[00:00:05] Chris Kirby: They say it takes doing something 10,000 times to be good at it. With over 60,000 beverage formulations, Flavor Man is better than good at making dreams into drinks. We're Flavor Man, and we partner with dreamers and entrepreneurs to not just get your flavors perfect, but help you develop your beverage product from start through finish. When you work with us, we're with you from start up to bottoms up. So let's get started at flavorman.com. Flavor Man, change what the world is drinking. And now, Taste Radio.
[00:00:50] Ithaca Hummus: Hello, and thanks for tuning into the Top Podcast for the food and beverage industry, Taste Radio. I'm editor and producer Ray Latif, and you're listening to episode 183, which features an interview with Alex Day, the co-founder of trendsetting cocktail bar, Death & Co. Tune in on Friday, October 11th for episode 55 of our Taste Radio Insider Podcast when we're joined by Chris Kirby, the founder and CEO of Ithaca Hummus, who spoke about his strategy for disrupting a legacy category and being profitable while doing it. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we'd love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. If you've ever sipped on a craft cocktail, chances are that the drink was influenced by one of a handful of bars at the forefront of modern mixology. That shortlist includes Death & Co., whose trendsetting location in New York City's East Village has become a mecca for cocktail enthusiasts. Known for its inventive libations and ultra-sleek ambiance, Death & Co.'s focus on delivering an elevated drinking experience has made it an archetype for premium bars and also paved a path for the rise of high-quality packaged cocktails. In an interview with Bebnets John Craven and Mike Schneider, co-founder Alex Day spoke about the inception of Death & Co., which has since opened distinct locations in Denver and Los Angeles, and the company's thoughtful approach to innovation and branding. He also spoke about why articulating the Death & Co. style is an ongoing process, how consulting taught him the importance of creating systems, why patience is key to Death & Co.'s recruitment process, and why the company thinks of itself as a content creator as much as it is a bar operator.
[00:02:41] John Craven: Hello, John and Mike here for Taste Radio, and today we are in Portland, Maine, and we're at the home of Alex Day. Alex, thanks for joining us. My pleasure. Thanks for coming up. So, I guess I would call you a legend of sorts in the cocktail world. Maybe that's my own label for you. And, you know, I guess both Mike and I have personally enjoyed many visits to Death & Co.
[00:03:01] Mike Schneider: Many.
[00:03:02] John Craven: In New York. Excellent. This is much brighter and less dark than there. We have windows here.
[00:03:06] Mike Schneider: You have windows, I know.
[00:03:08] John Craven: I know, it's crazy. You know, I want to start sort of at the beginning of just, you know, how did you get into this sort of cocktail hospitality world? I presume you were a bartender at first.
[00:03:19] Alex Day: Yeah, I was. And I think, you know, as anyone who might be described as successful in especially this industry, it's a lot of dumb luck, honestly. I moved to New York when I was 20. I transferred to NYU and I was poor, you know, and I needed a job. And my brother knew a guy who owned a bar and gave me a bar backing job. And I'd worked in hospitality before that, like working on the line in a kitchen. You know, more kind of kitchen side of things, less front of house, but this sounded really fun. It was Friday and Saturday nights, you know, when my friends were out drinking, I could be also drinking, but working at a bar too. And it was a terrible piece of crap bar on the Lower East Side that took me in for the first time and allowed me to bar back. I think from there, it was a surprising trajectory because I thought I was going to, as a 20 or 21 year old, you think that you're going to go down a certain path. And for me, it was either the foreign service or get my PhD and teach or travel the world and do certain this and that and be academic. And that really didn't work so well, especially when some of my professors were like, You don't want to do that. You don't want to be a teacher. You're going to be a professor in some community college in Kansas, and that's not going to work for you at all.
[00:04:35] Mike Schneider: When a professor's telling you not to be a professor, you listen. A hundred percent. Yeah, exactly.
[00:04:38] Alex Day: Like, okay, you know something I don't. I definitely don't have what it takes to, like, live in New York City and be an academic. But at the same time, something was happening in bars and restaurants in New York, and especially in bars where This was after Audrey Saunders had established herself at the Pegu Club, and Sasha had opened Milk and Honey, and Julie had opened Flatiron, and Dale had done all his work at the Rainbow Room, etc. And there was a shift happening, and working in bars at that time, like, I was able to go to some of these places, and they really, like, stoked curiosity for me. And it wasn't that it was just about cocktails, it was something else was happening there. There was something creative, there was something environmental there was something exciting happening and that like really grabbed a hold of me and so that kind of transitionary point where you know 22 or 23 getting out of college and figuring out what the hell you're gonna do with your life for me that coincided with the growth in this industry and this like magical moment that happened and I just dove in.
[00:05:37] John Craven: And that was like early 2000s is that sort of the time frame?
[00:05:41] Alex Day: Yeah we're talking around 2004 I think was really when I started getting the bug. and exploring, you know, I had a blog for a while. I was a total nerd, like making my own bidders, doing everything. You can probably find it. I'm never going to tell anyone what it was called. The Jeffrey Morgenthaler knows exactly what it was called because he and I had a reciprocal kind of blog relationship for a little bit. It was an exciting time because there were no rules at that point. There were a couple of books, like Dale had a book, Gary Regan had a book. Wondrich hadn't even put out Punch, I think, at that point yet. So there really wasn't a whole lot out there as far as resources. So there were a handful of us on eGullet and meeting up in these bars and kind of exploring this whole new world that dated back, you know, to a different time and a different world in and of itself back in the late 1800s. So it was really kind of exciting to get to try and do all this stuff and create it on our own. And I think that really explains a lot of my success in the industry was like, There were no rules. I happened to be really into it. And I was at the right place at the right time and just was able to capitalize on it.
[00:06:48] John Craven: I think to your point of no rules, you know, we mentioned or alluded to what Death & Co is like on the inside. It is, I would say, still a very different place. You know, other places, I think, have emulated it at this point. But, you know, it's for sure not what you think of as, like, your typical bar. You know, you can't even see inside the place, right? So, I guess... There's no sign. Oh, there's barely a sign. There is a sign. It's very small. Yeah. And so, I mean, what was sort of the genesis of, like, that idea? How did you know that that was, like, the right move to make?
