"Better Than NEW YORK PIZZA" | The SECRET To Delicious Pizza | The MJ38 Show Episode #63 | Darius

On this Episode of The MJ38 Show (Podcast):

Matthew and Justin talk with Darius, The Owner of Slice Street Pizza in Dripping Springs, Texas

Slice Street Pizza prides themselves on quality. From Non-GMO ingredients to real Olive Oil and avoiding seed oils whenever possible. They strike the balance between a commercial and artisanal style of pizza, while never missing on flavor. 

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Transcript

0:09

You won't miss me. I'm a star, baby. Mr.. Darius. Darius. Darius. You got it, Darius. Now, don't. Not Darius. You're right. That's it. That's it. You said it. So you said you knew Chef George, right? Yeah. Yeah. How? Jamie. How'd you get in contact? Gosh, it was, Was a heck of a long time ago. It was. I think he was 1011. I was 12 or 13. Crazy. Like 20 years. Wow. He had some collection of knives, and he opened. I was like, hey, look at this knife. Well, we all did. We knew he was going to be a we knew he's going to be a chef. Just he had bigger knives than the chef that I actually have these days. That's crazy. Just like a knife connoisseur. He just really like knives. That kid wasn't to everything like that. Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. We had a good, good time. Nice. Yeah. We met at a retreat center out in California. Really? We were at, like, a summer camp type thing, and our families had both gone at the same time, and that was. The rest is history. That's crazy. That's Destiny's history. That's crazy. Yeah. Now we're. Now we're practically neighbors. That's awesome. Dude. That's really. Cool. Yeah. I yeah, we have a similar relationship. Just having known each other since childhood. Like, ran into each other, became friends, best friends, and then just, you know, you get lucky like that sometimes I meet somebody, it's like just with you for your life. I mean, good person, right? Time. Everything happens for a reason, right? It's awesome. I don't know what that reason is. Right? I mean, I'm here. I still don't know. Finally. Like, why am I here? You find out? That's the. That's the big. Question. We're here today to bring some spotlight to not only a local business owner, but a consultant, an entrepreneur or family man. He's been in and out of the real estate market and knows that from top to bottom. Production company marketing. This guy is, a Renaissance man is an understatement. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Seriously. You guys are making me sound cool, but you are really not cool. And with the intro, baby. Come on. Yeah, you're awesome man. It's really nice to get to know you. Yeah. So you all on these are having, I guess we have a box. If you can't, if you're just watching, you're not going to see it. But we have a box in the middle of the in the middle of a table here. And what is in that box? And where is it from, Mr. Darius? Well, it looks like a pizza box. Yeah. So it's, suffice it to say, there should be pizza in there. Although now that know that you're holding it like that, I'm a little worried. I'd say so. Is it cake? Is it cake? It's cake. It's actually. Cake. So I have a slice free pizza in Dripping Springs, Texas. Dripping Springs, what's it called again? Slice Street pizza slice. Yeah. Look at that chicken bacon ranch. And off of, off camera. Off mike. We were talking about how I just somehow guess that you guys are going to, like, chicken bacon ranch. I don't know how. Dude. I don't know how to. Well, it's definitely my our number one subway order for sure is Chicken Bacon Ranch. So it's a heater. But personally, the other night I was trying to have healthy chicken and it was I was going to end up eating. And then my girlfriend was going to make her daughter food, and then she was going to probably nanny maybe snacks on something. And I was just kind of like, you know, not stressed out per se, but. Can you do that. Again? Like kind of 90 maybe. So maybe I was going to have. Some, I don't know, club soda. I'm like. Soda has. No calories. But whatever. What ended up happening is I was a little bit frustrated and I was just like, okay, look, no, hold on. We're going to have dinner. We're going to eat dinner together. It's then it's like, yeah, I think it was Sunday night. Monday night, Sunday night. I'm like, we need to. I don't want her just eating whatever she's going to eat. And then you're maybe not going to eat, like we're going to sit down, eat together. So I don't want to eat this food even though I'm like starving. I was like, let's just order a pizza. It'll be ready in ten minutes. I'll go get the pizza, I'll come back and then we'll say, we're having dinner, and then we'll all sit down and eat dinner together, because I feel like that's important thing for us to do as a family. And then she was kind of like, okay, like I agree, which normally doesn't happen. So I feel like I was on to something. And then. I went to go get the pizza. But the problem with pizza is I want a chicken. So that don't really healthy. You know what I'm saying? I don't want to eat. I had a slice of pizza earlier this week that was loaded with salami and pepperoni and all, all the bad stuff, and I was like, let me just order a chicken pizza. You guys can get a pepperoni pizza. And then I had some chicken pizza and I was like, this is incredible. I'm so into this. This is where I'm I'm living for this chicken pizza. And so, then you walked in with the chicken pizza, and I was like. What the hell is going on? Everything happens for a reason. Tapped into it doing crazy. Well, I mean, that's. On that, on that vein of consciousness. That's kind of why we we put the pizzeria together the way we did. Right? I got three little kids. I got fourth on the way. And, you know, I'm, I knew I was going to be bringing food home on a regular basis. I didn't want to bring home garbage. Nice day. So we tried really hard to put together a product that was, you know, like, why does fine dining get to have all the fun? Why do they have to there? Are they doing the fire, the farm to table? They're they're doing the, you know. Everything they say. Has a selling point. Yeah. So I'm like, well why can't we do the same thing? So we went and found the local mill and Dripping Springs called Barton Springs Mill. And so we use their flour in our flour. Mix it. The entire mix is non-GMO. Even part of it's organic. We use real olive oil, on our Detroit pizzas, we use real butter. I don't use MSG on anything. I avoid. Seed oils. Like, I'm like, if we're going to do this, let's do it. Right, guys. So we're having fun. And so in that pizza, you've got quality ingredients top to top to top to bottom. So man I'm very excited. But not like just you know everybody says quality ingredients. I feel like it's such a freaking you know. Yeah. Who doesn't say that. Yeah. We got glory. We got quality. I think Jack in the box says quality ingredients. Well, there's another papa. Something that does it too. And it's like, come on guys. Yeah. All right. What's what's quality to you. And you literally know probably where their quality is coming from. Well yeah. Yeah I've been. In those. Kitchens. I want to not pause for a second. But is it. so you make your own fat ice. Yeah. I guess we're going to just jump up it. Yeah. So I get these little, this little. Cooler, like this big, kind of like an old school lunchbox. And you fill it with water most of the way, three quarters of the way, and you rip off the top. So basically, it's an insulated, you know, thing. You put it in the freezer, like, get a deep freezer, you know, make room in your, in your freezer. And it because it's insulated it freezes from the top down. Doesn't matter what kind of water you're using. When that happens you're pushing the impurities and the air down to the bottom of the of the container. So at the bottom never really freezes unless you leave it in for like six seven days. Whatever. I maybe less than that but whatever you. Long time. A long time after, after 1 to 2 days max you've got about this much of frozen chunk in that you know pail and then you flip it out, flip it out, drop it out onto your your cutting surface or whatever, and you use. A. A knife just to kind of go back and forth like just a normal knife, not a serrated knife or not like that. And all you're doing is you're just using the friction to kind of create like an indent. And you do that on all four sides, and then you take a little mallet and you tap on it and it just turns a straight line right through, like cuts perfectly. Just sit there and try to hack at it. Don't sit there, try to cut it. It comes out crystal clear. There's still water at the bottom. It comes out crystal clear. And then you stick that in the freezer in a Ziploc. Got all the ice in the world. Chilling. Takes some time. Most people don't want to do it, but they're, you know, food nerds like. You, right? Just about anything. Once or. Dude, here's what I'm thinking, is that we go for it. We 3D print people's logos, drop it right on top towards the end of the, it goes from top to bottom, so I don't know. So they've already got you taken care of. In fact. Next food show. I should just invite you guys to come along. A lot of these food shows, they show up with these guys that have the stamps. Really? And the stamp, all it is, is a like a diecast stamp. And the stamp just sits. Right on top of that cube. So you get that cube, you. Can buy it, you can make it whatever. You just leave it on there. And then just the heat and the pressure transfers a little indent into the ice. So when you drop that into the into the glass you can see the logo. Dude, that's pretty cool. That's a. Cool gift. That's a cool thing to have in here. That's that's dope to have a custom. Big ice. Big ice block at. Your crib. I think that's one of the reasons to go out to a nice place. You have big ice. It's cool for. The old fashioned. Ice. They charge like 2 or $3. An ice cube. Many of these places. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Not to you. The I mean, they they're adding it into the drink. You don't realize you're paying for it, but, like, we can get a $17 cocktail. A lot of the times you're paying for that. An ice cube. The glassware, the ice. Cube. Yeah. The smile from the bartender. Yep. It's all built in. Yeah. I tip on top towards the. A tip on top affects. The level of service that people give it. Those places sometimes it's phenomenal though. Like to some degree worth the presentation is part of the product. You know they give an incredible presentation that's like you appreciate it. That's what you're there for. Cirque du Soleil does that. That's why we try really hard not to shake up the pizza like. You did with this, just for display purposes. Is it a tie? Yeah. No, but this pizza looks phenomenal. I really am excited to eat it. Yeah, we can bring it back to that before our technical difficulties, but so you said or you're talking about I guess ingredients and culinary background is. So how'd you get into the the pizza game? I mean. This is a three hour podcast. Okay. Yeah, yeah. You said that the initial idea was about your kids and that you wanted to, I guess, open up a food business, but then also logistically work it well into your life. I mean, I kind of yeah, it goes it goes back to, you know, goes back to my, my roots, being Greek, being Greek and Persian, right. To two ethnic backgrounds that are super into food and hospitality. Like, there's no you don't go to a Greek house, you don't go to a Persian house and not get force fed some form of food or another. I'm not hungry. That's okay. You're still going to eat? You could taste it. I didn't ask you. You're hungry. Like they look at me like, oh, you're just skin and bones. Like, no, I mean, yes, there's skin and bones, but there's a lot of other stuff. Yeah, yeah. But, no, I mean, like, growing up in that in that world, like, the only way to hang out with my grandfather was to go to the restaurant. Really? And so we did I, where I worked every job, you know, in the restaurant as a kid, pretty much. And, I mean, back in the old days where, you know, no one cared about rules and. Regulations, like they had a. Little kid, you know, delivering a drink to a table. Imagine the tips that you get. Right, like I made. I didn't make the drink. But here I'm serving you the drink. Yeah. The kids. I mean, I, I at a point in time, I was cute. So they tell me. There you go. But, yeah. Kind of grew up in that. My dad was a mortgage broker, so kind of, you know, headed that direction without really realizing it. I for a while, I wanted to study theology. So I went down a completely different road, lived in Greece for a little bit, and, and then found myself kind of headed back towards the family business. I tried one last chance to escape, and I started an ad agency, and my first customer was my father in the mortgage business. And I'm like, all right, we're going to do we're going to. Do all the ad buys. And I had had a blast. I mean, traveled the world, you know, took on customers, had fun. Every our our customers seemed to be in like in, in finance, real estate and food mainly because, you know, when you're starting out, you're not making very much money. So you find a restaurant that you can do something for and they end up feeding you if they don't pay you. There you go. Win, win. It was great. That'll work. But, Anyways, I ended up going into the mortgage business, did that for a long time with my with my. Family. And then, I said I was going to I was going to do something. And food ended up working, you know, working the line like a line cook job for a little bit. Worked as a server for a little bit, rewrote menus, did some some restaurant consulting, you know, here and there. Bought a food truck. George and I did some catering together. And then I just kind of kept threatening. I'm going to start a restaurant and start a restaurant. So the restaurant. And then we got together and, with a couple of partners started Slice Street Pizza. And and the idea was to try to mimic what some of these franchises were doing and then just kind of morphed into something more than that. And I'm like, I'm like, I want. Make a pizza that I don't want to. Eat. Course. Yeah. So some. Of these other places that maybe the first bite you've you've noticed this. Before, like the. First bite you have is, is pretty good. Like it's salt, it's fat. It's like what. It's carbs. Like what. What could be wrong. It's so wrong. It's right. Yeah. But then by the time you get the second, the third and the last bite, it's never as good as the first. There's a nice. About like pizza in general. I'm talking about most fast food okay. And I'm talking about most food in general. Yeah. Right. Yeah yeah. Oh okay. Think about that. You go to some even nice restaurants and your first bite is great because there's the hype. You're hungry, you're hungry. You know, you've gone through the whole waiting. They serve you and they sit down and like the napkin, like everything is, you know. It's all a show in a way, but. It's presented 100. Percent. So is the last bite as good as the first? All the time. All the time? No. I'm I guess never are. Very seldom I can think of a couple. I'm an optimist. So I, I'm always thinking about, like, positive, responses to an argument. So like first just some pushback, right. Pizza for instance. I'm a, I'm a New York style pizza eater. My mom is from the East Coast, so I really like to fold it up. And then for me, the first bite, it's not my favorite bite because it's like, not it's not the best bite. I gotta I gotta carve out the best bite. Yeah, sure. But then that bite right there once I've bitten off the edge of the pizza and I've got a full mouthful of what this pizza is about that hit. But I guess that you would that could qualify as the first true bite. Well, okay. Sure. But then you can go into all sorts of different variations, right? So me a hot slice of pizza and then you roll it up and now you have the in my opinion the best bite because now you're getting the crunch of the crust. Oh shit. And the hot gooey. Cheese all. Together instead of leaving the bone for the end. Now we like to tell everybody to trust the crust because the crust is so fantastic and the crunch of the crust is great. So we don't I don't want you to throw the crust away. You probably won't because. It's that good. Don't lie. Well yeah exactly. But I mean, at the end. Of the day, first bite versus the last bite, right. You go to get a Pizza Hut, you go to get one of these, you know, chains and you're like. This was good. And then I don't really want it anymore. Yeah, I did the same thing when I had the pizza I was telling you about earlier this week. The idea of getting it is always it's amazing. That's a marketing it's psychological. Yeah. It's just generally it's it's it's life, right. You're going to pay this and you're going to get. That and you're like, okay, cool. And it's cheap. And Did I, I was paying for the moment. I was paying for this. And then. Yeah, the family dinner, my. Girlfriend's daughter ran over and went, it's pizza time. Yeah. She's like three years old. I don't know where she got that from that she was hilarious, you know what I'm saying? It was