Slapfish, Newsom, and Recipes: Chef Andrew Gruel Interview
On The Babylon Bee Interview Show, Kyle and Ethan talk to Chef Andrew Gruel about running a restaurant, why people won't let go of tips, and Ethan's idea for nacho's. Chef Andrew Gruel has appeared on many shows including as a Judge on Chopped and Food Truck Face Off. He has gained notoriety recently for being outspoken about the struggles restaurants have been facing this past year. He has a number of restaurants including his fish restaurant Slapfish and pizza joint Big Parm. Kyle and Ethan talk about the most controversial business decision Chef Gruel made: offering no pineapple pizza at Big Parm. After discussing why pineapple pizza is a bad decision, Chef Gruel goes into how difficult it has been running a restaurant during the pandemic. Kyle and Ethan give their ideas on how to improve Chef Gruel's restaurants. In the Subscriber Lounge, Kyle and Ethan throw out random ingredients and ask Chef Gruel what dish he would make with them. Ingredients ranging from bat wings to Nashville hot chicken. Chef Gruel shares what food is unappreciated. Ethan finds out tips for finding the best seafood. As always the interview ends with the 10 questions with an added bonus of one of the worst customers Chef's Gruel had to deal with.
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Hey, everybody, welcome to the Babylon Bee Interview Show.
We are two extremely skilled interviewers who interview awesome guests.
I'm Kyle Mann and I'm Ethan Nicole.
Ethan Nicole, and we're going to talk to Chef Andrew Gruhl today.
Gruel.
So in one of those strange twists of fate, a man that was born with the name Gruel went on to become like a gourmet chef.
Yeah.
I thought it was like a rags to riches Disney story.
Like, Gruel, you'll never be a chef.
Yeah.
Yeah, it'd be like if his name was like, you know, garbage.
Food.
I don't know.
I didn't have that analogy prepared.
I didn't have it locked and loaded.
I was waiting.
I was expecting it to be.
It'd be like if your name was Slingshot and you wanted to become a sniper rifle maker.
Well, no, not even that.
I can't come with a good analogy right now.
Andrew Gruel, LA chef.
He's got multiple restaurants and he's been very outspoken.
If you watch, there's some viral videos of him on YouTube just going off on Gavin Newsome.
It'd be like if your last name was Lawless and you wanted to become a police chief.
There you go.
That's real.
That actually happened.
Yeah, so he was a judge on Food Network's food truck face-off.
He's the founder and CEO of many restaurants.
Slapfish.
Out here in Huntington Beach.
Most notably.
Big Palm is a pizza restaurant out here.
Is that a play on like Big Pharma or something?
Big Parm?
Big Palm?
I think so.
That's hilarious.
And Two Birds is a chicken restaurant in Irvine.
Two Birds.
That's like a name of an Indian guy or something.
Yeah.
I'm Two Birds.
I used to know a guy named Two Crows.
It's like an Indian guy.
One who kills Native American.
Oh, it's like two birds.
One stone.
I got it.
Oh, one stone.
Wait, okay.
We're picking up his, so what is Slapfish?
He said, I listened to an interview with him where he said it was because the fish is so good, it slaps you in the face.
I feel like he hadn't refined his restaurants.
Fish are a slappy animal.
They do full-body slaps.
Yeah, they just slap.
So anyway, he was a pleasure to talk to.
We had a blast.
He has a great time.
We talk about food.
We talk about lockdowns.
He kind of rose to prominence in conservative-ish circles when he spoke out against Governor Newsome's crazy lockdowns.
Yeah, and then the government of California came after him and slammed him.
We're going to get into that, talk a lot about food.
You're going to be hungry.
At the end of the episode, I recommend fasting.
Watch this episode, and then you're really going to enjoy whatever you eat after this.
Hopefully, if you go somewhere good, you should go to one of Chef Gruhl's restaurants.
Do that.
Well, wait, Hanky's here.
Is he here?
Oh, here he comes.
You didn't help me out with that at all.
Oh, sorry.
I was texting somebody.
Yeah.
Hey, oh, there he is.
So, food, huh?
Oh, man.
Man.
I've heard of it.
Yeah, I like food.
Do you like food?
Is it that obvious?
That's not what I meant.
I mean, I just.
Yeah, no, I like food.
Who doesn't like food?
There's a lot of people.
How angry does ketchup on a hot dog make you?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I actually hate ketchup.
Just in general?
Yeah, I just hate it.
So, okay, so a hot dog or no hot dog.
How about pineapple pizza?
I hate pineapple on the pizza, too.
Wow.
I don't like it either.
So you just have a clean palate.
Yeah.
Good.
Ketchup on eggs.
How do you feel about that?
You're the guy I want to know.
Well, I'm here to troll.
So because I can create the concoctions to make people angry.
I mean, there are certain contexts like ketchup on meatloaf.
I actually kind of like it, but I don't like dipping stuff in it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not even ketchup at that point.
It's a glaze.
It's a glaze once it's on the meatloaf.
Extra commonalization.
But I like to post.
It was funny.
I saw an article about a month ago, something from the DOD stating that, well, be aware of pineapple on pizza debates because they're basically Russian plants trying to incite this is how they topple America.
Yeah, this is true.
100% true.
It was the Department of Defense and it said they're just trying to incite division.
And I'm like, it's so hilarious that pineapple on pizza is the topic that's creating the division nowadays.
It's like we've run out of everything else and now it's pineapple on pizza.
I'm pissed about everything else.
I was telling the other day I was at his house for a birthday party and they had pineapple pizza there and I was trying to hide it from my kids.
I didn't want them to know that it was an option or it existed because they hadn't found out yet.
Well, you made a great point about the guy who's the pineapple pizza guy.
Yeah.
You know, when everybody's ordering pizza and there's the one guy who says, I like pineapple, and then you have to get one pineapple pizza.
And he's the only one who wants one.
He has one or two slices and then he starts eating everybody else's pizza too.
Of course.
Yeah, he has one of them and he has all the other ones.
Yeah.
And he doesn't, the reason why pineapple on pizza sucks so much is that it just bleeds and turns into a watery mess.
So it's not like you can be like, well, you know, do a quarter of the pizza with the pineapple.
You might as well then just urinate on the pizza.
Yeah.
Right.
Well, I do that.
Yeah.
Do you serve pineapple on pizza at your pizza?
Of course.
No, I'm just kidding.
No, if you look at Big Palm, which is my pizza joint over in Tustin, it specifically states like we could put anything about who we are.
All it says is Big Palm, no pineapple allowed.
That is our.
Is that on there?
Yeah, that's our actual.
That's our secondary kind of branding.
So how often you get people who walk in and they find out you got no pineapple all the time.
People get pissed.
People get pissed.
Yeah.
They're like, you want to tell me what I can and can't eat?
And I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't make a bill or a law about this, but I'm going to use my power to tell you that please don't come back.
