LIVE with Jorge Mas on business, Major League Soccer in Miami, building a stadium, advocating for Cuba
In our third ever Pan Con Podcast Live event, host Mike Beltran sits with guest Jorge Mas (and 15 guests in the audience) for a conversation about business, leadership, legacy and culture.
Jorge Mas is chairman at MasTec, an infrastructure engineering and construction company founded by his late father, Jorge Mas Canosa. He talks about the highs of growing that business into the largest Hispanic-owned company in the United States and the lows of seeing its stock price tank.
More recently, Jorge played a key role in bringing a Major League Soccer franchise to Miami. He’s the managing owner of Inter Miami CF (whose other owners are his brother José and soccer legend David Beckham). He tells Mike about what motivated him to get involved with soccer in the first place, the cultural and economic significance of bringing the team to South Florida, and the challenges (especially political ones) of building a new stadium complex for the team.
Finally, we talk about Cuba, the ongoing protests on the island and what Jorge thinks is necessary for meaningful, lasting change there. Jorge is the chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, which was also founded by his late father.
The discussion was had at Ariete over a tasting menu sponsored by Courvoisier, Bordeaux Index, D’Artagnan Foods, and Sanpellegrino.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio
Support DADE on Patreon
for access to the extended cut of this interview.
Subscribe to
Pan Con Podcast
Transcript
00:00:00 Jorge Mas: We made mistakes growing a business, we had successes but we made mistakes. So in 1997, we were the first hispanic company to hit 1 billion dollars in revenue.
00:00:12 Michael Beltran: Wow.
00:00:13 Jorge Mas: Big deal, etcetera, it was amazing. And then, we grew… 1999- 80, 98, 99, 2000. In 2000 there’s a telecom crash. So you guys recall MCI’s… All of these other companies, they all go out of business. But we’re- we did work for them, so we’re creditors. So we had to write off half of our receivables.
00:00:35 Michael Beltran: Wow.
00:00:36 Jorge Mas: So at that time our stock, just to give you a relation, had gotten up to like 60 dollars a share. So, in march of 2001, our stock was at $1.31 cents. So I have a little sticker on my computer that has a day that says 1.31. We were basically worth nothing, and I learned a lesson. We are not worth what a number on a screen or a stock is worth. My value is exponentially more than that. It has nothing to do with our stock price, but that was my rallying cry to the troops, right? We’re not worth this, bear down, batten down the hatches. We got it. And, so we slowly started getting out of that.
00:01:20 [Podcast theme music]
00:01:47 Nicolas Jimenez: Hello, Hello.
00:01:48 Michael Beltran: This is an awkward moment before all the podcasts and Nick takes like 20 minutes to get set up, so I apologize ahead of time.
00:01:54 Nicolas Jimenez: Okay, we are three minutes into our scheduled time, this is a record for us actually.
00:01:59 Jorge Mas: Okay
00:02:00 Michael Beltran: Are we keeping all of the lights on?
00:02:02 Nicolas Jimenez: I mean- I don't know man, you own the place.
00:02:03 Michael Beltran: Yeah I know, I'll fix that
00:02:05 Nicolas Jimenez: Don't you have people that can fix that for you? What do you have to get up for?
00:02:07 Michael Beltran: No, It's good just keep doing your thing.
00:02:09 Nicholas Jimenez: Okay, Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to an ep- look at this, this is- this is the sexiest thing that has ever happened on this podcast.
00:02:27 Michael Beltran: It was the same way when we did it the first time.
00:02:29 Nicolas Jimenez: Uh, I don't know about all that.
00:02:30 Michael Beltran: I think it was.
00:02:30 Nicolas Jimenez: Alright we are recording the 3rd ever episode, live episode of Pan Con Podcast. By that we mean live, as in with an audience, not live like everybody is watching this now. So if you say some terribly embarrassing thing, please feel free to come up to me later and tell me to cut it out, for public consumption. We are in the, the cava is that we call this thing? The cava?
00:02:56 Michael Beltran: I gotta say, this is so incredible for me that you actually have someone working the sound next to you with a computer.
00:03:02 Nicolas Jimenez: Well, my unpaid intern was a no-show.
00:03:03 Michael Beltran: It's just like, it's negative, it- like they don't, they think this is actually how it happens every week.
00:03:08 Nicolas Jimenez: Right, we have a lot of prop cigar boxes.
00:03:10 Michael Beltran: Yeah, This is not how this happens every week.
00:03:13 Jorge Mas: It's much more sophisticated this time.
00:03:16 Michael Beltran: Yeah cause, big time guests, big time people, everyone is dressed nice.
00:03:19 Nicolas Jimenez: There's a lot of candles just for you and me.
00:03:21 Michael Beltran: Right, there are. Are there? Yeah there are.
00:03:22 Nicolas Jimenez: No, no I mean usually, we do this week in week out with candles, table cloth, all that.
00:03:26 Michael Beltran: Yeah, that's true.
00:03:27 Nicolas Jimenez: So we are recording in Arietes or “Ariete” as Mike likes to say cava downstairs in the secret area dungeon. We are recording our third ever live episode this time around with, special guest, and, I think now, Pan Con Podcast hall of famer…
00:03:46 Michael Beltran: Hall of famer for sure.
00:03:48 Nicolas Jimenez: Jorge Mas, So you will be invited very soon, I'm sure, to an induction ceremony in the tourist bathrooms.That's where the hall of fame will be. Just to give a quick run down of who is joining us here, and I would invite the people who are around here to just raise your hands when people, when you hear your name called so everybody knows who you are. We have Pamela Martinez of Beam Suntory over there. Also Joanna Peña of Beam Suntory. We have Jorge Mas, of course, over in the, the guest of honor seat. Brenda and Lawrence Popritkin. Lawrence, please do not call him “the hubs” he doesn't like it. But, you may know Brenda from The Whet Palette there's a trophy of hers sitting- is it still there Mike?
00:04:37 Michael Beltran: It is still there.
00:04:38 Nicolas Jimenez: It's still, on the barred area.
00:04:39 Michael Beltran: Still trying to get that number one spot.
00:04:41 Nicolas Jimenez: That's right.
00:04:45 Nicolas Jimenez: We are also joined- one, one star is never enough. By Jonathan Drew, founder of Drew Estate Cigars. I wanna shout out Jonathan for all of the cigars, and other goodies that you have in front of you, plus an ash tray that is upstairs. By the way, I want to also point out, I should have said this for Joanna, Courvoisier is what you’ve been drinking to this point and what you will be drinking after this point. Thank you to them for supporting this and other Pan Con Podcast events. Doug Rumsam of, Is it “Rumsam” or “Rumsum”?
00:05:21 Doug Rumsam: Rumsam
00:05:22 Nicolas Jimenez: Rumsam, I got it right the first time, of Bordeaux Index, he is responsible for providing all of the wines that we will be having as pairings throughout this dinner. He’ll also be jumping in to talk a bit about each of these wines as they come out. Mike, are we still having Manny come and talk?
00:05:41 Michael Beltran: Chef Manny will explain each course.
00:05:43 Nicolas Jimenez: Excellent. We are joined by, for the first time, we’re joined with a guest, who is also a team dade media group/Pan Con Podcast Tatiana Cardanas Santovenia over here. So thank you to Tatiana for being around.
00:06:01 Michael Beltran: That’s ads@dademag.com
00:06:03 Nicolas Jimenez: That's right, ads@dademag.com
00:06:05 Michael Beltran: That's all of your money.
00:06:06 Nicolas Jimenez: Care of Tati. Diego Londono and Suzi Pedes from Chef Smoke slash The Barrel, also supporters of Pan Con Podcast. They make a pretty kick ass grill as well, sorry, it's not a grill, it's not a smoker, it's The Barrel. As well as some hot sauces, some hot sauces that you’ll be taking home with you tonight. Ivan and Ivan- Im sorry, i'm going to attempt this.
00:06:33 Michael Beltran: Give it a go, let's see what you got.
00:06:37 Nicolas Jimenez: Mladenovich.
00:06:38 Ivan Lodenovich: Yes.
00:06:38 Michael Beltran: Alright, clap it up Nick!
00:06:41 Nicolas Jimenez: Yeah. That's right. Ivan Mladenovic and Sarah Silver Mladenovic, Eddie Fuentes is on his way. I hear that he is skidding all over the roads to get here from Hialeah, driving very dangerously to make it to this event.
00:06:53 Michael Beltran: Classically Late. Yup.
00:06:54 Nicolas Jimenez: And, And, the sagüesera, who I am told does all sorts of interesting things for Micheal Beltran, to keep him out of trouble.
00:07:03 Michael Beltran: Great things. Great things.
00:07:04 Nicolas Jimenez: Keeping Michael Beltran out of trouble full time. So, with that, this is where, this is Mike's favorite part of the podcast where I step away and shut up.
00:07:15 Michael Beltran: It is the best part of the podcast.
00:07:16 Nicolas Jimenez: That's right. I just want to note again that Doug, Doug will be jumping in to talk wines as, as they appear and we- I’ll go and hand you the mic in a moment. Also we're going to open it up to Q&A in uh, maybe like the last twenty to thirty minutes. If there is something that you just, like, really need to get out like you feel compelled you know uh…
00:07:40 Michael Beltran: This is compelling stuff.
00:07:42 Nicolas Jimenez: Yeah, just make sure…
00:07:43 Michael Beltran: So I expect some compelling questions.
00:07:44 Nicolas Jimenez: Yeah i mean make sure- but im saying like if, if before the Q&A opens up, you just feel like you have to get something out, like its just so good, let me know, i'll bring you a microphone and it's on you if you embarrass yourself and it wasn't worth waiting until the Q&A. Uh so that's it, that's all i got so, Micheal, the floor is yours, take it away.
00:08:03 Michael Beltran: Welcome to the next episode of Pan Con Podcast with me, your host, and Pan Con Podcast hall of famer and good friend, Jorge Mas.
00:08:13 Jorge Mas: Thank you for having me, Michael.
00:08:14 Michael Beltran: So last time um, I don't know, it was, what? Two and a half years ago we did this?
00:08:19 Jorge Mas: Yes
00:08:20 Michael Beltran: Two and a half years ago when we did this. It was right after the world had shut down…
00:08:25 Jorge Mas: Changed, yes.
00:08:26 Michael Beltran: Yeah, the world had shut down and we were like, this is gonna be a few weeks and we're gonna be solid.
00:08:30 Jorge Mas: Yes, right?
00:08:31 Michael Beltran: And we'll be back, and everything is gonna be normal. I think, from that point you were supposed to open the season, well, before I get into this, if anyone wants any background like there's not enough on the internet on who you are, um, you can go to our original episode which is, I don't know 175 ago, and you can get all kinds of background on who you are, and how we’re friends, and how we used to be neighbors but you left me, and, and why we’re here today. So, Nick is already flagging me down for something.
00:09:04 Nicolas Jimenez: That's right Doug is going to uh, we got a wine out right? Am I mistaken? There's a wine out?
00:09:10 Nicolas Jimenez: Okay well- well, I think it's best to get it out now so we're not interrupting their conversation.
00:09:16 Michael Beltran: Okay go ahead, You let it, let it rip nick.
00:09:18 Doug Rumsam: So we're going to start with a 2012 Dom Perignon. 2012 was a vintage, There was a lot of curveballs for any champagne grower. There was frost, there was hail, there was rain. It was a good August and it turned into an amazing champagne. Just telling Jorge earlier, that um, a vintage like that or the 08 or 02 I would say that you could hold on to and revisit in like 10 years. Amazing now, but this 2012 Dom Perignon is one of the best.
00:09:57 Michael Beltran: Yeah.
[ad break starts]
00:10:08 Nicolas Jimenez: Thanks to our sponsor, Aganorsa Leaf Cigars.
00:10:11 Michael Beltran: Aganorsa Leaf is renowned throughout the world for its signature flavor that possesses all the great attributes of Nicaraguan terroir along with classic Cuban aroma and flavor.
00:10:21 Nicolas Jimenez: Aganorsa Leaf is pleased to announce a brand new addition of Guardian of the Farm, Cerberus, named after the mythical, 3 headed hound that stood watch at the gates of hades. This exciting new Nicaraguan puro uses 100 percent Aganorsa leaf tobacco and is wrapped in Aganorsa’s new corojo 2012 cover leaf, which adds a level of complexity to the blend, adding light spice, and a rich smooth body to the blend.
00:10:49 Michael Beltran: When you smoke one of our new world class blends you will experience the difference between ordinary tobacco and Aganorsa Leaf. That's why we say: “our leaf is our strength.” Learn more about Aganorsa leaf and use their store locator and find a cigar shop near you that carries their products at www.aganorsaleaf.com
00:11:07 Nicolas Jimenez: The two of us smoke Aganorsa Leaf cigars often, we also offer them to alot of our guests, like for example, Dave Arvello, who everytime i post a picture of a Cerberus, mentions to me in my dms or in a text how cool the band is which is actually is a pretty slick looking band. But also, I just wanna note, little personal anecdote here so it's not all totally straight up red, I can say that Micheal Beltran will absolutely not only vouch for the quality of Agonarsa Cigars...
00:11:36 Michael Beltran: Yeah
00:11:36 Nicolas Jimenez: But you met a Miami legend, and handed him an Aganorsa cigar.
00:11:40 Michael Beltran: I did meet a Miami legend. I was smoking nearby Alonzo Mourning, and we had a conversation about cigars and he handed me one of his, and I went inside and I bought this exact same cigar, and I handed Alonzo Mourning this Aganorsa cigar and I said “Try this, thank me later.”
00:11:59 Nicolas Jimenez: I mean, if that's not an endorsement, I don't know what is. AganorsaLeaf.com
—-
00:12:08 Michael Beltran: Introducing the newest line from Drew Estate Cigars, 20 Acre Farm is a complex refined and medium body cigar with super oaky and cedary notes accompanied by a whisper of white pepper and a bright hint of citrus. Built at La Gran Fabrica Drew Estate in Nicaragua using a velvety, and I mean velvety, Ecuadorian Connecticut shade-grown wrapper.
00:12:33 Nicolas Jimenez: Under that wrapper is a sun-grown habano binder and a filler blend of Nicaraguan tobaccos from Esteli and Jalapa in perfect balance with the opulent and majestic Florida Sun Grown leaf. Florida Sun Grown is also the name of the farm where that tobacco is lovingly grown and harvested by Jeff Borysiewicz who is the guy you see in this video playing behind us, on his pristine 20 acre plot of land near the Central Florida town of Clermont. I have actually been to that farm, along with plenty of other cigar tobacco farms in Mexico, Central America and the Dominican Republic. And Jeff, who by the way is very nice guy, there's actually a cigar box signed by Jeff hanging on my wall. What Jeff is doing there is super legit, so it's always cool to see products like his which is the only premium cigar tobacco grown in Florida, in products from a company like Drew Estate.
00:13:29 Michael Beltran: Plus, 20 Acre Farm being a Drew Estate product means it's the creation of master blender and Pan Con Podcast guest Willy Herrera. Support our guest and sponsors, get it online, ask your local cigar shop about 20 Acre Farm by Drew Estate learn more about Drew Estate and use their store locator to find a cigar shop near you that carries their products at drewestate.com
00:13:57 Nicolas Jimenez: That's right, I'm probably going to smoke one of those right now.
00:13:59 Micheal Beltran: I- what are we waiting for?
[ad break end]
00:14:07 Michael Beltran: So, you know, it was supposed to be the first season, right?
00:14:13 Jorge Mas: Yes.
