Ever wondered what the secret is to a truly outstanding meal? The answer is simpler than you might think - it starts with fresh, high-quality ingredients and a dedication to crafting meals from scratch. Hosted by our CEO and General Manager Fred Fung, join us in an enticing conversation with Richard Brumm, Director of Culinary Operations, and Joseph Elwell, Assistant General Manager, as we dive into the mouthwatering world of our Scratch Kitchen and uncover the journey that fresh food takes from farm to table at the Bonita Bay Club.
Our guests share their passion for culinary perfection and reveal the challenges and rewards of sourcing the finest seafood and meat from around the globe. We discuss everything from the dry aging process of beef to the delicate art of flavor profiling. But we don't stop there - we also talk about the club's unique use of American Wagyu beef and homemade pepperoni unlike any you've tried before. We even tackle the often-overlooked aspect of food presentation, reminding us all that the perfect dining experience starts with the eyes.
But a scratch kitchen isn't just about food. In our conversation, we delved into the day-to-day operations, including the often misunderstood aspects of allergen consciousness and the hurdles of staff retention in such a demanding environment. We even touch on the financial implications of running a scratch kitchen, revealing how it can lead to better financial health for the club. It's a peek behind the curtain into a world where every meal is a culinary masterpiece, and every ingredient tells a story. So, grab your headphones and prepare for a tantalizing journey into the heart of Bonita Bay Club's Scratch Kitchens.
Click Here to view the list from Chef Brumm
Ever wondered what the secret is to a truly outstanding meal? The answer is simpler than you might think - it starts with fresh, high-quality ingredients and a dedication to crafting meals from scratch. Hosted by our CEO and General Manager Fred Fung, join us in an enticing conversation with Richard Brumm, Director of Culinary Operations, and Joseph Elwell, Assistant General Manager, as we dive into the mouthwatering world of our Scratch Kitchen and uncover the journey that fresh food takes from farm to table at the Bonita Bay Club.
Our guests share their passion for culinary perfection and reveal the challenges and rewards of sourcing the finest seafood and meat from around the globe. We discuss everything from the dry aging process of beef to the delicate art of flavor profiling. But we don't stop there - we also talk about the club's unique use of American Wagyu beef and homemade pepperoni unlike any you've tried before. We even tackle the often-overlooked aspect of food presentation, reminding us all that the perfect dining experience starts with the eyes.
But a scratch kitchen isn't just about food. In our conversation, we delved into the day-to-day operations, including the often misunderstood aspects of allergen consciousness and the hurdles of staff retention in such a demanding environment. We even touch on the financial implications of running a scratch kitchen, revealing how it can lead to better financial health for the club. It's a peek behind the curtain into a world where every meal is a culinary masterpiece, and every ingredient tells a story. So, grab your headphones and prepare for a tantalizing journey into the heart of Bonita Bay Club's Scratch Kitchens.
Click Here to view the list from Chef Brumm
Well, hello, members, we're here with another podcast today and we're focusing on Scratch Kitchens. I've got my distinguished guests here today Richard Brum, who's our Director of Culinary Operations, hello, and our Assistant General Manager, mr Joseph Elwell. Hello, thank you. So you know, going back way to I guess it was somewhere a fall of 2011, richard, was that when you came aboard, october 2011. October 2011. And you really adopted a culinary operation that wasn't to the level that you were used to A lot of prepackaged and reportioned items.
Speaker 2:That is very much correct. Yeah, coming in here, it was an interesting system that they had in place. They were opening up bags of pot roast from Cisco and bottled dressing.
Speaker 1:And it was probably and hopefully you saw that as an opportunity, oh absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, otherwise we would have come down here.
Speaker 1:Well, and now it's probably a great time to just say congratulations on just an unbelievable recognition and award that has come from a lot of hard work and commitment from you and your team. Club and Resort Magazine named you and your operation the number two culinary operation in the entire United States for private clubs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we were honored and thrilled to secure that rank. It was a great deal of hard work and the accumulation of many years of dedication by just an amazing team of culinaryians who are really dedicated to a genuine scratch program, and that makes a big difference.
Speaker 1:So that's the perfect transition, Richard. I think a lot of that success maybe a lion's share, and almost predominantly and exclusively that the success is attributed to that scratch philosophy. Tell us what that is in the broader sense.
Speaker 2:So I mean from the broader sense in essence is we want to make as much of our food as we can and to be able to see our natural raw products, to be able to bring in just the highest quality raw ingredients and then create with them. That's what brings the value, in my opinion, to our membership here at the club. We know where everything's coming from. We know, you know perfect grains and beautiful pristine fish and you know ethically sourced beef and all of our different items come in in their natural state and then we make food with them.
