Barrel and Fork

Intro:

Welcome to The Best of LKN, a podcast featuring the best small businesses and the most influential professionals around Lake Norman, North Carolina. Each week, we spotlight those businesses and individuals that are making a positive impact here in the Lake Norman area. Thanks for joining us. Enjoy the show.

Jeff:

Hey friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m really looking forward to sharing this conversation with you that I had with the owners of a really lovely restaurant in Cornelius. But first, I’d like to introduce you to the sponsor for this episode.

Jeff:

This episode of The Best of LKN Podcast is brought to you by HempLily, your CBD oil source. Trusted since 2017, HempLily CBD helps you find balanced wellness. Stress less and feel better fast. Use code LKN15 for 15% at HempLily.com. That’s H-E-M-P-L-I-L-Y.com. Thank you HempLily for sponsoring the podcast.

Jeff:

Now friends, in this episode I sit down with Jason and Sarah. They are the owners of Barrel & Fork, a really unique and amazing restaurant in Cornelius. And in this case, I actually had an opportunity to dine at Barrel & Fork with my wife prior to recording this podcast. So this episode actually turned into a little bit of a review as well. So I share our experience and our thoughts on Barrel & Fork and I hope that it adds a little bit of context and value to this episode for you. So without any further delay, let’s get stuck right in to that conversation with Jason Tuton and Sarah Conrad, the owners of Barrel & Fork.

Jeff:

I’m really pleased to featuring a wonderful restaurant in Cornelius today on the podcast. The restaurant is Barrel & Fork. It’s a fine dining restaurant near the heart of Cornelius on Main Street. I recently had the opportunity to experience Barrel & Fork, my wife and I, and just enjoyed every moment of it. And I’m looking forward to sharing some of that experience with you in this episode. But for now, I want to introduce the owners who are joining me, Jason Tuton and Sarah Conrad. Jason and Sarah, welcome to the podcast.

Jason:

Thank you.

Sarah:

Thank you.

Jeff:

Yeah thanks. I’m glad we were able to work this out. I know you’re both very busy, multiple businesses to run, and I hope we can followup and circle back again to talk about a couple of the other ones as well. But today, this episode is focused specifically on Barrel & Fork. And I just want to kind of dive right into all the details about the inspiration behind Barrel & Fork and everything that guests will experience there, and I can’t wait to share my own experience as well. But before I do that, I want to get just a brief background, a brief bio, on you Jason and Sarah. A little bit of your career leading up to purchasing Barrel & Fork, or founding Barrel & Fork. Sarah, why don’t we start with you.

Sarah:

Mine will be a little bit shorter. This is definitely… In our relationship, Jason and I have our own things. And this is definitely Jason’s thing. It’s a reflection of him 100% when you go in. The style and everything he’s always loved in every restaurant that we’ve been to, he really got to incorporate that into his own, which is very, very neat to see that kind of all come together for him. My background is actually marketing, before I got into the businesses that I run. And I worked with a lot of restaurants and did a lot of full market campaigns and things like that for their businesses. So it was definitely something where for our deal with Barrel & Fork, it kind of rolled off of some of the experience we had with the previous restaurants is what I kind of felt that I brought to the table, a lot more of the processes and behind the scenes like that, to kind of help Jason. But the menu and the inspiration and all of that was definitely 100% him.

Jeff:

Well Jason, Sarah kind of teed it up for you. It sounds like Barrel & Fork is… She’s putting all the blame on you.

Jason:

Right. Right.

Jeff:

So let’s get your story.

Jason:

Well I think she undersells it a little bit. But yes, certainly it was me behind maybe the purchase of Barrel & Fork and initiating it. But Sarah’s not taking near enough credit. She really has the restaurant and had been doing it for three years and it was part of our life. We had talked multiple times about getting a full service restaurant and she was heavily involved in those conversations. Barrel & Fork kind of came about as a fluke and although I may have pressed hard, if it wasn’t for her and her background, I would have never leaped into it. I think we would have stayed within our comfort zone.

Jason:

But my background is I came from the West Coast. I’m a West Coast guy. I graduated from Berkeley in Northern California. So I spent a lot of time in San Francisco working in restaurants and I always loved restaurants. It was always a passion of mine all the way through college. It was my first job out of college. And it was something that I always thought I’d go back to. There was just a love there. There was a creative outlet there. But as with anything in life, your career kind of finds you. You don’t always find your career. So I jetted off into a completely different direction. And thankfully, it was a good one and it’s paid off. But coming full circle now, it’s been fantastic to kind of put my foot back into that little pond and use this as a creative outlet. I’m not a cook. I’m not a bartender. I’m not a server. This was strictly a… really a creative outlet business decision that we surrounded ourselves with some fantastic people and we’ve been very, very fortunate to kind of execute the mission. But anyway, that’s it in a nutshell. That’s the two minute version.

Jeff:

Well you have definitely involved some pretty amazing people. We’ll talk about the team as well. You mentioned kind of dabbling in the creative pond. The restaurant business is more like a boiling pot of water, isn’t it?

Jason:

Right.

Jeff:

I read that somewhere recently.

Jason:

Not for the weak.

Jeff:

No. No, that’s for sure. Well for listeners that haven’t been to Barrel & Fork, let me paint a little picture. The home was built… or the structure was a home that was built in 1906. It’s got a beautiful wrap around patio or porch where there tables set up as well. So there’s seating there. But when you walk in, you of course see the gorgeous bourbon bar that anchors the establishment. And you’re really kind of taking a spin back to the 1930s with the prohibition era, portraits of prohibition era icons and the décor and artwork from that period. You didn’t just wing this. A lot of thought went into how you were going to kind of… the theme that was going to surround this restaurant. What inspired you to go that direction?

