Latest / The Steve Harvey Morning Show / Overcoming the Odds: His story showcases how family heritage and values can shape a business vision across generations.
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to my show. I'm Rashon McDonald, a host of
- 0:02Speaker 1: Money Making Conversations Masterclass, where we encourage people to stop
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- 0:30Speaker 1: can uplift your community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or
- 0:34Speaker 1: advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Now, let's
- 0:38Speaker 1: get this podcast started.
- 0:40Speaker 2: I have a fraternity brother in front of me. He's
- 0:43Speaker 2: my guest. Or make a sign five.
- 0:45Speaker 1: I actually please this young man, but let me tell
- 0:47Speaker 1: you about him before we get into that fraternity talk.
- 0:50Speaker 1: After earning an MBA and an MS and miis lost
- 0:55Speaker 1: a successful career in business consulting with some of the
- 0:58Speaker 1: nation's top firms, helping companies transformed through technology. He is
- 1:02Speaker 1: now reviving the legacy of the spare rear barbecue Pit
- 1:06Speaker 1: of Greenville, Texas, bringing his family's Cherry's recipe barbecue recipe
- 1:11Speaker 1: you know over already seventy year old recipe, seventy year
- 1:15Speaker 1: old sauce, and authentic Texas techniques to cook County, Illinois. WHOA,
- 1:21Speaker 1: The mission is too simple to become one of the
- 1:23Speaker 1: nation's premiere barbecue destinations by delivering unforgivable flavor with world
- 1:28Speaker 1: class service. Please work with the money making conversation masterclass,
- 1:32Speaker 1: Robert Fitzpatrick.
- 1:33Speaker 2: How ain't doing Fratt doing well? Fred?
- 1:35Speaker 1: Long time Margie Houston District. Let's get that out of
- 1:38Speaker 1: the way. Yes, because I want to go back. I
- 1:41Speaker 1: always tell people this, Robert. Okay, because now you're at
- 1:44Speaker 1: to barbecue all right. You know he also served our country.
- 1:47Speaker 1: Thank you for that.
- 1:48Speaker 2: Okay.
- 1:49Speaker 1: Navy, right, yes, okay, between the ages of eighteen and
- 1:52Speaker 1: twenty two, you know we just fire, you know, we
- 1:56Speaker 1: we you know, can't nobody tell us. You know, we
- 2:00Speaker 1: talk of the world between eighteen and twenty two, and
- 2:03Speaker 1: then after that we kind of like get off target,
- 2:06Speaker 1: you know, might get married or might do something like Okay,
- 2:09Speaker 1: you joined the Navy and all these things, but that
- 2:11Speaker 1: wasn't what you were your dreams between eighteen and twenty two.
- 2:16Speaker 2: Now you know mis mb you know.
- 2:19Speaker 1: You transformative guy in the tech world with corporations nationwide,
- 2:24Speaker 1: can now barbecue. So tell me this, what did you
- 2:30Speaker 1: want to do b between the ages of eighteen and
- 2:33Speaker 1: twenty two.
- 2:35Speaker 3: Between age eighteen and twenty two, I had set out
- 2:39Speaker 3: to become an industrial engineer. Prior to that, I actually
- 2:44Speaker 3: wanted to be the city manager of the little town
- 2:47Speaker 3: that I grew up in, Belle, Texas. In my opinion,
- 2:50Speaker 3: it was just a poorly run Even as a teenager,
- 2:52Speaker 3: I thought it was a pool.
- 2:53Speaker 2: You saw the city and I thought I could do
- 2:56Speaker 2: a better job.
- 2:57Speaker 3: So I thought. My counselor told me it's really at
- 3:00Speaker 3: that time, he said, there's really not a city manager curriculum.
- 3:03Speaker 3: He said, but you all to study civil engineer and
- 3:06Speaker 3: then you could that would be a good background to
- 3:08Speaker 3: be a city match thought about it, thought about it,
- 3:12Speaker 3: and at the time, so this is late nineteen seventies,
- 3:16Speaker 3: they're not gonna let a black man be a city manager.
- 3:21Speaker 3: And then my dad had a business and I thought,
- 3:24Speaker 3: I think I'll study industrial engineering because to me, that
- 3:27Speaker 3: was engineering applied to business, right, So that's what I
- 3:32Speaker 3: was trying to be between eighteen and twenty two, was
- 3:33Speaker 3: an industrial engineer.
