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Hustle & Heat Podcast Ep. 37 | G Boys Cheesesteaks
On Episode 37 of the Hustle & Heat Podcast, we sit down with the crew behind G Boys Cheesesteaks to talk business, food, entrepreneurship, and the journey behind building their brand.
We get into what it takes to operate a food business, the challenges that come with entrepreneurship, lessons learned along the way, and what’s next for G Boys Cheesesteaks.
If you enjoy hearing the stories behind local businesses and the people putting in the work to build something of their own, this episode is for you.
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Automatic transcript from Buzzsprout. It may contain errors.
0:00 What’s up, guys, and welcome back to another episode of Hustle and Heat Podcast. My name is George, your host, and we are on episode 37. Episode 37 is very special. If you guys have been on social media lately, you would have noticed a place that has been popping off brand new in the Venice area, right off of Jacaranda. They sell Phillies or from Philly themselves. Without further ado, I’d like to welcome John and Ken from the G Boys. Guys, welcome to a podcast. Thank you for coming. Tell us a little bit about yourselves, what you do, and why you do it.
0:33 Well, I both grew up in South Philly. Born and raised there. I ran a family business for 40 years. Business was 90 years old. I retired from that three years ago, right after COVID. Was doing some real estate stuff. I always had my real estate license. Came to visit my brother last May. He says, You want to do another shop? And that’s why we’re here. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
0:58 Yeah, so I’m I’m actually a physician by training, uh, internal medicine. I work for uh Archwell Health right now as the market medical director. But I always loved to cook. If I wasn’t a physician, I think I would have been a chef. I would have gone to culinary school. And um I really got interested in cooking and food when I met my wife and ate at my wife’s house. My mother-in-law was a great cook. My wife is a great cook. Um, that’s what inspired a lot of this menu. A lot of the recipes for the sauces and how we do things is is from her. Uh and you know, I came down here three years ago, went to a restaurant on Venice Avenue, and a couple of the waiters were from like Northeast Philly, and I said, Where can you get a good cheesesteak? They said, You can’t get a good cheesesteak around here. And then, you know, being entrepreneurial, as we talked about earlier, but we should open up a cheesesteak, please. Put it on the back burner, but then when he was doing nothing retired, I’m like, hey, you know, we should we should think about really doing this, and then lo and behold, you know, I couldn’t do it alone, he couldn’t do it alone, but together we could do it. So that’s good. Teamwork’s always better. Yeah, yeah, and that’s that’s our motto, you know. You see it up there, two brothers, one vision, one great sandwich. So that’s awesome. I love it. That’s where that’s what we strive for, you know.
2:16 That’s good, and you guys picked a great location. It’s beautiful in here. You guys did a good job building this place out. So um, I can see why you guys have long lines. And if you guys haven’t seen the pictures and stuff, these guys are packed all the time, so that’s awesome. Um, so they’re your recipes. You guys work together. You used to be a butcher, right?
2:36 Yeah, I was a butcher for 40 years.
2:38 So everyone raves about the chicken cutlets here. Tell us a little bit about that.
2:42 Hand cut them every morning.
2:44 Every morning.
2:44 Every morning I’m in here at seven, starting to hand cut them. Then we get them all set, get them breaded, ready to go for the day.
2:52 So you you bread them for the day? Yeah. You don’t you don’t bread and then freeze?
2:56 Nope, nothing’s frozen.
2:57 Everything’s always fresh every morning. Yeah, that’s what we really wanted. We wanted fresh, just like home. Like all this stuff is things we made at home and how we would make things at home. Um, and then the cutlets, certainly the same way, right? We could have bought frozen cutlets from a supplier and just threw them in the fryer and served it, but that’s doing the disservice. That’s not real Philadelphia. And that’s what we really wanted to bring, like a taste of Philadelphia that we grew up with here. So John, you know, is excellent with a knife. He cuts a ton of cutlets, he cuts the chicken for our chicken cheese steaks. We have the breading, right? It’s again my wife’s kind of breading recipe, so it adds extra flavor to it. It’s just not out of a can and bread it. Like I said, everything has a family spin to it, what we grew up eating, and I think that really sets us apart. Yeah, you taste our cutlets, and they’re just that’s awesome. I can’t wait to taste them. Yeah, and John does a great job. You know, it’s it’s it’s a lot of physical work, you know, cutting the cutlets, trying to get them the right uh thickness. You know, we want them thin, we try to pound them a little bit.
