Is There A Future For Plant-Based Meat? And, The Brilliance Of Boston's Bina.

27:58But yeah, really interesting. It's a whole line of avocado seed tea. They have hibiscus berry. They have lemon. They have a bunch of different flavors. I think in general, they could maybe help the consumer. You know where you can meet the founder of Absinthe? Where? BevNet Live because they will be in the new beverage showdown. Okay, you're revealing too much. That's all you can reveal. You're not supposed to talk about that. Yes, I need it. It's fine. No, no, we're going to leave that in. We're going to cut Mike entirely, Joe. Joe, cut me out of the show. Let's see. Let's see what happens. Just replace them with static.

28:32It'll be more useful. We're going to reveal the other 11 semifinalists in due time. Can I call out one more lemonade product here? Yeah, please do. I mean, it's kind of weird that I was drinking a lemonade beverage with lemonade chips, but this is the new hop water iced tea and lemonade. I mean, it's basically like a half and half with a little hops to it, which is, I don't know, not a combo that you would think would work, but it does. It's nice. It's tasty. I like it. Nicely done. Hop water. Very good. There's no laminate. No skewer.

29:07Quick break. If this episode has you thinking about what's next in food and beverage, explore BevNet and Nosh Insider, our subscription platform with deeper insights from the BevNet team. Visit tasteradio.com slash insider to learn more. All right. It's time to get to our featured interview for this episode. That's with Babak Bina, A towering presence in Boston's culinary scene for nearly four decades, Babak is a renowned restaurateur whose influence stretches far beyond the dining room. Known for his unwavering focus on hospitality and a bold commitment to innovative, globally-inspired cuisine, he has helped shape the city's food culture in lasting ways.

29:48In this episode, Babak shares insights into how he educates diners without alienating them, why pushing a city's culinary boundaries matters, and what it takes to craft experiences that go well beyond just great food. His leadership philosophy, lead by example. Whether it's mopping the floor or bussing a table, Babak believes culture starts at the top, and he lives it every day.

30:14Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I am honored to be sitting down with Babak Bina, who is one of the co-founders of BCB3 Hospitality Group. Baba, great to see you. Good morning. Yeah, thanks for coming out here to Newton, Massachusetts. Not too far from your home, I assume? Yeah, yeah, we've moved to Boston just recently. We're empty nesters, my wife and I, so we're in the heart of downtown Boston. Nice. I don't know whether to congratulate empty nesters for getting to this point, or what should I be saying here? You know, a friend of mine just had a baby Sunday, and I said, welcome to the tribe that will never stop evolving.

30:50And we have a 19-year-old in New York City, And we have another one in Boston that's about to graduate. So it's an interesting trip that really never ends, it appears. Yeah, it's interesting when I talk to folks who, I have a friend who's 45 and he just had his first child. And he's like, wow, it's so tough. It's so difficult. And I'm like, yeah, it's for two reasons. One, you have a newborn. And two, you're 45 years old. You've been in the Boston area for some time. Talk about how you came to this city, this amazing city. And I mean, your contributions in terms of the culinary scene are pretty much unmatched at this point.

31:27But what drove you to Boston? Thank you. I appreciate the compliments. Keep them coming. You know, I'll try. I'll try. I have a few written down here. I came about the business, the hospitality business, in a somewhat different way than a lot of people, I would say. We had to flee the 1979 revolution of Iran. And my mom scurried me out of the country, although my dad had been saying for months, Everything's going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine. And I vividly remember the last day that she said, this is it, was when there were people fleeing the police and the military, and they had scaled our boundary wall of about 12 feet and were running over our flat roof, and they were being shot at.

32:10And that was it. My mom said, I'm out of here. You can stay here if you want, but I'm taking my son and we're leaving. And we ended up leaving shortly after on May 7th or six, I think if I remember correctly, 1979. And my sisters were going to university here. So it was a natural place for us to come to. We did think it was going to be temporary, but obviously decades have gone by and it has not been temporary. It was difficult. My dad passed away my freshman year and he was just 16. He had just finally gotten here and he passed away shortly after. So I took off a year and money was tight, you know, and I started as a dishwasher going back to how I got into this business.

