Save What You Love with Mark Titus

00:00:00:04 - 00:00:24:04
Mark Titus
Welcome to the Save What You Love podcast. I'm your host, Mark Titus. Well, today we are sitting down with Seattle Super chef James Beard, Award winner Tom Douglas. Tom's a good friend. He's a mentor. He's an investor in the company that I've created here that is producing this podcast, Eva's Wild, and he's also been an executive producer on both of my documentaries, The Breach and the Wild over the years.

00:00:24:06 - 00:00:48:20
Mark Titus
And today we really dig into what this last two years have meant for him, both with the COVID pandemic and evolving as a restaurateur. His love for wild salmon, where that overlaps with the Bristol Bay story and how he treats people that come to work for him. It's a really fascinating conversation and I'm excited to bring it to you today.

00:00:48:22 - 00:01:09:06
Mark Titus
Also, for the holidays, we've got some new stuff on Eva's wild website, most notably five years in the making. We've got Eva's wild salmon jerky, which is brought to you from the pristine waters of Bristol Bay. It's a little bit smoky, a little bit salty, a little bit sweet, and just a little bit of a heat on the back of your palate as it goes down.

00:01:09:06 - 00:01:31:02
Mark Titus
It's awesome. Really psyched about it. And remember, every single purchase that's made through Eva's Wild, there's a donation made on your behalf to the people of Bristol Bay, led by United Tribes of Bristol Bay, to defend Bristol Bay from things like the proposed Pebble Mine. Hope you're enjoying your holiday season so far and I hope you enjoy today's podcast with Tom Douglas.

00:01:31:03 - 00:01:33:14
Music
We'll see you down the trail.

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Music
How do you save what you love?
When the world is burning down?
How do you save what you love?
When pushes come to shove.
How do you say what you love?
When things are upside down.
How do you say what you love?
When times are getting tough.

00:02:09:13 - 00:02:14:13
Mark Titus
Chef Tom Douglas, welcome. Hi.

00:02:14:15 - 00:02:16:02
Tom Douglas
I feel like I've seen you before.

00:02:16:02 - 00:02:21:11
Mark Titus
I know. I think we got to stop meeting like this. Well, usually I ask, where are you coming from.

00:02:21:11 - 00:02:37:06
Tom Douglas
Let's just be clear. We need to keep meeting like this. This is a very professional atmosphere, and normally you and I are kind of like, piecemeal get together. So this is awesome. We're at Victory Studios. Since I haven't been here in 25 years, I think I taped a commercial here a long time ago.

00:02:37:11 - 00:02:56:14
Mark Titus
Well, you just stole all my thunder. Thank you. And but that's the whole point. Yeah, we're here in person, which is awesome. And Victory Studios is still here on 15th, and they're rockin and they're doing all kinds of great stuff. And I know it's a probably a good, you know, halfway point from your work life going from the north down to the city.

00:02:56:14 - 00:03:11:07
Tom Douglas
It is. If Balad is north, then yes, I'm a Ballard too. The urban core is definitely this is halfway. And you know, we have a professional studio to downtown where I do my radio show every week. So it's. This is lovely.

00:03:11:07 - 00:03:31:12
Mark Titus
Yeah, I agree. It's a it's a big upgrade from just doing the laptops from over yonder. Let's just dig right into this here Let I like to start these things out by learning a little bit more about your story. So if you would tell us your story, you didn't just get plopped into Seattle with a beautiful restaurant and hospitality empire all of a sudden.

00:03:31:14 - 00:03:34:14
Mark Titus
How did you come into this work that you do?

00:03:34:16 - 00:03:57:13
Tom Douglas
Well, boy, there's so many different angles on this. I'm a worker bee, so the restaurant industry is a worker bee mentality and I was 18 working in a place called the Hotel DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware, because I didn't want to go to college. And my guidance counselor in high school said, well, you should try this out. And so I tried it and liked it, except I was a little bit antsy.

00:03:57:13 - 00:04:15:20
Tom Douglas
I was 18 again, and I don't know how you were at 18, but I was ready to be out of the house and ready to be on the road. And no matter what job I had, it couldn't have held me there. So especially without the struggle of going to university, which I was the only one of eight kids of my parents that did not go.

00:04:15:21 - 00:04:36:00
Tom Douglas
And that still rankles my mother. To this day. I'm the black sheep of the family. From that perspective. On the other hand, I've done pretty well, and so she's pretty proud of that. So hey, turn 19 on the road. When I got in my car, I packed everything in my Chevy station wagon, literally everything that I owned. My dad had give me 150 bucks like he did every one of his children.

00:04:36:00 - 00:04:55:17
Tom Douglas
As they left the house, I had saved 300 of my own. I had bought a car for 300 and I made it to Seattle 40 some days later and was out of cash. And so I got a job cook in which still to this day, if anyone wants to get a job cooking, please come see me because it's hard out there.

00:04:55:19 - 00:05:13:01
Tom Douglas
I got a job cooking and I've been kind of going at it ever since. You know, I've done a little bit of this and that over the years, worked on the railroad, built houses, sold wine, you know, on a wholesale basis, which is how I met my lovely wife. She was selling wine retail. I was selling wine wholesale.

00:05:13:03 - 00:05:23:06
Tom Douglas
So she was my customer. And then we got hooked up there and we've been together now 38 years while we have a daughter and a brand new grandson. Hercules.

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Mark Titus
Hercules. It's the best.

00:05:25:21 - 00:05:26:05
Tom Douglas
He's the.

00:05:26:05 - 00:05:46:12
Mark Titus
Best. I like to cuddle pictures that I've been able to see. You know, anybody that's been familiar with the restaurant industry knows that COVID was devastating to restaurateurs. And I know personally you've had many chefs in the Dish pit, and you bet long nights, but you and your team are still here.

00:05:46:14 - 00:06:10:10
Tom Douglas
When you know. Let me just jump in on that. Sure. Because, you know, there's a there's a bit of a misconception about that because it wasn't equal where the the drama was really it was in the beginning. But our restaurants are in that urban core. Right. And there are really at least 60 to 70% of that business is international travel.

00:06:10:10 - 00:06:29:10
Tom Douglas
It's business travel. It's business people in office buildings downtown. You know, it's a different dynamic than a neighborhood. And so when everything went down, I just couldn't figure out why the restaurants in Ballard were still busy and mine were absolutely empty. And then they would go to even to the base of Queen Anne or any place that there was a real neighborhood.

00:06:29:16 - 00:07:01:02
Tom Douglas
The restaurants were still doing a little bit of business, but places like mine that I was doing, you know, eight or $10 million a year in business, I was doing one cover a night at Loyola, for example, which was one of our busiest restaurants. Right? So it was a dynamic hit. But what I will say from there is that the government jumped in so quickly, which was a shock to me, that it soften the blow the loans payroll payroll protection plan were a huge benefit.

00:07:01:02 - 00:07:19:03
Tom Douglas
It's the reason we are here today that I have anything more than my building that I owned. And that's why I'm not involved in a bunch of lawsuits with landlords. Right. Because this BP money really jumped in the middle of all that process and took what was a horrific situation and made it livable. And so here we are chatting today.