[00:07:21] Alex Day: Yeah. Well, it should be noted, I didn't open Death & Co. actually. So, my business partner, Dave Kaplan, He and our other business partner, Ravi DeRossi, they opened Death & Co. And it was very much their brainchild, and I think born really out of Dave's excitement and passion for the industry, but not from the same place that I eventually would come from and bring to the partnership. Dave never worked behind a bar. He's never been a bartender, but he is wildly passionate. He's incredibly articulate about it. He knows what he likes, and he had a vision for a place. It was really exciting to me when Death & Co. did open, because I lived right around the corner. And I went there for the first time, and I sat down. It was like, I don't know, a week after the bar opened. And I had this amazing experience with a guy named Joaquin Simo. And I've repeated this story over and over again to people, because they're like, how did this all come together? And I'm like, really, it's Joaquin's fault for the most part. It's a combination of Dave, his vision, and Joaquin really just showing me what it was to be a new forward-thinking bartender. Because it wasn't that I mean, his drinks were delicious and he was exposing me to new things that I'd never tried before, but he was so cool about it. And what I mean by that, it wasn't that he was just professional or that he had a chip on his shoulder, because he didn't have a chip on his shoulder at all. He just really like brought myself and this person I was there with having a couple of drinks into the fold of his mind and let us explore for a couple of hours. And I left that night being like, this is it. I'm going to work at this place. I don't care what I have to do.
[00:08:53] Mike Schneider: Can you expound a little bit on what that vision was and what it was that drew you to the vision itself?
[00:08:59] Alex Day: Yeah, certainly. I think the vision of Death & Co, as I understand it from Dave's brain, who, you know, is my best friend and my business partner now, Dave wanted to create an environment that was a place of community for people like him, which were young, which were modern, which were not throwback in any way, that had respect for tradition but wanted to forge a path forward. And that really appealed to me because as much as I love the history side of things, of everything we do, be it cocktails, beer, wine, spirits, whatever. I love the heritage aspect to it. I also think that we are in such an incredible time where we get to take those skills and look forward with them and progress and do something new and exciting. And that was kind of the ethos that I felt in those early days and why it appealed to me so much. And since then, I've learned that that energy that I felt that first time I went to Death & Co was a reflection of Dave having a starting place and then putting together this team including Phil Ward and Brian Miller and Joaquin and Jessica Gonzalez that were that kind of beginning crew that had the skills the actual technical skills as well as the creative abilities to express that in a new way and Dave let them and that was really the exciting part to me was I saw that a bar for the first time wasn't manned by a single person that was the figurehead. It was a collective idea. And it was this sort of like cocktail socialism happening there that was incredible. And as soon as I got my talons in it, and you know, the running joke is like, I was the only one younger than Dave. So he like was excited to give me a job. So suddenly they would stop making fun of him for being the young guy. As soon as I got in there, and learned about it, that mentality of coming together for a greater good and the results that we had in those early years, which is all what our first book is about, is that like magical first five year time where we were doing just this crazy amount of work and prolific cocktail making left and right and kind of pushing the envelope of what this little bar in the East Village could do. It was... I think the most impactful baseline that our, as a philosophy is concerned, it's the most impactful thing that we have now grown on and kind of expressed in different ways, be it through Death & Co.'s growth or through our consulting, through the other bars we have. It's just this idea that it's not about one person, it's that the best results always come through collaboration.
[00:11:23] Mike Schneider: It does feel like a very forward-looking place in spite of the fact that if it wasn't for the candles, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.
[00:11:30] Alex Day: Absolutely true. Everyone looks a little bit better in candlelight.
[00:11:34] John Craven: I don't know. It's really hard to take an Instagram photo in there, though. Shucks. Shucks. Well, I bring appropriate gear, but I see people fumbling around and an occasional flash going off.
[00:11:46] Alex Day: Yeah, it's funny. Those early days were, you know, it was before, of course, Instagram was around. And so never a consideration. And it's funny how much as we're working on new projects, either for ourselves or with others, that we now consider the Instagram moment. And we hate ourselves every time we talk about it. But it is important from a marketing perspective, right? Like our Instagram is a huge marketing side of our company and we invest a lot of money into it for the Death & Co. handle, so we have to consider these things now. Whereas the original is like a time capsule of a different pre-Instagram era, which is odd.
[00:12:22] John Craven: Well, that side of it, as someone who, I guess, is an end user of, you know, Death & Co., you know, you guys do a really great job with it, just even how they interact with you, like when you post something, you know, from there. Yeah. Or where I posted, you know, a drink from the book or something like that. It feels a lot more like, you know, I don't know, engaging, I guess I would say, than other establishments. not knocking on them, but it seems like again, like you guys have a sort of rhyme and reason to what you're doing.
[00:12:52] Alex Day: It's content to us, you know, like we are as much as we are bar operators and builders and cocktail creators, we also content creators, you know, we write books and we view our Instagram as an extension of content. And I think this is, it returns to that conversation we were having about the original vision of Death & Co and coming out of my partner Dave's kind of mind. And he has taken that now and he's grown his skill set and really been the shepherd of this entire marketing engine that is our either social media or otherwise and to your point about the social media like we didn't want to we were getting a little bored of just like pretty pictures going up and we have a lot of them we work with great photographers that's awesome like our photo assets are incredible but it's like One more picture of a cocktail, really? Like, what else can we do with this platform? And now we're starting to play with not just delivering information, but how do we engage people? Like, Dave did this incredible essentially takeover of our own account the other day where it was a Q&A session for people. And it was like bartender questions, industry questions, how do I start my first bar, questions about drinks. And Dave, you know, spent the day kind of responding to people and stories and really providing that kind of dialogue, which I thought, I think it's just so cool that there are our social team and the marketing side of it is really, really reaching out to the community in a way that is impactful and not boastful and not just for our own selfish purposes.
[00:14:21] John Craven: Yeah, it's certainly not pushing product, I suppose. Maybe aside from showing the books and whatnot, but even that, it's not like, hey, come on down for our new whatever cocktail we whipped up or something like that.
[00:14:32] Alex Day: Sure. It has that benefit. We've seen greater engagement in our doors because people are involved in our social media and have maybe followed us and live on the other side of the planet and they get to come and they've like, I've seen you, bartender, in front of me on the internet before and it's kind of amazing. moment. That said, though, it's, you know, it can be so much more than that. And I think that that is where we're seeing the opportunity to really use social media and use our engagement with the larger community to build what we see as our internal community. You know, as far as a recruitment tool, like we're nothing without the people who work behind the bar every single day, right? Like it's not, It has nothing to do with Dave and I at the end user experience is all about that human interaction and the connection that our people have with our guests. So if we're able to recruit the best people because they see something in us and we continue to remind them of that, it has proven to be really helpful for us.
