feb 5, 2023 - a. Chris returns to Florida

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b. Rob, Chris and Mark meet at PCI at the beach. Rob and Chris meet Mark’s daughter who flew into town from NY to, in her words, “keep an eye on Mark”, as his wife and her were concerned in the way he was acting and talking.
c. The night went on and Mark became more and more loud and obnoxious around strangers. Rob and Chris were not aware of how much he had been drinking, but as the past week or so had gone, his behavior and mannerisms had seemed to magnify when we all came back together again on this night. He would walk up to complete strangers and ask, “Do you know who this is? This is Chef Robert Hesse… he was on Hell’s Kitchen twice…Rob Rob…show them your pictures, Rob used to be over 600 pounds”. This was making Rob really uncomfortable. Mark would go on to explain to everyone that we were the owners of Fo’Cheezy and basically demand that they tell everyone they know to go to our restaurant. This was very awkward for everyone.
d. The unfortunate pinnacle of the night was when someone sat at a table with all three of us and Mark gave his usual spiel to the person and for about the next 45 mins was trying to get the guy to understand the compound effect of this stranger telling 10 people about our restaurant and them telling 10 other people, etc. The stranger was a bit confused because he was a bit intoxicated as well, and Mark went on and on, and then it became very weird. The stranger was excited to meet Rob and was excited to go to Fo’Cheezy and tell his friends until Mark continued to make it weird.
e. When the stranger started to make these comments, Chris called off the conversation and thanked the stranger for talking with us and to have a good night. Chris turned around to Mark and Mark said, “I fucked up, didn’t I?”. Chris stated, yes you fucked up, and that, “People don’t care what you say until they know that you care”. Mark told Chris that he was trying to get around to how many people the stranger could impact with our non profit charity No Kid 86’d if he had told a bunch of people. Chris told Mark that that may be the case, but that he was doing it all wrong and he never heard him say anything along those lines to anyone that evening. Chris stated that Mark was making it all about our business and how other people could help us do better. Mark kept saying that everyone in his “team” was telling him how important word of mouth is. Chris stated yes, word of mouth is powerful, but not in that way. Mark asked Chris if he was mad at him, and Chris stated, “No, I’m disappointed in you”.
f. This was a huge red flag for Rob and Chris and it reminded us of how Craig used to act in relation to the business and this is something that we didn’t want for our company. Rob and Chris did not like the idea of someone like this representing our company. This was not the only incident of this type of behavior as noted in previous comments. Although Mark had good traits of seeming to care about teamwork and building up the company culture, on the other hand his behavior was one of showboating, overexaggerating, saying he was doing things which we later found out weren’t done, and just a plain belittling attitude towards Rob and Chris and others around him.

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