00:14:14 Michael Beltran: Inaugural season, we were supposed to do a big lunch…
00:14:18 Jorge Mas: Big lunch.
00:14:19 Michael Beltran: Big lunch, It was like a…
00:14:20 Jorge Mas: And the world ended…
00:14:20 Michael Beltran: And then the world ended.
00:14:23 Jorge Mas: Listen well first of all, again, and I'm glad to see that I am a Hall of Famer now.
00:14:28 Michael Beltran: You are a hall of famer.
00:14:30 Jorge Mas: This is my first hall of fame induction, this is a good thing, yes, and I think that's a… Fantastic. But first of all, listen, thank you. And i am super proud to be here with you, first cause you’re my friend, second for your success, for everything you've been able to do because two and a half years ago, you know when we were together and I think we had an amazing time and we have fun together and we enjoy each other's company, but there was a significant amount of uncertainty in the world. And what Michael is alluding to is, you know I got involved and in bringing a Major League Soccer team to Miami, 4 years ago you know David Beckham have been given an- an option when he came to play in the United States after he left for Madrid, and he happened to pick Miami, our beautiful city, which I am a proud native of, and he was having difficulty in getting the team started, and I received a phone call from the commissioner of Major League Soccer to see if I had any interest in getting involved because he needed obviously people who had local knowledge and could help acclimate into South Florida. So we met, I flew to New York, met with David, we hit it off we become super close friends, and I thought it was extremely necessary for us to bring, to bring a professional soccer team to Miami because as a, as, frankly as, as a Cuban American i didn't grow up with, with futbol or soccer. I was a- you know I ended up playing baseball in Columbus and, i'm going to give my Columbus plug here.
00:15:53 Michael Bletran: Love that, love that.
00:15:54 Jorge Mas: And um, and so I grew up playing baseball, football, basketball and, and the makeup of our community when I was growing up was very, was very different then what it is today. We have a significant amount of diversity especially much more expanded from you know South and Central America and the Caribbean, whos first sport is soccer so when I got involved with the venture of Inter Miami, I was super excited, tried to build a great brand, tried doing the color pink and black and do something very cool for our city to fall in love with it because it was always my aspiration, that when people think of futbol or soccer in the United States, that they would immediately think of Miami. And there were a lot of elements to do that, you know the growth of our city, what we were doing, a truly global city, you know? David Beckham is an important component ‘cause he has basically a worldwide audience. You know the fact that we could bring, to everything that had been happening in our community, and really with a blank slate because this was a team with no history, no name, no brand, but it was going to allow us to be able to on a blank canvas, design something I think that was a reflection of our community. A community based on passion, a community based on our parents, many of us, coming to this country with nothing in building a better future for us, and I think that everything that I try to do in our lives and I know that you've done is to make our parents and grandparents and our heritage proud so that our kids can learn from an example of that anything and everything is possible if you dream it, and if you work hard. So as your friend congratulations on your success and what you’ve done, but when we sat back then, you know we had prepared, Inter Miami was going to have it’s, it’s first game on March 12th of 2020. Huge build up, game was sold out, Fox on a Saturday was going to be the most watched soccer game in the history of this country. We had like 1,500 VIPs, he was going to do the event at our training facility up in Fort Lauderdale in our stadium, I was going to have a VIP party, 100 I, I at that time I lived literally…
00:17:50 Michael Beltran: Yeah
00:17:51 Jorge Mas: 100 yards from here.
00:17:52 Michael Beltran: Across the street.
00:17:53 Jorge Mas: Across the street, um, all this was set up, and I'll never forget this was going to be a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, culminating with a game on Saturday event. And if I don't… If I recall correctly either Monday night or Tuesday, Rudy Gobert from the Utah Jazz had covid, tested positive and that changed the sports world. So I'll never forget receiving a phone call and asking me to, you know we're postponing every Major League Soccer game, we're going to call the beginning of the season off, but do you want to play your game? You know, because you guys are ready to go, huge TV audience. And so I go listen, let me think about it, let me get a little more informed, I'll let you know later this afternoon. Never forget I walked to my brother's office, and i go “what do we do?” Like we got 1,000 people here, games sold out, tickets are going for $1,000 on the secondary market. And I'll never forget I told him, I go “You know it would be really hard, imagine if we play this game, then we dont play for 3 or 4 weeks, and then our second game, you know, is in April or May. That's not, that's like a big gap.” Think of how naive we are, right? Then we got into, what's covid? What's not? Into people, and like I said we knew nothing about vaccines, everything was going to shut down. So we made that decision that Wednesday to not play and to shut down. Fast forward a few months later, is there a season? What's going to happen to our soccer team? You know, we had in, all of our games were sold out so it was like, it was like a world stopping period of time. And at the time not to mention, with our family business, and the thousands of employees that we have at, at MasTech and it was just, you know, it's easier now that we’ve come out of this, but I remember at that time, my, you know my kids, they were all away at school, they came here for the opening of the game, and their life's changed. You know, my youngest, was playing baseball at Wake Forest and he never went back to the, to school. At the time, my daughter was working in New York and she started working remotely. She ended up in London two years later to finish her masters. So everyone's lives changed but I remember the period of time when we were all home, and our lifestyle changed right? And instacart, and, and groceries being put it at the, at your door and you spend all day with your family. So there was the bad, but the wonderful. We did puzzles, we interacted, we were together. It was a I think a true recalibration of what's important in life right? Like what matters. You know, and listen it was hard and it was harsh. Imagine with you and, and what happened with the restaurant business and things being closed and not opening and, and do we ever get back to a normal world?
00:20:30 Micheal Beltran: Well I mean, but it's also the same thing of recalibration. You know?
00:20:35 Jorge Mas: Yes.
00:20:35 Michael Beltran: You know? Like at that, at- I tell people this story all the time like I want to start in June but the beginning of that, obviously it was seven years ago but really when we dug deep and said that we're going to make the something different was when the doors were closed for 5 months and I had nothing to do other than dream of like, what it really could be, instead of like, what it's been, because we started with nothing and now we just had a little more than nothing, and a baseline of pretty much a clientele and a community of people that supported us. So, I had months to figure out, like, how can we make this better? So it was a recalibration of a lot of things, for a lot of people. Some people it was good for, some people it was bad for. You know? I think as people reflect on that time it’s… there's a lot that went into it and I think the mental aspect of, like, how everyone dealt with that is going to, it's going to affect them for the next 10 years. You know? whether good or bad, but, it was a recalibration for a lot of things, business, right? How you handle your daily life, what you do in your daily life, what you enjoy. I think people now came out of covid “I like to knit.” I don't know, “I didn't knit before, now I've spent five months knitting.” I know no ones making sourdough anymore, they did that for 4 months.
00:21:47 Jorge Mas: Yeah
00:21:47 Michael Beltran: But, it was a hard recalibration.
00:21:50 Jorge Mas: And look, lessons, you know, lessons learned from that, and I remember and I recall you and I having conversations, because during the course of that time in order to launch this team, you know? We were opening back, we were going to open that March, we eventually ended up playing in October of that year, one game in a, in a stadium, in a temporary stadium that we ended up building in Fort Lauderdale. But it was always our aspiration to build a stadium here in Miami, because this is… Should be the home of the team and what's going on. I remember back then, you know, it was right after we had taken our stadium project here in Miami to the voters in a referendum to be able to build not only a stadium, but a development that generates jobs and becomes a destination, an entertainment district, hotels and retail and great F&B and we’re going to end up hopefully opening something there in a few years, and you know with 62 percent of the voters in the city of Miami, we went forward that was in November of 18 and then when we sat down last time I was naive enough to think “Well, we got the voters to approve it, this will take 6 months and negotiate a lease, and I'll start building a stadium, and we’ll be open by 2021.” You know? Fast forward it's been a 4 year process of negotiating something in order to, you know, be able to move forward. Which becomes a difficulty of you know, dealing with city government, dealing with so many different interests, and the one thing I took out of that, is to persevere. Right? Because there was so many obstacles put in our way to be able to accomplish something that I think is going to be truly transformational for our community in so many different ways and we just persevere and going through it and no matter the obstacles and what happened and dealing with city government and different interest in what you have in all of the uncertainty surrounding that, is a life lesson. I think it's been a life lesson for all of us involved, that if you can dream it, if you can think of it, and you push hard enough you'll eventually get there. You have to have the luxury of time to do it. You have to be-
00:23:45 Michael Beltran: Patience.
00:23:46 Jorge Mas: Patience, you have to know how to neander around all of these different issues and obstacles that go about. But, you know, but we sit here today, our teams played for 3 years, we made the playoffs this year, we ended up losing in New York last week. I think we've been accepted enormously well in our community. Our stadium is a tremendous atmosphere when we play in Fort Lauderdale, in Miami it's going to be even better. So listen, I'm very happy with the launch of the team with a million challenges because once covid hit, all of our plans went out the window.
00:24:15 Michael Beltran: Mhm.
00:24:15 Jorge Mas: In terms of, what players did we bring, who did we sign, what did we organize. Because the whole soccer economic landscape changed but, you know, thank God we stuck with it, um, I think we’re in a great place now, I think this is just a very early chapter of Inter Miami and bringing, and bringing the soccer team here, and I'm super enthusiastic, you know, about, about the future.
00:24:36 Michael Beltran: So just, so everyone knows, in front of you is an amuse-bouche. You guys are supposed to eat this. The idea if people don't know what an amuse is, is to stimulate the pallet so you’re ready for more food. Um, I'm just going to, i'm going to explain that. Say it again…
00:24:49 Unknown Voice: Are you ready?
00:24:52 Michael Beltren: Are you ready? Yeah. Um, I'm going to explain that ‘cause I'm going to make Chef Manny explain all of the other courses, and he loves doing that. So it's going to be great. Um, question, so like, after obviously I think we live in a world that everything is,I think information whether good or bad is like always in the, like in your face. After the whole thing with the stadium happened, what was the reaction? How did you guys deal with it? Good or bad?
00:25:22 Jorge Mas: You know this is, it is a very public process...
00:25:25 Michael Beltran: For sure.
00:25:27 Jorge Mas: You know, it had to do with, you know, the voters and the neighbors, and what they want and converting frankly a, 00:25:32 UNKNOWN WORD owned, city owned golf course to something different. Half of it's going to be a city owned park, the other half is going to be an entertainment district and I think the things that our community needs. I think during, there was a significant amount of enthusiasm in the early portion to build up and I think because I spent a lot of time, you know, visiting neighbors, and talking to people and talking to people because you want to obviously be inclusive, and trying to deliver something for that community and that district and that neighborhood, which they want, in order for it to be successful. I think over a period of time there was a lot of frustration, as I started looking like I go like “Why haven't you started? Like, we voted for this.”
00:26:08 Michael Beltran: Right.
00:26:09 Jorge Mas: Like, what's up? Right? Not understanding that the process is really difficult to get there…
00:26:15 Michael Beltran: Oh yeah.
00:26:16 Jorge Mas: And there was a long period of frustration, then there was a period, there was all these things that were never going to get done.
00:26:20 Michael Beltran: Right.
00:26:21 Jorge Mas: Like oh, forget it, you guys are going to have to pivot, have to get done, you’re going to have to stay in Fort Lauderdale, like what are you going to do? So, but during all of that, we kept pushing, again, it was frustrating, but it was frustrating…
00:26:30 Michael Beltran: Yeah.
00:26:32 Jorge Mas: It… it was frustrating because you met with city officials and city staff, and lawyers, and everyone that's involved and it’s, it's frustrating because you know, when you own private businesses, you just want to, excuse the word, you want to get shit done. Let's just get it done.
00:26:44 Michael Beltran: Yeah.
00:26:44 Jorge Mas: And like move forward, and like, just get it done. Obviously, you know, public process with a public asset, that involves a lot of issues, it becomes more difficult. I took the attitude of, look, keep pushing, keep pressing, because what everyone wants you to do is throw in the towel. Right? ‘Cause everybody is “No this…No that, and throw in the towel and just pivot.” But, you know, I was brought up to not throw in the towel. I was brought up to, you know, push and persevere and just push, right? Push with everything you got, because at the end I think what, you know it’s going to be a true destination. It's at the entrance to the airport, So first thing people will see when they land in the city of Miami, in Miami. 65 million people go through Miami International Airport. Last thing you’ll leave, and to build just a stadium by itself, doesn't make any sense. I have said this a hundred times and I've been somewhat criticized by some other sport owners. Stadiums on their own or black holes, that, they're not good. They’re not good economically, they’re necessary, but they’re not good, they don't add value in my opinion. But if a stadium is an anchor of a much larger development and destination, where you have life, right? 365 days a year. Where you can have an office component that are there, hotels parked by the airport, an entertainment district that people can go to with a retail component, great food and beverage, and experiences. ‘Cause right now you go places to have an experience, be sports related, or not sports related. An experiential, that you can take your family, you can enjoy yourself. Because… and I remember when we were campaigning for- for the stadium and the referendum in the district, and I had one meeting with an older couple that put it all in perspective for me, and he told me, it was in Spanish, it was an older Cuban couple. And he told me he goes “Why not us?” 3 words. And I went “Why not you?” He goes “Why can't we have something nice in our community?”
00:28:42 Michael Beltran: Right.
00:28:43 Jorge Mas: “I don't want to go to Brickell City Centre and I don't want to have to go to, you know, West Dade and in the mall out there, and I want my grandkids to be able to have an opportunity to walk across the street, or work there or not, and, and a good paying job.” So when I heard that I go, you know what, everything we’re going to do is going to be worth it, because sometimes that gets lost, right? What really, truly matters to people. You know? And listen, the transformation of Miami over the last five or six years, and you know, we’ve, we’ve grown up here…
00:29:14 Michael Beltran: Even just the last three years.
00:29:15 Jorge Mas: Has been crazy.
00:29:16: Michael Beltran: Yeah.
00:29:16 Jorge Mas: You know, and how can we continue deriving that? We’re a truly global city. You know Miami has to be the centerpiece of everything that's happening and in the course of all this time in the last few years, you know, the United States is going to celebrate the World Cup in 2026. So there's a World Cup that going to start next month in, in Qatar, and it's a, it's a world event that happens every 4 years and I remember when we were making a bid to have Miami as a host city for the 26 World Cup, and I was at the presentation, and I was there and it was you know, all the multiple mayors and everyone was there and I'll never forget it was at the Hard Rock stadium. And the head of FIFA was there and a lot of the people who were presenting on our behalf because I was part of the committee, trying to convince FIFA to pick Miami. And we were comparing it and trying to show how Miami has the capacity of Super Bowls and major events etcetera, and the FIFA guy like, he looked, and I don't know him very well, but he was, he said it to the whole audience he goes “Guys, a SuperBowl is nothing.” So he asked the gentleman making the decision “How many people watch the SuperBowl? X 10s of millions, 100 million people” He goes “Let me give you a number, take that number, multiply it by 22, and that's the amount of people that look at a little bowl when we roll it, and the World Cup draw, much less the World Cup.”
00:30:44 Michael Beltran: Wow.
