Jim Bartoo on the Nashville Zoo
Jim Bartoo, Marketing and Public Relations Director at the Nashville Zoo for the past 25 years, talks with Spencer and Annalee about the zoo's rich history. He shares insights on its founding, conservation efforts, and the sourcing of animals, along with the story behind the giant pumpkin at Boo At The Zoo. Bartoo emphasizes the importance of places like the zoo in helping us disconnect from screens, engage with nature, and appreciate the wonders of the natural world.
About Jim Bartoo
For nearly 25 years, Jim Bartoo has led as the Marketing and Public Relations Director at the Nashville Zoo. His journey in marketing began at the Columbus Zoo, drawing from a background in advertising and news journalism.
Under his strategic guidance, the Nashville Zoo has seen remarkable growth, with attendance soaring by over 150%. Bartoo's initiatives have effectively amplified awareness about conservation endeavors, educational initiatives, and captivating events, fostering robust community engagement and support.
Resources
Nashville Zoo
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Spencer 00:06
So Jim Bartoo, it's public relations and marketing director for the zoo. So I feel like that is one of the cooler titles at any party that you come up to when you're like, hey, what do you do? And it's like, oh, I'm in transportation and logistics, and it's like, what do you do? Well, I do, like, public relations for the zoo. Like, I mean, that is just cool, yeah, that never runs out of steam.
Jim Bartoo 00:27
It's a good party starter, right? Yeah. And depending on who you're asking, you know, if you're asking an eight year old boy, they're like, what animals do you take care of? So, well, I'm in marketing, so I deal with a lot of, you know, snakes.
Spencer 00:38
You're gonna get those questions today, yeah? Those are coming in about two minutes that you're going to be getting those questions. So tell us the back story you work for the zoo is how I'm going to say it, right. How do you get to realize what every little boy's dream is, which is to work at the zoo? Well, and you're right.
Jim Bartoo 00:57
I was, you know, always a big zoo fan, but I never really knew that that working at a zoo meant something besides taking care of animals in some capacity. I think everybody thinks about a zoo as if you're there, you're taking care of animals, and that's really all it is. But it's not. It's a business like any other business, and it has accountants and business people to run the business end of things. If you're going to drive people through the gate, you need to know how to set up an E commerce platform and to be able to take care of guests as they wander through the park. They need to use the bathroom just like animals do and their customers. There's a there's a whole industry of people that work behind just taking care of the park and making sure it looks clean. So So I grew up liking zoos, but never really thinking that I would be working at a zoo I went to. I went to college and got a degree in advertising at the University of Tennessee, and go. And at that time, they really just, they train you to basically go work for an agency. That was really kind of the setup, right? These are all the different jobs that you could do in an advertising agency. So when I left, I thought, that's what I'll do, is I'll go try to find work in an agency. And I'm from Chattanooga. So I went down to Chattanooga. There was, there was not a whole lot of opportunity down there for me. I didn't really find a whole lot.
Spencer 02:28
It's Chattanooga Choo Choo. I mean, they had to need some marketing, right? Yeah,
Jim Bartoo 02:32
If you're in the hospitality, yeah, if you're in the hospitality industry, they're great for that. You know, they have a wonderful hotel down there in a train that doesn't work, but it's a it's a nice area, so I wound up in working in TV news. Actually, I started in their promotions department, which is like having a client that is your also your paycheck. But I moved into the news department because the news department was needed somebody to kind of bring order to the chaos that was running around in the news department. So I did that for a while, and then they they quickly moved me into producing television news, which I found shocking, because I failed my journalism class in at UT. The one journalism class I had to take. I did not do well in it.
Spencer 03:23
You didn't disclose that before the promotion, though, right?
Jim Bartoo 03:26
No, absolutely not. It's like, sure I can write.
Annalee Cate 03:28
That's a hard class. I had to take that one too. That's a really hard class.
Jim Bartoo 03:33
Well, the teacher that I had the first time around would give you zeros if you made an error on, you know, personal names and things like that. So you spelled something wrong, it was deadly. But anyway, we so I did TV news, and I moved from one station to another station, and I did that for about three years. Met my wife, my future wife there, she was a health reporter at the time, and she was able to get a job up in Columbus, Ohio, as a health reporter out there, and they agreed that they would send her through nursing school so she could become a qualified health reporter and this kind of stuff. So and I agreed to follow her because I was, I like news, TV news, but it's, it's really a job for the young, right? They own you. 24/7, if there's a threatening snowstorm, you're on a bridge over a highway telling people don't come out here, right?
Spencer 04:25
That's what you do, those famous shots. That's just like, that's 80 mile an hour away.
