Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
We're chatting about the people, places, events, and flavors that make Johnson City, Tennessee a lovely place to live. An interview show hosted by Colin Johnson.
Proud member of the Maypop Media family of podcasts.
0:00:00 - (Colin Johnson): It is a little bit chillier November day here in Johnson City, but the chill in the air is kind of welcomed. It's like we've missed fall a little bit. It's been a little hot. It was 65 degrees yesterday. I got to play golf. It was fantastic. But I'm excited about. I was excited about that. I'm excited about fall, but I'm really excited for you guys to meet my new friend, Brandon Bell, with Rising Vibes Kitchen. How's it going, Brandon?
0:00:24 - (Brandon Bell): Doing great. Thanks for having me on.
0:00:26 - (Colin Johnson): Welcome to the podcast. I think you said you hadn't done a podcast before.
0:00:29 - (Brandon Bell): I have not.
0:00:30 - (Colin Johnson): That's all right. This is our first go, too, so we'll. We'll figure it out together. You'll be fine. We'll be good.
0:00:35 - (Brandon Bell): We got Mitch.
0:00:36 - (Colin Johnson): We got Mitch. Mitch has done a thousand of them.
0:00:38 - (C): Yeah.
0:00:39 - (Colin Johnson): So, first question you've listened to the podcast. What do you love most about Johnson City?
0:00:47 - (Brandon Bell): I love this question, and I've thought about it and pondered it.
0:00:50 - (Colin Johnson): Good.
0:00:50 - (Brandon Bell): And there's so many things. I think first and foremost is the community here, y'all. Um, hands down. Uh, we were sort of shepherded in by a good friend, uh, from the area. And a funny story. When I pulled in with my moving truck, There was about 15 people in my driveway that I'd never met before. And I said, who are you people? They said, daniel sent us. We're here to move your stuff in. And literally, those people have become family to us.
0:01:18 - (Colin Johnson): Um, and back in California, those people would have been there to take all your stuff. Is that what.
0:01:22 - (Brandon Bell): Back in California, it probably would have taken about three months to organize something like that.
0:01:25 - (Colin Johnson): Really?
0:01:26 - (Brandon Bell): And half of them would have shown. No. We have a great community there as well. But sight unseen, this. This community has embraced us.
0:01:33 - (C): Yeah.
0:01:33 - (Brandon Bell): And. And welcomed our growth and our family in. In a beautiful way.
0:01:37 - (Colin Johnson): I love hearing that because I promote our areas. Just loving and, like, we just want to take care of each other and embrace each other and support and help each other. And I think we've really seen that happen a lot lately with all the flood response stuff. And it's good to hear. We're just moving. I mean, because you've been here how long now?
0:01:57 - (Brandon Bell): I've been in the Tri Cities area for almost three years.
0:02:01 - (Colin Johnson): Okay.
0:02:01 - (Brandon Bell): We've been in the region for almost four.
0:02:03 - (Colin Johnson): Okay. Awesome. Yeah. That's great. That's great. Where did you grow up?
0:02:08 - (Brandon Bell): Well, that's sort of a loaded question, but, you know, bullet points. I was born in Miami, childhood in Atlanta, a short set in Texas, and the majority of my upbringing in Northern California.
0:02:20 - (Colin Johnson): Okay, what took you all over the place?
0:02:22 - (Brandon Bell): I call it the paper chase. My mom was in computer programming early on, and that community, as it spread, they. They sort of would. Would get promoted and bring each other on.
0:02:35 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, that's cool.
0:02:35 - (Brandon Bell): And so my dad was sort of a jack of all trades and Marine veteran and could always kind of find work, but my mom sort of, you know, pressed the moves.
0:02:45 - (Colin Johnson): That's cool. Did you like moving all over the place when you're a kid or.
0:02:48 - (Brandon Bell): In hindsight? Yes.
0:02:49 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:02:50 - (Brandon Bell): During the time it was a little challenging.
0:02:52 - (C): Yeah.
0:02:53 - (Brandon Bell): Especially when I got into those double digits and I'm going, I'm never going to have a friend for more than five years, you know. Well, that. That's definitely proved myself wrong, you know, now it's friendships for 25, 30 years.
0:03:03 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. That cool. You can stay in touch with lots of people.
0:03:06 - (Brandon Bell): I do, yeah. And I. And I really was able to pick up a little bit from every place I went.
0:03:10 - (Colin Johnson): That's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. So let's talk about why you're here. You're promoting your food truck, right?
0:03:17 - (Brandon Bell): Yes.
0:03:18 - (Colin Johnson): So tell me all about this thing. I love the name. What's the name?
0:03:21 - (Brandon Bell): So we're called Rise and Vibes Kitchen.
0:03:22 - (Colin Johnson): Rise and Vibes.
0:03:23 - (Brandon Bell): Rise and Vibes. Yeah, that's right. And. And it's really, the name comes from. Our original business in California was called Rise Up Catering. We. We really believe in rising tides, raising all ships. And. And we are vibrational people, and we believe that we absolutely get back what we put out. And so, you know, not necessarily good vibes only. We all have our off days. But when vibes are good, they can be better. And when vibes are down, they can absolutely be lifted and we can lift each other up.
0:03:53 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Where did you, like, talk to me about kind of energy and the vibes part of it? Because a lot of people, like, that's just kind of hokey or whatever, but I feel like the Earth is full of good energy. Like the Lord made it right and it's coming and it comes into us and we give it back off. We can, I mean, you can meet somebody and feel their energy right away.
0:04:16 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah, and, yeah, absolutely. You can always shift. Right? You can always. We shift up and really from a vibrational scale, you know, like with love being at the top and, you know, anger and revenge being at the bottom. Right. There's a huge scale and it doesn't have to Go from anger to love.
0:04:33 - (C): Yeah.