literally the $12 was worth. Just like sitting down for a second with every beer, which is if you can sell that to people. That's crazy. That's way more than pizza. Okay. Well, so how how nerdy mathematically can we get? I mean, let. Me show you. Please go off. 3.141592. And it just keeps going and going. I mean, this is we're talking about a mathematical expression. It's an infinite, right? It's a circle. It never. Ends. What is more unifying than that? Pi. Oh, that is pi. Yeah. I'm saying oh, you lost. You lost me. You lost it. I wanted that to lead so bad. But but no, I mean, like, you sit around, you sit around a. Round circle, right? You sit around a pizza. It's it's fantastic. Obviously pizza ends at some point in time. Yeah. You get the one guy who thinks he can have 14 slices and there's none for everybody else. But the end of the. Day, you're sitting around something, you're hanging out together. It's always there it is. All of our moments are around food. If you. Look at. That society, even in America, where food is less important than in other cultures. Right? Everything is around food. Everything's around food. Go out on a date. You're usually going to get something to eat. Go to your your favorite ballpark or your favorite, you know, game. You're going to get something to eat. You go out after a sports thing. You go out after. School. You hang out with your butt. You're going to get something to eat. Huge social leisure. Huge social life. Big time. Right? Yeah. We all got to eat. We all got it. We all got some of us eat more than others. But everybody's got to eat. Baby. At the end of the day like it's, it's. There and it's going to be tagged with a memory. Yes. Right. So that pizza that you got for me, it was Friday night pizza nights growing up with the with the family. Yeah. Mom would throw out a big white sheet on the, on the floor, move the furniture out of the way. It was the couch in the back where the adults sat. Mom and dad were on the couch and kids were on the white. You know, sheet on the floor. So if we drop something, who cares? It was Costco. They got some bomb peas. We got huge every once in a while. I don't think we were. We were. I guess we were good enough kids that we didn't revolt, but we probably wanted to. Every once in a while I was like, Papa murphy's. Like, what? What is this? And but it was Costco. Murphy's. Let's take home and bake. Yeah, we we did that. Yeah. And then you. End up like, over doctoring it. Like I'm gonna put it right. I'm gonna put this out on like, before, you know, it's like it's not even a pizza anymore. It's like a sandwich or something. It's a board of ingredients. Yeah. My stepdad, actually, his parents own, like, a few, maybe 7 or 8. Papa, Papa John's okay in new Jersey. And so he grew up working in pizza shops all the time. And then having my mom got together when I was ten. So from that point, we were having take on pizza, making pizza at home, nothing crazy, you know what I'm saying? But it's just like it's a, it's a it's easy. It's solid. It's such a staple for a family. You know what I'm saying? It's nice. Like the food. Pyramid. On and on a plate. Yeah. Plus this pizza, this shit. Everyone's happy to eat pizza. Like you said. You remember blockbuster? Yeah. Yeah. We used to get Blockbuster on Friday and have a pizza on. Friday, and it was just like all those memories. Killer. So now your life, you're doing the same thing, right? What? What about you Jason. Yeah. Good pizza. Memories. Pizza memories. I don't think we really had like a ritual for it. Really like growing up. But it was something, always a thing, you know. Yeah. All the kids eat pizza. Everyone needs pizza every day at school. So you have that one. Ranch, six buffet. Yeah. You have that one friend or I mean, at this point, acquaintance. They're like, I don't really like pizza. I do not none. None of them. There's so many. What is wrong with this? There's. I can't trust them anymore. Yeah. You you. Lost. You lost some judgment check. Let me talking about. It's more nuanced than you have. A found a pizza that you liked yet? Well, there's no that is the. Other comment is there's no such thing as a bad pizza. There you go. And other end of the spectrum, I. Would say that I would have agreed with that statement prior to opening a pizzeria. And recognizing that once you've tried so many different pizzas, you get to that point, you hit the wall and you're like, yeah, that's I'm just not. I'm not gonna eat that. It's not for me. Okay. Did you hear your pizza snob? I've had a good pizza. Now I don't really want to go down the dark, you know, deep relative well, but if you're. Really drunk, like, that's the thing. The guts spun. And how hungry are you? Yeah. Pizzas be hidden when you're drunk. For sure as well. I guess. Yeah. Right. Perfect thing to end half parties. And it's so easy. His portable feeds a multitude. It's a good time. Yeah. It's a great time. What's the I guess. Yeah. What are you as far as maybe chains are not chains. There's any pizza store or operation. Like what do you get? Where are you? Like, well, who are you trying to grab inspiration from as far as pizza pizza makers in the game? Good question. So for me, it was kind of like, all right, how how do we how do we find the balance between the ubiquitous everywhere pizza, Americana. You can get it, you know, in every town, every zip code everywhere. And that phenomenal pizza that you had that one time, you know, it was maybe more artisanal, or maybe it was more like a pizza parlor or maybe whatever. So it's like there's a couple places across the nation, I think that that, you know, are just super well known for pizza. You've got the New York institutions and, you know, you, the minute you bring up anything in New York is like. Wow, that's not pizza. That's not like. All right. So one thing about New York pizza is that New York pizza to somebody who lives on, you know, this street and that street is completely different from somebody who lives on that street in the other street. Because everybody does it just a little. They have their own little spin on it. It's such a melting pot, too. Totally. Yeah. I mean, it's the end of the day. It's like this Italian product, right? That that comes over and becomes Americanized and, you know, you got you got the Chris Bianco's of the world and the Tony Gemignani of the world. These guys are like, you know, massive role models in the pizza industry, titans in the pizza industry that have more artisanal concepts. And, you know, you go there and, and, you know, they're putting it in a 90 degree Bernardo's here in San Antonio. Does is it does. Yeah. It's, right by North Star Mall. Oh. Okay. Now I want to say I think I've seen their sign. I go over the North Star area a lot. There's a gym over there. So they got that like pizza Napoletana. Okay. Right. Certified by the Italian government. Let's. Oh, yeah. Oh, pizza is a big deal. You got a. Certificate from. Italy? Yeah. Yeah, they're like a there. I don't what is that? They have a mother dough. That's truly from. No. It's like they follow every single rule of what it is to have pizza. Pizza Napoletana from that region of Napoli. And, you know. They're importing ingredients is that they're using. A certain flour with a certain water. Distributor, that kind of stuff. Oh, certain. Water percentage, certain fermentation. Model. So what I'm saying, is it like a qualifier for how you prepare the food. Yeah. Okay. So anybody could prepare the food through that model and get qualified. Yeah. In theory okay. Yeah. But I mean, it's I mean you talk about the water snobby. That's the that's the. That's a. That's like making it's like I got a guy. It's like champagne or like wine production, you know, sense like in order to we call it champagne. It's like it has to be very specific. In the region of France. Right. This method. This is sparkling wine. Right? This is a round bread device. That's crazy. Right? Yeah. What the hell? This. So there's a, there's like a I guess Italy's the the the holder of those certificates to be like, this is legit pizza. Sure. But I mean, is that really true? Is that what people. Is that what people. You know, follow. No, no. Absolutely no. There are a certain segment of the population that's a big deal to them. You know, I think I've gone through the ups and the downs. Like sometimes I'm like, I want that thing. That's. But then I went to Italy and I went and had and it's like, yeah, okay. It's even different. Even if you get this certificate, having it in Italy is still different than having it here. A part of that is a psychological aspect of it, the sights and the sounds and the smells and, you know, what have you been doing and the memories that are attached with it. And. You know, there's hype, you know, waiting to get into, you know, Pizzeria San Michele. And you're like, oh, wow, I'm finally here. Yeah, yeah. But anyways, that's awesome. So you get some inspiration from Italy as well, or. It's all over. I mean, it's all or you got, you got Italian producers, you've got American producers, you've got the chains that do it really well. I mean, you've, you've got to look at Domino's like they're not even a pizzeria anymore. And I'm not saying that negatively. They're a tech company. How so? I mean, they've they've got the pizza. Tracker, they've got the waypoint locator. They've got. You know, they're going to they're going to tell you, where you can meet them on the side of a street, in a park, wherever, and pick up your pizza. I mean, like, it's their app is is, you know, you can't I can't I can't compete with that. There's no way I no. Independent can compete with that. The only thing we can compete on is flavor profile, quality of ingredients, you know? Yeah. Our dough is 48 hour cold fermented. Theirs is, you know, made that morning, you know, or 12 hours whatever. They've got stabilizers. It comes out perfect every time I get little bubbles here in there. Yeah. Well, you know, human touch. Yeah. Yeah. It's a different demographic, though. Someone's going for ease. Or, like, price point, if that's what they're looking to consume their food. Like they're going to pay money to get food and they're looking for like those things you're not really competing to take that client away from them or that that customer, you know, like if you want people that want pizza, the taste delicious or something new or something with the ingredients like that, you're talking about being like local and organic and stuff like that. You can take those customers away from other people. But it's weird because they're like more globalized, more commercialized. You're not competing for the same customers. No. And learning that, it's like going through that experience and learning that lesson, you know, I'm not going to I'm not going to be everybody's Domino's ordering. I'm not going to be a Pizza Hut Pizza Hut order. I also don't think I'm going to beat everybody else's favorite pizza place, because everybody is going to have their own favorite pizza place. Yeah. Now we're we're blessed that we are in that kind of category where people try it once and it's very rare. We hear anything negative about it. But at the end of the day, most towns have something like. One pizzeria per 2000 2500 pizza people. That's kind of roughly the pizza math. You know, when you're figuring out, am I going to open up a shop here? We've got like. 8 or 9 and Dripping Springs. The math kind of checks out about 30 something thousand people there. But there's really only going to go down to the other pizza place and people, hey, I don't I see you at my shop. I'm not going. To be offended that they're. Like, go, go to the other local guy. That's great. Yeah. I mean, I'm not it doesn't bother me at all. Because we have our, our core group of, of regulars that are going to continue to come back. We got a core group of new folks coming through the door checking us out online or whatever. And we're going to we're not going to be everybody's. Slice, but we're most people's lives. Yeah. I think you can't compete for a big market. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Which is awesome. It's just weird that like Walmart and Domino's, those like people that have been in the industry that they're in for as like almost as long as the industry's been there, they have this different kind of reach. They're able to push, you know, hundreds of thousands into millions because of their infrastructure, because they have technology that costs so much. I mean, you can't get the investors that they can get because it's hard to get the credit that they can get, like pretty much have. Any kind of economies of scale. Right? Like a pizzeria in and of itself or, or just, you know, use this to compare against any business, really, but specifically in food, that one location costs a lot, right? Your cost of goods, your cost of goods sold are higher. Period. End of story. On your your one location operation. You have the second location and some of those costs are getting shared. Not to mention you start being able to buy more volume and then you get a little bit better deal right? Right. Then you get the third. It's usually the inflection point is about 3 to 4 locations where all of a sudden it's like, okay, now we can start making money. Really? Because now we've got, you know, a general manager split between multiple locations. So there's one salary, maybe it's a higher salary, but it's one salary as opposed to yeah, three separate salaries. Right. Yeah. You know we're buying these boxes. We're getting these boxes by the caseload now we're getting the boxes by the pallet load. But pretty soon you're getting the boxes by the container load, you know. Like oh okay. Scalability classes. Yeah. I'm gonna go straight to the, to the, you know, I'm not going to skip the distributor. I'm gonna go straight to the manufacturer. Yeah. Because yeah. Because you can typically at that point you need to be buying a certain amount, even have that conversation make sense for that person. So now, you know, I do the deliveries from one location of. All right here's your boxes for the week. Same thing. We're going to make the dough in one location. Now I'm going to send a truck out to the different locations. So that's where we obviously where we were eight nine months in. So we've got to set our sights on that. Of course we're not there yet. And then what do you how does the business growth look once you get to that three to fourth location, do you start thinking about 10 to 50 locations? What's your move there? I mean. It just it everything depends. Everything depends. Right. Depends on what's the economy doing at the time. What are interest rates at the time. Where can that money be invested elsewhere, and what is it doing for you at the time? It's it's all very much, you know, time and place centric. But the goal is, is definitely growth. You want to grow big enough to where you get the attention of a hedge fund. You get the attention of a big portfolio. They want to come in and pick you up, you know, and then at that point, oh, do you want to sell? Maybe you want to keep going to and and so that's, you know, there's, there's, there's a lot there's a lot to go. You can't you can, you can set your sights over there, but you have to focus on on where you're at right now. And for us right now, it's we have bet the farm on staff, right? We've bet the farm on people doing their job properly. It's scary. Yeah, right. Do mean I like. Hiring people in general. Yeah. Hiring people. You guys can run this podcast, right? You can run a operate operation. Just the two of you. So the the the risk there, the variable there is much lower. Right. But for me it's like, okay, well if employee A doesn't show up to open then can I get employee B to come and open. If employee C doesn't show up to close or just leaves because they had an emergency and didn't tell anybody, well, what happens if the shop close, right. Like, we've we advertise online that, you know, our hours are X to Y. Are we are we closed. Are we. Open. So that was the biggest thing. Like when we opened, we opened December 20th 9th January. That first month was just like, how do we staff this place? People didn't want to work. Oh, I'm tired. I stayed up too late last night playing video games like bruh. Did you get a bruh from me? Are you talking about can I find your parents and like have a conversation about, you know, like, yeah, let's do that. Some high school kids or what? You know, that was that was, you know, and we had a handful we had a handful of like, stars. And then we had a bunch of, you know. Not stars. Yeah. Other other material. Are you fire in the not Stars. That usually. Take care of them. So I'll say. The fire fire themselves. They usually take care of. Like I sort them out. And it's it's amazing. Every every time, every time I went to go like it was like, no, I decided I'm going to leave. I'm like, wow, you would probably. Like an hour before me saying something like that, or like, like a day before. I had one guy who I really, really liked. He was in a high school, or he was actually a college kid, and. And, Just everything about him. I thought it was fantastic, but then he just was making all the right, all the wrong decisions. When I would walk away. Oh, and