Episode 30: Mulvaney's B&L Builds Community with Love and Food.

Can a restaurant truly be a catalyst for change and community connection? Join us as we sit down with Patrick Mulvaney, co-founder of Mulvaney's B&L, to uncover the powerful intersections of food, love, and societal transformation. Patrick shares his inspirational journey of turning an old firehouse into a beloved dining destination, and how the spirit of "It's a Wonderful Life" fuels their mission to create a heartfelt community hub. From a memorable White House visit post-2024 election to the bustling early days supported by a loyal local community, Patrick reveals the indelible impact a restaurant can have beyond just serving meals.

In our conversation, we explore Patrick's reflections on Sacramento's dynamic food scene and his collaborative efforts with influential figures like Santana Diaz to push the envelope in sustainability and local sourcing. Patrick opens up about the trials and triumphs of the pandemic era, and how resilience and adaptability became their guiding stars. With a focus on mentorship, he offers invaluable advice for young restaurateurs eager to make their mark through community engagement and authentic leadership, underscoring the legacy-building power of passion-driven pursuits.

Patrick and his wife, Bobbin, also share insights on the crucial importance of mental health in the restaurant industry, highlighting Bobbin's innovative "I Got Your Back" program. By fostering open conversations about mental well-being, they aim to create a compassionate work environment. The episode wraps up with a heartfelt discussion about balancing family dynamics in a business setting, highlighting the joys and challenges of running a family restaurant. Patrick's vision for the future is grounded in contentment and community service, offering a hopeful and inspiring outlook for restaurateurs and community builders alike.

To learn more about Mulvaney's B&L visit the website HERE

To learn more about the Capital Region Family Business Center visit our website HERE

Transcript

Steve Fleming: [00:00:00] Hi, my name is Steve Fleming, CEO of River City Bank, which was founded almost 50 years ago. As a leader in a family business myself and a longtime board member for the Capital Region Family Business Center, I understand firsthand how incredibly important family businesses are to our economy and the unique challenges they face in sustaining from generation to generation.

podcast series informative, Entertaining and even humorous at times. That's why our family business, River City Bank is proud to support this podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. 

Patrick Mulvaney: It was pretty cool, right? Cause here's your, here's your dream that you've worked for for so long, right? By that point.

So in 2006, I'd been in the restaurant industry for 20 years. Right, and here it is that you fed 35 people that first night, Bob and I sitting at the crappy table with the green tablecloth on top of it that passed for a bar when we first opened and looking out at this space [00:01:00] and saying, you know, here it is.

Now we just have to do this every day for the rest of our lives.

Natalie Kling: Hello, and welcome to A Seat at the Table, Trials and Triumphs of Family Business. Brought to you by the Capital Region Family Business Center. Helping family businesses to grow and prosper. I'm Natalie Mariani Kling, your host and a fourth generation family business member. I am so excited to join you around the table for real conversations about what it's like to grow up in, become a part of, and navigate the complexities of a family business.

Special thanks to another family business, River City Bank, for their generous support of this program. In this episode, we speak with Patrick Mulvaney, co proprietor and head chef of Mulvaney's B& L, a restaurant [00:02:00] that has played an integral role in making Sacramento the farm to fork capital of the country.

If you love food, you will love this episode. Today, we hear how one family has made a living and a life out of creating moments of delight and wonder for others. We talk about navigating marriage and family as business partners and how Mulvaney's commitment to food. and community has made them influencers on a national scale.

Welcome, Patrick, to a seat at the table. Thank you for being here today. 

Patrick Mulvaney: Yeah, thank you for having me. 

Natalie Kling: So I want to start with you and your wife, Bobbin. You started a restaurant, Mulvaney's B& L, and You started it because you were both deeply involved and deeply cared about community and love and commitment and food and obviously, you know, Mulvaney's your last name, but I'd like to start by having you share what the BNL [00:03:00] of Mulvaney's BNL represents.

Patrick Mulvaney: Sure. Well, I, I came here from, from, I'm originally from New York, came here from Phoenix and Bobbin is a Central Valley girl born in Reading, grew up in Lemoore. Okay. And I, I, I, when I came to Sacramento, I fell in love with Sacramento, and the 12 month growing season, and knew that this was where I eventually would have my restaurant.

The name B& L comes from the movie It's a Wonderful Life. Where Jimmy Stewart as the hero spends his time thinking about how to get out of that small town. And then he sees what his life, what life would be like if he hadn't been in it, and how valuable he was to them. And so I knew when we first opened the restaurant that we would have Mulvaney's building and loan.

Now originally it was because we, because I knew I was in a small town and my friends from New York and family were gonna bust my chops about What the hell is in Sacramento, tomatoes, but what's turned out is when you watch the movie is that Jimmy Stewart's become a he. It's an important part of the community and, and the great blessing for Bob [00:04:00] and I is that that has occurred as well over the last 18 years.

So the name I think is really fortuitous. 

Natalie Kling: When we spoke earlier this week, you were walking down the gangway, literally returning home after attending a cocktail party at the White House, which I love for a couple of reasons. One, because it shows that your vision of the future. of having a local community has really grown to be a national scale.

You, you're an influence on a national scale. And also because as we record this, we are just 10 days post 2024 election. And what a time to be there. It's given me thought about what kinds of conversations. you were having there and in the culinary world and how the culinary world is, is seeing things.

There's a lot of heightened emotions around the country, as we all know, and what you guys are doing to come together. 

Patrick Mulvaney: Yeah. So, so there's sure lots of [00:05:00] trepidation, right, is a safe word to say. And, and as I walked around and, and, you know, spend a couple of days in the city and it's great to see old friends.

First of all, Super honored to go to the White House, like how cool is that, that, that these rooms that you've seen on TV forever, that you're being handed glasses of wine and little canapes and you get to walk around and meet the ambassador from Azerbaijan or the ambassador from Ireland. But for me, more importantly, it was that it was the chefs that were there, the culinary core that were there, maybe 50 or so chefs, and many of them friends to be able to talk about, about where we were and the importance of the work we do.

