Mar 29, 2020
- Matt Mills
You care about their family; you care about each other's success and what you're doing. And you never want to. You never want to see anyone suffer, especially from things out of their control. As far as our, personally, with my business, I was telling them the first person and not get paid, it's gonna be me or will be me or is me. So as far as the restaurants go, it's just such a tenuous thing.
- Liesel Mertes
Hi, this is Liesel with the Handle with Care podcast. Perhaps you are sitting at home listening…because so many of us are sitting at home in this time of COVID-19. Or maybe you are an essential worker, going out into a world of exposure because you still have a job to do.
Coronavirus is top of mind for everyone, so we are doing a special miniseries here on Handle with Care. Workplace empathy, truly seeing the whole person and not just the job, has never been more important to as many people as it is now. We are going to be talking to all kinds of people affected by the shutdown, giving you valuable insights and guidance within their stories so you can help those around you.
Today, we are talking with Matt Mills of Mills Catering, headquartered in Indianapolis. Matt is a hard worker, a straight shooter, and, as someone who has been fortunate enough to sample his cooking, he is a bang-up chef. And COVID-19 has hit his business, hard.
Before we begin, I’d like to thank our sponsors, FullStack PEO, providing benefits and HR support to small businesses and entrepreneurs, and Motivosity, a software solution to brings fun and engagement to your employees.
Now, back to Matt and his story…
- Liesel Mertes
Would you tell me just a little bit about Mills catering? How long you been around? Why you started doing this catering thing?
- Matt Mills
Sure. While I was an English major. That's why I became a caterer. Absolutely. As what? The creative writing major. So, my father is in the food business, the wholesale Sysco for all my life. I worked at Cisco for a while. I started working there when I was 13 in the maintenance department. When I went to college, dabbled with restaurant stuff a little bit after that, but my first real job cooking, I ran the cafeteria, Sysco in Indianapolis Fed three shifts, didn't go my head from my butt and I loved it, loved the oh, let's see what we can do with this.
- Matt Mills
It actually prepared me quite well for what I do now because they are basically, they'd give me things. I'd plan a menu on the fly. We'd figured out and realize I know what I was doing, went to culinary school in Rhode Island, came back, worked in some restaurants, was working for a local restaurant in town and did a catering job for them and spent about 20 hours on it and used some of my own stuff and realized that I didn't need a middleman for this.
- Matt Mills
And it picked up one or two people that were interested in events. And I was like, you know what? Let's give this a shot. Quit my job, started buying equipment and slowly started a business and went from a couple different locations and worked out to cast the old cast across from.
- Matt Mills
I guess it was we're be-bop pizza was a forty fifty fourth and college worked out of there for a while. Shepherd community who will give a kidney to at any time if they need one has very good to me. And Jay Height is probably one of the best people I know. He. They've been in there instrumental in me staying in business for a while. Had a baby about 15 years ago, so I ran a business 18 years. He's paying taxes legally.
- Matt Mills
And when Silas was born, I remember having a conversation with my father. Lon is like, we going to get serious about this or what? So, I bought a building right after that. And then. Just started quietly building business in spite of myself. I'm not very good at. social-networking I don't really. We finally got our Facebook page up and running after 10 years. But Zo, in spite of myself, we've just been quietly under under promising and overdelivering and trying to do our best.
- Matt Mills
And if we don't do our best, we fix it. So. That's good.
- Liesel Mertes
And just for the human dynamic. Will you tell me a little bit about your wife and son?
- Matt Mills
My wife is my better three quarters Anastasia. Catherine Anastasia Mills. She is much smarter than I am. She is very talented in law, gardening, music. Just about everything she does, my son is 15 sales smells. He goes to cathedral. He is such a good friend and a good teammate and a great kid.
And I couldn't be more blessed like that. And yes, a rousing endorsement on my part about your wife, especially.
- Liesel Mertes
Yeah. I had, um. I had a friend who well, Sam, we had dinner. He dropped our food for our family. And as I looked at it, they said, oh, that's actually from Matt Mills catering until my dad's. I mean, I know I've been the beneficiary of some of your cooking
effect of some of the food that you gave him. So, thank you from my family to yours. That's funny.
- Matt Mills
Well, as far as my business goes, we. It pretty much has wiped me out for about the next two months. And once we get into wedding season, that's definitely going to get a lot more interesting as people try to life events tend to take a lot of time to plan and tend to be expensive for some of them. So, we got some figuring to do on that. As far as restaurants go in food service in general, pretty much if you got any place right now you you have the owner, all salaried people doing what they can to keep the doors open.
