What does it take to build a neighborhood shopping center around local businesses instead of chains? On this episode of The Localist, host Carrie Rollwagen talks with Payne Baker and Sam Hickmott of Bruto and Mom’s Basement in Avondale.

Payne owns the Avondale Mills shopping center. He is also a co-owner of Mom’s Basement, the bar downstairs, and Bruto, the bakery and cafe upstairs. He got into real estate almost by accident. He cooked, worked in TV and film, and went to law school before he and a friend bought their first neighborhood shopping center in Crestwood. Mom’s started when a tenant pulled out at the last minute. Payne and a few friends decided to just open a bar.

Sam came to Birmingham from New Zealand as a barista. He worked at Urban Standard, Paramount, El Barrio, Carrigan’s, and Hero Doughnuts before he landed at Bruto. He and Carrie talk about loyalty to good owners and healthy debate. They also talk about why a team wants managers who move in the same direction as the owner.

Payne explains why he did not want Family Dollar in a neighborhood shopping center. He also shares how Bruto grew out of a CBD drink business and an empty kombucha brewery. Sam explains how baking bread and slicing meat in house keep prices low, down to a $4 egg and cheese biscuit. They also preview the old Ghost Train container bar. It will become Bruto’s back bar near the Rotary Trail.

If you love Mom’s or Bruto, or you have ever wondered what goes on inside a small business you drive past every day, this episode is a fun and honest look behind the counter.

Neighborhood Shopping Center Topics Covered in This Episode

What Bruto and Mom’s Basement are, and how they share ownership
How Mom’s Basement started as a parking lot conversation among friends
Where the ’70s wood paneling at Mom’s came from
Sam’s path from New Zealand barista to Birmingham baker and chef
Learning from Wil Drake and Roscoe Hall at Urban Standard pop-ups
How Payne went from cooking and law school to buying shopping centers
Why a neighborhood shopping center needs local tenants, not chains
Saying no to Family Dollar
How a CBD drink business and an empty kombucha brewery led to Bruto
Why owners and managers need to move in the same direction
Building a menu around a kitchen with no hood
The real cost of espresso equipment
How from-scratch baking and shared ingredients keep Bruto’s prices low
The Ghost Train container bar and plans to bring the Rotary Trail to the shops

Mentioned in This Episode

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Connect with Bruto and Mom’s Basement

Bruto is a from-scratch bakery and cafe in Avondale with bread, pastries, pizza, sandwiches, breakfast, and coffee. Mom’s Basement is the bar downstairs in the same shopping center.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Below is the full transcript of this episode of The Localist with Sam Hickmott and Payne Baker of Bruto and Mom’s Basement. This transcript is provided for accessibility and SEO.

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Carrie (00:12): Welcome to The Localist, a podcast for small business owners where we talk about the highs and lows of building community through entrepreneurship. I’m your host, author of “The Localist” book and small business consultant Carrie Rollwagen. The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. Infomedia is a website and digital strategy company based right here in Birmingham, where I work as senior vice president. At Infomedia, we help small businesses get big results online.

Carrie: Today on the podcast, we’re talking about Bruto, which is a cafe in Avondale, and Mom’s Basement, which is a bar in the same shopping area as Bruto. That’s not a coincidence, because they share ownership. Payne Baker is one of our guests today. He owns the shopping center, and he’s also a part owner in Mom’s and an owner in Bruto. We’re also talking with Sam Hickmott. Sam is a baker and a chef at Bruto.

Carrie: It was really fun to have them on together, because they have a dynamic that we don’t talk about a lot, but that exists so often. Payne is the owner, and he’s thinking about big-picture stuff and what the P&L looks like. Sam is boots on the ground, talking to the staff every day and talking to customers, and bringing that information to Payne. Then they work through decisions together and move forward.

Carrie: I also really love that they talk about these businesses as reflections of what the community wanted, and also of what Payne and some of his friends just wanted to see, which is how a lot of small businesses are started. It’s not necessarily a really defined five-year plan. It’s more responding to what the community actually wants, and that’s what he’s trying to do with these businesses. I think you’re going to love this episode if you’ve ever been to Mom’s, which a lot of our listeners have, or been to Bruto, or if you’ve just been curious when you’ve been driving by about what is going on at these businesses.

Carrie: All right, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Sam, I’m used to seeing you behind a counter, so we do kind of have a fake counter here.