00:07:19:03 - 00:07:40:22
Tom Douglas
You know, I'm off the line for lunch today, which wasn't the case there for a while. But we none of us knew that was coming. I mean, I don't know if your business was able to get any of those, but many, many, many businesses around the city got that money to keep things afloat in our town. And I guess I'm saying all this because sometimes people get on the government like it doesn't work.

00:07:41:00 - 00:08:08:08
Tom Douglas
That worked, that kept people busy. It enabled me to send out checks to all my former team and it just enabled so much, you know, to get that square with my landlords, to pay my utility bills, to get square with the sales tax. I mean, people don't realize I had collected sales tax of over a half million dollars for February, that all of a sudden I have no business, you know, that's it was amazing.

00:08:08:08 - 00:08:10:11
Mark Titus
So a lot of gratitude there.

00:08:10:14 - 00:08:13:20
Tom Douglas
So I'm so grateful for the programs that came up. Yeah.

00:08:13:22 - 00:08:26:20
Mark Titus
Well, look, this is a perfect segue way. I mean, nobody knew how to face this pandemic. The government I mean, we think the government is like some omnipotent force out there. Like these are people trying to figure out what the hell is going on. And and.

00:08:26:20 - 00:08:28:07
Tom Douglas
Often trying to figure out the right thing.

00:08:28:07 - 00:08:52:03
Mark Titus
To do, correct? Yeah, I know. So so this this is I agree. I think all in all, you know, we fared okay especially people in this this line of work. But you know, what I think was so interesting to me was watching your innovation, just like the government had to pivot and figure things out, Like you definitely had to pivot and figure things out.

00:08:52:04 - 00:09:04:13
Mark Titus
Contracted kind of brought the team home, you know, and can you just talk a little bit about how you did that? What were some of the innovations that you came up with to to keep it going and make it real?

00:09:04:15 - 00:09:23:07
Tom Douglas
Well, you know, it's horrific what happened. You know, you got people that put in 25, 30 years of their life into our business, that all of a sudden we're given a five day, five day notice that things couldn't carry on. I can't pay you anymore. Right. If I had known PGP was going to be six weeks away, I mean, certainly I would have done things differently.

00:09:23:07 - 00:09:45:03
Tom Douglas
But none of us knew that was coming. So we just pivoted right away. You know, we went outdoors, we put a pizza oven on our dock at our warehouse in Ballard, and we started I started in the pantry and in pastry, and we started building a new restaurant on wheels because I still needed to run my business out of the same warehouse.

00:09:45:03 - 00:10:06:02
Tom Douglas
And so we put everything on wheels. And so we would literally when I got my big train tractor trailer rigs full of jars for my Robbins spices, I would move the kitchen even during service and then unload with our work truck and then move it all back in place 15 minutes later and just beg forgiveness from customers who got delayed for a minute for their pizza.

00:10:06:04 - 00:10:25:21
Tom Douglas
And so that's the first thing that we did. We went from 865 people to nine overnight from March 15th to March 16th. That was the difference. And it was it was dramatic and super sad for me. And to this day, you know, some of my former team won't talk to me because they felt like I let them down and I get it.

00:10:25:21 - 00:10:48:23
Tom Douglas
I understand. I don't think what they don't understand is I didn't have a choice. They could work, but I couldn't pay them. And so that was that was just the way it was. And until P happened. And then, you know, by that time, all those folks, many of those folks were on unemployment with with an enhanced unemployment. So there wasn't the s the the real need to come back right away.

00:10:49:01 - 00:11:18:21
Mark Titus
Well, look, everybody, you know, again, kind of stumbling through this thing, took a lot of hits and who knew how what the proper channel is to get through this thing. But, you know, you've been a stalwart member of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest community for many years. Why do you believe developing a strong sense of place brings purpose to individuals and communities?

00:11:18:23 - 00:11:39:02
Tom Douglas
Boy, I just think, you know, not unlike Bristol Bay or whatever, we all have our story. We all have our community. Everybody does. And I don't care if they're anti-government for government, whatever you have your little world that you live in and, you know, oddly enough, in downtown Seattle, like it's three blocks, not even like it's not even from Stewart to James Street.

00:11:39:02 - 00:11:56:14
Tom Douglas
It's more like Stewart to all of like three blocks. Virginia Right. I know that doesn't quite make sense, but we live in this small little bubble in our life. And and to me, I've always taken that very personally to make sure that my bubble is safe. The people in my bubble are safe. If I've got money, you've got money.

00:11:56:14 - 00:12:20:13
Tom Douglas
You know, if if I've got time. We always talk about it in our company as the three T's, your your talent, your treasure and your tenacity. Right. If you've got and if you've got all of that, you should be able to offer that to everyone in your bubble and your community. And I've always just felt strongly that I personally don't want to be the guy that scrapes the cream off the top.

00:12:20:17 - 00:12:36:14
Tom Douglas
You know, I want sure, I want to get rich. I want to I want to make money. I want to do all that. But I want everyone to share in that success. And some of those things come down to like just having health care, you know, when people go broke because they don't have health care a lot. A lot, it's it's a big problem.

00:12:36:16 - 00:12:57:18
Tom Douglas
So I fought for national health care and I believe in it. I've had health care in my company since year, the end of year one when I couldn't even afford it. We got health care because to me, that's a basic human right. And the idea that if you're wealthy, you're okay, and if you're not, you're you die is is a basic problem to me.

00:12:57:18 - 00:13:21:04
Tom Douglas
The whole thing, like I get I see these ads for St Jude's Hospital in Memphis, right? They do amazing work. Why is it that we need to send our money to St Jude to St Jude's to cure cancer for these kids? Why isn't that a basic human right? You shouldn't have to go to Memphis. It should be. Every community in our country should be working to save these children or anybody for that matter.

00:13:21:04 - 00:13:40:11
Tom Douglas
Right. And so when you go back to your sense of place and sense of being Seattle and I fit you know, there's we're a very progressive town and I feel very dramatically now am I as far left as some of the Socialist Council members that we have are? Absolutely. You know, I'm not you can't have it both ways.

00:13:40:13 - 00:14:01:14
Tom Douglas
Those same council members are spending all the cash driven by capitalism, real estate sales, all those sorts of things. They're spending that cash as fast as they get it. You can't have it both ways. You can't expect that and then vilify the business community and then take the cash that it's generating and all of a sudden everything's hunky dory.

00:14:01:14 - 00:14:03:18
Tom Douglas
It's just doesn't work that way.

00:14:03:20 - 00:14:22:20
Mark Titus
I'm going to take a little side road down this channel just for a second. It seems like in this recent election for Seattle mayor, there has been a somewhat of a mandate that, look, we want this is not working this direction we're going in. Do you do you sense that you feel like we're kind of at a a moment where it could go one way or another?

00:14:22:20 - 00:15:03:06
Tom Douglas
Mandate is a big word. No, I don't feel that. And I don't you know, we have an interesting election coming up here on December 7th, right? The Sharma's a recall election. Right. You're going to see, in my opinion, that she gets kept in office overwhelmingly. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't I think the the disconnect is that at least that's my opinion, that the elevated income community does not recognize now is the chasm that is out there between the haves and have nots.

