Max Curzon-Price and Andrew Kong Give the Latest Intel on Bar Supernova

I recently sat down with Max Curzon-Price and Andrew Kong to hear how things are shaping up for their upcoming Chinatown project, Bar Supernova (they’re targeting an August opening — follow them on Instagram for updates), situated next door to the legendary Keefer Bar. As construction ramps up, the two dished on how they’re feeling, where the budget has gone so far, and what to expect from their summer rooftop patio pop-up series – as well as their broader thoughts on the state of the F&B industry.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Coming up, talking the upcoming Bar Supernova with Max Crozon Price and Andrew Kong. That's coming up next. Today's episode of Track and Food is brought to you by Scout Magazine. If you're wanting to learn more about Vancouver's food and cultural sphere, with regards to community news, new restaurant openings, central guides to some of the city's best offerings, as well as who's hiring, Scout is where you should go. You can find them at ScoutMagazine.ca. That's scoutmagazine.ca. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the podcast today. My name is Jimmy Maughn. I'm your host as always. It's another sunny day today here in Vancouver in mid-June. World Cup fever is hit Vancouver like a ton of bricks. This city is on fire, especially after Canada winning that amazing game yesterday over Qatar. Yeah, it's been a wonderful time to be a part of the city, seeing people really jumping on ship with this big festivity. So it's uh it's pretty cool. I did another episode of the pod yesterday with my good friends Max Cruzon Price and Andrew Kong. Sat down with them and chatted about their upcoming new bar, which is called Bar Supernova. It's going to be here in Chinatown. I brought them on in the podcast in mid-February. We briefly talked about them at that time signing their lease. Now it's been a couple months. Obviously, they've signed their lease. They are now in the space doing construction and uh going through that process of opening up a bar in Chinatown and in Vancouver in 2026. And if anybody's read anything out there about the economics of our city and our world at this moment, doing something like this at this scale at this time is quite challenging, but they're pulling it off and they're quite optimistic. And so I was eager to talk to them about this process, how much money they're spending, the space that they're building, what it's looking like. I got a chance to get in there actually and take a look at it, and it's coming along. The bones of the bar is being put together as we speak. And they've also got some great news to share in the sense that they do have access and are going to be running the rooftop patio, and they're going to be launching a rooftop patio series until they open, starting probably next week, or I guess this week, once this comes out. But uh that's very exciting for them. They're gonna be doing pop-ups on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, DJs, music, and some snacks, and some obviously great cocktails. So these are good friends of mine, two people I admire and and uh have a lot of respect for because I think they're gonna be trying to do something pretty cool for the city. And, you know, they're gonna be next to Canada's best bar in the Kiefer Bar. And Kiefer Bar is an iconic institution in the city. And, you know, I think it's great for the city to have more, you know, new bars, but also people that are really excited about bringing this industry forward. We've seen a lot of development with that over the last 15 years, but with North America's 50 best coming here the past two years, excitement for cocktail fever and people just doing really good work. I think is really cool. And yeah, I'm excited for them. It was nice to chat about that. Otherwise, I finally got to try the pork up at Kisa Tanto, which is quite amazing. I've been begging Joel to finally put it on the menu, and he did. Had it twice last week, which was pretty cool. And I'm about to start filming that video series. I've been taking my sweet time because I've been doing a lot of research and having a lot of fun with it. So stay tuned for that. Otherwise, yeah, hope everyone out there is enjoying their summer and having a great time and enjoying this weather. Check out your bars and restaurants. Even though it's World Cup Fever right now, I do hope you indulge in making sure that we uh spread the love and not just give it to all the sports bars and people with TVs. Because there's a lot of great restaurants and bars out there that are doing great work, and we want to make sure that they're having a great summer as well. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy this episode with Max and Andrew. They're delightful, and this is a great conversation. Without further ado, I'll bring them on. We're doing the podcast today in my lovely apartment. It's mid-June, it's a beautiful day out. We're also sitting with his great partner, Andrew Kong. Hello, Andrew. Oh, we're just cracking a drink. Let's crack a boy. I gotta crack mine. Mine's non-alcoholic. That's okay. So cheers, gentlemen. Cheers. Thanks for having us. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm excited to bring on these two gentlemen today to talk about their new bar. We brought them on back in February with uh James Lankford Smith and Dalla Al Chani. James Aaron's at. Oh, James, James. See, I don't remember how to do my things. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I shouldn't even remember Jimmy anyway, so that's fine. Yeah, that was great. And it was kind of I was talking to my girlfriend about this the other day. I totally I forgot how long that was. It felt like it was yesterday, but I was like, wow, that we actually did that in February. But a lot has changed in your world since then. I was actually lucky enough to just go into your space, which was you know exactly what I expected to be in mid-June when you guys were hoping to open it sometime in August. It looked exactly like a construction zone. I've been in those many a time running restaurants and working in restaurants. You guys are opening July? Sure you are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

I mean, that's sure you are. I mean, we've had like at least a month and a half.

SPEAKER_03 5:03

If anybody talks about like kind of the thing about the hospitality industry, is it's like if you've been a part of a build and you're doing the build and you're like, you know, everyone's like, oh, we're gonna be opening this date. And I used to always get frustrated about restaurateurs or people doing like this, like, oh, we're hoping to open like we're opening August 15th. Like that's a set date. And I'm like, why would you give yourself that deadline? Because you know, we're consistent.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Would you give yourself that disappointment?

SPEAKER_03 5:22

Yeah, also you're like, you're always delayed, right? Yeah, and then you get into the space like literally two weeks before, and you look at it and you're like, there's no fucking way they're opening in two weeks. There's no way. And then it does happen somehow magically. But you guys are different. It sounds like you guys are extremely optimistic. So I'm gonna throw to you, Max, right now. Since February, how's it been going?

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Yeah, heaps, heaps has happened. I guess we would have just signed the lease in and around that time. Maybe maybe we were just about to sign off. Maybe it was like March, I think we signed off. Yeah, um, we were pretty confident on it, but I mean we were so confident on the lease at that point that we'd already engaged our interior designers who had design who had like done significant work at that point in designing the space and fitting the layout to a space that we hadn't signed the lease on yet. I knew we had pretty good relationship and negotiation with the landlord, who was pretty supportive along the way. But yeah, obviously we've got keys in possession of the space. Uh gosh, what's happening? Like, what have we done in the meantime? There'd be a handful of little pop-ups here and there. We did a trip down to Mexico, 50 best happening there. So yeah, like every month there's something big, but it's like step by step that comes. And now it's into construction. It felt like we were at an absolute standstill for the longest time. Like, I was giving our contractor a hard time. I'm like, why are there not people in the space all day, every day? And he's like, Well, reasons X, Y, and Z.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Turns out construction is uh more complicated than just like, yeah, go build.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Go buildings, yeah. Yeah, just securing the last couple of permits, we had to amend ourselves onto a building permit. So a big draw for us for the space here is that we're within Kiefer House, which is a hotel, sort of on the corner-ish of Kiefering, Columbia, just off Kiefer in Maine.

SPEAKER_03 6:58

Is there a popular bar next to you guys? Kiefer bar. Kief, yeah. Yeah. Isn't that Canada's best bar right now? Uh it sure is. Sure is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:05

Speaking of 50 best.

SPEAKER_03 7:06

Do you feel any uh kind of like pressure to be kind of like, all right, I gotta measure myself against this amazing team of 16 years?

SPEAKER_02 7:15

We just feel extremely grateful to be next door and in such good company. If they've been like institutional in the scene for at least the 10 years that I've been in Vancouver for and since before that, I think 16, 17 years they've been right now that they just had a birthday.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

I think there's a little bit of pressure, like you know, the way that we look around our community, seeing what people are doing and all the cool stuff. And, you know, you want to be a part of that zeitgeist and do cool stuff too. So yeah, it's absolutely like we don't look at it as like a competitive business kind of thing, but like just people doing stuff that we also want to be a part of in the community to do that, those kind of things too.

