People Over Profits with Rick Arsenault

Hey, welcome to the Restaurant Coach Podcast. It is the cure for the common restaurant. I am so honored to be joined today from a neighbor from the Great White North. Rick Arsenal is here from the Bluebird Cafe and Grill. Rick, welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy to get you on here.

Thank you, Donald. I'm, you know, very honored to be part of this great podcast. I listen to it all the time, and, you know, you have awesome guests. I'm very honored that you chose me to be here with you today.

Well, you know, I mean, I love. So I started following you, you started following me. And then, of course, you know, I try to follow back people who follow me on Instagram. And I just tell you, your Instagram, your Bluebird Cafe, Orangeville Instagram account, it is just amazing. And you. You hit on all the stuff I really wish more restaurants would do. You really talk about and you really showcase me. Do a lot of videos. You show a sense of humor. You showcase your staff, you show. I mean, it's just a really, really great, great kind of Instagram thing. And you've really done a great job of really taking culture to that next level.

Thank you. And that, you know, and that means a lot to Michelle and I, and, you know, having read your book and, you know, listen to your seminar, when you put that on for the town of Orangeville, which is amazing, you know, the post pandemic, you know, getting restaurants back. Back at it, and, you know, it really. Michelle and I really focused our time on building our social media platform. You know, the pandemic threw a lot of different curve balls to restaurateurs and other businesses, and Michelle and I decided to take the time to, you know, think outside of the box and get creative on our social media. The reason the videos kind of started, it was funny, was we missed connecting with people when we were locked down. We didn't have anybody inside the restaurant but Michelle and I and one or two chefs. And, you know, we miss talking to our guests. We miss those interactions with people. And we thought outside of the box and say, hey, you know what? Let's connect this way. And it snowballed. It got bigger and bigger. People started calling the restaurant, and if Michelle answered the phone, they'd say, oh, is this Mrs. Tick Tock? Or, you know, we're. We're recognized. So, you know, we've become recognized. People know us just by our Instagram, by our TikTok. It's been amazing. It's built our sales, you know, that a lot of times they say social Media isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Well, I will tell you, 100% it is.

It is. When you do it right, when you have a good message and you're consistent with it. I think it really. I'm a huge believer. I always say best known beats best.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, and keeping your brand top of mind, that's what marketing is all about. So how did you get into the restaurant business?

I started back when I was 13 years old, blanching french fries at your local fast food chain, Harvey's. That's still here in Canada. It's been around forever. I was a french fry boy and just fell in love with the industry and kind of worked my way up from there. Got in some great corporate chains. I was with the keg for about 10 years. I opened some restaurants from the ground up for Lone Star group of companies. I was a regional manager before I bought the Bluebird. But the Bluebird was kind of my dream restaurant. Michelle and I ate there. That was the first restaurant we ate at in Orangeville when we moved here. And we fell in love with it.

Oh, wow.

And, you know, everybody kept asking me, you know, you're gonna buy franchise or what are you gonna do? I knew I wanted the Bluebird. So, you know, we. We jumped on it when we found out it was for sale.

Very, very cool. That is so cool. How long have you run it now?

It'll be four years in February. So February 2019, we bought it. And our one year anniversary was a pandemic that shut down restaurants. Who would have known? Yeah.

You know, you're shocked. I'm always shocked. Like, how many restaurants decided that we opened up?

Yeah.

In like January 2020. Oh, that was bad timing.

Yeah. But you know what?

I had it worse. Oh, my. My heart went out to the people in Canada. You guys were like, I mean, talk about shut down and lock down and like, no escape.

But you know what? We're. We're very blessed and grateful, you know, our community, outside our community. We had people driving, you know, up to an hour just to come and get our takeout, which was phenomenal. You know, we're so blessed that, you know, we're still here and we, you know, do what we can in our community to make sure that people recognize that.

That's so cool. So, you know, one of the things that is kind of like top of the top of mind right now is, of course, like, supply chain inflation is really starting to hit the restaurant industry. How's the supply chain and inflation up.

In Canada so far, you know what, from what I understand, it hasn't gotten as bad as what's happening down in the States. But you know what? For, for me, I've got a great relationship with a couple great suppliers. And, you know, my one main salesman, he works his butt off for me. And, you know, I'm in constant communication with him. He's letting me know what's happening, what the trends are happening. So, you know, he's working with his margins to make sure that we're getting the best deals we can. Our produce suppliers, they're, they're working hard behind the scenes for, for a lot of restaurants.