Speaker 3:Now, Chef, really neat is that you go into a really granular level of detail with that philosophy as well, all the way down to grinding your own spices. So it's pretty amazing that it goes really from top down.
Speaker 2:It is. We spent years looking for a spice company to partner with and you know we use a brand called Spicewalla and they come out of North Carolina. You know they're a direct importer. We bring in, you know, whole cardamom pods and cinnamon sticks and black peppercorns and whatever it might be, and you know we have spice mills and you know it's the same concept of. You know you go to Starbucks or you know a coffee shop and you expect those beans to be ground fresh, right. You know these great places aren't using packaged preground coffee. It's the same thing when you think about spices. You know it's. You get all your essential oils and everything's more vibrant and it's just a really good product.
Speaker 1:Now, richard, we cite that we're a 95% scratch kitchen, so I think that a lot of members don't really know what that means and what things are made in-house versus purchased outside. Talk about some of the items that some of the members would maybe not be as surprised, but also some of the items that they would be just really surprised to know that you make from scratch right here at Benita Bay Club.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting because you know, one of the things that I talk to my staff and in general about is the whole concept of you don't know what you don't know. And because you know we are in the industry us, you know, within the culinary industry it's very natural for us to be producing all these different items, but I guess it's less predominant sometimes than we would normally think.
Speaker 1:So you say that, but in the, say, five star resort and hotel world which I've worked, they don't touch anything. What you're doing in terms of that scratch kitchen philosophy and I think some of it has to do with just a focus on margins and things like that. But continue on. I just wanted to point that out because your world and our world of private clubs it's maybe not as uncommon at the really top tier clubs to focus on that, but it really is. In the rest of the world where everyone dines.
Speaker 2:Sure, absolutely. You know it goes to the extent of like if you're going to walk through a grocery store, you know all of those products that you see on the shelves that you buy in cans and boxes we make here. So you know salad dressings, you know we make all our own salad dressings. They're not coming in bottles. All of the soups in all the various different areas, you know those are made from scratch, and not only the soups but the stock. So you know we're not purchasing chicken broth in a can or in a box. You know we make that stock.
Speaker 2:You know that salsa that comes from the quesadilla, that doesn't come from pace, that that comes from Jesus. You know who makes all our own dressings and sauces. He's awesome, he's great. You know he makes the guacamole fresh daily. He's got you know three different salsas that he makes. He makes that honey lemon dressing that everybody loves so very much. On the Benita Bay salad, you know there's no boxed pasta here at Benita Bay Club. Your linguine and fettuccine and elbow macaroni and that alphabet pasta that is in the kids, macaroni and cheese. We make that. You know we hand roll the raviolis. The tortellini is made from scratch. Have you made your own fusilli?
Speaker 1:man, that's it.
Speaker 2:I love fusilli. Fusilli is one of my favorite pasta shapes. That's a Seinfeld reference for anyone. We could. We could If that's something that you would like. You know the fish, you know our seafood that we bring in. The fish is brought in whole. You know we don't buy fillets. You know you go to a grocery store and you see those fillets sitting there. Our coolers are filled with whole fish. That a fish moniker brings down.
Speaker 1:Not only that, I know that you have roughly four different purveyors for fish that you use, but you've also been known to go out onto the I call it the high seas, but it's really the Gulf of Mexico, I suppose with a spear gun and well-rooted lungs to hold your breath. Actually, you probably had an air tank right. I did. Sometimes our fresh catch is caught by you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. If you want to talk, seat to table. I know where the source is.
Speaker 1:Well, in fact, I just learned the other day that your local purveyor. Very often it's four or five hours out of the water, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:To your dock, definitely, definitely, and it's just pristine product and to be able to have those local partnerships. You know when we're dealing with Dilly's Fish Company, which is once again, like you said, bringing our Gulf species right to our doorstep, to being partnered with Farmer Mikes, who's just right across 75 and has just great local farms, and we're getting tomatoes and seasonal produce coming out of those places, it's just, it's great.
Speaker 1:Stripaharia mushroom farm.
Speaker 2:That's just south of us where we're getting some of our more exotic mushroom species you know Well.
Speaker 1:Back to fish, because the last time I looked when we ran our sales mixes, the number one sales item was fish, the number two was fish and the number three was fish. So much for that. Meat and potatoes Midwest diet right. But one thing that you mentioned is that you know we talk about you're getting it fresh, often locally, hours out of the water to the dock, but there's certain things you can't get here and the product that is the best is across the world. In Tasmania it is. And so there's a different example of something that you want to serve to the members. One of our top selling items salmon, and where do we get it from?
Speaker 2:Tasmania, it does. It does so our Tasmanian salmon from a company called Big Glory Bay. So it's a beautiful ranch product, very, very high in fat. Such a great fish and that gets harvested, comes across the water the next day and we bring it down from a company called Wolf Seafood out of Boston, where we get a lot of our northeastern species from as well. Just a great, great boutique fish shop that's producing and supplying us with incredible products from around the world when we need to.
