The Recipe for Resilience: Joel Rodriguez’s Journey from Army to Ovation Bistro & Bar

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Kodespode and today’s guest is Joel Rodriguez, owner of Ovation Bistro & Bar, the best smokehouse in central Florida. They are unashamedly passionate about the food and drinks they create. As a family owned and operated business, they are always ready to serve. Their mouthwatering ribs and in-house smoked meats have earned them serious street cred among locals and visitors alike. And for good reason, they are part steakhouse, part barbecue smokehouse, with tender brisket smoked in-house daily, craft burgers, juicy steaks, and all certified Angus beef. They have three locations in Florida, Lakeland, Winterhaven, and Davenport. Joel and his co-owner Fernando come from a migrant family where they were no strangers to hard work. They both served as country in the army in Afghanistan and upon their return from duty, their next experiences would lay the groundwork for them to start their own business.

But they didn’t stop there. They also started a non-profit to help feed Polk County Florida residents, having donated over 30,000 meals already. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. All right, now back to our guest today, the owner of Ovation Bistro and Bar, Joel Rodriguez. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Joel Rodriguez: Anthony, I appreciate the invitation. I’m excited to see what, you know, to tell our story. It’s always a good time.

Anthony Codispoti: All right, let’s get right into it then, Joel. So every inspiring story has a beginning. Joel, what sparked your journey in this industry and what moments made you realize that this was your calling?

Joel Rodriguez: So, previous to me finding out, this was for me, I was, you know, I was a okay high school student, you know, when I say okay, I don’t mean A’s and B’s, I mean C. I was skating along, right? I did just enough not to get trope or not to fail, but I never had a real, you know, I was just kind of getting through the days and the weeks and the years came by and then, like my senior year came up and I was like, wow, what am I going to do? I knew that I wasn’t a person that was ready to go to college because I didn’t like going to school, it’s a high school. I didn’t like classes.

I did them because it was like what I had to do. And so, you know, one day a recruiter came by the high school and, you know, hooked, lined in sinker. He got me, so he told me he would take me around the world. He’d show me a lot of things.

He trained me and he did that and then some ended up spending almost 10 years in the army between two different enlistments. And it was, it was a game changer for me. I didn’t really need it.

I didn’t know I needed that discipline until I had it. So, I was, you know, it was, as I go back, I was really scared. Like the night before, I remember talking to my mom, and she came to my bed and she was like, son, like, if you don’t go, you don’t, it won’t make me, you know, I was like, I told my mom, will you tell me what to do? Like, because my mom kind of didn’t want me to go either. And she was like, you know, I was cooking at Bob Evans’ breakfast chain and I was in the mornings on the weekend and I was cooking at a steakhouse at night in the evenings.

You know, I worked two jobs all through my last, like two years of high school, once I got my car. So, she told me, you know, we’ll work it out, you know, we’ll figure it out. I was like, well, so I know, I just, it was a long, I didn’t sleep. And the recruiter there to pick me up at 3.30 in the morning. So, I just, I laid in bed, you know, we had to be at the Tampa map station, I’d say around five. It was a good hour drive, but of course, he wanted to leave some time in there. So, just laying in bed.

Anthony Codispoti: You were pretty, you were pretty nervous.

Joel Rodriguez: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti: I mean, I was initially, you were excited about this. Yeah. He’s going to show me the world. He’s going to teach me all these things. Yeah. Then as it gets closer to it, it gets real.

Joel Rodriguez: It gets real. And, you know, you got, you got your stuff packed. I mean, you got a bag and it gets real.

Anthony Codispoti: Now, what do you think you were most nervous about?

Joel Rodriguez: I was, I was the most nervous about my, my physical condition because I wasn’t an athlete. I was, you know, I worked and, you know, I had a nice, had a nice size midsection. I didn’t have, I had asthma come to find out. I was diagnosed 20 years later, you know, which did help me not be able to run. I just, I was, you know, we were very, we had, we had very meager means and going to the doctor and getting, you know, and seeing doctors. It wasn’t something that we did. So I just, I dealt with it. I couldn’t breathe well. And that’s just something I dealt with.

Anthony Codispoti: I didn’t, you know, you said you came from meager means kind of paint a picture for it.

Joel Rodriguez: Yeah. So we, we, we, we, so both of my parents when I was younger was we’re, then they worked in the fields of the orange growths in the, in the winter here and in the, in the, in the summers we would travel, we would migrate to New York or Indiana, wherever there was work and would pick vegetables and apples in New York. We would do tomatoes in Indiana squash and New York or Ohio, wherever there was a farm, then you’d help, we would live on site on the farm and we would just go out every day. You know, if it was daylight, we were working then when it got dark, you know, we were actually up, we’d shower it up and ate dinner and then we did it again. Did it all summer. I was working the field at, you know, 12, 11, 13, 14. And it just, yeah, it just, you know, it was, it

Anthony Codispoti: was, it was a physical labor and it’s not hard, but it’s just tedious, right? It’s just tedious going up and down. Like sometimes I would have like a hole and I would just hold the plants and I, you know, I would just hold around to get all the weeds out. I would just go right down the road and it’s just like, it’s just, I mean, just 12 hours, 11 hours. It’s just, it’s not hard.

It’s mental. Like, I remember I found a way to escape in my mind and I, you know, I’ll, this is, I don’t know what it’s called when you, you foreshadow something later on in my story, but this is when I realized that I could do that. I could actually leave my body and just focus on something else. Like I would watch, you know, the Simpsons episode the night before in my mind as I was hoeing or I would watch a movie and I, it was just, and I realized, and it was like nothing. I was like, oh man, I already did this whole, this whole acre here, these old two acres and it just blew by because I was, I was entertained, you know. Wait, say more about this, Joe.

Joel Rodriguez: So, no, so it was like, I didn’t realize I was, no, no, no, it’s just, I just like, you know, I just, because we, I didn’t have, we didn’t have like, this is back in the, in the, in the late 80s, the early 90s and so there was no, you know, iPhone or like, what are the Google Glasses they got now? So they got all the stuff now, but, you know, I just so, but in my mind, I could, I could remember them, the show last night, you know, because we would get home and we would watch, you know, The Simpsons was on at 6.30 or 7. That’s about the time we’re showering up, we’re eating, we’re getting ready and for bed and that was our show. So I used to watch it. It’s to be on, I think it used to be on an hour, maybe hour and a half, like The Simpsons would like, I think The Simpsons are still on actually, which is pretty incredible here for The Simpsons, but yeah, and it was just funny, man. It was a funny show. We used to all watch it, the family, we’d sit around the TV, but it was so nice.

Anthony Codispoti: You could see the whole episode. I could see the whole episode of my mind again, right, or a movie or like, and I was, and I’m still doing my task. I’m still getting the job done. I wasn’t slacking there, Anthony.

Joel Rodriguez: I was working, but, but I could transport myself and that made the days and the weeks tolerable as we, as I helped the family, you know, right? Because it was, it was a, it was a summer. I was in school, you know, I never missed school. Like school was very important to my parents, but I never missed school for work, but in the summers and on the weekends and where I could, you know, we would help, and like, and that’s in our culture to help. Like, my dad would help his dad, even though he had his own family and so forth and so on. So everybody just helped.

Anthony Codispoti: So you learned hard work from your parents at a very early age?

Joel Rodriguez: Oh, very early. Yeah. And I see my dad, and like, so I’d be done. You know, he’d get us out, he’d have a basketball hoop on. He’d get me out early.

He’d just come by, he’d be like, all right, you’re done. Come on. You know, everybody else, everybody’s leaving.

No, just you. And so he gets it because he saw the kids out there playing and he just, he’d send me, he’d get me home. He was a, he was a, he was kind of a, he was a crew leader. So he counted like the number of, of, of pants or baskets that each person would do themselves.

