072 - Gabe Scott

Alright, this is the most journalistic thing I've ever done. I'm hitting record on my phone before I walk in to Lady Bird Taco for the first time. I'll grab a mic stand here. So the last time I was here, this was a place called Box.

Bongo on 10th BOX. And now I see the Lady Bird Taco sign on there. It looks amazing. The windows are all taped up so you can't see through them.

And here we go. Look at this dude, your kitchen! That is after I'm wearing this one. Yeah man.

Crazy. This looks cool. That's a good job. Yeah, we're as far as opening.

It's kind of a question mark. We were 10 days out for you. 10 days out. And I mean, I know it's kind of like, wait, 10 days.

But when you have an army of people, yeah. And you're getting down to it and stuff's just happening fast. But army of people is down to me. So I've just been doing it all myself.

From the beautiful Art House studios in Nashville, Tennessee, this is The Pivot, stories of people who've made a change. Welcome to The Pivot. My name is Andrew Osenga and my guest today is Gabe Scott. Gabe and I have played music together for 20 years at this point.

A lot of you have probably seen him on stage with Andrew Peterson, with David Crowder, with people Norman. But right now he is not spending his time playing music, though he is an incredible musician. He actually just opened a restaurant called Lady Bird Taco. It opened this past Wednesday.

He and his wife and their business partners have been working on this for years. I've been here and I've talked about this for years. And so this Saturday to get to stand in line, wait in a very long, socially distant, sun-shiny line. And we waited for over an hour to get our breakfast tacos.

And it was awesome. And get to see so many friends out there that were supporting him. Ian Cron was in the line next to us. Andy Goldhorn was actually running food out because he was helping Gabe.

It was so fun just to see that the whole community come out and support Gabe and this restaurant. It's just so exciting. And Gabe and I got to sit down about a month ago and talk before the restaurant was open. Gabe and his wife, Keeley, who's also a good friend and a longtime work colleague, they've risked a lot for this new adventure.

And who could have imagined that would have included a chapter like this one with a shutdown and literally protests going on down the street. But to talk to Gabe and what could seem like a crushing circumstance must be challenged with resilience and hope and faith. And I'm so glad that Gabe and I got to grab this time. And after talking about doing this interview for a year, we finally got to do it right now, just wild.

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Here we go. And now here's my conversation with Gabe Scott. Well, we both just got fun calls at the exact same time. Do you definitely know you?

Well, typically I'll start these interviews. I'll say something like, oh, tell me about where you grew up, how you got started doing what you do, but you've done a bunch of different things. And here we are sitting in an empty restaurant. There's wood on the floor.

It smells like sawdust. I know this is not the plan, what I'm seeing right now. And I'm curious if you tell me a little bit about where I'm sitting right now and what life looks like for you kind of in this moment. Yeah, so you are sitting in Lady Bird Taco.

It's been a sort of a three year labor of love. It's a restaurant, Austin inspired taco restaurant. Something that I've dreamt of national having for quite a few years. And it just never came to fruition from anybody else.

So I decided a few years ago, we need to take a stab at trying to change everything. This is me talking to my wife, Keely, who's I think six months pregnant. I think we should change everything about my career. And let's open a restaurant.

Had you done anything in like restaurant world before? That was that? Yeah, I did table magic at an Italian restaurant when I was in college. I table magic, you mean card tricks, illusions, things like that.

Yeah. So you go to your six month pregnant wife and you say, I want to quit my job that I'm doing now and invest all of our life into a restaurant. Yeah, precisely into it, like a high fail rate industry. How does that conversation go?

I think the only reason she went for it is because she's from Texas and she really loves Texas as most people. Yeah, as most Texans do, they really love their state. And this is, you know, Lady Bird Taco is a massive nod to everything that is Texas. And so I think she that resonated with her.

So she said, let's do it. I think you're right. I think it's time to make a change. Which is crazy in hindsight that she said that, but she did.

And so we did. Yeah. Know what did you been doing before? Yeah, primarily music touring, 17 years of touring, maybe five years, four or five years of full time production song, you know, songwriting, mostly for TV and film.

And in some session work, but I mean, my life was mostly my career, I should say, had been primarily music up to that point, which is, I mean, that was a dream. It's a dream come true. It's a dream. I didn't even know to dream that this idea of playing music for a living where I came from.

It never occurred to me. I love where I came from. But it just didn't occur to me that playing guitar or even better hammer dulcemer could somehow be a career. I just I still can't believe that it can be.

So it was fantastic. It was just not for change. I know that I know that feeling. You never say, what are you going to be when you grew up?

I'm going to be a musician in my where I came from. Right. You could say, what do you want to be? I dream of being what was your dream?

