Kestrel Country Podcast
Kestrel Country Podcast
Joel Cohen, Owner of Tapped, Talks Small Business
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Personal Background and Life Choices
Speaker 1This is the Kestrel Country Podcast , where we discuss the people , places and events all around Kestrel Country . So , joel , I like to start off with um , kind of just people's background , you know , for get into how , what , what got you to Moscow . It's a podcast about Moscow , but where'd you grow up , kind of what brought you to Moscow , and then we can talk about some of what you're doing here now .
Speaker 2Okay , I'll talk . I'm sure you can edit it out if it gets too , too lengthy . But you know I was born in Phoenix and so I lived there until I was 11 . That's where most all of my my mom's side of the family which is most of my extended family , because my dad only has one sister um , but even my dad's parents lived there . So I was born in phoenix , I lived there until I was 11 . I moved to the seattle area , um , that's where I graduated from high school in that area , in the bothwell k , kirkland area , and then I wasted about a year and a half of my life after that and then I joined the Marine Corps because I wasn't doing well at school I mean , I almost didn't pass volleyball , and so I was like this is probably not the right place for me .
Speaker 1And I've played volleyball .
Speaker 2You're not terrible yeah so thanks , that seems it was mostly an attendance issue , gotcha , so you were in school though I , yeah , I did two trimesters at shoreline community college , okay , um , I had tried to join the marine corps , actually like I think in my senior year , but I had flat feet and so and I admitted to that because I didn't know it would disqualify me , and they disqualified me . So I went back in my senior year , but I had flat feet and so and I admitted to that cause I didn't know it would disqualify me , and they disqualified me . So I went back in like a year later and told them I did not have flat feet . When they asked about it , um , and I guess they didn't , they didn't notice .
Speaker 2When I went to the medical , I mean they commented they're like your feet are kind of flat and they signed off on it .
Speaker 1Um so did you have his like family in the military in the past ? Was something you kind ?
Speaker 2of always wanted to do . Um , mom and my grandparents were in world war ii . Um , my , I had a couple uncles by , uh , by marriage . Well , one uncle by marriage and one that's sort of like a weird family connection . Anyway , they , they were in Vietnam , but no , not a lot . Again , most of my mom's side are sisters , you know . And then my dad has one sister and he was not in the military himself . So not a ton .
Speaker 2Yeah , I think it was always something that was kind of interesting to me . It wasn't as though it grew up with my heart set on it , but it was always something that was kind of interesting to me . It wasn't as though it grew up with my heart set on it , but I , it was always something that I thought might be interesting to do , the military in general . So I , I went in because I thought I actually might make a career out of it . I thought like I don't want to go to school , obviously I'm not having , I'm not enjoying this , I don't want to do it . So I , I thought being in the military could be a good career .
Speaker 2So anyway , I did four years in the Marine Corps . I was in Camp Pendleton in Southern California and then briefly deployed after 9-11 , came back and basically got out right away , and then I moved back to Phoenix . My parents and my brother had all moved back to Phoenix from Seattle while I was in the Marine Corps , so basically everybody was there . But uh , I really didn't like Phoenix at all as I lived there as an adult .
Speaker 1And you didn't like the Marine Corps . Like how'd you figure out pretty quick as like , yeah , this is not the career for me .
Speaker 2I did . Yeah , um , as an institution like the Marine Corps and there are some Marines that I I , of course , but in general , the quality of the person and the kind of the I don't know what the right word is , but sort of the I guess the honor that I thought would be there wasn't really there , it was just kind of skeezy a lot of times , wasn't really there , it was just kind of skeezy a lot of times . And , um , they talk a lot about leadership . Um , but , like a lot of the people that were leaders thought leadership meant screaming and cussing at you . You know , I was like , if you want me to take out the garbage , just ask me to take out the garbage , I'll take it out . You know , you don't have to berate me and cuss at me to get me to take out the garbage . If you ask me and I don't do it , I okay , but we're not there yet , you know .
Speaker 1Just so , there was just that kind of a .
Speaker 2thing um , uh , that I just I didn't , I guess . And then I , by the time I got out I was done . But if I look back I could have probably made a but if I'd maybe pursued like an officer route or I just even had a different mindset myself . I got kind of disenfranchised and I had a bad attitude about it , you know , for the most like the last three years I was in . So it could have been better . I made it sort of worse for myself than it needed to be because of my attitude . But yeah , I knew pretty quick I wasn't going to do more than four years . I did tell you know , when you get close to getting out , somebody comes and talks to you about reenlisting and I told this gunnery sergeant that I would stay in if they made me a colonel . And they didn't do it . They said yeah . So I was thinking I'd be on a real early track to general Did they think about it .
Speaker 2He thought about it . Yeah , long and hard .
Speaker 2Your life could have been very different , yeah , so , uh , yeah , got out , moved back to phoenix and started going to college , and by that time I was much more motivated to go to college , um , and that's what . And during that time is when I became a Christian , which was January of 2004 , and I got out in August of 2002 . And so I was looking to get out of Phoenix in general because I didn't like it , and I was looking to get back to a place out of seasons and I was , at that time , looking for a place that had some kind of Christian community I could be a part of , because , you know , I was going to church in Phoenix with my mom , but it was a giant church and , um , I mean , I didn't know anything about theology at the time , but it was Calvinist and sort of theology , but it was a very um , modern , um , church service , you know , uh , the music was all very modern and all that . So I didn't know any of that , I just was there .
Speaker 1And .
Speaker 2I was 25 and , you know , kind of too old for the youth group . I did the youth group but there were , you know , 18 to 22, . Most of them they were nice to me . But I didn't make any friends . Nobody invited me . So I didn't really have any community , a Christian community .