Like in the orange girls down here, he would, they call them a chivetto. And that, because the, the gold, the gold is the, is the, is the big truck that has the claws that gets the, that has like, gets the orange, the orange buckets, he scoops them and he picks them up and they dump some of this thing. And that’s called the gold. And the gold in Spanish is chival.

So they just call him, he’s the gold or he’s a chivetto. So he drove the bus, he picked everybody up in the morning. He had, he had to make sure he had ice water in the back of the bus. He had this posters, very good for the, the, you know, for the labor laws and stuff like that.

So, so he, so he did that. And I mean, so I used to go out and pick oranges too in the weekend. I’m gonna, I’m gonna fast forward to when I’m in high school now. So we did that all, all through my elementary years, right?

Summer, we just find a time to go and we didn’t go every year. If the, if the harvest wasn’t going to be big and, and there was no need or if it was, if there wasn’t, there’s going to be no other families that were coming. It was just all single migrant workers.

And he’s like, there’s no way for us to stay. You know, sometimes they had, it depends on the farm. Sometimes the farm had like individual like trailers, you know, and that each, like families could live in. And sometimes they just had kind of like, like a, kind of like a barracks or dorm with a centralized kitchen with a bunch of stoves and refrigerators around it.

And they have rooms and when there was situations a little like that, then we wouldn’t go. We would just stay here. My mom would make it a job in the kitchen somewhere. Sometimes I would follow and we’d just cut grass and stuff to maintain. But so I remember you one year and the fact, so we did this throughout my childhood.

So I was, I was no stranger to hard work. But I didn’t think it was, I thought it was normal, right? Cause that was my reality. My reality was, you know, this is what we do to make money like ends. And, and I know that people did other things like the banker, you know, he typed on his computer and he had, he had the keys of the safe and I could see that big old safe and went in there to cash our checks on Friday, right?

So I know a few other things, but I don’t know that’s what we did. And I was okay with it. Truth be told, I was a little ashamed in school that, you know, that we had to, that we had to do that. But that’s, you know, and the long run, it was, it was the best blessing that I could ever gotten.

Anthony Codispoti: So at that point, did you feel like these were two separate worlds? And you were kind of always being this one and not, yeah, exactly.

Joel Rodriguez: Right. That’s exactly how I felt. You know, like I knew that other people didn’t have to do that. And they got to go to camp as well. And I would lie, you know, in the seventh, sixth grade, seventh coming back. I’d like, where were you? Always that summer camp, you know, we was, we was here.

We was at the Bahamas. I would just tell the whoppers and, you know, we’re really, I was up in the fields working, especially if I came home late, because the season didn’t end on time. And we got here a week or two late, you know, before after school scarred, I have a friend like, where were you at, man? We’ve been at school two weeks. I said, oh, man, our vacation was just crazy. And honestly, I was like, we were just trying to scrape enough money to get back down. So, but, but, but yeah.

Anthony Codispoti: So. I enjoyed that the things that you used to be ashamed of are now the things that you give so much credit to for where you are.

Joel Rodriguez: And I’m most proud of too. Like, you know, my, you know, we didn’t have, we didn’t, we, we didn’t have to work as hard as we did, right? But my dad was always trying to get us ahead and trying to, you know, move us out of a, it was, it was horrible. We lived, you know, my first recollection, recollection was like a duplex of our home when I was like four or five, six, I remember was like, because there was always somebody right next door and I could hear him and we would, there was another kid next to him. I’d knock on the, on the, on the wall.

He would knock back. And I remember that. Then we moved to like a different part of the town. Had our own house. It was a single house. It was very meager, but, but still it was nicer.

Right. We rented that one. Had a, had a, had a convenience store right next to it.

So, you know, he would come back with a bag of Doritos and a can of bean dip. I tell you what, I was in heaven, man. It was like, it was the best thing ever when he got home from work.

I remember those things. I just remember him also never being home, like when he was working. Like he would, he would like leave before I was awake and he’d come home well into the evening, seven, eight at night. Uh, I know that he said there and he had to count up his, his cards and his tallies to all, for all the, the guys who were working.

He started off as a picker and then he got, you know, they promoted him to, to be the, the crew lead. And then we moved on, then we bought a property next to my grandfather’s, then we upgraded again. We got a, we got a big trailer, you know, a big double Y, you know, with three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

That was pretty cool. Cause I only had one, both of the previous ones I remember, I remember, I remember seeing like, wow, there’s two places I can go to the bathroom. I was like, I was like seven or eight. That was a big freaking deal. That was a big house. We had a yard finally and so, and, and, uh, how many of you were there?

Anthony Codispoti: It’s, there was, so there was, there was myself, my younger brother, uh, Fernando, my other younger brother, his name’s Eric and, and, and my baby sister who was 10 years from my junior. Uh, she was kind of like, I tell her this, she was the whoopsie, but uh, but, but, but now it’s grown up like, you know, we have great relationship, all four of us.

Uh, so, so yeah, man. So we worked through and then, you know, and, and where was I? So now we’re back in high school and, and now the weekends, I mean, I was like, I was like, dad, I need to, I say, give me a spot. And some days he would let me go pick and, and, and, you know, he, it depends on my report card. It depends on how I was acting at the house because he knew if I could go pick, that’s easy money for me.

I wasn’t the fastest, but you know, 50 bucks is 50 bucks. You know, when you’re 14, 15, uh, no, you take that. So I remember you, you, one time I was, uh, I can say, uh, you know, I’m, that, that I’m the most straight shooter ever, but, uh, one time I was picking a row, like a row of oranges and I, and I was doing really good because there were small trees right.

It all depends how much you could pick was, it was a landscape. If they’re a big tree, then you have to get a ladder to get to the oranges at the very top, right? You have to make it a hook to hook them off and drop them.

You got to go down, collect them. Or if you had like, a tree that was smaller, that, that blossomed earlier and they were like seven feet tall, right? And they were really, they were just, there was, you know, they were blooming with oranges everywhere.

I mean, you’d make a killing, right? So that’s the kind of row I had. I was doing good. I mean, I knocked out two tubs, two tubs before lunch and I was a three, four tub kind of guy all day, right? So, uh, but, but then, uh, but the, but the trailer where the, where he, he dumped the, right?

So I’m going to set this up for you, Anthony. The guys were picking to their bag, right? They would go through the bag and drop it in the tub. It was a big circle. So I don’t know how many gallons there is.

I don’t know. It’s big though. It’s, you could, you could fit like 20 people in it standing up, maybe 15. So it’s a pretty big tub. Yeah, right. So then you would dump your bag, carry this tub.

Anthony Codispoti: No, no, no, no, no. You carry your bag and then you take it and you dump your bag on the tub and then you unleash it and the, and the bottom opens up and your oranges fall in, then you, you strap it back, then you go back and pick more and the faster you can do it, the better, right? So it’s, you know, it’s, it’s the faster, you know, more. So I, I, uh, so I, I was doing great and I was like, man, I don’t know. I couldn’t have been 15. Maybe I was 16.

No, I wasn’t, I wasn’t 16 yet because I didn’t have a car yet. So, uh, he put me, I was beside the, where then, so then, so then the tub’s full, right? Then he comes with the goat that I spoke about earlier and he gets the claw, he claws it, he dumps it in his, in his, in his, in his, uh, in the goat, which carries, I don’t know, like 20 or 30 of them tubs. Then he goes into the trailer that’s out there in the field, parks somewhere and it’s up on hydroxyl lifts up and it opens up on the side and he dumps it into the trailer, right? So, and then the trailer starts to, and then, you know, he can go back and forth and kind of he levels out the oranges and that’s the process. Then the truck driver comes back up, takes the trailer and then he goes to get processed. But in the back, there’s a lever that opens up the bottom switch so that way they can fall out and then they’re lifted up at the plant, the orange girl plant, right? And I was right beside it and I looked at it and I was like, man, that sucker looks like there’s a lot of, it was full, it was almost full, it was full. So, I figured I could just open the lever up, dump a couple like bags and then close it back and then go dump my bag into the thing, right? Trying to cheat.

