- [Announcer] "Travels & Traditions" with Burt and Nicholas Wolf is made possible by Goldbelly, shipping stone crabs, pizzas, birthday cakes, and more from many of America's restaurants anywhere nationwide.

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And by Swiss International Airlines, flying to over 100 worldwide locations.

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Since 1985, Five Star Travel has been developing and delivering detailed itineraries for trips, cruises, and vacations to destinations around the world.

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(stately orchestral music) "Travels & Traditions" with Burt and Nicholas Wolf is a classic travel journal, a record of their search for information about our world and how we fit into it.

They travel to the source of each story, trying to find the connections between our history and what is happening today.

What they discover can improve our lives and our understanding of the world around us.

(stately orchestral music) (stately orchestral music continues and fades) - [Burt] In this program, we will learn about the history of the stock market from Ray Dalio, how Joe's Stone Crab remains the highest grossing independent restaurant in the world, and how innovations in technology are transforming global economies around the world for the better.

My first meeting was with Ray Dalio, one of the most successful people in finance.

- I think that basically life exists in three phases.

- He's the founder of Bridgewater Associates.

Bridgewater is the largest hedge fund in the world.

They have over $120 billion under management.

I wanted to speak with Ray about how the business we interact with on a daily basis got started.

When I was in Holland, I went to visit the offices of the Dutch East India Company, the original offices, and they said they were the first company that allowed shareholders.

- That's right.

They invented capitalism as we know it.

And that's a good invention.

The first stock, the first public stock, and that was also the Dutch had the first public stock market and that changed how we perceived wealth.

I'll tell you why.

Up until then, we perceived wealth as being the wealth we had.

You have your house, you have your whatever, the stuff you have and that was wealth.

And then they began to be able to sell dreams.

In other words, they'd be able to sell a piece of an income that hasn't yet been made.

So that created this wealth that was inconceivable before.

So there are all these cycles that I'm describing, but there's an evolutionary process of man learning and evolving in different ways.

So the way I look at it is there are these cycles, the money cycle, the internal conflict cycle, the external conflict cycle, that all work together in those rises.

And then there's evolution of man inventing new ways to do things and become better.

And that's an evolutionary process that these cycles move around as there's that evolutionary process.

For example, early in that 500 year period, the wealth and the power was in the hands of families that were royalty, okay?

And they had a political system connecting them, you know, through the church.

The popes and so on would pronounce who had the mandate of heaven.

And they did that in all societies.

In China, the same thing.

And so there's the emperor and the family and so on.

And wealth was around agriculture.

So in other words, you got it out of the land.

You grew it and that's how it worked.

And then there's evolution.

And really evolution then becomes the beginning of the development of machines that start to do the work for you.

And so you see individuals, as we go into the early phases of the Industrial Revolution and so on, you see the inventions of machines that replace the person.

And you see wealth and power shift to those who are being able to be productive, that come up with the ideas and so on.

Or you have the Age of Exploration where they go all over with their boats and they take wealth from other places.

And so you see that happen and that evolution.

And then you start to see the breakdown of these families.

Instead of royalty, and you start to see, okay, that other class in the French Revolution and other places.

It becomes then the people.

Starts with the nobility fighting and then it goes down below that to the masses fighting.

And you start to see an evolution in the political system that evolves.

And then you start to see economically that you move up, you know, from physical.

Then it becomes the brain and the brain becomes the thing.

How can you invent things?

And you see entrepreneurship begin to develop and you see like a capital market begins to develop.

There weren't capital markets like we're talking about in Holland and everything.

You develop the capital markets.

You developed the brains.

And now what we're seeing it evolve is that the mind comes up with these things and you come to this artificial intelligence.

(bright music) - While Burt's up north interviewing Ray Dalio, I'm here in Miami at Joe's Stone Crab.

It's the highest grossing independent restaurant in the world.

And if there's anyone who's gonna know a thing or two about running a successful business, it's going to be Steve, the fourth generation owner.