Speaker 1:And sorry, Joseph, no shot against New England and that area up there, but he's pretty quiet over there. Possibly the best lobster is not from Maine, is it?
Speaker 2:You know it depends, it really does depend. So, Maine lobster, incredible product, but it's a different lobster. So it's, you know it's a clawed lobster, but if you're going for a lobster tail, best lobster is coming from South Africa or Western Australia.
Speaker 3:And that's a funny lobster. You can't beat those claws.
Speaker 1:He's reaching for something there clawing at it.
Speaker 2:But yeah, your cold water spiny lobster coming out of Western Australia or South Africa is just an incredible product and we're pretty excited to be able to serve those species as well, so that descriptor on a menu where it just doesn't say lobster tail, it says South African lobster tail is important Absolutely, and that's why we like to put those things on the menu, to let our membership know that we're being very conscious on the products that we're intentionally sourcing to go on our menus and to be part of our features and be part of our dining program.
Speaker 2:What else do you make in the?
Speaker 1:house Richard.
Speaker 3:It's got like five pages of text over there. I don't know if we're going to get to all of it. There's a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2:We could spend 40 minutes just going through this list.
Speaker 3:How about the turf? There's some pretty cool things you do with the meat program as well, there is a lot of turf here.
Speaker 2:So all the beef that we serve, from an Alakard standpoint, as far as your steaks go, that's all American Waikoo beef, which is a fantastic product. That's Mishima Reserve Really really neat to be able to bring that to the membership. And that's also what we use for our dry age program. So we're dry aging our beef in-house. And where's that? That is right in between the hearth room and the club room. So we have that beautiful dry age cabinet there that you can see all those products going through their cycles and getting all delicious. We've got some cool experiments going on in there. We've got some cocoa rubbed beef that we're dry aging. We've got some bourbon infused beef that we're dry aging. We're also playing with some tallow encased beef to see if we can push that aging process a little bit farther. And if you look next to that, you're actually going to see our homemade pepperoni that's fermenting in the cabinet and getting dry aged and beautiful. So all of our pizzas and flat breads, that pepperoni that comes on there, that's made by us.
Speaker 1:So I know you experimented with this. How long does it take to dry age a steak?
Speaker 2:So, as far as steaks go, we like to go 28 days on a on a bone out product and we go 47 days on a bone in product, your bone in primes and things like that. We start at 47. And like a New York strip that's been dry aged, we like to go in at 28 days.
Speaker 1:So how does that get impacted? Why not 45 days versus 21 days versus whatever? Because I know that in the beginning you were experimenting and I had some great taste tests. Even the stuff that you thought was too long or too short all tasted great to me.
Speaker 3:But upwards of like 100 days. I think at one point you were doing a steak.
Speaker 2:We did a 100 day dry aged A5, actual Japanese wagyu prime, and it was good. A5 Kobe is the highest. A5 Kobe is the highest grade. It was more fat than beef at that point and it was good. But what we noticed is there was some oxidation, so the beef took a color that was unexpected, and so, while it was still delicious, that visual presentation lost a little bit of its effect. And so I guess that's the biggest thing in the process is finding that sweet spot that's going to appeal to the majority of palates. And then, every now and then, we take things to extremes and let people taste some of the more unique offerings that we have.
Speaker 1:So how much weight do you lose during that process?
Speaker 2:Once all is said and done, is we lose about 50% of that product. So that's a lot of times where your cost factors coming into that, between the moisture loss and we want that that's the whole idea of dry aging is we're evaporating water out of that beef to make that flavor more concentrated. There's also an enzymatic breakdown that makes it more tender and you get these great kind of nutty and sometimes kind of good cheesy sort of flavor profiles that are going on from that process. But that exterior, the part that gets all dark, that gets all trimmed off and we get down to that beautiful red meat that's fully trimmed. And what we really like to do is we like to present a steak on your table that if I tell you you're going to get 10 ounces of New York strip, you get 10 ounces of New York strip and you started with ballpark.
Speaker 1:What Of a raw product before, before it lost all that?
Speaker 2:weight. Before that it would be close to like a 20 ounce strip.
Speaker 1:You got a big list there and yeah, no, where do we start us?
Speaker 2:How about citrus?
Speaker 1:Yeah, how about juice? And, by the way, just for all you listening, I think what we'll do is we'll have a link on the podcast whenever we send out email. That will show all of the items, or I don't even think that's all the items, but it's a comprehensive list of items that I think a lot of people would be surprised that we make in house here.
Speaker 2:Right, did you know you get fresh juice here, no matter where you go, even at the bars?
