Hey Jeanette, hey Rachel. Today's interview is with John Krieger, who is the founder and CEO of Cure Companies. He said he has seven projects going on right now at the same exact time. Originally, we were just to talk to him about Spring House, which is a restaurant multiple restaurants in one beautiful renovated house in Tenafly, New Jersey. But we also get to talk to him about his past and how he's come to this and how he started in restaurant building, management, real estate, lots of different areas, and then also how he got to the famous Garden State.
Speaker 3Yes, it's a winding interview. I really enjoy talking to him. I really wanted to get behind his business sense because he has been. He's a New Yorker. He's built a lot of different successful restaurants and had a bunch of ventures in New York city and nationally. He has done a lot of work and he towards the end of the interview he kind of gets a little bit to the beginning of a story and talks about how he failed at first.
Speaker 1Yes, and it's always interesting to hear about that.
Speaker 3I know you weren't successful right off the bat Right and which just seems to be a thread a lot in most people.
Speaker 1Clearly we keep forgetting that, though because, it's easy to see when somebody is a success, you assume they've always been a success.
Speaker 3Yeah, you're like okay. So you just woke up like that, right, and you just did your first, first, first. I'm sure there's people out there they're like I just you know I did it and I was great and I'm amazing. No.
Speaker 1And just so everyone knows about the sound, you're going to hear some paddle balls, like tennis balls kind of banging against the wall a little bit in his office and he'll explain more about why that is. I will try to lower that sound, but if you hear it, that's what it is Right.
Speaker 3It's one of his business ventures that he's doing. Look up online. We will put links to it. Yes, all of the restaurants that he has been involved in are beautiful. They are top tier, incredible places for entertainment and food and community. So everyone go there and also enjoy this interview. Hi, john, thank you for coming on. Lost in Jersey.
Speaker 2Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1We are looking forward to hearing your origin story as well as how you got to New Jersey. Seems like you're a serial entrepreneur, so we'd love to hear about that as well. But I guess first, if you don't mind telling us where you're from and how you ended up in the great state of New Jersey.
Speaker 2Great state indeed how you ended up in the great state of New Jersey, the great state indeed. I was born on the Upper East Side, spent my early childhood there, then moved to Long Island, you know, finished up high school, went to school at American University in Washington DC, then back to the city for probably 21 years or so and then COVID threw a little bit of a winding road. I ended up in Tenafly, which I just be on every day, become more and more appreciative of, and, you know, now really planted some seeds and roots and trees here.
Speaker 3Okay, yeah, well, definitely. So let's go back to that part where you said that you've been in New York for so long building of like businesses within the New York area and nationally.
Speaker 2Okay, so just about every major city in the country.
Speaker 3Okay, how did New Jersey start to become on your radar at that point?
Speaker 2The truth is it was a total fluke. After COVID, I ended up in Baltimore for a year and a half. Oh, because my sister and brother-in-law were there and we went to visit them. They lived in this beautiful suburb on like a five-acre property and we convinced their neighbor to lease us their house. So we basically built a camp for a year and a half so all these cousins got to play. We basically built a camp for a year and a half, so all these cousins got to play, and me and my kid at the time, who had only lived and experienced Manhattan, getting to watch him completely readjust just by being on grass Right. We lived on 2nd and Broadway. There's no grass anywhere.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2So like there was just a change in his personality. Way, there's no grass anywhere. Yeah, so like there was just a change in his personality. His system went from a very nervous and anxious kid to the opposite. But, um, I was headed from there to upstate new york.
Speaker 2I actually moved up there to work on a land development, which was going to be the next six years of my life and the entire project, which had been totally designed, developed, engineered, blew up and fell apart in like 48 hours, and so I had to find another place to live. I have three younger sisters. The middle one had ended up in Tenafly. In the end, I was either going to be in Southampton, westchester, or Tenafly. It was just a function of whoever signed a lease first. I mean, that's really it. I could have been in either of the other two and I ended up here. I would say very quickly I kind of became enamored by it, you know, and then started to get more serious about, you know, the stuff that we're doing now. I became very close with the mayor here pretty quickly. You know certainly people from New York who have this kind of stigma and this opinion of Jersey. It's pretty weird considering just how unique and really amazing it is. Yeah, there's this flawed and Misconception.
