We sit down with Party Fowl owner Austin Smith and talk Nashville, food, and politics! We also ask what the "Secret Sauce" is to running a successful restaurant in a thriving city.
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Our Guest - Austin Smith | @partfowlnash
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00:12 Hello everybody. I'm Stuart Deming of XPLR.Nash. I'm coasting the Nashville daily podcast with Mr. Erin Pennington, and we have a special guest, the owner of Party Fowl Austin Smith. How you said, how are you doing today? Good brother. How are you? Good, Erin. Oh, yourself? It's a good day. You know why it's a Friday, Friday in Nashville. That's why. So that means you guys need to take off of work. Don't work. Please. we don't want you in downtown some food today. Yeah. especially party foul party foul is in three different locations throughout the city of Nashville down in Murphysboro downtown and in Donaldson, Austin. Tell us how you got into the restaurant industry.
00:55 Well the first time I walked into a restaurant interview to be a server, the manager there told me, you're too cute and you're too pretty to do this once you start serving tables or never get out of this alive. And I laughed at her and went about my business going to college and whatnot. And when, you know, after 12 years of serving off and on bartending bus and tables washing dishes, here I am back in the restaurant industry for the rest of my life. I mean she nailed it. Day one. It was actually I served my first two jobs were Santa Fe cattle co. I was a server over here off of music Valley drive. And I also was at the cooker in green Hills. Those were my first two serving jobs that I ever had.
01:30 So what age were you at that time with those services?
01:33 So 18 because you had to serve alcohol now before serving, I actually hosted at 15 years old at on the border in Antioch. Oh nice. I had to wear a sweet rainbow sequin vest and I nailed it. I had floppy hair, like dander, beak, you know, a on what's that show? Duty. What is it? Dawson's Creek dude, I had the Dawson's Creek here. I've ever seen Dawson's Creek in my entire life. You had don't admit that. You do.
01:59 I've got to go back and find a clip of that now. Yeah. So you've been serving since the age of 18 and then now you own three locations here in Nashville. Correct. That's amazing. We're won't get into that more later. All of a sudden. What's your take on traffic here in the city of Nashville?
02:17 I think everything can be fixed with one simple training instruction, which is learn to merge. Jeff, I completely agree on and off ramps are just that you are not supposed to come to a complete stop. You're supposed to build momentum, right? I mean it just, it just bugs me. It drives me crazy. It does seem like everybody who's merging
02:39 Is doing it for the very first time. Yeah. And then they're really hesitant. So this is a Friday afternoon or Friday morning. Please guys, just stay off the roads for our, our deployments. So some upcoming events tonight we have widespread panic. They're doing a three day show at the Ryman auditorium starting at 8:00 PM. So they're doing it tonight, tomorrow night and Sunday to learn more. Ryman.Com Judah and the lion is performing at ascend amphitheater at 8:00 PM on Saturday. And you may be going to this one, Austin, the Titans preseason game versus the Pittsburgh Steelers starting at 7:00 PM on Sunday. You go into that game.
03:15 I am a season ticket holder. I will be in attendance. But you also left out a very important event that's coming up in the next few days. Monday night is Backstreet boys. I'm in a sweet [inaudible] streets back. Just cause I have a dip in and drink cold beer. Doesn't mean I don't like some Backstreet boys that's going to be at Bridgestone arena. Know it's time for that Austin. I do not. [inaudible] PM seven 38 o'clock. Yeah. Bachelorette parties galore. That one. But yeah, I'll be there. Oh, nice. All right. So some
03:47 Big commentary happening here. Big machines. The record label who opened vodka distillery restaurant near Barry Hill. Aaron, what do we have on that?
03:55 Well, it was kind of only a matter of time for them. You sold their billboards everywhere for the past year. And who's on the news? On a big machine? I can't remember who is on big machine. Let me look that up. There's, there's a lot of people who are on big machine.
04:07 It starts with Zac Brown band, right? I mean it's right out of the gate. Yeah.
04:11 Opening in Berry Hill. I understand for the restaurant. I'm actually surprised the distillery. I, I'm surprised there was enough real estate over there for them to open up a distillery unless it's just maybe small batch stuff that they're doing. I'm not, I'm very surprised they didn't open up near Pennington distilling. And
04:30 [Inaudible] Philips, Justin Moore, Brett young Sugarland heard of them. Lady antebellum. Yeah. You have, so you have some Sheryl Crow, the Cadillac three. Yeah. So you have a lot. Thomas Rhett, you have a lot of artists on big machine. So where exactly in Berry Hill is this distillery going?
