.jpg)
The meez Podcast
Josh Sharkey (Entrepreneur, professional chef, and founder/CEO of meez, the culinaryOS for food professionals) interviews world class entrepreneurs in the food space that are shifting the paradigm of how we innovate and operate in our industry.
The meez Podcast
Chef Opie Crooks on Building FARM Hospitality Group and Preparing for Fatherhood
#77. In this episode of The meez Podcast, host Josh Sharkey sits down with Chef Opie Crooks, a culinary talent and soon-to-be dad. Josh shares the story of how he first met Opie at an event in Washington, D.C., where Opie's graciousness and exceptional cooking left a lasting impression. Now based in Savannah, Georgia, Opie oversees culinary operations for FARM Hospitality Group, managing multiple concepts with his characteristic warmth and expertise.
Recorded from the quietest spot Opie could find—a car, away from the restaurant’s generators—this conversation offers an insightful look into the challenges and rewards of growing a hospitality group. Opie discusses his role as a culinary director, emphasizing the importance of supporting and nurturing the chefs he works with, ensuring their success and innovation.
Join Josh and Opie as they catch up on life, leadership, and the journey that has brought Opie to this exciting moment, just before he embarks on the new adventure of fatherhood. Congratulations, Opie!
Where to find Opie Crooks:
Where to find host Josh Sharkey:
In this episode, we cover:
(03:45): Opie's background
(05:19): Culinary community in Savannah
(12:56): All about FARM Hospitality Group
(19:38): How Opie and his team continue to learn
(25:11): The value of culinary consistency
(31:50): How Opie and his wife Annie are preparing for their first child
[00:00:00] Josh Sharkey:
You're listening to Season 2 of The meez Podcast. I'm your host Josh Sharkey, the founder and CEO of meez, a culinary operating system for food professionals. On the show, we're going to talk to high performers in the food business, everything from chefs to CEOs, technologists, writers, investors, and more about how they innovate and operate and how they consistently execute at a high level.
[00:00:24]
And I would really love it if you could drop us a five star review anywhere that you listen to your podcast. That could be Apple, that could be Spotify, could be Google. I'm not picky, anywhere works, but I really appreciate the support. And as always, I hope you enjoy the show. Hey, ladies and gentlemen, today's guest, if I time this right, is literally having a baby this week.
[00:00:50]
We're trying to time it so that he can listen to this episode and maybe watch it before he was a dad and then after. This is chef Opie Crooks and he's one of the nicest people you'll meet. You know, the first time that I met Opie, we were doing an event. in DC at the lion hotel and I was sponsoring a breakfast and he was cooking it and first of all his food was delicious but he was hosting a bunch of incredible chefs from around the country for this event and he couldn't have been more gracious with his kitchen with his space with his time and right away i was like man this is just such a just a class act kind of person He has since moved down south to Savannah, Georgia and he is overseeing culinary for a hospitality group called FARM Hospitality Group.
[00:01:38]
They have a number of really great concepts and well, you know, we did spend some time just kind of generally catching up. Funny enough, he was in his car for this conversation because, well, you know, what it's like running a restaurant and finding space for some quiet that doesn't have generators and condensers running.
[00:01:58]
So I was appreciative of that. And anyway, we just had a good time catching up. We talked a lot about what it's like growing a hospitality group and becoming the culinary director and starting to sort of manage all of these chefs and making sure that the metric of success for yourself is high. how successful and happy and productive and innovative the chefs that work with you are.
[00:02:17]
So it was great to hear his story and just sort of his trajectory of how he's gotten to where he is. I think you'll just enjoy, of course, relating to that. And I'm just really grateful to have had the time with Opie before he became a dad because he'll probably not have a lot of time for the next few months.
[00:02:33]
Anyways, thanks Opie. Congratulations. And I hope that everybody here enjoys this episode as much as I did. Good to see you, man. What are you up to today?
[00:02:49] Opie Crooks:
Today, I'm over at our new bakery slash supper club Flora and Fauna. Got here in the morning, checked in on breakfast, had a meeting with Jeff Brandon, who's the, uh, owner, founder of the group that I'm a partner in. Had a quick catch up and now I'm talking to you and then I'll be working service tonight and we're going to knock it out.
[00:03:09]
And then all of our restaurants are closed for the 4th of July. Oh, that's super nice. And everybody's looking forward to a little reprieve. So
[00:03:16] Josh Sharkey:
Nice, man. Well, I do have a bunch of questions about FARM Hospitality group because we couldn't find a ton of information on it, but I'm going to ask you a bunch about that, but you know, just because we've met in person a few times and chatted a bunch, I just want this opportunity selfishly to just learn more about your background.
