Episode Transcript

Rusty Rueff: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. You know, sharing food, you know, sharing food is a powerful way to bring people together. We know that. We do it all the time, right? We share a meal. Well, Feast World Kitchen enables refugees and immigrants to serve their traditional recipes to local residents who get to learn about and enjoy authentic international cuisine without ever having to leave town. This food business incubator is building bridges between cultures and knitting its local community together. Executive Director Ross Carper is partly responsible for making this idea a reality in Spokane, Washington. Ross got the idea for a permanent kitchen that would feature a rotation of international cooks. After meeting an immigrant chef who wanted to rent out her food truck so that she could expand her own catering business, feast World Kitchen also provides an opportunity to bring people together over a love for food in an effort to chip away at the mistrust and the fear directed at immigrants and refugees. Today, we get to hear Ross’s story and also hear how God has uniquely called him to welcome the foreigner among us. Let’s listen in.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast here with Rusty and William. Brothers, good morning.

Rusty Rueff: Good morning. It is a good morning. It is. It’s a beautiful day where I am today. I don’t know how it is. We’re unusually hot today, so I’m trying to be quiet where I am in my little office. But I’m also sweating down the sides of my underarms. So, yeah. So it’s just all gel.

Henry Kaestner: Just to let it go. Just come into our lives in our worlds right now. More than you may even want to think about. That rusty shirt.

Speaker 3: Is in the video podcast.

Henry Kaestner: That’s a very good thing. Is that.

Rusty Rueff: Video. Get it out there. Get it out. Exactly.

Henry Kaestner: Exactly. I’ve been looking forward to this guest for a while. I watched Ross’s video. There’s so much about Ross. Ross is not sure he’s loving on refugees. And by the way, just in preparing for this, I looked up just key Bible verses on loving on refugees. And there are a lot there being 80 people who are listeners podcast going to be all over the refugee debate. Let’s get more in. Let’s not let any of them and a whole bunch of things. So we need to acknowledge that. And yet you cannot get away from what the Bible says about loving on the foreigner and the refugee in our midst. So we’re going to go into that on this podcast, and if you don’t believe me, just go and Google top verses on refugees, love and on refugees. And it’s really compelling actually to walk it through. And in reading these passages, you can’t help but to think that actually I’m a refugee, I’m somebody living in a foreign land, so maybe we’ll go into that a little bit. But the other mash up is that Ross is really involved in food. And if you’re like me, I love ethnic food. And so Ross is thought of a different way to bring ethnic food, changing it up, making it happen, loving on people. It’s all those things all together. And so, Ross, thank you very much for being on the program. Welcome.

Ross Carper: Hey, thank you for having me. I’m so honored to be here. It’s been fun to listen to some episodes of what you all are doing. And yeah, I’m just thankful to be here.

Henry Kaestner: Good. Thank you. So we’d like to do a biographical sketch of every one of our guests. So, who are you? Tell us what brought you up to the current venture that you’re on. Please.

Ross Carper: Yeah. So, you know, I grew up in the city where I live, Spokane, Washington, and I’ve pretty much been a Washingtonian my whole life. For me, I got serious about my faith, like a lot of people as a teenager, through some excellent youth ministries and things that I was involved with relationships, people loving me and embodying God’s love and who Jesus is in my life. And so, you know, that was a huge thing for me. And when I was in college, I studied philosophy. Yes, I have a degree in philosophy and a master’s in creative writing, which are not the most like moneymaking, entrepreneurial, high paying degrees in the world. But, you know, I love thinking about what matters and I love stories about what matters. So I was in a really interesting space in college where I was really serious about following Christ and I was studying philosophy and I was at a university where secular university, you know, state school, western Washington, where half my professors in that program were Christians and the other half were atheists or agnostic. So it was really an interesting thing for me in terms of thinking and learning how to have conversations across some of those philosophical theological boundaries. And the thing that I wrestle with the most is the oldest one in the book. You know, a lot of people think that job is archeologically, the oldest Bible book. So the oldest question of the problem of evil. And so we look at our world and all the things that so many people are going through. And that’s what I was wrestling with. Not necessarily it being evidence that God doesn’t exist, but it being just if you really engage with the suffering in our world and the things that people are going through. You know, I’ve been so blessed and lucky and everything else about my life. But, you know, I started wrestling with this in terms of my faith and in terms of people going through things. And and so I’ve always felt called by God that as we see problems in our world, you know, we’re invited to be part of the answer to the problem of suffering and pain. So long story short, I just I kept wrestling with that and have kept in my life in ministry and the different things I’ve done, you know, trying to be a part of solving problems or addressing things in the communities where I live. And that’s kind of what brought me to, you know, I think entrepreneurs love to solve problems, right? So that’s what brought me to a place of wanting to get into the food world. So I was in the church world for a long time at First Presbyterian Church here in Spokane doing youth ministry and and then more like missional engagement, you know, just at our church, my role as helping us get ourselves out of the pews and actually embody faith in the community through service, you know, things like that, engaging with issues of justice and how we can, you know, just engage with our neighbors, love our neighbors as we’re told. So.

Henry Kaestner: So you didn’t have.

Ross Carper: A problem with the food?

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. So you didn’t start off in the food business with your current iteration. You start off with something called the compass breakfast wagon. Yeah. What’s that? How are you going to youth ministry? Your philosophy, creative writing. You know, it’s food truck time.

Ross Carper: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I like to joke about my career having a lot of winding roads, but yeah, as I was in this role in my church, we really love to support missionaries and people a long ways away, but we got real focused on neighborhood transformation right in our very neighborhood. And for me, I live in the neighborhood where my church is, you know, Lower South Hills, Spokane. Nobody knows what I’m talking about around the country, but that’s my neighborhood and I love it. And I thought, what better way to connect with people outside of the walls of the church than in a walkable little food spot? And I kind of wanted to create space where some of those connections can happen because to be honest, you know, in the church world, you know, there’s just a lot of folks in our communities and neighborhoods that are not going in there. You know, maybe they have baggage, bad things that happen to them. Maybe they’re just not there with their beliefs or whatever. But as church becomes less of an expected thing for people to show up at in our communities, we’re still called to love our neighbors, right? So we don’t just sit around and wait for them to come to us. We need to be creatively thinking about what are those spaces, what are those third places where we can interact with neighbors and, you know, not with some big agenda like I was. I wasn’t in my food truck trying to convert people to Christianity or something, but more just as a space for relationship. So yeah, I love breakfast, I love cooking, and I’ve worked in restaurants and things in the past. And so I just, you know, kind of got the crazy dream of trying to figure out how to do the hard thing of converting a 1972 camping trailer into a health department certified food truck. So.

