Latest / Earn Your Leisure / EYL #55 Everybody Eats feat. Chef Kelvin

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EYL #55 Everybody Eats feat. Chef Kelvin · Earn Your Leisure

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  Speaker 3: All right, guys, welcome back, e y L. We have
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: a very very exciting special episode today. First and foremost,
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: shout out to Drvin. I didn't even tell you what.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: A couple months ago we were number two on the
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: on the DR Charts for Business podcast. We have a
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: strong following in DR and some of our biggest guests
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: have been Dominicant. We had Caesar dj mv's partner. Shout
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: out to Caesar. We had loaded the slumsneto. He's his
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: best friend. Shout out to Fernando. This is the John Henry,
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: John Henry. Shout to John Henry. So you're in good hands.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: So today we got shelf chef Calvin, Calvin Fernandez, so
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  Speaker 3: I'll do the rundown. He is legend within his own right, prodigy, legend,
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  Speaker 3: whatever you want to call it. He has cooked for
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  Speaker 3: the New York Yankees. He is personal chef to j
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  Speaker 3: low and and a Ron, personal chef to j Lo
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: and a Rod. He made Forbes thirty Under thirty for
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  Speaker 3: Chef List. He's been on TV Network on chop on Man,
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  Speaker 3: First Child, Bobby Flay. He actually defeated Bobby Flay twice.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: He defeated Bobby Flay twice. He's partner chef in Last Lap,
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: which is his restaurant that he's partnering right now. And
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: he was formerly the chef at Marina.
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  Speaker 4: Oh my God, a whole entire VI at the height
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  Speaker 4: of it, at the.
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  Speaker 3: Peak, we'll talk, but we gotta talk about I feel.
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  Speaker 5: Like I got to walk around with you on a
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  Speaker 5: regular basis.
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  Speaker 3: So first and foremost, thank you, thank you for joining us.
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  Speaker 3: Appreciate it.
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  Speaker 5: I'm happy to be here. It's an honor shout out
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  Speaker 5: to you guys for doing what you're doing. I got
• 2:21
  Speaker 5: goosebumps with you were telling me what you guys are
• 2:22
  Speaker 5: doing in DC, because I don't know about that. So
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  Speaker 5: I'm happy and proud of you guys because you're always
• 2:25
  Speaker 5: leveling up so bigger and better things on a regular basis.
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  Speaker 4: Welcome to the green room having me.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: So the thing about your Leash is that we it's
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: really cool because it's a business podcast, but it gives
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: us broad range because everything is a business. Like literally,
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: everything is a business because you're making money in it.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: And one of the things that especially like for just
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: everybody has to eat right and every like that's literally
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  Speaker 3: and figuratively.
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  Speaker 5: You're saying that this is one of the biggest reasons
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  Speaker 5: why I started this. Just getting into this business, I
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  Speaker 5: knew three things. I'll always be with friends, I'll never
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: go hungry, and I always have a because we need
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: food to survive.
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  Speaker 3: That's it. You need food to live. That's a fact.
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  Speaker 3: And it's like a lot of times so we've we've
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: interviewed restaurant owner before, but we haven't interviewed a chef.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: It's a different dynamic and a lot of times people
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  Speaker 3: It's one of those things where people love to cook
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  Speaker 3: a lot of times, right, but a lot of times
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  Speaker 3: people don't think about how can they monetize it, how
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  Speaker 3: can they make a career out of it, how can
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  Speaker 3: they make a business out of it. But you've done
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  Speaker 3: all of that and you're still leveling it up. And
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  Speaker 3: so it's an interesting conversation because I feel like these
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  Speaker 3: are these are conversations that we can have where anybody,
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  Speaker 3: you know, could apply skills that they have and become
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  Speaker 3: a chef. Right. It's not something that you have to
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  Speaker 3: Like a lot of times, like we talk like hedge
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  Speaker 3: fund and stuff like that, and people get like, oh,
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  Speaker 3: this is over my head. Cooking is not over anybody's head.
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  Speaker 6: Like you got a bag of chips in your in
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  Speaker 6: your cupboard, you got some's like.
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  Speaker 5: You're doing a chop basket right now.
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  Speaker 4: You got a chop basket? What you got?
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  Speaker 3: So you're a world class chef, but you come from
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  Speaker 3: humble beginning. But your family is a long line of chefs,
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  Speaker 3: cooks things that nature.
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  Speaker 5: Right, especially being Dominican, you come from a line of
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  Speaker 5: women that know how to cook. You know, I think
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  Speaker 5: what's always nostalgic for me I can be out the
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  Speaker 5: country for three months, the first thing I need is
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  Speaker 5: a home cooked meal from my mom. And it's one
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  Speaker 5: of those things where I remember and I think about it,
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  Speaker 5: and when I'm creating a new dish, it's always like,
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  Speaker 5: how can I make this nostalgic for someone else?
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  Speaker 4: You know.
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  Speaker 5: So, just like you said with food, there's so many
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: different outlets that you can go to creating a business.
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  Speaker 5: And reality is you think about how many people have
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  Speaker 5: started a business in their own home and how they've
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: grown to a small, little commercial and then buying the
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  Speaker 5: store next door. And those are some of my favorite stories,
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  Speaker 5: you know, people that start small and not every even
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  Speaker 5: I started a company at one point when I was
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  Speaker 5: doing meal props, and we literally rented out an apartment
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  Speaker 5: and just made that our kitchen, like there was no
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  Speaker 5: other furniture. We have refrigerators in there, we had shelving
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  Speaker 5: in there, we had two ovens, and that electric travelo.
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  Speaker 5: That electric goal was high. But at the end of
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  Speaker 5: the day, we were doing the job.
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  Speaker 6: So you said you came home to a home cooked
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  Speaker 6: meal from your mom, but your dad is actually the chef.
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  Speaker 5: My dad is the chef, you know. And then especially
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  Speaker 5: being in a Latino you always think about the women
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  Speaker 5: are the cooks, you know, and if you think about restaurants,
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  Speaker 5: of the cooks are men, you know. So I'm actually
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  Speaker 5: happy to see that there's a lot more women in
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  Speaker 5: restaurants and shutting it down, there's a lot of female
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  Speaker 5: chefs that I've had the honor and privilege to work
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  Speaker 5: alongside and collab with. And that's something that I like
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  Speaker 5: to see on a regular basis as well, because when
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  Speaker 5: you do think about food and love, and it really
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  Speaker 5: does come from both. So I'm happy to see that
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  Speaker 5: on a regular basis.
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  Speaker 3: Now, I just thought about that, that's interesting because yeah,
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  Speaker 3: you think about it traditionally, not to sound sexist, but
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  Speaker 3: it's like most of the time in a household, a woman,
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  Speaker 3: your mom is the one that's really making.
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  Speaker 5: Mom, Grandma auntie.
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  Speaker 3: In restaurants, men are the artist chefs.
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  Speaker 5: And I think about it comes to a point where
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  Speaker 5: in restaurants you probably get paid a little bit more
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  Speaker 5: than your regular standard jobs. You like, even me, I
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: was fifteen years old and I was getting paid at
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: that time it was like ten dollars an hour, but
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  Speaker 5: minimum wage was seven fifty or six fifty, so I
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  Speaker 5: was like, I'm already ahead of the game. I'm making
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  Speaker 5: four dollars more than anybody else. And that was me
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  Speaker 5: at fifteen. So when I was getting a check of
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  Speaker 5: eight hundred dollars for every two weeks, I thought I
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  Speaker 5: was rich. Think about that now I can't. I don't
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  Speaker 5: even leave my house if I don't make eight hundred dollars.
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  Speaker 3: So at what point did you did you say, Okay,
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  Speaker 3: this is something that I could actually take serious. You
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: went to school for this, right, yeah?
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  Speaker 5: I went to uh well, it started in Long Island
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  Speaker 5: City High School. I went to a high school that
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  Speaker 5: had the program. So the program was just learning how
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  Speaker 5: to make you know, brownies and cookies and like a
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  Speaker 5: home met class. I would say that, you know, But me,
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  Speaker 5: I was being the typical jock, and I was like,
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  Speaker 5: I'm not gonna wear an apron. I don't want to
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  Speaker 5: be in a place where you think about you know.
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  Speaker 5: They were my friends, but you know, we tease each
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  Speaker 5: other a little bit, and the last thing I need
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  Speaker 5: is to give my teammates on the football team and
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  Speaker 5: on the baseball team something else to tease me other
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  Speaker 5: than me being five feet tall. Thank God for those
• 6:58
  Speaker 5: extra five inches So it's one of those things where
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  Speaker 5: it took a lot for me to take put my
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  Speaker 5: pride aside and say, all right, let me let me
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  Speaker 5: put my focus onto something. So shout out to my
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  Speaker 5: ex girlfriend in high school, Maria, because if it wasn't
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  Speaker 5: for her, she pushed me into cooking. You know, she
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  Speaker 5: wanted me to show a little bit of interest and
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  Speaker 5: support the way she was supported me by being at
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  Speaker 5: every game, every match, being my biggest cheerleader and no
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: putintendent because she was on the cheerleading squad too, so
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  Speaker 5: she was forced to be there.
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  Speaker 7: It wasn't more of a more of a maybe she
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  Speaker 7: chose to be there. She chose to be I'm gonna
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  Speaker 7: take it off that. I'm gonna take it on that
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  Speaker 7: I take it. So if it wasn't for her, I
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  Speaker 7: would have never went into cooking.
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  Speaker 5: And she gave me the opportunity to to put my
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  Speaker 5: talent into something else because I was a good sports
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  Speaker 5: I was good in baseball, I was great in wrestling,
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  Speaker 5: I was okay in football. Uh, but being on a
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  Speaker 5: platform where I'm the solo star, like cooking, that was
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  Speaker 5: all thanks to her.
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  Speaker 3: So all right, so you went to c I A,
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  Speaker 3: which is one of the top culinary institution in the world.
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  Speaker 5: Right, Culinary Institut of America. The CIA is the elite
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  Speaker 5: school for culinary So it's like, you know, we're the
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  Speaker 5: cornell of culinary schools. You know. It's one of those
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  Speaker 5: things where they provided a program and a way for
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  Speaker 5: you to learn more than just cooking. You know, I thought,
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  Speaker 5: at seventeen eighteen years old, I'm here learning about wines
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  Speaker 5: of the world. I'm here learning there was One of
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  Speaker 5: my favorite classes was product Knowledge, where literally, by the
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  Speaker 5: end of the class you would have a table full
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  Speaker 5: of ingredients. You can't pick them up, you can't smell them,
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  Speaker 5: you can't touch them. You have to know what it
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  Speaker 5: is just by looking at it.
