A Sustainable Feast - Tim Meagher

Hosts: Travis Entenman & Lori Walsh
Guest: Tim Meagher - COO of Vanguard Hospitality

Episode Summary

Tim Meagher, cofounder of Vanguard Hospitality, discusses his journey from working in pizza to managing multiple restaurants in Sioux Falls. He emphasizes the importance of hospitality and creating a unique experience for guests. Tim highlights his efforts to source local products, including partnering with tribal partners, and the challenges of maintaining a sustainable food system. He stresses the need for resilient, interdependent relationships with producers to ensure long-term success. Tim also reflects on the impact of the pandemic on food systems and the importance of normalizing local products to create a sustainable future.

Highlights

• Tim traces his unlikely path from pizza joints and a heavy metal band called Spore to cofounding Vanguard Hospitality, explaining how a song called “Vanguard” inspired the name and a legacy-driven ethos that rejects the status quo.​
• He unpacks the difference between service and hospitality, arguing that hospitality is about how a place makes you feel and how relationships are built in a room, not just how fast food arrives or how well a table is managed.​
• Tim describes his journey into wine and cheese, learning microclimates, soils, and root systems, and how that same curiosity led him to question monocultures, input-heavy agriculture, and ultra‑processed foods.​
• A turning point comes when he begins sourcing Berkshire hogs and later partners with Dakota Rural Action, acknowledging what he doesn’t know and working to normalize local foods so they are no longer a niche but a default choice on menus.​
• Inside Vanguard’s kitchens, he and chef Josh quietly swap ingredients for more nutrient-dense, pasture-based options, trusting guests’ bodies to notice the difference rather than preaching ideals at the table.​
• Tim talks candidly about walking away from dependence on broadline distributors, visiting ranches to see plant diversity and soil health, and telling suppliers he would rather lose his businesses than go back to systems where somebody always loses.​
• The episode explores integrated regional hubs, small processors with kill floors, retail, and restaurants under one roof, and what it would take for South Dakota’s food system to be resilient enough to feed itself.​
• Throughout, Tim returns to questions of incentives, relationship-building, and “playing offense” in a system that constantly tries to sell you convenience, showing how small, intentional steps—from one better salad to one local logo on a menu—can add up to structural change.​

About the Show

Rivers & Rangelands explores conservation, water, and community in the Northern Great Plains. Hosted by Travis Entenman and Lori Walsh, the podcast asks big questions about how we care for our land and water — today and for generations to come.

🎶 Special thanks to Jami Lynn for providing the music for this episode. You can explore more of her music here: jamilynnsd.com

👉 Follow Friends of the Big Sioux River for more episodes, updates, and ways to get involved.

👉👉 And to hear more from Lori, follow So Much Sunlight, a newsletter of essays, poetry, and audio ephemera on Substack!

Transcript

Unknown: 0:09

It's gonna fall on deaf ears if I say, you got to rip the band in everything has to come from a producer, and I create more havoc. Ram Dass said that like to be mindful of creating violence in your in your zeal to do good, I'm sensitive to like, am I creating violence here, or am I actually helping five? Welcome to another episode of rivers and range lands podcast. My name is Travis Entenman, and I am joined today with Lori Walsh and we are in the most interesting room we've been in yet. Yes, so it's a very 1920s speakeasy gangstery vibe. I feel like I'm about to run some bootleg moonshine up to Chicago, but we're in Paramount bar next to minerva's in downtown Sioux Falls, and we're going to be talking to one of the owners of Vanguard hospitality who owns and runs minervas, Tim Meeker. They've done a really good job of bringing some good vibes to downtown and trying to get the Speak Easy feel. And we have the ginks Who's looking down at us. Make sure we stay in line so lights are low, the candles are flickering. It's just lovely in here. Paramount, since we inherit it has it's kind of like a music mixed wine bar venue type feel to me. It's very neutral, like oranges and in beiges, and I'm very environmental sensitive. So I like when I go somewhere, I travel and I go to a local spot, I like to be captivated by what it is that they're saying with everything they do. And sometimes that's like, especially with privately owned places, you get this, this nuanced character. And when we chose to take a break during the summertime while we were getting new staff, I was like, let's take this opportunity to, like, give it its own voice, and let's push in a little bit. Let's have some moody artwork. And this back room in Paramount always said to me, like, Hey, are you guys gonna play poker legally back there? And it's just about the the vibe that you get well that also enhances your experience with your guests. Why you go anywhere is how it makes you feel. So we took that opportunity and I repurposed some artwork in paid homage to some old school mobsters that were very influential in that mob scene and or had visited in Rob Sioux Falls at one point in time. And it's an invitation when you come in Yes, to a certain space and to a certain character, yeah, because everything is how you make people feel hospitality, you know, the service side of things is just the mechanics. How well am I paying attention to managing your environment, knowledge of what it is that I'm serving you, those different types of things that you bring to the table for the service aspect. But hospitality is, you know, how excited Am I to see you, and are you developing relationships? And then, how do you, how do we make you feel in our presence? And that's a different type of value when you're paying for something. Is, how, how do a group of people make you feel in their space? Yeah, well, I think that idea of hospitality could be a through line for a conversation today of how you're approaching because what we wanted to do in talking with you is talk about local foods and what you have done with the restaurants to bring and highlight local producers and products and how that is part of the larger idea of maybe hospitality, or how you see that. But before we get into that, would you mind kind of giving us a background? How did we get to this point? How did Tim meager come to up the back room of Paramount set the stage for us a little bit for your background, as much as you're willing to share, but just kind of get a ground, a ground level of who you are as a man. Okay, really good man background now I feel like now I'm really in the gangster room. We're really gonna solve this masculinity issue. Yes, I love it, solving it. What does it mean? I started out in pizza to pay for my