Transcript
Mike Tholis
Welcome, everyone. This is the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast, and today we have chef Jamie Simpson. He's the chef liaison at the chef's garden and the executive chef of the culinary vegetable Institute. Welcome to the show, Jamie.
Jamie Simpson
Thank you so much, Chris.
Chris Spear
Hey, thanks for coming on. So, I know The Chef's Garden as a produce grower and purveyor that provides amazing produce to restaurants. They've been doing that about 30 years now, right?
Jamie Simpson
Almost 40
Chris Spear
Wow, that's such a great track record. But now, I guess due to COVID, you guys are trying to adapt a little bit and start shipping to the home consumer. Is that kind of what's going on right now?
Jamie Simpson
In a nutshell. Yeah.
Mike Tholis
Everything seemed to literally change overnight. And, man it you know, in the restaurant industry, we think so much about restaurants, but places like you guys are impacted just as much, if not more, and I imagine that's been, you know, a super challenging thing for you guys to overcome.
Jamie Simpson
You know, it's a kind of a similar issue. opportunity that even a restaurant faces, we often look at the chef's garden as an extension of the kitchens that we serve. Right. So like we do have prep cooks and we have purveyors essentially out in the fields like picking the right products to order. And where a restaurant could turn into like a some sort of a food delivery service. We were kind of doing the same thing. It's actually the very similar to farming and cooking.
Mike Tholis
How fast Did you guys make that pivot? You know, once it looked like restaurants are going to be closing down. How quickly Did you manage to figure out okay, we're going to go into start doing home delivery.
Unknown Speaker
Fortunately, where we are in Ohio. Our governor was pretty quick to shut restaurants down. I think one of the first it was a Sunday. Farmer Lee and I were at chef's wedding and You know, the audience in the room was chefs as well. And everyone's you know, these people are saying their vows and everybody's phone is blowing up. He, my farmer, and I really liked selling on delivery boxes. It happened pretty quick.
Mike Tholis
Yeah, that was around, I guess for you guys. Was that the same as you know, like the second week in March or so I imagine. Right. So give us a little bit background about you know, how did you come to start working at the chef's garden and the culinary vegetable Institute like what was the path that brought you there?
Unknown Speaker
Like many chefs this place, the where we are now the institute we host six or used to post six or 700 Guest chefs a year in this building. And the institute was here as a place for people to better understand where their food comes from, to get in the fields, pull some vegetables, bring them into a kitchen and and then apply them to something. It was built as a place to, you know, embrace failures in many ways to explore and try new things. And I came here like most chefs, I was working at a great restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina, where I was born and raised. And when I had an opportunity to take some time off of work and go to another restaurant, I opted out of that and to take a road less traveled towards a farm. And that farm was this farm, the farm that we were ordering from the one that felt like Christmas, every time you open the box, you know, the one that just brings a sense of place, and time and seasonality and all those things. I really fell in love with the farm from afar. And they came up to help with a roots conference, the very first conference that we held for chefs. It was Seven years ago, and it was sort of a four month project. And I was like, Okay, I'm going to come up for this four month project. I'm going to help with this concept. We're going to get it off the ground and go back to Charleston. And I'll leave with all of this stuff I fell in love with never left. Moving here was a great opportunity for me and one that fits, I believe, pretty well, in your podcast concept of chefs without restaurants.
Mike Tholis
Was there a chef there previously, or were you the first one to come on into a position like this?
Unknown Speaker
There was there was about a dozen chefs in this position within a, you know, 1520 year period. And chefs from all over the place from really literally from all over the world like have operated this kitchen. It's not a restaurant. It's not a banquet hall. It's not a You know, it's not a r&d kitchen. Really, it's it's sort of, yeah, this flexible space that was designed by a board of advisors, Charlie Trotter, Alonzo cos, john George was involved at one point. Chris Hastings from hot and hot fish club was involved. Rick tramonto helped with a lot of the design here. And it was basically like a bunch of chefs from around the industry that helped and really supported the farm, put their heads together on how to build a place that, you know, could, could continue to teach. So who are the typical people who come to do learning or farm tours or whatever I mean, they're chefs from all walks of life around the country or world. Yeah, all over I mean, part of you know, if it's function is like, if I'm going to go to a farm, as a chef, I'm, you know, in travel maybe across the country or the world to go to They're, I would like to have a kitchen somewhat nearby that I can cook in. And that's why this was built. Yeah, our cup, like the people that come to the institute are, you know, chefs in multi unit chains that like you would never expect to learn about carrots like, you know, Starbucks and Wendy's and chick fil a right and then you have, you know, chefs and like, other types of like higher end restaurant groups, from, you know, the Landry's of the world to Disney's and the cruise ships to hotel chefs. Even like, you know, Nordstrom is a, you know, you would know it as a retail space for like clothes, but they have a huge food service division, like a massive food service division. Like, you know, it's all kinds of types of people. Obviously, also really high end chef, but The goal is really to understand like how to incorporate vegetables in their menus. There's no better place in the country to do that. You know, I think that a place that's connected to a farm that grows six or 700 varieties of vegetables is a good start. But then you put a kitchen on it that was designed by some of the greatest chefs in the world. You got a great spot. It's a good recipe for creative thinking.
