493: Sous Chef Summit w/ Eduardo Castillo

Welcome To Private Club Radio

Denny Corby 0:00

Welcome to the Private Club Radio Show, the show where you get the scoop on life inside private golf and country clubs. I'm your host, Danny Corby, and each episode is a real conversation with club leaders, the pros, the people and partners who help clubs thrive. We talk leadership, culture, food and beverage, member experiences, member engagement, marketing, governance, and so much more. If you want practical ideas, better teams in a club experience, members actually feel and talk about. You are in the right place now. Welcome to the show. In this episode, we are chatting with Eduardo Castillo, who transitioned from a marketing role at Texaco in Venezuela to becoming a renowned chef here at clubs in the United States. And we chat about his experience, what got him here, his experiences navigating the culinary world, the challenges of managing large kitchen staffs and all kitchen staffs, the importance of education and leadership in the culinary industry, which leads us to this episode, which is where we are talking about his really cool sous chef summit he has coming up at his club next month in June. And he's gonna talk all about that. Cannot wait. And before we dive into this episode about the really cool Chef Summit experience, if you are into experiences for yourself or your club, listen to this.'Cause I have a really cool experience for club professionals just like you who like fun, who like education, who like adrenaline, and like being around like- minded people. It's called Management in Motion. And it's where education meets adrenaline. It is such an amazing day and a half. We take BMWs, M2s, threes, and fours, and we rip them up. Drifting, drag racing, Auto X, high speed laps, lead follows, go- karts, food, drinks, you name it, all mixed into all of this though, is education from other club leaders of how they use motion and what their motion is, and how that leads to how they lead. It's a great experience. We are halfway to sold out, limited to 50 people. September 21st at the Monticello Motor Club in New York. If you wanna learn more, head on over to Dennycorby.com/managementinmotion or it's Dennycorby.com, and you'll see it there. And while you're at Dennycorby.com, if you're looking for an experience for your members now, whew, we gotta talk, because we got the Denny Corby experience. There's excitement, there's mystery, also there's magic mind reading and comedy, a ton of laughs, gasps, and holy craps. Done well over 350 club shows to great success. If you wanna learn more, see more, see some testimonials from other clubs, watch some clips, head on over to Dennycorby.com. And if you're intrigued, reach out and let's talk about bringing the show into your club. Enough about all of that though, private club radio listeners, let's welcome to the show, Eduardo Castillo. how do you go from marketing at Texaco in Venezuela to the kitchen and one of the oldest country clubs in San Antonio?

Eduardo Castillo 3:08

So a lot of this is the people you know. Uh, so the, the first step, Texaco. So in 1998, uh, the company got basically shut down in Venezuela. We're, we're kind of getting a deja vu of all this because, uh, Chavez won the election in 98. He nationalized the oil and all the minerals. So all these companies, Texaco Shell, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, all these companies that are doing business in Venezuela, basically are told,"Thank you for your business, get out of here." So I was employee 12, six, eight. I mean, I was one of the few for the first employees that they hired in 93, 92, something like that. And then suddenly you're, goodbye, you're out. And they sh- basically shut down operations. downsize, everybody got laid off and I didn't like what was happening in the country. So- Yeah. my friend was going to culinary school and I talked to him and say,"Hey, you, if you go to culinary school, you can get a, um, a student visa to go to the US." So I did culinary school, got my student visa, and ended up in, uh, Ohio. 2001. So that's how I end, I dropped out of engineering and corporate America, corporate world into the USA- I'll

Denny Corby 4:33

just, all just because of a friend who liked the cook.

Eduardo Castillo 4:36

Yeah. Yeah. So I went and I, uh, I was working in a hotel and I hated the hotel. I hated hotel life. Um, it was, I was the most nice, I was the overnight cook doing the room service. Uh, you're shutting down at 2:00 AM and all the stewardess come in from less flight and they start ordering kid food because that's what they have on their budget. Yeah. So are you kidding me? And I found an ad and I'm, I'm, I'm gonna date myself here. I found an ad on the newspaper for a country club. For a country club looking for a school- Yes,

Denny Corby 5:15

circled it. Yeah, high, you got, hit, hit it with the highlighter.