Pontiac Firebird that I got in high school, and I worked for a Lebanese owner, and which he recently sold his place here in Sioux Falls. Is that zeroities? Okay? So he moved from Aberdeen to here. There's some level of adrenaline, and that comes with which I experience in my teens of working in a restaurant, and I moved from that into like a corporate environment with Pizza Hut, I had this belief system that everyone in the United States should love Pizza Hut, and so I became obsessed with perfect service, and going after my competition, I didn't know what I was doing. It was 19 years old, and so I would sit and go where, like godfathers at the time was, was the Aberdeen, was the one crushing everybody. So I sat there for a week, and I just took notes on everything they did well, then I went back and did it better, and that kind of perpetuated my experience and career with the corporate people. And so I dabbled in the food system part and the management of numbers, and I love all the variables. Very difficult. Every day is a complete variable. Then I decided to go to school. And then when I was in school, I joined a band. I've always wanted to be a rock star, so I quit school, moved to Minneapolis. We wrote music and started this heavy metal band adventure. And I worked for a repossession Company, which was super fun, and was the band called Spore. Spore, Trans Am Pizza Hut. Spore, yeah, you're a repo man, so you're like, what is that? So as a people finder. So they locked me in a room and with my manager and banks would hire us with people they lost connection to or couldn't have communication with anymore. So they're like, you find them. And so I thought you looked familiar. Yeah, it was, it was interesting. So I worked on these accounts all over United States. Met all these wonderful people. I did that for about a year. I moved back to South Dakota, and then worked for minervis for a couple of years, got into the management side of that, decided that I wanted to be in a big city again, so I moved to Phoenix, and there I met my wine mentor. So I worked for her for two years in a wine bar in Chandler, and then she opened a marketplace, and then I was a wine steward with a cheesemonger there. So I learned this whole other world to the nuances of like, that's where I started to really learn the nuances of food. So every day we'd have me tasting these cheeses and and I started to really truly refine my palate, along with how she was teaching me. And and then I got to a space where I was like, What am I doing with the restaurant industry and or hospitality? And so I took a break from that, and I traveled the United States for two, two and a half years, and installed digital projection and movie theater. So I was in a different city every three days, roughly, yeah, so I got to see places I would never travel to like because they're off the beaten path and so all over the United States. Fast forward a couple of years, still living in Phoenix, the chef here that oversees the three restaurants, which is a really good friend of mine, called and said, Hey, you should move back to South Dakota and take over this restaurant and Watertown another minervas, and I laughed, and I was like, There's no way I'm moving back to South Dakota. And I was in Indianapolis for like, two months, and I was kind of getting burned out with what I was doing. So I came, came back to South Dakota, interviewed, and I think in the next six months, ended up moving back here, stayed with minerva's until 2013 when I moved to Sioux Falls and I'd taken over several different stores, moved all over, lived in a hotel for a year managing these two different properties. They were trying to turn around and and then I started as a regional manager. Met my partners, we approached Paul, the original founder of downtown Sioux Falls, minervas, and ended up taking that over in 2016 with Foley's. It kind of all lined up at once, with grill 26 and Foleys. That's when we became our own entity, which is Vanguard. And the funny thing is, and I never thought about this. I was like, gosh, I tell people about this, Vanguard was not named after, like to nod to any financial institution or stocks or anything like that. I didn't even know about that stuff. Not big, big fan of index funds or. That it's just the common definition of the word, yeah, no, no, it was named after a heavy metal group that I listened to. So the band is August Burns Red. They're kind of a Christian influence band. I was driving back from Minneapolis late one night because I managed a restaurant up there, coming back to Sioux Falls, and I was listening to the lyrics of this song called Vanguard, and it was about like taking the leap of faith and collectively letting go of your predetermined what you think you can accomplish, and and kind of just jumping off the cliff of what could be. And I was like, Hey, we should name our company. This had no but I never came back to that. I was just like, you know, they're like, Yeah, that sounds good and, but yeah, so Vanguard's actually named after an idea from a song I have, a metal song, and that's kind of why I'm also legacy driven. So what we create in a movement needs to be passed down to other people to continue that and forge ahead. And it's never to like status quo is not part of our dialog, and if we acknowledge status quo, it's our responsibility to each other to call that out amongst your partners, amongst the staff, too. Okay, yep. It's a common, common language. It's a culture of thinking, ethos of Yep. It's very uncomfortable, and times when you want to take a road that seems somewhat familiar. One of us pipes up and said, I don't think we should sell out in that way. I think we could do better, you know. And sometimes it's me going, okay, what are you thinking? You know? And And then sometimes, you know, it's me pushing people too. That's changed the dynamic of who's at the table, our way of thinking and our adaptability, what we can actually entertain as options has expanded, and it comes out in very small ways. And sometimes it's very like, it's like ripping a band aid, and it's very difficult. I want to ask you a question before we get too far into this, which is, why did you have to leave South Dakota. What if you had stayed? Did you think leaving changed your trajectory? I don't know how to answer that. I left because I thought there was nothing here for me. I was an artsy fartsy dude. Grew up, you know, in Aberdeen, which is I would consider like a moderate sized community. I wasn't exposed to a way of thinking that entertained opportunity. I wasn't in, you know, I didn't have parents in business. I didn't have, like, these built in relationships. I was kind of a, like, a metal head. I was into things that weren't like, natural to the environment up there, sure, and I didn't know how to, like, express myself and those types of things. And I'm like, as soon as I graduate, I'm getting the hell out of here. And that's what I did. I moved to Denver right after high school and sold Kirby's door to door. And that was