That's cool. You mentioned the word. You said relationship. You know, I have a great relationship. I think so many restaurant owners kind of have this adversarial kind of, you know, it's us against them. And my, my vendors are kind of screw me and, you know, we have this kind of. I don't like them and, you know, and they're just trying to screw me over all the time.

Yeah.

What are some of the things that you find that really help build that relationship deeper?

You know what I think 100% is getting to know who you're working with, you know, and being honest, being trustworthy with these people. People want to do business with people they like, people they love. You know, we make sure that our delivery drivers, when they come in, they're greeted, you know, like a friendly guest, you know, so they go back to their company and say, hey, I love working with the Bluebird, because, you know, they give me a bottle of water in the heat. Or, you know, they, they treat us with respect. No, my main sales guy, him and I chat all the time, and he's, you know, he's told me, hey, you know, these, my competitors going around, you know, they're giving fifteen hundred dollars cash to jump in with a, with a different company. It's like, you know, no, Jim, I'm with you. You know, you've been loyal to me, I'm loyal to you. You've saved me so much money, you know, that fifteen hundred dollars is nothing to what you've saved me over the last three years. So it's just having that constant dialogue.

That is so cool. Yeah. And just having a thing and, and you mentioned that, you know, it's like people we know like, and trust, that's who we like to do business with. I, I would say that's one of the things I just, I loved about your Instagram. It's like I was like watching and singing. I can hang out with this guy, you know, I can hang out. Man, we'd have some fun, you know.

Well, next time you're up in Toronto, make sure you, you know, make that our little drive north and come and see us.

I definitely will. I definitely will. So, you know, being able to change and pivot is really paramount right now. What are some of the ways you've really shifted your business model?

I think the biggest thing was, you know, driving staff forward and letting our staff do what they do best and creating relationships with our guests. You know, we, we, Michelle and I always talk to our team about it. We talk to our guests about it. It's, you know, Michael, my job, Michelle's job is to be the ambassadors of that restaurant. And we give a five star experience to our team working for us because we want them to give a five star experience to our guests coming in. You know, looking at pivoting different ways, we, you know, we changed our takeout model back when the pandemic, when we just had takeout and no dining room was creating an environment where the guests came in to receive their takeout in a five star experience way with, you know, making a connection, not just, oh, here's your bag, see you later, gotta go. It's, you know, let's sit down and talk to these guests, bring their food out to their car and have a conversation with them. You know, the biggest thing that came out of the pandemic was a curbside pickup, and it's still going crazy for us. People love the convenience. They pull in our back parking lot, they get to see our friendly staff and talk to the staff, and they go off in their car.

So is that something you started after, during the pandemic?

That's something we started during the pandemic.

You're gonna keep it.

We, we haven't gotten away from it because everybody loves it so much. It's that extra convenience. It's that extra wow factor that we talk about. No, we. We write messages on every single takeout bag. And that all started during the pandemic? Yeah, it was my son. My son was running orders to the car. Michelle was taking orders on the phone. We had two, two chefs in the kitchen and myself bagging. And because we saw the regulars that we knew in the dining room that were coming in for takeout, we just write them little love notes and people started posting them on their social media and having fun with it. Then it came to the point, oh, man, I can't stop on one person because they're going to get offended because they didn't get the message from Rick. They didn't get the message from Michelle.

Exactly.

So now we've trained all of our takeout staff to every single pizza box, every single bag that leaves our restaurant has an inspirational message, has a funny little quote, has something there that means something to the guests. And we still get so many people talking about it in the community. It's amazing.

That is so cool. That is so, so cool. So leadership is one of the things I talk about a lot in my books. I talk about leadership all my books. What do you think is kind of critical to be a leader? What do you think a leader needs?

To me, it's the passion to lead people and the passion to, you know, you're there for your people, and you're there. You know, you got to be honest. You gotta, you know, when you screw up, tell them you screwed up. Don't be scared. Don't, you know, you can't stand behind people and say, oh, I'm not doing this anymore because of this, or whatever it is.

Yeah.

You know, it's being passionate, being true to who you're serving. You know, I learned a long time ago some of my great, you know, people that I follow, Simon Sinek and Robin Sharma. You know, my favorite book is Leader Without a Title in our entire restaurant.

