E151 Ben Kingstone

This week's guest is Ben Kstone, who joins us from Toronto, Ontario. That is a hospitality professional with a passion for creating exceptional guest experiences. In Ben's current role, he is the Beverage Manager for Harlow Entertainment, a Toronto-based private equity firm with over a quarter of a billion dollars of assets under management. That is curated and managed beverage programs for a range of venues, including a 400-room hotel and summer Canada's top restaurants and bars.

That was a finalist for Diagio World-class Canada in 2023 and has also been nominated for Forbes' Top 30 under 30. That is also set to release a bar book later this year. Ben has got a lot of drive-in determination and we really enjoyed a conversation with him. So will you.

Make sure you check out Ben on Instagram at KingCoxians and the link is in the show notes as well. Enjoy the show. Okay, we're back with another episode of the industry podcast. My name is Kip.

This is Dan. I'm guessing it's pretty awesome. That is correct. I am still awesome.

That is so awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot. You've heard a few stories before the podcast, but my life is a mess.

But the third bar is looking good now. We have a liquor license. So that's an exciting way to dispute that if I can. You got it.

You should have gotten in earlier. So now I just have to deal with the city of Cambridge and we'll see how that goes. But to look over the Argyll Arms opening, hopefully in the first couple of weeks of May, that's Preston area of Cambridge 210 King Street East. So get ready for the grand opening area and you can follow Argyll Arms 2023 on Instagram to see what's coming up there.

Cool. Yeah. And if you're in Kitchener, obviously you want to check out Sugar Run, speak easy downtown Kitchener at Sugar Run Bar on Instagram. Check out all the good stuff we have going on there.

So if you're in the top town, it's Babylon Sisters, Wine and Cocktail Lounge in Uptown Waterloo at Babylon Sisters Bar on Instagram as well to find out what's shaking in the Waterloo region. So check out all those places. This is unpaid advertising. If you're a fan of the show, the best thing the way you can help us out here is to subscribe, rate and review, leave a little five-star review for us if you think we've earned it.

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What else? Is that Canada? Is that Canada? Is that Canada?

Does all the artwork for our Instagram page? We're always grateful to all the great work he does for us and you should check him out for any of your graphic arts needs. And this is episode 151. So we're on our way to the 100.

Yeah. Yeah. Check out the archives as well. If that's a lot of really good interviews lately, Dan, do you remember what they were?

I remember he was like a dry erase board against like 32 hours. Yeah. Last week was Sidney Kendall's prior to that we had Hugo Gemino. Yeah.

That was a really good one. That was 13x. Yes. We had Kate Buschlow.

That was Rob Wig and then Janai Angel. Yeah. So check out the archives. Of course, Ron McKinley.

Absolutely. That was great. Great interview there. So dig deep into the archives.

Check out all those episodes. And people sent this one if we didn't bore you to death yet. This is a heavy editing before this goes there. We have Ben Kingston with us right now from Toronto, Ontario.

Very close to us. Ben, how are you? I'm great. How are you guys doing?

We're great. Thanks for doing the show. That's very much my. Appreciate it.

My pleasure. Thank you for reaching out. Yeah. So let's get started talking about like, I mean, your resume is very impressive.

So I don't really know where to jump in on that. Also, what do you like? How old are you? If you don't mind me asking.

Jesus Christ. Like, honestly, fuck off. Very accomplished for a man of your age. Yeah.

Congratulations. Yeah. Congratulations. Very much.

What is your job at this moment? Like I know you've got a bunch of projects coming up and like what do you say is your main game? My job right now. I'm the better manager for Harlow Entertainment.

So Harlow Entertainment were a private company company. So we invest in lots of different projects. I work for the entertainment sector, but there's lots of other sectors that are more traditional to private equity. So we invest in other people's projects, but as well have a operating portfolio of our own.

So I'm the beverage manager for the operating portfolio. So my key venues in Toronto would be Roses and Valerie, both at Hotel X, Casamoto in Yorkville, and my baby project in Portfolio's Park Avenue. We have a 25-seat high-end high-touch cocktail bar and adjacent to that in the next room is about 120-seat lounge and luxury life experience. Oh, cool.

