It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact time that my service industry burnout came to a head. 2019 wasn’t the best year for our restaurant group. Financially Southern Culture Hospitality Group was underperforming and we were feeling the pressure. Southern Culture the flagship of our restaurant group was coming up on it’s 8th year of creation. Brunches were still a juggernaut but our weekday sales were dropping. We had several discussions about revamping Southern without losing its identity. I had wanted the stage ripped out and build an oyster bar in its place. Live music was a flop at Southern. We’d have some great bands and some bands that would make your prop your chin on your elbows to keep your head from hitting the table when you’d fall asleep. Often times customers would complain about how loud the bands were and leave. Brunch being as vibrant and energetic as it was, the made the music fit. The sheer volume of people usually drowned them out. Another option was to close in the patio and make it a small venue for weddings and try to capture that dynamic. It seems we discussed that option for a solid 4 years but could never pull the trigger.

Lto was on year 3 and already on it’s third reinvention and god knows what menu revamp we were on. LTO had unspokingly becoming the little engine that couldn’t. Between the rapid decline of Dive N Boar I and II and the constant reconstruction of LTO to find that niche that would get cherrydale’s ass to eat a burger somewhere other than 5 Guys, that fucking location had become a burden. The bar side was healthy and energetic but the dining room was the underachieving little brother that never hit its stride except for the occasional weekend. I initially had wanted to do a sports heavy themed bar, late night, bucket beers, couple dozen TVs and keep it simple. My partners were always concerned about image and “attracting the wrong crowd” which what I considered to be the wrong crowd and what their definition was left up for considerable debate. We had originally met in the middle on a clean cut family dining experience involving fun burgers and whimsical shakes. This was not what I had in mind but to receive financial backing my partners and I needed to see eye to eye on the concept so this was sort of a happy medium. I could get my burger bar while they wouldn’t look like grungy biker bar owners (not my words). LTO phase one turned out to be a phenomenal fail. We got our asses handed to us week one of opening. We opened understaffed and underprepared. In the first week we lost 8 of our 12 kitchen employees and within a month my KM resigned. Long ticket times and and an undermanned store I feel left a long lasting first impression with the general public. The dining room side would fill up with families for an hour and then it would be a dead zone. We had hoped for better alcohol sales to boost the price point per head but all we managed to get was sweet tea and water drinkers. The bar flourished with happy hour and late night but the feel and vibe was like trying to watch a football game in a fucking Pottery Barn. We needed that check average to hit $22 and with influx of children eating kid burgers and adults not participating in alcohol beverages we were hitting right at $16/17. That meant watching the whole dining room full up for about $1200 in sales. Great to see the dining room robust with people but the bottom line didn’t give a shit. We decided to repaint once again and separate the dining room from bar. The bar looked great but the dining room still couldn’t get it’s footing. Our last change before covid was to add some high dollar pool tables, football and darts. This was probably my fav look of all of them but once again it was not working. The only thing it managed to do was make the dining room LOOK busy.

The Habitap was about to pop its first birthday balloon and the grid iron capital of Greenville (Woodruff rd) was being mighty stubborn about filling up our seats. Habitap was a hard concept for me. When I created it I just could not get the warm fuzzies. I struggled with the location, concept, menu etc you name it. Habitap was not the first concept created for that location. We had been discussing that side of town for 4 years. The Dive N Boar concept was specifically created for that building but the malaise of Mojos (Southern’s old icky neighbor) pushed us to put Dive there instead. Which we would learn rather quickly that was a terrible mistake. The other concepts thrown around was a modern style diner Local Toast and a tavern (unnamed). I was looking to create something that was all beer/wine taps and small finger food. Mostly bar bites and sandwiches. My partner wanted more so we added a double decker pizza oven and I made the concept pizza friendly without coming across as a pizza joint. I will take full blame and responsibility on that concept’s first try and it’s unwillingness to succeed. I made the call on counter service to keep up with the modern times and well Woodruff rd wasn’t having it. I was banking on the success of a few other local restaurants that were booming and it didn’t work. One thing to consider when you open up multiple restaurants is demographics control your dynamics. I’m not talking about knowing the percentage of boomers or gen x ers within a 3 mile radius of your company. Cultures, attitudes and palates can change quite a bit just 8 miles down the road. It’s a fucking crap shoot to get it right and if you don’t then you better move to fix it quick. The consumer can be very unforgiving at times. We also wanted to capture some of the brunch magic Southern had on the woodruff road side of town so I did a biscuit heavy brunch with a do it yourself Bloody Mary bar. Our brunch magic was mediocre at best and our lunches were pathetic. Our weekends were decent however and when we were busy the atmosphere was electric. Still, of the three Habitap was my third favorite. It never felt like my creation.

