sane Elmo Steak House is responsible for getting new gingr into parks and W I thought we're going to flood into this thing and I'm like we've got the pinle golfers in STO right now truly stewarding sto steakouse is to not do another sto Steak House who are the three coolest people to ever eat at sto Steakhouse from South bin to Evansville and everywhere in between this is get in the show focused on the hooer state and the incredible stories happening here today I'm Nate spangle founder of G Indiana and I will be your host for today's ation quick pause in the action to introduce you
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of the bottle with the bar spoon on the back as a subtle reminder that this stuff was made for anyone who loves making cocktails so grab a bottle of barke vodka from your local grocery or liquor store and impress your friends with the cleanest vodka ever made for more info visit barkeep vodka.com today I'm joined by Craig Hughes the CEO of Hughes culinary a family-owned restaurant group based in Indianapolis Indiana he is a driving force behind the success of iconic local establishments like sto Steak House 1933 lounge and Harry and izes Craig is continuing the Legacy started by his father Steven Hughes under his leadership
Hughes culinary has expanded its footprint and embraced both traditional dining and new Ventures including retail products like St Elmo shrimp cocktail sauce it's amazing if you haven't tried it I can't believe anyone's not tried it and they their plans for Distillery and some fun spirits that are coming out uh today we're going to be talking about the history and the hoess of the iconic St ELO Steak House some big developments on the road map for Hughes culinary and a little bit behind the scenes of the food bits Craig welcome to get in Nate great to be here thank you man man I have been pumped
up for this one for a minute so I got introduced to the marketing team and all the amazing work that they're doing through all the brands right and I think that's important for people to know like right off the Jump is like it's not just St Elmo it's not just Harry and izes like there's a lot of moving parts and pieces that are going on behind the Hughes culinary brand hey we've been waiting for your call for a long time you've been hitting every part of the state but right right you know the oldest one of the oldest restaurants in Indianapolis right in downtown in
your home City yeah and I would say like the most and I don't feel bad about saying it the most iconic restaurant in Indianapolis like that's a full stop that's not him saying that's me saying that it's like if you have a little bit of a budget to spend right you got to go enjoy a steak and you have to get the shrimp cocktail at St ELO it's it's fantastic Nate I use the word iconic too but I didn't F found the restaurant I mean it was founded by Joe star Back In 1902 so for me it it sounds like a bit of a Swagger
and and confident thing to say that it's iconic but gosh it opened in 1902 and it's we view ourselves my dad and I for sure and I think everybody at the restaurant is stewards of the restaurant you like we're just caretakers of it during a period of time it's hard to really possess something that's reached that kind of status as much as it is something that you're just overseeing and trying to leave it in a better place than you found it man I love and I love that that's like where you're leading with cuz like it is Iconic and and you are a steward of
it like this brand is established 1902 what was the founding story of sto Steakhouse guy named Joe star uh opened up Joe star's Tavern serving the sto buffet and it was truly a Tavern it's in the same spot that we're at now the iconic uh kind of Chicago style bar that's made by Brunswick out of tiger oak is there today that was there Back Back In 1902 and eventually it just kind of transitioned more from a Tavern to a restaurant and that's when he kind of to took his name down from Joe star's Tavern to sto Steakhouse so it served the sto Buffet yes what
was the sto Buffet I mean I we've got old old menus I don't have any Buffet menus but there's a there's a photo of Joe star there with s Buffet decal in the window and then the the hard sign was uh Joe star's Tavern but uh he transitioned it and it's funny you know like here we are in one of the largest landlock cities in the country and sto was the patron Sant of sailors uh and so Joe star was nautically inclined but we're we're a steakhouse and we're we're we're we're we're here with no water in sight except for the White River of course
St Elmo is the patron saint of sailors wow would have made a great seafood restaurant right okay I'm starting to put a pieces together so is that where he chose the name like how did we choose the name yeah I mean we don't know that there were some pictures of of ships and things and we think he was very just kind of nautically inclined in some way that's kind of how I describe it now and uh of course we got the S moam cocktail so you know we have we we know Seafood to a point I did I did not know that St Elmo was
the patron saint of sailors Sailors wow there we go okay so that's putting a little bit together of you know the iconic Seafood that makes that makes sense to me so how long did Joe run St Elmo cuz there was another owner before you guys right there are several so he took it into the early 40s and he sold it to a guy named Bert Condon who was a another Tavern owner and Harry Roth who is in the next ownership group said it kind of went from bad to worse uh so it wasn't iconic In 1902 I don't think so I mean I mean it
lasted 40 years under the Founder's name so i' call that iconic I mean I think if you can get a restaurant to last 10 years You' you've reached the Pinnacle and uh I celebrate 10y year anniversaries for our restaurants more than I do the opening date CU anybody can open up a restaurant uh that's what I I always say like when I was I don't know 19 20 I was like I can't wait to start a business like let me tell starting a business easy keep it a business going hard that is the challenge yes so Bert Condon just had it for a couple years
and Harry said it went from bad to worse and I think it was going it was kind of trailing with Joe star a little bit as he was getting older and just a little bit more disconnected it kind of trailed down and then Sam and Ike Roth bought it in the mid-50s or I'm sorry the mid 40s they were two brothers and they felt like they were in over their head and they called in their third brother Harry Roth who was practicing optometry in Chicago like early in his career and Harry said I went from my glasses to bar glasses and came down back to
Indianapolis joined his brothers in the business they moved on to something else that's when Harry brought on his long-term friend um Izzy Rosen who was like a bookie down and was continued to be a bookie while he operated St ELO steakhous but his mom and he operated a Fruit Stand Down at City Market wait so the owners app this would be third owners of of St ELO were an ex optometrist in a bookie you got it that's Harry and Izzy the original Odd Couple yeah I mean Harry was Slender he wore the bow tie and I can tell you that the story behind that and
Izzy was a little bit more portly Gruff as all get out smoked a cigar in the restaurant drank a bell Scotch while he while he worked and uh I can't get Bell Scotch I'm trying to get it back in but it's not in the states anymore and uh you know he would he would be back behind the bar and and there's a guy named Willie Kelly that used to work at stano from 1969 till he passed away about eight or 10 years ago uh that would be back behind the bar from 1969 until like the 2010 it was our longest time you tenured employer yeah
Willie Kelly but uh so Izzy would shake his empty glass of ice and he' go Willie ring my bell and Willie would go and and top off his Bell scotch and you know all kinds of I love that and that that led into the 50s uh so they they basically Izzy or Harry and Izzy had it from 1947 to 86 oh wow and uh and that's when my dad uh came into the what made it an interesting opportunity for cuz there's just one restaurant in 1986 yes right like just just the steakhouse yes okay what what made that what was your dad doing and what
made that an interesting investment for him yeah my dad was in the restaurant business he he went to short Ridge High School here in town went to IU stayed down in Bloomington but started nober Roman's Pizza which is got a A lot of people know about no Roman's Pizza back in the day there's still some versions of it today but it's not really what it used to be back in the 0s Station Pizza right for the most part I think so he doesn't love it he's not happy with where it is today that's un but it used to be like a like a pizza joint
like s like a Greeks right Greeks yeah you see the pizza being made in the window and uh the Great Dark booths and and old movies playing uh so so he got out of that he did and in ' 86 same year he sold uh or bought s fak house got R out of Noble Romans and then went over and it's like you know what I know food so I'm going to go buy and at the time was it a high class Steakhouse or what was the vibe I don't even know if we're a high class Steakhouse now he we a Stak joint but uh
um he well he was in the business and a lot of his uh connections were here in town like Banks and attorneys so he got to know Harry and Izzy just as a customer in in the restaurant business and when they were ready to sell he he was up up you know he was available and and uh it wasn't he had a lot of friends that said I don't think it's a good investment downtown Indianapolis IN ' 86 isn't what you know it it evolved into uh and uh so he said some people said it was a risky investment but obviously it turned out to