so I'm like, all right. And that was the one guy that I. Had to fire one. Yeah, they all fire. It's not bad. In nine months. Sounds like a rite of passage. Yeah, well, but it's. You know, I don't know, I probably should have fired more. Okay. I don't think so. I, I mean, I, I'm a new business owner, right. But I've been in a position where my influence might have, you know, pushed some people over the edge. And I just get to that point. I had a realization. I was like, man, these people, it's paying their bills. You know what I'm saying? I have shitty days. There's times when I was younger and less mature that I had a lot more shitty days and good days, you know? And, I don't even think this person's really qualified or competent up to what I think a standard for this employee should be. But at the same time, to, like, fire someone to X sometimes, I guess, you know, biblically, to separate wheat from chef is true and good. But what's is this person? It's their life and they're just fucking. It's me in this moment. And I could just I could just make it easier for me by taking that away from them. I just believe that they're going to take care of themselves, that that thing's going to happen. Wrong. You're not wrong. And I feel so much on the same wavelength because it's like you know that's the difference between looking at someone as a number versus looking them as a, as a person. Right. Here's, here's the the skill the capital they bring to you know to the table right. But at the end of the day you are also doing them a favor, okay. Because if they continue to think that they can do that and get away with it, they will do it down the line. And someone's going to teach them a lesson for sure, right? Eventually they're going to have to. So. My thing is, if I and I told, by the way, that one guy that I fired. Was way. More respectful than the majority that walked out and he thanked me, which is I did not expect that from him, especially, I think. Best case scenario, for. Real. I, I caught him, you know, on break when he was supposed to be running the shop. Oh. Outside of the shop. How did I catch him? By going to the grocery store and seeing him there when I'm like, wait, who's running the shop? So, hey, how are you doing? What the fuck? What are you doing here? I mean, it's a small town. Like, what are you thinking? That's. Oh, that's right. So. So then I come back and I'm like, dude, no, I'm I can't. Yeah, but you know what? As much as this hurts right now, I truly believe that I'm doing the right thing for you because you are going to think about this moment. You're going to remember the conversations that we had where I said, hey, if you do this, this and that, we're going to get you there. You didn't do those things, so you didn't progress. That's on you. But now you're going to think a second time about how you're going to commit yourself to your next job. And I firmly believe that if you want to make money and if you want to grow, you're going to take that and you're going to run with it the next time, and you're going to learn from it, and you're going to be you're going to be a little bit more sober minded next time. Most definitely. So I like to think, obviously it's easier to think this way, but I like to think that the reason he thanked me was because he saw that too. Right. And then he's going to look back five years, three years, ten years and be like, okay, yeah. And I was a little I was a little immature. But I got this now right. So yeah. When it's right, it's right. You know, I feel like that's the thing I took away is even he knew it was right when and appreciated you for doing the right thing, which I think is something we all appreciate. But we gotta hope, right. And if not, he was just, you know, giving me what I wanted to hear and, you know, whatever. That's a crazy level of giving you what you want to hear. I look, I. Have gotten to the point where I recognize that I can think I'm doing great by people, and they can think I'm doing terrible by them. Like, there's no question the, the, the, the lengths that I've gone to show somebody how much I care about them as an employee. And they still think that I don't care. It's crazy. So, you know. Perception, perception is reality in so many cases. Right. And I tell it to the staff. If you look like you're not working, you're probably not. Working. And if you look like you're working hard, then you're probably working hard. There's exceptions to every one of those rules, but if I see you leaning around like Chef George says all the time, I'm stealing this from him. I see you leaving. I see you've got time to clean. Time to clean, time to clean. That's it, that's it. So what are you doing? Leaning like, I'm not paying you to lean. Yeah. Come on. Now, that that's a little too far for me. Stay vigilant, all right? Just for me. Just for me. But I also I don't I think that argument is like, oh, you're serious? Yeah. This on a. Sarcastically just, you know, like, no. No, most of these shifts are not that long. Okay. That's okay. Like four hours after school. Four hours after school. And you're and you show up after the first hour, like, when do we get my break? Right, right. See, that's a different I got here. Yeah, that's a different attitude. Your break was the whole time between school and here. Yeah. Context is everything. I was thinking 40, 40 to 50 hour a week. Workers. You know, your restaurant. Let's say it's slow right before it's going to get busy. Everything's set, everything's pristine. That's different. We're leaning. You know that. That's different. You got to take those. Well, you're. Saying everything's ready. Okay. I'm saying you're leaning and your station's a disaster. There we go. That's disgusting. You're leaning. We're like. We've got boxes that need to be folded in. In my world, right? We've got a catering coming up later tonight. And like the the bag for the catering is not ready. Yeah. It's on your mind right now stuff. Yeah. It's like it's time to clean. You got time to clean? Unless there's nothing else to clean. Then lean away. That's a good one. That's a very nice modifier. That's a very good one. If you clean it all, that's. That's fine. I'm. No, I don't want you being busy for the sake of being busy. Yeah, that's a very good point. I don't want you just to do stuff to make it look like you're doing work. Yeah, yeah. What do you actually do to work? Right. And when you've run out of tasks and shit, hats off. You're good. Baby. You get in my book. Because I've yet to see someone run out of. Tasks, right? That's the thing in a restaurant is always. It's an endless. List or. Something you could be doing. Like, we like the front door. You can see smudges all over it. And it's like. It's like, please Windex. I buy Windex, just wipe it down. I promise. We got it. Yeah. That's rough. So only one fire. I saw that. That's not bad, is it? Been a high is a is a high turnover? I guess it's it's, really, I know the food industry is kind of like that, right? Yeah. We're like over 90% turnover. Son of a bitch. I, you know, 9 to 10. Are going to be gone. I mean, it's a temporal job. It's a transient job. Yeah. It's not it's not a career. We are we are down now to this core group of like, insanely hard workers. You love it. They pay them. Well, we we do. We pay them with slices of pizza, all that. That's it. That's what they are all day long, baby. And it's like. They want, they will never. Starve. And these guys are making good tips too. I mean, like, we worked it out like we're. Almost $7 an hour on tips right. Now. Well I'm like so. They're already making a decent wage. And now like I don't I think I have most of my staff or. You know. I talk numbers. You know, I just. Make it at least a dollar. 50 release. Just. Yeah. 213. With inflation. Come on. Now. That's good though. But I guess the question is more about like, these competent people that you have, how are you? What are you doing to retain them, I guess you begging. Yeah, right. I mean, please don't leave trying to. Build a relationship, right? These, Because the thing about, you know, people not being up to a standard or having the standard be if you got time to lean, you could be cleaning. Unless your station is clean. Well, how clean is it? That's relative. But no, if you get these real competent people, do what I'm saying. You get these superstars, you don't get to ask those questions. I agree, you. Just get to trust them for the most part. And most time you see someone like that leaning, you're pretty like you don't really need to go ask them, you know, hey, what are you doing? Because it's like you kind of you know, their character, right? That's correct. But those people, it's hard to retain those people because. Because they actually want to work. Right. Well, now you have you have whether they're high school or college age, they, they say they want to work. Do they work? They come to work expecting to not work. Trying to not work, but actively working on not working. Can I just I told one of them that I said, if you put as. Much effort in following the rules as you do in trying to skirt your job, gosh darn it, you'd be a force to be reckoned. With, right? That's what I want to keep around because they're force to be reckoned with. Hello, my friend, Jonathan Stone. I'm gonna tag you in this. That guy is so good at getting out of work. He's phenomenal. He's a master mind, dude. I mean. That's why he's my boy is because, like, normally with people, I'm like, hey, you got to be. You got. Well, come on, we're doing the nitty gritty. Yeah. He's like, fuck that, why would I because I could and we could just and watch I'm going to do this. And then I'm just like, he's going to be somebody someday, bro. He's got it figured out. I mean, Con. Artist like finagle. He's an aspiring actor, so I feel like he's real creative. He's trying to finagle America for millions through Hollywood production. He's working on. It. Come on. That's my dog. Come on, Jay Stone. But these personalities, I think, are really help drive business, I guess is what I'm getting at is like people I don't know, you just people. Come in for the personality. So if I hire the right person, people are going to come to see that person, believe it or not, because they get they get treated a different way by that person. They are their name is remembered. I was talked about hospitality earlier. I mean, like hospitality is a big deal. I'm actually very convinced that it's like a cornerstone of life. Big time. Right? People talk about. Love. You can't have love without hospitality, and you can't have hospitality without love. They just don't. They don't work. You've got to. Love your customer to do hospitality. After you've got to. Because otherwise, like, how do you. How do you smile at someone who's telling you that you're you're a terrible person or you're, you know, you're you're food? Someone messed it up and ruined their night. And like, how do you talk them off that ledge? You can only do it with love. Even if you say you don't. It's got to be there somewhere. So how do I sit with you? Just. I'm trying to think, I guess. Hospitality. Yeah, well, when we say hospitality, what are we referring to exactly? It's like hosting somebody. Or like, just being, like, nice to someone or like, really nice. So hospitality industry to me span is beyond just hotels. It spans into into food and beverage everything. So hospitality is from the moment they walk in the door from how they're hosted, you know, at the front desk. How they're greeted, how they're seated, how they're served the attention that you take to care for them. When you replace that, you know, spoon or that fork when you see that their glass is half full and you fill it before they ask you. You know, when you go and you. When you assume, I think that the level of service and obviously we're we're in pizza. Right. But you and I have both, you know, served in fine dining establishments. So it's like you have as well. Yeah. So it's like if you can anticipate somebody want or need, you're you're doing service, you're doing the appropriate amount or the above and beyond. Right. That's hospitality. Though. Yeah. Yeah. That's hospitality. Yeah I guess anticipation of needs and the service providing service. That word to to throw some stereotypes. Now I'm going to throw a Greek word at you. That's Felix Sonia. She looks and in most a Greek is is made up a ton of compound words. So Philo meaning friend and xenos meaning, stranger, foreigner. Stranger. So it's it's the the friend of the visitor. Friend of the guest. Friends of the stranger. You can go so far as as as stretching that fellow to being love of, a Francophile is somebody who loves French stuff, right? Okay, that's an American word. We got that from, you know, Greek. And that's it's the same concept, right? You're loving that stranger. You're you're giving them service big time. So to me. That's the root of what we do. And I think that's what separates restaurants. You know, we're we're providing a service. That's what separates us from, you know, the good and the bad, right? The wheat and the chaff, as you said. Right. So how how much are you going to love that customer? Yeah, you better love them a lot because you're paying your. Bills big. Time. That's that's kind like a necessary evil or like I was, I guess, in reference what you were saying about hospitality and love, like and been inseparable. It's like sometimes some of those clients are hard to love sometimes. Sure, but you love the you. You need to love them. You need to love them even if they're problem child. But what's the highest form of love? And this is getting deep. Down, you know. What's the height of the bottom of it? The highest form. Of love is to love someone that doesn't love you. Yeah. Unconditional self-sacrifice. Oh, truly unconditional love. I mean, like, think about that. And that you talk about biblical. That's pretty darn biblical. Oh, the the only thing, the. Basis of life right. There. Some of us shifts. We're consciously thinking about this is me in my pursuit of trying to be as Christlike as I can be, is trying to love this person that I don't want. I don't want to do this. A lot of life is doing stuff you don't want to do, and sacrificing what it is that I would, quote unquote, want in service of trying to love this person. So I'm going to go be warm and kind and, but anticipate their needs. Because I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink like. Exactly right. Like I'm being a servant, you know, be a servant to these people. I'm literally serving them right now. So like that, that, like you said, love is tied into hospitality to do the hospitality. I had to tap into that so that I could perform at the job. Some not every night, but a lot of times. But I see I have buddies in the industry that think what I say can be pretty crazy, and I'm very well recognizing of the fact that it is crazy in so many ways because we have grown up. I have grown up with, you know, old Greek grandfather, old Greek, old Persian grandfather. You know, my my dad, my mom. The customer is always right. Gosh, that just that. Dagger so many times. How is that? Right? But it's you and I. Think to be a restaurant owner, and I don't know what I'm to. I've been a restaurant owner for nine months, so I do. You can throw everything I said out the window just doesn't matter. But the only thing that I can think of is that we have it's incumbent upon us to treat that customer that way, because they now more than ever have a limited number of dollars, and they are selecting to risk their dollars with you. Sure. Big time. And they're not going to the fast food establishment for whatever reason that night, and they're going to you. So that fast food establishment could have been $10 for the same pizza or $12 and it's 14 with me or whatever. Right? And they take a risk. Because they generally feel I think we can kind of for the most part, you know, agree that the fast food places have consistency down pat. Yeah, that's a big selling point. So it's like, I know that if I'm going to take $10 of my hard earned money, I'm going to get that. And it might not be the best, but it's going to be exactly what I expected it to be. Right? Well, a consistently inconsistent. That's a difference. I know I'm gambling on these fries here. Yeah, there's a 5050 shot. These fries are going to be cold. That's predictable. Yeah. That happens. I factor that into the. Did they remember the pickles. On my brother I like I wanted the pickle. I said no tomatoes. They always get you the drive there. Sometimes just to mess with you. Yeah. That's what they call them. I have to. Make a good relationship. They don't love me. Yeah. They don't love him. They don't love us as much. But that's okay. We can't you know that going into it. I'm saying. You know that making that decision. That eyes. Wide open, your eyes are wide open in this establishment. Yeah, but guess on the off chance. On the off chance. But I guess in the alternate scenario where they don't go with that because of whatever reason. And then you do go to you, you know, I'm saying I guess it's a, I guess where are you leading up to with that? Are so I mean, like you, you look at that and then they come to you and they give you maybe the same, if not