William Norvell: Okay, now I got two questions. Okay. One, do you still have a camping trailer? And two, if there is a meal that Ross makes better than anyone else that, you know, the neighborhood kind of here is white. Ross is doing that tonight. What is it?

Ross Carper: Right. Yeah. So I actually sold the business and the trailer to one of my former youth group guys who is working with me as an employee. He is also has always wanted to be an entrepreneur, have his own business. And he actually bought the business from me and operates it now because I got so involved with the Beast World’s Kitchen project and we were definitely known for biscuits and gravy. You know, we used, you know, locally farmed sausage, you know, scratch made biscuits. You know, it was none of this stuff out of a can or anything like that. So Biscuits and Gravy is my favorite thing to cook for my friends.

William Norvell: All right. Well, we have on location. We know what we’re hitting you up for. We haven’t done it yet, but it’s going to happen. One, if.

Henry Kaestner: You do that, though, we’re all kind of foodies, right? Rusty owns restaurants. We should go on tour where she doing should tour and the eating features and eating you are you.

Rusty Rueff: Yes, exactly. And do our podcast right there from these different restaurants.

William Norvell: And we know we’re I’m going to throw out as the first one. But one of our guests, John Marsh, has been revitalizing Opelika Auburn. And if you want me to go to Auburn, you know, this is a big deal. But he has started numerous restaurants and so it’s a stop just saying.

Rusty Rueff: And in your own state. Ross we had marked. And listen. That’s right. Seattle. Right. So he’s been on the podcast. So we’re accumulating an itinerary here. I love it.

William Norvell: I love it. Well.

Ross Carper: It’s just a touch fancier than my things, so that.

William Norvell: Doesn’t mean it’s better. Fancy doesn’t always mean better, but. Okay, so we’re going to get into P’s World Kitchen for sure here in a little bit. But I want to start somewhere else. We want to start at I also think of the time you’re now working with your local church and organizing some good neighbor teams where you’ve really just befriended international children and families. And, you know, something we haven’t talked about a lot, but obviously is happening around the world. I’d love to just take us into some of these experiences. What are some of the stories about people, you know, moving here for the first time? You know, I mean, I think the three of us, at least on this podcast, we were born here in Mali, travel abroad. We’ve always lived here. But what are some of these experiences you’re hearing about people that are coming to the US for the first time and don’t really know much about this world?

Ross Carper: Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve had the honor of partnering closely through my job at the church with this organization called World Relief. It’s a Christian humanitarian organization that is one of maybe a dozen or so contractors in the US that resettle refugees. So it’s kind of cool. It was at the time the only resettlement agency in Spokane, Washington. And, you know, their mission is to empower the local church to stand with the vulnerable. And so I got the joy of being along for the ride for that. And it truly was and is continues to be a joy. I was leading a college group and several of us formed one of these good neighbor teams, which is just what it sounds like. You know, you’re just trying to welcome a neighbor to the city and it’s just a team of maybe eight or so adults who are background checks committed, ready to go. And all you are is a supportive friend to a newly arriving former refugee family because, you know, the caseworkers need to work on housing and jobs and clothing and but there’s all kinds of stuff when you’re in a new culture that you just need friends to help you with, like getting a cell phone, getting a driver’s license, learning, you know, where’s the best grocery store nearby, where I’m going to be able to afford the food and get what I need, you know? And these meetings were so fun. And, you know, I can remember we got placed with one of the first families from Syria to be resettled in the whole United States. And, you know, you’re reading about this conflict in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of people losing their lives, fleeing violence because of this civil war and all this strife. And here we are sitting in this little tiny apartment with this family, with several children. And it’s a guy that, you know, they just want to like anyone else. They just want to flourish and raise their families and have peace. And I think he owned a barbershop back in Syria. And, you know, when the bombs are falling or all around them, it’s like any of us would do. He got his kids and wife and got out of there, you know, and and so that story with that family is one of several where the Americans are sitting there. And then about 2 hours into one of our meetings, you know, just kind of being friends, we’re like, okay, it’s time to go. You know, a lot of cultures around the world, you might have noticed, like church is a little longer gathering. You know, when you visit with someone, you’re not just in and out. So that’s when at about that two hour mark, that’s when like the tea and the food starts coming out of the kitchen. And we noticed that that kind of receiving hospitality was just as important as us extending hospitality, you know, to sit and eat a meal around the table with a family from Iraq or Syria or the Congo or wherever. That was really a powerful experience. And so my love of food and, you know, I’m running this food truck and doing these things sort of started to intertwine with the work I was doing with former refugees.

William Norvell: Automating such a interesting counter-cultural thought. I mean, you know, receiving hospitality. I’ve never heard that phrase before. It’s a really interesting one. And, you know, we’ll we’ll talk about this the way we, like, talk about it throughout the episode. You know, God’s word is always alive and moving. And, you know, the brilliance of it is you can learn something new and God calls people to different things with age old scriptures that have been there for years and years and years. And then you read them and they take on a new light. Yeah, right. And so then we probably haven’t spent time on, as I would love to give you a little space to talk about what motivates you right from God’s word to welcome people in and how should others maybe seek that out for themselves through Scripture to see if God may be calling them to do something similar in their neighborhood?

Ross Carper: Yeah. Thank you. The two big scriptures for me are really in Luke ten when Jesus responds to the question about who is my neighbor. The story He tells is, of course, the Good Samaritan story. And the Good Samaritan is not the one that’s in a place of cultural prestige and power. And the Samaritans, as we know, studied our Bibles. The audience that Jesus was speaking to wouldn’t have been impressed by a Samaritan. Offhand, they were other. And so that’s not only is the person who is other, your neighbor who you need to serve, but like I said, with receiving hospitality in that story, the other is actually the hero of the story, the one who is when you wouldn’t expect it. He’s the one who is truly embodying the teachings of Christ, you know, the great commander. And so that and of course, Matthew 25, when I was a stranger, you welcomed me again. And I think in these interactions with people whose experiences are way different than mine. Whose culture? Even religion is just way different than mine. I cannot help but feel like and I do feel like this is from God. I feel like I know God better when I know more of God’s people. And that’s because each person is an image bearer, right? From Scripture all the way back to Genesis. And when Jesus says, Hey, when I was a stranger, you know, whatever, you did this for the least of these. You did it to me when I was a stranger. You welcomed me. I really believe that in the interactions we have with our new neighbors from around the world, we can see Jesus in those folks. So he said he’s going to be there and he’s right where he said he was going to be. And then those are the scriptures that I, I mean, there are many, many, many. Sure. But those are the ones that are real seminal for me.