[00:15:31] John Craven: Well, the recruitment end of it, I have to imagine, and correct me if I'm way off base here, has to be one of the, you know, biggest kind of assets of, you know, what you've built at this point. Certainly, you know, having been in there, I think last time I was in Death & Co, it was like the first night of the new menu or something like that. Ooh, chaos. But everyone was, you know, and I would imagine chaos, you know, despite having never worked behind a bar, but something new, right? And everyone seems so, you know, poised and is clearly taking their job very seriously. I kind of imagine it on par with, you know, someone getting a bartending gig at a bar like that is like getting a stage at the French Laundry, you know, like that's a resume builder and you're learning from, you know, people who know how to operate the best bars.
[00:16:16] Alex Day: It's a careful thing to balance recruitment and the reputation that we have, that we're fortunate enough to have, and bringing people into the fold. We've absolutely had times over the years where people straight up have never worked for us and then we get calls that, you know, they put the name on the resume and the flattery of that is not insignificant, you know, like that's great. It feels really good that people think we're important enough that they would lie on their resume and say they work for us, but then we have to protect ourselves and really hold true to what our standards are and to ensure that when people do work for us that that reputation is actually legitimate. So, you know, it's not only the recruitment side of things, it's vetting people from a hiring process, which I'd be happy to talk about because it's incredibly involved for us. And then the training and ongoing, you know, relationship that we have with our team members that is really the bulk of, I think, our work from a leadership level is recruitment, hiring, training, and that kind of ongoing culture that exists within our properties.
[00:17:24] Mike Schneider: It's definitely worth diving into a little bit. What are the keys to hiring within Death & Co.?
[00:17:29] Alex Day: So our hiring process is a little atypical, especially for the hospitality industry. We have three phases, essentially, where we call a tract where we're just gathering, you know, getting out there in the world. We're posting that we have a job opening. We have a new property. we're looking for a specific role and we ask people to go to our website and we have for each one of the properties an individual form essentially that you fill out. And this form isn't just information gathering on who they are, who the applicant is, but it is us communicating some things that matter to us. We communicate things as kind of hokey as our core values, like these are the things that really matter to us. Do any of them resonate with you? And what we're looking for is a little bit of engagement at this point. It doesn't have to be total engagement, but at least a spark of understanding of what we're talking about and what matters to us so that we can extrapolate within that first process. Are they aligned with us at all? The next phase is a pretty typical interview structure. After we've gone through that first and we, you know, we'll review a bunch of resumes. For example, in Los Angeles right now our team is vetting about 150 applicants that have come in and we have not, aside from my Instagram post like two days ago, we've done zero posting whatsoever. And how many people do you need to open? We need a staff of a little over 30. Okay. That's inclusive of everyone. Bussers.
[00:18:49] John Craven: Oh, so that's just for bartenders is 100.
[00:18:52] Alex Day: That's probably around 100 for bartenders. Yeah. Because of course our reputation, most people want to be bartenders. So after we've gone through those and looked critically at the kind of spread of experience levels, We then filter and, you know, either let people know that unfortunately we're not able to move forward with you and hear X, Y, and Z reason. It's an unfortunate part of it, but it's a necessary one. And then we go to the next phase, which we call discovery, which is a typical one-on-one interview. It's what you would imagine an interview to be. Asking technical skills, background, getting a sense of cultural fit, but a thing that we find to be problematic, not just in the hospitality industry, but with the hiring in general, is human bias. We all have, you know, baggage that we bring as interviewers, as leaders, and maybe we're not being as objective as we could be. But, you know, once we kind of go through that first step of discovery and move beyond that, we have something we call alignment, which is a group-style interview. Imagine the table we're sitting around right now, that there were 10 people. A couple of them are going to be managers at this place, maybe an owner is there, and mostly applicants in different job roles. Some maybe overlap. And this is much more conversational. We're asking questions about community engagement. We're asking questions about our industry's impact on the planet. We're asking questions about their favorite food. You know, things that are both serious and have levity to them so that we can get a sense of these people around the table. How are they going to interact with one another? How do they click? So it's not about the individual at that point. It's about really the cohesiveness of the team. And we ask ourselves at the end of that, would this group of people work together for eight hours a day? And if there's ever a no, then we can't move forward with that person. It's cumbersome, it's a long process, but it's one that we found to have the best retention. In this day and age with incredible increases in labor, which, you know, the socialist leaning in me is like, yay, that's great. And then the business owner in me is like, ah, this is so terrifying. But to be able to limit our exposure, to limit our training and turnover to have a staff that is there with us for longer is just good business sense, I think.
[00:21:11] John Craven: Well, I guess it seems like what you've created again, like it would be a step down to leave a place like Death & Co. and go somewhere else. So, I mean, what sort of retention do you get from people generally?
[00:21:23] Alex Day: Well, our world is changing now, right? We used to have a tiny little bar in the East Village that has a long reputation, and our retention within that door, within Death & Co. New York, is incredibly high. Within the bar staff, there's almost zero turnover unless someone is moving to a new job in the company as just happened in the last year. Our head bartender there, Tyson Buehler, moved up to the director level position within the company. And then our head bartender who took over for him just moved to Los Angeles to be the head bartender there. That's the greatest path that I can think of for anyone. For sure. We now have moving into the head bartender position in New York is Shannon Tabay, who worked at a number of places, was actually began on one of the earliest teams of Death & Co. in New York as a server, then went to culinary school. went and opened a bunch of bars, has an incredibly varied background, came back to us and became a bartender there. We have people that may be leaving because they want to pursue a degree and get a lifestyle change out of it. But honestly, we don't really turn over very quickly. It's a very coveted job and they do well for themselves too, which is great. On the front of house side of things, a little bit more turnover as far as like server and bar backs and busters are concerned, but pretty high as well. Denver, a slightly different story. We have a massive business there. We are open about 20 hours a day. We have a daytime cafe and coffee bar. We have, you know, daytime food service, a big culinary department, a big kind of marquee death and co-experience in this grandiose lobby with lots of windows in it, oddly enough. We have an outdoor bar and then we have an event center as well. So we have quite a large staff there, but I've been really surprised that this hiring process has has really resulted in, while we've had some people leave, we haven't had a whole lot of new people. We've kind of kept the same core group of people there, which is really exciting. And even within those, we've seen people grow with us and a couple of people moving to LA to be on the project there. So that same sort of level of mobility internally with the company as we grow is proving to be successful, which is exciting. Excellent.
[00:23:38] Chris Kirby: We'll be right back with more from Alex Day after this quick break. They say it takes doing something 10,000 times to be good at it. With over 60,000 beverage formulations, Flavor Man is better than good at beverage development. Let us guide you through the process of getting your drink brand created. Flavor Man, change what the world is drinking.