Sam (02:20): Yeah, this feels very natural. There’s some nice distance between us. It keeps me comfortable.

Carrie (02:26): Exactly. So we’re going to talk a lot today about Bruto and Mom’s. If you’re in Birmingham, you’re probably pretty familiar with both places. But could one of you take Bruto and one take Mom’s and just do a quick explanation for somebody who hasn’t been there? What is the deal?

Payne (02:48): Sure. I’ll let Sam start with Bruto.

Sam (02:53): Sounds good. So Bruto is primarily a bakery and coffee shop. We obviously do sandwiches. We have a breakfast menu that’s been going for about four months now, and we’re trying to do everything from scratch where possible. We have a small kitchen, so there are some things we have to make sacrifices on. But for the most part, all of our bread, all of our baking, all of our pizzas are from the ground up, from scratch. I felt like there was a real lack of good breakfast places in Birmingham, especially in that neck of the woods. So we started doing breakfast, and that’s really taken off.

Carrie (03:38): Okay. I definitely have more questions about that, but give us a summary of Mom’s.

Payne (03:46): Oh, the summary of Mom’s. Well, Mom’s will be nine years in May, I’m pretty sure. We had bought the shopping center, and I was in the process of redeveloping it. We had this weird basement space that used to be a laundromat, and at one point it was a police precinct. It had been all these different things, but by the time we got it, it was essentially a storage container. So we were trying to figure out what to do there. I had a tenant who was going to open one of those little hippie kind of stores. She had a store in Montgomery, but she pulled out at the last minute, and I really needed to fill the space.

Payne: So I was talking with Patrick Nelson, who’s one of the partners at Mom’s, in the parking lot, and I’m like, “What are we going to do here? I need to get the space filled.” We were just kind of shooting the shit, and we’re like, “Well, let’s just start a bar.” We walk into what was Sheppard’s Pet Supply at the time, and Wes Frazer was there. Wes and I went to Birmingham-Southern, R.I.P., together. We’re like, “Wes, what do you think if we opened a bar?” And he’s like, “Can I be involved?” And we’re like, “Sure, why not?” Then Daniel Drinkard, who we knew from the old shopping center, was like, “I’d love to be in a bar.” So the four of us got together, and that’s kind of how it started.

Payne: And then I wrote my wife into it, because I was looking at doing another project that would have conflicted me on the ABC license. So I just signed her up, and she’s like, “You did what now?” And I’m like, “Ah, don’t worry about it.” But now she pretty much does all the work.

Carrie (05:45): When you go to Mom’s, it doesn’t feel contrived. It feels like it grew out of a story like that, like it really is your mom’s basement. “Organic” is a cheesy word for it, but it’s interesting to hear that it really was. I think it’s easier to have that feeling when it’s real. A lot of people try to replicate that, and it just feels kind of off.

Payne (06:16): Oh, I totally agree with that. It really feels like it’s been there since the wood paneling of the ’70s. Patrick and Wes and I hung all that ourselves, with the help of a couple of other people.

Carrie (06:34): How did you source the wood paneling? Was it salvage, or were you like, “No, we have to have this”?

Payne (06:42): That’s a good question, because I can tell you exactly where it came from: the Lowe’s in Forestdale. They kept it on hand because it was used in mobile home repair.

Carrie (06:55): Oh, interesting.

Payne (07:00): It is interesting.

Carrie (07:00): So Mom’s is basically a Birmingham institution now. It’s coming up on a decade, so that’s institution level, right? It’s one of those places that everybody knows about. You guys know this, but for listeners, my husband owns a business in the shopping center. So when I’m describing where it is, I say, “Oh, it’s where Mom’s is,” and everybody knows where that is right away. That’s handy for your other businesses too.

Payne (07:33): “Located in the shopping center above Mom’s Basement.”

Sam (07:37): And it’s weird. I probably wouldn’t be working at Bruto if it wasn’t for Mom’s. I worked at Mom’s. I started going there regularly, probably the first year it was open, and I started meeting the owners and loved them all. So eventually, when the opportunity came up, I was like, “Yeah, I’d love to help out with Bruto.”

Payne (07:56): You’re still “Sam, Mom’s door guy” in my phone.

Sam: I didn’t know that.

Carrie (08:04): Sam, you’ve been in a lot of those critical, I don’t want to use the word institutions again, but you were with Carrigan’s and Hero back in the day. I feel like you’ve been all over the restaurant scene.