3:57 That’s awesome. So tell us about your journey from starting building out this place to now. What has been the hardest thing to do, what has been the easiest thing to do, what have you enjoyed the most?
4:08 Well, it took us about nine months. It took us about nine months to find a location. I mean, we we we we checked out a lot of places and just couldn’t find the right location. This one opened up. Um I guess it was like February we saw it. Yeah. And we actually closed on it in March. It was originally uh hibachi sushi place that was selling. And we came in here, took over their lease, redid the whole kitchen, opened everything up, redid the whole inside to make it look like uh South Philadelphia row home. That’s why you see the bricks on the wall. So it’s kind of like that South Philadelphia style type of place. So, you know, that’s what we wanted.
4:54 Yeah, we were originally looking for like a freestanding building, and we had a couple places that we looked at and it kind of fell through at the last minute. We weren’t really thinking about being in sort of a strip-wall location because we just wanted freestanding with an order window takeout window. But when we saw this place, you know, we we figured we could make it a combination of that. So, like John said, this was all enclosed, but we opened up all the walls here so you could see the guys cooking. I think that’s part of the uh the atmosphere. You hear the the the spatula is banging on the grill. That’s the best part, right? Yeah, it’s this constant ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. So and and actually, you know, we’re busy, we have the stools over there, people sit there, they love to watch what’s going on in the kitchen. That’s the best part. Yeah, yeah. So it was a journey, and you know, coming here, and then and you think you know it all like this is our first restaurant business, right? We weren’t in the restaurant business, we were in different businesses, and you think everything is so simple, but you learn a lot along the way. We made a couple made a couple missteps, we we corrected quickly, but um well has been your biggest lesson.
6:00 Well, the thing was um at first we were like portioning steaks out already, pre-portioned. Even though it was fresh, we’re pre-portioned them. Trying to cook them to order. But with the volume we had, we had to go more of um I won’t say, like a Philly cheese steak shop in the city. Everything’s put together, thrown on a grill, we’re cooking it constantly. We added a second grill to make our time get expedited where our sandwiches are now coming out between five and eight minutes. Before when you’re trying to cook it to order, you know, it could take a half hour, 45 minutes.
6:36 You know, so yeah, so we got ahead of that. We learned that pretty quickly. Um you know, that the volume that we didn’t expect. We were talking about selling like 50 sandwiches a day at the beginning.
6:47 And we’ve How many are you at right now?
6:50 So we usually average between 350 to 450 a day. Yeah. Uh that’s when we first opened, we were just, you know, backlogged. As hard as we worked, we couldn’t we we couldn’t meet the volume. Um, but then we quickly, you know, evaluated at the end of the night, talking about how can we make this better, right? So we knew we needed another grill. We had a three-foot grill where that guy always is doing is cooking, cooking, cooking, cooking the meat for us, transferring it over to other grill, and they portion it into steak. So it’s like a seamless process. So then we could really get the orders out quickly. So that was probably the the most important lesson. How do we meet the demand of the community without you know kind of putting them off where they I don’t want to go there, I gotta wait 45 minutes type of thing.
7:41 Now they come here, yeah, and it’s probably but people have to understand in the beginning that there’s always growing pains. Yeah, and as consumers, they have to. They’re very patient.
7:50 Like we looked at we looked at some of so I’m not on really on social media, I don’t have a Facebook, although we have a Facebook account, but my daughter does a lot of the social media for us, puts the videos up, and and people would say, you know, be patient, they’re gonna they’re gonna figure it out. Yeah. Meaning, like no one, no one complained about the quality of our food. They said it was awesome. No, I hear it’s excellent. It’s excellent, authentic Philly, fantastic, but the weight was the biggest issue. So we knew we had needed to get that down. So we went from 45 minutes to an hour to five to 18 minutes now. That’s good. So uh we’re we’re we’re really you know hitting our stride. And you know, trying to find people who who want to do it your way and and not what they’ve done in the past. You know, we’ve we’ve gone through different people in the back on the grill. Now we have a great team on the grill. Yeah, it’s exactly and we figured that was gonna be you know some bumps in the road because you’re gonna go through people that just don’t fit, you know, don’t fit, don’t see the vision, don’t want to get the colour.
