I've done everything here from fix the espresso machines to to plunge the toilets. to speak on that because I Talk about this at Bner Media. The reason I'm always calm is I know if every if David starts a coup and takes every employee with him I Have no fear because I know how to do every job Yes I think a lot of entrepreneurs make that mistake Vayner Nation I'm extremely excited I'm actually excited because visually this will be an interesting episode as well. So go check YouTube if you want to watch this one because we're in this incredible setting here in Midtown Manhattan with a fellow entrepreneur from the East Coast I Admire very much Gregory's coffee I actually tell the story pretty often when I talk about Vayner media like how we moved offices and Gregory's coffee is actually in that story because when we moved to 23rd 24th in Park literally every day it was kind of like when we started to somewhat grow up into like the alpha, not just complete scrap in the mud.

Ridiculousness of the first couple years, every day there would be aund Gregory coffe cups because everybody go downstairs multiple times a day and so we are here to talk to Gregory from Gregory's coffee. really talk about entrepreneurship his journey I Want you to know about him because I think a lot of you actually should be going on a similar path. And we're also here to talk about the incredible V friends Gregory Coffey's collaboration Gregory and I just did uh Good Day New York But we're really excited about the Jolly Jacko Pumpkin Spice Chai Latte collab that we're doing that's running here in October So if you're visiting New York City get to A Gregory's find a jolly Jacko beverage, pick up a collectible sticker, flip it on eBay or whatever else and so I've just been really fun. We're about a weekend seeing all the tweets and the pictures of people having this cup in their hand.

the QR code. We'll get into all of that and more. But first, let me say hello to: Gregory How are you my friend? I'm doing well. How are you I'm good.

Let tell the vayer nation a little bit about yourself. Literally Comic Book Number one. Take the floor for two three minutes, four minutes Where you grew up. What kind of kid were you? Just give us the zero to day one of opening your first Gregor's kind of story.

Let's ground you for the audience. Son of an immigrant, you know my father came here uh from Greece at a young age my both my parents are from Brooklyn That's where I started my journey. Sort of grew up in this sort of New York entrepreneurial household. So my father was a Serial entrepreneur left College to to pursue his dream which was running his own business.

So he was working at a doughnut shop at the time. when the opportunity was there to take over that he decided to leave school take over that doughnut shop and that was the first of his many foray into the food and beverage. World here in New York city So um, where was that donut shop that was all the way down in like Benson Hurst area I believe it's still there, but it's probably changed names quite a few times since then, but he went on from Donuts to the classic New York City Deli you probably saw all over the city in the 90s they s sold everything. When I was probably in my teens, he he had launched this panini press sandwich concept which there was about seven of them at their Peak So I sort of grew up watching my father um, grind grind every day you know I probably didn't get to see him as much as I would have liked, but he was that was the the deal back then.

Plus like not as convenient now with phones and connectivity so definitely loved my Summers going to work with him tell stories of when I was seven. he used to have me down in lower Manhattan doing deliveries for him in the summer. uh so he had a store down by Wall Street he'd send me to send bacon, egg and cheese and coffee across the street and I'd show up with my Yankee hat little kid and these people would be surprised to see their delivery boy probably being uh in second grade. Uh I have a son who's now eight and I could never imagine him letting him loose in lower Manhattan but my father thought it was a good idea.

you gots I I mean at the time I probably got two bucks and I thought I was the richest guy in the world but uh at the time I didn't realize what was happening but my father was sort of giving me a lot of the tools that would later help me in life. which was you know, showing about hard work, dedication, all the experience in FNB. So I mean my whole life is not necessarily about FNB but it has really been the fabric. were you were you a good student or were I was so so you were getting good GR grades for dad's stuff my dad also immigrant family.

good grades were that was. it was like you know if I got a 97 it wasn't great. It's like what'd you get wrong, you know I got very fortunate I got very bad grades and I was born in the Soviet Union So I'm like First Gen but my and my mom would ground me but there wasn't that which is so common in immigrant. Families My mom didn't play that game.

she had a different point of view that I had it and she wanted me to be accountable to bad grades. but it's really been interesting as I got older. I Didn't realize that I was in an incredibly small minority of immigrant families where the mom and my dad worked like sounds like the way your dad did and my dad wouldn't have known if I got A's FS or Z's or W's like had no clue but my mom she grounded me for every bad report card which was four times a year though the summer one, she was lenient a couple days and I'd go out and play. so the the pressure to get good RADS was there yes and did school come easy to you or did you have to really work at it to get those 97s? it's it's odd to say, but it did come easy to me.

