Bearded Gang

Where does your creativity come from? Do you have to be inspired? Or can you set your mind and go forward with tasks that require creativity? What nourishes it? Pumps it? Stirs it?

I was sitting in Graze the other day with a notebook in my hand, blank page staring back at me. Waiting on the gas company to hook me up. I thought this would be a good time to relax and jot down some menu notes and wrap my head around a menu. For an hour I sat there cross legged on an uncomfortable sofa staring at the walls. Zero jots were jotted.

I’ve had menu writing cramps before but this has been the biggest one. All the restaurants I’ve opened I’ve hit some lulls were it took a while to get my flow. Not so much with Southern I was bursting at the seems with ideas at that time. It was my first novel. She got all my love. Dive was the same. I had so many ideas that I ended up with a ridiculously large menu. I’d have to shave it down every month to shrink it to it’s greatest hits. It didn’t stick around long enough to matter.

Lto wasn’t hard for me. It was a burger bar you aren’t exactly reinventing the wheel. I always wanted a burger bar so I had a half dozen menus already written out. The vegan part wasn’t so easy. I went vegan for 4 months to absorb the culture and palate. It was challenging but I did learn a few things mostly how to make veggies taste like meat. I ended it with a bacon cheeseburger to celebrate,

Habitap was a real menu block and it never hatched. This is not a knock on hab either even their last menu was stil 70% me and it always made me cringe. I didn’t like that menu nor the concept. Again this isn’t a knock. I created the concept for fuck sake so if I’m knocking it’s all on me.

When we had to close and reopen all the restaurants during Covid it was put on my shoulders to reinvent all three restaurants simultaneously. That pretty much did me in and washed away my creativity. My passion was already struggling and that was the knock out blow. It was tough.

My last week in my company was right after co authoring a 7 course menu for Euphoria at southern for dinner and then another multiple course brunch at Habitap the following day. It just got too much for me. I was close to plagiarism and putting my name on menu ideas. There’s quite a few of those folk around here. I’ve always refuse to be or at least try not to be that individual. After that brunch I left for Maine for a week and I never stepped foot in my kitchens again.

I know I talk shit about it but I have nothing against Euphoria. It’s great for the city and some restaurants really showcase themselves during this time. I just had enough at that time of being my companies wind up lackey.

Chadcuterie menu I wrote in about 15 minutes out of desperation. I had zero focus on the menu itself I was more concerned about the production and presentation of the boxes. I didn’t absorb myself in deep research of artisanal meats and cheeses. I watched TikTok videos until they made sense in my head and then went “blast off” into the local market.

Listen. Take it from me. Don’t ever do that shit. I came out alright but slinging and winging charcuterie is not a good idea.

If you look at my menus you can tell they are still shallow, quick and lack any of my quips. 3.5 years later it’s the same menu. I’ve moved a few things around and shortened it but it hasn’t evolved. I could probably leave three boxes on there and not feel much of a shift.

My brat and dog menu for the trailer took about three weeks until I nailed my ass to my notebook and forced a menu. It turned out ok but I’d still give it a 5 on a 10 scale.

Currently, I wake up sometimes at 3 am with the first thought in my head is “you don’t have a fucking menu”.

Not one. I’ve got a hundred phone notes scribbled in between shopping lists, to do lists, haiku’s and some really bad poetry. No menu direction.

Yeah I know it’s a deli. Sort of. Again I hesitate in focusing on that word because if you walk into my place there will be no Katz vibes or any Groucho, Publix Greenfields. I’m calling it a deli so Greenville at least has a basis. I’m selling deli style market food with a big emphasis on charcuterie and catering. You won’t be standing in front of a sneeze guard asking for extra black olives on your sub. And at the same time hell you just might. See what I mean?

I ordered bread samples just yesterday.

Creativity comes at me when it decides to. I could be hiking up a mountain and it’ll hit me and I’ll type in 20 ideas on my phone while I’m tripping over rocks and roots. Can’t ignore them, I take em when they show up. Morning walks help and I’ll do the same and occasionally walk right into a mailbox. Bruises to get the juices flowing. Sometimes while I’m driving I could write an entire concept.

The buildout sucked out a lot of my creativity for now. If you could measure it like a phone battery I’m in the red right now. I had this gal set to open July 1. We all know that ain’t gonna happen.

Am I worried or anxious? A tad but I’m not standing on a ledge. I think it’ll come to me once I can push aside all the construction and buildout projects. It’s hard to multitask creativity. I realize I’m tired and dragging ass at the moment. This is the slow season for charcuterie or suppose to be. As I gear up to make 48 10×10 boxes today. I’ve been pushing a little too hard the last month and I feel the old body breaking a little. I keep telling myself in my head over and over “please just let me get this place rolling before any body parts decide to breakdown.”

Yes, I’m talking to you left knee and upper back.

Mentally I’m ok. I stopped looking at the approaching deadline and pushed it aside. I’ll open when I’m ready. That’s all there is to it. I’ve had to cut my shop time back because my back shuts me down. I smell like a YMCA locker room with all the Ben Gay aroma slathered on my knee and back. I’m not whining that bad yall just journaling it.

I’ve mentioned before I’m deliberately putting myself through this process because my body and mind needs to wake back up. It’s like training for a marathon. I’m definitely locked in on the deli I’m just dealing with multiple tasks at the moment.

Plumbing stopped for two days not sure what’s going on with that but it’s on par with all the other projects I had forecasted to be done this week. Wasted a trip to Spartanburg to grab a cooler and left empty handed. Father’s Day weekend and I’m leaning towards not working that day. I’m still headstrong on having these days to be spent with my family.

Next week I’ll have to put it in overdrive. I’m fine with that as long as the others I’ve tasked with projects step it up and do their thing. I’m weary of sweeping up their dust everyday. Physically and metaphorically.

I guess this could be considered a deli update so cheers to episode 21 ish.

I get frequent questions asking about my kitchen pedigree. My daughter used to ask me all the time where I learned to do certain things when she’d watch me cook.

Where it all started, who I worked under, training, inspiration.

“When did you become a chef?” Which I used to respond with “I’m not a chef”

Sure by definition I am a chef. To me it’s like calling someone a pilot because they had to land a plane to keep it from crashing into the side of a mountain.

I actually became adept in the kitchen in spite of myself. I had no urge or calling to work on the line in fact I’d wager to say it was the exact opposite. I hated working in the kitchen. When the km job at the Blockhouse was dumped in my lap I was as green as summer grass. I watched the line cooks and mimicked their motions, habits and procedures with no understanding of logic or purpose. So did most of the cooks working there for that matter. Sure I could grill a decent burger over charcoal, fry a fucking chicken tender and set a timer for a tray of bakers but that was all from previous observations of what the watching the line toil and observing some very bad habits at first. I could cook a meal for you but I never paid attention to as to why things were done a certain way.

I didn’t have any training under a chef or mentor I had literal fucking crackheads and line cooks who were as clueless as me. I learned by observation and curiosity. When I couldn’t locate a line cook at the Blockhouse I’d walk on the line and start my ticket. Grilling was easy as was the fry station. Servers made their own salads and desserts during lunch so I had been slowly acclimated into the system. Steak temps? I’d just eyeball the grill marks. As a km there I never created features or specials. Did even do a burger special there? Doubtful, I was too busy keeping the cooks from stealing cases of beer.

Other than some scratch made soups I watched Moe make I didn’t absorb much.

Didn’t care at the time. I was only doing my job. Rather poorly I might add.

But I became a solid line cook.

Steakhouse threw my ass on the line too. Didn’t like cooking there either. Small kitchen line, discombobulating actions, swinging dicks bumping into each other or going sideways in those narrow ass walk-ins. Expos barking ticket times along with microwaved black beans spilling out onto your face. I used to think microwaves were an integral part of the kitchen. We had three of them hoisted over the line going full blast all day long. It was a 90s thing I suppose y’all.

The damn heat from that grill. 5 ft of hickory wood blazing your face like you stared at the sun all morning. One day the hvac broke over the grill and never got repaired. Summertime your apron would smoke from the heat from the grill as all the grill bricks would slowly crumble over time. I held a thermometer in my hand one afternoon and it read 122°. I’d keep bar towels in the freezer to lay over my neck.

No passion in that kitchen for the first 10 years. I was a damn GM. Ain’t nobody got time for cooking. I walked around in pressed JC Penny slacks, starched button ups and dress shoes that I’d wipe clean with bev naps before talking to tables.

I did had procedures, food costs, recipes and specs hammered into my head like military training and during those 16 years I absorbed every inch of it. I ate that system up like it was bred into me. Once you get over the population of microwaves the AZ did fill me up with some solid administrative skills and a deep understanding of financials that grease the kitchen wheels. When the steakhouse was firing on all cylinders that kitchen produced some amazing food. I still remember all the specs

Shrimp tails down so not to burn

Crisp that chicken skin with diamonds before the flip and don’t fucking press it

Caramelize the ribs

I can still make that ridiculous sirloin marinade. The spinach and artichoke sauce is still my bechamel basis for cheese sauce.

The timing as to when I threw myself into the kitchen can be up for debate.

I hit my head fairly hard riding my bike and I went through a slurry of kms for about 2 years.

During that time my passion flipped. Maybe I was burned on getting my face melted by angry customers as opposed the hickory grill. I had to take the kitchen and run with it while being the operator. Kms were hard to find and I think I’d fired about half a dozen in a year so I started coming in early to do prep and set up the line. I took over the truck orders, reorganized all the prep sheets, par levels and procedures that had become outdated. I’d cook by myself on the line on slow days while prep got caught up or vice versa.

After about a year I absorbed myself into recipe books and write down daily feature ideas. I’d do weekly lunch specials that would eventually make up a quarter of the steakhouse menus. Happy hour specials, weekend features. The kitchen became my second home. If we were short handed I grabbed an apron and worked the line all night. If I were closing I’d jump on dish to help our dishwasher wrap up early so I could get my cocktail hour in before all the bars closed.

I was still very raw. The steakhouses were staunch on specs and procedures but it wasn’t chef driven. I could write a menu but I couldn’t orchestrate it the way it needed to be.

I could build a home but I wasn’t an architect.

When I became the regional guy I submerged myself into food. Food cost was outrageous so I broke down every menu item, every ingredient, every procedure, evaluated, reevaluated. I became a student to my passion. When I traveled I’d sit in Barnes on my downtime and grab a dozen recipe books, restaurant architecture, food and wine mags and I’d fill up notebooks with ideas, recipes and fusions of food. The more I studied and read the more all the moving kitchen parts started to make sense. Spices began to jump out and blend in my mind, kitchen layouts shifted. The last three years of my tenure at AZ I was full of useful data. I absorbed a full ass degree in food. This was my kitchen self earned MBA.

