Citizen Chef Season 2 Coming Soon!

and welcome to a special episode of Citizen Chef. My name is Christopher Osciitis, and you don't know my voice, but I'm the executive producer of this show. My team here at I Heart has been working tirelessly with Tom Colliqio over the past year to put together a show we hope inspires you to know more about the food you eat. And as we're looking forward to season two, we wanted to sit down and talk to Tom himself about his plans, about how he spent the last year.

This year that's been so strange for all of us, but we're at a point where there is a little bit of hope. But that's something that Tom also feels strongly about. And so he really wanted to share with you the listeners, a little bit about what's inspiring him for the future. Tom is currently in his home in

New York. I'm in studio in Atlanta. But while we can't invite you into Tom's restaurants, what we can do right now is invite you into Tom's living room, into his den, into wherever in his house is quietest because he's got a new puppy. Tom, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me. I know we're busy getting ready for the new season of the show, and you're certainly busy keeping your restaurants afloat, but I would just like to dive into what the last year

has been like for you. Oh wow, it's it's been there. It's been up and down. A year ago today we closed all all of our restaurants and so I had to lay off about four seventy people, and that was rough. The last service we had was on a Sunday, and I remember going into the restaurant and Bartender has been with me twenty years. He was in there having dinner with his family, and all I can do to keep myself from losing it the table because it's terrible day.

Even then, I had a good idea from talking to friends I have in government, that there was going to be a pretty robust unemployment package. So I felt at least people were going to get through. But then some of my employees weren't eligible to receive unemployment for various reasons. So listen it was. It was. It was tough. And then thinking about what my media plans were going to be. I was out of a job. I had no idea

what we were going to shoot again on TV. How long was it gonna take to get the restaurants open? It was rough. Very Soon after closing the restaurants, about a day later, I received a phone call from a friend of mine who was working for talent agency and well, you know, we have a foundation and we want to help restaurants. And I kind of laughed and I said, I don't think your foundations are big enough to help us,

but let's keep in touch. Soon after that, I received another phone call from a friend who when I worked at Food Policy Action, he was one of our lobbyists that we worked with and have joking, I said, I think independent restaurants need a lobbyists. Let's make that happen, and so I called my buddy. I said, I think I know we could do with your money. And that's how the Independent Restaurant Coalition was formed. We started to grow.

It started with about twelve people, and we found a group down south that was involved in another group out of Chicago and in San Francisco, Los Angeles, all over the country. And we had one goal, and that was to reach out and make sure that our federal government understood, you know, how bad things were, and then also get them to understand the scope of how many people independent restaurants employing, and just getting an idea of the general

economics if a percent of these restaurants closed. And it worked out, and we managed to get our bill written in the House, in the Senate, and the election with the new Congress, everything got thrown out the window. We had to start all over again, but we got through that and our bill is now included in the stimulus package. So I spent the better part of the last year working on that, and then the other part was just trying to figure out what I was doing with our business.

There's opening in the summer, closing again in the fall, reopening again, trying to figure out the best way to use PPP opening a business and keeping staff safe. It's just been a it's been an up and down the year. Right now, I'm feeling pretty optimistic business wise. We started shipping these boxes out and that's done really well so far. We got by We lost out of our four restaurants in New York, one of them is permanently closed, but other than that, the other restaurants are opened up l A.

We just reopened Vegas. They're open more of a license and deal. They're open, but we're managing. Yeah, it's weird. Right now is a time of I think cautious optimism in the country, and there's been a lot of focus, especially from the Independent Restaurant Coalition, on dealing with the effects of the pandemic. But one thing that in your career you've always focused on is is not just what's directly in front of you, what what the apparent problem is,

but digging deeper, looking further down the line. So what can the Independent Restaurant Coalition and groups like it turn their focus to long term after some of the immediate negative impacts of of the COVID pandemic have been addressed. Yeah, Uh, that's A great question, because we're struggling with that as well as organization. So we're going through some changes. Number one, we're moving away from a Seed four lobbying group and more towards the C six, which is a trade organization.

