The Restaurant Guys

Herd Provisions: The Cowboy and the Wine Lady in Charleston

• The Restaurant Guys • Episode 101

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The Banter

The Guys enjoy a snack and Mark tells the secret of what makes it great!

The Conversation

The Restaurant Guys are on location in Charleston, SC at Herd Provisions with owner Alec Bradford and wine director Kellie Holmes. Alec tells how he began cattle farming and grew to running a restaurant. Kellie shares how she selects wine to match the farm-to-table story of Herd Provisions and trains the staff to reflect that story.

The Inside Track

The Guys found the concept of having a restaurant and a wine shop familiar, but Herd’s butcher shop and cattle farming takes it even further! When you are invested in a project, it’s incredibly personal.

“ I take it very personally, but it is incredibly gratifying. The best day I ever had was the first time I sold a steak at a New York restaurant (to Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin). He does a great food and of course, Eric is not well known for cooking steaks, but he took three ounces of tenderloin and some caviar, and he called it surf and turf.  I think I did a backflip in my mind for sure. That was, that was one of the best days of my life,” Alec Bradford on The Restaurant Guys Podcast 2025

Bios

Alec Bradford is the owner of Herd Provisions in Charleston, South Carolina, a farm-to-table restaurant and whole-animal butcher shop. Herd’s high quality meats are sourced directly from Alec’s very own Leaping Waters Farm in Virginia. Since 2004, Alec raises one of the oldest and rarest breeds – Ancient White Park cattle. 

______________

Kellie Holmes is a restaurant consultant who focuses on the creation and implementation of wine programs in the Southeast and beyond. As Herd Provisions’ Wine & Events Director, she runs the wine program for the dining room and retail shop including a wine club and tasting events. She focuses on sustainably produced, small production and minimal intervention wines. 

Info

Herd Provisions

https://herdprovisions.com/

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the-restaurant-guys_1_03-18-2025_124156:

Hello everybody and welcome. You are listening to the Restaurant Guys. I'm Mark Pascal and I'm here with Francis Shot. Together we own stage left in Catherine Lombardi, restaurants in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We're here to bring you the inside track on food, wine, and the finer things in life. Hello there, mark. Hey buddy. How are you today? I'm doing really, really well. Excited that today's gonna be one of the shows where we air one of our interviews that we did at the Charleston. Wine and Food festival. Food festival. Yeah. A lot of fun. Yeah. A little road thing with Alec Bradford and, Kelly Holmes. Holmes from Herd Provisions. Gonna talk about beef, gonna talk about Charleston. It's gonna be chewy. Cool show. But, uh, I, I wanted to treat you with something today. I see right before me, so my neighbor across the street. Brought me something and I had a piece of it this morning before the show. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, Francis has to have this, this is, this is right up his alley. He's, as he crunches into the microphone, it's fantastic. Okay. So my neighbors across the street made me Irish soda bread. Yep. And what do you think of the Irish soda brand? I think it's some of the best I've ever had. Okay, now I'm gonna tell you why it's the best you've ever had. Okay? I just want you, I want you to be aware I'm 60. I've had a lot of Irish soda bread in my life, way more than I have, and most of it not very good, but frankly, I thought it was, I thought it was really good. Yeah. So there's a couple of reasons. What do they do? Why it's better? Well, you see all the, it's packed with, with rais, right? It's not just, you know, be speckled. It is packed with reasons. I've had many conversations with people like. If there's raisins in it, it's not real Irish, classic Irish soda bread. I'm like, shut up. Reins are amazing. Alright, so there's a, there's a key factor in this Irish soda bread. Okay, yeast. What? What's in it? No, it was made by a woman. Oh, that's it. There you have it. Who is. Half Irish and half Italian. And, and that is, that is the key. So, so because of that Italian part, she cares that it tastes good. So that, that became part of her recipe. But we care. That tastes good. What's that crappy thing that your, your family makes with the honey balls at Christmas time? That's str fah str fah. That's, that's our one. True. So bread here, we give that to our Irish friends here. Um, it is the str full of, of something is different about the soda bread. It's more so. Let's explain what soda bread is for those who don't know. Um, I can't, mark doesn't even know. Mark wants to know the why is their soda bread. So soda bread is something where there's no yeast involved, but it's bread where the baking soda lemons the, the, the bread and gives it the, raises, the flour, and puts the air in it. Um, and so it, it tends to be very bland. It's like unleavened bread, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, and to make it taste good, it's a really, you know, you get to get that texture right. Is a, is a, is a really delicate balancing act to get the dough just right where the bicarbonate or soda does, just does enough to leave it and, and give it a good texture. Usually it's very dry and the reason people put raisins in it, it's if you're battling dry bread, raisins. Mm-hmm. And put moisture right in there. And also the other thing about if you make raisin bread at home. Or if you have raisin bread, the raisins will preserve the bread. So if you make a loaf of bread at home, when you make white bread or any kind of regular bread, it will last days longer if you've got raisins in there. So I can tell you one of the things that I don't like about soda bread that I noticed when I ate this didn't have, it tastes like baking soda. Mm, you can taste the baking. There's baking soda in there. There, there's too much. And I, that's, that grosses me out and I immediately don't want to eat it. So this was left on my porch this morning by, my lovely, lovely, neighbors, Chucky and Liz. Uh, and I went, oh, soda Bread. Amazing. Really amazing. And so I cut myself a piece before I came in today, and I, and I toasted it, and I had another clue that this was made. By Irish, Italians tell me, okay. In the bag with the Irish soda bread Yep. was a stick of Kerry gold butter. Oh yeah. Cultured butter. Cultured butter. So having good butter, it makes all the difference. And they were like, don't do this wrong. You can't, you can't do this with plain old regular butter. You gotta do this with a delicious, cultured butter. And so I knew that they were thinking ahead and they were, they, they honestly had hospitality. In their veins. So can I tell you a funny story? It's the Italian blood. Can I tell the Italian blood brought the Irish butter? You're taking credit for a lot of stuff here. Mark, mark, Jesus. Um, oh, all, all this sudden, the Italians are responsible for Kerry Gold. I don't think so. At my house. They were. If she, it's, they were responsible for the Kerry Gold on my front porch. Lemme tell you something else. Olive oil. And this bread sucks. You don't wanna put olive oil on your soda bread? Okay. You, God damn. I, I agree. Alright. Um, I'll tell you a funny story. So you know that my cousin Ronan, lived with me for like 10 years. Yes. Uh, Ronan is originally from Ireland. Mm-hmm. And, uh, lived with me. And I always have cur gold in the house or other cultured butter. Mm-hmm. American cultured butters. Um, and, you know, you always see a cultured butter. It's, it's, it's more yellow than the other butters. so Ronan would, occasionally. Uh, get stuff from the supermarket and he'd bring home like, you know, breakstone white butter and there's white butter in there. I was like, Ronan, you know, you you can use the cultured butter. You can go over the expensive butter. Don't worry about it. He's like. Jesus, Francis, I left iron to get away from that damn butter. I like the American butter. That's amazing. Isn't that funny? So Ronan, that's amazing. Used to, he hated, he's like, oh God, I like clean American butter. Doesn't taste like anything. That's amazing. He, so he was wrong. The other thing is on your soda bread, don't be afraid to use salt. Salt is your friend for fruit with soda bread especially. Yeah, it's, that's the, that's the ingredient that I find is missing in soda bread as well. It needs a little bit of salt back on. All right, listen. We're gonna go to a show that we recorded with an interview at Herd Provisions in, South Carolina and I think Francis will be done chewing by the time that we air the show. Got any more? We'll be back in just a moment with Alec Bradford and Kelly Holmes of Herd Provisions in South Carolina. You with the restaurant guys? Always find out more@restaurantguyspodcast.com.