We had recently let go of our VP operations to cut back on our overhead cap and had brought in a brand new C.O.O. who had the unfortunate timing of being hired just as the first covid germ probably hit the west coast. My partners’ and I were just now at a point of light bickering and second guessing each other’s decisions. Our relationship over the years was ok but to be honest we came from completely different backgrounds. I always came across to them as a ruffian with few words to say and the mouth of a sailor. Professionally we seemed to get along for the most part but we had our moments like any other partnership. If the bottom line is fine we fine. Well the bottom line was indeed not fine.. The main bulk of my vocation at the time seemed to center around long repetitive meetings about finding that secret “sauce” to make all the restaurants perform better. That “Gangwer magic” my partner would exclaim to get me motivated to punch holes through slow weekends and engineer a insurmountable comeback. We’d discuss topics of new menus, handbooks, uniforms and management styles. My main partner enjoyed having one on ones with me to discuss my behavior on social media, my language in meetings and overall trying to encourage me to be a strong god fearing Christian. Let me be the first to say that last sentence is in no way to belittle him or make fun of him. I know in my heart he was doing what he thought was best. He was trying to mentor me, to help me become a Christian. He was concerned about my drinking and personal life. He did it because he cared. I on the other hand wasn’t looking for a mentor or father figure. It made for some hard conversations but at least we were open and transparent in our discussions. I do not fault him one bit in trying although some might say otherwise. Partnerships can be a lot like marriages. Trust is important. Communication is important. Finances and profits replace the emotions of love and security. There will be parts of this that may seem like I disliked my old partners which is not true and also not the point of this story. There will be some emotions released that may shine a negative light on our partnership because well, I’m an emotional person and sometimes it comes out in my writing. The last thing I’ll add is my partner was a unselfish and generous person who meant well as far as our relationship went. At the end of the day we just couldn’t see eye to eye professionally and personally.

I was sitting at the bar in LTO when McMasters made the announcement that all restaurants in South Carolina would close their dining rooms to the public. We knew it was coming but in the back of my head I was hoping he’d change his mind last minute. You know like in his deep southern drawl “we ain’t closin’ a gawd dayum thing” while banging his limp little hands on the podium like a dick beating gavel but no, like many other businesses across the country we got the royal covid fuck yourself. My opinions on the whole lockdown will be reserved for another day.

Some of my LTO staff were sitting at the bar during the announcement and all I could do was watch their faces. It was Saint Patrick’s day and we had maybe 6 people in the restaurant. Word was already out and people were already staying home. Some employees cried while others ordered shots. I walked around and hugged everyone. They were scared, hell I was too! Not just about the future of my businesses but for the well being of my family and my staff. I went next door to Southern and did the same thing with everyone there. Right after I drove up to Habitap and for the third time hugged everyone in sight. “What happens next?” They all asked me. “We will keep our doors open and we are going to kick curbside’s ass!” – I told everyone. Boy would I fucking be wrong. But I knew that before I even said it. That night I went home and cried myself to sleep with a bottle of vodka.

Curbside

For some reason I can’t recall the meetings we had right before curbside it was a blur. We tried curbside for two weeks. I walked to every car I could keeping safe distance and thanked every single person for their support. LTO was the heavy hitter with curbside of course due to it’s menu. It was a positive punch in the arm to see the cars lined down the building from friends and customers to show their support. We’d run with a skeleton staff, developed online order apps and served everyone their food like a McDonald’s with no drive thru window. I reduced and rewrote all three concept’s menus overnight, pushed to get them to our graphics artist and have the menus posted before service. Southern’s was the toughest. We were doing take out meat and twos and family meals and every time we’d get low on something I’d have to change the menu again. This restaurant was not built to survive on takeout food. The whole basis for southern was ambiance, music, energy and of course the food. To be served to you not in a fucking cardboard box and consumed with plastic forks and knives. Habitap’s curbside was essentially non existent. Our staff were mostly salaried managers. Southern was my GM, myself and my sous. I’d come in at 7am. Rewrite three menus, email them to everyone, set up prep and line at Southern, cook, serve, wash dishes and close. For 14 straight days. Running next door to LTO to help and driving to Habitap between shifts at Southern. Overall curbside was a joke. It’s like movie theaters shutting down the theater part and trying to serve popcorn and icees to survive. It’s not even a bandaid over a bullet wound it’s more like using masking tape to reattach a severed head. Southern went from 400 covers for Sunday brunch to 15 take out boxes. 50% of those from friends just trying to support a hopeless cause. We were drowning and drowning fast. It’s hard to put in words what it’s like to not have control over the business you created. To have politicians cast your business aside for “the good of man”. There’s no amount of PPP that can mend your restaurant business once it’s forced to close down. Restaurants operate and strive on solid cadence, return customers and exposure. The media was portraying restaurants and bars as breeding grounds for covid. As covid continued to grow and infect, the service industry was taking the brunt of the cause of spread of infection. I’d watch on the news as networks would show diagrams of restaurant HVACs and how coughing and sneezing mucus particles could work their way through the duct work and infect other tables if they were to dine inside. Literally drawing lines from one table to the next as to where germs and bacteria will drop right on top of your chicken tenders. I even remember one write up stating you would more likely to catch covid in a restaurant than any other place. This included planes.. . All the while across the road 200 yards from me I could see over 300 cars in the Home Depot parking lot from everyone preparing to do some TLC on their homes during the shutdown. I had a very difficult time processing this as my businesses were flailing. I was tempted on several occasions to take some tables up to Home Depot and Lowes and serve my food there since covid and wasn’t an issue in home improvement stores. Every single day when I’d walk out to serve a customer a $15 box of meat and twos I’d take a look across the street and watch my neighbor’s business surge while mine dropped by 90%. My anger and frustration at that time was indescribable and very unhealthy.

