Adapting Episode 1: Canlis

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/15f4072a20779332

It's kinda like the word pick six. I don't that just like happened a few years ago and now everybody says it. Watch now the like ESPN is like pick six. Pick six. And when it doesn't happen, they're like we could really use a pick six right now.
Welcome to season six, episode four of Acquired, the podcast of Uh Ben Hey, um
I think you're on autopilot. Yeah, I uh sorry. Muscle memory.
All right, listeners, we are coming to you in a time of enormous change and upheaval. The coronavirus has spread around the world, challenging global health systems, bringing economies to their knees, and changing daily life for everyone seemingly overnight.
Given this, uh, it just seems irresponsible to stay business as usual over here and put on our normal acquired episodes for you all.
So we're changing acquired.
For the first time ever, we're taking a pause from normal episodes.
The world doesn't need acquired right now.
People normally tune in to hear us talk about the stories behind great technology companies and what goes into building them.
But these aren't normal times.
What the world does need right now is stories of great leaders and how they and their organizations are responding to what might be the biggest moment of change we've ever seen.
So we're gonna take everything that we've put into acquired over the years, uh, our format, our infrastructure, um, and the way we can reach all of you, and we're gonna put our full weight behind this. So starting today.
We're pausing acquired and we are launching.
Adapting.
Adapting is a series all about doing just that, showing leadership and changing to fit what the world needs right now, not what it needed last week. So with adapting, we're gonna take a shallow dive, a more shallow dive at the beginning of each episode into the history of an organization, but our focus is really gonna be on the present and on the future, not the past.
We also won't be grading. Adapting requires taking risks and putting yourself out there. And anyone who's doing that right now is forever an A plus in our book.
Yeah.

Yeah, David, um
I think we were just talking about this, but I'm I'm excited about this. It just feels right in uh in this moment to do this.
Totally. Uh listeners, we are making some important changes to the acquired community. If you haven't joined our Slack, you can sign up on the acquired website and find all the announcements there. And we're doing some sort of new and uh and pretty cool things in there. If you're not yet a limited partner, now is the time to join.
In addition to LP episodes, we are adding a community component to the LP program.
So last week we had our first group Zoom call with everyone who's uh shut in at home, and it was really fun and therapeutic to get to talk with everyone. So we've decided to make it a regular monthly thing as part of the limited partner program. So we'll be announcing more details on that uh in the LP show. And in the meantime, you can
Sign up at glow.fm slash acquired by clicking the link in the show notes below.
And lastly
David and I feel very strongly that money should never be a reason that a single person can't become an acquired LP. So we were talking about this beforehand, especially when introducing this new sort of um community hangout component. If you can't afford a subscription, especially as we all respond to this pandemic together.
Uh, even if you already are an LP, just shoot us an email, introduce yourself, and uh and we'll take care of ya.
Yeah, we felt super strongly about this. Um we want
Everyone who wants to be part of this community to be able to. So shoot us a note. Yep.
All right listeners.
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If your legal team wants to check it out, whether you're a law firm or you're in-house at a company, you can learn more at Lagora.com/slash acquired.
And just tell'em that Ben and David sent you.
Now what is today's episode actually about?
Well, we are doing an episode on a topic that we never thought we would do on this show.
A local restaurant.
But it is so much more than that. Indeed.
And we think uh our guests words are are very inspiring and super important today. So without further ado, please enjoy our conversation with Mark Canlis of Seattle's Canless Restaurant.
All right, listeners, most of you are aware that restaurants are among those hit the hardest from our current health crisis.
Canless is leading the way in adapting to provide a product in need, delivery food.
Saving jobs and ensuring the continuation of the business through trying trying times.
Many are asking as a city, country, and a global community, can we do this? And uh as Mark said in the Seattle Times earlier this week,
Hell yes, we can do this, and we're going to do it with burgers and bagels.
So uh uh to introduce Mark, I'm gonna borrow um a line uh or a little bit of Mark's bio from the Candlelist website because I find the the prose just poetic.
Mark Canless is the second of three sons.
He grew up in a restaurant family.
He joined Canless in two thousand and three after graduating from Cornell University and serving as a captain in Air Force Special Operations. He met his wife, Anne Marie,
While opening famed restaurant tour, Danny Meyer's fifth restaurant Blue Smoke in Manhattan.