00:30:45 Jorge Mas: Right? So he goes “So you guys think these are big and this is like 20X of what you guys have ever done.” And it, he was just making a point, that this is a truly global stage and a global audience. Fast forward, Miami was picked as a host city, so we’re going to host, be a host city for probably 7 to 9 games of the World Cup in 2026. That's why I think this develop of Miami Freedom Park is important because I want it to be the centerpiece of sports and soccer and everything that’s great about our community and museums because I think that, you know, I'm at a point or we are at points in our lives were, you know, we've gotten through that hustling of the 20's and 30's and we’re at a stage now where it’s, at least for me, a lot of the focus is how do we leave a legacy? How do we leave an imprint of the things that we do, make an impact? As an example, you know, ‘cause I remember that was what my late father was able to do in his life, and sometimes i reflect and he died at a very young age, actually younger than what i am now, and, but i always thought he was an old man, like, so it was like weird like i'm at this age now where like, and i have a 29 year old son and it's like this is weird. But it's time about doing that so, you know there’s a lot of lessons learned, you know, I tell a lot of people “Man just persevere, persevere through it” Right? The ups and downs and if you drive it enough, and you, and listen you’ve had 50 obstacles and challenges in what you've done.
00:30:03 Michael Beltran: Just today…
00:30:04 Jorge Mas: In your life, you know? In just today, right?
00:30:04 Michael Beltran: Just today.
00:32:07 Jorge Mas: But if there's one thing if, there's one trait that I think that, that separates the people who end up doing that it's to truly persevere, but what is, what is perseverance? Because it's really easy to try to define it, and I have a definition for it, and it's believing in yourself.
00:32:25 Michael Beltran: It's faith.
00:32:26 Jorge Mas: You have to believe in yourself. It's faith. It’s faith in you, it’s faith in, It’s faith, it’s faith in the general sense. But you gotta have faith, and you have to believe in yourself and your ability in what you do, and don't doubt ‘cause if you allow doubt to creep into things that you do then that creates fear, and it creates things that are negative. And that's what you gotta like… shy away from.
00:32:44 Michael Beltran: I mean legacy is an interesting word when you look at, obviously, you have a very successful business. Right? You have been very successful. Do you feel like your legacy is more kind of like, attached to where the team goes? Or where you have already been?
00:33:00 Jorge Mas: You know, that's a great question, because I think about that as well.
00:33:04: Michael Beltran: Yeah, that's a…I like that.
00:33:06 Jorge Mas: So I am… Look, I'm a child of a Cuban exiled family, so im, I'm Cuban at heart. You know? But I was born here, I was born at Mount Sinai Hospital, so I'm a Miami kid. But everything that I do in my life, I do in the aspect to honor my parents, and to honor the generation that had the bravery to leave their homeland and come here to a foreign land with the expectation of going right back, and we're here. And so, I do that as a lesson to my kids, to the future, you know, that the next generations coming up. So look, I think I've accomplished much in my life and my most big accomplishment is my family… And it's my kids and it's my wife and I think the circle of friends that I do, and try to set an example. I got a very successful business, thank God. It's called MasTech, we're one of the largest 400 companies in the United States of America. The largest Hispanic company in this country. We’re involved in energy and infrastructure and telecommunications and we now have 31,000 employees across the country, and I'm super proud of what we've been able to build because it's a homegrown company from Miami that's been able to grow. I'm super proud of that. So, is that my legacy? You know? But then, I'm involved in this super high-profile project and to be honest with you I'm actually surprised, you know this is a profile– this is a high profile issue. You know? Listen, I’m the first Cuban-American owner of a sports team. And that’s a big deal. I don't…
00:34:37 Michael Beltran: I love that.
00:34:37 Jorge Mas: I don't say that a lot but that's a big deal, And I, and so i have to honor that, So I do think that what we do with the team is part of the legacy, I do. I've had these conversations with David Beckham, you know, an amazing soccer player, you know, a global figure, super genetically blessed. You know? Like the whole deal, Right? So you think of that and I asked him the same question, and he frankly, If he were here he'd tell you he places enormous importance in bringing a team to Miami and building it, and making it, for the same reasons I'm talking about now. So you got a guy that's a super great soccer player, a global figure, everybody knows who he is. And he places more importance in his team here, then what he's accomplished. So I do think that if I leave a legacy, I think a lot of it is that. I like to believe, I think, a legacy, that also has to do with building a great business, of never forgetting my, you know, my roots of Cuba, of trying to help Cuban people be free one day. Which I've been very engaged in that, so i think it's an all of the above, but there's no question that from a narrative point of view, having a internationally recognized and global soccer team here gives me a different platform to talk about our city, to talk about our aspirations, and so yes I think the team is going to be a very different platform to expand on that legacy.
00:36:03 Michael Beltran: Love that, that's a perfect time for time out. Can I get Chef Manny so he can explain this or no?
00:36:10 Jorge Mas: Comes eso tu?
00:36:10 Michael Beltran: No, I don't eat wine…
00:36:12 Jorge Mas: No?
00:36:14 Michael Beltran: Drink, I mean.
00:36:14 Jorge Mas: Arribo
00:36:16 Michael Beltran: I know…
00:36:19 Jorge Mas: Arribo cometelo cono.
00:36:20 Michael Beltran: He's like “you need to eat this.”
00:36:21 Jorge Mas: Yeah bro
00:36:25 Michael Beltran: There he is, give that man the mic. Chef Manny everyone, alright! First michelin star to come out of homestead. Ay, you don't give him a microphone?
Yeah, the microphone alright, I love that.
00:36:38 Manny Arredondo: Alright, So today’s first course, we have a citrus-cure snapper with caramelized plantain and a toasted sesame and basil vinaigrette.
00:36:47 Jorge Mas: Beautiful
00:36:48 Michael Beltran: Thanks chef, appreciate that. Oh yeah, wine.
00:37:09 Doug Rumsam: So, the wine that is coming next is a white burgundy from Meursault, which is known for being quite rich and opulent, by a family that's been doing this stuff for a century-and-a-half, Bouzereau Family… And should pair perfectly up with this delicious looking dish.
00:37:32 Michael Beltran: Thank you. I think that the idea of legacy is interesting, right? Because when you're ambitious, your ambition will lead you in different directions. You know business, family, just wanting to start a soccer team and pretty much the outliers of Little Havana between the airport, you know? And I think that, you know, coming from the culture in the community that we come from, the idea of legacy is like, very intense, right? Because we are building a new, kind of like a new vision of, like, who Cuban-Americans are. ‘Cause people don't really know who we are…
00:38:14 Jorge Mas: Correct.
00:38:15 Michael Beltran: Around the country and around the world. I mean Cuba is like this little lost island that’s in the middle of the Caribbean, that no one talks about, because it's a hot-button subject, and people don't want to like, you know, poke the bear.
00:38:24 Jorge Mas: Correct.
00:38:26 Michael Beltran: Essentially so, you know, I'm the first Cuban-American chef to win a Michelin Star. And I’m the one who told the Michelin guide that. They had no idea…
00:38:37 Jorge Mas: Right…
00:38:38 Michael Beltran: Which is great, I love that. I don't want to be like…
00:38:42 Jorge Mas: Yeah, you didn't get the merit because of… ‘cause you’re a Cuban kid.
00:38:43 Michael Beltran: Yeah, you didn't give me, like, the badge because I’m something to you guys, you guys had no idea, it's the food on the plate that matters. So the legacy is there, you know, it's just like, how we continue to push that conversation, and the conversation is just beginning, really. It's just really getting started, because Miami is this melting pot of a city that has so much and so many things. You know, Cubans are now just one of many different Hispanic cultures that are here, and so many other cultures that are here also. So it's like, I don't know when I, when I think about legacy now or when we sat here two and a half years ago, I had, we had one location now we have several, you know, and like every time we open another one it’s like, how are we pushing this conversation in total forward? It's not just… Are we opening a business? And obviously the business needs to be fiscally responsible and all that kind of stuff, all the fun business stuff that no one likes to talk about, but, is the story of the message that we're trying to get across, is it still there?
00:39:44 Jorge Mas: I have a very pointed opinion on this. And I think that our accomplishments and our success need to be recognized for our accomplishments in our success. And we happen to be Cuban-American. So the fact that you know some people try to label minorities successes or accomplishments by their nationality is insulting. So one, I don't think we're victims. I’m not a freaking victim of anything, so I don't want to play that card ever. I belong. So I tell people this story, I’m like, a bunch of stories. When I first started going to Wall Street with my brother, and we’re a little entity that started in Quail Roost Drive in Perrine Florida and we go to these meetings in Wall Street and I'm like in awe, right? All these big firms and Goldman Sachs and Citi were there, and I would laugh because you know I'd say it's Jorge and Jose Mas coming to a meeting. Like “Jorge” and “Jose.” You know? Jorge, and Jose Mas. So I joked and I go “Oh, these people probably expected us to walk in with a lawn mower and rake.” Right? So, we know a lot more than a rake, we walked in here to talk multi-million dollar deals. And so we belong, as long as we approach life that we belong. You are a one-star Michelin chef. There is absolutely no one who can take that away from you and you earned it. No one gave it to you.
00:41:21 Michael Beltran: Right.
00:41:22 Jorge Mas: No one gave it to you because of a fuckin’ label. Cuban-American, but I belong. Right? So, I think that the challenge many times is, is people like to demean or second “Oh you know you’re Cuban, you’re Hispanic, you speak spanish you’re a Cuban-American.” So no, no no no no, I belong, I do speak Spanish, I'm proud of my language. And I speak, I speak multiple languages. That's a good thing that's not a bad thing. So, the whole, and I know there's a lot of things going on right now with this whole social… people trying to revolutionize what society means. But we belong. As– We belong, like, we belong. Like I dont want to take a back seat to anyone, as good as anyone else. We push the envelope, we push to be excellent, and we should never be bashful about that. Like we’re one of the largest corporations in the U.S. And we’ll continue growing and we’ll continue being successful. It's an accomplishment, yes. But it's an accomplishment because we belong. Not just cause we’re, you know, from Miami, or your restaurant, so I you know that the whole labeling is I'm super proud of our community and our heritage, we've accomplished a lot, you know, the Cuban-American community I think what they've done to help build the city to what is today, no one can ever take that away in our history. And there are so many other nationalities that have done the same. There was a Cuban-American initial-ite at Exodus here in the early 60s, that sort of pushed Miami, right? And then allowed Miami to become this melting pot that it is today, because we are a cultural Mosaic, that's the beauty of Miami. This is a great city. It's a beautiful city for those reasons, and so, you know, I think we need to continue carrying the torch of where we came from, honor those who were before us and just continue pushing forward. History will always write about our contributions and what we’ve done here, because no one can ever take that away from us.
00:43:12 Michael Beltran: Right. Wow, that was– I’m pumped…I'm ready to run through a wall. I’m going to let Jorge eat his dish, Nick, do you want to actually talk for a bit? I’m just I, I want to let Jorge eat.
00:43:27 Nicolas Jimenez: I have no idea what you're doing.
00:43:29 Jorge Mas: Okay this is delicious.
00:43:30 Michael Beltran: He’s trying to eat right now.
00:43:30 Nicolas Jimenez: Yeah, yeah. No, that's fair.
00:43:31 Michael Beltran: I feel like if I keep asking him questions, He’s gonna stop eating.
00:43:33 Nicolas Jimenez: That’s fair, well, I'm going to turn the tables on you here. I wonder… You know,I think that you've probably had some of your own experiences with people, I guess, framing what you, not just what you, but what you and Ariete have done, in a way that makes it like Oh, It was significant because of this narrow category, like that may be true, but I wonder whether you have some of that same kind of, like, gut reaction of like, no, actually what we're doing is significant because of significant…
00:44:00 Michael Beltran: Right
00:44:01 Nicholas Jimenez: You know, not just because it's Cuban-ly significant or Miami-ly significant.
00:44:06 Michael Beltran: Cuban-ly is good.
00:44:07 Nicolas Jimenez: Yeah.
00:44:07 Michael Beltran: That's a good word.
00:44:08 Nicolas Jimenez: Yeah.
00:44:08 Michael Beltran: I don't know if that actually exists.
00:44:09 Nicolas Jimenez: Big-ly, big-ly
00:44:10 Michael Beltran: Big-ly?
00:44:10 Nicolas Jimenez: Yeah.
00:44:12 Michael Beltran: Oh boy, that’s a whole other can of worms. I feel like, you know like I think what it comes to any of accolades or success people were just like…
00:44:23 Nicolas Jimenez: You’re currently talking into the back of the microphone.
00:44:25 Michael Beltran: Well, I’m trying to talk to you. It's very difficult.
00:44:29 Nicolas Jimenez: Well, talk to them.
00:44:30 Michael Beltran: I think people have, more framed it as, like, well yeah, it just made sense. Ariete was like “That's what they're supposed to do.” ‘Cause we took a cuisine we kind of, change it completely, we made it to what we thought it should be, and then we created this beautiful thing that no one had seen before… and people were like “Oh yeah, of course you know, you, of course you won a star.” What do you mean of course you won a star? Like that doesn't really work that way. We worked very hard, we changed the conversation behind an entire food culture, it's not just black beans and white rice anymore and we're going to continue to do that and I'm very proud of that. There've been a lot of chefs before me that have done similar things, we were just lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time.
00:45:15 Nicolas Jimenez: Right.
00:45:15 Michael Beltran: Which is, you know, Miami now has Michelin stars, you know? 20 years ago they didn't. I think when Douglas was cooking 20 years ago, and Norman was cooking 20 years ago they probably would have won a star too. So…I don't know, I mean people frame, you know, people frame things to whatever conversation they’re in.
00:43:33 Nicolas Jimenez: Yeah, It's kind of like when people say, “Oh, well, you know Pan Con Podcast is obviously the best Miami-Cuban-American-Chef lead podcast in Florida.” But, we’re more than that. We belong.
00:45:45 Michael Beltran: Yeah, yeah I guess so. I guess we are.
00:45:47 Nicolas Jimenez: We– We belong, damn it.
00:45:52 Michael Beltran: I mean, it’s nice of you to put it that way. Alright, that's enough from Nick for now.
00:45:56 Jorge Mas: By the way, I like “Cuban-ly”
00:45:59 Michael Beltran: Cuban-ly is good. We should put that on a shirt.
00:46:02 Jorge Mas: Trademark that, that's really good, Cuban-ly.
00:46:05 Nicolas Jimenez: I’ll let you have that one.
00:46:06 Michael Beltran: Okay, that's good. Cuban-ly, I like that. So talk about like we talked about this little bit before the podcast started, which was, obviously you’ve experienced a solid amount of success in your life, but people always focus on the success and not really on the hardships. You know, and, obviously I feel very fortunate that I have friends like yourself and other people that have been through this before and have experienced a lot of things that I maybe am experiencing now, or will in the future and, you know, like growth is difficult, you know, going through growing pains as people like to simply put it, any kind of growth is difficult, any kind of like… As you try to grow to keep your standards, your execution, whatever it is, there's a lot of hardships behind that and we experience them every day, you know I wasn't kidding when I said I probably had 50 obstacles from the second I woke up to right now. What were some of the biggest ones in your career that, I think, you would look at is like… That was a point in my life that really made a difference?
