On this week's episode, Jake Richards joins the show for an in-person interview. Jake is a certified Somalia who is currently working at Loloan and Ravi Bar in Waterloo, Ontario. Jake got a start in the industry at the age of 12 when he landed his first job at a pizza restaurant and he's been employed in the industry ever since. In our conversation with Jake, he talks about the first steps in becoming a Somalia when he had an accidental injury early in his career.
While not being able to work on his feet, Jake enrolled in a Somalia training program and his career took off from there. Jake talks about the rigorous training involved, such as developing a strong sensory memory, and the art of guiding customers to discover new wines and spirits, and the importance of creating a welcoming, unpretentious experience for customers. We also talk about the challenges of running a niche liquor business, especially in a smaller market like Kitchener Waterloo, the challenges of working in the restaurant industry, including dealing with no-show reservations. In the closing minutes of the show, we reference a TV show that we couldn't recall the name of during the recording.
The show is named Drops of God, and we finish off with a humorous anecdote about Jake's first customer that he encountered in his very first serving role in his career. We had a great time talking with Jake and want to thank him again for bringing over several bottles of sake to try and drink during the recording. Enjoy the show. Okay, we're back with another episode of the industry podcast.
Keep in mind with you as always, what's happening with you, man? How much? The usual start of the week, so I'll just get ready to, you know, pay your life for the rest of the week, guys. Yeah, I'm going to Friday, yeah, next Sunday around 4 o'clock and start crying.
Alright. Next day's the Monday. Hey, John, where are you? He's crying in the shower before I went to work.
It's kind of fun way to live. Alright, that's true. How pretty good? Pretty good.
I am trying to get a new brand of underwear today, so that's always a crapshoot. You never know how that's going to go. That's a good idea. How those panties fit?
Yeah, especially at our eighth group. It's a, you can say it was a brave decision if you want to call me brave. Yeah, yeah. Like a firefighter or a policeman.
A policeman? Yeah, we'll say how that all pans out for me. But yeah, aside from that, everything is normal and good. Yeah, cool.
Yeah, I'll cover if it's behind us, Halloween's on the way. That's always good for business. Yeah, that was good for the bars. We can.
That was alright. We had a private party that was a disaster at Babylon, but I wasn't there. So yeah, if you're in that area, you should check out or in the KW area, you should check out. The bars should be running.
It's the bar downtown kitchener at Sugar Run Bar for everything that's going on down there. And Babylon's sisters up down Waterloo. That's at Babylon's sisters bar. It's fine with what's going on there.
Hopefully no more of these crazy parties. Like from what I understand, if those people never come back to our bar, have your own be happy. It was that kind of party. Yeah.
Yeah, apparently. But they rented out the, if you haven't entered my bar, well that's the name on you. But there are two levels to the bar. Apparently they rented out the bottom level for some reason, which doesn't really make a lot of sense, but they wanted to be closer to the DJ.
And then they kept getting pissed if anybody wanted to walk into the bar and go to the back, which was the part that they hadn't rented out. It's like, that's the entrance. I don't know how they were. And other people were going to show up and then they were getting pissed if people left as well.
And when they threw their part, it was like, you can't explain the shit to people. But yeah. So that's what's happening at Babylon sisters bar at Sugar and Bar if you're in the KW area. In addition, reach out to me, kyppatablonstisters.ca for all of your wine and spirits needs, repping for a Lord, the Stilling Company, and Terroir Wine Imports, and Malaguirir Winery in Niagara on the Lake Beamsville, actually.
So if you need wine or spirits on your guy, shoot me an email. Instead of the tasting. If you like what we're doing here on the show, the best way to help us is to subscribe, follow rate review, leave a little review. That helps a great deal, apparently, with the algorithms.
That's what they tell me. Follow the algorithms and what do they call it? Sorry, I'm doing a blank on the word. I'm looking at engagement.
Oh, that's right. So do you need to be engaging? Yeah. So engage with us.