0:04:33 - (Brandon Bell): It can go from anger to frustrated.
0:04:35 - (C): Yeah.
0:04:35 - (Brandon Bell): And then from frustrated to, you know, maybe he's a little sad or whatever.
0:04:39 - (C): Right.
0:04:40 - (Brandon Bell): And then eventually you can cross up and, you know, we pour that into our food. You know, from a, from a culinary perspective, I just believe that food is a conduit. It's an opportunity to connect. And so, you know, when we pass something either through our festival booth kitchen or through the truck to somebody we know, that's an opportunity to share love, to nourish someone, either, you know, internally with the food or externally with, you know, just a well wish or sometimes our festival booth kitchen turns into a therapy counter.
0:05:18 - (Brandon Bell): And that's why we always have multiple cashiers. So somebody needs to step aside and be with somebody for a minute. We can get the line rolling.
0:05:25 - (Colin Johnson): That's cool.
0:05:25 - (C): Yeah, yeah.
0:05:26 - (Colin Johnson): Sarah, did you all. Did you just graduate from high school and start a food truck or what was the story?
0:05:34 - (Brandon Bell): No, I've actually. In high school, I had my first job as a dishwasher and same and I worked my way up in the kitchen from there. And then eventually I went into the front of the house and then it got to be college time and didn't really know what I wanted to do a new restaurant. So I went to school for hospitality management at Florida International in Miami.
0:05:57 - (Colin Johnson): Nice.
0:05:58 - (Brandon Bell): And it was there I realized that at that point in time, I could make a lot more money as a bartender than I could as a cook. So I did that and that took me into management. Worked all the way from. To a general manager level. And which brand?
0:06:15 - (Colin Johnson): A hotel.
0:06:16 - (Brandon Bell): What's that?
0:06:16 - (Colin Johnson): Where were you for the.
0:06:17 - (Brandon Bell): I was at Hughes. Well, I went in front of Houston's steakhouses, which is a national. When I moved back to California after graduating from college, I became a manager at a. At a steakhouse in San Carlos, California. That's cool. Work my way up. And then at some point in my 80th hour of my nth week of this, I said, this is a lot. And a friend called me and I took a sales job as a, as a food. A specialty foods wholesaler.
0:06:49 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, wow.
0:06:49 - (Brandon Bell): So I did that and then. And then came to a crossroads after the natural disaster we went through in California with a wildfire. And that came to an end. And then I found a job as a dishwasher repairman. Realized I never really worked with my hands. I didn't know any trades or anything. So I took a job with a big company called Ecolab and got an amazing, really well rounded training in electrical, mechanical, plumbing, they did that. And I transferred here with them.
0:07:25 - (Brandon Bell): And then I was under somebody's dishwasher in Boone, North Carolina, and I said, you know, maybe somebody should be fixing my dishwasher. And I felt like I had gone the full circle and said, you know what? It's time. And I drove home that night, and I walked through the door, and my wife Lacey asked me, how long are you going to do this? I said, do what? She said, live a life out of your purpose. When are we going to go forward with our business?
0:07:55 - (Brandon Bell): I said, well, I was just coming home to tell you that I put in my notice.
0:07:58 - (Colin Johnson): There you go.
0:07:59 - (Brandon Bell): So alignment all the way through. And that's just a snapshot. But, yeah, I'd run the full gamut and said, it's time to become an owner. And so that's cool.
0:08:09 - (Colin Johnson): Now, where did the rising vibes, like, how did you decide? Like, okay, this is the cap of food we're going to put out. We're going to do it through a food check. We're not going to open a storefront. Tell me about the process of thinking through that. And Lacy a part of the business?
0:08:23 - (Brandon Bell): Oh, yeah. She's 50% owner. And the whole. We were. Well, rewind to 2016. We were just dating. We both love music festivals. I grew up going to reggae festivals and raves back in the 90s. And I've always just loved the music scene and how it just gets people to an uninhibited state and feeding people in that element. I love festival food. I love trying all the different foods. So we're sitting there at this festival, we're watching this dumpling truck.
0:08:59 - (Brandon Bell): It is three in the morning, and people are just coming out of the woodwork and buying three dumplings for 20 bucks.
0:09:06 - (Colin Johnson): Holy cow.
0:09:07 - (Brandon Bell): You know what I mean? And we're bumping house music. And Lacy goes, we could do this. And that's where the whole vision came from. And we. We decided to call it Rise Up Catering. And shortly after we put together our business plan, we lost our house in a wildfire. And. Which brought me to, you know, we just started the business and all this stuff. So anyways, Covid came right after that, and we said, okay, let's have a rewind on the business and let's get our foundation set again, and we'll know when it's time.
0:09:47 - (Brandon Bell): As far as the food goes, we want, you know, we don't do frozen food. We don't do. You know, everything we do is handmade, chef made. We figure out how to get it to the festival service level. And so we went with our front runner of kind of tropical inspired soul food is the vibe and. Which is kind of me in a nutshell between Miami and Atlanta and California and traveling to Costa Rica and all this stuff.
0:10:18 - (Brandon Bell): So he said, what's. What is. What's about as southern as it gets. And he said, well, chicken and waffles. And we said, okay, how can we play that? And it brought me back to going to concerts and stuff in Miami, where down the whole street is griddles full of arepas and those. Arepas. Arepas. And I said, what if we did, like a chicken and waffle spin with the arepas?
0:10:41 - (Colin Johnson): And tell me what an arepas.
0:10:42 - (Brandon Bell): It's a. It's a griddled corn cake, essentially.
0:10:46 - (Colin Johnson): Gotcha.
0:10:47 - (Brandon Bell): And there's a couple different styles. Mainly it's Venezuelan or Colombian. Venezuelan. It's a very simple presentation. And they stuff it with meats like pork or chicken or something like that. The Colombian version, which we decided to go to market with, is called the arepa de chocolo. And it's a sweet baby corn arepa, and it has condensed milk and cheese and butter. And I said, this is probably more suited for a southern palate.