Sam (08:21): Yeah. I started at Urban Standard, which is where we probably first met.

Carrie (08:27): Definitely.

Sam (08:27): And then from there I went to Paramount and El Barrio, Carrigan’s, Hero Doughnuts.

Carrie (08:36): I think you might have even had a stint at Church Street. Am I making that up?

Sam: Yes, after you sold it. Briefly. I was still trying to get into cooking at that stage, and I thought baking would be a nice, easy step in. I did not love baking. That was not the same.

Carrie (08:59): The hours are quite different than bartending hours. Well, there’s a little overlap, actually. With bartending, you’re going to bed at 4 o’clock in the morning. With baking, you’re waking up. How did that interest in food grow? Am I correct that when you first started, you had just moved to town and were picking up bartending shifts and things like that?

Sam (09:29): Well, barista stuff. Ever since I was about 15 or 16 in New Zealand, I was doing coffee shop stuff and cafes. When I was traveling around the States, I needed a place to work in Birmingham for a while, so I started working at Urban Standard because that was my skill set.

Carrie (09:47): There are people who don’t know this, but at that time, Urban Standard was the place to run into people. People would ask me about networking, and I’m like, “Networking in Birmingham is just going to Urban Standard.”

Sam (10:00): There was a lot going on.

Carrie (10:05): It was a very popular, big coffee shop. It’s Frothy Monkey now, correct?

Sam (10:12): Yeah.

Carrie (10:13): So you probably met a ton of people and got connected with more of those downtown places.

Sam (10:19): Well, Wil Drake and Roscoe Hall used to do pop-up kitchens out of there, and I’d watch them work, and I was like, “Oh, I want to be a chef now.”

Carrie (10:30): Roscoe is a super popular chef now, and Wil is from Hero Doughnuts and all of that. So for people listening, you’re like, “I know those names.” So that’s how you got interested, just hanging out with them and seeing what they were doing?

Sam (10:49): Both of them were really, really talented, and the food they were putting out was just so cool. The culture in the kitchen seemed so fun. Often the baristas would serve for them on those nights to get a little bit of extra hours. I started talking to them, and I was like, “What do I need to do to become a chef?” And they sort of coached me in the right direction.

Carrie (11:11): So what did you need to do?

Sam (11:14): I think it might have been Wil who got me to go to Church Street. Then from Church Street, someone introduced me to one of the chefs at Paramount. I was trying to use that as a kickoff zone, so I could meet more people and try to get into a proper kitchen.

Carrie (11:38): I don’t know if this is your experience, but my husband, Russell, used to work at Paramount too. I feel like the guys at Paramount and El Barrio at the time, and I don’t know if they had Zaza then or not, are very much restaurant people and seem to treat their people well, with health insurance opportunities, that kind of thing.

Sam (11:58): Yeah.

Carrie (11:59): So I would guess that’s a good launch pad.

Sam (12:02): Oh, totally. They seemed like one of the very few at the time who were even doing that. And I did not take advantage of that. At 23, 24, I didn’t care about that.

Carrie (12:14): I was always trying to get Russell to meet people and say hi to people, and now he’s like, “Okay, now I see why you were doing that.” For a long time, El Barrio, Paramount, and Zaza were not the only places, but kind of the only places downtown. Avondale was obviously a very different thing. Payne, you were a little bit involved in developing Crestwood too, right? Did you have a shopping center there? Am I making that up?

Payne (12:51): No, we redeveloped the Crestwood shopping center where the Tavern was. Blake Millican and I and a gentleman by the name of Joe Clegg. We bought that from Ralph Jolly. That was my first big project.

Carrie (13:10): How did that happen? I’m not exactly sure what your background is, but I don’t think it was buying shopping centers and turning them into go-to urban destinations.

Payne (13:27): It’s been about 20 years. I graduated college from Birmingham-Southern, and my wife and I moved to Crestwood in August 2005. Then in October 2005, the Crestwood Tavern opened, with Blake Millican running it, and I became a staple there.

Payne (14:04): For the first three or four years after college, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was doing a lot of TV and film stuff, and that was before TV and film even thought about coming to Birmingham. So if I was working, I was not home, and if I was home, I wasn’t working, and Rae got tired of that. Then I had a buddy from college who was a chef at Silvertron, and he’s like, “Come to Silvertron. I need a sous chef.” I used to cook at PT’s, so I had sports bar food experience, and he’s like, “I’ll train you up on this. We’ll be fine.”