SPEAKER_03 7:50

Yeah, I mean, we said this last time. I could not think of a better space for you guys to be in. I think it's you know, obviously going in there right now and getting kind of a vision of what the idea, what you guys are doing, and obviously seeing the rooftop patio and the potential that you guys have there moving forward, but also just like I love the idea that you guys are next to them. I think it's great for Kiefer, I think it's great for Chinatown, I think it's great for Vancouver. I think it's exciting to have that kind of like you guys are gonna be so different from them, but also you're gonna add so much more unique, like another brand of great cocktail kind of measurements in the city, which I think is really cool. And yeah, it's also, I mean, I'm being selfish because I live a block away.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

So I mean, like, what a great block, though, right? Like between Furbar, Supernova to slot in next to Kiefa, Baobay, Juke, Mio, right around the corner, Pizza Tanto right around the corner.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Bigira, La Wai.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Yeah, I mean, even like, I don't know, like London Pub is a great pub. Yeah. Like if you don't go in there expecting to order a Manhattan, but like Pete's coming soon? Pete's coming soon, absolutely, man. Like, there's so much DD Mao around the corner, it's dangerously close.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Chinatown Barbecue, Newtown Bakery, lots of good stuff.

SPEAKER_02 8:53

Yeah, no, we're super, super stoked to be a part of the community, and people have been extremely welcoming so far.

SPEAKER_03 8:57

So, question now that you guys are in the middle of the thick of it, should people open up restaurants and bars in the city? How difficult is it?

SPEAKER_01 9:04

It's expensive.

SPEAKER_03 9:05

It's expensive. It's really expensive.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

We just came from Mexico City, and you see the sort of like caliber of bars there, the cool architecture, the designs that they've done. Their labor costs are fractions of what we do here. So, like, you know, if we really want to get down to the breakdown of like cogs and things like that, their overheads that they spend on labor just means that they can afford to have an army of people in their bars helping operate day-to-day. Whereas in Vancouver, you know, people need a living wage, like the city's expensive. So, you know, it just changes the name of the game.

SPEAKER_03 9:36

Can you open a bar for under a million dollars? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. You can open another bar. Your bar under a million dollars. No, no, no, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

No, it's I mean, it it depends on uh on the concept, how malleable you are, what you want to do. Like, I think it also boils down to like Andrew and I both kind of made an agreement when we started this project, is that we wanted to try and I don't want to sound cliche, anyways, like reinvent the idea of what a bar could, should be, like reinvent like the concept of what great hospitality and service is. Like we, all the three of us at the table, and I'm sure many people that tune into this podcast as well, like are people that dine out. Like I've listened to a number of your podcasts where people talk about service and what they expect. You talk about tipping culture a lot, you talk about design, layout, how much you love a space, how much you don't love a space, oversights, like these are the all things that like anyone that is a bartender by trade and by craft like does talk about and thinks about all the time. And between the two of us, this is a combination of like 26 years of being behind the stick that both Andrew and I wanted to open a bar. And it's like the combination of all of that thought and knowledge that we put into this, and we just knew that we could like we're not just gonna like take a room and then flip it and be like, all right, here we go, right? There were a number of spots in this neighborhood too that we were like pen to paper so close to signing on that in hindsight I'm glad we didn't because it fundamentally wasn't gonna be compatible with the thing that we were talking about. Like building a bar that's an empty shell from the ground up is so much more expensive, yes, painfully so. Like nobody knows how much HVAC costs until you have to pay for HVAC.

SPEAKER_03 11:08

Like, yeah, so what's that like what's that like right now? You're buying an HVAC $220,000. For an HVAC machine?

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Uh well that's about like that's like all your ductwork, your makeup air. That's the hood vent itself is like only 20k, but like air conditioning, makeup air. If you put a hood vent in, it's gonna create a vacuum in the room, right? It's just sucking air out. So then you have to have a makeup air unit on the front or somewhere in the building that pulls in fresh air into the space, and then you need distribution for that. So you know, one seat doesn't just get blasted with gallons of fresh air, like yeah, and then you have to install it, and then you need you know, the city to sign off on where it's going, and then you need electrical plumbing.

SPEAKER_03 11:44

Please tell me you had a shot of whiskey after getting that bill.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Like we haven't done a bill yet. It's just in the budget, it's just made into budget, so we're gonna have to pay it. 220 grand? It's a quarter quarter million dollars just on HVAC. So that's like that's that's where a million dollars comes from. And there's no way Can you do that cheaper? No, it depends.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

It depends on the building, it depends on the space, the size of the space.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

And bear in mind, we didn't have to a big attraction for us on the space that we're in is that the if we want exhaust for the hood vent, usually that is really expensive for people that want to put a hood vent in because you've got to cut a hole in the roof and then punch through and like that's expensive. Thankfully, the landlord and the hotel had already installed that for us. Otherwise, it would be impossible because you can't run a vent up through 10 floors of hotel rooms, right?

SPEAKER_03 12:27

Can you get him to pay for the HVAC?

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Uh well, but you do have TI technically, tenancy improvement. So, you know, that's part of the negotiation with a lease.

SPEAKER_03 12:35

Because that's essentially something you're putting in for the space. Like even if you left, that the HVAC's staying there, it's not going anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Correct, correct.

SPEAKER_03 12:40

So I mean that was a long conversation.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Well, that's why it took five months to negotiate the lease. Like we five months? Five months. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:46

Wow. I mean, when you talked to James Irons out about this, did he give you any kind of inkling? James was incredibly helpful.

SPEAKER_02 12:51

Well, yeah, he knows what to look for. He, well, you were with him at dinner at the place I used to work in the past, and he was he'd had a couple of drinks. That's fine. And he was like, Promise me, promise me you will not sign a lease until I've read it. And I was like, I will take you up on that. There are today is a day that we accept every single favor people can offer. And James was enormously helpful. I think he read three or four different leases.

SPEAKER_03 13:14

Well, because he knows, I mean, he's how how many leases has he done? He knows what to look for. It's double it's double digits. And I just like I I've said this a million times over and everybody who's listening out there. I'm just like, like, if you've never done this before, it's call your friends, call the people who've done it. You know, like I'm even as a journalist. I mean, I look at all the journalists out there that I follow, that I that I like, that I look at some of the patterns they do, the things they do. I've I've tried to do so, I've taken some of those notes into how I run this podcast. Even writing, I'm obviously we've all done that as bartenders. We see what other people are doing successfully. We're kind of like, okay, that's a really good idea. You know, so it's like, why would you not take up anyone's on the idea of signing literally, probably one of the biggest documents you're ever gonna do in your life? For sure. And your lease is probably what, 10 years? 10 plus five. 10 plus five. So you just signed something that you're literally locked into for 10 years, potentially 15. It's like, yes, speak to the people out there who have been doing this for years, who know what to look for. I bet you there's a lot of questions he brought up to you that you're like, I had no idea. You know, and it's like that's oh yeah, oh, heaps and heaps.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

And he's like, Don't sign that, don't sign that, ask for to negotiate that. Like, you know, how much how much of a fixed string period and how much free rent? So a fixed string period is the time that you have to build, to build the space, right? Like you shouldn't, if it's a new build, you shouldn't expect to pay rent during that time. Whereas you can ask for free rent once you get open because you've obviously would have just spent all this money. And then, of course, you know, one day we'll leave the space and somebody else will come take it over. But we paid for the walls, we paid for the plumbing, we pay for the coring, drilling through the concrete, like HVAC, gas, and like all things, right? Like these all the things, and they stay. And so does the bar top, and so does like anything that is even remotely screwed into anything is theirs.

SPEAKER_03 14:47

That's why a lot of places, a lot of people look for a turnkey. You just take the key and you've already got the shell, you can kind of change it.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

I mean, there are there are many ways to skin a cat, and there are many ways to open a bar to answer your previous question of like, could you do it for less? Yes, you can. If anyone's thinking about opening a bar, I would highly recommend seeking out a restaurant that is for sale, that is closing. And the condition is the space has to be exactly what you're looking for and acceptable. You can't change anything exactly.

SPEAKER_03 15:13

So you can the union space over here, they're not changing anything. They've been doing it over and over there.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

So actually, we very nearly took the union space, right? That's what we asked you, like your opinion on that space. And so, for example, if we took the union space and bought it as a restaurant for sale, at the time it was for sale for about 200 grand. So we would have had to pay, you know, the 200 grand for the HVAC would have just gone to paying someone for a restaurant. Granted, you get the fridges, the freezers, the bar, the washrooms, everything comes with it, including most importantly the permits, the operating license, the liquor license. So the liquor license has to be right. Don't buy a brunch spot that has a liquor license from 10 a.m. till 5 p.m. if you plan to open at 5 p.m. Because it's going to take you six months to amend that with the city of Vancouver and get that approved, right?

