[0:00:03.9] RE: I’ve been asked many times, innocently, was it hard to open the DC kitchen? I mean, no one had ever done a job training school, a cooking school for the homeless. There was all these urban myths that it was illegal to donate food. But I’m a white dude in America. I mean, what’s hard? That’s a really important construct, because we talk a lot about privilege. We rarely unpack that, because one of the things that I was born with was the confidence of being a white dude in America. I think, people really truly underestimate what it means to have confidence, that your ideas are good, and that if you just get in front of people, they’ll hear you and they’ll listen to you.

[INTRO]

[0:00:53.8] LW: Hello, friends. Welcome back to At The End Of The Tunnel Podcast with yours truly, Light Watkins. In this episode, we’re going to hear the story of Robert Egger, a California native who relocated to Washington DC and on one faithful night, he found himself volunteering in the back of a truck, feeding the homeless. On the ride home with his wife, he became obsessed with using the resources and connections that he acquired while working in the nightclub business, of all places, to find innovative ways of taking perfectly good food that was being thrown away by restaurants all over town each night and using it to help feed even more hungry people.

This idea led to what became a revolutionary non-profit called the DC Kitchen, which is still in operation today. As we’ve seen in many of these stories, Robert’s seemingly normal background of coming up in the 1960s and 70s was quietly preparing him for his path as a renegade in the non-profit sector.

I have known Robert personally for a handful of years. He and I both delivered TEDx Talks in Venice in 2014 and he’s been a friend and mentor of mine ever since. I’m proud to share his fascinating story on the podcast and I’m excited for you to hear it, because I truly think that you will be changed by the end of this episode and the way you look at food will forever be changed.

As always, we’re going to start with talking about young Robert and what he was into as a kid and how his earliest obsession with being in a nightclub industry led to him toward founding this initiative to feed millions of people. Without further ado, I introduce to you Mr. Robert Egger.

[EPISODE]

[0:02:45.3] LW: Robert, thank you again for joining At The End Of The Tunnel. As always, I like to start by talking about childhood and was just curious, if you can remember what was your favorite toy, or activity as a child.

[0:03:00.5] RE: Dude, it's funny you mention that, because I loved almost anything with wheels. I think I always wanted to be going and moving. In particular, stretching the boundaries of where I could go. As a kid, I had, or like any kid, I had a bike and I loved having a bike, because I mean, it was the freedom to again, leave your neighborhood and explore.
I also was raised in Southern California during the 60s and had this interesting transformative moment between one of my favorite, favorite things man. I had a skateboard, like a lot of people back then. It was funny, because I came up in the era where you had metal wheels and pretty much hardwired in piece of wood that had no ability to bank or pivot. If you hit a rock on one of those metal wheels, I mean, even the smallest pebble sent you flying.

It sounds funny, but it hurt. I mean, dude, it's like so many things in life, but it was so much fun you got back on. Then came out of nowhere, you had polyurethane wheels showed up. I don't know what it was on the bottom of that attached the wheels to the wood that allowed you to bank and pivot, but it was a revelation. It's funny, because I think that transition from something that was fun that could hurt, to something that was fun and it was even more fun, open the door for that idea of that I think has been a big part of my life, which is just because something works now, it doesn't mean you can't make it a whole lot better.

[0:04:33.2] LW: Right. I wonder, did that early experience if you can even remember this, did it make you feel more – taking more caution as you were trying to have fun, or did it make you more of a renegade like, “I just know. I'm just going to take the cuts and bruises with the journey.”

[0:04:49.0] RE: You know, man. I don't know whether it was the age too, because again, I think – obviously, I'm older than you, but I think we both came up in an age where we were put out to play.

[0:04:58.0] LW: Yeah, of course.

[0:04:58.8] RE: Our mom would put us out and it’s like, “Don’t come home. Come home at dark.” There was a sense of adventure and the lumps you took. Again, dude, I don't know how many trips to the emergency room on that I had one as a kid. I mean, nothing bad, but I mean, I had my share of stitches. It's almost like anything man in life, once you get hit and you realized it doesn't hurt as much as you think it might, it doesn't mean you walk out and ask somebody to hit you, but you're not afraid. Yeah, I think all that stuff really sharpened my sense of adventure and wanted to get out and do stuff.

[0:05:42.7] LW: What was the dynamic like growing up with your parents and you and siblings? Did it feel nurturing? Was it survival mentality? What was happening?

[0:05:51.7] RE: No, I was pretty lucky, dude. I mean, I was the first of six. Again, born in 1958, along with some interesting peers, man; Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson, Ellen DeGeneres, who looks much younger than I do, but it was great a moment. My parents stayed married until they passed. My dad was a Marine Corps pilot and he was gone quite a bit. He did three tours of Vietnam. I was raised and surrounded by very strong women, my mother and then my four sisters.

My mother was a very demanding woman. She just expected a lot of us and really pushed us to participate, not slack. Yeah, man. I mean, we moved around a lot, which made me very – our family very insular. I mean, I'm an outgoing person, but like I said, I've always respected and felt comfortable around women, because that's who raised me.

[0:06:44.1] LW: What happened when you were 10? You had a pivotal experience. I want you to talk about it.

[0:06:48.0] RE: Well, 10 was – I talk about this quite a bit in a lot of my work, because again, I think even for younger people, it's a struggle to hear an older dude talk about back in the day. 1968 was a pretty insane year, even as tough as this election year might seem to us who were in the middle of it. ’68 was tough, I mean, because you had Lyndon Johnson had pulled out and Robert Kennedy decided to jump in.

