One of the most successful and influential business leaders, restauranteurs, entrepreneurs and female mentors in San Antonio discusses a myriad of topics. From Fiesta to the very tough economics of COVID-19, we get into it.

Transcript:

Justin: Hello and Bienvenidos San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonio and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

Okay, welcome to the Alamo Hour, today's guest is Jody Newman. Jody is the chief friend of The Friendly Spot. Soon enough to be hopefully Two Friendly Spots. She mentors small businesses through Cafe Commerce. She was the first-ever Queen Anchovy, which is how we met and became great friends to this day, a random Fiesta event, which is one of the reasons I love San Antonio, honestly, is Fiestas. This weird thing where you make lifelong friends. That's where we met.

Jody: It happened.

Justin: We asked Jody on here today. We're going to talk about small business, small business mentorship, and honestly, what's going on today, the biggest thing, the gorilla in the room, the elephant in the room is Coronavirus and how small businesses have been affected. Thank you for being here.

Jody: Thanks for having me, Justin. I'm happy to be here.

Justin: All right, so we're going to start with one of my start with everybody, with a little bit of just random background about you. Do you have any pets?

Jody: I do not have any pets.

Justin: Do you have human pets?

Jody: Yes. I have two wonderful kids. I have a 14-year-old son named Wilson who is a freshman at Holy Cross on the Westside, and then I have a daughter named Simone who is in the fourth grade.

Justin: Okay, what is your favorite place to eat in town right now? I know there's a million, but right now what is it?

Jody: My super favorite place to hang out without a shadow of a doubt is The Dakota East Side Ice House on Hackberry and if you have not had their pork casserole, you have not lived.

Justin: All right. I've seen you and Steve post from there quite a bit.

Jody: It's so good.

Justin: I still haven't been there. I've got to.

Jody: You got to. You have to.

Justin: Another thing. Everybody's got this weird hidden gem thing in San Antonio. When you tell people, "Okay, you visit San Antonio, but to be a PhD tourist, you've got to go to this or do this thing." What is your hidden gem?

Jody: For you to experience San Antonio fully, I think you must go to the Esquire Tavern.

Justin: For me, it's the Downstairs.

Jody: Yes. For sure.

Justin: Such a great hidden gem. Okay, we're going to get into this more in a second, but you're very involved outside of your job, which everybody in town knows what The Friendly Spot is unless they've lived under a rock. What are some of your biggest involvement outside projects?

Jody: Interestingly enough, several years ago I was spread so thin. I had The Friendly Spot Ice House. I had interests in other ice houses. I joke that when I see an ice house, the more dilapidated it is, the more I want it. I'm super into ice houses. I started spreading myself thin and several years ago my husband said, "Pick a lane sweetie." I decided to choose Launch SA, which is San Antonio's small business incubator. We also have the first culinary accelerator in the country called Break Fast & Launch. I sit on the advisory board. I'm also a mentor at Launch SA. Oddly enough, I think it's been the greatest school of my life as well.

A lot of my weekly, monthly, yearly efforts goes to Launch SA. I'm also active in Fiesta Cornyation, which I was the invented royalty and several years ago, the queen anchovy.

Justin: What year was that?

Jody: I believe it's 2014. [laughs]

Justin: I was trying to remember. I couldn't remember.

Jody: I was the Queen Anchovy One. Then I'm also active in a relatively new movement happening down in my neighborhood called Southtown The Arts District, applying for cultural district status and just supporting the creatives and creative sustainability in Southtown. Those are my passions but certainly, Launch SA is my gem.

Justin: Okay, I assume if I talk to you in a year from now, you're going to have a new list probably.

Jody: I hope not. I'm hoping that I'm old enough to actually start committing. [laughs]

Justin: All right, and Launch SA is business mentorship, is that correct?

Jody: That's correct. It's essentially the 311 for small business in San Antonio.

Justin: Any odd hobbies?

Jody: A lot of people would really laugh, but I actually have a butterfly garden. I'm super into butterflies and chrysalis and caterpillars and all of that. I also am well known for cruising my cruiser bikes around Southtown, either with my husband, my mother or my children.

Justin: How are the milkweed doing?