(bright music) Before we start out, I wanted to give our viewers a little taste of how old Joe's Stone Crab is.

It's older than Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

It's older than World War I and even the first television.

So Steve, tell me, how do you keep a business running for over a hundred years?

- I think one of the things being fourth generation is I grew up in the business.

My mom grew up in the business and my grandfather grew up in the business and we realized you have to save for rainy days.

And we did not over expand.

There's only one Joe's Stone Crab restaurant.

And so most of our eggs are in one basket.

And, you know, success, 'cause I believe, you know, we are by definition a successful restaurant over a hundred years, et cetera.

But success does not always guarantee or ensure successors.

And I believe that we are constantly monitoring our inventory, constantly in touch with our fisheries and our fishermen and our customers.

- [Nicholas] So what I'm getting here is you have to build a sustainable business model.

- Yes.

- And it can be tricky, right, with stone crab when they're in season, out of season.

What else do you guys do in terms of sustainability for a restaurant like Joe's?

- I think we try to cultivate a great working environment.

We offer a lot.

You have to sustain the employees.

You have to help do that.

We look out for their best interests at all times.

We reach out to the community, you know, as much as possible.

We're a part of the community.

We were here before the community.

- Before Miami Beach was even a city.

- Right.

So to sustain ourselves, you have to do the right thing now, but you have to look to the future.

- Steve then walked me around the restaurant and showed me how it's run on the day to day.

So, tell me about the place.

- Okay, we built this addition in 1995.

This is now the main bar.

- [Nicholas] And that's new for you guys?

- Yes, '95 is like a second ago, but I remember when it opened and we actually had a maitre d' stand right here.

That lasted a minute.

- And then you needed a bigger space?

- 'Cause the bar filled up.

- Yeah, I'm sure.

- And we needed, so we moved it over there.

Our maitre d' is, you know, like the central command, the air traffic controller for all the customers.

- It's a good analogy.

- Yeah.

So, they keep track of the names, how many people in the party.

- I see you.

- The time, whether the party's complete or not.

- Upgraded to an iPad since 1913?

- Correct.

Right.

- [Nicholas] So with all these people coming in every day, there must be celebrities, famous people from different time periods?

- Well, okay, well this is the new entrance, 1995.

But if you go back to 1913, I mean, we had Mr.

Brown.

He was really Al Capone.

That was, you know, his pseudo name.

Joe Kennedy used to come in here and Senator Kennedy.

And I mean the list goes on, Amelia Earhart.

We've had royalty, had actors, actresses, musicians, had some interesting people here.

And they do a lot of take out.

- Now you got Nicholas Wolf, so we'll add that one to the list.

- You are.

Oh no, put him on the top of the list.

- [Nicholas] So we're quite literally walking down the aisle here.

- Right.

The aisle of adulation.

People love to get these tables in here, especially, like Richie Barron.

There he is, Mr.

Z. Nice to see you, sir.

- I like you're walking around.

You know everyone by name.

It's- - Oh yeah.

- Fairly impressive.

- [Steve] They're looking at us.

Here's the family table.

That's a fun table.

- How do you get your name up here?

- Regular dining, it takes decades.

Well, look.

Like J. Edgar Hoover's right here.

He used to sit here with my grandparents.

Walter Winchell was a famous writer, reporter.

- And with all of this, it's pretty easy to forget that this is actually a restaurant and there's cooking going on here, so I think we gotta go check it out.

- Exactly.

- So I actually ate here two weeks ago.

I was spying before I came here to shoot.

- You did?

- I did notice that the checks are handwritten.

- Right.

- It's a very interesting touch.

- [Steve] Well, yes, especially if your handwriting's not too good.

We have the main cooking line is right over here.

The stone crabs are in another area.

You see some of the fried dishes- - [Nicholas] I'm taking a sneak peek at the famous hash browns over there.

- Oh yeah.

- [Nicholas] I know our viewers like that.

- You caught that.

That, to me, is the quintessential side dish of Joe's.