Wow. And what's the location on that one? Davenport and Avenue Road. So it's directly above Mimi Chinese, which is another one of our projects as well.

Mimi and Sunnies. So Mimi is definitely one of my favorite restaurants in the city, unbiased opinion on that one as well. Yeah. So there is a fantastic high-end Chinese restaurant.

So they're very well-known in Toronto and we've plotted our lovely park hat right above that Davenport and Avenue Road. And how many, like, so those are the ones, like in the entertainment area, those are the, like, those are the, your responsibilities, these bars and restaurants. Like how many other projects does that company have going on? Times, let me pull it up right now because there's a lot of different things.

Like, for example, we own Spindco. Oh, okay. In the city studio. We own that.

There's some corporate locations as well as some franchise locations. You know, we're heavily invested into Sotopsake, Ace Hill, Baro, Cabana Pool Bar, Casamoto, obviously. So that's one of ours. Like, in the day swears, you might see that in the grocery store as well, those little snacks, Nousity Gas in Montreal, Nobu, Pittsburgh Penguins, Planta, and Sotopsake.

And the newest one that we're all very, very excited about is Jake Schack. Oh, yeah. That's big in the US. You guys thought we were bringing that to Canada?

Yeah, we're bringing that to Canada. So that's something super exciting. It's been really tough to be tight-lipped on, but the news was broke a few weeks ago. And we're partnering with a couple of really important people in the Canadian scene to bring that to Canada.

But that was a long time ago. I'm a big fan of Sotopsake. I think I'm a rep by Halpern now, because we always see them at the Halpern-Grun crew. Yeah.

Portfolio tasting, who's the best one in Toronto. Okay, so let's talk about how you got to the place that you are. Like, how did you first break into the service industry and how did you end up with this gig? So I first broke into the service industry as a bar back on King West, the entertainment district downtown here.

And I was in university at the time. What do you guys go for? So I went to school for photography and photography at Ryerson. After my second year, I think it was the start of my third year, I believe.

I got quite sick. And I was diagnosed with misdiagnosed, let me preface this, with pancreatic cancer. Holy fucks. That's a bad misdiagnosed, I guess, but it's pretty bad misdiagnosed too.

So I woke up one morning and I was completely yellow and jumped on this and checked myself into the hospital. Wow. And the initial diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. I said I had a tumor on my pancreas pushing on my liver.

I'm like, okay, great. Obviously, you know, feeling like I'm probably going to die. One of the biggest things that I regret in my life. And I really didn't like what I was doing at school, didn't see, you know, a huge future in it.

And I just started bar backing at a place called Belfast Love, very, very busy. I just bought it downtown. And I really had kind of fallen in love with that. And just kind of really something clicked.

And I'm like, okay, so like if I was to die tomorrow, one of the things that I regret, I really wanted to job their love, which at this point was like just starting my bar backing and really loved the idea of being that, you know, cool, King Street bartender in their twenties. Right. I wanted dogs and I wanted to cover my body in the tattoos. Because that's, you know, things that I loved at the time.

Yeah. So after that, the actual liver doctor got back from vacation and changed the diagnosis. I was still in liver failure, but it was caused by my workout supplements and the high amount of green tea extract that were in them. Oh, really?

Yeah. So I'm allergic to green tea extract and my liver couldn't process that plus the normal amount of alcohol that a college student drank. Yeah. So I was still in the hospital for just five months, I believe.

And I got out. Everything's fine now. But definitely something I just have to be conscious about. So every time I look at a different supplement, I'm always like, okay, like this is a green tea extract and this and there's a million things hidden in all of those supplements.

But I try to stay away from them now. But yeah, definitely kind of like chalk to the system. It's like, so what am I going to do with that? They make me happy.

And I just absolutely fell in love with bartending eventually throughout my time working there working, you know, as a bar manager, eventually working my way up through the ranks over the course of like a two and a half year period, two years period, part of COVID. I fell in love with the cocktail world. I just was absolutely loved, you know, like reading all the books, like liquid intelligence, death and co, like, you know, my favorite one actually is probably Scofield's moderning, modern classics cocktail by whatever it's called. I just fell in love with it.