Eduardo Castillo 5:19

Yeah. The whole thing, the whole thing. So I reached out to my advisor at the school and, and he said,"You need to FedEx overnight your resume to this guy." So now, you know, broke, broken student paying 20 bucks to FedEx overnight an envelope from Nelsonville, Ohio to Columbus, Ohio. Like, like literally I took, I could have probably cheaper for me to drive the resume there.

Denny Corby 5:41

Yeah.

Eduardo Castillo 5:41

Anyway, I start talking this guy and calling this guy and calling this guy. I didn't know who the guy was. I had no clue. I, I'm pretty sure my advisor has something to do there, but I ended up getting a job at the Lakes, uh, Golf and Country Club, and that was my entryway to the clubs. But the greatest part is my friend now was a chef there. He was on the US Olympic team. So I worked with James for James Decker in 2003, four, something like that. And we work in, uh, I was in a student visa. My, my student visa had an expiration date, so I had to get a work visa. We tried to do paperwork with him and blah, blah, didn't work out. So he helped me find a job, and that's how I ended up in Indiana in a city club. so that club went down in 2008, and then that's how I ended up working with the one and only Ken Johnson, which you had on your podcast.

Denny Corby 6:34

Yep.

Budget Pressure And Payroll Discipline

Eduardo Castillo 6:34

That was another lucky show. Ken can tell you his side of the story. That was another, that was a big break and a very lucky shot, you know, working with Ken was fun, was interesting, was hard. And then, uh, 2000 and-

Denny Corby 6:50

How so?

Eduardo Castillo 6:52

Well, you know, Ken was asking me very hard questions and, and questioning me. All the stuff that I'm trying to, that I learned right now, he was asking me And I had the background on finance and the number from Texaco, so I was able to really read those numbers, but he was asking me the questions about,"Do you have the budget to do this? Can you, does your payroll cover your sales? Do you have the sales to cover your payroll? What is your food cost out of line?" You know? So I was learning sales mix. I was learning, uh, payroll control. I was learning all those things, you know, do you, like I said, you have to sales to support people-

Denny Corby 7:26

Almost because you had to. Almost because, like, you, you So almost like you had to, because if not, you probably would have had somebody else in there who could, maybe. I don't know.

Eduardo Castillo 7:34

Yeah.

Denny Corby 7:34

Could be wrong.

Eduardo Castillo 7:35

I, I mean, it, and it was reasonable what he was asking, you know? It wasn't impossible to- Yeah.

Denny Corby 7:39

Right.

Eduardo Castillo 7:40

But, but it was hard, you know, you, you have a month that you're busy and you bring people early and you keep people late. And your payroll, you know, I remember, still remember to these days, he will give us a, the, the, the payroll, uh, report on a weekly basis. So by week two, you're in jello, that means you're over budget already. And it's week two out of week four. And, and, and now you're going into week three, say,"Who's gonna work this week so I don't keep on burning payroll?" And then you're thinking about, well, you, we have this funeral on Monday and we have this event on Tuesday that went long and we added this event on Thursday. So do I have the sales to, to, to support this payroll? You know, because he does, he's not giving you the sales because you, you know, in a contract club business, the sales are always a few days behind-

Denny Corby 8:30

Right.

Eduardo Castillo 8:30

but the payroll, you can get the numbers immediately.

Denny Corby 8:32

Yeah.

Eduardo Castillo 8:34

And, and, and at the end of the month, you know, even if you are in the red, but if you have the sales and your ratios are right, he, he wouldn't give you grief. So I mean, so that, that was a, that was a tough school right there.

Denny Corby 8:46

Yeah.

Eduardo Castillo 8:48

So the other part of the story, and, and again, you know, I'll let Ken fill this in, is when I put my notice, he stopped talking to me for like a week and a half. He was so mad.

Denny Corby 8:59

Does he give it you the cold shoulder every day?