And my question to a lot of them was, what do you think good has come out of it? Right? Or what are we going to make that's good? And, And the first is, the first reaction is always, this is hard, this is hard. But the truth is that we in the restaurant business provide moments of delight and wonder for our guests, right?

We are a place where [00:06:00] you come to get away sometimes to, to break bread and relax, but we're also a place where you come to break bread and have an honest conversation and drive societal change. And so I urged, I guess, you know, my, my colleagues that this, this was, really an opportunity for us in the restaurant world to be able to, to embrace that.

And then, and two, as a side line, right, being from California, a place where 25 percent of the fruits and vegetables people eat in the United States come from, let's engage the farmers, right? Let's have a conversation about this is what we do. This is what's good for society. This is what's going to make a better tomorrow.

You know, our, our friend A. G. Kawamura was the last, Food and Ag secretary for Mr. Schwarzenegger, who retired, had a party at our restaurant. And he stood up and said, there was, there was some, you're lefty, you're righty stuff. And he said, in this room, we are neither red nor blue, but green. We are California agriculture.

with the goal of taking the [00:07:00] land we received from our grandparents and leaving it in better shape for our grandchildren. And so I told that story a lot in, in Washington, D. C. because the truth is that if you're frustrated and angry, that what you're going to get back is frustration and anger. But if you, if we can figure out a way to push forward with love and kindness, then, then maybe there'll be an effect.

Natalie Kling: Fantastic. That's so beautiful. Let's go back to before you and Bobbin had met. You were both independently had a love for community and food. Tell us a little bit about your individual stories and how that led to the two of you coming together to create Mulvaney's. 

Patrick Mulvaney: Sure, well, I told you, right, that I'm, I graduated with a degree in English, qualified me to be a waiter in Manhattan, and, and I had realized in, in the course of, of college and working summers in restaurants, that restaurants were a community gathering place, right, in Rockaway Beach, where I worked.

It was a gathering place for the Irish neighborhood, for the people who lived there. [00:08:00] It was a welcoming place, a first landing spot for immigrants coming from Ireland, which at the time had about 25%. Unemployment. And it was also a place where politicians from the city, Manhattan is as far away as you can get geographically from Rockaway Beach, came to seek advice.

You know, one day I was at lunch and Ed Koch was the mayor and he walked in the front door and I said, good morning, your honor, may I help you? And he said, I'm here to see Tuberty. And I went outside and my first boss, Dan, was sitting under a tree smoking a cigar. And I said, Dan, Ed Koch is inside. He said.

He said. Have him sit down, tell him I'll be in when I'm done with my cigar, . Wow, this is cool. Right? You're politically active. And so we, you know, we kept moving on. And for me that inspiration came to Sacramento, which is a place where if you want to be involved, that people say, lace up your shoes and get on the pitch.

Right? Let's go. You want to, you wanna work, then work with us. And so that attracted me, Bob. And growing up in Lamar, [00:09:00] her, uh, stepdad had in 1938. Asked his father for six acres by the, by the Highway 41. Because his other four brothers were going to get the other 160 or 300 acres. And he opened the first gas station.

He opened the gas station because he was by a naval base. And he realized that, The sailors were there running out of gas, so he could sell them gas. But he realized they were getting off the base so they could buy beer. So he opened a mini mart. He realized he was getting beer so they could eat girls. So then he opened a dance hall.

And then he realized that when the dance hall was closed, they wanted something to eat. And he opened a 24 hour restaurant. And so she'd been immersed in that. in ways that are hard just like any restaurant child can tell you, right? You know, 11 o'clock at night, we're busy, come wash dishes, come peel potatoes, you're doing all the grunt work.

But I think that, and she, she swore when she left Lemoore in, after high school, in a cloud of dust saying, I'm never working in another restaurant again or with agriculture. So that didn't work out too well. But, um, [00:10:00] But behind, behind the bar at the JNI, and I think this really speaks to who Bobbin is and where she comes from, there are patches, shoulder patches from military people from the Korean War and Vietnam mostly, and now some from Iraq and Iran, Afghanistan.

And when soldiers were deployed, they would come in with those patches and say to, to Joe, her stepdad, Joe, I'm being deployed. Please watch out for my wife. If she needs eggs and toilet paper or milk, please take care of them. If the worst happens, please rent her a U Haul, right? And get her, get her to go.

And so those patches have now been up there for, uh, 70 years. And Joe, Joe's, Joe and his family no longer own the restaurant, but when you go in, you know that those, those patches are staying there forever. And that was Joe's commitment to his community and it's something that Bobbin embraces and understands how to do that in the hours.

Natalie Kling: So when the two of you met, you already had [00:11:00] that in common. How did you, tell us about how you connected that with each other and then how that really turned into Mulvaney's. 

Patrick Mulvaney: So when I first met her, I invited her to a pig roast. We used to have, my dad used to have pig roasts to celebrate. I thought at first it was, it was a celebration for his friends, but my dad was a criminal defense attorney and it really was.

Uh, a place where he could invite bailiffs and stenographers and court officers into the house to say thank you, right? There's, there's no way to say thank you effectively. That was his way of saying thank you to everybody who made the court system that he was engaged in run well. And so when we opened our business, we started having pig roasts.

St. Patrick has a little different definition than St. James. So the more drinking at the last one, we had over a thousand people and nine roasting farm animals out front. But in the early days, there was no, I used to make flyers and pin them up in kitchens around city. So I went to the convention [00:12:00] center and Bobbin was there in the front office and she didn't actually say this, but she never denies thinking it was, uh, the probation bus is out that way and the kitchen is the other way and I don't know which one you belong on, but it's up here.

