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Speaker 3: All right, guys, welcome back, e y L. We have
Speaker 3: a very very exciting special episode today. First and foremost,
Speaker 3: shout out to Drvin. I didn't even tell you what.
Speaker 3: A couple months ago we were number two on the
Speaker 3: on the DR Charts for Business podcast. We have a
Speaker 3: strong following in DR and some of our biggest guests
Speaker 3: have been Dominicant. We had Caesar dj mv's partner. Shout
Speaker 3: out to Caesar. We had loaded the slumsneto. He's his
Speaker 3: best friend. Shout out to Fernando. This is the John Henry,
Speaker 3: John Henry. Shout to John Henry. So you're in good hands.
Speaker 3: So today we got shelf chef Calvin, Calvin Fernandez, so
Speaker 3: I'll do the rundown. He is legend within his own right, prodigy, legend,
Speaker 3: whatever you want to call it. He has cooked for
Speaker 3: the New York Yankees. He is personal chef to j
Speaker 3: low and and a Ron, personal chef to j Lo
Speaker 3: and a Rod. He made Forbes thirty Under thirty for
Speaker 3: Chef List. He's been on TV Network on chop on Man,
Speaker 3: First Child, Bobby Flay. He actually defeated Bobby Flay twice.
Speaker 3: He defeated Bobby Flay twice. He's partner chef in Last Lap,
Speaker 3: which is his restaurant that he's partnering right now. And
Speaker 3: he was formerly the chef at Marina.
Speaker 4: Oh my God, a whole entire VI at the height
Speaker 4: of it, at the.
Speaker 3: Peak, we'll talk, but we gotta talk about I feel.
Speaker 5: Like I got to walk around with you on a
Speaker 5: regular basis.
Speaker 3: So first and foremost, thank you, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3: Appreciate it.
Speaker 5: I'm happy to be here. It's an honor shout out
Speaker 5: to you guys for doing what you're doing. I got
Speaker 5: goosebumps with you were telling me what you guys are
Speaker 5: doing in DC, because I don't know about that. So
Speaker 5: I'm happy and proud of you guys because you're always
Speaker 5: leveling up so bigger and better things on a regular basis.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the green room having me.
Speaker 3: So the thing about your Leash is that we it's
Speaker 3: really cool because it's a business podcast, but it gives
Speaker 3: us broad range because everything is a business. Like literally,
Speaker 3: everything is a business because you're making money in it.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that especially like for just
Speaker 3: everybody has to eat right and every like that's literally
Speaker 3: and figuratively.
Speaker 5: You're saying that this is one of the biggest reasons
Speaker 5: why I started this. Just getting into this business, I
Speaker 5: knew three things. I'll always be with friends, I'll never
Speaker 5: go hungry, and I always have a because we need
Speaker 5: food to survive.
Speaker 3: That's it. You need food to live. That's a fact.
Speaker 3: And it's like a lot of times so we've we've
Speaker 3: interviewed restaurant owner before, but we haven't interviewed a chef.
Speaker 3: It's a different dynamic and a lot of times people
Speaker 3: It's one of those things where people love to cook
Speaker 3: a lot of times, right, but a lot of times
Speaker 3: people don't think about how can they monetize it, how
Speaker 3: can they make a career out of it, how can
Speaker 3: they make a business out of it. But you've done
Speaker 3: all of that and you're still leveling it up. And
Speaker 3: so it's an interesting conversation because I feel like these
Speaker 3: are these are conversations that we can have where anybody,
Speaker 3: you know, could apply skills that they have and become
Speaker 3: a chef. Right. It's not something that you have to
Speaker 3: Like a lot of times, like we talk like hedge
Speaker 3: fund and stuff like that, and people get like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is over my head. Cooking is not over anybody's head.
Speaker 6: Like you got a bag of chips in your in
Speaker 6: your cupboard, you got some's like.
Speaker 5: You're doing a chop basket right now.
Speaker 4: You got a chop basket? What you got?
Speaker 3: So you're a world class chef, but you come from
Speaker 3: humble beginning. But your family is a long line of chefs,
Speaker 3: cooks things that nature.
Speaker 5: Right, especially being Dominican, you come from a line of
Speaker 5: women that know how to cook. You know, I think
Speaker 5: what's always nostalgic for me I can be out the
Speaker 5: country for three months, the first thing I need is
Speaker 5: a home cooked meal from my mom. And it's one
Speaker 5: of those things where I remember and I think about it,
Speaker 5: and when I'm creating a new dish, it's always like,
Speaker 5: how can I make this nostalgic for someone else?
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: So, just like you said with food, there's so many
Speaker 5: different outlets that you can go to creating a business.
Speaker 5: And reality is you think about how many people have
Speaker 5: started a business in their own home and how they've
Speaker 5: grown to a small, little commercial and then buying the
Speaker 5: store next door. And those are some of my favorite stories,
Speaker 5: you know, people that start small and not every even
Speaker 5: I started a company at one point when I was
Speaker 5: doing meal props, and we literally rented out an apartment
Speaker 5: and just made that our kitchen, like there was no
Speaker 5: other furniture. We have refrigerators in there, we had shelving
Speaker 5: in there, we had two ovens, and that electric travelo.
Speaker 5: That electric goal was high. But at the end of
Speaker 5: the day, we were doing the job.
Speaker 6: So you said you came home to a home cooked
Speaker 6: meal from your mom, but your dad is actually the chef.
Speaker 5: My dad is the chef, you know. And then especially
Speaker 5: being in a Latino you always think about the women
Speaker 5: are the cooks, you know, and if you think about restaurants,
Speaker 5: of the cooks are men, you know. So I'm actually
Speaker 5: happy to see that there's a lot more women in
Speaker 5: restaurants and shutting it down, there's a lot of female
Speaker 5: chefs that I've had the honor and privilege to work
Speaker 5: alongside and collab with. And that's something that I like
Speaker 5: to see on a regular basis as well, because when
Speaker 5: you do think about food and love, and it really
Speaker 5: does come from both. So I'm happy to see that
Speaker 5: on a regular basis.
Speaker 3: Now, I just thought about that, that's interesting because yeah,
Speaker 3: you think about it traditionally, not to sound sexist, but
Speaker 3: it's like most of the time in a household, a woman,
Speaker 3: your mom is the one that's really making.
Speaker 5: Mom, Grandma auntie.
Speaker 3: In restaurants, men are the artist chefs.
Speaker 5: And I think about it comes to a point where
Speaker 5: in restaurants you probably get paid a little bit more
Speaker 5: than your regular standard jobs. You like, even me, I
Speaker 5: was fifteen years old and I was getting paid at
Speaker 5: that time it was like ten dollars an hour, but
Speaker 5: minimum wage was seven fifty or six fifty, so I
Speaker 5: was like, I'm already ahead of the game. I'm making
Speaker 5: four dollars more than anybody else. And that was me
Speaker 5: at fifteen. So when I was getting a check of
Speaker 5: eight hundred dollars for every two weeks, I thought I
Speaker 5: was rich. Think about that now I can't. I don't
Speaker 5: even leave my house if I don't make eight hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: So at what point did you did you say, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is something that I could actually take serious. You
Speaker 3: went to school for this, right, yeah?
Speaker 5: I went to uh well, it started in Long Island
Speaker 5: City High School. I went to a high school that
Speaker 5: had the program. So the program was just learning how
Speaker 5: to make you know, brownies and cookies and like a
Speaker 5: home met class. I would say that, you know, But me,
Speaker 5: I was being the typical jock, and I was like,
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna wear an apron. I don't want to
Speaker 5: be in a place where you think about you know.
Speaker 5: They were my friends, but you know, we tease each
Speaker 5: other a little bit, and the last thing I need
Speaker 5: is to give my teammates on the football team and
Speaker 5: on the baseball team something else to tease me other
Speaker 5: than me being five feet tall. Thank God for those
Speaker 5: extra five inches So it's one of those things where
Speaker 5: it took a lot for me to take put my
Speaker 5: pride aside and say, all right, let me let me
Speaker 5: put my focus onto something. So shout out to my
Speaker 5: ex girlfriend in high school, Maria, because if it wasn't
Speaker 5: for her, she pushed me into cooking. You know, she
Speaker 5: wanted me to show a little bit of interest and
Speaker 5: support the way she was supported me by being at
Speaker 5: every game, every match, being my biggest cheerleader and no
Speaker 5: putintendent because she was on the cheerleading squad too, so
Speaker 5: she was forced to be there.
Speaker 7: It wasn't more of a more of a maybe she
Speaker 7: chose to be there. She chose to be I'm gonna
Speaker 7: take it off that. I'm gonna take it on that
Speaker 7: I take it. So if it wasn't for her, I
Speaker 7: would have never went into cooking.
Speaker 5: And she gave me the opportunity to to put my
Speaker 5: talent into something else because I was a good sports
Speaker 5: I was good in baseball, I was great in wrestling,
Speaker 5: I was okay in football. Uh, but being on a
Speaker 5: platform where I'm the solo star, like cooking, that was
Speaker 5: all thanks to her.
Speaker 3: So all right, so you went to c I A,
Speaker 3: which is one of the top culinary institution in the world.
Speaker 5: Right, Culinary Institut of America. The CIA is the elite
Speaker 5: school for culinary So it's like, you know, we're the
Speaker 5: cornell of culinary schools. You know. It's one of those
Speaker 5: things where they provided a program and a way for
Speaker 5: you to learn more than just cooking. You know, I thought,
Speaker 5: at seventeen eighteen years old, I'm here learning about wines
Speaker 5: of the world. I'm here learning there was One of
Speaker 5: my favorite classes was product Knowledge, where literally, by the
Speaker 5: end of the class you would have a table full
Speaker 5: of ingredients. You can't pick them up, you can't smell them,
Speaker 5: you can't touch them. You have to know what it
Speaker 5: is just by looking at it.
Speaker 4: But that was I mean, it was a process for you.
Speaker 5: Oh though, there was a process to learn that. Absolutely,
Speaker 5: you don't get that overnight.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, I mean you weren't just chosen for the school.
Speaker 4: You have to apply and go through a whole process
Speaker 4: to be so the program.
Speaker 5: Through the program, I was fortunate enough. Thank you for
Speaker 5: mentioning that SEACAP Careers through Culinary Arts program. These people
Speaker 5: are the reason why I am who I am as
Speaker 5: a chef. And I say that more because it was
Speaker 5: it was more than just an opportunity to win a scholarship.
Speaker 5: There were a family, you know, Richard Grouse and the founder.
Speaker 5: He was like my second dad, and when he sees
Speaker 5: people that he believes in, just like my old high
Speaker 5: school teacher, Terry Maxis. You know he's retired now, good
Speaker 5: for him. You know, he put in effort and he
Speaker 5: put in the hard work to make sure that we
Speaker 5: had the opportunity. You know, I did a cooking class
Speaker 5: that led me to a cooking competition that led me
Speaker 5: to winning forty thousand dollars to the CIA. You know,
Speaker 5: never in a million years that I think I would
Speaker 5: win a scholarship, let alone get forty grand.
Speaker 3: How much does CIA course?
Speaker 5: CIA now probably forty grand a year, So I saved
Speaker 5: like half.
Speaker 3: So it's a two year program.