the-restaurant-guys_2_03-07-2025_145750:

hey everybody. Welcome back. Um, our guests today are Kelly Holmes and Alec Bradford. They're at herd provisions in Charleston, South Carolina, but actually we are their guests today because we are at herd provisions at their invitation in Charleston, South Carolina. And we're here to talk about, um, farms sourced ethically rated meats from their own farms, sustainable wines from small producers, and all the kind of stuff we believe in and love. Hey guys, welcome to the show. Hi. Thanks for having us. Appreciate it. No, thanks for having us. It's very cool. We just had, an ethically sourced, farm sourced, lunch of beef. This is a very cool spot. We have a butcher shop here. We sell, we're a wine centric restaurant. We have a full service restaurant. Uh, and you guys have a great story. You want to tell us how herd provisions came to be and what makes it different than every other place in the world? Uh, sure. uh, I started out as a. small farm in Virginia that's taken on various guises. Uh, right now it's pretty much entirely on leased land. It's run by an older gentleman in Bland County. I started raising a rare breed of cattle that I saw on a trip to Montana. What type of cattle? They're called Ancient White Park. There's only 2,400 on the planet. Um, and they come from, there was 900 years. They were the private property of the British oil family. they would keep them in park, which the park part of the name comes from, and they would hunt them. and generally otherwise, just they were very pretty animals. They're solid white with black points and large spread of horns. very regal looking. Um, yeah, so, well, that's where the cows come from. I got the farming idea by growing up on a farm. I. My grandfather had in Middle Tennessee, near Murfreesboro. when I was two years old, I wanted to grow up and be a cow. And so I think they call that being a ferry. I think you mean it in a slightly different way. I actually thought that I could grow up and be a cow.'cause they just had such a nice lifestyle. They stand out in their own food, eat all day, sleep when they want. They never get cold. Too cold. He's not in Tennessee. Um, yeah, so I became enamored with that lifestyle and. Although I went to college and studied, you know, history and creative writing and all that, I quickly found myself back as a farmer working on the farm, running the land and selling beef to really nice restaurants, highend restaurants, all over the east coast. Then I decided to open my own place. So beef farming is a little different than a, than a lot of other farming, that infrastructure you need to be able to manage selling beef is monstrous. I mean, if you raise vegetables, there's a lot of vegetables that may come in at the same time and you sell them. If you raise rabbits or quail, you have a steady supply of rabbits or quail, and you can supply X number of Quas. But when you have a small number of cattle, we know that that's a very large animal. It has like either two of everything or four of everything, and you've gotta get that whole animal to market and used. How do you manage that as a small farmer? Uh, well first of all, I mean, when you're raising beef cattle, your primary crop is grass. So you have to have the best grass is you can grow that grow year round or very close to it

Alec:

When I first started out, I would, I had no problem selling ribeyes and tenderloins and strips and flanks and whatever.'cause everybody loves that. But it's, there's a

Francis:

whole rest of a cow though, isn't there? There's a lot

Alec:

more, yeah. If a cow was entirely, it was 700 pounds of rib, I, I would. Billionaire, but um, but you have the rump roast, then the chuck and of course the chuck, you can turn into grind, whatever. But to balance all those things out, I could sell everything out of my cattle and then have the rounds left over. And I had a hard time selling those. And they would go into a cooler and I could sit there and look at the cooler and say, that's my profit. My profit is still hanging in the core. Yeah, everything else is going to cover the cost, but I don't have any way to get rid of all these other parts. Miracles happen in the form of Italian restaurants because they can take the entire cow. Whatever they can't use goes into the ragu.

Mark:

That's

Alec:

exactly right.

