Life Conversations with a Twist
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Life Conversations with a Twist
The Heart of Hospitality: Lessons from a Successful Female Business Owner with Diane Mina
S3 Ep14 Episode Shownotes:
“For someone in hospitality, the greatest gift is to serve others.” —Diane Mina
Building a successful business is no easy feat. It takes a whole lot of passion, perseverance, and strategic vision to make it happen. And when it comes to the hospitality industry, the challenges can be even more intense. But the ones who rise to the occasion? They often uncover some seriously valuable insights that can inspire and guide others on their own entrepreneurial journeys. In this we're diving deep into the keys to sustained success in the culinary world.
Diane Mina is a seasoned hospitality pro and the wife of the one and only Chef Michael Mina. With a diverse background spanning hotels, restaurants, and her own entrepreneurial ventures, Diane has a wealth of experience and an infectious enthusiasm that make her a total force to be reckoned with in this industry.
Tune in as Diane shares her remarkable story, from her early days in hospitality all the way to the incredible growth and evolution of the Mina Group, the secrets behind their team-driven approach to running a culinary empire, the challenges of navigating the ever-changing restaurant landscape, Diane's signature Bloody Mary mix and future plans, plus much more!
Connect with Heather:
Episode Highlights:
03:29 Early Career
07:30 The Growth of Mina Group
26:41 Challenges and Success in the Resto Industry
35:05 Diane’s Bloody Mary Mix and Personal Projects
47:16 Restaurant Concepts
50:45 Challenges and Future Plans
Connect with Diane:
Restaurateur Diane Mina created a one-of-a-kind, 100% Italian Bloody Mary Mix from her three decades of service working in the hospitality industry. She and her husband, Chef Michael Mina, founders of The Mina Group based out of San Francisco, own and operate over 30 restaurants across the globe. In 2014, Diane made her mark in creating a signature culinary blend specifically for their restaurant collection and within three years, launched her own company, TerraMina LLC, producers of Diane Mina's Garden Grown Blends® featuring, Diane's Bloody Mary and Dirty Diane's Jalapeño Bloody Mary both made with San Marzano tomatoes. Garden fresh taste with rich umami ingredients, Diane Mina's Garden Grown Blends® drink beautifully straight from the bottle or mixed with any chosen spirit.
Heather Nelson: Hello everyone, welcome to this week's Life Conversations With a Twist. This is probably my favorite podcast interview today. I'm really excited to have you on, Diane Mina. She is Michael Mina's wife. I always tell everyone how we met, and this is a really cool story. A really good friend of mine, Emily, who I've actually asked her to be on my podcast a million times, and she's just so busy. And I get it, it's fine. She will be on some day. Her and I met through the Grapevines, and she and I were having lunch one day and she's like, oh, my god, I'm so excited. I get to meet with somebody who has always been someone I admired, and someone I looked up to. And I'm like, who? And she's like, Diane Mina. She's Michael Mina's wife. I'm like, oh, my god, stop. And she's like, yeah. And she was like, so excited to go into this meeting with you. Fast Forward, a couple weeks later, she texts me and she's like, oh, my gosh, Diane listen to your podcast. Because there's a local influencer who was on my podcast too. I love her as well. You would voice text her like this message, and I literally like shit my pants. I just told you this story. I literally shit my pants. I'm like, Michael Mina and his wife listen to my podcast.
Diane Mina: Yes.
Heather Nelson: That's how we met, and then I started following you. I just love your personality and what you're doing, ao thank you so much for being here. That was a very long intro, but I'm very excited to have you here.
Diane Mina: I'm honored to have the intro. Thank you so much, Heather. We're so thrilled. And my husband and I were glued to it. It was really cool because we don't get that kind of time together. Get him to focus on what everybody's talking about and what you're bringing to the table in this space of hospitality, culinary space, food and beverage. It's really cool so he was impressed. There you go.
Heather Nelson: Thank you. I appreciate that. No, I've been in hospitality my whole life too. I started in restaurants. I worked in hotels. I've worked in venues. I worked for rental companies. Hospitality has always been in my blood. Born and raised in Sonoma County, which is like the biggest food capital, I feel like, in California. And so for me, chefs are like my celebrity. The people that I look up to are celebrity chefs or people in the food world so I cannot wait to hear you guys story, and hear what journey you're on as well. So thank you. Let's start. Tell me a little bit about where you live now? Where do you currently reside? We're gonna go kind of all over the place, but I would love to have you introduce yourself, who you are? A little bit about yourself. And then I want to take it back to Diane when you were little, and how you got to where you are today.
Diane Mina: Okay. So present right now, we are living in Las Vegas, Nevada, which we're not strangers. We actually started our first restaurant in 1998, so we've been in Vegas on the business side of things since 1998. I'll start with that a little bit. I met a chef in 1990, and we opened up our first restaurant together called Aqua with our partners at the time. And so I've been around chefs for a hot minute so that's where we met in San Francisco. Prior to the restaurant space, I was actually on my own little journey of hospitality working in hotels. And I used to serve high tea scones and Devonshire, and little tea sandwiches at the Four Seasons Clift Hotel on Geary Street in San Francisco. And at the time, it was privately owned by the (inaudible) family. And I was like, okay, I'll check out what this high tea service is. I wanted to learn all aspects of running a hotel, because I wanted to be a General Manager of a hotel. I was running the tea, and Michael was the pastry guy so he was in charge of making my scones. And sometimes, they were late. I was like, who's the guy? I didn't know who this person was. I was like, who's the guy that's always late with my scones? I'm running around and everybody's like, that's Michael Mina. He was a young, upcoming, fabulous chef, but I met him when he was doing pastry. You learn a lot in pastry. You learn a lot about timing.