Speaker 5: So you're getting in getting an associates degree in culinary
Speaker 5: arts and business management. So aside from that, you know,
Speaker 5: I dormed there. I'm not going to go back at home.
Speaker 5: Even though I was close to home, I still you know,
Speaker 5: took on the.
Speaker 4: Full college experience forty bands.
Speaker 5: So I just let's say, sorry to cut you off.
Speaker 5: Let's just say it's fifteen years ago. I graduated, I
Speaker 5: just finished paying off Sally Maye, and I got for
Speaker 5: the other forty It's like I.
Speaker 4: Took a long time that that was a good I'm
Speaker 4: still saying.
Speaker 3: All right, so you finished college and then you start
Speaker 3: you going to corporate where right after that I started.
Speaker 5: Right after college, I joined there was a company called
Speaker 5: there was a restaurant called Gotham Bar and Grill. So
Speaker 5: before I got into corporate, I literally did what any
Speaker 5: young chef should do in his bust your ass for
Speaker 5: the next two years and give six months to the
Speaker 5: top chefs in New York City. So I worked with
Speaker 5: Marcus Samuelson, I worked with Jean George, I worked with
Speaker 5: Daniel Blude, I worked with Alfred Portally. That was the
Speaker 5: place where I did my six month, my eighteen week
Speaker 5: internship at the CIA, and then I got hired right
Speaker 5: out of college. So I was lucky enough that and
Speaker 5: that was one of those things where I determined that
Speaker 5: I'm going to come in early even though I'm not
Speaker 5: getting paid. I got paid an internship wage, which was
Speaker 5: still at least getting paid. How much you get paid,
Speaker 5: I think it was like seven fifty an hour.
Speaker 3: After you graduated.
Speaker 5: During my internship before I graduated, that was like right
Speaker 5: in the middle.
Speaker 4: So Alfred Bortally, he he's the head chef at the Gothambarn.
Speaker 5: Grill was the executive chef at Gothenbarn Grove for about
Speaker 5: over thirty years. He just opened. It's funny because I
Speaker 5: went to Gothenborn Girl last night because I needed some nostalgia.
Speaker 5: I went to Strip House and I was like, let
Speaker 5: me just go to Gotham Bar and Grill have an
Speaker 5: amazing old fashion and so yeah, a little flashback. And
Speaker 5: I walked in and they're like, well, Alfred's not here anymore.
Speaker 5: He just opened up his own restaurant like three blocks away,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, no, I need to go there.
Speaker 4: But the restaurant itself, I mean, when he was there
Speaker 4: was it was it was Michelin.
Speaker 5: It was Michelin. Star it is that so three star.
Speaker 5: It was three star New York Times consistently for thirty
Speaker 5: years in a row, which is which is very hard
Speaker 5: to do. The highest you can get. His four stars
Speaker 5: in New York New York Times and Michelin is three.
Speaker 5: So they were one star Michelin and there were three
Speaker 5: star New York times, which is elite. Aside from that,
Speaker 5: it's one of those classifications of knowing that you're branded
Speaker 5: by the Michelin Guide knows that you're you're your top
Speaker 5: of your tier.
Speaker 3: So all right, then you started working at this strand right.
Speaker 5: So after Gotham Bar and Grill I did, I was
Speaker 5: at a restaurant called Cafe des Artis and I had
Speaker 5: my opportunity to become like a junior soux chef. That
Speaker 5: was the first time I had an opportunity.
Speaker 3: A shoue chef is a chef underneath the head chef.
Speaker 5: That's correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's like ashi chef apprentice.
Speaker 5: I get that all the time. There's people are all
Speaker 5: so you do sushi. I'm like, I shout out to
Speaker 5: the movie Ratatui. Then let everybody know who is a
Speaker 5: shoe chef and who is a sous chef and what
Speaker 5: they do because at that moment in my part in
Speaker 5: my life, I was a soush chef. I'm like, finally
Speaker 5: people are gonna stop thinking that I make sushi.
Speaker 3: So what's the what's the what's the what's the order?
Speaker 5: So the chain of command would be like when you
Speaker 5: first walk into a restaurant, like I did this. I
Speaker 5: worked as a dishwasher for a couple of months. Then
Speaker 5: I did prep, which is all you do is peel potatoes,
Speaker 5: clean vegetables, literally all the dirty stuff that people don't
Speaker 5: think about because we come into restaurants as cooks and
Speaker 5: things are ready for us. Like I don't have to
Speaker 5: peel my own garlic, I don't have to peel my
Speaker 5: own shots. I don't have to peel my own potatoes.
Speaker 5: I don't have to peel my own onions. When you
Speaker 5: do these cooking shows, you got to do everything you
Speaker 5: take for granted that you don't have your prep cooks
Speaker 5: or you're with you, you know, to help you out,
Speaker 5: but you have the chain of command of prep cooks.
Speaker 5: Then the very next step is garbage, which your salads
Speaker 5: and cold appetizers. Then if you're good at that, you
Speaker 5: move to hot apps, which is usually like little pastas
Speaker 5: Risotto's sear fagar, depending on a restaurant. I did ten
Speaker 5: years in French. I was classically Frinds trained, working at
Speaker 5: restaurants like you know, Cafe dis Artis and with Jean
Speaker 5: George and restaurant Danielle. But those are all like little
Speaker 5: six months stints I just wanted to learn a little
Speaker 5: bit from all of these great chefs, and knowing that
Speaker 5: my foundation later on, I was still gonna use a
Speaker 5: little bit of what they taught me. And then after
Speaker 5: Cafe des Artis, I got an opportunity to become an
Speaker 5: executive chef at the age of twenty two and west Chester,
Speaker 5: Westchester White Place. Yeah, we're Antipasti was the name of
Speaker 5: the restaurant Anti Pasti and it was an Italian restaurant.
Speaker 5: I'm like, shit, I don't even do Italian food. Why
Speaker 5: are you even offering me this job? Twenty two years old?
Speaker 5: And there was a guy shout out to Orlando Santana.
Speaker 5: I don't know where you are, but thank you, my man,
Speaker 5: because if it wasn't for you, I would have continued
Speaker 5: to doubt myself. And he told me, I remember, I said,
Speaker 5: how am I gonna be a chef at twenty two?
Speaker 5: I'm gonna need to know all the answers that the
Speaker 5: guys are gonna ask me. He's like, dummy, You're gonna
Speaker 5: know the answers because it's gonna be your food. And
Speaker 5: I said, ship, this guy's right, all right, let's do it.
Speaker 4: And it was.
Speaker 5: It was a memorable experience. I was a chef at
Speaker 5: twenty two. I saw my name on the menu for
Speaker 5: the first time, and I learned how to do Italian
Speaker 5: food thanks to the Sioux chef that was there. I
Speaker 5: inherited John. I don't remember his last name, but John
Speaker 5: was amazing at Anti Posty. We're friends on Facebook. I'm
Speaker 5: gonna send you a message and tell you to listen
Speaker 5: to this. But John, he taught me how to make pizza.
Speaker 5: He taught me how to do fresh pasta, and he
Speaker 5: taught me that his secret was putting some truffle oil
Speaker 5: and chocolate cake. And still to this day, I do that.
Speaker 5: So when people ask me what's different about my chocolate cake,
Speaker 5: I'm like, I can't tell you, but I just thought
Speaker 5: about that truffle so so so so.
Speaker 3: Like all right, because you're you're you're you're in a
Speaker 3: different market than like, uh, you're in a high end
Speaker 3: market like going to your education and working in like
Speaker 3: a New York City or LA cities like that. How
Speaker 3: how much money do chefs get paid? Like top the
Speaker 3: top chef, the shoe chef, the prep like it.
Speaker 5: All depends because even my even me, I'll tell you
Speaker 5: when I made. My most money was as an executive chef.
Speaker 5: Was when I was twenty two years old and I
Speaker 5: was making one hundred and fifty grand and I made
Speaker 5: them pay me because I was leaving New York City
Speaker 5: right so, and west chef made so I made that
Speaker 5: money in west Chester. I left Gotham. I left Cafe
Speaker 5: des Artist because the general manager at that restaurant was
Speaker 5: going to go to be the general manager at Anti Pasty,
Speaker 5: and he took me with me, and I said, this
Speaker 5: is what I want to leave. Because of course at
Speaker 5: that time, I was like, I live in Queens. At
Speaker 5: that point, I was living where is whit I gotta
Speaker 5: take Metro North. I've never done that in my life.
Speaker 5: I got to pay two hundred dollars a month for
Speaker 5: a train ticket. I'm like, I need to allocate all
Speaker 5: these things into my salary. But I got a reality
Speaker 5: check right away when I left Antipasti and I came
Speaker 5: back to the city, and I knew that taking a
Speaker 5: step back sometimes you got to take a couple secs
Speaker 5: back to move forward. So here I am twenty four
Speaker 5: years old. The reason I left Antipasti was because the
Speaker 5: restaurant was going out of business because of things that
Speaker 5: happened previous to me arriving there. There was just no
Speaker 5: fixing that, and they went to court and the judge
Speaker 5: ordered that the company get dismantled and everybody sell their shares.
Speaker 5: So to me, it was another learning step. You know,
Speaker 5: I was an executive chef. Here, I am twenty four
Speaker 5: years old coming to New York City trying to apply
Speaker 5: for all these executive chef jobs, and everybody was like,
Speaker 5: who is this kid? Like, why is he here? We're
Speaker 5: looking for an executive chef.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean they looking at you as a kid
Speaker 6: because most guys that exactly chefs are thirty five forty.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Nowadays you have different types of chefs, you know,
Speaker 5: so you see the inspirational people that you know, there
Speaker 5: was a movie called Chef Flynn where there's this kid
Speaker 5: who was fifteen years old and you know, he learned
Speaker 5: by reading books and watching YouTube and he literally has
Speaker 5: his own restaurant at like twenty two years old downtown
Speaker 5: in New York City. So like, I'm inspired by that story.
Speaker 5: And I remember reading that story while I was at
Speaker 5: La Marina and he came out front page of the
Speaker 5: New York Times. I'm like, there's no way that this
Speaker 5: kid is a chef. There's no way. I worked my
Speaker 5: ass off to go to school and work for all
Speaker 5: these chefs and he's worked for nobody and he's a chef.
Speaker 5: I went to have his food. He's a chef, so
Speaker 5: it documented it's a chef. You know. It's a whole different,
Speaker 5: the whole different perspective of what types of chefs they
Speaker 5: are nowadays, you know, like I was. I had a
Speaker 5: meeting with one of my friends last night, and she
Speaker 5: has her own meal prep service, and she doesn't want
Speaker 5: to call herself a chef. She doesn't want to buy
Speaker 5: herself a self a chef jacket. I'm like, you deserve
Speaker 5: to call yourself a chef. You do the food, you create,
Speaker 5: the menus, you taught yourself. It's okay, you're not an
Speaker 5: executive chef, but you are a chef. So that's why
Speaker 5: I say there's lots of different levels of chefs. But yeah,
Speaker 5: I learned the hard way because people were looking at me,
Speaker 5: and I was young and I was always hungry. So
Speaker 5: I just needed to get to the point of being
Speaker 5: able to cook for you. If I can cook for you,
Speaker 5: I want I already know that. So as an executive chef,
Speaker 5: if you're trying out, it's not just a resume. You
Speaker 5: have a portfolio and you do what's called the tasting.
