Noma's News, The Menu, and AI Eating Food | Ray Delucci - Ep. 160
Episode Notes
Join us for a special episode of our podcast as we delve into the recent news of Noma's shutdown and the online food fight that ensued. Our host breaks down his initial thoughts on the situation and interviews Ray Delucci, host of Line Cook Thoughts, for his perspective. Stay tuned as the host discusses more on the state of the fine dining industry with Ray Delucci. Don't miss this in-depth discussion on the future of fine dining in a post-apocalyptic COVID world.
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Show Notes:
NYT Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/09/dining/noma-closing-rene-redzepi.html
Noma's Website: https://noma.dk/
The Menu: https://www.hbo.com/movies/the-menu
ChatGPT: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
Line Cook Thoughts: https://www.linecookthoughts.com/
Ray's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rdelucci
Marc Vetri's Instagram Post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CnSq71bPFX_/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
Line Cook Thoughts' Instagram Post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CnNntMzPM0g/
Get Meez: https://geni.us/meez-trp
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[00:00:00]
What is that folks? This is a special fusion style episode, long time listeners of the show know that I like to break down industry news. Sometimes I also like to do interviews sometimes. And with the news coming out this week about Noma closing and the chaos, the absolute food fight that happened online combined with the fact that I've been meaning to catch up with Ray Delucci host of line cook thoughts, frequent guests of the show.
That's what I have in store for you today. So I certainly dig into my initial thoughts. And some expanded ideas that I had within the first 24 hours of this news being announced and shout out to Ray for just being a great peer in the space with me, agreeing to do this kind of jam style show. This is also going live on his podcast, RSS feed. So he's subscribed to his show. You're probably going to get a little bit of a different intro, but I definitely recommend you check his episode out too.
And thank you for you folks for messaging me, asking me for this episode to be made. But I would also like to share at the top of the show that this entire situation is evolving and growing, and it's also. So one of those, like, we'll see kind of moments where I think a lot of other entrepreneurs and people thought leaders, mark Zuckerberg being like the other one in a different industry to ours. That's like taking a bit of a risk, putting his foot down in an interesting way.
And it's not like anyone has lost. The clock is still going in this situation. If you want to have an expanded episode to this, And I would love to get your folks' thoughts. either in an Instagram story. In a DM on Twitter via email, or even in an expanded conversation in the repertoire pro community, it's really been exciting to see the conversations that are happening and how that space is growing online.
One insight that I really wanted to pause and preempt and, and read that really summarized my feelings of better than I could even write them was from chef mark. Vetri. shout out to previous guests of the show, Andrew Friedman, who [00:02:00] shared this on his story, and then ILT immediately ended up taking a second to read it. And again, it's only got about 5,000 likes.
On Instagram right now. And I think it deserves more love. So before Ray and I get into it, here's what Marc Vetri wrote. Read by me also an optimist. So this is mark now quote, with the news of Noma closing, everyone has taken upsides again on the fate of the restaurant industry is fine dining establishment.
So I felt it was important to say as well as remind everyone that the closing of Noma is most certainly not a referendum into the world of fine dining restaurants. On the contrary, it's clear proof that the industry is changing, adapting and coming out stronger than ever. Noma is not saying it's closing because modern fine dining doesn't work or that the modern fine dining model is unsustainable or fizzled or any of the other headlines out there today.
They're saying that they're closing because their system doesn't work anymore. I'm no expert on the goings on at Noma or the restaurants with similar style or dilemma, but saying all the fine dining doesn't work, because one restaurant is closing. Isn't a front to all of us who choose still love
and thrive. In this modern post-apocalyptic COVID fine dining world. our restaurants and culture, haven't stopped changing and evolving in the past 25 years since we opened Vettery. And I imagine it will continue to evolve long after we are gone, always for the better.
What Noma did was remarkable. And while it's sad that it's closing, I trust they will continue to do remarkable things in the future with all of their endeavors. And I'm certain they will adapt and keep creating amazing things to inspire the food world. In the meantime, rest assured that fine dining remains very sustainable, albeit more difficult than it used to be. We will continue to celebrate life with you at your most cherished moments. And we will continue to welcome you into our home and create dishes with an experience that inspires while maintaining a supportive environment for our teams so they can thrive, grow and be successful in this amazing industry. So again, I think that's enough preamble out of the way. I certainly dig into more thoughts on this conversation. If the last point here, if you want to see the expanded graphic that I shared with Ray in this conversation, and just see how I'm thinking about some of these signaling mechanisms, you can go ahead and subscribe to the repertoire newsletter, which is available in the show notes of this podcast.
Let's [00:04:00] get into it.
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Ray Delucci: Let's just dig into it. So Ray's back on the show and I'm back on Ray's show. This is, this is a, this is a double posting one, it's good to see you, man, and I'm just happy, happy to be recording again.
Justin Khanna: Yeah, me too. Especially start 2023. Right. So I think it's good.
Ray Delucci: Well, the, we were just talking before we pressed record about the fact that the internet has had no shortage of hot takes in the past 36 hours on some news that has come out that I think you made a post on that I obviously have, you know, thoughts about, and, and I, I know that that was one of the big topics that we wanted to discuss today.
But maybe just for the listener, if you have gotten your fill of Noma content over the past 24 hours, we also want to talk about the menu as a movie, and we also wanna talk about AI in food and food media, I think. And so those are the, any, any, any, just kind of setting the stage points that you want to add, Ray, before we get into it?
Justin Khanna: Yeah, I mean I think all three are relevant in their own right. I think it's kind of ironic. The day before Noma closes, I watch, not that this has air any bearing on reality, but for in my own personal view, the day before Noma closes, I watch the menu. And then obviously AI has been huge, you know, getting into chat, G p t and a couple.
I, I'm working on a podcast right now where I'm gonna have a, some people on, in their respective fields that are a little bit more in depth into the AI background in food. So I'm really excited to talk to you about it, cuz from what I've found so far and what I've seen, I'm anxiously entrusted about the future of food and ai.
So,
Ray Delucci: I have a couple jumping off points that I certainly want to go down and, and the main dot point that I wanted to highlight for the listener here is I don't necessarily think I'm interested in piling on more. I think what a lot of my listeners might know me for is this idea of kind of what can we learn from this?
Or is, is there a lesson or can we treat this as a cautionary tale for people moving forward? Because I think that there's no shortage, again, of people who are just kind of like either spewing, hate , you know, cuz that's e, it's, it's so easy to dunk on Renee right now, or. They are getting things a little bit twisted and only making it [00:08:00] towards context of like, you know, dining culture in general or something like that.
But like you and I talked to chefs and so that's kind of what I prepared notes wise for today. Did you have just kind of like an initial gut reaction maybe to seeing it or, or, I know that you put up a post, so maybe you can talk a little bit about how that's been to see the audience trickle in and give their thoughts on that.
Justin Khanna: Yeah, and it took me a while to write that, so maybe reading the caption might be a good jumping off point. So when I was thinking about, so I, I think, don't think it's any secret if you're a listener of Lion Cook Thoughts to know that I. Don't necessarily think fine dining is the best for the food industry.
But again, I understand it. There's people at all levels in these restaurants that work hard and it's never my intent to disrespect that. And I'll read the caption cause I, like I said, I did put some thought into it and it did, you know, resonate somewhat so I wrote, I have a lot of respect for those who love and cherish their craft, which I do like that should be No, no question about that.
The work done at NOMA is no doubt of the highest caliber in the culinary world, but it's food like this that comes with such an expense, an expense on those who work for these restaurants in some of the most challenging environments when it comes to work life balance, one of the best chefs in the world comes out to say the system of fine dining is broken.
I hope that those who have ignored that can maybe now see it. Great food exists, but perfect food doesn't. And the pursuit of it has led to systems which negatively impact the workers within. Do whatever you are passionate about, but take care of yourself too. There's more to all of this other than awards and accolades.
I love food in its hyatts form, but if cooks are suffering for me to have a few moments of bliss, is it worth it? We as an industry need to really question what we hold in value and what costs at what costs it is attained. So for me it's like, yeah, no, I'm not excited in a, in a sense that Noah's closing, I'm not like, happy that Noah's closing.
I'm happy that Renee came out and said that and it was a cynical take. Oh, he, after he's made his millions and established himself, now he's saying it. But yeah, that was my gut reaction is that that quote, out of everything, I, I mean, to be honest, I really didn't care about the, the lab or the CPG products he's gonna be working on.
[00:10:00] That was the thing that hit me most was him saying, fine, dining's broken. Cuz for so long he's been one of those titans that people have dreamed about working for. And people talk about it and have like obsessed over and it's like, I hope that guiding light in that sector of the industry saying that it's not worth it or that it's not sustainable, what we're doing isn't good.
Maybe that reaches some people.
Ray Delucci: do you find that that's what took with people, like, is that what's being, would you say that that is one of the reasons why it's being shared, or do you think that it got picked up by people who have different agendas or, I guess maybe a follow up question is, do you think that there's something in what you wrote that people aren't giving as much weight to where you're saying, no guys, this is important, and nobody, no.
No one's seeing it.
Justin Khanna: And I think the response has been interesting. I, it's, you know, I'm on Instagram with 14,000 followers, so getting a thousand likes on a post is pretty substantial for me. And it was shared, I think, across 52 stories. And people had been sharing, read the caption or like, you know, like, this is what we should be saying or whatnot.
I think for me, a lot of people agreed with the effect that, yeah, like, and I made it very clear, like, there's no doubt that this is great food. And there's no doubt what they. is like amazing. It's like cutting edge, pushing food forward. And I think what resonated with people though, it's like at what cost and at what cost is that to the end person.