Heather Nelson: He's working with you, you're like, this is not on time.
Diane Mina: So of course, Puerto Rico time. I'm like, excuse me, are you the guy that's in charge of giving my scones? He's like, yeah. And I'm like, you're about 10 minutes behind schedule. He said he fell in love right then and there when I started riding him a little bit. So we worked together at the Four Seasons, that's where we technically met. And then I wanted to learn more about pastry and how to cook. He worked several jobs. He worked at the opera, at one of the restaurants there, and I learned how to make desserts. He made me crack 180 eggs. I guess that's payback from bitching about the scones, separating the yolk and things. I was like, we're making chocolate. I was like, okay, this is fun. It blossomed from there, and then he just started cooking for me. I'm like, all right, I'll give you a chance. There you go.
Heather Nelson: I'm so jealous. I love my husband, but he does not cook. And I said, in my next life, my husband will cook because I love cooking. I would love to come home to this beautiful meal, but someday.
Diane Mina: He was so sweet too, Heather. I was actually dating someone at the time when we met at that hotel, and we were just befriending each other. He's a sweet soul. He's very intense, but he's a very sweet soul. And rumor had got after the guy I was dating, and he wasn't as cool as he probably should have been. And he was like, why was he such a guy? I'm like, I don't know. So one day, I was having a little bit of a down day and he said, what's your favorite ice cream? I said almond fudge. And there it came to me. Hours later at the end of my shift, he lifted up these beautiful silver old domes, and there he had handmade this beautiful ice cream with fudge, the almond. He just made it in the kitchen that day. I said, what are you? What's happening here? Because I wanted to put a smile on your face. I said, well, that worked. No love interest presented itself at that point. And then we started to befriend each other and talk a little bit more about hospitality, dreams and family. And then the one that got to me was a caesar salad with extra anchovies and extra crab, fresh crab from the bay. What can I tell you? And I was like, I'm gonna give you a chance.
Heather Nelson: Oh, my god, I love that. Does he cook for you all the time?
Diane Mina: Not as much.
Heather Nelson: I want to know your lifestyle. So you guys currently own, how many restaurants now?
Diane Mina: Under the Mina Group, we have, I want to say 37? 38?
Heather Nelson: That's insane. I think about just one restaurant, but to own 37 and they're all over the US, right?
Diane Mina: We're all over the globe. They're in Dubai. If you go to the Michael Mina website, we'll have a list of all of them. A lot of them too, Heather. There's a lot of different concepts underneath the Mina Group. One of them that we're rolling out a little bit more frequently is the Bourbon Steak concept. People seem to love the steaks. They're not going anywhere, steak and potatoes and the fries, but we have a lot of different concepts under that umbrella. And really, it's about people. Talk about teams. We live and breathe teams. There's no way these 37 restaurants plus, I think we're actually going to be at 40 at the end of this year. There's no way it's possible without an infrastructure of talent and value. It goes both ways, and just the dedication from our team. I don't want to get emotional here, we're very passionate about our children. Our children from the F and B side, from the operations side, from the HR side, from the special event side, booking parties, the day to day grind, the kitchen guys, the pit crew guys. There's a lot of things, forgive me, I say pit crew, I'm old school. But there is a whole operation to running a back dish room. You gotta do it. So our people, a lot of our family staff have been with us for, I would say, a minimum of just a few months that are coming up to 18, 21 years, 22 years. So that is a blessing and gift, and that's why we're able to do what we're able to do. It's constant re-training, evolving, and everybody brings value. At the end of the day, it's Mina Group. Michael might make all the decisions. However, the decisions are made with a collaboration of folks. Sometimes he'll go, no, I want this. We all know Michael, or those who do no disrespect. But at the end of the day, it is a collaboration between his chefs and his beverage managers, his operations team, and our finance team. It's a collaboration.
Heather Nelson: I couldn't even imagine. How many employees?
Diane Mina: Don't hold me to these numbers, but it's a pretty good amount between 35 to 50 on task. And then there's folks on the road that are able to open up and do these restaurants. And then I would say 3,000 employees that work in these restaurants. And a lot of our restaurants are, actually, we partner up with hotels. So we do a lot of restaurant management agreements where the hotels themselves are interested in a Mina Group restaurant, and we collaborate with them as well. You probably know this already because in the industry, a lot of chefs don't have a lot of free standing restaurants, and own restaurants.