00:47:18 Jorge Mas: I think points and I'll separate it, and I'll focus more on the business side of life which is part of the… the fabric of life. But it was trying to learn.. listen and, and we've been through hardships, and this is sometimes like I recall a lot of conversations that I'm having with my son now. Because we’re a, you know, a fortune 300 something, big company, 12 billion in revenue, it's like we’re a very different animal, but that's not who we are. You know, we started literally on Quail Roost Drive in Prime, we would dig ditches for the phone company, for the electrical company. That’s what we did, we dug ditches and we put cable in, and that's how we started. With trucks, and laborers and I was 14-15 I would get in the back of a truck and literally, dig ditches with a pick and an axe and I would learn how to drive a backhoe, the machine, so I can get the shade in the summers. There was times in the early 80s where we didnt have enough money to pay payroll. Not enough money. Like, it was like, hey in your car, and you’ll get a check from BellSouth at the time, you get a check, deposit it in a bank so it can cover payroll when checks start clearing on Monday. So, you know, those are the challenges of any business, right, you know, cash flow, what you get, receivables, good jobs, bad jobs, money. It's you know, the type of people you could hire. It was… we started from 0, we didn't inherit anything, we didn't like, buy a big business, we started like that. So as we started growing, there was a challenge of growth. So when Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992, and I was… that was a major event in the Mas family's history. So forget the personal issues, in total. So I recall with my, my wife and I were engaged to get married, We were going to get married, It was August 24, we were going to get married the 28th or… 28th of August, 29th. Hurricane hit the 24th I think or the 22nd, 23rd, or 24th I can remember now. We obviously didn't get married that day, she wanted to go spend it at her parents house in Color Ridge, and I lived in Pinecrest. So the hurricane hits, and i didnt see my wife. I couldn't find her for 2 days, ‘cause they lost their house, it like, literally fell on them. And our offices werent there anymore, they just weren't there. It was 186th Street and 104th Avenue. We went to the office after we, sorta like went down there ‘cause all– all your points of navigation or like gone. And we didn't have, like, a building. And most of our employees lost her house’s…
00:49:59 Michael Beltran: Wow
00:50:00 Jorge Mas: Yeah this was like a disaster. So out of the disaster we started building, Right? And we got employees, all this infrastructure had to be rebuilt etcetera. So, fast forward, so 2 years after 1992 our business boomed, because we were basically rebuilding all of the infrastructure in South Florida. In the course of that, we got the aspirations, look we can handle anything and we can grow, and we ended up in 1994 buying our largest competitor. Which was called Burnup & Sims, a company out of Fort Lauderdale. They had operations all over the U.S. We bought them, we ended up trading on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange and then we had to grow the business. We made mistakes growing a business, we had successes but we made mistakes. So in 1997, we were the first hispanic company to hit 1 billion dollars in revenue.
00:50:53 Michael Beltran: wow
00:50:54 Jorge Mas:Big deal, etcetera, it was amazing. And then, we grew… 1999- 80, 98, 99, 2000. In 2000 there’s a telecom crash. So you guys recall MCI’s… All of these other companies, they all go out of business. But we’re- we did work for them, so we’re creditors. So we had to write off half of our receivables.
00:51:15 Michael Beltran: wow
00:51:17 Jorge Mas: So at that time our stock, just to give you a relation, had gotten up to like 60 dollars a share. So, in march of 2001, our stock was at $1.31 cents. So I have a little sticker on my computer that has a day that says 131. We were basically worth nothing, and I learned a lesson, we are not worth what a number on a screen or a stock is worth. My value is exponentially more than that, it has nothing to do with our stock price, but, that was my rallying cry to the troops right? We’re not worth this, bear down, batten down the hatches. We got it. And, so we slowly started getting out of that. We developed a relationship with a little entity out of a suburb in Georgia had this crazy idea of putting satellite dishes on houses, stupid idea. That became DirecTV. We were the largest and still are a provider of DirecTV, all the DirecTV trucks all over the country, installation systems, those are all MasTech employees.
00:52:20 Michael Beltran: Wow.
00:52:20 Jorge Mas: Then we started getting into the clean energy business, so bottom line during the mid-2000 of this supposed, “you're almost out” You know? “You guys are almost.. you guys are almost dead.”
00:52:31 Michael Beltran: I mean how many, how many people at that time told you, like, you should just wrap it up?
00:52:34 Jorge Mas: Well, we had like 2 entities, they told us we’re bankrupt, that entity. I said, like, “Excuse me?” Like, that's not going to happen. So yes, people thought we were done. And out of that…
00:52:45 Michael Beltran: What year? 2000…
00:52:47 Jorge Mas: 2001.
00:52:47 Michael Beltran: 1
00:52:48 Jorge Mas: So out of those ashes, you know, it was hard, it was tough. Bank lines, credits, people… the business went from, we were doing a billion, 2 billion, 3, we went, we cut it in half. Yeah it was like, tough. You learn lessons from that. So your successes, and my, our successes, are a product of learning from our bumps, our obstacles, and you aren't… you fail at things, absolutely. You have to recognize those. You know what you need to do? You need to embrace that. You can't, like ignore it, no no no, embrace it. What did, what did you do wrong? What didn't you do wrong? Integration in business was wrong or wasnt growing, what are you doing? and you learn. And basically when the crash in 2008/2009 period, where, you know, a lot of my friends' businesses were suffering… We were like this. *raises hand*
So for the last 14 years, we’ve been like this. Because we took the lessons we learned we got into the right businesses, we learned how to execute. You know we're smart and conservative in what we do. Right? We don't gamble. But… but we grew. And we’re in the… The right place at the right time so we were one of the first companies to bet on like, clean, like on wind power, solar, you know, natural gas, which is a clean energy, it's a clean energy. So we bet big on those, and today we're in, in our business, we’re the largest at what we do. So have we had struggles? Absolutely, and I told , you know, just your life, and your perspective, your perspective changes…
00:54:14 Michael Beltran: 100%
00:54:15 Jorge Mas: At the time in 01 I had a, you know, Michael had just been born, I had two young kids. You know the epiphany, you were there, you know, your life, you're raising a family and doing a business and you're… It’s challenging. But again, we put our nose to the ground, bared down, battened down the hatches and just pushed. So, you learn from those lessons. You know? So as you get older you know I was like, like my wife says “Oh my God you were, you were so over aggressive when you're younger, you're much more, like, chill now.” And I said look, it's not being chill or uber aggressive it's just that, the same problem 20 years ago, I would have gone through that wall to get your kitchen, now I go, there’s a door there, just open the door, and go through it. I think that's a great analogy ‘cause that's how I was.
00:55:00 Michael Beltran: It's interesting right, we would turn 7 obviously not as long as you guys been around but we turn 7 in January, and there's been, in the seven years there’s been several times that I..
00:55:15 Jorge Mas: This is delicious by the way. Yeah this is good.
00:55:17 Michael Beltran: There’s been several times that I'm just kind of like, I don't know if we're going to make it to next week but we're just going to, we're going to keep going, we're going to keep going, not being able to pay payroll…
00:55:28 Jorge Mas: But listen, but 7 is amazing, this is like dog years for restaurants ‘cause our business is different, right? Like, you know, we’re like it a business, our nature. The fact that you’ve gone 7 years. Let’s look at the example you named some very renowned chefs earlier.
00:55:42 Michael Beltran: Yeah.
00:55:43 Jorge Mas: Right? The different adderations and what they’ve done. The fact that you've been steady, have been able to do what you do, and you're building on your platform without losing, and I'll talk to the customer…
00:55:53 Michael Beltran: Yeah, I love that.
00:55:54 Jorge Mas: Without losing the quality, and losing the charm, and everything that made this special, because that's your challenge. Now I'm flipping it around like, flip it on you. Your challenges, you know, when people try to build, you know, like multi-restaurant models…
00:56:12 Michael Beltran: Right
00:56:12 Jorge Mas: Do you lose what got you there? Do you lose what got you there? And the key is to not do that, and you haven't, like, you're good. Like, right?
00:56:21 Michael Beltran: Oh we're, we’re better.
00:56:22 Jorge Mas: You are…
00:56:24 Michael Beltran: We’re better than what we were.
00:56:25 Jorge Mas: This is amazing, so you're better. That's the key to success.
00:56:27 Michael Beltran: Yeah.
00:56:28 Jorge Mas: Lesson learned. Right? Which peers and other people continue to make mistakes and like, I see it with my peers and companies I compete with. It's just cause im older and i’ve been around 5 cycles already. You know, cono he's doing the wrong thing… .
00:56:43 Michael Beltran: It’s perspective.
00:56:46 Jorge Mas: Stay small.
00:56:47 Michael Beltran: Perspective
00:56:48 Jorge Mas: Perspective. Stay small, don't grow…
00:56:49 Michael Beltran: When I look back at the last…
00:56:51 Jorge Mas: Generate money, generate cash flow, have what you have and then, stay small.
00:56:56 Michael Beltran: When I look back at the last, you know, 7 years there’s several times that I’m just kind of like, “Fuck man…” This was, this was a very difficult point like I struggled through this but we pushed through this, incredibly hard, and we will continue to push through it. Now, 7 years in, when I get… obviously there's hardships every single day and they’re just like “Why are you so calm?” I'm like we've fuckin’, we've been here.
00:57:20 Jorge Mas: Yeah, been there done that.
00:57:21 Michael Beltran: We’ve been here. Like the only difference is that you will fail, there is failure every day, but just fail forward. Continue to push yourself to be better today than you were yesterday. And then be smarter than you were yesterday too ‘cause you have to learn from the failure. I… it's okay to fail. Chef Manny, enter Chef Manny.
00:57:42 Jorge Mas: This, by the way, the aroma, the smells…
00:57:44 Michael Beltran: Tamal en cazuela
00:57:45 Jorge Mas: Si, pero lo trajeron tamal en cazuela like my, my mom made it.
00:57:50 Micheal Beltran: No, it's different.
00:57:51 Manny Arredondo: Alright guys, so, our next course is our Tamal en Cazuela, with min uni, red pepper sofrito, and then we have a pork-fat foam to finish.
00:57:59 Michael Beltran: Thank you, chef.
00:58:01 Jorge Mas: Thank you.
00:58:03 Michael Beltran: This is actually, built off of, now completely different, from my grandmother's recipe that she gave me, and I mean it's very different now, but the first iteration of this dish was served at Family Meal.
00:58:15 Jorge Mas: Really?
00:58:17 Michael Beltran: Yeah, when I worked for Norman, and he was like, he just came to me after Family Meal and was like “Man, that was really good.” I'm like yeah, it was… I mean it was my grandmother’s recipe. He’s like “Let’s just put it on the menu.” So, we put it on the menu with just shaved black truffles and truffle shu on top, and It was one of our top sellers for 6 months. It was a really good dish. Now, it's different seafood and, interesting and weird. Which is more… more our bag, but…
00:58:40 Jorge Mas: Anything with uni is good.
00:58:42 Michael Beltran: Anything with uni is usually good. Um, how are we all doing? Are there any like, very intense questions that need to be asked, or no? Only intense ones. No? Man, you guys are really missing out.
00:58:57 Nicolas Jimenez: How about if I ask you a question?
00:58:58 Michael Beltran: Ask a question, Nick.
00:58:59 Nicolas Jimenez: So you just, you just mentioned how this dish ended up on a menu at one of Norman's restaurants. Talk about how you handle that, like, how you handle people inside of your company coming up with something, wanting to be on the menu. What's the process of that? What’s the…
00:59:19 Jorge Mas: That’s a great question.
00:59:20 Michael Beltran: Yeah it's very…
00:59:22 Nicolas Jimenez: Do you handle it deliberately differently from how people that you’ve worked under handled it? Like, did you learn? What did you learn about, what to do, what not to do, what to value, and what not to value?
00:59:34 Michael Beltran: So I will say that when I worked for Norman it was when he was a little longer in the tooth than when he was young. So, you know, when I worked for him I had the opportunity to put food on his menu often, and when I left the restaurant that I work for him at, half the menu were dishes that were mine. Now, what I learned from that experience is the fact that he invited me into a, like, more of a collaborative, creative circle, was the fact that he invited me into it. After that, I worked for other people that were not so creative and collaborative and more egotistical and they just kind of wanted to be, like, their own thing. I think that what has made us successful is the fact that people bring ideas, opportunities to the table and they're always heard or executed, or just, we can try it out if it's not good, it's not good if it's great then it's great: ends up on the menu. I don't, for me it's not an ego thing, I really just care about great food on a menu, and like, in this space specifically, like this one… Are you listening? No you’re not? Alright cool.
01:00:45 Nicolas Jimenez: Yes, I'm listening.
01:00:46 Michael Beltran: I don't know, you were just… Um, this space specifically, is the most collaborative space that we have because the talent in this room and in this restaurant is probably more than any other restaurant on the East Coast I would guess, in my opinion. I know I'm a homer, but yeah, I would say. Yeah… What? What's happening?
01:01:11 Unknown Voice: We’re taking questions, I wanted to explain.
01:01:14 Michael Beltran: Oh man, we got a question, I love that.
01:01:35 Unknown Voice: So, question for you all, but also for all of us. Jorge beautifully talked about identity, you know, our identity, our pride, our game as Cuban-Americans and then, you know, you have children your youngest is 22, mine is 13, other than the connectivity and the nostalgia of Cuba that we share with them, I'm starting to notice that, and I think this is great, and I even feel it myself, that I don't necessarily identify and I don't mean it in any woke way or anything, I don't identify as a Cuban-American, I'm from Miami. Is Miami the identity for all of us now?
01:02:21 Michael Beltran: Hold on, so I mean, so for me I definitely identify very much is like, when they ask me what kind of food we do I say we do progressive Miami cuisine. Because no one understands what Cuban food is, anyways. When I identify, like, me as a human, I'm Cuban-American through and through because, once I leave to other places and I enter this other realm of other chefs, like every other chef has a huge platform, like, to talk about the kind of cuisine that they do. And there's obviously others that are under-represented like us, but you know, Cuban food is not spoken about at all. So, if i can have even just some influence on the fact that someone is going to research the history of Cuba at all, and see how fucked it is, Just by me saying that im Cuban-American and this food got us a star, then yeah, im going to talk about it. You know? I'm definitely… I’m definitely from Little Havana though, for sure. Like there's no doubt about it.
01:03:31 Jorge Mas: Listen I… You know and I think our kids especially, yeah, you’re from Miami and it has a connotation, and it has a meaning. And i think it especially has a meaning for the kids whose parents have a background that's not necessarily the United States of America, American background. Let’s say, for my daughter in London, she's from Miami but everyone knows everyone sees that, you know, she's ____ or Cubana, and there’s something there, right? And I've seen her have conversations, ‘cause whenever she's in London, it's just her, right? “Oh my god… You’re from Miami… You’re Cuban… Oh, What a nice, this… And we went here and there” And my daughter stops them, like, instantly. She goes A B…she’s like drilled, right? A B C D E F G. Right? She defends what’s happening on the island, the fact that going there as a tourist is not good. Like all of those things not taught, felt. And that's the difference, is they still feel it. The next generation, that totally will be a different issue, but in this generation yeah, you're from Miami. That's fine, I don't look at that as like, if you’re Cuban-American, you're from Miami, but Miami has a connotation and there's an understanding that Miami is a true melting pot, right? I say many times joking at like, the owners meetings of Major League Soccer, Board of Governors, NFL owners, the whole deal, and I go “We’re the capital of Latin America.”
01:05:10 Michael Beltran: Yeah, I know, I mean, you’re not wrong.
01:05:13 Jorge Mas: No, I say that. We’re the capital of Latin America, the percent of hispanics,Miami speaks spanish, that's just, it is what it is.
01:05:20 Michael Beltran: Yeah
01:05:21 Jorge Mas: Yeah, it is what it is, there's no denying it. So yeah, I think I should be proud. I say i'm from Miami too…I’ll always say i'm from America, but, I'm from Miami.
01:05:36 Nicolas Jimenez: I know Diego had something.