Returning to Seattle.
Mark spearheaded the generational transfer and brand modernization that has garnered the family business national acclaim as one of the finest restaurants in America.
He now owns and operates Canless with his brother.
Brian.
He and Anne Marie reside on Queen Anne with their three children. And as for Canless, Food and Wine Magazine has called it one of the forty most important restaurants in the last 40 years. They have received twenty-two consecutive Wine Spectator Grand Awards and been nominated for 15 James Beard Awards.
and won three of them.
Welcome, Mark.
Thank you.
Good week.
Also have the luxury of when you write your own bio you can kind of make yourself sound good. I hope I haven't inflated that in any way. But um but thank you. I was gonna say the most important thing for for Ben and for me is I know um both of us have had many special memories at uh at Canlis. So thank you guys. No, I'm I'm honored to be on the show.

All right, David, take us in. History and facts. Yeah, well, so for anybody of our listeners who are in the Seattle area, and probably many who even many who aren't, you already know a lot about Canless, but
Mark, can you give us a little bit of the history? I mean, it's a very, very special place. This isn't just another restaurant. Maybe can you go back and talk about your grandfather's story and
Hawaii and Pearl Harbor.
Sure. You know, we Yeah, we're gonna go all the way back. I run this restaurant with my brother, Brian, and we very much feel like this is the tale of a couple different grandfathers. It's sort of the amalgamation of four generations of
Camless is doing restaurants. Um our great grandfather
for Teddy Roosevelt.
Um after his presidency on an African Safari.
I was picked up at a hotel in Egypt and invited to come along and be a steward on that whole thing for a year and a half.
Um so really it starts there. Uh he and my great grandmother would
Um come to United States somewhere around nineteen oh nine, nineteen ten. I started a restaurant in Stockton, California.
um at that time and had a bunch of kids. One of them
Peter Camas.
Um
started this restaurant can't in nineteen fifty, so
Uh, that was my grandfather. He would pass away in the seventies and my mom and dad ran this.
Uh for thirty years.
Brian and I have now been doing it since two thousand three and in so many ways we feel like we're just getting the hang of it. So slow learners. Um but you know, it's more or less a hundred years of trying to cook for people. There's um
There's a pretty cool military history with the restaurant and starting with Peter too, right?
Yeah, so then on the other side of the family are a whole bunch of folks who have served in the armed forces. And that is uh just continues to be uh something that we're really proud of in this family and and something that we've many of us have chosen to do and
um and represent I think some of the sweetest years, at least for my own life, and I would say that the same is true for my dad and my grandfather.
And my brother, so uh I was in the I was in the air force, so with Brian
Uh, dad was in the navy, my grandfather was a Marine for
Forty three years? I don't even think you can do that anymore, but back then you could. And um
So we have yeah, that's just been a a part of our family story and and to be completely honest, a very large
um influence on the way that we lead. Last yesterday we're running this crazy drive through we've got cars everywhere, shut down traffic, and I get a
Um
I get a phone call and I have hearing aid, so the the thing just comes like straight into my head. It's as if like the phone is ringing in your brain. So I just answered it because I thought it was our our road team. And it was the colonel that I worked for.
You know, twenty five years ago, Curl Mueller and a man that just had such remarkable influence.
on the way that I lead. And it was random. I haven't talked to him in years and
I was like Colonel Mueller, no way.
Um, I've been talking about you uh to everyone because I in so many ways I feel like you prepared me for this and not just a uh it's not about adapting your company, but the leadership I think
Um the the way the military teaches you to to prize your people is just
Yeah, I just learned so much in my in my time in the service. So that was that's just been a gift to us.
That's great.
Can list the restaurant.
was on Honolulu
grew out of the U SO after Pearl Harbor, right? You know, he left the place in Stockton, he'd grown up there and he wanted nothing to do with restaurants, uh w the what his parents were doing, and he ends up in Hawaii.
Um, he's still in Dry Goods when Pear Harper happens, uh he remembers the Earl's flying over, he was playing tennis in the morning and
Um, like everybody, like so many people in Honolulu at the time, they kinda all headed to the base and
Tried to do what they could.
