E153 Mike Derry

This week's guest is Mike Derry, who joins us for this interview from New York City. Mike currently splits his time between Karthah Hanyakolumbia and New York, originally from Pan-Tikton, BC, Mike waited tables at Bar-Tendent through college. Mike has spent his working life in various careers. Teacher, commercial production, illegal recruiter in New York City until he came back to his dream.

Bar Life. Mike opened his first bar in New York City in 2013 and sold it several years later in 2018. Eventually, Mike opened his next bar in Karthah Hanyakolumbia after traveling there for a vacation. This bar opened six weeks before the pandemic and then immediately shut down for eight months due to pandemic restrictions.

The bar survived the pandemic and is now thriving. Currently, Mike is looking for a new space in New York City. Enjoy the show. Okay, welcome to another episode of the industry podcast.

Keep in mind with you here as usual. All right, how's it going? I'm doing all right now, how are you? So awesome, look at my name.

Good to be here. Another thing that's very nice is always. I don't know how to switch days with you. You can go deal with the fucking fire department in Cambridge and I'll just hang out in your house and be awesome.

Sure, sure. I'll go to the office today. They're making us work from the office a couple of times a week, so there's three of us. And our office seats 45.

Yeah. I wonder why nobody can get a lunch crowd going. That's what happens. Yeah.

I know we need that office. I know you're not going to go back full time. People in the service industry, where do you go for you to go back to the office? Sure.

Okay. We have a great guess as usual coming right up, Mike, there you'll be joining us in a minute. Before we get to him, we should mention that you're in the kitchen. We want to lose area.

We want to check out should run downtown kitchen or at should run bar on Instagram to check out the events that are happening there at Babylon sisters bar on Instagram is where you can find out what's going on at Babylon sisters, up to Waterloo and stay tuned. You can follow at our girl arms bar. I think that's what I should. I should go on.

Arm is 2023. That's right. I'm going to go on Instagram to find out when that place is finally going to open. Is there any underscores that name or just one long thing?

It's all one thing, but I should probably know that my social media manager set it up for me, but I should know this stuff. But yeah, so stay tuned to those places to find out what's going on event wise. Oh, there are underscores. It's our guy'll underscore arms underscore 2023 on Instagram.

Check that out and we're looking hopefully to open this month. So yeah, stay tuned for that. If you would like to be a guest on the industry podcast, you can DM us at the industry podcast on Instagram or email us info at the industry podcast club. Do you want to advertise those to the places to reach us also?

Right. Great review. Obviously you're going to want to do that. And that can add that can of dot CO is the man behind the artwork on the Instagram page.

Big shout out to him as always checking out for all of your graphic arts needs. That's a z a K H a double and H dot CO. And I guess that's all we got to sort a lot about. Let's bring in someone else what they're talking about.

There you go. Right. Mike Derry joining us here from New York. How are you Mike?

Good morning. How are you? Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on the show.

Yeah, appreciate it. Very exciting. So you are actually also Canadian. Is this correct?

I was in Victoria. Went to UVic for a while and UBC. And then I ended up in Los Angeles for a bit and then made my way to New York over twenty I guess 24 years ago and have been in New York since and now Cartana. Right.

So when you like I know you've had a few different jobs some in and some outside of the service industry when you moved to New York originally were you in the service industry or was that during one of your other professions? No, what happened actually was a teacher for I was an old teacher for about six years and hated it. That's teacher. It runs in the family and he kind of pushed me in that direction but I never really loved it.

I love the kids but I didn't love the job. It was one of those things where in the back of my mind, I always wanted to open a bar. And teaching was kind of just dragging me along and didn't quite do it for me. And then decided to pull the trigger and open a bar.

Right. So, and your first bar was in New York, right? Yeah, it was in the East Village called Juke Bar. It's still there.

It's not on a second avenue. And that was an experience. What's that all about experience? Yeah.

So did you have a type of service industry experience before you did that? Or was it more like you always just kind of wanted to own a bar and thought you'd give it a go? It was, you know, college I was a bartender and a waiter and even managed to be places as well. And then I started attending experience under my belt and I always loved it.