[00:03:33]
I know like your cooking background, because you can just Google that and find where you worked for spike for a long time. Who's that for like Like, how did you, how did you get into all this? Like, I don't know any of that.
[00:03:45] Opie Crooks:
Yeah, I, I grew up in Nashville, started working in restaurants when I was a kid and, and fell in love with it.
[00:03:51]
And, you know, I realized that the, uh, chances of me playing professional sports were, uh, few and far between. So it was like, I took that same kind of tenacity that I had for sports and translated in the kitchen and, you know, just started trying to work at the best places that I could and, you know, the rest is kind of history, you know, just head down and, you know, honing the craft is kind of what I was always chasing and just trying to do. I was a big baseball player.
[00:04:22] Josh Sharkey:
Gotcha.
[00:04:23] Opie Crooks:
Still play? No, I've never, I don't even really watch it except for the Savannah Bananas. You know, what's that? So the Savannah Bananas is the local baseball team. It's more of a show than it is baseball. Now they have their own, like they call it banana ball, but there's like lots of singing and dancing and it's like a real showmanship situation.
[00:04:47]
It's pretty amazing to watch.
[00:04:50] Josh Sharkey:
It sounds kind of likethe Harlem Globetrotters of Savannah. Exactly.
[00:04:52] Opie Crooks:
It's the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball. Exactly. Exactly. You know, like people will do like trick plays, like they'll hit a ball to the outfield and the guy will do a backflip before he catches it.
[00:05:03] Josh Sharkey:
That's pretty fun.
[00:05:04] Opie Crooks:
Yeah.
[00:05:05] Josh Sharkey:
I met you in DC. You were at the, uh, Rake's Progress, the Lime Hotel. Right. So obviously Nashville, DC, I think you obviously bounce around some more as well, but I'm curious about the Savannah, like scene, like what is the culinary? Community, like in Savannah,
[00:05:19] Opie Crooks:
It's really good. It's a really tight knit community. You know, I think that the restaurant scene is really growing. I think that there's a lot of really good chefs that came from major markets. Andrew Brochure opened up bro shoes, family tradition. You know, he came from the Alinea group, you know, Kyle Jacovino has the Toria pizza, which is right next door to Flora and Fauna
[00:05:38]
He worked. You know, for Hugh Atchison for a long time, you know, Chris Hathcock, he goes by Chino, you know, worked with Ryan Smith at Empire State South and, you know, he worked for Sean and he was the chef at Huss for a long time. So there's also more chefs that I'm probably leaving out. You know, Brandon, who's the chef and founder of our group was with the Ritz Carlton for a really long time.
[00:06:02]
You know, in Naples and, you know, a lot of the like really old school, you know, hardcore kind of French style, Ritz Carlton dining room areas. So there's a lot of energy in Savannah. You know, it's like Charleston was a few years ago. I'm imagining I wasn't there, but that's what I've been told. And, you know, it's just really fun.
[00:06:20]
And, you know, it's not as cutthroat as a DC as I would say, like chefs are super open, everyone is, you know, super friendly and, you know, willing to share. You know, best practices or, you know, what's going on or business levels or, you know, everything like that. So,
[00:06:38] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Are there spots that everybody goes to after work?
[00:06:41] Opie Crooks:
Yeah, there are. Yeah. There's a bar called Over Yonder and it's kind of a, uh, Western themed bar and they have, I think they have the best burger in town, so definitely the place to go.
[00:06:53] Josh Sharkey:
You also spent a bunch of time just in Georgia working, actually, I think it was like a decade, right? For Roy, was that, was that right?
Before you,
[00:06:59] Opie Crooks:
Yeah, I worked for Roy kind of all over the place. You know, I worked for him in Atlanta. I worked for him, uh, in Florida. In Jacksonville Beach, Florida, and then I traveled around with him a lot, like doing LA Food and Wine Festival. You know, there was a dinner on the East Coast that He was cooking out, you know, somewhere in Florida, you know, I would generally be there. So,
[00:07:18] Josh Sharkey:
Roy Yamaguchi for, for, we didn't really preface that. But, and
[00:07:22] Opie Crooks:
Then I finished with Roy's and not Baltimore and that's how I ended up in Baltimore.
[00:07:26] Josh Sharkey:
What was it like working with her for Roy's for a decade?
[00:07:29] Opie Crooks:
It was great. You know, like I think at the time, like the balance of, you know, corporate systems and cooking techniques that were, you know, mandatory and like really kind of like, I guess, beaten into you was like, it was the perfect balance for me, you know, because like there was all this structure around like how you can improve.