like, having like, that was life slapping me in the mouth and say, you really want this. But it taught me how to, like, it was scary. Like, you know, how do you engage stuff that, like, scares the heck out of you. Kirby is a vacuum cleaner. If you don't know, I did not know. I was about to ask. Then I Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm here to help you out. And then when the the moment where you said I'm never coming back to South Dakota, what were you thinking then, that it was the same. Was it frozen in time like you were gonna come? Is that I can't grow? Yeah, the opportunity isn't there. I'll be surrounded by a way of thinking that will I'll feel like isolated and ostracized. So I had these, these old thoughts, maybe that were going through my head, and then I don't know what it was. Yeah, I actually do a glutton for punishment. So the property that I went into needed leadership and needed direction. I like fixing things I'm not good at, like, C at management systems, managements, because I get, like, I'm sure I'm undiagnosed ADHD, so it's like, you throw me into a situation where it's completely effed and there's no like, good visual outcome, I'll thrive in that. You say, keep doing what this has always done. I check out. You know, it's like, that's not using my skills or you. Know, I can do it, just very average. That's not the best place for you, though, no, my best place is creating solutions faster the gray wolf comes to play. When the gray wolf comes to play off, can we go to the is there a turning point where you're thinking about food systems? Is that during the pandemic? Is that pre pandemic? That's pre pandemic? When is some of those shifts where you're starting to think about where food comes from, and what you're putting on the plate beyond the bottom line of profit and loss. And there really started. I started a dabble in that 2011 when the current chef here and I were working in Sioux City together, and we had an opportunity to connect with some, like, a pork I'm just gonna call it a co op. It was a company that had like five or six different Pork Producers under a system, and it was Berkshire hogs, high quality, great. And I'm like, what if a restaurant was just this, like that, that idea came to my head. I was, like, a co op, or, like, no, like, bringing in all your own products. Oh, okay. And I didn't put a lot of weight into it, but I was like, and so I pressed into it while I was there, you know, just with the couple of those, those types of people, and then that kind of like, sat on the back burner. I didn't do a lot of research. And for one reason, I didn't go very far into it, because I thought I was ignorant in the area, and I was afraid to admit that to people who knew a lot, like homesteaders and different, you know, small producers and stuff. I was afraid to show up and say, I don't know a damn thing about any of this. Can you help me and be shamed? If I'm going to be honest, I didn't want that shaming piece of it. I don't know where that came from. That's nobody's fault. But I was afraid to be ignorant. So I only went so far with things. And then in 2017 I reached out to Dakota, real action, and I said, Hey, I have this idea. I want to get the company to a point where, when I hand the reins to other people, it's realized some aspect of sourcing in connection with where the ingredients come from, and it's, it's an exercise philosophy, where do I start? And I had to admit, I was like, I don't know what to do. Can you help me? Like, next year and a half? There's a couple of them that I'm texting them at 11 o'clock at night. Hey, I came across this. Do you know about this? Where do I go to further learn about it? Is this the truth about this subject? You know, like, and they're always answering questions. And I also appreciated that, and then they had to ask for me, which was, can you put this logo? Is South Dakota local foods logo on your menus, since you're carrying some stuff. And I was like, yeah, absolutely. And they're like, this is important to us to normalize it. And as I explained, normalizing to me from your standpoint, and they're like, where it just becomes normal to see and purchase local products, and it's not a niche idea. And I was like, that actually makes the most sense out of anything I've ever heard from anybody. Is the normalizing piece? Because I'm like, Yeah, you want true change, you normalize it. Sure. And so that fed, then being accepted for what I don't know and pointed into the directions where I can learn, and then having a back sounding backboard of people who, if they didn't have the answer, they would direct me or just help me better understand where the truth was behind things fed into then once I switch on, then I'm a freight train with no brakes. That's where I'm at today. Will you, will we go back for just a minute? And will you tell me what you ate growing up, what was on the dinner table in your household? I see my mom pulling her hair out right now. So growing up, I stress. I ate a lot, so pizza, frozen pizza, every meal I could get it. I'm addicted to pizza. I thought that I thought I was Italian, because I love pizza so much. In the third grade, I got in a huge arguing with my mom because I said I was the only. One from Italy in our class, and she's like, you're not, you're not from Italy. And I was like, Yeah, I am. I saw pizza. Yeah. I said, I love pizza so much. How, how could I not be from Italy? And it made me so emotionally upset that my mom was arguing with me. And don't deny this mom, but yeah, but little Debbie's junk food, that kind of shit. And that's why I also have a reference point like, Well, why did I feel like crap all the time too growing up and I didn't grow up in the environment where we're canning our own food and doing, you know, the gardening and stuff like some of my good friends did, my perspective is, yeah, this doesn't work either. Like, if you're talking about mental clarity at school, like, oh sure, eating little Debbies does not help mental clarity. It helps calorie intake. So if you're food insecure, at least you're eating calories. But so I see the you're not going to be thinking about how hungry you are if you have a Little Debbie in your tummy, right? Which is what I was trying to explain to Travis the other day about Ultra processed food. You know, for some of us who grew up, you know, not always having access to things that makes you stop being hungry and you can concentrate. Yes, however, to your point, there's zero nutrition in that for growing body and a functioning Travis brain. Yep, right. So I use that perspective, and that's how I implement things in my own life. Is like, Okay, I know scientifically, there's a nutrient density difference in these two type of things, whatever I'm looking at. And so I move towards the one with higher nutrient density. Because I don't preach it out on the floor at the restaurants. I just make the change internally, because if your body feels different to you. When you leave here having eaten something, whatever you had, you can