Tips, Taxes & the Fine Print: Breaking Down the OBBBA

Bryan Gorman: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Shift Change podcast. I'm your host, Brian Gorman, excited to bring to you this episode today on a very important topic, the OB-BBA, and to welcome my guest today, Kurt Grogan from TipHouse. He's the chief operating officer there and co-founder.

I've gotten to know ⁓ Kurt the last several months, doing some webinars together some podcasts. interviews as well. welcome to the program Kirk. Kirk: Hey, thank you very much for having me, Brian.

I'm looking forward to it today. Bryan Gorman: Absolutely. for those that don't know you kind share your story first and talk a little bit about tip house, and then we'll get into our topic. Kirk: Sure thing.

I'll start, know, Kurt Grogan, I'm based out of Dallas and been in hospitality for almost my whole life. Started at Chili's at 16 and then, you know, managed some wine bars and other sports bars through college to get my way through it. And about eight years ago now, ⁓ started Tip House. so Tip House is a comprehensive tip management suite.

It is made from the moment a tip is left at your establishment, whether that's hotels, restaurants. sports venues, all of the above that we cover. The moment that tip is left until the moment that tip reaches their bank account, TipHouse handles that entire piece. Reporting compliance, real-time payments, all of the fun stuff just to make sure that you, ideally as an operator, are doing way more fun things than updating an Excel sheet.

Bryan Gorman: ⁓ super And this topic today is super important, too. I know we're on the other side of tax season. I think when we talked before, were on the backside of tax But ⁓ talk about what OBBA ⁓ is for those that don't know and and it ⁓ the business world today, especially restaurants. Kirk: I sure do.

Yeah. So it is a sweeping bill and I won't pretend to know the ins and outs of every piece of it. However, for hospitality specifically, big beautiful bill, OBBA, I always, always almost miss a B in there, ⁓ it is ⁓ colloquially known as a no tax on tips, right? And this was a bipartisan effort.

both Biden and Trump expressed that, you know, if it came across their desk, they would sign it and try to keep more money back in hospitality space. So. Bryan Gorman: Me too. Kirk: where it actually rubber meets the road is impact.

Three areas primarily, I'm gonna cover two pretty in depth with you here, but one of course is the no tax on tips. And that is a great political slogan. We'll dive into the nuance of that later, but in general, up to $25,000 reduction on tax liability for voluntarily given tips. Voluntary is the key word there, service charges and other things do not apply.

It also is a half that amount, so 12,500. of reduced tax liability on overtime, only the premium portion and only under FLSA rules. So that must be 40 hour work weeks, not eight hour work days, like you might see in California for overtime qualifications. And it's only that premium, that 0.

5X. And then there are a couple of things for operators that all of you, you know, should work with tax specialist accounting, whoever you have available, things like the a hundred percent depreciation on some capex expenditures, things of that nature that are beneficial to you. But As that is not my space, I am not going to dive deep into it. All I am going to give you as a hint is if anyone in your finance side has not brought those up to you, certainly flag it for them so you can pay attention and save some money.

Bryan Gorman: Mm-hmm. Sure. absolutely. And then ⁓ are maybe some of the biggest misconceptions you're seeing about the OBBA right now?

Kirk: Yeah, great question. Well, for starters, it's the idea that the slogan, tax on tips is entirely inaccurate. You know, we'll start there that it is federal taxes on up ⁓ to $25,000 credit. What does mean?

It means, ⁓ you know, Medicaid, those are still taxed. It means state taxes still apply. ⁓ Lots of I think there are seven currently and there are a number more in legislation are trying to mirror. Bryan Gorman: Sure.

Kirk: the federal level of OB-BBA. So that state level tax on tips may actually come out and go away. But the biggest misconceptions are, know, servers, bartenders, I'm not going to pretend that they got into the space because they want to follow every up-to-date tax and political leaning and law and everything going on. And so they hang, hang on that no tax on tips portion in that statement.

That is going to be the largest misconception. There are still taxes, of course, on this money. The big one. is that it is on voluntarily given tips.

