Dan: 0:00

If you walk into Michael's Deli in Boston, you'll see a sign above the cash register. It says, there's a new sandwich special.

Steven: 0:09

And it's a picture of a fist in between two slices of bread, and it says "knuckle sandwich". And it says available to anyone who does not say "Hello" before they start to order.

Dan: 0:22

That's Steven Peljovich. He bought the deli in 2012 and runs it.

Steven: 0:28

We get people who walk in all the time and they'll be like, "Pastrami, rye, mustard, to go." And as they were saying that, I was saying, "Hello." "How are you doing?"

Dan: 0:36

Right.

Steven: 0:37

And then they look at me because I haven't moved. And they're like, "Pastrami." And I'm like, "No, no. I get that. You wanna get food. I was just trying to say 'Hello' because I'm a person."

Dan: 0:47

For Steven, this isn't just about manners or being polite. It's about why he does this job in the first place.

Steven: 0:55

I thrive on human interaction. The day that people don't wanna come in and talk to us and interact with us is the day where I'm like, "Okay, I'm done with this. I can't do this anymore."

Dan: 1:06

And that human interaction Steven thrives on, he's watching it disappear across the hospitality industry.

Steven: 1:13

You order online and you order from a kiosk or you order on a tablet and you pick up a bag that's on a shelf in a store without talking to a single person in that store, that mode of ease for the consumer, I think is gonna come bite the hospitality industry in the butt at some point soon. Like, the food can't just be the only reason that you're ordering from a place.

Dan: 1:37

For years, Steven resisted this trend. He just used an old school cash register. But he says his wife finally convinced him to modernize. You can now order a corned beef sandwich from the deli online. Steven still put a stamp on it though.

Steven: 1:53

So when people order online, you typically get some sort of message that your food's either being delivered or your food's ready for pickup. Correct?

Dan: 2:00

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Steven: 2:01

Our message says, your food is ready. Please be prepared to say "Hello" and introduce yourself before you get your food from any of the employees in the store.

Dan: 2:11

I love that. I'm Dan Heath, and this is What It's Like To Be... In every episode, we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession, an ice cream truck driver, a crisis PR consultant, a barman. We wanna know what they do all day at work. Today, we'll ask Steven Peljovich what it's like to be a deli owner. We'll talk about why one customer got banned for life, what it is that makes a deli a deli, and what happened when one of his most loyal customers suddenly disappeared. Stay with us. Walk us through a typical day for you. Like, what what time did you get to the store this morning?

Steven: 3:12

Well, this morning is my good day because Mondays we're only open from ten to two, so I got in at about 7.30 this morning. Typically, I'm there between 5 and 5.30 in the morning.

Dan: 3:21

And are you open seven days?

Steven: 3:23

Open seven days.

Dan: 3:24

Wow. And are you personally there all seven of those days?

Steven: 3:28

I am pretty much there all seven of those days unless I've got something else going on in my life or I'm desperate for a day off and I work it out with my friends. Part of that's just because I'm a control freak. The other part is I really love what I do. And I guess the third part is I have too much energy to be sitting at home reading a book on a day off. If I've got a day off, need to be doing something.

Dan: 3:52

Man, that is a lot. Seven days a week.

Steven: 3:54

Yeah. My grandparents would call it shpilkes. Like, even now, I'm sitting in a chair talking to you guys, and every few minutes, I'm standing up because I don't know how to sit still.

Dan: 4:05

Steven says in the early morning, he cranks up the music and does a million things from paying bills to organizing to cooking. I asked him about the cooking. Are you cooking the same kinds of things every day or do you have like one day you do this and then Wednesdays you do something else or what's the rhythm of it?

Steven: 4:22

In many ways, it's like Groundhog Day because there are certain things that we do cook every day just because of the volume that we go through. And our kitchen is not much bigger than the kitchen you probably have in your home.

Dan: 4:34

Mmm.