Jim Bartoo 04:28
I know it's pitch black behind me, but it's a snowstorm. That's the way it kind of worked. So I wanted to get out of that. So again, up in Columbus, again, looking for agency work, didn't really find anything. And we lived in Powell, which is right outside Columbus and probably about a mile from the Columbus Zoo, and this was in 1992 so I figured I'll just pick up a part time job at the zoo just to make some money while I'm looking for agency work. Yeah, and I literally started from the ground up. I got hired into the Guest Services Department. I was ringing in school groups. I was renting strollers and wheelchairs. They had me doing the tour on the tram through the zoo for a while, where you talk to people and tell them about the animals. And it was, it was, it was like the best summer of my life, yeah, and I'm like, This is what a four year degree at UT gets you. You know, it's an intro job at the zoo in Columbus. And during that time, I realized that they, they had a marketing department, a marketing and public relations department. And I walked up and I went and introduced myself, I told him my background was. Told him I worked in TV news for a few years, and they opened up this door. And I'll preface this by saying the Columbus Zoo is where Jack Hanna is from. And I don't know if you all know who Jack Hanna is, but he was a big national zoo guy, and he was on Letterman and all different kinds of late night shows. So they had a huge video library, and they open up this door and they show me this video library, and it's in complete disarray. It's just tapes laying all over the place. And they have this, it's called a three quarter inch tape to tape editing deck. This was before digital, non linear editing. This was linear tape to tape editing, right? And they opened it up, and they said, we've got this great video. Do you know, you know? Do you know anything about this? And I was like, Yeah, I was trained on three quarter inch tape to tape. So they were like, Would you like a job? And I said, I would very much like a job. So, so they hired me again, making no money and working, I think maybe eight hours a week or something, I would come in and organize their video library, and from there, I just made myself as useful as possible. And they were like, Hey, this guy can run events. And I learned about sponsorship, and I learned how to organize volunteer teams of people to run events, and started doing more and more and more. Wound up staying there for seven years. We had our first child in Columbus. And when you have children, your your life changes, right? You go from very self aware to very aware of your responsibilities to someone else. And it became very apparent to us that we wanted to spend more time with our family, mine, being from Chattanooga, carols, being from St Louis, so we made a conscious decision to try to get closer to home. Nashville was an ideal city for that, because it's roughly in between the two cities. It's a huge health care town. Again, she was a health reporter. She needed to be able to be in a town where she could generate enough stories to qualify to just be a health reporter. And it's a huge this a huge health care town. And I found out that they that the zoo had just moved to a 200 acre piece of property, about six miles from the richest county in the state, and in someone in the zoo business looks at that and goes, that's a gold mine. That's going to happen. You've got a zoo that you're building from the ground up, and you're really close to a huge constituent base that has the the money to be able to become members and support it as it grows. So I we decided to make a move to Nashville. My wife landed a job. She was able to talk the local NBC affiliate here into creating a health reporter position, and so she got hired very quickly, and I told my boss, we're moving to Nashville. And she said, Well, let's, you know, see if we can get you a job down at the Nashville Zoo. And they had just happened to be looking for a marketing director. They had just let theirs go. So we walked up to Jack Hannah's office at the time. Who knew the zoo president here, Rick Schwartz, and he said, Yeah, well, we'll call them what we'll call get them on the we'll get them on the phone right now, you know. So called him up right there and said, Rick, you got to talk to this guy, you know?
Spencer 09:15
So, and the next Tennessee accent has been introduced. Oh yes, yeah.
Jim Bartoo 09:18
He's from East Tennessee. Man. He's a great, great person. So, yeah, he's really the reason why I'm here. And I, you know, I got the job, and I've been, I've been in this job for now 24 going on 25 years, wow.
Spencer 09:35
When I think about the zoo as a child, born and raised here in Nashville, I first knew the zoo as Grasmere, and talk some just about the evolution of the zoo from where it started to where it is now, just in your journey, right?
Jim Bartoo 09:53
And years before that, Nashville had a zoo. I've heard little bits about it. It's over kind of in the Green Hills area where, where it was at the time, there was a trolley that led there. At some point. I know very little about that, but for the longest time, Nashville didn't have a zoo. In 1990 the property, the Grasmere property, which which had been owned by two sisters, the Croft sisters, Margaret and Elise Croft, they owned about 450 acres called Grasmere, and it had been in their family for generations and generations. There was a house on the property that was built in 1810 the two sisters got the property from their father. Their father had all his money in Cuba, in sugar plantations in Cuban that the daughters actually lived there with their father when Castro took over and he took it all. Castro took all the property so that, as one who takes over a country does so, the sisters moved home. They tried to farm the property. They weren't really able to make a tremendous amount of money on it. They weren't able to keep up with the taxes on 450 acres in Nashville. So they struck a deal with the city in 1965 that they would hand the property over to the city once the last one passed away, with the one condition that a portion of the property had to be used as a nature study area. So the last sister died in the mid 80s, 85 I think five years later, the city sold half the acreage, all but about 200 acres, 250 acres. They sold so all but about 200 and that became the Grasmere business park as it is now, yeah, the rest of it, they handed the property to the Children's Museum, which is now the Adventure Science Center, and said, We want you to run some kind of a nature park. A zoo would be great. And so the Children's Museum started the Grasmere wildlife park over there, and it had maybe a dozen exhibits in there. They were all indigenous animals, or animals that, at one point in Earth's existence were indigenous because they had, like pozoles, keys, horses there, which I don't think have been in Tennessee since the Stone Age, but, but they had the bison, they had wolves, they had cougars. There they had several different things. And the Children's Museum ran that from 1990 until about 94 maybe 95 I'm not sure the exact history. At the same time, a gentleman bought about 100 acres up in the jolton area, and tried to start a private zoo up there, and that was called the Nashville Zoo, and that ran for a while. Is a beautiful piece of property, and they were seeing lots of people going up there, but in 9495 when the Children's Museum said, we can't do this anymore, they handed the property back over to the city. It was then that Mayor Bredesen asked the Nashville zoo up in jolton to relocate to the Grasmere property, and we did that in 96 opened up to the public in 97 and from there, basically started building a zoo from the ground up there was, like I say, maybe a dozen exhibits there that we moved different animals into. The Bison area became zebras and eland. The wolf exhibit became cheetahs, the bear exhibit became tigers. The Cougars we inherited, actually, they were part of the property. There were a couple that were part of the property. There was a, there was an otter exhibit there that's now alligators and and I have to say that the Otters did leave before we brought the alligators in. It wasn't a, it wasn't a, let's see who wins, kind of situation. So, so we did that in 90 opened up in 97 and have been basically building since then. And I got there in 99 so I got there after all of that had happened, but it's still very new. You know, I tell people, when I got to the Nashville zoo, the best exhibit we had was the backhoe.