SPEAKER_03 15:50

You mean that's not something you can just go and it's in an email and it's done in two days? Yeah, you just just knock on the door. Just go ask Ken Sim.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just go knock it in his door. Hi, Ken. Uh why does it have to take so long? Yeah, it's so annoying. But that that would be the way to do it if you wanted to do it for less, if the room is acceptable. But then you can't change it. If the permit, you cannot move any walls. You would have to sort of quote rebrand. So you buy the space, you take the keys, run it for a week or two, and then say, uh, we're rebranding. You shut it down, you probably lay everybody off, you got the place down to studs. You cannot move any walls, you can't do anything. Everything is considered like grandfathered at that point. You can put like a pony wall in, but prefer like something that you can. Can you move the bar? No, no, can't move the bar, can't move the washroom, can't move the kitchen. If it's zoned for an area, that's where it has to stay. So that's a drawback of that. That would be the drawback. But spending $200,000, give or take, or $100,000 or $300, however much, to buy a restaurant that's obviously for sale because it's not succeeding. And then you're gonna literally kill the business. Now that that might be that person's retirement plan. So they obviously want to get as much for it. They're not gonna let it go for $50K unless they're really desperate. But yeah, I mean, you know, you still have to pony up that cash up front to like kill the golden goose, so to speak, right? You're like you're buying a business to shut it down.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

And that's also a kind of a thing that you know we discussed very early on was the reason that we went for a space that we could entirely build ourselves is because it feels like a lot of bars and restaurants open that just are the same as what they were when they closed. And that's just kind of the cost of getting into the business because you have to come in with so much more capital in order to actually like change the room. So it's kind of pointless to buy a restaurant if you're just gonna gut the place entirely and rebuild. You have to just forcibly open with the bare bones of what it is already and then create something. And there's a lot of places that feel like, oh, this is just like the last place because it is.

SPEAKER_03 17:44

They didn't change anything. The identity is still there. Well, that's yeah. I mean, that's an issue that I I mean, I've said this a few times, having lived in this neighborhood and seen when the union shut down, what was it, like around COVID? Yeah, I've there's been out three or four iterations that have gone into that union space, and none of them has really made any major differences. And I think the reason why none of them have been really successful is that it still feels like the union. They haven't changed. People still call it the union. Oh, we'll go to like Miso Taco, you know, where the union used to be. Like I've wanted all of them to succeed. I've gone into all of them, I've tried them all out, and it's just it still feels like that old relic. And unfortunately, the way us humans are is just like we can't let go of that. Like it'd be like if someone went into the diamond right now and just opened up the diamond.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

We nearly took the diamond. That was another one, right?

SPEAKER_03 18:28

I mean, I know that building's going under major renovations right now, but like you could have easily taken that space and just like turned it, but everyone walking there would be like this feels like the diamond.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

It's the diamond. And I mean, we had long conversations about that. It's like, is this gonna feel like we're taking over this, you know, like heritage institution of the city and like bringing it back for the people, but also can we ever get out of that shadow? Get out of the shot, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

Yeah, it's kind of like what I say about the James Bond series right now. It's like I like that they're taking Amazon's taking their sweet time figuring out who they're gonna pick for Bond, and it's been already five years since the last one came out. It's like Daniel Craig was iconic. You need to kind of like go away from that for a little bit and get people like to not think about it and actually come back with something completely different. I want Indus Alba. He's too old, he's like 51 years old. So I mean Indress Alba would have been great 20 years ago, like when he finished The Wire, that would have been perfect because he was the right age. I don't know who they're gonna pick. I don't I just hope they don't pick Jacob Alordi. I don't think he would be a good fit for it. He's in everything right now. Yeah, I know that. But I yeah, he's like sorry, Jacob, you don't get that.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

I think they're gonna choose someone lesser known.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

I think so. I think that's what you have to do. But you have to reinvent the whole thing, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:31

And so it's kind of like the way that Casino Royale like really reinvented itself from Pierce Brosnan era.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

Yeah, it's a completely different thing. I think with the union space, I think and unfortunately it's just a lot of businesses going in there right now who just maybe just don't have a lot of money to start and redo something. Yeah, but someone kind of needs to do that. And so at least the good thing about you guys is you're the first ones in there. So you get to start fresh. Yeah, it's gonna cost you a little bit more. But I think long run, I think the runway is way better.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Wow, that was it. And it was a lot, it was a lot of conversations, and there was a certain point, like I felt pretty good about it. And and Andrew and I went back to look at it a second time, and he's like, I think this is it.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

Yeah, but that rooftop is amazing. I mean, that right there is the cherry on the top. I mean, you want to talk about that? I mean, hell yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

I was like, I was up there right now, it's incredible. Like the view is on both sides. You have both sides, mountains and floors. Four wrap around four. And you have this. Like, if you guys eventually have the money and actually turn that into actually what you want it to be. Next summer. Next summer. It's like literally, you have essentially you could have two bars.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, the ground floor is like bar supernova itself is set up to accommodate for upstairs. So we're like, we're already trying to future proof. We'll we'll buy the bigger ice machine that doesn't make sense for this little bar now, but it's gonna have to feed two bars in the future.

SPEAKER_03 20:39

No, no, no, buy a shitty buy a shitty ice machine. Shitty used one that's been like yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Hotel hotel uh yeah, off like the sixth floor of a motel that's shutting down. Crescent ice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just shaved ice, yeah. Perfect. You guys um yeah. You're doing a Hojazaki? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, the rooftops, you know, it's it's about the same footprint, it's about 2,100 square feet, give or take. The only way you can get up there is through the elevator in bar Supernova, through the back of Supernova, which is great. We can kind of, you know, if we're full in one, we can accommodate somebody upstairs. If upstairs wants to move downstairs and get out the heat, we can we can move people back and forth. They'll be both high caliber but slightly different concepts. There'll be a much lighter food offering upstairs. Probably can be up there, 10? Till 10, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

It's basically technically it's way later than that.

SPEAKER_03 21:28

Because like if you guys if you just put like if you put up like great cocktails up there, DJ, the vibe up there is gonna be insane.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

Twelve, yeah. So that's it. Basically, in the in the meantime, while we're waiting for construction, and while the sun's here, we're like kind of don't get me wrong, we have a heap of stuff to be doing, but we're like, Well, the one thing that you guys have going, I don't think people realize this is that when you s when you go up there, you have no buildings blocking your view in any direction.

SPEAKER_03 21:52

Yeah. Like you literally can see on both sides, it's unimpeded views.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Well, you can see Mount Baker in Washington. And you're not even that high.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

Yeah, it's love floors. It's not like you're like a 40-store walk-up.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

You see all of Chinatown, you can see the rickshore, you can see the gateway, all of the city, the North Shore skyline.

SPEAKER_03 22:08

The other one like I thought the North Shore was a better view, but then I went to the other side, and the other side's like a lot of people. Science Well, False Creek, yeah, it's pretty sweet.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

It's pretty.

SPEAKER_03 22:16

And it's funny because I wrote a column last year talking about the fact that like we have this, you know, like you go to Hong Kong, you go to Tokyo, and you have millions, or I shouldn't say millions, but lots of bars that are in the city, yeah, like in the sky that are like these, you know, like we have all these towers and we don't have one sky bar. Not saying you guys are a sky bar, but you guys, this is kind of like a something a little bit elevated.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

But I would say to 20 landlords out there.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Like something on like because penthouses are too valuable.

SPEAKER_03 22:42

Yeah, but they're all empty.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

So no one to live in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. But they sold them.

SPEAKER_03 22:46

Yeah, but think about I know, but like let's say you had like a like let's say you did a small pop-up version of like let's say you do this five years from now, someone comes up to you and says, the 32nd floor of the Shangri La will give you this one apartment.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:59

And you can build your bar there, and it's got this whatever panoramic views, you get the patio and everything else. And you build your bar there. You're telling me that no one's gonna go to this? This thing would be.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

Yeah, it would pop off. But the thing is, you need to have the accessibility that it can be covered over because right now that's the biggest issue that we had. And again, these are all conversations to have if you're signing leases, but it's like it would be prohibitive to take a lease on a rooftop patio that's you know only open for six months of the year, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:28

I do want to make the distinction between a patio bar and a rooftop bar.