And so, you know, I know we can dive into that and we'll come through that, but service charges do not apply. And there are a couple other unique scenarios where, you know, you cannot make, it must be the, or the guest has the opportunity to leave a tip and voluntary chooses to leave X amount. You can get these hybrid service charge and tip and we'll cover, but the biggest misconception in general is if you let, if you don't communicate with your staff that, no tax on tips is here.

It's great. And then they see their first paycheck and their taxes taken out. You're going to get a lot of questions from them. ⁓ easier to get ahead of that, you know.

Bryan Gorman: sure. Right? No, absolutely. And, you know, can you maybe talk a little bit about how the how the legislation is affecting overtime calculations and it's a little bit in the weeds a little bit, you know, a little bit here, but ⁓ your perspective, how is that affecting overtime calculations for tip?

⁓ Kirk: Sure. So the first thing that people need to be mindful of ⁓ is, know, states can calculate overtime differently than ⁓ FLSA does. So it is the Fair Labor Standards Act, FLSA, if you hear me mention that, that is what that's referencing. And that is the golden rule for this.

And so ⁓ gotten questions from customers in California about how it's going to be calculated and how it looks at, because they have an employee who worked nine hours today. Bryan Gorman: Yeah. Kirk: They worked under 40 hours for the week, but technically under California law, they have one hour of overtime because it is calculated daily over eight hours and that does not apply. So they are not going to get that any of that $12,500 that they're eligible for deduction on their liability just because they're meeting California's overtime policy.

So it keeps that state and federal a little different. realistically though, I think it's something, you know, that we need to really open up lines of communication about what overtime is being looked at. there is kind of a reverse classification trend that you're already starting to catch the wisps of. And that is where salaried employees do not take advantage of this.

There is no overtime for salaried employee. And so you're starting to see that piece for tipped employees, particularly, you're going to see that employers are always trying to get tipped employees off the clock faster. They do not like ever paying overtime on that, even particularly maybe in tipped credit states. Bryan Gorman: Mm-hmm, right.

Kirk: because that tip credit starts getting calculated differently. Tip credit, if you're not in it, is ability to pay up to $2.13 an hour, assuming tips take them over the minimum wage. So lots and lots and lots of nuance, and Brian, always worth noting that whenever you are listening to this, things are changing.

There are challenges going on, so if you catch this in its November, of these things may have changed listeners. Bryan Gorman: absolutely. Yeah. Great point.

Great point. and speaking of that, you know, what, what changes as you know, around, around compliance here, you know, what changes for W two reporting and payroll Kirk: Yeah, absolutely. It's one of the things I'm so thankful to be partnered with Alliance on is y'all are putting out some great information and working and getting ahead of this with customers. the big piece is that everyone needs ⁓ try to remember 2025 ⁓ 26, 27 and 28 are treated differently.

So this rolled out, ⁓ believe, 4th of July on 2025, effective though for the entirety of 2025, ⁓ So all of those savings, all those tips that they had. Bryan Gorman: Mm-hmm. Kirk: when they filed on April 15th or before, ideally. They're eligible for $25,000 and reduced tax liability on their tips, saving them typically thousands of dollars.

We worked with a number of customers directly one-on-one to with their employees, file it through TurboTax, actually quantify the real savings, similarly for overtime. That occurred though, so the whole year accumulated, and then you got that back on your refund from the IRS, or it just reduced the amount of taxes you owed, pending your filing status and all that jazz. Um, for 2026, it is different. Um, it is, should be occurring every payroll, right?

You go 2026 and 27 and 28 are all going to be on every paycheck. So it's less of a lump sum at the end of the year, more, know, you're getting dollars back on every paycheck. But all of this relies, of course, as you look to like the W2 and you know, your operations has to be pretty tight. Um, there are codes that the IRS put out that they immediately understand TT and TP for overtime and tips paid, um, respectively.

that denotes that this amount is in tips. So we're going to reduce this amount by 25,000 if you go over and then you'll pay the remaining. So it really helps for operators to be on top of this with their employees. I've heard a couple and not that they're incorrect, but I just think they they're in the wrong spirit there.

⁓ well, this is all about the employees. We, as the managers or owners or operators, we actually don't have to do anything for it. And technically true, but you could do a lot to assist, to educate, to research and to make sure you're classifying it on their documentation correctly. Bryan Gorman: Mm.

