Podcasts about quench

Drink the living water – Jesus is waiting to quench your thirst! -------- Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible.     Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org   Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

Kevin Anderson speaks from 1 Thessalonians 5 on the work of the Holy Spirit.

Oh Lord Quench Evil Fire - Yoruba Prayer

This week, Clayton Riddle continues our series on The Holy Spirit. This week's message is entitled "Let's not quench the spirit". Despite the Holy Spirit being God, we can influence the spirit in our lives when we fail to listen and embrace the things of God in our lives.Scriptures for Today1 Thessalonians 5: 12-221 Corinthians 1: 10-12Recorded on 30th March 2025

Don't Quench the Holy Spirit (2 of 2) | Pastor Shane Idleman Watch our services live at http://wcfav.org/ Free Downloads of Pastor Shane's E-books at https://westsidechristianfellowship.org/teachings/ Donate to Westside Christian Fellowship here: https://westsidechristianfellowship.org/give/ Free speech is being severely compromised. This new FREE SPEECH platform is amazing - many solid voices are moving over. You can follow Pastor Shane here on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Westside Christian Fellowship is a non-denominational Christian church that meets every every Sunday at 8:30 am 11:00 am in Leona Valley, California (9306 Leona Avenue). For more info, or to read our statement of faith, visit westsidechristianfellowship.org/about-wcf/statement-of-faith/ To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1055/29

Don't Quench the Holy Spirit (1 of 2) | Pastor Shane Idleman Watch our services live at http://wcfav.org/ Free Downloads of Pastor Shane's E-books at https://westsidechristianfellowship.org/teachings/ Donate to Westside Christian Fellowship here: https://westsidechristianfellowship.org/give/ Free speech is being severely compromised. This new FREE SPEECH platform is amazing - many solid voices are moving over. You can follow Pastor Shane here on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Westside Christian Fellowship is a non-denominational Christian church that meets every every Sunday at 8:30 am 11:00 am in Leona Valley, California (9306 Leona Avenue). For more info, or to read our statement of faith, visit westsidechristianfellowship.org/about-wcf/statement-of-faith/ To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1055/29

The Armour of God is described in Ephesians 6:14-17. The GOSPEL SHOES: "having shod your feet with the (shoes of) preparation (readiness) of the Gospel of Peace (another aspect of God's Word)” (v15). To be ready for battle, you need the right shoes to give you a firm footing, so you can stand your ground on God's Word and the completed victory of Christ. These are the shoes of the Gospel, which declares His finished work over sin and every enemy, thereby bringing us into peace with God (peace comes after victory). We put on the Shoes by knowing and embracing the Good News that He has won the victory and we stand firm in that truth, ready for action. We standing in His victory, rather than trying to get the victory. Then v16 says: “above (covering) all, taking (up) the SHIELD of (the) FAITH, with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts (arrows) of the wicked one (God's Word is powerful).” The Shield that protects us is not our faith, but God's Word (the Faith), we need to trust in God's Word rather than our faith, but it is by faith that we take up the Shield and put it in front of us. The Word must not just wrapped around our heart, but lifted up in front of us, where it can cover every area of our life, by confessing His Word and thanking God for His promises and who He is to us (Heb 13:5-6). The roman shield was like a door covering the whole body, made of 6 layers of animal hide, anointed with oil (the Spirit) and drenched with water (Eph 5:26), able to protect even against fiery arrows filled with combustible liquid designed to explode on impact. Likewise, the anointed Word of God is empowered to protect us, even against the worst weapons of the enemy. These fiery arrows are words (thoughts) set on fire by hell (Jam 3:6), with spiritual power to penetrate our soul and set it on fire (with bitterness, anger, fear, discouragement etc) if our Shield is not up. But if we activate our Shield, by declaring: "The Lord is my Strength, Stronghold, Light, Peace, Provider Shield, Victory..." then the fiery darts will not be able to penetrate our heart and mind and emotions. Derek concludes by giving a classic example of how to put up the Shield of Faith as demonstrated by Paul in Romans 8:28-39, where he says we must not be passive in the face of the things (attacks) of life, but we must declare God's truths (Christ's love for us and His finished work) in response to these things. he asks: "what shall we say to these things?" (v31), and then tells us what we should say (v31-39). In this way, we activate our Shield of God's Word, which quench the evil thoughts (words), sent from the enemy to hurt and destroy us.

The Armour of God is described in Ephesians 6:14-17. The GOSPEL SHOES: "having shod your feet with the (shoes of) preparation (readiness) of the Gospel of Peace (another aspect of God's Word)” (v15). To be ready for battle, you need the right shoes to give you a firm footing, so you can stand your ground on God's Word and the completed victory of Christ. These are the shoes of the Gospel, which declares His finished work over sin and every enemy, thereby bringing us into peace with God (peace comes after victory). We put on the Shoes by knowing and embracing the Good News that He has won the victory and we stand firm in that truth, ready for action. We standing in His victory, rather than trying to get the victory. Then v16 says: “above (covering) all, taking (up) the SHIELD of (the) FAITH, with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts (arrows) of the wicked one (God's Word is powerful).” The Shield that protects us is not our faith, but God's Word (the Faith), we need to trust in God's Word rather than our faith, but it is by faith that we take up the Shield and put it in front of us. The Word must not just wrapped around our heart, but lifted up in front of us, where it can cover every area of our life, by confessing His Word and thanking God for His promises and who He is to us (Heb 13:5-6). The roman shield was like a door covering the whole body, made of 6 layers of animal hide, anointed with oil (the Spirit) and drenched with water (Eph 5:26), able to protect even against fiery arrows filled with combustible liquid designed to explode on impact. Likewise, the anointed Word of God is empowered to protect us, even against the worst weapons of the enemy. These fiery arrows are words (thoughts) set on fire by hell (Jam 3:6), with spiritual power to penetrate our soul and set it on fire (with bitterness, anger, fear, discouragement etc) if our Shield is not up. But if we activate our Shield, by declaring: "The Lord is my Strength, Stronghold, Light, Peace, Provider Shield, Victory..." then the fiery darts will not be able to penetrate our heart and mind and emotions. Derek concludes by giving a classic example of how to put up the Shield of Faith as demonstrated by Paul in Romans 8:28-39, where he says we must not be passive in the face of the things (attacks) of life, but we must declare God's truths (Christ's love for us and His finished work) in response to these things. he asks: "what shall we say to these things?" (v31), and then tells us what we should say (v31-39). In this way, we activate our Shield of God's Word, which quench the evil thoughts (words), sent from the enemy to hurt and destroy us.

Quench not the light of Israel

Sunday Morning Expositional Message

There are things we must do to maintain the fire of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

Watch our services live at http://wcfav.org/ Free Downloads of Pastor Shane's E-books at https://westsidechristianfellowship.org/free-ebooks/ Donate to Westside Christian Fellowship here: https://westsidechristianfellowship.org/give/ Westside Christian Fellowship is a non-denominational Christian church that meets every every Sunday at 8:30 am & 11:00 am in Leona Valley, California (9306 Leona Avenue). For more info, or to read our statement of faith, visit westsidechristianfellowship.org/about-wcf/statement-of-faith/

5:4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. 5:5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. 5:6 Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. 5:7 For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. 5:8 But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. 5:9 For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, 5:10 Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. 5:11 Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do. 5:12 And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; 5:13 And to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake. And be at peace among yourselves. 5:14 Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men. 5:15 See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men. 5:16 Rejoice evermore. 5:17 Pray without ceasing. 5:18 In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 5:19 Quench not the Spirit. 5:20 Despise not prophesyings. 5:21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 5:22 Abstain from all appearance of evil. 5:23 And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 5:24 Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. 5:25 Brethren, pray for us. 5:26 Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss. 5:27 I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren. 5:28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

