Transcript: Episode 174: Apron on a Fence

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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor episode 174. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/174. 

[00:00:14] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast ride up to the top floor features tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. And now your host and elevator operator, Susan Barry.

[00:00:32] Susan Barry: Welcome to the show. Mitch Prensky grew up in a food centric family, but pursued a music career before pivoting to the culinary world. He trained at the French Culinary Institute and worked with industry legends like Jacques Pepin and Bobby Flay before launching his own ventures, including the critically acclaimed Supper in Philadelphia.

Over the years, Mitch has developed innovative concepts, created pop up restaurants before they were trendy, and consulted for high profile projects like Zabar's and Hyatt's lifestyle brands. With business partner, Jenny Yip, Mitch leads COJHO F&B Development, focusing on transforming food and beverage concepts for boutique hotels and independent operators. Today, we are going to talk about restaurant consulting, industry trends, and the future of dining and hospitality. But before we jump in, we need to answer the call button.

Call button rings 

[00:01:19] Susan Barry: The emergency call button is our hotline for hospitality professionals who have burning questions. If you would like to submit a question, you can call or text me at 850-404-9630. Today's question was submitted by Kirsten. Kirsten does not give a preamble. She just jumps right to the question, and it is this. How much correlation is there between a culinary school degree and success in the restaurant business? Is a degree important? This is a good question for you, Mitch. What do you think?

[00:02:12] Mitch Prensky: Yeah. Okay. So, I'm going to go against type as somebody who is culinary trained and has mentored a lot of culinary students less and less over the course of my career. My career have I seen success equal that, that culinary degree equals success. It really is not important and it's certainly not crucial. It's really more about how you work and how how passionate you are about this. That'll get a lot further than just having a piece of paper. 

[00:02:41] Susan Barry: It's interesting. I think the same is true in hotels, although as the child of educators, I don't want to be anti education. I don't mean it that way, but the idea that you take out, hundreds of thousand dollars in loans and then have to start at the bottom of the org chart, we're in an apprenticeship business. So it's almost like you're going to do those 10, 15 an hour jobs, no matter what, maybe don't have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to do it. I don't know. 

[00:03:13] Mitch Prensky: Yeah. I would say this. I think, so when I first was starting in the industry as a, and trying to be a line cook here in New York as a 22 year old what was important back then was if you didn't have the degree, you could, they wouldn't even look at your resume and some of the more high end restaurants.

[00:03:31] Susan Barry: Oh, interesting. 

[00:03:32] Mitch Prensky: And that was back then. And it's just so not that way anymore. So for today, and this is where we are, we're not, nobody's going back in the past. I don't think it's important. I think what's important is you show up, you put your head down, you work. And you learn, keep your eyes open and your mind open.

[00:03:50] Susan Barry: Interesting. You started in music before shifting to food. How did your background as a jazz musician shape your approach to this hospitality industry that we're in? Or did it? 

[00:04:05] Mitch Prensky: Oh, no. Very much. I grew up, I also grew up in a family business that was in food. I've run hospitality from a very young age. Music and hospitality are, there's so many parallels and I've said it for years. Really, if I put it into buckets of, okay, so me as an individual musician, trying to learn a craft and learn an instrument, there's a lot of detail and discipline to master that instrument. And that was instilled in me from a very young age. And those habits and routines are identical to the discipline. It takes a master cooking,

[00:04:39] Susan Barry: Oh, interesting! 

[00:04:40] Mitch Prensky: Running a business, building a team, satisfying customers. Practicing seven hours a day alone in the room to hone my skills, which I did. And that's honestly, I wish my, I think my parents would have been happy if I was not, that's not what I did.

[00:04:56] Susan Barry: What was your instrument? 

[00:04:57] Mitch Prensky: I'm a drummer, which is even the worst. 

[00:04:59] Susan Barry: Oh God. 

[00:05:00] Mitch Prensky: Yeah. So I'm a drummer percussionist. So I would practice seven hours a day alone in the room, which is not the most social setting for a young person and then later on, and you're learning how to get ideas in your head out in the instrument. It's the same as learning how to cook and honing your skills. You have these ideas in your head of what something should taste like. It's only with practice that you're able to get those ideas out of your hands. There's a lot of teamwork involved, right? A lot of improvising in music. There's a lot of satisfying customers is very similar to satisfying the audience, right?

