The World Famous Jefferson Diner

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forever what's up everybody mike ham here with

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another episode of greetings from the garden state we are here in jefferson new jersey at the jefferson diner with nick and jimmy cerretis guys welcome to

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the show nice to meet you i appreciate it it's good to have you saying what's up customers take care

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this is the community side we're gonna get to that a little bit but that's part that's part of the community for sure just like connection with the with the

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people that come in here um but uh so i'm very excited like i was telling nick before i've basically been coming to the

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jefferson diner since i was like 13 14 years old i'm 31 now so like 17 18 years

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uh which is a long time good math yeah yeah right he had to do it for me at the beginning well it takes him a few tries yeah well

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we don't do math on this show so i was like three years old back then yeah right um but uh all right so great

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so i want to kind of get uh for the people that maybe don't know you guys we're going to kind of do like a little quick background kind of are you from

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new jersey are you from someplace else um kind of how long you've been here all that kind of stuff age before beauty

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right all right yeah nick cerretis my brother jimmy yeah we're both from new jersey both born and

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raised in dover new jersey our parents are immigrants from greece

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and you know our father had a little place back in the late 50s in dover

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uh right above dover lanes it was a luncheonette he went back to greece married our mother

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brought her back then she had us and we kind of grew up in this business uh since a very young age

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they would just take us they had no babysitter yeah right we had nowhere to go so we would just they'd leave us

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in a room or something and we'd watch everything we see what goes on this is all we really knew yeah

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growing up and this spot or this the spot was indulged over okay they moved from there they got

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a luncheonette maybe a block away it was called pete's lunch and eggs our father's name is pete yep

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and you know we were down there all the time every day little kids and then you know the customers would take us for

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walks they take us to their businesses yes that dover was very vibrant yeah it had

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10 shoe stores 10 furniture shops you know clothing stores it was a very vibrant town

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and uh the customers were my father's friends yeah and they would just take us into their shops we'd play in there a little bit

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you know and uh bring us back yeah i love that yeah that's that's great like i think that's so cool because it's just

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like like that's kind of the vibe i would like to kind of get for this show it's just like it's like a fabric of the community type of thing um and just kind

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of like what we were just talking about when those guys were leaving and when we first started the episode it kind of seemed like that's a similar type of

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vibe that you guys try to bring here right so we try to make it feel like i'm sorry i'm trying to make it feel like

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it's your living room yeah it's your home yeah you know yeah absolutely did you have anything else to add there jimmy

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well we're talking about you know the community down in dover we're trying to kind of do what our parents did down

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there yeah yeah and grow with the community and support them and in turn they support you right and so we've been

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doing we've been trying to do that up here you know supporting local you know softball teams hockey teams soccer teams

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football teams you know they have a game and then they come here afterwards and support us yeah and it's a really it's not it's not

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always about the money it's a good feeling yeah to have the community support you exactly and to see everybody

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wearing the same shirt whether it's jefferson falcons or whether it's you know uh sparta

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uh high school or a roxbury high school randolph high school they'll come in and because we support

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them they support us exactly this is a beautiful thing yeah i love that and that's one of the things that makes us

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go yeah for sure it drives our engine yeah i'll tell you a quick funny story we were big yankee fans growing up i

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could tell from the wall if this wasn't a dead giveaway there's a huge yankee wall yeah we don't have any more walls to put together but

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we have so many things our father had no way of getting us to a yankee game he always worked and we didn't even have

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the money to go and there was a shop around the corner a guy named ruby sanders uh just passed away and his wife cindy

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and his wife cindy they had a place called latin lassie it was a kid's clothing store which my mother would take us through her mother would take us

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through and shop there he took us to our first two yankee games he wouldn't take a penny from our father

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and he treated us the hot dogs and whatever we wanted there you know it was great yeah it was great and we got to

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see the yankees in the late 70s the championship team i saw thunder munson playing all those we saw thurman munson

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play right field i mean really i think it was probably one of the only games he's ever played anything he's heard yeah he said he couldn't catch me right

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he was right in front of us yeah yeah but those are great memories so we had season tickets to the yankees

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with the old stadium before they built a new stadium and we had more time on our hands before we did all this yeah so

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there was a young kid that would come in here with his parents all the time big yankee fan never went to the stadium my brother and i took yeah