Speaker 1:you know that cocktail that you're drinking Even at the Wave.
Speaker 2:Cafe. The Wave Cafe is a great example of that Beverage cart.
Speaker 2:Well, the beverage cart. Yeah, Yep, the juice is on the beverage cart, that orange juice, you know that doesn't come from anywhere else other than our kitchen. You know we're squeezing fresh citrus juice orange, orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit, apple cider, repressing apple cider at the Wave Cafe, the Green Goddess. All of those juices are made either here in the main clubhouse, if it's citrus, or with Allison over at the Wave Cafe If it's any other form of juice, be it carrot or beet or any of those other delicious, healthy items from that standpoint. And yeah, they go to the bars too. Yeah, sour mix is made from scratch. You know the paloma that you're getting with grapefruit juice is fresh grapefruit juice.
Speaker 3:It makes a huge difference in the program too. It really dovetails nicely with the from scratch philosophy and really enhances the quality of the bar beverages.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not just about making it from scratch, but you also have to deal with maintaining the quality, like, as you mentioned, the spices. You want them to be ground, and just like with ground coffee versus whole beans. Sure, once you grind it, the shelf life becomes shorter, I'm suspecting.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and you know we have those logistics in place to make sure that these products are are being produced as close as possible to when they're being used. For that reason, you know you want a corned beef sandwich at lunch. We make corned beef, not just cook it, but we make it.
Speaker 1:Where do you make?
Speaker 2:it? Oh, we make it in the kitchens. So you know corned beef process, it's got to be brined and that's where you get all those delicious flavors in there. But then we also throw in our smoker. It gets an hour of smoke on there. But other products you know all of our ribs, brisket, things like that. You know we're smoking those in-house. You know that salmon, that smoked salmon that you get for Thanksgiving with some beautiful, beautiful smoked salmon's out there, and you know we're making those. You know we're not buying in smoked salmon, we're making that now, chef, sometimes you smoke out of the house as well.
Speaker 3:Tell us about the signature item for the men's classic.
Speaker 1:Oh, let me introduce this. This was, this was something else. So, before Richard goes, he's rich, he's kind of humble about this sort of.
Speaker 3:Thing.
Speaker 1:He didn't tell anybody until and then I started telling people. So this was classic 2012 first, where you decided to do a roast suckling pig and.
Speaker 1:Where you were really getting started with your scratch program and and we had someone that we knew who would roast the suckling pig, bring it in an hour before we needed it and we'd serve it. So that came in and I asked you. I said, richard, what do you think of that this? You said, yeah, I feel like we can do better than that. And I said, well, how would we do that? Well, you know, we'll smoke it ourselves, and so we don't have a smoker. Oh well, we'll get one. So we knew that was coming on the Capitol in that summer. We actually rented.
Speaker 2:We rented it first one rented it for the first two or three years until we got the program under wraps and, you know, really figured out what we were doing.
Speaker 1:Then we finally went in and and got one and then we got one, then we got a double barrel one, right yeah.
Speaker 2:And then we got a double barrel one and then another double barrel one, just to be able to handle the volume that we do at some Of these events.
Speaker 1:So anyway, where I was going with this was. I think there's a lot of people that actually like that pig, but it wasn't to the same quality that you knew that you could create here. So the next year you rented the smoker and it was probably about Six o'clock, seven o'clock and no, it was later than that, but it was, you know whatever time. It was 70 o'clock at night. I ran into you and I said so, we all set for tomorrow. And you said well, now I'm gonna go over to the Naples Club and we're gonna smoke the pig. I said so, what's involved with that? Well, I get the smoker in there and put the pig in around 10 o'clock at night, I think he told me it smokes for about 12 hours, would be done sometime around 10 in the morning and We'll take it out. So I go as you put it in there, you go home, sleep, come back early in the morning and check out the pig. You said no, no, no, we need to add wood Every. Was it 40 minutes, 20 minutes, every 20?
Speaker 1:20 minutes 20 minutes you would have to add wood to the smoker, and I said, well, who's doing that? And you said it's gonna be me. I said, well, why don't you get one of your guys to do it? You go, it's it's too much to ask for anyone. I could never do that to my staff. So you went down there and Started at 10 o'clock and you proceeded to text me pictures throughout the night. I Finally figured out how to silence my phone At about 2 o'clock in the morning and you were taking photos not just of the smoker but also of the temperature gauge in your car that you were using to light the smoker, and you were also using it to stay, I don't know, not warm, but warmer than it was outside, because it was something like 35 degrees outside.
Speaker 2:You've had some cold ones. It was a strangely, strangely cold arch and for some reason it always happens During that week. Yeah, we've had a couple cold. We've learned, though. We've learned we've gotten better, you know, and then you know it's nice. You know, usually Joseph will come out and, you know, bring a bottle of wine, and usually Last year you skip on me, but you gotta get through it somehow.