We own Mina Group, and we have a collection of owned properties on a smaller scale. And then on the larger scale of our company are mostly Restaurant Management Agreements where we partner up with Hyatt, Ritz, Marriotts and all great partners. We've had 30 years of building our brand at a small level of the one to two owned restaurants. And then we expand that out, and we roll it out. And now, we have a collection that we're really proud of, and it's a built-in infrastructure of their team. So they have HR that we work with, they have media, they have marketing, they have sales. We combine our intimate team of sales, marketing. Integrated that with the hotel partnership. It's really cool. It's a difficult concept sometimes because people don't really understand that there's a lot of emotion when you have that many people involved. So everybody gets air time. Whether they believe me or not, but everybody does get air time to give input on all of our restaurants. It's really important because, as you know, to make something for yourself, I mean, yeah. Okay, we could do that. But for making someone in hospitality, the greatest gift is to serve others, in our opinion, that's why we both still work. Michael's literally still in the kitchen.
Heather Nelson: I was curious about that. So you have almost 40 restaurants, and 26 years.
Diane Mina: We opened up the Media Group. We partnered with Andre Agassi who's our business partner. We have several partners in different aspects. When Michael won Best Chef of California in 2002, we opened up the Mina Group in 2004. We had moved away from our partnership. At that time, we were rolling out the Aqua concepts, and that partnership just worked. We kind of had a house, and had two kids. We were like, what are we going to do? And Andre was a blessing. He stepped in and came in and said to my husband back in 1999, hey, if you ever want to do a restaurant, I love cooking. And that blessing came to fruition. He partnered up with us, gave us our start, gave us our platform to have chef and three other operators. One phone and a desk in an office off of Geary Street in San Francisco, we're like, now, what do we do? We had relationships, we had intelligence, we had talents, but we didn't have a space for the kitchen. So we were in an office building, it's kind of a weird word to say Empire, but collection. I don't like to use that word empire. I like to say collection if that's okay?
Heather Nelson: I love that. Did you ever think that this was going to be your path? Clearly, you're an FandB like myself. I just worked at a restaurant as a hostess, and I was like, yeah, yeah. And here I am still in the hospitality industry, and I love it. I love everything about it. I try to find myself, trying to get out of it because I'm overdoing events. I find myself back in it again because of this weird addiction. And you probably know what that is like, correct? When you were growing up, you're like, I want to be in the food world. What is it that you thought your life would be like, and it clearly made a huge turn.
Diane Mina: Great answer. And I can also say to you, it lives in your veins.,Heather. You're gonna be like. I'm tired of it. I am really brief here. I was born on Long Island that's based on the East Coast. And in some aspects of my life, I was always exposed to hospitality, food and dining. On my mother's side, her parents are both Italian. On my dad's side, Puerto Rican or the Italian side. And then my dad is from a Puerto Rican family. So I always try to state my parents like the West Side Story. My mother was from an affluent, very fancy Italian family. And there's my daddy with a very skilled laborer, plumber, engineer, Puerto Rican. Both worked hard. Both had what they needed, just very different. They were not poor, but different. So my grandfather, my mother, my Poppy, my mother's father used to have a feed store, and he would drive his truck all around town. I wanted to bring this up because I'm like, when was he born? He would drive his feed truck, Charlie's feed truck, all over Bethpage dropping off seed. And Long Island didn't have acreage and farms. They would actually plant potatoes and vegetables along a driveway. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Or a small little patch, and your grandmother knew that would be in the backyard. It's the best meal you've ever had. Her nails are getting in there and popping crazy. I've always been around laborers and family meals.
My grandfather, Charlie, used to take me to Italian restaurants. When I was a young girl, he also had a trucking company. So the feed store grew into this big trucking company for Grumman Aerospace. Back in the day, Grumman was really still big, but it was bought out. He had a gas station. And behind the gas station were all these campaign trucks, and I would go on deliveries. I'm like, this is the funnest thing ever. My mother's like, what are you doing? I'd be drinking a little bourbon on the side. I'm 10 years old. I'm like, Mom, I'm fine. They got me Tony, Maribelle, Vince, everybody, all the goombas were there driving me all over the place. Go to the red check and tablecloths. I'm like, this is fantastic. What a life. So really, on my mother's side, it's just really entertaining, fabulous. Just too many fun stories. And then on my dad's side, Puerto Rican, everybody, rice and beans, rice and beans and empanadas. And so I was always around that, and I found that really engaging. I found that really connective because everybody worked really hard. We treasured weekends together. We treasured them. We spent time together. You were sitting down at 5:00 o'clock. My brother and I, my mom and dad. You're sitting down and having a meal. Doesn't matter what kind of day. Get off your 10 speed, we're eating together.
Heather Nelson: Off your phone, it's time to eat now.
