Restaurant Owners Uncorked

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

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

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

Hunter opened Session Bar in Tuscaloosa, AL five months ago and his place is CRUSHING it. Hunter is thirty years old, and this is the first place he has owned, but he's been in the business since he was a teenager. Hunter has very good business acumen, high energy, and humility. A great combination! Enjoy...