From Overdraft to Overflow: The Inspiring Story of Eby's Corner Bar

At some point, you just got to say yes, even though you don't know what the outcome is going to be. Welcome to Restaurant Influencers presented by Entrepreneur. I'm your host, Sean Walchup. This is a Kali BBQ Media production in life, in the restaurant business and in the new creator economy. We learned through lessons and stories. We traveled all the way to Washington, D.C. to bring you an amazing story. I have Emily Brown. She is the proprietor

here at Eby's Corner Bar. The fact that I got in is part of the story. She has lines out the door. This bar just opened. But before we get to that story, I'm going to ask her where in the world is your favorite stadium, stage or venue? Camden Yards, Baltimore, Maryland. Camden Yards. Beautiful. We're going to go to Camden Yards. We're going to talk to Entrepreneur. We'll talk to Toast. who sponsors this show, and we're gonna

ask them to put on an event for hospitality professions. Best storytellers on earth. I'm gonna bring you to the pictures, man. I'm gonna give you a mic, and I wanna know the story of the photo at your bar of your overdraft check balance. Oh yeah, I was building out here. I was sitting at this table right next to me, and the build out's probably 90% done. My loan that took three years to obtain is completely gone.

My 401k that was pathetically underfunded is gone. And I am looking towards not paying potentially my own rent. And I got that email. I'm sitting here looking at everything. It looks really good. And I get this email that my account is overdrafted. I just thought, man, this is really real. And I started laughing. i was sitting back here i started laughing and i just found it to be while devastating inspiring and i put it up as

a joke but also to remind myself that like i'm here to get some money and to you know fund myself back and to remember what i sacrificed to be here and to remember how how real it is and how hard it was bring me back to getting that balance like what what did you do besides laugh because you laughed and then you got it you know You fell down, but you got to get back up. Yeah,

I cried some too. You know, I had to take out a little extra money. I had to borrow three grand from a friend to get liquor on the shelves. I had to, I'm trying to think, like you find some old Acorns account, you know, and you take that out and put it into the business. I opened, you know, maybe a week before anyone was ready training wise, things like that, just to get money in the door.

What was the vision when you started? Why did you jump off the cliff? This is a show for entrepreneur. We have business owners that want to be inspired. We know how hard it is to run and operate bars, restaurants, any anything in the hospitality space. But we do it because we have the DNA for it. Yeah, I don't think I ever thought I had the DNA for it. I never learned how to do anything else. That's

that's for sure. I can hardly use a computer and I always wanted to do it. I remember my first cool bartending job was at this place called the rabbit club in New York city, kind of a punk rock, uh, craft beer bar across from the original Mineta Tavern. And it was the owner had just created such a cool space. And I just thought, God, it would be so great to own my own place. And I started

thinking about the things I would do or how I would do it. I never believed it would come to fruition. Like how do you get the money? Right. Things like that. Um, I was doing all sorts of stuff to try and change my life. I was running private tours. in New York City on top of bartending. I was running Airbnbs for people and I never told anyone because I was embarrassed, but I was the cleaner. Like

I would keep the cleaning fee. I mean, New York is a hustle. And then I moved back here to help my cousin open his first pizzeria. And, you know, it's his first place. I'm making no money. I'm bartending on the side. I get to watch him go from zero to 60. He won best pizza in the world. So I'm watching like, you know, one little shop in the mall, an explosion. I am killing myself along with

him. And I remember I heard a podcast happenstance about deathbed regrets. And I just had this light bulb moment where I was like, oh my God, you've got to change the way you think about yourself. And you may never get to do anything different, but if you won't even try, how can you live with that? And so I started listening to audible books and podcasts and just sketching things out. And I was so busy being beverage

director of all these pizzerias at that time that I only had a half an hour every morning. And if I hadn't, you always think I'll wait until I have two weeks. I'll wait until I have that whole weekend and you're never going to have it. You have to force yourself. And that's, that's how I got started. Why here? Why now? This location specifically. Where we're sitting? Even when I got the loan, so I'm funded. Landlords did

not, they were not excited to work with me. I'm a no-name. I couldn't be my own personal guarantor. And I knew I couldn't be prime time. By prime time, I mean, near Le Diplomat or, you know, the flash year, Georgetown, Logan Circle, the White House. No way I could afford that rent. And an Adams Morgan landlord, just, all these things weren't working out and I was getting really frustrated. And I found this place. it has gas

lanterns outside, which you have to be grandfathered in for. And I remember seeing it and just being like, at some point you just got to say yes, even though you don't know what the outcome is going to be. And this landlord, there were some tough contingencies, like because I couldn't be my own personal guarantor, I had to give up a large chunk of my loan that I wasn't expecting to. I will get it back, but like