Mike Tholis
But it must be really exciting to get to work with so many new products and interesting heirloom varietals. I mean looking through your catalogue of things you guys have there stuff I've never tasted never worked with. How do you work with products? Do you just grab something and start trying it tasting it doing kind of like an analysis I mean, if there's a variety of cauliflower that you've never had before you just pick it up and start working with it.
Unknown Speaker
Right? I mean, we we treat every day as a you know, a blank slate and walk through the garden and You know when oftentimes we're going through even ingredients like vegetables that you know, but that most people know you can find new parts or new stages of that plant's life that it really interesting like a you know like a zucchini or like right now zucchini Oh go from like this green almond sort of texture right and like flavor profile. Then it goes to like a traditional like summer squash sort of thing that we all know and then like it'll keep going into like a gourd pumpkin space if you let it right. and form a hard skin you knock on it, it's almost hollow and the seeds are hard. It's pretty cool. But when we are approached with a new item, like something that maybe a modern plate has never seen, like oka in parts of Peru and Central America, Mexico like there's so guys exploring and experimenting with oka. We started growing it here and it was Something that most chefs in the United States had no clue what to do with or what it was for, you know, beyond traditional applications of like puree. Okay, is the tuber of a variety of sorrel. Right? Think about like this tuber kind of like, maybe a Jerusalem artichoke, but like colored like, like I don't even know, like a like a gemstone from like the earth and then flavored like sour apple, you know, with the starts of a potato. So you got this new thing that that is a great place for us to really start exploring because like, if it's starchy, maybe it'll fry and you know if it's, if it's sweets, it'll caramelize if it's sour, let's try the juice. If it's you know, if it's It's rich and full of cellulose. Maybe we can dry it until like crispy things. Yeah, I don't know. We just kind of look at everything for the first time every time. Ideally, you know that that applies to carrots as well.
Mike Tholis
So how do you start growing something like that? Or why is it someone approaches you and wants you to grow them? Is it something you guys learn about? and want to try it? Like if you get into oka like, why would you even start growing that in the first place? Oftentimes, it's a you know, a lot of these vegetables
Unknown Speaker
come at the request of a specific restaurant or chef.
Unknown Speaker
Sometimes by the time we figure it out, is the restaurant closed or is not interested in the item even more. It took us five years to figure out how to grow the stuff for that bad example. You know, if you were in a situation like maybe your grandmother lived in Italy, and when she moved to America at a young age she brought with her her mother's to make No seeds. And she planted them every year and canned them and you had one little vial of those seeds left, right. And instead of like risking it all and planting those seeds yourself, you'd send them to a farm like this, to plant and grow for your menu to tell your story of your grandmother, your great grandmother, you know what I mean, too, sometimes that's the case, that's a really beautiful I love when that happens when a when some even if it's not the best tomato in the world. It just tells such an impactful story that just makes you one that you know, and to be a part of it.
