The Iced Coffee Hour - “You’re Getting Scammed!” Joshua Weissman Reveals How Restaurants REALLY Make Money

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

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So you started out as an overweight teenager who loved food and now you're shredded, rich, successful YouTuber with 10 million subscribers. How much time is realistically needed to get to, like, a decently impressive home chef? I didn't go to culinary school. I worked in restaurants, in real-life scenarios, learning real-life techniques and tricks. Where's the landshould? What's the worst thing you've seen in a restaurant? State officials today looking to address the growing issue of substance within the restaurant and hospitality industry.

There have been people that I've worked with that were like, And then one day they just disappeared. Someone was standing up with their chef knife. The person stood up and turned into their knife. They got rushed to the hospital, got stitched up, went back to service. How much money do you think your restaurant's going to make? I have no idea. I mean, how much does Gordon Ramsey make on those restaurants?

Like $200 million a year? This is my new restaurant, which officially opens today. And it's called Ben and Lins. What's the most you've ever paid for a meal? One of the most expensive ones was for you guys. I wouldn't say it's phenomenal. Not my cup of tea. It's too buttery.

Buttering. Buttering. What is the biggest mistake that you have made? Joshua Wiseman, thank you so much for coming on the iced coffee hour. Oh, thank you for having me. How about you be back? So you started out as an overweight teenager who loved food, and now you're shredded, rich, successful YouTuber with 10 million subscribers.

He's a script. He did this intro, and the first thing I said is Jack. I'm going to not do that. I'm like, I actually kind of like you. That's actually, yeah, it's so funny. Jack's like, Graham, don't worry about it. He's a friend. Yeah, it's fine.

So why should people listen to you? Listen to me. Well, it depends on the advice. I'm giving. If I'm giving advice about cooking, I can give you a few reasons. I feel like you're an expert, though, at cooking, cars, watches, and business. You're really good at all those things. You know, sometimes I feel like an expert in many of those things and sometimes I don't. I feel like in cooking, yes, right? Like in cooking, I've spent my whole life learning how to be good at it, learning how to avoid mistakes. I've made a million mistakes cooking, right? Like I spent my whole life

doing it. So like my goal is to help other people avoid making the same mistakes I did in cooking. That's pretty much all I ever do. So if you ever watch any of my videos of me cooking, you're going to see, I oftentimes interject and go, oh, by the way, don't do this because XYZ or do this because XYZ. So my goal is always to give value. That's kind of it. But do people need to listen to me? No. There's a million resources out there, right? But I like to think that I'm doing something to help people. Why are people so drawn to cooking? Something I feel like everybody can understand. understand to a certain extent, right? Like, everybody eats. I feel like this has been said so many times. Everybody eats. But the reality is, like, if you pick up something and it tastes great,

there are certain things that universally taste good, right? Like a perfectly ripe and crispy apple, right? Lots of people love a perfectly ripe and crispy apple. Some people could sit down and digress why it's so good, why I enjoy it, why I think other people will enjoy it. But at the end of the day, like anyone can pick that up, eat it and understand it. It doesn't matter what language you speak, doesn't matter where you're from, you get it. So I think it's something everyone can touch. How did you learn to be a cooking pro? Oh, God, a pro? You guys are throwing the questions. I mean, you get paid to cook, right? And you were a pro. Were, whoa. And you are a pro. You are a pro. I'm messing with you. I mean, I think the simple rule for life is just repetition. You got to be

able to do it over and over and over again and not be afraid to make mistakes. And over time, you will master it. But what was the rule? It's like the 10,000 hour rule. It's kind of like, I look at it like that, right? Like the more time you spend just failing and up and, you know, making small modifications, getting a little better every time, eventually you're going to reach a tipping point where you have a total understanding of a subject. And in the world of cooking, like, it really comes through repetition. How much time is realistically needed if you're starting from zero food skills to get to, like, a decently impressive home chef. Jack's asking for himself.

You should see the way this guy cooks. Yeah, but I thought you cook now. I do cook now, and I use flaky salt, and I have MSG. Yeah, I mean, you're already there. He's healthy enough. He puts the steak in the air fryer. You know, honestly, I've come around with the air fryer. I've come around.

They've gotten better, though. I meant to say microwave. He hasn't graduated from the microwave. He still uses the microwave. Yeah, I don't even. You're talking to a guy who literally, like, when I first met him, his freezer was stacked bottom to top with lean cuisine and hamburger helper you know what i it's funny like the first time i ever came on the podcast i didn't know you guys that well and then over time

we've become friends which i i love you too but the funny thing is i remember when we first met i remember thinking like oh you know maybe like graham will get into cooking and like it you know like noticeably better by the next time i see and i feel like the amount of growth that's happened in in your cooking from then and now is like pretty pretty small but i don't know i don't need to because it's completely no because anytime I need like a really nice meal honestly I just I buy cookie unity and they're really good. And this could be a sponsor by cookie

so how much time would be needed if you're taking like someone with no food skills to become an impressive chef? Like for an average person if someone's watching this right now and they like they want to become a decent chef how much time would they really if I was teaching them or just very generally just very generally speak I really think most people can do it a lot faster than they think it's just the people kind of hold back too much like again, this applies to so many things.

But if you're willing to just throw yourself into it and let go of the fear of messing up or wasting ingredients, which are real, you know, there's a real tangible things to be worried about. But if you're willing to forego that, I think you can learn to cook pretty well. And honestly, if you, let's say open a cookbook and you just keep cooking recipes out of a cookbook and follow directions to a tea, let's say you do it three to five times a week. I know it's a lot. maybe two to four times per week,

I think you could become relatively confident in your cooking skills within two to four months. I'm not saying you're a master, you'll just have the confidence to keep going. Now, you say that you've made a lot of mistakes, and a lot of this is a learning process. What is the biggest mistake that you have made? There was a time that I was making a sauce called it.

Do you know what a gastric is? No. It's basically like a reduction between, it's vinegar or sugar. You reduce it into kind of like a sweet and sour or syrup. It's a French sauce. and I was reducing the sauce. And a lot of time in restaurants when you're doing prep, and it's early in the morning, you can utilize multiple burners. So you could theoretically

have three or four sauces that need to be reduced, but they're all different. So you have like three or four pots with all your different associated sauces. You'd go throw them on the burner, get them to a boil, reduce it to low. And you know that, hey, these are going to take 10, 20, 30 minutes. I'll put different timers for different things. And then I'm going to go off and, like, I don't know, pick some herbs or do something else, right? Maximize your time. try to do as many things at once as possible. So anyway, I was doing that, and I had all my pots on the stove. One of them was a gastric and a few other sauces.

They're all reducing. I go off and I'm chopping some veg. I'm doing some other prep to the side. One of my timers goes off. So I'm pulling all my different sauces as they get reduced at different rates. But one of them was taking a while. It was the gas streak. I leave the gas streak on and letting it sit.

It's simmering. It's reducing. I go off and do another thing. I'm working. At this point, I forgot about the pot on the stove, the gas streak, the last one. So it's just kind of reducing and reducing and reducing. I have no idea because I don't even think it's on the stove anymore. I've completely forgotten about it.

My timer went off and I let it go in my pocket and I didn't know. And someone goes, hey, there's a pot on fire. And I'm like, pot on fire. Well, I had a gas streak on, but I think I took it off. And also, how is it gas? Gastroix's not going to catch on fire. It's just water or it's just vinegar, water, or sugar. That's it.

And I go over there. And there's literally like a 12-inch flame, like a jet engine shooting directly out of this pot, like directly into the air. And I'm like, wait a minute. And then it says gastric with my initials on the handle. And I'm like, wait, how's that even possible that it's, and it's like carbon at this point. It's carbonizing.

So, like, it's like bubbling with like black soot out of the thing. wall also being on fire. So I'm like, okay, no worries. I got this. So there's a few ways to put out a pot fire, right? You could do baking soda. You could throw water in there, but that's more dangerous, right? It could splash, so many different things. So I suffocated it with salt. I took kosher salt and I just poured a bunch of kosher salt until literally was mounded up in the pot. It sounds like you're making a bomb. Yeah. That's crazy. And so the fire goes out. But then like a little like wiggling flame goes through the salt. And I'm like, ah, no big deal. And then it just keeps, and then the fire engulfs the salt and it's still going. And I'm like, how is this possible?

Like, I don't understand how this is possible. And then the president of culinary for that company walks in. And he goes, whose pot is this? I'm like, oh, my God. It's my pot. I don't know what's, I don't know how this is still on fire. It was a gastric. And he's like, well, take it outside. And I'm like, okay, all right. And so I like, I like, I start to pick it up and he's like, I got it. Moves me out of the way, grabs the pot and then walks outside with it, tosses it on the ground. He's like, just put a hose on it.

Anyway, this was like in front of the president of culinary, the CDC of the restaurant, and all of my coworkers and all of the front of house are watching this go down. Yeah, it was very embarrassing. Nothing really that bad happened, but it was like one of those things where it's like ingrained in my brown forever. So now I never forget pots on the stove. So as a chef, when you walk into a restaurant, what is the first thing that you notice? probably honestly sanitation.

The first thing I noticed is like how clean are the tables is the space well camped. It depends on where I'm going to eat though. Like if I'm going in and out, I'm not looking for that. Like I shut that part of my brain off. But if I'm going to like a nice restaurant,

I'm not looking for problems to be clear. I just notice things, right? Like if the table's really dirty and I put my hands on the table, I'm like, you know, you notice that it's sticky. You get you ever sit down and like you feel grease on the table? Right. And then that makes you think,

oh, what are they doing back there? So that's probably the first thing I notice. or staff interaction, like if the front of house are like particularly rude. I mean, I'm not going to say anything, but I usually notice that. Can you enjoy a mediocre meal or do you find yourself hyper-analyzing everything

when you go out to eat? No, it's not fun to hyper-analyze everything. You've got to be able to enjoy. Listen, like half of what is great of going out to eat is being with your friends, hanging out with people, having good conversation, who no one really loves to go out to eat alone, unless I don't know.

Graham, I feel like you do. I don't know why. I like eating standing up as fast as possible. You're just, it's terrible. Macy hates it because what I'll do is I'll just microwave food. I sit over the counter watching a YouTube video and I just scarf down my food. I get it down and then I'm on to the next. Your digestion system is just working overtime, man.

Is there a proper way to eat though? No, I'm not a doctor. I can't answer that for you. You know, you're going to have to get one of these wellness gurus to give you that info. But yeah, I mean, like, I really try not to overanalyze those things. I don't think about it that often, honestly. I just want to go out and eat and have fun. But what do you mean by mediocre?

You mean like something that's not fancy? Yeah, just like an average, you know, you're just like driving through barstow and you have to stop at a place. I prefer eating like that. I think I'm kind of over fine dining a little bit. You know, it's like it's expensive. It's also just like, I feel kind of stressed out when I eat at a fancy place. You know, they're like when they're sitting there describing the meal to you.

Like sometimes I want that. But like over, that's just not real life. Like sometimes you just want to go out and get a good burger or Sometimes you want to go out and just chill, something more relaxed. Do you like it when they describe the meal? Because I've found when I go to very fancy restaurants, which is not very often, but when I do, and they're just like, let me read off this menu to you. I'm like, well, I can read, first of all.

Like, and then they go through everything and they say a bunch of words. I have no idea what they're saying. They're saying, like different sauces and this. Jack's just going to get the burger, too. We don't need to hear. And I'm just going to get the cheeseburger. And if they don't have that, I'll get the chicken fingers or the steak. I thought we were talking about fine dining restaurant.

Okay, yeah, fair enough. But I'm just saying like, like this whole process of fine dining is, it's a process. It's getting a little annoying right now, I think. When they explain every thing, we need to do retention style editing for waiters and waitresses. Like I think, I think if there's a dish that's like inherently, like there's a necessity to describe it, like on how to eat it. If you know that people are always going to go, hey, how do I eat this? Like if it's plated really crazy and you're like, how do I eat this? I would understand.

I think that's helpful. If some, if staff go, hey, this. dish has this and that, it's easier if you eat it like nachos or whatever, right? Like, that, I think has value. But I think if you sit there and explain every single dish, it gets a little monotonous and boring. And also, I'm just kind of like awkwardly waiting there. Like, can you leave? I want to eat. Now, I'm curious when it comes to restaurants, why do so many restaurants fail? I don't have all the answers to that. But I feel like, I mean, there's so many reasons that restaurants feel. Running a restaurant is really hard. Like, I think people don't realize how hard

it is to run a restaurant. Marjans are thin. It's very hard to find. you know, people who know what they're doing. It's really hard to keep standards high. It's really easy to make mistakes. The margin of error is super small. So, I mean, all of those things combined, obviously can lead to a treacherous path to somebody who's not as knowledgeable or is more inexperienced. But even experienced people get knocked down in restaurants. I mean, we've seen tons of, like, celebrity chefs and, like, famous people who own dozens of restaurants. And every once in a while, they'll just close a restaurant. What is more important? Is it location or good food?

I don't know anymore, honestly. Like, I think good location is always going to help, right? Like, having a bad location is not going to help you. So my first thought would be, like, location's probably a little more important. But I think if you have bad food, who cares, right? I think that this notion that, you know, if you have bad food but a good location,

like you'll probably survive is not necessarily true, but it depends on the city, right? If you're in, like, a really expensive city, like Los Angeles or even Austin or, or New York, like, I feel like even if you have a great location, your rent's going to be really high. So you're already spending a ton on overhead. Your staffing is going to be really expensive, so you're even more overhead. And so now you have all of this that you have to pay off before you can even make a profit.

So if you're not selling enough volume or you're not selling at a high enough ticket per person, which usually kind of goes back to volume oftentimes. If it's not balanced properly, then you're eventually going to become that negative pretty quickly. So if your food is bad, like, how are you going to have? How are you be customers? How are you going to sell enough food? You know, so I would say probably a good mix of both, but location definitely helps. How much does the average restaurant make?

Because we've been to some pretty crazy ones where I see those buildouts that are tens of millions of dollars. And I look at the menu and I'm thinking how on earth are they ever going to pay this back? But before we go into that, when you hear how much some of these restaurants cost just to build, it makes a little more sense why the food gets so expensive. Like if you go out, order a couple steaks, maybe some drinks, all of a sudden it's a $200 bill. That's why a lot of the time I'd rather stay home, make a great steak, and eat really well for way less money. The only thing is that you have to know how to cook a steak right for it to come out anything like the restaurants. And that's the hard part, because unless

you really know what you're doing, you're basically guessing when to flip it, when to pull it off, and how long to let it rest. Our partner chef IQ does all of the thinking for you. It tells you when to flip when to pull, when to rest, and even when it's ready to serve. So whether you're making steak, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, or even burgers, you don't have to sit there wondering if you're about to undercook it or completely ruin it. Unless it's really simple. You just download the app and connect the probes, then just start cooking, and Chef IQ will send alerts to your phone telling you exactly what to do and when to do it.

Like our editor Michael's girlfriend literally cooks everything for him. He has no idea how to cook, awful cook, but he even cooked a perfect steak with Chef IQ. I mean, this is just incredible. This was the easiest thing. The UI of the app is also so nice. I could not cook a steak like this in a million years if I wanted to. Look at how juicy that is. Are you kidding me?