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  Speaker 4: But that was I mean, it was a process for you.
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  Speaker 5: Oh though, there was a process to learn that. Absolutely,
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  Speaker 5: you don't get that overnight.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. So, I mean you weren't just chosen for the school.
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  Speaker 4: You have to apply and go through a whole process
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  Speaker 4: to be so the program.
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  Speaker 5: Through the program, I was fortunate enough. Thank you for
• 8:45
  Speaker 5: mentioning that SEACAP Careers through Culinary Arts program. These people
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  Speaker 5: are the reason why I am who I am as
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: a chef. And I say that more because it was
• 8:54
  Speaker 5: it was more than just an opportunity to win a scholarship.
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: There were a family, you know, Richard Grouse and the founder.
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: He was like my second dad, and when he sees
• 9:04
  Speaker 5: people that he believes in, just like my old high
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: school teacher, Terry Maxis. You know he's retired now, good
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: for him. You know, he put in effort and he
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: put in the hard work to make sure that we
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: had the opportunity. You know, I did a cooking class
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  Speaker 5: that led me to a cooking competition that led me
• 9:19
  Speaker 5: to winning forty thousand dollars to the CIA. You know,
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: never in a million years that I think I would
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: win a scholarship, let alone get forty grand.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: How much does CIA course?
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  Speaker 5: CIA now probably forty grand a year, So I saved
• 9:32
  Speaker 5: like half.
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  Speaker 3: So it's a two year program.
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  Speaker 5: So you're getting in getting an associates degree in culinary
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: arts and business management. So aside from that, you know,
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  Speaker 5: I dormed there. I'm not going to go back at home.
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  Speaker 5: Even though I was close to home, I still you know,
• 9:45
  Speaker 5: took on the.
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  Speaker 4: Full college experience forty bands.
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  Speaker 5: So I just let's say, sorry to cut you off.
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  Speaker 5: Let's just say it's fifteen years ago. I graduated, I
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: just finished paying off Sally Maye, and I got for
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: the other forty It's like I.
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: Took a long time that that was a good I'm
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: still saying.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: All right, so you finished college and then you start
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: you going to corporate where right after that I started.
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: Right after college, I joined there was a company called
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: there was a restaurant called Gotham Bar and Grill. So
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: before I got into corporate, I literally did what any
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: young chef should do in his bust your ass for
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: the next two years and give six months to the
• 10:20
  Speaker 5: top chefs in New York City. So I worked with
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: Marcus Samuelson, I worked with Jean George, I worked with
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: Daniel Blude, I worked with Alfred Portally. That was the
• 10:30
  Speaker 5: place where I did my six month, my eighteen week
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: internship at the CIA, and then I got hired right
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: out of college. So I was lucky enough that and
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: that was one of those things where I determined that
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: I'm going to come in early even though I'm not
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: getting paid. I got paid an internship wage, which was
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: still at least getting paid. How much you get paid,
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: I think it was like seven fifty an hour.
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  Speaker 3: After you graduated.
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: During my internship before I graduated, that was like right
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: in the middle.
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: So Alfred Bortally, he he's the head chef at the Gothambarn.
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: Grill was the executive chef at Gothenbarn Grove for about
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: over thirty years. He just opened. It's funny because I
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: went to Gothenborn Girl last night because I needed some nostalgia.
• 11:01
  Speaker 5: I went to Strip House and I was like, let
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: me just go to Gotham Bar and Grill have an
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: amazing old fashion and so yeah, a little flashback. And
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: I walked in and they're like, well, Alfred's not here anymore.
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: He just opened up his own restaurant like three blocks away,
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: and I'm like, no, I need to go there.
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: But the restaurant itself, I mean, when he was there
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: was it was it was Michelin.
• 11:17
  Speaker 5: It was Michelin. Star it is that so three star.
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: It was three star New York Times consistently for thirty
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: years in a row, which is which is very hard
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: to do. The highest you can get. His four stars
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: in New York New York Times and Michelin is three.
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: So they were one star Michelin and there were three
• 11:31
  Speaker 5: star New York times, which is elite. Aside from that,
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: it's one of those classifications of knowing that you're branded
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: by the Michelin Guide knows that you're you're your top
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: of your tier.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: So all right, then you started working at this strand right.
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: So after Gotham Bar and Grill I did, I was
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: at a restaurant called Cafe des Artis and I had
• 11:52
  Speaker 5: my opportunity to become like a junior soux chef. That
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: was the first time I had an opportunity.
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: A shoue chef is a chef underneath the head chef.
• 12:01
  Speaker 5: That's correct.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's like ashi chef apprentice.
• 12:04
  Speaker 5: I get that all the time. There's people are all
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: so you do sushi. I'm like, I shout out to
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: the movie Ratatui. Then let everybody know who is a
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: shoe chef and who is a sous chef and what
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: they do because at that moment in my part in
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: my life, I was a soush chef. I'm like, finally
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: people are gonna stop thinking that I make sushi.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: So what's the what's the what's the what's the order?
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: So the chain of command would be like when you
• 12:22
  Speaker 5: first walk into a restaurant, like I did this. I
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: worked as a dishwasher for a couple of months. Then
• 12:27
  Speaker 5: I did prep, which is all you do is peel potatoes,
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: clean vegetables, literally all the dirty stuff that people don't
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: think about because we come into restaurants as cooks and
• 12:38
  Speaker 5: things are ready for us. Like I don't have to
• 12:39
  Speaker 5: peel my own garlic, I don't have to peel my
• 12:41
  Speaker 5: own shots. I don't have to peel my own potatoes.
• 12:42
  Speaker 5: I don't have to peel my own onions. When you
• 12:44
  Speaker 5: do these cooking shows, you got to do everything you
• 12:46
  Speaker 5: take for granted that you don't have your prep cooks
• 12:48
  Speaker 5: or you're with you, you know, to help you out,
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: but you have the chain of command of prep cooks.
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: Then the very next step is garbage, which your salads
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: and cold appetizers. Then if you're good at that, you
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: move to hot apps, which is usually like little pastas
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: Risotto's sear fagar, depending on a restaurant. I did ten
• 13:04
  Speaker 5: years in French. I was classically Frinds trained, working at
• 13:08
  Speaker 5: restaurants like you know, Cafe dis Artis and with Jean
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: George and restaurant Danielle. But those are all like little
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: six months stints I just wanted to learn a little
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: bit from all of these great chefs, and knowing that
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: my foundation later on, I was still gonna use a
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: little bit of what they taught me. And then after
• 13:23
  Speaker 5: Cafe des Artis, I got an opportunity to become an
• 13:26
  Speaker 5: executive chef at the age of twenty two and west Chester,
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: Westchester White Place. Yeah, we're Antipasti was the name of
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: the restaurant Anti Pasti and it was an Italian restaurant.
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: I'm like, shit, I don't even do Italian food. Why
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: are you even offering me this job? Twenty two years old?
• 13:41
  Speaker 5: And there was a guy shout out to Orlando Santana.
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: I don't know where you are, but thank you, my man,
• 13:45
  Speaker 5: because if it wasn't for you, I would have continued
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: to doubt myself. And he told me, I remember, I said,
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: how am I gonna be a chef at twenty two?
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna need to know all the answers that the
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: guys are gonna ask me. He's like, dummy, You're gonna
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: know the answers because it's gonna be your food. And
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: I said, ship, this guy's right, all right, let's do it.
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: And it was.
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: It was a memorable experience. I was a chef at
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: twenty two. I saw my name on the menu for
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: the first time, and I learned how to do Italian
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: food thanks to the Sioux chef that was there. I
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: inherited John. I don't remember his last name, but John
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: was amazing at Anti Posty. We're friends on Facebook. I'm
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: gonna send you a message and tell you to listen
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: to this. But John, he taught me how to make pizza.
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: He taught me how to do fresh pasta, and he
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: taught me that his secret was putting some truffle oil
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: and chocolate cake. And still to this day, I do that.
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: So when people ask me what's different about my chocolate cake,
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: I'm like, I can't tell you, but I just thought
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: about that truffle so so so so.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: Like all right, because you're you're you're you're in a
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: different market than like, uh, you're in a high end
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: market like going to your education and working in like
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: a New York City or LA cities like that. How
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: how much money do chefs get paid? Like top the
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: top chef, the shoe chef, the prep like it.
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: All depends because even my even me, I'll tell you
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: when I made. My most money was as an executive chef.
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: Was when I was twenty two years old and I
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: was making one hundred and fifty grand and I made
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: them pay me because I was leaving New York City
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: right so, and west chef made so I made that
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: money in west Chester. I left Gotham. I left Cafe
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: des Artist because the general manager at that restaurant was
• 15:17
  Speaker 5: going to go to be the general manager at Anti Pasty,
• 15:20
  Speaker 5: and he took me with me, and I said, this
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: is what I want to leave. Because of course at
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: that time, I was like, I live in Queens. At
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: that point, I was living where is whit I gotta
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: take Metro North. I've never done that in my life.
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: I got to pay two hundred dollars a month for
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: a train ticket. I'm like, I need to allocate all
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: these things into my salary. But I got a reality
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: check right away when I left Antipasti and I came
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: back to the city, and I knew that taking a
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: step back sometimes you got to take a couple secs
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: back to move forward. So here I am twenty four
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: years old. The reason I left Antipasti was because the
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: restaurant was going out of business because of things that
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: happened previous to me arriving there. There was just no
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: fixing that, and they went to court and the judge
• 16:02
  Speaker 5: ordered that the company get dismantled and everybody sell their shares.
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: So to me, it was another learning step. You know,
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: I was an executive chef. Here, I am twenty four
• 16:11
  Speaker 5: years old coming to New York City trying to apply
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: for all these executive chef jobs, and everybody was like,
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: who is this kid? Like, why is he here? We're
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: looking for an executive chef.
• 16:18
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean they looking at you as a kid
• 16:19
  Speaker 6: because most guys that exactly chefs are thirty five forty.
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Nowadays you have different types of chefs, you know,
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: so you see the inspirational people that you know, there
• 16:29
  Speaker 5: was a movie called Chef Flynn where there's this kid
• 16:32
  Speaker 5: who was fifteen years old and you know, he learned
• 16:34
  Speaker 5: by reading books and watching YouTube and he literally has
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: his own restaurant at like twenty two years old downtown
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: in New York City. So like, I'm inspired by that story.