you, your body will recognize the nutrition difference, and you'll feel satiated, and it feeds you in a different way. You'll just feel better, even if you overeat. And see now, isn't that interesting? Because that's a value right there about eating that I think is under discussed, because I had a salad at grill 26 last night for dinner, and I have not enjoyed a salad that much. I was like actively loving that salad. I kept saying this is the best salad I've ever eaten while I was eating the salad, and then when I left, I was on top of the world. I was, like, in a good mood, and to pause and to think that might have something to do with what you just ate, I don't think everybody thinks about or the idea of just like that was a thought out process by the chef or by the staff that they want you to leave feeling that it goes back to that hospitality? Yeah, I think through line too. And I don't talk about that on purpose, because I don't want to preach ideals. I just, if I see that I can do something better, I just do it. And if the outcome is recognized, then great. So, yeah, it's that's part of our dialog is we change ingredients. If you just stopped in during one of our meetings, you would hear that because, you know, Josh, the one that oversees the restaurants on the culinary side, he has those conversations like this is in nutrient dense we can do a better job. Let's make this because, you know, these egg yolks are, you know, pasture raised. So it's not just the difference the Anthony Bourdain, you know, the food of the restaurant tastes better because it has way more butter and salt in it, right? There's true. That's what he used to say, yeah. And so you're not in the back, just saying, how do we get people to eat more of this, buy more of this, come back more you're instead asking questions about this. That's where I'm being better than that. Yeah, that's where I feel like I'm not the best businessman either, because I don't have those conversations. And now that you point it out. That's only when it's pointed out, then I know I don't have those conversations, because I don't think about it. Yeah, are we showing that we're doing the best that we can do, even if it's not enough, because not everybody likes what you do. You know, like at Maurice, we from the cattle that we get. We roast all the bones. We make our French onion from from complete, start to finish, and that's because we can taste that, oh, there's more collagen in this. And it's it has a better mouth feel, and we're getting all these nutrients out of the bones. And we go to bed at night knowing that we did the best we could do. I. And we're providing the best that we can. It's not just a salt block with flavor, and that's what a lot of times, you know, even lightly processed foods will will bring, and where you can reduce it, we can. I mean, everything's about a step forward. You so no disrespect to our aunties and grandmas. Was there a moment where you was it with the cheese monger, where you start asking deeper questions, because I'm trying to get where you make that pivot point to like reaching out to code, a real reaction saying, I don't know anything about local sourcing. Will you help answer questions that reflects back to me to that moment someone's teaching you about cheese, and you're developing a taste for so wine, or I could rely it, relate it to wine. So when I'm learning wine, I had to my mentor said, You never you get yourself to a point where you don't even need to taste the wine. It's the winemaker, the climate, the microclimate, the soil. If you know all of those things, you understand what should be coming out of it. And so I studied rainfall. I studied sun exposure, Hillside facing hillsides, soil diversity, how that affects different rows and vines and root systems, and how the root system, how deep the root system and strong the root system is affects its ability to produce the right fruit. And how much fruit do you want on a vine, because once you have more fruits, it dilutes the intensity of each grape, diminishes it, and then you start to introduce manipulation and all these things. Well, I just applied that paradigm now to everything. So like when I go out and visit a biodynamic winery, like last one I was at was Benzinger and Sonoma. Up on the mountainside, they have 80 acres, and only 30 are planted to grapes. The rest is planted to environment, to create a natural environment for the grape vines. So they use, you know, 60% 65% to have the winery. They have pools that have deep root systems, so they filter the water through two separate ponds and reuse the water. They have sheep. They have plant diversity all over the place, so that it brings in different bugs and insects, and all of it becomes this working environment. And then I so to me, that's learning. I love learning. But then you're getting close to truth. So truth isn't apply this to a monoculture. You're you're constantly like, apply this spray to this monoculture, and you create this that's not the truth. That's a manipulated version of creating a system of revenue. What happens is, is you start this process of compensating Well, I created this issue. Now I need a business to to circumvent this new issue. And it goes on and on and on and on where, if you have a working environment which takes less input costs, and that's very sensitive to to people who sell these different products, less input costs in a working environment, creates a natural truth, which is, if you don't touch a lot of it, it can function on its own. And to me, that's like the search for truth behind things, whether the we get to truth or not, I want to know what a truth can look like, because in our world, I mean, just open your phone. You go to Tiktok, there's 100 people selling, you know, remote control cars to you. Everything is selling to you. There's an incentive. So what are you incentivized by? And that's when I'm talking to a new producer, I'm talking to an organization, or whoever I'm talking to. What I'm truly trying to understand in my conversation is, what in what are you incentivized by? Because people can make like I'm sold to all the time. Salesman, right? Yeah, you know, and they got sell sheets. Here's the points. What I've found is there's very limited true knowledge behind any of it, and sometimes I just want to know that simple. So questioning things has led me to being less dependent. Yeah, so my relationship with my sales people is they, I spend probably 1/10 the amount of time talking to a salesperson that I used to, because they have no value other than creating solutions for me, like I ran out of this cheese. Can you find me a substitute? I'm looking for, you know, something to be this type of bread or this type of butter. Can you help me out that's value, but showing up and pushing products that you don't need? And there's always, you know, somebody with some kind of storyline I had a meat specialist show up a couple months ago. They show up to my restaurant, and they bring this guy representing this other beef, let's say, and it's we have