[00:07:53]
There was like, there were a lot of rules as to like what you could and could not do because at the time Roy was owned by Outback Steakhouse. So it had kind of all the corporate structure with kind of Roy’s vision for the food. So for me, like I learned, you know. How to process a PNL, how to read a PNL, how to really dive deep into PNL, you know, like I had to send an email every morning when I was a chef partner that was like, Hey, we're going to spend, you know, 1400 bucks on labor today.
[00:08:22]
We're going to do this many covers. This is what the sales are going to be. And, you know, that's the plan for the day. And like, if it was off by 100 or more, my phone would ring the next morning by 9 a.m. And like, like if you did better. If you spend a hundred dollars less, it'd be like, Hey, why'd you spend a hundred dollars less?
[00:08:43] Opie Crooks:
And you'd be like, Oh, you know, like the first time I was like, Oh, I don't really know. And like, you know, this is in, you know, the early 2000’s. So it's like, it was 11 bucks an hour. So it's like, well, what did someone do for nine hours? And I'm like, well, I don't know. Well, what do you mean? You don't know. You don't know what one, one person did for nine hours.
[00:09:02]
And I'd be like, oh, all right. So then like that really got me.
[00:09:08] Josh Sharkey:
Who was that into the, who was that person that was asking you that? Uh, his name's Mark Anders. But I mean, like the role, like what was that? Was that like the controller? Was it,
[00:09:14] Opie Crooks:
His title was Joint Venture Partner. Kind of like a regional manager, if you will.
[00:09:22] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. I didn't realize Roy's was owned by Alpac and still owned by Outback it's not at all. So they divested or how did that work?
[00:09:29] Opie Crooks:
I'm not sure how it all went down, but I believe that Blumen Brands, which was Outback became Blumen Brands, sold it to like a private equity group.
[00:09:40]
And I think Roy was not involved anymore. And then there's only a couple of them left on the mainland. He's still doing why in a pretty big way. So,
[00:09:50] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, so that's crazy, by the way. So you would essentially forecast the sales for the next day. And then based on that, you would also say, here's how much I want to spend on a daily basis. You do that daily basis.
That's crazy.
[00:10:04] Opie Crooks:
Well, you had to forecast it for the month, you know, there was like this crazy spreadsheet. And like, so you did like your, your food sales forecast, your daily labor forecast. You know, as a projection and then like the day of, you can go in and change it and be like, Hey, this is what I'm actually going to spend today because, you know, Hey, we picked up a party.
[00:10:22]
Hey, business is down. Hey, we're trending down 2%. So I got to spend less on labor, you know, and then you would plug in what, what it is, email it. And then like, at the end of the night, the closing manager would put what the actual was send it off and.
[00:10:37] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:10:37] Opie Crooks:
You know?
[00:10:38] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I remember doing the same often, but typically it was like a flash report that was just like generated on like, you know, like a trailing 12 week, you would just get the forecast for the next week based on the trailing 12 and never, I've never heard of it done manually.
[00:10:52]
That's pretty. That's pretty cool. But how accurate were you?
[00:10:54] Opie Crooks:
It was pretty accurate. I would say that it was within like a couple of points. You know what I mean?
[00:11:00] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. And what did you use? Like, how did you forecast a month? Was it, did you also just use like a trailing 12 week or like, how did you come up with Right.
[00:11:07] Opie Crooks:
Trailing 12 week, you know, and then like historical data, you know, this month versus last year versus two years ago. Yeah. Plus the trailing 12 week. And then you're just, you know, you're obviously making the best educated guess you can.
[00:11:21] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. It's so interesting because there's a lot of AI technology or machine learning technology now, it's like forecasting revenue.
[00:11:28]
Right now. Yeah. Now. Yeah. Now. But you just said you're, you know, a couple of points at 98 percent accuracy is. Right. That's pretty good. That's better than any AI model. Right.
[00:11:40] Opie Crooks:
Did you do that today with your restaurants? No, we don't do that. I mean, we have a lot of tools and like, we definitely manage proactively, but like, we're more interested in like the chefs
[00:11:53]
cooking delicious food for our guests. Then like them being, you know, kind of like inundated with like a spreadsheet and you know, like they obviously have a constant schedule and I review their constant schedule every Thursday and you know, we talk about it, we talk about the plan for the week and then we execute the plan, you know, get to the month and be like, Oh, labor's 60%.
[00:12:14] Opie Crooks:
What are we going to do?
[00:12:14] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I forgot to say this, but I wanted to X, I wanted to say it earlier when we started chatting is that like we're kind of I'm kind of anchoring this call on you being a dad in like two months. Yeah, two months, literally two months. I looked at the schedule and I think this is supposed to go out in like, I don't know, like end of August or early September, but I want to time it so that it goes out like right close to when you're supposed to be a dad.