Jody: They're doing really great. We have 11 caterpillars currently today from a monarch that I knew was pretty much producing. [laughs]

Justin: We went over those on New Year's. Was it New Year's, we looked at those?

Jody: Yes.

Justin: Okay, next question. What is the one thing you think San Antonio needs that it doesn't have? That's a very broad question, but it's left up to you

Jody: To tell you the truth right now, as funny as it sounds, I think that San Antonio has a slower pace. A lot of people would say we need a faster pace, but I think we're actually on a sustainable pace for the exception of one thing. I think we need improved mass transit and we need it immediately.

Justin: Perfect, yes. When I was younger I had a mullet, so what was that terrible trend you followed when you were younger?

Jody: I have an Oakland Mills picture-- My senior picture at Oakland Mills with this pose that I was in. I always had a bob. I was always the tallest girl but in that photo, I know it's hard to believe, but I was wearing orange and had gold earrings on, big hoop gold earrings.

Justin: Can we get a copy?

Jody: No, no, no. I have it. I'll send it to you. It's hilarious.

Justin: I'm going to hold you to that. What year did you move to San Antonio?

Jody: I started living in San Antonio full time in 2002.

Justin: You've been here a while?

Jody: Yes.

Justin: Okay, I know your favorite fiesta event is Cornyation, so what is your second favorite?

Jody: Actually, one of my most favorite fiesta events is the King William Fair. I've been the volunteer to put the kids float together for years because my kids have always been in it. I also love the Southwest School of Arts and Crafts arts fair. It's pretty fabulous.

Justin: That's where we met.

Jody: Yes.

Justin: All right, and finally, what do you think will be the best thing about having a November fiesta?

Jody: Interestingly enough, I always think about beer when it comes to that stuff, so I've recently found out from one of my fabulous distributors, Ralph Good, who is my glacious dude that Fiesta and the Wurstfest are the same week. Fiesta is one of those things where, if you do it right, you don't remember. Listen, November Fiesta, first of all, big shout out to the Fiesta Commission and Ron Nirenberg for their leadership and not canceling Fiesta, but postponing it because it's saved thousands and thousands of local vendors from significant financial hardship. I feel like that was such a great decision.

Justin: No. I agree with you.

Jody: Also my fiesta this year, my metal is good and I want to be able to use it.

Justin: You mean now you get to use it because it will make it here in time?

Jody: [laughs] Yes.

Justin: Because that's what my big concern was.

Jody: Yes. That's right, for sure.

Justin: Okay, let's get to it. I want to talk to you about-- Let me tell you the way I feel about what's going on, is that I am insulated because I am in a job and a career that is not going to have as much of a negative effect as so many other jobs are. I'm sure we are going to feel it. I'm sure we're going to have a problem as well. As we sit here right now recording this-- Who knows by the time it airs, what's going on, but as we record this, the hospitality industry and the entertainment industry are really the only in San Antonio that have been really locked down. Fair?

Jody: That's right.

Justin: I see things online and we're going to go over those. Like bare necessity and Culinaria and all these to-go menus and all of those, and they feel good to try, but they also feel like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. What is your advice? Let's start with the people that their jobs have been lost because of this. What advice do you have? As a small business mentor, what kind of guidance can you give for people?

Jody: Sure. Over the past 72 hours, I've had the pleasure of speaking to almost a hundred of our food and beverage operators at all different levels. What I will say first of all is that there's nothing fair about this. These are people who are in one of the riskiest industries of all time anyway and a lot of them have made it. If left to continue doing what they were doing, some would succeed and some would fail.

For some people, this is really speeding up the failure and really the personal financial ruin of their life. To those people, there's really not much you can say to them. This is the loss of their investment. Sometimes they cashed out their 401k. Sometimes they use their entire savings. We're talking about true financial ruin. It's also very difficult sometimes to say to those people that there are people that are losing their lives because the statistics that are coming out are that there will be hundreds of personal bankruptcies for every death from the Coronavirus. The fallout from that is significant.

The one thing I would encourage people to do is understand, don't judge. When someone is calling you and they want to vent, listen. Don't tell them what to do because most of these people are successful and they got there. They got there on their own with their own sweat and their own grit and their money. I'm seeing two different directions. One is a direction of preservation, and that is the direction that I have gone.