Kirk: Otherwise, and we saw this with some of our customers was the employees had to go through and figure out their annual tips that were given. They had to manually enter that into TurboTax because it wasn't separated out into box seven or 14 on that W-2. And those are the boxes that are being used for this traditionally going forward. And we will see, we will see how many ⁓ make this easy for their staff over the course of this year and the future years.

But as always, I would say, you know, keeping your staff happy is always important. Keeping them happier in today's. Bryan Gorman: Sure. Kirk: Market space and market pressures is even more important.

So do things that make sure your employees know that they're going to keep thousands of dollars more tips in their pocket if they work at your place because you look out. Bryan Gorman: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely.

I think you mentioned this early on, Kirk, but you know, why does this the distinction between tips and charges, like you mentioned matter, you know, more now than ever. Kirk: Sure, so this is, you there's been an industry trend for a while of service charges kind of ticking up. we saw a few groups, so we've partnered with a few groups early in the days, but rationale here initially was we want to make it steadier for employees. We want to make sure they know exactly how much they're going to earn.

And because that's wages coming into the business, as opposed to tips, the business actually can control the service charge however they wish. Meaning, They're usually paying most of that back up at staff, but they may be buying benefits. They may be doing 401ks. They may be doing these items for the staff that they traditionally didn't have.

All good causes. ⁓ there's its own frictions with that where your top tip earners feel like they're contributing to the average of the pack and they may jump ship famous cases across the U S now. This is more extreme than ever, however, because as you're alluding to, and as we kind of touched, ⁓ voluntary tips are deductible. Service charges are not.

Bryan Gorman: Mm-hmm. Kirk: because that is actually not a tip to the employee. That is revenue driven to the restaurant. The restaurant then is able to do whatever they wish with those service charges.

Due to that, that means ⁓ bring ⁓ 18%, 20 % auto-grat on these checks, whatever it may be. Even if you give 100 % of that back to the server, that is still not a voluntary tip. It crossed into the restaurant's chain of control of the bank account there. And so that is actually now just wages being paid out, which wages have no bearing.

on the tax liabilities. So, you know, in an example where an employee, say a restaurant server, you know, between tips, service charges and wages all in makes $100,000 at a location that primarily does service charges and a server at a place that primarily does tips also makes $100,000. The server in the latter of those scenarios is going to take home two, three, $4,000 more at the end of their year. Their net take home will be significantly higher by the thousands of dollars because they are eligible to get that $25,000 reduction in liability.

So Savvy servers are going to start picking up on this sooner. The whole market will catch it relatively quickly though, where it's not safe. Service charges are going to be completely eliminated. There are always real world scenarios where you might want to use them, but it is certainly going to kind of buck that trend that we were increasing service charges.

They're going to start disappearing more and more because servers don't want to work there. If it matters at $4,000 in my pocket at the end of the year, I'm to go to the place that allows me to keep that. Bryan Gorman: No, absolutely. And as you can imagine, there's a lot of just a lot of lot that goes into this right?

A of the restaurants have to manage their teams need to manage. No, what are some restaurants most exposed to as it relates to compliance? Like what what's the risk involved with all this? Kirk: Great question.

Um, wage and tip theft is a huge piece and not the biggest one. And yes, there are absolutely fraudulent cases and there are terrible operators out there. 95 % maybe this is the optimist in me here, Brian, but I believe 95 % of time it just errors, right? It's not intentional.

It is that you don't have the perfect system. You don't have the perfect managers to track it. make, we're humans, we miss type, we fat finger a key into an Excel sheet, whatever it might be. Bryan Gorman: Right.

Kirk: But believe it or not, that is the highest risk for compliance. you were doing something that is not easily auditable, that there's no paper trail, there's no change management log as to who adjusted items. You know, and we've seen this, ⁓ of our customers brought an Excel sheet that they were using. They wanted us to handle their tip management.

Hey, here's how we do it today. Can you guys replicate this? Yes, of course. But we just wanted to flag something for you that the totals don't match and we identified why.