Well, I love that book.

Yeah. And our entire restaurant is based on the leadership without a title. We don't have a head chef at our restaurant. You know, our. Our kitchen team is run as a brigade, and everybody works together. There's no hierarchy in our restaurant whatsoever.

The one thing I have to say I'm impressed about your Instagram page is that just the amount of pictures of people and having fun, and it just, you know, and again, and you mentioned this before we got. Before we hit the record button, you said something about, you know, you said people over profits.

Yeah.

Talk about that a little bit more.

Yeah. And. And that's something that, you know, some of my great mentors taught me growing up through this industry is, you know, you got to take care of. There's a great picture.

I love that one.

But it's taking care of your people and, you know, and showing your weakness and making sure that if your people aren't happy working with you, you know, they're not going to want to produce for you. They're not going to want to get you your profits. But if you build that culture, you build that love of working as a team, people respect that, you know, and Something I always tell people, people don't work for Rick, they work with Rick. You know, they don't work for the Bluebird. They work with the Bluebird. That's always, you know, my biggest thing when I have my one on one coaching with my team is, you know, I don't want you to come into work if you don't want to be here, don't work for me if you don't feel like you're going to bring value. I want you to do it because you want to be part of our team.

I love how your Instagram too is not only you talk about, you know, you're showcasing the fun, you're showcasing food. Of course, you always hit the team, you're having a great time. But I think it's, it's, it's funny how like, like you would talk about just like everyday stuff like, you know, drinking games for those who work with their spouses. You know, it's like if you've never worked with your spouse, I mean, I saw this, I was like, oh, yeah, I understand this completely. Yeah, all right. Yeah, no, I'm not doing it right. No, I'm not doing it right. Okay, fine.

And for Michelle and I, it's, you know, we have that balance at our home life and our work life. And it's funny, we barely see each other at the restaurant because we're both doing whatever that needs to be done and we're both leading the team. But, you know, when we're at home, we try not to talk about the restaurant. If we, if we don't have to. When we're at home, we're, we're Rick and Michelle as a couple and we take care of our children and we have fun. And, you know, a lot of these videos, we were worried as business owners, what are people going to think? What are people going to say? But then we step back, it's like, well, that's who we really are. We're really goofy people.

That's being authentic, I think, you know, I think more people need to be authentic in their marketing and be more storytelling and just, just, you know, throw, just throw to the wind saying, man, this is who we are. This, you know, we're. Yeah, we're goofy, we're funny, you know, that's who we are, man. We're just, you know.

Yeah, it was funny.

You know, dance like, dance like no one's watching. Right?

Exactly, exactly. You know, our most viral video that we've, we've gone on, Tick Tock and Instagram, it is Me sitting in the pouring rain last summer before dining rooms reopened. You know, that's probably had close to a million views. Just between all the different marketing.

See, this is funny stuff. This is good stuff. Yeah. It seems like you guys have a great time.

Yeah. And it's, you know, when you're, when.

You'Re hiring, what are you looking for when you're hiring? A really good team.

Yeah. It's all about a winning mindset. You know, I'm not one to pick up a resume. When somebody brings in their resume to honest, I don't even look at them. Let's have a conversation. I want to know, I want to know you as a person. I want to know, you know, what are your. What makes you want to be successful? You know, a lot of the team that we have, they never worked in a restaurant before. And we've taken the opportunity to, you know, let them be who they are and create what they create.

Yeah. Do staff incentives, you do bonuses, you do all kinds of great stuff.

Yeah. We actually just, you know, after the pandemic, something we were looking at was medical benefits for our staff and.

Oh, really? Cool.

Yeah. So we actually just brought medical benefits in for, you know, dental, medical for all of our full time staff after six months of being with us.

Good stuff. Funny stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. So self care. I'm a huge believer in self care. What do you do for self care? What do you do to make sure that you're at your A game? Because, you know, I think you believe like me, culture flows down.

It doesn't work.

So how do you take care, how do you make sure you're at your A game all the time?

A lot, a lot of time spent in my hot tub. No, I, you know, I do.

Everyone needs a hot tub. Rick says everyone get a hot tub.

You know, I'm part of a, you know, we used to be called the 5am Crew and we used to go work out together. We were together for about five years. You know, all different aspects of life and all different age range. We, we became so close, unfortunately during the pandemic when gym shut down, we kind of all went our separate ways. So now, you know what? I work out and do some nice walks and the, you know, we got a lot of great trails and just do hiking and spending time my family, that's, you know, for us, that's what's.