Eduardo Castillo 9:03

He had to walk by- I could see

Denny Corby 9:04

it.

Eduardo Castillo 9:06

So he would walk by my office every single day on the way in and wouldn't even say good morning.

Denny Corby 9:14

He I don't know why, but I just envisioning him, like, stopping in your doorway, just, like, fixing his bow tie and just, like, continue walking, just not even making eye contact. Just, just kicking his feet at you, just.

Eduardo Castillo 9:31

I, I, uh, I'll let, again, you know, I'll let him fill in that side of the equation here.

Denny Corby 9:36

Oh, that's so funny.

Eduardo Castillo 9:39

So anyway- That is so funny. From, from there, I went to Greenwich and, um, I, I moved to, uh, uh, Round Hill Club in Greenwich. Uh, I worked with, uh, Dennis Mirmans who was retiring. Michael Torito took the club for about a year while they hired a manager and then, uh, Brian Walsh was my last manager there.

9:59

Mm-hmm.

Moving To San Antonio Country Club

Eduardo Castillo 10:00

And that was another one. He So with Brian, I learned how to do, uh, zero-based budget. You know, we would do payroll budget and he was like,"Okay, I need your payroll budget for the year." And you, you, you do your thing, you know, you, you fill your stations and you give me your numbers and say, we had a shoulder season, a slow season, a full season, and I give him my number, say,"Oh, you're out of line by 25%." I don't know what to cut. So, well, you gotta figure out how to do that. So you start, you know, if I cut this half an hour here and at this half an hour here and this hour here and this guy here and moving stuff around, then I can manage. So the, and I start working with the J1s and H2Bs and all that kind of stuff too a little bit. So, you know, that's why you, you learn a complete different side of the equation. You build your budget from zero. You, you, you filled your holes on your payroll, you filled your holes on the, um, on the days and you start adjusting your wages. I mean, if I need to give this guy a 4% increase or I need to hire a new cook at$3 more than what I'm paying right now, that's gonna throw my budget for a loop. How do I explain this?

Denny Corby 11:03

Yeah.

Eduardo Castillo 11:04

So I worked there for seven years and I had the most So we came to San, we came to Texas. We went to Chef to Chef in New Orleans and we drove down to Texas to visit friends. So we came to Austin, San Antonio and, uh, Houston, and we stopped by San Antonio Country Club, and my friend Nelson was a chef there. We had lunch with him and a bunch of friends and all that. We went to, uh, Circuit and we, we rode race cars and fun. It was a lot of fun trip. And we're driving from San Antonio back to, uh, Katie where my friend lived and we're driving in front of, I think it's the Igloo factory right there. I, I, this is recorded in my memory. Yeah. And my wife tells me,"W- why don't we move to Texas?" And said,"Nope, in a million years, why would we move here?" I mean, it doesn't make any sense to me. This is March, but a month and a half later, I have a phone call. Nelson calls me, said,"Hey, I'm going incorporate. Uh, this is 2019. Uh, Nel- uh, Marvin wants to talk to you. And why? Well, he wants to interview you for the job. Okay. Okay. I guess you know, when, when a good friend calls you for something like that- Yeah. and sitting, putting you on your lap, you, you, you, you have to say yes. Yeah. So two weeks later, have a job offer. I, I talked to Marvin on the phone, he, uh, he called me down, he said,"You, you know, I want you to come in and spend a, a day with us and whatever." I cooked for them one day, um, did a demo, um, all that, and then, um, a week later I have a job offer. I was traveling with my wife and my son looking at houses and all stuff, like a literally a week later. So there, there, there goes my never moved to Texas.

Denny Corby 12:54

Yeah. Yep. So, so for people who don't know about San Antonio Country Club, you know, paint, paint the picture, what, what kind of place i- is it?