And long and short of it was, you know, three years previously, they flagged that formula got changed in the Excel sheet accidentally. I'm assuming it could have been intentional. They don't know that manager was long gone. But, and they did the right thing.

They flagged it. They went back and made employees whole and they wanted to because they're leaving a massive liability hanging over their heads if they don't go and resolve that. It is not just, okay, you know, we miscalculated tips for our employees. We'll just pay them and make the difference up when a legal lawsuit comes.

It is that plus lawyer fees, plus damages, plus so many other items. And so that compliance hanging over your head, if you don't have a perfect paper trail, if you're not automating how tips are coming in and out, if you're not giving visibility to your staff. I think all of this kind of creates a larger issue in the context of OB BBA, which is for the first time ever. mean, staff always pays close attention to their tips.

That's not to say they don't. They have extra incentive to really drive into the numbers this year. And for the next three years with OB VBA, they have extra incentive to scrutinize every penny because there are additional tax savings for them now. So whereas before they might've brushed it off and said, yeah, you know, in my head, that makes sense.

I'm not going to actually take the time to calculate it. Now they might. once ⁓ notify a lawyer, a lawyer contacts, every other staff member they have record of that worked for you. Bryan Gorman: Mm-hmm.

Kirk: they start piecing together this whole class action element. know, Perry's down in Texas is going through it right now. If you've tracked $21 million was the final verdict that they got popped for. And I don't know about you, but I don't know many restaurants that have a spare 21 million hanging around.

you know, leaves a large compliance issue. Bryan Gorman: Hmm. Right. Sure.

Sure. No, absolutely. And yeah, to your point about, you know, the spreadsheet part of it and trying to automate as much as possible, maybe talk a little bit about tip house can help automate, ⁓ help automate that process for restaurants. Kirk: Sure, That is actually, I mean, in a nutshell, we are in completely automated platform.

So we, we integrate directly with the restaurant's point of sale time and attendance platform and any other relevant vendors that may impact the calculations. Automatically bring that in. The restaurant layers in their tip logic over the top. We handle all calculations.

We give alerts and notifications for missed clock outs. We reconcile, we pay the staff directly into their existing bank accounts. But more and more importantly than anything and more and more in today's age is at every day, every pay period, every month, every year, you see a one-to-one, every single penny that came in as a tip, left as a tip and to these staff members. And so, you know, our biggest piece is if you ever even think that a lawyer is sniffing around or they contact you, you've got records, indefinite records.

We don't delete anything with it that's easy to store for you. You know, you can have eight years of tax records that you can share back over and all tip allocations included, kind of puts a lawsuit to bed right before it starts. And give everything to the employee as well. They have a free mobile employee app where they can track all of this themselves.

So, you know, the first step is just peace of mind. know, nobody gets frustrated if everybody has visibility into it. So that's the problems that we set out to solve and thankfully are solving across the nation. ⁓ Bryan Gorman: Awesome.

So talk about this is going to be around the OB VBA is going to be around for a few more years here. What is a future proof, if you will, a tip strategy look like for 2026 and beyond? Kirk: Yeah, that's a great question. is adaptability, I think is always the top one.

We often see groups that, know, ⁓ why is your tip structure this way? ⁓ well, you know, the manager before this manager, before that manager set it up ⁓ no one wanted to change the Excel sheet or no one wanted to take that fight on with the staff. And the honest answer is oftentimes it's not a fight and you may be delighted to find that you're going to lower your turnover if you go and change that. You know, we think hospitality staff is very similar to a sales staff, right?

Are they able to drive revenue for your business? Are they able to give delightful valuable experiences to the guest? Are they able to upsell your products? Are they able to recommend great food and drink items to them?

And in that instance, you want to rethink always your tip structure. I'd advise, you know, I I would say quarterly, it's my business, of course. So yes, we're going to say that at minimum annually. Where are your top tip earners the top revenue drivers for your business?

Are they who's keeping regulars coming back? Are you being fair with supporting staff? You know, like if you're getting a regular complaint that your food runners are, you know, slow, they're not taking the food to the right tables, they're not paying attention, they're, they're not double checking the expo line and grabbing the last sauce before they run that plate. Is there a way that you can slightly bump up their tip out percentage?