Speaker 2And my aunt knew I was looking to move and I was thinking about moving to the Santa Cruz area where my sister lives and at the time my aunt lived there too . This is the aunt that sort of led me to becoming a Christian I'm talking about here . She said you should move to Moscow and think about going to New St Andrews College . I've never heard of either , right , although after she heard I became a Christian . I got this package in the mail when I opened it and it was Reforming Marriage by Doug Wilson . She had just sent that to me when she heard I became a Christian . So I read that and again , I'd never heard of Doug Wilson or anything . But I mean I read it and it's got all the Bible verses in it . I'm reading it , I'm reading the Bible . I'm like , yeah , that makes sense . So somehow she was aware of Moscow and Credenda Agenda , new St Andrews , doug Wilson , I guess that she had sent Brendan O'Donnell this direction way back in the day .
Speaker 1Oh yeah .
Speaker 2So anyway , she said to you know , I should move here , I'd probably like it , and so I just kind of picked up and moved and yeah , yeah .
Speaker 1Idaho's got four seasons . Yeah , yeah , but you didn't go to New San Jose College , did you ?
Speaker 2No , I applied , I got in , but I didn't have any money to go there and so I thought , okay , well , I'll work for a bit , save up some money . I was doing that and then I thought , well , I'm kind of just working and sort of idle , I'll try and finish my degree because I got why not right ? So I , I finished , I ended up finishing my undergrad degree and I don't know , I never , never , find my wedding my way to new st andrews . So what was your ? What were you studying ? I was getting a bachelor of science in business administration with an emphasis , emphasis , in finance .
Speaker 1So was that a ? Was that kind of a post post Marine Corps thing of like ? Were you always good at math ? Were you attracted to entrepreneurship ? Like what made you go down that finance route ?
Speaker 2I'm good at math . I'm good at algebraic math or not . Calculus . I did terrible on calculus because that to me seemed more like almost like a language . But you know , if it comes to just solving math multiplication , arithmetic and algebraic kind of stuff I'm good at that . I've always known that . But basically when I was in Arizona going to community college and , by the way , you asked , did I start ?
Speaker 2No , I started while I was in the Marine Corps and so I started doing correspondence classes with this college called Thomas Edison State College there in New Jersey and they kind of specialized in this and they had a heavy military , you know , student base .
Speaker 2And they offer great pricing and all this stuff . So when I moved here , I continued it with them . So , but finance , because they made me choose something and I didn't know what I wanted to do and I , frankly , still don't and so I just chose finance . It sounded like it could be interesting . Again , numbers and math are kind of a thing that I know is good at , so that's kind of how I landed on that just because I had to choose something and I didn't know what else to choose .
Speaker 1Yeah , so you got your degree in finance , met your wife here .
Speaker 2Yep , yep Met her here in 2000 . We met in 2006 and got married in 07 . It was a good year to get married , it was . Yeah , yes , you and I , and Christine and Catherine spent a lot of time together that's true that summer of 06 . Yep , I don't know if you remember that , but I sure do . Yeah , a lot of boating , a lot of soccer and tennis , neither of which I actually enjoy but Christine was there .
Speaker 1But hey , yeah , yeah , yeah , that's awesome . So you got
Career Path to Entrepreneurship
Speaker 1married in 07 . Uh-huh , and what did you do right after that ? You were doing accounting .
Speaker 2No , so I worked for Keith Daimler and I was his loan processor , but that was before .
Speaker 1He is an accountant now , but that was before he was in accounting Yep .
Speaker 2Okay . So because what I had ? After I got out of the Marine Corps and lived in Phoenix , I worked for Wells Fargo as a loan processor for about a year .
Speaker 1Oh , okay .
Speaker 2Yeah , but I only did it for a year and then I quit . So I had applied for a promotion at Wells Fargo and then they brought me into interview me for that position for loan processor two or whatever it was . But when they started the interview I was like look , I just quit , I don't want to do this anymore . So I'm like all right , I never had a job interview or promotion interview like that before .
Speaker 1You didn't ask to become colonel in order to stay , or anything .
Speaker 2No , no , I didn't see that . They only gave me a 1% raise and I was kind of unhappy about that . I think that played into my decision to leave . So anyway , point being , I had done some loan processing before . So I met Keith like my first two weeks here and he said he might be looking to hire a loan processor , and eventually he offered me the job , and so I did that for about two years , I think .
Speaker 1Okay , and that was like 2007 , 2008? .
Speaker 2That was 05 to 07 .
Speaker 2Okay , so yeah , right before the crash yeah , so , um , during that , I graduated with my degree in 07 and there's no real jobs here for a finance degree from some no name college out of new jersey , right ? So you could sell insurance or be a personal banker , and I didn't want to do either of those . So I had taken an accounting class , basic accounting , while I was getting my finance degree and thought it was kind of interesting , and so I decided again . I didn't know what else to do , but I needed to do something . So I'll become a CPA , right ?
Speaker 2So went back to school for a master's in accounting . Then I started working for Christchurch as , like their finance person , and I did that for about three years While you were getting your master's in accounting . And that's when the recession happened and it took me . I graduated in May of 09 , but it took me until January of 11 to get a job for an accounting firm , and that was Moss Adams over in Eugene . And , yes , during that time , keith had gone back to school and got his master's degree in accounting and got a job at Moss Adams up in Spokane . So , yeah , then we moved to Eugene , was there for almost three years and came back .
Speaker 1Yeah , and Moss Adams is a big , big firm right .
Speaker 2Yeah , a big West Coast firm , okay , um , one of the one of the larger west coast ? They're not .
Speaker 1They're not , certainly not one of the big four , but they're pretty , pretty big firm , yeah , and you were doing um audits and that kind of stuff as , and you got your cpa while working for them , or did you have your cpa before ?