a couple extra dollars and they're like, you're okay. We took a risk. We tried the pizza. And for whatever reason, it wasn't as hot as they wanted or it wasn't as perfect as they expected. Or, I mean, the amount of the amount of. Critique that we get is it's it's it's a high. Amount of scrutiny. I asked for olives. Why were there not enough olives? Like, that's super. Subjective, right? Yeah. Yeah, I don't like well, I. Expected more cheese. You could have asked for extra cheese. Like I could sit there and fight over every single one of these. You know. It was their expectation in line with what's like arguably fair to have perceived. I'll give you. Every once in a while a staff member is going to mess up, right? That's on me. But I think that's like you can look at it and be like, yeah, our standard is it's three quarters of the industry, standard is three quarters of cups of olives. Who cares what the standard is, right? Like I train them to do this. So they're following my my instruction. Right, right. Am I going to sit there. And that's our normal amount. So I'm sorry you don't like it like. No I'm going to be like you know what? You're right. Let me go get you. Some more olives. Yeah. What did that cost me? Nothing. A couple more olives. Yeah. More $0.10. Cost me more olives. Yeah. Very good point, sir. Inventory. Can't forget about it. I mean, like, if you think even of the reports, I think of of the discount. Right. Like what did that what did that do? I took somebody who was pissed off, and I turned them into somebody who's at least not walking out of here seething. Definitely. There's places that I won't go back to because of a bad experience. And then. Overall. It's a bad no. Not all of this was typically. But when you said, if I go to a place and they're closed early, like if they close at nine and it's 815 and they say like closed in the I know it's probably some younger person that just left early or whatever. I'm fucking pissed. I'm fucking pissed. I worked. And. Even you can't even stay till, don't stay late. You can't stay up until nine. You know what I'm saying? You're posting closed hours. I hate that, so I will put an order in with my staff. I hope they're not watching. I'll put an order in, you know, like, two minutes to close. Because the rule is, when they sign up, this is what we say. We are open till nine. If somebody gets in at 859, if someone even gets in at nine, you're serving them for sure. For sure. And so I'm a I'm a big believer in that somebody is never going to come back because they now you've taken their trust because they trusted Google the listing that you built mind you. Right. Yep. Right. They took the Yelp listing. They took the whatever. And they said I'm going to I'm going to be there when you come. No. And the next time it's like, what? Once bitten, twice shy. Yeah. Yeah, sure. A lot less likely to come back. Correct. I was almost 0% chance sometimes. Yeah. Maybe one time near the. It happened a lot at the subway next to the tennis center that I would go workout at when I was in high school. And if I that would make me so mad that I was like, man, I hate that subway. I'm not going back there. But as soon as I'm leaving tennis and I'm starving and I want, you know, bacon chicken Ranch. I'm going right back there. So sometimes that's maybe what drives us crazy is, like, I kind of need the thing they're selling from my routine and my commute. But I think that the overarching message that it doesn't cost a lot for all of us, that that that one hospitality piece, that one. You know what? You're right. It's worth, like most of the time, infinitely more. Maybe dollars or word of mouth marketing or just goodwill going back on to the community and making sure someone leaves at least happy if they're upset, you know, instead of scathing. Like you said, scathing could do like a lot of damage if also you get a bad reputation for doing poor customer service. You know. I had one person and I, I don't have anything against this person by one person come at me and I it felt personal and that could be my mistake. Right. I think I think at the end of the day. I take too much stock in my reviews because I will sit there and I will read every single one, and I will respond personally to every single one. And at this point, we're up to 211 on Google and 30 something on Yelp. And and after today, depending on what you think. I mean, I'm expecting to see somewhere in the ballpark between 2 and 4 stars. I don't know, but come on. But I mean, like, this. One person reached out and they wanted a refund. Oh. Okay. And I. That that stuff. Doesn't get to me again. It's what is it? It's a couple dollars. They didn't ask for a full refund. Oh. Which I found perplexing. Yeah. They asked for a refund on the one pizza that was, let's say, 20 bucks. A third of what the total bill was because we added sauce. We do Detroit style as well. So we added sauce on top when they said no sauce. Total mistake on our part. Right. There's no excuses. We messed up. So sorry. Can I remake it for you? It's my go to. Yeah, definitely. If you're a business owner you're not in the business. It just. Here's some cash. No, no, no. Can I? I'm going to fix it for you because I want your experience to be good next time. Or I want you at least to know that I recognize my mistake. I want to fix it. But for whatever reason, they didn't want the the they didn't want the remake. They wanted the refund. So then I have to go and try to get them a refund. And believe it or not, there are some point of sale systems out there that are still not in the 21st century. I happen to have one of them. Oh no. So it took me a while. So let's say they reached out on a Sunday night and I responded on a Sunday night out of outside of business hours. And then the following Sunday they were ticked off that it wasn't done yet. And they basically called me out and said, I'm not doing customer service because it hadn't been done yet. And I was like, I'm. So I'm so sorry. I thought customer service was offering to remake the entire order, including. The with the full. Order, not just what we messed up like. To me, that's above and beyond, right? Big time. But to you, customer service was not following through with, you know, the refund within five business days. I don't disagree that within five business days would have been nice, but hey, I'm not in control of how quickly these guys work. Unfortunate I had to put a ticket in. This is ridiculous. It's 20. 24. Yeah, I had to put a ticket in with customer service and then they had to go to the credit card processor, and then the credit card processor took their time, like, whatever. Finally it got done. But after I received a one star on Google and one star on Yelp and a one star on TripAdvisor. It's like really. They went out of the way for that. One. They went out of their way. They made a TripAdvisor account and just. Put a review in. Yeah. Because nobody uses TripAdvisor here. That's for people. That visit the United. States. Yeah. Yeah. Right. There you go. But here I am. Via. Email. They've trying to do damage control. Like hey, what else can I do. Like I really like I hope you understand. I feed my family with this business. Yeah I did one star. Review over 20 out of $60 is it's going to I'm going to feel it even if it doesn't really hurt me at the end of the day. Not directly, but. Yeah, I'm going to feel it. Definitely. Well, let me let me fix this to where you like. How do I fix this to the point where, you know, you can fix your. Review or at least take that? I got roasted on an updated review, like the audacity for trying to change the review. And why won't you like? And I'm like, oh my God. It gets worse, it gets worse. Medusa's head grows. Oh another snake. Yeah. So I just at the end of the day, I wrote a final update saying review. Refund. Done. I still have nothing against you. I will still make you the whole order. Yeah. Come back in any time. I will still make you the whole order on me. Sounds like. A competitor. Crickets. That's like how a normal person acts. Know there's a guy, Mike Bausch, that I super respect in this industry. And, and he says, he wrote this book called UN sliced. And I highly suggest that any business owner read it. So he says he's going to go to the end of the Earth, you know, for customer service. My thing is, I'm not going to kill you with kindness. I'm going to murder you with kindness. Nice. I like. Right. And so it's like. It's real intense. It's very intense. Hey, I'm Greek dude. We do it like, go big or go home. Do a big. Yeah. So I like my line is I'm going to remake the whole order. I'm going to go buy you a pizza from somewhere that you really like, because obviously you don't like my stuff. No, actually. Well, let me, let me, let me take care of this. Very rarely has anyone ever taken me up on it, but when they do, they're just shocked that I go out of that, you know, to that distance. And now they come in. I had a guy yell at me in the shop, yell like in front of me because the. Pizza was five minutes late, full. I'm not talking like snowflake yell. I'm like, this guy was yelling. How do you respond? Jesus! I thanked him. What he give is a dialog. How do you take a look at it? What kind of verbiage. Are you're using there? I can sense your frustration. I'm so terribly sorry for. You're right. We should have been on time. I do understand that there are things that that happen. It's not your fault that we got busy right before you came in, but your pizza did get delayed. And I just want you to know I have a couple ways I can handle it. I can go ahead and refund you right now. I can tell you it's going to be made in a couple minutes and still refund you like, what would you like me to do? Sheesh. Total ball in their court. Yeah, yeah. And so then that's it. It gets to the point where it's like, you know, at some point they recognize that, okay, someone actually cares. And so you bring that, you bring the temp temperature down a little bit. And so then it's incumbent upon us as the this is my opinion, but it's incumbent upon us to continue to keep that temperature low. Right. So you have a fire over there that's burning and you've kind of poured ice on it by removing anything that they can be upset about because you just completely owned it, you're not fighting them. But it's smoldering and all it takes is a light wind to just definitely. Light it back up again. At this point, it needs to be perfect. That pizza better come on. It better be. Fucking perfect, bro. And the amount of times that you do a remake and you're like, oh my God, the remade. Spent like, no. How did they how did they mess up the remake? Okay, so then you're like, you're. Like trying to find a way to hide because the guys intently watch it like it's a different incident, but like, they're watching and it's. Like, oh no, no, that wasn't yours. Like it was totally there. Like, like, can you get another pizza in the oven? Like at six minutes? Like, how can I make six minutes. Feel like one talking. Song? Let's get back to this talking dance. Yeah. Look over here. Look at me. One thing that I'm definitely doing for you right now is eliminating the time in between when this conversation ends and when the pizza comes out. So I'm done talking. Your pizza will be ready. I will be done that I've said. Like I've called. I've shine. You shine light on the problem, right? Like it's the big light. Yeah. Well. At this point, I'm just going to do anything I can to talk. Kind of like. A radio announcers going like. Yeah, exactly. We're waiting right now live. They're coming in. We don't know where they're going. It's like, look at that. Oh my gosh. The door. Is just so. Beautiful. There's like one other option is to just wait in the kitchen and isolate the customer. Right. We have an open kitchen. Oh, it's still in a hiding from that guy. He's looking right at you. Good. Sit there and look mad. Like you're like, hurry up, guys. Like going to make you feel better. I don't know, going to. Like, we're going to berate our customer. We're going to berate our staff the way our customers berate us. No. No. But I had that same that same guy. I was like, all right, Mr.. Let's just say. Johnson. Easy. Not his real name. Because now he's my customer. I just give you the the spoiler alert. But, Mr. Johnson, we've got three minutes on your pizza. Hey, Mr. Johnson, it's a minute to go. Hey, I'm boxing it up right now. Mr. Johnson, you'll be out of here in no time. Oh, look at that. Only 15 minutes behind. I mean, which is totally acceptable on a busy Friday night. Like, you. Put your order in your schedule to pick up for 545. First of all, you. What were you thinking? That's in the middle of a rush. Like, okay, it's somewhere between 10 to 15 minute grace period. Like average person gets that. That seems pretty reasonable. I was I would think you. Would have the rush built in to the estimated time. Oh you would, you would you would you would you would, you know. Stagger times like. This guy time to clean time to clean. The air over here. Hey, I'm speaking for the people like you would think. And you're correct that technology in 2024 is there, right? Right. But we've already established that I can't even do my own refunds. So what, are you really sure exactly. That's fair enough. As of November, that should change. Like, we're going with a completely new system that's slightly like it's going to be exciting. That's right. I mean, the other thing is a ding for me isn't, I'm. I'm like. I'm not telling you where we are. Like, yeah, there's no address on there. I'm the most forgiving person. Like, I when I went to Domino's, they've got their best technology in the world, right. It was fucking sorry. 1045 at night. Nobody was there, you know what I'm saying? They said you will be ready in 12 minutes. What pizza? Exactly. I got there and they were like, all right. Yeah, you can just, hang out here in your car. We'll bring it out here in just a minute. And I was like, what the fuck? I'm like, ten minutes late. You're 12 minute estimated time. How is the pizza? Not ready. Notice they don't even have chairs for you to sit in there. They had it. Locked. The door in it. Was locked, but they were still, you know, doing pizzas, which I thought was strange. But back door pizzas. Yeah, exactly. I guess I don't know, but there was a lot of there was a few people there. I don't know if they're all buying pizza. So I wasn't too sure about this location. Hey, there's some deals going on in there for sure. The wheeling and dealing. Can I get a job? Yeah, I don't. Know. I don't know if you want to go there, but I bet you could get a job if you want to work. Regardless, I didn't think about it. I was like, what the fuck? How long it takes to make a pizza? But then I'm insanely like, it's cool. It's what I like about it. This guy, you know, I feel like. Most of us are. Like that. Exactly. Right? Right. Because, like, the guy's got a job and he's. We really. Don't know what's going on in his. Life. Like, oh, the average human. Being is a benefit of the doubt. Kind of person. Right? I think we most of the time give. That to the most part. Yes, I agree, I would think so. Except for the ones that go on Yelp. Yes, the YouTube commenters, those fuckers. You're the. This is the worst podcast I've ever heard. Isn't it crazy? I said no one about this one just died. Oh, there you die. Wow. Okay, people is looking for someone or someone to vent or not vent. But, you know, like the equivalent of venting with their own life. There's trying to get some of that out of their internal. Notice, too, that it seems like that the people that would be vocal, it seems like bad things happen to those people, and it's like the one person we messed up today is the one guy that's going to leave. You about it totally. That's crazy. That's what Murphy's. Law. Yeah. Exactly. Right. I mean I think, I think we had a a comment early days on our Instagram, which it's been all very positive. But somebody like I think put like a sick. Emoji, emoji. Or something on our pizza and I don't remember if I did or I didn't, but I think I was, it was like one of those things where. I'm like, oh, thanks man. We think it's pretty sick to, good, bro. They said Sigma. He had to throw up emoji but like That's marketing that turn that into a positive. You know letting that plane turn as it because yeah I guess yeah. One thing we talked we were talking about earlier was this because the customer is always right. That's the mentality for I think for all business for the most part because you need fucking customers to make you money. Like if there are no customers, no money. So like, the customer to some degree always has to be right. But literally they could be wrong. They can be wrong. They totally. Can. Go ahead. That's not medium rare. I'm saying that's a that's a perfect medium. It totally can. It's like 134 degrees internal temperature. Bro. I don't know what you're talking about because perception is reality. But it would. Be better now. We can't sit there and train them. I don't think. No. But it'd be better if they said, you know, this is not what I wanted. There you go, there you go, there we go. Because communication is I mean, like, that's one of the other cornerstones, right? I want to be able to tell you what I really mean. Exactly. Right. Not this isn't medium rare. Medium rare to me is, Yeah. My expectation is this. Right. And that's. And you. You go to certain places where you can you can you can hear it in the voice of the server. They got their game down pat. Right there like so. Just so you know, medium rare to us is it should. Be, you know, a little just a little bloody in the middle, you know, and where as you go somewhere. Else. Okay. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. No problem. Then you come back and now you've got this variation so large a truck and fall through. Yeah, yeah. Expectations. Warm red center. If you want pink, we need to go to medium. Yeah. They're there. We need to get. Yeah. Let's. And then that's when the servers you know gets down. You know squats down. Yeah. Get on one knee I John. Right. Yeah. How are you doing tonight. Like that's a question. That's a pet. Peeve of mine by the way. Don't don't kneel down in front of me I feel well I've heard a lot of people say why do you need a move? It shouldn't. I've done it. Full disclosure, I've done it. I've seen it done. But I recognize now that I don't like it. Some people are. Well, what about it? They do not like. I don't know, they just offering. I don't know, it's like the is don't squat in front of me. Just maintain your normal high like Kaepernick. Get out. Come on down to about Tebow. Take a knee real quick. What? Bruh, what if it's a manager? This coming over like a. Second, bro? By the way, put the counter up. Yeah, he's. That world to be. Manager comes over. Issue at hand. Some discrepancy. Waiter can't handle it. Need to talk to a manager. Manager comes over, gives you the squat down. In that scenario, the first thing you're thinking is bro. Get up son. You gotta of this advantage. You're getting whatever you want for your comps. You're good after. That. Stand up. Sir, anybody talking to me? You know, I honestly, I can't tell you what it is that I don't like about it. From my perspective, the only time a lot of times when I would go for it, it's because, table height is kind of at my waist. And it's weird to have a conversation where I'm trying to connect with you, where you're. I've got this is in my waist, you know what I'm saying? I get I get the. Understanding because I made that. I'm like, again, the first thing I'm doing is confessing that I like some, I don't like something that I've done. Okay. So I've done it. I've, in my mind messed up, but I can't put my finger on it. I can't tell you that. I think it's acceptable when there's a kid. Right? Because I think the whole getting down to the level of the kid is just, it's so wonderful to to be at a level of a kid. I, I where I think that's memorable for the child. It's a part of someone's dining experience, as if you can make their child happy. You just made them happy, even if they didn't like your food, your service, your atmosphere or whatever. Definitely you made the kid happy. And we live in a society where it's all about making the kids happy, which. We could talk about later. It's why it's been struggle hiring high schoolers. But but it is what it is. I said, you're saying. Big time. Easy way for a five star review. I say go out of your way to make the correct. Hey, man, do you want to try a mocktail tonight? You want to do a little, little something crazy mangoes and then sweet, get the kid a mocktail and then he's super happy. Ask him about their soccer game. Whatever, dude, that was just a straight for me when I my goal was to get five star reviews, I knew that if I was killing it with the table and I could help the kid feel like he had a good experience in this formal space that was going to push it over the edge. When I told them that reviews are really important to us, they're, you know, help drive our business lifeblood. Your business. Exactly. Yeah. When mine leave me. My boss will puncture my tires if I don't get a review tonight. Yeah. That's the next. That's the next go to. If they're looking a little bit timid about getting the phone out, you know. Yeah, brother, I definitely noticed that. Definitely working. And some of the finer dining establishments as a server, if they have the kids with them, like one of the. There's two moves for sure that I was always the go to was like sometimes I would try to get their order for the kids like immediately. As soon as they sat down like waters, it's like, okay, aside from drinks for y'all, like, can I get some starter for them? So they're like occupied. You know what saying are you like chilling and have. Dinner anticipating needs bro. Right. So like that that was always a hitter. And then also whenever the steak would if a if a child under ten ordered a steak to like offer to cut it for him. Yeah. Money for King cash. Oh yeah. That's money. That's like this is what I'm paying for. Right? This is. Why we call that. Like. Because I don't have to cut steak. I cut every night for this damn kid. For real? Yeah. So some of that would hit for sure. Yeah. I like getting the kid a mocktail. That was always a to make for me. Make him feel like an adult. They'll do. Cheers. You know, I. Just threw a roll of bread. I'm like, here. It's like, take a roll, read. A roll, read. What's roll of bread? Oh, yeah. Your own kid. Thank you, I appreciate it. I thought that was a wine I hadn't heard of. Yeah, roll of bread. I was like. Whoa, roller red. And that's. Yeah. Too long. Podcast is too long. So, yeah, I'm not doing very well anymore. We're crushing. Dude, we absolutely crushing. Oh we're chilling bro. Yeah. That's wild. That's crazy. Pizza. That's a whole market. That's so, so worst experience as a server go. Oh. There's a couple. There's a couple I'm trying remember okay. So I'm trying to categorize it in my mind. Have opportunities coming. Some of these opportunities a cup most of them are just like filed into like super busy nights that were just crazy being understaffed, overbooked. We're running out of like under inventoried, overwhelmed. Yeah. We're we're under a lot of categories. And over in the bad category, it's a bad night. Like yeah we've had a couple rough ones. Yeah. There's one night I know that you're thinking about that. I was thinking. About as well. I've probably two, two on my dome for sure. Like a grand opening night. That was historically pretty terrible. Just like in my personal life. I'm not sure how it is relative to others in the industry, but this grand opening was just some shit, y'all. It was just crazy. This craziness just like just food never coming out, you know, type shit. Kitchen still getting get it figured out. The printers in the kitchen not quite routing the right proper way. Everything was kind of just just piling on top and there was this, I guess. And also at that point we were had like we were in between service and management. So then we had a slightly different role of obligations. So in that particular night with that particular set of obligations, my job was like put out the fire. So like table touch and like you don't want to touch every table if they're all on fire. If you're a server and you have three tables. You're burning at some point. You only have three tables like that. That's it. You're like your night is limited to three fire tables, but like I have 17 tables I have to go touch and they're all on fire. Yeah. It's like, fuck yeah. That was a rough one. Fertile. That was a rough one. I'm trying to remember there's any instances of like any, like a particular person or like a client. They gave me a rough time, but typically was just being over over overbooked and just being in the weeds forever. Yeah. Living in the weeds, for sure. But then I guess one person, just one particular instance of like a customer that always. I don't know why, but this one just like sticks with me. I was just salt grass and I was just running food because at that point, like once you get to the finer establishments, they have other help support staff to help run the food for you. So you're very rarely running your food, but soft grass, definitely running your own food for the most part. And running other people's foods. And I would just I ran out a couple trays to a table. It was like a ten top or something. So I handed out some of the food and then someone asked me for sauce or something. It's not even my table. I'm just helping out. He's like, can I get some Heinz 57 or whatever? Okay, yeah, go back, come back. And the guy, the gentleman is just he doesn't like go into me. But he definitely expresses his discontent with the with the steak cut that he had received. He's like, man, I was just expecting better. Well, we could have just gone to Roadhouse across the street, blah, blah blah. That's like cutting me deep, sir. You cut me deep. What do you want? Me what what what. What do you want. From me? What do you. I shouldn't even be here. I have a whole nother section. I'm out of here, bro. No good deed goes unpunished. Yeah, it all go somewhere that I'll go somewhere. But yeah. So some some trouble clients and just trouble nights. But nothing crazy. I'm sure if I gave it some more time and the think tank, I could come up with something. But what y'all got worst restaurant. The cutting me deep story. Guess me, I'm pretty sure. And I hope this isn't a false memory, but I'm almost positive I walked by Justin because I was working at the same sulcus he'd been, and we'd been there for like three weeks, and it wasn't even that long. Me, I don't even know. And I just hear Justin going, you're cutting me deep, sir. You cut me deep. And I was just like, what is happening over there? Story corroborated. Yeah. Yeah, it was hard to, because if we're new to. So we are still trying to figure everything out a little nervous. You know, I want to make sure we make the cut. We're doing a good enough job, and this guy's just laying into my boy like, oh, geez, now. But same thing. It's hard to remember specific moments of people just, like, ripping you, like, no one. You know, one time I called this guy boss. Like, sorry. Sorry about that, boss. I mean, I think the food was at, like, just lay and I would just. I wouldn't get a manager. I'd just be like, hey, man, sorry about that, boss. That's shouldn't have taken. I should have time for these fried pickles. Whatever he goes. I am not your boss. And I was like, yes, sir, I'm sorry. We're in a fucking salt grass. So my mind, I'm like this Texan, like I'm just, you know, I'm just trying to connect with you a little bit. I mean, technically, I'm working for you, right now. I was like, so are my balls. We could argue that you're paying my bills. You're about to pay me. Yeah, okay. But. And then you and then. He he's like, I want to see a manager. And I was like, okay. And this guy complained to the manager that I called him boss. And I think he was like trying to say that I was talking down to him or something like that, or that was. Yeah, like. Like I came over and tried to make him feel bad about complaining or something like that. Like I was like, okay, but. He's using it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. So I can understand how boss is not what it used to be. Right? Okay. I can get that right. It used to be like a boss was a boss, and now it's just kind of like a diminutive form of, like, bro. Definitely. So I can. I can get this transformed. Yeah, I could understand. But at the same time, it's like I'm. Well, the context really was it was it. No. Like it's an upward. Swinging, bro. Yeah boss. It's enough boss. It's really positively charged. Do you do that? What the hell with my whole vibe, boss. Yeah, with my. Energy. I thought he felt it. He did not. He did not. Yeah. So that moment stuck out to me. Was like a man. People, dude. Like, once to get me in trouble over that shit. You know what I'm saying? What the. Fuck? I remember that story happening because, yeah, I at the at the success where we were going to. And then I remember we transitioned into the next restaurant, which was higher price point, a little more fine dining. And that terminology was being thrown around and fucking everywhere. Fucking everywhere bro. Everyone's calling people boss. Yeah. Like the customers, the likes, the regulars. They have more money, you know, like they're all these people are just fucking people. But they had more money than lawyers. I just picked a profession that allows them a little more disposable income. But we're all just people. So I was like, oh, that's so weird. How it's like. And you would think that, like sometimes because started on the Riverwalk going to kind of higher steakhouses, higher steakhouses. And you would think that the drop off would like what the higher price point the tips would be lower because like overall, like money expenditure, it's like, oh, yeah, people don't want to they're going to spend all this money on the steak. The I don't want to have any extra to spend on the server. But that wasn't the case either. It was like, oh no, it was weird. It was a weird. Maybe we just found like a different kind of restaurant that's like it's a higher, higher price point, but it has a different sort of feel to it, vibe to it. But yeah, I just remember that sticking out to me. I was like, that guy was like, got a manager because he was mad. And then you called him boss? Yeah. People over here is like chilling this guy to spend like $1,000. Like, yeah, it makes you want to cool. It makes you want to draw a conclusion that people that have a more trail personality are more likely to be successful, and these people that are more stuck up and neurotic and want to have something to be upset about and because of. Free shit, looking for low. Frequency vibration doesn't result in this life that let's grant you access into these nicer places. I want to draw that conclusion so I can justify my investment in having this nicer personality where I'm like, super cool, super chill. Benefit of the doubt kind of people. Right? Right. But I don't know if it's a true translation. Yeah. Would you go out on that limb? Would you say it's worth it? Literally. I think it's worth it to always. I. Think it's always worth it to go out on that limb. I do, I think like. Literally like it's going to come back to you, it's going to come. Back. And I'm not a karma guy, but I do understand that you do good things. And, you know, sometimes good things come back to you. I was always taught that you put a smile on someone else's face and then down the line, you're gonna be smiling too. Yeah. It doesn't happen right away, but you've got to constantly put that other first. That is the basis of hospitality. You're not serving yourself first. You're serving them first. Right. Sure. Yeah. I think that. That the that question is one of our slogans here and the 38 is that it's worth it. And the, the thing that we're talking about that it's worth it is, is to try to live a lifestyle where you're doing good things because it's the right thing to do, because you enjoy doing the right thing, because that's kind of what life's about. And but is it worth it is a question. That's why it's the slogan. It's because it's a declaration. It's to say it is worth it. Like we're reaffirming that I'm standing on that because it is a question to some degree, should you be selfish? Do these things come back around as generosity, the path to where you want to go, and thus you could be selfishly generous because you want what you want out of life, almost like a pragmatic way to get where you want to go. That's like false humility, right? Someone's humble for the sake of, you know, making it look like they're humble here. Right? Justin says a lot of time, like, what's the what's the true intention of the energy? Like, where did the energy really lie in the choices that you had made or the decisions that you made? Because that's way more telling than the false humility that you could bear, you know, and so I think that that's a good indicator. But regardless, like it is there really proof on paper that having those good intentions and doing good on people and trying to do your best for everything around you, is it really going to come back around for you in your life? And maybe if it's not literally even going to come back around, it's just still worth it to live that life, because I think it's a more enjoyable life. You're going to feel better about yourself, talk about sleeping good at night. You know, not having your endure the life come by and feel like things passed you by. I think it's living your life above reproach. You know, like, can somebody someone can always, you know, find you reproachful, approachable. Approachable. So good. Here we are coming up with, our own vocab. Make it, make it. Look, look it up like the BMW. It. But, I mean, like, I think someone can always find an issue with you, right? And and and you don't. You don't want to live your life in such a way where you're constantly, you know, worried about what others think. But at the same time. If you can live your life in such a way where you're always operating. You know. In the good side of things, you're always you're always trying to be, you know, the best and not in a haughty manner, but like, I want to do the best by someone. I want to make sure that if if I'm going to go back and someone's going to judge me on this, right, are