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just to you know pay forward right you know yeah i love that um so let's talk a little bit more

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about like the diners how long has the diner been here we've been uh we've been here all

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together i'm thinking 37 years right 30's going on 38th august 1st 1985. yeah

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okay yeah yeah awesome and then like kind of like i think you were telling me a little bit before like so this people

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that are watching on youtube can kind of see the space you know like a little bit of the this space right here it's

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certainly evolved yeah we started off with uh you know 40 seats maybe about 10 tables right and now you just take your

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camera and go around you look at it and we have the tavern next door we've expanded i don't know how many times

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yeah we got a little patio outside you know during covered we had a tent yep and um

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let's see it looked like a circus that really it did but you know what it is like the flag stuff on top

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of people yeah now we're going to try to do like a uh outdoor uh four seasons room with glass yeah uh

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give it kind of a nice atmosphere so we don't have a circus tent out there you know yeah taking up parking i'm sure

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right it does take a part you know um but uh so that's awesome so then like kind of as i think it's really cool

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because kind of watching the the place you know expand and do all those kinds of things is is really cool to see um so

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maybe take me through like you know when you guys first started do you ever kind of like foresee that it was going to get

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to maybe this level and even beyond that moving i don't know i don't think we i don't think neither one of us foresaw never was going to get this big yeah we

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ended up when we when we opened up it was a luncheonette we made it into a diner we expanded

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outwards we expanded this way then we expanded again we ended up buying the strip mall yeah we ended up buying the

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bagel building we ended up finding some properties up the road now we recently purchased the bank over there

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so we've done really well we've been very fortunate very lucky yeah that we

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are in a good town right we have great loyal customers yeah our parents raised us the right way and taught us a lot

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about the business yeah and we try to pay forward to our uh you know our staff and uh and the people that come in the

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door yeah we treat everybody the same way with respect right absolutely and so what i also think is cool is we never

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thought we'd get to this point oh right yeah i mean so i think when any time you start something especially coming from

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like the background that you guys have it's like all right like we got to keep like a luncheonette like that's cool and then you get a chance to like expand and

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it's even better you're like holy like this is amazing it's a classic american dream story yeah we've lived it

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right we started we started like i said we were hanging out in this type of business all the time

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yeah we only spoke greek until we went to school right yeah no we didn't know we're in america which is my parents

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just spoke greek because we only spoke greek yeah and you know again we've evolved and and just

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we never thought it would expand to this yeah but we just kept pushing one day at a time and then opportunities would come

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up and we take them we grind it right and you have people

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some people want to see you fail you know right there's always those one or two haters out there out of the

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thousands of people that we know yeah we never want to see anybody fail yeah you know when we drive by restaurants or

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even any any type of business and we see a lot of cars or yeah we see they're busy we see them expanding right we love it yeah because we know that that

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american dream is still alive right and if we experienced it yeah and lived it we want

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other people to experience it and live it exactly and it's all within your means to do yeah you just have to have the drive yep uh and just that little

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edge if you have that little edge right that little stepping stone yeah or a little bit of help or even create your

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own stepping stone that's all it takes absolutely yeah i totally agree with that and like i think i've seen that

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over the course of the lifespan of this show you know talking to people that like have similar stories to what you guys have doing different things and

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different types of businesses and all that kind of stuff and you see it and you're just like you know people that have like that new jersey kind of like

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attitude kind of thing like you work hard you're tough you know you make things happen like that can have those

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common denominators exactly and that's what i love about this show because you get to hear stories like that but um if

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people are like somehow unaware of the jefferson diner i think for how many years was jefferson

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has jefferson diner been the number one diner in morris and sussex county we've had i mean those are some local

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newspapers new jersey newspapers right uh they voted us number one and i'm gonna say uh i mean i gotta look at my

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sign but uh i'm thinking about seven or eight times yeah yeah that's awesome it's been a lot

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of years and this isn't we've been number two and we've been number three sure right now that's still pretty good yeah right as long as we're good at most

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of the things we do yeah we're happy you can't be perfect at everything yeah and you can't be great at everything maybe

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you're great or really good right on a few things yeah but you're good all the way around exactly consistent yeah and

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you know we make mistakes and uh you know and it goes on social media but you you know you have to do your best to

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to take care of the situation yeah and uh and just explain that you're human yeah right mistakes yeah yeah it's gonna