No. I ask it that way because there are just a lot of people who are naturally good at school. They understand the system, they understand what they need to do. I I was able to achieve, you know, good grades I was a you know, top of my class even in college in the honors program at Boston University undergraduate business school.

Um, ironically I was about to reference my brother AJ who barely worked in, got great grades and he went to Be as well. Oh really. so maybe there's a trend there, but I did enjoy my time at Be, but also the one time that caught up with me was law school where I was able to manage time and you know, get the grades I always expected. but then I get to law school and the workload was so much more.

I couldn't just approach it the same way I had done previously. So when I went to got to law school that first semester when I was getting towards finals I was realizing it was a little different. um I still W up doing well, but it was just for me. it was.

It was a transition as to how to approach it and that was probably the most pivotal time for me learning that I couldn't just rely on natural ability. that or you know, ability to kind of recall things, think through things. Law School taught me. you have to work really, really hard if you want to achieve what you really expect to.

Also taught me about writing and a lot of things that also for whatever reason in business and all these things wasn't business. school wasn't as critical. So did you go to law school thinking you were going to practice law? I Did you did? Yeah. Oh interesting goad.

So again. I I went to school not thinking I was going to work in the the food and beverage industry wasn't necessarily cool back then. Uh, it wasn't I You know you'd go to work for my dad I'd come home smelling like grease with ripped jeans, but not because it was cool because they got caught on a nail at work, you know and it was like, you know, not glamorous, you know I Admired my father, but it wasn't something that I you felt there was almost like most immigrant families. When Dad or Mom is working in that environment, there's almost this subconscious if not outwardly conscious conversation of like, well, you're going to use this as a stepping stone and you're going to do this more bougie thing.

Oh my mother cried when I told her I wasn't going to be a lawyer um, my grandmother years after I I completed law school and I was working at Gregor used to call me her grandson the lawyer because they were that mentality of office job professional. uh, whereas the stigma about being an entrepreneur but an entrepreneur in the food business did not have the same sort of cache I Tell a lot of kids now. you can't imagine what being a chef means today compared to 25 years ago, being a chef 25 years ago was the help Exactly. Now there's celebrity chefs and you know the culinary explosion in our society and that's wonderful.

Thank God But like to your point I'm very aware of. You know it seems crazy how long ago was this when you start Gregor's 17 years yeah? I mean like it's just actually profound to think about entrepreneurship and food and beverage entrepreneurs rebranding in our society today as like completely the other side of the pillow. I Think it started with fast casual? Yeah, I think that's just literally the the nomen: you're getting away from fast food, where you could start saying things that people used to associate with just Quick Service you know, grabbing a salad, grabbing a a coffee to now it's an elevated experience and they started designated it as fast casual or fine casual whatever it was, but getting away from oh, it's just like another, you know Deli You know McDonald's esque type business so you're in law school? Yeah? I assume there's the great entrepreneurial story like what's the moment that you're like this I'm doing Gregor's I was working my first law job first summer after school they offered me a position and I kept saying to myself I can do this job it was this then kind of reverted to how things were in the past. They would give me a mountain of work in their eyes I would complete it in two hours and then I would go back and be like what else do I have to do I just it felt very easy to me what the tasks they were giving me to complete.

so I felt like I could do that job I could make money doing it I really had no passion for it the more I was in it I was like this just feels like work and it wasn't something I enjoyed to do I kept saying you know my whole life seeing my father run his own businesses I guess there was this thing in the back of my mind that maybe one day I would open my own business I didn't know what it was so I stopped and said you know I've got all this experience I've been doing this thing my whole life but I've always been working at my father's locations thinking I'm helping my dad not could this be something I actually want to do as a career So it was the moment of talking to my father saying like you know I don't think I want to practice law he had one of his locations. It was a sandwich shop literally across the street from my law school. So I was a customer my first year he needed help he needed a manager said would you let me run the store He thought it was a little odd request. um but first he's like if this is what you really want to do sure So my grades did suffer second year when I did that but the business picked up quite a bit under my you know leadership tutelage.

I realized I was good at it mainly because I've been doing it my whole life. sort of that. Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours I realized I literally from shaving carrots when I was five making deliveries when I was seven watching all things my dad did. it's so crazy.