04:51 Let's see, it says big machine. This is in a Tennessee and is partnering with the neighboring cafe, Mo Nell's. Oh. To serve a full lunch and dinner menu. They will also be serving coffee and a light breakfast in the morning. Which will be good because music row, the, the new music row over in Berry Hill, there's going to be a lot of people there no matter the time of day. So it's good that they're kind of catering to that community instead of just tourist times. So I'm glad to see that, but I'm still very shocked at the distilleries out there and not out in the nations where all the other distilleries are coming.
05:23 Awesome. Do you ever find yourself in Berry Hill?
05:25 I do actually. And for those who call that the new music grow, that's just because they're new to Nashville. Let me tell you, the County queue over there has been there for like 30, 40 years. My dad has recorded so many albums over there. I wrote very Hill's been hopping for a long time. Everyone's just catching up. I love that area, man. I'm telling you, I think this is cool for the Berry Hill. I think third,
05:44 No, it seems like a new restaurant is opening in that area every month now. It's pretty interesting to see.
05:49 I'll sell, I'll say still, my favorite over there is probably here babies. They're probably still one of the best. My nails is great. Then also
05:58 The funky griddle that places, yes, great restaurants. What else is happening in business news, Erin? Okay. So this is coming from news channel five and, and we'd heard about something like this before and this is Brad Paisley's free grocery store. And today the news is they've just been awarded a 1.5 million state grant for them and I know that's probably relieved some financial pressure for that business. And this is a grocery store that they are offering free groceries for whatever their, their status is for people who might need some income assistance or a just groceries to survive. And this is going over in the Belmont area. So, so this is going to be kind of a step forward and getting that established built build out. I don't know exactly how they're supposed to be using the money with this grant, but I know that's a step forward.
06:51 And they also want to have a pharmacy education. They want to have health screenings, a mental clinic, a mental health counseling and music therapy. Also they broke ground in April and it set to earn or open early 2020 so you can learn more about that news channel five. Yeah. Awesome. So what we do Austin, with a lot of our podcasts, we have an explore tip of the day where and when we have a guest on, we'll ask them, how do you best enjoy Nashville? Like a on a day off or if you had advice to offer people on how to best explore this city, what would you, did you tell
07:31 Them man, just start with the food and I'm a little biased. I'm not gonna go easy on you and say go down to party foul. Cause I go to parties though. No, I mean look, I mean you got great barbecue around, I mean peg leg porker is one of my neighbors. Just love him to death and [inaudible] collaborations at all. We, we have not done a collaboration yet, which breaks my heart now and when you bring it up and we haven't done it, I mean that's just a no brainer, right? Yeah. Carrie, I'm calling you. You keep on falling on the chicken. I think [inaudible] hot chicken, you know, the barbecue, get work together. Maybe even throw the hot seasoning into the barbecue sauce on wow. Real hot barbecue sandwich. I mean, come on now. I do have a dry rub that we incorporate our Nashville hot end too, so we could do some ribs.
08:17 I've actually done those in the kitchen, but we haven't shared that with everybody yet. Yeah. So I, you know, I'd go get me some barbecue over at peg leg. I'd maybe go throw some axes at Nashville sporting club. And then let yourself just get lost on Broadway. There's a lot of fun to be had. Do not skip karaoke, ms Kelly's. If you do that, it's a mistake you gotta carry on. Keep miss Kelly's and ask momma for the jello shots. You sing. Some Backstreet boys. When you're here, you're looking at ms Kelly's. I've been known to strike up a tune. Yeah. we've done that. I have a couple of go tos and I used to be Evelyn McCain. I'll be, that's when I was single and in college and thought that worked. It doesn't skip the of McCain. I'll be, although I do love the album bro.