Here I was living in Southern California and Robert Kennedy shows up and stands, or sits actually, with Cesar Chavez, who was finishing a 25-day fast to draw attention to the plight of migrant workers. That was something that really struck me, because here was an example of Robert Kennedy showing incredible solidarity and great political risk. Also, I was raised Catholic. My mom was really impressed that Robert Kennedy helped Cesar break is fast with a piece of communion bread.

I remember her bringing that to my attention and that really stuck with me that image. Right after that, Dr. King was murdered. That was profound. It was also one of those moments in life, because I was playing with some kids. We were given the day off of school the next day and we were outside. Some construction workers stopped us and asked, “What are you all doing out of school? It’s midweek. I innocently and with a great sense of commitment said, “It's because Dr. King was assassinated.”

Dude, it was all those things where I can so sadly remember the look on this guy's face and the snarl in his voice when he said, “They let you out of school, because they shot that N-word.” I was just like – I mean, I knew the word. It's not as if you didn't know it, but I'd never heard it, like someone say it, I had read it. I had heard people reference it in the abstract, but I'd never heard the word itself, let alone spoken with such hatred. Dude, to this day, it was such a pivotal thing. Then of course, two months later, Robert Kennedy was assassinated. I think that year really is when I metaphorically self-baptized and decided, I know now what team I'm playing on and what I want to do with my life.

[0:09:09.2] LW: Did you have a conversation with any of your parents, or any adults about that comment that this construction worker made, that helped you shaped, you say you self-baptize, so shape your understanding around what you're going to do next? Or is that just an internal process that you've built and you remember going through?

[0:09:25.1] RE: That's a great question, Light, because no, I didn't. I don't think I would have repeated it. I mean, again like I said, my mother really was a very committed civil rights. It was fascinating. Again, when I often in hindsight looked back at her generation of women who were college educated, but to be at home raised their kids, she sat and raised us, but through the lens of the women's movement, the civil rights movement, the farmworkers movement, the environmental movement.

Even though she wasn't participatory that way in that she wasn't out marching or anything, I think that she really guided our education very much around the lens of the way you treat your fellow humans and the concept of respect. No, dude. Honestly, it's funny, I don't think I've ever thought about that, Light. I did, it was all internal. I mean, I just process it in my own little head.

[0:10:13.5] LW: As a child, because you were still very much a child at that point, were you watching the news? Were you getting their own information somewhere? Were you reading the newspapers on your own, or you’re relying on the narrative and the spin from your parents and how they interpreted this information about Chavez, or about King, or about Kennedy?

[0:10:31.5] RE: Well, you know, it's funny, man, because as a young kid, we all watch the news. I mean, every night you watch Walter Cronkite. My mother, we sat around the table at night and as both – I was fascinated by my mother's decision to do this, because we had a children's Bible that got passed around from child to child, from the oldest, me, down to my youngest baby sister, Shannon. We read a chapter every night. It was both a reading exercise, a family thing, but it also opened the door to discussions about what does this mean.

There was I think an effort by my mother to translate some of the things that were happening in the world via her biblical background, her sense of religious faith. At the same time, I also came up at a time when every neighborhood literally had a football team. There were so many kids and we all ran loose. I grew up incredibly intrigued by my generational elders. I am a baby boomer, but I'm almost 11 years into the first baby boomers born in 1946. I’m 11, 12 years past the first boomer, but I'm part of that cohort.

I was watching my generational elders who were growing their hair, who were smoking cigarettes, who were listening to incredible music. I mean, I remember vividly sitting in garages, where some kid would bring home a new album. In particular, I remember the Beatles pretty constant. At the same time, another fascinating thing anything happened, because I always really, really not only dug music, but I dug what I saw at the time as the social implications of music.

Again, you go back to and this was also a time when there were shows like Laugh-in and Flip Wilson and The Smothers Brothers. Again, I know some of your younger listeners might not know that, but these were breaking barrier, groups that were overtly on a very small bandwidth of three basic main TV station; CBS, ABC, NBC. They were talking about race and class and gender and the war and getting cancelled. That in and of itself was news.

When one week your show is on and your family sitting around watching and your parents are laughing. Weeks later, you find out it's been canceled, because of the jokes they told. I became fascinated by the power of that medium. Dude, the most interesting is as I aged a little bit more and continued on this trajectory of intense interest in social causes, there was one of these wild moments where my parents, I remember my father and again, military dude talking to his friends about politics and them arguing and talking about the issues of the day.

Yet, when my parents who had parties quite often would put on a Motown record, everybody danced. A, I love watching people dance and have fun, but I was – Again, there was some moment. I forget what little switch it was that I just listened and it's like, wow, these people who are afraid of certain political ideas and the same ideas that got Dr. King and Robert Kennedy assassinate, murdered as young men, they were dancing to those same ideas put to music.

I mean, again, the same thing that Marvin Gaye, or a variety of other Motown artists were saying, or were getting my parents’ generation to dance. At very early age, it’s got me on this interesting trajectory of being fascinated by and really intrigued by the power of music to get people to hear things that politicians couldn't.

[0:14:07.0] LW: How did that end up playing out? You obviously know graduated from high school and what happened next that led you through this trajectory towards music?

[0:14:16.8] RE: Well, you know what's wild, man, is in this timeframe, we moved from Southern California to Northern Virginia, which was a real rude awakening for a kid, who really was raised and came of age in Southern California in the 60s, with all of the dynamism and excitement of that culture. Here I was transported into rural Virginia with its, I think at the time and even still at times, a very different culture.