My Km at Southern on the last day of March came in to work with a slight cough that continued to get worse through the day. After hearing a coughing fit from him on the line I asked him to leave and get a covid test and I shut the kitchen down. If he had covid chances are I would too and if I had it then everyone working could be exposed due to me traveling to each restaurant. He called the next day to let me know both he and his girlfriend had it. I on the other hand didn’t catch it nor did anyone else at the time but it was decided to close all the restaurants temporarily just to be safe. I’ve been apart of some restaurant closings over my 3 decades of service industry but this was unique and quite different due to the circumstances. I’ve never temporarily closed one down with no timeline as to when to open it back up.

Most of your product is disposable. The last thing you want to do is throw away $4k worth of product. Can goods are safe as are most dry goods but what do you do with all your proteins, produce, sauces, dressings etc? We didn’t use walk-in freezers in my restaurants. Hell the only reason southern had a freezer was to keep tater tots in it. After we closed I shoved 4k worth of proteins in the reach-in freezers in all three restaurants (Habitap actually had a walk-in freezer) and filled up grocery bags with produce and other foods that wouldn’t fit to give out to all the staff. I had some wonderful folk Venmo me to support my closing businesses so I would stuff money in envelopes and stick them in the grocery bags for the employees. My staff were my family and I didn’t know any other way of taking care of them at the time. I locked down all the restaurants. Locked up the coolers and unplugged everything. I had zero clue as to what we were going to do next.

So.. I went home. For the first time since I bought my house in December of 2009 I went home without any idea as to when I should go back to work. I sat down on my side of the sofa, opened up a bottle of vodka and drank the whole fucking thing.

The following day I couldn’t tell if I had covid or a massive hangover. It turned out to be only a hangover but I spent the whole day after shutdown on my sofa lying there just staring at the ceiling and feeling the biggest sorry I’ve ever felt for myself. I didn’t check my emails, texts, social media I just laid there. I remember cursing at myself for destroying my body during a time when I needed to be at my healthiest. At this time, like the rest of the world, I was still scared of covid. More so because I was worried for my family. All three of us semi-huddled in our home leary of the mailman giving us covid germs or Amazon packages coming in to infest our home with the Wuhan boogie woogie flu. I had to admit, this being my first pandemic I had no clue what to do with myself much less any of my restaurants.

For the first week or so I maintained communication with my company via text and email. I would physically check-in to all the restaurants to make sure the walk-ins and freezers didn’t trip during the night. I would inspect all the doors to make sure everything was secure. I began to rewrite all the menus and the undesirable data entry for food costs and then head home. During that time the work I made for myself usually ended around noon and I’d go home to my family. The weather, despite the scare of the pandemic was enjoyable so I would set up a sprinkler for my daughter and sit outside and watch her play. My wife and I would sit in our camping chairs, chat, read and relax. Later we would grill out and play card games and video games. I spent some of my newly inherited free time fixing issues in my house that I had been unable to tend to over the last decade. Painting cabinets, wall repair, pulling weeds, loose tiles etc. The house had been falling apart for years from neglect. What was and shouldve been my sanctuary was more like a construction zone at all times. I’m ashamed at how far I let my house go. I also used the downtime to paint recreationally and actually sold some paintings for cash to help pay some of our bills. I hadn’t touched a paintbrush since I opened Southern a decade ago. At night my family and I would build a fire in the backyard and sit outside my truck camper and watch the sunset. In the mornings I’d make breakfast, ride my bike, do some data entry at LTO and work on the menus again. By this time all three restaurants were completely closed and most of my communication with my partners were sporadic emails. I had zero interest in physical meetings, my partner was in poor health and I still did not trust the media reports so my family stayed in our little bubble for that whole month of April. And in that month we slowly began to become a family of three again. Oh and a dog and cat.

Family, unfortunately is something that easily gets taken for granted. I scored high on all the daddy checklists – birthday parties, doctor check ups, softball and soccer games, vacations. I have pics of me in all of these events but I wasn’t ever really there. Not mentally. I was answering calls/texts from work. I was responding to emails or someone’s review. I was checking social media to see if anyone was engaging with our event or hoping we knock it out of the park tonight so we can cover payroll. I honestly couldn’t tell you anything about my daughter’s birthday parties except for when she blew out the candles. Any events or holidays that involved family bonding usually meant going to work at dawn and leaving at dusk. I had worked every Mother’s Day since I was 21 and even during the pandemic spent my whole Mother’s Day detailing Southern’s kitchen and the only Father’s Day I had taken off was for vacation in which I was bombarded with phone calls from prime rib getting 86’d by noon. Thanksgiving was celebrated by cooking for friends who had no family, Christmas Day I would be so exhausted from holiday parties and high volume that I would spend the whole day lying on the sofa. This isn’t to register a sob story. This was the norm and I rarely even blinked over it. It’s part of the sacrifice of working in the service industry. It’s just the fucking norm. I was programmed to accept it as such. Most holidays you don’t have free time to celebrate in this line of work. You aren’t given that luxury. It is the fucking way.