I think a lot of people have a lot of different feelings about it. And myself being two, two years removed from the restaurant industry, I don't know that I have as much weight to judge what anyone's feeling right now, especially if they've worked through Covid. But for me, I think the big takeaway is that idea that for so long this industry spent so harsh and what we've idolized as the best is the harshest reality for most cooks.
And that there does need to be a change. I also, you know, think that it's interesting though that this isn't a new message and that it's been something that's been said for a while. And obviously when Renee Redzepi says it, it's important, but that should be really, it should have been really clear to everyone for the la especially the last two years.
So, but I think the biggest thing is like [00:12:00] yeah, in agreeance that what they did was great, but wasn't worth it.
Ray Delucci: can I take you through a framework or, you know, some writing that I did on this? I'm gonna quickly share my screen here for, for, for you to see. And then I'm gonna kind of walk the audience through you know, cuz there's gonna be visual people that are watching. And then there's also gonna be, I'll put your post up on, on my edit and then I'll also put this up.
I was thinking a lot about incentives and about signaling because a lot of what motivates us as humans is one, there's this whole concept of like mimetic desire. I see that Ray has a podcast, I want a podcast. Now, it's not necessarily that I inherently somewhere bubbled up in me as a human that I wanted a podcast.
I saw that you had something and then I wanted it. And I was thinking about a lot of what you write about, which is striving for accolades is the wrong way to. And I certainly agree with that, to to an extent. But I was trying to continue to talk about it further after seeing everybody's hot takes on the internet.
And what I came up with was these six or seven areas and on each of those you can either go more on that area or less. And it leads to some pretty interesting things that I think you and I can draw examples to how people's signal as hospitality professionals, business owners, chefs. So I'll walk you through each of these and kind of give examples for each.
So the first category is recognition and awards. And so if we really kind of like push that more, it will be, it might sound something like, look how many Michelin stars I have. Look at the write up that I got in the New York Times. Look at where my ranking is on Worlds 50 best. And then if we subtract and we go the other way, it is I gave back my stars.
I did have a place that was really, really nice, but I gave it away and I don't actually care that much. For recognition awards, same category, different ends of the spectrum and people still use it as a way to signal. So that was ex category number one. The next one is profit profitability. If we push for more profit, people might say, look at how high our profit margins are.
We ran a 30% profit last [00:14:00] quarter. Look at how profitable we are. If we go less, it is our grocery brand does the profits. Us as a restaurant, we don't have to worry about profits. Our content machine makes, makes money, makes the money. Our bistro makes the money. We don't have to worry about profit. Our cookbook is the one that's the cash cow.
The next one is scale. So you might have people flex and say, look how big and operationally savvy we. On the, on the higher end. And then if you want to decrease that, you can say, look how small and nimble we are. I remember there was a specific popup that I worked with my chef that I worked for in Norway where we had James Kent from Kitchen Table in the UK come and they were the two chefs.
My chef and James Kent were flexing on each other because we would do 120 covers on a busy Saturday night, and their kitchen counter was only like 15 people or something like that. And so my chef was looking at him and he'd be like, must be nice to only have to serve, do this for 20 people a night, or something like that.
And that he was flexing about how big we were as an operation compared to them. The next category is longevity. So one person might say, this company, this restaurant, this institution has been around for 30 years. We're celebrating our second decade in business. And then if you go on the other end, we're only here for two more weeks.
That's what you notice Noma talking about, where it's like we're, we have this popup and we're only gonna be around for this short amount of time. You better come here quick. But it's again, talking about longevity, one category, two ways to flex. And the next one is innovation. Look at this product you've never seen before.
That's on the higher end. If we, if we boost innovation, that's where you get. And then if you decrease innovation, we do the basics, right? This is like the diner that, that, that has the same menu that they've had for ages and ages and ages. And they don't actually, they aren't known for innovation, but they still use it to flex.
And the last piece is accessibility. So this is the franchise. This is the place where, again, it's probably been around for a long time and it's everybody who wants a table gets one. Anybody who wants our, you know, chicken tika masala sauce, you can have it. And then the last piece is, [00:16:00] Taking accessibility away.
This is, we're booked out for a year. It's, you know, we're booking out for the next six months. It's impossible to get a table. And so talking not just the audience but you through this, this is the first, I, I kind of put this together, you know, within the last 24 hours. And I was really just trying to think of what are categories?
What have I heard in the last, you know, 12 years that I've been in this industry? And how can we look beyond what everybody's talking about with Renee, which is, everybody picked one of these to kind of like pinpoint on him. But I think that we're all signaling in different ways in our own way in, in our, in our careers and in in our entrepreneurial journeys, especially if we go and start something.
And I'd be curious, like if you think any of this has a, has been a contributor to what we're seeing with Noma?
Justin Khanna: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I, I found it interesting in, and I think I see it actually down if you scroll a little bit, because I had this thought. So this is, they're closing in 2024.
Ray Delucci: Yep.
Justin Khanna: The next however many, like year, year and a half, two years, that they're open, they can charge whatever they want to diners.
It's the end of Noma. Get it while it's hot, get it while it's here. It's gonna be gone soon. They can like, do whatever they want. They could like, like the floodgates are open. So, I mean, there's part of me that's like, happy he said that. But then there's also the cynical side of me that's like, well, he's signaling that they're closing and now this is not a, an already precious.
If you were to say resource and I'm doing quotes and the culinary world is now about to be extinct, there's not gonna be any more left of it. How much are you willing to pay? So this went from. Elitist levels of dining to, I, I don't know. Maybe, and I'm just saying maybe he keeps his prices. I highly doubt it.
If he was in, I'm not supporting this, but if he was a smart businessman, he would raise them to the highest degree. Like it goes from elitist to like, maybe the, the half of the percent of people can afford this many. I [00:18:00] have no idea, but it's going to be insane, I think, how much money he'll get because there's still so many people that love his cuisine.
Ray Delucci: I mean,
Justin Khanna: for me, that was the biggest signal is like, what, well, what are you doing in the next two years? Like you, that's a great message you have, but what do you, are you going to raise your wages along with raising your, like what's gonna happen in the next two years to close out Noma?
Ray Delucci: I think the price raise is totally justified, especially because now everybody has seen, I mean, think about the, the, the person in Covid, the, the restaurant operator in Covid who posts on Instagram or sends out an email newsletter who says, Hey everyone, we're gonna have to close in three months if we don't raise our prices.
There were multiple businesses in Seattle that I got emails from in that vein where they were like, we need to raise our prices because X, Y, Z. This guy just had like one of the biggest exposes in the New York Times talking about the fact that he can't continue to operate at the prices that he has set.
And so I think from a justification perspective, He's gonna be totally fine to raise the price. What I kind of wrote in my notes here just below this is like, is that going to coincide with the continued payment through the internship program for people going from sta years to being interns? That was, you know, one question.
The second question was, maybe they just say that the food is just gonna change entirely. We can't have a team of 15 people shingling rose petals anymore. Or that, that story that they told in the New York Times article about the, the black garlic fruit leather beetle thing. I'm just, I, I'm, I'm fascinated.
So, so that was, that was my topic. I have one more, but I yeah, I want to, want to, I want to hand it over.
Justin Khanna: I wanna tug on that because you, you've said this before, especially during Covid, you came out and said how like, some business, business restaurants were operating in a spot where they should, where realistically they shouldn't be. And this is my whole take.
This is the whole, like my personal reason why I didn't get into fine dining. What, I went to New York and I went to Chicago and I stashed and I got a couple of offers and some one Michelin star restaurants, one, two star [00:20:00] to become a cook, like a garbage egg cook. And they were gonna pay me $14 an hour and with student loans and not ha and being on my own in terms of like financial support, having to make my own money to pay my bills and all that, I couldn't go work for them.
Michelin wasn't an option for me. It wasn't an option to go for me at that time. That being said, if we are at a point now where, and that's due to like. Like other like expenses for myself, everyone obviously is different, but for me personally, I couldn't go. And I know a lot of people who get priced out of, especially New York, if the restaurant and if the restaurant, so many look up to the restaurant, the best restaurant in the world, the best restaurant in the world, according to Sam Pellegrino, the three Michelin side restaurant, according to Michelin, can't operate in a financially sound way.
Then what? Like it doesn't make sense why anyone would go down that path to me. Like this shows me it doesn't make sense. Like I left that because it didn't make sense for me in personal finances. We have the best in the world and not able to do it with all their backing and all their awards. And I know in the article it said he hasn't become wealthy off this, but like the, whatever you're spending your money on, dude, you have, you have backing.
Like it's, you're not, it's not, you're not a mom and pop restaurant, you're a Noma. So like for me it's just like, that's the biggest takeaway for me personally. It's like, No, I wasn't crazy when I was interested in Michelin because of the financial reasons. I wasn't crazy for doing other things because at the end of the day, they can't hack it now.
So that's my takeaway in that like financial aspect.
Ray Delucci: I did some interesting digging. When the article came out from Bloomberg a couple weeks back on the $250,000, it was technically $240,000 loss that Noma reported. This was a couple months, couple weeks back, and if you look at their website, they have their team fully listed out from what I'm going to say is like the people who are on the payroll listed on the website.
And at the time of us doing the research, there was [00:22:00] 16 admin positions listed on the website. So, , the way that I did that math was okay, if we take like a modest 50 to $60,000 a year salary for that position to, to run admin at noma, which for one, what in the world is, is there so much admin work where you need that much, you know, people, and again, someone's there and has the story.