[00:24:02] John Craven: Well, let's talk a little bit about the expansion and, you know, kind of going back a little bit to the point where you're now a partner in Death & Co. and, you know, at some point this organization expanded into something more, you know, thoughts of other locations. I think, you know, I don't know where the sort of consulting end came into play, but take us through that a little bit.
[00:24:25] Alex Day: at the very beginning. So I joined Death & Co. I don't know, six months after it opened, I think. And then very quickly, Dave and I realized that we had a lot in common, that we shared a lot of the same values, that we had similar ambitions, which was to grow and to do more and not just do one property. And I think that that speaks to kind of an excitement to learn and grow and evolve as humans in general. And we are very different people, but we really do share that. And I think that's the nucleus of our business partnership and our other partner, Devon Tarby, as well. as we met her years later. So in the beginning, you know, it wasn't time to open another bar, but we wanted to do more. And a guy in Philadelphia approached us and really approached Dave and said, I want to open like a Death & Co. And he said, well, you know, no, but I have a consulting company, which he definitely didn't have a consulting. Maybe he had inked the like, you know.
[00:25:18] Mike Schneider: So many consulting companies start that way. Yeah, exactly.
[00:25:21] Alex Day: Like LegalZoom.com and suddenly I have a consulting company. I think it was a slightly more extravagant than that, but he's like, yeah, we do this thing. We will help you design and open a bar. And that eventually was the Franklin Mortgage and Investment Company, which was our first test of doing something for other people. which is a completely different workflow. You know, when you are the boss, when you are the leader, when you are the visionary of an idea, you don't have to compromise unless you force yourself to, for a number of reasons, be it monetarily or operationally or just because you're being a lunatic and you think you're jumping farther than you ought to. But for services-based work, we are there to provide a lot of things and sometimes that is help them with their vision to hone it or simply to provide good operational planning, you know, set up the bar correctly, pick the right ice machine, choose the right liquor, here's the cocktail menu, let's train your staff, those kind of things. So, there's a kind of myriad of things that we can do and that first one was the first time we had done or really the first time we had done a soup to nuts. I had done a little bit of consulting before that on my own. And we kind of stitched it all together in this big package and we saw a really cool return from it. Not necessarily financially, but it was hugely rewarding because we got to take this thing that we loved and try to express it in a different vessel.
[00:26:47] Mike Schneider: What did you learn from that experience that you brought to your own growth strategy?
[00:26:52] Alex Day: So I think those early years of consulting, the thing I took away most was the importance of planning. the liquid in the glass, that beautiful little cocktail, that is the thing that gets all the attention, right? That's what press loves. That's what the books love. That's what everyone is like into that, right? But all the work that goes on before that. And I think prior to really diving in systematically to consulting and our services side of the business, At times, I would kind of put stuff together much like we would at a bar, which is very organic. It's like, OK, I need to create a menu, so I'm just going to create the menu. And now the menu's done. Here are the recipes. Here's the ingredients that we need from it. Or let's do a training. OK, let's get around and let's talk about this menu and just be loose about it. as you study like how people learn and how systems are most effective, you learn that that there's a way in which to do it that has more impact than just being that slapdash. And so I think that putting together the Franklin, doing a lot of the other early consulting work allowed us to try systems to create systems that are now with us to this day that are like almost unrecognizable from the way we put them together then, but I can feel little pieces of them, because they were the starting point that has now moved on to this very robust and tight protocol that is almost logical in nature, where, for example, a menu. We have a structure that we call wireframing. Like, if you've ever been involved in creating a website, you know... Of course, we might have some of those.
[00:28:20] John Craven: We have a couple of websites. Yeah, you have a couple of websites.
[00:28:22] Alex Day: You know about websites, right? We might make them. Might make them, great. So, you know, right? Wireframing. You understand the concept, but for those who don't, you know that you're going to have a landing page, an about us page, and maybe if it's a restaurant, a menu page. But you know that architecture, but you haven't defined what the content is within it. We approach a menu from the same way, where I have defined, let's say for a consulting client, that they want a drink menu that's 12 cocktails long. I believe very strongly that a menu is a narrative and that a menu should have a start and end point and that should make sense almost subconsciously from light to most dense or spiritist down at the bottom so that there's trajectory that is understandable.
[00:29:01] Mike Schneider: Yours definitely tells a story.
[00:29:03] Alex Day: It better tell a story. And so in a simple version like that 12 cocktail menu, we define like, okay, there's a spritz style cocktail and we're not even thinking ingredients. A daiquiri style cocktail, an old fashioned, a martini, yada, yada, yada. And then eventually we fill in the blanks. So that system has been really helpful for us because it removes a lot of bullshit. We're able to cut out the bartender who has a really good idea or me who I have a really good idea and I want to express it, but I haven't really thought how that fits in with the entire narrative of it. So we do a lot of work in our heads to not waste product that is expensive, but also, you know, people have worked really hard to make. So why pour down the drain with a dumb idea when you can think about it a little bit more critically? And yeah, that comes with the wisdom of knowing what spirits taste like and how they work and interact with cocktails. But we found that kind of systemization has been really helpful to free us up from being bogged down. But also, there's that Pablo Picasso quote that I really like, and I think a lot of people have co-opted it, which is, learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist. And I think that absolutely applies to our work. I fundamentally believe, just like any musician knows, you have to learn music theory and learn chords and learn how to actually play your instrument before you can express yourself creatively. incredibly true of our work. And so now we are using those systems after 10 years of doing them for other people and honing them for our own growth, which I am deeply proud of.
[00:30:35] John Craven: So, you know, now that you are expanding the Death & Co franchise with, you know, a location that's open in the Ramble Hotel in Denver that I think is about two years old and Death & Co Los Angeles is soon to open, you know, what was sort of the catalyst for expanding that franchise. And I guess on top of that, thinking about this as a guy who's not a restaurant or bar guy, like why not just open, I don't know, Death & Co Uptown or something to that effect? You know, why spread your wings that way?