If you ask my wife she’ll be the first to tell you I’m a creature of habit and scheduling. I have my normal daily routine just like everyone else the only difference is if I strayed from it my anxiety would go through the roof. If I wake up 15 minutes late I feel my whole day is fucked or at least for the first few hours until I am able to adjust. From my first cup of coffee, workout, breakfast, shower and then my prep routine for work would always have to be completed in a certain order. My truck orders, scheduling were all done exactly the same time. I won’t say I was the most organized (my employees would laugh at me and tell you I’m full of shit) but my routine made it look that way. I was an overworked robot, programmed like a fucking microwave. Hit a button and watch me cook and perform as fast as I can. In the industry there’s only one pace and if you fall behind you’re essentially fucked until the shift is over. Sometimes that fucking can carry over into the next shift or the following day. In the back of the house, as cliche as it sounds you do consume half eaten meals over trash cans. You take 20 second puff breaks, extinguish the cherry and stick the used cigarette back in its pack for the next chance to smoke. Or run in the back to respond to 20 texts that you couldn’t answer during dinner rush. You’d do this shit for 14 hours straight. Then you leave, go sit in your favorite barstool and drink at the same pace because you had to do it all again in 8 hours. I lived this life for 3 decades. It was my daily routine. It was slowly killing me but I was too busy to notice or too brainwashed to care.

But.. thanks to a germ from half a world away, my 30 year routine of shit, shower, shave and serve had been interrupted. And boy did it fuck me up.

There was no defining moment that I can recall that pushed me away from my vocation. It was indeed a perfect storm. I have been asked if I would still be with my old company had Covid not come around and shook my whole world and I’m not 100% sure I still would be. My relationship with my partner had become volatile over the past few months but for the most part we still got along. I loved my company and what we created. I was working at a pace that became more and more difficult to keep up with but I still managed. I loved our staff they were my family. But, I was getting frustrated with butting heads over my creativity and direction the restaurants were going. There had been several conversations with my partner over my social media being too volatile. Yes I know I can be abrasive at times through mostly sarcasm and wit and I know I’m outspoken but truth be told I created that online persona to engage and create content for my businesses. My social media was engaging and maybe a little too much for a conservative Christian over 65. But it fucking worked and still does to this day. (This subject will be brought up again soon). I would have monthly meetings and one on ones with my partner discussing misinterpreted Facebook posts. Examples – I had jokingly made a remark that maybe crack wasn’t so wack after all and later that week had a meeting with my partner discussing my drug use.. Our photographer had taken a pic of me holding a knife in one hand and a chicken in the other. I had posted it and it had become an engaging post. Nothing negative at all but the following week I was asked to take it down. Apparently one of my partner’s friends had found it offensive and cruel. Let’s ignore the fact that I was frying 160lbs of chicken a week.. I refused to take it down but there were other defining posts that I removed just for the sake of having a quiet afternoon to myself. I can recall a 30 minute one on one during the lockdown about my social media and being compared to one of the owners of Home Depot. “He’s a billionaire and he doesn’t post anything on social media.” “He’s a first class business man that keeps his private life to himself.” That man being Bernie Marcus, a mega donor to the Trump presidential campaign and is also quoted as saying that people are “too fat, too lazy and too stupid to work.” As far as his political beliefs or standards I could care less but yo.. find a better example of a human being. He doesn’t post too much on social media probably because he was over 80 when it was created.. Also I was told.. now brace yourself “I cuss too much”. These small sporadic accusations were minimal for the most part but over a few years they tend to build up. Yes my relationship with them absolutely had bearing on my departure. That said I’m sure they could give an earful of my shortcomings and difficulties of working with me from their perspective as well. I do not try to portray myself as a victim or as the black sheep. Partnerships just like marriages can go to shit. And that’s just what ours did. Covid was just the accelerator.

Back to work

My communication with my partners for the whole month of April was minimal. It was comprised of mostly emails and after convo at the end of the day I would respond with “if I am needed for anything let me know otherwise I’ll be in the restaurants or at home” I ended every correspondence like this because to be honest I was lost. I would walk around the restaurants with my hands in my pockets looking around trying to find that secret sauce/formula to put these places back on track when we reopened. If we even could. Ever since I was a GM for Arizona I always had the security of knowing if the shit hit the fan I’m the mother fucker to call to fix it. I was cocky. Beyond cocky. I’d always had the ability to overcome whatever that was thrown at me in this industry. If my kitchen line crashed I could get them back on track. Food cost way out of line? I fixed it. Staffing? I’d find someone (except for dishwashers) menu underperforming? I got you. My previous job before we opened Southern was regional manager for my old company of 16 years. If I showed up to your restaurant with a suitcase chances are someone was getting fired. I loved it. Being that guy that could fix anything restaurant related. I thought I was unstoppable. I couldn’t beat covid though. Hell I couldn’t even get it in a headlock. I felt like someone punched me in the gut and walked away leaving my ass to gasp for air. I felt defeated while my company looked at me to fix it all. I had no answers and avoided any physical meetings my company were trying to schedule during that time. When I finally showed my face back at “headquarters” at the end of April my relationship with my partners would already be heading to the point of no return.