Diane Mina: I can go on about that. I've always been in that little space. And then schooling was not my thing. I have dyslexia, so it's hard for me to talk about that as a 57 year old woman because a lot of people don't know about it. I'm not afraid to talk about it. I didn't know what I had till later in my life, let's put it that way. And not to say that there's any excuse for why I didn't like school, but I had some hard time going to school. No college is great here, but I knew I needed to go into hospitality. I felt like connecting with people was my greatest strength. And being a hostess, that's where I started. And I thought, as you know, that's your first impression of meeting people. So that was really cool. So I graduated from high school in 85, got out early. Actually in December. I was like, I'm done with this, mom. I gotta get out of school. And I went and worked with her at the chattel agency. And I started working with people in that aspect. Worked at the reception desk, but I was always bitten by the hospitality industry. I did hostesses. I had more than one job. I did paper routes. I did house cleaning for a little bit. I had my own cleaning business, and that's where I met Michael. He's, like, what are you doing? My grandmother was like (inaudible). So I was like, why not? I'll clean other people's houses and stuff beneath me. What the hell. So it was hysterical. It was just too funny. Thinking back now, really, really cool stuff. So I graduated. My first job in a hotel was 1988, and I opened up the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame. And I loved it. I loved it. I loved working in the front desk. I loved checking in people. It was right next to the airport. So sometimes, we'd get what's called a distress passenger flight where flights got canceled. So now, I'm booking 400 people at one time. I'm like, pre reg, check in. How fun is that? 300 people in my face. Let's go. So I loved it. And then the earthquake happened and I was at a job, then went and worked at restaurants, and that chef. There you go.
Heather Nelson: What a cool story. So food in the hospitality industry has always been in your butt. You can tell that you have the personality for it. I think you have to have the personality for it. I keep telling my kids, all of my kids, when you get your first job, it will be in a restaurant. I don't care what you say, it will be in a restaurant. Then I've met so many great friends. People who are still my best friends to this day, through the restaurant business, and it's fun. I miss hotels. That's funny that you say that because there's always a little part of me that's like, I wish I could work for a hotel again because that was a fun time.
Diane Mina: It was a good time. Some of my aspirations on this, I think I'm still young enough. I don't know, I'd still like a B&B. I think Bed and Breakfast is not on a grand scale because I wanted to be a Hyatt. I wanted to work for Hyatt and be a general manager. There's not a lot of female general managers at that time. There was like, I think 137 in the group at the time and I was like, I'm going to be 139. But now, being in it and loving it, I love the bigness of it, the grandeur. But now, I think it's more intimate. Having a bed and breakfast is always something that who knows what's going to happen. The journey took a different turn from a twist
Heather Nelson: That's your twist. What is your role within the company? We'll get into a little bit of what your focus is. You're just there as a supporter and a wife? Or are you involved in any of the certain restaurants or projects?
Diane Mina: I have to say earlier on, kind of part of the development piece, talking about esthetics and more design. I don't want to say design because I'm not a designer. Michael was always asking about the input of warmth, atmosphere, lighting, and what people would like to experience. But no, I don't have an active role. I have to keep my husband on the rails, and that's my greatest joy because it's difficult. He's got a lot of energy. He's got a lot of passion. He's extremely intelligent. His mind never shuts off. And my job early on, I knew that I had to keep him calm. And I don't always do that. You've already met my personality, so I'm a handful. And sometimes, I can taper it down. But for the most part when we fell in love, I fell in love with not only the person, who he is, and how kind and gentle, but he's so passionate about what the gift that was given to him, He recognized it in such a way that, I don't want to say the word perfect, it's a bad rap because striving for perfection could mean anything. It doesn't mean you have to be perfect.
What I'm saying is, if he wants to make a beautiful dish for somebody, and he sees it in his mind, it better be perfect when it gets to that plate. Is that okay to say? If you talk to flower arrangements, or people who put flowers together, artists are different mindset people. In their mind, an artist on a canvas can make a circle, and then they can color it in and we're like, that's fantastic. No, that's not perfect. So I think it's a very personal perfection that people feel as entrepreneurs, as creators, as builders, as welders, as anybody that's using their hand and looks through their eye, sees the world differently through the eyes of a creator. It's very different from something being, oh, I have to turn my, this has to be, you know? That's not a judgment thing. I'm just saying that I knew early on that his intensity was a lot. I thought that when we got together, I was like, okay, restaurants is what he told me. That's what he said, Heather.
Diane Mina: How many?
Diane Mina: The goal is eight restaurants early on because I miss him, and I don't get to see him that much. He's on the road a lot, probably 200 days out of the year. He hasn't really changed that schedule. The longest we've ever spent together was our honeymoon in 1994 for four weeks. That's the last, aside from the COVID piece. That's the longest we've ever spent together in one place. That's not a complaint. That's not a martyr thing. That is the actual facts. And I learned a lot in that space. You can't not be in love with that type of passion, right? And anything else aside from that, it was me missing him. I can get through that. I could talk to him about that, him not being home for dinner, okay? I can get through that. Him not being around for every car pick up with the kids. I can get through that. He was there the day my mother passed away, and he was there at the birth of my children, our children. He's been there on very, very, very impactful days. It was my job to keep him on the rails.
Heather Nelson: He's traveling that much, 200 days out of the year.
Diane Mina: He has not stopped.
Heather Nelson: Do you go a lot with him?
Diane Mina: You know what? I'm not a big fan of flying. I have found out as I've gotten older that I'm not comfortable with it. I thrive in a lot of places. And when I do travel with him, sometimes I don't like him to feel the pull of spending time with me when he has to do what he needs to do. If he has an opening and he's gone for six or eight weeks during that opening, I might come. And at the tail end when things are done, I'll be supportive. And that seems to be the best part because, listen, he wants to be with me. We want to be together. But I also know the pull when someone's in your space, but they have to get the job done, and that a lot of people are relying on him. He has a lot of people to answer to. So yes, I might be saying that I'm taking second place in this. I don't consider it that way. But what I'm saying is we always put people first, and it's actually God first, and then we serve others, and then we know we're going to find time with each other. I don't know if it's a 1, 2, 3, thing.