My mother sensed how bummed I was. Of course, I think as any parent who moves quite often, I think is really tuned in to their kids, or and what's going on with their children and how they transition.

[0:14:56.5] LW: For people who don't know, this is the Washington DC metropolitan area.

[0:15:00.9] RE: Yeah, exactly. Anyway, my mom said, “Hey, there's this movie I really love. Why don't we watch it together?” It was the movie Casablanca. I was probably 14, I think. This movie captivated me, because there was a scene very early in which everybody was – the first time you see the Rick's, this nightclub that is where the majority of the movie takes place and everyone's flooding it, everyone's seeing Rick's. The sun goes down, the moon comes up, everybody starts to roar into this nightclub.

As I watched, here was from the – if you'll go into cinematography from this high shot down into the club, you could see Sam and his orchestra playing. You could see Sasha the bartender and Carl the waiter and all the people that you get to know later. You've got the sense of the swirl of Rick's and how everybody was there. As they took a tighter shot, then this tracking shot that went through the crowd of people that in the distance were just having fun, you started to hear their conversations, the intimacy and everyone was whispering to each other, plotting to get out of Casablanca to America and the freedom that it represented in this movie.

As a kid, I became fascinated, because again, I already was hip to the power of music. I was intrigued by the idea of nightclubs. Because again, when you watch movies as a kid, so many older movies, particular musicals took place in nightclubs. I was already fascinated by that culture. Here was this idea of this super highly functioning nightclub that gave these refugees the freedom of a night out. I mean, the momentary respite of being a refugee in northern Africa.

Yet, what they were all seeking and what this club was really was a doorway to this deeper freedom of America. That duality of purpose, the idea that you could have a nightclub that functioned at every level, but right below the surface like a Trojan horse. There was this diabolical larger purpose, to free people. Dude, that just – I don't know what it was. I don't know what happened in my little brain, but it's like, dude, I'm going to open a nightclub.

Much to my Marine Corps father's chagrin, his firstborn child, his male son, his only son at the time suddenly decided, “I'm going to open a nightclub.” Dude, that's all I talked about. I mean, I was really fixated on this and I remain fixated. I mean, I barely graduated high school. I was sneaking out every night running into DC to see clubs. Again, I was fixated on this idea of when I am liberated from the drudgery of school.

Dude, I was a horrible student. I think back then, I probably would have been diagnosed with some random thing. My brain doesn't learn analytically. Whenever they’d say, open the book to page 10, in particular with math, my brain just shut down.

[0:17:57.7] LW: Did you know anyone who had a nightclub, or did you have any mentors in that area? Or were you just – did you go to a place that you really admired, other than seeing Rick’s in Casablanca?

[0:18:07.0] RE: No. It was just fantasy. It was this image. Dude, again, it was this weird, two crossroads came together for me. One was, I mentioned earlier and I used the term self-baptized, but I really would love your listeners to recognize that that word, at least coming up in the faith I did, that's a serious word. What I meant is I truly was deeply, deeply fascinated and studied as a kid, liberation movements.

I was glued to anything that my parents in their generation didn't like, I wanted to learn more about. I was just a sponge. Again, like I said, I couldn't learn. It's funny, dude, now that I think it out loud, I just said, I can't learn out of a book, but it's maybe because I didn't want to learn that shit, but because I learned a lot of stuff out of books. I mean, I was devouring things, like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, or Soul On Ice, or Autobiography of Malcolm X, or a variety of different things that I wanted to learn about that.

It's funny, I never really thought about that that I actually did learn a lot out of books. I've always pegged myself as somebody who couldn't learn analytically, but I guess in hindsight, it was because the subjects didn't appeal to me. Yet, the liberation stuff really did. That idea of being part of a movement. They have to also understand, I grew up totally impressed by and desperately wanting to be a hippie.

To me, when I watched whether it was again, I know your listeners who are young are going to be like, “These are pop references that are obscure,” but there's a show called The Mod Squad, that was like, one of these first interracial shows where there were three young – they were cops, but there was this dude Link, who was the African-American cop. Anyway, there were so many people that I saw that it's like, I just want to be part of this bigger movement. I want to grow up and go out and protest the war. I want to grow up and go to concerts. I want to grow up and be part of a generation that is out on the street fighting for things.

When I came of that age, it was actually quite disappointing, Light. It influenced me in a huge way, because I watched that generation. At the time, I couldn't figure out why, but they seemingly abandoned these causes. As the 70s really unfolded, what the daring of music gave way to the – the seeming frivolity of disco and leisure suits and cocaine and fun and parties. In my young eyes, this was a level of hypocrisy and almost betrayal of a sense of duty and obligation.

I mean, again, I looked at my generational elders and it's like, “WTF. I mean, what happened to you all? You all were the people I aspired to be and now, you've you become these almost comical figures in your yellow leisure suits? I just don't get it.” There was a sense of betrayal, quite honestly, that was I think, there was a momentary sense of it being a drift and not knowing who my people were anymore, who was fighting for a sense of liberation and stuff. Then suddenly, punk rock came up and that suddenly music that was loud, music that was fun, music that was political. Dude, I was off to the races. That combination of I graduated high school, I found my sound, my parents retired and split. At age 17, I'm like, “I love you all so much, but now is my time. I'm staying here in DC and I'm going to go in and get a job running nightclubs.” That began a very long and joyful journey of my 20s running nightclubs.