They were frustrated and for the most part I can’t blame them. No I didn’t pop into the offices for a month to see how everyone was doing but I did work inside the restaurants everyday. Either to maintain inventory and check stock, work on menus and I even tried my hand at baking to keep my mind in work. Then once again I’d go home early to my family, cook out, play games and watch my daughter grow as much as 10 years in one month. Everyday I went into those restaurants while we were closed I yearned to go back home and see my family. I had sacrificed 9 years of my existence building a empire to feed my family, to give us a sense of honest, hard working security. Three restaurants was just the beginning for me. I wanted 20 plus. I wanted my company to be a household name. I wanted to kick the shit out of the restaurant industry and be king of the fucking hill. No one works that hard all the while thinking “I sure hope a global pandemic doesn’t come through town, shut us down and fuck me in the nose”. I never went to culinary school but I’m pretty sure they don’t teach you how to run a restaurant during a pandemic. I was frustrated and angry. I was beyond angry. I’ll save my opinions on the mandates and shutdowns for a rainy day but it didn’t take an economics expert to see that we were all being set up to fail. Not in a conspiratorial sense. We can set aside all that shit just to point out the facts. Restaurants have very slim margins. Usually your profit line is around 3-6%. One shitty weekend can fuck your whole month. Imagine what a whole month of daily fuck yous can do. To allow restaurants to only do curbside food is ludicrous. The government’s next best solution was ok you can open but only 25% of your dining room can be occupied. Also the bureaucrats are going to hand down several new rules for all restaurants to follow. To add insult to injury operational costs were about to go through the roof. Commodities were rising, some prices doubling even tripling. Once upon a time you could get a case of nylon gloves for $25. They went up to $110 a case. One of the new rules and regulations were everyone had to wear these. Cooking and serving. Touch something with them? Gotta change them out. Each restaurant was purchasing 5 plus cases a week. A WEEK. That’s $2k a month just for gloves. That’s a busy day of curbside sales to put into perspective. Also boxes of masks for every hostess stand and employees. Fry oil doubled, chicken and beef skyrocketed. Even fucking bleach tripled if you could even find any at the time. One of my favorites was enforcing mask mandates to customers which was like playing pin the tail on a feral hog. Customers would literally try to fight a 16 year old hostess for asking them to wear a mask. I had to walk one ornery asshole outside to let him know that a mask was the least of his worries if he didn’t remove his finger from a hostess’s face. Of course we all had to wear them. We’d all wear our masks in 110 degree kitchens sweating all over each other and then get off of work, take our masks off and sit together drinking at the bar. Couldn’t serve alcohol at the time we had to do something with it.. Our restaurants were rapidly sinking in deep horseshit. My empire had become a dangling carrot on a stick, shoved up a politician’s ass driving away in a Porsche and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

My first step back into my office was early May. I was met by one of my partners who wanted to talk to me before I went to work. She wanted to notify me that they wanted to eliminate my wife’s position in the company. My wife was in charge of all social media outlets and event planning. It wasn’t my ideal plan to have my wife work for the company from the beginning due to the fact that if there ever a financial situation and cuts had to be made I would be the one firing my own wife. My partner on the other hand was adamant to have her. “We need someone with a ventured interest in our company to do our social media” which I agreed 100% just not someone that I live with.. They had decided to go with a branding firm to do our social media (something that I was always against due to previous experience with other branding companies) and since we couldn’t have events anymore there was no need for an event coordinator in our company. This decision and change in our social media was definitely a petty reaction reaction to my absence in meetings amongst a few other things but even though I recognized it as such I let it go because I felt that I had brought that part on myself. Going home to let your wife know she’s terminated from your company is not a good way to start off your week. it’s a part of business. I get it. Shit happens but the timing could’ve been better. Next up was a 48 page shiny and new employee handbook written straight from another successful company in Chicago. My company was really proud of this handbook and I let them soak in it seeing as I didn’t have anything to do with it’s creation. I didn’t even open it up to read it until they had everyone go over it in Habitap’s orientation. I’ll get to that shortly.