Jason:

Honestly, the home is the inspiration. It was everything. And I don’t want to sound corny, like it spoke to me. But the reality was, as I said, Sarah and I would kind of bounce these ideas and these concepts off each other all the time. And nothing, I don’t think, ever inspired either one of us to think, oh yeah, this would be something that would be great. And when this came available and we started to talk a little bit more serious about it… I think what’s great about being in a relationship with your spouse and you’re both in business together is one is almost always going to play the devil’s advocate. So I’ve played that certainly with Sarah. And it’s not always good conversations and she can chime in on that. But she played that with me with Fork. When we were purchasing Fork, it was, “Well what are you going to do here?” And, “How you going to do this?” And, “You can’t cook and you certainly can’t run this day-to-day.”

Jason:

So the more and more I kept going back to the home, before we had actually decided to purchase it, the inspiration truly evolved. It wasn’t something that I thought of day one. It’s still evolving. But that house is generation… That house has seen two World Wars, it’s seen a depression, it’s seen a recession, it’s seen Kennedy be shot. It’s seen prohibition, as you mentioned. So I think what I tried to encompass in that house was I wanted you to kind of feel that when you walked in, that you were being transported into time, into not just 1906, but maybe 1906 or 1920 or 1945. And I think you get that with the music, with the black and white photos that we have throughout the building that symbolize everything from Billie Holiday’s 1930s jazz to Steve McQueen on the wall with his gun in a great 1970s shot. So it really transcends that.

Jason:

And that’s something that we talk about a lot with our staff, that this is, to me, a journey. And it may sound cliché, and again, maybe kind of corny. But I was big fan growing up… On the West Coast, we go to Disneyland. I know all you East Coasters, including my wife who’s from the East Coast, you go to Disney World. So I guess you know better than us. But we like… My favorite ride was the Pirates of the Caribbean. And I always felt like you were transported to a different time. It wasn’t a scary ride. It wasn’t anything that was a roller coaster ride. You just… It transported you. And you got off that ride and you wanted to get right back on. And that was a journey. And so when you walk into the restaurant, that’s kind of the exposure I want you to have.

Jason:

I want you to see the bar and see the fireplace that’s 120 years old and see Jade, our bartender, back there with some goofy hat on slinging a drink like he would in 1930s. A 12 layer ingredient drink that we make from scratch. Everything is made in-house. Nobody does that anymore. Nobody has that feel anymore, that vibe. The music is a carefully selected playlist. It’s not random. There’s songs from every era that’s in that playlist.

Jason:

So everything… I think we pay attention to a lot of the details because we want the guests to truly have that experience and that journey, and with a little Southern charm. Like you said, the porch, so crucial to that and the building. It’s not in a strip mall. This isn’t a downtown Charlotte metro restaurant. And I wouldn’t have opened that and I don’t think Sarah would have supported me in that decision. I think we both fell in love with the house and that’s what inspired us from there.

Jeff:

Yeah, I could see how that would happen. The house is… Well I mean, it’s beautiful. It’s an adorable place and there’s so much history there. I want to talk about… You mentioned Jade, the bar manager. And cocktail programs are so rare these days. I mean, there aren’t many establishments that have a true cocktail program. You guys are one of the few in the area that have a such… I mean, you really take cocktails to a whole… to a completely different level. How do you know Jade? How did you guys connect? Because he’s awesome. And Jade, for the listeners, he is libations guy and I’ll post a link to his Instagram feed as well in the show notes. But go ahead.

Jason:

Well and Sarah can certainly chime in on the fun times we have with Jade. He’s his own character. He’s his own guy. We were very, very fortunate. Everybody says it’s all about your people. But maybe more so than ever in this business, because I’m not there day-to-day. I truly am not. I probably stop in once a day, but I’m not really there day-to-day. So we had to find the right people that could execute the mission. And I think I sat with Jade for about five minutes and I was done. I didn’t need to talk to anybody else and I had talked to a lot of people. And it was just… There was a click. There was an energy. There was a vibe. And he understood everything that I was trying to do. And I knew he could execute that with an exceptional… He’s out of Chicago. He was in Asheville for a long time. He spent time in New York. His exposures and his experience and his age, I mean, he’s not… I’m not sure if he listens to this podcast. He’s not going to be mad at me telling you. He’s not 25. So he’s just been around. And his appreciation for glassware and the way a cocktail looks and the way it’s layered, it’s really a culinary experience from Jade. It’s a chemistry equation, not just a drink. And everything has its place and everything has its purpose.

Jason:

And again, I go back to… So many restaurants are… The new word is chef-driven. I hear that all the time. Oh, it’s a chef-driven restaurant, which I don’t quite understand. I feel like every restaurant at level’s chef-driven. But our restaurant is guest-driven 100%. We are trying to drive the guests through this journey, through this experience that I talked about. And again, I think such a big portion… When we walked into Fork, it had no bar. And I just knew that this was the conduit from A to Z, from getting on that ride and then going through the entire journey was making this bar something really, really special, unique, exhilarating. Energy, vibe, smells. He’s using [inaudible 00:14:48]. He’s using all these things. And Jade just immediately… I knew that he was the guy. And that’s hard to explain. But he just… Sometimes you meet somebody and you just… you know he’s going to do it. And he has. He’s been phenomenal.

Jeff:

He’s the only one I know of locally that’s doing a smoking old fashioned. And you guys actually use hickory wood chips, is that correct?