We're a telefriend. So listen to one show. Maybe this one. Yeah.
If you want to be guest on the show, info at theindustrypodcast.club. Also that's where you can meet just for any sponsorship or you can DM us at the industry podcast on Instagram. And that is where the artwork done by the great Zakhana exists at zakhana.co for all your graphic cards, needs always a big shout out to Zakh for all the great work he does for us. Perfect.
That was a great job. Anything else you wish to discuss before we get to our guest? Nope. Sorry.
Let me get that out of the way. Okay. I'm burned out. That's the hell of a shot.
It's all on you and me, Jake. So with us today is Jake Richardson brought us some saki to try. So cheers. Thank you very much.
Try this out. Mm. That's good. This is what kind of saki is it?
So this is a jung my ganjo. I can joke. So I'm certified in some of the A, but I mean kind of covered saki a little bit in our course and I think that's where my fascination with it began and some super cool stuff that I really, but it's a lot to learn. So the, I don't know if you know the process of saki in this saki course.
So I won't even. I do a little bit. And the reason is because I was going to open a saki bar at one point. Oh, yeah.
That's a hearing kitchener. That would have been there all the time. Yeah. Well, it didn't pan out.
We pitched it way down the line with these guys. It was a couple of Korean dudes and they were all into the idea. It was going to be like a saki bar with the yakitori. Is that right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we had, it was going to be like sort of like 80s Miami vice field to the bar and sort of smash those ideas together and they were all into it.
I went up to Korean town in like Oakville to meet with these guys again and they wanted to meet. They were like, oh yeah, we're going to get you to do one of these in Singapore too. We own a bunch of property in Singapore. So it's like, it's not a little sketchy.
And then I never heard from them again. Yeah. And the location that we agreed on, they sold and now it's a pharmacy. So there you go.
But yes, continue. Yeah. So I brought these just because I thought this is part of the thing that fascinates me about it. And so that, hold on a year, familiar with the EO Chaku, kind of traditional.
But so, and Masu, some of these people. So you ever see, no, I think this might be one of the weird shaped bottles, but the bottles always go like 720 mill bottles. I went in 720, not 750. So the way it goes, this used to be on the samurai side.
This was his daily ration of rice. This was also his drinking vessel. Okay. So just, I don't know the tattoo interview, but this is a small wooden box that, what would you say the dimensions are this just because this is not your only.
It's not so much dimensions, it is volume. So it is, I have to do some math here. I think it's 180 mill. Right?
So, so 180 times four is 270. Right. So that's two samurai sit down and they have two drinks. That's kind of, and it's, ever you get some half bottles, not these ones, but some half bottles are essentially two Masu.
Mm. Oh. Yeah. It's, I did not know that story.
I think, and I serve sake in these because it's so aromatic. These things are absolute garbage. Right. You know why they use these?
No. Comonos. Comonos. Drape across.
This is Drape wine. It's not going anywhere. Okay. But that weird like history and attention to detail, just, just in this, I found was actually fascinated.
Mm-hmm. And then moving on to, I mean, we have, there's just hundreds of different styles and I brought three. That's what I discovered when I was researching, because we had to pitch this idea to a bunch of people, right? I'm so part of our pitch was bringing different kinds of sake and having them try it.
And I was blown away once I started getting into it. How much of this stuff is actually like wine, whereas like sake is like wine, like spirits are like wine when you really think about it. Most people just are drinking the bare basics of shit and don't get into that, right? Like you drink the sitti sake that you get it.
You can eat sitti spot. And yeah, and I remember growing up. I got that from we had like 25 years ago. It was actually four of the best.
The, like, or like drinking hot sake. You know, yeah. Well, my understanding is that the house hot sake came around because in the A's and you know, everyone was drinking the sake of the time and it was hot because what they were signing over here was the dog shit. Right.
So they would eat it up to them. Right. That's right. That's right.
So now we're starting to see the good stuff coming in and ideally should serve chill. Now there is time and a place for warm sake depending is zooming sake. It's still here in Toronto. Yeah.