burns back slowly starting year three. So now at the time I'm already on my back foot. That was the only way to do it. And So happenstance this place, but fell in love with the corner. Love that it was on a corner. Love the lanterns. And bring me idea. Bring me into the concept. Bring us in. Let us know. What was the vision? In my spare time, I go to restaurants and bars always have. And I

lived in New York for a long time. And when I moved back, I remember never knowing I'd open my own place, complaining to my mom, gosh, there's no middle ground. There's no place to like really hang. I'm out of I love dive bars. But sometimes you want to eat something that's not from Cisco. Or sometimes you want to hang in your sweats, but you do want a Negroni that's stirred correctly. And I also love fancy restaurants,

but that's its own thing and you need to dress a certain way and you can't sit for four hours and cut up. And I was reminded of places like J.G. Mellon or Corner Bistro where you and I might go, couple of bloodies, burger, switch to beer. And like really, you know, our friendship's getting stronger while we're sitting there. And you become actual friends with the bartender. I yearn for that here when I move back. Bring me

into how you think about bartending. I have a lot of really talented bartenders working for me. People that have worked at top 50 bars, people that have worked at Death & Company. And I appreciate that level of skill so much. But the most important thing to me in a good bartender is how you make people feel. They feel seen. You remember that their grandmother had surgery. You remember that they had a bad date. You know that

they happen to be the person that needs a side card of ice. And for me, that is more valuable than the absolute perfect, most creative cocktail. So one of the craziest happenstances that it's one of our technology partners actually gave us the opportunity to come and tell a story here. Okay. We're here now. Tell us about hospitality. How does hospitality work in your bar? What is your vision for hospitality? Well, it's inspired by the show Cheers,

which I know everybody here is not old enough to really have been during that era, but we all know what it was. I really think people want to feel seen. And in my opinion, also, anybody that comes to my place, their day should get at least a little bit better, whether they started on a great day or a bad day. and I don't ever want their day to get worse. And that doesn't mean to me that

every burger is perfect. We're gonna send out overcooked burgers, but the recovery and the actual caring and not picking favorites actually genuinely caring about the human being and appreciating that they're choosing to spend their time and their money with us that's hospitality to me did you know that toast powers over 140 000 restaurants across the united states canada and uk it's an incredible company i'm on the toast customer advisory board they are proud sponsors of this

show restaurant influencers we couldn't do it without their support they power our barbecue restaurants in san diego If you have questions about Toast, if you're thinking about bringing Toast on to be your primary technology partner at your restaurants, please reach out to me. I'm happy to get a local Toast representative to take care of you. You can reach me at Sean P. Welchef on Instagram. Once again, thank you to Toast for believing in the power of

technology, the power of storytelling, the power of hospitality. Back to the show. How long is the barb of no bell? Four months and a few weeks. Four months and a few weeks. When was your oh shit moment? Like being scared or oh, gosh, I think it was one week in. One week in. And I wasn't prepared. I thought this was going to be like, I don't know if you've been to like Corner Bistro or here in

town to tune in, but you need to come in and the bartender goes, hey guys, like sit wherever you like. There's no hostess. There's no system. I thought that this back bar that we're in right now would be closed Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Or this sort of thing. There's a bar in the front, but we were at capacity. I had no systems in place. Snoop Dogg was not performing here. And I'm like, this is the worst

thing in the world. This is a corner bar, not a nightclub. People are going to be so annoyed. They might do it for the weekend. So I immediately, as fast as I could, I hired a host. Then I realized I need two hosts because one's seating someone and there's a horde of people in the front. So now while we don't take reservations, we take your phone number. Then you can come drink here in place, which I

think is great. And also probably beat the wait list because you're Hunger Games-ing it at the bar. The bars are first come first serve or you can go drink across the street at Shaw's Tavern. You can go do your laundry. You can go do whatever you like. And then we text you. And then you text them. Right. But that was never the plan. So that was pretty shocking. I think it was about a weekend. Yeah. Bring

me into the beer program. I'm really into beer. What's funny is I have all these taps. Only half of them are up because I can't fit the kegs and the food for the volume we're doing. But I do have a light and dark, which is an ode to McSorley's in New York City. I imported lucre faucets from the Czech Republic. So they create a cappuccino like 60% beer foam cap. So when you order a light and

dark, I'm going to hand you two mugs, 10 ounces each. There's some foam. You're getting 16 to 19 ounces of beer. And it's one of the best beer drinking experiences. I think you can have Schilling Alexander's the Light, best lager maker in the country. And then the dark, I volley back and forth between Sojourn, who's in Virginia and Lost Generation here in DC. So we were just over at PubKey filming and they told me about the