I, I would love to know because I've worked at some of these other fine dining places where you have two people max managing reservations. One person is, you know, kind of like a overall bookkeeper. Then you have things like HR and you have some potential purveyor relationships and stuff like that. But as we're thinking about like running STO air programs, I think that justifies, you know, potentially more, but I don't know if there are r and d roles that are also considered admin positions and kitchen positions.
But again, at that 50 to $60,000 a year salary, which is not crazy high for someone who is like working in hr, that's almost a million dollars a year of admin expense that they were having to think about. And so again, everybody's talking about these individual dot points of this loss here and, and profitability there.
But I think until e any of us would see the p and l of the business, we wouldn't be able to dissect, oh, this is exactly the thing that caused it to, to all unravel.
Justin Khanna: Yeah. And I mean, how much has a dinner at Noma? Or how much
Ray Delucci: it's five, it's 500 for the menu, and then I'm almost positive there's wine on top of that. And so,
Justin Khanna: Think like that's, that is
Ray Delucci: so I, I cal. Yeah. So I calculate
Justin Khanna: bill.
Ray Delucci: totally, totally. And not, not to mention that, but like how many of the people who dine on a given night are not from Copenhagen? So what additional travel spend expenses went into making that meal possible?
Justin Khanna: but think, but think about like if I go get Ramen, it's $20. It. My bills may be 30. So let's just do very quick napkin math. So if I were to go [00:24:00] get ramen 17 times in a month, that's how much one Noma meal, just the food is not including tip or anything else, right? So imagine charging that per person and still not being able to financially like that's insane.
And it just blows my mind. It does. Aaron?
Ray Delucci: what I think causes a lot of chef's brains to break is like, especially if you've run a culinary program before or been responsible for food cost, it's very easy to map those numbers of, you know, take whatever you spent on the menu, multiply it by five, and that's a 20% food cost that you're running.
Justin Khanna: It is.
Ray Delucci: to, to, to do that math either in reverse or regardless of how you break it down, it's. The, the, the cost is, is coming o off of that top line in, in other ways that we're just not able to, to see in these reports that are happening. Whether it's, again, admin costs, whether the building itself, they're still pay, paying off renovation, you know, costs from, from, from that move that they had.
Again, if they're floating the r and d team with the revenue that's coming in from, from Noma, it's, it's, it's really difficult to say,
Justin Khanna: and for me, a big, I think a big thing in 2023 that I really wanna touch on in, in regards to personal finance on the podcast is exactly this, like, this idea that money doesn't matter when you're passionate about something.
Ray Delucci: so you're wanting to get away from that.
Justin Khanna: yes,
Ray Delucci: Okay.
Justin Khanna: the idea that this, that people put themselves through such financial hardship, some people to go work for an awarded restaurant when they can't afford it, and it, it's impacts their future, it impacts their ability to live comfortably later on in life.
It impacts their ability to. , like,
Ray Delucci: They neglect their health typically.
Justin Khanna: Yeah. All these things. Like, it's like, no, you have to have assessments where like your pa like you can't just do it. You can't just go for passion. Like real life comes in if you're not caring for yourself. Real life hits hard [00:26:00] later on. So like, and it's not like a, like, like I said, said four, do what you're passionate about, but you need to take care of yourself.
And like so many I think have been put into this like idea with Michelin and all them, and this is the only reason I don't like fine dining. It's like so many people get put in, like get some people go into it willingly. Some people I think, get kind of pressured into it, or they feel like if they don't do it, they like, I remember I had that like reality of like, oh, I'm leaving this path.
Am I a sellout? It's like, no, you need to take care of yourself. And so like when you see an operator like this saying he can't hack it with the money and everything, like he could charge whatever he wants and he can't do it like, . That's not to say restaurants can't work. There's a lot of great successful financially fluid restaurants, but this style isn't sustainable and like, I just hope people realize that it's not just the restaurant, it's the being at the restaurant isn't sustainable and trying to go for that isn't sustainable for everyone.
Ray Delucci: I think that's a perfect segue, talking about finance and money and raising money and having longevity in business. I pulled a couple of books off my shelf. I have like books here and then I have a book shelf in the closet just over
Justin Khanna: I just moved and I had to donate so many. It was sad. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Ray Delucci: I distinctly remember going through what I'm gonna call like two seasons in my book buying.
Journey. And the first one was Cookbook Mania. So this was get all of the phon books, the $50 $40, you know, large coffee table, beautiful photography recipes that you would like kind of look at, but never really make, you know, you would transcribe a couple of things into your Moskin notebook phase. And then I also went through this phase of getting books that look that, that are like this.
So this is like the Lean Startup. This is Rework by the team that built Basecamp. This is built to Last by Jim Collins. There are a bun and, and this also came with listening to founder interviews, podcasts, YouTube channels on entrepreneurship and making money and growth hacking and all of that. [00:28:00] Those sorts of things because I could see the writing on the wall.
Having a standalone restaurant concept wasn't gonna work. And so what I really tried to do was try to learn from some of these entrepreneurship people, because I could acknowledge as just read one single startup book and mirror it to a chef or a hospitality professional. And you'll be like, yeah, chefs are totally entrepreneurs.
And so why do we continue to hold the chef title when we have officially moved from cooking on the day today to running a business on the day today? And the cleanest example that I can have is from a book that I certainly took a lot away from. It's called the E Myth Revisited Ray. Have you ever read that?
Justin Khanna: I've not, I'll add it to my list.
Ray Delucci: it's a, it's a book about delegation basically, and building structured systems into your businesses. And the author, you couldn't have picked a better example of this. He picks a bakery owner. As the person to highlight in this book that has been read by millions of entrepreneurs over the past however many years it's been in, in publication.
And he does it because he specifically talks about one problem that plagues almost every single business owner, which is nobody can do insert my product as well as I can. And with this bakery owner, it is, no one can make the pies as well as I can. Therefore, I can't hire anybody. I can't put in systems, I can't delegate anything out, and I can't focus on growing the business because I'm always the one making the pies.
And then he goes on this big rant about how to potentially solve that with some really helpful frameworks. And that was, you know, a, a, a, a certain eye-opening experience for me when I read that book. But my dot point of, of a note that I wanted to bring up in conversation with you is, is are we potentially moving to a place where restaurants and hospitality concepts, whether that's like hotel concept or we've, we've, both of us have kind of been paying attention to the, like the Gary V Fly Fish Club, n F T concept.
Will these businesses start to operate more like startups if they want [00:30:00] to be innovative, creative, wanting to grow or bring something crazy new to market? And the example that I wanted to talk you through is this idea of getting investment at the beginning and operating at a loss in service of non-financial goals.
So think about the early days of Uber. The first time you and I probably booked an Uber, it was what, $4? And we were like, holy crap. Like that's it. You know? Like this is a $15 cab and you're given to me, to me for $4. But what was that in service of? That was in service of getting users that was in service of finding product market fit, all of these things that startups talk about, but restaurants don't pull on that because I think that there is this sole focus on, well, we're just gonna be like the bistro down the street.
when in reality it's like you're operating at a completely different set of goals and targets. And it's not to say that like I don't consider NOMA a restaurant, but the goals of NOMA and the goals of the one Michelin Star place in Chicago are two very different goals. And they have different resources available to them and there's all of that stuff.
And so a main dot point in, in addition to that framework of should restaurants operate more like startups is, if that becomes true, Renee now becomes founder of NOMA and they talk about it in the New York Times article. He's chief creative officer of the project versus the chef. And then what does that allow you to do that allows you to highlight other team members along the way as you're building the business in the same way that like Cheryl gets highlighted just as much as Mark Zuckerberg when we're talking about meta.
So I'd be curious your, your thoughts there on this idea of SH restaurants operating as startups more as we go forward.
Justin Khanna: I think, yeah, I think it's interesting and trying to just kind of think about, cuz I hadn't thought about that before, so you're definitely correct in the start of capital aspect and like, let's [00:32:00] run this for a year. And that goal being and having clear defined goals. getting more cust, getting obviously more and more customers come through the door, putting out great product that tastes good, having repeat customers.
I think the challenge in a restaurant compared to other maybe startup products is the repeat value, right? What Uber values on is you coming back to it again and again. You know, if Uber, you know, they might lose money on the first few rides you make, but after 10 rides, they're, they're gonna start to profit off of you, right?
So you have to wonder, it's that, that I wonder about, that's still where I think fine dining doesn't hold up because with a restaurant that's like, you know, a, a fast casual restaurant or a restaurant where someone could come in twice a month, you have that repeat value. But if it's a Noma, it's experience, you don't get that repeat value.
So your money, your profit isn't gonna come off of repeating that same customer. So then where does it come off of? And eventually we'll have to either be you getting to a point where, You're lowered your food costs. You've raised your prices, or you've started a CPG brand, which I think most chefs are.
Where I think startup capital would be helpful is having that all that foundation, like you said, laid out. Cuz then maybe it's a well oiled machine so you're not running on fumes and you're actually starting out with the gasoline you need to get it going. But I still think there is a little bit of a wall to overcome that.
I don't know that I'm equipped to think of where it's like you don't have repeat people all the time.
Ray Delucci: There's also not an exit that's a attractive at the end of a restaurant, right? Like you're basically trying to build this thing and then throw it off of a cliff, and then hope that it continues to soar.
Justin Khanna: And
Ray Delucci: versus
Justin Khanna: that's the disease of a celebrity chef.
Ray Delucci: Sure.
Justin Khanna: Uber.