We were literally just downstairs getting some coffees while the team here was prepping upstairs. I Can't go into an establishment like this and not pay attention to POs to how fast is the register moving. Think about the thing you know the most and think about how you look at it versus people that know nothing about it for I'll give you an example: somewhere in my mid 20s late 20s I was like wait a minute look at all these people at this restaurant the way they're drinking wine, they're drinking like water. they're not even thinking I would take like an 8 minute like thought process of like smelling it, tasting it.

it was like consumed me or like when I watch the Jets and like I watch casual like you just when you know something. so much better than the rest. So for me, retail and restaurants and things of that nature I don't walk in and order a coffee I Walk in and order a Gregory's coffee a jolly Jacko pumpkin spice uh chai latte I Also though, I'm watching the staff trying to figure out why the POS is doing what it's doing. thinking about how clean the store is which is an incredible challenge in New York City was hard enough in New Jersey In the suburbs traffic like watching how people were walking by the street I'm curious if they would like look at the storefront.

noticed like 30 of them looking at their phone was like oh right, like storefront real estate is kind of like outdoor media like 50 years ago. this like the signage in your store converted better than it does now cuz people are looking at the phone. just all these random things that like literally ran through my mind in two seconds. Step first.

yeah I mean it's it. Honestly, as we've expanded sometimes it can be a problem because if I haven't been to a store for a long time, sometimes I may have this anxiety as to what am I going to see because I know I have these sensors that start firing the minute I walk in it's like that's not correct. My father has my father has one store every day. He's really just unhappy on his drive to work which is 45 minutes cuz basically he knows he's going to walk in and see something he doesn't like and he's got one store and he's there every day.

So for you having dozens, there's an appreciation effect cuz my team knows that like I'm I will lift them up. There's things that they're working hard. um some of them are newer at this, some of them are doing it for a while, but even that you can get blinders if you go to the same spot every single day. So when I come in and I give it I give feedback or Point things out that maybe they were missing.

It's all with the mindset of just yeah like we're I'm I'm not here trying to catch them do something wrong delivery. This goes back to cander like I think about kind cander versus not kind cander. Everyone listening knows owner manager who's got a bunch of stores. We've all seen the cliche.

We all are thinking what I'm about to say which is that boss that walks in when she or he's going to look at all 10 stores and just starts yelling and and leads by fear Yeah and I think I don't think I've ever yelled in the 17 years. How about your dad? Was he a little more old school? No, that wasn't his disposition either. he worked as hard or harder than anybody there and he has people who've been working with him for 40 years. They've literally the people that have stayed with him in a food and beverage establishment which is probably the most rare and I always took that which was Tre people with respect.

Let's let's let's bring some value to everybody who's listening and managing. Let's stay on this for a second. What do you think in the 17 years that you've been running this? Actually, let's context it for everybody. Gregory's coffee.

How many locations which which states 36 about to open? number 37? Where in? Daran Connecticut Um, actually we're having our final inspections right now so I do have a little bit in the back of my mind. Hopefully it's going okay up there. Oh trust me. I'm thinking about nine other things while we're doing this.

Go ahead, but we're in. New York uh New Jersey Connecticut and Washington DC uh So 36 today. hopefully 37 by the end of the week. Any plans for any extra States as you little little Rhode Island little Boston a little this this this northeast Mid-Atlantic Corridor certainly is in right in my wheelhouse.

My in-laws are up in Rhode Island so they talk, Ask me all the time. We definitely love to get down into that Virginia market. So yeah, kind of bridging this northeast 95 in the 17 years from location one, which was what 2006 24th in park. First one okay, Ours: Yes, no, no, isn't that what's so funny? Notice what? I just said that was so weird.

Ours: that's amazing. Okay, from that store to the one you're about to open in Connecticut What do you think from day one, because you, like me, had a lot of training as a kid. from day one was your biggest strength that you continue to be great at where you've doubled down or refined. and what do you think was your biggest weakness in hindsight, that you've been able to close the gap on and even above and beyond that, if you want to talk about that one or something else, what is the thing that can that you're still potentially struggling with as a manager of such a conglomerate? So I think my biggest strength from all along was just my passion, my dedication, my unwillingness to let things go.

arai. So I'm just you willed it. Yes. I've W certain things into existence by sheer effort by intestinal fortitude.

Yeah. I Would you know my team would probably tell you I'm you know the Larry Bird I'm the first guy I'm I am in our stores with somebody who works for Vayner Media at our Gr location. Every every morning they open the door. they open the doors I'm there minutes before after they open.