UNiTE Food is a Yorba Linda, California-based company that produces globally inspired protein bars. The brand offers unique flavors such as Churro, Mexican Hot Chocolate, and PB & Jelly, aiming to bring diversity to the wellness industry. Each bar provides around 10 grams of protein and is gluten-free, catering to health-conscious consumers seeking both nutrition and nostalgic tastes. Clara often relied on protein bars during her busy career but found the available flavors uninspiring. Drawing from her diverse culinary background, she recognized a gap in the market for culturally diverse flavors. Clara's father is an entrepreneur. Her family immigrated from Sudan when she was five years old. When they arrived in the United States, her father started a plumbing supply distribution business, which is the business Clara worked in earlier in her career. The idea for UNiTE was something Clara started thinking about in 2018 or 2019 while she was still working in her family's plumbing business. She began experimenting with different recipes and products in her kitchen in the early days of the pandemic in 2020.Clara often visits ethnic markets to learn about new flavors for new products. She also studied flavors and what people were eating when she traveled abroad.  QUOTES “If I'm anything, I'm a very curious person. I'm curious about how the world works and I'm curious about why segments of the population aren't being served.” (Clara) “If you focus on your customers, they will reward you with loyalty. And if they reward you with loyalty, your revenue will grow. If you create value, why would somebody leave you?” (Clara)“For me, it was about making sure we were taking care of our customers. That was the winning strategy. It sounds really simple, but it's way harder to execute.” (Clara)“Business is a framework. Once you understand product liability, you understand how to insure against it. You learn about the certifying bodies in your industry. It's hard and it's not (hard).” (Clara)“It's really about building relationships. Mutually beneficial relationships.” (Clara) “When you're over 40 and you created a new business, you're usually not doing it for money, you're doing it to try to make the world a better place.” (Clara)“I wanted to find common ground. Let's find flavors that will resonate with lots of people.” (Clara)“The essence of the UNiTE brand is to seek to understand and seek to find common ground instead of focusing on how we're different.” (Clara)“At the end of the day, consumers want authenticity and they want brands that create products that are meaningful to them. (Clara)“I don't really worry about copycat brands. I worry more when they stop copying me.” (Clara) TRANSCRIPT 00:01.49vigorbrandingAll right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Fork Tales. I’m Michael Pavone. Our guest today is Clara Paye. And I’ve known Clara for a long time. ah She is from Unite Foods. ah Unite’s line of nutritious bars are built around the concept of global flavors, but also comfort foods. Clara has started a brand that’s redefining what protein and nutrition bars can be, and I’m happy to have her as a guest. Clara, welcome. 00:25.55Clara Paye _ UNiTEThanks, Michael. Good to be here. 00:27.85vigorbrandingSo again, I know you, I think pretty well, and I’m excited to excited for this. This will be fun. So um I want to go back. I mean, you have a fascinating story. So before we get into Unite, I want to talk about you. How did you, you know, where where do you come from? Where do you, where did you work? You know, talk a little bit about what got you, got you here. 00:46.86Clara Paye _ UNiTEWell, it’s definitely not been a linear path. It’s been really a path led by my own curiosity in the world. And so I think if I’m anything, I’m a very curious person. I’m curious how the world works. I’m curious why, you know, segments of the population aren’t being served. So my journey really started, you know, undergrad, I went to USC and I really went undeclared and thought I but wanted to be a lawyer and. 01:10.72Clara Paye _ UNiTEgot into one political science class and I was like, no, I definitely don’t want to do this. And so kind of was looking around like what else is out there, found the business school at USC, and more importantly, found the entrepreneurship program, which was number one in the nation at the time. And, you know, and I knew I didn’t want to study accounting or finance, and that’s what business was to me in my mind back then. And finding this entrepreneurship route really like kind of opened up the world to me and was like a light bulb. 01:34.45Clara Paye _ UNiTEyou know My dad is an entrepreneur. and We immigrated from Africa and the Sudan when I was five years old. And in Africa, he had an automotive parts distribution business. And when he immigrated to the U.S., he started a plumbing manufacturing and hardware distribution business. And so, you know, having a dad that had kind of modeled entrepreneurship, it was demystified for me. And so I was like, oh, that’s really interesting. You know, I’ve been an entrepreneur kind of since I was a little girl, whether, you know, the classic lemonade stand or side popsicles or, you know, drawing pictures and trying to sell them to my aunts. Like, you know, I always had that entrepreneurial 02:07.53Clara Paye _ UNiTEstart and you know funny and but like at USC I remember them taking a poll of all the entrepreneurship kids and how many of them had like a lemonade stand or something similar as a kid and it was like 95% of the class raised their hand right like it’s something almost innate where you know that entrepreneurship bug grabs you was even a little kid and 02:15.32vigorbrandingMm 02:24.37Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so, you know, going into the entrepreneurship program, it was kind of like and equated to like Ted Talks, where you just got to like hear and listen to these really successful entrepreneurs that had launched and they were normal people with good ideas that they just implemented. 02:36.22vigorbrandinghmm. 02:38.93Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd I thought I would you know be an entrepreneur straight out of undergrad. I wrote a business plan um and for the apparel industry back then. this is I’ll date myself, but I graduated in 1999 and in 1998, 99. I wrote a business plan for plus size clothing for teenage girls. So I saw that there was this huge segment of the population where kids were kind of, you know, Americans were growing in size. and there weren’t really anything fashionable for young girls to wear if they were plus size. They had to shop, you know, especially in jeans, they had to start in the, you know, shop in the women’s Husky department, women’s department or the boy’s Husky department. And it really wasn’t anything fashionable. And I wrote this great business plan. All my professors told me to do it. And like the only person I knew that had any money was my dad. 03:21.66Clara Paye _ UNiTEyou know, being 21 years old and or, you know, barely 21 and asking him to fund, you know, I needed like $30,000 back then to launch this business. And my I was going to do it with my best friend whose father had just invested in the jeans manufacturing plant. 03:34.66Clara Paye _ UNiTEShe had done the entrepreneurship program the year before. It was like this home run idea. The internet was just coming online and we were going to do it all online. We didn’t need storefronts. You know, we’re kind of kind of revolutionize all of these things. 03:44.94Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd my dad’s like, what? Huh? Like watch yourself humming products. Yeah. 03:48.78vigorbrandingYeah. 03:50.42Clara Paye _ UNiTELike, this is a business that already exists. And he just didn’t see it, didn’t understand. But it’s it’s ironic that like that business would grow on to be like that segment specifically, um where I did all my research at this mall, like, went on to become a billion dollar business, like Torrid went into the same free mall with the same concept. And so that was kind of like always in the back of my mind, my entire career. So from age 20 to now, like, gosh, like, why I should have done that, like, I should have done something like that, you know, why didn’t I try and um I’m telling a really long part of the story so we can edit this, but it’s really like, you know, for me, it was really about that early experience in entrepreneurship that I held on to, but then I would go on. 04:22.93vigorbrandingOh, it’s great. 04:29.89Clara Paye _ UNiTEand work in cosmetics, worked for advertising agencies, you know, um and then eventually my dad lured me into the family business, which was like, you know, about five years after college, I wanted to get my MBA and he said, hey, I’ll make you a deal. You and your best friend want to come work for me, get your and MBAs and I’ll pay for them. And you just have to stay the time that you’re studying. And, you know, we did this executive MBA program where we worked our nine to five and then we went to school from like six to 10. 04:53.31Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd those are long days, but they were really fun because I got to take what I was learning in the MBA program and immediately apply it to my family business, which was, again, the plumbing and hardware distribution business. And so not that I was in love with plumbing and hardware, like, trust me, if I never see another supply line in my life, it’ll be too soon. But um it was really about this unique experience that I got to learn and apply, learn and apply. And it was just Really? um Really what set me up for like, you know in that curiosity to like really make an impact in my family business Where you know, sometimes when you join a family business you get told well, this is how we’ve always done it So this is why you have to do it this way and for me I got to kind of redefine everything Because of this MBA program that I was doing and my dad trusted, you know, he always had a high regard for education And so was like, okay. Well, yeah, let’s try it and really got you know got in and 05:45.11vigorbrandingThat’s fantastic. i mean You bring up a really interesting point, though. Being a so a sibling of an entrepreneur, you you kind of do realize, or you maybe you don’t realize that it’s it’s not easy, but you you know it’s it’s doable, right? If you watch your father do it, like my father had a couple small sporting goods stores. So I thought, well, if you want to start a business, you just go out and start it. You just do it. and You know, my story is I’ve never been smart enough to know what I can’t do. So I’m like, Oh yeah, I can do that. And just, you know, and sometimes you pass, sometimes you fail, but you know, it’s like, Oh, I can try that. Oh yeah, I’ll do that. So, but, but I think our parents really do make it easier for us if they’ve done that, you know, and you sort of, I don’t want to say you take it for granted, but it’s sort of like, it seems doable. It seems attainable, you know, and next thing you know, you you’ve got something special. And I’ll say this, it had to be interesting, difficult, and maybe very educational for you. 06:34.52vigorbrandingah being a young woman in and the and the plumbing supply distribution business. I mean, what was that like? 06:40.78Clara Paye _ UNiTEah You know, it was it’s a very old industry. It’s you know very much like there’s very little product innovation. And so for me, being a curious person, I was always trying to learn. I always wanted to go to like plumbing school. So like I could like learn about the products a little bit more because they’re actually really complex. And if you ever go down a hardware store aisle and you go down the plumbing fittings or the plumbing section, I mean, there’s literally thousands and thousands of SKUs and so many different parts to like toilets and you know faucets and it’s it’s a very confusing um you know you have to have like a lot of deep knowledge in the industry to really make an impact so for me you know i knew i was never going to have that right what i could bring to the table was really an outside the box way of thinking about this industry like you know we created the company’s first website and started selling you know online and really trying to 07:28.80Clara Paye _ UNiTEUm, quantify customer experience, right? Like it wasn’t just about like place, you know, filling orders. It was like, what was the experience of that order for your customer? And so I’ve always been a customer centric leader. So I think it’s because I came up through marketing and entrepreneurship. You know, I really care about the customer and I really care about like the person that’s opening the box, whatever that box is, you know, and so. 07:51.58Clara Paye _ UNiTEFor me, it was all about aligning the business to be customer-focused, because my thesis was, if you focus on your customers, they will reward you with loyalty. And if they reward you with loyalty, your revenue will grow. 08:01.84Clara Paye _ UNiTEright It’s a win-win. 08:02.46vigorbrandingmean 08:03.15Clara Paye _ UNiTEIf you create value, why would somebody leave you? So it’s when you’re not creating value and you’re creating problems for the customer that you know you have that attrition. 08:13.25Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so for me, it was really about um making sure that we were taking care of our customers. And and that was the winning strategy. I mean, it sounds really simple, but it’s way harder to execute when you get to scale. 08:26.05vigorbrandingThat’s great. I mean, it makes total sense. So basically, you do all your own plumbing now, is that what you’re saying? 08:31.81Clara Paye _ UNiTEnot at all 08:32.01vigorbrandingYeah, I knew about it. Okay, so now let’s jump into something that I know you’re very proud of and should be. the that You founded Unite, okay? and And so let’s talk about that. You founded in March of 2020, right? 08:44.85vigorbrandingIn the middle of that thing called the pandemic with COVID. um but Obviously, that was a part of the story. That’s what sort of infused the story. Can you talk a little bit about that? 08:53.69Clara Paye _ UNiTEYeah. So, you know you know, I’d been ideating on it for like probably a year and a half before that and really trying, you know, it was working in the plumbing business at my, you know, and the family business that I was kind of like stuck behind my desk. And especially when I became a mom, like I was always just like looking for quick fuel to get me through my day. And that was like kind of when I had the epiphany for Unite and really our main point of differentiation is that we use global flavors. 09:15.38Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so I had this unique experience, again, just just like the plus sized clothing where I was like, wait a minute, like there’s this whole population of people out there, like half the population are immigrants, people like me, or people that are just like really interested in other cultures and really interested in other foods. 09:31.28Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, I live in LA, like there’s, you can eat Thai, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, whatever you want, any time of day you want, you know, it’s all, you know, and that’s what makes America unique is that we are this melting pot of cultures. 09:38.69vigorbrandingYeah. Yeah. 09:42.73Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd it very similarly, I saw this demographic shift where, you know, America was just going to continue to grow in, in multiculturalism. And so I was like, okay, if you’re in wellness and you are diagnosed with something like for me, it was a gluten intolerance. Like, and you go and try to find diet compliant food and you go to the shelf and like nothing resonates with you. Like that’s a huge miss. And so I think it was because 10:08.08vigorbrandingbut 10:08.18Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, i I’m not, everybody that has created protein bars up to that point wasn’t diverse, didn’t have the life experience I had. So I just kind of used my own life experience it to develop it. 10:18.38Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd I developed them in my kitchen, like really, like, you know, as I got my cuisine on out and was like, what would I put in my protein bars? And for me, it was like almond butter and dates and, you know, let’s sweeten it with all natural things. 10:25.68vigorbrandingMm hmm. 10:28.41Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd I i can’t use sugar, alcohols or Stevia. Like I i just, they’re not palatable to me. So I just use natural things. and literally googled what do nutritionists say should be in a protein bar and like made those my macros like it’s not that hard you know you don’t have to like spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to figure it out and um created my first recipes and found a co-packer to make them and I knew you know because I didn’t want any food liability I wanted a really strong co-packer to be the producer for them found one that ah you know where they saw the vision they understood what we were about and supported us and got our product launched and 11:05.31Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, Expo West was this trade show, you know, it was a trade show in the food industry. It’s the largest natural products convention in the entire world. And if anybody hasn’t been to it, just imagine seven convention centers all smashed together in Anaheim, hundreds of thousands of people, like 3000 plus exhibitors. It’s literally and figuratively like Disneyland. Like it’s just, it’s a zoo. It’s, there’s so many people. And we got our little 10 by 10 booth and at the, you know, they have this like new products part of natural expo that opens a day before or used to. 11:35.43Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd we got our booth set up and we were ready to rock. 11:37.30vigorbrandingMm hmm. 11:37.51Clara Paye _ UNiTEWe were going to go show our bars. We had this whole warehouse full of new bars to show buyers. 11:39.71vigorbrandingand 11:41.83Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd that’s how it’s going to get people excited. And then the pandemic. And that was the first thing to get canceled. And literally we got this call like shows not going to happen. So break down your booth. 11:51.86Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd you know, and it was like such a wild time. 11:52.43vigorbrandingYep. 11:55.64Clara Paye _ UNiTEum And people were really, you know, unsure of what was going to happen. And, you know, ah brands were not able to get into stores to pitch or any buyers, everything kind of went on hold because every grocery store was worried about safety for their employees and how to keep cleaning products on shelf and Lysol wipes. 12:13.52Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd like nobody was really thinking about like protein bars, right? 12:16.49vigorbrandingRight, right. 12:16.43Clara Paye _ UNiTELike we’re all trying to, you know, that’s what like, I think we all were baking banana bread every day in this power now and like, you know, consoling ourselves with chips and margaritas at, you know, noon. so 12:26.31vigorbrandingYeah. Well, I remember like for us, I mean, you know, one of my companies is Quench, which is a CPG food and beverage. I said, you know, COVID was truly the greatest sampling program in the face of the earth, food and beverage. If you made a product at that time, if you had an established product, you people bought it, people ate it, they put in their pantry, they stacked in their shells. I mean, it was phenomenal time for food. I mean, unfortunately, it was you were too new, right? You couldn’t even take advantage of it. You didn’t even get a chance to get out of the starting gate. so That’s how to be extremely disappointing. But I think it’s amazing too. Like, okay, so you you come from one industry and and you learn a lot just in business and dealing with people from one industry. But then you you applied to this startup that you didn’t, you’ve never really, you were never in the food business. So you don’t learn how to be a manufacturer, you had to learn about safety, you had to learn about ingredients, legal and and everything and anything. I mean, it’s just, ah it’s an amazing undertaking. How did you how did you learn so much? 13:21.18Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, like business is a framework. So once you understand product liability, you understand how to ensure against it, right? And you learn that, you know, you have to look, what are the certifying bodies in your industry, right? 13:35.40Clara Paye _ UNiTELike in, you know, for electrical companies, it’s like UL listing, you know, in food, it’s SQF. 13:35.85vigorbrandingMm hmm. Mm hmm. 13:40.84Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd it’s not like the information isn’t that hard to find. So I think it’s like, you know, once you have a framework of, it’s, you know, the product is a widget almost, right? Like how you deal with Lowe’s is how you deal with Target. 13:49.40vigorbrandingMm 13:52.55Clara Paye _ UNiTELike it’s a big box. 13:52.83vigorbrandinghmm. 13:53.59Clara Paye _ UNiTEThey care about many of the same things, right? You have to understand what’s going to happen on the back end of your business. You have to understand how to get that product there on time and in full. And that’s what matters to them. 14:04.49Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so I, you know, it’s hard and it’s not. And so for me, I’ve always really relied on my network, Michael, like, like if I don’t know the answer, I know somebody that I know must know the answer. 14:16.44vigorbrandingMm hmm. 14:17.09Clara Paye _ UNiTESo I spent a lot of time. I don’t want to say networking, but I think it’s really about building relationships, like mutual like mutually beneficial relationships with people, trust. 14:26.75vigorbrandingSure, trust. 14:29.50Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd when I got into the food space, I was like, I just need to great advisors around me. I need people. 14:33.78vigorbrandingMm hmm. 14:33.82Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd I didn’t want like consultants. I wanted people who were also running their businesses, who were going in the trenches, doing it with in in real time. 14:38.08vigorbrandingSure. Skin the game. Yep. 14:41.79Clara Paye _ UNiTEand so you know, having a ah YPO forum of YPO, you know, food CPG people was like one of the ways that I accomplished that and like really creating a forum of people around me that were doing the same things as I was. 14:50.42vigorbrandingMm 14:56.01Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd, you know, there’s a lot of symbiotic um experience there. And we all got to go through COVID together. So it was something I did early on, you know, it was like grabbing people who wanted to go on this journey with me. 15:02.72vigorbrandinghmm. Mm hmm. 15:06.56Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so, You know you’re I think networking is like kind of like a bad word sometimes like people think it’s like you’re using people when you say networking but you’re doing networking right you’re actually at creating value for other people first right and that out it works. 15:13.24vigorbrandingwho yeah 15:20.16vigorbrandingThat’s right. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. So now let’s talk. You created the, the you had a product, you you got shut down and covered. So let’s talk about the Unite name. You created a brand and I’m a big brand guy, you know that. I love brands and and I love what you did here. I love the name and I’m not just saying that because you’re here, but this is something I did not know. I read an article and I read about the I in Unite. I should have looked and realized that the lowercase I, but to talk about the brand and how you came up with the name. 15:45.47Clara Paye _ UNiTEYeah, I mean, so for me is all about that what I was trying to do. So this is like the mission part of like this journey when like you’re over 40 and you’re creating new business. Usually you’re not doing it just for money. You’re really doing it because you feel like something’s missing in the world and you want to make the world a better place. At least that’s my journey. 16:01.60Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd for me, it was like, how can I use food as this instrument of inclusion to improve the lives of people, see people who haven’t been seen, welcome them into wellness, right? And kind of create cultural bridges, right? Where like somebody who I think food is has this unique way of binding people, right? Like it’s the cultural equivalent of bringing your, you know, 16:23.95Clara Paye _ UNiTEyour dish to a potluck and like you know kind of like do you like it you know kind of like yeah having that like you know there’s a moment where you’re like are you sure it’s kind of a little strange or like you know when when people used to come to my home and like be like you know my mom made this thing you don’t have to eat it it’s you know you might not like it and then people loving it and you’re like oh Okay, it’s good. Like it’s safe. Like everyone’s accepted now. And so I think for me, it was like how, you know, food can, can also divide people. But if people make fun of somebody’s food or make fun of flavors, you know, and I think it also can unite. And so I wanted to use it as like, you know, let’s, let’s find common ground. Let’s find flavors that like will resonate with lots of people. And so like the flavors we choose typically are not just like country specific. They’re like region specific. 17:04.98Clara Paye _ UNiTESo like, you know, churros are eaten in Spain, in Mexico, and like all over Latin America, right? Baklava is eaten in North Africa, in Greece, in Russia, in Croatia, right? 17:15.03Clara Paye _ UNiTEBubble tea, which sounds like just an Asian, Asian flavor. And yes, it was born in Taiwan, but you know, like but the British drink milk with tea. the in Indian people drink milk with tea, and the Middle East drink milk with tea. 17:25.54Clara Paye _ UNiTELike those flavors are, can resonate with lots of different people. 17:29.23vigorbrandingYeah. 17:29.53Clara Paye _ UNiTESo, and then there’s peanut butter and jelly, and that’s the one where people are like, 17:31.64vigorbrandingYeah. 17:32.95Clara Paye _ UNiTEhuh like you know that’s like that’s not global but it’s like my american heritage is just as important and so i want all people to feel represented and the reason the eye is small and as i think because if you’re trying to connect two sides you yourself have to get smaller to understand the other side and so that you you know to understand the other you know and we live in such a time of division and so like really having a name like unites like it’s really the essence of the brand 17:37.39vigorbrandingyeah 17:58.39Clara Paye _ UNiTEis to, you know, ah seek to understand and seek to find common ground and instead of like how we’re different. 18:05.96vigorbrandingI love it. i mean You obviously have a propensity for for marketing. it’s it’s It’s very smart and very sound, the thinking behind it. and and I’ve had the products that are fantastic. and again I’m not just saying that they’re your your products are absolutely delicious, so you should be very, very proud of that. 18:21.31vigorbrandingum you know and now So we talk about the flavors, so ah we do a food trends presentation every year and we always come up with all these funky flavors and and we we I shouldn’t say funky, we we we learn about things that are popping in different parts of the world and starting to you know bubble up and and and ah you know we we try to grab onto them, I mean all of us as manufacturers, as restaurants, as ah marketers And we try to understand these flavors and how to bring them forth and and introduce something fresh. how do How do you go about finding flavors? How do you go about deciding what the next flavor is going to be? 18:54.83Clara Paye _ UNiTEit’s really intuitive for me but like you know my my hero flavor is churro and like that one was really you know born out of you know I live near Disneyland I live like 15 minutes away and I have small kids and so we were always at Disneyland always the line at the churro cart was kind of like around the corner right and like churro was like definitely this very familiar flavor and like churros are you know they’re eaten they’re They’re not just different for different sake. Many people have had a churro, whether it’s at a fair or at Disneyland or at a carnival. Churro was like not that um outside the box for most people, and it was very approachable. and so like That Disneyland car, just like looking at the lines, I was like, yeah, that could be a really good flavor. How come nobody you know hasn’t really done that? and then 19:44.35Clara Paye _ UNiTEyou know, I would visit ethnic markets a lot to look at the flavors. 19:47.44vigorbrandingSure. 19:47.62Clara Paye _ UNiTESo I go to Hispanic markets, I go to Korean markets, I go to Japanese markets, you know, I live in an area again, where I’m blessed by diversity. And so I study, you know, when I travel, what are people eating? 19:59.01Clara Paye _ UNiTEWhat, you know, what are people, you know, what do people enjoy? And I really, I mean I the first flavors are really like things that I loved so I just wanted to create things you know flavors and then I tested them on my friends and I probably Michael I probably made like 15 or 20 different flavors before I started right like and kind of like chose the heroes from um the ones that I made and in my kitchen. 20:17.81vigorbrandingMm-hmm. Now, is there one that you you loved and thought, oh, everyone’s gonna love this and didn’t make it? Is there a flavor that you kind of, what is it? 20:26.76Clara Paye _ UNiTEYeah it was a ah green tea matcha 20:30.55vigorbrandingUh-uh. 20:30.44Clara Paye _ UNiTEflavor and so but green tea powder sometimes can be fishy and it’s like sounds so weird but like it just didn’t work in in scale right and so and there are macho bars out there but I never think that they taste great and so you know I wanted it to have like good product integrity and so like that was like a 20:35.42vigorbrandingOkay. 20:39.37vigorbrandingNot it. 20:45.81vigorbrandingMm-hmm. 20:48.56Clara Paye _ UNiTEyou know, one that like I thought would be, you know, cause if you, if you look at the Starbucks menu, like ah so many, you know, those, those are great flavor cues too. Like, you know, Starbucks spends a lot of time in flavor development. And so you can just, you can take cues from adjacent industries. 21:01.68vigorbrandingSure. We got to work with a lot over the years ah through Quench. We worked with the Hershey Company and we worked with the scientists. And I was always blown away because we’d go in the, and back, this would be like early 90s, we’d go in these rooms or they’d have to swipe a card for the door to open. It seemed very like, 21:17.81vigorbrandingUh, sign sci-fi, you know, and it would it be lab technicians and they’d put drops and they’d be like, here, taste that. What does it taste like? I’m like, well, I taste apple pie. They’re like, wait for it. I’m like, Oh, I taste whipped cream. Wait for it. Oh, I can not taste crust. Like they could do this. I mean, it was like better living through chemistry. They could do all this stuff. 21:36.54vigorbrandingand what it came down to obviously was and this is what is so hard with what you do is now you have to source the ingredients now you have to make sure it’s not a chemical thing and then you have to understand can you can you afford that flavoring at a price point that will be palatable to the consumer so there’s so much involved in all of what you do yeah 21:56.81Clara Paye _ UNiTEThere is so much like, look, all business is hard, but the food business is particularly hard, right? Because you’re, it’s a living, breathing thing, right? And for me, it came down to simplicity. Like I always wanted simple ingredients um because I wanted people to be able to understand what was going into the bar, right? Like I wanted it to be real food and natural. And um so when you have those kinds of like, 22:22.56Clara Paye _ UNiTEBarriers, you know, it’s it helps you and it hurts you right? Like I can’t put in a bunch of processing You know like many large companies can because that’s not the brand value that I’m trying to create or the kind of product I’m trying to create. 22:30.08vigorbrandingRight. Mhm. 22:34.50Clara Paye _ UNiTESo yeah, it’s very hard um You know, we do get a lot of those scientists taking pictures at our booth every year at all the Expos and so people and we have been copied, you know and that’s like just anytime you’re successful at something people are gonna copy you and so 22:45.84vigorbrandingSure. Mhm. 22:50.21Clara Paye _ UNiTEBut I think at the end of the day, consumers want authenticity. They want you know brands that are creating products that are meaningful to them and will reward those brands. So I don’t really worry about like copycats. I worry more about when they stop copying me. 23:07.91vigorbrandingbut you know and But to your point, and you know weve we’ve been doing a food trends report for over 15 years, and what you are doing and and how you’re doing it is very on trend. It’s not easy. It’s not inexpensive. i mean it’s ah it’s ah you know you there’s you could You could have cut corners along the way on your product, but you don’t do that. I just think that that’s going to pay dividends in the long run. i think that’s such a It’s hard to stick to your ethos, but I think you do a fantastic job of that. so I think it’s something to be proud of. and so and My next thing is, I did not know this, but the I in Unite stands for invite. and I did not realize on the back of every bar there’s an email address that you can people can send directly to you for suggestions on new flavors. Have you have you learned anything from these? Have you gotten anything interesting in the emails? 23:52.30Clara Paye _ UNiTEYes, I love those emails, like those emails come to me. And so I get to interact with the people that write those emails. And, you know, the most meaningful ones are when people will give me a flavor suggestion, but then they’ll also say, thank you for making a bar for us. 24:07.73Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, thank you. And it’s exactly what I wanted to do. 24:09.63vigorbrandingThat’s super cool. 24:10.64Clara Paye _ UNiTEwhen I, when I set out was like, make the invisible feel seen. 24:12.05vigorbrandingYeah. 24:14.77Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd you know, I know what it’s like to not feel seen. You know, I know what it’s like to like, kind of be in the shadows, like being a woman in the plumbing industry. Perfect example, right? Like you don’t really belong here or you don’t like, you know, somebody that looks like me typically doesn’t work in plumbing, right? 24:29.33Clara Paye _ UNiTElike It’s a very old, old, you know, antiquated kind of industry. And so like when I get those emails, I get really excited and people do have some great ideas and ideas of like things that we’ve actually developed, you know, and just haven’t launched. And, you know, so it’s fun to know that like, it is also on trend for people. 24:49.00vigorbrandingThat’s fantastic. So I mean, ah um I’m being italian Italian. My wife’s Greek. So yeah, yeah, her mother makes us baklava. So it’s phenomenal. So I love that. I’m really proud to see that you have a baklava in your in your flavors. So you have you have baklava, you have peanut butter and jelly, you have chiro, bubble tea, Mexican hot chocolate. What’s your what’s your favorite? 25:09.34Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, it’s like asking me which my favorite kid is. 25:12.05vigorbrandingah We all have one. 25:11.94Clara Paye _ UNiTEum i and I mean, is our hero. 25:12.61vigorbrandingCome on. We all have one. On any given day, we all have one. A favorite kid. 25:18.32Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd churro was like the first bar where I was like, okay, we really have something. 25:19.02vigorbrandingUh-huh. That’s the baby. 25:21.72Clara Paye _ UNiTEYeah. But I really also very much like baklava. And it’s similar to churro in that, you know, it’s got kind of like some of the the same kind of spices with the cinnamon. 25:28.18vigorbrandingMm-hmm. 25:29.41Clara Paye _ UNiTEBut baklava has never been done outside of baklava. 25:31.48vigorbrandingMm-hmm. 25:32.33Clara Paye _ UNiTELike, think about it, Michael. Like, you’ve never seen a baklava ice cream. You’ve never seen a baklava cracker. 25:35.23vigorbrandingNope. 25:36.56Clara Paye _ UNiTELike, you’ve never seen a baklava popcorn. Right? Like it was very unique. 25:40.80vigorbrandingYeah. 25:41.16Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd, you know, when I, before I launched, you know, many of the, the manufacturing partners I met with in the beginning were like, these price flavors are too strange. Like nobody’s going to buy these and like to be, you know, have come full circle and and be like, no, they’re great. 25:54.00Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd like Baklava just won a good housekeeping award this year when they’re, you know, best snack award. Churro won the same award last year. 25:59.19vigorbrandingAwesome. 26:00.98Clara Paye _ UNiTESo it’s like, it’s incredibly validating when, you know, people. like like the product and like, you know, um appreciate it. And it’s got organic honey in it. It’s just really tasty bar. 26:12.34vigorbrandingThat’s great. Well, like I said, you’re the products are amazing. And in a way, I like i look at these flavors and in a way they are they’re kind of all comfort foods, too, right? I mean, they’re, they’re, yeah, they’re all international flavors, but they’re almost like international comfort flavors, you know, it just it kind of feels that way. 26:28.40Clara Paye _ UNiTEWell, they’re nostalgic flavors. 26:30.16vigorbrandingYeah. 26:30.11Clara Paye _ UNiTESo they’re foods that you ate in childhood. 26:32.21vigorbrandingRight. 26:32.26Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so that was also really important to me. That was also one of the barometers is like childhood flavors. 26:36.76vigorbrandingPerfect. 26:38.45Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd ironically, I mean, I didn’t develop these for kids, but like kids love our bars and like, duh, they’re childhood flavors, right? Like they’re really for adults, but you know, so we’ve had this like wide range of like consumer interest in our, in our products. And so for me, it’s like about taking you back to kind of like a simpler time. I think, you know, health food specifically is sometimes punitive. Like, Oh, I don’t really like this mushroom powder, but I’m going to drink it because like, i my you know, my, 27:03.59Clara Paye _ UNiTEpodcast said that I’m going to get muscles if I drink it. you know and I’m like more on the other side of wellness. We’re like, let’s make it fun and let’s make it like food you want to eat, not food you have to eat. 27:09.80vigorbrandingMm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. All right. Well, let’s have some fun here. So, you know, being the research guys that we are and the marketing guys where we came up with our own flavors. So we decided to go around the world. I want your opinion on if these are going to be winners or not. So we’ll start in India, a gulab jambu. It’s very popular dessert. It’s often served during celebrations. It’s fried dough soaked in a rosewater syrup, often garnished with almonds and cashews. 27:40.04Clara Paye _ UNiTE10 out of 10. I think that would like a home run flavor. I’ve actually, you know, my Indian friends have also suggested ah exact flavor and it’s always kind of been in my mind. 27:45.01vigorbrandingYeah. 27:48.94Clara Paye _ UNiTEThe rosewater is the one that’s like, can be polarizing. So, you know, we try to have things that are like, you know, broad appeal, but yeah, I think 10 out of 10 would be a great flavor. 27:57.57vigorbrandingPlus, I’ll say this, I hate to be the total American here, but pronunciation can also be a barrier to people buying something if they can’t if they can’t figure out how to say it. 28:04.52Clara Paye _ UNiTEFor now, right? 28:06.08vigorbrandingAll right, now we’ll head to Spain, a creamy caramel flan. 28:09.66Clara Paye _ UNiTEI love flan and I think flan is another one of those foods that’s mistaken for like just Latin Americans because lots of people eat flan or you know it’s called sometimes creme caramel it’s called like different things in other regions of the world you know so yeah another great flavor you guys are good at this don um don’t start a bar company Michael. 28:15.09vigorbrandingMm hmm. 28:26.72vigorbrandingyeah Yeah, yeah. We would never if we, you know, they’re yours. These are all yours if you want to do them. So you have some friends, we have some employees in Brazil. So um Bolo de Rolo. It’s a light sponge cake. It’s rolled up with a layer of tangy guava jam. 28:43.47Clara Paye _ UNiTEThis one I’ve never heard of, I’ve never had. 28:45.94vigorbrandingright 28:46.23Clara Paye _ UNiTEI’ve not not been to Brazil, so it really piqued my interest. I love guavas. I think tropical fruits, you know, we see that in beverage now. 28:54.85vigorbrandingRight. 28:55.48Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, there’s all kinds of great beverages that have popped up with tropical fruit flavors. 28:56.09vigorbrandingMm hmm. 29:00.70Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd definitely in terms of what global flavor trends, guava I think is still underrated because I love guavas. 29:04.97vigorbrandingMm hmm. 29:07.99Clara Paye _ UNiTESo yeah, I think, you know, it’d be interesting to to get the um the sponge cake kind of consistency in a bar because bars tend to be a little bit drier and a little bit harder to to make soft because water stability issues. 29:20.76Clara Paye _ UNiTEBut I think that’s super intrigued. I want to go to Brazil, so that’s on my list. 29:24.27vigorbrandingYeah, there you go. There’s an excuse for R and&D. It’s a write-off. um you know Yeah, it’s ah that that’s that’s that’s fun. OK, so we go to Italy ah for some almond biscotti. 29:37.61Clara Paye _ UNiTEI mean, I love biscotti, but I think if you’re craving biscotti, eat a biscotti. 29:41.08vigorbrandingYeah, I agree. 29:41.18Clara Paye _ UNiTEyou know 29:42.08vigorbrandingYeah, I don’t think that works in a bar, right? 29:43.73Clara Paye _ UNiTEWell, you know like people tell me, like oh, you should make a hummus flavored bar. I’m like, what? Why don’t you just eat hummus? 29:49.24vigorbrandingYeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. 29:50.94Clara Paye _ UNiTEyou know For me, it’s about taking some things. Because biscotti is not unhealthy, like typically. like you know If you had one, it’s like it’s fine. 29:55.05vigorbrandingNo. 29:57.11Clara Paye _ UNiTEIt’s like a treat. So I typically try to take like higher calorie, higher density things to make them healthy and approachable. 30:02.75vigorbrandingoh 30:05.67vigorbrandingYeah, you’re you’re almost bringing a dessert together to a degree, right? 30:05.58Clara Paye _ UNiTEso i probably Exactly. 30:08.59vigorbrandingYeah. 30:08.51Clara Paye _ UNiTEa 30:09.42vigorbrandingYeah, that totally makes sense. And you know what’s funny? You you just said something that that really kind of stuck with me. though The beverage industry does do a lot of flavors. And it’s really kind of accelerated. I mean, as a company, we were early on with with flavored beverages in the tea category. 30:24.27vigorbrandingAnd we were we had a brand that we worked with for like 15 years. We helped build what’s called Turkey Hill Iced Tea. Excuse me. And it was the first refrigerated tea. a lot of There was teas out there that were shelf-stable, but we were in the refrigerator. Well, the proliferation now of beverages in the refrigerator. You go to a convenience store with just walls of beverages. So there’s a lot of unique flavorings that you see popping up. And I guess that’s that would be a good place to see, I don’t know, what’s acceptable, right? like what are what are What are consumers interested in? 30:53.61Clara Paye _ UNiTEYeah, I think um it’s a good, again, like I got to take a lot of flavor cues from like a Starbucks or like, you know, what are people drinking? 31:01.08vigorbrandingyeah 31:02.11Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd like, what are the flavor cues in beverage that we can borrow from, right? Or we that can inform some of us. I think in beverage, it’s a little bit easier because the flavoring is just like props added to something versus like you’re trying to really create something authentic in food. 31:13.60vigorbrandingYeah, yep, yep. 31:19.97Clara Paye _ UNiTEBut gosh, I’m just happy I have a shelf stable product. Like I can’t imagine distributing a refrigerated or frozen product. 31:25.52vigorbrandingYeah, yeah, yeah. 31:26.11Clara Paye _ UNiTELike knowing what I know now, it’s like just a whole nother level of of anxiety. 31:30.73vigorbrandingYeah, well in flavoring to own on that side is it’s amazing how if you had some foot, it’s not obvious as a flavor to like what happened to potato chips, right? So we have a snack food category of snack foods. I mean, adding just a new flavor a new fun. It’s it’s amazing how much velocity you get and how much traction we actually did it across the tuna category. 31:49.35vigorbrandingAnd you would think, you know, tuna, we started adding sriracha or different types of hot or or or Thai chili or, I mean, just all these kind of unique flavors. 31:54.20Clara Paye _ UNiTEMm 31:57.94vigorbrandingAnd it’s amazing how it can really ah get you more more ah shelf presence. 31:59.66Clara Paye _ UNiTEhmm. 32:03.65vigorbrandingAnd it also then, ah it creates ah an atmosphere of trial. So it’s ah’s it’s an awful lot of fun for that too. So um so as an entrepreneur who who’s growing and developing a brand that’s still a relatively young brand, ah you just created it four years ago. 32:17.34vigorbrandingWhat are some of your biggest challenges? 32:20.85Clara Paye _ UNiTEIt’s sad to say, Michael, but like there’s a lot of predatory behavior for emerging brands in the food space, right? 32:26.57vigorbrandinghe 32:26.47Clara Paye _ UNiTEWhere I think this industry like depends on the turn to a certain degree of like brands to fail, to come in to shoot their shot. And like when they fail, it doesn’t matter because there’s like so many other brands behind them trying to get in that same shelf space. 32:39.58Clara Paye _ UNiTESo I think it’s just being the underdog. like If you look at the shelves that we’re on, we’re competing with behemoths, right? Like billion dollar brands, multi-billion dollar brands, like that control the entire food supply. 32:48.42vigorbrandingMm hmm. Mm hmm. 32:51.38Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd we’re like on the same shelf and like, how can we actually compete to build brand awareness? Like, you know, so you just do it with a radical authenticity. You do it by creating value for the consumer, creating something different, creating a better product. 33:05.17Clara Paye _ UNiTEBut it’s really like having come from a larger company where like, you know, you have some kind of street cred because you are a larger and you’re eight It’s easier to grow a larger company, but to grow from scratch has been like humbling. 33:17.69Clara Paye _ UNiTElike it’s There’s a lot of people who want to put their hand in your pocket, who want to you know take advantage of you, and you have to be astute. 33:18.13vigorbrandingYeah. 33:24.66Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd again, you have to surround yourself with people that are smart, that will help you avoid the landline, help you clear those paths. but You know, I, um, I also started, um, a nonprofit called included for, you know, people of color in food CPG just because I feel very passionately it’s called included included CPG, um, for people to kind of like not make the same mistakes that I made or kind of try to pull it forward somehow by clearing the path for, you know, I don’t want people to, you know, make the mistakes that we, we’ve made or could have potentially made. 33:49.99vigorbrandingMm hmm. 33:56.73vigorbrandingMm hmm. That’s you’ve you’ve always been one to give back. And I think that’s very admirable. I mean, we were walking around. It was it was it this we were just talking about with the included CPG. 34:09.40vigorbrandingWe were walking around. He was exposed. You had a special section and they they they don’t you had them donate space. What was that for? 34:16.71Clara Paye _ UNiTEum Yes for emerging brands and no for included and so we do do that at the fancy food show and at Expo West every year and so we kind of run kind of a mini incubator accelerator For these brands and help them get that space and be ready to pitch and you know, you have to be market ready So it’s not like for a brand that’s like pre-launch it’s like, you know if you have some kind of like established brand presence and really hoping to elevate them to the next level because those trade shows are so expensive and it’s so primitive and so anything that we can do to 34:18.69vigorbrandingOh, OK. 34:43.19vigorbrandingYeah. 34:46.50Clara Paye _ UNiTELevel the playing field to like help an emerging brand win is like I just it just lights me up I like it makes me so happy because These are the people improving the food systems. 34:57.16Clara Paye _ UNiTEThese are the people that are bringing healthy Products to market. 34:57.35vigorbrandingRight. 35:01.02Clara Paye _ UNiTEThese are the people who are you know, taking their family recipes and trying to share them with the world 35:06.90vigorbrandingWell, I mean, I admire you because you’re able to, I could see you walking into those shows and asking for them to give you all this space. And I know how you are. You do with a smile, but you’re pretty emphatic and I’m sure you always get your way. 35:19.64vigorbrandingCause I know I sit in meetings with you and when I’m, and when I miss a meeting, I have to answer to you, but you do with a smile, but you always hold people accountable and you get what you want. And I do respect that. So sure. 35:29.41Clara Paye _ UNiTEWell, I mean, it’s been a great partnership with New Hope and the Specialty Food Association. And it just, it aligns with their value. So they actually are great partners. And so it’s a, you know, and it’s a team. It’s not just me. There’s like five other founders on the leadership team have included. So, you know, we, we are really working hard to improve um the food systems. 35:51.19vigorbrandingwhat So what ah what do a lot of these folks, i mean thankfully they have you ah to sort of open up the door for them, literally to bring them into the into these shows. so like What do you see a mistake made by ah want to be entrepreneurs? what What do they do wrong? Or what do what do you think and in the brand creation process? What do you what do what do you think that they they do wrong a lot? 36:11.05Clara Paye _ UNiTEI mean, it’s probably something we did wrong too, but it’s like trying to pretend you’re a big brand when you’re not, right? Like, yes, you can get on that shelf, but are you ready? Can you support it the same way a big brand does? 36:20.43vigorbrandingMmhmm. 36:22.89Clara Paye _ UNiTEDo you know all the levers to pull, right? 36:24.66vigorbrandingMmhmm. 36:25.09Clara Paye _ UNiTElike And it’s hard to say, like, it’s hard when the opportunity knocks not to take it, right? 36:30.71vigorbrandingSure. 36:31.30Clara Paye _ UNiTESo it’s like that discipline of knowing, you know, What is the actual contribution margin of this account? And, you know, is it just like, or does it accomplish something else? So I think it’s like biting off a little bit more than you can chew. 36:44.02Clara Paye _ UNiTEum And then the one that I pay attention very closely to is quality. I think quality can sink your company so fast. You know, one quality issue, one copacker issue, one whatever issue. 36:53.05vigorbrandingyeah 36:54.04Clara Paye _ UNiTESo if you’re not paying attention to your product, you know, so closely, um that can really be a landmine because you can always create more brands. But you know, if your brand name is like tainted, it’s hard for you. 37:07.44vigorbrandingRight. I mean, some people might not even know like that. I think people assume because you have a brand, that you actually make it yourself. And you know, there are co-packers out there and a lot of brands use co-packers and you’re handing off your basically your baby and your promise, you know, a brand is a promise, your promise to the consumer to someone else to make. Obviously, there’s there’s checks and balances there. But it it is a, you know, there’s there’s places along the way that you have to count on a lot of partners. And it’s a, I’m sure it’s a difficult business, you know, 37:36.97Clara Paye _ UNiTEI think you have to think of your co-man relationships as kind of like your investors because they’re investing their line time, their energy you know to develop your brand as well. 37:40.66vigorbrandinghere Yep. 37:44.95Clara Paye _ UNiTESo it is a partnership. You’re not just like, you know. Um, taking and giving, right? is It’s truly a partnership but if done right. And like, yeah, I like to, I like to actually preface a lot of my buyer meetings by saying, Hey, by the way, I don’t make this in my garage. 37:56.50vigorbrandingMm 37:57.57Clara Paye _ UNiTEI, you know, because like the, the bias is if you’re like an emerging, I have a dream person and you’re like, make as far as in your garage and like packaging them up and sending them out. 38:01.10vigorbranding-hmm. 38:07.22Clara Paye _ UNiTEI thought there’s anything wrong with that. But like, when you’re trying to pitch a fortune, you know, 100 company, they got to make sure that, you know, you have your ducks in a row. 38:09.52vigorbrandingRight. eat Yeah. Yeah. 38:14.95Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so that’s a good qualifier. 38:17.32vigorbrandingYeah, Target doesn’t want you like ah to think you’re baking the night before. That’s funny. But I mean, yeah, it’s ah yeah’s it’s true. And it’s amazing all of the the hurdles, I’ll say, that you have to go through. So you have a great, yeah there’s a quote that you like to talk about. lot Winston Churchill, success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. And you’re always enthusiastic. You want to talk a little bit about some of those things that you had to bump up against, some of your failures, some of the things that you had to pivot. 38:44.24Clara Paye _ UNiTEOh, there’s so many, Michael. I mean, every, if it’s, if it was easy, everyone would do it, you know, like I say that, but it’s like, it’s so true. 38:49.31vigorbrandingSure. 38:51.46Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd like, you know, and every entrepreneur I talk to in the food space or any space, it’s like, you gotta be able to take those hits and get back up. 38:57.56vigorbrandingOh, yeah. 38:59.18Clara Paye _ UNiTEBut the getting back up is really hard, right? 39:02.31vigorbrandingMm hmm. 39:02.73Clara Paye _ UNiTEEspecially when there’s like, you could do something else with your time. You could do something else with your energy. 39:06.20vigorbrandingGreat. 39:07.24Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd that’s where like a mission becomes really important. And it’s like, what’s actually driving you? 39:11.03vigorbrandingMm 39:11.36Clara Paye _ UNiTECause if it’s money, you’ll give up. There’s way easier ways to make money. 39:15.17vigorbrandinghmm. 39:15.47Clara Paye _ UNiTELike if I wanted to go make money, I’d just take my money and invest it in real estate or whatever. I’m like, yes, we do that too. but It’s really about mission for me. And so what drives you to like make the world a better place, have a lasting impact, create products that resonate with people. 39:31.82Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so success is just a barometer. It’s just an outcome of you living that up. But like, you know, there are times, I mean, I think if you’re not ready to throw in the towel every month in your business, are you even an entrepreneur? 39:42.90Clara Paye _ UNiTELike, you know, like it’s just, it’s the getting back up. 39:43.50vigorbrandingRight. 39:46.20Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd it’s like that loss of enthusiasm is what gets you. And like another way to send that is like burnout. If you’ve burned out, it’s too late. So I make sure that I don’t burn out. 39:52.89vigorbrandingYep. Yeah, that’s very smart. That’s actually very sage advice right there. Because look, these businesses, no matter how ah exciting they are, or how long you’ve been doing them, you do hit those those troughs, you do hit the burnout phase. I mean, personally, I started my first agency 33 years ago. And it’s, you know, ah yeah well and during this whole time with COVID, there’s so much change. And and and you know You think, well, you’ve been doing this for a long time. Everything think just should be on autopilot. No. I mean, I probably worked harder in the last couple of years. I did maybe in some of the middle years. I don’t know. It’s just just a different time. So yeah, the entrepreneur thing, I think everyone takes it for granted or everyone looks over and says, oh, you’ve done that. Or you have money because of this. And ah most people don’t realize those days and those sleepless nights and those weekends and the you know the the fears of everything from bankruptcy to lawsuits to everything else. We all go through it. right i mean every 40:45.92vigorbrandingi get to I’m very fortunate i get to talk to a lot of founders, I get to talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, and a lot of successful people, and they all have the same they all have those same stories. Every one of them has that nightmare, like, yeah, there was this time when, and you know you didn’t think there was a tomorrow. so it’s ah ah you know it’s ah It’s good to hear, it because your story, you’ve seen it all all the way around from your father to to starting up now and what you’re doing. and I love that you stick to your guns. because ah Again, you can cut corners. You could do things faster, cheaper, but not better. And I think that what you do is ah is really remarkable. And i again, I know it’s going to pay off in the long run. So so what’s what’s next for you tonight? I mean, are there any new flavors? If you can’t talk about it, I understand. But if theres is there anything new products or flavors or anything exciting on the horizon? 41:29.86Clara Paye _ UNiTEYeah, there is a new flavor. It’s called Hot Fudge Sunday. We’ll be launching soon. And so we’re really excited about that flavor, another nostalgic childhood treat. 41:35.70vigorbrandingAwesome. Yep. 41:38.67Clara Paye _ UNiTEAlso some different, you know, we’re looking at different formats, kind of some adjacent things. So definitely an innovation pipeline out there. 41:43.72vigorbrandingthat 41:44.39Clara Paye _ UNiTESo hoping to launch some other products. But really, I want to win at bars first and, um you know, really own our category and really, you know, make sure that our velocities stay up and and everything is is good with bars. 41:59.13vigorbrandingFantastic. All right, so one last question. And you can’t be one of your bars. But if you had one last final meal, what would you eat? Where? Why? 42:09.00Clara Paye _ UNiTESuch a good question. I mean, I’m a California girl, so it’d probably be an In-N-Out cheeseburger, ah you know, and and yeah some french fries and egg steak, animals for sure, animal style. 42:15.08vigorbrandingThere you go. All right. I respect that answer. That’s a great answer. Animal animal style, I hope. 42:25.41Clara Paye _ UNiTEum You know, it’s kind of like, that’s the meal when we travel abroad or something and you get back, you’re like, oh, I just want an In-N-Out burger. 42:26.67vigorbrandingah 42:30.92vigorbrandingYeah. 42:31.05Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, it just, it feels like home. And I think that goes back to nostalgia and childhood too. 42:35.15vigorbrandingAnybody that with work or or or whatever, friends or family that travel with me, they know when I land in California, that’s one of the first things I do and I will not leave until I do it. It might not be the very first thing I get to do if I have a meeting, but I will have in and out before I get on that plane to fly back east. 42:51.43vigorbrandingso That’s a great answer. 42:51.95Clara Paye _ UNiTEThat’s right. 42:52.84vigorbrandinggreat answer so Anyway, Claire, thank you. This was awesome. I you know i appreciate you. ah you know I’ve known you a long time and it’s just so cool to hear your story and see what you’re up to and congratulations. 43:03.82Clara Paye _ UNiTEThanks, Michaels. Fun to be on. 43:06.07vigorbrandingAwesome. Thanks.

Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth on several occasions, [John 14-16], making the point to His disciples that the Holy Spirit is trustworthy and that He would never mislead them.FaithLife Christian Ministries:Download our Free App:https://get.theapp.co/hghqPodcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/faithlife-christian-ministries/id1606442323Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/faithlifecmInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/faithlifecm?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==X:https://x.com/faithlifecmLinkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/faithlife-christian-ministries-82ab77191/YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@FaithLifeChristianMinistriesWebsite:https://faithlifecm.comDonate: https://subsplash.com/u/faithlifechristianminist/give

Problems and setbacks take us all down a rabbit hole. This teaching helps give your godly tools and a new perspective. This will change your life in one simple sip of this milkshake. Check out Anita's Audible A Leap of Faith: A Life Filled With Questionable Choices.

Join Sterling Spencer on Pinch My Salt episode 56 as he takes you on an incredible journey into the thrilling world of big wave surfing. In this exciting episode, he discusses the legendary talents of Nathan Florence and Landon McNamara, two of the most prominent figures in the big wave surfing community. Together, they dive deep into their most epic wins in the ocean, sharing personal stories and insights that will leave you inspired.SUPPORT US!Quench your thirst with WEST PEAK! Use code: Pinchmysalt https://drinkwestpeak.com/pages/store-locator0:00 2025 & Energy 6:53 Pinch My Clips!19:29 Nathan Florence PIPE MASTER! 22:50 THONGS24:25 Resolutions 27:01 Eddie Aikau | Big Wave Surfing45:49 Tom Carroll & Kelly's Shadow 49:57 Rob Machado 54:21 Hawk Tuah Girl56:42 Birds58:28 Cold Burger1:02:00 LA People1:04:21 Muscles#sterlingspencer #hawaii #podcast #nathanflorence #pipelinemasters #surfingpodcast

Ep 56 | BIG WINNERS | Nathan Florence & Landon McNamara | Pinch My Salt with Sterling Spencer Join Sterling Spencer on Pinch My Salt episode 56 as he takes you on an incredible journey into the thrilling world of big wave surfing. In this exciting episode, he discusses the legendary talents of Nathan Florence and Landon McNamara, two of the most prominent figures in the big wave surfing community. Together, they dive deep into their most epic wins in the ocean, sharing personal stories and insights that will leave you inspired.SUPPORT US!Quench your thirst with WEST PEAK! Use code: Pinchmysalt https://drinkwestpeak.com/pages/store-locator0:00 2025 & Energy 6:53 Pinch My Clips!19:29 Nathan Florence PIPE MASTER! 22:50 THONGS24:25 Resolutions 27:01 Eddie Aikau | Big Wave Surfing45:49 Tom Carroll & Kelly's Shadow 49:57 Rob Machado 54:21 Hawk Tuah Girl56:42 Birds58:28 Cold Burger1:02:00 LA People1:04:21 Muscles#sterlingspencer #hawaii #podcast #nathanflorence #pipelinemasters #surfingpodcast

Do you struggle to get the nutrients you need for better bone health and reducing inflammation? If so, you're not alone! In this episode, I sit down with the amazing Dr. Dana Cohen, integrative medicine expert and author of Fuel Up and Quench. Dr. Dana shares how small, easy tweaks like incorporating nutrient-packed smoothies can create transformative changes in your health. We dive into how your blender can help you maximize nutrition, reduce inflammation, and support bone health. Dr. Dana's practical tips make eating healthy food achievable, even with a busy schedule. She also shares her philosophy on harm reduction, breaking the cycle of shame around food choices, and up-leveling your wellness one step at a time. Are you ready to fuel your body and transform your health? Tune in to this insightful episode and start your journey to better nutrition and healing!  “Nutrition and diet are the fastest ways to better health—faster than any medication I know of.” ~ Dr. Dana Cohen In this episode: - [02:05] - Fuel Up and its link to Quench - [07:55] - Overcoming habits with harm reduction - [12:14] - Ultra-processed foods and their health risks  - [16:12] - Blending: nutrients and hydration made easy - [18:15] - Changing tastes with diverse smoothie ingredients - [25:38] - Why diversity is important for our health - [27:55] - Full-meal smoothies for balanced nutrition - [31:39] - Hydration hacks: Eat your water - [36:45] - Big health gains from small changes - [38:33] - Finding your reason for getting healthy - [42:50] - Products to improve your health   Resources mentioned - 2025 MORE Natural Approaches to Osteoporosis & Bone Health - https://tinyurl.com/strongbones2025  - Dr. Dana's website - https://www.drdanacohen.com/ - Fuel Up: Harness the Power of Your Blender and "Cheat" Your Way to Good Health by Dr. Dana Cohen - https://www.drdanacohen.com/fuel-up-book - Quench by Dr. Dana Cohen - https://www.drdanacohen.com/Quench-Book   More about Margie - Website - https://margiebissinger.com/  - Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/p/Margie-Bissinger-MS-PT-CHC-100063542905332/  - Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/margiebissinger/?hl=en    DISCLAIMER – The information presented on this podcast should not be construed as medical advice. It is not intended to replace consultation with your physician or healthcare provider. The ideas shared on this podcast are the expressed opinions of the guests and do not always reflect those of Margie Bissinger and Happy Bones, Happy Life Podcast.   *In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links on this site: Some of the links going to products are affiliate links of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items, but the price is the same for you (sometimes, I even get to share a unique discount with you). If I post an affiliate link to a product, it is something that I personally use, support, and would recommend. I personally vet each and every product. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to help you create positive changes in your health and bring more happiness into your life. I will only ever link to products or resources (affiliate or otherwise) that fit within this purpose.

When we resist or put off God, we are quenching the Holy Spirit in us. However, if we yield ourselves to God, He will enable us for His purposes. Yielding to God is not about what works we can do for Him; it is about what He is able to do in us and through us as yielded vessels to His will. VF-2452  Watch, Listen and Learn 24x7 at PastorMelissaScott.com Pastor Melissa Scott teaches from Faith Center in Glendale. Call 1-800-338-3030 24x7 to leave a message for Pastor Scott. You may make reservations to attend a live service, leave a prayer request or make a commitment. Pastor Scott appreciates messages and reads them often during live broadcasts. Follow @Pastor_Scott on Twitter and visit her official Facebook page @Pastor.M.Scott. Download Pastor Scott's "Understand the Bible" app for iPhone, iPad and iPod at the Apple App Store and for Android devices in the Google Store. Pastor Scott can also be seen 24x7 on Roku and Amazon Fire on the "Understand the Bible?" channel. ©2024 Pastor Melissa Scott, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved

Reading Jeremiah 4:1-18 where the Lord again calls Israel to repentance, and then turns to Judah and assures them of the judgment that will come to them for their evil deeds. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!

This message was shared virtually by Sr. Pastor A. A. Jackson via Zoom Meeting on 12/22/24.  It is based on 1 Thessalonians 5:19; Matthew 25:7; and Galatians 5:16.  When we walk in agreement with our flesh, we will quench the Spirit. Then, we will not keep your lamps (lives) trimmed and burning.  We cannot walk in the […] The post Quench Not the Spirit appeared first on Realm of Agape Christian Church.

Mosquito VR, Emotional organs, YouTube restitution, Antimatter delivery, Universal memory, Diamond batteries, Barbarian snuff, Shopping mall apartments. Jennifer, Angie, Way, and Bradley discuss the curated links for the week of 12/13/2024. Please consider supporting this ad-free content on Patreon.

As she was singing the words, “I don’t want anyone else. I don’t need anything else,” the Lord showed Shawna the people and the things that had taken His place in her heart the past few days. He’s so loving to tell us the truth. Nothing and no one can quench our greatest thirst, only Jesus can. The show had just started a couple weeks ago, Scott was talking and at that moment the enemy accused Perry an ancient sin. And it rocked him back on his heals. What do we do when that happens?? Everyone is going through something. On her knees in her office surrounded by a mess of spilled pomegranate arils, Shawna wanted to cry as she thought, “this is my life right now.” You never know what someone is up against. Be kind today. A few months back Perry said some honest but angry words to his bride Teresa. They quickly made peace but Perry knew he’d wounded with his words. He went to bed and had a restless night. And in his fitful sleep he had a dream, of grace.Donate to Moody Radio: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/morningshow/wgnbSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Have you heard of the Holy Spirit? Are you curious about His role in the life of a follower of Jesus? The Holy Spirit and the spiritual realm can make us uncomfortable – so we sometimes avoid these topics. But the Holy Spirit empowers believers in both the Old and New Testaments, and we want to live a fruitful, spirit-filled life today too! Join us for this seven-week series as we take a journey to understand the Holy Spirit and the relationship we can have with Him.