01:05:40 Diego Londono: So, you guys have spoken about a lot of good stuff, which is amazing, right? And I think that a lot of what Mas has spoken about has 2 sides, right? He’s spoken about his business which is, you know, the ground of what you've done, and then also about your soccer project which has been, I think, what you said “Exposed me to a whole new world” that I couldn't believe what I did, right? That… that flash of that right? You’ve done so much in the business world, but the variety of doing the soccer is impactful. And I will tell you I am a Columbian kid, right? Raised in a Cuban community, right? I'm a Westchester kid, raised in a Cuban community. And I consider myself to be a Colombian Cuban. You can't.. How can you… Jachete for life, right? So, It's… You can't escape it. When we saw that you got behind the project of the soccer, what I told all my friends I was like “This is somebody that is going to make this reality for us.” ‘Cause, you know, my wife's Cuban, right? For us, South Americans and Central Americans, that's a reality that we’ve wanted for a very long time. Right? Because it's very near and dear. You said, “I didn't know the sport.” you said “I didn't know the sport.” right? But for us, it's near and dear. And we’re like, this is somebody that's going to bring a certification that's going to make things, like, a reality. And what you guys have done, the challenges, the perseverance, has been for a big community in Miami, cause this has been a Cuban community, but, slowly but surely it's becoming a, i think, South American community, like, a very big central…south, right? Now, we’re global, like you said, we are the hub for Central-South America at this point when it comes to ecommerce, any ecommerce that you can think about at this point, right? We thank you for, what you’re backing, what we do, right? It's a big push. We’ve always thought we needed somebody to bring that backing behind it, and the fact that you had the vision to see. And I believe it's going to be world class, no matter what happens, right? World Cup, Emles, whatever we do, you know, we thank you so much for that, that's 100 percent. And, Chef, an amazing meal, my wife and i come here all the time, we always say “Nobody serves a better dish than Ariete.” It's just… the food here is always amazing, right? You guys are absolutely… what you do everyday is top shelf, bar none, 2 stars in my book, 3, 5.
01:08:15 Michael Beltran: 2 stars should have been a thing, but, I'll tell you, I appreciate that.
01:08:21 Jorge Mas: Listen, thank you for that, and that, by the way that… That's what inspires and drives us everyday. Because it is important to be driven by something that inspires you, that you have an aspiration for, and I see it during our games. To see for 90 plus minutes, our supporters section, standing-room-only, 35 degree rain, singing, smoke bombs, flags, every nationality, kids moms, dads, abuelo, abuela out there, like, going crazy is atmosphere that you do not see in typical American sports, you do not see that, and thats amazing. So, the reason that I was first pushed into this is my first experience with futbol (soccer), I was 13 years old and I went to my first match at the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid with a very dear friend of mine and I thought it was a coolest experience on earth, because it was the first time i was able to drink wine out of a bolsa, you know? A bolsa, a pouch.
01:09:23 Michael Beltran: It’s pretty amazing.
01:09:26 Jorge Mas: But it wasnt that, it was a whole day affair. So I was like, oh my God, like, I've been to the Orange Bowl, I've been to a million events, I go “Wow, this is crazy good.” And that's hooked me on the experience, and that's what we want to translate here. And then I had an event maybe, 13, 14 years ago, like the 2000s. I was in Buenos Aires and I went to a River Boca match at La Bombonera. Yeah, it's nuts. That was it i go, wow, yeah.
01:10:08 Michael Beltran: I don't know what this is but I need to go.
01:10:11 Jorge Mas: It's a stadium at La Bombonera, the rivalry… you can't equate it to anything here, not yankees, mets.
01:10:18 Laurence Popriken: Michael, it's to the point where the fans have to exit separately, the home team's space behind, and they allow the other team to exit first. That's how bad it is.
01:10:29 Michael Beltran: I love that.
1:10:31 Jorge Mas: I know, and I went, and I went “Wow.” This is like______. The chants, because most of our supporters groups are, they’re fans of either ____ or other– Just very Argentinian or Hawiian, like our chants and what they sing and they do it, yeah it's amazing. And our supporters travel. So, New York we had like 700 at our playoff game but the most we had, is when we went to Orlando we had like 1500 of our supporters in Orlando, they were louder than the home, but then, things got a little nasty, and it wasn't good.
01:11:07 Michael Beltran: I mean, you know, I mean sports do get, they get like that.
01:11:11 Jorge Mas: Yeah, It's a great culture. It's a cultural issue. It's really good, really good.
01:11:17 Michael Beltran: What was your question? You had a question.
01:11:20 UNKNOWN VOICE: Well, I was going to, first I should ask, When is Messi coming? But that just…
01:11:25 Jorge Mas: I get asked that a lot by the way. Yeah.
01:11:27 UNKNOWN VOICE: Argentina, Argentina. I'm just kidding. I was just wondering how you guys met, because you mentioned the neighborhood thing but I don't…
01:11:35 Michael Beltran: Well, he was my neighbor, but, across the street from the restaurant. Not from like actually where I live. It was like a slow Sunday, and I was, I was working the line / expo, this was back when we didn't have a lot of employees. And he came up to me and introduced himself and I'm like, I definitely know who you are. Like, I'm not oblivious.
01:12:02 Jorge Mas: I intro– I yeah, I went to him. ‘Cause I thought he was, like, awesome.
01:12:08 Michael Beltran: And equally, and I um… this was back when we had the half-wood-grilled-chicken on the menu. Which your wife is a huge fan of.
01:12:15 Jorge Mas: My wife's favorite.
01:12:15 Michael Beltran: She's still mad that we took it off the menu. And, since then, we’ve been, you know, pretty tight. I know that I can always call him and he'll pick up the phone, which is incredible to have a friend like that with just, like, the knowledge and wisdom that this man has that I could be like I “Like life sucks right now, what do you think? Can you tell me what you think? Because I think that it all sucks.” And he’ll be like “You know, you need to relax.” And I'm alright. That's cool. But that's really how, how we met and I think that was 4 years ago.
01:12:51 Jorge Mas: And what ____ ‘cause i knew of him before I actually met him or came here and was the fact was the stories with Ariete, his grandmother, the recipes, I was attracted to ‘cause he was taking our culture, and taking it to a level and a platform that it had never been at before. And so I admired him, and I wanted to thank him, like what you're doing is amazing. It's really good. Then we hit it off, my wife like a freaking chicken, with her chimichurri dinner and salsa verde.
01:13:19 Michael Beltran: Salsa Verde, yeah.
01:13:21 Jorge Mas: Not chimichurri, salsa verde,_________, Yeah it was amazing, then when you took it off the menu she got, like, pissed…
01:13:29 Michael Beltran: She was mad.
01:13:30 Jorge Mas: And she told you.
01:13:30 Micheal Beltran: Yeah, she did tell me. And then, then i cooked Nochebuena at his house.
01:13:35 Jorge Mas: Nochebuena at my house.
01:13:36 Micheal Beltran: Yeah, that's right, I did cook Nochebuena at his house.
01:13:38 Jorge Mas: The year of Covid, when my family was here. The end of 20 right?
01:13:46 Michael Beltran: Yeah, the end of 20. That’s correct. Yeah, it's been like a… quite a journey.
01:13:52 Jorge Mas: Yeah because, Nochebuenas, like, all the Mas’ we all get together, but, we were worried about my mom, she's a little older. And then everyone, without mom, so we’re not going to get together. So I was like, cono, like, this is the first time the family’s not going to get together. So, I said screw that, come. He ______ at my house and it was amazing.
01:14:06 Michael Beltran: It was good. It was way too much food for just, like, 8 people though.
01:14:10 Jorge Mas: Yeah, It was. It’s okay.
01:14:11 Michael Beltran: Cause it was like, us, and like, you 6, it was like, it was way too much food. But that, I'm good for that. So, i guess…
01:14:18 Jorge Mas: But, if you ask my wife and my kids it was like, one of the best Nochebuenas ever.
01:14:22 Michael Beltran: I love that. Really?
01:14:22 Jorge Mas: Yeah, it was, absolutely.
01:14:23 Michael Beltran: Oh, I love to hear that. I guess, really the, the question now is like what's next, right? Stadium is going to happen, I'm sure everyone asks you this shit all the time.
01:14:37 Jorge Mas: But what's next, look, stadium is going to happen. It 's going to take, you know, I always tell people, this is the hard part now actually building it. But we’ll get it done. It’ll happen. I am super excited about our team next year, because we're not the only ones that believe in Miami. Miami is a great city. I then, want to attract amazing players here, so I think that the eyes of the soccer world will be here next year.
01:15:05 Michael Beltran: I love how pumped you are about this…
01:15:06 Jorge Mas: So it's, yeah it's going to be, like, it's going to be amazing.
01:15:07 Michael Beltran: I really do love how pumped you are because, like, you know, like, business is business. Right? But then when you find, like, a passion project, that you're super pumped about…
01:15:15 Jorge Mas: Yeah, business and MasTech, yeah MasTech is phenomenal and great but I'll let my brother run that. It's okay. He's super talented, he's amazing. I've been doing that for… I think since I left college, like, okay yeah, like this is fun. I'm having a blast.
01:15:29 Michael Beltrán: I love that.
01:15:30 Jorge Mas: It's, It's very challenging, it's hard. I hate losing, and I'm super competitive. I can't be talked to, like, during the game. Like, this game last Monday was at Citi Field, it's freaking raining, it's cold, its Gonzalo Higuaín’s last game, he an amazing run, we were playing on a baseball field. Great, you know, good 30 minutes were there and I thought it was offsizing, we were going to go up on nothing. I could tell we were going to get, start getting shredded in the midfield, I am super pissed off. Great, but there is a flipside to my New York story of losing last Monday night. So, knowing it's a challenging game, it's myself, Aleyda, my kids and David Beckham and his son, Cruz. So, what I made sure, was when we were in New York, that we had great food.
01:16:15 Michael Beltran: Okay.
01:16:16 Jorge Mas: So we had lunch at Le Bernardin.
01:16:18 Michael Beltran: Oh man, I've had lunch there.
01:16:19 Jorge Mas: Amazing…
01:16:20 Michael Beltran: Yeah, it's great.
01:16:21 Jorge Mas: Right? With Eric Ripert, etcetera… great seafood, and great wine pairings by Sommelier Aldo Sohm, it was great. We go to the game, it's bad. So, I see David on his phone. Boss, like, we're gonna forget this, we're gonna eat on the plane. So, this is all bad… etcetera. So on our plane, shows up, the owner of Lucali, with 4 pizzas, calzones, meatballs and freaking desert thing. So on our way back, we all got stuffed with food. So it started eating, and it finished eating.
01:16:57 Michael Beltran: Yeah, that's a good, that's a good…
01:16:59 Jorge Mas: Alright there we go.
01:17:00 Michael Beltran: That's a good way to forget.
01:17:01 Jorge Mas: Yes.
01:17:01 Michael Beltran: I just actually went to New York too, and I had some really great food. Yeah.
01:17:06 Jorge Mas: I think what's happening in New York is, like, I… I think New York is really different than what I am used to seeing. But, there's great food.
01:17:11 Michael Beltran: What does that mean? Tell me what that means to you.
01:17:13 Jorge Mas: It means that I always looked at New York as the beacon and financial center of the world, had a different buzz. Super fan of New York when my daughter was living there for 2 years, it was amazing. So, when I went back a year ago, it was a different city. It wasn't the New York that I knew, it was dirty, it was, you don't want to walk the sidewalks, my daughter's in an apartment on Gramercy Park, I wouldn't let her live there. The restaurants, half of them were shutdown, this was a year ago. When I've been back, ‘cause I've been back… it's getting better, but it's still not the New York that we know, and my friends that live there, with the crime and everything that's happening a lot of them are moving here. But, New York will be back, New York will bounce back. New Yorks going to be amazing, but it's going through a tough period now.
01:18:04 Michael Beltran: I mean, I think, like after what the world just lived through, you know over the last two years…
01:18:09 Jorge Mas: I think New York's amazing.
01:18:10 Michael Beltran: Yeah, but it's also, like, everyone has had a different trajectory afterwards.
01:18:14 Jorge Mas: Yes.
01:18:15 Michael Beltran:Obviously, Florida was on a different path than...
01:18:18 Jorge Mas: We’re different.
01:18:20 Michael Beltran: We are definitely different then the rest of the country, and we are, I think, in a place right now that can, we can capture a lot more than the rest of the country can.
01:18:28 Jorge Mas: But, it's hard when you go there living how we do here, and going there and seeing the contrast is hard. Like, I went to Major League Soccer's offices in New York there ‘cause i always go. 20 percent of their employees in the office, 20? Maybe. It’s weird, like, at MasTech we don't have 100 percent employees, we don't. We got 80.
01:18:48 Michael Beltran: Right.
01:18:51 Jorge Mas: You know it's, for me, it was just a contrast. All it was, was a contrast not good, bad or indifferent, I was just…
01:18:58 Michael Beltran: Everytime i go somewhere it's always a contrast. You know?
01:19:00 Jorge Mas: But it's a marked contrast to…I always looked, me, when I grew up New York was like “Oh my God, like, this is like the center of the world, this is the center of the world.”
01:19:13 Michael Beltran: I mean, but wouldn't you say that a lot of people nowadays say that Miami is the center of the world?
01:19:16 Jorge Mas: Yes, they all want to be here.
01:19:17 Michael Beltran: They all want to be here.
01:19:18 Jorge Mas: Not San Francisco, Miami and New York, they all want to be here. But then my daughter’s living in London, now. And I was in London like 10 years ago like, ehh. No, London now is like, like wow. Like in contrast with New York.
01:19:32 Michael Beltran: Oh, is it?
01:19:34 Jorge Mas: Yes, yes, yes. Like London now what they're doing with, im forgetting this cuisine, im talking about London the food scene. With different…
01:19:41 Michael Beltran: Yeah, the food scene is intense.
01:19:42 Jorge Mas: The food scene is super intense now, it's a super different city. For whatever reasons people have migrated, post covid, to places that they feel they can, I don't know, like, maybe move easier, and less restrictions or not, whatever it is. It's a combination, it's about feeling safe, it's about having a friendly business environment, It's about not being shut down, it's about so many things. It’s, look when Covid hit, my first thought at MasTech, at that time we had 20,000 employees. I look at my brother, I go “Bro this is going to be bad.” Like, 20,000 people. If you recall, construction became an essential service…
01:2019 Michael Beltran: Right, it was an essential service.
01:20:20 Jorge Mas: It was an exempt service.
01:20:20 Michael Beltran: Right.
01:20:22 Jorge Mas: We laid off, barely no one.Our employees that couldn't work, only couldn't work because of government mandates and areas they were that kept certain people working that was essential service. Thank God, frankly, during Covid, we grew.
01:20:40 Michael Beltran:Yeah
01:20:41 Jorge Mas: Thank god, right? But i've been to some of those cities, and, and again i don't want to get into, well i will if you want to, talk politics, i'll talk cause i have no filter in my mouth. I go to some of these cities, i go, some of these people are retarded, like, whats going on here?
01:20:56 Michael Beltran: I mean but what, what is the real like, let's talk about this, so why is Miami what it is today? And what is Miami going to be over the next 10 years, because of what's happened in the last 3 years.
01:21:08 Jorge Mas: I think Miami has finally become recognized for what it always was.
01:21:13 Michael Beltran: Oh, 1 thousand, million percent.
01:27:16 Jorge Mas: I don't think Miami is different, I think they're finally recognizing, oh my god, I live here, and then you go there and you go, I like this, for a lot of reasons.
01:21:28 Michael Beltran: Right.