It says, unlike your children, our pizza dough sits still for 18 hours.
That's true.
That is true.
You're on the website.
I'm on the website.
I don't see anything about pineapple on pizza.
I don't know if you're.
Here we go.
Here we go.
You have to show us.
Yeah.
You can start the timer if you want.
Actually, I'm sorry.
Look, in a moment of weakness, I got a little diplomatic.
So the third one is, bring your own pineapple, actually.
Oh, yeah, Twitter.
Twitter is no pineapple allowed.
You appeased the mob.
Yeah.
You came to the mob.
No, I did it the other day too, the difference between tailor ham and pork roll, which is a big New Jersey debate.
Okay.
I don't know if you're familiar with that one.
No.
But it's, I mean, they're effectively the same thing.
They actually are exactly the same thing.
But people get so mad.
And I posted, I'm a Taylor ham guy.
So I said Taylor Ham pork roll.
And everyone was like, take aside, you weenie, you spineless SOV.
I am not involved in this debate.
I don't even know what either is.
It's like, yeah, bizarre to me.
It's a log of, it's like the New Jersey version of spam.
It's only made in New Jersey, and it's called Taylor Pork Roll.
And people in Northern Jersey call it Taylor Ham.
And in Southern Jersey, it's called pork roll.
It's the exact same thing.
They call it.
Yeah.
And it's a breakfast sandwich.
Like 99.9% of people from New Jersey every morning have a Taylor ham egg and cheese.
Okay.
I like breakfast.
Breakfast burritos are to me one of the perfect foods.
I couldn't agree more.
It's a complete protein.
Yeah.
Everything.
Swaddled up.
Like a newborn.
Yeah, it's the swaddle effect, that level of comfort.
So, well, how do we transition to talk?
I mean, this is more fun, too.
Yeah, you've already talked about it.
People can Google all those other interviews about COVID stuff, right?
We just talk about food the whole time.
Just food.
All food the whole time.
We'll get more into that.
We got some ideas for you on how to run a restaurant.
Excellent.
Good, good, good.
I'm always looking for that.
Twitter's a great place for that.
We're always looking for headline ideas from random strangers.
Yeah, that's what we do.
Yeah, Twitter.
No, I'm starting a new restaurant.
It's actually going to be called Twitter.
So it's just all the ideas from people on Twitter put together.
So I want to show how miserably anybody exists in the world.
It sounds like a train wreck.
Slap Twitter.
Yeah.
Yeah, bingo.
Well, pretty soon here, Newsom will be running my restaurant.
So we'll see how well he does.
Yeah, what's going on with that?
I know they were investigating you and all this randomly after you spoke out against them.
Yeah, it's still now, of course, we're in this waiting stage where they subpoenaed like four years worth of records and documents.
And I mean, everything you can ever imagine.
Like every single email ever written.
It is as exhaustive as it comes.
And then it's the waiting game, right?
Because they're going to go and they'll find something.
They'll find somebody missed a clock in here or there.
I mean, it is virtually impossible that across 10 businesses with over a four-year period, probably two to three hundred employees per business, right?
Come and go.
You know, that's 4,000, 3,000, 4,000 employees, two weeks of records through the years.
They'll find a missed punch-in, an improper calculation, and they'll throw the book at me.
I'm just waiting for it.
Get you on pineapple discrimination.
They'll definitely get me on that.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's got to be racism or something.
I don't know.
Yeah, there's something there.
Well, it's Russians.
A pineapple?
Oh, the Russians.
Yeah, the Russians.
Gotcha now.
I got you now.
Hmm.
Yeah, that's insane.
It's insane to me that they can just do that and just keep you waiting forever.
Yep.
And I mean, you got legal fees, you got, well, that's the point in it.
And when the state comes down with these blanket investigations, it's not as if you sue me for something arbitrary and then I go back after you for legal fees stating that your case was just complete BS.
So when it comes to the state, it's like, well, no, no, these are just open audits, right?
Nothing triggered this.
We just happened to do an audit by virtue of some confidential information that we received, right?
And then what they do is they send a long letter out to every employee you've ever had.
And they're like, we're here to protect you and we're writing on behalf of the state.
And if there's anything your employer ever did, here's a list of 50 questions.
Please answer these.
And they're leading, right?
Like, did you ever feel uncomfortable working there?
Was the temperature too high?
It's a kitchen.
Sorry.
Sorry, pardon my language.
You know, it's like things along those lines.
And they trick you with the way these are written.
Most of the employees reached out to me and they're like, what is this?
I'm like, you don't have to answer it.
You can.
You don't have to.
And the majority, I mean, we're a great employer.
And, you know, you're always going to have your bad apples.
But look, you know, I mean, when it comes to pay, it's like, we're paying 20 to 25 bucks an hour for dishwashers.
We've always paid $5 above minimum wage.
There's no pay issues there.
It's merely a matter of them just trying to find something silly.
So have you ever had like the food person with the clipboard show up at your place, like walking around all like, oh, yeah.
Like now, like, how often do they show up now?
Now they come more often, right?
And everyone says, and of course, when I bring that up, they're like, oh, no, no, no, no.
The health department has now added more reviews because of COVID.
And I'm like, well, this guy basically is our line cook now because he comes so often.
So he even knows when he shows up that like give him an apron.
I always try and get, I always give him free food.
We get awards of excellence every single time they come in.
Yeah, show them free lunch.
That is true.
That is true.
But, you know, there was the image that went viral, like, oh, it was around Super Bowl from the brewery Bravery Brewing up in up north, right?
Where the health inspector was dancing, but apparently she was drying her hands.
Right.
It was like, well, I'm nervous.
So I was actually just drying my hands while dancing.
That's how I dry my hands.
And it was after she had shut everyone down.
So it was like she was dancing in excitement.
And then I had posted that and kind of pontificated on it.
And then the very next day, the health department showed up at our place.
And the guy's like, I saw your video.
Oh, we're doing an inspection.
And I'm like, well, obviously you're here because of that.
What are your thoughts on the video?
It's like, I can't answer that.
Jeez.
I don't even know what to, I mean.
So remember the video that went viral with the woman in LA?
She's like, my restaurant shut down and there's this film set right outside my restaurant and people are sitting.
So they also have that.
I mean, there's all these other.
Why are restaurants such an easy target?
I guess, because you have airplanes, people can all crowd on an airplane, people can crowd on the subway.
Just there's not as much of a government connection to we can all get herded into the same Walmart entrance.
Yeah.
You know, it's all fine.
Yeah, restaurants are the low-line fruit.
Because they're seen as a luxury, I guess, to some extent or something.
I don't even think it's about, I don't even think they go that far into it.
I think it's strictly just that we are the low-line fruit, right?
So as I've said through this whole pandemic, the governors are really using this as an opportunity to, it's their time trial.
It's like, look what I can do.
Watch.
I'm going to be, I got to be in the news today.