Speaker 2I . I passed all the exams on my own while I was waiting to get a job again , because I was . I was just like I'll do something . I don't want to be idle , yeah , and I thought it would make me , you know , more desirable hire . So , anyway , I did all the exams . But you can't actually get your license until you work in the field for a certain amount of time . Oh , okay , so I didn't get it until I'd been at Moss Adams for two years .
Speaker 1Okay , so I didn't get it until I'd been at Moss Adams for two years . What's that ? I mean it's kind of off track , but what's that like now ? So I mean at that time it took you a couple years just to find a job in accounting . Do you know what that's like now ? I mean , is there a shortage there , like there is a lot of other places ? I'm told that there is .
Speaker 2I may be looking for an accounting job soon . I have a very large debt I gotta pay off , but I gotta get my CPA license active again , so I have to do a lot of continuing professional education . But yeah , I'm told that there's a demand for accountants , probably like there's a demand for everything . I think it was a thing that a lot of baby boomers probably did more than you're going to find in Gen Z or even millennials .
Speaker 1That makes sense . Everybody wants to do computer science and that kind of thing now .
Speaker 2Yeah , and a lot of those people obviously have left the workforce . Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah , it seems similar to attorneys . I know in that same kind of post-recession . During the recession timeframe it was like there were law school graduates everywhere working whatever job , because there just weren't any law jobs . Right now it sounds like it's swung a little bit the other way .
Speaker 2Oh , really Interesting .
Speaker 1So yeah , you'd worked , worked in Eugene and then came back here .
Speaker 2But what did ?
Speaker 1when did you get ?
Speaker 2into kind of entrepreneurism . That's the right word . Yeah Well , I guess while I was in Eugene I made friends with a couple of brothers who wanted to start a brewery , and so they asked if I would help them sort of be the accountant , finance person in that , and so I agreed to do that , help them get their brewery up and running , and that's Cold Fire Brewery out of Eugene . So that was kind of my first major step into entrepreneurship . I sold newspaper subscriptions door to door when I was a kid . I don't know if that goes .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think so . That probably was a window into your future , right , yeah ?
Speaker 2And often all I got was pizza afterwards , because nobody ever bought any . But the guy did buy his pizza afterwards . Yeah Well , that's good yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah , I mean , when you're a teenager , working for pizza is not a bad thing . No , for pizza is not a bad thing , no , yeah . So other than that , though , it was your first foray into it yeah and was that something you always had interest in ? Or was it like , hey , just a more of out of an opportunity these guys came to you ? You're like , oh man , this would be interesting yeah , it was more of an opportunity .
Speaker 2They came to me , um , and asked if I'd do it and and is that still going ? It's still going . Yeah , they're doing really well works . We've expanded . We've uh opened a second brewing location , um , and we got you know . We've tripled our production capacity . We have a restaurant being built . We've won several medals at uh great american beer festival and uh world world beer cup , so we're we're doing pretty good , that's awesome yeah we just signed with the distributor , and so there's a chance in the not-too-distant future they might be getting their beer out here .
Speaker 2Wow , that's awesome .
Speaker 1And that was how long ago .
Speaker 2We opened in January of 2016 .
Speaker 1Okay , and so Tapped is probably what you're most known for around here . Was that when you started thinking about , or was that kind of what planted the seed , thinking about doing something similar here in Moscow ?
Speaker 2Well , it's not similar .
Speaker 2You're not brewing beer , but no , the idea for well , the idea originally came to me when I first moved here . Now it wasn't necessarily tapped here Now it wasn't necessarily tapped . But when I moved here I realized or noticed that there , if you're talking about restaurants at that casual mid-price point , not like higher-end restaurants , but at that mid-price point , casual dining everything seemed to be catered to college students . If you can remember back to 05 , what was available here ? You mean there was Applebee's . I don't even know if Applebee's was here yet I think it was .
Speaker 1Yeah , in 05 .
Speaker 2It might have been Applebee's , winger's , winger's , so some chains like that .
Speaker 1There wasn't . I mean to be honest at that time . There wasn't much period , even on the higher end . It was like the Red Door downtown was about the only thing other than you know other than you know out at the university . There just wasn't much here . Yeah , pizza joints .
Speaker 2Right . And so you know , even like the Ale House .
Speaker 1Oh , that's right , Ale House was there . That probably opened around that time . Ale House , yeah .
Speaker 2No , ale House has been around since like the 80s , really .
Speaker 1I think so have they weren't .
Speaker 2I don't think they were in that location maybe people older than older than me have said oh , you know , I come back here and my kids are at college to visit them and we go to alehouse because I went there when I was in college , okay , so anyway , I don't remember all that was here , but what there wasn't as a place that seemed to cater to cater to post-college adults . At the time I didn't necessarily have a concept , but I just thought this is weird . Everywhere else I've lived there's plenty of places like that that aren't just college kind of dives . I'm not trying to bag on any place , but there wasn't a place that I thought was whose target market was postgraduate , you know , adults , post-college adults . So that was something I noticed when I first moved here .
Speaker 1Okay .
Speaker 2And I thought , man , if somebody could open a business like that they'd probably do really well .
Speaker 2And obviously I was not in a position to do anything like that .
Speaker 2But after coming back here and so I moved back from Moss Adams and I was working for a company in Pullman it's like the head of their accounting department and kind of realized I didn't , I realized at that time I don't think I want to do accounting for the rest of my life and was trying to figure out what else I would want to do . I thought I am young enough now that if I go out there and try something else and I fail , I can have enough time to put things back together . So I was kind of talking about a lot of what we've just talked about with a friend and he was , so I was kind of telling him about my idea . So when I come back from Eugene I still notice there wasn't a place , like I had mentioned , to cater to post-college adults . But my idea then had taken more shape from the craft beer circle I'd kind of stepped into in Eugene working , you know , in Portland in Eugene a lot At that time particularly it was a big craft beer boom , so I'd sell tap houses .
