E161 Alexandra Evans

This week's guest is Alexandra Evans who joins us for an in-person interview. Alex started her hospitality career over four decades ago when she landed her first job working at a French cafe just a few blocks from where she was growing up. Several years after her start, Alex lied her way into a waitressing job at Toby's Goodeats and she quickly learned to love the late nights and fast cash and fast camaraderie that comes with work in the industry. From there, Alex eventually moved to working in finer dining establishments which in turn led to her to develop a strong interest in wine and earning a Somalia diploma.

Alex has worked at noted Toronto restaurants such as Bulba and Skara Mush. Eventually Alex moved to Stratford Ontario a few years ago and started teaching wine and service at the Stratford Chef's School. Alex is also a sales representative for Nicholas Pierce-Wines. We enjoyed some great wine and great conversation with Alex.

Enjoy the show. Okay, we're back with another episode of the industry podcast. My name is Kip, this is Dan, what is happening with you. No, I'm just hanging out with another awesome day in the summer so I was enjoying not working.

Not at the moment. Good evening. Perfect. Thank you so much.

Same old, you know, summer living in the barn in the street in Ontario, not great but we're getting through it. It's a great fall. Nice. As you do happen to be in the Kitchener Waterloo and Cambridge Tri-City area in the next couple of weekends before we hit the fall, then you should visit some of my places.

Shoulder run is the speakeasy in Kitchener. It's actually run by her on Instagram. You can find out what's going on there. We have a burlesque show coming up at the end of the month.

Last Friday of every month, you want to check that out. Accessory rate burlesque to follow what she does there. Nice. Actually, what time does the showtime kick off so we'll get there at the right time?

You want to get there when the door is open at seven because it fills up very quickly. So I recommend that as a bit as soon as possible. If you want to get a good seat, that show is amazing. If you have a check it out, you should.

And just come by for a cocktail. Babylon Sisters is the wine bar I've done Waterloo at Babylon Sisters Bar on your Instagram and Facebook feeds. Lots of great stuff going on there all the time. Check out our feed to find out who's DJing, DJ Nana on the last Saturday of every month.

That's an awesome show. DJ'd Bane every Friday night. And rotating wine flights and greables. Everything you're looking for.

And then the new spot, Argyll Arms at this one. Okay, I'll put links in the show notes. Thank you. Yeah, check out the Argyll Arms.

But we have live music Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights. We have open mic on Wednesday nights. We have specials on wings and pines. We have happy hour every night.

So much going on there. So come check out Argyll Arms if you're in the Preston neighborhood. And that's about all I can plug at this point. Perfect.

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I think that's all we need to discuss. We can just get to our guest. Alex Evans is joining us. How are you Alex?

Hello everybody. Thank you for having me here. Of course. Thanks for joining us.

That's a good one. Always thanks for coming over. Love guest. Thank you.

Thank you. And this guest has actually won because she also is a wine rep and we did a little tasting before the show. That's right. We're working on wine right now.

Well, well, yes. I think that's the first for the industry podcast show. So you're the winner Alex. Okay, so you've had a, we met what?

Like probably two months ago. Two months ago. You recently? Yeah, you took over the Nicholas Pierce portfolio as ironic because two of our good friends went on the show where your predecessors.

I've received them. Yes, exactly. I've replaced John Kent recently in the last March I started. So I think he left in October.

So shortly thereafter. Yes. And beforehand it was my collection. It was a reason.

It was a small world. Small world. A lot of the wine. But one of the cool things that you're doing right now was, first of all we should say that you've been in the industry for how long now?

Oh shit. I started when I was 16. So almost 40 years. There's been a retirement, cold thing going on.

But yeah, 30, 35, I guess 85 years. And I still count what you're doing now is the industry. I mean, you're selling wine. I know you're just actually retired from being on the floor or whatever.

But like, you're selling wine to restaurants and still industry. At least the industry adjacent. I think so. It's kind of fun because I get to talk to people like you, writing about life in the industry.

But I don't really have to put in the eight or ten hour shifts. Like I said, it's nice because I'm in bed by nine, three, ten o'clock. So I feel like I've still got my tone to do anyway. But we were talking while we were doing the tasting about how there's a part of you that still misses the sort of atmosphere of being on the floor.