You get a higher quality individual there or let them know that, you know, the next month the tip structure changes based on the total number of comps and you can get really granular. So those are the areas where I really think if you're future proofing it's the adaptability and this is again where having a system that automates everything where it's instead of you you tell me hey we typically tip two and a half percent of alcohol sales back to the bar but we're tinkering with the idea of making it three percent.

Well if you don't use an automated system that's a ton of work to go make that a test right and see if it works or not. would take 15 seconds and tip house to adjust that. ⁓ we automatically notify the employees on your behalf. have record of it.

We track everything for you. You can see apples to apples last week versus this week with the new change. What happened with the results, what you want, do you want to revert all of those items? But you know, it, see front of house staff overlooked a little bit, but they are your only guest touching experience, right?

⁓ you go back to restaurants or businesses where you had a terrible experience with the server or a bartender. Bryan Gorman: Mm-hmm. Kirk: You do go back to places where, yeah, you know, this may have been okay, or that wasn't up to exact standards that I wanted, but it was such a delightful, fun time. I had a great time.

Everyone was in a great mood. made great recommendations. You're willing to at least give that a second chance. And, know, as we all know, the staff is there to earn money.

So make sure it's obvious how they're earning it. Make sure you're improving their opportunities to earn it. And that is really what future proofing tip looks like. ⁓ A system that is as adaptable as you need it to be in real time.

Bryan Gorman: Absolutely. That's fantastic advice. the OBVBA, what other trends you seeing ⁓ among multi-unit What else are you seeing out in the industry right now? Kirk: Man, so much.

⁓ Obviously, the always, always topic is AI, right? And we're moving into people trying to adopt it. ⁓ Some doing it very well because they're using it as this ancillary amplifier for the customer experience. Some that are trying to use it to replace humans a touch too much, and they're kind of getting some pushback and backlash against it, and I totally understand that.

Where I think it makes a lot of sense. Bryan Gorman: Yeah. ⁓ sure. Yep.

you Kirk: And one of the trends that I would love to continue to see is people getting more time back for their managers, letting their managers be on the floor more. And the amount of time I see managers in back office, whether it's accounting, inventory, tip management, know, point of sale issues, whatever it might be. It just takes away that time that a manager's coaching on the floor. He's monitoring their staff.

He's touching tables. He or she is touching tables, you know, Welcoming the guests and hey, you know, how was everything? Can I do anything for you? Taking real feedback and making a real experience.

Um, that is what I think of as, as managers during your busy service times, they're helping run food. They're making sure they're uniting the team, making everything go smoothly. Uh, you can't do any of that from a back office when all you're doing is managing 16 vendors. So I see AI working on that end.

Well, I see vendors bringing some of those things in to help, you know, we're going to do roll up summaries of the day instead of you having to monitor throughout. Those are going well. Bryan Gorman: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kirk: Um, in general, think we're going to see more, you know, food cost or skyrocketing, course, labor cost or high. course. Um, the big challenge and trend right now is how do you drive value? Knowing that prices are increasing and you're getting squeezed at the margins, right?

How are restaurants continuing to drive value? And we often think of value as the amount of money I pay for the food I get, but there's so many other ways and we already touched on it. Are you training your staff to be delightful? Are they doing a, you know, two minute, two bite check-ins on the food?

Are they making sure and recommending additional sauces that they love or a side dish that they love? Are you doing discovery and delight? Hey, you know, what brought you in? ⁓ it's a birthday.

Well, dessert on us, you know, so happy to take care of this for you. All of those things drive value. And, you know, again, AI can help you with those if you've got a great system on it, but I don't think it's necessary to have any form of AI just to remember the basics of great hospitality, because it's needed more than ever. Guests are getting more and more feeling like cattle being pushed through a line here.

So we want to bring it back to that hospitality first. Bryan Gorman: Oh, I love what you said to discovery and delight. That's awesome. I love that term.

And I think that's a, that's that's fantastic. And maybe, you maybe expand upon that a little bit? Like what have you seen the restaurants that are doing really well at that? Now, what, what are they incorporating to, to, so you just touched on that.