[00:31:04] Alex Day: I think my partners and I, Dave, Devin, Ravi, and the team around us have always kind of viewed Death & Co as being a lot more than these four little walls. And while those walls in New York are really special, and they've created incredible experiences for a lot of people, that they really represent an idea, and they're the vessel for this idea. And that idea to me is a progressive look at what hospitality can be, what a bar experience can be, questioning what cocktails can be, and really pushing the envelope of the guest experience in as many ways as we can. So what does all that mean? Well, as we look towards our expansion, we feel that there is incredible value to take that idea beyond those walls and see if it can express itself elsewhere. And the ramble in Denver and Death and Code Denver was probably the most dramatic divergence that we could have taken from the East Village. It looks like the polar opposite. I've not been, but... It's insane. It's a giant lobby that is all ours. Like, you walk into the hotel and there's a desk for the hotel reception. Everything else you look at is ours. So you're in it right when you walk in the door. You're right in death and go. So that's a little terrifying because a hotel doesn't close. Right, so we are a nighttime brand, a cocktail brand, known to be a dark, intimate environment. So what do you do with that? You have to go to the drawing board and really understand what is important to you as a company, what's important to you from a guest experience. And for us, it's that personalization of the guest experience, where we are guiding them through something. Our offerings and our menus are not large because we're boastful about our cocktail creation. We strongly believe that we want to give people opportunity to explore new ideas through cocktails. So, if we're able to do that in an environment that is a lot bigger than what we've done in New York, or even elsewhere in some of the other bars we've opened, then we've learned something new about ourselves in the process. And I think that I'm most excited from a creative level to see how the Death & Co idea can be expressed, not just in cocktails, but in, say, coffee. which we are exploring in Denver. We have a coffee bar and I'm very passionate about coffee. I'm a big shocker. I'm a nerd about coffee. Yeah, exactly. So what is Death & Co.'s aesthetic when it comes to coffee? And we're exploring that right now. It doesn't veer away from the classic, the understandable. People gravitate towards really good coffee, but it's done to our style. And I think that that is really exciting to me. And how do you articulate that style? oh, it's an ongoing process, right? Much like articulating our style when it comes to food. We've always had food at Death & Co. New York, but it's been a footnote for the most part. And Denver allowed us an opportunity because we are serving food from 7 a.m. until around midnight. as well as having, you know, full kind of dinner service, it allowed us to have a bigger culinary team, which is to say, greater creative energy, looking at how food can be expressed through the Death & Co idea. And I think it hasn't been perfect. It's been a really interesting challenge along the way, starting from opening Death & Co Denver and having a straight up like dinner style menu. yeah, a lot of shared plates, but like straight up entrees, to evolving it to be more fitting with our brand and assimilated with it, where now our team is doing the coolest thing in New York. I'm so excited about it. So we have, our cocktail menu there is now separated into essentially categories that are based around sort of the ideas in cocktail codex, which are core template ideas that are expressed differently. So, you know, variation on a Daiquiri, an old fashioned martini, et cetera, et cetera. And the culinary team said, Well, what if we played off those same ideas, but in a very small bite form? Yeah, they have some, you know, kind of more traditional, larger things that you can snack on. But they're now playing with this idea of a two bites menu, where it's just two bites as it sounds like, but each one of the dishes represents those same sort of ideas, but expressed through food. So the barrier of entry is really low. And now our culinary team, who's incredibly talented, like our chef in New York, Catherine Kane, came from the populace in Denver and Los was our sous chef in Denver for a while before she moved out. Like her talent is insane. She is really, really, really good at what she does and that she works for us is like phenomenal to me. So we're able to now play with the ideas that we've been doing in beverage for so long in food. Will it have the same impact? Will it have the same amount of sales? Definitely not. We are a cocktail brand that is part of our DNA, but I think that those cocktails represent ideas that we can kind of explore in different ways.
[00:35:54] Mike Schneider: But you hire a coffee team, you go through your process, this innovative process that you have, you come up with a team and you say, okay, hey, here's the cocktail codec. Now just go do it for coffee, right? Oh yeah. Not so much.
[00:36:07] Alex Day: I mean, not all of these ideas are direct comparisons, right? Like a coffee is a different product, but process is similar. And as someone who hires a lot of bartenders, who has trained a lot of bartenders, I will say that some of the best that I've ever trained have been baristas, formerly, who took it very seriously. And if you've ever dived into all the nerdy writing around coffee, like the Scott Rao books, you'll see that it is on par with the geekiness in the cocktail world. And it happens to be that the coffee folks just drink a lot of caffeine, so they stay really productive, whereas us booze folks get really unproductive at some point in the day.
[00:36:52] John Craven: I think the coffee folks are worse. Like, I make the comparisons sometimes for coffee, but it would be like, to use a spirits analogy, if all we had were scotch, you know, and all we had to talk about different styles and flavors was that. Because that, from a consumer perspective, like your palate It's like trained for, I don't know, this is dark or it's light, you know, like all those nuanced things that us, you know, coffee nerds appreciate. Like, it's just like lost, you know?
[00:37:22] Alex Day: Yeah. It's the difference between the view of coffee as a cultural necessity and not a thing of enjoyment as much.
[00:37:31] John Craven: It's like a caffeine delivery mechanism. And how can I get it as cheap and quickly after I wake up?
[00:37:36] Alex Day: I mean, look at the proliferation of shitty coffee out there. Right. I'm not knocking anyone. If people, if that does it for you, fantastic. That's great. But I just firmly believe that life is too short for shitty coffee and shitty coffee cups.
[00:37:52] John Craven: So based on how you're describing New York and Denver, what do we expect in LA? Is it a little bit of each? Is it something, I don't know, totally different? How did you approach that?
[00:38:04] Mike Schneider: It's like Disneyland.
[00:38:05] Alex Day: It's like Disneyland. So it's 8,000 square feet. No, I'm just kidding. With a monorail. With a monorail. Oh, that'd be so cool. Next time. Next time. I feel like we should shutter the doors and stop what we're doing if we're not learning, evolving, and like, taking lessons from each one of our projects into the next one. So in that respect, Death & Co LA is heavily influenced by what we've done in New York and what we've learned in Denver. But it is environmentally much closer to what people would expect from the New York experience. It is... So darker. It's dark. Actually, not a window to be found. Oh. It's in a basement.
[00:38:43] Death & Co: In a basement? Yeah.
[00:38:45] Alex Day: Moving up in the world. Can't even have windows in there. Not even an option. It is a... slightly bigger bar than in New York. We'll have between 75 and 80 seats, depending on the kind of final count of things. But it will be understandable as a death and co-experience. The altar that is the bar in New York, that is the kind of driving force of the creative experience and the hospitality experience at that, is reflected in the space planning in Los Angeles. But LA is a different market. It is not like New York where there are five bars within a stone's throw of our front door, of our threshold. So LA, there are some bars around us, but we have to be mindful that people are often coming to us from far away. And so while we maintain the guest experience that we demand, which is generally mostly seated, You know, a little bit of standing room will probably exist in L.A. because we have a little bit more room. New York, we can't because we don't have any room for them. We want to be able to make sure we capture people, so we actually have a secondary bar that people will first experience when they come into the space that is kind of Death & Co with its hair down. It's looser, it's a little less formal, it is a transitionary point from Los Angeles into our world. And the guest experience is really, it does change, it does progress, it does evolve from the threshold of the front door, from the street in LA, spiraling down into the building through this first bar, this first experience, which we want people to to have as their kind of like stop by, don't even think about it sort of spot, and then into the deeper, more immersive experience. So it's both, you know, intellectual, the experience into the bar, but it is also quite literal. A progression. It is definitely a progression, yeah.