Bro, this is so good. So if you want to feel more confident when you're cooking and save money by not eating out, head to chef IQ.com and use the code iced for 25% off sitewide. Once again, that is chef IQ.com code ICED for 25% off sitewide. How much does the average restaurant make? Because we've been to some pretty crazy ones where I see those buildouts that are tens of millions of dollars.

And I look at the menu and I'm thinking, And how on earth are they ever going to pay this back? I honestly don't. I don't know. I'm not well versed enough in like the back end of, you know, I haven't worked at 20 restaurants. I've worked at three, four restaurants. So I don't have enough of a view on the back end. But I will say that every restaurant makes a different amount of money because each restaurant is a completely different business in a way, right?

Like there's really high volume but low ticket cost restaurants, right? So that would be like a fast food place or a fast casual place where the price per person is, lower, but the volume that they sell is way higher. But then you go to a fine dining restaurant, oh, well, we only serve 50 people a night, but it's like $300 a person. So higher ticket average, lower volume. So you have to like tip the scales one way or another. So it can vary pretty wildly, depending on the type of restaurant that you're looking at.

But I will say the most profitable ones are usually lower ticket cost, higher volume. Usually, not always. It depends. Like I'll give you an example, like steakhouses make a, a lot of money. Like some steakhouses can make 20, 30, sometimes 40 million dollars annually. Whoa. In one space. Just Google like highest revenue steakhouse and what they get per location because it's like a big number. It's like kind of shocking. And is it steak or we're talking like drinks.

Both. Steak is like one of those. I think it's a little bit of a perspective thing. I think a lot of what makes these type of restaurants like make a lot of money is the perception of value. That's what I was curious about how much psychology goes into pricing. So much. So much. So much. So much. Mentally I'm thinking, oh, that must be a pretty good steak. Forty-seven million dollars annually for one restaurant for Joe's prime seafood and steak. Have you been there? No. But I mean, that's just an example. You should go. Oh my gosh, man. That seems like the best place to go. We'll join you. Per year for one restaurant. Wow. Isn't that kind of crazy? So they, so theoretically, like,

if they sold that one restaurant as a business at a 3x multiplier, they're selling it for over $100 million. Okay, what's their profit margin on that, though? I have no idea. I don't know. I don't have their books. I don't know. I'm going to... They've got to be making 20%, right?

I think it's probably between... I don't know. It could vary wildly. I don't want to say, but like, it could, it could theoretically be 30 to 35% maybe. That's a guess, wild guess, don't know for sure. Have you ever heard of the myth or truth? I'm not really sure about in and out only making money from their drinks? Have you heard of that?

I've never heard of that. You've never heard of that? I feel like that was a pretty commonly shared belief is that In-N-Out literally only makes money off of their soft-served drink. There's no way. There's so many numbers that fly around in a restaurant. It's kind of hard to say, like, how much are they ordering? What's their, do they have a special deal with their purveyor?

Like, if you're an In-N-Out, you probably have a purveyor that you have a, you're getting like really low pricing on product because you buy so much of it. So you can usually get a special deal on it. So they're probably spending less on tomatoes and lettuce and ground beef than anybody else in the world, like theoretically, right? Or in U.S., I don't know, like, it depends, maybe. But there's so many different makeups, right? Like, I've heard from, and I don't know if this is true or not, but I've heard from people that Terry Black's barbecue is doing like 30 to 40 million a year as well. And they have supposedly like 35, 37 percent margins. I don't know

if that's true. I don't know. Like, I can't guarantee that. I've never seen their books. This was like a he said, she said thing. But I would believe it, though. Because again, they have volume and they have high ticket. And that's what makes steakhouses so profitable. Because perception of value, right, you've got a steak that they purchased. It's a New York trip that's one pound. It's one inch thick. It's a nice, big, juicy steak.

They bought the steak for, let's call it, $20 to $25. But they're going to sell you that steak for $125 to $250, right? Because it's Australian Wagyu and this, that, and the other. But they might be getting a special deal. They may be even spending even less per steak. So their multiplier on food, their food costs, in correlation to how much they're charging you is just abysmal. You can't do that in other restaurants,

but the perception to me, when somebody walks into a steakhouse is they feel, usually when people go to a steakhouse, they're like, oh, this is going to be a fancy meal, or maybe it's their, you know, Valentine's Day, or it's their anniversary. Like, it's a treat.

So most of the time when people walk into a steakhouse, they are prepared to and are okay with spending high ticket. I don't know what it is, but they won't do it at a certain fine dining restaurants. What's interesting is some foods, in my opinion, have no reason being as expensive as they are. For example, sushi. Sushi is like rice and it's just like raw fish.

You don't even have to cook it. Yeah. But they sell it for this premium price. You go get one roll and it could be $20 at a restaurant. And who gets full off of one roll? Realistically, you need two to three. Have you noticed? You know, like you need to eat a lot of sushi.

So it's extremely expensive for something that you think is it should be a lot cheaper. Have you noticed how many sushi places have opened in the last like five to 10 years? Yeah, but that's because what? They're just more popular. I feel like more people are just eating sushi these days. It's because they're really popular and people have recognized that they're like probably one of the highest ROI restaurant businesses you could possibly make. Like, have you guys noticed that there's like Omicasse is popping up everywhere?

Yes. Where it's like just a table and like two chefs. Because now people can open a restaurant for like a little bit more reasonable cost because it's a small room. They don't need a huge space. They don't need 20 staff. They only need two sushi chefs and maybe like a porter and a waiter or waitress. they serve, you know, they have a seat for 10 people.

They do maybe two to three rotations, so 30 people a night. I can't think off the top of my head, but let's see you get like a Hamachi Nagiri, right? Per nagiri piece, you might spend anywhere between 10, 12, 14, 15 bucks. Dude, it's like a half ounce of fish. Like 15, let's think about this for a second. How much do you think just a filet of the hamachi is? 80 bucks?

No, way less. Less. Way 30? Really? Yeah. I mean, I don't have the price off the top of my head, but it's way less than $80. Like, maybe the whole fish, but like, you're probably spending, I don't know, maybe, let's call it per side, I don't know, 40 bucks.

So you've got 80 bucks in the whole fish. You have two sides. Each side is, let's call it eight ounces. You got 16 ounces or probably more than that. Let's call it 24 ounces of fish, right? You're doing a half ounce per roll. So, like, do the math. Like, you're making a crazy markup on that fish.

So one thing I'm really curious about, there is an all-you-cad-eat-eat-sushi spot here in Vegas. It's $23.95. I think he was going to bring this up. When you go after 9 p.m. How do they make money? Because we're getting a table full of food for $23.95. Maybe for them, it's like they're regaining margin on product that would be thrown away anyways. So maybe they're, they've got like, all their fresh fish, they're saving for, like,

the typical day eaters, I guess, you know, the 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. crowd. And then like whatever scrap pieces, is it the full menu? It's a limited menu. Well, there's a few pieces they don't put on. There's like a meat piece, like a steak, sushi one. There's like very few pieces that are not available. Okay.

It's like 90 plus percent of the menu. That's kind of crazy. I don't know. I'm maybe it's just like. I heard it's reject fish. Like this is the fish that would have gone served at like a nicer restaurant, but it didn't qualify for it. they just send it to the all you can eat spots there's so many ways that they could make margin on

that though like theoretically you're to your point they could be buying fish at a lower cost because it's lower quality and then they can sell that fish and get it sold um at a lower cost for you and then they're able to sell more volume again remember it's like ticket average versus volume so to to me it sounds like they're getting more volume by putting that 9 p.m they're packed every night cool great so now they're selling way more than they usually do so I'm sure that they make up their margin doing that So you just opened up a restaurant. People have probably been wanting you to do this for a long time. What was the logic behind that?

It's so funny you stayed the question like that. Like, what was the logic? Yeah, this is not a logical decision. It's not a logical decision at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I love food and I love restaurants. I have a huge passion for hospitality. Before I was doing any of this, I worked in restaurants.

I mean, I didn't choose to go work in a restaurant to be, you know, have a silly fun time. I did it because I love restaurants and I love hospitality. And I'd also, to be honest, just felt weird having this connection with this community that I've built who also love food. And I feel weird that I haven't been able to serve them my food. Do you know what I mean? Like that's part of my MO. I cook for everybody I know. It's a big thing for me. It's how I express myself, but it's also how I connect with people. I like having conversation, but it's so funny. Whenever I have people come over, a lot of the time, like, I'll kind of like recede into the kitchen and be quiet for the next hour or two

so I can really focus on making a great meal and then once I'm done, I'm like hanging out with everybody. But I really like that part where I'm like in the cut and making an experience for somebody. It's almost like if somebody loves acting or somebody loves being a comedian and they like performing,

it feels like a performance for me and I just feel like that part of my body or that part of my brain has been like repressed for the past like five years because I can perform on camera but I don't get to serve people my food. And it just feels weird that I'd not.

And so it just felt like time to open a place. So what went into making that decision? Like, when did you decide that you wanted to open up a restaurant? How long has this process been? Oh, so long. I mean, the last time I was on here, I think I talked about how I wanted to open a restaurant. And it's taken a long time to figure it out because it's a big risk, right? I'm doing, I mean, I've gone through so many different iterations of restaurants.

There are other restaurants I would like to and will open over time. But I've had to like bounce around on different concepts. Because I have multiple concepts already built. but I had to bounce around with different concepts of like, should I open this first or should I open this first? And I was worried about what people would think if I opened this kind of a restaurant versus another kind. Should I go high end?

Should I go medium, whatever? And ultimately I decided, you know, I really want my first place to be a place that anybody can eat. I don't want to, like, be another person that's opening a super expensive restaurant that you can't get into that is like super exclusive. It's like, what's the point? You know, I want anybody to be able to just swing in,

grab a bite. It's affordable. You can go in and get a sandwich you know that you're getting it for like a really really good price a very competitive one like one that competes with fast food prices so explain this exact restaurant how did you decide that you're going to make this type of food how did you determine the the build out the location all of the logistics behind it with with most of the things that i do i always identify well exactly what i want the end result to be and then i work backwards so to me the end result was like i said i want it to be restaurant

premium quality like something that you would pay a premium for but deliver it to people in a much more affordable cost and way more chill. Like you don't need to dress up. And so that was like the core of the idea. And then I worked backwards from that. So I was like, okay, well, what will the dish be? Like, will it be multiple dishes? Will it be one?

I ultimately decided on like a holistic concept, which was like fried chicken sandwiches. I just feel like it's like an area that I love fried chicken sandwich. It's my favorite sandwich. I would choose a fried chicken sandwich over a hamburger. 99.9% of the time. It's just, to me, it's a better eating experience. But most of the new ones that come out are like 25 bucks. You know, this one's way, is way less than that.

And so I'm saying that my sandwich is just as good as a $25, $30 sandwich, but it's just not that expensive. You could just come in and get it for fast food prices. And it's about 100 times better than what you'll get at. And, you know, a Wendy's or a Burger King. And it's actually made with premium ingredients. We're making our own pickles. We're making our own sauces.

We're making our own everything, like basically, right? Like we're hand-bredding our chicken, et cetera. Once I figured out all of that, I basically was like, okay, well, we're going to have to work really hard to make this margin possible. And now it comes down to like really getting volume. So like, you know, fingers crossed, I really believe if you put a good product out there, people will show up. So I'm hoping that, you know, we get the volume that we're looking for the number of people to come in and eat. And at that point, once I figured out the branding, I was looking for a spot that would fit that. So I looked for what's called a second generation space, which is like places. that already have a kitchen. That's it. Like, let's say a restaurant was formerly there. They left. Now there's still a kitchen, but nobody, no resident. Nobody's holding that property. It's now up for lease. Those are the hardest to find. It took me three years to find one. Three years. So I went to multiple people. The first year and a half, I went to different locations and tried to get a lease thing going. And then once I realized how long it was going to take for each spot because of the permitting and build out,

I was like, we're so screwed if we, if we, it's going to take us years to open a spot and so much more money, by the way, because you have to pay for so much more because there's nothing there. So, um, yeah, I found a second generation spot. We, we built it out. I did all the branding and, um, probably over a quarter million and has been invested like just in like general build out. Um, but I'm, I'm like the only, I don't have an investor. I don't have a fund. I don't have a, a friend giving me money. It's basically like, hey, Josh, we need to buy this. Um, but I'm, I'm, I'm like the only, I don't have an investor. I don't have a fund. I don't have a friend giving me money. It's basically like, hey, Josh, gosh, we need to buy this. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm and I put it on your personal credit guide but not my personal. Yeah, you put your business card. Oh, wow. Business credit card. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean like, but basically, yeah,

if something needs to be paid for, I'm paying for it, essentially. And are you going to have a drive-through? No, it's crazy about doing all of this with no investors is that everything is on his shoulders. So if something goes wrong, there's nobody else there to pick up the slack. And I think a lot of people relate to that.

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And I kid you not, this is the perfect phone case. And are you going to have a drive-through? Not for this place. Yeah, no drive-through here. But I'm interested in doing a drive-to. The only problem with the drive-through is it adds a few logistical things that I'm not sure if I want to add yet or not.

If people are like overwhelmingly asking for it, I will find a way to do it. Like, I want this to be a place that people are excited to go to. But as of right now, we don't have drive-floor. I always thought the drive-thrues increase revenue substantially. Like, I always wish that you could do a drive-thru chippole. It just seems like an easy thing to do. So there's a few logistics that are involved with drive-thrus.

There's, like, I'm sure there's additional permitting. But then there's also, like, you need a different kind of POS system, I think. I've never built a drive-thru, so I don't know. I just know that my operator, that I work with, he's pretty hesitant on the drive-thru just because of the logistical hurdles to make it happen. It's not easy. Otherwise, everybody would have drive-through.

Do you think it's a good thing that it's so difficult to open up a restaurant? That's part of the reason why I wanted to open one. Because I feel like a lot of people are coming into the food space because it's a fun and I want to choose my words carefully. I don't want to say it's an easy way to make money, but I think people have identified food in the content space as like a place to farm money. And that's not why I got into it. I can promise you that.

But I don't like that. I don't like that people are just kind of jumping in just to make money, like, because it skews all the people out there that are trying to do good things. And so the restaurant, I think, is a good barometer of who really cares. But do you think they actually make money? Like, I saw a clip of David Dobrick saying that Dobrook's pizza is costing him $10,000 to $15,000 a month to stay open, but he likes it because he likes driving down Sunset Boulevard and being like,

hey, there is my spot. If restaurants didn't make any money, then nobody would open any more restaurants, right? I mean, I feel like that's a pretty, that's like one common sensical way to look at it. But they are, it's harder to make a, it's one of the hardest businesses to make money. And then you have to constantly baby it.

But I mean, I mean, how much does Gordon Ramsey make on those restaurants? Like $200 million a year? So are you planning to franchise or are you planning to open up a whole bunch of these? Like Dave's Hot Chicken sold for like, like, what, one billion dollars plus? My number one goal is just to make really, really good food at keep the quality standards and just constantly deliver a great sandwich that people love to eat, that people will want to go eat, that will make people think more about having a good experience when

they're eating. That's my own, that's my goal. Here's a curveball question for you. Could you sell the chicken at that price if minimum wage was $25 an hour? I think, yeah. I think so. Because we don't need a ton of staff to do our business. Like we built it in a way that we don't need like 20 staff all the time.

Does it ever work to automate like the cashier in front? Like I see some of the McDonald's now that really just have this kiosks. You walk up to you press a few buttons and like you just see someone scrambling in the bag, just putting it together. I mean, of course you're not paying another person. But I like the face time. I mean, right now we're so early beginning, you know. I don't know. Like, I don't, I will say this.

