Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Grace Corbin on Leading Casa Nueva's Worker-Owned Cooperative Restaurant in Athens, Ohio

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Grace Corbin on Leading Casa Nueva's Worker-Owned Cooperative Restaurant in Athens, Ohio · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Coduspotti
0:17
and today's guest is Grace Corbin.
0:19
She is a co-owner and Vice President of the Board of
0:22
Directors at Casa Nueva in Athens, OH.
0:26
They are a worker owned cooperative restaurant that has
0:29
been serving Mexican inspired cuisine since 1985.
0:34
They focus on fresh, local ingredients and foster a close
0:37
knit community by hosting live music, art shows and supporting
0:41
area nonprofits. Under Grace's guidance, Casa
0:45
Nueva has received multiple local awards from the Athens
0:48
News. She has seen the business grow
0:51
to include many member owners and more than 30 associates who
0:55
share a passion. Provide do that sentence again.
1:00
She has seen the business grow to include many member owners
1:04
and more than 30 associates who share a passion for providing
1:08
great food and service. Grace has been part of Casa
1:11
Nueva since 2009, bringing her background in cooperative
1:16
governance, marketing, and front of house management.
1:19
Before joining Casa Nueva, she managed Bagel Street Deli and
1:23
earned a bachelor's degree in Sociology from Ohio University.
1:28
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2:10
All right. Back to our guest today, the
2:12
Vice President, Board of Directors of Casa Nueva, Grace
2:15
Corbin. Thanks for making the time to
2:17
Share your story today. Thanks for having me.
2:20
So, Grace, you graduated from Ohio University OU in Athens, OH
2:24
in 2006 and you found your way to Bagel Street Deli.
2:29
Was this your first introduction to the restaurant space?
2:33
It was not. I actually got my first
2:36
restaurant down when I was 15 in my hometown of Shaker Heights,
2:40
OH. I walked into a restaurant
2:43
called Pearl of the Orient and asked if they were hiring and
2:47
the owner Rose Long's response was when can you start?
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So I I worked there throughout that, throughout high school and
2:55
then once I went to OU. At that time OU had six week
3:01
long winter breaks. So I would go home and work for
3:03
winter breaks as well at Pearl the Orient, which really
3:09
solidified my destiny in restaurants if you will.
3:13
OK, you know, in my experience, Grace, a lot of times our
3:16
biggest lessons come from really powerful experiences.
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Is there one that sticks out in your mind from your time at
3:23
Bagel St. Well, Bagel Street is a small,
3:34
locally owned business. They're open seven days a week.
3:40
Probably the well, the coolest thing about that place where I
3:47
actually still work part time. I'm not sure if you knew that we
3:52
have parties. We have two parties a year,
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one's on Halloween and one is called Pickle Fest, which is a
3:57
pickle eating contest. You eat many large dill kosher
4:03
dill Pickles as you can in 10 minutes and it is insane and fun
4:09
and loud and. What's the record?
4:12
13. And how many minutes say again,
4:16
OK, and give me the size we're looking on screen here.
4:19
They vary, right? So like, not all Pickles are the
4:22
same. We, we, we put Pickles in
4:26
baskets and put them in front of the competitors.
4:28
OK. And, and it's not always fair.
4:31
Sometimes they're a little smaller, sometimes they're a
4:33
little bigger. It's just the lack of the draw.
4:35
OK, so people who have eaten 10, let's say, are like, yeah, yeah,
4:39
the year that they, you know, I heard that they were really
4:42
small. Well, sometimes they're a small
4:43
ones and sometimes they're big. When it's just about a little
4:45
comes in the bucket. I might have to bring my I might
4:48
have to bring my 11 year old son for this competition.
4:51
Dill Pickles are actually his favorite food, so that's the
4:55
reason. I'm asking my 4 year old.
4:56
My friend's 4 year old competed. Last competed.
4:59
Yeah, competed last year and she consumed one pickle.
5:02
OK, it's a good starting place. Yeah, but that's it's such a
5:06
morale builder. It's such a fun time.
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She's just kind of like let loose with your Co workers and
5:12
get kind of crazy. OK.
5:14
All right. So that how did the opportunity
5:16
to join Casa Nueva come about? How did that door open?
5:19
So that is sort of a funny story.
5:21
So I, I left Bagel St. in 2008 because I moved to Colorado
5:25
Springs for a little while. And when I came back to Athens
5:29
from Colorado Springs, my apartment was above.
5:34
The apartment that I was moving into was above the bar that's
5:38
across the street from Casa Nueva.
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And I had been there a couple times, and I have some friends
5:43
that work there. And when my dad and I pulled up
5:46
with EU Haul and everything right in front of Casa to load
5:49
into my apartment above the bar across the street, my close
5:54
friend and president of the board now, Josh Brown, he was
5:58
standing outside having a break from work.
6:00
And he said, oh, Grace, you're back in town.
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I said, yeah, he's like, you should apply at Casa right away.
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And I was like, all right, because I didn't really know
6:08
what I was going to do. So I got the job like a week
6:11
later and the rest is kind of history.
6:13
But we'll talk about that history.
6:14
Yeah, let's get into the history in a little bit.
6:16
But first, the paint a picture for me.
6:18
For someone who's never been there before, what's the
6:20
customer experience like? So our main entrance takes you
6:25
right into the bar, what we call the cantina also which is our
6:29
largest. We have three main customer
6:32
areas and the cantina or the bar is the largest it it doubled in
6:36
size in 2004 and it's a big, huge space.
6:43
The walls are reddish orange. There's 25 or so tables and a
6:48
big, huge horseshoe bar that takes up most of the room.
6:53
That's where you'll be greeted and you know, you'll let the
6:57
host know if you're just just there for the bar or if you want
7:00
more of a formal dining experience with service and
7:02
stuff. And then through a little
7:04
doorway to to the right is our first dining room, what we call
7:09
the right room from the kitchen. There's the right room in the
7:11
left room. So the right room's next.
7:13
There's 7 tables in there. The walls are light green.
7:16
The art is all by Passionworks Studio, which is the local art
7:20
studio that has resident artists of all differing developmental
7:26
abilities. They have passion flowers and
7:29
all kinds of painted guitars. They do a lot of reused media.