Ray Delucci: Yeah.
Justin Khanna: Uber's not, what was it? Tyler was his name. Maybe that started it.
Ray Delucci: Travis.
Justin Khanna: Travis? Yeah. I don't even know his name. Uber isn't tra, it's called Travis. It's called Uber. Uber. Or you know, [00:34:00] Twitter's not called Jack.
Ray Delucci: is kind of what I'm pushing for. Right. So like, it, it doesn't become Renee's restaurants anymore. It becomes the concept. It's like a
startup.
Justin Khanna: and I know it's called Noma for
Ray Delucci: No, no, no. Of course,
Justin Khanna: Yeah. But it's like, it's because of Renee is there, the French laundry was because of color, Alinea was cuz of Grant. And obviously there's so many people that went into that and there's so many different aspects, but that's, I think that's the curse of the celebrity chef too.
So I think you have to deal with that as well. You could do what Emeril did, which was genius and make the brand off of being a celebrity chef, but like, really diversify. Like he did it right. And like you see Emeril's restaurants, like, they're like, they're accessible like people like you see like anyone can go to them and like eat his food, right?
They're not like these. Walled off gardens of pure bliss and quotes and quotes again, like anyone can go eat great food from them. So it's just like, that's one example I think of maybe where if you wanna be a celebrity chef and you get startup capital, you have things that are accessible. But again, I think fine dining is, it's hard, man.
It, it really is hard.
Ray Delucci: I think the thing that most attracts me about this model is the amount of, you know, and we've seen this not happen in the past of few years, the amount of diligence that often happens in startup investing, whereas with restaurant concept just it, it tends to be this kind of like, well give me 250 K and me as the chef, I will work my face off in order to make this success.
When in startup investing, it's typically like, what are you going to plan on using this money for? Can we see a well-defined team structure? What sorts of assets are you gonna purchase? What is the business plan? Because me, as the investor, I wanna see return on my money versus the typical restaurant, you know, that that gets funded is, you know, the, the, the meme that happens is like, oh, the investor just wants a place to be able to come and take their friends for dinner.
And I just think that it, it, it fundamentally changes the incentives of the relationship [00:36:00] between the customer, the chef, or, or, you know, like the, the, the operators, the people who are gonna be in the business on the day-to-day. And then the person who's, who's deploying. The capital. And so all, all of that was, was, you know, and, and, and what gets launched off the back of that, I think becomes the most interesting thing.
Cuz I think you and I can both agree that like, there are certain restaurants that have high profit margins. But what I find to be a little bit more interesting is these like duo relationships that often happen with restaurant concepts. So like Masimo Bottura and the Gucci Store. So Gucci store, super high margin, but they rely on Masimo Bottura to have like a restaurant concept museum of Modern Art and the Modern.
So it's like really profitable, really well known brand of museums. They have the audience constantly coming in, but they have the restaurant that is this two Michelin starred the modern. And so that is, is actually kind of. Where I can see businesses potentially getting acquired if they're funded in this way, because it could be you have a bunch of startup capital, but then like the Museum of Modern Art says, we wanna buy your restaurant and come in here, you know, and, and then have a strong foothold and then be able to continue to operate because you've built such a strong brand.
Justin Khanna: Yeah
Ray Delucci: what else? Talking about Noma. Any, any, any other, just kind of like things that came up or things that gro ground your gears a little
Justin Khanna: Yeah. And I know we have two other topics, so I think this will be my last point on it. And this is more so not getting a little bit away from Noma, but getting more into, you know, in talk, in looking at some of the responses yesterday. So I've been very honest in the fact that I've. restaurants two years ago, and if you look at my Instagram, I actually put food reporter and I still feel very much of, I mean, I'm still in the food industry.
I work in food like development, manufacturing. And why that is, is interests, lifestyle changes. You know, I think a lot of people tend to forget, and you and food media can attest to this, like, I might have a less, I might work, you know, a regular work schedule, but those off hours I'm still working, right?
Like I [00:38:00] probably still put in, if you look at work in total 60 hours a week with what I do with line cook thoughts, what I do with writing and everything else in between, right? So I think for me, like it comes down to this idea of who can speak on things and what do we value. And it's something I've been talking about for over the four years I've been doing Line Cook Thoughts is I don't like fine dining.
I said it in 2019 and I say it now. in 2019. I will say that I had, I held it in much higher regard. Cause I was still, I think, don't know that I truly understood kind of what it takes. I like going to nice restaurant. I don't wanna say all fine dining, but I really think there's an issue with Michelin and I really think there's an issue with what we hold up.
Right? And it, it blows my mind. I'll give you an example. So I went this last week, we weekend I live in the suburbs of Illinois. There's a restaurant called LaQuinta de Los Reyes in Aurora, Illinois. Got to go there. Mexican restaurant. Beautiful restaurant. They did tableside guac and they had this goat bia that they, that I, we ordered that I, they came out, it was, it was under a little, like, there was a little like like burner, right?
And so it was on a plate. It was like the liquid, it was cooked in and it was still simmering. And it was like to like, so soft, so tender. Like honestly, Justin, like some of the b like some of the best, like I can't stop thinking about it. I don't remember the last time food made me feel that way. Like it was that good.
That's what I like. And like a lot of cooks in the industry, where do they go on their days off? They go to places like that. Yet we all strive for this like artistic thing and it's like I just really, really like will keep hammering home that our framework is broken. Like that food is cool, it's great if you're passionate about it.
That is amazing, but that isn't your worth, that doesn't define who you are. And so I, like I said, just the last point again with Noma saying it's with Renee saying it's broken, like I really think we have to start questioning how we define worth and [00:40:00] culinary and the food industry. Is it that you work 70 hours a week?
Isn't that, is that you've stad and worked at Michel star places? Or is it that you have a healthy lifestyle and you're doing what you're doing and it's all this bullshit of, oh, if you like go and have a healthy lifestyle, you're weak. Like no, like that? Like no. Like you can still work hard at things, but if you're mentally not okay, if you're physically not okay.
If you're, if you have a family and they're, and you can't be with them, like, those things matter too. And we like the obsession over the, the idea that we're putting, oh, I'm gonna tweezer into a, like tweezer shit into a plate over like being with my family or being like, it's so broken man. And if Rene Zeppy, like, you're the leader of so many people's dreams of being a chef, is saying it's broken.
Wake up and listen. That's my last point. I dunno if you want to add to it, but that's definitely it.
Ray Delucci: yeah, a couple, couple dot points. So the thing that I wrote on Renee specifically, the sentence that I, that helps me think about this is Renee, and this story in general is the story of someone who has an arguably unhealthy love of food in cuisine, who experienced runaway success with a project at the right place, at the right time, and doesn't have the skills or character traits to ask for help.
That's how I kind of view this,
Justin Khanna: Okay.
Ray Delucci: and on that point, I think as a optimist myself, and looking at, pardon in the pun, the ingredients that are available to. The creator economy, content, popups becoming more well known and well regarded than ever. I hope that you and I Ray can talk in 10 years and we'll say, remember in like the 2010s when everybody was like going for Michelin Stars in the same way that people talk about the.com bubble happening when everybody was like, the most important thing in the world is to have a website.
And everybody was like these crazy valuations and people working themselves to death and like the tech tools were [00:42:00] not what, where they were. And that ultimately led to kind of like Silicon Valley happening, you know, so maybe we can look at, you know, like the modernist cuisine leading into New Nordic as that same transition.
And then what comes after I think is what I'm more interested in. Cuz I'll I, I'll paint a picture for you. A world where maybe Michelin isn't the defacto authority. But there are multiple ways to get recognized because I still think signaling is important. That framework I outlined earlier, I don't think that we as humans will ever unlearn, at least not in our generation or time as, as, as our current version of humans will unlearn signaling.
I think it always is gonna matter. It's kind of like where, where does the recognition of those signals come from and is there more variety that's coming off of those signals versus it all coming from this one centralized place, which is Michelin and it only going to towards one type of restaurant and cuisine.
And that's ultimately what I, what I, what I hope we kind of get to. And the last point that I wanted to mention because I, I kind of put out a lot of content about staging and there was certainly. A clip from, or a, a section from the New York Times article about a woman who had asto at noma. It was an externship internship and she talked about making those fruit leather beetles.
You should read the New York Times article if you want the full clip. But she says, quote, the experience taught her to be quick, quiet and organized, but little about cooking. And the place where my head went was like, isn't that valuable? Like, isn't learning how to be quick, quiet and organized, like actually beneficial in, do you know, depending on where you're at in your career?
I think a lot of people take that away from Michelin environments. And again, it's not to say that like everything else that went along with that is good, but the place where I tried to challenge myself in thinking about this was like flip it to any other [00:44:00] industry. So it's like if you did an internship at a software company, like if you go to Instagram and you intern at Instagram, and we, and we just replaced the sentence, she, the experience taught her to be quick, quiet and organized, but little about coding. Or the same with going and intern interning at a hospital, but little about surgery. Right? Or you're on a film set, like you go, you go with an avatar three, like the new movie that's that that you know James Cameron is working on is like, it taught me how to be quick, quiet and organized. But little about camera operating.
It's kind of like, it's an internship for a reason is kind of where my head goes. And you and I have been pretty vocal about this idea of if the business would completely crumble and certain elements of the menu or output wouldn't get made. If you took your STA yard program away, that's probably an unhealthy, you know what I mean?
Like relationship with sts. But again, I've hammered this multiple times in multiple pieces of content. I had a ton of value come from my ST experiences, but part of that is because I didn't do a year long stge somewhere completely unpaid. I was always very strategic with where I chose Toto, and then ultimately how long I decided Toto.