I don't feel comfortable franchising. Would I open up multiple locations? Maybe, yeah. I mean, I think it would be really fun, actually, if, like, I could interact with the people who watch my videos and be like, okay, let's vote. I'm going to open another place. Where is it going to be?

And then have, like, everybody vote for it. Have everybody be like, L.A. or whatever, right? And whatever gets the most votes, we're just like, all right? And then we just open wherever gets the most votes. So I think that would be really fun because then now people can enjoy the sandwich, but if you live in, I don't know, San Diego and San Diego, one, well, now San Diego can get the sandwiches that have to come all the way to Texas.

What's the secret to making a good fried chicken sandwich? I mean, many ways the skin and cat, right? Everybody has an opinion. To me, it's like a few things. The chicken has to stay crispy for a long time, because once you put in a sandwich, all the sauce and pickles and everything, it's going to go flaccid and chewy. The goal is to keep it crispy.

So something that stays crispy for a long time, so it's crunchy when you bite into it. The cook on the chicken is like maybe the most important part. You ever get a dry chicken sandwich? Horrible. It's just like sawdust. You can't even focus on the eating experience because you're focusing on not suffocating to death on this dry chicken.

So cook time on the chicken. And then seasoning. And I don't mean like herbs and spices. I say this all the time. People make fun of me for it. But like salt levels are like really crucial for chicken sandwiches because there's so many components that it can be underseason really easily.

And then maybe like the fourth one is like adequate saucing. Like you need usually a little more sauce than you think you need. I like it saucy. Which fast food restaurant has the best chicken sandwich then? Like who would be your main competitor? Outside of you guys, who has the best chicken sandwich? Reliably, you go there, you get a chicken sandwich. This is almost ideal.

I don't really have like a fast food place that does that for me. Pop-Eyes. When the Popeye sandwich first came out, I would say Popeyes was one of the leaders for sure. But now it's like, I feel like their quality's gone down so much. That's just my own personal experience, though. Shaq is a hot chicken spot. I haven't had Shacks yet. Is it big chicken or something?

I think so. It's called like Shaq's Big Chicken. Yeah. How much money do you think your restaurant's going to make? I have no idea. Like, do you think that it's going to be worth your time? I hope so. So it's really that risky to open up this restaurant.

I mean, you can sit there and run a pro forma. We've ran a pro forma. But, I mean, like, as anybody who's ever open to business likely knows that you can write a pro forma, and that's great. but it's a theoretical piece of paper. What if you just don't sell what was on the performer? Okay, well, then performance out the window. It could make seven figures if it does really well. But I mean, of course, there's the margin.

And I think if prices change dramatically, the margin will change, right? If wages go up dramatically, the margin will change. But I will say this, though. I'm not taking any money from this place out the gate. Like I'm very, very focused on nurturing this business. I'm not going to like the second it becomes profitable, start putting in my pocket. In fact, like, I'm going to probably if opening another one makes sense because people really want it in another city, I'm just going to use the money that we make off this to open another one.

I'm not going to just like start taking cash out of it. So I'm much less focused on making money off this place right now and more so focused on just making really good chicken sandwich and getting it to as many people as possible. What was the most surprisingly difficult thing about opening up a restaurant? I mean, the risk. The risk is theoretically infinite. I mean, unless you close the doors, the risk is theoretically infinite, right? And as you know, like, the failure rate for restaurants are extremely high. The costs are extremely high. And in my case, if you don't have an investor, I mean, somebody has to pay for something, right? If something goes wrong, let's look at it like this.

There's the initial investment of all the stuff and equipment you have to buy. commercial equipment, super expensive. Like if you need a commercial oven, $20,000. If you need a new hood vent, that could be $60,000 for a hood vent. Why do you get a commercial thing? Why don't you just get like a residential hoodvent? It's illegal. Every city has rules.

You have to have commercial permitted equipment in a commercial space to serve people from a food safety standpoint, but also from city safety standpoint. They want to protect against fires. They want to protect it. And also, by the way, here's another thing. It's not just a hoodvent. Where is your output for the hoodvent? Whatever the hoodvent is sucking up, where is it going physically out of the building?

Is it going out the top or is it going out the side? Because there's also rules about that. If it's going out the side, you have to add something on the outside of the building called a scrubber. So it's called scrubber because it scrubs. It cleans the air that comes out before it exits the building because it could be blowing on a street. It could be blowing into someone else's building.

and scrubbers can cost thousands and thousands of dollars. You know what's really interesting? I'm always tempted to go to restaurants when I drive by and I get the whiff and I get the smell. You know, like Wood Ranch, every time you drive by a wood ranch, you get that smell of that meat being cooked. Totally. It makes me want to go there. There are very few restaurants that do that. There's also people that theorize that's not even from the food.

They're just spraying fragrances into the air. What? There's no way. Maybe I'm just on like conspiracy food reddit or something. But I've also heard about something like that. We're a conspiracy theorist with restaurants. I'm just saying that could also be a potential marketing ploy is to spray fragrances that lure people in your restaurant.

So is this something that you're going to lean into is making like the streets smell like your chicken. Should I make chicken candles? That would it genuinely sell. If that would actually do well. And you can buy in and out clothes, you walk into your restaurant and you buy chicken candles. Yeah, like our herbs and spices in the form of a candle. That's hilarious.

That's, Actually really funny. Okay. I'll see what I can do. What about the risk of lawsuits? Like someone comes in, they slip and fall or they say, hey, I got really sick from the food. It's underpicked. I mean, theoretically that can happen with literally any business, like any physical business.

If you guys decided you wanted to open a, I don't know, like a finance company that finances houses or something, right, a mortgage company, which I don't know that you would ever do that. But if you did and you had a physical building, you run that risk too, right? Any physical location. Insurance, right? you should have insurance. We have all sorts of insurances for that. Graham's asking how good your insurance is and if the floors are going to be slippy. I got wobbly feet. Yeah, he has really wobbly feet. Very prone to just slipping. Well, it's funny you say that I actually have a picture of you on the wall that says,

do not let this man enter, give him the sandwich on the other side of the street. On the drive-thru, hopefully. Yeah, now you're going to run the car. Yeah. Now, one thing I've noticed, though, is it seems like a lot of influencers these days. They're getting involved in, like, restaurants. Yeah. And they're really promoting restaurants and doing a great job. Like, I love the people in their car. They're just eating in the car.

I love them. I've been to a lot of the restaurants because they see them in the car and they just rave about the spot. And then I find it fun to show up. Yeah. So is this something that more restaurants should lean into? You don't even need to because they'll show up if it's good, right? But, sure, yeah, I don't see why not. I mean, these guys aren't like chefs, but, I mean, some of them seem to have pretty good takes.

I did a video where we went and tested the palettes of a few of them and went to all the places that they recommended and a lot of them were actually pretty good. I'm open to it. It's not like you need to be a chef to say if something's good or not and some of them have good pallets. Can an influencer save a bad restaurant? Yeah, totally.

It's happened a few times, hasn't it? I think there have been a few news articles of like restaurants that were struggling and then like Keith Lee goes there and then they're fine. But I'm curious. Why is a good restaurant struggling? That's what I want to know. Like if you have really good food at somewhat of a reasonable price, isn't it kind of just like natural that you would start to get regulars and be able to sell enough food to make a profit?

I feel like at this point it's like a little bit, you kind of have to lean into the theory of it, right? Because there's no way to know for sure. But I mean, we live in a noisy world. There's restaurants all over Las Vegas. There's restaurants all over every city. And they're all trying to promote themselves. They're all trying to get people's attention. So when you have so much noise going back and forth, sometimes people can get forgotten in the mix.

Maybe they're not. a savvy from an entrepreneurial standpoint, so their margins aren't right. Maybe their food is good, but they have consistency problems. I mean, there's just so many reasons why restaurants fail. It's tough to, like, nail down a specific reason. But the one thing that I am curious about is how long can a restaurant succeed from an influencer post? Because let's say, like, Keith Lee goes somewhere and they blow up. But is it going to be blowing up for the next five years? I don't think so. I think it would be, like, a couple months maybe of, like, high foot traffic. But, like, do they maintain that? I don't know. I'm curious, like, we don't have the data for that yet.

I think Dobrooks is kind of an example of that because originally there were lines out the door, like they would sell out. But now I went there recently and like there's like a couple people in there, Max, or it's like empty. And so I think that it might just be like that beginning phase. And then like if your food is really good, people continue going there. But like David Dobrick is not a chef. Like David Dobrick isn't known for food. And also like, we're some see heroes. And others see egos.

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What about the restaurants that have been around for 10, 20, 30, 40 years? What makes them successful versus these other places? Like, if we, let's take a restaurant that's been open for like a long time, like dominoes, right? Because I guess that's a piece of concept. So let's look at dominoes and let's look at Dobricks. Why is dominoes around for so long, still has the sales that they do? That's just because it's easy. What I mean?

Just being able to go online, they're everywhere, everywhere you go. You get essentially the same product versus Dobricks is one location, physical. don't know if they deliver economies of scale to it. So then why doesn't he make those changes to make it easier to get? Like, why doesn't he, why didn't he add a drive-through element? Why didn't he add an Uber Eats element? Why didn't, you know, like, is that his answer? Is his answer to make it easier for people to eat? And then his problems are sold? Probably also, Domino's is the de cost structure down that they're able to do so much. Yeah, but there's so many examples of that, right? It's not just dominoes. There's, there are restaurants where

there's a lot less restaurants, or sorry, a lot less number of buildings, but, you know, they're doing really well. There are restaurants that have 10, 20, 30 locations and they do really well, and they've been around for 10, 20, 30 years. Or what about the single restaurants? There's single restaurants that have been around for decades. Like, what about Mr. Beef in Chicago? That just all they do is sell Italian sandwiches. They've been around for literally generations, but why are they still around? There's just an Italian sandwich. It's not even expensive, actually. It's not even expensive meat, but they've been around for generations. I think the question is, like, what is it that makes a restaurant stick around and what are these other places not doing that is, you know, that they're

struggling with. I also think things ebb and flow too, right? Maybe he'll go back up later. I don't know, right? Now, for the really nice restaurants out there, how do they treat celebrities different? Like, if a normal person just calls up, hey, is there any availability? No, we're booked. But like, Brad Pitt comes in and somehow they have a table. Do they always have tables? Most restaurants don't book all of their tables in advance. But it's not because they're holding it for a celeb. It's just they always have, they leave room for walk-ins, basically, right?

Because people cancel their reservations. So if you fully book your restaurant and you're relying on people to eat in your restaurant, if you fully, fully book it, as in like you book every single table, you know, a day or two in advance, well, now anybody who comes in off the street, they're going to walk up and you're going to go,

oh, I'm sorry, we're booked for this evening, right? Which can happen. Yeah. But then what if 20% of the people that book don't show up? you could have sat you could have seated those people so you always leave room for walk-ins in the event that there's a walk-in just to make sure that you maximize as many customers as you can get as much volume as you can get to make sure your restaurant's full but and this is this is where the celebrity part comes in if a celeb calls and maybe they really like that

celeb or they want them in their restaurant yeah they'll probably pick off one of their seats that's reserved for walk-ins and give it to them so we have in the past not that I like it in fact I kind of hate it, but we'll call and they'll be booked and then Graham will tell someone usually, hey, you call as my assistant and say, we have YouTuber, you know, or some, some person, famous person coming in later tonight if you have some space. No shame. And I'm like cringing in the corner, but every, I think every single time it's worked. It's worked.

Every single time. And we did it the first time as a joke. Just to see, let's mess with them a little bit. And sure enough, they got right back. Yes, we'll see you. and it was prime time. It was like 8 p.m. And it was a party of like six.

And somehow they made it work. One of them I didn't even believe at first was the in Vegas. Have you seen this place? Whoa, yeah, yeah, yeah, really famous. For six months straight. But somehow they could have availability. Yeah. We've had it happen to us multiple times whenever we do shoots and we need to shoot at a really famous restaurant or like a multi-Michelan or like something that's booked out months in advance.

And sometimes we're like, We need to book, but we don't have enough time to book. And we'll call them and be like, hey, we're shooting a video. We're going to cover your restaurant. And usually they're like, yes. So yeah, they have room for it for sure. But they're not, I don't think that they're, I don't think that they're inherently reserving it just for famous people, but they will give it to them for sure.

And so do they just boot someone else off? No, no, I think they're, I think that they're giving. Or they're make a table. No, they're giving you the walk-in tables. I think that if it's a fine dining restaurant that actually does have fixed seats and they don't take walk-ins, I don't think they're booting anyone, but I do think they'll try to find a way to make a table or get an additional table. One time I, oh, I feel so bad for this. So there's a restaurant in Denmark. I'm actually good friends with the chef now after this

happens surprisingly. You would think that he'd hate me after this. So the restaurant's called Alchemist. Have you heard of this place? Crazy. Have you been? No, but I've seen all the videos. Honestly, this is a place that I think you should go to, even though it's so like outside of your, honestly, I would watch a full-length video of a GoPro of him just had going through that. I don't know if I could do it. Describe it to Jack. It is a 50-course, seven-and-a-half-hour dining experience through three or four different dining rooms. It is the most absurd restaurant experience I've ever seen in my entire life, not just operationally, but from an experience standpoint, it is genuinely mind-boggling.

How much does that cost? I don't remember it. I think it was like 800 to 1,000. That's it. No, I think it's more than that. I think it's at least 1,000. but I don't know the exact number though. We might want to quote that

because I don't want to say the wrong thing. For eight hours and 50 courses? It's a pretty good deal for how long the meal is. I think some of the courses though are like a little bite. Yeah, one bite. You'll like lick something. Yeah, that's true. There's a part where you start eating like paint

actually in a room and painting with a crazy person dancing. It's pretty wild. Oh, so the story. So here's what happened. So I didn't know how big of a deal this restaurant was. I knew that they did really cool stuff. I didn't do that much research on them. I just knew, oh, this is a really famous place.

Michelin Star, the chef is amazing. And I was trying to get a reservation, but I couldn't figure how they were. I was on the plane from Texas to Denmark with my wife. And I'm like, oh, I really wanted to do a dinner with her there. And so I'm like, look and try to figure out. And I'm like, I'll just DM the chef. Maybe like he'll help me get a reservation, you know, whatever.

So I DM him. And this is the evening before the dinner. Like normally they're booked months in advance. They did not take walkins. They literally have a locked door that only opens at your reservation time. No way. Like a two huge mass of like 20 foot doors open like the gates of heaven or hell. Anyway, so I DM him and he goes, let me see what I can do.

And then he comes back to me and he's like, we got it all sorted. We got you guys booked. And we go there. I found out that they had to get a new table and put in a new table in every dining room. No way. New chairs in every dining room for us. for us. And I felt so bad. I had no idea. And then we went through this whole meal. It was amazing at a great time. We met the chef. We met all the people. They were super sweet to us. And at the end of the

meal, they didn't charge us. They would not charge us. And I had, we had a lot of wine bearings that night. So, I mean, we definitely would have been on the higher end of the cost of that. And they didn't charge us anything. All right. I'm so curious. What perks do you get is Joshua Wiseman? Perks? I really try not, I really try to force people to not give me perks. I don't want that. Like, I want to support the restaurants are hard enough. I don't want to get a meal for free. If anything, I try to force them to make me pay. Like at the end of that meal at Alchemist,

I specifically was like, please charge me. And they were like, no, no, no, no, no. And they literally refused. So I basically got them to, I basically forced them to charge me a dollar so I could tip my waitress. Yeah. That was the most that they would let me do.