- 3:35Speaker 1: So educate us what exactly is an industrial engineer.
- 3:40Speaker 3: And an industrial engineer does it? Like I said, it
- 3:44Speaker 3: applies engineering concepts to business. Okay, So an industrial engineer
- 3:49Speaker 3: would design business processes. An industrial engineer UPS employees lots
- 3:56Speaker 3: of industrial engineers. So time and motion study, shortening distances,
- 4:01Speaker 3: shortening work.
- 4:02Speaker 1: Did you say the famous thing that UPS trucks are
- 4:06Speaker 1: designed or left turns and something like that so they
- 4:09Speaker 1: can shorten their delivery routes.
- 4:11Speaker 2: Yep, yep, yeap. I believe so, And that was.
- 4:15Speaker 1: Tied to indust your engineer, and I'm sure, okay, so
- 4:18Speaker 1: just learning how processes work.
- 4:21Speaker 3: Right, right, And my thinking was maybe I could use
- 4:26Speaker 3: that thought methodology to help my dad's business flourish and growth.
- 4:32Speaker 3: And what was his business? And his business was Dad
- 4:35Speaker 3: opened the Sparry Barbecue restaurant in nineteen fifty one in Greenville, Texas.
- 4:41Speaker 3: That was four years three years before Brown Versus Boarding
- 4:45Speaker 3: education at the peak of Kansas that desegregated schools, and
- 4:50Speaker 3: so when they opened, it was also against the law
- 4:52Speaker 3: for blacks and whites to eat together. Right in restaurants.
- 4:56Speaker 3: Dad just broke that law. He said, anybody wants to
- 4:59Speaker 3: eat can eat here. So for the next fifty years
- 5:03Speaker 3: Dad was serving northeast Texas. Well, I think it's the
- 5:06Speaker 3: best barbecue on the planet.
- 5:08Speaker 2: Let's talk. Let's talk about that. That's history.
- 5:10Speaker 1: You know, to have a forward thinking father, I would
- 5:14Speaker 1: have to say courageous. Yes, okay, yeah, you know I'm
- 5:18Speaker 1: from Texas, Houston, Texas, so I know what Texas is. Okay,
- 5:23Speaker 1: talk about your life growing up with that type of father,
- 5:26Speaker 1: that type of environment, because obviously it impacted you because
- 5:30Speaker 1: you wanted to run Greenville. You thought you could do
- 5:32Speaker 1: a better job, even in seventeen eighteen, so you saw
- 5:36Speaker 1: things differently as a young person.
- 5:38Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, one of the things I saw was a
- 5:43Speaker 3: strong leadership by my dad, letting blacks and whites eat
- 5:46Speaker 3: together in the same place. He didn't allow cursing in
- 5:50Speaker 3: his restaurant, didn't have music in his restaurant either, because
- 5:53Speaker 3: they didn't want to bias you know, country versus R
- 5:57Speaker 3: and b versus soul to this good food, just good
- 6:00Speaker 3: food in a hole in the wild place in Greenville,
- 6:03Speaker 3: Texas that stayed packed. But he didn't allow cursing. So
- 6:11Speaker 3: a white person was in his restaurant continuing the curse.
- 6:16Speaker 3: So my dad had to come from behind the counter
- 6:18Speaker 3: say hey, young man, I don't allow that kind of
- 6:21Speaker 3: language in this restaurant. He quieted down, Dad went back
- 6:25Speaker 3: to work. That cursing starts up again. Dad picks up
- 6:29Speaker 3: a pistol, goes right up to this white man in
- 6:32Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties and says, I can do one of
- 6:35Speaker 3: two things. I can call it an undertaker of the ambulance.
- 6:37Speaker 3: Which one do you prefer? And if I shut up
- 6:42Speaker 3: his cursing. So so I had a dad like that,
- 6:46Speaker 3: right right.
- 6:48Speaker 2: So that anything in the place didn't get burned down overnight.
- 6:51Speaker 3: No, suddenly, suddenly, I think a lot of people were
- 6:57Speaker 3: scared about that black white.
- 7:00Speaker 1: It's a combination of scared in respect and respect. You
- 7:03Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, because you know I first of all,
- 7:06Speaker 1: I respect anybody who went against the knowing when as
- 7:10Speaker 1: he ends up doing.
- 7:11Speaker 2: He was a business owner in a business where you
- 7:15Speaker 2: know all.
