#1583 - John Terzian & Craig Susser

Joe Rogan (0:16)

So gentlemen, let's start, just introduce yourself. John, introduce yourself, tell people what you do.

John Terzian (0:21)

I'm John Terzian, I own a company called H.wood Group. So we have restaurants, nightclubs, Delilah, Nice Guy, Bootsy Bellows are some of them.

Joe Rogan (0:30)

And Craig?

Craig Susser (0:31)

I'm Craig Susser, I kind of feel like such a slacker compared to that.

John Terzian (0:34)

Yeah, you should.

Craig Susser (0:35)

I own a place called Craig's Restaurant, and a vegan ice cream company called Craig's Vegan.

Joe Rogan (0:41)

A place called Craig's, very modest, it's one of the best restaurants in LA. Very highly respected place. And we're here to talk about what the fuck is happening to the restaurant industry during this pandemic and how crazy it is.

You know, I've talked about this before, but having you guys on so you could say firsthand what it's been like to you, and what this experience has been like, and how poorly it's been handled. Just I wanna give people a sense of this at home, what it's like from two men who have made their living in the hospitality and restaurant industry.

John Terzian (1:16)

Yeah, yeah, I mean, you wanna start, Craig?

Craig Susser (1:19)

Well, no, the funny thing is it's like, we're the rule followers. We're the ones that are used to handling the health department. We're the ones that are used to, you know, doing everything that, you know, from a safety standpoint, right? And now, we're the ones that are being crushed or being picked on, so to speak, but that's the way a lot of people in the industry feel, because we're the ones that are being shut down in a city where a lot of other businesses are remaining open, like malls, distribution centers, markets, stores. I mean, you can go to a mall and go shopping. You can go on an airplane from LA to, you know, New York, take your mask off and eat, and that's okay, but you can't eat outdoors in a restaurant in LA. That's following social distancing, all the health guidelines. I mean, we know our business. And so it's been really hard since, what, it started March 15th. We shut down.

We were then told to put glass in between our boots, so we did that. We opened for about 10 days.

We did UV lights in the air conditioning systems.

John Terzian (2:29)

Air filtration, all the stupid, everything.

Craig Susser (2:31)

Absolutely, and then we built patios.

I've personally spent $250,000 abiding by the rules that were set forth by the state, by the county, by the governors, by everybody. And then to just kind of be shut down is really, really difficult. And it's not about me, and it's not about my restaurant, and it's not about John. It's about the employees. It's about the dishwashers and the busboys and the servers that live day to day on the money that they make at the restaurant. It's their livelihood. It's how they feed their families. They send money back to the countries that they came from, you know? This is a larger issue. And the reason it's a larger issue is one little restaurant like Craig's, we have 90 employees.

A furniture store might have five or six.

So when you shut down an industry like that, it really has a huge economic impact. And then it has a social impact because we all love to eat. It's the one thing we have in common. We like to get together as people.

Joe Rogan (3:32)

I'm a giant fan of restaurants. One of my favorite things to do is to go out to eat. And living in LA, it was so frustrating. It was bizarre. It doesn't make sense. Now, when you guys get the orders, when they tell you what's shut down or what's open, is there anyone you communicate with? Is there anyone that's involved in government that you've had conversations with?

John Terzian (3:52)

No, that's the issue. That's the biggest issue that we have is they refuse to communicate to any of us.

And I can't quite figure out why. We hear about it on the news. We've joined with about 30, 40 other main owners that are all in the area.

And I think it's the one thing that's kind of a silver lining in all of this is that we've all teamed up to kind of like try to figure out what's going on. But we find out about it from the news, and we have to just make these moves within 24 hours.

It's absolutely absurd. And we've reached out. I've reached out to Newsome. I've reached out to Garcetti, and they do nothing. You know, they put you on phony task force. They lie. You know, they have no idea how serious this is. And I commend you for having us on. No one else wants to speak about it. Everyone's too scared of backlash.