Speaker 5: So you're offering me a job. Before we even talk numbers,
Speaker 5: we got to see what you could do.
Speaker 6: So you I mean, as the executive chef, you obviously
Speaker 6: create the menu, right, So you're doing the advertisers, the entrees, desserts.
Speaker 4: Are you also creating the pricing?
Speaker 5: You're doing the food costs here do the pricing. So
Speaker 5: you have to learn. That's why if it wasn't for
Speaker 5: culinary school, I wouldn't have known how to do food costs.
Speaker 5: I would have known what labor costs was that Yeah,
Speaker 5: So basically for you to make money, you multiply the
Speaker 5: amount of what a food costs by three. I would
Speaker 5: say higher expensive fine dining restaurants will do it by four.
Speaker 5: So for example, if it costs me to make a hamburger, right,
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna make just any hamburger. I'm gonna make
Speaker 5: sure of Calvinberger, right, so it's gonna we're gonna put
Speaker 5: it on the menu for eighteen dollars. So for me
Speaker 5: to make money, that burger cannot cost me more than
Speaker 5: six dollars. So that's the patty, the buns, the condiments,
Speaker 5: the French fries, and the labor to make that dish.
Speaker 5: So for you to make money, you'll always multiply things
Speaker 5: by three, depending on what the business is. So for
Speaker 5: you to learn about food costs, it really you have
Speaker 5: to break down how much does the four ounces of
Speaker 5: the meat cost. How much does one burger bun cost?
Speaker 5: How much does one slice of lettuce cost? Here's one tomato.
Speaker 5: How much does a case of tomato cost? And how
Speaker 5: many slices of that tomato do I get? So to
Speaker 5: break it down, it takes a lot of work to
Speaker 5: do food costs. But only the most successful people are
Speaker 5: the ones that do their food costs right.
Speaker 3: And that's that's true with any business. And I'm glad
Speaker 3: you said that because a lot of times people go
Speaker 3: into business and they just wing it. It's like I'm
Speaker 3: gonna i'm gonna charge, I'm gonna.
Speaker 5: Charge, I'm going to costco I'm going to say, and
Speaker 5: I'm just gonna charge twelve dollars.
Speaker 3: That's the fact. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna charge.
Speaker 5: Show me how you decided to charge that twelve dollars.
Speaker 3: I think people will pay fifteen dollars for this fish sandwich,
Speaker 3: so I'll charge fifteen dollars. Like it's like you wouldn't
Speaker 3: know that it cost you eight dollars to make it.
Speaker 3: It's no rhyme or reason why you're doing it. You're
Speaker 3: just winging it. And that's like I said, that's that's
Speaker 3: true in the food industry, but that's showing any industry.
Speaker 3: And it's like, you got to have a self formula
Speaker 3: to know you gotta have a profit margin. If not,
Speaker 3: screw you're gonna be in debt.
Speaker 5: Absolutely nobody wants a business that's not making money.
Speaker 3: So what else did like business side they did they
Speaker 3: teach you?
Speaker 5: And aside from food costs, labor costs, it's it's how
Speaker 5: to treat people, people management, you know. And I always
Speaker 5: joke around that on my Excuse me, I always joke
Speaker 5: around saying that on my resume, I'm a professional babysitter
Speaker 5: because you have to be able to manage people. And
Speaker 5: there's so many different personalities, there's so many different people,
Speaker 5: how people were raised, how people grew up in what
Speaker 5: restaurants they grew up. And this is my best advice is,
Speaker 5: if you want to be Greek, surround yourself by greatness.
Speaker 5: Surround yourself by people that you aspire to be like.
Speaker 5: Surround yourself by people that you want to be better
Speaker 5: than in a sense of greatness. And that's why I've
Speaker 5: worked for all these great people, and I learned how
Speaker 5: to manage people because I always treated people with respect.
Speaker 5: There was a restaurant that I worked at in the
Speaker 5: beginning of high school years where my weekends, instead of
Speaker 5: playing baseball with my friends, I'm here at a restaurant,
Speaker 5: volunteering my time just so I can learn and know
Speaker 5: to make sure that if I want to go through
Speaker 5: this career before I go to culinary school, before I
Speaker 5: signed that forty thousand dollars Sally may loan, do I
Speaker 5: want to be in the restaurant business. So I volunteered
Speaker 5: my time. I worked at this place called the Water's
Speaker 5: Edge and Queen's and I worked for a shref who
Speaker 5: was like, you know, you've seen Gordon Ramsey. Let's put
Speaker 5: Gordon Ramsey times ten.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: Shout out to George Mansroth.
Speaker 4: I love you.
Speaker 5: He was like Dad number three, but he was tough man.
Speaker 5: And I was fifteen sixteen years old and I'm getting
Speaker 5: things thrown at me. I'm getting called every name in
Speaker 5: the book. The moment he found out I was Dominican
Speaker 5: and he's like, ah, that explains it all. You're a
Speaker 5: Dominican handicap And I'm like wow. And I knew what
Speaker 5: he was doing wasn't right, but to me, it made
Speaker 5: me tougher. Right. I grew to a sense of I
Speaker 5: became a man a lot faster. But I also knew
Speaker 5: that I'm not going to be that guy, no matter
Speaker 5: how talented he was and still is. I was not
Speaker 5: going to treat my staff like that.
Speaker 3: So what's what's the labor cost?
Speaker 5: So labor costs. When you come to labor costs, you
Speaker 5: think about how much money people are making per hour.
Speaker 5: And an example, there's restaurants where if you're in a
Speaker 5: hotel in corporate you're you're making a lot more. You're
Speaker 5: probably making double to what chefs and cooks normally make
Speaker 5: in restaurants. And that's just because I've had the opportunity
Speaker 5: to work in both. So let's say, for example, when
Speaker 5: I was at the Strand Hotel, it was a non
Speaker 5: unionized hotel when we first started, and I was there
Speaker 5: for about six years, and then I left to open
Speaker 5: up Blend on the Water, which is my first Latin restaurant.
Speaker 5: And then after that the Marriotte Vacation Club company came
Speaker 5: in bought it out, and when I got there, I
Speaker 5: came back and I saw it in a way is
Speaker 5: I don't ever like to go back to something. But
Speaker 5: for me it was like, what it's corporate now. It
Speaker 5: went from a small Boutiko hotel to the Marriotte. Maybe
Speaker 5: this is what's right for me. Maybe I do want
Speaker 5: to be a corporate chef. Maybe I want to be
Speaker 5: able to have my food in multiple Marriotts. But when
Speaker 5: I got there, all of a sudden, the dishwasher who
Speaker 5: was making ten dollars an hours now making twenty dollars
Speaker 5: an hour. The line cook who was making seventeen dollars
Speaker 5: an hour and now was making twenty seven dollars an hour.
Speaker 5: So now it's like I can't have a successful kitchen
Speaker 5: doing the food that I do because now I can
Speaker 5: only have one dishwasher. Now I can only have two cooks,
Speaker 5: not four.
Speaker 4: Or cuts into your margin, cuts.
Speaker 5: Into my margin because at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: your labor costs has to be think about this, there's
Speaker 5: one hundred percent, right. Your food cost has to be
Speaker 5: under thirty percent, right, Your labor costs has to be
Speaker 5: under let's say twenty percent, twenty to twenty five percent.
Speaker 5: Then you have to think about liquor costs under eighteen
Speaker 5: percent because all this is cutting into your profit. Then
Speaker 5: you think about rent, you think about electricity, water, You're
Speaker 5: left with like ten percent at the end of the day.
Speaker 5: So the more that I save on food labor is
Speaker 5: the more money that gets into the pocket of the business.
Speaker 3: That's a typical profit margin for restaurants ten percent.
Speaker 5: It's something that's why a lot of restaurants go out
Speaker 5: of business. There were times where I saw where we
Speaker 5: made two point two million dollars and after all expenses,
Speaker 5: we came home with two hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: To two point We did an episode with a restaurant
Speaker 3: owner in Baltimore, shot with Derek Falcon, and his thing
Speaker 3: was a unique strategy that he has. We only uses
Speaker 3: mixed use properties for his thing because he gets the
Speaker 3: rent from people that live upstairs and his subsidized It
Speaker 3: takes less pressure off of him hit the restaurant. He
Speaker 3: you feel aboute hundred percent.
Speaker 5: It's smart. You're finding ways to make more money in
Speaker 5: your pocket.
Speaker 4: No, I was gonna say another thing. He doesn't open
Speaker 4: every day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you don't have to open every day people. People
Speaker 5: are so afraid of Granted, I see the mentality of
Speaker 5: the day that the moments that we're closed are opportunities
Speaker 5: to make money. Yeah, that's also opportunities for you to
Speaker 5: lose money. It's okay to have Monday Tuesday off. Guess what,
Speaker 5: Now you have a staff that's happy because everybody has
Speaker 5: two days off consecutively. This is a business where you know,
Speaker 5: I'm grateful when I get two days off in a row.
Speaker 5: But now I'm at a point where I make my
Speaker 5: own schedule. But I'm also a hustler. I also love
Speaker 5: money and I also love working, so I I this
Speaker 5: is busy season for me. I'm lucky if I have
Speaker 5: three days off this month, you know. But I also
Speaker 5: take the whole month of January off, so there's there's
Speaker 5: It works out pretty well, right, nice, It works out
Speaker 5: pretty well. And I also I also take off two
Speaker 5: weeks from my birthday in July. So it's the heat
Speaker 5: of the business. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: I put myself in a position where I deserve that,
Speaker 5: and I earned that. But again, you earn your leisure.
Speaker 5: But again, other than that, you see me hustling every
Speaker 5: single day. If you follow me on Instagram, you know
Speaker 5: that I'm always working. Whether it's doing a video on
Speaker 5: YouTube now, whether it's speaking at a high school or
Speaker 5: an elementary school, it's me at last Lap, or it's
Speaker 5: me doing a private dinner for twenty or doing a
Speaker 5: private dinner for ten, or doing an event for one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty people. So I'm grateful that because of
Speaker 5: what I do, I do so many dope different things
Speaker 5: on a regular basis.
Speaker 3: Well, that leads us right into our next segment. We're
Speaker 3: going to talk about some entrepreneurial stuff that you do,
Speaker 3: and yeah take it from there. All right, So now
Speaker 3: we're going to go into the second segment, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to just talk about a couple of things that
Speaker 3: we spoke about off camera. You talked about you did
Speaker 3: the pop up dinners that became wildly successful, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: can you talk about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Absolutely, It's one of those things like I'm getting goosebumps
Speaker 5: now because I got another pop up dinner that's coming up.
Speaker 5: On the nineteenth and the twentieth of December. But we
Speaker 5: got into that because of not being in a restaurant
Speaker 5: on a regular basis, my demand was hired. The only
Speaker 5: way that you can have my food is by you
Speaker 5: booking me. So it's kind of me like forcing. The
Speaker 5: other hand, it's like you want my food, you booked me,
Speaker 5: and I'm not gonna lie. What I do with food
Speaker 5: changes the way that you see food. For example, if
Speaker 5: you have my mac and cheese, you'll never see mac
Speaker 5: and cheese again unless it's my mac and cheese, because
Speaker 5: every time you take a bite of someone else's mac
Speaker 5: and cheese, like damn, it's good, but this is not
Speaker 5: Kelvin's what do you do with the Mexican and flavors?