00:15:03:06 - 00:15:26:13
Tom Douglas
And I am not a so fan. I'm, you know, she doesn't care for me. I don't care for her. That's fine. I still respect her position and her office and all of that. But my guess is she's going to be reelected overwhelmingly and that that there's a lot of angst out there. So mandate, you know, you got to remember who's running for city attorney.

00:15:26:15 - 00:15:48:01
Tom Douglas
She was pretty out there in her views. And so so we elected a Republican city attorney. You know, we'll see what happens. Can't do much without the rest of the the rest of the city going along with her. And Theresa Mosquito got reelected easily. And she's one of the most progressive on the council, so she dislikes me. I don't care much for her either.

00:15:48:01 - 00:15:55:08
Tom Douglas
So it's like but I'm still I'm an old fashioned blue Democrat. I'm just not a socialist.

00:15:55:10 - 00:16:30:21
Mark Titus
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, there is so much discord and, you know, it's like we're fractionated inside of silos that even seem to be should be somewhat homogenous, you know? And we're still finding ways to divide ourselves. I think my observation is I don't know either what's going to happen with the recall. I think I think we have come to a place where people are weary of the quality of life that has sort of degenerated in in the downtown corridor.

00:16:30:23 - 00:17:04:17
Mark Titus
How that's translated into action, I don't know. But I do know that this sense of place is strong here and it really has so much more to do than the concrete. We've we've, you know, constructed here. Speaking of place, we have this icon here. Wild salmon. It connects us. It connects you and me as well as orcas, otters, seals, trees, and all the people who get to take part in the blessed feast when they return to spawn every year.

00:17:04:19 - 00:17:17:18
Mark Titus
Can you tell me how your relationship with these critters started with the consciousness of a can? To becoming a champion for them here in our home and and beyond.

00:17:17:19 - 00:17:39:12
Tom Douglas
Yeah, well, mine started in a bumblebee camp for sure. Friday nights in the Catholic family. It was either canned salmon or Mrs. Paul's fish sticks. So. So that's how my relationship with salmon started. And I hated it. And it was just like, the worst thing I ever tried. It looked terrible. Big orange loaf coming out of a can is awful.

00:17:39:14 - 00:18:03:20
Tom Douglas
You know, I didn't really much know about salmon until I got here back on the East Coast. You know, shrimp and flounder are the kings and crab blue crabs. Right. So but I didn't know much about salmon. And then our early on here, you're walking through the Pike Place Market. You know, I distinctly remember the first time I got my first sous chef job, it was at a restaurant called Punjabi Restaurant on Second and Pine in the Doyle building.

00:18:03:23 - 00:18:26:03
Tom Douglas
And I walked with my fellow chefs into the market in our whites. And, you know, the fishmongers started whistling at us and like, just totally making fun of our uniforms. I never wear those again. I was totally shamed out of my whites. And but I distinctly, you know, those mountains of fish, the mountains of crab that were down there, fascinating to me.

00:18:26:03 - 00:18:59:19
Tom Douglas
I had never seen anything quite like it. So the Pike Place Market is near and dear to my soul when it comes to understanding where the food came from. And even then those guys didn't know much about it. They were slinging salmon and they might have known a species issue, but they weren't totally in on how it was caught, how it was bled, how fast it got to the marketplace, you know, how long out of the water, you know, all the things that kind of developed over the last 30, 35, 40 years, guy named John Raleigh hooked up with and you've heard him a lot, but he's the one who recognized that we weren't putting

00:18:59:19 - 00:19:23:06
Tom Douglas
enough value on these fish and that when they were handled correctly, they were even a better product. That's where the whole Copper River thing happened, and that's where some of the good oyster conversations have come about. Mussels, certainly crab is a little bit different in that world. He never really got much involved with crab, but to me it's important about how crab is handled and how the fishery is managed.

00:19:23:06 - 00:19:42:08
Tom Douglas
And so it's just became a passion for me. And I have never been as you know, never been one to say stop doing this, stop doing that. But I have been one for managing, managing the process and managing the fisheries so that we're not raping the ocean. And that's going to be interesting to see if we're doing a good job or not.

00:19:42:08 - 00:20:04:13
Tom Douglas
We feel like we are, but you know, fisheries are struggling all over at the same time. Even though Bristol Bay is doing great, there's other fisheries that are struggling all over. So are we really managing it well or are we waiting for the other foot drop? You know, as the ocean temperatures change and climate issues continue to wreak havoc across the world.

00:20:04:13 - 00:20:05:06
Tom Douglas
So.

00:20:05:08 - 00:20:29:14
Mark Titus
Yeah, clearly there is a lot out there that we don't know. One thing we do know, and this is why I've been on this tack and I know this is part of the reason you've been on this tack for so long as well. Bristol Bay is this unique place in all the world. You've been leading the charge in our shared mantra to eat wild, to save wild urine.

00:20:29:14 - 00:20:42:22
Mark Titus
Investor And he was wild. You're an executive producer on both of my films. It's obviously mean something to you. Why why has Bristol Bay and the fight to protect it become so important to you?

00:20:43:00 - 00:21:13:15
Tom Douglas
Well, I think for the longest time you don't know where you can jump in, right? You need something small enough to put your finger on. Because to talk about salmon as a worldwide issue like the North Atlantic salmon, what do I know? What can how can I affect Bristol Bay? Felt like a place where I could jump in and be be effective and not solve the problem, but certainly help to talk about the issues that were on the table when it comes to the mine or overfishing or whatever food from they've native people that live in the area.

00:21:13:17 - 00:21:40:11
Tom Douglas
And so there's some simple concepts there that we've talked about for years now, which is eat wild, save wild, big bike. And jobs are really the key, right? Economy is really the key on that because a lot of people still don't get it. They don't get the fact that if you buy that wild fish or if you if you look back and see what that fish was selling for before John Raleigh helped put a price on its head, that was more reasonable because it's worth more, right.

00:21:40:13 - 00:21:57:15
Tom Douglas
That fish is definitely worth as much as any Wagyu beef going. yeah, on a per pound basis for sure. So anyway, so if you, if you can put an economy around that fish so that the locals can make their living so that the fishermen here in Seattle and the boat owners can make their living, then we don't need the mine.

00:21:57:15 - 00:22:19:06
Tom Douglas
And that's really it was a simple back and forth. There's like a light bulb kind of stuff, you know, when when you can give them what they need, you know, they want to put their kids in school. They want to feed them a healthy meal. They need that cash to do that. So let's give them the cash for this elevated seafood product that is self-sustaining if we handle it correctly.

00:22:19:06 - 00:22:28:23
Tom Douglas
Right. And forever. And instead of digging up, they're digging up the area and putting arsenic and stuff into our waters and creating havoc.

00:22:29:01 - 00:22:39:02
Mark Titus
Well, we're at a moment that is the most hopeful it's been since President Obama was in office. And I see this for years. I see you shaking your head and well, I I'd be.

00:22:39:02 - 00:22:40:11
Tom Douglas
Negative, but we got to get this.