Speaker 2It was a big thing and so sort of a concept I thought might translate well here in terms of a tap house . So yeah , coming back from Eugene is kind of where I kind of , and working in Portland and stuff is where I put the concept together in my head . Not that I had come back with the concept , but when I started thinking about possibly doing it , that was the concept I thought of Gotcha . So a friend of mine was like , yeah , let's do it .
Speaker 1You know , I was like all right , I guess Was that in in Eugene , was it most , I think . When I went down there and visited you guys , we we went to Ninkasi . You know , you guys , we went to Ninkasi . Were a lot of them , more specific breweries , or were there similar things to Taft where you have a whole bunch of different beers and some of both .
Speaker 2Yeah , there's definitely both . In fact , my original concept for Taft was actually even more casual .
Speaker 1Okay .
Speaker 2It was more of a concept that you see quite a bit in Eugene and Portland . At least you did 10 , 12 years ago when I was there , but you didn't have a waiter really . I mean , there was a couple waiters that would occasionally wander around , bust a table . If you wanted something , you could ask them , but if you wanted service right now , you'd go up to the bar and get something . That was kind of my original idea and we actually opened trying to implement that model originally at TAPT . But people here did not accept that . People want service , yeah , and so there's a culture that has to embrace that . Yeah , eugene has that culture . It's like it's not an uncommon thing .
Speaker 2Interesting here it was like what's going on ? This is not how we do things , this is crazy right . So I had to shift meet the market , what's going on ? This is not how we do things , this is crazy right . So I had to shift , you know , meet the market where it's at and give them what was going to keep them coming back . So we had to scramble and kind of change the concept and really look at a full-service restaurant .
Speaker 1So you start a restaurant with no real culinary experience , no real restaurant experience , no , I've never worked in a restaurant in my life . But you have . You have business knowledge and experience .
Speaker 2I didn't have to Finance anyway . Yeah , I have account , you know accounting and I've audited plenty of businesses . But I mean there's a there's a certain level of business . That's fairly simple , right . You need to sell the thing you make and make more than you spend you know , yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah , well , it's just interesting to me . It seems like a lot of people are the opposite , the other way around . Right , they're a chef or whatever . They're really into food and cooking . And I'm not saying you're not , but I'm not , you know . But then how do you actually make that into a business ? You know ? I mean , the same goes even with construction . You see a lot of guys they're really skilled carpenters like great , I'm going to go start a business . I don't want to work for this other guy . A lot of times it doesn't work out because they're good at construction . They're not necessarily good at running a business . Yeah , so it's just interesting that , coming at it in a different way . So how did you put together the I guess , product side of it for lack of a better word the food side of it , not having experience , not being in the food business ?
Speaker 2I thought that , again , just the basic idea of , you know , controlling your costs and your labor and the cost of the goods sold , and all that that's applicable to any manufacturing in quotes , manufacturing business right , which is what a restaurant is , is like a just-in-time manufacturing business , right , and so that's one thing , that sort of of just it just is what it is . Now , I don't know anything about food . I don't really like food , though . I mean , if I didn't have to eat , I probably wouldn't . I could just take a pill to have fill my . You know ,
Restaurant Success and Lessons Learned
Speaker 2get all my nutrients .
Speaker 2I would do that , yeah , um so not a good tagline for a restaurant , by the way but well , I figured I would just hire people who knew that kind of stuff , and so , uh , that's , that was what we did originally . And so , um , you know the people that I worked with them and give them my two cents on things . But they basically put the menu together and then , as we went along , we tweaked it . Okay , people aren't ordering this they must not like it .
Speaker 2Let's put something else on right . It was just a lot of fixing , fixing the original guesses we'd made . Um , or you know , hey , we this , this product , people like it and all that , but we , we don't make very much money on it and so it's like it's like all we're losing money when we sell it , kind of a thing . So , um , we have to replace it in order to change it , you know . So , not being a food person , it has helped me because I don't have any sort of attachment to anything on the menu .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah , either , either it's a a thing that people like to buy and we can sell it at the right margin in order to run a successful business , or it's not . So , if not selling , well , people don't like it . Get rid of it . Put something on that people like I don't care , it wasn't my creation , I'm not married to it . If the cost of goods sold is too high , no problem saying well , if you want to continue selling this , we need to change what we put into it and that was another thing that I learned in the restaurant industry is , whenever you make a dish , you're always going to compromise on some things .
Speaker 2It's never going to be the ideal way you would make it . If I invited you over for dinner . They were going to make you dinner . Maybe at the highest-end restaurants you can do that , but not not in , certainly not in casual dining . So , um , not really caring about food the way that I do , it was easy for me to sort of approach it that way and sort of insist on that when other people are like no , this , this is how it tastes the best and it's like I get that , but , um and again just go with the idea of that .
Speaker 2Um , you know , tap wasn't created to sell the best food in Moscow . Right , that's not what we do . I don't . I don't charge enough for that . You want the best food , you're going to pay for it . And another thing I learned in the restaurant industry is the . The quality of the foods you put out there is directly related to how much it costs to buy . I mean , that's , that's the number one driving factor in how good is this product . Well , how much did it cost to buy ? You want a really good steak ? It's pretty much going to be because it costs $40 a pound to buy . You can mess it up cooking it , but that's always going to be better than the $6 per pound steak that somebody else went by , unless you ruin it cooking it . So those were some interesting things I learned pretty early on in terms of running the restaurant . Yeah , so what year did it start 15 .
Speaker 1Okay , almost 10 years , yeah , wow . So that brings up I don't know what the statistic is , but you always hear it out there , right , like most restaurants fail within two years , something like that , yeah , so how did you get past that ? And was it close ? Like you know , was the first two years as bad as other people experience .