Annalee Cate 14:19
So when you first came into the zoo, what was, what was kind of the hurdle to growth, or what was the, what was the first thing that you set out to do, to say, we're gonna really expand this thing?
Jim Bartoo 14:31
As the marketing director, um, well, when I first got to the zoo, I had no budget. It was a, still, a very young, that's a big hurdle. Yeah, it was, it was very young. Fortunately, I had the I had the experience of knowing what a good story is. Right from working in TV news for a number of years, I knew how to build a story that I could drop in a reporter's lap and make it irresistible enough for them to pick up and run so everything. That we did for the first few years was all earned media. It was all nothing. But look at all the different changes that we are making, and the zoo was exploding in growth. I mean, we have been growing faster than most. Most zoos will run three years before opening a new exhibit, and usually when they open a new exhibit, it's either a revamp of something old or they've completely raised something and building new because they're landlocked. They can't go anywhere. We don't have that problem. We haven't had that problem since I've been there, and we won't for a long time. We're we're now at about 188 acres. The city needed about 12 acres to build the Croft Middle School. So we carved out a little piece of land, renegotiated the lease. They gave us some some infrastructure funding to be able to help build some of that stuff. The property is parks. Property it. We don't own it. We lease it for the purpose of building a zoo. So, so yeah, we started basically building from the ground up, from there.
Annalee Cate 16:03
And for how much of the acreage is currently developed.
Jim Bartoo 16:07
We're on about half of it. So of the 188 we're roughly developed on about 9092 something like that.
Annalee Cate 16:14
And is that for for a zoo like nationwide, what's what is kind of the minimum viable acreage, or what's typical of a zoo.
Jim Bartoo 16:21
if you look at an average across the United States, I mean, they vary greatly, but an average size is probably going to be about 50 to 60 acres. Land mass wise, yeah, land mass wise, we're going to be easily in the top 10, maybe even the top five. I don't know. A lot of zoos are acquiring new land in other areas now to do breeding programs and things like that. So it kind of kind of muddies the water as to who owns what and how much you declare to be your actual size of your your property. Most zoos are judged in terms of size and animal collection, right? So size wise, we're one of the biggest in the country animal collection. We're probably more on the smaller side because we're so new. We don't, you can't just go and order Tigers on Amazon. You gotta, you know, work with other zoos to eventually acquire some.
Spencer 17:16
Feel like there's a tiger King reference to be made in there, or something Carol Baskin, perhaps, like, maybe secure that. But I just, I'm having 2020 vibes come back in a strong way. Please do tell me, Tiger King. I'm sure you're horrified by it, but admit it to me, you watched it.
Jim Bartoo 17:34
I actually have not. Yeah, I have not seen it. I heard it's a real train wreck, but I have not seen it required viewing
Spencer 17:42
I know you may have to do it's like do it on a private browser because of your background, but I'm saying it's a worthwhile view, and you won't be able to tell me that Carol Baskin didn't do it by the end of it, and you'll get that reference by the time you watch the video. So okay, all right, we'll move on from that. So we do have a series of questions, though, that we just want to ask someone that has these answers in the zoo space. And you know, you never get to ask dumb questions, right? You always kind of are worried when you're on the tour that you can't ask silly questions. So that's what we're going to do, is we're going to pepper you with a handful of silly questions.
Jim Bartoo 18:19
That sounds great, maybe just go back and forth.
Annalee Cate 18:20
I want to start with what we're on, though, because I really don't understand this. Like, where do you get the animals?
Jim Bartoo 18:26
just get Amazon.
Annalee Cate 18:32
But no, I really am curious. How do you get them?
Jim Bartoo 18:37
For the most part, we work with other zoos, zoos in general, all the good zoos in the United States, all the ones that that operate professionally and and carefully are accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and we all work with each other very closely to trade animals to breed certain animals when certain animals need to be bred for a healthy captive population. So that's where we get them. Is from other zoos.
Annalee Cate 19:09
We use barters. Is it a barter or, like, I mean, like, is there a coveted Snow Leopard out there that some zoo just has, that all the other zoos are like, naming?
Jim Bartoo 19:19
Yeah, it's, I don't know if, if people necessarily covet the animals that they have that you use it more as a as leverage for for being a zoo of of importance, right? So we, we excel at breeding clouded leopards, okay? And there's a lot of zoos that would love to have a clouded leopard exhibit, so we may breed clouded leopards, pair them up with genetic lines that are different enough that they can start a new genetic line and say, Alright, we have this pair that is ready for an exhibit. And you'll put them into another zoo or send them out to another zoo. And then. Down the road, we'll say, hey, look, we need, we need a leopard, and more leopards that we want to open up. So we're looking for any kind of surplus of a more leopards that are out there. And they'll be like, on Nashville zoo, yeah, they helped us with this, and they help with that. And so, yeah, let's see if we can get them and a more leopard that they can put in there, or somebody has, we have a big surplus of these animals. Is anybody looking to open up an exhibit for this? And zoos may say, yeah, actually, we're looking at that situation. So it really is more of a communication effort. And animals are, animals are loaned to other zoos, but a lot of times when they're loaned, they're loaned on, like, a permanent basis, right? This animal is going to stay here. We're going to send this female to Nashville, and another zoo may send a male of that same species to Nashville, and when those two animals mate and have offspring, the two zoos that were there may say, We want first pick of the litter that come out of this. So they get a new genetic line of animals that comes back to them, back to their organization.