So 6:00 in the morning and then I'm here. you know, 600, 7, 8:00 at night. Whatever it is. I'm usually the one turning off the lights and that's and then weekends too if anybody needs me.

I'm always available. My wife might might have a few things to say about my unfettered availability. My team feels it and they appreciate it. So I think there's a lot of things that I've just been unwilling to let fail.

Um, and my team feels that I think it kind of Might tie into my biggest weakness which is sometimes my inability to let others do do their thing. Give them the room. What is the balance of micromanaging or coming in and being the leader? That's the balance you've been struggling with at times, right? Yeah, I mean and I think a lot of it is. Um, we were small for a long, long time.

I mean we had 18 locations and there was probably three total corporate employees including myself. It's only recently where we've even started to expand in a corporate team and where I've started to have others who are capable of taking on responsibilities. But I think people need to hear this. Who judge like work ethic or judge what you're talking about now.

I think everybody who's listening and hit me up on Twitter Gary Be if you agree with this: if you own a business, it is like a dog. It's like a child. It's your baby. You know.

obviously that resonates with me. I Don't view you as like this crazy guy. What? I view that is I Get it. This is like part of your family when people don't have a business and aren't entrepreneurs.

I'm incredibly empathetic that they don't understand in the same way. I'll make the one that I do think people understand for all the people right now who have a dog who judge or laugh at their friends who don't understand cuz they don't have a dog, what it feels like to be a dog owner and what it feels like and why you cry when the dog passes away or is sick it's a F family member Believe It or Not That is what a business is to a true bread entrepreneur. I Mean it's it's it's. certainly people refer to me as Greg from Gregories I am this business is an extension of me as AO Exactly.

It's hard to get away from it, you know? impressed with that. I'm like actually thinking about rebranding Vayner Media I think Gary B needs to take over for the very very very very lucky black hat I like I look at the logo here and I'm like you know what I think he figured it out so I think you kind of hit it a little bit there but that uh the the allowing or the you know giving others some of the things that again I have another gift in a curses I've done everything here from fix the espresso machines to plge the toilets to speak on that because I talk about this at Bner Media. The reason I'm always calm is I know if every if David our friend Roser starts a coup and takes every employee with him I Have no fear because I know how to do every job. Yes I think a lot of entrepreneurs make that mistake for sure.

Even my father would tell me when we started roasting our own coffee. he's like don't forget, you need to know how to do that too in the event something ever happen because that's his old immigrant mentality too. That's right, you're the last line of defense. Whatever happens.

I mean there's been times where like I had to drive the truck right? like the delivery we couldn't deliver. it's like well am I going to open tomorrow there I Remember a major snowstorm probably like 2011 12 where the city got shut down my store in 44th and 6th it's all hotels on that block. nobody could leave. everything was shut down my store.

We were baking everything out of our store uh 24th in park at the time in the basement there were people that all the hotels couldn't get any food so we baked the the product at 24th in park I put on like snowsuit, carried it like to a Subway got there, carried it through more snow and people were like grabbing food out of my my hands out of the baskets cuz they literally had nothing to eat on that block and I'm like I'm walking in you know carrying as much product as I could and my team was like surprised right that I would do this but I'm like who else is going to do this cuz I I Literally it's hard for me to sit and watch something not happen if I have the ability to make it fixed I told a story for a long time. My most famous Wine Library story is a woman in Bergen County getting a delivery to the wrong place of Beringer white Zendel which is $3 a bottle a $36 case of wine misdelivered. she calls and complains it's in December With bad weather, it's one of the busiest days in the store. I am the disproportionate leading salesperson in the store like every third customer that was going to spend $2 $3,000 on collectible wine came in and says where's Gary is Gary here where's Gary and I knew that I had a moment where I did it for two reasons: One, this lady the I'm sorry the her son called and was really complaining because she was really upset because she needed her baringer white zadel for the holidays she was elderly in her 90s and I knew that it was an opportunity for me to show that customer over everything no matter what kind of customer.

and I took a case of Beringer from the warehouse downstairs, threw it in my car, drove to Bergen County delivered a tour and came back. Missed an hour and a half. lost tens of thousands of dollars in Revenue potential during that time, but it became a story that became connective tissue for my company to speak about. Like exactly what you're saying: if you as a leader are able to fix I think too many leaders would rather blame their team for not working than jumping in and getting dirty and fixing it.

