I just feel like the greater the tragedy,
the greater the humanity that comes out of it.
Hi, I'm George Resch, better known as Tank Sinatra,
founder of Tank's Good News.
Tank's Good News is an Instagram page
that I decided to share
everything that goes right during the day,
because there's plenty of places to find what went wrong.
(gentle music begins) My childhood was tough.
I was chubby, so I was made fun of,
cause kids can be cruel.
And one of the first things that I learned was that
if you can make people laugh,
you can get people to like you.
So that's what I made my entire personality,
was just making people laugh.
So my first comfort was food,
but then once I found alcohol and drugs,
I went down a pretty dark path
and it got very bad, very quick.
And I wound up getting sober at 22,
which is a gift that is beyond words.
It's how much of my life I owe to getting sober at that age.
So, I started posting memes in late 2015
under the name Tank Sinatra
and it's really just because I'm big, built like a tank.
I have blue eyes, old, blue eyes and I'm from New York.
When hurricane Harvey was going on
and when the news comes on,
they just tell you what went wrong.
I just feel like the greater the tragedy,
the greater the humanity that comes out of it.
I saw a photo of a woman
on the back of a jet ski in her flooded home
and she was smiling.
And in that moment, it became apparent to me
that even in the middle of a tragedy,
attitude is everything.
I was this close to naming it,
something around hurricane Harvey.
And I was like, you know what?
I want to run this page when this hurricane is done.
So I named it Tank's Good News
and when the page really became galvanized to me,
was when people started DM-ing me and sending me good news
that they had found out in the world.
When I first started the page,
it shot right up to a hundred thousand followers
within the first week, which was incredibly exciting.
But now, here I am a couple of years later,
and we're at 2.5 million, which is incredible.
To hear from people who were having a bad day
or seeing the world a certain way
and they tell me that the page, it's not the me
I can't take credit for it, it's the content of the page,
changed the way that they see the world.
It's, that's the best part of running the page.
We're gonna try and zoom with the good news story
that you brought to our show today to share with everyone.
So Jeff Williams started this restaurant,
which is a pay-what-you-can restaurant.
There's no prices on the menu,
there's no suggested nothing. Pay what your can.
So he started it in what's called a food desert
in Fort worth, Texas.
Good food is not affordable in a food desert.
Yeah.
And he's got some people that come in and pay nothing.
He's got some people that come in
and pay thousands of dollars.
I think it's awesome, I'd love to meet him.
I hope he's here. Jeff, are you there?
Hello. Hey, Jeff!
(audience applauding) How's it going?
So Jeff Williams is this person who has really
put his talents to good works in the community.
What is the range, Jeff, that you've had?
What's the largest amount a person's ever paid
for a meal at your place?
We've had someone pay $1000 for pancakes before.
(laughing)
$1000 pancakes! That's not even our largest.
Yeah. Wow!
Good pancakes. Yeah.
Have you been surprised by what people have paid
or what they have not paid?
Like how many people have paid or not, the ratio?
You know, it's interesting.
When we first set out to do Taste,
our initial idea was that 20% of the people would come in
and be in need.
And 80% of the people would come in
and be your normal restaurant goers who would,
you know, pay it forward.
But getting into this, that's been more like 50/50
and even in some cases, 60% of the people in need.
But the most amazing thing about what happens
is that the other people have given
what we expected to come from 80% of the people,
even more, sometimes.
But there's also another element to this,
there's an educational element to your program.
Yeah, well, that's actually new for us.
We started that since COVID
and when the dining room opened back up.
But we have a restaurant,
we're used to training people every single day,
we are 85% volunteers,
so we train about 35% of our staff every single day.
We teamed up with our local food bank,
Tarrant Area Food Bank
and the culinary school at Fort Worth,
to provide an apprenticeship that is tuition free
and the apprentices go through the program
and earn an ACF, American Culinary Foundation accreditation,
which is the largest accrediting body for food service.
And during that period, we actually pay them.
And you're paying it forward
bringing back our labor force in this country
in our restaurant industry.
(audience applauding)
It is amazing.
We have some friends at Pom Wonderful,
they are donating $10,000 (audience applauding)
to help you keep your good work going.
That's amazing. (audience applauding)
Thank you guys so much,
I wasn't even expecting that at all.
(audience applauding)