Because that was the easiest way. I was like, he won’t notice that I’m killing it today. I already got two, I’ll get two more, maybe I’ll get five today, you know? I think they were going for, I don’t know, $10 a barrel.

So, I was like, I was like, man, man, I’m gonna bang out 50, I might get 60. So, I go to the back, I open it up and it’s hard. I mean, it’s a big trailer, right? So, I pop it open, I fill up, I fill up and then I close it. I said, oh, and I can’t, right, I close it and I can’t close it, right? I didn’t realize that the pressure behind it, like the flow would not let it close. So, there’s no way it’s gonna close. So, now I have to sit there and wait because God forbid I let that whole freaking, that whole trailer of oranges that people already picked go on the ground. So, I’m just holding it. The thing is super heavy on my back, like it’s dragging me down, I’m holding it up and I started yelling, dad, dad, you can’t hear me, it’s a big, I don’t know how many acres it was.

I mean, you know, 30, 48, 50 acres, 100 acres, I don’t know how big it was, it’s humongous. So, I just had to wait. I’m sitting there, I’m So, this was your penance for trying to cheat? I’m trying to tell you, man, I was, and I was thinking right there and I was like, man, and again, I went back, I went back in my mind, I was just like, man, what am I gonna do? My friend, thinking about the basketball game, we used to just play basketball in high school, like, you know, just like for fun, not on the team or nothing, but I’m just thinking about stuff and then finally he pulls it around, he pulls out, he’s like, and he put my hands down, I took him right back, I couldn’t put my hand, I was like, let me put my hand back down, but he came up, he’s like, man, are you sure it’s smart? I said, Dad, I just, I thought I was gonna, he’s like, he started laughing, he started cracking up, he went, he was like, he was like, are you tired?

He’s like, yeah, yeah, let me push it back. He said, I think you can’t go back. He says, you’re gonna have to walk with the trailer back to the plant. And I said, I can’t do that, he said, well, so he said, so he laughed, he walked away and I was like, so he came around with the trailer and he got the, what he did, he got the claw, the hook that hooks the, the, the tubs, he just, he put it, he’s like, watch out, watch out, he put it right on the thing, he just, he prays, because it had hydraulics, they just closed this shut.

I just remember seeing all the juice come out of the bottom like, because he just smashed so many oranges right there and then he said, I closed it, so I closed it. He said, he said, how many, how many, how many bags you get? I said, I got one. He’s like, that’s, it’s your lucky day because I’m gonna let you keep that bag. I said, okay, sorry, dad.

He’s like, he just drove away laughing. You know, he never mentioned it again. I mentioned it to him like, I don’t know, maybe 30 years later and he remembers though, he just, he just thought it was the funniest thing. He’s like, he’s like, he’s like, he said, you ain’t that smart, huh? I said, well, I never claimed to be. He’s like, you thought you could close it as dad, I thought so. But, but our relationship was good. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti: So we’ve sort of laid the foundation here for the great work ethic that you learned growing up from a very young age, working out in the fields. Let’s fast forward to your time in the military. You said you did two enlistments, were they back to back? Yeah.

Joel Rodriguez: So, so, and so, so we made it to basic that day and and I was, I was overweight. So, you know, so we’re back that morning, there, he’s being picked up and I had previously tried to go the week before, but I didn’t make weight or the tape and the, and the same. So these, these little things that happen in your life, people don’t realize how they have an altering effect as I have a ripple, right?

And they just ripple throughout your whole life. So the same guy that taped me the day at the, at the, at the map station a week before, he recognized me. He said back, try it again.

He’s right. I didn’t eat the night before I was in the, I was in the sauna. I was, you know, I was running every day. I had to lose 10 pounds.

I didn’t get, I lost like nine. So I still had to be taped because you could be overweight if you taped right, if you had the right measurements, you know, right? So, so he came to my belly and like it had like that much on it. And it was like, so he just like, I looked at him, he looked at me and he was like, he just, he squeezed that sucker. He bought, cut my skin. He said, all right, you’re good.

He put me through, right? So, so, so that single thing that put me in basic training that evening, that let me go through. And like I said, I had asthma undiagnosed. So I started to run and I struggled and I think I was going to make it just because of the, the physical, the physical activity that I was not used to doing. But, you know, through all the training, I just, you know, I thought, you know, the, the, the basis for my work ethic, like, and being able to put that, put myself somewhere else, like you’re running five miles and you know, you have asthma and, you know, you’re actually blacking out like you, I fall over and I’d get up and start running again.

And after I catch my breath, you know, I just, I’ll put my, I would go somewhere, I would go somewhere and I think all that to the, to the time I was in the fields, all them hours and hours, like, and I could really, I could really transport myself where it wasn’t a big deal, like, and it wasn’t that hard. Like, so I just, I did it, you know, I lost, I don’t know, 60 pounds in basic training. I finally saw some muscles on my chest, had I saw a little, like six pack, you know, I had like a two pack, the first two was coming out and I was like, what?

I was flexing my arm, you can see the little tri-sounds, this is crazy. So I continued on to my individualized training. I was an air traffic controller for the first five years and went to eight. So the school, cool was like six months to learn how to become an ATC personnel. So every day I worked out, I mean, I just, I became that, I got the body I never had and had a lot of confidence and, you know, I was making money.

I was sending all my checks back home because I didn’t need anything. I was in training. I would, they fed me at the, at the, at the tell hall, you know, three times a day.

You know, I just, I kept, I kept a couple hundred bucks for me to go out on, you know, Saturday and then Sunday and, you know, go out, go downtown and, you know, go shopping or do whatever I wanted. But you sent the bulk of what you were?

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah. Oh, it all, it all went back. Yeah. It all went back. It all went back.

Joel Rodriguez: It all went back. Well, and, and, and I didn’t have any quality. I didn’t have any, I wasn’t, it will about it. Like my parents were still, you know, they were doing better, but they weren’t quite there yet. You know, and it just, so it really, it really wasn’t nothing to me. Like I didn’t need it. You know, if I needed something, I would get it and people like, man, I will tell, I’ll tell my roommate, I said, what are you doing with your money? I said, I’m sending it all home. I said, how much are you keeping? I said, I’ll keep like a hundred bucks. I said, you know, you’re going to pay for two weeks. I said, yeah, what do I need it for? I just need, I was, we’re walking everywhere we go.

I don’t have a guy to have a car to have any expenses. The food was there. I just, you know, if I wanted to try to sneak in some beer money here and there, you know, I was, I was 18 at the time and, you know, I would, you know, that’s somebody who hooked me up, you know, the older GI walking on the, hey, so, did you give me a beer? You know, and it was like kind of, it wasn’t allowed, but it wasn’t frowned upon.

Like you’re a soldier, like you can have a freaking beer. Like I said, it wasn’t illegal, but it was like one of those things, like, you go to the classics.

Anthony Codispoti: But it looked the other way.

Joel Rodriguez: Yeah, kind of, and everybody did and you just had to, but, but because if you messed up, man, your, your ass was in a ringer and that’s not a ringer you want to be in. They, you know, and don’t get in trouble outside the base because that’s even worse because you have to do a civilian punishment, whatever, whatever, for whatever. And then you get to get the UCMJ action that’s, that was, that was levied against you. When you got back on base and that was sometimes worse. That was most times worse.

Anthony Codispoti: So what was the biggest thing that you learned from your first in this there?

Joel Rodriguez: Man, the world is very big, right? The world is super big. And then I’m very, I’m just like, like a half a sanguine. I don’t know. I don’t know the analogy for it, but I just, I realized that the world was really big and that, that I, and that, that I was able to do things that I never thought I could do. I was running two miles and 12 minutes, you know, I was, you know, I was with full blown asthma without knowing it.

And I had, I had, I lost like a bunch of way. I looked great. I passed. I became my air traffic controller. So I was smarter than what I thought I was.