Totally. And we all miss it when, and I was saying, yeah, yeah. And I was saying the same thing. I kind of miss it sometimes too.

Now that I'm moving to the ownership role. But like, you miss it. Like it's kind of this reminiscing about of like a crazy person used to date. Ex-crazy people.

Yeah, yeah. They're glimmers. They're glimmers. Yeah, they're glimmers.

I remember the good times. I was like, oh, maybe I should call that person. I remember the good times. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think you romanticized a little bit for sure. Yeah, I remember there was a point, two, three, two years ago I went to Fogo Island to work at the Fogo Island Inn and I took a friend with me. And we had a service where everything was magical and we just looked at each other across the room and it just felt like everything was coming out. The kitchen was on sync.

Both of us, she and I were on sync. There was just a, there was a feeling in the air. And I don't know if you can explain that to listeners who have never worked in the industry, but it's fleeting. It's definitely a fleeting moment.

It happens every once in a while and then of course the next night you work, it's complete shit and you know the weeds for like three hours and you're hating your life. But I think there are moments where you have a room full of people, you have a section full of people that are just awesome. They're easy to talk to. The kitchen's on point, the bar's on point.

Everybody, all the reservations are showing up on time. They're ordering nice wines and they're just, everything is perfect. And those are the moments that I, amongst others that I really miss. And when you look back at it and say, I think, all those nights were like that.

Yeah, and they weren't anywhere. How long were you at Fogo Island for? I was there for five weeks. Just a minute.

They couldn't get, they couldn't get, they couldn't get, stop during the pandemic. So Carl the owner of Scaramouche, his wife sits on the board of directors there and I'd retired and he emailed me, just after I moved this guy for it saying, listen, I know that you've sort of, you know, retired from the industry, but would you consider helping out? And I, it was a very short, quick answer. Yes.

Because I knew of the Fogo Island in, it was on my bucket list at some point even though I probably couldn't afford it. And my, I asked my friend Sarah who works at canoe restaurant in Toronto and she and I went on this little adventure for five weeks and it was magical. It was magical, it was magical, completely magical. Where did you stay when you were out there for like a short term like that?

They provided us with a house, there's a cute house that was about a 10 minute walk from the, from the, from the inn and it was, I can't even begin to express how amazing that place is. If anyone out there gets a chance to even go to Fogo Island, rent a B&B there, it's, I live in Toronto at the time. It's a complete opposite of what Toronto is. It's like the end of the world.

I mean it's, it's, it's. Was Bri Dennis still there when you were there? I know that name, no. No.

Okay. Yeah, she was Osama there for a bit. So, Kim Cyr. Kim Cyr, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

She was there and oddly enough we worked together 30 years ago to tools. The wait for 30 tools in all. Never enough. That's, that's pretty transition.

So that's kind of how you started with. That was a bit of my earlier, yeah, yeah. That was my management gig. I got involved.

I worked at Toby's Good Heath for a minute. Oh. And then a friend of mine was a general manager at O'Toole's on Carlson, Carlson Street, right across the street from Maple Beach Gardens. Oh, wow.

That was a shit show. I'm not going to lie. And I worked with Jeff there. Yeah.

That's good. That's crazy. Yeah. To think of where you, like when you, I was, I was, I mean, just as good as like when you were working at like a place like of tools.

Yeah. At that point, like how old would you have been them? 26, 27, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Is there any stretch of your imagination that you would end up teaching wine at the Stratford Chef School? Yeah. Right.

I didn't even know why I'm at that point. My mom's French from France, so I knew obviously wine, but I didn't know wine. Right. So I, yeah, it was just, it was, it was coming from Toby's.

It was sort of a nice segue from Toby's. It was a roadhouse burgers. And again, I was a bit of a hockey fan, so the Leafs used to come in. Gilmer and I became friends.

Oh, really? Yeah. I love him. Oh, cool.

And it just sort of segued into one day, my sister actually said, let's take a wine class together, and we went to George Brown. Like it was for fun. It was just in the gingles, and I thought, well, it'll help my career. Sure, okay.