Speaker 1:He's so hospitable. I never did that. I just turned my phone off and wish for the best.
Speaker 2:But anyway, but yeah, every year we expanded. It's great. Well, you know, last year, you know now that we have the, the two Double barrel laying smokers, we were able to have both of them out there and so we're smoking on four barrels. And you know, we've we've gotten smarter and gotten better over the years. We've got some Bluetooth thermometers that we use now that controls or allows us to kind of control and watch that process a little bit better and that really really helps with the amount of time that we have to spend and directly associated with those, those smoking units, and save a little on wood and and save a little bit on the Every 20 minutes sort of concept. So that's, that's kind of refined a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's something else though.
Speaker 2:It's a great night. You know, a couple of my sous chefs are now involved in it and and we have a night together and it's it's kind of a team bonding experience that we do and and kind of look forward to it Until the next two days, because now we have the rest of the classic going on and and we've beat ourselves up a little bit, but it's a good night.
Speaker 3:And is that a? Are those scheduled sous chefs or is that on a volunteer basis? It's a completely uninvoluntary, I'm told, basis. It's been a. It's been a rotating. Cast out there who your wingmen are.
Speaker 1:It's been fun to say so, joseph, what Richard does here, and not only does he manage and lead a predominantly from scratch kitchen, but he changes menus a lot too, I think. As I recall, every restaurant changes four times a year, with the 55th hole Changing six times a year. So how does all of that and the scratch philosophy impact the front of the house?
Speaker 3:Well, it really goes hand in glove and I'll tell you from my past on the service team everything's better when the meal is great. It drives member satisfaction as well as it's. It's so great to have the staff in place that can be proud of the output and the product that the kitchen and the culinary team stand behind and, like you touched on, there's a ton of variety that that entails. In fact, a really, really neat fact is that members could dine every day in the clubroom specifically and enjoy something different every day without even opening the menu jacket, just by way of the sheer volume of Daily specials that we have from a routine basis for lunchtime as well as dinnertime. And now we have specials at the breezeway and the 55th hole itself. Chef has all the numbers in front of him here, but there's a daily salad as a daily sandwich as well as the flatbread of the day. So there's just so much variety, and that's just on a daily basis.
Speaker 1:So you could eat here every day of the month, and, and, and do that every day of the year. Wow, every day of the year you could come here and get something different and never open a menu.
Speaker 2:So, if we're talking about numbers, there's 19 menus that change quarterly.
Speaker 1:How 19 when there's six outlets and there's really eight operations, right?
Speaker 2:But some of those are even doubled because you know we have a dedicated vegan menu that's attached to each one of our dining outlets. So that menu, as we change our regular menu, therefore the vegan menu has to change also. So each one of those dining outlets represents two as far as menu changes. And then we know when we're going into that, there's 12 Daily features between the different restaurants that we that we run, five weekly featured items that change. And then of course we have poets night on Friday night and that's different every Friday. So it's got a similar theme but the items that are are encased or or go with that theme change on a regular basis as well. So our menus are Always evolving and always changing and there's, frankly, always something fresh and new and unique for the membership to try.
Speaker 1:Richard and and also Joseph. How do you all deal with special requests or dietary restrictions or Allergies and I'm lumping a lot together there. There's preferences as well, but there's so many different diets and preferences and and Scary and most important ones are the allergies. Some people say, you know, I'm allergic to peanuts or shellfish or name it, and how do we deal with all of those type?
Speaker 3:of special requests. So, from a big picture perspective, being a from scratch Kitchen actually positions us really well To accommodate members and their guests, not only from a customization standpoint to, you know, make meals that are prepared More to their liking but, as you said, to prepare them in a manner that's safe for those with food restrictions as well as Allergies. So, like chef already said, we have the dedicated menus specifically for those that are vegan as well. We have the ability to customize everything further to make sure that those are prepared in accordance with their diet.
Speaker 2:As much as possible. Absolutely, and and that is really one of the great things about that scratch philosophy is we are able to customize and we do customize as much as we physically can at any given time. Allogens you know I've been dealing with allergies my entire going on with 30 year career. At this point, very, very cognizant and conscious about especially allergies.
Speaker 2:And While we don't have a dedicated Allogen free kitchen, you know utensils are changed and cutting boards are changed and gloves are changed and we care. You know we care in a very, very deep sense and we take everyone seriously. So you know, when I have a ticket, come back and you let us know that you specifically have an allergy to something. If you say I have an allergy, we get granular with it. You know we're going to make sure, if you have a garlic allergy, that you know that includes all alliums, so that includes onions and that includes garlic powder and that includes all those hidden things that may be in a dish that we're going to make sure that you're conscious of and that we make sure that you aren't affected by your garlic allergy.