And my, my boss at the time was Chris Anderson. And he, you know, had a very similar passion and love for me and really kind of like love for cocktails and kind of just pushed me to, you know, expand my horizons and grow and learn more. And eventually moved on from there, you know, in one of those weird pandemic summer things and I worked for the butcher chef, which is probably obviously the most expensive restaurants in the country. It's pretty ridiculous.

So it's a very small restaurant, probably got 55 seats, you know, just spent millions of dollars making this 55-seat restaurant. The bar was made out of thinners eye. The end cap on it was solid Canadian brass, like, insane, the amount of money and design went into this place. But everything there was classic, like fine dining French service.

So, you know, you're putting stakes on people's plates, like leanest or richest with a spoon and fork kind of thing, like in tongues. So, you know, there's certain people's sides to them. You know, so I, I eventually became the beverage director for that group of restaurants that are, that two other snake houses, Michael's on Simcoe, which is no longer open, and Oliver's in Oakville, which is a very old school, been around forever establishments. So that was kind of my first foray into like multi-vendy management, training bar staff, stuff like that.

And eventually, you know, something like that wears on your hair tie, you know, getting into the restaurant one two o'clock in the afternoon and making sure everything is absolutely dialed in and perfect. And there's never any dust or anything, repulsion glasses, polishing glasses again, you know, watering the plants, stuff like everything that needs to get done to make that venue look as pristine as it is when people are coming in there spending five, six, seven, eight hundred dollars per person on their dinner. Yeah, I think our tasting menu was about $450 before you added the lagu. Yeah.

So it's not include wine as well. No, it did not. There was wine on top. Yeah.

Yeah. So it was pretty intense and very, you know, it was a very demanding environment. You know, it was, you know, not only did I have to make all these cocktails by myself because it was a one man show by an bar. But I also had to run multi-course tasting menu service at the bar.

You know, I would have to run back to the kitchen, get the plates, make sure I have the hands. You know, you never, you never came back to a guest seat and cleared, you know, came in for a second clear. You grabbed people, everybody cleared everything all at once. Someone came in, wiped the table, everything that was dropped was dropped at the same time, done at the same way.

That's the school service though. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah.

So that was, I definitely, I learned wealth of knowledge from so many influential people on natural steps of service there. And afterwards, I went for a while and I'm not really expanding my cocktail knowledge and my things that I really love. I reached out to Massimo at Mother and was like, Hey, are you looking for hands? You know, I'm kind of burnt out.

You know, the money's great, but like I'm burnt out. I need to do something and I need to keep growing. I think I was like maybe 24 at this time. And then so I joined Massi, you know, over at Mother started as a bartender and eventually, you know, they realized that, you know, they really needed the assets that I had coming from corporate background, but also the service aspect of it.

And I became the director of operations for Mother cocktail bar, which was really such an incredible experience, such an amazing team of people and such talent between Massi and James Park and one of my best friends now. Like, you know, we just, we had a really big team and we're a family and we, you know, with the organizational skills and corporate elements that I was able to, you know, use into this artistic atmosphere. You know, we made a fantastic team and, you know, Mother is probably one of the most successful cocktail bars in the city now. This is kind of a weird thing to ask you, but like, would you look back at like that whole experience in the hospital is like almost a positive experience now?

Like, I know obviously at the time it was awful, but like, think about like how that turned your life around thinking about what you wanted to do with your life and where you found yourself now. Yeah, no, totally. It's, I tell people whenever I tell the story, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. Because it really changed my perspective on how I live life.

I just want to. I think maybe the best thing that ever happened to you was that it was a misdiagnosis. Yes, yes. Definitely the misdiagnosis is the best part.

But yeah, that's right. But, but, but, but that's kind of what I was trying to get at. Like, it does seem like it really did. Like, most of us don't have that experience like a near death experience or thinking that you're near death and being that ill and then like literally having the time and what's essentially a second chance to reboot your where you're going in life and especially at the young age.