It'll help my dogs, I don't really know. And the wine teacher was a French and older Frenchman who had been teaching wine in Toronto for many years. His name was Jack Marie for those people that might know him. And we, he started talking about, you know, Pino Noir, and then he started talking about the war, and then segue into these stories, these French stories that I loved, but everybody else in the class was sitting there, because they were as interested and they needed to work the next day.

So, it was at a clock at night, and we hadn't tasted wine yet, so I found him mesmerizing. I just thought he was amazing, and I passed, he had a test at the end. I passed it, and I moved on to the next level of the wine class, and then did my assembly diploma in 2003, and that opened many, many doors too. Right, so like, when you started this, when you were still working at O-Tools?

No, I was, I'd moved on to, I kept sort of moving up to Latter, so if it went tobeys and then O-Tools, and then I started working at LePere D, which was a French bistro that had a French wine list, and then from there went on to a restaurant named Boba on Avenue Road. At that point I'd had my assembly diploma at Boba, so I was the general manager buying the wine. At that point I was pretty entrenched in the wine world, we're going back to 2008, I think it was 2007, 2008, and it just sort of kept evolving from, I went to Celeste now, restaurant on Mount Pleasant, and then ended up at, and then ended up at Scaremooch, and I stayed there for 10 years. Right, so like, in your pinpoint of time when you were like, I feel like I'm in Duwine now, and that's when you wanted to start doing the courses.

Yeah, during the courses, and the Sunday 8 courses I was a wine geek, I'm not going to lie, I spent a lot of money just buying, tasting, you know, you research all these wines that you're learning about. Well, you got a taste of me, so you spent a lot of money just sort of, I go to the Italian wine, the tasting in Toronto, and I just, you're a geek, you're a wine geek. And at some point you do, it sort of dissipates, that you're not all consumed by it, but... Well, it's a lot of work, like that studying is insane, like I did my levels that I did, and I was just like, after a while, like I don't have the time to keep up with the amount of studying that goes into it, and like, you really have to dedicate your existence to it for a little bit there.

It was a good solid year, almost a year and a half, where it was like, I guess, like three to four hours a day, consistently for almost a year and a half. But I loved learning about the geography, the climate, you know, just the history, you start going down the rabbit hole, and there's so much to learn, you know, there's so much that goes into a bottle of wine. Like, I loved just learning all of it, like I just, I got really bitten by the wine bug. And then, you know, when you geek out for like a couple of years, you do, there's a point where you go, okay, it's just wine, like...

Back a couple of years, you know, we're not changing lives here, we're not changing lives here, we're not changing lives. I think I know that there's no worry about that. I just love the taste of it, I'm not gonna lie, I drink it every day. I, maybe because my mum is French, I have a good understanding of France, which has really helped me in my career, sort of the birthplace of wine, so I can speak to that.

I love, I just love the history of it, I love pairing foods, I love, I just, I love, it was a nice segue from the restaurant business into the wine career that has led me into selling wines now. And when you're doing, so I wasn't even curious about it, because I struggle to keep my level of retention of the knowledge, because I'm not doing it every day anymore, and plus I'm trying to run a couple other businesses that are not wine focused, and like, you know, I run a Scottish pub in Preston, Ontario, like this is not wine heavy. So I focus on that stuff, and then I, there's so much knowledge that you need to retain, like, how do you find, I mean, you're still working in the wine industry, it's not like wine now, but like, how do you find things to stop taking the courses, like, and stop working, say, at a high-end restaurant, like, how is your wine retention knowledge? It's hard, you know, now that I've started back into the wine world, working with Nicholas Pierce, all of a sudden, they're talking about these new ways to ferment, like, they're fermenting in cement, you know, they're fermenting in amphora, which is not something that I learned 20 years ago.

So, all of a sudden, the trends, I love listening and watching these trends in the hospitality business, you know, in the hospitality business, especially after now post-pandemic, people aren't using, you know, let's say the fine dining restaurants aren't using tablecloths anymore, you know, there's a scale back of trying to save some costs on, like I said, tablecloths. They're just, I love seeing how, you know, back in the 80s and 90s, there was, you know, chentros in Toronto and all these high-end places, and now that seems to have dissipated, and everybody's a little bit more casual paying attention to their finances a little bit more. The same thing that applied to the wine world is that the trends have changed, right? So, now people are into natural wines, they're biodynamic, organic, amphora, this is all sort of new in the last, you know, five, ten years.