William Norvell: I’m curious how food can bridge this gap, right? I mean, such a novel concept, something we eat often during the day. And, you know, you said, you know, experiencing God’s people, I live in a place you know, I lived in San Francisco for ten years. And I’ve always remarked that, you know, experiences are what San Francisco is all about. Like, no one knows what car people drive. No wonder it’s all about like what have you done and what have you experienced? And that was new for me when I moved out here. And food’s a big part of that, right? The new restaurant or the new thing. And, you know, and of course, there’s so many different types of cuisines to experience. And you and you kind of learn, hey, you know, that sounded interesting, but not my style, you know? But also, I’m curious how you’ve seen, you know, when immigrants come over, how can going out and sharing someone’s traditional meal or going to a restaurant, a different global cuisine, how can that bridge the gap of getting to know people and understanding who they are and exactly what you should understand them as image bearers of God and actually not different and more alike than different.

Ross Carper: Yeah, well, I think one thing I’ve reflected on is the table is the ultimate level surface, you know, and when you’re sitting around the table together, it really, it truly does level the playing field. You know, like often because I’m from here and I kind of know how to interact well and succeed in my context. That can come with a lot of privilege and a lot of power dynamics in the relationship where it’s like, I’m the person who has it all figured out and I’m here to help you. And like I said, with giving and receiving hospitality, it’s actually more comfortable for everyone when we all have something to contribute. And that’s why the church potluck is like the ultimate embodiment of all of God’s love is because people bring something to the table, literally. But in this case, sitting at a table with folks who are sharing what they love and what they love to do and what they love to serve, that kind of encapsulates their culture. There’s pride in that. And I think the good kind of pride where it’s like, Hey, this is how we do it. From where I am, I’m kind of like my biscuits and gravy. A lot of your listeners in the South are probably ridiculing me that I like to make biscuits and gravy. Up in the Pacific Northwest. But, you know, I’d love to show you what I got. And so it’s true. That’s true for our friends from around the world, too, is there’s something pretty simple about it. But I also think there’s something really radically spiritual. You know, the Lord’s Supper, you know, we have this physical thing of eating together that is embedded in our faith as Christians and that flows out of things like the Passover meal in the Hebrew Jewish tradition, too. So, you know, food is such a everyday thing, but that’s why it’s so spiritual. At the same time, it’s our daily bread.

Rusty Rueff: You know, Ross, I think we’ve all had the experience of maybe not trusting or, you know, a little apprehension about those we don’t know. Right. Or cultures that we don’t know. How are you seeing what you do? You know, chip away at that mistrust or maybe even the fear that sometimes directed at immigrants. Do you see that chipping away?

Ross Carper: Yeah. You know, little by little, I think it does. One of our taglines is less fear, more falafel. Yeah. And that, you know, it’s just a funny thing. But what isn’t funny is when fear leads to, you know, mistrust and ultimately racism. And sometimes that can go both ways, right? We fear people who are maybe coming to us who don’t speak the same way or believe the same things or look like us, because, you know, there’s just sort of an inherent human thing to fear the unknown. Right. And then obviously that can go both ways to where, you know, people are afraid that they’ll be targeted because of how they look or what they wear. And what we’d love is for communities to be have spaces where people can maybe get to know each other a little bit. Because I think we’ve all experienced like, you know, once you get to know the guy down the street whose politics are different from you, particularly if you’ve shared a meal with them, you know, maybe you tailgate around on the same football team or whatever it is. It kind of it just softens it a little bit. So I think we get so on our screens and on our talk radio or whatever it is about, Oh, this is what we need to believe about people from the Middle East or whatever it is. And I just think we need to spend at least as much time trying to interact with real people instead of thinking of.

William Norvell: Sorry Rusty super quick. There’s an amazing video we should link to our to find it. I think it might have been a Heineken commercial or something where they bring two people in and they have some props. And so you signed up clearly before to get to know each other and you talk to each other. And prior to that, they had filmed each person talking about a hot button issue that they seemingly disagreed with. Right. So they get to know each other, I think, over high tech and of course, gets the commercial. And then at the end of it they show the videos. And so this person is saying something very negative about the other person’s point of view and vice versa. Right. But they’ve already got to know each other. And at the end, the prompt is, do you want to stay and have a beer with this person and get to know them more? And it’s about an eight or ten minute video and it is amazing, as you might imagine, everyone stay is. But there are some people that have some real you can tell they’re really struggling with should I stay or should I go? But they already had that connection before they heard their point of view. And it’s a really profound video I found. I’ve seen it. I’ve watched a couple times.

Rusty Rueff: It’s good. Hey, you know, Ross used the word community a number of times here, and we’re trying to build our community with our faith driven entrepreneurs. We’ve got these small groups that are how many, Henry, do we have now that are running?

Henry Kaestner: We’ve got right in the January cohort alone, we’ve got 135 or so representing 88 different countries.

Rusty Rueff: That’s amazing. Russia and these groups are 10 to 15. You know, folks that are coming together, entrepreneurs searching for, you know, sort of life, giving friendships with people that are like them. But I’d be interested, you know, you’re creating community around food. Are there other elements that you could share with our listeners and with us to help us even be better at building community? What are some of the elements that you’ve seen?

Ross Carper: You know, I think purpose, you know, we like to talk about, you know, people need something to do, you know, something like a movement to be a part of. And I think, you know, for this World Kitchen, it is a community that includes people coming at it from all different angles. Maybe you’re a former refugee who’s cooking and sharing their food and culture learning, job skills, small business skills, earning income. That’s life changing for your family. But maybe you’re a volunteer and maybe you’ve helped us, you know, knock out the old seventies popcorn ceiling that was in this terrible restaurant that we got control of. Yes.

Rusty Rueff: We can see it. It’s stained up there next to the air ventilation. Yeah, I know that restaurant.