[0:21:56.3] LW: You were a bartender at a club. Then you ended up on this truck called The Great Patrol. Can you just talk a little bit about that? I know there's a special someone that came into your life between that moment and you being on that truck. Just tell us how that whole trajectory played out, because it seems like the last place you'd end up after being a bartender at the nightclub.

[0:22:22.1] RE: Well, it's funny, dude. Because A, I always wanted to be in love. I love the whole concept of love and I love the whole idea of – I was always ready to be married, to be a partner. It wasn't like I was looking. I mean, I had my share of relationships, but I was tending bar at The Child Harold, a beautiful little nightclub in DC, a little teeny town house, but it's where Bruce Springsteen had his first show in DC, the Ramones had their first show. The door open and as I’ve said many times, man, Claudia walked in, ordered a drink and stole my heart. I was just in love with this woman.

Anyway, I was both courting Claudia, but also pursuing my nightclub education. I was not random about working in a nightclub. I was a voracious student of the business. The business being both the music industry, but also – see, I wanted to do something different with my club. I wanted to put on shows. I didn't want to rely on the audience for one particular band to fill a nightclub up at night. I wanted to do shows. Again, I didn't want to hope a band talked about politics. I wanted to deeply embed issues into shows.

My vision for a nightclub always involved much more of a variety show format, right? I’m studying that and I'm studying Claudia. At the same time though, man, as the 80s started to unfold, the issue of homelessness started to really appear. Now again, man, there's always been people on the fringe, but now here we were in the nation's capital where I lived and here were people sleeping on steam grates all over the downtown. At first it was primarily men, but then women and then, dude, families. The issue was so profound.

I was walking to work every night going to my nightclub gig, walking past people and thinking about this. At the same time, Claudia and I decided, “Okay, man. Let's get married.” There was a little church around the corner from the nightclub I was working at the time in Georgetown. It was funny, man, because this nightclub, the last nightclub I worked in was a jazz club, which wasn't my gig, but that's where rich people went and I wanted to learn about that.

Here I was, seeing literally dude, Sarah Vaughan, Oscar Peterson, Mel Torme, The Modern Jazz Quartet. I mean, it was an insane education to go from all of the icons of punk rock to the last generation of touring jazz greats. Anyway, I'm walking home and I see this little church and we make an appointment to go in. The pastor there said, “Yeah, man. I'll marry you two. 50 bucks,” which for us was the right, the magic number. He said, what at least you might want to do is come out on our great patrol and go out and serve people on the street.

Dude, all I wanted to do was get married. I went out anyway. I've told the story many, many times, but it was a fascinating night, because here we cooked a bunch of food that was purchased at this incredibly expensive grocery store. We loaded all this stuff into a truck that bounced down the road on a rainy night and stopped, first in front of the World Bank, then across the street from the White House and served people who would line up as they did dutifully night after night for this truck to show up. Here they were out in the rain.

At one level, I was having a great time. It's like, this isn't so bad. This feels good. At the same, time I'm looking at people outside in the rain and the driver of the truck called them each. He knew everybody by name and was saying, “See you tomorrow night. See you tomorrow night.” That echoed. It was as if that 11-year-old kid was standing behind me saying, “Dude.” This is people in your own backyard who are outside in the rain. It was this moment I've described in which I really saw charity in America for what it is, which is sadly, it's based on the redemption of the giver, not the liberation of the receiver. That moment was just that – an interesting clarity.

Now again, dude, for your listeners, this wasn't like my life changed that night. I just on the way home rattled off the Claudia, who was a legal secretary and used to take in dictation. She was taking notes and I'm just like, “Dude, let me just –” I just spilled this out, but it's like, “If you could go to the restaurants, the hotels, the caterers around this town and get the food that they throw away at the end of the night,” which was again, as I mentioned earlier, I studied the business and that was part of our business model. There was a certain amount of food that got thrown away and it was accepted, not [inaudible 0:26:45.3].

It was maybe an interesting way in which you can feed more people better food for less money. You can get that food and you can feed people food that's really luxurious, nice food, versus lentil soup or whatever night after night. What was the big bleep was I said, the smarter idea though is to offer those men and women a chance to get out of the rain and be part of the solution. I mean, I had so many conversations with people that night who were clearly lucid and capable. I just proposed, we should start a cooking school, restaurants have jobs too. Anybody's worked in a restaurant and your audience knows, man, restaurant kitchens are the island of misfit toys.

It's like, why not use that food as a way to not just nourish people, but liberate people via their ability to be part of the solution. They can get a skill, people get fed, the restaurants that donate food now to get access to entry-level people. I thought it was a great idea.

A couple of weeks later, I had written it up and asked that very same priest who was going to marry us to see if some of the other churches and synagogues took turns serving people via this Great Patrol, if we could meet. I proposed this idea of a central kitchen and a cooking school. Dude, to my shock, I was told, everyone seemed to go out of their way to try and find a way to shoot down this idea. Up to the point where it's like, this moment where you're like, “Oh, wow. They're not going to do this.” They're not going to do it, because it rocks their boat.

It was an interesting sad realization that they’re constructive of why this needed to stay the same was because it worked for them. Again, it's one of many moments in my life in which I have tried to be respectful, but I've been disappointed in people who I assume would be share this by any means necessary attitude of getting people out of a position where they needed charity.

[0:28:47.9] LW: At that point, were you thinking of it as a part-time hobby, passion type of a thing, or when you were pitching it to them, or were you thinking we'll all do it together and I'll just keep running the bar and I'll do this on the side, or were you thinking that this is something that's going to essentially take over my life?

