Welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast with host Darren Sheer, an initiative of the RGW Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. This is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate their local values into business. You can get more information about HBU Center for Christianity and Business and sign up to receive free access to all features of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at ChristianityInbusiness.com.
SPEAKER_01On this episode, we're joined by Peter Demas. Peter is the president and CEO of Demas' brands and Peter D's Seasonings. Can I call you Peter D?
SPEAKER_03Now you can call me whatever you want to. Probably nicer than what a lot of people call me.
SPEAKER_01So Peter D grew up in his parents' restaurants and was surrounded by the spirit of serving others. After pursuing a law degree, which I'm sure that was an interesting conversation, you know, with the family in the restaurant industry. Uh he then turned back to his heart's calling, the hospitality industry. I know your your family was excited about that. Today, uh Peter is a successful restaurateur offering a lineup of authentic dishes. The family spent many years developing through his four Demas's restaurant applications and two PDK Southern Kitchen and Pantry restaurants and Peter D's catering in Middle Tennessee. In addition to exceptional service and homemade dishes, his restaurants operate with a mission-oriented approach that is radically different in the fast-paced food industry. And he's the author of the new book, Afraid to Trust, One Man's Journey into the Love of God. Peter, thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_02I appreciate you. Thanks for having me on.
SPEAKER_01So as we talked, I know that you're you're Greek and our listeners can pick that up from your uh your last name there, but but you're serving Southern Comfort Food, right? Can for we have an international audience, so why don't you give our um kind of wet the appetite of our listeners for the type of food that you're serving there through your uh establishments?
SPEAKER_03Well on the Demas' side, the Demas' is just an extremely eclectic menu. So on that side, we serve steaks and pastas, and um uh uh some people even think we're an Italian restaurant. Um so uh but we have just everything there. So the problem is when you have a uh with with many Greek restaurants, Greek Greek people think they can cook everything, so they broke put everything on the menu. Um and so when when we branched out to do the PDK Southern Kitchen and Pantry, actually we started off changing it to Peter D's, which was an upscale casual, and it and it did not do very well. And that's a big part of the book uh that we had was learning how to handle failure uh as a Christian, as a Christian business owner. But then from it we were able to spin off into the PDK realm, which is a fast casual southern food. So we have things like uh chicken and waffles, shrimp and grits, you know, burgers, uh chicken tenders, um, you know, just uh a variety menu, which is unusual for fast casual. Um we have fresh cut salmon. So we we have we have uh but but then we take Brussels sprouts and do what a good southern boy does is fry them up. So we have fried Brussels sprouts which are out of this world. You know, so so again, we we try to uh we we have narrowed that piece down into more of the southern the southern food um part of it.
SPEAKER_01You you alluded to the the restaurant closing down. Why don't you tell us what was what was that experience like in going through that journey?
SPEAKER_03Um to to to the the Cliff Notes version of that was that was awful, one of the worst experiences of my life. Uh but no, you know, it was it was interesting, um, and really in a in a in a way it was an incredible blessing. And um because we we had started and planned this restaurant. My wife and I had started playing this restaurant uh and uh during the the planning stages of this restaurant, right toward the beginning of construction, is when I found Christ. And so we made changes. How many years ago, just for uh uh about seven years ago, uh six and a half years ago when I found Christ. So so when I when we made that change, um and we started, and then we said, okay, look, our our changed, our purpose statement in all of our restaurants is our purpose is to glorify God by serving others. And so when we said, okay, uh that's where this restaurant from the ground up is going to be and start this way. And so we we did a lot of things with it um that we normally wouldn't have done. Uh we closed on Sundays, for example, we did a um we had a wall of clocks, which was my my favorite things. The clocks were all set to different times. And when people would go up and they'd say, Hey, why is this, you know, what does this mean? What do the clocks say? So if it said like 1221, you'd flip to the back of the clock and it would say Romans. And so it was a verse for them. And then so many people were asking about it that we had a pamphlet printed up that we can give them, and so it was a way that we could share the gospel without being uh letting you know where they got their permission first um with being able to do so.