SPEAKER_03 23:32

Yeah, this is just this is just it could be like in the buttons like an in like if it was fully enclosed, it would crush. It would crush, yeah. Like it would crush. Yeah. Like you're like, oh, let's go to the said bar supernova up on the 32nd floor of the Shangri La. And in the wintertime, it's like, look at those views.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

But you think opening our bar is expensive. Wait till you try to open one of those bars.

unknown 23:52

I know.

SPEAKER_03 23:53

Yeah, that would be a good one. But I mean, like they do it in they do it in all these other major cities.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

You know, uh yeah, I think they're cool. I can't give you a good reason why we don't. And I think honestly, like you're saying, it's just it's just condos, condos, condos, condos, condos, right? And it's all empty. Yeah. I know. Drive across Canby Bridge at like 7 p.m., particularly in winter when it's already dark at that time. And I I always look at how many lights are on in like all of Yale Town or you know, even if you're coming to the West End or whatever. I'm I'm always looking like what percentage of lights are on or off. Like, where is everybody? Like, why is it that like 40% of lights are on in downtown 7 p.m. on a Wednesday?

SPEAKER_01 24:29

I will say that because I have thought about this, you don't have all your lights in the apartment on at the same time. It would be you'd be like in the kitchen and the kitchen lights would be on, but you're for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But to play devil's advocate to that point. I don't know what kind of darkness you're living in in. Yeah, you have one room. Yeah, of course all your lights are gonna be on.

unknown 24:47

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Uh so if you have eight rooms, how many rooms are you gonna have on? Fair enough, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 24:53

Well, maybe you're a psycho and you'd like all your lights on. I don't know. Probably. Uh what should people expect about the rooftop bar here?

SPEAKER_02 24:59

So we'll be I I I've I reckon by the time this is out, we'll be open. We're we're pretty imminent.

SPEAKER_03 25:05

Next Sunday, next Friday.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

The last thing that I just need to wait on is I just need the permit in my hand from the city to say that we can do a temporary event up there, which they've said is done, but until it's in my hand and not not releasing reservations. So yeah, we'll be operating everything through open table. What you can expect is a bang and sweet spot with some delicious cocktails. We've got some easy food, like cheese chocolate tree, grazing boards, a little beer, a little wine, bang and high balls. All the reservations will go through open table, and we do require reservations because the front door to the Kiefer house is code access. It's like a serviceless hotel. There's no like so when you get a reservation, we have a code. We'll see how bad it goes the first weekend or how good it goes the first weekend. Either we'll come and get you, or you'll get a code and you just let yourself in the front door, use the same code to get up to the rooftop. It'll be clearly signed.

SPEAKER_03 25:58

Do you have your glassware and stuff like this? Do you have a glass? Yeah, yeah. That's it's it's coming. We sure have a list of all the things we need. Like, and you're gonna work out of like food-wise, you're just gonna make it up there?

SPEAKER_02 26:09

Yeah, yeah. So Thursdays we'll prep everything off site. We've got a commissary, which is great. And then Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we'll have everything that's available on the menu. I don't think we'll like we're right now, we're not planning to do like any shaking cocktails. It's not like, oh, I'll just get a margarita. Preferably, we're working with like no perishable ingredients. We'll have beautiful Kodama ice loaded in frozen glassware already, everything batched, ready to go.

SPEAKER_03 26:31

Vacas sodas, that's it.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

That's all we're doing. Oh, vodka soda, baby. There is three high balls, so yeah, we're working with Oh, so you got the menu already ready to go.

SPEAKER_03 26:37

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

Trone, Grey Goose, and uh St. Germain have been uh very kind to us as well, as uh San Pellegrino. It's basically helped us get this thing open. Like we've definitely been relying on brand sponsorship and partnership to make this thing happen. There was exactly zero dollars that we could pull out of the budget to uh open a second space when we're just like two months from opening. Were they excited to work with you? Uh yeah, we didn't get a lot of pushback, which was really, really nice.

SPEAKER_03 27:00

I'm gonna talk to you guys about this in a few seconds on a side topic because I'm writing a column about branding right now. Let's do that. I'm finding it a little bit interesting in the sense, but I don't want to cut you off while you finish.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

So yeah, I think it'll be we've we got a little DJ setup coming up there, and then we'll run from 1 p.m. till 10 p.m. Give or take. The sun sets right about like 9 30 at the moment. So uh we'll kind of shut it down with sunset and uh do it again the next week. DJs? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have them.

SPEAKER_03 27:25

Uh huh. You get Mickey?

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Oh, we could talk to Mickey.

SPEAKER_03 27:29

He's free Fridays. That's a good show, actually. Actually, yeah. He's free Friday. I want to build a nice little roster. He's doing some stuff right now. He's doing all the FIFA stuff right now. Good for him. Yeah, he's doing like the main, he's like doing the main, I don't know, fan pavilion thing today. Like all day.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

So you're saying he's totally busy and super affordable.

SPEAKER_03 27:46

Well, yeah, I mean, yeah. Well, because he's Monday nights at June. Yeah. And then he's Wednesday nights at Kiefer, and then he's Friday nights at Saturday nights at uh Prophecy. So he's got free five Fridays. Is he guy? Is he just DJing full time now? No, he's still doing his uh social work stuff during the day. But yeah. Good for him. If anybody's unfamiliar with Mickey McLeod, Mickey McLeod was the person I started the Drack Me podcast with back in 2018. And he was with me until I killed him off in 2021, I think. 2020. I think he did 56 episodes of it. That's a good run. That's good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

Well, he also has such a good voice for podcasts.

SPEAKER_03 28:18

Oh, he's great. Yeah. He kind of lost interest around episode 40, and I had to drag him for the last 16. But I think I think it was 56. I think we ended with him. Did you fire him? Well, I didn't fire him. He was just kind of I don't know what to do say anymore. I was like, I always knew that this was gonna eventually just be my podcast. But he just well he stopped, he got out of the industry, and then he went into becoming a social worker and stuff like that. So but I obviously still likes Anishy's DJing. But that DJing was that's how we have all these mics, and that's how I kind of got into this because he knew all the audio and how to do all this stuff because he's a he has a degree in audio and engineering. So sweet. You need a degree to plug these things in. I guess I didn't have to actually but before, so when we first started doing the podcast in 2018, he did all the mixing. Yeah. So afterwards, I have an engineer that I send the episodes to, and then he cleans it all up. This isn't straight to radio. I mean, it could. So, but yeah, I don't think those ums and ahs are good. And the guy comes in and he just cleans it all up, makes it all sound nice and clean and professional. It's I was gonna say, every time I listen to an episode, I'm like, this is so cohesive.

SPEAKER_02 29:13

Everyone's so switched on. You hear the clinking of wine in the background, like there's no way.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

Well, it's I mean, yeah, we're not perfect here, but uh yeah, it's making him it's cool that he's been able to kind of create a pretty good career in DJing outside of uh working in hospitality. So for sure. But uh it's a little thought for you. But uh, it's exciting. I'm excited for you guys to have uh that. But anyways, I'm writing a column right now on kind of like I've written a series of columns recently about kind of the idea of choice in branding. And I'm finding it very interesting about this idea of you know, you walk around Vancouver right now, and all you see is McCalob Ultra and Budweiser, because FIFA is literally that's their main sponsorships, and they branded everything. And I'm curious about this idea of choice when it comes to the consumers decision making. I'm saying that like, you know, for you guys in your situation, you've partnered with these brands to get this off the ground. And I know brand sponsorships are huge for events and small and small businesses. The one thing I'm I'm curious about is if you have something like you go to BC Place and you look at all your beer options and it's just the entire lineup of whatever has been bought and paid for. Yeah. And people just go, I like Budweiser. But at the end of the day, you're not really given the kind of your actual real opportunity choice. I'm kind of curious about that idea of like, do people actually really know what they want? Because you're never really loaded to question. Well, it's just think about it. It's like it's this idea of like, you know, you're like, I like Budweiser, but I'm like, if that's the only thing that's ever really been shown to you, would like if we took away half of their branding and put like, let's say, all the local beers there, would people still pick that brand? And I always wonder, I've been wondering about this idea of like, you know, like, do we actually know what we want, or is it we've been there is there is that's a big question.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

That's a big question. There is, there is objectively, I would say the consumer has, or at least the consumer that we see has never been better educated. Even if you want to get down into like non-alcoholics, people are making, speaking of making choices, people are making really big choices to not buy these products as well. I'm a big fan of like we vote with our wallets kind of mentality. As an individual, I try to not buy big brands. I try to buy local where I can, where it's not again prohibitive of cost. From a business, I think is where you have like real pull, even a teeny tiny independent bar, like still has pull for like local businesses. Budweiser is a drop in the bucket, a drop in an ocean, like if we bring them on. But if you, you know, like sign on to buy a light local lager instead in lieu of Budweiser, like yeah, you're making real differences there. And I think as a consumer sitting down at a bar using Budweiser as an example, if you had a cool local beer or Budweiser, I'm significantly more likely to go with the cool local beer.