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: And I remember reading that story while I was at
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: La Marina and he came out front page of the
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: New York Times. I'm like, there's no way that this
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: kid is a chef. There's no way. I worked my
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: ass off to go to school and work for all
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: these chefs and he's worked for nobody and he's a chef.
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: I went to have his food. He's a chef, so
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: it documented it's a chef. You know. It's a whole different,
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: the whole different perspective of what types of chefs they
• 17:05
  Speaker 5: are nowadays, you know, like I was. I had a
• 17:06
  Speaker 5: meeting with one of my friends last night, and she
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: has her own meal prep service, and she doesn't want
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: to call herself a chef. She doesn't want to buy
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: herself a self a chef jacket. I'm like, you deserve
• 17:16
  Speaker 5: to call yourself a chef. You do the food, you create,
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: the menus, you taught yourself. It's okay, you're not an
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: executive chef, but you are a chef. So that's why
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: I say there's lots of different levels of chefs. But yeah,
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: I learned the hard way because people were looking at me,
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: and I was young and I was always hungry. So
• 17:34
  Speaker 5: I just needed to get to the point of being
• 17:36
  Speaker 5: able to cook for you. If I can cook for you,
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: I want I already know that. So as an executive chef,
• 17:41
  Speaker 5: if you're trying out, it's not just a resume. You
• 17:43
  Speaker 5: have a portfolio and you do what's called the tasting.
• 17:46
  Speaker 5: So you're offering me a job. Before we even talk numbers,
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: we got to see what you could do.
• 17:50
  Speaker 6: So you I mean, as the executive chef, you obviously
• 17:52
  Speaker 6: create the menu, right, So you're doing the advertisers, the entrees, desserts.
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: Are you also creating the pricing?
• 17:58
  Speaker 5: You're doing the food costs here do the pricing. So
• 18:00
  Speaker 5: you have to learn. That's why if it wasn't for
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: culinary school, I wouldn't have known how to do food costs.
• 18:06
  Speaker 5: I would have known what labor costs was that Yeah,
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: So basically for you to make money, you multiply the
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: amount of what a food costs by three. I would
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: say higher expensive fine dining restaurants will do it by four.
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: So for example, if it costs me to make a hamburger, right,
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: I'm not gonna make just any hamburger. I'm gonna make
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: sure of Calvinberger, right, so it's gonna we're gonna put
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: it on the menu for eighteen dollars. So for me
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: to make money, that burger cannot cost me more than
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: six dollars. So that's the patty, the buns, the condiments,
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: the French fries, and the labor to make that dish.
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: So for you to make money, you'll always multiply things
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: by three, depending on what the business is. So for
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: you to learn about food costs, it really you have
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: to break down how much does the four ounces of
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: the meat cost. How much does one burger bun cost?
• 18:51
  Speaker 5: How much does one slice of lettuce cost? Here's one tomato.
• 18:56
  Speaker 5: How much does a case of tomato cost? And how
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: many slices of that tomato do I get? So to
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: break it down, it takes a lot of work to
• 19:02
  Speaker 5: do food costs. But only the most successful people are
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: the ones that do their food costs right.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: And that's that's true with any business. And I'm glad
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: you said that because a lot of times people go
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: into business and they just wing it. It's like I'm
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: gonna i'm gonna charge, I'm gonna.
• 19:16
  Speaker 5: Charge, I'm going to costco I'm going to say, and
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: I'm just gonna charge twelve dollars.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: That's the fact. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna charge.
• 19:22
  Speaker 5: Show me how you decided to charge that twelve dollars.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: I think people will pay fifteen dollars for this fish sandwich,
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: so I'll charge fifteen dollars. Like it's like you wouldn't
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: know that it cost you eight dollars to make it.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: It's no rhyme or reason why you're doing it. You're
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: just winging it. And that's like I said, that's that's
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: true in the food industry, but that's showing any industry.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: And it's like, you got to have a self formula
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: to know you gotta have a profit margin. If not,
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: screw you're gonna be in debt.
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: Absolutely nobody wants a business that's not making money.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: So what else did like business side they did they
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: teach you?
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: And aside from food costs, labor costs, it's it's how
• 19:54
  Speaker 5: to treat people, people management, you know. And I always
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: joke around that on my Excuse me, I always joke
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: around saying that on my resume, I'm a professional babysitter
• 20:02
  Speaker 5: because you have to be able to manage people. And
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: there's so many different personalities, there's so many different people,
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: how people were raised, how people grew up in what
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: restaurants they grew up. And this is my best advice is,
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: if you want to be Greek, surround yourself by greatness.
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: Surround yourself by people that you aspire to be like.
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: Surround yourself by people that you want to be better
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: than in a sense of greatness. And that's why I've
• 20:25
  Speaker 5: worked for all these great people, and I learned how
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: to manage people because I always treated people with respect.
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: There was a restaurant that I worked at in the
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: beginning of high school years where my weekends, instead of
• 20:37
  Speaker 5: playing baseball with my friends, I'm here at a restaurant,
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: volunteering my time just so I can learn and know
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: to make sure that if I want to go through
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: this career before I go to culinary school, before I
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: signed that forty thousand dollars Sally may loan, do I
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: want to be in the restaurant business. So I volunteered
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: my time. I worked at this place called the Water's
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: Edge and Queen's and I worked for a shref who
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: was like, you know, you've seen Gordon Ramsey. Let's put
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: Gordon Ramsey times ten.
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: Shout out to George Mansroth.
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: I love you.
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: He was like Dad number three, but he was tough man.
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: And I was fifteen sixteen years old and I'm getting
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: things thrown at me. I'm getting called every name in
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: the book. The moment he found out I was Dominican
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: and he's like, ah, that explains it all. You're a
• 21:19
  Speaker 5: Dominican handicap And I'm like wow. And I knew what
• 21:23
  Speaker 5: he was doing wasn't right, but to me, it made
• 21:26
  Speaker 5: me tougher. Right. I grew to a sense of I
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: became a man a lot faster. But I also knew
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: that I'm not going to be that guy, no matter
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: how talented he was and still is. I was not
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: going to treat my staff like that.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: So what's what's the labor cost?
• 21:44
  Speaker 5: So labor costs. When you come to labor costs, you
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: think about how much money people are making per hour.
• 21:49
  Speaker 5: And an example, there's restaurants where if you're in a
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: hotel in corporate you're you're making a lot more. You're
• 21:55
  Speaker 5: probably making double to what chefs and cooks normally make
• 21:59
  Speaker 5: in restaurants. And that's just because I've had the opportunity
• 22:02
  Speaker 5: to work in both. So let's say, for example, when
• 22:04
  Speaker 5: I was at the Strand Hotel, it was a non
• 22:06
  Speaker 5: unionized hotel when we first started, and I was there
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: for about six years, and then I left to open
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: up Blend on the Water, which is my first Latin restaurant.
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: And then after that the Marriotte Vacation Club company came
• 22:19
  Speaker 5: in bought it out, and when I got there, I
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: came back and I saw it in a way is
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: I don't ever like to go back to something. But
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: for me it was like, what it's corporate now. It
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: went from a small Boutiko hotel to the Marriotte. Maybe
• 22:29
  Speaker 5: this is what's right for me. Maybe I do want
• 22:31
  Speaker 5: to be a corporate chef. Maybe I want to be
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: able to have my food in multiple Marriotts. But when
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: I got there, all of a sudden, the dishwasher who
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: was making ten dollars an hours now making twenty dollars
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: an hour. The line cook who was making seventeen dollars
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: an hour and now was making twenty seven dollars an hour.
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: So now it's like I can't have a successful kitchen
• 22:48
  Speaker 5: doing the food that I do because now I can
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: only have one dishwasher. Now I can only have two cooks,
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: not four.
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: Or cuts into your margin, cuts.
• 22:55
  Speaker 5: Into my margin because at the end of the day,
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: your labor costs has to be think about this, there's
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: one hundred percent, right. Your food cost has to be
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: under thirty percent, right, Your labor costs has to be
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: under let's say twenty percent, twenty to twenty five percent.
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: Then you have to think about liquor costs under eighteen
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: percent because all this is cutting into your profit. Then
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: you think about rent, you think about electricity, water, You're
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: left with like ten percent at the end of the day.
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: So the more that I save on food labor is
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: the more money that gets into the pocket of the business.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: That's a typical profit margin for restaurants ten percent.
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: It's something that's why a lot of restaurants go out
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: of business. There were times where I saw where we
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: made two point two million dollars and after all expenses,
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: we came home with two hundred thousand dollars.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: To two point We did an episode with a restaurant
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: owner in Baltimore, shot with Derek Falcon, and his thing
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: was a unique strategy that he has. We only uses
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: mixed use properties for his thing because he gets the
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: rent from people that live upstairs and his subsidized It
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: takes less pressure off of him hit the restaurant. He
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: you feel aboute hundred percent.
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: It's smart. You're finding ways to make more money in
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: your pocket.
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: No, I was gonna say another thing. He doesn't open
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: every day.
• 24:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you don't have to open every day people. People
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: are so afraid of Granted, I see the mentality of
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: the day that the moments that we're closed are opportunities
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: to make money. Yeah, that's also opportunities for you to
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: lose money. It's okay to have Monday Tuesday off. Guess what,
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: Now you have a staff that's happy because everybody has
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: two days off consecutively. This is a business where you know,
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: I'm grateful when I get two days off in a row.
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: But now I'm at a point where I make my
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: own schedule. But I'm also a hustler. I also love
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: money and I also love working, so I I this
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: is busy season for me. I'm lucky if I have
• 24:36
  Speaker 5: three days off this month, you know. But I also
• 24:38
  Speaker 5: take the whole month of January off, so there's there's
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: It works out pretty well, right, nice, It works out
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: pretty well. And I also I also take off two
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: weeks from my birthday in July. So it's the heat
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: of the business. But at the end of the day,
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: I put myself in a position where I deserve that,
• 24:53
  Speaker 5: and I earned that. But again, you earn your leisure.
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: But again, other than that, you see me hustling every
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: single day. If you follow me on Instagram, you know
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: that I'm always working. Whether it's doing a video on
• 25:03
  Speaker 5: YouTube now, whether it's speaking at a high school or
• 25:07
  Speaker 5: an elementary school, it's me at last Lap, or it's
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: me doing a private dinner for twenty or doing a
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: private dinner for ten, or doing an event for one
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: hundred and fifty people. So I'm grateful that because of
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: what I do, I do so many dope different things
• 25:20
  Speaker 5: on a regular basis.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: Well, that leads us right into our next segment. We're
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: going to talk about some entrepreneurial stuff that you do,
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: and yeah take it from there. All right, So now
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: we're going to go into the second segment, and I
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: wanted to just talk about a couple of things that
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: we spoke about off camera. You talked about you did
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: the pop up dinners that became wildly successful, right, Yeah,
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: can you talk about that?