- Matt Mills
And then I know many places like this where they'll pull temps and try to help offset expenses and help pay any staff, because pretty much servers went away about, what, a week ago. Yeah. And that's a that's a real thing. I don't know why I don't know the end plan on this, but if we can't if we can't adapt, I don't I don't know. I think that's what everyone is doing right now.
- Matt Mills
Everyone's just kind of seeing what they can do. Changing what they do. Compromising any way they can. We were all families, basically, when you when you look at a restaurant or any kind of business and you want to make sure you take care of your family and it puts an especially owner is in a tough situation and there's really not right answers. But I don't know. Do what you can, I guess.
- Liesel Mertes
Tell me a little bit more about that. When in the midst of normal times, what is that kind of family or collegial interaction like?
- Matt Mills
Well, for us, it's kind of like a crew on a pirate ship. We're all there. We're all there because we want to be there. And I would love to say it was a military example, but it's not. We just, you know, we we kind of you work with someone, you form a relationship, you start, you care about them as a person.
- Matt Mills
You care about their family; you care about each other's success and what you're doing. And you never want to. You never want to see anyone suffer, especially from things out of their control. As far as our, personally, with my business, I was telling them the first person and not get paid, it's gonna be me or will be me or is me. So as far as the restaurants go, it's just such a tenuous thing.
- Matt Mills
And now I'm losing in the middle May. I've had June stuff either move in some of these things or reschedule and we'll figure that out. But its kind of is what it is. I like I said, I'm trying to figure out the best way to be a steward of the funds we have. Make sure everyone can get paid. Make sure we can kind of be in control of the situation as long as we can. We've even switched what we're doing now, we're doing catering.
- Matt Mills
So, we run deliveries. We have free delivery. That's what a lot of restaurants have done. They've gone to to carry out pickup or they've changed what they've done all together. They've become commissaries.
- Matt Mills
I've taken steps to help fortify things. But it's I'm not really concerned about the business. It's not going anywhere. I'll need to die, or the building needs to burn down for me to quit. But I keep my guys and I want to keep their I want to help them help feed their family. So, we're trying to stay busy. That's kind of where we are.
- Liesel Mertes
Yeah. Tell me about that. Because as I have been talking with and doing communication coaching for executive teams, you know, I realize there's a particular burden of someone at the top who realizes that the decisions that they make have trickle down to all the peoples families who are present in there.
- Liesel Mertes
How has that felt to you as you're facing the realities of the market and the people who make up your pirate crew?
- Matt Mills
Pirate crew? Thank you very much. Well. I like the fact that we're still working. It's kind of in our bones and it's what we do. So, it gives us normalcy in that. And if we can feed some people and help some people and feel like we're actually doing something towards it, I think that's a win. So that's kind of. We always run by the. The theory, it's not the philosophy, it's not what happens, it's what happens next.
- Matt Mills
Like things happen. Now what? So, this was a now what moment where. Now what are we gonna do? Well, we're gonna do this meal kid thing if that doesn't work. I've talked to the guys. I'm like, if they shut it down, maybe we can be at someone's hungry somewhere. I'd rather be cooking even if I don't make a damn dime on it. Cause that's what we do and kind of go crazy if I don't do it for a while.
- Liesel Mertes
Yeah. You mentioned is keeping you up at night. Tell me a little bit more about the stuff that's keeping you up at night.
- Matt Mills
I've had a lot of peace about it. My my fears are the unknown. I think that pretty much sits with everyone because there's so many things we don't know right now. I think that. Needs are gonna go. The needs that everyone has now will change as this progresses and as things get more and more restrained. I mean, I'm I'm fortunate or we're fortunate in that as being part of food service. I don't think that we are going to physically close down, but I don't know what happens with grocery stores.
- Matt Mills
People go into the store. There's just a lot of unknown as far as. It's just interesting because like food banks, I think food banks are struggling to find product right now, even if they have funds because everyone's in the same boat. Everyone wants the shelf stable. They want the the past policies and they want the something you can pull out and feed your kids. So that that keeps me up the business stuff. It's all things. It doesn't matter just the personal cost on this for us as a as a city and everything else.
- Matt Mills
That's what that's what worries me. It's all right.
- Liesel Mertes
I mean, I've I've had a growing sense of just the long tail on this. And they're the relational cost then as people are just dealing with all of that, the stress of work, insecurity or people being laid off, you know, how that how that comes out and different behaviors and. Yeah. Like, you know, our alcohol sales are through the roof right now and not that that's inherently bad thing. But, you know, I'm going to be having an interview later this week with a guy who, you know, is fighting for his sobriety.
- Liesel Mertes
And what does it mean to have all the AA meetings closed down? Right. Have everybody drinking. And, you know, it's just all these human dramas that are compounding as time goes on.