01:21:28 Jorge Mas: So people are recognizing, they're all coming here now. And they are recognizing everything that Miami stood for, our multi-diversity, multi-language, cultural mosaic, geography, the water etcetera, But it's the way we live, right? Like, It's, It's what we do. And people are recognizing that, we’re finally becoming a magnet for everywhere else. ‘Cause frankly, New Yorkers and people from california are like “ Aw miami, it's a little bushtown, we’ll go vacation on the beach, it's a bunch of spicks down there.”
01:22:00 Michael Beltran: Now they call move here.
01:22:02 Jorge Mas: Now they all move here.
01:22:02 Michael Beltran: Yeah.
01:22:04 Jorge Mas: And It's not stopping.
01:22:05 Michael Beltran: I said the same thing about food, right? It's like, when we won stars in June, I was like, we could have won these stars a decade ago. Not me because we weren't open a decade ago. But I also think, Um, I also think that this was just a validating moment in the food world that we have deserved for a long time. And I think that's going to continue to happen with several different industries, and as we continue to go. And, obviously im a big fuckin’ homer because this is my home. Nick is waving the mic at me..
01:22:41 Nicolas Jimenez: Oh, I was, I had already waved to you, I was waving at Carlube to let him know I was turning the mic on. Ivan has things to say.
01:22:48 Michael Beltran: I, oh, okay. Alright Ivan.
01:22:50 Nicolas Jimenez: I dont know whats going on either, I’m as lost as you are.
01:22:52 Michael Beltran: That's perfect.
01:22:53 Ivan Lodenovich: I think that was a very profound cut off…
01:22:56 Michael Beltran: Was it?
01:22:57 Ivan Lodenovich:Maybe you should finish what you were saying first.
01:22:58 Michael Beltran: No, I don't even remember what I was saying.
01:23:01 Ivan Lodenovich: You said a very, so the comments that you were sharing are, I agree with, and are a little triggering in the sense that, you're in a room full of Miamians, telling how wonderful Miami is, and like, we all agree. It's, we already know it's wonderful here. I'm curious what each of you think Miami is missing? Like what do we really need? Or what do we crave?
01:23:26 Jorge Mas: Ill answer that
01:23:27 Michael Beltran: I'll also answer that. I can answer that.
01:23:28 Ivan Lodenovich: I mean you have an incredible amount of capitol coming to South Florida, you have an incredible migration of people coming to South Florida for a variety of reasons during the pandemic, but, um, what are we missing as a city in order for us to be even better, and to set the stage beyond New York, beyond London, and to really be kind of a uniquely special place?
01:23:53 Jorge Mas : I think, go ahead.
01:23:54 Michael Beltran: It's a two part answer, but, you go.
01:23:56 Jorge Mas: I think we're going to face challenges, with the expectations with people moving here, what they are accustomed to from a global city. Which has to do with education. So i think all of my friends that are in this whole different financial world moving down here, are having issues with schools. And I think, I'm just out of the school age but I have nieces and nephews, there's issues with schools. Schools are super important. But, I think there's going to be enough capital invested here, to build the infrastructure of schools in order to educate our children in the best way possible, and a better way then we did doing that, but it's a challenge. It's a challenge that has to be executed. So I think 1 is education, 2 is the infrastructure here. We're in the infrastructure business and we're in the business of moving people to get to work. We need to make sure that the gridlock in our infrastructure is such that you don't take 1 hour to get there, 2 hours getting to work. We can't become New York with traffic, or San Francisco. Then I think there's other activities where you have these big capital dollars coming in, be it, restaurant, cultural, etcetera. I think those aren't challenges, I think those are opportunities. I personally think that our challenges are education and transportation infrastructure.
01:25:18 Michael Beltran: That's a very wise way to look at this. I think that um, our challenges through growth are a little more personal for me, because I think, people, as more stuff… like let's not even talk about like, very grown up things like education, right? Forgets. Lets just talk about like on, on, what everyone sees, which is, the glitz and the glamour, and the f&b and all that stuff. I think us as Miamians, it takes us to make a difference because we need to take a step back and appreciate the things that made us special to begin with. Like the things that make Miami great from day one, which are, whether you want to talk about whatever food place you ate at when you were 10, or whatever you know, if you went to Acy’s Icies when you were a kid. And all those kinds of things, like, we need to take a step back and continue to appreciate those things in order to keep Miami what Miami really is. And I think as we continue to grow, it's going to be the job of so many people that are the shot callers, and the people that sign all kinds of things into legislation and like, actual, like rules and what allows people and things to open here. But it's also our job to continue to make Miami special in what we appreciate. Because if you just listen to the media of Miami, everything is what it is today. We need remember what was yesterday so we can appreciate what makes this city fuckin’ special, because, if not, were fucked. Right? Like we're incredibly screwed, Because we're just going to be what San Fran has been for the last 20 years, right? Which is…
01:27:09 UNKNOWN VOICE: And that's like a wicked balancing act, right?
01:27:11 Michael Beltran: Yeah.
01:27:12 UNKNOWN VOICE: You have a whole culture around the future right? Like around Blachade, around web3, around building a tech based city, around an evolution in sports, and things like that. And then you have us that grew up going to the nighta, right? Like that… that culture almost is second fiddle to this evolution. Right? Like how do you preserve it? Like how do you make sure that as the city evolves, you keep that culture, you preserve the importance of things that we grew up with, that are, I think in my head I think of places like scotty's landing.
01:28:00 Michael Beltran: I love that place
01:28:02 UNKNOWN VOICE: It's a different spot but that's a place I grew up going with my father, and like, having burgers, and like, growing up in. So, those places are no more, like that. It's evolved as any city would, but, I think what you're stating is really important in preserving the culture. I just wonder how we do that over the course of time?
01:28:23 Michael Beltran: I mean, people and not faking the funk. Like, I mean, everyday people will talk about like the new Carbone's of the world instead of talking about our betters. You know? Like there is absolutely nothing wrong with our betters, and people will continue to do that if we let them. And I think that, you know, part of my mission as a human has been to try to preserve what makes Miami special as much as I can and the culture of Miami as much as I can, because it will be forgotten. People are, in today's world, everyone wants to just know what's happening today, they don't want to remember all the history that's been here so it really takes several of the people in this room and other people also, which is just to remind the world, like, there are several things that make us fuckin’ great. So, it is a very interesting balancing act, because we are in thing incredible moment of growth and everyones like, lets take all of the dollars that we can, and that's cool, but let's also put the dollars that we can into the things that matter that made us this way that we are, So, anyways Chef Manny, the floor is yours sir.
01:29:37 Manny Arredondo : Alright guys, so, the entree tonight is called Nochebuena. So, these are all flavors that we grew up eating right? So you have your pork slayed belly, that's been stuffed with a sausage and a maduro, then we have Curtis avocado. Curtis is our dishwasher…
01:30:00 Michael Beltran: He has an avocado tree.
01:30:03 Manny Arredondo: So it is Curtis avocado, we have sour orange gel, and then a colatura mojo.
01:30:10 Michael Beltran: Love that, thank you.
01:30:12 Jorge Mas: This is really good.
01:30:17 Michael Beltran: I'll just, while you're eating, this is probably, what, the 8th iteration of this dish that we’ve had. We've tried to recreate the flavors and the feelings of Nochebuenas so many times, and failed…
01:30:28 Jorge Mas: This is amazing.
01:30:30 Michael Beltran: I feel like we've failed so many times, but you know everytime we do it we get better. Nochebuena is a feeling, it is a culture, it is a moment. It is a thing that I think only people in Miami can understand. That is incredibly special, and trying to recreate that in a dish and in a moment is, has been a challenge of ours as a restaurant for a long time, so…
01:30:55 Doug Rumsam: As a non-Miamian, can you give me a little bit of a background on Nochebuena?
01:30:59 Jorge Mas: Yes, please.
01:31:00 Michael Beltran: Well, I mean, Nochebuena for me, in my family, it's like the one day we get together every year, right and I came from…
01:31:07 Jorge Mas: The night before christmas
01:31:08 Michael Beltran: Yeah, the night before christmas. So, I come from a family where my grandparents are the cooks, you know, my grandfather is the cook of the family. And pretty much it was the lead up, this is why this is the only holiday where I really enjoy, which was like the lead up to Christmas eve was so intense. You know, he would have a whole, you know, we would have a whole hog just sitting in the fridge like you would open the fridge to get something and there's a whole pig sitting in there and it 50 days of like blanching Yukon making Coley and making Frijoles in the whole thing like the lead up to it and then that moment when you eat for Christmas Eve. You went out for us like my grandfather would sit there and they'll be 30 people eating and he would wait it would see everybody ye and then once he sees everyone eat then he would sit down and evening and it was like a moment that it's like it's so hard to recreate the understanding in the feeling of that moment to try to light put that down into one dish we've tried so many different fuckin’ things and it's it's always delicious and is always exceptional but it's like can you recreate the feeling is the hardest part.
01:32:15 Doug Rumsam: And it's the build-up, like, you'll never recreate the buildup?
01:32:18 Michael Beltran: No, I mean, you know, the build-up is the hardest part.
01:32:21 Jorge Mas: No, but this is really good.
01:32:26 Michael Beltran: So then, I'm going on a bathroom break.
01:32:40 Doug Rumsam: Second fiddle to the great food are the wines that we’ve got. So, both are from Bordeaux, and we've moved over to the left bank of– sorry to the right bank of Bordeaux, predominantly these two are Pomerol Saint-Emilion, the left glass we've got Saint-Emilion, and the right glass we've got Pomerol. We've got two estates that are just knocking it out of the park, sensational. And we've got them from two of, of, their best vintages in recent memory. So, on the left you've got Figeack, Figeac is run by a guy with such incredible attention to detail, freddy fay. Whos just doing immense stuff at the property, last year completely redid everything, just, it's immaculate. And his wines over the last decade have just soared. Super fresh, accessible early but you can just park it away for 20-30 years Figeac is right at the top of their game, and was just recognized at Premier Grand Cru Classe A. And, and actually the sort of, anomaly there for Figeac, is that in sentiminion, you would usually expect Merlot, but, it's got a lot of Cabernet Sauvignon in there. Which gives it a bit more, sort of, back bones, it's a bit more structured than you'd usually get from a Saint-Emilion. And, Conseillant is from Pomerol, Pomerol is basically a hodge-podge of little properties, mostly on clay mostly Merlot, conscious a bit different in the, have a bit of a patchwork, and it borrows a bit of land in Saint-Emilion as well, limestone, super fresh, very well known for being really silky. 2009 was a vintage that was just massive in every way, so, massive on fruit, alcohol, tannins, acidity, but somehow they've pulled it all together and you get a balance. It's like a turbo charged one. And 2010, a little bit more structured one, you can tuck away for a very long time, quite correct. Nice to see alternative years side by side in a bit of a comparison. And they both offer enough seriousness to be able to handle that great food.
01:35:16 Michael Beltran: Love that. I think we should just like, touch on the elephant in the room, right? Which is the state that, kind of, Cuba in, at this moment. I think where we're all at is I think, the world in general is at a place that they don't quite understand what's happening, I know that we here in Miami understand what's happening but for the 22 people outside of Miami that listen to this podcast… it's really only 22, in total yeah. I think it's important to note that like we are at a very interesting kind of like, crossroads right and you know me knowing you and knowing your background and stuff, I think you could speak on that a little bit better than a lot of people can.
01:36:13 Jorge Mas: Look, I think I think the situation in Cuba, and again, it's hard to explain but it's tragic. It's how, all the, all the emotions it's frustrating, it's like all a gamut of emotions are going to things that make no sense that don't take any type of historical sensibility ‘cause how can you have a nation that's been enslaved since 1959, 60 plus years now. When you had two waves of Cold War, fall of communism in Eastern Block, you’ve had all those things and Cuba remains this, you know, this this monstrous dictatorship that took all of the best repressive tactics from the old Soviet Union and applied it on its people. When you look at rafts being found by the dozens every day now as we speak, you see the border full of Cubans fleeing the island, you see the desire of a people wanting to be free via protest on the street, yes it's just incessant repressive machinery controlled, still, by the Castro family and his acolytes. You know, what's the solution? ‘Cause Buba is an island. And it's easy to lose hope, it's easy to ignore, right? Like most of the world has ignored, and will continue to ignore Cuba because it's not on anybody's list I have always said that the only time Cuba’s situation will be resolved by an outside force, outside of Cuba are when the interest of a free Cuban people align with that countries interest. And that hasn't happened yet. So, so, what do we do? Right? Like that that's the ultimate question, and we can support humanitarian bases we can support the opposition in Cuba with support, and we can do all that, but what really moves the needle? And I've been doing this for a long time, and it’s, I don't think there's any magic bullet, I think it takes faith. I think if you look at the models of countries that have gone from a totalitarian system to a free society in a short period of time, there's been shocks in their systems that were not anticipated.
01:38:44 Michael Beltran: Are we in that shock moment?
01:38:45 Jorge Mas: I don't know, I don't know, Im, frankly I hate to say it cause I'm super optimistic, but I'm not super optimistic. ‘Cause I think it's going to take something much more severe to rattle the powers that be in Cuba from repressing the people. At the end of the day, and you heard me say this before, the solution of Cuba lies in the hands of Cubans.
01:39:08 Michael Beltran: Yeah.
01:39:09 Jorge Mas: It does not lie in the hands of the United States of America or forgein powers, or Venezuelans, or Russians etcetera. It lies in the hands of Cuban people. When the Cuban people decide to truly be free and take any means necessary to do that, you'll see movement. Can I rely on the… United States are going to free Cuba, there's not going to be an invasion of Cuba to free the people. That's not going to happen, it's not going to happen. So, it's, it's, we’re in a frustrating situation, I think what we all can do is just continue showing the world what a free Cuba can represent, what the Cuban people aspire for, which is freedom. I think there has been a tremendous shift over the last 20 years, and from Cuba being this supposed revolutionary, socialist example, to truly being a pariah, I think it's very difficult now where you see people saying Cuba is a good example of anything, where you had the extreme left and socialism for a long time and use Cuba's as an example and none exist anymore, but it's frustrating.
01:40:10 Michael Beltran: Do you feel like in the last 2 years there's been more of a push or no?
01:40:15 Jorge Mas: I think so because you start seeing exhibits of opposition publicly that you didn't see before.
01:40:19 Michael Beltran: Right, from the people.
01:40:20 Jorge Mas: From the people, I mean, that's evident, that's good. That's good.
01:40:24 Michael Beltran: Yeah, I mean and it could have been, you know, I mean we only see what they want us to see, right? You know and then once we're seeing what they don't want to see then they cut us off from all vision and you can't see…
01:40:38 Jorge Mas: That– You can't, they can't take back or control back what's happened. I think there's amazing momentum, I think everything that's happened is a good thing. But, I think for decades we all believed that what would matter to the Cuban people was the, only the political speech, right? Freedom, democracy, those values that we all hold dear, put that aside, what the Cuban people truly want is to be able to socially survive, and be able to provide something for their kids and put food on the table and do those things, because when you've been taken away when you've, given nothing and depend totally on the state, thats a bad thing, you become subservient to the state. And as you see people now go beyond that barrier, right? That barrier of the ____, the revolucion, the people on the block who spy on you, what do you want? And you're going on the streets, and you're repelling the police, right? Of arresting someone who's doing something peacefully, an those, those are all great signs. So, is there movement? absolutely, but again you get, people get, you know were getting impatient, were going like yesterday, yesterday, yesterday, yesterday.
01:41:46 Michael Beltran: Right. I see you over there, was it something to say?
01:41:48 Nicolas Jimenez: No, No, I just, you know, we got… we’re on a weirdly timed situation for our, for our podcast.
01:41:54 Michael Beltran: Are we?