be a great investment and he plowed reinvested into it and elevated its game uh you know all the way to you know we won a James Beard best Award of Excellence in 2012 so it's it's evolved uh but we still do think of it as a stake joint I me you can come there in a jersey and hang out with the guys on any night there might be some suits or a couple's having an anniversary dinner next to you but it's it it kind of welcomes all and I would say now that I've like actually interacted with the people behind St Elba like the marketing
team and the the kitchen staff and all the fun stuff there like I think from the outside it can give that like you know you go in it's like a little it's got a good Ambiance to it that does seem like at at first surface level it's like oh this is classy but then when you meet all the people and everything like they are super welcoming like you can come there before a Colts game after a Colts game you can out like it is the more I get to know the people behind the brand the more that I see like oh yeah this is a
stake joint which I really like I like it and it really embodies like who your hospitality and all that fun stuff yeah we're authentic and the people are authentic they're very unscripted you know our server experience when you're at the table side we let them kind of run the show as far as how they want to do the delivery uh it's not like a national chain that really has different points that they they need to hit on and uh the personalities are tremendous and the longevity of some of the careers is cool we're not perfect we make mistakes all the time but it's a genuine
classic Steakhouse that's in Indianapolis and you know I hope the people of Indianapolis treat it like it's theirs I mean it really is I love that and so your dad took over in ' 86 and ran it for 10 or 11 years and then I think was it 97 where you joined yes yeah 97 so what got you to the point where you're like man this like steak joint like One Singular restaurant right at the time in 97 like this was appealing for you to uh to come work on yeah well I I started I had to jump back to 1984 when I started working
at one of my dad's restaurants in Bloomington called mustards or actually it was a rick kum's restaurant and he owns Malibu Grill in Bloomington uh but he had a place called Poor Richards in Bloomington my dad bought it was going to flip it to A New Concept I started washing dishes there in ' 84 and just got the I was a freshman in high school and and it was pretty cool to work in a college town restaurant and so you guys grew up in Bloomington yeah I did yeah yeah he stayed in Bloomington after after college for the most part with one woodon in in
Cleveland born and raised in Bloomington Bloomington South and and working in a college town restaurant was pretty darn cool I thought as a 14-year-old with all these college students as servers and hostesses and cooks and things and kind of they you know brought me up in a way you know like you you age age quick in the restaurant business I guess but uh it was a tremendous experience and then I went on to study Hospitality management at Penn State University then joined Hillstone Restaurant Group in Washington DC at a Houston's and worked there for a couple years before coming back and that's kind of where
I got my fine dining uh experience was a Hillstone Restaurant Group and so when the opportunity came with a management change at St ELO in '97 I was ready to jump in nice okay so you joined 97 as kind of like the general manager of the steakhouse yeah I kind of bridged it a little bit but yeah I was uh managing some other Quick Service restaurants in our company at the time and and uh I wanted to get back into fine dining so uh I was the manager for it with a team a couple team and it was raw back then I mean it wasn't
like managers became managers because in the old days they just filled a role that needed Sur oh yeah Richard's been here for 10 years and manager now no we got a little bit more formal with Richard but back then it was uh step up to the plate 97 John is but Richard is legit Richard is actually the general manager Richard certainly qualified yeah he Richard Edwards is amazing yes uh and you got to know him when you were over there I'm sure you got behind the scenes huh oh yeah that video drops by the time this comes out it'll just dropped if you didn't check
out me competing against Chef Corey uh making the world famous cocktail sauce and it was experience let me tell you like from grinding the actual horseradish to like mixing it all up and it was a blind it was a blind taste test we made sure it was completely Anonymous and I did win oh did let it be known let it be known I out saued the uh the the expert so this thing doesn't work out for you how did you know that's exactly what I said he picked mine and I was like man if this whole you know content podcast thing doesn't work out like
I'm just going to have to make the uh the cocktail sauce U okay so 97 you're there's a few restaurants in the group at that point and then takeing me through like the next 10 or so years like when does the next when does Harry and izes come and take me through the Journey of the last 30 years like I was there in ' 97 we expanded it in '98 and added on the homman room and uh finally the restaurant just got big enough it's hard to execute at a high level with too too much size and too many seats so I started thinking well
let's do another restaurant you know and uh I looked at I thought about like Gibson Steakhouse in Chicago if you've been up to the the Gold Coast area of Chicago or otherwise known as the viagara triangle um and they have a restaurant next to it called Hugo's Frog Bar which is similar but Classic Grill as well and I thought that's a pretty cool concept if you can't get into the famous Gibson Steakhouse they've got their own restaurant right next door and I thought maybe we should do that if we don't open up next to stomo Steakhouse somebody else will so um you know Drew on
the the restaurants history of Harry and dizzy as the namesake for it and we call it kind of our companion restaurant to St ELO and that opened up in 2007 and it's been great I thought we were going to cannibalize some sales never did we're open for lunch and dinner and we've kind of put things on the menu that we always wanted to do at St Elmo in a way but wanted to keep St ELO very classic straightforward traditional Steakhouse here we've got more menu variety and of course uh some lower price points Burger and club sandwiches things like that the lunch special like I
think there's like uh where you can get a couple sliders and a salad I don't know 20 bucks or whatever it is maybe it's called the parlay I think that might it is it is incredible like you go there like it's one of those lunches where I'm like I come back after and I'm like man I'm full you check all the boxes in one meal yeah you get a you get trim cocktail you get a salad you get the sliders fries like you're you're set that's all you need and people can treat her and Izzy as like a steakhous if they want to because we
have Sano shrimp cocktail we've got the same steaks as sto or you can treat a more lower price casual gorilla if you want to with the burgers and pizza and pasta and things like that well talk to me about balancing this iconic brand you know you want to keep as much of it the same but also there were times where like it was not a great you know it wasn't it wasn't what it is today in the 40s 50s and like you know 86 87 when your dad takes over um how do you balance keeping the history with Innovation and growing and like making it
the best version of itself possible it's a bit of tight rope for sure and I think you get that uh I know when my dad bought it the first year I think it did a lot more in sales than it did prior to and I think his Banker said what did you do and my dad said well we reported all the income back then it didn't have a point of sales system it was you know cash and operating out of a cigar box for the most part you know we had it's like weird there's a lot less of this Bell this Bell whiskey missing like
that's interesting exactly yeah that just stayed on the Shelf after that point I don't think anybody ordered Bells back then um so I just things like that you know I came when I got involved in 97 we did do an expansion and there were guests that said don't touch a thing like don't change it you know the people that D there regulars for years but a lot of the things we do just we do very subtly uh I mean that things needed organized we needed a better wine selection it didn't really have that back in the day uh we tweaked the menu so I think
a lot of of our guests have been with us for 50 years I mean I think of some people that were in high school that are now in their late 70s or 80s that still come in probably recognize the evolution but it's been so subtle along the way uh we do try to innovate we were the first restaurant in on Open Table in the state of Indiana wait what year was that that has an innovation even know when it was I remember seeing it at the National Restaurant Association trade show in Chicago and I'm like we need this and the whole reason I wanted it
back then was one I wanted to be able to get online reservations on our website and these websites are kind of like a new Fairly New Concept and then two I remember next door the canterberry hotel used to be next to St Alo they had a disgruntled employee and they took all the valet keys they took all the keys from the valet thing and and left and so the canterberry you know couldn't you know get anybody's car back they had to get like locks smth out and it was a total you imagine this GRT old employee took all the valet Keys yeah yeah and and