Heather Nelson: Yeah, I love that. How many kids do you guys have?
Diane Mina: Two boys, 27 and 23.
Heather Nelson: Are they in the food business?
Diane Mina: No, they are not. I think they learned early on, Heather. Because we'd have parties, events and thanksgivings, and I did auctions at school when they were tiny little babies. I was like, okay, we gotta play in the kitchen. They have no desire. So our youngest, Anthony, graduated from NYFA, the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles. He's a screenwriter. I Love it. And our oldest, Samuel, is actually living here in Nevada temporarily. He's supporting his dad working and getting on the business side. Learning about the operations of the company on the financial side. He's in the company, but he's not cooking.
Heather Nelson: So he's not in the kitchen. I love that. It was so funny that day that you and I corresponded on Instagram. I was in Truckee, and lo and behold, I come down from North Star, and there's the restaurant. And I was like, it's not open. I was so bumped.
Diane Mina: It wasn't it open when you were there?
Heather Nelson: Because we're in between seasons, I guess. My husband and I's favorite restaurant is international smoke whenever we can get away for a date night. That's where we had San Francisco, and then we're staying at the MGM. We're actually coming to Vegas. My husband's a Raider fan, so we're coming to support the Raiders in December, and we're staying at MGM. And I was like, there's an international spot there is.
Diane Mina: Send me a message. I'd love to see you guys, and maybe get you out. Check out some other places.
Heather Nelson: If you'd like, grab a glass of wine or something. I would definitely connect with you. But I wanted to know, so you have a lot of restaurants, and you talked about the pandemic. And here in Sonoma County, a lot of restaurants are closing, like literally left and right. How do you think you guys have been so successful in the restaurant space in the kind of climate we're in right now?
Diane Mina: Great question. I'm going to go back to the infrastructure of our company and the belief in the value of our brand, and kind of stay in our lane of what we're trying to achieve. And what do our partners want? What do they want? The cost of running a restaurant is extremely expensive. We all know that the cost of anything is and reevaluating our positioning with our partners every time is what we do. That's why Michael is so involved. We have three phone calls a week just with his ops team, and those can go two to three, five out. That chef committed to his team, looking at the numbers, how do we improve this one location? We've had some closures. We've been blessed not to have that happen for quite some time during COVID when everybody was shut down. My husband and his team did the Mina Family Kitchen. Because the most devastating piece of that is the people that work for you when restaurants close. I don't want to get emotional, they put in all this time, they put on all this effort. And when you can't provide meals for them because they're there for 8 to 10 hours at a time, that was devastating. There's the insurance, and there's all that kind of stuff.
Obviously, that's super essential and important. It was the community that we missed. What I think is most heartfelt when you hear about these restaurants closing is the community that's lost within the restaurant, and what's built out from there. So staying in our lane, knowing our concepts, understanding that price gouging is not what this is about. We follow what's happening to everybody, but still try to listen. A lot of the time, we're always sending our own resources back into the company. That's a huge thing. Everything goes back into the company. It goes back into the employees. Super important. We want to be profitable. Who doesn't want to be profitable? But when you have hiccups like that, you have to always reinvest in your staff. You have to always reinvest in your company, and to make sure that things can operate that way if you have that. We were very lucky to be in the business for a long time.
For someone right now to open up a restaurant is difficult. It's difficult just for permitting alone, licensing, depending on what the concept is going to be. What you're saying before about the celebrity piece of it, we find ourselves in that position where we groom talent within because you can have a great concept. Someone has been dying to open up an Italian restaurant, but they didn't go to cooking school. They don't have the infrastructure, they don't have the platform of resources and all that kind of good stuff. But those are difficult. Those are the kind of stories that break my heart. When someone's like, oh, I'm gonna open up a restaurant. I'm like, oh, my gosh. But because we have the blessing of so many people in our company that aspire to have their own restaurant, they already have that blessing, and that platform of those relationships. So for 25 years, we have a chef of cuisine or executive, or line crew hostess, they've been through a platform of restaurants. They've opened up restaurants so they're getting education on the fly right then and there. So it's not just coming straight out of school. We do have a lot of people that come straight out of school, and they do their internships. But to stay afloat today, I think, is really challenging.
I don't know if I have a secret sauce for that because the way time is, how we've stayed afloat is our team. How we've stayed afloat is reinvesting back into our team, and making sure the quality is always there. Because that's the other thing too, is that everybody's single dollar. They want a lot, and that's okay. They should. I don't want to say demand, let's be easy with that word. But if you're going to put our restaurants or collections, they are premier. And they expect that as well. Our partners expect that as well. You hear about these branded franchise restaurants that are doing well, that the Chick fil A is all good. And those are great, but there's a lot of other people that would like to put their talents out there. So yeah, I find it to be a struggle. We're hoping that through another part of our company, I'm not sure exactly how much more I can speak to this without having it buttoned up, but we want to continue fellowship in this space. And that's why I think a lot of more hospitality teams can build within those strengths. Maybe that'll help the closures of everything. But sometimes, you just hit a wall. Sometimes, concepts just don't work.