So there's a lot of those parallels, right? Seemingly disparate skill sets and industries both are they're entertaining. So hospitality is entertainment at the end of the day. And so is music. Lives do not hang in the balance when you're a musician. And I similarly owning restaurants and being a chef and having a team of guys who are younger and potentially a little anxious about getting everything perfect all the time. And they were very nervous about that. I would say, listen, if, unless we do something really wrong here, lives do not hang in the balance. We're going to make a lot of people really happy. My theory to all of this, when people say what business are you in? And there's that old adage, think about that. I think both of these industries the business, it's the business of making memories. 

[00:06:24] Susan Barry: Absolutely true. Your journey includes everything from catering to full service restaurants, corporate culinary gigs, all of the things we could probably make a whole episode about each one of the phases of your career. But. 

[00:06:38] Mitch Prensky: Wait, we're not going to? 

[00:06:40] Susan Barry: Since we can't do that, I want to hone in on Supper because you basically ran a farm to table restaurant before it became this universal movement. So I want to hear about Supper. 

[00:06:56] Mitch Prensky: Okay. Overarchingly the long and short of it is, it was the most inspiring, the most challenging, the most rewarding project that I decided to tackle in my career and in my life, really. And Supper was really based around, it's very interesting, the whole farm to table the expression farm to table. The first time I ever heard the expression farm the table, it was someone applied it to me and said, Oh, you're that farm to table chef. And I was like, I don't know what you mean.

I just cooked the way I cook. And it was really based around my particular passion, which is serving very local, very seasonal ingredients. And the ethos was to create an offering that was informed by a particular place that morphed and changed throughout the seasons. And, it was more natural for me to improvise, which really comes back to music and jazz and all this. Which is understanding what's in front of you and then being able to create something with the, to pivot on a dime and say okay, today we have, Jerusalem artichokes. What are we doing with that? And then you have to go do that. So having been labeled that guy, I decided to deliver on that ultimate version. I was like, okay, if you're going to call me this, let me first off, find out what it is and see what that promise is. And really what the the version of that ideal.

So I had a farm property, three acres in that partners with mine. It was their land and they gave me three acres and a staff of people and I was the most fortunate chef in the world to grow whatever I wanted, whatever came out of the ground. I pulled out of the ground the first year I pulled everything out of the ground myself. Yeah, I would drive out to, it was out the suburbs of the Philadelphia area in horse country. I would drive out there at 6 AM. I would pull everything out of the ground, drive back into town, give it to my guys to wash up, go run my catering company. Thanks. Take a nap, come back in the afternoon and write a menu, take a nap, 10 minutes and write a menu.

And then from there we would wrap everything, have a night of service and then go ahead and do that again the next day. And that informed, that was, to me was, it came out of the ground. I pulled it out of the ground. I brought it to this place. It got on their plate five hours later. And that to me was the ultimate version of farm to table.

[00:09:13] Susan Barry: What inspired, I'm guessing it was maybe not to have to get up at six in the morning, but we'll see. What inspired you to start a COJHO F& B development and how does it or does it reflect your vision for where you think food and beverage is going? 

[00:09:33] Mitch Prensky: Sure. Listen, I was a owner of five restaurants in three different cities. I did that for about 20 years and I was always just me. I decided that I wanted to pivot away from being biopically focused on myself, right? And what I was putting into the world. And I wanted to help another guy monetize and gain ROI on my skill set. And my, experience, right? First was with Bon Appetit management and I was developing food hall concepts for them. And then running  Zabar's and that was a different thing. My, my background is interesting in that I have a MBA from work in entrepreneurship. And for years, I never used it as a mechanism to get anybody to understand me. It was more, I use it for my own education.

However, I was running my restaurants, of course, was informed by what I learned. But in this world, I really could apply a lot of those, what those learnings, that's what I was taught. And that helped immensely. And after doing this for 20 years I just wanted to pivot that way. I wanted to help others.

And then after honing those skills, getting into that world it brought me to own my, to my first opportunity to open my own spot or my own consultancy, which was called Collective Hospitality Co Op. And then a few years down the line, I was doing some really great projects. Years down the line I connected with Jenny Yip, who's my partner. And she's in this insanely talented monster creator. Who's, people know her in the industry for the last, 20 something years. And we decided to join forces, so to speak, and that became COJHO. If people wonder about what the word is, it's Collective Hospitality and she is Jen Juice Hospitality. So it's C O J H O. That's just the two of us put together. Our vision really is rooted in the concept that ideas are nothing without execution.

So everyone has ideas. The only ideas that anybody has ever seen are the ones that are executed. So for us creating inspiring F & B spaces that are beautiful and they're exciting and they're they're all inspiring, operational and functional is what delivers the ROI to our clients. And that's really where, what our passion to, to put that recipe. 