[00:40:39] Chris Kirby: We'll be back with more from Alex Day after this short break. They say it takes doing something 10,000 times to be good at it. With over 60,000 beverage formulations, Flavor Man is better than good at beverage development. Let us guide you through the process of getting your drink brand created. Flavor Man, change what the world is drinking.
[00:41:03] John Craven: So with the third, you know, location on the way and these all kind of being their own, you know, establishments having their own sort of vibe and whatnot, you know, what do you see as kind of like the grand vision for this? I know like you've mentioned other cities. I remember Boston being one is a selfish, you know, thing that I remember, but you know, what, what do you think like the scalability of this is, you know, do you have 20 locations? Are you going to go, I don't know, international, like what can this really be?
[00:41:31] Alex Day: I mean, without letting too much of our kind of strategy out, because it's, it's not 100% solidified, you know, we have thoughts and opinions about where we want to be from an actual physical location perspective, as well as just from a company perspective. And I think, you know, our goals as we look towards our 10 year or five year or three year is, you know, to be not just a respected cocktail bar company, but to be one of the better companies to work for in general. And to us, to be able to provide that, to create that, is to grow to a certain level. And we see our growth in, yes, the expansion of Death & Co's, to a degree. The brand is very important to us, and maintaining the brand's integrity is going to be a challenge, but also probably our greatest chance to make it special at each place. So I talked a little bit about the idea of Death & Co. not being four walls, and I think that that is really important as we look towards our growth is looking at any new place that we're going as being an opportunity to express Death & Co, even if it looks maybe similar, but that it speaks to its community, it speaks to where it's at, it understands itself in that place before we even say, yes, this is what we want to do. So that's really important to us. And we spend a lot of time thinking about that. And we've got two cities right now that we're actively looking at discussing really vetting. And right before you got here, I actually was sketching out a floor plan for one to see if a space makes sense for us. Does it have the seat counts? Is it in the right neighborhood? Does it feel right? What is this gonna let us do? How is this gonna be a new Death & Co experience? So that ultimately for fans of the brand, which is a ludicrous thing to say, but it does exist where there are people who want to experience all of it. And we want to, for those people who land in a new city, And they're like, oh, there's a Death & Co. here. They want to go experience it because it's not a carbon copy of New York or Denver or L.A. or wherever we are. That there is a reason to go there. That the menu is unique. The space is unique. The identity is maybe has something to draw them in. So that I think is really important to us. But we also see an incredible opportunities within the consulting side of our company. And we stopped kind of calling it consulting because it's more services because we do more than just like write a menu for people. We work with big hotel groups. We now are doing management deals. For example, our first one in Florida is called Sparrow, which is a rooftop bar. I saw that. It looked beautiful. It's really cool. And it's a unique brand. It's a unique identity that, yes, is anchored in cocktails, but it is expressing itself and it's totally different language, right? And to us, that's really fun and exciting and we're exploring other opportunities in that way so that we can take all these things and aggregate them, be it management deals and creating unique concepts in collaboration with other people in different cities that maybe aren't really on our radar for Death & Co., of growing Death & Co. to a degree that we are comfortable with the brand integrity. and working with people on a services level and then continuing our content creation through books and other means of media where we find that we can really then stitch together this company that is in five or ten years not just a cocktail brand but something that is bigger that is a really really good place to work.
[00:44:59] John Craven: But I guess with all of that, you're still tied to cocktails as a core component, right? Yeah, it's our niche. So you've been at this and Death & Co has, you know, I guess been at this for, geez, almost 15 years, right? 12, yeah, almost 13. Almost 13. And, you know, it seems like a lot has changed in that time, just in terms of, you know, I suppose, flavor and taste trends, you know, I guess I would say it seems like, you know, you can kind of go to any mediocre restaurant nowadays and they probably have, you know, a cocktail program in air quotes, you know, they might even have a O'Hawken old fashioned or a drink that's a Death & Co original, and it's probably not as good. But, you know, I guess, where do you sort of think we're at in this kind of cocktail movement? I mean, like, what happens next? You know, it's gone from obscurity, I think, when you started. You know, you had to go out of your way to find classic drinks to now ubiquitous. So, you know, where are we at?
[00:46:01] Alex Day: Have you guys read Kevin Alexander's new book called Burn the Ice? Nope. It's incredibly well written. I'm about halfway into it right now. great food writer and food cocktail, everything culinary writer. And he put together this book that is a reflection on the last, I would say, decade and a half of the explosion of what you could call craft, I guess. you know, within restaurants, within food, within cocktails, within, I'm not sure if he goes much into wine, but there's a lot of food and kind of cocktail conversations. And we're featured pretty heavily in it in a pretty flattering light, which is cool and all that. But also I really am intrigued by the message that is in it, which is, This thing exploded, this thing happened that we all were a part of and probably didn't realize and it may be over. This wonderful growth of the like the culinarian, the top chef like explosion in mass consumer interest in cooking. Even if people don't cook, they like watch these shows and buy these books. And so this whole thing happened and it's really exciting. And a lot of us built our careers within it at some point in it, right? You know, it begs the question of, is there a bubble? And people have been talking about it for a really long time. Like, even when I first started, they're like, oh, this cocktail thing's a trend. It's gonna, like, go away. And, you know, my kind of, like, response to that has always been, well, that's bullshit. Like, once you have something delicious, are you going to go back? It's going to take something like prohibition to make it literally impossible for us to drink good things or eat good food, right? To change our desire to have this thing we've had before, unless there's some catastrophic thing that happens, right? So I think once you have something delicious, you know about it. You've experienced it. It was funny. I was at a bar in Portland, Maine here with my husband like two nights ago. First time we got to actually go out and enjoy our new city. We're sitting there and Portland gets a little rambunctious on the weekends. Like people come here during the summer. It's like a place to come. And so there's this like 22 year old. group that were like, you know, one of them definitely like his older brother or parents like likes cocktails. And so he knew something. So he like ordered something that he had heard of before. And his friend's like, I guess I'll have that too. How much does it cost? You know, it's like not understand, like, why would I pay that much money? And then he just kind of like, and I didn't even observe this. My husband, Andrew, watched this whole thing happen where the kid like, saw the thing, he's like, oh, that's a really pretty glass. That's, wow. He did that with care, watched the bartender doing it. And he's like, his confusion is starting to melt away. And then he like, how much was it? And he's like, oh, okay, I guess that's not that bad. And then he took a sip of it and he's like, oh, wow. It's amazing and I just like watch my husband take all this in and it's a very typical trajectory I think that is happening, continues to happen for people of discovery, of learning that there's more to drinking than just intoxication, which I think will always be the fuel for our product. So while our company is very niche within the cocktail sphere, I think that We don't have to chase innovation always, but we can always be at the forefront of how good that experience can possibly be. Not just from a quality of ingredients, execution and technique, but on through to guest experience and the hospitality side of it, of really like pushing the envelope of how great it can be to be in a bar.