Speaker 5: And like I'm slidated now.
Speaker 6: I'm thinking about this man. Were you about to put
Speaker 6: a new standing man all chefs restaurants?
Speaker 4: Ye gotta bring food with you.
Speaker 5: You should have told me something happened.
Speaker 4: Now you brought something else that we go to talk
Speaker 4: about something.
Speaker 5: I can never come in empty handy. I always introduced
Speaker 5: myself with food, but today introduce myself with something else.
Speaker 3: Were talking about you the only way that they could
Speaker 3: eat your food is my bookingt Yeah, that was the
Speaker 3: only one. So what restaurant were you are at that time?
Speaker 5: At that time, I wasn't at a restaurant because the
Speaker 5: first time that it was twenty eighteen where the Marriot
Speaker 5: Vacation company closed down. They just decided they didn't want
Speaker 5: a restaurant. No matter how successful the restaurant was, we
Speaker 5: weren't making money. And the reason we weren't making money
Speaker 5: because the labor was too high and there was nothing
Speaker 5: I could do. I was on the line, and that's
Speaker 5: something when on the line means I was actually cooking
Speaker 5: the food. That's a line cook's job, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean. As a chef, I'm creating the menu. I'm
Speaker 5: teaching the line cooks how to do food like me.
Speaker 5: And that's what I think makes me a little bit
Speaker 5: successful on the end where I really take into consideration
Speaker 5: the teaching part. I love to teach, Right, So if
Speaker 5: you're one of my employees and we got a new menu,
Speaker 5: me and you are gonna cook samon side by side
Speaker 5: for two weeks, traight.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So in my mind, I mean, I work with kids,
Speaker 4: so I'm thinking like the line cooker is like the Minion.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, they absolutely are, and they're only as good
Speaker 5: as how you train them. So and I'm grateful that
Speaker 5: everybody that's been a part of my team is just
Speaker 5: now like ten years later, five years later, even two
Speaker 5: years later, Like I'll take the biggest example was Lomarino.
Speaker 5: Lomrino was one of the best teams that I've ever
Speaker 5: assembled in my entire life. And I'll say that because
Speaker 5: it was such a big team, so many different personalities,
Speaker 5: so many talented chefs that are all executive chefs now,
Speaker 5: like Trill Cooker is chef Jose de Hissu's one of
Speaker 5: my road dogs. This guy has been with me for
Speaker 5: about four years and he has his own pop up
Speaker 5: dinners in his home. Like he does infuse cannabis dinners
Speaker 5: as well. He does. He comes on the road with
Speaker 5: me when I need to go to jal and A Rods.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I want to talk about the pop because
Speaker 3: that's interested for a few different reasons. So you all right,
Speaker 3: so you built the following on social media at the
Speaker 3: time already.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks for doing the food shows, doing Food Network,
Speaker 5: doing b Bobby Flay.
Speaker 3: That also helps out, Yeah for sure, So so so
Speaker 3: the pop up. Can we get back to that, because
Speaker 3: that's an interesting business model.
Speaker 5: So the pop up. The reason we did the pop
Speaker 5: up was because we wanted to do something once a month,
Speaker 5: whether it was a pop up event where it was
Speaker 5: like friends Giving, we sold tickets online, they sold out
Speaker 5: in one day. We're like, okay, this is this is
Speaker 5: We're on to something. So the friends Giving was around Thanksgiving,
Speaker 5: we would do almost like we run out Aloft. We'll
Speaker 5: invite one hundred people. You buy tickets online, you get
Speaker 5: food catered by meat whether it was pastor derves, plus
Speaker 5: an actual I'm always fancy, so we did like the
Speaker 5: first meal was an actual Thanksgiving meal. You get turkey,
Speaker 5: caramelized Brussels sprouts, stuffing and gravy. And then the next
Speaker 5: meal would be like something Latin like Beni, which is
Speaker 5: like a roasted pork with mac and cheese and something else.
Speaker 5: And then of course you get my ad airbus. It's
Speaker 5: not an event if my at eppas are not there,
Speaker 5: and if people walk into the building and they see me,
Speaker 5: the first question is are we having at airbus And
Speaker 5: it has to be yes. Sometimes people don't book me
Speaker 5: for at appus and I tell them if they're yelling
Speaker 5: at me. I'm appointing them to your direction. You're taking
Speaker 5: that hit, not me. So I learned that the pop
Speaker 5: up thing was was such a big demand because already
Speaker 5: I'm not giving you the luxury to have my food
Speaker 5: on a regular basis. So every time I did a
Speaker 5: different pop up, we wanted to do like a tacos
Speaker 5: and tequila, so we'd run out. There would be summertime,
Speaker 5: we run out a rooftop and do a dope event
Speaker 5: like that. And then I started noticing that I wanted
Speaker 5: to do more of a sit down experience. So Valentine's
Speaker 5: Day was like the first time that we did. We
Speaker 5: rented out of place in Modhaven. It was called Motley Kitchen,
Speaker 5: which is known for being a restaurant. It's just a bakery,
Speaker 5: and out of that bakery they do catering. So I
Speaker 5: rented out the spot. We did fifty people, three nights
Speaker 5: in a row, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, sold out. And then
Speaker 5: from that moment on, I was just like, people will
Speaker 5: follow me wherever wherever I am.
Speaker 3: So how much money when you making off the pop ups?
Speaker 5: Off the pop ups, Let's say that's when I would
Speaker 5: be making it depends on location. It depends on the
Speaker 5: rent of the venue. At the end of the day,
Speaker 5: I always try to make twenty five percent to thirty
Speaker 5: percent profit compared to like what we talked about ten
Speaker 5: percent profit in a restaurant. How many people are going
Speaker 5: with you? How many to do an event, depending on
Speaker 5: the size. So for that I had three cooks. I
Speaker 5: had a host, which was my best friend. Shout out
Speaker 5: to Eric. This guy has become like my manager, my assistant,
Speaker 5: my brother. But I also give him luck because he
Speaker 5: got to be in some do commercials with me too,
Speaker 5: So he was a host.
Speaker 8: I had.
Speaker 5: Three servers, so I would say a team of about
Speaker 5: less than ten, but about seven to eight people. But
Speaker 5: depending on the on the event, Like I have another
Speaker 5: the event that we did with the NFL Amazon and
Speaker 5: we had a team of fourteen people. It all depends
Speaker 5: on what we need to produces as a team. And me,
Speaker 5: I'm so hands on, so I'm always still cooking. I
Speaker 5: need to learn sometime to take a step back and
Speaker 5: let the team make me proud like they like they
Speaker 5: always do.
Speaker 3: So like the event in my haven, because I'm interested,
Speaker 3: I'm going through with this, Like how much would you
Speaker 3: say so.
Speaker 5: We charge one hundred and fifty dollars per person, fifty
Speaker 5: people per night, which was like, let's say, forty five
Speaker 5: hundred dollars. And then after that we paid one thousand
Speaker 5: dollars for the venue for three days, or it was
Speaker 5: like sixteen hundred for three days. Because we got it
Speaker 5: three days consecutive. It was a deal. And I mean,
Speaker 5: I'm a negotiator. I will negotiate to as much because
Speaker 5: I guess at the end of the day, I learned
Speaker 5: if you don't ask, you'll never know, right. So if
Speaker 5: you're charging me five hundred dolls per day, I'm like,
Speaker 5: can you give me four hundred per day? And I'll
Speaker 5: give you three dates in a row instead of just
Speaker 5: one event, so on and so forth. So you need
Speaker 5: to be able to learn how to talk, learn how
Speaker 5: to negotiate, and at the end of the day you
Speaker 5: offer a barter. You know, I'm very big on barters,
Speaker 5: where I'm like, okay, if you give it to me
Speaker 5: at this price, I'll give you two tickets to the
Speaker 5: event as well. So you need to be able to
Speaker 5: learn how to work with people. I was fortunate enough
Speaker 5: that my partner for this event, he was great on
Speaker 5: getting liquor sponsors because that is where and the reason
Speaker 5: why we made money, because if I had to put
Speaker 5: out on the pocket for liquor.
Speaker 4: That's gonna kill us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we're already paying for food, we're already paying
Speaker 5: for a venue, we're ready paying for staff. Take off
Speaker 5: that liquor, and that's the money that we're making. So
Speaker 5: that again, not every event that I do, I get
Speaker 5: a liquor sponsor, but I try to.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's like five thousand profit.
Speaker 5: Out of three days, five five thousand profits split between
Speaker 5: me and my partner.
Speaker 3: Okay, so yeah, the reason why. So it's like twenty
Speaker 3: five hundred dollars, let's just say so. But that's not
Speaker 3: bad for its weekend. It's all about creativity. So it's
Speaker 3: like a lot of times, if you're not familiar with
Speaker 3: New York City, mont Haven, South Bronx, SOUTHROX, South Rox
Speaker 3: not really the best neighborhood.
Speaker 5: But up and coming. Yeah, it's a good thing to
Speaker 5: buy something now because yeah, it's good. It's gonna be big,
Speaker 5: it's gonna be big Frenchy.
Speaker 3: So so there's a few different lessons in that. I
Speaker 3: think exclusivity is very important, and it's like people the more.
Speaker 3: Sometimes the more you make yourself available, you devalue yourself.
Speaker 3: It's like Supreme the clothing line, right it's like people
Speaker 3: will play it, pay a thousand dollars for it because
Speaker 3: you can't get it. It's not easy to get right
Speaker 3: even like with the marathon clothes right now, rest in
Speaker 3: peace in it. But it's like people is lined up
Speaker 3: around the corner for that pop up store because you
Speaker 3: can't really get the clothes, Like it's hard to really
Speaker 3: get right now. Four So you by you making yourself
Speaker 3: like the pop ups like once a month. However you
Speaker 3: was doing it. It's like now it's the whole event
Speaker 3: as opposed to just having a mom and pop shop.
Speaker 3: You're just selling food every day. It's like they just
Speaker 3: walk past you. You come out once a month, and
Speaker 3: you got to be creative. So it's like you didn't
Speaker 3: pick the most expensive real estate in New York City.
Speaker 3: You picked the hood and I'm.
Speaker 5: Not afraid to pick them. There's times where, like the
Speaker 5: event that we're doing on nineteenth and the twentieth, we
Speaker 5: paid prime dollar for thirty seven Street between eighth and ninth,
Speaker 5: you know, But at the end of the day, it
Speaker 5: depends on the event that we're doing, and of course.
Speaker 3: The network and you're at that point in your career. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but like for people that's just starting out, a lot
Speaker 3: of times it's like they feel intimidated. But it's like
Speaker 3: work with the resources that you have.