- 7:16Speaker 1: The all you know talking about how hard is open
- 7:19Speaker 1: the small business today, think about when your dad was
- 7:22Speaker 1: trying to do it. Okay, anybody give him a lot
- 7:25Speaker 1: of credit wasn't anybody gonna give him a loan. Wasn't
- 7:28Speaker 1: anybody in the situation where you had to deal with racism,
- 7:33Speaker 1: You had to deal with so many elements of discouragement
- 7:37Speaker 1: going home, you know, wondering if somebody gonna rob even
- 7:41Speaker 1: when you got home, you might get robbed. So the
- 7:44Speaker 1: elements of that really had to have vote. Was it
- 7:47Speaker 1: a profound impact on you?
- 7:49Speaker 3: I would say profound impact. You mentioned not getting ribbed
- 7:52Speaker 3: when you go home. He never got nobody, nobody even
- 7:55Speaker 3: challenge to tell and he always took back In those days,
- 7:59Speaker 3: you always took home and then you and then you
- 8:02Speaker 3: took it to the bank. And they and I'm just
- 8:04Speaker 3: sure people knew that, but they also knew he would
- 8:09Speaker 3: clock you if, as we said, he busted the capital.
- 8:15Speaker 2: And this is really a professial.
- 8:18Speaker 4: No documentary on your dad.
- 8:21Speaker 3: He did do East Texas State, which is about fifteen
- 8:23Speaker 3: miles away now I think they call it Texas and
- 8:26Speaker 3: in commerce. Yeah, they did do a documentary on him,
- 8:29Speaker 3: so he's interviewed and I do still have that. The
- 8:32Speaker 3: local paper that for Black History months did a whole
- 8:36Speaker 3: spread on him. Not related to that, but more related
- 8:41Speaker 3: to Barbecue National Geographic did a spread on it in
- 8:43Speaker 3: nineteen eighty and then some Living magazine also did a
- 8:47Speaker 3: spread on it him in the eighties as well, But
- 8:50Speaker 3: that was more barbecue.
- 8:51Speaker 2: Not so much his personality.
- 8:53Speaker 1: I think that that's more about what we're talking about.
- 8:55Speaker 1: You know what inspired you?
- 8:58Speaker 2: You know? You know am I? You know?
- 9:00Speaker 1: You ahead of your time in the management information system,
- 9:03Speaker 1: which is what dominates our world today Google phagbook. Anything
- 9:08Speaker 1: you do in the social digital space is managing information systems. Now,
- 9:16Speaker 1: education played a major role in your life. Talk to
- 9:19Speaker 1: us about that. Well, let me say a couple of things.
- 9:23Speaker 1: So I'm the youngest of seven. Uh no, gay be
- 9:26Speaker 1: me all of us.
- 9:28Speaker 2: I got you know, six sisters, two brothers, So you
- 9:30Speaker 2: can stop all of that young and.
- 9:31Speaker 3: See, all of us had degrees undergrad Five of us
- 9:38Speaker 3: have massive degrees.
- 9:40Speaker 2: The youngest child meet from from Greenville Tech. Wow. Uh
- 9:45Speaker 2: so the youngest time me, I have two masters.
- 9:47Speaker 3: Uh and so what I what I began to do,
- 9:51Speaker 3: kind of continuing the industrial engineering aspirations, is to help
- 9:55Speaker 3: companies improve finance. So in accounting process of this processes
- 10:00Speaker 3: really so the mis degree allowed me to understand the
- 10:04Speaker 3: technical side more than most financial people, and the NBA
- 10:09Speaker 3: allowed me to understand the business side more than technical
- 10:12Speaker 3: people do, so I helped them communicate and help improve
- 10:15Speaker 3: systems from the Navy to EDESS time and only old
- 10:21Speaker 3: people know what DS is. Right, you probably know EDS
- 10:24Speaker 3: because you worked that.
- 10:24Speaker 2: I be a I've worked for their computer.
- 10:29Speaker 3: I worked for consulting companies of both Arthur Anderson and
- 10:32Speaker 3: you have to be old to know what that is.
- 10:36Speaker 3: And KPMG more recently. Wow, that's a resume.
- 10:40Speaker 1: Now, how did you squeeze military service into all of that?
- 10:45Speaker 2: That is a great question.
- 10:46Speaker 3: So actually my I have two pieces of military service.