Oh yeah, I mean there's a book that my priest had recommended me at one point and then kind of really struck a tone with me called Extreme ownership I don't know if you've heard of it I can't read for which is why I H the great I mean at the end of the day, the concept that it says is that if if something is within your control like within your four walls or your your sphere of influence and you can't H and if something doesn't go right and you can't honestly say I did everything in my power to make this have worked well, then you should look at yourself and say it's on me, it's not on them So you know I' sort of taken that to heart. where I don't like plasting blame I'm I'm right in the trenches with everybody else. So if I especially when you're the owner, founder, like you are like you hired those people right? Like when I look at my incredible team that I'm looking at right now like these six people like I hired them and if I you know CU even if it's indirectly Sid who runs the team If he's hired one of the individuals here, well I hired him to hire them I will never understand this Obsession of blame When you have full control, what's the easy route, right? I could always just point the finger and say, well, a societal issue I mean I believe that so much of our unhappiness right now is predicated that you want to blame the Mayor of New York You want to blame the president You want to blame a a party, You want to blame social media You want to BL I had a friend who's blame spent the entire 30 minutes blaming social media and the mainstream media and I'm like what about you like like what? what are you consuming I mean we experienced this mid to late kind of coid where there was a I was doing the thing where I was blaming coid on issues we were experiencing. Well oh well, this door might be slow because of Co or that's happening because of Co And then I felt like what am I doing I'm saying like you for you, there's people in the street.

if they're not coming in, they're going somewhere else, they're going somewhere else and it must be something we're doing or not doing So it caused us to kind of look. We made adjustments, tweaked and what was the biggest tweak you made in that scario? I mean our our food, our our food program, our customer service. just how we even how we packed bags to. Like how we made it easy for people to to access things so we had to move things around, rearrange, even, uh, reconfigure our menu to.

you know, there's points where there's just less options available. So people were looking for a one stop. People used to be comfortable bouncing to two three different places. They'll get their coffee from here, sandwich from here, muffin from there.

Now it's like I don't have the time nor do I have the interest in going. So like, how can we update what we did to make it more appealing to what people today are looking for? Even like we're talking about delivery right? Like we didn't we weren't very good at delivery because we didn't do very much of it. We weren't packing them very well. They would show up and product would spill just cuz it wasn't It wasn't your core competency.

We would maybe get one or two deliveries a day pre-o Now it's like dozens a day per store, so we had to get better at it. You know now those scores have gotten significantly better. Let's talk about collaborations since we have one together with be friends and this. Jolly Jacko Pumpkin Spice Chai Latte Delicious! Go get one! Oh yeah I'm I'm pretty like pumped with the feedback of the you know everyone thinks their baby is the best looking.

so I'm not going to judge on how delicious this is I'm just reading Twitter and you and the team have done a great job. Clearly people like Twitter or is it still Twitter I just call it Twitter forever I'm old school I still say tweets but I'm like what do you say? am I doing an X am I I'm Xing something out I don't know I I'm really lost. That has how to describe this. Yeah, I'm just very comfortable calling a Twitter but I'll change if the world wants it I'm consumer Centric How do you think about collaborations? When was your first collaboration? If you can recall, why do collaborations? How should people that are listening right now that may have a business that is in the kind of demo that is possible to do collaborations even if they have one store or one product I think collabs are very interesting and I I wonder how you think about it and what's the history of collabs? So to me collaborations have to make sense.

You have to have people are working with somebody that is of like mine where why this made so much sense to me. just for everything you stand for aligns very closely with what we stand for. and there's a lot of times like oh, this is a great business opportunity right? This person has reach but it's kind of like how we create a blend like you might wine I'm sure is very similar when you're talking about how do you, what are you looking for the end product right? So when we're talking about coffee I Want rich flavor, unique flavors, crisp, clean Balan sweetness. It's hard sometimes to find one single coffee that can give me everything I want It's almost impossible.

The best wines in the world World Always blend multiple grapes almost always. most people don't know that and same with coffee. I mean maybe because we out and out call them Blends I Want this my house blend, my dark roast blend. but it's like how can I find individual components that when you put them together give me the end result that I'm looking for.