32:49But 1981, I started as a dishwasher in Pino's Pizza in Cleveland Circle. I go to Pino's every so often. Yeah. I just wanted to fit in with the rest of the kids. And Phil Petruzziello, who was also an immigrant, obviously, the owner, his son was one of my best friends. So he gave me a shot. Minimum wage was$3.25, I think, back then. I was getting under the table, don't tell anybody,$2.90 or something. But yeah, BU was great in a sense that it allowed me to get the education that I, that my family wanted, that I wanted. But at the same time, it allowed me to expand my mind as to what potentially could happen.

33:26But I really didn't know what I wanted to do. Didn't want to be a dishwasher your whole life, I'm sure. But I mean, the restaurant scene and being inside a kitchen, I think can be thrilling or it can be terrifying. What was it for you? Let me just say, Ray, that today, if someone tells me, what do you do? I tell them I'm a chief dishwasher and my bigger boat is actually named the chief dishwasher. I'm proud of that start. I'm proud of the staff that make the restaurant business what it is. It couldn't possibly happen without them. Every person in the restaurant contributes in a big way. It's not about me, frankly.

34:03It's actually more about them and what they do in our restaurants and has always been. The oldest staff member we have has been with me for 35 years now. So, and he started as a dishwasher. He's a sous chef and has worked at many of our restaurants. I don't know if I answered your question. I think you did. It's, it's, it is thrilling because there is so much opportunity to be there and to be with people who really care about food and are passionate about food. On the other hand, when you go into the restaurant business and I've seen the back of certain kitchens and it's hot, it's busy, it's crazy and it's fun, but it's not for everyone.

34:39Where did you see the opportunity for yourself? Where did you feel like the passion to open your own businesses came from? I think a lot of people in the business call it the bug, catching the bug. And I had caught the bug. I had caught the bug with the camaraderie that I felt, the family sense, the sense of family that I had at Pino's and with these fellows from the North End, many of them that commuted to Brookline to work. And, you know, there was discipline, even in a pizza place. You couldn't go near the pizza table. If you were a dishwasher, you know, first of all, you were hazed, you know, go get the elbow grease and kept describing what the elbow grease was.

35:19And what was the elbow grease? It's metaphoric. It doesn't exist. I know, but I guess how were you hazed? I guess is probably the best word. They sent me down to look for the can, the jar of elbow grease that's down there. It's on the second shelf. I'd come back up, they'd say, did you find it? I'm like, no. They're like, it's a blue can. It's sitting on the second shelf. We just got a delivery yesterday. Go, go back now. So, you know, as a 13-year-old, 14-year-old did that. Wow, they were like, back then you could work in a restaurant at 13, 14. No, of course you couldn't. But, you know, come on.

35:53Under the table. Okay, yes, yes. We mentioned it a couple of times. Yeah. The sense of family and camaraderie, it brings a lot of misfits. It brings a lot of brilliant people that can't really function elsewhere, perhaps, because they can't find their place. And the restaurant industry is just incredible. 17, 18 restaurants later, I can tell you that it's incredibly thrilling. It's a Greek tragedy every day. And there are highs and lows. And I try not to really get hung up on the too highs and too many lows because they can be really, really at this point in my career. They can mess with your head.

36:29What was the most important business lesson that you learned when you were starting out? Being able to change your trajectory yourself. Deciding that you're going to self-impose what you want to do and then sticking to it no matter what. because I think that endurance, being flexible and changing paths as outside factors come in and being able to do it with grace, do it with hospitality, do it with compassion. Those are things that you will eventually learn if you stick it through, but you have to have the perseverance. When we talk about hospitality and we've mentioned hospitality a thousand times on this podcast.