Important is anything you do for mindset. Do you meditate?

I read, you know, just. I listen to a ton of podcasts and audiobooks. You know, that's probably the, the biggest thing that I, I miss not commuting to restaurants anymore because now I'm four minutes from the restaurant. But, you know, I, I was sitting my, you know, when I was an area manager in the car for two, three hours. All I'd listen to is podcasts and, and audiobooks, a lot of stuff by Simon Sinek, Jeremy Scott Fist, Jeremy Scott Fitness. He, he does some great stuff. And know yours I always listen to, obviously.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you. Robin Sharma. I'm a huge fan of Robin Sharma.

Robin Sharma, too. Yeah, I love Ron Sharma. He's a, he's great. He's awesome. Brennan Burd. I like Brennan Burt a lot. I'm a huge Tony Robbins fan.

Of course. Yeah, yeah. Brene Brown. She's, she's wicked. Yeah.

If you had, if you had to recommend an audiobook, wouldn't it kind of changed your whole kind of like ideas about leadership, what would it be?

Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last. Okay. Is probably one of my favorite ones. And Robin Sharma's, the 5am Club.

Yeah. What was the best meal you've ever had in your life?

Probably, I would have to say anything at the Bluebird.

Nice.

You know what, that, that's why we bought this restaurant that, you know.

Yeah.

Michelle and I ate there weekly before we bought the restaurant. That was our, our go to place. Our favorite place. But, you know, besides the Bluebird, I would have to say Gotham in Vancouver, Canada.

What was about it?

Just the, the atmosphere. We got to sit outside on their, the patio in front of a fireplace and had an amazing steak. The atmosphere was great. No, to us, it's all about an atmosphere. Michelle and I love dining out. And you know, it's, you know, everybody says, are you picky because you own a restaurant when you go out for, for dinner? It's tough. Me, it's not about being picky. But, you know, I know what I love to see and I love seeing it.

And I have certain expectations.

Yeah.

Especially if they have a good, I mean, if they got a lot of pr, they've got awards and they got, you know, my, my expectations rise.

For sure. For sure. Exactly. You know, and, and making that connection with that server, to me, that's what's important is, you know, if you, you have a server that's just there, you, you can tell.

What would you say is, do you say, would you say a good meal or a good food can save bad service or do you think bad service can save.

I think it's a, it's A balance. Act of both personally, you know, and I always talk to our team about it. It doesn't matter. You know, for us, it's. We're gonna make a mistake. We're not perfect, but it's how we recover that guest leaving that restaurant, you know?

Exactly.

No matter what happens at the restaurant, we can save it. And Michelle and I will talk to our guests, and, you know, if I have to buy somebody dinner, then I buy them dinner. But as long as they walk out our front door saying, hey, you know what? It wasn't perfect, but, wow, they sure knew how to fix it. That's what's important to us.

Very cool. In looking at restaurants, looking at profitability, what do you think is, like, one of the biggest challenges restaurants have with hitting profitability? I know in the United States, the average profit in the United states is only 5, 6%.

Yeah. And it's. It's about that. The same here too. Yeah. You know, and to me, it's about getting people in your door. You know, we're very blessed that our. Our restaurant is full lunch service, dinner service. You know, our. Our time that we're trying to work on right now is that between 3 and 5 o' clock is how did we get some more people in there? If your restaurant's always full, your profit of profitability is going to come. And it's.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, and controlling your cogs, controlling your labor. And, you know, the big thing we do in our kitchen is cross training. Everybody can do everything in our kitchen.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess our biggest success story in our kitchen is we have a young man who's 16 years old. We hired him as a dishwasher, and this kid just worked his butt off and want to learn more. We had him doing salads and desserts, moved up. Now he's running the line with all the chefs and 16 years old.

That's amazing.

Yeah. And, you know, last year when he was doing school online, he was there five nights a week. And, you know, Michelle and I built a relationship with his parents every day. We know. We talked to him. Are you okay with school? He's like, yep. We saw his parents were like, he's still getting honors at school, and he's working full time, so.

That's so cool. Yeah, that's so cool. So cool. So, you know, a lot of times restaurants, we have this kind of thing about labor, you know, and there's always say there's a. There's a labor shortage. I. I personally don't think There's a labor shortage. What do you really think the real problem is?