So similarly with the collaboration, it's like how can I find Partners or people or whatever it is that can help us become a better version of ourselves or expand our reach or to connect with people. that or Del like your customers right? exactly. There's certain people that maybe they love V friends they're ingesting VOR Media or you or your content and maybe they were aware of Gregor's maybe not somebody somebody drove from South Carolina to be one of your DC locations. That's great news.

that's cool stuff right? Like you just those things add up I mean of course and it's just like but I'm not Again, it's not just about like the business or the dollars. it's like how do you do things that make sense in do dollars? you would go for the for the entity whether that's someone like Taylor Swift or like a media outlet that can just drive the most business when it doesn't fit the consumer can smell it. I'm kind of I mean I like fashion too I've been doing I've been in like magazines whatever just because handsome like you're a model or I have friends that work in that business so they like to tap me when they need need need somebody to do interesting whatever from time to time interesting modeling I modeling so it's like I've been in like GQ for like as like guys of New York and how they dress and stuff like that so it's yeah, but there's been times I've been approached by a brand to do you know either an ambassadorship or a campaign and if that brand is something I would never actually wear or I just don't like I'm like there's like the money I'm like yeah, they want to pay me or they're going to do this. It's transactional, but I'm like it just doesn't feel right because it's also like what was the first collab you did at Gregor's do you remember trying to think or at least one of the early ones that you can remember and I mean that we partnered with people, influencers, influencers, like did anything surprise you early on when the influencer thing was just starting to happen where you're like holy crap I Can't believe that person drove so much or any or anything interest.

To be honest, there wasn't any collab that changed us materially, but I think Also, we weren't do we haven't been doing it right. This is different because there's like a a prolonged period. There's a tale, there's a lot of work that's going into it, and this is honestly a learning experience for me too because we've done these one-offs uh, or single events and there's no tail to it, so you might see a single pop on one day people are driving people in, but then there's not a continued effect where I'm seeing a lasting right. you might get some new discovery.

somebody might have realized there's a location, but it's micro whereas this this podcast what we just did with Good Day New York that kind of like the way we're doing the content like we worked with Cores which is a A Greek facial care company. that's cool I'm Greek yeah I get it, they connected so we're like oh we want to do something So they we did this huge activation on one day they had samples and product at all the stores and giveaways and this kind of stuff and that day we saw a lot of attention but then the next day it was like right back to right back right? So we've learned that the one day one off might not be the exact or or we did with some of these big social influencers around events. Um and we definitely Drive traffic. but if you're not doing a prolonged continuous effort what I like about this I always think about collabs for me for everyone who's listening I'm like I need them to feel like that was the best decision they made.

What I liked about this was as you recall, one of my requests is like hey I really wanted to be a new drink like just slapping my my Jolly jacket on exactly it doesn't feel authentic in Reverse What? I was excited about even when we were talking the first time. and definitely now that I'm seeing the response I'm like oh sure we may decide to keep doing this every season, but even if we don't CU we don't want to or you don't cuz you don't want to, it's not right. You now have a formula that you may want to use as just your and to me like I'm like that would be worth it for them for everyone who's listening. basically every collab I do I basically make pretend I'm fully the other person and what would I say yes to I'm Blown Away the word collab Collaboration Please go Google it because what? I see from a lot of you when you try to do a collaboration is you try to win the deal.

It's what about me? Yeah I'm like what are you doing like go go search It Go understand the word and that was a big part of me want I really wanted it because I wanted it to be unique but I also knew in the back of my mind well if they crush it and I know they do a good job over there they may that just might become a thing they sell. Definitely there's things like that where we've tested it. We have a few menu items that were seasonal or tried something out and they just don't leave the menu cuz they're really great and again something like this marrying two products our our chai and our our pumpkin spice that people love both on their own so put them together and yeah it's working really well. I'm pumped about that.

talk to me about and you may have no answer for this. But since we are talking about, you know for everybody who's listening what what's really developing in V Friends Land is collectibility. This podcast is coming out just as ComicCon is probably either happening or is happening at the end of this week into the weekend. One thing that's been blew me away with Be Friends is collectible pins.

If every everybody right now like in parallel to listening to this goes to eBay and types in Be Friends pins, completed items, sold. you'll be blown away like just wild because I didn't grow up collecting pins though I knew Olympic pins and Disney pins were a thing. obviously something I grew up very much collecting trading cards. The vriends trading cards thing is going bananas right now.

Also go to eBay and look that up. Oh son's coming on screen here. Here we go. Nice little pin.

oh there it is. This is nice. like this, the comic. this is pretty so anyway how about for you as a kid? GRE did you collect Comics Magic the Gathering Pokemon sports cards, sneakers, anything or you were a non- collector.