If you go down there for their winter carnival thing, whatever it is, and definitely stop in there, they have the sake made to be. Yeah. We went there. But the guy I was partying with was from Toronto and he, so he brought me to that distillery where they make their own and it's killer.
Like the product is great. But then they showed us, they took us through the back and showed us the whole process. Oh, G-ROM and stuff. Yeah, yeah.
It was cool. Yeah, but that's the thing. And I thought like my, we should have run focused and like learning about even, like, you know, we're just used to drinking Bacardi, white, right? Or whatever.
Or Captain Morgan, garbage. And then when you get into like those sipping runs and the complexity of the flavors and like on your nose as well for a rum, I was shocked out until I got really into it. But it's the same thing about sake. And I think we're used to talking about like wine that way, but where people are starting to talk about other spirits in the same way as they talk about wine.
People are getting more sophisticated in their palettes and I mean, most people. And not to shit on this guy because you know, he dropped about 1200 bucks on high into tequila last week. Okay. But he's already with salt and lime shooting it.
Like it's Quairvo, right? It's like, oh, come on, dude, like, thanks for your money. But you know, take your time. Take your time with that stuff.
Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it's just not brand recognition necessarily, but I think this the flavor profile and interesting higher end cocktails now, right? Not just Ramakosh, you're getting into like cool stuff with a lot more to offer. So it's a good hit to it.
Yeah, it's good. Like I wish we had a bigger audience for it in our town here. Like if you go to Toronto, definitely, it's just a matter of population size, right? Like the more people, the more chance you are to find the people who are into it in each spot.
And I mean, we complain about this on the show. I complain about it more often when we're not recording, but our community here in Kishowanau, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be large enough to support the niche type spots that are really, like you will get some. There are people out there like that, but they don't go out often enough to the same spots often enough to support kind of really getting into like high end, even wine for that matter, you know? Well, when I moved here almost 30 years ago, it was a very staking potatoes town.
Yeah. There wasn't a whole lot happening, right? Creative cuisine. The big ones were, this is another thing that I was thinking about the other day.
It was all chef driven restaurants at the time, right? We had Peter Martin, had Bell and Nina, Nina's place. There was Janet Lynn, of course, Paul. And then we had the college university crowd, right?
So in the middle there, there were foodies, but I think we're still kind of doing that. We're still kind of the meat and potatoes people, and then the university, you know, $2 to kilo shots. And we're starting to find people now that are a little more adventurous and willing to be guided, not into a different territory of taking over the comfort zone, essentially. This is sparkling sake.
Oh, this is not a... No, sake, a tough sell at the restaurants? Oh, yeah. It is.
Yeah. And even the Japanese restaurants in town here, I mean, it's unfortunately pathetic. They're in sake selection. It's really bad.
Yeah. And that's what we wanted to do with that bar. It was bringing in like, like, my friend was traveling in Japan at the time and brought us back some shit from there, and we were just going to low-key sell some of that stuff. But when the bar didn't happen, I just drag it at home.
And oh, man, like some of that stuff directly from the source, like it was like a $300 bottle of sake. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
That's kind of crazy. There is actually a camp-high event in Toronto, everyone. So why once a year? We should check that out.
What's the one that you obviously had the wine shows now? So I think it's a helper and maybe revs them so goo or something like that. It's the sake. It's like almost like...
So Joe Gu? Excuse me. Yeah, I can't remember the brand name, but it's like they're trying to do like a cool version of sake and like, you know, like a cooler looking... Oh, trying to make it a hip thing.
Yeah. Try the next sake. Yeah, the product's okay, but it's not... We bought some, trying sell, but no one's coming to a bar to sip on sake, at least not where we live, right?
Like I don't know if you ever go to Black Dice in Toronto, but they have a sake of sake of sake menu and like, people will go there and actually drink sake, right? But again, it's a population situation. There's a really great agency, Metropolitan Spirits, I think it was called Vivian. I want to say how they're out about a camp member.