Carrie (14:44): And Silvertron was in Forest Park.

Payne (14:49): I was doing that for a while, and then Rae was like, “Our house smells like fryer, and your schedule’s stupid, so you’ve got to go get a job.” So I ended up at a commercial real estate firm, and then the ’08 crash happened. So that was kind of cool. My brother decided he was going to go to law school, and I was like, “Oh, I’ll go to law school.” So I went to the Birmingham School of Law, and I did real estate during the day. Meanwhile, I was sitting on my bar stool at Crestwood Tavern every day. Well, not every day.

Sam (15:33): Who said that?

Payne (15:35): Blake had developed a nice relationship with the guy who owned the center and kept telling him, “You’ve got to sell me this one day.” Then Ralph finally decided, “I’ll sell the shopping center.” And Blake’s like, “He said he’d sell the shopping center. Let’s buy it.” So I called up my old baseball coach and said, “I’ve got this opportunity to buy a shopping center. I don’t have any money.” He thought it seemed like a good idea, and that’s how we bought it. That’s how I got into retail shopping centers. I kind of learned on the fly.

Carrie (16:11): I think it’s a good story, because so many people, before they get into small business, think there’s some plan and some trajectory you have to go through, and I find that’s often not true. A lot of times it’s that kind of story. With Church Street, we were like, “Oh, the Starbucks is closing.” Cal and I were friends and had worked together before, and we called up basically everybody we knew and said, “Do you have money? Because we don’t.” I just had Jimmy from June Coffee on, and he said when they opened June, he had $4 in his bank account.

Carrie: What I was talking about with him is that eventually you can’t keep opening businesses that just dig the hole deeper. But a lot of times the first business is kind of, “We’ll see.” You don’t really know what you’re getting into, and you don’t know the proper ways to do it. You knew some of the proper ways, since you had some background in law and real estate development. But a lot of times you just have to call people up who might have money and say, “Here’s my plan.” Really, it’s more of a dream and a little bit of a plan.

Carrie: It did seem like around that time is when more people started going to those two shopping centers, the Crestwood one and the Avondale one. People were moving to Crestwood and Avondale before that, but it seemed like it shifted from people stopping by from the neighborhood to more of a destination. People come to Bruto and Mom’s and, of course, the jiu-jitsu gym, or in the other shopping center, Thank You Books and everything over there. They come to those as destinations. It’s not just people who live in Crestwood and Avondale.

Payne (18:16): Yeah, definitely. Even more so with the Avondale shopping center, I think.

Carrie (18:21): Was that on purpose? When you were looking for tenants, were you taking whoever came to you, and it ended up being a cool collection of people? Or was it on purpose? How does that happen?

Payne (18:38): It’s pretty intentional. You’ve got to have a good tenant mix. Being from the community, I like having the local. That’s what I want in those centers: local businesses, not the corporate stuff you find in your traditional strip centers.

Carrie (19:01): That’s good, but it also gives you some tenants who are on shaky ground. I also think local businesses are better, by the way. But sometimes it’s got to be tempting to say, “Here’s a huge corporation that I know is going to be fine in a 10-year lease and pay on time all the time.” Are you just like, “I don’t care. That’s not why I’m doing this”?

Payne (19:32): Well, of course I want people to pay on time. But these are neighborhood centers, and that’s not the tenant that needs to be there. It needs to be something that’s for the neighborhood. A giant corporate spot is not really what we were looking for. When we got the Avondale one, it had Family Dollar in there. Family Dollar never misses a beat, and they had a five-year option. And I was like, “I don’t want Family Dollar.” Family Dollar is not going to help the center get to what I think that part of Avondale needed. So I was kind of not a really great landlord to Family Dollar. I was like, “Just please, whatever you do, don’t exercise your option.”

Carrie (20:30): Giving Family Dollar a taste of their own medicine. It seems like you extend that even to things like Bruto and Mom’s. Not only do you know what you want in the shopping center, but how did starting Bruto come about? I could be wrong, but it seemed like you saw a hole in the market, at least over there, for what Bruto has become. How did it work? Was it accidental? Were you just like, “I want Sam to do something”?

Sam (21:07): I came in a little later, but I was there for the [inaudible]. I’d get off work and come over and cook pizzas in this terrible oven.