It's kind of crazy. But how often do you just sit down at a restaurant, just you're just out with maybe some friends or whatever and they just say don't worry it's on us it's often but like i normally don't let them though like i normally don't let them i literally do not let them um usually the like a lot of restaurants will send stuff out for me which is really nice but i always over order so i usually end up having like my tables like too stacked with stuff um that last night we got we got that 120 dollar mozzarella for free believe it. Now, what's great about going out with you is that I get all the food to go. I hate any

And then I pay for it. But I don't like any sort of waste. I don't like ever. I never like it. Listen, I never like it when food is thrown away. To me, it just feels like that's food that's food that's someone prepared. Yeah. Especially if it's like an animal food, like some animal gave its life to feed people. Like, I'm going to eat it. How much food waste is there in restaurants? I mean, I, I, I would. would hope that it's gotten better today. But I mean, when I worked in restaurants, what I saw was obviously a lot of food waste. It really depends. Some restaurants are really good about it, and they make sure that they check. Some restaurants will literally check the weight of something

at the beginning at the end of producing it so that they know how much food waste and they can calculate how much they're wasting to try to minimize it. So some restaurants are really good about it. But the restaurants that don't do that is really out of control. Because think about it. If you sell like a meat product,

you're ordering hundreds. thousands of pounds of meat, anything that reaches the end of its lifespan in terms of food safety gets thrown away, obviously. So that could be in the hundreds of pounds. It could be more. Fine dining restaurants, whenever they make, like, really highly portioned foods.

So, like, you ever go to, like, a fine dining restaurant and there's, like, a perfect piece of meat that's, like, exactly rectangular. Well, the meat didn't come that way. So they'll usually cook the whole thing where they'll, like, kind of par-cut it, cook it, and then they'll do what's called portioning where they portion it into the perfect shape.

Now, a good restaurant will take the trim and make something else with it. But a restaurant that doesn't give a... We'll just throw the trim away. And if they're throwing trim away, they're wasting probably anywhere between 30 to 50% of all of the meat that they use for that. And that does happen.

But I couldn't tell you which restaurants are doing it right or wrong. One thing I'm really curious about is a restaurant reading. Like, when you walk in you see like an A or a B or a C, what goes in behind the scenes to get an A? or when you see a sea, is that a red flag? I don't know if it's exactly a red flag. Like, some health inspectors are brutal, man.

It's really hard. It's really hard for restaurants. But, I mean, there's so many things, right? Like, from a food safety standpoint, every restaurant has usually two buckets, right? They have buckets for soap and they have buckets for sanitizer. And it's really important that they constantly rotate the bucket of sanitizer because the sanitizer that's in the bucket has a certain lifespan.

man. So if they don't rotate it, they basically, usually people will label it with a time to swap it out and put fresh in and then they put a new label on it. If you don't constantly rotate that and the inspector notices, hey, this sanitation bucket has been out for an hour longer than it's supposed to and you haven't rotated it and put a new label on it, that's a demarcation. If you, I mean, appearance, right? If the floors are super dirty and their walls are greasy, that's a demarcation. Like, there's so many little things. Like, if you're busy and you forgot to replace your sanitizer, like you're getting marked for that. That kind of sucks, right? But it's also dangerous because the sanitizer isn't as effective. So if you wipe something down with sanitizer that's

old, you might not be cleaning it at all. But a food safety inspector, are they typically like undercover when they look into a restaurant? Okay. Usually, they walk in with the clipboard and everything. Yeah. And also like, let's be real, like someone's in your kitchen and like doing this. Oh, okay. They're like in that. Yeah, yeah. But you usually know like a little bit ahead of time. Like you'll usually know like a hour or two. Anytime I've ever worked in a restaurant, I've usually been like, hey, the health inspector is going to be here today at 2 p.m. Like, so I've never seen them come in undercover. What's the most you've ever paid for a meal?

One of the, one of the most expensive ones was for you guys. Oh, gosh. Jose Andres. What was that like, like, four grand? You know what's funny? We sit down and they're like, you know what? Like, we'll order for you. Like, we will take care of you.

Like, this will be great. We'll get you all of the good stuff. We're sitting down, looking at the prices and you're like, this is pretty expensive. Like, this is nice of them. They brought out the A5 that I didn't order, and then they charge me. Yeah, and then they bring down the bill, and it's like a few thousand dollars. Yeah. They must have made a mistake.

Wow. Did you make your money back on that video? Not, yes, yes, yes, we did. Okay, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what was the most expensive meal outside of that? I did an omacase once with a bunch of friends, and I paid for everybody. And it was like a really expensive omacase.

And I think it was like, we had 20 people eating with us. And it was like with drinks. Because, I mean, think about how expensive. sushi is, right? And then go to an omacase and then multiply that but like 15 to 20 people. And then everybody's having alcohol and everybody's having all the expensive cuts. Like $4,000, 5,000 bucks. Yeah, no. I think it was like, it was nine grand plus tip. So like maybe like, it was over $10,000. I don't remember how much. So I think I got you a beat, believe it or not. Really? Believe it or not. Yeah. So I run this group. It's called the index, link down below in the description. It's a,

group of entrepreneurs, and we meet up four times a year. And the first meetup we ever did, I booked 21 Royal in Disneyland. And this is Walt Disney's little house above the Pirates of the Caribbean. You have no idea. This isn't sound like Graham at all. Well, it's for an entrepreneur meetup group. So it makes sense in context of this. But it's $1,500 a person. And it was $18,000 for the dinner. Plus, I think we tipped another $2,000 on top of that. It might have been $3,000. But it probably already included gratuity, I'm sure. So you probably paid on top of that. I don't know. It was just a flat $18,000 then we tipped on top of that. So it might have been $20,000 total for, I think it was 10 or 12 people. That's brutal. Wow. Does my wedding count? I guess not.

How much was the food at your wedding? We had a 25-person wedding, but I had a two Michelin Star restaurant cater it. No way. Yeah. And it was 25 people, and it was like shockingly expensive. I think it was like $23,000. How expensive was your wedding? I don't remember. I don't remember. It actually wasn't as bad as you would think.

It was not as bad as you. Honestly, big hack, big financial hack. You can either have a big wedding in the States and, and let's call it 100 people, and you spend, I honestly don't know. Like, if you want like a, you guys know this, right? If you want like a nice looking wedding, it's expensive, right? Flowers are expensive. The venue might be $30,000 to $50,000 or more.

Sometimes venues are $100,000. But I've seen a lot of weddings go into like anywhere between the 50 to the $100,000. $100,000 marker for 100 people with good food and a nice venue, right? You could do that. Or you can take your close family, 25 people, and go to Italy or France, or somewhere that's like vacation like, for a week, take them all out there, pay for their flights, get a venue. The venues out there are a lot less expensive. You could literally do this at an Airbnb. You can get an Airbnb for like, and stay at the Airbnb, like a wine vineyard. And it's like maybe two grand a night for everybody to stay there. and you'll spend probably less money doing that.

And you'll be able to have a whole week's worth of fun. So we did that instead. So what do you think that cost total? Like 100 something, 150? All right, hold on. When weddings start getting that expensive, you have to start getting a little bit creative with where your money's actually going.

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You can also click the link down below in the description. Terms may apply. So what do you think that cost total? Like 100-something, 150? Probably less, honestly. I think less. I think, like, I think you could do it for, I think you could do it for as little as 50. And probably if you want it to do a lot of flowers and stuff,

it's going to go up pretty dramatically. It could end up in the $100,000 marker maybe, $100,000, $150,000 maybe. You could end up, it just depends. I mean, I've seen people do it for a lot less. I have a friend who did one in, like, in Poland. And even if, like, 50K. Seems pretty affordable compared to Logan Paul. How much was his?

$3 million? Millions. Oh, yeah. We didn't spend even close to that. I think we maybe spent $125, maybe. And that was to fly everybody out, put everybody up for a week and a half. We went, I paid for dinners. We went, you know, we, we, we, we had, like, you know, two Michelin Star Restaurant caterer it. We had amazing floral arrangements.

Like, it was a good deal. I was not looking to get screwed by the wedding industry. Right. So it was, it was fair. Do you think tipping culture has gotten out of control? I don't care. I just tip. It's fine. Like, if it makes somebody else happy, like, I'm always happy to tip. I always tip way more than I need to. I usually tip any order between, like, 25 to 35% minimum. What if it's, you're going out to a coffee restaurant or like a coffee shop and you get a coffee to go? I always tip 25%. Do you tip when you order food to go and they give it to you in the plastic bag? I tip regardless, honestly.

I, I just... Okay, I mean, I do too. I'm just curious because a lot of people, like, think that tipping culture has gotten completely. It has. You know what? I think it's made it more harder to make things affordable for people. I think the average person, it makes it way harder to make things affordable. I would be frustrated. But I mean, like, I also know that, like, I can, I'm happy to do it.

I can afford to tip them so I do it anyway. And if it makes their life better than great. I tipped on my smog test. I've tipped on my smog test as well. Okay. Yep. The guy was really nice and really chatty, very friendly. And just, you know, turns that thing around.

And there's the tip. And I was like, I can't not tip now. But it is the job to do the thing. Why can't business just pay people what they should be paid? You know, the tipping thing feels like, I guess where it gets out of hand is if people aren't being paid what they should be paid and then needing to use tips to get up to that. But they're not. They're paid what they're paid, but the tipping is free.

I mean, it's just like for them, it costs the business nothing. I guess it makes the person more. For them to stay at the company. Or to just like, it's hot. There's no downside for the business or the employee to turn the thing around. and then it says, what do you want to tip? And that's why at some point it does make sense to speak out against, you know, tipping for a smog test.

Here's where I would draw the line. So do you do Christmas lights on your house? Yes. It's expensive. Yeah, I'm grandfathered in, though. So I've got the original price. I was one of the first customers. Can I ask how much you pay?

Yeah, I think it's $800. What? That's so good. Yeah, that's what I was saying. So it's $400 to put up or $400 to take down. But I think now they charge. like $1,500, but they've never raised the price. And in fairness, we've given them a lot of business.

Okay. So there was a, I don't use this company anymore, but there was a company that I was using, and it was like $2,500 to do Christmas lights every year. And then one year, they charged me to $2,500. And every time I paid it, I winced because I'm like, God, this is so dumb, just like Christmas lights up. But I'd rather do it than, you know, risk my life. They sent me the invoice, but there was like a tip.

Like a mandatory, you have to, like, put a tip. Mandatory? Mandatory. You could press no tip, but it was like a mandatory button you had to press. And I was like, oh, wait, what? Like, but I'm already paying $2,500 for you to put up my Christmas lights. What's the tip? What am I tipping for?

Do you know what I mean? Like, it feels- But again, there's no downside. If even 20% of people give something, it's free money. Yeah, I guess, like, it doesn't matter. If there's an option to press no tip, then I guess, like, it doesn't matter. But there still is that social pressure to always. tip. Like if they're turning the thing around, like, there's no way I'm never clicking no tip.

I've never pressed no tip. You know, but. Did you tip on the Christmas lights? I did. How much did you tip? Uh, I think, I think I tip like 10% because I was already paying $2,500, dude. I think there's, and it's, and it's one guy. Who am I tipping? That's what I would think. It's like, if this dude is getting, if his business is charging $2,500, why don't you, hey, dude, start your own. Honestly, start your own business with the, the amount of money that you got. It was his business. this. Yeah. So you're tipping the business owner.

It makes no sense. It's just like if you want to. Correct. Probably for the holidays. It was a one-man band. It was literally just him putting up Christmas lights. So my confusion, that's where I get confused about the tipping thing. If you're a sole, if you're like the sole business owner and you're doing the work and you ask for a tip, that's where I'm confused.

Well, you set the price. Why not just set it at the price that you want to charge? We technically have tipping enabled on the channel. Like people could leave us tips and I get them every now and then from people who comment. And it says like so-and-so tipped you blame. Okay, I'm going to be honest, guys, do not tip the channel.

Just don't do it. You don't need to. You guys have to. You guys have to have to. I would not recommend tipping you have to channel. Everybody tip this just to prove them right. If you want, no, if you want something, make them feel bad.

Become a YouTube, like a channel member because then you're actually getting something. Don't tip us. Yeah, yeah, right. Just save the money. Invested in your Rothiski. The channel memberships are way more fun. And we're doing post shows.

We're doing midweek episodes as a channel member. Or just throwing a Roth IRA. Either or. Why do you have a tip button? Why don't you just take it away? I honestly didn't even know if I'm being able to. No, well, the honest answer is because if people want to do that, it shows up and their comment gets boosted. And then I always see it.

I always respond to every single one of them. But we aren't prompting people to tip. No. But it's it's not like you're watching a video. It's like, do you want to tip this YouTuber? That's insane. That would be so funny. They should do a graphic where it turns around.

Why has a company not came up with that idea? Like tipping YouTubers. That is hilarious. That'd be so funny if it was like a graphic of a. hand emerging from the window and like going like this and I would love to see the video just paused at the exact moment and saying like if you want to keep watching and then you could say no but then you're going to be on a list is like one of the people who said no I even think I could be incorrect here but I even saw there was like I was paying a bill or something like that

I'm talking like a utility bill or like an internet but but there was a tipping option on that as well of like it was some sort of utility it might have been like the pest control guy. But it was one of those where everything now, the tip option is there. I guess like in some ways you could say it's gotten out of control, but in most cases, like pretty much every case, it's like whatever, I'll just do the tip and, you know, it's all good. And what about expensive wines? Because the service is basically the same if you're opening up a cheap versus an expensive bottle. You know, you could get a $30 bottle or you can get a $10,000 bottle should your tip vary from, you know, $15 to $300 or $3,000.

Speaking of that, I do want to say there was a post that went crazy viral on Twitter of a lady who got reamed for leaving a tip that was like $30 because her meal was like a thousand, but only because she ordered the really expensive drinks. And she said it takes the exact same amount of time, exactly what you said, but people were flaming her, that if you have the means to do that, you also have the means to tip. But this person argued, no, the person didn't spend any more time, any extra service on me than they did the other table. The work didn't change. That's so funny, you see that.

I thought about that once before. This happened to me not that long ago. I went to a coffee shop and I got my typical order, my wife's coffee. But then I got like three bags of beans. And the beans were super expensive. They were like 30 bucks per bag. So, you know, my bill or the final cost is like, I don't know, $130 or something, right? Now, had I not ordered that, I would just immediately press 25 percent.

But then I paused because I was like, wait a minute, why is my tip? Because I, you know, did my typical 25% sign and paid? And I was like, wait, did I just tip them like 40 bucks? Like what just happened? But it was because the initial bill was so much higher. I was like, oh, wait, but I just picked these bags up and bought them. Does that mean that I should tip them $40? Or do I tip them for the coffees that they made me?

Like, I don't know. I have done that exact same thing at a coffee shop. Buying the beans, they throw that in with the espresso shot that I got. And I'm like, I got one espresso shot. I'm tipping like $8, like the cost of the espresso shop for grabbing a bag of Yeah, it's a little, that part's a little confusing. To me, it doesn't make sense how like that you can tip 15% or you can order a door dash and a person literally goes and picks up food, drives it all the way to your house,

delivers it to your front door, takes a picture, and that is like 15% tip to. Like those services in my mind do not appear to be equal. And so like there are certain things that I'll tip more aggressively on and then the other things like I'll tip less. Yeah, like based on the effort. Exactly. I think like for me, what I do is like I've shifted my brackets up. And so like the worst tip that I'll ever give is like maybe 18%.