And I always wanted to come back to it. But was, you know, following the right thing to do, which is, you know, get a college degree and get a profession. And in the back of my mind, I always thought back to those days and think, man, I really like to do this myself one time. Right.

And, yeah. So, so I got to New York, I was trying to be responsible. I just had a kid and we were struggling with my ex-wife's business. And so I was just trying to fill in the background financially.

And then when things were ready, when I had a little bit of money put together, I said, okay, I'm gonna pull the trigger. I'm gonna finally do what I want to do and chase it. Right. So, I'm gonna start with the opening bars and what a pain in the ass can be and the challenges they're in.

But talk to us a little bit about, like, you trying to open a bar in New York? I'm sure the rents are crazy. And what's it like dealing with the city in New York? Give us a little rundown of your process of opening the first spot.

Well, I didn't, I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea what I was doing. Never do I.

Yeah, we always think we do. And then, yeah. A partner that was a fireman who was a good guy, but we ended up falling out after we talked. Like, it was just, it was just hard from the beginning.

And when you don't have a bar under your belt, no one wants to take you seriously. And then you're gonna give your investor money so you have to come in with your own money and you have to figure it out. There's a lot of just knowing where to put things, where to build out the bar, where to put refrigeration, where to put the, you know, the wells up to binding sound and binding all the permits for everything because New York has a lot of permitting as well. So it became very complicated.

And I learned quickly, you know, we were putting in 16 hour days before we opened, you know, just trying to get this thing built out and up and running, you know. And, you know, I mean, my theory at the time was, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I don't know if this is gonna work or not. I want to do it.

I don't have industrial money. I'm putting my own money in. So I'm not gonna put a lot into it. So we're gonna build this thing out as cheaply as possible.

And if I lose, I don't lose too much. And if I win, then great, I'm gonna continue on with this career. And we did okay. I made the money back in the first year that we put into it.

We were profitable day one, opened up big and just stayed, you know, popular the whole time. And, you know, had some growing things, had to change partners. We had a falling out and brought in a new partner. And things went really well for about five year run.

We had it until we decided to sell. Yeah, that part of the thing is interesting, right? Like it's very, I have to please say, but you really don't know until it's like moving in with someone, right? You don't really know, you could be great friends, but until you like try and get into business together, having a business together is way different than just, you know, being friends.

So like there's so many more pressures and everyone's got their own. Like you don't know what someone's philosophy about doing business is or how they go about it until you are actually working with them, right? It was, it was sad because we work with friends. Yeah.

You know, we got along great. We have a similar sense of humor. And then once the business opened, it was just was not, we weren't on the same page at all. And I'm having to be in one for a spot too.

So I'm gonna be with it. Yeah. Yeah. And then got, you know, I had a manager at the time.

I bought it at a quarter percent, like 25%. And that synergy went really well. So we, you know, we were able to work well together and, you know, everything cleaned up afterward and it became much more enjoyable. You know, it was really good.

Really good. It's still there. It's open now. Like the guys at the bottom are running out.

So when you're looking for a spot in New York, obviously there's thousands of bars in New York and it's a massive city, many different areas to choose from. What made you settle on the East Village in that area and what was your concept? Did you have a concept for the bar? Was it just like a let's just open a bar?

Talk to us about that a little. I don't want to be caught up. The concept was going to be dictated by the space. So what does it look like?

And then you start to let the space speak to you. And I still do that. I did that with the space in Cartena. And again, I'm looking, you know, like I told you earlier today, I was looking at spaces for another cocktail bar in New York, in the West Village.

And it's, it's, we didn't have a strict concept in mind, which is probably easier when you're looking for a first basis. So, you know, it landed itself to, it was an underground bar. We wanted to kind of like a fun, loving cocktail bar that was, I mean, at that time everybody was doing speaking easy. So it was serious tricks.

They were doing serious cocktail. They were doing cocktails at all. Right. And so that was 2013 and we opened them right around the time when people were really getting into the cocktail movement.