The steakhouses taught me logistics, procedures, finances and administration.

It also turned me into a solid butcher. I’ve carved more cows than 99.99% of the world’s population.

16 years worth

Went I broke up from the band and went solo I still had a lot to learn. Everything I knew I learned from the steakhouses and found it not to be applicable on all levels. When I opened Southern I still had three microwaves. All the steakhouses had three. I was just replicating what I had already learned. It took about a month before I removed two of them. We served our pudding warm so one was needed.

I could barely dice an onion. At the steakhouses we used dicers, slicers, buffalo choppers, robot coupes. They didn’t like free hand shit it was too inconsistent. I won’t even tell you how I cut my very first yellow onion by hand and by this time I was training Southern to open.

I had a good palate. I had some creative ideas and I could write a fun menu because I had been writing ideas down for years. I still lacked a lot of basic kitchen fundamentals but I hid my ignorance. I was blessed with some young souses that populated my kitchen line and I watched and learned. While I worked I had one eye on the talented guys. I absorbed their training. I didn’t ask questions because I was faking it until I made it. I’d go home and look up certain procedures to understand the process of what I observed. And like the steakhouses things clicked. I absorbed it all.

Once I adjusted to the volume and started studying my passion again and research. I’d spend hours on my laptop looking up restaurant concepts, menus and themes from Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Seattle and smaller cities. I wanted to know what everyone was eating, what was trending, plating, architecture, branding. I’d sit next to a pile of recipe books filling up more notebooks. I stayed a student I wanted Southern to be the best. This was my dissertation. Southern became my platform for creative expression. I took everything I learned and formed a team and forged a solid concept. None of the others came close in my opinion.

My knife skills, which have never been spectacular improved. I had good line skills but I couldn’t tell you the reason for using clarified butter until after my first year. I was a solid km. Not a chef.

Dive and Boar allowed me to submerge myself into another concept. I turned my studies into smoking proteins. Some new creativity outlets and a few more chefs to watch.

I spent 9 years honing my kitchen skills and research. Focusing on seasonal menus, local ingredients and side eyeing all that new trends that came and went. All the while seeking out new concepts to create. I got fairly decent at it all. I haven’t mastered anything. I’d say I’m very well rounded.

My old company I taught myself seasonal trends, better kitchen efficiency and understanding. Creativity and I pretty much peaked as a linecook. If I had any improvement on the line I’d say my egg skills definitely won’t from gray cloak to white cloak. I peaked here as far as physical exertion goes too.

Charcuterie has changed my approach a bit. Most of my research and studying didn’t put a focal point aesthetics. I’ve always been a big protein guy. Meat is the star under some starch and or veggies. Charcuterie made me slow down and focus on the plate itself. At first I felt like a chump because I was buying pre sliced shit and sticking it in a box. Don’t get me wrong I still do it to an extent but once I got comfortable and started making my own spreads, pickles and even crackers for a while it became more enjoyable. Charcuterie slowed my brain down to focus on plating. It made me see food differently not just as something to eat but as art. I bet I’d make a hell of a tweezer chef now.

My mind shifted from quantity to quality. It forced me to step out of my comfort zone.

A completely different approach to how I do food. And I’m solo now, no delegation I have to do it all. It can wear you down but at the same time it’s made me mentally tougher. I was losing it back there for awhile y’all. Losing it all. Last time I had a job that wasn’t F&B related was 1998 and I wanted to quit that job the minute I started it.

Do I consider myself a chef now? I’ve never wanted that title. I never allowed my staff to call me that. I used to pull for myself for the best in the upstate awards for best chef. I never won shit as a kid. They were fun to win and go to that little party they’d throw during my drinking days. The main reason is because my daughter will still bring it up and tell her friends. She’s proud of her father’s accomplishments. So yeah those two little awards that some think are paid for were a fun and big deal for me. I keep one somewhere in my laundry room. The other plaque never made it home due to my split with my company the last time I won one. Kinda won and lost at the same time that year. I was taking a nap when that one was announced.

About to add another chapter to my cooking book. Craft deli, cold cuts, better understanding of cheeses, new layouts for charcuterie, larger caterings, new concept, new approach to food.

It’s constant continual education. In this field you can become irrelevant real quick. I’ve been on the side of irrelevance. I tell the new kids all time to be humble because it can happen overnight. Even though I tire of that side I stil have to play that game. It’s a part of the system.

Selling tickets

If I had to sell myself on a resume to a complete stranger I think I could make a decent presentation. Culinary schools I don’t necessarily support for myself but had I’d gone it would’ve saved me a lot of bumps and bruises I got along the way. I learned through all my mistakes. It works just as well it just takes longer. Regardless of your training if you don’t have a good palette and instincts you won’t do as well as others. All I can think of was an old KM of mine that had a hell of a shiny resume and a terrible pork chop with cranberry glaze and smoked Cole slaw. That was his premier dish.

Shudders

I seek out several different camping options when I travel. If I’m driving long distance I usually pull over to one of the larger truck stops and jump in the back of my truck with a mattress pad and a light blanket and take about a 5 hour snooze in the parking lot. It doesn’t make for sound sleeping. Parking lots are usually lit, large semi diesel engines idling and hydraulics farting all night. Doors slamming shut every 3 seconds. I trade in comfort for a little safety. I’ve never been messed with in one of these stops. I did have some teenager or younger kid snoop around my truck outside of a late night Taco Bell in Texas. I stuck my head out of the back glass camper door with a hatchet in my hand and asked if he was lost. He walked away quickly. I’m not that worried about someone trying to break in my truck but if that worse case scenario should happen I can assure you I’m prepared. I have at least a half dozen accessories handy to dissuade anyone from opening my truck. I have also played out about 100 different scenarios in my head and the correct way to respond should it happen. Sometimes I sort of wish it would. Be interesting to see how I’d react.

My destinations are usually plotted with either public campgrounds, Dyrt, Hipcamp and my favorite dispersed camping. Public campgrounds (I’m in one currently in Glenville) have their advantages. Most have showers, restrooms, dump stations should you need one, and an office that may have access to firewood, ice and sundries. A solid campfire ring, picnic table and a level lot for your tent, camper or RV. They also have observed quiet times usually from 10pm-6am which I can appreciate. I get mildly violent if you fuck with my sleep. The cons are obvious. If it’s a holiday the campgrounds are packed, they’re loud, you have neighbors 20 feet away from you. Also for some reason campgrounds host a lot of barking dogs. Add on the fee of camping that has gone up quite a bit over the last 3 years. A site on Huntington Beach for a tent can cost you $50 a night. Others like up here in Glenville I get the same amenities for $22. I can part with a $20 and a deuce. Most expensive would be the one in that valley of Sedona. $89 a night in March. Favorite would be the jeckyll island campground. All canopied with willow trees. Actually there’s a well shaded site in Ouray, CO full of aspens that I could’ve spent a week in with a smile on my face.

Hipcamp and Dyrt serve the same purpose. Enterprising folk out there set their property up for overnight camping. Some have amenities and others you get a small corner of a field to park your truck and some sawdust and a bucket to shit in.

Literally.

Prices often times reflect the amenities. If you’re paying $15 for a plot of grass that’s what you should expect. If you’re paying $50 to stay on someone’s property then you might expect at least a porta potty, fire ring and possibly WiFi. And a good view.

I have mixed reviews and feelings about these apps only because of the consistency. I’ve stayed in some amazing little spots all around the country and I’ve stayed in some blechhh ones too.

First the shitty ones

In no particular order I pulled up to a Hipcamp listing that was at a winery outside of Helen, GA and in their listing it looked great! Great vista in the background of north Georgia mountains. “Located right outside of the winery”. Hey I can camp here and use their bathroom, I may even eat here.

I pull up and my site was literally in the parking lot grass. There were customers parked 8 feet from my site. The spot was about 6 feet away from a drop off. It was $20. $20 too much. I left immediately and stopped at the main campground right outside of Helen. $17 10/10 recommend.

Some jackass had a listing in lake Willoughby, Vermont. It was a 50 yard pull off that ran parallel to a freshly tarred hwy. His RV took up most of the plot. I couldn’t even open my awning. I had that reserved for 2 nights. I left and found one right outside the next town. A little farm owned by a little lady. I played with some goats, chickens and a pig. I showered with a cold spigot and slept blissfully in 20° weather. It was so wet and cold I had to dig my trailer wheel out of the ice the next morning. I slept like a damn baby though. Told all the farm animals bye before I left.

The next day I stayed in the parking lot of a YMCA in Cape Cod. It was aight. You could use the gym shower. The host was a bit of a cunt.

Some good ones. I stayed two nights at an Indian ranch right outside of Glacier. I got high and danced naked with some prairie dogs after dinner. Talked philosophy with the camp host (not the same night) and watched the sunrise while scanning for grizzlies and mountain lions.

Had a not so bad one outside of Fort Collins. I forget the town name it looked shiny and new. I had a good steak and potato dish in a local bar with a salad bar for $16. I gotta say it made my day. The site was a level farm with small inlets for camping. A little bench and fire ring. Small wood pallet for privacy for a hose shower. It was fine. Horseflies were hungry but that sunrise fixed it all.

Really enjoyed a small commune in Cortez, CO. You parked in a large fenced in ranch with a community kitchen, game room and showers. We (my wife and I) stayed under the tent canopy on my truck and watched the sunset over the snowy Rockies while the prairie dogs yelped. I’ll have that memory in the good vibe banks forever.

We had stayed in a Hipcamp in Sedona the night before and the camp host had tried to kick us out for my aggressive driving in the campground (I didn’t see a newly made gravel speed bump). After cursing at me and my wife I followed him back to his site and encouraged him to change his mind for his hasty behavior. We didn’t leave that night.

I don’t know man I’d have to say my favorite was in Lewisburg, WV. I had an acre all to myself overlooking the sunrise over town. I walked around that big ass bridge at New River Gorge, had a good ham salad sandwich in Lewisburg and snuck around Carnegie Hall like I was trespassing. I built a campfire watch the sun go down while I swung in an old rope swing that I bet went at least 20 feet in the air. I had a grilled steak and finger gunned a new camp arrival in a mini van. A retired teacher named Lisa. I think. Old school hippie.

Dispersed camping is my favorite. No rules, no reservations and no regulations. Well just don’t stay in one spot. BLM – bureau of land management throw all of this beautiful land out there that you can essentially go off grid as long as you hop around a bit. I love finding new spots that I can sneak in a little ravine, knob overlooking a sunset, putting my tailgate down and melting into the night. There’s usually well kept pullovers from other occupants with fire pits, trails to do your things, and level spots to flop. You can run into some hardcore weirdos in these areas but I’ve never had one act aggressively. Paranoia keeps them at bay. At the same time if the shit hits the fan I sleep better knowing these folk are reliable.