Um my grandfather had quite a uh
Healthy self esteem?
Um just code for you know He sounds like an entrepreneur. Yeah, there you go. That's thank you. Yeah, that's a nice euphemism for uh how to
Large ego and at some point he finds himself talking a lot of smack inside the US O about the quality of the food.
The chef gets so upset that he kinda throws a towel at him and says you need to do a better job.
You try it.
Which of course he does. And by the end of the war he's running all of the food on base, uh, for the US so that's about
Kind of between three thousand and five thousand meals.
Um
So maybe in some way uh this drive-through is us getting back to our sort of um I don't know, high volume roots, if you will, but um
But that's what happened and then right after the war.
Opened a restaurant.
on a beach that was little less known before the war and and certainly than before now, uh called Waikiki.
So he had that restaurant in nineteen forty seven, it was called The Boiler, and then he came to K he came to Seattle in in nineteen
Fifty.
And Mark, just to context that for our listeners a little bit, when you say getting back to our high volume roots, for folks not from Seattle, canless is
Fine, fine dining. W what does v normal volume look like? And uh what does the adapted volume look like? I don't know. I feel like I live in a bubble and I don't really understand the real restaurant business. But in the world of
Okay, so let's just try to understand fine dining for a second,'cause I think it's a funny term.
We consider fine dining just to be the most considered form of caring for somebody with with food and hospitality. It's like
So
Uh for us we're considered to be a massive fine dining restaurant in the world of fine dining, you know, twelve to fifteen tables is pretty standard.
Uh we have thirty three.
Um, but on a busy night the most guests we can serve are somewhere around a hundred fifty to two hundred.
Um I have a hundred and fifteen employees to make that happen.
We are a model of inefficiency and um that's just six dinners a week. That's all we're doing. So I say that like'cause I just want people to know just exactly like And not open for breakfast, not open for lunch. No. No no no no. Yeah. Hundred and fifteen people to figure out dinner.
And there's always, if not, maybe there's like a couple hours a day where there's someone not there, but when you talk about that hundred and fifteen people, it's like

A day we don't use our kitchen.
So it's twenty it takes us twenty hours to to to open for what is essentially five hours of of dinner time service.
Uh a lot of prep obviously goes into that. And yeah, sure, you're baking bread and and and setting things up sometimes take a couple days to make. But today we served, you know, about
twelve hundred people through the drive thru. Uh we served about
I don't know, somewhere in the r range of three hundred people.
for breakfast. Uh tonight we'll send a couple hundred dinners out for delivery. So it's a much different impact.
For us and we're not exactly set up for it, so we're we're trying to figure that out as we go, but um
Today was a day of rest for us. It felt so um every day this week we've opened a new restaurant concept.
Um, we started on Monday with a drive through. Tuesday we added bagels and yesterday we added
I did home delivery. So uh today we were just sort of refining some of those systems again, and uh it was kinda nice just to just to run them and see how we could tweak it. So let's get
Right into you know, the show is adapting. It's now seventy years that your family has run Canless Fine Dining.
And in
Two weeks really since you started planning, you've thrown that out the window, and now you're doing these three different things. Like, can you walk us through when was the moment you realized
That
This was gonna happen and you needed to change.
My wife and I were in New York City
doing something for the James Beard Awards and uh we got the news that Seattle had its first case.
And we went back to the hotel and just sort of talking through like, you know, this thing's coming, it's here. It's here in Seattle.
Um
And what does that mean?
Not just our marriage and our own children, but our extended family. I have parents are in their seventies.
Um
And uh what does it mean for for the restaurant family, for the staff and
Couple days later, uh back at home we had a meeting as a team and we just said
You guys let's let's really think through this a little bit uh while we were having that meeting. Uh
King County or Governor, I can't even remember who it was, but someone official
And now
had this like live stream and kinda came on and said, Hey, this is much bigger deal than we thought.
Um
You know, it's it's like at first you just kinda have it's like the sucker punch to the system, you know, you've got the wind taken out of you a little bit, and then
Pretty quickly we realized uh that it would be just as risky to do nothing as it would
to do something really radical and um if we were if if we were gonna live into our values
uh then you know, every once in a while that really is probably gonna cost you something. And in this way it was gonna cost
Shutting down what was still a profitable business.
for the unknown of opening up three new ones. And and the only the reason we're doing three is cause again it just took that many ideas to
Get all of my staff up to having all the hours they would've normally had, and that was the goal here. So um
We started with the drive through. Um for those that don't know, we're a fine dining restaurant.