[00:12:44] Opie Crooks:
September 19th.
[00:12:45] Josh Sharkey:
So you could have a little archive of like, I was like, here's before I said, yeah, here's before September 19th. Okay. I'm ready to tell me about the restaurant you're working for.
[00:12:56] Opie Crooks:
So FARM Hospitality group, you know, Brandon Carter and Ryan Williamson, who's our founders, you know, they started the group with FARM, you know, about eight years ago, Brandon was a chef at Palmetto bluff, which is a
[00:13:09]
Oh, yeah, really high end, you know, resort hotel operation on here. And Ryan was selling him produce at the restaurant and at the resort. And Ryan was like, Hey, I'm going to, I really want to open this restaurant in Bluffton and Brandon was just kind of like, yeah, I'm not really interested. Ryan was like, why don't you design the kitchen for me?
[00:13:27]
And then like, you know, once you design the kitchen, you're like, ah, this could be really amazing. You know, the rest is history, you know, FARM opened, you know, very successful restaurant in Bluffton, South Carolina focused on. You know, cooking with the landscape on the low country using local purveyors, you know, they have a wood fired oven.
[00:13:47]
So that was all, you know, kind of what attracted me there about three years ago, they opened Common Thread, Savannah. Ryan's originally from Savannah, so they always had a desire to, to come to this market. Two years ago, we opened Wildflower Cafe in the Telfair museum. That was Annie's introduction to the company.
[00:14:05]
Annie's my wife for the people that are on the podcast. I don't know. So we opened wildflower cafe. You know, it's, there's no hood there. It's just like, you know, a couple of panini presses, a really small, you know, ventless convection oven. And, you know, we do really delicious sandwiches and salads and grain bowls and kind of healthier fare for the museum goers.
[00:14:28]
And then we opened Strangebird, which started as a food truck during COVID. We opened it as a brick and mortar and it's kind of like a Latin inspired barbecue, tacos, burritos, but then we kind of, Take the strange and, and tap other cuisines. You know, there's some Asian influence, there's some Middle Eastern influence.
[00:14:46]
And, you know, it's a lot of fun using, you know, local products to kind of showcase what can be done with them.
[00:14:52] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:14:53] Opie Crooks:
And then we just opened Flora and Fauna about 60 days ago. I'm in the old back in the day bakery space where Cheryl day and Griff day, uh, operated for 22 years. Their last service was on Valentine's day and we opened 60 days later.
[00:15:11] Josh Sharkey: Wow, that's
[00:15:12] Opie Crooks:
Really, uh, really flipped it. And Annie's there as well, right? Annie's the executive chef of Flora and Fauna. So in the morning it's bakery breakfast, lunch, and then at night we changed to a supper club. The dining room kind of. It doesn't change, but it does shift in the vibe switches. And we do a, a prefix menu, three course pre fixe menu for $55.
[00:15:35] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. I'm just curious now, like your role as the, as the, you know, culinary director, you have all these executive chefs and the chef from each of those restaurants. Like what's your day to day life?
[00:15:44] Opie Crooks:
You know, we're mid opening right now. So Brandon and I are both living at Flora Fauna, you know, making sure that we get systems in place, making sure that we get, you know, costs in line pretty quickly.
[00:15:56]
Making sure that, you know, our chefs are executing the vision. And then, you know, I kind of play the field a little bit. Like, I like to check in on everybody. So I'll stop by each restaurant, see how everyone's doing. And then if someone is needing more help, you know, maybe they have, you know, a sous chef that needs a little bit more mentoring, or maybe they have, you know, they're wanting to do a dish for a wine dinner and they need some help with a technique.
[00:16:28]
I kind of make myself available to go and, and put out the fires and like, if someone calls out for their shift, like I'll generally slide over and cover, or if someone goes on vacation, I cover the restaurant. You know, we just changed chefs at FARM a few months ago. We hired a really good chef from Atlanta during the transition for the four months that we were without a chef.
[00:16:51]
I was essentially the chef there.
[00:16:52] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:16:53] Opie Crooks:
And so. So. Plug and play.
[00:16:55] Josh Sharkey:
How do you like interface with, with, with all the chefs? I mean, are you, obviously it sounds like you're developing, you know, new menu items with them and you're also stepping in online when, when needed, but do you all work on growth on learning more? What part of that is?