And we wanted to have accessible fun drinks. We put them in the Mason jars. We had a DJ. It wasn't, you know, sit down, listen to Lo Jazz and, you know, we wanted a loud place that was a party and enjoy the cocktails as well.

So kind of blended up two concepts of a cocktail bar and a fun lounge, you know. So, but I didn't, you know, we ended up calling it Juke Bar, which was my, my ex-partner was African American and his father was from the South and had acted as, he wanted to do a juke joint sort of concept, which kind of work and kind of didn't work. We didn't really, we never really nailed it. People didn't quite understand what we were.

And so we kind of cut that part out and made it more just about a juke box and make it more musical oriented. And that was our, that was our catch. Just having good DJs, having really great music and making sure that the musical is kind of the driving course behind the bar. A lot of hip hop, a lot of reggae, a lot of, you know, pop, a lot of jazz.

I mean, we play everything on a given night, Latin music. And that became, that became our central focus and then have cocktails on the side. We're really good. We try to make great.

What was the capacity of that place? Officially? Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's an official number. We had 69. Probably had about a hundred and twenty five hundred and thirty there on a Friday or Saturday night. That's a good thing.

I mean, it was the same as standing with him. It was about 1400 square feet. It wasn't big, but we were pretty busy, you know. 3D for the bar constantly.

You know, we had three or four bartenders myself, I'd be bartending. We all jump in and just go go go. You know, during the week we'll slow our little more relaxed, but generally we can't. It was a zoo.

That's great. Yeah. Oh, so how do you then end up opening a place in Columbia? Long story.

So during that time, we, interesting story too. But during that time, we got the idea we were going to do some can cocktails. We were getting it before, you know, the cell just came out before anybody was really doing it. We were just starting to get a few RTDs on the market and we developed three or four through the lab and decided we're going to try and get a distribution of other can cocktails and we tested them on the market through juke bar and got excited about it.

We had a pretty good product. And then we found out that you can't have a whole cell liquor license and a retail liquor license at the same time in New York City. It's against the law. It's a 12-time house law.

But we had to either, you know, sell the bar or give up on that. So we decided let's just test the market and put the bar on the market. See if we get any, get any kits like nobody in New York is really paying key money for a bar because there's some spaces available. But immediately we got some really good offers and updating more going and it went well.

So we sold. At the same time we went on vacation to Carta Hana, right around the time we were selling and it was packed. It was just booming. There was just lineups at every bar and restaurant and it was really nice and it was not the US.

And we thought, well, why don't we, we don't know what we're doing with distribution of a product. Let's go open a bar, get some income coming in and then we'll revisit this cocktail thing. So that was the plan. We got a couple of guys together that I wanted to do it.

We all had prior history in the industry and there was four of us at that point. We found a great space that had three levels, two terraces, was huge, a secret ceiling. It was great. We worked on that deal for about a year and it all fell apart.

There was money laundering involved. It was a crazy story. I don't know if I've allowed to talk about it because there's a investigation going on about the guy who owned the building. But basically what happened is we put down a deposit and pretty happy to deposit and literally 15 minutes after we put down a deposit for the space that we've been working on for nine months, 10 months, 11 months.

I can't remember. He calls us and says the deal is off. We're selling the building. We're putting it.

You got to be kidding me. I put so much into getting down there and getting thank you guys, setting up and getting permits and getting visas and all that stuff. This guy backs out and we went, okay, I think everybody got frustrated with the situation. I was the point person.

I was the one down there still doing most of the work and I was spending most of my time down there. I'm down here already. I've got my banked out set up. I've got my tax ID numbers, my Colombian visa, all that stuff.

I'm just going to find any space right now and just open something because I was frustrated. So found a small little place that was a glass that showed me. So glasses and sunglasses and he was closing up and I took it. So that's where Mondo opened.

So then recently I found out the big space with the problems were it's owned by a Belgian royalty, a number of Belgian royalty who did sell the space. But what do you do? He had apparently, and this is what I'm reading so allegedly. I don't know what we got.

We were above the saver, but he opened a shell company and panna mon sold it to himself. It was an investigation for money laundering and fraud in Europe and all kinds of stuff. So it was actually a blessing in Chicago. This guy that we didn't get to buy.