My dream? Right. That's not a plan. No.

So how did that? So you're a small town in Michigan, right? That's right. So how do you end up getting to the place where you're playing music for a living?

Yeah, I just I mean, I think I think the deal is this. My dad, my family loves music. He's a musical incline. So I sort of shadowed him as a child playing piano and trying to be musical and being influenced by the music he listened to.

My dad has always had good and eclectic taste in music. So I remember I remember as a little boy, our our live the neighboring town. I was going to say our library. They didn't do it.

The neighboring town library started this program when compact discs were released where they would rent not rent check out. Check out. So my dad just he jumped on that bandwagon hard and he would bring home all this music and we'd go for rides running errands or whatever listening to this. You know, hey, I want you to listen to this.

It's they're called Lady Smith Black Mombaso. Oh, yeah. I remember thinking like, well, I love this. I didn't even know what this is.

And it was long before Grace Land came out. That's exactly the CD you get from the library. So, you know, when when Grace Land came out years later, I remember seeing in the line, I was a lady Smith Black Mombaso and I was like, I knew who those people were. You knew what the long term ago.

So, so yeah, kind of growing up in that environment and ending up in a band with a few guys in the area playing Christian Rock, if you will. What was your band name? You I think you know what it was. And that's why you want me to say it.

We were called DASIS, D-O-S-I-S. Yeah, it's good, man. It's great for the active giving freely. I was in a band called Corbin.

I can't remember what it was like before. It's funny. Now that I think back on it, a word that means the act of giving freely is is really generous, but it's a horrible business plan for a band. And that's pretty much what we did the entire time.

The band was gave me every I paid. Yeah, I left that experience, did a couple of years at university near my hometown and realized it just wasn't me. And my dad, who was a lifetime educator, so he's a teacher for years and years. That's the language he speaks.

And yet he called me one day and he said, Hey, I was looking in a magazine and I found this ad for this place called Full Sail. And it's like an audio engineering university. I think you and I should go there and check it out. It's in Florida and we're in Michigan.

That's a long drive. And I couldn't believe it. It's like, so it was this great compromise of the language. My dad spoke was education.

The language, my kind of heart spoke was art and music. And he found a beautiful compromise that might make us both happy. And so we went down there, checked it out, decided to quit. The university and I went to Full Sail.

And in a roundabout way that changed my life going to Full Sail because while I was there, I met Andrew Peterson. He went into the playing music with for quite a few years and still do his Christmas tour. Or I've done this Christmas tour for 20 years. So we met at a church, first Christian church in Claremont, Florida.

I got asked by the family I was living with. He was a pastor, Dave. And he said, Hey, we have a junior high lock and can you be a shop around? And I said, no thanks.

And he said, actually, I really need a shop around and I wasn't paying rent. So I said, OK. And I went and Andrew had gotten hired to be the entertainment that night. I think he made $60, I believe.

And we met that night and we just hit it off. It was like we were both in our early 20s or maybe we were 20. And there's something different about your heart when you're at that age. I mean, I can't recapture that.

If I were at something and I met somebody today, the last thing I would do is go up to them and start like trying to, you know, like see what we have in common, become friends. Now I'm just kind of tired and feel like I have enough friends. Yeah, right. But at the time, man, we ended up in the pastor's office.

I wasn't doing my job shop running. And we played, we just traded back like cover songs for a couple of hours, played a first show together a couple of weeks later, maybe a week later. And moved to Nashville a year after that and went on tour with Cadence Call. So I kind of traveled the US on that tour.

That was back in the day when touring was really, it was a different model back then. Like you would, we went on this tour was 40. That was more than that. Maybe 50 or 60 dates.

And we would be gone for a month at a time or five weeks at a time. You know, it was like going on a work vacation is what it felt like doing something you like and traveling the country. Yeah, which was amazing. So how so you to it for a long time and you played with Andrew for a while.

That's right. Who else did you play with? Yeah, I played with Bebo Norman. I played with David Crowder and then a bunch of other folks I would kind of fit in between.

But I sort of I guess I'm a loyalty person as I'm thinking about it now because I kind of had these long term relation music relationships through my career with Andrew and with Bebo. And then I finished touring with David Crowder and in between I would play with other friends for not to wear tegas one that comes to mind right now that I really enjoyed still somebody I keep up with and love a lot. So yeah, I always love your work on those all sons and owners. Oh, thank you.

Yeah, I was like, oh, yeah, that's fun. Those were really fun projects to make because you kind of have a specialty of I typically get hired to play one instrument and you get hired to play like nine different instruments. Right. Right.

What's that? What was that like for you? Yeah. What are those instruments?