Payne (21:22): It was more that I had started a drink company, and we were in the basement. Harvest Roots was upstairs, and they had this really nice kombucha brewery. Then Pete and Lindsay closed, and I had this giant space. It was really sudden. I just got a text one night: “Hey, by the way.”

Carrie (21:53): I don’t know a ton about that, but I think there were lots of factors where the dominoes started falling for them. That’s business.

Payne (21:59): It’s hard. And the drink business is really hard. If I could go back in time, I would do things a little differently. So when they went out, I was like, “Well, their space is nicer than what I’m currently operating in, so I could move my stuff upstairs.” And then I’d have this retail thing, and I had a concept of how I could make that work.

Carrie (22:31): Because a build-out is very difficult, like a kitchen build-out or a beverage build-out. So they’ve already built out the space, and you’re thinking, how can we use it?

Payne (22:41): So I moved everything up, and I was going to do kind of an Amsterdam-style coffee shop, if you get my drift. During that, there were some issues down the road with Edgy Puff and some of those other stores, and I was like, “This is not what I want to do.” But I had already moved all my stuff upstairs. So that’s when Sam and I started talking about how we could turn this into something else. Bruto came out of that. I had my little business in the back of Bruto, and Bruto was in the front. Everything was great until we got a liquor license, and the state of Alabama was like, “You can’t do this.” So I had to pack up all my stuff and go back to my basement.

Carrie (23:34): Because it’s CBD beverages, right? The laws on that are very wonky.

Payne (23:44): And it’s all about to get wonkier. Unless Congress does something, that whole industry is going to go away. December 12, I think, is when the new federal law is going to take effect.

Carrie (23:57): It’s pretty wild. You’re diversified, at least.

Payne (24:07): The train’s coming back into the station, and I’m not buying a new ticket.

Carrie (24:13): That makes sense. Logistically, you want the kitchen and don’t necessarily need the front. But it sounds like you were always doing a full kitchen, even at the beginning when you had the beverage stuff up there. By the time Bruto opened, was it always, “We’re baking everything we can”?

Payne (24:44): Yeah. That was really important to us.

Carrie (24:47): Sam, did you do the menu? Did you guys work together on the menu? Did you have a concept you were rolling with?

Sam (24:56): I’m trying to think what job I was doing. I think it was Carrigan’s, probably. I started taking on the general manager role there, so I had to pull out. At that stage, we were just trying to get bread and pizzas going, and there were plans for me to help with operations and things like that. But then I got a promotion, so I left them in the lurch. And I came crawling back.

Payne (25:27): Sam has a nice, unique history with David and me. We like to trade him back and forth.

Carrie (25:35): Oddly true. You’re not always going back and forth between the same people, but in a restaurant scene in a market like ours, you get a lot of people hopping around, which can be a really good thing. You see how people are interacting at other places. Carrigan’s is a very different scene than a business in Avondale like Mom’s.

Payne (26:07): Mom’s was always quite different than Carrigan’s. We can’t make drinks. People come in and say, “Make me this,” and we’re like, “Yeah, no.” It’s supposed to be different.

Carrie (26:20): I even said that about Church Street when I was still an owner. Our point was, “We will connect with you, and your drink will be pretty good.” That wasn’t the tagline, but our core purpose was the connection, not the best third-wave coffee you’ll ever have. There were other places where the cappuccino was going to be perfect every single time. At Church Street, you knew you were going to like your drink, but it was more that your baristas would connect with you. Both are good. It’s just what you’re looking for at the time. But the vibes are very different at Carrigan’s and Mom’s.

Sam (27:03): For me, and I realized this more in hindsight a few years ago, I feel very loyal to the owners. It’s not necessarily a style or type of place I want to go to. If I think someone’s a good person and we gel, I want to keep working for those people.

Carrie (27:24): I think that’s great, and it can also be an awkward position. Sometimes it’s easier to get along with the staff when you just bad-mouth the owners. I’ll say this as somebody whose current job is like that. I have a boss, but a lot of the team reports to me in some way, and that’s always a hard thing. Sometimes you’re defending somebody, and you’re taking on so much of what the owner takes on in that middle ground. I think it’s a great position to be in, and it’s also great for the team, because the team doesn’t actually want a general manager or a chef who’s saying bad things about the owner. You think you do, but you really don’t. Does that make sense?

Sam (28:17): You really start to lose traction with your staff if there’s not a cohesive direction that the owners and the managers are trying to go. That’s probably part of why I floated around to a few other places and didn’t fit. It’s like, I want this to go one direction, or you want it to go a direction I’m not comfortable with.

