Spring Valley

How did you get started? I know you and Lynn went to high school together, and you were building cars as a teenager.

In Spring Valley, San Diego County.

my neighbor bought Borough Bend Ocotillo Wells Cafe.

And that was just turning into an off-road mega.

again he's he's a legend already for being the everyman doing these everyman things right and for however whatever however it came to him to do a thing on racing uh behind george plimpton behind the wheel he's in monaco he's in england he's he's hobnobbing with jackie stewart yeah freaking royalty who's leaving yeah riding a helicopter to

the race with him you know

And then he gets over to La Mesa, California or Spring Valley and sees you and your wife and your humble garage.

He goes,

It was 200 square feet, a location on College Avenue, another 200 square feet, and another location in Sports Arena, 200 square feet.

three different locations in San Diego County, because we believe that getting people 3.3 million people in San Diego to come all the way to Spring Valley was a broken business model.

So we wanted to get barbecue, craft barbecue, ribs, tri-tip, chicken, wedding beans, mac and cheese, smoked at our commissary, our main location, and then delivered to our ghost kitchen locations.

Guess what? Startup costs were very low.

What are the lessons we learned failing using the Ghost Kitchen model? We learned that we still believe we're the Amazon of barbecue.

We still believe that technology will play a role in restaurants thinking differently.

We still believe that the smokers that we have at our main restaurant in Spring Valley will help us build a catering business.

allow us to deliver barbecue to more institutional buyers.

I mean, that's awesome that you...

I mean, growing up in the East County, there was that dance club at the base of Spring Valley, Mount Helix.

Oh, I just drew a blank.

and it was all the gothic and then there was piranhas that took over uh the cowboy bar in mission valley on sunday nights