SPEAKER_03 31:43

Well, it's just I the only reason I'm thinking about this is because like you get all the thousands of tourists that are coming to Vancouver right now and they're coming to see the World Cup games and they're getting really excited. And I mean, Justin McEroy for the CBC just he did a nice video recently talking about like how Vancouver's really kind of been lit up since the World Cup started. And if I'm someone from Holland, I'm someone from Mexico, and I'm someone from Iran, and I'm here to see games, and then I go to BC Place and I go to all these fan fan expo uh pavilions, and all I'm seeing is the beers that I can see anywhere. And I'm not really getting that local perspective. Or I'm not even talking about beer, I'm just talking about anything. I just wonder if like behavioral economists have been calling that, they call it choice architecture. It's kind of this idea of like when you go into the liquor store and brands pay money for placement, and it's and they're not forcing you to pick something, but it's like a nudge. It's kind of look at us. So I always wonder sometimes it's like, are we or do we ever actually really have full autonomy in our choices?

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Well, the thing is that us three in the room and many people listening to the podcast are people who pay attention to their palates. Like we enjoy the food scene, we enjoy the drink scene, and so we go out and find those things. But quite honestly, the vast majority of people don't really see, you know, having a nice cocktail as like a thing that I would want to spend twenty dollars on, right? I'd rather have like four twelve dollar margaritas. So it's sometimes just as like what's cheap and in front of me is, I feel like a huge portion of the population. Yeah. Because the people that like you know, the people coming to FIFA that are into beers will go seek them out. They know that they're not gonna find them at these stadiums and things. And no, you know, maybe if you did put those products in front of people, people would try it. But a lot of people are like creatures of comfort. They want the comfort of it. Yeah, they're just like, I've had this before, I want that one.

SPEAKER_03 33:33

And that was my last call. I wrote this idea of like how people want comfort and they want to know that, like, okay, I've been to McDonald's, I know what that looks like. So yeah. Sorry, this is a little too much.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

No, I think it's a really I think it's an important question. I mean, in terms of also how brands operate within businesses, like that's another really big thing to consider. Like our concept at supernova inherently is built on being unaffiliated with brands for the most part. So that was a big conversation for us to have here. Like, like, does that feel weird now that you're kind of partnering with these people? Yeah, for sure it does. Like, the first thing that we do is partnership. Like, we were very selective of the partnership. It was pr like Patron, who we specifically went to first. And um, I was fortunate enough to go down on the the trip to the Hacienda a while ago. And my experience there was an eight-hour tour of that was so open to everything that was going on behind the scenes. It was like full curtain pullback that we spent like two hours looking at management of Bogasso, like the leftovers from the ferment and how they treat their water before it goes back into a system. And I was like, Oh, you guys like take this like very, very seriously and very, very sustainable. And the product is expensive, it's a hundred bucks a bottle here once it's landed on the shelves, give or take at ECL. But I was like, if we have to use uh a big brand tequila, which is another whole conversation I would have on a separate podcast about the damage that tequila is doing to the agave industry, if there was one that we have to do, like it would be those guys because that's aligned with bar supernova. Like the concept of bar supernova in itself is you know, a supernova is bigger in death than it is in life. And so our sort of supernova theory, quote unquote, is to take a dying star ingredient, blow it up, make it big. So we go to bars and restaurants, coffee shops, wineries, whoever, and we ask them what they throw away more than anything else, and we will take those products and process them either through fermentation or distillation, and that'll be our starting point. Like good examples, like uh oyster shells from Boulevard. Andrew was getting prawn heads from Anchi, I think. And then we would like clean the oyster shells, grind them, distill them, fry the prawn heads, grind them, distill them, and then our starting point would be like ocean shell distiller rather than gin. Now that's a hard sell if you go to Bombay Sapphire or Tank Ray and you say, You want to sponsor us? And you're like, Well, no, like you don't buy any of our product. Like, we don't have a back bar at Supernova, like the one there's no back bar. There won't be a back bar. No, there's gonna be one vodka, one gin, one whiskey, a light rum, a dark room, one tequila, one mezcal. And it's all bar supernova. We won't have it on day one, but it's a long-term project to build out that we we want to work with like a heap of the local distilleries here to be like even let's say ampersand, like no notes. Like their gin, their vodka is perfectly good and doesn't need to be marketed differently. But we do want to remove glass bottles from the equation. So we're gonna look at buying in bulk from them in like a tote container that we can then you know about batching cocktails, like how many like cases and cases and cases do the guests never see where you know, talk about like marketing and packaging and and uh choice architecture, I think you called it, and the way that brands spend enormous amount of money on like perfecting the bottle, perfecting the logo, perfecting the font for us to take that bottle out of a case, dump it into a batch, and throw it in the fucking bin. Like, I did that, I did that the other day at work. And that's you know, like Campari being shipped from Italy, that's Santori Toki being shipped from Japan, that's Bombay being shipped from the UK to land in little old Vancouver on the furthest corner of a Eurocentric map, is like way, way, way over there. You're shipping glass. Glass is more expensive to produce and put out than almost anything else. The design, the packaging, the weight of the glass itself. You know, how do we get the the product cheaper, more affordable, and more money into the pockets of the people that actually produce these things? So our long-term goal. Oh, you're a farm to table bar. Kind of uh distillery to glass. I to an extent, like I want to put money in the pockets of like the people producing the Mezcal, right? Like that guy. And if we can get that, we'll figure out how to land that direct in large.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

Fair trade booze.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

I love it. Then I can give my guests a better rate, a cheaper price, because I cut out glass bottles. A 750 mil bottle is the perfect size for a right a residence, right? Like you at home are gonna, you know, take maybe a year or two or three to drink a single bottle of rum. But we're gonna go through four of those a night. Why are bars still buying 750 mil bottles, right? Why are we even selling 750 mil bottles to bars? Why has nobody figured out that we can have like a refillable Hong Kong has uh it's a like a vending machine, it's a it's a dispense. You put your refillable container underneath, you you swipe, you pay, and it fills it with five gallons of patroned tequila, right? It just seems very dangerous. I don't know. I mean, like I think Hong Kong's probably like at the forefront, the forefront of like you know, global economics and society. Like if they've figured it out, why why why can't we do that, right? I don't know. So these are the questions that we're having. Long story short, for your question is like brand partnerships becomes a question, a moral question for us that I'm like Well, that's the thing. That's we can do this on the rooftop, but like you know, the long-term plan for bar super downstairs is to remove.

SPEAKER_03 38:55

I mean, yeah, but like I mean, like prime right there. You're you're holding a can from Rewind Laser, you know, Rewind. You know, Sampain's a really good friend of mine. Laser Light, awesome. Great brewery on Port Moody. And it's just like I was just like, I don't know. It just breaks my heart sometimes when I see this Michel, Budwise are just everywhere. Well, I'm just like, we have all this great stuff here, local. Yeah. Like we have these great, awesome purveyors who are there's lots of them. Do you think any of those breweries could keep up with the demand of FIFA? But I think I think a lot of them could together collaboratively. Yeah. And I think also we don't ever give them the opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

I don't think enough of us do. Like I can guarantee you that all the bars and the restaurants around here, who like the big pubs, would have been approached by reps of Michlaub and Budweiser and been like, We're gonna buy all your taps. Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:37

And so the guest is a good one.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

And we're gonna give you the discount, and you're gonna make all the money off the top.