[0:29:03.9] RE: Well, I had a ton of energy, dude. I was a young man. I had days free. I figured, I might be able to cook during the day. I was willing to roll up my sleeves, but my destiny was opening the greatest nightclub in the world, as I would tell anyone who ever asked me. Dude, I was laser focused on this idea of I'm going to open the greatest nightclub in the world since I was a teenager. I mean, it had been probably 11 years that I had been working nightclubs and building towards this idea.

[0:29:33.7] LW: Had you been saving money for that nightclub? Or do you have anything in the –

[0:29:38.0] RE: No. I was a bartender and Claudia was a secretary. We didn't have any money. But my money, my gold was my ideas and my skill and my pedigree. I mean, I had a good run, dude. I really worked in some of the best clubs and managed these clubs and ran their business and booked their bands. I was working my way up to be an undeniable pro, let's put it that way.

Yeah. I mean, never in a million years did I think – in fact, even after I started DC Kitchen, my assumption was, look dude, I'm doing this because no one else would. It was interesting too, because a lot of people were also skeptical of my idea about a nightclub that would put on shows. I mean, don't forget, this was also the beginning of the DJ era. Most investors were like, “Dude, why do you want to have a big old band when you can just pay one dude to play some records? Put up a VIP thing and sell exclusivity and jealousy and all that. You're trying to sell love. Greed is where the money's at.” This was also an era of Wall Street and that movie, where greed is good.

There was an element of look, I'm going to get this kitchen going, because dude, it's not that hard. Again, my model was everything I used – and frankly, the model I ended up leading for decades is based exclusively on what's already there. All I'd said was look, I'm going to take food that's available free. I'm going to use an underutilized kitchen. I'm going to offer men and women who are undervalued, who want to get out of the trap of the streets. I'm going to offer volunteers who have free labor, a place they can come and really make something bold to happen. I'm going to offer chefs who have food that they hate to throw away and I can give them a tax deduction for it and they can come and I'll teach and get access to entry-level people. Everything was there. All I did and all I've usually ever done is reorganize existing things to get better, more just and dynamic results.

[0:31:32.2] LW: Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Today, so when you pull all that together and you went out and I'm sure you pitched it to other people, because you had to secure a truck, you got to find the space, you have to call up the George H. Bush's people to work out how to collaborate with them for their inauguration. Was it a obvious winning idea to all those people at the time, or did you have to do gymnastics to try to – and jiu-jitsu to get people to buy into your vision?

[0:31:58.9] RE: Yeah, but you know, dude, this was an interesting moment to transition a little bit in this, or branch out in our conversation, because I've been asked many times, innocently, was it hard to open the DC Kitchen? I mean, no one had ever done a job training school, a cooking school for the homeless. There was all these urban myths that it was illegal to donate food. But I'm a white dude in America. I mean, what's hard? That's a really important construct, because we talk a lot about privilege. We rarely unpack that, because one of the things that I was born with was the confidence of being a white dude in America. I think people really, truly underestimate what it means to have confidence, that your ideas are good. That if you just get in front of people, they'll hear you and they'll listen to you.

As a kid, man, there was a famous moment on TV that I remember so vividly, when Muhammad Ali was interviewed. He was talking about all of these examples. He's saying, man, Tarzana in the middle of the jungle, he yells, a whole tribe of black people run. John Wayne fires one gun, five Indians go down. He just went through the whole list of things that as a kid, my eyes are getting wider and wider listening. That culture that I grew up in, gave me this insane confidence to call up. As you alluded man, I took a show person's flair and said, “I'm going to open this kitchen,” but there's an inauguration coming up and George Bush Senior is going to have all these parties. Man, I'm going to get that food. I called up.

This is another really cool place to branch out, because when I called up, not only did that take confidence just to think, “Of course, I can call up the inaugural committee and get their food.” When I finally got that person saying, “Hello,” and I knew this was the caterer, or the guy in charge who could make the decision, my name was Robert Egger, my voice was an educated white kid’s voice. There's a lot of things that I think the idea itself was profoundly simple. I think over the years was easy for people to grasp. Again, the birth of the kitchen has so many things baked into it that made a success. Yeah. I mean, it was a lot of convincing people that you could donate food, that men and women who were homeless could work, that restaurants would do this. I think the secret sauce of so much of my success is just the fact that again, I was born in the right time, the right place, the right gender and the right skin color.

[0:34:42.9] LW: Do your siblings, had they adopt that same level of awareness, that self-awareness that you have, seems like you've had for a long time? Or is that something that you feel is when you contrast yourself with the people that you were nurtured around, was that unique?

[0:34:57.2] RE: Yeah, it was unique, dude. Because again, I had four sisters. Don't forget, I mean, I think any woman in the audience is going to resonate with the fact that while I could get on my bike and ride as far as I want, my sister's couldn't. We're at age – when I was 15, 16, 17 and I could stay out at night, my sister's couldn't. I don't think my sisters were given the same freedom. I know they weren't. It was those freedoms and that access that I think continued to stoke the fires of I can do anything, that again many men of my generation have intrinsically, but I don't think really credit with their successes.

I mean, we just saw for example, Mike Bloomberg on one of the debates say, “I worked hard and made billions.” It took Bernie to bring up his workers. Again, that idea of just working hard isn't what it takes to make it in America. I mean, again, working hard when you're white is you're already 99% there. Again, I don't want to belabor this, but I don't want to ignore and I try my best. This has been a big part of my career, because not only did I get what I have because of these advantages, but at the same time, it baked into me a sense of obligation that I was going to use anything I received because of this to benefit people beyond me.