7:34
So anyways, so then that that dining room and then the far
7:37
room, what we call the left room has a pink floor, light green
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walls, a couple of booths. It's the smallest of our spaces
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and it's the original space. Actually, we've expanded 3 times
7:47
over the years so that in 1985, the left room is the only dining
7:51
room that we had. So depending on where you choose
7:56
to sit or where you're guided to sit by the host, depending on
7:59
what tables were already occupied, the vibes of the room
8:04
can be a little different. And people sometimes don't like
8:06
to sit in the bar, they want to sit in the old room.
8:08
Like is 1 like more loud and energetic like music booming or
8:12
what? OK.
8:14
Yeah. So the cantina's the most
8:15
lively, generally speaking, with more of like a homey community
8:21
vibe. The well, they all have a
8:23
community vibe, I guess. But the dining rooms, like the
8:26
more formal dining room, can be a little quieter until you get a
8:31
party of 10 in there, and then the marble floor and the tin
8:35
ceiling make it a lot louder. Lots of echo there.
8:38
Yeah, I could see. Yeah.
8:40
And what's the food like? Tell us about the food.
8:43
So we serve what you would look at the menu and think, OK, this
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is like a normal Mexican restaurant, right?
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Enchiladas, burritos, queso dip tacos.
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But our spin on those items are a little different because we
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every single thing that we can make by hand from scratch, we
9:03
do. So our flour tortillas are made
9:05
in the house. All of our vegetables are hand
9:06
chops. Our queso, we make it in the
9:08
house. It's not the white liquid that
9:10
you might expect from a Tuxmex joint.
9:11
It's more of a chunky, spicy tomatoes, hot wax Peppers, cream
9:17
cheese, butter, Monterey Jack. Sometimes when I know it's
9:21
people's first time and they say let's get some queso, I
9:26
sometimes hesitate and sometimes don't hesitate to tell them it's
9:30
it's not what you're expecting. It's really good.
9:32
You're going to like it, but it's not that white liquid that
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we all know and love from traditional Tex Mex restaurant.
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You'll also find items on our menu that you might not expect.
9:43
So we have a rotating cast of vegetables of the day.
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We always have normal Mexican food things, right?
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Bell Peppers, onions, tomatoes, black olives, rice.
9:55
But then we'll take anything that we can source locally as
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far as produce goes. Kohlrabi, cabbage, bok choy, and
10:05
those are part of our rotating casted vegetables of the day
10:08
which we will put into our house made flour tortillas.
10:11
And what we call a burrito is a big baked square situation that
10:18
you need with a knife and fork, not so much a pickup with your
10:20
hands and meat. And so we're recording this
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middle of November 2025. And So what do you do in months
10:30
like this for locally sourced produce?
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Is that just something that kind of gets put on hold or are there
10:35
greenhouses that you source from?
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How's this go? It's a little bit it's it's a
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little bit of all of that. So we mushrooms are a common
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player in our vegetable of the day rotation, even though
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they're not like a vegetable, they're a fungus.
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But people love mushrooms. They're they're, we always have
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two. Mushrooms are a very frequent
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staple in that rotating cast. Right now we have spaghetti
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squash, we have butternut squash.
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You know, the summertime we'll have zucchini and things like
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that. But there are also some
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greenhouses and other sources. So cabbage is a very big one.
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We have cabbage and mushrooms is what we joking to our to our
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regulars when we greet a table, we always lead with what the
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vegetables of the day are. And a lot of times if I'm
11:22
waiting tables, which I do occasionally, I say to a
11:25
regular, do you want to guess what the veggies of the day are?
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And they'll say cabbage and mushrooms.
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And I'm like they surprise. But people love the cabbage and
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the mushrooms. So those are our most readily
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available items. But yeah, we try to just keep a
11:36
local and whatever we can get no matter what time of year that we
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get. So I live in Columbus, OH, which
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is, I don't know, probably been an hour and a half away from you
11:45
guys. And I have the good fortune to
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interview folks from all over the country.
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So it's pretty rare that I can say, oh, I've been to your
11:55
restaurant. But in this case, I can say that
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my sister Alexandria is a resident of Athens.
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She recently graduated from Ohio University.
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So I was down there for her graduation dinner several months
12:08
ago. And so I asked her, I said, hey,
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if you had one question you would like to ask, what would it
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be? She's like, oh, the story about
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how they became a Co-op employee owned, She's like, that should
12:21
be really fascinating. So on behalf of my sister
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Alexandria, that's the question I posed to you, Grace.
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OK, so before we became Casa Nuevo, the space, the left room,
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just the small space was a restaurant called Casa Que Pasa,
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and it was small. I think they did breakfast also.
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And then one day in late 1984, the owner, sole proprietor, the
12:52
legend is that he left undercover of night.
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But regardless, the main, the main take away is that he shut
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the restaurant down with little to no notice whatsoever to his
13:06
employees nor the community. So it closed and there were
13:10
eight employees there who I'm not sure how many employees
13:13
total there were when it closed, but eight of them said to
13:17
themselves, you know, between the eight of us, we probably
13:22
make this work ourselves. How much experience do you how
13:26
much experience do you have? You do a little bit of money
13:28
stuff. I know some how to order things
13:31
and build a menu and I think we can do it.
13:34
So they realized that between the eight of them, they had over
13:36
100 years of restaurant experience.
13:40
And then in October of 1985 is when they officially got their
13:49
license or whatever. So the summer and fall of 1985
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they reopened the restaurant as a Co-op called Casa Nuevo.
13:58
And that's the short version, I guess.
14:01
There's there was a lot of a lot of trial, a lot of tribulation,
14:05
a lot of figuring it out as they went.
14:07
But that's kind of how people learn best than things I think.
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But that was 1985, and here we are in 2025 and we're still at
14:14
it. 40 years later and So what is this Co-op experience, look
14:18
and feel like today? So it's a very interesting kind
14:23
of business model where we the main, the main thing is
14:29
democratic decision making. So people sort of in our
14:33
community joke about Katha has meetings to have meetings.
14:37
We're closed on Tuesdays and that's our main meeting day.
14:41
So that's every Tuesday. We have a board of directors
14:43
meeting where it's very much big picture.