And I think the thing that made me the most upset about that quote from, from that woman in, in the article was like, she didn't know about Noma. There was, there was a line in the article saying that like, let me, let me, let me read it for you specifically, because I really just wanna make sure that I, I get this quote right.
said let's see. She said where does it say quote? She says, quote, knowing nothing about Noma, except that many called it the best restaurant in the world. She flew to Copenhagen to live and work at her own expense for three months. I, I, can I, I'm gonna kind of call bullshit on that because that was my experience at.
I wanted to go to Mutz. I asked my culinary director person liaison guy at per se. I was like, [00:46:00] Hey, you spent a season at mutz. Is there any world where you could connect me to someone that I could send an email to at Mutz to potentially get as stge there? And he said, Mutz only takes season long, sts, but I can get you a week at noma.
And I was like, what's Noma? This was 2011. That is a genuine, I had no idea what NOMA was. I didn't know what to expect. I just knew I was gonna go to Copenhagen and try to learn.
Justin Khanna: Yeah.
Ray Delucci: I, I, I kind of call bullshit on the like, whoa. Well I didn't know, you know, piece of it. It's kind of like asking those questions.
And again, you and I talk about this too, like being willing to talk to your employer about what to expect. You're interviewing the restaurant just as much as they're interviewing you. Like all this advice that we share. I just wanted to call that point out because I think it paints a poor picture of, you know, potential great learning experiences that can come in the culinary world.
Justin Khanna: Yeah. I think I think it's knowing what you're getting into, right? And I think it's also going back a framework thing too. Again, I think there's gonna be critics everywhere. When I left fine dining and I started did like a manager in training position, I managed like restaurants that were you know, where I was like a, managing the kitchen, managing profit loss, all that stuff.
I had badass cooks who had no idea. Who know what Noma was it like, it all just depends, you know, it all depends and it's all a focus on like where you're going, where you want to be and what you're doing. I think like if I were to go, like I started at a Tara when I was in college and I did that for a day.
I had all I, all I was going to do was see how it was. I wasn't expecting to, you know, I was, maybe I learned things here and there, but like it, it's like I feel like in that quote, I'm not sure what that person is looking for, but it sounds like to me, and it's totally valid to feel this way, I think, but it sounds like that this person went there and had this experience and was, but inside they really wanna own their own restaurant and do their own thing.
And Nomas not the place you should be going to and like who told, and like if that person was being guided by someone, that, that's the other thing too. When we hold [00:48:00] these places in high regard, it's like, oh, just go to Noma. You learn all you need to know. If you're looking to manage a restaurant, you shouldn't be going to Noma.
You should be going to X, Y, and Z. A place that can get you training at and how to run a p and l. What, like how to talk to vendors, how to do pricing comparisons, how to manage staff and HR issues. All those, that's what you should be learning. So it's like, I think, I think we've also put a bandaid on these places.
Oh, just go there and you'll be good. Like, no, that's not, that's not the answer.
Ray Delucci: I think so much of a fine dining experience, not just from the working side, but from the dining side too, is expectation management. So you've talked about this in multiple pieces of content too. You hype this place up in your mind and you go to, you go to the place to finally have the menu and your expectations have so far over-inflated what that restaurant could ever serve you at that table for you to be satisfied and.
It's the same with working places. To your point, if she was potentially misled by someone to say, oh, well all you have to do is go to Noma for three months and you can come back and open your own place. Or even if she just did some reading to see the caliber of cuisine that they were executing on and was like, oh, this is the most important place in the world.
And that's all I need. I, I don't know. I, I'm, I'm trying, I'm trying to keep everybody accountable in these situations just as much as we're, we're, you know, talking about Renee, you know, just making sure that we, we get some nuance in, in
Justin Khanna: no, you me. You mentioned that. You mentioned that too, and I think one more point I wanted to add. I don't remember what you said a few minutes ago that sparked it, but a real quick reverse back into like lifestyle and choices made and sacrifices and everything else in between. You know, I think about now I'm probably the happiest I've been in quite some time and I'm most sure of myself in quite some time.
I shared it before we started, but my grandmother just passed away recently. She was definitely one of the most important people in my life. And I remember when I was in restaurants, there was a point where I had to go for her 80th birthday. And there was some, I got, I received a good amount of pushback on [00:50:00] leaving service or leaving, taking time off to go see her.
And I did it anyway. And I was just like, whatever happens, happens. And I can tell you now that maybe this is just a message for anyone out there who has these, you know, who struggles taking time off, who struggles being there with family. And I just wanna say like, this is for people who can afford to do that.
There's a lot of cooks that can't do that. So this is just for the people that can afford to go maybe miss a service, go miss a day of work to do that. And your ego and pride is what's telling you now. I remember going. To see my grandmother on her 80th birthday and her face and her crying when I got there.
And cuz I told her I wasn't gonna be able to make it, I didn't think at the time I would and I was able and I just surprised her and her passing. Now I, that's one of the most proudest things I think I've decisions I've ever made for myself was going there and I couldn't tell you at all that month what was going on in the kitchen.
I couldn't tell you what the worry was of that month, but I look back so fondly on that and it's the flip side, right? There were some things I missed. There's some things I regret. You know, I remember one year I didn't call my dad to wish him my happy birthday and I regret that and that, and I was so busy that day, like I was that busy that I couldn't call my own dad to wish me a happy birthday.
Right? So I think leaving that too is like the decisions you make in life. Like f you can fo put all your focus in food, but all that shit comes back and all that shit. Banners and so like, I just really like wanna stress that too is like those decisions have impacts on your life and you have a life worth thinking about and going over and mulling over.
So, When you make decisions to go to Noma and you make decisions to Stodge and you make decisions of, oh, I'm just gonna sacrifice these things, like the sacrifice comes back in some way. And so when you look back, what are you gonna be more proud of? Like being in service that night or being there for your family or your friends or whatever it means for you to go do that thing, go we to that concert that you've wanted to see since you were five years old and now service is on a Saturday night.
Well, like, what are you going to do? So,
Ray Delucci: And taking that time away, I can only imagine. There was nothing monumental that you missed at work. [00:52:00] There was nothing. We're here
Justin Khanna: Got right back. And guess what? They needed me to be back there the next day and they, if I, they actually did need me to be there. So it's like, yeah, like you're needed too. So like yeah. It's just make those, make smart decisions. Make smart decisions for yourself. And I think that's the big, I think for me the biggest sin of restaurants and dining is that they expect you to be there all the time and they, it, there's this expectation that you're not supposed to have a life.
And it was one of the reasons why I left, because I have so much more I want to do with my time and my life and interest, podcast writing, et cetera, family, health, fitness, mental health, all that stuff. And I couldn't get over the fact that I was always expected to be there and that it always took up my time and my time is valuable.
And there's so many things that I value, and I think there's some operators who do it right. I don't, I don't think it's like all restaurants are bad, but especially in fine dining, you're expected to just give your life away for however long you're there. And like, that's bullshit in my opinion.
Ray Delucci: Agree.
Justin Khanna: So the menu
Ray Delucci: Yeah. Let's,
Justin Khanna: go from something serious to a dark comedy horror thriller on H B O Max.
Ray Delucci: let's talk about expectations. What were your expectations of the movie? Did you, did you get anything spoiled or did you, did you
Justin Khanna: no, I, I've been excited since day one, since seeing the trailers of the menu. I love raw fi I love Anya Taylor Joy. Nicholas Holt is a great actor. The whole cast was pretty great. But no, I, I found it interesting that we were gonna go. My wor, I had a worry, and I don't wanna say that I love this movie, but I had a worry that we were gonna start in food and then go into like island Horror.
Like I wanted it to all stay in the restaurant, which it did. And I was so surprised when it did, cuz I thought they were gonna get to the restaurant then like the first act was gonna be food. And then we were gonna go off into like slasher, like, oh, we're all stuck in like this island and they're coming back.
Like we're getting picked off one by one of the woods. No, it all stayed around dining. And so my expectations were met and exceeded, but my first gut reaction was like, oh, it's gonna start with food, but then it's gonna travel into something completely different. So
Ray Delucci: Should we give a disclaimer that we're gonna [00:54:00] cover spoilers? Are you fine to cover
Justin Khanna: yeah. Yeah.
Ray Delucci: so this, so this is your
Justin Khanna: well maybe, maybe first, like if you don't want it spoiled, I would give this movie a, I would suggest you see it, and I really enjoyed it. Before we go into spoilers, any words like that before.
Ray Delucci: I also heavily enjoyed it. I thought it was incredibly entertaining and I, I definitely recommend everybody who is even remotely interested in food, dining chef culture. Again, what Ray and I just touched on, which is the last, I'll call it like 20 years of how restaurants have kind of like risen in popularity and then either closed or declined or, you know, open up multiple locations.
I think it's, it's worth your time, so, I thought the same. I thought that it was going to devolve into like saw slash you know, like super gory, whatever. And it's not like there's no gore in the movie, but I, I went in with as little expectations as possible and I even had a friend send me the script to the movie and I decided not to, to read it.
It's a friend who works in Hollywood based in LA and was like, Hey, thought this would be interesting, whatever. And I chose to specifically not read it because I wanted to have be ple as pleasantly surprised as possible. And man, it was such a fun ride of a movie because of that lack of expectation for me.
And so, again, if you want that same experience and you have no idea what we're talking about, just pause now. Go, go, go, watch, go, come back. And I think the biggest point that, that I geeked out about, I would argue more than any single person in the theater, and I did see it in the theater, was how many chefs they referenced.