walked out so I'm thinking what could happen at St El I so back then we had like a binder for all of our reservations like January February binder March April binder and I thought man what if somebody walked out with all these binders we'd have no idea any night who was coming in to D what we could take as far as reservation so I went on Open Table to like solve that issue cuz and I don't say I don't know how many restaurants in Indiana are booking out like a year like what's your furthest out reservation I think we go a year I know we
take it a year I don't I can't remember if it's O we open our books that far out but obviously like our private event manager and things like that we have people that come in for Indie they do their Indie 500 party every Friday night before the IND 500 and they rebook next year we just get it in the books um I think you can book out pretty far a and that's the thing though a lot of like restaurant owners don't they're like oh I don't need to work like where're we don't do that many reservations but it's like for you guys like when you're
taking the next two three four months it's like somebody like spills their cup of coffee on there and you don't know if that phone number is this or that or like that was the other thing that that was the other reason I wanted to go to Open Table now it's evolved into so much more I mean people just love to make reservations using their iPhones or Androids or whatever just so convenient and it's there I don't know if you can do it right where it's like oh it's booked for the time that I want but maybe like a recommendation is like har is like right
next door so it's like you can even like keep feeding them down this I like that and so so you've done a good job of managing that subtle changes throughout it give us a scale of like maybe guest served like guest served in 97 when you joined versus guest served today in 2024 almost 25 uh I think a good night back then it would be like 250 guest at St ELO and now with the additional space and just how we've evolved that that restaurant into what it is now a great night is 800 I mean we could do a th000 covers in the night we've
done more than that but a really solid uh weekend uh we'll we'll do 850 covers on a night that's I mean that's incredible and and it it still feels like every time is it's not like with volume the experience has dwindled you know it's like and I feel that's the whole thing like subtle changes increasing efficiency all these things and I think that has to be a main reason why your employees stay for so long like I think is it on the back of the menu that you have like we put all their names on the back of the menu and without what no one
else can do that and it's like when you talk about your top five like what are the five longest tenured employees at sto steakouse oh I mean like Carrie wford Ricardo Alvarez Super Dave beard uh and like what year how many years are these are these uh I think car's at 38 or nine years now so I mean it's you know it's tough to get too much longer or older than that like Lorenzo kuna was just in the other day um he was a server for us and started 1976 he came back for our friends giving lunch uh last week and he started in 76
and uh but it's it's a young man's game or young you know Young Person's game sometimes I mean especially service you're carrying these trades with 32 ounce Porter houses on top and not side it's not light and uh so we try to help out some of the servers like the the let's call the more tenured servers have the dining room that's right next to the kitchen and of course there's dining rooms that go upstairs there's dining rooms that go down into the lower the garden level of the restaurant so uh it's tough to have a career longer than 40 years I mean 40 years though
in the restaurant business is crazy like I feel like I look around and I hear restaurant owners or anyone in Food Services like it's so hard to find help and this and that and like you guys have seemed to I won't say crack the code but you have done a really good job of employee retention over over time and celebrating the faces that make it say steak house yeah I mean we do we celebrate the faces the culture is really important we allow them to make some great money I mean they have group health benefits they've got 401K they've got all these things that their
access uh just like at our office across the street is just a reminder of who we go to work for who I go to work for is our is our staff and right in the front entry of the office is like 40 photos of different team members dishwashers and servers bartenders and things like that and it just like you walk in that door and anyone that's kind of in that above restaurant level like in finance and marketing and operate you know directors of operations and VPS of operations things like that because we have 850 uh stewards we just get a little reminder every morning these
if we're supporting them they're supporting the guest that's you know that's how it goes and it starts from the top right that culture is built from like they feel supported then your guests are going to feel supported and back all the way through which I I love that well talk to me as we kind of I want to talk about a few of the other things besides St Elmo but do we have a story as to why it was cocktail like shrimp cocktail became so well known for St Steakhouse it goes way back um there's a photo hanging in the restaurant of Joe star behind
the bar and there's a menu on the bar that says Michelob drafts 10 cents shrimp cocktail 15 cents so we've had some price inflation over over the years uh but it goes way back I don't know why I'm just so thankful that Joe started out making it like super spicy like you made it uh the other day because I mean that's not a very approachable way to do it you're you're just you're at the extreme of of presenting a very classic dish that's served around the world right and uh he took the extreme route and thank goodness he did because it's really been our signature
it's you know it is our signature item that people talk about and like people talk about Indianapolis and they say you have even if they don't know it's like s Elmo World Famous shrimp cocktail SAU like you have to go to when you're Indianapolis you have to get that shrimp cocktail and it's like our city is almost even known for this that comes back from Joe star's Tavern yeah back in the day um so and that takes us into though you guys started selling that commercially like yeah we we we did uh at some point you're like gosh if this is such a signature dish
that gets a lot of chatter and name recognition that people fly in you know and want to experience when they're in Indianapolis so it I'd be remiss if we didn't try to put that in a in a glass jar and so that people could enjoy that in other places and it took a while because it's really the key to it at the Restaurant level is we grind it fresh every day you were part of that process and um then we small batch the ingredients throughout the night uh so that the acidity of the tomato sauce doesn't break down the spiciness of the fresh ground horseradish
and to put something in a shelf stable uh I mean it's chilled but environment that goes on the shelf that would last long enough for it to work in a grocery store situation really difficult so we had to kind of yeah even on on your best night right even if it's a thousand a thousand guests and they all got the shrimp cocktail it's like it's still made fresh that day versus you know you're trying to sell 10,000 glass jars of shrimp cocktail when did you release the cocktail sauce like commercially and how did that process of like getting it right go yeah I should know
the date but it's been about 12 years or so since we've launched the retail cocktail sauce it was a bit of trial and error at first because you know it would lose its spiciness and we have to add natural Rish extract to it to kind of like pump up the spiciness uh a little bit more than just the naturally occurring chunky hor radish that's in the 8 O jar so often times when you get a sto shrimp cocktail sauce in retail if you get a batch that's made within the last month it it kind of it's the hotter it's hotter than it is in the
restaurant and every day it goes down in spiciness and it's got a seven Monon shelf life and it it actually probably has any eternity shelf life in it because there's so much the horseradish in it like doesn't make it go bad it's like it's like a preservative almost a natural preserva but the spiciness reduces so at at by the time seventh month seven months uh hits it's a little bit more mild than it is in the restaurant that's why we have that seven Monon expiration date and was this your guys's first venture outside of like a restaurant it was yeah so I mean how hard
was that for you guys to just like learn about manufacturing and food not that there's not food science in the restaurant side but like you know shelf life and all that stuff like while you're also managing this would have been 12 years ago like you have Harry and izzi's you have sto were there other restaurants at the time just those two so you had those two but then you're also like okay we need to bring this product to life and get it in shelves and who do you call to like carry your product we were working with a local person it was friend of mine