this new secret beef. It's like wagyu from Minnesota, and I said, Did you even look at my menu before you walked in here? Did you even ask the question about who you're going to talk to? I said, I've had the secret beef for years. I said, I go out and I visit the cattle on any one of my ranches that I source from. I see the grass that they're eating. I can see the plant diversity. I know what the nutrition value is on the land they're grazing. And I said so to come out, show up at my restaurant and tell me you have some super secret idea is, Bs, you're trying to get me to subscribe to the idea of exclusivity. I've created that for myself. You know, which I'm trying to share with everybody. So when you talk about being dependent, you're talking about being dependent on a couple suppliers, yes, everything you're eventually going to serve, yeah, to your customers. Yeah, because you it's easy for, like, cash flow businesses specifically to like be dependent upon a lot of different types of other industries for efficiencies. You're always trying to create efficiencies. And this is where I've explored the exact antithesis to everything that I've learned in the industry is by throwing everything I learned in the garbage, it's so uncomfortable, and because I'm like, Well, if I truly want to know what this means over here, I actually have to completely abandon everything I've learned to go in this direction. And then I have that my own insecurity to deal with, like in the beginning. And then after 2020 when I just started ripping the band aid off all the proteins I could get. And I sat there one day, I was, like, six months into it, creating all these relationships, meeting, you know, with these producers, visiting their farms and ranches and and I sat there in my office and I'm like, oh shit. Should I be spending my time on this, like, this much time? Am I a bad businessman? I should be reviewing Excel sheets, and I should be drilling down in expenses, and I should be and I went through this whole like conditioned dialog where I'm like, I might be just messing everything up because I have nothing to look at like as a paved way. And so that was a huge insecurity of mine. I was like, well, and then I just said it out loud, I would rather lose my businesses then go back to being dependent on you, because I said you don't have anyone's best interest in mind, but yourself and one of us is always going to lose from the producer to the restaurant or the end user, and it doesn't matter to you and the nine people. So you're always going to take your commissions, and we will suffer in some point. So it's not a whole system. A whole system means everybody wins. And when I said that, I, like, resonated with me. I'm like, Okay, I do stand here now. What so how you know when you have these hard conversations with these, these suppliers? Like, how do they take it? Do they, you know, obviously still work with some of them, yeah, for, for different products. But like, how do those conversations go after you say these things, what you find are people who are still in alignment with you and support you, like our current salesman, from us foods, he does what a good salesman does. Like, okay, I see you're doing this. Where can I help you the most? That's a partnership, you know, I see you go in this direction. I'm still on your side, you know, how can we continue to work together? Maybe in a different way? Because he's still trying to take care of his family, too, and that opens the door to a new type of conversation. It's like, well, yeah, let's explore this together. You can help me out here. Sure, here's, here's what I know I can't, you know, supply myself with and let's focus on these things, and I'll deter these, these products from other companies, and get them to you to help compensate. You work together. That's what a relationship is, you know. So even though it is, the distributor side. We still form a great relationship, good communication. And when people want you to succeed, they will ask that question, how else can I be a part of what you're doing? So a lot of what you're doing from from, if I'm hearing you right, it's, you know, it went from a black and white transaction. Yeah, it's just like you get you got a seller and you got a buyer, and this is what we got. Take it earlier to forging and building partnerships that have more value and a deeper root system in that relationship, to be able to solve problems together and everyone's still working together, just kind of a different mindset, different mindset. Yeah, and the backdrop to what you just said is coming out of covid. I feel like I'm fairly good at seeing things for what they are, and we don't have an infrastructure in our food system in South Dakota that can exist independently to where it's feeding itself it's taking people to keep pushing and forging ahead like we all experienced the pandemic. It got weird in different scenarios, yeah, and what to me was the most I was the most sensitive to was what happened to relationships, what happened at the grocery store? What happened at, you know, times of our basic needs that became strained for people, and when do they turn on each other? And I don't mean that in a negative way, but what it showed me was we're not adaptable anymore because of our efficient way of living to hard times and balancing hard times with supporting each other. So yeah, we did fight over toilet paper. People did rip that out of each other's hands. We did freak out when there was less ham, like there's these things in it, and I see that on the humanity side, where it's like, Okay, we are used to this way of living, but then you stop looking at the things that are threats. And that, to me, is not a when I say the term threat, I'm meaning it more from a bank standpoint of, if you go to get a loan at a bank for a business, they're going to ask you, you know, what threats are there to your what would be a downturn in sales? What would threaten a downturn in sales? We want to make sure you can make your payments all this stuff. And you think of those scenarios, well, if I lost these clients, I would manufacture less, you know this and this. So what's your plan B for that? You get used to thinking that way, so you're not thinking about when everything's going well. You think about what what could harm me in the future, and how do I at least prepare somewhat for it? So what did you learn from the pandemic, about that, about the food supply chain and the things that we weren't prepared for, and how like, what did we learn? What did you learn during that time? We are so dependent on importing into the state that it would fracture and paralyze us if it went any further than it did. So we have to have producers, produce producing food, but we're South Dakota, yep. And what, I think a lot of people, what do you mean? We're so dependent on importing so for farmers to make money, they have to keep growing, yeah. And I'll say, like, what, we look out and see corn and soy and and and then there's nothing negative about corn and soy, but