Speaker 2Misconception of what New Jersey is.
Speaker 3It's the opposite of anything or everything that I've ever heard or, I think, what most people associate we want to talk to you about Springhouse, this new restaurant that you've started, but we also want to understand how it's different from the past work that you've done and what has like your entrepreneurship that you are bringing to this, like your business acumen.
Speaker 1Give the background for our listeners on how you stumbled upon Springhouse.
Speaker 2Yeah, I just kept passing the building on. I don't know wherever I was going, maybe to drop my kid off or something, so it was the middle of COVID, whatever variant, I don't know two, three, but like there was this big sign, huge sign on the building for sale or rent. One day I was just like I should go look at that. It wasn't impressive. It had been vacant for like three years, so the landscaping was pretty beat up. But I walked in the broker. I didn't even meet the broker, I think, until the day I signed the lease. She was like yeah, here's the code, go in.
Speaker 2I walked into the building and I spent like five minutes walking around and I called my wife and I said you need to come here right now. And she was like why? And I said just please, get to see this. That's how it started and I did that professionally, for most of my career is study buildings and spaces and communities and try and figure out what would be a good match contextually for both the property and then the surrounding area, and that was my job. But something about the building was just very unique and different, right the things that I was accustomed to building in places like LA and New York and DC. These are just boxes within buildings.
Speaker 2You certainly don't have houses in the middle of these areas, right? So it was very new for me. But there was something unique. I said to my wife I was like we have, I have to have this, we have to do this.
Speaker 1Is she used to that from you?
Speaker 2She's taught all the time I mean a lot better, you know, over the last several years as I've got less nuts, but yeah, it used to be like, probably once a day.
Speaker 1Hey.
Speaker 2I got it.
Speaker 1That makes sense.
Speaker 3Maybe once a quarter. Was this more of a emotional connection? And then the others that you've done is more of a business connection, like, do you feel? Like?
Speaker 2So with the Sprint, the first driver was that I very much wanted to and still do wanted to open a school and it felt very much and it was a school and it had this backyard and I kind of had this vision for a very unique type of school in the space. So that was actually why we took the building.
Speaker 1That's fascinating. I love hearing the backstory. I would. You would never know that. Okay.
Speaker 2We moved forward with that strategy for about three months I don't know when we took it, but it was getting very close Like it was clear we were not going to open for the school year coming up. And when we started to sort of build out the business model for it, it was also clear that we were going to lose a lot of money. And so we pivoted to this other concept which we opened and was operational for a year, which was called the Spring and it was a cafe and then it also had like a room that was fully built out for kids programming and we did early childhood music classes and yoga for adults and we had people coming in to do lectures. We ran it for a year. I call it our sort of charitable endeavor because we lost a ton of money. You know basically built this place that you know you could walk in and spend $6 on a coffee and four hours doing other stuff.
Speaker 2There was this moment where a bunch of people made us offers. They wanted to buy the property, which is a very enticing thing to do when you're losing a lot of money. Yeah, there was this real moral dilemma of but and at that time I had gotten much more involved politically. So I had become the president of the chamber and I saw a longer vision for tenafly and I was like I can't do that. Like I like that'll be a really bad look. You know, this is a special building, like I feel almost like there's a gift in the ability to have it so we decided we're not going to sell it, but we needed to do something else.
Speaker 2Then, all of a sudden, sort of everything converged. Uh, a guy in town who owned the liquor license said you know, I'd love to sell this to you. And then, once that happened, we closed down and spent a fortune of money and six months renovating to build. You know what you see?
Speaker 2now which is still entirely driven by the intention of creating this space where people feel really comfortable coming and having, you know, either a more like formal sit down in our dining room or just grabbing a drink at the bar and now going into the backyard at the beer garden, which is completely informal but can meet people and socialize and feel like they're being treated like family, like it's much more than just a restaurant.
Speaker 1It really is.
Speaker 2It's a restaurant but it doesn't feel like that and everybody really says that and that is the intention. Intention. It took a little while to get there right, which is not atypical for any new venture, but I would say the intention has never sort of deviated from. This town deserves something that's super special, really unique, and that brings people together.