They have a fantastic portfolio, like pages and pages of us are so cool stuff, but unfortunately that means I have to buy the case. Right. I'm not going to sell the case. No, it'll be the viral go on first.
Anyway, I just want to bring a few different things. Yeah, this is cool. I never tried sparking sake. So let's talk about you for a little bit, since you're on the show.
At what point did you discover that the world of wine and that you were into it, and maybe you were going to start studying? Well, that's a whole different story. But I've been in this business in one capacity of another since I was 12. My very first restaurant job was at Monroe's Pizza in BC, and I've always had a restaurant job since then.
But what happened was I was at the time working for the Waterloo Inn with Mary Dohm, and I ended up going to a party after work one night, got kind of junk, jumped off of a guy's ground-forward balcony, to go grab my cigarettes out of the car. It wasn't crazy. It was only like maybe four feet, but I ended up breaking my heel. Cool.
Yeah, it was not good. So I couldn't work. And Mary Dawn Blesser, I still see her once in a while, and she's a soft spot for Mary. She could be a hard woman, but we got along.
So she said, listen, you can't work. You can't walk. You can't walk. So tell you what, why don't you find a program to go study something, restaurant related, and I will pay for it, and I will pay you a salary while you go to school.
Jesus, that's fucking nice, right? Yeah. Especially how old were you at that point? I don't know.
Before, we just had kids, so I was in my name, 25. Yeah, so to get that kind of support at that age, because really they could replace you no problem. Right. Yeah.
Yeah. So what the water went at the remodel for the new restaurant? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think I may have worked with you.
Oh, really? I got to work with you. Yeah. Where?
Who was the solute at the time that he looked like an 80s fucking bomb? Oh, Florian. Florian? No, I can't remember his name, because I thought, I thought we recognized you.
But then we had the outfits, the new age tuxedo kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. So that was like 90s, 98 or so. Really?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I only started, I only started like 2001, I guess it would have been, because I remember when we had opening night.
Yeah, that's because they revamped the whole fucking place to have a nice restaurant. Yeah, Russia's. Yeah, Russia's. Yeah, that's a nice high flute in Toronto, obviously, in there to do the design.
And then opening night was supposed to be 9-11. Oh, all that shit went down on 9-11 and of course like to open a night bombed. Yeah. A few people showed up, probably to drop their head around what's going on.
But yeah. So I don't know who was there before then. Yeah, it would have been, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because I remember that vividly. I ended up working a lot of the brunch shifts on Sundays.
Oh, come on. I had to crush a bunch of booze and have a bunch of free food and get ticked because the rest of it was dead. Yeah. Yeah.
Like there was nothing going on there. It was such a massive space though. Yeah. It was way too big.
But I mean Sunday brunch is man, those bread puddings and all you can eat shrimp packed the place. Yeah. Yeah. Which always, yeah, it was busy.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Pretty much.
Yeah. Pretty much. I mean it was fine. Oh, did he?
Yeah, he was very German. Yeah, I do remember him. Where did he end up? Yeah, he bounced around a couple different spots.
Yeah, I do remember him. I think I did work with him here, right? Yeah. But that's like getting back to me.
You're saying that's pretty fucking crazy that like a 25 year old kid and she's like willing to pay you a salary to not work and also pay for an educational for you. Yeah. So I ended up choosing the CAHPS program in Niagara. Now there was a Toronto program, but then I thought, if I go to Toronto on a Sunday, I know too many people there, it's just going to turn, it's not going to be good.
I'm not going to get home to your stay. It's not going to be an overwhelming wife. So I'll do an agra. I'm not going to be a part of the teachers at the time, right?
Master of the, one of the first, or the first, Master Sam and Canada. And he's very intimidating, extremely knowledgeable guy, the personality of a robot. He's got what he tends. And miraculously I passed.
I couldn't believe it. But at the end of it, it doesn't matter what course it is, it's just the beginning, right? You got to keep studying. You got to keep reading.