Steven: 4:35

I have an eight burner stovetop with two ovens underneath, and that's what we use to pretty much cook everything in-house. So a lot of this stuff gets cooked every single day and because we make it fresh, it'll change what we're making every day. But, you know, whether it's cooking chicken, cooking chicken livers, chopping up vegetables for soup, boiling eggs for egg salad, whatever it may happen to be. I like to try to get a lot of that stuff done in the morning. And then I have one particular prep guy who's been with me for about nine years now, but other people who will then take that product over when I'm done with it and turn it into whatever the finished product is.

Dan: 5:19

The prep guy, Sebastian, is one of two full timers on Steven's team. The other is a guy named Misha. He knows everything about the business and takes over on the rare occasions Steven is away. And there are four or five college students who work shifts. I asked him who was in charge of taking the customer's orders.

Steven: 5:38

Everyone can do it, and everyone is well equipped to do it. Again, being that I'm a control freak and it's sort of, I feel like the deli is my personality in food.

Dan: 5:51

Mhmm.

Steven: 5:51

So I I probably take care of 80% of the people that come in through the door.

Dan: 5:57

Because he's right out front, he often sees when people have a good experience and when they don't.

Steven: 6:04

It pains me if someone doesn't like my food. Like, it hurts me in in my soul because, again, it's not just food, especially deli. Deli brings back memories for people of happy times, sad times with their family, with their friends, getting together. And it's not just a meal. It should be an experience. So when someone's not enjoying my food, I want to know why. I want to know whether we made something wrong, whether they ordered wrong, whether it's not to snuff from what their grandparents used to make for them and we needed to, "My grandmother used to put this in there and that's what I was expecting" or whatever it may be so we could try to make it right for them the next time, hopefully building to a next time.

Dan: 6:48

So whenever I'm writing books, I'll always send out early manuscripts to get feedback, and one of the things that I feel like is not easy is knowing because I always get negative feedback, there's plenty of that to go around, and it's difficult to know, like, what negative feedback to trust. Like, which negative feedback was just coming from people who just, you know, honestly weren't well-suited to what I was writing and I shouldn't listen to it. And which negative feedback was really telling me something constructive that I need to get fixed. Like, how do you navigate that tension?

Steven: 7:22

I judge it by the tone of the person. And whether they're coming from a place of like giving me honest, truthful, insightful feedback

Dan: 7:31

Mhmm.

Steven: 7:31

Or there are people in the world of deli. And if you go on social media into any of the deli pages, you will see it where someone will post a story of going to eat anywhere. Could be my place, could be a place in New York, could be a place in Chicago, could be wherever it is. And they'll say, I went in and I got a corned beef sandwich and they used yellow mustard. And there'll be like this outpouring, this crazy flood of, "What kind of place did you walk into?" "Why did they do... How do they not know what they're supposed to do?" And again, if you're a traditionalist, then, you know, it should be spicy brown mustard. Like, I have people come in from time to time. We use half sour pickles, and they're like and I also have full sours as well, but half sour pickles are the ones that come with every sandwich. And people will come in and they'll be, "I don't understand why you don't use full sour pickles for everything. That's really the only pickle that should ever be served in a deli." And so that kind of feedback to me

Dan: 8:32

I can't imagine saying that sentence out loud. That is amazing that you hear that frequently.

Steven: 8:38

I hear that probably at least once a week or your your knishes are not square because they're used to the knishes from a place in the Lower East Side. And I'm like, well, we make them ourselves. And I'll joke with them. I'm like, if you want, since we make them by hand, I could sort of push it into a square shape, but I didn't know that square made it taste different.

Dan: 8:57

So what are the attributes of a of a quintessential deli? Like, what do you what do you have to have?

Steven: 9:03

Well, I think it starts with you have to actually make the product that you're serving, at least in my world. Like, if I'm going to draw the line and be one of those hardline traditionalists, I don't necessarily care what you serve and how you serve it, but did you make it fresh or did you cut it out of a bag? Because I know I'm feeding you food that was prepared within the last two to three days for the most part versus something that was manufactured somewhere months ago that has like an expiration date months from now.