Speaker 2That's and special, really unique, and that brings people together and that is elevated yes, experience and its execution, whatever it is, because it's a sophisticated community right. We just won Best New Restaurant in New Jersey and it's a profitable business which is new To be successful that quickly.
Speaker 1Congratulations, because that's hard.
Speaker 2That's very hard, you know. It's probably just a testament to the thesis, which is this town and surrounding area really has an amazing customer base that knows what great is, deserves it. So let's just keep building great, whatever that means, right, whether it's a restaurant or a wellness and fitness facility.
Speaker 1Yeah, so the new paddle venture. Are you simultaneously working on multiple projects?
Speaker 2Yes, yes, absolutely. It's the only way my brain can function Got you.
So then, were you, at the same time as going through this with Spring House, thinking of another way to get a community to be together and do things that are active and fun and engaging, and that's what came.
Speaker 2In the first couple of years I was just sort of opportunistic about things. I wasn't. You know, I didn't have like a full strategy. We have a strategy now, a three and a five-year plan for the company, especially specifically to Tenafly and Bergen. Everything pre prior to that was really much more of a. I'm just going to be open to what shows up. Right, like we own high exposure, right.
Speaker 2I mean, my kid went to camp there. I showed up to pick him up. I saw him 40 foot up in a wall. I started crying. The owner came over to me. He was like who are you? And I was like that's my kid. She gave me her whole story and said you know, you have to buy this from me. And I said, okay, I didn't know I was ever expecting to buy a climbing gym. It was like this is an amazing thing for the community and for kids and adults. Gets them off of TikTok and social media, which is a super important thing for me. And I think we could, you know, continue on you know what's here and make it, maybe even improve it. So, but Paddle was similar. It was a guy, you know.
Speaker 3Can you tell us what Paddle is? I mean, I'm like, what is it? I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2Well, you tell us what paddle is. I mean, I I'm like what is it? I don't know what it is. Well, I'm surprised you haven't heard it, because there's balls slamming against the wall as we speak.
Speaker 1Well, I I do hear a little bit of stuff in the back, so I'm glad you explained what that is. Yeah, I'm here.
Speaker 2So we just built our corporate offices in the facility. So another guy with a similar story to me, you know, moved from new york, an entrepreneur moved to englewood. We met through a mutual, you know, moved from New York, entrepreneur moved to Englewood. We met through a mutual friend. You know, I know you've been building stuff I've built. You know I've built a lot of other stuff in technology but I really want to build a paddle facility. Do you know what it is? I had no idea. I'd never heard of it, Never seen it Same.
Speaker 2I, you know, we just became friendly. I said, do I want to be in business with this guy? Because once you do that, you become, you're jumping into bed and it's a very, very intimate experience from a, you know, emotional time standpoint, et cetera. I looked into the sport and then we shook hands and we built it. I mean now you know we've been open for four weeks we found a location in Crestville it's actually on the border of Tenafly and Crestville and we built it and it's amazing it's doing the same thing. We have the same intention, like let's build a really premium facility that obviously focuses on paddle, but the second phase of this is like 15 000 feet of wellness. So we have an indoor pool, steam room, sauna, cold plunge, hot plunge gym, massage room, but I mean it's gonna look as nice.
As you know, the aman club on 57 and that's the thing with all of your projects. It seems like you go full tilt, you do, and I'm curious, okay, just talking to you and getting to know you, which is you know what everybody, everyone, the listeners are doing is getting to know you. Is that sounds like? I'm curious, like, when you get up in the morning, like I have a very generic way that I list what I need to focus on, all the different projects, because I have several different projects I work on. What do you do when you wake up in the morning? Because, first, how many projects do you have going on right now?
Speaker 2I have eight of them. I have, like you see, three like a whiteboard post-it notes. There's about 10 more of those around my office and then four screens and I wake up and I meditate every morning without fail breath work, meditation. I go for a walk with my kids. I don't do anything until I've done that. You know, cold play, all that stuff. It sounds kind of like but are you like meditating?
Speaker 3and then you're like spring house, no, paddle, no you come back to the present. Do you just keep pulling yourself back, or have you gotten really good at it?