they going to judge that I was I didn't care, or are they going to judge that I care, or are they going to judge that I, I tried to help or they're going to judge that I didn't try to help. Right. So my thought is just operate based on you're doing the right thing, period. End of story. Yes. And hopefully it comes back around. And if it doesn't, it was still worth doing the right thing. Right? Yeah. Doing the right thing is always worth it. Yeah. To of approaches to address in such a way to express disapproval or disappointment. So to. Live as kind. Of not humble at all. I'm not humble at all. But I got it right. Hey. Oh. I like that. Oh, you know, it would be. Right here if you made a buck. You get a buck? Yeah. Please beat two points on the board. I would just point if you didn't. That's. Yeah. All right. Thank you, mom, for teaching me vocabulary. Come on. It's good shit, I like that. I was I was homeschooled, by the way. Really? Oh, and. George too, right? Is that what he said? But he is. He uses it as a way to, like, stab at his mom. He's like, I don't know. Mom, I was homeschooled. Oh, no shit. I'm like, George, she's right there. That's hilarious. I would love to get into what homeschooling was like for you, but to just to cap off the, you know, is it worth it? Debate the ongoing debate all the time. As a business owner, there's probably, I would assume, a lot of opportunity to cut corners, to report things in a way that's more beneficial to the consumer rather than the authoritarian. I think there's what's what's right is probably a question, not that you think about all the time, but you probably have to have a sense of, we're not going to do it that way. We're gonna do it this way because it's the right thing to do. But would you say that that business owner is not as effective or optimized as a business owner? Who is getting what's the goal to have numbers, to have growth, to have revenue, whatever the goal might be, let's say that they're really great at that, but they're cutting a ton of corners. Is that a better business operator than the latter or former or other? If you're looking at things on a on a numerical scale only. Sure. Yeah. Easy. Easy. Right? Right. Yeah. So that's that's. The that was a long question with like three different different questions. But jump jump in there. That's I mean that's the that's the problem is most people look at a business owner as can they make money or do they not make money. And and that's I get it. That's why we get into business. We don't get in business to pat egos. Although there are some that do. We don't get. In business just to say that we're in business, although there are some that do we get into business to make money? Yep. I think what it boils down to is how quickly and how. How long are you willing to take to make money? Because you can go with this more new school style of I'm going to make money. That's it. Like, I don't care, I'll step on anyone's back to get there, or you can go with a little bit more old school, which like, you know, this is what my, my, my grandfather did and this is what so many like him came to this country and made friends by taking care of people right. And made a business by feeding people. And it's like, okay, I'm going to feed you the most amount I can for the least amount of money. So that way you feel like I care. So you see a value out of this relationship. Guide, dear friend that I know, out in, in Montreal. I mean, he talks about when he had his, his restaurant. He did he did pasta and he's like, I just I loaded that plate because it's pasta. What was my cost on, on on pasta I made my own. He goes. Hey. Right. It's like flour and water and egg and salt and that's it. So he's like, I just made sure they had the biggest plate they can get their hands on, and I charge him as least that little amount as possible. And I just did as many covers as I could. So, you know, fast forward to now and it's it's harder to run a business than it's ever been in so many ways. Right? There is technology that makes it easier, but then there's also technology that makes it harder. There's taxes that are worse in many cases than they were before. There's there's more liability in a very, you know, litigious society that just wants to go after you for no apparent reason. You know, I joke with my customers like it just so you know it, it's hot. We don't put on their caution content hot. But you know, it's don't get don't get upset with me. When you burn the roof of your mouth because you can't wait to. Take a bite. Just came out of an oven. Yeah, but I mean, like, at the end of the day. It's it's it is a really rough time to run a business. And, and we are also in an election cycle. Right. And so now we're dealing with, well what's going to happen. And now I'm, I'm worried about my money. I'm a consumer, I'm worried about my money. But I'm worried about the economy more. And I'm now making decisions based on what's going to happen. Like, well, if this person gets elected, then I might not spend that money. If that person gets elected, I might pull my money out of that. And and so you have now people thinking in a different way than they're thinking the last three years. So a lot of I think what's going to happen is going to be contingent upon and at the same time not contingent at all, just it we've got to get past this magical date of, you know, Election day. It's this month right. It's the next month of November. Yeah. Okay. November. So people January is when they get sworn in. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I think and I think that has a lot to. Do with. Why we're seeing, I think, a more depressed summer than we've seen before. We're seeing a slower pickup because right now we're about to head into the busy time, like Halloween is our busiest day of the year. What I'm told, right? I've not had a Halloween open yet, but October is a busy time. Back to back to school. Should have been busier. It's. Just not as busy. You know, I think there's a lot of people that are out on the fence that are just sitting, hanging out, and that has something to do with why it's so tough to run a business. And that goes back to how it's. So I think it's difficult to do the right thing. It's more difficult today to do the right thing. So you have a lot of people that I mean, just look at. There's a lot of people that think that they were doing the right thing and they're shutting down, there's a lot of people that cut corners are also shutting down. There's no you can't paint with the broad brush, you know, anymore. Other than that, every month that's open. We, you know, make it. We get to. The point where our statistics of shutting down. Decrease by. At least a 10th of a percent. To move forward. I mean, like, it just it's just terrible. Yeah. So way back to your question. Doing the right thing is doing the right thing. And I think it needs to be lauded. And I think there are plenty of people who are going to sit there and going to argue that point back and forth. You know, well, the right thing is to make money, sure. But the right thing is also to have a purpose behind it, because I believe that the businesses that have the story and can sell with the story and can sell with the reason and the why behind them, as opposed to just the cheapest or just the fastest or just the whatever, you know, superlative you want to include. I think they have more staying power. It's just harder to. Stay. For longer. If that makes sense. Right. Your your period of uncertainty, whether this is going to be a business that succeeds is going to be a longer incubation if you will. Yeah. That makes sense. Because you're trying to do the right thing. Right. And you're doing the right thing according to you. And you can have 16 people in a room that all disagree on what the right thing is, right? Big time. Sure. But right. Business is supposed to be just about dollars and cents, right? That's what they tell you. I think that 16 people in the room could agree that it's more than that. But I'm with you that whether that and every argument they reflect that as a principle there is different. Right. But I think that we all know that it it's more it's more than but dollars and cents and that gets lost. It gets lost in the lifespan of the business from certain people. It just happens. It's not everybody's, you know, shared principle to be honest or to be, you know, altruistic or, you know, right. Forthright. Yeah. Yeah. Not trying to scam people or smoke and mirrors, whatever. Well, then there's a blur. The line between marketing and and truth. Right. We always are going to try to market our product in a way that that makes it sound better than, you know it is. But at the end of the day, if it's a really good product then that really isn't a hard sell. And I mean guys, I know I haven't taken the time quite yet and I should have done this earlier, but I gotta show the camera slides because this is a good product. Well it's foldable. Did you notice you talked about. So have you done this all? Oh look at that thing. Look at this thing. And it's holding its form. Look at that chicken bacon. Yeah. Tell us about this pizza. Chicken bacon. Ranch. Yes. We did a white sauce. Our white sauce is more of an Alfredo sauce. Oh, yeah. Like that. Oh, yeah. We did our mozzarella on top of that. And then chicken. I like to put the chicken at the bottom so it stays a little bit more moist than when the chickens are right on top. It dries out a little bit more. Yeah. And then drizzle of our homemade ranch and green onion. It looks beautiful. That looks fun. I'm salivating right now. Take a. Bite. Yeah. You know, I think I should. I think you're waiting for someone to accept that as being okay. I should, I should, I should eat it. Hi. You should. You don't have a toaster here. We have a microwave. This is my go down. Across the aisle. All right, I'll take you. I'll, We'll take it home. Still don't know. Don't. I mean, you can as intended. As intended. I have gifted it to you. You could do whatever you want with it. I want to respect your game. And what would you. Okay, so how would you advise me? I open my mouth, watering. I could smell the the the crunch. I could smell the crunch. Pandora's box. Pandora's pizza has been. Open, dude. But I guess so. How would you recommend to reheat this? And there's your reheating instructions. Would that differ from other like pizzas that was made? And, well, I'll answer that. And yes. Okay. So 500 degrees. 500 degrees. 500 degrees. No way. Fire. Inferno. Hottest. Shit. Yeah, well, it's about, about as high as the average oven's going to get. Most ovens are between 450 and 500 at home. Stress test my oven tonight. 500 degrees. Wait for it to preheat. All the way up. To 500. I want it goes ding or whatever yours does. Right. That's when you put the slicing. Got it. And you do it for like a minute and a half. Two minutes. No more. That's it. Okay. Wait for that little sizzle to happen on top with the cheese. That's it. Wait too long. Too much sizzle. It dries out. But that's how we do our slice shop, right. So we've got slightly we make the slices in advance okay. Usually an hour to two hours ahead of when someone's going to consume it. Sometimes right, right then and there. But then we're going to throw it in for a slice because we are slice shop. At the end of the day, you can get a full pie if you want to, but you can maybe get a slice. I love that. And it just comes right back to life. And we use. Quite literally the most expensive cheese in the market, really, to try to make sure that when it reheats it, like you still get a cheese bowl. It's not like you. Won't get all like. Yeah, now if you overcook it totally. Right. It's going to be just like a cracker. Got it. But there's that beautiful window of about a minute and a half to 2.5 minutes where if everything's working the way it's supposed to, you take a bite, and that cheese still stretches like day one. That's cool. I would not have expected such a high temperature. Yeah, no. Very few. That's a great question. Right. Okay, everybody, I was thinking 300. I mean you could it's like not. Going to crisp as much. Oh okay. And I'm going for a pizza that has a little bit of a crunch. Heard that. Oh yeah. It's it's. Chewy. Like if you go to the, to the crust it's going to you're going to get chew because we use a very high gluten flour. Dude I'm loving the shape of this pizza. I gotta let you know that is round. I'm so I mean 314 is this. One we've. We've accomplished. Yeah. That's a round pizza boy. Oh but that's a I mean it's a big pizza. So thank you for generously giving us such a massive pizza. But also this slice is so foldable I mean you already touched on it but that's nice. So when you buy a pizza from us, we do it. We cut it in eight. When we cut it for slices, we cut it in six. When I give it out for fun and it's like we doesn't have to feed so many people. I cut it in six because it's just it's what we all love now are we cut them in a smaller size? They still fold. Yeah. I just there's something about that New York style size where you sit there, any. Piece of pie? Oh, yeah. You get a big old piece of paper. We're, we're getting to a point where I have questions I want to ask you, but I kind of want to rapid fire through some questions. Just so. Exciting. We can maybe leave a little bit more room for, like, conversation, discussion towards the end, but, Okay, so if you know. Oh, sorry. That's fast. And if they next question. You if you opened this pizza shop in New York, this concept, this person, you could take the same team, you could take your same investors. But I'm saying you got to open it in a building in New York. Would your pizza be better than it is now? It's I don't I don't know if it'd be. Better be better than it is now. Yes. Just by virtue of where it is. Sure. I mean, no, I don't think it's going to be better. I think it would get more attention. Okay. Because look at how many people are in New York. Okay, I. Ask a different question. This is typical of somebody who answers a question with a different question. Yeah. Yeah, I'll probably ask whoever the question is. But. I ask all of my New York customers, how would we do if we opened up in New York? That's a nice question. What would you think about us if we were open up in like next to your favorite, like, you like Joe's, you like, you know John's of of of Bleecker Street. Like what? How would we do right next to your favorite shop? And I don't know whether they're telling me the truth or not. I never you never do. Like how many people are going to tell you your baby's ugly. Right? No. What? I would say a zero, I say right up there was, you know, maybe one out. I have no one. And he's sitting. Across from me. Right now. A really honest person. He's like brutally honest. Look, I can't tell a. Lie that maybe a. Maybe he's got a face for. Radio. But, I mean, I think, I think at the end. Of the day. We've had a lot of people tell us that the pizza would do okay, like like I think you'd be. I don't think anyone's come out and say it's better than anything I've had in New York. We hear a lot. It's better than anything I've had in Texas. That's that's what I hear. Hey, I just want to swim in my pond. Right? Like. And Texas is is about as big a pond as you can get before you call the sea. Right? Right there. It's right there. So big of the friends. Yeah. There we go. So, I mean, I'm happy with that. Now, how would I do? There is totally subjective. I'd love to find out one day. You know, so obviously this podcast is going to go to how many millions of people that are going to find out if we need to open up somewhere else. So at least one. At least 1 million, at. Least one. Oh one person. One time we'll touch somewhere. Between 1 and 1 million. Oh, good. So there's three people that. Are going to watch it afterwards. At least. At least I'm going to watch it. It's on. Oh way. This is I won't. Forget any time soon. So that was a rapid fire. My father patient with a non rapid fire. I told you. It was shorter than some of them. We've we've asked three questions that took about this long of time. And then that was the fourth question we wrapped up pretty quick relatively. Yeah. My follow up question is do you think that New York's pizza is just better than Texas pizza. As a as a culture? Yes. Right. Because New York culture, New York has a pizza culture. I'm talking about taste alone. And but see, that's there's more to it than just taste. Okay, okay. Take it. I'm open to new heights. I believe there's more to it than just taste, because it's like, what are you doing? I'm walking. How many blocks? I've done it right, and I want a slice of pizza. And it's just it's not going to fill me up. Most of these slices are thin like ours, but. So I can have a bunch of them. I can just have one as a snack, right? The the put it on the, on the grease paper or the or the, you know, the uncoated white paper plate and just kind of hunch over while you're walking down the street. It's it's pretty cool. Yeah. That's a, that's a different, you know, ball game. Having them on the, on the corner, every street corner every street multiple on a street. Let's like our tacos. Sure. Right. So what's the difference. Like reverse that. Oh wow. Hey fly. Mike, you got to literally