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SPEAKER_03And so, but the problem was was everything from that building that we expected failed from the construction, the architect, the designer, the construction, the operations, everything we did did not work. We had over a hundred years of experience in the upper management piece of it, and yet we couldn't get it to work ever. I mean, and when we did, it would work for about two weeks, and then something new would happen. And so when you're going through that and you and you're so used to relying on your experience and your expertise on it, you know, um, I mean, I've won all these awards for being, you know, for being a great restaurant operator and business owner, and and you can't do anything, and you're losing money just constantly, you're bleeding money just constantly out. You know, everything that I had leaned on and trusted, whether it's friendships or or financial or my status and reputation, experience, all of those items that we had, um, God stripped away. And and I look at it now and say, okay, well, why did we fail? Why do we have to go through it? And I realized because if we didn't fail, I would have said I did it. Because I was still too new of a Christian. I even remember making the comment, well, we got God on our side now, like God's my God's my backup, you know. And and so we had to deal with the journey and the practical journey of how do you handle this? And still, and while the whole time, I mean, we're seeing people getting led to Christ in that restaurant, customers, employees, all these people. So it served this incredible purpose. And then God allowed us to get out of it faithfully as well. We we never we didn't have to close it. Someone ended up coming up and leasing it. And just the series of events that led to that, um, led to that, that, that, that place, and allow us the time to open up the PDK Southern Kitchen and Pantry has just been been an absolute incredible experience from beginning to end.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so you kind of on a on a on a heart level, I mean, you're this is your introduction to Christianity, right? I mean, you're you start walking through this about the same time. I mean, on a on a very personal level, what was going on in your in your heart and your and under how you under understanding God.
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, it it one of the things that that happened is because I was a very angry person, you know, very before I met Jesus. I mean, it was uh throwing things was was very common for me. Uh cussing was was I I took cussing to an art form. I can put cuss words in the middle of words. I mean, I was really good at it. And um and what I would do is if something got in my way, I just ran it over. I mean, I would just rip it apart. And well, I remember I would be lying in bed, you know, saying, I don't want to get up, I don't want to deal with this problem because I don't know what to do. You know, and grew up in this business. Like I never ever thought I would never know what not to do in this business. Um and you go through and you can't get out of bed. And and and I remember just just feeling this, this, this kind of all you have to do is get angry again. Once you get angry again, it'll you can you can take control over it, you can get angry again. And I kept saying, I know that's just not the right thing to do. The problem was I didn't know what to do. And I would talk to other Christians and they're like, oh, well, turn it over to Jesus. Well, that's simple when I'm turning a pen over to a person. If I were to take a pen and turn it over to you, you can grab the pen. I can physically see it, I could physically see your hand grab it, you know. So that's a lot simpler to do. But how do you turn that problems and insecurities and fear? How do you turn that over to Jesus? And so I kept reading the Bible every morning and and still do. I mean, every day uh since I've been saved, I've read the Bible. And I I was at my office, it was Saturday morning, about 4:30 in the morning, because you can't sleep when you're going through these problems. So, and and I'm reading my Bible, and and and I just and I'm praying, and I just finally can't take it anymore, and I fall on the ground just bawling crying. And I'm like talking about the type of crying where you know you you you get spit, tears, not everything coming out like a small child crying, and I just I can't stop. It's just uncontrollable. It's the only time I ever heard God's audible voice, and and I and I heard somebody say, That's enough, get up and go to work. And my office is an old historic home, and there's nobody here on Saturday mornings. I I startled, I looked around, and you know, there was nothing here. So I was like, okay, well, I'm getting up and going to work. So I sat down at my desk and can't function. I mean, my brain's not working, and um I'm like, well, I can at least do some emails. So I started just trying to answer some emails, and I remembered a verse that I saw in a post-it note in a hospital before I got saved, um, which was in Matthew 6, which says, Do not do not you know worry about tomorrow, for today has enough worries on its own. You know, if God takes care of the birds, he takes care of, you know, then he's gonna take care of you. Um and so I've looked that verse up in that little section, and then I then I led me um to Philippians 4, 6, which said, Do not be anxious for anything with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Submit your request for God. And I realized we got to be thankful, and that's how we that's how we combat this fear, and that that God has a bungee cord tied around your ankles. So you maybe feel like you're plummeting to the rocks below, but you're gonna get yanked up before you hit it. Now, it may not be where you want to be yanked up to, but but it but it created this idea that that that fear is not you don't battle fear with courage, you battle it with trust. That that the courageous people can be fearful, but but but when you trust in something, then you're not gonna be afraid of it. And so I have to trust in God that He's gonna see me through it. And again, it won't be on my timetable, it won't be the exactly the way I want it done, but but in many cases, as in this one, it actually was better than what I would originally have wanted. And it ended up um, but that's how that's how that journey came. And that's also where I started realizing Christians like Christians speak, but we don't necessarily know the practical tools of how to apply it um in our lives, and partly because we don't spend enough time in the word, we just spend time listening to things but um and listening to other people's opinions. And so that's why I was like, okay, we're gonna start figuring out how to practically apply to these problems on what to do. And the thankfulness was the biggest piece that we started with.