In every single state, there's only a few governors that have kind of hidden and just gone with the flow, right?
So you've got California, he's out there.
And then even on the other end of the spectrum, you got DeSantis who's like, oh, no, watch what I'm going to do.
I'm going to set a good blueprint for dealing with the fact that California wants to jam California into the 49 states around them.
And when I look at what Newsom was doing, it's like, okay, he needs to make himself look really powerful.
Like, I made the hard decisions, but I did a lot.
Look at what I did.
And this wasn't easy for me.
And we're the low-line fruit.
Shut down the restaurants because every individual and independent restaurant, they're not going to get a lawyer and sue the government.
If he goes and he shuts down Walmart, well, bam, you got a lawsuit right there.
You got a big issue.
Shut down any of the big box stores.
You got a major problem.
Obviously, he can't shut down anything Hollywood related.
That's why they were exempt through the whole thing.
So when you look at the businesses and the big businesses that were providing money to either their campaigns or they were just kind of in the pocket of a lot of these politicians, the restaurants, they're not going to fight back.
These restaurants, no margins in the industry.
Do you think that like, you know, you know, Bob's chicken is going to get an attorney and sue the government?
No, they're just going to sit by and they're going to take it.
So it's that effect of, look at what I did.
And it was so hard to do, but I'm really, really making tough decisions in order to try and beat this virus.
And I'm, you know, it's hard being me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think depending on your political philosophy, you want to look like you're doing something.
And that's always, you know, we got to do something.
Yeah.
It doesn't really matter if it does anything or not.
Yeah.
You know, and then they're expecting the spike, and so then they're like, oh, now we're going to close outdoor dining.
And that became the big rallying cry for a while there.
Yeah, of course.
For the holidays.
But that's the difference.
You just nailed it down to the simple form, right?
I'm going to do something or I'm not going to do something.
So at the end of the day, it was about doing as much as you can, which is then ultimately the unintended or intended consequence was that that action had an equal and opposite reaction, screwed the economy, probably created more negative outcomes, unintended, or intended, as I said, or on the other side of the spectrum, not do anything, right?
So we have restaurants in Florida, we have restaurants in Georgia, we have restaurants in South Carolina.
And those states, we had no difference, right, from an internal perspective in regards to COVID spread, effects on the business from states that were incredibly tightly locked down versus those that were virtually open the whole time.
So now you look back, of course, hindsight's a beautiful thing, but you look back and you compare the two, and it's like, wow, that's crazy.
Those states that were actually more cumbersome in their regulations, like California, New Mexico, the businesses were hurt so bad, but when you look at the raw numbers, there really wasn't a difference.
Yeah, that's the thing that it feels so obvious that the states that were looser on these restrictions, there isn't massive body counts in these states.
So it feels like people just willingly ignoring that fact.
Yeah, of course.
Of course.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
And then from, you know, from our perspective as a restaurant, what now I'm worried about, right, is, and this had already started in California, but the pandemic seemed to almost become the predicate by which a lot of the officials were able to rewrite the way, you know, the calculus, if you will, for how the government interacts with businesses, especially small to medium-sized businesses, but they've deputized a lot of these local agencies, right?
So of course we saw from a federal perspective where the federal government was saying, well, we're going to tell you what to do on a local level and we're going to kind of throw out that idea of classical liberalism or even the notion that states can run their own.
And then from a state perspective, it was instead of the states allowing the local communities to do what they wanted to do, it was the state stepping in and saying, we're going to be the grand force here telling you what you can and can't do.
As we saw in California, shutting down the beaches in Orange County.
Orange County's numbers were nothing last summer.
Newsom shut down the beaches the weekend of the 4th of July, which was the only time in which the restaurants were going to go from red to black, right?
That's our Black Friday for restaurants along the coast.
So we bought absolutely all of our product.
Finally, all the employees who were missing hours, I said, I'm going to give you guys as many as you want.
You want to work 20 hours, 4th of July, we're finally going to have it.
We buy everything, we schedule everybody, and then the Wednesday before or the Thursday before, we had bought all the product on Wednesday, Newsom shuts down the beaches.
People cancel their trips, business goes to nothing.
And then I said, watch, two weeks from now, cases are going to spike because everyone's going to be jammed into backyard parties as opposed to being out in the open air, which we knew was the good thing.
That's so insane.
And it happened.
So we lost all of our business.
I still paid the employees, but that wasn't a red for us.
And then the cases spiked more than I guarantee than they would have.
What happened to allowing local agencies to make those decisions?
So now what we're seeing is we're seeing that Newsom, by keeping his executive powers in place under the pandemic, they talked about how he was going to kind of some of them were going to burn off over time, but he keeps these powers in place in order to be able to deputize the local agencies, whether it's the health department or the ABC, to penalize businesses who aren't following things.
And that's the scary, that's the scary part, the way that that's going to happen from state to local.
And those are the long-term effects that we're seeing.
You touched on something interesting there that my wife's a hairstylist and she had this exact same thing where the government is just, you know, they're declaring, well, tomorrow you have to close.
And then a few weeks later, like, tomorrow you're allowed to open.
She's like, you can't just open your hair salon booth tomorrow.
Yeah.
You know, and it's probably even worse for a restaurant because you got to stuck up in supplies.
You got to call in employees and all that.
And it's just so obvious to me.
Well, people have to know that you're open now.
Not everybody follows your social media account and goes, oh, they're open today.
Let's go today.
Yeah.
And it's so obvious to me that everyone in government making these decisions has never run a business in their lives.
Or even worked at one.
Yeah.
Like, have they ever been a dishwasher?
Yeah.
Well, I don't think you have either.
Yeah.
Well, that's the Twitter effect that we were talking about running a restaurant, right?
Like, that's what people say to me.
So I posted something the other day about, you know, the shortfall that restaurants have right now financially.
And everyone's like, well, I want to audit everyone's books and see where that PPP money went.
Well, the funny thing is people keep saying the PPE money.
And I'm like, first of all, you're just throwing letters out there.
It's the PPP money.
The PPE is the stuff you wear on your face.
But second of all, it's not just the fact that all of that should go to the employees.
How about the expenses that you put into all the product that was lost when they open close, open close, and then the over abundance of money that you put towards labor if you're a good employer or the fact that your paper costs are up 3%, then you've got to now buy masks for everybody, which is 1% to the bottom line, or the plexiglass, the outdoor patios, the heaters, all the things that you bought that were never used because by the time you put them in place,
they either shut you down or they changed the goalposts that those were no longer necessary or they weren't approved, one or the other.
I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars.
And nothing is, there's no mechanism by which the businesses can now get rebates or refunds on any of that product.
Yeah, you're sitting on a bunch of plexiglass.
Yeah, no kidding.
What are you going to do with it?
Yeah, no kidding.
I mean, I've got so much plexiglass right now.
I don't even know.
I'm thinking about just building a car out of it.
Just driving around in a transparent vehicle.