Yeah, I'm even to this day. I'm torn on that whole the whole thing that you just said. It's like the idea that I've on the jack of all trades or I'm the utility guy. Right.

I say yes to things. I say, can you play this? Oh, no, but yes. Yes.

Hey, Keely, I need to go by a banjo really quick. I have a session tomorrow. I need to figure this out. I'm well enough to fake these people out.

Did you really play a banjo? Yes. Tonight before it says. I also bought a laugh steel a couple days before session because somebody asked for it.

And it's man, that makes me anxious to think about now. I would never do that now. But at the time I was just saying, yes, whatever it is, I want to do it. And that's kind of been my calling card for years in the music industry.

But there's also a little bit of a regret there because I think I was, you know, jack of all trades isn't the whole quote. It's only half the quote, you know. So the master of none stings a little bit, you know, because that's kind of how I feel. It's about my time in music is that, you know, I had a decent amount of talent or have a decent amount of talent.

It could do quite a few things pretty well, but never focus myself long enough on one thing to just be like, Oh, man, that's the deal right there. I know that's arguable. Oh, well, I know the feeling. Let's argue.

Tell me more story to like, I'm an artist. I'm a producer and people go, what do you do? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah.

I know that feeling. My friend Tim Lauer, Tim. Tim a little bit. OK, so I was on the session with Tim.

He's a session player here in town. Just a master player. He's player and a producer and whatever else, but all around great guy. We were chatting on a session one day and I'd just gotten I was about a year deep into like learning how to program, get into the computer and electronic side of music making, which had never been my language before.

And I really dove in head first and I was getting, I was starting to be hired to do it to do just that. And I was telling Tim like, man, it just kind of stinks like I feel like people calling me and they're like, Hey, can you play the hammer dulce? Because like that that's all they know me for. Oh, he's a guy that plays hammer dulce.

I'm doing all this programming stuff now and I'm finally getting hired. But it's weird because I get there on the session and they don't have any idea what I've done or what else I do. They think I'm just a programmer and it's just so weird. I like I do these other things too.

And he said, you'll learn that what you need to do is be whoever you need to be for whoever needs you. Just be what they need you to be. It doesn't matter that you also play hammer dulce. It doesn't matter to them.

If they want you to program program, they want you to play hammer dulce. Be that guy doesn't matter that you play hammer dulce. They need to talk. Right.

That's right. So he just said that if you stick to that, you can make a lifetime career out of this. If you don't let it get to you, you know, so that's that's kind of what I did. It was a short lifetime career.

I made out of it and loved it and still do. That's the thing, man. I still love I really love music. So why start a restaurant?

I think I think for me, it was I'm getting to a point in my life where I'm nearly sure that everybody goes through this thing that some people probably call a midlife crisis or maybe those are different things. I don't know. But we go to we get to this point where we start to evaluate our life to this point. And we sort of take stock of what we've done or what we haven't done that we wanted to do.

And we either it either ends with the conversation or we take action. And we chase down one of those things. And so for me, when that happened, it became conversation, a long conversation. And that started turning into dipping a toe in the water and kind of sort of unbelievable things started to happen.

I don't want to say miraculous. I don't want to insult that word, but I will say I'm sort of unbelievable thing started happening. And I knew that this this was a door, a door opening that I needed to walk through. That also sounds too small for it.

But okay, before we before we get to like the why of the restaurant, actually, let's talk about when did you start getting interested in making food for other people? I think that's that's the difference between I think I'm hungry. I want to make something to eat and I'd like to make a bunch of food to serve a bunch of people. Yeah.

Where does that come from? Yeah, I think that it's easy to be. I was one of these people previously that thought, oh, it meant it'd be amazing to have a bunch of people over and make a great dinner or it'd be amazing to have this restaurant where this community comes in every night and they're laughing and having a great time and you're like the kingpin of the whole thing. That'd be amazing.

And then you talk to somebody who's who makes food for a living or owns a restaurant and they don't do it like really bad decision. Oh, I mean, 100 100% of industry people, you restaurant industry people, at least they should I do this. They say no, really always. Yeah.

So I think I had those those kind of silly thoughts for years, like it's kind of romantic to think about on your restaurant. But in reality, for me, the spark came when I was in my mid twenties, late twenties, maybe my grandmother, Doris had had a stroke and she was she was dying in Michigan. And I had to make a hard choice to leave a tour. That choice wasn't hard.

I had to make the choice between attending her funeral or getting home while she was still with us. And that's the choice that I made. And so my parents sort of gave me the heads up. Hey, grandma's not responsive.

She can't speak. The doctors know their saying she doesn't have any brain activity. So it's just a matter of time. So just know that but she is here.

