Track & Food Podcast
Track & Food Podcast
Is There a Right Way to Run a Neighbourhood Restaurant Anymore? (with James Langford-Smith & James Iranzad)
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What exactly is a "neighbourhood restaurant", and is it something that can be manufactured through PR and virality? To understand these questions in greater detail - including how they relate to Vancouver’s current dining scene - I sit down with podcast regulars James Langford-Smith (June, Pamplemousse Jus) and James Iranzad (Gooseneck Hospitality) to get their individual insights, expectations, and dining experiences of the "neighbourhood restaurant". Will the financials of operations make the romantic idea of the “neighbourhood restaurant” a more complicated concept than ever before? Find out where we stand by listening to my conversation with the local F&B/hospitality industry vets now.
And for further reading on this topic, check out my latest column, "The Restaurant Everyone Wants Doesn’t Make Sense Anymore", via Substack.
Coming up, talking neighborhood restaurants with my good friends James Ironzad and James Langford Smith. That's coming up next. Today's episode of Trackin' Food is brought to you by Scout Magazine. If you're wanting to learn more about Vancouver's food and cultural sphere, with regards to community news, new restaurant openings, central guides to some of the city's best offerings, as well as who's hiring, Scout is where you should go. You can find them at ScoutMagazine.ca. That's ScoutMagazine.ca. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. My name is Jamie Ma. I'm your host as always. For today's episode, we're spending it on the neighborhood restaurant. What it is, how do we define it? Are they even still relevant and possible in 2026? And is virality a major factor in establishing the concept of this? And how does PR work? I wrote a column about this idea recently, and I brought on my good friends James Ironsad and James Lankford Smith, gentlemen who've been on here numerous times, to discuss it with me. They had their thoughts. It turned out to be a very lively and fun discussion. So I was really excited about that. Otherwise, things here in Vancouver were going really well. World Cup uh fever just ended. I think the city really took off and showed its true colors during this time. Uh so that was really cool to see. Even though I do know that it was a little bit difficult for some restaurants that didn't have TVs. So hopefully, if you didn't get a chance to check out your local neighborhood restaurant, I hope you do so. Otherwise, I did try the pork up at Boulevard recently, and I must say it is quite spectacular. So kudos to that team and Roger Ma. This is a great episode, as always. James and Jimmy bring a great wealth of insights and humor, and it's a lot of fun. And we dig into this idea of a neighborhood restaurant. So if you've been to one or you have one personally that you've frequent often, you'll probably enjoy this episode. So without further ado, I'll bring them on and do enjoy. Gentlemen, how are we doing today?
SPEAKER_02Hey, we're back, baby.
SPEAKER_03Good day, mates. Um doing okay. Yeah? Yeah, I'm pretty good. Yeah? It's been a minute. I mean, me and you did a podcast about a month or two months ago. Uh you phoned in. I did, yeah. It's the first time we've had you on since I've been. That feels like ages ago. When was that? It was in May. It was in May. This April or May. This is the first time I've had you. We've actually had the three of us together since I think January. Well, probably longer than that. It's been a while. I haven't been here.
SPEAKER_02I remember we did one in November.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. It's it's been a while. Yeah, anyway. Well, a couple good things. I wanted to catch up with you guys more in the sense of like, you know, we obviously talk all the time, but I mean, you've been dealing with all this World Cup stuff. Your emotions are high right now. Yes. James, we haven't actually had you on in a while. So, like, what's how's Pomplamous? How's life running June? And uh what's the first time?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's busy. I mean, you know, I've had a lot of yeah, but both things have been really amazing and challenging at the same time. I've also had some personal challenges, as the two of you know about. And I think, I don't know, like it I realized in the last couple of months we talk about mental health a lot in our industry and and with us personally, and I'm a big advocate for going to therapy. And I know Jimmy also goes to therapy regularly as well. And we have this incredible support network. I'm very grateful to have this incredible support network around me, but I realize in the last couple of months I haven't been the best version of myself. Well, I've been dealing with a lot of grief and personal grief, and I've had so many amazing people reach out and support me through a challenging time. And especially Jordan and Tyler at the winery have been really incredible. And then Keenan, Cam and Letty and the entire Dune team have been really insane and incredible, and especially the the staff there while I was going through something that was really traumatic and tragic for me and losing someone. And I just really want to make it clear that I didn't feel great about reaching out for help and like kind of burying my head in the sand. I was like, I'm gonna be okay, I'll be fine. Like I'm normally the person that you know is there for other people, and it's been a really hard, you know, like three months for myself. And I just I want everyone to know that it's okay not to be okay, and there's people out there that really love you and and and want to be there for you. And I've done a bad job of accepting kind of that help and and that grace when people want to check in. And if you're not okay and you don't have the capacity to kind of talk to somebody, like just know that there's a lot of resources out there, and and I've used all of them recently, and I definitely feel like I'm on the other end of it, and I've dealt with a lot of grief in the last five years, with a lot of us have as well, and losing people in this industry and then losing a father figure to me was really challenging. And yeah, I'm just I I think now I'm in a way better headspace to kind of be a little bit more capable of taking some more things on, and I'm just really grateful for my community and the people around me, and just want everyone to know that it's okay not to be okay, and like to always reach out to your friends, and when and if your friends aren't responding, like just checking on them because I would I can't stress the amount of people that sent me insane messages, people that I didn't really know that well, just to be like, Hey, we haven't seen you around or we haven't heard from you, and it it meant a lot. So, but apart from that, the restaurant June is really busy, it's had an insane 14 months, you know. Letitia did a great job setting up that room with the opening team, and it's been a privilege to kind of be involved in some capacity, and I'm gonna stay around for as long as I can. You know, it's challenging, obviously, with the winery, I'm away a lot, but it's been really fun, and you know, we're hiring right now at June and a little bit understaffed, but I feel like we've made some really big forward steps and momentum's high. And um, I think the kitchen team is really crushing it right now. The beverage program's always really insane, and having Catherine Woods come on as our wine director's been a big bump in our wine program, and seeing like the list be curated towards menu changes all the time. And this is wine school did an insane job, but it's nice to have somebody there every day that is really trying to boots on the ground and cater to what the needs of the clientele are. And then Pompo Moose, Jordan's just kind of been holding down the fort. Me and Tyler both have full-time jobs right now, and I'm on the road trying to sell wine a lot. And Jordan's been farming and making wine and doing everything, so she's just the power horse behind that business. And come harvest, we'll all be back together, which is really exciting. And yeah, the wineries we've had a pretty good start to the year. Um, there's a lot of BC wine in market right now because we had a great vintage in 2025, so you definitely have seen some more competition, and it's a little bit harder to sell wine. And FIFA hasn't been great for a lot of our restaurant accounts, so we definitely saw a big dip in wine sales from some of our bigger restaurants that were affected by FIFA. But I think the tasting room's been busy, things are picking up, and we're releasing new wines every other week, essentially, and the wines are tasting really well and really well received, so that's really exciting.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I know it's uh I was lucky enough to hang out with you last week on Wednesday. We were down at the Olympic Village Farmers Market. Farmers Market, thank you. And you were that was the first time you'd ever done it, and it was kind of cool, it was a beautiful day, and we're walking by and it's so busy. It was like if anybody's been down that never been down to that one, it's I mean, it's really close to me, but it was like I was like, wow, this is actually a really good location, good ability for people to walk through, and it's just got a obviously the view is amazing, but yeah, there's a lot of great purveyors down there, and you were you were actually quite busy.
SPEAKER_01And like the the thing that I found really interesting, we do lots of markets in the Okanagan, and and the Pentington market's been great and it's been amazing for us, especially when we first opened. But the False Creek one like didn't see the volume of people that would see at Pentacton, maybe. Um also it's an evening market, so this could be a weeknight market. A weeknight market. So this could be a little bit different because people are more inclined to try wine or to buy bottles in the evening. Wait a sec. But are you saying the ones on the nights are slower or busier? They're normally slower with volume.
SPEAKER_03Do you not go to like the kids or trout lake farmers market at all? How busy do they get?
SPEAKER_02Like a lot busier.
SPEAKER_03Really? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I mean, I I mean I'm just they're always on weekends and I'm working weekends. No, no, I wasn't like, you know, criticizing you. I'm just saying like so I go every weekend, especially in the summer. Yeah, and they're very busy. But like the the midweek markets are are are mild.
SPEAKER_01And the Penticton market is, you know, it starts 8.30. Like that people can that's a very successful market. People can purchase from 8.30 until one o'clock, and yeah, that's the largest true farmers market in Western Canada. True farmer's market meaning like a owner, operator, or farmer has to be at their stall at all times. Whereas other markets in Vancouver or elsewhere, you can send an employee that's attached to the business, which makes a lot of sense because if you're growing something in summerland, you can't always drive every week to the city, and which I completely get. But I love the love the Pentacan market for that reason. However, like at 8 30 in the morning, I I'm not really selling a bunch of wine. So like it was the evening market was really interesting for me because I had a lot of consumers that were looking to purchase things for dinner, and then they see wine, and so like the taste to purchase ratio was a little bit higher than what I'm used to, even though the volume was lower. I had more people buying bottles because I thought it was funny that people were trying to haggle with you on your prices.
SPEAKER_03I was like, who's haggling at a farmer's market? Like, seriously, these are small business people, you know, it's just like you're trying to like price and like bring the price down.
SPEAKER_01I was like, obviously, he's like, Yeah, I mean, we we charge a little bit more to sell wine in Vancouver because I don't live here permanently. Like, I I spend you know, like a week here than a week at home, and it's expensive for me to get back and forth. So, like, and we I can't give the same. Right, you shouldn't have to explain you shouldn't have to explain yourself. I don't think you should have to explain yourself at all. I mean, it was four dollars more a bottle than it is if you came to the seller door or the Penticton market. But yeah, I mean you you heard me. I was like, unfortunately, I don't have a budget to discount wine. Um, you're talking to one of the operators and owners.
SPEAKER_03No, it was cool. I mean, like a lot of people were doing exactly what you were saying. They would come in, they're like, they buy a bottle of two for dinner. I saw one guy come in and buy he'd buy your whole trio. Yeah, which is like I love your wine seed 'em all the time. And then yeah, it was I thought it was great.
SPEAKER_01I think that was the biggest thing now. We're five years into pomplamous. It was really nice to um be at a market where I'd say 80% of the people tasting the wines like recognized or had the wine before, which was cool because you know, three years ago they're like, is this grapefruit juice?
SPEAKER_03Jimmy, are you pointing pomplamoose at all your businesses now?
SPEAKER_02Not all of them, sir. Yeah, not all of them. We're probably due for a little reorder, actually. We'll have to look into that. But yeah, we should pour it lucky. I think we've got to be a good one. Yeah, because Lucky Taco moves a lot of wine. Do you even sell wine? Not very much, honestly. Yeah, I mean, we have but do you sell Argentinian wine, probably? No. I think we should. Oh my god, you guys are just mean right now. I'm still feeling very vulnerable. They'll just say iron's ad on the back. I'm still feeling very vulnerable. Did you cry? I did cry yesterday, yeah.
unknownDamn.
SPEAKER_02I'm not afraid to admit that. I grew up in England, man. Like it's my childhood. Like it's been 40 plus years of I don't know what of the emotional, whatever. Was it Rudy? My favorite English player? Yeah. Because my yeah, my favorite players, ironically, are, and I'm you know, first to admit this, are not actually English player players. Is it Bex? David Beckham is not actually like one of my favorites. Oh no, I'm saying who is your favorite? Who's your favorite English player? My favorite English player. I wish I had an answer off the top of my head for this. I don't really have one. No, you never had one like that. You're like, I never really thought about this. My son would kill me because he loves having these conversations of like breaking it down, like, well, who's your favorite English player? Who's your favorite player at this position? I grew up like Eric Cantana's the reason I'm a Manchester United fan, and I like Zaynadin Zidane and and Leo Messi and so on and so forth. But none of them are English, unfortunately. Zedan is like a big legend. Yeah, we love him. Anyway, we are talking about that right now. We sell you know what we sell at Lucky Taco because we sell very, very little. We sell uh cans of Strange Fellows wine.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Can you do cans for him?
SPEAKER_01No, no, no, okay. I mean there's a really funny um meme. I mean Burgepock, they do cans, and their can wine's great.
SPEAKER_02Yes, but they like what we do is we just have like a white, rose, and red.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they do rose cans.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, lots of them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And you can purchase them.
SPEAKER_02But I just have all the same supplier off yeah, whatever price.