But like if someone does a really good job, I do let my tip amount reflect the level of service that they give me. And I do think that people should do that. Like I think if they gave you a really good service, you actually should tip more. And if they gave you a bad service, you should tip less. Yeah, you should have a minimum threshold. And then if somebody exceeds expectations, you should try to try to give them some. People always just tip 20%. That's it.

It's like wherever I go, it's 20%. I actually think that you should adjust it accordingly. Yeah, I got a guy at a pokey restaurant. He is awesome. I leave the biggest tips. And since I started leaving the bigger tips... I live in two bucks every day. No, but it started because he gave me these really generous scoops.

You know, like a Chipotle where they just like a big fat scoop and then sometimes they'll go and get a little more. Started doing that. I started leaving bigger tips. And then I started noticing his scoops got bigger. So I kept up in the tip. too. You're almost equalizing the value.

Yes, you are. Yeah, but he benefits because he gets the tip. And I benefit because he's very generous with his scoops. Like, you know, the pokey scoops. But theoretically, you're just paying for more fish at that point. Not really. It's implied. It's a mutual respect that I have that like, hey, you give me a little more scoop.

I'm going to help you out too. And then we're buddies. Do you think that Chipotle actually serves four ounces of protein with every meal? Do they weigh it? No. Okay, so then how can they accurately say that? Like, do you think it probably averages out to about four ounces? I mean, it could.

There is no way, unless if it's just the Chipotle I go to, but I happen to go to, I go to a lot of Chipotle's. Do you think it's more or less? Way less. They're supposed to give you four ounces of meat. In actuality, it's probably close to like 2.875. Have you measured it? I've actually watched a few YouTube videos on it. People did measure it.

And there are tricks that you can use to get more. Like having cameras on you. Have you seen this? I have seen that. If you have somebody film you while you're ordering your Chipotle bowl, supposedly they will give you more of everything. I've seen that. Also, here's a trick. If you want to get more meat, this is what I've started to do, is I actually just ask for the meat on the side because they have sized cups and they put it in the cup and they make it level with the top of the cup. And so it's actually four ounces as opposed to like a scoop. But that's so interesting. Is it compressed?

So, no, they don't tip it. Maybe they'll give it a couple pats, but it's not like fully compressed. But it is 100% without a doubt more meat if you ask for it on the side as opposed to in the burrito. That would make sense. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, I mean, I, I mean, look, it's not possible for them to accurately give you four ounces of meat every single time when they have however many hundreds of locations and hundreds or if not thousands of employees putting the chicken on there, but they're not weighing it. How can you accurately say that?

But apparently it is possible for them to give you three ounces every single time instead of four or less than they should give you. Because they do. Or I'm surprised is it seems like a lot of people at Chipotle don't care. And that for them, it doesn't really cost them anything extra if they're a little more generous with their sizes. So I always thought the person. The chefs don't have to cook as often. That is like my logical conclusion of why they skimp out on the meats is because it puts more of a burden on the chefs if they're constantly churning meat. I would disagree.

I don't think the people in front are in cahoots with the people in the back. I think it's probably management who's like, hey, guys, we got cameras over here, corporate's watching. We got to be, you know, good on our sizes to remain profitable. That's my guess. Do you guys think that it's more so the decision of the people on the floor or do you think that it's more so the corporate decision? It's got to be corporate. I would always been corporate. Yeah.

Because I don't think. I think it's better for the person to be like, yo, I'm going to hook you up today. I'm going to make your, here's a big scoop. And how about this? A little more. it would make everybody's day. And everyone would lighten the mood and they don't make them happier. Because if I had the choice to give it a little more, I would.

I also just think like when you're cooking chicken and serving people chicken and standing in the same spot for eight hours, like you're just like tired of making chicken all day, you know? Like they're people, you know, maybe they don't want to cook more chicken. I don't know. Or I don't know. I don't know if it would make everybody's day better. But I do get the concern with the lack of consistency there, though.

I wouldn't be happy with you. Oh, I'm never upset of the workers themselves. For me, it's just like, like you're paying for a certain thing and you're not getting that thing. That's fair. And so that's on the business. Yeah, I'm with you on that, yeah. Now, I'm curious when it comes to cooking. I want to talk about cooking myths.

Number one, is MSG bad? There's not a lot of data out there that says whether or not MSG is directly correlated with being bad for you. There's a lot of conversation out there about it. But at the end of the day, like, I'm not a scientist. let me be clear about that. But from what I've seen in my own personal experience, at the end of the day, MSG is monosodium glutamate, right? So it's a salt form of glutamate and glutamate is what, right? Glutimate is found in so many different things like pork, tomatoes, mushrooms. It's naturally found in these things. It's just a salt form of it, right? So if we're already designed to process glutamate,

generally speaking, like a sodium form of glutamate, should be perfectly safe to eat. I know that there's all sorts of things on the internet of people saying that they get nightmares and they can't sleep. I have never experienced that personally. I think that there's a lot of things that people ingest when they're eating things that have sodium in it, like all sorts of things that they could have an allergy to, et cetera. But there's just not a lot of data out that that suggests it's not good for you. And it tastes awesome. Ever since I got over that whole fear, I've never had a problem with it and it's only made my life better.

I love MSG. Is truffle oil a scam? I think so. Half the time it's not even real truffle. A lot of truffle oil is made from like perfumes or like flavor compounds rather than like, like literally sometimes it's artificial flavoring, right? Like you're eating artificial flavoring in oil as opposed to actual real raw truffle. If you want truffle flavor, you obviously, you get it from a truffle. It's a great way for a company to make a ton of money off of flavoring and oil to taste like truffles.

But I don't think it tastes that great. And it's also super overpowering. Is Wagu overrated? I think, yes. Oh, my God. I think Wagyu has had this crazy PR campaign for the last, what do you think? Like five years, maybe? Probably.

Maybe 10. Maybe 10, yeah. So I think Wagyu has been on this crazy PR train for the past 10 years. I think Wagyu is amazing. From a product standpoint, it's like super unique and there's nothing else like it. And I think it's a beautiful thing. I also think it's like a special occasion thing. I don't want to eat Wagyu every day.

And also, like, it's just so much fat. It is. Like who wants to eat? When I eat Wagyu, I appreciate. it and I love it, whatever. But like, I can eat maybe an ounce, two ounces of it before I'm like, ugh, I don't want it anymore. No one's eating a whole steak of Wagyu. So to me, it's like a, it's a delicacy. It's worth it every once in a while. But it's right now, just, it's way overrated. Most other types of beef, like there's American Wagggy that's being made that's really good. That's not A5 that has less fat in it. That's way, way better and way, way nicer to eat. It's just too specialized, you know? Is expensive olive oil worth it? I look at it like kind of like wine. Like if if if it has to do with economies of scale, right? Like certain olive oils are expensive just because it's a small producer.

And they have to charge a certain amount to make money. Whereas you could go to a bigger producer that's producing the same quality, but they have economies of scale so they can charge you less. So yes and no. I would I would just look to pick the best quality olive oil that you can afford. And call it a day. Most of the time, I would say 50, 50, yes and no, but sometimes you're just buying premium because it's a small producer.

Are expensive eggs worth it? I mean, part of egg pricing you can't control because it's like the economy. But I mean, no, because they all do the same thing. If it's a health thing for you, that's your own thing, right? Like if you're like, oh, I only eat pastured eggs or I only eat organic eggs, well, then you're going to pay a premium. Are you getting an egg that can do something than another egg can't? No, they're all identical.

Aren't you paying for the treatment of the chicken? Like free range? Sometimes they're not. Cage-free is like not even like helping the chicken, which is my understanding. I've read that a lot of these like cage-free, like organic. I don't know, I've never been to them, but I've read and I've seen articles about them basically line. Free range is very different from cage-free. It's like, almost the same thing as.

People expect that when they see like free range or cage free, that it's chickens roaming this big field somewhere with the sun. But like when you really look at the definition. It's usually in like a covered building and they're like, they're not in a cage, but they're in a gigantic pen like pushed up against each. Correct. Yeah. Yes. And a lot of the treatment of that is not what you expect when you buy that. Yeah, but they're able to upcharge you on cost.

Yeah. Yeah. What is it worth to spend the extra money on? Like of all of the different ingredients, like would you say a nice salt, a nice seasonings? Nice chicken, nice eggs, nice olive oil. Like, of all of these things, what makes an actual impact, the more money you spend? Buying from local farms. It's expensive to buy from local farms.

But the benefits are you're supporting your local economy in a legitimate way. You're actually, like, supporting real families directly. So that's cool. You are getting almost always a super duper premium product. Like, this is like, you know, if you're looking for free range, like likely they are actually roaming around in the sun. So if that's something you care about, the premium you're paying is actually going to that, right? And you're developing a cool relationship, which I think is fun, right? But I would say that that's the one where your dollar does actually go towards something that is what you think it is.

Does that make sense? As opposed to like the egg conversation where like, oh, it's free range. So you're spending $2 more for free range, but they're actually not really free range. So you would say always just try to find a source that makes it. So like if you could find a source that makes olive oil, if you could find a source, if you could find a source that makes butter. It's always better just to go there. Yeah, and I also think you'll feel better about spending the money

because now you have almost a relationship with those people too. Like you might even meet the person that, not just a salesperson, but you might even meet the person that works for that company and maybe you'll become friends with the co-owner one day and they'll start giving you deals. Developing a relationship with a company like that is really cool. I like doing that with small producers. Is it true the use is really rampant in restaurants?

It can be. I don't know where it is today because it's been a long, times since I've worked in a restaurant. Spent almost eight years since I've worked in a restaurant. So, but is when I was, when I was working in restaurants, yeah. My understanding is it very much still is. Like from my friends that work in restaurants, I used to work in a restaurant. Like, what do you mean by that, though? Like, I mean, I've seen, I've seen people do right outside the restaurant. I've seen people, um, I remember there was a line cook that I worked with and I like got it in their car and

they were like, like, I saw it in the car. And I was like, oh, interesting. It might sound dumb, but why? Is it like a performance thing to, like, do better at the restaurant? Or are these just, like, man, this is such a tough question to answer because it's, it's so nuanced. There's so many reasons why, right? Of course it's a harsh work environment and people,

maladaptive coping mechanisms, right? They do it to cope. And I get it. Sometimes it's coping, but also I think that restaurants have this really weird. Restaurants are in such a weird place in the job market world where it tends to lure people in and will hire people who have issues. Because anyone can work in a restaurant, right? There's no barrier to entry to work in many restaurants. And so I think like because there's such a wide open door for anyone to work in, which I think is amazing, by the way.

That's like one of the best things ever about restaurants is anybody can come into a restaurant. and the most restaurants will accept you with open arms no matter who you are where you're from like you could barely speak English and they'll still hire you like that's i think that's amazing but when it when a door's wide open anyone can walk in right so you got to remember that that means that people who might have problems that you don't don't normally see might walk in those doors um but also maladaptic cope mechanism it's really hard to work in a restaurant it's very stressful so listen it starts like this right you go you work your first restaurant shift Maybe you have personal problems. Maybe you don't. But if it's not a good working environment or it's a toxic working environment, you don't know how to cope with that. You don't have anybody to talk to. Maybe you're very lonely, who knows, and you're getting screamed at every day. It's stressful. You're working from 11 a.m. to 2 in the morning every day, six days a week, you get one day off. And so like the one way to release steam when you're constantly pressured is like, you know, maybe you have a shot a whiskey at the end of every night. And then two. And then three. And then three.

and then that's not effective anymore so one of your other buddies gives you a little or whatever I've never partook in any of that I don't drink I don't I don't I don't you know I've never taken any before

but I've seen it many times and because of how I saw it ruined people's lives I always was like I will never touch that stuff because I've seen people like go you know there have been people that I've worked with

that I loved that were like that worked in restaurants and then one day they just disappeared You know, sometimes, like, they disappeared because they stopped paying rent and they got evicted and then they got fired and like, who knows? Maybe they're homeless. I don't know. Never saw them again. And that makes me sad, but it also made me realize, like, I have to be really careful. Because at some point, someone will offer you something at your lowest moment on a terrible night and you're the, and you go, you know what? Okay. And that is the turning point for a lot of people, I feel like. I don't know for sure, right? But I've seen it happen so many times. What's the worst thing you've seen in a restaurant? I mean, I've seen so many things. I've seen people get in screaming matches

and throw pots and pans at each other, like big heavy pots and pans that weigh like 30, 40 pounds. Like if you hit somebody in the head, they could die theoretically, right? Yeah, sure. I wasn't there when this happened. There was somebody that worked at a sushi bar once

and someone was standing up from grabbing something from a low boy. And another chef was turned to their right with their chef knife grabbing something. And so the person stood up and turned into their knife. And the knife went into them. Like they accidentally, completely accidentally. Not meant to happen.

And they were fine, but they got rushed to the hospital. Like, they checked everything. They went back for service that night and finished the night. They still have that chef coat in that kitchen, by the way, in a frame with a stain on it where they got, it's kind of crazy. What's the rudest request from customers? It's tough because I feel like customers should be able to make requests. Granted, like my restaurant, like, we're not allowing modifications for the first couple of months,

but that's for the sake of consistency. It's not because we don't want to give people mods. We will add them later. But it's usually in the world of, like, impossible modifications, right? So if, like, let's say you go to a restaurant, right? Let's say you're a pescatarian. And you go, I'd like the halibut pescatarian. the f-do I do?

Do you want, do you just want, because then it becomes a series of questions, right? Now it's a big logistical process to get you your food. You deserve to have what you want. And if that's what you want to do, that's totally fine. But like from a logistical standpoint, you are now the hardest person to work with in the room because now we have to figure out, okay,

well, we'll do it for you, no problem. But like, now we have to figure out, are you okay with the fact that you're going to get literally just like sauce and like maybe garnish and maybe a vegetable? And now you have to make a decision not knowing what the plate looks like. So you could still be unhappy with what you get, by the way, not only where the plate looks like to go, yes, I want that. And then we have to like kind of make those mods, make those changes and bring it out to you with our fingers crossed that you're

going to like it. And then if you don't, then there's the worry of like, are you going to be mean to us because you didn't like it? Or, you know what I mean? So it just like puts, it puts everybody in a weird position, including you as a diner. What's the most difficult customer experience you've had? Yeah, I just had like a, I think there was like a table that was like full of, And by the way, I have no problem if somebody has a specific dietary need, I completely understand. But when they make requests for dishes that, like, literally are almost impossible to make, like literally a pescatarian ordering a fish dish, I've had tables where they'll, you know, you've got a table full of pescatarians or vegetarians where they order a bunch of things that are inherently not vegetarian or pescatarian.