14:47
It's yearly projections at business plan, It's check in
14:51
with our coordinator team. And then once a month we have a
14:55
member meeting where we go over in depth the finances from the
15:01
month before, how we did, what it looked like, what we sold a
15:03
lot of, where we maybe took some missteps.
15:07
And then also on Tuesdays, any number of committees will meet.
15:11
We have a front of House committee and many development
15:13
committee, the Finance Committee, an operations
15:18
committee, which sort of came out of COVID and we'll talk
15:20
about that some more later. And sure.
15:22
But the decision making process is what really is, what really
15:27
makes us, I think interesting because it takes a long time to
15:32
get things done with the Democratic decision making
15:35
process. But it means that the resulting
15:39
decision that's eventually made has been weighed in on what if
15:45
and really, really taken apart piece by piece and put back
15:49
together in a way that everybody can agree on.
15:52
So we're as a sole entrepreneur, sole proprietorship, you might
15:57
have a person that owns the business that makes the decision
16:00
about a marketing scheme or a menu change or an hours change
16:04
or something about the operation that they've made a decision,
16:08
they've relayed that decision and now everyone has to deal
16:11
with it, whether they like it or not, whether it works or not,
16:13
whether they agree with it or not.
16:15
But at Casa, in our Co-op model, everyone's opinion counts,
16:19
whether you're an owner or an associate, whether you work in
16:25
the back of the house or front of the house, AM versus PM,
16:29
everyone has an opportunity to talk about the issue at hand,
16:33
what they think would work, what they think won't work.
16:36
And then we come to a decision that again, has been thought
16:39
through countless times by countless people.
16:43
And then we then we implement it.
16:46
So you have some folks that work there that are owners, some that
16:50
work there that are associates, so not owners.
16:54
And you say everybody has input. Does everybody get a vote?
16:59
No. Just the owners.
17:01
Yeah. So in board meetings, the board
17:04
members can vote. In member meetings, the members
17:07
can vote, but it's our responsibility as the owners of
17:12
the business to take into account the opinions of our
17:15
staff, our our associates, our non owners because sometimes
17:20
their ideas are better than ours.
17:21
You know everyone, Everyone has equal rights to voice opinions,
17:27
come up with ideas, influence decisions.
17:30
Everyone can attend meetings. Every single meeting that we
17:32
have is open to anybody. It's not just nothing is a
17:35
closed door meeting ever. Yeah.
17:38
And so how does somebody get to be an owner?
17:42
So the process to ownership is it's going to sound complicated,
17:47
but hear me out. So if you've worked there for a
17:51
year or two and you've been participating maybe in some
17:55
committees and giving your opinion and you know, getting
18:00
into sort of the, the bones of an hour operation really works.
18:04
And you are interested in beyond just coming in for your shift,
18:08
clocking in, working your shift, clocking out and going home.
18:13
And you want to have more of an active role in the business and
18:16
the, and how it, how it functions.
18:18
Then you apply to be a trial member.
18:22
So you put up a letter and you say, I have an intention to
18:25
become a trial member. And once, once you make that
18:31
step, then you're interviewed by the board of directors and the
18:35
board of directors interviews you about why do you want to
18:37
become a trial? Where do you see your niche, if
18:40
you will, on where you where you want to most help or influence
18:44
the business or where do you really see your place?
18:47
And then the board of directors after that interview makes a
18:51
recommendation to membership or not that that person can then be
18:55
a trial member. So if the if the person gets the
18:58
board recommendation, then it's a strong vote of confidence from
19:01
the board that membership should give this person a chance to be
19:04
a trial member. If the board does not recommend
19:07
that person, that person can throw in the towel and say maybe
19:11
the board's right. It's not a great fit right now,
19:14
but they can also say I don't agree with the board's non
19:18
recommendation. I'm going to go to membership
19:20
anyways. So then at the next member
19:22
meeting, that person is interviewed again, this time by
19:25
all of membership, which does include, of course the board of
19:28
directors. Our decision making at the
19:33
membership level is consensus based, so unanimous.
19:36
So one no means it's a no, but 100% yes is obviously it's yes.
19:40
So if that person is voted into trial membership by membership,
19:46
then they become a trial member. And the trial period can last
19:49
anywhere from three to nine months generally, but you can
19:53
fast track it. You can take more time if you
19:55
need it. There's no real set expectation,
19:58
but usually it's about 3 to 9 months.
20:01
During the trial period, you go to one of at least every
20:04
meeting, so all of the committee meetings, all of the a board
20:07
meeting, all the member meetings in that period.
20:10
You also do some finance workshops with our finance
20:12
coordinators. You learn how to read a profit
20:14
loss statement, a balance sheet. You take some cooperative
20:18
communication classes. You learn about the insurance
20:22
and outs of the decision making process.
20:23
I Casa you have access to everyone has access to, but it's
20:28
more formally presented to you the operating rules, the bylaws,
20:33
all of our articles of incorporation and our documents
20:36
that really govern our business. After all that, if you decide
20:41
that you're still interested and you want to become a full
20:43
member, you put up a letter again and you say I've been
20:46
through the trial period, I'm all in.
20:48
Let's do this. The board interviews you again,
20:51
a recommendation or not, and a non recommendation in this
20:54
scenario can mean we don't think that you've done enough in your
20:58
trial period yet. We want you to really dig a
21:00
little deeper, get in there a little, a little more before you
21:03
apply for full membership. You don't think you're quite
21:05
ready yet or know what you're signing up for in some cases.
21:10
And then if the recommendation comes, they go to membership
21:12
again. Membership votes, you get
21:14
interviewed again, membership votes again.
21:16
And then you're a full member. And if you like, let's say you
21:20
become a member in in the first hour of a member meeting, any
21:25
votes that come after that interview, you get to vote.
21:27
Your vote becomes valid immediately after you're voting
21:31
there. And so when they're voted in, is
21:34
there some sort of a financial buy in?
21:38
Yep, there is a buy in. I don't think it's a secret, so
21:43
I can just tell you that it's 1800 bucks and it comes as a
21:46
payroll deduction over a two year period.
21:49
If you want to extend it that long, that's about how long it
21:52
takes to go the slow way. If you want to fast track your
21:58
member fee contribution, you can tell our personal finance
22:03
coordinator, our payroll lady, if you will, hey, sign me up for
22:07
100 bucks every every two weeks instead of whatever it is.