0:11:17 - (Brandon Bell): It's a little more approachable.
0:11:18 - (C): Yeah.
0:11:18 - (Brandon Bell): Sometimes when people ask us what it is, we were like, well, it's kind of like cornbread and pancakes. Had a baby. Hey, there you go. And it's gluten free. And we make a vegan version.
0:11:26 - (Colin Johnson): Sounds delicious.
0:11:27 - (Brandon Bell): It's delicious. And we put some maple syrup on there. Makes it very approachable. And it also brings our concept together in one dish.
0:11:34 - (Colin Johnson): Nice. Yeah, that's cool.
0:11:36 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah.
0:11:36 - (Colin Johnson): Tell me about, like, where did you learn to cook? I mean, because you were. You said you were kind of in the back of the house with this. Did you get to cook in the. In the steakhouse or.
0:11:46 - (Brandon Bell): I did some cooking there. Mainly cut my teeth cooking with my mom in Georgia. Yeah. She was an entertainer. She wasn't really a knitting circle type of southern galaxy. And I wasn't necessarily a shirts and skins, football in the street kind of kid.
0:12:00 - (Colin Johnson): Right.
0:12:01 - (Brandon Bell): So I found a good home with my mother in the kitchen.
0:12:03 - (Colin Johnson): That's cool.
0:12:04 - (Brandon Bell): And so she taught me how to cook, and she taught me how to cook for many. And she taught me how to cook with love and without recipes.
0:12:11 - (Colin Johnson): There you go.
0:12:12 - (Brandon Bell): Just feel your.
0:12:13 - (Colin Johnson): Right there.
0:12:13 - (Brandon Bell): That's where it started. And then I think I picked up my first cookbook around maybe 12 years old. I've made some very Loosely packed shrimp burgers, which most of them fell through the grill. But, you know, from there, you know, we'd cook for my friends. A lot of my friends had broken homes and stuff growing up. And so my friend group, I was always kind of the cook as well. Quesadillas and burritos and things like that.
0:12:38 - (Colin Johnson): Kind of bringing people together at the start, right?
0:12:40 - (Brandon Bell): Always, man. Yeah.
0:12:41 - (Colin Johnson): Isn't that cool?
0:12:42 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah, Yeah.
0:12:43 - (Colin Johnson): I think we've talked about it a number of times at our church, about how the Lord was either leaving a meal, going to me, you know, a meal, or getting ready or sitting at one, you know, and it's just, you eye dog. Eyeball to eyeball like we are. You just get to know somebody. And there's a reason our bodies need to stop and eat every day, you know, two or three times or depends on your meal schedule. You might do the six small meal deal, but you got to stop and eat. Your body can't just run forever.
0:13:10 - (Brandon Bell): And that's also a big reason why we chose music festivals to launch our business. Because people make choices at music festivals that sometimes don't serve them internally and they really need to eat. They should, you know, like, hey, guys, you want to go for four days and, you know, see it all the way through. Eat something.
0:13:30 - (Colin Johnson): Something.
0:13:30 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah, something.
0:13:31 - (Colin Johnson): You're going to need some energy.
0:13:33 - (C): Yeah.
0:13:33 - (Brandon Bell): Some nourishment, you know.
0:13:35 - (C): Yeah.
0:13:36 - (Colin Johnson): Little base layer to start.
0:13:38 - (Brandon Bell): Exactly.
0:13:39 - (C): Yeah.
0:13:39 - (Colin Johnson): That's funny. Like, so which. Are you still hitting festivals? Like, where do we find your food truck?
0:13:44 - (Brandon Bell): Well, we are. Locally, we do meet the mountains. We do Blue Plum. We're hoping to get into rhythm and roots this year. We do some smaller things in Irwin and tap houses. Okay.
0:13:59 - (Colin Johnson): How often are you.
0:14:01 - (Brandon Bell): There's a food truck rolling as often as possible. We also do festivals abroad as well. We did Texas Eclipse this year, which was a huge festival, 60,000 people.
0:14:13 - (Colin Johnson): Whoa.
0:14:14 - (Brandon Bell): That was a big haul and a massive undertaking. We did a couple in Kansas and then we have a good pocket of festivals we do in Florida during the wintertime.
0:14:25 - (Colin Johnson): That's cool.
0:14:25 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah. And so, yeah, so we travel around locally. We prefer to do festivals, and we're actively looking for a kitchen space to call our own and have the truck in front of and.
0:14:40 - (C): Yeah.
0:14:40 - (Brandon Bell): So right now find us on social media and try to track us down, you know.
0:14:45 - (C): Yeah.
0:14:46 - (Colin Johnson): How many days? Is it weekly you're open. Or is it more like a monthly thing that we. Because now I'm kind of craving one of your.
0:14:53 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah.
0:14:54 - (Colin Johnson): Arapa pockets.
0:14:55 - (Brandon Bell): Well, right now. So, you know, this past season, since Halim is this region's very busy event season, you know, this is. This is go time for a lot of mobile operators and events. You know, we were in for Storyteller. We were in for probably four events that were rightfully canceled after Helene.
0:15:16 - (C): Yeah.
0:15:18 - (Brandon Bell): And quite a bit of food truck business as well that we passed on. We did, however, have a great opportunity with World Central Kitchen, which is a big international nonprofit. That's cool. That fed a lot of people, and they helped back us financially to feed thousands of people since Helene.
0:15:41 - (Colin Johnson): That's awesome.
0:15:42 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah. We actually tell our numbers, and we did somewhere just under 8,000 meals in six weeks.
0:15:48 - (Colin Johnson): Dude.