[00:17:11] Opie Crooks:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think, you know, I check in every morning with, with most of the chefs, like we have a, a text thread and, you know, we get a nightly recap, Hey, this was great. Hey, this was not great. This was the team so and so did well so and so did not do well. Hey, we really had to focus on You know line checks this week because you know scarlet ran out of beats on her station last night At 8:45 on the last turn like, you know, I got that last night this morning I touched base with the chefs i'm like, hey Let's make sure that we get some real good energy around line checks this week.
[00:17:46]
Let's make sure that we're grabbing Kelly. Who's, you know, one of our junior sous chefs and like making sure that he is getting in there and like getting his hands on it as well and making sure that we're pushing him to do the things that we need him to do to step up, to be a leader. So
[00:18:00] Josh Sharkey:
This show is brought to you by, you guessed it, meez.
meez helps thousands of restaurants and food service businesses, all of the world. Build profitable menus and scale their business successfully. If you're looking to organize your recipe IP and train your team to put out consistent product every day in less time than ever before, then meez is just for you.
[00:18:20]
And you can transform all those old Google Docs and Word Docs and PDFs and Spreadsheets and Google Sheets into dynamic actionable recipes in meez. And lightning speed. Plus, stop all that manual work of processing invoices, cause meez will digitize all your purchases automatically. And there's a built in database of ingredient yields, prep yields, and unit of measure conversions for every ingredient, which means you're gonna get laser accurate food costs in a fraction of the time.
[00:18:46]
Visit www.getmeez.com, that's G E T M E E Z. So learn more and check out the show notes moving forward because we're going to be adding promotions and discount codes so that all of you lovely and brilliant meez podcast listeners get a sweet deal on meez. Yeah, you know, independent of sort of like the day to day improvements in the operation are the things that like you do or you do with your team to just, you know, Grow and learn outside of the things that you're doing.
[00:19:21]
I always find like, you know, like we get, we get older. We start like, you know, now we're like running businesses and managing lots of people and a lot of time is spent on that. I'm always like super curious how everybody continues to learn the things that you were learning before. Like, are you, does everybody buy books together? Are you going out? Like
[00:19:38] Opie Crooks:
Right. Like, you know, I have like a few, like a handful of books that I really like. One of them is called, “Work Clean”. I actually think they changed the name of it. I don't think it's called that anymore, but it's by this author. His name's Dan Charnas. And it's not really a book for chefs.
[00:19:52]
It's, it's more of a book about chefs and about mise en place. And it's kind of like, he just, people that work in an office, how chefs work. You know what I mean? Because like, we work in this very specific way. We're like, most things are black and white. You know what I mean? Like You're going to come in, you have to have your prep done by this specific time, because we're going to open and like, whether or not, like you meet that deadline or not, it's not like optional, like it, you know, in an office work, it's like, oh, Hey, you know, I'm a little bit behind today.
[00:20:26]
I didn't get the deadline by five o'clock. Like someone's like, oh, okay. Like, you know, we'll just get it going tomorrow. But for us in the kitchen, there is no tomorrow. So I really like that. I'm a big fan of Audible because I spend a lot of time in the car driving to Bluffton. That's how I love listening to your podcast, obviously.
[00:20:44]
So your podcast is on my rotation and then books on Audible is in the heavy rotation.
[00:20:51] Josh Sharkey:
Actually, I was just talking about this with my team yesterday or my I don't remember if my CS, my, my sales team of just, you know, ownership, it's so many lessons I feel like in the, in the, in the kitchen that translate really well to any industry.
[00:21:06]
mise en place is obviously like king, right? Like being prepared. Right. But you know, I was telling them yesterday about, you know, owning your station. Right. So like, if you're the saucier at. You know, whatever restaurant X, right, everything about that station, you won't, it's your temp, how clean, how organized it, where does it, is it stocked?
[00:21:24]
Where does this stuff live? Like, how are you placing things with it is, you know, it's efficient, like that's yours and you train someone else in that station. It's like, you're a little micro business. And I think that's a pretty cool part about like being a cook, right? Is you get this little micro business in a way, right?
[00:21:39]
Like you've got to make sure that like all this stuff that you need to get to work gets ordered for the, I mean, if it's that type of. Kitchen, right? And everything that has to do with your station, if you're the poissonier or the saucier, or whatever the name is, depending on if it's American, obviously different names, but you kind of become, you know, the manager or the CEO of your little business.
[00:21:57]
And that's really translated. And I think that what's interesting is it doesn't come across that way in other industries sometimes. Uh, at least like the, the perspective doesn't come that way where like, if you have a job Whatever, right? Like you have a boss and they tell you what to do and you have your instructions and you follow them and that's kind of, you know, and you have your metric of success and then that's it.