10 ounce glass. I guess this hasn't made it to the West Coast or maybe I'm just not hip enough. Tell me about the 10 ounce glass. It's two 10 ounce mugs. Yeah. But it's viewed as one beer because with this nice, thick, you know, foam from the Czech taps, you're getting again, each pour is a little different. We're busy, but 16 to 19 ounces of a low ABV beer. People love it. How about the food? I

was very obsessed with the food. Every item is something I'm really into. I'm not a chef originally, so there's no world where I could like force myself to develop skills for items that I'm not obsessed with. The Cote de Buff of this menu is a burger. It's dry aged, incredible amounts of pepper wrapped in tallow before you come in. We make our own bun here, 48 hour ferment. Very particular about if you were telling me a

crazy story, I want to put that burger down, get my martini and I want the burger to be there for me when I come back. But it can't be so heavy that it's like too formidable and you can't eat it. So I worked on that for a really long time of pastry chef friend help, things like that. But and it's served with fries. There's a thick onion on it. It's very simple, but it's high end and

everything else price wise comes down from there. Club sandwich, huge, probably best value on the whole menu. Yeah. Tell me about your North Star. Oh, in my podcast, they were saying that if you're trying to change your life or do something for the first time, you should choose a North Star, someone to sort of look up to and kind of see how they did things. And I chose this chef and well now big deal restaurateur, his

name is Billy Durney. Billy doesn't know me. I've been to his place. I tried to, I went to a wine dinner to kind of try and meet him, but I was too shy to really tell him that he was my North star. But he, I believe worked in security in Brooklyn, became obsessed with barbecue and just worked on it. I don't know for an entire year, maybe I'd have to refresh the story, but opened a place

that some of the best barbecue I've ever had in my life. Then he opened Red Hook Tavern. I'm very particular and very detail oriented, like, every baseball card in my baseball bathroom, I thought about the color and how that looked, the teams, the representation, things like that. And he is very detail-oriented and particular. And now he's opening Sag Harbor. He's doing some huge project in Manhattan. He loves, when you look at his Instagram, he loves hanging

out with other guys that make food, other people that like wine. He enjoys his life. to the fullest it would seem and has created some of my favorite places. Tell me about the community. How's the community responded? Mostly great. I mean, sometimes people D.C. is not New York. They're not. I was on a five and a half hour wait on Saturday. Five and a half hours. Yeah. It's longer than TSA. And one table in particular, it

was a tentop. They waited seven hours and 18 minutes. And sure, I sent them around a chenar and I thank them for their patience. Most people are Happy for me. Some people, somebody on Saturday, you know, said go fuck yourself when quoted the wait time. And I don't like it when people are rude to my hostesses who are working their tails off. This is one of the hardest doors in town. Most people are awesome. And every

time I'm stressed and I think, oh gosh, I'm such a disorganized person. I'm such a disaster. Everything's going wrong. I am able to pretty quickly take a step back and go, oh boo hoo, this is the best. What's happening to me is the best. go back and look at the photo on the wall. Yeah. It's wild. I go to the coffee shop and a stranger asked if they could take a photo with me. Someone took a

photo of my car. I get notes on my car. I mean, it's really, it's really, I'm not used to it. And it's a lot of lows and highs like, oh, you got invited to the Caps game. Now you're plunging a toilet, you know? And you know what? That's big memories, lows and highs. That is, it sounds like the life of a restaurateur, bar owner for sure. What does the vision look like? Have you had a chance?

I mean, you're still so deep into it, trying to just keep up and, you know, we come in here barging in like we get an interview. You're all over the place, but you're building something very special. You have like magic in a bottle. Thanks. I had secret goals. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone. Like I, people came and looked at the space, chefs, other people that own bars. and told me what they thought I could

do per year. I knew what I had to do to pay my loan back and pay my rent. I had secret goals of, you know, I can have a little bit of a life if I hit this number. But what I wouldn't tell anyone, because I just thought they'd think it was ridiculous, is that I wanted to do 3 million revenue. This is only 1,800 square foot, all in kitchen and bathrooms. I am doing, I am

out, I have blown, I think things will calm down, but even if they calm down by 30%, blowing my secret goal out of the water. My other secret, secret goal was like someday I really, I think maybe when I was thinking about Billy Durney, I was like, I have three different ideas, but I would never tell anyone because it seemed just not realistic. And now like every day people are asking me to open another place and