Mike Tholis
Why aren't people growing more of these things? Like why do you not see them commercially? I know a lot of things are impacted by yield and cost of production. But it just seems a shame that you go to the grocery store and we have one carrot now maybe you have to, if it's a really nice place, but with all the varieties out there, why are we just limited to what people think of as, you know, these horse carrots or whatever
Unknown Speaker
you I mean, you hit it right on the head there. It's really in, in mass, like agriculture and real production for like, you know, farms that are trying to compete in grocery stores per se. It's a tons per acre game. That's it. It's not. It's not about flavor. It's about yield. And it's also about distribution or ship ability. So when they harvest maybe like tomatoes, they'll harvest green tomatoes that have the ability to ripen when prompted. That can be shipped green because they're not, you know, soft yet and they can ripen at the grocery store. Sometimes, it's like carrots to your point carrots are harvested. Most of them in the United States are grown in California in a desert They're watered heavily, they have the water and then they pull them out of the ground, they cut the tops off in the field and they ship the route. They grow quick. They're easy to grow. And it's a tons per acre game. When the farmer looks at growing a new product, it's about flavor. It's about shelf life, which is important. Not always, but is. It's about, you know, color, it's about story. Why are we growing this and why is it important? Sometimes we like this institute here is tasked with like weeding out like 30 different varieties of something and turning it into two or three and make those available. And so we have to look at it from a critical point and like obviously flavors most important in the it wouldn't be in front of us if it didn't have yield. So that's already been decided, we get to look at things like at that point we get to look at things like like historical references, you know are there is this variety you know more similar to something that was grown 5000 years ago, you know, and then we kind of shape a story around it. It can be applied to desserts or cocktails or you know, savory applications that's also really kind of a cool place to to live. We just did a tasting a few weeks ago, on different amounts of salt, sea salt, added to water and watered the plants with that liquid. And in some cases, some plants can absorb that salt water and make leaf almost seasoned. In some cases at certain varying degrees that will inhibit growth and the plant will move on your growth. So we have to find the sweet spot for certain plants. Water with seawater, and bring them something that they had inside them the ability to produce this salty minarelli leaf is really cool.
Mike Tholis
That's wild, I would think that like salt would kill the plant. I would never try and do that. But I guess that's what you guys get into is just kind of trial and error with some of this stuff.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, in many cases, I mean, some of the plants that were growing are like indigenous to like, you know, sandy beaches. And if that's the case, then they can handle and tolerate certain levels of salt. If they don't have salt, they're not gonna absorb it. But that same theory then can be applied to other plants like fennel, or celery,
Mike Tholis
right? Some, some plants can absorb certain levels of salts and like then you get really cool different flavor profiles. Do you have any ingredients that you really love there? Like is there something you had never tried? And you've discovered and now you just love it or love Working with it or it's been a real joy to kind of do some r&d with.
Unknown Speaker
There's a handful of them we're growing a series of ingredients that we think apply themselves really well to cocktails and spirits in general. And some of the compounds in those plants tend to lend themselves well to alcohol soluble or alcohol solubility. So like you know, if I were to put certain types of sorrel with a cocktail, you know, versus others, some will like really express a nice Sour Apple green apple flavor profile others don't necessarily release any flavor with to the beverage, I think is cool. The rhubarb right now, I'm kind of all about the rhubarb And right now, I can't Get enough tomatoes. I mean, we're, you know, you get into some of these varieties side by side. You know, it almost is like it's almost like a wine tasting. We're like this. This tomato is more like a pineapple than a tomato or this tomato is more like a green grape. Literally then, like a typical summertime, tomato, and then others, you know, are already like, you know, sauce. And I'm, I'm loving that. We have about 100 varieties we're growing right now, you know, and with COVID when without home delivery, they're all homeless. So it's useless. It's like, yeah, it was a very difficult time for us because like, you know, you got to, you got to keep the plants alive, right? We're only talking about March, many, most of these plants were already planted, whether they're in a greenhouse ready to go into the fields, or we already had the, you know, starts Are we have the seeds from last year and refrigeration ready to load this year and like, you know, you got a one farmer actually it was farmer Lee's father said, the best way to save a seed is to plant it. You know, in some cases, like, if you have that one special thing and you really, you know, want to save it, sometimes you just put it on the ground. And you can turn it into, you know, 10 or 15 seats. We were and are still at 100% risk of losing this, everything right. And if the best way to save a seed is to plant it, you know, then just plant the farm into we're going to keep growing. We're going to keep harvesting. We're going to figure out a way and an outlet for it, which I'll talk about in a minute. In some cases, it's it's home delivery. You know if I don't have several 100 pounds of a single product it might not make sense in a home delivery box, or everyday is just crazy. We're we're looking at product development for the chef's garden right now at the Institute. We're not doing dinners. We're building some shelf stable, preserved foods really designed around agricultural waste, or potential agricultural waste. We've found the best way to go to market with a whole bunch of products is by co packing. So we're gonna start we're starting there right now are shipping products out to a handful of manufacturers from jellies and jams to vinegars to mead to so potato chip companies are not out of the question. was looking at non alcoholic spirits. So we got a handful of ideas were reshaping and resizing all of our honey frames in the hives. So the bees can do something smaller for the houses. There's a lot of like, a lot of cool projects in the works. And then while these things are going on CVI itself will become a more of a packing plant or a processing plan for a handful of of items that P finally choose make the most sense for us
Mike Tholis
for now. Do you still have some restaurants that are ordering products? Or is that pretty much been?
