Restaurant Owners Uncorked

Wow. This episode is tremendous. No spoilers, just listen. Enjoy!

Sean and Wil caught up to discuss a wide range of topics, from the book "Traction" and it's impact on Sean's business, the Communal Table podcast, Ben's Friends, where the craft beer industry is (possibly) heading, mental health, and more. Sean's a great dude, this was a fun conversation. Enjoy!

A heads up on the episodes we'll be recording this week.

Jerry Lachman, aka Jerry Allen, is a very humble, low key legend in the Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, NC area. This was so much fun to record, and you will absolutely enjoy listening to Jerry share his story and his philosophies on how to run a successful establishment. Enjoy!

On a sunny, 70 degree February on the N.C. coast, we sat down with co-owners Martin de Jongh and Ole Pederson and learned how the two programmers-by-day launched a successful brewery eighteen months ago while keeping their day jobs. Enjoy!

Aviator Brewing opened in 2008 with Mark brewing beer out of an airplane hangar (there's a very cool story about why he was there) and driving his kegs to nearby restaurants and selling them out of the back of his truck. Eleven years later and Aviator has outgrown their 23,000 sq ft facility and is building a 65,000 sq ft facility to move into. This is a great story and Mark spent the whole hour with a wide grin across his face as he shared it. The guy clearly loves every minute of what he does. Enjoy...

Scott Crawford and Steve Palmer discuss addiction and sobriety issues in the hospitality industry, as well as the organization Ben's Friends in a conversation hosted at Crawford and Son.This is a very honest, raw discussion about an issue that has so negatively impacted the restaurant industry for decades. Steve (sober 18 years) and Scott (sober 15 years) lost a very close friend, Ben Murray, share their stories of drug and alcohol abuse, their realizations that they were either going to change their lives or wind up dead, and their respective roads to recovery. And they share the story of Ben's Friends (www.bensfriendshope.com), which Steve co-founded three years ago after Steve and Scott's good friend Ben Murray took his own life due to shame related to relapsing.

We've known Woody and Chris for a long time, and we're thankful for that. These are two incredibly genuine guys who've built a great business that is very well respected in their footprint. We had a great time hanging out with them, learned a lot about the craft beer business, and even cracked open a couple of cans of their iconic "Trophy Wife" beers. Enjoy...

Rick owns Deeluxe Chicken in Durham, NC and has been in the business a long time. We got pretty deep into substance abuse, sobriety, relapsing, mental health, physical health, and more. All the stuff nobody wanted to talk about until fairly recently. This is raw and real and awesome. Enjoy...