Dan: 9:37

Oh, gosh. I didn't really think about that to be honest. So so that's a huge difference between you and like a a sandwich shop. Yeah?

Steven: 9:43

Yeah. And and again, that's a hard thing for people to understand. Like if they're walking in looking for a sandwich and the prices of my sandwich are more expensive than what you'd find in a sandwich shop. And it's like, well, we make it here in-house. We get raw products from, you know, all different places and we treat it with love and care and time and energy. And the 40 pounds of meat that I put in the pot this morning are only 26 pounds of meat when I'm done cooking it. So I lost 14 pounds that I paid for.

Dan: 10:18

Yeah. Could you just could you dive in a little bit on that? Like, tell us how corned beef comes to life for instance or something else if it if it's a better case study.

Steven: 10:26

Yeah. No. No. I mean, I sell more corned beef than anything else. But typically, people will use briskets to make corned beef. The briskets will come in and they're brined in something similar to like a pickle brine. And what that does, it helps because brisket is a really tough meat. It's just the nature of it. It also used to be a really inexpensive meat, which is why it became like a staple of the original delis that came out of the people from Eastern Europe because they were taking the cheapest foods at the time, essentially they could afford, and trying to make it taste good. So by brining it, you're breaking down the muscle, the tissue, all the stuff that makes brisket tough. And so it'll brine for a week to ten days just to...

Dan: 11:12

And are you brining it?

Steven: 11:13

We get ours in-brined.

Dan: 11:15

Okay.

Steven: 11:15

So it's still raw. It comes in a brine already and it comes out of a meat packing plant in New York. It's the same place that the original owner had been getting meat from since 1977, and we've continued that relationship to this day. And so we get it in, and then we'll boil it for anywhere from three to five hours depending on how much meat we're cooking. And that then helps, you know, obviously cook the raw meat, but it also seals in the flavor in the meat. And then that meat can't be used that day because it's boiling hot. It'll take a day or so for it to cool down and then we'll what we what you'd call clean it because there's typically a lot of fat in and around it. And although you want a good amount of fat in the you know, on the corned beef, you don't want all the fat. So we'll clean it a little bit and then we'll use it for service.

Dan: 12:14

Hey, folks. Dan here. So here's a cool thing for you. We recently passed a million downloads, So cheers everybody. When we started this podcast in fall 2023, I knew we had ten downloads in the bag. A hundred? For sure. A thousand? Probably. All the other zeros from there were speculative, so thank you for all those extra zeros. By the way, Matt Purdy, the show's producer said, if we hit 10,000,000 downloads, he will get the show art tattooed on his forehead live on TikTok. So let's do this. Actually, he did not say that. But it can't hurt to plant the seed now. Let's get back to the show. So given how much of your energy and personality goes into this place, I have to ask why is it called Michael's Deli instead of Steven's Deli?

Steven: 13:15

Well, because it was started by a gentleman named Michael in 1977. At that point, I was only eight years old, so it definitely wasn't mine at the time. And realistically, when I was leaving the corporate world and looking to run my own business, I didn't wanna start from scratch. The hospitality industry, the restaurant industry in particular is way too difficult, and the success rate for starting your own is so small. I was looking for a place that was in existence and had a reputation. And at the end of the day, I don't need my name on the door to know that it's mine. So I got no problem. And it's really a nice out because if someone's, like, someone's cold calling or someone walks in on a sales call, like, oh, you know, like, whether it be on the telephone or in-person, and they're like, oh, is Michael available? And I'm like, no. He isn't. But if you wanna leave me something, I'll make sure he gets it next time I see him. And I can then either throw it out because I don't want to do it, or if it's something interesting, I could follow-up on it. But they never you know, and then they could call back, hey. I left something for Michael. Oh, yeah. We gave it to him. He'll get back to you if he's interested.