Jason:

Correct. Yeah. He’s an old soul. He wouldn’t do it if he couldn’t use hickory wood chips. He wouldn’t do it. He’d just move on to doing something else. He’s either going to do it… Like I said, all of the ingredients… I’m going to tell you, 98% of the ingredients, with the exception maybe of cranberries, which are really hard to squeeze if you’ve ever tried, we make in-house and he makes personally. So you just don’t find that. Most of it’s canned. We do our own soda in-house and tonic. And that’s Jade. He wants to do it right and he wants to do it from scratch so that he can control the measure of that chemistry, if that makes sense. He wants to control every flavor, every taste, every aroma. And you can’t control that when you’re using an outside source. Anyway.

Jeff:

There’s so much I want to talk about. I know we don’t have all day. But I wanted to… I had to ask you, is it considered a bourbon bar or a whiskey bar primarily? How would you describe the vibe in the bar area?

Jason:

I mean, yes. We have 256 bourbons and rye whiskey and scotch whiskey. So you can’t escape that that’s what it is, for sure. And I think that bourbon has become such a… It’s become so unique now and it’s such a different liquor than, let’s say, vodka or a different spirit or gin. Because of the aging process of bourbon, because of how delicate it is and how regulated bourbon it is. Believe it or not, it’s extremely regulated. You and I could make vodka in the garden today and we could drink it tonight. It takes at least four years for bourbon to be called bourbon. So there’s a uniqueness to it. And that adds again to what we want to be. We want those different flavors and those different tastes and those different options for our guests. So we get labeled a bourbon bar. But I don’t know if that’s the right… I’m not mad at you. If you want to call us a bourbon bar, I’m not angry.

Jeff:

Okay. Good.

Jason:

It’s just there’s so much more to that, right?

Jeff:

Yeah.

Jason:

There’s just so much more to that palate than just saying, “We’re a bourbon bar.” But we do love our bourbon. There’s nothing quite like it.

Jeff:

Well what’s not to love?

Jason:

Right, right.

Jeff:

Yeah Jade is a mixologist for sure. Just a craftsman when it comes to cocktails. So you’re absolutely right. I mean, obviously there’s so much more there to the bar program. I want to talk about the team. I had the pleasure of meeting your executive chef, Justin Morris. Tell the listeners a little bit about Justin.

Jason:

You want to chime in on this one Sarah? You’re a big Justin fan.

Sarah:

Sure. Justin we met… I know Jay was interviewing a lot and just kind of putting some feelers out there and, like he said, there wasn’t an exact concept and an exact idea. It was kind of seeing what the community needed, what they wanted, and what talent was out there and kind of putting it all together. I can’t remember if it was the second or third interview that he had done and he asked me to go to this one. And I’m like, “I make simple stuff.” I’m like, “It’s been a 14 hour day. The last thing I want to do is go to another restaurant and have a drink and talk to some guy about food.” So we met with him and it was instant. And my favorite thing about him was how calm he was.

Jason:

Yeah.

Sarah:

You know that reputation of a kitchen is 100%. It’s angry. It’s loud. You got to keep up. It’s hustle, hustle, hustle. And you don’t mess with the chef. You don’t mess with the sous-chefs. You stay out of the way. The servers are kind of the annoying ones back there. And he just had this energy that was different. And his experience was very neat, because it was in an almost exact replica situation house-wise that we had found back in his hometown. So the space, kind of the energy, the year the home was built, there were a lot of similarities that just happened to be the same, which was very neat. And then when he started talking about basically where he was in his career and what he was looking to do, and then his specialties, it all just made so much sense. He was the perfect fit. The energy, the food, the experience. And where he truly wanted to be and wanted to grow and that we could give him that space to do that was very important. So he was just perfect.

Jason:

And we had really come to a crossroads with the purchase of this restaurant. Sarah’s right. I dragged her. I made her go with me that night. And it was late. She worked all day. But we were at a crossroads where I had to make a decision if I was going to buy it or not, and I knew I couldn’t cook. So if I didn’t somebody that fit that bill, then we were going to pass. As much as I love the space and as much as I was excited about doing something unique there for the community that I thought we could really bring, we really needed to find the right guy. And both Sarah and I drove home that night and were just… We were blown away. At his age, he’s super young, hungry, excited, creative. We just thought, man, how did we hit that home run? How did we get that lucky to sit with that guy tonight? He’s just exactly what we wanted. Moldable, coachable, and wanted to come along for the ride. And where do you find that? So it was great.

Jeff:

Especially with that kind of talent. And Sarah, you mentioned his calm demeanor. That was one thing that struck me when I met him, how calm he was. I have early on, probably the first half of my career in adulthood was spent in the hospitality business, both in golf hotels and restaurants, and I know the stereotypical chef, executive chef, personality and the atmosphere of a busy kitchen. So his demeanor definitely pleasantly surprised me. Just a super cool guy. Yeah. And obviously, it goes without saying, the food is exceptional. What he was able to do with… My wife ordered the halibut. It was phenomenal. What was he was able to do with just some simple ingredients, it’s amazing. And she’s picky when it comes to her seafood. So home run there. Really well done.

Jeff:

Met Eric Carter, the master of smiles. I can see why he seemed so adored in the community and of course there at Barrel & Fork. What an awesome, awesome guy. Tell me about Eric.

Jason:

So Eric worked for me prior to Barrel & Fork in a different capacity. And when I started talking to Sarah about potentially buying this place, she looked right at me and said, “There is no way you have enough time in your day to run a full service restaurant. So now what?” And again, I think that’s the great yin and yang about a husband and wife team. She’s going to call you out. And I don’t always like it and I get mad sometimes. And then I think, okay. She’s right.