Fav? Linville hands down. There’s no maybe for me. Yes there’s some spots that would blow it away out west but the accessibility does it for me. 107 miles, 1 hour 56 minutes away. I have a few spots that the sunrises up right in my tent window. I perch and take it in with some propaned coffee. Ever since I’ve put this trip on my agenda at least twice a month for the last 4 years I haven’t had a single ailment. Not even a head cold. I can’t tell you the last time a tissue touched my nose.

We (my buddy and I) settled down at lake Powell, lone rock area. Ate some damn good burgers with arugula. I took a double dose of mushrooms and watched the moon rise. Made friends with two crows and saw heaven for the first time. It changed my everything. We also got stuck in the sand for about two hours. Which is why I now drive a 4WD.

Wife reserved me a school bus in Durango that was parked outside on a hill overlooking a small town on the southside of Durango. To give credit where it’s due my wife is my camping navigator. If I need a spot that’s not BLM land she finds one while I’m on the road, schedules it and sends me the link. She makes my life easy for me. The bus came with a curious cat I adopted for the evening. Went into town and ate a steak with gravy fries and washed it down with a local brewed beer. I feel like I could eat that meal everyday. Especially on a chilly night like that one.

Stayed in another Hipcamp outside of Durango. Long dirt road to a pull out on a farm, adequate shower facilities and an outdoor kitchen that had seen better days. The view of the Rockies was magnificent. The whole night my buddy and I felt like we were being watched by a rather large cat

I dispersed in a little retirement home in Bar Harbor. Grilled off my tailgate and drank fireball shots until I passed out. Lost my trekking poles ascending Katahdin. Had a fabulous lobster roll.

I camped under a bridge in an inlet in key west. Never got good vibes. Went the square place and took some amazing sunset photos, got a lotta tipsy and walked back to my truck. Right at the same time two locals pulling my bike off my rack (or trying to) they walked away as I walked closer. Could’ve been a bad time. I pulled out and drove into a Ace Hardware and tried to sleep while being surrounded by wild chickens. What is it with me and farm animals? Insert blog of South Dakota cow stampede of ‘23. That was the night I dispersed camped in the badlands and got caught in a hailstorm with a herd of chatty bovines. Would 10/10 camp there again but it’s a 28 hour drive.

Washington Gulch in Crested Butte is the Colorado equivalent of Linville for me. Dispersed camping right outside of Butte that slowly carves up the mountains for miles. Great camping. Great big mosquitoes though. I’ve stayed there twice. Gonna go at least a dozen more times before I’m done..

Dispersed camping can keep you on your toes. There’s usually no service, no running water or a power source. If you break down (and I have) you don’t have AAA coming to your rescue. Animals have never bothered me too much. I’ve only had one bear grace my site and I think we both scared the shit out of each other. Plenty of deer have come by to say hi and it’s almost impossible to camp in the CO wilderness without elk checking you out. I haven’t camped high enough to run into any bighorn sheep. Random, there’s a farm outside of Sedona that allows you to pet their alpacas. That’s one my list. They’ve all been on my mind because I have the bug right now. I was spoiling myself with three big trips a year and kind of burned myself out for a bit. They fun! But they also exhausting.

I still have my mind set to squeeze one in this year but if it doesn’t happen I’ll be fine.

Probably the biggest meal I’ve eaten in the past few years.

Humility

I used to pride myself on being a big deal. When you’ve been small change most of your life you can get quite a chip on your shoulder. In the service industry when I thought I was starting to peak man what a big head I had. Service industry is tough business and I was feeling strong knee deep in it. When I opened up any restaurant after Southern I had deep resources, architects, interior designers,contractors bidding on our build outs. Staff hired out to settle projects for you. Smallwares order taking too long? I had someone to call that would find out the delay. IT guy? I could text him and he’d be there in 10 minutes. Man it felt good. I felt like I had an army within arms reach at all times.

It’s changed a little. I’m not sitting at the big round tables delegating projects or approving where 220v hookups should hang from the kitchen ceiling from my office. I spend my free time painting my kitchen walls, driving to Columbia to pick up three boxes of rare tile, running back and forth from Home Depot because I keep burning through drill bits trying to hang wood panels on cement walls. The people who used to call me back don’t do it as quickly anymore. Some just don’t even try. They just disappear. Posted I was needing help soon and I’ve received 2 resumes. Yeah resumes are maybe a little over the top for what I need but if you don’t have one handy it gives me the wrong vibes. They aren’t really necessary just looking for a little effort.

I’m enjoying the energy I hear from my neighbors building out next door with their coworkers and friends.

I’m a little jealous.

At the same time, I’ve put myself under a tremendous amount of pressure on purpose.

I need to know how much I have left in the tank. When I parted ways with my old company it took something out of me. My competitive edge, my work ethic and my confidence.

I found myself getting anxious and scared on busy days by myself. I used to embrace them. It’s not physical, ok maybe it is a little. I’m nursing a pinched nerve in my back at the moment that’s really knocked me out this week. The pain is like discovering a fresh bruise between your lower shoulder blades and then having someone shove a dull pencil in it 24 hours a day for the last three days. I achieved this from anchoring panels to the wall. Can’t stop construction for a damn sore back.

I posted that my construction grace ends at the end of this month (I think) and I’m on week 5 with my landlord drilling a drain for me. Until I get running water I cant bring product in. Its fine really. Just frustrated. Reached out to two different purveyors last week to call me back and set an appointment for accounts. Not a word and no Joey if you’re reading this I’m not talking about you 😆.

You know, it takes a while to get back up when you get knocked down. You may never be at that one level you were before it happened and really I don’t wish to be. I needed to take my time getting off my big egotistical ass.

It fucking feels good.

I almost folded a little last week while working on the deli and charcuterie nagging at me simultaneously. My plans just weren’t going the way I intended them to and I spiked and went manic for a bit. I stood in the deli with tools in my hand debating which wall to launch them into, literally. I’m two months in this project completely flying solo with my plan, zero menu and zero hopefuls on the peeps I’ve reached out to.

I’ve prepared myself accordingly the whole time but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting. I’m just not surprised anymore is all.

I’ll get this fucking deli opened. I haven’t even hit 5th gear yet. It’s gotta be done just the right fucking way.

I still walk away from the spot everyday with a smile on my face. It’s me all me. For the first time. Every fucking screw, board, tile and equipment was bought and paid for by those ridiculously long holiday charcuterie weeks. Three years of that is creating this. To invest in yourself with no strings attached.

I have to take the humility in stride.

The beach house was around 7000 sq ft. It had 10 bedrooms and baths with another loft that slept 4 more people. We had been scanning for months online to find the perfect wedding venue at the Gulf. We didn’t care where in the gulf but Orange Beach was our thang. It was our hangout, our beach and where our love grew.

We looked at outdoor venues, parks, vacant beach lots. Only thing that mattered was that we said our vows with our toes in the sand at the Gulf. I bet we looked all over the damn place to find the perfect spot. We literally drove to the end of the road at Orange Beach.. and there she was. The Halekai beach house right at the end of the cul de sac. Instead of stressing over where to stay and where to get married we decided to combine them both. I jumped out of my jeep and walked up to the property. Like all the other beach houses on the strand it sat atop of huge pillars with around a ten foot clearance under the house. I walked up to a housekeeper and asked her if she minded that I measured off the square feet of the home with my feet and she raised an eyebrow and then her shoulders and said “Si” and I did my thing. I wrote down the square footage and mapped out the floor plan in my head. By the time we got back to our actual condo I had a floor plan mocked up with 8 foot table rounds, chairs and where the DJ would go. We would do a Low Country Boil buffet for dinner and an open bar. We’d have our ceremony on the beach in front of the house. To save some money on chair rentals we wrote little notes on the folding chairs on the beach to bring them with you to the tables under the house if you want to eat. It worked brilliantly.

All of our closest friends came down to the gulf for the week to celebrate. The wedding party all stayed under the same roof in one of the 10 bedrooms. Two full sized kitchens, jacuzzi, several outdoor grills. It was the perfect venue.

Families met families for the first time.

Friends became friends. The best of friends.

We played games in the sand, laughed until we cried. We had a house filled with our restaurant family too so you know there was a good time to be had.

I’ve been so busy over the years that this could possibly be my first reflection on this event since the day we celebrated. We laughed and cried during toasts, I got to dance with my mother probably the only time I had.

I left two chairs vacant in the front row for my father and brother David. You walked down the beach house steps in your beautiful white gown and your insane (perpetual) tan while Israel Kamakawiwoʻole sang Over The Rainbow. The only complaint I have from that ceremony was that you walked too fast down the aisle. I just wanted to watch you for a bit longer.

That song still makes me cry to this day.

My stepfather Tom was my best man. The man who had the impossible task of replacing my father. I don’t think he stopped smiling the whole week. I miss that man greatly.

That whole week was a blur. We karaoke’d at The Pink Pony, showed some of y’all the iconic Flora Bama all the while getting our hues darkened.

Our little monkey Lily was passed around and hugged by probably 100 different folk and can you blame them? She’s always been a flower.

It would take a funeral to get everyone together like that again and man we’ve had a few since that day. I look back on the old photos fondly. I see some faces I’ll never see again and some that I don’t see enough. It’s a shame you can’t throw a party like that every year but lort that might get expensive.

It’s surreal to watch the wedding photos shrink over the years. The first year our house was littered with dozens on them. Over the mantle, up the hallway stairs, in our bedroom and all the guest ones. After a bit one may fall or you paint a wall and don’t want to mess with holes over the fresh paint. Sometimes you move and they get wrapped up in bubble wrap never to see a shelf again. We keep a couple handy on display and one that my friend made with a poem and driftwood for our wedding present hangs in our living room no matter where we move. This little journal may require me to break them out again. I miss some those faces especially now.

14 years man. That’s a solid score. The things we’ve experienced over those years have been nothing short of extraordinary. With tears and laughter although our wrinkled smile lines have overtaken the frowns over the last few years.

This has me jonesing for sandy feet and some Bang Bang shrimp from Cobalt.

If I didn’t say it enough I’ll say it again, I’m extremely grateful for all of my friends and family. Not just because of the shared ceremony or gifts but also the quality of life I’ve had because of all of you.

Cheers to 14 years.

The first year I went without the bottle was a solid year for me. I had just begun to find myself in a new era of life. I felt good hell I felt great. Sober life turned a good corner for me but for a bit I still felt like good ol Chad was lingering in the crowd. Cheering me along like everyone else but he wasn’t wearing my team colors. Juuust in case I wanted to go back to his team. For me and my short attention span it was “ok you did it.. now what? You don’t socialize anymore. You don’t talk to half of your friends anymore in fact you’ve managed to isolate yourself from almost everyone. Maybe making a cameo at a local watering spot to eat.