EP 54 | PIPELINE MASTERS let's talk about it | Pinch My Salt with Serling Spencer Is the Vans Pipeline Masters not cool anymore? Can We do better? Join us as we dive deep into our review on the highly talked-about fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul! We discuss Kelly Slater! Cory Lopez and of Course Laird Hamilton! SUPPORT US! Buy some merch - https://sterlingspencer.co/Quench your thirst with WEST PEAK! Use code: Pinchmysalt https://drinkwestpeak.com/pages/store-locatorCORE LORD WETSUIT SALE:https://www.matuse.com/Get a rad pair of Savalés! at https://www.savalefootwear.com/

We're coming into the end game and Lindsey's mind is already at it's breaking point. This week all "bras" are off when things get a whole lot darker and more secrets get revealed when we watched episodes 17, 18, 19, and 20 of Neon Genesis Evangelion! This episode is "sponsored" by Liquid Shinji: Now in Orange! Visit our Patreon to support the podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/animeighties⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Your help allows us to improve the podcast and offer more retro anime content! If you'd like to check out our retro anime video essays, or our incredibly funny short videos, please subscribe to our YouTube Channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@AnimEighties⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you'd like to follow us on social media we are @animeighties everywhere! If you liked this episode please rate and leave a review! If you have feedback or questions, please email us at animeighties@gmail.com

In this episode, Hosts Bill Elliff and Jordan Bowen delve into the concept of quenching the Spirit and how it affects our spiritual journey. Discover the importance of recognizing and responding to God's voice, rather than treating it lightly. Are you treating God's guidance with the seriousness it deserves, or are you quenching the Spirit by ignoring Him? Join us to learn how to cultivate a life where the Spirit's presence is welcomed and actively embraced. Start your own Personal Revival Journey Today at www.onecry.com

