It really made me smile to see Nick Mautone from the old Mt. Vernon, N.Y. neighborhood all over the news during the U.S. Open.
And not for playing tennis!
Nick invented that now infamous signature U.S. Open ‘Honey Deuce’ Cocktail that took the media by storm this year. At $23 a drink, it generated about 10 million dollars at the U.S. Open this year alone!
Above is a Screenshot from You Tube of Nick Mautone being interviewed about the Honey Deuce cocktail on king5eveningnews. Check out the report. It’s fun. Nick shows you himself how to make this cool and easy drink at home.
Honestly I thought the sheer amount of press that ‘Honey Deuce’ cocktail, Grey Goose Vodka, and Nick got this year… was insane! And those honey dew melon people must be thrilled. Because seriously, when’s the last time anybody gave that much attention to honey dew melons?
This is just a screen shot sampling of the press coverage which went on and on. I first caught wind of his cocktail fame in an article in Wine Enthusiast.
Nick Mautone invented the ‘Honey Deuce’ back in 2007 when Grey Goose hired him as a consultant to create a signature cocktail for the event. Talk about a never-ending drink! Even Nick couldn’t believe the cocktail commotion he’s caused. (Do people get royalties from inventing drinks?)
I thought it would be fun to contact Nick and invite him on my show to take another bow, and give him some old-time love and find out!
Nick said,
“Because I was a brand ambassador and a hospitality consultant to Great Goose Vodka, which I started with in 2005. As a consultant, it was the single best consistent gig I ever had in my life. I loved it and without going into details, they paid me well. I had a great expense account. They flew me all over the world to talk about Grey Goose, train teams, distributors, do great events like the US Open, and I played golf with celebrities!”
Nick’s a warm and wonderful guy and he’s written all kinds of books to teach people how to be great mixologists. Books that both professionals and those interested in being great mixologists at home will benefit from.
Nicks a dad, a futurist, and the brother of one of my best childhood pals Carol Mautone. The Mautone house was chock full of kids (seven I think? LOL) and commotion and their house always smelled like great Italian food! Their Dad had a specialty food business, and their sweet mom Adele was constantly shopping and making food. Never knew how she kept up with them all, but she always had a smile and always welcomed me and others into her home with open arms. It’s probably where her kids learned about the true meaning of ‘hospitality’.
Carol became a chef and moved to Italy but now teaches English to foreigners and I’ve been threatening for years to fly over and visit her. Soon! Meanwhile, I stay in touch with her lightly on Facebook and I’ve connected with lovely Nick too a few times over the years.
Nick and his family moved out to Washington State, to Mercer Island, near Seattle. I followed Nicks career in the restaurant industry. He started out bussing tables, backing bars, and then he and his brothers and sisters opened a place called American Pie on the Upper West Side of New York.
Nick Mautone now has 40 years of hospitality industry experience. He believes in the power of mentorship, leadership, collaboration, and possibility. Nick is the architect of an inventive process called “Hospitality Sabermetrics” — think Moneyball for Hospitality he says, and has a sixth sense when it comes to foreseeing trends.
Since his start, Nick has worked with some of the most iconic and influential restaurants in the world including Gotham Bar & Grill, Hudson River Club, and most notably, Gramercy Tavern where he was managing partner alongside Danny Meyer and Tom Colicchio for seven years, and helped define and nurture a fledgling idea Danny and the group coined called “Enlightened Hospitality.”
So, what is Enlightened Hospitality?
Nick explained,
“Enlightened Hospitality’ is the core values of how you operate your business, and you hear that term a lot in business leadership programs where a company will say these are our core values and these are the way we want to operate our business, and these are the non-negotiables that we will not forsake any amount of money.
And so, they are the guiding principles, if you will, that you want to live by, that we wanted our business to operate by, and we wanted, as people, to live by.”
And I think it really made sense. I think that’s why I enjoyed it, that’s why I took the job. Danny had core values; Tom Colicchio had core values. At some point during the first few years that I was there, we actually took those core values and encapsulated them into our manuals and then we used them as part of our review process.
And it really became a great way to manage people, and everyone knew their expectations.
Everyone screws up, bear that in mind, but if you screw up and you forsake one of those core values, we’d sit you down and say, hey, you know, it just didn’t work for us the way you handled this particular situation. Look at how we want to operate. Here’s the way and the waterfall of progression of how you should handle these situations.