Absolutely. Look, I mean, it has changed. It's made me where I am. That experience.

I don't know what life would have looked like had an other experience and I'm really grateful it was a misdiagnosis. A little bit of a shock to the system in your early 20s doesn't hurt. Yeah, that's crazy. That's a crazy story.

But that's like great that you like found the thing you love to do and like focused on it. And you see, you clearly are driven in what you're doing. Like, you're not taking any shortcuts and like, it matters to you. Yeah, of course, like I my work week now is still, you know, it's still pretty crazy.

Ever since I like really dope into this, you know, I've been working, you know, 60 to 80 hour weeks for, I guess, last almost seven years at this point. So before we became a bar back, like going through high school stuff, did you work at any restaurant center as well? Or is it just like really? No.

So where do you get that? Yeah, no, I definitely, you know, I grew up, I really nice family, a nice Jewish family from suburbs. So this was definitely out of left field for most of my family. But thankfully, you know, they were very fapping, you know, they supported me in what I wanted to do and whatever made me happy made them happy.

But I definitely grew up and learned, you know, all of my skills in a very short period of time and, you know, like, like, 19, 20, 20, when I was working with a bunch of people that were like, you know, in the later 20s or early 30s and like bartenders that have been around forever. And then there's this young kid that like wants to like be the best and like, you know, like just totally in love with the industry. And, you know, I really had a lot of people to look up to. And I probably rubbed some people the wrong way along the way, but you live anywhere.

Yeah. Well, I mean, there's no way to not do that, especially in the service industry, right? It just happens. Like, there's so many unique personalities that work in the service industry.

So we can't all get along. But you're also now working on a book. Tell us about that. Yeah.

So this book's actually, I finished it over a year ago. I finished it over a year ago, you know, trying to find someone actually prints the book the way that I wanted it to be printed. It was very difficult because I'm still trying to make it cost effective to the point where like I can actually sell this thing. You know, I spoke into, you know, various book shops and cocktail shops and I'm very keen to take it on.

And I've actually just found a local printer in Toronto that can make this happen for me at a reasonable price. I was trying to, I spent so much time trying to go overseas to Alibaba. It was not like this is an idiot trying to get printed. But by the time it got here and it would have been like, you know, all the shipping and duty and import fees, it still ended up being like 15 bucks a book, which is like, it's doable.

That's roughly the same price that I'm getting it printed out in Toronto. But it was just such a, you know, it was a risk, a huge risk to like pass this. Then these guys constantly money to get these books printed at such a high volume to then hope to get it the way that I want it because it's not something that's rarely here and available and ready to touch and feel. But we're printing right now, I've got samples, 10 samples in the next few weeks.

And it's the idea behind is the bartender's journal. So inside I worked with a graphic designer to create templates for a few different things for, you know, cocktail design that kind of follows my ideology behind how to design a cocktail and how to communicate that cocktail to someone else. There's designs for the prep for the ingredients to go inside, you know, or whether it's a salted mineral agave here up or, you know, some form of cordial or shrub or pickle or whatever. There's a format in there to help keep you organized and to be able to share your information and knowledge.

There's one that I worked with a master's small yay on to, you know, kind of like fill in the bubble to analyze the wine that you have in front of you for, you know, all the spirit education and wine education training that we do in the industry. And same thing for spirits as well, kind of like fill in the bubble. And then in the back pocket, I've created kind of like a flavor wheel to help hone in on some of the flavors and characteristics of spirits and wine, which fits into like a little pocket in the back and it's all printed. It's, you know, nice leather bound book.

Yeah, so I'm forcing that at some point. Yeah, that's exciting. So I just have a lot of fun to work to. So how long do I take you to do this?

It's probably took me about three months with the designer, back and forth. Yeah, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to go on. No, but the writing of it. Oh, the writing of it.

It's kind of, you know, it's backfilled from the last, you know, few years, right? I was kind of making it out with it. Yeah. Yeah.