- Yeah.

- A lot of love goes into that, a lot of love.

- [Nicholas] Talk to me about the stone crab.

I mean, it's in your name.

You guys are famous for it.

- This is the heart of the menu and this goes all the way from the Gulf of Mexico and it ends up right here getting cracked to order.

So the servers will place their orders for either medium, select, large or jumbo size, and they're hand cracked right back there.

There's a whole technique behind that.

Okay, well the smallest size is medium and there's about eight to the pound.

Okay, and then selects, there's about six to the pound.

- [Nicholas] And is there a different taste?

- Basically the same.

Yeah, I happen to like selects.

So I think that's a component of value.

- That's what I ordered last time now.

- The selects are my- - But talking about value, we can't skip on the chicken.

- Oh, well that's a steal.

- Yeah.

- [Steve] That is a steal.

$8.95 for a half a chicken.

- [Nicholas] It beats inflation.

- [Steve] It's the second most popular item on our rep menu, and we are an American seafood restaurant.

- [Nicholas] But if you talk about business, it definitely gets people in the door.

- [Steve] And it keeps them here and they love it.

And they talk about it all the time.

I don't care where you go.

And then the hash browns are behind that.

That's our most popular side dish, the hash browns.

- [Nicholas] And I like, you can ask to cook 'em in butter.

I think that's great.

- Oh sure.

- Yeah.

- [Steve] We'll cook 'em in butter for you.

Actually, there's a lot of prep that goes into it, a lot of love, a lot of time.

- [Nicholas] So what's happening?

Are they blanched first and then they're fried up?

- [Steve] The potatoes are actually peeled and then boiled in like 400 pound batches at a time.

- Wow.

- Then we cut them into chunks from that.

And then from the chunks, they end up right there where you see it below the cooking line right there.

And he's scooping out a measured amount and he's putting 'em into the cured saute pan.

- Are they home fries or are they hash browns?

- We call 'em hash browns.

- So they're served like a one big hash brown.

- Correct.

And look at the crispy golden, the top here.

That's not an easy thing to achieve.

And they do take time.

- And now for a demonstration on how to crack a stone crab.

It's a messy business, so we're wearing aprons, so- - Yes.

- Steve.

- Thank you, Nicholas.

This is a mallet.

- I figured.

- That's what we call a mallet, kind of like a hammer, too.

Now, this is a stone crab claw.

What I'm gonna do first to make it easier to crack, you see how it's kind of lifted up a little bit?

What I'm gonna do is just tap it down a little bit.

See?

Now it's flat and it's easier to hit and it's easier to get a good bullseye, right?

So light hit because this is a thinner shell on the end, a light hit like that.

The second one, I'm gonna hit it a little bit harder because the shell's a little bit harder here.

And the third one I'm gonna show you.

See, this part of the crab claw is the part that moves.

Okay?

That's where you wanna hit it, right in there, right on the top.

Not necessarily here or here or here, but right up here.

'Cause you get a better break in, then it's easier to eat.

So I lift it up and like that.

And sometimes you can just hit it a little bit more.

- That looks great.

- Now, it's a pretty- - And to be clear, if you eat at the restaurant, you do not have to crack your own claws.

- Oh, I hope not.

No.

We do 'em all in the kitchen.

You don't want anything.

- But what about if I order?

If I bring 'em home?

- Well, you could do it both ways, but we crack 'em for you to take home.

- Right.

Well still, it's a good skill to learn, I feel.

- Absolutely.

- This one's a little tricky.

I'm gonna go with the easier one here.

- Okay, there you go.

- Okay.

All right.

So which side?

Which side is the best?

- I would tap it right in here a little bit.

- Okay.

- Just tap it and flatten it out.

Keep tap.

You'll get it.

There you go.

- All right.

And now with the lighter part here?

- [Steve] Yep.

A little harder.

- There we go.

- Okay.

- And give that one a better whack.

(mallet bangs against crab) There you go.

It's okay.