So I walked in with my wife, Keeley, my parents kind of gave us gave us the room and I set with my my grandmother. Well, I will say this, when I walked in to the room, she started well, tears started streaming on her face and she started kind of moaning and making making the sound of someone who was trapped and wanted out to say, I see you and I love you and I'm so glad that you came to see me. That's how I took it. And it was a, for me, it was a really beautiful moment to know, hey, she's still there.

And she met so much to me. My grandmother and I had from the time I was a little boy, we had a really special connection. She to this day is one of the best people I've ever known in my life. And so I walked in and they kind of gave us the room and I sat with her.

I talked about the past growing up, things we had done and then talked a little bit about her future and my future. And I was holding her hand the entire time and near the end, I looked down and our fingers were intertwined. And I, something struck me, I was born with kind of these crooked pinkies, which always made like reaching for that like high note on the piano. It's a little bit more difficult because it bends back the wrong way.

But she gave them to me. She was born with the same exact pinkies. And so we had identical pinkies, oddly enough. And so when I saw those crooked fingers kind of intertwined, this thought came to me about my grandmother and how much I loved her.

She was a great pie maker and it was like a legacy in her family for years. She taught my mom how to make pie. My mom is a great pie maker as well. And it occurred to me in this moment as my grandmother was dying that when she's gone, that leaves my mom.

And my mom is going to die as well. It's not fun to think about, but it's reality. And when she does, so will that legacy. Somebody needs to do something about this.

I think it should be me. And so on that trip, when I made it back to my parents, I said, Mom, you need to start teaching me how to make pie because I want to carry this forward. So my mom started teaching me and I started having phone conversations, flights back and forth from Nashville to Michigan, trying to learn how to do this. And it just became this passion.

I started making, I was still touring at the time as well, which is crazy. So even with a crazy touring schedule, I was making hundreds of pies a year. So multiple pies a week and learning every time, making, trying to make great crust from scratch and which gets overlooked. And it's so it's the care.

It's not just the carrier of the filling. It's like a big part of what makes a great pie. So I've never even tried to make pie. Yeah.

Yeah. That's because it's hard, right? Making pies hard, making good pies hard. I've made several bad pies.

That was easy. Super easy. I made lots of bad music. That was easy.

Sometimes no. Yeah. So anyways, that kind of turned into a thing. It didn't turn into a career or a job, but it turned almost into this work feeling, this work routine where I would make pie to get better for no particular reason.

And then- So your neighbors are just thrilled with this. Yeah. And oddly enough, Keely doesn't like pie. My wife doesn't like pie.

So, I mean, I love pie almost as much as anything in the world. And so I would make a pie in the evening and it was super cathartic for me, like the process. And the more complicated the pie, the better. It took longer.

I would spend three hours making, preparing this pie. Get in the oven, take it out, let it cool. And I would try, the deal was I would try one piece and then we would take the rest of the pie and give it to friends. That was the deal that we made.

But I would break the deal so often because I would go to sleep that night. And no joke, I would go to sleep thinking about the pie. And in the morning, my eyes would open. And before I could even remember who I was, I was thinking about that pie.

Well, like what you could have done differently? No, and how bad I wanted to eat it. Oh, geez. That's awesome.

So I would start my day by eating pie, which is a horrible habit to get into. But you've earned it. You've made it. You've said three hours making it pie.

Yeah. So I would end up eating like two or three pieces of pie for breakfast and then we'd give the rest of friends. But anyways, I started getting invited to these food retreats at this place called Lady Lodge down in Texas. And for these, it was like this food retreat that bring all these people in to talk about food and make food.

And they'd have these workshops during the day where you could be creative. And one of the workshops they offered was pie baking. And I would teach these little, I think they were like little one hour classes or one and a half hour. We'd spend time with people showing them how to make crust.

We'd prepare the filling. We'd get it all set, put a top crust on, let them initial or design something on the top to market as theirs. We'd end up with 15 or 16 pies. We'd bake them all that afternoon and then we'd serve them as dessert for the dinner that evening.

And people really loved it. There's something about food that is because food is a necessity, right? It's something that we have to have to survive. But the thought of making it more than that, more than just something that you need to survive is kind of magical for everybody.

Whether you're making money from it or not making money from it. There's something gratifying about saying, I made this thing and it's not going to be here for long because I'm about to eat it. I'm going to consume it and then it's going to be gone. But it's going to give me something back, right?

There's something great about that. I think people are receptive to that. And for me, that was the launching pad for recognizing that spark or that excitement and thinking, well, maybe in the future. The thing is, it's easy to say that.