0:15:49 - (Brandon Bell): With a team of four.
0:15:50 - (Colin Johnson): How great is that?
0:15:50 - (Brandon Bell): A quick shout out, if I can.
0:15:52 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:15:53 - (Brandon Bell): To Mark Wallace, who's my ace in the kitchen. My wife Lacey. Chef Jesse Fields, who's an amazingly accomplished chef here in this area. Cool. And Chef Hannah Groves. I've surrounded myself with an amazing team, and the four or slash five of us, plus a handful of volunteers, we're able to.
0:16:11 - (Colin Johnson): Thousand meals.
0:16:12 - (Brandon Bell): Produce almost 8,000 meals. That's unbelievable.
0:16:14 - (Colin Johnson): That's awesome.
0:16:14 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah.
0:16:15 - (Colin Johnson): Again, I just. It's our community, man. We love each other, right?
0:16:18 - (Brandon Bell): We do. We do. And the love is magnetic. I mean, we met people coming in from as far as Missouri, Oregon. I met a guy from Oregon who just drove out here and was, you know, building a bridge, you know, West Virginia, Michigan, New York. I mean, it's incredible the people we met. We were stationed in Pablo, North Carolina, for four weeks.
0:16:43 - (Colin Johnson): No. Wow.
0:16:44 - (Brandon Bell): Incredible outpouring of love and connection.
0:16:48 - (C): Yeah.
0:16:49 - (Brandon Bell): Really powerful.
0:16:50 - (Colin Johnson): Now, does Lacy have a. Does she have a culinary background as well?
0:16:54 - (Brandon Bell): No, she does not. Lacy was raised on pasta and butter.
0:17:01 - (Colin Johnson): Nice.
0:17:01 - (Brandon Bell): And. And, you know, very down home, you know, kind of mom's cooking.
0:17:07 - (C): Yeah.
0:17:07 - (Brandon Bell): Right. You know, and I came in, like, our first date. I made her a cumin pork roast with cherries infidel sauce or something. She's like this.
0:17:20 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, yeah.
0:17:21 - (Brandon Bell): You know, I'm, like, putting it all out there. And she goes, I want you, pork. I said, let's just put the idols behind, you know, let's just give it a shot. And she was like. She looked at me after that first bite, and I was like, I think. I mean, yeah.
0:17:36 - (Colin Johnson): She's like, hey, now this guy's got skill.
0:17:39 - (Brandon Bell): So I've opened her up to culinary in a lot of ways, and she's definitely opened my heart into a lot of ways. She taught me about gratitude, you know, which very simply, as she put it to me is you don't have to do anything. You get to. And I said, no, I have to go to work and I have to do this thing. She goes, you don't have to. You can choose to. And if you choose to, you can be grateful. And I didn't understand it for months. We would argue back and forth because it was major, major programming shift, you know, from these things that we're told, you have to do this and you have to do that.
0:18:21 - (Brandon Bell): It's all a choice.
0:18:22 - (C): Yeah.
0:18:22 - (Brandon Bell): And you do. Yeah. There's going to be consequences or benefits to either choice you make. Right. So. So she opened my. My heart and I opened her palette.
0:18:34 - (Colin Johnson): I love it.
0:18:35 - (Brandon Bell): I love it.
0:18:35 - (Colin Johnson): Sounds like a great match. Made it.
0:18:36 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah.
0:18:37 - (Colin Johnson): Together. Yeah. I've studied gratitude a lot, and it's one of the highest forms of energy you can be in. I mean, when you're in gratitude, you can't. You can't be angry. You can't be mad at somebody if you're sitting there, just listen off all the wonderful things about them and what you're thankful for. And so it just. It changes you.
0:18:54 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah. And even when you. When you. When I've really hit that wall of frustration, I can be grateful for the learning experience.
0:19:01 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, 100%.
0:19:02 - (Brandon Bell): As Lacy says, I'm grateful for teaching me that I haven't reached my highest self.
0:19:09 - (Colin Johnson): That's a good one.
0:19:10 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah.
0:19:11 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:19:11 - (Brandon Bell): You know, when.
0:19:12 - (Colin Johnson): Because sometimes we'll go, too. Like, I'm grateful that I have a job, or I could be, you know, in a terrible situation, you know, and take yourself to that place. Which sort of grateful. But it kind of takes you down a little bit, and then. So, yeah. You're grateful that you can help people out of terrible situations, or it's just.
0:19:28 - (C): Yeah.
0:19:28 - (Colin Johnson): I think as long as we're giving our lives away, then we're doing what we're supposed to do.
0:19:32 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah. And at the very root of it, I'm grateful for this breath.
0:19:35 - (C): Oh, yeah.
0:19:36 - (Brandon Bell): You know, I mean, just in that. To take. To be grateful for every breath, every heartbeat and every heartbeat. Right.
0:19:42 - (Colin Johnson): And then what are you gonna do with it? You're gonna choose to keep it.
0:19:46 - (Brandon Bell): And then action.
0:19:47 - (Colin Johnson): There you go.
0:19:48 - (Brandon Bell): That's right. And then action.
0:19:50 - (C): Yeah.
0:19:50 - (Colin Johnson): I love it. I love it. What do you like to do for fun when you're not making food?
0:19:55 - (Brandon Bell): I love to play with my kids.
0:19:56 - (C): Yeah.
0:19:57 - (Colin Johnson): Tell me about the kiddos.
0:19:58 - (Brandon Bell): Gracelyn is almost four. She's just full of love and spunk and grit and curiosity, and she's very extroverted, like I am.
0:20:12 - (C): Yeah.
0:20:12 - (Brandon Bell): She's never met a stranger.
0:20:14 - (Colin Johnson): That's sweet.