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happen it's how do you take care of it how do you bounce back from it right you know do you offer them a free meal do you give them a gift card do you bring

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them back and you apologize to them nicely on yeah social media right you know everybody has to deal with it

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personally delivered food to people's houses right you know i have three four delivery guys yeah but i'll

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take it myself if somebody's had a delivery problem right and i gotta tell you these people have been customers for

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life cause i did something like that exactly and they appreciate it right and it goes a long ways to have that personal touch yeah definitely you have

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anything you know we take care of our mistakes uh if it's a legitimate mistake

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obviously you always have the professionals that come in who are looking for freebies looking for gift

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cards on the way out right yeah i'll be lobbying we sniff those out we've been doing this for a long time

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our staff can sniff them out yeah can sniff them out yeah you know and those are the people you really

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they just where they disrupt the customers around

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them sure yeah that that's just customers around them can see through when they say listen you know knock it off we usually stop it right

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i say listen you got to leave you're not getting a freebie and you're not getting a gift card because i'm just encouraging

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you to go do this somewhere else exactly and they do whatever you know yeah there's only maybe there's only a handful you get eight or ten thousand

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people a week to go through these doors and they do it and they do it at other places conservative number you get but all in all we have good customers less

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than a handful a week yeah yeah definitely um awesome uh so what we're gonna do uh we're gonna

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take our first break of this episode this is a great first segment uh we're gonna come right back so we are here in

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jefferson new jersey the jefferson diner with nick and jimmy cerretas i'm mike ham this is the greetings from the rsa podcast we'll be right back

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it is time for today in new jersey history melissa gorga was born on march 21 1979 and raised in thomas river new

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jersey she's best known for being the cast of bravo's the real housewives of new jersey and that is today in new

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jersey history all right we're back this is segment two of our episode with the jefferson diner

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in jefferson new jersey with nick and jimmy serratus i'm mike hamm greetings from the garden state podcast obviously you know that that's why you're here so

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guys in the first segment we got a good view of like what your background is kind of where you can come from uh the

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you know the starts and all that of the of the jefferson diner itself um the success that it's at seen over its

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would you say 37 years we're going off 38 38 years 38 yeah um so in our second segment we

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always like to do something where we kind of take it through the eyes of a customer walking in the door um so

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there's like a lot of different things that go on here because like we said we have the tavern we got the diner um so there's a lot that someone can

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experience coming in here uh so like i was i was asking you before before we started recording this segment about

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like the the neon lights outside because like you're driving up route 15 here and there's basically nothing and then all

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of a sudden it just like appears like this oasis out of the out of thin air um so talk to me about like that like maybe

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some of the you know things that people can like the visual stuff that people can see when they walk in the door here

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well in this part of the state i think and because we were going to wildwood

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from little kids our parents would take us to wildwood atlantic city and this and that we did see a lot of

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retro neon diners in wildwood which is also the doo-wop capital of the world that's where doo-wop started chubby

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checker chuck berry had their uh their beginnings yeah and it's still very do-wop-down and

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jimmy and i loved the look we loved everything so when we started out here we wanted to introduce neon into the

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north jersey diners right and again our colleagues a lot of diner people who we know everybody we're

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friends with why you you know old-timers greeks why are you putting neon on there yeah

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why are you putting why are you putting those those lights up yeah you got tvs in your diner right tv's is another

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thing yeah we put tvs in why do you have tvs that people are never going to leave they're going to sit there all day right

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they're going to leave they're not going to hang out here all day the idea is somebody comes in alone yeah they don't

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feel alone right they have something to watch they have something to do there's noise there's action yeah uh there's it's busy yeah

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you have a lot of busy things right yeah diner needs to be wide open a lot of windows big windows

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you need to see action you need to see traffic it has to be fast moving and inviting right a restaurant has to be intimate yeah hence the diner yeah less

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windows darker not so much action because you want to relax but in the diner you want to be in

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and out in the tavern yeah yeah yeah so you want to be in and out you want to see tvs you want to see action right it

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might be a game on yeah maybe you and your wife want to go out but the game is on yeah she wants to go out and you you

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want to watch the game now you can still go out and watch the game right not only that we're here a lot of hours

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yeah yeah but i mean you know to answer your question like uh what what are they gonna expect when they come in they're gonna expect

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a 50 retros diner right with modern food yep happy faces a family yeah family