Three weeks later, went to the mayor state of the city. I was, I'd combed my hair. I was wearing a suit. She wasn't wearing glasses. And she came up and said, May, may help you get a chair, Patrick, kind of pulled back and then said, Hey, how you doing? That's great. And then a few days later she came to the, to my office to talk about some rental stuff that you, company that she was working with and then started stalking me and the rest is history.

Natalie Kling: So you guys, so you started, did you start working together in the catering company or how did that evolve? I was in the catering 

Patrick Mulvaney: company and then she started coming in to help me grow up because for sure there's a lot of things I don't know about catering and what she said is with that first meeting when she came into the office.

That, that maybe she was trying to flirt with me, but she [00:13:00] was trying to, but that when she came in and she showed me her catalog or whatever, and I threw it on the floor and she said, and here's this guy saying, what do you think about, about slow food? What do you think about terroir? What do you think about farm to fork?

What do you think about this rich agricultural region in which she lives and we live? And she said, she went outside and called one of her girlfriends and said, I just met, I just met with Patrick Mulvaney and he's smart. I've never met a smart chef before. So, so we started building them from there. And it's true that up until Sarah, our daughter, got married, every time she left the door, Bobbin would say, don't date cooks.

Natalie Kling: Oh, that's so funny. In the culinary world, is there a difference between a cook and a chef? 

Patrick Mulvaney: No, not from her perspective. Yeah. So in the culinary, in the culinary world, a cook is a person that works in the kitchen as the chef is the chief and he has some sub chefs, sous chefs, or chefs de cuisine who run.

The kitchens themselves, Bobbin does not, lots of people sometimes have an issue. I, [00:14:00] my dad, again, was really bad with names. And so as we would be in Queens Boulevard going into court, you'd say, counselor, good morning. Who's that? No idea. Who's that? No idea. Counselor, good morning. How do you know he's a lawyer?

Because he's wearing a cheap suit and it's not the first time. So he's not a defendant. So as I started meeting more people, I adopted that habit. But because of my, my world, I call everyone chef. Because I'm really not very good with names. 

Natalie Kling: That's so funny. That's a, that's a good, that's a good shortcut.

Patrick Mulvaney: Yes. 

Natalie Kling: I wish we had that in every industry. So you, Patrick, had always known that you wanted to start your own restaurant. You knew that the possibility of bringing people together and, and for people to have a really worthwhile way of spending their working lives together was that this was, this was a vision.

This was a dream. You had experienced it. So tell us about, you and Bobbin decide to open a restaurant, you, you. I mean, [00:15:00] tell us kind of the, those few weeks leading up to it and then your experience of opening night. 

Patrick Mulvaney: So we, yeah, you know, we, we talk about restaurants being family. We talk about them engaging.

And for me, my first restaurant in college, all of a sudden I felt welcome, right? And all of a sudden it was just, it wasn't a matter of what your grades were or what you were studying or what, were you going to go to law school or it was table 32 needs butter, go get it. Right. And, and that didn't matter what you looked like, who you were.

And that piece that everyone learns differently, everyone works differently was always really important I think to both of us. And so we started, we moved from the basement of the mortuary to, uh, the old firehouse that we're in now and started thinking about what kind of restaurant we wanted to have. We knew that it would be whatever the farmers brought in the front door was what was going on the plate.

She knew that getting a menu out of chefs is like picking up mercury with a fork. So it was difficult. And, and I knew that she has this great sense of hospitality [00:16:00] and ability to create a space, right, that is welcoming and wanted. So we moved in, we spent a year, took a little while, there's some stuff got in the way.

Mike Dunn called, the writer for the Bee at the time, said, Hey champ, you said you're opening in 2005, what's going on? I said, Mike, got a little delayed, but you know, February in 2006, we're on. He wrote, Most anticipated restaurant opening of 2005 is now the most anticipated of 2006. We see very little evidence of it, but Mulvaney swears that there'll be something there.

They called in the beginning of February and said, Hey, big shot, how's the restaurant coming? I told you we were opening up. Said, Valentine's Day? I said, that's the stupidest idea ever. No, we'll be open by the end of the month. Click. Hey everybody, restaurant's opening in three weeks. Let's go. And so we moved the catering stuff out of the way and bought some tables.

We got some used chairs from a closed Starbucks. And on February, the end of February, we had our first dinners and it was, it was pretty cool, right? Cause here's your, here's your dream that you've [00:17:00] worked for for so long, right? By that point, So in 2006, I'd been in the restaurant industry for 20 years, right?

And here it is that you fed 35 people that first night, Bob and I sitting at the crappy table with the green tablecloth on top of it that passed for a bar when we first opened and looking out at this space and saying, you know, here it is. Now we just have to do this every day for the rest of our lives.

Oops. Right? Do you wonder, are people going to come? Are people going to like you? Are they going to? It's a really good in the community, right? You know, I had fallen in love with Sacramento, had Sacramento fallen in love with us, or at least, was Sacramento at least willing to tolerate us? So when you get your checks at our restaurant, you sign a book, right?

Or there's a book for you to sign if you'd like. And about six weeks in, there was, I was reading the books at the end of the night, and there was a note in one that said, Dear Mulvaney's, sitting in the place, sitting with my one true love, celebrating our 10th anniversary [00:18:00] in the place we first met. Thank you.

And then I knew that we were going to do okay. 

Natalie Kling: So how, how did it feel in those, in those early days when you are thinking about, wow, okay, so the reality of, first of all, we know businesses have a huge failure rate. right? Let alone restaurants. So in those early days, you must be thinking, okay, we're doing it.

Okay. Oh my God, we're doing it. And oh my God, this is what it takes. And can we do this for, for, can we do this for the rest of our lives? I mean, how were you, How are you experiencing that in those early days? 

Patrick Mulvaney: So, so one thing is I had lots of great mentors who were not shy in pointing out my shortcomings and how potentially to avoid the pitfalls that would come with them.