Speaker 2Probably not . Probably wasn't as bad because we didn't fail . So we were . We had a profit the first year . It wasn't a ton of money or anything .
Speaker 1That's outstanding .
Speaker 2Yeah , I mean , I think having the church community here was a huge lifeline right originally , and that's something we didn't have down in Lewiston . But it's hard to know how much that affects your business until you maybe have something to compare it to . But I think a lot of restaurants fail in the first two years . One because of their location , which could have been a thing for us in Lewiston too , and the other one is kind of what you mentioned earlier . You have somebody who likes to cook and so they want to do a restaurant . But liking to cook and actually even being a good cook is different than making food in a restaurant . You know , it's just two totally different things . So it doesn't matter if you like to cook or even if you make really good food doesn't you have to make it for a profit .
Speaker 2Yeah , you know . Yeah , um it't . You have to make it for profit . Yeah , you know . Yeah , you have to make a lot of it at once , and so you're not hand crafting everybody's . You know dish
Location Decision in Opening Restaurant
Speaker 2.
Speaker 1So you mentioned location being one of the big reasons people go out of business . How much of is that in a factor for you guys ? Did you ? Were you super picky in finding that location ?
Speaker 2Here in Moscow or down in Lewiston .
Speaker 1In Moscow I was . Yeah , and what went into that decision ? Because I mean , I'll be honest , it seemed like at that time , from what I remember , most of the restaurant scene was further south , yep , on Main Street , yeah .
Speaker 2Yeah , Main Street . I definitely wanted to be on Main Street . That was something that me and Caleb Applegate , who was working with me and partnered with me and helping me get this place going , that was the thing that we really were pretty set on Now being , yeah , north of 3rd Street .
Speaker 2You're right there was probably a little bit of a gamble at the time , and a lot of people tell me I was . It was a mistake , you know , um , but there was nothing . There wasn't anything available south of third street , right ? I mean , we'd looked for months and months it just wasn't anything , and that place that we're in now .
Speaker 2I don't know if you remember , but it was empty for a long time . It was hideous , uh , internally and from the outside it was , I think , like the Latah County Democrats had been the last temporary tenants in that place . It wasn't until I I don't know why , but I just thought . You know , if we just gutted this thing , it could rip off the front , it could look totally different , it could be whatever we want it to be .
Speaker 2And this just dawned on me one day when I was walking by . So that was how we , you know . I just thought let's go .
Speaker 1So your main location decision was downtown yes , just being on Main Street .
Speaker 2Main Street . I would not have wanted to go further north than probably Mingles . It was that first street , but that Main Street between 6th and 1st was really the area we were located .
Speaker 1Okay , yeah , and what was the ? What was the reason for that ? Just , did you guys do look into foot traffic , do a lot of studies on it , or was it just you know more gut instinct ? Like I think a restaurant needs to be downtown ?
Speaker 2It was mostly gut instinct . I mean not that it takes a whole lot of um , uh , intuition to realize that downtown moscow is sort of the heart of the dining scene , but also just the heart of our city . And again going to lewiston , it's not like that . In lewiston their downtown isn't the heart of their city , it's not even in the heart of their city . You know , it's in the northwest corner of their city , um , and it certainly is not the place that people just go to .
Speaker 2So , uh , but obviously that's how it is in Moscow , that's , you know , all the successful restaurants were on , were on main street at the time . So yeah , I mean that was fairly self-evident . Um , we didn't do any . I didn't do any studies or anything like that what were ?
Speaker 1did you have any like super hard lessons ? I mean we haven't really talked much about lewiston yet , but um , hard lessons those first few years that you guys had to learn that you know big hiccups , anything like that . Um seemed like you were going through a fair number of I don't know if chefs you know or you know the people in charge of cooking and menu and that kind of stuff . Did it take a while to kind of find the right fit there ?
Speaker 2Yeah , it wasn't until Tyler really wanted to try it and had been reluctant to since he had never worked in a restaurant either to say like , yeah , you can run the whole thing he had been working there previously . Yeah , he started as a front of house manager .
Speaker 1Okay .
Speaker 2And he had been a bootster and a teacher before that . But he wanted to do it . He asked me and I had not had success finding the person I wanted prior to that and I thought , why not One ? He had been almost two years years by now , so he has almost two years of experience . I've got a lot more restaurant experience by this time too .
Speaker 2Working to figure out it's not just the cost of goods sold , it's how do we make the kitchen run efficiently so that when we get busy we can get food out quickly . That was a real challenge up front . A lot of that has to do with the way your menu is set up so that if 80 of your orders are all have to be cooked on the flat top and our flat top is , you know , only so big . I can only cook so much on it . If I have to service 80 in the restaurant with that , yeah , I'm going to fall behind . Interesting , right . So you have to get menu items on there that utilize the entire hotline pretty evenly . So you know we have four hamburgers and that's pretty much all we cook on the flat top . But the flat top probably services 50% of what we actually sell . So the menu isn't 50% flat top items , you know griddle items , it's , you know 10% , but it does make up 50% of our sales roughly . Just kind of making up round numbers here . But point being that , yeah , it has to be . You have to set it up so that everything is utilized fairly evenly , so that you can make the most food you possibly can at any one time .
Speaker 2And a lot of that was trial and error , the thought of his trial and error , but also sort of coming to that realization along the way . Right , I didn't , I didn't dawn on any , at least on me and on tyler , until a little while in like this is a problem . We're falling behind because every that that station there has to cook everybody's food . You find the bottleneck and yeah , and it's , you know it's only so big . We only got a four foot , you know griddle . So , um , so there's that component which was an interesting thing to learn . Uh , um , again , what kind of procedures you have to make the food be able to be actually hot and on a plate as quick as possible . Can we prep ahead of time All that kind of stuff ? So , yeah , it's like a logistics experiment or it's a logistics job , a lot of it .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah . So then , when did we can talk about this in a little bit . So how early did you decide ? Like you know , this is going well . What if we did it again or if we found another spot ?