- 10:51Speaker 3: One was straight active duty, where I was active duty
- 10:54Speaker 3: and deployed on the ship. Okay, that was from nineteen
- 10:57Speaker 3: eighty six to nineteen ninety, and I was still taking
- 11:01Speaker 3: classes while I was. In fact, that's why I went
- 11:03Speaker 3: into the Navy to be able to afford college. And
- 11:07Speaker 3: then I finished my listener trying to catch up with
- 11:11Speaker 3: people my age, so I said I probably should do
- 11:13Speaker 3: some more education, and I joined the reserves. So I
- 11:20Speaker 3: finished those two degrees, and I both joined eds's Accounting
- 11:25Speaker 3: of Financial Leadership Development program and the Navy picked me
- 11:30Speaker 3: up as a supply co asser, So I had to
- 11:32Speaker 3: I had to do two years of preparation to become
- 11:34Speaker 3: a supply cosser in the reserves. But that was only
- 11:37Speaker 3: a week and a month and two weeks a year,
- 11:39Speaker 3: except for when I got deployed to Iraq right right,
- 11:43Speaker 3: that was a straight six months right desert. So that's
- 11:47Speaker 3: how I combined those two careers. The reserve career was
- 11:50Speaker 3: really only one week in the month and.
- 11:51Speaker 2: Two weeks a year.
- 11:52Speaker 1: So we know, Robert, long time been knowing your long time,
- 11:56Speaker 1: fascinating life.
- 11:57Speaker 2: You know, we're going to get to barbecue.
- 11:59Speaker 1: But I just want to respect sometimes when I'm when
- 12:03Speaker 1: I'm talking to people, you know, they kind of like
- 12:06Speaker 1: normalize their lives.
- 12:08Speaker 2: They normalize the things around them. You know.
- 12:12Speaker 1: You know, see what your dad did is kind of
- 12:14Speaker 1: normal to you, you know what I'm saying. But to me,
- 12:17Speaker 1: it's like, wow, you know the fact that seven kids
- 12:22Speaker 1: all got degrees.
- 12:23Speaker 2: You know, see, you know that's normal to you. You
- 12:28Speaker 2: know what I'm saying.
- 12:29Speaker 1: And and I just want people to understand, who are
- 12:32Speaker 1: listening to this show, we all know that's not normal.
- 12:36Speaker 1: So I have to ask you this question, why is
- 12:40Speaker 1: your family so humble?
- 12:44Speaker 2: Humility?
- 12:45Speaker 3: Probably because of mom and Dad, but also probably because
- 12:48Speaker 3: we are firmly rooted in Christ.
- 12:54Speaker 2: So if you try to get bold, he has a
- 12:56Speaker 2: way to make you right, right, right right.
- 12:59Speaker 3: We try to get right right, he'll make you hump right.
- 13:03Speaker 3: I've been through many of those to big experiences. One
- 13:06Speaker 3: of those, I would say is pursuing the industrial engineering
- 13:10Speaker 3: at the University of Houston. That curriculum was.
- 13:14Speaker 1: Tough, absolutely well, you know the thing about it, like
- 13:17Speaker 1: anybody you know, and that's a university US of which
- 13:20Speaker 1: I graduate from.
- 13:20Speaker 2: That's a predominant white institution.
- 13:22Speaker 1: And you know, and so when you start talking about
- 13:26Speaker 1: your peer group of people who look like you, you know,
- 13:30Speaker 1: it was always funny, you know, because we were in
- 13:32Speaker 1: fraternity or make us I find we knew a lot
- 13:34Speaker 1: of our friends or in all the divine that organization,
- 13:37Speaker 1: it looked like a lot of black people, you know,
- 13:39Speaker 1: and we moved there is probably about thirty five thousand students.
- 13:42Speaker 1: It was only about twenty five hundred dollars at the
- 13:45Speaker 1: university center. You see something looking like a ton of us,
- 13:48Speaker 1: So we really didn't have, you know, peers we could
- 13:52Speaker 1: turn to that looked like us. In the academic arenas
- 13:56Speaker 1: on talking about professors and deans and people like that
- 13:59Speaker 1: who could. So in my behindsight, I can see there's
- 14:02Speaker 1: an advantage to go in to an HBCU because there's
- 14:06Speaker 1: a certain degree of relatability and also a general cause
- 14:11Speaker 1: to want you to win, you know, because I always
- 14:16Speaker 1: tell people in college, as you know, Robert, it's the
- 14:18Speaker 1: pyramid of fact. It's a bunch of yards a freshman.