SPEAKER_01But there's a funny Instagram, I mean, of a French man doing poetry about wine in a can that if you haven't seen, I highly recommend.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Look at it's pretty funny.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Business is good. Business is good, yeah. I mean, I must have been really good for bells. Well, I mean, Bells and Whistles has had its two best months of all time. So I mean, it's really, really enjoyed the World Cup. The other restaurants are maybe kind of like one might be up a little bit, one might be down a little bit, the other ones are they're all pretty flat, honestly. It's like the same ish as last summer, especially when you factor in like some some menu price increases over the year. But you know, it's okay. I mean, we're lucky. We are. I know we're gonna be talking about neighborhood restaurants today a little bit, but we are truly neighborhood restaurants, and so we're not so affected. I think some of the downtown restaurants, maybe some of those that James was referencing that purchases wines are the ones that didn't quite get the turnout they were expecting.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, like I know if you know, for people thinking about out there, World Cup is coming to an end, we got the final here this Sunday, but like throughout this past five weeks, I've talked to a lot of people in the industry, and if you had TVs, you were great. If you didn't have TVs, yes and no. I think it's if you didn't have TVs, some places were, but I know a lot of places did take a hit. I'm not bemoaning Vancouver for you know getting the World Cup. I think in some ways, I think it's been a boon economically for the city in a lot of ways. Yeah. But there was a lot of things that were done that I think are a little bit like I think a lot of ways when the when people were coming out of the games, they were literally funneling them up to Yale town and downtown.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And they're basically saying stay away from downtown, stay away from China Gastown and Chinatown and the downtown east side. Obviously, I get it. But I mean a lot of businesses in this area I know that definitely were slower. And I've talked to other restaurateurs who've said that you know this has been a little bit more challenging for them. But I think it's for a lot of people, it's some people it's been a big hit, but I think a lot of people it's been probably kind of what you were saying, a little bit flat, maybe a little bit down, but nothing too crazy.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, I I think you know, for us, like you know, we operate our restaurants in the so-called I don't know if you know, Kitsalano and Carousel, they qualify as suburbs. I suppose they do. North Vancouver, River District, whatever, all of our spots, like people like locals who maybe just didn't necessarily want to tough their way through the traffic downtown and whatnot, they're just happy to visit their local restaurant, their neighborhood restaurant. And it worked for us. So for others, I think again, down I'm sure the majority of restaurants that didn't get where they wanted to go or saw their sales like lower than maybe a similar time last year were the ones that were downtown.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean the restaurants that I think it really helped with the Granville's trip, you know, and the bond. And like to me, like they're the ones that we don't really need to highlight also personally, but that's like I'm a me, a me thing. Like, I'm conflicted because I really wanted the Chinatown, gas town businesses that I love and adore, and you know, other businesses that my friends own to do really well. And I really thought that having an international crowd would be like, okay, let's go and these cool natural wine bars or let's go to you know these cool, like recommended restaurants or Michelin restaurants, and that wasn't the case. Then, however, being in Vancouver for, you know, the better part of 10 years on and off now, and living in Canada for over 15, I thought seeing how it brought people together, how it brought my staff together. We have, you know, working in restaurants, we have this amazing ability to have so many different people from all around the world. And seeing some of the Canada games and the like everyone being so proud of how well Canada did. And I like I love the scenes and it it really showed off the city. And I think that maybe yeah, it did a disservice to some businesses, but I'm hoping that it'll make Vancouver more fun in the future and like just be able to like have these cool outdoor events and extended patio licenses and like watch parties and yeah, the vibe was good, undeniably.
SPEAKER_02Like, I mean, I I popped down a Gravel Street once, and it was amazing. Yeah, you know, everyone's out, everyone it's super positive, and everyone loves each other, loves each other. The games are all in daylight, it's safe, it's like you know, the city showed so well overwhelmingly out of the 16 host cities, it seemed to be pretty unanimous that Vancouver represented itself the best.
SPEAKER_01And I'm not a FIFA or soccer fan. Like I watched a game with Jimmy at Bell's like what a week ago or two weeks ago, and I had to ask him the rules, like I had fucking no idea what was going on. So like I'm not a a football per or a soccer person at all. However, like I the more things that we do to bring like 50 best and Michelin, and I know there's a lot of people that will be like, oh, it's negative for the city, but I think we need to like highlight Vancouver and be a little bit more fun at times.
SPEAKER_03No, no, I agree with you. I think I I like as much as I see all these things, I think it's it's been a good thing for the city.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, affected June for sure. Like we were like definitely a lot slower. Any day there was a game in Vancouver, we were a lot slower. And it was funny, like the day that the last game finished, the Columbia game, that Columbia played Switzerland, right? Here in Vancouver, that was the last time. That's right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that was the last time.
SPEAKER_01So I drove back from I was at the winery that weekend and drove back, and it took me six and a half hours because traffic getting into the city was so bad. Oh, really? Yeah, and then I worked service, assuming that it would be like a slower night because it was our last game in Vancouver. But as soon as the game finished, it's got crushed. We got absol like destroyed on a Tuesday. So it's like, okay, if you feel it's done in Vancouver, now everyone can go out for dinner again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and that's the thing I think like I've already started seeing that is that like I've talked to seen gone out a lot ever since kind of like we had our last game. And even at the hotel and everything, I've seen a complete flip where it's like people are like, all right, it's over, games are done here. Vocals are coming back, we can go out now, it's normal. The traffic patterns are gonna be a little more less restricted.
SPEAKER_01I haven't been in the tasting room that much this year, like maybe one weekend a month right now. But we hired a great German to run our tasting room, and Jordan has been in the tasting room quite a bit with Tyler. And she was saying a lot of the Vancouver people that we've seen in the Okanagan are avoiding, we're avoiding FIFA or like coming down to the Okanagan to like get out of the city to avoid it. And like as somebody who delivers wine, like I'm driving back and forth, you know, all the time. Delivering wine downtown fucking sucked. Like there was one day I delivered wine and gas down at Nelson and Seagull, and it took me an hour and 20 minutes to get to June. What? Yeah, I got stuck in like they had shut down all these pavilions and because I didn't know there was a game on. So by the time they divert traffic, it was like it was a fucking nightmare.
SPEAKER_02Oh man, that's unlucky. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03That in itself right there is sucks. I think you you came to see me one day, I think, because you couldn't get around to those things.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, yeah, I forgot about that.
SPEAKER_03You like you were like, I can't get I can't get home because like there was so it was blocked off everywhere.
SPEAKER_02I don't know how much that was actually FIFA related though, because I was coming from the North Shore and trying to get to I can't remember where I was going, to be honest, but I was coming off the Lionsgate Bridge out of the park, and the traffic was ridiculous. And to be honest, I'd already been sitting on the causeway and in the park for like an hour. You know, I had to go pee. I'm like, I'm gonna go see Jamie, take a leak, and uh, you know, have a martini, and then and then by then hopefully it'll open up a little bit, which it actually did.
SPEAKER_01So that's my move when I drive from the farm back to the city. Yeah, like I try and just book it right and don't stop, and you get stuck in that traffic and you know, Chilliwack in Abbotsford, and then I'm like, oh man, I have to pee so badly. Then I just the I just book it to It's Okay Bar and like pull up right there, you know, on Hastings off the highway, run straight in, all the staff there are good friends, they sell pompa moose and go beeline straight to the bathroom. I come back, they've poured me like a pint of lunch.
SPEAKER_02Which is the irony because then you have a beer and then you gotta go pee again and like 25 minutes.
SPEAKER_01I'm also late to like wherever I'm going, so I don't have the time, but it's I can relate to that. It's really funny.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, that is actually quite funny.
SPEAKER_01I like that. That's a good stuff. It's my routine stuff, but it's okay as soon as I get off the phone.
SPEAKER_03If you guys are listening, if you need to go to the bathroom and you're in a hurry and you're on a good time, uh you can go to the show.
SPEAKER_02It's also a good time to pop this can open.
SPEAKER_01Also, it's okay, but it's just a great place to go and have a beer, and you can also watch sports. Thank you, Sammy. We're drinking some Laser Light.
SPEAKER_03So that's I think Laser Light's sponsored the last two episodes. It's been I think it's been the last two or three. It's pretty fun. Good, good local. Yeah, it's delicious. It's easy, easy to drink. Yeah, last week I had to order three kegs and this week I had to four. So this stuff is uh is moving. Doing good job. Rewind. Love you. I should get that sponsored. Anyways, gentlemen, I brought you here today to talk about a column I recently wrote because I'm trying to write a lot more lately.
SPEAKER_01Uh well, hold up. That's because uh didn't you just get into journalism school at UBC? Yeah. Is that why you're trying to like get masters in journalism?
SPEAKER_02I thought we talked about maybe because you weren't here last year. But I was commenting on how I didn't know you could actually take get your master's without getting without getting an undergrad.
SPEAKER_03I've been writing for a long time, but I mean I'm trying to write more consistently now, is basically the better word. And this column I just published is my 141st column that I've written. Nice. But yeah, yes, I did get into master school. Congrats, man. That's a big deal.
SPEAKER_02That's good that you know there's that famous story about a young writer who goes to visit, I think he goes to visit Chekhov, wants to show him what he's written. And Chekhov asks him how many how many stories have you written. And he says something like, He reads it, it's a good story, but he's like, How many have you written? And he's like, I don't know, like 10. It's like, come back to me when you've written a hundred, you know, like you gotta hone your craft a little bit. And you know, at 141 or whatever it is, articles you're really getting there, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, I mean, it's just I find the best way to become good at most things, and you know, for the longest time I wasn't able to get a job in journalism and I didn't have really a lot of experience. So for me, it was just like, okay, so if I just start writing on my own and getting better at it and getting better at it and getting better at it, and just like learning and getting people to give you feedback and your reading, and then obviously going to journalism school helped out, and then now it's like I'm gonna be going to do my master's degree. It's just more like you know, you start to find your voice and start to figure out what works and what doesn't, and it's just like anything. But I what I've learned is that you consistency is the best part. And so and it's also more fun, you know, if I can I try to put it in the city.
SPEAKER_02By consistency, you mean like the discipline of like writing I try I'm trying to write a new column every two weeks.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so that's the goal. I have a sub stack, and you know, I wrote for the longest time on medium. Yeah, but medium has kind of changed their the way they present everything, so it's not as easy for a reader to find my work. Yeah. So that's where tracking food was the But now I have a sub stack and it's a little more consistent, a little more easy, and people can find it there a lot easier. So it's it's a better medium, I guess.
SPEAKER_01How many how many reads do you get? Do you can you record that? Do you see how many people read your article? Yeah, yeah. I mean you can.
SPEAKER_03Of course you can. I mean, uh it's I mean my sub stack is small because I haven't really I don't really promote it. I'm not really kind of putting it out there. But I mean this one, this column got probably my biggest so far. You write regularly, Jane? But I mean like my stuff on medium, I have columns on medium that have over 14,000 reads. That's crazy. Do you journal?
SPEAKER_01Like I journal.
SPEAKER_03Do you journal?
SPEAKER_02I do not journal. Not on a regular basis. Like, you know, on trips and such, you know, I might uh do a 10-minute writing session or something in the morning. That's why I do it. I think most therapists would tell you to journal. It's generally very good for you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I mean the cool thing about medium is like once it's on there and you have it on your thing, people will find your column. Like I have people reading columns that I wrote like six years ago. And then you're like, I'll look at the stats on that one. I mean, I looked at one the other day that I think it had like I think it had like 17,000 reads. Yeah. And like, and then it shows you your open rate, shows you how many people commented, how many people liked it. So it's yeah, I mean it's it's interesting. But I mean, then you look back at the stuff you wrote six years ago and you're like, you know, how terrible was I?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but I mean that's just the plight of any creative person, though, right?
SPEAKER_03Like how bad were you when you first opened up your first restaurant in the very night?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think back on those moments and it's just like, my God, like what was I thinking? But at the end of the day, we're all just a culmination of our experiences at any point of our lives. You know, my writing teachers in university, one of the like one in particular, the number one thing that he, I think, instilled in me was you just gotta, you get you just gotta figure out when to let go. At some point, you just gotta stop because you could always keep improving a piece that you're writing because you you're always learning, you're always observing, so on and so forth. But you just gotta let go and release and then move on to the next one and forgive yourself for anything that maybe would be a a challenge for you to look back on at some point.
SPEAKER_03Well, the one thing that I find interesting, and obviously we'll try to move off this topic because I don't like talking about myself, but in the sense of like I've had a lot of people tell me that they want to start writing and they want to get into it and they want to do that, but they always get so afraid of publishing it and putting it out there.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And one thing I got over that was like it's a very personal thing though.
SPEAKER_03But I got over that a long time ago because like the minute you push put something out in public, especially if you try to push it or show it to anyone and put it in social media or whatever, and people can actually give you like you have to get over the idea that people like not everyone's gonna like everything you write. And not everyone's gonna like not everyone's gonna agree with what you write or your perspective, and you have to get over that. And I've had people tell me that they're like, I think you're wrong, or think you're this is stupid, or like whatever. It's like you just have to get over that. But some a lot of people they get so much in their own head. Yeah. And so it's like I always try to say to people, I'm like, you have to learn that you can't write for other people and write for yourself, but also just like if you think that you're you're worried about other people having problems with it, then you're thinking about the wrong way. Because if because if you're thinking about like I mean, you the same thing with your businesses, right? You don't make why I mean you try not to run your business the way people want it. You try to write your business the way you want to want it, and hopefully people like it.
SPEAKER_02Uh I think that is the case with me. I think that's the case with James and the folks over at Pompa Moose. Like, you know, we create things that we love and we believe in. Rick Rubin talks about this a lot with regards to you know, his like with the creative act and his podcast. Like, you want to create something that you think is beautiful, and then you just put it out to the universe. People like it, they don't, and uh you you create it for that for God in like small g God, like for the sake of the the the act itself for for the sake of beauty, and and that's enough. As soon as you start catering to an audience or writing for some someone in particular, or you know, to fill a niche is like then you know you're incapable of creating something I think that's truly special.