And then you're right, you just kept saying, can we do this? But, but we always said we can do this. Right. And, and entered in with that idea of we were going to figure it out. Right. [00:19:00] Bob and I against the world. Didn't matter. Right. And, and for sure. And the grace of our clients, like God bless them for sitting on those crappy chairs in the beginning and you know, having, when we opened, we didn't even have lighting in the building proper because the coffee shop had been a day thing.

And so we had purchased three really big lamps that they use at home Depot to keep the aisles bright. And so the lighting was just atrocious, right? It was not, it, it, it, all sorts of things. And piece by piece, you put it together, right? And, and I think for us, one of our secrets is that as we put it together, we were inviting people to come in and be part of, right?

And that, that idea that you're part of the community, that idea that when you're working at Mulvaney's, you're part of Mulvaney's is really, I think, key to what's helped us over the last 18 years. 

Natalie Kling: One of the stories I loved is that shortly after you opened, you invited both your dad and your old boss, Dan.

And Dan, tell us, tell us what Dan said to you and then what he did for you. 

Patrick Mulvaney: He [00:20:00] said, your food is fine, but you don't know shit about running a floor. You are horrible. And good. Bye. So what do you want to do? And I said, I don't want to fail. I want this to go. And he said, all right, you're my bus boy. I'm here for four days.

And then he rode me around like a donkey for those next services for that entire week. Have they paid for that second glass of wine? Why is that glass of wine empty? That person has a napkin on the floor. Did they get their salads? Why are they eating their entree before there? Like boom, boom, boom. All these things.

How are the hostess sitting people? Why is she sitting this table 12 when the restaurant's empty next to table 11? Here's another place. Like things that I hadn't even imagined before. And yeah, it was, it was a firehose, a trial by firehose right with him, but he had always been, you know, Dan Tuberty, the, the, the guy who told Ed Koch to wait had always been a mentor for me for 20 years.

And when we purchased the catering company, I met my sec, what, who I call my second Danny, which is Dan Kennedy, who is the publish publisher of the business journal at the time. And he and I had a lunch at Waterboy. It [00:21:00] was great. And he said, what do you want to do? And I said, I want to be involved in the community.

I want my restaurant to succeed when it opens, but I don't want to just be standing behind a table handing out chocolate dipped strawberries. I want to be part of the conversation. And Kennedy said, Okay, one of us can have a meeting with anyone they want in Sacramento by 2. 30 this afternoon. And it's not you.

But together, if you'd like, we can work on it. Right? And, and for sure he did and God bless him. Really, his, his help is, has been instrumental in both of them and, and I say that, that I don't have one mentor. I have my two Dannys. Like they're angels and a devil sitting on my shoulders, right? Where Dan Kennedy is saying.

Well, the Harvard Business Review says, and what does good look like and where do we move forward from here? And Dan Tuberty is standing on the other side, chomping a cigar and saying, where's the money?

Natalie Kling: Oh, that's so great. I love that. So cool. Part of that [00:22:00] story with Dan, the Dan Kennedy is, is really an important piece because it, it started to connect you to something bigger that you had asked for us, you wanted to be involved in something bigger than just your own business today. You have succeeded in that.

You are, you and Bobbin are involved in all kinds of organizations. Can you, just off the top of your head, list some of the, of the organizations you guys are involved in? 

Patrick Mulvaney: Sure. Uh, well, Family Meal Sacramento, right? Up there right during the pandemic, we started with feeding 1300 people in the Sacramento area seniors.

And then the governor, it inspired the governor to seek funding for what became Great Plates Delivered, which was something that served 40 million meals across the state to seniors. And actually in DC on Tuesday night, we went out to dinner and I met a fellow, John, who works for Jose Andres and they said, Oh, and John [00:23:00] Patrick has a restaurant in Sacramento.

And he said, Mulvaney's said, yeah, he said, yeah, we know that you guys did family meal Sacramento. And in the beginning of the pandemic. We're the central kitchen and we bring people and cooks and food into one place to separate it and we were a little paralyzed because we didn't know how to do it and then we heard about these guys in Sacramento who were doing 400 to 800 meals a day in a way that was safe during the pandemic and it gave us the reset we needed to figure out how to move forward.

Wow. So that's pretty cool. James Beard Foundation, now Food Frontier in Sacramento is bringing all sorts of people together. You know, the, uh, Obviously, the Chamber of Commerce Visit Sacramento has been really instrumental too. We're really proud with Visit Sacramento. We just came back from Turin at the end of September where they have a food conference for 350, 000 people in even numbered years in northern Italy, and they've signed an MOU to bring that Terra Madre program to Terra Madre Americas.

And so for the [00:24:00] next decade, you'll see in odd numbered years, that festival here in Sacramento. It'd be a little small, but we'll probably have about 100, 000 people here in Sacramento next year talking about good, clean, fair food for all, and for us showing what's America, what's the West. And what is Sacramento to all those visitors coming in.

And then the White House, because you mentioned it, so I guess I should throw that one in. The White House invitation was a result of what the State Department calls the Culinary Diplomatic Corps. And their belief, Secretary Blinken's belief, is that the soft diplomacy that comes, like I said, when you break a table, break bread at a table, it changes conversations.

And so as a result, they engaged about a hundred of us to go out and Perform that kind of function. 

Natalie Kling: So everything you've told us so far kind of points into this, your why, your and Bobbin's why. If you could summarize your why, what would you, what would you say it is? 

Patrick Mulvaney: So the, the, the why that I don't [00:25:00] always tell everybody is that Sacramento has just been very good to me and I want it to be better.

And, and the whole, you know, process. I mean, the gifts that we've received are just things that I want to give back. And my way, I think, of doing it is to drive towards what I call the second question. And my hope is whenever anyone in the world has a question about food, that their second question is, what does Sacramento think?