Mark:

And so, yep. one of our restaurants, Catherine Lombardi mm-hmm. Named after my grandmother, and that was the whole theory of, of, of her cooking. Yeah. Was, listen, they came, they were poor. And so they had to use those, those secondary and tertiary cuts. Absolutely. They weren't getting reved. They couldn't afford revise, and what they found was, Hey, what do you know, we can make more flavorful things out of these cuts than those kind of more common cuts.

Alec:

Mm-hmm. I was lucky enough to actually live in Italy for three years. After I graduated college, um, I lived in a small town called Panzano. In Chiante. Mm-hmm. Which is famous for Dario Chich Butcher Shop. Yeah. We were there, we were in Ada. We stayed in and went there for lunch. We were in that shop. I, I used to buy firewood from him and practiced my jokes in Italian. On his staff. Uh, joking is probably the hardest thing to do in a foreign language. You have to like rib somebody afterwards and laugh and they just look at you like you're an idiot. Um, but uh, yeah, I lived in Panzano for about nine months outta the year, and I'd go to Rome for the other three months, and worked as a bartender at a little Irish pub. Um, but when I was in Italy, of course, you know this, every restaurant that you go to gets all of their food, all their sources, all of their, um, supplies. Food supplies from within five miles generally of where the restaurant is. Um, obviously they might go to Parma to get their cheeses or whatever, but for the most part, you're gonna find that. That type of restaurant exists in, in, um, there's a ton of them in Italy. and you don't see those in the states. They're just not as common. The ingredients aren't super complicated. The food tastes amazing. And, um, I kind of wanted to build that after living in that environment for a while. In fact, I'd like to go back there and live again.

Francis:

Well, so how do you build that in the United States where, you know, mark always says that you can always judge the quality of a restaurant. It's a, an inverse proportion to the size of the truck that delivers their

Mark:

a number of weeks, the number of wheels on the truck that deliver. So you an 18 wheeler

Francis:

delivering all your stuff. It's probably not an awesome restaurant. Guy pulls up in a Jeep, uh, and unloads a cooler full of stuff. It's probably a better restaurant. Mm-hmm. But we know the reality of running a small restaurant ourselves and we don't have a farm with our own cows on it where we can manage that. Right. Like I said before, we, we have certain farmers where we agree to buy the, their whole entire produce, and, and they talk to us about what they're planning and when it comes in, and we're ready to preserve what we can't use in the moment. But cows are bigger animals literally than that. How, how do you. How did you get that distribution chain to sell your beef? When it was time to bring it to the market? Where did it go? I mean, so, so just put it into the, the food chain is not really an option for you.

Alec:

So, well, back before I had this restaurant and I was selling to several, many different restaurants, DC New York, Nashville, Birmingham, um, I would make that drive. I would, I was the guy in the Jeep with the coolers. Um, and I would pick up truck and I would put, uh, I have these giant. Cubes that I can fit dry ice in if I need to, but whatever I need to get the, keep it chilled at the right temp. And I would make about a 2,600 mile loop every, every single week. Wow. Um, I would do it in the course of three days. I have, uh. I have a predator natural ability to stay awake, um, and drive. And I've been doing that my entire career. I still, you have to decide what's local, what that means, especially when it comes to beef. Like here in Charleston, we're blessed with long growing season. You can obviously get as much fish as you like, and the fish quality's great. You can't really raise cattle in South Carolina. Yeah, very well. I mean, there it gets too hot. The grasses grow here, they don't have enough protein. And maybe in the upstate, like really close to the mountains, you can do that. But certainly most of the state is not conducive to that. My farm's in Virginia, so every 10 days I drive to Virginia, I. Go check on the cattle, go buy the slaughterhouse, pick up some meat, bring it back here. And, uh, chef takes it apart and um, uses it in everything. That's the advantage of having my own restaurant, of course, is that I can tell Chef and she can plan ahead and we know exactly what we're gonna do with all the different cuts we can run into specials, we can, she'll, she'll make a ragu, bolognese, whatever. Mm-hmm. When you're doing sell to other restaurants, that was my biggest problem. Like, like I said, everybody wanted the rib robots, you know, and they wanted them on, they wanted them on a, on a sale because, you know, I'm just like a local guy and they, for whatever reason, they were thinking that the quality of being less than, you know, getting it from Cisco, which of course is not the case, not just Cisco, but you have like a lot of meat purveyors, mostly outta Chicago that, um, you know, they're, I'm just trying to remember the guy in Jersey. Um. Is the Meat King. I can't remember his name right now.

Mark:

Well, we have a sausage king, but that was from, uh, no, that's the movie.

Alec:

it became really difficult to balance out what I was selling, what I had. Could I get enough to every restaurant to make it worth their time to buy from me? and did I really want to spend like my children's childhoods three days a week on the road? Uh, turns out they really like to enjoy the drives too. So when before they went to school, they would sit in the backseat and play and sing and they got to visit all these chefs. Oh, that's awesome. So they all grew up in kitchens of great restaurants all over these. So do you still sell to other restaurants? Not really. I have a couple in, just near the slaughterhouse that buy grind periodically I have a friend, uh. Who's opening a restaurant in Miami right now, and he wants me to supply his opening, shipment of beef. I'll do that, but as far as I'm not, I'm not taking care of any of the distribution anymore. That's up to him to get it from the slaughterhouse to him. Great. I'm certainly not driving to Miami. I.

Mark:

Kelly, I promise we're gonna start talking about the front of house shortly. Yeah.

Alec:

I know we have to get to meet in

Mark:

the door first. Then we talk about how we're gonna start. One of the things you said was 2,400 cattle of, of this breed of cattle. Yeah. 24 breeding

Alec:

head. That's the female. I,

Mark:

I believe that most people as they, that when they listen to something like that, say, well, how could you use them? For feed. How could you put them into the food system if they're, if they're so endangered like that, not recognizing that the only way save this is the solution. Yeah. Right. This is how we, this is how we build the number of head back up. Yeah. This is how we get people to see that it's a valuable product. It's a valuable animal. Yeah. And then it grows from that type of distribution, not the other way around.