But so did you lose your deposit on that spot? We ended up getting it back six months later because it was a third party. But it's supposed to get it. So the original group you were working with, they were all you based on the US at that point or is there any low?

Yeah, well, one's Colombian, but he was in New York at the time. So he was kind of a bad at the point person that started looking down there and saying it's a really cool country and really cool culture. And it is. It's much better than people think it is.

It was difficult for you to get all the business accounts going being a US citizen as well. Yeah, I have duals in here. It's difficult because there's just a ton of paperwork in Colombia. I thought Colombia, you know, you've heard the stories.

It's lawless because of the history of Colombia. They over regulate that. And everything is done to the T, like to, you know, every penny that you bring into Colombia from the US has to be accounted for and shown. And then they have, oh God, I thought New York had bureaucracy.

Colombia has bureaucracy and it moves slow. And it's just it was very, there's a lot of hoops to jump through to say the least. It's just incredibly complicated and frustrating because it moves slowly and also I wasn't, I didn't speak Spanish at the time. So kind of relying on translators and that kind of thing as well to get through the process.

It was something. Yeah. So how do you speak Spanish now? Oh, yeah.

Like how do you go about even like now? So when you get the place you decide you're going to flip it, like you said, you don't speak Spanish at the time. Now you're dealing with, you got to find like orders to flip a glass store into a bar, right? Unless you're doing it yourself.

And then you got to hire staff and everything else that goes in. And how are you navigating all of that process? And so we've been together for five years. And so she became my point person.

She was working in a bank at the time and then she started helping me with all the, her name is Maria. She's here too in New York right now. So she was doing a lot of the procedural things like making sure that we had everything done right, opening the accounts. And at the time I was really impressed with her.

So we got to run as a bar manager and now she's part owner of Mondo. Nice. Yeah. So she's done fantastic job.

So she's probably more of the pace of bar than I am now. She's really, really one. Doing the in-depth running of it. More of a face.

Right. So I got a good. Yeah. That's good.

So she, she, so she found contractors. She found the AC guys. She found the plumbers that we pretty much gutted this building and built it all out again. And she found all those guys and we did it fairly cheaply.

We're still improving it. We're still making changes for the constantly. And then getting in and getting up and running that's when my experience that you are really kicked in training the staff, training them on the cocktail, training them on the service, have a different level of service expectations than they have down there. So I don't find the service particularly great in Cartana, but our service good.

We work hard on that. So. I'm not sure my experience was in. So we ended up balancing each other pretty well.

She's the back of the house. I did the front of the house and it works well. Or the cost of setting up a place because I'm sure like, I can't even imagine what the amount of money that goes into opening a place in New York. Like, comparably in Cartana, is it like incredibly cheaper or?

Yes. Yeah. And that's the attraction is like, well, I can get this thing up and running for $130,000. Right.

And that's from bottom all the way up to we're operating with, you know, with a budget. So it was incredibly cheap. But you can do it extensively as well. And you can hire an architect and a designer and they're going to milk you.

The difference between maybe doing your own design and then bringing someone into your design could be $100,000. You know, it's significant because, you know, they just overcharge because they have you, you know, and they have expertise apparently. So if you kind of, I mean, we were our own general contractors. Basically we were bringing everybody in and having like a plumber work here and the electric shop work there and AC guys working here.

They were all separate guys that we brought in and kind of organized ourselves and say, what am I doing it that way? Yeah. And then had a plan on the design, you know, we changed it completely since then. So how long that place is open now?

We opened six weeks before pandemic. Right. So you were talking a little bit about this before we started recording, but tell our listeners about that whole process. Like six weeks before the pandemic hits and then you were closed for eight months.

Eight months completely. Could not open. So financially, it couldn't have been a more vulnerable time. Like we were, you know, we had not been able to pull any money out yet and we put everything into it and it's a tourist city and there was no tourists.

There was nobody allowed out on the streets. It was just, we were just done. So after a few months, they gave us permission to deliver food. Well, nobody knew who we were.