You know what? A lot of times I think it's that operators aren't taking the time to, you know, I hear it still to this day is, you know, oh, they came in at noon. Are. Are they silly? They don't know that restaurants are busy at noon. Well, take the time and talk to them. You know, a kid who doesn't know a restaurant, he doesn't know you're busy at that time. But it's is taking the time to sit down with people, you know, and Michelle and I count our blessings that we're fully staffed right now, and we have guests that comment about that. They're like, you know, I go, I went out to dinner at another restaurant and they had nobody. How do you do it? We're like, well, we're building a culture. We're building, you know, we have the cream of the crop in this community working for us because we've created an environment where people want to work with us. We have a lot of fun doing it.

There you go. I think that's critical is that, you know, and it goes back to what you said earlier about people before profits.

Yeah, yeah. And unfortunately, a lot of operators, not only in the restaurant industry and a lot of other industries, don't realize that if you're not taking care of people and not creating environment, they're not going to want to stay with you. Longevity.

No, they definitely won't. What's your favorite thing on the Bluebird menu?

Hands down, the lasagna is probably my. My go to all the time.

Really? Do you order, like every day or what?

There's been. There's been rumors that I've eaten it five days in a row, but our, you know, there. And it's funny, a lot of people always ask us, you know, what do you recommend on your menu? And unfortunately, there. There's not one thing I can recommend because everybody has their favorites.

Everybody has your favorite.

Yeah. And, you know, when we opened back from the pandemic, we shut down for three weeks and we reopened our takeout. We. We brought back half the menu, and everybody's calling, well, where's this dish? Where's this dish? So we flipped it the next week or a couple weeks later, and then everybody's mad. So after that, we're like, you know what? Let's just bring the whole darn menu back.

Oh, wow. Wow.

Yeah. You know, there's so many great choices on our menu, and it's, you know, the guys Put so much passion, the girls put so much passion into creating these dishes.

How many services do you do? Breakfast, lunch and dinner? Just.

No, we just do lunch and dinner.

Just lunch and dinner.

Yeah.

How many days a week?

5. We're closed. Sundays and Mondays. Give everybody a nice couple. Everybody deserves that weekend.

So I'm a huge believer in the five day work week.

Yeah.

For restaurants, I am a huge believer. I think you can make just as much money in five days if you market correctly than you would being open seven days. And also I love it because now I just gotta run one eight team.

Yeah.

Yeah. One solid team. Everyone knows you work five days and then you get two days off. Everybody gets two days off in a row.

Yeah. And you know what? Our staff appreciate it. You know, they, you know, the guys aren't booking off a Saturday night, you know, the odd time they do, but, you know, it's because they have whatever. But, you know, we know everybody knows when they're off and it's. It's great. And yeah, our profitability is. Is there. And you know what? Our sales are. Are phenomenal for five days a week.

Yeah. That's so cool. So cool. So cool. So if you came in with a warning label, what would it say?

Probably that, look out, Rick. Rick is just fun and wild and crazy. Just watch my tick tocks.

Yeah, your tick tocks are amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, your tick tocks are there.

No, to me, to me, you know, life. Life is too short to. To worry about the big things. It's just, have fun and be yourself and enjoy life every day. Because, you know, your life can change in a minute, in a second, so you gotta live it.

I know that personally.

Yeah.

Died twice. Yeah. So, yeah, life can change very, very quickly.

Yeah.

So culture, culture. And we talk a lot about the people part. What else do you think is important to creating the culture?

Like you have, you know, I, I think it comes down to, like, you know, the work environment and, you know, the workload and how you. How we stretch it out. You know, in our kitchen, for example, as I said, we don't have a head chef, we don't have a head of the brigade. Everybody has their own accountabilities and they hold each other accountable and they enjoy that. And they, you know, they look at the culture and realize, hey, you know what? I'm going to help so and so today because, you know, he helped me yesterday, she helped me yesterday. And it's just the environment. And we talk a lot about that. You know, we, we broke down A lot of walls. When we first opened that restaurant to make sure that there wasn't a divide between the front of house and the back of house and.

Oh, I hate that.

Is it there? Yeah, it's always going to be there.

But there's always a little attention. But you can, you can minimize it a lot more than a lot of places do.