00:22:40:11 - 00:23:05:16
Mark Titus
Done. I agree. Yeah, I agree. It makes me I knock on wood, it makes me nervous when people ask what's going on. I'm like, yeah, it's it's a good moment. It's a nice pause and we got to go the distance because, look, I don't know if you saw the the U. Deb's projections for next year, but they're projecting 71.2 million salmon to return sockeye to return to Bristol Bay.

00:23:05:16 - 00:23:20:08
Mark Titus
Again. What happens in the natural cycle of things when it comes? You know, invariably it will. It's at the peak it's ever been it's the highest it's ever been in Bristol Bay. It will come down. Yeah. That's just the way it's it has.

00:23:20:08 - 00:23:20:19
Tom Douglas
The ebb and.

00:23:20:19 - 00:23:45:14
Mark Titus
Flow. It's the ebb and the flow. What happens when we come off of that plateau and the next iteration of Pebble comes in and says, Hey, how are our mining jobs looking right now? This is the point that you're driving home and this is the point that that I think we're going to be doing a new film, a final film in this chapter, and it's going to be looking at where from here, where do we go from here?

00:23:45:16 - 00:23:46:16
Mark Titus
So.

00:23:46:18 - 00:24:11:13
Tom Douglas
Well, here's what I'll say about that. And I think you are much more of a pie in the sky kind of guy here. You're very emotional and I tend to be a little bit more of a realist, as you probably know in our relationship over the last ten years or so, this is never going away when you have that much money in the ground, in gold and copper and whatever else is in there, I'm sure there's more.

00:24:11:15 - 00:24:35:11
Tom Douglas
It's just this problem is never going to be going away and we're going to have to be diligent for the rest of our life and our kids and everybody. This is this is not an issue that you can put to bed. Look at what Mr. Trump did just with some national parks in Utah, just in his four years that had been put away for 50, 60, 75 years by Mr. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, and places.

00:24:35:13 - 00:25:00:19
Tom Douglas
I don't know the exact names of who put what where, but he undid that with in a matter of one swipe of the pen. Right. So these kind of things, I don't care if it's Obama or Trump or Biden or whoever these things know, when there's that much money at hand, they'll never go away. So it's just to me, it's we have to have a system in place to be diligent about the fight.

00:25:00:21 - 00:25:19:03
Mark Titus
Right. Forever. That's right. And knowing that this thing, the reason this system works so perfectly is because it has not been constructed, it has not been dammed, it has not been infrastructure did yet, and which is.

00:25:19:05 - 00:25:23:05
Tom Douglas
One of the bigger issues. Right. Is it just the roads? There is one of the huge issues.

00:25:23:06 - 00:25:44:09
Mark Titus
That to me way beyond the issue of a catastrophic event of a mine being built and a toxic tailings dam failure is the infrastructure that is with what has happened here. It's what's happened every time humans have come into salmon country. When you build the infrastructure, you open the doorway to all of the rest of the industry that can come in there.

00:25:44:13 - 00:26:09:14
Mark Titus
Once that genie's out of the bottle, it's gone. So to your point, we've got to stay on this with messaging about this, I believe bringing people there. I you know, I'm going to get you up there, I believe telling stories about this place, having some semblance of experience, eating the food from there, you know, really is at this core, if you value this thing, if you love this thing, you're going to want to keep it going.

00:26:09:14 - 00:26:40:15
Mark Titus
And the way to keep it going is to leave it alone in terms of hard core extractive industry. Speaking of industry, I won't talk about supply chain for a minute. Knowing where our food comes from has is not important. It's paramount. Now. It's become, I think, for most people in this country anyway, we're really aware of where our food comes from, are want to be aware of where our food comes more than ever before.

00:26:40:17 - 00:26:46:07
Mark Titus
Tell us a bit about Prosser Farms and why this place is so important to you and your wife.

00:26:46:07 - 00:27:10:21
Tom Douglas
Jackie I personally, the number one reason why it's so important to me is that makes her so happy. Yeah, so that is. I know that's I don't mean that to be cliche. I was in a male and female kind of way, but she loves it there. And when she's happy, I'm happy in, you know, just in that loving kind of like, my God, you just love love this down to your bone.

00:27:10:21 - 00:27:37:08
Tom Douglas
Yes. Yeah. So. So that's the first thing. Secondly, she's always felt strongly about going about her business organically. That's interesting because farming is hard. We think the restaurants are hard, fishing's hard, whatever. Farming is hard. And, you know, just this year, for example, because of the heat wave that we had back in June, we would normally have 3500 tomato plants in the ground.

00:27:37:13 - 00:28:14:17
Tom Douglas
We would normally get. We keep records every year. Yeah, we would normally get 80 to £90 of tomatoes per plant. Wow. Awesome. Right? The beautiful, organic, lovely tomatoes all watered by the melting snows of the Cascades coming down the Yakima River and being sucked up into our fields and redistributed. Right. So this year we didn't even get a pound of tomatoes per plant because that heatwave that happened here in for three days and over there for almost six days of five and a half days of 116 or hotter.

00:28:14:19 - 00:28:43:07
Tom Douglas
Right. Killed all the tomato plants, just sent them in the shock. And, you know, so at the same time, we doubled our melon production and what else eggplants do beautifully, right. But all the green beans dropped their flowers. It was too hot. So farming is hard and Mother Nature is difficult and there is something so rich about that, that struggle that generations and generations of people have gone through before us.

00:28:43:09 - 00:28:58:16
Tom Douglas
It's rich in its in its life. Giving soul. Yeah. Owning your food in that kind of way and owning the process. When I talk to my customers about farm to table, I am being really serious. I get it.

00:28:58:19 - 00:28:59:06
Mark Titus
No, I know.

00:28:59:06 - 00:29:17:00
Tom Douglas
And it's not. It's that and I don't know that. It's like I'm only buying chicken under a plastic wrap in a grocery store. You never really know what that chicken was like. Well, we just harvested six of our oldest chickens, you know, We know what that's like every day, cleaning out the coop, grabbing the eggs, doing a lot, you know, a lot of people do that.

00:29:17:01 - 00:29:38:01
Tom Douglas
But for us, that was new to me is taking that process all the way to the beginning. And it's it's awesome and it's affected the way I do business. You know, I really appreciate the farm produce much more than I did in the beginning when we first started. I think effort is Valiant and I. I'm all for farmers.

00:29:38:03 - 00:30:05:13
Mark Titus
Clearly you're not you're not supplying all of the food you serve in your restaurant. But just to the point you just made, you know the story intimately. You know what it takes to bring tomatoes to somebody's plate. Yeah, that's huge. Can we just talk for a minute about what given what we know and we're experiencing right now with this rapid rise in inflation and supply chain screwed up all over the place, is there a vision?

00:30:05:13 - 00:30:18:03
Mark Titus
Is there a sustainable vision for a more localized, a more regional supply chain model that your experience with Prosser Farms could serve to educate the.

00:30:18:03 - 00:30:41:23
Tom Douglas
Rest of us? Yeah, but that's got nothing to do with supply chain issues that we're facing today. I do think we're in a temporary spot. You know, certainly inflation, just like, you know, the fish quotas goes up and down and we're in a time of rising inflation. But I think the supply chain, as far in the process of Prosser Farm, I think the genie is out of that bottle.