Speaker 5: I think that's so important that you're saying that, because
Speaker 5: you have to be able to no budgets. Like you said,
Speaker 5: you're not going to be successful if you're breaking even
Speaker 5: You're not going to be successful if you're not charging
Speaker 5: the right prices.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: Of course I wasn't able to charge one hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty dollars if this was ten years ago for me
Speaker 5: and my bread and who I am now. But with
Speaker 5: the accolades and with the awards and constantly winning, you know,
Speaker 5: an award after an award, and the people that I
Speaker 5: cook for, it is vouching for itself. And I always
Speaker 5: joke around and I say, my food is all hype
Speaker 5: until you finally experience it yourself.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I was just telling I was telling one of
Speaker 3: my friends this the other day because you're talking about
Speaker 3: like a business and we was talking. Actually Jamal actually
Speaker 3: said it originally and I relayed the message. And it's
Speaker 3: like the business is only going to bring like, let's say,
Speaker 3: like two thousand a month, And at first I'm like,
Speaker 3: it's not worth it, like that's two thousand, But then.
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Speaker 3: She but I'm like thinking about it, like, well that's
Speaker 3: two thousands. Like what I said, you through that five times.
Speaker 3: Now you got ten thousands. So it's like, it's not
Speaker 3: about hitting. It's never about hitting home runs. It's never
Speaker 3: because if you play baseball, you don't swing for a
Speaker 3: home run. You swing and eventually you'll hit a home
Speaker 3: run if you're strong enough, but you don't plan to
Speaker 3: hit home run because you just strike out. It's like,
Speaker 3: it's never about home run, just about consistently building your name,
Speaker 3: building your brand. Getting two thousand a thousand Dad's up
Speaker 3: over the course at the time. A lot of time
Speaker 3: people like the going up And that's about one. That's
Speaker 3: how much you made too, because that's kind of what
Speaker 3: I figured you made. And I people cant intimidate like
Speaker 3: I got a fifty thousand for a weekend. It's like
Speaker 3: not when you first start.
Speaker 6: It's not how we're saying, like you made twenty five hundred,
Speaker 6: like that's somebody's month.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolute right, And I've thought of that, and there's
Speaker 5: certain times where I haven't made money on events because
Speaker 5: you have to understand what is this event bringing to me? Also,
Speaker 5: is it an event that I have influencers that are
Speaker 5: going to every single person tag me in their Instagram posts?
Speaker 5: Because those are deals that I have made too, and
Speaker 5: I was afraid to make those in the past until
Speaker 5: I finally made one and I was like, holy shit,
Speaker 5: I just got fifteen hundred new followers in a day,
Speaker 5: Like how Because every single person that was there was
Speaker 5: an influencer or was in their own and their own
Speaker 5: life a start, whether it was a singer, whether it's
Speaker 5: an actress, whether it was a songwriter, whether it was
Speaker 5: an artist, whether it was a banker. They were all
Speaker 5: at the top of the game at that And when
Speaker 5: I did that event, I was like, Okay, I need
Speaker 5: to find ways that I can do.
Speaker 4: Is not a product is going to speak for itself.
Speaker 5: The product is going to speak for itself. People are posting,
Speaker 5: people are eating, they're having their reactions, and all of
Speaker 5: a sudden, out of those new fifteen hundred, guess what
Speaker 5: I just made. Some come from those people booking me. So,
Speaker 5: like you said, supplying demand and then also you have
Speaker 5: to make sure that, like you said, I'm doing an
Speaker 5: event on the nineteenth and the twentieth that's one of
Speaker 5: the most expensive events I've ever done. I'm doing a
Speaker 5: collab with griseld Vaie, which is an incredible woman, incredible voice,
Speaker 5: and we're taching one hundred and seventy five dollars per person.
Speaker 5: You know, but at the end of the day, people
Speaker 5: don't know the expense that comes into pulling off an
Speaker 5: event in New York City on thirty seven seven, where
Speaker 5: you're just buying a raw stage, a raw form, where
Speaker 5: you have to buy stage and lights.
Speaker 6: In the highlight of the holiday season and the holiday
Speaker 6: season where Christmas is in two weeks.
Speaker 5: And that's why we sold it two months ago, where
Speaker 5: we sold out again in one day. And I'm blessed
Speaker 5: to be able to say that. You said, supplying demand,
Speaker 5: if you put yourself available every single day, I'm not
Speaker 5: going to sell an event out every single day. But
Speaker 5: if we do it once a month, guess what, people
Speaker 5: talked about it for a whole month. We're posting for
Speaker 5: the next one. We're gonna do it again already.
Speaker 4: People haven't experience said that.
Speaker 5: People haven't experienced this event. And the next next that
Speaker 5: sounds like I'm so high. We haven't even done it yet.
Speaker 3: That sounds like an event that we just did in
Speaker 3: DC and the streets is we got the streets going crazy.
Speaker 3: Love that, Atlanta. Don't play yourself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're telling you now.
Speaker 5: I think I'm gonna come.
Speaker 3: So talk about another thing that you did, Keith.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: Puerto Rican drink traditional Puerto Rican I would say Thanksgiving
Speaker 5: holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and maybe New Year's but that's
Speaker 5: a little push.
Speaker 4: That's always the gift that they give you. No give
Speaker 4: you like seventeen bottles in the free So.
Speaker 3: If you're from New York City, you know you got
Speaker 3: Boikuas Puerto Ricans, you got the minikanos. Dominicans don't do that.
Speaker 3: They're different. Don't don't ever confuse, don't ever confuse it
Speaker 3: too right. They have different cultures, different different vibes, but
Speaker 3: so many similarities for sure, Like we all do absolutely,
Speaker 3: but that particularly is a Puerto Rican. It's a Puerto
Speaker 3: Rican thing, right, So you've been a Dominican. What what
Speaker 3: made you do that?
Speaker 5: I did it as a joke. I did it as
Speaker 5: a joke. You know, kind of like for the moment,
Speaker 5: it was funny, and you know, it was one of
Speaker 5: those things where I was like, let's test the market.
Speaker 5: This is like five years ago, you know, where Chef
Speaker 5: Kelvin was finally building his brand. And I'll talking to
Speaker 5: third person now because even in the even in the streets,
Speaker 5: I'm not Kelvin anymore. Chef Calvin, your chef. I remember
Speaker 5: I was on the train once and somebody's yo, Chef.
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh shit, I made it. Somebody's calling me
Speaker 5: out on the train. I was like, damn, I can't
Speaker 5: be on the train. No more joking around, you know.
Speaker 5: But in reality, the coquito is traditional Puerto Rican. So
Speaker 5: I did it, and I'm like, let me find ways
Speaker 5: to What makes a chef unique is making something that's classic, traditional, reinvented, right.
Speaker 5: So I didn't reinvent the wheel when I made this cokey,
Speaker 5: I just made it. Mind like everybody makes it with
Speaker 5: let's make hennessy. Everybody uses these ingredients, let's use those ingredients,
Speaker 5: but let's add something else into it. I can't tell
Speaker 5: you the secret. And then again, everybody uses cinnamon. I'm
Speaker 5: gonna use exotic spices like I'm using, yeah, things that
Speaker 5: I've used in cooking, so like, that's the cool thing
Speaker 5: about it. I'm thinking of making coquito as like making
Speaker 5: a dessert for me, because in reality, it's a little
Speaker 5: bit sweet, it's thick in flavor, it's coconuty, and it's
Speaker 5: I use it for like French toast batter. Now I
Speaker 5: use it to make ice cream. I use it to
Speaker 5: let's take that to the next level. So of course
Speaker 5: when I make coquita for the first time, there's a
Speaker 5: lot of you know, people saying that's not traditional. But
Speaker 5: it's okay. I'm not looking to be traditional. I'm looking
Speaker 5: to be Chef Kelvin. So I'm making coquito. That's why
Speaker 5: my coquito says on the label Coquito by Chef Calvin.
Speaker 5: If you're looking for traditional like, I'm sure you can
Speaker 5: find those out there. And again, there's plenty of room
Speaker 5: for all of us to eat. I know, I had
Speaker 5: people hit me up on the regular, like, please don't
Speaker 5: sell your coquito in Jersey, Please don't sell your coquaito
Speaker 5: in Brooklyn, like you already do enough. I'm like, but
Speaker 5: I want more. What's the p with one? And more?
Speaker 3: So how did you get that out?
Speaker 5: I posted it on Instagram.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 5: I posted on Instagram. Back then, I had like thirty
Speaker 5: thousand followers. I'm blessed to have like almost sixty seven
Speaker 5: sixty eight now. And I posted it and I said,
Speaker 5: I made it for myself. I wasn't even selling it.
Speaker 5: I was like, I just made Henny Cokai throw right away.
Speaker 5: There were no dms back then, there were just comments.
Speaker 5: So I posted it on my page and I got
Speaker 5: flooded with comments in like the first five minutes.
Speaker 4: You said you said the magic word hennessy.
Speaker 5: Hennessy, and They're like, are you selling? And I was like, nah,
Speaker 5: I'm not selling. So I just made it for my friends.
Speaker 5: We had it. Then the next year, I was like,
Speaker 5: let me just make twenty bottle. Let's see what happens.
Speaker 5: I made it. I sold out in ten minutes, and
Speaker 5: I said, we're going to make a business next year.
Speaker 5: Because again I knew I didn't bite off more than
Speaker 5: I can. True, I wasn't ready to start a business,
Speaker 5: and I wasn't when I launched it in two thousand
Speaker 5: and sixteen, but I was fortunate enough that I was
Speaker 5: working at La Marina and I had a kitchen of disposal.
Speaker 5: They were only they were only open for a season season,
Speaker 5: so when we were there in the winter, it was
Speaker 5: just for private events. So I ended up using their
Speaker 5: kitchen to make okay thro and I paid some guys
Speaker 5: that were on my team. They're loyal Alex and David.
Speaker 5: These guys have been through everything with me, and they're
Speaker 5: both at a last lap. So even though I'm not
Speaker 5: our last lap, you know you can get great food
Speaker 5: with them. But we started a business. We got labels,
Speaker 5: we got gift bags, we started answering, made up an email,
Speaker 5: we made up a venmo, a cash shap, opened up
Speaker 5: a bank account, and we opened up a business.
Speaker 3: How much How much did you sell?
Speaker 5: First year of officially selling, we sold two hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty bottles, which I thought was not bad for we
Speaker 5: started late. We started only in December. Yeah, the following
Speaker 5: year we sold five hundred bottles. And now we're in
Speaker 5: unofficially year five, we've already sold six hundred bottles and
Speaker 5: we're not even a peak season yet. So Christmas is
Speaker 5: our big one. Now we're looking to sell about.
Speaker 3: Three four hundreds. The reason why I love that story
Speaker 3: also see this is all things that especially food. It's
Speaker 3: like your grandmother you I you're mahome makes these these
Speaker 3: homemade RUMs and all these stuff. But it's like in
Speaker 3: p pople like it, right, but it's like, why is
Speaker 3: it just limited to your family?
Speaker 5: Absolutely right, You're absolutely right. You can you can sell
Speaker 5: anything unless the product is good. You can't be afraid. Again,
Speaker 5: don't reinvent the wheel. Like I said, I'm not doing
Speaker 5: nothing new. I'm just making the version I'm making in mine.
Speaker 5: I just made it a little bit different. I'm using
Speaker 5: Madagascar vanilla bean. That's why you know it's expensive. Each
Speaker 5: vanilla bean is like five dollars?
Speaker 3: Is that? Is that the secret?