SPEAKER_01And so it's it's also way easier. Like at the end of the day, everyone's in sales. You're always trying to sell something, whether it's you know, at your restaurant, how to come to my restaurant wine. If you don't purely believe in what you've created or made or the environment you've created, then it's so much harder to sell. So for us, like again, like we also like we make a wine that we that we all love and this expression of it, and if it doesn't sell very well, we'll readjust and maybe not do that skew again. Right. However, we're not like changing our whole identity as people.
SPEAKER_02But I mean, yeah, your craft is obviously something that obviously is it's just in capitalist the kind of perspective you have to look at it. When we talk about poetry or writing, it's you know, like I don't think like Rambaud or or or or Flannery O'Connor were thinking about selling their poetry. No, that's true. They were just writing for the sake of it, you know, for the necessity of it. And hopefully that's what you're doing, Jamie. You know, like in for in my case and and and James's case with the wine, like, you know, we our dilemma is that we also have to, you know, we've got bills to pay, you know, and so we have to reconcile.
SPEAKER_01But the root of what we do is like, I mean, you have my sales pitch at the farmer's market. I was like myself and two pals. We have 10 acres in some land, we farm organically, make wines, we enjoy drinking. I almost could say it by the end of it because I heard you say it so many times. Yeah, if you don't like something, I take no offense, everyone's palate's different.
SPEAKER_03I was like, I was like, you could have left, and I was like, yeah, I'll do this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know, so like we we we do like the and the same with James and any any of our restaurateurs that we love and adore, like you have this idea and this concept that you want to do that you think is beautiful, and then you build that and you hope that they come, and then you make adjustments when you need to to sustain the business.
SPEAKER_03No, I love it. I appreciate you guys reading the column. I kind of forced you to do it as it was your homework.
SPEAKER_01I wrote a column, but it was Jimmy pulls up on his phone to read it quickly. Quick skim, quick skim. Just kidding.
SPEAKER_03Just kidding. Of course I read it. I wrote it, it's called The Restaurant Everyone Wants Doesn't Make Sense Anymore. And it's based off the captivating title, by the way, Jamie. I know. I I found that uh I realized that that worked. Basically, the idea is Vancouver's economics have made the neighborhood restaurant a gamble, regardless of how honestly or cynically it's pursued. Um, this idea came from a column that I read on Eater a couple weeks ago. The column was called No Influencers in Neighborhood Restaurant Please. How the neighborhood restaurant jumped a shark in Los Angeles. Now, this entire discussion that we're about to have is about the idea of a neighborhood restaurant. And what I found interesting about this column, James, Jimmy, uh James, I don't think you got a chance to read that one.
SPEAKER_01The Eater one I did, yeah. Oh, you did? Okay, good. Yeah, yeah, especially because I was based in LA and I eat a lot in LA in neighborhood restaurants because I stay in a neighborhood there.
SPEAKER_03This one I found interesting because the author, Hillary Pollock, she basically discusses her frustration with how social media and marketing teams are presenting new restaurants with this tagline that they're neighborhood restaurants, they're neighborhood joints, they're places that are gonna have that neighborhood feel. And she basically says that that's not fair because a true neighborhood restaurant is something that is something that's earned. And she goes through the three, the four C pillars. A neighbor restaurant is consistent, convenient, comfortable, and casual. And then she goes on to talk about how like can I challenge that for a sec? Yeah, I mean, or is it too early? No, no. I mean, the part of this part of what I wanted to write about is that my thesis is the idea that like to have a neighborhood restaurant the way she specifically articulates it, is almost impossible in 2026 because she says that like a neighborhood restaurant should be something you can just walk into at no uh any moment's notice. It should be super casual that they should know you there, and there should be like a little bit more of a carefree attitude. But like most restaurants can't live and die like that, they need to have a certain level of people consistently coming in.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and most neighborhoods can't sustain a restaurant like that either.
SPEAKER_03No, and so that was kind of where I went to.
SPEAKER_02The the four C's, though, I have to just say the consistent one is is a tricky one for me.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_02Like I don't like the other three are absolutely necessary if you want to recap it, you know, for our listeners. Like casual, comfortable, and convenient are all necessary for a neighborhood restaurant. Consistent, while it's important, is not actually an essential aspect of it being deemed a uh a neighborhood restaurant. In fact, you could argue that a restaurant with that mindset might actually be allowed some inconsistency from time to time because of the fact that its priority is on making things simple and uh and it doesn't need to be as consistent as we would regard like a corporate restaurant, which I know James loves corporate restaurants, and they can be commended for their consistency, but not for I you know, that doesn't make them inherently neighborhood restaurants.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so I definitely want to dig into that. Yeah. I mean, okay, so I'm not trying to just jump on the wrong.
SPEAKER_02No, not at all. I think I think I'm not trying to jump on the writer right off the bat, though, because I did think it's a great article and it's a good take, but that point stood out to me and I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so why don't you continue? Like, what were your initial thoughts of my column and then what she wrote and kind of the whole thing?
SPEAKER_02I like, you know, first of all, you made your point about a restaurant that could be deemed a neighborhood restaurant being unpretentious, familiar, and unhurried. And I think all of those are excellent adjectives that I would also use to define a neighborhood restaurant. They all kind of fall within the casual of what she calls the four C's. So that was a point I think that was important to just break down a little bit. But the part she talks about virality, you know, of of of going viral and that being like a a necessity in the modern day of of being a successful restaurant. And again, I challenge that as well. I think you don't think that's important. I don't think it's important.
SPEAKER_01I think that it depends on longevity, right? You can go viral and be really popular for a year, but then is that restaurant going to be there in 10 years? And some of our favorite neighborhood restaurants are 10 to 15 years standing.
SPEAKER_03You know, yeah, but I mean, but they still play the virality game and they still feel a certain need to it. I mean, I talked to Sammy about this, who works at uh who owns Parkside and Rewind. I mean, he's done he's told me that specifically, I don't want to single him out, but I'm saying he's specifically told me that he's like there's a certain level of pressure that he feels he needs to kind of work with when it comes to social media and being present and kind of making sure that the brand is visible. Someone's not got a restaurant though. No, but he owns a brewery and he owns a very popular brewery and he's in a very competitive market. Yeah. For me, the biggest And I love that I love that he still wants to make sure that he does that. He's also really good at it.
SPEAKER_01I think any good operator is going to adjust to their times and what they need to do to keep their room busy. However, I think a big difference that she skips around from is like a neighborhood restaurant that has 25 or 30 seats is a lot different than a neighborhood restaurant that maybe have a hundred seats.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01And in LA, there's lots of little small neighborhood restaurants that will only have 30 seats, and there's some that are still a neighborhood restaurant, like a casual Italian place that will have 120 seats. And the 120 seat restaurants are a lot more prominent on social media because they have a lot more seats to fill, you know. And if you only have 30 seats, it's a lot easier to fill that room in with a population of what 22 million people in LA or something, you know?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So, and same here in Vancouver that we see that all the time. Like, you know, Bao Bay has 64 seats, right? Oka has 30 seats. So, like, it's double the size. Like, Bao Bay needs to be more present, in my opinion, on social media because it's also like competing with all the other Chinatown restaurants that arguably are really popping off right now, or have been for a long time. Not that to say that commercial drive isn't, but Oka is 30 seats and they don't need to have a social media presence. I think they post like once a month, if that when they're closing for a staff party.
SPEAKER_03But I mean, okay, so better question is what is a neighborhood restaurant in your mind then?
SPEAKER_02I don't necessarily disagree. I just to finish the point about virality, if I may, though, like I just feel like when you bring in anything that is remotely dependent on popular culture, you're giving yourself a shelf life of like 12 minutes. That's actually I'm I'm stealing that. That's a line from Aaron Sorkin in the white in like writing it some episode of The West Wing. But I think Aaron Sorkin's an amazing writer, and you know, good writers are brilliant observers of society, and so it's relevant, you know. Like in this case, I just feel like then it's on to the next one. If you buy into that, if you succumb to that, and you know I love Sam so much, but I disagree with him on this.
SPEAKER_03Well, I'm not saying he I shouldn't put him out like that, and I apologize to that's okay.
SPEAKER_02But I'm not saying that he feels a need to, I just think that he does feel a need to like listen, restaurateurs are insecure people, and I'll just put myself at the top of that list. You know, like you're only as good as your next meal. I chose this industry because I was an insecure person before I started doing this. And you get instant gratification, like it's instant and constant validation that you are enough, that you are good, all rejection, and so on and so forth. And and for what, yeah, exactly, right? Like every single monthly staff meeting, we look at the reviews and we're like, okay, how did we do what's the ratio of four and five stars versus one and two? Is it a hundred to one? Okay, we're fine. If it's not, then let's talk about it and dive into it further and let's look for patterns. Like we we look at all that stuff. So at the end of the day, like if someone is thinking about that with regards to social media and feeling like you what you called pressure or an insecurity to try to keep up, you know, respectfully, I just feel like that is again the wrong approach. Going back to the Rick Rubin thing, like you cannot look at it like that. We have 25 or 30,000 followers on social media. That's just Instagram, let alone all the other shit. And I'm just like, we post regularly. I think you know, Tyrell does it for us, he does a brilliant job. But at the end of the day, like, you know, we do that honestly, like for informational purposes, but also just for fun. You know, it's part of the identity stuff, sure. But like, you know, if you are depending on that for the success of your neighborhood restaurant, as is suggested in this article, then I think that's deeply flawed.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so but then the next part, and I touch on this in my column, I say uh the one of the subsections I call playing the game or losing it, and I reference something from Prof. Media, Scott Galloway. One of uh the writers for that company writes uh piece called Today's Top Founders all have one thing in common. Founders with big followings raise more money and spend less requiring customers. And I reference that in the sense of like this idea that like the people that are really growing their brands right now on social media and growing their brands in in whatever business that they're trying to do, have learned that they need to have a big presence and they need to have that their presence on social media almost, almost has as much, if not more, importance on them building out a successful business. Now, the reason why I say this is that like when I go out and see all these marketing events and I see them all the time at the hotel, and I see all these marketing events where there's like uh I mean Gordon Ramsey talked about this on his show on Netflix. He said he even said it on episode number one before they even started their new business up at the whatever the high new the high restaurant in in London, yeah. He said that we need to invite a hundred influencers who's coming in because if we don't have this social media presence pushing us, yeah, we're screwed. I've talked about this in past.
SPEAKER_02But that's not a neighborhood restaurant.
SPEAKER_03No, no, what I'm saying is but to build a business, and I'm saying to build a business and to have a neighborhood restaurant is the idea like when she says about having a classic neighborhood restaurant, it's like this restaurant that's like been there for 30 years, it's in the corner, it's been around for so long, people just go to it all the time. But it's like to be able to get to that point, to establish that point and still have that relevance. I don't know. I sometimes wonder like, do you still need to still participate? Like, there's a lot of great neighborhood restaurants in the city. I probably wonder if they still need to do that, or are they gonna start falling behind?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I I have two points here. Like, define a neighborhood restaurant is the hardest thing to do, I think, here. A big thing to me is money spent. So, like a perfect example is when Dachi opened, right? That's in a neighborhood that was on East East Hastings and just before Nanaimo. I think it's East Hastings and Garden, right? They opened with bootstraps, they took over an old existing restaurant, they would have spent the minimum amount of money that anyone spent to open a restaurant, probably in the last 10 years, and they worked every day there and created a neighborhood spot. They didn't need to have a huge social media presence because one, they don't didn't have the time to, but Miki did a great job with their social media and have built this neighborhood restaurant. Then you have a restaurant like June. June on Cambi is in an up-and-coming neighborhood. It is a neighborhood, technically verbatim.
SPEAKER_02It's I'm sorry, I don't know if you can call Cambi Village an up-and-coming neighborhood. Okay, but it's it is it's a neighborhood. It's a neighborhood. It's a dense residential neighborhood that has had people living in it for obviously like decades and decades.
SPEAKER_01Again, like no restaurant, like no big restaurants, like all small, like very small, like grab and go places. I know what you mean. They spend a hundred times the amount of money to build that restaurant than Dachi does. Yeah. So now you are on the hook for way more. And so if they didn't have a PR team, a social media team, and you're also employing five or uh ten times the stuff that Dachy did when they opened, like you can't afford not to have an empty restaurant from day one at June on Cambi. At Dachi, again, it's not ideal, but your risk for reward is a lot lower. So if Steven and Mickey working on the floor every night, which they did with one chef and one dishwasher, I remember they could afford to like do a thousand dollar dinner service. If June on Cambi did a thousand dollar dinner service, it would close within a week.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, facts, right? Like, so to me, I'm like, it's kind of tough to compare like apples to oranges sometimes with these neighborhood restaurants because yeah, they're in neighborhoods and the social media and PR thing is a push, but there's still like you it's a necessity if you on your spend on your build out.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so then the better question is is also what she talks about in that column. She says, I'm annoyed with all these new restaurants coming out and hyping themselves up as neighborhood restaurants.
SPEAKER_01But again, they're in a neighborhood, so why can't they be a neighborhood restaurant?
SPEAKER_03I'm not saying can you establish yourself that way?