Right. I thought I didn’t, I never gave myself a chance. You know, and, and now, now my wife speaks of it, because she’s a, she’s a, she’s a, she’s a professor at the University of Central Florida. And she does a lot of research to, you know, it’s academic research.

Like, why do some kids succeed when comes when some kids don’t? And she says that nobody was there to advocate for me. You know, when she says, I’m, I have ADHD. And, and I, I’ve never been diagnosed as a dude.

I see this all the time. Like you have ADHD and, and you’ve never been diagnosed. And you wonder why you were in the sixth grade in school. I was an in school suspension pretty much the entire year. And, and, you know, I was, I did bad at school. And, but people still pass me though, because, you know, they don’t want, they didn’t want me back in the class, right? I was a disruption.

The next person’s next guy’s problem. So, but the seventh grade year, I did better, you know, the eighth grad, the better. And I had, I never had a problem that it was a transition from elementary to middle school. But my wife says, like, if you had somebody to advocate for you, and that’s what her research focuses on, on, on, on why some people are more successful than others. But the, the ASVAP kind of figured out that I’d be good at, at the ATC thing. So just by the way, I said, I couldn’t be a mechanic or an engineer. Like those two things I was, I don’t know how gears work together.

And I just, these are jobs you can’t do as you can do anything else. And I picked, I picked, I picked that one because I had a girlfriend. And the school was in Fort Rucker, Alabama. That’s lower Alabama. It’s like six hours from where I lived then and currently actually. So I knew on the weekends, I could, I could, I can make a beeline home. And so that was the main reason I want to be a traffic controller because where the school was, it was a six month school. And I’d be, I’d be driving distance away.

Anthony Codispoti: So your first stint in the Army, how many years? Five. Five years. Yeah. And were you deployed? Did you go overseas?

Joel Rodriguez: No, I went overseas, but not deployed. It was, this is 97 to 2002. And, you know, 9-11 had just happened when I got out. I was stop loss for, you know, for like a month and I, everybody would think was stop loss, but, but then like the year, the next year I got out, I had to go to Korea. That was a pretty awesome experience. And then I got out and I came home. I was, I’m going to use my GI bill because I wanted to be a banker, Anthony, like, because the bankers, they had the money because they had the keys to the safe and they always wore a suit and they always had a tie. And every time I went to the bank, we always had mud on our boots and, you know, dirt on our blue jeans, right?

Just to catch our check. So, uh, that was very impersonable upon me when, in my younger years. I mean, we had no, like, I had no financial literacy. I didn’t know how to use the ATM card when I got my ATM card from the Army. Remember the first time I got, I said, what do I do with it? Where do I get the money? I said, because I used to get my check and I just go to like, you know, a convenience store or like a grocery store to cash it, give my money, give my money, the money for the car and whatever and keep the whatever I could for myself. So, uh, yeah.

So, uh, what was I sold? I remember the first time I pushed the card in so hard into the ATM, I got stuck and they wouldn’t come out. So it ate it and I had no money for that weekend.

Anthony Codispoti: But, uh, so you used the GI bill?

Joel Rodriguez: Yeah, I used the GI bill. Yeah. So I got out and I got, thanks for giving me out track. I got out, I started going to college. I was a 28 year old, uh, uh, sorry, uh, 24. I was like, uh, no, 20. 2002.

2002. So I was 23, 24. And, uh, I go in there and for the first time with the, to the class, I, uh, ironed my slacks and had a long sleeve shirt, ironed down, had, had, had my backpack, you know, nice. I was still, I was still in good shape. You were ready. I was ready.

I was like, this is, this is a big day. Like I did five years for this day and I walked in the first girl said, are you the new professor we’re getting? I said, no, dude, like I’m in class. They’re like, oh, really? I said, oh, you look like the teacher.

I said, okay. So I looked around, everybody’s in shorts and flip flops and it’s Florida and it’s Florida in, in August. So it’s blazing hot. I’m sweating. There’s a, a, a wool like it was insane. But like that’s what, that’s what, that’s what I assumed it would be like really, but it wasn’t like that at all.

Right. It was, so, you know, I dressed like that for a couple more, a couple more months just because I bought the clothes like right when I got out of the army. Got to use them, man. So, uh, but then, but then my cousin who I grew up with, uh, he went to a college right next door and, uh, he was like, dude, what are you doing, bro? I said, go get some shorts, flip flops, man.

And, and a couple of t-shirts. It’ll be good. I said, I was like, really? I felt weird the first day, but I did feel more at ease because I didn’t like the teacher anymore. And, uh, so I was gone with the college and I was doing, I was doing my thing. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti: Go ahead. Did you, did you end up finishing or? Yeah.

Joel Rodriguez: Yeah. No. So, so I was, I was, we, we, uh, then, so I was on my thing and my brother was actually in college with me. He started, uh, he had just graduated the year before. So it was, but he went into the National Guard and, uh, his unit just got for deployment. So we actually were in a couple of classes together.

We kind of planned it out. So I thought that was cool because he was, I was a senior. He was a freshman, right? And then there was, so we hung out a little bit as my senior year, but he was kind of like the hang around kid, right? He’s going out to senior skip day with us. I was like, bro, you can’t go to senior skip. You’re a freaking freshman. I’m going to tell mom then if you don’t take me. So I said, all right, get in the car, bro. Went to the beach, right? So, but, but this time, like, you know, he’s grown up.

I’m growing up, both in college. Uh, he got orders to go to Afghanistan and, uh, his unit did and, uh, he had already been deployed. He got deployed, uh, right after, uh, 9-11 to the Tampa airport for a year.

So, and I would come and see him. There was a nice deployment, right? They got to stay at the Marriott in the airport and they got to eat at whatever restaurant they wanted. They just did security around the airport because nobody knew really what was going on.

They were just burning money, right? The, the, the DOD was, so, uh, so, you know, we had a conversation one night. We’re out. We’re having fun. We’re having some drinks at, uh, there’s a place called Disney Springs that used to be, uh, like a club in the area. Like it was called, uh, Downtown Disney.

And it’s, it’s, it’s relatively close to where we lived, uh, maybe 45 minutes, half an hour. But so we’re down. He’s like, man, I was, I don’t want to go. I said, I don’t know if I’m gonna, I might need to hurt my back. And he was just, he was really concerned. I said, man, don’t be concerned. I said, easy for you to say you did your time.

You kidding? I said, I said, I’ll do my time again. I said, I’ll go with you. And he’s like, he’s, he said, he said, he said, yeah, he said, yeah, I said, but, but you got to take care of all my drinks because I hadn’t been paid yet. Uh, and I said, you got to get all my drinks this weekend. So he said, all right, that’s a good deal. I said, so, boom. So, so I saw, we started drinking up, took a shears and gave a high five and, and a hug.

Anthony Codispoti: Uh, so your brother bought your drinks and you go to Afghanistan.

Joel Rodriguez: Yeah. So we, so I went, so I went there. So Monday morning, uh, and, and like, so Sunday morning, he was like, man, that was awesome last night. Yeah, that was cool. Right.

We get in. Uh, and then, uh, he’s like, man, that’s cool too about the whole Afghanistan thing. And I said, what? Oh yeah, you’re going right. So yeah, but you’re going with me. I said, I am. I said, what are you talking about? He said, you said last night, I was like, oh, I was like, oh yeah, yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

We’re going to do that. So, so, so, but it was, it was hazy. I kind of, I didn’t, it was foggy, but when he said it, I was like, I did say that.

I was like, wow, I did say that. that was, so, you know, when they more talk to commander, I said, if I don’t have to go back to basic training and I don’t have to, and I can be with them the whole year in Afghanistan, you know, cause they were losing soldiers. This is National Guard, you know, National Guard people sign up to National Guard cause they think they’re gonna be home, right?

They’re gonna be, and they didn’t start deploying those guys until the 90s, I think, until like Clinton years. But so he was great, he was glad to have me and I was glad to go. I had to go back to Tampa Mets and it was a little easier around the waist this time and I got right in, I did my physical and then we mowed to Camp Shelby.