[00:22:17]
And everything outside of that purview is like, that's not really my job. Not to say that you're not working hard, but, or that you want, don't want to do more, but like you have this sort of box. And I feel like what's, what's cool about kitchens is when you have a station, that box is kind of everything. I don't know if you agree, but
[00:22:34] Opie Crooks:
No, 100%. The dishroom is your station, you know?
[00:22:37] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:22:38] Opie Crooks:
If the courts are dry. That's your station. If the
pots and pans aren't organized, that's your station, you know?
[00:22:46] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. It's also your product, right? It's what's so interesting about it. Like if you have like spotless glasses or you have like, you know, all the sauces are like spot on and seasoned perfectly and they're like refreshed.
[00:22:58]
And that's your product of a larger business. You don't get that in a lot of other industries, but in ours, it's like you, like every single person has like their little business. You know, you talked about the books that, but do you guys, are there other things outside of books that you all do to continue to learn?
[00:23:16] Opie Crooks:
You know, we definitely go out and eat. We definitely talk about food. We definitely, you know, we have little jam sessions for the menu, you know, once or twice a month, you know, especially like right now, as things are like, you know, moving pretty rapidly. Like we'll meet with all the chefs and sous chefs and like everyone will come with ideas and we'll kind of round table like, Oh, I'm thinking about.
[00:23:37]
This chicken dish with a golden zucchini puree that we fold into rice and make kind of like a risotto or, you know, whatever it is. And then we kind of like flesh that out, especially for like younger cooks, like trying to take, you know, the vision I always use like the A, B and C, you know what I mean?
[00:23:54]
It's like lots of people can, can do the a, where they're like, I can think of this incredible thing. And then, you know, the B is the hardest part. Cause you have to. You know, source, execute, cost, write a recipe that somebody else can also do. And then C, you have to put it on the plate and make it beautiful for the guest every single time.
[00:24:18]
So I feel like A and C a lot of times people have, but the B is like where, you know, like I'm not trying to plug me, but I am trying to plug me is like for us, like that's where we're meez’s like the most helpful, because like. You know, we shared throughout all of our concepts. So we're like, Oh, chef Joseph has this amazing recipe for this Japanese barbecue sauce.
[00:24:42]
I think that would go really awesome with this short rib, jump on meez, look at it. You know, if you make some tweaks, like let us know and. And we'll look at it together and then we'll, we'll make version two or whatever.
[00:24:54] Josh Sharkey:
I totally agree, man. I got, you know, it's funny. I have this, like, I don't even know where I heard this saying, but there's a saying that it's way more important what you can do consistently every day than any one thing that you can do amazing, you know, just one day, you know, it applies to everything, like even exercising, right?
[00:25:11]
Like you could crush one workout and just like. Balls to the wall, but what's more boards can you do it a similar workout every single day for you know? Or whatever like consistently over there so true with food, you know I think it and it's also something you learn over time obviously as a cook I don't know how you think about this But it doesn't really matter how sick of a dish you can create on your own once that looks beautiful It's like, I mean, it's a typical mistake you see when you see someone creating like a, a dish that has 72 steps to it, and it looks really cool, but like, nobody can execute it.
[00:25:45]
You know, like, how do you make food that can
actually be executed the same way every single day by someone else other than you? That's what's really special and, and a skill that you have to learn as a chef.
[00:25:58] Opie Crooks:
It always drives me crazy when you, like, you see something on like the internet, right? Social media, whatever it is. And then you go to that place and you order that thing and it looks nothing like it. And you're like, what happened? Like, why would I, like, I came here for this thing. I thought it was going to be amazing. And like, it's not even close, you know, sometimes, you know? So,
[00:26:21] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Well, what's worse is if you go someplace and this is what my number one reason for not going back to someplace, because I get so scared.
[00:26:32]
Is if I have something, let's just say I have something that's awesome. And then I come back and I want to order it again. And it's like totally different, not the same thing at all. And it doesn't taste good. I don't want to go back and forget it. Cause I'm like, I'm scared what the next time will be.
[00:26:44]
Cause if I have something else, that's good. And I want to come back and order it. Am I going to be disappointed? Right, exactly. That's not the most important part of any. Restaurant, maybe any business. It's just, can you be consistent in what you're executing? It's way better to be consistently good than once in a while, be incredibly amazing.
[00:27:03]
You know, how do you like help your team with that? Like, how do you help them? You have all these. sous chefs and chefs across all these different places. Like, what do you all do to sort of maintain consistency and like, make sure that when you're developing a new dish, you're thinking through, okay, how are we going to execute this? You know, at scale.