It's easy to say, yeah, maybe in the future I can open a pie shop or sell pies at the farmer's market. And I said all those things. And my friend said all those things. And then you don't do any of it.

You just talk about it. So how does that lead to opening a taco restaurant? Yeah. So I think again, just the desire to have scratched tortillas in Nashville, which don't exist in this kind of food.

I'm a deep desire for me that eventually I thought I need to take this on, kind of like the pie. It's like this legacy in Austin, it's a part of the culture of Austin. I think last year there were over 400 restaurants in Austin that served breakfast tacos. There's that week where everything in America shut down March, March 12th through 15th.

Because we went to Lady Lodge. We went down there for a payment camp. My family went on the 11th. Everything was still open.

And we woke up in the morning and everything was closed. And we had six days to kill in Kerville, Texas. And we ate breakfast tacos. Yeah, man.

That's the thing. They're so it's bizarre. It's like it's truly comfort food, but it's also it's hearty. It's fuel.

It gets you through the day. It gets text and it's through the day. And I was like, it's about time it gets a nationally through the day, man. Need something other than pastries because you know, pastries every day and your body starts to change.

So what's the process? Like how do you obviously that could go for hours? But like the short story, like how do you get to the point from, I think I want to do this to we're sitting in a building. Right.

Cheers. Heating units. I mean, there's a lot involved. There's a lot involved, man.

More than I ever imagined. I imagined it was a lot and it is multiples. Really? Oh, yeah.

If I had it to do all over again, it's hard to say. I probably wouldn't. I probably too intimidated if I really knew what it was going to take. Really?

But I'm glad I didn't because I was able to press on and get it in small doses. Like, oh, there's that too. Okay. Let's tackle that.

Oh, you know, it's just over and over. Knowing it all at once, it's too much. And I'm super good at stretching out an answer to a question or maybe even kind of like not answering a question. But when you say how do you get to, what did you say?

How do you get to? Yeah. I mean, how does this happen? Because you tell your wife, yeah, I need to stop what I'm doing and start a restaurant.

Right. What do you do after that conversation? Yeah. Right.

What I did was this, I actually, and this is going back, I apologize. I'm going to go back in time just a short time. It's maybe two months back in time from the moment I talked to Keeley about it. I said, I think there needs to be a change.

These are the, these are the things that I feel like I have a passion for. You were feeling like I need to stop what I need to do something else. That's right. Okay.

And I, it wasn't like, hey, let's stop this and open a restaurant. It was like, hey, let's stop this, possibly open a restaurant or a couple of these other things. What I had done on January 1st of that year was I took stock of what I loved about life. I didn't say like, hey, what career are going to go into?

I sat down with a sheet of paper and I made a list of as many things as I could think of, of things that I love about being on earth. And it was maybe 25 things that came to mind. And they weren't like dramatic things like, oh, I love seeing the blue ocean with whales reaching. It wasn't like that.

It was like tiny things. Like I love good smell. I love breakfast tacos. I really love thoughtful technology.

Like technology that's not corrosive, you know, and then I picked three things on that list, but those on a new sheet of paper and with lots of space in between each one and then started to brainstorm how I could turn any of those three things into a job that would make money. And one of those was breakfast tacos. One of them was I love good smells. And I got quite a ways down the road of a way to make money with good smells as well.

I pursued all three of these things, simultaneous technology smell and breakfast tacos. I was out doing installs like Smart Home, like AV installs with a friend of mine in town who owns a company that does that. Really? Yeah.

And I was trying, I was meeting with loads of folks. I'm in Austin. It was like a breakfast taco and a technology trip meeting with people in Austin about an idea I had for room diffusers that sent entire homes. And then breakfast tacos and endures started opening for all three, but the biggest door, a massive door opened for the restaurant.

And so... Isn't that like a crazy story? Yeah. Yeah, man.

Yeah. Yes. There is and here's the deal. Again, sort of I'll answer your question, but I'll say this that God doesn't really talk to me, Andy.

It's like I believe in him sometimes. But I've had like maybe three instances in my life where I've truly felt seen or heard something direct like that I thought was directly from God. So I'm like starving, you know, and then one happens just in time in my life. And this is, I think that I live, I'm grateful for the life that I've lived.

I feel like even though faith for me has always been a bucking Bronco with faith and with God, he is persistent and gracious to me and grants me this goodness. And this was one of those times. I was in Austin, I flew to Austin with a possible business partner who's here in Nashville who had never had breakfast tacos before and never been Austin. So we flew to Austin so I could show him what was up.

And we were doing taco research, I mean, the best kind of research in the world. And it was just meant, we made another, I made another list. And it was like all of my favorite places to get breakfast tacos in Austin. We were going from one to the next to the next.