37:13It's sort of an industry term. I think general guests, consumers don't necessarily know what it means. What does hospitality mean to you? You know, we're from about the same part of the world. Sure. And I think that it's a little bit difficult for Westerners because since I was little, it was instilled in me when your guest comes to your home and how you take care of them. And it is thousands of years in the Persian culture to take care of your guests. It is embedded in us that if your enemy shows up at your door front and wants water, you give them water. So these are things that are really, some people have it in their blood.

37:56You can kind of tell when you're talking to them and you're interviewing them. And some people, they can't get it. And so for us, we want to hire staff and have people on our team that truly understand hospitality. That is that they want to give up themselves more than they might receive in return. I believe that you certainly receive a lot, but I think that you have to put it out. You have to go the extra mile. You have to think about the other person first, and then hopefully you will get it back. I believe you get it back for sure. I've been so lucky because of that, because of doing first for others, and then it's come back tenfold.

38:40Great food, great hospitality, I would think, are keys to a great restaurant. You can't say both, but what would be more important? It sounds like you're so passionate about hospitality, and I can feel it, and I've seen in your restaurants, that hospitality has to be the most important part. But what would you say between great food and great hospitality? Well, I'll turn the table on you and ask you a question. If you go to a restaurant and you have an incredible meal and your server is rude, your server is dismissive, and the host that greeted you or didn't say goodbye to you when you left, are you inclined to go back necessarily?

39:21No. second question if you were to enter a restaurant and you were greeted like you were visiting your best friend's home and the server made you feel welcomed and would almost anticipate your your needs before you would even ask for that steak knife that was missing at the table and showed up with it and made your experience great but you were like you know what this pasta was overcooked or that steak was a little bit overdone, would you go back to that restaurant? Probably. I can't say for sure yes, but probably because I think I can overlook a slightly overcooked steak more than I can overlook rudeness.

40:04You got it. That's the answer. And I think that some chefs might disagree, but most chefs of, you know, the caliber that I have, my business partner, Jamie Bissonette, agrees that it is extremely important for people to be taken care of. And that's where hospitality for us is, that it glues us together. And you're going to have bad nights, you're going to have a bad meal that might come out. But if you dealt with it in a hospitable way, and if you put the guest in the front, and you made sure that they were taken care of, ultimately, they'll come back, they'll give you another chance, but not if you were not hospitable.

40:41And if you turn the tables on them and made them feel awkward or bad. You can sense it, or at least I can. And if you're watching the video, you can sense it. Babak is very, very serious about hospitality and the importance of it. And I think customer service in general is one of those things that has really fallen off in every aspect of life. And so to be able to walk into a restaurant or, I don't know, call your credit card company and actually have great customer service, it really does mean a lot. I mean, I have a Discover card and it's so funny because I get ragged on all the time. I'm weird.

41:13Everyone gets, you know, you don't need anything to get a Discover card. What do you need? Like, I'm hating on Discover while trying to say I love Discover. But anytime I call up the credit card company, they answer almost immediately. It's a human being. I can talk to them and they answer my questions and it's boom, it's done. Some other companies, complete opposite. Some restaurants I walk into, they're like, thank you so much for being here. Others are like, Like, do you have a reservation? No? Okay, you're gonna have to wait a little bit. Sit down over there. I'm like, I'm giving you money.

41:44I'm giving you a lot of money, actually, in some cases. Why am I being treated this way? Well, you know, the funny thing is, when you go to any business, name it, you go to the building department of any town or city. It's like the most boring place, right? And the most difficult place to deal with certain things. They're great public servants. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to knock anybody. But, you know, you get somebody that walks up to you and smiles and says hello and asks what it is you need. Nine out of ten times, you know, they'll turn around and say, oh, you're in the restaurant business?