Brian King that had Royal Foods at the time that did products similar to this not maybe not cocktail sauce but did other uh perishable products Sal dressings things like that we use their food science team to kind of develop that initial recipe and uh so we have that co-ack for us and it a bit of a trial and error like I said it didn't perform as well as we wanted to all the time and now it's we've got a really great consistent uh recipe and process through our copack and what was like the first big win where it's like oh we're we got it right
it's commercially available but we're going to get it into Marsh know at the time local groceries they were the ones yeah they were the ones and that's cool that was fun for me and my dad and some other people because we win guests like one table at a time or whatever in the restaurant business like we don't have like in a manufacturing thing this pipeline of business that we big contracts that you win so that was a fun change like you you were alluding to that it's a different hat to wear and now we get this big win where Marsh is going to put us
in 60 of their grocery stores that have whatever 2012 marshes like it was a it was crushing it like it was a huge maybe it was not Kroger size but it was big you know like Indiana Midwestern chain of because they went they went out of business probably five seven years ago something like that maybe yeah maybe a little bit longer yeah so my dates might be off on that but we they they took us to the market and then our sales team kind of built up and we were in Costco and Kroger and um we've been in Whole Foods and and fresh time and
Meyer and all you know all these different grocery stores now and different points in the year we're in like 35 States I was going to say like is it a big holiday like around the holiday season I that's when I like we'll go like months without eating a shrimp and then all of a sudden it's like all November every Thanksgiving for some reason we want have stuffing and shrimp cocktail and then you get to Christmas and same thing that's what happens October November December our business swells in that department because people are doing shrimp platters and entertaining and having holidays and it grew to steak
seasoning and some other sauces and we have a great prepared horse radish that's not a cocktail sauce that's uh in the marketplace too so if you like a nice fiery horseradish I mean we know our horseradish so that's out in the market too that is true uh so you were building that side of like kind of food products you know stuff like that and then you've dipped now into Spirits yes so talk to me about the what's going on with rare Saint barke vodka and some of these other uh yeah yeah the the initiative in pushing to cocktails and Spirits we launched with the sto
kind of ready to made ready to pour cocktails uh six years ago and uh so our famous one is the Elmo Cola that's what our number one selling cocktail at St Elmo was for number of years I think it's been surpassed by the by the old fashion the pops old fashion we we've produced that in a bottle and it's it's a whiskey that's been um soaked in luxardo cherries and and natural vanilla beans and that's and then you serve it with like a side of Diet Coke or Coke or however you like I call it an adult Cherry Cola basically and a group out of
out of Bloomington again Cardinal approached us about hey we can kind of recreate this and and and for a spirit on the Shelf if you're interested in it and uh actually they didn't even suggest that that I suggested that to them I like we should do business together I'm like well this is our best top selling cocktail let's try that launched it now we have espresso martini and we have an old fashion that do really well under the sto brand and then that kind of led to I I'm one of those guys that just likes a straight cocktail like I don't order off cocktail list
when I go out it's I want a vodka soda or I want a a bourbon on the with a large Cube or something like that so we moved into uh barkeep vodka which is out in the marketplace now and liquor stores and and grocery stores as well as rare St whiskey and those are like kind of high-end but affordable too like barkeep comes in below $19 a bottle and we use this group also in Indianapolis called true Essence that has a patented on this pressure filtration system it molecularly changes kind of the off putting notes in alcohol and so it really creates a smooth smooth
super premium there's some science behind it because I've been seeing like the like best tasting all the and like a lot of Brands claim like best but there's some science behind what you're with true essence what you're doing there that's like helping improve the taste of barkeep we taste it blind against stoy Elite and all these high-end uh super premium vodkas and we come out really really uh strong mostly preferred over all those I mean there's everything subjective but I think we're about I don't think I can say it yet but we just scored really high in a very independent blind vodka National tasting that
I think we're going to release the information but we t last year's highest scoring vodka in the country or actually I guess it's in the world because there's products from all over the place so I'm hoping that is really what you know I we feel super confident about the quality of that vodka and we're excited about Barky and take me into like the makeup of let's say like commercially available products like between rare Saint barkeep the cocktail sauce all the stuff sold in stores versus the makeup of the restaurant group like what percentage of your I mean like of the business is restaurants and what
percent is commercially available stuff oh it's it's a like 80% restaurant for sure and it's going to be even more than that when we open up a couple new restaurants it just you know we we do restaurants really well and all of those retail products are just riffs off of things that we do in the restaurant and so they're they're nice supplemental things they were super helpful during covid when restaurants were completely shut down for uh six to 85 days depending on the county that we were operating in and um you know that helped sustain the organization uh to have those sales and everybody's at
the grocery and buying things and drinking all day long if you remember so Spirits was a great help but we're still really a restaurant company and we use the restaurants to create these uh products and I don't want to call it a side hustle at all but it's just we're certainly waited towards restaurant I had Brian Smith from hard truth on and he was talking about like how Big Woods and quaon and all this started like it was a brewery and local stuff and then like maybe you get the one that hits and you're like like you know could hopefully fingers crossed it it's barke
bodka all of a sudden it's just like like then that then you start to say like oh yeah like we have an equally matching Spirit or this or that but like I think being excellent at restaurants is awesome and it's really great for our city um so give us give us a scope of like where Hughes culinary is today how many restaurants do you operate uh what are there any that we might not know that is a part of your group and then take us like what's coming down the pipeline well besides sto steakhous we have uh three hering Di's restaurants and oh where's the
third one at the Indianapolis Airport a concourse so you come in you go on the pre-tsa side to the right as you're coming in and we are the first restaurant that you'll walk into there and then of course we have one on 82nd Street and downtown next to St ELO uh we have a 193 Lounge in Fishers and then maybe the one that people don't know is sometimes a hug culinary restaurant is the HC Tavern and kitchen which is also in the same development in fisers called the fers District the yard is what a lot of people ref it's awesome I went to a rehearsal
dinner shout out Kaden Maha they got married and the rehearsal dinner was at HC Tavern um and it was it blew my mind the the the candid Express I'll give it to you unfiltered right so Kate is from Muny and he's like oh yeah our rehearsal is going to be at HC Tavern and I'm like okay like I know the Jones family love them very well and I was like oh a Tavern like bar food like totally cool like I show up in like a polo like we're going to be like at like a kind of like a bar restaurant and I walk through these
like big revolving glass doors and I'm like I'm underdressed I messed up I made a mistake cuz it like blew my mind it we were back in like the private room like once you go through the bar um and like food was amazing cocktails were awesome uh and I I loved it I thought it was it was great and I had no idea that it was associated with you all it's a cool scene thank you for that compliment and uh we do try to build these restaurants and design the restaurants so that you feel like you're not in Indianapolis a lot of times I mean
you could be in SoHo or wherever you know where San Francisco whatever you think is kind of a cool hip Vibe and I like to make sure these restaurants are right here in Indiana we have six now in Indianapolis we've got in the Indianapolis metro area and then 1933 in Carmel will open up in March where's it going at in Carmel it's on Rangeline Road just south of Main Street across from the Indiana Design Center so if you know where Trey restaurant is and Monterey and anon's and sa we're just kind of right around the corner from that on Range Line oh okay yeah yeah