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: Absolutely, It's one of those things like I'm getting goosebumps
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: now because I got another pop up dinner that's coming up.
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: On the nineteenth and the twentieth of December. But we
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: got into that because of not being in a restaurant
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: on a regular basis, my demand was hired. The only
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: way that you can have my food is by you
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: booking me. So it's kind of me like forcing. The
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: other hand, it's like you want my food, you booked me,
• 26:02
  Speaker 5: and I'm not gonna lie. What I do with food
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: changes the way that you see food. For example, if
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: you have my mac and cheese, you'll never see mac
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: and cheese again unless it's my mac and cheese, because
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: every time you take a bite of someone else's mac
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: and cheese, like damn, it's good, but this is not
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: Kelvin's what do you do with the Mexican and flavors?
• 26:19
  Speaker 5: And like I'm slidated now.
• 26:21
  Speaker 6: I'm thinking about this man. Were you about to put
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: a new standing man all chefs restaurants?
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: Ye gotta bring food with you.
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: You should have told me something happened.
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: Now you brought something else that we go to talk
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: about something.
• 26:31
  Speaker 5: I can never come in empty handy. I always introduced
• 26:33
  Speaker 5: myself with food, but today introduce myself with something else.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: Were talking about you the only way that they could
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: eat your food is my bookingt Yeah, that was the
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: only one. So what restaurant were you are at that time?
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: At that time, I wasn't at a restaurant because the
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: first time that it was twenty eighteen where the Marriot
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: Vacation company closed down. They just decided they didn't want
• 26:51
  Speaker 5: a restaurant. No matter how successful the restaurant was, we
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: weren't making money. And the reason we weren't making money
• 26:55
  Speaker 5: because the labor was too high and there was nothing
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: I could do. I was on the line, and that's
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: something when on the line means I was actually cooking
• 27:02
  Speaker 5: the food. That's a line cook's job, you know what
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: I mean. As a chef, I'm creating the menu. I'm
• 27:08
  Speaker 5: teaching the line cooks how to do food like me.
• 27:10
  Speaker 5: And that's what I think makes me a little bit
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: successful on the end where I really take into consideration
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: the teaching part. I love to teach, Right, So if
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: you're one of my employees and we got a new menu,
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: me and you are gonna cook samon side by side
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: for two weeks, traight.
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So in my mind, I mean, I work with kids,
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: so I'm thinking like the line cooker is like the Minion.
• 27:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, they absolutely are, and they're only as good
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: as how you train them. So and I'm grateful that
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: everybody that's been a part of my team is just
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: now like ten years later, five years later, even two
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: years later, Like I'll take the biggest example was Lomarino.
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: Lomrino was one of the best teams that I've ever
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: assembled in my entire life. And I'll say that because
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: it was such a big team, so many different personalities,
• 27:58
  Speaker 5: so many talented chefs that are all executive chefs now,
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: like Trill Cooker is chef Jose de Hissu's one of
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: my road dogs. This guy has been with me for
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: about four years and he has his own pop up
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: dinners in his home. Like he does infuse cannabis dinners
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: as well. He does. He comes on the road with
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: me when I need to go to jal and A Rods.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I want to talk about the pop because
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: that's interested for a few different reasons. So you all right,
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: so you built the following on social media at the
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: time already.
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks for doing the food shows, doing Food Network,
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: doing b Bobby Flay.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: That also helps out, Yeah for sure, So so so
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: the pop up. Can we get back to that, because
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: that's an interesting business model.
• 28:35
  Speaker 5: So the pop up. The reason we did the pop
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: up was because we wanted to do something once a month,
• 28:38
  Speaker 5: whether it was a pop up event where it was
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: like friends Giving, we sold tickets online, they sold out
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: in one day. We're like, okay, this is this is
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: We're on to something. So the friends Giving was around Thanksgiving,
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: we would do almost like we run out Aloft. We'll
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: invite one hundred people. You buy tickets online, you get
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: food catered by meat whether it was pastor derves, plus
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: an actual I'm always fancy, so we did like the
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: first meal was an actual Thanksgiving meal. You get turkey,
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: caramelized Brussels sprouts, stuffing and gravy. And then the next
• 29:09
  Speaker 5: meal would be like something Latin like Beni, which is
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: like a roasted pork with mac and cheese and something else.
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: And then of course you get my ad airbus. It's
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: not an event if my at eppas are not there,
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: and if people walk into the building and they see me,
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: the first question is are we having at airbus And
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: it has to be yes. Sometimes people don't book me
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: for at appus and I tell them if they're yelling
• 29:28
  Speaker 5: at me. I'm appointing them to your direction. You're taking
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: that hit, not me. So I learned that the pop
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: up thing was was such a big demand because already
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: I'm not giving you the luxury to have my food
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: on a regular basis. So every time I did a
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: different pop up, we wanted to do like a tacos
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: and tequila, so we'd run out. There would be summertime,
• 29:44
  Speaker 5: we run out a rooftop and do a dope event
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: like that. And then I started noticing that I wanted
• 29:50
  Speaker 5: to do more of a sit down experience. So Valentine's
• 29:54
  Speaker 5: Day was like the first time that we did. We
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: rented out of place in Modhaven. It was called Motley Kitchen,
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: which is known for being a restaurant. It's just a bakery,
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: and out of that bakery they do catering. So I
• 30:05
  Speaker 5: rented out the spot. We did fifty people, three nights
• 30:08
  Speaker 5: in a row, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, sold out. And then
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: from that moment on, I was just like, people will
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: follow me wherever wherever I am.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: So how much money when you making off the pop ups?
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: Off the pop ups, Let's say that's when I would
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: be making it depends on location. It depends on the
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: rent of the venue. At the end of the day,
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: I always try to make twenty five percent to thirty
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: percent profit compared to like what we talked about ten
• 30:30
  Speaker 5: percent profit in a restaurant. How many people are going
• 30:32
  Speaker 5: with you? How many to do an event, depending on
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: the size. So for that I had three cooks. I
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: had a host, which was my best friend. Shout out
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: to Eric. This guy has become like my manager, my assistant,
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: my brother. But I also give him luck because he
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: got to be in some do commercials with me too,
• 30:49
  Speaker 5: So he was a host.
• 30:51
  Speaker 8: I had.
• 30:53
  Speaker 5: Three servers, so I would say a team of about
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: less than ten, but about seven to eight people. But
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: depending on the on the event, Like I have another
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: the event that we did with the NFL Amazon and
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: we had a team of fourteen people. It all depends
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: on what we need to produces as a team. And me,
• 31:08
  Speaker 5: I'm so hands on, so I'm always still cooking. I
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: need to learn sometime to take a step back and
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: let the team make me proud like they like they
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: always do.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: So like the event in my haven, because I'm interested,
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: I'm going through with this, Like how much would you
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: say so.
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: We charge one hundred and fifty dollars per person, fifty
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: people per night, which was like, let's say, forty five
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: hundred dollars. And then after that we paid one thousand
• 31:27
  Speaker 5: dollars for the venue for three days, or it was
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: like sixteen hundred for three days. Because we got it
• 31:32
  Speaker 5: three days consecutive. It was a deal. And I mean,
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: I'm a negotiator. I will negotiate to as much because
• 31:38
  Speaker 5: I guess at the end of the day, I learned
• 31:39
  Speaker 5: if you don't ask, you'll never know, right. So if
• 31:41
  Speaker 5: you're charging me five hundred dolls per day, I'm like,
• 31:42
  Speaker 5: can you give me four hundred per day? And I'll
• 31:44
  Speaker 5: give you three dates in a row instead of just
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: one event, so on and so forth. So you need
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: to be able to learn how to talk, learn how
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: to negotiate, and at the end of the day you
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: offer a barter. You know, I'm very big on barters,
• 31:55
  Speaker 5: where I'm like, okay, if you give it to me
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: at this price, I'll give you two tickets to the
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: event as well. So you need to be able to
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: learn how to work with people. I was fortunate enough
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: that my partner for this event, he was great on
• 32:07
  Speaker 5: getting liquor sponsors because that is where and the reason
• 32:09
  Speaker 5: why we made money, because if I had to put
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: out on the pocket for liquor.
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: That's gonna kill us.
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so we're already paying for food, we're already paying
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: for a venue, we're ready paying for staff. Take off
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: that liquor, and that's the money that we're making. So
• 32:22
  Speaker 5: that again, not every event that I do, I get
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: a liquor sponsor, but I try to.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: Okay, it's like five thousand profit.
• 32:29
  Speaker 5: Out of three days, five five thousand profits split between
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: me and my partner.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: Okay, so yeah, the reason why. So it's like twenty
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: five hundred dollars, let's just say so. But that's not
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: bad for its weekend. It's all about creativity. So it's
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: like a lot of times, if you're not familiar with
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: New York City, mont Haven, South Bronx, SOUTHROX, South Rox
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: not really the best neighborhood.
• 32:50
  Speaker 5: But up and coming. Yeah, it's a good thing to
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: buy something now because yeah, it's good. It's gonna be big,
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: it's gonna be big Frenchy.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: So so there's a few different lessons in that. I
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: think exclusivity is very important, and it's like people the more.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: Sometimes the more you make yourself available, you devalue yourself.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: It's like Supreme the clothing line, right it's like people
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: will play it, pay a thousand dollars for it because
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: you can't get it. It's not easy to get right
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: even like with the marathon clothes right now, rest in
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: peace in it. But it's like people is lined up
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: around the corner for that pop up store because you
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: can't really get the clothes, Like it's hard to really
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: get right now. Four So you by you making yourself
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: like the pop ups like once a month. However you
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: was doing it. It's like now it's the whole event
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: as opposed to just having a mom and pop shop.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: You're just selling food every day. It's like they just
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: walk past you. You come out once a month, and
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: you got to be creative. So it's like you didn't
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: pick the most expensive real estate in New York City.
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: You picked the hood and I'm.
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: Not afraid to pick them. There's times where, like the
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: event that we're doing on nineteenth and the twentieth, we
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: paid prime dollar for thirty seven Street between eighth and ninth,
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: you know, But at the end of the day, it
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: depends on the event that we're doing, and of course.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: The network and you're at that point in your career. Yeah,
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: but like for people that's just starting out, a lot
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: of times it's like they feel intimidated. But it's like
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: work with the resources that you have.