I stuck with it though. I didn’t have a detailed plan of action.

Just don’t get drunk asshole. You’ve gone this long. “One day at a time just like you tell everyone else.”

Fine

I made it to year two.

Year one and year two were completely different

If you’ve ever injured yourself especially in your 40s and 50s you know some injuries takes months even years to heal.

I’ll give you an example. Several years ago I had an operation on my left Achilles. I had a real bad case of Achilles tendon calcification. Calcium build up behind my Achilles was stretching the tendon bad enough to push it to the point of rupturing. I had been running my ass off training for a big time marathon and my Achilles wasn’t having it. I had to have it basically shaved down in outpatient surgery and my recovery time was about 2-3 months. I healed as expected from the surgery but my Achilles became very vulnerable to pain. You could poke me with your finger on that spot and I’d scream in pain. I was literally Achilles heel in physical form. I couldn’t prop my feet up on a ottoman even if it was padded. Just the left one. I had an employee at the steakhouse trying to have some fun give me a “flat tire” on the back of my shoe and I fell screaming in pain.

The operation fixed the issue but left a very painful scar. I had mobility. I could even run again. The nagging pain stayed for years. I wrote it off as just one of those things I’d have to deal with.

12 years later my right foot started doing the same damn thing. Surgery wasn’t an option for me. For one I didn’t have health insurance and I didn’t want to have both Achilles to have the same traumatic pain for the rest of my life. I researched every home remedies because I didn’t want my Achilles to burst obviously and decided to do my own thing about it until I was left with no other choice.

I stopped wearing my favorite shoes, Hokas. I bought a pair of crocs for work. Yes they are ugly but they didn’t touch my heels. I used to wear compression socks when I ran and the day after for recovery. I put them away. I also traded in my running for walking for a full calendar year.

In that one year my right ankle began to heal on its own. No meds I’m not a pill guy for personal reasons. I didn’t even take pain meds for my first Achilles operation. They aren’t my thing. With my addictive personality I was terrified.

After a year or so the bone spurs went away. The pain went away. And miraculously the pain and scar tissue damage in my left foot also went away. After 12 years of constant pain.

12 years I limped on that foot. Surgery fixed the issue at hand but left a ton of scar tissue in had to live with.

Let’s now make a another connection.

First year of sobriety for me was very similar. It was my own personal operation on my brain. To fix the swelling “Achilles” in my head. Because just like my Achilles it felt like was brain was going to explode. Sobriety took that swelling away but just like my left Achilles I had a lot of painful scar tissue to deal with.

I was fixed

But I had to give it the right remedy to let it heal and just like my ankle it would take more than just time.

That’s what I refer to as my reckoning. Getting sober is hard fucking work. It’s a daily workout in a rehab head space. You don’t always heal with rest. You also need proper rehabilitation for your mental health. Sobriety is just the awakening.

You’ve had your operation. Now it’s time to reckon with it.

My first year without my favorite toy was life changing. Physically I turned a new page. I looked good, I felt good. A lot of my familiar aches and pains were dissolving along with some age old inflammation.

My mental habits were better due to no brain fog, hangovers and chemical imbalances trying to chop away at my mental health but I was left dealing with a lot of emotional scars.

Alcohol controlled my emotions, filters, personality for a really long fucking time. Without it I started having to deal with all of these organically. Not one by one y’all my brain left the front door open for all to hang out at the same time and I have a really small house to host these activities. It gets crowded up there.

It was/is hard. Its the dark part of sobriety that no one likes to talk about. I no longer have that vodka insulation that helped me absorb years of repressed emotions.

They’re all there now. Can’t deal with them one by one emotions come in packs like hotdog buns. There always seem to be more buns that the dogs can fill up.

Year two was spent rehabbing my mental health. I acknowledged sobriety needed some assistance. I used the same determination I used to throw the vodka away to address my mental health.

I’m was sober but my brain was still a trainwreck.

My emotions were spiking in a manic matter. I was like a hot and cold faucet one extreme or the other.

I was/am a sober person but still needed to work on being a better person and also assess multiple mental health issues. Sobriety is a nice stitch up to that open wound but I don’t want to deal with scar tissue for another decade.

Retraining your brain on how to think and deal with things is harder than training for a marathon.

I use early morning meditation and yoga for my mental flexibility. Stretching before my long mental run.

I journal my reps, mental workouts, my gains and my losses. Some days I’ll do things way out of my comfort zone to push myself. It may be just eating something different from one of my go to eateries, changing my walking routes, driving 5mph slower than normal all day, hiking or camping in a new spot or even building a charcuterie box completely backwards. I do this deliberately to let my brain know we are going outside of our box all day. Brace yourself.

I’m a creature of habit. I assign myself a strict schedule. I eat at certain times, I go to bed same time every night, I drink probably the same amount of ounces of coffee every morning and won’t touch caffeine after noon. These are good habits but at the same time they keep me in my safety zone. Remove even one and it fucks up my whole day. I also employ these methods when I camp. My site is set up by a specific time and if my campfire isn’t going by 6:30 I start to sweat. I probably had it set up and ready to go hours before. Setting up my campfire is the very first thing I do when I arrive.

Again these habits are healthy but they are concealing the fact that I have to be in absolute control of my environment or it goes to my head. Over the last two plus years of my reckoning I’ve applied these habits into my folder of “needs work”

I have several of these folders they aren’t imperative but when you file them altogether they become a great deal.

Control freak -file one

Withholding my emotions -file two

Anger management -file three

Procrastination for fear of anxieties – four

Mountains of bitterness over the years -five

and about a hundred more. Many I don’t share they’re my own to reckon with but I’m sure you get the illustration.

I don’t reckon with all at the same time it’s insurmountable. I pick and choose a couple of files and work on them individually. With this I apply manifestation.

Sometimes I feel manifestation gets a bad rap because it’s misunderstood. You aren’t rubbing a genie bottle and poof a wish comes true.

Nor are you wishing with your hand stretched out and eyes squinted with superpower concentration waiting for a winning lottery ticket to magically appear.

That isn’t manifestation. You’re trying to conjure up a pipe dream.

Manifesting is creating a vision. A physically or for me a spiritually one that I put on my horizon to chase and achieve. Just like training for that marathon 12 years ago I envisioned a goal in mind and then created a plan, training regiment, focus and end game to reach that result. There will be always be some hiccups and fuck ups along the way. Keep that goal on your horizon the whole time. Somedays it may seem distant than others but if you stay on course and apply yourself it can be attained.

I wanted to have my own restaurant when I was 35 years old. I didn’t open up Southern until I was 42.

For seven years I trained myself for restaurant propriety. I started photocopying P&Ls and breaking them down. I threw myself back in the kitchen and absorbed every single aspect of BOH operations from recipes, procedures, equipment and then started manifesting my own ideas. I created multiple concepts in my head, wrote several down. If I went out to eat I absorbed every little detail I could find that I found paramount to having a successful operation. I would eat in larger foodie cities and with a notebook and journal.

We walked through two dozen spaces over 4 years. I kept that brick and mortar on my horizon for a long ducking time. I never strayed from it. I was hell bent and obsessed because that’s what my manifestation needed. I worked my ass off to get to that level and it paid off.

I built the vision in my head

I put in on my horizon and never detoured.

I manifested Southern Culture.

I use this as an example of my reckoning. I’m doing the same exact thing.

I put a shit load of mental health goals on my horizon. Goals to fix this noggin and most of its toxicity. I set these goals not only to fix myself but to bring me back home to my family.

Let’s be honest the two are the same. I can’t have mental happiness without the love of my family.

I can’t have the full support and love of my family without my mental happiness. Or at least putting in some goddamn effort.

I created a new manifestation with a new horizon. For me it’s the ultimate horizon. Every thing else is just life fodder.

Ok I’m gonna try to tie all of this together.

I used my Achilles injury as an example of a procedure I had done to fix an issue with my ankle. I used sobriety to do the same with my brain. The operation fixed the immediate issue but I was left with years of scar tissue and constant pain as a result. I just figured it was the norm until I took it upon myself to reckon with the pain and through patience and perseverance I healed it. It took a long fucking time but as a write this I’m sitting here with my right foot propped over left foot on a wooden coffee table. It’s been well over a decade since I’ve been able to do without pain. I can literally bang my heal on the table without wincing in pain.

Sobriety was my operation. I still have a lot of scar tissue/trauma to reckon with.

It’s gonna take a shit load of time. I have been mentally preparing myself for every step.

Year one was just focusing on my vodka bottle. It was tough and after the first year was under my belt I felt like I won a trophy but not the game. Winning season but didn’t make the playoffs.

The second year I dealt with emotional spikes, still had big bouts of depression and anxiety was going through the roof. I was sober but just like my operation I thought it would be the end all to my suffering. It fixed a big, fat troubling issue that had been addressed but I had scar tissue to deal with and that’s when I put my reckoning into overdrive.

Fix your shortcomings Gangwer was what I wrote down. I’m not talking about habits like picking your nose in public, driving too slow in the left hand lane or forgetting to wash your hands after you piss.

These were much deeper, imbedded into my brain. Bad mental habits, outbursts, disorders etc that I had hoped sobriety would’ve fixed. It didn’t but what it did was open my vision to a new horizon. A new manifestation/ path to focus on.

Just being a better fucking person.

It takes more than sobriety and I feel like some of you need to hear that as much as I did.

I’m present but my inner dialogue needed to change too. My internal thoughts still bordered on bitterness, jealousy, bullish thoughts. Not publicly I was hyper aware when I went sober how I personally came across to people on social situations. I took myself away from these events for quite some time. I felt awkward and still do. After two plus years I’m just now going back out in public places that I have more than 10 people on a city block.

Sober you can still be two different people in your head. After my first year of sobriety I’ve been working on combining the two. It’s not as easy at it sounds. There are a lot of clergy out there that preach and then go home to being someone else. I refuse to preach until I become the person that exemplifies the truthfulness that come from my mouth.

It’s harder than it sounds.

I take these files in my head and I choose one randomly and reckon with it. Manifest a solution and set it on my horizon.

It’s hard with some. I try to focus and it’s like trying to read a online article with a thousand different pop ups ads trying to take you away to another article at hand. Tiny little x’s to poke at until the article has been completed. But I don’t stray until I do and then it’s on to the next.

I’ve taken to opening up my mental health to my wife. All of it. If I have an emotional outburst I’ll come back into the room after my mind has acclimated and explain my thought process step by step to my wife.

What was on my mind

The build up beforehand

And all the little snakes that tripped me up in between.

