Good Neighbor Podcast: TN-WNC-SWVA

EP# 364: How A Chef Blends Italian Comfort With Southern Smoke To Deliver Quality At A Fair Price: Penne For Your Thoughts

• Skip Mauney & Geoffrey Bernstein • Episode 364

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Craving something familiar yet bold enough to surprise you? Meet Geoffrey Bernstein, the owner-operator of Penne For Your Thoughts, where Italian comfort meets Southern smoke and fast-casual service meets fine-dining technique. We dig into the craft behind dishes like smoked chicken Alfredo and Italian sausage mac and cheese pasta, the kind of plates that taste like a neighborhood favorite but show the polish of a serious kitchen.

Geoffrey opens up about the path from survival cooking to professional passion, the leap from a proof-of-concept food truck to a thriving brick-and-mortar in Knoxville, and the systems he borrowed from both fine dining and fast casual to deliver consistency at speed. If you’ve ever wondered how a small team can make their own sauces, slice their own meats, and smoke their own chicken without slowing the line, this conversation lays out the playbook: tight prep routines, smart sourcing, zero pretense, and a relentless focus on value.

We also address the elephant in the room: pricing. Geoffrey breaks down supplier-driven costs, the pressure independents face, and why holding prices steady can be a promise worth keeping when you design for efficiency. The COVID chapter reveals how mobility turned into a lifeline, with the truck rolling straight into neighborhoods and reshaping the business for resilience. Between candid talk about margins and joyful notes on family and home-theater obsessions, the story points to a bigger takeaway: quality doesn’t require a white tablecloth, just intention and care.

If you’re in East Tennessee, grab delivery from the website or book the truck for your next event. And if you love local food stories, share this episode with a friend, subscribe for more conversations like this, and leave a quick review to help others discover the show.

SPEAKER_02:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Skip Martin.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, hello everyone, and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. And today I am super excited to have uh someone in our studio for the first time and uh really excited to learn all about them and what they do, and I'm sure you will be as well, because today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Mr. Jeffrey Bernstein, who is the owner-operator of Pinnae for Your Thoughts. Jeffrey, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Well, like I said, we're excited to learn all about you and Pinnae for your thoughts. So why don't you kick us off by telling us about your business?

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, well, Panay for your thoughts. We are located in Knoxville, Tennessee, and we have been open since about April of 2018. We started as a food truck selling Italian American Fusion. Um, and then we opened up our brick and mortar about three and a half years ago. So we've got both running right now, and we love serving our local community. Uh I guess kind of the idea behind I say Italian-American Fusion, and people are like, huh? What is that? And it's really kind of a way for me to do whatever I want to do because between the Italian fair and American quotations, you that that covers a lot. I get to do a lot of playing in there. So we don't want to be your traditional mom and pop spaghetti place that you see in in every town. We we like being a little different. The way that we are different is first the Italian-American fusion. So, like a smoked chicken alfredo instead of a traditional Alfredo. So we have like that southern smoked chicken flair to the uh traditional chicken alfredo. We have Italian sausage, mac and cheese pasta. So we've got like American things, Italian things, and we smash them together, and it's it's pretty great and fun and different. You know, you don't see those kind of things everywhere. Uh, people have really responded to it very well.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I'm sure. And and it not only does it sound uh fun, it also sounds delicious.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's we we try.

SPEAKER_01:

So very good.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh we also kind of fuse some different techniques of my background in there. I come from before this, I was a regional director for Five Guys Burgers and Fries. So I had the corporate kind of fast food environment there. Before that, I was running fine dining restaurants. So I've incorporated kind of both of those worlds into this. We use a lot of techniques that big boy restaurants use in our little counter service restaurant. So you get a much higher quality than you would expect walking in and ordering out the counter with what we provide.

SPEAKER_01:

Very good to know. Well, what uh thanks for telling us about your journey with with this particular business. By the way, congratulations on approaching eight years. That's that's a quite a few. Absolutely. Uh, especially in the restaurant business. I mean, that means you're you're here to stay, you've been around that long.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's time.

SPEAKER_01:

Um yeah, yeah, it is. Um, but what uh brought you into the world of food? What uh you know, what was your journey to get there?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, to be completely frank, why I started cooking was because my mother is a sweetheart, but she is not the best cook. So survival mode got me into it in the very beginning, and then um I just took a passion for it. I've I've had one foot in it no matter what I've done in my life, and I really excelled at it. So I've managed a bunch of groups, and we I kind of decided when I was approaching 40, uh, you better start thinking about doing it for yourself or you never will. Um, so we just decided to start with the proof of concept with the food truck. People responded very well to it, and we've just kind of tried to grow up from there. Kind of a couple hang-ups with COVID and whatnot, but still trying to trying to figure things out.