You got to do it. You're in COVID. We lost a year. I lost out on a year of tasting.
I lost out on that serving thing. I'm like, I had to go back and hit the books a little bit, get back into service again. I once things started to reopen. And I know someone lost some of that knowledge, right?
And some things won't ever retain. Because I don't, right? The bottle shapes, right? The regular bottle shape, the magnum, after that, I don't know.
I don't do that. So it's, uh... Why would say it's like learning a language or like playing tennis or something like that? It's like, if you're not practicing it all the time, you lose it, right?
Totally. Yeah. And, uh, and I think about working in a restaurant versus being like a wide writer or being in that, you're always around food and smells and different ingredients and you smell these and you pick them up and it's kind of, it brings things back. And that was part of the training, right?
I look like an idiot. You're cooking and you're picking out mushrooms and all the mushrooms and you're starving. It goes, that's fine, right? And just putting it into your memory bank so that when you pick up a glass and you start to kind of pinpoint what these things are and try to figure out what is it?
Where is it from? What style is it? The party trick, right? The brown tasting is essentially, yeah, it's a party trick.
It is, yeah. Yeah, because it's not something you're ever going to need to know in real life. No, no, no. No, really.
I want to address you on whether you can figure out what great it is from one region, one year. Like, no, like I said, it's a party trick. Right, then that's such a potential source shit too. You go to these wine tastings in Toronto and some people are super cool.
We have some of the best songs in the area, right? Rob Miller, Brie Dema, Mike Henderson, Johnny Curwin and Stratford. These guys are just cool and they can bring down the snobbery of the wine and make it very approachable and enjoyable. And you go to Toronto and you see these shmucks and they're just like, fuck off.
You know, like, oh, what is that? Oh, well, if you don't know what this is, then it's not for you. Fuck off. Yeah.
And that goes against everything that we do in the restaurant, right? Our job there is to take out the intimidation factor of wine, make it fun, make it enjoyable, make it educational, but not to talk down. Right. And you know what I mean?
Exactly. Right. So, and that's the part that I love about it and I don't take it that seriously because then it's just not fun. Yeah.
Yeah. There are ways to get your knowledge across to people without sounding like an asshole. You know what I mean? And talking down to them, like, they should be the lesser person because they didn't go to school for fucking two years to learn it, right?
Like, in one other area in service, does that happen? You know? Yeah. I mean, this is in like that 1980s New York French restaurant, you know, and that's a whole other aspect, right?
And, you know, in the industry and restaurants is creating experience, making people feel comfortable, you know, educating them a little bit? Sure. Yeah. I guess if they want to be.
Mm-hmm. Sometimes they don't. And that's fine too. And then something to me, I'll just do that and then fuck off.
Like, that's fine too. Well, yeah. Well, can we get about the Chianti? Yeah.
Yes, of course we can. We'll fucking correct them. Oh, you mean about the Chianti? You know?
Here's this now. Yeah. Exactly. And it's okay.
Like, I always talk about like trying to put together my list and we're trying to do cooler stuff, right? Like, maybe do some education with different kinds of grapes that we bring in, right? Different reflections, different countries where maybe you wouldn't expect a certain grape to be grown. Like, I like to do cool stuff like that.
But it's not even the time they want a Cali cat. And that's fine too. And then I just have to learn to eat that and just be like, okay, I'm going to have one of those on the menu. And all the time.
Yeah. Yeah. That's a thing. You can't make a wineless that's just too out there.
You have to still have people in their comfort zone. You can't make one that's just for you. It's a hard lesson for me to learn. Yeah.
And if anybody's made that mistake, I made that mistake when I first came out and I got my certificate. I'm like, oh, I'm going to bring all this cool-y. S'd, S'd. It's a cool, why a cool story behind it?
But no one knows what the hell that is. No. Or, yeah, just, you know, there's a way about it. Working at Langdon Hall, because I worked at Langdon Hall briefly too.