42:19Yeah, I used to be a bartender. I used to serve during college. I did this. I did that. And these things are, again, you don't have to work in the restaurant business to be hospitable. You go to a doctor's office. I went yesterday or the day before yesterday. And, you know, the receptionist was not very kind. You know, it's my annual, it's like a little bit weird. And it's my first time that I'm seeing this doctor. And there's no skin off of our nose to smile. There's no skin off of our nose to be kind. And my wife and I have a foundation for children and young adults with disabilities. And we use horses to help them.

43:02That's where you see challenges. right? We are so lucky. We are so lucky to be most of the time able-bodied and those who are not have their challenges, but they put one step in front of the other and they achieve things on a daily basis that are a breeze for us. And we do it without thinking. So I think that the world would be a better place if we were just kind to each other and we were, again, hospitable to each other because it doesn't have to be in the restaurant business. It could be, you know, I walked in, you offered me somebody to drink and that's hospitable. That's greeting people in a kind manner and welcoming them.

43:41I would agree. And I think in today's world, we definitely need a lot more hospitality from top down. That's also awesome. Going back to food and great food and your restaurants are known for top quality food in every regard. The presentation of the meals, the food itself, the ingredients, merging different cultures. It's all done so beautifully and seamlessly. And I think partnerships with people who can help deliver and help create, in one way or the other, these delicious meals is critical. And I talked to Jamie about this a couple of weeks ago. And how do you form, how do you foment great partnerships such that with your suppliers, you're getting consistent supply of the food that you need with your social and marketing teams that they are delivering on what you expect from them to promote what you're doing in the restaurants.

44:39What's the key to partnerships in your 30 years of doing this? Communication, honesty, compassion. We're all human beings. We have bad days. We have good days. Forgiving each other if something goes wrong. You know, a lot of times we take things personally and it doesn't need to be that way. We're all trying to work towards a goal. Identifying someone that believes in those same goals and wants to have the same passion that you have, it's not easy. But surrounding yourself with smarter people than yourself, surrounding yourself with people that are willing to do the hard work, that's where we're lucky.

45:20That's where we have thrived. And certainly it used to be my sister and I that we put in hours and hours and we surrounded ourselves with great staff. And now it's my two business partners, Andy Carton and Jamie Bissonnette. And then you can widen that circle, right? It's our general managers who are compassionate like us. It's the people that are then under them or alongside of them. We lead by example. When things go wrong, let's figure out why it went wrong. But more importantly, who do we need to make sure that they're okay in the process? I do want to say that the pendulum has gone a little bit to the other way in, I'm not saying coddling, right?

46:01Don't get me wrong. We have a business to run at the end of the day, but we still need to be compassionate. If my driver comes in delivering whatever product it may be, I smile to them. I welcome them and I I offer them a glass of water. I tell them where the bathroom is this is the first time at the restaurant. They'll remember that. I'm not doing it for them to remember it, but I'm doing that because that's just my innate nature of doing that. And we, when our staff see that, they will emulate that. And so having partners that think in the same way, I'm very, very lucky that I've had partners that think the same way and behave the same way.

46:39And yeah, we're having a lot of fun. And, you know, we did not want to do what we've done at BCB3 without first talking through all this stuff and agreeing that, you know, we're gonna have rough patches and I don't need to do this. I do this because I love doing this. And it's the same thing for my partners. I think about the cuisine and the variety of cuisines that you have introduced to the Boston area via your restaurants, and it's amazing, right? I mean, when you think about a restaurant like La La Rock, which is one of the most celebrated restaurants, I think, over the last 50 years in Boston.

47:16Thank you. And Persian cuisine. I don't know. Were Boston-area residents ready for that? How did you get them excited about it? Wow. I don't think the show is going to be long enough to talk about that. La La Roox was very, very dear to our heart. And to this day, there are people from around the world that will contact us and say, You know, we heard about this new Basque restaurant, Zerito, you open. Well, what about La La Roque? Why don't you open another La La Roque? And, you know, everything has its time and place and we were ahead of its time for sure. We conceived of the idea some 30 years ago.