Build a house.
So one of the fun things about COVID is all the strange little rules that they've come up with.
I always love the don't go out after 11 o'clock as if COVID is a werewolf or something.
Yeah, all the rules about like drinking.
You have to have food when you drink or else.
Yeah, but chicken wings aren't food.
So that was Cuomo.
Cuomo was the greatest.
I love he's like one day he just wakes up.
He's like, you know, I'm going to really micromanage these bar menus.
I think that's the way we're going to prevent COVID is if somebody's, I mean, COVID, if you think about it, it makes complete sense because if you're eating chicken wings, you're totally susceptible to COVID.
I mean, I read that.
I think that was Fauci who said that.
But if you're eating chicken on a sandwich, COVID is freaked out.
Turn up.
They are just like, that guy's eating a sandwich.
Don't go after him.
But the guy with the wings, he's a target.
Well, bat wings, for sure.
Yeah.
Maybe you're cooked bat?
No, no, no.
Not that I know of.
You got to do a slap bat.
Yeah.
Make the slap bat, Rusty.
That's a good point.
That is a good point.
Well, now it's funny, right, that we're being highly encouraged to eat bugs out of the ground, right?
So it's all about, oh, you eat cicadas.
It's great.
NPR does a five-hour piece on it.
They're like, and then you saute the cicada.
And I've listened to these too.
And I laugh.
I'm like, this is so insane that we're using the 17-year cicada push right now to try and glamorize bugs.
Because do you know what the name of a group of cicadas is?
What?
A plague.
Right?
That's what it's called.
A group of cicadas is a plague of cicadas.
Why the hell are you encouraging people to eat a plague coming off of a pandemic?
Eat a plague.
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Yeah, so what are some of the stupid rules that you've I assume they send you guidelines as a restaurant?
We were talking about the dumb rules.
Any that stand out to you?
Guidelines you've been given?
Well, I mean, it's funny you bring that up, actually, because they don't send you many guidelines.
So in the beginning of this, you're just supposed to know, right?
Like we're all supposed to be epidemiologists.
Granted, we are on Twitter.
We're on Twitter.
You got your degree from Twitter.
Yes.
If you have your degree from Twitter, structural engineers, epidemiologists, tax accountants for a while there.
So they didn't send you anything, and that was where I said, I'm like, in the beginning, if these local agencies had actually acted like consultants and gotten with the small businesses and the restaurants who are inherently trained to create safe and sanitary environments, like we know how to do that.
So we kind of, the learning curve is a lot smaller.
We could have been able to easily model the right types of behavior.
But now they're starting to like retroactively send us stuff.
Like just a reminder from OSHO, you have to do the following, right?
And now OSHA's guidelines are absurd, right?
We have to keep a whole system of who has and hasn't been vaccinated, what color mask they're wearing, what type of mask they're wearing, when they wash their mask, when they wash their clothes, how often they take a shower, right?
Like it's going into a lot of real personal stuff.
But the best one is for restaurants to like maintain social distancing, right?
Like six to eight feet, of course, in the kitchen.
How the heck are you going to do that?
You set down the plate there and step back and then the other person gets it.
Yeah, like the fry guy.
He's like, hey, hey, don't throw that fish down on the grill yet.
I'm going to throw the fish and chips down.
I'm going to throw it down there.
Okay.
Hey, you guys can come in now.
Now go throw the fish on the grill.
Yeah, there's 40 tickets on the board, but this is kind of how we have to do it one at a time.
Sorry, guys.
It's going to be four hours for your lobster roll.
But really, it's like they don't think at all about this type of stuff.
That's just the mechanical pieces.
But frankly, I don't read the rest.
For me, when this whole lockdown thing started, it was like, I get it.
When this whole thing kicked off, I was like, a couple of weeks, I'm like, maybe this will be bad for the economy, but a couple of weeks staying home.
Maybe we can all recover from this.
And we're all in this together and that whole thing.
And then my wife, who's a hairstylist, she's like, they're never going to end this.
She was more woke than I was to this whole thing.
She's like, woke?
Well, awoke to, yeah.
She was more red than I was.
And I don't know when it was.
I think it was when they opened everything back up.
And then she's like, I'm not going back to work because they're just going to shut me down again.
And then like a week later, they shut down all salons again.
And that, for me, that was like the red pill for me for this whole lockdown thing.
Was there a moment for you that you realized that this is not, was it the same for you or were you?
Great.
I mean, I have a very similar situation.
It was the same with myself and my wife.
She's always like the one who's kind of, you know, crawling around under the bed looking for the conspiracy theory.
And I was like, no, no, no, this is great.
Two weeks, same situation.
She's like, it's not going to be two weeks.
I'm like, come on, this is, there's no way.
This is, and then, you know, it was the same situation, but it was, for us, you're right, it was the open, close, open, close.
But the point at which for me was like just throwing me off of a huge cliff, I never thought they would shut down outdoor dining in Los Angeles, 75 degrees and sunny, when, especially after months of knowing consistently, right?
Being outdoors is fine.
You had an entire summer of love, right?
People protesting outdoors.
And it was never a super spreader event because they're outdoors.
Of course, these protests, they're all outdoors.
And I remember at one point, I was like, this isn't a referendum on the protests, but I just want to post this photo of all of these people.
None of them are masked, piled on top of each other, protesting outdoors as they were en route to riot.
And everyone's like, they're outdoors, you moron.
Follow the science, like whatever.
And then, you know, fast forward four months.
And it's like, okay, well, then doesn't that same logic apply?
And they're like, not at all.
It's the winter time.
There's a new spike now.
People are being forced indoors.
Well, not in Southern California where it's 75 degrees and sunny.
It's like, you want to kill grandmother, you profit-driven fool.
It's the exact same thing.
There is absolutely no difference.
And the fact is, it doesn't surprise me that the government wanted to, you know, take these moves.
It surprises me how many people just idly sat by and took it and gobbled it up.
Right.
This is a stupid comparison, kind of, but, you know, I have a somewhat obsession with cults.
And I, you know, read these books on like the FLDS and so are there cults.
And you do have these cult leaders that just make up arbitrary rules.
It feels good.
Like there was Warren Jepps from the FLDS one day decided red was evil.
So no one could wear red.
They decided to get rid of all their red clothing.
And then he one day was decided dogs are bad.
Someone had to kill their dogs.
And it feels like we're living in that kind of thing where it just feels good to make a rule.
And more rules are better.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
And as long as there's something that you can kind of intellectually hang your hat on, right?
Like, okay, red.
Yeah, that makes sense.
The devil's red, right?
Like, oh, red, I get it.
Red.
Red.
Go ahead.
Like, as long as there's something that you can just kind of throw out there, because you're, if you think about it, right?
Intellectually, putting your, like, like staying away from people, well, that makes sense to stop a virus.
Sure.
Right.
Until you learn that it doesn't really act that way, right?