[00:11:57] Susan Barry: So speaking of that, you offer services that start at like feasibility studies, take people all the way to launch and beyond. How do you think being so comprehensive sets you apart in the consulting world? 

[00:12:13] Mitch Prensky: The difference for us is we firmly believe in treating each project as we have with our own for the past three. So when we take on a project or we're opening a restaurant I treat it as if it's my restaurant and I, and Jenny does the same. What we do on the same level as what how his risk looks right, let's say, for lack of a better term, but really taking everything through for us, it's deciding what to build, why to build it, how to build it. They're all important success of the project where we feel the crucial areas of the differentiator for us is the launch, the opening that my minutia of that. And after opening the most important part of it is after you're opening when the rubber hits the road, those important operational days build long term success a lot. Listen, concepting and launching are fun. And it's the last fun you'll ever have. But that's not what this is supposed to be. It's not, I don't think that anyone ever told me this needs, this is necessarily something that's going to get dopamine levels every day. It's supposed to, it's supposed to be functional and profitable. 

[00:13:26] Susan Barry: It's what I always say about opening hotels that I opened two hotels in such rapid succession that then running the hotel, I was like, Oh my God, this is so boring. Let me start a company. Okay, makes total sense. 

[00:13:41] Mitch Prensky: I remember when I opened Supper took a long time. I bootstrapped that as self financed. We did everything we could do to get this thing open. And it took a long time. We were exhausted on the day it opened. We were like, wow, it took a year, 14 months, maybe. We opened it on day one, I'm sitting there and I'm like, Oh wait, no, it took me 14 months to get to the starting line.

[00:14:03] Susan Barry: Exactly. The finish line that you think is actually getting to the starting line. Yes, 

[00:14:09] Mitch Prensky: Exactly. And then you just have to have a little kumbaya moment with yourself and say, all right, am I set up for this and accept that and then go and do it. And really I, that's, that translates into everything we do for other people, for our clients, right? Understanding that, yeah, no, this is nice for now, but once we get this open is when we really have to work. 

[00:14:31] Susan Barry: We like to make sure that our listeners come away from every single episode of Top Floor with some specific practical things they can try either in their businesses or in their day to day lives. So for boutique hotel that are looking to elevate their dining options. What do you think is the first thing they should consider? 

[00:14:53] Mitch Prensky: Yeah focus on what you want to achieve with the F & B pro. 

[00:14:57] Susan Barry: Make money. That's what I want to achieve. 

[00:14:59] Mitch Prensky: Yeah. Everybody wants to make a living. Yeah, make money. I mean, operating, I think the first thing really is to your perception of the property, right? Are you ultra luxury? That speaks to one level of offering you're not going to apply what you would do for a lifestyle offering or a casual select service offering into an ultra luxury property. So I think understanding that helps elevate because now you're you have cohesion between the branding of the hotel on the room side, let's say and on those that services side and on the F&B. The F&B should really be there to lift all of that.

[00:15:39] Susan Barry: What about advice for turning an underperforming? Restaurant into a success. 

[00:15:46] Mitch Prensky: Okay. There's a lot to talk about here But I mean I could boil it down so I think The last resort Mr. Reconciled. That's the last step. I think everyone runs to, Oh, it's not working, change it. It's not worth changing. That's costly and it's not necessarily true. 

[00:16:04] Susan Barry: And it takes forever too 

[00:16:06] Mitch Prensky: I think the first thing you have to do is internally really doing an assessment of the operations itself from a P and L perspective. Where are you seeing gaps? Where is money running out the door? Is it labor? Is it food costs? It's it waste? All of that. And then from there, you have to look at refuse and see what the public thinks of what's what you're doing. And then you see, you say, okay, fine, they're miserable and we're miserable. And then you say what do they want now? That's where your gap analysis comes. The worst thing I ever see, and I say this all the time, the restaurant starts tanking in a hotel and that development team who launched and they were all happy when they launched, is nowhere to be found.

They're off to other things. And the ops team, the GM, they let it fizzle to the ground. It goes dark and then people, ownership comes and they say, what are we going to redo? And then they rehire people and they remobilize and get this thing going in a new way. I always say this, and this is why we stay with our projects, right? We'll stay in a F & B asset management oversight role. So we can watch KPIs, right? So, when I see things pitching south, I start doing that assessment saying, okay, what's going on here? Why is this happening? If it's a, if we decide at the end of the day that it is a reconcept, we can do that in real time so that you're saving money, you're not losing staff, you're not burning it to the ground and having to restart the engine. 