SPEAKER_02I I think the point that she's trying to make is that people are taking advantage of that word, they're weaponizing that word essentially. Beg your pardon? Which which I mentioned, I talked to you. You do, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. But the economy's tough. And I think that it's become a bit of a buzzword to basically emote this kind of idea of accessibility, affordability, and so on and so forth. Because it's vague, you know, it's like the abstract painting. It tells you whatever you want to hear. Like I agree, like it's interesting that you mentioned Dashi. Like, we haven't talked about this yet, but you gave us some homework to think about our favorite neighborhood restaurants in the city. And Dash. Dashi was on my list. Dashi is on my list as well, too, which is um I think testament to how truly it is a neighborhood restaurant if we all independently came up with that. But I have no problem with people considering June a neighborhood restaurant, because even though it's it was more expensive to build considerably. It's expensive to eat that. Like it's way more easy to eat at Dodge. But also in a more affluent neighborhood. So people so if the people of that neighborhood choose to use it as their neighborhood restaurant because they can afford to afford it because they're brought a house. Take away from the fact that it's a neighborhood restaurant.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. That's my point. And the thing for us at June, right? Anytime someone comes in, it's tough to get a reservation at June. If you live in the neighborhood and we recognize you, you've come in like, let's say, three times, we'll be like, hey, like this isn't this is someone who lives in their hood who'll come back three or four times. We like that's what to me, that's what a real neighborhood restaurant is. Recognizing that somebody who wants to champion your restaurant, bring their friends in, tell their friends that when we're in town, that and they can walk there. That's good hospitality. The other thing, again, keep in mind like restaurants need to make fucking money. So if you can walk to my restaurant, that means you can drink a lot more. And we make money on booze. Number one fact. So if you get people in your neighborhood walking to your restaurant for dinner, they are automatically going to spend more money. Fact. So you want to capture that clientele that lives in your neighborhood because they're gonna spend more fucking money.
SPEAKER_03So what do you think that all the listeners out there are thinking in their minds when I bring up the idea of a neighborhood restaurant? What do you think they think a neighborhood restaurant is? Because I think what they think it is, is it's that place on the corner that's been around for 20 years that is cheap, foods average.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But they couldn't go there, they probably know their bartender, they probably know a server or two. They've been going there for a long time.
SPEAKER_02I think you're right about all that. I think the majority of people would think that way and they would agree with the article, even though I think that is an outdated fair. And I think it's not 100%. You know, I I I think that, you know. You own neighborhood restaurants. You just own several of them. Six of them, yeah. Like I would say that most people would disagree, but again, in in this case, and I say this with all the humility I'm capable of, like, they're wrong. And James and I are right, and you can still be a neighborhood restaurant that is pricey. So it's not just based on cost, it's based on convenience. The rest of her C's, I think, are totally is it convenient? Yeah, is it casual? Like, June, you can still pop in. Right. And Jane's in a t-shirt, fucking sweatpants and clogs in there with a tank top last night.
SPEAKER_03Well, I mean, she talks about that. She says it should be a place where you can just walk in where you just came from the channel.
SPEAKER_02June also has a massive bar. So, like, you know, if you don't have a reservation for a table, yeah, maybe you can just pop in and grab yourself, like, share a couple of dishes with your partner sitting at the edge of the bar, and it's a lovely thing.
SPEAKER_01You can be in and out in 25 minutes. You want to do a beef tota towel and a cocktail in 25 minutes. Wait a sec, you had someone come in with their clogs yesterday? Yeah, and sweatpants and a tank top. Can we talk about sweatpants?
SPEAKER_03Like, what is going on here?
SPEAKER_01Don't wear them outside the house, period.
SPEAKER_02Dude, it's like 30 degrees outside. Why are you wearing sweatpants anyway?
unknownI'd be fair enough.
SPEAKER_03But I mean the end of the, I mean, okay, so if we think about that, and then we think about all this stuff, I don't okay. So better question is can I also we can't do that?
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna jump in because you had one other point in here that I think is really related to what we were just talking about. Okay. And you said consistent exposure is winning out over quiet consistency. And this line I would like to challenge as well.
SPEAKER_03I I actually think it's actually very true.
SPEAKER_02I can be just because and I I didn't bring this up, but like I'm on the fence, so I want to be convinced. Yeah, Megari, but so I call it Oka. I'm sorry. Yeah, I know. I you know, I think we those of us who know and love these guys still call it Oka. So here's a restaurant that has absolutely no so-called exposure social media presence or whatever. Yeah, and is the definition of quiet consistency.
SPEAKER_01And there's lots of fucks about the food, but couldn't give two fucks if he gets a good thing. You're saying Oka has no one's social media presence at all? Oh like minimal once minimal, minimal. Literally once a month, like does it has an old doesn't take reservations, an old school book. If he doesn't like you, if they don't like you, you're a bad guess, you don't eat that. But again, they have fucking thirty seats. Yeah. So like the the it's easy to filter. It's a lot easier to be that way, in my opinion, with 30 seats. However, Oka is fucking incredible, or Megari, but Oka is incredible and amazing. Everyone should go there.
SPEAKER_03But like then, fuck, I fucked up. I thought you were talking about Oku. No. Oh, Oka. Oka. Oh, yeah. We're talking about pasta, yeah.
SPEAKER_02We're not talking about it.
SPEAKER_03I was like, Oku has a big social media presence. No, that's what I'm going to do. My bad.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, so Megarney has nothing and they're full every night. Yeah, La Quercha has nothing. Like there's loads of amazing restaurants. Yeah, I mean, there's gonna be examples you're gonna provide.
SPEAKER_03Disprove my point. I agree with you on that. But if you're if you're the place like June, yeah, and you spend as much money as they did building that place, which is millions of dollars, can you afford not to play the virality game? No, you cannot. Because as James just said, you cannot afford to have that thousand dollar service. Well, you need all the help you can get. You need to make sure you're full all the time.
SPEAKER_01Well, you've also got an old chips in, right?
SPEAKER_03Even though you say that and you want and you realize they're like, we want to be a part of the you know the neighborhood, which they're going to be, and they are, they're gonna be there for a long time. And they probably make sure that they try to take care of all the regulars. And there's probably like, but at the end of the day, they also have to realize like, we actually have to play this game. And then the better question is are we mad? Like the way she's mad in that all article, she says, I'm annoyed with these PR companies and these restaurants for using that neighborhood tagline. Should we annoy?
SPEAKER_01Should we I think we should be annoyed if they had 30 seats?
SPEAKER_03Okay, so we should be so if Dachy did that, you'd be annoyed.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I think it's unnecessary. You know, it would to me it would seem unauthentic. Whereas when, like, if you're trying to be that like bootstrap open up restaurant with two young restaurateurs, which they were at the time, and they did have social media, but they couldn't afford to give people free meals. They were like, we're gonna kill you with kindness and hospitality. Everyone knows I'm very close with the owners of Dachi. I love that restaurant, they're really good to me. And Miki lets me stay at her house when I'm in Vancouver. So shout out to the best roommate going around and Billy. Billy and Miki like house me. They just killed people with kindness and hospitality. I lived in the West End when they opened, and when I was running Kissa Tanto, all my staff lived in East Vancouver, would go to Dachi for dinner and then come to Kissa, which was at that time popping off and one of the hardest restaurants to get into, and they would all just be raving about this fucking neighborhood restaurant called Dachi and these east things with funky wine. I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? And then I started sending a lot of our VIP guests and clients, like, we want to go somewhere like that no one knows about that's new and off the beaten path. I'll be like, hey, go to Dachi.
SPEAKER_02Which is you know, I love that that's a question that people ask.
SPEAKER_01And and and and I had never been to Dachy at this point. So at a van at a Van Mag, this is probably like, I don't know, like eight or nine years ago, Stephen and Miki came up to me, like, hey James, so nice to meet you officially. You've never come to a restaurant, but you send all of these guests, like why? I'm like, because I trust my staff and they love what you do, and they tell me how great it is, and all of the people I've sent, they'll love it, and I can't wait to come and eat there. And then I moved down the road from them and obviously became quite close with them. And they did an incredible job of just focusing first on hospitality and not on PR or social media. However, they've always had social media, but it wasn't like their reach was very minimal, right? But that's a different experience to somebody who's going to spend a million plus, you know, like you talk about Max and Andrew, like they don't have the luxury of just opening their doors, like they're spending a couple of million bucks, you know, down the road, probably to open a bar. So that bar has to be busy.
SPEAKER_03What do you think would happen if for them, let's say, because right now they're they're opening up next to Kiefra, how busy would they be, do you think, if they just decided to do nothing? No social media just opened versus what they're doing now? How different do you think that experience would be?
SPEAKER_01If they did nothing, I think that'd be busy because the Kiefra is the busiest bar in Canada or in Western Canada right now, and they don't line up every night, so you get the overflow there.
SPEAKER_03Like let's say they didn't tell any social media any influencers, no media.
SPEAKER_02Because they're first-time restaurateurs, they need it more than others.
SPEAKER_03Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, do you think how bad how how much like let's say they just opened their doors, no one knew it would even open?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Do you think people would like how long do you think it would take for them to at least three months? Three months? So it would set them back three months.
SPEAKER_02Not all influencers are going to come because they're paid. Some of them just do it because they honestly they're looking for good content. They're looking for views, they're looking to show off the undiscovered, you know, in our city. And so eventually, especially because those two guys are really good at what they do and they make delicious drinks. People learn about them. And their rooftop patio has this like very unique video. You went to it. I went last Friday. Oh, what's great? I mean, like, it's a really interesting view, and it makes you feel like you know, most of the time when we look at the view is previews, you're looking from like, say, the financial district, where it's like the steel and glass kind of perspective. Whereas here you're looking at East Van. You're looking at Chinatown, Gas Town, Railtown, and you you know, you feel like you're in Portland or Brooklyn or something like that. Full view of mountains, too. And it's fantastic. So, and you get all of those like beautiful cranes or whatever they're called over in the port, you know, like down towards the second narrows bridge. It's a really cool perspective of the city that I think is really beautiful. So between the view and the quality of drinks that those guys make, you know, influencers would find them anyway. PR people who, you know, like obviously can back it up by what they generate for a restaurant, they're gonna charge three to five thousand dollars a month. And so, you know, maybe if you are a restaurant that is opening and spending millions of dollars of you know of of cash to open, you can afford that. But maybe a smaller restaurant like what do you mean PR3, three to five grand a month? Yeah, minimum. Minimum. You fucking get it.
SPEAKER_01Social media is three to five grand a month.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, what?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, but people don't realize how it's I love that you're surprised by the I mean I I I worked for Tristan Leffler, who did Sonye and she does all the stuff for like Balbay, Saviour. Yeah, of course. And I know that she charged a lot, yeah. But I was just like, But they're friends, right?
SPEAKER_02And so and and and she used to work there, and so like there's relationships there.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so like if you're I'm also giving them a deal as well. Of course. But let's say you're let's say you're doing the social media for for those those guys and they wanted like what do you think?
SPEAKER_02If I were to go right now and say, hey, I'm gooseneck hospitality, I have six restaurants, and I would like you to help us out with you're looking at that. Oh my god, all six?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That would be a shit ton of money. 100 grand plus a year. Yeah, 100 grand plus for P six restaurants. Easily. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Would you do you think it's a good return on your investment?
SPEAKER_02For me, no is the easy answer. But there are certain I mean, I'm very fortunate. We're we're well established at this point. You know, we've got good followings already, been around a while, like we've got a good product, so on and so forth. Return on investment, right? ROI on 100 grand a year for me would would be poor because not worth it. You know, it would have to increase our sales by, let's say, a million dollars collectively to make it worth it, which it might, but it's a gamble, and I don't want to spend it.
SPEAKER_03My biggest my biggest thing about this is like when you see influencers at these media events and they're launching stuff and it's like these all these stuff, and I'm not shit trying to shit on them. But it's like let's say this influencer comes in and they have 35,000 followers on TikTok or 100,000 followers, whatever it doesn't matter. Okay, you bring them in, they could check your space, maybe post something. But how do we like how do you know that your return on investment is gonna be actually like how do you how can you prove that what they are doing for you is actually gonna give you anything else?
SPEAKER_02I mean, and that you can't and this is it's very difficult to quantify. How do you think we we didn't have PR you know when we first opened some of the restaurants? We brought on short-term PR for a month, maybe three months or something like that. Haven't done it in a while. I remember about like maybe a year ago when we launched brunch down at River District at Buffalo, some influencer came through and raved about it. And it turns out they have a massive following on TikTok. And we actually like we you know, it came out so quick, like right before the weekend. It was a specifically about brunch at Buffalo, and it went viral, and like all of a sudden we were like way busier than we'd expected. From having like two servers on the floor on one, exactly, you know, then all of a sudden, like so you know, we've just started. We'd only exactly we'd only just begun brunch like a month ago. This influencer, by coincidence, happened to live close by. I think I can't remember the the exact details of how they stumbled upon us, but like they did, they loved it, they posted, and then next the next week it's like you know, and and it's actually we've held that level since then, which is crazy. So very, very impactful. But you know, that first weekend was like holy.
SPEAKER_01And you probably you probably lost money that first weekend with recovery because you weren't staff for it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, but but hard.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's super hard.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but I mean, I guess, and I mean this is something I've always struggled with, is like I don't like the idea that a restaurant is at the whims of an influencer.