Heather Nelson: Yeah, yeah. It's definitely a bummer.
Diane Mina: Shocking to me because of the Napa restaurant there, and what you guys have at your fingertips, it really breaks my heart to hear about that.
Heather Nelson: Especially these smaller restaurants. Those ones you fall in love with, you go in and you fall in love with the food, and the team. And then six months later, they're closing. You're like, but I really liked that place. I'm definitely a creature of habit. Once I find ones that I love, I just continue back there. I hope things change. Where we live now, I'm part of a hospitality association. I'm working on the membership side, but we do a lot of advocacy, and that's something that I would love to see happen more is, how do we support our restaurants? Whether that's advocating for them at the state level or whatever. Because it's literally everyday, a restaurant is closing in Sonoma County. They make it so hard again to have a business here. So I was just curious, what you guys's success is, clearly, because you keep. And then every week you're like, here's a new restaurant. You just have to train all the rest of us.
Diane Mina: Again, the way the company is formed with the RMAs of having the built in relationships definitely helps. Don't ever give up. If it's a dream for someone, don't ever give up. Just more education for the smaller businesses, for restaurants. I think the CIA there, I think they run, some say, (inaudible). They run some nice programs. I'm in the food business school, and I'm a mentor. And people that are graduating say, you get to put in your experience so that these young adults who want to get into this business can ask a lot of questions to mentors who've already been there. Product manufacturing, restaurant ownership, financially is a big deal. A lot of people, financially, it's a big deal. So if you don't have that 2 to $3 million in your pocket, it's challenging. I know that. That doesn't sound like a lot of money, but it is a lot of money. You can't open up a restaurant for $100,000. You're always kind of relying on a partnership. And then if you have a $50,000 opening, and then you just have to pay rent, that's $11,000 a month, you're always going to be upside down. I love what you're saying there because I think education is key. And if we can build more programs to get that young talent in, I'm interested in the state piece. We talk about what California has to offer in the culinary and beverage space. It's unreal between the wines, the vegetation, all the goodness and all that. There's so much goodness there, and we got to use it. We gotta put it to use, and we got to feed the people.
Heather Nelson: I love that. I love the work that you're doing. I can't wait to hear more about that line of work. Tell us about the Bloody Mary mix and what it tastes like. This is your little project, and I want to hear, what inspired you to start it? And a little bit more about the work you do in that.
Diane Mina: That's the twist here. I was young in Long Island, and I was drinking Bloody Mary's at 10 years old with my grandfather. We would have the clam banks and I'm like, what's that little red yummy thing? He was like, don't tell your mother. It was a lot of don't tell your mother back then. And so I was drinking them. I was attracted to the umaminess of the Bloody Mary. And then it was that. And chocolate (inaudible), that was my thing. I didn't do soda pop, so I loved him as a young child. It was definitely a different term because I loved Hotel and Restaurant operations. Then an idea, an opportunity came, and I would make Bloody Mary's. What I'm missing on the big point is, when I became of age to make them legally, when I was hanging out with chefs and we'd have all these big parties, Thanksgiving dinners, I always made the Bloody Mary bar. It was always this big thing. If you're a connoisseur of Bloody Marys, you go all out. Well, the chef did the food aspect, and I did all the bar. So whether it was bloody marys, margaritas, you name it, I'm making it. So it was front of the house, back of the house situation. So that's kind of how just the fun came to life. And everybody was always like, oh, my gosh, Diane. Diane, can you make Diane's Bloody Mary? I'm like, okay. So that's when Diane's Bloody Mary started.
You've heard these stories before. I wasn't making them from scratch back then, but I was using things like clamato, which I now know has a lot of sodium. I've been doing this for 10 years. I've learned some things, no judgment folks, but here's some things. So I was using other mixers to make my final product. I would put in just my special nuances, and it became Diane's Bloody Mary. I gotta tell you how it just happened. It literally just happened. I'll have all the tailgates. Oh, my gosh. We were going to candlestick. Remember candlestick? We would watch the 49ers, and I would drop down the tailgate, and I'd have all these garnishes. Our one day off, we would just do this whole thing. So I loved making them. I love the way they taste. You gotta love something that much. And then in 2000, probably 12, 13, my husband had an opportunity. When the camel stick was closing and they were going down to Santa Clara. They were pitching, they were reaching out to local chefs of the Bay Area. Michael was one of them. They wanted to have a really upscale restaurant inside the Levi stadium, down below premier space, blah, blah, blah, but they wanted to have a really cool experience for a ticketed event. They wanted people to buy in. Aside from the seats, they wanted a culinary experience at the Levi's Stadium at the base of it. And so they were pitching to all the other chefs.
