Francis 1:17

Morning, mark.

Mark 1:18

Hey Francis.

Francis 1:19

How are you this morning?

Mark 1:19

I'm very well. How are you?

Francis 1:21

I'm, I'm, I'm well. And I know that you today want to talk a little bit about, uh, interviews because we've been doing, we've been doing a bunch of interviews, um, for, for the restaurants and, uh, they're always interesting, aren't they?

Mark 1:33

Francis and I have a, a great little system where, uh, you go through an interview process and you finish with one of us

Francis 1:39

before

Mark 1:40

you're hired. So

Francis 1:40

you interview with the staff. You don't really, you even interview with management. You interview with various members of the staff, and then you do a trail in the restaurant. And then if you make it through and the rest of the staff who admittedly has to work with you, the full house,

Mark 1:50

give us recommendations.

Francis 1:51

Uh, we, we'll meet with you. If you make it through them, you get to talk to us.

Mark 1:54

Okay. So the final stage of the interview is, is meeting with us.

Francis 1:58

Usually. Usually they, they don't let through wackadoos. Um,

Mark 2:01

but sometimes, but what I will tell you is there has been a, a magnificent group of interesting folks coming through the door anyway. I had one woman come in the door the other day and. You just know someone's BSing and Francis and I have been giving interviews for a long time, and anybody out there, uh, I'm sure a lot of you give interviews and you just know when someone's BSing. And, uh, I guess one of my character flaws is when I, when I know someone's BSing. I always dig a little deeper. I always keep going. I always ask for a little bit more information. Well,

Francis 2:38

it's a way to make sure that they're BSing and a way to amuse yourself a little

Mark 2:41

bit. I, I, you know, just a small example, I had a guy the other day and I'm asking him, what he wants to do with his life, you know, as far as a career goes, and he says, I'd like to open my own restaurant. 10 minutes later in the interview, this is a college student, what are you doing after graduation? Oh, I'm gonna get an internship and, uh, go work on Wall Street. Hmm. You realize that doesn't agree with your earlier answer, right? So I, so I, I, I love catching people in those kinds of things and, and I'm always surprised how much people will be Yes. In their interview, oh God,

Francis 3:12

people will just lie.

Mark 3:14

And I had a woman sitting in that, that dreaded chair the other day. I began talking to her and she really spoke a lot about how the restaurant business is my life. I love food, I love cooking, I love, you know, all these things. Well, if I, and, and one of my favorite questions asked is, okay, well if I'm paying for dinner, where would you like to eat? Anywhere in the world? Her answer, my dad's kitchen. Okay. You get to eat in your dad's kitchen all the time for free, right?

Francis 3:43

Right.

Mark 3:43

Okay, that answer doesn't count. Next answer. Here

Francis 3:49

also not allowed, also not sucking up, uh, minus your plus two points, whatever it is, but it, new answer. Need a new answer. So, you know,

Mark 3:56

this woman just keeps going on and on and on with bad information. So, uh, I know all about food. You won't have to teach me anything about food if you hire me. Really. That's great. Okay. So yeah, I go to all the best restaurants. I go to Ruth Adams, you know, I go there all the time. You know, Ruth's Chris is, I'm pretty sure the restaurant she was talking about. Yeah,

Francis 4:20

probably. Yeah.

Mark 4:20

and the other she said, and I love caviar. Oh, really? Well, what kind of Cary do you like? Her response? Beautiful. Beautiful response. I like black and red.

Francis 4:31

Yeah, that's awful.

Mark 4:33

I was like, again, it's okay if you don't know about caviar. I'm gonna be honest with you. 80% of the people I hire when I hire them, dude, don't know that much about caviar. Dude,

Francis 4:41

front of house, 90% of who we hire.

Mark 4:43

Okay? 90% don't know about caviar. That's fine,

Francis 4:45

right? That's the thing. We'll hire people without experience. Well, I don't need you to have restaurant experience. I don't need you to have. Time going out for restaurant experience. But what I do need is you, to be honest, and that's the funny thing, is, you know, people fake experience all the time that frankly I don't give a, I don't care about, I don't give a rat's butt. Mm-hmm. Whether you worked here or there, because mark and I view the philosophy, especially in front of house, especially if we're hiring for an entry level position. I don't care where else you worked because I'm gonna teach you a different way to do things anyway. I can teach any. Hardworking, nice, dedicated, loyal, honest person. How to be a good waiter. I can't teach someone who knows how to be a good waiter to be any of those other things, you know? But when you lie about it in the interview, man, it's, I, you're lying about food. Mm-hmm. And that's the thing that always you have

Mark 5:26

food to the guy who has a restaurant for 18 years.

Francis 5:28

Right? Right. You only the food to me, you wanna lie about like rocket science to me, I'm not gonna figure it out. You don't have to know much to know more than I do. But you're lying to me about food and restaurants. What you think you're gonna get away with it. It's crazy.

Mark 5:39

So anyway, one of the things we do at the beginning of shift is we have family meal where we all sit and have dinner together and you know, the first bit of it is week of bits and talk about the things that have, that have happened to us over the course of the last 24 hours. Then we do some sort of training anyway in that first little bit of family meal. Now how Family Meal Works is you basically sit wherever you want. But what I'll tell you is generally those people who have only been working for a week or two for us, they kind of self-segregate. Right? Right. They sit kind of at their own table away from anybody who might be intimidating.

Francis 6:11

Right? Right.

Mark 6:12

Okay. Anyway, this girl sits right across from the chef. Okay. No problems. That's, that's totally fine. No, Francis just remembered the story. Okay.

