Abandoning Tradition in the Hospitality Space

of restaurants, hotels and nightlife venues. Great to have you both with us and Todd. I want to start with you because I see in your notes that you're abandoning the traditional hospitality business model. What does that mean? Um, well, you know, I think we have you know, just sort of in all my years of going through the business of of of restaurants and owning small restaurants and then being involved at hotels and casinos and various aspects of

how people dined in the various venues. Is I think what you're seeing in many ways is a shift in in sort of the expectations of the customer. Um, certainly they're uh pent up right now, especially coming out of pandemic because there are pent up pins up. Um need to be out and the social and get out of

the house. And you know, I think maybe there's even more appreciation for what restaurants are doing today in the hospitality industry because, um, you know when people who had to sit around for a year or two years without being able to go out, and I think they realized, Wow, we really missed this part and we are these gregarious creatures that need to go out and socialize. Yeah, I hear that. Hey, um, I should know Todd is joining us on the phone from l A. Keith, you're joining

us from Thailand. So, Keith, we really appreciate you staying up late to join us here on Bloomberg Business. We come on in here, Keith Burkard, you are chief of staff at English Hospitality Group, and weigh in on what you were just hearing from Todd, because yeah, I want to hear how the landscape looks right now as we are all satisfying that pent up demand to get out there, because hey, as we learned today, it's pretty still pretty

hard to find employees out there for these properties. Yeah, I would say that's one of the biggest challenges right now in hospitality and that goes for all, um you know, to to your hospitality groups, not to specifics um to certain ones, but really identifying what your strengths are in whatever hospitality venture you have, you have to make sure you surround it with the right amenities and amplification that the market is looking for. And that goes, you know,

not just domestically in the United States, but internationally. As Todd was saying, what what areas are you focusing on and how are you creating that consumer volume on a consistent basis? And so Todd, I want to go back to the phrase you used, pent up demand do When I hear pent up, it's sort of implies a burst

and then a sort of a fade. And obviously, I mean this conversation that we're having, it's uh, against the backdrop of a lot of recession fears, and I'm wondering, you know, how you're thinking about the economic environment as you expand I mean, I think, yeah, Keeps and Eye have this as our daily conversation on many different fronts that as far as is uh, you know, we and I certainly you know, we were very fearful of this sort of recession or pending recession, you know, hitting um

the fact that yes, at some point, the new the newness or the reintroduction of being able to go out again and and socialized and being restaurants. UM. Change Obviously the economic uh you know uh decreased as far as you just people being afraid of sending money again and going out. So UM, I think all those having said I yet to see a lot of that slept yet, and I don't think we've seen it in even our restaurants.

But you know, we are very treading, very cautiously, treading very cautiously and looking at every aspect of the business. You know, I think he does that, you know, the signs and codes of every day, you know, getting sort of the idea of getting making sure they were not overstaffed, making sure that we watch all our numbers very closely. I taught I want to go back to something that you said before we went to break and it's the idea of not necessarily seeing softness anywhere around the world.

What can you tell us about regional differences here in the US and outside of the U S when it comes to demand. Um, As we do sort of get through this reopening here. UM. I think, well, that's a very interesting question, but I think it's it's spit in the a couple of categories, depending on sort of the the type of cuisine the restaurant. It is sort of the the neighborhood you're in, you know, if you look a sort of South Florida now or where you know, uh,

you know in on beach area that you know. Obviously there's certain categories of UM of of types of restaurants. They're always going to kind of flourish because depending on the clientele, their economic situation, UM, whether they have kids, they don't have kids, you know, that kind of thing, how how that plays out, and sort of what they're daily average way of leading is UM. So, you know, I think what we try to do is diversify as

much as we can in our portfolio. All the restaurants we listed are all across all categories from you know, from luxury to to uh more fast casual UM and I think, you know, giving people different options helps us maintain a pretty consistent um UH business. Depending on what's going on in the world, we always to have some category that will be filled in one way or the other. So let's talk about the cannabis category because it is

like that transition. That transition this definitely called my eyes. So tell me about Last Leave, Keith, come back in here, so as I understand it. Uh, you have mac and cheese, pasta olive oil. Tell me tell me about that endeavor. Sure.