And how many restaurant concepts and cuisine types that they touched on. And for me it was just being able to like look at them giving an ape egg to the guy in the hen house. And I was just like, oh my God, this is hilarious. And the, the Dominique cre I think it was the scallop presentation was, was based off of, of hers.
And the first snack on the boat being like, I heard people saying it was kind of like oysters and [00:56:00] pearls when in reality like that dish is very different and it's not quite the same as that. But I kind of got where they were coming from. Some stuff on Francis Malman the list goes on that I thought was like the coolest.
Justin Khanna: The, the, it literally was a linea at the end.
Ray Delucci: Yeah, the Alinea, the Alinea dessert at the end all of it was, was incredibly cool for me cuz all it felt like was individual Easter eggs just getting dropped where it was like, nobody knows about this except for the, the people who know. And it was really cool to see that amount of accuracy in a movie with, again, to your point, that caliber of acting that was happening.
Justin Khanna: yeah.
Ray Delucci: what did you think about not just the, the, the food scenes, but a lot of things that I saw in, in conversations about the movie were like the different guest archetypes that they talk about. So one is like the old couple who just like, you know, couldn't be bothered to like actually have a conversation with each other, but like, they come out to, to eat at the restaurant.
The other one is like the, the, I think his name was Tyler in the show, who is like the, the nerdy guy and then the girlfriend who like, just can't be bothered to like, give a shit about, about what, what's happening. And he knows all the backstory of the chef. Then there's the finance bros, and then there's like the celebrity and his partner, his or her partner that come in.
And so I guess did, did were, were any of those, like, did you feel like they missed any, any archetypes or, or did you, did you feel like they, they nailed it on those archetypes that come in?
Justin Khanna: Yeah. I, I listened to a review of this and I think it's very spot on, and I think if you haven't seen it, you're gonna go see it. You shouldn't be listening to this part right now. But if you're just like spoilers, I think it's, you have to look at everything at caricatures, otherwise it can be a little bit depressing, kind of the ending of it.
I do wanna say like, the only part of the movie I didn't like was the onscreen act of suicide. I thought that was a little much, it was a little gory. It was a little much for me personally, I thought it was a lot. I definitely get the, the metaphor of like killing yourself to be for the kitchen, but I thought that was a little too on the nose.
I would've loved someone who like really, I guess IA Taylor Joy plays a person, is the person that didn't know.
[00:58:00] But more so I think that there should have been been a guest who was a chef that was like the chef that is like critiques it. The chef that's like, oh, they're just putting foam on this shit. Like this is stupid. And IA
Ray Delucci: the critic. The critic was also
Justin Khanna: the critic was there and IA Taylor Joy was the foil for everything going on.
But I wish there was you, we've all had that chef that like, just totally hates on anything close to Weezer food. And I would've loved to guess. That's like. And then like, you know, Ralph or whatever his name is, slow, the chef being like, you're like the anti, the, the anti-thesis to like what I am as a chef.
Like you're the, the burger flip or whatever it is when, you know, in the end it turns out he's loves flipping his burgers. But yeah, I thought that would've been cool. I, I don't know, story wise it would've been cool, but I, I definitely was like, yeah, it would've been cool to have like a, a, a retired chef or an ex chef being there who like totally calls shit on all this.
But no, I thought they did a really good job with how they portrayed everything and like the people they chose, especially the critic, right? Cause I think the critic thing is interesting and man, like the powers of critics and the power of me food media, like, yeah, you can make or break things. You can like, do whatever you want.
And it's like, you know, we, we see it. I mean, Michelin Guide is a criticism, Sam Pellegrino's criticism, and it's like, what are all the, like, those are all human beings. What are their perceptions? How do they do their framework? So yeah, I, I thought it was really interesting.
Ray Delucci: It also shows how weird of a job that is to be a
Justin Khanna: Mm-hmm. .Mm-hmm.
Ray Delucci: I consider myself to be a weirdo of the fact that like, I record my meals when I go out to places and I like edit it and do a voiceover of it, but that's for my own personal enjoyment. And I can't even, like if I, if you told me that I had to edit three of those a week, I think I would be, you know, it, it would, it would change me fundamentally as a human.
Like it's a very strange position to be in to cri critique food for a living, at least for me. Like my personality type just doesn't resonate with, with having that be like my full-time thing. I love doing it as a hobby. And I think that that's [01:00:00] like one of the biggest points that the movie touched on is when these restaurants become like an obsession, not just for the guest but for the chef.
I think the, the point that, that I kind of thought was a really interesting tidbit was the mom sitting in the dining room just like getting shitfaced and. The fact that he would like come over and just like gently acknowledge her, but then allow her to just continue to be depressed. I think that that was a really interesting metaphor for like, neglecting your family and like them, you know, like supporting you from the sidelines, quote unquote.
When in reality all they're doing is like looking upon what you're doing. Not really being all that interested, but like, I never get to see this person or spend time, quality time with them. I thought that was a, a, a fascinating, like whether I'm misinterpreting that metaphor or not, that's how I, that's how I looked at that moment.
Justin Khanna: I, I really saw a lot of myself and Tyler when I was in the culinary school. I think Tyler is like the ultimate CIA kid on steroids. Just like, totally like enamored with these things when it's in reality, it's like not that serious. I just love that so much because I've been there. I was that maybe not, obviously not that extreme, but like, I was that, that like, oh, like Bergamo or all these different things and like, he did this and that, and it's like, bro, you sound so you need to chill out.
Like you can't do, you can't even do the f the stuff. I really,
Ray Delucci: was a great moment.
Justin Khanna: oh my gosh, the, him cooking . I think that's, you know, I think it's, I hope when like common viewers like, like, or you know, the general audience like sees it, like they kind of can realize that, you know, obviously Yelp and all that has taken over like restaurants and whatnot.
But that was such a good scene because he's like, and it's such a good scene cuz you, you see, and you know, this is where I'll talk about fine dining in a positive light. You see how much thought goes into it. It's obvious, right? You can't just come, come up with it on the fly. So for him to have leaks, shallots, butter, and then like undercooked lamb, like, it was just, it was so perfect and how they chef tabled his dish.
It was like Tyler's bullshit as his dish. It was just like, it was so funny for me.[01:02:00]
Ray Delucci: Has there been, was, has there been anything that you've seen with the movie where you've, you've, you've seen a take or you've seen someone, someone mention something or, or highlight something that you, you either disagreed with or, or do you think wasn't highlighted enough? I'll kind of ask that question again in the context of the NOMA thing, and for my listeners specifically, I will be doing a video series on the menu because one that's been one of the highly, most highly requested videos after my breakdown of the Bear.
And aside from the movie Boiling Point, that's another popular one. But yeah, I'm cur I'm curious, Ray, if you, if you saw anything where you're like, People were talking about this and I didn't necessarily think that this was accurate, or people aren't giving this enough attention.
Justin Khanna: Before we get into that, I do wanna say my favorite reason that he chose to have a guest there for their demise was the actor. Because he spent his day off to go see a movie and it was shit. I thought that was, so, like, if anyone in the food world has, like, I remember like when I was working 2019, I think I had three days off during the summer, and like I just, I get that like, obviously not to the point where you want to kill someone, but it's like, you know, you, your time is so precious in those moments that you go and.
Do something else and it, it isn't as great as, or it isn't what you needed it to be and you feel so disappointed. I thought that was so freaking hilarious. I mean, I think overarching themes obviously like the, like I've watched this with someone that isn't in the food world and it is cult like, how, I mean, we go back to Noma, how cooks are, and like, like you see it online.
Like there is not, I don't know about maybe, I don't know some people that level of intensity, but it is like that where like you just like, like the craziest look of like, oh, I'm there and like I'm doing it and not for everyone, but like there is like honestly like I, when I see people working at these restaurants, I don't see that, but I see like the defenders or the people that wanna get there but they can't get there are also like that where it's like, it is very cult in that space, right?
Of like, whatever Renee says is like golden. I see it online. There's so many people just like, oh, this is a [01:04:00] beautiful, like genius move by Renee and all this stuff. So I definitely see that. I definitely see the undervalue of what a chef does, and I definitely see the inflation of prices to, I really, my favorite takeaway was the inflationary prices and how a lot of this food has become untouchable for most of the general population.
I think that was a big thing for me, like real, like this is what we hold up and like most people can't afford to go dine there. So I think those are like the main takeaways I had from it.
Ray Delucci: my thing that I am taking away from the menu being characterized in the way that it has this Noma situation, David Kinch closing Men, rea,
Justin Khanna: Mm-hmm.
Ray Delucci: all of it happening and swirling all at the same time is kind of this idea of like, have we seen where like the ceiling. From the sense of we will now use this as the water line where we can kind of say that's what running at 135% looks like.
Justin Khanna: Yeah.
Ray Delucci: And in reality, like there is a a point where you can be at a hundred percent underneath where we're at now. And now that we've all seen where this goes. If we continue to, to your, all the dot points you mentioned, that's that, that leads us to a really negative place. And the reason that I say that is because reason that I'm so bullish on restaurants and dining experiences in general is as we think about our lives, this is like a side tangent rant.
As we think about our lives and the things that we value, a lot of us as we get older start to value experiences more than things.
Justin Khanna: Mm-hmm.
Ray Delucci: I've had this experience multiple times and I try to notice it when it happens. If I tell someone that I went somewhere for a holiday with my wife for a solo trip, for work, for just visiting a friend in, in x, Y, Z city.