Eduardo Castillo 13:03

Uh, full service club, you know, all the standard innocent sports, as we wanna call it, tennis, uh, pickleball now. We have a pool, uh, full service pool with a snack bar or kitchen. Um, 90 some thousand square foot club, clubhouse. Um, 135 acres. We, uh, we're neighbors of, uh, Fort Sam. Um, so 18 holes of golf, golf. We're in the midst of our renovation right now, so, but it's a very social and very, very active club. Or, uh, overall operation is about$25 million. We do about 12, between All in, we do about 12, 13 F&B, um, you know, 250 employees total. I got about 15 in the kitchen. Um, so I mean, is that, you know- Five, five,

Denny Corby 13:52

five, zero,

Building Education Through Travel And Stages

Eduardo Castillo 13:53

or one, five? No, five zero, 50. Yes. Between stewards and cook and all that, we operate, um, seven days a week, breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the pool grill, and six days a week in the clubhouse.

Denny Corby 14:07

Wow.

Eduardo Castillo 14:08

So it's pretty active, you know? We do We just did an event for 20, um, 20, 1800 people and an, an event the week before for close to 3,000 members. So we do a couple very large events and, you know, in the regular bus, you know, the weddings, the luncheons, the funerals, uh, we do a lot of, uh, business meetings and, and social events, so pre- pre-active. We do not do golf outings. Only the members only golf outings and internal golf outings. We don't do Monday corporate outings or anything like that.

Denny Corby 14:40

so, so you, have you always been big into education and learning and all of that?

Eduardo Castillo 14:49

Yeah. So, I mean, when my first dad in formal education came in, um, Fort Wayne, my GM told me,"I don't have a lot of budget for education, but I want you to go to the Greenbrier to do the, uh, was it Chef Summit or something like that and the, and the, the chef something at the Green Briar, the Chef's Institute." Uh, so I drove from Indiana to White Sulfur Springs and, uh, did they, uh, the whole, um, it was fantastic. I mean, it was just, it's great to have, you know, at that point I knew James and, uh, I knew a lot of the people on the team, you know, Joking Butner, um, oh my God, all those guys and I, you know, was there, Ed Leonard, all those guys were right there. So it was great to have the formal education at the Greenbrier and being at the Greenbrier. And then when I went to, uh, Baltimore, Kent connected me with a couple other guys that were his chefs in his, um, previous clubs. And we, we used to go to, uh, star chefs in New York, um, and we would spend three days in New York, we would go to the conference and all that, and then we'd go have dinners and, and just hang around the city, and then we went to chef to chef multiple times. So, you know, formal location, that's kind of the f- the, the, the big part of formal education. And on the other side, then the struggle was how to send your sous chef for any of these events, because, you know, you have a$5,000 budget for your education for your team, and you go to any of this conference, there goes your 5,000 bucks. So what do you do with your sous chef? So, so, you know, with your leads and, and, and, and all that, I mean, I remember in Connecticut was the first time I was able to really send one of my guys somewhere. So the, the club chefs of Connecticut planned a threat to Japan and, um, my sous chef at the time, um, unbelievable guy, um, Matthew Roach, he said,"You know, all, these are all my friends. I would like to go. And we talk and we say,"Okay, let's, let's figure it out what this is. And, and, and I talked to Brian and we, uh, said,"We'll meet you in the middle. So we'll, we'll subsidize some of his trip." And he went to Japan. I wanted to go to Japan and, but, you know, I know it was gonna be an opportunity for him.

Denny Corby 17:09

Yeah.