Constantly, like for my current job, I believe between all the venues I've got upwards of like 80 pills on the go that flip seasonally. Some of them are shared between venues, but you know, between that and mother and butcher chef and, you know, Belfast downtown, I've got, you know, hundreds and hundreds of cocktail recipes and it's really nice to actually see how some, you know, like, can get elevated throughout time. So for example, at park at one of our barely age, our barely gel infection is called the vampire campfire. And that is a cocktail that has kind of been with me since like day one.

It was like my first menu cocktail as a bar manager and I've kind of just always elevated it and changed it and it has seen many different iterations through time. Was there a point where you got the realization that like, Oh, shit, I'm pretty good at the creativity and like the dedication that goes into like making a cocktail? Was there a point where a light bulb went off for you? Because like you said, you started as a bar back and also in your bartending from like most of us went through bartending that way, but there's a time you're like, Oh, shit, I might be good.

Do you remember the time that happened for you? No, like at the end of the day, like I still think I don't like I'm good at what I do, but there's always still so much more to be learned and more knowledge to consume. But there is one moment that sticks out to me where I was like, Okay, like this is the missing piece of the puzzle. So two rather.

So one when I started working at mother, the huge focus on the drinks there are about like depth of flavor and achieving that third dimension because, you know, it's creating a classic cocktail. They're pretty much all two dimensional. You know, you've got your sour and you've got your strong and your sweet and stuff like that, but really finding another way to get that third dimension, which we did a mother through fermentation and different pickles and stuff like that and really getting into the more, you know, on the front end, it doesn't show as like molecular, but on the back end, it's, you know, we're using all the different acids, you know, malic acid, sicker acid, tartaric acid, as corbic acid, et cetera, and working with Massey and James Park really kind of like, I had like a bit of a light bulb moment where I'm like, Wow, okay, like, this is what a really good. This is what takes good cocktail.

So like a really good cocktail is getting that third dimension in there and, you know, using the use of cordials and syrups at the same time, you know, to be able to get the flavors that you want, but not always having the sweetness from those flavors. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. Talk to us a little bit about the world class experience because like you were a finalist in what your 2020 just passed.

Just past 2023. Yeah. So, yeah, so okay, great. This is going to be fresh in your mind.

And so yeah, tell us about that whole experience being a finalist at world class is a huge deal. Yeah, so it was really my first cocktail competition as well. So, I honestly fuck you, but that's just great. I had like, I had like, I was like, I submitted for like an online or a competition, maybe like when I was like working at Belfast as a bar back.

But this was like my first real like in person cocktail competition where I had to, you know, the first round you submit a drink with all store bought ingredients and the goal is to accentuate the, you know, the base spirit and to really show off, you know, the Agile. So I had submitted a tequila martini that, you know, played off of all the different flavors in Margarita with the orange and the lime and the saltings. And then round two was a 10 minute master class with Tinkeray. So we had to do a 10 minute master class to the judges pretending like they were at home bartenders.

So I put together a, when I do master classes, you know, regularly for other clients or friends or whatever, we always put together a box and ascended them with all the ingredients that they needed. So I put together a drink, you know, with Tinkeray and Tinkeray and white quartz or pheno jerry and a citrus heart cordial and some fever, tree metaturing tonics. So very nice, simple, refreshing. But Tinkeray number 10 was the focus of this master class and big focus.

And what makes Tinkeray time so special is the fact that it's first distilled in small batches with citrus hearts in it. So you have whole grapefruit and lime and orange in a distillation. So the citrus heart cordial took those ingredients and, you know, added a little bit of acid and sugar balance and, you know, really brought the different top notes alive from the Tinkeray number 10. So we had to go into the history of Tinkeray, what made it so special.

You didn't believe the amount of research that I had to do to get this 10 minute master class. And once that went through, we then got our challenges for finals, you know, but trying to balance my crazy job and world class was probably the most difficult couple of months of my life. And, you know, you get there at first and it was like a 15 hour day. Like we started at like eight o'clock in the morning, weren't done until like, I don't think I got home until midnight.