- 14:21Speaker 1: But as you go up that pyramid to that tip
- 14:24Speaker 1: is less and less, and as you get less and less,
- 14:27Speaker 1: that means it's less of us that we're going to
- 14:29Speaker 1: go around and have support because guess what, we've been
- 14:32Speaker 1: victimized by the pyramid of fact. So let's go back
- 14:35Speaker 1: to what your daddy started, barbecue. That's why I got
- 14:38Speaker 1: your the show. But you have such a fascinating life, Robert,
- 14:41Speaker 1: I have to detour right because you need everybody your
- 14:44Speaker 1: dad tell till we started talking about barbecue man, why
- 14:47Speaker 1: you want to get in the barbecue business man?
- 14:51Speaker 3: Well, I think that's very simple. Again, the leaving college
- 14:56Speaker 3: or leaving home to pursue college and they can study.
- 15:00Speaker 3: That's your engineering, so I can come back and help
- 15:02Speaker 3: my dad better his business. So I think almost everything
- 15:05Speaker 3: I was doing, I was thinking I need to be back.
- 15:08Speaker 4: So eighteen or twenty two really was about the business.
- 15:13Speaker 3: In the back of my mind, I'm thinking I need
- 15:16Speaker 3: to be doing that. When I got married in nineteen
- 15:19Speaker 3: ninety nine, a little late, but my wife said then,
- 15:24Speaker 3: and she still says to this day, well she's not
- 15:26Speaker 3: saying this so much now because I'm almost there.
- 15:28Speaker 2: She said, you.
- 15:30Speaker 3: Need to be barbecuing, and you don't need to be
- 15:32Speaker 3: working for these people out you need to be barbecue
- 15:35Speaker 3: so awesome. And then as I've traveled around I lived
- 15:39Speaker 3: and say, why.
- 15:40Speaker 2: Did she say that? I can't just let you go on?
- 15:43Speaker 2: Who are you doing that? She said, you need to
- 15:46Speaker 2: be doing this.
- 15:47Speaker 3: Well, a couple of things. One is she she got
- 15:49Speaker 3: to taste the barbecue. Okay, did you deliver it?
- 15:52Speaker 2: No, that my dad was so she knows.
- 15:57Speaker 3: And then I started because we moved to Virginia where
- 16:00Speaker 3: I couldn't get dass barbecue, so I had to start
- 16:02Speaker 3: making it on my own. So she started to taste
- 16:05Speaker 3: about barbecues and like, that's what you need to be doing.
- 16:08Speaker 2: Wow, listen, lord down, what are you barbecuing? What am
- 16:13Speaker 2: I barbecue?
- 16:14Speaker 3: So my dad's place is called the spare rib. Okay,
- 16:18Speaker 3: so that was his special pork spare rib. So of
- 16:21Speaker 3: course I'm gonna do that.
- 16:22Speaker 2: Okay.
- 16:24Speaker 3: When he started too, he used to. He used to
- 16:26Speaker 3: get the whole fourth quarter of a cow and cut
- 16:29Speaker 3: it himself. Wow, and smoke all of those pieces of meat.
- 16:35Speaker 2: Uh huh.
- 16:36Speaker 3: Later on they everybody stopped. He was able to get briskets,
- 16:40Speaker 3: and briskets just took off. So and I don't have
- 16:43Speaker 3: his skill set to know how to cut a four
- 16:45Speaker 3: quarter of it. So we'll be cutting up, we'll be
- 16:49Speaker 3: smoking briskets, Polish sausage. I'll take the sausage, police sausage,
- 16:54Speaker 3: link sausage, and hot links as well. I would change him.
- 16:58Speaker 3: People don't do that enough.
- 17:00Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe.
- 17:02Speaker 1: My greatest passion man and memory is coming out of
- 17:06Speaker 1: a nightclub in Houston, Texas and paying two three dollars
- 17:10Speaker 1: for that link sandwich man the White brig.
- 17:14Speaker 2: Yeah, we gon have hot links yep, yuh.
- 17:18Speaker 3: And then one a time I want to have something special,
- 17:21Speaker 3: like I'll probably bring some Buddhan up from Louisiana smoking
- 17:25Speaker 3: and that'll be the month special for that.
- 17:27Speaker 2: Right right right, Smoke bou dat, Smoke bo da Okay. See,
- 17:31Speaker 2: here's the thing.