And we've seen that change, right, over the last 25 years. When I first started saying, chefs would say, what, what's in Sacramento? Now they say, you guys got a lot of stuff going on, right? The World Central Kitchen guy, the people, chefs at James Beard are all talking about that. But we also know now, Forbes and the New York Times are saying, Wow.

Sacramento has some stuff going on. Here's a place to watch. We know that UC Davis now is getting more engaged, that professors there are saying we can spin off our intellectual property in food technology and, and biochemistry into the [00:26:00] world and hopefully create a future. now a burgeoning ecosystem of alternative protein development in West Sacramento.

And that's not even including the way that the Unified School System has now a 60, 000 square foot kitchen to do at scratch cooking, that Santana Diaz has taken local procurement of products from 11 to 54 percent at UC Davis Medical Center. His, the goals for UC to, UC proper, uh, sustainability are at 30%.

He's at 42. There's 40 acres of urban gardening in West Sacramento. There's the Food Literacy Center with a brand new building to teach kids how to cook and eat vegetables. Soilborne Farms went from two acres when we first met them over on Howe and Hurley to 65 acres. in Rancho Cordova. I mean, it's just, I'm not, what I'm saying is I'm just, I'm very proud to be, have been a part of seeing all that come to fruition.

Natalie Kling: It's so awesome. It's so awesome. It's [00:27:00] so much bigger than a business. And so my next question would be, how do you find the time? 

Patrick Mulvaney: Well, good people, right around you to support and it's good partners. And so, again, Dan Tuberty said to me years ago, your knees have a shelf life. And so you need to make sure that you are a teacher, right?

You're a fine cook. You're not a very good person with money, but you're passable. But for this to be, for this to be ongoing, then you need to teach. And so I think we have, right? We, we look at this not only, Mulvaney's B& L is something of which we're stewards, right? But also that, that is important to be able to reach out into the community.

And so we do, right? And, and I'm super proud of, of, of Santana Diaz and what he's doing and Brad Checky and the work on family meal and, and Amber Stott and the food literacy program and what people who have all sorts of people who have been [00:28:00] through our doors. Have, have come to do and I'm really excited, right?

For the next generation during the pandemic. So we, we were feeding all these people and the b and l was kind of the hub for food. We had a beer truck on the side that was unfortunately not filled with beer, but filled with food that people were giving us. Michael Bosworth had said, Hey, I left a ton of rice for you at Produce Express, and I said, three or 400 pounds.

He said, no, I left you a ton of of rice. And if when that's done, you'll get another ton. So people who are feeding seniors could call and say, I need. Family meal rice, right? And, and the Pacific Coast producers were bringing pallet upon pallet of tomato products and Superior Farms brought us 4, 300 pounds of lamb vindaloo.

So it's just amazing. So anyway, people would come and pick this up. One day Brad was out there. We were standing the appropriate six feet apart drinking a beer. And he looked at me and said, you know that I'm you. So you need to figure out what to do next. So I know where to go. And then together we need to [00:29:00] figure out who's me.

And I thought, wow, Sacramento has a succession plan in place. And wow, he's smarter than me because he's, but it's great. Right. And so there's a little piece for sure. At the beginning, like, what's the matter? I'm, I can do this. I'm tough. Right. I'm, What are you saying? I'm old. But then I started to think, right?

There's things that I do know how to do that they don't, right? And things that I probably do better than they don't. But there's certainly a lot of stuff that they do better and, and, and we need them there to do it. So it frees up time for you and also so that they can begin to learn. And they can begin to learn how to teach, right?

So this, this doesn't just end here, but goes on, right? Creating a legacy. 

Natalie Kling: Yeah. So I think it's pretty obvious to anyone listening that all of this commitment to people and, and, food and community and green and all [00:30:00] of that has to be a part of what has made Mulvaney's such a success. In addition to you and Bob and being who you are and your values and living out these values through your restaurant, when you, when young restauranteurs come to you, how do you advise them on how to make a successful restaurant?

Patrick Mulvaney: Well, thank you. But I think that you could put imperfectly in front of anything that I do as, as we go. And for sure, right? And, and folks always come in and ask, and, and you talk about, sure, there's nuts and bolts, right? To everybody, pay your payroll taxes, right? Because 

Natalie Kling: that 

Patrick Mulvaney: catches up. But here's the things to look for.

Here's how to build community engagement. A lot of that stuff is stuff they already know or they learned, right? And then we're there for those dates. You know, when I started. Randy Paragary was always really good to me and he would, I would call and he would answer the question on the phone. He would say, come in and let's have a drink.

One night he said, [00:31:00] we're having dinner at Esquire, I'm choosing the wine and you're paying. But he was always, but super responsive, right? And really good. And I asked Tuberty, I said, yeah, it's surprising he's, he's going out. And Danny said, of course, that's because you're the head of your own ship now and there's no street signs in the ocean.

Your job is to help other people figure out how to go there. 

Natalie Kling: Wow. So 

Patrick Mulvaney: I held on to that, right? And that kind of guides me and hopefully guides some of the people that we helped along the way. You know, so Ginger Elizabeth, went to her chocolate company, she came in and I thought it was one of these, here's how you open a business, let's get a business permit and do you have insurance?

And, and she said, well, I'm opening a business and I need space. Pardon me. She said, yeah, Dan Bud said that you have a restaurant and he said, call that loser and let him. Tell him that you need to rent space. So Dan Budd is a pastry chef in New York, who we had both worked with at different times. He looks like a Boy Scout and cooks like a stoner, which are beautiful.

So anyway, I [00:32:00] was, I was out to a lunch somewhere and I threw the keys on the table and said, all right, good luck. She said, what do I do? I said, I don't know. I don't know how to do chocolates. Good luck. Just lock the door on the way out. Throw the keys to the fence. I'll get back in. And so she spent her first six months or so at the restaurant doing her chocolates, selling her chocolates out of, out of the B& L.