I'll give you an example, man, we're on this line anyway. My first day, the DC Kitchen opened, or it officially launched on Inauguration Day 1989 with the inauguration. Again, what I said earlier, I took my show person's flair, because dude, think about it, what media outlet in the world could resist some guy in a truck driving around picking up food from inaugurations to feed poor people the next day? As predicted, every media outlet of the world wanted to cover that. That was from day one, there was a sense of wow, I have touched something that I didn't know existed is how much Americans were viscerally frustrated by how much food we threw away.

I mean, it's very common to talk about this now, but in 1989 again, it was a very new construct. Little did I know that almost to a person, Americans were really guilty, felt guilty about the food. Here was this moment where I tapped into this, this energy and literally the day we opened, media came in it kept coming. I made a self-pact of saying okay, there's people all over this country who are doing similar work. They're just as smart, if not smarter than I am, but they're never going to get media coverage like this.

I'm going to share whatever I have. That began what I've oftentimes refer to this 5149 rule of mine, that I was always going to spend 49% of my metaphorical energy and time on my business, but I was going to make sure that whatever I did with that 49% lended itself to a bigger cause. Again, that has been the benchmark of my model forever. I will only work and contribute to something bigger than myself, because I've seen people get lost in this idea of thinking, I can solve, pick your issue if my non-profit just gets more money. It's like, no dude, we're not built that way. The larger dominant capitalist society is never going to give us the resources.

Rather than trick myself into thinking my little kitchen as badass as they have been and will remain, that they're not enough. They have to be part of something bigger. Again, that's just another example in where I've tried to take these dreams of my youth and make them part of my everyday life as an adult.

[0:38:49.0] LW: Did you ever in your wildest dreams, even with your white privilege and your white male access, did you ever think that you'd have presidents of the United States in your non-profit and you'd feed so many hundreds of thousands of mouths through this idea that you got on this Great Patrol, that one night with your wife?

[0:39:09.4] RE: Well, maybe not that night. I'll be honest with you, Light, I really – I can't emphasize this enough. Yeah. I mean, I could see that, because again, I had my own sense of bravado and purpose and drive. Yeah. I mean, dude, it was zero in my upbringing that suggests that I couldn't. Zero. Nothing.

I mean, in fact, quite the opposite. Everything suggested that I could achieve anything I wanted. Literally, think of that. For a white kid in America, a white boy in the 1960s to say, “I'm going to be the first man on Mars,” teachers would never say, “Oh, dude. That's a messed up idea. There is no way.” They'd be like, “Oh, man. That kid’s got plucked, got Moxie. I like that kid.” Again, dude, there was nothing.

You have to understand too, I dreamed of my nightclub having presidents come. Everything I did was based on this idea of – it's funny, it's that movie about the baseball field. If you build it, they will come. Everything I did was based on that idea of I'm going to build something that will bring people here. They'll be drawn to it.

[0:40:12.5] LW: I love that. DC Kitchen, I mean, we don't have a lot of time to get into all the details around the great story, but you have written about this plenty and you've talked about this plenty, but it ended up – it's still going. It's been 30 years now. You even branched out into Los Angeles, you started the Los Angeles kitchen, which had its own array of challenges and opportunities for growth. Then eventually, that LA kitchen ended up closing after how many years was that in operation? About 10 years?

[0:40:41.8] RE: It was six in the hardest years. I put my real sweat and blood in that, because you know what's interesting, dude, and it's nice thing to talk about very briefly, but there was a time in DC Kitchen where I didn't make a decision. It's like, I'm a founder. I can sit here and ride this thing forever, or I can be a good founder and split. I did everything I was supposed to do. I created a good board, a good staff, a good reserve, financial reserve, a good business model. I was one of the early pioneers of social enterprise. DC Kitchen already had its own income stream and ability to hire people.

About probably almost a hundred cities at the time had taken the idea and made it their own, but had taken this nub of an idea. When I went to LA, there was a sense of I'm going to go and I'm going to take all the juice I have and try and draw attention to what I think is going to be one of the most profound issues. It already is, but it hasn't really been recognized. That's the issue of senior poverty and the staggering number of people who are going to wake up in an America, where they're going to live 10 years, 15, 20 years longer than they have money in the bank and what does that look like, particularly for communities of color?

I went to LA with again, a proven bonafide dreamer sense of next step, only to run into a real buzz saw of lethargy around the issue of aging. Sadly, as I did, dude, this has sadly been a benchmark on my career. I've gone so many times to places where I assumed people who would be my allies in doing bold new things, end up being my adversaries. I literally have to spend insanely valuable time working my way around people who got lost. I've said this so many times, like man, nobody wakes up when they're 20 and looks in the mirror and says, “Man, when I grew up, I'm going to be a boring bureaucrat that stifles innovation at every turn.”

World's full of people. I've always wondered, how did they get so lost? I've had to spend time getting around people all my career. Sadly, I couldn't in LA. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my – In fact, it was the hardest thing I ever did, because again, dude, I've been an employer. I made payroll for 30 years without fail. I created thousands of jobs and produced millions of meals. I had to basically admit, I can't keep this big old machine that I've built with so much promise and love and hope. I had to close it.