Speaker 4: That is one of them? We got some here.
Speaker 5: Already, and I tell people, I'm like, it's vanilla, It's
Speaker 5: vanilla bean is special. It's it's the reason why you
Speaker 5: see the specs in the vanilla ice cream. You know,
Speaker 5: it's it's the reason you see the specs in the
Speaker 5: criminal lay. But at the end of the day, it's
Speaker 5: the special spices.
Speaker 3: And it's it's always about the love. You can't duplicate that.
Speaker 3: But it's always about being creative too. And it's like
Speaker 3: we're gonna talk about a lot of Marina. But lot
Speaker 3: of Marina is only open for two months of the year, right,
Speaker 3: three months.
Speaker 5: I would say, more three pushing events. It would open
Speaker 5: April and it would close I would say beginning of September.
Speaker 3: But you had access to had access full year year round.
Speaker 3: So now you used that to pretty much have a
Speaker 3: free kitchen.
Speaker 5: I found ways. Yeah, I asked, you know, I said, hey,
Speaker 5: you guys are not doing anything. I even offered to rent.
Speaker 5: They're like nah, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: the way that no one knew really about my contract,
Speaker 5: but the way my contract worked. Again, I'm not a
Speaker 5: greedy guy, so I understand things. If if we were
Speaker 5: not open full year, I wasn't expecting to get paid
Speaker 5: full year. But what I did want was the times
Speaker 5: that we were just seasonal. You put me as an
Speaker 5: independent contractor and you would still pay me fifty percent
Speaker 5: of my yearly salary. So I was still getting a
Speaker 5: check every week, but it wasn't the full one hundred percent.
Speaker 5: So I needed to find ways to make money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you had access, I had access.
Speaker 5: Okay, now I'm going to start doing caterings. Now I'm
Speaker 5: going to start, you know, doing coquito. Now I'm going
Speaker 5: to start, and that the opportunity was there. I wasn't.
Speaker 5: I wasn't afraid to do things that I wasn't expecting.
Speaker 5: And I also wasn't desperate. I was patient throughout the
Speaker 5: whole process. Like I said, I sold twenty coith those
Speaker 5: year one. We're at five hundred now and we're not
Speaker 5: even halfway through our season.
Speaker 4: Can we Dominican?
Speaker 5: Dominican?
Speaker 4: They show up?
Speaker 3: So all right? Can we talk about I was waiting.
Speaker 3: I was waiting.
Speaker 4: We just.
Speaker 5: Look at the smile. If you if you have to memory, if.
Speaker 3: You're a loyal listener to a Lisia, you know, how
Speaker 3: is a second home for us? The basketball tournament. We
Speaker 3: talked about the basketball tournament a lot because they treat us,
Speaker 3: they love us.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 3: Shout out to everybody there. We're actually about to do
Speaker 3: Chris Gotti Show after this, so shut shout out the Dykman.
Speaker 3: But so east side, west side, So on the on
Speaker 3: the east side, on the east side, it's the basketball
Speaker 3: court on the west side by the water. That was no,
Speaker 3: we never we didn't tell the stories about Lotarna from
Speaker 3: New York City. You know about lom Marena. If not
Speaker 3: you heard fab you was in lot Marina all summer.
Speaker 3: You see you heard French pull up Arena in a
Speaker 3: yach boy.
Speaker 5: It made some easy captions on Instagram. Just made me
Speaker 5: feel like I'm on top of the world even more.
Speaker 3: So, we were gonna get off track for one minute.
Speaker 3: You was an executive chef and lot Marina at his peak,
Speaker 3: lom Marina was a beach. The best way I can
Speaker 3: describe it, It's like a beach front party restaurant had everything.
Speaker 5: Yeah, each you had a lounge, you had food trucks,
Speaker 5: you had.
Speaker 4: Stage, you had a live stage.
Speaker 5: Beautiful women, restaurant, beautiful women. I got in trouble. I
Speaker 5: was just I was just cooking.
Speaker 3: So can you just explain in a minute, like what
Speaker 3: was the vibe in lom Marena at that time.
Speaker 5: So I'll tell you two quick vibes. One was imagine
Speaker 5: being the only sober person at a drunk part. When
Speaker 5: I was leaving work, kitchen closed that twelve I'm walking
Speaker 5: down people, I'm just like what, I can't even catch up.
Speaker 5: There's no way I could catch up. We got it
Speaker 5: now we're left. So it was always a problem with
Speaker 5: La Marina because they closed that one o'clock. But the
Speaker 5: blessing of La Marina also was that entire dykeman wasohiut
Speaker 5: to Mama Sushi, because those are one of the stories
Speaker 5: that I always loved telling. Because they started small eighteen
Speaker 5: seat restaurant, bought the door next door to the right,
Speaker 5: then bought the ball, they got to the left, and
Speaker 5: now you got a seventy five seats, and then and
Speaker 5: then put seats outside, and then they're on their third
Speaker 5: fourth location. God bless shout out to them that those
Speaker 5: are the people that I inspired to be like. And
Speaker 5: I don't even have one location yet, but La Marina
Speaker 5: was a vibe. So not only the reason I worked
Speaker 5: there was because I used to party there a lot,
Speaker 5: and I joked around said in front of the wrong person,
Speaker 5: I wonder what it'd be like to work here. The
Speaker 5: opportunity presented itself and still to this day, shout out
Speaker 5: to Fernando Ma he's the owner of a zona that kuba,
Speaker 5: which is a dope.
Speaker 4: Spot the street.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and uh in the bronx on top of a
Speaker 5: post office. I think he paid somebody. I think he
Speaker 5: paid somebody because the moment, again I was living in
Speaker 5: Queen's traveling to Washington Heights, I got out the train
Speaker 5: station and somebody said, Chef Kelvin, welcome to Washington Heights.
Speaker 5: We've been waiting for you. There's no way.
Speaker 10: There's no way.
Speaker 5: Still to this day, I remember that. But Lo Marina
Speaker 5: was just it was. It was madness, and I like
Speaker 5: to say controlled madness. It was the only time where
Speaker 5: I had it. I had a walking talking on and
Speaker 5: I'm I'm talking to my Sioux chefs through this walking talkie.
Speaker 5: You O, the beach is going down. We need more
Speaker 5: French fries the beach. I need to cooks to go
Speaker 5: to the beach. French Carmelo. Anthony needs, you know, a
Speaker 5: tomahawk steak.
Speaker 3: Don't make that happen.
Speaker 5: We're gonna make that happen. It was one of the
Speaker 5: the greatest experiences ever. I had an amazing team, Like
Speaker 5: I said, Chef Traill, who they issue, Chef Andy, who's
Speaker 5: the chef of Suo in the Bronx, Like, these are
Speaker 5: just guys that are talented. Elio who's in a Michelin
Speaker 5: Star restaurant in Manhattan, Like that's what makes me proud,
Speaker 5: because I feel like I'm a proud that even though
Speaker 5: we're all similar to age, but you.
Speaker 3: You said that also in the business you you turned
Speaker 3: it around the kitchen around attle bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was hard to come into a place that.
Speaker 5: This is why when making business decisions, it's hard for
Speaker 5: me to go to a place that already has an
Speaker 5: identity because it's hard to change either bad habits or
Speaker 5: it's hard to change something where people are used to
Speaker 5: So when I got to La Marina, they already had
Speaker 5: a standard. They went through a couple of different chefs.
Speaker 5: The food was not great, and the owners themselves said it,
Speaker 5: we don't need to really worry about the food. People
Speaker 5: are gonna come for the view. And I said, what
Speaker 5: you're doing wrong is you're not giving them another reason
Speaker 5: to come. People are gonna come regardless the view, the women,
Speaker 5: the parties, the artists, the maseratis, the ferrarish. It was
Speaker 5: just cash. Cash is king in the world. Now you
Speaker 5: don't find a hooka up town because everybody got to
Speaker 5: put it on the books. But it was such an
Speaker 5: experience where we learned. So my goal was to bring
Speaker 5: Chef Kelvin's food to an area that was not understanding it.
Speaker 5: So after being there for a full summer, I was
Speaker 5: able to turn around lower the labor costs lower, the
Speaker 5: food costs increase the food sales. I remember over almost
Speaker 5: three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars. And again we
Speaker 5: were only open seasonal, so imagine what I could have
Speaker 5: done in a full year. We didn't have the opportunities
Speaker 5: because it gets cold down there by that water. So
Speaker 5: we did some great closed events, We did some great weddings,
Speaker 5: and twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen was a year to remember
Speaker 5: for me for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah we made it right, Yeah we made it.
Speaker 5: We will miss you.
Speaker 3: We will never be forgotten going, but not forgotten. That
Speaker 3: corner will never be the same, won't. Even the strip
Speaker 3: is not the same.
Speaker 5: Absolutely not. It's tough, like even me. I live in Riverdale,
Speaker 5: so I'm close to the madness, but I haven't been
Speaker 5: out there a while. It's not the same.
Speaker 10: The Dominicans up. We've been saying it also that no meal.
Speaker 3: All right. So in the last segment, we're gonna go
Speaker 3: into what you got going on now and future endeavors.
Speaker 3: All right, So we're gonna close it out, which but
Speaker 3: you have going on now. So I want to first
Speaker 3: want to talk about our last lap, last lap, so
Speaker 3: you can talk about so that's that was an establishment
Speaker 3: that was already open and you partnered right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Last Lap is it's such a great vibe. It's
Speaker 5: a Caribbean vibe. It's true to like my heart, my soul.
Speaker 5: Shout out to the guys that Last Lap. They're the
Speaker 5: reason I'm there because when we started just talking about it,
Speaker 5: you know, the ViBe's gotta be right. And these guys
Speaker 5: are young entrepreneurs doing their things, opening different establishments. There's
Speaker 5: gonna be the last Lap l A. There's gonna be
Speaker 5: last Lap Miami. There's an opportunity to continue to grow,
Speaker 5: and those are the right people to do it with.
Speaker 5: And they were open, and I went to forgot to
Speaker 5: mention this. I went to France for three months. I
Speaker 5: lived in Lyon, France. At one point when the Strand
Speaker 5: decided to close.
Speaker 4: Down, I got a nice your French trains, yeah.
Speaker 5: Classically French trained. I got a nice little severance check
Speaker 5: and at that moment I did a cooking competition. Circle
Speaker 5: back again fifteen years. The same people that gave me
Speaker 5: a scholarship to go to high school gave me an
Speaker 5: opportunity to win a full scholarship to go to France
Speaker 5: and live, all expense paid to go to a culinary
Speaker 5: school in France. Here I am, at thirty something years old,
Speaker 5: going again learning schooling. You can never stop learning. So
Speaker 5: I'm the only guy who was in this class who
Speaker 5: didn't speak French, and here I'm trying to communicate with people.
Speaker 5: But thank god that food is a universal language. Show
Speaker 5: me how to cut this, I will cut it the
Speaker 5: way you want to. Show me how to cook it,
Speaker 5: I will cook it the way you want it. But
Speaker 5: the reason I didn't get involved with Last Lap right
Speaker 5: away was because I was out here doing this three
Speaker 5: months stint in France, and I got back to Last Slap.