Carrie (28:36): I love that description. I heard a definition of unity on a podcast the other day that said unity isn’t agreeing on everything, unity is going in the same direction. I thought that was really interesting, because a good owner and general manager relationship is kind of like that. It’s not that one of you is right every single time. It’s that when you leave the room, you’re moving in the same direction. Do you guys find that to be true?

Sam (29:08): I think so. We have plenty of debates, but they’re always healthy and respectful.

Carrie (29:17): You’re probably bringing very different perspectives too. There’s the perspective of, “This place has to stay open,” and there’s also the perspective of, “Here’s what our staff is struggling with. Here’s what customers are telling me on a day-to-day basis.” The best businesses work together on that instead of fighting each other.

Carrie: What has developed with Bruto? What has changed since the beginning, especially since Sam came back? Has anything developed that you’re excited about, or anything you thought would work that kind of didn’t, which is pretty typical? I had Jimmy on, and I was asking about the boba tea. He’s like, “I never want to do that again. That was terrible.”

Payne (30:12): They harvest guinea pig eyes. You know, that’s the rumor.

Carrie (30:15): Is that what those noises are? I was wondering.

Sam (30:25): And the smell at the back.

Carrie (30:27): We’re starting a new feud. Oh, dear. Sorry, Jimmy.

Payne (30:36): Your [inaudible] is still the best in town. Tim doesn’t have anything on it. Sorry, Tim.

Carrie (30:44): We’ll link to that episode. I don’t think Tim’s a big business podcast listener, in a good way. He would say that. I asked him at one point, “Do you want to come on?” He was like, “I’m good.” So has anything changed, even in response to what customers wanted? Or have you had the right vision and stayed with it?

Payne (31:14): I don’t think we’ve made any real major changes. We’ve done an hours change, and we were discussing changing up the hours again. I think we’re limited with what we can do there, because one of the things we don’t have in our kitchen is a hood.

Carrie (31:36): Oh, that changes everything.

Payne (31:41): It does. So when we set the menu in the beginning, all of that was done with the limitations in mind, so it’s stayed pretty consistent. We change up our scones and muffins all the time.

Carrie (32:00): Just to respond to different ingredients in different seasons and stuff like that.

Payne (32:06): But the overall delivery, I think, has pretty much stayed the same. We’ve been messing around with the dining room layout. When we first opened, it was kind of weird. I had a vision. No one else liked it.

Carrie (32:22): It’s a really big, open space, which can be really great, but it’s also hard to carve up and figure out how people are going to use it.

Payne (32:32): Right now, we have a little seating area up front by the roll-up door, and it’s a really popular part of the restaurant. So now we’re looking at where we can put another one of those, because we have all this space. It’s pushing and pulling it in the right direction and then getting everybody on board. That’s challenging.

Carrie (32:55): It was funny for me going from owning a coffee shop to helping with the gym. I’m not an owner in the gym, but it’s the opposite. With the coffee shop, it’s, “How can we use all this space?” With the gym, it’s, “We want the most mat space possible.” So responding to how people use the space is different. How’s the coffee program going? You have a barista background, so what did you know you wanted to include?

Sam (33:32): There was actually some conversation early on about that. I was like, “You’re not going to love how much it’s going to cost to get some of this equipment.”

Carrie (33:40): It’s really hard. People talk to me a lot about, “Oh, I’ll just throw an espresso machine in there.” It’s so expensive.

Payne (33:48): That’s kind of what I did. $15,000. We still have the original espresso machine. I’m going to shamelessly plug the liquidators down in West End. Of course, now I’m blanking on his name.

Carrie (34:12): You can send it to me, and we’ll put it in the show notes.

Payne (34:16): Over in West End, there’s a store that has all the used restaurant equipment you could imagine. We would always have random stuff, and he liked to horse trade, so I would trade stuff. We started trading equipment, and I ended up with this tiny little espresso machine. I’m like, “Sam, this is what we’re starting with.”

Carrie (34:43): That’s when he’s like, “I’m going back to David.”

Payne (34:52): So we get this thing set up, and it doesn’t really work. Then Amavida comes in, and they’re like, “We can fix your machine.” So they fix our machine, and Cheyenne at Amavida was like, “Machine’s ready. This isn’t going to work.” I’m like, “Just bring it back, guys. I’ll show you.” So we set it up, and we’re making coffee out of this machine. It’s a really nice espresso machine for your house. Not a great espresso machine for a cafe. And he’s like, “How’s that working?” And I’m like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “What you want to do is buy this $1,000 machine from me.” And I was like, “Okay.”