Alec:

They're not gonna be saved by being a really pretty yard ornament. They have to have a commercial viability in some way. And so by keeping them, breeding them, using them as meat displaying to other people, like how wonderful the stakes can be, then you know, that gives more people incentive to raise more cattle. The number grows and mm-hmm. There you go.

Francis:

One of the things we talk about a lot is that is the dispersed agricultural system. You know, as things consolidate more and more, it's great to see small farmers, practicing farming in your area. We think that makes a more secure food system. It would. So having, yeah. So, but talk to us about your, and I know this will be just, I want to touch on how you raise cattle and we've done a couple of shows on this, in a sustainable way that is. Regenerative to the land, sustainable on the land. Good

Mark:

for, for, you know, carbon building and soil building and, and the types of things that you are doing that change the formula, change the dynamic and, and could change some of the negative things that are happening. Could, could start reversing some of the negative things. Change the pH of the

Alec:

soil for sure. I mean, when I was living on the farm and I lived there, you know. Full-time for about 14 years and moved to Charleston and split my time Since then, when I was living on the farm, I. 10,000 turkeys a year. We had probably, I don't know, 500 chickens. Uh, we did 600 hogs had 350 head of cattle. And when you have all those different animals, you can utilize them together. I mean, everybody I'm sure has heard of a chicken tractor. Like let the chickens go in and break up the cow manure after they eat the bugs out of the manure, and it breaks up the cow pies into smaller pieces. Spreads it out across the field. it eliminates your need for like diesel use in order to spread fertilizers, that sort of thing. and of course, rotational grazing goes hand in hand with all that. So you are, like I said, if you're trying to raise good grasses, you can't. Keep, putting nitrogen into the soil and try and hoping every year that you're gonna get a bumper crop, and then Right. You know, it's gonna, it's gonna deplete the soil over

Mark:

time. You, you slowly, you slowly over time literally erode the soil. And that's, we, we had some big problems'cause of that. Yeah. You know, in the, in the thirties. Yeah.

Francis:

So, uh, one, one final question before we get to you, Kelly. I wanna talk about front of house and wine and Great. What we do with all this meat when we get it here. Mm-hmm. You were in a really unique position as a farmer. Most farmers, like most wine makers, most cattle farmers, they don't get to see it all the way to the end. And what I always say about our job,'cause Mark and I are on the floor of our restaurant most nights, right?

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm.

Francis:

And, and I've talked to wine makers who're like, I'm jealous of you. You get to sell my wine. And you get to see the reaction. You are right there. But you are a farmer who's racing the cows, and you take it all the way to the end and we're sitting here in your restaurant and you get to bring it right to the consumer. What's that like?

Alec:

Uh, I take. Everything I do, I take it really personal. I'm, I'm very driven, you know, I have, like, if people have a problem with the animal, I've spent the last 20 some years trying to educate people on what good beef is, why we do dry aging, you know, how we tenderize the meat. like I said, yeah, I take it very personally, but it is incredibly gratifying. The best day I ever had was the first time I sold a steak in New York at a New York restaurant and I was sitting there and I sat down, you can, I sat down with his chef. It was lain. Nice, nice. So that was a pretty good, I mean he does, he does a great food and of course, and he is not. You know, Eric is not, well known for cooking steaks, but he took the tenderloins and put'em in a surf and turf. Then there was like, you know, three ounce of tenderloin and some, uh, smelt or some row, some fish, eggs, some caviar, whatever, called it surf and turf. And I, yeah, I think I, I did a back flip in my mind for sure. And, um, yeah, that was, that was one of the best days of my life. That's awesome.

Francis:

we heard a rumor last note on the, cow side of things that, uh, you could tell us the name of the cow that the stakes came from. Is

Alec:

that propaganda? That's propaganda. I can tell you the number. I can tell you the name of the mother, but the, the steers don't have names. They get their love and attention through the quality of life that they live. But we had a couple that were named, the first one we ever had. My kids, uh, called the Big Boy. he was this enormous steer. He finished out his, uh, dress weight was like 1400 pounds, which is, that's a gigantic animal. And, um, my third child, ULA was sitting at the dinner table and talking to my son Aiden. And he says, uh. He's like, where's the big boy? Because he knew that I had just gotten back from the, um, slaughterhouse. ULA was like, it's in your belly and it's delicious, boy. And it, I mean they were like, how idea? That was three. Aidan was seven. Did anybody have a problem with that? Oh, no, no, no. I love your. Kids.

Francis:

I love your kids. Hey, listen, we're gonna take a quick break. We're gonna come right back on the other side and we're gonna talk about the restaurant side of her visions with Kelly Holmes, wine, food service, all of that. We'll back in just a moment. You're listening to the restaurant guys, find out more restaurant guys podcast.com. Hey there everybody, welcome back. So you may not know it because we haven't asked her any questions. We're very rude. Uh, but Kelly Holmes, is a noted wine professional. Uh, and she's been here at her provisions and she's running the, the restaurant side of things with the folks on some amazing wines. You made quite a name for yourself. Everybody in Charleston knows your name. Uh, you have an excellent selection. We started with a cocktail. We just had lunch here In the spirit of. Full disclosure. That's right. The restaurant guys are out there working hard for you. Everybody. We never miss an opportunity for lunch at a cocktail. We taste the food so you don't have to. Exactly. So, alright, so you're on the other side of this. You guys are sitting next to us at the table and we appreciate you both taking the time, but it's a real, it's a real partnership. This place goes back to the cattle farm and you are here on the floor serving this great food with wine. What's different about working at herd?

