this is really, really good pizza. This is unique to this area. There’s
nothing like it. No one’s doing a 72-hour ferment for their dough like
we are. It’s not saying that other places aren’t great, I just find this to
be a very unique spot in this neighborhood.
RT: We chose to make our own mayo at Muss & Turner’s, for example,
and that says something to someone. We choose to brine our chicken.
So people eat our chicken breast sandwich to go, ‘Oh my God, why is it
so juicy?’ Well, we chose to take the time to let it sit in brine and do it
the way we think is the right way to do it, to ensure that you have a
juicy chicken breast. And so those little things, those little commitments
to a level of quality, the commitment to process a method of cooking
that is fine dining trained but bringing it in a more casual, connected
atmosphere - that is really what the essence of our business is. We’re
all fine dining trained, but this whole idea of like, you have to pretense
around it, this need to spend all this time and all this money to get
good food where you can go anywhere in the world and get the best
food that exists while you’re in your shorts and a tee shirt, it’s like,
‘What’s the deal?’ That’s where I think a lot of people really came
around during the recession, like, okay, I’m not going to spend $200
and two hours, but I want that food. I’ll go to M&T. And I’m actually kind
of liking not having to wear my sport coat. I mean, Local Three. That
was in the middle of the recession. We had enough people coming up
from Buckhead that loved they didn’t have to put a sport coat on and
worry about that.
CL: Speaking of sport coats though, can we talk about Warhorse?
RT: Ha!
CL: That’s like your little secret.
CH: We have no idea what you’re talking about.
CL: You guys really keep that under vest, huh? I guess the people
who should know about it are going to know about it?
CH: I wouldn’t say that, I would just say that our goal is to have some
mystique about it. Like, you’ve never seen a picture of the inside of the
clubhouse at Augusta National. That’s part of what makes you going
there special.
CL: True. Well, hopefully once all this clears, you guys can get back
to helping people and some semblance of normalcy, if there is such a
thing. But I don’t know that it ever will be normalcy as it was before.
RT: Going back to the way it was is not even an option.
CH: We are trying to define the new normal and we’re doing it not just for
us, but our industry is having to define the new normal. There is no
normal of eating in a restaurant anymore. There was what we had, and
now there is what we’re doing right now. The only thing I can think of
that’s even remotely close, and I don’t think it was this disruptive, was
when air travel changed dramatically on September 12th. I can remember
as a kid walking on a plane with two beers in my coat and nobody’s
saying anything and I remember when there was no security, you just
walked in the airport, walked to your gate, walked onto your plane and
took the hell off. But there’s going to be things from this that stick with
people and we are going to have to make changes and adapt.
CL: What is part of your new normal? Making that carryout officially a
part of your business model?
CH: I can tell you, carryout’s not going away. There’s demand that we
didn’t know there was demand. A lot of what we’re missing is the fact
that there just aren’t big events. People aren’t getting married. They’re
not having 60 people to their office to talk
about business. Home Depot corporate’s not taking
people out to lunch. We’re missing all that business.
So how are we supplementing? Carryout’s one way to do it.
RT: You have a lot of chef-driven restaurants that are now in the
delivery, carryout space. They prepared meals for families, which has
been going on for a very long time, but the folks that were in that
segment have more competition now. It’s like, imagine being Purell,
right? Like, they can’t keep up and now, they have thousands of
competitors. Every distillery is now doing hand sanitizers, you know?
CH: It doesn’t taste nearly as good as whiskey.
TM: I haven’t tried it out yet, but I’ll stick with whiskey.
RT: And virtual tastings. We’ve done dozens of them and people love
them. They can’t touch each other, but they can still connect. And as a
matter of fact, they have a more fluid conversation than if they’re in a
dining room at separate tables. They all can talk with each other and
hear each other and hear what the wine maker or the beer brewer has
to say, versus that question is at that table and only those people at
that table hear that. Now, you can mute everyone. Well, how great
would it have been to mute people in it during a lunch meeting?
CH: How great would it be to mute people period? I’d just mute
everyone. You just use sign language, you understand what flipping
you off means. That’s universal.
RT: Ha! So we’re doing quarts of cocktail mixers. Like, that’s so damn
obvious. Why weren’t we doing that before? Of course they drink at
home. Of course they want to make a cocktail, but they don’t know
how to, or have time to do it.
TM: People could come and sit in our bar and we could mix them a
drink, where we can’t now.
RT: And maybe they don’t want to come to our bar every night, but
they do want a Brown Thrasher every night. So that’s not going away.
And they don’t want to spend the money on buying all the different
ingredients to make it.
CH: You probably have 17 kinds of bitters at home.
RT: And like, we found this out at Easter, we don’t have the capacity to
prepare, store and reheat prepared meals for 150 families. We learned
that one, too. So for Mother’s Day, we said, okay, let’s prepare it all
beforehand and then they’re just gonna have to reheat or cook some of
it when they get home. A lot of the feedback we got was actually, ‘This
was great because we felt like we did something from Mom.’ The dad
and the kids actually contributed, they did something and they felt
better about the meal. Mom felt better about it too. So are we going to
do the Mother’s Day buffet that we used to do again? Probably not,
even if we can, because, who’s really going to be into that? They’d
rather sit around their patio table with their families having great food
instead of in a busy restaurant with other kids running around, right?
That’s a legit thing we’re going to come across. And it was the easiest
Mother’s Day any of us have ever executed. It was very heavy up front
prep, but they didn’t have 400 people coming through and have to deal
all the curve balls that exist when you have human beings coming in
saying, ‘I don’t want that. Can I get that? How about this? I have this
dietary restriction.’ You have kids running around without any
supervision. So up front, it was a lot of planning, a lot of preparation,
but you’re just handing people food and they go. So it was such a
different experience. Easter was painful for us.
CH: Easter’s always painful. You don’t know what you’re doing no
matter what year. And then, by Mother’s Day, you figured it out because
Easter was like five weeks ago. And then nobody cares about Dad, so.
RT: You get the forgiveness of Jesus and then you’re out to the wolves
with Mom.
34 COBB LIFE | JULY 2020