0:20:14 - (Brandon Bell): You know, so really just working with her to harness that energy. And then Priceton, he's almost 2, 2 in May. And he is very much like his mama. He's an observer. He's going to smell it before he tastes it. Graceland. Like just throw it in there. Throw it in there. Right? And yeah, they're just a blast. They become more and more fun individually. I love to, I love to mountain bike.
0:20:46 - (C): Yeah.
0:20:46 - (Brandon Bell): I like to get into the gym when I can, you know, talk to old friends and paint. I like to paint as well. Some of my fun hobbies.
0:20:56 - (Colin Johnson): That's super cool.
0:20:56 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah.
0:20:57 - (Colin Johnson): What do you, what do you love most about like, what's your favorite thing to do in Johnson City? Fun wise?
0:21:03 - (Brandon Bell): Waterfalls. Oh, well, in the area. Waterfalls, we, we trace. We chase down a lot of waterfalls. We've been to over 50 waterfalls.
0:21:10 - (Colin Johnson): There's a song about don't be chasing waterfalls.
0:21:12 - (Brandon Bell): I know. You know what they also said no scrubs. We go up, we go all day.
0:21:20 - (Colin Johnson): Tlc. So.
0:21:23 - (Brandon Bell): But yeah, in, in Johnson City itself, I think the most fun things we would like to do is, you know, we walk around Johnson City a lot. We love the holiday time here. We do the Christmas trees.
0:21:33 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, yeah.
0:21:35 - (Brandon Bell): You know, we visit our friends over at Johnson City or photography in the studio whenever. They'll have us in there.
0:21:41 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:21:42 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah. Shout out. Mike and Victoria. Love you guys. And, and, yeah, and eat. You know, we eat. We like to go to.
0:21:51 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Talk about some of the other restaurants that you're thinking like are tip top from a culinary perspective.
0:21:57 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah. I would say WAN is probably my most attractive menu. Mexican. The Costa Chica. They got a new one up there where I think there's been Asian buffet or something.
0:22:13 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:22:13 - (Brandon Bell): I love walking in there because it's got the Asian art, but then it's like a full Mexican tienda. You know, Love those two places. We like Project Barbecue. I know they've been on the show.
0:22:25 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:22:26 - (Brandon Bell): Those guys, they crush it. The brisket just melts. That's meat butter is what I call it. Freaking meat butter.
0:22:34 - (Colin Johnson): I've heard that.
0:22:35 - (Brandon Bell): How did you get it to dissolve like that? It's. Yeah. You know, food truck wise, event wise. Groovy. Grovers, if you haven't had.
0:22:44 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, she was on here too.
0:22:46 - (Brandon Bell): She's rad.
0:22:47 - (Colin Johnson): We had some great food from her. Yeah.
0:22:48 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah.
0:22:50 - (Colin Johnson): Super healthy.
0:22:51 - (Brandon Bell): Super healthy. You know, and, and flavorful and a lot of fun.
0:22:54 - (Colin Johnson): When she meets you at the window. It's just like, what's up?
0:22:57 - (Brandon Bell): Totally. Yeah. Yeah.
0:22:58 - (Colin Johnson): High, high energy.
0:22:59 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah. And you know, another one that we really like is the Brunch Box, and that's one of our other favorite food trucks.
0:23:05 - (Colin Johnson): Okay, the Brunch box. Absolutely.
0:23:07 - (Brandon Bell): Steve. They're great people.
0:23:08 - (Colin Johnson): That's cool.
0:23:08 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah.
0:23:09 - (Colin Johnson): Is there like some kind of app or site or something like that where all the food trucks would like completely in their locations? So you like driving around, you could.
0:23:18 - (Brandon Bell): Be like, they, they have them, they have them. You know, I think that I don't know what they are, you know.
0:23:26 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:23:29 - (Brandon Bell): I have the food. I have a food trailer. I mainly got it for the health department.
0:23:33 - (Colin Johnson): Okay.
0:23:34 - (Brandon Bell): They really like to have a licensed entity. It makes things easier.
0:23:38 - (Colin Johnson): Sure.
0:23:38 - (Brandon Bell): It gives us great marketing. You know, there's, there's a lot of different variables to the mobile food vending business. You know, some guys like to, like to do the rallies, you know, and, and they like to get out there and they move as a unified unit and they do rallies in the parking lot. You know, for us, we love events. You know, it's, it's, it's more risky because you're putting, you know, vending fees and you're, you know, every time I go shopping before a festival, I'm like, it's kind of like playing blackjack.
0:24:13 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. It's like, hey, I'm buying $2,000 worth of food. Yeah.
0:24:18 - (Brandon Bell): Basically, now we're getting into where we're doing events for second, third time. We can go back and look at numbers. What worked, what didn't.
0:24:25 - (Colin Johnson): Right.
0:24:26 - (Brandon Bell): But those first time events, it's like, hey, you know, that's why we always try to build menus that things can be moved forward into in other dishes or, you know, can be, you know, we can carry it forward into a food truck or something like that.
0:24:41 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, that's cool.
0:24:42 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah.
0:24:43 - (Colin Johnson): Who are some of the people that have been influential in your life to help you besides mom, but to help you kind of get to where you are today, like in the food truck realm or wherever.
0:24:53 - (Brandon Bell): I mean, from like a, you know, bigger name, celebrity standpoint. You know, Anthony Bourdain was probably one of the first chefs that, that really showed me, like, you can be raw, you can be authentic. You don't have to be perfect, and you can still make a name for yourself. Guy Fieri, I love what he does for his kid, for the community of the culinary world, the mom and pop shops, and he's a Sonoma county native, so kind of our backyard, you know, hometown hero there.