Speaker 1:Well, this is a pretty important topic and it can be very sensitive and the higher the degree of allergy there is to an item or a product, the more sensitive it becomes, right. So can we guarantee someone that is, say, celiac or allergic to garlic or whatever it might be, can you guarantee that there's absolutely no chance that there's going to be any of that item or gluten or garlic in there? I mean, think about cross contamination. I mean that's something we talk about a lot. I mean you look at some places and I think the reality is that if somebody is incredibly sensitive to a particular item or ingredient that we can't without an allergy kitchen, we really can't come to the point where we feel completely confident that the cutting board or the oven doesn't have trace elements of that ingredient in there. And you know how do places deal with that if someone's truly allergic.
Speaker 2:Sure, and that's a great point, and sometimes that's very personal driven, but it depends on the item. So when we're specifically talking about items that can be aerosolized, specifically flowers a great example of that you know there's flower in the kitchen. So, just like, if you're going to buy a commercial product, if you're going to buy a Snickers bar or whatever it might be, if you look on that package it's going to clearly state that it was produced in a facility that contains X, y or Z allergens. Another item made in the same factory as a Snickers bar is going to say made in the same facility that makes items that contain nuts. And that's the situation that we're in. So, while we do everything physically in our power to make sure something is allergen free, items are produced in a facility that contains allergens.
Speaker 1:Well, actually to that point. We made a change on our menus recently to denote that, changing from gluten free to gluten friendly Absolutely, and I think that was an important note when we found that there are places like I mean not to compare our operation to this, but Chick-fil-A, as an example they have items that they list that do not contain gluten as an ingredient. Sure Right, but they say, if you want gluten free, the only items they show on there are packaged in plastic, delivered to the customer and they have to open it themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and that's realistically the only way that you could truly guarantee that that sort of production existed. And if we had an allergen free kitchen that was dedicated to that, we could create those sort of packagings ourselves. But yeah, aside from that, that's pretty much where those limitations would be. Now, at the same aspect, if you think about an allergen free kitchen, even you still have cross-contaminated allergens, sure.
Speaker 1:Right. So how many clubs or facilities do you know? There's some kosher right, we know about the kosher Right, but yeah, let's take that aside. There's only one club I know of in the entire US 4,000 country clubs that I know of that has an allergen kitchen.
Speaker 2:That is correct and it was a recent addition, within the last two or three years, I believe. But yeah, as far as I know from my colleagues and people I've talked to is there is only one dedicated allergen free kitchen that I'm aware of.
Speaker 1:For those of you who don't know where that is Farmington Country Club, I think right, that's correct. Yes, so, richard, does it make it easier or harder to attract and retain quality culinary talent with this scratch philosophy?
Speaker 3:Yes, it's a loaded question.
Speaker 2:The best answer is yes. So the scratch philosophy allows us to bring in some incredible people, but it can also be extremely challenging for a lot of staff that come into our doors because we do things so polar opposite to what most people are used to. And just you know, our genuine philosophy of how we go about what we do is just completely different than most places.
Speaker 1:So people have to take pride in what they're doing. They do Not just view it as a job. In order to really embrace that and for the people that stay here.
Speaker 2:Well, and you know it was one of the first conversations that we had, and it's what I call the French fry philosophy, and the French fry philosophy is the French fry means almost more than anything else in the kitchen, like if I have a culinary in coming in and they don't care about the chicken tenders and French fries, then they have no business cooking anything other than that right Especially in a country called.
Speaker 2:Well, there is a way to properly make french fries and properly make chicken tenders, and if they don't care about that, why would you be cooking anything else? Everything that we do matters, everything that we cook matters, everything that we're putting on a plate matters, and that's the mentality that I try to instill in our culinaryians, in our front of the house staff, in our overall dining program is everything matters and each detail matters, and if you aren't conscious about it on a regular basis, then we're losing sight of the overall goal of that quality to the membership.
Speaker 1:Well and, from a retention standpoint, you reward, support and recognize people that embrace that, and one of the ways is, as they achieve different designations and accreditations through the ACF, american Culinary Federation, they get rewarded, they get paid more, they've made the commitment, they get reimbursed for their portion of their tuition and then it's a way of them giving back to us and us giving back to them, and 90% of my management team came up through the ranks is not hired from the outside.
Speaker 2:There are people who have put a dedication and a commitment to our program and to our membership and the reward is moving up and getting better and being more recognized and being in a position to eventually go out and run their own scratch philosophy kitchens and it just it makes the industry better.