So we started the day with, there was the, here I'm going to pull up the challenge packet just so I don't remember all these challenges here. So the first challenge was, so basically day one, it had us starting at eight o'clock in the morning and then dinner was eight o'clock at night. And then after the dinner, we had a pop up at a really cool arcade bar called Greta's in Vancouver. So it didn't quite end.

But the first challenge was the check in challenge first thing in the morning and check in challenge is a completely mystery. You don't know what it is until you get there. So they have the bartender prep room, you know, all set up. And I totally forgot that this was, you know, the challenges and I got there and like, okay, I'm going to get ready for the next challenge.

We got times like prep for our Johnny Walker storytelling challenge and the waste of tasting. And then they're like, no, this is the check in challenge. This is, you know, your kettle one check in time. You have 10 minutes to make a kettle one drink and they actually had this time to see a brand of herb, I think it's a brand manager for kettle one global.

So you flew in from kettle one for world clubs. We got to get a lot of really, really often people, but you know, 10 minutes, 10 bar tender is absolutely madness in here. And you only have a limited amount of ingredients that are available. So we have to make a cocktail for that.

And you want 10 minutes, that's it done. Get out of the room. Judges come in. They judge your cocktail.

You don't know who won any challenge until they bury them. You don't know where it points to it at all. And then so we went from there to our Johnny Walker storytelling challenge where we have five minutes to tell a story of art using about Johnny Walker and a personal story to share with the judges. And again, they brought someone, they brought their global brand ambassador for Johnny Walker and as well for this one.

So got to meet a lot of really awesome people. So we have that one and then right into the blind with the tasting. So this was probably the toughest challenge of the entire of the entire week. So they didn't tell us what whiskies were going to be on it beforehand.

They didn't specify whether or not it was just the Scottish portfolio or it could be the international whiskies or American. So I, the reserve team in Toronto brought me and my other friend that was actually ended up winning Jacob into the office, the Diagio and breakthrough office. And we tasted basically the whole portfolio of whiskey. I was not okay to go back to work after that.

They walked around Queen Street, spent some money. How many drinks would you have to taste for that? So what the challenge ended up being? So they gave us a blind tasting at the Diagio office and it ended up being, they were like, oh, this is going to be much harder than what you guys are.

And like, I mean, I mean, Jacob got four or five whisies and we're like, okay, great, like we're doing good. But they gave us a list of the six whiskies and didn't give us any more whiskies. And then we get there and not only is it an expanded portfolio offering, there's like 20 something whiskies listed and only six cups. Great.

So I think I think the winner, the winner of that challenge got too right. Oh, is that right? Oh, yeah. The winner of the challenge got too right.

I don't want. So that was Roan Co. Roan Co. Very obvious, like very obvious vanilla top note that was one that I was like, yes, I like smelt it.

I'm like, Adam, you need to try it. That's Roan Co. Then we went into the Tank Ray party challenge. And we got some drink masters.

Yeah. So the cocktail party challenge, I drink masters, just the Diagio version of it. So it ended up being like over 100 people that would come in, they would cast their boats at the end and we had to start a station and serve drinks out of it. Oh, it just, yeah.

For that one, I actually did a, I went to the like a silver champagne fountain and, you know, had my dry ice in there, chilling the drink, but it would also be flowing the cocktail throughout it. And we had to dedicate this to one of the judges that we were assigned to. So that was cool. And then the Don Julio Mystery Challenge, this was my favorite one.

This was actually the one that I had the one that I ended up winning. So we got dropped off on Granville Island and we're given 100 bucks. And said here, go to this open air market by everything you need for a cocktail, come back and make a drink. So that was a lot of fun getting to run around Granville Island trying to find everything and keep it under budget and you know, you have to cost out the entire drink and give your pitches to how you would like this served in your bar.

So that drink is actually on most of the menus at the venue now. What is it? So it's a, that was a little bit of a little bit of don't believe it won't go. Sombra Mezcal and Pierre Veron drag yourself with a gooseberry honey and mint syrup and both lemon and lime juice.

That was just so super yummy. And I ended up finishing with like probably about 15 minutes last. So I was, you know, actually the last one to get back from doing my shopping and the first one done, which felt really good. I even had time to get a measuring cup because there was no measuring devices given.