So I collected sports cards and I was I mean we didn't talk about it earlier, but I definitely played every sport out there. Soccer, basketball, um, track, basball. probably best at soccer I played that my whole life I probably I mean I probably enjoyed that the most. but maybe my most success was throwing javelin in high schol School Oddly enough, I transitioned from running uh, doing the mile to yeah launching a spear.

It just seemed like really cool. Uh, when I was in freshman when they they said they line everybody up like all everybody's going to run a Sprint long distance, start throwing some stuff, jumping and see what you're good at and they gave me. They gave me a football as like a and I I launched it like 15 yards farther than the starting quarterback of the he the high school team at the time. So like, all right this guy, you should throw Javelin and like got into it I Love it.

But the the The: the quarterback wound up quitting the team because he couldn't bear the fact that Varsity quarterback couldn't throw it as far as this 9-year-old 140b freshman. So anyway that was I was like hold on Gregory I'm not letting this go. You're telling me your freshman year as a ninth grader, you threw the football further than a starting quarterback and that forced him to quit. Yeah, you might need to write a book about this so you colle sports cards to the stay.

A huge Sports guy. love it. Definitely was bit by the sneaker bug in college so my father immigrant could never, uh, justify paying money for sneakers. so I had one pair or whatever.

Reasonable. I was loved Jordan sneakers growing up but I never owned a pair. So the minute I got to college I went on eBay whatever money that might have been allocated for food I portioned some out to make sure I could buy a pair of Jordan 3s and from there it was problem for a while. Um, and I still have a few of those from that are still wearable.

Uh, don't wear them as frequently. but uh, started a journey of being interested in in that and then Clos which led to you know, being connected with some of the fashion community and stuff like that. But today I don't collect as many things I would say. but I wish I could but I iire well let's talk about that for a second.

This is something I'm very passionate about. You answered it like most people will I wish I could. but I think you know this like I believe and I talk about this in marketing underpriced attention. For me, it's more exciting to find some sort of ad on Pinterest interest right now that nobody sees than buying a Super Bowl ad.

And that's how I think about collecting. Of course, people collect different ways and different budgets. But let's talk about art. especially Contemporary Art Right now, there are three contemporary artists in Manhattan who she and he are making art.

Nobody gives a It is super inexpensive, hundreds of dollars, maybe a thousand or so and literally they are destined to be wildly collected, heavily collected over the next two or three decades. And I think for anybody with sports cards, Nfts, pins, comic books like there's always a moment in every genre sneakers right now that people are not like you think you know what's going to be collected but you don't always know and so I encourage you to consider that it's not I'll H you for the right places to look for sure to find some of these things cuz I've done it too. There's like you know Raph Simmons is a designer and there's some of his pieces are extremely collectible and I purchased a sweater on Gry Alts.com at one point. um I paid what at the time I thought was we too much for it but I was like it's worth it cuz it was a collector's piece and I literally tripled my money on a sweater.

So this is clearly your fashion love like collecting clothes and Handbags and all that stuff has become very very very big. like is that something that you might start doing I Do I mean I do I I but you wear it right I wear it. I mean I have things in my closet for 10, 15, 20 years that I still wear and some of them are worth a lot of money just because of time and things have changed or like. Tom Brown is a designer that people love I have stuff from like 2007 or eight when he was still very early in what he was doing, then those pieces are are important to other people.

Yeah, super cool. What did we not touch on? Anything You want to talk about the formula? Anything you want to talk about the locations, anything about Gregor's or anything else for the general entrepreneurs and operators that are listening. Yeah I mean I think when I think about starting Gregor's even running it today or when people ask me like what made you want to start this or how do you still stay passionate about it I think it's a making sure what you're doing, you love and you you're not again doing it just to chase dollars because anytime you're just trying to make money doing something, it's going to be very hard to be successful in it. It's the biggest mistake, Don't you agree? Yeah, it's the thing I put out the most about on content because it's like if you're passionate and you love something like I said earlier, you're going to you're going to make sure it does well.

It's not a guarantee, but your much higher likelihood of success you genuinely puts because I might extra $50 today or it's I know the Buss it I want to give it what it needs. You know having something that you care about, you're passionate about truly understanding your position and staying true to that like you know We say our our tagline is see Coffee differently. You know what does that mean to me? It's like I don't want to do things just like everybody else does when people come to Gregories or we call them regulars like our our regulars. Um, it's like what do they appreciate? It's like that old New York Sensibility that I had running my father's places was it had to be delicious.