8:49 Ego’s a big thing in the kitchen. Yeah. So it’s hard to fight that sometimes. Yeah, absolutely.
8:55 I mean, like the cutlet sandwiches take a little longer because we cook them to order. So they, you know, could take about 15 minutes to make. Try the cutlet, get it out, you know, prepare the sandwich. Where the steaks, you know, we get an act of it.
9:08 Yeah, in and out.
9:09 Yeah. The sandwich, the cutlets is funny. The cutlets is like it’s almost like a work of art, right? They they they have a vision, or right? Alana, yeah, my daughter Alana has this vision of the way it should look, right? And there’s a process of, you know, you put this first, this second, and but it has to be, you know, artistic. So when you see our sandwich, you’ll see it really everything just looks beautiful. That’s not like thrown together in here, eat it. Yeah. No, that’s that slows us down a little bit, but I think the people, once they unwrap it and eat it, and you know, every bite you get a little taste of everything. So we want everything to be perfect in the sandwich. Yeah.
9:47 And everything we make in-house, our sauces, marinara, vodka sauce.
9:51 Even the bread, huh? Yeah, bread and you guys put recipes on the bread too, huh?
9:55 Fresh gets finished off.
9:56 I love that.
9:57 I love that every day. Yeah. And you know, that’s so, you know, we we we do offer a non-seeded option. We don’t have it very often, but if any of our sandwiches or steaks, we can make into a wrap.
10:12 Yeah.
10:12 So if people don’t want the seeds on the roll, they could just are the best part.
10:16 Yeah, yeah.
10:16 I I me personally, I agree. Yeah. I think some people with chewing and you know, they may not want it, but we at least offer them that option. 100%. And gluten-free too. We have gluten-free wraps as our option.
10:30 So what else do you offer here?
10:32 So we offer yeah. I mean, you know, besides the steaks, we got chicken cheese steak. So it’s, you know, basically instead of some people don’t want ribeye beef, they want chicken because it’s healthier, yeah, per se. I don’t know. He’s the doctor, I don’t know.
10:50 I’m a steak eater, so I love the ribeye, right? But I’ve had the chicken cheese steaks and they’re great too. But we offer like kids, kids’ choices. So we have a kid’s grilled cheese, yeah, kids’ chicken tenders, uh, kids’ hot dog. We have our side plant, typical sides, fries, cheese fries, onion rings. We we we want to bring housemate chips. We’re just trying to figure out uh the physical plant part of it. How can we make them with all the other things we’re making at this point? So you can see it’s kind of taped off on the phone. Yeah, I see that. I was gonna ask you a lot of. A lot of people ask about that. So we did make it in our test before we opened, and they came out really good. Um, but with all the other volume we’re doing, we won’t be able to handle that volume. So we’re trying to we’re trying to find a solution for that. So we’re gonna we’re gonna come up with a solution for that.
11:39 You gotta be ready for season, man.
11:41 Yeah, so we are. So, like we said, we we put an extra grill, we have an extra freezer so we could handle more product, right? Because we get our meat delivered twice a week, so we need to keep volume. So we added the extra freezer. That’s good. Um, so we’re we’re we’re figuring out where that we talk about season every day. We were just here last night when we’re closed, me and John just going over the previous week, what we could do better, what we’re gonna do for season. One thing coming. Um so just to go back, what else do we offer? Sandwich of the month. Okay. This this sandwich of the month is the C VR wrap, crispy bacon ranch, crispy chicken, bacon ranch wrap. That’s been a big seller. That’s in the wrap, comes with fries. Um next month, we’re going with the butcher man. The butcher man here at the pork store. So it’s the classic Philly.
12:32 Tell them what it is. Yeah, it’ll be a roast pork sandwich. Okay. We’ll cook that in-house. It’ll be from the fresh ham, which is the leg of the pork. We’ll season it up with the garlic, rosemary, black pepper, bake it in the oven here, cool it down, slice it. It’ll be served with uh broccoli rob and ported chop prevalon right on the roll. Nice, classic Philly. That’s a class, that’s what’s I’m gonna come back and try that. Classic Philly sandwiches.
12:55 Our broccoli rob’s really good. Again, we make it in-house. Yeah. Um, so it’s really good.
13:00 What kind of cheese do you guys use?