So we're doing that work. You know. After that, I'm sure we're gonna end up working on whatever comes our way, whether it's healthcare that can really help our industry, minimum wage on a federal level or a local level. Mostly will be involved in helping craft these various bills, and you know, we want to get involved early on and shape these programs as opposed to letting them happen to us. And so that's what I think we're looking at coming up.

There's not there's no one particular thing we're looking at right now. Right now, we just got to get our house in order. Tom. These days, you're known as much for your activism as you are for appearing as head

judge on Top Chef for your restaurants. But I'm curious, it's easy working in this industry to whether you're a line cook, a manager, front of house, back of house, you know, your shift ends, you go get a drink with friends, uh and co workers back when that was sella thing that was easy to do, and it's easy to sit there and complain about the industry, and then you go to bed and you wake up and the

next day you just go right back to work. At what point did you decide, I can't just focus on the day to day and I need to address these bigger pictures. When did you move from being someone who was aware of the problems to someone who decided to

address the problems. Yeah. Sure, let's unpack that a little bit, because I think part of what you said there was really important because I was that person who would go out after work with Then when I ope my own restaurant, I realized that now I can make change and what I used to do not so much to go out with the coworkers, but at the end of the night, all the servers would sit in the private dining rooms, said grammarc tavern, and that's where they would, you know,

do their side work and stuff like that close out the end of the night, and of course everyone would beach theman, you know, problems with this, problems that, and I would stare and listen, and you know, I would go to a meeting next day and image who meet the next day and say, well, this is what I'm hearing. This is some suggestions, and they're like, we're be getting this like one o'clock in the morning. You get a lot of information from waiters after they had a couple

of glass of wine. It was about taking that information and then figuring out what to do with it, and that's how we made some real politic changes in our restaurants. They also helped, Like early on, Danny I were very like minded. I mean the grammar should have and we put out smoking before we were mandated to. We offered insurance well before people were offering insurance. In fact, you know a lot of our peers gave me a hard time.

But when when it came to actually trying to focusing on legislation, it really started with the issue around hunger. And I got to credit my wife Laurie for the shift, because you know, I did a lot of work around hunger, but really raising money for various organizations. Chiefs naturally gravitate

towards the issue around hunger. Please we feed so many people who you know, who can afford it, but we actually someone a us think that that food and nutritious food is should be right, but I would, you know, show up in events and bring food and to help raise money for no kid hungry, our gods that we deliver meals on wheels city Harvest. And I thought I knew a bit about the issue. And then my wife was mentoring a young woman and so she would come

to house, clearly she was hungry. We would send food home. But then when she was in the school, principal call and say, it's clearly this young woman is hungry. So my wife started. She's a filmmaker, and she decided to take on the issue of hunger. A documentary placed the table and it was during that time that very quickly we learned that hunger in this country is more of a political issue, lack of political will. It's not because

we don't have the resource to feed people. When the film came out and it gave me a soap box, and you know, obviously I was on TV already, I had a following, so I was able to use that following into trying to make some positive change around hunger, and that led to the founding of Food Policy Action, which was a lobbying group essentially set up to help craft legislation. But what we did is we actually published

a score card. We great at Congress andally voted around various food issues, and so that that put me square into Capitol Hill. And we can't end hunger through charity. Charity can help it, help manage it, but we really need some legislation dating the food stand program, looking at school lunch, looking at school breakfast, and getting as many people as possible. And there are a lot of different

organizations that were working on us. A lot of these organizations they were doing their charity work and they were afraid to get involved in politics, and we felt that's where we had to move people. You know, since the eighties, going back to Reagan, that was a message that government's bad governments the problem. Government is not the problem. Dumb governments problems, but good government and good policy really can help a lot of people. You know. I think we

finally are seen that major shift. I think with Biden, whether it's infrastructure or whether it was a stimulus package, we're finally putting people first. It's not enough to to sit back and say, well I don't do it, so it's okay, or I support this. For that, I think we gotta get vocal, and I think we have to be not afraid to handling it some people along the way. It's going to happen that I'm comfortable doing it, and