yeah I got you is that where like their the huge development is going up right now it's yeah we're not that far south not that yeah we're just a block south of Main Street so there's a three-story building going up there that we're on the bottom floor so that'll be great that'll be a really I mean that whole area this is slowly becoming like the pro carel podcast and I I've been an outwardly spoken like I'm not a caramel guy I live here in Broad Ripple like I'm a Broad Ripple you know inside the loop but man Midtown caramel is just up and to the
right I'm I feel the same way you die hard I've always lived in Washington Township and Indianapolis and gosh I got caramel Envy though I think we all do of what three up Rooftop Bar up there too it's just like there's some fun to be had there especially as I get a little bit older and like man we need to get our our a few of the the people together and like give some life to the Broad Ripple strip and get some more like 1933 esque or like local owned restaurant like I think that would be so so cool no offense to brothers and killroy
you're great but you know we could we could do better here in Broad rle I will say you got to have a mix right you got to have a mix of something for everybody and yeah and I think it is missing the higher end piece yes um and I do find myself there's a restaurant I go to half liter a ton I don't know if you it's barbecue down4 oh that's Good sp's Guys own and that and nandos I think's really good you got petite Sho so there's some places there that check the box out and I love that you get not that I didn't
think that you ate it anywhere else but it's like it's always cool to see people in the business that also like respect and you support the others in the business you know like between SS and and all these other groups and it's like oh I'm going to go eat at nados or I'm going to go eat at half liter or wherever it is like I don't just eat at my restaurants no I I don't think any restaurant tour does if we're not working we're probably at another restaurant enjoying that scene because that's that's what we love who do you think is someone in Indianapolis like
that does restaurants well that you respect oh I there's a lot of them but I mean look at Mike Cunningham and Martha Hoover and there's there's there's a lot of them out there um Jake Burgess has bongies and and wait bongies is that the one like up where's that one at Perkinsville that's you need to hit that one if you thir person you're the third person that's recommended this it's like up Way North almost like near lwood Anderson area like up that way and you like tailgate for itly you tailgate there's a gravel parking lot it's always full but it's a it's a simple Tavern
with great culinary food uh not a huge menu and yeah you you kind of hope that they're on a hour and a half wait and you just open up a bottle of wine or have a cocktail out in the parking lot and you wait for your table super cool destination restaurant I love that one I love going to Henry's social and Columbus that's a great destination restaurant uh right down on the Main Street in Columbus I can't remember the name of that street I'm mean Bloomington you got to go to yono's Old Zagreb uh man okay you know I mean you know the plate you
know the you you are the restaurant expert when it comes to all of Indiana I love that yeah I don't know about that but uh I do love to eat yeah so so you're opening 1933 in Midtown and what was the next restaurant that you have opening in March we have a 1933 slhc dual concept opening up at Indianapolis Airport in the former Champs location so if you know where her and dizes is at Indianapolis Airport which is on Concourse a to the right as you go through security this is in the exact same spot on the other Concourse to the left side of the
airport and it's going to be super cool like the renderings and it's under construction right now just started should open up uh uh that second week in March and it's going to be very cool going to create a very upscale Cool vibe uh for for the Indianapolis Airport which you know they do a great job of embracing Indianapolis restaurants I mean you've got a lot of them you got bubs and uh which is crazy there's a bubs in the airport I mean yeah we got they try to like they don't want to come South they don't want to come south of 465 but we'll go
to the airport like I love that it's the world's greatest airport too this is true I did a I don't know if you saw this one I did a time trial where I went from parking my car in the economy lot to on my plane like I was Seated on the plane I was running late and I decided the best thing I should do is film a video Yeah 38 minutes I went from parking on the I went on the shuttle in through security the whole nine yards and I'm sitting in my seat on the plane in 38 minutes it was one crazy cuz I'm
like documenting I'm like I'm actually running late and then I got to my seat and I posted it and it got like I don't like 200,000 views or something on YouTube and everyone's in there like blah blah blah oh hair this and it's like then there there's so many more people going like oh I've flown through Indianapolis it's amazing like Indianapolis Airport does it right it's clean it's efficient it you know it it's amazing uh you weren't flying Southwest I guess cuz you know you'd be sitting in the middle middle middle of I'm I'm on the startup budget so I fly a legion or Spirit
those are my two go-to right now um but I do sometimes pay for the upgrade like it's like $37 to pick your seat I'm like come on you guys are running a racket here yeah okay so two restaurants opening up are there other like products or things that we should be looking at at coming down the pipeline I think that's it I mean we're our our our next forray is uh Phoenix Arizona we're finally going to take a restaurant out of the state and we've got a herin izzi's under development in in Paradise Valley here in the heart of Indiana something unique is growing for
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next a lot of do you do market research of like uh we have a lot of Indiana people that winter in Arizona and like we're going to have a base customer like a small customer base out there or what makes you choose Arizona it was between that and throwing a dart at a map we Cor related those two things and pointed at Phoenix Arizona we did do a lot of studies and growth studies future growth studies and uh need to have a direct flight Tak them back to Indianapolis Airport instead of a lot of restaurant groups will open up in multiple markets they'll go to
like Columbus Ohio and Nashville and Atlanta Charlotte whatever we just want to identify a market and kind of create a a submarket and so our hope is to do a couple restaurants out there here in is is start and a couple 1933 is it's 5.6 million people it's a much larger market than Indianapolis we can certainly put three out there I think I love well I think that I love I'm going to ask the question are you intentional of like hey the expansion restaurants that we do will not be called St Elmo you 100% yeah there's only one there's only one say so like you
know we we Tavern on the Green like you can't put a Tavern on the Green in Columbus Ohio right I I love that the respect that you have for that brand like it is Iconic and like from the beginning the episode when you say like hey I'm a steward like you know I'm I'm stewarding this brand during this period of time whether it's 20200 however many years you know Hugh culinary owned St Elmo uh but it's not like we're GNA cash in on this name and open up St Elmos in every market and yada yada y like hey we could open Harry izzi's we can
open 1933's HC taverns like all that stuff is that's your IP but it's like this is the IP of like I know 100 100 plus years of of someone else I know I mean you're right we can grow and we have to grow to keep people interested in our brand now I'm not even talking about guests I'm talking about employees and stewards that I mean if we don't grow then no one has any upward mobility in their in their job I mean half our office or more people that started as hosts or or um servers bartenders whatever in the restaurants and servers can become managers
and managers can become district managers and things like that so that's part of it but I think the first step truly stewarding S steakouse is to not do another s Steak House don't put one in Las Vegas don't don't go anywhere else and certainly we get emails and letters and things like that to do St elos in every Market every developers looking can you share like can you share like one of the craziest ones or it's like I got an I got a letter from so and so in Las Vegas asking for stom I couldn't remember the specifics of it but yes it's been like
Caesars and Vegas or the Trump whatever down in Florida you know development the Time Square in New York uh developer wants one is it hard like is it hard to like stay true and not just like oh man they're those are big checks big markets like you could be making a lot of money if you just opened 50 St ELO steak houses yeah or I could be broke 10 years for now because they all failed who knows what the scenario is I know I'm happy now I think our our staff at St ELO certainly appreciates that we haven't done that there's a lot of guests
I me a lot of Indianapolis people that I'm sure glad the visit Indie the Chris Galls of the world Leonard Hoops would go ballistic if he found out we had a St Elmo somewhere else and we're no longer that like piece of and I think the front doorstep to Indianapolis the word I go back to is just iconic and like the way that you're protecting that brand is Iconic and that like no matter whatever happens it's like I hope they look back to this episode and the way you talk about this brand and let's say your grandkid 80 years from now or whatever is running