Jason:

But I came home one night and said, “I have the guy and he’s worked for me for a while.” And his background was wine and he had some restaurant experience in his background, but hadn’t been in the restaurant business forever, but that was okay. Again, this was about… I didn’t need him to have the business acumen to run this business. I could do that. I needed the guy to be the face of the restaurant and again, execute this guest-driven vision. And I’d met a lot of people over my lifetime and in career and Eric is just one of those guys that’s so unique. Outgoing, energetic, the single most positive guy you’ll ever meet. He will find something positive in everything, period. I mean, sometimes it’s-

Sarah:

A flaw sometimes.

Jason:

It’s a flaw. Yeah. Sometimes you’re like, “Eric, it’s not a good thing. This pandemic is not a good thing.” But that’s what makes Eric great, and that’s why the staff gets behind him and that’s why these guys will run through the wall for him. It was early on that I knew, I don’t have to be there. He’s got this. And he’s going to deliver that message and he’s going to create relationships. And I mean, I feel like sometimes restaurants lose that, especially big chain restaurants that are great… They have great food and they make tons of money and they have this great five million dollar restaurants. But they lose the connection. They got eight managers, all these different people running around.

Jason:

And we’re a small little community here. Cornelius, Davidson, Huntersville, this whole little Lake Norman area. And it’s 100% of our relationships. It’s not about the food. It’s not about the bar. It’s not about the house. It’s about creating these relationships. And when you talk about Jade and you talk about Justin and you talk about Eric, the one thing that they all have in common is they all build incredible relationships with our guests, every one of them. Jade has a following like no other. All of our regulars know Justin and go in and will stop in the kitchen and say hi and talk to him for a few minutes. That’s what we’re creating. It’s not just about the food and again, the atmosphere, whatever. Those are all great consequences of what we do, but these guys are relationship builders and Eric is probably the best.

Jeff:

Yeah. Yeah. He’s an amazing guy. It was just so enjoyable meeting him. We really enjoyed our conversation with Eric. Sarah, you run… So you have longer history in the restaurant business than Jason. I know that you run restaurants with four locations in the area. How do you guys balance this workload? Is it building teams? How do you do that?

Sarah:

It’s a learning process. There’s no set formula. Jason and I do not have any children together. Jason has two sons that are now both in college. The one we moved to college and then COVID happened and then he moved back. And then we moved him again.

Jeff:

Yeah. Yeah. I get it. Trust me.

Sarah:

We do have… And I hate to say that it’s an advantage, but we have our careers and what we do every day and the relationships, we have work families more than we have a full house. At this point, Jason and I just have each other in our home and our dog that’s 13-years-old and lays around all day. So we have that flexibility and that freedom to build the relationships with our team. And I think that that has given us the time and the energy to do that in our businesses versus our household.

Sarah:

Personally, we get to see each other, I feel, I lot more now than we did. COVID has definitely changed the dynamic of a lot of things. And we do have more time together in the evenings and Sunday especially. Sunday’s kind of our days where we make the time for each other. But we grew very quickly at the beginning of 2020. And so when we kind of had it down and then we get in a routine, and then we would bounce everything and go on trips and do fun things together. And then we’re like, “Oh, we’re a little bored, because we get to leave now. Let’s do something else.” So then we would grow and then we’re like, “Oh, wait. That’s not enough. We have seven hours of sleep now. Let’s do something else.”

Sarah:

Jason and I both have that personality where I don’t know if we’ll ever retire. I don’t know if we’ll ever… We just enjoy being busy and we enjoy being around other people. And we do have time together in the evenings and on the weekends. We’re both just kind of go, go, go. So for us, that’s enough time for us. I think more time we might not get along as well. We have a great balance.

Jeff:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s important. And obviously, you have so much passion for not only Barrel & Fork, but the other enterprises you’re involved in as well. So that definitely helps when it comes to those long work days and seven day work weeks. It helps when you just love what you’re building and what you’re putting together.

Jeff:

I do want to mention one other team member and that was our server, Mackenzie. I normally don’t need a lot of help with the menu, so I was good there. But she was able to turn this bourbon guy onto an Irish whiskey, which I thought would never happen. But the… Oh, what was it called? Dead Rabbit?

Jason:

[inaudible 00:29:15]?

Jeff:

Yeah. I’ll be searching for that very soon. And then when it came time to pick a wine, she helped me select one that I absolutely loved. And since our visit, I’ve actually found that bottle locally. So I’ve got a bottle of it at home now. But just kudos to her. She’s just an exceptional server.

Jason:

She’s great.

Jeff:

Extremely professional and-

Jason:

She is the only server on our staff that we carried over.

Sarah:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Jason:

And not necessarily purposefully. We had a few stay. But our business model was completely different than Fork, completely different. Really a 180, 360, whatever you want to call it. And she was one that just fit. She was the square peg in the square peg. And everybody else, I think, was still trying to live in the past. And she’s just kind of has that same… I mean, for her age, as young as she is, her wine knowledge, her bourbon knowledge. She bar tends for us on our brunch. And she was an easy fit. Really quickly we knew we had an untapped talent that I think was being suppressed, and like I said, she’s the only one that’s carried through. And she’s phenomenal.