- Matt Mills
Sure. But it's not. I will say this. I really value the time we've been able to spend at home because we were always in orbit of each other and we're always at the same place, you know. So, it's it's been very nice just to be. The circumstances are shit. And I would love the circumstances, but it's just kind of nice to. Be together. And this also brings out the resilience and people, because you see people that like, oh, now we're gonna do this and we're gonna look out for each other this way or we're gonna.
- Matt Mills
I'm sure that you can find countless stories of people helping people and where we live. We have a bunch of bikes we're going to put on the porch because there's a swap. So now you don't have to go the storm by stuff. We all have stuff we can kind of trade. And we hopefully this will bring us a little closer as people that we're not supposed to talk to one another face to face.
- Liesel Mertes
You know what? Then I like the turn of phrase is not what happens. It's what happens next. And tell me a little bit about some of your most fun at home times as you've been enjoying being with stations. I was.
- Matt Mills
Well, we've we've been watching movies, which we don't usually do, but it's just fun to sit together and be together. We play anagrams or we try to pick out a board game and make it work. Dinner is more of a source of entertainment.
- Matt Mills
I love trying to figure out what we're gonna eat and station would always I drive her nuts in that I would try to run out of food before I'd get more. I'm really good at survival cooking. I guess that can of beans last for me. But I like the challenge of that. Our drawers have never been more organized. Hopefully the sun will come out eventually and we have this side. But I don't know. It's just going to be stuck with people.
I'd rather be stuck with them.
- Liesel Mertes
Yeah, you wouldn't want people to know about it. I don't know. People who are in the restaurant business or catering. You would want them to have an awareness of or do you have any word like that?
- Matt Mills
In what way? I don't know. Like, I actually write things like, hey, still, you know, be buying gifts, certificates or.
- Liesel Mertes
Absolutely. Is there a call to action like that?
- Matt Mills
I do. I'm not as connected as I should be. I mean, be aware that it's not for people in the industry, but for people out of the industry. There's a lot of people off work and suddenly off work because of this. And yeah. Gift cards, I think are a great idea. If you're I mean, these people are still good at doing carry out and stuff as long as we can do that. Any tips you usually do, they'll pull and give the servers.
- Matt Mills
I mean it's it's not critical yet, but it's gonna get interesting I think for sure. I don't I don't think this is going to end us. I think we're gonna be OK. Just going to suck for a while.
- Matt Mills
Yeah. Yeah, I hear that. Well, thank you, Matt. I hope that the rest of your day, whether it's movies or Bananagrams, goes, well, I am surprised. I'm sitting in my closet with the door locked and I told my husband before I went and I was like, Luke, can you please keep the children from screaming at each other just as long as I'm in there? And it's been remarkable because this is the longest stretch to day that we haven't had either war cries or loud games of tag.
- Matt Mills
So, I've got some fun, actually. And they they are kind of fun.
- Liesel Mertes
There's there's an element there, all kinds of things that are chaotic about having four children. There's also things that like they still have like a kind of cohort like to play with and fight with. And so, everybody's at a pretty high emotional pitch, which can be glorious or devastating. But they do have other options all the time.
- Matt Mills
So, there you go.
- Liesel Mertes
Thank you for making the time. I appreciate it. If you need smarter answers, I could probably think on things until you give them all. Those are good answers. And yeah, I think more than anything, you know, talking about owning your words in your heart. Your your heart for your people, but also the power of, you know, ducking your head and doing the work and being willing to pivot. Is is a good word. I especially liked. Yes. It's not what happened, but it's what happens next. So, I think it's a good word for people. And thank you. All right. Have a good afternoon, Matt. All righty. See you. I like.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
As always, here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Matt Mills
- I hope this conversation opened you up to one of the stories behind the numbers.The men and women being affected are not just data points, they are people with families and passion, scrappy entrepreneurs and workers that are feeling this deeply
- Buy gift cards or order carry-out.People in the restaurant and food service are doing everything they can to keep their pirate ships afloat…I have linked the Mills Catering Facebook page to the show notes. This is the best place to keep up with daily menu items and delivery options. Try the coleslaw
- I loved Matt’s turn of phrase: it’s not about what happened, it’s about what happens next. This is, in a time of great uncertainty, perhaps a good word for everyone. What happens NEXT for you?
OUTRO
Mills Catering: https://www.facebook.com/Mills-Catering-122716954412270/?eid=ARAsePo1FH2OYPk9_Q_UhyxBJAYJQ8cgc1xiN3nH-Y7UWGKaTFmwWAPxQm4dLo5y6xAnUXokFIzXjIvS