13:02 A lot, a lot of different ones. Really? Um the the most classic, classic one now, like back in the 70s, 80s, it was all whiz, cheese whiz. If you went to a Philly, it was whiz with.
13:13 Yeah.
13:14 Meaning cheese whiz with onions or whiz without. Cheese whiz without onions. That’s how you would order. But now the movement has gone to more uh Cooper Sharp, which is a creamy American. So you’ll taste it. We’ll make a couple steaks for you. That really just melts into the steak, so it’s all just integrated really good. We offer American cheese, provolone cheese, whiz.
13:36 Um I mean, some people we have French mozzarella that we use on the cutlet sandwiches. Some people want the fresh one. So what we do with that is we have it in the roll, and then the steak goes on top and it melts it. So it’s kind of like like they do in Philly. A lot of, you know, some of the uh steak shops in Philly don’t melt the cheese in with the steak. So they put in the roll, put the hot steak on top, and it melts. We’re here, we chop and mix it together so it gives that creamy feeling. And that’s what you’re seeing more and more in Philly with the steak shops in Philly. They’re doing more of a chopped, melting the cheese inside, folding it in, putting it in a roll. Call it nice.
14:16 To me, that’s the best the Cooper Sharp is the best.
14:18 Yeah, I just recently got introduced to it. I like it a lot.
14:21 Yeah, it’s been around for a while, but now everybody wants it.
14:24 Yeah, I guess it’s a big jersey thing too. Yeah. Cooper Sharp. Yeah, it’s yeah. So tell me something. Every Philly place I see, they take an hour break. What is that like a Philly thing?
14:35 You know, so we no. Actually not. I mean, they they pretty much go. Um we were forced to take an hour break. When we opened originally, we were open from 11 to 8. Okay. And we found that we were running out of product every day, midday. We had to John had to run in the back and start recutting cutlets. We had to start re-breading cutlets.
14:59 So you take the hour and a half to re-reprep.
15:02 So now, yeah, so that that’s why we we decided to close from 3 to 4.30. Originally. Originally, so now uh it hasn’t been advertised yet, but we’re staying open from three to four. Still a volume of people walking in because they don’t know the hours. But from four to four thirty, it’s a hard lock. This way we make sure everything is ready to go for night because there’s a big push at you know dinner time next time. No, 100%.
15:25 Yeah, 100%. I’m I’m kind of glad I don’t live too close to this place. I’d probably be here all the time. We’ve had some I’m a Philly guy everywhere I go. Yeah, if I don’t know what to eat, I’m ordering a Philly. Yeah, yeah.
15:36 We’ve had some people, they’ve been here probably 20 times, 30 times. I mean, they come in three or four times a week, and we love it. I mean, it’s great support. I mean, we’re yeah, the community’s been great.
15:46 Community’s been great.
15:48 They’ve been coming from Naples, um, Fort Myers, Orlando. Oh, I bet. The villages, Tampa. I bet. Um, a couple guys from London were in here. The Uber told them to come here to try something. We had Germany, we just had uh Wales in here from Scotland the other day. They they come in and try it. They’ve never had a cheesesteak before and they love it, you know. Really? Yeah, yeah. So it’s like uh a new thing for them. So it’s exciting. You know, it’s funny to see it’s funny to see their reaction, right? They never had it, you give it to them, you kind of you’re we’re back there working, but you look over and you watch it, and you’re talking to a friend, and you know, their eyes give her big, oh, this is really good, you know, it makes you feel good, you know.
16:27 Yeah, like last week there must have been 15, 20 people from Philly came in, and they tell us they’re from Philly, where they’re from, we talked, you know, same neighborhoods, things like that. So it’s good to see that. Yeah, you know, I actually had a friend of mine, I didn’t even know it, he was in Orlando, visiting another friend of his, and they actually drove over here. Oh wow, surprised you? Yeah, surprises, and had a few sandwiches, and I, you know, I was I looked up and I saw him. I was like, hey Joe, what are you doing here? Because we were in Orlando, we had to come and see you. So yeah, that was cool.
16:59 Hey Rich. That was cool. Um Rich, you want to make a couple SIGs? You want to make a couple signatures for us? Signatures, you got two? Two, yeah. Thank you.