Ross Carper: Yeah, exactly. So there is a lot of deferred maintenance. And so that has led to volunteers, you know, doing all kinds of stuff. And so it could be, you know, an older gentleman from my church again, maybe he’s not the most multicultural person in the world, but boy, he loves to put the tool belt on on a Saturday morning and get some stuff done. And everybody has a part to play, you know, and nine times out of ten, they’re going to walk away with a meal as well and an interaction with someone, you know, from a real different background. And so when it comes to volunteer staff, donors, customers, of course, you know, we are a restaurant and catering company. There’s just kind of this multifaceted community that’s popped up and I’ve been really thankful for it, man. How we can build communities. I think also in helping launch this and now serving as the executive director, I’ve gotten to, you know, make connections with other people who are leading nonprofits in my city and in my state and in my, let’s say, in my denomination and presbytery, there are people doing innovative neighborhood things. And so it’s been fun, kind of like what you do on a bigger scale. It’s been fun on a local scale to connect with other people who are trying to, you know, get out in the neighborhoods and have some new expressions of faith that aren’t necessarily church plants but are community spaces. So it’s been a pleasure.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, that’s great. You know, so many times we talk about doing community and consumers. Our customers are in our neighborhoods. But, you know, you can build community inside of a company, too. Right. And it really does feel like community where people are helping each other. And so I appreciate you sharing what you did about that and what you’re doing. And we definitely all should learn from the way that you’re building community. You know, you also serve as an incubator, if you will, for empowering immigrant chefs. And I’m really curious and interested in that, because that means you’re training and you’re developing and, you know, you’re spotting talent and then you’re helping people get to the place that they should be. And I’m sure there are some that shouldn’t be chefs and they learn along the way. And, you know, that’s the entrepreneurial journey, too, right? We go out and we we find talent and we try to develop and bring them in. So take us through some of the challenges you’ve had about incubating these immigrant chefs and what have been, you know, some of the real learnings that you’ve had along the way.

Ross Carper: Yeah. Oh, man, it’s fun. And, you know, small business incubation is one of the things that we do. And I say that because I think most of us know how hard it is to start a business, let alone a restaurant. You know, a lot of people are familiar with the statistics and the failure rates on that particular project. But we are in a day where small food entrepreneurs, people doing pop ups and, you know, catering events by renting ghost kitchen space. Maybe you have a cart, maybe you have a small mobile food unit like my trailer or a food truck. You know, a lot of the folks that we work with, we’re already catering out of their little apartments. You know, under the radar, international students who want a taste of home will come pick up 15 plates on a Saturday night or something, you know, so that kind of stuff is going on. But also, immigrants have always flourished in this country when it comes to owning restaurants, and that’s because they have something to offer that’s truly unique. You know, you got to be able to bring something novel to the table. But we walk alongside folks who want to start things, whether it’s a restaurant, food truck, catering company. And what we love is that that includes English language. That includes, you know, we partner with an English language school that’s housed in our church across the street, and that’s been going for 50 years. You know, and English language development is a big part of business development because you have to understand the regulations in order to follow them. Financial training. We have a Zoom call coming up with our accountant just talking about small business finance. And so each month we have meetings with our chefs about these sorts of things. And it’s really a holistic how can you flourish and thrive in Spokane? Because not everyone is going to start a restaurant or even a business. But if you cook at least once every couple of months as a side hustle, well, guess what? Side hustles are actually a pretty legitimate part of our economy and the way people live their lives these days. And that’s there’s nothing wrong with that. If you do it to share your culture and that kind of thing, that’s great. But a lot of people are doing it to pay for school because they’re going to be a nurse practitioner, or maybe they already were in their home country and they have to start all over in our education system. So failing fast is a good thing too. We all kind of you know, your listeners probably are familiar with that concept of like, hey, let’s not find out when you’re 100,000 bucks in debt, you really don’t want to run a restaurant because it’s really hard and time consuming. Let’s find out when you cooked in our cooperative nonprofit restaurant a couple of times that you really want to do something else. And that’s a great thing. It’s a total win when people say no and they say, I’m not going to start a business. I’m going to interact with fees in a different way. But we do. Yeah, we do these incubation types of things as well.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah. I always say with the folks that tell me they want to be in the restaurant business and want to open a restaurant themselves, you know, I said, you remember, it’s all fun until it’s 2:00 in the morning on Saturday and you’re emptying out the garbage, you know, and trying to, you know, clean the place up so it’s ready to go tomorrow. And do you want to do that week after week and day after day and month after month? And well, to that point, what’s next? What’s next for First World Kitchen and what’s next for you? What’s next for Ross?

Ross Carper: Yeah, well, we are you know, speaking of incubation, there’s many folks in our community who, you know, some of our chefs are more ready than others and market tested, particularly a couple Syrian families who people really love those shawarma wraps with fries. It’s basically like the Mediterranean Middle Eastern version of the cheeseburger. You know, it’s like it’s just that good. And you just you want it, you crave it. So we are looking at there are a couple who have the permitting to start their own thing. And so we’re working with them on that. There’s people in the community who have commercial space that we’re thinking about developing in terms of maybe not a second location for us, but maybe one of these places where our graduates can have a lunch counter or something or whatever it is. So yeah, we’re kind of expanding our catering and events. You know, as we continue to emerge back into public events from the pandemic, we’ll be doing a lot more farmer’s markets and things. And, and this is great because it gives people experiences as kind of that small food pop up startup. We’re also working on that right now. We have the application and to to sell some of our products in stores and grocery stores here in town who have already committed to running some of those products like hummus, baklava, flatbreads, different sauces, desserts, stuff that will be good on a shelf. So we’re excited for our brand to expand in that way in order to provide more opportunities with the families that cook with us. You know, there’s one family like I’ll share just something. You know, we do some casework, too, and we’re thankful to be in those settings where we can affect people’s lives. And in one case, you know, my Issa, our chef program director, helped a woman get a protective order to get out of a physically abusive marriage and relationship. That was just and now this woman, she cooks with us and she’s a single mom of several kids. And, you know, it’s kind of the community is mobilizing to help her thrive, you know, in this new season that has all kinds of challenges. So so there’s some of that where we’re a network of support and we’re trying to get better at making sure that we’re not just a restaurant or catering company. We are a network of support systems and relationships that is about people flourishing, about the shalom, you know, that the peace of God being in people’s lives, especially people who have been through a ton of violence, persecution, ethnic cleansing, trauma, abuse, lived in a refugee camp for ten years. You know, it’s a holy privilege to be a part of trying to help this community come alongside people and so that they can thrive.

Rusty Rueff: Bless you for what you’re doing.

Ross Carper: For your.

Rusty Rueff: Pleasure.

Ross Carper: Thank you.

William Norvell: Thank you. Exactly. Rusty ready to take my intro, but thank you so much for all you’re doing and. Amazing, amazing story. And you know something we can all relate to? Write food and stories on the table and and people and image bearers of God. So just grateful for your story and where you are. And one of the things we love to close with, because we love to invite our guests to share where God has them in his word and just love seeing how that transcends. And it could be something you read this morning or right before you jumped on the podcast that struck you. Or it could be something you’ve been studying lately, but we just want to invite you to share where God has you in His Scripture and how He may be encouraging you these days or challenging you.