Looking this direction, um, but if you turn around we're on a really busy road, you know, and that's not ideal. No one would plan that out these days.
Um
But we just said okay, what do we have? Like what what um starting with what do we have to be thankful for and then what what assets are out of disposal here if we if we started from scratch.
Um, how would we play this and
Um we were I remember watching the live stream, we're all sort of huddled on the couch there, the team. There's seven of us um This is all in the first in this meeting. This is like in the meeting and uh we do these
Like three hour off sites and we go to one of uh somebody's homes we can like
kind of feel what it's like to be welcome into their home personally. So sitting on Marin's sofa.
And uh which is not sev seven person sofa, it's like a three or four person sofa. And we're all kinda like huddled and watching this thing and
Yeah, I think it just it just hit us that like
The game is an up.
Like wait a second, this isn't over.
This is just beginning, and I think we'd all gone in.
With the sentiment of
Helplessness, if we're honest, maybe hopelessness. I think there was a
feeling of okay, I gotta bat in the hatches. I gotta
Hunker down. I gotta
You know, and
Um Protect, yeah. Protect. And that's a lousy strategy in a lot of things.
Soccer being one of them. Um
You you see in in sports all the time when when uh when an entire team sort of switches to defense and loses their offensive, like suddenly you're like Ah, don't do that. Wait a minute, like keep playing your game And for us we're like if we're gonna keep playing our game
We just need to admit to the game changed.
And the game now, currently today, this is two weeks ago, was
No one understands the six foot rule, and no one understands what is socially socially acceptable. We don't understand if we should be shutting down.
schools and public places, or if that
Is
You know, building a fear that right, so this is
Happening so quickly, but

The game had changed.
We just got the sense that it was going to.
Yeah. It hadn't yet, but it was like the writing is on the wall and
I think nobody wanted to actually say that out loud.
But it felt that way a couple of weeks ago. And so Well, I can tell you from the outside the way it it sort of felt is uh you made a more drastic move earlier.
than most places.
Like I think in the next week a lot of places started trying to figure out what does it mean for us to do delivery
But I will say from the outside the way it looked was
And frankly, part of what inspired David and I for this was, Oh my God, that was decisive and that was severe and extreme. And risky. Like you you know, you guys took a I wish I could take credit for that. Let me tell you where a lot of that credit belongs.
First off, uh we have an incredible board of directors and some advisors who are just um remarkable sounding boards for us.
Um both of our wives were really key.
into sort of speaking into
um how are we or f how are we how were we were perceiving the world
Um and I think in this time it was a a time of just great perception, trying to understand and make sense of what we were hearing, how it pertained to us and our team.
Um, but really when we launched this with the executive team, we said, you know, this thing could work
That's to say there's a chance the boat is taking on water and there's a chance it might sink.
And also, there's a chance there's a lifeboat on the end. W will someone just go to the end of the ship and see if there's a lifeboat? If that's kinda what that meeting felt like.
And somebody came back and said, You know, as turns out there is a life ball on the back of the ship. Like we could all get in it, right? And so
So we sat on that as a team for about twenty four hours. I uh the next
I or forty eight two days later I was having dinner with our staff.
And we're all sitting around having family meal, talking this through.
And I just said, You guys I let me just tell you where my head's at.
Um
And I'm scared to tell you'cause I don't know what it means.
But this is what we're thinking about as a team and and it would mean
All of you need to revolunteer to work here.
They would mean all of you choosing to be in a position
Choosing not to be laid off.
or temporarily furlough, choosing to actually continue to do this thing and
Would any of you be interested in uh not only that group of sort of five or six of us sitting around the table, but
The next night in a staff meeting announcing it to the entire team
Um, this is up to you. You don't have to do this. And every one of them saying
Wayne.
You know, put me in coach.
And
I think that was just such a
Boost of encouragement to us is like
If you guys are in Warren.
And let's do this. Right. It had like that sort of sentiment to it. It was like, Okay.