We didn't have any first hours in the restaurant. So we went down and we started making burgers and delivering them. I bought a little electric scooter and I was the delivery guy and it was like cooking the burgers and that's how we survive for a bit. Wow.

And we didn't really make any money. Actually, it wasn't enough to survive. It kept us sane. You know, we had something to do.

Yeah. Like it's funny thing to mention that because when, for us, we reached out down completely on and off several times, right? And then when we were allowed to be open and it was like under ridiculous restrictions, like 10 people maximum, including the staff and like we were only allowed to be open till 9 p.m. And it was like, we didn't make any fucking sense.

And so for us, like we did start doing bottled cocktails and selling them and like that wasn't enough to keep us going either. We would sell them once a week on Sunday afternoon and like, and we would deliver them. But like, I totally get what you mean. It was almost more like a mental relief.

Like something is happening. We're doing something like it's not enough to say open, but at least we're doing something, you know, it was, it was depressing for a while. You just, you're locked in our apartment and do anything. You couldn't leave your house.

I don't know what it was like in Canada. I know New York people could get out and go shopping. You couldn't. The streets were empty.

So it was really intense. So then they did open us up. Actually, they would pay to serve food, but not alcohol when they finally did open it up. Now the interesting thing was they created this kind of team that would go in and check your place out.

And if you met all the standards for the new, you know, COVID readiness standards with plastic up and air flow systems and all that stuff, then you could sell alcohol again. But until then, so they came, you couldn't do it. So we couldn't get these guys to show up. I was just going nuts.

So what I did was we're kind of a long bar and we have two floors, long and narrow and then you go up through the back and you go upstairs and there's another bar upstairs. So what I did is I built a wall at the front and I tore down all our decor and I went to the front and just painted it at the ugliest colors I could think of like bright yellow and blue. And we put out a hot and we had a hamburger stand. We were kind of selling hamburgers anyway.

So we basically had a hamburger stand and then there's a door to the back and we literally ran in a legal speed. So when people found out that you could go back there and drink, they started showing up. So and we had crazy curfews at two in the afternoon or six in the afternoon. But people were saying until three or four in the morning, you know, just get the music down and we got to sneak them in and out off the street because of police op them.

It would be bad. And so we did that for about six weeks and then we got caught. So what happened when you get caught? There's a cop in the front going, what's that?

No, it's back there. I got us a cup. You know, there's a lot of cookies out there. You open it up and we're half full and I got it.

And the team that's supposed to come to inspect got wind of this and they go, what the hell's going on? They came to see what's going on. And we'll be having them there. We'll inspect us.

So they inspected us and nine days later we were open. So it actually, so it actually worked out. Oh, crazy. If that seems to happen on Terrio.

I would probably I would never open a lot to open another place again. At that point, I'd never know. I mean, we were just a little bit on. Yeah, but it's funny that it actually ends up kind of being the savior of the whole the ball place, right?

Because you got you. Ironically, yeah, yeah, and they came in the game and they inspected us and we didn't have to be much and we know we were open. So and then they did crazy curfews. They would extend it to 11 for a bit and then they would drop it back down to eight.

And so you know, you're we're never really, really making you were just kind of hanging on up the door. I don't know. Maybe last June. It's like it's so fucking like it's actually you're giving me like bad like Vietnam style flashbacks to this time period because it's like I forget how fucking stressful it was.

Like it seems like a total different lifetime now to me, but like going through that and like constantly getting jerked around with the curfews and like you said, you're not you're not barely hanging on like every every week you're just like checking your bank account is there gonna be enough to make it to the next week, whatever, right? And it's a real triumph of adversity that we both of our places. Yours and mine made it, right? So which is great.

But like thinking back to that time, but how fucking stressful it was every day and you just think, yeah, people are coming in, but they're jerking around with the curfews. You never know when you're like gonna be allowed to be open. And then like one day you might get two people walk in. The next day you might get 20, but it's never busy.

Never. It was never busy. It was talking about the stressful. The site with the stress that I had, obviously you shared was incredible.

And one of the things that was most stressful about it is I didn't have a plan. I didn't know what I was gonna do with this fails. Like I mean, I got money into this thing and I'm gonna lose it all. I didn't have more of my backup.