Eduardo Castillo 17:10

And I was already going to chef to chef and stuff like that. So I, um, I kind of stepped out, just go have a good time. They spend like a two and a half weeks in Japan. It was a wild trip. They had a great time. And then when I moved to San Antonio, then we did have a much larger education budget, but still then, you know, what is the cost of sending someone to a conference? So I go to conference to CMA now, my sous chef goes to the, uh, the chef summit because the club management put together, um, I, I was invited to speak a chef to chef last year in Baltimore. So I took my su- one of my sous chefs with me since I got a, you know, when you're invited to speak, you get the free ride. So might as well, so I'm gonna be there, might as well pay for it- Yeah. and bring him along with, to the ride. Yeah. But I think the most creative part was when I started sending my team to go somewhere else, you know? So I, I met Richard Brown in one of the BMIs in, um, and, and I told Richard, you know, he has a pretty busy club, Bonita Bay in, um, Naples area. Yeah. And Richard, I would love to send Marco, my sushi, to spend some time with you. And we book him on a flight. Richard actually took him to his house. He was, he stayed in Richard's house and he spent a full week working with Richard and he came back on fire, you know? Marco- Yeah. Marco was a resort chef, a club and resor- uh, uh, he was, he come from the Marriott and he wasn't fully sold on the country club idea and he came back from, um, from Florida with a complete different mindset, you know, looking at a club like Bonita Bay, you know, say,"Okay, this is something I can do. Um, a couple years later, I reach out to my friend Todd and, uh, my friend, um, Tom in, uh, Baltimore. From my days in Baltimore, I remember they do the Eldridge and Green Springs, which is the golf tournament interclub. And I told them, um, I wanna say two guys to spend the time, they spend some, uh, some days with you up there for Elders and Green Spring. And, and if you ever work in the Northeast, you ne- you always know that you're always understaffed. You're always shorthanded, you know, because it's, the season is so packed as up and dance and, uh, um, I sent Eli and, uh, David to spend a week with them. I mean, those guys were only sending me photos of the ballgame and eating crap cakes downtown. I said,"This guy's really working or what are they doing? They're a little tourism." But I mean, they, they, they spent, again, they spent a week up there, they came back, just, just the fact that they, you know, Todd always laughed because he looks as, they came to my house and they look up and say,"I've never seen threes this tall." No, I never, but it used to experience of spending time on the club and talking to the managers and talking to the other staff and, and, and, and seeing it, you know, for me, that was I cannot afford to send them to any of this conference, but I cannot spend 1500 bucks in between hotel, airfare, some meals, and, and, and, you know, go and learn something, you see something different. Just, just, just go to a different place.

Why Sous Chefs Need Financial Skills

Denny Corby 20:18

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, speaking of something different, something new, you've, you, you got something cooking, no pun intended. The Suchef, Shoo- Sue's Chef Summit, well, it's almost a tongue twister too. Uh, June 21st through the 23rd at your club, where, where did that idea even come from?

Eduardo Castillo 20:38

Well, you know, it's just back to what I was saying, you know, you become a sous chef because you're the best cook on the line. You become a, a, a lead cook because you can cook better than anybody else. You're the more organized, the cleaner, the needer and all this stuff, but you never have the skills to really operate a kitchen, to price a menu, to cost a menu. You know, you come with the idea, you give it to the chef, and the chef say,"I like this, add more this, add more that, split it up this way." And the chef just do his magic and goes on the menu, and you have no clue what he decide that that halic was gonna be$38 or$48, or you don't know why that filet is$45 on the country club, but$65 for banquet. And, and you don't want And, you know, and I struggle with that with my team now, you know, having a large team, I passed down a lot of those responsibilities to them. And, and, and when I've been asking them how you cost this item out, it, I found them completely It, they're completely dumbfounded. You know, how do you break down a tenderloin and what's the cost of it? What do you mean? How much do I charge for a seven ounces filet? And they have no clue. A- and I walk into the steps and I've been doing that with my team and, and, and we've been f- formalizing it in the club. We've been, we've been, uh, formalizing it with, within our team, but it's become one of those things that as days go by, you realize it's not only me. I talk to my other friends that has, have big, bigger clubs or operations in general, and, and they're the ones doing all the math, and they're the one doing all the ordering, they're the ones doing all the stuff, saying,"Why am I have to be the one doing all the ordering for an event for 200 people? Hey, you have a team of 12 people. Yes, I get it, you know? But even then, you know, what kind of this, what kind of service are you doing to your sous-chef who eventually is gonna be in your position and is gonna have an event for Easter for 400 people and gonna end up with twice as much food as he need because he doesn't know how to order. And, and it's not that they're not paying attention, it's that we are not taking the time to walk them through the process, you know, how many pounds of protein you're gonna have to order for a buffet for 900 people. You know, how many prem reps? Yeah. How many racks of land, you know? It, it, it, or, or, or, you know, what does it, what happens when, you know, Janet or Jimmy comes in every day, half an hour early to set up their station and, and you don't correct that and you don't address that. And then now it happens that you're three months in and you're deep in the whole, on, on the, um, payroll because Janet's been making an hour overtime every, every, uh, hour and a half on overtime every week. And, and, and you're paying this person 20 bucks an hour, the wages now are out of control. So anybody who walks to the door wants to make 20 bucks an hour, 18 or whatever, and you're paying this person, you know, overtime I don't know how the people in California do it that pay after eight hours overtime. I mean, and, and you're paying this, it's all this money that you're paying for this and they are, you know, oh, I don't know why my budget is out of line. Oh, I mean, you allowed it for six weeks.