[00:27:23] Opie Crooks:
For us, we have really good leaders in place that have worked with us and they kind of understand, you know, the score, if you will, you know, like they understand, like, there's not necessarily like a formula, but there's, you know, all these notes that we have to hit in order to make sure that we're going to put this dish on the menu.
[00:27:39]
And like, Our menus change so frequently that like, you know, sometimes a dish may change mid service, you know, presentation wise, because, you know, when we played it before service, we realized that like, Oh, this is not attainable during service to make sure that it goes out in time and manner. Let's do this like this, let's do this like this.
[00:27:59]
And like, let's make this quick kind of change in the moment so that it is executable, it is beautiful. And it is most of all delicious, you know? So giving people the confidence to say like, Hey, you know what? Like I realize now that this isn't going to work to their team and like change it kind of mid mid service is something that we definitely like try to instill in the team and like making sure that it works is the most important part is that what the guest receives is delicious, beautiful, and it makes them want to come back.
[00:28:31]
How often are you changing a menu? So like on the job, every day at most places, like we don't change the whole menu, but like something will change because, you know, If a farmer doesn't have squash, for example, right? Like farmer Larry comes today and he's like, Hey, I don't have the squash. You know, like we don't like call up Baldor and say like, Hey, like let's get 10 cases of squash in here.
[00:28:52]
Like, we're like, okay, cool. Like, what do we have? Let's pivot from squash and let's do, you know, X or let's do Y. And so that kind of forces us to change the menu as well as be creative with. You know, the landscape of the ingredients that we have.
[00:29:09] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. It definitely keeps you, keeps you on your toes. I remember we had this tempura squash, a winter squash dish.
[00:29:15]
It was a kabocha squash or red curry squash. It was like a red curry squash tempura that we roasted and then tempura, and then there was like this really cool grafton maple cheddar, you know, grafton maple dip for some chili peppers in there, red curry squash was still like random to get like you, you got it sometimes, but not always out of the flavor.
[00:29:35]
And so like sometimes it would be, we would get kabocha. Sometimes we couldn't get any cause the squash was still not like, you know, it was taking a lot of your right. And we'd use sweet potatoes, but like every time, you know, you have to do slight tweaks to the batter or to like how you, you know, how you roasted or you fried it.
[00:29:51]
It was a pain, man. Really hard when you're, you know, when you're just buying from farms and you're using those kinds of products. Is that like a daily or like a pretty consistent like dynamism of your menu where you're constantly sort of like tweaking a product because you're buying so many farms?
[00:30:03] Opie Crooks:
Not a ton right now in this, in this current season, cause like Right now we're in the like bountiful summer, you know, everyone has a ton of tomatoes.
[00:30:14]
Everyone has a ton of summer squash, you know, like, so we're not in that scenario. But like last week, like we put a gazpacho on at Flora and Fauna and we, we were using sun gold tomatoes. Cause we really liked the way that the like skin adds like a little tan into the gazpacho. And then, you know, no one has sun gold tomatoes.
[00:30:32]
So like, You know, we have to adjust the recipe, you know, we're using a different cherry tomato, like, hey, this needs like a little smoked paprika now, hey, this needs like a little bit more cucumber, hey, this needs a little bit more olive oil to like get that richness that this sun gold tomato was giving to us, so like, those kind of things, you know, working with the ingredient and understanding that like, hey, the ingredient may be a little bit different today, and like, we need to taste it and make sure that it's going to give us the same result, and then we don't get the same result, it's not like, oh, Okay, like, this is good.
[00:31:03]
I made the recipe. We're good. You know, like someone brings it to the chef to try and the chef's like, Hey, like, this needs a little bit more acid. This means a little bit more, you know, salt. This seems a little bit more whatever it is, you know, then we adjust from there, which will sometimes frustrate our cooks because we're like, Hey, we have this great app, you know, we have these kindle fires that are, that are in the kitchen and like cooks woke up and he's like, Hey, I need to make, you know, pimento cheese today, you know, Hey, they shorted us on cheese.
[00:31:33]
I have this much cheese does the recipe. And then we taste and we're like, Hey, it needs a little bit more action. He's like, Oh, I followed the recipe. I'm more like, yeah, like you did a great job on the recipe, but like, we're going to make sure that it's like. So
[00:31:50] Josh Sharkey:
I want to kind of migrate over to something a little bit more personal.
Cause like I said, so you have, you have a baby coming in like two months now. I think first kid, right?
[00:32:01] Opie Crooks:
Yeah. 16 days ish. First kid. Were you nervous about how you planned? I'm nervous about everything. Obviously I'm a big planner. As you know, we've met in person and talked about planning and executing and.