this business and they like remember like hey there's video proof there's there's audio proof like do not change this like this is Iconic to Indianapolis and there are all these other brands and the growth that we can do for our company but like keeping this as like first Wonder of Indianapolis orever the one thing me you got to have that one thing stays true okay well now we're towards the end of the show we got you know a couple minutes left I'd love to rap up with some fun stories and just some fun questions totally loose off the cuff uh we call it the lightning
round um the first thing I just want to touch into is we have it on good authority multiple places that you and pton Manning are good friends how did that relationship and like did he just come in as a customer one day and you're just like he's he and I are just boys that was it I mean uh no it didn't it didn't we weren't boys from day one at all uh his agent Tom Condon football agent was dining in Sayo every day and I think had maybe even a couple meetings in one day at St Elmo the year in '98 when Payton reported to
to Indianapolis as a as a rookie and he was a little bit of a hold out not not very long but Camp had started I think in Tera hope Tom Conan says Hey and this is back when I'm at Sano you know every night and the guy there uh can you keep the grill open later and absolutely Payton's coming in we're going to keep the grill open and I remember where he sat uh in in the restaurant in the homman room that's when I first saw him and he was super kind he said his dad Archie dined here a lot and said you got to
come to St Elmo and he's been a regular like he would come in almost after every home game pretty much every home game in into the wine seller dining room we even put a passcode for him to get down the elevator I was going to say is there like a special pton entrance yeah we we finally created one just so he could come in without having to walk through the entire gaunlet I mean you have to walk past all 400 seats to get to that table and take like 500 pictures and I I I love this I was actually just talking with um do you
know Dave nef yeah so nef he's with Purdue now with the bmaker alliance and he was like the number one it's like uh be a friend not a fan like especially like when you get up there to get to interact you know and it's like if the first day you walk in you're like oh my gosh pton I love you like y y y it's like then he never wants to come back and he knows I know nothing about football like I I I figure everyone that talks to him at some point in the day ask him football questions or talks to him about football
or shares a memory or whatever I talk pop culture TV movies like he's into all those type of things so that's kind of been my angle with him as a friend is I don't talk to him about football well it's like yeah when you walk in after a long day it's like the last thing you want to do is talk about work yeah yeah oh yeah we sold 500 steaks today like the cut of meat the price of meat is great it's like no you want to talk about stuff that you don't have to that you get your mind off of work which I love
I think that's super cool especially when you think of iconic hooers and like people that are embraced like in the culture like that is amazing and he's an owner of her and izes when we were building the first one in 2007 there was a story in the paper and we had a business partner at the time that had to pull his ownership out and so my phone started ringing people were interested and I didn't know there was a ownership opportunity at this restaurant and this is now this is the first one so people didn't know what her and disy was they just knew it was
coming from us and it was offspring of St Elmo and he and we knew this partner was going to be an investor but when pton called we're like maybe I had to dilute everybody down a little bit pred and and include him in it because at the time I was thinking herein is is all is going to be all about sports politics business you know we're right downtown we've got lobbyists we' got businesses located around us we got stadiums and he would certainly check the box of that cool you know athlete uh we walked over to Ocean Air and sat at one of the back
booths and he peppered me with like 30 questions about the investment and uh and of course like being that guy that is like consent prepar you know like the way he prepares for sport games I assume he went through that entire list maybe he had some help with a financial adviser putting some of these questions together and then when we were getting up to walk over to the restaurant which was under construction at the time he like made sure that every check every question had been hit in that investment well I think that a big thing too with like a lot of athletes like make
that uh restaurant investment or like one bad investment or whatever it is and it's like you end up like losing a ton of money or whatever so I respect that like it's pretty cool and but but then also for you to have the like credibility that it's like hey this is a New Concept like we we hit a home run like we have obviously we have t Elmo but like we can go make this happen and like getting the sheriff to believe in that and write a check that's pretty cool yeah yeah I mean we I joke with them now it's like you always got
hering is's investment to fall back on if this financial if the other things don't work if the Man cast doesn't work yeah and he likes investment because it's not dependent on his name like we don't use him in advertising at all we didn't put his name on things so it's just uh it's a legitimate investment for him and and that's cool but he's not the only like star studded guest that uh that St Elmo has had right so like you guys were featured on man versus food the best thing I ever ate and parks and wreck yeah parks and wreck Robo that whole team came
in that was that was really a very cool experience for us for the restaurant I mean we have a lot of synergies with sports uh like Jim Nance and all these people Monday Night Football talk about us but we didn't realize how much bigger like just a mainstream sitcom NBC show I think all of us that are into sports think Sports is like the biggest thing in the world and it's really not and uh that thing just just blew me away with how big of an impact that well how did that how did the process of getting parks and wreck to sto work do they
just like shoot you an like yo we're going to be in town or or how did that happen well Bren Jones on our marketing team probably said he out he solicited but uh he laughs about that he says he's got the easiest job in marketing just usually waits for the phone or the email to come in and it did and then the producers and and creative guys started coming in the restaurant for probably like four or five months before the show shot getting a feel for it and they were really great people and we got to be friends with them and then finally when the
shoot came I mean it was unbelievable they had trucks they had 100 extras uh oh so they bring their own people in to like oh yeah they didn't even use our extra I think we had like two employees or so in in the in the scene but they had all these models and stuff as the extras other people dining in the restaurant and the really unique story about that if you saw the episode was uh n gingr the speaker of the H or former speaker of the house was in Indianapolis giving a speech and he wanted to come into St and have lunch and we're
right in the middle of the film shoot the shoot was or the for the show there's cords going across the sidewalk and trailers and things all up and down Illinois Street he's tugging on the door with the local uh newscaster that was interviewing like I'm sorry Mr gangri but we're closed for the shoot we have her and izes next door if you'd like to you know have that experience we sto experience is close as you're going to get right now by the way we're not even open for lunch on a on a normal day much less this and so he walked and the producers and
the directors that were there saw him and they're like is that n gingr the speaker of the house I said yeah and they're doing a show about politics at local Indiana politics and they come up with this idea right there they wrote it on the scene and they go back and get them he signs a waiver says he'll be in the show and they get in they they write it well gurage gangri names sound alike we're going to create the situation where there's confusion over a reservation at the front door and it was like the producers and the directors were out on the sidewalk on
Illinois Street high-fiving each other they like this is like one of those moments where you can't plan it and it just happened so you're saying St Elmo Steakout is responsible for getting new gingr into parks and re I mean we we we we were just we enjoyed that scenario it was like a perfect storm that happened and like Indiana Indiana that's Indiana right there that's so awesome another fun story right is Joey Chestnut he once ate over 18 lbs of the shrimp cocktail and a competitive eating contest you guys hosted we do this at for the Big 10 football championship every year the Indiana Sports
Corp wanted to kind of like activate that game a little bit more than just football for the Big 10 Championship so they approached us like three weeks before the game on the first year we did it and said hey would you be interested in doing an eating contest with major league eating and I thought I don't know if that's on brand or not but we're want to be good Community supporters and sports Corps huge they bring in all the final fours and these big events and this Olympic swimming and all these things so we said yeah we'll do it and that's how we got to