Speaker 2No, I, I, I my strategy and kind of like, like visual if you want to like visual. So I have about, I have seven projects right now that I'm working on. So, like, think about an octopus, right, an octopus has eight arms. When it's focused on one thing, it doesn't use all eight, it uses one, right, yeah, whether it's hunting or whatever, so for me, or spinning, you know, you ever see those guys on the street who are spinning plates? Yes, so they're not all, they're usually focused on one and the other ones are in this state of movement and then, as it starts to wobble, then they go back to that one. It's.
Speaker 2I dedicate my time and energy to one specific project, whether that's for an hour or two or five or an entire day, and I have 90% of my focus on that project and then, you know, I'll move to the next, depending on what needs the attention. These businesses all have teams now, right, general managers, assistant general managers. I have a holding company with, you know, an individual who's in charge of all the creative and all the finance and the operations, and so I have a team. And, you know, as we live in this world where all of these kids are diagnosed with add and adhd and all this other stuff like and I had, you know, every diagnosis in the book, and the truth is there is a way of actually using that to your advantage, and I think a lot of it has to do with implementing these mindfulness practices. Like, I have two boys and a girl, six, three and two. The two boys are like these kids need to be running around a forest for like five hours a day. It's just half it's.
Speaker 2It's it's like caging an animal if you're not really, and I don't think and and and also by the way and I you know these, they're also doing yoga and breath work like I'm trying to implement all that stuff now because I know from the way I was brought up right Like the immediate thing was like I'll take medication or he's got to go into a special thing. But the truth is it seems as though like 80% of the kids in the country are diagnosed with some version of this, and I think it's important to understand that, just handled the right way, it's very advantageous. We live in a world where, at every minute, there's a hundred things being thrown at us right yeah, if you're on a phone and you don't have control over it.
Speaker 3There are a hundred things hitting you, so the brain can sort of reacclimate in a more dynamic way to function where you are I remember once, uh, years ago, when we were in an assembly and the principal who I didn't really love the principal but she said one thing that I always remember and I was like huh.
Speaker 3She was like you know, our kids, their brain is going to be different than yours. You know, they are learning how to multitask on a level that you weren't having to do when you were young. So just because you think that what was your way is actually we're evolving, you know, we're changing a little and it's kind of like it's scary to imagine, to think that things they're going to learn differently, they're going to use their multitasking ADHD capabilities maybe to benefit them in some ways. You know, I don't know, I mean, I think that's to some extent what you're saying is that these things that we think are problematic and we need to conform them, that maybe they're going to help them, help us you know, or also to change school the way it's.
Speaker 1You know, like I think you know, the way that they're finally realizing and a lot of classes are finally realizing for a while now. I guess that you know not everyone needs to learn the exact same way by sitting straight in a chair for eight hours a day, even as you say it, doesn't it sound like? It sounds outrageous.
Speaker 3Well, I get upset a lot, because my son has these things and you know it's like, why do you want to medicate him to be just like everyone else? You know, like, why do you want to do that? I mean like because he's great. He just doesn't like to or isn't. That's not his thing. You know why do we have to force it to be his thing?
Speaker 2You know, why do we have to force it to be his thing? You know, by changing At some point, I hope to God and it feels like you know, maybe that's coming up sooner than later, but like this whole thing needs to break and this whole way in which we approach this Schooling, I really hope is going to sort of fall apart.
Speaker 1Was that the impetus for you wanting to start a school?
Speaker 2Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's so clear, right? I mean yeah.
Speaker 2From the data and all the information out there about all these other countries that are doing things differently. And then if you just look at, I mean, I employ hundreds of people and a lot of our pools would be typically, you know, people in their 19 to like 27. People and they're 19 to like 27, there's a problem like there is a serious. I mean, there's a major issue with this generation, or the multiple generations that grew up on social media. You know that can't make eye contact, can't socialize. Oh, I know, like it's. It's a, it's this is. It's the saddest thing in the world to watch. Yeah, we have a camp right now at Padel. Like any opportunity that I have to use these places to facilitate like a better environment for kids for sure.
Speaker 3I don't know what all of your projects are, but I'm hearing about at least three of them right now and it sounds to me like with the spring house. You know, one of the reasons I want to get back to it is because I, as you had said, it's been rated, named the best restaurant new restaurant in New Jersey and it seems to me that it's there's more than just the food and the environment. There's something else going on there that that might be giving you that edge there that that might be giving you that edge.