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: I think that's so important that you're saying that, because
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: you have to be able to no budgets. Like you said,
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: you're not going to be successful if you're breaking even
• 34:20
  Speaker 5: You're not going to be successful if you're not charging
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: the right prices.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 34:24
  Speaker 5: Of course I wasn't able to charge one hundred and
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: fifty dollars if this was ten years ago for me
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: and my bread and who I am now. But with
• 34:30
  Speaker 5: the accolades and with the awards and constantly winning, you know,
• 34:33
  Speaker 5: an award after an award, and the people that I
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: cook for, it is vouching for itself. And I always
• 34:37
  Speaker 5: joke around and I say, my food is all hype
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: until you finally experience it yourself.
• 34:41
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: And I was just telling I was telling one of
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: my friends this the other day because you're talking about
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: like a business and we was talking. Actually Jamal actually
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: said it originally and I relayed the message. And it's
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: like the business is only going to bring like, let's say,
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: like two thousand a month, And at first I'm like,
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: it's not worth it, like that's two thousand, But then.
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  Speaker 3: She but I'm like thinking about it, like, well that's
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: two thousands. Like what I said, you through that five times.
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: Now you got ten thousands. So it's like, it's not
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: about hitting. It's never about hitting home runs. It's never
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: because if you play baseball, you don't swing for a
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: home run. You swing and eventually you'll hit a home
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: run if you're strong enough, but you don't plan to
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: hit home run because you just strike out. It's like,
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: it's never about home run, just about consistently building your name,
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: building your brand. Getting two thousand a thousand Dad's up
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: over the course at the time. A lot of time
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: people like the going up And that's about one. That's
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: how much you made too, because that's kind of what
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: I figured you made. And I people cant intimidate like
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: I got a fifty thousand for a weekend. It's like
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: not when you first start.
• 38:04
  Speaker 6: It's not how we're saying, like you made twenty five hundred,
• 38:07
  Speaker 6: like that's somebody's month.
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, absolute right, And I've thought of that, and there's
• 38:10
  Speaker 5: certain times where I haven't made money on events because
• 38:13
  Speaker 5: you have to understand what is this event bringing to me? Also,
• 38:16
  Speaker 5: is it an event that I have influencers that are
• 38:18
  Speaker 5: going to every single person tag me in their Instagram posts?
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: Because those are deals that I have made too, and
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: I was afraid to make those in the past until
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: I finally made one and I was like, holy shit,
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: I just got fifteen hundred new followers in a day,
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: Like how Because every single person that was there was
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: an influencer or was in their own and their own
• 38:39
  Speaker 5: life a start, whether it was a singer, whether it's
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: an actress, whether it was a songwriter, whether it was
• 38:43
  Speaker 5: an artist, whether it was a banker. They were all
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: at the top of the game at that And when
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: I did that event, I was like, Okay, I need
• 38:48
  Speaker 5: to find ways that I can do.
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: Is not a product is going to speak for itself.
• 38:52
  Speaker 5: The product is going to speak for itself. People are posting,
• 38:54
  Speaker 5: people are eating, they're having their reactions, and all of
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: a sudden, out of those new fifteen hundred, guess what
• 38:59
  Speaker 5: I just made. Some come from those people booking me. So,
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: like you said, supplying demand and then also you have
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: to make sure that, like you said, I'm doing an
• 39:06
  Speaker 5: event on the nineteenth and the twentieth that's one of
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: the most expensive events I've ever done. I'm doing a
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: collab with griseld Vaie, which is an incredible woman, incredible voice,
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: and we're taching one hundred and seventy five dollars per person.
• 39:18
  Speaker 5: You know, but at the end of the day, people
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: don't know the expense that comes into pulling off an
• 39:22
  Speaker 5: event in New York City on thirty seven seven, where
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: you're just buying a raw stage, a raw form, where
• 39:29
  Speaker 5: you have to buy stage and lights.
• 39:31
  Speaker 6: In the highlight of the holiday season and the holiday
• 39:35
  Speaker 6: season where Christmas is in two weeks.
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: And that's why we sold it two months ago, where
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: we sold out again in one day. And I'm blessed
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: to be able to say that. You said, supplying demand,
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: if you put yourself available every single day, I'm not
• 39:46
  Speaker 5: going to sell an event out every single day. But
• 39:48
  Speaker 5: if we do it once a month, guess what, people
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: talked about it for a whole month. We're posting for
• 39:52
  Speaker 5: the next one. We're gonna do it again already.
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: People haven't experience said that.
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: People haven't experienced this event. And the next next that
• 40:02
  Speaker 5: sounds like I'm so high. We haven't even done it yet.
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: That sounds like an event that we just did in
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: DC and the streets is we got the streets going crazy.
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: Love that, Atlanta. Don't play yourself.
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we're telling you now.
• 40:13
  Speaker 5: I think I'm gonna come.
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: So talk about another thing that you did, Keith.
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: Puerto Rican drink traditional Puerto Rican I would say Thanksgiving
• 40:32
  Speaker 5: holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and maybe New Year's but that's
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: a little push.
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: That's always the gift that they give you. No give
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: you like seventeen bottles in the free So.
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: If you're from New York City, you know you got
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Boikuas Puerto Ricans, you got the minikanos. Dominicans don't do that.
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: They're different. Don't don't ever confuse, don't ever confuse it
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: too right. They have different cultures, different different vibes, but
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: so many similarities for sure, Like we all do absolutely,
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: but that particularly is a Puerto Rican. It's a Puerto
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: Rican thing, right, So you've been a Dominican. What what
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: made you do that?
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: I did it as a joke. I did it as
• 41:17
  Speaker 5: a joke. You know, kind of like for the moment,
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: it was funny, and you know, it was one of
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: those things where I was like, let's test the market.
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: This is like five years ago, you know, where Chef
• 41:26
  Speaker 5: Kelvin was finally building his brand. And I'll talking to
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: third person now because even in the even in the streets,
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: I'm not Kelvin anymore. Chef Calvin, your chef. I remember
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: I was on the train once and somebody's yo, Chef.
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: I'm like, oh shit, I made it. Somebody's calling me
• 41:39
  Speaker 5: out on the train. I was like, damn, I can't
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: be on the train. No more joking around, you know.
• 41:44
  Speaker 5: But in reality, the coquito is traditional Puerto Rican. So
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: I did it, and I'm like, let me find ways
• 41:50
  Speaker 5: to What makes a chef unique is making something that's classic, traditional, reinvented, right.
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: So I didn't reinvent the wheel when I made this cokey,
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: I just made it. Mind like everybody makes it with
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: let's make hennessy. Everybody uses these ingredients, let's use those ingredients,
• 42:04
  Speaker 5: but let's add something else into it. I can't tell
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: you the secret. And then again, everybody uses cinnamon. I'm
• 42:09
  Speaker 5: gonna use exotic spices like I'm using, yeah, things that
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: I've used in cooking, so like, that's the cool thing
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: about it. I'm thinking of making coquito as like making
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: a dessert for me, because in reality, it's a little
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: bit sweet, it's thick in flavor, it's coconuty, and it's
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: I use it for like French toast batter. Now I
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: use it to make ice cream. I use it to
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: let's take that to the next level. So of course
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: when I make coquita for the first time, there's a
• 42:34
  Speaker 5: lot of you know, people saying that's not traditional. But
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: it's okay. I'm not looking to be traditional. I'm looking
• 42:38
  Speaker 5: to be Chef Kelvin. So I'm making coquito. That's why
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: my coquito says on the label Coquito by Chef Calvin.
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: If you're looking for traditional like, I'm sure you can
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: find those out there. And again, there's plenty of room
• 42:49
  Speaker 5: for all of us to eat. I know, I had
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: people hit me up on the regular, like, please don't
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: sell your coquito in Jersey, Please don't sell your coquaito
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: in Brooklyn, like you already do enough. I'm like, but
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: I want more. What's the p with one? And more?
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: So how did you get that out?
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: I posted it on Instagram.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: I posted on Instagram. Back then, I had like thirty
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: thousand followers. I'm blessed to have like almost sixty seven
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: sixty eight now. And I posted it and I said,
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: I made it for myself. I wasn't even selling it.
• 43:14
  Speaker 5: I was like, I just made Henny Cokai throw right away.
• 43:16
  Speaker 5: There were no dms back then, there were just comments.
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: So I posted it on my page and I got
• 43:21
  Speaker 5: flooded with comments in like the first five minutes.
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: You said you said the magic word hennessy.
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: Hennessy, and They're like, are you selling? And I was like, nah,
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: I'm not selling. So I just made it for my friends.
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: We had it. Then the next year, I was like,
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: let me just make twenty bottle. Let's see what happens.
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: I made it. I sold out in ten minutes, and
• 43:37
  Speaker 5: I said, we're going to make a business next year.
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: Because again I knew I didn't bite off more than
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: I can. True, I wasn't ready to start a business,
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: and I wasn't when I launched it in two thousand
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: and sixteen, but I was fortunate enough that I was
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: working at La Marina and I had a kitchen of disposal.
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: They were only they were only open for a season season,
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: so when we were there in the winter, it was
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: just for private events. So I ended up using their
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: kitchen to make okay thro and I paid some guys
• 44:00
  Speaker 5: that were on my team. They're loyal Alex and David.
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: These guys have been through everything with me, and they're
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: both at a last lap. So even though I'm not
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: our last lap, you know you can get great food
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: with them. But we started a business. We got labels,
• 44:12
  Speaker 5: we got gift bags, we started answering, made up an email,
• 44:15
  Speaker 5: we made up a venmo, a cash shap, opened up
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: a bank account, and we opened up a business.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: How much How much did you sell?
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: First year of officially selling, we sold two hundred and
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: fifty bottles, which I thought was not bad for we
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: started late. We started only in December. Yeah, the following
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: year we sold five hundred bottles. And now we're in
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: unofficially year five, we've already sold six hundred bottles and
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: we're not even a peak season yet. So Christmas is
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: our big one. Now we're looking to sell about.
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: Three four hundreds. The reason why I love that story
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: also see this is all things that especially food. It's
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: like your grandmother you I you're mahome makes these these
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: homemade RUMs and all these stuff. But it's like in
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: p pople like it, right, but it's like, why is
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: it just limited to your family?
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: Absolutely right, You're absolutely right. You can you can sell
• 45:06
  Speaker 5: anything unless the product is good. You can't be afraid. Again,
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: don't reinvent the wheel. Like I said, I'm not doing
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: nothing new. I'm just making the version I'm making in mine.