Sarah:

She was also, when we took over, literally two weeks out from having her baby. And she stayed every single day up until the day she had her baby and helped us transfer over all the back end stuff, all the register systems and the new menu and truly stuff that we kind of walked in blind to. When you take over something, you don’t know a lot of times what you’re walking into. And she stayed, no matter how pregnant she was or how tired she was, and she helped us. And she certainly never had to do that. So from the beginning, she certainly showed us the type of person and worker she was.

Jeff:

Yeah. Well just outstanding. We really enjoyed having her as our server. Take me through the rooms in the restaurant. The main room behind the bar. I’ve got a couple of favorites. I think that one’s called the Capone?

Jason:

That is. That is. So the first room when you walk into your left, right before the wine room there underneath the staircase, is Ness. They’re all old… What am I looking for? Criminals. They’re all fugitives. So it’s Ness, Bugsy, and Capone are the three rooms. And I don’t know how we came up with those. I think that was an Eric deal. But they each have unique characteristics and they’re all a little different. And we continue… Each room kind of continues to evolve. Still to this day, I’m always looking at it and thinking, well we could tweak this and change that and give it a little bit more of this type of appeal. But I like most of the rooms for their simplicity. Bugsy, it’s got probably 20 pictures of fugitives on there.

Jeff:

Is that the one with the red and white walls?

Jason:

Yep. Yeah.

Jeff:

That’s my other favorite room. That was a cool room.

Jason:

So that one had a… That’s got a little bit of a gangster tinge to it and that’s kind of a fun room. But every time I walk through the house, what’s crazy about that house is there’s not a lot of square footage and there’s not a lot of… We’re constantly complaining about space. But every time I walk through, and I mean every time, I find something else that I think, man we could do this or we could tweak this or this would be unique. This would be neat. It just has so much to offer that we’re just kind of touching the surface and having fun with it. It’s just a neat place.

Jeff:

One last thing about our experience there and then we’ll move on. My wife and I typically will go out to dinner obviously for special occasions, like most families do. And we have always selected restaurants Uptown. And we looked at each other during our experience there at Barrel & Fork and just kind of almost at the same time said, “There’s no need for us to go Uptown anymore.” Like we just really love the restaurant and I could see Barrel & Fork as a destination for folks who live Uptown to come to Lake Norman for a really exceptional meal and a really amazing atmosphere. So I just had to throw that in there. Obviously, our experience was just awesome. We can’t wait to go back.

Jason:

I appreciate that. I think that’s one of things Sarah and I talked about when we first started to kind of map it out. And I would talk out loud to her and that was… We wanted to create exactly what your experience was. We didn’t want you to have to Uber to Charlotte and have good cocktails there and then come back home, if you lived at the lake. We wanted to try and create that here so that you could stay close to home, so you could have that experience and on a whim, you could run out to a great restaurant.

Jason:

Sarah and I have lived here for going on almost five years. And quite frankly, as good as Charlotte is and as much as it has to offer, it pains us to go down there and make the drive and battle 77 and all of those things. We’re kind of homebodies. We work a lot and we don’t want to do that and we wanted to have that type of… create that type of place for those that are similar to us.

Jeff:

Absolutely. Yeah. Well I think you’ve accomplished that. Really well done. Moving on, I always ask this question of my guests. And Sarah, I don’t know if you saw the topics that I sent to Jason or not. So you may not have some ideas off the top of your head. But I usually ask my guests to mention a few local small businesses that they’d like to give a shout out to. Or in particular, often they’re businesses that have been very helpful to you during 2020. And speaking of 2020, we’ll circle back around to the COVID topic here in just a second. But were you able to think of a couple businesses that you wanted to kind of give a shout out too?

Sarah:

Definitely. This year has changed a lot of things in how we do business and who we’re still able to do business with. One of the stores that I run is directly next to a printing and marketing store. It’s AlphaGraphics, which is locally owned and franchised in Cornelius. And I had used them with the other store, but we had kind of used them on a one-off business. But they… I can’t tell you how many times there were menu edits or just the shuffle and the craziness obviously, when things went from normal to curbside only.

Sarah:

I don’t think… People that aren’t in the business don’t realize how quickly you had to change to relevant and to adapt and to survive. And a lot of that was menu changes and food changes and things like that. And all that has to be printed and then there’s the no touching and the no… Just so many things collaterally and marketing-wise in our spaces had to be changed, and they had to be changed very quickly. And AlphaGraphics was done same day. The crew over there, they treat us so well. You walk in and they stop everything they’re doing and they’re like, “What do you need? You need a logo? Your car? Is it outside? I’ll do it right now. You need to print your menu? I’ll do it right now.” And for what? We don’t spend tons and tons of money with them. We run over there, usually in an emergency situation. So they probably don’t like seeing us. But we’re very grateful. They are just phenomenal.

Sarah:

And I’d always thought AlphaGraphics was like a chain or an OfficeMax or something. I’d always kind of lumped them all together until we started utilizing them next to us at our other restaurant. And they are very small and local and personal and it’s amazing. They’ve helped us so much.

Jeff:

Excellent.

Jason:

Yeah I want to… Actually, this was on a previous podcast of yours that I haven’t listened to. And I was just so happy to hear her name listed. And I know we’re about to talk about COVID, which I think is an important topic. But restaurants were crushed during that time as ours, as a lot of industries. And Rhonda Washington cuts my hair. And who was more affected than… And let me tell you, Sarah knows, my hair’s very important to me.

Sarah:

You haven’t seen her lately. I can tell.

Jason:

Yeah. Yeah. I know. It’s getting a little long right now. But she’s Salons by JC, which is in… I think it’s actually Huntersville.