Unknown Speaker
Yep? Big like Mark city markets like Chicago and like New York is pretty much offline. There's a handful of restaurants doing some pretty neat stuff. Alinea is doing some really great, like takeout options this weekend ever just open to Curtis Duffy's place. They've got some cool stuff, but it's small bye You what we're seeing the most of right now is, you know, resorts, private clubs and things like that far out there and rural. They are, they're still online seems to be doing okay. In some cases.
Mike Tholis
So when you do the like at home delivery boxes, is there any selection or is it just kind of farmers choice? And how's that going?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, there's a few options. There's
Unknown Speaker
like, early on we curated a, an assortment of boxes with a group of doctors and drugless doctors is the organization that, you know, in their old roots of Hippocrates that food is medicine. And we do too. In some cases. They kind of helped us curate a list of ingredients that are good for like, you know, the immune system. And so we we fulfill those and that's not like, you know, whatever you You can throw at it. There's a pretty specific list of ingredients that we keep in those boxes. We have a series of boxes that we're doing with Thomas Keller right now called small farm and big hearts or in our on our website. It's called Smart farm provisions. And that's where basically, the TK RG is sort of curating a handful of their purveyors into a single box to help save some of those small farms. That has grown since then we're working with Gavin Kaysen. And he's brought on a different meat producer, and we've done a maybe a dozen or two dozen of these boxes since March. Oh basic. I've got one on right now with Elysian Fields or purebred lamb. And the concept there is it's a pretty specific list of ingredients in the box with lamb or B for oysters or seafood or whatever. ardoch nothing's off the table, which is crazy. And it's, it comes with like a video recipe and people can cook along. There is a best of the season box, which is our number one selling box that allows us to sort of navigate the farm and let the farmers be farmers and like, whatever is great, you know, works its way into that box and that one goes out and it changes really, pretty much weekly.
Mike Tholis
You guys have a pretty good blog component to your website with recipes and stuff. Do you find that that's something you're going to continue doing, especially as you see more home consumers with your products, maybe wanting some guidance on how to use things or is it just something you've always done and you'll continue doing?
Unknown Speaker
Ironically, for 18 months, we've been writing a cookbook, a book on vegetables, and it's a night we just turned in a 900 page manuscript and it's off limits and so when to do This home delivery thing. And everyone's like, we need recipes. And I just spent my last two years on recipes for home cooks pretty much. And they're off limits. So we started over. And we started from scratch, we basically made a blank recipe template and a blank document on Google Drive and started throwing, compiling and writing recipes in this thing. A lot of people ask, like, at home, especially like, what do I do with, you know, flowers? You know, what do I do with with these beats? I've only worked with big beats, but these are babies, what do I do? It's just ideally, it's a tool for people to kind of wrap their head around some of the applications and ideally, hopefully, like chefs like you can contribute recipes to the page as well. So you know, and if it's something you're interested in doing, let me know because it's it's exciting. It's a category that I want to grow, but I don't have time to do it. So it's gonna lie on relationships like you and I are, like rich or David who you've interviewed.
Mike Tholis
Yeah, I always try and talk to my friends who, you know, people love to get CSA boxes, but they'll always say like, I get cold Robbie every week, and I have no idea what to do with it. You know, that seems to be one of the examples that people always get in a CSA box, but they've probably never used and so I'm always trying to create recipes and put them on my website just to say if you've got this or if you've got that, here's what I do with it. You know, and I find that to be fun.
Unknown Speaker
kohlrabi is a perfect example. Like, look it up.