• 45:15
  Speaker 5: I just made it a little bit different. I'm using
• 45:17
  Speaker 5: Madagascar vanilla bean. That's why you know it's expensive. Each
• 45:20
  Speaker 5: vanilla bean is like five dollars?
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: Is that? Is that the secret?
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: That is one of them? We got some here.
• 45:32
  Speaker 5: Already, and I tell people, I'm like, it's vanilla, It's
• 45:34
  Speaker 5: vanilla bean is special. It's it's the reason why you
• 45:37
  Speaker 5: see the specs in the vanilla ice cream. You know,
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: it's it's the reason you see the specs in the
• 45:41
  Speaker 5: criminal lay. But at the end of the day, it's
• 45:44
  Speaker 5: the special spices.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: And it's it's always about the love. You can't duplicate that.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: But it's always about being creative too. And it's like
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: we're gonna talk about a lot of Marina. But lot
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: of Marina is only open for two months of the year, right,
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: three months.
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: I would say, more three pushing events. It would open
• 46:02
  Speaker 5: April and it would close I would say beginning of September.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: But you had access to had access full year year round.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: So now you used that to pretty much have a
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: free kitchen.
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: I found ways. Yeah, I asked, you know, I said, hey,
• 46:18
  Speaker 5: you guys are not doing anything. I even offered to rent.
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: They're like nah, because at the end of the day,
• 46:21
  Speaker 5: the way that no one knew really about my contract,
• 46:24
  Speaker 5: but the way my contract worked. Again, I'm not a
• 46:25
  Speaker 5: greedy guy, so I understand things. If if we were
• 46:28
  Speaker 5: not open full year, I wasn't expecting to get paid
• 46:32
  Speaker 5: full year. But what I did want was the times
• 46:34
  Speaker 5: that we were just seasonal. You put me as an
• 46:36
  Speaker 5: independent contractor and you would still pay me fifty percent
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: of my yearly salary. So I was still getting a
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: check every week, but it wasn't the full one hundred percent.
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: So I needed to find ways to make money.
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you had access, I had access.
• 46:48
  Speaker 5: Okay, now I'm going to start doing caterings. Now I'm
• 46:50
  Speaker 5: going to start, you know, doing coquito. Now I'm going
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: to start, and that the opportunity was there. I wasn't.
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: I wasn't afraid to do things that I wasn't expecting.
• 46:57
  Speaker 5: And I also wasn't desperate. I was patient throughout the
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: whole process. Like I said, I sold twenty coith those
• 47:03
  Speaker 5: year one. We're at five hundred now and we're not
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: even halfway through our season.
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: Can we Dominican?
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: Dominican?
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: They show up?
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: So all right? Can we talk about I was waiting.
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: I was waiting.
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: We just.
• 47:22
  Speaker 5: Look at the smile. If you if you have to memory, if.
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: You're a loyal listener to a Lisia, you know, how
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: is a second home for us? The basketball tournament. We
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: talked about the basketball tournament a lot because they treat us,
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: they love us.
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: There.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: Shout out to everybody there. We're actually about to do
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: Chris Gotti Show after this, so shut shout out the Dykman.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: But so east side, west side, So on the on
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: the east side, on the east side, it's the basketball
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: court on the west side by the water. That was no,
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: we never we didn't tell the stories about Lotarna from
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: New York City. You know about lom Marena. If not
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: you heard fab you was in lot Marina all summer.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: You see you heard French pull up Arena in a
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: yach boy.
• 48:13
  Speaker 5: It made some easy captions on Instagram. Just made me
• 48:17
  Speaker 5: feel like I'm on top of the world even more.
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: So, we were gonna get off track for one minute.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: You was an executive chef and lot Marina at his peak,
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: lom Marina was a beach. The best way I can
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: describe it, It's like a beach front party restaurant had everything.
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, each you had a lounge, you had food trucks,
• 48:37
  Speaker 5: you had.
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: Stage, you had a live stage.
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: Beautiful women, restaurant, beautiful women. I got in trouble. I
• 48:44
  Speaker 5: was just I was just cooking.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: So can you just explain in a minute, like what
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: was the vibe in lom Marena at that time.
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: So I'll tell you two quick vibes. One was imagine
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: being the only sober person at a drunk part. When
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: I was leaving work, kitchen closed that twelve I'm walking
• 49:03
  Speaker 5: down people, I'm just like what, I can't even catch up.
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: There's no way I could catch up. We got it
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: now we're left. So it was always a problem with
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: La Marina because they closed that one o'clock. But the
• 49:10
  Speaker 5: blessing of La Marina also was that entire dykeman wasohiut
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: to Mama Sushi, because those are one of the stories
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: that I always loved telling. Because they started small eighteen
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: seat restaurant, bought the door next door to the right,
• 49:32
  Speaker 5: then bought the ball, they got to the left, and
• 49:34
  Speaker 5: now you got a seventy five seats, and then and
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: then put seats outside, and then they're on their third
• 49:38
  Speaker 5: fourth location. God bless shout out to them that those
• 49:41
  Speaker 5: are the people that I inspired to be like. And
• 49:43
  Speaker 5: I don't even have one location yet, but La Marina
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: was a vibe. So not only the reason I worked
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: there was because I used to party there a lot,
• 49:50
  Speaker 5: and I joked around said in front of the wrong person,
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: I wonder what it'd be like to work here. The
• 49:56
  Speaker 5: opportunity presented itself and still to this day, shout out
• 49:59
  Speaker 5: to Fernando Ma he's the owner of a zona that kuba,
• 50:01
  Speaker 5: which is a dope.
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: Spot the street.
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and uh in the bronx on top of a
• 50:08
  Speaker 5: post office. I think he paid somebody. I think he
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: paid somebody because the moment, again I was living in
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: Queen's traveling to Washington Heights, I got out the train
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: station and somebody said, Chef Kelvin, welcome to Washington Heights.
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: We've been waiting for you. There's no way.
• 50:27
  Speaker 10: There's no way.
• 50:28
  Speaker 5: Still to this day, I remember that. But Lo Marina
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: was just it was. It was madness, and I like
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: to say controlled madness. It was the only time where
• 50:36
  Speaker 5: I had it. I had a walking talking on and
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: I'm I'm talking to my Sioux chefs through this walking talkie.
• 50:42
  Speaker 5: You O, the beach is going down. We need more
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: French fries the beach. I need to cooks to go
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: to the beach. French Carmelo. Anthony needs, you know, a
• 50:51
  Speaker 5: tomahawk steak.
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: Don't make that happen.
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: We're gonna make that happen. It was one of the
• 50:55
  Speaker 5: the greatest experiences ever. I had an amazing team, Like
• 50:58
  Speaker 5: I said, Chef Traill, who they issue, Chef Andy, who's
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: the chef of Suo in the Bronx, Like, these are
• 51:04
  Speaker 5: just guys that are talented. Elio who's in a Michelin
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: Star restaurant in Manhattan, Like that's what makes me proud,
• 51:09
  Speaker 5: because I feel like I'm a proud that even though
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: we're all similar to age, but you.
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: You said that also in the business you you turned
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: it around the kitchen around attle bit.
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it was hard to come into a place that.
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: This is why when making business decisions, it's hard for
• 51:24
  Speaker 5: me to go to a place that already has an
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: identity because it's hard to change either bad habits or
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: it's hard to change something where people are used to
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: So when I got to La Marina, they already had
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: a standard. They went through a couple of different chefs.
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: The food was not great, and the owners themselves said it,
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: we don't need to really worry about the food. People
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: are gonna come for the view. And I said, what
• 51:45
  Speaker 5: you're doing wrong is you're not giving them another reason
• 51:48
  Speaker 5: to come. People are gonna come regardless the view, the women,
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: the parties, the artists, the maseratis, the ferrarish. It was
• 52:00
  Speaker 5: just cash. Cash is king in the world. Now you
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: don't find a hooka up town because everybody got to
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: put it on the books. But it was such an
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: experience where we learned. So my goal was to bring
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: Chef Kelvin's food to an area that was not understanding it.
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: So after being there for a full summer, I was
• 52:18
  Speaker 5: able to turn around lower the labor costs lower, the
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: food costs increase the food sales. I remember over almost
• 52:25
  Speaker 5: three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars. And again we
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: were only open seasonal, so imagine what I could have
• 52:29
  Speaker 5: done in a full year. We didn't have the opportunities
• 52:31
  Speaker 5: because it gets cold down there by that water. So
• 52:34
  Speaker 5: we did some great closed events, We did some great weddings,
• 52:39
  Speaker 5: and twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen was a year to remember
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: for me for sure.
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah we made it right, Yeah we made it.
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: We will miss you.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: We will never be forgotten going, but not forgotten. That
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: corner will never be the same, won't. Even the strip
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: is not the same.
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: Absolutely not. It's tough, like even me. I live in Riverdale,
• 52:58
  Speaker 5: so I'm close to the madness, but I haven't been
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: out there a while. It's not the same.
• 53:03
  Speaker 10: The Dominicans up. We've been saying it also that no meal.
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: All right. So in the last segment, we're gonna go
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: into what you got going on now and future endeavors.
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: All right, So we're gonna close it out, which but
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: you have going on now. So I want to first
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: want to talk about our last lap, last lap, so
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: you can talk about so that's that was an establishment
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: that was already open and you partnered right.
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Last Lap is it's such a great vibe. It's
• 53:37
  Speaker 5: a Caribbean vibe. It's true to like my heart, my soul.
• 53:41
  Speaker 5: Shout out to the guys that Last Lap. They're the
• 53:44
  Speaker 5: reason I'm there because when we started just talking about it,
• 53:48
  Speaker 5: you know, the ViBe's gotta be right. And these guys
• 53:50
  Speaker 5: are young entrepreneurs doing their things, opening different establishments. There's
• 53:54
  Speaker 5: gonna be the last Lap l A. There's gonna be
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: last Lap Miami. There's an opportunity to continue to grow,
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: and those are the right people to do it with.
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: And they were open, and I went to forgot to
• 54:04
  Speaker 5: mention this. I went to France for three months. I
• 54:07
  Speaker 5: lived in Lyon, France. At one point when the Strand
• 54:10
  Speaker 5: decided to close.
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: Down, I got a nice your French trains, yeah.