01:41:58 Nicolas Jimenez: Yeah, we got to get upstairs too. And we still, yeah we’re going to do Q&A things.
01:42:01 Michael Beltran: Oh, we’re going to do Q&A things. Is it time for the Q&A things?
01:42:03 Nicolas Jimenez: I think it's about time for the Q&A things. I want to, to transition into them by having a, thanking people and also having a few people address the crowd.
01:42:16 Michael Beltran: Oh, we’re going to talk? People are going to talk?
01:42:18 Nicolas Jimenez: Yeah…
01:42:19 Michael Beltran: Got it.
01:42:19 Nicolas Jimenez: We’ll transition into the people talking with some, some things. I want to thank Jorge, for agreeing to, to do this thing that is, like, way beneath his station. This is beneath all of you, to be doing this…
01:42:34 UNKNOWN VOICE: We’re underground.
01:42:35 Michael Beltran: I would have to agree, actually.
01:42:37 Nicolas Jimenez: No, you really are, you all have lowered yourself, under-area to do this thing. So thanks. Thanks for that, thanks to Mike for putting up with this light that I put up in the rafters, I know it's been his favorite part of the day. I know Mike is not a fan of lights and I put one right in his face. Thanks to the sponsors of this dinner, that's a ,people you see in those frames over there, Acqua Panna Pellegrino, we’ve got Courvoisier, we got Bordeaux Index which of course we've been hearing from, from Doug. Doug thank you for guiding us through, through so much of the booze here, and D'Artagnan Foods, which, which also sponsored the thing, unfortunately there's nobody personally here for us to, to thank but, you know, they pitched in.
01:43:25 Michael Beltran: It’s cool, I buy enough of their stuff.
01:43:27 Nicolas Jimenez: Well, you know, that's why you're not selling the ads around here. So, thanks to all the sponsors, also going back to Courvoisier with Joanna and Eddie here and I know that we were going, so I don't know if you want to do it from your seat, or if you want to come up here?
01:43:46 Michael Beltran: Oh, get on up, c’mon, lets go…
01:43:48 Nicolas Jimenez: Yeah, c’mon, you wore a jacket and everything for this.
01:43:50 Michael Beltran: Yeah, you wore a jacket, the nice kicks c’mon
01:43:52 Jorge Mas: Looking sharp. Oh yeah, with the pockets, I was going to say the same tre buena pinta. Tre buena pinta.
01:44:04 Nicolas Jimenez: That's a lot of pinta to be staying sitting down. You know?
01:44:10 Joanna Pena: Hi, first of all, thanks to Nick and Mike for having us this evening. I'm Joanna Pena, as he mentioned to you. I work with Beam Suntory. I run the East Coast for Multicultural Marketing, I think we touched on a lot of things this evening which brought a lot of joy because it's what I do for a living. I put our culture in the brand's hands like brands that, historically would never have speak like spoken to a Hispanic consumer. I create programming to you know, bring our brands to other audiences and make everybody feel included, right? In this room. I'm also a Miami-born girl from Cuban-American parents, second generation Cuban-American. My grandfather was ______ he went to jail for 2 years and he lived his whole life working out of the Cuban museum in Little Havana. Abrigarita venti, cinco, cero, seis, right? He was a treasurer until he died a few years ago, and I'm not here to talk about myself or what I do for a living but I'm here actually, to talk to you about something that was born 5 years ago because one of the topics that we kind of touched on earlier was legacy, and I think what is my legacy in life? Right? And I think one of the things that I learn from being a product of immigrant families, and coming to America and wanting to, you know, create the American dream and leave something behind, is help those along the way that identify the same, you know, historically as us and have gone through some of the same struggles that we have. One of the things that really shaped my life growing up was hurricanes. I lived in Puerto Rico in 1989 when I was five and Hurricane Hugo basically wiped out my family business we relocated to Miami again Hurricane Andrew came and did the same thing again relocated me to Central Florida so, 5 years ago we found ourselves after Hurricane Maria hit the island of Puerto Rico and, wiped out the island and where my family relocated to after basically they left Cuba. So, what happened that day was something super unique. I think that in this industry in the hospitality industry there's something that brings us all together and it's like when one of our brothers or sisters needs something we call each other up when we say “How can we help?” Right? In that moment I spoke to a lot of Industry peers and I said “Hey Puerto Rico needs us, who's willing to step in and put their hand up and do something about it?” Right? Back then five years ago Eddie Fuentes was one of the first people I called and who put his hand up he's a Cuban-American not Puerto Rican doesn't have any ties to the island. Michael Beltran, another Cuban-American chef said “What do you need? I’m there to cook.” And we threw a great event and raised money for Puerto Rico and it kind of was what born shaking for it's a group of like-minded individuals whether were hospitality industry or other brands in the room tonight could be a part of it, it's a lot of just like people that want to do good for those that are finding themselves in tragedy in a desperate crisis, right? And do you know recently we've been kind of going through the same thing again, you know, we had Hurricane Fiona once again wipeout Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, then Ian came, wiped out Cuba wiped out Central Florida and 3 weeks ago we held another amazing event, the industry came together lots of brands, lots of people donate their time. We're not a non-profit. I just want to make that very clear, we are literally a collective of people that believe in helping others in the best way possible with whatever resources we have, right? chef Mike once again, thank you for being there that night as well 3 weeks ago to help cook. But we just wanted to make you guys aware of what shaking For is, and invite you all if there's any way that you want to be a part of this, help people I think you know we just finished raising $70,000 at the event 3 weeks ago which is going directly to the people in Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, but the people who really need us right now are Cuba and Central Florida who happened to be what make up Miami and Florida as a whole and this is our local community of people that could really use, you know, your, whether it's donations for your brand to be part of our next that or what not if you want to be a volunteer resources help out in any way possible. This, Ill pass it off to Eddie.
01:48:43 Eddie Fuentes: Oh, that was great. That's a hard way to follow that up.
01:48:46 Michael Beltran: That's a hard follow up… Hard follow up.
01:48:48 Eddie Fuentes: Really hard follow up, I’m not gonna get there, but anyway, name is Eddie Fuentes I own 2 restaurants in Wynwood called Spanglish and Grills, but again, I don’t at all want to spend even a second of more time on myself and it's really about Shaking For, and again, 5 years ago as Johanna said, piggy-back off of that I was literally, like, just watching it on the news one of my business partners a Hectare Acevedo, which I think you, you know through Miami Inter and, nothing he was in Italy and kind of really enjoying you know a cocktail competition win and whatever and then this happened and I was just like, I just literally called him and said “Hey, what are you going to do?” You know what I mean? Like, the whole island you know, again doesnt have power again is going, you know, getting wiped out so, we're not a non-profit, I didn't really know what really to do I just thought that, at least a drop or a prick, but in the heart .maybe we could do something, you know? If we could actually go to the houses and give directly, you know? I'm not handing it to somebody else to get it filtered and it stays and I'm not trying to talk bad about anybody, but it stays in an airplane hangar for years to come and nothing really happens that's literally the opposite of what I wanted. So, we did it again a couple weeks ago and we got together, we did this now and I thought it was a mission with 30 days that we had last time and now he did it in 7 days and we even the second day, we killed we did last time and I mean that by just building awareness and, and funds and for the, you know how gracious Miami is, I'm through and through Miami kid on from Hialeah he said Little Havana but im, you know, 305 all day I'll be here for this my life. But, and I want to just again, the certain, I feel pumped up during this conversation and podcast I was like, you know when, when you hit legacy when you had you know the first you know, the first Cuban-American, and againnot to talk about, because of that is is why you should be there but more just because you know, we belong. I love, I love, I love that you know? And you know, just want to do my utmost to, I know it's going to be very very difficult to, do even a prick or drop in a community that you know I was fortunate enough to go once, and honestly that will probably be the last time I go. And, but you know, just hearing it everyday, you know, the struggles and all that so and we can do anything to figure out a way to make any type of impact to you know, communities like Pina De Rio that, my mom comes from and she gave up everything. I get emotional talking about my mom but, so, you know all those struggles, they leave, they go to a country, everybody knows the story, so if we can do anything you know, we should we we are compelled to do so. And Central Florida too, you know, obviously yeah you know, everybody is there and it looks like 92 in Homestead and about going back to structure. Hopefully, to answer a previous question, we do pay attention to infrastructure from under the ground up, so that Miami is here 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 years after this, we need to do so, and who's going to do it? If we don't do it nobody's going to do it, just how if Cuba doesn't do it for themselves unfortunately nobody is going to do it. But, anyway I'll pass on the mic, hopefully I a jerked a tear from somebody else, and hopefully their resources, and pockets and nothing man, thank you so very much. Appreciate everybody here, thanks Mike, and Mr. Mas, and thank you guys, appreciate it.
1:52:26 Michael Beltran: You got a “Mr. Mas”... You got a “Mr. Mas.”
01:52:32 Nicolas Jimenez: I know all of that is going to be very difficult for the next people to follow, so I want to take the opportunity to thank Pete the dog, for not making a lot of noise during the podcast. Pete has been a model guest. Didn't even ask for any of the wine, he's just been happy with his water and kibble over there in the corner.
01:52:50 Michael Beltran: He got a bad haircut. He got a bad haircut…
01:52:53 Nicolas Jimenez: He got the worst haircut in the history of dog haircuts that I gave him last night.
01:52:58 Michael Beltran: Only Nick.
01:53:00 Nicolas Jimenez: He, I mean, thank you.
01:53:03 Michael Beltran: Are we ,are we actually going to do a Q&A now?
01:53:05 Nicolas Jimenez: We’re gonna, okay so, I brought that up, now I want to, just two more people I want to bring in, Diego and Susie, if you want to just say a few words about, just because I want people to know what you're about to be given, there are some gifts waiting for you upstairs, and i know you two contributed to some.
01:53:23 Diego Londono: So, that is, I think what we've done here today is amazing and there's a lot of talking points that are close to my heart about the community and about who we are as a society and how we've evolved as a society, ‘cause I think that is ever so prevalent into what we do today and who we become tomorrow right? And a visionary that said something very true to me, that is “Look I didn't know what soccer was, but I invested in it because my community is bigger than who I am today as a Cuban-American.” My wife's a Cuban-American but I am Colombian. And he said “I think that there's a bigger scope, there's an Argentinian, there's a brazilian, there is Columbians, there's Hawaiians, there's, everything” And people like Chef, right? Like Chef that brings you know, this Cuban culture into a plate that we can all enjoy and bring different styles, and different flavors. I think that those things are important to us today. Right? I am, I am a finance guy through and through, originally, is who I am. I lend money to homes, right? You guys want to buy a $300,000 house, a 3 million dollar house, you want to build a house, that's what I do, right? But my passion has always been the kitchen. I am the type of guy that wants to barbeque, I'm a guy that wants to, you know, be in the kitchen every single day. That's what I do. Covid happened, and Covid told me we were going to sit in the house all day long, and I told my wife, who hates me at this point, today, ‘cause I gave her so many jobs. Alright, ‘cause I do finance for days, and she just wants to go ahead and carry out all of my ideas. Let's build a barbeque that nobody has in Miami, with that, The Barrel was born. So The Barrel is a very traditional way of cooking in South America, which is indirect-heat. Right? You guys have all been to a thousand restaurants in Miami, South American where you see the meat hanging, but you never see it hit, actually the heat. That's what we do. So The Barrel is indirect-heat, amazing flavor, right? Lump charcoal, you get this wood flavor, which is, just something that nobody has ever tasted, and we brought it here to your house. So, you don't have to go, no longer, to a restaurant to get that type of flavor, we brought it to your house. It's amazing, it's great, it's literally my baby project. We’ve won many, many awards at a lot of competitions like a restaurant. But I'm like, I don't have a restaurant, I sell a product. And I remember last time they said, like “You guys don't actually have a rest—” “No we don't have a restaurant.” We literally sell the product. And so, that's our baby, and through that, that concept that we had, we started serving our signature dish which is Chicarrones. We do Chicharrones, which is, if you're Hispanic its Chicharrones, Pork Belly for my gringo friends. For us Hispanics it's Chichar– we do a chicharron that's not fried. You get that crispiness that is amazing, and it's just a crowd favorite. We started serving it with a little bit of my grandmother's hot sauce, and that was just a topping. That became a business on its own. So, now we have Abuelita’s Hot Sauce. Which is literally, the best thing in the whole wide world, everybody tells me, forget about everything else, it's the hot sauce that is the greatest thing. So, that's why we are here today. Right? We support the podcast, we are big fans. We’re going to continue to be big fans, because this is literally the best podcast there is, in the world. I tell my wife all the time.
01:56:55 Michael Beltran: Wow… wow.
01:56:56 Diego Londono: We do say it! All the time. She goes to me, “Diego again?” I'm like, yeah can we throw more money at it? ‘Cause we just love it.
01:57:06 Michael Beltran: That's ads at dademag.com
01:57:11 Diego Londono: And she goes to me, “You’re not tired of just doing finance, why don't we get to the food?” I'm like, no, no I let the food ______ . And, you know, we're just so very, you know, happy to be here with everybody. Thank you so much for everything that's gone on. We are also big fans of everything that has to do with giving back to the community. I think, our foundation, what we’ve done, we probably sold like 10, 18-wheelers to the west coast, right? Probably, like, we’ve always raised money, we're always out in the community, we have another coffee business so we’ll talk about that another time. But, through all those things that we do, I think we’ve done 3 or 4 ____ out on the west coast, we do a bunch of stuff to give back to the community, ‘cause like I say, there is no community like the Miami community. We’re so diverse and were so in-tuned to how diverse we are, that I would not want to live in any other city. And I'm a real estate guy, that's what I do for a living. It is the best investment you could make in this world, right? Miami just has everything going, from what these beautiful people are doing from the food, ‘cause our food culture is just blowing up, to everything else, it's amazing. Thank you for having us, and, thank you.
01:58:30 Suzi Pedes: Everybodys going to get some hot sauce too.
01:58:34 Michael Beltran: Everyone gets hot sauce.
01:58:48 Michael Beltran: Now, the floor goes to Chef Manny.
01:58:49 Nicolas Jimenez: Yeah, before we give the mic to Johnathan for the last word on those gifts that are upstairs. Manny, let's wrap up the desert here.
01:58:59 Manny Arredondo: Tonight’s desert we have the Ariete Cigar. It's going to be a manjari chocolate with a hazelnut mousse, espresso ice cream, and that's it guys.
01:59:16 Doug Rumsam: So, alongside the cigar, not the obvious choice, but I went with the classic Bordeaux. So, we skipped over the river to the left bank. Pontet-Canet 2003, that is Cabernet Sauvignon dominated. 2003, a vintage that is well known for being the hottest on record. Only surpassed by the one we just had. So, very rich, high alcohol levels, really concentrated, there were small little grilled berries, at the time. But i think it's a bit like, sort of mentally thinking, does sort of, cherry go with chocolate? My idea is instead of a sweet wine, i think, sometimes it's quite nice to have a steady Bordeaux against a bit of chocolate. And, there we go, I hope you enjoyed the wine tonight.
02:00:19 Nicolas Jimenez: And then, finally, the last person I’ll pass the mic to is Johnathan Drew. Who, just on, just a personal note, very exciting for me to have you here because Johnathan is the founder of Drew Estate Cigars. I was the senior editor of CigarsCon magazine from 2013-2020, and Johnathan has fed me many, many times. So, I'm glad that I finally got to invite you here for a meal. I feel like I now owe you another one ‘cause of, like, the over-the-top gifts that you’ve brought here. But, just take a moment, let everybody know what the deal is, with what they're about to, you got a candle on everything for this. Just so you know.