SPEAKER_01So as a as a brand new Christian, I mean, for most people when they first get saved, I mean, they maybe they haven't heard about all of the different um things like for example the C12 uh members and what they're doing in their companies, or they want to replicate or or or kind of borrow from some of the Chick-fil-A model in their company. You it seems like you just wanted to do everything, right? You just wanted to completely just surrender this this company to the Lord, but where did you get uh some of this this inspiration, some of these ideas for um like like I understand that you had New Testaments in the uh in the lobby, right? And then the newspaper kind of uh brings some persecution over that. Where did you get some of these ideas for for why you wanted to do these things?
SPEAKER_03You know, uh it's not like um uh some of it I steal from other people. You know, it just I see somebody doing something like, oh, that's really cool, we can do it. Um, but but I'll be honest with you, just many times you just start you um I spend time every day in the Word of God and and I don't listen as well as I need to. Uh sometimes I do tremendously better than I do others, but I but I try to spend time just sitting back and listening and just trying to, and and and what I find is that when you read the Bible every day systematically, it's incredible how certain verses will pop out at you in order of where you are handling. You know, I tell people the Bible is the only book where the author comes along and explains it to you as it as you read it. You know, so so that's honestly a big chunk of that. You know, so I I I look at it and I said, okay, so how do we now define success? You know, if you know I if God's my managing director, if God is the one who owns my business, then I'm the steward of that business. And so how do I define success? What is he asking me to do? You know, he wants me to keep the business open, so I still got to be a good steward of the financial piece of it. But what does God ask me to do? And he asked me to go and share the gospel. You know, it's it's you know, it's not to uh, you know, and he says, well, you know, love your neighbor. Well, love your neighbor by sharing them the gospel. We don't love our neighbor by letting them get away with whatever they want to get away with. We love our neighbor by sharing the gospel. So we have to find ways of doing that. And however it opens the door, we we try to. So this year, for example, we have a ministry goal of we have a lot of employees that didn't have cars and walking, you know, two to three miles every day and then working and then walking two to three miles back, and you know, they're working on their feet in a hot kitchen. And so we bought 20 bicycles to hand to the employees that needed them. And but but when we handed them the bicycles, you know, we prayed over the bicycle, we talked to them about it, and we explained to them we're not giving you the bicycle because we're nice people, we're buying the bicycle because you know, be because we love Jesus and we want to have an opportunity here to talk to you about them. And so it gives us an opportunity to be able to talk to people about it. And if they say, I don't want to hear you, then we walk away. I mean, that's no big deal. I don't care, you know, that's up to them. But the the the the but but their choice it becomes their choice. My choice is mine, and I get to choose whether I share the gospel or not because I have to answer for that. And so that's really where a big part of it comes from. So we just start seeing ther certain things and say, hey, this gives us an opportunity to be able to do this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and so I know today you're a part of C12, and which our listeners will be familiar with because we've we've had several uh both in leadership in C12 and member uh representing the the companies of C12. Uh at what point did you get involved with C12?