I've realized that the jobs that I have created and speaking with my employees, they don't want to be unemployed forever. They want their jobs back in 30, 45, 60 days whenever we're allowed to operate. My commitment to them is that I'm going to do every single thing in my power to keep healthy so that when we open we can have a full staff and we can have product to sell. We actually sell physical items, so we have to invest in that.

Justin: Sure.

Jody: Then you are seeing groups like Culinaria, which in my opinion, Culinaria is the most well equipped nonprofit in San Antonio food-related to get the message out there. Culinaria has done a fantastic job. They're not only one of the best event throwers in this town. I know you've been to events thrown by Culinaria but I think that Culinaria, their response to this has been amazing. It's been immediate--

Justin: I'm a little embarrassed. What is Culinaria? I know they're non-nonprofit, but what is their actual mission?

Jody: Culinaria is a lot of the reason why San Antonio's gastronomy is on the map. Culinaria is a nonprofit that tells the story. It tells our stories of how we got there and how we created what are some of San Antonio's greatest treasures. That is their job. They don't toot their horn a lot so that's why a lot of people don't know them but they do assist with food and beverage staff when they go through hard times, when they get ill, they have children that say get cancer. When I saw that Culinaria was heading up a to-go restaurant week and stuff, in my opinion, that was the best option for something to succeed.

Justin: Did that come out of the blue, I should know this, or was that Restaurant Week they just flipped to a to-go menu?

Jody: That's Restaurant Week. They already had the process and the procedures for Restaurant Week and Restaurant Week is extremely popular here in San Antonio. They were speaking with a lot of chefs and a lot of industry insiders and that's how they came up with the To-Go in the curbside.

Justin: Okay, I listened to one of your previous podcasts today with a restaurant industry podcast. [crosstalk]

Jody: Sure, yes.

Justin: One of the things that he highlighted in yours and one thing you highlighted was that you listen to your staff.

Jody: Yes, for sure.

Justin: How are they?

Jody: They're down. They know that they were being safe. They know that we were making decisions to social distance. That we are in an outdoor environment. Frankly, they feel like the world needs a Friendly Spot right now. They're down but they're not out. I just had some great response from my staff that did not want to file for unemployment because they thought it was going to hurt me and Steve.

A lot of our people have been with us a long time. They gave me their feedback and they trust me to do the right thing. What they want is their jobs back. They want to be making the caliber of money that they were making the day we closed.

Justin: To the Friendly Spot, I wonder a little bit, one day you offhand told me which turnover rate was and it was just insane compared to every other industry job. Y'all don't have people that leave y'all. Y'all have people that stick around.

Jody: We really do. To tell you the truth, until the day we closed, we were staffing up for the spring. We had a bar staff position open and a kitchen staff position open. Up until the very end, we were hiring. The people that work for the Friendly Spot are some of the greatest people in the world. Some of them I know very well, socially. Some of them I don't really know anything at all.

We have joked that we have this one staff member that's been with us for over five years but we joke he's in the witness protection program.

Justin: [laughs]

Jody: I think we're going to deal with this as a friendly family but for me, the day that I can get those people back to work that's what I'm fighting for. That's what I'm preparing for.

Justin: Hopefully, we have listeners that have never been to the Friendly Spot because they don't live in San Antonio. Recently you started selling alcohol but until then you were always sort of a beer and wine--

Jody: That's right.

Justin: Really beer for the most part and one of the largest beer sellers in South Texas. Fair?

Jody: Yes, for sure. I will tell you that it took us 10 years to be RateBeer's best place to have a cold beer in the state of Texas.

Justin: Very cool.

Jody: That award came the month that my husband and I got our mixed beverage permit which for people that don't know is that it allows us to have liquor. We joked like, "Is this God telling us something different?" We're definitely able to take and make some Friendly cocktails on tap and Friendly frozens that have been great sellers. My staff, one of the things that several of them said to me on Wednesday and Thursday was that we were about to have a record year. They wanted me to know that they knew that and they wanted me to know that this was taking that away from us. I love them for that.

Justin: I was thinking about this. The last time I felt this ominous feeling,...