know Joey and he competed in that first one and it's grown we've done it for years it's coming up uh again this first week in December for the and it's at every Pacers game too now yeah right not everyone but not it's at a bunch of Pacers games they pick three people and have them eaten n a minute or whatever and we'll do it up at Ross a stadium occasionally and and there's a there's a picture that went viral or something of like a I think it was I think it was up at purd and there's like a girl and she has a first B
of cocktail sauce and it's like she had no idea what to expect three super wholesome co-ed girls competing you know speed eating shrimp cocktail not a great situation but great content yeah great yeah okay so when you think about your restaurants what's your personal favorite menu item I guess love me build a meal maybe more than that of course I got to start with the shrimp cocktail at St Elmo then navy bean soup and my dad does the navy bean soup St we call it Steve Hughes style this is a traditional very classic navy bean soup but he adds Cherry sour cream diced onion Tabasco
so if you're in St Elmo and you want kind of the off the menu navy bean soup Steve Hughes style is a great order Oh They'll be like oh man where did you get that one at oh yeah and the server will come they go back dice dice everything up and serve it up a bacon lettuce tomato salad and then I I like the wet age Prime New York strip I that's kind of my stake and and often go with tuna like people this weight staff laughs at me for how and I order our tune at s they're like you remember we're Steakhouse I'm like
I we're named after the patron SAA sailor so don't judge me too much there you go okay but I do that and then the butter the bourbon butter cake for dessert that's that's like oh I'm the cheesecake meal right there the cheesecake is phenomenal are there any other like from any of the other restaurants like menu items you've been able to experiment that you're like I think this is phenomenal well I you know simple creature I mean I I love like just our Tavern Club at either ha and izes the HC the lobster C go at the hcc's kind of built that's a signature item
now you got to try that the cheese just pulls apart like french onion soup and then got the garlic butter and the lobster or you can do an escargo version of it which I love too prime rib sandwich at 1933 or just the 8 O prime rib I love our prime rib the 1902 roll at at 1933 which is tuna great tuna you know like a lot of the sushi places when they get a tuna roll it's always kind of like the chopped up tuna kind of like whatever this is like a big chunk of just perfect uh great a tuna the ratatori here in
I is a lot the Downtown special Pizza love all those things I love it you are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the menu I'm impressed oh I've tasted everything repeatedly and was a part of it we go through this like really extensive like pitch process you know it's almost like U the show of what is tank Shark Tank yeah when it comes to pitching these menu items and sometimes we'll give them some inspiration the chef team some inspiration what we want to see and then we let them take it in a direction that often times is better than what you know we
had envisioned or maybe seen it somewhere when we traveled or whatever and and uh then there's usually like multiple revisions and follow-ups and then we'll feature it in the restaurant for a little bit make sure it's working with the guest make sure the kitchen can execute it consistently and then then it hits the menu man I love that okay who are the three coolest people to ever eat at sto Steak House I mean John Travolta walking in is pretty cool see John Travolta Jimmy Fallon or Adam Sandler Sierra I mean all the sports people that were in town that week were incredible I mean Michael
Schumacher was a big one Tiger Woods Phil Mickelson I mean what I remember the year we had the BMW here in Crooked Stick tournament I know you just did a golf thing down in in French lck but there was a BMW uh tournament at Cricket stick and then after it ended they were getting their team put together is it the Davis Cup I can't remember what the the the team is for like the US team that goes and plays against Britain the rer rer Cup rer Cup team thank you so they had a team meeting at St Elmo down in the wine in the director's
room and it was like tiger and Phil and the whole team and it was pouring during BMW and all of a sudden and it was pouring that night all of a sudden Water started cascading down this area in the garden level of St ELO and they're in this room and we are like bailing water uh this room was elevated like two or three steps and I thought we're going to flood into this thing and I'm like we've got the Pinnacle golfers the iconic names like like household names in St ELO right now we are back there buckets and Shop backing and trying to keep the
water at Bay so that the meal didn't get interfered sweaty ruined our clothes never got to meet tiger or Phil they have no idea we kept it at Bay and it was just well when they see this I mean I think tiger and Phil are Avid listeners to the get in podcast so when they hear the story I'm sure they'll write you a thank you L yeah I'm sure yeah right I do that like all the time where it's like someone talks about like a famous person I'm like oh yeah like they listen to the podcast and like I've gotten one person be like really
and I'm like not yet I'm just one day I'm just letting you know sometimes when a famous person's in there you don't get a cool famous experience behind it there's some other side of the story that doesn't have that happens if you could wave a magic wand and open any concept restaurant that you wanted what would you open oh man I've always been torn between French like cool beastro like you know like a balazar type of concept in SoHo New York that's got like a really cool vibe to it not like the traditional French that everybody thinks of or Mexican I mean who doesn't love
Mexican I mean we to make great margaritas and kind of like balanced traditional Mexican that hooers know and love but like make the quality just like so much better and the atmosphere better than you know some of the Mexican places I love a good steak I love but there is some days we're just like a Mexican restaurant in margaritas and like the vibe Just Hits right yeah and you want to just do a Cool vibe that doesn't exist in Indianapolis so those would probably be the two right now some of the Ops Team are like so glad that we're replicating a restaurant or two right
now and the marketing team certainly is cuz they're like oh my gosh every time we do a new restaurant concept which we really only have four well there's a Facebook page for that there's an Instagram page for that there's a x page and a Tik Tok all the stuff don't think about and then just yeah now they're managing 30 different social media sites just the passwords alone it's like trying to remember like oh man what St Elmo one right or St Elmo 2 and all the menus and all these things that change it just it just becomes a lot uh when you think about it
just kind of multiplies up what's the one piece of advice you'd give to any aspiring restaurant tour I mean get experience go work in the business there's a lot of people that would say they want to be in the restaurant business that haven't even really been in the restaurant business uh before so you got to go get into it and work every single position in the restaurant at some point just to get a handle on it and just uh and start small I mean this I'm not saying a food truck or something but the investment is inherently very risky and you don't want to just
do something that you can't recover from sometimes financially so I'd say start small and just see see where it goes and if you can hitch on with somebody uh and and learn from someone else in the business do that but you just got to get your hands dirty and get in there you know that's a great thing about restaurants is you don't have to have an MBA you don't you there's it's a very approachable industry for people this could be why there's a lot of failure in it too I don't you know I don't know but it's very competitive and it takes a ton of
work ton of hours but I also think like every industry takes ton I mean there's no easy way to make a living anymore I mean if if there were people would be doing it right and there'd be a line of it and then it get saturated and you you'd have a tough time so it's just tough just stay true to yourself make sure your concept is something that is like really identifiable you know don't try to be something to everybody when I think about like Steakhouse the reason the steakhouses are so successful is because everybody knows what they're going to get kind of thing every
developer puts a steakhouse in which drives me crazy be a segment like do Mexican really well do Italian really well but you know if you start kind of losing your identity don't try to be something for everybody like we have the authentic or super nice pasta but we also have really good steaks and we also have the and it's like no it's like find your lane and like go own that lane go own it yeah and then like I always make the comparison I always talk about like art team's a band we're writing music all the time we're you know it's all the things that