Kelly:

What's different? Well, it's unique. I think our relationship is unique because I, I am not here on the floor full time. Um, but I have been working with Alec and the restaurant since, uh, January of 2020. Mm-hmm. So, uh, was more involved earlier on. Um, but now we have a great team. Obviously Alec mentioned our chef, Jean Alexia, and then her kitchen team. And then we have an incredible general manager. Ethan and, uh, a GM and a full front of house team. So it's, it's unique in the sense that what makes it different Yeah. Is that it's not the structure you see all the time in restaurants, but it seems to have worked for us and for her. And I think that we're in a better place than we've been in a long time.

Alec:

Yeah. We opened in 2019, so we were just six months open before the, uh, you know, obviously the pandemic hit. Was, uh, introduced to me by a former chef, actually, and said she'll be an asset to the restaurant and help you. Manage people better. And she's managed restaurants for many years over her career. So she moved in Well, after the pandemic, I didn't hire back a manager. I didn't have the funds to, it's just the two of us. Yeah. So it was just me and Kelly doing all the management of the restaurant. Jean was in the kitchen. We had one line cook and a bartender, and we, you know. Fair knuckled it for, uh, several months, Better part of a year.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Alec:

and Kelly stayed on, you know, she always was doing the wine, but then she took over more trying to train other managers, train me to understand what was going on, what I was looking at

Francis:

you know, one of the things that it, we always say is important We're front of house people as well. We're not chefs. but the front of house is you, you've gotta get the mechanics right. To get good service out there. You've gotta, yeah. you have an interesting story, the story is important to tell, to contextualize the food and what's going on. Here it is, and I saw your wine list and it is some unusual selections that you, people are not gonna find in the, whatever the local liquor store is around here necessarily. So it's about training people to tell a story and how Yeah. Tell us about the story and how you get people to communicate it.

Kelly:

So I think that it has to start from the top. it's a, you know, cliche because it's true. you have to be excited about what it is you're educating people about Uhhuh. Alec is passionate about the beef. I'm passionate about all of the wines that are in the building. And the reason actually we started working together. Yes, we were introduced by, um, a chef, but I sat at the bar and I remember looking at the wine list when. After you first open, and I remember thinking, wow, these wines don't match the whole ethos of the menu. Mm-hmm. Because there were, there were just some larger production wines and things that just didn't seem specialized enough. Um, and I tend to focus on wines that are more, focused on farming and they are agricultural products, as you will. Yeah. And, um, more simple, uh, less is more, low intervention.

Mark:

Again, a lot of people aren't gonna realize that when you come up with a restaurant concept. Mm-hmm. You want everything to jive, right? You want everything to come from the same place in your heart. Mm-hmm. And if your beef is coming from one place in your heart and your wine and your cocktails and your beer are coming from a different place in your heart,

Kelly:

yeah.

Mark:

It's really not coming from different place. Two different hearts.

Kelly:

Well also, you know, when you have a vision for what you wanna do, then you, then you add actual real life human beings to it. It changes.

Speaker 3:

Right.

Kelly:

You know, I was a theater major in college 6 million years ago, and one of the professors taught me something. When I was taking directing courses, and he taught me that you have a vision for what you want to happen on the stage. Mm-hmm. But once you add a live human being, it changes. Yeah. And you have to be okay with that. And you have to understand that the end product. Is the best thing because it does require teamwork. And I think from my years and my, my background is in general managing, uh, restaurants, running wine programs, et cetera. So I'm a consultant now, but herd is the place I've been the most and the longest as that role. And so it's, it's communicating through people and you have to get to know your people. You have to. Be personal with your staff. You have to understand their life, how they come to you, what kind of energy they're exuding on the floor is how your guest feels about their experience.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Kelly:

So, so they have to be happy. And so, you know, having your family work here, it, it becomes more of a personal place than I've ever, you know, worked with. And it's really special and that comes through. But sometimes the original, Motivation for what you wanted to do changed.

Francis:

Yeah.

Kelly:

and it morphs and it, has to pivot and grow.

Francis:

we talk about all the time we're training and one of the things we experienced just recently, like during Covid, we, we lost most of our staff and our key staff stayed with us, front of house, front of house, all of our key,

Mark:

all of our top people stayed, but we lost all the mid range and, and beginner people. Yep. And so

Francis:

we went back to, we, we were blessed with having, we've been around for 32 years and so we had, we have training in place, we have procedures, we have checklists. What we realized was, was driven home to us. We always said it, but it was driven home again. As we tried to rebuild that staff and go back up from nine front of house people to 70 70, yeah. What we found was, you know, somebody used to say, you, there's a checklist and you get trained how to do this. You get trained how to do that through procedures, so this and that. But what, I think it was Jennifer who said, there's a stage left way to do everything, and you can't put it all on a checklist. You can't plan for every exigency that's, it's gonna arise. It's a, it's a

Mark:

feel. It's a, yeah, it's an

Francis:

emotion. It's a,

Mark:

it's emotional part of it. Right. And

Speaker 3:

yeah,

Francis:

that has to be part of the story. And, and one of the things we say is that once you get. We need a critical mass of those who are with your mission of those who get those unspoken things and will do it, right? Mm-hmm. And then you can train everybody else. And with your family in here, I'm sure that helps you keep that critical mass where you outnumbered them and then the them can come be the use. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Yeah. Does that make sense? Does that make any sense at all? It

Kelly:

makes a lot of sense. I, you know, I've, I've managed quite a few different staff and, and I do think that finding the right people to tell your story. Is one of the most challenging parts of the business. And also finding the right people that have the work ethic that you need them to and you want them to. And that also understand, um, how, how it's spending one person's money, not a conglomerate or Yeah. Or an overarching restaurant group. You know? It is, it is, it is very personal. Um, but you have to. Draw a fine line. Yeah. And, and I'm sure you guys know this, it, it has to be personal but also has to be professional.