You had to get it quick. had to Great Customer service. How to be hot and the place had to be clean. If you could do all those things at the same time, you had something for me in coffee that was very hard to find.

It's a lot of places make great cup of coffee. A lot of places can move quickly. not everybody can do them both at the same time while also delivering it with great customer service. All those things you mentioned, you look at the POS how quickly are people moving? All those things add up to the overall experience which is again what I think about all the time and I walk into my stores it's like I want to make sure I'm seeing all those pieces adding up together to see coffee differently like every we want to do every single day.

So yeah, it's the passion, the drive, the care, the love, and then at the end of the day when it affords me to be able to like collab with someone like you and you're great team and great products. Uh people driving uh long time to get some collectible pieces and scan this and see some Easter egg videos and whatnot. It's so fun and just see how how much things can develop over time. Uh I Never would have thought 16 17 years ago I'd be talking about Gregories and you know scanning QR codes and opening up your hopefully as we're sitting here your 37th 37 getting improved.

just getting the one going was like all I cared about that at the time and then then it's like well well maybe we could do more and then it's like well maybe this can go further and I was like well why am I still in New York we could try this in DC this was 2017 and then it just goes from there. Where can people find more information about Gregor's So all of our handles are at Gregor's coffee. uh G R Y s no apostrophe coffee uh um Gregor Coffee.com You can find us you guys app it up. Do you have an app? We do have an app.

Can order ahead? Uh order delivery. Do you become a regular on that app the minute you sign up? You're regular. You're part of us, part of your joining the fam. So yeah you can find us on on socials on the web.

Hit our app up. If you're in the city you know we have. You know all of our products. We make ourselves like I said earlier like on the drive to give everybody context on a drive from Good Day New York We drove together and I was telling telling him I wanted to pay him a compliment when we moved that Vayer Media office I was eating an obnoxious amount of soft carbs at this point in my life which means like baked goods and I was blown away by the presentation and just really the softness AKA freshness of the products and the baking program the bakery program at Gregor's if you're in the tri-state area or these states that the incredible establishment is operating I Highly recommend if you're a muffin or croissant or C really good.

It's like for better wor. We take it on ourselves to be as vertically integrated as possible. Control the supply chain, control quality. Everything we do we make ourselves.

so like in this drink. you have the pumpkin spice we make from scratch with pumpkin puree. real products, real ingredients. the chai we Brew ourselves I don't milk the oats I guess maybe that's the one thing I depend on other people to do with the oat milk.

but Dustin milk soaks a lot. Okay, yeah, so if anybody has got a great soaked oat milk that they think could work for me, we'll work on it. But otherwise we're trying to make everything ourselves and we're really proud of everything you do and we're really excited to be part proud of you brother. I Really wanted people to get to know your story I Hope you were inspired I hope you took away one to three to four nuggets of insight affirmation I think you could tell Now makes sense to me why Gregory from afar knew this could be a good collaboration because he saw what I was talking about and we were doing I guess you could also find me I mean at Gregory's zotus on my handles I I should probably talk about myself sometimes too.

So connected to the brand I'm like yeah yeah Gregory's copy Gregory's I'm just at Gregory's motus so spell that like a yeah Gregory I he pretty straightforward but we go g r e g O r y and then last name Zam Photus z m f O t i s so um you never thought about calling it Zam photus like Gregory was a better play. One of my cousins took just the Zam photus handle so yeah I let him have it uh my father I'm Greg my father's George he took gam Photus so I'm like you know even though I was early on all these things I just I had other weird and like coffee X Clothing whatever. now they're all just Gregory Zam photos so X Twitter whatever you call it uh Instagram Instagram do we get some clothing content on? Maybe. yeah there's there's some.

Probably a bunch of kids stuff. Good for good for you. Thanks for being on. Bayer Nation Thank you please? Uh, this goes through the month of October right? Yes sir! Uh, in the month of October get your ass to New York New Jersey Connecticut or DC find a Gregor's and Order loudly and proudly a jolly Jacko Pumpkin spice Chai latte cold or hot let us know on Twitter uh GBE or befriends what you thought of it.

Take a photo I'm sharing a bunch of those. Get some followers out of this. Uh, hope you have a great day. Thanks for listening.

Thank you Good stuff my man. Thank you! Nice great.