22:12
Because once you get it, once you get it paid off, then you
22:14
start accruing interest as soon as it's paid off on the way.
22:18
So some people like to just get it out of the way, get it out of
22:20
their face. And so then once you're once
22:24
you're an owner, are you taking part in quarterly or annual
22:30
profit distributions, dividends, how's that work?
22:35
So it's, it's annual, Yep. And the process that we do is no
22:40
surprise to me anyway that it's a it's a little bit confusing.
22:43
So any year that we make a profit, we the following year.
22:49
So any profit that we make, 60% of it stays with the business
22:53
and 40% all the way around 40% stays with the business, 60% is
22:59
divvied up, excuse me, among the owners from that year.
23:04
So even if you leave, if we'll get to that in a second, I
23:08
guess. So the following year, so let's
23:12
say 2004, we make a profit. The following year, 2005,
23:17
October of that year, you as an owner will receive 20% of your
23:24
portion of the 60% of the profit.
23:29
Four years later in May, at our annual member meeting where we
23:33
select a new Board of directors, we solidify the business plan.
23:37
You receive the remaining 80% of your share of the 40% of the
23:44
profit from. And do you only receive that 80%
23:48
if you've been with the company the entire time?
23:51
Like do you forfeit that if you leave early?
23:53
Even if you leave, as long as you update your information with
23:56
our payroll lady, she mails you a check four years later.
24:00
OK, so once you've been there for a long enough time and we've
24:03
been profitable long enough, then pretty consistently you get
24:07
a little check in October and a big check from four years before
24:10
in May. They would get our little ones
24:12
on October and our big ones in May.
24:14
Got it. Now during that initial, hey, I,
24:18
I wrote my letter. I, I, you know, I want to, I'm
24:21
applying to be like a probationary member.
24:25
I forget the exact terms. If if the recommendation from
24:28
the board comes down as no, do you see a lot of those folks get
24:33
angry and just quit? Only seen that happen once.
24:40
OK. I mean, I've only seen someone
24:42
not received the recommendation one and that person just, they
24:48
did not quit. They were disappointed.
24:50
They, they were a little angry and they felt a little
24:52
blindsided as to be expected, I guess.
24:57
But it kind of just said, fine, never mind, I'll just clock in,
25:00
do my work and clock out 'cause really we want, we want more
25:06
members. We want people to pursue that
25:07
path. I would guess that folks who
25:11
choose that path, you're going to have a lot less turnover from
25:14
them, right? I mean, the restaurant industry
25:17
is one that's notorious for high turnover.
25:19
And I think, you know, as I'm listening to you talk about this
25:23
model, like reducing that turnover seems to be one of the
25:26
big advantages. The disadvantage is sort of the
25:29
complexity of the decision making, which I heard you allude
25:33
to. And as somebody who's, you know,
25:34
been a business owner for a number of years, I'm like, wow,
25:37
that could be really difficult to, you know, change the
25:42
direction or make decisions on new ideas.
25:45
And you're nodding your head. So that's true.
25:48
Yeah, yeah, things notoriously take a long time and we always
25:53
have, you know, people do really what if something to death any,
25:57
any especially big change, we're going to.
26:00
And if we're going to make a big change, I can't even think of
26:05
what 1 might be. But there's always going to be
26:08
people that are like, well, what if this happened?
26:09
What if this happened? What if this happened?
26:12
And sometimes it's worth it to entertain those what ifs.
26:17
And sometimes those what ifs are so obscure and unlikely that
26:22
it's like, OK, that will probably never happen.
26:25
And if it is, if it does, we'll cross efforts when we come to
26:27
it. Yeah, OK.
26:29
But clearly I'm it seems like there's no thought to sort of
26:33
change the structure of what's going on.
26:36
It seems to be working relatively well.
26:39
It's we've been there for 40 years.
26:40
Yeah, 40 years and you know, I, I know from having been there,
26:44
the experience, the customer experience is great.
26:46
My sister and her boyfriend love the place.
26:48
They're there on a regular basis.
26:50
So if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
26:52
Kind of a thing. Yeah, kinda.
26:55
OK, so tell me about. The the bigger sweeping changes
26:58
I wish that we could make sometimes, you know, sometimes I
27:01
want to throw out the book and rewrite it, but.
27:04
What's an example of one of? Those.
27:07
One of those big sweeping changes that you would like to
27:10
make. Well, so we have the, we have
27:18
three dining rooms. We have two small traditional
27:23
sit at a table, sit there, your server comes over or they bring
27:27
you your food, blah, blah, blah. And then in the bar, it used to
27:31
be much more casual. Sit wherever you want, order at
27:35
the bar, pick up your food from a window.
27:38
When COVID happened, and we'll probably talk about this a
27:40
little bit a little later, but when COVID happened, we had to
27:43
change that completely. And we serve the full menu and
27:46
with table service out in the bar.
27:48
Now I would love to go back to people coming in and sitting
27:56
wherever they want in the bar, ordering their feet at the bar
27:59
and then have a food runner bring it out to them with a
28:01
number on their table, which sounds so simple to me.
28:07
But we would need probably a couple more bartenders that we
28:09
would need a couple table attendants to wipe tables to the
28:12
class where the bus, you know, and for some reason that idea
28:19
sounds very simple to me. And I know I have a couple of my
28:21
Co owners on board with that idea.
28:24
But some other owners are so hesitant to make that change
28:27
because they really believe that our customers love being waited
28:31
on at a table in the bar. But we consistently have our
28:36
customers say, when are you going to go back-to-back to
28:39
normal? And sometimes when customers say
28:42
that to me, I say, what part of before do you consider normal?
28:49
And they can't really explain it.
28:51
It's very kind of like, well, you know, like it was before.
28:55
And I'm like, before what, what, what it, what, what, what was it
28:59
like before? It was chaos before.
29:04
It was chaos because people were going up to the window to get
29:06
their own orders. Yeah.
29:09
So you would order at the bar, and we have a bingo board in the
29:13
cantina where when your food was ready, the cooks that were in
29:17
that little kitchen back there would turn on the light for your
29:20
number and you would come pick up your food, food from the
29:24
window. The main problem with that is
29:26
that people wouldn't always remember what they ordered.