0:25:29 - (Brandon Bell): You know, my, the Chefs in, in college were very inspiring. And, you know, I've worked with a lot of amazing people. You know, I would say that there was a chef by the name of Jeremy Chang that I worked with at a place called Town in San Carlos. And me and him butted head so big when I first started working there, we were just like this. And, you know, I find that some of the most influential people in my life are people I was like that with at first and was able to find a way to navigate and create success.
0:26:02 - (Brandon Bell): And so, you know, shout out to Town and Avenue restaurant group, they'll see this eventually.
0:26:06 - (Colin Johnson): That's cool.
0:26:07 - (Brandon Bell): I learned a lot working with that group.
0:26:08 - (Colin Johnson): That's super cool.
0:26:09 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah.
0:26:10 - (C): Yeah.
0:26:10 - (Colin Johnson): What would you. What sort of advice would you give somebody who's kind of like, oh, I'm. I kind of thinking maybe food is the way to go. Like, how would you, like, where would you counsel them to go to culinary school? Just get. Get the job in the back of the house, working, watching. What do you think?
0:26:26 - (Brandon Bell): The first question I would. I would definitely. It. You respond to that with a question, and that would be why, you know, what's. What's your passion? What's your purpose?
0:26:39 - (C): Yeah.
0:26:39 - (Brandon Bell): What do you want to. What do you want to do with it?
0:26:40 - (C): Yeah.
0:26:41 - (Brandon Bell): If you want to go Michelin, if you want to be like a Michelin rated chef and all that, culinary school is a great place to go.
0:26:46 - (Colin Johnson): Right.
0:26:48 - (Brandon Bell): You know, you got. First off, your heart has to be in it because it is nonstop.
0:26:55 - (Colin Johnson): Have you watched the Bear?
0:26:56 - (Brandon Bell): I admittedly, I have not. Oh, my God. But almost everybody asked me if I've watched so intense.
0:27:02 - (Colin Johnson): And I'm like, I don't know that.
0:27:04 - (Brandon Bell): And I don't know if I need to watch a show that mirrors my life.
0:27:07 - (Colin Johnson): Well, you know, they're not. Yeah, the vibes are not great on that one.
0:27:11 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah. So, you know, there's. There's a lot of that. You. Earlier, you asked me why I didn't go to a restaurant.
0:27:17 - (C): Yeah.
0:27:18 - (Brandon Bell): You know, I don't. I've seen a lot of debauchery happen in restaurants.
0:27:25 - (Colin Johnson): It does seem to have, like, a dark culture in the back.
0:27:28 - (Brandon Bell): There is. There's a lot of divorce. There's a lot of addiction.
0:27:30 - (C): Yeah.
0:27:30 - (Brandon Bell): There's a lot of sexual harassment and misconduct and things like that. And not to say all houses are like that, but just overall, it can get like that. You know, if you get, you know, 20 to 60 people working 70 hours a week together and you're taking on the brunt of Everybody's stuff that comes through the door in restaurant, people are often very, very fairly abused by the public. It can. You know, the first thing a lot of people want to do is get off work and go have a beer and.
0:28:04 - (Brandon Bell): Plus. Plus, plus. Right, right. And I was no stranger to that. I'm now almost two years without, you know, clean of alcohol and.
0:28:13 - (Colin Johnson): Good for you.
0:28:14 - (Brandon Bell): The thing. So, you know, it's my. My commitment to when we do have a kitchen and we do start serving the public from a kitchen is that we probably won't have waiters or waitresses. I'll have really good bus boys. But taking out the middle, pick it up at the counter and just try to keep it really, really family and at the counter and keep it about the food. So anyhow, I would say, what do you want to do with it?
0:28:43 - (Brandon Bell): What's your purpose? What's your passion? And then I could probably give a better guidance.
0:28:48 - (Colin Johnson): I still think that was great.
0:28:49 - (C): Yeah.
0:28:50 - (Colin Johnson): I think if somebody can. If you can figure out your purpose early, I think that's huge. What do you feel like you were made to do? And I think a lot of people just go, I need to get a job and make money. And then they find themselves stuck in this, like, well, I'm making money now, and I'm kind of in the wheel. I've got a mortgage and a car payment and kids and, you know, and I'm not living out my best life. Right.
0:29:16 - (Colin Johnson): I'm under a dishwasher going, what am I doing when I really want to be making food and rising vibes.
0:29:22 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah. You know, and I totally agree with that, Colin. Like, it's just, you know, what I've come to with money is that money is a byproduct of passion and purpose. And there's lots of byproducts. Right. It's just one of them. There's also connection and validation and family and community. I mean, when I walk in my path and purpose and passion, then I'm open to all the abundance.
0:29:57 - (C): Yeah.
0:29:58 - (Brandon Bell): Right. And money is one form of that. Right. And it's, you know, it's a really good form. You know, it really helps with a lot of things. But if that's the. If that's the sole focus, then what else is falling by the wayside?
0:30:12 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:30:13 - (Brandon Bell): If you're focused on a byproduct versus the mission.
0:30:16 - (C): Yeah.
0:30:16 - (Colin Johnson): Get lost.
0:30:17 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah.
0:30:18 - (C): Yeah.
0:30:19 - (Colin Johnson): I think. Yeah. And it's, I'm sure, jumping out of California and trying something new, you know, totally off the, you know. Well, you were. You came with Ecolab. But, yeah, I think having that bravery to come and go across the country, you know, that's pretty cool, too. So talk about, like. And then stepping into the fear of, like, you. And it sounded like Ash or Lacy is like, hey, we're going to do this thing. So you've got a good back or you've got a good friend cheering you on a little bit. And so you're like, all right, we're going to do this food truck deal.
0:30:53 - (Colin Johnson): But talk about that, like, for that person who's fixing the dishwasher today. And, like, I really want to get out of here, you know, and do something different. How did you fight the fear or break the mold or whatever you want to call it, to get going?
0:31:12 - (Brandon Bell): By investing in myself and in a lot of personal development work.