Speaker 1Do you train your people to uh in the like? You know how disney has their famous service uh training. There is something to be said about specifically training people to be more of that community feel and to look out for each other, and it's not just a transactional moment. Do you have a specific mindful way that you do that?
Yeah, always. So my, my, one of my partners, who's the chief operating officer across all of the brands. His name is Brandon Hirsch. He's been with, we've been together for almost 13 years, okay. So you know, prior to Jersey and pre COVID, we we probably employed over a thousand people, so we had massive training programs. We actually had a classroom in our corporate offices for this.
Speaker 2So we're always onboarding new people for new businesses and you know anything you can think of by way of like growth and sort of how somebody starts, you know, in the kitchen and then ends up in a management position to being very, very diligent about, you know, in the kitchen and then ends up in a management position to being very, very diligent about, you know, smiles and warmth. You know the reality is, and especially in a restaurant, you will never get to 100%. There will always be something that comes out wrong or off. Oh right, you know. And if the environment which we can control, you know, is well maintained and beautiful and the individual who's serving that food comes into it with an energy of appreciation and happiness, it's okay if the whatever is a little bit cold or came out a little bit late. People forget very quickly If the food's great and the individual is miserable. Forget it, it's over right and there's no smiles.
Speaker 2So we have like zero tolerance policies for some of the stuff you might see and that's becoming more of the norm in society by way of interactions between consumer and employee, which is disgraceful, I think. Business owners everybody complains that it is a really bad time to be hiring people, but the reality is, if you're going to allow a culture that's going to be unhospitable within your business, it's going to fail at some point anyway. So you might as well get rid of. If you need four people to run it and two are not great, get rid of them. Step in and work behind the counter, because you're just going to tank the whole thing anyways. Right, at some point we're going to lose patience for this sort of mediocrity that's been allowed everywhere.
Speaker 3I don't understand how that like gumption, I guess, is the word to to take that kind of step with that potential loss. I was actually. I know it's like business 101. I'm like to take that risk to open a restaurant and possibly it fail. How do you write that off, I mean-.
Speaker 2I'm happy to share.
Speaker 3I've failed many times yeah let me know how many bankruptcies have you had?
Speaker 2Amazingly none, but came from pretty close. I mean, my first ever business that I started was a crazy story.
Speaker 3Let's hear it.
Speaker 2It's funny because we're about to reopen Fat Troy in Englewood and it turns out and I'm telling you I had no conscious like awareness of this it's almost identical to the first thing I started 17 years ago, like that's why the first thing was this, this place called sensible. It was on 52nd, between third and lex. It was an asian fest casual concept. It was gorgeous. I had no idea what I was doing.
Speaker 2Um, I had a partner who ended up becoming. He was actually a con artist. Oh he, he's dead. Oh God, a lot of people and he died. He had a lot of money invested in it and we had, we had other partners who were invested in it. Thank God, it was so obvious what had happened. You know that, like the investors were like you got to walk away. We're going to deal with this guy, you know. And then we found out he actually was in jail in Korea. He was like a legit con artist. But the truth is I, if I lost I don't know a few hundred thousand dollars, I don't know what an MBA costs, it's at least that, but I can assure you that.
Speaker 2I got, I got you know that and a PhD, and and it was really. It allowed me to be an entirely different type of entrepreneur. And you know it took me two years to come back from that.
Speaker 3It was a very but how did you come back from that, Like I mean, that's a lot of money and then go into the same kind of business.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, you learned a lot.
Speaker 2So I think that happened when I was just turning 30. I mean, I was broke. For two years I was broke. I didn't have an apartment, I was living on friends' floors.
Speaker 2You know, most months I didn't have money for anything. I mean, it was really like, you know, not living on the streets, but I had nothing for two years. It was like my major reset in life. Two years it was like my, my major reset in life and it was super humbling and it's exactly what I needed, you know, to just sort of re guide me towards the kind of person I wanted to be, because for my teens and twenties I was.
