#1487 - Janet Zuccarini & Evan Funke

Joe Rogan (0:01)

Ta-da-da-da, and we're rolling. Janet, Evan, what's up?

How are you guys? Good to see you.

Janet Zuccarini (0:07)

Good to see you.

Joe Rogan (0:08)

Strange times.

Janet Zuccarini (0:10)

The weirdest times ever.

Joe Rogan (0:11)

Yes, but Felix is still intact. The restaurant's there.

We were talking about restaurants that have been just destroyed over the rioting and the looting and the chaos, and you guys, you got lucky. You dodged a bullet.

Evan Funke (0:24)

We did.

Joe Rogan (0:25)

Very happy to hear that.

Janet Zuccarini (0:26)

Well, I think Abbot Kinney got a bit of warning, and all of Abbot Kinney boarded up, and so we boarded up, and the National Guard is still there today.

Joe Rogan (0:34)

What the fuck?

It's so strange.

It doesn't make any sense. If you told me that something happened in LA and people were rioting, I'd be like, well, if it happened in LA it kind of makes sense that people are upset. And then you said, but they're smashing businesses and destroying restaurants and destroying small stores and family-owned businesses. I'd be like, well, wait, why? Why are they doing that? There's no rhyme or reason to this.

Evan Funke (0:57)

It doesn't make any sense. I understand why people are pissed.

Joe Rogan (1:02)

Put that fucker up there.

Janet Zuccarini (1:03)

We're just talking about it.

Evan Funke (1:04)

How's my level? Good, better?

Joe Rogan (1:08)

Yeah, it's, I mean, it is what it is. There's nothing we can do about it now, right?

Janet Zuccarini (1:13)

But I also think there's been thousands and thousands of peaceful protestors out there.

And the press is really not focusing on all the peaceful protests, which is our right to protest.

And there's going to be a bad apple everywhere, and then you're going to get hundreds of people that, and I think you were saying on your last podcast, it's a bunch of young people that don't know where, yeah, where's your iPhone made? Where are you going to get your shoes made from? And they're not thinking about that. They're just thinking free running shoes. And this is fun. And we've been locked up and like, let's get out there. For 10 weeks.

Joe Rogan (1:50)

Yeah.

Evan Funke (1:51)

They've been in their house.

Joe Rogan (1:52)

It's the perfect storm of craziness, right? A disease we thought was going to kill everybody. And then, so everybody shuts down. Then it turns out it doesn't really kill nearly as many people as we thought, but we still have to be shut down.

And then like, when do we get to go back to work? And then all of a sudden, hey, you guys can open up. Like you guys got no warning.

Evan Funke (2:09)

No warning.

Joe Rogan (2:10)

No warning. I mean, I called Janet up when it happened and I was like, what?

You just, you get to open? Like, but it takes 10 days to get staff ready. That's what you said, right?

Janet Zuccarini (2:18)

Yeah. I just had a friend send me a text message. Hey, so are you open? I hear you can be open now. And I mean, it was just dropped in the news before, you know, any, we could have any time to prepare.

And, you know, we don't have the staffing. You need, we need at least 10 days to be able to open our doors.

Evan Funke (2:34)

I mean, that's really our biggest challenges is getting our staff back into the restaurant and feeling comfortable in the restaurant with all these new regulations. And you have state regulations, you have LA County regulations, you have City of Los Angeles regulations. And each one of the documents are like novel length.

So I'm sitting there at home reading all three cross referencing and we basically have to abide by the most stringent rules. So I'm like picking apart each one. Okay, trying to decipher what we can actually do.

And then on top of that, we're trying to get people out of their houses because they're scared shitless to come back. Because the wild card is the clientele.

Joe Rogan (3:17)

I think people are gonna come back in droves. I think if you were open full capacity, you'd be fucking sold out instantly. I really don't think there's any issue at all.

I think there's so much fear mongering going on, but I think the actual attitude of people, way more people are interested in going out than are interested in being locked up for longer.

Janet Zuccarini (3:38)

Well, I think it's like different groups of people. So you have young people who wanna go out and they don't care and they'll be seated at full capacity.