I didn't have one at this point. Yeah, I mean either. Where'd you go? I got money on the side.

I was working everything through. I was safe. But this one was like we're not hit with this. And I had no idea what the future was gonna do.

Kind of just dug in and committed and made it work. But fairly. And the daily stress was overwhelming. It was just not fun.

I know. Like I'm joking when you started talking about I was literally getting like I could feel my anxiety level rise again to thinking about those times. And now it's like I was talking to somebody today and we got on COVID conversations like it doesn't seem like a whole different lifetime that we went through that. And I also think like looking back now it's a lot easier to say in hindsight.

But man, I do feel like when we all look back at that time period we're gonna be like, wow, we crippled the economy in a massive overreaction. Yes. I mean, nobody knew what they were doing. They were trying to figure it out.

So, but I mean, obviously this happens again. I think we're gonna be better prepared, but man. It does seem a lifetime ago. It does right.

Yeah. And now we're just looking forward. How are we gonna do it next? What are we doing next?

Yeah. So you're so you're living in Cartagena at the time. You make it through this. At what point are you like, okay, I should go back to New York.

And when you went back to New York, was it with the intention of opening a bar or? I have to get to New York. So I actually commute. Oh, okay.

Okay. I'm two weeks in Cartagena, two weeks in New York during the pandemic. So I could go to the quarters and I got locked into Cartagena. So I didn't see my kids for about even, so that was fun.

But now I'm back. And so there was always, I've always been in New York. And they were quite out. But at this, you know, up until now, it's just really focusing on building up Monteau and making sure it's doing okay and getting ahead.

And we are. We're doing really well now. And we're, we're making, I mean, we're doing some really cool things. Like next Saturday, we're in Mexico City and we're doing a bar takeover at Rio and Monica, which is where the opening acts were employees only.

And they're coming in at the rest. but they invited us. So somebody's noticed us. And we're trying to get some notoriety.

And our cocktails are really good. So, been focused on that, but I always wanted to be back in New York. And now we're working at New York again, getting the team together, getting some investors together together. Because they do need them here.

The cost here is just astronomical right now. I can't even fucking imagine. I know how much I was helping a bar in Kitchener and like, so I got back in New York. I don't want you to bulge what you're spending on a bar or anything like that.

But like give our listeners a basis of like what a square footage price is from a New York real estate, like in say the West Village where you're looking. Right now we're looking at, you know, 2000 square feet, like on the average place that I'm looking around, 2000 square feet runs anywhere from 25 to 40,000 dollars a month. Jesus Christ. Yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, that's, I know that's a scary number for most markets.

Yeah. But here it's not overwhelming. Like if you're gonna make it, you should be able to make that in a weekend. Right, yeah.

And that's what I was looking at this way is like, people always ask me how you crunch the numbers on this. I'm like, well, basically you're trying to very least like make your biggest parts of your overhead on the first weekend of the month, right? So then the rest of the month is spent trying to make profit, right? Yeah.

And that's kind of the key. So if you, if you've tried some numbers, it really doesn't, it's funny, like you throw a number like that, it sounds astronomical, sounds crazy to, a person who's like, well, we're paying, but it's all relative, right? As long as you can make that on the first weekend, then that's what it is. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, you know, average cost of $17, $19 in the West Village, you know, and a lot of people, so it's, you know, your market is big and they're active and they're drinking a lot. And a lot of, a lot of money, you know, they're not afraid to spend. So $100, $200, $1,000 a year is normal for a couple hours of drinking.

And we always say, like in the business, it's like, you know, like it is what it is. Like I was talking to another borrower just the other day and they were talking about, we had a recent minimum wage increase. They used to be like server minimum wage and then regular minimum wage. And now there's no server minimum wage.

Now it's just all the same minimum wage. And he was like, when you're talking about it, somebody was asking us about it and we're like, well, I don't pay that. You guys pay that. Like we just raise our prices.

Like, you know, that's how it works. Yeah. I mean, I think payroll's about the number one expense. So it's not hard to say the control.