Francis:

Right. You can be professional, but that doesn't mean business is business. You know what I mean? It's not like, yeah. If you steal a bottle of gin, you are taking$30 from Francis and Mark, you are taking$30 as if you took it out my pocket. Yeah. It's the same. Exactly. Stole it outta my wallet. It's, it's not different than that. And it's, it's never easy. Yeah. But I think you can get that loyalty when. People know, yeah. That it is you and you know what, and if. And if one of your cooks, lemme see if this is happen to you guys, if one of your cooks goes missing, you might have to find them in the, in the county jail and bail them out, you know. Well, but what happens is the first time, the first time you do that and it's 10 o'clock at night, you're like, I need all the money from all the cash registers. I gotta go out. Um, the rest of your staff has loyalty to you.'cause like, wait a second, they're going to blacks.

Kelly:

Yeah.

Francis:

And then they, they see that you've got their back. Yep. And if you do that with everybody, you can, you can have an exchange. Do you have any experiences like that you wanna share with us? Any jail experiences that

Kelly:

would be, um, I, I don't have any jail experiences. I don't think we've ever

Alec:

had to. You guys haven? No, we, your day will come. We had a lot of guys who just got outta jail who came to work for us, especially right after the pandemic when we couldn't find anybody in the kitchen. So there was, that's hard. So we had a, we would, any warm body that would willing to come in and work a fryer, we definitely. Went through a lot of those guys. It was a hard time for, for staff

Kelly:

watch. Yeah. It changed, it changed everything, so, yeah.

Alec:

Yeah. But you're, you're dead on about like, as far as loyalty with the staff and like, I'm here every day that I'm in town. If I'm not on the road back, going back to the farm and everyone knows my name, my phone number, most of them know where I live. They know my kids, you know, I have, they have personal relationships with everybody from top to bottom. And it's, um, aside from, you know, we all have our bad days and sometimes you know, there's, there's some forgiveness that has to go on between staff members and, and whatever. But, um. Yeah. It's, it's without being the dysfunctional family, we, there is a bit of a family atmosphere in here, which is obvious because my daughter, I'm sitting here watching her at Expo right now. Nice. Yeah.

Mark:

I, I'm sorry, you, you said something that's just simply not True. Because you said restaurant family and it's not dysfunctional and

Kelly:

Definitely we,

Mark:

we are all in this business because we are a little bit dysfunctional.

Kelly:

We might have something there.

Alec:

No, that's true. But you know, there's, whenever I hear, I, I read up on business and how people run their businesses and. Very often you'll see like the family atmosphere is not what you like. That's a red flag when you're going in to look at a business. but that's more for like, is your manager a little too close to you or something like that. Yeah. You know, um, and there is the, obviously the separation, but it is, I mean, it is very much like a family and every family is dysfunctional personally, you know, the head of, uh, four kids and yeah, we do really well now, but that's because they're all over 18 and everybody's grown up. You're on street now. Yeah. Listen,

Mark:

I love a large part of my staff. They are, they're very important to me in, in my life.

Kelly:

Yeah.

Mark:

But they also understand that there are things that they can do that will cause them to be fired immediately. A hundred percent. That's just how the, the business needs to operate.

Kelly:

Yep.

Mark:

It is very personal to me.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. And,

Mark:

and their lives are personal to me, and I will Sure affect their lives in a positive way, however I can. Yep. But. We talk about sustainability all the time. Right. To be sustainable, you have to operate in a way very much that is sustainable.

Kelly:

Yes.

Mark:

And that means the business has to operate, the

Alec:

business has to make money, or then it's not, yeah. Correct. I mean that's, that's one of the things about sustainable farming. I've always had trouble with that word. Is it, it's not just, you know, are you regenerating the land? Are you providing a service to your community? the farm isn't sustainable if the farm can't make money. Exactly. I've

Mark:

never. Had trouble with that word, because that word for me has always been bigger than most people use it.

Francis:

a mm-hmm. We have a series of, in downtown New Brunswick, New Jersey, where our restaurants are. Mm-hmm. There was a time that there was a, a new coffee shop every, and it'll be a new coffee shop and it'll be run by some very. Forward thinking, sustainable people. It's all about sustainability, sustainability, sustainability. And those coffee shops, mark and I walk in, we're like, this place can't, can't make money. I do the math in my head. I'm like, if they're busy all the time, still not enough. and they would, sure enough, they'd go outta business in 6, 7, 8, 9 months and then somebody else would start a coffee shop and do the same thing. And then they would go visit sick. And you're like, for all your sustainability, you wasted all that energy. Building this restaurant, putting all this stuff sustain together and it's not sustainable. Yeah. And there were like, though, some of these were, one said they were a Marist cafe and they were against making money. I'm like. But then you are not going to be here.

Speaker 6:

That's not sustainable. the vaccine you're selling anything is a problem. Your whole theory. What do you mean? It's sustainable. You're not going to be here, you're play

Francis:

acting. I know that's, you know, it's, it's easier to be a jerk and get ahead in business. Yeah, it takes, it takes hard work to be doing the right thing. And making business. So congratulations.

Mark:

And the other side of that coin right, is, yeah, that's what I think what Francis was just talk, talking about is the other side of that coin is, I know a lot of people who are really good at the business part of this. Yeah. And they're skimming waiter's tips and they're underpaying the purveyor and they're, they've decided not to pay that guy and let him sue him. Yeah. And all those types of things to, to take margin on the edges. to me, that's not sustainable either. Right. Right.'cause sooner or later where it's gonna get out on you.

Kelly:

Yeah. Well I think you made a point earlier. Uh, you have to lead by example. Yeah. People have to understand and also mark what you said. People have to know where that line is mm-hmm. Where they cross it, and they need to know your line. And if you don't communicate that to them, and if you don't show them. Then they won't know. And that's the getting to know them part.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm.