we do before it becomes a restaurant that I think is the coolest part of our careers and you got to like hear your singers you got you sing to a person right every menu item or experience you have to have a person in mind you know if you can't think of John's going to love this or Susan's going to love this like you got to have people that you know that are going to love that menu item and and commit to it but don't just create stuff without like having like example of who's going to really latch onto that menu item and like when we
open up a restaurant we'll carpet bomb like all these ideas and we'll just hand out menus to people and say Circle things that you had ordered they don't even see what the item is they just look at a menu that has our kind of vision creativity on it and if there's a bunch of things that don't get circled on it we don't even start those just drop off the menu before we even start to like go to the food preparation phase too that's awesome some of the things that we think I I don't think that everyone knows how like the S the literal sausag is
made like behind the scenes of a restaurant right final thing before I have I have three questions that I ask every single guest that are always the same uh but I want you to shout out any one of your restaurant team members Carrie wford I mean Carrie is one of the the people I said has been there 38 or n years at stomo he's iconic I mean talk about you can't say sto's iconic without saying Carrie waer and the people behind it are iconic I mean he is amazing there's oil painting of him in our Legends room which we do for everybody that's been with
us for 30 years or more and he loves his whiskey like back in the day he was like Makers Mark you know through and through this is back in '97 98 before the whiskey boom hit and he's teaching me about wow you got you got to drink the red head I'm like what's the red head he like that's maker Mark and he just he's got a great pallet for whiskies everybody loves him like I'm and when I say everybody loves him no one dislikes Carrie wford staff you know you got 160 stewards at St ELO not one of them dislikes Carrie wford that's hard to
do I mean it's a numbers game in life on likability and he somehow has it Master then guests love him too he's just just an amazing beautiful personality I met him for like 5 minutes and I felt like I had known him for a lifetime like 5 minutes in I was like oh my gosh you are amazing like what a guy he's awesome that's a good that's a good shout out yeah now we've come to the final portion we have the same three question I ask everyone who sits in the seat and we're going to just hype up um some hooers Indiana and uh maybe
reveal a secret so what's something that the world needs to know about Indiana well we're becoming the spring break capital of the world right with global warming it seems like this weather's been fantastic all year long I it was 71° uh I think yesterday or before I can't remember pack up a car get to Indianapolis you know it's about the people I think that the ho your hospitality is a real thing and I think people realize that pretty quickly when they get off a plane and come to Indianapolis or Indiana in general I mean it's just warm Warmness it's this city doesn't have a lot
of arrogance we work together really well to pull off these big events you know how do you pull off these events with tons of egos there are no egos in this town really I think they're very collaborative environment to be in I love that that's so true what's a hidden G in Indiana how about the story in I don't even know what town is it it's kind of like Brown County and it's been there since like 1850 or 60 something like that there's like 13 14 rooms and Cottages it's kind of between Columbus and uh in Nashville great little restaurant up up on the main
level my wife and I Jill we like to go to the bar like we have a little Lake cottage down at Grand View in Columbus area and we'll go over uh to the story end we we do a nice meal sometimes up up top but we'll go down to the bar like more nights than if if our kids aren't with us and it's kind of like cold rainy night Friday night karaoke night and the bar basement bar of the story in it's as local as it gets down there this karaoke is awful it just makes me feel good like everybody is just like farmers and
locals from from the area Indiana's as Indiana gets down there I love this so first off I'm on the story in website since 1851 so the the header thing says one inconvenient location since 1851 yeah it's hard to get to it's if you love windy roads hit it I love that it says Tuesday movie night Wednesday Bingo Friday karaoke heck yeah Saturday Sunday music yeah so go down to go down to the basement they've got like burgers and maybe some chicken they're okay in a little paper boat with crinkle cut fries it's the ambian and yeah they've got some great craft beers down there the
bartenders are awesome it's about as authentic and genuine as you can get I love that final question for you who's a hooer that we need to keep on our radar someone who's doing big things I mean I the first person I think of is like Chris G with visit Indy that guy is just unbelievable Ambassador for the state of Indiana so he works with Leonard hoops and Susie towns and that whole team at visit Indie and you got to think about how tough it was postco in every Metro Market across the United States and visit Andy put this city on its life support and brought
in volleyball tournaments from Chicago because Chicago was more locked down and the sweets trade show and they started bringing the entire NCAA March Madness March Madness did the whole bubble you know and it these people they make things happen bring the the Olympic things and it's it's a coordination of a lot of groups but I would say Chris G and Leonard Hoops he's amazing Chris is going to be the chairperson for rev he is a butler grad I think he's a Board of Trustees at Butler he has just been a rising star uh for that he'll when Leonard retires he'll probably be the CEO of
visit Indie you were to here first yeah there we go hot take not even that hot yeah Chris is awesome but but think about how Indianapolis coming out of the pandemic and what they did like lifted the whole city up and we have all these amenities that you and I get to enjoy because of all that concentrated business that comes through that Convention Center there wouldn't be as many restaurants if it weren't for that there wouldn't be as many assets of museums and things if it wasn't for that group and we get to benefit from it we say well we don't benefit from conventions the
tax dollars that come through or clean tax dollar uh and it just funds this whole state it's it's incredible it's I don't think a lot of people really fully grasp some of the groups that come in through like early part of December Performance Racing industry it's like 70,000 people coming through Indianapolis and boom just the the economic impact of that in especially in like off seon times kind of you know where it's like where it's not people just like you know it's warm out and everyone like the locals are all like maybe hunkered down a little bit more but like these conventions and everyone coming
through and like 210,000 people or whatever for Taylor Swift to three nights like it's crazy like they they are doing really good stuff and they definitely don't get as much love as I you know they probably sh yeah yeah that's too I would say man this was such a great interview I had a great time learning about the history behind St Elmo and the growth and I had no idea from your your dad getting in Noble Romans and just the evolution and and all the things coming down the Horizon to what the airport caramel two new locations plus some stuff out in Phoenix yes so
I mean big things on the horizon thank you for all you do and thank you for being an amazing Steward of that iconic St Elmo brand like I think that's why I'm leaving out here like fired up of like this is a true it's not a Hidden Gem it is just a true gem in the state of Indiana and the way that you speak about the brand and the way that you just honor that is is really impressive to me so thank you thank you Nate thanks for the community for all of its sport through the 122 years that we've been around and here's the
next 122 more hey everyone quick pause in the action to introduce you to flutter Von re a true Hidden Gem in Indiana especially for all you watch afficianados out there founded by an Indiana State graduate from Bates this family-owned brand has Deep hooer Roots dating back to the 1830s they are even proud members of the Society of Indiana Pioneers which I didn't know existed but is a sweet organization they are based in India and are redefining luxury watches meticulously crafted in Cookoo by a certified watchmaker and his Apprentice the designs blend classic Elegance with a modern twist don't miss their Chase Brisco race day VIP
experience giveaway an incredible opportunity for race fans Chase is an awesome NASCAR driver from Mitchell Indiana you're going to be learning more about him soon follow flutter Von Reese to explore their stunning Collections and join their journey to Greatness thank you for listening to this episode of get in if you like what you heard make sure you leave us a review wherever you listen to podcast this show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater whether you're looking to start a podcast or take your content to the next level click the link in the description to see all of my gear recommendations at sweetwater.com
if you want to behind the scenes look at everything we're doing across the state make sure you follow me on Instagram and Tik Tac @nate spangle thank you so much for listening and being part of what makes the hooer state great we'll see you next time here on get in