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that works together happy yep and a staff that works together happy yeah we're one big i mean it's a cliche but we're one big

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happy family sure here right you know if one of our staff members is is sick or something and there's and they're all

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yeah you get 20 30 text messages from everybody exactly how you feeling right coming back yeah it's a big family yeah

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and uh we like that and our customers like that they see that right the customers see that yeah but they also

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see that we try to stay fresh you know when they're walking in the door they're going to see something different they're going to see something new

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uh i you know we were one of the first diners to introduce sliders no diner ever served the slideshow

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before yeah you know our again some relatives some friends what's a slider and we had to explain to him

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and show it to him what the slider was yes uh we put in our computer system

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how long ago did we do that 30 years of pos system again one of the first diners to actually put a pos system in where

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you're not writing it by hand and giving the customer a receipt yeah then nobody can read again we got criticized why are

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you putting that in there yeah you know we're used to handwriting everything down i'm going to tell you why we put it in yeah because it's better when we

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cooked in the kitchen every waitress had different handwriting you couldn't read half the stuff they were giving you like a tail or hammock

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and sardines like a taylor handbag and cheese would be t h e c h taylor hand mac and cheese yeah on

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the bottom of it hr for a hard roll right spk salt pepper texture right yeah exactly so

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try training somebody to look at that yeah one server would just write taylor

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ch h for hardware instead of hr yeah it was hard to do business too many barriers

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right right but i can give you a list of foods that we are one of the first diners

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to to put on our menu you're not going to believe some of this stuff right maybe the most popular thing

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that's very greek and that's a gyro yeah i was blown away when you told me that i just think that's like there's gyro

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stands right yeah gyro stands but i like you know just because i mean like it's very rarely would you find them in

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diners back in the day well that's that's like the same time right yeah that's it's so interesting to me and we

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you know i called the food company a greek a greek purveyor yeah and i talked to them and i says which one of your

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diners are selling your product they said we've been selling to greek markets in new york and

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greek stands you know on the corner of properties and things like that you know hot dog stands where

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they sell gyros but no diners are doing it i go we're going to do it you're going to send us pita bread you're going to send us your

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meat against dennis and everything jumbo waffles belgian waffles sweet potato fries sweet

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potato waffles waffle fries curly seasoned curly fries uh a half a pound uh certified angus

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beef burger everybody used to serve four ounces five ounces yeah we convinced some of our uncles to do the eight

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ounces yeah it works right also in the business brioche buns ciabatta bread yeah did that like just

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little things right did that innovation stuff like i mean i i'm sure like when you started the tavern like that

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just gave you like a whole new palette to kind of like try different stuff too right we tried a lot yeah i would imagine right the sliders we tried in

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the tavern okay we brought them over to the diner again our menu dating back from the late

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eight from the mid to late 80s other diners didn't have this menu yeah

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people would criticize us our colleagues yeah they were older greek immigrants sure and it's okay because you know it

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reminds us of our fathers right and that's how we learned too right and they were saying why are you

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doing this because they didn't want to do it they didn't want to have to expand their menu right but we wanted to grow the business

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and give people fresh new ideas and i believe with the menu that we created

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almost everybody copied yeah a lot of people copied uh and and a lot of people actually called us up and said you know

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we like your menu do you mind if we copy a few things off of it yeah and we think alike

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and i thought when i told him he said that would be my exact same answer right i tell them you know what it's an honor

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for you to actually call me up and ask if we can copy something right yeah now

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you probably eat around all over the place oh yeah how many diners do you know that serve a real brick oven pizza not many we

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serve it break oven right yeah and and we can serve them all day long and we could do 18-inch pies we could do

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bar pies we do garlic knots fresh yeah right in the oven um

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are you guys 24 hours is it 24 hours

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yeah yeah and you know three four o'clock in the morning five o'clock you don't get the customers you want to

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really yeah unless you need time to spend with your family exactly you know between the two of the best six kids yeah exactly

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like you said it's a family business business that's and you got a balance right with your family that's definitely

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a really important thing you gotta have time for your family you gotta be able to go away you gotta balance in life this is your life right you got a

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problem yeah and that's why when you do it together when you have a partner you can actually have a life outside of the

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jefferson diner yeah exactly that's important healthy healthy wise mentally