Kelly:

And seeing your staff. And I'm, I'm very lucky that I, I feel really blessed in my career that I've affected a lot of people's lives. Yeah. From Atlanta to Napa, to California to here to know that somebody I hired and put in a wine, Sommelier position to start, but they didn't even know they wanted to do it. And now they're running programs in other parts of the country. Yeah. You know, and they, they are kind and they say, Kelly hadn't hired me. I wouldn't be doing this. Yeah. You know

Francis:

Kevin's rally. Yep. Kevin's rally took care of me when I was 21 years old and helped me travel around the world, learn about wine. I would, I wouldn't be in the wine business if it wasn't for that one guy. And yeah, you have people that think that about you. And hopefully we have people to think that about. We know we do. We have of course you do for 32 years.

Kelly:

Yeah.

Mark:

People who are masters of wine. Yeah. who, write books about Australian wine and That's awesome. You know, really this cool cadre of people We've been part of their story. Right? Right. It can never be all of someone's story.

Kelly:

You make a shift change. You make a lane change for them, and then Yeah, and then they follow on.

Mark:

But, but there's one gentleman that I'm thinking of who's actually been on the show,

Kelly:

Uhhuh.

Mark:

you saw the light bulb go off. Yeah. He started as a busboy. Those are great moments. He had worked in other restaurants, but never really. Took it seriously. Mm-hmm. Worked for us. went to 11 Madison Park, mm-hmm. just started doing all these really Yeah. Extraordinary things. But I know that bulb went on in our restaurant

Kelly:

and there's nothing like that feeling. And for me, I think, you know, being in the front of house is not always, uh, an a very thanked position as you know. Um, it could be very challenging. See,

Mark:

I think back a house is the least thanked position in the world. Yeah, I think

Kelly:

it depends on the house.

Mark:

Yeah, true, true.

Kelly:

I think it depends on the house. I think you get what you were saying is, is having that instant gratification of watching a guest drink the wine, eat the food, that mm-hmm. If you're considering that is things, yes, absolutely. But I often think that there are so many behind the scenes things that happen that don't, may not look like the type of work that people think. You know what it takes like to me, when I get on a floor, that's the candy. Like that's, yeah. Oh yeah. That's the fun.

Mark:

People always are like, like what

Kelly:

it takes to get to the menu and the, and to have the wine in stock and to have the team in place and to have the silverware to do it and all that.

Mark:

I love that expression though. No, I've never heard that expression before. That's the candy. That's the candy. But I've been saying that forever when I'm on the. people are like, oh, you work so hard. I'm like, this is the easiest part of my day. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Francis:

This is the fun stuff. It's the

Kelly:

best part, right? This is

Francis:

the fun stuff. I walk around carrying plates, talking to people and pouring wine. That's the easy part. Yeah. It's the, it's the time with the spreadsheets and the boxes. That's not so much fun. Yep. Well, so I, I wanna, I wanna turn the conversation'cause we just have a, a, a little bit more time. I want to talk about why Charleston, I mean this your, your farm's not in Charleston and what's, why, why are we here?

Alec:

Well, the, I, I wish I had a more beautiful story. My, um, I hope this

Mark:

story doesn't

Alec:

suck, now my ex-wife got a job down here at, and so she moved down here and I stayed on the farm with my kids for about another nine months. While she adjusted to her job and the kids finished that year of school. And then I, in that time, I started looking for a place I'd always wanted to open a restaurant. I always thought it'd be Nashville. Nashville Made sense to me. Um, Charlotte, a little bit. Greenville, South Carolina. I bought the land and, um. Develop the land, built the building. In the meantime, I was running a food truck in town and, I kept the, the restaurant and I kept the farm and the cattle and I didn't keep the wife and, um, wife has been great ever since. That's awesome. The story got better. Definitely got better. Alright, so I turn a similar question to you. Hold on one second. Why food truck? Why, why did you decide you I needed revenue and I needed. To have at least, like once I saw how long it was gonna take to get the building built, it was four and a half years from when I bought the land to like when we actually opened our doors. And I was like, I can't not have something coming in and I need to be building a. Some, uh, connections within the food scene in Charleston. So I got a chef who remains a very close friend of mine, and he and I opened a very chefy food truck. And we went around to places all over town. We did the brewery scene, of course we did big festivals. I kept the food truck open basically until we opened the doors, and I just didn't have enough manpower to handle both food. Trucks are a hustle. You have to be like that. You have to be ready to go every day.

Mark:

It's not the, it's not

Alec:

the

Mark:

story. Not a

Alec:

bit. Not a bit. I mean, they're fun. They're fun in their own way, but in. Charleston, they're also incredibly hot in the summertime. Oh yeah. You know, like the hood's just sucking all that, all that warm air into the window while you're standing there. It's like your face is in a blow dryer and it's already a hundred degrees and a hundred percent humidity outside.

Francis:

Yeah, I can be rough. I have no desire. Thanks for sharing. Scare me away, mark. Uh, Julie, cancel the food truck order. Not this basic comedy

Mark:

just came to an end.

Francis:

So we interviewed a chef just recently who from down here we've been interviewing a few people. Uh. and he, he's cooked all around the world and he said that the Charleston people were the most open-minded people to cook for. He has come in contact with

Kelly:

really,

Francis:

he was talking about food and using odd bits of right, of the animal, right? But you are bringing people, wines they may never heard of before right in front of the house. What is your experience being down here in Charleston and because we opened, I'll just give you the backstory. We opened with estate bottled wines from small producers in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 19 92, 2, which is very

Kelly:

unique when.

Francis:

What did you just say that? Yeah. You know? Right. so what's that like for you here? What's it, what's it like? Because you have retail here as well. Mm-hmm. And in the restaurant and you're dealing with the, the guests we talked about, the employees. Talk to us about that.