Um, why not? And it I think at some point you say to yourself and any
Time of crisis.
If I have the ability to help, why am I not doing it?
And that is what it felt like to us. It felt like this could be
an encouragement to the city. It was clearly an encouragement to the staff.
Um
And it was for us uh just a way through. A a way that and uh uh
An untested, untried way.
But um
Uh.
That would give it a world.
That's awesome.
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I wanna talk about
Communication and language.
And the language you guys use and I've always I've always used, but particularly now is really inspiring. But before we get to that
Can we go back to the three

the bagel shed, drive through lunch, and then delivery for dinner.
Where did they come from?
Th there's also a fourth it's a fourth concept coming.
Um which I'm super stoked about. But um yeah, I can kinda walk you through all three of those.
The first one was uh the was the drive thru.
Uh we saw that as being the biggest revenue generator.
Um we have a ridiculous amount of labor here. It's it's the most expensive thing and we knew that one of these concepts have to actually work. And so
We just I geographically, if you understand the way this restaurant works, you can pull right off of the street, right under our pork cash air.
You can stay in your car and you can roll right on down the driveway. And it was like that's what we knew we needed, that the cleanliness there, the ability to not have any contact with the guest.
um but still sort of be facing them. And so yeah, we were embracing our inner drive through as a fine dining restaurant. It was just like this is us. Come on, let's just let it out of the bag and
Chef can cook a remarkable burger and um we've always joked about
doing this sort of traditional salad of ours, the camel salad is to go item and
Like why not? Like let's just do burgers and ice cream sandwiches and salad to go. It's like
Like
I don't know. Sometimes that's all you need.
Can you talk about average ticket price for each of these three concepts and sort of how that would compare to?

So
You know what? We uh have designed this thing not to make
Money. I think it's a little bit weird.
Speak.
Pra uh let's see, this is a tricky this is tricky thing. I don't think there's any unethical anything unethical about
um making money in this time I I I in a certain sense we have a duty to do so
But mostly as a as a means of um protecting the staff and
To be clear.
I don't I d we're only four days in. I don't know if we are. That's to say the bag of concepts clearly does not make money. Um it's labor intensive.
We don't have the equipment to scale that in any way such that we could we could move that to be a profitable business. Uh, we could raise the prices, but that just feels dirty. So the point again is is to keep people employed. So
Um with burgers we probably make a little extra. With bagels we're definitely losing
Um with dinner
As we scale that up, that'll be profitable and somehow.
If we can get break even.
Even from the onset, that's what that's what the goal was. Was like it'd be amazing if for the next three months Canless could not lose money. I think that'll posture us really well coming out of this thing on the other side. And and I do think of it as a few months, not just a few weeks. So
Um
Yeah, bagels came out of the idea of we're gonna be really busy for lunch. Um
Our expediter.
happens to be this incredible woman from the lower east side of Manhattan.
Uh, she's a baker and and she makes a re ridiculous bagel. And Chef is from Brooklyn and he wou she was like, That's the best bagel I've had in New York City or in Seattle
We happen to have a bread oven and a shipping container and it was like a no brainer, so we just opened the bagel shed and we're doing
You know, everything bagels with fried eggs and homemade sausage and um cheese and Can you sell the bagels as an add on to dinner for like breakfast at home the next morning?
That'd be a good idea. We sell out of bagels in under an hour.
So it's a full time crew of eight making these things and it lasts that whole idea lasts an hour, so
Uh we actually thought about intentionally slowing the line so that
Because again the the ch the idea is to keep everyone employed here, but um but no, we've been blown through them too quickly.
So we're n we're right now we're looking at taking over another bakery.
Um that is closed and maybe we can use their space and kind of scale it up higher somewhere.
Yeah, I did see something, it was like uh you had some message on your website this morning, like uh unfortunately bagels are sold out as of eight thirty seven AM. Yeah, yeah, they they think I'm going nuts. So the last concept of just doing family meal at home, you know, we cook an amazing family meal for the staff. That's the meal that twice a day Chef prepares for our team.