00:30:41:23 - 00:31:03:03
Tom Douglas
I just think people shop on price so much. I mean that to get people to recognize that it's going to cost them 25 to 50% more for a smaller farm hand-raised food, I just don't think people are willing to do it. And I certainly as a restaurateur, you can't be the only one out there doing that. And you might if you have a tiny restaurant where you can charge.

00:31:03:03 - 00:31:22:23
Tom Douglas
But in a bigger company like mine, there's just no way. So I don't think that's pandemic related personally. I mean, there are some really nuts and bolts pandemic issues, like I can't get jars from my spice shop right now. So, you know, those kind of those kind of issues, I can't get theater cups for my concessions at the Paramount in more theaters.

00:31:23:01 - 00:31:29:17
Tom Douglas
Those kind of things are going to settle themselves out. But farming, that's a that's a hard one.

00:31:29:23 - 00:32:15:11
Mark Titus
Sure. And that's right. I guess being a business owner now that there's a actual mathematical formula that is going to allow you to stay in the business or not and keep doing the things that you, you know, want to do and the things you want to achieve. I wonder about the cost opportunity, though, or maybe even the idea that telling the story about what is it going to cost if we don't fix these bigger things, like working with our earth, working with systems that are more adept at naturally producing things, working with the soil, as opposed to plowing everything, maybe doing crop covers and, you know, are we at a point where we do you

00:32:15:11 - 00:32:29:20
Mark Titus
think that people have heard the alarm bell on where we're at with climate change and supply chain fragility to perhaps dig in and invest in a better way of doing things?

00:32:29:22 - 00:32:56:02
Tom Douglas
Well, again, I don't think it's got anything pandemic related. People have been looking at these, you know, this hydroponic gardening, vertical farming. But climate change just a bigger issue than the pandemic for sure. And it's certainly a bigger issue than supply chain issues that are out there. And they're out there. But, you know, supply chain issues to me right now is whether I can get Jamison whiskey or not or if I can only get Bushmills whiskey.

00:32:56:07 - 00:33:26:12
Tom Douglas
You know, it's like, where's the container? It's on a boat somewhere. It was supposed to be here a month ago. What happened? Those are supply chain issues right now, what you're talking about is much more organic and substantial in the problem size than what supply chain is. In my opinion. And it's been interesting, the fragility of the supply chain that's been a real eye opener and it's really a little bit like owning the farm now like we do is like, I see the process now that I used to just take for granted.

00:33:26:14 - 00:33:50:08
Tom Douglas
But there are climate change issues like no water in California, right where we're used to getting romaine lettuce anytime we want. Romaine lettuce is on a circuit, by the way, just like oranges and lemons and limes on a circuit. Right. It's got the whole south for whether there's Romaine Farms in Texas, Arizona, Florida. You know, and it's just the buyers are the ones who buy from all the different commercial lettuce farmers.

00:33:50:08 - 00:34:04:00
Tom Douglas
Right. And the commercial citrus farmers. And of course, South America is the big supplier of this and that. And, you know, peruse sells us more asparagus than Washington state does. Washington State used to be the biggest asparagus farm you know why that is, by the way?

00:34:04:00 - 00:34:04:17
Mark Titus
No, I don't. Tell me.

00:34:04:17 - 00:34:10:11
Tom Douglas
Yeah, well, because we've we paid them to plant asparagus instead of to for cooking.

00:34:10:16 - 00:34:11:15
Mark Titus
You know, Interesting.

00:34:11:16 - 00:34:19:07
Tom Douglas
Not to cow what's the word I want Coca. Coca or whatever. They make cocaine out of this. And so they're now very large asparagus.

00:34:19:07 - 00:34:49:09
Mark Titus
Competitors, interestingly, comes around. Goes around. Well, you know, the reason I'm circling around all this, of course, is coming in to our our next question here, which is you have organically been a leader in creating change, starting with paying people a fair wage and making sure people have benefits and really, really reaching out to our homeless community, working with things like Fair Start.

00:34:49:11 - 00:34:51:00
Tom Douglas
Food Lifeline, Food Lifeline.

00:34:51:00 - 00:35:17:23
Mark Titus
It's a huge deal. And I feel like you are you chefs are on the front line with social change that is going to be necessary. So why do you firmly believe that business can be a force for good? And can you give us some other examples of that work that really have? It's near and dear to your heart and you've you've tried to work on over your career.

00:35:18:01 - 00:35:36:11
Tom Douglas
Yeah, I'm frustrated with that right now. You know, I've been supporting Food Lifeline for close to 40 years now, and I'm frustrated that the problem gets bigger instead of smaller. And so I'm not really I don't really know what to think about that in, you know, it's not much I took from my Catholic school education. I'm about the least religious person.

00:35:36:13 - 00:36:00:03
Tom Douglas
But I do think about the loaves and fishes story, right? And teaching people how to fish instead of just giving them fish. And I do have a side of me that socially wants us to make a contract out there that that there's no freebies, you know, And I that I know that goes against my democratic values in some ways.

00:36:00:05 - 00:36:31:00
Tom Douglas
But like somebody says, do you think people if somebody is on welfare or getting unemployment, should they have to work to me, if they're able bodied? Yeah, I think we should have a program where they have to work now in emergency situation like we have, which is where the an employee puts away a bit. The government takes money from every paycheck and I contribute to every paycheck so that when somebody is out of work, they have a window of time where they have some money to keep their apartment or keep their health care.

00:36:31:00 - 00:37:04:09
Tom Douglas
And that's awesome. And I'm a big believer in that social contract. But the long term social programs, to me, they need to be more interactive and figure out how we can move forward. But when it comes to how businesses in there, that's what I was saying earlier about the whole socialist side of things. Either we all go socialist, we get national health care, we have a national minimum wage like every household gets 25 grand a month or whatever, whatever that number is, and we figure that out.

00:37:04:09 - 00:37:31:13
Tom Douglas
But this whole this whole combination to me is not working super well and when you look at I haven't done enough study on this to maybe accurately tell the story, but when you look at the Nordic countries where the social contract to me is a bit stronger, you know, free tuition, which I'm all for, education should not have to be paid for making sure there's food on the table, maybe basic rent infrastructure.

00:37:31:15 - 00:37:52:23
Tom Douglas
I'm for a lot of these social contracts, but, you know, oil money is paying a bunch of that. Sure. And so and they don't have any salmon either. They're all farmed. Yeah. So they've they've made some of their own screw ups. So but getting more towards that, what they call a democratic social kind of situation, I'm all for that.

00:37:53:01 - 00:38:13:19
Tom Douglas
But you can't have it both ways. And so from a business standpoint, you ask the directly to the question, business needs to get involved. It makes me nuts that McDonald's can open all these restaurants, Subway, you name it, and they don't have health care for their team. How is it that you can go up and 25 restaurants and not have health care?

00:38:13:21 - 00:38:42:20
Tom Douglas
At least I know I got big too, but at least we had health care. We had vacation time. We have sick pay. We have a basic minimum wage of 15 or better, which is now 17 and a half or better. We try to accommodate many of those kind of social issues within the way we ran our business. Now, you would never know that talking to our current city council members about me or many people who love to trash me, but because they don't know the reality of of having to run a business.