47:55And just for context, listeners, 30 years ago in Boston is very, very different than it is today. Boston is a completely different city. For sure. And it was back then. I think all the movies that you see now that characterized a Boston person as having the accent and blue-collar worker who is kind of crass. I think the majority of those characters existed 30 years ago, not today. I think that Boston has kept its name as the Beantown for a reason. And in fact, La La Roque, the space that it was in, the restaurant that was in there was called... So just before La La Roque, just so people can maybe remember this far back, there was a restaurant run by Odette Berry called Another Season.

48:45La La Roque was there for nearly 25 years, and then Odette Berry was there with Another Season for about 20 years. Prior to that was a restaurant called Au Beauchamp. And going back to 1905, there was a restaurant that was called Boston Bean. and it was literally just a counter and it was below a hotel that served, you know, simple American fare, Boston fare. And so the trajectory of what Boston's gone through is pretty amazing. When Azita opened Toscano on Charles Street, nobody knew what risotto was. Nobody knew what focaccia was. They were like, where's the spaghetti and meatballs? This can't be an Italian restaurant.

49:27It's certainly not if you're in Beacon Hill. And, you know, we've come a long way. People know a lot about food. When the Food Network came around, we were like, oh my gosh, really? And then celebrity chefs. And so we've come a long way. And most of it, certainly for good. When you have a lot of, obviously, restaurants opening, like it's New York City, but you don't have the population to support it, it becomes difficult. People coming from outside of Boston and opening 700-seat restaurants, and that pulls, it creates a vacuum. But yeah, Yeah, La La Roox was an amazing restaurant and we imported all the ingredients, thanks to our mom who went back and we actually were smuggling.

50:09Again, don't tell anybody, but when there was an embargo, we would ship it to Canada and then we would drive it from Canada here. We went through crazy stuff to get the ingredients and we always promised that we would not substitute anything that's grown here. And the reason for that was the authenticity that we wanted to create in the flavors that that existed in the La La Roque food, that exists in Persian home cooking. You know, the same way a grape varietal Chardonnay would taste different from Napa versus Sonoma, nevermind the sub, you know, terroirs that may exist. It's the same thing with the ingredients that you would want for your food.

50:45So we wanted it to be as close to the way we grew up eating it as we could make it. Did you feel like you had to have a point of reference for your customers, for your guests. Again, for the reason that maybe people weren't as familiar with the flavors or weren't as adventurous as guests might be today. How did you get them interested in the cuisine? You know, every restaurant is different as to why you do what you do. The core of what we've always done to this day with BCB3 is we want to familiarize Bostonians and visitors alike to food that would not normally exist in Boston. So, I mean, we opened SOMAC and my people might say, well, there are other Korean restaurants.

51:31Sure. But, you know, once you taste food that Jamie and his mother-in-law soon have created for the restaurant and the recipes, those are really homestyle recipes. Those are the way she grew up eating and the way Song, Jamie's wife, grew up eating. And so that was the impetus for it. We wanted to create that. And so for us, it's about finding the unique things that don't exist here and having it be an experience. So it's not just the food. It's not just the hospitality. Obviously, what you see with your eyes are also very, very important. And what you hear when you walk in with the music, it's complicated.

52:14it. It's difficult to nail it. And it's difficult. You could have actually the perfect of everything. And then there are outside factors that change it. But going back to why Lala Rook or why we, you know, we felt that Beacon Hill with the well-traveled residents would understand it, would appreciate it. People who've been to Iran, uh, have had Persian food, maybe in their friend's home, understand how delicious and how unique it is. There may be 12 different ingredients and it's like a chemist lab. You have to make sure that the ingredients, as volatile as they may be as raw ingredients, they could be more flavorful or less flavorful than that last batch.