[00:49:31] John Craven: So I guess are you saying at a certain point, it's, there's no longer a need to sort of innovate on the, you know, liquid end of things. I mean, I guess it seems like some of the, you know, like cocktail codex, your, your most recent book, you know, while it breaks it down, there's definitely some like technically nerdy stuff in there that, you know, I don't know. I consider myself a beverage nerd. I don't know if I would attempt some of that stuff at home.
[00:49:57] Mike Schneider: You're a cocktail nerd, dude.
[00:50:00] John Craven: I guess, are you implying like we'll just get to a point where there's kind of like the staple of drinks and it shifts to more hospitality? No, I don't think so.
[00:50:09] Alex Day: I think there will always be a need for creativity. Maybe there will be lulls and ups and downs, but I think that It's unrealistic to expect the same explosion that we've seen in the last 10 years, because again, there were no real rules. And the opportunities out there to bring in technique and ingredients from other spheres of culinary or science for that matter, bringing rotovaps into the equation, thanks Dave Arnold and centrifuges for that matter, of exploring exotic ingredients that have been isolated in the Alps a hundred years and suddenly we get them in America, there's going to be diminishing returns on that kind of that momentum. And that's fine. But there is always going to be people expressing their creativity in this space in many different directions. And what I'm really stoked about is that there is no longer one direction to go or even a couple of directions. I would say, you know, 10 years ago, it was your more classically oriented, the kind of Sasha Petrosky, milk and honey style of, uh, bars, which I was lucky enough to work at at the same time I was working at Death & Co or the Taylor, Eben Freeman kind of more avant-garde perspective, which I also worked at at the same time. And then the somewhere in between, which I've always used as Death & Co. And why I took like really gravitated to those and like, okay, that's a really cool technique, but does it taste delicious? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. So is it for the sake of the technique, or is it for the sake of the end result liquid? Or is that classic, just simple, is a two-to-one Manhattan the most beautiful thing in the world? All the side-by-sides I've done with a certain rye and a certain sweet vermouth, it is delicious. I can't really make that taste much better. You know, that is good. So I do think innovation will continue. I think people will have the need to continue to evolve and I think that's a natural thing because we have, you know, if you do the pure math on a back bar, there are, you know, any well stock bar is, you know, a few hundred bottles maybe of booze. Do the math on the combinations of things that you can put together in a glass and it's phenomenal. Maybe not all of them are delicious, but there are lots of opportunities. I try not to pour too much stuff down the drain. Sometimes it happens. Hey, you know, sometimes the person who made that isn't living anymore, so I think it's best to just ingest it and pay respects.
[00:52:30] John Craven: Pay respects, I like that. I mean, are there particular, like right now, I don't know, flavors or maybe spirits that are kind of on the cusp of becoming like the next thing, you know, how do you kind of like analyze that end of things?
[00:52:46] Alex Day: I don't really get caught up in the trend side of the industry, mostly out of fatigue more than anything. There are so many products coming to the market, and I guess there are probably a couple different camps of things. There are those that are new because they just haven't reached us yet. So all the Amari that has come into America in the last decade, right? Like that's really exciting because it's just new, extremely focused flavors that are unique in and of themselves. And that exists within Mezcal, that exists within all over the place. Eau de Vies from Europe, whiskeys that we didn't even know were being made in Japan. We just heard about the kind of more Scotch style ones and now we're having ones that are kind of like bourbon. Like where the fuck did that come from? It's amazing. I hope it's okay that I cuss. So those are really exciting. And then the other camp is the growth in the craft distilling movement, which is exciting to see more producers and makers out there, but it's not always delicious. And sometimes that's because, you know, they have a very young whiskey or a distillery needs to make some money because You know, they put a bunch of whiskey in barrels and they can't make money off of it for five or ten years so they need to make a vodka and a gin that maybe they're not quite as passionate about. And that's okay, right? But it's really a lot of noise to sift through all these products that are out there. So just, you know, on a product level, I... tend to approach it with a little bit more skepticism than I otherwise would. And maybe that's me getting older and just really wanting to drink Pear Brandy and Calvados all the time. But, you know, that is Anne Negroni's for that matter. But then on kind of a flavor side of things, I think, and I tried to articulate this in Cocktail Codex in the martini chapter, but why I love the martini over the Manhattan, which is definitely its historical precursor. That's not the point of Codex is to like start with the origin, historically move from there. But what I love about the martini is that the subtlety and nuance in it is, I think, representative of what's happening as our culture gets more advanced with its palate. You know, when we learn more about spirits and we learn more about cocktails and people become savvier drinkers, their distinction between small little differences is more understandable. And they're able to even more powerfully articulate those differences and what they are. So the martini being that drink that has always been... everyone's personal preference. No one just says, I want a martini. They want a martini with olives, with no vermouth, or stare in the direction of France and shake in and up. And in this particular class, they have a million things that they want to qualify with. And that annoys the hell out of some of my bartender friends, but I love it because it means that this format is malleable to people's preferences. So the nuance, the subtlety, the differences in the small little details, I think is, the most sophisticated direction that we're going with cocktails right now. It may not be the everyday, like, big press-worthy, like, new ingredient of the month sort of thing, but it is, I think, a more interesting conversation that we're having now.
[00:55:51] John Craven: But I think that means we're more evolved than we were 13 years ago, right? Yeah, definitely. If we're at that level where consumers are you know, wanting to experience all these things, right?
[00:56:02] Alex Day: Yeah, they are. I mean, look at the success of our latest book is, I think, a representation of that, or rather a reflection of the people that are buying it and responding to it. You know, there's a lot of commentary within about, so you think you like this, how about thinking about it from a different way and try these four ways to make this thing? finding your path, whatever it is. None of this is dogma, right? So, and that I think is another reason why cocktails are so exciting is because like, screw the rules. Like they are baseline things that we all agree on as far as harmonies for balance of ingredients mixing together to create something that we like, right? But aside from that, like we can do whatever we want with them, which is really cool. And also incredibly terrifying for people who don't know a lot about cocktails because it's mystical.