And we always joke about like one of the best restaurants in the city actually being Camlas's family meal. Like it's so good. The pastry chef is making
Cobblers and the bartenders are like making homemade sodas and Chef is like Hey this is my mama's meatloaf and this is like
Enchilada from Nico who's in press and prepping all day and
It's so good and it kinda kills us the the rest of the city doesn't get to see what these guys are capable of outside of fine dining and so
We just thought, Okay, well that's a no brainer. Like why don't we just keep making Fami Mail? We don't need a big menu.
Delivery is tough to figure out and it making a transition like this, I I think if you can keep it simple
You should.
Um and so we offer one thing a night.
Um the very first night it was Castle because we had all these dry age ducks. We're like what we can do with ducks.
And more of a farm saying, Are you gonna take delivery of ducks going forward? And we have to say yes. So
Um tonight it is uh rabbit pot pie and glazed carrots and it's um I had it for lunch. It's insane. It's so so good. So
We just thought
Shoot, we can bake all that stuff here, pack it up, throw a bottle of wine in it, and my servers who used to take food from the kitchen to the table are not just taking it to the parking lot and
Right on down the street a little way. So
Um it keeps them employed and it keeps my kitchen cooking all night long and
Kind of fun.
That's so cool. How uh technically, how did you
make that happen. You guys adapted. You've been on Talk, the um reservation and ticketing system for a while. How did you d did you work with Talk to make this happen? The guys at Talk were awesome. We called them
early on and we're like, we have this crazy idea and we're actually trying to like hack the system. It's so talk is a reservation system for those that don't know and that th those guys are awesome. And we were trying to see if we could morph the reservation system into a delivery system.
And we've just about figured out and
They they call like you guys stop it. Hold on a second. We can we can do this. Give us five minutes.
Five minutes later they call back and they said, We stood our company down, we're turning it back on, we just called everybody in, they're in Chicago.
And we're just gonna work on this so you have the platform. And they cranked it up, working around the clock for a couple of days.
And we were able to launch. And so that is a mechanism that any restaurant in the country
Look, not everybody can do drive through. I mean it's just the physicality of it. The location is gonna work for them. But any restaurant that company could do delivery and
Now that we've got the software for it, it's just it's it's not.
You know, overtly tricky.
Uh, can you talk through any restaurant the country can do delivery? I'm sure there's a lot of folks that that own restaurants that are listening to this. What does that take?
It takes low guts.
And it takes just that kinda good old fashioned restaurant scrappiness that every restaurant tour already has. If you're in this business, I guarantee you have what it takes. Because it's just
It's just w the same thing it takes to run a restaurant, it's it's that. It's a little bit of um
Uh the willpower just to make it happen. That's I think what all of us are going through. So all we did was figure out a minium.
And we launched a website so someone that knows what to do
On the internet, that's not me, um, but our design team drew up a little logo, which is not necessary. Uh we threw a little splash page on top of canvas dot com, which is also not necessary. You could just post on Instagram
Having to switch to delivery.
Um, so appreciate you supporting us doing this. Now you can do various versions of it. Our fancy. Our servers have it all on their phones, they get the maps, they get the texts, we can do drop offs, no contact drop offs, we can do alcohol.
Again, talk made all that possible. But you can keep it really simple. It I mean it takes ordering some boxes and some to-go containers, coming up with one thing that holds hot really well.
And letting your constituency know it.
Tonight's a great night for takeout. So yeah, we sold out three nights worth of takeout in about ninety minutes.
Wow. One question that I have that I'd I'd be remiss if I didn't ask, and I'll give a little context for listeners. So Canless is
innovative not just in the way that over the last sixty, seventy years you guys have changed fine dining, which we haven't talked about on this episode, but um Mark's given some great talks that that you can sort of read about and the the evolution of fine dining and Caneless's role in it. But also in doing these wild experiments that you would not expect
the finest dining in the city to also have a shake shack pop up in the parking lot before there was a shake shack, or you would not have expected uncover that a little bit. Do you mind if we dig into why you wouldn't expect a fine dining restaurant to do that?
Yeah, definitely one of the
reasons that I think this transition has been um possible for us is that we practice this kind of thing.
And by that I I don't just mean events in our parking lot. I mean
If you want to be a restaurant that is around
Let alone relevant or humane to the conversation.