I'm like, that is a man. It's such a great, uh, term. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Kirk: Yeah. Hey, I love it, man. And shout out to Gaylord Hotels. This was before they were bought by Marriott.

That was actually one of my summer jobs and they beat that into your head, And ⁓ I love it. And it worked so well because their entire piece is, know, we're an expensive hotel and we're a luxury hotel and guests are spending a ton of money to be here. It's our job to make them, you know, an unforgettable experience. so Gaylord Hotels back in the day, that was one of my high school summer jobs, I think, but they, Bryan Gorman: Yeah.

Sure. Mmm. Mm-hmm. Kirk: beat it into our heads and we took it seriously and you could see their impact.

So it can work with, know, some loyalty programs can be great on that items, but I find it the number one piece is servers typically servers and bartenders get to know a lot about their guests. Are you giving them any method to record this information? Is this ever making it into any form of a ⁓ relationship management platform? ⁓ that's a loyalty platform, whether that's a reservation platform, whatever it might be.

but it makes all the difference in the world. You know, when my wife and I will go out for our anniversary here in a week and a half and a restaurant says, ⁓ you know, well congrats and happy anniversary. And, know, we got you this table and this dessert on us. ⁓ that information made it into the system at some point, whether it me entering it through a Rezzi or an open table or whether it was a information and dialogue.

⁓ but I ⁓ see some of the best restaurants are coaching their staff to be curious, if it's not for future visits, even if it's just making them feel special. ⁓ you know, the kid won the little league game and that's awesome. And so, you know, here's a free strawberry lemonade on us with it, or, we just want to take the time to congratulate them for it. All the time you can do that.

The great businesses, great hospitality is doing it in spades right now. And I think it is truly helping to separate the best performers who are going to continually be able to. Bryan Gorman: Yeah. Kirk: Increase prices to match the market, but still be successful because they make the guest feel a certain way.

Right. I, I can cook well. Why do I go out to eat? Because I love the experience of socializing.

love engaging. love, you know, having that, that experience at a restaurant and being served and being delighted. if it's just me doing all the work, if it's a not friendly server, if it's a bartender that doesn't seem to care or recommend drinks, I can do that at home, man. You know, Bryan Gorman: Right?

No. and kind of shifting gears on you a little bit here going into the ⁓ fun. not these questions weren't fun, right? But the fun questions, what's, what's a popular restaurant trend that you think is totally overrated right now?

⁓ Kirk: Yeah, sure. ⁓ great question. I think, ooh, a popular restaurant trend that is overrated. Bryan Gorman: It could be AI, right?

Maybe, in some ways. Kirk: I actually saw as cop out of an answer as that is, I think it is exactly that. I think it's the idea. ⁓ And this is where I mentioned earlier, like AI is used to enhance, not to replace.

I know guests are not dumb. AI is invading every part of life. We know when we're chatting with a human versus when we're chatting with a chat bot or computer, right? your experience, your personalized emails, your bookings, all of these are just very obvious.

They don't have any tone. They don't have any. personality to it. That's a totally different ballgame than someone calling me to confirm a reservation or measuring these items.

I think that in itself becoming too sterile is a real piece. And some of that is, you know, it's no secret that there's a lot of roll ups going on. The industry has a lot of acquisitions that has a lot of things going. I see a lot of businesses losing their identity and their culture.

And that's what made people so popular. You know, I get down to Austin or Seattle is where I was for the last 12 years. So many restaurants there had such big personalities that as they either expanded into 10, 20, 30 units, or as they got bought up by a private equity firm and rolled up into another organization, they slowly lost that personality. They slowly stopped training employees to have a voice, to speak and be fun and engaging.

And it's just very much become a service model of just in and out efficiency. And again, efficiency isn't the end game in my opinion for restaurants. value at service, it's providing a delightful experience. And so that's it.

I think AI is, I'm not gonna call it, it's the culprit. It's just an easily abused, wider of the market that we see. Bryan Gorman: Sure. ⁓ great.

No, great answer. And what's the most underrated market or concept that you see in QSR hospitality today? Underrated. Yeah.