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emotionally you need that right or you can't move forward here and when you come back refreshed and rested from a vacation yeah you can offer more to the

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business exactly yeah like you're more you're filling your cup back up you know you might go out to dinner you might see

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something different yeah you know and you incorporate it into your business maybe a variation of it yeah people

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learn from us but we learn from others too of course there's things that we pick up from other places as well yeah to give them credit right right

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it's not just all coming from us yeah i showed you what i told you what we did yeah there's other things you know

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exactly um so the other thing i would ask like could you talk about something like the the innovative things that you guys have been doing um but obviously

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like because this is such a staple of just this community and even like surrounding communities like all the way up through sussex county you know morris

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county as well um talk to me about like the staples of the menu that when people

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come in here it's like we know we're gonna serve like x number of whatever that dish is like what are the things

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that people just like hammer like they love it here well we've been known you know when my parents had it as a luncheonette

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used to be called lakeside luncheonette and there was about 15 tables and they expanded to like 20 tables

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and the thing it was known for was breakfast and lunch yeah mostly breakfast uh hash and eggs

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um omelets big omelets you know the french toast the pancakes homemade oatmeal yeah

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that was how we started and then they ended up my parents ended up opening up for dinner okay and they

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introduced the stuff floundered to the area staples chicken francesca of the area right things that uh you know jefferson

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township really didn't experience no uh 38 years ago i would imagine not yeah

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so to answer your question when people come in what do they expect they expect it to

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be family made yup my nephew is our head chef and he learned from us and my mother and

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my father and my grandmother yep because it just passes down recipes passed down yeah from generation to generation right

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so they could expect it's going to be family recipe family family cooked family owned

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staff is close they're going to get attention and if there's an issue or a problem

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we're going to take care of it we're going to do our best to take care of it of course right and they're going to have a consistent menu

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new specials every week yeah they're going to have 24 beers on draft okay on top yeah and they can order pretty much

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anything under the sun yeah uh we've been on multiple tv shows for different types of dishes

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one was a musa dish it's a staple in greece we were on the food network for that

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uh we were also on the food network for lobster bisque soup okay and we were also on a different food

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network show for uh skilled breakfast skillets yeah we made beautiful breakfast skillets

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that was on unwrapped i believe okay uh the other shows were on diners drive-ins and dives

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and that really uh that propelled us that show propelled us yeah for sure and uh guy was just tremendous he was

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amazing uh classy and professional yeah and their whole crew was professional right from david

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page uh production all the way down to their photographers

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and everybody and everybody else they were just an amazing it was an amazing experience yeah um

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speaking of we've been on multiple shows my brother was a judge on uh spike tv for okay one of the food shows

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oh yeah a show called frank and frank tony luke jr okay he was a really fun guy chef josh capone who's skyrocketed

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in in the business yeah josh capone is an amazing chef he's done a lot of shows he's on bar rescues yeah a

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lot of great shows yeah yeah and a really good guy yeah you've been on tv we've been on tlc network okay um trini

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and suzanna did a makeover on one of our servers yep we did the makeover right in here in the diner right on the counter

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yeah and they made her over right there with a crowd of about 150 people that's awesome i love that and it was just

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incredible they ended up paying for the girl's wardrobe yeah uh they bought a diamond ring

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for the husband to get engaged they paid for it they paid for her wedding at the madison hotel which we attended that's

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that was all on tv yeah it was a beautiful episode yeah and you know we're always on the news channel you know four or five right just

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crushing it channel 12 right you know podcasts radio shows and we really enjoy it we enjoy doing

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what we do yeah uh it's to a point where uh we look forward to coming in and and

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coming in because you don't know what to expect exactly you just don't know what to expect the right thing that's like everybody can pop in right you have

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actors and famous people and governors senators they pop in all the time yeah

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professional athletes yeah you don't know what's gonna happen right and that's what we were talking about i think in the first segment maybe about

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like how like uh maybe it was even earlier in this segment like how they're just like there's the energy like things are moving like things are happening

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because everybody's been to a diner wherever you go faster than you can imagine exactly everybody's been to that diner like you go and it's just like you

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know like you get like the crotchy waitress and she's just like what do you want and you just like tell her

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look at you and say what do you want what do you want what is the worst thing that really annoys me if we hear it here from the server they're gonna hear it

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from us right right you know yeah so yeah i love that we do have some really fun people to come in of course we have