Speaker 2I was a pretty wild, kind of hard going guy, but I always, you know, wanted to be married to the right person and, you know, have kids and be a faithful, you know, conscious minded human being. That was not my direction for my teens and 20s. All I wanted to do in my teens and 20s was go out and have fun and as much as humanly possible. So I went through that process. You know, I had to rebuild myself and then, shortly thereafter, I was connected with the. You know, this guy from Australia wanted to build a coffee brand that was Bluestone Lane and that was an interesting journey. And, you know, then built a holding company and we, we, we had a really very large organization. We had almost like 45 different locations between seven brands around the country, you know, and that was just this, this great ride.
Speaker 3Is that when the page turned for you Like, you started to see that you can do this. You know you can.
Speaker 2Yeah, yes, but you know the truth is I still was operating, you know, maybe on paper, successfully, but I would say as a human being, was not a great father, didn't have a great marriage. You know, my whole life was focused on growth and and money and, you know, building up a valuation in a business. If I look back on it, you know I was not very happy as a person and um, and really caught up in this whole world, which is pretty unique. You know, it exists in plenty of places, but New York is, it's a bastion of this right. So you know, you, that that becomes normal like this. Oh yeah, this is the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1I. You're surrounded by everybody else that is also doing the same, so it seems very normalized. Yeah, but I also.
Speaker 3I mean, I just want to. I kind of know where you're going and I agree with this and I. But I also think that to some extent somebody has to be rough and tough and do the to make the money so that you can go to someplace nice and have an and then fulfill yourself peacefully. I mean, it's like it's this weird thing how do you have, how do you become successful nicely?
Speaker 2So, coming from someone who has been on both sides of it, I've had a lot of experiences and one of them was trying, you know, being successful this way, and the other one is now right. So I know what both sides of the coin look like and the answer is you do not have to be a, you know, sociopath really is kind of you know, to be successful and in the end it does nobody any good good, because these people are typically pretty miserable, right. They're surrounded by people who want nothing to do with them by way of their employees, right, and in the end, whether it's in you know now or you know, on their deathbed and you could look no further than Steve jobs, all these other guys, you know it's pretty worthless, right. Their kids get all screwed up, you know, they end up divorced. They end up, you know, just pretty miserable lives and a lot of money. So I just don't believe and I now know that you can be a super thoughtful, caring, you know, intentional human being and be successful.
Speaker 2It doesn't mean that you become somebody who everybody gets to walk over. You can't run a business that way. You have to set very clear guidelines on what you demand as an owner by way of you know work and deliverables, and you have to be ruthless. When I always have like the most ruthlessly compassionate person in the world, I'm ruthless but I'm also very compassionate. Yeah, like that's the kind of company I'm working. I'm doing what I need to do. You're getting paid to do what you need to do. It's quite clear about what that is. If you're doing that, then my job is to help you grow and be even happier as a human being, and I will do that as long as you're doing your part. And when you're not, you know we'll sit down and have our conversations and you'll either get to the place that you need to be or you'll leave. It's. It doesn't have to be like, but you don't have to like sit there and scream at somebody in the middle of you know business or whatever.
Speaker 1Oh God, I remember that in my older work days of seeing this one partner rip to shreds another person in a meeting and it was so uncalled for and so over the top that all of us just looked at the partner Like you're the problem, dude, dude, it wasn't even like it's like yeah, I don't think that's gonna work much longer.
Speaker 2I don't, you know? Yeah, there certainly seems like we're coming to this sort of inflection point in this country. Humanity right, we're like. There's so many, it's such a divergence and kind of an old and a new, and yeah.
Speaker 3I hope we make it through it, but like it's um I want to um ask you before we wrap up this interview because it's been very interesting. I really appreciate you talking to us about the business side of everything, but I also do want to do a little focus on spring house.
Yeah, I'll walk you through it. So it's got a. You know there's actually four bars but it has a uh, like the. When you first walk into the restaurant to the right is this very casual. You know, there's like 25 seats. It's a bar. It looks like kind of like a hotel almost and people hang out there all night and also have dinner. But you know it's a little louder and they kind of want that ambiance. Upstairs there's a speakeasy which is opening pretty soon, really cool. It's got its own bar and very kind of like Soho house feel in terms of design. Also, across from that is our other dining room, our secondary dining room, which has 47 seats. Okay, downstairs we have a 32 seat dining room, very airy and light but really sophisticated. In our backyard we just built this, this huge beer garden, which has like 80 seats.