I'm like, I got to measure. I'm angry at my shoulders and stuff like that. And then there was the kettle one closed loop media challenge. So it was a TV interview style.

You had to prepare drink and use one chosen ingredient from your community as many ways as possible. I ended up choosing corn and I ended up using it like seven or eight times in this corn milk milk punch. Nice. That sounds awesome.

That was fun. And then there was a speed challenge at the end of it. And that was probably the most intense and longest week of my life. But there's lots of other really fun moments aside from it.

They took us to Tojo's in Vancouver. The Tojo is the man who invented the California role. Oh, nice. So we did no mccossy experience with him.

And it was very, very cool. How many bartenders are in the finalists challenge that you were in? Ten. Right.

You already said that. Sorry. Yeah. That's crazy.

That was a crazy lot of work. Yeah. No idea. What an experience though.

Yeah. It was crazy. And you know, it actually took a lot of financial input as well. Like, you know, it spent a lot of money on this competition.

One of the other guys had a six foot tall ice sculpture of like a bear and its cubs. And he poured his drink through it and went down around and came out to the left. Jesus Christ. You gotta be like, fuck this guy with this bear sculpture.

I saw it roll in. I'm like, fuck. I did it right away. You're like, I'm fucked.

But also, like, I'm sure that the judges know that, okay, well, he just spent a bunch of money on that. Like, cool idea. Yeah. I'm sure they take that into account a little bit, right?

Yeah, I am sure. You know, all the judges are very well-respected and people. They've all been where we are. And once you do something like this, you have, you know, this little family that you can, you know, rely on and talk to you.

And you want to bounce ideas off of each other and stuff like that. Yeah. So I stay in touch with, you know, a lot of the people that I met through this journey. Yeah.

Like everybody we've ever interviewed on this show who's done a competition of any type that's like sort of a more national or international one has always said the best thing about it is the people you meet and keeping those contacts. So you get that experience. That's what it's like. You meet some like-minded individuals that can, you know, push you and challenge you and maybe show you some different techniques and different things to do with things.

It was the same as the Drink Message Show, actually. Like, we've interviewed a few people who were on that show and like, same deal. Like, I didn't want this. They didn't all get along.

But like, you know. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So you've given us a lot of times.

I'll let you go real soon. But I just want to touch on obviously we can't have you want to not talk about this Forbes Top 30 under 30 thing. Like, what the hell? Tell us about this.

So it's for a hospitality specific magazine. Okay. So my director of operations Kyle was top 30 under 30 and he nominated me this year and I just submitted everything for it. Hotel Your Magazine.

Oh, okay. I know that magazine. Hotel Your Magazine. So it's a hospitality specific magazine.

I had it. He just, all he said to me was he's like, I've nominated you for top 30 under 30 on what? Like the Forbes one? He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm like, okay. That's amazing. Yeah. So that was that's cool.

So we'll see what happens with that. I had to like put everything together at the last moment for it that needed to like updated resumes, like reference letters, stuff like that. And you know, put together a video. So we'll see.

We'll see what happened with that last week. Well, that's amazing. Well, honestly, Ben, your career, especially for some of your ages, that's astounding. Super impressive.

We appreciate you coming on the show and telling us all about it and giving us all this time. Tell our listeners where they can follow you to see what you're up to. You can follow me at the end. Instagram and feel free to swing by park at Friday's and Saturdays or my days behind the bar.

So I'm still working behind the bar. That's great, man. Good for you, man. Honestly, super impressive career.

You're impressive person. We wish you all the best. And again, thanks for giving us the time tonight. Thank you very much.

I appreciate you having me and I find myself in Cambridge. Would love to stop by for a drink. Yeah, I think you'll be more impressive. Kitchener, Waterloo bars.

But yeah, Cambridge is more of a Scottish pub deal. So nothing for not re-amending the wheel there. But I think you might take the two bars in Kitchener, Waterloo. So yeah, if you're ever in our neck of the woods, hit me up and we'll have a drink.

Absolutely. Thanks again, man. Thanks very much. Bye.