There was one of these days that any entrepreneur dreads, where I had to sit in front of my computer, man, with a message that it was going to go, basically fan out across America. I had to push send, knowing that people were going to get this e-mail and in my heart as you can imagine, worrying that the echo that I was going to put my head out the window after I push sand and hear a reverberation of people saying, “Damn. Robert Egger fucked up. Dude.” I literally was physically ill with fear. Dude, fear. I'll be honest, with a sense of shame is maybe too harsh a word, but there was a sense of like, dude, I failed. I'd never failed.

[0:44:02.8] LW: Well let me ask you this, before you get into what happened, how long had the writing been on the wall that things were going to go in this direction? Because like you say, you have this confidence, you’re a very optimistic person, you can convince your way into doing pretty much anything, you had done so for 30 years. How long have you been sitting on that idea and realizing that it's not going to happen?

[0:44:24.1] RE: Well dude, honestly, I'll be direct, pretty much since I decided I was going to do it. I mean, I knew what I was walking into. There was a part of me that felt so much that I was going to cash in all my chips and A, go back to the community where I was a 10-year-old kid and that construction worker confronted me. I’m like a prodigal son. I was going to return.

I knew, because everywhere I went, people had given me tons of money. When I said, “Hey, man. I'm leaving DC Kitchen in good hands and I'm going off and I'm going to do this new gig.” They're like, “Oh, man. Robert Egger, what are we going to do next, man? Because we got to be in the Robert Egger business.” I'd say, “That's great, man, because I'm going to LA and I'm going to pioneer what senior meals of the future look like and I'm going to take imperfect fruits and vegetables and I'm going to really pioneer a plant forward, meat as part of the meal, not center of the plate thing, but more importantly, I want to challenge people to see elders in a different light. That if they were going to be upset about wasted food, because it had a wrinkle or a bruise or a blemish, shouldn't they be even more profoundly upset that we waste an entire generation of people, because they have a wrinkle, or a bruise, or a blemish?”

To a person, every funder who had been generous to me said, “Oh, dude. I wish we could help, but we don't do seniors.” I knew that I was walking into a very tough, but necessary. Dude and again, this is my thing, leaders in my opinion, there’s a difference a boss and a leader. I'm a bad boss, to be honest with you, but I’m a good leader. I felt it was my job to take every ounce of juice I had and put it towards something that was mandatory that we see, even if people didn't want to see it.

I felt if I could use my energy and entrepreneurial energy and bring new life. More importantly, Light, to come to a city where the false idea of beauty emanates from. Hollywood is a place where women are cast out casually at a certain age. I used a sense of probability saying, women outlive men, women outnumber men. The majority of people that are old in America will be women, how long until there's a revolution in which women, sisters basically stop and say, “Fuck the beauty myth. Fuck your concept of beauty. I'm just as beautiful as I ever was. In fact, I'm more beautiful, because I have a belt load of great experience under my weight.” You get my point.

This was something I'm like, I can use this. This is the perfect place, just as DC, where presidents came and stood side-by-side with men who were homeless at the DC Kitchen. Could I utilize the resources valet the same way? Again, man, like I said, I just – I think I truly underestimated how little people cared, how little money was available for and how entrenched the ideas around senior meals and the business, because again, dude, part of my model was I'm going to create a business that will both train people for jobs and create beautiful, healthy meals out of the non-profit side.

The for-profit side will actually get contracts to do congregate meal sites for seniors. Going back to my nightclub days, have you ever been to a Senior Center recently? I mean, it's bizarre. Because you go in and you got to realize, the people who are in there right now who are 70, dude, they were 20 in 1968. They were at Woodstock. They were at Wattstax. They were part of this generation. Yet, when you go, they're literally playing, they're treating them like they were born in the 1930s. There's all this big-band music. I'm shocked.

I look at those senior centers and I see the deepest well of life experience in the history of America and a generation of people who are still able and willing to be part of something bigger. They just need to be called back home, not to the 60s, but to that sense of optimism and idealism. In effect, I went through a phase of disowning the hippies, only in my later years to want to help them find their way back to that spirit of the 60s and maybe a little of that activism that made them feel so alive.

[0:48:37.4] LW: Talk about what happened after you sent the e-mail that you were closing LA kitchen and what you learned about letting go.

[0:48:44.4] RE: Well, I’ll be honest with you, I'm still letting go. I mean, it's hard. I mean, I can talk all pretty about letting go, but dude, it still hurts. I mean, I'm 62 and I fully anticipated being actively involved the rest of my life, till I literally dropped. Yet, I had to stop and say, “Okay, dude.” Again, going back to say, you've had a great run. I mean, every day I look out and see the ripples of my work. I see my great dear friend, Jose Andreas and the world central kitchen, which I'm proud to be on the board of. He's taken the same model to extreme lengths, far beyond I could ever. No matter where you go in the world, there's people doing these community kitchens now.

I could sit back and chill and frankly, rest for a minute, but the bigger question was does the world really need another 62-year-old white dude try and stay relevant? I mean, I have a lot to contribute, but should I be willing to stand aside now and say, I will – instead of being a leader, which I've been all my life, maybe now it's my time to serve. In fact, you and I talked earlier in our joyous friendship about a moment I had in Peru, where I had led a hike up into the mountains, only to fall back and rely on an older woman at the very back of the line to lead me over the hill. That's when I really embraced this construct of the first can follow and the last can lead.

This is my time to follow. I'm spending just about all of my efforts now are trying to say, I have an incredible stockpile of knowledge. I have tremendous ideas about policies that will enable a younger generation to avoid some of the pitfalls I hit in Los Angeles. I want to be a servant to a younger generation of leaders, whether it's identifying them and trying to get them attention, whether it's being a connector, whether it's just being an ear.