Yeah. And, you know, we, you know, we encourage our team. You know, this past weekend after service on Saturday night, they all went out to one of our local bars and hung out together as a team. And it was great to see.

So if you had to pick a couple core values, what you say, some core values that you're. You guys kind of live by.

100 is every guest that comes into our restaurant leaves with a five star experience. And that includes our staff. Our staff are our guests. Right?

Yeah. Everyone forgets that there's internal and external guests.

Yeah.

And we focus so much on the external guests, we forget to market and appreciate the internal guests.

Yeah. And that's like I said earlier, that's, you know, my, my job and Michelle's job as the ambassadors of this restaurant is to, to create a five star experience for our team. And, you know, we, we try to live that every day. Are we perfect at it? No, because nobody's perfect. But, you know, we do our darndest to, to create a great team for our, for our staff to work under.

What's Michelle's favorite item on the menu?

The penne palermo or the Napoli pizza.

Oh, really?

Yeah. So we, Michelle and I actually joked about that. So for 10 years straight before I was buying the restaurant, that's the only thing she ate, was the penne palermo.

That's it.

That was it. That's the only thing she would eat. And once we bought the restaurant, we, she had to expand her horizon. But now they all joke around. Soon as Joe puts a Napoli pizza in the pizza oven, Michelle's around the corner because she can smell that thing cooking a mile away.

Yeah. That's amazing. Amazing. How about your kids? What are your kids like?

My son, he loves the amola pizza, which blue cheese and potatoes on it. My youngest daughter, she, she loves our Greek salad or our Caesar salad. Yeah.

Yeah. What do you think about the Caesar salad? What do you think makes your Caesar salad unique? Because everyone has a Caesar salad.

It's just we make it nice and creamy. We're 100% scratch kitchen. Every, every single dish is made to order in our restaurant. So nothing's externally made. We. From the raw ingredients right through to the cooked ingredient is made. And yeah, we make our Caesar salad so nice and creamy. Lots of garlic. I don't eat it because a little too garlicky for me.

So, you know, a lot of people don't understand in Canada, there's a thing called the Caesar, which is a drink.

It is the best drink in the world.

Yeah, it's like, it's what we call a Bloody Mary down here. But a lot of times they get confused. It's like, you know, it's. I was at. I was at. My girlfriend, her. Her sister, she's a twin sister who married a guy, he's from Canada, and he was making Caesars, and yet we have this party, and he asked one of the guests, he goes, would you like a Caesar? And she's like. And she's like. Gives him this look, like, okay, yeah, I'll take that one. Not that kind of Caesar. Different Caesar.

Yeah, no, bloody Caesars are good. I, you know, I do. I do have to say I indulge in those quite a bit.

Do you know the Caesar salad was actually invented in Mexico?

I did not. I did not.

Tijuana, Mexico, 1924.

Wow.

The guy who opened, the guy who owned the restaurant was Caesar Cardini. Had an Italian restaurant in Tijuana. Some businessmen came over, over across the border. All he had was, like, some romaine, some parmesan, and some eggs and he. And some lemon juice, and he made a salad tableside for him, and he called it the Caesar salad.

Now, that's an interesting fact. I'll have to share that with my team.

A lot of people think it's from Italy. Nope. Mexico. It's an import from Mexico. So what's like the biggest thing your restaurant's doing right now to set yourself up for 2023?

We actually just hired a videographer to keep moving forward on. On our social media platforms. You know, it's funny, Michelle and I sit back and we look at other restaurants in our market that kind of mimic our social media. So we decided we were going to hire a videographer to kind of elevate, you know, the video content that we're doing, the photography that we're doing. And then we're looking at just continue moving forward with different community events that we loved getting a part of. You know, we just finished doing a thing for one of the local hospices. We just donated 900. We did a dollar from every pizza soul for the month of September.

Oh, that's so awesome.

Yeah. So we. We love giving back to our community. So we you know, we don't have one charity that we just specifically do with. We try to go around. We do a lot of different things in our community.

And as far as like, videography, do you have a YouTube channel?

We do.

Do you really? That's awesome.

Yeah, we just started putting some of our, you know, professional type videos on there.

Have you started doing shorts yet?

No.

Oh, YouTube shorts are the hot new thing you got to do. YouTube shorts. I have to think of stuff you use for Tik Tok and Instagram reels.

Okay.