Stephen oversees Baldi Management Group (BMG), an airport concessions and management consulting company that manages restaurants in Reagan National Airport, JFK International Airport and Dulles International Airport. Established in 2008, BMG operates various food and beverage outlets, including franchises like Dunkin’ Donuts, Potbelly, and Smashburger. Stephen is an alumnus of Georgetown University, where he was a Community Scholar and student-athlete. He attributes his success to mentorship and now mentors young people, aiming to provide growth opportunities within his company. As founder-led company, Stephen has formed connections with other DC-based founder-led restaurants like Founding Famers and Timber Pizza as well as with larger national brands. About 15-20% of BMG's customers are employees from the airport itself. Stephen is a strong advocate of mentorship and helping employees grow and advance within an organization, even if it means the employee leaving the organization for a better opportunity. QUOTES “My commitment to making meaningful connections with people comes from way back then when I was forced to do it, not only because of who I am but my circumstances and I've tried to carry that out through my career and my life.” (Stephen) “There's something different about a founder-led company, because you've built it.” (Stephen)“Airports are a wonderful place to work. Once you end up in this ecosystem, it's hard to walk away.” (Stephen)“(In airports), the passengers are dynamic. We get to meet and connect with them all. We have the privilege of participating in whatever journey people are on every day and the following day, we get a whole new group of people.” (Stephen) “The (airport concessions and restaurant industry) is about an $8 billion a year industry nationally but the industry is controlled by about 20 key companies. It's a small ecosystem.” (Stephen) “Operating a streetside restaurant versus a restaurant in an airport is a completely different sport. The speed, the requirements, the logistical challenges (of being an in airport), all of our crewmembers have to go through background checks. Unless you're a serious player, you're not trying to participate in airports.” (Stephen) “We encourage our crewmembers just to meet people where they are. It may be the 50th time you've welcomed someone to our restaurant but it's the first time you've spoken to the person in front of you. You should be additive to their experience and not add additional stress or complications.” (Stephen) “We welcome the chaos. When it's raining and snowing outside and your flights are delayed, we kind of welcome that because that means we get to hang out with you a little bit longer.” (Stephen) “If I bring in someone as a front line worker who's pouring coffee, if they're still pouring coffee in three years, both them and the organization has done something wrong. We want to scale people up.” (Stephen)  TRANSCRIPT 00:01.9900:01.99vigorbrandingHey folks, welcome to Fork Tales, and I’m excited. Today’s guest is Stephen Baldi He’s the founder and president of Baldi Management Group. Baldy Management Group is an airport concessions and management consulting company. It’s a mouthful there. ah Manages concessions in Reagan National Airport, JFK International Airport, and Dulles International Airport. Stephen, welcome to Fork Tales, and thank you so much for joining us.00:25.82Stephen BaldiMichael, thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to the conversation.00:29.01vigorbrandingSo for those that don’t know, all of these are located in the sort of DC Metro, Baltimore or down at DC Metro area, right?00:36.21Stephen BaldiCorrect.00:37.04vigorbrandingYeah.00:37.19Stephen BaldiYeah, even though Philadelphia is my hometown, I’ve been in Washington DC for almost 30 years. um So this is home base for us.00:46.37vigorbrandingyeah Well, you you you know, I have a little trick question because that was going to be my first question. Are you still a Philly sports fan? I mean, do you bleed Eagle Green?00:53.03Stephen Baldiif If you cut me, it would be nothing but green. I live in Washington, DC.00:56.48vigorbrandingOK, beautiful.00:57.88Stephen BaldiMy heart is in Philadelphia.00:59.81vigorbrandingBeautiful, beautiful. Wow. There’s, there’s guys, I don’t even know what they call themselves these days. these’s The commanders, the Washington football club.01:04.91Stephen Baldioh The Washington football team, they’re all.01:05.40vigorbrandingI mean, they’re just, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just, it’s irrelevant. It’s irrelevant.01:10.11Stephen BaldiYeah, Michael, my family would disown me if anything other than my ah zip code changed as far as my hometown affiliation.01:10.06vigorbrandingSo that’s fantastic. Hey, it’s awesome. You got to bring, I had a gentleman come in, uh, from, uh, Oregon last week to speak to a bunch of advertising agencies from North America. We hosted them in Philadelphia and this guy was so excited. He was, he, he, he came from there, but he was Philly through and through. So everything in his presentation tied back to a Philly icon, something about Philadelphia that was iconic. And, you know, ah in our company, we’re,01:44.34vigorbrandingWe’re very proud that we’re an independent advertising agencies. We have an agency called Vigor and an agency called Quench. Vigor’s restaurant branding. Quench is food and beverage marketing. And the whole thing was around independence and how it’s how important it is.01:57.06vigorbrandingAnd he had all these great icons from like Nick Foles to, ah you know, ah Mike Schmidt to the Fanatic to, I mean, Will Smith.02:07.11vigorbrandingI mean, he just went through all the Philadelphia stuff, you know, the Liberty Bell and everything else. and So it was cool. It was cool.02:11.77Stephen Baldium I love it. I’ll tell you an interesting story about Nick Foles. So I had a really good feeling about our Super Bowl run, even though you know Carson Wentz, who was leading as the MVP that year, went down. And the Friday before the Super Bowl, something told me to go online and buy a Nick Foles autograph helmet.02:33.57vigorbrandingWow.02:34.10Stephen BaldiAnd I did. Now, I did not expedite the shipping, Michael. So it was not in my possession on Monday after we had won the Super Bowl. And many of my friends said that helmet’s never going to show up, but it did.02:47.65Stephen BaldiSo I bought it for $99.02:47.77vigorbrandingThat’s awesome.02:49.77Stephen BaldiAnd I can tell you, it’s it’s worth a lot more than that.02:51.92vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. Yeah, it’s worth a lot to people in Philadelphia. So it’s fantastic. And the pride of that city runs deep. So alright, so tell us about Baldy enter Management Group and what it does what inspired you to get into the airport concession games. I mean, you started I think in residential property, right?03:06.90Stephen BaldiI did. I started in residential property management in 2002. And I started in airports in 2005. And it was all kind of serendipitous. I had a really ah prickly history before starting in 2002.03:23.22Stephen Baldiat Kettler Management, which managed tax credit properties, but also Class A luxury communities.03:29.04vigorbrandingOkay.03:29.23Stephen BaldiAnd I had a tenant coming to my office. And she said, Steven, I see you engaging with the residents and how you handle issues. And I think you should be doing more. And I thought to myself, like this woman doesn’t know me.03:39.92Stephen BaldiYeah, I just fixed her fireplace. But who are you to come in my office and tell me what I should be doing? And at the time, I was making $22,000 a year with a Georgetown degree. And the job that they wanted me to interview for paid $85,000 a year.03:54.21vigorbrandingwow03:54.39Stephen BaldiSo as you can assume, Michael, goal I took the interview, I got the job. And so for three years, I worked in development for Westfield, which most people know as shopping mall developers, they have an airport division.04:05.82vigorbrandingHmm. Ah.04:07.99Stephen BaldiAnd so I was responsible for the redevelopment of national airport here in Washington, DC from 2005. to 2008. And then I leveraged a relationship with OTG Management, which has a very large presence at Philadelphia International, um into a joint venture relationship and actually launched the company, BMG, in 2008. And two thousand and eight and it’s we’ve not looked back since.04:31.36vigorbrandingThat’s fantastic. you know It’s funny. I really i don’t know you. we’re We’re really talking for the first time. I can tell right away, like youre you have a positive attitude, and I can tell you’re engaging. And so I could see how someone would see you in action and be like, hey, you know you you could do more. like You can be a part of something bigger. And it’s obviously what’s happened, which is it’s awesome. I’m a big proponent of attitude. I mean, i I love to know where people went to school. I mean, if you if I interview you, I want to see your brains on the table.04:58.39vigorbrandingBut I really want to know what your personality is like. I want to know about your attitude. I want to know ah how ah how much of a ah person you are that wants to win and be engaging and help people. And it’s ah like it comes through with you right away.05:09.91vigorbrandingAnd that’s ah it’s cool.05:10.18Stephen BaldiI appreciate that.05:11.03vigorbrandingnow it’s it’s05:11.32Stephen BaldiYeah, i’ll I’ll take it back if you if you want me to. So ah back in 1988, I was turning 13 and I begged my mom for a pair of Air Jordan sneakers.05:24.58Stephen BaldiAnd you’ll remember when Gordon’s first came out, ah they were the first shoe over a hundred dollars.05:25.72vigorbrandingOh, yeah.05:29.85vigorbrandingOh, yes, they were.05:30.36Stephen Baldiyeah I grew up in a upper lower class household and it was a stretch for my mom to purchase these shoes.05:31.49vigorbrandingYep.05:37.09vigorbrandingMm hmm.05:38.21Stephen BaldiBut I begged her and I begged her and I begged her and and she ended up buying them for me. And she said, you know, I just want you to be safe. Well, you probably can assume where the story goes. Within like a month of getting these sneakers, I was an attempted robbery, and I acted very violently to defend myself, and it resulted in me getting expelled from the school that I was at.05:59.94Stephen BaldiAnd as a punishment, ah rather than letting me play basketball for the entire summer, my mom forced me to go to the reading math and basketball clinic at Friend Central, which is a very prominent independent school on the main line of Philadelphia.06:14.39vigorbrandingMm hmm.06:14.96Stephen BaldiAnd that decision changed my life. um I went from living in a predominantly all-Black neighborhood to a private school that I was the only Black male in my class.06:25.11vigorbrandingWow.06:25.74Stephen BaldiAnd what it did was it changed my perspective of what was accessible. like I had never seen a computer before.06:31.75vigorbrandingRight.06:32.14Stephen BaldiAnd at this school, there was in a computer lab where we could sit down and navigate things.06:34.40vigorbrandingYeah.06:36.15Stephen BaldiAnd so going to Friends Central, having my mom make that leap of faith changed my trajectory in many ways. I matriculated from there to Georgetown University here in Washington, DC, which is how I got.06:48.20Stephen Baldito Washington DC. So I am a super Philadelphia sports fan, because not only am I from Philly, but Allen Iverson was my classmate at Georgetown University.06:51.93vigorbrandingThat’s awesome.06:55.50vigorbrandingIs that right?06:56.61Stephen BaldiYeah, we were the same class.06:56.89vigorbrandingWow.06:57.61Stephen BaldiAnd so, yeah, very cool.06:58.33vigorbrandingThat’s so cool. Yeah.07:00.38Stephen BaldiAnd so maya my commitment to making meaningful connections with people comes from way back then when I was forced to do it, not only because of who I am, but my circumstances.07:00.74vigorbrandingAI. It’s legendary.07:12.75Stephen BaldiAnd I’ve tried to carry that out through my career and my life.07:15.84vigorbrandingThat’s fantastic. what a great That’s great. That’s a great story. you know it’s like It’s funny that on the Air Jordans, at that time, when they came out, and I can follow you on that. i know you You nailed it. You said the first sneaker that was over $100. My dad had ah this like mom and pop retail sporting store. We sold mostly like hockey stuff. We were from Hershey, Pennsylvania.07:35.39vigorbrandingAnd I was working in a store in in Camp Hill and outside of Hershey. It’s up in the West Shore, they call it. Anyway, long story short, I was in the mall and we sold some sneakers and the Air Jordans came out and we had them on the wall.07:48.37vigorbrandingAnd it was like, it was insane. $100 for a pair of sneakers.07:52.08Stephen BaldiYeah.07:52.28vigorbrandingAnd I mean, like, whereas I’ll say the average then was probably like on the high end was probably like 50, 55.07:57.40Stephen BaldiYeah, for sure.07:58.58vigorbrandingAnd this went right to 100. And it was funny, my dad, maybe that’s where I started learning about, and I really did learn a lot about marketing, working in retail, because you have to talk to people, you have to sell. And I think that’s the most important skill a person can learn. Communicating with people and learning how to sell, like, you know, at least present yourself, right? So I put these sneakers at the very top. I said, dad, you know what? ah I said, everybody wants the Air Jordans. Most people can’t afford them.08:21.42vigorbrandingbut everyone wants to come and look at it. So I always sell them the white, the white, men’s the body they’re like but you know, so for every one Air Jordan, I saw, I used to sell like 30 other pairs of shoes.08:25.49Stephen Baldiah yeah08:30.65vigorbrandingYou know what I mean?08:31.05Stephen BaldiIt’s been up in the store. It’s like a newspaper. People don’t necessarily want just the newspaper, at least the retailer does it, but they come in to buy the newspaper and then they buy the water, the soda, the candy.08:33.13vigorbrandingThat’s right.08:39.73vigorbrandingThat’s right. yeah I lured them in with the Air Jordans. I think we had like five parrot the most. I mean, we couldn’t afford, you know, it’s a little mom pop store.08:46.41Stephen BaldiProbably two sizes.08:47.56vigorbrandingYeah, right. That’s exactly right. So that’s funny. So okay, you talked about sports and and and you know, Philly and all that you you pride yourself on um being a local company and playing in front of the home crowd.08:58.99vigorbrandingTalk a little bit about the the local connection in DC that you have.09:02.34Stephen BaldiYeah, so I’ll tell you, when you fly into most airports, what people don’t automatically see, but being a former developer, I understand that any airport authority, when you land in their airport, they want you to know what city you are in.09:18.24Stephen BaldiSo national brands are extremely important. So you’ll have your Dunkin’ Donuts. You’ll have your Pop-Belly’s, which are ah franchises that we operate.09:22.12vigorbrandingMm hmm.09:25.89Stephen BaldiBut every airport wants you to have a sense of place. So when you fly into Philadelphia Airport, you’ll have a Jim Stakes, because that’s you know historical to that region.09:34.38vigorbrandingYeah.09:34.93Stephen BaldiWhen you fly into National Airport here, or Dallas International, you’ll have your South Blocks, which is an ASE base. com concept here in the DC.09:45.49Stephen BaldiYou’ll have Ben’s Chili Bowl, which has been around since the 60s.09:45.90vigorbrandingMm hmm. Mm hmm.09:49.41Stephen BaldiAnd so we’ve prided ourselves from identifying and connecting with other founder-led brands, because I’m a founder. And nothing against a hired gun.09:56.93vigorbrandingMm hmm.09:58.81Stephen BaldiI know they are often effective at their job. But there’s something different about a founder-led company because you’ve built it.10:06.95vigorbrandingYeah.10:07.27Stephen Baldiit probably has more ah meaning to you behind just the bottom line um results that you drive. It’s personal.10:15.52vigorbrandingYeah.10:15.69Stephen BaldiAnd so we’ve developed very deep relationships with companies like founding farmers, with timber pizza, who are all local based companies here. And we expect to continue to grow it, not just in this region that we’re in, but as we grow into other markets to do the same.10:30.68vigorbrandingYeah, that’s that’s fantastic. And you nailed it. I mean, like, I’m a founder, I’m an entrepreneur. And you know, and ah again, wonderful folks that that work with me, I’m very, very, very lucky. But you know, for for most people, it’s their job, you know, their career, and and hopefully there’s a sense of of a family and a real relationship.10:49.53vigorbrandingBut for me, it’s my life. I mean, i am I am defined personally by this, which is probably pretty shallow.10:51.05Stephen Baldiright10:54.86vigorbrandingI mean, i mean look, um I love my daughters. I’m a dad. I’m ah a husband. I love my family with all my heart, but I feel like I’m defined by my company and the what I’ve built. and and all of that And I just, you know, so again, I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing or whatever, but it’s just, it’s ah it’s a lot deeper, right?11:11.93vigorbrandingWhen you found something and ah it’s it’s a lot deeper, everyone thinks it has to do with like money and stuff, and it really doesn’t.11:12.49Stephen BaldiRight. For sure.11:17.73vigorbrandingIt’s a it’s really about, you know, sort of like your life’s life’s work. and You know, you know, I get I get the most excitement out of seeing the growth of the folks in the company. ah It’s great to see the brands grow and the companies grow.11:30.42vigorbrandingBut I really get a kick out of of seeing the folks that have been here a long time and and all that. So anyway, that’s just that’s me.11:35.91Stephen Baldiright11:36.26vigorbrandingBut I just I totally I totally concur with what you’re saying as far as the founder led. I mean, that’s that’s fantastic.11:41.40Stephen BaldiYeah, at some point as a founder, you most likely had to put something at risk that meant something to you.11:47.14vigorbrandingYeah.11:47.50Stephen BaldiWhether it’s personal guaranteeing, first leverage to build the company or, you know, having to bail it out because you run into a pandemic, which we all face back in 2020.11:47.75vigorbrandingOh, yeah. Yeah.11:55.18vigorbrandingAll right.11:57.80Stephen Baldium Oftentimes you can’t just walk from that business and matriculate to another W2 position because this is yours. And so I love when I can connect with founders.12:04.69vigorbrandingYeah.12:07.41Stephen BaldiI’ll work with non-founders also, but there’s something unique about the journey we’ve all been on.12:09.54vigorbrandingSure.12:11.88vigorbrandingYeah, absolutely. So let’s let’s talk a little bit. I just so folks know, I mean, what’s really cool about this conversation is I, ah you know, with vigor, we work with restaurant brands, right?12:22.32vigorbrandingSo we’re very familiar with restaurant brands. And you you have brands like Potbelly, Smashburger. You said founding farmers soon to come. ah Timber Pizza, Dunkin, I mean, some some household names.12:33.94vigorbrandingI don’t know if I’m um yeah any ants.12:34.26Stephen BaldiOn the end, don’t forget on the end, this is what else we have.12:35.99vigorbrandingNo, I can’t actually. Yeah, we actually worked on any answers. We have an agency called quench that a branding agency, Food and Beverage, that that actually worked with Auntie Anne’s because they started here in Lancaster.12:40.96Stephen BaldiOkay.12:45.88vigorbrandinghu Yeah, and I got to meet Anne Byler in the beginning.12:45.98Stephen BaldiThey did.12:48.81vigorbrandingSo, Auntie Anne is actually a person and she’s a wonderful lady and It was a really really awesome to meet her and and and what a she was so she’s a very philanthropic lady very very ah ah Generous and very successful very so she’s got a phenomenal story as well. But so yeah, I certainly won’t leave the auntie hands out But you so you have all these great brands um Talk a little bit about I mean, you know, you said somewhere founded by they you know the founders and all that what’s it like to to manage all these different brands and13:18.00Stephen BaldiI’ll tell you, it’s a dynamic environment. Airports are a wonderful place to do business. Again, I share with you briefly how I matriculated into them, but once you end up in this kind of ecosystem, it’s hard to walk away.13:33.35Stephen BaldiWe get the privilege of serving the traveling public every day. And what’s special about that are the passengers are dynamic. There are people who are going on business trips. There are people who are going on vacations. There are people who are going to be celebrated and there are people who are going to, you know,13:51.28Stephen Baldiusher people off into a transition of life. And we get to meet and connect with them all. And so I tell our crew members that we have the privilege of participating in whatever journey people are on every day.14:03.68Stephen BaldiAnd then the following day, we get a whole new group of people coming through.14:06.48vigorbrandingyeah yeah14:07.36Stephen BaldiSo that’s dynamic in the industries are small. I will tell you it’s about a $8 billion industry nationally in the United States, food and beverage and airports.14:14.57vigorbrandingYeah. Yeah.14:19.40Stephen BaldiBut the industry is really controlled by about 20 key companies. And within those 20 companies, you probably have 50 total key players.14:23.32vigorbrandingyeah14:27.50Stephen BaldiAnd so we know each other. you know You typically don’t leave the industry. Your business card may change. So you may go from company to company, but it’s a small ecosystem. And so I’ve enjoyed being in the industry now.14:40.58Stephen Baldi18 years. I started when I was two. ah But it’s a buy it’s been an extraordinary 18 years, except for some of the challenges like COVID. But you know for the people who were able and blessed to push through it, I think we have a different perspective on what we can be and what we should be in the businesses that we lead. To your point,15:00.50Stephen Baldium being defined by your business is not necessarily shallow, but there’s levels, there’s there’s depth to what we do.15:08.62vigorbrandingYeah.15:08.91Stephen BaldiAnd I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to swim in those depths ah for many years.15:14.41vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. We’ll get to COVID in a second, but I want to go back to airports. ah I’ll say, fortunately or unfortunately, I’m a customer. I’m in an airport every single week. So when you’re describing the people you see there, it’s like, yeah.15:21.70Stephen BaldiAwesome.15:24.71vigorbrandingI mean, you know there’s it’s every single walk of life. Everyone seems to have a higher level of stress.15:30.65Stephen Baldiyeah15:30.77vigorbrandingEveryone’s in a hurry, even when they’re not, or even worse, if someone’s really not in a hurry and they’re walking slow in the airport, that can actually be more frustrating and stressful. but ah So how do you how do you deal with that chaos? I mean, you got all these people that are amped up and nervous and they have anxiety or whatever, and then all of a sudden you’ve got to serve them and take them, you know, and represent these great brands and and and actually make the stuff and and in a and a fast time because they’re always running late, even if they’re not, they just think they’re always stressed.15:56.04Stephen BaldiRight.15:59.20vigorbrandingTalk about airport concessions. Talk about that chaos.16:02.08Stephen BaldiYeah, so you meet people where they are. And I will tell you, operating a street-side restaurant versus an airport, it’s a completely different sport.16:09.79vigorbrandingI cannot imagine.16:10.73Stephen BaldiI tell ah these founder-led companies when they’re thinking about matriculating in the airports, I tell them you know it’s like playing high school varsity basketball.16:10.80vigorbrandingyeah16:19.70Stephen BaldiAnd then you get drafted to the and NBA, like the speed, the requirements, you know, we have to go through the logistical um challenges of having every box that comes into your restaurant scan.16:20.40vigorbrandingYeah. Yeah. Yeah.16:31.21Stephen BaldiLike Cisco’s not pulling up to our back door and delivering our ground beef for Smashburger.16:31.53vigorbrandingYeah.16:34.05vigorbrandingRight.16:35.85Stephen BaldiLike it’s going through an X-ray, just like your luggage is.16:38.86vigorbrandingYeah.16:39.39Stephen Baldium All of our crew members have to go through a 10 year federal background check.16:44.03vigorbrandingSure.16:44.19Stephen Baldium There’s complexities to the business, which are to our challenge. But to me, it’s also kind of to our benefit, Michael, because it reduces my competition. Because unless you’re a serious player, you’re not trying to participate in airports.16:54.14vigorbrandingMhm.16:56.81Stephen BaldiAnd so for me, understanding those barriers and be able to navigate them are great. But from a day to day operation standpoint, We encourage our crew members just to meet people where they are.17:07.93Stephen Baldium It may be the 50th time you’ve welcomed someone to our restaurant, but it’s the first time you’ve spoken to the person that’s in front of you. And again, you don’t know if they’re going on vacation or they’re going to a celebration of life to send a family member home.17:16.31vigorbrandingright17:22.96Stephen BaldiRegardless, you should be additive to their experience and not adding additional stress or complications. Just try to deliver them fast, friendly, exceptional,17:34.09Stephen Baldiservice because that’s our standard. That is our vision for the company, which is being exceptional is our standard. It’s not something that happens intermittently.17:42.84vigorbrandingAll right.17:44.59Stephen BaldiIt happens all the time. And so we welcome the chaos.17:45.78vigorbrandingYeah.17:48.05Stephen BaldiYou know, when it’s raining and snowing outside, even though your flights are delayed, we kind of welcome that because that means you get to hang out with you a little bit longer.17:54.78vigorbrandingYeah. Yeah.17:55.63Stephen BaldiSo as long as we’re not canceling flights, if they’re just delayed, that’s kind of our sweet spot.18:00.01vigorbrandingThere you go.18:00.65Stephen BaldiSo we welcome it all.18:02.58vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. You know, you you said something really interesting. So as I mentioned, Vigor is our agency that that does branding and marketing for restaurants. I know, and it’s not, you know, it’s common knowledge that turnover and and employees in the restaurant industry is like the biggest hassle, right? and Everyone’s dealing with that that turnover. But you just said something. they They have to go through this long, arduous process to get through. So do you find that you have, I’ll say, maybe better better qualified, better quality,18:32.38vigorbrandingah team members in your restaurants?18:34.64Stephen BaldiI would tell you that our hourly and even our salary leadership ah on some levels, they’re more committed because it is a personal investment to get through the process.18:39.98vigorbrandingMm-hmm.18:45.54Stephen BaldiAnd so, you know, typical food and beverage turnover is anywhere from 100 to 150%. And only ours is closer to like 30.18:51.64vigorbrandingRight.18:54.91vigorbrandingthat’s hey That’s fantastic. I never thought that that would have never dawned on me that that would be ah an unfair advantage. you know It’s funny, like yeah I was telling someone the other day, you know the higher the barrier to entry in business, actually the better the business is because you don’t have just everybody and anybody competing.19:12.66vigorbrandingSo you you have a higher barrier of entry.19:13.25Stephen BaldiCorrect.19:15.58vigorbrandingum And with that, you have you sort of have ah have a capture to a degree ah group of people, right? ah But the one thing that is interesting, I think if I remember correctly, I think there’s like 30%, I’ll say of ah if it’s a Dunkin Donuts on the street corner, 30% of their their ah customers will probably repeat, right?19:35.43vigorbrandingah you You are not, I mean, you know you might have the same business guy that flies every Thursday out to you know wherever,19:37.58Stephen BaldiNo?19:40.80Stephen Baldiwe have We’ll have our Michaels.19:41.81vigorbrandingYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.19:42.16Stephen BaldiWe have our Michaels.19:43.59vigorbrandingI’ll hit your place and at the airport get a coffee on the way out, but that’s it. Yeah, that’s it. So that’s.19:48.43Stephen BaldiI will tell you, though, we do have outside of the the traveling public, we do have recurring customers who are the people who work at the airport. I mean, at National and Dulles Airport, you get anywhere from five thousand to ten thousand employees that are there every day.19:56.97vigorbrandingNo, that makes sense. Sure.20:03.65Stephen BaldiAnd so ah they are also extremely important to us.20:03.75vigorbrandingMm hmm. Hey, they got to eat and drink, right?20:07.86Stephen BaldiThey got to eat and drink and they have to do it fast.20:09.70vigorbrandingRight. That’s right.20:10.84Stephen BaldiWell, we have different incentives to get them in and out, but they are our recurring customers and they’re about 15 to 20 percent of our business.20:15.10vigorbrandingYeah, that makes sense. Hey, going back to the old mall days that I was talking about the sneakers, I sold a lot of sneakers to people that worked in the mall, not many Air Jordans, but a lot of the, you know, a lot of the lower end sneakers.20:22.26Stephen BaldiYeah, for sure.20:27.36vigorbrandingSo, we talked to you hit on earlier and I know we, we inevitably, hopefully one day we, we don’t, and we don’t have to talk about, we always go back and talking about COVID and, uh, you know,20:35.54Stephen BaldiOh, yeah.20:37.21vigorbrandingOne of our companies and our holding company is a company called Varsity. And Varsity does retirement communities around the country, we market retirement companies. Well, that that industry shut down. I mean, no one was going, no one was visiting, and people were sick. It was bad. Restaurants, another one of our our agencies, right? We marketed restaurants. No one was going. It was basically shut down. you know Your hospitality Uh, and your restaurants, I mean, and your travel, I mean, you’re, you’re combining it all and how, talk about that a little bit.21:06.75vigorbrandingI mean, you were hit from both ends.21:07.11Stephen BaldiOh, I had the privilege of double dipping.21:11.81vigorbrandingYeah.21:11.93Stephen BaldiSo we were in hospitality beverage, but we were also in travel.21:12.41vigorbrandingIn turmoil.21:15.47vigorbrandingYeah.21:16.03Stephen BaldiAnd