[00:17:39] Susan Barry: So tell me if I'm wrong about this. My instinct is that particularly when it comes to restaurants inside of hotels, I don't think this is necessarily true in freestanding restaurants, but restaurants inside of hotels, I think that they fail, not because of the concept, but because of the bodies on the floor, the people who are working day in, day out.

And I'll think about in particular, this may not be so much the case anymore, but the kitchen in a hotel is oftentimes located so far away from the dining room that the waitstaff spends all of their time in the kitchen and they're never taking care of the guests. Is my instinct on this off at all? Like what are your, what do you think about that? 

[00:18:31] Mitch Prensky: I know I'm sure that there were instances of that and it's a more traditional thought process there. And that's why you've seen in the last, let's say 15 years, more lifestyle boutique offerings where the restaurant is standing on its own. There's an open kitchen and it operates on its own. I'll give you an example of one successful offering where the team is really engaged and they kill it every night, which is the Beekman hotel. And the Beekman here in New York city. And I'm very intimately involved with it. I'm there every day, but it really is my home away from home.

Knowing ownership, knowing the staff on both sides, it is a management deal with a crafted hospitality right now, Calicio's team. So they're running it, it's a restaurant that they would want. They're not. So there is in dining at the beach. And there are fences built up through crafted. But I think that's for larger properties, in some areas where you're like maybe it's, maybe a grand high at offering not to name names, but to say these larger hotels.

[00:19:41] Susan Barry: Yeah, like big, full service 

[00:19:43] Mitch Prensky: The big full service model, I try my hardest to cleave off pieces of that in the F & B space. So if you're in a large property and we're developing a concept that's going to be their fine dining restaurant. There's no reason why the food should be coming to the base for this, let's say 39th floor off. So you design it and we do kitchen design and spatial planning so that, it acts almost as its own freestanding restaurant. This way, a lot of it too is management, right? Generally. So how managers are, relaying that or telling that story to the staff, it's very important that we're here. But yes, there is an an element of out of sight, out of mind, a lot of times in kitchens that I saw a lot in the older hotels and the larger properties.

And that's why it's not something that I love. And whenever possible, I'll say, okay, fine, we have all this space down here. Let's do a on in the space. Let's say it's on a different floor. Let's do a turnout kitchen. or a show kitchen. So this way people understand that it's being cooked and there's that element is there so you can do all your prep downstairs, but when it's showtime, you're upstairs, you're on the floor and you're in. 

[00:21:04] Susan Barry: Got it. I want to also ask about something that you mentioned with the Tom Colicchio company, because I have worked with, been involved with, consulted on so many hotels that there was a point in time, and I don't know if this is ended yet, where that was everyone's solution to the F & B problem in hotels, outsource it, give it to somebody, let them run it. And I think that it worked really well in a lot of situations, except for breakfast. That means like amazing concepts that had a lobster Cobb salad and an admit, every wonderful thing in the world could not get breakfast. 

[00:21:50] Mitch Prensky: Sure. This is what I'll say. It's a different skill set to run a three meal restaurant in a hotel, but it is to be a, an independent restaurant regardless of how busy your restaurants or morning your brunches on the weekends you're still a guy that's I love dinner and that's the coolest thing. But I say this about that, it's one of my favorite metaphors is it's independent restaurateurs going into the hotel world. They say we can do that. And it's the same thing as guys who are restaurant guys saying we can cater a 500 person seated dinner. 

[00:22:21] Susan Barry: Yes. 

[00:22:23] Mitch Prensky: It looked right, it looks the same, but it's not. It's like a horse and a zebra. They look the same. They're both serving food to people. But at the end of the day, they don't have a lot to do with each other as far as the mechanisms. So as far as those companies, when you start saying, okay, it's a United Square Hospitality Group, what's on these bigger companies. They understand that you need to hire correctly and you need to write menus correctly without giving the short end of the stick to the day part that you just never cared about. And know, because it's not as. 

[00:22:59] Susan Barry: And that every guest cares about, like that's the thing that people care about. 

[00:23:03] Mitch Prensky: Exactly. And a hundred percent you're not there to throw your idea forward at guests in a hotel. You're there to give them, this is what I always said about how I cook and how I perceive what I do in restaurants is, I make a thing that my customer loves and I make it a little bit different and a lot better. 