So it's like, well, we don't have an alternative for that. But we do have pescatarian and vegetarian options, but they don't want that. So how bad is it? Because I go to some steak places and I say, I want, my steak, medium rare plus. Half the time they either say, we don't do that or what is that? The other half, they say, oh, that's fine. Is that a bad thing? Because sometimes they give me that look where I'm like, should I not even ask? I don't know what that is. I think that makes sense. I don't think that's a bad mod. I think that's totally a fair ask. I think that it will confuse people who don't have the knowledge. Like, how trained is your staff? And also, does your staff cook? Like,

If you have a waiter or waitress that maybe cooks at home and they're super, super well trained, they've worked there for a while, they know how stakes work. I think if you said that to that kind of a waiter or waitress, they probably go like, oh, okay, so like take it to medium rare and just a little more. Correct. That makes sense to me. What was interesting, though, I started going in a back and forth with the server who said, there's no such thing.

And I said there was. And they go, we have never been asked for that. And I said, that's impossible because I go here at least every other week. And I got to get it all the time. I've never seen you here before. They don't know, I've been here for, you know, a long time. We've never gotten that. It's impossible because that's all I get here.

I mean, went back and forth and I had to pull up on my phone that like this is a thing. But I didn't want to. I felt like at that point now I'm the, but it's not the craziest request. I think it's fair for you to ask. But you also shouldn't be surprised that people are confused about it, right? Yeah, I wouldn't say that's impossible. It's not impossible. I just, I explained.

I explained exactly what it was. and they say, no, we don't do that. But I said that, that was factually incorrect. So I feel like at that point, if someone's saying something, I feel like you probably annoyed her. Jack calls me out all the time when I say something that's factually incorrect, Jack makes it very well known that I'm incorrect. And listen, I will give it to Jack when he is correct.

I say, you know what? You're right. Shouldn't be that way, but it is what it is. I mean, you know what you could say next time, honestly, is you probably just go like, you know, whenever the chef tempts it, can he just like temp at five? degrees over medium rare. Yeah, I try to...

That's, like, the simplest way to put it, right? Because that's essentially what you're asking for, right? Like five to eight degrees above medium rare. But why are you doing that, though, in the first place? Because a lot of times they get medium rare, and it is like, it's closer to rare. And it's so chewy. So you're trying to preempt improper cooking by asking for medium-rater-plus. Is that right?

No, I like it closer to medium, but medium to me is overcooked. God, dude. I don't know if I ever want to cook you. Yeah. And this is a dude, by the way, that eats lean cuisine. Okay, so, like... I used to eat. I mean, I kind of like that he's super specific about how he eats, though.

I respect that. I am too. But, like, that's crazy, though. So how often are you satisfied with the way the meat comes out? 90% of the time. It's only... Because of how you order it is? Yes, because, yeah, the medium rare plus, I would say 90 plus, it is perfect.

I actually have this issue with my... 10%, it's like, that could go either way, but I'm like, I would never complain about it. It's good. I have this issue with my coffee order. Because my coffee order is kind of weird. So, quad-shot ice latte, right? seem simple enough. Yes.

Completely different, depending on where you order it from. Have you ever gone to one place and you get a really milky ice latte and you go to another place that's not really milky? But you just ordered an ice latte. So it has to do with like the cup size.

How big is the cup? Right. Because the shot of espresso will almost always be the same. Right. So if the cup is larger, you're going to get more milk. It also depends on how much ice they put in it.

So now it's how big is the cup and how much are they diffusing it? This sounds so dumb now that I'm breaking this down. But I think about this so much because I'll go to one place and ask for a quachot, and it's way too milky. I want it stronger. So my order now to get to do what you do, my medium rare plus is quachad ice latte in a 12 ounce, in a 12 ounce cup, if they have it, and if they don't, my first question is, what's your cup size?

And if they go, oh, it's 14 ounces or it's 16 ounces, then I'll go, can I get a quashot ice latte, say extra ice short. So when you do that, you now have enough ice that you'll be able to fit less liquid in it. So that means less milk. And if you ask for it short, they'll put in like 20 to 20% less milk. I want to challenge this for a second. I think that part of going to a restaurant is getting something a little bit different. And like for me, if I go to a steakhouse, I always order my steaks medium well.

I'm kidding. I always order them medium rare. Well done. Every place I go to, I order a medium rare. And some places it's a little bit more on the rare side and some places it's a little bit more on the medium side. But I think that this is like part of the experience of going to a restaurant is that every time it's going to be a little different. I know how I like my coffee, but I still don't go to the same coffee spot every single day. Like I'll go around and try to get a coffee from here and try something different over here.

But that's why people have their favorite restaurants though. People have their favorite restaurants because they like how that restaurant makes that thing. People have their favorite coffee shops because they like the way they make their coffee. That's how I go. When I go to the same coffee shops because I know they're going to make it exactly how I want. But if you're going to a new spot, are you still going to order with the same criteria that you apply on your favorite place? I think it depends on how addicted you are to getting the final product. Like for me with coffee, I really don't want a different coffee.

I drink the same coffee every morning and I have for the past 10 years. So I don't want my coffee to change. But like with food, though, I'm open to it. What are three dishes that every single person should know how to make? I would say an omelet is a great dish. to know how to make because it's easy. It's low stakes. It's fast. But as you get better making it, you can do so many things with an omelet.

It's also good healthy for you, right? Eggs and whatnot. A steak, because, again, you'll learn a lot of different techniques in one thing. You'll learn a lot about how product and how a specific ingredient can affect the cooking process, right? The steak, the thickness, the quality of the steak, how, what temperature it was. Like, there's a lot of detail in a simple dish like that. So steak. This one might be a weird one, a little bit of a curveball, but like a really good salad.

Not because, whether you like salad or not is a different conversation. But salad will teach you a lot about a really important component of cooking, which is emulsification. You'll learn how to properly emulsify a dressing, which applies to so many different avenues in cooking. It's like not even funny. So emulsification, it'll teach you how to properly season things that are inherently difficult to season because vegetables have a lot of water in them. if you don't season it enough, it's underseasoned. And also, like, vegetables are hard to make taste good. So you really have to force yourself to really think about the flavor that you're adding to this.

What's the best meal to impress a first date? Hey, by the way, really quick, if you want extra content just like this as well as early access, and a bonus post show posted every single week, feel free to join as a channel member to get immediate access to all of that, as well as early access to everything else that we post, along with priority responses to all of your comments. So if that sounds cool, feel free to join. Would love to have you on board. Thanks so much. We'll get back to the podcast now. What's the best meal to impress a first date? Oh, I mean, everybody knows this. It's a steak dinner. Always a steak dinner. How do you cook a perfect steak? Simply. You don't overdo it. You don't overthink it. Uh, salt pepper. If you want to

base it with butter, you can. I like to go the easier route, like less prep more so I can spend time with, you know, my date in my case, my wife. Um, but it would be. be like a nice one and a half inch steak, whatever your preferred cut is, but I would recommend either a rib eye or a New York strip. Look for something with a lot of high intramuscular fat. It's like nice marbling, basically. Not waggou. I think like prime is fine. If you can find an Australian waggue or an American wagg you'll get the right quantity of fat that's not overwhelming, but we'll make it juicy. And super simple. You bring it out. You let it come to room temp for like 20 minutes so that the surface is nice and warm. Sear it two to three minutes per side so you can get a nice medium rare.

and then basted in butter, you can throw herbs, thyme, garlic, whatever, baste it with a little bit of butter for like 30 seconds to a minute, let it rest, slice and serve with whatever you want. It's like,

always delivers. Unless you find out they're vegan, then that would be sad. Does it matter how expensive the knife is? Like, I've seen some of these like $300 knives. Does that make a difference at all? No. I have like $2,000 knives

that are not any better than my $50 knives. If you like, if you like a craft, and you like collecting art, then you may enjoy collecting a nice knife, but no, the amount of money you spend on a knife will not improve your cooking, in my opinion. I think that everyone should have one good knife.

One. You don't need three, you don't need four, you don't need a pairing knife, you don't need, no. If someone's like, hey, I have a hundred bucks, I want to spend ever on a cutlery, get a 10-inch chef's knife. The nicest one you can find, the nicest one you can afford. It could be $20.

I don't care. but a 10-inch chef's knife can do absolutely everything that any knife can do. It can even cut crusty bread. It's not as good as a bread knife, but it's not as good as a bread knife, but it's still a piece of steel with an edge. It can cut bread. Not perfectly, but it can still do it. Why don't you have a knife that you sell?

I feel like that's such a great product for you. I don't know, man. I've thought about doing it, but I'm just so particular on how I like my knives. I just don't want to create a product that, like, is too expensive for people, And I just feel like my knife is going to end up being really expensive. And people will have a problem with that. So I just haven't done it. Like, that's kind of it.

It's also, like, hard to repeat purchase those, you know? Yeah, because a good knife is supposed to last you, like 10 plus years. Yeah, yeah, a lifetime. A good knife could last you theoretically a lifetime, right? Depends on how well you take care of it. Also, the knife that I would make might be something that not everybody wants to deal with. Like, I love carbon steel knives, but they're so nightmares to take care of. and most people don't want to deal with that.

Well, you do sell books. How many books at this point do you have? Two. Two books. Well, actually, three, but like one I published when I was 17. So that was out of print by the time I was like 18. How many books have you sold? My first book, I think it's over a million.

The second book, I haven't checked in on it for a minute in the hundreds of thousands for the second book. And how does it work? Do you just get royalties at this point where every book that's sold, they just like send you a check. Yeah. It's usually like two checks a year. Is it lucrative to sell books? If you sell a lot of them, it is.

And the first book, you had a publisher, correct? Both. What went behind the decision of having a publisher for the second book? Because if I remember correctly on the first podcast we had discussed you getting a publisher for your first book and you sold a ton of copies. But I mean, you made a fraction of the amount of money that you could have made had you just self-published. Yeah, it's crazy.

I look back at that and I'm like, if I had self-published that book, oh my God. would have been so different. I wasn't like, well, first of all, I didn't even want to write my first book. I was kind of like, I already make recipes online for free. I don't know if I want to sell them or not. And like I was kind of like pushed to do, put it. But there's like, you know, not in a bad way, but my team was like, come on. Like, it's one book.

Like your chef, like do a cookbook. And I'm like, okay, fair play. And I did a book, did a cookbook. That's literally all the thought that went into it. So I didn't know it would do that well. The second time around, I was like, I don't know if I want to do another one. This is a lot of work. And they, you know, they gave me, they gave me like a big bonus as like an incentive to do it.

And I, you know, I was like, all right, fine. I'm not going to say no to that. So, you know, yeah. What's something that the average person doesn't understand about writing and selling a book? If someone's going to go into writing a cookbook, the first thing that they're going to realize is it is significantly more work than you can imagine. And it's usually under an unnecessary time crunch. That's what I really don't like about the publishing world is, and I'm not, I'm not, outing publishers. I enjoyed working with my publisher. But it's just like, hey, you have a year to

write this thing, which sounds like plenty of time, right? No, it's not, dude. It's so much work. First of all, all the writing, right? But then there's all the editing and then you got to get into the photography. I mean, you're taking photos of 100 plus recipes, right? But they usually only give you a couple of weeks to shoot 100 plus recipes. I think I shot my first book's recipes in like five days. How does that work? Do you have like a team behind the scenes making some of the dishes and then you're just like, you show up to take a photo with them? Yeah. So basically I have all the rest, all the recipes are written. They're all proofread and tested and they're good to go and they're locked in on the book. You would bring, you would hire a photographer to take the photos,

like a professional proper photographer. Um, you, they, they wanted me to have food stylists for the first book. I was like, no, I'll style it myself. Holy. That was a terrible decision. Because what ended up happening was I had a bunch of culinary people from restaurants that I knew that came in and helped me cook it. I was like, here's all the recipes, right? I would check to make sure everything was being cooked properly so that nothing was wrong. They would do all the cooking, and then I would be waiting. We had three sets set up, and, you know, one dish would be delivered over here. I would assemble it, and I would food style it. They would take the photo. Then I'd run over to the next set, assemble it, food style, next set, food style. 14 hours every day for like four or five

days where I would like run over this set, run over the next set, and I did that for 14 hours straight. And then I would run back to the kitchen, mind you, sometimes things would get up, right? Something would get overcooked or didn't look quite right. And I'd have to have them remake it,

which that's okay, that happens, but like slows down the day. This sounds dumb, but why can't you eventually just AI the thing? And it looks perfect. I would never do that. I just, I guess it depends on the use of the AI.

You know, I mean, like, I don't know, this is a hot topic right now. I feel really weird about making my food. Like, if I was doing another cookbook, right, and I need to take a photo of food, I just don't feel emotionally right putting this image out there that isn't the actual dish. And part of, like, a recipe to me

is proving to people what they're going to get when they make the dish. And if I didn't make it or assemble it on camera and take a real photo of the actual recipe that was executed. It feels a little smoke and mirrors. And I don't like that. I want to be transparent with people. And I also want to be able to say,

hey, if you make this recipe, that picture in that book is the recipe. It's not doctored up to, you know, with like spray paint. You know, I'm sure you've seen some of these crazy food. Glue. Yeah. Yeah. Like, we don't do that.

We use real food. Like they, by the way, there were times with photographers where they wanted to use like, imitation mashed potatoes to make it look like ice cream and I was like no we're using the ice cream and and um I believe that if you can at least do that and I think it's it's honoring the audience and the people that are buying your book and saying to them that you know this is a legit recipe how big is your team we have on staff full time probably about 12 people um you know from like editors to head of production, to director, to, you know, maybe like an assistant creative head, you know,

like I'm technically creative lead for the, for everything that we do, but we, we need to bring in a head of creative probably because it's getting pretty hard for me to do it by myself with all the other stuff I have going on. So 12 people full time. And then we've got about three or four freelance editors that we kind of dip into their well when we need them. And then everybody else is kind of freelance, aside from the restaurant, obviously, which, which is like a totally different business. Are you ever worried about the Mr. Beastification of YouTube? The things are maybe a little too optimized? Yeah, yeah, a little bit. I just don't know where it's going right now, and it feels like a lot of people are doing the same thing. As somebody who came from like what I would call,

and you guys did too, actually, what I would call like the last of OG YouTube. Do you know what I mean? Where like it was a little less hyper optimized. I think optimization is great, by the way. I love optimizing. But it just feels. like a lot of people are doing the same thing. And anytime somebody does something cool and unique, 500 other people do the exact same thing. So then now that cool and unique thing can never blossom into a greater thing.

It just is immediately gobbled up by a bunch of like, you know, money hungry people who want to make money on YouTube. And then now the concept's dead. And nobody can extrapolate on it ever again because they literally shot that horse like 600 times. But then if you don't do it, then it's just your videos don't get recommended. I think what people don't realize about YouTube is there is a threshold where you can

completely dissolve your business if you don't like pay attention to what works. Like you can't control the market. No one can control the market in any business. If the real estate market shifts tremendously, you're going to have to deal with it. You don't have a choice. You can't like call the government and be like, fix interest rates, please, you know? And so the way I look at it is like the market on YouTube has just aggressively shifted so much. if you operate in that space

and you're not optimizing your thumbnails and titles, you're probably just not going to see much of a result. And I think it's unfair for people to look at that and be like, well, don't do it because I don't like it. It's like, guys, like, these are people's livelihoods here. Like, people have been building businesses. Oftentimes what I've found is, like, there are still great shows being made,

but it's just going to take time for people to get past the optimization of the title and the thumbnail. We were just talking to someone who's telling us about the anti-thumbnail, And it's just, it's like kind of like a still shot frame that is made to look like an iPhone shot. And now because so many thumbnails are optimized that when you have the one thumbnail that looks like just a still, they stand out. It stands out. So now it's a swung in the opposite direction.