If my brain was a hose it would be one of the old ones that lie in the side of the yard in crimpled angles. You turn the hose on and you get all these tight little blockages that don’t allow the water to pass through. My wife is the one that straightens that hose so I can water my garden.

A year ago I didn’t do this. I’d turn off the faucet because there wasn’t enough water coming out of the hose to makes a difference. My garden would dry up

Growth

Manifestation

New horizons

That’s just an example and if I applied all the other files into examples well we’d be here a long goddamn time.

It works. The manifestation.

After the second year of sobriety and reckoning my mind changed. My thinking has evolved. Just the last three months I’ve dissolved a bucket of scar tissue. Writing it out has been a key. Journaled manifestation.

I get bouts of anxiety at night. I turn them into those pop up ads but the X’s are larger and easier to see. I’m like Tom Cruise in Minority Report with that giant virtual reality screen, wearing my virtual gloves and goggles, swiping bad anxiety tabs with better ones. I’m literally doing this in my mind. Bad thought pops up at 3am and I’m like “nope, get the fuck out of here” and I swipe for a new tab or I close the laptop down.

It works for me. To each their own

Your thinking can change overtime. You can reprogram your motion of thoughts through patience, mindfulness and consistency. I’m not 100% and never will be but I’m better. My inner dialogue has been much more positive and is still progressing.

Actions express your priorities much louder than words and inspirational fb quotes.

If my mind is not sharing what my outside words are saying then I’m a failure as far as influencing positivity and intentions. It took awhile to manage those thoughts.

Sincerity is not a job or obligation it’s an existence.

It’s my manifesto of manifestation.

This is my path to my growth. My mental gym workouts. They are paramount to my mental health and they work as long as I keep them on my horizon.

I’m not good at showing others how to follow this honestly I feel like it’s all unique in each individual’s mind how to manifest.

For me it works and I’m cozy with the progress.

Food cost is a double four letter word for me.

It’s triggering.

The minute service industry management was thrown at me it was the first thing that was thrown at me to reckon with. I had no equations to go by. No one to take me under their wing and show me how to evaluate it, conjur it or solve it.

It’s an intricate part of the industry especially if your a food heavy establishment. Most of my restaurants were 75% food 25% alcohol. Habitap was around 60/40 I honestly would’ve liked them all 60/40 alcohol is more profitable.

In the twilight of my long career at the steakhouses I feel like the last two years of my job was driving to each steak establishment and having long discussions about underachieving food costs.

Steakhouse’s ideal number was 35-37%. Most sat at 40%. Some hovered on 42%. You won’t stay open too long with 42%.. and they didn’t

What exactly is food cost? I’ll make it simple for you or at least try.

Food cost is the amount of money you put on a plate to be served to a customer. If you came into a steakhouse of mine and order just a simple 8oz filet with a baked potato and salad then that menu price would reflect the sum of all three products to line up at 35%’cost.

Filet – lets say it’s $18 lb. So 8oz would amount to the proprietor as $9 per serving. Now before we do this across the board you have to ask are these pre cut filets? Chain off? Or loins at $18 a lb? If you’re buying your own loins then you have to calculate waste but we won’t do that at the moment because then we get into some varying word problems and have to apply some arithmetic. It’s 6am and I’m on my first cup of coffee.

So, filet has already put your plate price at $9. If you were calculating your food cost to be 35% you would be looking somewhere around $25.60 to cook a filet and put it on a plate and serve it to a customer.

That’s the easy part. Now you have to calculate the plating accessories. You’ll most likely be purchasing your potatoes in 50lb cases. You’ll have to forgive me it’s been a minute but I think we were buying 60ct potatoes. My memory has lost quite a bit of storage.

You buy bulk potatoes in 50lb cases. So if you’re buying 60 count potatoes it means you’re getting 58-60 potatoes per case at 13oz avarage each. Cost of potatoes fluctuates like fucking petroleum. Always pray for good weather in certain regions it has a huge impact on your bottom dollar. We’ll mark this case at $30 for simple math. That puts a potato at $.50 a unit.

Sounds simple right? Well do we want to go by the law of averages and price out each potato loaded or just butter and sour cream which is the most popular choice? This is where your line training will set that pricing standard. When I used to work at the steakhouse the potato guys always prided themselves on the height of their loaded potatoes. Yes they looked great on a plate with that mountainous build up of butter, sour cream, bacon pieces, cheddar shredded and a mound of green onions. That little accoutrement could range from $.25 to .$50 per potato. Doesn’t sound like a lot but over time 1000 loaded potatoes could fluctuate your food cost by $250. That’s just one side item on your menu.

So let’s cost out potatoes at $.75 per build up just to be safe. That puts your plated filet $28. We haven’t touched base on the salad plating. I will skip over the individual cost of each salad component because I feel like my equations are probably already losing most of you.

But yeah you have to cost out each ingredient. And lettuce can go from $19 a case to $40 in a week if a nice flood or drought hits the farms. At the time I was costing out salads I believe the average side salad was $.80 per serving. That included the $.18 portion of ranch dressing. That was our popular salad dressing so I used that for the law of averages. You give your pantry guy tablespoons for accuracy, a portion vessel for lettuce and one I repeat ONE scoop for dressings and it better not be bigger than 2 oz or we will pull your ass off the line to reeducate. This is cost control at its finest. You put a lot of your food cost in the hands of $12 employees who usually maintain the efficiency you put into their training unless it gets busy of course then it gets a little hairy.

You think you’ve got a good hand on it? Now go look into the trash cans on the kitchen line. There always full of food. Mostly food that’s suppose to go out to the tables. How do you account for that? Well we have to start a waste sheet to blend in with your comps to explain to your investors why your food cost is trending upwards. You could fill up 30 more potatoes with the cheese, bacon and green onions you’d sweep off the floor during a Friday night line sweep. Salads that were dressing on the side and misread went into the garbage without thought of comping. As a line cook you don’t want expo to notice how many times you fucked shit up so most mistakes slide quietly into the trash. Grill cook is the same. Of 150 steaks going out the window at least 5 probably dropped on the floor, got thrown out for being undersized during butchering or they went flambé from all the fat and grease on the grill. Some will be comped others will sit in the at the bottom of the trash never to be found. Grill cooks are egomaniacs. They never mess up..

So now we have a steak (filet) $9

Baked potato assumed loaded $.75

Side salad assumes it’s 1.5 cup greens at level market price with tablespoon chopped bacon, diced tomatoes, two red onion rings slices (on slicer setting 3 for consistency) and two ounces of ranch. $.80

Price on plate $10.55. Menu price will be $30. That will put your food cost at 35.166666666666666666%. That’s what we want right? Close enough if every single plate goes out exactly the same way as all the others.

Which will never happen. Let’s bump it up to $31 at least. Now we are at 34% with a tiny bit of wiggle room for over portioning and drops. Not much though. You have about $.30 worth of wiggle room. I’d suggest $32 just to be safe. All of this is under the pretense that your company’s food cost is set a 35%. My own personal restaurants I liked for it to be hovering under 30%. Burger bar was 32%.

It’s difficult to price everything across the board at 30%. Some items won’t sell at that cost.

Some, the only thing you’re doing is taking a steak out of its airtight wrap and slapping it on the grill. Others you have to take into account the process of preparation. That brined, smoked, carved protein might’ve gone through an 30 hour process of preparation. It may have consumed a $18 an hour prep cook’s time most of the day. You have to make sure financially it makes sense. Prep time has its fingers in cost too.

Another thing to consider is what percentage of P mix is the big sellers on your menu? WTF does that mean Chad? Well let me tell you.

One of my problem children during my regional steakhouse days was our Columbia location. Its food cost was usually 2% higher on average than the other three. I spent a lot of time there rewriting inventories, meat count sheets, pouring over comps for theft. I’d sit with them while notating inventory and data entry, I’d watch every plate for consistency, employees eating, I set new portion standards and the cost wouldn’t budge. After spending a few weeks back in Greenville I began to recognize that although our menus were identical the consumers tastes were different. Greenville sold a lot of sandwiches and salads for lunch (a great food cost item), sirloins were the star (34% food cost). Columbia didn’t do much for lunch. People went thirst for steaks. They loved the ribeyes, prime rib and the Arizona dip sandwich which was priced out at 40%. The ribeyes were 38% and prime rib was around 42%. This greatly affected their overall god cost. The p mix for Columbia showed they sold up to 40% more of these items than the upstate locations. The lower cost items such as chicken, salads and sandwiches inserted on the menu to balance the higher cost items were way below par than the company average. It caused the fluctuations.

Also their sales were underperforming. High volume fixes food costs too.

How so? Well another equation you have to reckon with is inventory. The larger your menu the larger your inventory. Maintaining a strict inventory is good for costs. You have to set the standard with a little planning involved. Everyone’s inventory is different I can’t come out and tell you $8k is the ideal opening inventory every month. It doesn’t work that way. The months end on different days of the week. Our big trucks always came in on Mondays and Thursdays. Its not fun doing inventory on a Thursday night when you had a $6k truck arrive that morning. On the other side Sunday night inventory was most likely small due to the weekend taking everything off your shelves. Your costs are also effected by your existing inventory. It’s an over/under thing. You don’t necessarily get good credit by having a healthy inventory. It gets backed out of you monthly costs. I might touch base with this later but honestly I’ve probably lost most of you by now.

Ideally it would be great to end each month of your inventory on a Sunday when your shelves are mostly empty and you can start all over again. I prided myself on how streamlined my inventory was every week. Monday healthy inventory, Sunday empty shelves. There’s a fine line between reducing your inventory to a healthy low point as opposed to running to the grocery store 16 times on Sunday because you ran out of product.

Slow restaurants have higher food cost due to the fact that it takes a healthy investment to create that first inventory purchase and to maintain it. Your very first truck will most likely be your biggest one. It may take $10k to fill your stock up for the first time and then you’ll watch it flow down to $2k and back up to $8k but never back to tht original level. Why? Because hopefully you’re selling it and not holding it. The more shit that sits comfortably on your shelves collecting dust the higher your food cost will remain.

This isn’t some secret formula. Its economics.

You wanna talk about theft? It’s rampant in the service industry. Usually it’s just employees making a meal behind your back. I was very transparent with my line cooks. If you’re hungry eat. Don’t make a four course meal if you want a burger then get a server to ring it up. It had to stay under a certain menu cost. Most abided by it but I’d still get some jive ass turkey that would walk back into dish with 8 pieces of bacon, 4 biscuits, stainless bowl of grits and a piece of fried chicken.