I can't mention the other ones because I don't want to get into trouble, but there were five chefs that were in the collection, and Chef Mina was one of them. So he was adorable, and he pitched me this idea about this Michael Mina tailgate, what we had been doing together for 20 years. We took our one day off, and we turned into a concept. I love it. They love the idea. And Michael's like, oh, if we're playing the Philadelphia Eagles, we'll find out who's the chef in Philadelphia. So then, we go through all this marketing and find out who's the hot chef in Philadelphia. So then, we'd invite that Philadelphia chef to come and go head to head with Chef. So it was not only competitive on the field, it was competitive in the Michael Mina tailgate. It was hysterical. So the Michael Mina tailgate was born and I said, that's so exciting, honey. Congratulations. Another restaurant, this is really cool. And he goes, there's one little caveat. I said, what's that? He goes, well, I told them that you make really good Bloody Mary, so they want a Bloody Mary activation. And I said, well, okay. What the heck does that mean? He's like, just do what you do on the weekends when we're together. I'm like, okay, big platform. New thing. I'm nervous. So long and short, we're with some friends in Lake Tahoe and I'm like, my husband just got this incredible opportunity, and then he put me into the mix. This is the first time he's putting me in the mix of his restaurant collection. It's a big deal. He's a really cool chef, and he must think I got something. So she's like, you do have something. I'm like, well, what am I going to do? So she goes, ask your husband if you can make your own mix. He'll do anything for you. I'm like, well, maybe he will.
Heather Nelson: Yes, he will.
Diane Mina: Oh, fast forward. I went to him nervously. I'm like, listen chef, I'm so excited for this opportunity and to be working together. Let's be real. I was so much more thrilled about learning from him in this space. I was like, I get to be with my husband in a restaurant. This is so cool. What am I gonna do? So I had to have my shit together. And so I pitched him a deal. I wrote it out, and I said, listen, honey, I think I could do this. I want to do this, but I'm a little nervous. I'd like to create my own, if that's okay. He goes, absolutely. What would that require? Little rewind, we were living in West Marin, and we had three acres there. There was nothing but weeds. That was beautiful. It was a really nice kept landscape, but we had a whole area in the back that was just begging to be loved with something. And I don't know, I wasn't growing any vegetables like my upbringing. I didn't have any flowers picked in the garden. So I said, what about if we planted the tomatoes and I made my own recipe, my scratch recipe? He goes, that's a great idea. Do all the work, find out how much it's going to cost me, meaning him, and we'll go from there. I'm like, okay, that's fantastic. So that's how it happened.
So we partnered up with this wonderful landscaper. She is amazing. She's Mother Earth. And I said, this is what I need to do. So I planted all kinds of varieties, including some ingredients, some of the cilantros and other spices. But mostly, it was about the tomato. I wanted a better product. You probably heard this from a lot of people, entrepreneurs, I want a better X. I want to improve this. So I knew that through that process, I would learn from one of the most brilliant chefs on the planet, in my opinion, of how to bring this to life from a scratch recipe to the people of the new stadium. Actually, I knew a little bit more than I thought, Heather. I was pretty proud of myself. From my grandparents cooking and learning from chefs, and doing a lot of research, I learned a lot. I was so proud of myself. So I came up with this recipe, and it was lovely and delicious. I'm very proud of it. I can share some pictures with you if it's helpful. But I literally planted about, we took about a quarter acre of our property, and just dredged out a bunch of vines and limes. I had 11 rows.
Heather Nelson: I love it.
Diane Mina: It was crazy. I was out there at 4:00 o'clock in the morning picking off those big worms. I was like, what are these grand things? So our first year at the tailgate stadium, it was Diane's money bar. Girlfriend of mine, a very sweet custom, designed my bar. It was all antique barn wood and corrugated steel tin. It was awesome. And so I had my own little U shape wheeled out bar in this big mecca of Michael Mina. And it was the hottest thing going, I have to say, aside from Michael's lobster dogs and all that kind of stuff. We have to open up at 9:00 o'clock in the morning. So in the morning, I would make the product. It was a four day production. So Thursday, I would drop the tomatoes. I would harvest everything, put them in five gallon buckets. I would make sure that all that we were using at the time, heirloom tomatoes, we were using black trifles and one other one. I can't believe I don't remember the other one. I put together two different types of heirlooms, and the flavor profile was off the charts, velvety and delicious. I was like, wow. So I would make those in five gallon buckets. I would hand turn them, very similar to apple sauce. I had 10 people at my house every Thursday before the Sunday game. It started on Thursdays. I'm like, guys, 1,000 pounds. We need 1,000 pounds. So I had my dad and my step mom, my girlfriends, everybody's part of this crew with a little paring knife. I'm like, take out that mold. Mold isn't good. Throw it away. And I've been dissecting everybody's work like crazy. Then that would rest for 48 hours, and then I folded in all the other ingredients. So then we go live on Sunday.
And I'm telling you, Heather, we had like 1,100 people. From the opening, 1,400 people. We banged out probably 800, 900 Bloody Mary service. That was 2014, 2016, the president of Williams Sonoma retail at the time was Janet Hayes. She came through our line because my husband, again, what a sweetheart, he brought all the people of influence. He was like, you gotta meet my wife. You gotta see what she's doing. I'm like, I was just a team player. I was just a line cook. He's like, you gotta try my wife's stuff. She puts an app. He was very complimentary. So she comes through my line, she has the drink, and she's like, what is this? I said, I don't know. It's fantastic, isn't it? And she's like, yes, it is. I love this. It's better than ours, would you like to bottle it? And I said, are you kidding? I don't know a thing about that kind of stuff. Lo and behold, seven months later, I'm like, what do you think? And so I went to the corporate office with my garden in tow, baskets. I had tomatoes, I had all my 23 ingredients in pods. And my husband was there. He came with me, and he's like, we're going to do this today. So I did my presentation, I was very nervous. I had 16 people, and I was like, this is what we got. And they're like, how many stores do you want? I go, how many stores can you do? I'll take them all.