Dan: 14:25

Tell me about one of your favorite customers.

Steven: 14:28

Wow. So I'm going to tell you about a customer of mine who is no longer with us. Rita Manor was a regular of Michael's before it was my place. And she came in every day, sometimes multiple times a day. She was an older woman. She had no family that she ever talked about. And whenever I'd ask her about family, like, there was no one around anymore. She lived in, like, a apartment building for older people. It wasn't like a home, but it was apartments for older people that was down the street from us. She had a walker that she walked around the neighborhood with, and she'd come in and she'd eat. Her bread always had to be toasted to the point of blackness. And there were times she asked us once if we could do it with challah bread, which is a much softer, fluffier bread. And we tried to do it and the bread actually caught fire. So I told her we're not going to do it with that bread anymore. But she came in. She put us in our places. Like, as much as we were her family, she became our family.

Dan: 15:39

So at one point, the walker Rita was using, the wheels started falling off. So Steven finds a company that heard the story and essentially donated a new walker to Rita.

Steven: 15:50

And she made us create a sign and laminate a sign on it, like donated by the company and by Michael's Deli. And it she had it on the front of her walker. So she basically was a walking billboard for us.

Dan: 16:07

What a character.

Steven: 16:08

Yeah. And then it's probably now six or seven years ago. And there were times in the winter where, like, I finally got her to give her give us her phone number. And I would call her in the morning and I'm like, you're not coming out today. It's too cold. And she was just like three blocks from us, so we would start bringing her food. And to get her to do that, like give up her independence was really, really difficult. And there came a time where she was not like, we didn't see her for a couple days, which was odd. So I tried calling her and I got no answer. And I went to her apartment building and she wasn't there.

Dan: 16:48

Eventually, he figures out that her health had deteriorated and she'd been transferred to hospice care.

Steven: 16:55

So me and my team gathered a bunch... She loved to read. So we got a bunch of books. We got some other little stuff, and I would and I brought a box and I drove over to this place after work one day. And I'm like, "Hi, I am here to see Rita Manor." And they're like, "She's not seeing any people today." And I'm like, "Well, I brought her a gift and I just you know, I'd like to I'll wait around if she wakes up or whatever." And they're like, "No, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And finally got out of them that she had literally just passed like a half hour before I got there. And so that being said, somehow one of my regulars had heard that whole story and it became something that ended up in the newspaper. And that newspaper article and her picture are on the wall at the table where she always sat. And so she'll always be a part. Sorry.

Dan: 18:04

It seems like that would be a really important source of meaning, you know, running a small business that is fundamental to the community and people start to get to know you and you get to know them and it's not a transactional business in the way it might be at a franchise or something.

Steven: 18:23

It's not at all. It's why I love what I do, because I get to connect with people. I get to insert my whether they like it or not, I get to insert myself in their lives And they insert themselves in mine. They've seen my kids grow up.

Dan: 18:38

Were your kids involved with the deli growing up?

Steven: 18:41

Yeah. I've been really fortunate that my kids have like one, I'm really fortunate that none of them wanna take over the business. That I'm happy about because

Dan: 18:50

Why do say that?

Steven: 18:51

Because it's a tough business. You have to be built for it. And it's not the most lucrative business, not the most lucrative career. And you always want something different and better for your kids. And they're all finding their own path, and they're all doing remarkably well in their own individual ways. But when I bought the deli, our daughter was 13, our son was 10-ish, and our youngest was six years old. And like the fun of having them come in, like to want to spend the day with me, to want to work with me, to want to be a part of what we do was awesome. And, like, our six year old who's now in five days finishing his freshman year of college is now two inches taller than I am, bigger and stronger than I am. But he used to just stand on the milk crate. We used to have a manual cash register, and either me or my wife, when she would come in and help out, would tell him what numbers to punch on the cash register as people were ordering.

Dan: 19:58

Have you ever had a customer that was badly behaved enough that you had to kick them out?