Spencer 21:09
How it works, honor system amongst the zoos, right? I mean, it's like the coat of thieves, right?
Jim Bartoo 21:15
Yeah, it's not as much. It's not as much a transactional process of of money trading hands. If there's money to be spent with that, it's usually on trying to figure out how to get the animal from point A to point B.
Annalee Cate 21:29
Okay, and I'm curious. So it's like, I've always thought of the zoo as, you know, like, like, anything where it's okay, you we see this little, tiny snippet, this little, you know, glass window, this little fenced area, and then there's just this huge production behind the scenes that we never know about. But how much of the zoo it sounds like you have that piece, you have the animal care, how much of it is, like research. It sounds like there's a big job around, like, population control, like, is somebody like, heading breeding for the zoo?
Jim Bartoo 21:57
Or, like, that's a really good question. And in a general sense, yes. You know some of these animals, the ones that are part of a species survival plan, okay, which is a za process of making sure that any particular species has a genetically viable population to stay within the copy of population. Think of it like all zoos in the United States being one giant arc of animals, right? If, if they were to disappear off the face of the earth, everywhere except within these zoos, could you sustain the population? Noah had one male and one female of every species. And we know that in genetics, that's just not going to work, right? You need genetic diversity to be able to maintain a healthy tree of that particular species. So there is an SSP program for many, most of the animals that are in captivity in the United States. Those SSP programs are overseen by people who take care of what's called a stud book. And a stud book is basically every animal, every species, every individual of that species is logged into the book and where their parents came from and where those parents came from. And they look at that and determine this animal needs to go right to keep that diversity. They'll say, this animal really needs to go over here to be mated with this male, because this is a whole genetic line that we have never introduced before, and we can mix up the genetics by making this work. So that's the a broader sense of how these animals are managed under human care.
Spencer 23:49
Wow. Okay, when you said stud book, I did have high hopes for what that was going to be in a totally different direction, but that is a really cool story of the intentionality that goes in. I don't know that we got what ACA stands for.
Jim Bartoo 24:04
It's the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and it's a it's a national organization that accredits zoos and aquariums across the country, and there's some in Canada as well. There are some zoos across the pond in Europe that are ACA members. There's also a World Zoo association that you can be accredited to, but the ACA is really kind of the gold standard when it comes to accreditation, and they this organization looks at how you manage your collection, how you care for your collection, the upkeep of of the care and the facilities that you keep them in, as well as the financial solvency of the organization itself. They want to know that these zoos are healthy enough to be able to continue their work and what they do. And you're right about kind of seeing in that window and seeing just that the poor. Mission of the zoo that you pay your admission and go in and see and that's great. There's, you know, that's what drives a lot of our financial stability, to be able to do everything else that's there, and that everything else is the science and the study that goes behind it. These keepers watch and care for these animals day in and day out. This is their career, and whenever something happens, even if nothing happens, they're recording what's happening with these animals, and that information is being shared across the country in the Aza network. So we're learning more and more about animals who, frankly, there's some of them we don't know a whole lot about. To give you a good example of that, we have the largest collection of Giant anteaters in the country, possibly the world, right? None of them are on exhibit. They're all behind the scenes, and we do never seen them out there. No, no, we, we tried an exhibit briefly, and it didn't, it didn't really work out. We're still looking at at adding some of those in, but right now, we have a breeding facility for giant anteaters, and we breed giant anteaters, and in this process, we have learned more about giant ant eaters than anybody else in the country. And we write papers about what we find, and share that with other zoos that have giant anteaters. To say this is what we found out about this animal. We found out that they can catch human flu, which nobody knew before. And that's interesting for cross species to be contaminated like that that don't appear to be very close in genetic line. You know, you can understand if a chimpanzee or a primate species, catches a cold from a human and vice versa, right? Because there's, there's that close genetic link to that, but an anteater is much further down that genetic line, that connection you wouldn't think would be there, and you don't really know that until you learn it, and you're like, wow, they caught and the reason why we know that is because we had a keeper that had the flu and came in to care for him and and we had an animal contract human flu. We were like, wow, this is unbelievable. We had no idea. So we published a paper about it and shared it with the rest of the community, and said, Hey, Red Flag,
Spencer 27:18
wow. That's gonna ask me,
Annalee Cate 27:19
You said the exhibit didn't work out. I'm like, What do you mean? It was so great. Mean?
Spencer 27:23
It was so well because,
Annalee Cate 27:24
Yeah, it was cryptic.
Jim Bartoo 27:30
Side note on giant anteaters. Yes, they're, they're, they're pretty lazy animals, I have to say, really. So they sleep in they sleep in the morning. They take a lot of naps, you know. So they're not they're not as active on exhibit as you expect them to be. And when they take naps, they tend to lay down and they lay it. I don't know if you know what a giant anteater looks like. You may have to pull it up on a as you head, but they have these giant bushy tails that stick out in the back. And when they lay down and take naps, they fold their tail over themselves and cover themselves with their tails. So if you walk up to an exhibit and wonder where the giant aneater is, chances are it's that pile of brush that's sitting there in the corner that you thought is just a pile of brush that's sitting there. So that tends to be what an aneater looks like.