Kelly:

I think what's unique about it and what. What happens here is that because we have the retail program, we have a wine club.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Kelly:

And I have, um, a really great core group of members that have been part of the wine club since we started it two and a half years ago.

Speaker 3:

Uh,

Kelly:

and so I'm able to, because I have a retail component and a a dining room component, I'm able to cycle through different wines constantly. And that club is really kind of the apex. Of that because I work with a different distributor every time and I look through their book and I kind of know what I want. I know what importers I kind of are, am drawn to what I'm feeling. What did, what did we taste last month? What would work in the dining room? If I have a couple bottles left over, I can put it on the list. So I find that our, our Charleston clientele. The one people that specifically live here have grown to trust the list

Speaker 6:

Uhhuh

Kelly:

and are willing to e expand their horizons. That's great. And I think that we also have a lot of, you know, people coming from larger markets to Charleston because it is, uh, such a well traveled city.

Speaker 6:

True, true. And they're,

Kelly:

they're expecting to see a list with more diversity on it. Um, not just your Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernets, et cetera. And so I think that we have the ability to offer a little bit of unique selection for those who are willing to be, you know, a little adventurous. and then some classical producers that kind of, Set the standard.

Mark:

So one of the things that Francis and I have been big believers in is I want you to ask me, what is this? Yeah. Yeah. I want you to, I want you to, to say, yeah, I don't see a lot of stuff I know on here. Help me. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's, that's the best question you could ask in the dining room. Hey, it means you've shown me that you care and now, and now you're, and you're open to, to that which is not everybody, and you know, not everybody needs to Yeah. Wants that, right. Some people just wanna say, you know what? I'll take Chardonnay number two and I'm, and I'll move on my way.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Mark:

I think it adds to the customer experience, and I think it adds to our experience when somebody engages that way. And, and that's one of the first things you do at the table.

Kelly:

Mm-hmm.

Mark:

And it's a, i I love engaging with the table about the what bottle of wine's gonna start their day.

Kelly:

Well, it's just like the, the light bulb going on for a staff member. It's the same thing with a guest.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You

Kelly:

know, we had a, uh, our signature dinner last night, I was pouring a Griner vet Leaner, um, from our producer and this woman just, she was like, what did you say? Could you repeat that? I don't understand. Yeah. And I got to talk to her a little bit about the history of Griner Vet Leaner. Yeah. You know, it's Austrian origins and all of that. And she was just looking up and she was just like, I don't even know what you just said, but it was great.

Francis:

Is one of the only the only place I've ever heard of is doing all of the things that it's doing. And I think, you know, in a, in a world where there's a lot of pretty good, I mean the, the, the good local restaurants pretty good, you know, the, the good chain restaurant, it's, you know, workable. But what you wanna do is distinguish yourself, set yourself apart. And so, we have had some people over the years, say we have 700 bottles on our list, more or less at this point. Mm-hmm. And people are like, well, how come they. We've even seen people writing reviews. While they don't even have the normal wines, they don't have the, I'm not gonna say the names, but the wines that you expect to find. and the complaint was, well, you don't have the ones that every other steakhouse has. I'm like. Why would I do that? All the other steak houses have that. Why do you want the same thing? You can get everywhere.

Speaker 6:

Yeah. I

Francis:

want you to come here to get something different. Yep. And what I always say to people is, you know, we always tell our staff when they drop the list, you know, here's our wine list. And so,'cause nobody wants to open a wine list and look dumb, like I don't want the guy to open a wine list and say, of course not. Oh crap. I don't know any of this. I'm just, I'm an idiot. I'll just take the cabernet. But we always invite them. We say, you know, here's our list. It's mostly state bottled wines from small producers. So there's stuff, a lot of stuff there. most people won't recognize if you're, if you have any questions about what you do see or you're looking for something you don't see, just ask us. Right. You invite the question.

Kelly:

Yeah.

Francis:

But that's what you do here. You sit, you in, you have to ask questions when you come to this restaurant. Mm-hmm. And then you come here because you can only get those things here and that's pretty amazing.

Kelly:

Well, I, you know, each, each wine, each producer is, is a story of a farmer. Exactly Alex story, and that's, that's what's so important to me.

Alec:

Well,

Kelly:

she teaches

Alec:

that story to all the staff. Every day when she does and she's introducing the new bottle of wine or a special bottle of wine, she'll gather them all around the shop, up front or by the bar and say, and they'll all get a taste of it, and she'll tell them, you know, who that person was, what they had for breakfast, that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Mark:

Well, I will say this has really been a pleasure, Francis and I generally like to, to finish the show with some little anecdote or some, some little story. Nice. So I'm, I'm gonna back to, to what you were talking about earlier time in Italy. When you were, living in Dario's, little, village in Tuscany, and you would practice your, jokes on the Italians? both my brother and I were lucky enough to stay with, uh, the same family in France for, for a summer.

Speaker 3:

Oh, nice.

Mark:

Uh, and they didn't speak any English at all. And so while my brother was there, he was known for his French maros. so there's an expression in French. that's Leave me my sneakers. Leave me alone. Okay, so my brother thought he was a hot chop and so he, he came back and so it's like, uh, which means lick my long French bread so, so he got a lot of laughs with that one and not intentional. Definitely, you gotta be really careful in another language when you're trying to joke

Francis:

around at him, not with him. Listen guys, it's been great. Really a pleasure. Yeah. What you're doing here is really special. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

Alec:

Thank you so much. Really had a great time. Really nice to meet you both.

Francis:

Well, uh, you can find more great interviews like this@restaurantguyspodcast.com. I'm Francis Shutt. And I'm Mark Pascal. We are the restaurant guys. See you next time.