reverse the flip that. You got to make it hot so it don't worry you. So I kind of, like, caught my middle finger. So you might be able to get me flipping you off. Dude. That's perfect. Now just jump right back into what you were saying with the same word place, and we can. Just slip the right together. So, I mean, like, flip that. Around and now talk about tacos. How would a taco do in New York? The thing is, is Mexican food is not good in New York. No it's not. I've heard that. Yeah. I mean, I have it I haven't had good Mexican food in New York. Yeah. I'm sure there's somebody that's crushing it and there would be offended by that statement. Sure. I mean, like it's 20, 24, people get offended by anything you. Say, right? But my my mom's from New York. We grew up in Indiana. Indianapolis moved here when I was like five. And instantly it was like, oh, the Mexican food crushes. This is we eat fish tacos. We had cheese in Indiana. And then if you know anything about cheese, that's would not compete in this market. It wouldn't be. Which is like not nearly as good. The beans are the same. The rice isn't the same. Like mind boggling. So with respect to that, people, when I would go to New York and eat pizza as a kid and then fly back to Texas, I would be like, why? Why don't we have that here? I don't understand, like it just tastes better in my opinion. Now, I was a kid, granted. So, you know. Look, I think there's an exception to everything, right? Yeah. And you're going to find probably somewhere in Houston that makes a phenomenal slice of pizza somewhere in Austin that or in Dripping Springs. In this case, I'm dripping. And that's a great slice of pizza. I'm open this this looks delicious. I mean, look. This is an a traditional pie, right? So traditional it is not. But it's bones are traditional. And I think that the answer is emphatically. Maybe that's about as well done as you can. I mean, you're ready for the press. That was great. I mean, you sound like a Texas pizza shop owner for sure. Look, I would love. I mean, you're going to hear it first, right? I, I would love to do a Texas pizza festival the way that New York does. You know, Dave Portnoy just did a big one back there. There's another guy that does, San Francisco, LA, Chicago. You know, there are great producers. Excuse me, there are great producers here in Texas. I don't believe that where you are dictates what kind of a pizza you're going to create, where you are dictates what kind of a pizza you might do. Right? So if you open in New York, there's a certain stigma. I have to do this right. And you open in Texas, there's kind of a stigma, which is you have to do that. And for us it's, well, you've got to do a lot of cheese because, you know, Texans, we like cheese. And it's like, okay, I can do that. But I'm going to give you the option to do that instead of doing that as my product I want my product to be. Nothing is overwhelming. I don't want the sauce to overwhelm the cheese or the cheese to overwhelm the the crust and the crust to overwhelm the sauce. Like, I want you to be able to taste the nuance of every. Somebody asked me, what's your favorite slice? At the end of the day, it's cheese. It was never cheese because I like all sorts of things on pizza. And if you look at my Instagram, I love making the weirdest. We put blueberries on a pizza. Hey, it's cool. I'm into that. It's great. But at the end of the day, a cheese. Slice is going to be the true test of who does a good slice of pizza. Beautiful. Because each each raw. Ingredient has a chance to sing all on its own without being drowned out by the other ingredients. Right. Beautiful. That was a great. I'm. I'm I'm great at rapid fire. You're crushing it. You're crushing. I mean, at the amount of times you've said something that I thought that's going to do incredibly well on social media has been like off the charts. So you're doing amazing. You're built for this. Wait for my. Check. Yeah. Me too. Me too. Okay. What's coming? It's coming. Joe, let's see if we can actually do. Should we actually do a rapid fire around? Yeah, let's do it. 5 or 6. Just real. Quick. All right. Yes or no? Are you going to set them up as yes or no questions? No. I was thinking 3 or 4 sentences. Unless it's two new ones. Right. You can tell me if it's going to take a minute. I just if you wanted to really do a rapid fire, I'd try to play it. Even though I suck at it. I would. I would have to take word. I'd have to reword all my questions. That's fair. All right, so we're going. We'll continue. But, Justin, do you got anything you wanted to? I'm sure you've maybe built up a question or two we didn't get a chance to ask. No, I guess what we were talking about. We're talking about tacos. I'm a New York, I guess. Yeah, you're talking about ingredients. Know. I guess just like being a tasting better in New York versus tasting better here. Yeah. The last note on that is just that my parents, my grandparents, they tell me that it's the water, that the water in New York is different than the water you get in Texas. So when you make the dough, the dough is a different dough than what you get. You'd have to import New York water to Texas to make a pizza. Here that tasted like New York is what the. That's what the local people of New York have told me. And I don't know if that's true or not, you know what I'm saying? I don't agree with it. And this is the first time that I'm publicly saying that, hey, the reason I don't agree with it is because at the end of the day, there's a softness in their water. Yes. That softness can be replicated. I mean it's just it's science. Right. So you can filter a water to get as close to or to be that. I mean there's a company out there selling a water, a New York water softener device for I think 5 or 10 grand. It's okay. You can make New York water from anywhere. Minerals though. What about the minerals? Oh, I mean, that's a that's a that's a different discussion. That's what the new. Jersey there is a new one. There is a new once I get it. I don't know. That's that's why when. You want. A water, you and I are going to fly to New York now, like I'm no joke. Like we'll do this. Okay? We fly to New York, we pick up a slice. Receiving this, and we'll do. We'll do, we'll do this. Both ways to be fair. Right. So we'll take a cold slice from here. Pick your favorite. You know, New York, once you've established what that slice looks like here, bring it over there and eat it side to side with one of those. Right. Do the same thing. Bring it back. Eat it side to side with one of these. I think you're going to be hard pressed to, to, to differentiate. The other thing I'm going to say is this is why I think your environment, when you're eating again, there's anticipation, there's buildup, there's excitement. I'm eating in New York, sight sound honking. You know, if you like walking here. Yeah. I mean, like, there's a whole there's a whole package. Of of having that slice of. Pizza. True. So now take it and eat it in this room. Right. You're going to feel the same way. No, it's going to be completely different feeling. Is it going to taste the same. Yes. But is your is your body going to be able to understand the difference sometimes? Yes. Sometimes no. There we go. Because I think we're so we're such as, we're like we're all head cases. I'm a head. Case. Well, we're we're all head cases. Like we can think differently just because of where we are. Yeah. It's natural big. Time. Yeah. There's definitely science to that. Like when you go to a new place there's like new or more neurons are firing or different neurons are firing because you're like outside of your typical yeah, environment. Yeah. I also think there's a thing about peak, you know, if you're having a peak pizza orgasm, it doesn't matter if it's this pizza or that pizza. Like if you reach what is the ultimate thing that you're like, oh, this is as good as it gets. Sometimes it's like that feeling alone is what you're saying this pizza tastes delicious about. But if you can achieve that thing and Texas and have that peak moment, you're going to say, oh, this is good. As good as New York. It might be hard to say, like, oh, I can taste the cheese here is a little less sharp, which isn't melding with the way that the marinate. It's I think it's just like to be a. Food, you have to be a food critic. Right. And your palate has to be so well trained. Right. And you have to have a stellar memory, right, for you to be able to pick out that kind of thing. Right? I believe. And there's plenty of people out there that I truly believe can do that. I think the average person is going to I think I would struggle with that. And I eat a ton of pizza. I mean, I know it doesn't show, but, you know. You like crave, man. Thank you, I appreciate it. Yeah. Definitely work really hard every day. Right. What time do you wake up in the morning? Depends if I had my way. Nine. Yeah, it's usually like seven. Although my wife would say. How many times did you snooze at that? You know. Sure. I woke up at seven. I ain't get out of bed till nine. This some that some of that. Sleep is the best sleep. The snooze. Sleep. It's different. Sometimes we go on. I feel like there's something maybe not. The quality of sleep is different. Maybe it's just like the the control. It's like I'm not getting out of bed yet. Hold the fucking. Phone. Is that control? I ain't the islands of control. I think it's the absence of control. Adjusted as true discipline. So from that perspective, I feel like you're like, you know what? This is for. Me. Yeah. Yeah. I'll turn this cookie off right now. These nine minutes of my. But it felt like 90 minutes. Yeah, right. Sometimes the then that maybe two, nine minute cycles. 18 minutes. I can feel like an hour. Well yesterday Tuesday. Was this. Was the first day that I didn't care about what time I woke up. And I don't remember how many weeks. Wow. And so it was like, you know, Monday is normally what Industry day. It's not been that way for me. Like, you know, starting a restaurant, your every day is an on day Sundays. I can use it kind of etch out some time. But yeah this was this was yesterday was it was was luxurious in a way. Although the relativity of of luxury has changed so much. Luxurious used to be like, let's go on vacation. Yeah, it's going back now. It's like. Hey, I'm going to wake up and have a coffee at my own. House. I like. I say. Dude, that's luxurious. I have a. Coffee on my back porch. Chilling, getting to sit down for a meal that was luxury for a little bit. I don't want a private space to eat. That was a luxury for a little bit. I put my kids to bed last night. That was. Luxury. That's awesome. I haven't done that in a while. Nice. Makes me a bad dad. That's nice. Now you're working, man. Exactly. It's set him duty or something like that because he worked real hard. That's a good that. Do you have a favorite college here in Texas? I don't. Did you go to school anywhere? I, I've been to school, so. And I've gone to school, at the college level, I didn't graduate. I mean. I was the guy who in the middle of, you know, lectures with my professor, like, Mr. Arm, was that really important? I'm like, yeah, I was going out to make money picking up my fundamentals. Be polite. Like, try to do it like they would always find. You know. Really, because you were working at the time or your time. Yeah. This was during the time of that agency. This was during the time. Of. The. Well, it was part ad agency, but also with the mortgage business, because when I worked the ad agency, we also I was also helping my dad. So I get a phone call and it was, you know, I jump on it. Yeah. But, I did love my classes. My brother always says that he had to work hard and I didn't. And I think that's probably part of the reason why I didn't end up finishing is that I, you know, so many things did coming did come easy. On the business side, ask me science questions. I hated geometry, couldn't stand it. You want me to prove side angle side theory. Like. Look at it. It's even it's given like like don't measure it. The fucking wall for me. Yes. Give it. No, no. You got you can't. Use the proof to prove. All right. You know like fine. But you know business law loved it. So I love that class. There's one professor. I will try to find it. Did you. Go to Texas. State? I did not know. Okay, I don't know. That's right, I had this I had this one professor in Washington state and, at a community college, really high level stuff. And, and I just absolutely loved the class. It was business law. It read the cases, and then you have to argue the cases. But I found it more challenging to not read the cases. And argue the cases. There we go. It was a lot of fun, especially the the after part, you know. How did you get how did you get an A on that. You just told me you didn't read it. I'm like, yeah, but I mean, like half of. These guys are BSing all the time. Like, I gotta be able to figure it out from now, right? Yeah. So it was, I was. It was fun. An example of how to not be a student. Now, it's just there's sometimes if you're lucky enough to find something that you're good at, you don't. People are studying to be good at something. But if you're good at something and you're able to make a living, a career out of it, that's pretty awesome. You know, I think we all aspire to do that anyways. I think I aspire to be a podcaster. This is the most fun I've had in a long time. I know. Dude, obviously I get high on my own voice, so it's like it's terrible. It's when I. Get to the I love it, travel down these. I love. Yeah, because open it up. Are you are you trying to I guess are you a proponent for like your kids to go to college or how do you feel about that? Again, deep. I mean, I think I. Think if I had to say no, it would be no. Right. That didn't really make sense if you had to. If I had to say, I'd say no. Me too. And the reason. The reason I say no is because I feel like. Too many kids. So let's let's. Assume for a second that parents do a good job raising their kids. And some do. And let's assume that I'm doing a good job, which I hope I am right, and time will only tell. So if we're assuming all these all these things, that kid going into school. Is. You know, on this rise hasn't hit their crescendo yet, but they're on this rise, right? They're getting smarter, they're learning more, they're building experience. I just see college ruining that. In. So many cases with friends, friends, friends kids. And. Friends of friends and seeing these kids grow up. And then all of a sudden, you know, having these conversations with them and then they go to school. And I'm not here to say that all of education's bad. I'm truly not. There's there's, I think a lot of redeeming qualities even today. But there's so much of this like, well, I. I learned how to think, but I learned how to think differently. Whereas maybe the dad was a business owner and taught them how to think based off of that. And now they're going and they're they're learning something else, but they're losing work ethic. They're coming at like, how many people do we know coming out of school in half a million, a quarter million in debt? What do they have to show for it? And what kind of jobs are they getting? There's plenty of people that we know that did okay or you know, but there's I think an overwhelming portion out there that they're coming out of school. They're like, give me the job right? But they're not getting they're not getting the job. That is tough. Yeah, sometimes they're not even getting jobs related to their degree like at all. You know, they'll go through college and then get the degree and then get a job in like a different field. Oh, I, I hired a, I hired a, I hired a gal at the mortgage business that, that that we were running and super, super cool like smart. But her, her major was philosophy and archeology. Okay. Philosophy and archeology. Philosophy stands up. I love those. Guys. Find some fun. And I'm like, I'm like, so why did you apply at a mortgage company? Yeah, right. I can't I can't get a job that I like. No one's hiring. And this was like, what? This was what, five years, ten years ago? Ten years ago, no one was hiring. It didn't like it. Like they were. They didn't pay very much. It's like it's as bad as getting a communication degree. Like, you know, what did you study? You studied things that people don't. Want to hire you for. It's tough. Some intangibles, abstract thought. Right. Like, no, I don't want abstract. I want you to think this is what how I want you to think. Why sell it? Just sell it. But why? It's like got too much philosophy. What do you do? I have to come up with philosophy to get through. If we're selling lies all day long, I don't want to work there, you know what I'm saying? I'm not talking about selling lies. I'm just like. Sell the product or read the script or follow. The this. Can you make me believe in it? Yeah, sure. I can make you believe in it, because then we can. We could do this. Yes. There we go. Yeah, yeah. Stand behind the service. No. Your product. What if I say this all the time. And I get into arguments with people all the time? I'm like, I won't sell it if I don't believe in it. Like, yeah, you will. No, no, no I can't, I can't and I won't I can't. Yes you can. Okay. All right. Sure. Gun