so I remember very specifically on March 11th, 2020, President Trump came on television and he announced a 30-day travel ban to Europe.21:27.16vigorbrandingMm-hmm.21:28.65Stephen BaldiAnd at the time, ah most people only thought about the impact of air traffic travel to Europe, places like London, Paris.21:37.58vigorbrandingright21:38.31Stephen BaldiBut I anticipated that this was really the big moment for our industry.21:43.00vigorbrandingRight.21:43.21Stephen BaldiI know a lot of people associate kind of their aha moment with COVID becoming a significant thing when the NBA shut down and more importantly, when the NCAA tournament shut down.21:53.85Stephen BaldiBut that announcement on March 11th signified for me that things were about to change for my business.21:58.60vigorbrandingYeah.21:58.72Stephen BaldiNow, I didn’t know it was going to be 18 months.22:02.21vigorbrandingRight.22:02.55Stephen Baldium But within about two weeks, we lost 85% of our top line revenue. And so on March 18, we shut the company down for 18 months. um And it was a challenge to what we talked about earlier, where a lot of my identity was tied up in this company that I built.22:20.39Stephen BaldiWell, there was no company to have an identity he tied to. And so for me as a leader, It really pushed me during that time to redefine who I was in that moment and who I was going to aspire to be if we were privileged enough to come out of it. And we did. We’ve come out very strong, stronger than actually we went in. um We actually sold 35% of the business last year to some strategic, but then also some individual investors. And so I’ve had the privilege of surrounding myself where before I was the only voice in the room and now there are many.22:55.69vigorbrandingRight.22:55.77Stephen BaldiAnd it presents some unique challenges, but also some extraordinary opportunities for me to low to learn and grow from other individuals and institutions that have built companies to scale, not all in food and beverage, many not.23:10.17Stephen Baldium But it’s really given me the opportunity to become a better leader um and to take our company into the next five to 10 years of what we will be.23:20.35vigorbrandingThat’s fantastic. you know i the the The COVID obviously affected everybody. It affected everybody in different ways. and like For us for a business, it was and it was really interesting in that you know because we have several different agencies in our holding company, it was sort of a little bit of a like a mutual fund where one or two stocks could be really down, but then others can be up. Our CPG agency, Quench,23:40.72vigorbrandingyou know we’ We’re doing we’re doing brands national brands like you know Sunmade Raise and Stark Institute. To me, COVID, to to that to that company and those brands, COVID was like the greatest sampling program in the history of Earth. i mean If you put it in a package back then, it was on a shelf. People bought it. They stuck it in their pantries. They ate it. They bought more of it. i mean They couldn’t get enough of it. i mean It was just ah an insane time.24:01.94vigorbrandingfor those companies. and then the other the The negative side obviously was the restaurants and everything else. i mean It’s a really interesting time. and and you know You said about how you it can define things. the other thing One of the other things we did was we took adversity. We had all these CEOs that were like, what is everyone doing? i mean like you you know This just happened. It was unprecedented. What is everybody else doing? so We thought, well,24:23.89vigorbrandingAll right, we’re not making i mean and and again it’s not we’re not making revenue businesses down, but we still have these relationships. They’re our clients. So what can we do? So it wasn’t my idea, but one of our guys said, hey, let’s create sort of a round table. of that And our agency is called Varsity. So we called it the Varsity Round Table. So we got all these CEOs that were just like,24:41.34vigorbrandingWhat’s everyone doing? And they were able to talk and it was so successful that we did it the next week. And then they talked more and then more and more CEOs jumped in. They weren’t even our clients and became this open source sharing that has now been, we are on about, I think it’s like 250th.24:58.49vigorbrandingroundt We’ve been doing them every week since the first month of COVID.25:04.38Stephen BaldiWow, impressive.25:05.19vigorbrandingAnd what’s done for a company, for us, i mean again we don’t make any money from it. And it wasn’t about that. It was just a place for people to really vent and help. And now we have speakers come in and talk, and everyone’s obviously well beyond COVID.25:16.71vigorbrandingBut it’s really allowed us to be a thought leader and assist these folks. And you know at the end of the day, it’s what it’s all about. And I know a big thing for you is is mentorship, right? I mean, you know talk about giving back. you want you Do you want to talk a little bit about that?25:27.81Stephen BaldiYeah, I’ll talk about that but I’ll also talk similarly to your roundtable so in February of 2020 I had the privilege of joining the organization YPO, which is Young President Organization, which is very similar to what you define there’s 35.25:42.82Stephen Baldi1,000 YPO members globally. And it’s really for business leaders who have decided that they want to walk towards betterment as a person, as a leader, as a family member, as someone contributing to their community in partnership with other leaders.25:58.55Stephen BaldiAnd so I am in the Washington DC Baltimore chapter here ah in the region.25:58.93vigorbrandingMm hmm.26:04.18Stephen BaldiAnd I’m in leadership. And I can tell you that organization was really critical in me navigating everything that I had to go through ah during COVID.26:14.98Stephen BaldiNow, we didn’t we didn’t meet weekly, um but we do meet monthly in a small group of seven to 10 people, and we have forum.26:15.26vigorbrandingSure.26:19.82vigorbrandingMonthly forum.26:22.81Stephen BaldiAnd, oh, there you go.26:22.85vigorbrandingI didn’t know I’m i’m YPO, too. I didn’t know your IPO. Yeah, I’ve been.26:25.92Stephen BaldiYeah!26:26.21vigorbrandingYeah.26:27.01Stephen BaldiSo YDO is really what sustained me during COVID.26:27.03vigorbrandingSo Oh.26:29.86Stephen Baldium And I’m privileged to be on the ladder now in leadership.26:32.72vigorbrandingDo for you.26:35.01Stephen BaldiAnd so, yeah, as far as mentorship, when I started the company, you know it was a priority for me to give opportunity to underrepresented populations. um Now, as I started to grow the company, my focus started to turn inward, Michael, if I’m being honest. And you know the beginning of 2020, it was difficult for anybody to tell me that I wasn’t the shit. I built this company from zero to something much larger than I had ever aspired to as a young person.27:04.34vigorbrandingRight.27:06.68Stephen Baldium But COVID took all of that away.27:08.81vigorbrandingYeah.27:09.14Stephen BaldiAnd so what it reminded me of is that there was a mission that I started this company with. And it was something that I needed to recommit to when we reopened.27:19.90Stephen BaldiAnd so now um we’re really pouring into our crew members um When I hire someone, specifically, let’s take Dunkin Donuts.27:30.76Stephen BaldiIf I bring in someone as a frontline worker that’s pouring coffee, if they’re still pouring coffee for us in three years, both them and the organization has done something wrong.27:34.59vigorbrandingMmhmm.27:41.17Stephen Baldium We want to scale people up. It is not cost effective for us to have people in the same position for multiple years. So if we’re not scaling someone up to take on additional responsibility inside our company and sometimes even outside of our company, then we’ve done something wrong. you know My mentor told me a good leader ah expects or wants people to leave. A great leader expects them to.28:08.64vigorbrandingYeah.28:09.01Stephen BaldiAnd so either they’re leaving the position that we’re hiring them for or they’re leaving to go to another organization. But either way, we have to invest in our hourly crew members because we can’t afford not to.28:20.86vigorbrandingYeah.28:21.76Stephen BaldiAnd so that’s something that we really communicate out and share out. to our community and our organization and people know that we’re gonna invest in them in ways that other companies might not to and we feel like that gives us a competitive advantage and as a leader it makes me feel a good about not only our bottom line results but also the success that we can feel. I have a manager who’s been with us for eight years.28:46.57Stephen BaldiHer name is Marta. And she started as a single unit manager. And now she’s a multi-airport director.28:53.24vigorbrandingawesome.28:53.39Stephen BaldiAnd to see her growth and to understand the impact that that has has had on her family is tremendous. And I want to do that a hundred times over.29:00.50vigorbrandingSure.29:00.79Stephen BaldiAnd I have the privilege of being able to do that as a leader of our company.29:01.01vigorbrandingYeah.29:04.70vigorbrandingand And think of it this way, I mean, and that’s what’s so great about this country, I’ll say is like, you were making whatever $22,000 a year, I think you had free room or board or whatever you were managing, right?29:12.60Stephen BaldiI did.29:13.65vigorbrandingSo you you’re probably like, I’m getting by, this is okay. And look, you and you know, obviously, you’re you’re very well educated, you have a great drive and personality, but you you created a a huge company. And that’s, that’s, that’s really super cool, really super cool.29:25.90Stephen BaldiWell, Michael, I can tell you specifically in that first year, 2002, I made $19,117 and 43 cents. I can tell you that specifically because that W2 still sits on my desk.29:36.80Stephen BaldiI have it framed.29:36.84vigorbrandingYeah, yeah.29:37.68Stephen BaldiI look at it every day just to remind me of where all of this started and where now we’ve grown the company to I’m, I’m extremely proud.29:45.15vigorbrandingYeah. And you know, you mentioned YPO and I’ve been very privileged to be in that organization for, gosh, I think at least 20 some years.29:53.06Stephen BaldiSo you joined when you were 17.29:54.45vigorbrandingYeah, no, but yeah, it’s one of those things, is we you know, it used to kick you out when you’re 50. In fact, I did, I got the rocking chair and showed up at the front door.30:02.59Stephen BaldiOh, there you go.30:03.68vigorbrandingYeah, that was the thing. And then they decided to have YPO Gold, WPO and all that. stuff So I stayed in and now we’re like a forum for life. So my guys, we meet once a month and we are together. ah we A lot of it’s virtual because these guys, a lot of it, we’re retired and stuff.30:15.91vigorbrandingSo um I’m old. I mean, the it’s YPO o Gold, but I always say it’s Silent G, you know, YPO old. So, but it’s a, it was the greatest thing I’ve ever done for me.30:26.29vigorbrandingMaybe a better husband, better father, better businessman, a better employer, better ah a friend. I mean, and I i mean that.30:32.27Stephen Baldiand human30:33.29vigorbrandingYeah. It’s just a better human. And I think a lot of people see it from the outside and think it’s all, it’s a bunch of guys didn’t talk about how many cars they have and where they want vacation. It’s not that at all.30:40.24Stephen BaldiIt’s not that it’s a transformational community, you know, having a high trust network is invaluable.30:40.92vigorbrandingYou know, it’s, you know, it’s a, it is, it is.30:47.41vigorbrandingYep. Yeah. Someone’s got your back, right? You can always pick up that phone and call your, one of your folks and just, they got your back. No, that’s yeah.30:54.39Stephen BaldiAnd it’s nobody, and it’s nobody, nothing, never. And to have that level of confidentiality is special.30:57.03vigorbrandingThat’s right. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that’s that’s awesome. That’s all good for you. I had no idea. That’s fantastic. um So, but now I’m going to do a little ploy here. You got to go and you should go to Austin this year to the food and beverage round table.31:10.60vigorbrandingI mean, if you can check it out, it’ll be, I think it’s in in January, you know, I’ll probably be speaking there, but you should go.31:14.55Stephen BaldiOK.31:16.84vigorbrandingI mean, you know, I’d love to meet you in person. It’d be fantastic.31:18.67Stephen BaldiYeah, I’d love that.31:18.88vigorbrandingAnyway, so could we do,31:20.42Stephen BaldiMaybe we’ll be celebrating a Phillies World Series by then.31:22.74vigorbrandingOh man, you’re making me nervous. um I hope so. I hope you’re right. I hope you’re right. But our company, we do it we do an annual food and beverage trends report every year. We’ve been doing them for like, jeez, 15, 16 years. And so a lot of times we launched it at the food and beverage round table. So it’s always really cool stuff.31:40.96Stephen BaldiAwesome, send me an invite and I’ll be there.31:41.00vigorbrandingum Yeah. All right. Well, definitely. I’ll make sure you get it after this, after our conversation here. So, okay. When you go to a restaurant, you you have a choice between human interaction or self ordering kiosks. I know that, you know, you guys need to be really ah high speed, efficient and all that. What what do you, what do you prefer?31:58.57Stephen BaldiWell, it depends, right? Deploying technology is a strategy that ah should be done with intention and asking the question, and then what, right?32:12.55Stephen Baldium I will tell you a story. So the first time we experimented with self ordering technology was in 2008 at JFK airport terminal five.32:24.65Stephen BaldiAnd we deployed at the time iPads um at our Dunkin Donuts because we thought, you know, technology is moving in this way and it’s fun and it’s cool, but nobody wants to walk up to a counter and order a coffee by pressing buttons.32:29.75vigorbrandingMm-hmm. Yep.32:39.85vigorbrandingMm-hmm.32:44.46Stephen BaldiYou know, communicating to a cashier, ah medium cream and sugar takes about 15 seconds. When you are forcing someone to press hot coffee, then medium, then sugar, then extra sugar, like that’s just, we found that that was a ah strategy that wasn’t ah successfully deployed at that time.32:58.57vigorbrandingwho33:05.34Stephen Baldinow That was back in 2008. I will say trends have matured since then and so there is an opportunity to have self ordering technology at a place like Dunkin Donuts and people have learned to navigate it quickly. um You have hot buttons for certain high usage items and so I say to people all the time because my friends question me, whenever they see an iPad, they assume that that means that that technology has taken someone’s job. And what I try to educate people on is that you know if you deploy technology in a intentional way, in a smart way, it allows you to redirect33:45.29Stephen Baldiwhat you would have otherwise spent on front of house and the back of house.33:46.57vigorbrandingMm33:49.72Stephen BaldiOr maybe you’re deploying it at a ah leadership level that’s multi-unit capable.33:49.78vigorbrandinghmm.33:55.24Stephen BaldiAnd so it’s not necessarily ah replacing jobs, but allowing savvy business leaders to take that investment and redeploy it in other ways. I will tell you that the benefit is you know technology doesn’t call out. Sometimes you have to reboot the system, but it always upsells. It always asks you if you want a dessert and always ask you if you want to package your burger with fries. And so to be able to grow your top line ticket, ah that’s only going to drive bottom line outcomes, which allows a business owner like me to look at expansion, to go into other cities, to be able to bring other people along with us because the business is growing. And so there’s opportunity beyond just taking someone’s order. And so34:40.31Stephen BaldiTechnology is something you have to look at in parallel kind of decision making. But I enjoy it. There’s some concepts that it resonates more significantly than others. But I think there’s a balance and there needs to be a balance of both going forward. I don’t think we’re ever going to have an industry that is exclusively technology or self ordering driven. um And I think you go in with a bunch of assumptions, you understand how your customers respond to it, and then you be agile enough to adjust appropriately.35:08.96vigorbrandingYeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. And i I concur. I mean, you know, I don’t want to wait in a massive line, especially from an airport. But, you know, just ordering, pre-ordering and all that kind of stuff isn’t all that funny either.35:19.32vigorbrandingSo it’s just you with that happy balance. You know, I do like talking to somebody and, you know, because I talk a lot, I guess. But plus, I always ask for some ice in my coffee just a little bit. I don’t want nice coffee.35:27.30Stephen BaldiThere you go.35:27.67vigorbrandingSo it’s a little tough to explain to an iPad, you know, so very soft.35:31.57Stephen BaldiTo drop it into a couple of cubes, yeah.35:32.20vigorbrandingWhoops. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t want to burn my, burn my mouth. So now I know you have at least one daughter, correct?35:38.70Stephen BaldiI’d have two daughters and a son.35:39.87vigorbrandingTwo daughters. right All right. Sorry. There we go.35:41.61Stephen Baldi26, 25, and eight.35:41.75vigorbrandingThis will be great then. Wow. Wow.35:45.67Stephen BaldiI started over, Michael.35:45.74vigorbrandingA little gap here.35:46.59Stephen BaldiI started over.35:47.16vigorbrandingYou had a little gap here.35:48.55Stephen Baldihad I had a couple of gap years.35:48.93vigorbrandingA couple of gap years. i well so I have two daughters, 26 as of last week and coming coming up on 29. The reason I bring up these families is you know we all know we love all our kids the same.36:01.78Stephen BaldiNo, we don’t.36:01.79vigorbrandingBut on any but okay but on any given day on any given day, depending on the phone call, depending on the visit, there’s certainly ones that we like other better than others.36:02.97Stephen BaldiNo, we don’t.36:09.94vigorbrandingMichael Alex, it happens it back and forth all the time, just in case you’re listening. Those are my daughters. um36:14.34Stephen BaldiLove it.36:15.04vigorbrandingso you know, we talked about pot belly, we talked about smash burger, we talked about dunking, we talked about timber, we talked about founding farmers, am I missing any any ends?36:25.21Stephen BaldiThere you go.36:27.03vigorbrandingWhich one?36:27.28Stephen BaldiIt’s the end. Yeah.36:27.84vigorbrandingWhich one’s your favorite? What’s your favorite kid there?36:29.64Stephen BaldiMy favorite. Wow. You’re going to force me to say that.36:33.77vigorbrandingYeah, yeah.36:34.15Stephen BaldiWell, I will tell you, because I don’t know if any of our franchisors are going to listen to this part. I love them all equally, and I am privileged to be able to operate them. I will tell you the one that probably um sits deeply in my soul as a person ah is probably Dunkin’ Donuts.36:55.45vigorbrandingNice.36:55.85Stephen Baldiand And I’ll tell you Dunkin’ Donuts because when I was growing up ah in Southwest Philadelphia off of Cobbs Creek Parkway, I had family that lived out by the airport. And in order to get into that area of the city, you have to travel on Cobbs Creek Parkway.37:11.63Stephen BaldiAnd there’s a Dunkin Donuts on the corner of Cobbs Creek Parkway and I can’t remember the cross street, but it’s been there for close to probably 30 or 40 years. I’m 48 and I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t there. And I remember seeing that Dunkin Donuts and thinking how rich that franchisee must be to have that score.37:30.65Stephen BaldiNow I know that owning a single franchise is not necessarily a path to generational wealth, but it did, that Dunkin Donuts did put in my mind like what was possible.37:40.22vigorbrandingYeah, that’s cool.37:40.70Stephen Baldium And so to be able to be now a 14 year franchisee of that brand, um which is our longest franchise relationship, it’s pretty special.37:46.48vigorbrandingSuper.37:50.20vigorbrandingThat’s cool. And you know, I’ll say this from the, from the branding side of the world. Uh, what a phenomenal job. I mean, Duncan’s been around forever. I mean, at one point time it was getting a little tired. It was sort of just fading in the woodwork.38:01.35vigorbrandingAnd we know, I mean, all these brands, I mean, they come on strong. They’re, they’re always started somewhere. There’s this regional thing. And then they become these big brands and is they, they struggle to stay relevant.38:10.04Stephen BaldiRight?38:12.62vigorbrandingRight. And I think Duncan has just done a remarkable job.38:16.08Stephen BaldiWe have, yeah.38:16.24vigorbrandingof staying relevant i mean from their graphic design from their marketing their branding to their advertising and all the cool stuff they’ve done that you did you did they blew it away they they absolutely did and yep38:22.42Stephen BaldiI mean, we had the best Super Bowl commercial in my opinion. I mean, Ben Affleck and J.Lo, they did their thing. And Mark Wahlberg, it like it was it was a beautiful commercial.38:33.65vigorbrandingYeah, and you know, it just shows like when you have passion for something, and those guys certainly have passion for for for that part of the world and ah from the Boston area. I just think it’s it was exceptional. In fact, ironically, we have at at our holding company level, Pavone Group, we have the longest running, okay, this is no kidding, the longest running Super Bowl commercial voting mechanism called spotbowl.com.38:56.66vigorbrandingSo every year we get38:57.28Stephen BaldiOK.38:59.26vigorbrandingyou know, thousands and thousands and thousands of votes from around the world, and people vote for their favorite Super Bowl commercial as it’s being played, as the game is being played. And then the the national media outlets reach out to us, and then we tell them the results.39:13.08vigorbrandingAnd Dunkin Donuts was was certainly a stellar winner.39:13.26Stephen BaldiOK.39:16.02Stephen BaldiIt was and had to be at the top.39:17.26vigorbrandingYeah, it was awesome.39:17.88Stephen BaldiCome on out. Tell me Michael it was at the top.39:19.04vigorbrandingYeah, yeah. It was, well, I’m looking over here at my guy that runs it. it was It was the top one. Yeah, it was, it definitely was.39:24.42Stephen BaldiIt was, it I thought it was.39:25.10vigorbrandingOh, yeah, yeah, yeah.39:25.89Stephen BaldiThere you go. Thank you for, thank you for phoning your friend and getting confirmation.39:26.59vigorbrandingIt was it was awesome.39:29.55Stephen BaldiIt was a pretty special advertising.39:31.41vigorbrandingYeah.39:31.85Stephen BaldiAnd yeah, I didn’t get a chance to order my Duncan jumpsuit, but I’m sure it’s in the mail somewhere.39:36.72vigorbrandingYeah, there you go. there That’s that that everything.39:38.41Stephen BaldiMaybe Duncan corporate will see this and they’ll send me one.39:38.96vigorbrandingAlthough. yeah Yeah, all the merch, everything they did around that was super cool. and the take the outtakes from the39:43.99Stephen BaldiSuper cool.39:46.35vigorbrandingyou know It’s funny too because when it comes to this marketing stuff, like it used to be just a TV spot. and The reason I looked over to ask Dave, Dave’s the guy you spoke to. He’s the one that that kind of heads up this podcast. He’s also the one that really runs Spopple. We’ve been doing this so long that In the beginning, we didn’t know anything.40:03.48vigorbrandingIn other words, they would the game it was all about the game. The game was played. And then people realized, well, people love the commercials. So we never knew, like like you and everybody else, we just sit there and watch the game, cut the commercial. Oh, it’s a commercial for fill in the blank.40:15.61vigorbrandingNow, they release the commercials to us ahead of time.40:15.73Stephen BaldiYeah.40:18.45vigorbrandingThey tell us what it’s about. They send us outtakes. They give us information. Because they realize it, because it’s a couple million dollars for 30 seconds, that they need to get as much juice out of the you know squeeze as much juice out of this as possible so they want to know they put stuff online they do teasers and it’s it’s turned into a an event unto itself and uh we’re really proud to have been a part of it so it’s kind of funny that you brought that up that’s cool stuff all40:39.58Stephen BaldiYeah. Now I will tell you my all time favorite Super Bowl commercial.40:44.35vigorbrandingright uh40:45.67Stephen BaldiNow I remember the star, but I don’t even remember the brand.40:49.95vigorbranding-oh40:50.06Stephen BaldiRemember the the commercial with the kid and the Star Wars mask and he was going around zapping things and he went and he zapped the car and the car started.40:55.24vigorbrandingVolkswagen. Yeah. Yeah.40:58.28Stephen BaldiThat was my all-time favorite more commercial.40:58.46vigorbrandingYeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. That was ah that was a Volkswagen spot. That was a fantastic spot.41:03.91Stephen BaldiFantastic commercial.41:03.93vigorbrandingIt was a fantastic. You know, I’ll i’ll tell you mine next. i’m I’m a simp and I, you know, ah the Budweiser commercials and41:11.83Stephen BaldiOh yeah.41:13.17vigorbrandingThere was one though in particular where the guy, you know, he raises these horses and it goes on to be a Clydesdale and it it takes off and the horse leaves and there’s a parade. And I almost get choked up thinking about it.41:24.28vigorbrandingIt was so well done. There’s a parade, the guy standing there to parade and the horse sees him, breaks away, chases him down on the road. Oh my gosh. It was, it was, I had to do a live TV commercial. I had to do a live segment on the news about the the best TV spot and and they they, you know, they played it and I wasn’t expecting them to play it.41:40.60vigorbrandingI’m like, I had tears going down my face.41:42.56Stephen BaldiOh, you got emotional.41:42.51vigorbrandingI’m like, That’s my favorite.41:43.64Stephen BaldiOh, look at you.41:45.41vigorbrandingI still get emotional. i think but i think it I think it was the best all-time i mean story. It was just cute. so anyway That’s right, man.41:50.70Stephen BaldiAnd the best story always wins, Michael. Best story always wins.41:53.25vigorbrandingThat’s right. right yeah Yeah, you know, we always tell people a brand is a promise, ah but you have to tell a story. You have to draw a motion, make them laugh, make them cry, make them feel something about your brand. And that’s how you break through. And it’s always important, you know, a lot of times clients will say stuff, um you know, hey we just want to sell more, we got to do this, we got to do that. And and really it comes down to ah the fact that you’ve you got to do great creative to break through to get people’s attention.42:19.09vigorbrandingSo, well, I have a couple more questions for you and I want to hit them for sure.42:21.03Stephen BaldiOkay.42:22.25vigorbrandingSo now look, ah we talked about the airports you’re in, in the in the in the greater DC area, some of the most, I mean, they’re they’re busy, they’re they’re important, they’re huge. Other airports, I mean, you have great concessions in those airports.42:34.37vigorbrandingOther airports that you think have great concessions in the country?42:37.16Stephen BaldiYeah, I will tell you, Atlanta, one of the busiest airports in the world, definitely in this country.42:42.95vigorbrandingOh yeah, oh yeah. yeah42:45.86Stephen Baldium And then Houston, Orlando, Chicago, Charlotte, these are all markets that we kind of look at.42:49.80vigorbrandingMm hmm. Oh yeah.42:54.54vigorbrandingMassive hubs.42:56.51Stephen Baldium It’s important for us to be in high demand airport systems, because you never know how the world’s going to,43:02.80vigorbrandingYeah.43:05.21Stephen Baldirespond. And Morgan Hausl is one of the people who I look to for kind of strategic direction.43:12.04vigorbrandingMm hmm.43:13.49Stephen BaldiI’m thinking about my business. And one thing he always says is that as a business leader, if you’re only planning for the risk and threats that you can predict, you’re probably missing the biggest one.43:24.90vigorbrandingOh, yeah.43:25.41Stephen Baldium And so how we kind of shelter ourselves from that is we go into high demand markets. So even if an airline, a legacy airline like an American or United or a Delta or a Southwest ah decides that they no longer want to operate in that market, there’ll be another legacy carrier chomping at the bit together.43:44.09vigorbrandingSure.43:44.40Stephen BaldiAnd so that’s one of our strategy when we’re looking to grow nationally is to look at high demand airport markets.43:44.77vigorbrandingSure. Mm hmm.43:51.29Stephen BaldiAnd those are just a few that I named.43:53.58vigorbrandingI’m a big fan of Morgan has effect. We have him speaking at our, at our YPO. He’s, he’s one of, I think he might even be next month’s speaker. So I’m really, really, are you really, that’s all his book.44:00.64Stephen Baldiah We’re bringing them in on the 13th of November. Yeah.44:04.00vigorbrandingHis book’s incredible. Incredible. I made my daughter’s read it. So, um, what’s next for balding management group. And mean we talked about in other airports. What’s, what’s next for you? What’s what’s your vision? Where are you were are you hoping to go?44:13.26Stephen Baldimy My vision is to grow the tent and plant trees that I may never even know their shade, um because that’s when I think a community and when a business is thriving is when you’re willing to do things that you might not be able to see to fruition. And so we’re trying to build a company, not trying, we are building a company that will rise the tide for all the boats. I want to create another 20, 25 stories just like mine.44:41.46vigorbrandingYeah.44:41.62Stephen Baldium I can invest and grow my company so that it’s beneficial and creates generational wealth for me, but I also have the opportunity to listen to the individuals whose stories might not necessarily be taken to the top because they’re not fully formed or well articulated.44:59.34Stephen BaldiI try to look for those people, because I was once that person.45:00.66vigorbrandingyeah45:02.15Stephen BaldiI was the property manager in the office, and Cynthia Garber came and tapped me on the shoulder, which she did not have to do.45:02.50vigorbrandingyep45:08.96Stephen BaldiAnd so I’m trying to identify those voices in our companies, the people in leadership, but also the people who we don’t necessarily identify with immediately, because a lot of our workforce our ESL where English is a second language.45:24.24Stephen BaldiAnd so verbal communication is a challenge, but I don’t want that to get in the way of us knowing or ide