how their financial system is set up to make money is you have to continue to strive for more acres. You You keep Bill building it. But what happens is you have the stress of constantly expanding, and then you have a monoculture taking over a finite amount of area, and all of that, more often than not, is exported, which is great, like we have a business of exportation, and that's also needed. But what we don't focus on, and it's not talked about, because no one's going to get elected by building a local food system. So you focus on the where the dollars are, and we have to have producers also. And I use the term diversified, so I encourage producers specifically on like the ranching side, protein side, yeah, go ahead and sell into the. System, sell your yearlings here, or your cattle into you know, the feedlots do do what you've done that's somewhat predictable for you, and then diversify into something else, so that you're diversifying your family business. Because what I see also happening is outside money coming in from other industries that need to expand their portfolio in a way that they can pay $2,000 over what the value of land is per acre, and somebody trying to make money on the acre can't do that. So you have this weird dynamic that's happened where non farming people or equity groups or whatever can purchase this because their money comes from a different industry. So people who are dependent upon their own land to create their revenue for their family business can't afford now to expand those pieces. So if producers don't keep their land, it leaves us in a place to be not diversified. And diversification means less dependency to me when I'm speaking to it, and if you want to become fully dependent on an entire system, then let's keep going that way. If you want some freedom over where your food comes from, keeping family businesses. The more family businesses that there are, the more competition that there is, and it balances out these need for large corporate entities. And I just use the term balance. I'm not saying eradicate another side of something, but if we don't do that, and we don't invest in that, we just go drink $7 coffee and complain about it, and then things just keep going in that direction. So you have to do something, and we don't have an infrastructure to fully sustain South Dakotans if, and I just call it pandemic too. It could be anything. If the system shuts down, transportation gets disrupted, we're going to have the ham issue is going to become a lot bigger, and we're an arm's reach away from when that happened before, and what in history tells us that it can't be worse, you know. And what I'm saying is, don't fear it, but acknowledge it, and then work together so you create a resilient system. And maybe it's not perfect, but it's less than catastrophic. If you have an importation disruption because your foods, all our food, is coming from somewhere else, why would it be worse now than during the pandemic? Why would we have not learned lessons and built infrastructure? And because it's not easy, yeah, and I'm not ridiculing anybody. It's hard to engage things every day that are difficult and then take lots of energy. It has to be maybe ingrained in your value system to keep pushing you, but those people that allow the value system to keep pushing them truly in the future, will make it easier for average I call them average Joe and Jane, people that care but don't have the energy to go look that way. Or the resources, the resources people are busy like, Why do you think? Like, I go to Target and I pick up, you know, I sit in my car now, I don't run inside. And I think of those efficiencies that have been created to make it easy. To get your T shirt, get your eggs, get your milk. You don't even have to come in the store anymore. You can order it. It'll be ready. You stop on your way because you're doing 100 other things, taking your kids 100 places. And so my comment to you know, food organizations or co ops or whatever is, you have to show value outside of the transaction, first and foremost. And we have to work to make it easy to be successful, because people will do it. But what people can't do is spend the time to go find the chicken farmer. That's that's overwhelming, like, for an average person to like, go seek out where I want to do chicken, because our family likes chicken. Well, who do you choose, right? And how do you find them, especially as we get more separated from where our food comes. Yeah. I mean, it'd be almost a pilot, like, can't just Google Local chicken farm for me to go, because then you more than likely can't just go to the farm and get a chicken either. Yeah. So do you? Are you seeing since the pandemic, and with, specifically with the food systems, or. Are we getting more diversified? Like, it might be slow going. It might not be where we would want it. But do you see it changing? Yeah, cuz not everybody from the same niche idea is showing up in the same room. It's like school system mixed with you at, like, my conversations with you, yeah? Like, I'm involved in these conversations with the USDA around Farm to School, and the people that show up to those are from all different walks of life. And it's that where those great ideas come from, because you get to hear each other and like, oh, from your point of view this, those were the best ideas come from, is when we're all in the same room together, and it's not just confirmation bias from the same type of people. And I think that's so valuable. Yeah. Great things and then good health, family pictures. What have you learned from the producers that you go to the ranch or you go to the farm and you talk to them, what have you learned from them that's changed what you do in the restaurant? The people I do business with, everything means something to them. Like they are very aware of improving the soil health. They are very well of aware of like, Are my animals unhappy? Let's, I mean, simple things, like, I'll be in a conversation with them, and like, Oh, this one over here has a different behavior. We need to go check them out. The tune, you know, piece of that. Like, they care. So I'm in this class at SDSU called beef SD and it's teaching ranchers how to be profitable, and I'm trying to understand the whole system that they go through, so that it just helps feed perspective. So I'm the end user in that group, and we went to small processing plant. We're on a trip in August, and we went to a small processing plant that had a kill floor processing all their offices, and then in the front was a restaurant and retail store. So they were fully integrated. And I was blown away, because I'd been kind of preaching this, like, if you plant these integrated systems, like, let's call it six in South Dakota, where they become hubs, and then you could distribute to local grocery stores, schools, whatever, but you need a hub for mild processing to bypass what it is the skill or skill set or ability to hire skilled labor in these school systems to, you know, just do the mild processing at