And my sister-in-law Kelsey said, hey, there's this, there's this coffee shop you guys should go get coffee at because it's good coffee. And then directly next door, in this same parking lot, there's this restaurant, it's going to be closed because they're only open for dinner. It's not a taco place. But I think that you should just walk over there, peek in the window because the interior is just stunning.

And I think it will be inspiring to you in general. So I think you should just go look in the window and take a look. It'll only take you five minutes. And so we did, we got coffee, walked over to the place.

We're both peeking in the window. And it was definitely closed, it was dark inside. And for some reason, I still pulled on the door and the door opened. And I walked in, which is not really my personality, but I walked in to a very closed restaurant.

And this is probably one in the afternoon. And this is a restaurant that would have opened at five. And we could see, all the chairs were up and we could see in the back corner, there were like shadowy figures. It was a true story.

Like five guys sitting around a table with their computers probably getting ready for the evening service. And I said, somebody shouted from the corner and said, hey, can we help you? And I just said, oh, sorry. I sent me a phone and I told you're space is beautiful.

Sure enough it is. Thanks. And I started walking out. The voice said, well, hold up.

And he came walking out of the shadows. And as he did, he said, Gabe. And I said, Andrew. And it was this chef in Austin, the only chef I know in Austin, or anywhere named Andrew Wisehart, who I met at the food retreat at Lady Lodge seven years prior.

We never exchanged numbers. I remember thinking like, oh, we're kindred spirits. Like we'd be friends, he and his business partner Ben. Like we'd be friends if we lived in the same town, but we never tried it in full.

Didn't see him or speak to him for seven years. I walked into their closed restaurant that I didn't know was their restaurant. And they were there on top of that. The two people that own the restaurant were there, which is not typically not, you know, they were there for their one hour meeting that happens once a week.

And on top of that, he remembered me and I remembered him. And he said, what are you doing in town? Oh, you know, researching breakfast tacos for Nashville. He was like, oh, great idea.

And as we were walking out, he said, hey, there's ever anything I can do to help if you need any info. Here's my here's my contact. I mean, this guy is a renowned chef in well in Austin and otherwise, just a great name, a great guy in that industry. And so eventually as the partnership didn't work out with the Nashville person, I thought, I think I'm going to reach out.

With an email that said, hey, would you like to, I don't know, consult for our restaurant or be a co-owner or move to Nashville or anyway. So he wrote back and just said, yeah, we'd love to be involved in any way. And that led to them flying to Nashville a month later and becoming partner, full partners, a few months after that. And these guys are fantastic.

They own restaurants in Austin that continually get voted tops in Austin, which is a big food scene there. And so they know what they're doing. They're wonderful guys. And somehow I bumped into them.

That's wild. So are they a part of this restaurant now? Yeah, they're full partners. And Andrew is, I mean, yeah, I could not have done this without them remotely.

So they've guided me on the business side of things as well as developing the menu. That's amazing. How long ago was that now? Bumping into them a few years ago.

Yeah. It takes a long time to open a restaurant. Yeah, if you were to break this whole process in a couple stages, what are some of like three or four stages to opening a restaurant in your experience now? Yeah.

Coming in not knowing what you're doing, the first step is research, massive research. I mean, I spent so much time researching online, using resources to try and get my head in the game on the internet. And that's research. Like, yeah, just researching like what do on the business side of things, what do margins look like in the restaurant industry, what models do they use to formulate food costs and how do you price your menu?

Like you've probably never had employees before in your association, right? No. Well, yeah. That's like getting into like advanced algebra there.

It's like, that's a whole, that's a whole other thing. But, yeah, it's just researching like, you know, how many people can you expect to come into your restaurant? What does it look like? What does food preparation look like?

What does food safety look like? And then you finally realize like, there's more to learn than you can learn. So you kind of have to just jump in. So we just started jumping in.

And first step, so first practical step was trying to find money, which is the first time I've raised money, at least in this kind, in this sort of way, you know, is a significant, opening a restaurant's expensive. There's a lot of costs in the front end, which is why restaurants have such a high fill rate, because you put so much money in on the front end. And if it doesn't work for even a month or two, it can completely destroy the business because there's just not much buffer. So you have, and that's, and it happens a lot, I think, because people get passionate and excited.

This is my guess. I mean, I'm a newcomer. What do I know? But I've done a lot of research and I think that people get excited and passionate about their So they do one of a few things.

They maybe first run out and look for real estate and they find a spot that's like kind of okay, and they're like, oh, perfect done. And yeah, and maybe it's not a great space. And so in the course of six months, they go from idea or concept to execution, and they're just not prepared. Even if they're great cooks, they're not prepared for the business side of it.