And people get it. And then, you know, nine out of 10 times, they understand what they did wrong, they correct the problem, and they move forward.
If not, they understand and they choose to move on because they can’t live in those core values, and both are acceptable outcomes.”
Nick’s spent a lifetime trying to keep integrity in all he does.
I wanted to know his thoughts about the current state of the restaurant business.
So many restaurants have struggled after COVID. Some reopened, some did not reopen.
Getting and retaining good help is the #1 problem I hear from most in the restaurant business I’ve spoken to.
Nick said,
“So, the pandemic forced this change to happen five or 10 years earlier than it needed to.” One, people need to be paid appropriately, plain and simple. Tips not withstanding, yes, tips count for your income, but you need to be paid appropriately.”
“Most importantly, people need to be treated appropriately. And what I found, you know, in my career, and I don’t speak for Danny Meyer, but I will say in our organization during that time, and I know it carries to today, our number one goal was to treat our employees well and take care of them to the best of our ability. And if we do that, then we can honestly live with honor and hold ourselves to a high standard as being good about the business.”
“A lot of people didn’t operate that way, so the pandemic forced that change. And now you see this, people leaving the industry, going on to do other endeavors. It will come back because everyone needs to eat and everyone needs human companionship and the connectivity that comes with sitting in a restaurant or a bar or a movie theater or whatever it is and seeing other people. So, I think it’ll come back. It’s just going to take a little time.”
Nick is the founder of Mautone Enterprises. Whether you’re a first time first-time restaurateur, or turning around a big ship on the wrong course, Nick’s your guy to help guide you and your staff to profitable collaboration. He’s known for nurturing sustained success, streamlining operations, and aligning core values in every sort of hospitality business. Here’s his website: nickmautone.com.
Tell him Debbie from the old neighborhood sent you 🙂
Enjoy this podcast my warm conversation with Nick Mautone on The Debbie Nigro Show.
If you’d rather read than listen the audio transcript is below.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
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0:00:00
And now, back to the Debbie Nigro Show!
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0:00:03
Come on!
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0:00:04
Don’t believe me just watch! Don’t believe me just watch! Don’t believe me just watch!
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0:00:26
All right, hey, hey, hey, hey, welcome back to the Debbie Nigro Show. Hi guys, how are you doing today? Anybody going out to the U.S. Open, watching the tennis? It sure is exciting this time of year. Always happens right about now. And yes, some people get to go and some people watch it on TV.
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My mother used to be up like all hours of the night, I remember, like watching tennis, tennis, tennis. But the real star of this year’s U.S. Open is not actually the players, no, it is a signature cocktail called the Honey Deuce, D-E-U-C-E, Deuce, okay, as in one of those tennis terms, and it’s the signature drink of the big event, okay?
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0:01:06
All over TikTok, like five million videos featuring this viral cocktail, the Honey Deuce. I’m telling you, this is crazy. And I’m reading all about it because I’m like, wow, how does a cocktail get that famous? And so I’m reading in Wine Enthusiast, I’m seeing all the recaps, and I see that my childhood neighbor Nick Mautone invented this in 2007.
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0:01:32
I was like, OMG, I got to get Nick on the show. He himself can’t even believe that this cocktail generated like $10 million alone this year. He invented it in 2007. He’s all over the news because it’s so simple to make. You can make it at home. He’s got all kinds of books to teach you how to be a great mixologist.
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He’s an enormously successful guy in the industry of hospitality. He’s a mixologist. He’s a dad. He’s a futurist. And he’s my old friend. Hey, Nick, welcome to my show.
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Hey, Debbie, thanks for having me. I greatly appreciate being on. It’s wonderful to hear your voice.
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Oh Nick, I tell you, I got chills of happiness when I saw that you were the guy behind this. I’m like, wow! I mean, I know you’re cool because I know that you have a very innovative mind. You’re visionary in your industry of hospitality and everybody and their mother wants to work with you, but that cocktail that everybody’s buying for $10 million this year, did you
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get any of that royalty….
Because I was a brand ambassador and a hospitality consultant to Great Goose Vodka, which I started with in 2005. As a consultant, it was the single best consistent gig I ever had in my life. I loved it and without going into details, they paid me well. I had a great expense account. They flew me all over the world to talk about Grey Goose, train teams, distributors, do great events like the US Open, I played golf with celebrities.
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0:03:13
I did really, really well with Grey Goose and Honey Deuce.
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I have no complaints on the individuals, if you will.