I'll continue to do it. Can you tell me what it was like the first time you actually went into Congress to address the seat of power of our nation in person? Yeah. So the first time I did it, was it a hearing, It's congressional hearing on I believe it was school lunch. I'd go there and I might speech prepared and it went really well, and I was I was more nervous giving my speech because I'm terrible reading a speech. And once I got through that, the

Q and eight part was fine. I actually got into it a little bit with one of the members. It's interesting, but it was scared. So Shelley Pingry, who is a congresswoman from Maine, she had a townhouse on Capitol Hill and she wouldn't buy this, say afterwards and sixty members would show up, mostly Democrats, occasionally gets some Republicans in as well. You know, that's when he saw when the

stuff really gets done. And you saw that how when Republicans and Democrats got together, they were all laughing, having a good time. I think a lot of that stuff that you see is really for the cameras and a lot of times you can get the other and move something along, but you realize that this is how stuff gets done, is by reaching out. It really works, and

they want to hear from people. I think that sense of personal connection is is what's really valuable, and understanding of that is what pulls a lot of the levers and drives decisions. One of the things we try to do on Citizen Chef is really take deeper dive, to take time to dig into an issue so that you have time to talk to the people that you find really fascinating to really understand and unpack issues from their

perspectives as well as from yours. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're interested in exploring on this upcoming season of the show. Yes, so big changes at the U S d A. And you hear the U s t A. And I think the average person who clearly eats food, they don't understand how and what the U. S t A does. And so I want to probe that a little bit and see if they're modernizing, how are they going to modernize it, how does that

affect people? A lot of what the pandemic sort of uncovered is the fragility of our food system, and so trying to figure out ways to modernize that. And there's several bills to get rid of the whole KFO feed lot system that's the way of feeding cattle and splittering cattle. Interested to see how that plays out. But also clearly the pandemic, a lot of people weren't able to feed themselves. And so now we understand the needs of what a

strong safety and can afford Americans. And so I think probing a little deeper, we're still going to see regional storms that are going to really affect the food system. I think that's not going to change. And we saw the regional storm in texas As ice storm, and you see the habit that's it's playing out now and ways where there's shortage is a plastic and things like that.

And so we're in the crossroads here and the question is how is government going to deal with some of these issues, How we can strengthen our food system, how are we gonna make them more localized. That's something that I want to continue to probe, but I think also want to explore just certain restaurants as they open up, how are they doing, because we're still a long way away. If I see one more America's open again, I'm gonna put whatever hair I have on my head out because

we're not open yet. Restaurants may be open, but people are still very hesitant to come out, and I think that the restaurant industry is still gonna struggling. So yeah, there's a lot left to do. I think it's really building on what we started season one. You know, the comments that I got back from a lot of people is they didn't know. And that's why I love to

hear that they learned something they didn't know about. Are they went deeper than we and they thought and people I want people thinking about food in terms of this system that we created and think in terms of how does food different seeds to plate, what's the process and people are becoming more and more interested in how their food gets there. But tom as we're sitting here recording this,

it's the beginning of April. Top Chef is premiering on TV and a lot of people know you through that, so it would be remissing me not to ask you if you could give us a little preview of no spoilers, but let us know one thing that you ate this season while you guys were recording in Portland, they really knock your socks off. There was one dish in Particken that I remember that I really enjoyed, but there were several.

There was a lot of great food this season. In season and we shot during COVID we were in a bubble. We got to Portland quarantine for ten days. We had a hundred and fifty people on the crew. They were all staying in a hotel. We were the only guests in the hotel and mask were worn. Socially distant temperatures taken. We had test taken every other day. I had my puppe with me, so I would take our own walks and that was about it. We you know, got through.

Nobody got the other cool thing. Instead of flying guest judges in once a week, we had a pod of past cotestines who were the diners and the judges, and that made for a really interesting perspective. It was. It was a fun season's to shoot considering, you know, how how shitty the world was and time to get away and we made we made great TV, and there's some really cool things that came out of the fact that

we were shooting, you know, under these scenarios. So the restaurant wards was completely different and really worked out well. We also really got into into some of the issues around diversity, you know, we we we did some really new things. I can't, I can't give it away. I can't. I can't tell you all of you know, some of the groups that we that we worked with. But it was.