So they have a bad month or two and there's no working capital buffer and they have to go out of business. So we took the opposite approach, which is it's a bit stifling and frustrating, but that's kind of the long road, the long ramp up to opening. So it's in a three year process, a year that was spent trying to find real estate, which is extremely hard, especially in the market, in the market like Nashville and in these times, not really the pandemic times, but pretty that real estate is tough and commercial real estate is even tougher. I've told friends it's like, I liken it to the wild west.

I mean, it's because there's such demand for it. People will do anything. It's having deals almost done or signed and people backing out the last minute going back on their word. It's just gnarly.

Some of the stuff that happens. And yeah, that was really rough on me. It was really discouraging to me. It felt like I was getting kicked in the face every few months because we put all this time into a space that we had found that we felt was good after having looked at a hundred others and the deal with fall through for some reason or other.

And that's kind of how we ended up where we ended up was a deal had fallen through. I was chatting with my friend Bob Bernstein who owns a bunch of coffee shops here in town. There's a Nashville legend. Pye and near if you want.

You know, like the first kind of coffee shop in Nashville 25 years ago. So anyway, he kind of jokingly said, hey, you should take overbox, which is a space that he has in the 12 South neighborhood. It was a commercial bakery and a coffee shop. It's too much in my house.

And I assumed he was joking and he said that he mostly was. And then over the course of a few weeks, he kind of realized, oh, maybe he's not joking. And this is where we sit now, too much from my house. So again, it's like, thank you, thank you God for causing so much disaster that we ended up in this wonderful place, you know, or.

So that's the first step is real estate. Second step is construction. And oddly enough, food is one of the last steps that you tackle. So we already had a space before we ever cooked any food, which is terrifying for me.

I asked Andrew, chef, like, hey, you know, it's kind of like a karate kid, like, I'm gonna learn how to punch. Yeah, but what am I gonna learn how to punch? I'm gonna sign the flow. I can't believe I just said that reference.

I can't believe I just said that reference. I'm like, uh, hey, Andrew, what am I gonna learn how to, what am I gonna start making tacos, man? And he's like, oh, don't worry. Don't worry.

That'd be great. Yeah, win, win, win, win. And all along, I'd been trying to sort out mastering the tortilla, which I use some of my pie experience that helped my cross experience. So this is your, like this tortilla is your own recipe.

That's right. That's right. It's two years, about two years in the making and we're doing flour and corn. So both from scratch.

So, which isn't done much. It's barely done in Nashville at all. So there are a couple of places now. That being said, Andrew, eventually he just said, hey, the food, the food is the easy part.

I'm a chef. That's what I do. I make food. This, the business and the construction and the hiring, that's the hard part.

So let's focus on that. And then we started having these tasting parties where we started cooking. And he's right. And he's a chef and he's great.

And the food's great and the food's gonna be great. I'm so excited for people to try it. And it's sort of like, it would be like somebody who doesn't know music coming up to us and I don't know what the exact analogy would be, but it's kind of like, this is what we do. Don't worry about the actual playing of the music.

Let's get people hired and let's figure out a budget and see this. You know, like you talked about, you leave town for five weeks to go on tour and you're playing music. You're an opening act. You're playing music 30 minutes of that a day, five days a week.

I think a lot of people's work is that way. You do all this other stuff that you care about so that you can do the thing you love. Right. That's right.

Okay. So you were gonna open. What was your opening date? A couple of times.

We eventually got full staff hired. They were, it was Friday when we finished hiring all the staff. They were supposed to start training on Monday, the following Monday. I don't remember the date.

10 days out, whatever that works out to be from our March 21st opening. It was that Monday that we call everybody said don't come in. Training is off. And decided to postpone at that point.

Let's postpone for a month opening because this isn't a very good time to make a splash. We had no idea what it was going to turn into, which was, oh, there won't be a proper opening for a long, long time. It's like, we're not going to open it in the way that we thought we were, who knows, who knows, when we'll open it that way. So what we've been doing over the last couple of weeks is scrambling, still trying to get the last bit's finished up in here and then trying to get in touch with the city, trying to get fire inspections, health inspections, because they're obviously affected in a dramatic way as well.

So everybody is under this and they're behind and they're unreachable. So we just had our fire inspection yesterday hoping to get inspected by health soon. We made the decision to go ahead and open up as a takeout place only. Most likely even when our mayor decides we can open up and start doing half capacity or whatever different states are doing, I think we'll still, we're going to lean towards moving slowly on that side because, well, to be safe, just to be safe.