Carrie (35:45): Espresso machines are so finicky. They don’t like the weather to change. Getting somebody to service them, responding to the weather, it’s so hard. You guys know this, but for people listening, you think, “Oh, I’ll just add coffee, and that’ll be cool.”

Sam (36:08): You have a group head that stops working because you used it too much, and one that stops working because you didn’t use it enough.

Payne (36:17): You expect it to do the same thing every time, and it doesn’t. And I still don’t understand.

Carrie (36:22): So is the plan, “We have what you’re coming for”? Or do you do specialty drinks all the time? I think either is good.

Sam (36:36): I think we’re trying to just keep very good, consistent, delicious drinks, with a handful of seasonal things like cold foams and a seasonal syrup. And then the baking also. Right now we’re going more pumpkin spice muffin, apple cinnamon, that type of thing.

Carrie (36:56): How do you guys keep prices down? That’s one of the most common things I’ve heard people say about Bruto. When I asked around about what I should ask, it was, “Their prices are really great for what it is.” You’re baking everything fresh, but you’re priced like you’re bringing in Sysco or something, and you’re not. This is a compliment. Is that just really knowing what you want and dialing it in?

Sam (37:30): That’s what really surprised me. I think the baking and the bread take a huge chunk off your menu pricing.

Payne (37:41): And slicing your own meat.

Sam (37:42): Slicing our own meat. And the breakfast was actually something customers were asking for. When we put that on, I was really nervous about it. Then I got done pricing it, and I was like, “Why is everyone charging so much for breakfast?” We’re still doing pretty well with our margins, and we’ve got a $4 egg and cheese biscuit. I think that’s the cheapest item on there.

Carrie (38:08): Does that relate at all to not having the hood? I don’t know if this is true, but sometimes you’re working with a chef and they’re dreaming about all this stuff, and you end up with one weird thing that doesn’t work with the other things, and then the pricing gets off. Does that make sense?

Payne (38:34): We are very big on having ingredients that go across the whole menu. That was really important during our menu creation, and that helps keep costs down.

Sam (38:50): We can buy in bulk and spread it across the board a little bit.

Carrie (38:53): I like that, because I don’t know anybody else who’s as inexpensive as you guys and is still saying, “We make everything in house.” That’s really cool.

Payne (39:06): So we should raise our prices.

Carrie (39:08): Now the Birmingham subreddit is going to be like, “The Localist is raising prices.”

Payne (39:15): They’re lighting their torches right now.

Sam (39:19): Something I’ve always loved about Bruto is that it’s really, really good food that’s not going to break the bank. I’m sure there are sandwiches at other places that are more interesting, but I don’t want to spend $22 on a sandwich anymore.

Carrie (39:36): In some ways, and I don’t know if this parallel is fair, it’s a little bit what you’re doing at Mom’s. You can come and hang out, and you can come a lot, because it’s not going to cost a ton of money. Part of that is because when you have a fancy cocktail program, it costs money, and that money gets rolled into everything. I’m putting words in your mouth, but it seems like with both Bruto and Mom’s, you want neighbors. You want people to be part of the community, to come and feel welcome, come a lot, and feel connected. People can still Instagram your stuff, but you’re not performing for TikTok or Instagram. It seems like you want to be the go-to if you’re in the neighborhood.

Payne (40:23): Yeah, absolutely.

Carrie (40:25): Which is refreshing.

Sam (40:28): And it’s cool. We’ve got some really interesting, fun, caring customers who come in, and people who have connections with the strip mall and Mom’s Basement, who are just coming because we all know each other and we all get along. It’s really nice. I was very surprised by how many people I recognize coming in all the time.

Carrie (40:54): I was wondering about that. Is it mostly people from Crestwood or Avondale? Or are you finding people coming from elsewhere? I come over there, but I don’t live over there. Obviously, Russell owns a business there. I don’t do jiu-jitsu.

Payne (41:12): We have people who come from other places. Mom’s is definitely a destination. But Bruto, I think, is more local neighbors for the most part. On the weekends, you’ll have people come from over the mountain.