SPEAKER_01It's a world we live in, like, I mean a lot of but a lot of but I'm saying a lot of people. Look at Google reviews on like anything.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but I mean, like, okay, so like I mean, you both deal with Google reviews and stuff like this, and it's also like there's a thing right now on Eater right now, I think I was looking at this the other day, talking about like I think like should restaurants have to be like under that microscope in the sense of like, you know, why are we giving so much credibility to people who don't know anything about a lot of people don't know anything about quality of food or how to rate food? Why are we letting that one star review decide and give them so much power? And then also like with the when I wrote this column, it's just like more in the sense of like you know, like why should the virality of a restaurant and it's how much time and energy they spend into it? I mean, I write I ended I end the column saying the tragedy that that is increasingly getting us into the uh into rooms requires a completely different set of skills. If you're a restaurantur and you go into I want to be a great restauranteur, a lot of restaurateurs don't have the skills or the energy or the time to want to be uh great at that virality moment. And they have to spend, as Jimmy's saying here, if you own six restaurants, a hundred thousand dollars a year to even have a consistent one, a competitive one. It's just and and it's it shows you the kind of the disconnect that we have with our society in the sense of like, yeah, we want this neighborhood restaurant, but if uh June wants to be a neighborhood restaurant, which you know it it probably is in a lot of ways, they can't play that game in a lot of ways, the way she's writing here. You also have to play the virality game.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and also like I think people forget sometimes that like being big on TikTok or social media normally doesn't translate to dollars, like from my experiences in restaurants and you know being able to operate restaurants that are very have been very popular on those forums. Um, those guests come in, they want to come in and take photos, they don't want to talk to the staff, they want to order off the pictures that they've seen on their phone to be like, and then they want to post I did the thing at the place, you know, and I ate that dish at the place. So it has nothing to do with blood dining. So they no, and they normally spend very little money and they're not a good that that they're not like I'm a big fan of body language in restaurants, which so is Jimmy. I think it's infectious. I believe in rewarding good behavior. If you have a guest that may not spend a lot of money at your restaurant, but is like I love it here, engage with the staff, order something in you every time, wants to be in your room, and like recommends you to all their friends, that to me is worth so much money. So I'm like, anytime you're on a reservation, anytime you want to come in, we'll love to see you. Same with pompamous, like our tastings are free for a reason. We want our local community to feel like it's very accessible. You can come in, taste six wines, start to paint anything. And sometimes they will come in once a week and never buy a bottle of wine. But every time they have someone visiting, they bring all their friends in and all their friends buy a ball of wine. So to me, you're like, it's a long-term play for us. So and any restaurant that wins awards or that does really well in you know, like the Michelin or North America or Canada's best, you get this huge bump from people that just read those magazines and come in, and that's not normally great. And then once that bump kind of per se, then you get the people that are real diners that want to eat in your restaurant, and that's when you kind of create that culture and and money. But when you're operating an empty restaurant, you need to make sure that you can fill with seats. And sometimes taking that influencer or that, you know, a hundred dollar for four people check is better than not having anyone because you also need to keep staff busy.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because you you I mean you feel certain pressure, like you said, you have to pay my staff. I don't want to, I don't want to lose them. I have all these other things, I have bills. But she talks about this idea, she says, you know, that people could just walk in at any time. But like most restaurants don't want that. Most restaurants want to be fully booked, but you can't get in. And so, like, I remember I wrote this in the column. I said that, you know, Bao Bay for the longest time was just a walk-in restaurant.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and then they went away from that because they're like after the pandemic most most after the pandemic, they weren't like my whole time at in that company, it was always a walk-in, and then it just after the pandemic, honestly, the world changed.
SPEAKER_03But people want people want to know that they can get a table.
SPEAKER_02We were the same as Bao Bay when it came to not having any reservations prior to the pandemic at Buffalo Carasdale.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, like that's one of the things I loved about Buffalo Caroisel.
SPEAKER_02So we go up there and I'd be like, I don't know if I'm getting a table. And so there'd be times like, and we'll always take care of you. You have a glass of prosecco or lambrusco or something while you're waiting at the door. The good thing that restaurateurs like about not having reservations is that it maximizes your it maximizes your revenue. You're always full. You don't have downtime of like, let's say 30 minutes.
SPEAKER_01Waiting for an empty table, someone doesn't show up, someone shows up as a four, as a three, not a four.
SPEAKER_02So let's say you've got a 6 p.m. table and then you've got 8 p.m. booked at, you know, uh following that, but they wrap up at 7 30. Now you've wasted that 30 minutes. Whereas if you don't have reservations, somebody who's waiting at the door just goes right in and you're constantly generating revenue. So you prefer no reserve. 100%. So okay, hold on. So in theory, yeah, it's a good idea. Like we like that, but post-COVID. So post-COVID, that changes and people want security.
SPEAKER_01But I people have a thing for that. Like, so I don't think it's yeah, the pandemic definitely affected it, but I think also the way that we look on our phones and we're like we're obsessed with social media. I think people now we're impatient. We're impatient, we get dopamine hits all the time. We don't want to know that we may have to wait in line for something.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_01Well, there's an entitlement piece. So I think that people now like fuck it. I don't, I want to know that I can get a table. Because if you're 10 minutes behind your reservation, people lose a fucking mind now. Yeah. Whereas before, they'll wait an hour and a half in a fucking lineup in Chinatown just to be to have dumplings. Well, it's so funny about this.
SPEAKER_02This is such an important point, by the way.
SPEAKER_03Well, what's so funny about this is there's a fucking column about this on Eater right now. It says the latest gig economy hustle restaurant line sitting. Yeah. People are paying people to wait in line to go to fucking popular restaurants like June.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And it's like, I never book a reservation at June. I just walk in and half the time I can barely get a seat, but I don't care. I'd I don't know.
SPEAKER_02But like I mean, that's a crazy idea, right? I mean, that's that's something that like, you know, obviously somebody who's fairly wealthy might do for a Vancouver's way too small to do that.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I don't know. This is the New York thing. I know that this is an American thing.
SPEAKER_03But could you could you go back at Buffalo Carisdale to no reservations?
SPEAKER_02No, you well, I mean, right now you lose money, I think. Yeah, like we we do it honestly in the same way that they describe, or you've talked about in your article where you know we'll always limit the number of reservations so that we can accommodate some walk-ins without them having to wait. But James is right, like you know, people show up and they have uh a 7 p.m. reservation, for example, and then their table's not ready because the the preceding table is kind of lingering, enjoying dessert, chatting, whatever, and they don't they don't get up until 7, and then you clear off and seat them at 7.10. You know, somebody might say something, maybe they've had a bad day. You know, again, we always like to give the compassionate assumption, but like, you know, maybe they've had a bad day, maybe they've either just hangry, whatever it is, but like lo and behold, they're like, you know, they're not necessarily being particularly nice to your staff, and you're like, fuck man, that is some seriously entitled shit. Like you have 10 minutes, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so it's fine, especially when there's an acknowledgement. You know, staff are like, hey, here's some bubbles, like your patience, like you know, here's a splash, blah blah blah. Like we appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01And on the flip side, the amount of times tables are 10 to 15 minutes late is way more than we're late. How often do you see that June? People being late for reservations, yeah. I'd say 50%. 50%?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and after 20 minutes we give the table away, then they come and they're mad, and I'm like, well, this happened a lot with us during the World Cup because people are making reservations. Like we generally we make people like I mean they can be like 15 to 30 minutes before kickoff, but then it's like, well, kickoff's at noon, and you you weren't here at noon, and there's a lineup of people dying. Like, I'm not waiting for you. It's just like we'll we'll give you a call and it's a courtesy, it's fine, you know. But like if you're running that far behind or you haven't had the courtesy to call us, it's like, well, yeah, man, you've lost your fucking chance.
SPEAKER_03Tell me, tell me how many times not much.
SPEAKER_02I would I would be able to count it on two hands over the course of six weeks, 144 games. Yeah, it fucking happened. Yeah, it's crazy. Wow.
SPEAKER_01But the other issue that we have as well, right? Is like, okay, let's say you're running 20 minutes late. We've allowed a two and a half hour dine time for you. So you now you're 20 minutes late. We tell you out by time. But now your experience is not the experience that you would have if you're on time for your reservation. If we're running late for your reservation, then we obviously push back the next reservation or move the tables around. So you're still elegant because we fucked up. It's on us. You know, and it but this happened like before the pandemic at kissed all the time. People would constantly be like, I'm just parking the car. That's a famous Bao Bay thing. Because at Bao Bay, we wouldn't see you unless your whole party was here. Because that would somebody would go in there and put their name on the lineup and be like, I got us a table for three, but their friends are in North Vancouver. So now they're sitting at a table for 40 minutes until their friends come, not ordering, not ordering. So, like the non-reservation restaurants and big on brunch reservation and non-reservation restaurants is that your whole party has to be present. Yeah, we're gonna hold the table for you for now. No, yeah. And they're like, Oh, but my friend's just parking the car. And I would be like, the amount of people who have told me my friend's just parking the car, then it'd come in 40 minutes is insane. I don't doubt that they are parking the car, but if they are, they'll be here in three minutes, which is amazing, then I'll have you seated. But until then, I want to keep seeing the people behind you. And 99.9% of the time, their friend shows up 25 minutes later.
SPEAKER_03How much easier would your restaurants run if you did just walk-ins?
SPEAKER_01We wouldn't be busy, that's a thing.
SPEAKER_02We wouldn't be busy. A lot of people wouldn't be busy, especially in the neighborhoods.
SPEAKER_01Because they want guarantees.
SPEAKER_02You get a little bit of an older clientele sometimes, you don't get the young, cool person that lives downtown. They want to have security, they want to know that, like, hey, I want to get in there at six, I want to be, I know I'm gonna be out by 7:45, and I can get on with the rest of my life.
SPEAKER_03I would agree with you on this.
SPEAKER_01Like when I like when when I And drinking cultures change. So the before is like when you're going to a neighborhood restaurant, so Bao Bay again, let's use that as an example. You go to Bao Bay, hey, the the waits, 45 minutes. You go to the Kiefer bar, you have two drinks, no problems. Go back to Bao Bay for dinner. People now will only have one, maybe two drinks midweek maximum, which is a stretch. Lots of them don't drink. So now they're like, well, I have to wait 45 minutes, like I don't want to fucking do that. I'm just gonna go home and order Uber Eats. You know, whereas before, like when people were into going after the state.
SPEAKER_03Well, no, no, but actually, that's an interesting thing you just put up there, which is like a complete nice tangent. But you said, how much do you think that affects people? Like, I don't want to wait in line, I'll just get Uber Eats.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, obviously, these are topics that you know we've talked about in previous episodes. We've had talks about third-party delivery, we've had talks about alcohol consumption. You know, there was a time when we started doing these podcasts where nobody talked about alcohol being an issue. Then there was like a report saying that having more than 15 drinks a week for men or 10 for women would be harmful to you. Now it's two. Now it's two. Now it's two. You know, so it's like, well, what am I gonna do? Go have like two drinks a week, you know, waiting for my table at Bal uh at you know at the kefir before I go to Balbae.
SPEAKER_03Like I mean, Derek Thompson just wrote a column about the end of alcohol. It's basically talking about like kind of like how alcohol has just kind of changed so much for people. And Scott Galloway's gonna beat the shit out of that guy. I know. No, he he's on Scott Galloway's side. Oh, he's like, I like he's like, I love him. He's like, this is the stats of presenting statistics. He's like, I like having people over, I like making martinis, like having drinks. He's like, I like the social activity of it, but it's like yeah.
SPEAKER_01But I I do have to say I am seeing a really small shift in people that uh that don't indulge in alcohol, that still want to go out. Like I met this amazing young woman the other day who has just recently moved here from New York and came to an event we did at June with Jewel of the South in an incredible bar in New Orleans, and went to all these events. And the whole time I was like, You don't you don't drink like just order non-alk? And she was like, Yeah, I love to be, I like, I like to be out and about. I want to see everything. I just I'm allergic to alcohol, I don't drink, so I but I still want to be a part of the scene and I love these bars and what their creativity and and there's more and more people that would go down to the Kifa bar and probably have one or two non-alks and pay 15 or 16 bucks for them while they're waiting for a table door good restaurant. So I am seeing that shift a little bit, which I think is really cool.
SPEAKER_03So to to kind of cap on this entire conversation, what's interesting is that when I dropped this column on July 6th, the Global Mail-So his blood is not as strong as ours. You and I can carry this one. The Global Mail dropped a kind of a short little kind of feature thing called the Neighborhood Restaurants of Canada. And I think that's I think that's kind of what the title was. Let me see here. They uh talked about kind of like this idea of the neighborhood restaurants. There's some all over Canada. It says here, Canada's beloved local restaurants, the real dish list. And so it's 12 restaurants that they picked all over. For these 12 restaurants, Eatery's Delicious Food is just the beginning of what makes them special, which I thought was interesting because it's we were talking about neighborhood restaurants. And they picked 12 restaurants all across Canada, and they give kind of like why they're special, why people really gravitate towards them, and they got people to kind of nominate them and stuff like this. For Vancouver, the restaurant that they picked was Shambar, which I thought was interesting. And so I don't know. I love I I love Shambar. I love Shambar and Carrie. No, I just thought that I just thought it was interesting they picked Shambar.
SPEAKER_01So, like, is it in a neighborhood? I don't like it. How many people live around there?
SPEAKER_03It's mostly businesses and what's I'm saying is like so I thought that was interesting in the sense of like, yes, I mean uh maybe they were looking at the idea that Shambar's been around for twenty-two years and it's you know they've developed kind of like an identity in Vancouver. And but I just thought it was interesting that I was like Shambar.