Everything's a pendulum. It is. That's the other thing. That's the other part of this conversation, right? It's like, oh, well, aren't you guys sad about the hyper optimization of YouTube? Just like anything else, the pendulum swings, man. It'll go back the other way. Like, just like in politics and just like in, in.

culture like things will swing really aggressively in one direction and then it'll swing really aggressively in the opposite direction even with AI like I think there's going to be a huge boom which I'm really excited about in analog stuff like not just like watches and and stuff like just things that are analog getting together at a restaurant getting together with your friends instead of cooking on like a hyper fancy stove people are going to be cooking on like OG gas without any LEDs on it no computer cooking like cooking like cooking on a campfire, not just in cooking, I think across all things in life. Yeah.

Like the hyper optimization of life is going to create a pendulum swing for analog stuff. I totally agree with you. What are some of your financial goals? Well, I have a family now. You know, I have a nine-month-old son and we plan to have more kids. And so I look at like my finances super differently now. I'm not just like, let me, you know, build the biggest building in the world. or like, you know what I mean?

Like from a metaphorically speaking, I'm not like, let me build the biggest building. Of course I want to do that and that's a goal of mine. But I don't know, man, I just want to make sure that my family is set up and taking care of. Aside from my kids going to college, like, I already have my son's college funded. You know, so what's my goal? My goal is to make sure that, you know, they're safe for their lives that they're taking care of no matter what in any situation for the rest of their lives. I'm not necessarily saying that I'm going to fund their life, but, you know, in an emergency that there's something there for them. you know, long after I'm gone, long after we're gone.

That would be my ultimate goal. I don't know if I have like a specific number in mind. I think it's more so just when that feels right, having the freedom to be able to make more creative decisions would be big for me. Like I think to your point about the optimization of YouTube, I think a big achievement for me would be to get to a point financially where we can just from a production standpoint go, you know what?

We're going to upload once every three months and just really dive deep on really, really, really cool stuff. That to me is really interesting because I think being under the gun of constantly having to create content can sometimes put you in a position where you feel like you're putting ideas out that you like, but like you know could be a little better or could be a little bit more optimized. Like I'm sure you guys feel that too, right? Every creative person feels that.

Even the people who make movies, like, you know, $100 million budget movies feel that way, right? Because they're under a time cruncher who's got $100 million cranking down on them. But I'm sure that they wish that they had more time. How is your income broken down these days? So my margins for my business are like primarily made off of YouTube ad sense, like almost entirely. So because if you think about it, that's like the only consistent number that you can monitor that like comes in every month guaranteed. Brand deals, I want to be able to say no. Like a lot of people don't know this, but like I leave tremendous amounts of money on the table with brand deals on purpose because I don't want to say yes to every brand.

What's the biggest brand deal you ever turned down? There was a brand deal that came in last minute, right? And I'm sure you guys get these, right? Where they're like, hey, can you guys do this in a week or two weeks or whatever? It's like a crazy turnaround time. It was a crazy turnaround time. They wanted quite a bit. They wanted two long forms, one short form and like three stories.

And that was it. It was quite a big ask. And they wanted all turn around in two weeks. And I think it was like, I think it was like half a mill. Whoa. And so I was like, I was considering it. And so I went to them and I was like, well, can we just do a long form for half a mill? And they said yes for one video.

Holy crap. That's when I was like, oh, okay, that changes things. Maybe we should do this. But the problem was like the brand was just like not my. Like I just wanted to see if they would say yes, to be honest with you. But the brand that I just didn't really, I didn't use. I was not a huge fan of them. They kind of had some issues with them as a company, like publicly.

public PR issues. And I really thought about it, but ultimately, like, even after they said, I wish I hadn't asked if they would do that, because that was when I was like, why did I ask that? Because I was trying to make them go away. And when they said, yes, I, like, sat there for a day thinking, like, should I do this? And I had ultimately decided no because it didn't align with my values. So I said no to half a half a mill for a 30 second talking point. That was a hard one.

Wow. That was a hard one. But, you know, you've got to stick to your guns, man. Like, at the end of the day, I care way more about, like, not. I can't, once you crash that threshold, you can't go back. Yeah. So what do you spend your money on? And how are you saving and investing?

Nowadays, I mostly invest my money. I don't really spend that much anymore. Like, I, like, aside from, like, my, I mean, the majority of what we spend is obviously on the business. That's, like, the majority of our money. But, like, any money that I make, like, right now we're not as, like, cash positive from a content standpoint because I'm really focused on just making the best stuff

that we can. A lot of people think like, oh, the channel makes, you know, tons of money and Josh is pocking at all. That's not true. Like, I have tons of people that I pay. It costs a lot of money to, if you want to really gun it and make big content to grow, you got to spend a lot of money to do it.

Like, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to make our production happen. A month? A month. And so like... Holy crap. What costs that much money? It's just like all the production people, the cost of the cost of the, flights, the cost of like equipment, the cost of hotel bookings. Like we did a video where I was like,

oh, this is a great metric. We did a video where I was like, what can I get to eat for a dollar around the world? And we traveled the entire circumference of the earth and went to like eight to 10 countries with a dollar and ate all over the country and then came back. I mean, that video, how much you think that video cost me? Probably like 50 grand. I was going to say $50,000. No, actually more because you're traveling also with staff. It was a good guess. It's a good guess. Cost is like almost $90,000 to shoot that. The irony of spending that much to see what I could get for a dollar. 90,000 and like $8.

Yeah, that's not a good business model, by the way, but I just wanted to try it, right? And so we're like, we're like shooting for the moon here, right? So anyway, my point is like when when like good deals come in or whatever, like I'll usually just invest it. Right. Like I have, like I said, I have a family. Like I'm trying to be responsible. So I don't really like spend on a lot of frivolous stuff. What's the best investment you've ever made?

The S&P 500, honestly, it's been great. SV500 has been great. Is that just where you invest most money? That in NVIDIA. When NVIDIA dropped to $78, I threw a pretty big chunk here. No way. So you got to be up like 5X on that then. Yeah.

Are you making more money from investing than you are from your business? No. Like in terms of what is net to you at the end of the year? You think that your net worth grows more from your business profits? Not yet, no. No. I think it's probably close, but not yet. No.

I haven't quite crossed that threshold yet. That's so impressive because we talk to so many YouTubers very often and virtually none of them invest. And the few that do are stoked that they do and they end up building good net worths and they can afford the things they want to afford. The other people, they never invest. And all of their income is from their active income. But if something were to happen to their YouTube channel or their social media accounts, like they would completely lose out on all this financial growth. So you're one of the very few people we talk to that like active.

invest, which is insane to hear that probably 50% of your net worth growth comes actually from your investments as opposed to your active income. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely, it's definitely getting to a point where I could see the tipping, the scales tipping over in the next couple of years, for sure. Like, but it depends, right? Like, because at the same rate, like, as my investments have grown, like, some of my income has grown too. So it's like they're like, almost like escaping each other. But, like, it's getting closer, though. Like, it's, there have been times where I've looked at some of my returns and I've gone, ooh, that month was a little

bigger than last month. You know, like, I've had months where my investments have done far more than what I've made in a month personally. But from an annual standpoint, not quite yet. What's the worst investment you've ever made? Bitcoin.

Oh, no. How much did you lose in Bitcoin? I cannot say. It's not good. Like hundreds of thousands? Did you tax ourselves? No, I'm pretty, honestly, like, guys, I'm pretty, what's the word?

Conservative? I'm pretty conservative. You know, I don't, I don't. Are you holding or did you just sell? Did you just sell out of it? No, I'm still holding. You know what's so funny? So this is really bullish for Bitcoin.

In fact, today it was up three per cent. I saw that. The reason why I just found out yesterday that Jack sold his Bitcoin. I sold all my Bitcoin base. At what? At what cost basis? I don't even know, honestly. Maybe like, maybe like 65, 70.

That's great. Let's go. My cost basis is 90, so I'll tell you that. Oh, sorry. My cost, I was down for sure. Like, my cost basis was a lot higher. I sold it probably around 65 to 70. Bullish.

But my cost basis, I mean, I think I lost like 40 grand or 30 grand. Oh, really? Oh, that's actually, wait, so then your cost basis was higher then, wasn't it? Yeah, it was, yeah. You don't remember what it was? I do not, because it was the I bit ETF. Oh, you didn't have to wreck Bitcoin was at when I, yeah. Oh, okay.

have that, but I also, I still do have a little bit of Bitcoin, but not that much. By the way, I've never purchased Bitcoin in my entire life ever. I've always just, I'm, like I said, I've always been a conservative investor. So like, I'll put money in, you know, the SMP 500 companies that I believe in. And I'm very much of like a, I'm not trying to make money quick. I'm just like, you know, put my money somewhere where it will grow through the nature of attrition and call it a day. I don't want to look at it. I don't have time to day trade.

I'm not like, let me make as much money as I can on the stock market. But when Bitcoin started going down, I was like, well, maybe this is an opportunity me for opportunity for me to give it a taste test. So I didn't put a ton of money in there, but I put enough to make it worth it if it went up. And yeah, I mean, I went in at 90. So I'll tell you, the best thing you could do is tax loss harvest. So you'll sell it and you could buy it right back. You actually own the Bitcoin itself. You could sell and buy back the same day. There's no wash sale. Claim the loss and then use that loss to offset other capital gains. Yeah, but you can't use that unless you like sell, let's say, another stock or an asset.

Yeah, that you realize a gain. But it's going to get hit with capital gains. But it does carry forward and then... Perpetuity, right? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you may as well just take the loss. And then what you could also do is sell enough to realize that gain, it raises your tax

basis. And that way, at least you get to realize that, you know, it's, it's going to work in your favor by realizing the loss. Even if you're suggesting, are you suggesting someone should take their Bitcoin, sell it at a loss, buy it back, and then possibly sell another thing that's profitable and receive. Yes, so I'll give you an example. I sold the property and I have a big capital gain. I used my loss on Bitcoin to offset the entire capital gain. But I buy back to Bitcoin immediately and now I'm good. So you get to keep the cash from the thing that you sold. Correct. You get to keep the profit without getting taxed on. Correct. And my exposure... But you still hold the Bitcoin and it has the ability to gain. Correct. And my exposure to that remains the same, but now my cost basis is lower.

So theoretically, now let's just say Bitcoin now goes up to 300,000. I will have a bigger capital gain. But I get to utilize the benefit today by having more money left over today that I could then reinvest. So like theoretically, if you had like a stock that was like crazy up and likely not to go up for another decade or something, you could theoretically let that go and... Correct. I do this every day. year. Every year in November, I look at my accounts and I say, what lots do I have at a loss? How big is that loss? And then I might have a loss of, you know, X amount. And I'll sell that.

And you just want to make sure you're not going to do like the wash sale. So you have to wait, you know, a certain amount of time. You can't buy in the previous 30 days. You got to wait 30 days. But on some of these lots, I just dump a chunk of money in there. And then I just wait. And it's fine. It's fascinating. Wow. And what do you do with the, so what about the money that you're getting capital gains on? What are you doing with that? Are you just holding it in cash? No. So what I did, I bought a tax-free muni bond. So, this is real estate that I just sold in L.A. And I did the calculation that I earned a little more in a tax-free muni bond than in the property. So I just basically put it in a tax-free muni bond. So you reinvested it. Yeah, it's all reinvested. But I took a chunk of that and I just bought today an international index fund. an emerging market index fund, and a little bit in the S&P 500. That's interesting. But the chunk of that is in taxing money. That's crazy.

So now I make more money tax-free without any of the hassle of real estate. That's a crazy leveraging hack. That's wild. Yeah. So you basically get free leverage. That's basically what you get. If you're going to reinvest that money, you basically get extra leverage for no capital gains tax. Yeah, that's sick.

Yeah. So you could utilize a few little things. But also, if you have a good accountant or someone looking over your portfolio, they're going to identify these things. Yeah, yeah. And they might just say, listen, right now you don't have any gains to offset this. Let's just leave it and see what happens to Bitcoin.

How do you feel about that? How do you feel about accountants and like wealth advisors and things like that? If somebody's a long-term investor, right, let's say somebody, it just feels a bit like, what are they doing if you just plan on stay on this? I think certain people, it benefits them a lot. I think we know some people who are really good with money

who use financial advisors, because it's not worth their time to even think about. Like, having someone optimize and do these little strategies, like one little strategy could pay for their service for the whole year, and then they're free. So there are all these little things. And like, I'll give you an example, actually, of why even a financial advisor would benefit me.

I'm not using a Roth 401k. And we had the money guys on the podcast, and they're like, dude, you could save so much money by a, by basically doing a Roth 401k, you're just leaving money on the table. You could save X amount. You contribute like 60 something thousand a year. Compounded over that.

Like, that's a service that would pay for itself. I'm just not doing it because I'm busy with other things. I'm like, I just don't want to think about it. There's so many things with kids too, like doing a 529 account, which is like the education investment account. There's so many cool things out there with kids too. Yeah.

Getting back to this, I'm curious. What is the biggest criticism about you that you think is correct. I guess the biggest criticism is more of like a blanket thought rather than a specific criticism, but that people think that like,

I have this like one track mind way of thinking about everything in terms of food or like my opinion. Like I think my opinion's always right. I definitely don't feel that way at all. I mean, I project that a lot on screen because oftentimes like it's like we have a challenge in the video

so we're building towards something. There's like a story we're building and so I'm adding emphasis and intensity and I think sometimes it comes across is like, you know, I only think about things one way. But like, honestly, I'm pretty, I'm pretty, like, fluid when it comes to stuff like that. One thing that I think is correct, honestly, it's not that, it's not that crazy. Like, the only thing people have really gotten right about me is that, um, that I'm extremely,

that I'm extremely anal about how things are made. Like, specifically with little small details, like salt. Like, people are like, Josh is over-obsessed about salt and blah, blah. That's probably right. I'm probably a little almost like I harp on that a little too much. But to me, this is more of a personal preference. I just feel like it's the one thing that everybody can leverage to make their food taste as good as possible. And if you don't, you're kind of missing out.

It's the only thing that enhances flavor if you think about it besides MSG. You have a really extensive watch collection. What was your first piece and what are all of your watches? Oh, first piece, Milgauss. I love that watch. Great watch. It might be honestly the most underrated Rolex I can think of

I agree with you The Rolex mill gauss It's a really cool watch Because it's like A you have An oyster perpetual That's unlike any oyster perpetual I can think of The second's hand is a lightning bowl

Just crazy Like what Rolex has done that That feels like so off kilter for them The blue dial Plus the green glass It's just like a wacky watch It's thick Yeah I also like that it never took off

I like that nobody really loved it Because I love it And I'm like you know what This watch deserves love. So that's one. I still have it. A very first watch. Actually, you know who I bought it from?

Rolex itself. No. Nico. Nico. No way. Cool. That's awesome. Nico Leonard.

Nico Leonard sold me my first watch ever. Yeah. He's a good friend of mine. Like, before he was even huge on YouTube, I bought it from him. Really? And I'm not going to claim anything here, but like, I see you have a new watch. Oh, yeah. You didn't even tell Graham.

Holy Jack. Oh, yeah. I've never, I've never seen that. Yeah, I got a new watch. Is this, no, is this yours? Yeah. What? Wimbledon, fluted, Jubilee.

Did you buy this in Japan? Let me see it. I did, yeah, yeah. Let me see it. I want to see if it's real. I'll be able to tell if it's real. Will you, though? Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, wait a second. It still got the things on it. I know. Wow, it's that new. Oh, my gosh. He didn't even, he didn't even bother to take stickers off. He did that for you.