- 17:31Speaker 1: I lived in Chicago five years, five years, five years,
- 17:35Speaker 1: and so I'll tell you their hands down. Can nobody
- 17:39Speaker 1: be Houston food wise, hands out, but Chicago cargo brother.
- 17:46Speaker 2: And see a lot of people don't know that.
- 17:49Speaker 1: When they used to do the cattle drives, they always
- 17:52Speaker 1: went up to Chicago. That's why great steak, great barbecue
- 17:57Speaker 1: exists up there because people go Chicago cause everybody want
- 17:59Speaker 1: to claim Texas and South Carolina that mustard. And you
- 18:03Speaker 1: get up in that Kentucky area. Every every small town
- 18:07Speaker 1: in Kentucky got a barbecue stand. It blew me away,
- 18:10Speaker 1: expecially orange I think Orangeboro, Kentucky is the barbecue capital
- 18:14Speaker 1: of the world. And if you go there, you go
- 18:17Speaker 1: they put another barbecue shop some places in Orangeboro.
- 18:20Speaker 2: It's ridiculous.
- 18:21Speaker 1: And so so when I when I see you're going
- 18:25Speaker 1: up there, and now tell everybody.
- 18:27Speaker 2: Where you going and why are you going to do
- 18:29Speaker 2: barbecue and Chicago? Okay, okay, that's a great question.
- 18:33Speaker 3: So what what brought me to the area where I
- 18:36Speaker 3: live now is I came to be the Deputy Comptroll
- 18:39Speaker 3: and Budget also for the Navy on the Great Lakes
- 18:43Speaker 3: Naval Base, had a two hundred million dollar budget and
- 18:46Speaker 3: about fifteen people that worked for me. Thank God for technology.
- 18:53Speaker 3: So that brought me the Great Lakes. But I knew
- 18:59Speaker 3: I wanted to do this barbecue things, so I started
- 19:01Speaker 3: looking at locations, found a location closer to Chicago. I'm
- 19:05Speaker 3: about fifty miles north of Chicago. Found a place closer
- 19:08Speaker 3: to Chicago, and thought, Okay, this is the place. So
- 19:12Speaker 3: let me get the word out that I'm going to
- 19:14Speaker 3: be here. So I went to one of our tenth
- 19:17Speaker 3: district for Mega Fire and one of the brothers that
- 19:23Speaker 3: told me that I needed to be in Skokee, Illinois.
- 19:27Speaker 3: And you know how we go back and forth with
- 19:29Speaker 3: the job. Man, I ain't going to know skoke right,
- 19:35Speaker 3: I'm not going to to gear Gear. But I started
- 19:39Speaker 3: investigating and just one positive thing after another, and I'm
- 19:45Speaker 3: buying building.
- 19:45Speaker 2: It's Skokee, right.
- 19:47Speaker 3: This particular brother happened happens to be on the board
- 19:50Speaker 3: of trustees for the Belgian Skokee. So just so many
- 19:53Speaker 3: positive things in the city. The economic development team there,
- 19:58Speaker 3: they didn't just it's not like, oh yeah, another restaurants come,
- 20:02Speaker 3: It's like they really want me to be there. Yes,
- 20:05Speaker 3: we have grants that you can. Yes, we'll help you
- 20:07Speaker 3: find a building. Yes, hey, meet this owner of this building.
- 20:11Speaker 3: Met the owner, he was fantastic. She So this building
- 20:17Speaker 3: that I'm buying is five thousand square feet. I'm gonna
- 20:20Speaker 3: act three thousand square feet. But I've got two tenants
- 20:24Speaker 3: ridding the other two thousand square So if I don't
- 20:27Speaker 3: sell a beef sandwich, that rent's coming in.
- 20:30Speaker 2: Well that's the old management sidey. You know what I'm saying.
- 20:34Speaker 1: You realize that I always tell people, you know, you
- 20:36Speaker 1: buy building what you're doing in the daytime if you're
- 20:39Speaker 1: doing stuff at night only, you know. And so you
- 20:42Speaker 1: said I got five thousand greet first feet, you partitioned
- 20:45Speaker 1: it another thousand thousand for potential rent landlord activity.
- 20:50Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm gonna be a landlord as well as
- 20:52Speaker 3: a restaurant too at the same time. But the village's
- 20:56Speaker 3: scoche has just been so so positive, inviting, I think.
- 21:02Speaker 2: So I'm gonna be downtown.