SPEAKER_03I've been involved with C12, I think, five years now. Um you know, it uh there's a guy who went to my church that called me and said, I want to meet with you. And I I'd never even met him before. And so we we sat down and met, and um, I just kind of told him a little bit about my story and went to my first meeting, fell in love with it, thought it was thought it was awesome what they were doing. And then the second meeting, I had to go and present our business and say, okay, this is, you know, and these are some of the issues that we have, and uh they gave me uh uh some very hard advice that was um much needed. And I'm like, okay, you know, they they're they're doing it because they love me, but they needed, they weren't gonna sit there and just allow me to continue down a path I didn't need to go down. And uh again, that's when I was like, oh, I'm all in on this. You know, any any time that we you can look at other business people and say, you know, you, you know, um uh because a lot of times in our position, we don't have people that we could talk to about our problems. And we need somebody that loves us enough that's gonna say, and we can trust enough to say, you're doing this right or you're doing this wrong, and just just be able to rely and count on that is just just absolutely incredible.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and this is a theme that comes up again and again on this show is discipleship and and how and and most most of us we have never had in fact I I went to seminary and I took a a course called Biblical Models of Discipleship. And on day one, the professor said, Raise your hand if you have never been discipled, you never had somebody come alongside of you, maybe a little further along uh in that particular vocation or or walk of life that you're in, and they helped they they helped you to, they kind of cut came alongside of you to provide some of that guidance and mentorship. And 80% of the hands went up and said, We've not been discipled. And and these are future pastors, right? And so this is definitely the case with business owners as well, or mid-level managers, or dishwashers, or you know, whoever you are in society. Most people have never been discipled. But I just I always want to highlight these times when this is actually happening because this is the Great Commission, right? This is uh go in all the world and make disciples, which isn't just get them to pray a prayer, but it's let's let's ask you the hard questions. Like that's kind of the way you described it. Most people don't have anyone like that.
SPEAKER_03Well, part of it too is is and and for those who who aren't being discipled now that are listening to this, um just just uh be be blunt, that's you that's that's their fault. Yeah, you know, they so for me, um I'm like a barnacle. You know, I attach onto somebody and I'm not gonna let go. I'm gonna constantly call and harass them, asking them questions, getting their feedback, etc. You know, until the point where they're like, okay, fine, he's not going away, so I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna have to deal with them. So I got a bunch of people out there that I can contact and say, hey, I'm going through this issue, or hey, you know, I'm reading this verse and it's just it's just really baffling me in this act, you know. How you know, how do you interpret it? And and so it works really well, but a lot of it is is on me. You know, I I have the obligation to be discipled as well. But then as but the only way that I can is if someone else had opened the door for me to come to them. Right. And if we want to sit there and hide, and we want to hide behind our coffee mugs and we want to hide, you know, that uh and and say, oh, well, you know, hide behind our computer screen, and I just hope people notice that we do good, you know, then then it doesn't do any good. Unless we tell people the reason why we do good is because I'm a Christian, they won't know any difference. And if you don't tell them it's because of Christ that that that that you're doing this, they're gonna look at you and say, Well, you're a good person, and then you're gonna start believing it, in which case then you start going on a huge slippery slope at that point in time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And hey, you may have the newspaper writing, you know, mean nasty grams about you, and uh, you know, and then that's what you've experienced. And but hey, that's and I know as much as we love that quote, uh, you know, always preach the gospel when they're necessary, use words, but you need to use words, like people know Well see, here's here's the thing.