[00:23:24] Susan Barry: What do you think are the biggest mistakes that you see operators make when they're doing their pre opening planning specifically? Like what are they not thinking about or what do they have assumptions about that are wrong? 

[00:23:37] Mitch Prensky: Okay. So it's across the board, but it's the big word is budget. But it's not, but no, that's not only, okay, okay, but that doesn't only mean capital. It is one of them, right? Budget for capital, budget properly for time, and budget properly for talent to get it, the job done in the amount of time with the amount of capital. So they're all tied to each other. And I think that you always hear that thing, it was like, we're opening in a week. I was like, wait, but where's the team to do this? Oh, they're already the operating team and they're opening three. They're already running two units in the hotel. I want them to open this thing too, but I don't want to hire outside people to do it because I want to, so it's penny wise and pound foolish.

And that's all runs back to capital budget. And then that thing of listen, we want to open, but we never, the check never cleared for that guy to come in and FF & E is waiting on a doc somewhere stuff like this. You know at the end of the day, it's making sure that all of those budgetary questions, those buckets are full.

[00:24:42] Susan Barry: Got it. I agree. And that's been my observation at least. 

[00:24:46] Mitch Prensky: Yeah. Yeah. There's no, there's no getting away from it. There's no magic pill where you can say, I opened this place with no money on a short amount of time with no people. No one's ever, it's never happened. 

[00:25:00] Susan Barry: There's no book written about that. We have reached the fortune telling portion of our show. So now you are going to predict the future and then we will come back and see if you got it right. 

[00:25:11] Mitch Prensky: Okay. I don't think I do. 

[00:25:13] Susan Barry: This is, not a difficult question at all. So I'm sure you'll be fine. Okay. What's a prediction you have about the future of food in the hotel business in hospitality. 

[00:25:25] Mitch Prensky: More bespoken, more luxury of the buzzwords of the year coming and it's Oh, luxury. But what does that mean for the F&B space? I also really feel that there's a desire for customers to connect with the culture of the place that they're in a very real, organic and less programmed way. And I think it's done very well in smaller boutique hotels because what they're able to do is become part of the community as a whole and be part of that wheel that turns right. Spoke of that wheel in the F&B space, it's potentially writing menus that speak to what's happening culinarily in that location. What's happening with ingredients in that location. And it boils down to this. And this is what I, my hope is, and I hope I see more of it is going the extra, it's not even a mile, going the extra block.

When I had Supper, this is goes back to business. The goal was do anything that anybody say, yes, just get a, find a way to get to yes. And I've seen less and less of it in the last couple of years. And I'm hoping that within the next year, people are getting back to that point where they say I love this industry and I love what I'm doing for people and I'm going to find a way to get to yes. At Supper, it was, I had a customer come in for brunch and he was, diabetic and he asked me if I have sugar free maple syrup, which I'd never heard of at the time. And we were across the streets from a Whole Foods. So I ran out the door during brunch and there's windows and everyone watching me and I'm like, Hi. And I run across the street and I buy some maple syrup and I put it on the table. And that's a very small way of doing that for a customer. So I think that it's really localizing the experience. That is what I'd like to see. 

[00:27:10] Susan Barry: Okay. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about the restaurant industry, writ large, what would it be?

[00:27:19] Mitch Prensky: Oh my God. It's easy. Just make it more equitable and understanding of the human fact, human. Everybody who works in this industry and I got industry, it was, it's a, it was pretty unforgiving. And it could be right? Nobody was giving you a, a mulligan on anything, but he was like, Hey, you'll be fine. Everybody was like holding you to task every day. And I think that the world generally and generationally is changing, which it will every day and every minute and everything that we all do. And I would like to see more of that equity, equitable, treating staff more equitably, treating your partners your customers, understanding that we're all here for a pretty limited amount of time as human beings on the planet.

And far be it from me to force somebody to take away their freedom or what they want to accomplish in their life. So that I can get, two steak frites on the table on a Saturday. You understand? It's understanding that a larger sense. And I think that we spoke about it during a couple of years ago, pre COVID, Me Too movement, all that, where it was like, okay, how are we treating workers? And I feel like there's a good veneer of that, but I think the underlying is probably pretty similar to what it has been. 

[00:28:46] Susan Barry: What is next for you and what's next for your company? 

[00:28:49] Mitch Prensky: Next for me, next for me is what's next for my company. Wish I had more hobbies, don't. So some exciting projects we have coming up in the new year. We have some independent restaurant concepts that we're kicking off here in the East coast. And also I've been getting the opportunity and Jenny and I, we got the opportunity to work with some legendary creators of the luxury hotel space, which is amazing.