By: Jon Vinterfalse

The Golden Steer Steakhouse, established in 1958, is Las Vegas’s oldest continuously operating steakhouse. It has been a favored dining spot for numerous celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn Monroe. The restaurant is renowned for its classic ambiance, featuring red leather booths named after its famous patrons, tuxedoed servers, and tableside preparations of Caesar salads and flambéed desserts.One diner once said, “The Golden Steer feels like the soul of Las Vegas.” Nick McMillan and Amanda Signorelli are the managing partners of the Golden Steer. Nick & Amanda took over as managing partners in 2018. Amanda's father, Dr. Michael Signorelli, purchased the Golden Steer in 2001. Nick has spent his career building companies in both the technology and food industries. Amanda's background is in the tech industry.Nick and Amanda created a mail order offering called Goldbelly in 2020 as a way to offset the impact of lost sales during COVID. The online sales continue today with a variety of high end seasonings and compound butters.Customer service and hospitality is a key part of the Golden Steer brand and they live that philosophy every day. It includes simple things like answering phones with a human voice, which Golden Steer has hired staff members to do.  The Golden Steer has worked hard to build its social media presence, becoming one of the most viewed steakhouses on TikTok and using the channel to create offers that drive traffic to the restaurant.  QUOTES “I'm born and raised in Las Vegas and my father purchased the restaurant back in 2001. He did it because he loved the legacy and the story and it was something that was near and true to his heart as it is to many Vegas natives.” (Amanda) “Our longest tenured server is a gentleman named Venko who's been with us almost 40 years. We've calculated that he's made somewhere in the ballpark of 375,000 Caesar salads in his career.” (Nick)  “It's a ton of fun when Venko's making your Caesar salad. You'll definitely hear some stories about old Vegas for sure.” (Nick)  “We're one of the most – if not THE most – viral restaurants in America on TikTok.” (Amanda)  “We're in a strip mall. A lot of times folks say ‘When I first drove up I didn't think I was in the right spot.' But then you walk inside and it's like a little time capsule back to old Vegas.” (Nick)  “We look at ourselves as stewards of this brand that has survived six decades plus and we hope to celebrate another six decades.” (Nick)  “To quote Steve Wynn, ‘People make people happy.” We really try to embrace that.” (Nick)   TRANSCRIPT 00:01.94vigorbrandingHello, welcome to Fork Tales. I’m Michael Pavone, and we’re really excited about this episode. This is gonna be a fun story. There’s a list, obviously, of truly legendary restaurants right in in the United States, but the Golden Steer in Las Vegas is one of those restaurants. it’s It’s the oldest continually operating steakhouse in Las Vegas, and our guests today are Nick McMillan and Amanda Signorelli. I’m Italian, so I got that right, right? 00:29.18Nick _ AmandaNailed it. 00:29.73vigorbrandingyeah Okay. So the managing partners, the Golden Steer, the Golden Steer is a steak house that became a regular stop of Frank Sinatra Elvis and many others. There are rumors of secret doors. We’ll talk about that. And, you know, as one diner once said, the Golden Steer feels like the soul of Las Vegas. So ah Nick, Amanda, welcome to the show. 00:49.07Nick _ AmandaWell, thank you, Michael, for for having us. It’s fabulous to be here. It’s a wonderful morning ah out here in Las Vegas. And we’re certainly looking forward to chatting with you a little bit and telling you about the Golden Steer. 01:00.62Nick _ AmandaThank you. 01:00.87vigorbrandingFantastic. Fantastic. So the question is for both of you guys. Tell us a little about yourselves and how you came to be a part of the Golden Steer Steakhouse brand. And I guess there’s like a love story or something else in there too, right? 01:13.37Nick _ AmandaThere it A little bit of everything. 01:14.54vigorbrandingOkay. 01:15.92Nick _ Amandaah So I’m born and raised in Las Vegas, fabulous Vegas. And my father actually purchased the restaurant back in 2001. And he did it because he loved the legacy and the story. And it was something that was really true and dear to his heart as it is with many Vegas natives. Now I left Vegas and went out to Chicago where I met this lovely, charming gentleman. And at some point I said, hey, 01:38.76Nick _ Amandawhy don’t we jump in and since you are got a bit of a background on the culinary side and I’m on the kind of data and marketing side why don’t we put our heads together and jump back in and return to Vegas and give it a shot. 01:50.74vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. That’s awesome. Nick, you made breakfast somewhere along the line for her. Is that how you, the culinary side? 01:54.75Nick _ AmandaYou know I tried I burned some boiling water but Yeah, originally from the Chicago area, I actually spent most of my career in the technology space. 02:06.21Nick _ Amandai But the interesting wrinkle is that I studied in Rome when I was in college and really fell in love. 02:11.53vigorbrandingAwesome. 02:12.27Nick _ AmandaOf course, the Europeans have such a different relationship with food and dining. And I came back to the States. I thought I wanted to move into the culinary hospitality world. 02:24.22Nick _ AmandaSo I did culinary school. My cousin owned a restaurant in Chicago that I cooked in his kitchen for a while. But ultimately said, you know, this is crazy. Who in the right mind would ever want to own a restaurant and left? the way I went back to the software world. The margins are much better and never really anticipated coming back to it. And then, and then, yeah, we met in and Chicago and We got married in 2018 and I sold the tech offer for my last business and had some some time and her father called and said, hey, I need you guys to so either take over the restaurant or I’m going to think about selling it. 02:59.30Nick _ Amandaand So we looked at each other and said, but let’s do it for a year. Right. Let’s do it for a year. 03:04.58vigorbrandingYeah, give it a try. 03:05.72Nick _ AmandaWe’ll kick ourselves. There’s such an iconic story and and history to to the place. So that year started March 1st of 2019. And of course, a year later, the the world changed with COVID. And so now here we are. 03:21.83vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. So I mean, are obviously Vegas has a storied history, all kinds of neat and maybe some bad background stuff. And your steakhouse has kind of been in the center of it all, hasn’t it? I mean, yeah if I remember, I think it’s like almost three different, ah sort of, I’ll say, historical chapters. So you had, didn’t you have people coming from California, ah coming out through the West, maybe to hunt? And the restaurant was a part of that. Can you talk about that a little bit? 03:48.00Nick _ AmandaYeah, so we first consider ourselves, and you nailed it, we really think about it as stages and horizons of history, which is really wonderfully wonderful to see how the restaurant itself has absorbed it. So the very first one was, we called ourselves the period of the Wild Wild West, friendly for the Cowboys. We were truly a Western frontier restaurant, which was a bit more technical back then. What would happen is the Cowboys would come in from all these different places around the world. They’d come to Nevada, they’d go on the mountains, whatever they shot and killed, they’d bring in, it would be our responsibility to clean, prep, serve, and cook all those things for whoever had them. And so you have a lot of iterations of rattlesnake game, things like that on the menu, but very much Wild West cowboy lore. And so that’s what we started as. And then the second phase of that was as Vegas matured and went from being a saloon-style town to something a bit more elevated, we decided as a city to dominate the entertainment space, which led us to what we like to call the showman era. And so with the showman era, that’s where you have Sammy Davis Jr. 04:45.14Nick _ Amandaah me monroe you’ve got frank sinatra You’ve got all these iconic, amazing celebrities and talents who are coming through Las Vegas, putting their foot on the ground and saying, let’s own this, let’s create it. And during that time, while they were out and performing for everyone else, they’d come back at night and dine at the Golden Steer. And we’ve actually got stories of patrons who said, oh, I remember my father and my grandfather used to come to the Steer because Frank Sinatra would get up on a table drinking whiskey, smoking a cigar and serenading the rest of the restaurant. 05:11.08Nick _ Amandajust really amazing moments that you wish you could see. Of course, when you’ve got the showmen and you’ve got the glitz and glam, you very quickly have the seedy underbelly, which ends up being the mob style. 05:14.47vigorbrandingYeah. 05:21.27Nick _ AmandaAnd so where all the fabulous flashy people come, mob’s there. And that is not surprising, especially when it started with someone like Tony Spalato, who came from the hole in the wall gang. And he made his mark in his business in Las Vegas, as he liked to call a jewelry shop. 05:35.18Nick _ AmandaI think of him more as a pawn shop because everything he had, you stole from a celebrity. You could just buy it back. So he began in Vegas and brought the rest of his um friends, we’ll call them lovingly, to this year to have meetings. And that began the mob period where they spent a ton of time here. It led to the mob room. We had the MatriD trying to exchange and make sure that we had the right mob partners not sitting right next to each other or in different rooms if we needed to. And it created quite a different ambiance. 06:02.56vigorbrandingit’s It’s amazing. And it’s really, I mean, again, so I can say this I’m Italian. So I’m always the old mob is I mean, I, i wrote you know, I think the greatest business movie ever made was a Godfather. And I swear by that, I think that is the best business movie ever made. 06:14.88vigorbrandingAnd so and the greatest movie ever made. So I love all of that, that, that, that mystique. I’ve been to your restaurant and the food is phenomenal. 06:21.44Nick _ Amandait 06:24.74vigorbrandingI’m not pandering. It really is phenomenal. 06:26.86Nick _ Amandathank you 06:26.94vigorbrandingBut you almost get that vibe when you walk in there, like with the brown booze and you have the other people’s names owner who used to hang out there. 06:32.06Nick _ Amandaand 06:32.49vigorbrandingum It’s just, it’s amazing. So you you had obviously all the showmen, you know, the whole brat pack was there. I know that there you have the picture behind you. ah But you also had celebrities like Joe DiMaggio, right? You had, I think it was Ali there. I mean, I think you had lots and lots of sports figures. I mean, I guess anybody that popped in Vegas, how’d he go to the Golden Steer? 06:48.32Nick _ AmandaThank you. Muhammad Ali ah celebrated his birthday here. Mario Andretti, yes, Joe DiMaggio, some more local folks. So, the comedian of Entroqua is Terry Fader. And then my favorite, one of my favorite stories, of course, is Mr. William Baxter. So, William Baxter is ah is a famous, for a number of reasons, one, ah very, very successful professional poker player. 07:17.87Nick _ Amandaum but also very so very well known because he sued the United States federal ah federal government in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court and he argued that poker is a game of skill and not a game of chance. 07:30.68vigorbrandingOkay. Hmm. 07:33.60Nick _ Amandaand so And that it should be taxed as income instead of gambling winnings. Gambling winnings are taxed higher than income is. 07:38.95vigorbrandingHigher. Yep. 07:40.44Nick _ Amandaah He ultimately won it and permanently recategorized poker winnings for for players across the country. And so just, ah I think it’s a great example of kind of the Vegas stories that you find here um that are that fly a little bit below the radar. 07:52.87vigorbrandingYeah. Yeah, it’s it’s crazy. And again, so much history, yeah you know, I think evolve. And it makes sense, right? Like we talked about like the the mob and stuff like that. Well, in every movie, I mean, you know, they got to go somewhere that’s sort of like a neutral ground, right? Where they’re, you know, they’re not going to be talking in the inside the casino or, you know, their hideout. So they’re gonna, they’re gonna go someplace where there’s ah other people and all that. And the Golden Steer was sort of like a centerpiece for that, wasn’t it? 08:23.81Nick _ AmandaIt was and actually it worked that we’re having this conversation from the mob room. So this is one of the private rooms that we have in the restaurant where they like to come in and dine and enjoy because it was it was separate and so they could have some candid conversations. 08:28.11vigorbrandingOh, there you go. ye 08:40.00Nick _ Amandaalso very close to a back hallway that we had so that they could ah sneak in and out as they needed to because one of the other booths that we have is Ralph Lamb and Ralph Lamb was very well known sheriff here in Vegas in the the at at the same time as the mob so he was kind of chasing them around and so there was certainly times that that one or both were coming in and required ah a quick getaway or a discreet exit and so that’s why they love to to kind of sit and dine in here in the mob room. 09:12.77vigorbrandingThat’s great. So we won’t talk too much about the mob, although I do love the mistake, but so this, yeah we can go to, let’s, let’s talk about like, you know, I know you don’t serve burgers anymore, but, but you said in in past interviews, I guess Elvis had had his last burger at the golden steer. 09:26.63Nick _ AmandaWell, I think he had the last burger that we served at the Golden Steer. I’m sure he had burgers after that. 09:30.40vigorbrandingOkay. 09:31.71Nick _ AmandaBut yeah, we used to do a little transition from the mob. 09:31.79vigorbrandingOkay. Oh no, we’re not saying he didn’t get poisoned there. No, no, no, no, no. You just had, yeah, I would have very clear on that. 09:39.04Nick _ AmandaWe had to make sure that we were clear about it. Um, no, he, he used to come in, he would sit at the, at the bar and and enjoy a burger. And then as you know, his, his fame continued to rise. He transitioned to sitting in, he has a beautiful, probably one of the best corner booths in the restaurant where he would sit and transition from burgers to, to steaks. And so at that point we decided, all right, no more, no more burgers on the menu. 10:05.00Nick _ Amandaand and and to this day have still not served a burger since Office of Time. 10:10.03vigorbrandingThat’s great. So, okay, you guys joined the the Golden Steer 2018, then COVID came around, obviously, and probably created a havoc for everybody, like it did everybody else. I know how it affected the restaurant industry. But you guys, i’ve been I’ve been to your website, you guys are doing mail order, things like that, too. Is that right? So we’re gonna talk a little bit about that and some of the thinking that you put behind that. 10:30.50Nick _ AmandaYeah, absolutely. So when COVID first hit, we both looked at each other and credit to Nick. He was really early on in this. We were actually planning for COVID in the December of the year prior. So we were looking out and thinking that there was going to be something that changed the restaurant dramatically. It was a question of what and how, and more importantly, how long. And so a lot of restaurants we’re looking at, do we do a to-go option? But the reality is our restaurant is on the strip. 10:53.31Nick _ Amandawith the world being shut down. We don’t have anybody here. Even if we wanted to deliver, given the radius, by the time the product got there to most of the suburbs that are going to be 20, 30 minutes away, the product and integrity and quality was going to be disastrous. So it did not make sense for us to try that. The other element, when you look at the actual nature of our business at the time, the predominant share of our customer base actually came from outside of Nevada. And so we said, all right, so most of our customers that we need to be able to get to aren’t here. Let’s ship to them. 11:19.84Nick _ AmandaFortunately, in a prior life, I had run a company and was good friends with some folks that had started a shipping company that was on Foodside and that was Home Chef. Nick also had his first company, which was Right Bites. 11:30.63Nick _ AmandaSo he also had an idea of how to do shipping. So we looked at each other and said, let’s give it a go. So we went live on Goldbelly, which was May 19th, sold out of our inventory with one email in about two weeks. 11:38.00vigorbrandingMm hmm. 11:43.08Nick _ AmandaSo there’s something there. Let’s turn it on and run with it for a bit. Fast forward to November of that same year, and we ended up taking it in-house and selling ourselves on Shopify and building that out. 11:52.01vigorbrandingThat’s great. 11:52.22Nick _ AmandaWow, we’ve been able to double that business pretty much year over year. And interestingly enough, that business is actually a seasoning company first and a state company second. 12:00.39vigorbrandingWow. Good for you. Well, I mean, there was the mail order stakes before, right? 12:02.46Nick _ Amandathere was states 12:04.20vigorbrandingPeople had that. That’s something that, you know, existed. So, uh, which that’s great. And it’s good to still have that, but the seasonings are, that’s what makes you guys special, you know? 12:12.82Nick _ AmandaIt’s a ton of, and it was, you know, something, you know, we’ve, so Sergio sees, so Sergio is our master butcher. He’s been with us for almost, almost four decades at this point. 12:23.22vigorbrandingWow. 12:23.37Nick _ AmandaAnd he, over the years has developed a seasoning blend in it. We use it on steaks in the restaurant. But it really came, we so during COVID, we did virtual private dining, which was we had all these conventions cancel, all these corporations that looked to do virtual events. 12:38.93Nick _ AmandaAnd so we we had our iteration of that, which is we would send a box of ingredients for a three-course meal. So our world-famous Caesar salad, rib eyes, the cream corn, twice baked potato, and then, of course, the bananas foster. 12:53.11Nick _ AmandaYou can’t forget, a little taste is sweet at the end. 12:54.34vigorbrandingnope yep 12:55.78Nick _ AmandaBut one of the items was Sergio seasoning. And as we did more of these events, and we did them for folks like Dell and Cisco and NASA and Second Watch, people started asking, like hey, this Sergio seasoning, can we can we buy this separately? And so a light bulb went off, and it was I think a year and a half after we first started selling steaks that we then allowed folks to to buy and and brought the Sergio seasoning to market, which then kicked off a line of seasonings, and now we have a line of compound and flavored butters that we also ship out as well. So it’s been a real like evolution of that online piece that you know I don’t think, um without COVID, I i mean, we we probably would have exported a little bit, but it was really a driver and catalyst for you know expanding into that online space. 13:43.94vigorbrandingYeah, I mean, it’s brilliant. And look, you know, necessity is the mother of invention, right? You guys, I know restaurants are hard and it can be a daily grind, you know, whether you have one or 50 or for franchisee, franchisor to then start an online, really, in a way, a CPG business, right? i mean e-commerce business, it’s a whole other world and it’s a whole other venue. So it’s really kind of cool that you were able to have the energy, the fortitude and the desire to drive that way. That’s that’s awesome and kudos to you guys for doing that. 14:14.81Nick _ AmandaAnd that is, I, you know, Amanda has really taken that by the horns and driven that um to an amazing extent. 14:14.89vigorbrandingum 14:24.40Nick _ AmandaI think it’s it’s wild. I mean, it’s been it’s been a long journey, right? we’re We’re almost four years in, but it’s been exciting to see kind of how that has evolved and changed. um Because it is. 14:35.21Nick _ AmandaIt’s an entirely different world. 14:36.55vigorbrandingSure. 14:37.18Nick _ AmandaThe digital ad space is, um is ah of course, massive. um And so it’s been it’s been fun to to kind of lean into that. And it’s to see where the two have fed off of each other, I think, is is very exciting for us. 14:53.69Nick _ AmandaAnd so as an example of that, It used to be two sister brands. So we had Golden Steer Las Vegas as one of the domains and then Golden Steer State Company. And it was only in March of this year that we kind of brought it all under one umbrella. 15:06.96vigorbrandingSure. 15:07.41Nick _ AmandaIt’s goldensteer dot.com, which really we saw a lot of benefits in and value to it, which has been it. 15:10.93vigorbrandingOf course. Yeah, I mean, it’s that’s super smart. I mean, this all came about like Fork Tales, this podcast all came about because we have we have an agency. My background is is advertising marketing and we have a holding company and in our company, we created different brands. And one is Quench, which is CPG food and beverage. When we were doing that, people would come and say, hey, 15:32.60vigorbrandingYou should you know market our restaurant or do you do restaurants and. Everyone thinks well restaurants food and beverage right so it’s the same as cpg but it’s not and you guys know that cause you’ve done both so. We created vigor or you know take on and a brand called vigor which is a restaurant. 15:49.99vigorbrandingbranding and marketing agency and they are very different. I did it because they’re different. and We have different skill sets in there and you know it’s retail and the speed of retail in the restaurant side and CPG is just a different animal. 16:02.86vigorbrandingSo I mean it’s a yeah it’s it’s ah um kudos to you guys again for doing both. 16:06.33Nick _ Amandato go. 16:08.20vigorbrandingI see that a lot because we’ll have a lot of folks on that’ll be ah they’ll they’ll start with ah a food product, a CPG and they’ll create restaurants from it. or they’ll have a restaurant and then things will emanate off of it. 16:19.82vigorbrandingYou know, we just did a thing with Guy Fieri ah with his sauces. We just did a thing with, I’m trying to think who else was, it doesn’t matter. But we’ve we’ve had a lot of these guys, a home run in is another one who’s started out as a restaurant and and now they’re, you know, yeah. 16:33.66Nick _ Amandaoh yeah ah 16:36.53vigorbrandingthey’re phenomenal pizza, right? So it’s really kind of neat to see these evolutions and how they grow. So well thank goodness that the whole industry of the conventions is back. and I’m sure that’s great for you guys. In fact, i’m i and believe it or not, I’m not just saying this, we have 15 people coming in to your restaurant. I think it’s in October. If that reservation is not made, we have ah one of our companies and our holding company is a company called Varsity, which is senior living. We have we market and brand retirement communities around the country. 17:06.78vigorbrandingAnd there is a, ah the acronym is SMASH. I’m not sure exactly what it stands for, but they’re having a convention in Vegas. And so we’re bringing a bunch of clients ah to the restaurant. 17:16.97Nick _ AmandaThank you. 17:17.92vigorbrandingYeah. Yeah. So I’ll have to make sure they get the bananas foster. 17:18.87Nick _ AmandaWe’ll see you. 17:22.79vigorbrandingSo, oh yeah. 17:22.81Nick _ Amandait’s the bottom one 17:24.05vigorbrandingBut now the stay on the let’s say when you’re Caesar Salads killer, I was at the restaurant and the gentleman at the serve, they talk about him a little bit. 17:31.84Nick _ AmandaYeah, so our longest tenured server, a gentleman named Banco who’s been with us for also almost 40 years, and we calculated that we think that he’s made somewhere in the ballpark of 375,000 Caesar salads in his career. 17:50.13Nick _ AmandaUh, so it’s, it’s, he, and he tell, he tells some wonderful stories. 17:50.59vigorbrandingyeah 17:55.52Nick _ AmandaHe’s been in Vegas for a long, long time and has met some incredible people. And, you know, one of them, most interestingly, coming back to kind of the the mob era. 18:06.14Nick _ AmandaSo Tony Spelatro. Camino talked about his his jewelry store. It was right next to the Golden Steer, which is why he would come in. And one of it the gentlemen on his henchmen team was Frank Colada. And Frank Colada, there is a ton of stories and books and podcasts about him. 18:24.98Nick _ Amandaum because he yeah actually was ah an informant and went into witness protection for a long time and then came out of it and he would still after he came out he would still come in and dine at the Golden Steer and Vanco was the only server that he would that he would really allow to to wait on him and so they had a they had a special relationship and Vanco yeah has some tremendous stories and It’s still with us. 18:48.76Nick _ AmandaWe are grateful um through through all of the ah the craziness of COVID remained with us and and is a treasured part of of the team. And we are not just him, but we have a tremendous team. 19:00.25Nick _ AmandaBut it’s a ton of fun when Van Gogh is making your season salad. You’ll definitely hear some stories about Old Vegas for sure. 19:04.81vigorbrandingYeah, ah it’s it’s super cool. Like I said, I absolutely loved ah my time there. and And you were not there, but he was so that, you know, he he was there. 19:13.26Nick _ Amandayeah 19:14.38vigorbrandingthen We got the Caesar and, you know, it was it was a phenomenal. So and the whole like the whole mistake. And what’s really cool and and you I should say for anybody who’s interested in in in checking out the the the restaurant, you know, we think about Vegas and restaurants like there’s these big casinos and all the restaurants in the casinos. 19:30.51vigorbrandingYou guys are not in a casino. I mean, you’re old Vegas, you’re on the strip, right? 19:34.33Nick _ AmandaWe are, our address is not technically on the strip. We are about a half a block or a block off the strip, but we’re in a strip mall. 19:41.22vigorbrandingYeah. 19:41.54Nick _ AmandaAnd so a lot of times we get feet, like folks drive up and they say like, when I first drove up, I don’t, I didn’t think that I was in the right spot. 19:46.04vigorbrandingYeah. 19:50.61Nick _ AmandaUm, because, you know, we talk about all this history and everyone that’s come in and you drive up and it’s a strip mall. 19:55.88vigorbrandingright 19:56.10Nick _ AmandaUh, but then you walk inside and it’s like a little time capsule back to old Vegas. We still have, you know, 20:00.15vigorbrandingyeah 20:01.01Nick _ AmandaWe still have the carpets and the dining rooms and the popcorn ceilings and a lot of the elements that make, that kind of transport people back to to that time. And so, um but yeah, and we’ve always been in this location, ah you know, 66 years. And you can think about, back to Amanda’s story about the frontier days. 20:23.72Nick _ Amandayou can kind of see it when you come here like this is not you know there was the old strip down on Fremont and then some of the kind of the new hotels were being built in the 50s and 60s but this was kind of just a little bit off the beaten path and so there were hitching posts and it’s easy to see how folks would you know go and hunt in the wilderness which was not that far from where we currently are but now of course today it’s it’s a much different story Vegas has seen some tremendous growth but 20:42.38vigorbrandingRight. 20:47.30vigorbrandingYeah. 20:48.45Nick _ Amandaah But yeah, it’s a ton of fun when folks come in for the first time and kind of look at themselves at the outside like, are we at the right spot? And then walk in and a whole different world. 20:56.76vigorbrandingyeah Well, the way you explained it was absolutely 100% my experience. Because when I went out there, I think I took an Uber, and you know how sometimes Ubers you put an address in and you’re like, well, this doesn’t look right. I did the old, well, this doesn’t look right. And then I was like, wait, wait, no, there’s, oh, yep, yep, yeah, we’re right, okay, great. And walked in and it was like, to your point, it’s like ah Oz, right? You open the door and there you are. And so I think anybody that goes to Vegas, you know, the the mystique, the history, all that stuff is so important and so cool. and You know, I just need to go to, uh, you know, anybody can go to the wind or whatever, which they’re all fine. 21:26.30vigorbrandingThey’re all great. But I mean, like to go out and see your place is like, it’s like going to a museum. and And then, but then on top of it, the food is as good as anything you’re going to get anywhere, if not better as far as a steak. So I just think you have such a cool vibe going and, uh, kudos. 21:38.08Nick _ AmandaWell, thank you. yeah you know and it’s And especially this year, it’s bittersweet, right? So the Tropicana is in the process of being torn down. 21:43.48vigorbrandingYeah. 21:45.67Nick _ AmandaAnd and it’s a remind. What’s that? The Mirage. The Mirage, of course, is you know the first hotel that Steve Wynn built from the ground up is is also in the process of being demolished. 21:49.01vigorbrandingYeah. 21:55.82Nick _ AmandaSo it’s exciting. the The town has seen tremendous growth. And I think the um the community has benefited from it greatly. But it’s also a little bittersweet because these icons of the past kind of are continuing to to transition. 22:06.50vigorbrandingYeah. 22:08.96Nick _ AmandaAnd so we we look at ourselves and we think, and we talk about it a lot with the team, that we feel like stewards of this brand that has managed to survive you know six decades plus, and that we you know hopefully would love to celebrate another six decades. 22:25.51vigorbrandingSure. 22:25.95Nick _ AmandaPast this so it’s been you know, the town is is is wild. it’s It’s been really great um But yeah, they’re it’s kind of always in that transition period 22:36.05vigorbrandingThat’s funny. I mean, it’s really ah yeah it’s ah it’s an amazing kind of thing. And just to have that history is just it’s a treasure to your point. So a lot of the restaurants will claim that, you know, they focus on hospitality, but very few do it well. What’s your secret? How do you make it real and make sure that your staff brings that, you know, to life every day? 22:54.75Nick _ AmandaIt’s a great, way it you know, I’m from, or like I said, I’m originally from the tech world. And so it’s been, um, It’s been phenomenal to see just, I think, just want to talk about for a second. I think the, the work ethic and, uh, the quality of people that are in the industry is tremendous. Um, and I think, you know, people really that are in this, like have a passion for, for it. And I think Vegas itself is unique in that. Uh, and I think it, it starts with people. Um, I think to quote Steve, when he always said that, you know, that people make people happy. Uh, and I think we really try to embrace that. 23:32.99Nick _ Amandaum And one, so Pete Wells just retired as the New York Times food critic in his final column. One of the things that he talked about was phones, that a lot of restaurants don’t answer phones anymore. And we do. We actually, ah we get a tremendous number of of inbound phone calls and we’ve hired up folks in the restaurant to be able to try and answer as many of those phone calls as possible with a human voice because we think that that is important. And we, 24:02.19Nick _ AmandaYou know, at the end of the day, we were a family business. There’s not too many family businesses on the Las Vegas Strip. And so we try to bring that warmth and the idea of, you know, folks are coming in to celebrate their most treasured moments, their birthdays, their anniversaries, graduations. 24:21.88Nick _ AmandaIt’s always fun when a local came in for prom and now they’re coming in for, you know, their kids’ graduation or or anything like that that’s multi-generational. 24:27.56vigorbrandingAwesome. 24:30.23Nick _ AmandaAnd so there’s a lot of, ah history that folks have with the restaurant and warmth I think is one of the big pieces that we try to to focus on. I mean there’s the there’s the tactical ah you know the steps of service and all of those pieces but we really try and say how do we make people feel feel good and feel happy feel welcomed if If something is wrong, if there is a miss on food, um we will you know either replace it or take it out late. We do everything that we can to ensure a great experience because we know that folks are coming in to to celebrate celebrate those special moments. so 25:08.31Nick _ AmandaWe really try and focus on the people first. ah We have a tremendous, tremendous staff um that I think enjoys the history and kind of being a part of that stewardship of ah a legacy brand. And it’s a ton of fun. And I think we are We are fortunate that we have had folks that have been with us for a long time to kind of keep that, like a, like a Vanko and a Sergio over the decades that have seen the ebb and flow of the city, that have seen the ebb and flow of the restaurant and have some, ah you know, a foot kind of in the old Vegas hospitality that folks like to to reminisce about. 25:34.68vigorbrandingwho 25:47.75Nick _ AmandaAnd so we try and and bring that and make that real, ah you know, day in and day out, which is, which is a fun, a fun and interesting challenge as a part of the restaurant industry. 25:57.16vigorbrandingYeah I mean we’ll like you know okay so and I’m not saying everyone can do it well but anyone can make a steak you know I can go home and grill a steak but if I go to your restaurant I’m gonna get it I’m gonna get a phenomenal but really it is about that whole experience right and those people become they’re part of the brand like we I said I did have the Uh, uh, your gentlemen, Benko, I guess is his name that did you make my, so my salad was phenomenal. I mean, and that was part of the whole, the whole deal and and and part of the romance of the whole place. So, uh, I think that’s, that’s phenomenal. So now talking about special moments last year, you guys purchased a thousand square foot of adjoining space. You’re expanding for the first time in 50 years. Um, now you you have a classic look architecturally, how hard is that to do? And what is the, what are what are you going to do with that space? It’s just tables. You can do more banquets. Is it, you know, talk a little bit about that. 26:43.00Nick _ AmandaYeah, so we opened it. um And it it was exciting. It was the first time in 50 years. And to Amanda’s point, in the restaurant, you could see the evolution over the six decades because the the the current bar that exists today was the last expansion that we did in the 70s. And so it was it was fun to to take on this bra of of you know this first expansion in 50 years. So we opened it last November right before F1. 27:10.62Nick _ AmandaAnd it is additional dining space, but also mainly with a focus on large parties and private dining, which is a tremendous part of ah Vegas now with with all of the social parties that come in and of course all of the conventions. 27:16.19vigorbrandingGreat. 27:20.66vigorbrandingSure. 27:25.69Nick _ Amandaand and we kept We kept everything as, you know, it was very inspired, of course, by the existing space. So ah wood paneling, which is a huge part of the existing restaurant or the the original restaurant, it was kept. The carpet is the same. We kept the popcorn ceiling. So its it was a very fun conversation with our designer and architects before we even started construction. 27:53.76Nick _ AmandaWe walked through the existing space to to kind of get some ah design ideas. And we were talking about the ceilings. And I was like, well, of course we have to keep the popcorn ceilings because we have the popcorn ceilings in the existing space. And our designer looked at us and she’s like, you know, I’ve taken a lot of popcorn ceilings out in my career, but I’ve never actually had a clock that wanted to put them in. And, you know, of course, would it be our first choice if we were just, you know, starting from scratch? Maybe not. 28:19.14Nick _ Amandaah But it’s a part of the history and kind of the rounded coving of where the walls meet the ceiling is a part of that. 28:19.44vigorbrandingThat’s it. 28:27.28vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. 28:27.44Nick _ AmandaAnd so all of those pieces that we that we could we took the, you know, we have ah this beautiful um circular soffit that is in the main dining room. And we also created a similar one in one of the the new rooms as well, just to make people continue to feel like this is this is an extension, you know, no different than what the steer has done over the six decades of, you know, continuing to um to kind of grow and do it in a way that that is in harmony with the with the rest of the space. So it’s been and we but to 29:03.30Nick _ Amandaum I guess I’ll just say we were very excited so when we opened it the first night we did a friends and family dinner and the first couple that walked in they gave us a hug and ah she was super excited she’s like oh congratulations on the opening like and we were at this time we we greeted people in the new space so she walked into the new space gave us a hug and she’s like after the hug she’s like all right this is awesome congratulations can we see the new space but she was standing in the new space and asked to see it and really made a smile. 29:32.74Nick _ AmandaAnd that was kind of the goal that folks wouldn’t have any idea that they were standing in a space. 29:34.02vigorbrandingah 29:36.59vigorbrandingYou have to pump like some old cigar smoke in the seat cushions right in the new place. 29:39.18Nick _ AmandaWe didn’t know about that. All right. 29:40.74vigorbrandingyeah 29:41.52Nick _ AmandaThe joke was the mill workers that I was going to have, you know, bring in like four and five year olds with like keys and like socks to like mark up the woodwork to make it look aged. 29:50.06vigorbrandingYeah. That’s awesome. That is awesome. All right. So now I’m going to ask you, that you know, I’ve read that the the steer has the best steaks on earth and I’ve had a phenomenal, absolutely. I concur. um Now you’re the couple that makes the best steaks. I’m going to give you something personal. man I’m going to start with you. ah What’s your favorite cut and how do you like it cooked? 30:08.78Nick _ AmandaThat’s easy, ribeye 100%, absolutely. Medium rare and always with, if I can, I really like our maturity butter. I think we did a great job with it. So I like to put that on top. 30:17.99vigorbrandingWell done. Well done, Nick. 30:22.50Nick _ AmandaWhy, i the our ribeye is our signature cut, 24 ounce bone in. If, and I won’t pick that, but I would say actually the strip loin, our New York strip, our 16 ounce New York strip is is probably my go to now. I think it’s the perfect blend between, you know filet of course is delicious if you’re looking for that, very lean, tender. A ribeye is fantastic, great marbling. 30:46.92Nick _ AmandaA good bite and I think the the strip kind of plays right in between those It’s got good fat for good flavor, but it’s still got some good tenderness. We butcher all of the meat in house. So everyone’s Steak is cut fresh that day which I think really adds to that element of freshness and we wet age everything for a minimum of 28 days to to bring a little tenderization to to the meat and It’s a ton of fun. 31:16.48Nick _ Amandaand We cook, it we we keep it old school. We cook on commercial broilers, uh, that really help us kind of measure the amount of char that we’re getting, uh, you know, based on kind of the, the distance from the heat source. 31:29.86Nick _ AmandaSo it’s a very old school. I think the broiler broiler is as old as Sergio is. 31:34.84vigorbrandingI was going to say evening, bought him a new broiler. 31:35.26Nick _ AmandaUh, 31:37.20vigorbrandingHe’s been there all these years. 31:38.45Nick _ Amandahe likes the old one. 31:38.62vigorbrandingThe guy can, he needs a new broiler. 31:40.40Nick _ AmandaHe likes, he knows how it works. yeah He likes the old one. 31:42.08vigorbrandingThat’s it. That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s great. Now, Amanda uses the butter. What do you, any, anything you’d like to add to your steak? 31:49.44Nick _ AmandaNo, I like to keep it traditional and classic. 31:51.93vigorbrandingSo I’m kind of in between both guys. I’m always a ribeye. I did Devone in at your place, phenomenal. I don’t put anything on my steak. So I just, I’m, and I love ribeyes. I, you know, there’s probably a healthier steak out there. 32:02.72vigorbrandingThey’re filet, but I figure, you know, my deathbed, I’m not going to wish I ate more filets. I’m always going to eat a ribeye. So ribeye and a big bottle of Cabernet or an amaron. 32:07.23Nick _ Amandaah great a hundred 32:10.30vigorbrandingI love amaron lines. Oh, that’s like heaven on earth. I’m hungry. um So, I mean, yeah, so so nothing on your stake. um is is If someone wants to put a catch up, is there any judgment? 32:22.36vigorbrandingHow do we feel about that? 32:22.65Nick _ AmandaThere’s not, there’s not. 32:23.52vigorbrandingNot? 32:23.88Nick _ AmandaAnd I think so for us, that comes back to the hospitality piece, right? 32:24.04vigorbrandingOkay. 32:27.63Nick _ AmandaAt the end of the day, we’re serving you your steak. So if you want ketchup or you want A1 or Heinz 57, or you want it butterflied and well done, ah no no judgment from us. 32:40.62vigorbrandingMm-hmm. 32:41.32Nick _ AmandaWe’re going to prepare it the way that you want, ah which I think is is important because you’re you know you’re coming in to celebrate and so who are we to to to say that you can’t have it that way? 32:51.78vigorbrandingsee see but that’s what we do differ a little bit because I do judge and and I love I love my wife but she’s always well done steaks well done we were we were in Italy and the steak Florentine right and they make their steak Florentine it’s just aged and it’s basically they make it one way they only make it one way and she and you know and very expensive and to your point it’s it’s your your your time your money people should be there she walked in and she asked the waiter she said 32:54.86Nick _ Amandaand Yeah. 33:18.17vigorbrandingI know I probably shouldn’t ask this because they make it well done. He’s like Sure, but I’d rather I’d like to recommend the filet for you. He would not sell her the the t-bone the steak Florentine He would I he’s like I will get you a filet That’s all you’re allowed to have and she was happy that she was okay with but that’s that’s the truth I have one other anecdote like when I started my my illustrious career Like like I and like I think a lot of people did and I think everyone should you start in a restaurant I just think that is like The greatest education anyone can have that and I think everyone should have to sell something like I don’t care if it’s like ah ah subs for your baseball team or Girl Scout. I think everyone should sell something and everyone should work in a restaurant and in my ah my illustrious career. I started out at this restaurant and it was a 34:02.41vigorbrandinga gentleman by the name of Hobart Umberger, and and he he had a restaurant he did very, very well with. He had a bunch of restaurants at one time called Um-ee’s, just a local fair. It wasn’t like, it was like all one-offs. When he was getting ready for retirement, 34:15.31vigorbrandingOr as he aged, he didn’t need money and he didn’t care about serving a million meals. He wanted to make everything by hand by himself. So he created this thing called Hobarts. It was high end, very high end. Hershey, Pennsylvania. So we would get a lot of people in from the factory, a lot of dignitaries, lots ah lots of C-sweep types of folks. He had one bottle of ketchup. One. And it was next to a knife. 34:36.89vigorbrandingin the kitchen next, behind him. And inevitably Hannah was the waitress. I can still picture it like it was a, he’d be, and he did these things, these tornadoes of beef. He would do these center cuts of the filet and he was very proud of those. And inevitably it would be this thing and Hannah would be all nervous and stuff. she open the door in the kitchen. 34:53.71vigorbrandingI was washing dishes, by the way. And she’d be like, Hobart, I don’t want to hear any shit. this I know you’re going to yell. I need to catch up. And he would be like, he’d start throwing stuff. 35:04.41vigorbrandingAnd he’s like hey do and he’d be banging stuff. And he was like, who the hell? And he knew because he made everything by hand. and He made it. He was like, that’s the guy. There’s just sort of the plays. The tornado is a beef. 35:14.76vigorbrandingAnd he’s like, there I’ll be damned if I’m going to have my cake. Anyway, so i I’m glad we had that question. here Because it’s a it’s a thing. 35:20.38Nick _ Amandaah i edit a hundred percent and and but we We like to have these conversations because a lot of folks share your perspective, um and which you know in some sense i can I can understand and empathize with. but i think we I will say to you know to the the story you told about your wife in Italy, 35:40.38Nick _ AmandaWe will recommend, so I think a good example is like the tomahawk. So we we offer a 40 ounce tomahawk and it’s a tomahawk ribeye cut. so it’s that So it has a good amount of fat in it. 35:50.13vigorbrandingOh, yeah. 35:52.39Nick _ AmandaAnd so one of the places that we will do some recommendations is if someone comes in and orders the tomahawk rare, we will maybe suggest like, hey, um, because it’s, if you want it rare, some of that fat is not going to render out. 36:07.65vigorbrandingMm hmm. 36:07.83Nick _ AmandaAnd so it’s going to be a little, it could come across as a little tougher, a little gristly. And so there will be some times that we’ll make some recommendations, but, um, at the end of the day, folks are are ordering what they would like. 36:18.37Nick _ AmandaAnd I think for us, it comes back to that hospitality piece of, you know, we want you to feel warm and welcomed, uh, and I don’t know if you can feel too welcome if you order a captive and you’re taken and you hear the shaft in the back laying in top of his pants. 36:33.46vigorbrandingAnd he did and he but he didn’t care like he was like he would actually would rather them left because him at his point in life He was just an artist and he wasn’t looking for money and it was just that was his like ah Passion project. 36:38.34Nick _ Amandaah I’m sorry. 36:43.68vigorbrandingSo it’s just yeah, it’s crazy. But sorry. So now we’ve got we’ve we have a phenomenal steak you guys make the best steak on earth What sides you have a lot of sides what which sides are we getting? I mean everyone’s got their go-to’s at a steakhouse. 36:54.91vigorbrandingWhat do we got in here? 36:57.19Nick _ AmandaOh, so I always loved the twice baked potato. I think it’s phenomenal. 37:00.35vigorbrandingI 37:00.52Nick _ AmandaI think it’s our go-to. We actually at one point were featured in, there was like a Idaho potato Gazette that came out and asked for an interview. 37:05.84vigorbrandingNice. 37:07.11Nick _ AmandaCause they’re like, Oh, we’ve heard that you’ve got the biggest potatoes. I was like, well, if it’s coming from the Idaho potato Gazette, I’m pretty honored to hear that. 37:12.47vigorbranding That’s great. 37:13.86Nick _ AmandaYeah. The twice baked is great. And then our cream corn. I love our cream corn. uh it’s got it it certainly got its sweetness from the corn and then we use cinnamon and i heard a customer described it as like it’s like taking a bite of christmas and i hadn’t heard that before and i was like that’s the perfectly summarized is kind of the cream corn and so it’s the i love to take a little cut of steak kind of 37:24.23vigorbrandingThere you go. 37:44.26Nick _ Amandadrag it through the cream corn a little bit to get some of that sweetness. And it’s ah to for me, it’s one of the most perfect bites. 37:49.86vigorbrandingFantastic. That’s awesome. And then what for dessert, I think I know the answer to this, but. 37:55.20Nick _ AmandaI mean, we i Our tableside desserts, they’re a ton of fun, right? 38:01.76vigorbrandingYep. 38:01.89Nick _ AmandaAnytime you’re going to light something on fire for a dessert, it’s awesome. 38:03.48vigorbrandingYeah, sure. 38:05.77Nick _ AmandaBut I think, you know, it’s in their classic, in their pure, in their simple, ah but executed very well. So, I mean, I’m partial. We do two tableside flambe options. 38:16.73Nick _ AmandaOur bananas foster our cherries jubilee. 38:18.43vigorbrandingMm hmm. 38:19.15Nick _ AmandaI am partial to the bananas. I think we use brown sugar with it. and A little banana liqueur, some 151, a little orange zest, and it is it is excellent. 38:27.87vigorbrandingnice 38:30.02Nick _ AmandaBut a Amanda has a separate opinion. So we ran this interesting test where a problem we were running into was, you know, when people make a reservation at the Valencia, let’s say states it’s a party of six, only one of you are probably giving us your information, whether it’s your phone or your email or what have you. 38:44.13Nick _ AmandaAnd so if you want to continue to build a relationship online with the rest of the party in there. 38:48.04vigorbrandingNice. 38:48.67Nick _ AmandaHow do you get them to go to your site or engage or have some sort of a back? 38:50.40vigorbrandingMhm. 38:52.28Nick _ AmandaAnd so we realized that what is really strong is our social media presence. We are one of the most, if not the most vile restaurant in America on TikTok. We just passed 175 million views of hashtag gold. 39:02.98vigorbrandingWow. 39:03.56Nick _ Amandayeah And so we were like, okay, what can we do to combine this in honor of our 65th? And how do we create what I call an organic trigger? So if you’re dining, you can do something else. And so I was like, okay, let’s play with the flames. What can we do? That’s going to be a flaming dessert that can be exciting, that can be different. And so we worked and created something called the Sapphire Jubilee in honor of the 65th anniversary. And of course you like throw some blue in there at the server’s head of it because they were always covered in like blue dust on their white shirts. 39:30.90Nick _ AmandaIt was a little messy, but it was fabulous. And it really did turn bright blue flames. And so the I was like, okay, let’s try it. We’re going to make it where you can only order it if you have the code word from TikTok or Instagram. 39:42.30vigorbrandingWow, I like it. 39:44.36Nick _ AmandaWe’ll look up on there or say something. Or then ah when the server says that to them, if they’ll follow us or try and find it. And sure enough, I was like, I have no idea how this is going to go. First night comes. And within like the first, I guess, hour of opening, boom, somebody ordered it with the code word. I’m like, all right, we’ve got something. And it was, to this day, it’s my favorite version of that flam bazer. 40:05.22vigorbrandingThat’s excellent. oh that’s and the The marketer in me is very proud and honored. 40:08.87Nick _ Amandaa 40:09.14vigorbrandingThat’s that’s fantastic. I mean, I love it. 40:10.55Nick _ Amandayeah 40:11.44vigorbrandingReally. i’ saids that’s ah It’s awesome. 40:11.84Nick _ Amandaand since sense that it’s 40:13.45vigorbrandingum So I had the banana foster and it was wonderful. 40:14.75Nick _ Amandaso as foster 40:17.86vigorbrandingum i So I have one last question for you guys, and and then you’re free to go. And you can’t say the golden steer, but if you have one final meal, what would you eat and why? 40:31.11Nick _ AmandaSo for me, ah it’s risotto. Risotto was probably one of the first dishes that I really started to make during culinary school and just kind of fell in love with. I am ah studied in Rome, Italian heritage, and i i love like to me, it’s like, 40:55.32Nick _ Amandasuch a pure distillation of Italian cooking. right it’s very at the At its core, it’s very simple, but there’s a lot of ways that you can that you can go wrong with it. um And it takes some work, right? You have to be standing over it with your wooden spoon, kind of slowly adding stock. 41:14.38Nick _ AmandaAnd it’s also a it’s kind of also almost a blank palate. So you can add orabela mushrooms or butternut squash or asparagus or any number of things. And so I think I would i love risotto and that would probably be my, that would be my five if I had to pick a final dish, that would be it. 41:33.19vigorbrandingNice. Amanda, you can say Nick’s risotto if you want. 41:34.49Nick _ Amandaand think 41:35.93vigorbrandingI mean, ah, nice. 41:36.61Nick _ AmandaIt’s close to that. So Nick was actually, was very kind and he he knows this well, but something that he makes for me on all of the special occasions is a beef wellington. And I’m very picky about how I like my beef wellington and all the things and he’s like really nailed it down. 41:51.40Nick _ AmandaI wasn’t before, he’s now like spoiled me and I blame him all the time. I’m like, you’ve created the monster here. So it would be the beef wellington that Nick does make for me because I do it amazing and it’s my favorite. 41:59.24vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. Guys, I want to thank you. 42:01.92Nick _ Amandai 42:02.99vigorbrandingThis was fantastic. Like I said, the first time I ever had a couple and you guys were great. There was no fighting. It was close. I thought there for a while over the desserts, but that was good. 42:07.74Nick _ Amandayeah 42:09.71vigorbrandingThat was good. You guys do great. So thank you so much. It was my honor to talk to you guys and I really appreciate your time. 42:14.97Nick _ AmandaWell, thank you so much for having us on, Michael. low was ah It was an awesome conversation. We certainly appreciate being here. 42:20.11vigorbrandingGood deal. 42:20.09Nick _ AmandaPleasure.