So, you have to, and we're making great wine and Ontario, which is a new wine region unto itself, right? Like, I mean, 50 years ago, there were no wine and Ontario, there were no vineyards in Ontario. If you compare it to France or Italy like that, like it's, so I love seeing the progress, the trends that emerge in this industry that we're in, that are, you know, once upon a time you used to dress up to get on a plane, you know, right now. People show up in a fine dining establishment with, you know, shorts and flip-flops on, like it's, everything has changed.

What is your personal opinion about that? Like, do you? I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan.

I kind of miss the days where people, like, they're starting to think wrong with a casual fine dining experience, like, that's how I would like to describe, I mean, that one is not fine dining by any stretch of the imagination, but we try to create a curated wine experience that's very casual, so it's like, we have some very high-priced wines there, and no one looks at it, it's like a place where you've got to show up in a suit. Yeah, there should still be those places. I totally agree. I think, we have to have standards, you know, like, I think in, in fine dining restaurants, you can't show up with a baseball cap on, and shorts and flip-flops.

I guess. And a tank top, but wiser tank top? Yeah, sorry, I'm offending anybody out there, but I just... Well, it'd be a tank top.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just, I don't know, there's certain things that I think that we should get dressed up for. Yeah. I think that we should, you know, there are certain things, of course, getting on a plane in a suit doesn't make sense, but I think going up for dinner for your anniversary in a fine dining restaurant with tablecloths, ordering a nice bottle of wine makes sense.

Yeah, and there's, but there's something romantic, even about the notion of like getting in a suit to get on an airplane. I think like, there's something like, that shows you're making an effort. Yeah, it's an effort, yeah. Because if not, we'd be as friends all the time.

Well, anyway, if you're under the age of 30, you are. You are. Totally. And now we sound like all people yell, like, I think there's a place for that, in our society.

There should be, there's a place for the, like, the actual fine dining experience. When you look around, you're paying a lot for your meal, you're paying a lot for your wine, you're getting impeccable service for that reason, and you, to the establishment to look the part as well. Right. Like, you know, at Scamu's, for example, I would have a tie on, I would, or as if I was serving, if I was in a treaty, or similarly I'd have a, you know, a beautiful shirt on, and a jacket, and pants, and I would be in a fine dining attire.

And I think if you're going out for that, I think there's so few occasions that allow us to do that, that I think that there should be room for that in our society. Right. Like, we're not saying that all places to be like that, and probably the places that people are going to freak out the most are not going to be like that, but there's a room for that type of establishment doing so. Totally agree.

Yeah. Even if you've gotten rid of the table class and you're trying to, you know, save costs on other things and still be in an upscale environment, I think you should, I don't know, dress the part. Right. I agree.

Yeah. And I do miss it, because you do go into like these really nice restaurants, and like there's, our restaurants are still trying to do the table class and everything, and you go in there and the people in the restaurant are just like you said, dressing short some flip flops, not like what is happening. Okay. And I'll never get it.

That's just, I'm old. Yeah. That's right. This is going to turn into the old persons in, old persons, old people at the industry podcast.

Not just this episode. I mean, in general, because I get fucking older every year. We're doing, we turned 50 this year. So we're like in the same boat, we're just like looking back, like no one under the age of 30 is ever going to listen to this.

Yeah, yeah. We're probably pretty sure the question. Totally. I want to talk a little bit about Stratford, because though, when you, so you're teaching wine at Stratford's School, so who, like are you teaching, well, actually just describe what you do.

So a couple years, you know, post pandemic, we, my partner and I decided to move to Stratford, and I knew I couldn't do the business anymore, the industry. So I threw some neighbor friends, who sits on the board, one of them sits on the board of directors at the Stratford's School. In my experience, they felt that I would be well suited to take over from the, my predecessor, who is at Langdon Hall. And I'm teaching in service and wine to first and second year students at the Stratford's School, which is a perfect sort of segue from my career.

