#7 - Serving drinks in the parking lot, and two people doing the work of six! (36:19)

Restaurant Reality Show

Sam Knoll: [00:00:00] Let's just kind of start at the beginning. I'd like to know your whole history, so I'm going to get you to divulge some of that. And let me know when you started cooking, Why, you know, how old were you all that good stuff?

JT: [00:00:16] I was, I was 18. I mean, it's pretty much the same circle. You started with me. The whole, uh, Willie Moats, Chuck Sass. Uh, Oh, Rick Maggard. Oh,

Sam Knoll: [00:00:32] I was going to say, did you work for Rick early on?

JT: [00:00:35] I started with him at crawdads cross. If you remember that all the way down at the South end of the beach. Yep.

Sam Knoll: [00:00:43] And that was what was at his second restaurant.

JT: [00:00:47] He had, he had, uh, Crawdad cafe. He had Coyote cafe, the little one on 27th street and a place called barking dog down at the end of 36th street. I think he was down then

Sam Knoll: [00:01:01] I remember barky dog.

Yup. It's amazing. Well, so, okay, so 18. What, so what was that just kind of like at a, at a high school, summer job, what, uh, what, not much.

JT: [00:01:18] It just, um, it was right there on the boardwalk and, you know, it's, you know, I love surfing back then fishing and doing all that stuff. So it made, made sense right there and yeah. Easy, easy, easy job to get back then, too. Yeah. Compared to everything else from high school where it was way bette pay.

Sam Knoll: [00:01:44] Yeah. I

guess that's true.

Yeah.

JT: [00:01:51] And I was 18 and there's, you know, a whole room full of adults that buy you beer.

Sam Knoll: [00:01:55] Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. You had a good group. You're working with I, that was one thing that Rick Magard did very well. Was he somehow managed to pull in people and produce pretty talented chefs.

JT: [00:02:11] He could assemble a lot of talent that's for sure.

Sam Knoll: [00:02:13] Yeah. Every place he opened, for the most part, it was kind of amazing. And so, so let's see. So you basically, so from 18 until now you've been cooking for a long time. Yeah, we met back in what? 90? I don't know, mid nineties somewhere in there. Yeah.

JT: [00:02:39] How'd you get 96, 95, 96. Okay.

Sam Knoll: [00:02:46] Yeah. And it was interesting. Um, I was looking at, you know, some of the folks that we cooked with back then, and I was, I was, I was even, I was, I was telling my wife this evening. Yeah. That there've been times where I've gone back to Virginia Beach, simply because I wanted to go see where you were working and try to come in and get something to eat or come back and grab a beer with you when you'd get off work.

Right. It's been a long time since we'd been able to do that. Very long, probably too long. Yeah. We'll have to someday once this COVID stuff is over, we'll see if we can fix that.

JT: [00:03:22] I think, I can't remember. You always wanted to kick my ass cause I'd take you out way, way, way past your bed.

Sam Knoll: [00:03:27] Oh, without a doubt.

Well, at this point, you know, I mean, I'm like an hour and a half past my bedtime right now.

It's like you hit this, this 50 year old thing. Um, I obviously can't speak for all of them, but you hit that and it's just kind of downhill, you know, wake up at five in the morning for one to fall asleep at eight thirty or nine at night. That's just the way it seems to roll. Right. So, well, what else? Um, I'm trying to think, which, which are your restaurants out of all those, those jobs you've had?

What, what was your favorite? One of those and why do you think that was your favorite?

JT: [00:04:11] Well, we're like me Stroud. Uh Sulecki. I don't remember if you remember Paul Holbrook we're together for quite a while. We had a. Uh, coyote, like even at the beach and then we moved to a Laskin road. Yeah, that was, that was definitely my funnest time because I met, uh, some of the best friends that I still call best friends, even, even today, years and years and years later, you know, Mike Straud still comes over at my dad's house for Christmas brings, his daughters, you know, the whole family.

And, you know, we probably drank too much beer in my dad's backyard. No, we managed to have a pretty good time and I still talk to all those guys, even Sulecki. That's good.

Sam Knoll: [00:04:59] Yeah. I haven't, I haven't said a word to Steve for a long time. I guess anyone listening now, it was interesting. Um, I cooked with JT at a place called coyote cafe for a little bit.