SPEAKER_01I I wouldn't consider it a neighborhood restaurant.
SPEAKER_03But Jimmy, would you consider would you consider Shambar a neighborhood restaurant?
SPEAKER_02I'll just put all the other disclaimers you guys did that, you know, I like Shambar and Carrie's friend and so on and so forth. But so is Nico and and if it wasn't for Shambar, we would not a yeah, if it wasn't for Shambar, we wouldn't have as many cool restaurants as we do. Having said that, it's not a fucking neighborhood restaurant. No, like I mean it's in a neighborhood, I guess there are people who live in that neighborhood. I have a friend who lives next door. Okay, like it's fine, but it's not, I think, like the definition of what we would call a neighborhood restaurant by what was discussed in Lutland Butcher in the article uh that we were referencing as well too, yeah. Or by anything else. So you thought that was a unusual pick. I think it's a very unusual pick, and it makes me question the other ones as well. Okay. I mean, if yeah. I I think if we were to trying to identify which is funny because it's choosing one restaurant in all of Vancouver to represent neighborhood restaurants. I think if you were to poll any restaurateur or let alone the public, God forbid, like about what is a neighborhood restaurant in Vancouver, you ask 100 people, not one of them is gonna put Shambar on that list. Which again, you know, it is a neighborhood restaurant to some people, but it's not the definition of a neighborhood restaurant.
SPEAKER_03Okay. So this flawed. This is my last question for you guys on this topic, and then we're gonna go to our list.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_03Do you think diners actually want the neighborhood experience Polk describes, or do you think they want the feeling of still wanting reservations, buzz, and a weight worth bragging about? So do you think people want to know that they're gonna go to June and it's gonna be fucking busy and it's gonna be popular and it's gonna be hard to get a table, and they're just gonna walk in, it's gonna buzz, everyone's talking about it, or do you think they want to know that they can just go to Balbae and across the street and just like it's a big one?
SPEAKER_02They want both, dude. This is the entitlement piece that we talked about. They want it to be a little bit hard, they want it to like be hard to get, but they want to have the satisfaction of having accomplished that.
SPEAKER_03What about going to a neighborhood restaurant that when you walk in? This is one thing that I reference this about Mammy Taylors. When Ron ran Mammy Taylors, I live around the street from Mammy Taylors. Yeah, a lot of days I would go to Mammy Taylors sometimes four times, four or five times a week. And I'd you know, I'd get off work, I'd just walk around the corner, I'd walk in. And uh some days I loved it because it was packed and I couldn't get a seat. But some days I loved it, I'd just walk in. There was a couple of people at the bar, a couple of people in the lounge, and I'd always have a seat at the t at the bar. Yeah. And it was just kind of like nice to just walk in.
SPEAKER_01But I think that's the whole premise of a neighborhood restaurant is they're the neighborhoods that you live in. So like for for like us, right? Like in I go to Bal Bay all the time. I just walk that's what I mean. And if they were busy, we would just either come back here and have a drink or go somewhere else in that neighborhood. Yeah. But like if you're so any neighborhood restaurant you can always get into because they recognize you and they know that you go all the time, but you may have to wait 20 or 30 minutes. So either you go back home and wait until 20 or 30 minutes, which is two minutes down the road, because normally you're living in that neighborhood. But if you're traveling from neighborhood to a different neighborhood restaurant, that's where I think this problem's being caused.
SPEAKER_02Then you're a destination restaurant. Exactly. You know, like a place like let's say like Savio Volpe has always called themselves a neighborhood restaurant. You know, so before this article was written. That is not a neighborhood restaurant. Okay, but it is a neighborhood restaurant. Okay, it nobody's got a lot of people. So hold on, this is the very point that I'm trying to make. So Savio has been open now for let's say a little over 10 years, right? They were open, we're nine years at Bells and Whistles. They opened before we did Kissa and Saviour opened the same meeting. Okay. So 10 years ago they opened, and from the beginning they were calling themselves a neighborhood restaurant. And I have no problem with that. Like, you know, like I don't disagree with you that by this definition, it's not really a neighborhood restaurant. It is a complete destination, it became a destination restaurant.
SPEAKER_01It would start off as a neighborhood restaurant that got popular.
SPEAKER_02So there's a lot of people that live in East Vancouver that have that didn't have any restaurants to that quality at that time. So therefore I think that's so this goes back to the point about how June can also be a uh a neighborhood restaurant because just because you have to be somewhat affluent, quote unquote, to be able to go to the restaurant three times a week. It doesn't mean that it's not a neighborhood restaurant. Now, granted, like we have people that might go to Bells and Whistles like every day or three times a week or whatever it is, but it's a much lower check average than Savio Volpe. Does somebody go to Savio Volpe three times a week? There probably are people that go there three times a week. But probably not though. But I mean, not very many though, right? It is a restaurant that was you know built on its um reputation for design, quality of food, service, so on and so forth. I wouldn't expect you to go there because it's expensive. Even though healthy locals would probably only go, and yes, it is 100 seats as well. So, you know, like you're you're going there, you're spending $100, $150 per person. So most people aren't going there multiple times a week or month or whatever it is. It's you know, and some people would consider it to be a special occasion restaurant. Also, it's fucking hard to get a reservation in there. Sure. And you they always but they did it right from the beginning. They're like, we always save a few tables without reservation for walking. Yeah, $100. Well, they would they would say that they did, maybe it was only one or two, but let's assume that they're you know being um I think they do.
SPEAKER_01No, that yeah, yeah, they they always do.
SPEAKER_03I've never called Paul for reservations for my birthday and stuff like this. And I know that Paul, I know that they set aside stuff, and I know Paul's really good about that. And I know they set aside stuff like this because I've heard from the management team that they're like, yes, they're gonna be able to do that.
SPEAKER_01They're very that that company is very good at making sure that people that frequent their restaurants that live in their neighborhoods where they're gonna be able to do that. They want to make sure they take care of them. They take care of the people that live next to their restaurants or that they're regular guests.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like any restaurant does.
SPEAKER_02But you also said that Ron doesn't have marketing cynicism, which I think is ridiculous because we all know and love Ron, and he has major contempt for PR and marketing and so on and so forth. And so they very purposefully did not incorporate any kind of such methods for promotion of Miami Taylor, though.
SPEAKER_03So this is all he also did it himself too, right?
SPEAKER_02Sure, but I mean he's not a PR professional. No, I know that.
SPEAKER_03I'm saying better question is yeah, okay. So if you're in his position, you're Mammy Taylor's eight years ago. Yeah, would you have hired us a person to do that stuff for you at that point?
SPEAKER_01That's too hypothetical. I'm not even gonna say that. Yeah, maybe an employee. I would have maybe got an employee like that.
SPEAKER_03No, no, I'm saying, like, would like uh how long have you had a person doing your social media? Like when did you realize like I need to do someone, I need to hire someone for this?
SPEAKER_02The first time I used social media was when we were opening Wildeby, so that would have been like early 2012. But you probably did it though. No, no, no, so we hired somebody. Yeah, we hired like uh Milk Communications Shannon Heath at the time. And then we used other companies like you know, there's a small handful of companies that are really, really good at this, and you know, we would experiment, you know, we used two or three of them along the over the you know last 15 years. Last video, okay.
SPEAKER_01I've I have a question for you guys. So let's say Mammy Taylors was opened in Fraserhood 10 years ago when there wasn't anything else around, or right now where June is, it's really for evening restaurants, it's just June and Ilio, then Miso Taco, I guess. But it's a very different experience from the other two restaurants.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01Ron having Memui Taylor's here when you have Baobae, Kifaba, then Kissitanto opens, right? And then a couple years later, Lau We Irish Heather, Irish Heather, Begira, like all of a sudden, like this neighborhood went from having, you know, like two to like it had let's say two to three neighborhood restaurants, and then a premium restaurant being Kissitanto, opened in the time that Ron was operating here. So now you come to Chinatown, let's say like if you live in the neighborhood, yeah, we all go to Mammy Taylors because we know we can get in and we don't want to spend the money that maybe you want to spend at a Kissa or Kiefabar with the cocktails aren't, you know, the premium cocktails. But Bao Bay was affordable and so was Mammi's. But then there's Fat Mao and then there's Phnom Penh, and then there's Chinatown Barbecue. So you're like, okay, there's all these other options now in this neighborhood. You know, so like if you dilute the neighborhood with too many options, is that taking away from some of these other neighborhood restaurants? Whereas if Mammi's was in, you know, like maybe where June is right now, where there's only two restaurants there and you can't get into either one, I think that bar would be full every night because you'd go have a drink there and hang out. All people that live in that neighborhood may like enjoy that more casual atmosphere. I also think that if you're just really good, people are gonna go regardless.
SPEAKER_02If you double down on the fact that you're a bar and just be a bar, then great. But there are some licensing issues in Vancouver and British Columbia that are limiting that. You know, like Rami Taylor's I enjoyed m many, many, many nights there, and Ron's obviously a good friend as well, too. But they put the emphasis on the boost, and they didn't put the emphasis on the box.
SPEAKER_01I very rarely ate that.
SPEAKER_02Nobody really ate that very much. Like we all still talk about like a couple of menu items pork chop, ham grenades. We love that dirty rice, right? All of that, but like I never had dinner.
SPEAKER_01I had brunch there a lot or breakfast, and then I waited. I idled. I know I didn't have the office. I'm I'm because I love it. But this was a flaw, right?
SPEAKER_02I idled a lot of dinner so this was, I think, like, you know, respectfully to you know, my friends who owned it, like in hindsight, with all the clarity of hindsight, maybe if they, as first-time restaurateurs at the time, had put more emphasis on the food, you know, then you know, yeah, maybe it would have gone a little bit differently. Because if you've only got people coming to a restaurant for the drinks, then there's a problem. Yeah, I gotcha. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, another question for you guys. So if if you travel, look, we're gonna give our list of neighborhood restaurants that we love. If you travel to one of these neighborhood restaurants and you can't get in, are you gonna be mad? You know, well, that's what this article is about. Well, I mean So we are we trying to pick neighborhood restaurants that you can always get into. So it's a destination/slash neighborhood restaurant? Well, kind of like like what what neighborhood like I don't live in Vancouver, right? So like I none of my neighborhood restaurants are.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so like you shouldn't go to a neighborhood restaurant without a reservation if you don't live in that neighborhood.
SPEAKER_03So, prime example, like Megari is a good choice. Yeah, Megari was on my list. And Megari is a restaurant you can't, they don't do reservations, no reservation. And what I like about it is I'm like, okay, so like it's a little bit anxiety inducing because I'm like, 'I like taking my girlfriend out for nice dinners.' And I'm like, I I'm I'm like, let's go to Megari. But I also know that she also is the type of person who's like, she likes knowing that there's some sort of like, okay, if I get ready and I'm gonna look pretty and do all these things, that we have a table at seven o'clock. So when we get out of the Uber, she's not we're not gonna be standing in line for 30 minutes. Especially in Vancouver in the rainy months of the year or something. Which is fine. That's totally fine. But then also when you get hungry, you're like, you don't want to be, you don't also we we may get in line and be like, yeah, it's gonna be an hour. Then she's gonna look at me, and I'm gonna be like, uh fuck, where are we gonna go now? So I get the logic. You gotta plan for that. You have to plan for that. Now the great thing about it now is no nomas next door, so I can go have a drink and hang out. Nomo is great. But flamingo rooms down there. Lots of places. There's lots of places open. Like, the great thing, great thing about that area is you can go to a lot of places.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love the flaming the flamingo room. We've got that quite a bit.
SPEAKER_03But I will say that there is I understand the logic of like why coming out of COVID, people feel the certain need to have really COVID fucking did this, to have like a certain level of like consistency or at least security. Security, that's the other word. Do I prefer it? Yes. I will be one I will admit that I'm one of those people who actually just prefers knowing that 8 o'clock I have a table reservation at Megari or wherever. Um but I get it. I get why, I get why Mugari doesn't do it, and I get it probably does maybe help a small what do they have, 20 seats? Yeah, 30 with a patio, maybe.
SPEAKER_02But it's about managing people's expectations. If they know, then it's their choice. Like the original Vidges was one of the busiest restaurants in all the time.
SPEAKER_01And you walk up to it and expect a great job though of managing the line, giving you snacks and giving you snacks.
SPEAKER_02But hey, listen, like you get in line, it'd be like 30 people ahead of you in the summer, yeah. Like, but in the wintertime when you're waiting outside to try to get in and it's raining, you're standing there with an umbrella. There's no cover. Yeah, you know, like the you can't it's too dark to enjoy the little koi pond. No one's gonna bring you a hotora out there when it's like fucking raining and cold, you know, and uh we all did it. Like, I remember being the same there the same time as uh what's her name? Martha Stewart, you know, like fucking VIP, doesn't matter, you're waiting. You're that you're that old?
unknownHoly shit.
SPEAKER_02Bro, this is not that long ago. Twenty years ago. Pre-jail. Yeah, pre-jail. So it's just like it is what it is. Like, yeah, it was definitely in pre-jail for Martha, not me.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say clarify that part of that apart. Do you guys watch that documentary, the Martha documentary? No, it's great. I highly recommend it. Is it good? Yeah, I love I loved it.