I like the idea of taking all of my experience, all of my knowledge and just sort of passing it on to this younger generation that, what I like about the Stratford's School is that they're teaching them obviously, cooking, but there is an element of knowing how to serve and knowing how, what wines are paired and there's a wine element as well. So I like that they're giving them sort of the complete package, that they're not just teaching them how to cook, is that they're understanding all aspects of the restaurant business. Well, and I would say that we, like, we've talked to a number of like pretty well respected chefs on the show now, which is, and they've all gone to a chef's school or whatever. And in similar fashion, like all of them have had to learn how to pair wines properly with food and also the service component as well, because it does, like, I don't know how to describe this perfectly, but like if you're a chef at a high end restaurant, like you're the executive chef that has to have everyone describe it, you should know how proper service is given.

So you can call it out if you're not seeing it, right? Yeah, and I think that there's also an element of the back of house experiencing what front of house goes through. They can go through a really crappy customer or they can go through the stress, I mean, they're in the stress, they have their own stresses in the back, but the front of house has their own separate stresses. And for a short period of time, they can experience that.

So they can have a better understanding, because there is always that divide between front and back of house. This at least gives them a hands-on experience with what that looks like for them. Yeah, and that's important because, like you said, that the divide exists and it's so easy for the front house to yell at the back of house over an error and vice versa, right? If we all don't know what we're all on the video.

Well, it's the team, and there's always been, you know, we can go down maybe this rabbit hole, but the back of house in front of house, there's inequality with the amount of money that they make, and that has always been the case, and we touched on this briefly earlier, but I'd like to see more, just a little bit more equity in both. Because both of them work equally as hard, I just want to make sure that at some point the back of house in front of house or more, they work more in unison financially, physically all of those things. Yeah, and like, obviously working as long as you work in the industry, like you've worked in several places where there was like a major divide and other places where it was a little closer, and like, as am I, and I always say the most enjoyable times I've had at work were the times where the back of house in front of house were in unison. Magic, we got along, yeah, we got along, yeah, those are magical times, because 90% of the time it doesn't work that way.

Because at the end of the day, all we're trying to do is make the customer happy, right? I mean, that's what the ultimate goal is. So I feel strongly, and if anything, the pandemic showed us there is a divide, you know, there's a divide between the line cooks that are making, you know, a little bit more than minimum wage and working 14 hours a day, not getting paid over time. And the waiter that works five hours and makes 300 bucks, you know, so I really would like to see that, again, I think I'm retired now, of course, yeah, of course, even in that.

But I do, I would like to see more equality, that's, I guess, my point in that. Do you think at the school now, like, how are you finding the students, like, at what age are they generally? I was a question. They are younger, yeah, they're younger, they're young, they're had a few students that actually couldn't drink wine because they weren't abaged, they never drunk wine.

Oh, really? Yeah, they never liked the taste of the wine, so that was fun. Tasting the wine, so yeah, how do you think someone is never, especially, because you're trying to teach food pairings and like how to flavour profiles, and someone who just was like, I swear, don't like the taste of wine. Yeah, we weren't able to drink it because they weren't able to be.

A couple of 18 year olds, or some that just didn't like the taste of wine, they just didn't like it. And we're seeing that a lot, you know, I was again going back to the trends that we're seeing, is that now a lot of maybe in the bar, if you can speak to that, is non-alcoholic drinks. You know, we're seeing a lot of younger people that just aren't drinking, like the, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know that person. But we're seeing a lot of that happening, right?

That is our reality right now, like with trends I spoke about, is it's kind of neat to see them evolving, you know, moving forward. So it's been interesting, the younger generation teaching them about something that they may or may not like at all and don't like the taste of when they weren't brought up with. So it's been interesting that also rewarding because you get a handful of students at the end of the class that go, wow, that was so cool. How can I take more classes?

What book should I buy? What should I buy at the LCBO? You know, they're totally engaged and they're totally bought into it. And they have had a little bite of the wine bug.

And you just want to feed them, you know, and I think I'd love to see where you end up in the next five minutes. Are you going to be a somebody? Are you going to pursue this? Is this just a sort of a fleeting moment?

Or hopefully you can take this and move forward with it, you know? Yeah, I love that too. Like even just in my place in the business, whether it's sugar, I'm more into it, more content focused or a bad long, more wine focused. When you see someone young who's actually taking a keen interest in it, I still love that so much.