52:53So you have to constantly be tasting, adding more. You know, we have one of the oldest recipe books that, you know, is a couple hundred years old. And you could see that it's a smidgen of this, a pinch of that, a hint of that. It's not a spoon. It's not a cup because that's not how Persian food is made. And so that's what made it actually very, very, very difficult because it's the constant tasting and certainly great chefs do that with any other cuisine as well. Don't get me wrong, but it becomes much more integral when you add all these different herbs, spices, nuts, fruits, meat, and then you're marrying them together to create something on its own that doesn't exist on its own.

53:32It's the sum of all the parts that make it so unique. I love that you have been introducing new cuisines, new cultures via food to the Boston area, and you're doing it again with Zerito. You mentioned SOMAC, but Zerito is a Basque-inspired restaurant. And the dinner I went to in late March that was a collaboration between Zerito and Sushi at Temple Records was a really, really amazing collaboration in that you merged Japanese cuisine and Basque cuisine in a way that I had never thought possible. And it was amazing. Again, Basque food. What is that? I think you ask the average Bostonian what Basque food is all about, they really don't know.

54:16You ask the average Boston resident what sushi is all about, they'll be like, oh, spicy tuna. And certainly that's not, you know, what we got at that dinner. But getting people educated, getting people excited about something they don't necessarily understand, how do you do it in a way that makes them feel comfortable? Sometimes education is hard. It can make people feel a little on edge. Like, I don't want to learn too much about this. I don't want to be too immersed in, you know, the background of all of us, where this came from. I just want to eat good food. But how do you get, what's the hook?

54:47That's a tough question to answer. It is almost foolish what we do or what we've chosen to do. You know, it'd be almost easier to just cookie cut these restaurants, right? And just find a great one and then just multiply it. But I think that for at least my partners and I, there is a part of our brain that would not be satisfied. and that's why we've done all these new concepts and we want to make sure that we are challenging people and hopefully we're not missing the mark in how challenging it's going to be for them we don't obviously want it to be over the top and somac or temple records or sushi at temple records these three concepts just like you said right it you know okay so sushi big deal but you go in there and you have what Kenta, our chef, is creating there.

55:41And it's nothing like you've had before. Yeah, shout out to Sushi at Temple Records because it is, I mean, there's sushi and then there's Sushi at, yeah. He is really spearheading, creating something that Boston has not had. And again, no disrespect to our peers and everyone has contributed to what Boston has become. And part of our contribution has been is and will always continue to be, how do we inch this forward? Maybe before it was feet, we were moving the city's culinary direction. Now it's perhaps a slight direction this way, a slight direction that way. You know, I'll use J.M. Curley as a example of what I thought at the time.

56:26A gastropub in Boston that you built. Yeah. And J.M. Curley, named after the infamous politician James Michael Curley is an example of, I got mad, actually. We had created an incredible restaurant called Bina Osteria and Bina Alimentari, a side-by-side gourmet food shop and restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton in the North Tower. And of course, the bottom in the world fell out in the economic world. And, you know, we hung in there, but it was very, very difficult. It was beautifully designed by Nader Tehrani, who is this incredible designer architect. And it was so unique, so avant-garde, so forward, that it didn't fit Boston.

57:07And we were, you know, I think if the economy hadn't collapsed, we could have gotten people to come along. But I said, fine, you want down and dirty, great food. And so the next place, JM Curley, we built with going to Lowe's and picking up the fixtures and, you know, designing it myself, going back to the original sort of way that I started. And, and it was a huge hit because people really wanted no frills. And the staff also didn't want to get dressed in tuxedos and, and fine dining sort of attire. And we crushed it. And then we created a little speakeasy behind it called Bogie's Place, which is doing really, really well still, and keeps going up against the big boys and winning best steakhouse in the city.