02:01:06 Michael Beltran: Even more so, I have bought a fuck-ton of your cigars, theyre always exceptional. I really appreciate you being here.
02:01:15 Jonathan Drew: Thank you guys. So, yeah my name is Johnathan Drew. I guess, every gathering, every space needs a bad guy, and that will be me, I am a New Yorker. Yeah, so i very much enjoy, I am the bad guy now of Drew Estate, I always say it, so, its okay, its cool. But, very cool evening listening to Michael and Mas it was, way more than i had anticipated tonight. I lost myself in terms of being a cigar manufacturer, or being a New Yorker, or graduating I say, class at Brooklyn Law School, from the bottom, pretty much the worst. Its not easy ‘cause if you get below a C you dont graduate, So, its a really… You’re shooting for the worst. But, listening to you guys tonight, and, thinking a little bit about my experience and just a quick introduction, not only being the bag guy from New York, which I still love, moving to Nicaragua from New York, from Brooklyn. Yeah, not just into Nicaragua, but up into the north into an area called the Las Segovias, which is where our city is, Estali, in El Barrio which is Rosario, which is outside the center of Estali, and then where my factory is La Grande Fabrica Drew Estate, which is the largest factory in the world. We’re in a little body there called ____ , and since we put in the streets, the _____ and everything with our, our, ____ our government in Estali, which is the most sandinista of all the sandinistas, we built at our town, which became Oscar Gome Dos. Which is very interesting for a New Yorker who couldnt even really say por favor or agua, like that was about the end of it. So the landing in Estali, in 1998, right after the Hurricane after Mitch, where 10 thousand people had died in Katrina in Nicaragua and Honduras, and literally moving there then, just a lot of the conversation tonight took me back to a lot of pain, took me back to a lot of what I consider to be, where we ate apples to eat, or bought a car and sold it a week later ‘cause it just didnt work out and we needed the cash. To take a little lot from Padrone or Placentia, who allowed us to, to part with them the, us as a little, a little New Yorker arriving in Estali where most of the cigar-makers were Cuban, another interesting link to, to tonight. I think maybe an appropriate cigar company for tonight might have been Jorge Padrone, or Fuente, or one of the legacy, you know, Cuban families. Listening to you guys, really, numerous times i said, wow, some of my colleagues would have been just a beautiful addition, to where you guys took us tonight in your journeys and how they overlap. But, I think, thats also interesting, like i said, being the bad guy, but also being the outsider. Right? From most of you guys in the room being either– really, we have a gringo, so I send a little bit of love. Dont worry. I wont keep you guys all night, dont worry. But, what i will do though is i'm going to stand up for a second, and, good thing i do because my legs were getting numb. I'm going to introduce you guys a little bit to- You guys had a little conversation in terms of Michael Mr. Chef Beltran losing your local touch, and losing, you know, your heart as your growth, that we’ve all watched and admired and learned from, and continue to learn from. You’re an inspiration to me, that's for sure everyone in this room, not a question, just seeing everybody’s energy, really that's what it is. But, tonight Nick asked for us to come, i said im going to come, im going to bring some nice products for everybody. Wether you smoke or not, probably all of you have a friend or family or a somebody you work with. So, ill tell you whats in that little bag, next to it is a little lighter, and a cigar from a farm thats actually here, in that little white box. Thats in Orlando, its the only farm for tobacco, for premium tobacco in Florida. And, the guy who grows that farm, knows that farm, I'm the godfather to his kids, and I process all that tobacco. So, whenever you think about a premium cigar you think about the seed, you think about the country of origin of where its from, and then theres the processing, what you do to the tobacco. So, everything that I gave you guys tonight or that we gave you from Drew Estate, I gave you a couple of these, and a couple of those. This one I'm kind of, kind of excited about. Its kind of outside of my space, you guys, we did this thing with Metallica, two weeks ago we released it, it was kind of cool, with the main guy, the singer, James. We did this product with him, you got one of those. No ones ever really seen that, it just came out last week. This is the biggest brand in the United States, Acid, Its been a 60-70 million bucks a year of doing that. Undercrown is a beautiful product, and i wanted to share with you guys. This shit I call “Born on the factory floor.” And that tobacco represents our city Estali, where again, im probably the bad guy, but… So, this is a big product for us, this is, you guys know the Pappy Van Winkle? You guys have probably had the Pappy.
02:07:28 Michael Beltran: Of course I've had Pappy. You got some for me?
02:07:30 Jonathan Drew: Yeah, you got some Pappys, and I got some more, whatever. But, you got them in the bags, the Pappy Van Winkle, I worked with the family on this product, It's a pretty cool thing we do, it's been a journey in and of itself. And then, lastly, I gave you a few of the, or more, whatever, of the Undercrown 10th Year Anniversary, which is really, really special. So, I'll walk you through that stuff, but, really, tonight all i have to say is that, it brought me really back to our start. To moving to Estali, moving to Nicaragua in ‘98, i got into the cigar industry back in 96 in New York City, at the world trade center after a bombing the first time in ‘93. We opened up in 1996 Super Bowl Sunday. Our New York roots, connected to our new Nicaraguan roots which, when i moved to Nicaragua, not only did we just get through Hurricane Mitch but, the country also was going through a civil war. So the civil war that really ended in 92, and Violeta Chamorro became the president of the country. It was really by the time i started really hanging around them was 96, 97, we moved in 98 full time, and i lived there 14 years. 19 and a half years I was there in full. And, through that time period, coming there, and actually listening to so many Cuban families, I know, obviously living here in Miami and being here. Coming into a city where you have to wait a year and a half to get a phone. Forget cell phones, we got cell phones 10 years ago. But to get a phone, or where, chicks are wearing mens clothes, ‘cause there's no clothes, and if you want to buy them, you buy them by the pound. And being in the second biggest city in the country, and there's 3 restaurants. And more of these kinds of things It wasnt one street, one house, on any street, in anywhere in our city that didn't have bullet holes ridden in every single house. And here's this gringo, all of a sudden I’m walkin’ through, I had a little snub nose, I thought I was shittin’ my pants I thought, I could pull the shit out of it if I had to. ‘Cause people liked me, and they helped me, they were like “Ay this guy is crazy.” I was the only gringo in the city, out of about 100 thousand people, period, no questions asked, i dont give a shit what anybody says, believe me. And we were the smallest company and the worst company that's ever lived in premium cigars. Like, so, we were always proud to say, we’re not, you know, were not a 5th generation Cuban cigar manufacturer. Cause we were like, Drew Estate, we were New Yorkers. So, we had to throw our shit in the arena, and we came in heavy, but we were really, just weak and fragile. And a lot of the Cuban older guys, they liked us, they laughed with us, they drank with us. They just thought we were fascinating, that we would just be larger than life, but we were really pure. And it was a really incredible, just intense moment. And we managed to find our style, and our flavor. It came from graffiti and it came from hip-hop and it was very urban, back in a time where, now it doesn't matter if it's paid or not, because, it's not what we are now. But, tonight you got this stuff… Anyway we grew from the smallest company, and I say the worst company ‘cause I know it wasn't just the smallest, we were the worst. Every decision we made was terrible, and we’ve grown now to be the biggest cigar company in the world. I've sold a business to Swisher Sweet. And after… Yeah that was 2014, for a couple years they sent me on the road to chat and chat about the company and whatever. Then they brought me on as president, since then, we've definitely been about 52 or 51 percent of what Cuba makes in a day of premium cigars, for the world consumption, that we make in our factory. Anyway, i could go on, but here's the deal, we have this stuff for you that's in those bags. I really appreciate you guys. Upstairs we have some ash trays for everybody. So whether you– like again, whether you smoke or not, maybe you have somebody who you want… Somebody special you want to bring it to. Otherwise you guys can have them for the crew here, and..
02:11:39 Jorge Mas: Thank you, congratulations.
02:11:39 Jonathan Drew: Thank you.
02:12:32 Nicholas Jimenez: Featuring, “The Hubs.”
02:12:34 Laurence Popriken: So, anyways, I’ll make this quick. So, Laurence, my name is Laurence Popriken, I mean, there's no Latin in that, right? Raised in Argentina for 12 years, long story short, but anyways, what I wanted to say was, I married a girl from Hialeah. First time I ever went to Hialeah was to pick her up on our first date. I didn't even know what Hialeah was. All i wanted to say was, the Cuban culture, so her mother moved in with us about 10 years ago?
02:13:17 Brenda Popriken: Too long.
02:13:21 Laurence Popriken: The only thing that I want to say is that it's a really interesting culture. One that I learned through her, she was born in Hialeah…
02:13:31 Brenda Popriken: I was not born in Hialeah.
02:13:32 Laurence Popriken: I mean, in Cuba, Marielita?
02:13:35 Brenda Popriken: Yes.
02:13:40 Laurence Popriken: And, all i wanted to say i when you guys talked about the challenges, in with, you know, with all of the influx of people coming coming into Florida, and what other challenge, and all i have to say is, her mother, born and raised in Cuba, I don't know how old she is in her 70s, whatever, been living with us for a while, and i think that one of the biggest challenges is going to be to make sure that these people have a voice. Because it is very easy, like, this lady has lived with me for like 10 years. And, she just wants to share her experiences, and her experiences are the real deal.I mean these are, I don't know how old, 70 years old, but like this is a lady that has lived in the best of times in Cuba, and the worst of times. And it is so easy for her to start talking, and for you to just, kind of like, be like i'm just moving on to, like, my life because this lady just wont stop. Right? But I really feel, I just wanted to say that, and there's and there's a lot of influential people in here and all I wanted to say is that, one of the biggest challenges, has to allow these people to have a voice. Because this lady has lived through stuff that I would never, I mean I lived through the military regimes in Argentina, and i thought, you know, here i am, you know, I've lived through that, i remember being 12 years old and my father saying “Larry, you know, the military is taking over the country.” This is nothing compared to what this lady has told me over the years. And i think that, I, again, there's a lot with her, but i feel like one of the largest, one of the biggest challenges has to be to allow these people to have a voice, because if we quiet them, because they are inconvenient, because they're so off touch with what's going on today because they are still living in that, in that world. But, they have so much to share, and if you dont allow them to have a voice were going to—
02:15:45 Michael Beltran: Well I mean, but it's our job, right? As a younger generation to be, like, I would say a boombox, to what we’ve been through. Not us, I wont say us, what we’ve been through, what our families have been through to give us the opportunity to be able to do what we are doing now. ‘Cause the older generation, they all sit by a ventanita, and they drink coffee and they talk, and, you know, everyone sees it as like, ventanita culture, but it's not just that. We have dumbed down that culture to a fuckin’ extreme. Really what that culture represents is the culture of oppressed people. Right? So if we, us, that have the opportunity to say “Okay, yes, this is who we are.” But now, lets, let's give it a louder voice. Let's give it a bigger meaning. And the bigger meaning, whatever it is, whether it's building a company that's on the world wide stage, building a company that's on the world wide food stage. Right? Because Cuban food didn't matter before June 9th, it does matter now. And, that's kind of like, when people ask “How do we keep this city current.” As in, how do we not lose ourselves to like, all of the money that's coming today is by not forgetting those stories. Right? And it takes us to not forget those stories.
02:17:12 Laurence Popriken: That's the last generation, right?
02:17:14 Michael Beltran: Right, 100 percent, 1000 percent.
02:17:20 Laurence Popriken: Whatever they say, and how they communicate it's so different then how we communicate.
02:17:24 Michael Beltran: But it, It's also a multi-layered thing, right? Because, people like my parents wanted to assimilate to American culture to give me an opportunity. They didn't want to make themselves a big deal. They didn't want to teach us Spanish at home, they wanted us to be American, because they wanted us to have an opportunity. Now its our job to realize the fact that we have the responsibility to make sure that people dont fuckin’ forget. And that's giving a voice to, you know, everyone that's talking, drinking coffee by a window, eating croquetas and pastelitos. And that's why, me and Nick have this conversation all the time, which turns into a bunch of shit. But, its really, its really just more like, you know, people have dumbed down ventanita culture to this thing, but theres so many real facts and real shit thats being spoken there, that people, that people fuckin forget. Right? And it's our job, your job, your job, his job, so many people’s job to make sure that people don't forget. They're not allowed to forget. Around me, they're not allowed to forget, I know around Nick they're definitely not allowed to forget. So, it's just more of the pushing of the conversations, like, allowing them a voice is for us to say “shut your mouth, let them talk.” Whether it's through us, or through other people, that's allowing them a voice.
02:19:10 Nicolas Jimenez: I think that's probably, that's probably a good note too, we said it when we did this similar format with Norman Van Aken, that Pan Con Podcast is really just our elaborate ploy to lure people in with food and throw a bunch of Cuba in their faces.
02:19:19 Michael Beltran: Yeah, I love that, that's good.
02:19:31 Nicolas Jimenez: So, so our trap has worked, yet again. It's the most expensive propaganda trap in, in podcast-dom. Yeah, it's a very Cuban-ly trap. Thanks to everybody for joining us here. I want to also thank all of the Ariete people that are not named Michael Beltran. Manny, Adiran, Andrew all the people who helped make this a thing. Val Falsetto who also was a big player in making this a thing. And, because, as Mike knows, I'm not going to be able to help myself, I'll throw in my two cents on the Cuba thing. I think it came up, like, you know, we have to give people a voice, we have to amplify things, and this, that and the other thing. I wont get into my whole history with it. But, i had an opportunity, that, certainly i didn't create it for myself i sort of stumbled into it and I went to Cuba 4 times between, in ‘08 and ‘09 if you count the time that they turned me away and told me I was never welcomed back. Because of all of the_______
02:21:22 Michael Beltran: Partly, this is why I love Nick.
02:21:26 Nicolas Jimenez: And you know, ever since July 11, and this is a thing that we’ve, you know, said multiple times, we’ll expand on it in an episode that has been recorded but not released. You know, a lot of the talk of the Cuba thing, and I think this applies to any country, any cause, any whatever. Has been about, oh you gotta amplify those voices, you gotta amplify this, you gotta give them a voice, and yes, that's true, but, it's not a Cuban issue, it's a human issue. So, sure tell people what other people are saying, but also, participate. If you have an opinion on Ukraine, if you have an opinion on what's going on in Nicaragua. Then, you don't even have to be Cuban, have an opinion on Cuba and say what you think, and participate in the conversation and contribute in some way, and leave yourself open to being wrong, if that's part of the thing. But, participate, contribute, it's, you know, it's closer to us than a lot of things, and really the distance doesn't even matter, right? So, participate in that, or whatever it is that you feel strongly about. It doesn't have to just be about amplifying other peoples voices, you have your own, and it's as important as anything else. So, somehow I've managed to, like, commandeer the thing. I'm glad I stopped at like, 3 drinks. I don't know if i would have been capable any more. So, that's it, that's it, it's over, this is the end of the podcast.
02:22:48 Michael Beltran: Wait, before it's over, Jorge thank you.
02:22:51 Jorge Mas: No, thank you,
02:22:52 Michael Beltran: I appreciate you, you're one of my great friends. I appreciate all of your wisdom and everything you've added to my life and everything you've added to this whole thing. You are an inspiration to so many people.
02:23:03 Jorge Mas: Thank you.
02:23:04 Nicolas Jimenez: And now, for a lightning round.
02:23:05 Michael Beltran: No, no lightning rounds today, but thank you again man, I really appreciate you.
02:23:10 Jorge Mas: Always here for you.