SPEAKER_03All right. Yeah, I said top five favorite neighbor neighborhood restaurants. Yeah, I think we all said obviously Dachy's on our list.
SPEAKER_02Can I just clarify? I always say dashi.
unknownIt's dashi.
SPEAKER_02So you're supposed to say like the ch? Yeah, it's not why am I softening it even though it's like clearly a D-A-C-H-I?
SPEAKER_01It means it means like family or something. I should I should probably know.
SPEAKER_02Is that a Japanese word?
SPEAKER_01No, I assume it is, right? It's Miki. They're gonna kill me. It's it's I'm pretty sure I'm me. I want to say they're not gonna kill you, though.
SPEAKER_02Everybody's got low expectations of you because you're Australian.
SPEAKER_01I I think I I'm oh I should know this because I've worked this so many times. Anyway, so I think it means like family or friendship.
SPEAKER_02It's on all of our lists, and what we I love dashi and uh it's great. What else you got? Should we just call me's Nasko or anything? Let's not do that right now. What do you got? Just cold call her. I'm looking for you.
SPEAKER_03We've got only 10 minutes because Jimmy's gotta go.
SPEAKER_02All right, so what else do we have on this list? Bravo. I had your boofla. Oh, sorry. I had your buffalo. I'm not, I'm listening to me. I'm just I really appreciate you saying that by the way. I I truly believe in my heart that all of our restaurants, Lucky Taco, I think Bell, I think your best bells and whistles, all of them are the quintessential neighborhood restaurants. Yes. By every single definition or measurement that one could have. So by every definition or measurement one could have, all of our restaurants are neighborhood restaurants, and I'm super happy and proud of that. Let's leave mine out of it as far as the ones that I'm going to. You can say Buffalo all day long.
SPEAKER_03I was gonna say your two of your restaurants, I say the two that are most neighborhood-y are uh Buffalo at Carisdale and Bells and Whistles. Yeah. Yes, I think I especially think that Bells and Whistles has the quintessential new neighborhood vibe because it has so many regulars and it's such a place that people go and hang out.
SPEAKER_02Like we have people that go there every single day. Yes, literally every day. Bless their hearts. We love them. They're friends now. We try to take good care of them, obviously. They're genuinely friends. Like, you know, we want to do everything we can for them. And that's Mr. Australian. What's your choices here?
SPEAKER_01Of my top five. Yeah, just top five or restaurants you like that are new pretty.
SPEAKER_02Oh, there you go.
SPEAKER_01You had to look it up, so nobody is gonna know you right now. She's gonna be so mad.
SPEAKER_02Bravo though. Can I just get back to my second one too? Bravo's a good one. Oh, we're doing one at one point. It doesn't matter. Just well, we all agreed on Dachy, so I'm gonna go first on round two and say I love Bob Bravo. I don't live in the Fraser Hood, nor do I enjoy that particular name, Fraserhood, whatever. But like put your stanlow roads around Fraser Street, like Bravo's great, like super lovely. Again, you know, maybe a little bit of a higher check average, but yeah, you can go sit at the bar, have a drink, glass of wine, whatever, some oysters. Everybody will like want to get to know your name, which I really appreciate. It's really friendly, connective, stripped down a little bit, and uh and the quality is great. So it checks off all of those three out of the four C's that I care about. It also happens to be consistent, even though I don't think that's necessarily a relevant factor when we're determining what is a neighborhood restaurant, but kudos to them, they make my list.
SPEAKER_01My number two is Kuchill. Okay, well, we can also take Megari by okre off the list.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I think that's definitely one for us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Niwa is my Niwa's another one, yeah. Yeah, Niwa is definitely like I mean, Niwa Nero Tondo and Angelo Pacifico, like it's all kind of melded together.
SPEAKER_02You know, it's so funny. Like, I mean, I love this, right? Like, I went to Angelo for my birthday. Like, yeah, I mean like you know, like we talk about special occasion restaurants. I would not call that a special occasion restaurant. It's a neighborhood restaurant. As wonderful as it is, it's a neighborhood restaurant. If I lived in that neighborhood, I live in that neighborhood right now, and I walk down. I would gladly go there several times a month. It's possible to do that as well, too. If you don't do set menu, I assume you can order a bowl of color or a ball.
SPEAKER_03So what's what's in your neighborhood where you live that you would walk to consistently?
SPEAKER_02Like if I'm like your house, what's close to you? Well, Mainham? I live in a pretty residential neighborhood, so I like I have like bakeries and whatnot, whatever. What's your bakery?
SPEAKER_01What's your what's your go-to? So like is on my list, by the way.
SPEAKER_02Okam Twir is in Kitts, and it is a place that Josh and I were just talking about the other day that is absolutely a neighborhood restaurant. And it's interesting that you say that because it's on my list. It's on my list, it's on my list, too. And it's great, you know, those guys are lovely. They I don't even know if they do reservations. I think they do if they know you. They do reservations. Do they do it for everybody? I remember last year we went for Josh's birthday. There's a group of eight of us, lunch.
SPEAKER_01Max had his 40th at Bodega. Yeah. And it was in my time at Bodega on Galeano, and it was the funnest three days of my life. They rented out Pilgrim, and we had a big like party at Bodega, then they rented out Pilgrim, and then he had invited me, which was really sweet. But it was they're great people and lovely.
SPEAKER_02I love doing too.
SPEAKER_01And the hospitality is always just 10 out of 10.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. The room and they they have fun, they're good at it, they're so they make it look easy. It's so good. And you talk about like, you know, we often talk, you talk about body language today, we talk about timing regularly when we talk about restaurants. They just make it look easy, and it's just a fun place to go any time of the day.
SPEAKER_01And if you're if they're running 10 minutes late for your reservation, they have this amazing ability to make you like not the most angry people would be like, What the fuck? Where's my table? They're like so French and so like charming and nonchalant that they make you feel like, oh yeah, of course. Like, oh yeah, it's a fine you have a some uh apetitable, you're fine. We have your table. Like, I love it. I love it. And their pork is so fucking good. Yeah, I haven't I haven't had dinner there for a long time. I go there for lunch.
SPEAKER_03Ian Elizabeth had it uh about a month ago and it was so delicious. So okay. Well, you know the one restaurant I think that we are all kind of overlooking right now, which I think I'm kind of curious to see.
SPEAKER_02We're not overlooking shit. We just had two so far. You don't know we're overlooking anything yet.
SPEAKER_03Where is Como on this list?
SPEAKER_02So literally, okay, I'm gonna just show you because it's on look at that. Look at that. Oh, look at that. Okay, there you go.
SPEAKER_01I have I have a restaurant on my list that I guarantee is not on either of your list.
SPEAKER_02Okay, but hold on. I want to just talk about Como for a second. Yeah, which I think is really Which we talked about every time the three of us together. Talk about bars being such an integral part. I mentioned it earlier, we haven't talked about it yet, but I want to talk about it because even though Como doesn't have a particularly big bar and there are no seats at their bar, well I guess there is there are seats. I my favorite is standing in the true.
SPEAKER_01This motherfucker's always trying to stand at bars. Including my own bars.
SPEAKER_02But I love it. He's old age, words. I know, right? It's hard on the back. Yeah, but yeah, honestly, like Como is truly a wonderful servant to his neighborhood. And obviously, these are friends of mine, and so like all of ours. That is a really cool, dense residential neighborhood. People will pop in and have a snack. Como's like, it's not cheap, it's not super expensive. If you go and have a nice dinner there, like if you go for it, you're dropping some money. You're gonna drop some money, but you can also get in there and have a couple of snacks and a quick drink of it. Happy hour is insane. It's so delicious. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03My girlfriend's favorite place, she loves the martinis there. We love going there and hanging out and have a couple of dildos, it's so good.
SPEAKER_01You can make it very affordable. Like it that that's why I like Como so much is if you're on a budget and like let's say you're a young university student and you live on Main Street or like in that area, um, the Dochelin park, wherever it is, you're like, okay, you can still go there, you can have a happy hour of a mouth and soda, a couple of free, you know, like conservators or tappers, and then be out of there for like 40 bucks with you and someone else. And then or me and you go there and we'll spend $300, you know. Like very easily.
SPEAKER_02And it's still a successful restaurant. Yeah. And so, you know, and they do their social media internally, they do a very good job of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Juno lives upstairs, and he's like, it's so annoying because when I get home, I'm always like, I'm going, you know, like to my apartment. Um, but then I'm like, I see Como and I see Vermouth, and then I see a guild, and it's like Steve, I could never plan and I want to go. I could never look all the garlic prawns there. Fucking things.
SPEAKER_03Those sticky, those sticky ribs, and then they have their sticky. Anchovy butter, it's the bikini thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the bikini sandwich at Como is what dreams are made of.
SPEAKER_02That's what hangovers are like cured by, I guess, is what I want to do.
SPEAKER_01The bikini sandwich is my all-time favorite dish, then.
SPEAKER_02So is so is Bobet on our list?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Baby's on my list.
SPEAKER_03And Bobe's on mine.
SPEAKER_02Balbe has I mean that's become a neighborhood restaurant. Let's just clarify that. That's an interesting thing. So it was a destination. There is a yeah, exactly. So there, you know, restaurants are not stagnant, you know, they're dynamic entities. They evolved. And uh they evolve exactly, right? But it opened as a neighborhood restaurant, though. I remember going to Balbay and standing in line, and I know I'm like fucking name-dropping all over the place here with my uh what was the other one I said? Oh, Martha Stewart. Yeah. I'm standing next to Seth Myers and Lauren Michaels during the Olympics. Lauren Michaels? Trying to get into Balbay, and it's like opening week or whatever, and it's just mental.
SPEAKER_01How couldn't you get into Balbay? You had your 40th birthday then.
SPEAKER_02That was years afterwards.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, Jimmy's fucking old. Remember.
SPEAKER_02I'm talking about opening week at Baal Bay. I got to see.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I worked his 40th birthday party at Baal Bay.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Are you serious?
SPEAKER_03That's true, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and then 10 years later, I gave you depends on your birthday for 50th.
SPEAKER_02And I was allowed to come and still sitting in the fucking like uh sprawl space in my house. Why would we open them yet? Why would I just to see like a penny?
SPEAKER_01Have to stand up all the time. That's true. I can't. You've got the bots and twice right now.
SPEAKER_03I was expecting a picture with the Krug and the Depens and you know the whole something.
SPEAKER_02And uh we're really, really like this podcast because we're like fucking digressing so hard.
SPEAKER_01Hey, I have I have uh a a wild neighborhood restaurant that I doubt's on your list that I want to talk about.
SPEAKER_03Let me think. Let me think. Is it in Vancouver?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Can you give me a neighborhood?
SPEAKER_01No, that's cheating.
SPEAKER_03Uh annoying him. I mean, you're gonna want to pick up so it's okay.
SPEAKER_01No. I mean, yeah, but it's uh it's okay, it's on my list, but this is not the one that I doubt this is tabola.
SPEAKER_03What's it tabula?
SPEAKER_02Okay, tabula.
SPEAKER_03They were on my list, they were gonna be on my list.
SPEAKER_02I'm sure for the people of the West End, it is a to me it's a West End institution. Absolutely. I went there for dinner a couple of years. I mean, there's like a Spanish on that note was the same. No, Spanish the same. Oddfish would be the same. No, think about it.
SPEAKER_03Think about where would he pick on it? I think he's on commercial.
SPEAKER_02What's that? Oh, where is he? On commercial. Why are we overthinking this? He's like a fucking hermit. Like not a hermit. What's the word called? Hobo. He's like he travels so much.
SPEAKER_01He's always like acorn? Yeah. And that's a tough stretch for a neighborhood. I mean, it is, but that would open as a destination. Which is fine. STEM. STEM Japanese restaurant in Burnaby.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That's not Vancouver. I said Vancouver. Nobody would have ever guessed. By the way, I've been there and I love it. And I'm sure with the people, it's on, I know I'm so proud that I remember this name. It's on Rumble Avenue. It is in Rumble Avenue. And uh what a what a great thing. STEM is fucking awesome. How was that neighborhood? It's in Burnaby. South Burnaby is very close to River District. Is it is it South Burnaby's great. There's a ton of money there. It's comfortable. It's a really nice.
SPEAKER_01It's an amazing restaurant. It's a very, very good Japanese restaurant. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It actually won Best Japanese in Vancouver one of the years since the Van Magic.
SPEAKER_03When I opened it, it was like we haven't mentioned any Asian restaurants that are kind of like, but it's such an interesting point that you make.
SPEAKER_02I was just thinking this.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say Ramandanbo. Yeah, but I isn't there multiple locations? Yeah, but that doesn't I feel like you're cancelled out as well. If you have multiple locations, then why?
SPEAKER_02That's not true. I totally, totally disagree with that. I think like having multiple locations doesn't mean that you can't. I think Bells is a neighborhood restaurant.
SPEAKER_01I think Bufler is Garrisdale.
SPEAKER_02I don't know, I don't know. I mean Edgemont Village. Believe me, the people of Edgemont Village would probably probably stab you both for saying that it's not a neighborhood restaurant. No, no, I think I think in the gone there enough.
SPEAKER_01It's in the I guess yeah you've picked your restaurants in certain neighborhoods that don't have a lot going on.
SPEAKER_02You know, well it's nice to like go into an underserviced when I'm a community because when you're going to do well, like your bells and whistles was the same.