Denny Corby 24:02

Yeah. Is it, is it, is it kind of sometimes Uh, how do I phrase this? Are, are, or do clubs sometimes assume that culinary talent automatically equals, like, leadership ability? So you're trying to, like, bridge that gap a little bit?

Eduardo Castillo 24:24

There is a big part of that, yes. I think the, the culinary leadership really I, the, the leadership at clubs sometimes assume that you have the knowledge. I also think that sometimes the leadership at clubs is A lot of this information is held at the top and is not passed down, you know? So, so you have a budget and, and the manager runs your budget for you and, and, and, and runs your department for you and, and tells you when something is wrong, but doesn't walk you through the process of why did w- what went wrong here or why this is wrong, you know? It, it, it's The, the What There's a phrase. It's the volume Something about volume covers all the mistakes or something like that, you know? When, when you have a club that is busy, you can shuffle product around and figure out how to move it. It's when you go to the shoulder system that you're, need to be pushing stuff around and, and knowing where stuff is, you know? And that's- Yeah. that's what it is, you know, you gotta sell it three times. Just, you sell it- Is it,

Denny Corby 25:38

is, is, is that why financials intimidate so many chefs?

Eduardo Castillo 25:43

I think it's not only chefs, it's from the house managers, it's dining room managers. It's anybody I'm doing this for chefs because it's I wanna get under my belt a, a I need to understand the process with something I'm very familiar with, you know? And I, and then, you know, extrapolate it to how you do this with bars, how do you do this with dining room s- staff? How do you do this with hourly staff that work on the pool grill? You know, I, I think it's not only chefs. I think anybody who's in a leadership role that has They went to college, they got a background knowledge of this, but I don't think they have a in- depth understanding of what it is, you know? It, it, it, it's I was laughing this week. I mean, and I, you know, the contract clubs are the perfect example that we can do whatever we want most of the time. So we have a salad on the banquet menu that they use the canned mini pairs, and they're really hard to get for some reason right now. We used to order them that would be next week, next day. Now, we need to order them. They, they may be next month. And, uh, for some reason, my guys double ordered, and they ordered about 750 bucks worth of mini pairs in cans. And I tell the guys,"Dude, if you're running your own food truck or your own restaurant, and your sales are 1500 bucks a day, can you afford to pay a bill for, uh, 750 bucks today just to have it sitting on the shelf?" And they look at me and they don't even gather the, the, the, the thought of what does that mean? So, so you went out on your food truck today and you have 1,500 bucks on sales, you gotta buy food to run tomorrow, you gotta put gas in the truck, you gotta pay the guy who's helping you out, and then you need to pay this guy who dropped 700 words of mini pairs right there. Where's the money coming from? Say, inventory management. But the club pays the bills every, every month doesn't really matter, you know? We have, uh, we have the love of getting dues every month and we're blessed and cursed by it.

Ordering Math Backup Plans And Waste

Denny Corby 27:51

Yeah. Yeah. Wait, when, when a s- a sous chef attends this summit, what do you want them to understand differently when they go back to their clubs?