29:29
I don't remember what their number was, even though we'd
29:32
give them a card with the number on it and they would come, they
29:35
would come up to the window. You know they ordered from the
29:38
bar, right? So the cooks that are in the
29:40
window have never laid eyes on this person before.
29:43
There's maybe two or three orders in the window to be
29:46
picked up and a customer comes up and said, is this mine?
29:51
Well, who are you? What did you order?
29:53
What number are you? I've got 40 tickets in front of
29:56
you. I don't have time to help you
29:57
sort out what you ordered. So why do you want to go back to
30:00
this model, Grace? No, no, I don't want to go.
30:02
I don't want to go back to picking up their food in the
30:04
window. None of us ever want to go to
30:07
that. That is the one thing that I
30:09
believe 100% of membership will always agree on, that we never
30:11
want to go back to that. But I do want to go back to
30:14
people being able to sit wherever they want, push some
30:17
tables together if they want to grab chairs, rearrange our
30:21
furniture a little bit, which is very much frowned upon right now
30:24
because we have a floor plan and a seating chart server such,
30:28
which does sort of make sense and it's organized chaos right
30:31
now. But I want people to go up to
30:33
the bar, order their food, put a number on their table, and
30:36
rather than picking it up on a window, someone brings their
30:40
order to them. They don't have to guess if it's
30:43
their food. We know what they ordered, we
30:45
know what number they are, we know where they're sitting.
30:47
We bring the. Yeah.
30:48
Gotcha. OK.
30:49
Yeah. So you've alluded to this a
30:52
couple of times, so let's just go ahead and dive in.
30:54
There was the big challenge of COVID.
30:58
So I believe it was a couple days before Saint Patrick's Day,
31:06
March of 2020. It was a normal day.
31:10
I was at work. It wasn't a normal day.
31:12
COVID was encroaching. It was it was happening.
31:15
We were, some of us were masking, some of us weren't.
31:17
We were people were getting nervous.
31:21
And then the governor decided no more dining service.
31:25
Everyone has to get everybody out of there.
31:28
That happened at like 2 in the afternoon or something like
31:31
that. So the word spread like wildfire
31:36
and we immediately said anyone whose food hasn't come out yet,
31:40
we're going to pack it up. So you go, everyone's got to get
31:42
out right now and now we need to figure out what to do.
31:46
So we had that night an emergency member meeting.
31:50
So any member that could make it on short notice showed up and we
31:55
sat in the left room and pretty much cried through a 2 hour long
32:00
meeting of Oh my God what are we going to do?
32:04
We knew that we had to make carry out our primary revenue
32:10
stream and we needed to figure out we needed to a order a ton
32:15
more carry out supplies, boxes off the containers, bags,
32:20
napkins, blah blah blah. And we needed to get more actual
32:26
physical telephones because we weren't doing online orders at
32:29
the time either. We were pretty basic.
32:32
Carry out was not a, a, a big huge thing as it is now.
32:38
I mean, we did carry out sales, but we didn't do a very high
32:42
volume of carry out sales. We also needed to figure out
32:47
what to do with our staff. Did we keep everybody?
32:51
Did we lay people off? Did we furlough people?
32:54
And at the time we kind of thought it would be a couple of
32:56
weeks, maybe a month and that quickly turned into almost a
33:03
year. So we we shut the cantina and we
33:10
shut the right room and we operated all of our carry out
33:13
operations through just our old original very small space.
33:18
So we shut the main entrance and we made our one of our emergency
33:22
exits, the exits, the one and only entrance.
33:27
We got more phones, we answered the phone like crazy.
33:32
We boxed all the food. We did curbside service because
33:35
people were nervous. They still wanted our food,
33:37
which felt great. And it was really nice to have
33:40
business still. But we did curbside service.
33:43
You know, we put up plastic barriers everywhere.
33:48
And then when we when we discovered that we were allowed
33:54
to sell to go cocktails, which was a huge help, I'm sure every
34:00
business with a liquor license and probably attached to the
34:04
fact that once they were once we pulled the trigger on to go
34:07
cocktails, it pretty much saved us.
34:09
So yeah, I want to hear more about that because I remember
34:12
hearing that, and I'm not in the restaurant industry.
34:15
And if I wanted a cocktail, I would just, you know, prepare it
34:19
myself at home. And so I wondered, like, how
34:21
many folks are actually going to leave their house, go down?
34:25
Because part of the reason, like, I go to a bar to have a
34:27
drink is I want to be around people.
34:30
I want to meet some friends there.
34:32
But now am I going to a bar to get a drink that I could have
34:36
made at home and then take it back home?
34:38
But you're smiling and nodding and, you know, you're saying it
34:41
saved you. So clearly a lot of people were
34:44
up for that. Yeah, so we're pretty famous for
34:46
our margaritas. We make a really good Margarita.
34:48
We always make them by hand every time.
34:50
We don't really, I mean when it's like a really crazy dance
34:52
site or something, we will make a batch of them, but we still
34:55
make the batch by hand. We people really love our
34:59
margaritas and they love our drinks.
35:02
And you know, restaurants make a lot of money on alcohol and
35:07
we're no exception. So we bought like a pallet of 12
35:12
ounce glass jars and lids and we made huge pops, basically like a
35:18
cauldron of margaritas. We would ladle them into these
35:22
jars, but we didn't want to ice them, you know, because
35:27
someone's not going to maybe drink it until half an hour
35:30
later. So we would put so in a 12 ounce
35:33
jar, we would put, you know, 4 ounces of liquid and then put
35:37
the linen. So it's a jar that's not even
35:39
half full and we'd put them in the bag with the to go food and
35:44
people would get, we would, we made little instruction sheets
35:47
for a little while that were like, hey, take the lid off,
35:50
fill it with ice, put the lid on, shake it up, take the lid
35:53
off, enjoy. Because sometimes people would
35:55
call and they'd be like, I think you just gave me like a lot of
35:58
tequila in a jar. And we're like, I don't know,
36:00
that's the Margarita. It just doesn't have the ice in
36:02
it. We didn't want it to be watered
36:04
down. We want you to enjoy it whenever
36:05
you want to. So people would, people would
36:07
order 12 of them and just take a case home and then they'd just
36:10
have them. There was a stipulation that it
36:13
had to be with food. It was like 3-3 alcoholic
36:17
beverages per meal, but meal was sort of loosely defined so there
36:23
was a lot of wiggle room. So it could be a bag of chips or
36:26
something. Perhaps for some people, that's
36:28
all they want for dinner. Absolutely.