Speaker 5: We were doing some cool little Ada day vibes, like
Speaker 5: was there once a month again do the pop up
Speaker 5: and it was always a successful sold out night. We
Speaker 5: sat down and they made a deal that I couldn't refuse,
Speaker 5: and they offered me a partnership and I was able
Speaker 5: to establish my team there to make me feel comfortable
Speaker 5: to know that even though that I'm not there, the
Speaker 5: food is going to be great. So thanks to Chef David,
Speaker 5: thanks for Chef Alex. Those guys have been with me
Speaker 5: for ten plus years and it's hard loyalty is a
Speaker 5: hard thing to find, and these guys make me proud
Speaker 5: every single day.
Speaker 3: And one thing you said I was interested is like
Speaker 3: you have like royalties, Like it's like a royalty deal.
Speaker 5: So you know, I watched them a shark tank. As
Speaker 5: a businessman, you got to learn, right, So you know,
Speaker 5: I made him an offer of you know, I wanted
Speaker 5: to make this much amount per area and they said yes,
Speaker 5: and I should have asked for more, but again, I'm
Speaker 5: not greedy, so you know I was. I was just
Speaker 5: grateful for that opportunity. This is the first time that
Speaker 5: I made a deal like that, and it's been it's
Speaker 5: been steady.
Speaker 4: You know. I think it's the only place that you
Speaker 4: can get get So that's this is this.
Speaker 5: Is traditionally you could say Kelvin's kitchen, but in reality,
Speaker 5: it's the only place that you can get that's my food,
Speaker 5: you know, aside from getting kill than himself with Kelvin's kitchen,
Speaker 5: you know, so you know. And and last slap is
Speaker 5: a small rum bar. We got two floors. It gives
Speaker 5: you an opportunity to come have some amazing cocktails because
Speaker 5: they have a great mixology program. And then you never
Speaker 5: know who's gonna be there the same day that you either.
Speaker 5: We We've got a lot of celebrities from Rihanna to
Speaker 5: Michael B. Jordan to uh the list goes on. We're
Speaker 5: always on page six. That's a great thing.
Speaker 3: So so like, even though you're not there a lot cooking,
Speaker 3: but you have the recipe. So anytime your dish is sold,
Speaker 3: or any dishes sold, you get a percentage of that I.
Speaker 5: Get Yeah, I get a fee for each that's sold.
Speaker 5: Correct it again, it's not bad though he said it
Speaker 5: better than the people that said it on the On
Speaker 5: a few other shows, they're like a rape. I'm like,
Speaker 5: we're not raping nobody. I'm like, and it's tough because
Speaker 5: it just comes with with the culture and how we learned.
Speaker 5: But not is the dish that I be Bobby Flay with,
Speaker 5: And that is also the dish that I've won for
Speaker 5: years in a row Best Chef in America with Forbes.
Speaker 5: So I have five different versions of these APAs and
Speaker 5: the only place you can find those is at Last Lap.
Speaker 5: So that's the signature star. We have a dish called
Speaker 5: Adipa Heaven where you get twenty pieces of APAs and
Speaker 5: it's all all.
Speaker 4: Is.
Speaker 5: It is traditionally like a corn cake almost like it's
Speaker 5: hard to describe. It's traditionally made with corn, flour and water,
Speaker 5: and I actually use fresh corn corn right kind of
Speaker 5: sort of but not really. And I'm gonna say that
Speaker 5: because it's almost the same ingredients except we're not baking it.
Speaker 5: We're not. You got to make a dough and then
Speaker 5: traditionally the doe the dough is griddled or like pan fried.
Speaker 5: I deep fry minds, so you get that crispy texture. Traditionally,
Speaker 5: an adipa is stuffed. I put all of my toppings
Speaker 5: on top of it, so and I make them mini,
Speaker 5: so you'll have like four adipas to in order. My
Speaker 5: traditional classic one is we call it the award winner
Speaker 5: now because that's the one that beat Bobby Flair. It's
Speaker 5: braised beef, short rib, guacamali, picco, the Gayo lime scented
Speaker 5: sour cream, cotiha chies, microslatro. So you'll take it, You'll
Speaker 5: dip it in the sauce. You'll have it in one
Speaker 5: bite and it's a party in your mouth. It h
Speaker 5: every every sense that your palette. It's like sweet, salty, crispy, hot, cold, herbaceous, creamy. Mommy,
Speaker 5: You're like, what the fuck did I just experience?
Speaker 4: What was that?
Speaker 6: Pulling up the last last vibe? So you mentioned beating
Speaker 6: Bobby played with the dish. Now I read this and
Speaker 6: maybe it's true or not. But prior to that, because
Speaker 6: you are French training, and were you doing Latin foods
Speaker 6: prior to this?
Speaker 5: No, I wasn't doing Latin food until I left the
Speaker 5: Strand Hotel. The first time I got an opportunity to
Speaker 5: open up a Latin restaurant and that's how I created
Speaker 5: the ideas at a restaurant called Blend on the Water.
Speaker 5: So my goal was to go learn as much as
Speaker 5: I can about Latin food. I'll tell you one hundred percent,
Speaker 5: I did not know what I was doing until I
Speaker 5: started asking my mom, asking my dad. Going to you
Speaker 5: know bar which is like the was or it still is,
Speaker 5: the number one at bar downtown in the Lower East Side.
Speaker 5: They had a line around the door, and I'm like,
Speaker 5: they must be doing something right. So I had their ADEPA.
Speaker 5: I'm big on textures. It was good, but I'm like,
Speaker 5: how can I make this different, unique and mine? So
Speaker 5: we got to the drawing board and created the EPA,
Speaker 5: the original one that I have now was nowhere near
Speaker 5: the first one I made. So not everything I make
Speaker 5: was great. Things take time, things take practice, and let's
Speaker 5: just say time that perfection takes time.
Speaker 3: Well said, So you, j Low and a Rod's personal
Speaker 3: How did that? How did that come about?
Speaker 5: Shout out to Duval. This beautiful lady was a fan
Speaker 5: of mine. Five years ago. She came to one of
Speaker 5: my events. I did a pop up event in Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: There was a restaurant called SDQ. It was also like
Speaker 5: a lounge, and she came to my event and I
Speaker 5: treated her the way I treat everybody, Like I know
Speaker 5: you for ten years and you say hi to me,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna give you a hug. If you show me
Speaker 5: pictures from last birthdays that you came to celebrate with me,
Speaker 5: that makes me even more special. So I treated her
Speaker 5: like I treat everybody. We have a conversation, we'll talk
Speaker 5: about it made you come here? Have you had my
Speaker 5: food before? Five years later, fast forward, she's Jlo's personal assistant,
Speaker 5: and an opportunity presented itself where the chef that they've
Speaker 5: had for ten years couldn't do Thanksgiving weekend and She's like,
Speaker 5: I know this chef. I don't know him personally, but
Speaker 5: I've had his food. He's great with kids, he's great
Speaker 5: with blah blah blah, this this, that opportunity came presented itself.
Speaker 5: I hit a home run, and let's say, for a rod,
Speaker 5: I hit a grand slam, And since then, they hit
Speaker 5: me up for every time they need something, whether it's
Speaker 5: a Birthday party for their kids, whether it's Memorial Day
Speaker 5: in the Hamptons, whether it's Christmas in Miami, which I'm
Speaker 5: going next a couple of weeks, and then New Year's
Speaker 5: even la. I'm blessed to say that anywhere they need me,
Speaker 5: I go.
Speaker 3: You know, a personal chef is actually a good investment
Speaker 3: something that I'm going to look into in a New Year,
Speaker 3: because I know a guy. It's like it's like I
Speaker 3: always said, like a personal trainer and a personal chef.
Speaker 3: It was a good investment.
Speaker 5: You're investing in your mind too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, personal chefs.
Speaker 3: Wife, I was like, well that's that's a good investment.
Speaker 3: Might investing investing in your mind body? You better say
Speaker 3: that for sure, especially because it's like when you want
Speaker 3: to run a lot, you can't cook like you don't
Speaker 3: have time to cook, especially like you know, you got
Speaker 3: dietary ships. I'm trying to go vegan. So it's like,
Speaker 3: stop dating a.
Speaker 5: Girl because she was vegan. You know it's tough. I'm
Speaker 5: a chef, man, I'll be and I try.
Speaker 3: You could be a vegan shock, but I can't.
Speaker 5: I can be a vegan check, but I can't be
Speaker 5: a vegan shock. I can't be a vegan check. And
Speaker 5: I tried it. Like we dated a couple of years
Speaker 5: ago when on a couple of dates and I was vegan.
Speaker 5: When I took some of the best Michelin Star restaurants
Speaker 5: that were vegan, I'm like, what the I need steak?
Speaker 4: Oh my god?
Speaker 5: And then yo, I would take a home and I'll
Speaker 5: go get a burger or something, and I'm like, Yo,
Speaker 5: this is crazy. I'm eating twice, I'm spending doubles of
Speaker 5: money out. It's not gonna work out. This is not
Speaker 5: gonna work out. This is not gonna work out. I
Speaker 5: laugh about it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: Why I take you someone to get home? Ah, man,
Speaker 4: not traffic. I'll stop that hurricane.
Speaker 5: Shout out to you. That's that's not easy. And I
Speaker 5: have some vegan friends that they hold me to it,
Speaker 5: and like even doing this event on the nineteenth and twentieth,
Speaker 5: I had to put a vegetarian menu because I know
Speaker 5: so many people that support Grisel and support her are
Speaker 5: all vegetarians and vegans, so I got to make sure
Speaker 5: that that offers.
Speaker 3: And that's another lane too, especially like there's so many
Speaker 3: athletes and entertainers and just you know, high level business
Speaker 3: people that like personal chefs is like a whole another lane.
Speaker 5: It's a it's definitely a world in its own. But
Speaker 5: it takes a special type of person to do that
Speaker 5: because at the end of the day, you sacrifice your
Speaker 5: entire life, not only just a cooking to the person
Speaker 5: that you're working with. Then, because they they're requiring, their
Speaker 5: needs are a lot different than any other cook chef.
Speaker 3: You're like, they're beck and call at all times.
Speaker 5: And that's why I when I decided to do person
Speaker 5: no chefing, I had my own requirements and restrictions. And
Speaker 5: it's like, one, I would never stay at the person's house.
Speaker 5: I would need my own hotel because I tried it
Speaker 5: once and no matter what, I'm staying in the twenty
Speaker 5: million dollar house, I can't sleep in a bed knowing
Speaker 5: that I work downstairs. Or imagine I always joke around.
Speaker 5: Imagine I'm hungry and I'm gonna go make a grill
Speaker 5: cheese sandwich I one o'clock in the morning and somebody says,
Speaker 5: can you make me want to fucking kitchen is clothes?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 5: I would make it gladly.
Speaker 3: Did you hear about But that's just something I always
Speaker 3: joke around with. Did you have did you hear about
Speaker 3: ditty story with his personal show?
Speaker 5: No, I didn't hear ditty story. Imagine ditty story.
Speaker 3: I will tell you, ye shot, I got crazy, it
Speaker 3: got crazy. I got.
Speaker 6: Can we talk about the branding, because obviously you have.
Speaker 6: You've done an amazing job on social media doing that,
Speaker 6: and it's led to some deals with Fogo.