Mike Tholis
And you get so you guys used to do full vegetable dinners on the farm previously, when you could be open to the public, like people could come in and do dinners. Is that right?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Um, the institute here, historically is open once a month for the public. And we do a series we've done a we do a handful of series. One of them is a lecture series. So like, maybe a writer or photographer or a chef or a farmer will come out, they'll tell their story. In some cases, it's a winemaker. And other cases, it's like a maple syrup guy or whatever. But they'll come out they tell their story. And then we do a small format like four or five course dinner to relate to the topic. We do a vegetable showcase series where there's one every other month and it's like six courses of tomato. And the height of you know, potato season we do a potato dinner and then we do a squash dinner and asparagus dinner, things that like people can really get behind. Those do really, really well. We sell those out. As soon as we put them up. We do a lecture series we do that we do a like a guest chef, you know series where Kind of a pop up will allow, you know, Jose Andreas came out or like Paulie grant will come out and he'll, he'll do he'll do him you know and we don't there's no specific recipe really formal written we just get them out on the farm and do the thing and cook some food and it's always always really fun. I think my favorite guest chef dinner, and one of one of my favorites, but that just blew me away was a Tara, New York, Ronnie and Borg just just killed it. The kitchen is furnished with equipment from like all over the industry and it's always changing. So we have these fantastic partners that supply us with new ovens and new blast chillers and new mixers and circulators and whatever we really plates are steelite is our biggest like Wear glassware flatware sponsor. And we work with their ceramicist to do some stuff and it's just a really cool, it's not a restaurant, but it's really, really a cool place.
Mike Tholis
Sounds like a chef's dream. I mean, this is what I really love is there's so many interesting things you can do in the culinary world. You know, I went to culinary school. And when you go to culinary school at least, you know, years ago, it was like your options were somewhat limited. You worked in a restaurant or hotel or resort or something like that, or maybe you gotten a contract food, but there's so many interesting things you can do, which is why I want to have you on the show. Because, you know, you're you're a chef, you're a chef who does really great dishes works with the best products really cool plating, and you don't have to work this restaurant job. You know, there's just so many awesome things you can be doing.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I always said that. Even like when I also went to culinary school. When I was in culinary school, I was even trying to help guide some of the other students That, you know, you don't have to come out of this with a chef job, right? Like, there's so many today this morning, we got an invitation to go cook for some film crew in Honolulu for five days. Not gonna do it. I'm not interested, but really interesting, you know, and if I was tied into like a restaurant, that kind of thing might be impossible. If there was like, you know, an opportunity to, you know, to continue to learn. Restaurant concepts are really challenged with the need for the day to day operations, you know, and you have to, like, perform a certain amount every day or like, you know, it's just not viable and it's already a tight margin. So like, restaurants are tough. They're really, really a difficult industry. And we're seeing it now with COVID of how delicate this damn situation is. You have you You know, some of the I think it was like JP Morgan put out a financial statement that like, you know, all of their of all their like restaurant accounts, they only had an average of like 11 days of cash flow. Right. So like, you taking some of the best restaurants in the world, right? And you're telling me that they can't close for 11 days without being closed forever? Yeah, like, they don't have enough cash on hand. Like if I was like a, like a tech company. I could just shut down and turn back on and like 10 months.
Mike Tholis
Yeah, I've seen so many restaurants that I love that are closed and just said they're not going to open again, just doesn't make sense. Can't do it.
Unknown Speaker
Your base of interviewees is about to grow a lot, because because of this nightmare, it's not a good situation.
Mike Tholis
Yeah, and we've talked about this a lot. I mean, I would never open a restaurant. It just doesn't make sense. I don't have the money to begin with. But you know, I can Run a pretty low overhead with my business and give someone a very similar experience to going out. And now I mean, my business has exploded because what I do is this fine dining and home. What I'm seeing so much of now is I'm doing all these 12 to 20 person weddings, these people, you know, normally we're going to do 130 people, that's not my bread and butter. I can't do that at all. But now they're just renting an Airbnb, and they just want to have 15 people out to the Airbnb, and they find me they're not hiring restaurants to come out and do it. Because I've already established myself as an in home private chef, and I bring the China and all that set the table and give them that same experience. So I'm seeing a big uptick and people who are afraid to go to restaurants just because restaurants are open for indoor seating or have outdoor seating doesn't mean people are comfortable going there. So I'm seeing a lot of people who are transitioning into kind of what I've been doing. And everyday people are asking me, how should I do this? What would you be doing if you were me right now to build a client list?