- 21:03Speaker 3: Skokie, right, and it's it's one of those communities areas
- 21:07Speaker 3: that's on the comeback. So this barbecue place, this Texas
- 21:12Speaker 3: style barbecue place, may be the marquee feature.
- 21:15Speaker 2: Let's come back down this.
- 21:17Speaker 1: Is this is always the killer for me and barbecue places.
- 21:21Speaker 1: What are the sides?
- 21:24Speaker 2: The sides are some Texas sides. You gotta have potato salad,
- 21:28Speaker 2: yes sir, yes, sir, And you gotta have color.
- 21:30Speaker 1: Let's let's letta okay, the sides we talked about, Okay,
- 21:37Speaker 1: potato south Okay, is that potato with mayonnaise?
- 21:40Speaker 2: And what type of sound is? Uh? It will be
- 21:42Speaker 2: the egg based egg potato sound. Yeah. Okay, I want you,
- 21:47Speaker 2: I want I want you. Okay. Coast law shredded Coast
- 21:51Speaker 2: law with vannagar?
- 21:52Speaker 3: What type of coast hot we we're gonna make the
- 21:53Speaker 3: coast law in the house. Okay fresh, it will have
- 21:56Speaker 3: some fresh and it'll have some vinegar, but it'll be
- 21:58Speaker 3: a pineapple coach slaw. Okay, okay, cool, so a little
- 22:01Speaker 3: different than maybe what you use.
- 22:04Speaker 2: You hadn't ran me out the build because you got
- 22:06Speaker 2: two things.
- 22:06Speaker 1: I'm with y'all, okay, because a lot of people don't
- 22:09Speaker 1: have the right potato sells.
- 22:10Speaker 4: I go places dealing man potatoes out.
- 22:12Speaker 2: Yeah, long coast Yeah, where I am you about to
- 22:15Speaker 2: get cold? I'm saying.
- 22:16Speaker 1: Okay, So so you already up and up in Chicago
- 22:19Speaker 1: area doing something a little different.
- 22:21Speaker 3: Okay, gotta have fried ocre, Okay, fried ok Okay, have
- 22:24Speaker 3: fried Ocre. And then I'm gonna have a barbecue bean
- 22:28Speaker 3: that's a pento bean, no sugar, not that sweet stuff
- 22:31Speaker 3: that I'm making house. But because everything we do is smoke,
- 22:35Speaker 3: my barbecue beans will be smoked, right, and you know
- 22:38Speaker 3: that's about this. But the barbecue sauce.
- 22:41Speaker 4: Seventy year seventy years, I can't.
- 22:44Speaker 1: I can't ask you about the seventy year old recipe
- 22:47Speaker 1: because you're gonna look at me like a praise. Okay,
- 22:49Speaker 1: So but it's like different versions of that recipe, or
- 22:53Speaker 1: it's just one recipe for the sauce.
- 22:54Speaker 2: It's just one recipe. I can.
- 22:56Speaker 3: I can if you ask for it, hot fight see hot.
- 23:00Speaker 3: I can heat you up when you come in, but
- 23:02Speaker 3: you have to request that. And if you want a
- 23:04Speaker 3: little bit sweet, I can. Okay, But my standard sauce
- 23:07Speaker 3: is my dad's standards. So great interview, Robert.
- 23:09Speaker 1: Now, I got the Kaslow, I got the smoke beans,
- 23:14Speaker 1: I got the potato salad, I got the fried opal.
- 23:17Speaker 2: That's four sides.
- 23:18Speaker 3: Yes, desserts, desserts, Apple Coppler, blueberry Coppler, Sweet, potato pie.
- 23:26Speaker 3: Uh my dad had a fried apple and a fried
- 23:28Speaker 3: apricop pie. I'm gonna try to recreate recreate that, but
- 23:32Speaker 3: I don't know if I go that's some Greenville stuff, right.
- 23:35Speaker 2: The april coop pie, you might want to hold off
- 23:38Speaker 2: on that.
- 23:39Speaker 4: But the blueberry.
- 23:41Speaker 1: You have to be a blueberry now, because that's again,
- 23:45Speaker 1: that's a staple for me.
- 23:46Speaker 2: A lot of people don't know how good that is. Man.
- 23:48Speaker 3: Yeah, now, and you hear the scoop ice crime on
- 23:52Speaker 3: either one, okay, now, the closure eye Texas toast or
- 23:55Speaker 3: corn bread. But I'm gonna have what you call bread dipping, Okay,
- 24:02Speaker 3: I mean sauce dipping. Bring so it'll just be sliced bread.