Ross Carper: Yeah. Yeah. You know, my church has gone through Philippians and I think it’s Philippians two. Where it breaks into verse, you know, it’s a song or a poem about the character of Christ, you know, and about how he even though he was God, he still humbled himself. And, you know, when you. I love being on podcasts and things like that. You know, we get a lot of accolades and pats on the back for the work that we’re doing, and that’s great. But humility is something that we all need to come back to because that’s the character of Christ. That’s the very nature of God’s incarnation of being becoming human and even not a very prominent or well-regarded human, but someone who was humble, even humbled themself, even to death on a cross. So yeah, it’s just been good to be reflecting on humility, looking at Philippians and just how can we humbly serve and be the type of servant leader that reflects God’s character?

William Norvell: I mean, I meant.

Rusty Rueff: You know, I always leave our podcasts hungry for more. But today I’m actually hungry.

William Norvell: I’m hungry. He did it. He did.

Henry Kaestner: It. Had nothing to do with the fact that we’ve been doing podcasts nonstop and it’s now 1:00 pm Pacific Time or that he’s been staring at an apple on the wall for the last hour or so.

Ross Carper: You just.

Henry Kaestner: Mentioned ten times, but.

Rusty Rueff: Had that looked good. So that’s good to hear that.

Henry Kaestner: What do you do for exercise?

Ross Carper: Yeah, exactly. I’ve put on a few pounds since starting this Beast World Kitchen thing, but yeah, I’m about to eat this lunch prepared by a family from Darfur, Sudan, who cooked in the restaurant yesterday and they had some extra. Ibrahim, God bless him. He’s just such a kind person. He brought a bunch of food to my house yesterday after they closed up the restaurant and just wanted to share some plates with my family. And so I’m about to eat some leftovers from that. But yeah, I definitely have to set my Strava to run more miles per week because of how much that happens in my life. That’s cool. That little calorie meal.

William Norvell: I want that problem. I don’t have that right now.

Henry Kaestner: You don’t have the problem of what.

William Norvell: Part of that problem of people bringing me awesome food. So I have to run more.

Henry Kaestner: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ross Carper: It’s a good problem that.

Henry Kaestner: God bless your us. Thank you, Heavenly Father, lift up Ross and his family and his ministry and just ask and continue to give him your wisdom and discernment in favor and protection. And he feel your joy as he goes out and made this story of you, one that really encourages and packs lots of people towards loving the refugee and the alien in their midst. Jesus. His name. Amen.

Episode Transcript

Rusty Rueff: Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Today, we’re going to dove deep into a company in Cincinnati, Ohio. The name of the company is Jam Cola. It’s a janitorial service company that had a people problem, a 400% turnover people problem. The operative word here, though, is had because when owners Tony and Mary Miller started really listening to their employees and learning about their lives, they dramatically changed the way they manage their people. You see, knowing what really matters to employees and then partnering with them to help them realize their dreams changes everything. Mary Miller joins us today on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast to share her experiences and provide insight when it comes to retention and turnover. If you’re looking to solve a people problem, then this episode is for you. Let’s listen in.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast again. We are on the road, so to speak, and we are going to one of my favorite cities in America, Cincinnati. I love Cincinnati. I hadn’t been to Cincinnati at all growing up. I went probably was into my early thirties that I first went to Cincinnati and I live just outside of San Francisco now. And Cincinnati is the town that reminds me maybe the most is San Francisco, the history and the hills. But there’s some things that Cincinnati does better than San Francisco. And I’m a big San Francisco fan, but I’m a better and bigger barbecue fan and ice cream fan. And I’ve we had a guy our president had been with for a long time, was from Cincinnati and in even lived out of Cincinnati for a little while while he was working it at bandWith. And he would come over to the house and bring Montgomery Street ribs and.

Mary Miller: Bring and another wonderful family business.

Henry Kaestner: I love it. I love it. And then how about Raiders?

Mary Miller: Raiders ice cream?

Henry Kaestner: Yep. So great is also good. But then when we went and when we moved from North Carolina to California about six and a half years ago, we went on a family road trip. Actually, Kimberly flew out with a cat, but it was the three boys and I, and we decided to hit as many barbecue joints as we possibly could on a ride across country. And I thought we’d would go to Montgomery Street. But another barbecue place. Eli’s got better.

Mary Miller: I was just going to ask you if you went to L.A. is so good.

Henry Kaestner: It’s unbelievable. It’s just meat and sauce. But there’s something.

Mary Miller: Very different.

Henry Kaestner: And it’s really good, right on the banks of the Ohio River and then losing it. If you’re sick of my geography and my kind of MapQuest overview of Cincinnati, this land is second. But there’s one other thing I need to mention is that one of my favorite experiences was as an endurance cyclist. There’s a bike race out there. It’s about 120 miles is called Godzilla. That goes up and down the banks of the Ohio River. And the steepness of those hills is unbelievable. I thought that Ohio is this, you know, flat. It most is surely is not but we’re not.

Mary Miller: Talking any pig is one of the most popular marathons now in the country. And it’s in Cincinnati. And the hills are killers.

Henry Kaestner: I bet they are. I bet they are. There’s a fine big have anything to do with the ice is have anything to do with barbecue. Why is it called the fine pig pigs?

Mary Miller: A big part of our history, our German history with the pigs. And we used to have a lot of pigs that are out Cincinnati. So we’re often called pork operators.

Henry Kaestner: Oh, I didn’t know that. So you may have guessed that we have a guest on our show and his Mary Miller. Mary, typically we don’t give this overview of where our guest hails from, but we are today. Thank you very much for your story. Thank you very much for being on the program.

Mary Miller: Oh, thank you. It’s definitely a pleasure.

Henry Kaestner: So in the overview in the intro that you’ve heard from Rusty, we have a little bit of an overview of an idea, of course, of what Genco is. But before we get into the incredible work that God has done through you there, we like to start off every podcast with a bit of an autobiographical flyover of the personal interviewing, and just help us to understand what your background was like before Genco.

Mary Miller: Okay.

Henry Kaestner: Why is that funny?