Perfect example. My wife and I went to to Lima, Peru for honeymoon,
Justin Khanna: Hm.
Ray Delucci: and eight out of 10 people that we talked to about that [01:06:00] trip, they say, oh, did you go eat at Central? And the same thing I think happens if anybody ever says, oh, I went to Scandinavia. I went to Copenhagen. I have the same happens to me when I say I worked in Scandinavia.
And they're like, oh, did you work at, did you go to No.
Justin Khanna: Mm-hmm.
Ray Delucci: And you can insert other versions of restaurants in some of these places if the person is not a fine dining nerd. And what I'm trying to make as a point here is like food tends to be one of the most memorable and enjoyable parts of a, of a traveling ex trip experience.
You talking about the Goia is a perfect example. You get to Chicago, it's like, this is what I talk. I'm not gonna talk about going to the Bean. I'm not gonna talk about the weather. I'm not gonna talk about some hotdog that I had. Maybe you will, but you know what I mean. There are these specific food experiences and that, that's what I'm saying.
I try to listen to these things as I'm at a dinner party, especially with older people that I hang out with. Like my wife and I have this friend group where we are the youngest members of this friend group, and this is actually with two of them is my wife myself, and then two of these older people. One is in their fifties and one is in their late thirties.
We went and saw the menu together and if you hear them talk about a trip nine times outta 10, they're talking about, we had this most amazing wine tour that we went on. We had this fantastic cheese that we got to try. We went to this restaurant and it, the view was amazing and all of this stuff like food still matters.
And I think what we've maybe seen is again, like overshooting where the ceiling potentially is, and to the person who's like hyper ambitious and is just like, there are no limits. Like we're seeing that there are, and it's like you're ultimately hurting people. and seeing the menu and trying to unpack a couple of the metaphors that are happening in there, I think is helpful for someone thinking about their concept.
Because again, I'm about these cautionary tales, man. I'm about these lessons learned and how can we make sure that there aren't any mistakes that come, come down the track.
Justin Khanna: No, I agree. And if I have a [01:08:00] boxer and she's talking in the
Ray Delucci: Oh, no,
Justin Khanna: if you hear anything while I talk, that's it. But yeah, I mean, to put, to put a pin in that or to end that, because I wanna get to AI really quickly. If we still have the time, I'll always, and going off the menu, you look at what he smiled at cooking was the burger, right?
I'll always say one of the top 10 meals for me of my life is I worked 16 hours in a restaurant. One day I was like 20 years old. And on my way home, I stopped at a Taco Bell. That was six minutes from my house, ordered a beefy gor, beefy five layer burrito, cheesy Gordita crunch, a Dorito Lo Taco Supreme, and a Mountain Dew Baja blast.
And I ate it within those six minutes, and I still remember how cheesy the Gordo, how the cheese flowed from the soft, shallow, hard shell on the gor. I remember the Doritos Locus tacos being so crisp and it was like the perfect amount of sour cream and lettuce. And I still remember the BP five layer burrito being hot and perfectly.
Whoever made that, I'm pretty sure Renee Redzepi was in that kitchen because it was made perfectly. The Baja Blast was perfectly carbonated and I ate it within five minutes. I was so hungry. I hadn't eat anything all day. And that will forever be one of the best meals I've ever had. And it was just that experience of I, I had accomplished this tremendous day doing this tasting with my chef.
I was tired, I was starving, and I just like barely pulled into a Taco Bell and had like this amazing experience. And I think we had to like, I think a lot of fine dining is really like we're trying to recreate, we're trying to create that, right, that experience, but a lot of times that food experience happens in the least likely of places.
So I think we push too hard for. And it's like this dopamine type drive of like, oh, we wanna have this experience and that's great. But for me, most of the best food memories I have are things that I never would've, you can't pay for 'em. You can't artificially create them. And I think one of the lines in the movie was like, it was she said to him at the end, which like kind of made him start to lose his mind.
It was like, you cook, don't cook with love, you cook with the possession. And as a diner, we're obsessed to get to all these different places. That's the reason why the guide was made was to [01:10:00] get you to go to these places. So you, you can't art, but you can't artificially create magical experiences like that.
You can have them at those places, but not everyone does. So I guess that's what I'll leave it with. It's like Taco Bells within my top 10 meals of my life. And that was when I was so freaking hungry.
Ray Delucci: If you asked AI to come up with your Taco Bell order, what do you think it would say?
Justin Khanna: Mm-hmm. . And it probably would save Doritos local Taco Supreme with extra sour cream at the time.
Ray Delucci: What, what are you playing around with ai? What, where do you think it's, it's going to lead us to, and what opportunities are you seeing? What fears do you have? What potential downsize is is nobody thinking about how, how has your experience been?
Justin Khanna: Interesting. For sure. And first I'll lead with, I'm working on a podcast about ai. I'm having different, I'm having chefs, I'm having people in food, robotics. I'm having, I'm really hoping to put out a podcast in the near, within the next month or two with a really full, like, chock full of information about ai.
I think it's gonna be around a two hour episode too, so we'll see how it kind of pans out. I think for me, I wanna start with chat, G p T and something not related to cooking. It's been so hard for me to grasp what Bitcoin mining is. It's been so hard for me to under, like what I understand Bitcoin, I understand the blockchain.
What is Bitcoin? Like? What do you mean mining? And I've Googled it and I've gotten lost in these rabbit. So I put into chat G P T, which is this AI system by OpenAI, which like is incredible. If you haven't used it, you definitely should. And I was like, explain to me bitcoin mining, like I'm a fifth grader.
And it went through and explained why mine, like the math problems that need to be done in order to work through Bitcoin transactions. And I'm like, well, why do these math problems exist in the first place? And it sent me like this comprehensive reason as to why they exist. And I was like, finally, like this clarity that I had over bitcoin mining, which sounds so mundane and so like, like so niche.
But that's what it's gonna unlock in my opinion, something like this. And now there's the problem of is this information accurate? What can be [01:12:00] done to manipulate information that's being put onto these systems? Or like what code is being written to work like on how these systems find it? Because I also read like the dangers is you can manipulate the system to be putting out bad information or things that lead to, you know, hate.
You know, different viewpoints, but if we're gonna look at just like merely the positives for now, and obviously that's a bigger discussion. Yeah, I mean, that was cool. I'm putting it, being able to put in I was like, gimme a ch recipe for chili. Gave me a chili recipe, all the amounts added up. I was like, all right, now give me a recipe for chili with like a Japanese twist and then it kind of converted it into like a Japanese chili.
Why I chose that, I don't, it was just like, I wanted to test like what, what it was gonna give me. And it, it still made sense what it gave me. Obviously I'd have to make it and taste it, but the ratios and everything made sense. So I think it, what AI is doing is I think it's going to replace Google Chat chat items, like chat G p t cuz it's so easy to just like, please tell me this, or please tell me why.
Language, for example in talking to a friend who speaks Spanish and explained to them different like English, like I think I, I think those phrase ideas with this, I was like, oh, can you just explain that in Spanish? . What if you have a kitchen full of Spanish speak, speaking cooks, and you have a system in your, say you have technology in your restaurant where you have recipes.
Oh, can you just put that in Spanish chat? G V T, oh, now it's all in Spanish. Can you put these directions in Spanish or can you put 'em in you know, give any Chinese, any, any language you want. Can you just like, repeat that in a different language? It's so fluid how it works. So that's where I'm playing around with what I'm looking into is automation, restaurants, and automation of recipe creation.
I've done some talks briefly with some people, and I think the main point I'm getting is the goal isn't to displace people. AI will displace people. I wanna make that very clear. But a lot of people who are working with restaurants are making it so that you're not doing these mundane tasks. The goal, the perfect scenario for me would be if we could train [01:14:00] these workers to be equipped to work with AI to do then.
better tasks instead of, you know, working with like simple things like, you know, like having to peel on onion. Can AI do that so you can do something with more value? Or can you operate that machine? You know, it's like, so it's, that would be the perfect scenario. But for me, I think the thing with the food world is everyone's banking on AI can't create things.
AI will never have that touch of a human. And I really, it's like stockbrokers thought that, and now we have Robinhood, like, I don't, and as I'm not advocating for that, but I don't think we as an industry should ever, especially after Covid, should ever be like, oh, we're immune to an, to a labor changing thing that's coming in the future because of the human touch.
I I or because it nee it's needed. We've seen covid. Proved us wrong. Everyone needs to eat. Well guess what? Restaurants still had to shut down like we should. So I think that's my biggest thing is like don't get caught not knowing about it. I definitely think there's, you should be on the front, on your front foot.
And I also saw, one last thing I'll say, I know I'm going along on this is like I've seen the argument of well if you're using it then aren't you just kind of contributing to it? AI is coming. It's better to know what it is. It's better to know, like if you haven't used chat G P T yet, you definitely should.
Cuz that's gonna be, that type of stuff's gonna be prevalent in within the next five years, for the next two years probably. So those are my takes. I know it's a lot. Any thoughts? Let me know.
Ray Delucci: Yeah. I think the point that is, is easily referencable in people's frame of mind is the idea of anybody that owned a restaurant, having a men a website, number one, which we kind of mentioned already. And two, just having their menu be shared online. Like that was something where everybody was like, oh, well what do you mean?
Like, I'm gonna have to learn how to do this thing. I'm gonna make it publicly available. I'm gonna share [01:16:00] my stuff. It's gonna be easy for people to like, am I gonna get phish? Like, all these sorts of questions came up in the early days of the internet, and now it's kind of one of the first things you do when you have a concept or you have an idea and, and you bring it forward.