Eduardo Castillo 28:01

I wanted to start questioning, how do I do payroll? You know, I wanted to start questioning, how do, how do I do my schedule that affects my payroll? What changes on my schedule this week will reflect on my payroll next week? How much do I need to order this week for Mother's Day that I don't run out of product? And what's gonna be my plan B if it goes wrong? You know, I tell my, my We, we use the, we use the OSHA plan is our, our, our mode of the club. What is the OSHA plan?

Denny Corby 28:36

Do you- So we were- Wait, wait, wait, wait. The, the OSHA- OSHEP.

Eduardo Castillo 28:40

Yes, OSHED planned.

Denny Corby 28:41

O-S-H-I-T?

Eduardo Castillo 28:43

Yes. OS.

Denny Corby 28:44

Okay. I just wanted to make sure I heard that. Yeah. Okay. I love it. I am intrigued.

Eduardo Castillo 28:49

So it, it, because the, you know, what are we gonna order? We're gonna have, we have Easter for 800 people and what are we gonna order? We're gonna order 25 pounds of Red Snapper. And, you know, you do the math, 25 pounds times 16 divided by 700. It's like a quarter of an ounce per person or an ounce per person, whatever it is. And when we do the math, it doesn't make any sense. Just not. It just really is surreal that you order 25 pounds of red snapper. But then you realize that not everybody's gonna eat And that's what, that's what you It takes your time to really click on it, you know? As a chef, you get it. No everybody's gonna ate red snapper. Probably 50% of the people are gonna ate red snapper. But the plant kicks in when everybody decide that today's the day to eat red snapper, and it is 12:15, you still have 300 people to come through, and you have one pan of red snapper. So the question is, what do you do now? So what is there in, in the house, do we have salmon? Do we have, um, halibut? Do we have any other- Hold on a second. Yeah.

Denny Corby 29:58

One second.. All right. Can you hear me?

Eduardo Castillo 30:31

Yeah.

Denny Corby 30:32

Oh, hold on. Uh Can you hear me?

Eduardo Castillo 30:53

Yes, I'm here. You good?

Denny Corby 30:54

Okay. Yeah, I have 10 minutes. Five minutes.

Eduardo Castillo 30:57

Okay.

Denny Corby 30:59

All right.

Eduardo Castillo 30:59

Perfect. So, so, you know-

Denny Corby 31:02

Go ahead. Sorry.

Eduardo Castillo 31:02

So what do you do? So, so it bec- it comes down to what do you do? You know, do you, do you pick up anything else? Uh, in the end, and we design a menu that's very broad and there's a lot of things on it, but in the end it's they want fish. So they'll be, you know, the last 200 people are gonna have to eat salmon, they're gonna have to eat, um, hallewood or whatever you have in the house that rather than ordering, you know, because what, what if they decided that they're not gonna eat the restaurant today, they're gonna eat the pork or the chicken or their lamb or whatever else there is. So, so what is your backup plan? How are you gonna satisfy them with something that is not a lesser quality, but it's something that will provide that? So I mean, and we do that for every event, you know? We, we, we do events regularly for five, 600 people. And, and it's one of those things that I wanted to ha- be able to pivot and shift without breaking the bank. I think one of the biggest mistakes that we do is we order so much food and we end up with so much leftover and that's what you're, you know, and that, there's some, only so much soup you can do that you can try to sell and then it becomes family meal. And if you don't have a large team, it becomes waste. So, so that's, that, that, that's one that, what I, that's what I want them to learn. I wanted to learn how to, how to, how to lead also, how to hold staff accountable, how to hold the standards, you know, how to make sure that a cup means a cup and a pound means a pound and we don't measure a pound with a cup and, and assume it's gonna be okay or, or, or things like that, you know? How do you ensure that consistency is held through the, the whole operation? Yeah.

Summit Format Hands On Learning

Denny Corby 32:42

Yeah. And, and not just all of the, the education that they're learning, you also have a ton of fun going on, which is, which is cool. You have fried chicken and bingo.