Mary Miller: Well, well, because it’s just I’m clear every day, you know, it’s easy reading the Bible when you read about David and Moses and everything about how God uses people that are we can not have it all together. Tony and I both. We’ve just been celebrated our 30th anniversary. He started Giancola when he was 20, and I came along 27 years ago and together we took this mom and Pop should have registered as a nonprofit cause we were never making money or our team members were working pay day to pay day. And we were working payroll to payroll literally, and turn it into this amazing company that’s helping people go after their dreams and use their gifts to be able to make life better for themselves and their family. And we’ve been very involved in our community in so many ways. That is, I would never have predicted, you know, half a lifetime ago, Henry, I had the worst year of my life. It started out with a bankruptcy, followed by my second divorce, followed by unemployment. And then I got an eviction notice on Christmas Eve. Wow. So I’m a single mom with three kids and not sure what to do next. And I just have always been a faithful person. I’ve always believed I grew up in church and I just poured my heart out to God, showed me what to do. I don’t know. When I finally realized other people didn’t have the answers for me, I wasn’t reaching out to him to show me the path I was believing. Others knew better than. I knew of how I should live my life and the choices I should make. And so I decided to change that. The first thing I did, I needed a job, right? And I got a job. And I remember still calling my parents and letting them know that I got a job. And they were excited. And they said where they were expecting, you know, Cincinnati, P&G, G.E., you know, we’ve got these huge companies and home headquarters in Cincinnati, Kroger’s. Now I’m in sales and I sold mobile homes, 100% commission. No stability, no knowledge, no experience. But God used that job and that opportunity and my willing to trust in him to lead me to more possibilities. I made more money during that first year than I had ever made in my life because I wasn’t getting consistent support from ex-husbands. And I had these three kids, and the four of us like to eat and we needed clothes, right? So that’s we were in survival mode. And during that process, I met Tony not realizing he would be husband number three. And I was in the sales job. He had this cleaning company and we were always working and we got together. We got married in 91 with this blended family and decided in 93 it was time for me to quit the sales job and put all my time and energy in this family business. And I neither one of us knew what we were doing right. I mean, we just didn’t know what we didn’t know. But we just kept moving forward. And we had strong faith. We were going to church and praying and was a big part of our lives. And we just kept moving forward. And we hired this consultant to help us to make Jan Koa something more than a survival company, more than just this mom and pop on the corner. We had 65 part time employees back then, but we knew it needed to be more because we knew one day we weren’t getting any younger. Tony had just hit his forties. I was in my mid-thirties and the kids were growing up and one day they’d be wanting college. So we knew we needed to do something different. And what could we do with this business to make it more successful? So I dove in. I’m a fact finder. I start checking into our industry and conferences and found a consultant that was going to help fix everything.

Henry Kaestner: And Rusty mentioned this in the introduction, that there is a people problem. We’re all familiar. All of us have an entrepreneur or a business owner type of background or have aspirations to us what the podcast is about. So we understand the challenges of turnover, but you had 400% turnover.

Mary Miller: Which is average for our industry. So I thought we were in a good spot because we were average with other cleaning companies. But I’ve never been one to want to be average. I’ve always wanted to, you know, be better than average or be in the top. Haven’t made it many times, but I always wanted to be better. So that’s what when this consultant fired us.

Henry Kaestner: The consultant fired you?

Mary Miller: Yeah. We hired him to make us better, and he fired us. Second day of a five day contract.

Henry Kaestner: He said it was a lost cause. What was that about it?

Mary Miller: He said that he could not do anything to help us with processes or efficiencies because we didn’t have enough people. And if we don’t fix our people problem, not that our people that we had were a problem. We just didn’t have enough people. So the first night of this contract was him and Tony going out and checking a couple of the buildings that we were going to focus on first to create some processes and systems that make them more profitable or make them profitable, period. And they ended up vacuuming all night because we didn’t have enough people to get the work done that needed to be done. He said it was probably the most expensive vacuum that we would ever have work for us. And I said, I hope so. So he left us. We went flew back home the second day and we had to figure out what were we going to do next. And, you know, failure wasn’t an option. We had a blended family of five kids. We had team members that depended on us. We needed to figure out how to make this happen. And with that, we changed the questions. We changed our prayers, and we changed our focus. And our focus was there used to be a book called The Yellow Pages. You may be familiar with. Yeah.

Henry Kaestner: I know that. I look really, really, really young.

Mary Miller: But that book listed every janitorial company in Cincinnati. Yeah. So Tony actually went through and counted them. He said, okay, there’s 104 cleaning companies. Why would people want to work for us? Of all the companies out there, why choose us? We had to look at our watch. We had to change our way. What could we do to attract people to want to work for Jan? And we spent that weekend after the consultant left because we didn’t have as much work on the weekends back then. And we really dove into a bunch of books, books that we could find that used to be more than one bookstore in the city. And we just dove into it. How to find people, how to keep people, you know, all kinds of things about each other and people. And one of the things you said, okay, let’s look at our top ten employees. What do they have in common so that maybe that’ll help us find where to look for the rest and what the number one thing they had in common was the transportation issues. Hmm. So, okay.

Henry Kaestner: So the top ten had the transportation solved. The other one, I didn’t.

Mary Miller: Know they had the top ten that we depended on the most had troubles with getting back and forth to work. They didn’t have dependable transportation. Our night managers were spending their time driving people around from building to building and back home to be able to get the work done. So we thought, well, if we could fix the transportation issues, maybe we can attract more people like them. Yeah. And get the work done. So Monday morning we went out and bought the 15 passenger bed and that was the beginning of our shuttle. We’re not a transportation company. It was a nightmare, but we did it for three years, tried to make it work. And our shortage, we were 38 full time people short at that time. Within three weeks, we were 15 people short. So it made a dramatic change in being able to get people because nobody else had transportation either. And it’s still an issue. It’s gotten better in our region with our public transit and stuff. I served on their board for six years. So, you know, when I see a problem, I’m trying to find ways to eliminate those obstacles to make things better.

Henry Kaestner: But you found that. So I want to go so I want to go back to before we go on to some of the other things you’ve done, I want to camp out on a 15 passenger van here for a second. And part of my we’ve got this partnership with Faith and Company. One of the key things we do, Mary, is we’ve got this FTE group we call Faith Driven Entrepreneur, a group where you get together with 12 of the 15 other Faith driven entrepreneurs and business owners and go through the marks of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur through different stories. And it’s it’s been a lot of fun. We had, I think, 770 entrepreneurs and business owners like yourself go through it. And the cohort that started on September, and we’ve had a lot of fun with that. And then of course people say, Well, what do we do next? And there are a whole bunch of different things to do next. But one of the things we’re working on are seasons two and three. And so we’ve been watching all of these stories to include jurors, and it’s really neat to hear Tony’s story. And so you’re able to solve a transportation problem with this van that we hear about in this movie that I think you and see featured in season two or season three of this after season two. So it should be in season two. Good. That’s awesome. All right. So there’s some advocacy there. But tell us, you know, you found out more about solving a problem. You learned about these people that are working with you. Right.