Steven: 20:04

I've had one. Well, I guess two. But the one that stands out who I told can never come back again... We were crazy busy, and we only have six tables with four seats in them. Like, we're not a place to come hang out. And if I get a backlog of people waiting for tables, I typically will yell something to the effect... Like, I don't tell people to leave. I'll say, "Hey, folks. If you've got room at your table, I got people who are gonna have their food ready soon and wanna sit down. You might be able to make a new friend. You might make a new enemy. But if you don't mind sliding over and making some space at your table, or if you're completely done eating, we appreciate the fact that you had time to sit and enjoy your food. If you could please allow for the next people to be able to do the same."

Dan: 20:48

So one day, they're slammed and people are eating standing up. And Steven realizes there's a dude sitting by himself at a four seat table.

Steven: 20:59

And I go over to the table and I'm like, "Sir, I'm real sorry, but would you mind sharing some of this space with people? I've got people literally standing up eating, and you've got three seats here." And he goes, "Absolutely not." And I'm like, "Okay. What's wrong?" And he's like, "You idiots put the wrong mustard on my sandwich." And so at that point, like, already I'm like, "You wanna call me whatever name you wanna call me? I'm the owner. I can take it. You start insulting my team even if they're wrong. I'm gonna back them up because they're my team. They're my idiots. I'm the one who can call them an idiot. You can't." Right? So I go, "I'm sorry. We put the wrong mustard on your sandwich?" He goes, "Yes. You idiots put the wrong mustard on my sandwich." And so I literally just I'm dumbfounded. So I'm like, "And you never thought of just asking us to make you a new sandwich or make it right?" "Oh, and give the idiots another chance to screw it up?" And so that's when I was like, okay. You know, I'm doing everything I can to try to do right by you, sir. So I do a spur of the moment thing that, you know, I look back on and I feel bad on, but I literally turn to everybody in the place. And I say, "Folks, I know it looks like there's three seats here at this table, and this gentleman's not allowing people to sit here from what I'm told. He's telling people to move away. But I want you to understand it's not him. It's the idiots that work here. We were foolish enough to put the wrong mustard on his sandwich because we don't know what we're doing. So if you're upset that you're standing up eating, please come talk to me about it. Leave this gentleman alone. He just wants to enjoy his wrong sandwich made by idiots today." So he gets up, gets right in my face, and he's like, "How dare you embarrass me in front of all these people? You son of a bi..." I'm like, "Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah, buddy. The only person who's embarrassed themselves today here is you. You could've done this a hundred different ways. I gave you a hundred different ways to do this. You chose to call my team a bunch of idiots multiple times. That's unacceptable here. So, now that you're up... Let me grab what's left of your food, and let me escort you out with it. Please keep the basket that it came in because it's the last remnant of our place you're ever gonna have." And, like, people started clapping. It was stupid.

Dan: 23:22

So Steven, we always end our show with a quick lightning round of questions. Here we go. What's a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know and what does it mean?

Steven: 23:35

So I got two that come to mind. One is a "schmear", which many people actually may know what that is, but it's a Yiddish word for like a layer or a spread of either a condiment or cream cheese or chopped liver in a sandwich. And it's really... Depending on how someone says the word is really how much of a schmear they want in their sandwich, and that's something that you learn over time. The way they exaggerate is like, okay. They really want a generous helping of whatever they may happen to be.

Dan: 24:06

Mhmm.

Steven: 24:07

The other one is a "macher", which is another Yiddish word. It means like a big shot, like a big deal. Someone's a bit you know, you're you know, like someone important, but we use it. And again, we used to handwrite tickets. Like, we would write it on there sort of as a joke because it's someone who didn't introduce himself or didn't say hello or asked me, like, hey. I parked illegally. How long is that gonna take? And so we'll write macher on it because in their world, they're a big deal.

Dan: 24:38

And so it's like an inside joke among your staff, basically?