And I'm so humbled every day to be sitting across a table or in a conversation or on a zoom call with somebody that I, I thought his name was the name of a brand. I didn't even know. Oh, there's a human that is that guy. And that's, and we're fortunate this year that we're able to work with people like that as well. But really helping, at the end of the day, that's all we really want to do is help dispel the anxiety around F & B and help create something that's going to build in, lift the boat for the rest of that business, the business inside the business. 

[00:29:47] Susan Barry: Okay, folks, before we tell Mitch goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.

[00:29:59] Narrator: Going down. 

[00:30:00] Susan Barry: Mitch, what is a story you would only tell me on the loading dock? 

Elevator voice announces, “Going down.”

[00:30:04] Mitch Prensky: Okay, here's the story. I own Supper and we're hitting on all cylinders. I don't know what year this is, but we used to do restaurant where you can set up in Philadelphia, which was insanity. We were an 85 seat restaurant and on the first night we would have a book of 250 reservations.

[00:30:26] Susan: Wow. And that's like a three course pre fee. 

[00:30:30] Mitch Prensky: Yeah. And all of those courses we were giving choices within each course. So it's probably like three choices for each course, but three courses plus little snack/hors d'oevurey things, whatever we were adding on. And I have a team of guys with me, and I have this one young cook, I don't want to, I'm not going to, use that his name, I'll use a separate name, I don't even know if he knows who I am. But he was working for me and he always seemed less than present in his work and really very nervous and stressed in the kitchen, which, and he was a very beginning level guy. He was a salad guy, but man, you need some bodies to turn out some stuff and it's, it's that day. And he was nervous that day and very anxious. So I helped him on a station and he was scattered. And he said to me at one point, it's like an hour, half hour before we open. He says, Oh, chef is okay. I'm going to take a break. I have to go make a phone call. And we had a little backyard area with a fence.

So he goes to make his phone call and we're all running around like crazy and 10 minutes go by. We haven't really seen him, but everybody's doing stuff. Let's call him Eric. And I say, Hey, you guys seen Eric and everybody says something else. Everybody goes, yeah, no, he's downstairs. He's in the walk in. He's out having a smoke break. He's doing it. Everybody's seen him, but nobody's seen it. They go, Oh I haven't seen him! And we're just about to open with a line out the door. And I go outside, I'm like, where's Eric? I walk outside to find this guy and all I see is his apron hanging over the fence. 

[00:32:01] Susan: No, 

[00:32:03] Mitch Prensky: Yeah. And he vaporized and we were like, Did he just get cold? So I go back inside and it's very, it's funny and also stressful, but listen, my guys, the teams that I wrote ran always the teams that I was part of, we always had a sense of humor about this. You can't, you get pissed for a second. But I walked in, I go like the. 

[00:32:25] Susan: Did he jump the fence? Do you think? 

[00:32:26] Mitch Prensky: Wait! So we go, I say, I think he got called to his home planet, just up into the air. And all that's left is the apron. And we never saw him again. He ran away. He ran away 10 minutes before service on the busiest night. And so of course I became two stations. We needlessly, we all banded together and we got it up. We picked up the, this guy, but he vaporized, he just. And I've never seen him since.

And I'm like, that's, it was the cleanest break I've ever seen. You have to be in a certain, I'm amazed by people that can cause I could never just, that's more than high and dry. That's I'm going to leave you like I never existed. And I'm like, what was it? And I went downstairs and go, and at the end of the night, before, after we got up, and everyone's laughing about, I go did we check his locker? What's in his locker? Nothing. He's not playing. Nothing. Bags. I'm like, okay, dude. All right. 

[00:33:25] Susan: Back to the home planet for Eric. 

[00:33:29] Mitch Prensky: You got called home, wherever it is. 

[00:33:30] Susan: Oh my gosh. Mitch Prinsky. Thank you so much for being here. I know that our listeners loved hearing your story and I really appreciate writing to the top floor.

[00:33:40] Mitch Prensky: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Susan. 

[00:38:08] Susan Barry: Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/174. Jonathan Albano is our editor, producer and all around genius. He even wrote and performed our theme song with vocals by Cameron Albano. You can subscribe to Top Floor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and your rating or review will go a long way in helping us give you more of what you like. 

[00:38:43] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Top Floor Podcast at www.topfloorpodcast.com. Have a hospitality marketing question? Reach us at 850-404-9630 to be featured in a future episode.