- It's- - It's still good.

- Is this a good first time?

- Excellent.

- And this is that part of the claw that moves, right there.

Give it a good whack.

Hold the claw, too.

Just go bam.

A little harder, harder, harder.

- Got a feisty one.

- Keep going.

It's okay.

There you go.

- All right.

- That's a beautiful crack.

It's great.

Don't forget the mustard sauce.

- [Nicholas] Don't forget the mustard sauce.

- [Steve] People love the mustard sauce.

- Let's go for it.

How much mustard sauce do you wanna put on it?

Is this a good amount?

- That's a good start.

Just keep dipping.

After you bite down, you'll see.

You'll pull some off and you'll do it again.

How is that?

- It's very good.

- Good.

- You know, it tastes a lot better when you crack it yourself.

It is like a gratification.

- It does.

- After trying so hard, you know.

Steve, being one of the highest grossing restaurants in the world, how many stone crabs do you go through a day?

- [Steve] Today, we'll probably go through a thousand pounds easily.

- [Nicholas] I wish, like, maybe we could get an AI visual to show how many a thousand pounds of stone crab is.

- Probably 5,000 claws, give or take.

- Wow.

- More or less.

(bright music) - [Nicholas] And of course you have to finish the meal with a Key lime pie.

- Yeah.

- So what I noticed is, it's interesting, there's no Key limes in Florida anymore after the hurricane took 'em all out.

So how did you guys get so famous for it?

- Oh, wow.

Well, that's one of the best stories of Joe's.

In about, let's see, it was 1968, there was a reporter who came down to Florida from Chicago who I think he wrote for the "Chicago Tribune."

And he came and interviewed members of my family and staff and he was doing an article on Joe's and the stone crabs.

And then he went back to Chicago and he wrote about Joe's and he mentioned our Key lime pie and how wonderful it was.

And we didn't have Key lime pie on the menu, and- - That's an interesting story.

- Right.

Now, necessity is the mother of invention and we had to create a Key lime pie recipe for Joe's pronto 'cause people are gonna ask for it, and we didn't have one.

So she made a Key lime pie with the graham cracker crust, the sweetened condensed milk and the fresh squeezed lime juice.

Now today, you can't always get enough Key limes.

So sometimes, we do resort to limes.

We do our own lime squeezing here.

We crush our own limes in-house and we go to great lengths to make sure that the outside of the lime, before it's pressed, is sanitized organically.

So there's a little trick to that and a little food chemistry.

And we do that and we have a room strictly dedicated to Key lime pie.

We have one or two people making them.

- [Nicholas] I've got a sneak peek of that room.

It's- - Oh yeah.

- [Nicholas] Pretty impressive.

- [Steve] So Key lime pie is a natural for a Florida restaurant.

It just, it's a natural.

And we also ship them everywhere around the country.

It does require dry ice and we have to overnight it.

- And something really interesting that I noticed, 'cause a couple days ago I was here, I was picking up a Key lime pie.

So when you take one out at Joe's takeaway, they give you a full bottle of whipped cream.

- Yes.

- And I wanted to say that's some really impressive attention to detail.

I've never seen that done before.

- Right.

It's a nice little touch.

Thank you.

It's a great touch.

We want people to enjoy it.

And if somebody dines in the restaurant, our whipped cream is fresh whipped cream made from heavy cream and sugar.

(bright music) - [Burt] Since we looked at how businesses as we know them today, got started with the invention of capitalism and how one of the most successful businesses operates today, let's try and predict the future.

(funky music) Since 1980, China has been the fastest growing economy in the world.

It has transitioned from an economy that followed a detailed plan set out by the government and based on the manufacturing of goods for export to a system that includes a new and experimental form of capitalism.

I wanted to learn more, so I traveled to China.

(funky upbeat music) I met with Jonathan Krane.

Years ago, he developed a media company that brought the Rolling Stones and Beyonce to China.

Today, he's the CEO of KraneShares, a company primarily involved in developing and managing Chinese investments.