08:57 Nice. Very cool. All right, so this episode of the Nashville daily is brought to you by screened threads. Screened threads is a Nashville curious shop located in the historic marathon village use called Nashville daily to get 10% off your next online order. Their website is screened, the threads.com also if you go in person, mention this ad and get 10% off in person as well. So screen threads specializes in candles and Nashville goods. Definitely send them your way to you Austin, so you can learn more about screen threads. I spring threads.com. So Austin, this is a restaurant city that is thriving right now. Chefs from around the world are moving here to Nashville and they're opening restaurants and then in six months they're closing. That's, that's happening to a lot of places here in town. What's separating party foul from other restaurants in the city?
09:47 Well, you know, we have locations in the couple, Oh, we have, we have restaurants in a couple different locations around town and each one has its own breath, a its own personality. You know, downtown Nashville, a lot of people say we're a tourist restaurant, right? We're Nashville hot chicken. We're in the middle of downtown isle in the Gulch. And so that one right there, you know, we get a lot of tourism. People come here and they hot chicken is no longer like just something you eat. It's something you do. People say, well we're national. We're going to do hot chicken. Yeah. So Nashville was easier. Now Donaldson, you've got to stay fresh. You've got to stay fun. You've got to keep things that are relative to what people want to do. If they're actually going to get out and go do something, they're going to put their kids in the car and go make a trip.
10:22 Is it, is it kid friendly? Don't just go toward the adults. Go for the families. Make it somewhere you can watch a ballgame. Make it somewhere where you can go have a business lunch or a birthday party or anything. You have to accommodate everyone. And a lot of places that I've seen, and I've had friends who have had restaurants come and go they are going for a very small demographic and in a city this big with so many options, you have to be more broad with what you offer. And we've been very blessed so far.
10:50 So with Murfreesboro, that's a way different demographic than both Donald's in, in downtown, right? How are you making that location
10:58 Work? So, you know, happy hours are big, but you know, you have a lot of people who live in Murfreesboro drive to Nashville, so you've got to have a little bit of a later happy hour. You got to make sure that you have all your ballgames, have your NFL Sunday ticket, have things like that. We do kids eat free on the weekday so people can bring their family in. I mean we do a lot of fun stuff like that. We also were very philanthropic at party foul. We get involved with youth leagues and we get involved with all kinds of different charities and organizations in each of the areas that we're in. We try to keep every restaurant a part of the, the community that it sits itself in each time. And that's another big key. You have to be very, very involved and let people know you care about where you're at and they'll care about you being there.
11:42 So how did, when did party fell kind of pop into your head that this is a concept that you want to see through and is it like thought it would be now that you have three locations?
11:56 It is so much more than what I thought it was going to be. You know, at first, you know, it was me and my business partner, Nick Jacobson, who owns three 60 a wine bar, bistro and Bellmead, you know, it was, he and I on the softball field with our team names, a party foul and a, we were just joking. This would make it a great chicken joint. I love hot chicken. And I was like, man, what if he had hot chicken on nachos? We've had hot chicken on this and that. And I started to come up with his ideas and I was like, we need to do this. And so originally we were just gonna take hot chicken to the next level and put it on a bunch of dishes that are not just your everyday hot chicken dish and have more offerings. And then I met my chef and then menu just exploded. It went bigger than I ever thought. My ideas, I couldn't even keep up with him half the time. Our bar program grew. I mean this was originally gonna be a 3000 square foot restaurant and now the one we're sitting in today is 13,000 square feet.
12:45 Wow. This space is huge compared to other restaurants in town.
12:49 It's been, it's been, like I said earlier, we're blessed and we don't think we count our blessings. May my knees are sore from prayer.
12:57 Well it's, it's been awesome and seeing party foul and everything. It just from the time that that I've, I've been in Nashville so congratulations on such a great restaurant. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So you're a Nashville native. Correct.
13:11 So this is tricky. I am an opera land baby. My mom moved here at 17 to sing an opera on USA and she had me, she got pregnant with me in Nashville, but she drove back and had me in Memphis with my mom pep also. So I'm born in Memphis, but I've been in Nashville almost my entire life. They brought me home to the it used to be, I guess it's the arbors at Hermitage apartments. Okay. So not very far from where we are now. And I think my, my house is maybe three quarters of a mile from the apartment that I was brought home to as a baby. That's all. Let's look up. I mean I'm, I'm really Donaldson Hermitage, Nashville. This is my home. Both my parents are music industry. I'm, I'm a lifer.
13:47 It's like a Pawnee Eagleton thing right there from parks and rec. So being here for so long, there are significant changes that you are in seeing, like enjoying that you're seeing and then there's significant changes that should not be happening here in the city.