Mary Miller: We saw a different side, Henry. We brought the van to the office. Our general manager at the time was like, okay, who’s going to drive this magic band? Drive the magic of Giancola? And I love what Tony said in the video. He said, I had the least amount of work to do, so I became the first driver. Well, within two days he was invisible. Nobody getting on that shuttle thought of him and realized this is the company owner. They just saw him as a person that was driving them, picking him up from home and taking him to their jobs. But Tony got to see where they lived. He got to hear the conversations of what their day was like and what they were looking forward to and what their obstacles were. And our people are full time. That was an early switch that we did full time employment with benefits, so they worked 6 p.m. to 2:30 a.m.. So Tony would take them to work by 530, get them by 6:00, and he’d be back home and then he’d go back out to take them home and get home about 330, 4:00. And he’s got this really bad rule. If he can’t sleep, I can’t sleep. So he would wake me up.

Henry Kaestner: That’s a bad rule.

Mary Miller: It’s a bad rule. But we would talk. He would tell me about what he saw, about what he heard, and our hearts broke. You see, we fell into this trap, Henry. And I don’t think we’re alone. When we’re in business, you think of what you need. It’s kind of a spreadsheet mentality. But in our industry, you need mop buckets, microfiber rags, vacuum cleaners. You know, these different tools and people. And people just fall into that category of tools and equipment and chemicals that you need. We were not seeing the humanity. And God brought it to us in our face. This is who’s doing the work for you. This is your product. You’re a service company. If you don’t take care of the people that are doing the work for you, how is that going to work for your business? How are you ever going to do my work if you don’t take care of your people and all of a sudden the scales of justice look differently to us where we were balancing our customers never knew we were having issues with people. It was always clean. By 6 a.m. before anybody came to work, the buildings were clean. If we had to go out and do it ourselves, it would be done. But now all of a sudden the scales start changing and we start realizing we had to treat our team members, our interior customers with as much respect and dignity as we treated our customers. That paid us the ones we were paying and the ones that paid us. We had to treat them with the same respect, helped them overcome their obstacles, helped them increase their opportunities and find ways to improve the quality of their lives. And as we created these different programs, you know, he had a really catchy tune. The name went first was the Incredible Employee Retention Program.

Henry Kaestner: That’s what you call it.

Mary Miller: That’s how we got it at first sight. Sure. That it did. Anybody? It was horrible. But a friend of ours was like, you know, what you guys are doing is you’re helping people achieve their dreams and pursue their dreams.

Henry Kaestner: Tell us, what does that mean? A little bit more. So you’ve got to know. And just to fast forward a bit, you’ve got 600 employees now, so you’ve had exposure to lots of.

Mary Miller: Skills and we were up to 650.

Henry Kaestner: Now, where are you really?

Mary Miller: So yeah, we were. And now we’re just hovering around 500, okay? Because there’s not as many people in buildings. Some buildings are still closed. So a lot of stuff that we couldn’t do anything about.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, but that’s a lot of stories, though. And when you talk about helping some of these employees live their dreams, are there any stories that come to mind? Just, you know, I think that you’re going to find that we’re going to release a video together in partnership with Faith and Company shortly. And in the video, of course, we meet some of these employees. But paint a picture, if you will, of some of the characters. Who are some of these people? Who are that people? They go to work from 6 p.m. to 230. A What are they dealing with in their lives? What have you learned?

Mary Miller: It’s really across the board. It’s like everything else in life. You could walk down the street. You don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives when you meet them. There’s Sue in Curtis. If you go to YouTube and type in Janko, a video comes up that Compassion International did years ago, and they talk about their help. We help many families buy homes, most of which were first generation homeowners, because, as Sue said in the video, she didn’t think she was the type of person that could own a home. We changed the way they looked at possibilities. We had a young man from Africa coming in and wanting to get his driver’s license, and after our original dream engineer took him out to try to teach me, he said, Now we need to find a professional to help. You know, we realize we can’t help make their dreams happen, but we can connect them to programs that exist to help make them happen. But he comes in one day and he asked for me and he wanted me to see his driver’s license that he just achieved. And he wanted a picture with us to send home to his family that still lived in Africa to let him know that he achieved his driver’s license in the US, which was going to help him get a better paying job because of not having to stick to a bus line.

Henry Kaestner: Now, you said something in there that I think somebody might miss. Dream Engineer. What’s a dream engineer?

Mary Miller: The Dream Engineer is somebody that helps people engineer their dreams, not just dream them and think of them, but be able to put them together and make them a reality. So nothing gets built. Not a roller coaster, not a building without an engineer being involved in the design and the creation of it. And that’s what people need. They need an engineer to help do it, and then they can find a way to make it real.

Henry Kaestner: And you have dream engineers at Giancola? Yeah. That’s their job.

Mary Miller: That was their job. Well, it’s evolved since then. Since when? You have 65 employees, you can do things very differently than when you have 500. So now what’s done now is everything in life evolves. Nothing can stay the same. Right. So it’s evolved into a culture of caring, of change in the conversations at every level. And so we really work at it from Tony and I to the leadership, to the directors, to the managers, to the supervisors, where we’re always doing things to encourage people to improve their quality of life. And what do you need to help move forward? And that’s really our biggest obstacle right now isn’t so much the COVID as an obstacle, because there’s always these changing. We’re master pivot tiers these days. But how do we evolve from helping people focus on their dreams to the future? How does that adapt to what the current needs are? Because the needs today are different than what they were three years, five years, ten years ago. So there’s a lot more people that are in the today that it’s hard to dream about a future when you have so much uncertainty in today.

Henry Kaestner: Hmm. Yeah. Tell me about how your faith and Tony’s faith, which comes across really clearly in the video. And then you talked about, you know, at the outset of you guys starting to work together, that was a big part. Is it getting you through the tough times? How do your employees experience that or do they?

Mary Miller: We do talk openly about our faith. Yeah, but we do it in a in a way where we feel we’re respectful of other people’s faith practices. We have a few hundred people that are from Nepal and Bhutan. And so their faith practices is different than our Christian faith. So we support them on their high holy days when they take off work, you know, we take off Easter, Christmas, those holidays, they don’t practice those, but they do have their own holidays. So they take those days off and everybody pitches in to help cover the jobs that need to be done so they can celebrate. So we really try to do it in a very respectful way that faith is important. And if we do it in that manner, I believe when people see how we live our life, it makes them curious. So like, I love to speak. I speak all over the world and I always find a way to weave my faith in the conversation. And the people that are believers will thank me for it and the seekers will ask me more and want to do it. So I think that faith doesn’t have to be something that you have to be afraid of. It’s just done in a respectful way that people have a choice of how they practice their faith and who they believe and what they believe in. But if we live the life as we’re supposed to live, more people will want to know about that and will want to follow that.