• 54:14
  Speaker 5: Classically French trained. I got a nice little severance check
• 54:17
  Speaker 5: and at that moment I did a cooking competition. Circle
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: back again fifteen years. The same people that gave me
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: a scholarship to go to high school gave me an
• 54:25
  Speaker 5: opportunity to win a full scholarship to go to France
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: and live, all expense paid to go to a culinary
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: school in France. Here I am, at thirty something years old,
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: going again learning schooling. You can never stop learning. So
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: I'm the only guy who was in this class who
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: didn't speak French, and here I'm trying to communicate with people.
• 54:41
  Speaker 5: But thank god that food is a universal language. Show
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: me how to cut this, I will cut it the
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: way you want to. Show me how to cook it,
• 54:46
  Speaker 5: I will cook it the way you want it. But
• 54:48
  Speaker 5: the reason I didn't get involved with Last Lap right
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: away was because I was out here doing this three
• 54:52
  Speaker 5: months stint in France, and I got back to Last Slap.
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: We were doing some cool little Ada day vibes, like
• 54:58
  Speaker 5: was there once a month again do the pop up
• 55:00
  Speaker 5: and it was always a successful sold out night. We
• 55:03
  Speaker 5: sat down and they made a deal that I couldn't refuse,
• 55:07
  Speaker 5: and they offered me a partnership and I was able
• 55:10
  Speaker 5: to establish my team there to make me feel comfortable
• 55:12
  Speaker 5: to know that even though that I'm not there, the
• 55:15
  Speaker 5: food is going to be great. So thanks to Chef David,
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: thanks for Chef Alex. Those guys have been with me
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: for ten plus years and it's hard loyalty is a
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: hard thing to find, and these guys make me proud
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: every single day.
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: And one thing you said I was interested is like
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: you have like royalties, Like it's like a royalty deal.
• 55:29
  Speaker 5: So you know, I watched them a shark tank. As
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: a businessman, you got to learn, right, So you know,
• 55:34
  Speaker 5: I made him an offer of you know, I wanted
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: to make this much amount per area and they said yes,
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: and I should have asked for more, but again, I'm
• 55:42
  Speaker 5: not greedy, so you know I was. I was just
• 55:43
  Speaker 5: grateful for that opportunity. This is the first time that
• 55:46
  Speaker 5: I made a deal like that, and it's been it's
• 55:48
  Speaker 5: been steady.
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: You know. I think it's the only place that you
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: can get get So that's this is this.
• 55:53
  Speaker 5: Is traditionally you could say Kelvin's kitchen, but in reality,
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: it's the only place that you can get that's my food,
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: you know, aside from getting kill than himself with Kelvin's kitchen,
• 56:01
  Speaker 5: you know, so you know. And and last slap is
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: a small rum bar. We got two floors. It gives
• 56:08
  Speaker 5: you an opportunity to come have some amazing cocktails because
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: they have a great mixology program. And then you never
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: know who's gonna be there the same day that you either.
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: We We've got a lot of celebrities from Rihanna to
• 56:17
  Speaker 5: Michael B. Jordan to uh the list goes on. We're
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: always on page six. That's a great thing.
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: So so like, even though you're not there a lot cooking,
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: but you have the recipe. So anytime your dish is sold,
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: or any dishes sold, you get a percentage of that I.
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: Get Yeah, I get a fee for each that's sold.
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: Correct it again, it's not bad though he said it
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: better than the people that said it on the On
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: a few other shows, they're like a rape. I'm like,
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: we're not raping nobody. I'm like, and it's tough because
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: it just comes with with the culture and how we learned.
• 56:55
  Speaker 5: But not is the dish that I be Bobby Flay with,
• 56:57
  Speaker 5: And that is also the dish that I've won for
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: years in a row Best Chef in America with Forbes.
• 57:02
  Speaker 5: So I have five different versions of these APAs and
• 57:06
  Speaker 5: the only place you can find those is at Last Lap.
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: So that's the signature star. We have a dish called
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: Adipa Heaven where you get twenty pieces of APAs and
• 57:14
  Speaker 5: it's all all.
• 57:16
  Speaker 4: Is.
• 57:16
  Speaker 5: It is traditionally like a corn cake almost like it's
• 57:20
  Speaker 5: hard to describe. It's traditionally made with corn, flour and water,
• 57:25
  Speaker 5: and I actually use fresh corn corn right kind of
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: sort of but not really. And I'm gonna say that
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: because it's almost the same ingredients except we're not baking it.
• 57:32
  Speaker 5: We're not. You got to make a dough and then
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: traditionally the doe the dough is griddled or like pan fried.
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: I deep fry minds, so you get that crispy texture. Traditionally,
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: an adipa is stuffed. I put all of my toppings
• 57:44
  Speaker 5: on top of it, so and I make them mini,
• 57:47
  Speaker 5: so you'll have like four adipas to in order. My
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: traditional classic one is we call it the award winner
• 57:52
  Speaker 5: now because that's the one that beat Bobby Flair. It's
• 57:54
  Speaker 5: braised beef, short rib, guacamali, picco, the Gayo lime scented
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: sour cream, cotiha chies, microslatro. So you'll take it, You'll
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: dip it in the sauce. You'll have it in one
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: bite and it's a party in your mouth. It h
• 58:06
  Speaker 5: every every sense that your palette. It's like sweet, salty, crispy, hot, cold, herbaceous, creamy. Mommy,
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: You're like, what the fuck did I just experience?
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: What was that?
• 58:18
  Speaker 6: Pulling up the last last vibe? So you mentioned beating
• 58:21
  Speaker 6: Bobby played with the dish. Now I read this and
• 58:24
  Speaker 6: maybe it's true or not. But prior to that, because
• 58:26
  Speaker 6: you are French training, and were you doing Latin foods
• 58:29
  Speaker 6: prior to this?
• 58:29
  Speaker 5: No, I wasn't doing Latin food until I left the
• 58:32
  Speaker 5: Strand Hotel. The first time I got an opportunity to
• 58:34
  Speaker 5: open up a Latin restaurant and that's how I created
• 58:37
  Speaker 5: the ideas at a restaurant called Blend on the Water.
• 58:40
  Speaker 5: So my goal was to go learn as much as
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: I can about Latin food. I'll tell you one hundred percent,
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: I did not know what I was doing until I
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: started asking my mom, asking my dad. Going to you
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: know bar which is like the was or it still is,
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: the number one at bar downtown in the Lower East Side.
• 58:59
  Speaker 5: They had a line around the door, and I'm like,
• 59:01
  Speaker 5: they must be doing something right. So I had their ADEPA.
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: I'm big on textures. It was good, but I'm like,
• 59:07
  Speaker 5: how can I make this different, unique and mine? So
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: we got to the drawing board and created the EPA,
• 59:13
  Speaker 5: the original one that I have now was nowhere near
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: the first one I made. So not everything I make
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: was great. Things take time, things take practice, and let's
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: just say time that perfection takes time.
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: Well said, So you, j Low and a Rod's personal
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: How did that? How did that come about?
• 59:30
  Speaker 5: Shout out to Duval. This beautiful lady was a fan
• 59:34
  Speaker 5: of mine. Five years ago. She came to one of
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: my events. I did a pop up event in Brooklyn.
• 59:39
  Speaker 5: There was a restaurant called SDQ. It was also like
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: a lounge, and she came to my event and I
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: treated her the way I treat everybody, Like I know
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: you for ten years and you say hi to me,
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna give you a hug. If you show me
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: pictures from last birthdays that you came to celebrate with me,
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: that makes me even more special. So I treated her
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: like I treat everybody. We have a conversation, we'll talk
• 59:59
  Speaker 5: about it made you come here? Have you had my
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 5: food before? Five years later, fast forward, she's Jlo's personal assistant,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: and an opportunity presented itself where the chef that they've
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 5: had for ten years couldn't do Thanksgiving weekend and She's like,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: I know this chef. I don't know him personally, but
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 5: I've had his food. He's great with kids, he's great
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: with blah blah blah, this this, that opportunity came presented itself.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 5: I hit a home run, and let's say, for a rod,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 5: I hit a grand slam, And since then, they hit
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 5: me up for every time they need something, whether it's
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: a Birthday party for their kids, whether it's Memorial Day
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 5: in the Hamptons, whether it's Christmas in Miami, which I'm
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 5: going next a couple of weeks, and then New Year's
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: even la. I'm blessed to say that anywhere they need me,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 5: I go.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: You know, a personal chef is actually a good investment
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: something that I'm going to look into in a New Year,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: because I know a guy. It's like it's like I
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: always said, like a personal trainer and a personal chef.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: It was a good investment.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 5: You're investing in your mind too.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, personal chefs.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: Wife, I was like, well that's that's a good investment.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: Might investing investing in your mind body? You better say
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: that for sure, especially because it's like when you want
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: to run a lot, you can't cook like you don't
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: have time to cook, especially like you know, you got
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: dietary ships. I'm trying to go vegan. So it's like,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: stop dating a.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 5: Girl because she was vegan. You know it's tough. I'm
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: a chef, man, I'll be and I try.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: You could be a vegan shock, but I can't.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 5: I can be a vegan check, but I can't be
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 5: a vegan shock. I can't be a vegan check. And
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 5: I tried it. Like we dated a couple of years
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 5: ago when on a couple of dates and I was vegan.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 5: When I took some of the best Michelin Star restaurants
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 5: that were vegan, I'm like, what the I need steak?
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: Oh my god?
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 5: And then yo, I would take a home and I'll
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 5: go get a burger or something, and I'm like, Yo,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 5: this is crazy. I'm eating twice, I'm spending doubles of
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: money out. It's not gonna work out. This is not
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 5: gonna work out. This is not gonna work out. I
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 5: laugh about it.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: Why I take you someone to get home? Ah, man,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: not traffic. I'll stop that hurricane.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 5: Shout out to you. That's that's not easy. And I
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 5: have some vegan friends that they hold me to it,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 5: and like even doing this event on the nineteenth and twentieth,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: I had to put a vegetarian menu because I know
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 5: so many people that support Grisel and support her are
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 5: all vegetarians and vegans, so I got to make sure
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 5: that that offers.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: And that's another lane too, especially like there's so many
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: athletes and entertainers and just you know, high level business
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: people that like personal chefs is like a whole another lane.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 5: It's a it's definitely a world in its own. But
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: it takes a special type of person to do that
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 5: because at the end of the day, you sacrifice your
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 5: entire life, not only just a cooking to the person
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 5: that you're working with. Then, because they they're requiring, their
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 5: needs are a lot different than any other cook chef.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: You're like, they're beck and call at all times.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 5: And that's why I when I decided to do person
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 5: no chefing, I had my own requirements and restrictions. And
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 5: it's like, one, I would never stay at the person's house.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 5: I would need my own hotel because I tried it
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 5: once and no matter what, I'm staying in the twenty
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 5: million dollar house, I can't sleep in a bed knowing
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: that I work downstairs. Or imagine I always joke around.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 5: Imagine I'm hungry and I'm gonna go make a grill
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 5: cheese sandwich I one o'clock in the morning and somebody says,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 5: can you make me want to fucking kitchen is clothes?