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fun employees do we have some really good employees yeah right the customers come in and they just ask for them yeah

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you know they ask for the server right and because they're entertained exactly the server entertains you yeah and that's the island yeah that's what keeps

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people coming back is uh the number one thing for going out is your experience right

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you know and food is right there yeah but you want the experience when you go out along with the food they go hand in

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hand of course it's a show when you come here you're watching a show it's like you're part of the show

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yeah and you come here to see people and you come here to be seen as well yeah this is where people come where family

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and friends come together yep yeah and our families our friends come together that's our logo yeah i love parents our

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aunts and uncles our cousins everybody comes here to see us and we hang out we have family dinners here and it really

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is a lot of fun right and the guests see that yeah and it's a great environment they like it too it's a happy environment it's a

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safe environment yeah i love that awesome all right so great second segment so we're gonna take our second

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last break of this episode so we're here in jefferson new jersey at the jefferson diner with nick and jimmy cerres i'm mike ham this is the greetings from the

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garden state podcast we'll be right back it is time for new jersey fun fact of

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the day did you know that new jersey has about 9 000 farms in the state and even though there has been a reduction in

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farmland the number of farms in the state is actually increasing and that is your new jersey fun fact of

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the day all right we're back for our last segment of this episode of greetings

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from the garden state i'm mike ham we're here in jefferson new jersey the jefferson diner with nick and jimmy cerretas so guys in the first segment we

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talked about the background of you guys and the business and then the second segment we kind of learned what someone would come to expect when they walk in

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the door here but our third segment which we do for every episode is try to tie it back into the community in some way

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because this is new jersey podcast and we're learning about like you know what goes into what goes on behind the scenes

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and makes the businesses that people frequent tick you know um so first i think we need a little refill on the

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coffees oh yeah absolutely yeah oh jackie oh hey jackie how are you oh yes please thank you just a little

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bit yeah it's almost like you read our minds this is amazing yeah like how did you know that like

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you're just an absolute pro it's a natural yeah jackie knows i love that

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she just works more hours not by choice you guys know that right well no that was your choice yeah thanks jack i

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love that thank you jackie um awesome so that was cool so now i got a refill on the top um but uh so yeah so back to the

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community side of it so we've touched on it in a lot of different ways like how when you people come in here you want them to feel like they're in their

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living room like it's a family business it's a family atmosphere like it's not just you guys but you have like sons and

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nephews and everything like that working on the business and all that kind of stuff but let's let's dive even deeper

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into that so maybe um what are ways that you guys try to support the community of you know maybe

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it's jefferson or even the surrounding communities beyond the walls of this business

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i'm sorry i'm just looking over because my parents just came in my parents that's fine

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hey mom and dad how are you pete and donna hi pete and donna how are you

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this is mike [Music] hi nice to meet you they started this yeah you know awesome

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yeah amazing and dad is 94 years old now wow that's my middle son georgio right

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there kissing his grandma yeah right this is not stage they just you know

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they went next door for physical therapy he just walked over amazing i love it

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so we you know answer your question we've been uh trying to do what they did all those years you know

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when somebody comes in from the community and they need help whether it's personal or whether it's for one of their groups yeah or whether it's a

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fundraiser or whether either either party is running for office we support all of

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them sure we try to help and you see the return that we get on that

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personal touch that investment we make in people and community yeah they come back in it's just you'll see fire chiefs

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come in chiefs of police's old chiefs old mayors [Music]

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teachers principals students and and and then 10 15 20 years down the

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road the students are having families exactly they come in and they bring up they bring up memories when they used to

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come in late at night they're friends yeah and have shakes every night in two minutes yeah why don't you hang out a

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little bit yeah i'm sorry we're gonna be done in a few minutes sit with us a couple of minutes yeah go sit so we try

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to do that and you know a lot of stuff is you know through donations right fundraisers

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and we do a lot with uh the community with drug awareness yep and suicide

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prevention of course um we just helped out recently uh for maya's mission oh yeah yeah yeah

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absolutely yeah and we a few of my staff got trained on narcan uh for you know drug abuse yep i

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do and heroin you know yeah sort of thing so right do that every few months

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nice meeting you too bye-bye see you later see you later so we do that yeah

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whatever whatever the community needs yeah if it's within our reach to help we will do it right