Henry Kaestner: Indeed. Indeed, some number of our listeners have employees that are entry level, so have entry level and are an opportunity to be able to have maybe refugees and recent immigrants from Nepal and Bhutan among their ranks. You didn’t stop at the shuttle or at the Dream Engineer. There are other initiatives that you’ve put in place to over 30 years that have been a big part of your culture. Share some of those different initiatives that you’ve done because maybe a listener from here and say, You know, I could do that.

Mary Miller: Well, it all starts with orientation. We talk about what are their dreams? We ask them, what is it they’re working toward? Because we want them to be more than just this is a paycheck and living paycheck to paycheck. What is it that you need or want to have happen? A lot of our Nepalis are homeowners already. They really found a way to fit into the culture and make those things happen. But we really so much so we’ve had health insurance available for employees. Affordable real health insurance is the nineties because it’s the right thing to do to help people, to help them improve their quality of life and not have to worry about that, but to invest in their future. We created a4a1k available just three years ago for all of our employees and we don’t have a huge percentage participating, but in three years we’ve already got over $1,000,000 invested in that program and Giancola matches up to 4%. So we’re very involved in helping them improve their quality of life.

Henry Kaestner: So there are some other things, though, that you also do to participate with your employee. I’m thinking that is a little bit of a leading question, but talk to you about some of the other initiatives you do, like your monthly employee dinner.

Mary Miller: And you had dinner, and we’ve had to make some adjustments on that, too.

Henry Kaestner: I bet you have.

Mary Miller: Yeah. With COVID, we can’t have everybody in the same space, so we’ve had to break it down. And it’s so crazy how God works. We moved into a new office six months before COVID hit, and in this new space, the way it’s designed, we have human resources in an area and administration and operations on the other side. In between the two, we have a nice big training area where everybody gets orientation and we have ongoing trainings throughout the year as people need to learn more and new and different things. But we have this huge meeting room that we call our family room and the family room is set up so that everybody can meet in there. But we haven’t been able to have all 50 people together since we’ve been here because of COVID. And so we have to break it down into smaller groups, but we’re still meeting in the smaller groups every month. And that’s a time to have education and promptings of what’s going on, to celebrate the things that are going well in people’s life and to be able to have a meal together, because that’s when you get to know people. So even the people in the office staff are encouraged not to eat in their office. And the kitchen area is a prep area and everybody’s encouraged to come in to the family room to have lunch so we can get to know each other better and create a community and connection.

Henry Kaestner: Tell us about what you are hearing from God recently. We like to close out and I have an offer that I’m going to make to you here at the end right after you answer this question. But tell us what you’re hearing from God. And maybe it’s not necessarily in something you read in the Bible this morning, but maybe it’s this week or something. Recently, we believe that the Bible is alive and God speaks to us through it. And we are just really, really blessed whenever we talk to a business owner and they say, You know what? This is what I think God has been teaching me through his word recently. What would that be for you?

Mary Miller: I’ve got to share with you, Henry. About four years ago, I was invited to speak at our big church here in Cincinnati’s Crossroads. And we’ve been going there, and I got to speak at Unpolished, then 2017. And I was invited to be part of a huddle group with Cathy Beecham, who ran operations for Crossroads back then. She was incredible, incredible spiritual mentor for me and many, many others in our community. And she had been executive vice president at US Bank. She was very involved in YWCA. I mean, she was just an amazing person. And in January of 2018, she said to me, What are you going to stop believing? Other people have the answers when all you have to do is listen to the whispers from God. And she challenged me to spend time in the morning before I exercise in the book and to study Scripture and listen to what God’s saying to me. And I’ve been doing that 90% of the time every morning. And Cathy passed away two months later from lung cancer. She had just been diagnosed. And what I can tell you is the thread, especially during this year, my word is embrace. And every morning as I read the Scripture, God whispers, embrace my faithfulness and embrace my grace. And He’s totally encouraging me every day to stay on track, that there’s better coming still, and that this is just a moment to strengthen us, to help us catch our breath, because we’re going to be quite busy in the future. And I don’t know what that all means, but I just know more than ever, and my leadership team is my daughter, son in law and brother in law, and their faith is super strong as well. So, you know, it’s a really important piece and I know that God’s in the middle of it.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, indeed. Okay. Here’s the offer. When you get a chance to get everybody back together again as all the COVID protocols are gone, and you call up Justin, our executive producer who’s listening to this right now, and you say, I’m taking you up on your offer, which is that we want a bike riders ice cream for everybody. You bring 500 them together. We will make that happen. It’d be awesome to celebrate that you do such a great job of loving on people that need love and helping them achieve their dreams in homeownership and college and driver’s licenses. And my love language is ice cream. And that’s just a little way that we can say, gosh, you know, you doing an awesome job. It would be neat to be a small part of that. So remember that soon as you can.

Mary Miller: Do it, I will. I will. And I will share this podcast when it’s released with rich grader who’s a friend of mine.

Henry Kaestner: Oh. Oh, that’s awesome.

Mary Miller: That’s absolutely. We’re kindred spirits. It was his grandfather’s third wife that turned the business. The ice cream from a hobby to a business. And I’m Tony’s third wife, and he always credits me for the growth of Ted Koa.

Henry Kaestner: Oh, that’s great. Well, that is. It’s so good. So my. My family’s been in the dairy business, my case here, and I’ve got it actually on my wall that I’m looking at right now. We’ve got a patent on the milk. And so we’d been in the dairy business for 150 years. A German family talking about the Germans in Cincinnati and ice cream was back in the late 1800s, early 1900s. There is some amount of bartering, but yeah, you get paid in dairy products with, you know, you drop off milk cans in Cincinnati.

Mary Miller: It was with pigs. That’s why the.

Henry Kaestner: Pork. Is that what it is? Yeah. So in Baltimore, it was it was it was ice cream. And so ice cream was a big deal. But I got an argument with this guy is talking about that for us in Cincinnati. And I said, you know, the best ice cream is the Halo Dairy and Lawrenceville and maybe even better. You know, another great vino, of course, is Haagen-Dazs. He said, no, no, no, no, no. The best ice cream in the world is great. Or something like now I’ve never even heard of it. And he sent me a six pack and dry ice and I’ve never been so happy to be so wrong. It was awesome. And so I’ve been a creator’s fan ever since. This was not meant to be a grader’s advertisement, but it became one. Mary, God bless you for all the work that you’ve done. Thank you for spending the time to share with our audience and.

Mary Miller: Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity very much.

Henry Kaestner: Great being with you. We’ll put the video in the show notes and I’ll look forward to an opportunity to share this story with many more people.

Mary Miller: Excellent. Thank you so much.