So, so completely agreeing with you that people should be at least paying attention to this. Number two, playing around with it and three, Hopefully a practical takeaway. I teach this it's kinda like a workshop course called dt, the DTO O framework. And the three letters stand decide, test and operationalize.
And it's in the context of dish creation. And it seeks to solve this problem of how do you take an idea that you have and not only make sure that it works, but make sure that you can share that idea with your team. And what I think AI can be the most helpful with is the first letter, which is decide.
And what I teach in the, in the workshop is this idea of what's the worst way to write a menu? Just like open up a blank Google Doc, just be staring at the blinking cursor being like, I don't even know what in the world I'm gonna start with. Like, I need to have five courses and I have no idea what they're gonna be.
And to be able to go to chat j p t and say something like, can you do a riff on my last menu? And then have that present you 10 courses. And then you use this first letter in my acronym, which is just decide, I don't wanna do lamb. I want to do pork. Now I don't want to do cabbage, I want to do kohlrabi. I don't want to have it be a caviar sauce.
I want it to be a black truffle sauce. And then all of those things we are uniquely positioned to do because they ultimately put us more in line with being human, which is our, our best selves. Second point that I noticed as I was playing around with that is in relation to menu writing is I have this kind of idea that's top of mind, and it's not, it's not fleshed out enough to, to, to really be a, a, a thing.
And so I won't share that much about it, but I basically asked chat g b t to like come up with a concept. Come up with a [01:18:00] menu in this style, and it just pulled on stuff that I know already exists, and I have it in my head that this is gonna be like a restaurant concept that I launched in my forties.
I've really kind of changed my tone on talking about how that, how I talk about that in, in, on the channel, and I was just like, oh, there still is, you know, kind of like a level of dumbness to, to these programs where it's just, it's, it's not that smart. It's very good at aggregation. It's very good at summarization.
It's very good at, again, going from zero to one with the context that might already be available on the internet. But I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty in agreement with you
Justin Khanna: Best explanation for it right now is with chat, chat g p t. It's not smart. Like, it's not like a smart thing. What it's doing is, like you said, it's aggregating, it's pulling words off the internet. It's all it's doing. It's just doing it in a very efficient, quick, and very detailed way because of the systems it's running on.
So, like you said, it can pull anything you need, but if you ask it like, but it can't opinionate it can't be smart in that realm. So I think there's like, you gotta know how to use it, right? You have to know how to like, to, like how to, if you know you need to do your research on how to use it, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
I wanna touch on one thing real quick cuz you brought it up and this is gonna be a, this is a breakthrough for me in 2023 and it's about recipe ideation specifically for new people in the industry or new people working with recipes. And, and this is for a different time, I'm just putting this out there that I think the worst way.
to have people create food, and I just did a blog post on this is to say, make me a dish. I think saying, make me, and I put the example on my blog post, make me a pasta dish with chicken breast in the style of, in the style of Tuscan cooking is the best way to get a dish that is creative, but has some framework.
Adding that framework to creativity I think is super important. We can talk about that later, but I agree with you on what you
Ray Delucci: No, there's a website called Prompt Hunt, p r o m, pt h u n t.com, and it is in service of what you just said. How can you give the best prompts to, to chat G B T or any sort of like Mid [01:20:00] Journey or Dolly or any of these aggregators AI platforms, because that ultimately becomes the game. It's like, how can you be a better user of AI than everybody else in order to be a human, an AI empowered human?
The the last point that kind of rounds all this out and kind of brings it all together in my head is this idea of there's maybe like a spectrum or two charts, and you might have two restaurant concepts. One is zero humans in it, which is very real. There's maybe someone who drops off the ingredients.
We're getting to a place where that might not even need to happen anymore. And us as humans can go to this place and literally get hot prepared food or get it delivered to our, to our door. No humans required. Then there's like 50%, which is like we use AI to be better chefs. And then there's, what I am making a prediction on is in the future we will potentially have a restaurant that is a hundred percent human run.
We don't use any sort of artificial intelligence or automation or anything. And what I like about that is like it actually gives a place for the people who are so invested in projects like Noma to go, cuz that's what ultimately like also is. It's not like a loser in this situation, but there are genuine people who are so widely interested in committing their time and their energy towards a project like Noah's level of execution.
and it's like, I don't think those people are going away, or those motivations are changing. Like I get the dms, you probably get the dms too. Like, I'm so interested in going to like 11 Madison Park and just getting my ass kicked and to have, you know, there might be fewer of them, but to have a hundred percent human run restaurant in a, in, in a, you know, where, because the supply and demand changes, they could charge a lot.
That might actually be like a really beneficial situation for [01:22:00] everybody.
Justin Khanna: Yeah. I think the last point I'll make, I'm worried about displacement. Like when I, when I, like I say, when I'm doing this AI research, it's not like I'm in L like me personally. I wish I could, we could stop it. Right now. I feel like it's at a point where it's like it's gonna start to displace and it's gonna be very hard, difficult.
And I don't know who it's, it could affect me, it could affect you, could affect anyone. I think the biggest danger though, in what you kind of touched on with aggregation is you look at movies right now, you went to go see the menu in theaters. I'm waiting for things to hit streaming, and you see that people are waiting for things to hit streaming. When we get to a point with ai, there's gonna be a point in restaurants and AI where someone's gonna be like, surprise me. Or they're gonna say, gimme the cheeseburger from the menu. And a chef will never be able to keep up with that level of . , it's gonna get to the point I believe, where you're gonna be able to literally order whatever you want.
Give me sushi. You know what? Nevermind actually, can you actually give me a in and out style cheeseburger with animal fries and it's gonna be able to do that. And so I've really just worn like, like the next la the next 50 years of chefs are going to be having to adapt to that. And it's, it's freaking scary.
And it's like, what the hell's gonna happen? But I think that's where it's gonna go. So
Ray Delucci: It's always fun jamming with you, my friend, on some of these ideas.
Justin Khanna: Yeah. Same with you.
Ray Delucci: if both of our audiences end up liking this, maybe this can be something that we turn into some sort of a, a, a series. I don't have a co-host currently and I think that, you know, this makes you, I think, the most frequent guest on, on the podcast.
And so,
Justin Khanna: same for you.
Ray Delucci: yeah. Cool, cool. Always, always happy to jam. I, I hope to visit you in Chicago soon. If you're ever out in Seattle, please, please don't hesitate to to come say, hey anything. You wanna leave the, leave the readers with you have a new newsletter, CLE, please, please pimp the newsletter out.
Justin Khanna: Yeah just go to lion cook thoughts.com, prep list items. Every Monday I put out just a newsletter with three bullet, three to four bullet points on things I find interesting. So it could be stats from the nra, the National Restaurant Association. Be careful which [01:24:00] nra, I say National Restaurant Association.
It could be tools I like. It could be new VR posts I put out, or just stuff I find interesting on the internet. I've shared a lot of different articles recently. And then quotes I like. I'm a big quote guy. So go to like thoughts.com. You can just put it at yourself into the newsletter. And then obviously if you wanna shout out what you're doing and I think TikTok is a cool, or your video where people can find the upcoming video content
Ray Delucci: Yeah, YouTube's the best place. Just my name and, and, and, and on YouTube. The other thing that th this audience might find useful is I have a five day kitchen productivity challenge, which is just kind of some tips and tactics that helped me a lot when I was working the line, and if that would ever be of, of use we'll just put it in the show notes and it's in the description for folks.
It's completely free. It's just, it's like 40 minutes of video content that I just sent to people just in, in service of being able to help. And I have a newsletter too, and, and YouTube's kind of the best place to, to find all that stuff. So.
Justin Khanna: One. One last thing I wanna shout out is we no announced it's closing on Monday. We're recording literally the day after, so shout out to the flexibility we both had to get on a mic and chat for an hour and a half. I think that was, I was pretty shocked.
Ray Delucci: and if some more scathing news comes out and Ray and I miss some stuff, d you know, please forgive us cuz it's Tuesday, January 10th as we're as we're recording this. So not too much changes. Thanks again buddy. It's always good to see you.
Justin Khanna: you as well.
Well, well, here we are together again at the end of another episode of The Repertoire podcast. If this was your first time listening, this is a show for hospitality creators who want to think better, increase their performance and believe that it's. Possible to take lessons from what others have already learned.
I am your host, Justin Kana, and if you're new here, I'd like to personally welcome you to the show. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Friendly heads up to check out the show notes inside of the description of this podcast. If you want to check out previous guests links to specifics that got brought up in this episode, as well as other helpful content that we create and share here online because.
Everything we do is focused on helping you along your journey. If you don't have a ton of time, the best place to start is with some value sent straight to your inbox every single week. It's called the Repertoire Newsletter, where we share knowledge on [01:26:00] sharpening your skills, asymmetric upside, and exploring the industry beyond the status quo.
If you subscribe, we'll keep you up to date on trends that are shaping the hospitality creator ecosystem. We'll share discounts on. Find as well as content that we've been producing ourselves and helpful articles that we've already read and decided are worth your time. Last up, if you want to connect with other industry professionals in the Repertoire Pro community, you want to check out courses like Total Station Domination or download free tools that we've created.
You can learn more@joinrepertoire.com. That's J O I N R e P E R T O I R. Dot com. The only ask for me is that if you enjoyed this episode, I'd really appreciate a review of this show on Apple Podcasts as well as Spotify to help the podcast universe know that people like us, like shows like this.
Regardless, I'll see you in the next episode. My name is Justin Kana and I hope you have a good one.