Speaker 3:You developed a lot of talent as well, coming in from a student perspective as well, with culinary boot camps that you've posted for local culinary programs in high schools, as well as the kind of the upstart of the international staffing program having brought in the J1 student visas. Many of them are still with us today, having converted to H2Bs and have developed so many skills along the way as well. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And they're just incredible people and we're really grateful for that dedication that we've seen amongst all those team members and the fact that they keep coming back year after year. There's a dedication there to come back to this program and be part of something bigger, and that's what it's all about.
Speaker 1:So here's a question for you. This might be a little bit loaded. Does it cost more or less to operate a scratch?
Speaker 2:kitchen. Can I go back to my yes answer?
Speaker 1:You may, but then you're going to have to explain it, since it's a yes.
Speaker 2:So raw materials you know, in and of their nature, when you're dealing with, for instance, pasta, you know we make our own pasta, flour and water relatively inexpensive Labor more expensive.
Speaker 1:How many staff do you have, richard, fully staffed in season?
Speaker 2:Fully staffed in season throughout all of our different restaurants and dining operations. The back of the house is 80 strong Wow.
Speaker 3:That's a big number and you compare that to the front of the house Upwards of 120 once we are at the peak of the peak.
Speaker 1:And just as a point of reference, that's probably 140 for golf operations, maybe 120 to 130 for golf course maintenance. The fitness centers 45, 40 to 45,. The spas about the same.
Speaker 3:So at our peak it's about a third of the staff base between hospitality and culinary, yeah, because we're about what?
Speaker 1:600 in peak season. Okay. So yeah, labor costs more.
Speaker 2:And it takes a lot of people to do great food. It really really does. Could we do it with less people? Sure, Do you want food coming out of a package with questionable origins, with preservatives and all kinds of ingredients that you can't pronounce?
Speaker 1:Well, I guess that's where we came from right. Yeah, we've been come a long way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's less a cost decision than it is a intentional quality decision is what drives that Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Joseph, we talk about this as well, and recently, within the last six, seven, eight years, an organization called Club Benchmarking, who reviews financials, and most specifically in this case, with food and beverage, and they found an interesting correlation, didn't they?
Speaker 3:They did and in fact it took a long time to get there because this is an industry that didn't have a whole lot of data and they a partner with over a thousand clubs and have compiled data in the last 24 years and they found an inverse relationship of food and beverage subsidies being the amount of dues that go to support the food and beverage program, and that relationship was inverse with the overall financial health of the club. So the long and short of it was that the more the club subsidizes the food and beverage program, the better off they are in financial health. The biggest contributing factor that they looked at for financial health the metric was the initiation fee that they were able to command based on member demand and the quality of the club.
Speaker 1:Wow, so that's sort of counterintuitive, isn't?
Speaker 3:it Completely, especially for somebody coming from the greatest segment of the market, which is for profit. Oh, like me, you've come a long way too.
Speaker 1:It took me a while. For anyone that doesn't know this, I mean you could look at this as we us being a break-even food and beverage operation because we utilize dues to pay for the different amenities that we offer here. But the reality is that, as our subsidy has increased significantly since 2010, when we repackage and preportioned and we're opening up things with scissors, we've become more and more successful. Back when we were doing that, we had a smaller subsidy. We were not sold out of memberships. In fact, we had 40 or 50 open golf memberships when I joined the club in the fall of 2010,. And now we have a waiting list for the waiting list for the waiting list for the waiting list for golf memberships.
Speaker 3:I'm really glad Stephanie tracks all those. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1:Technically, just for the record, we only have three recognized and formalized waiting lists, and then we do keep track of people who would like to get onto one of those waiting lists to become number 180. It's a big deal. So one other thing I think that when it comes down to subsidy, I'm reminded to one of the conversations I had when we were searching for executive chef, which is what the position was when we hired Richard. We had over a hundred applicants within the private club industry and we worked with a maybe the predominant executive placement firm in the country Copland Capellar Wallace and they broke it down to 10 people. We selected five to come in, one of whom was Richard, and then we brought down to the last two and one of the questions I asked Richard. You may remember this or not.
Speaker 2:As I said, what's your?
Speaker 1:philosophy on food waste, because, of course, I came from the for profit right, so I'm thinking about managing the dollars and cents and the efficiency and this and that. And you said something that really struck home for me. You remember what that was. It was only 13 years ago, it's like yeah, honey, right, you said Fred, I have too much respect for food to willingly throw in the trash. Can I will find ways to utilize it in other ways? I have a feeling that the employee dining room is serving turkey today.
Speaker 2:As one example, they might still be serving turkey, but I mean, we definitely have turkey soup and turkey sandwiches all over the menus throughout the week. But it's true, it's absolutely true and to that extent, it's also one of the reasons why I like to bring in whole fish, that we bring in larger portions, subprimals of beef and that we bring in whole vegetables and so that the cooks, so that the people working here can see where this is coming from and understand that we need to respect that. It's not just opening up a bag and there's burger on your plate. It came from somewhere. Your salad came from somewhere. Your tomatoes came from somewhere. Your you know, your grouper filet came from somewhere, and it's incredibly important for the people preparing that to understand that and have respect for that.