The first restaurant we decided to open back up was Habitap. It made complete sense. Habitap had the largest dining room and outdoor space and with counter service dining some things had to be addressed. Counter service wasn’t working and now with people having to stand 6 plus feet away from each other the line to the counter could get frustratingly long. We decided to go full service but had to tweak the concept. I went with a four food truck concept to segment our menu into four separate food truck concepts. Habitap needed a good pick me up and this concept seemed original and unique. Brunch I would change away from biscuit theme to full service to give it a second shot at taking on Southern when the opportunity showed itself. I would go into Habitap at 6am and work on prep, menu specs and recipes. I found myself trying to hurry because all the while I missed being home. A new habit was forming of spending more time with my family at home. Also the thought of going back to working 14 hour shifts started to wear on me immediately the first week I was back. I rearranged the kitchen, finalized my menu and started our tastings. Once again I was back to where I started the month before. I’d go into work, set up the kitchen, cook a page off the menu for everyone to see, smell, touch, taste and then clean up, wash dishes and lock up. I did this for about 2 straight weeks. I’d go home exhausted, open up a bottle of vodka and drift off. Get up and do it all again. The only difference was my exhaustion was waiting for me the next day. It didn’t matter how well I slept or how much rest I got the night before I would wake up dog-tired. There was zero passion in my work. I started to dread going in. I notched it up to being away from physical labor for a month and I would get back into the groove soon. I had to. Too many people were fucking counting on me and we had to get the proverbial ball rolling. Rewriting the Habitap menu took a lot out of me for some reason. It wasn’t a hard menu and easy to pickup on the line. My creativity was at a career low. I would stare at recipe books and restaurant menus for hours and draw a blank. Yes you cxn have writer’s block when writing menus and it’s frustrating. I found myself creating shortcuts on recipes because I didn’t want to deal with the headaches of the morning prep guys fucking up product. I just wanted to finish my work and go home..

The whole plan going forward post covid was to open up Habitap first, followed by LTO and then Southern Culture. I had finalized the menu for Habitap and we had already brought in a number of our staff off of furlough to retrain and reopen in the next week. It was time for re-orientation and the unveiling of the new and improved employee handbook. Page by page the handbook was introduced and I sort of listened with my feet propped up in a barstool until they got to the part about social media representation. In the meeting with 25 plus employees it was determined a good idea to bring up a social media confrontation that involved my wife or as they stated it “wife of one of the business partners” which seemed a little ridiculous considering the other business partner’s wife was the one leading the orientation. In this conversation (I was told nothing about it) it was brought up that one of my wife’s political stances had almost caused a viral post. This was quite the hyberbole statement considering it involved one person who was no longer a friend of my wife and while it was something worth mentioning to me and only me they chose to air it out to all of the staff instead. I of course took this very personal. I had some words with my partner behind closed doors and I’ll just say some things were said that can’t be taken back. To add more salt to the wound I finally looked over and read the handbook. Things were added to directly silence my social media. Such as – no one can post anything affiliated with any of the restaurants without the CEO’s permission, my partner’s wife being the “CEO”. No podcasts without consent of the CEO, no branding and no pics of the food etc. it seemed I had struck a nerve with my posts and this was their way of trying to shut me down. And it worked. I didn’t sign that ridiculous phonebook of plagiarism but I didn’t post shit. I didn’t say shit. We opened up Habitap and watched the dozen people run through our doors

LTO opened without a hitch. We didn’t do much to change LTO other than trying smash burgers to speed up lunch tickets. We had the same orientation speal and I stayed close by just in case the subject of my wife was brought up again but it was not this time. As far as my relationship goes with my staff the LTO staff and I were closer than the others. No particular reason other than I spent a great deal of time there and the turnover there was low so I got to see the same faces everyday. That and they were just a great staff to work with. The animosity of the previous meeting had quieted a bit and I was excited to get LTO back on track. I want to say we reopened LTO July 1st but it’s a little blurry and all of LTOs social media has been erased from existence so I can’t backtrack. And well I wasn’t suppose to post anything so I can’t go back and see either.. LTO opened to the applaud of about 10 people and the first week or two was a ghost town. I started reaching out to my friends that lto was reopened and they of course had no idea since the only media about it was through our newly acquired Radical branding company. Business algorithms can be hit or miss which is why I had always encouraged my staff to post about the restaurants but I was recently told that I don’t get social media by someone who didn’t even know how to post a profile pic on IG. I felt slightly rejuvenated after LTO opened and swallowed my pride for the “better” of the restaurants and tried to put aside my frustration. I was back to working my regularly scheduled routine and only had one more place to reopen.

I was itching to get Southern back open. It had been closed 4 months and I was worried it was slipping out of people’s minds. The thing with restaurants is your customers can forget about you real quick. People can/will find new places to eat, maybe somewhere closer to home, or you got a new job and there’s this place that you drove by that you want to check out. Or you started a new diet and this place has one salad you can eat. There’s a dozen different scenarios but the main one being if you close your doors for too long someone can and will steal your customers right under your nose. It’s part of the industry life and I was scared for southern to fall under that umbrella. We as a company we’re being methodical. Maybe a tad too much but I was never known for my patience. Before we took all of Southern’s employees off of furlough I walked through the restaurant and did a quality check on all the equipment. Southern had been open for almost 7 years and most of the equipment we bought to open the restaurant had been purchased used all over the upstate to keep us within our financial budget. As I started to plug in, turn on and relight everything the equipment wasn’t having it. Ice machine? Done. Water heater? Nope. Three of the five coolers on the line were dead and one fryer decided it was done too. Roughly $25000 worth of equipment needed to be replaced. This equipment had been going nonstop since we opened in 2012 and once it stopped to take a break it couldn’t start back up again. The irony was not lost on me. The equipment and I were in the same fucking boat. We were one in the same.