I don’t know, probably like a year later, six months later, excuse me. That first, so I went, so, do you remember a couple of years ago in 2004, Florida got ravaged by like four or five hurricanes like this, saying there was like Charlie, then Eileen, then Irma, and then, so that was the month the month that I signed up with the National Guard. And so I got in that Humvee, I was like, man, I thought I was gonna go to drill once a week and we’re gonna go to, you know, cause if you’re mowed to active duty, it’s different, right?

That’s what we just live it. But I didn’t think I was gonna go, like for that month, we’re in the back of it, we’re on a Humvee or in the back of a LTV, like just going up and down, doing guard duty, doing patrol, helping hand out water. So that was my whole, that was summer, that summer.

Anthony Codispoti: And then how long were you actually in Afghanistan?

Joel Rodriguez: So we mowed to Camp Shelby, Mississippi after that. We were there for I think four months, five months. You got all your immunizations and you did all your training. And you do like, you know, they have mock cities of Afghanistan do all your training, like, you know, your combat training, like, you know, your entry into buildings, do all that kind of stuff on top of like the basic commands on like on the language is like Dari and things, things like that. So then we left and did the end of June, and we got back July 4th, 2005. So a year, a year flew by, lots of fun. I lost even more weight. I got even more.

Anthony Codispoti: Lots of fun. I haven’t heard many people.

Joel Rodriguez: No, well, you know, it was a really light, it was a really light year that year. I don’t know. I don’t know. We were at Camp Phoenix and Kabul and the word had it that, of course, I didn’t know anything about anything. You know, I was, you know, I was a specialist. I didn’t, I wasn’t, you know, I was a RTO.

They made me a radio transmission operator. So I just, the big dogs were behind me, the generals and colonels, and they’d get on the horn tell this person to do this and I track where the units were, where different assets were in the field. But the rumor had it that the base, the camp that was called Camp Phoenix was owned by the biggest drug lord in Afghanistan. And so the United States Army, the DOD was paying them rent to own, I think it was like three blocks. It was, it was, it was fortified.

Like I was just a good place. That’s why they picked it, right? And there was big old, like, one story tall sandbags like around the whole building, like too high. So it was towers everywhere, like guard towers.

But so we had it, like, and I was there, it was light. I think there was a couple of explosions at the front gate, but really, really a calm year. It was, that was before the surge.

They did the surge in Afghanistan. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t hot that year at all. I mean, it wasn’t hot at all. Like, I was like, man, we’re just working out and like walking around the city. And like, we’re just, you know, we, and the mission was a presence, a presence mission. We’re just here to support, you know, the new, the new government, right?

The one that collapsed in a matter of a day, right? We’re gonna go into that. But that was, that was, that was the mission. Just, you know, we carried around little Snickers bars for the kids, we throw them, you know, right? When they got nearest, because, you know, earlier that year, the kids were, they rushed, they were handing out, and they got through them and the kids are grabbing anything.

They’re talking about impoverished people, right? So one kid, he grabbed like a live grenade off of soldiers. So we weren’t allowed to hand them anything anymore because he got it and took it.

And he, I mean, he was, that’s gonna be a year’s salary in Afghanistan. So, so we had to throw the candy in there. It was sad, it was sad seeing that state of people like who live like that and they just live in the mud.

Anthony Codispoti: And I felt like, I felt like I was blessed, right?

Joel Rodriguez: Yeah, I feel like I was blessed because now in my year, I had a roof, we had water in my trailer, right? We had two, we had two toilets, right? These guys sold like everything’s perspective, man.

So, yeah, so, okay, so boom. Went there, got back, went back to work at the Albuquerque and got back to Steakhouse where we were working. He got me a job when I got out the Army. He was an assistant kitchen manager. Got me a job as a dishwasher.

I became a dishwasher and then a style of guy that fired work my way up the line. He was like, wow, man, I was like, you’re really trainable. Like how do you learn so quick? I said, it ain’t hard, man. You just tell me what to do and I’m gonna do it and I’ll just keep doing it, right?

Just for repetition, right? So, so I continued to do that. And while we were doing all this, we had, I was going to college, right? So I transferred to University of Phoenix because I knew I was gonna go to Afghanistan and I went to college there. I got, I finished my bachelor’s while I was over there. And then got back and once I got my degree, I had one more credit and I was like, man, I don’t wanna do it at University of Phoenix because this is very expensive, man.

So I said, so I went to the community cause I did like a pottery class, like a pottery class. And got my credit, got my credit. Then I told the Alback, I said, hey, man, I got a bachelor’s degree in management now. That’s you guys should make me a front of house manager.

And they were like, well, we don’t have a spot right now, Joel. Like we can make you a kitchen manager. I said, I don’t wanna be a kitchen manager. Like I’m articulate. I’ve led troops before. Now I was thinking I was smart, you know?

Stories changing in my own mind, right? And but they didn’t have a spot. So I went on Career Builder, I went on Monster and he’s a job board back in 2007, right? And Longhorn called me, Longhorn Steakhouse, you know? And they did me interview and they were telling me, you know, so I told him my story, what I was less than 10 years of my life after high school. And so he’s like, oh man, we can give you a job. He’s like, oh man, I’m a great cook too. He’s like, I don’t need you to cook no more. I said, you know how to cook. But I was a great cook. But he didn’t, he said, the guy told me, his name was Matt first.

And this is the first guy who gave me a chance, right? Cause I had the sheepskin. I had what I thought was knowledge to manage a restaurant, but I really didn’t know anything at all about managing restaurants. So it gave me a job and I learned. And right when I got back from Afghanistan, I met a girl who was just, at the end of the night, where we used to make it the, you know, I was a grill cook. So I said, need the reports, how many steaks we sold? And she’d be the head server. And she had to give me the report so I can tally up the meat sheet.

I had 50, I sold 20, I should have 30 left, right? And so I had to do that every night on a nightly basis. So she would always get given to me. And I just remember looking at her and I was like, man, I said, you like me, don’t you? She’s like, what are you talking about? I was like, you always, you always like- Jokes, confidence is high. No, it was high, man. Like, I was like, cause like there was always a tug.

I remember like, I’d like take the report, but it wasn’t released. Like, you know when somebody grabs it, you release it, I got it. But there was always that little tug.

Like she didn’t want me to leave. So, you know, maybe we’ll talk about my love story on another podcast, but so, we’re still together all these years later, but have two kids. So in 07, we had our first baby, right? And I got back in 06, you know, she got, in 07, I knew, I knew like, having seen the things I had seen, I wanted to, I wanted to, you know, I felt like I was ready to be dad. So, so I became a dad in 07, in August.

15th of 07. And I got, I started to look at that. That’s when I was like, man, I got to be, I got to get a dad at this kitchen. I’m not making enough money. I think I was making 13 bucks an hour.

That’s the soul. I met with a guy called Matt first, you know, at Longhorn and he gave me the biggest promotion I ever got in my life. I mean, from an hourly employer, somebody was going to manage a main, main dollar restaurant, a multi-million dollar restaurant, you know, with the training, right? And he just, you know, he worked me 55, 60 hours for, you know, I was making a lot of money back then, $39,000. I mean, I was, I was, you couldn’t tell me I wasn’t the king. I mean, I was making more money than my dad. So I had to be the king, right? I worked hard at Longhorn. I did well, I transferred, I learned a lot. Well, made a lot of mistakes.

Anthony Codispoti: I mean, I’ve, I remember this one time. It was part of everybody’s learning process, right? Yeah, man. Yeah, I learned. So one time there was this guy who was, his state couldn’t get right. Like, and I, we made him the first one, the second one. And then he didn’t like how that would taste. So I went to the back and I got a ribeye loin, because we had the ribeye pre-cut, right? But that one, it got off the ribeye loin.

We did the prime rib and I cut them a loin and it was a little bigger, a little juicier, trimmed it up nice and perfectly. And, you know, so, so we cooked that one. He finally liked it.