17:11 So that’s awesome. It’s always good getting surprised by friends and stuff. Seeing people come over from all over the place. That’s that I bet that feels really good. Yeah. Um, how many hours you guys put in this place? You guys work all day. I know you work at night, you said.
17:25 John, I mean, John’s here all all the time, right? Because I have the other gig I’m doing. Um, so he’s he’s here from anywhere from 6 to 8 in the morning uh till 8.30 at night. I come in at 5 till 8.30. I’m here all days on the weekends. Um we’re both here, but we feel like we have the team in place, we have our processes in place, things are running smoothly, that we’re gonna start splitting time, right? He’s gonna be here. I come in at 5, he goes home, I’ll just run the rest of the day. He’ll have a weekend off, I’ll have a weekend off. Yeah, one of us will always be here. Yeah, so we’ll yeah, we feel like we want to be here. I enjoy it, right? I bet you do.
18:08 It’s a great, it’s a great feeling, right?
18:09 And and give him the orders. I always ask everybody where are you from? How’d you find us, right? It’s great to talk to people, you make those connections. So many people come and say, Thanks for opening this up, thanks for opening this up. Yeah, which was surprising to me. They’re like, Yeah, thank you for being here. This is great. You know, I love coming here.
18:24 People love food, man. Love this. Yeah, food is love food. Yeah, yeah, food is love.
18:28 So you know, people say to me, you know, you’re doing 14 hours a day. I used to do 14 hours a day. That was hard work. This is not hard work. Yeah.
18:37 Do you ever miss the butcher shop?
18:39 I missed it. That’s why I got into this. Yeah, I miss seeing the people, you know, things like that. Um is it still open back home until the reason why it’s not is because when I had the butcher shop, we only dealt with paper wrapped meat, meaning that I dealt with the slaughterhouse, was killed the day before. It was strictly a pork store. That’s what it was. And once COVID came, now you know, slaughterhouses changed their schedule, stuff like that. They said no more paper wrapped meat, it was gonna be Craovac. Well, Craovac could have been a week ago, was killed. You know what I mean? So it was starting to change the quality of the product. And I said to my wife, I said, you know what, it’s time to go. Once I feel bad, can’t do this, it’s gonna ruin the reputation in the store. So you closed the city. That’s why I closed it and sold the building. Wow. That was it.
19:27 How big of a place was it?
19:28 Uh I mean, you know, we it was it was a corner store in Philadelphia. I mean, we were we were known for our pork products, it was strictly a pork store. Couldn’t always stop each other. It was around for 90 years. You know what I mean? And you know, yeah, you felt bad, but the quality that we were used to and not being able to keep that up, it was just time to go. Yeah, every day.
19:50 I respect that. So it’s not quality over over fried. Okay, that’s it.
19:55 Yeah, and that’s that’s good. You know, a couple times we did sell out on a Sunday, and the reason we did sell out was because we didn’t get our meat delivery from up north because that’s where our meat comes from. Yeah, it comes from uh outside of Philly, the rip eye. And they shorted us on it, and I said we’re not gonna you know substitute something in that’s not the same quality.
20:17 Talking about this, just yeah, just to say your meat all the way from yeah, it comes to comes to from Philly.
20:22 Wow. So they delivered down here twice a week. So the one week they shorted us on our order. We sold out Sunday, what, three o’clock? Like three o’clock. Yeah, we were we were done by three. We were done by three. And you know, you know, you see all the stuff on social media happen to go out and you don’t have enough product, yada yada. It wasn’t that we didn’t have enough product, I wasn’t going to substitute something that wasn’t the same quality just to make a sandwich.
20:48 So talk to us about this meat. What’s so special about it?
20:51 Well, it’s sliced ribeye. It’s not it’s it’s strictly ribeye sliced. It’s not that frozen marinated put together, looks like a brick that they throw in a grill and chop it up. This is ribeye steak that’s sliced, meat stack they call it. So it’s all slices, and we throw it on the grill and then chop it.