Speaker 5: On blessings and again, these are things that I tell
Speaker 5: people that are always asking me, how did you get
Speaker 5: some man followers? How'd you do this? And I was like,
Speaker 5: I am giving you what I'm saying. I'm giving you.
Speaker 5: So if I'm a chef page, I'm gonna give you food.
Speaker 5: I'm going to give you things that are related to chefs.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna give you some tips, I'm gonna give you
Speaker 5: some recipes. I'm gonna not be afraid. The only thing
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna give you is Michael Keat the recipe
Speaker 5: and my APPI recipe. So, guys, I love you to death,
Speaker 5: just stop asking anything that I make money on I
Speaker 5: can't give you. But again, it's one of those things
Speaker 5: where you have to stay true to what you're trying
Speaker 5: to sell, what you're trying to do, and who you're
Speaker 5: trying to be. So I am Chef Kelvin, my Instagram
Speaker 5: is Chef Kelvin, and I'm going to give you everything
Speaker 5: that has to do with food. Instagram stories are a
Speaker 5: little bit different. You can get a little bit more personal.
Speaker 5: You can show traveling, you can show family, you can
Speaker 5: show friends. But at the end of the day, I'm
Speaker 5: giving you what I promised that I was going to
Speaker 5: give you. You have to stay consistent and at the
Speaker 5: end of the day, you have to make sure that
Speaker 5: what you put on your feed is true to you.
Speaker 5: And you can't be afraid to post because you're not
Speaker 5: going to get a lot of likes. So I'm actually
Speaker 5: a little bit happy with the whole you know, removing likes,
Speaker 5: because at the end of the day, you'll know still
Speaker 5: that someone is getting a lot of insights and a
Speaker 5: lot of people coming to them when the comments are there,
Speaker 5: because you can tell when someone has a real fifty
Speaker 5: thousand dollars following and someone has a bought fifty thousand following.
Speaker 5: You can have ten thousand likes, but if you have
Speaker 5: two comments, something's wrong. Engagement engagements completely off, you know,
Speaker 5: because if I post something and I'm going to get
Speaker 5: a thousand likes, I'm going to get a hundred comments.
Speaker 3: And it's That's something I learned early on as far
Speaker 3: as social media. Friend of mine told me that you
Speaker 3: should be able to look at somebody's page without reading
Speaker 3: their bio and know what they do.
Speaker 5: Agree. Reading your bio is just say everything that you do,
Speaker 5: and you're, well, you can't say everything because then my
Speaker 5: my characters will run out right away. But you would
Speaker 5: have to say in your bio, you would say who
Speaker 5: you are, what you do, and what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: They should be able to tell without reading it.
Speaker 5: Absolutely agree.
Speaker 3: So it's like a lot of time people through all
Speaker 3: kinds of random nonsense pictures and memes and it's like,
Speaker 3: what's happening?
Speaker 5: What are we here for?
Speaker 3: But it's going on the message I'm confused. I'm confused.
Speaker 5: If it's there for fun, then cool. But if it's
Speaker 5: for business, yeah, you can't do that.
Speaker 3: You can't. You got to sacrifice that. And this page
Speaker 3: is like a reflection of like how people are going
Speaker 3: to look at your business.
Speaker 5: I like the way you said that without reading your bios,
Speaker 5: should be able to talk just by looking at pictures.
Speaker 4: See.
Speaker 5: And I learned that. I even tried doing like a
Speaker 5: personal page and that didn't work because I have no
Speaker 5: time to let alone. Yeah, this is my personal life,
Speaker 5: so stop with the personal stuff. If you know me
Speaker 5: on a personal level, you know that you get the
Speaker 5: same guy that you get as a chef level. You know.
Speaker 5: But building that brand, you have to learn that it
Speaker 5: takes time. You have to be patient. You can't rush
Speaker 5: for the likes. And I know that now because I
Speaker 5: just started YouTube and I'm hitting up one of my
Speaker 5: friends who has been an expert on YouTube, and she's
Speaker 5: done multiple videos, and I'm reaching out to her. I'm like,
Speaker 5: but if I put it on Instagram, I'll get fifty
Speaker 5: thousand likes, But if I put it on YouTube, I
Speaker 5: only have a thousand likes. She says, you have to wait,
Speaker 5: You have to be patient. And I learned and I'm like, not,
Speaker 5: we're not patient in this world. We don't even read
Speaker 5: in this world. And I learned that because I get
Speaker 5: my card told on a regular basis, and I can't
Speaker 5: get mad at clients. I'm being that honest I get
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh, can I park here? It's like six
Speaker 5: signs yes, yes, yes, Okay, I forgot the last one,
Speaker 5: and I get mad at clients when I'll give you
Speaker 5: all the information, like, for example, to purchase my coquito,
Speaker 5: you got to send an email to Coquito's by Chef
Speaker 5: Kelvin at gmail dot com. You say hello, you can
Speaker 5: say all the information you want. You're gonna automatically get
Speaker 5: a response that says thank you for your inquiry. Here's
Speaker 5: the product, Here's how much it costs. Here's the size
Speaker 5: of the bottle. Here's how we can deliver, here's forms
Speaker 5: of payment. Everything that you can ever ask me first question,
Speaker 5: how much is the bottle?
Speaker 4: How much.
Speaker 5: To All the information you need is in the in
Speaker 5: the in the last, And you have to be patient.
Speaker 5: So you have to be patient all sets alike. So
Speaker 5: even now that you know ten years, fifteen years, I'm
Speaker 5: going to say now when I turned thirty five in July,
Speaker 5: I'm going to be cooking for twenty years. So building
Speaker 5: this brand for twenty years. Everything that I've wanted is
Speaker 5: happening right now at this moment. Brand deals with Infinity.
Speaker 5: You know, I have an awesome commercial that's coming out
Speaker 5: where I'm honored to know that Infinity, that luxury brand
Speaker 5: wants to follow me around for a day and tell
Speaker 5: my story, and it's going to be an awesome commercial.
Speaker 5: Can wait to share that. You know, I'm a chef
Speaker 5: and with the Institute of Culinary Education, even though that's
Speaker 5: not my alma mater, I'm so happy to be with them.
Speaker 5: They give me an opportunity to tell my story on
Speaker 5: blog posts, to use their kitchen for YouTube shows, for
Speaker 5: if I want to shoot a book, if I want
Speaker 5: to just come in and prep for an event. I'm
Speaker 5: grateful for people like that that believe in me, believe
Speaker 5: in the brand, and and help me take my career
Speaker 5: to a level that I wouldn't imagine doing.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 5: I think it's important and as you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 5: companies like Wells Fargo to see my Instagram page and say,
Speaker 5: you know, we want to partner up and collab with
Speaker 5: this guy because what he's doing is positive, so I
Speaker 5: know that he can be the right guy that will
Speaker 5: share our message. And I'm always smiling, so I have
Speaker 5: people say I have a million dollar smile. It comes
Speaker 5: with making people happy.
Speaker 3: Chef Calvin, Man, you want thank you for coming. Appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Appreciate it anything you want to tell the people your Instagram,
Speaker 3: social media and thing you got coming up.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, Man, I appreciate you guys for having me, letting
Speaker 5: me tell my story on a whole different platform because
Speaker 5: I'm able to tell people my story and inspire. So
Speaker 5: I always say if I can inspire one person from
Speaker 5: one thing that I do per day, my job is done.
Speaker 5: The most important thing is if I can offer some
Speaker 5: people advice that want to become a young entrepreneur. Is
Speaker 5: back to what I said, surround yourself by greatness. Don't
Speaker 5: be afraid of not making a lot of money now,
Speaker 5: don't chase the money. The money will come chasing you.
Speaker 5: I'm at a point in my career where i can
Speaker 5: greatly say that I'm turning down gigs because there's just
Speaker 5: so many things coming in. So as the team expands,
Speaker 5: I'm looking forward to growing my YouTube show. Starting my
Speaker 5: cookbook in January and cookbook, yeah, that's number one thing.
Speaker 5: It's cookbook and cooking classes. So I'm going to try
Speaker 5: to get back on the cooking classes. Looking for a venue.
Speaker 5: All my social media is chef Kelvin c h E
Speaker 5: F K E l v I N. Don't look at
Speaker 5: my page after midnight. You're only going to make yourself
Speaker 5: hungry in advance. But thank you guys for having me.
Speaker 3: Thanks you man. Troy housekeeping it on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, shout everybody on patreon dot com. I know that's
Speaker 6: our proud to pay program. The support on it has
Speaker 6: been tremendous, man, and it's beautiful. We got to actually
Speaker 6: get to speak and and and engage with some of
Speaker 6: our patrons and the list keeps growing. So shout everybody
Speaker 6: that's supporting that. You know that if you are a
Speaker 6: Tier four or five member, you are access to Alisia University,
Speaker 6: which is our online school. Shots wearing the merch, shout everybody, Yo,
Speaker 6: the merchant has been moving like crazy.
Speaker 4: Man. We put up the merchant.
Speaker 6: The sales were out out the door man the first day,
Speaker 6: So shout everybody that's purchased the merch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, you want to talk about university.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Nivirsually, we're about to actually do a class, like
Speaker 3: right now, he's not joking. It's three classes every single week.
Speaker 3: We do a real estate class on Monday, we do
Speaker 3: a floating class on Wednesday. Me and Troy do a
Speaker 3: class every Thursday. And starting in the new year, we're
Speaker 3: going to have e Yo. Yeah for sure, so you
Speaker 3: know we it's an interactive at zoom. We get to
Speaker 3: ask questions. It's really dope. It's really dope experience. And yeah,
Speaker 3: don't forget Atlanta, Atlanta VIP experience. We are coming January
Speaker 3: twenty six. It's gonna be crazy live podcast, networking event,
Speaker 3: open bar, dinner, and then we're gonna have a workshop
Speaker 3: the next day. Alumnis is gonna be there. We're gonna
Speaker 3: be there. It's gonna be a whole vibe. So events
Speaker 3: tab on our website on your leisure dot com.
Speaker 4: Don't play yourself.
Speaker 3: No, Atlanta, we got we can't wait to touch the
Speaker 3: town for sure. And the book tip of this week
Speaker 3: is Kitchen Confidential by the late great Anthony Bardain Peace
Speaker 3: for sure, so I thought that would be fitting. Chef
Speaker 3: recommended that book himself.
Speaker 4: He read it four times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's it. Thank you guys for rocking with us.
Speaker 3: We'll see you next week.
Speaker 4: Peace Peace, Coach.
Speaker 11: The energy out there felt different. What changed for the
Speaker 11: team today?
Speaker 8: It was the new game day scratches from the California
Speaker 8: lock Play is everything. Those games sent the team's energy
Speaker 8: through the roof.
Speaker 11: Are you saying it was the off field play that
Speaker 11: made the difference on the field.
Speaker 8: Hey, little play makes your day, and today it made
Speaker 8: the game. That's all for now, Coach.
Speaker 11: One more question played the new Los Angeles Chargers, San
Speaker 11: Francisco forty nine Ers and Los Angeles Rams scratchers from
Speaker 11: the California lottery. A little play can make your day.
Speaker 11: Peace Play responsibily. Must be eighteen years or older to
Speaker 11: purchase plate or claim