This young church was given inspired advice by the Apostle Paul. Among his instruction was to “Quench not the Spirit.” Today we continue our study of the Holy Spirit. A better understanding of the trinity helps us to realize why Paul admonished this church not to “quench the Spirit.” Our text is 1 Thessalonians 5:19 and John 17. Questions? Email: hello@citylifechurch.nyc For more information visit: https://citylifechurch.nyc Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/citylifechurchnyc?locale=eo_EOAll Music Licensed through CCLI - https://us.ccli.comCCLI Streaming Plus License # 21120922 Episode 376

This podcast is gnarly, and it's absolutely packed full of insane surf topics that will keep you entertained and informed! Did you know that Donald Trump is currently the president?  Also, we have a hilarious segment where Sterling expresses his jealousy of people that LOVE FEET! This leads to some funny discussions about how do pretty girls walk like that? What makes their movements so captivating? Plus, we cover the ultimate guide on how to date a pretty girl with our survival kit that you won't want to miss! And if that isn't enough excitement for you, listen in as Sterling shares his terrifying encounter when he got cornered by a shark! We discuss surf culture in-depth, sharing stories, experiences, and insights from the waves, and much much more that will leave you wanting more. Tune in for laughs, knowledge, and everything in between!Support Pinch My Salt by supporting our sponsors: Quench your thirst with WEST PEAK! Use code: Pinchmysalt https://drinkwestpeak.com/pages/store-locatorGet a rad pair of Savalés! at https://www.savalefootwear.com/▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬STERLING SPENCER https://www.instagram.com/sterlingspencer?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==RYAN SPENCERhttps://www.instagram.com/ryanspencer?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw=#donaldtrump #sterlingspencer #surfingpodcast

Hour 4 THE DRIVE - Football Friday 11-01-24

Casandra Carson stops by on a tour stop to discuss her latest endeavor, Casandra's Crossing. This is an album that she released on the day the show was recorded with George Lynch. This is a fantastic new album that compliments the work she does with Paralandra very well. Check out the music she has out, catch her on the road, and support musicians by checking out their store with the links below:Listen to Casandra's Crossing: Click HereListen to Paralandra: Click HereCheck out Paralandra on the road: Click HereBuy Paralandra merch: Click HereParalandra Bio:Paralandra hails from Springfield, Missouri, and formed in the summer of 2013 when Casandra Carson and her dad, Paul Carson, began writing songs together to play a one-time event at their local county 4th of July celebration. The response was so positive, and they enjoyed it so much, they decided to continue booking shows and writing songs. They recorded and released a homemade CD titled Rise Up; which sold over 1,000 copies at local shows. Shortly after, friend and local musician, Sawyer Rikard, joined the band on bass guitar in 2015, bringing their stage sound and performance to another level. In March of 2016, they released a follow-up EP, All Fall Down, which debuted #1 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. They soon began touring and being invited to festivals such as Rocklahoma, SXSW, Rockfest, Dirtfest, Loud in Lima, etc.In 2018, they joined forces with Legend Recordings, and released another EP, Ascension, which became their biggest release yet with singles “Back to Life” and “Killer Queen” landing on the radio. Shortly after, they added local powerhouse drummer (and childhood friend of Sawyer), Dakota Watson, to form the rhythm section Casandra, Paul, and Sawyer had always dreamed of. In 2019, they recorded standalone single “Love Will Win” with producer/videographer, Jake Jones, which gained even more radio play, and placed them on numerous national tours; supporting artists such as Tantric, Saliva, Yngwie Malmsteen, Dokken, and being added to the KISS Kruise and NAMM Show.The band continued to write, record, livestream, and perform wherever they could during the 2020 pandemic, and only continued to gain traction and fans from all over the world. Reaching out on a whim, they won over the attention of renowned producer/songwriter, Elvis Baskette, and shortly thereafter, entered the studio to record their first professionally made, full length album, Street Magic, in 2021. This release proved to be a monumental success, skyrocketing their audience with over 5 million views and streams across all platforms. Radio singles from this release alone include “For the Record”, “Despicable”, “Repeat Offender”, “Can't Quench the Fire”, and “Only Human”.Paralandra has since toured the country on multiple headlining runs, and is constantly supporting iconic bands such as Warrant, Lita Ford, Firehouse, Last in Line, and countless others with no end in sight. They reentered the studio with Elvis Baskette in 2023 and recorded their 2nd studio album, which is due April 4, 2024. They plan for this release to be just as big, if not bigger than the last, as they continue to record, write, tour, and work tirelessly to build their brand, and change the direction of rock music to be a force for good in this world.

Jennifer Lisa is known to many by her business name Quench Metalworks. Born and raised in Maine, Jennifer received her BFA in Jewelry and Metalsmithing from the Rhode Island School of Design. Handcrafted in sterling silver and unique gemstones, her jewelry collections are ever-evolving and draw inspiration from the balance of linear elements and organic shapes. Jennifer took a leap of faith and opened a brick and mortar following a dream she had. During our conversation she shares the ups and downs with owning your own shop and how she was making a move to new location when covid hit leaving her with two places to pay rent on until her lease had ended on the original shop. It was at this time, she began pivoting and working on building her IG in order to reach a new audience… and how she is now finding it necessary to explore other options to reach collectors as IG continues to change.  We talk about this and much more including balancing creativity and productivity, the importance of  having a community to lean on, teaching, and we nerd out a little bit on our favorite things… stones.  Follow Jennifer: Instagram: @quenchmetalworks Website: quenchmetalworks.com Want to continue these important conversations with a mutually supportive and diverse community of jewelry artists? Then please consider joining us in the ⁠Slowmade Collective⁠. It's the best place I know online that can support you and your desire to create a sustainable business that feeds your life.

Hurricane Helene brought in some insane weather that captivated everyone along the Gulf Coast! Sterling Spencer had the most insane surf adventure ever! In an incredible display of bravery, he ended up saving a girl from an emergency situation in the surf, showcasing not only his incredible surfing skills but also his quick thinking and heroism in a challenging situation. Additionally, he almost got into a fight with another surfer, which added to the drama and excitement of the day! Surfing amazing waves in Alabama and Pensacola Beach, he experienced the exhilarating rush of riding some of the best swells that nature had to offer, making this adventure one for the books! Join us as we dive into the wild ride of Sterling's epic day on the waves, exploring the beauty and chaos that Hurricane Helene brought to the surf community! #podcast #hurricanehelene #pensacolabeach Support Pinch My Salt by supporting our sponsors: Quench your thirst with WEST PEAK! Use code: Pinchmysalt https://drinkwestpeak.com/pages/store-locatorGet a rad pair of Savalés! at https://www.savalefootwear.com/▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬STERLING SPENCER https://www.instagram.com/sterlingspencer?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==RYAN SPENCERhttps://www.instagram.com/ryanspencer?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==0:00 Periods 4:58 Pinch My Clips!12:36 HURRICANE SURF DAY43:58 Bobby Lee44:59 Gym Time49:27 Dumb and Dumber 50:15 Going Deep

I am done with women's health being undervalued and underfunded. I am tired of feeling like our bodies are fodder for politics rather than what they are, which is: half of population, complex, individual, and just as worthy. And while I clearly have feelings about it, I have no expertise. So I've invited Somer Baburek to join us as our guest. Somer serves as the President & CEO of Hera Biotech, a women's health company focused on commercializing a non-surgical diagnostic for early detection of endometriosis. Prior to founding Hera, Somer spent ten years in life science venture capital at Targeted Technology Fund, as the Director of Clinical Operations for Santalis Pharmaceuticals where she built out the clinical program at the company. All that to say, she knows a whole lot about women's health, endometriosis and FemTech. It's time for all women to get the care they deserve, the information they need, access to the options and choices currently only available to some, and the opportunity to be listened to and treated for whatever it is that is hurting us. There are women who don't and won't advocate for women's health, but guess what – we can stand for them anyway. Because this isn't about deserving or earning, this is about the inherent value of each and every one of us - let's value women's bodies for far more than how they look! Connect with Somer: Website: www.herabiotech.com  IG: https://www.instagram.com/herabiotech/  FB: https://www.facebook.com/herabiotechnology  Like what you heard? Please rate and review  Thanks to our This Is Woman's Work Sponsor: Visit  https://www.heyfreya.co/ and use promo code TIWW for 25% off multivitamins and other products - I use the Thrive multivitamin, Quench, and Nourish daily!

We dive deep into the mind of the mastermind behind the greatest surfer. The latest news on P Diddy and his recent arrest! Sterling Surfs naked on the beautiful shores of Pensacola Beach, where the sun shines bright and the waves crash with wild excitement! We also dive into a thought-provoking discussion about who truly has a more dangerous job than Sterling? Was Sterling's dad the first ever Surf Christian Mafia boss? Sterling receives an unforgettable gift on Ryans birthday. Would Kelly Slater be the greatest if Sterling was never born? AND MUCH MORE!!!Support Pinch My Salt by supporting our sponsors: Quench your thirst with WEST PEAK! Use code: Pinchmysalt https://drinkwestpeak.com/pages/store...Get a rad pair of Savalés! at https://www.savalefootwear.com/▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬STERLING SPENCER https://www.instagram.com/sterlingspe...RYAN SPENCERhttps://www.instagram.com/ryanspencer...0:00 Hurricane Surf1:59 Surfing naked4:22 Pinch My Clips22:19 Most Dangerous Job25:30 Couple facebook accounts27:01 Fights and Chris Ward 30:03 3 Favorites to Surf with 38:29 Ryan's Birthday!39:18 Pdiddy Arrest 43:43 Perfect woman 45:45 Happiness 48:08 Kelly Slater52:07 Core Lord Surfers54:42 White Truck update

Have you ever wondered if you REALLY need to peel those carrots?

Your soul is designed to be satisfied in one thing, and one thing only: the Lord God. All other earthly pursuits to quench your soul-thirst do just the opposite in comparison with God. -------- Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible.   Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org.   Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

The greatest moments in surfing are captured in this incredible video! Get ready to dive into the thrilling world of surfing as we explore the most unforgettable WSL highlights that have made waves over the years! In a surprising twist, we reveal that Lana Del Rey is dating an alligator farmer! Watch as Sterling Spencer, the talented surfer, magically predicts the judges' scores on each wav! Showcasing his astounding intuition and skill! As the competition heats up, John John Florence, Ítalo Ferreira, Griffin Colapinto, Ethan Yewing, and Jack Robinson go head-to-head in an exhilarating battle for the prestigious world title, bringing their A-game and showcasing their incredible talent! Additionally, we take a moment to share an interesting fact about Sterling, who, when he was just 16 years old, wrecked his mom's car in a memorable incident that still gets talked about today! And for a moment of adventure, join us as Sterling gets lost in the woods, leading to a hilarious and unexpected series of events! Don't miss out on all this excitement and more in this epic podcast!#wsl #surfing #podcast #sterlingspencer  Support Pinch My Salt by supporting our sponsors: Quench your thirst with WEST PEAK! Us code: Pinchmysalt https://drinkwestpeak.com/pages/store-locatorGet a rad pair of Savalés! at https://www.savalefootwear.com/▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬STERLING SPENCER https://www.instagram.com/sterlingspencer?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==RYAN SPENCERhttps://www.instagram.com/ryanspencer?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

On this episode of TIWW, we're going to talk not just about understanding masculine and feminine energetics, but unifying them. Within ourselves first, and then in our relationships. Our guest, Dené Logan is a Marriage and Family Therapist with an orientation in Depth Psychology (often referred to as ‘The Psychology of the Soul'), co-host of the podcast Cheaper Than Therapy, and author of the recently released book, Sovereign Love. With her Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology and her experience being the mentee of acclaimed psychotherapist Esther Perel, Dené is passionate about sharing tools and strategies to cultivate spiritual awareness, understanding the current shifts taking place within our societal structures, and empowering others in understanding how they can live the most fulfilling lives possible. What I hope most is for you, and for me, for all of us, is shed the gender expectations, give our finger to the should and the supposed to's, so that we can show up as our best, most authentic selves – which is a mix of the masculine and the feminine. But in order to do that, we need to know ourselves, deeply and intimately – we get to build and create from the inside out, knowing that whatever energy that exists authentically within us is as it should be. Connect with Dené: Website: https://denelogan.com/  IG: https://www.instagram.com/dene.logan/  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@denelogan  Book: Sovereign Love, available on Amazon Like what you heard? Please rate and review  Thanks to our This Is Woman's Work Sponsor: Visit  https://www.heyfreya.co/ and use promo code TIWW for 25% off multivitamins and other products - I use the Thrive multivitamin, Quench, and Nourish daily!

Welcome to episode 47! Please leave a like and Comment!Sterling Spencer reveals the shocking truth about why the world-famous big wave surfer is so divisive among fans and fellow surfers. Skateboarders, the ultimate stunt kings, pull off mind-blowing tricks that leave audiences breathless! We dive into Gabriel Medina's jaw-dropping Olympic photo that begs the question: does it save surfing's reputation? In this thrilling video, we catch up with the legendary Chuck Norris. We explore the wild side of surfing, uncovering why surfers often display more aggression than skaters, tapping into the intense psychology behind their competitive spirit. Sterling shares a heart-pounding tale of his quest for the ultimate waves in Mexico, where he even hopped on a sea plane to access those hidden treasures! Plus, hear about the scariest experience Sterling faced in Hawaii when he ignored his pro surf trainer's crucial advice, showcasing the extreme dangers of adventure sports. Why is Snoop Dog the most loved human on earth!?We'll also investigate the notorious reputation of guys driving white trucks! Is Mr. Beast facing cancellation in the online world? Are we getting blacklisted by surfing legend Kelly Slater? Join us as we tackle these sensational topics and SO MUCH MORE, delivering captivating insights and epic stories you won't want to miss! Support Pinch My Salt by supporting our sponsors: Quench your thirst with WEST PEAK! Us code: Pinchmysalt https://drinkwestpeak.com/pages/store-locatorGet a rad pair of Savalés! at https://www.savalefootwear.com/▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬STERLING SPENCER https://www.instagram.com/sterlingspencer?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==RYAN SPENCERhttps://www.instagram.com/ryanspencer?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==0:00 Most hated Surfer?5:38 PINCH MY CLIPS16:01 Why Surfers are Mad21:33 Mexico & Sea Plane 26:41 Best Surf Trip Ever29:24 Boneyard in Hawaii33:54 White Trucks39:39 Dating, Marriage, Babies49:04 Snoop Dog50:28 Mr. Beast Cancelation?54:59 Magazines58:25 California Dress Code59:46 Black Listed?1:02:13 Secret surf sesh#chucknorris #podcast #funny #mexico #dangerous #gabrielmedina #snoopdogg #pinchmysalt