a facility and then use The transportation but everybody would deliver to the hub. They do that. It's this place in Nebraska. It was blown away. So you're walking through the kill floor, you know where they're make smoking meats, making hamburger. And then all the people that work there are their offices in the next space. Then I walk into the kitchen and the retail floor, and I'm like, Yeah, this, this works, and it makes complete sense. And then we went to 100,000 head feedlot, which was unique, the large 6500 head a day processing plant, 10 head a day processing plant, and we're, we're, we're leaving a large food system company that makes a lot of food in grocery stores like Walmart's in Costco, like frozen stuff. And we got in this long conversation about kind of downplaying. I heard some downplaying of people who want grass fed, you know, animals, let's just say, and can't tell the difference, and blah, blah, blah. So I kind of like was checked that attitude, and my response to that of, yeah, you can. And you have one company that you own where it's like eating a casing of beef grease called beef stick. And the other one company that you own is, you know, a grass finish beef stick. You. And I said, if you look at the ingredients, it made you take all the poison out of it. It does taste different. It tastes clean. I don't feel like I want to jump off a cliff when I'm done eating it, I can read the ingredients as average Joe. That's what people are. That's why they pay $1.50 more a beef stick. Does eating a grass fed beef stick gonna change your life? No, but the accumulation effect is what people are trying to reduce. It's the accumulation of exposure to chemicals in our foods and in our environment. People are just trying to reduce where they can and when you can read the ingredients. That's reducing the accumulation effect. It's not solving your problem. No one's trying to solve their problem in a beef stick. But if they can read the ingredients, and it's certified organic or grass fed, that contributes to reducing the accumulation effect, how much do you control in the restaurant space? How much control do you have over the business, over the plates that come out of the kitchen, as much as I want, like much as I can handle. Is there a more specific question that philosophy is it applies to your work here? I mean, when some when that plate comes out, do you know where everything came from that's on that plate. Do you know not every time? Yeah, no, if you're working, it's important for you to do as much of that as possible. Yes, and I'll take asparagus. I'm not willing to get in an argument with a guest about not having asparagus, because it won't make sense to them. If I sit here for an hour and explain my philosophy, they just want asparagus. So I'm not willing to create tension where there doesn't need to be. What I am doing is working on all the other things and accepting that, yeah, today our asparagus came from brew like it is what it is, but the guest is still happy, and it's still about them, yeah? So because they're they're more than one value, you know? Yes, I've been thinking a lot lately about what we value, about food, and it might be, you know, hospitality, yeah, giving the guests what they want, and that's a value. But then also the other values that you've been describing to us, and those can be supportive of each other, or sometimes they can conflict with each other. Yeah, that's life. But as long as you're being intentional, the reason you're getting the asparagus from Peru is because, you know, the guests want it and you want them to have it. We're not at a place where they're saying, Yeah, hey, I get I get everything. And so everybody in this room all gets what you're doing. We're willing to eat broccoli, Rob instead of asparagus. Just bring it. What's in season? Yeah. No, they Yeah. The customer isn't there, yeah? And that's okay. I just, I have plenty of things to go after, so I'm like, yeah, the asparagus, whatever. And I'm just I'm not picking on asparagus, but there is I'll pick on because what I don't want the environment to be, and this is where people get turned off, is when you're judged, right? You come into a judgment environment. I'm very sensitive to that. I don't preach any of this stuff unless people ask. And that goes back to the shame that you felt the beginning of not even wanting to admit that you didn't know something. People will not come to a food Co Op or a restaurant or a place that they feel. You're gonna feel if I could fail miserably, it would be to create a niche and not normalize something. Yeah, yeah. And I'm, I'm working very diligently to not become a niche. And I think what you're doing a really good job of, in my perspective of, you know, while you don't control everything, you are playing offense. You are choosing certain things, yes, thinking about all the products and the systems in place instead of having them force on to you, and I guess that I think, is just that mind shift alone is a good example or case study of how you could go about a business, even though you might not put the same value on these products. Per se, you're showing that you can have intentionality on each of these decision points and not just have it fast. It's not an all or nothing scenario, right? Yeah, because if I'm going to encourage, like, a grocery store, because I go advocate for these things outside of here, a grocery store, another restaurant, it's going to fall on deaf ears if I say, you got to rip the band aid. Everything has to come from a producer, and I create more havoc than any kind of Ram Dass said that like to be mindful of creating violence in your in your zeal to do good. So I'm sensitive to like, am I creating violence here, or am I actually helping? I'm a rip the band aid guy off. If that is not sustainable, it's a big band aid. Well, bleed out, and that's just my personality. It's a big wound. So what helps me create balance is to put myself in other people's shoes. So when I go and advocate at a grocery store, it's first steps doing one thing is huge, because you're intentional about it, yeah, you know. And then let's rally around that and let your customer determine what's next. And then it becomes an organic, natural thing progression, and you're in it with your guests or your customers, and they're evolving with you. And everything is worth celebrating. What's your hope? What are you working toward? That's a great question. I don't I've been told I don't need to take this responsibility. My hope is to show that where you think there's something can't be done, it can, but you have to check your commitment to it, and when you realize your commitment to whatever it is that you think can happen, even if all signs point to No, You can do it. And we've done that enough over and over. Now I kind of believe my own like, Bs, like, okay, yeah, I've jumped off the cliff enough times. These things can happen. You know, like this week we're we're getting in salmon from the tribe and the Tulalip tribes in Washington. I didn't set out to