Speaker 1:Because, speaking about turkey, I think it was 88 or 90 turkeys that we had for Thanksgiving, which, yeah 2,000 pounds, 2,000 pounds, 2,000 pounds of turkey. And one of the things that I think people really that I spoke to really appreciated was we've all had bad turkey dinners, bad Thanksgiving dinners. We got to eat and it's a mad house and you get dry turkey after waiting for an hour to get it Of those 2,000 pounds of turkey. No, turkey saw an oven until 4 o'clock in the morning on Thanksgiving Day. That is correct.
Speaker 2:And so our last seating on Thanksgiving is at 7 o'clock at night. Our last turkey came out of the oven at 6.45.
Speaker 1:Pretty amazing.
Speaker 3:It might have been the freshest turkey all day.
Speaker 2:Well, but the reality is it's something that we're conscious of. We don't do banquets like other people do banquets. We treat banquets like Al-Qaeda and do as much as we physically can to ensure that the last bite of food is no different than the first bite of food in the day.
Speaker 1:Great point on banquets, because I came from a for-profit, very high-end hotel and resort background, specifically in catering and events. It was hot boxes. Eventually it became shell cook right, but they come right off the line. It comes out of the oven, it becomes assembled and it goes into the server's hands and into the dining room. Absolutely Pretty amazing. Yeah, definitely. So a couple more questions. We're going to wrap this up a little bit. We've gone off on a few tangents, but I appreciate it and hopefully the people who are listening do as well. But wine service is a huge part of the dining experience. Joseph, how's this fitted to the mix?
Speaker 3:It plays in really nicely, given that Chef Richard and Melissa Hemingway, our wine director and certified sommelier, they forged an excellent partnership for really the romance of food and wine together. Wine is arguably the most complimentary beverage when enjoying a meal, in that it elevates the meal and the meal elevates the wine service. And one of the things that Chef Richard and his team are able to do exceedingly well, because everything's from scratch is to really hone in on authentic regional cuisine. So that's something that in the kind of wine world you look at, kind of a key pairing rule, which is what grows together goes together. So they've really come up with some great menus for our wine dinners, for our wine tastings, whether it be just a simple cheese plate from the same region that the wine that Mel is featuring, or a deep dive into some really cool wine dinners where every course is paired to a regional food item from the same country that the wine is being showcased from. So they're able to really accentuate that marriage of food and wine to a wonderful extent.
Speaker 1:We missed that wine dinner, or I did that truffle wine dinner. Oh, unbelievable Shaved white truffle, which I'm not going to tell the members how much that cost per pound. People, you see black truffle on a lot of menus but you very rarely see white truffle and it was shaved fresh onto the plate that night.
Speaker 3:Every course featured some iteration of white or black, or both truffles and some caviar as well. There's a little caviar on there, why not? Just for some fun? So funny enough, the highest priced wine dinner of the year, but also the highest subsidized wine dinner of the year.
Speaker 1:But break even with juice, so worth it. So that about sums it up. It was a long enough podcast. We went into that philosophy of taking a deep dive into something that I'm not sure if the members will love this or they will be completely bored out of their minds, but we had fun, didn't we? Absolutely Definitely. It's for all you listening or for you person listening. If there's anything that you want us to talk about in future podcasts and the guys sitting in the room specifically related to, like food and beverage or clubhouse operations, please let us know. We talked about some things like financials.
Speaker 1:A lot of people don't understand why country clubs and private clubs lose money or subsidize or utilize dues to break even with a food and beverage operation. And, as critical and counterintuitive as it is, it's been really proven that that is the case to invest in providing members with great food and beverage. Because I say this like and I sort of like cringe as I say it not everyone plays golf, but everyone eats and everyone appreciates a good meal. How do we develop menus? You know you change them all the time, but what's a philosophy in changing those menus? And there is one, and there's any other topic that you all can think of. Just send Becky or Richard or Joseph or me a note and we'll get back in the room.
Speaker 2:And I'm always happy to personally answer questions as well, so please reach out. That was Richard Brum. That was Richard.
Speaker 1:Brum, richard B, at Benita Bay Clubnet. That is correct, yes.
Speaker 3:Yes, and we just barely scratched the surface on the wine program here. We're actually going to hear a lot more about that. We've got a dedicated podcast with Mel Hemingway as well, so that's coming up soon. Fantastic, excellent, excellent.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks everyone for joining us. Hope you made it this far. We'll talk to you soon. Right now, take care.