Just to bring people into it. My way, when I was at Langdon, people wanted a wine. Okay, what would you like? This is a thing.
It's a conversation. What would you like? And it's a tough thing to ask, but what's your price point? What do you think it's comfortable with?
But you have not been able to point to the price on the menu, right? Right. Say it out to them. But then you offer, okay, now you kind of know what they would like.
You know what their palette is? What their palette is? And the style of wines that they like. Now you can kind of veer off from that.
So whether it's brand recognition or whether it's something a little bit more out there or something kind of a little bit crazy. But within their parameters, their flavor profile, what they want to spend. Yeah. And always tell people who really enjoyed that.
Yeah, that's how I tried to approach it as well. It's like, it should be a fun conversation between you and the guests. I have you in the talking about wine. That should be fun for you too, right?
And recommending something to somebody that they might not have known about just based on what you're talking about. What are you usually drink? That's what I tell my staff. Ask them what they usually drink.
We have something on this list for every palette style. It's just might not be what they're used to. Right? So what do you usually drink and how much do you want to spend?
Without saying it that blatantly maybe. Yeah. At the end of it, it's about the guest experience. The wine is just such a small part of that.
And I kind of treat every aspect of a service the way I do wine, whether it's the food. And where I met now with Paul and Sean cooking. And people can get intimidated by the menu. We can imagine that you would get a little empty.
We should give them a little plug there. And you kind of make a bit of a joke about it. And I kind of joke, but it's not really a joke. How do I pronounce this?
You know, honestly, I don't know. I say you've never learned a letter, right? I mean, what the reason. But you try to make them feel comfortable.
Yeah. I mean, I know how to pronounce it. But yeah, you're making them feel like more at ease, right? Yeah.
I'll have that a little while. And I'm like, oh, you feel like you're correcting them? That's the worst thing you can do. Yeah.
I do always marvel though at both of Paul's restaurants, Bemis and Lolo and as I've eaten there several times. And obviously my ex works there. And I see, but like, it would blow me away when she would come to the table and just list off the specials. And I'm like, how the fuck are you doing that?
Like, what's the scale? Yeah. Honestly, honestly, I'm honest with God, it literally would blow me away. It was honestly like a super impressive skill set.
Like that, I don't know if it's like, I guess I should have asked her what they would have really asked her. Like, is it just straight memory work? Or do you sort of, like, suddenly because you're doing it over time, you're learning about the foods you sort of know, you start to learn the pronunciations obviously, and then maybe you start to learn over time what certain foods are called. And then you kind of put it together.
But like, she would list off a fucking list of specials including appetizers. And by the time she got to the end of it, I'm like, I didn't even recognize a word that you just said. Well, I was a combination of all that, but also when you travel to those places, right, it sticks better. And also, it pulls.
It's all right. And he was going to that, so I'm not interrupting. Yeah. And Paul did crazy knowledgeable.
And he'll sit us down, you know, telling, you know, these regions are so close together, but these guys tend to use like this, and this region uses these ingredients, not so, right? And just the distinction between the two places. So when you have somebody in your corner like that who can kind of walk you through a menu and discuss the territory, the culture, it helps. So just stick in your mind a little bit better, right?
So that's extremely helpful. It's not some chef just whipping a menu and there you go. Right. Yeah.
There's some rationale behind it in some education in this area. So this is a sake. It's like very milky, cloudy. This is a Nagori.
So anytime you see a Nagori, this is a course filter. So that's like wine, rice, cinnamon. Oh. So what sake is, it's more like, he's just the process.
I don't want to be a sake, um, infomercial here, but the way it's made, it's more like beer. But it goes through this thing called multiple parallel fermentation. So like you look at the alcohol content on these, like that's 16.2. That's, I don't have my glasses on that.
So that's okay. That's almost 6%. But it goes through this process of as the yeast and sugar are combining to create the alcohol, it's, it just keeps doing, it keeps revolving. It has to stop.