Speaker 2um , that's probably about three years in . It was probably 2019 . Yeah , maybe 18 actually could have been in 18 . Yes , it was 18 . That would be three years from 2015 . I'm good at math , so yeah we started looking in 18 and we actually started . We made our first step towards lewiston in 2018 by attempting to lease a spot down there and the current spot . We ended up putting it in okay . We ended up buying that building a year later and then , um , putting it in , uh after that .
Speaker 1So so your thought was yeah , things are going well . We've kind of figured out how things are running up here , and tyler was already there at the time or no ? Yeah , tyler , tyler was at tap from day one , so yeah , okay and running things at that point , at that point , three years in , um , and just thought , well , why not get into , why not multiply this thing ? Yeah , three years in and just thought , well , why not get into , why not multiply this thing ?
Speaker 2Yeah , and we had looked in several places . We considered Pullman , we considered Coeur d'Alene . In fact we pursued an opportunity in Coeur d'Alene that just didn't work out . But Lewiston is pretty close , so we thought that would be . But far enough away that we wouldn't just be pulling our own customers , was that ?
Speaker 1kind of the Pullman decision ? Did you guys know ? Where do you track that information ? Is that through either credit cards or anything like that to figure out where your customers are coming from , or was it more just ?
Speaker 2anecdotal . Yeah , it was pretty anecdotal , but it's also . It's not that hard to sort of get a feel for it , right .
Speaker 1When there's a big wazoo weekend , you guys are busy , for example , more busy than U of I weekends . Okay , yeah , that makes sense .
Speaker 2So and frankly I don't love business in Washington . The minimum wage laws are punitive , and so staying in Idaho was desirable for us . But yeah , we also had again this is all anecdotal , but lots of Lewiston people over the years . Just you know you do so well in Lewiston and all this stuff . And of course there's the other side of everybody's like Lewiston is just too blue-collar , they don't care about any of this .
Speaker 1You hear a lot of both . You don't really feel like tapped as uppity though . No , I don't , I don't .
Speaker 2Um . But there , you know , people would say all they want is is their Bud Light or their Coors Light , um and a . I heard that kind of caricature a lot and it's like I mean , how many are like that and how many would like tap ? Who knows , I don't know . I don't know how to get that information , but we just decided it Again . It's not uppity , it's just pub food and beer . So we thought , even if you liked just domestics , we have light beers , we can carry more down there if that's what people want .
Speaker 2But if we're saying , yeah , but we sell good food , you like good food ? Right , I mean , you like Coors Light , you might still like a nice hamburger that's not frozen . So anyway , those are sort of the the . Uh , I guess we thought it would . It was pretty good reversal fit .
Speaker 1Yeah , so it took , I mean , from starting down there 2018 timeframe to when did you open ?
Speaker 2We opened in 2023 .
Speaker 1Okay , so , yeah , that's a long haul , yeah .
Speaker 2And that was mostly construction related delays and that kind of thing . Uh , well , no , we ended up buying the building about exactly a year after we signed our first lease to to rent that spot , even though we never actually got into it in 18 . So we bought it in 19 . And then we were working with the bank and they said , hey , your loan to uh to renovate the space is ready to sign on Friday . And so Friday came and went and on Monday I contacted the bank and said hey , so we didn't sign on Friday , are we going to sign today , tomorrow ? What's the plan ? The bank manager he called us in and we'd been working with the bank for probably five or six months at this point to get this loan done . So it was early 2020 now and , um , he's like , hey , so your loan was declined like three months ago , and I was like what you know ? So-and-so said we were going to sign two days ago .
Speaker 1What do ?
Speaker 2you mean , it was what you know , and he's like I , he was trying to um , you know he had to be careful about how he was saying all this . He was like I'm sorry , I don't know how to tell you what happened , but I think this guy just didn't want to tell us we were declined , I don't know . I mean , he went so far as to say we were going to close , not just string us along Like you have a closing date . That's crazy . It's like surely your cover-up will blow up at that point , right , I don't know . So it was weird .
Speaker 2Anyway , we had to , and then the bank didn't want to actually do a restaurant loan . At that time COVID had just started and they were just pulling everything back . So we had to go find a whole new bank , do a whole new loan process , and that took another 10 months , 11 months . And that took another 10 months , 11 months . So we're a year and a half after we bought this building before we have a loan to go and renovate it . And then , uh , yeah , just for cost reasons , we had to basically self-perform , um , as a general contractor . I mean , I I tried to hire , uh , construction individuals to run the job . I wasn't trying to run it myself but , um , again , didn't have great success at finding um great project managers went through a few kind of finish it off myself , um . So yeah , it took a while and you know it was very expensive because all the things went crazy . Yeah , you're right , when we started yeah , no , kidding , all that inflation .
Speaker 1yeah , I mean I had to have been you guys , from what it seems like . Anyway , you guys probably got hit by inflation almost worse than anybody else , right , because you're doing a construction project which was insane inflation and cost of food , right Inputs went through the roof from what we could hear . So , yeah , a lot of hurdles , but you finally got opened and yeah , so what ? And you guys just recently closed . So what happened there was ? You mentioned location . You think that was one of the biggest factors , just being downtown , but , like you said , lewiston downtown is different .
Speaker 2It is there downtown . It could be really nice if the people cared enough to prioritize it . And there are some people down there that do , but they're a minority . Majority of people just don't seem to care .