No, they're, they just released in the York they're raising minimum wage to $17 an hour. Right. So they're making about 15. So, and then with all the payroll taxes on top, it's pretty much doubled.

You know, you're thinking about $28 to $30 an hour for each person. So that's something out of control. But at least not, it's not that important. No, I bet.

That's where I say money. It is incredibly cheap down there. Right. The funny thing about the labor at least though, is that you can't, you do have some semblance of control over it because you can monitor like your hours, like how many hours you're doing on a week.

You have control over how many people are working and for how many hours, whereas like your rent and your insurance and your hydro and all of that stuff is those are set prices. That's, there's nothing you can do about it. Yeah. That's the one in the places we can control it.

So that's the one in places we attack while it's trying to get the maximum efficiency for the minimum amount of people. Yeah, it's why you'll never meet a borrower who's not obsessed with labor. Yeah. Exactly.

But to put it in perspective, I'm paying, gosh, my bartenders now and Carter in our making about $300 a month. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy.

I mean, and they're kind of, and plus amigos. Okay, what's the, what's the like down there? So the, the, the, the 10% we've entered to put 10% onto the, onto the tab. Like an undergraduate?

Yeah, it's crazy to me, but the credit card processors down there don't allow you to add a tip onto your credit card. Oh. So you know how we, we decide, we decide what the good duty is. They don't do that.

So they only make about 10% on that. And then I always, when I'm talking to the, to the gringos, I'm like, you know, if you guys are not from them, gosh, you should talk about it. They don't make sure. But I'm also one of probably the few owners in town that actually gives 100% of my tips to my staff.

I make a lot of them take a lot of it. You know, as much as 80%. You know, yeah, they doesn't make it back to these guys. So it's amazing that everybody wants to do that.

Like, I mean, I guess people do have a choice, right? It's a pretty good job. I mean, if you have a bartender in Cartania, you're doing pretty well compared to some of the other people in the industry, in the tourist industry. So they're doing pretty well.

Yeah. And what's the credit card? Yeah. What's the general, like an Ocada Hanyas, a big tourist city, like you mentioned, or probably is getting back to that now.

But what's the scene there in general? So is it all different kinds of bars, like any major tourist city, or is there sort of a focus on certain types of establishments? Like are you one of the few like cocktail bars? We're one of the few ones, but we're actually, you know, on the same block is Altay-Maco, which is one of the top 50 bars in the world.

They're six or a thousand from us. And they're a huge place. And they're more like a club. And they're going more for the party office for now, unless the clock tell folks I would guess, to say.

We're more cocktail focused now. There's a couple other small cocktail bars. There's a lot of rooftops. There's a lot of clubs.

So it's, I mean, I think when you're going on vacation, what do you see? You're seeing party spots. Yes. The majority of them.

So we're pretty likely to. We play on music, we play on music, we play on music, we play on music, we play on music, we play on music, we play on music, we play on music, we play on music, and the thing you need to do is what you already learned before me obviously, which is that you have a bunch of concepts and then find the space that when you find your space, figure out which concept works best in that space. That's the way you do. Yeah.

And let your customers decide what this thing is. I mean, if it's working for them, follow it. I think a lot of guys get into my I want this concept and then try to force it down the throat of whatever's happening. And it doesn't always work that way.

It's out of your hands a bit. Let it just grow. And find it's only. And be willing to, I just want the worst word of the fucking pandemic was pivot for the art industry.

But it's also kind of taught of something that at least it taught me something that, yeah, you can start with. But don't be afraid to let your customer base tell you if they want you to pivot a little bit, right? You can't even reach it anymore. Yeah.

I mean, we open as a TK bar. That was my deal. I was like, I love TK bars every time I'm, you know, my time in Los Angeles, there's some TK bars there, TK bar. And in my back of my mind, I thought we really find it one one.

And I thought it's tropical next to the Caribbean. You know, I thought it was a good idea. Now we're kind of getting away from it. And not so much because, you know, it's just the club you're doing with the hell TK is.

They don't get, you know, they're like nice things. They're like, you know, they don't like dive bars. They like nice bars. So I was like, wait a second.