That's me. Yup. And then I left and I don't remember if I had the order right on this or not. I guess. Yeah, I guess a mix it up. I wouldn't, I cooked at, with, with Steve at, um, what was that restaurant on 19th street that Rick had?

JT: [00:05:31] Oh, the fishbowl, uh, yeah. Cafe society,

Sam Knoll: [00:05:35] Cafe society. The first place I ever really cooked, I'd always been, you know, the bartender or waiter or something.

So that was interesting. And I was the pizza man. There didn't remember they had pizza. Well, yeah, I didn't have a real big role,

but, uh, yeah. Yeah, that was, that was, that was a good time there without a doubt. So Coyote is your favorite or that group that you worked with, there was your favorite and that was a very talented group. Oh, there we went.

JT: [00:06:13] We went to work together every day and we. Got off work and played hard all night together and just rinse and repeat pretty much every day while we were in our twenties.

Sam Knoll: [00:06:22] Yeah. Yeah. I think that's kind of the norm for that whole group all had long hair. Yup. Yup. All kind of, uh, which is so funny now. And I look back at pictures of me. Remember, halfway down my back. I remember, I remember you brought into work one day. I think you said like finally cut it off. Oh yeah. He had a picture of it on a coffee table or something.

Have you, um, have you ever played with the idea of, of. Moving in to an ownership type position with anyone with a restaurant.

JT: [00:06:58] I did that.

Sam Knoll: [00:07:00] Well, tell me about that.

JT: [00:07:02] I actually, it was me and a couple of friends started taking my frigerator

friends, opened coyote cafe back up. Yes. Yeah. Yes,

Sam Knoll: [00:07:18] yes, yes. And I never got back to the beach, uh, to see that that's right. It was, um, John Mannino's son, John who's another John Mannino.

JT: [00:07:34] You still know he was, he just texted me like 10 minutes ago. He's still, uh, still one of my best friends. I made him go to Florida all the time.

We just got back with last month, we drove down there for nine days or something like that.

Sam Knoll: [00:07:49] What do y'all do down there?

JT: [00:07:52] My family owns an Island down there. Like since before I was born and one year he get, so me, you remember bird? My brother. Oh yeah. Yeah. So one year we were all down there and just having fun and the eight, he said, I'm coming down.

And we'd see him on Facebook. He's checking into whatever, whatever North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, you know, it was like is he really coming?. Yeah. And sure shit. Me and burger stand in the middle of that. Keylock dirt road in front of the house. And we see some headlights come around the Palm tree. I was like, no shit.

He's actually here. So wound up being one of him and his girlfriend's favorite places to go.

Sam Knoll: [00:08:35] And that's pretty cool.

JT: [00:08:36] And so maybe they go there. Every year and you can't beat there, the rental cost of free. So you can't beat it.

Sam Knoll: [00:08:46] You guys, what do you, you do a lot of fishing down there too. Yeah, that's awesome.

JT: [00:08:51] I haven't really, since this COVID thing started, that's true.

Yeah. Florida Is wide open. There's no masks, no nothing. It's like normal. It's like normal civilization down there,

Sam Knoll: [00:09:03] which feels kind of crazy to me.

JT: [00:09:06] Yeah. Yeah, because you spend a whole two weeks down there, then you come back up here and you're like, Oh yeah, the apocalypse is still happening.

Sam Knoll: [00:09:14] Exactly. Yeah. So. I mean with where are you working now? How did, how did the, uh, the, this pandemic effect that,

JT: [00:09:25] Oh, shit. I think April, April is when we shut down. I mean, they changed some of the laws where we were allowed to serve, you know, strict Virginia is where you're in Carolina still.

Sam Knoll: [00:09:34] I mean, Carolina.

JT: [00:09:35] Yeah. Well, you know, strict Virginia was on, um, Uh, alcohol laws, you know, you have know, you have to have all your drinks up by two o'clock, uh, you're not allowed to have, you're not allowed to serve people in a parking lot or, well, they relaxed all those laws, really? Yeah. So we decided to take full advantage of that.