14:01 You know, I love the diversity of what we are now. I mean, when I was growing up, this was music city, country music USA, that was all we were. And we are damn good at that. But now we are so much more, I mean, we're a sports town now. I mean, who would have ever thought country music, country music USA would pull off hockey? Who thought that was a possibility? Right? Who thought we'd get an NFL team? You know, who thought that we'd be talking about major league baseball? Who thought we'd start getting these, you know, two and three star Michelin chefs coming in Nashville and building restaurants here and, and broadening our, our, our food scene. It's really exciting to be here right now because you know what, I love sports and food, so it is countering straight to my heart. The one thing I'd say is that, you know, we just have to be careful about how quickly we grow.
14:47 I think, you know, we've done a really good job at pacing this far. You don't want to outgrow what you got. And so as long as we stay on pace, just keep everything moving a little slower. I think it's going to be a really nice growth and progression for Nashville. But if we get too quick, man, you've seen it in other places. I mean, I go to Atlanta. I love Atlanta. You know, I've actually been looking at places for a party, found Atlanta boy, they grew fast, they grew big and it's tough to get around over there and I don't, I don't want to get too, too far away from our roots. Slow and steady wins the race. What's one thing that you think Nashville doesn't have? That they need? Opryland theme park. Bring it back. That's what we don't have. We have everything. This is the number one tourist destination in the country. We don't have a dang theme park. What is going on now? We've heard rumors about everything off Pennington over here and, and things like Dolly may be coming into town and collaborating. I mean, what do we gotta do to get a theme park back in this city? That's what I want. What's a, this is going to be interesting. Let's talk about
15:50 Politics in the city of Nashville for a second.
15:54 We have the election coming up here soon. In a couple of weeks we had, it's a runoff election. I don't know if you're following national politics as much,
16:02 But what I'm [inaudible]
16:05 What's been influential in your decision to, as a business owner and the position that you're going with your business and also dealing with local politics,
16:16 You know, as a restaurant too, or you have to be really careful about talking about politics. You know, what they say about sitting at a bar. You don't talk about religion and politics. Now, I already told y'all how much I pray. So if I start talking politics, I'm going to get, well, no, I'll tell you this. I'm actually a political science grad from Lipscomb university. That's what I studied. I worked on campaigns off and on throughout my college years. And after I graduated for a little while and I ran for the Hills I fell out of love with the daily grind of being involved in politics. Now I do vote, but I I used to want to be the president. United States of America. Don't put that evil on me. I don't want nothing to do with it. God bless everybody who takes that seat cause I don't want it
17:00 Completely understandable. So with the market changing so much
17:08 What's party foul going to do in the future to keep up with the, the trends of the city and also they keep reaching the local destinations they're in. [inaudible]
17:19 Once again, it's staying involved with your community, you know whether it's the, the youth soccer leagues, whether it's the FCA, which we're involved with. I mean, you just, you want to be involved. And so in Murphysboro we're very involved in that community and multiple aspects in Donaldson. Same thing in Nashville. I actually just got accepted into elevate, which is the Donaldson Hermitage leadership. It's just really awesome. It's, it's almost a year long program. We just had our orientation on Monday, so this week was my first week getting in there and boy, I mean you would be amazed at how much goes into this. So you just stay in ingrained in your community and being involved. And the hard part about it is as we grow across the country, which we have every intention on doing is how do you create that for your new team? The people, cause I can't be everywhere at once. My, my, my corporate team that I have now is not going to be able to be in every city in every town that we go into. Right? So it's all about creating that culture that every restaurant that we opened, the people that we hire believe in the same things we believe in and that their community is number one and they have to stay in it.
18:26 That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. The, with the shortage of staff here in the city, how are you dealing with that? So
18:35 We have actually been really, again, I'm going to say it again, blessed. You know, I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but when it comes to like our front of house bartenders, servers, food runners, things that nature, we have very little turnover. People do not leave party foul. You make great money. And one thing that we say here, when I sit you down for an interview and you come to interview a party foul, I'll tell you the first thing I say, number one before I'll tell you who we are and what we do. We're a family. If you poison this whale, you will not work here. I have kept a lot of people who might not have been the best of their position and invested time and money into them becoming better at it because they cared. And I've had people who are amazing at their job and we're horrible at being a teammate and a family member who we've let go.