21:12 Yeah, we we you know, we sourced a couple different ones and we did taste tests, we tasted ourselves, we cooked ourselves, me and John, before we hired any staff, we were cooking on the grill. What do we want to do? What do we want to taste like? You know, how much cheese do we want on the steak? We went through meticulous every sandwich, like we want five slices of Cooper Sharp with this much meat. That’s that’s the sweet spot, right? And that’s what everyone knows on the grill. How many slices of Provolone, how many slices of American or Cooper Sharp. So the quality, the consistency should be there. But it’s all the consistency that we decided on, right? That we want that we feel authentic. So the Ribeye, we have a couple different brands, um, but yeah, the one we settled on was the best tasting brand. I I don’t know what makes it so different, but it’s just like you. You know, somebody makes uh a dish of uh macaroni and clams, somebody makes it, and one’s better than the other, right? Yeah, 100%. And you know, it’s just one stood out to us and that’s better.
22:11 It’s got the marbleization in it, stuff like that. I mean, look, it’s typical ribeye. It’s typical ribeye. That’s what you want.
22:17 Yeah.
22:18 And ribeye is truly, in our opinion, the best for for cheesesteaks, right? I think some places up north use different steaks.
22:26 Top it around, things like that. Not that. No, the ribeye is a ribeye.
22:29 But ribeye has the most flavor, in my opinion. And I love steak, and I if I go out, I always order a ribeye if I if I could.
22:37 You guys ever miss living in Philly or you like it here better?
22:40 I don’t miss Philly at all. I don’t miss Philadelphia. You know, growing up in growing up in South Philadelphia was such a unique, great experience. It’s a city of neighborhoods, right? And you and you had these, you were just out all day. Right? We we would go out at eight o’clock in the morning, come home for dinner, and after dinner just go out until the street lights came on. You felt safe, you had friends all over the place. You just you played in the playgrounds, you were just out riding your bike, getting in a little bit of trouble here and there. You know, it was just it was it was a unique experience. Like when my kids grew up, you know, they had the video games and they were inside. They weren’t outside as much, and we moved out. So we were never home. Uh, I think growing up there was fantastic. When I go back there now, it’s not the same. No, it’s just not, right? Yeah, and I and I love Florida. I love Venice specifically. We we looked at a lot of places in Florida, me and my wife, and and Venice, the Venice community was just, you know, something just kind of called us to it. It was it’s kind of laid back, beachy, you know, nice people. Um I just love it. And so I I was just back in Philadelphia this weekend, and I can’t wait. As soon as I land, I can’t wait to get back on the plane and come back. Yeah. I don’t particularly miss it. I miss some things about it, you know, but um not enough to make me want to move back there, that’s for sure.
24:00 No, it’s totally changed. Neighborhood’s changed, it’s it’s totally different. My oldest son still lives in Philly. Um, you know, his work, and my daughter-in-law, my brother, you know, my brother David still lives there. Um it’s nice to visit, but you want to come home. You know, come back here. You know.
24:20 All right. I would tell you one thing. One thing we need to mention, I just want to jump in here, is that if you look at our menu, the names of the sandwiches.
24:27 You guys get on camera too, baby? Yeah.
24:30 Yeah. The names of our sandwiches, we we made it for our for our family. Yeah.
24:37 Oh, yeah, we’re not eating that.
24:38 That’s alright. Yeah. Eat it. Eat it.
24:40 Anyway, stop.
24:42 So the names of our sandwiches are really named for our family. So the Johnny Boy is for John, right? Uh the smoking Joe G is for our Uncle Joe, who was a big, big part of our life when we were younger. Uh, Frank’s Hot is for my grandfather, Frank. Uh, Honey Jean is for our aunt. Uh, so you guys are very honey Jean was John, for some reason, we’re only 18 months apart, but he would call her Honey Jean, not Aunt Jean. So it just kind of stuck. We always called her Honey Jean. She was a sweet lady, she was very artistic. So we we made a sandwich for her. The Kenny G is for me, and I will say, he’s not gonna like this, Rich, but you heard him. Three different people ate the Kenny G and came up to me and said, That is the best sandwich I’ve ever had in my entire life. Yeah. And what happens, Rich? What do we say?
25:30 The Jotty Boy! Tell Rich, it’s the Kenny G. Oh, we got a Philly right here. Jack checks my dad, the big G is and Steak George, grandfather.
25:40 Steak George, other grandfather.
25:41 So all right. So, guys, here’s the famous Philly.
25:47 Yep. Cooper sharp on you, Cooper Sharp, nice and creamy. It’s a good looking steak.
25:52 Little sesame seeds. Good looking steak. It looks beautiful. Hot off the grill.
26:06 Good job.