And we had, cause we weren't at first we were allowed to serve people inside. I'm like, well, what the fuck do we do about that? We need to. Survive. Yeah. Yeah. We don't want to stop serving them. Right. So we started throwing parking lot parties since we're allowed to serve alcohol. Right. In the parking lot.

We had girls on roller skates rolling out there where they're serving trays with full-blown cocktails, beers, you name it. You know, we just hand it right through Sam's window, right into the, uh, dry into the driver's seat with whoever you happen to bring along. And let's just keep on. Go ahead. Couple of, of a foldout tables out there.

We just put some hors d'oeuvres, you know, we just did a charter for those of us. Yeah. Yeah. Other than draw people in, keep people happy. Yeah. But I'm happy. We did that for a while. We were surviving on them. We got busted by the police for it because there's just. If they stayed in their cars, they would have been good.

But after four or five cocktails, it's like, Oh, look, Sam Knoll's here. I got to get out of my car. I'm gonna go hang out with, yeah, exactly. Suddenly eight or nine and other people over here. It's just, it's like a children's soccer game, just like all these people just congregate. There's one little Mosh pit.

They can't obey by the rule after they know have a few drinks,

Sam Knoll: [00:11:06] couple of drinks is all it takes. I think that's so true. I guess that's always been the hazard. You know, that's why they were saying, well, you know, eventually restaurants can open now restaurants can hold more people, but the bars are staying closed.

I think it's just there's this, this, everyone knows that you get a couple of drinks in you and any inhibitions are gone. , you know, obviously do whatever you shouldn't be doing. Yeah. So, yeah, so I mean, so, so they stopped that.

JT: [00:11:38] Well, at first, I mean, I had to, uh, I let three, it was three or four, three or four guys.

They kind of wanted to leave there because of this. You're the unemployment thing, you know, everybody's getting like nine or a thousand bucks or something crazy like that. Yeah. And it was hard for me to get them back, you know, once you feed that dog, that much, that much, you know, it's like, so I have to it's, you know, um, I'm getting paid a thousand dollars a week to sit on my ass and played X-Box or I can make less money to come work my ass off.

Then it sounds like,

Sam Knoll: [00:12:14] yeah, that's tough. One. I know it's

As soon as that ended everybody came back and just recently when they. Uh, reimpose the, uh, 10 o'clock right now we're on a 10 o'clock alcohol limit. Uh, wow. And, uh, yeah, so I was having a hard time giving my guys hours, so I lost another, another few of them.

JT: [00:12:36] Yeah. So right now it's just me and one other guys iron manning it seven days a week.

Sam Knoll: [00:12:43] There's two of you. That's hardcore. So when you said you were busy, now, you weren't kidding both of us. Yeah. Wow.

JT: [00:12:52] We got a six, we got a six station or a six person kitchen, two people doing the best we can. We shorten the menu up, you know, make it a little bit more, uh, compact.

I said, you know, I don't care how good you are. You can't be in two places at once. You just can't. So, you know, just shorten the menus up. That's a favorites on there for everybody and, you know, just that's, that's our role right now. I mean, it's

Sam Knoll: [00:13:20] it's once again, it's just keep people happy, and they will keep coming in.

JT: [00:13:24] Yeah, we've been actually pretty lucky that we've pretty much held on to most of our local regulars, you know, new people. We do have an outdoor seating area. That's. Pretty large, but as soon as the temperature dropped below 60 degrees, you know, that thing's history. There's a couple of people that have the indoor.

I don't get it. I have the indoor seating, you know, all the flaps and they get heated in there.

Sam Knoll: [00:13:51] It's done here. Why is it the same?

JT: [00:13:55] Why is it okay to go eat? And, uh, you know, it looks like the scene in E T when they found out he had an alien, you know, it's like, yeah, these, all these people outside. Eating it a condensed closed space.

Basically. Basically you put a Petri dish out there in the middle of your parking lot, and you're shoving a whole bunch of people in there, but for some reason it's legal in the parking lot, not legal inside. So yeah, so there's been people, you know, getting in trouble with that because now you have to have same, same fire code.

You have to have fire extinguishers, exit signs, two exits. Uh, no open flame heat, you know, it's just like being inside. So they're making it very, very challenging.