00:38:42:22 - 00:38:52:11
Tom Douglas
And that is the biggest downfall in our council and our mayor's office is so many of these folks have never run a business.

00:38:52:13 - 00:39:02:06
Mark Titus
One of the things that going back to kind of the safety net, you know, clearly there are people that need that and that that contract is there for a reason. Yeah.

00:39:02:08 - 00:39:04:12
Tom Douglas
Especially Social Security. But another.

00:39:04:12 - 00:39:10:10
Mark Titus
Case. Absolutely. And that's I mean, that's been a bipartisan thing people thought was.

00:39:10:10 - 00:39:10:20
Tom Douglas
Yeah, yeah.

00:39:10:20 - 00:39:39:22
Mark Titus
And you know, from from the Johnson administration and, you know, one of the other points that I think about, you're mentioning like, should people work and should people have some some training like Fair Start does for for instance, it's it's the I know for my own life, like having a sense of pride, having a sense of self, having a sense of identity in the work that you do is so important.

00:39:40:00 - 00:39:57:23
Mark Titus
It's it's beyond just getting a paycheck, paying the rent, you know, keeping the cycle going. I think as a as a human being, finding some purpose in that. Have you seen that with with people in your team and certainly some of these other efforts that that you've supported over the years?

00:39:58:01 - 00:40:25:09
Tom Douglas
Well, certainly, and I, I don't necessarily I don't necessarily not see it in other places where people aren't happy. I think, you know, we've got a lot of mental health issues. There's a lot of areas where people just aren't able to work. And I get it that I'm actually okay with that. And that's but I do think if you if people can find the right match for themselves where that that pride of their effort comes through, I think it's awesome.

00:40:25:11 - 00:40:45:05
Tom Douglas
And I see it every day in my team. You know, we have a motto in our company called Get Up and Show Up, and that is don't just come to work, show up, bring everything you got to work and I'll try to do the best in return. And the other thing that we talk about in our company, which is not everyone can be a boss.

00:40:45:07 - 00:41:04:13
Tom Douglas
You know, it's funny, some people have the wherewithal, some people have the attention span, some people have the want to do other things. Other people just want to go do their job right. And you have to be respectful of that. And we need both. It's just like not everyone needs to go to college. Some people need to go to a trade school, trade school.

00:41:04:13 - 00:41:22:00
Tom Douglas
Right. And, you know, that's what we're desperately short on right now. I didn't go to college. I didn't want to go. And frankly, you don't have to go to college. My daughter did. She was she desperately wanted to go. And then she went to law school afterwards. And she loves it. And she's a smart kid. But we're very different people.

00:41:22:00 - 00:41:29:04
Tom Douglas
We approach work in very different ways, and she's much more cerebral than I ever was. I'm more brawn.

00:41:29:06 - 00:41:54:21
Mark Titus
Well, I have the same story. I left school early to start acting, to start a career in the arts and, you know, quickly realized that was going to take some supplement to keep that thing going. Yeah but I think this is a wonderful segway into I know it's tough out there across every sector trying to bring people into the workforce.

00:41:54:23 - 00:42:11:02
Mark Titus
But in specifically in your channel here, what advice do you have for young, nascent chefs or entrepreneurs that that want to or are considering getting into or perpetuating this industry in the restaurant industry?

00:42:11:02 - 00:42:32:21
Tom Douglas
I would say for more immediate success, hook up with a mentor, you know, be willing to put six months in with a mentor and understand the lay of the line and you'll have much more success, much more quickly. The mentorship is something I try to do when people ask if they can have an hour of my time to talk about the business or this or that always.

00:42:32:21 - 00:42:51:04
Tom Douglas
I mean, if I can do it, I do it. Yeah, It's just it's an important thing to me. So to me, you know, get off your butt, get out there and just try and, you know, look for some mentorship in areas that are interesting to you. Of course, we could love to have anyone come into our industry that that has any interest in that.

00:42:51:04 - 00:43:10:21
Tom Douglas
And, you know, it's surprising how little training you have to have in order to get on the job and then get on the job training. You just have to have some patience that you're going to maybe not make as much as you want for a little while, but it's going to pay off in the end. The other thing I wanted to say is probably goes back to your last question beforehand.

00:43:10:23 - 00:43:33:20
Tom Douglas
I am sick to death. Are you ready for this? I'm ready, man laid off. I don't have too many opinions. No, no. I am sick to death of my wealthier friends. Sometimes not all of them, but many who consistently want to blame the unemployment system for the lack of workers out there. Right. I am sick to death of of one percenters telling me, they're just lazy.

00:43:33:20 - 00:43:56:02
Tom Douglas
They don't want to. They don't want a job, they're getting too much in unemployment, blah, blah, blah. You know, that's why there's nobody out there to work. It's nonsense. It's absolute nonsense. I don't care what part of your life or what generation. There's going to be freeloaders, right? It just happens. You know what? Turns out there's some 1% freeloaders, too, that are putting their money offshore, not paying any taxes and hiding it illegally, turns out.

00:43:56:03 - 00:44:19:15
Tom Douglas
Yeah. Yeah. And so they always want to kind of just blame everybody else. And not look at their own people in their own system of the tax system the way it is. Right. And so I firmly don't believe that our our unemployment crisis right now or lack of workers has got anything to do with things that we didn't know were going to happen, like the baby boomers are retiring.

00:44:19:15 - 00:44:47:21
Tom Douglas
Yeah, yeah, we have no truck drivers because a lot of those people were older and they took this opportunity to retire. Our government is insisting on no immigration that virtually those people used to be the people who did the work in our kitchens. Right. And and did a lot of work around gardening and all sorts of things as they assimilated into our into our life and became lawyers and doctors themselves and their children, that we have put up so many barriers, all these people, there's no child care.

00:44:47:21 - 00:45:06:00
Tom Douglas
So a lot of the people, 60% of the people that used to work for me were women. Not that women are the only ones that can do childcare, but traditionally that's where they've gotten shoved sometimes, and it's not worth it right now to get a job and try and pay 100% child care, you're better off staying home with your kid.

00:45:06:02 - 00:45:19:16
Tom Douglas
So there's a lot of places where these people are that are not just sitting on unemployment, collecting free checks, and I'm sick of it, sick of that connotation around the lack of workers in our world. So it is nonsense.

00:45:19:18 - 00:45:37:18
Mark Titus
You're talking about one percenters in the working class. And I think it's a great segue into this and this is, of course, just a massive topic. I have I have some ideas about this, but I'm just interested personally in what your ideas about this. We are so divided and polarized in this country.

00:45:37:20 - 00:45:40:11
Tom Douglas
Are we.

00:45:40:13 - 00:45:54:13
Mark Titus
Good? Good. More on that. Despite our political and social differences if we have them. From your point of view, where do we begin healing these perceived wounds?

00:45:54:13 - 00:46:24:03
Tom Douglas
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think that the the division is certainly loudest on both ends, on both, you know, left and right strikes are super loud divisions. But I would still guess that there's 60% of us that aren't divided one bit, which is in an election, a 60% would be considered a landslide. And so I do think that it is somewhat overwrought.