I just want to tell you how much joy this brings me. I told everybody as I was writing you up this morning, I made a little video of you and the cocktail and I put up some of the clips from the stills. I couldn’t figure out how to do, I’ll get the video up later from your interview with the people at, what was it, oh gosh, the T, oh, King 5 Evening News, right?
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0:03:46
So, but in the story I explained how that, you know, you were a neighbor a couple blocks away, I loved your sister, we were best buddies, I miss her so much, she moved to Italy, then you and your family moved out to Washington State, you’re in Mercer Island, it’s just kind of near Seattle. And that, you know, when you feel an old home, you see somebody from your hometown succeed. It just, it is very special.
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So I’m giving you the big love today.
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Thank you very much. I appreciate it. It warms my heart to hear that.
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And I want to talk a little bit about what else you do because everybody can benefit from your knowledge. Yes, this drink, the Honey Deuce, is making all this big splash at the U.S. Open and expected to generate more than $10 million in sales this year. People are paying like $23 this year for the recipe, but you have a lot of books out,
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and you teach people how to be great mixologists at home, you teach other professionals. I put up a whole list of all your books, which I was like, wow, I knew you wrote a couple, but you wrote a lot of books. So which is your most favorite?
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Well, in my heart, it’s the first book, which is what’s called Raising the Bar. You can still get copies, but it came out in 2005. You can buy copies on Amazon and other retailers, of course. But it is no longer being reprinted as we’ve morphed and moved on to other books.
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But when I decided I wanted to write a cocktail book, I got together with my… He was a friend, and he became my book agent, David Black, he’s a well known book agent, agency in New York. And we talked about the book, and I really wanted it to be beautiful. Right? I said, I may only get one shot at this, right? I’m not
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a celebrity chef. I’m not Rachel Ray. I’m not, you know, some of the other people on TV, you know, have a medium to keep selling books. So I said, I got one shot, I want it to be a beautiful book. I don’t want it to be a bartender’s Bible. I wanted it to be for the home cook who wants to make a great cocktail. And we went with a publisher called Artisan, also here in New York, just fantastic.
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And they did it. I mean, they couldn’t have gotten a better book with better pictures, with better stories, and great editing, and everything that I needed to create what I term a successful book.
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Yeah, it’s great.
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So that’s the one that’s most near and dear to my heart. But the other three, which I call the little ones, if you will, we had a lot of material during Raising the Bar that we didn’t use, and a lot of cocktails that we wanted to revamp and retool. And Artisan came up with this small format book series they called the Artisan Kitchen Series, where they got some of their favorite authors, and I like to thankfully include myself in that, and the other chefs and other bakers and things like that.
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And they created this small gift book selection that you might find in, I would say, the not so normal locations. So yes, they are in bookstores, but they’re selling more in Targets, in the food section, where you might get cocktail shakers from me
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or baking items if the person was a baker. And so I was very proud to see that Target picked up, you know, thousands of copies of the first one that came out called Holiday Cocktails in December of 18. And then, you know, I’m at a store in Whidbey Island
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a couple of years ago. Whidbey Island is this remote island off the coast of Washington state, just beautiful, it’s kind of like the Hamptons of Washington, and walk into this local gift shop, there’s my book.
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Oh my gosh, that’s the most exciting thing in the whole world.
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Exactly, and I’ve seen it all over the country in these great little locations, and I’m like, oh my God, this is so amazing.
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I know.
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And so, they’re very near and dear to my heart. I’m working on a couple of other books that are not yet sold, they’re not yet published, if you will, and we’ll get there.
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I got to go back to your house in Mount Vernon, New York, because your mother was unbelievable. I loved her. I know that you and your brothers and sisters all kind of just grew up in this very tight house with a lot of food and a lot of love. I used to love coming over there because it was like always amazing food your father had a specialty food business And I never knew your father
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Who dreamed of becoming a NASA scientist? your father
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I
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Was reading you know your backstory here
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You were talking about the house and how you yeah the handmade pasta and all the stuff that I never used to love coming to Your house for he said while he dreamed of becoming a NASA scientist?
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You, Carl? Or you?
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No, no, me. I, I, believe it or not, my dad went to the Boeing School of Aeronautics prior to World War II. He was in college, then went to World War II. He was an airplane mechanic. And I don’t know if it was through him or just the love of science and reading, but I had always wanted to get into science.
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Well, I have an idea. Listen, I think you need a NASA cocktail.
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Yes.