SPEAKER_03 39:40

So the guest doesn't even get a choice. Yeah. Because the taps are already bought before they even got there.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:44

So they don't even get a choice on what they want.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

I will say you you said earlier that Vancouver has been lit up by FIFA, and I do think they've done a very good job of making the city look a bit cleaner and a bit more exciting.

SPEAKER_03 39:54

Yeah, I mean, and like Gramble, I saw the I mean the videos of Gramble Street and up what they're doing at the PE right now. Like it's it's I mean, there's live music, there's stuff going on, there's you know, we had all the car free days.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

I mean, every single restaurant is dead right now. Yeah, and then every hotel, everyone. So the economic promises, the hotels are dead right now. And I think the hotels are dead because they all towed the line of like three, five, eight thousand dollar rooms a night, which is egregious. So everyone's Airbnb their own apartments, legally or illegally, and they've all left town, and all the people that would be filling bars and restaurants are not here, and all the tourists, the tourists that are here with love to them coming and being a part of our city, are not the tourists that our food and drink invisible. But they're all but they're all going to the centre. They're going they're going to the center.

SPEAKER_03 40:41

If you're on Grammal Street, they're going to go. That's for the year. But if you're, you know, regular restaurant up on Main Street or whatever, or in commercial or a gas town, no TVs, dead. Yeah. You know, and I think a lot of people ended up going in. That's why that's why Poorhouse put in TVs.

SPEAKER_02 40:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:57

You know, like it's because they're probably thinking, all right, well, we're gonna get nothing. We're gonna be dead. Well, Poor House is a good location. No, it's a good location, but you would never think that poor house would have TVs. And a lot of places have just put my grocery store around the corner, put TVs in. That's crazy. The grocery store? Yeah. There's two TVs.

SPEAKER_02 41:14

Can you imagine being like, I couldn't possibly miss this? I can't go to the grocery store right now. You're just like walking around craning your neck.

SPEAKER_03 41:19

Yeah. But it's like, I mean, my hotel, we have a fucking, we have like a hundred-foot screen out there out front. And, you know, it's it's there's 300 people out there every day outside. You know, people are super excited. So it's just it's boom, it's a big boom for certain businesses, but we already know this. I mean, this is what happens every year with when the canocks go deep in the playoffs. Everyone goes to the sports bars, but everyone, everything else kind of takes a hit. But, you know, at the end of the day, hopefully it's a good economic boon for overall.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

But I don't know. I would like to know if we as the citizens of Vancouver can continue, expect the city of Vancouver to put street cleaners out all day, every day, and keep the city as clean and delightful as it has been presented all year round. Andrew the other day was like, I was like, oh, that's nice that they clean the streets. He's like, why can't we just have that? Like, this isn't a dirty city by no stretch, but it's the lifestyle choice of cleaning your house when you've got guests coming over or just having a clean house. Like, we're a very advanced and beautiful city with incredible infrastructure. I'm like, why don't we just have a clean house?

SPEAKER_03 42:22

I mean, I will say I will say every June, July, and August, you easily could shut down Gravel Street for just pedestrians. Yeah, I don't think so. Like it's not really impacting the city right now. No, I think I mean there there was already discussions about the idea of like people seeing this like, wow, this is really fun, and people are liking this. I'm like, no shit. They do this in other cities over all over the world, and it's very, very popular. Like they kind of did the pilot project in Gastown and then they right after they finished rebuilding the Granville Bridge. Yeah, but then they then they stopped doing it last summer because then now it was just every Sunday. It's because some businesses complained about the foot traffic. But I'm like, I don't think it but also they only started doing it really good at the end of the summer. But I mean, it I mean, if you go to Gravel Street right now, it's I mean today, especially.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

So I live on Seymour, so I do see the effects of shutting down that street because now it seems like there's more traffic on Seymour. Maybe there's more people, you know, and more whatever. But I'd gladly give that to have you know an entertainment district that actually is full of people. Gravel Street is like the my least favorite place to go.

SPEAKER_03 43:21

It's my least favorite, but I mean, if they can it's just I mean, it's just the business district. It's just not really the places I want to go to. Like outside of the Commodore. Yeah, yeah, and La Vogue and where else would you do it in the city though? Like where where else would you do it? Where else would you put like a the only other place in the city you could do is Gas Down?

SPEAKER_02 43:35

Commercial, maybe. Uh Water Street might be nice.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

And it's not exactly like that's a huge through fare, to know.

SPEAKER_03 43:41

No, the thing with that is what they should do is they should do kind of what they do in Barcelona, is where you shut it down and then you just let the entire middle be little small businesses. Kind of like a little like farmers market, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the whole way down. You want to learn another thing here? That's free basically. It's like cost 200 bucks, set it up. There you go. Yeah, you just do that the entire way down so that way you have all the Businesses on the side, and then you have all the businesses in the middle. And then then then then it actually has something to do.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

You know, I'll push back a little bit on that point because like you're right, the three of us don't go to Gramble that often. It's not really built for us, but I don't need the city to be built for me. That's true. Right. Like I just want it to be lively. I want people to enjoy themselves and like have places to go and be outside, whatever. So like if we implement those things, right? Like, I'm not gonna go to the club anytime soon. But if people are wanting to do that, like I'd like for them to have that option. And you know, Gramble, the current iteration of Gramble may change over time, too, is if people are actually going there, right? And Robson Square is nice during the day. Yeah, yeah. It's great.

SPEAKER_02 44:40

Like if we even Robson Street's not a bad place with that, you still have like Albany and Georgia running.

SPEAKER_03 44:44

Like Robson Square is really nice, like when people are just hanging out and you it's artists there, musicians, there's you know, skateboarders. It's it's a lively where can we put our application in for city planning? I mean, we've got ideas, yeah. Yeah. How about build a bar first?

SPEAKER_02 44:59

Well, we'll we'll keep working on building a bar.

SPEAKER_03 45:00

Have you guys thought about how much you're gonna price everything?

SPEAKER_02 45:02

Yeah, yeah, for the most part. We're gonna try a concept with the food in the beginning. We've brought on a chef and partner, Sean Cuzellas, who's an absolute frickin' G. He's just spent the last three, four years. He's a he's a Vancouver boy originally. Andrew used to work with him, and he's been in just outside of Melbourne for the last three, four years, uh, working in a restaurant called Bray, B-R-A-E, which is a three-hat so like they have hats instead of Michelin Sars in Australia. Three hat restaurant um was working as a sous chef and running that. It's a 60-acre farm with a 12 or 20 seat restaurant on it.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

12, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:39

I think we're just like, and like all the chefs are farmers, and uh like he's been running that for the last little while. I had like a wealth of knowledge in terms of like fermentation, pickling, like his food. Why is he here? He just came back from Australia, his family's here. So he's just come back, but he's like, I'm kind of down with fine dining for a while. And I was like, Well, what do you want to do? And he's like, I just want to make the best snacks. And I was like, Boy, do we have a role for you, sir? So he's his knowledge is super on brand with what we want to do, and the vision is very much aligned.