Spencer 28:18
Any time somebody associated with a zoo, kind of gets that low voice and says it didn't work out. I started thinking Jurassic Park. I'm like, Yeah, I have no idea what happened. So that is a story that we all needed to have so my mind can go on from
Jim Bartoo 28:35
Yeah, sometimes they just, they don't, they don't work out. You look at them at the exhibit, you get the feedback from the public. They're like, I don't understand what's in here anymore. I don't see I never see anything when I look inside here. That exhibit eventually became kangaroo kick about. So that's I love. Blew that whole area, yeah. So we kind of changed that whole area out before that, it was African hunting dogs. We had in there for a while. We had cheetah in there for a while.
Spencer 29:02
Kangaroo kick about. Huge upgrade. I'm a huge fan. Oh, yeah. How often do you get to interact with kangaroos? I know you get to go in the exhibit, right? It is a up close and personal experience. I love it.
Jim Bartoo 29:13
Yeah, yeah. And some of them love to be petted. You know? Some of them like sitting on the sidewalk and being petted by humans. They think that's the greatest thing ever. Others that don't, then they can just kind of hang out in the grass. And we tell people, you got to stay on the walkway. You can't go out there and touch them.
Spencer 29:31
All right, here's my silly question. So anytime I feel like a dad walks up to the tiger exhibit, there's this moment in time where you look at the railing, you look at the pit, and you're like, I could get out there if I had to, like, you know, if I saw somebody that was like, in a moment, like, I get out there. So talk to me about the crazies that actually perhaps do get into exhibit. Is that a legitimate. Fear that, as the public relations guy, do you have, like, the Red Book in case someone gets in the exhibit, and like, you have a crisis management answer for it?
Jim Bartoo 30:09
We do, yeah, part of the requirement of being accredited by the ACA is that you have to have emergency plans in place, including animals that get out of their enclosure.
Annalee Cate 30:24
From the most I was thinking, get in, but get out.
Jim Bartoo 30:27
From get out, yeah, from like a hamster getting out, or, you know, a guinea pig, in our case, all the way up to a tiger getting out. We have to have scenarios in place, and we do for escapes like that, or a killer anteater, or a killer anteater That's right, roaming around and hiding like brush in the middle of right, right in front of your eyes. So yeah, we have that in place. And we also have in place. What happens if somebody goes into an exhibit, gets into an exhibit, and that, again, varies depending on which exhibit they're getting into. So if it's an exhibit of what, what's considered to be a class one animal, which is a an animal that that could kill people, we have scenarios in place to be able to to interact what we do, the step by step process of what happens. And everybody has a role. My role is talking to the media and explaining to them what happened, right?
Jim Bartoo 31:26
You know, back when I first started at the zoo, we didn't, there weren't a whole lot of people working at the zoo. I think we had like 30 employees, and we have 250 employees now, I love where story is going. Yeah, right. So at the time, they were like, we needed people, because we have part of the part of the training is to have a shoot team, somebody that comes and actually has to put an animal down if it is in danger to the public, it's our responsibility to put that animal down. It happened at a zoo. It might have been Bronx with a gorilla, where a child fell into the moat and the male gorilla, and they had to take out the male gorilla, and that was it was sad, very sad day. But that's the responsibility of the zoo, is to keep their guests and their people safe, right? That's our responsibility as people come on grounds.
Spencer 32:22
That's key. Number one, I was hoping for tranquilizer dart.
Jim Bartoo 32:24
That's what I was no they, we have, we have, we have a vet team that's trained in tranquilizer dart. So they'll come out for that. But the shoot team is trained to kill, to shoot, to kill. And early on, we didn't have a whole lot of people that were trained in firearms. I grew up learning how to shoot a rifle and hunt. So I knew I knew how to shoot, and I was trained for the shoot team for a number of years, and I would go out and train with them. And it got to a point where I was like, Look, the reality is, is, it's, it's unlikely that I'll have to stand in front of the media and say, stand by. I have to go and take care of something really fast, right? And then come back, you know, with a smoking gun and explain what happened.
Spencer 33:07
Yeah, it'd be pretty legendary, right?
Jim Bartoo 33:12
I know, yeah, yeah. But so, so eventually I had to step away and there's, there's plenty of people that very trained and qualified people that that are part of the shoot team. Now,
Spencer 33:23
okay, well, before we go on, Anna Lee, any question you've been dying to ask through the years?
Annalee Cate 33:27
I haven't I have another silly question, but I am just curious. So I think about a zoo and that many animals and like, so much poop, like, what does somebody feel like? I think if we have one little dog in a backyard, and, like, I know how much poop scooping is required. Like, what are you composting? Are you literally creating the most fertile farmland ever to exist in Tennessee? Like, what are we doing?
Jim Bartoo 33:53
Here we do animals that animals that are herbivores, any animal that doesn't eat meat, will compost that, and we'll mix it into soil and compost it. And before you gardeners out there go berserk and call us for a little sampling of that very rich soil. It's mixed in with a lot of straw and hay and bedding and everything else that these animals live in. So it's not ideal composting for what you would expect composting be, but we do compost. Yes, it's safe to do that for animals that eat meat. We we store it in another area. It's, it's, it's composted separately in kind of a contained area. So that's getting cryptic.