Others kept me on my toes on daily inventory and meat counts. Especially if you bought meat in pre cut form. Its already wrapped and ready to steal. Most of your theft is on its way to the dumpster and then takes a detour to someone’s trunk. Always check your slim Jim’s at the end of services. Its usually wrapped up in a trash bag on top of other trash. Always at the end of service unless they are resourceful and have a cooler in their trunk. You don’t want a tenderloin basking in your backseat for 5 hours in July. Once you get a vibe from that employee they are easy to catch.

Always have cameras on hand. I enjoyed watching two line cooks on a Friday night pile prime rib into a take out box while the manager was outside smoking.

Whole tenderloins under empty boxes, a chub of hamburger meat, pack of burger buns and a gallon of mayo. These are just the ones I caught. You might catch 10%.

I had a dishwasher get t boned on his moped after work and cryovac sealed pork chops were found all over the side of the road next to his moped. He was fine btw. Just walks with a limp now. I see him every morning on his little stoop next to the Hampton station. No hard feelings. Moped might’ve moved faster had it now been weighed down with stolen goods though.

Keeping your comps below 2% of your food sales should be the norm. 1% is ideal but no more than 2. A solid management team that communicates well with patrons will help. Stay away from the office managers who dislike confrontations and walk out with a stack of gift cards. If bribery is the only way to bring customers back then save yourself some trouble and lock the doors. Use your comps to show appreciation towards your regulars. It goes a long way.

So why are we bumping up our purchases 350 to 400%? Well we have bills to pay. That food inflation is imperative to pay things. A lot of things.

The napkins in your lap. Linen is a huge bill that adds up annually.

Bar towels, mop heads

Silverware, China, small wares. If you buy a plate from any reputable China distributor you’re looking at $10-$15 a plate. That’s on the cheap side. I’ve bought $25 bowls just to make my shrimp and grits look prettier. They all chip like a pringles in a dropped can. It’s fun watching 20 plates topple over when a dishwasher cracked out slips on the floor. Silverware? Sidework is pulling old silverware out of discarded linen for hours a week so you don’t have to buy more. Those little magnetic trash cans are trash. They may catch 1 out of 10. Also customers love those fancy steak knives and will take them home with them.

Chemicals for sanitation and washing dishes, hands, floors and ass.

Utilities. Want to see my gas bill on busy days? Power bill for 5000 sq ft restaurant in 90° summer heat with 300 people coming in and out all day is fun to pay.

I could write a hundred more lines but this was meant to be a brief blog.

If I could give you an easy equation to start off with for managing a forecast for a full service restaurant it would be this –

Keep your food costs under 30%

Keep your labor under 30%

Beer and wine under 25%

Liquor 18-20%

My easy diagram for dummies start up model is 30/30/30. This applies for full service. Food costs and labor for bars varies differently.

Aforementioned food cost after comps 30%

Labor ideally after taxes 30%

All other expenditures 30%. These range from monthly rent, utilities, small wares, paper products, repair and maintenance and everything else on your p&l lines.

If this pipe dream retains its level lines of financial burdens you’ll net 10%.

So if you have a $1,000,000 in annual sales you’ll net $100k. Sounds great right???

Well.

You lost a GM last quarter and had to train a new one so you double up on management coverage for 3 weeks while your new gm gets acclimated. Your kitchen turnover caused you to spend an extra $300 a week to train a pantry cook who thinks a fried egg goes into a fryer.

Your hood fuzzed out during Friday night dinner rush so you had to close at 6 and turn away 80 reservations

Line cooler shit the bed overnight or it got unplugged while cleaning last night and you toss out $300 in filets

The L on your marquee sign went out and it costs $600 for a professional sign company to pull their rig up and change the bulbs

Water heater doesn’t want to heat anymore

Your lease is on year 5 and now it’s gone up 3%

Your dining tables are sticky from years of food and residue and now they have to be sanded and restained

Again. I could write a hundred more lines of not “what ifs” but “when it does”

Just wait until minimum wage finally doubles. Look I get it. I understand it. The average consumer will not like it that’s all I’m going to say at the moment.

I’m about to compute my food costs for the deli soon. Charcuterie I don’t worry about because I add assembly costs to my food costs so it works out for the most part but that will change soon.

I threw this out there somewhat for fun because I do this for a living and also for some to understand why restaurants charge what they do.

It may also be good for some of my km and chef friends who don’t calculate your food costs accurately. Some have never grasped it or at least most of mine couldn’t seem to for the most part. I recall interviewing a chef for SC and asked him what his food cost were at his previous employer and he looked at me with a blank stare and said “I think around 15%” and our interview ended immediately.

Math is easy for me it’s the million other things that are not.

Don’t read this and think I’ve got it all figured out. This was only a brief summary I wrote out after a pot of coffee. There are a thousand different variables to come into play. This was meant to be a very elementary example for discussion.

This counts as a deli update right?..

Man this day really started that cliche reference “snowball rolling down the hill” for me.

Our/my restaurant group was about to get the mandate handcuffs

Anyone that was social media friends with me got to have front seats to the meltdown show.

It wasn’t really that bad. Not on your cellphones at least just in my head

There was already a whiff of change in the air with my vocational attitude and my old partners.

A tiny thread holding up a bowling ball in a hurricane force gale.

The upcoming coronavirus had caused a fun argument to erupt between me and my old partner. Trivial at best but at that time I was around a 9.99 on the tension scale.

Hour long stares over ridiculously large Office Depot tables in tiny rooms.

Covid was icing on the relationship cake.

I’ve always been the one to take the fall if sales were underperforming, bad reviews, poor employee moral or under trained mangers. If food cost were high I’d jump on it. Menu ideas choked I would write a brand new one. Three to four menu revamps annually per restaurant. Some I’d tweak others I’d revamp

Gotta stay current

Gotta sell tickets

Ticket sales had been dropping for a bit. I as per the norm took full responsibility. My control was a minority partner. When fault was to be had I was the majority partner. Hey they were my concepts. I created them I get it .

My only argument from time to time was “maybe we could’ve tried to build one that wasn’t already in someone’s front yard?”

I look back and can say with all heart and integrity I gave it my all.

Until that day. Then I started dropping zero fucks like Johnny Appleseed. I had always been open to criticism but never had anyone question my sacrifice.

My drive

My passion

I’ve punched heads for less. Not that I would’ve in this situation but that temper is still there.

My grip on my old company loosened after this day 4 years ago.

My old comrades jumped on that opportunity.

Smart

I would’ve done the same. Just turn your back for one moment. I did but I’m not an idiot all I did was close my eyes long enough for them to make the changes.

I don’t take that part personal at all. There were plenty of personal issues. Conflicts of personality and egos it happens. I will never reflect on any of my old partners in a viscous way. I gave back the same I’m no fucking angel.

The difference for me was I still tried to retain a good relationship.

The effort was mine to give and to takeaway. I’m petty as Tom.

It doesn’t take much

Listen I’ve said it before I write before I think and I rarely backspace because then I’m editing my thoughts. 4 years later I’m still fuming over a few things. Sobriety puts my emotions on the big screen. If I know you’re watching me I’m going to show my ass .

It’s my show

It’s my ass

Anyway

New direction here ___

From March 17 2020 to September 30 that same year. I can’t tell you much about my old job. I was there but I wasn’t.

Many decisions were being made in rooms that I wasn’t present in.

Many whispers

I’d been through it before and I fought my ass off.

This time I sat back and waited. There was no fight left in me. Hard to swing when you no longer care.

The longer we dragged out opening the restaurants back open the more I disassociated. If that was the plan then well done sirs. And ma’am.

I do recall sitting through three presentations of demographics

Plugging in food costs in three different platforms and then doing it all over again when I rebranded all three menus.

Man I hate data entry. That was well known.

I had the cleanest office in the company. I never used it. Can’t do what I did behind a desk.

Not looking for a pity party yall. I was just triggered and my finger never left it. Still dealing with that.

Reopening all the restaurants literally felt like to me I was getting back together with a toxic ex girlfriend. I knew what I was walking into but didn’t know how to get out of it.

Actually I did know. All I did was watch the clock.

I have always been a fighter when I believe in the cause. The fact that I didn’t fight this time was obvious.

The mandate cuffing made my blood boil. Do you understand how frustrating it was to run outside with styrofoam boxes, wearing gloves and masks? Boxes with brunch items. Customers and friends supporting you out of desperation. Sunday brunch we were doing 400 covers. At that moment we did $200.

And as I’d walk outside sporadically to thank every single person that pulled up I’d look across the parking lot at Home Depot with over a hundred cars corralled 300 yards down the road. Mulching your yard was waaay more essential than food.

The ridiculous tents we would erect to save our dining rooms. Price gouging, not to mention the press reminding everyone that restaurants were the most likely place to catch covid. I literally watched a segment where they detailed someone sneezing and the mucus trail through the HVAC over the table, diagramed.. to show the sneeze landing on top of another table.

Planes? Planes were fine just wear that paper mask. What could possibly go wrong? I’m sure the germ swam over here anyway.

I have not watched more than 30 seconds of national news since that year.

I am extremely biased towards things that I never cared about now. Or when I used to say to each their own it’s changed. I’ve made it a point, being a local business owner to keep most of my opinions to myself when it comes to politics and religion. If I voiced my political opinion I’d probably have the fbi knocking on my door. I don’t even write it down. I’m not an idiot.

And it all stems from this day 4 years ago.

I’ve overcame quite a bit the past 4 years but let’s never have that discussion in person. I don’t control my emotions very well. I’m still angry.

How much does it linger? I made a promise to myself after my split that no matter what I do I will fucking make sure it’s as bureaucratic proof as possible. If the goddamn bubonic plague makes a comeback my business will still be running.

I’m about to open a spot. What’s the first thing I post about it? No dining room. Counter only. And if something happens I will bring you your fucking food.

So yeah. I still have some of that bullshit from 4 years ago in me.

But

And we just discussed this (my wife and I) this week

Aside from all of that

Pandemic’s punk ass

Partnership shit

Mental breakdown almost, I kept it together. Anger can provide some healthy strength provided you know when to let go. Anyone that reads this it is obvious I’m still hanging on to a few angry hairs.

Dead ass as you kids say

Aside from all of that.. I’ve changed. Goddamn have I.

If you could put that Chad from 4 years ago beside the one now

I don’t know. I think we’d look a lot different. My frown lines have lessened a tad. I’m at least 25 lbs lighter, I know my head has shrunk. Egotistically and physically.

My beard is mostly gray. It went real gray after I left my company. Stress can do some wild things to you.

My craft has changed dramatically. If I had to give myself credit my skill set has actually improved with rest. I do things much more deliberately, aesthetically.

I feel like an old boxer who retired and took up oil painting.