[00:56:51] John Craven: Definitely more intimidating than wine sometimes I would say even.
[00:56:55] Alex Day: Which is funny, because like I find wine to be terrifying. Like I love wine, I try to study it, but if I learn a producer, the next year it's going to be different. So it's like, at least with booze, I know Beefeater Gin is going to be identical year over year.
[00:57:10] John Craven: Well, I think, you know, from what I see, you know, you go to certain places that have these really like, you know, I look at what's in the drink and it's like, maybe I know what the base spirit is, but like nothing else on there makes any sense. And like the context of, you know, a drink, I think of one that I had in London last year, it had a seaweed from Scotland and it was smoked, literally smoked with hay and this and that. you know, I guess my fear is kind of like, well, you know, if I'm sitting at a bar and you make this for me, you know, if I open your wine and I don't like it and dump it, you know, I don't have to sit there and drink it in front of you, you know? So it's, you know, it's an, it's an interesting thing in the sense that the chef is right there making it for you. And, you know, it's not like they're saying, do you like beef or chicken? It's way more complicated than that sometimes. So.
[00:58:00] Alex Day: And there's a lot of ego involved too. Right? So like you just talked about two different things there. One, the like personal interaction with the bartender and like a fear that your rejection of the idea is a personal slight, which it for some people definitely can be, right? Because you put a lot of your own identity into these cocktails as a creator. that you also talked about in your example at that bar in London, the menu, the actual physical menu and how it was represented. Like how we express our ideas to our clients, our customers, as bartenders, as operators, I think is just as valuable as the actual content that we're giving them. So if I list ingredients that make you feel stupid or make like 50% of people feel stupid, I'm being inhospitable, right? Or how do I have the menu set up to help them navigate? I talked a little bit earlier about the trajectory of a menu from lightest to densest. That is our hospitable move so that I can help people navigate that menu. What are you in the mood for? And I really think that's important. A cocktail can be set next to each other, but if you present it in a different way, one that's more driven by your ego or the desire to show off that you use these techniques or tools or special ingredients versus what your guest really wants to know, what is this going to taste like? Am I going to like this? Or is this exciting, intriguing, and exotic an experience in and of itself, which can be entirely legitimate too.
[00:59:30] Mike Schneider: Alex, if you were in tech, you'd be a UX guy and a good one too. Yeah, for sure. You're thinking about everything in hierarchies and you're thinking about the user experience and the design and how to communicate. You'd definitely be a good UX guy.
[00:59:43] John Craven: You talked about how social media was kind of an important part of like engaging the consumer. You know, the cocktail and spirits and just sort of greater beverage community has a lot of, you know, sort of influencer personalities in it. You know, some of them with pretty creative names, you know, and I think certainly awesome photography. How much do you like work with influencers and kind of where does that fit in the mix for you guys?
[01:00:10] Alex Day: Yeah, that's always been a difficult area to navigate. I've talked a little bit about the differences between the partners in our company and the different personalities and perspectives we bring. And I think I've always been very skeptical of the actual impact that, say, an influencer could have. There's often quite a bit of demands, like there's levels of... you know, giving away free things and, you know, trying to get that one post and what does it take to get there. And I think that we've essentially gone a route where if somebody has influence but also understands us and has, is engaged themselves in what we're doing, then that's a meaningful relationship to look at. I'd say one of my favorites is a guy named Elliot who's the apartment bartender. Yeah. So Elliot was a big fan and he was moving to Denver and Los just kind of chased after us. He's like, I want to do stuff together. And we're like, cool, man. Like, and Dave met him and he's like, he's really cool. I'm like, whatever. He has a lot of Instagram handlers. I don't care. And then I met him. I'm like, oh, you're awesome. You're a good dude. You're actually really passionate. You're really focused and you're really savvy. You know what you're doing. You're like, this is your career and you put a lot of effort into it. And I respect that. And we've worked with him since on some photography. But that to me represented more of a partnership as opposed to like essentially a glorified ad buy, which is what some influencer relationships can be. And that never really feels good to me, is that kind of relationship where I just, because of what we gave an individual, that we suddenly get something back from them. It's very transactional as opposed to relationship-based. And I think that you can see that through the other things that we do, be it writing books with our co-author, Nick, who is very much a partner and a very good friend of ours. There's a relationship there. Our graphics and illustration team is a husband and wife duo from now live in Jackson Hole right down the street from Dave who are, you know, wonderful people. Our publicist is within the family. Our design company is within the family. Like, we have these relationships are really important to us. And as we grow and these type of things present themselves like influencers, we're like, well, we need to have a relationship before we can really trust somebody to even represent our brand.
[01:02:32] John Craven: I guess, do you feel like that's maybe just a part of how business works now that, you know, for especially hospitality driven places, like, do you feel a lot of pressure to, I don't know, buy those posts? Like, is that the add buy of 2019? Gosh, I don't, I don't know.
[01:02:51] Alex Day: I see the value in it. I think we're very fortunate that we have such a strong, say, Instagram handle, the Death and Company. But we also work with a really good social media agency who helps us guide that. And we rely on them pretty heavily to look at opportunities and see their value. So I do think it is important. To answer your question more pointedly, I think it's important and it's not useful to ignore it, you know? I think maybe that's the better approach to it is like to think that you're above it because it's kind of silly in theory, right? Like famous for being famous, like I don't, which is of course a small percentage of people. There's a lot of people doing incredible content and creating really interesting things out there, but it can be easy to dismiss. And I think if you dismiss it, you're losing an opportunity in this day and age to represent your business through somebody else's eyes. And if you have a really good business, you have a strong identity, you're doing something well, hopefully people are going to react well to that. And if they have influence then and can spread that, then you're all the better. And I think that's probably why we develop relationships with people, because I don't want just the one post. I want them wherever they're traveling and talking to other people saying, Death & Co, those people are awesome. Their team is rad. I had this incredible experience. So it goes a level deeper than that, which is that kind of general, it's kind of that general connection that we strive for in everything we do.
[01:04:16] John Craven: All right. Well, thank you very much, Alex, for spending some time with us and for taking part in the Taste Radio interview. It was great to meet you. Likewise. Thanks for coming up to Portland.
[01:04:24] Alex Day: Thanks, Alex. Thank you.
[01:04:29] Ithaca Hummus: That brings us to the end of episode 183. Thank you for listening, and thanks for our guest, Alex Day. You can catch both Taste Radio and Taste Radio Insider on Taste Radio.com, the Apple Podcasts app, Stitcher, Google Play, SoundCloud, or Spotify. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at Taste Radio.com. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