Sam Knoll: [00:14:44] That's interesting. So they're, they're basically, they're saying it's outside, but you have to treat it like it's inside dining.

JT: [00:14:50] It is inside Sam.

Sam Knoll: [00:14:52] I know

JT: [00:14:53] you walked through a damn door. You sit at a table. It's covered it's from the, from the ceiling all the way to the concrete. Yup.

Sam Knoll: [00:15:00] And there's probably less air circulation there than there is in the restaurant where there's a system moving air, right.

Friends. Then in this, uh, in this business, who've kind of lost jobs or any, anything like that?

JT: [00:15:18] I don't have any friends here at the ocean front. I don't, I have some friends out in Colorado where they. Um, Hmm, have shut all the restaurants down period closed till they closed two weeks ago. And they said they're allowed to open December 20th.

There's rumors of them doing that here. I don't know if you see what's going on. Like in California, there's a few other States where they, they told gaven, given everybody stay at home orders, whatever you want to call that, but you're not allowed to function as a. As, as a business,

Sam Knoll: [00:15:54] I guess that's just as they watch this, this, uh, current spike in, uh, an infection they're feeling like they need to do something about, uh, yeah, I mean, here in the restaurant business and, you know, it's, I guess, especially at this time, if they get hit with something like that, it may do many of them, in.

JT: [00:16:17] Well, well, we, we were lucky enough. We got on the plane. Uh, on the ball early enough, you know, like CPS and, uh, bill Gambrill, you know, that like having this, like almost twice a week, I have some kind of giant conference call where everybody's trying to figure out what everybody's doing. And everybody got in on the, uh, you know, the paycheck protection loans.

We got money for that, you know, uh, sub from the government and that got us through. Uh, this spring, you know, like in early part of the summer, you know, or we had, were not freaking out. We were comfortable. Cause we had a little bit to, to chew on before, you know, we died, but if they hit us again like that, and there's just, I mean, you will see restaurants, I mean, nationwide, you will see them cave.

That's the only thing they keep. I kept even giants like Bill Cambrell CP shuckers places that have been around forever. So that that happens again, the loss will take, there's no way they keep the doors open.

Sam Knoll: [00:17:18] Well, I think they've all eaten through whatever cushion they had and at some point, even if they, even if they've got it, I guess they also have to say at some point, is it, you know, is this a smart time to even be doing this business?

I'd be better off paying my rent and that's it. And insurance, you know, but that's it. And we'll, we'll see if we can hold out until everything gets all better and then try to regroup and reopen things again, whether it's something different or, you know, who knows? I don't know. It's a very bizarre,

JT: [00:17:56] it'll be different when this is all over.

It's still going to be different. Yeah. This one's going to leave a scar for sure. Yeah, I think so.

Sam Knoll: [00:18:06] Yeah. So you've, you've played for a little bit with the restaurant owner side of things. Um, and with that, how did, how did that one work out?

You guys ran for awhile and it just didn't do quite enough. And just decided to go ahead and fold that location.

JT: [00:18:26] We did. I mean, like we still plan on doing something along the lines, you know, one day, you know, something falls out of the sky and it's too good to pass up. You know, maybe we still got all the signage.

You're still, I mean, literally we have a storage unit slam full crap, you know,

coyote, cafe, lots, lots of Coyote cafe cups. I don't really want to talk about the cups. We've got lots of cups. Um, Yeah, it was the location. You know, I went into it thinking, you know, I was like, well, how can we fail a Hilltop?

Hilltop's always busy. You know, like it's, it's one of the, if not the busiest, uh, one of the, one of the, uh, metrics that a landlord has given us this, uh, that, that corridor after that, uh, first colonial, uh, Laskin road corridor sees over 650,000 cars a day. Might be the same car, but they went back and forth.

That's that just can't be a real numbers. Like, man, it's a real number. So that's crazy. And right there also is the number one grossing. Uh, Chick-fil-A and Virginia it's like, so it does see a lot of traffic, you know, it's crazy.

Sam Knoll: [00:19:37] The Chick-Filet world is just it's it's, it's just, it's it's such an enticing thing you'd like to assume.

Well, if Chick-fil-A can do that business here, then why can't I, but it doesn't always work that...