19:15 So we have a very low turnover in front of house, back of house. There's so many restaurants opening every day that you know, a lot of kitchen folks, I mean they're taking their 40 hour job at because everyone's worried about labor. They don't give overtime. People are having two and three jobs. And so we've had, again, we've been very lucky. We have a lot of diehard full time kitchen employees and we have a lot of people who wear their second home, but they treat it like they act like it's their first one. They're here. You know, we, we built a family here and in each location that's very important to us.
19:44 That's awesome. Yeah. I think the thing I love about party foul is you come here and it is very family oriented and I think that's a, a niche that Nashville definitely needs in this city. Or do you have any other questions? Yeah, so we, on our podcast about a week and a half ago we talked about hot chicken. We talked mainly about the story of hot chicken and how it started in the city. But one of the questions that we asked, and you might be able to give some insight into this as, can you experience Nashville hot chicken outside of Nashville?
20:15 1000000%. You can and not everybody has actually lived here. And you have been raised around Nashville hot chicken who's making it nowadays, but once you learn how to make it, I mean it's all about putting the love into it. If you know how to make that mud and you know how to fry a piece of chicken. Yeah, you can do it. I mean we've had I mean there's a guy who went who left Nashville and went to Australia and opened up a hot chicken joint and there's a line around the corner here in Nashville though. That's my understanding. Okay. He is, he runs with some of the folks in my circle and supposedly he is a, he's a Nashville who went out and did it. There's a hot chicken joint out here opening in London. I mean LA has got Howland rays who they're setting social media on fire.
20:55 Right. Wow. I need to go have a in way sandwich and I have a hot chicken joint just because I've heard how delicious it is. So, yeah, I mean, as I go traveling around the country, looking at possible new destinations for us to put location, you're going to see Nashville hot chicken and almost every major city, if not every major city in the next couple of years. I mean, it is everywhere. And yeah, I think you can get authentic now. I have tasted some real turds. I'm telling you about it. I'm sure I've tasted some that I'm like, that's barbecue sauce, man. That is that, that is Frank's, that is not national hot chicken. You don't even know what you just did. Just take that off your [inaudible]. Yeah. So yeah, I think you can you just gotta find the right spots, but I've had some and I've been impressed.
21:35 That's good to hear. I thinking from an expansion standpoint, I think certain parts of the Northeast like Buffalo, New York and like Brooklyn, New York party foul would be an incredible model for our restaurant in those cities. I concur. We we had a very brief, very simple, didn't go anywhere, conversation, talking with the giant stadium about possibly doing something there. Cause we were doing Nissan stadium for awhile and it didn't go anywhere. But my partner and I immediately, our eyes per Debra were like, if we go over there, we're putting three or four locations around this area, even up a little further Northeast from there. You know, it was, yeah, it, it definitely calls to me. It's a matter of how quickly we can do it. Cause right now we are a three man corporate team. It is me, my operations manager, Tiffany Thompson, and my chef Bart Pickens.
22:21 We open every restaurant and then we'd go back and hold all the restaurants accountable for our quality and our standards. So it's so hard. We're actually gonna start building a, a larger team very soon. That's crazy. That's awesome. It talking about sports teams, hopefully we get the orals and you can open up something within their stadium. That's what I'm hoping for. Yeah. Stuart, anything else? Nope. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us on the Nashville daily podcast. Where can people follow party foul and where can people follow you personally? So I am actually, I do all the social, so you want to follow me personally? You go follow at party foul Nash at party found Nashville on, on all the all the different social medias. If you see a post you like and you hit, I like that or I shared that.
23:04 That was for me and I love you for it. All right, so I'm still attending. This is the Nashville daily podcast. Make sure to go follow us on Instagram X PLR dot. Nash. go if you need Nashville merchandise, you can get some here@partyfowlalsoasscreenedthreads.com and make sure to rate then is rate us five stars and subscribe to our podcast. Aaron, what advice should we give somebody? Somebody for the weekend? Well, I think it's pretty obvious there's a lot of music going on. Music and food this weekend. Go see a show, go to a party foul. And I think you've got a perfect weekend. Sounds great. Alright. Have a great weekend guys. Thank you. [inaudible].