Unknown Speaker
We have one on Friday. And then I did something we would have said no to 100 out of 100 times, but like this Friday, we're gonna pack up food for like 25 people, we're gonna drive it to their house. And people do ones that
Unknown Speaker
people want or at least to stay together. Yeah.
Mike Tholis
And I see now you guys are opening up to an Airbnb experience as well, which seems pretty cool. So what's that you have like one room that people can stay at?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, we call it our one room hotel. The institute was designed with a single suite above the kitchen. And it's beautiful. It's furnished by Viking. But it's got a really nice like, log cabin like country feel kind of like this room. Would from the property. When they cleared some trees to build the building. They turned in To like this table, that is kind of the Spirit throughout this entire building. But the suite is a really great room and like, you know, traveling is kind of limited right now. So we thought we might as well just open it up for additional incremental revenue while we're not doing public events. And it's booked tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday this week, which is great.
Mike Tholis
Yeah, that's really that. That's really cool. We're always looking for things like that we might have to my wife and I get in the car and drive out there sometime. Come on out. What's your thought on the routes conference? Have you guys thought about doing anything online? I mean, I'm sure this year it's not going to happen. Like it's always happened. And now so many people are doing conferences, you know, via zoom or whatever. Is there any decision on what you guys are going to be doing?
Unknown Speaker
routes is huge for us. It's something that you know, we we take really seriously. It's big commitment for our team. But it's such a valuable opportunity to bring people together with COVID and corporate spending cuts and travel bans and all of that, obviously an on farm and food safety and on farm by gathering of people is not the future. For right now. We have talked about and I don't even know if we've made that state public yet you might be the first person to know we have an on staff LIKE IT departments and a marketing team and a video, videographer and a photographer. Even with all of that. Online conferences
Unknown Speaker
can be very difficult.
Unknown Speaker
We've talked about it, it's
Unknown Speaker
it's really a lot for our team right now. And I I really don't know if we'll be able to but we are Going to do something but it will not compare to the magnitude that routes conferences. Yeah,
Mike Tholis
you know, I love the star chefs conference so much. I think I've gotten the past nine years and you know, just thinking that this October that's not gonna go down. And, you know, it was always my favorite time of year to connect with everyone. You know, you guys were doing yours like almost right before that, weren't you? September October is that when roots conference was?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, it was like a, I think about a week before.
Mike Tholis
Yeah, that's why I've never made it because I always take like almost a whole week and go to New York around that time. And I've never been able to justify taking off like two weeks in October to come to conferences, but it looks like this year, I'm not gonna get to do anything.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I love Star chefs as well. I mean, the people behind it are relentless, and they're, they're so focused and driven and what they're doing and they do set they do a really, really great job. It's a lot of work.
Mike Tholis
So you have anything else you want to share with our listeners before we get out of here today?
Unknown Speaker
I don't know, I think I mean, like, I guess there's gotta be, there's gotta be some words of encouragement or shared, I guess there's got to be some words of encouragement shared for our listeners, if, if I'm assuming your audience is, is both chefs and chefs without restaurants just know we have a year on the ground of the industry. And there are some restaurants that are doing phenomenally well. There are some restaurants that have made some really important changes, to continue to do business. And some on the front end, those changes are hard. But as you adapt to them like they get easier and business can in some cases never be better. You know? If you're in a situation where you had to do more revenue, you might look at all types of dining. Be flexible, you know, don't be fixed in your business model. If something's not working, adjust it. If that doesn't work, adjust it again. Because in the end of the day, something's going to work. And like I said earlier, in the beginning of this call, I believe that the chef's garden or growing vegetables and farming is somewhat similar to cooking in a restaurant in our case. You got to be flexible, and try new things and take a road less traveled, and take risks and embrace it. fall on your face and get up and do it again and have a lot of fun. I think that those those things are some of the most important things this industry can do right now.
Mike Tholis
That's very inspiring. I love that and like Everything in life, not just food, I think sometimes simple is best. And if you start with a good foundation, you get good stuff. And I can't think of a better thing to start with then amazing produce. So I'll definitely be out there spreading the word because you guys have some great stuff. And I hope that now so many people at home also discover the products that the world's best chefs have known about for a little while. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. glad we were able to make it happen. It's
Unknown Speaker
been crazy couple weeks.
Mike Tholis
To all our listeners. This has been the Chester that restaurants podcast, as always, you can find us at chef so that restaurants.com and org and on all social media platforms. Thanks so much and have a great day.