I wanted to learn about the future of business in China.

If you think about the highest grossing business day, Black Friday comes to mind, but that's not actually the case.

It's Singles Day, November 11th.

- Singles Day was established by Alibaba.

And it's a lot of companies in China now participating, but it's become a phenomenon.

It's sort of like our Black Friday.

But just the numbers, you know, it's tens of billions of dollars are generated in that one day.

A lot of the leading internet companies, the Amazons, the Googles, and you know, those equivalents in China, their market share is actually like most, I'd say 90% if not more of their revenue is just coming from China.

So it's, you know, that market is so large.

They focus there.

There's so much growth opportunity.

So a lot of these companies haven't even globalized yet, and they're just focused on the China market, which is large enough.

- [Burt] Which of the Chinese industries are going to have great growth in the next few years, in your opinion?

Obviously, electric automobiles.

What else?

- [Jonathan] Yes, so you have electric automobiles.

So, you know, and we pay attention to China government policy.

Where there's strong policy for certain industries and initiatives, the Chinese government usually is investing a lot of money into those initiatives.

So, we follow that a lot.

And so some of the key themes where the government's supporting a lot is around the environment.

And that's where you mentioned electric vehicles, but also clean technology and solar and wind.

And you know, you have a country that has urbanization, a lot of people moving, tens of millions of people moving to cities.

They have to have a real focus on cleaning up the environment.

Other themes, healthcare is another example of a real opportunity.

And we kind of look at China as it's getting greener, wealthier, and healthier.

- [Burt] While I was in China, I wanted to speak with someone who experienced the fastest growing economy firsthand.

- Well, I think a lot of things happened, right?

Like, over the last 30 years, China's GDP per capita turned over 38 times compared to the world average, like three, four times.

So that's like miracle.

That's like outlier, but that's only numbers.

But I was there.

I see the whole change of generations.

It's really amazing.

My father was born in a village and my grandfather was born like as a farmer for his whole life.

And my father moving out of the village to a town to do business.

So all of a sudden, if you know the history of China, there's big reform in the '90s, right?

Like big reform, opening up, embracing the capitalism, American dream happening in China.

Everybody wanna make money.

My father's one of them.

So moving to town, moving to cities, is the quickest way to make money.

There's like lot of opportunities happening in the cities.

So when the new technology come, people quickly adopt it.

And just embracing the Fintech, right, like the WeChat payment.

Alipay is so quick, so easy and everybody use it.

I think young generations is very different because they are born into this basically good economy, right?

They have not experienced a lot of the old system or the planned economy.

They're born in a world free, like freedom market, like market-driven economy.

So, and they have a lot more information from overseas.

So their mindset is like global, right?

Like global, like peers.

- [Burt] Well, that gives you a picture of how businesses, as we know them today, got started, how they're run day to day and what we can predict will happen in the future.

- Well, now you know the stories behind some of the most successful businesses around the world, how they operate and how they got started.

For "Travels & Traditions," I'm Nicholas Wolf.

- [Burt] But wait, there's more.

For daily reels featuring interviews and stories filmed during "Travels & Traditions," visit @NicholasWolfTV on Instagram or @BurtNicholasWolfTV on YouTube.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music accelerates) (bright music) - [Announcer] "Travels & Traditions" with Burt and Nicholas Wolf is made possible by Goldbelly, shipping stone crabs, pizzas, birthday cakes, and more from many of America's restaurants anywhere nationwide.

Goldbelly.com.

And by Swiss International Airlines, flying to over 100 worldwide locations.

Truly Swiss made, Swiss International Airlines.

And by YP Foundation, helping those in need through education and improving life skills, guided by the principles of good deeds, charity and public welfare.

YP Foundation.

And by Five Star Travel, Incorporated in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Since 1985, Five Star Travel has been developing and delivering detailed itineraries for trips, cruises, and vacations to destinations around the world.

Five Star Travel, Incorporated.

(gentle music)