I don’t beat myself up physically anymore. I may not feel as “hard” as I used to but I’m much more fluid and flexible at 52.5 years of age. Bench pressing 275 lbs will never be achieved again. But my knees don’t crack like they used to and I can pull my hoodie over my head without wincing in pain.

I walk instead of run now. I’m just not in some much of a hurry anymore. I don’t run up the mountains anymore. Remember that guy? I was always running. I had to get to the top of the mountain as fast as I can and then run back home and go back to work.

Nah. Now I mosey up. I pull out and chair and a blanket and we have a nice sit down. Maybe all night.

Some scars take a long time. I’m still healing in places I didn’t know about. These goddamn anniversaries remind me of this.

Back to my convo with Jess

My wife always being the pos to my neg reminded me that all of this had to happen for me to change.

It’s taken 4 years for me to swallow that. It’s still tough.

Poignant moment, sitting in a camping chair with a Dales Pale can in my hand. Watching my 10 year old daughter dancing over the sprinkler in our yard. My brain clicked into reset. You could almost hear the chef knife dropping from my hand.

I was done

That was in April. I lasted for 5 more months but honestly I was gone from my company at that moment. They knew it too.

Parting was amiable. Our partnership for the most part always was. Emotions can spike months later. Mine did. Sobriety makes you reckon with them.

I do believe this and it helps

I would still be drinking, probably more so

I’d probably still be with my old company. It wouldn’t be pretty at the moment if I were

Id still be miserable without even realizing it or worse. Much worse.

I could feel my body weakening from all the abuse. I needed to see my daughter jumping and dancing over that sprinkler.

The reckoning only came about because I had slowed everything down enough to put it in front of me. To finally analyze something other than food costs, P&Ls, demographics, emails and overall toxicity of the service industry.

Thank god I don’t have that full service bar beckoning me next to my favorite bar stool. Now I have a well worn spot on my sofa where I’m currently enjoying a cup of coffee with a clear head. A present, happy head.

I still hate this fucking day. I’ll always feel like there are some really big, powerful people that can kiss my ass forever.

But to the circumstances and what they changed in my life? Well played mother fuckers but let’s not do this again.

Your boy is tired. At least it’s a good tired. I like being in my 50s. Your brain has an amazing way of prioritizing things if you allow it and I have.

Gonna take the fam to Folly today to celebrate because regardless it’s a celebratory moment.

Might even get a little tan

2009 was a wild year

Just in one year I asked my girlfriend to marry me in Charleston, one month later on Mother’s Day I’d find out we’d be starting a family and I was in the middle of closing a coffee shop I had opened the year before. Tumultuous but exciting. Life was good, solid job at the steakhouse, wife and child on the way. Biggest issue was we were living in a little one bedroom 900 sq ft loft downtown with two cats. We were going to have to move before our baby arrived and real estate was complete shit from the recent housing market crash meaning I couldn’t sell the condo for what I paid for it so I had to rent it out.

We shopped for houses for a few months and found a nice, little semi updated bungalow in San Souci. A good sized 4 bed 3 bath two level. The upstairs attic had been renovated hence the bungalow style but still two levels. The price was right. It was a little roomier than what we needed but knowing we had a kid on the way, both sides of our families would be coming to see the new crown jewel of the family. Man we’ve lost so many people in our family since that year..

We bought the house on the 19th of December, had to take down the tree and do it all over again. Celebrated Christmas while unpacking everything and putting together all the baby furniture that had been sitting in boxes all over the condo in transit, waiting for the eventual relocation. Jess was about to burst at the seams 9 months with Lily kicking around . We were under a little pressure. Jess’ health insurance ended January 1st and well, we needed Lily to pop on out quickly. And on the 29th she did. Jess and I never really had time to enjoy hanging out and doing regular couple things after our engagement like normal folk. We had a family to plan. Sometimes I wonder if that made some of our marriage uphill at times because we had so many responsibilities immediately that we never seemed to have time to just be us together. We’ve done quite a bit since then to make up for it but we could’ve used some at that time. That Christmas was a blur. I don’t remember much. We were too anxious about the upcoming forever present on the way.

Our beautiful little girl was born with all things attached and we came home to build our forever nest.

Our home became a revolving door for friends and family to come hang out and see our baby. Gifts were bought, food was always on the counter to graze. The kitchen in the house was the selling point. Granite everywhere, shaker caninets with expensive pull handles, stainless appliances with wonderful BTUs to cook with, extra wide sink to fill with baby bottles. The rest of the house had been somewhat updated with the budget of a People Magazine. But it was ok. During my free time I had intended on updating it room by room.

Before Lily could even crawl I had managed to rid the house of all wallpaper and had ripped the carpet out over the hardwoods downstairs and had it all refinished. The den and office had vinyl flooring and so much padding underneath that I had 2 inch gaps between the existing trim and the floor. This house was going to be amazing I thought at that time. I spent one weekend redoing my daughter’s whole bedroom. Made a bench for her, upholstered it, built shelves for her books I’d read to her at night. Even welded a giant metal “L” with lights on the wall. Spent my whole Sunday from start to finish. Four coats of paint. I’ll never paint a room yellow again. That nesting guy got lost in that house over time. I’ve been searching for him the last three years.

Two months after we moved we had some family come into town to stay for a few days. Unbeknownst to us the old clay piping leading down from the house to the street was getting swissed and crushed by tree roots. All it took was a few too many toilet flushes from a heavily visited household to fill those pipes up. I’m not ignorant to the logistics of plumbing. When you flush it’s suppose to go down. When there’s no down to go it comes back up. And it did. Through every orifice in the house. Sinks, toilets and tubs. All overflowed. The upstairs bathroom was directly above the downstairs bathroom. It rained on the downstairs bath while I plunged shit out of every sink in the house. What about your home warranty? Oh we had one. Called them immediately. They came out and surveyed the situation. “Oh article 6 paragraph 12 on page 59 states if your plumbing doesn’t have an existing clean out we can’t cover it”. $2000k was the estimate. I had just bought the house 2 months before. Cash flow wasn’t there. I reached out to an old high school buddy Kenny and his brother who were plumbers and they knocked that down by half and took care of it for us. And yes they added a clean out. By this time I had a stained ceiling over my one of my bathrooms and what would eventually turn into floor rot under the tile. I had planned on saving up to get that repaired sooner than later. Hopefully. The house behaved itself for a bit although that summer we found out the hardway that the hvac wasn’t enough to cool the whole house. They didn’t update the hvac when they added the rooms upstairs. Just shoved in more duct work. During peak summers we’d keep the ceiling fan in the bedroom on high with the door always closed. The master bedroom had a nook that I would tack a sheet over to consolidate the cubic feet in the bedroom to maintain a comfortable temp. Our other option was the bedroom downstairs on the other side of the house. Lily’s room was directly across from ours. Moving downstairs would’ve placed her at the other end of the house and upstairs from us. When you have an infant child that’s just not acceptable.

About a year after our purchase I was given a promotion to regional manager from my old company AZ. So from aside my regular work responsibilities my mid weeks consisted of traveling to Columbia and Atlanta. I enjoyed my new position but wasn’t big on being out of town with a wife and a two year old at home by themselves. Any home updates were put on hold for a bit while I transitioned into more work load and schedule. “I’ll get to that once I slow down again” was a popular phrase for me. Also around this time I was distracted with another project. My old partner and I were revving up ideas for a restaurant concept. We had been shopping around for awhile but recently it had been picking up steam.

We liked the house, it was plenty big enough maybe even a little larger than what we anticipated since we had no plans of expanding our family “unless you’re willing to carry the next one” my wife told me. Our daughter has her own playroom downstairs, I used the den for a little gym set up and we kept the back bedroom set up for company. Life was a-ok there for a the first two or three years.

When we opened Southern in 2012 I had commited some sweat equity out of my pay. I took a 50% pay cut from AZ to soften the operations account for SC and would sweat it out for a bit until we could possibly have equity checks distributed. Southern did well after the initial slow poke opening. The small checks kept us above water for a bit but there was no cash flow to assist any home renovations. My handyman skills are extremely limited. I know enough to get by but I’m sure as fuck not a DIY guy when it comes to construction or electrical. The house wasn’t falling down around our ears mind you but it always seemed a permanent construction zone at times.

Our neighbors were fine around the neighborhood. They all kept to themselves. We lived there for 11 years and I can’t tell you anyone’s name on our street. I’m not exactly neighborly myself so.. Our yard was huge and mostly due to my busy schedule I hired someone to keep our yard up. I never bought a lawnmower for that house. I had a rake, shovel and a leaf blower that would get some use in down the road.

We never used the back bedroom for anything other than staging a spare bedroom and we folded our laundry back there. It was also the coldest part of the house during summer so on nights I couldn’t sleep I would crawl down there in the corner of the house with a blanket wrapped around me and fall asleep. The back room was actually quite cozy, even had a little gas fire place. We never used it. Couldn’t keep the pilot light lit.

I often had odd dreams in that back bedroom. At first I’d remark to my wife that I had a dream about a relative that had passed. A very realistic one of my father while I slept one night where I could physically feel him hug me. Several about my brother and had a few from my stepfather after he passed in a motorcycle accident. I had never dreamt about them since we moved from that house. I can’t accurately recall if I dreamt of them upstairs in the master but downstairs it was multiple times. Nothing strange or any words just presence and the memory of seeing them in my sleep. Never thought much about it at the time. I used to have some whack dreams. I don’t really dream anymore which is strange.

I spent many a night down there. Sometimes I’d dream often times I just slept. The really odd dreams started coming a couple of years later. I’d go downstairs some nights and lie down back in that room usually around 3am. That was always the witching hour for me. If I woke up around that time it usually meant I wasn’t going back to sleep. I had terrible sleeping habits while I worked in the restaurants. Stress didn’t allow for comfort.

So for several years I’d go “nap” in that room until 5:30 or 6 when I’d get up for work.