SPEAKER_01:

There you go. Well, it's interesting. I can relate my mom, uh, God rest her soul. She she uh she cooked a lot, she just didn't cook very well. Yeah, she she power boiled. It was a very southern thing. She liked to put any kind of meat had to be power boiled or overcooked to the point where it was shoe leather in order to kill everything, I guess. Anyway, anyway, so um what are some myths or misconceptions in the in the food industry?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, um, I'd say right now, uh, you know, lately, the past couple years, I think pricing is is probably everyone's Achilles heel. Um, and there's a lot of misconceptions around it. Uh for the most part, I'm sure there are operators out there that are probably taking advantage, but I I think they're few and far between. Uh, I think most of us are kind of working with what we have. You know, we don't really set prices, our suppliers do. Um so uh, you know, we've had a lot of kickback, or not just us, but every operator I talk to in town has had a lot of, you know, people are just in and we get it. You know, we feed our families too. It's expensive. Um, but it's just there's just nothing we can do about it, really. So we, you know, at Panay, we try to keep, I haven't raised prices in two years, even though I probably should. Uh we try to keep everything as as reasonable and affordable. That's part of our mantra, is to get the the big boy restaurant and the and the convenience and the the quality and the price that you know we offer for affordability, affordability. Um so I think that's probably the biggest misconception right now is is pricing and and people thinking that uh restaurant owners are just being greedy, and it's really just not it's not that we you know when we get our supplies in, we have to set our prices according to what we pay.

SPEAKER_01:

So like everything else, absolutely. Yeah, well, it you know, I know in the restaurant business you work a lot of hours, um, but hopefully you've got some off time, and if you do, what do you like to do for fun in such a case?

SPEAKER_00:

I am a movie enthusiast. I took many years to build a little home theater in my house, and that's what I do. I I love collecting movies, I get all nerdy about it, you know, atmos soundtracks, stuff like that. Oh wow, I also love cooking for my family. Uh my girls, I have three girls, and two of them are in dance, so I I love going to watch that and participate and watch them grow into little people. It's amazing. How old are they? I have nine, thirteen, and twenty.

SPEAKER_01:

Nine, thirteen, and you said twenty?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh wow. Uh wow. Covered the spread. There you go. I hear you, brother. So uh well, let's switch gears for just a second. Can you describe a hardship or a life challenge, whether professional or personal, that you've overcome and came out the other side stronger for it? Do you think come to mind?

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. I I think I think most recently I I would I would say having to pivot this business around um the COVID was scary. Um us being a food truck at that time was very beneficial. Um, and I feel sorry for a lot of people that were didn't have my mobility at the time. Uh, I was able to travel to neighborhoods directly where people were and just feed them when they were locked down. And that really helped us a lot to navigate through that. And I think just being snapped out of my uh how would I put it traditional use of running restaurants in that time and forced to take a look around in under different circumstances, I think that definitely made me a stronger operator because you know, for 20 years it was just routine. This is how you do things, this is the set price we do, this is the percentages, this is how you run your labor, this is blah blah blah. And then all that just went out the window for everyone, you know. So um really getting you out of the routine of the day-to-day kind of thing of just operating, I think that made us all who survived much stronger operators.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely, because there was a lot that didn't, you know, that didn't survive.

SPEAKER_00:

Um it's still going on, there's still fallout from all that, you know. Um, not every everybody, a lot of people had more bankroll than that year, you know, tried to figure it out, and they're still it's it's still affecting people. So um absolutely still still everything to be learned every day. That's right.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right. Always learning. So um Jeffrey, if you could think of one thing that you would like our listeners and viewers to remember about you and about uh Penne for your thoughts, what would that be?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, always go for your dreams, first of all. Um, second of all, I you know, Penny is a young company still, small, but we have aspirations for greatness. And I really do believe that our mission statement of bringing quality restaurant quality food to a counterservice place, you know, we're not just back there warming up bags and cutting them open. We're we make all of our own things, we make our own sauces, we slice our own meat, we smoke our own chicken, we do all of these things in our little counterservice restaurant. So that's really the the quality that you get combined with the convenience of the counter service and the affordability that we offer by not having a huge staff, um, you know, is really what we want to take home.

SPEAKER_01:

Very good. Great thing to remember. And for those of us who would love to come check out some Italian fusion uh are intrigued by what they've heard today, how can we learn more?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you can go to PanayTruck.com. That is our website, and if you were in the Knoxville area, you can get delivery from our website. We also can book our food truck through the website, and we are on social platforms Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. Uh they're all Penay Truck, all the handles.

SPEAKER_01:

P-E-N-N-E. Truck. Truck. Very good. All right. Well, Jeffrey, I'm hungry now, even though it's morning. But uh uh appreciate you taking you, please, man. Um, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule because I know you're busy. Um, and uh we appreciate it and appreciate what you're doing for the community and and for good bringing good food to uh to Knoxville. So thank you for that. And uh moving forward, we wish you and your family and and your customers all the best. All right, I appreciate you. Yes, sir. Maybe we can have you back sometime. I would love it. Thank you, Scott. All right, thanks so much.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GMP Tribe Dash Cities.com. That's GMP Tribe Dash Cities.com. Or call four two three seven one nine five oh seven three.