Jeff:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jason:

Her little company is Ambassador Hair Salon. And of course, she was out of business for three months, basically. And you think my hair’s long now, you should have seen it then. It was extremely long. I looked hippyish. But just the nicest… She only cuts men’s hair, which is pretty rare, I think, for a female. But I met her four years ago and I have followed her now. She’s finally opened up her own business and she did it right before the pandemic. And I felt so bad, because I thought, man she’d been with a corporate deal for a long time and actually ran their salon. And then she branched out on her own and I followed her, and then the pandemic hit and she was closed down. But you just won’t find anyone more genuine, nicer, small business owner just trying to survive. And every time I go in there… I get my hair cut and I like to kind of be silent. I’m not a big talker. I really just kind of zone out. That’s kind of a nice time for me to not deal with anything in life. And she just puts a smile on my face every time I’m there. She’s just fantastic. So I’ll give her a little shout out.

Jeff:

I appreciate that. Todd Hirschfeld was the guest that mentioned her.

Jason:

Yeah, okay.

Jeff:

Yeah. Yeah. I’ll definitely… I need to reach out to her sometime soon.

Jason:

She’s pretty shy. She may not talk to you. But she is [inaudible 00:39:51].

Jeff:

Anyone else?

Jason:

You know, Sarah I think mentioned a really good one. I think a lot of our vendors… Orrman’s Cheese Shop in Uptown. They’re fantastic. They’ve gone through a lot of pain as well, as we all have. But we get our cheeses from them. All of our fresh cheeses for our cheese boards come from them. And they’ve been just really, really responsive in really, really tough times. And so that’s just one. She runs a little cheese shop downtown by NASCAR Hall of Fame… or Uptown, excuse me, up in that area. I think it’s on 7th street. Somewhere down there. But it’s Orrman’s, O-R-R-M-A-N-S Cheese Shop. Great cheeses great honeys, great jams, all local. She’s a cheese whizz, no pun intended. She is just a guru. They’re fantastic. I know that’s not Lake Norman business so that’s why I was a little cautious to mention, but they’re just fantastic.

Jeff:

Oh yeah, that’s perfectly fine. Yeah. No problem. Yeah. I appreciate that. Well we glossed over COVID. We probably shouldn’t. Let’s take just a minute or two. I’m sure the impact is obvious on your businesses. Sarah, you’re running four. Jason, you’re running Barrel & Fork, five restaurants in the family, in the enterprise. In a nutshell, what’s it been like? Give me some highs and lows of business during 2020.

Jason:

Well… and Sarah, you can chime in, I think it’s been different. From our Clean Eatz businesses to Barrel & Fork, it’s definitely been a different dynamic. We shut down for two and a half months. We did curbside, which is really tough to pivot, as you can imagine. You’re an executive chef who’s now making burgers and chicken sandwiches so that we can accommodate at a curbside level. That was really difficult.

Jason:

I think that I hear a lot of people, especially restaurants I’m talking about, that they’ve come out… or other businesses that have come out stronger. I certainly think that in… Good times create bad habits. So things are going great, you forget about… Maybe you’re not running as lean as you should. Maybe you’re not paying as much attention to your guests. I certainly think that COVID or a recession, which was really what this was, in a sense, to us, made us better in some ways. We came out of it better. We came out of it leaner. We came out of it more focused. I don’t ever want to put a good spin on COVID. I don’t think that’s appropriate.

Jason:

I think that the biggest thing for me, and I know Sarah’s struggled with this a lot with the Fork, that our consumers don’t sometimes understand and that is it wasn’t just the restaurant that closed. The supply chain logistics behind restaurants shut down. So your farmers shut down. So there was no produce. There was no proteins. There was no truck drivers. So even when we reopened, to turn that machine back on, still to this day, has been really, really difficult. And it’s driven up pricing. Supply and demand has gone completely different than what it was prior to the pandemic. And so restaurants, specifically I can speak to them, there were so many industries that were affected.

Jason:

Even though I think we’ve come out on top, we’re still there, and a lot of restaurants didn’t make it, sadly. We still struggle to this day to kind of mix this 50% capacity and these minimum purchases that we have to get from our vendors. And then again, those guys firing up the logistics behind it. It’s really, really tough and I just hope that… Sometimes I think we forget that as a consumer. This isn’t just specific to restaurants.

Jason:

I think we’ve kind of come out of this a little bit and we’re forgetting where we were four or five months ago. And a lot of these businesses, although they’re reopened, regardless of the industry, they may not be at 80% or 70% or even 50%. A lot of the restaurants that I know could not bring back personnel. The personnel left, went elsewhere to find jobs. They’re still seeking and hiring and trying to get people to replace. But the consumer comes in and expects the same experience, which we’re trying to deliver, I think, at every turn. But it’s not quite as easy to execute as it was pre-pandemic. So those are those tweaks that I think all businesses are going through right now. They’re tough.

Jeff:

Yeah the supply chain, it’s really the behind the scenes challenges that the consumer doesn’t see. And it’s really the supply chain has affected every industry. And I don’t think that… Obviously, we know it’s affected automotive and recreational vehicles and appliances. And we’re not so quick to realize that it’s also really affected the restaurant business as well, the restaurant industry. And yeah, being a fine dining establishment, the menu, your core menu, probably doesn’t travel super well. Like most fine dining restaurants, your primary asset is the dining room. You’re not set up to maximize to-go orders, so the menu had to change, I’m sure. It was probably night and day.

