Jon Nelson - Jon’s Naturals, Lincoln’s Pub
MARCH 22, 2020 © Right Here, Right Now.
Gosh, it’s been hard, it’s kind of been a double hit with Jon’s Naturals our meat distribution business. We started out that last week before all of this went down with close to forty deliveries and by the end of the day we’re down to one. They all canceled so it left us scrambling at the warehouse in McClelland and here it’s kind of the same thing, it all just came pretty quick and we had to kind of react on the fly. Luckily I think that's what restauranteurs are good at doing, is kind of changing on the fly, and reacting to situations. there’s a lot of moving parts it seems like in this industry and business that we are able to be pretty versatile and react pretty quick to change and I think we all just kind of switched gears and realized we had to do delivery and take out and kind of make another way for us to get our food to customers and I think we’ve all kind of had to learn that game. We’re just kind of working through it, trying to keep our staff employed as much as possible and keep everybody busy and still give people good food.
We have about thirty here between two restaurants Jeffersons and Lincolns and about three or four out in McClelland, butcher and a couple of delivery drivers. We cut back some of our part-time people, we tried to keep our full-time people full time and kind of lean on them and then kind of supplement where we needed to.
Josh - I know having to cut back employees is a tough decision to have to make as a business owner, how have you been feeling, even aside from the restaurant?
I’m doing good…I try not to think too far out in advance and trying to compartmentalize different issues that come about during the day. Trying to not look at it too big picture and just try and handle each challenge daily as they come. I think that’s the best way I’ve been handling stress and anxiety, just kind of work through each situation as they come and do the best you can. But other than that I feel pretty thankful for everything, business and life and family, I have two little boys who are six and seven years old and they’re just the happiest little dudes on the planet so that just puts everything in perspective and makes it easy. It’s tough to have a bad day when you wake up in the morning next to those guys so that’s pretty cool.
Josh - Has this allowed you to have more time at home? I mean it seems like you’ve been staying pretty busy…
Yeah, definitely, we’re still staying busy but the kids are out of school so they run along with me on deliveries I might have, or they’re down here playing video games or eating cheesy bread or drinking chocolate milk so yeah, we have definitely increased our bonding time. We’ve tried to do the whole school thing and teach them a little bit as well, but they like hanging out with dad and think they’re on a big vacation.
Josh - What’s it like being a father during this time?
Yeah, you try an insulate them I guess as much as you can. They know the words coronavirus and they hear it, and I don’t know if they grasp what it is but they just know that some businesses are closing and they ask some questions like are we still going to be open, can we sell food and make food for people, they kind of ask the general questions but I kind of try and talk them through the questions and try not to freak them out too much.
Josh - Have you ever gone through situations like this before?
No, it's like what I was saying earlier, you know, you’re always presented with these little challenges or these little hurtles whether it’s dealing with customers or banks or landlords or geez there’s always something breaking or you’re always fixing something, so you’re used to kind of reacting or changing but nothing quite like this. Luckily we were able to adapt well, we started delivery at Lincoln’s like about two weeks before this went down so we kind of has that infrastructure in place with the delivery driver. The meat shop out in McClelland is ninety percent wholesale so most of our business is wholesale. We do some retail and online ordering and meat boxes and stuff, we just kind of switched gears with distribution since those orders weren’t coming into the more retail-oriented. I know the grocery stores were short on proteins and products and stuff so we kind of started marketing towards ground beef and burgers and chops, just trying to get food in front of people that way. So retail has kind of spiked, so we’re keeping the butcher busy out in McClelland and doing meat steaks and jerky and all that good stuff.
Josh - How long have you had Jon’s Naturals?
So that was 2014, so 6 years and before that I had Cellar 19 which was a little sandwich shop and deli and that was for 8 years and sold that in 2013. I was just looking for a way to find locally sourced protein from the midwest that wasn’t coming from the east coast, west coast and incurring all those environmental costs and freight costs and trying to do a more local path so that’s kind of where the idea came from to do Jon’s Naturals. So yeah, we started that in 2014 with just a little meat counter, butcher shop. Found some local farms, learned how to make sausage off of Youtube, and did some training with some butcher stuff. Just started small and then kind of switched gears into wholesale over the course of the next 6 to 8 months and then kind of developed relationships with these chefs. You know we got into one or two restaurants and one of them would go to start one of their restaurants after working at a place or maybe go into a different restaurant to work in and that kind of traveled word of mouth and the chef community in Omaha and restaurant community is pretty tight-knit and everybody knows each other so if you have good customer service and good product I think you’ll be around a while so that’s kind of how we made our name.