to my head. Sure. If I. Didn't care. Yeah, but we've already established that I want to do the right thing. Right. So now I've already I've already typecasting myself into that role where I can't sell something if I don't believe in it. Feels wrong. It feels wrong. Yeah. And you probably do better work when your heart's in it. You want to know? One of the biggest things that I sold as a mortgage broker was, was the reverse mortgage. I love the reverse mortgage in line. Me, I'm. In love. With the reverse mortgage. You have senior citizens who have supported their home all these years, right? They've made their payments on time, many of them never missing a payment. And they've put their kids through school and they've done this and they've done that. Now they're in their golden years. Right. They're in their 70s. They're maybe even more. They could be older than that. And now that home is worth so much. Right. They've had it for ten years. They've had it for 20 years. Some of them longer. They can't really support their lifestyle as much. Their cost of living has gone up. Social security is not paying out as much as they thought. Maybe they got Social Security right when they were when? Right when they could. So, like. They're not getting as much as they really, you know, should, the cost of gas, cost of living. The home needs repairs. They want to see their grandkids. They're traveling. Oops. We're running out of money. So you use a reverse mortgage to pull equity out of the home to fund the remainder of of of that retirement, right. It's like an instant I can fix my retirement trajectory. So there's so many, you know, people like, out there. Oh, there's negative this, negative that. Sure. Can it can it not be the right thing? It definitely can't be. Is it my pizza. Not going to taste great to everybody. It might not. Right. But I can tell you going in what the quality is. And I can tell you going into reverse mortgage with the quality is. So if you remove the bad actors, if you remove the people that are being sold when they shouldn't be like, I'm going to sell my home in six months, well, then you shouldn't do a reverse mortgage. Or, you know, I want this home to go to my kids. Well, okay, how can your kid afford to make a payment afterwards? No. Don't. Like let's stop. Let's not try to force you to do it. Let's stop and pull back over. But if it works like, hey, I my kids are, they've got a $300,000 a year job and they're taking care of themselves, and they just they're willing to take care of me, but I don't want them to take care of me. And I don't care what happens to my home when I'm gone. I just want to make sure that I can be here and be there for the special moments and take care of my husband, or take care of my my wife or whatever. Reverse mortgage looks pretty good. Never have to make a mortgage payment again. The home value is going to continue to grow. Usually nine out of ten times the loan amount is going to continue to grow. But at the end of the day, I. Don't have to make a payment because the loan amount is growing. I'm not making a payment. It's happening in reverse. It works pretty well, but so many people. Are like, I'm not going to do, I can't sell, I can't. Anything that's going to scam a senior, I can't sell. Whoa. It's it's not as if you're not skimming, senior. You're sharing with them a tool. Does that tool work. For them. Yes or no. Yeah. Do they want that tool yes or no? If they do, it's a it can be an amazing tool. Well if that tools heroine maybe not. If the. What if the tool is heroin. You see what I'm saying though? So are they back in the 20s? It might not have. They put. It in Coca-Cola didn't they. Or those those. Okay. Never mind. You know what. Was over the counter? Are we, and. Did these people plan on eventually they got to pay a payment, right? No. On the reverse. Unless they sell. Unless they sell. So if they sell, then they have to pay off the loan. Whatever their home value sells for less. The loan amount. Right. And if the loan balance has grown so much when they sell that their home is upside down because they're getting, in most cases, not, an FHA Federal Housing Administration backed loan. Well, now they don't owe the difference between that shortfall. So they kind of wash their hands and walk away. Sounds like a way to crash land. You're paid off mortgage that gives you more money for time. But like if you sold the house and it was paid off, you'd make way more money, but you'd have to live somewhere else. Where are you going to live exactly? You get an apartment, but then people don't want to move into an apartment. Everybody want. There's a common misnomer that not everybody, like, people are like, well, well, you're going to have to downsize when you get older. Like, not. Everybody wants to downsize, right? So there's a lot of people out there, myself included, that that like using the phrase right sizing. So it's like, I want to I want to right size. Sometimes that means moving into a bigger home. Sometimes it moves into the same home. Sometimes it just means, hey, I want to stay here and make this home more enjoyable to me. Yeah, sounds like the right strategy for the right person. Yeah. Right moment. Yeah, but it's. Not a one size fits. All right. And so that's the thing. You can throw the baby out with the bathwater and just be like, yes, it works for everybody or it doesn't work for it. Anytime you hear absolutes. That's when you got to be careful. I believe in that. But when you understand that there's nuance with, with everything that's like. Like this is this. Can be a great product and it can be terrible. War can be. Good. Right. It's always going to be terrible in a way, because there's always. Going to be loss of life. But there's there's could be something positive that comes from this. But at the same time. Context is. Every context is. Everything. Yeah, I'm with you. That's beautiful. Heck yeah. Kids go to school. Yeah, I guess I was going to ask. Okay, back to pizza Talk for you. Before we round out, let's. Stop talking about what's coming. So, yeah, the war talk. The war talk. Heroin talk. Good God, it's good for absolutely. What? What makes a good pie? What makes a good pizza? Not pie, but a pie. What makes a good one? All right, well, I mean, we've got the basics. Flour, water, salt, yeast. Right. I think that the longer the fermentation, the better that crust is going to be in. The fermentation is going on with the dough. That's going on in the dough. I'm, Now, if I could do this on my own, just for fun, I'd go sour dough because I just. I love this, our dough. But the problem with sour dough is it's so freaking alive. And it's hard. It's so much harder to commercialize. We could do it. We have to live that, raise prices big time in order to do that. But aside from going sour dough, you do a longer ferment for us 48 hours, right? I love my pizza. At about four days. That four day dough is just so, so amazing. From a commercial standpoint, 48 is the minimum I'm happy with. Longer can be even more exciting. Got it. What's happening? You're lower in the glycemic index in that dough okay. So it's actually fermenting and it is processing out a lot of that sugar. A lot of the things like, you know, it's not fermenting in your gut the same way that a, you know, dough that was made 12 hours ago does or ten hours ago or this morning. And so I think that that's what makes to me start with the crust. You know, we say trust the crust because I really do believe that it's, it's that's that's the first thing that first thing that touches your tongue is the crust. Yeah. The base, the foundation. It's got to be there. Yeah. Yeah. So all right start there and then what's your sauce? I want the cleanest sauce possible. I don't want a bunch of stuff in it. That's where I love the Napoletana style. Right. Pizza. From Napoli that that area of, of, of Italy traditionally is just straight, straight San Marzano tomato milled, you know, skin or no skin seed or no seed, but it's just somebody, somebody with their hand usually broken apart. But that's great. I mean, it's just there's a beauty, there's a sweetness, there's a, there's a there's a salinity, there's a brightness that's, that's happening there. It's just it's lovely. And there's usually nothing in that. Maybe a little salt. Maybe a little basil. And. Then olive oil on top. So one of my favorite pizzas, aside from, you know, just judging a pizza for its cheese and sauce is a tomato pie. Wow. So you just. Saw straight on the, on the crust a little bit of olive oil. It's fantastic. If you're going to go cheese, which many of us do. A really. Good high, high butter butter fat, mozzarella, low moisture. Whole milk mozzarella. I am a midwest fan. I like the cows that have to pack on more weight to survive the winter. There's a cow. Yeah. There's a there's a. Yeah, exactly. And there's a, there's a kind of this comment that well, the Midwest cheese is not as consistent as the West Coast cheese because like the California cows, they don't have to do that. Right. They're not. Yeah. Happy cows come be. California is great marketing by the way. Right. So I'm not saying that they're bad or like I just my thing I like Wisconsin, I like Midwest, I like that type, that flavor profile. Cheese heads. Yeah. There's a reason that there's. No. You know. Yeah. There's something to that. The cheese. It's. Yeah. You got a powerful cheese culture over there. One of the roots to that cheese culture lie. Cheese curds. Behind good. Cheese. Ever had cheese curds? I don't. Think so. How? Yeah, I think yeah. Well, squeak. Squeak when they're so fresh. There's a there's a little ball of cheese. Yeah, yeah. Cheese curds. Is it a little little. Little. Nugget. So if I took a scoop out of a cheese wheel I could call it a curd. No. Okay, well, where's the difference? We're getting a little deep for my stupid brain. But a cheese, a cheese curd is is usually the product that's before the final finished. You know, cheese. Curds and whey. Curds and whey. So as they're separating it, you know, in the chat, right? There's there's a little things that usually are floating to the, to the top. And the fresher they are the more they squeak. So and I so when I say squeak it's when you, when you bite on it with your teeth. And you. Can actually hear them squeak. Here. Your teeth squeak against the, the. Yeah it's, it's hilarious. Yeah. Kind of like that. He. Yeah. Just keep doing that. Sounds like team. That's a quality cheese. Yeah. Let's quality curd. Yeah. That's lot a kernel. Probably has something to do. The white mice like. It's got curd. Nice. There's a lot there. No. So, poutine. Have you had poutine? And that's French cheese and sauce on fries. There you go. Right. Yeah. Fries and stuff in Canada. Yeah. That. That's one of life's simple pleasures. Really? Oh, yeah. Like it's terrible for you. Have a had it. It's just gravy on fries. But they make usually really nice hand-cut Kennebec potato fries. And then like cheese curds, fresh cheese curds, brown gravy and then Mike is lots of pepper. Let's do that. After we do the New York taste test. Hey. We could hit him up on the way back. Yeah. Talk about language. All right, Mr. Da. What is what's the next what's what's, on the docket for the next 6 to 18 months? But obviously to be on the podcast again, I mean, like that, we have to do that. Bring it back. This is awesome, right? Does it hurt when we feel like it's starting to be over? Yeah, I could tell I it makes me sad. I can feel the. Cane pulling me off. Oh you're good. Okay. I'm sad, I'm sad, I hate it. I wish we could keep going. What are we doing after this? Yeah. So. Yeah. The goal is location, too. Okay. The goal. Is location. To where? I guess what's what's the potential? Well, when we started, it was like, let's. Let's head towards the hills. Let's keep it and behave, you know? Yeah. But I became right up there with me, like big cave Buddha, you know, San Marcus. Kyle. You know Austin. Yeah. This way. I'd like to go to San Antonio, too. Right now I'm already there, so I live in between. I live on in the Hill country. In between, in between here and there. Perfect. Nice. Well, I'm. I'm in Blanco. Blanco County. Okay. So, I could easily from my home go to either metro, but with a location already and Dripping Springs, the natural next step would be to be somewhere else by their. I really like Buddha. I think Buddha is a is a really growing spot. Big time. And it's only 30 something minutes, 37 minutes from the current location. BC caves is even bigger. So there's an idea as well. But that's the the biggest goal is to get location to increase our, our third party, not third party, but like our wholesale business, like, you know how we met, trying to produce, dough and pizza, and pa bakes for the restaurant industry, you know, for bars and, and distilleries. So I, I'd like to see more of that. And I'd like to. I'd like to see catering increase as well. Nice. Well, yeah. So let me say. And your next event catered. Right. Yeah. This company parties. I got to get rid of that Corolla that I'm driving around. I upgraded to a van or something. Let's go. I've got one final question. Why this pizza was specific. This one. Why I brought it. But your product. Oh, why should you buy my pizza? Yeah. Why what? Why your. Product? I think there's very few places that take the time to find flour that is non-GMO. I think the GMOs are a lot of what we're struggling with in society today. Why people can't process, you know, wheat, why they can't, why they're mostly, you know, gluten free or gluten intolerant. I think there's very few places that are doing their best to avoid seed oils. That's a goal of mine. Is it perfect? No, I'm very honest about that. Sometimes you're going to find it, but like, we try with everything we can instead of using the blend, the oil blend, we're using real olive oil in our dough. Instead of using Crisco like, is traditional for a Detroit, we use real butter in the Detroit. So to. Me. It's it's a product that is as artisanal in nature as it can be while still trying to be made fast. So. You know, it's very cliche to say, because we care, there's plenty of other people that care. Tell me how much you care. I mean, it's it's that there's. So many people on my same block and around the corner that care just as much, maybe. Yeah, but I, I care in a different way. I care to produce the best quality product that I am comfortable bringing home to my kids. That's that's how I look at it. Well, I let my kid, There's so many people who will feed their kids things just because of time and efficiency and dollars, and we're there to like, I mean, we'll we'll go to the fast food, you know, chains. But we're always going to feel guilty about it. At least that's how I'm programed. Yeah. Yeah. Fast food. Hurts. So I don't want to feel guilty about this. I'm going to feel guilty about the calories that's there. I'm going to feel guilty about, you know, maybe how many slices I'm having. There we go. But I'm not going to feel guilty because I know that the ingredients that I'm putting in down to the water, down to the yeast, down to whatever it is, it's good stuff. And so for me, the story of how we're producing really, truly artisanal style pizza in a fast food kitchen is, I think, a big part of the why. And at the end of the day, it competes with it. It hits out of its class in both, you know, price and in and, and quality. And I think it's kind of cool. Yeah. It's awesome. It's a modern it's what people want. It's what someone's asking for. I think they want the seed oils. I mean, that's a kind of a new thing the last few years are people are really trying to like, watch out for that more and more and more. So like to be have an eye on that, to have an a pulse on what people are looking for and to be doing it at a price point where you feel like you are reaching families. And so competing with, I mean, what's the what's the most expensive, most high end pizza? I feel like you're you're competing with those markets too, you know. And that's awesome, man. That's really awesome. I believe in your product. I believe in. You. Thank you I appreciate that. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah, bro. Absolutely. But so much fun. You be coming out. What time you plug in I plug the name plug the in the socials. Where where are you at? What is called how we. Found you. Slice street pizza Street pizza.com at Slice street pizza online Instagram Facebook. X. Yeah, it's a slice or slice. Slice one slice. Slice slice pizza. Slice. Street pizza street pizza slice. Street pizza. Let's go catch him on the Instagram. Catch him in real life. It's even better. Yeah, come by the shop any time. But, Yeah. This has been fun. You guys come and visit. Maybe the next one. We'll do a remote. Yeah, we can do mobiles. Oh, yeah, we do. We're about to. We'll have the we'll have the, the. Pizza going in the back. And that way you can have it hot. That'd be I hear you at that every time. Don't have a mobile oven yet. Let me. Know where. It's nowhere. We have a mobile studio so. We're locked in for it. Yeah. It's real. Oh, yeah. Man. It's been a pleasure. My pleasure. Preciate you coming out. Appreciate you guys. And up wrapping 63. We'll catch you on the flip. See you next time. Peace.