26:10 Wow. Yeah, thank God I don’t live in Venice. I’d be broken. That’s really good. If you guys haven’t tried that yet, haven’t been here yet, I would highly recommend it. These guys are family people. They love what they do. This guy’s been a butcher for many years of his life, and this guy’s a business guy, doctor, and he loves to cook as well. So if you guys haven’t been to G Boys, I’d highly recommend it.
26:40 What are you thinking of bread?
26:42 Bread is awesome. I love sesame bread like this. Yeah. Like sesame’s are my favorite thing ever. Good, good. Glad you like it. It’s beautiful in here. Um you you guys have family that works here too?
26:57 So uh my daughter, Alana. Okay, she’s here. She uh she has the artistic vision of the sandwiches, the way they should look. Okay. She does our Instagram social media, um, and she does a great job with that. If you haven’t checked out the Instagram post, I love it. Oh, I follow you guys. She gets all the latest music trends, and yeah. I say, what about this song? And she says, Dad, that’s not the song that’s trending, you gotta use it. I just stay out of it now. I’m just like, all right, you you you know what to do. We don’t know how to do it. Um my wife comes in uh during the day. Um she should be here, she may be coming. John’s wife uh has been in here, so but mostly it’s it’s me and John and Alana and my wife. Um so we keep it we keep it family oriented. I think I like that. I’m sure people appreciate that too. We try to treat our staff like family, right? We have good relationships with them. We try to keep it, try to keep it light, try to keep it fun, but we certainly want to be focused, right? We don’t want to just be sloppy in what we do. So everybody knows what we expect and and they honor that. So and how the sandwich should go out. Yeah. Let me make sure. Alana, are you making the big G? Lana? Lana.
28:12 Alana. Are you making the big G? Yeah, yes. All right, we’re bringing up the stake?
28:23 Drill good, man.
28:24 Yeah. I gotta give a shout out to Rich. Rich Rich is a stabilizing force back there. Rich is a good cook, man. He he he’s controlling everything. He he makes sure the quality is there, and and he makes a great steak. Yeah. If Rich says, hey, you want a steak, I’m gonna say, okay, I’ll have one. If you say, hey, you want a steak, I got some extra stuff here, I’m gonna say, okay, yeah. I’m gonna try it.
28:52 Oh, I can taste the big ones.
28:54 Yeah, it’s good. Yeah, it’s real good, man.
28:58 Yeah.
29:01 Uh, you guys do anything for football games? You guys got any plans to do anything, specials? I mean, I know your affiliate fans. You guys are gonna lose week one to the skins. Uh we’ll see about that. It’s a long season.
29:12 It’s a long season. Yeah. When’s the last time the skins won a Super Bowl?
29:20 Well, they don’t know if they’re the commanders or the skins. They can’t get their name right. I got we’re gonna wrap this up.
29:27 I can tell you, I love your quarterback. Your quarterback is Jaden Daniels? Yeah, that guy is tough now.
29:32 You guys don’t have five on the menu, do you? Hello, sir.
29:37 Armando. Yes, how you doing, buddy? Uh why don’t you why don’t you come in here? Hey Rich. Excuse us one second. Yeah, so Rich, he he’s a new guy. Okay. Can you see what he does on the grill? Of course. All right. Hey doing buddy. So we’re constantly bringing in you know new staff to meet the needs. I agree. So you talk about football season, right? We know that Saturdays and Sundays are gonna be busier because people are gonna want to order sandwiches, take out, so we’ve been answering the phone, getting takeout orders. So we’re constantly trying to add staff. So we usually have three people on the grill. I think in season we’re gonna have four people on the grill to meet demand. We’re gonna need that, but we’re also gonna start on that table. We’re talking about doing uh right there.
30:27 Oh shoot.
30:28 All right, that’s a big boy. There is the big G. That is press gonna take half devoted the number one, yeah, number one sandwich on the menu.
30:36 Yeah, these gutlets look good.
30:37 Yeah.
30:39 Wow, I gotta take a picture of this. That’s a good sandwich. Yeah, that’s beautiful. Hold up, find it. Yo, you think you can get a close-up? Talk to us about the sandwich.