You're
Doing
A fair amount of this every year anyway. People always ask Brian and I, how come you guys haven't opened a second restaurant? I'm like, Oh
Um you just don't know it. But we open a second restaurant about every eighteen months.
I would say that's how often the systems inside of Canvas are changing.
Um, and those are being rewritten by new employees and employees that have been here twenty years.
um the idea is that there's probably a better way to do it than the way that we're doing it. I we just kinda believe that. And so
Um
I think
If you want to matter, you need to earn that right. And to earn it, you gotta be working all the time at opening a restaurant that's really good. And tonight we're good.
Uh tomorrow will be better.
And that's
That's not news to anyone. I think what happens I that that's to say that's not a strategy that no one's heard before. If you're in business, you get it, right? And
maybe thank you to the Japanese who made that a very popular concept.
you know in the late eighties and nineties, but like we're all sort of thinking that way. What happens is it's really easy to get lazy.
Um, it's really easy to start to devalue that as the thing is working. And of course if you
If you go too far for that, maybe you're undoing things that still had a a usable lifespan inside of them, right? So you hate to take a system down that would have been amazing for the next
you know, foreseeable future. So that takes a little
I don't know.
Sorting through. You gotta be careful there, but
And less listeners think that uh
You know, we're just talking about a one time thing opening up a uh shake show. I like I went to your restaurant last summer, and when I say restaurant I mean parking lot for the Hawaiian Knights luau uh where listeners, it's the largest
hot tub you've ever seen.
It's and it's up on like a second story deck overlooking a like you guys opened a little pizza shop and like a multi story like hangout. Bar which
We Which we I think we I think we created. And then we also had so we built a couple of tiki huts and um have yeah, we yeah.
I is the story is am I right you bought the swimming pool on Amazon? Well uh no, so uh for we like to test things out on staff parties and the goal of a staff party is to throw one that the staff would willingly come to
If they had no association with the restaurant, right? So you just said look, you guys it's a true
Day off. Or it's a true night off.
Like do whatever you want. And also we're gonna be throwing this party over here and it's like totally like no expectation come.
Only
But we just talk about it. So um
Anyway, yeah, at some point
Oh we were throwing a luau.
Oh yeah, we had covered the parking lot in sawd.
Uh because we're like it's not cool to throw
party in a parking lot and cement and whatnot we could was grass. So we solder the thing over and we threw a volleyball party and we had a pig roasting and somebody said at some point
Well every Lua needs a beach. So
We like rotten sand and then I went on Amazon and I'm like, No way, you can buy a pool for like two thousand dollars. Well that's cheaper than
You know, in the world of staff parties, this the stuff adds up quickly, so
Anyway, about a pool.
And we filled it up.
Um and then it just kinda like went from there. So then
That was a really successful party and we were thinking about fun things we could do over the summer and we thought, Well why don't we just throw the staff party for the city
And honestly, you guys, I thought
Like a few hundred people would come. Like who goes to a parking lot to find any restaurant to hang out in an above ground pool.
Yeah, like twelve hundred people came in night. Like it was nuts. And all of them waited an hour or two to get in. So that
Caught us by surprise a little bit, but
It was also a ton of fun. I mean you DJ on top of a shipping container and
Underneath your bacon the best pizzas and roasting pigs and
Uh yeah, I don't know what happened out there, but it was g it was it was tons of fun. So we do like to just sort of think through these things and um and I think it's it's a little bit of a good exercise
Look, just'cause we're fine dining doesn't mean we're not thinking of
Ninety nine other ideas to do and
To us it's kinda like the Formula One version of putting out a sedan. It's like why don't we go push this as far as we can? Let's see what happens. And every one of these projects finds its way back under our media.
Every one of these projects influences what we believe about hospitality and
You need that stuff. You need to be inspired by it. Your people need to be inspired by it. Yeah. That's fun.
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So as we start to wind down here, that's that's the question on my mind is I know it's only been four days, but
Um of the three restaurants you talked about and and fourth that we'll keep under wraps for now.
Um, what do you think might make its way into
Canless when we live in a normal world again. Um here's what I hope makes its way into canless.
I hope that what comes out of this
Is
A visceral reminder.
Of how alike we all are.
And if there's anything that I think we've learned so far.
It's that
Our understanding of the human spirit
Is limited at best.