Carrie (41:28): That makes sense. That’s typical of a lot of coffee shops. The coffee shop community here is more like, “We want you to go to an independent coffee shop, and go to the one in the neighborhood you’re in,” not, “Go across town and always come to me.” When I owned Church Street, it was, “I want you to come to Church Street when you’re here. I want you to go to Urban Standard when you’re downtown.” It wasn’t, “Drive all the way back to Mountain Brook every single time you want coffee.” That’s kind of silly. Tell people what’s next. I think you mentioned containers or something like that.

Sam (42:07): He’s the expert.

Carrie (42:10): Give us a scoop.

Payne (42:15): We’re finally getting around to it. We have the old Ghost Train shipping container bar that’s been in the back of the shopping center for going on three years now.

Carrie (42:30): It’s like Ghost Train sent their ghosts out to good people. Good People has their recipes, and you guys have the bar.

Payne (42:43): Taylor is one of my dear friends. He’s now a Florida man and has moved to Tampa.

Carrie (42:50): Oh, wow. That’s different than Birmingham.

Payne (42:58): But anyway, we’re finally putting the containers back together. I’ve been working on them for the past week, and we’re hoping that this Saturday will be the first day it’s open for business.

Carrie (43:19): So by the time people hear this, it’ll either be open or about to be open. Perfect.

Payne (43:27): And then there’s Continental Gin. You know that weird little strip in front of the shopping center that Reddit really cared about?

Carrie (43:35): The parking situation. They were like, “What is this?” For people listening, there are some planters that slightly divide up the parking lot, and it makes kind of a little trail right in front of the shops.

Payne (43:53): That was the idea, to put the trail right there. The Rotary Trail runs behind the shopping center, and the idea was that we were going to catch the Rotary Trail and bring it in front of the shopping center where all the businesses are, and in front of the Continental Gin. We had a long conversation about this, and we’re like, “This is what we need to do. We’ll drag the trail in front, and then we’ll have this big pedestrian promenade at the trailhead between the two properties, and it’s going to be great.” And I was like, “Cool. I’m going to do my part.” And then we did it.

Carrie (44:40): And then people freaked out.

Payne (44:44): People freaked out. It didn’t make sense, and all that stuff. But now all of that is finally coming together, and it will make sense. The containers are going to be very much a part of it. That’s going to be Bruto’s back bar. We’ll have a little stage and TVs and stuff, and this nice outdoor spot. The trail comes through, and there’ll be this nice pedestrian landscape between the two properties. And then hopefully the internet will be nicer about it.

Carrie (45:16): Well, we can never depend on that. But whether or not customers come is what matters, right? I don’t think a lot of people, even if you’ve been down to Mom’s, have gone around the back. It’s two levels in the back. Is that where the Ghost Train bar is going to be?

Payne (45:40): No, it’s up top.

Carrie (45:43): Okay, so you’ll see it if you just come into the parking lot normally?

Payne (45:46): Well, you have to get to the side and then look all the way down in the back.

Carrie (45:51): So it’s on the side between you guys and Cahaba?

Payne (45:57): Yeah. It kind of makes almost a natural amphitheater area.

Carrie (46:01): I think that’ll be cool. That’s usually my shortcut if I’m going to Cahaba. I’m stopping at both places, I’m not just parking. And then people can have coffee out there, have food out there, all that kind of stuff.

Payne (46:24): I think we’re going to lean into pitchers of beer. I don’t know where the beer pitchers went. Back in the early 2000s, that was a thing, and then it just went away. So we’re bringing it back.

Carrie (46:37): Awesome. That’ll be exciting, and it sounds like there will probably be more developments. It does seem like you guys are responding to your customers and the neighborhood. It’s not so much, “I have a five-year plan, and this is exactly what we’re doing,” but more, “Let’s see what happens and respond to it.” Is the best way for people to interact just to come to Bruto and come to Mom’s?

Sam: Oh, yeah. Come hang out. Come say hi.

Carrie (46:58): We’ll put links to everything you guys do in the show notes. Well, thank you so much.

Sam (47:16): All right, thank you.

Carrie (47:17): The Localist is written and produced by me, Carrie Rollwagen. Our showrunner is Taylor Davis, our outreach engineer is B.J. Eadie, and our sound engineer in the studio with us today is Emery Lambert. Thanks again to Infomedia for sponsoring The Localist and making everything we do here possible. And until next time, whether you’re running a small business or buying from one, thanks for all you do to make our community stronger every day.