SPEAKER_03I I give speeches on that quote. First of all, that that quote's attributed to Saint St. Francis of Assisi, and and there's an article Christianity he didn't say it, he didn't say anything close to it. But the funny thing about it is, and this is what I ask, and particularly I've really hit men harder on this than than than just regular church attendance, which is at what point in time is it when necessary? As men, when are we gonna say, hey, we're now at the necessary part? You know, and and we want to hide, you're right, we want to hide behind it, but good gracious, I mean, you look at where things have been and moved in 20 years. Imagine if we had taken the when necessary approach 20 years ago, 30 years ago, would we be in the situation we are today? You know, and so you have to sit there and and stop. In reality, is it's just fear that that that's that's that's that's creeped in. I'm afraid I'm gonna lose sales, I'm afraid I'm gonna lose friends, I'm afraid that you know I'm not gonna do that. Well, here's the thing. If Jesus is your friend, are you are you you think about if if you're a friend of somebody and you're a friend, and then you see them at a different setting, a different party, and they just kind of ignore you because there's some more people that are important around. You know, so if Jesus is your friend, are you ignoring him when there's more important people around? And you know, and then we and we kind of kind of put that it put him on a back burner because I don't want to lose this, I don't want to do this. People are dying in the Middle East, and we're afraid we're gonna get fired for Jesus. We're afraid we're gonna lose 10% of our sales. And that's just you know, at some point in time we have to say, you know what, we gotta trust in God, know that He has it, know that His plan is perfect, and again, it may not be where I want to be, but it's where He where He wants me to be is what's more important, and that's the critical piece of it.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And and in keeping with this theme of discipleship, I I heard that 50% of that people's first jobs are in the hospitality industry, and uh and I have Several young family members that are working in restaurants right now. I mean, it's it's usually how people get introduced to the workplace.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01And which is a much more of a fresh sense of reality of the way the world works than what they're getting in school. Um do you consider your restaurants a place for making disciples? Which I already know the answer to that. I guess the better question is um what are some of the other ways that you're deliberate about that disciple making process?
SPEAKER_03And knowing knowing that uh, you know, there there are those um HR laws and and things that kind of screw around, but yeah, you know, but but the thing is even with the the laws and and yeah, as you said, I was an attorney and and I did employment law, so so that was part of the that's perfect. But but yeah, the the the right now, the way the law is set up is as long as you make things voluntary, you're pretty safe. So other things we did is we did voluntary Bible studies, you know, where you know we're gonna do a Bible study. If you want to come, you can come. If you don't, you don't. We have prayer time before meetings. Um we have called for prayer. So a great example of what we did was um we had uh you know what happened in Charlottesville with the White Lives Rally and people died in the square. Well, they were coming to Murfreesboro, and they they were first coming to a smaller town around the south of us, which is about a 15-minute drive straight down one road. So we were starting there coming to Murfreesboro, and where Murfresboro was, you know, you know, the business owners were arming themselves and doing all this other stuff. We said, you know what we're gonna do 30 minutes before we they arrive, we're gonna stop everything we're doing and we're gonna pray because we believe that prayer matters. And literally on a wait, you know, grills full of food, we had to stop, pull everything off, and everyone met outside to pray. And I honestly it was voluntary. I expected five, ten people, and we had so many people we couldn't fill in the whole area, and then we it even backed into our lobby as people sat around and prayed, and we prayed for confusion, we prayed that they would have flat tires, we prayed that if they did show, that we'd have opportunities to share the gospel with them because we know they didn't have Jesus in their hearts, and so we prayed all this stuff, and here's the amazing thing about it was they never showed. Wow, and the reason why is they said they were confused on whether they could show or not. Well, that's not true. Uh the the police found weapons hidden in the square and bottles of urine that they'd planned on throwing on people. They were they had everything planned. The confusion was down one road. That didn't happen. They got confused. You know, so uh so we we you know we we do things like that and we show people that we give them Bibles, we teach them, we have values of the week, and we teach them the values from the moment they come into orientation, and then every week we teach them a new value and what it means and how they can apply that value in their real life. And so we we do all these different ways that we that we that we we show them that that you know Christ cares and you know Christ cares for them. You know, when we have disciplinary things like um we have chaplains that service, but we also have in a in a um we had four people that that were engaged in a weird sexual harassment problem that we had, and we had to deal with an illegal side, which we did. But then we again we recognize these are four people that we know definitively don't have Christ in their hearts. And so we had knew that we can go and talk to them about it. One of them didn't want to hear it, and that was fine, they didn't have to. You know, but but from there we've kind of so we look for opportunities and