36:31
So what you're saying there makes a lot of sense, especially
36:34
like margaritas, like, not that they're rocket science to make,
36:37
but making a really good one. There's a little bit of art and
36:40
science that goes into that. I'm curious, though, about why
36:45
go for the extra expense of the glass jars?
36:48
I mean, glass is a nicer experience, but it's certainly
36:51
more expensive than a plastic cup.
36:53
Right. So part of the reason we did
36:55
that is because if you could seal them like sealed seal, not
36:58
just like a disposable with a little snap on lid, you know,
37:01
you shake that thing or you throw it in the back of your
37:03
car, it's going to be a mess. So that was part of it.
37:06
The other part is that environmentally friendly,
37:09
they're reusable. I mean, they're obviously
37:11
recyclable, but they're very much reusable and
37:16
environmentalism and environmental sustainability is
37:18
a big part of who we are and what we do.
37:21
I haven't really talked much about that yet, but the
37:24
environmental impact of a reusable item versus the
37:27
disposable item was a factor. Now eventually when we sold all
37:34
those jars and people would bring them back and we would
37:37
clean and sanitize them and reuse them a little bit, but
37:39
people kind of liked them having this cool little drinking vessel
37:43
that they got from us that they can reuse whatever.
37:47
Eventually once once things opened back up a little bit, we
37:50
were doing dining service and we weren't selling as many of the
37:53
to go cocktails. We did switch to a what looks
37:56
like plastic or PLA compostable vessel instead because we just
38:02
couldn't justify spending that much money on the glass shards.
38:05
Everyone. Yeah.
38:07
Tell me more grace about how the environmental aspect of your
38:12
approach to the business plays out.
38:16
Sure. So environmental sustainability
38:18
is something that I've been talking about since I learned
38:20
what recycling was when I was 10 years old, in 4th grade.
38:24
That sort of changed my whole mindset on throwing things away.
38:33
So we at Casa don't have any Styrofoam ever.
38:38
We everything is reusable, right?
38:41
So we don't really do ketchup packets.
38:43
We have bottles of ketchup on the table.
38:45
All of our to go where is either reusable, recyclable or
38:49
compostable. Our bags of paper, no plastic
38:54
bags. When we serve water, it's in
38:58
reusable plastic cups that we wash and reuse 1000 million
39:01
times until they chip or break. One reason that we focus so much
39:07
on locally sourced food is the environmental impact of that,
39:11
right? So we're not, it's not using gas
39:15
to travel from California to us. It's not sprayed down with a
39:21
bunch of pesticides to preserve it until we use it.
39:23
We get things that are fresh, harvested a couple days ago,
39:28
brought in from the person that grew them, who lives 30 miles
39:31
away directly into our restaurant.
39:33
We write them a check and they go on their way.
39:35
We're not even, you know, we're not even mailing them a check.
39:38
We're just handing it to them. Also a benefit of having locally
39:43
sourced products environmentally is that for your body, you know,
39:49
like allergies have a big, you know, local honey, legendary and
39:54
helping stave off seasonal allergies and things like that.
39:58
Yeah, it's always been a huge part of what we do.
40:00
We compost at Casa too. I should definitely mention that
40:06
our local recycling center does a curbside compost program.
40:13
My household participates in that, but it's great because
40:16
they do it for restaurants. So we have, his name is Ben.
40:20
It's it's just one guy that works there that comes and picks
40:23
up all the composts from all of the many restaurants that
40:26
participate in the program. We have very large parts on
40:30
wheels. I don't know how many gallons
40:32
they are, but they're big. They're like a big trash can
40:34
basically. But we put compostable items in
40:36
them. And what's cool about the
40:39
compost center where we live is that they can take meat and
40:42
cheese and other like PLA plastics, plant based
40:46
compostable plastics, plastics and quotes, of course.
40:51
Whereas you're not going to throw that in like your home
40:53
compost pile, right? You throw chicken bones in your
40:55
home compost pile, you're going to get raccoons and possums
40:58
every year, which I like raccoons and possums, but you
41:00
don't necessarily want them in your yard all the time.
41:03
So it's a huge, huge compost facility and it's fantastic.
41:08
And it's turned by hand. And so we compost all of all of
41:13
our foods. So anything that we create from
41:16
our preps, hand shopping, all of our vegetables, post consumer
41:21
food. So we scrape plates from our
41:23
customers that don't want to take their leftovers home or
41:25
their little whatever's on the plate.
41:26
You scrape that into the compost, all of our napkins, the
41:31
thin paper that we line our chip baskets with, all of that gets
41:34
composted. So at the end of the day, when
41:38
we take out the trash, we have a minimal amount of trash,
41:42
especially considering the fact that we're a restaurant.
41:44
It's like I would guess like 3 to 5 big bags of trash at the
41:49
end of any given day. And then what does Ben do with
41:53
the compost after it's fully broken down?
41:56
They package it and sell it as a revenue stream for the recycling
42:00
center because funding, as you can imagine, is not abundant all
42:05
the time. So they sell it and I've never
42:08
looked into it myself because unfortunately I don't have time
42:11
to garden. But I think that as a
42:13
participant of the program, my household I think has a bit of a
42:17
stipend, if you will, or a quota maybe is the word that I could
42:24
probably go and pick up for a soil amendment for my own yard
42:28
or garden. Got it.
42:29
Because you participate in the program, you have some sort of a
42:31
credit with them that you could get.
42:34
Yeah. But anybody can go out there and
42:35
buy some, yeah. Got it.
42:36
OK. Yeah, it's a great program.
42:39
Tell me about how the no tipping policy came about.
42:42
Great question, great question. So in the before time, meaning
42:48
before September of 2012 when we made the switch, we pulled all
42:53
of our tips that came in and divided the total equally among
42:58
the number of shift labor hours. So that included the cooks, that
43:02
included the dishwasher, included the preps.