Annalee Cate 34:41
I don't wanna work.
Jim Bartoo 34:42
Yeah, well, you know, for environmental reasons, we have to make sure that it's contained. We have a landfill, right, something that has, you know, that you can't we're runoff doesn't get into, you know, streams and stuff. We have a tributary of the mill creek. Yes. System that runs right through the property. You guys have seen the creek, if you've been out to the zoo, that creek also has an endangered crayfish in it, called the Nashville crayfish, only lives in the Mill Creek system. So we are required by Tennessee state environmental organizations to make sure that this waterway isn't contaminated by animal waste, right? For lack of a better word. So if you if you pay attention, you walk through the zoo, particularly as you're making your way from snake bites the the little concession area across the bridge as you're making your way up to kangaroo, if you look off to your left, you'll see what looks like a wall that kind of heads off through the woods, and that's a Gambian dam. And what that does is it prevents runoff from the fields of zebra eland, what used to be our elephant exhibit when we had elephants up there, all of that gets caught in this Gambian dam and filtered out before it gets to the creek. And that's that's required by the state to be able to build something like that. So all of that is done intentional, to make sure that we're capturing that that stuff.
Spencer 36:18
Yeah? So cool, Jim. That's gonna be fun. I got something to look at. Yeah, I go, it's a Gambian dam.
Jim Bartoo 36:24
That's a Gambian dam. Look, kids, yeah, that's a Gambian dam. They're like, come on, the kangaroos are right around the corner.
Spencer 36:32
Wow, I'm with that one. Yeah, I'm gonna turn into the group behind me and be right on your left is a Gambian dam. That's about where the conversation's gonna end. That's right. It will sound cool. Oh, and I do have a flamingo that is trying to eat the chair, apparently. But can you give us the story we have? Every guest bring something that is personal to them, that brings a story. So before we go on, we got to hear about the pink flamingo. Okay?
Jim Bartoo 36:58
We when we were opening up Flamingo lagoon, we decided we were going to do a fundraiser to try to help collect money for a very public fundraiser, to try to collect money to help with the building of this and the idea we came up with was actually taken from one of those crazy birthday party sites where you can pay to have somebody's yard filled with flamingos. So we called it flocking, right? You're gonna get your you're gonna get flocked. So we bought all these hundreds of plastic flamingos, and we started this program, and we had volunteers that will go out every day and plant a dozen or so flamingos in somebody's yard, in a sign that said you've been flocked, right?
Spencer 37:46
And then the more loving form of like, T peeing somebody's Right, right?
Jim Bartoo 37:50
Yeah. And so you could pay to flock somebody else's yard, right? And we had, it was just an immensely successful game, still available, but it's not but there has to be a number. Jim Well, people could buy flocking insurance that would prevent their yard from getting flocked, right? I know, I know it went both ways. And we raised, I think we raised, like, over a million dollars on this program. It was immensely successful, but we would go out and flock somebody's yard, leave it there for 24 hours, and then go out and pick them up, take them somewhere else. And we'd always leave one for the people that were there, just a souvenir along with the sign. But what we found out is we would go flock a yard, put about a dozen, maybe 20 flamingos out there come back the next day, and they're, you know, be like, 10 left, right? So we had to constantly supply flamingos because people were just pulling up and just like, oh, that's fine. And they would just kind of walk off with them. So that's what, that's the story behind that. And eventually we, we ended the program, and we had dozens of these left over, and I kept one and kept it in my office for forever, and it's, it's still there now. So if you ever do a zoom call with me, you'll see it like right over my shoulder, and someone gave me a little sombrero for it, so now it wears a sombrero back there. So it's a, it's a real party going on.
Spencer 39:23
Bring back Jim. It is time to do it again. Yard flocking to come back. Gonna be good. What's that?
Annalee Cate 39:30
Did you get flocked?
Jim Bartoo 39:31
I did not, no, no, I didn't. But we were, we were responsible for the Administering.
Annalee Cate 39:36
I'm like, I bet y'all. I would have had to think y'all would wear each other out.
Jim Bartoo 39:40
We had, we had board members that had so much fun flocking, flocking each other. Right? With this process, it was just, it was hysterical, right?
Spencer 39:50
Okay, that's an amazing story. Thank you. We had to give an explanation. We've gone for a little while and hadn't addressed the pink flamingo, right? You.
Jim Bartoo 40:00
So that was part of the flocking fundraiser campaign. It did very, very well. Yeah, okay.
Spencer 40:04
Well, bring a 2.0 and we will happily give a shout out and a spin on that. Sounds good? Yes, that's right. Okay, so let's talk about some of the things that the zoo is doing every single time I go to the zoo, and I go every year, all the time, members boo at the zoo, all the stuff. I've got photos that I could show you, there is perpetually construction, which is just like, welcome to Nashville, right? There's more cranes per capita in Nashville than almost any other city in the United States, which is just amazing. Yeah, the zoo is consistent with that. So talk to me about what you're up to.