we're intentional. You know, we have prayer chains, we have prayers on evaluations. You know if you have a prayer request on evaluation, here you go, fill this out. And um, so when you're evaluated, you can you can then say, you know, this is some of the issues that are impacting me. And so I mean, so we we try in all ways to show people that that it's in all parts of our lives, that it's but that the word of God is true. It's not it's not a philosophy, it's true. And that's and then so that's the hardest thing I think people have to understand is just that. And when we when you start accepting it as true and normal and not some type of supernatural thing, it's normal, uh, people start believing in it. Um, and it's not just first-time people, too. A lot of people that come that work in restaurants have made really bad decisions in their life, they're drug addicts, alcoholics, and you know, so they you know, and they need to know that Jesus loves them just as much as they love the 15-year-old kid that's got his first job.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and but and by the way, many become drug addicts from working in restaurants.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, absolutely. And and I I know we've had our share to come through there as well. Um, you know, it's it's you're right, drugs and alcohol are rampant in that business and and always has been and always probably will be. Um, but but again, we have but these are these this is our ministry field, and we shouldn't be scared of our field that that God put us in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And it's it's it's about discipleship, not only within the company, but but of the entire industry. You know, when you think about what what you're doing, what Chick-fil-A has been doing, and and Jersey Mike's and you know, there's just so many other great great companies that are that are Christ-centered, um, from at least from the leadership, and they're they are um you're infusing that that culture throughout your company. Uh so it's uh it's a beautiful thing. What as we wrap it up here, uh Peter D, tell us about this book, Afraid to Trust, and what our readers are gonna get out of it and kind of where they can get it as well.
SPEAKER_03So um, so the first thing, Afraid to trust, it's kind of starts off a little bit about my journey, um, which is um I was very antagonistic toward Christians. I actually went and made fun of them, attacked them, would never let them come into the workplace. And and so, and then it then it talks about, you know, when I found Christ, and then we had to take a business that's been successful for 23 years and say, How do we change this culture to a uh a very successful business that wasn't unholy, wasn't a bad business, you know, but and turn it into a into a Christian business. And then, and again, not a business owned by Christians, but a Christian business, I think there's a big distinction there. And then, and then watching the backlash that happened from it, um, and the failure of of uh the failures of of Peter D's uh restaurant as as we started to watch it crash and burn, and how we had to kind of turn to that and then watching God's faithfulness come through. So, so for those who you know who on a business side, in the business front of it, um you know, everybody in a business is either in a crisis or everybody in life is in a crisis, about to go into crisis, or just finished one. And this book is perfect for it because it allows you to have that encouragement during that time and to realize that just because I mean here's a person myself who is an expert at things that couldn't do anything. I mean, just couldn't make anything work, and and you've gone to that feeling where it's just like nothing seems to work. And instead of it just not being a day or a week, it lasted for years where nothing seemed to work. And and and and just watching God just in little motions and little things all throughout it that just ended up um uh uh bringing this out, and to know that that's the same as true for them. And again, having a practical way of being able to apply biblical principles to the crises that are going on in your life is just is it to me is where the value comes from that. Um we are um uh and so and you can get the book. Um uh uh the the best place to probably get the book is is is on a website called AfraidTotrust.com. Um it's the way that we can you can contact me directly. So if you're wanting prayers from me, if you want advice from me, you know, any of that stuff, you know, you can contact me directly, come straight to me, doesn't go through an assistant or anybody else. Um but you can also uh there's links that you can go to other places if you want to see the restaurants, if you want to see the where you could purchase that. So but Afraidottrust.com is the best spot. And if you uh uh if you do order the book, you can put in the promo code FIRE. Um and uh and and from that uh there's a discount. I can't remember what the discount is truthfully right now, but there is a discounted price that comes in if you put in fire on it. Uh and um uh because again, we we we want to encourage people to be on fire. We don't want to be firefighter Christians and put everybody's fire out. So, you know, we want people to be emboldened and engaged, and so so we want to be able to use that and hopefully they can be able to take that and start uh get ideas from it that they can do all new and better and greater stuff than what we can.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. Well, Peter, thank you so much for your time and sharing your your story for the impact and uh the the disciple making that you continue to do there through your through your ministry, and may God continue to bless uh everything uh you're involved in and your family as well.
SPEAKER_03I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00We hope you've enjoyed this episode, and if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HBU Center for Christianity and Business at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.