43:06
It wasn't just for servers and bartenders.
43:09
We divided that number up among the number of Labor hours.
43:12
So when you started working at Costa, you had a base wage and
43:15
then you had a tip wage, and those two combined give you your
43:22
total hourly wage. And we divided it among the
43:25
number of Labor hours so that it was the same for every hour that
43:28
worked 40 hours. For student that worked 20
43:30
hours. It's the same for each hour that
43:32
you work. Well, in 2012, we were
43:38
investigated by the Fair Labor Standards Act agency, and even
43:46
though everyone that works at Casa knew what the system was
43:50
agreed to, the system was fine with the system, at least
43:55
outwardly. We were not doing things by the
44:00
letter of the law according to the Fair Labor Standards Act
44:03
FOSA so that the intricacies of that law stated that you weren't
44:09
allowed to force traditionally tipped employees like bartenders
44:15
and servers to share their tips with non traditionally tipped
44:20
employees like cooks, dishwashers.
44:23
So we had a big decision to make because equity and you know, we
44:30
want everybody to be treated the same way and we want everybody
44:32
to make a wage and we want everybody to have the
44:35
opportunities and access to the same wages.
44:37
We didn't want to make things inequitable by only letting the
44:40
servers and bartenders split the swift pool.
44:44
The other complicating factor is that a lot of our staff, the
44:49
overwhelming majority of our staff is cross trained into
44:52
different positions. So John, my Co worker, my
44:56
successor as a marketing coordinator, actually, he's a
45:00
great example. Sometimes he does dishes,
45:02
sometimes he cooks, sometimes he hosts, sometimes he bartends,
45:06
sometimes he runs sound for the shows.
45:08
He's sort of a Jack of all traits.
45:10
So what of his hours would be eligible for that tip pool and
45:14
what wouldn't? And figuring that all out.
45:17
I mean on its face it sounds kind of easy, but really the
45:20
complexity of it is vast, especially when you consider
45:23
that the majority of our staff is the same in terms of
45:26
complexity of shift wages and trainings and cross training
45:30
etcetera. So we decided that we're not
45:34
going to take tips anymore and we're going to.
45:39
What we did in 2012 is we raised our menu prices 16 to 20% per
45:44
item and we raised up, we eliminated the tip wage and we
45:48
raised everybody's base wage in 2012.
45:52
I don't remember what it exactly was, but it made it comparable
45:55
to what we were making before. And then we just took a
45:59
percentage of our sales and divided that up the same way
46:03
that we were dividing up the tips before.
46:07
And we called it a revenue share wage.
46:09
A few years after that, we said, let's just, let's just take the
46:13
average of what everybody's wage was and just make that the wage
46:16
and stop doing this whole math thing every pay period.
46:20
Let's just make it easier on everybody.
46:21
And then everybody can also know what to expect on their
46:24
paycheck. We took the variable out
46:26
completely. So here we are 13 years later.
46:32
We don't take tips and it's pretty normal to us.
46:34
It's it's normal to us. It's normal to our customers,
46:38
except for every once in a while we have people say things like,
46:42
but I really want to tip you or and then we just say we'll just
46:46
keep coming back. Just keep us in business.
46:48
That's good enough. Or buy another dessert or take
46:51
AT shirt at home with you or get a gift card, whatever you want
46:54
to give us more of your money. We'll gladly accept it in any
46:56
form we want to do. Sort of a weird way to say that.
47:00
But so yeah, that was in 2012 and some.
47:04
And when we first started it, it was a little jarring and a
47:08
little a little abnormal. And I actually had a guy one
47:12
time say to me at the very beginning when we stopped taking
47:14
tips, a customer said, what if my server did a bad job and I
47:19
want to punish them? And he used the word.
47:24
And I thought to myself, you are a great example of why tipping
47:29
culture is sort of messed up in general that we've never gone
47:35
back. We've talked about because the
47:38
intricacies of the FLSA that sort of led to that decision
47:41
have changed a little bit. And there are some allowances
47:43
now where we could potentially make a system where we accept
47:47
and share tips work. But we've done it this way for
47:51
so long now. Now your customers are trained
47:53
for it. I imagine it was jarring to
47:55
train them when it first came in in 2012.
47:58
Wait, what? I'm accustomed to tipping
48:00
people. I, you know, but but now your
48:03
regulars are like, yeah, you don't tip and they tell their
48:05
friends when they go with them. Yeah, this you don't.
48:07
Tips, right. So to reverse that decision now
48:10
I think would be a marketing nightmare and it would probably
48:13
take a long time for people to get back used to it to where
48:18
it's giving us good wages again, understandably people would
48:24
wouldn't be used to it. It would take a while.
48:25
Yeah, Grace, what advice would you give to someone who might be
48:31
thinking about creating their own worker owned cooperative?
48:38
That's a great question. So the thing that the thing that
48:41
I love the most about being a worker owner at a Co-op is that
48:50
there is an inherent level of trust among my Co owners and I.
48:57
So I'm not a very numbers minded person, but we have finance
49:03
coordinators. There are three of them.
49:06
They know what they're doing. They've been doing it
49:09
consistently for a long time. I trust them to do it.
49:12
They tell us the numbers, the numbers make sense.
49:15
That's what they do. My Forte is front of house
49:18
operation. So any customer complaint or
49:22
customer challenge or seating challenge or big party or
49:26
whatever, people know to come to me, they trust me to handle the
49:29
customer side of things. A lot of the times our menu
49:34
development coordinator and the people that the team was, people
49:36
that source our produce, I trust them to find the best products
49:43
for the best prices that we can get.
49:45
And that's really what I love the most because in a sole
49:48
proprietorship, one person is in charge of all and they get
49:54
overwhelmed and they may cut corners and they may just pick
49:57
the cheapest option because it's easiest.
49:59
And they are subject to salespeople, salespeople in
50:03
them. And it's easy to get overwhelmed
50:07
when you're the only one making the decision.
50:10
So while sometimes things can take a long time to make
50:14
decisions or make changes, it's really a well thought out trust
50:22
based business model. What does the future hold in
50:27
store for Casa Nueva? Any growth plans?