0:31:16 - (C): Yeah.
0:31:17 - (Brandon Bell): Honestly, like, I wasn't no good, bad, right or wrong. I just wasn't raised with the tools. Sure that, you know, when Lacy and I lost her home in the wildfire, I was coping in all the negative ways. And a. A gentleman by the name of Rafiq that my wife had done some personal development work with, invited us to a workshop called Personal Mastery and with a group called Kimber and Associates. And she was like, if you're doing it, I want in.
0:31:50 - (Brandon Bell): And I was like, you know, you're taking me to a cult, whatever. You know what? They're going to try to change me, whatever. Like, yeah, that's the point. You know, something gets to change because what we're doing right now downhill, and.
0:32:03 - (Colin Johnson): Like, we need to change course. Yeah, right.
0:32:05 - (Brandon Bell): So we started doing these workshops, and at this point now, six years later, we've been through their entire platform multiple times, so learning tools around self, honor, contribution, respect, integrity, commitment, you know, and what it really means to dive deep, take a good hard look in the mirror, and being real and saying, we got some work to do. So with that, to somebody who's wanting to take a leap, I would say believe in the unknown.
0:32:49 - (Brandon Bell): Believe that if you keep going, the universe will respond. Because I can tell you, the last several years, I've made moves and thrown hail Marys that I never thought would produce. And I just started by asking, by asking God, by asking my community, by taking risks and facing fear.
0:33:11 - (C): Yeah.
0:33:12 - (Brandon Bell): You know, and taking a leap. You know, you read any book about any great leader of industry, the, like, think and grow rich. That book changed my life. And the common thread is they all took a leap.
0:33:29 - (C): Yeah.
0:33:31 - (Brandon Bell): They all took a leap into the unknown.
0:33:33 - (Colin Johnson): I like it.
0:33:34 - (Brandon Bell): So, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:33:36 - (Colin Johnson): I think You've got to fight the fear at some point and do it smartly. Right. Don't just, oh, I'm just going to become a Michelin chef and quit your job as a whatever. You know, you got to plan ahead a little bit, Source up some resources a little bit. Plan a little bit.
0:33:51 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah. Yep. You know, we, we actually, we had a little, we had a little nut. We did well on the house purchase. And that was actually what kind of sparked. It was. You know, several years before we went, my lovely partner said, what's it going to take, babe? Is it money? If it's money, what's the number? Like, how are you going to know when it's time?
0:34:16 - (Colin Johnson): Right.
0:34:17 - (Brandon Bell): Because we can keep saying, I'll know what is how, how are we going to quantify it? So I gave her a number and that was actually the next thing she said when I came through the door that day. She goes, okay, so it's been six weeks, the number's there. So what's your excuse now?
0:34:34 - (Colin Johnson): Boom.
0:34:35 - (Brandon Bell): You know, and that number was way less than what I actually needed, but it was enough to say, okay, we can get by for eight months without bringing another dollar in.
0:34:53 - (Colin Johnson): Right.
0:34:54 - (Brandon Bell): Week. And that's with, you know, and we didn't start with a food truck. I mean, we started with a 10 foot tent and a griddle.
0:35:02 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, wow.
0:35:03 - (Brandon Bell): You know, and then we bought a little countertop fryer.
0:35:05 - (C): Yeah.
0:35:06 - (Brandon Bell): Which I mean, we did $4,000 in fried chicken on that little countertop fryer. At our first blue pump. We had to stop service and clean it every 30 minutes.
0:35:15 - (C): Yeah.
0:35:15 - (Brandon Bell): But I mean, you know, something that I picked up, we did co starters with the chamber of commerce.
0:35:20 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:35:21 - (Brandon Bell): And something I picked up from a speaker there was. What's your, what's your, what they call the mvp, like your most viable product or something along those lines. Like, what's your bare minimum? Right. That you need to get started? You know, and we started focused on that. Okay, I need a tent that's fireproof. I need a fire extinguisher, I need a griddle, you know, and I need some product. And they just go with the fried chicken. That's what people love that we do. Let's just do that.
0:35:53 - (Brandon Bell): And slowly you build and build.
0:35:57 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:35:57 - (Brandon Bell): And then we said, okay, we need to get an entity. And then we started making. We did the big push where I was calling every Tom, Dick and Harry that I'd ever cooked a single meal for. Like, what can you spare to get us started? We bootstrapped.
0:36:10 - (C): Yeah.
0:36:10 - (Brandon Bell): You know, And I think that energy brought in some bigger family investment that really helped us get a down payment on the trailer. That's cool, you know, but. But people are watching. You know, I think overall, I believe people want to see their community win, oh, 100%, and they're not going to support somebody who's sitting on their hands.
0:36:31 - (C): Oh, yeah.
0:36:32 - (Brandon Bell): So I think, you know, we took action and that be God action. Right, right.
0:36:36 - (Colin Johnson): So, yeah, I think a lot of people just sit around the seat. I'll just manifest it while just sitting here in my chair, and millions of dollars are going to come in my lap, and it just doesn't work like that.
0:36:44 - (Brandon Bell): No.
0:36:45 - (Colin Johnson): You got to get out and make friends, and you do. And work your tail off.
0:36:48 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah. And, you know, but you might come.
0:36:50 - (Colin Johnson): Up with a great idea sitting there that you can follow through on. The Lord will provide that. Or, you know, you may meet somebody that has another idea that you kind of riff off of, and you're like, oh, this is going to work. This is where I want to go.
0:37:01 - (Brandon Bell): And then it constantly changes, but you.
0:37:03 - (Colin Johnson): Got to get after it. You got to get after it. You got to flex that hustle. Muscle, as I said.
0:37:08 - (Brandon Bell): That's right. Like Lacey says, body, emotion stays. Emotion.