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and they know that and they come to us yeah i think that's awesome we want them to come to us yeah absolutely because that i mean that's what really goes into

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like you said that's kind of like what you want to do right when your parents started it like that was a very similar

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vibe like you know how you guys grew up like with the community supporting you guys and going to the yankee games and

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all that kind of stuff um so i think that's all in the blueprint exactly and i think to me like i'm a firm believer in like

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if you're someone that puts a lot of like good out into the world like eventually good starts to come back to

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you you know what i mean so it's like you start to vibe with the people that you vibe with it's called karma exactly

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and even somebody may not see it but god's eye sees it and you paid back tenfold yeah

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uh and you know you don't do it proof you don't do something just to get paid back so god could see of course right

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because it's the right thing to do exactly one thing that we stress in here if you get a person that comes in that's alone

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an elderly person a few years back that person was coming in with somebody else yeah and they lost

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that person right or that person is sick in the hospital or whatever this person comes here to get out of the

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house other people yeah you have to make it special for them not because you feel sorry for them

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because right you want to make it special that makes you feel better uh and we tell our staff sit with the

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sit with the guests for a few minutes talk to them try to learn their story and if they don't want to tell you the story that's fine

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yeah sometimes a lot of times you'll be surprised right what these people yeah let out yeah to release right it's just

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dying for somebody to talk to you and we appreciate it we respect it we listen when they leave here you you made

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their day right you know and that goes a long way right and it comes back to us in good ways too

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it's like we were saying before like i mean that's how people just keep coming back in the door right like you said like you know families bringing their

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kids and their kids have families they're like you know what we got to do we got to go back to the jefferson diner because i remember when i was a kid and

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i got like an omelet or whatever with my dad and i'm going to take my son now too like that kind of thing right like

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people have met their spouses here people have proposed it here to their spouse right people i've gone on a few

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dates in the tavern uh you know like they were they were fine the the food was great obviously the

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girls the dates weren't that great that happens too exactly people meet their boyfriend or girlfriend yeah

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i actually started screening his too he's had quite a few a guy this has been the best last

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segment of an episode we've done so far a guy came here with a picture of a dog and the guy lived in parsippany and he loved his dog

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so much that he came all the way out here to post the picture because another customer's walking in as this

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guy's posting his picture and i'm helping him post it yeah right i saw that dog he goes behind a dumpster

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hanging around some shop in parsippany this guy flew out of here so fast

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maybe an hour later we get a phone call it was his dog come on he won it's amazing he wanted to buy the other

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customer lunch yeah but that person had left i didn't know who it was right but it's just it's just

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things that happen that make no sense but it happens we have a lot of customers we a lot of the military uh

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eats in here from uh picatinny arsenal yep and a lot of the times

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you may have 10 you may have 20 of them you may have 50 of them yeah you may have one or two right but you'll have a customer

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and they'll say you know what i want to i want to take care of their meal yeah uh don't let them know who it's from just you know do it anonymously yeah

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yeah and we love hearing that right and we do and we go up to them and tell them you know thank you for your service

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there's a customer that wants to take care of your mail they're anonymous yeah and um yeah it's just a wonderful thing

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right it's yeah that's so cool because like beautiful human ass yeah and i think that like it just i think just the

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vibe at this place kind of radiates like we said i've been coming for 17 18 years and like i i feel it when i come in here

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and it's just like everybody like you said staff you guys the customers like everybody's just like here having a good

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time there's a lot of energy there's a lot of stuff happening you know what i mean i think that that's kind of like what ties into that kind of thing like

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people are just supportive of the community that they find themselves in you know i mean like people want that you know like that feeling i think a

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business takes on the personality and the character yeah of the of the people in charge of the ownership yeah and you

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know we try to hire people as close to us as possible personality-wise and character-wise yeah

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sometimes you're a little off it doesn't work out that way yeah sometimes doesn't always work out that way i mean it's hard to find yet

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more times than just once or twice the hardest thing in this business is to weed out the bad the bad apples sure right and to

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weed them out in a way where you're not going to go get trashed on social media with the local because most of them are

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locals yeah yeah and it does happen to us too right you have to release somebody from you know terminate them

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because it's just not working out yeah and they'll tell you they're not going to have good things to say right that's

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always the worst day yeah that could be it's never a good day it's always the worst that's on them