Joel Rodriguez: And I’m so pleased, right? And this is like my first week. And the waitress was like, we’re gonna charge it for that last one. And I said, yeah, I think so. You know, I didn’t, I think so. I had the key. That was my third or fourth shift by myself. And the rest, like I was, I was the boss, man.

That was, that was really scary for me. And so I made him charge, but then it was a big email. Like, you made me wait, you know, for four states. So I got the right one and you still charge me. And then, you know, then that’s when I really realized that it really wasn’t about the sale, right? It wasn’t about the sale.

It was about the customer satisfaction and the indulgence and taking care of the people. Man, I wasted an hour of his life because he was very frustrated, right? Whether the other three stakes were good or not, that’s not my problem. It’s not my concern really. It’s just about making the customer happy. Most of the time, the customer happy, man. And I took that to heart. And I never, I’ve never made a mistake like that again when I’ve forsaken a customer’s time and or money.

Anthony Codispoti: That lesson was really imprinted. I mean, the first, the first week, that’s my first week and it was like, I still catch it. It’s still locked in my head.

Joel Rodriguez: So, so when did the idea to start your own restaurant come about?

Joel Rodriguez: So fast forward two years. Now, now my boss who didn’t have a position for me as a front house manager at the Alback has one. And he calls me, he wants me to meet his boss for an interview I do. You know, then I get another raise. Now I’m up to 52,000 a year. Now I’m making a thousand a week. Anthony, that’s freaking, that’s bananas, man.

Anthony Codispoti: You’ve never seen money like that. Well, that’s bananas. But it was good because my wife was still in college getting her PhD. We had a kid, right? We had a mortgage and it was, it came right on time.

Joel Rodriguez: And so, you know, that’s, you know, I leaned big on my faith when we struggled and we had to get food stamps. And, you know, at first, before I got the job at Longhorn, I would take, you know, whatever, like leftover prime rib.

I would ask the manager, hey, are you gonna throw this away? Right? He’s like, yeah. I said, man, can I have it?

Right? I would take it home. And it’d be good with some ketchup on it or A1 sauce.

Like put on some bread and it’d be delicious. But so it struggled a while and the exchanges struggle. And I, but it was, but it was normal having to feel like just being able to get by, like that was normal, right? That, you know, and later on, I realized, when I went back to Albeca, now I’m making a little bit more money. Like I started reading books about like society and like, Alcom Gladwell, he’s a writer for the New Yorker. He read a couple of books.

I think the book, the Outliers really stuck home to me and a tipping point. I mean, I was like a sponge. I was reading them. I couldn’t read them fast enough. I had them, I still got them all in my room. But now they’re all on my audible account, right?

But they, but it was great, man. I remember this one passage, this one story talks about it takes time for a family when they get here to establish themselves, right? As long as everybody does the right thing every generation, right?

You know, it’ll get better. You know, my great granddad was actually in Texas when it became a state or my great-great when ever, whenever they became a territory. I became there. My granddad went to World War II.

I had uncles and stuff. I didn’t go to Vietnam’s. We were all in the, we all served our country and we were all proud of it, right? I had, you know, and I still, my part, but everybody kept doing better. Like, and then, so now, now, so now I was like, I got a, now it’s my turn to up the brand, to, you know, to level up and keep doing better. And so it was, so in 2000, now, now we are, we’re 2000 and 13,000 and 12, somewhere around here.

Anthony Codispoti: Now you’re back at our back. And is this kind of when the idea for, Yeah, yeah, right.

Joel Rodriguez: Because they had an IPO and they went public and they had so many bosses. I actually couldn’t shake a stick at it. I mean, there was a VP of everything. There was a VP of productivity. Oh, there’s a, to come down and breathe down my neck on a Friday night and tell me what I can do better to be more productive when there’s food like in the window and he’s to be ex-pulled out and got out to the guest. He was talking about how, you know, this shelf could be like this and this could be like this or the flow. And I was like, sir, I said, can we do this after I get that food out? He said, let me show you one more thing. I said, I said, this is, this is nuts.

I said, we’re not being productive right now. I got upset and I walked away and I got in that window and he stood there and watched me for like 10 minutes. I said, I won’t be able to help you for tonight. Maybe you can come back. So I got reprimanded, you know, he left and then, so that was okay. I was like, whatever, you know, there wasn’t no skin off my back. Like you could yell at me and scare me. I don’t, come on. You would take him to the customer. Yeah, that’s what he didn’t get. They were like, I could have done it a better way.

Anthony Codispoti: That was a whole- The shelf over six inches.

Joel Rodriguez: Yeah, that was a whole thing. He was like, you could have been more tactful about it. And that was, that was what my boss said. I was like, okay, sure. Then a couple of months later, I got in trouble for giving out a couple of cases of bread to a church for a local charity. For their, they had like a soup kitchen then the weekend they asked me for, I said, absolutely.

I said, I just threw them out. And granted, the case of bread was like 16 bucks. I think it’s 15 something.

Like on the invoice that we paid, right? It was the nice brown, outback bread. It’s fantastic bread. And I gave it to them and then it got word back that we were giving out bread.

So another church came out. So I gave a, so then it was like, I ordered a special order just to get like 20 cases of bread in so I can give them away. And at this point, I’m the actually managing partner in this area because she went to have a baby, the managing partner did. So I took over that role. And so, and then they told me, you can’t do that. You have to, we want you to, I said, you want to be a part of the community, right?

You want me to run this ship? I came in and cleaned it up because they were doing, there was, it was, it was in chaos store, a clean house. I ran groceries a couple nights cause I just didn’t take somebody lipping back. I said, go home, you don’t work in on it.

I got to go over, right? I was really passionate about what I did. I did it well. But then when they started, you know, they say you want to build a store, you got to bring all these churches around here, all the local businesses to come to, I was doing that. But I didn’t do it because of, I didn’t submit a form to donate something to the corporate office now, right? You didn’t go through the proper channels.

Anthony Codispoti: I didn’t go to proper channels. Because there’s a somebody who has to check list and say, okay, it was, it’s, it’s Ashrinine. And, and, and, and at this point I was just, I was like, I’m done. So I told my wife, I’m going to quit. She said, no, you’re not.

Joel Rodriguez: So she was almost, she was under her last month of her PhD program. Needed the money, needed the money. I could quit. Yeah. She, she graduated and went to her first interview and supplemented my income with her first job. Actually, she succeeded. She got a PhD in chemistry. And like, so she’s, she’s got, we haven’t increased our bills.

We haven’t, everything’s the same. La-di-da-di. So I said, now’s the time. Now’s my time. So, so we took a leap. There was a diner, a block away from my, like we turned off the highway and came back to our, our development was back there, but like a block away on the highway, there was a diner that was struggling. And I went in and we bought the diner, just to drive the diner, just to, just throw it away with, with just credit card.

I was like 10, 10 grand. Like there, it was, it was, it was struggling. And they, they, they wanted out. They wanted out of their lease more than anything.

Is what they wanted, you know? So we did, just bought it, 10 grand. I got my uncle and, and my brother’s father-in-law to invest $30,000 in, in, in, in, in this new idea. I wrote up a business plan. First of all, let me go back a little bit. So I quit, I wrote up a business plan.

This is what we’re going to do. It was, and I looked back at it because I still have it on my G drive. And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s evolved to not what I wanted at first, but, but everything, it kind of settles, right? Like it settles where it should be.

So we, we, we, uh, so my brother was, was a managing partner at the Alback State House as well. So he’s, I’m going to quit too. I said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I said, man, this, like, my girl’s got me. Like, you know, you, you’re a one income.

Yeah, man. So I said, I said, so they had a program. There was like a four day week manager that you would, you know, if you had five days, right, you would lose 20% of your, uh, of your salary and you would work four days a week. And they were just trying to, because there was, they were hemorrhaging, uh, managers and they realized why, like why? So they made this program a four day manager.