It's basically 90 second little videos. They're the full length screen, like on the phone. That's a short. And the beautiful thing about YouTube shorts right now is that YouTube's really putting like a full court press behind it because they want to promote it. So you'll get a lot of organic reach that way.

I will definitely look into this one.

Yeah. It's awesome. It's awesome. So let's talk about stress. Everyone knows restaurant owners get stressed. And I saw you with that bottle of tequila. But besides tequila, how do you deal with stress?

I. I think like we talked about earlier is that, you know, that self care and.

Self care.

The hot tub. Yeah, the hot tub. You know, spending time. My family when we're not at the restaurant is just decompressing and, you know, when I am at the restaurant, when things get stressed out is just, you know, know, stand back and reevaluate what's really happening right now, you know? Yeah. Is me getting stressed gonna cause more stress for everybody else? Yep. It's going.

Yes, yes, it does. It definitely does.

You know, going from you?

Yeah, they take from you. Like if you're wigged out, they're wigged out too. They don't know why.

You know the old saying, go on the walk in and cool off.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So, you know, you are in Canada. Have you ever joined the Polar Bear club?

No, I have not.

No. You haven't jumped in the ice in the lakes up there?

I have not done that one yet.

You know, so here's my. If I come up to Canada and it's cold, we gotta take a. We gotta do a cold plunge.

I. I would do it with you, my friend.

All right. All right. Game on.

Yes.

And if you come here to Scottsdale, we'll do a hot plunge. Speaking of which, hey, man, are you coming to my restaurant success summit? It's next week.

I would love to. I just can't get down there next week. We busy week. Theater just opened next door for us.

That's true. You guys are getting busy.

Yeah. We got a beautiful theater across the street from us which keeps us open.

But if anybody has wants to. I still got a few tickets left. Restaurant success summit is October 24th, 25th. 26th here in Scottsdale, Arizona. You can go to restaurantsuccessummit.com and grab the ticket. I think there's, I think this morning There was four tickets left. That's it. I cabinet at 50 people just because I want to keep it kind of intimate. So everyone gets some one on one time with the, with the, with the speakers and stuff like that.

Beautiful.

So let me ask you, when you were a little kid, what'd you want to be when you grew up?

Hands down, a farmer.

Did you really?

I did, I did.

A farmer.

A cattle farmer. A milk.

A cattle farmer?

Yeah, a milk milk farmer. My, my mom's family grew up on farms. So when I was a young stride before I started working at Harvey's, I was on a farm every summer and I actually, my plan was to go to the agricultural college in New Liskert, Ontario. And then I started working at Harvey's and restaurants took over from there.

My grandfather had a little farm when I was a kid and I used to get drafted to go work, you know, detasseling corn, baling hay.

Yeah.

I'm happy to get recruited by my father into the, into the restaurant business. I was like, this sounds a lot better. Yeah. I don't know if that was like going from the fryer pan into the fryer.

Something.

I don't know, something like that. Something.

Yeah.

You know, who knows? What's one quote that you live by?

Every storm runs out of rain. It's tattooed right here on my arm.

Is it really?

It is awesome. Yeah. You know, it's such a true thing because no matter what happens in your life, you know, the dark days are going to end and things are going to come out, you know, it's not going to stay bad all the time.

Is that your favorite tattoo?

Probably.

Yeah.

Yeah. The other one for my dad, I got, got a. Yeah.

I always thought about, I wanted to get. I haven't done it yet, but I always wanted to get the symbol of Dao on my shoulder blade just to remind myself to follow the path, the way.

So yeah.

Yeah, I have a special ops tattoo. That's the only one I got.

Yeah.

And if people want to contact you, they can find you at www.bluebird cafe and grill.

Ca. Yeah, we're on our, on our tick tock on Instagram is your tick Tock.

The same as the.

It's at Bluebird Orangeville, Bluebird Cafe and.

Grill on Tick Tock.

On Tick Tock. Yeah.

Very cool. And then they can always just find you by your last name. They can find your Instagram too, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, Rick, I want to say thanks for jumping on today. It was a real honor to get to talk to you and. And because I knew you've been doing some really cool stuff with your culture and I just want to kind of dig down and realize that it is people over profit. And if you focus on that internal guest, I think that takes care of.

Your external guest 100%. And thank you so much for your time today, Donald. It's my pleasure.

Perfect, my friend. Thank you.

Thank you.

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