On occasion when I’d lay down I would feel some “thing” would sit down beside me on the bed. Of course it would scare the shit out of me. I’d sit up and say my wife’s name and would hear nothing. I’d swing my arms hard to see if they would hit something. My child was too small to make her way downstairs. Sometimes it would feel like something was sitting on my back like sleep paralysis which is what I wrote it off as. How the room was set up if the moon was bright enough certain nights it’s light would shine on the main wall beside the bed. Almost like a projection screen. The wall would look eerie from the night time clouds causing the wall to look like it was breathing or smoky. I don’t believe in much and it takes a bit for me to get spooked so sometimes I’d just stare at the wall and watch it move. One night I watched it and it started to make out symbols. Sharp pointed curves, circles, star shaped would whisp on that wall and I just lay there and watch them dance. Hell of a dream.. Sometimes when I’d turn the other way I’d dream of a little girl praying/kneeling beside my bed. One time I kicked at her and she billowed away like a campfire smoke. I have to admit it gave me chills. A few times I remember feeling something breathing on me. I seem to recall someone house sitting for us and telling me the same thing. That room was never warm. The rest of the house could be 70° that room was always cold. Eventually we kept the door shut to that room. I still think I was dreaming. After several of these encounters when I felt something sit beside me I would sit up and say “go away” and it did. Then I lie back down like it was the norm. I didn’t share much of this with my wife at the time. She would’ve made us move. When we adopted our dog Lucy a pitbull/ Dane mix I started to sleep a little better. I forgot to mention that I would have multiple dreams of home invasions when I slept in that house. My wife always said she didn’t care for the back bedroom and rarely went back there unless it was to fold laundry. Once the dog started barking into the back bedroom with the door closed my wife pretty much stayed out of there. There were other little oddities like my wife would smell cologne in our bedroom at night when I was out of town. I don’t wear any sort of cologne or body spray. One night a light danced across our room while we were in bed. One morning around Christmas our den floor made a loud knock like something large hit it’s head under our house. Almost bold enough to make my feet leave the floor. I went under the house to investigate (heavily armed) and found nothing. The door to the crawl space was shut solid.

We never had a connection with that house. I often wonder if that house had wanted it that way.

When Dive started to falter in 2015/16 so did our finances. That giant pay cut I took started to catch up and my wife was let go from her job. Bills got hard as did our marriage. My little jeep wrangler got towed away a few times. Once when I was pulled over for failure to yield on Pleasantburg and our insurance hadn’t been paid. Cops took my jeep right out of Southern’s parking lot right before Saturday brunch. A couple more times from our driveway. The tow driver and I became familiar with each other. The last time my jeep was repo’d he knocked on the door so I could get my stuff out of the car. A few months later they took my wife’s Camry. We didn’t have the funds to get it back. The way your treated when you go into repo is embarrassing. They talk down to you like you’re shit. A few conversations almost landed me in jail.

Our account was so low from bank charges I was stranded in NC while hiking because I ran out of gas. Bank took our last bit of money from overdraft fees. Wife had to call and beg the bank to give some back.

We sold our spare bedroom furniture and some heirlooms to keep us in the house. My credit got destroyed. Our marriage almost did. There isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not thankful for my wife’s resolve during that time. It was all her that held us together those years. I was too busy trying to build a crumbling empire.

Financially things eventually got better as my company grew. Well at least until the germ arrived that is. I blocked the driveway during Covid. If one of our vehicles had been repo’d again you would’ve read my name in the news.

The house over the years fell apart like a few other things in our lives. Roof was leaking, our bathroom floor from the plumbing debacle the first year was slowly sagging into the ground. Wood rot around the windows. Insulation was terrible, man our utilities were outrageous. Every time it seemed we would get a break and fix a few issues ther restaurants had other plans.

During Covid I made an attempt to get a small equity loan to update but I was furloughed so the bank saw me as unemployed. Par for the course on Tindal rd.

After the first few months it never felt like home. Not our home. I do recall the family we bought it from seemed really excited to sign those closing docs.

My career was so charged with responsibilities and effort that I couldn’t welcome that house as my home as well. Its like we were fighting each other. Family meals eaten in that house were few and far between. I rarely have any afternoon memories there. Mornings were always dark and it was usually the same when I got home from work. Or I just don’t remember from all the drinking.

I will admit when I was furloughed during Covid I enjoyed being home with my family for the first real time. It almost felt like our house. Those warm fuzzies ended when my work partnership exploded. Then I went into a fine deep depression. I spent days blowing leaves in my yard, expressionless. Wind would scatter them and I’d go out and rake them into piles over and over. My watch would register 1500 plus calories from all the raking. I could feel my wife peeking through the broken blinds checking up on me. I wouldn’t take the leaves to the end of the yard after a while. I’d move them around. We had mountains of leaves sporadically around the house. I was toiling. Not working was literally driving me mad. I felt like the dad in Amityville Horror splitting logs all day.

One night while I was a bottle deep in vodka I created a Chadcuterie logo on my phone while I was feeling sorry for myself. I needed a way to make some cash until I could find my calling again. It was literally suppose to only last until after Christmas.

When I created Chadcuterie that late fall I turned our house into a slightly illegal commissary. Our kitchen was dedicated to meat and cheese storage. Bought a small dorm fridge to hold my stock and used our dining room table to host the building up of the boxes. The counter was always littered with folded boxes and dry goods. Kitchen covered in flour. I was making my own crackers at the time. Our oven door wouldn’t close all the way so I would lean a stool against the oven door to keep the gas heat in. We would have pickups in our driveway. On busy days I’d have to instruct everyone how to pull around in the yard. The lawn got destroyed during Christmas time. I had to hide our city garbage cans in the back when they would get filled with trash from all the fruit clamshells. If it got too heavy I’d dump my trash into Southern’s dumpster because well, fuck you.

On a whim we called one of those ridiculous “we will buy your house” signs in our neighborhood. After doing some simple math I stood to lose around 20% of our equity using one of these investors as opposed to me sinking up to 60k to fix it up. 60k that I did not have. 60k that the bank would not loan me.

I swallowed a little pride and after haggling for 3 months I said I do and we had 45 days to get the fuck out of dodge San Souci.

We hired a moving truck February 2021 and moved all of our shit over to a little rental house in N Main. I didn’t even look back the last time I took the last little load of boxes in my Tacoma. By this time I wanted to get away from that structure as possible.

It’s mostly my imagination that has caused my negative perception of that house. I realize that. I don’t physically blame the house. I became a different person during the 11 years we lived there. It was tumultuous, it was always hot or cold and never in between. My personality seemed to replicate that. I don’t think I ever had a good night’s sleep there.

A decade of discomfort and despair

There was just something about that place..

Taking some good from the bad there were good memories to be had there.

My child’s first words (kitty) and steps were in that home.

Me mockingly carrying my wife through the door when we came home from our wedding

Some fun Friendsgiving times

Sitting by campfires in the yard during Covid. Slowly feeling myself coming back to my family

Hanging our first family photos over the mantle

Look we did our best to turn this into our home.

It just wasn’t having it.

That house did something to my mind. I don’t put blame on it for any of our hardships it just seemed to encourage them.

It may sound like an over active imagination but I could feel myself slowly start to heal when we left.

It took a year at our new address for me to feel it. I have no doubt I’d still be drinking at Tindal. If I was still with my family and they didn’t kick me out. That house seemed dead set on fucking that too.

My reckoning wouldn’t have reckoned. I fully believe that. That house was a canker sore on my soul.

It’ll hold some memories true inspite of itself.

I am curious how the new family is doing there. Does the back bedroom speak to them like it did me?

I like this little place we live in now. It’s a third of the size. We all share a bathroom but we get to share many other things too. I’m home more. We all are. It’s a rental but it feels like home. Something I haven’t felt in years.

No more leaves to rake either.

I don’t remember any bedtime stories ever being read to me as a child. I’m sure my mother read to me but it was rare with her work schedule and my father’s too. Both working at the Cock and Bull late night. My brother and sisters might’ve read to me out of their babysitting obligations but I can’t recall.

I didn’t read one until I was 39. I can’t recall which one it was I read to you. You wouldn’t remember either you probably weren’t crawling yet. It was mostly me reading while you giggled and smiled. Even at that early age you knew it was bedtime when daddy got home. Mom was always good at having you fed, gift wrapped and ready for bed when I got home. When I worked all the time one of my few benefits with you was I got to wake you up most mornings (still do) and I got to tuck you in. Your mom made sure I shared responsibilities. It wasn’t only my obligation it was my privilege but sometimes I got lost in the industry. You were always a happy baby. Smiling and cooing with me. For months it would be me kissing your forehead and making sure all the entanglements were out of reach. I was always extra extra careful with you. I probably took them out of the room just to be safe. As you got older and more verbal I’d get a “NITE” and or a “MUAY!” when you’d kiss your tiny little hand and throw your baby kisses at me, I’d always catch them before they hit the door. As you grew older you got to choose the books to read. You’d jump up in your bed in your little onesies that you seemed to outgrow every single night, little belly full of dinner sticking out that I’d poke with my finger while you giggled. You’d stand up by the little bookshelves I built by your bed and go “uuuuuuuuummmmm this one! And you’d pull a Mo Williams book off the shelf which looked ridiculously giant in your tiny little hands and we’d read about Knuffle Bunny or the pigeon that couldn’t drive a bus. I bet I read Mo Williams to you a hundred times. Enough in fact that if daddy was tired and tried to skip a page to hurry it along you knew it immediately and I’d have to go back and read that specific page. I didn’t mind. Sometimes I’d skip to see if you would notice. You always did. Then I’d put the book back on the shelf give you a loud smootch on your cheek while you giggled and squirmed. Your vocabulary got better and better “GNIGHT DADDY LUV YOU!”

We’d go from Everyone Poops, Chika Chika Boom Boom to reading Shel Silverstein and shed a tear about the giving tree, we’d talk about the adventures of Eloise, Curious George, we’d rhyme aloud with Dr. Seuss and some Madeline as you got a little older. I loved watching you lying in bed with those giant books spread across your wing span as you looked at pictures that became words to you.

Always smiling ❤️

My favorite book to read to you was always Where the Wild Things Are. Mischievous Max taming his little monster friends. You always wanted me to read that book to you. When I’d get you your favorite part “And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws!” You would start giggling in anticipation because when I got to the last part I’d roar and scream “AND SHOWED THEIR TERRIBLE CLAWS” I’d pounce on you and tickle you with my claw like hands” you’d scream and laugh. Some nights I’d act like I was too tired and I’d only read the words. Then I’d tuck you in as you looked at me disappointingly and walk out of your room only to slam the door back open and tickle you with my claws. I would never skip over that part. I knew it wouldn’t last forever. Sometimes you’d insist on reading that part and you’d tickle me with your tiny little claws and I’d giggle back. God, to think growing up I didn’t want to be a father. Biggest blessings of my life revolve around you and your mother.

I remember reading something pertaining the fact that you won’t know the last time you’ll ever read to your child until it’s too late. I read that and found myself crying. We weren’t there yet but we were close. We started skipping a few nights here and there but when we did read it was always Where the Wild Things Are. We still giggled and I still attacked you with my terrible claws. It’s been a minute but I’ll never forget and I hope you don’t either. I hope you read them to that beautiful little girl I dreamed about. Look at me here just sitting on my sofa crying.

I still tell you goodnight and I love you every night. My job, my lifestyle that I changed just for y’all allows me to.

And when you finish growing up I’ll still text you goodnight no matter how far away you may be and even show you my terrible claws if you still let me. I know you’ve outgrown it but I never will.