00:46:24:05 - 00:46:50:00
Tom Douglas
Now, the ones that are on the outside fringes are very loud. I, I was in Arizona a couple of weeks ago. I got out of my car, which was my friend's car happened to have Washington license plates. And I heard this screech come to a stop and this guy yells through his window, Go back to your sissy blank, blank effing state of Washington, you F-ing just.

00:46:50:00 - 00:47:06:06
Tom Douglas
And it's like and you know, I didn't even know, like, how did he know I was from Washington? And my license plate said that and he was just on me, like, fly on. Wow. And, you know, it turns out what it was happening was there's a sign on the Walgreen's door. My luggage got lost. I need to go buy some sundries.

00:47:06:08 - 00:47:38:03
Tom Douglas
It says wear a mask, if you would. It didn't say you have to wear them. So I started putting my mask on. That's what set him off. And so there's going to be that situation out there. Do I think that he's 50 of the population? No. What has been very interesting to me is the personally is in the last four years or so to learn about the undercurrent in our in our country and the put upon nature of many people that I just didn't know about.

00:47:38:05 - 00:48:10:15
Tom Douglas
And I think it's the great ignorance on my part. I just was unaware. I live in the you know, in Seattle, we live in this bubble of democracy. But, you know, I see it just walking, driving over the Cascades into the red side of our state. I mean, I should have known more about it. And not that I'm saying every red voter is at all crazy, crazy rightist, but I'm just saying I should have recognized and thought more about the divide and what is what's really bugging people.

00:48:10:17 - 00:48:35:02
Mark Titus
There was a really good SNL skit recently. If it was last week, I think they had this game but identify the Republican and they'd bring out these these topics. And and of course, all of them are like, that sounds exactly like me. That your to your point, like, I think that it's really true. There are people that just want those basic things.

00:48:35:02 - 00:49:04:23
Mark Titus
They want their kids to do better than they did. They want to have a dependable food system. They want to have dependable work. They want to, you know, not not live in poverty. You know, clearly these basic human human elements and maybe maybe this is a pie in the sky, as you say, kind of idea. But to me, the things that got done with most expediency were around my grandparents table.

00:49:05:01 - 00:49:29:14
Mark Titus
When we would sit around. And some of the fondest memories I have, of course, eating my grandma's cooking, which was a big part of that, but people disarming and laying their weapons down and sitting around a table and eating together and realizing that we share the human experience together, clearly that has not been possible really in the last two years.

00:49:29:16 - 00:49:46:01
Mark Titus
But do you see some kind of manifestation of that going forward there? Is there a way that we can physically experience each other and lay down that armor for a minute and kind of reengage with our humanity? Yeah.

00:49:46:02 - 00:50:31:03
Tom Douglas
I don't think so. I think in that particular way, I think the whole shout down atmosphere and the leftists, you know, is just as guilty as the right. I'm sure the shout down atmosphere makes some of those things impossible. I think maybe, maybe through Talk podcast, maybe through this in that individual sit downs. I was Chinese restaurant last night on Queen and this one guy just went off on Biden you know being like stealing all the money from Ukraine and being bought off and that Trump was so much better and it's just you going like really you don't think you don't think Trump did anything wrong.

00:50:31:03 - 00:50:57:23
Tom Douglas
And he was like, he was a Trump fan, which is fine, But he had some issues, I'm sure. Mr. Biden I'm not the biggest Biden fan. I did vote for him because to me he was the better of the two. But he certainly has had issues. He's a he's a consummate politician, never worked a real job in his life that I could tell he's from my home state of Delaware.

00:50:57:23 - 00:51:18:12
Tom Douglas
Right. So I should be the big fan. I'm not the biggest Biden fan. But did he have less issues than his opponent? I felt so. I don't know that you can get those those far left in the far right. Again, I think you can get the the 60% together and have a grand old time and get something done and talk politics.

00:51:18:12 - 00:51:22:08
Tom Douglas
And how do we fix this then? And but boy, the fringes are tough.

00:51:22:11 - 00:51:24:10
Mark Titus
The fringes are tough. Yeah. On both sides.

00:51:24:10 - 00:51:28:05
Tom Douglas
And maybe that's been the way it always is, which is we're more aware of the fringes now.

00:51:28:05 - 00:51:35:07
Mark Titus
So I dream of a long table and bringing people down together and, you know.

00:51:35:09 - 00:51:44:21
Tom Douglas
I'm happy to cook. I'm telling you, it's like, I would love to see that happen. But I think you have to start at the center and kind of work out. I think you're right. Yeah.

00:51:44:22 - 00:52:05:20
Mark Titus
Well, moving on. We're going to start winning this sucker down here. This has been a great conversation. Tom, What are your bucket list items? You've worked your butt off for many years now. And what what what are some of the things you want to do and some of the things you want to you pass along? What are some of the what does the future look like for the work that you want to do?

00:52:05:22 - 00:52:37:14
Tom Douglas
Boy, you know, I've done everything I've ever wanted to do, honestly. So I don't I don't I've worked super hard and I've lived the grandest lifestyle that I could imagine. I would think the things that for me that are still on the list are things that I don't know about yet. You know, I think the things for me is, you know, when I was a young father, you know, I just wanted my kid to think I was a good guy when I was six years old and she was 30 years old.

00:52:37:16 - 00:53:00:06
Tom Douglas
I think she thinks that. So I feel very successful. I wanted to have a successful family life. You know, marriage is hard start as hard as farming, but it's hard. And so I can't tell you how much I love and appreciate my wife for hanging with me for 38 years through all this craziness of running 20 businesses. And, you know, she's run them, too.

00:53:00:06 - 00:53:17:19
Tom Douglas
So I don't have a bucket list. I think they're nonsense. Honestly. I think there's something that if if it's on your list, go do it. And if it's out of your range, then it shouldn't be on your list because that's just frustrating. Just just get up and do stuff.

00:53:17:21 - 00:53:36:14
Mark Titus
I love the answer of something I haven't thought of yet. Yeah, that is something I've been pondering a lot lately, is the inherent nature of change in life. And the sooner you come to embrace that, that things will change. Things die, they grow, they are reborn. It's a beautiful thing. And their end, it gives a lot of hope.

00:53:36:14 - 00:53:39:22
Mark Titus
Like there's there's, there's stuff down the road to be excited about.

00:53:39:22 - 00:53:49:23
Tom Douglas
Well, did you know the pandemic was coming? Do have you has everything that's come out of the pandemic been a terrible thing for, you know, have you learned more about yourself?

00:53:50:01 - 00:53:50:18
Mark Titus
infinitely. Right.

00:53:50:19 - 00:54:16:20
Tom Douglas
And your wife? Yeah, absolutely. Love watching my kid deal with it. It's fascinating. Yeah. Watching my family, my sisters dealing with it. Some of them are in health care, first responder types. It's amazing what's going on. And so not that I would wouldn't want to trade everyone that's been harmed by it, but at the same time, these are this are life issues and we've got to deal with it and let's move forward.

00:54:16:20 - 00:54:19:17
Tom Douglas
I'm definitely a fan of moving forward MeToo.

