If you’re feeling it, they’re feeling it

I used to chef for an adventure tour company called Wilderness. We’d take people out for three-to-five days at a time on fully supported dirt bike adventures through all manner of terrain. The requirements to come on the trip were robust: plausible deniability that you had at some point in your life ridden or talked to someone about riding a motorcycle; a basic understanding of any language that might be shouted at you in moments of duress; and a willingness to say “yes and” to getting in way over your head.

I’m always going on about how it’s the accumulation of random skills that add up to a singular professional value. These trips were the exemplification of this principle. I’d stress like hell preparing four days worth of meals that could fit in two coolers, but on any given trip, “chef” was a flexible moniker.

In another life, I graduated from an automotive college, and would invariably be asked to perform some impossible repair to a vehicle or bike. I’d be trimming vegetables with a knife and, hours later, paring away downed trees from the path with a chainsaw or axe. We might need to cook up a quick shelter from early summer high Sierra storms for 15 people. I might even get to reset a dislocated shoulder or triage a broken femur. Although I loved the absolute hell out of it, I hope I’ll never work that hard again.

What continues to make Wilderness great is that they are a hospitality company that rides motorcycles. The experience comes first, and it’s never linear, and that crew is another world class improv troupe. “No” was not in the vocabulary and we were always clearing new pathways for being creative with hospitality.

Among the few simple guiding principles that informed our every decision, one has stayed with me for the better part of a decade: If you’re feeling it, they’re feeling it.

The first time I heard it, I only thought about bathroom breaks and how a feeling of nuisance trickles down through a hospitality experience.

There’s a simplicity to it: this new grill cook is kind of a dick — as the captain of my little pirate ship, if I’m feeling it, you bet your ass the rest of the crew is. That means it’s an absolute fucking emergency that Karl gets the fuck out of the building even if service, payroll, and me and Paul have to suffer a little bit.

There’s also nuance to feeling it. We spend more than anyone would believe on things that most restaurants think either don’t matter or that no one will notice. We use local olive oil, not the industry standard blended canola oil. We buy almonds from a guy who fucking loves almonds rather than purchasing commodity organic nuts. We buy Kosher salt from companies that don’t own slaves. Please hold while I climb off my high horse…

You could argue that people don’t actually taste or notice those differences but god damn if I don’t feel it in my soul when a corner is cut for profitability. And occasionally but frequently enough, someone will tell me that they like my restaurant because they always feel good after eating here. They’re feeling it, even if “it” is the culmination of hundreds of things that don’t make financial or logistical sense. That’s our superpower. We listen to the feelings. To quote another famous Tyler, “Felt like dirty dishes 'cause we was in sync.'"*

I love a slow burn idea like this. Over the last years, if you’re feeling it, they’re feeling it has become such an accurate barometer for so many things, professionally and personally.

It’s the reason we’ve fast tracked opening up Betsy in Altadena. The entire crew from the last rendition is feeling it. So I’m fucking feeling it. And if we’re feeling it, you’re feeling it. And it feels real good.

Right now, I’m putting a wine list together for the opening of Betsy with some very smart friends who’ve forgotten more about wine than I could ever know. If you ever perused the wine list at my former restaurant that I’ll not name so my god damn lawyer doesn’t call me again, I’m sincerely sorry. I wasn’t feeling that list and I never met a person who was. The Betsy list is only wines that we’re feeling. No head tilters or this-could-work-during-a-waxing-blood-moon-if-Jupiter-is-in-Uranus. Just a reasonably priced list of delicious, well-made wines from people who care.

It seems I’m also getting back into the coffee business. (Back on my horse for a moment here, hold my wine). I’m having a hard time finding the coffee experience I want to have as a guest. There are a lot of great spots out there, but nothing that feels like what I’d like to be feeling. Every business I’ve ever opened was a direct result of looking for something I can’t find. There’s a place in my mind that does what I’m after. I’m feeling it, and I hope and trust that when the time comes, they’ll be feeling it too.

*the creator