And it's that kind of thing, right? Where you're nurturing and then how proud are you, right? That, hey man, this is my friend and she's doing really well and I'm proud of the things that she's doing. How proud am I of, of, of her? of Billy at Bacon Butter Chemo with his, his world, all, all our friends and how proud am I of the Sacramento community that chefs and restauranteurs together have built and made stronger over the last 20 years, right?

We're a force to be reckoned with. And now we're ready, now that we're ready to be reckoned with, we're ready to go do some stuff. 

Natalie Kling: What's your vision for the next 10, 15 years? 

Patrick Mulvaney: So I think my vision has not changed, but the technology has. My goal had always been to sit in the corner [00:33:00] of the bar with the New York Times crossword puzzle and a cold cup of coffee and tell people how to run the world.

Natalie Kling: Fortunately the, 

Patrick Mulvaney: the New York Times is now on the iPad and I'm probably gonna have to get bigger iPads as I get older and my eyes get worse, but, but the rest of it still remains the same. You know, my friends from, High school, I grew up in New York and friends are calling saying we have a membership at Pinehurst or we bought a house in Boca Raton.

My husband is spending two, two months of the year in Delray in Florida. Where are you going? I said, I live in California. We don't, we don't have to leave, right? There's no snow here. But the other thing that I say after that is, is the real truth, which is I've watched the city change over 25 years so much.

And I think in some way, you know, we've had a hand in that. And I really want to see what happens in the next 25 years. So I don't plan on going anywhere. 

Natalie Kling: I love that because as we were talking earlier in the week, you [00:34:00] can really sense your commitment to being there for as long as, as long, until something changes, if it will, but you're not looking for something else.

You're looking to be there. And I had asked you about, you know, sometimes successful restauranteurs, they go on to to make lots of restaurants, and you had said we're a one family restaurant. Tell me about that. 

Patrick Mulvaney: Yeah, we're, we're a one stop shop. You know, we're, it's enough for us, right? Yeah, for sure. In early days, people saying, great, your restaurant's successful.

Do you want to open another one? Do you want to, do you want, and for us, that's never been our goal, right? And this is, this is, where we're at, right? I have a face for radio, so TV probably wasn't an option anyway. But they weren't things that drove me, right? You know what, what's always driven me is that, that sense that we're creating this community space.

that people value and how and, and honoring, if you will, the sense of trust that [00:35:00] people are placing in us, right? And, and wanting to make sure that we're living up to the expectations of those who are putting, putting that trust in us. So, and so for us, that's always been more important. I spent last week, we were at a conference with chefs in CIA in Copia down in Napa Valley.

And one of the things that struck me as a kid doing a kitchen called angel food, and he's taking new immigrants and bringing them into the, into the restaurant and saying, you may not know how to cook, but you have a work ethic and I can teach you how to build a successful career. And he said, everybody works differently, right?

And, and everyone has this definition and the definition of success is not For everyone, multiple restaurants, being on TV, publishing cookbooks, traveling the world, or, you know, or being a lawyer that appears in front of the Supreme Court, or being the president of a university, right? And, and if you're always looking for the next or better, [00:36:00] then you're never going to be happy, right?

We look around Sacramento and say, Yeah, this is good. This is enough. This is what we want. 

Natalie Kling: I mean, that's such a huge statement. I think a lot of people have a really hard time saying this is enough. So what. What advantages Actually a lot of 

Patrick Mulvaney: times I say this is more than enough. 

Natalie Kling: Yeah, that's probably more accurate.

Yeah, what advantages do you think there are in being able to say that? 

Patrick Mulvaney: For me? 

Natalie Kling: You know, yeah, I mean versus, versus chasing the, the next, the next, the next. 

Patrick Mulvaney: Well, it depends, right? And if you're a chaser, then maybe that's good. But for me, I get tired of that, right? And it also, and also, For me, I think that idea that you need to be more or you need to be something that someone else thinks you should be or Or you, more accurately, you need to be thinking that you need to be something else that you think someone else thinks you should be, which is probably not true.

Just distracts from [00:37:00] the work that's in front of you, right? And so to turn back and say, yeah, this is the work. This is what we do, right? This is the, we're going to teach these kids, right? We're going to make it better, right? It's the teaching. There's nothing better than having people come back in and, you know, And talk about, right, like, their experiences with us.

You know, we did a thing called I Got Your Back where we talked about mental health in restaurants. And we had a lot of deaths by suicide in 2018. Restauranteurs came together and said, what's our responsibility? And kind of figured out Bobbin is brilliant. She said, we need to talk about it every day. She created a tissue box with four colors of paper on it.

Happy faces. She drew happy, sad, neutral, and in the weeds. And We would talk about the temperature of the day, right, and it opened up this world where all of a sudden people were talking about the challenges that they were facing and really changed the way in restaurants for sure, but perhaps in Sacramento in general, that we talk [00:38:00] about mental health.

But I used to say in the beginning, this is a battle with no victories, but fewer defeats. About six months or a year in, a former employee came in. It was good to see him and I had fired him for sure, and he deserved to be fired for sure. And he said, you have to change what you say because you were right to fire me and I was bad.

But today I am five years sober. I am back with my baby's mother and I have a union card in HVAC. So just for today, um, success. So for me, stop saying that there are no successes in this battle. That's pretty, that's pretty cool. 

Natalie Kling: That's very cool. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. Your guys work with mental health has really been, I think from what I understand in talking to you, very important to you and very influential in not just your restaurant.

Patrick Mulvaney: Yeah. For [00:39:00] restaurants, restaurants around. And it turns out that it's this. It's this great community, right? That one that we were afraid, right? Four answers to every question, right? Go home, get back on the line, stop drinking, do a shot, right? We know they're all wrong. And then to figure that out with the help of so many people, right?