Yeah. You have to, otherwise it'll just go off the charts, right? And then end up an imbalanced thing. It's pretty wild, right?
But it's still super smooth and you don't get that alcohol burn that you would expect. But this is kind of more like a dessert style of, uh, has a little bit of sweetness to it. Very different mouth feel. It has like that silky, um.
Pretty creamy, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like it just coats your whole tongue.
Right? Like if you can imagine like drinking sort of pepto bismol, but it tastes good. Yeah. That's a very good description.
Yeah. Like that's kind of what it is. Yeah. It's, I don't know if it's going to suit my stomach, but, but it is, yeah, it's got that like mouth coating feel.
Like, and it kind of, when you talk about it that way, it's like sort of more of a dessert. Sake, it's like reminds me of like some of those dessert wines, like a Tokai or a soterrin, where it's like, it just feels like it fills your whole mouth up and like clings to your tongue. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It's rich and full and silky and smooth. And there's that kind of, yeah, exactly the coating is perfect.
Mm. Yeah. It's, uh, people should be getting more into sake. It's fucking cool.
You know, in the uptown store, you used to have a really awesome selection for a long time. And now they have nothing. Well, did you just open up the door for another Kip Saunders LCBO? Right.
The exact other shows all about, in fact, this one goes out specifically to Dan Susserlop, who mentioned who listens to the show. And the last time I hung out with her, she was like, so you really like the LCBO. But the LCBO has got his garbage. It's gone to ship.
I was talking about this at Malabar the other day. And like the Malabar, it was only coming from me, not then. Please continue to talk about the LCBO. But how they've now reorganized the store as well for profit specifically, where it didn't use to be so much that way.
And now they've just moved all of the best sellers right to the front of the shelves and they've gotten rid of a lot of the smaller independent stuff. Anything that doesn't like sell a ton right away, it's mostly gone from the store. If not, it's so buried hidden somewhere. And you have to pay to get your stuff on like the end of the aisle.
Right? And it was like, I was talking to someone, I won't say who, but I was talking to somebody the other day about it who was in the business. And it seems like everything cost $10,000. So you want your shit on the end of the aisle?
$10,000, you want it? Yeah. So it's like a well-worn assumption. Yeah.
When you're placing it, that's not, you know what? I just hope that with how things are now, do we get more independent wine shops? There's this place, have you seen this in New Hamburg? No.
I have to send you the link, I don't know. New Hamburg? New Hamburg? New Hamburg?
Yeah, I know. It's a nice thing. For me. That's where my wife's family is from.
I have to go to the liquor store the other week. I asked the guy that tells him, what's your job here? You don't do anything. I'm like, you don't pull anything out of my basket.
I said, you're making it difficult for me to pull anything out of the basket. I said, well, I'm junk here at the front. You don't bag the stuff. I said, you're pushing a couple of buttons.
What's going on? Why just putting myself? Check out. And then you offer me the option to go shop anywhere else.
There's lots of opportunities. Yeah. And I said, okay. Should I get the offer for a bit?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'll be banned out of there in about two weeks at the right time. That's what you're saying.
Is there a bit of wine shop that's opening there? I think it's just really cool if we had more of those open up. But it's hard because it's like, well, sorry, not to interrupt you. But the problem with it is even like Babylon, we went, especially during the pandemic, we tried to do the wine shop by some bottles of the door.
But you have to mark the bus so much to make it work your while. And then it's a very niche group of people who are willing to pay $50 to $60 for a bottle of wine that, like, we went in and go to the LCPO and get $20 for a bottle of wine, or lower. Yeah, but those people are always going to buy $20. That's true.
I mean, this is how the angry song started. Oh, yeah, the angry song. My pantry is. I'm They're not back in the cellar in Canada bullshit back at the LCPO.
And just everything pissed me off for a little while there. And that was the whole, all I was going to do was just do a ranset at the LCPO because I thought the radio was ridiculous. And frustrating. We're going to boycott Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Head vodka because it looks like a skull of Muchen.