Kirk: Ooh, underrated comes. I experiential items. It's still to this day, like everything is getting digital. It's no secret at all, right?

We've been driving towards this for two decades now. The more and more and more digital, particularly the more we think of the online digital space becoming than true, right? We can at least enhance it if not entirely duplicate or replicate things that never occurred. Experiential items in stores become infinitely more valuable.

I love the places that are doing a table side, this, a, ⁓ they're bringing a bar cart around table side blocks are huge. ⁓ I've seen table side drinks being made, you know, for special occasions. And it's awesome. Those are awesome.

Those are experiential. They still tap into the, the social nature. ⁓ so if people want to post on social medias, they've got a great story. They've got items to it.

They're doing the marketing on your behalf, but it is also just such a unique piece where, you know, Bryan Gorman: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes, I've seen that too. Yeah.

Kirk: We're in this battle at times, I think, where it's which of the two major food distributors supplied your restaurant. Do things that are very, very unique. Do things that are unquestionably farm to table. You're watching them cut open the avocados.

You're watching them do X, Y, or Z. Anything that drives that experience and reminds people why they're out, I think, is undervalued. There's a few groups doing it really well. There are a few groups that are trying to roll it out and finding their way still.

But here by me in Dallas, there's a great place that does margarita cart, and it's got... four or five different types of tequila, four or five different types of salt for the rim. You know, it's got all the accompaniments you might want to whether you like a little splash of orange juice or you like a Cointreau or you like a triple sec, whatever it might be. But just what an unbelievably unique, fun experience to get a couple of, if I'm bluntly being honest, overpriced margaritas, but I'm glad to pay for it, right?

Like I'm very glad to pay for it because it's a cool experience to have at my table, get to see and manage. So anything experiential. Bryan Gorman: Yeah. Right.

Sure. ⁓ absolutely. Absolutely. Very cool.

And if you were to hear the last question, Kirk, if you were to open something tomorrow, what would it be and why maybe it is a restaurant with a margarita card, but what would it be for you? Kirk: You know what I've actually thought about this and if things go well at tip house, I know opening a restaurant and I'm around enough operators and it's a, it's a tough life, right? And it can do very, very well, but it takes a lot of, you know, there's no 40 hour work weeks for people who are really trying to get this going.

So I've always liked the idea of a very limited cultural menu. picking, um, you know, a number of foods, whether that's five or 10, very small. Bryan Gorman: Sure. Kirk: But from five to 10 different cuisines, which would be a nightmare for the kitchen.

I understand logistically, it's a, a terrible idea, which is why I'm always hesitant to say, unless I have enough money to lose, I would do it. But I love the idea of a place where, you know, when the family is disagreeing on where to go, where the husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, mother and son, whatever it may be, or disagree that this is the place where you can get a burger. could get amazing pad Thai. can get an incredible chicken parm.

You're just picking one or two items from a few different cultures and performing them at the highest level. Bryan Gorman: Right. Kirk: ⁓ With of course, I'm a big fan of kind of like the speakeasy vibe. So it would have to have a central bar high quality liquor I bartended for too many years to ever allow ⁓ boring drinks to happen in my establishment Bryan Gorman: Sure.

Awesome. Very cool. Well, thanks for your time today, Kirk. If someone wants to know more about you more about tip house, how would they, how would they find you guys?

Kirk: Sure, sure. Absolutely. And I appreciate it, man. So, um, you can find us online.

We are pretty, pretty prevalent, uh, T I P H A U S.com. So the German spelling of house and that's tiphouse.com.

And if anybody would like to get in touch with me, I am very adamant about always opening my inbox. So it's just Kirk at tiphouse.com. I'm quick to respond and always happy to engage with anyone, but please feel free to reach out.

Obviously, tip house and Alliance work well together and we've got plenty of shared collaterals out there. So if you're ever looking to see what we do. You can find us there. Bryan Gorman: Absolutely.

Thanks so much, Kurt. Great to talk to you. It's important topic and learned a lot about you guys and what you do and keeping up with the OB BBA as well. So thanks so much.

And thanks. Appreciate your time. Kirk: Absolutely. Thank you, Brian.