Speaker 2It's got an airstream that we converted into a bar and then this nice kitchen that that has a, um, this seven foot, which we had a custom built in texas uh, wood burning grill, so chicken fingers and all these things that are cooked specifically out there in a separate venue, and then we have an event space that holds 55 people, that also has its own bar, and then I would say, within like 60 days, we're opening up Springhouse Provisions and that has its own entrance from the outside, um, and that'll be like a mini eataly so you can come in and get prepared foods. It'll have a butchery, so all of our food is sourced direct from farms. Pastas and breads are all cooked in-house with imported flour from italy, so all that stuff will be for purchase to go.
Speaker 3olive oils, you know what about the chef there? What's the? What's the food?
Speaker 2tell us about the food yeah, really kind of, and I've built a lot of restaurants. He's definitely the best chef I've ever worked with. He is a rare breed and he's an italian guy from naples. He's like no bullshit guy and he sat down down with me. I understand, when we started I understood about 20% of what he was saying because he's a lot of passion. Listen to me, leave me alone. Don't ever tell me to compromise on the quality of the ingredients and I'll build the best restaurant in New Jersey. But as soon as you tell me a compromise on the ingredients or to use things that go against you know my ethical belief, I'll tell you to go F yourself and I'll leave. That's my deal.
Speaker 1And you were like I love this guy.
Speaker 2I was like perfect. This is the man for me. Because I am the same way right, like I have this the food we eat is, like so toxic and and everything that he sources and everything that he uses is so clean.
Speaker 3Is there a signature dish that people that he, he likes, or you like, or the customers like?
Speaker 2There are so many right Like like you have this porterhouse for two that's cooked on a block of Himalayan salt and comes out with rosemary and like this whole clove of garlic that you. So there's that all of the pastas are handmade and, and you know every day so people are obsessed with that. Our artichoke dish is insane.
Speaker 2I'm a huge artichoke fan but they're baby artichokes, so you actually eat the whole thing. So he has this super interesting process that he does. People are are love it. I don't know I. I it's the only, and I mean this. I'm not it's the only food I eat.
Speaker 3Really, do you go there for lunch and then for dinner, and then you bring it home?
Speaker 2I bring it home because we're closed on Monday. So I make sure I have enough on Sunday so that I know, because I just feel better from eating it. I mean, that's what happens, everybody knows. Like you know, you go to Europe or France or Italy and you can eat everything and you don't feel it's the same thing here.
Speaker 3Would you call it Americana or Italian?
Speaker 2I would say it's Americicana. Right, there's a. There's a pretty healthy mix between fish steak.
Speaker 3Yeah, pasta's really dynamic rotation of things well, it seems like it's an experience to just go there. It's like a. If you don't live in tenafly, you should go there just to have this experience, to understand. And now that people will know a little bit more about the backstory of how it came about. It wasn't just. It didn't just start off as a restaurant. It had these iterations and now hit it. In addition to paddle ball and rock climbing, what are the other four that your projects? You're on.
So there's high exposure Padel United, fat Troy, which is in Englewood we're looking at opening another one in Short Hill soon. Nat Choi, which is in Englewood we're looking at opening another one in Short Hill soon. And then I have a digital therapeutic called HumorCure that's being launched. And then I'm part of a company called Sangha, which is just. It brings together leaders in groups that are focused on spiritual capitalism. So it's conscientious business, but also you know spiritual capitalism.
Speaker 1I have not heard that.
Speaker 3I love how all of them have some string connected besides just you. There's like an idea that's going through all of them.
Speaker 1Yeah, and healthy connections between people, sort of the overarching, yeah absolutely Sure.
Speaker 3Well, it's been a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll we'll look forward to maybe meeting you in person, since you're basically eating there all the time.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Anytime, I'm always there and I really guys invited me on the show.
Speaker 1Thank you, john yeah, inviting me on the show. Thank you, john yeah. This podcast is produced by Rachel Martens and Jeanette Afsharian. Please follow us on Facebook and Instagram. We hope you share this pod with your friends and family and let us know what you think. Check out our website at lostinjerseysite and don't forget to get lost.