It was a good season, really was. Tommy mentioned your new puppy and can you promise listeners that at least in one episode your puppy is gonna make an appearance on the podcast. Well, we usually try to keep her quiet because I'm usually in a closet, but I can bring her. I can bring her out if you want. She's always always ready to jump in. Her name is Tiki, which is the Hebrew word for hope, but her Instagram site is very Tiky girl sunk to super freak. She's great.

She's a flat coat of retriever. Our first Flatty passed away less November, I guess it was, and so we waited a few months and tikis Tiki's got us really got us to go. But she's been great. Yeah, it's been a good year for propets because we're home with them. You know, they're gonna freak out next year and all of a sudden, their home by themselves, they're like, where there, free go, thank you. So it's gonna be a big

change for them next year. I think after this past year, one thing we can agree on is that we need both more puppies and we need more hope. And it sounds like with her you got both at the same time. Yeah, I think so. I think so. What I'm really hopeful right now, I think you know, it's it's more shots and arms and more people that are vaccinated, and there's a lot of pent up demand out there, and every

week we're hiring more people. Hopefully that continues and we'll get people back to work and eventually we'll get through. We'll learn a lot from it, and hopefully we're better for it. Tom, I just wanted to say congratulations, not only on all the work you're doing, but also it's it's Crafts twenty year anniversary. I'm sure this is not the way you imagine you'd be celebrating twenty years of your flagship restaurant. But well done nonetheless. Thanks. Yeah, it's

twenty years and we really didn't celebrate it. We did. I did some zoom cooking classes around it, and we shipped out some of our favorite dishes and stuff like that, and that was great. But we're gonna celebrate our twenty first year. We're gonna call it our legal age and we'll have a party around that. But yeah, twenty years old and we're gonna we're gonna make it to twenty one.

Luckily for us, we got through partly because we had a great landlord and we've been there twenty years and they appreciate us, and so they really worked to get through this. You know, Tom, you've mentioned on this called landlords a couple of times, and I think a fifteen dollar cocktail, it's not fifteen dollars because of the of what goes in the glass. It's everything else around that. And one of those big things is real estate. Yeah,

you're absolutely right. Real estate, especially in New York and some other big cities, and really driving our cost. Rent is so much higher. You see, rent is like eight percent of our cost now it's four. So yeah, rent is it's just been it's been tough, and we're starting to see them come down a little bit, and I think there's gonna be some opportunities there, but it's been

really driving our costs. You know. The good thing is a lot of chefs who came and trained in New York are leaving the city and they're opening up great restaurants, and so in a way, we're seeing great food in secondary and terchary cities, and because that's where you can afford to open up a restaurant, we're seeing a big shift.

There's some benefits to it. But retail left New York when you have uh Ralph flam Paulo closed Flagship Store and Madison Avenue because the rent was too high, and I just felt, I don't need to be there anymore. I don't I don't need to lose money in the store to be here anymore. I think that's what's happening in food too. I think a lot of people are maybe you did your first restaurant in New York, but your next two or three or four are not going

to be in New York. Tom, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us today and anything you want to let listeners of Citizen Chef. Know there's gonna be a season two and I'm looking forward to it. I've been heard from so many listeners that that they're ready for more so and yeah, pready to dig in perfect. Thanks so much, So that's it. That was a chat

with Tom. I really enjoyed diving into this conversation. Tom already has a great idea of what he wants the upcoming season of Citizen Chef to be, but he's also looking for some suggestions from you, the listeners. So hop onto Twitter, pull up your Instagram account you could find Tom at Tom Colichio and let him know what you want to hear about, and make sure to use the

hashtag Citizen Chef. And I know a lot of you are probably already subscribers, but just in case you aren't, make sure you're subscribed to the show so when the new season launches, you will have first access to the new episodes. Thanks so much for listening today and for listening to the podcast. Stick around for the upcoming season of Citizen Chef with Tom Coliqio. It'll be hitting your phones and devices soon.