Like, but if you have this, like, just this deadly, if I touch you, I'm going to die.
Well, then keep me away from everybody.
So, yeah, yeah, of course that makes sense intellectually.
And then there are people who, from the very beginning, when we didn't know what was going on and we thought, remember, we saw those videos of people in China just passing out on the street.
Yeah.
And by the way, whatever happened, like, how come no one ever talks about that?
Like, hey, that was fake.
Where'd those come from?
Yeah.
Who's planting those?
Because nobody's dying on not one time in America was somebody just standing on a street corner and just passed out because they had COVID.
Yeah, the stuff coming out of Italy too is like horrifying.
Everybody's dying in Italy.
I'm sure that there's a lot of there's a lot of old people there who are dying.
But the horror stories were coming out at the beginning.
Yeah.
To kind of set this off.
Yeah, I remember the experts were saying like, you know, 10 to 15 million Americans could die from this.
Yeah.
You know, when this thing first came out.
And you're like, wow, this could be bad.
Well, wasn't the original model, I think, the Johns Hopkins model, wasn't that like two to three million by the end of the year?
And then it was, you know, tweaked.
And then like I can't even looking back on it, it feels like it was five years ago.
But we just move so we move on so quickly and we just accept it.
Like we were so wrong.
We were just absolutely wrong.
But don't worry, this time we're going to be right.
Point to me one time in history where things haven't evolved and we've looked back and been wrong.
We're always wrong, right?
Like there's certain fundamentals that then become the foundations upon which we build new theories and thoughts and hypotheses.
But like we're, we're kind of always wrong.
Now, there's things that go full circle.
Like now we're learning eating bacon and butter is actually much better than eating margarine and poly, you know, these kind of unsaturated fats.
Little fats and all that.
But some people never stopped doing that.
But also when you look back, like they were telling you, you've got to smoke cigarettes.
Cigarettes are great for you.
Like, oh, you have emphysema?
Like, smoke cigarettes.
That's going to help you.
And doctors were prescribing cigarettes or what have you.
So it's like it's inevitable.
You now know cigars are better.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
Or vaping.
Vaping.
Although it did come out the other day that vaping leads to cervical cancer in men.
Yeah, well, really?
And me.
Overeating.
I like the image of a doctor in the 60s smoking.
He's like, follow the science, man.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So knowing that, you just have to look right now and be like, when they tell us now, it is just everything is an absolute.
Like, this is the science.
Therefore, it is 100% correct because I tell you so.
It's like, but that's not going to, we know that's not going to be the case.
Were you more like conservative, libertarian, classical liberal before all this?
Or did this kind of turn you onto all this stuff?
Yeah, I've always been involved in my own private world studying this stuff and just find it pretty fascinating from a social and policy perspective.
But I've never been outspoken about it just for fear of the mob.
But, you know, there's a certain point where you're like, well, the mob's going to come after you no matter what you say or do.
So you might as well be honest with yourself at this point.
I mean, we're all going to get canceled.
Based on your fears, how'd that play out?
Did it get as bad as you thought it would or has it actually been better than you thought it would?
Yeah, so socially it's gotten as bad as I thought it would.
I've gotten death threats.
I've gotten just horrible emails.
But here's the thing.
Sales are doubled.
The people who complain don't spend money.
Keyboard lawyers don't spend money.
It's that simple.
Like they're going to come and they're going to try and cancel you, but then there's there then the other side of the pendulum is that people are going to say, oh, well, they're trying to cancel you.
Watch.
I'm going to spend double the amount of money.
It's kind of this Toyota thing this week, right?
Like all these people are saying, oh, we're canceling Toyota because they donated towards these particular representatives who backed the, quote, insurrection.
And now you're seeing people on the far right.
They're like, are you kidding me?
I love Toyota.
I'm going to go buy three Toyotas today.
Watch this.
Look at this new Toyota.
And I'm like, hold a minute, because it's only a matter of time before Toyota comes out and totally turns on this.
Just like I posted this yesterday with the right wing watch.
I said, everyone was cheering.
Right-wing watch was trending.
And they're like, yeah, they were thrown off for their own thing.
And I go, two days, they'll be back on.
Mark my words.
Oh, stop it.
Don't ruin the party.
Come on.
And watch two hours later, reinstated.
Yeah, that's what I try to just hold to basically.
If I like something, I buy it.
I'm not going to freak out about what they support.
Yeah, exactly.
It's a separate thing to me.
Totally agree.
So if you were going to be, you get to serve Gavin Newsome a meal secretly.
What do you put in it?
Well, I would say.
We can take your answer off the air if you need.
Nah, I would never use my craft to.
Look, I think at the end of the day, I would love to actually talk to and eat with Gavin Newsom because I want to kind of understand what's driving some of these decisions.
Frankly, I believe he's, to some degree, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
I think he is in a tough position in that he's answering to a lot of interests that perhaps we don't know about.
And, You know, I don't believe that he thinks that the moves he's making are the right moves.
I think he thinks that they're the politically expedient moves, that that's what he should be doing by virtue of his caucus.
And that's where sometimes you just want to sit down and talk to somebody.
So if we were going to have a meal, it would be pineapple pizza.
Okay.
You don't have to give them something terrible.
We were just thinking something bad food or like, you know, or some kind of blowfish.
Something spicy.
Poison talons inside its skin.
Well, that, or that.
Or something.
I don't know.
You have those fishes that are like you have to prepare them just right.
Otherwise, the person dies if you do that.
I would never even get.
I've got such a shaky hand.
I mean, you should see how many spelling errors I have when I type.
So you don't want me preparing that fish.
But the key with it, too, is that you actually have to get a little, when you cut it, you have to get a little bit of the poison in there.
Just enough.
So when you eat it, there's a sensation like your lips get numb.
It's that thrill of like, oh, am I dying?
But then it's like, nope, I'm good.
I'm good.
Give me a little bit more poison.
Yeah.
Thrill seekers.
You had that?
No.
No.
I would die.
It's just my luck.
So would you ever open a restaurant in California again at this point?
Yeah, certain parts of California.
I think that's what people miss is everybody's like, oh, why are you still in California?
You know, you say this or that.
California is a beautiful state.
California is unbelievable for so many reasons.
And, you know, why am I going to leave?
Right?
I just need to open in an area where it's more business friendly so that a lot of the, like in Orange County, for example, they were not coming after anybody for being open outdoors.
Like there was not that I know of.
Now, in certain cities like Costa Mesa, I remember they did criminally charge a bar owner for remaining open indoors, et cetera.
But that was an activist.
I'm pretty sure that was an activist DA.
So you just got to do your research, figure out where the best place to open is.
Yeah, it's one thing that this has brought to light is how important it is that your local sheriffs.
How important it is to look into your area that you're moving to or elect sheriffs who will actually protect your rights.
Local sheriffs, school boards, right?
Local politics are so important.