57:52And then finally, a few years ago, I opened the wig shop, which is a cocktail lounge next to all of those. And walking by the wigs in the store every day for a few years, I kept saying this would make a great cocktail lounge that you would find somewhere else in London or New York or something. And ultimately, just as we were coming out of the pandemic, I saw the opportunity. And luckily, I was able to take over the space and convert it into what it is today. Oscar Somoza, our spirits director, joined us and has created some incredible cocktails like nobody else in town. And he was, in fact, nominated for James Beard Award as a semifinalist.

58:28So we're very proud of that as well. We talked about this before we hopped the mics. I mean, you're in your restaurants almost always. And I think that says something, you know, leaders who are there, even if your team might not want you to be there sometimes, but leaders who are there, I think help to remind everyone that they're going to do the work too. But hold on. Yeah. They do want me there. You know why? Because I'll bust the tables. I'll pick up that broken glass on the floor and mop the table if I need to, because I'm not above anybody else. At the end of the day, I'm the chief dishwasher.

59:02That's what I do. That's why it's about building the culture that I'm not better than you. You're not better than me either. And we're here to achieve a goal. And that goal is to make that guest happy. And even if it, you know, I've been doing this for a long time. And when I realized that I've overdone it is when I get home and I take the shower and my knees are hurting, my back is hurting, my feet are hurting. And I'm like, why? It's like, well, I'm getting up there in age. And I just put in 14 hours, third, fourth day in a row. I am energized by it though, right? Once I walk in the restaurant, it's like that Energizer bunny that gets hooked up with the juice.

59:46I'm ready to go. The busier it is, the happier I am. And I'm not thinking about the dollars because that's the other thing that people get a little bit confused about. You have to be happy yourself. You have to create that environment that makes you happy and then make other people happy around you and have them create an environment that is this infectious happiness that when guests come in, they feel that as well. Because if you're not happy and you and I are having a fight and then we turn around and we smile, guess what? That energy is going to translate. That energy is going to come out. And so that's not going to do any good.

1:00:25So you can't fake it. You cannot absolutely fake it whatsoever. So you have to figure out a way to make yourself be happy as best you can, because we can't always be happy every day. That's just, you know, it's a farce, but you can try and you could figure out what that's going to be. Is it going to the gym? Is it going for a walk? We tell the staff, the managers, you know, if you're having a hard time, just go outside for five minutes, get some fresh air, break that cycle so that it doesn't translate to it spinning others into a different situation, but creating that culture, which we didn't talk about, but hospitality comes from the culture that you want to create.

1:01:03And And we try to work on it every day and talk about it and weekly, daily, hourly. Well, I think in a sense, you did talk about culture. You talked about the fact that your staff, your team, you yourself need to always constantly remind yourself that you are serving people food, that you are trying to make their evening because they might've been waiting a week to come in to your restaurant and have a good meal. and your experience serving them food or welcoming them into your restaurant can have such a huge impact. And so everyone needs to be on the same page. And I think, you know, the leadership starts from top down.

1:01:43If you're willing to do the hard work, if you're willing to be there, you're creating a culture where everyone is responsible, where everyone is moving in the same direction. Because if you're willing to do it, well, then anybody else should be willing to do it as well. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. You know, we talked about happiness. I'm so happy, Babak, that we had this opportunity to sit down. Thank you so much for coming out. My pleasure. I feel like I've learned quite a bit from you just in this hour that we've been chatting. And I know our audience is going to love it as well. Anytime that you want to come back, if you have an opportunity to, I know how busy you are, please stop by because I'd love to continue this conversation.

1:02:19It's been a pleasure, really, to talk about what we do and get other people enthusiastic about it and think about the way they can make our community, their community better is an important factor that we need to talk about more and more. Absolutely. Once again, thanks so much, Babak. My pleasure. That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. Taste Radio is a production of BevNet.com Incorporated. Our audio engineer for Taste Radio is Joe Kratchy. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt, and our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smirlinski, and our designer is Amanda Huang.

1:02:59Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Check us out on Instagram. Our handle is BevNetTasteRadio. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at tasteradio.com. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.