So Last Leaf was general you know, kick started during COVID because we knew that there was a large consumer based at home and consumers in the cannabis world did not have other optionality in the space, and we focused on primary food groups, not focusing on gummies, chocolates, um and traditional cannabis consumption uh Todd you know, had a lot of connective uh components to cannabis throughout the years, and we said, all right, what type of products are

humors touching on an everyday frequency? And those were oils, spices, rubs, et cetera. And we created lastly, which is cannabis and fused primary food group edible products. And we've been very successful as these touch and have a micro dose and component to it with both THHC, CBD, CBNU. And we know that this industry is slowly evolving, especially in the pharmaceutical industries. H They see it as a threat because it comes from a natural source versus some of the

inorganic compounds, and it actually works. It actually works, we're finding in most categories. That's so interesting time. I mean, well, go ahead, sorry, go ahead, No, No, I mean, I just I think also one of those ways that you can I it's always really started out this whole idea that's really the health benefits and things that we've been approached by all sorts of different in all sorts of different categories, you know, from doctors, from medical facilities, from

children's hospitals, etcetera. So I think, you know, that's a huge category that I think is still being discovered. And I said, you know, I think that is getting m played down by the big farm. You know, big farm. It doesn't want to it's getting threatened by it a little bit. And so we are big fans of those components of it as well. Hey, Todd, when when you look out across and I like, I don't mean this in a pejorative sense, but literally like you're you're trying

to build an empire here. You know, you want restaurants, hotels, nightlife events, ghost kitchen venues. You've got the cannabis element to here. When you look out across the different properties you have, where are you seeing the biggest area for growth? Um? You know, I still there's still huge, huge, uh. From the standpoint of of convenience in meaning food the delivery that we still haven't seen the interesting come down. Um. So this would be the ghost kitchen side of things. Yeah,

ghost ghost kitchen. But how do you how do you replicate what you do what people have come become accustomed to visiting your restaurants, how do you replicate that in a delivery sense in a ghost kitchen because it's more than just the food when you have that experience in one of your restaurants. What is a ghost kitchen? Can we just define that first? Okay, Yeah, that's a good question, Todd. You want to take you want to take it away? Yeah? That that was started I think by travelers. Yeah, from

Travis from Uber. Yeah, Travis Kline with cloud kitchens correctly, and he did cloud kitchens. And then so the whole term ghost kitchens meaning that it was a secret place that people made food or a warehouse that necessarily was not seen by anyone. It was just a place where they had a kitchen so that their turn ghosts not being seen. Basically, the idea is to create it exclusively for delivery, so you have, you know, the food being made in a place that doesn't actually look like a

kitchen or look like a restauran. Yeah, not a restaurant. Yeah, it's just the kitchen and we're in a warehouse, you know, with less ranked and less overhead. And that's a good idea that you can blow the truck into or the delivery guys who get into and out easy. So, Keith as as chief of staff, how are you really leaning into this idea of of of delivery and and creating this creating this sort of sort of extension of the brand.

It's a good, good question. Uh. Basically, what we're doing is we're partnering with really strong operators, not both in the US but globally because you need to have the right technology partner wherever you do this. But Todd has built i would say at this point, over a hundred brands in his career. So for us, this is a quick little pivot for Todd, especially to position a lot of brands on all different cuisine fronts, which makes Todd really really strong chef not not know, because he's not

one to mention. He has multiple different skill sets and we have approximately nine to fifty brands that we can put into these technology platforms. And also you see that, you know Amazon, you see Walmart retailers. The food delivery on the grocery front is changing dramatically as Well's interesting and another component where Todd has already been thinking. Todd's Todd's a very interesting creature. He's tend to twenty years ahead everyone else in the food space. Well, we love

having you guys on. That's the voice of Keith Burkar, chief of staff for English Hospitality Group. Also Todd English Master chef and partner at English Hospitality Group. I really appreciate you guys taking the time and joining us this afternoon. Katie, that is gonna do it for Bloomberg Business Week on this Friday, August five. Thank you so much for us and for kids. Really appreciate it. You're listening to Bloomberg Radio.