SPEAKER_01I think it's an important thing to do. Like that's that there's no shade there. But I think if you have like three or four of them, it's hard to be like, okay, like this is my go-to neighborhood restaurant.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so better questions what is your go-to neighborhood restaurant? What's your go-to neighborhood restaurant?
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, isn't that what we're doing?
SPEAKER_03No, no, no. What's the first one you always think of? Like, I'm gonna go have some dinner. I think yours is Ba ba bay.
SPEAKER_01No, my it's either Bao bae or dachi. I eat at Bao Bay the most. I crave that food. I love eating there. Like we we had an amazing meal there together last week. But it would be Dachi, I think. Me and me it's Baobay and Fat Mao and Kakoma.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I don't live in a neighborhood where there is as rich of an offering of restaurants. So there's a you know, honestly, man, like there's a little sushi spot like down maybe like six blocks from my house down on Broadway that is called it's called Greenleaf, and I love it. I order, take out from there, or I'll walk down and get it with my family, and like we will just go and sit there and eat, and it's great. It's a perfect neighborhood restaurant. And I think a lot of people in the community think of it as such.
SPEAKER_01So would you consider a Tarbazel neighborhood restaurant?
SPEAKER_02I never go there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but it's never there. This is my argument. I'm like, it's they have one in Davy, one in Kitts.
SPEAKER_02I think well, I didn't know that there's multiple locations, but I think the the people that like you know, Buffalo is a set, like Nook is the same, like so on and so forth. Like, if you happen to have one in your neighborhood, you probably don't give a shit if they have several other locations. You just think, hey, I'm really glad that this exists in my neighborhood, and I'm gonna go and chill out there three times a week.
SPEAKER_03As uh also an aside, Vancouver Vancouver City Council, I think, voted yesterday or today on creating new 17 new districts in in the city. So trying to build little community districts. Do you think like I mean I guess like do you think we should have I don't know about this?
SPEAKER_02I don't know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was I don't know. It was like a whole thing they were trying to vote on, but the idea of like building more little community spaces all over Vancouver.
SPEAKER_02Well, how would you define it as community?
SPEAKER_03So that we're gonna create density in certain areas in the city and they're gonna change the zoning laws. Oh, and they're gonna change the zoning laws by having like in areas that are underserviced when it comes to like what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean it'll be interesting to to see how they incentivize that because it's challenging you to do that. You're not gonna lower building costs. You'd probably get a lot of heat for lowering property taxes, but maybe that's one way that they would want to do it. So how are you? Local residents don't want it because they don't want to increase sure. So how are you incentivizing people to do what they want to do or to do what you want them to do if you're the city of Vancouver? Oh, yeah, I think we need to.
SPEAKER_03So I guess a better question is another question is also like would you would I mean you've done bells in another location?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Would would you say that that was more like you got out of it because it just wasn't working?
SPEAKER_02No, it was working great, honestly. Like, I mean, that's the I mean. This is uh I I thought about bringing that up when James was making the point that bells is a neighborhood restaurant. We opened up bells and whistles on Dunbar. Dunbar in the West Side. That's the St.
SPEAKER_01Augustine's pub, right? That's what you took over.
SPEAKER_02It was no, it wasn't. It was uh called the Dunbar Public House, and it was a big success. We did great there. The problem for me though was that there was a demo clause on the building, and the building was a mess. It was like it wasn't a well-built building, there was some problems, the landlord didn't want to invest in repairs, and so we had an opportunity to decide whether we're going to sell it or get cash out, right? Or write it into the ground, and that's just not our style. So we just sold it and got out. And so I'm I'm very happy with that decision. Would you do another would you do another bell somewhere? Sure I would.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Like like a Surrey type thing, or I mean, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02We'd have to, you know, we've gotten offers to go and build out in Surrey. That's not a community that I'm super familiar with. So and we're not just in a rush to do something like that. So, you know, we're we're not particularly ambitious. Also, so you say ambitious, like like if you I know we are it's funny we have six restaurants, you you know, but like I you know, we don't want to go like across Canada, like doing things like I know that that's something like Nook wants to do, and you know, power to them, that's fine, but like that's not really our vibe, you know. We're more connected oriented, we want connection tubes. We want to just chill out, like you know, we want to take care of our community. We love Vancouver, like for us, that's the way it goes.
SPEAKER_01Going back to Jamie's point about this whole like new little districts or like little communities, but one thing I've struggled with going into like more neighborhood places, opening up venues or bars, is necessarily the neighborhood doesn't want any noise after 10 pm. So like if you open the bells and whistles, right, in let's say like a more I say neighborhood that doesn't have a lot of restaurants around it, it's normally a quieter neighborhood, like maybe where like La Queer is, for example, or like Point Grey or whatever, and there's a sports game that finishes at you know 11:30, or you're playing, you know, you're doing something because you're open until 12 and there's noise outside, people complain. So it's gonna be funny to see how Vancouver handles that.
SPEAKER_03Do you get that at June?
SPEAKER_01All the time.
SPEAKER_03Really?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Why? Because it's very residential around all around us.
SPEAKER_03But you're like on the corner.
SPEAKER_01No, no, but so behind us, but they're over until 2 a.m., right?
SPEAKER_02So you've got people leaving at 2 o'clock in the morning after having some drinks and they're not.
SPEAKER_01We're emptying the glass bin, so we can't do that in after 10 p.m. And they're like right behind us is all residential places.
SPEAKER_03What are they complaining about? Noise didn't move.
SPEAKER_01Well, no, dude.
SPEAKER_03They were there, they were there first. But you live in a city.
SPEAKER_02Hold on, let's be careful.
SPEAKER_03I don't think seniority is is a is a factor. I don't care if I don't care if two people can't complain about this stuff like this. I you live in a city. You want to live in quiet, they move to live somewhere else.
SPEAKER_01They move to a neighborhood.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you live in a neighborhood that is on a just off a major artery.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Sorry that there's a business that's there. You're not wrong, Jeremy. I live on Main Street.
SPEAKER_02They're like, I've lived here with relative peace and quiet. I don't care. Move that. Okay, let's just hear me out. You're not wrong, but I'm just saying if somebody's lived there for 30 years of having something like the pension, they're stressed out by anything. And then all of a sudden it's like breaking glass at like 7:30 at night. But there was a band there before that. Not a very busy one. No. Well, it's still something. No, it's not. I think they closed it. It's not the same. No. It's not the same. And like I'm just don't people are going to respond, right?
SPEAKER_03So we're going to cater to the small minority over a couple of things.
SPEAKER_02No, I don't think we should be catered to it, but we also'm no one's saying that like the you know the city's being reactionary.
SPEAKER_01Everybody wants to it's just things we have to deal with as Russian tours, right? Like Baja Racing is across the road, which I don't know whether anyone's been there. I've been there, it's awesome. It's a fucking vibe. But I meet every other night.
SPEAKER_03So we can whenever you guys are really busy, I just go over there.
SPEAKER_01But uh Ilio and and obviously June, we we share that that little alleyway. And the number one complaint that we have is from you know, like noise after 10 p.m. Oh, interesting. But if you I mean if you if you're doing shift work or if you get up at like 6 a.m.
SPEAKER_03You get it.
SPEAKER_01You know, like you know, people need to sleep, so it's really important.
SPEAKER_03There's a lot of great apartments you can move to.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, but like maybe you lived in Chinatown and you moved out there and then a fancy restaurant opened next to you. And maybe you don't like fancy restaurants.
SPEAKER_03I don't know. I mean they're welcome to cities. Cities, I mean, I don't know. I'm just I find it fascinating that people seem to live in cities and they don't expect them to change and grow and in summerland, like the same.
SPEAKER_01It's not a city after eight city.
SPEAKER_03I'm trying not I'm I shouldn't be like that.
SPEAKER_01I mean it's it's also like again, like we're trying to make these neighborhoods more exciting and cool. I know. But you also want to not alienate your That's true, and I'm not trying to be disrespectful to that either.
SPEAKER_03To the people. I just think it's sometimes it's like You sure? Because you sure sound like it's like it's like two people complain, and now we have to like our entire business strategy has to be based around two people. Listen, the city's smarter than that. They understand, right? Really? Because when we do see when we do these uh public public public uh public things with the case, I know, but the city gets it.
SPEAKER_02Like we we got another bad article about this plaza outside of bells and whistles yesterday. Really? Right? Yeah, a follow-up article by the same journalist suggesting that there was some sort of like, you know, whatever, untoward behavior, which is absolutely fucking bullshit.
SPEAKER_03Did you forward them in the podcast episode?
SPEAKER_02Uh I I actually did not, but like but yeah, you know, like you know, we didn't do anything wrong.
SPEAKER_01We didn't kind of uh You also can't serve out there, so I'm so no exactly.
SPEAKER_02We make no money off of it. So like what are we talking about?
SPEAKER_01You were in there, I asked if I could have a beer, and then like, no, you can't. I'm like, okay, well, fuck, I'll just leave.
SPEAKER_02Anyway, so it's just but you know, it's just when you go and do these pilot things, like you have to demonstrate for a year that things are gonna go smoothly and and the city listens to everything. Which I think is I think that's fair, though. Of course it's fair, and I I completely agree because that's how long it takes to really get a good sense of how something is making an impact. And in this particular case, so far, several months in, you know, we've definitely had a couple of people mention that hey, they're concerned about flow of traffic. No, there's nothing about noise, absolutely nothing about noise. Flow of traffic, it was the only thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but it's annoying, it's always been annoying to find parking there, and it's annoying that you can't turn down that street anymore.
SPEAKER_02Well, the parking issue, I think personally, is more because there's a massive construction site across the street that's taking 15 parking spaces away, and that's not an exaggeration, but it is just what it is. Like, yeah. We'll see.
SPEAKER_01That's why you ride bikes. I mean, or that's why it's a neighborhood restaurant because you can walk there.
SPEAKER_02Walk there, drink more.
SPEAKER_03But I don't know, gentlemen, Jimmy's gotta go, so we gotta wrap this up. I just want to say, gentlemen's been great. Love you both. Check out your neighborhood restaurants, all the ones we mentioned. Make sure that everyone out there buys Jimmy an Argentina jersey. Fuck off. Brings it to Bells and Whistles.
SPEAKER_01Fuck burn that shit. No, don't do that. You can't, that's rude. He doesn't mean that he's he's grieving, it's fine. We'll talk about it in our group therapy session.
SPEAKER_03You'll be okay.
SPEAKER_01You know, you know, how much do you like Messi?
SPEAKER_03I thought you liked Messi.
SPEAKER_02He loves him. Wonderful, amazing. You're just incredible player. Best of all time, not even close. But corrupt shit. Okay. Anyway, I'm not blaming the loss on uh on whatever on correct. They start to score two goals. We lost, yeah. I know. We lost, we lost. It's fine stuff. I'm just scoring. I'm just sad.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, everyone out there, I hope you have a great summer. The weather's gonna be really picking up here pretty quickly. We're about to come out of the World Cup, so make sure you check out your local restaurants and bars, visit them, make sure you give them a lot of your love and support. Drink responsibly, and uh make sure you buy lots of pomplomas juice and uh drink it accessibly. Yeah, actually. It's great, by the way. Like we're drinking it right now, but also like Kodas is good, by the way. It's rose. The rose is like a guilty pleasure. Yeah, go find it and make sure you check out uh Lucky Taco down in Kitts because I got a beautiful patio down there.
SPEAKER_01So it's you so I couldn't get in yesterday. Uh I went to I went to Ty Basil down the road really to lunch. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02My son was working last night. You should have just pulled him aside.
SPEAKER_01Well, I was during the day.
SPEAKER_02I was like, Oh, during the day, yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_01I did lunch. Oh we I had friends in town went to go to like the local to watch the game, and honestly, that was a rookie mistake.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then I was like, I gotta eat, I had to be a junior in an hour, and just got back. And when I was like, let's go to Lucky Taco, and they're all from LA, and like we don't want tacos. I'm like, yeah, but I do. And then they couldn't get in there, so I went to Ty Basel.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And if you go to Edgemont, make sure you tell all the staff that this is not a neighborhood restaurant.
SPEAKER_00I mean, that isn't kidding.
SPEAKER_02My goodness.
SPEAKER_01I just think if you have multiple locations, it's a bit of a stretch to be like it's no.
SPEAKER_02No, his of your fucking earls, but we're not, you know. Jesus. Edgemont is a neighborhood restaurant, 100% it is. It's literally the definition of a neighborhood restaurant.
SPEAKER_03And also, I'm gonna say this Kisatanto has a pork chop on the menu. That's all I care about.
SPEAKER_02Okay. It's amazing. Well, I'm gonna go try it because the pork loma or whatever we both put on our list of best dishes of 2025, remember? Yes. That was insane. What the pork was? Was it no, it's not the loma. What was it called? Copa. Copa. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this was the pork. Yeah, Joel likes to cook pork. He's good with pig. That sounds funny.
SPEAKER_03I hope everyone's doing really well.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for having us, Jimmy. Uh happy summer. James is anxious. Bye, buddy. Yeah, he's just a pee. Look at him run to the bathroom. That's why he's running if you pee. This is why we got you to pen. This is why we got you depends. We're keeping this in, by the way. Yeah. We have depends for a reason. My girlfriend's laughing right now.