Eduardo Castillo 32:52

Yeah, so we welcome them- That's gonna be quick. Yes. So, so fried ch- some, someday we'll welcome them with fried chicken and bingo. So it's our fried chicken buffet that everybody asks me why, how do we get 200 people every, every once a month and for fried chicken and bingo say, I don't know, it's good fried chicken, it's good bingo, they had a good time. Yeah. So Sundays, all day, Sunday, we pick them up at night, we do fried chicken and bingo, um, kind of mingle, understand, get to know each other. Monday is all day hands on. So we're gonna do-

Denny Corby 33:20

With a dress code?

Eduardo Castillo 33:23

Yes. Yeah. They need a dress code. You know, uh, they need to show up professional. They, they're gonna be in the clubhouse with the members. I want them to look professional. They need to look professional. Can you show up with shorts and flip flop, flip flops? Um, so Monday is all day in the kitchen. So the club is closed, so we'll, we'll spend a whole day in the kitchen on Monday. So we'll do, um, s- demos. We're gonna break down some proteins. We're gonna, we're gonna do comparison of cost between breaking a whole salmon versus buying pre-cut clean flus because b- um, we're gonna break, uh, use, compare items that, you know, every chef want to use baby carrots and patty panty squash and these fancy items. And they don't realize that when you do baby carrots, you get the same amount of carrots for fo- for, for, for$45, you get five pounds or 50 pounds, depending on what you buy. So we're gonna compare how those items impact the cost of your menu and, and, and, and all that. And, and then, um, we're gonna talk about documenting employees and, and, and memo to file and note to files and follow up on HR procedures. You know, you have an employee that has a problem and then you go to HR, I wanna fire this person and say,"You have a paper trail." And you go,"What? What do you mean by a paper trail?""Yeah, you need to write them up, you need to suspend it, you need to have a memo to file."And, and you learn that the hard way. So we're gonna talk about that, um, and then they're gonna cook their own dinner that night. And then I have a professional coach coming in on Tuesday to, um, spend the morning within two hours about, you know, coach, coaching, leading, mentoring, and, and how to, how to lead through people, got how to get stuff done through people, how to manage your time so you're not, you know, you don't end up at 10:00 PM doing three things that you couldn't get done through day that your guy in Sat was just twiddling his thumbs and he could have help you with. And then, uh, they go back on Tuesday and, you know, depending how many you are, they can go back Tuesday night and work the service or they can take the Tuesday off and come back to work on Wednesday.

Registration Details And Final Takeaways

Denny Corby 35:27

Yeah. No, you, you have a lot, a lot of good stuff planned, a lot of good s- and, and, I mean, the schedule looks amazing. Um, I mean, I was, I was a s- a sous chef, you know what I mean? Like I would this looks like so much fun. But June 22nd to the 23rd, San Antonio Country Club, 9:25, all meals and education included. And if people want to learn more or register, they can, what, email you, chef@sanAntonioCc.com?

Eduardo Castillo 35:55

Correct. They can email me, they can call me, they can hit me on LinkedIn. I mean, absolutely. I'll be happy to have. You know, my goal is to do this a couple times a year, because I think there's a huge hole in there for education for, for people that are at this level. And, and, and, you know, we want, this is the future. These are gonna be the next chef running the club. These are gonna be the next chefs or the next dining room managers or the next F&B directors. And if we don't give them the tools right now, we're gonna struggle down the road. Yeah. So that's the whole goal.

Denny Corby 36:30

Awesome. Eduardo, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for doing this summit. It's gonna be so cool. Uh, and look forward to chatting more.

Eduardo Castillo 36:38

Absolutely. We'll report back when we're done.

Denny Corby 36:41

Sounds good.

36:42

Eduardo, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for all you're doing for the industry and education and just trying to enhance and just make things better. I love it. If you guys wanna learn more, reach on out to Eduardo to learn about his sous Chef Summit, Sou Chef Summit. Almost messed that up. If you wanna send someone from your team there, I think it'd be really cool. But that is this episode. Until next time, I'm your host, Danny Corby. Catch y'all on the flipity flip.