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we just could not mold them into what we need yeah to keep this vibe that you're talking

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about exactly yeah because that's the thing like you said i mean it starts yeah you can't see it in their head yeah

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you can't see what they're doing wrong we can't teach them what they're doing right because they don't want to know what they're doing they don't have it in

35:38

them yeah it's just not right because people just come from different we have a full tree of apples right now yeah and

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those apples are ripe yeah we got good staff i love that very good staff one of our best staffs yeah that's awesome i

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personally think i have the best staff i'm going to say a little further out to new jersey but

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let's just keep it in new jersey sure yeah yeah i have the best staff in new jersey yeah yeah and it's awesome we got good people right now we have good

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people awesome awesome stuff um all right so uh if people want to uh maybe like check you guys out before actually

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coming in let's hit them with maybe like social handles website like what are they you can you can get us on google

36:13

yeah uh you can get us on instagram you can get us on facebook you can go on either jeffersondiner.com or you can go

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on america's favorite diner.com okay and you'll find the jefferson diner that's a good that's a good domain to get yeah we

36:27

thought it was appropriate right i mean i agree you can go on youtube yeah yeah how many google

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we've had some we've had 13 and a half million uh google page views on our cover page wow and we have a few other

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pictures on there with a million yeah yeah and and the other ones are in the hundreds of thousands yeah last

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month if you just look at google it was 159 000 it's crazy something close to that some crazy number which is a lot of

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views we're proud of that for mom-and-pop business right exactly we still consider ourselves a mom-and-pop

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yeah because we're here right if it was uh if it was corporate or if there were multiple locations right we wouldn't be

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here exactly it would be a lot harder this is our only location and we're still here yeah could we have opened up another 10 20 30 places

37:10

absolutely we could have did it right but we chose just to focus on this yeah and stay with our family our local

37:16

family in jefferson township yeah awesome awesome and then if people want to bypass google and they're listening

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to this episode they're like i have to go right now they're in the car they're listening to the episode what should they put in the gps to get themselves here

37:28

put you guys on the supervision diner they're just jefferson diners yeah right yes yeah

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right on route 15 north and south we're right in the median right the actual address is five bowling green bowling

37:39

green yeah right lake on new jersey yep lake apachan is the largest lake in new

37:45

jersey part of greenwood lake is in new jersey and part of it is in new york state but lake at paccon is the

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largest lake in new jersey right and uh i believe it's uh the term is land of

37:56

the rock uh the local the local tribe that was here yeah right yeah yeah uh and there is a

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lot of rock believe me there is definitely a lot of rock but it's a beautiful lake it's a beautiful community if anybody ever gets a chance

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to get on like a pack on there's wonderful marinas there's great restaurants yep uh there's

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places where you can rent you know jet skis and you know bridge marina has a lot of things you can do

38:20

uh cats marina has multiple locations and it's just it's just a vibrant

38:25

vibrant community they have great trails that you can hike and that's getting expanded soon

38:33

uh thanks to camp six camp six is going to be expanding that and it's just a wonderful community yeah

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it's almost like a miniature version of lake george yep and it's growing constantly right so if anybody wants to

38:47

move in the area or do business in the area or come and eat uh in the area you come to lake compact

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on just go around yeah cannot go wrong can't go wrong jeffersontown is definitely very family oriented yeah and

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you see the families of the school system teachers right yeah just good leadership yeah good good people overall wonderful

39:06

police department yeah fire department and the rescue squad is right down the road they have great people

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we've become very close friends with throughout the years of course and we feed off of each other and

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you know even uh like i said earlier in the episode if somebody has a personal issue you

39:22

might get a text message yeah and if you can help that person out great right

39:29

awesome so this has been an amazing episode that i had no doubts like after our first phone call when i reached out to you guys and was like i want

39:35

jefferson dynamite to be the first diner on greetings of course yeah and i was like this episode is

39:41

going to rock and if that last segment was any indication like this episode obviously was awesome uh so nick jimmy

39:47

uh thank you guys so much for coming out with us today thank you so much i really appreciate it yeah absolutely absolutely thank you thank

39:53

you so again for everybody listening thank you again uh for everybody listening

39:58

this has been the greetings from the garden state podcast from jefferson new jersey at the jefferson diner i'm mike hamm thank you for listening and we will

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catch you next time [Music]

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[Music]

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you