Jeff:

Now the Clean Eatz, for listeners that don’t know, Sarah and Jason… Sarah runs their four Clean Eatz locations. So Clean Eatz does travel well. But I’m sure Clean Eatz had its own challenges as well. And I don’t want to dive into that, because I’m hoping Sarah, actually, that I can get you back in a future episode and we can talk all about Clean Eatz, because we could spend another… an entire episode on that as well. But what were some of the highs and lows that you saw this year, Sarah?

Sarah:

You know for us, it was… I mean, it’s never great timing, obviously, for something like this to ever happen. But for us, we grew from one store to four stores about eight weeks before COVID hit. So it was a very quick growth and we had already kind of taken the risk knowing that it was first quarter, which was our big quarter. So we felt like it’s already a risk to do this all at one time and to try and figure it out. But we’ll be okay, because it’s our busy time. And eight weeks later, it was no longer that.

Sarah:

The saddest part was employing all the people that we employed with those stores. I had almost 60 employees for four stores. And we were training and developing and spending so much time trying to get our team to mimic what we had built at the first store to all stores. And just when you get to that point where everyone’s kind of trained and everyone’s ready to go, I had to let go of literally 70% of them.

Sarah:

So there is a big misconception too, because of the type of business it was and that it was almost a grocery store, a lot of people would come in and be like, “Oh man, you guys are killing it, aren’t you?” And we were like, “No.” People just don’t… No one felt safe and that’s still a lot of times the case. So everything is shut down and everything’s at a halt. And like Jay said, the vendors… We lost one of our largest beef vendors that the company’s had for 11 years. So what’s in 60% of our staple items on our menu is overnight no longer available. Again, drivers are not driving and suppliers aren’t allowed to enter but so many times a month. And it was a very big change that obviously no one could prepare for.

Sarah:

And obviously the risk too. Do you stay open? Do you put your employees and yourself at risk? I was traveling and had several territorial employees that were traveling to multiple stores, and we had to completely change people’s positions and pay and responsibilities, because we didn’t want them to get sick and then be in several kitchens. So it was just keeping the consumer safe and keeping our staff safe was extremely important. So we’ve hunkered down and we’ve done the best we can with what we have, and all of our roles are different. That’s like what Jason’s saying, that a chef doesn’t want to flip burgers and package up meals, but unfortunately, that’s your job now. And that’s the constant motivational talk we have to have with our staff is I’m getting up at four o’clock in the morning and I’m making rice. I run four restaurants, but my job at 5:00 AM is make 100 pounds of rice. It is what it is.

Sarah:

We’re very lucky to be open. We’re very lucky to be healthy. We’re very lucky to be serving our community. So yes, it’s not great. And no, you can’t go on vacation, which all of my staff members… They’re all younger and, “Oh, we can’t go on vacation. We can’t take time off.” It’s just kind of roping everybody in and just saying there’s a lot of things that it could be worse. And we’re very, very, very lucky. So it’s definitely changing perceptive and it’s made us focus a lot on customers, and not letting them see the behind the scene challenges that we do have every day.

Jeff:

Yeah. For sure. You brought up beef. God. Beef was impossible to find in March, April, May. I mean, crazy. I couldn’t even get grass-fed from a farm. It was insane.

Sarah:

No. You can’t control it.

Jeff:

Right. Well who’s the reader in the family? Are you both readers? Are you both not readers? Who consumes the most-

Sarah:

Jason is the reader.

Jeff:

Jason’s the reader? Okay.

Sarah:

We called each other before this and I was like, “Yeah, I haven’t read a book in 20 years. You’re going to have to answer.” I’m like, “[inaudible 00:50:38], but-“

Jason:

I like reading, but reading is time consuming and it’s difficult to fit in. So I probably mix reading with… I love audio books, because I can be in my car driving somewhere and consume it in a different way. It’s not as cool as reading, to me, because I just don’t comprehend it quite as much. But the last two books that I’ve read that I really enjoyed that probably fit the bill for what you’re looking for is about… It’s probably been a year, year and a half, I read a book called Relentless by Tim Grover. And he was really the mental coach for Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, guys like that. This is the guy that they would literally text at two in the morning and say, “I’m feeling down.” And believe it or not, a Kobe Bryant or a Michael Jordan wasn’t always on top of their game. And this guy would kind of coach them back and tell them, “This is why you’re great and this is how you get to be great. And this is the difference between good and great.”

Jason:

And it really does kind of refocus your mindset when you’re talking about, especially in our business. There’s a lot of good restaurants. There’s not a lot of great restaurants. And so we’re always, always trying to achieve that. I consistently tell Eric, “Stop telling me the good reviews. I really don’t want to read a good review. I only want to read the bad ones, because I really believe the only way we’re going to get better is to solve the bad ones. I love the good ones. There’s nothing wrong with it. But you can read those. I just want to know all the bad ones.” And then maybe my favorite book that I’ve read in a long, long time is a book called Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss.

Jeff:

Yeah.

Jason:

And if you know that book, yeah, the ex-FBI international negotiator. Just such a cool book, the way he takes life and business, and there’s the negotiation side of life and business, when you negotiate with your wife or you negotiate with your business partner, and then was able to use his history as a hostage negotiator and kind of play that out in the book. To me, it kept my attention and it’s hard to do, to keep my attention. And that book was fantastic and I thought it really, really was good. So those are the two probably that I liked most over the last five years.

Jeff:

I’ll have to check out Relentless. I consume all my books through audio. Again, I would love to have time to sit down in a quiet room and read a book. It just hasn’t… That’s just not going to happen.

Jason:

No.