50:30
Any particular initiatives or projects that are on the horizon
50:34
that you're excited about? Well, you know, people ask us
50:37
all the time if you think about opening another location and the
50:41
answer is always not a chance. But you know, we're 5 1/2 years
50:51
post COVID now and we're still sort of not 100% recovered from
50:57
that and we're still sort of clawing our way back to what
51:04
feels normal. So I don't think that there's
51:07
much energy or desire to focus on anything quite like that.
51:14
I think expanding our operations to more late night activity is a
51:19
big area for potential growth. We have a couple, a couple of
51:25
people that are really championing late night activity
51:29
and the people that are passionate about it, we trust
51:32
them to come up with ways to make that happen.
51:37
So that's sort of, well, that's sort of I think what's next on
51:39
the horizon in terms of growth. I mean, I can tell you I'm, I'm
51:43
very happy and proud to say that we are very much maxed out most
51:48
nights as far as diners go. We are consistently, especially
51:54
on weekends, we have a wait list, we have reservations.
51:59
Sometimes it's tough to get a reservation for people on the
52:02
weekends, especially if they have a bigger party.
52:05
So we don't have a ton of room for dinner time growth, but late
52:10
night sales and breakfast and lunch sales, each day lunch
52:13
sales, there's room for growth. And I would love to see that
52:17
happen. But a lot of times I think
52:19
people don't want to, excuse me, commit to trying to come see us
52:26
for lunch because we make everything by hand and we make
52:30
it. We don't have any microwaves or
52:31
heat lamps. We make everything by hand,
52:34
every single order, every single time.
52:37
And while that is a huge part of why people really love us, it's
52:40
also why sometimes we can be a little.
52:44
It's more of a time commitment than like a quick one.
52:47
Right. Yeah.
52:48
So somebody comes in for dinner. Maybe they've got a little bit
52:51
more time to spend. They want a leisurely evening.
52:55
They'll have a cocktail while they wait for their delicious
52:57
meal to be served. Somebody comes in for lunch,
53:00
They've got to be back at, you know, work in 45 minutes or
53:03
something. And so you got to turn that
53:05
around more quickly. Yeah, I get.
53:07
Yeah. So there's there's definitely
53:08
room for growth there, but it's more of a challenge for her.
53:11
And so the late night, what time do you guys close now?
53:15
So the kitchen closes at 9:00 every night.
53:17
We're closed on Tuesdays always. The kitchen closes at 9 Sundays
53:20
and Mondays, that's when the business closes.
53:23
And then Wednesday and Wednesday we have open stage every
53:27
Wednesday at 8. So we're open till 11 or 12
53:31
depending on how many people want to perform.
53:33
We'll, we'll go as long as as as late as 2:00 if there's enough
53:40
activity. Thursdays we keep, we stay open
53:43
until at least midnight and then Fridays and Saturdays, most
53:45
Fridays and Saturdays we have live music.
53:50
So when we have live music, we're open till two 100% of the
53:53
time. And then we also serve tacos,
53:59
late night tacos from 10:30 PM to 2:30 AM on Fridays and
54:05
Saturdays. So our liquor license prohibits
54:08
us from selling alcohol after two.
54:10
But a lot of the late night places in Athens stay open until
54:15
3, sometimes 4:00 in the morning because once the bars close, the
54:19
bars let out and those people are hungry.
54:22
So we serve tacos on Friday and Saturday nights until 2:30 in
54:25
the morning. So the potential for growth late
54:27
night would be having more live music at night or extending our
54:33
late night tacos into more nights per week.
54:37
But the bars aren't always super busy in the middle of the week,
54:39
so we might get a few a few stragglers and a few desperate
54:44
Taco customers. But is it really worth it to
54:46
have our staff stay open? You know what I mean?
54:49
That's kind of always the game we're playing.
54:51
Yeah, I get that. What's something you like to do
54:54
outside of work for fun? Well, I have a 7 year old dog
54:59
named Wally who's a little pug terrier mix who has a very
55:04
feisty personality that occupies most of my time when I'm not at
55:07
work, so taking him on long walks and hikes is is a big one.
55:13
In the summer I really love kayaking on the Hocking River
55:16
when it's not polluted too much to do so lots of stuff outside
55:24
as much as I can. I also probably watch too much
55:27
TV because sometimes when I'm not on my feet at work I want to
55:30
just sit on my couch. It's a It's nice to unplug every
55:34
now and then, isn't it? Absolutely.
55:36
Yeah, I've just got one more question for you today, Grace.
55:39
But before I ask that, I want to do 2 things.
55:41
First of all, I always let my audience know the best way to
55:45
get in touch with our guests. And when I asked Grace what I
55:50
should tell everybody, she said, hey, come down to Southeastern
55:53
Ohio and have a great meal at Casa Nueva, so down in Athens.
55:58
So that's how you get in touch with them.
56:00
You go see them. Also, I want to ask everybody if
56:04
you would just take a moment, leave us a comment or review on
56:07
your favorite podcast app. If you do so, you'll have a
56:10
special place here in my heart forever.
56:12
Thank you very much. So last question for you, Grace.
56:16
A year from now, you and I reconnect and you are
56:19
celebrating something big, very exciting.
56:22
What's that big thing you hope to be celebrating one year from
56:24
today? Well, we will have celebrated
56:29
our 41st anniversary next year. Staying in business is a goal,
56:39
unattainable goal for for certain.
56:42
I'm very confident that that was an attainable goal.
56:46
We will reopen for business on Tuesday.
56:49
So we'll be operating seven days a week.
56:50
That would be a, that would be a good, a good milestone.
56:54
We were open seven days a week before COVID.
56:56
But then it's nice to have a meeting day and it's nice for
56:59
our meeting. It's got to be able to get to
57:00
that on Tuesdays. But being open seven days a week
57:02
would be a good one to celebrate.
57:03
When are you going to do your meetings then?
57:06
Maybe just have less meetings, huh?
57:09
There's no way we can have less meetings.
57:11
We probably have to have 25 meetings to figure out how to be
57:15
open on Tuesday. All right.
57:19
Well, Grace Corbin from Casa Nueva, I want to be the first to
57:22
thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us
57:24
today. I really appreciate it.
57:26
Thank you so much for having me, this has been real fun.
57:29
Folks, that's a wrap, but another episode of the Inspired
57:31
Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us
57:33
today.