Steven: 24:41

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a complete insult.

Dan: 24:46

What's a tool specific to your profession that you really like using?

Steven: 24:51

My favorite piece of equipment, we have high pressure steamers for our food. There's different ways that delis prepare the meats for service, and a lot of them have it in a hot water and mustard bath to keep it warm all day long, and they slice it to order. We have high pressure steamers that in literally forty five seconds will take refrigerated meat and turn it into melted in your mouth meat. And those are really the lifeblood of what we do. They're our secret ingredient in our sandwiches.

Dan: 25:25

I I can't picture that. What does a high pressure steamer look like?

Steven: 25:29

So it's literally a metal box with metal baskets in it that have nozzles on the inside, on the top, and the bottom that shoot out. Like, if you put your hand in there, you're gonna get third degree burns. It runs at about 550 degrees.

Dan: 25:44

Woah.

Steven: 25:44

So again, if you like, you wanna quick cook something, put it in there.

Dan: 25:50

What is an aspect of your work that you consistently savor?

Steven: 25:55

This, I I think, sort of flows through everything. It's sort of when I have someone who comes to me, whether it be from the catering order or someone that I've known for a long time or unfortunately when someone's like significant family member or someone might have passed and they tell me that like they need our food because it reminds us of that person or it reminds them of the food that their Bubbe used to make. I never wanna be better than someone's family's food, but there's no better reinforcement of the work that we do than someone saying that it brings back a great memory from their life.

Dan: 26:36

And that's an interesting point because, you know, food is so central to the rituals we have about, you know, all kinds of different moments in life, you know, both sad moments and celebratory moments.

Steven: 26:51

Yeah. And and the beauty of being a small independent business doing things the way that I do them is that we get to do that for all of our guests. You know, like people will call me on their worst days. And the first thing I tell them is, I'll do whatever it is that you need. I'm not gonna be the person in this time that's gonna be hounding you or driving you crazy. So here's my cell phone. Let's make sure we take care of you. I'll deliver it to wherever you need it delivered at whatever time you need it delivered because I know how important that is because I've been on the other end of that. And when you can have someone that kind of care and that kind of compassion is what we're lacking so much of these days.

Dan: 27:40

Steven Peljovich is a deli owner in Boston. It's called Michael's Deli. By the way, in the show notes, we'll have a link to the deli's website where you can order a corned beef sandwich. Just don't forget to say hello when you pick it up. I keep coming back to Steven's one man campaign in favor of politeness and conversation. Technology has removed so much friction from our lives. Think about Amazon Prime and DoorDash deliveries and Venmo, and it's incredible, mostly. The question is, what happens when some of that friction you're eliminating is the basic human contact that sustains us? Is it that hard to imagine a world where we unwittingly vanquish every last impromptu conversation? A world where you go from a driverless car to a self checkout store to a work from home job? And look, I'm not trying to romanticize inconvenience here. It's more like a replay of what happened when air conditioning spread decades ago. You sometimes hear from people at that time that when they stopped hanging out on their porches to stay cool, you stopped seeing your neighbors as much. It eroded a little of the social fabric of the community. And it feels like that erosion is what Steven is resisting. Giving a proper greeting to every customer, boiling up the corned beef, staying on top of the bills and supplies and staffing, and delivering the kind of meal that reminds you of your loved ones. Folks, that's what it's like to be a deli owner. Thanks to Kim Langsam for suggesting we talk with Steven and a special hello to Maya and Leo, two of our favorite listeners. Also, a shout out to one of our recent reviewers on Apple Podcasts... That was Angster who wrote, "I love this podcast. I've often told my husband that I hope reincarnation is real because I wanna know what it's like to be other people. Well, this podcast definitely helps scratch that itch. The episodes are small and digestible. I listen to every single episode, and I'm always excited for the next one. Thanks for making such a great podcast." Thank you, Angster, for a great review. This episode was produced by Matt Purdy. I'm Dan Heath. See you next time.