So if you, you know, you lose 20% of your, your salary, but you don’t work four days a week. And, and because, and I was one of the managers that they hemorrhaged along with a bunch of other people left. And there’s a lot of great concepts out there around, around the Florida area that came from old, old, old, our back managers.

Anthony Codispoti: But, uh, So how did you come up with the idea? Like why did, why was Ovation, Bistro and bar?

Joel Rodriguez: So the, so me, me, me and Fernando used to, to smoke and do barbecue competitions on the weekend. We would cook steaks, you know, for living and then we used to smoke and have fun with the barbecue on the weekends.

Right. And, uh, uh, I had to, I had to say this little story earlier that year, I took a, a, a flask into a sunny’s barbecue. And, you know, we got kind of in trouble. Like cause that got caught with it.

You can’t do that, sir. My wife’s like, why’d you do that? She was embarrassed. Like, why’d you do that? I was like, cause I want whiskey, man.

They don’t have nothing but, but lighting here. I was like, I want a freaking drink. So I was like, on the way home, so if you want a place that has a, has a barbecue and sells whiskey, then, then why don’t you make a restaurant up? She’s just mad. She didn’t mean that by it. Right. But then boom. So then we’re sitting out, then we’re sitting out like fast forward a couple of months. We’re sitting out, we’re smoking a brisket. I mean, my brother, we’re just hanging out. We’re drinking beer and, uh, and so I was like, man, you know what? Cause we’re, he was talking about, I want to leave out back.

This before, this before I left to, he’s like, man, I’m ready to go. I think, yeah, me too. I said, you know what we should do? I told him, I said, I said, I said, we should do like a barbecue place.

But that does like wine and does like, like, like, like full liquor drinks, like cocktails and like, especially coffees, like cappuccinos and expressos and macchiatoes and all that stuff. We do that and still sell steaks, but mainly be barbecue. Like be like a, he’s like, man, well, like a, like a, like a fine dining barbecue. I said, we don’t want to go that far, but like, but like nice, like casual dining, not like in Saran wrap or eat with your fingers, right?

Like slop, like on a, on a, on a paper plate, like a cheap, a cheap, like, you know, those little cheap places, like, like with actual coloring and actual, like plate where I said, we could do it. And then we looked at it. We started looking on, you know, on the computer.

I had a, I had a, we just got one of them, the iPads and we started looking out there. There’s nowhere like that. It’s not going to work.

I said, there’s nothing like that. So it’s going to work, man. That’ll, that’ll be our kind of our thing. And like, right.

So he, you know, my business school, right? I remember them saying, you got to have a niche. You got to have something that nobody else is doing, uh, bring something new and because at the end of the day, you’re just serving food that everybody can get anywhere and right. Cook themselves, but you got to create that, that’s something nobody else has. Right.

Anthony Codispoti: So I’m going to interrupt just for a second, Joel, because I’m realizing that there’s a pattern that I’m noticing here of Joel kind of being a little mischievous and getting himself into trouble. Yeah.

Man, it’s an orange truck thing. There was the, the detentions at school. Yeah. There was giving bread out, you know, from the restaurant. Uh, you took a flask into Sonny’s. This is Joel. And it hasn’t stopped. I’m just turning it up a little bit.

Joel Rodriguez: It hasn’t stopped. It hasn’t stopped. I just can’t help it, man. Like that’s what my wife says. She’s like, if you would have been, if you would have had the right mentorship and your parents wouldn’t know what they were doing, like you, you would have been so far along, but they just said you were bad. Not because they just said you were bad. Cause you know, she says, like you have, you have severe ADHD and you can’t.

And they ever say she’s told me this, she told me this a couple of years ago, but, and she still brings it up because both of my daughters have it and, and, but we treat them and they’re, and they’re, and they’re well controlled. Right. Uh, like that’s how I do my way. That’s how it works. I got one of my tabs and my emails and it’s just like, there’s all these tabs. I’m doing payroll on one thing. Send an email about this.

I have a catering event. I’m back and about to four is just so satisfying not to be stuck in the zone. Right. Like it’s satisfying. Right. So, so, so back to that night, right? Then he was like, nah, no way. I was like, yeah, bro, I think we can do it. So got on, got on, got on my laptop and I started typing away. I was like, man, yeah, this is all right.

It was a basic menu. And they was like, we’re going to do it, man. And then, then with the bread incident and then with my wife graduating, everything kind of was falling in place. And it was like, I got to, like this is my one time up at bat. I got to swing. I got to go for the home run.

My wife was really supportive. I made whatever you want to do. Uh, so, so we did it, man. Like we pulled off and I wrote this, this 50 letter of business plan with graphs and like demos of the area and, you know, and I sent it out to people. Only two people I knew had money. Uh, my brother’s father-in-law and my uncle who owned a construction business in, in, in Houston, Texas.

He still does. Uh, so they, they were wanting to give me, you know, I asked for 50 grand. I think I could do something with it. Now I look back at the amount of investment they gave me.

It was nothing. They both cashed out really good. And I was happy to do it too, where they were ready to be bought out. But, uh, yeah, man, we got going and that’s what kind of our deposit. Like we bought the old equipment in there and they got them out of their lease and they left and we remodeled with a handyman. Like we did all the painting. We did all the electrical.

I popped my finger one time when I was, I was touching wires. I shouldn’t have been, but like, we figured it out and we pushed through it. And, uh, and we got open. We got open probably, uh, it probably took me like eight months to get open. So I got, I didn’t know how to make it a license.

I didn’t know how to, how to apply for it. Like I had to figure it out and it was just like constantly figuring it out. And then, uh, actually it got to the point where we, I thought it would take like three or four months, but it was like eight months out. And so I had to make it a job to, to supplement my income. And, uh, so I would’ve got a job at a wing. I looked on monster really quick.

I went and did one interview to do hire me and I was at a wing, one of the wings, uh, you know, one of the restaurants that were really prevalent, you know, back then it was, it was a wing house and they pay me really well. And I was like, man, I don’t do nothing. Cause at the wing house, they don’t want you to talk to the guests at the wing house. They want you to basically be the bodyguard for the girls. Make sure that you, you count the money, do inventory, do you spread cheese, do your inventory?

It was, it was really, it was a easy, it was the easiest manager job I had. Come from our back in Longhorn when they were in your tail about touching every table, talking to everybody, agreeing not the community. They’re just, you just being, you just got to be back in the cut. You got to be watching. That was, that was your mantra.

Anthony Codispoti: But, uh, what was the, what was the opening day for your first?

Joel Rodriguez: So, uh, so we incorporated, uh, in September, uh, September 12th of 2014. And we opened, we finally got open. Like, but we started doing this in the, in the early summer, the end of the end of spring, and finally got to figure out how I incorporate. I used, uh, uh, I forgot what that, that website is that it’s a, it’s like a squeegee, you just call them and they do businesses for you. I don’t know.

Anthony Codispoti: It’s a bunch of them out there. Yeah. So registered. Yeah. I got registered. They did all of it for me. Like how many people came in the door?

Joel Rodriguez: So, uh, so we had a, we had a friends and family, right? Cause you know, I’ve been through our back openings and long horn opening. So had a friends and family. We tried it out. We messed up a lot. We had, I remember like the baked beans were so freaking spicy hot that nobody ate them.

And so that’s what you do right there at the time. I thought they were delicious. And so did my brother, so did my mom, but then we had to realize the pallets should be geared for our customers, which are the gringos, right? You know, the carcassian was the, the predominant, uh, ethnicity around here. And that’s what we’re shooting for barbecue, you know, hamburgers.

It wasn’t a Mexican place. So did that, we opened up the first week of, of, uh, in January. And it’s the middle of season down here. You know, and I’m coming from Alback and Longhorn and they’re getting the business right there.

You know, they’re busy. We opened up. There was nobody came. You know, we later nobody came. We have a couple of people show up like, you guys open up.

What are y’all doing? Right. So, so we struggled, we struggled for, uh, for an entire year, basically. And we were doing $500 in sales. This is open from 11 to 11. I mean, we had a bear.