SPEAKER_03 46:09

And so you're giving him kind of like crackmash a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

100% although the thing is that our kitchen and bar will be very closely aligned. You know, a lot of places claim to have collaboration between bars and and the kitchen, but really like one just generally makes a menu and then the other one kind of follows in step, usually the kitchen, and then the bar is like, Oh yeah, we paired your stuff with this stuff. Sometimes there'll be a little bit of crossover of like ingredients stuff. But really, what we're looking at is like, okay, here's like super seasonal stuff. Let's convert some of your waste into our stuff, some of our waste into your stuff. So we hand things back and forth all the time. It'll pretty much be like weekly meetings, like at the top of the week, it'll be like, okay, this is coming in this week. You know, you guys have this, uh, we have this, we we're gonna have this waste, we're gonna give that to you. You're gonna have this waste, we're gonna go here.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

Very cohesive with a menu. They're the kind of the concept right now that we we we troweled at one of the last pop-ups that we worked with him. He put, I think, like eight dishes on a menu. They were all like small, accessible, like bite-size, essentially, like two byte, you know. And I was like, I'm just gonna cost this at like six bucks for this, ten bucks for this, eight bucks for this. And I was like, fuck it, like everyone's always got choice paralysis anyway. So we just put it at the bottom of the menu, bring us all the snacks, like 65 bucks for two people and $105 for four people. And you just eat everything. And I think all but three tables on a night that sold out in two and a half hours, all was just like, yeah, send us a snack. And it doesn't constitute a full dinner. Just make it easy, just bring food. And so that's what we're talking about on the on like long term in the in the thing is like, well, here's the food. Yeah, you can have it a car if you want. But in terms of pricing, we're thinking about just being like, Are you two people? You do you want to eat? How hungry? One out of ten. Like somewhere here, and we're just gonna pick things and we're gonna send it to you based off of allergies, preference, whatever. It's snack omakase. Yeah, and you just you get snacks and the food comes and then you get a drink. And and the main thing is like we want to supernova the menu every two months, everything goes, which I know that you have strong opinions about that. What if Shea Celine got rid of the pork chop every two months? All right, I talked to a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 48:13

She's never doing that.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

The entire menu flips every two months, all food, all drinks. Just because it goes away doesn't mean it can't come back. But it's like we have to keep things fresh for our regulars for ourselves, and it'll be a smaller menu than you know, there are some.

SPEAKER_03 48:28

No one gets sick of making pork chops. It's impossible.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

It's impossible.

SPEAKER_03 48:33

You couldn't, you couldn't possibly dream of pork chops when you go home. Last week alone, I went to Kisa Tanto and they I didn't really no one I almost yelled at I yelled at Joel because he didn't tell me that they put it on their menu. And I was like, because he was it it used to be a feature, and then they put it on the menu full time because they took off the pork copa. And I was there and we were going there just to get the cheer myself because I think it's incredible. And then I looked at the menu just casually because I wasn't expecting it, and then I just saw the pork chop and I was lost my mind. I was like, what? So we ordered that. Of course you did. You are happy about it. It's so good. It's like it literally tastes like you're eating like the best sashimi. It just melts in your mouth. It's so delicious, but it's such a different style than the pork chops that I like that it's like such an elevated quality. It's like, it's like, it's like I'm eating like extreme five-star pork chop. It's like, I don't know how you made this so delicious, but it's incredible. And it's just like, and then we went back three days later and got it again. Got it again? And then the next night, the next night I went to Oakham Tor and I tried their pork chop and it was amazing. So I love you. You never change.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

Is it uh are you a bone-in pork chop or a bone-out pork chop kind of guy?

SPEAKER_03 49:36

I prefer usually bone-in.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:38

Um, but I well see. We're starting to make the video finally. We're starting to finally make the video, so I will have my thoughts soon. Uh have you done Nomo Nomo's uh iberico culture? I've tried them all. Awesome. It's so good.

SPEAKER_02 49:51

It's the apple kimchi with that. It's always hard.

SPEAKER_03 49:54

I mean, this this city is really kind of it really kind of embraced the pork chops because you see at them there's like 22. Perfect pork chop city, yeah. There's like 22 or 24 restaurants that have them on their menus. It's like, and I think it's I've talked about this because it's it's way more price sensitive to instead instead of steaks now because beef is just so expensive. You know, if you want a steak on your menu, you're looking at 70, 80 bucks where you can put a porch up for 45 to 50. Yeah, I mean, and people are doing them in so many different creative ways, which which is really cool. And so that's been really fun to see. And there's the kind of the more classic style. Like, I want a shambar during Dino, and it was only on their feature menu, and I'm mad they didn't put it on the regular menu, but it was incredible. And it was like thick and it was full blown on, and it was just like I was like, Yeah, I was like, yeah. So if you guys want to put porch ups in here, yeah, did you hear that?

SPEAKER_02 50:36

Speaking of your brand thing earlier, and I'm just looking at this thing you have on the wall with uh Jamie's got a big uh Guinness poster on the wall behind him. We were talking about like having one beer on tap, only one, and it's Guinness. Guinness! I want to I want to just have like if you go to a cocktail bar and you're like, Do you guys have beer? I'm like, maybe we'll get like a can of you know this delicious rewind laser lager or something, right? And just do like one canned lager, which is I think a can of lager. Do you like one local, one Guinness?

SPEAKER_03 51:02

That's what I would do.

SPEAKER_02 51:02

But does it have to be on tap? I think Guinness on tap is obviously like Guinness on the Guinness on tap.

SPEAKER_03 51:07

Not Guinness and Can, don't do that. Fuck that.

SPEAKER_02 51:08

Fucking no, no, not about it. But like one in the one one local. Easy. Maybe. Or just Guinness. I kind of like just Guinness. I think that's what they're saying.

SPEAKER_03 51:20

Right? I think it's just Guinness. They have the they have the cheeky Guinness. It's not even on their menu. You see it on the side, and it's kind of like I think you're no you're right on that.

SPEAKER_02 51:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Caretaker's Cottage in Melbourne had it too, as well as like the only beer that they had. They don't even have lager. It was just Guinness. And I was like, hell yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:33

Yeah, the downside is we've got to get it specifically a nitro tank just for that. Worth it.

SPEAKER_03 51:38

No, okay. We'll get them to pay for it.

SPEAKER_01 51:40

But then we have to put the branding on it.

SPEAKER_03 51:42

Huh? Oh, yeah, because then you have to brand it.

SPEAKER_01 51:44

Yeah. I thought we're rallying against brands here.

SPEAKER_03 51:47

I'm not against brands. I love against Guinness. Like, I love I mean, I like Guinness. I think Corona's. Ah, you're just against brands you don't like. I'm 100% with you. I think, I think, I think a lot of those major beers. I just I'd rather not have a beer than have a corona. I've done that before. Someone's offered me a corona, I was like, I'll just have a water. I'll just not have water. It's honestly tastes the same. Have you ever seen John Oliver's skit when he talks about Bud Light Lyme?

SPEAKER_02 52:10

No.

SPEAKER_03 52:11

Oh my god, it's like gold. He's is like he's like, oh, so we took swamp water from alligators and then we put it through toilet water, and then this is what we decided to give people. It's like the funniest thing in the world. Yeah, but see, this is why people come to the podcast. Get our beer preferences. Yeah, that's that's what we came here for. Um you guys gotta go because I know you guys gotta get back to the site. So I think this has been great, gentlemen. I think you guys are obviously I'm very excited for you. I think you guys are gonna be opening something pretty amazing for the city. I don't envy you having to go through this process, but I think it's also fun. It's heaps fun, it's heaps fun. It's stressful, but I'm like, I'm having such a blast.

SPEAKER_02 52:43

Yeah. Who's doing the branding? Onbox creative, phenomenal team. We know them. I know them. Have they done they do a lot of bigger brand stuff? They do a lot of I met Adam and Scott, who are the owners, like uh some sometime, a friend of a friend. I've known them for a few years, and their team with Chris and Jared and Margot are far and away like the best and most wonderful people. I mean, I like to give you an example with uh like we've never felt quite so heard, I don't think. So, like even the bar supernova logo, if you've seen it on wherever, looks kind of like janky, it's not on a straight line, all the letters are kind of different fonts, it's roughly the same. So the reason that exists like that is at that last pop-up we did with Sean, when our guests arrived, the onbox showed up. They were there with specific brushes and ink and paper, which they'd gone and tested various papers and inks and brushes in combinations to find the right one, and asked everyone to just draw a letter in B-A-R-S-U-P-E. Are you good at and people were like, okay, sure, whatever. Then they took all of those, scanned them, made them vector images, and then created the word bar supernova, the logo itself is the handwriting of all of the people that came out to that event and supported. And then they made a GIF file where the letters change constantly and rotate based off of all the files that we have in this like infinity complex of bar supernova where the logo itself is constantly changing and is alive and constantly dying.

SPEAKER_01 54:14

So that was like, yeah, we gave them the loosest. They've been incredibly fun to work with. I think also because they've enjoyed working with us because we've given them so much creative freedom. Like our first meeting was literally like here's a mug one of our friends made that we feel encapsulates supernova. She's a ceramicist. Yeah. Ceramic cup. Here's a music playlist, and the tagline, it's a five-star motel. And we're like, we don't care how it looks, we just care about how it feels.

SPEAKER_02 54:42

Did you have colors you wanted? No, we gave them nothing.