I leave the stickers on. Really? Oh, you should take them off. I have one. You think it'll mess the watch up? They'll get, they'll get, they're just hard to get off. They get kind of gluey, and then when you try to take them off, they won't really come off. It's better to, because you're going to wear it, and the oils from your skin are going to get in that and fuck it up. It's fine if you don't. You can get them off. This is a really good fake.

Thank you. Yeah. It was $25. No, you know what, Graham? Yeah. So we have an inside joke about selling options. Okay, Graham doesn't believe in it. I believe in it. Gosh, I'm so tired of this conversation.

And so what I did, what I did to prove Graham wrong was put $100,000 into an account and then just sell options and however much money I made doing that, I was going to buy a watch. And so I bought this one and this is my options roll. I will tell you, I will tell you. The counter to that is that Jack got very lucky with the options that his stocks didn't drop because the market's been on a tear. But he could have just as easily put $100,000 in the account, bought stocks. The stocks dropped 30%. He loses $30,000 and sells some options here and there and makes $4,000.

It's a beautiful looking watch. Where is your new Rolex that you got for free, basically? I'm just serious. See the thing is? What color is your new Rolex, bud? When you get to a certain point, you don't need to flex anymore because you have nothing to prove. Meanwhile, it's like... He's got an omega-on.

Zenith. Zenith? Oh, okay. Zenith, yeah. See, when you have something to prove like this, it's signaling to the world. I have nothing to prove, actually. In fact, when I was in Japan, I was going to buy a milk house. Anytime somebody flexes on you, the first thing you do is you just point out that they're single.

I didn't even realize. You're married and you have a warm bed. I didn't even realize that I was wearing this watch. I just kind of, you know, threw it on. Oh, yeah. Sure. This old guy? I'm happy for you, but how about this?

It literally looks brandy. But if your stocks drop, you have to sell it. Is that how that works? Yes. I don't think he's going to sell it. Anyways, I got this in Japan. I like it. Thanks.

Yeah, I mean, I love watches. Watches are great. But yeah, the Milgauss is such an underrated watch. I think it's so great. And I love that they discontinued it. I'll never sell that watch. That's like my favorite watch of all time. And I also think of Nico every time I wear it.

I can't help it feel like eventually they will bring that watch back. Maybe. Because I think it's becoming popular now that it was never popular. Yeah. And I could see Rolex in a few years just being like, oh, it's the new watch. Because after the land dweller, I think they're looking for, like,

new hype pieces. And I feel like that Milgaus is going to come out. And here's my prediction. It's going to be something crazy. They're going to do a precious metals, milk gas. That would be incredible. They're going to do,

they grow the yellow gold or... With the blue dot, like that. I'm telling you. That would be a killer. That would sell. And also, the stainless steel original milgas probably go up because of that, too. Yes.

Because if they release a precious metal one, it'll drive the core price of it to get one. so high that the low-cost ones that don't exist anymore will probably naturally go up. Yeah. That's crazy. Wow. Well, I will say, like, for me, like with watch purchasing, like I try, I try to purchase more, if not equal to the same watches that I purchase for myself, for other people, you know, like my family, my mom, my dad, my wife, like people that I'm close to. Like, I get watches for pretty much everybody. Like, I've gotten a Rolex for a lot,

almost all the close people in my life. So I try to try to try to, try to, try to, not just reward myself here, you know? And so the Milgauss and then anything else? Like what speaks to you most out of your watch collection? I can't, I'm not going to reveal my full collection, but the more recent one that I got, which is like super, super special piece, like to celebrate the birth of my son,

I got like an insane allocation from AP. I got an open work, the white gold 37 millimeter open work with the blue flange or flange. I don't know how it's pronounced. That's like probably my like most, prize piece, not because of like how rare it is, but because it's, I got it to celebrate the birth of my son. So, I mean, it's like kind of like a reminder of him

every time I wear it. But that's a special piece to me. That's a really special one. But it's not, again, like, because of my son. One thing I will say, dude, is that you've been looking very just like buff, like very in shape lately. Graham really has been looking me up and down since I've got to notice that. He's got eyes for you.

Yeah, he does. He does. Sultry. I'm curious. What is something that people misunderstand? about getting in shape and losing weight. Oh, man, there's so many things. I feel like I could really simplify this. Cardio's great, guys.

You really, I really, it's like the one thing that really changed it for me. But, I mean, it's unfortunately, it's just super simple. Like, you have, like, if you really want to get exact results, right, you want, like, a specific result, which it's usually like, oh, somebody wants to lose X amount of pounds. Like, sure, you can, like, hop on a diet, you can hop on a paleo this, you could do keto, right?

but if you want a guaranteed result, all you have to do is be in a calorie deficit and count your macros that are going in your food so you know what you're eating, that way you're not guessing and hoping that it happens, you know what you're ingesting every day and do the same workout every day

that will put you in a deficit. So like for me, it's like I do an hour of weight training, 30 minutes of cardio every day, six days a week, and just do that. Do you think that being fat is a choice? I don't know enough about science to say whether or not Like there's, I don't know, if somebody has like a thyroid issue, like, does that, does that mean it's a choice? I don't know.

Like, but I think that if you are in a position where you don't or you're not happy with the way that you look, I think the important thing to remember is that it is possible to make a change. Like, even if it's small. And I think a lot of people get stuck in the idea that they think it's not for them or they think that they can't do it or, you know, they don't have the money or whatever. Like, there's always something you can do, even if it's small. and it's worth trying and it's worth committing to for a long period of time, whether that's three, four, five, six months.

How difficult was it to get in shape? Was like one of the hardest things you've had to do? No. So it wasn't that hard for you? It wasn't like impossibly hard, but there are a lot of challenges that come with it, right? I travel a lot. I have to shoot food every day. And I'm like in front of food every day.

I have like a slice of pizza that I have to take a bite of and then put it down and then not take another bite because I had to do it for camera. But I have to do that 20 times in a day. three to five days a week and still be on a diet, you know. Does unhealthy food almost always taste better than healthy food? Honestly, oftentimes. Well, define unhealthy. High calorie food?

Yeah. Higher calorie food tastes good because it's higher calorie. Probably has more fat in it. Fat tastes good. It probably has more carbohydrates in it. Carbohydrates taste good. Sugar tastes good. Like, it tastes good.

But things that provide a lot of energy to us typically have high caloric density. So what's your go-to meal to get shredded? I did a burger a while back that people loved that like went crazy online. That's literally just like 96% lean ground beef. I saw that. It's every time I posted it does well. Yeah. But it's super simple.

It's literally just 96% ground beef, two, three ounce patties smashed, salt and pepper on both sides, a slice of American cheese. You can make like a yogurt mustard Sri Racha sauce. It's really low calorie on both buns, pickles, eat it. It has all of the flavored components that taste like a great smash burger without all the calories. It's like 400, 450 calories. Would you shave your goate for $100,000? Untaxed

Sure Yeah Why not How much to shave your head? Half a mill So theoretically Because it grows back If it was like

It's like you have to go bald For the rest of your life Well that would be a different conversation But it's like oh you have to shave your head And it'll take like a year to grow back Okay so I made half a mill for the year for shaving my head It's not bad for $600,000 You shave your goatee and your head

Both? I need a mill for that So like It's one or the other. Okay. Okay. What would you do a million, though? Gauty, hair, and eyebrows.

Two million. Eyebrows are a million dollars. Yeah. Because you just f***ed up the whole look. Now I can't even market myself anymore. You'll probably end up making more than that because your videos would just go crazy. Or they wouldn't because nobody would want to look at my egg head. You know?

Like, that's going to look crazy. Okay. So we now have some rapid fire questions for you. Hit me. How much for you to shave your head actually? Like bald bald bald Man I feel like If someone really offered me

Like untaxed you're wired the day of Once you're complete with the task I'd have a hard time saying A hundred grand Probably because it's kind of short the way it is I know in three months It would grow back and I'd just wear a hat You made 100K in three months

It's great Yeah I would do it All right So these are rapid fire Give us quick answers How much should a hamburger cost $10? How much?

Should a steak cost? 50. Cream cheese on sushi, yes or no? Why not? Does buying organic matter? According to what I've read, apparently not. How much to quit YouTube? People are not going to like my answer.

I love it. I love it too much. What would I do? I mean, like, it's not even about money, but you'd have to like give me enough money that I could do whatever the hell I want for the rest of my life, including do dumb businesses that fulfill my,

my needs. It would be like a, it'd be like a, probably like 150, 200 million. Would you never cook again for a billion dollars? A billion. Untaxed. I probably take the billion. Let's be real bad. It's like let's be real here. I mean like I think you know what's funny about that question though. I think I would be unhappy for the rest of my life if I did that though. But I know that like my family would be taking care of forever, you know, literally forever. Like what's more worth it? Me feeling like creatively fulfilled or like my whole

family being taken care of forever. I mean, come on. What's the best fast food? Jollybee. What's the worst fast food? Actually, no, let me change that in and out for me, for the burger. What's the worst fast food?

Water burger. Really? I hate Waterburger. What's the best restaurant? This answer changes all the time. I'm going to say interjack tie. And the best dish? These, these, these,

These Sishuan chili noodles that I had in China like six months ago. Most overrated restaurant. Most steakhouses. Most overrated food. A5 Wagyu. Which country has the best food? China. What are your thoughts on airport sushi?

Never had it. Gas station sushi? I will never have that. That sounds horrible. Okay, before we close at the podcast, we have one last thing for you. We have a basic tier list here. And we just want you to rank, it's a few foods and a few ways. of preparing foods and you just let me know what you think.

Oh, okay. Air fryer. You know, in the past, I would have given this maybe a D, but nowadays they're pretty dope. I'm going to give it an S. There we go. I love airfrax. I love airfrax.

Blackstone, they're, you know, an A. They're really useful, but they take up so much space. Carbon steel. They're great, but there's so many other types of materials that are less cumbersome to clean. I'm going to give them a B tier. Cast iron, same thing, same reason. B tier.

Green egg. Ooh, a lot of people love these. You know, honestly, you can do so much with their green egg, and they actually don't take up a ton of space and they look cool, A tier. Hexclad pans. What is that? I don't, you know.

What are Hexclad? It's Gordon Ramsey's. I've used them, but they, They don't do what they've been advertised to do for me personally, so I'm going to give them... They work well until they get messed up and dirty, so I'm going to give them a B tier. Microwave, A tier.

Yes, told you, John. There's a lot of uses for a microwave. Do everything with that. Non-stick pan, S-tier. You know, they're not good for you, but there's so many things to do, and you cannot make... I mean, you can make it almond and stainless steel,

but there's so many things that non-stick solves so he makes life easier. of an S-tier, absolute necessity item for so many reasons. Pellet smoker is great to have, but it's not as good as a traditional smoker. I think a traditional smoker I would give an S and a pellet smoker, and a pellet smoker, I would give an A, because it's easy.

Suvied, which you misspelled, by the way. That's very funny. I'm going to give a suvied at A tier. It's a little overrated, but it works really well. Stainless steel S-tier immediately. They do so many different things, multi-purpose. It can do almost anything. It's the pan that I use for almost

every. What brand stainless steel do I buy? Made in. Easy. Not a sponsorship. Done. I have been sponsored by them in the past, though. Weber Kettle? Big fan, S-tier. It's affordable. You don't need a lot of fuss to use it,

and they work very well, and they last a long time, as long as you clean them properly. What about a George Foreman grill? Is that on there? It's not. Where would you put that? S-tier. C or D. It's a single use item. Dangerous.

Burn your feet. Spam, I'm going to give an A tier. It's amazing. Not an S tier because, I mean, it doesn't apply to everything, but it's tasty. Chicken, I'm going to give it an S tier, only because, you know, actually A tier, A tier, A tier chicken. A tier chicken because, you know, it's hard to cook really, really nicely. But when you do it right, it can teeter into S-tier territory.

I'm in between, but I'm going to land it on A-tier. Fish, S-tier. When, to me, it's the most underrated food on the planet. Actually, to me, it's like the second most underrated food on the planet. And when done right, it's impeccable. Pork, S, tier immediately. The most underrated meat, period, end of story. Think about it.

Some of the greatest things that people love universally. Ham, bacon, pork belly. I mean, cultures all over the world. And yet nobody talks about pork? Snails. C. It's not a fan. Steak S, come on.

Do I need to explain why that's an S? turkey. I'll give it a B tier. It's all right. When it hits, it hits, but it's not that great. Caviar, I'm going to give in, ooh, it would be crazy if I gave caviar an F. I'm going to give caviar an A tier.

It's nice to have, you really don't need it. If you lived your whole life never having caviar, you're not missing out on the essentials of life. Head cheese, B tier. It's good, but it just doesn't apply to everything. for me. I don't really seek it out that much, but it is good. Sweet bread. What do you mean by sweet bread? Like breads that are sweet? Like banana bread? Sweet breads or sweet bread? Like lamb sweetbreads? Because there's an image of bread on this. The organ meat. Oh, I'm going to give that a D tier. I

really don't like sweetbread. Sweet breads, I've had them before and they're all right. Um, bubble gum. See, I hate the, the, the, um, like weird, I'm not a huge fan of the weird aftertaste it gives me. And spearment maybe, but like, hubbaba, I'm not a fan. Fua grah. This is going to throw some people off. I'm going to give foie gras a D tier. Thank you.

I'm not a fan. I don't, I don't seek it out. There have been times I've had incredible foie gras, 10% of the time I've enjoyed it. Most of the time, I just don't want it. It's not that great. The texture throws me off and the, gaminess is not always that great. It needs to be perfectly made to be good to me.

Truffle I'm going to give a B tier. It's nice. It's great to have. Sometimes it really pops, but most of the time it's not really worth it. I don't think people should spend their budget for the week on it. Barbecue S tier. Immediate S tier. Barbecuing is an instant way to make almost anything taste incredible from vegetables to meat.

You can even use it as a smoker to smoke something like a sauce. Josh, thank you so much for coming on. We're going to link all your info down below in the description, including your restaurant. Yes. Yeah, if you guys want the best fried chicken sandwich for a reasonable price, it's at our restaurant. And it's very good. And you're taking on investors, right? So we'll throw a little money your way.

We'll jack and I alone 5% of it. A measly 10%. If you want to pay for an entire set of five stores, then yes. We'll discuss. Guys, thank you so much for watching. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you to everyone for listening. Yeah, and thank you all to the channel members.

as well. We post the whole episode without all the retention edits. Edited. Unedited. So enjoy that. Just like Josh likes it. Thank you so much. Until next time.

Until next time. Thank you guys. What is something that the left is fundamentally right about that the right does not want to acknowledge? Nothing. Get out of my face. Don't get it. And who the hell lets you back on this campaign? Good luck because they don't give a fuck.

How difficult is it to change someone's mind? Depends. Beach, you f*** ass, fuck you go. I have plenty of friends. I'm fine having a few enemies. They're all in the same room. They're all going to the same parties.

And when they all share the same worldview, it's a blind spot. How much money have you lost by not being PC? Many tens of millions of dollars. I've had people say that I was a hate speaker because I said soccer was... I do. I think so.

What political beliefs have you changed your mind on? I don't know that anyone has ever actually convinced me. to take a more left position. Who's been the most intelligent person you've debated? People aren't going to like this answer.