Like every healthcare company here, the state, the Steinberg Institute, Mayor Steinberg was great, and Wealthspace, and nonprofits, and the Native American Health Center, like all came together to kind of make this happen. Boost us up, boost up our world to say this, this is what you can do. And then we found out that there's people around the country that were doing the same thing, right?

And, and in all sorts of ways. So there was. Once our friend called in Cincinnati had and they let me tell the story that the two chefs die by overdose Within two weeks of each other early, you know winter probably winter of 20 just before the [00:40:00] pandemic and and they said What do we do chef? Right a couple of friends from Cincinnati all quite independently said reached out and said what do we do?

And I don't know the answer, but I reached out and the guy who literally wrote the book on talking about mental health issues from the Ohio State University said, Here's my contact in Cincinnati, and I am sending four copies of my presee. The person in charge of the American Association of Suicidology said, I live in Frankfurt, Kentucky, and I'm 45 minutes away.

Give me the phone numbers and I will be there in person. People were calling from Toronto to bring help. It's just the whole community, boom, coalescing together. What I said to the chefs who, who were spearheading it though at the end was, you know, this is really hard and, and that you lost these two gentlemen is tough, but they've left you a really big gift.

And that's everybody gets to see that you're deeply affected, right? So [00:41:00] for many ways, in many ways in Sacramento, and again, Noah's mom lets me tell the story and his son. We were affected by our friend Noah Zonka, who, who was a great chef and a great guy. And we just saw him spiral down and didn't.

Weren't able to help him, right? And I called his mom and said, Hey, I hadn't seen Noah. And she said, hoping that she'd say he's with me or he's in rehab. And she wrote back and said, I haven't seen him either. And if you see him, tell him I love him. And they found him alone a couple of weeks later. Well, really devastated, right?

The people, the chefs and in town, all these people that loved him. And so when we started to talk about, I got your back and talk about mental health and talk about the importance of not just letting it stew. It wasn't that you were getting a textbook or the. Human Resources Company was saying that you needed to do something.

This is an 18 year old kid saying I've heard of Mulvaney. Wow, that guy's really broken up about this. I guess this is important. Hmm. And to them, as I say to [00:42:00] everybody, right, when you lose a person, don't, don't hide your grief because their grief, the grief that you're experiencing is their last g, last gift to you.

To be able to move forward in a way that hopefully keeps other people out of that darkness. 

Natalie Kling: That's really beautiful, Patrick. Oh man. Okay. I, I want to go a little bit into the family part of the family business. So you and Bobbin are obviously a really good partnership from what I could tell from our conversation, you, you actually really like each other.

You're still married after all these years. How do you 15 

Patrick Mulvaney: minutes. 

Natalie Kling: How do you navigate being business partners and being so committed to so many people, not just in your restaurant, but in your organizations and in your, with your partnerships and the [00:43:00] farmers and, and then still prioritizing your marriage?

Patrick Mulvaney: So we're getting better at that for sure. I think in the beginning when you're worried, I mean, I'm still worried, right? So the business is going to be open tomorrow, but I'm less worried than I was 20 years ago. So we've started to, to build up on that. And then as we do, we, we take the time, right, to go away and just to break off and be away.

And it serves as a reminder to us that although we're, we work with, care for, and do these things with people throughout the region and throughout our restaurant, that our first commitment is to ourselves and our family. But that sometimes we also, and an acknowledgement that. We ask of each other in that relationship quite a bit of forbearance because we're involved in so many of those other things.

Natalie Kling: One thing that came up for me as I was listening to you talk about how you guys navigate this is that In some ways, all of this [00:44:00] beautiful work is an expression of, of your marriage. It's an expression of you coming together and, and your value system. And, and do you guys ever reflect on that and, and go, wow, this, this has come from.

From our love, from, from what we have together. 

Patrick Mulvaney: That we've built this together. Yeah, and I think that the, that, that also comes from us being on a seesaw, right? And so where we're able to help is to say, I'm low. Then Bobbin can say, no, look at what we've created and bring me back up and vice versa. I wish I was better at it than she was, but, or I'm not as good at it as she is.

I wish. I wish we were both as good as her. 

Natalie Kling: Yeah. 

Patrick Mulvaney: At that. But it's important, right, to remember that, that your family comes first. And for sure, it's hard sometimes on your real family because when you're, you know, we call when the door opens, we call it the show, and you're on stage like, Hey, how you doing?

Good. You know, now it happens that it's genuine, right? But it, it also [00:45:00] happens that, that then if you're busy, that sometimes your family can feel slighted. Right? Because you're not perception, you're not taking the time or, or you care more about those other people or when, or, and this is just me being defensive.

In my mind, it's this world that we've created that the BNL is how we support the family. Right? And so to your point, right? My, Um, my way of showing my love is trying to keep the BNL as successful as possible so that my family can be well supported. 

Natalie Kling: Yeah. One thing that, that I think is really an important part of your story too, is you have a daughter, you and Bobbin have a daughter who has grown up in the business and is right now.

Yeah. Choosing not to be in the business, not unlike many family businesses and many, many parents who this is such their heart, such their passion. And then the kid feels [00:46:00] differently, has their own maybe heart and passion for other things. How have you guys navigated that? And how do Um, you know, how, how is that for you and how have you as a couple navigated that?

Patrick Mulvaney: Well, the, the restaurant business is brutal, right? And, and if it's just a job and if it's not your calling, then you clearly shouldn't be there. And so I met Sarah when she was 13 and probably, so if I was in my early 40s, probably took me that long to realize. But my parents didn't want me to do something specific.

They wanted me to be successful. They wanted me to be happy. It didn't matter. I didn't have to go to grad school or be an English teacher or be a lawyer or be anything. They wanted me to be happy. And so I was kind of talking to her about, yeah, you don't have to. We don't want you to waste your time trying to make us happy, right?