And then you see other people who are just a job. That's fine, and that's fine too, right? But when you catch one that's keenly interested in the knowledge, because it just reminds you of you when you were younger, and it's like, I got into it and then once I got into it, I got fascinated by it. It's a different from that.

You find something you're into and there's people who are like, I'm into that, now I need to know everything about it. There's the people who are like, I'm kind of into that. There's another thing, and I totally get that. There's a few people that do get bitten by that wine bug.

It's fun to talk to them because their eyes just light up and they just want to gather as much information as possible. I get it because I definitely was one of those people. I love the nuances and styles of wine I was teaching today at the Shek School summer classes. Everybody's trying to absorb what I'm saying and trying to understand, you know, I was talking about new world wines versus old world wines, and stylistically how different they are and just watching them really trying to understand what I'm saying, and how does that relate to what they're tasting.

There's something just very rewarding as someone who is teaching wine when they start to get it at that aha moment where they're like, yeah, that's what I taste. You say Black Jerry or whatever, and they're like, yes, yeah, I get it in that moment where you can see just the wheels turning, and I really hope that I inspire them as much as my teacher inspired me. I hope to be that person where they can look back at some point in their life and go, Alex got me really excited about wine at the end of the day. And I hope to be that person in their life.

Yeah, well, you can imagine that you are, because you clearly, once you start talking about this shit that you're into, the passion comes out, right? I think that's why you and I clicked when you came for the first wine taste. I mean, you guys talked about wine, we got to talk about the service industry in general, and it was just like we were both in the way. How do you find that with your sort of side gig now?

I don't know if you call it side gig or really a lot of gigs. You got a lot of gigs before you. You're a woman of a child. You still have many times.

Whereas selling wine to people. So when you go to sell wines, and you're selling wine obviously, all the way to the province on a certain thing, right? So Nicholas Pierce is a pretty big agency. And are you mostly, do you find, what level, I guess it's different in every place.

Like a smaller place is like mine, you probably deal with more ownership level people, and then get the bigger chain restaurants, or just big restaurants in general. You're probably dealing with a wine buyer or a manager or whatever, right? Will you find that the level of passion or knowledge of the people you're generally selling wine to overall? Yeah, very.

That's the most part of everyone who's buying wine has a fairly good indication of. They understand, even if it's a rudimentary, they've taken one wine class, they understand the difference between a short name and a Sauvignon Blanc. And then you've got the geekier assemblies that want to know what elevation was the vineyard, planted at, and I go, God man, do you really need to know that shit? I mean, why does that do not?

Just keep some wine, like it or not. Like where is that going to go? Like what are you going to do with that? You're coming on Reddit.

But you don't want to do this. I'm so glad you said that because I think about that all the time. And let's say hypothetically that was a, you're trying to tell wine to me. I'm being that way about it.

Tell me what the terroir is. Tell me what the terroir is. What am I legitimately going to do with that knowledge? If I even try to pass that on to my staff, they're going to be like, they're going to be like, they're going to find the wines.

They're going to find the wines. They're like the best and push those ones. Like people always do. Like human nature.

Yeah. And we have somebody down here who's a song who's pretty famous for going to the table and giving a 45 minute description of the wine. People don't kill me. They just like pour the wine out.

I would like to drink it out for you. Are you done now? Yeah. There's a few people I know like that.

And whatever. I know judgment for me. That's the thing. It gives them a sense of purpose, confidence, whatever.

Do you like a wine or not? I don't know. I look at it from a very rudimentary, very basic. My biggest real life is finding a really good $15 bottle of wine.

I don't need to buy like $50. I've never spent that bottle on a bottle of wine. I get much more joy at finding a fantastic $13, $15, $17 wine. I don't need to know where, like I don't need to know that although the details that some somebody is need to know.

Right. Because like most people don't give a shit. No. When you start, they just want to know, I try and keep it if I sell wine to a customer at a restaurant.

I give them two or three bite size pieces. You know, it's going to be, you have to talk about the weight of the wine. So it's going to be a mid-weight wine or medium-bodied wine with bright acids, dark cherry. It's going to go very well with the food you paired.

That's all they care about. Yeah. And it's almost like, I feel like when I see people doing that at a table, it's like you said, it's almost about them. Yeah, it's more about them than it is about the wine or anything.