But then now, 10 years later, here we are, Halloween and Crystal Head School. I'm going to put it in different colors. Now it works for you. Now people are buying it.
I hate everything. It's great in operation. It's a creative operation. And they turn into a for-profit thing where the model used to be.
I mean, it's always for profit. But the model has gone soul to the level of the used to be. Remember when they used to have a whiskey month? And then you would go in there and they would actually bring in whiskey in different whisies that they wouldn't normally sell.
At least for a month, you would have these options of new cool shit to try. Now that's gone. Because they've gone to a completely, how can we make the most money at all times formula? So you go in and you're just going to get washed with whatever the rock stickula is, what is that one called?
And then Kim Crawford, you know, like that's what you're going to get. You're literally going to be able to tell you whatever one. It's literally gotten that way now. It's a fucking shame.
It's trying to find cool stuff there. And like, Angel's Embi for instance is a whiskey that you use and everybody will get in Canada. And then they finally brought it in and marked it up. You can get a bottle of Angel's Embi in, if I go across the border to Buffalo or Detroit, closest one to us, whatever, I can probably get one for $35.
It's $80 at the LCBO. And they finally found it, they got pocket enough to sell. So now they brought it in. Now you can get Angel's Embi anywhere.
But for years. There was, oh wait, sorry. You ever go to the summer hell liquor store? Yeah, which one was that?
It was the one with the big clock tower. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was like kind of cutting edge of the time when they opened it was like really slick and fucking massive. That's the tasting room in the back now.
This is the tasting room, right? So it used to go to the tasting room and you're on your way downtown. Let's go check it out and you can go and have like almost unlimited samples. Okay.
Yeah, to pay for it. Sure. But you could try all these cool things that before you invest in, now you go, if it's even open, it's closed. Every last time I've been there, it's closed.
Not even open at all. And now they have two sample maximum. That's it. Is that right?
Yeah. So you're like, what? Fuck off. Right.
You have 50 different things to taste and I can have two. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, that's like what are we doing?
Yeah. So they have this really great thing happening there and they're not utilizing it. Now maybe some people did that because they got abused, whatever, but still I just, I fucking hate deals. Well, there's always some take a room for everybody, but still it's like, yeah, they were doing a cool thing and now that's ruined.
And this is the end of the weekly K-branço by the L.C.B.O. corner. We need to jingle for that. We need to jingle when it's coming to our family.
Yeah. There's an L4, two bar intro. Yeah, I do. Here it comes.
And before we finish, because this is the thing that drives me crazy too, it's not even just L.C.B.O. policy. Here's a good example. I wanted to bring in a case of this room for somebody and do a store to store transfer room.
And one store says, no, we're not going to do that. We can't do that. Go to another store and Bonnie, thanks Bonnie. You're a doll.
I love you. She's like, yeah, no problem. So it's not a store policy. No.
I'm sure you're the worker. Right. Yes. And the specific buyers at the store as well.
I don't think they're being trained in a way to bring in cool stuff anymore. I don't know if there was- No, that stopped a long time ago. Okay, a John H Sasha, remember Joan? She used to be up at the landfill store.
She passed away a little while ago. But she would get to know her clients. And she would see you coming up, oh, hey we got this going. She knew what you'd like.
She knew what your taste preference was. Or what you were buying for a restaurant. Whatever. We have this in command.
She wanted to bring something out and then we got the chews what comes in. No. I just get sent to them. And that's the problem.
for the record that all my ranting about the else to be out. None of it has to do with the specific employees who work there because some of them are fucking gold. And there's a couple women who work there who I know and they know me and they're like, oh, we're maybe getting this thing in. We might be getting Blanton's in next week and I'll hold a boss of course.
No, not really son of course. And also in the wine area it's like, oh I know you're like the leading post shit or whatever. So like, yeah, we tried this. And so they make a relationship with you, right?
And I will sit in the Northfield store and previously at the Highland store with Ryan. Right, right. He's gone now unfortunately. Oh, is he?