We got to get these pumpkins in because we don't have enough tours now. And now I have to because of the pandemic. So I got to kind of redefine what our concept is. And let's go a little higher end and make it a little nicer.

And then now we're working on a new identity that was presented by one of my bartenders. And it's a really cool idea. So I go into work. It's a Saturday night.

And this bartender is 23 years old. He's just got the heart of gold. He comes from zero money. He comes from way down the coast.

And, you know, he's just happy to be with us. And he's been with us for two years now. And he's really improved. And he's become a really great bartender.

And he says, I want to make a presentation to you tomorrow. And I have a projector and a stream for showing the software games doing the work on the show. Can you bring the projector tomorrow? I want to do like a presentation.

I'm not like, let's just kick and ask me for money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Presentation. Yeah.

He put together this idea of what's called Tiki Castagno. Castagno is the coast of Columbia. If you're from the coast of Columbia or anything cultural to that part of Columbia, it's Castagno. It's Castagno means coastal.

So he goes, let's try our drinks and make, you know, get away from being like traditional Tiki drinks. And we do have really high-end Tiki cocktails. But let's get away from that. And let's focus more on the culture of the Colombian coast as our identity.

And let's create cocktails with an identity to a certain part of the coast or something that's happened historically or something that's important to us. So he's from this tiny little village on the south coast and the lot of, you know, a lot of slavery was happening when he was a slave club. So there's a lot of African-American, I'm not African-African, African culture mixed into Spanish culture in this part of of Columbia. And his village is kind of like that.

And they do a lot of drumming and I have this African song. They call it the Uyorengue. And so he wanted to create a cocktail on that. And he did.

And he did this fermented pineapple liquor that they make. And then every year they dig it up, they bury it for a year, they dig it up and then they drink that while they're doing these drumming things and they dance with African dance. It's really important to him. So it's not part of his, it's really part of his, his identity.

And so he created a cocktail with the fermented pineapple with some other, you know, things that were part of their culture. So a couple of weeks ago we drove down there, we filled up a truck with a bunch of stuff and we built a bar in the beach and invited all his friends down and they did the Uyorengue for us. They did the drumming and the dancing. And we made a little pop up bar right on the beach.

That's awesome. And showed them how to make the coffee. They were like, these guys have never seen a drink. I was the first American they've ever seen.

Wow. They were sweet as hell and showed them how to make the drinks. And then David said, everybody came down to watch. The whole town came down and we were panning up drinks at the cliff to people and had a great time.

So that's going to be kind of more of our focus of finding something specifically cultural to either Carta Hana or up the coast or down the coast. And we've got eight now ready to go. We're working on a ninth and I think we're almost ready to unveil the whole thing. But that's an exciting concept for me because it's really tying together the heart of my team and I have an amazing team.

The best team in Colombia. I'm guaranteed. They talk about teams being a family. Bars really is.

They're like my kids. They're not like, it's a different culture. I've allowed them to grow and support them and they don't get that opportunity in a lot of businesses down there. They're sort of surprised and just shut up into your job and fill it in.

So we've got this amazing team and they're going to come up with the concept and support it and we're going to roll with it. And so that's going to become the bars identity now as we're working more on this celebration of costani culture rather than just a T.B. and Carta Hana. I left that presentation all the way.

This kid had thought it through and wanted to bring this into the bar. Hell yeah, I'm going to support this. It was very cool. That's amazing.

Well, this has been a super fascinating conversation. Tell listeners where they can do you have social media for these places or how do you? Yeah, our Instagram is mondo cpg, which is server card, so m-o-n-d-o-c-t-g and then you can find all rest of our information from there. What about when your new project gets underway?

How do you want to get the word out of that? Two early for that. Yeah. All right.

Well, best of luck, man. I know it's a lot of work. I know personally what the work that goes into this and you obviously are passionate about it still. So that's awesome.

And we really appreciate you coming out and sharing your story here. That was super interesting. Hey, man. I really appreciate it.

And I know I rambled, but I hope you know, I hope you can go to start with that. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about it this way. Thanks, buddy. Take care.