I definitely think people have come together. you’ve seen with the Dandelion thing we did yesterday, it just felt great to get out and cook some food and see some chefs that are cooking. It wasn’t making anybody money and sometimes we get caught up in making the money instead of the love of food and feeding people and being a member of our community so I think that is good to be able to capture that and to see that instead of always hustling and scrambling trying to look at the bottom line.
We have definitely learned some new things for sure. You do have a second to go big picture when your doors aren’t open and you really kind of can look at all aspects of your business where you’re profitable, where you are not. Maybe if it makes more sense to do more delivery and carry out with lower costs here or there, it does make you look at that. We definitely will reevaluate. We have some great ideas. Ryan, we kind of came up with a kind of a signature cocktail list that maybe we can bottle, it doesn’t have all the booze in it, but it has all of Ryan’s signature fruit and drinks on there and then you just add booze to it when you get home and I think that could be a little offshoot of our business and maybe a new business that has sprung from some of this. So yeah, just trying to be creative and I think that's what's good about our industry and the restaurant people we work with, is everybody is super creative from people that come out like you that we’ve known and met over the past few years and seeing all of the awesome work that everyone does is really inspiring and that creativity helps as well because your mind is always thinking and so you’re always thinking of something different or a way to tweak something so it’s kind of fun to handle new challenges.
Being a good person is the most important thing. I think I’m a pretty good judge of character and I think you can tell somebody’s character pretty quickly. I feel like just by meeting somebody just by their demeanor and their mannerisms I think you can tell if somebody a good person within the first couple of minutes of meeting somebody and I think it’s important to understand that and really just be a good person and I think the rest kind of falls into place. But life’s hard, business is hard, life’s hard, everybody deals with kind of a lot of the same struggles and you never know what somebody else is dealing with personally, professionally so it’s always a great idea to look at it at face value and treat everybody with respect and how you would want to be treated. I think I see that in them. For sure I see that compassion, I see that creativity. Their both so different, one’s just sensitive and organized and ones just this squirrelly little kid who just wants to roll around in the mud and get dirty but they’re both just so compassionate and you can see that, and that’s what makes you think that they’re going to be good people and all the kids growing up are good kids so yeah, that’s pretty much it.
Man, it’s been 16 months, year and a half, a little less than a year and a half, it’s been a rollercoaster. Somebody was saying you know, there are some competitors out there that say “Aw man, I don’t think they’re going to make it you know, you’re struggling”. And gosh, if there’s not somebody out there that thinks you’re not gonna make it, I don’t think they know what they’re talking about cause these restaurant businesses are hard, especially the first couple of years, it’s a dog fight, you’ve got to be kind of in the trenches kind of just working, keep your head down, keep going every day cause you never know…the costs are coming, the expenses are coming, the labor is there, you just kind of have to keep focused and keep your blinders on and then work towards it. And you know that next month you now the rent seems to come a bit later and the payroll and it starts to stretch out a little bit and you can kind of get a foothold. But it takes a couple of years, two, three years at least before you can kind of feel good about where you're at. And we’re still in those early stages and when you have something thrown on top of it like this it totally throws a wrench into everything. So you reevaluate, you kind of work as a team, try and stick together and make the best decisions for your family, your friends, your employees, and your customers and see on ground.
It’s a labor of love for sure. I mean when I had Cellar 19 and then after I sold it I said: “No way, I’ll never start another restaurant ever again”. I started the distribution business and it's efficient, there are not many moving parts and you get to go into restaurants and drop off the product at the backdoor then leave, walk out and you’re done. It’s really exciting, it’s nice to do that. But then this space, Dixie Quicks, opened up and me and Ryan looked at it and gosh it was such a beautiful space and I was lured by the beautifulness of the space. There were tables and chairs and kitchen equipment and they were like “ Look you just turn the lights on and it will be this perfect little restaurant”. And then a month in you’re like (pounds the table) “Why”?! (Laughs)