offering financing. And I need to get this place organized and dialed and I need to decide is the path forward. There's a group here called Clydes. People want more EBs. Do I put another EBs? Do I get us off a five and a half hour wait and into a, and put another one here? And how do I make it just as special? well, I gotta co-design it with my mom again, right? I order a burger here

every day. Well, now I need to go to two places and have a burger every day. And I think that's a possibility or there's like Keith McNally and not that I would ever compare myself to him, but every single one of his ideas is unique and different. I'm more casual than him, but I have unique and different ideas. Or do you do like an EB's umbrella and they're all a little different, but they're all, I don't

know. I mean, I've never done this before. I am doing everything for the first time. Super exciting. Yeah. It's really, it's like I live in a studio apartment. It has no dishwasher, which in DC that's rare. I have no laundry. My car is a 2008 stick shift Toyota Corolla with a huge dent in it that I never fixed. And so for people to say like, we really want you to come look at this flagship property, you

know, really it's an out of body experience for me. It is a testament to perseverance. It is a testament to betting on yourself. Yeah. That's why we do this show. We never know where the greatest stories are on Earth. Entrepreneurs, business owners, bar owners, restaurant owners, like we love what we do. Yeah. We love it. Despite how much it kicks us in. This is a really hard business. It's a super hard business. It's it's never been

more difficult, but it's also never been more beautiful. I agree. I agree and I think it's really hard for individuals now. I think it's all groups, it's all VC and that's always a safer bet, but I'm really proud that I did something that's sort of like the American dream. I'm proud of that and I love what I do. People should not do it unless it is like A, their only choice or B, their absolute passion because

as glamorous as Zip Bite Lookers seem, it is very difficult, but I am thrilled. I love Evie's. When I look in the kitchen, I see the guys cranking the burgers and they're like the nicest people in the world. When I see people drinking martinis and laughing, when I see like a couple meeting here, it makes me really happy. If you could go back and talk to yourself back when you were working in the pizza business, handing

out all those hours, what kind of advice would you give to yourself? It's the advice I give anybody now that says, I want to do what you do. And I say, start now because it's going to take way longer than you think, unless you are one of these fortunate people with an uncle with unlimited funds. Also, like, why not you? Why not me? That was one of the most important things that I had to say over

and over again. Why not me? And it took years for me to like finally believe it. And it wasn't even that I believed it. You just have to force yourself. Motivation is not really coming for you. You have to pick up your concrete leg and force it forward. At least for me, who I do struggle with like a fear of failure or a fear of you. I couldn't even admit out loud like, oh, I would like

to make over 100 grand a year. It sounded ridiculous as someone who was always a waitress, always a boat trainer, never able to pay my rent. Crap credit. And so it feels embarrassing and you have to push through it anyways. Yeah. What an amazing message. If you guys are watching this, if you're listening, thank you. Please share this with another business person, somebody that has hopes and dreams that's in the hospitality space. We're grateful that Entrepreneur

Toast give us the opportunity to go and tell these stories. Thank you to Seven Shifts scheduling platform for literally putting Emily on our doorstep. So it's so great. We use seven chips. This is 100% the reason why we do this show, why we travel all over the country and now all over the world to tell these stories. You guys can reach out to me anytime at Sean P. Welch. Instagram is the fastest. Emily, what's the best

place for people to keep in touch with you? So right now I'm on the Instagram. It's only me. I don't really know how to people say who's doing it. It's not really very try hard. It's so it's so avant garde. It's because I don't know how to make a real. But it's me. You can, I have like 800 unread DMs. I try to keep up with everybody. I have a website that I don't even have access

to. It's a friend of mine's husband. So you can write us there, but I'm here very, very often. Come by and say what's up. of mine say what's up amazing thank you for having me by the way this is awesome seriously this is this is honestly why we do this show we're so grateful for the opportunity um as always guys stay curious get involved and don't be afraid to ask for help we'll catch you next episode

thank you for watching thank you for listening if you've made it this long You are part of the community, you're part of the tribe. We can't do this alone. We started, no one was listening. Now we have a community of digital hospitality leaders all over the globe. Please check out our new series called Restaurant Technology Substack. It's a Substack newsletter. It's free. It's some of our deep work on the best technology for restaurants. Also go to

YouTube and subscribe to Kali BBQ Media. Kali BBQ Media on YouTube. We've been putting out a lot of new original content. Hopefully you guys like that content. If you want to work with us, go to BeTheShow.media. We show up all over the United States, some international countries. We would love to work with you and your growing brand on digital storytelling. You can reach out to me anytime at Sean P. Welcheft on Instagram. I'm weirdly available available.

Stay curious, get involved, don't be afraid to ask for help. We'll catch you next episode.