And it's only
When
When you come to me and say
Mark, I think you got this man. And when I reflect that back to you and say, look
Done.
Uh
You got this.
Right, like tha that's that's what happens. Something really powerful happens there and
The whole mission of this company, which is I know a really weird mission, but it's it's to inspire people to turn toward one another.
And when we saw the disease spreading, and I am not talking about
Covid nineteen. I'm talking about the amount of fear.
The amount of discouragement
When we saw that spreading
And often for really good reason. This is not these are not insignificant days.
This is a good uh overused but good word. This is unprecedented for the entire world to go through s something together.
where no one gets to say, Yeah, it doesn't apply to me, right? When something like that happens, I think we have a responsibility.
To remind ourselves.
Of the truth.
And the truth is we don't know what we're capable of.
We
The camera's team.
We the city of Seattle.
We the United States of America, we the citizens of this rock that were
floating around on.
And I hope that we
understand that better on the other side of this thing. And
Um that's what we're learning. That's what we're learning inside this building. I don't know if we'll
We might not be able to do this tomorrow. Maybe this will go for months. I don't know.
But
Um
Every day I tell the team I was like
Hey, look, um you're gonna wanna go home and crawl under your covers and read your phone and it's
Is important to do so.
But when you wake up the next morning, you go outside, you physically go outside of your house, your apartment.
You look up at the sky.
And ask yourself the question, is it still up there or did it fall?
Yeah, but it's still up there.
You can be thankful for that.
And you start with what you're thankful with. You say, All right, the sky did not fall, contrary to the way I feel, having read all the headlines.
It's still up there. I hear a bird tweeting. I see a neighbor walking down the street.
You know what, let's start with what we have.
Let's go from there and let's ask ourselves the question.
If this is what I have.
What can I do with it?
Um
I don't know. Maybe what we get out of this whole thing is that as a discipline, as a practice, as a reminder that
I don't know, maybe that's a reminder that we need right now.
I think it's reminder that I needed.
I think it's a reminder that my team needed and
I wish you could feel the difference inside this place.
Before and after
We made this decision before it was
Feeling of the
Helplessness.
And after it was a feeling of hope.
Before it was a feeling that
The the the overwhelming
Wait.
Of this thing was too much.
And after it was the understanding that I had a role to play.
And that even just enduring
Even just enduring a little bit.
Might be my role.
I think when we tell those stories.
then we start to remind ourselves the truth of who we are as people.
And
That's pretty cool.
That's um that's why we wrote on that website we got this Seattle. It was the most poignant way I could say
To a city that needed to hear it.
We are capable of making it through.
Well, I cannot think of a single
Better way to leave uh
Leave this episode and leave our our very first episode of adapted.
Um and with that line. So Mark, thank you so much.
Thanks for thanks for having me on the show.
Anything else you want to tell listeners or or tell'em uh you know, where they should go get some great food. I do want to tell listeners something, yeah.
I think they have the ability.
Even though it doesn't feel this way.
To make a difference.
Uh what we've been talking about here is my restaurant.
You know what you don't have?
You don't have my restaurant and you probably don't have a restaurant.
To dismiss this.
As someone else's story in a city that you don't live in.
I think would be a great
Um
What would make me sad.
I think to hear this and to know that
If we're crazy enough to give this a world, maybe m you know, maybe some of you're crazy.
Is okay too.
And I hope it gives them permission.
To think optimistically.
I hope it gives them permission.
Um to smile at a neighbor.
Keep it six feet away. I don't care. You can still smile at them.
And so um that's not insignificant.
It's important, and it's gonna take all of us.
Remembering.
That about ourselves.
Remembering that that is who we are as
So
This is a story about our country and and largely this is a story about well beyond our borders and
How like we all really are.
Amen.
Let's all
Go do it.
Not exactly what you're doing. But do what we all can to do. You're all welcome to over there. I'm against it. I think competition only makes us better, but uh But you're gonna have some steep competition, the burgers are pretty good.
Well my uh it is it is on my calendar to come uh
Um
Tomorrow morning, I think hopefully around seven, seven thirty to the the bagel shed and pick one up.
I'd love to see her.
Thanks so much, Mark. Um listeners.
We will catch you for the next one.
Thanks, guys. See you next time.
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