30:55 Yeah, so that’s that’s the big G. So it has a couple meanings, right? So it’s us, we’re the G boys. Uh, but my uh my my wife’s uh grandmother, they used to call her Big G too. So she kind of inspired the sandwich a little bit. So it gives you a lot of different flavors, it gives you the saltiness of the prosciutto, it gives you the sweet heat of the hot honey. You got the long hots, which just add another level to it. The mozzarella smooths it out, the creaminess of that. So it’s really every bite you may taste something a little bit different. We drizzle some pecorino on there. So it’s really uh really, really a good sandwich. But for football season, we’re we’re me and John were just brainstorming yet. Last night, like I told you, we may do start start doing uh cutlet party trays, you know, the circular trays. So we’re gonna figure out how many cutlets in the tray and what the options could be because I think people want that for football Sunday, just order a tray, pick it up. You know, if we order trays in advanced, we could have that all done ahead of time so there’s not a wait. So uh we’re uh we have some things to work through. We gotta we gotta talk about our workflow and the volume, but uh I think we’re gonna be rolling that out pretty soon. That yeah is awesome. Yeah, isn’t that a great one?
32:18 Mm-hmm.
32:19 You gotta try the Kenny G next time. And you’re gonna say that’s the best sandwich I ever had in my life. I can’t do that to John, man.
32:25 Is that named after the Kenny G? That’s me, Kenny G. Oh, that’s funny. Yeah, yeah.
32:31 Yeah, beach sandwich is named after somebody, so yeah.
32:35 The Johnny boy’s really good too. Um, I mean John tease each other all the time. We gotta talk s***, your brothers, man.
32:40 We’re constantly breaking each other’s yeah, we have that is awesome. We have a good relationship, so yeah, a lot of fun working with my brother. Yeah, so yeah, yeah. Plus, my mother said I have to take care of him and watch him when he gets older.
32:56 Who’s older?
32:57 I’m older. By how long, how much? 18 months. 18 months. Well, we were always we were close in age growing up, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then my younger brother is like six years younger than me.
33:09 Okay.
33:10 Yeah, yeah, David’s seven years younger.
33:12 When’s David coming down there?
33:13 David won’t be down.
33:14 He loves Philly too much.
33:16 What’s he do? He’s uh got uh home health aid and companion business. Sort of the one I was telling you I started years ago. We we we developed and sold him, he reopened, and now he’s uh selling franchises. He’s got like 20 or 25 franchises across the country. So he’s uh he’s enjoying himself down there. He may he may come down here eventually, but he’s not coming down uh soon.
33:42 All right, yeah. We’re gonna wrap this up. You guys got any last words for the camera, for the people? Tell them about why they should come here.
33:53 I would just say, you know, John and I, we’re like we are overwhelmed and blown away by the support of the community. We we are so thankful for everybody who comes in. Um I think I think our product speaks for itself. We tell people if for some reason you don’t like it, bring it back and we’ll make it right, we’ll make it better. Tell us what you don’t like about it. We like feedback good and bad, you know. If it’s too hot, too much pepper, tell us, you know, we’ll figure it out, we’ll make it better for you. Uh but we’re really appreciative of the community and supporting us. Um so we’re certainly gonna uh we have something uh planned, given back in the in the next month or so. We’re gonna have kind of a party, community support party, we’re gonna have some giveaways and things like that.
34:38 Well, let me know. I’ll be out here and support you guys.
34:40 Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you coming by too. I appreciate you having coming on the podcast. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we’re gonna check out dubs too.
34:47 Yeah, come by have a good barbecue. Thank you, thank you. The the community support’s been just overwhelming for us. I mean, you know, we really never expected anything like this. Yeah, and you know, it’s kind of like a neighborhood feel. You know what I mean? Yeah, the community. You know, I mean, it’s kind of like that South Philly feel. Yeah, you know, South Philly was a neighborhood, everybody supported each other, and you know, the stores, the businesses, things like that. It’s the same kind of feeling, so which is good.
35:18 Well, for those of you guys watching, I I appreciate you guys watching. If you like this video, please like, comment, and subscribe. And if you guys haven’t been to the G Boys, they’re in the Publix Plaza off of Jack Aranda Boulevard in uh Venice, I’d highly recommend it. So come see the G Boys. Thank you.
Hustle & Heat is brought to you by Dubz BBQ, named Best BBQ Joint in Florida in 2026. Catch the next episode over smoked brisket and ribs, or stop by for happy hour, daily 2–6 PM and all day Thursday & Sunday.