We had tweaked Southern’s theme to go back to its roots with more of a Nashville vibe. We would try to recapture the bluegrass vibe that was initiated back in 2012. Southern had slightly lost its identity as a fun bluegrass, fun food with great music vibe and had been replaced with themes of wine tastings, white table cloths and elevated proteins. Not quite that tweezer food shit but one inch too close to “elegant” which if anyone knows me I don’t do fucking elegant. I changed Southern’s menu to fun Nashville style cousine with traces of New Orleans and man it was hard for me. Not the idea but the actual application. I couldn’t focus on my recipes or plate presentation. Even something as simple as she crab soup that I had made numerous times got thrown in the garbage on several occasions because to me it looked like gravy. My focus was shit and it felt like I’d lost my palate. Of all the restaurants I needed Southern to flourish. She was my first born. If she could get back on track then so could I.. During this time we had to make some difficult decisions. We brought our managers all back but at a discounted price until we went back to 100% occupancy. We let go of two KMs and took away some responsibilities to use the others more as linecooks due to shortages. I took over the orders of all three restaurants, scheduling and essentially supervising of all the kitchens all the while still doing my regular responsibilities which ranged from operations, data input, washing dishes and filling in voids of short staffing in all three. I was back to my normal 6 day work week and on my day off it was usually time for another meeting. Each day I found myself even more exhausted than the day before. I would go home after work, eat and drink myself to sleep. There were no more cookouts, game playing or nights outside by the fire. The sprinkler my daughter was dancing on two months ago was grown over with grass that needed to be cut. In front of the house that was slowly falling apart again. I missed my home again already. I missed my family. I found I was distancing myself from my partners more and more. There was still some bad blood post covid and we sort of danced around each other for the next couple of months.

My burnout started to peak in August. Southern was open, brunch was solid but we were still treading on thin ice. It just wasn’t the same. Everyone was back but it didn’t feel the same. Not for me. I didn’t tell anyone but my passion was quickly pissing away. Weekly specials would exhaust me, meetings were redundant and tiresome and photo shoots with our branding company frustrated me. At one point in my 5th take of tossing tater tots in a stainless bowl while slowly seasoning them for a content video I finally told the photographer that I would bash him over the skull if he didn’t get his camera off my kitchen line. That would be the last video of me ever taken at Southern Culture.

I can’t pinpoint an exact day but I started suffering from some major anxiety and panic attacks. I would stand at my prep table staring over a bag of fucking stone ground grits (that went up 22% most likely) and start sweating. My hands would begin to shake (they never had before) I would literally feel my feet go cold. For a solid 2 minutes I would try to compose myself. I’d stare down at that bag of Adluh mills grits and have no clue as to what I was doing. Like I forgot how to make grits. I’d do this sporadically with other recipes. I would zone out and forget things. I did this with orders too. I would make simple recipes and fuck them up. Luckily I prepped alone most days and no one would see my body and mind malfunctioning. I could feel me rapidly losing my self confidence. I started to doubt my dishes even when others would say they were fine. My partner had randomly dumped a private euphoria dinner with co chef in my lap for September and I wasn’t fucking ready.

Growing up I was a huge Atlanta Braves fan. From watching them on TBS in the 80’s to World Series contenders in all the 90s I would watch them every chance I had. One game that always stuck out to me was gsme 4 of the 1996 World Series when Jim Leyritz hit a three run homer of of Mark Wohlers in the bottom of the 8th that turned the series around in the Yankees favor and they went on to win the World Series. That one home run got into Wohlers head and he was never the same pitcher again. I had often wondered what type of trauma could do that to a person on any other level. Here I was experiencing it in my own environment. My self confidence was gone. My ability to lead was quickly dissolving with it. Covid was Leyritz knocking that fucking ball over my head. I didn’t know my career was about to end but I could feel it sliding out of my fingertips.

I cannot tell you much about the month of September of 2020. It may have been the alcohol, the anxiety or just my mundane thoughts at the time but I only had a few weeks left with my company. Words were scarce between my partner and I. We did make an attempt at patching things up. We had a long talk and aired out some frustrations and it went well but after about a week we were avoiding each other again. As I had stated earlier some things had been said and done that just wouldn’t go away. It didn’t help things that my mind was slowly cuckoo from the build up of anger from mandates, profit loss and just the knowledge of knowing regardless of the outcome the restaurant industry will never be the same. Throw in this ridiculous anxiety that had taken over and I was slowly fading in my vocation.