Jeff:

So I haven’t to do that in a long time. So yeah, like you, when driving or traveling or working in a situation where I don’t need to be listening to anybody, I’ll put the earbuds in and listen to a audio book. I love my Audible subscription. Never Split the Difference, Voss… I heard him. He’s such an amazing speaker. If you ever get a chance to listen to one of his keynotes or take any of his training, he’s such a killer speaker and the stories… His stories are amazing.

Jason:

They’re true.

Jeff:

Yeah.

Jason:

Yeah. True.

Jeff:

Even just off duty stuff like talking an angry guy down out of a fight at a bar. It’s just like… Yeah, he’s cool. Yeah. I’ll have links to both of those in the show notes. And yeah, I mean, if you’re looking for a bad review, you’re not going to get one here.

Jason:

I appreciate it.

Jeff:

Our review was Barrel & Fork is just couldn’t be better. So Jason, Sarah, is there a message before we close this interview or this conversation? Is there a message at all that you’d like to share with your guests or the community, before we close things out?

Jason:

This may sound super corny, but I do feel like we talked about the pandemic and what it’s done to the restaurant and all small businesses, but this is really a time to be kind. And this doesn’t have anything to do with Barrel & Fork. Sarah and I often… We talk about reviews, too. So this kind of ties into that. We’ll go down a rabbit hole and read reviews on other restaurants and other businesses. And we see… There was one I read the other day and it 150 comments on this review. And 50% of it was bad and 50% of it was good. And I just kind of thought, I don’t know if this is the time, with everything that we’re going through in this country, whether it’s politics or the pandemic… This is a time like your grandmother always said, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it at all.”

Jason:

This is a time to be kind. If you don’t like a restaurant, if you don’t like your bartender, if you don’t like your barber shop, if you don’t like your grocery store, I would tell you and suggest you don’t go again. But I’m not sure that social media and exorcizing that in the public right now… Is that appropriate?

Jason:

I really felt bad for this restaurant that was just taking it on the chin, and it’s a very well respected restaurant by a well respected chef and owner. We talked about, again, the logistics behind the scene right now. It’s really, really tough to run a business, not just a restaurant. I felt bad for so many industries that have been affected by this. We just need a little room and maybe a little bit of leniency right now as we all get through trying to rework a business model that none of us had planned for eight months ago. And that doesn’t have anything to do with us specifically, just maybe in general. And maybe that’s me on a soapbox. But that’s all I got.

Jeff:

I think that’s really well said. Sarah, do you concur?

Sarah:

I do. I mean, we definitely… We look at a lot of things on social media today and the support that we’ve received, we are very lucky. We have great base customers. We have great referrals. And we’re very thankful and appreciative that we’ve been able to keep afloat and to keep open and to keep the staff employed that we have, and to stay relevant during this time, because it’s very sad to see how many restaurants, how many very established restaurants and businesses have not survived. So with that being said, and the amount of people that are under extreme stress and there’s just so much stress and so much just feeling hopelessness that’s happening right now. And people are taking that out on social media in a lot of ways. So just kind of maybe thinking you’ll influence before you make those decisions.

Sarah:

A big thing with Jason and I too in any business that we have is if we know that it is wrong and we know you aren’t happy, we will make it right, 100% all the time. So to give us that opportunity to make it right before maybe the bad review or anything like that. And to our fellow businesses in the community that are also still trying to survive, give them the opportunity to make it right first. But we’re very appreciative of our community and of your time to give us exposure. We’re very, very lucky for sure.

Jeff:

Really, really well said. And yeah, now is… We could definitely use more kindness in our day-to-day lives, probably now more than ever. So that’s really well said. I couldn’t agree more. Well I’m going to close this conversation. I just want to say thank you to both of you so much for taking time. I know you have extremely busy schedules and this is not a worldwide podcast. Joe Rogan I am not. But I’m really looking forward to sharing your story with the audience, and sharing the experience that I’ve had a Barrel & Fork with the audience as well. So I just want to thank you both so much for your time.

Jason:

Well we appreciate it. Again, I think Sarah’s right on with the exposure that you’re giving to the community here at the lake is fantastic. So you don’t need to be Joe Rogan. That’s fantastic. We really, really appreciate it.

Jeff:

Well thank you. Listeners, the restaurant is Barrel & Fork in Cornelius. Owners Jason and Sarah, thanks again for joining the podcast.

Jason:

Thank you.

Sarah:

Thank you.

Jeff:

Well there you have it. Obviously, I am a big fan of Barrel & Fork. Thanks Jason and Sarah for taking the time for this interview, for joining the podcast. I really enjoyed the conversation and look forward to getting back to Barrel & Fork again soon. Friends, you can learn more about Barrel & Fork at BarrelandFork.com. And they’re in Cornelius just on Main Street. I recommend calling ahead, making reservations, and getting over there as soon as you can. It is awesome.

Jeff:

Thanks again to our sponsor HempLily, also located in Cornelius. You can shop in their boutique on Catawba Avenue or shop online at HempLily.com. Either way, be sure to mention the podcast and use code LKN15 for 15% off your purchase.

Jeff:

As always, all the links we discussed for Barrel & Fork and our sponsor HempLily and all of the other small businesses and books that we mentioned will be in the show notes at www.TheBestofLKN.com as well as a full transcript of this episode. So until next time friends, keep loving on your favorite small businesses. I’ll be back soon with another episode. Bye for now.

Outro:

We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of The Best of LKN. For more information about this podcast, show notes, video episodes and links to our featured businesses, please visit www.TheBestofLKN.com. We publish episodes weekly, so be sure to subscribe and stay up to date. Until next time, cheers Lake Norman.