The big picture, the Senate seats, congressional stuff, and the presidential stuff, it's such vanity.
Well, now it's not.
I mean, now, unfortunately, I think it's scary.
It's become more authoritarian.
But the local stuff is just so important.
So you want some ideas on how to run a restaurant?
Yeah, please.
Remember, that was why I was coming.
Yeah, it's okay.
More than anything in the world, Ethan.
So I've always thought, why isn't there any restaurant or restaurant chain that has a sippy cup non-spill that they could be take home, comes with the kids' meal, could be disposable.
But every restaurant, you take your kids, if you have an age one to three-year-old kid, the most stressful thing is that drink.
Even if it's got a lid with a straw, that's not going to do anything.
You need something that secures.
I'd be there.
I'd be there at least weekly with my kids.
I couldn't agree more.
Actually, ours are pretty tight.
So we went through a, you know, it was for me, it wasn't like, bring me the finest lobster and I'm going to choose them.
It was like, bring me all the kids' cups.
I want to see which one can.
I guess I need to go to slapfish.
You'd be surprised.
These are tight lids.
So tight, I can't even get them on.
That's the hard part.
Okay.
We've had employees quit because they couldn't get the lids on.
I can't do it.
So that's a great, that is a great point.
And I'll actually even extrapolate that further and say, kids' meals, right?
Yeah.
Kids' meals are the most important thing in a restaurant because they're never going to be eaten, right?
You're going to eat them.
The parents eat them.
There's a, in my opinion, right?
Like, the older the kid gets, the likelihood goes up.
But between one and three, there's like an 80% chance they're not going to eat them.
Yeah, they eat like an eighth of it.
So because of that, all of our restaurant kids eat kids eat free.
You never pay for a kid's meal at any of my restaurants, right?
Wow.
Because now, now the parent, you might think, like, well, that's really just $5, whatever.
That's not going to make or break my trip.
When it's going to get thrown away, it's $5 into garbage.
So a parent is like, oh, it's free, knowing it's going to get thrown away, or I'm going to eat it.
And then because it's free, that's great.
And that's been, from a business perspective, huge for us, bringing parents in.
Like, we were doing it in the beginning, like every Wednesday.
And we would have, we ran a little kinder care in there.
It was hilarious.
Like, one side of the restaurant was like all these dads just getting wasted.
And then there was like just kids running around, chicken fingers on the wall on the other side of the restaurant.
Nice.
It was a pretty good experience.
Pre-pandemic.
I like that.
Yeah, just a room for the kids to go crazy and shut them in there.
I've thought about that too, with like a glass wall, and then you just watch.
Yeah, you just sit out there and dine.
Yeah.
They'd love it.
You'd love it.
Just a very fine dining experience and then right through the glass.
Mayhems.
Yeah.
It's like Lionheart Van Dam.
It's like the pit fighting.
You know, the fancy people are sitting outside and they have these guys killing each other in the just like a little three-year-old's face against the window, like sliding down.
And then the parent is here just swirling the wine and staring at the kid in the eyes.
Eating their blowfish delicately.
So another thing that we think restaurants should have is a new system for describing heat levels.
Because extra, extra hot at one place means totally different things.
Do you mean heat, like spicy environment or food?
Okay, spiciness levels.
Okay.
And we need to standardize.
We're big fans of Nashville hot chicken.
Yeah.
And everyone has a different name and it doesn't, it could mean anything.
Yeah.
And a different, and there's a race element here too, because as a white man, I go and order and they put me on a different scale at Mexican restaurants and Asian restaurants.
Yeah, I've gotten discrimination at Thai places before.
Yeah, where you say I want hot and they think I'm kidding.
Well, so I don't, I frankly, I don't like the scale, right?
We rolled out a national feature two years ago, and it was our Nashville hot fried fish sandwich, right?
And everyone wanted a scale.
They were like, well, we could do one, pepper, two, three, four.
I'm like, that's just so subjective.
I'd rather keep it binary, hot or not hot.
And the hot was, in my opinion, extremely hot.
But then a lot of people would come and be like, ah, it's not that hot.
But that's okay.
Our hot isn't that hot for you versus the no spice is obviously just a fried fish sandwich.
And it wouldn't make it a hot fish sandwich.
But you get the point.
That might make sense.
You can order hot.
And then if you want it really hot, you can say, can I get it extra spicy?
Yeah.
Or something.
And maybe they can do that.
I don't know.
Yeah, we line our restaurants with hot sauces.
So we have all these different hot sauces.
Of course, they're branded, assuming they're going to get stolen, sit in your refrigerator.
So what I spend a lot of my, I've never bought ads.
I've never spent money on traditional marketing.
We buy extremely hot hot sauces and we give them out to guests, right?
And the reason they're so hot is the hotter they are, the less you use, the longer it sits in your refrigerator.
So the longer our brand sits in your refrigerator.
So we're looking for like the world's, I mean, at one point, I almost just started putting bleach in the bottles.
Just make it taste horrible.
So what do you do about one thing that drives me crazy at restaurants is they're really good at the beginning, like for giving the food, and then when it gets to the end when you need the bill, suddenly they just never come by.
They never bring you the bill.
You're just sitting there.
Also, what's the cutoff?
Like, how long should I wait before I just walk, get up and leave and don't pay?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I would, I would, you know, I mean, trust your own moral compass on that one.
But that is a good, well, and the reason that is, right, is because the only reason the server is moving so fast and beginning and bringing the food out is because they're scared of the kitchen, right?
Kitchen puts the food up and the server doesn't come and get the food.
Cooks turn into tyrants.
Like, get to food out of the window.
Like, ooh, dying in the window.
You know, 95% of our human resource issues are between front of the house and back of the house.
Like, oh, you know, he threw this hot plate of food at me.
So once they, once the food is out of the kitchen and it's not being driven, then the server's like, oh, I'm done.
Like, I don't care.
I actually don't care about the guest.
I just wanted to get the kitchen to shut up by giving them their food.
So that's it.
So you just have to keep ordering stuff.
Okay.
You got to get their attention.
You just keep ordering food, right?
But then right as it's about to come out, then you're like, oh, and I want the check too.
So I just need to ask for the check once the food arrives.
Right when they bring the plate, can you get the check?
Just say that.
Be like, I have this really weird fetish.
I like my check sitting on top of my burger.
So when you bring my burger, make sure the check is in the toothpick so that it's all in one.
It's a weird thing for me.
I mean, like a religious thing I have is I can't eat food I haven't already paid for.
That's a good point.
So I need to, it's immoral to eat food that's not paid for.
And that's why we're flex casual, right?
So you come in, you order at the counter, you get a number, and then we'll like serve your table if you need more beer, et cetera.
So you've already paid and then you sit down.
People are like, oh, just, you know, that's just such a good, cleaner model.
I'm like, no, I just don't trust humans.
We got any other good ones here?
Well, they're not good, but there are ideas.