Parking and Restaurant Challenges in Lewiston
Speaker 1Well , you know what's interesting ? I'll give you just a little anecdotal . So I went down there for lunch , I don't know when . That was late last year sometime . And it's funny because everyone in Moscow loves to talk about parking problems . Right Like parking downtown is a nightmare . Right Like I've never really had a hard time . I haven't either't either like maybe I gotta circle the block right once or twice , or whatever you know , or you park a block or two away from tapped and you walk in , or whatever . Yeah , for example , for using tapped as an example , I actually found parking for lewiston tapped quite difficult . Um , just , and I think some of it's because of downtown the way it is , it's much bigger right , and so it was like I couldn't just circle the block quick . It's like I had to go all the way down the one way , come back around . I eventually parked like back behind , thought I could cut through , ended up walking , so it did seem like parking was a little bit more of an issue in downtown Lewiston .
Speaker 2So Lewiston has a huge parking lot , public parking lot . That's basically . You know , you cross the street , you go to the park and you cross another street and there's a giant parking lot for like 1,200 cars Like .
Speaker 2I don't know , there's a ton , but nobody will park there and walk across the block , which is closer than just going down there down the street and parking , and easier . And I mentioned to the city , you know , hey , you should put up , like a giant light lit up , free public parking sign , you know , because so I don't think there actually is a parking problem in downtown Moscow , I mean sorry , downtown Lewiston or Moscow , for that reason , yeah , For that matter , but there's a perception that there is and that's all it takes to make people not go down there . Well , it seems like some of it's like a flow issue right .
Speaker 2So when I was trying to- get there .
Speaker 1I didn't really , you know , I was like I'd have to go . I would have gone the other way , but I didn't really know to go the other way , or whatever .
Speaker 2Yeah , and that stretch you're talking about , it's a long stretch where you can't turn around and that that's a bummer that is probably the least desirable um aspect of trying to park downtown .
Speaker 2If you can't find something right there , you do have to go . It's not that far , it's a quarter mile . No , it's less than a quarter mile , it's probably 250 yards , right , but it feels like a long ways , um , before you can turn around . And moscow is nice because you know every 200 feet you can turn around and Moscow is nice because you know every 200 feet you can turn around . So there's a perception at least of parking problems downtown in Lewiston . For sure that plays a role . You know , I knew of course it wasn't the center of their town like it is in Moscow downtown , it wasn't like the focal point of Lewiston . But the thing about Lewiston is they don't , they don't have a place like that . So if you're going to go out to eat in Lewiston , you're going to get in your car and you're going to drive to a spot and you're going to go park and go to that place .
Speaker 1It isn't , it's just they're all over .
Speaker 2They don't have a center mass of a bunch of restaurants all downtown or town or or whatever yeah , there might be more up thing , but like , still it's individual parking lot , individual place yeah , yeah , and so our thing was well , if you're gonna get in your car and drive to a restaurant , you could just as easily get in your car and drive to tapped yeah you're gonna get in your car and drive somewhere . So , um , that was the way you know . I mean , that's how I would think about it if I live there so , and I just think , well , I'm a fairly regular guy so probably a lot of people think like me .
Speaker 2But there is that perception of the parking that , whether it's true or not , the perception does keep people from going downtown . So yeah , that plays a role and we were also wanting to be sort of on part of a movement to revitalize their downtown . There was a big movement to do that , particularly four or five years ago , and it kind of fizzled and it's kind of it's almost taken a step back . I don't know Now , probably probably not a step back , but it's it hasn't really gone anywhere .
Speaker 2You know one of the guy that owns a lot of buildings downtown anywhere . You know one of the guy that owns a lot of buildings downtown . He's not done a lot of construction because the construction prices are unreasonable .
Speaker 1So he's just like I'm not going to do anything until the construction prices aren't stupid .
Speaker 2Yeah , you know so . He's done very greatly . He owns a lot of stuff , but he's just kind of sitting on it , is that Alexander ?
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , interesting . So so you had . How long were you open down there ? We were open for um eight months Okay . And is there any feeling of maybe we , maybe we didn't give it long enough ?
Speaker 2Uh , yeah , totally . I think if we could have made it for a couple of years we could have become a an established part of the restaurant scene in lewiston . But it was just losing so much money and I was the only one putting money in I was like I'm not I'm just not gonna do this anymore . I can't , I don't want to and I can't .
Speaker 1You know yeah how much of that do you think was geographic ? Um , not say lewiston in particular , but just being 30 minutes , 35 , 40 minutes . I don't know what was the drive down there , 35 minutes or something .
Speaker 2Yeah 35 .
Speaker 1Away . Does that take a toll in terms of what you have ? Do you think if you were there and could be around it all the time , that would be different ?
Speaker 2Yeah , it would have been easier on uh , on tyler for sure . Um so , yes , that doesn't affect our sales necessarily . Uh , it might affect , not directly . I should say it wouldn't directly affect our sales but it could affect things like you know is management there to ensure quality of service and , you know , create the kind of internal culture that is nice to have like that we have at TAP . Here I have a lot of servers that come from other restaurants and they tell us all the time here like .
Speaker 2This place is very different than any other restaurant I've worked in . You know so much better . You know these other places . They're all backbiting and they're catty and drama and all this stuff and no teamwork .
Speaker 1You're just looking out for me .
Speaker 2They find working at TAP very different , and that's just a cultural thing that has been created over time .
Speaker 1So a lot of that has to do with some of the people we've hired right .
Speaker 2We you know from from Tyler as the manager to the individuals , you know a lot of high character . You know NSA Christian people , which again the kind of employee pool down at Lewiston was very different , so it was not nearly as easy to create that kind of a culture down there . But anyway , being a distance , not having to manage there as much , can lead into those things which can indirectly affect sales If somebody's not getting the guest experience they want .
Speaker 1Yeah . So , Do you think you'd do it again in another place , or is it like you know what ? I think we've got a great thing going at Moscow Tapped , and it's good being in Moscow .