- 24:07Speaker 3: In the old days we call it light bread, not
- 24:09Speaker 3: corn bread. Absolutely, corn bread to me is is soul food.
- 24:13Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely not trying to be a soul food player.
- 24:16Speaker 3: Really not trying to be a creole restaurant. We're trying
- 24:19Speaker 3: to be a straight barbecue restaurant, just just barbecue. And
- 24:23Speaker 3: I want to do it better than or as good
- 24:25Speaker 3: as anybody in the United States. So I'm trying to
- 24:28Speaker 3: kind of keep it simple because I want to do it.
- 24:31Speaker 3: In fact, I wouldn't even do it if I didn't
- 24:32Speaker 3: think I was bringing the best product on the planet
- 24:36Speaker 3: to Scokeet doing all.
- 24:37Speaker 1: I'll tell you, Robert Man, you are can I say this, honestly,
- 24:42Speaker 1: an amazing man, the whole thing.
- 24:44Speaker 3: And I say that being interviewed by an amazing man.
- 24:48Speaker 3: I always looked up to this.
- 24:49Speaker 2: I appreciate that.
- 24:50Speaker 1: But but I was just talking about the humbleness and
- 24:54Speaker 1: you know, and and and now I got to go
- 24:56Speaker 1: back to you.
- 24:56Speaker 2: Now, did you just say anything about your mom? Marb's
- 24:59Speaker 2: there or what.
- 24:59Speaker 3: Your mom's sweetish, sweetish person, but the dominant figure with Dad,
- 25:08Speaker 3: I'll say this about mom so so so.
- 25:10Speaker 2: Dad had the force of you will do right right right.
- 25:14Speaker 3: Mom can tell you why you needed to do stuffing
- 25:16Speaker 3: right right that bat, but he didn't give h much
- 25:20Speaker 3: just what you gonna do?
- 25:23Speaker 2: I love it. I love it.
- 25:24Speaker 1: Hey man, you know we're gonna talk more, man, and
- 25:28Speaker 1: you know I'm gonna come up there for your grand opening,
- 25:30Speaker 1: But rob love that. First of all, thank you for
- 25:33Speaker 1: blessing me with this interview. You special brother, your family,
- 25:37Speaker 1: special man, and uh your two of your children got
- 25:41Speaker 1: a degree in sociology. I found that out my miners
- 25:44Speaker 1: and sociology changed my life.
- 25:46Speaker 2: And so again, man, thank.
- 25:48Speaker 1: You brother for coming into my having and allowed us
- 25:51Speaker 1: to hear your story.
- 25:52Speaker 2: What's the name of the barbecue place.
- 25:53Speaker 3: It's my dad was named Dewey, So it's gonna be
- 25:56Speaker 3: Dewey's Barbecue Market up and okay, illing right outside, right
- 26:02Speaker 3: outside of Chicago, by fifteen miles north of Chicago. We're
- 26:05Speaker 3: gonna have a side of it that's to go. So
- 26:07Speaker 3: it'd be about like Wegman's. I forget what grocery store
- 26:11Speaker 3: is around here, but like a grocery store deli. But
- 26:14Speaker 3: everything I have is smoke. But you can get it
- 26:16Speaker 3: and go. Oh, you can dine in with us, and
- 26:19Speaker 3: you can hear some of the old good sixties, seventies,
- 26:22Speaker 3: eighties feel good music.
- 26:23Speaker 2: That your dad would let you play. Dad wouldn't let
- 26:26Speaker 2: it get play. We gotta get out of here, man,
- 26:29Speaker 2: Thank you, brother, Thank you.
- 26:32Speaker 1: Don't understand, man, I you know when I meet individuals
- 26:39Speaker 1: and I interview a lot, man you know, and Robert understand, brother,
- 26:45Speaker 1: you are a special, special individual who's raised by a special.
- 26:52Speaker 2: Special mom and dad.
- 26:54Speaker 1: And I'm telling you right now, every last one of
- 26:56Speaker 1: y'all impacted people are impacting people in this world.
- 27:00Speaker 2: Thank you for coming on Money Making Conversation.
- 27:03Speaker 4: Thank you for listening to this episode.
- 27:05Speaker 5: No need for you to do me a favor right
- 27:08Speaker 5: now to follow or subscribe to Money Making Conversations. It's
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- 27:24Speaker 2: Keep winning