That's right. You know a lot. We're very pleased. I've said it many times on the show and many times in any conversation I've ever had about wine is that the best thing that the wine courses taught me was how to buy better wine cheaper.

It's literally the best thing I got out of it. Yeah, it's a hundred percent. And if I find at the LCBO a product that I love for $13, $13, $14, I'll buy two cases of it. And I'm happy to drink it for the next, you know, $20.

I never said, like now the LCBO, we're going to have a rabbit hole and that. That's a shit. I refuse to pay more than $20 for a bottle of wine when I go to the LCBO. And I'm sure you would agree with me, I was like, that's why I highly recommend you.

You're not in the service industry or you don't specifically care about massive wine knowledge, but you like to drink wine. Just take a couple levels of Ws that and your life is going to be infinitely better because you can buy cheaper wine. A hundred percent. And I said that to my students.

I said, I don't know what you guys are going to do with the knowledge that I'm just giving you, but at the end of the day, in five years, if you guys have a dinner party, you'll be able to go to the LCBO and say, okay, I can sort of navigate my way around what she's taught me. Even if I give you a slice, a small slice of something that can help you in your day-to-day life, why not take that? Even if it helps you navigate a wine list in France, just a little bit. Why wouldn't you take that?

Because it's such an intimidating subject for most people to sit down and open a big wine list and they get all scared and they think they're going to get ripped off by the Sommelier. I've been the opposite of that. I would rather rather, somebody tells me they want this style of wine for 80 or 90 bucks and rather sell them a $70 bottle of wine that I know they're going to like and hopefully come back. It was always my style as a manager.

I want you to come back. I want to rip you off and get an extra $50 out of you. You look at your bill at the end of the night and go, I'm never going back there. It's so short-sighted and a lot of people are in it for a very short term, whereas I always think that if you have my trust, I can recommend a wine to you.

You can come back and say, hey, we tried this last time. What else do you recommend? I can fit the price profile that you're looking for. There's a relationship that's this after there.

They can come back and go, hey, Alex, you know, you did last time, let's sort of follow that. Next thing, they're coming back every month or whatever. That's right. It's funny to say that too.

It's the short-sighted thinking because I think it applies to humanity as a whole, but specifically in this industry. So many people are just looking for that dollar that's directly in front of their face rather than the hundred that might be coming down the road. It's just like, a Sommelier relationship with your guest and then instead of trying to just bleed them for money while they're there. It makes no sense.

Especially in this climate too. Oh, God. People are getting wiser that too, right? Maybe there was a day where you could pull that shit off, but I think it's behind us now.

People are like, there's a massive level of distrust in society in general now that you almost have to work doubly hard to gain people's trust before you've even met them. So you've got to come with that sort of idea that I'm in this with you. I want you to have a good experience here and I'm not trying to bleed you for the most expensive bottle of wine. I'm trying to say, look, the coolest thing anyone can say to you when you're going to sit down and really really really expensive, I don't care how much money you have, is to be like, okay, you get ordered $150 bottle of wine, you will love it.

But I'm going to tell you right now, you can also order this $80 bottle of wine and you will love it and it will also bear and be able to do it with your meal, right? Yeah, yeah. People appreciate that shit. Totally.

100%. And I've worked in restaurants where I've worked with waiters where they just see the end result which is making more money off the sale. I've never seen it like that. I want people to come back.

I want them to feel comfortable with me and come back and establish a trust. I mean, essentially that's at the end of the day, in the hospitality business, that's what it's all about. It's absolutely the perfect spot to end this. That was like the perfect ending to the show.

I was so glad that you came by. We love doing these things in person and we also got a wine take channel which was lovely. And you got some sales out of it? Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Yeah, Nicholas Deere's wine check them out for private sales as well. I'm going to say that. So yeah, and I can speak, I've been dealing with Nicholas Deere's forever and Alex is amazing, she's one of the most knowledgeable people I've ever tasted wine with. And she has tons of amazing products at super, like all price ranges, but like lots of really good shit at totally reasonable prices, which is the best thing.

It's even better. Alright, Alex, thanks again for doing it. Thanks for coming on. Thank you.

Thanks very much. Thank you.