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That sounds amazing.
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Right?
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I think we need a NASA cocktail that we could all toast to getting those poor people back home who have been stuck in space that are gonna be there for like eight months that thought they were going for a week. I mean, right?
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I’ll make a watch.
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All right, so bussing tables, backing bars, you and your brothers and sisters opened American Pie on the Upper West Side of New York and then you went on to work with I knew you when you were working at I got back in touch with you when you were working I think it was Gramercy Park but you’ve been with Gotham Bar, Grill, Hudson River Club, Gramercy Tavern, you were the managing partner there with Danny Meyer and Tom Colicchio for seven years and these are big names and you’re a big name and then you nurtured a fledgling idea that Danny and the group
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coined Enlightened Hospitality. So what’s that real quick? What’s Enlightened Hospitality?
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Danny Meyer, Founder & CEO, Enlightened Hospitality, Inc.
Enlightened Hospitality is the core values that the units for hospitality and I’ll say I still operate under those core values, how we operate our business and you hear that term a lot in business leadership programs where a company will say these are our core values and these are the way we want to operate our business, and this is the non-negotiables
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0:10:05
that we will not forsake any amount of money as long as we operate under these core values. And so they are the guiding principles, if you will, that you want to live, we wanted our business to operate by, and we wanted, as people, to live by.
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0:10:20
And I think it really made sense. I think that’s why I enjoyed, that’s why I took the job. Danny had core values, Tom Colicchio had core values. At some point during the first few years that I was there, we actually took those core values
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0:10:35
and encapsulated them into our manuals and then we used them as part of our review process. And it really became a great way to manage people and everyone knows their expectations. Because if you, everyone screws up, bear that in mind, but if you screw up and you forsake
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0:10:53
one of those core values, we sit you down and say, hey, you know, it just didn’t work for us the way you handled this particular situation. Look at how we wanna operate. Here’s the way and the waterfall of progression of how you should handle these situations.
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And people get it. And then, you know, nine out of 10 times, they understand what they did wrong, they correct the problem and they move forward. Yeah, I’m sorry you’re saying
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one out of ten. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I think the one out of ten times the person doesn’t
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understand and they choose to move on because they can’t live in those core values and both
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are acceptable outcomes. Yeah, it’s absolutely true. I know I’m all about integrity and I see that you’ve spent your lifetime trying to keep integrity all you do, right?
But what about the restaurant business these days, Nick, just as a last thought here. You know, they’re struggling after COVID, people, you know, reopened, some did not reopen, getting and retaining good help is a problem.
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You got any thoughts about that?
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Yeah, I do.
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And probably a whole show worth on conversation on that, but I’ll put it in this way. The pandemic forced change on the hospitality industry and the retail industry and many other industries for the record, but hospitality, retail, health and hospitals, it was forced on us,
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and I include in that the airlines, the steward, I shouldn’t say that, the flight attendants who deal with situations just like waiters and servers and bartenders. So the pandemic forced this change to happen five or 10 years earlier than it needed to.
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One, people need to get paid appropriately, plain and simple. Tips notwithstanding, yes, tips count for your income but you need to be paid appropriately. Most importantly, people need to be treated appropriately. And what I found, you know, my career, and I don’t speak for Danny Meyer, but I will say in our organization during that time, and I know it carries to today, our number one goal is to treat our employees well and take care of them to the best of our ability. And if we do that, then we can honestly live with
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0:12:52
honor and hold ourselves to a high standard as being good about the business. A lot of people didn’t operate that way, so the pandemic forced that change. And now you see this, people leaving the industry, going on to do other endeavors. It will come back because everyone needs to eat and everyone needs human companionship and the connectivity that comes with sitting in a restaurant or a bar or a movie theater or whatever it is and seeing other people. So, I think it’ll come back. It’s just going to take a little time.
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0:13:21
Wow. I’m so happy we had this time and I know we’re out of time, but that’s okay because you’ve got to go. And I just want to tell everybody, Nick Morton is just fabulous. You can check out his website. It’s actually morton-enterprises.com where his books are too. And you can be a great bartender at your own house, but a big shout out and a round of applause for Nick Martone, who’s getting a lot of love this week because he invented that signature cocktail at the U.S. Open, the Honey Deuce.
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0:13:47
That’s got everybody up in arms and making everybody a lot of money. Honey Dew Melon Balls. Don’t forget them. Don’t forget them. Nick, have a great day.
Transcribed with Cockatoo
