Joe Rogan Experience #1583 - John Terzian & Craig Susser

(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays)

What up? What up, my brother? Uh, so gentlemen, why don't we, let's start, just introduce yourself. John, introduce yourself. Tell people what you do.

I'm John Terzian. I own a company called H. Wood Group. So we have restaurants, nightclubs, Delilah, Nice Guy, Bootsy Bellows are some of them.

And Craig?

Uh, I'm Craig Susser. My God, I feel like such a slacker compared to that.

Yeah? You should.

Uh, I own a place called Craig's Restaurant-

(laughs)

... and, uh, and a, uh, a vegan ice cream company called Craig's Vegan, which-

A place called Craig's. Very modest. It's one of the best restaurants in LA.

Yeah. Thank you.

Very, uh, highly respected place.

Yep.

And we- we're here to talk about what the fuck is happening to the restaurant industry during this pandemic and how crazy it is. Um, you know, I- I, I've talked about this before but having you guys on, so you could say firsthand what it's been like to you, and what this experience has been like, and, uh, how poorly it's been handled. Just, I wanna give people a sense of this at home, what it's like from two men who have made their living in the hospitality and restaurant industry.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you wanna start, Craig?

Well, no. It, it... The funny thing is, it's like w- we're the rule-followers.

Yeah.

We're the ones that are used to handling the health department. We're the ones that are used to, uh, you know, doing everything that, uh, you know, from a safety standpoint. Right? And now, we're the ones that are being crushed or being picked on, so to speak, by... But that's the way a lot of people in the industry feel, because we're the ones that are being shut down in a city, um, where a lot of other businesses are remaining open, like malls, distribution centers, markets.

Stores.

I mean, you, you can go to a mall and go shopping. You can go on an airplane from LA to, you know, New York, take your mask off, and eat, and that's okay. But you can't eat outdoors in a restaurant in LA that's following social distancing, all the health guidelines. I mean, we know our business. And so, it's been really hard since, what, it started March 15th. We-

Yep.

... we shut down. Um, we were then told to put glass in between our, our booths, so we did that. We opened for about 10 days. Um, we did UV lights in the, in the, in the air-conditioning systems.

Air filtration, all the stup- uh, everything.

Absolutely. And then we built patios. Um, I've personally spent $250,000 abiding by the rules that were set forth by the state, by the county, by the governors, by, by everybody. And, and then to just kind of be shut down is really, really difficult. And it's not about me, and it's not about my restaurant, and it's not about John. It's not about... It's about the employees. It's about the dishwashers, and the busboys, and the servers that live day to day on the money that they make at the restaurant. It's their livelihood. It's how they feed their families. They send money back to the countries that they came from, you know? Th- this is a larger issue. And, and the reason it's a larger issue is, one little restaurant like Craig's, we have 90 employees. A furniture store might have five or six. So when you shut down an industry like that, it really has a huge economic impact. And then it has a social impact, because we all love to eat. It's the one thing we have in common.