SPEAKER_01 54:45

Like literally, we they didn't plan on my favorite color, though.

SPEAKER_02 54:48

The playlist that we sent out is like 50 tracks that span everything from like 1950s, like Afro funk to modern day Mexican cumbia to 80s French disco. Like it's all over the map, but all those tracks are like high energy, like vibe, vibe, vibe, vibe. And like what Andrew said is what we gave to both the interior designer and the brand design. And we're like, I don't want to give you a Pinterest board and be like, make it look like this. Like, I want to see how creative you can get when you like completely take the leash off and like let them let them run with it.

SPEAKER_03 55:21

And what they came back with is just like what would you have done if they came back and they were like you were like, no.

SPEAKER_01 55:26

Well, they came back with three concepts. Okay. Yeah. So we they were like three general concepts and directions. We so we gave like a little bit of feedback. Yeah, I think one of them was very Petri dish-esque. Yeah, literally, it was like neon colours with like it was a cool concept, but we were like, this is very much not. This feels too labby. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:46

Yeah. Labby? Like laboratory. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was too like I don't know, neon and stark white, like cool, just not us. And then we're between two others, but every time we showed it to like friends of family, people were like that one, which is yeah, oh, so it was easy. It was pretty obvious. Pretty obvious. Okay. It was pretty obvious.

SPEAKER_01 56:04

I mean, they they even put the project into words that we couldn't even think of. Like, you know, it was a lot of people assume that Max and I are very driven by what's in the glass, like the the cup, the you know, the the the cocktail and all that kind of stuff. And sure that stuff's important, right? We want to make the best cocktail we can. But what we're really focusing with supernova, because you know, we talk about all this waste consciousness stuff, is the actual experience at the bar.

SPEAKER_03 56:28

That's what people remember. Yeah, you you you will go anywhere and you will try something delicious somewhere, but it it's the experience, how you feel, how you felt, how you were in that moment that always encaptures what you're gonna remember the most.

SPEAKER_01 56:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:41

And so everything plays into that.

SPEAKER_01 56:42

It's they wrote the tagline, Bar Supernova, the drink is just a garnish.

SPEAKER_02 56:46

Yeah, they put it as yeah, 51% service, 49% drink. 51% experience. Yeah. 49%. I'm like, oh, that's pretty that's that yeah, that wraps it up. Do you think you could have done that on your own? Like anyone can do that if you get there, but it was like I think there's a difference between anyone anyone can say they want to write a book. Anyone can write a book as long as you're literate. But like a hit, like a book is an incredibly hard thing to do. And sometimes like it's the word smithery of it to be able to like succinctly say exactly what you mean in like 10 words or less, which is what a tagline really needs to be, is like how did you hit the net like how how well do you hit the nail on the head? Like everyone, you know, writing captions for like Instagram posts is like harder than you think because everyone's like, ah yeah, you can throw anything up, but to like create a voice to create like an identity, and it has to be written in a certain way, and it has to use a certain voice, and it has to like follow through in a certain way, is a much harder thing to do than you think. And and and we said it then, and like we've told them in person and sent them a company-wide email, but like on box creative's work on bar supernova is like is and has been absolutely pivotal to the the the thing that it has become today. Like without the investment, which was a very fair price, like what we got out of it, that juice is ten times the squeeze than we thought we were gonna get.

SPEAKER_01 58:17

It was worth every penny. I'd spend every penny again on it.

SPEAKER_02 58:20

This ad for onbox has been paid for for by Patron. No, absolutely not. No, no, and it's it's it's not even a plug. Like, this is just something that Andrew and I have just we we've just said it is it is they have just been that good, and I think it people very, very quickly overlook working with good branding and good identity, and they're like, we already know what we are. And I'm like, I don't, I don't know if you do. I think your brain is so pulled in so many directions that don't have time to think about it.

SPEAKER_01 58:46

Well, it's not it's not just the creative expertise that they bring, like the the other perspective, because you know, we've looked at this project for so long that it's like we feel certain ways about it, and then a fresh pair of eyes really helps like frame everything. But it's not just that, it's the same way with like construction or the interior design is whatever. It's also a technical know-how of how to do these things. The discovery process alone during that was so insightful.

SPEAKER_03 59:07

I've I've put up drywall once in my life. I can probably do it again, but probably should hire someone who does it for a living. Make sense for sure. Yeah, this person does branding for a living, probably a little bit better than like sure.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

Yeah, you could design a room, but do you know how to do like the technical spec sheet of the lights and like how high they are off the ground and like where the power goes in and like all that kind of stuff? It's it's all the stuff behind the scenes that you know you think our job is hard. Then you walk into some contractor and they're like, Yeah, so here's like a 40 tab long spreadsheet of like all the construction stuff we're gonna do. I'm like, Yeah, okay, thank God I'm not doing that. Oh, it's brutal.

SPEAKER_02 59:40

Yeah, I mean, we yeah, we work with uh Emmer and Darcia and daughters as well. Small company there for our interior design. Small company, it's the two and three of them now, I guess. We gave them the same extremely loose open concept playlist, a ceramic cup, and a tagline of five-star motel. I'm like, I don't know, see what you come up with. And it has been a lot of back and forth, a lot of iterations, a full scrap of one concept. Like, we got into it and we're like, yep, that's it. And then the more we looked at it, we were like, I think that this is like fundamentally didn't align with the thing that we were looking at. And then when you realize, like, you can change the brand, you can change the logo, you can change the menu, you cannot, you cannot change the room.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:21

The room you made you made them do more work.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:24

Oh, well, no, no, but it was it was something, but we like I really loved what they came back with. I was everywhere before, I was like, you you totally got this, and then we just realized that like the loud, rowdy energy that we were didn't fit the more serious room that they designed, and it's a tough conversation, but like what they've turned around with and come back with is completely different and so sick. Like, so it it's it's again like it's like when you walk into Mio and you're like, Oh, okay, someone knew what they were doing. Somebody really put the time into this. But you know what, like Mio was designed also, I would say, like to 90%. It's the room itself is finished by the furnishings, by the art, by the jukebox, by the cat painting, by like everything, which may or may not have been spec'd by the interior designer. And it's like understanding someone that doesn't finish a room to completion because it also needs to be filled with are we still getting the clock? The death clock? Yeah, yeah. Excellent.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:19

Yeah, there you go. Well, everyone out there, this is Andrew Kong and Max Crush on Price opening up Bar Supernova soon. But their pop-up patio option is gonna be probably in the next week or so. Do check out their Instagram feed for reservations. It's exciting, it's beautiful up there. I think the bar's gonna be a lot of fun. And yeah, I'm excited for you guys. It's a lot of fun. It's a pretty good watch. And I appreciate you guys just being honest and open about this and talking about it. You know, I try not to do this podcast. I'm not trying to like make it where like I'm trying to plug. I mean, you guys are my friends, and I'm not, I don't want this to sound like me. I'm just trying plugging your business because no, I'm curious about the process of opening a bar and going through it and seeing the ups and downs and how much it costs and talking about this stuff. And that curiosity is some fun, it was always fun for me because I've never done it. But also, I think for a lot of people out there listening, it's kind of behind the scenes a little bit. And you can see pictures and you can see, like, hey, check out our space. But actually sitting down and talking with someone for about it for an hour who's in the thick of it and talking about, yeah, we were trying to drill our piping for our toilets as you showed me earlier, and we're like, we wanted it here, we can't do it here. And it's just like the logistics of actually doing this business, I think, is a lot more complicated, but it's also a lot of fun, and it's uh just peeling back the layers a little bit. So it should be a lot of fun. I'm excited for you guys. Thanks, man. So I hope you have a hundred dollar martini on your menu.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:34

Is that what you want?

unknown 1:02:36

No, why not?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:37

Yeah, it comes in a bottle.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:38

Somebody asked me yesterday if we couldn't serve a cocktail with a pair of pit vipers, like sunglasses, and I was like, are you okay if the cocktail's 60 bucks?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:47

Yeah, and the cool thing is it's like what what it is when you guys open is probably close, but it's gonna be six months ago.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:52

And a year later and two months, two years later, and later. It's malleable. Your guests tell you what you are.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:59

Well, everybody up there, wish them luck, and you'll see them soon very, very soon. And cheers. Bye, fellas.