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: Man?
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: I would make it gladly.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: Did you hear about But that's just something I always
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: joke around with. Did you have did you hear about
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: ditty story with his personal show?
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 5: No, I didn't hear ditty story. Imagine ditty story.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: I will tell you, ye shot, I got crazy, it
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: got crazy. I got.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 6: Can we talk about the branding, because obviously you have.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 6: You've done an amazing job on social media doing that,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 6: and it's led to some deals with Fogo.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 5: On blessings and again, these are things that I tell
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: people that are always asking me, how did you get
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 5: some man followers? How'd you do this? And I was like,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: I am giving you what I'm saying. I'm giving you.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 5: So if I'm a chef page, I'm gonna give you food.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 5: I'm going to give you things that are related to chefs.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna give you some tips, I'm gonna give you
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 5: some recipes. I'm gonna not be afraid. The only thing
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 5: I'm not gonna give you is Michael Keat the recipe
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 5: and my APPI recipe. So, guys, I love you to death,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 5: just stop asking anything that I make money on I
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 5: can't give you. But again, it's one of those things
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 5: where you have to stay true to what you're trying
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 5: to sell, what you're trying to do, and who you're
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 5: trying to be. So I am Chef Kelvin, my Instagram
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 5: is Chef Kelvin, and I'm going to give you everything
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 5: that has to do with food. Instagram stories are a
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 5: little bit different. You can get a little bit more personal.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 5: You can show traveling, you can show family, you can
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 5: show friends. But at the end of the day, I'm
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 5: giving you what I promised that I was going to
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 5: give you. You have to stay consistent and at the
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 5: end of the day, you have to make sure that
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: what you put on your feed is true to you.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 5: And you can't be afraid to post because you're not
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 5: going to get a lot of likes. So I'm actually
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 5: a little bit happy with the whole you know, removing likes,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 5: because at the end of the day, you'll know still
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 5: that someone is getting a lot of insights and a
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 5: lot of people coming to them when the comments are there,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 5: because you can tell when someone has a real fifty
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 5: thousand dollars following and someone has a bought fifty thousand following.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 5: You can have ten thousand likes, but if you have
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 5: two comments, something's wrong. Engagement engagements completely off, you know,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 5: because if I post something and I'm going to get
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 5: a thousand likes, I'm going to get a hundred comments.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: And it's That's something I learned early on as far
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: as social media. Friend of mine told me that you
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: should be able to look at somebody's page without reading
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: their bio and know what they do.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 5: Agree. Reading your bio is just say everything that you do,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 5: and you're, well, you can't say everything because then my
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 5: my characters will run out right away. But you would
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 5: have to say in your bio, you would say who
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 5: you are, what you do, and what I'm saying.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: They should be able to tell without reading it.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 5: Absolutely agree.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: So it's like a lot of time people through all
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: kinds of random nonsense pictures and memes and it's like,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: what's happening?
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 5: What are we here for?
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: But it's going on the message I'm confused. I'm confused.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 5: If it's there for fun, then cool. But if it's
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 5: for business, yeah, you can't do that.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: You can't. You got to sacrifice that. And this page
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: is like a reflection of like how people are going
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: to look at your business.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: I like the way you said that without reading your bios,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 5: should be able to talk just by looking at pictures.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: See.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 5: And I learned that. I even tried doing like a
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 5: personal page and that didn't work because I have no
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 5: time to let alone. Yeah, this is my personal life,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 5: so stop with the personal stuff. If you know me
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 5: on a personal level, you know that you get the
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 5: same guy that you get as a chef level. You know.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 5: But building that brand, you have to learn that it
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 5: takes time. You have to be patient. You can't rush
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 5: for the likes. And I know that now because I
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 5: just started YouTube and I'm hitting up one of my
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 5: friends who has been an expert on YouTube, and she's
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: done multiple videos, and I'm reaching out to her. I'm like,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 5: but if I put it on Instagram, I'll get fifty
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 5: thousand likes, But if I put it on YouTube, I
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 5: only have a thousand likes. She says, you have to wait,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 5: You have to be patient. And I learned and I'm like, not,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 5: we're not patient in this world. We don't even read
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 5: in this world. And I learned that because I get
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 5: my card told on a regular basis, and I can't
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 5: get mad at clients. I'm being that honest I get
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 5: I'm like, oh, can I park here? It's like six
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 5: signs yes, yes, yes, Okay, I forgot the last one,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 5: and I get mad at clients when I'll give you
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 5: all the information, like, for example, to purchase my coquito,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 5: you got to send an email to Coquito's by Chef
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 5: Kelvin at gmail dot com. You say hello, you can
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 5: say all the information you want. You're gonna automatically get
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 5: a response that says thank you for your inquiry. Here's
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 5: the product, Here's how much it costs. Here's the size
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 5: of the bottle. Here's how we can deliver, here's forms
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 5: of payment. Everything that you can ever ask me first question,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 5: how much is the bottle?
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: How much.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 5: To All the information you need is in the in
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 5: the in the last, And you have to be patient.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 5: So you have to be patient all sets alike. So
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 5: even now that you know ten years, fifteen years, I'm
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 5: going to say now when I turned thirty five in July,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: I'm going to be cooking for twenty years. So building
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 5: this brand for twenty years. Everything that I've wanted is
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 5: happening right now at this moment. Brand deals with Infinity.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 5: You know, I have an awesome commercial that's coming out
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 5: where I'm honored to know that Infinity, that luxury brand
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 5: wants to follow me around for a day and tell
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 5: my story, and it's going to be an awesome commercial.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 5: Can wait to share that. You know, I'm a chef
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 5: and with the Institute of Culinary Education, even though that's
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 5: not my alma mater, I'm so happy to be with them.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 5: They give me an opportunity to tell my story on
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 5: blog posts, to use their kitchen for YouTube shows, for
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 5: if I want to shoot a book, if I want
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 5: to just come in and prep for an event. I'm
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 5: grateful for people like that that believe in me, believe
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 5: in the brand, and and help me take my career
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 5: to a level that I wouldn't imagine doing.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: So.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 5: I think it's important and as you mentioned, you know,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 5: companies like Wells Fargo to see my Instagram page and say,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 5: you know, we want to partner up and collab with
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 5: this guy because what he's doing is positive, so I
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 5: know that he can be the right guy that will
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 5: share our message. And I'm always smiling, so I have
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 5: people say I have a million dollar smile. It comes
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 5: with making people happy.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: Chef Calvin, Man, you want thank you for coming. Appreciate it.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: Appreciate it anything you want to tell the people your Instagram,
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: social media and thing you got coming up.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 5: Absolutely, Man, I appreciate you guys for having me, letting
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 5: me tell my story on a whole different platform because
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 5: I'm able to tell people my story and inspire. So
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: I always say if I can inspire one person from
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 5: one thing that I do per day, my job is done.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 5: The most important thing is if I can offer some
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: people advice that want to become a young entrepreneur. Is
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 5: back to what I said, surround yourself by greatness. Don't
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 5: be afraid of not making a lot of money now,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 5: don't chase the money. The money will come chasing you.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 5: I'm at a point in my career where i can
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 5: greatly say that I'm turning down gigs because there's just
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 5: so many things coming in. So as the team expands,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 5: I'm looking forward to growing my YouTube show. Starting my
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 5: cookbook in January and cookbook, yeah, that's number one thing.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 5: It's cookbook and cooking classes. So I'm going to try
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 5: to get back on the cooking classes. Looking for a venue.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 5: All my social media is chef Kelvin c h E
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 5: F K E l v I N. Don't look at
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 5: my page after midnight. You're only going to make yourself
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 5: hungry in advance. But thank you guys for having me.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: Thanks you man. Troy housekeeping it on.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 6: Yeah, shout everybody on patreon dot com. I know that's
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 6: our proud to pay program. The support on it has
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 6: been tremendous, man, and it's beautiful. We got to actually
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 6: get to speak and and and engage with some of
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 6: our patrons and the list keeps growing. So shout everybody
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 6: that's supporting that. You know that if you are a
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 6: Tier four or five member, you are access to Alisia University,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 6: which is our online school. Shots wearing the merch, shout everybody, Yo,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 6: the merchant has been moving like crazy.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: Man. We put up the merchant.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 6: The sales were out out the door man the first day,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 6: So shout everybody that's purchased the merch.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, man, you want to talk about university.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Nivirsually, we're about to actually do a class, like
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: right now, he's not joking. It's three classes every single week.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: We do a real estate class on Monday, we do
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: a floating class on Wednesday. Me and Troy do a
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: class every Thursday. And starting in the new year, we're
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: going to have e Yo. Yeah for sure, so you
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: know we it's an interactive at zoom. We get to
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: ask questions. It's really dope. It's really dope experience. And yeah,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: don't forget Atlanta, Atlanta VIP experience. We are coming January
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: twenty six. It's gonna be crazy live podcast, networking event,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: open bar, dinner, and then we're gonna have a workshop
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: the next day. Alumnis is gonna be there. We're gonna
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: be there. It's gonna be a whole vibe. So events
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: tab on our website on your leisure dot com.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 4: Don't play yourself.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: No, Atlanta, we got we can't wait to touch the
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: town for sure. And the book tip of this week
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: is Kitchen Confidential by the late great Anthony Bardain Peace
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: for sure, so I thought that would be fitting. Chef
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: recommended that book himself.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 4: He read it four times.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's it. Thank you guys for rocking with us.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: We'll see you next week.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: Peace Peace, Coach.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 11: The energy out there felt different. What changed for the
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 11: team today?
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 8: It was the new game day scratches from the California
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 8: lock Play is everything. Those games sent the team's energy
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 8: through the roof.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 11: Are you saying it was the off field play that
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 11: made the difference on the field.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 8: Hey, little play makes your day, and today it made
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 8: the game. That's all for now, Coach.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 11: One more question played the new Los Angeles Chargers, San
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 11: Francisco forty nine Ers and Los Angeles Rams scratchers from
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 11: the California lottery. A little play can make your day.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 11: Peace Play responsibily. Must be eighteen years or older to
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 11: purchase plate or claim