I was shocked when I hit send on that e-mail, Light, because I thought I was going to be embarrassed. I was ended up being incredibly buoyed by the insane level of love that came pouring out of all kinds of corners. Again, dude, don't get me wrong, I know I've had a killer fucking ride. I know I've done good work and I've tried to be a good friend along the way, but I was unprepared for how generous people were when I assumed there'd be snickering and cut, or silence.

Like I said, it was hard, there was a lot of affirmation in the pain of closing. There's still an interesting process on going through as we speak, brother, on letting go and not being as –there's a phrase in the aging business called a PIP, a previously important person. How do you overcome that need to be the center of attention, or to be out front, or to be heard all the time and find a new voice and being a humble servant to others as they begin their journey?

[0:51:35.2] LW: Now you've relocated to New Mexico. You're giving talks. Are you writing anything these days?

[0:51:43.4] RE: No. It's funny, dude. We moved to New Mexico, because this is where my wife and sister-in-law are from. We've lived together as a family. I'm a big believer in family and taking care of each other. My in-laws moved in with us and passed at home when we were in DC. Anyway, we're living in a small rural town of 300. I've been actually intrigued, man, because I've been experimenting with small community meals.

I went to a beautiful little fiesta here and watching community eat side by side. My wife and sister and I, we served the meals and I was the emcee. It was again, here were old and young, addicts, bikers, people who live out, super libertarians don't bother me, all in this little firehouse. I was watching thinking, “Man. Dude, I've spent my entire career producing meals, but they've been served in places where you either had to self-identify as poor and stand in line, or you had to be old, because it's where old people go, or a kid, because well, that's where we feed kids.” Versus, this idea of the community eating together.

It was another one of those lightbulb moments. I’m not trying to start anything new, or I'm not going to launch another non-profit, but I've been very intrigued by this idea of community meals and how a very simple meal, where a community comes together, and the potential for maybe an older person to find somebody who might drive them to the grocery store once a week, or somebody who might mentor their kid, or an addict might find and somebody, a sobriety buddy will help them take that important step away from meth, or heroin or whatever. Like I said, man, I'm writing a new chapter, but I'm not necessarily putting pen to paper.

[0:53:24.0] LW: I love it.

I want to acknowledge you Robert for having what I feel is one of the most important traits on top of confidence and optimism, which is just curiosity and looking at the potential of something and having enough curiosity to really take meaningful steps in the direction of that potential. It seems like you're still just as curious today as you've ever been when I think back to your most enjoyable activity as a child, which is being on wheels, being able to maneuver obstacles and having fun along the way. It seems like you're still doing that to a large degree and it's starting to take shape in the next phase, whatever that's going to look like eventually. It doesn't seem like –

[0:54:15.2] RE: You have to see the smile on my face, man. That was a beautiful summation, man. I think it's been a beautiful little loop we've walked together this hour. It's been a joy, my friend. You're one of my favorite people and every conversation I have with you, I both – I walk away from it happier, a little bit more grounded and really feel like I've talked with a great friend.

[0:54:34.8] LW: Thank you. Before we sign off, I do want to mention the name of your latest branding. Fuck Shit Up. Can you just talk a little bit about what you mean by that.
 
[0:54:46.6] RE: Well, [inaudible 0:54:45.7] with that. My wife, I needed a new e-mail address and my wife's like, “Well, what are you going to do next?” I'm like, “Well, I'm going to keep fucking shit up.” Lo and behold, there it was. Dude, I tell people all the time, because people call me and they're like, “Oh, dude. I want to fuck shit up too.” It's like, “Dude, stop. Don't mistake those words with anger.” Understand that whether it was Harriet Tubman, whether it's John Kennedy, John Coltrane, all the people you admire, they all wanted to fuck shit up, they just said it, maybe said it different.

I mean, think about it, I have a dream. Is Dr. King saying, “We need to fuck some shit up.” I've just chosen a profane way to say it, but baked in there is the same deeply American idea of let's make things better.

[0:55:29.1] LW: Right. How can people find you? Are you engaging with the public in preferable ways? Are you on Instagram, Twitter?

[0:55:36.6] RE: Yeah. I'm Robert Egger. That’s E-G-G-E-R. I’m @RobertEgger on Twitter, Instagram. If you're on the move, fucking shit up, I have a website and I'm easy to find. I'm just regger@fuckingshitup.net.

[0:55:50.8] LW: Okay. Well, thank you again, Robert. I really appreciate it. I'm sure that the listeners of this episode got a lot of inspiration from this, which is [inaudible 0:56:00.4].

[0:56:00.2] RE: Right on my friend. It’s a joy to share some time with you. I'll see you soon, man.

[0:56:04.1] LW: Absolutely. Thank you so much.

[END OF EPISODE]

[0:56:06.6] LW: Thank you so much for listening to my interview with Robert Egger. I hope you have a new appreciation for repurposing and all the ways that we can use what we have now to simply take that next step. By taking the next step, that's how we get the clues for the step after that.

In the meantime, while you're out there taking your steps, make sure that you're also subscribed to At The End Of The Tunnel, so you can hear even more amazing stories about regular folks, just like me and you who are overcoming all kinds of odds to help people and to be of service to the world.

Also, don't forget to rate and review the podcast if you haven't already. You can find links to everything that Robert and I discussed in the show notes below. Please, also share this conversation with your friends who are struggling to find their own inspiration, or start their own movement. I will see you back here next week, same day, same time.

Thanks again for listening.

[END]