Jim Bartoo 40:42
Always up to something. Since I've been here, the zoo has always had some kind of construction going on, and it will be, probably for the foreseeable future. You know, like I say, we have another 90 acres to develop on. Right now, we're finishing up a new parking garage, which we never thought we'd get to 10 years ago. If you asked us we need a parking garage, our answer would have been, are you kidding me? That's no, that's way too expensive, that's way too much. We're never going to need that. Here we are. So that done. It is. It's supposed to wrap up in May. So we're supposed to open this up probably closer to the end of May. It'll add about, I'm wanting to say it'll add, like, 1800 spaces to it that may have, that may not be right, but it'll, it'll increase our our parking by about 60% which is, which is what we needed, right? And that'll that'll help us. We hope for the foreseeable future, it seems like we were we've always been expanding parking, like every other year, we're ready to expand parking because we grow out of it almost immediately, when we finish a project, we're ready for more. In addition to that, we're building a new area over close to giraffe called leopard forest. And for the past year and a half or so, we haven't had giraffes on exhibit because giraffes don't like big, loud construction equipment. They freak out and they'll run around. And we don't when, when giraffes start to get freaked out and run around, they run into things and break legs. And when they break legs, it's, that's the end. They can't, you know, there's no coming back from that. So, so we've been building this leopard forest exhibit. We hope to open that up later this year. It will have more leopards in it will kind of be the keystone species in there. But we'll also have a couple of monkey species that will have colobus monkeys, if you're familiar with those, they're the black and white ones with the long tails. And then we'll have do Brazos monkeys, which are kind of have a white beard and look like an old man, kind of red, kind of cap over the top of its face. We'll have clip Springer which are
Annalee Cate 43:00
no that's, is that the Lion King monkey?
Jim Bartoo 43:04
No, those are baboons. I think, yeah, yeah.
Spencer 43:09
I think if he would have won that, yeah, that's the one, I would have been so impressed. No, just like, because you know when he's like, yeah, you'll be familiar with this monkey. I'm like, I am not familiar with that monkey. But I'm gonna sit here and pretend like that. I know that.
Jim Bartoo 43:22
No, the colobus ones are black and white. When you see them, you're like, Oh, I've seen those before. Yeah. It's kind of like a celebrity that you don't really know the name, but you recognize the face, and you're like, You're that guy in that thing,
Spencer 43:33
Yeah, next to the gabrion Dam, right?
Jim Bartoo 43:36
That's right, yeah, exactly. So we'll also have clip Springer, which are kind of like they're antelope, little, small antelope that live on on Rocky faces, so they kind of jump around on cliffs and things like that. And hyrax rocks. Hyrax, which is kind of like a little marmoset.
Spencer 43:56
Kind of always wondered what those are, because they're it's actually biblical, in the Bible talking about the high racks. And I've never, I don't have a frame of reference. So when they're like a rodent.
Jim Bartoo 44:03
They're, uh, they're like a, like a marmoset almost. They're kind of like a, like a prairie dog. But they live in new animals
Annalee Cate 44:12
and it wasn't getting me any kind of
Jim Bartoo 44:15
look like a prairie dog, yeah, you could say that, or a groundhog, maybe a smallish Yeah, kind of like that. Thank you. Yeah,
Spencer 44:21
that only took like, four degrees of separation. Yeah, that's okay, two degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Jim Bartoo 44:27
That took four. You know, when they told me we were getting to process monkeys, I was like, All right, I gotta go Google that, because I'm not really quite sure what that is. And then I pull it up, and I'm like, ooh, that one's weird looking. That's gonna be cool to have here. Yeah? Good,
Spencer 44:39
All right, so parking garage permit under construction, any type of exhibits that are on their way, that you can disclose, something that is in the works?
Jim Bartoo 44:49
I could probably disclose this because our president did it in the National Business Journal a few weeks ago. We're working on a design for an orangutan exhibit. Ah, and that'll be huge for us, right? We don't have great apes at the zoo. We have good apes, but not great apes. So we have some, some Gibbon species that are apes, but they're lesser apes. This will be a great ape species that'll come to the zoo, and that'll be a huge addition for us. We've, we've had a donor step up to be able to help fund that. So now we're in the process of looking at it and designing it. It's probably going to be several years before that opens up, because we're still just in the design phase with that. And when I say design phase, this is mostly out of the head of our zoo president, CEO, Rick Schwartz. He's the kind of person that will that will go to native areas where these animals live and look at what their habitats look like, and then come back and try to emulate that inside the exhibit. When you go to Tiger crossroads and you walk underneath that bridge that's so innately done, that's what buildings look like in Sumatra. We want you to feel like you're in another world, in another place, when you drive down nolansville road and you see the strip malls and the used car lots and everything else that's up and down that road. And you turn into Nashville zoo, almost instantly, all of that drops away to a very natural environment. And as you walk around the zoo, you walk into very different habitats. All of a sudden, you're in a thick bamboo forest, right? And you're seeing animals that live in bamboo forests with that. So it's very purposeful. Everything that we build out there is very purposeful. And so that design for orangutan will be an evolving process. We'll come up with ideas. They'll start building it. They'll run into challenges for the architecture, for building things. We always kind of push our engineers and our builders to build new things. So it will be a few years before these things are done, but when it's done, it will arguably be the best orangutan habitat in the country.
Spencer 47:16
That's exciting. Yeah, something to look forward to this next aspect of just, why should we care? So in Tennessee, there are a lot of amazing causes to support, and I imagine, as most organizations, you're having to do a lot of fundraising and communicate that message of like, why should Nashvillians, why should Tennesseans care about the zoo? And what's fascinating is there's these moments every handful of years where something in the animal world captures the country's imagination. And I can't remember this right this second, but it was a video that everyone was watching. It was like a live stream at a zoo. Do you know what I'm talking about? It happened, like a couple years a giraffe birth,
Jim Bartoo 48:09
Yeah,
Spencer 48:10
Remind me what that was, because I remember there was a live stream, and it was like millions and millions of viewers. Were right. Everyone cared. What do you what was that?