get salmon from Tulalip, Washington. I did set out to educate and bring light to how destructive farm raised salmon is to our environment, and I did that through cold calling marine educators and scientists to help me understand like because what I don't like doing is wasting people's time either. So I don't want to go out there and say, you know, stop buying this, because it's bad anybody can do that. So I educated myself for last roughly two years and building relationships with the Santee tribe in Flandreau, and then us exercising a relationship that we were building together through helping them move their bison, not for Vanguard, but for food sovereignty in their own community. So we're kind of a satellite to that. And then they invited me to come along and witness their first trade agreement, almost 200 years that they knew of. They legally created this agreement, exercised the treaties that were set up hundreds of years ago and traded salmon for bison to feed their elders and then their community for a healthy protein. Support the fishermen, you know, support the people raising the buffalo. Because what I got to witness and meet were all these fishermen and like, hear their way of life, what it means to them, and then them knowing that they're participating in this, like, community exchange, like brought this sense of pride, things I just didn't even see coming. Now I can stand out the dining room. Someone says, so where's this fish come from. Here's a picture, and it comes from this little bay. You know, there's 45 fishermen on average that are out here every morning fishing. Here's the boat that buys what the tribe doesn't buy. You know, like, here's John. Like, and I don't like taking people's word for it, so going and seeing it firsthand means a lot to me, and then I get to ask all the questions from all the different levels. The biggest like hurdle we have to overcome is there's 15% less fat in wild salmon, roughly, so it cooks faster. So that's my most stressful thing is, how do I adjust the system, which is our kitchen, and I got, you know, 200 people in the dining room trying to be served, and now my salmon takes half as long. That changes the whole dynamic of communication on the line. That's the biggest thing I have to figure out, because then I can take it to the other stores and explain it. We can support them. Or if another restaurant wants that too, like we actually have working feedback, like, hey, take this into consideration if you need any help. You know, because then you're being interdependent. Whatever we learn we can impart in another community. Okay, it's not just really never about us. It's about what can we learn so that we can share it? And then as that sharing grows and we start relying on each other, well, that interdependent system becomes resilient. Well, I've, I've gotten a couple takeaways from that. Thank you. Tim, yeah, sharing all that, you know, it sounds like curiosity, continued education and willingness to learn and not be ashamed, to ask the stupid questions and really get into it is kind of vital. And then to me, it seems like that hospitality is the key ingredient, the through line for you. Yeah, it's creating the experience for your guests, your community, for the producers you work with to you know, the new partnerships you're developing, all of it is hospitality focused, yeah, the one thing I didn't mention, which started from the beginning, is we don't enter into any relationship unless it can become win win. So Win Win is completely different with every producer. Sometimes we have to pick up all our protein ads, whatever meat locker in South Dakota, because they're further out and they can't get it to us. So we have to arrange around the butchers and this and this, and then go pick up our own stuff. To my father in law goes and picks up all our Morgan ranch stuff in Omaha every two weeks. So that's a transportation side. But agreed upon pricing, everything is agreed upon. And then we ask questions like so in my industry, since you don't know it and you're a producer, in my industry, they might rip out the the road and redo it for two weeks. That might take a 30% decrease in sales. So if I'm ordering 100 of something, and then I tell you that I have to order 70, because that happened and I didn't have that on the docket or on my calendar, would that put your business at risk? And we have those conversations, and you know, sometimes the answer is like, Yeah, I'm only creating this for you. That would really put me and it's like, okay, create 65% of what we need. If you end up having more, and everything is going as planned, we'll buy it, but that way we always run you out, because I can always order off the truck. Sure I'm using my flexibility in recognizing someone's inflexibility. Because if this is truly a good relationship, I need to tell you about what can happen so that you're aware of that, and then you can make your own business decisions to protect your family business. And we have to grow that way. Interconnection, yeah, and that makes it resilient. Yeah, your success doesn't lead to somebody else's failure. Your success leads to somebody else's success, and we're all connected. It's kind of the antithesis of what we're taught, yeah, you know, but like, there's, like, high tide lifts all boats, yeah. And it can work, yeah. And I was like, proving that to myself first and foremost, I'm like, oh, yeah, this does work. And it it's not hard, but you have to have maybe some hard, uncomfortable combos, like somebody has to admit that that would affect their business. And maybe there's shame in that, you know, like, I can't absorb you not buying 30 of something. That would be really hard for me, you know, and you practice that, and that's, that's the relationship piece, is you practice building trust that way. Yeah, I'm not going to hold that against you, but I am going to protect you. Let's just go to this point and exercise that that way. We're both safe. I know someday the Lord will break our guest has been Tim meager with Vanguard hospitality. He and his partners run minerva's Grill, 26 and Maurice Steakhouse, all in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Travis and I would like to thank musician Jamie Lynn for allowing us to use her song red fox for season one of rivers and rangelands support her work and find her online at Jamie Lynn, sd.com also like, rate and share this podcast when you choose that helps us find even more listeners in this Sonic space. And follow friends of the Big Sioux River on social media, that's where you will find the latest episodes and more of what we're up to as we shape this project for Travis Entenman. I'm Lori Walsh, thanks for coming along. But just kind of get a ground a ground level you. Of who you are as a man. Okay, really good man background now I feel like now I'm really in the gangster room. Nah. We're really gonna solve this masculinity issue. Yes, I love it. Solving it. What does it mean? You this podcast thing doesn't work out. I'm gonna go into the wine and cheese you.