Anthony Codispoti: What did you eventually figure out, Joel, that sort of flipped the switch and, and got people coming in the door?

Joel Rodriguez: So what the, but, but the thing is that, that we still did it the right way. We didn’t cut corners, Anthony. So we realized looking back is that we were so, we were so slow. It was an advantage to us because we perfected everything about every recipe. We make everything ourselves.

Right. So we had the time to do that. And we had the time to, to, to just, uh, just adore every table that was in there. I made sure I made a couple of visits at the table, the server we had on. We just had one bartender, two servers on most nights.

It wasn’t nobody. I would open the kitchen in the morning as a KM. I’ll, uh, lunch cook will come in.

I’d go and I’d float back and forth at lunch. Uh, and the evening I have a second girl guy come in, a kitchen guy. Those two would work with my help and I’d be in the front and the back and I will close the dishwasher at night.

You have a couple front of house people and we’re, we’re full service, coloring and glasses, wine glass, you know, it’s a full service restaurant. And, uh, we just had to say, I mean, my payroll used to be like $900 every year, every week. It was nothing. Uh, and, and, and so I, we really, we took advantage of the slowness to just perfect standards and, and, and, and I, and I took, I had a bunch of my, my MIT stuff from long-worn and out back still at my house. So I just, you know, I didn’t copy anything, right? I just benchmarked a lot of stuff that, that they were already doing.

And I had the time. So our reviews were like, they were climbing up the roof. And like that back in the day was back then it was TripAdvisor. It was like the, like kind of now it’s Google. Everything’s Google now, but back then in, uh, 15, it was TripAdvisor.

It was the big thing. They would rank the restaurants in each town. I remember I looked at them and we’re, we’re 25, you know, out of, out of 140 or something. And then we were like 17 and then we were two and then we’re the number one restaurant in Devon Fort. And that was, that was, that was kind of the hot dog. And that was like about the ninth, 10th month mark.

And that’s, and that was like October, November, which is a slower month in this area, right before the boom hits. So, uh, then we did things like whatever I could do to bring them in. We did trivia.

We did bingo. Come in and try the food, man. And the food was so good.

People were like blown away. Oh, this is not a bar. It’s not bar food. I said, no, no, no, we smoke the sucker all day. And, and like we do the rub, we make our own rub, we make our own recipes. We make the, you know, the meat season and we do the pork season and we created from scratch. I remember my brother took like two weeks to make the, uh, the, uh, the rub, the brisket rub. I was like, dude, make the freaking seasoning already. Like, wait, oh, it’s not right.

It’s not right. I need to add a little of this. And he would have a big lexan lid and he would just have read right on it and have a little pocket of seasons. I would think about this for chicken. We think about this report. And I said, they’re eating season. I don’t know, cook some. I got really tired of eating like steak or stop. I’m tired of tasting this stuff. So he, so, so like can’t create, he must have wasted a thousand dollars we didn’t have in like sample packets of seasons.

Uh, we had the time to experiment. So he, so I never went back to the four day manager. So he worked four days at, uh, at our back and he worked three days. I can’t, at three, I guess I got to show you because I don’t know why I got to show you, but he worked three days at, at Ovation. And then I worked seven days. Like, so we both worked seven days a week. You know, he, he’s not a very talkative person.

So I got a lot of the, I do a lot of like these things, you know, we had a couple of interviews on, on TV and stuff like that. And like, and he doesn’t ever want to be involved. He’s like, do whatever, bro.

I don’t want, I don’t want to talk to him, but he does, he’s an introvert, uh, which was where I’m well for me because they used to call me iron lungs in the, in the military and not because I could run. All right. Cause that, cause that, boy, I could get.

Anthony Codispoti: I got to give the gap. I got to give the gap. Okay. So from humble beginnings, three locations now, as we wrap up here, Joel, what does the future look like for Ovation?

Joel Rodriguez: Oh man, the, uh, the future was good. I, you know, it’s, it’s the, the economy is kind of tough. Uh, we, we have seen a slump the last two years.

Um, we’re holding strong. And, uh, we’ve actually expanded and we’ve opened, we’ve opened a different brand of, of, of restaurant just to kind of wet our feet and kind of still the same type of service, but it’s called, uh, the social on Cyprus and it’s, uh, social on Cyprus, right? And it’s a, uh, it, it does Mexican food because that’s what we want to pivot to.

Right. So it’s the Mexican food and it’s, uh, kind of sports bar, TVs all over the place. Nice American dishes, like really inexpensive, not, not that place we’re going to, you know, we’re like 15 bucks ahead, but the, but a, but food made fresh.

And that’s kind of what the market, uh, is, it’s kind of demanding right now. They want to go out to eat. They want to have a beer. They don’t want to pay $10 for it. They want to pay $4 for it.

Right. They, they don’t want to pay a $20 sandwich. They want to pay for like an eight, $9, $10 sandwich. That’s what we’re giving them.

Right. So all the beef at Ovation is, is, is really expensive to source. So we can’t, we can’t, you know, we have to charge what, you know, the appropriate percentage and, uh, and so it’s doing great. Uh, we’re opening our fifth restaurant right now. Currently we should be open and a matter of, uh, the goal is March one is being built now.

Anthony Codispoti: Uh, that’s one of 2025 or recording this at the end of January, 2025. What is the name of the restaurant and the location going to be?

Joel Rodriguez: It’s, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s in Davenport and it’s going to be, it’s going to, it’s going to be called Margaritas. Cocina Mexicana. So Margarita is my mom’s name. You know, I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ve mentioned her name.

She’s been, she’s been the reason that I get the drive and that’s nasty from, but so we’re, so it’s in her honor where we’re opening a Mexican restaurant and doing all her recipes that we grew up on as a kid and some, you know, and some obviously some, some other Mexican fanfare that, that, that’s really gonna go over. Well, it’s going to be polished. It’s going to be like Ovation did barbecue.

Right. They just polished it a little bit, shined it up. This is what Margaritas is going to do to Mexican food. It’s going to be shined. It’s not going to be, it’s not going to look like you’re, you’re at a Chichis in the 80s.

It’s going to be nice and polished, almost, you know, a little sophisticated. Nice food, nice tequilas and, and, and, and, and an awesome service. And that’s, that’s kind of our focus now. Everything we have, we have a great team on, on, on staff and they’re holding me down while I’m, while we’re building our hair and getting, you know, the eco lab installed and getting the coke in there to get their product in there, getting the construction guys to be on time. The bathrooms get redone. The bar is getting redone.

Anthony Codispoti: So, it’s going to be, we’ll have to have you back on after the restaurant’s been open for a while.

Joel Rodriguez: It’s going to be great. Yeah. We should be open soon. Let me be right at Davenport four, five, six, five, three US Highway 27 in Davenport.

Anthony Codispoti: We’ll make sure we include that in the show now. Thank you. Joel, we’ve, we’ve covered a lot of great ground here today. It shared a really amazing story from humble beginnings, learning really hard work, serving your country in the military, coming back and learning, getting promoted, showing yourself how smart you are, building up your confidence, starting your own restaurant, struggling those early months, but focusing on that time to really dial in and make sure that you got the recipes and the services. Exactly. Yes, sir.

All the, the, the accessories like really dialed in correctly. And, you know, I think the proof’s in the pudding. Now you’re opening up your fifth location. So I think that speaks volumes to what you’re doing. So Joel, thank you for sharing your story today. I want to be the first one to show my appreciation for you sharing your time and your energy today.

Joel Rodriguez: I appreciate that, Anthony. And thank you again for the invitation. It’s been my pleasure. And, and, and thanks for taking me down a trip down memory lane. I mean, she was really mad at me when they got me with that flask. I mean, she, I appreciate it, brother.

Anthony Codispoti: You have a great day. Joel Stur and the pot and, and getting in trouble, you know, great things came from it. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Well, folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the inspired stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.