You need to be happy and you need to figure it out yourself. So like I said, she [00:47:00] was 13 when she met, so she's probably 16 or 17 and her mom got sick, some pretty serious cancer and from which she's totally recovered and it's great. And here's a 17 year old scared girl and I wasn't married, weren't married at the time.

So I just said to her, you know, I don't know what's going to happen, but I'll just make you this promise. Wherever I am in the world, I'll have a space for you. Right, because I just wanted her to know that there would be, she'd always have somewhere to come to, even if it wasn't ideal. So that cert for sure, I think, has helped us as we've moved forward.

And yeah, owning a restaurant, like I said, it's a bad idea, right, in a big undertaking. And, uh, Sarah is, you know, with her new family and she is a great mother and it is perfect for us, right? And, and so it's challenging for sure, right? I'm not gonna say, right, that we haven't had hurt feelings on both sides, like what, what's going on.

But, but the truth is [00:48:00] that, that this is, this is the way it is, right? And I love, I love my daughter first, right? I love my wife first. And, and then we'll figure out what the future of the business holds. Right? So it's not that important. And that's hard to convey to someone, right? Because yeah, you do want them to take over.

But they're not letting you down because they're not, right? You just have to pivot. Right? That's all. And it is hard, for sure. Like, I'm, ask any of the hundreds of people I've fired, right? I'm not the easiest person to work for. 

Natalie Kling: One of the things that you had mentioned too, is when you were originally kind of thinking about bringing your daughter in and what that might look like, there were, you, you reached out to, you know, outside resources, people you knew to, to, to try to understand what would that look like?

And one of the questions we talk about here is especially regarding the family business center as a resource for family business centers. I mean, how, how did [00:49:00] you tell us about how you tried to educate yourself around the family piece of running a family business? 

Patrick Mulvaney: And how did you do a transfer? Yeah.

Natalie Kling: Yeah. 

Patrick Mulvaney: So it, Turns out that one, one year, right before Christmas, we were driving, I was driving with our bartender to a going away party for someone. We saw a truck in front of us hit a dog on the road. and took the dog to the emergency room. And they said, Dan said, Yes, operate on the dog. It needs to survive.

And they said, that'll be 4, 000. And he pushed the thing over to me to sign. The dog's name, we said, Tread. And we put up signs. It turns out that Tread is the vendor's dog. No way. Insurance company. And so we started talking about that. And from that, we started talking about what does family succession look like?

How do people come in? How do they not come in? Right? How Sure, Sarah probably listened to her more talking about, right, what an ogre her dad was versus me. But, but starting to talk about what that [00:50:00] transition is and what the, what the position is in the, in the community. And as a result of that, right, the family, one of the other people in the family, one of the other families, In the FBC is the fat family.

Well, if you're going to talk about restaurant succession, yeah, someone who's been in it 85 years, who's transferred multiple generations, that's a great way to go in to sit down with Kevin and Wing and before she passed Lena, right? To say, how does that work? How? What's the road forward, right? And I think that, that, that in many ways what the Family Business Center provides, the resources that they provide are the same thing that Tuberty told me that it was my job to provide to other restauranteurs, which is that you're on the, you're on the, the cockpit of the ship and there's no signs to go and the only thing, the best way to do it is to ask others who have gone before you.

Knowing. That they're, that they are only there because of others before them told them how to do [00:51:00] it and that it's their obligation to make the road for those who follow easier. 

Natalie Kling: Yeah. Amen. Pretty cool. Another, another, another beautiful way to create community and in a very important way that we have to be arm and arm in these, in these small, small businesses, I'm sure the culinary world, certainly family businesses.

Yeah. Patrick, last question that we ask all of our guests is, do you think that the success of Mulvaney's is due more to hard work or luck? 

Patrick Mulvaney: Neither. I think stupidity. I went in blind. Lots of hard work, lots of luck too, but a lot of that hard, that hard work in service to looking out towards a horizon that you always didn't see, right?

Not getting stuck in. And for sure, again, those hundreds of people I fired were fired because of mistakes in [00:52:00] the moment sometimes. But yeah, it's, it's for sure hard work, but, but if it's, but if it's what you do, like I said again, right? If this is your calling and this is what you want to see happen, then you get to actualize that yourself, right?

You're in control. of your own destiny, right? We have a family business and our family gets to decide where it goes. Our family also gets to take responsibility for when it goes either way, right? Good or bad. Sometimes, and sometimes it's hard to take the arrows, sometimes it's hard to take the lumps when the arrows are justified.

But at the end of the day, you know, for Bobbin and I to say, we had this great gift and we have this great gift, which is that we are in control of our present and we have a large say in our future. And we can use that large say to have an impact on the future of our community as well. [00:53:00] 

Natalie Kling: Yeah. Well, as you said to me a couple of days ago, you are living examples of a worthwhile way to spend your lives dedicated to land and food and people and community.

And what a great example in the Sacramento area. But for everybody who has been a part of your world, to see that you could build something from your family, something you're passionate about, something you believe in, and then have the, the level of influence that you guys have now, so much bigger than Sacramento, is absolutely something you should both feel so proud of.

So thank you so much for sharing all of that with us, because That's a, it's a very, it's a great story, Patrick, and I appreciate it. 

Patrick Mulvaney: Well, thank you very much for spending some time with us. for listening to A Seat at 

Natalie Kling: the Table, Trials and Triumphs of

Family Business. If you like what you heard today, please be [00:54:00] sure to subscribe, post a positive review, and share with another family business owner. For more information about the Capital Region Family Business Center, visit cap family biz.org. That's cap family b u.org. You can also follow us on Facebook at Capital Region Family Business Center, and on Instagram at Cap Fam Biz BI.

If you know of other family businesses that have a story to share, please contact the Family Business Center at info at capfamilybiz. org, that's B U S. We're grateful for the support from River City Bank to make this program possible, and special thanks to Guy Raz from How I Built This for a wonderful closing question that's become one of our favorites.