Francis 6:21

And Chef Jr. Belt, by the way, is the most even keeled. He is intelligent.

Mark 6:25

I'm gonna tell you,

Francis 6:26

even keeled chef I've ever encountered,

Mark 6:27

easily the nicest chef I've ever encountered

Francis 6:28

as Oh, nice. One of the nicest guys in the world.

Mark 6:30

So she's sitting there and she says something dumb and he lets it go. And then finally she goes, uh, and she goes, you, oh, you're the cook. And he goes, I'm the chef. He goes, oh, the chef. Okay. So if somebody has a bad meal and really hates it, you're the guy I blame. Right? And he just turns to her and he goes. I need you to shut up and go to sit at the other table,

Francis 6:52

get up, get up, get up. Let's go sit up at the other

Mark 6:54

table. Go sit with the new guys. It was was one of those moments that, you know, again, it's a very even keeled guy. He lets a lot of stuff roll off his back and it was one of those moments that you just didn't expect.

Francis 7:06

And I thought to myself, haven't you even watched the Food Network? He said, he's the chef. I, you know, I don't, oh my goodness. I thought you're not gonna make it.

Mark 7:15

That's

Francis 7:15

what

Mark 7:15

I thought. I need you to leave the table. those types of things, they're priceless. I'm sorry. I, I realize that, that maybe I'm laughing at someone else's expense a little bit, but it's somebody who was totally trying to BS me, and if you totally try and BS me, I'm gonna make fun of you.

Francis 7:31

You know, I wanna ask a slightly different, topic because of this system where we have the staff interview new staff before they get to us, we, we weed it out, Tre, we don't waste a lot of our time on people who make mistakes like that. when we interview back of the house people though, we, if we're, it's a senior person in the back of the house and we haven't hired anybody senior in the back of the house in a long time. We have very stable staff. but we were interviewing chefs or sous chefs, and I remember this a long time ago, but I'll always remember this story and but. I'm gonna tell you about somebody who came, who was offensive to us. I remember there was a guy and I, I can't believe they're out there and we hear the stories from our staff when they get people in. The people who get weed out, they'll tell us the story of something crazy they did. But this guy was interviewing for a senior position. It was either sous chef or chef, and he had cooked us some decent food and. But what he, what he did during the interview process, I, I couldn't even believe it. I'm talking to this guy. I, you remember this? Oh, I remember

Mark 8:23

the story going

Francis 8:24

So tell us about his last place he worked. He's like, yeah, he was pretty good. You know, we, we brought things up. It got boring after a while and, uh, the owners weren't really, and they're saying bad things about his former employers, which was always a bad idea in an interview. And he said, but you know, we did a really good job there. Oh, I remember the two things this guy said. The one thing he said, he said, well, why did the restaurant, you know, go down? He's. Customers.

Mark 8:43

Customers.

Francis 8:43

The customer. What do you mean? The customers?

Mark 8:45

I thought you were gonna miss this one.

Francis 8:46

They, they didn't get what we were doing. I'm like, oh, but they, they did get what you were doing. You're going outta business. They got it. They got it. Exactly. I

Mark 8:54

was doing some really good stuff and they didn't understand

Francis 8:56

it. Uh,

Mark 8:57

and that's exactly what he said.

Francis 8:58

All right. Well, that was our depressing interview. Sorry. But they, but we, we just like, when we find great wines, we plow through all that shaft to find the glorious wheat. we do have a great staff. I will tell you. Really amazing.

Mark 9:08

Yep.

Francis 9:08

Very happy. Well, we'll be back in just a moment. Uh, we're gonna talk to, an Italian wine producer who you may not have heard of, but who has some great wines that are really reasonable and available. And, uh, we'll be back in just a moment. You're listening to the Restaurant Guys

Speaker 4 9:19

Hello everybody and welcome back. It's Mark and Francis, the restaurant guys, and our guest today is Giovanni Bon Martini Feeny.

Francis 9:25

Giovanni's Family Winery is, uh, the Baroni Fini Winery and Trentino Alto Adi region in northern Italy. well, he's visiting America right now and joins us today on the show.

Giovanni 9:34

Jovan Bonno.

Mark 9:35

Giovanni,

Giovanni 9:36

welcome to

9:36

the

Mark 9:36

show.

Giovanni 9:37

Bonno Marco. Bonno Francis. Francesco Francis would be Francesco.

Francis 9:42

I know it could be Francesco for today. In Irish. In Irish should be pontious, you know. But it says we don't. We don't.

Giovanni 9:48

My Irish is terrible.

Francis 9:49

Yeah. And Irish wine is worse. Lemme tell

Giovanni 9:51

you before going forward, I wanted to tell you that I coined the name of your show. I listened to a bunch of your broadcast off of over, obviously, from Italy. I can't listen to it live, but I can, uh, download those podcasts and I love doing that. So I've coined your show now that Azi.

Francis 10:09

Azi. Very nice. I like that very much. We're gonna have to get restaurant guides at ie, right? Or is it, is it it, is it like restaurant guides at it?

Giovanni 10:17

And I'd like a percentage of that business because I'm very entrepreneurial.

Francis 10:20

Certainly we will talk about the capital investment after the show. It'll be, it'll be something you could, not too painful, I assure you.

Mark 10:26

Giovanni, besides, you know how easy it is to make a lot of money in, in the wine business.

Giovanni 10:31

Uh, I know how difficult it is.

Mark 10:32

It's the same, it's the same in the restaurant, slash radio show podcast business.

Francis 10:39

I

Giovanni 10:39

believe it.

Francis 10:40

Well, we, we called you on the show because we wanted to talk about your, your winery, and I think one of the things that struck us about your