So we launched with William Sonoma in 2017, all 220 stores. Two SKUs, Diane's Original and the Dirty Diane. And we term that relationship in 2020. So when William Sonoma brings on retailer new products, they bring them on for three years because they want a nice rotation of talent to come through, and to get everybody that opportunity. But not everybody has that opportunity. That was a blessing that I don't know again, a higher calling, because we were in a position where my Bloody Mary mix from scratch that I made was exposed to someone who can help us get our name out there. So then we bottled it. And then after we turned out, which was 2020, you know what happened in 2020. We had all this product and the people loved it, but I no longer had the relationship with distribution to William Sonoma. So then we hooked up with our 30 year relationship with Southern Glaciers Wine Spirits, did a presentation with them. And now, we're in six markets with Southern Glaciers.
Heather Nelson: Amazing. I love that story. What a great story.
Diane Mina: I opened up my first solo restaurant at the Burbank Airport, which Emily is huge, she's so amazing. She's my biggest supporter. Every time I'm feeling a little blue, she's like, don't you stop. But it's called Diane Mina's Backyard Barn & Eats, and it is literally the exact, pretty close to the same concept that I had as a Bloody Mary bar. I did a Diane's Bloody Mary pop up in San Francisco. So in 2018, we had what was called the Mina Test Kitchen. The Mina Group bought a building, and they ran all these concepts. That's another thing to go back to. So you talked about many concepts. This was another blessing. A lot of chefs say, oh, I want to open up. I don't know a falafel house. I don't know anything. My husband and his team came up with this idea of having a test kit. You've heard of them today, but this was done years ago where you can test the concept out. Very similar to what New York does. They do pop up concepts, and they run them. They sell tickets, and people give you feedback. Oh, this didn't work, whatever. So before you put in that 5 or 10 million into a concept that people are like, wow, that's flame throwing. What is that? That's the other thing too. You have to test your concept out. It's huge. If you can't test it, I think that that also plays into something's closing.
Heather Nelson: I understand. Your marketing restaurant has like 50,000 menu items on it.
Diane Mina: Yeah. Too great. So the Mina Test Kitchen was exactly that. So we ran on the media group side. We had an Indian concept, we had a Mexican concept, we had the international smoke concept that's why we had more international smokes. Working with (inaudible), obviously, her talent is sublime. Having our culinary team take her recipes, Michael's recipes, and building that concept, like I said, the Italian concept. So we've had a lot of concepts come through that space, and then it was sitting dormant for a hot minute in 2018, and I went back to my asthma. I'm like, okay, so now I have all this great product, and I have a team of three people, four people saying, how do I get my product out to the world? And I said, husband, do you think you could let me use the Mina Test Kitchen? What do you want to do? I said, well, I don't have a sales team. I can't do bottle sales. I said, I'm gonna bring the people to me. He's like, well, how are you gonna do that? I said, well, you got that empty space in the Marina, 16 tables, and a little bar. I did all the design myself, with my family and friends, painters, electricians. (inaudible) who built my bar, she came and she did all of the work. I opened up. It was a crazy, beautiful experience. And we started that in February of 2018. We opened up in June of 2018, and it was Diane's Bloody Mary bar in the marina, and had served 12,000 people in six months. It was the coolest concept because the menu that was created, I worked really hard on this menu. Some favorites from my youth in Long Island to some favorites that chef and I made together, and then really brunch items that went with the Bloody Mary mix. So it was a Bloody Mary concept, and then the menu followed second. And it was really cool. So that has now been brought to life. All these years later in the Burbank Airport, we just celebrated our first year, October 27.
Heather Nelson: Oh, that's so cool. What a great story. Are you going to open another one?
Diane Mina: Yes, I am. The funny thing is, people like, well, wait a minute. So the name of our company is Terramina that produces Diane Mina's garden grown blends, which is Diane's featuring Diane's Bloody Mary. And I'm actually doing more SKUs. I'm going to do a margarita mix. I'm going to do some more blends. But it's been really challenging because, again, trying to get our product out there, growing other SKUs, it's a little tough. Being married, we are very fortunate who I'm married to, opportunity, the relationships, but it's still challenging. Female owned business, it's still challenging.
Heather Nelson: I love it. I cannot wait to see what you do. I have to wrap up because I have an appointment to get to, but I literally, seriously could sit here all day and talk to you all day. I have so many more questions. I might have to have you back on the podcast, but I just want to thank you for opening up your home, your story and your journey. It's been really cool and inspiring to watch you guys from afar and see, I mean, we didn't even get to talk about chefs, all his accomplishments, even in the last six months. All these things, cookbooks, everything, it's so cool. So if anyone's not following you, like they need to, and Michael and everything that you guys do, but I just want to thank you so much, and I cannot wait to meet you in person someday.
Diane Mina: Yes, look me up. We need to get here soon. Pleasure to be on the show. I can always talk to you too. We'll do it again.
Heather Nelson: We will.