0:37:11 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:37:11 - (Brandon Bell): Body rest stays at rest.
0:37:12 - (Colin Johnson): And it changes your energy big time.
0:37:14 - (Brandon Bell): It does.
0:37:15 - (Colin Johnson): Like just being in motion.
0:37:17 - (C): Yeah.
0:37:18 - (Colin Johnson): So what. What's something that I didn't ask that you wish I would have? As we're kind of starting to wrap it up. Did we forget anything?
0:37:33 - (Brandon Bell): Something I wish you would ask.
0:37:34 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Do you like. I want to talk about this, but we haven't hit it yet. Anything. We've kind of covered a lot of good stuff. You've had a lot of great answers. I love. This is what I love about it. Like, we get a lot of. We get a lot of. Just a lot of neat stories and information.
0:37:49 - (Brandon Bell): I would say, you know, I walked a lot of dark paths. You know, it's taken a long time to get here, but I've. I've faced, you know, I face addiction and never hit the rock bottom, but have definitely made some. Some. Some choices that. That I wouldn't support me doing in hindsight.
0:38:18 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that. Yeah.
0:38:21 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah. You know, and how did you break.
0:38:23 - (Colin Johnson): Free from a lot of that stuff?
0:38:24 - (Brandon Bell): There's icky stuff.
0:38:25 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, sure.
0:38:25 - (Brandon Bell): You know, we all make bad choices, and I want to address it because, you know, you talk about fighting the fear, you know, and I think a lot of time I was fighting. Fighting the reality, the realities of what I was. And at some point, I just got to embrace it and say, I'm not perfect, you know, and.
0:38:47 - (Colin Johnson): And that is. That's your past self, not your current. Not my current or your future self.
0:38:51 - (Brandon Bell): Exactly.
0:38:52 - (Colin Johnson): So you can learn.
0:38:53 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah.
0:38:53 - (Colin Johnson): And move forward, or you can sit in it like you're saying, like your wife. If you're sitting in it, you're staying in it, you know.
0:38:59 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah.
0:38:59 - (Colin Johnson): Or you get action and you get out of it.
0:39:01 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah. And the breaking point. The breaking point was. Was, you know, being. Being really hungover and sick through my daughter's second birthday, to be honest with you. And I said, you know, I looked at my wife's eyes and said, the party's over. I really. What I think it boils down to is when the consequences become. Become dire enough, you'll know.
0:39:37 - (C): Yeah.
0:39:38 - (Brandon Bell): And for me, that was it. And haven't really looked back. You know, alcohol took cigarettes with it. You know, that was the root for me, was alcohol and the choices I would make after drinking and realizing that I was drinking too. Big choices. And I say, well, you can just take all your friends with you. And it's been amazing. That's cool.
0:40:05 - (Colin Johnson): That's super cool. How can our listeners connect with you?
0:40:10 - (Brandon Bell): You can connect with me personally through Facebook. Brandon Bell. I'm public. You can connect with the business at Rise and Vibes Kitchen. Facebook's a great medium. We're the only Rise and Vibes Kitchen out there.
0:40:24 - (Colin Johnson): Nice.
0:40:25 - (Brandon Bell): And it's R I S I n apostrophe Vibes Kitchen. Those probably the best two ways. And, you know, I'm always open.
0:40:36 - (Colin Johnson): I love it.
0:40:37 - (Brandon Bell): Yeah, I love it.
0:40:38 - (Colin Johnson): Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really enjoyed getting to know you. It's just been a blessing. So thank you for that.
0:40:46 - (Brandon Bell): Thank you.
0:40:46 - (Colin Johnson): And last question. What gets you just fired up? You're like, let's go.
0:40:52 - (Brandon Bell): Um, what gets me fired up?
0:40:57 - (Colin Johnson): Is it like, that night before the festival and, you know, thousands are lining up chicken.
0:41:02 - (Brandon Bell): And it's watching. It's watching. Especially when we get to be at a festival. From a business standpoint, when we get to be at a festival a couple days ahead and we get to prep everything in kitchen, we build a restaurant everywhere we go.
0:41:16 - (Colin Johnson): How cool is that?
0:41:17 - (Brandon Bell): And to see it come to life, and then to hear the first bass drop and get the first customer, and then that celebration, it's just so exciting.
0:41:26 - (C): Yeah.
0:41:26 - (Brandon Bell): You know, and. And I don't. I don't even look at my numbers until we get home from festivals.
0:41:31 - (Colin Johnson): Sure.
0:41:31 - (Brandon Bell): I just want to be in it. They're going to be what they're going to be.
0:41:34 - (Colin Johnson): Right. There's no going back at that point.
0:41:36 - (Brandon Bell): And so from a business standpoint, I love the festivals.
0:41:39 - (Colin Johnson): That's awesome.
0:41:39 - (Brandon Bell): You know, from a home standpoint, just that rush of. Of children and mama loving on me.
0:41:50 - (C): Yeah.
0:41:50 - (Brandon Bell): Just fires me up to keep going.
0:41:53 - (Colin Johnson): Cool. Well, thank you so much.
0:41:55 - (Brandon Bell): Thank you, Colin.
0:41:56 - (Colin Johnson): It's been. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. I've enjoyed our conversation a lot, and I know the listeners have, too, and hopefully you guys can connect with Brandon, or if you want to move here and hang out with Brandon, just call me. We'd love to help you move to Johnson City or help you invest in real estate. So if you have any real estate plans, we'd love to help with that. Till next time, I'm Colin Johnson with the Colin and Carly Group and Keller Williams Realty.
0:42:17 - (Colin Johnson): I hope you have a great Thanksgiving if you listen to this around Thanksgiving. And, yeah, just thank you for being a great listener and just a great supporter of our podcast. We love you guys.
0:42:27 - (Brandon Bell): Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Colin.