[00:32:13]
I think we coordinated a breakfast together and at DC and I was like, you know, like, Hey, like we're going to do it this time, this time, this time, this time, this time, you're like, I'm not sure what time people are going to show up. And I'm like, yeah, okay, we'll just wait till people show up and then we'll do it.
[00:32:27]
You know what I mean? And I'm like, I'm a planner, you know, there's someone installing some built in cabinets in my living room right now so we can get a little bit more storage, you know, an older. House in Savannah doesn't have modern storage, if you will. Um, there's a prep list, you know, we're prepping meals to go into the freezer for when the baby comes so that.
[00:32:47]
You know, things are, are seamless and we don't have to think about that, you know, like just trying to eliminate the variables, just kind of like doing anything that we do is, you know, there's variables that you can control and there's variables that you can't control and controlling the controllables and letting the rest happen.
[00:33:05] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, well, there's one thing about kids is there's a lot you can't control. That's one of the great reasons for mise en place what you're thinking about, like preparing for a kid is that the great thing about mise en place is. Especially if you're somewhere where you're changing the menu every day or something like that, like, as long as you plan for everything that you can plan for, you're prepared for all the madness that inevitably is going to ensue.
[00:33:29]
And that is most certainly the case, you know, when you have the kid. I remember, we, we planned, we got all these meals together, we got the, the room set up ahead of time, you know, got all the little infant clothes and things like that. The food for us was fine. Everything else, it was fine. Just out the door, you know, it's funny the way I tell everybody's like don't buy a lot of infant clothes Because they basically wear the same shirt We've had like 16 pairs of like all these infant things and like do you know they're you know after after a month It's it's a different size anyways, but like, you know, you get all this stuff prepared and it's just you know Everything is a curveball, but it's exciting. It's exciting. Are you both taking off from work?
[00:34:10] Opie Crooks:
We'll both take a few weeks off of work.
[00:34:11] Josh Sharkey:
Nice. How's she feeling?
[00:34:14] Opie Crooks:
Great. Opening a restaurant and being pregnant at the same time has been challenging, but she's bustling through it. Doing good.
[00:34:22] Josh Sharkey:
It's nuts. Yeah. It always seems to come all at the same time.
[00:34:25] Opie Crooks:
It always happens that way.
[00:34:27] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Are you, do you have the room set up and everything?
[00:34:30] Opie Crooks:
We don't have the room set up yet now.
[00:34:32] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, that's good. Yeah. You got about six months before.
[00:34:35] Opie Crooks:
Next month.
[00:34:35] Josh Sharkey:
Well, about eight months until you actually need a room. How do you think that your work is going to change after the baby's born?
[00:34:45] Opie Crooks:
I'll definitely have to be. More structured in how I allow my time to be used because now I'm, I'll do anything at any time, make it happen, you know, that sort of thing. So I think like trying to, to organize my time so that I can be more effective during the hours that I need to be effective rather than like waiting for someone to need me in a moment that I might not be available.
[00:35:13] Josh Sharkey:
For sure. How do you think you're going to change as a person and as a leader?
[00:35:18] Opie Crooks:
There'll be more empathy. I'm sure. I feel like I'm pretty empathetic already, but a lot of my friends have been like, yeah, I just like things that were crazy important, you know, the way that You know, this certain thing had to be forever, you know, like all of a sudden didn't seem like that big of a deal.
[00:35:36]
And I'm like, I don't know what you mean, you know, like, they're like, you'll have things that you're so passionate about that, you know, may or may not affect, you know, the guest experience. And then when you have the kid, you're like, you know, that doesn't really matter anymore. We're good.
[00:35:49] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. By the way, what do you do when you're not working right now?
[00:35:53] Opie Crooks:
You know, I like to ride my bike, run, exercise. That sort of stuff, definitely go to the beach, you know, we're 15 minutes from the beach and that's a big relaxation point for me. So
[00:36:06] Josh Sharkey:
Nice, I promise there's a reason why I'm asking you this when you look back on it, uh, you know, in a year from now, just see what you think, but I'm excited for you, man.
[00:36:16]
And also just really grateful that we could find some time to catch up. I know we text, you know, every once in a while, but I was glad to have you come on and just chat for a little bit and I'm super excited for you to become a dad. I'm excited to see how things change for you when that happens.
[00:36:31] Opie Crooks:
Yeah, I'm excited too.
[00:36:33] Josh Sharkey:
Thanks for tuning into The meez Podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the song art mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist, Fresh Daily. For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/podcast. That's G E T M E E Z. com forward slash podcast. If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it if you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.
[00:36:57]
Keep innovating, don't settle, make today a little bit better than yesterday, and remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know. See you next time.