Is this your first time on the red carpet?

Second time on the red carpet, second final, so we'll cross our fingers and see what happens.

Congratulations, and what are you looking forward to most tonight?

celebrating our people, having fun.

The majority of our management crew is coming with us to the awards tonight.

It's just such a privilege to be able to share this moment with them.

Oh, wow.

He was like, "Hey, do you wanna meet for coffee? You know, catch up?" Um, I was like, "Sure, I got nothing to do," you know? So we met for coffee.

We started talking about the, uh, the industry, the, the future of, of what we thought hospitality wanted to be and just kind of, you know, riffing on, you know, what, what we really wanted to do and what we thought about wanting to do.

And, you know, he, uh, let me in on the fact that he was looking at spaces and looking for, uh, a chef, looking for a partner to open up a, a restaurant with.

And, uh, I give him shit all the time, but I wasn't his first choice.

I was, like, his third or fourth choice.

Um, but, uh, you know, we talked for hours and then, uh, walked into the back door of, uh, what was Lola, Michael Symon's flagship restaurant in downtown Cleveland.

That's right.