00:54:19:19 - 00:54:25:23
Mark Titus
Well, we have reached the bonus round and everybody goes through this little crucible here.

00:54:25:23 - 00:54:28:16
Tom Douglas
I don't know. I'm part of the group here. What do you mean? Everyone Who's.

00:54:28:16 - 00:54:30:04
Mark Titus
Everybody? All the guests on the show?

00:54:30:10 - 00:54:36:12
Tom Douglas
I didn't know your number. 33. well, see, it's a good I think I was number 20, and then we had to redo it.

00:54:36:12 - 00:54:39:15
Mark Titus
We did? That's right. We had a technical side.

00:54:39:16 - 00:54:40:11
Tom Douglas
We have a producer.

00:54:40:11 - 00:55:01:08
Mark Titus
Yes, exactly. Thank you, Patrick. We had a we had some technical mishaps. Now, this is particularly germane our region right now, but we're going to pretend that your house were in the path of a flooding river and you could only extract one physical thing from the house with the time you had. What would that physical thing be?

00:55:01:10 - 00:55:05:03
Tom Douglas
Probably my Chevy Tahoe.

00:55:05:05 - 00:55:10:00
Mark Titus
It's a large one. That's my lifeline. Yeah, that's my lifeline. It's funny, though.

00:55:10:00 - 00:55:35:15
Tom Douglas
What would it be? I know what you're asking. I don't have anything. You know, I am a move forward person, and I. Well, I appreciate the all the beautiful photographs and everything that I have and my award and, you know, the the hopefully, you know, the timeline of my life that's up on my office wall or whatever. And none of that stuff is important to me.

00:55:35:15 - 00:55:44:05
Tom Douglas
So if there was anything, anyone physically my house, whoever it was, I would get them out Perfect.

00:55:44:07 - 00:56:05:09
Mark Titus
And yeah, I know your whereabouts. When I see the Chevy Tahoe and I saw your pan and my hat and there's time he's parked out front. All right, so let's now call it your spiritual house. More about, like, metaphysical. What makes you you if you could take two traits about yourself just because you could only grab two in that time, what would those two traits be?

00:56:05:11 - 00:56:28:14
Tom Douglas
Well, I don't know that I have two good traits. I would say that the traits that that I am most proud of is my effort. I try to get up every day and not let one person out effort me. They might be a better cook, they might be a much better artist. You know, I write a bit, so I might be a better writer, whatever, but nobody's going to work harder at it than I will.

00:56:28:16 - 00:56:52:14
Tom Douglas
And that's something I try to do everyday. Get up and show up. Another trait would be that I'm a fair person. Yeah, I try to give everyone a fair shot and if you get the hardest thing in the world to do is get fired by my company because I just I want to bend over backwards to make sure that we've given you every opportunity to succeed.

00:56:52:16 - 00:57:11:18
Tom Douglas
And it's why we say things like, you know, you hear the terms like secret shopper, you know, which is like a term for when you send somebody undercover into your restaurant to see how things are going. So we call it shopping for success. I want to I don't want to bring anybody down I want to build them up and I want them to be the happiest people they can be for the rest of their life.

00:57:11:20 - 00:57:17:05
Tom Douglas
And that's sometimes that's difficult. Some people just don't want to be happy. It turns.

00:57:17:07 - 00:57:22:22
Mark Titus
Yeah, I've seen that guiding light. It's like it's a very small percentage, but they're just some folks are just down to determined.

00:57:23:04 - 00:57:42:16
Tom Douglas
And, you know, we my friend Pamela kind of said I watched her fire somebody one time because it was the hardest thing for me to do. And she just put her arm around them and she said, you know, there's got to be a better match for you out there. Let's think of some things that really you want out of your life and you want to see that and the guys getting fired.

00:57:42:18 - 00:57:49:15
Tom Douglas
But she put it in a way that was so positive and so reassuring that I just love that.

00:57:49:17 - 00:57:57:13
Mark Titus
Pamela is awesome. Yeah. Is there lastly, is there anything you'd leave behind in the flood to get swept away, purified.

00:57:57:15 - 00:58:18:12
Tom Douglas
Removed from Obviously outside of my family, they can have it all, let it burn and maybe I would feel differently if it burned. But you know, my house burned when I was a kid. We had to move out. My brother set it on fire doing something stupid, but home cleaning bottle caps next to the furnace would with, you know, acetone or something.

00:58:18:12 - 00:58:19:15
Mark Titus
my God.

00:58:19:17 - 00:58:30:21
Tom Douglas
Anyway, let's move forward. You know, let's. Let's fix the world's problems. I can't do that with my past. I can only do that with my future. So let's fix the world's problems.

00:58:30:23 - 00:58:43:12
Mark Titus
I'm with you. All right? If folks want to get involved with the work that you're doing, if folks, God willing, want to come and work for your team, how do they get involved and how do they follow? Where do they go to follow you?

00:58:43:12 - 00:59:00:03
Tom Douglas
Yeah, they can just go to Tom Douglas dot com. We have an employment section from that perspective. If they want to come do one of our grilling for good events where we take money, we buy all the product and then we sell it to you at double the price and then all that money goes to the food bank or the Ballard Food Bank or something like that.

00:59:00:03 - 00:59:18:18
Tom Douglas
Let's just keep an eye on our website for for situations like that. And if you ever want to just come hang out, the best thing to do with me hanging out and if you want to get to know me more or vice versa, take a class that I teach because that is two or 3 hours of direct time that we can we can hang up.

00:59:19:00 - 00:59:19:23
Mark Titus
And they're super fun.

00:59:20:00 - 00:59:29:17
Tom Douglas
Yeah, so much more difficult for me to walk through a dining room with one of my restaurants and like, sit down for an hour. But in the class situation, I can have that interaction. It's much more fun.

00:59:29:18 - 00:59:38:05
Mark Titus
Tom Douglas, James Beard, award winning chef, restaurateur, good friend, mentor. Thank you, sir, for being here today. And we'll see you down the trail.

00:59:38:07 - 00:59:41:13
Tom Douglas
Absolutely. Good luck on your efficient.

00:59:41:15 - 00:59:49:05
Music
How do you save what you love?
How do you save what you love?

00:59:56:14 - 01:00:22:12
Mark Titus
Thank you for listening to Save What You Love. If you like what you're hearing, you can help keep these conversations coming your way by giving us a rating on Apple Podcasts. You can check out photos and links from this episode at evaswild.com. While there, you can join our growing community by subscribing to our newsletter, you'll get exclusive offers on wild salmon shipped to your door and notifications about upcoming guests and more great content on the way.

01:00:22:14 - 01:00:59:16
Mark Titus
That's at evaswild.com. That's the word Save spelled backwards Wild dot com. This episode was produced by Tyler White and edited by Patrick Troll. Original music was created by Whiskey Class. This podcast is a collaboration between Ava's Wild Stories and Salmon Nation and was recorded on the homelands of the Duwamish. People. We'd like to recognize these lands and waters and their significance for the people who lived and continued to live in this region whose practices and spiritualities were and are tied to the land in the water, and whose lives continue to enrich and develop in relationship to the land waters and other inhabitants today.