If there's people that have moral qualms with eating meat, you could offer them animals who deserve the death penalty.
That's a gosh, that's such a great point.
A whole restaurant of just the Hitler of cows.
This dog bit a kid.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's good.
That's good.
Braised pit bull.
We're just throwing it out there.
Now, Ethan wrote this down, and I don't know what it means.
The chipotle of nachos.
No, my idea for a restaurant is like you can do the craziest custom nachos.
Like you said, Chipotle, I mean, you walk down the thing and pick all the stuff.
You could even do like dessert nachos.
You could do crazy Thai nachos.
Like just go all out on nachos.
You shouldn't have talked about that because now I'm going to do that.
You can do it and then just let me eat that.
As long as we can eat there, we don't care.
Buffalo nachos, just crazy.
Garlic?
Was that buffalo meat or like buffalo wing sauce?
Both.
Okay.
Yeah, let's do both.
Every animal.
So buffaloes that have obviously done horrible activities.
Has anybody done buffalo buffalo?
Buffaloes that stampede on a cat.
That's a good point.
Buffalo, buffalo.
Buffalo hot sauce, buffalo meat.
Why haven't they done that yet?
Wow.
Why isn't that a regular thing, more importantly, not just having been done?
Right.
You can do that.
And actually, that works well with a lot of different concepts.
There was one on the East Coast called Cereality, and it was cereal.
It was Chipotle of cereal.
Okay.
So you go through.
It was kind of like TCBY.
Do you remember the country's best yogurt, TCBY?
Yeah.
Or the original.
But it was yogurt.
Then, yeah, you go through and you build your own cereal bowl.
But it was great because you got towards the end of the line and it was like, oh, or like, do you want rice in there?
You want meat in there?
And you're like, that's just Chipotle.
Now that's just Chipotle.
Buccamole?
Perfect.
Well, that's all the ideas.
Yeah, that's all our ideas we got.
Those were good.
I'll get working on that.
We do want your opinions on things.
We want to talk food.
How were we on time?
I can't.
We got a little more.
I didn't even know we were recording.
I thought we were all talking about the warm-up.
Yeah.
You didn't record, did you?
Well, yeah, should we talk about tipping?
I wish Brandon was here.
He's very opinionated about tipping.
Oh, tipping.
Yeah, let's talk about tipping.
It's a political issue now.
It's political.
It's a big thing.
I talked about the other day I posted, somebody was like, oh, you can't find workers?
Pay your staff more.
I'm like, well, we are paying $25 an hour for dishwashers plus tips.
And they're like, tips?
Oh, now you want us to subsidize your wages.
I'm like, did you miss the first part, right?
Yeah, when I was a dishwasher, I think I made $4.75 an hour.
Well, the funny thing is, is that they really did.
So then it was this channel.
It's called naiving and giving the credit.
But then they started doing all these YouTube videos about me.
And it was like, F. Gruhl, this guy, his last name, too.
How's he a chef?
I'm like, that's totally original.
Isn't that an underdog story?
That's great.
That's what I say.
It overcame it.
Yeah, it was a calling.
And, you know, so they're like, tipping is the worst thing in the world to a lot of people, especially those who believe in kind of this notion of everybody gets a living wage, universal basic income.
The idea of tipping now.
Because it's merit-based, right?
Well, because it's merit-based and because they look at it as the incredibly rich private business owner is now pushing onto the consumer the need to subsidize their wages.
And what's funny is that we did eliminate tipping in a few of our restaurants at one point.
They were franchisees.
And you know who was the angriest?
It wasn't the team members, right?
Because they got a higher wages as part of that move.
It was the guests.
The guests were like, I want a tip.
It feels good.
There's a level of kind of psychological egoism there where it's like, oh, this feels really good.
Like, hey, do you ever, and let me ask, honest question.
Like, when you go to put a tip in a jar, do you wait until their back is turned or do you want them to see it?
I wait till they turn and look at me.
Yeah.
Have you seen the Seinfeld episode where George puts the dollar and he doesn't see it, so he takes it out and we go?
Yes, bingo, exactly.
And that's the reference I'm making.
And that proves the point.
I'm afraid of being judged for how much I put in.
I wait till they turn.
Turn away?
Yeah.
Unless they don't turn, then I have to do it while they look at them.
Okay.
All right.
I'm humble, though.
Very humble.
I make eye contact the whole time.
I'm like, you see this $1 bill right here?
Just dumping your wallet.
It's George Washington.
This is about to be yours.
Yeah, the table, the tip.
Because I was always taught 15% was the tip.
And then it feels like just in the last, like, I don't know if I, it's just because I moved to LA or something, but everybody's saying like 20, 30% seems crazy to me.
That's a lot of tips.
That is, that is emblematic of our inability to do basic math.
That is all it is.
It's being portrayed as virtue, but it's just the fact that people want to multiply by two and not 0.15.
But I was taught it's easy.
You just take 10% is really easy to calculate, double the tech.
And then half that again.
Well, you see already two steps.
How about just times two?
Yeah.
That's it.
That's all that it is.
The only reason it's gone from 15% to 20% is because of our mathematic, our aptitude when it comes to simple math and algebra has just gone downhill.
There's nothing virtuous about it.
So everybody thinks that restaurant owners are just like robbing their employees.
How profitable is it to run a restaurant?
A restaurant that profits, I would say on average, is between 3 to 5% net, right?
So assume, and mind you, most restaurants break even at best or run negative profit, kick those negative, kick the loss down the road, and then usually shut down after you're 3% to 4 or sell to somebody else.
So it's not unusual for restaurants to constantly run in the red.
But if you even think about that 5% profit, that's on the high end, right?
That's good.
And of course, there are outliers.
You've got your fast food, your McDonald's, et cetera.
But I would even suggest that after franchise fees, after royalty, franchise fees, royalties, all this stuff, that even a McDonald's franchisee maybe at best makes 5% to 10% in an established, well-known brand like that.
But independence, yeah.
Yeah, it's weird and interesting because most industries, you don't really, like, I look at my iPad and I can't even conceptualize what it costs to make each or what each part costs.
Yeah.
At a restaurant, we all go to the grocery store and we have some idea of what all this food actually costs.
Like you just buy it.
Yeah.
So it makes it a little, there's a little bit of a different dynamic on how we view pricing, probably.
Yeah.
And what's great.
So, to use that experience, if you go to the grocery store and you buy enough hamburgers for three or four people and it's like $10 for the pack, and then you go to a restaurant, and this is the mindset, right?
Why am I paying $12 for this burger?
I just got a pack of burgers for three people the other day for $10.
So, look at how much money you're making off of me.
And nobody thinks about anything else besides that.
They don't think about the employees.
They don't think about the government taxes.
They don't think about the insurance.
They don't think about the labor costs or the employees.
They don't think about the real estate.
Chairs you're sitting in.
Yeah, any of those.
So much stuff.
Yeah.