Speaker 2I would consider it . I probably would be the one to push it in terms of I wouldn't want to , I wouldn't spearhead it , but if somebody was like Joel you know I've run this restaurant over here with high success I really would think this . You know , tap would do well at such and such place . I'll partner with you .
Speaker 1I'll run it .
Speaker 2You know , I can invest as much money like yeah , I'd consider something like that , but I'm not , at this point in my life , looking to push another one somewhere I you know I think one up in court lane would probably do well . I just I'm not in a position to do it right now .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah and like going circling back to where we started . I'm not a restaurant lover . I don't , I don , I don't . You know , I go out to eat . I don't really care what my service is like , unless you call me names , I don't care you know , I'm just like I don't have the standard that I go out looking for .
Speaker 1I'm just there to have fun with whoever I'm with you know .
Speaker 2And so again , unless my food is pretty abysmal , I just I don't care , you know .
Speaker 1Um so , yeah , yeah , interesting . So what else are you up to ? What's next ?
Speaker 2you mentioned accounting , maybe doing some of that yeah , well , I've got , uh , this building downtown that I'm trying to get built , and a lot of that will depend on the construction costs . Um , but I've been negotiating with my neighbor about this shared wall that we have for a long time . Um , and I'm I've got my permitted now to to do the work that their engineer has agreed to , the work that my engineers provided .
Speaker 2So in hindsight I would have just said can . To my neighbor I said you get an engineer and you draw up what you want me to build to reinforce this wall , Because it was me drawing stuff , my engineer drawing stuff , sending it over like yes , and draw Do you like that ? No , it's like this . Well , change that . Okay , what about now ? We'll change that . It's like why don't you ? Just ? It probably would have been better if we'd done that , but anyway , I'm trying to get that building built .
Speaker 1Yeah , what's the plan for that building ? So ?
Speaker 2that'll be a four-story building that's the plan and the ground floor will be commercial and the top three stories will be apartments and I'm going to Airbnb the second floor apartments and see how that goes , okay .
Speaker 1Yeah , Is this kind of your first foreign , uh residential . Well , you got some . That building you own in Lewiston has some residential . Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2It has , and , and you know I've owned some individual single family um units in the past . Um so , but this would be , this would be the biggest commercial project that I've done for sure . So I got that going and just recently , with your dad , acquired those industrial properties south of town . I'm hoping to get more of those from the fountains if they want to sell them , but I'm not sure . I've been thinking a lot about , with this tapped , failing , what ? What do I want to do ? You know , for work , for for the vocation , for the next ? You know , however long I got yeah .
Speaker 1Is that a midlife crisis ?
Speaker 2yeah you see my corvette , though it's pretty sick yeah , nice .
Speaker 1Um yeah , anything . Any stuff at . Any new things that tapped or um things people should be looking out for . Um , yeah , still doing tap takeovers and trivia nights and yeah , all that , all that , no , nothing new .
Speaker 2Just you know we've got new specials every week .
Speaker 1Of course that's part of our thing , yeah , instagram , keep up the Instagram , because . I love looking , checking to see what the rotating burger is . You know .
Speaker 2And I get all excited about it before I go over . It has Instagram , I guess game improved in your eyes in the last few months .
Speaker 1I would say I have not noticed anything . Okay , no , all right , I don't know how much you're on social media . I don't know if that's helpful or not . Like I said , I mostly just kind of look for the rotator of the week and , yeah , check that out , okay .
Speaker 2That's what gets me excited . We've yeah , this I mean new for us we brought in a social media marketing person .
Speaker 2Okay , yeah , I mean new for us . We brought in a social media marketing person and she's done a lot of stuff , pushing a lot more content , doing more than just kind of the pictures . She's putting reels and stories , I think are the things that she's doing Unless those are the same thing , I don't know but anyway , a lot of content and different kinds of content that we've been pushing out there . So that's something that we've done , that's new behind the scenes and I can see that we're getting a lot more traction on the social media following and interactions and impressions and followings and likes and all that . All those terms , yeah .
Speaker 1But like you said that all those terms yeah , but like you said , you're a numbers guy .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1So you don't have to . I'm sure it takes time to see if that translates .
Speaker 2It does , and we started that for Lewiston and we had a massive spike in the amount of social media online interaction we were getting . How do you measure how that translates into people coming in ? It's hard . So one of the things we put in place here is like okay , you're going to market this item , let's see if the sales spike on that item .
Speaker 2Oh , there you go . That would be a good indication that , yeah , what you're doing is having an effect , and for the most part it does . We've seen that . So now does that mean more people are coming in , or is it just changing people's patterns , what they happen to wear when they already come in like I don't know ?
Speaker 1but yeah , just push those high margin items yeah exactly awesome . Well , I think we're like at an hour already , so , oh , wow , okay , yeah , thanks , joel you're welcome .
Speaker 2Thanks for having me tap to Moscow already .
Speaker 1So oh , wow , okay , yeah , thanks , joel , you're welcome , tapped Moscow and also be excited to watch . Hopefully that building start . We'll come down and then go up . Yeah Right , if you need some brick .
Speaker 2You know , let me know . Or some old , you have a lot of brick , really nice pine wood . Yeah , I mean that whole , that whole brick structure is looking to knock down . I didn't give away as much as I would have hoped last time , but I'd love to not have to throw it away , just give it to people to use .
Speaker 1Yeah , so yeah , cool yeah . Local brick , I'm sure yeah , which is awesome .
Speaker 2With 130-year . You know history in Moscow . So yeah , it is kind of cool . Anyway , you can have it for free if you want it . Just let me know . Cool , Thanks , man . Yeah , thank you , See ya .
Speaker 1Thanks for joining us . Like , share , subscribe . We'll see you next week .
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