And also because we can, because tacos are portable food. So it was, it was born for takeout, delivering, you know, it's wrapped in foil, keeps it warm, melts the cheese. Yeah, it was made for it. Well, what's interesting too is, I mean, even as, you know, we've been sitting here for 45 minutes talking, I mean, there've probably been a hundred people who have walked in front of this building.

Yeah. I mean, there's people right now, like, you're in a neighborhood, like you're right next to an elementary school, like, there's so much, there's so many people around here, like, even without you being open, the fact that this exists and there aren't a lot of businesses on this, this road, like, that's got to already have made an impact on this neighborhood, which is your neighborhood, right? So these people, you've been here a long time, how long have you lived in this neighborhood? Yes, seven years.

Okay. So like, these people know you. Yeah. What's it like for the community?

Like, it feels like this is kind of a community place, right? Right. Yeah. I think that, um, pre, pre pandemic, what it, what it felt like to my wife and I, um, in our business partners, it felt like we were, we found ourselves sort of, luckily, or however you want to view it, sort of in the center of this little excitement bubble.

People were super excited about what we were doing because one, we're part of, we're truly part of this neighborhood and they want something, probably anything. Um, but two, it's, it's something that's unique to Nashville and there are a lot of Texans here. And so we, we found ourselves in the middle of this excitement, people saying like, oh, I, we just can't, I've missed flower tortilla so much since I moved here from Houston 10 years ago or, you know, whatever, things like that. So it, um, man, it was a really beautiful on ramp that we were driving up and it's, but it's, uh, and I don't know if that's the question you're asking, but I would say that, though that was things were looking really good.

Um, it's okay. Right. My estimation, it's okay. Just, it's made it really complicated.

Um, unfortunately we have a good landlord who said we can defer your rent for a few months. You can pay it later. Things like that that have been life or business savers, I should say. So there's all that kind of, I mean, whatever, everybody's under a great deal of stress right now, but, but outside of that, it's okay.

If, if I believe that I can show up at a junior high lock and then find a career, then I can believe that, um, opening up a restaurant in the middle of a pandemic will be somehow okay. I had to close my eyes when I said it because it's still a little bit hard to believe, but, but I believe it, I believe it. Okay. Two other questions.

The name, Lady Bird Talket was the name where that come from. Yeah. So we wanted, um, it was, it's a very intentional name. Um, we wanted a name or at least a word that sounded pleasant to say and to see, um, which was a really fun, like as a, as a word person yourself, it was a really fun experiment in one, just finding a word that is both pleasant to say and to see because the word lady bird is actually a really, uh, kind of a pretty word.

The logo is beautiful, man. Like sign up front. Yeah. That's, that's our local legend, Matt Lehman, that designer.

Um, and, but also it's, it's delightful to say, at least I think it is, like it's just this light sounding word or name. And so we, we wanted it to be a subtle nod, not obnoxious, just a subtle nod to Texas, um, in particular Austin. And so Lady Bird Johnson, you know, she was the first lady and she grew up just outside of Austin and she, when she died, actually not that long ago, I want to say it or nine years ago, they renamed town Lake, which is downtown Austin. They renamed it Lady Bird Lake.

And so it's quite, it is quite literally downtown Austin, Lady Bird. And so this was our pretty word, both look and sound that was a little tip of the hat that probably most national billions wouldn't get, which is exactly what we wanted, but every Texan would get. That's fantastic. And I didn't come up with it and my wife, no, my business partners came up with it.

Um, it's like a friend of my business partners that came up with the name. So, uh, as soon as I saw it, I was like, yeah, I can see something good. Maybe I can't come up with it, but I can, I don't want to see it. So it's great.

Yeah. And she, uh, did dig just a little bit more into that. She was a really fascinating lady and not getting into any of the political side of things. Just as a human, she noticed that the highway system, speaking of on ramps, on ramps and exit ramps were kind of, it was just sort of this ugly part of life.

And so she years ago developed, she was the first, first lady to have a bill passed. That she had developed and it was this highway beautification project where they would go and plant wildflowers at all the on ramps and exit ramps to just bring a little bit of light to, to, to the, to the mundane, you know, to the, to the concrete, to the, to the commute. So, um, and she has this quote, I'm going to misquote it slightly, but the, the just is where flowers grow. So does hope, something like that, which I think is fantastic.

So they'd only add it to the wall somewhere. Right. It's good. Yeah.

Do you have a date for like to go? We don't have a date. I'm only because we're waiting on inspection, but yeah, I want to say that it'll be within weeks. We hope it will be within two or three weeks.

Um, awesome. Maybe a month. Amazing. Yeah.

Um, okay. Last question. Um, tell me a little bit about the menu. Uh, is it only tacos?