The Buffalo.
The Buffalo.
The Sippy Cups.
Actually, the Sippy Cups are like 35 cents, 40 cents each, raw cost.
Oh, yeah.
So the typical model in a restaurant, right?
If you want to make money in a restaurant, you want about 25% cost of goods.
So the simple math on that is just whatever your raw cost is, multiply it by four.
That's what you extrapolate onto your menu price.
So if my burger, I put everything together and I'm like, yeah, one lettuce leaf, one tomato for 15 cents, one slice of cheese for 8 cents, the burger for $1.20.
And let's say at the end of the day, it's $2.50.
So now I'm going to charge $10 for that burger.
Now let's go back to the sippy cup.
$0.40 on that sippy cup, that's $1.60 on the consumer side for that sippy cup.
I'm giving away meals for free.
I'm eating that for that sippy cup.
Now, I would, if it's too expensive to do the free sippy cup, I would buy a sippy cup.
You would.
If we had it there with the slapfish sippy cup, and then you have that free advertising in my house that I paid for where I'm always thinking about slapfish.
That's true.
But you're also someone who tips out of goodwill.
I need to look them in the eyes.
That's true.
I mean, I'm not the guy.
Yeah.
I might not be the average, though I do eat a lot, obviously.
So, okay, multiple visits.
That's important.
Hey, sorry to interrupt that hilarious podcast that you were just listening to, but my buddy Ethan and I here were thinking, you might not be a Babylon Bee subscriber, and we need to correct that.
Yeah, in fact, I could smell it in the room.
It smells like a non-subscriber in here.
Or is that cow farts?
Could be cow farts.
I can't tell.
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So you get a coupon code for cheaper merchandise.
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The advantages are endless to be subscribed.
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I know this is going back to the lockdown thing, and we're going to go to our subscriber portion soon.
But related to the profitability thing, you know, people were like, why can't you just shut down your dining room and just do DoorDash?
What's the profitability difference between doing having dine in or I mean or even just half capacity?
Well, let's okay, so let's talk the third-party delivery apps.
They take 30 cents on every dollar.
They've price fixed.
They're all 30 cents, period.
Now you're starting to have some independent players come out and say, well, we'll do it for 10% because we don't have the overhead.
Well, they're going to do 10% and when they get big enough, they're going to bump it back to 30%.
So 30 cents on every single dollar.
So now if I'm profiting a nickel, now I'm negative 25 cents, right?
And if 80% of my sales are through third-party delivery, now I'm, and I used to be a 5% profitable restaurant.
Now I'm negative 25%.
The government's not covering my loss.
And what's really interesting is that the metric upon which they're basing your allotment of PPP money is your 2020 sales minus your 2019 sales.
So if in 2019 I did a million dollars and then in 2020 I did $500,000, I'm going to be able to apply for $500,000 PPP funding.
Well, when they encouraged everyone to go and do these third-party deliveries, some restaurants were able to maintain their sales level by using as many third-party delivery outlets as they could.
But then they're losing 25 cents now.
So those people are screwed because they're not getting any PPP funds.
Now they're just eating a negative 25% loss on the same number of sales.
They should have just shut down and taken the free government money.
So they thought they were doing the right thing and they're now getting screwed.
And the people who, you know, they say open your dining room.
Well, in order to pay for the bodies and the labor and the food that you need to keep on hand in order to maintain an open dining room, you need to fill that dining room, right?
And if you, you know, opening a portion of that dining room, the same amount of work and everything goes into opening it in general.
So you need like a, you need a mandatory minimum amount of sales.
Sounds like a baseline.
Yeah, your break-even point, right?
Like if I'm paying rent, I need to hit X in sales in order to afford the rent.
The rent's not changing.
The lights are on.
Yeah.
So it's the wisest way to buy food in this area.
If you're wanting to DoorDash, is it better?
I mean, I guess just going direct, calling your restaurant and ordering to going pick up yourself.
Yeah, calling your restaurant and ordering, going pick up.
But if you want to help the DoorDash driver, give them cash tips.
Don't use the tip that's built into DoorDash because DoorDash says this isn't the case anymore, although I've heard from drivers that it is, is that, you know, basically they guarantee you a certain wage and they'll take some of your tips in order to meet that wage or anything above it.
So like if you hit your $20 an hour, any tips above and beyond that through the app, apparently they take.
I don't know how much of that is true, but I do think it's important that you just tip them cash anyway.
Let them determine how they're going to claim everything.
But in the beginning of the pandemic, it was manipulative because all these delivery apps were going, oh, we're commission-free, right?
Help your local restaurant.
Those were what the commercials were showing.
So when I would tell people about this, they're like, no, I just saw the commercial the other day.
I said, commission-free.
You're not paying 30%.
I'm like, no, that's for you.
You used to also pay 30%.
So they were double dipping.
Now the customer is not paying a commission, but the business is still getting screwed.
So the way they were marketing it, I think, was manipulative because it's like, oh, we're so great for the community.
We're commission-free.
No, you're not.
You're still screwing restaurants just as much.
Their sales went up so high that they could have afforded to eaten 20% of those fees and still come out as this like hero in the industry.
And then most likely, given the connection between Silicon Valley and the government, which, I mean, they're basically one now, I'm sure they would have gotten the kickback.
So they could have been the good guys, but they weren't.
Man, 30%, that's a lot.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
And look, I'm sure that they've done the models.
I doubt, I don't think it's, you know, maybe that's what it takes.
Actually, they're not profitable.
If you look at their IPOs, I mean, these business, the DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, I want to say it's like a $4 billion valuation and they've never been profitable, but that's the nature of these unicorns.
Yeah.
So who knows?
I'm sure it's also going towards $5 million salaries for whoever.
Some punk with a man bun in Silicon Valley.
Yeah, no kidding.
Hey, wait a minute.
Probably looks kind of like you.
Defend the man bun.
You know, I don't even call it that.
I think it's not the top of the head, man.
No, it's not the top of the bed.
This is just no hairdressers are open.
You know this.
Maybe your wife can help me out.
And I've got four kids.
So when the heck is there time to get my hair cut?
And then, you know, I watched Braveheart and I was like, you know, I kind of want to be like that.
And he's wearing a kilt, too.
You guys can't see it.
All right, well, we're going to move on to the subscriber portion.
We're all going to sit over in the lounge.
Yeah.
And he's going to wear his kilt.
So we're going to talk food.
Yeah.
Go deep.
We're going to get deep into food talk and maybe some more lockdown talk.
And we're going to ask Chef Gruel the 10 questions.
Oh, yeah.
So here we go.
Coming up next for Babylon Bee subscribers.
Okay, we're going to throw some foods at you and then you tell us how you cook this.
Combine it.
Do you really think that when I post a tray of sandwiches, I'm eating every single one of them?
What's an underrated food that you think more people should eat?
That's a great question.
Wondering what they'll say next?
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Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.