Enter Euphoria 2020. I don’t want to say that something as Greenville ish as Euphoria took my ass out but it probably set me up for the knockout. The dinner I was sharing with another talented chef was 6 courses. With the amuse bouche, apps, soups, dinner, desserts and all that other shit. We had around 2 weeks to prepare and for those 2 weeks I hardly slept. My anxiety was out of control. I couldn’t focus on a game plan and could not get out of my head that I would fuck this whole dinner up from here to Tuesday. My menu was safe and easy which pissed me off even more because I could’ve done better. I can’t tell you much of what I cooked again that month is a blur to me. I know it involved wild boar meatloaf with maybe a homemade deviled ham cracker for the bouche but that’s about it. The very next day was an Euphoria brunch at Habitap. I cannot recall one single item from that menu either. Both of those events had me exhausted. Maybe I was burned out creatively from it? Maybe I was exhausted physically from doing both at the same time I can’t give you an accurate answer. All I can tell you is I didn’t want to cook anymore. More like I was too frightened to cook. The thought of walking on that line and leading my kitchen gave me chills. Not the good kind. I could feel my hands shaking in my pockets. I was embarrassed. I had a show to do and all I wanted to do was hide in the back. I wanted to cry. I was imagining all our timing getting fucked, food coming out cold or underwhelming. Kitchen staff falling apart. I used to live for this shit and now I could barely hold a pair of tongs in my hand. That night and the following morning went without a hitch. I had planned a week long trip to Maine after euphoria. I was going to leave right after brunch service at Habitap. My partners were all pleased with how euphoria went and spoke to me at length at how happy they were with things. In the back of our minds we both knew in just over a week we wouldn’t be partners anymore.

Maine was/is beautiful. I spent a week living literally out of the back of my truck. I had my very first real lobster roll, I hiked some of the most pristine mountains in the Whites, biked around Acadia and Bar harbor and totally fan boyed at Stephen King’s house in Bangor. I had no anxieties, I was relaxed and decompressing. This was my first real road trip in my camper. The downside of restaurant ownership is vacation time is few and far between. I didn’t want the regular beach week, sipping on margaritas in the sand. My body craved travel and adventure. I’d done some overnight camping in North Carolina but not the whole week. I felt different. Free from all the stress that accumulated over the last several years. Physically I was in good shape but mentally I had been falling apart for the last several months. That one week change my perspective. I went fucking Walden overnight. It was almost like a vacationing lobotomy for me. I could almost feel the anxiety dripping out of me. I did check sales of the restaurants all week and checked in with the GMs unbeknownst to me for the last time. I would sit on my tailgate, wrap myself up in a blanket and watch the sunset over the harbor. And I would smile. Big fucking goofy grin smiles. I would think about my family, all those hours we spent together during the shutdowns and I would miss them even more. In my mind I had accepted to going back to the norm after all the reopeninz and I was finding this path unacceptable and unbearable now. I had the taste of a non-tumultuous family life for the first time in a decade and I needed more of this. Not next year or once a year. I was rapidly approaching my 50s and realized my life had mostly been measured in steak temps and puddin’. My body, my mind needed healing. It didn’t need a vacation it needed a lifecation. No amount of time off was going to fix this ailment. I had dedicated all of my adult life to trying to build an empire. To be that number one restauranteur in this whole goddam world only to see it controlled and shit on by one little germ. My meaning in life had turned into something minuscule. Was it fate? Coincidence? Or just a blind leap of faith I don’t know but sitting on that tailgate I knew my days as a restaurant owner were numbered. I could go back home and dive right into the thick of chaos again but just like Waylon once said “we ain’t living long like this” I had a feeling my life was about to change forever. Here’s the thing that took me a few years out of the restaurants to come to terms with myself. This industry had turned me into a terrible version of myself. I had become an insufferable, alcoholic egomaniac. I wore my bar ownership like a badge. I loved the recognition that came with it. Getting those best chef accolades got my blood going. Everyone knowing my name and face downtown if I could fit my head through the door. I was so cocky at times I would wonder how ignorant a customer must be to not like one of my dishes. I would call out other restaurants for stealing my ideas. I had lost my humility years ago and when it came back it was like a smack in the face from my mother. Man I hated the person I had become. He needed to go away.

I came home on a Monday. I was unemployed by Tuesday.

The conversation I had between closed doors with my partner will remain behind those doors. It wasn’t heated, no harsh words were exchanged and we even had our first handshake post covid. We were both done with each other as far as partners go. I had manage to build up quite the reason for exiting. I remember taking off each key off my key ring slowly, one by one, all nine of them with a resounding thud and immediately feeling like I just shrugged a 90lb backpack off of my shoulders. We made small talk about staying in touch and such but we never did. I walked out of the office and never looked back.

Post thoughts. I’ll keep this brief because I’m going to write down some feelings and points about post industry PTSD that is fucking real. Do I miss it? My ego does and it reminds me on a daily basis that I should go back and do it again. Anytime I see a vacant building ideal for a restaurant my hands begin to sweat but at least they don’t shake anymore. I do miss feeding people. I know I still do but it’s not remotely the same since I’m only preparing it and not cooking. I really miss my employees and the comradery. I probably miss that the most. The free booze when I was drinking was a great benefit too. Even if it almost did kill me on a number of occasions. Will I ever open up another place? Only time can tell but I must say the longer I’m out of it the harder it is to imagine myself doing it again. My lifestyle has changed, some of my old habits have been left behind and if straying away from this business is the cause for all of that then it just makes sense to stay the fuck away. My mental health sure as hell appreciates it and most importantly my family does to.

Until the next story 🤟🏼