Jim Bartoo 48:20
It was a giraffe birth which is, which is not remarkable. There's zoos all over the country that give giraffe births every year, that have giraffe births every year, but it was for whatever reason this one caught on as a as something that everybody had to tune into, right? Like a soap opera, right? Like, when is this female gonna drop this giraffe already. You know this, she's been pregnant forever, and so, so that I believe that's what you were talking about, was that process.
Spencer 48:48
Did the board of the zoo ever pull you aside and be like, Jim, we could have, we could have done this like the giraffe birth. I mean, I'm like millions of viewers,
Jim Bartoo 48:56
We need a pregnant giraffe. Jim, what can you do? Okay, so the Barry White music out, I guess.
Spencer 49:06
Thank you. That's exactly I think you should take that to the board. All right, I will, yeah, yeah, that's my official recommendation. So why? Why should Tennessee is? Why should Nashvillians care?
Jim Bartoo 49:16
Well, okay, so a couple of different reasons. Um, first of all, zoos are meant to be and the animals that are in zoos are meant to be ambassadors for the wild, right? We Our purpose is to inspire a culture of understanding and discovery of our natural world. We're if you don't know if you've never met a tiger or a kangaroo or any animal that you see at the zoo, if you've never seen that animal before, and you hear about this animal disappearing off the face of the earth, you may look at that and say, I don't even know what that is. Why would I care about that? But if you've been able to see that. Animal, get close to that animal, touch that animal. You may have a different perception for that people, yeah, kids, kids that grow up, anybody that grows up, almost everybody can remember their first zoo experience, right? It's always in your head, and it's always in your head, because it's such a life changing experience to see an animal that's not your cat or your dog or your parents at home to care they're animals, yeah, so to care for that, you know, to to want to have that on the planet is important for zoos to teach, to educate that process. The other side of this is zoos are are a community gathering point. Zoos are a reason for families to get together that isn't a movie theater or time in front of the screens, right? Zoos are the reason why people like living in their community. People don't move here because we have new hotels going up every week. They move here because this is a great place to live, and the zoo is part of what makes it a great place to live. So that's important as well, to be relevant in the community. And so when I send messaging out into the community, that's what we send. We're relevant. We are we have new baby animals for you to come and see, because we're relevant in the community. And we're saving this species. We're helping to keep it alive in this environment through this breeding process. We donate more than 3% of our annual revenue stream is donated to conservation causes across the world, and that's significant. This past year, it was more than $800,000 to conservation causes around the world and right in our own backyard. So that's relevant. That's relevant to what we're doing. We're not just saying you should do something about this. We're saying we're doing something about this too. Here's all the great stuff that we're doing, and you can come out with your family and enjoy three hours of walking around all these trails on shaded pathways and see things that you may have never seen before. I've never seen a de Brazos monkey before. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to seeing that. You know, what does it? What does it look like? Does it stare back at you? Does it, you know? Can it do Sudoku problems, you know? What is it? How smart is this animal?
Spencer 52:36
That's almost like you're good at messaging. Jim.
Annalee Cate 52:39
That was, I know, I was totally on the journey too, as we saw the marketing coming out magic well.
Jim Bartoo 52:44
And it's, you know, it's that there's a marketing hat and there's a public relations hat. And a lot of times those cross that they they they relate, and sometimes they're in opposition of each other. Because you can take marketing to extremes and go, should we really be doing that? And that's where my public relation hat comes on, and say, No, we should probably stop short of going that far.
Spencer 53:06
You had us so hooked on the story when you told the joke about, you know, the the dog and cat and then your parents as animals like, it took us an extra two seconds to laugh, and you've been like, oh, that joke didn't land. We were so engrossed in the story. We were both like, Oh, wow. So that was, yeah, that was a really good answer, and you really hit hard on one theme throughout that message, which is relevance, right? So for a zoo that is failing, that is struggling, let's say that there's a zoo director somewhere in the United States that's listening to this and is struggling, doesn't have the benefit of being one mile away from the wealthiest County in certainly the region, and six miles away from a place like Nashville, right? Do you give them a message of examining their relevance for why does the community care?
Jim Bartoo 53:56
Certainly, yeah, yeah, and your your membership levels would reflect that, right? How many people live in that community, versus how many memberships Do you have, and is that on average, with what you would see nationally, right? We're kind of right in that average sweet spot with we have close to 40,000 households, our members, and we live in the Nashville DMA, which is 1.21 point 4 million, maybe even 2.4 by now, with how many people are moving here every day? Who knows? But you know, we're kind of in that that sweet spot to show us that we have that membership. So that's what I would look at, is, are people buying your membership because they feel like it's worth buying a membership to go there. Are they going there enough to make a worth? Make it worthwhile buying a membership for the most part, memberships are transactional in nature. People buy them because they're, they're, they're worth the money, right? We know we're going to take our kids there. You know? Three times this year, four times this year, or every week we take our kids there. Some people will do that quite a bit. And they do that because they see the importance of it. They see the relevance of it. So what drives attendance for that? What drives people there?
Annalee Cate 55:15
What percentage of the revenue you guys are generating through admission is membership, admission versus just like one time ticket purchase?
Jim Bartoo 55:23
Oh, man, that's a good question. Financially. I'm not sure I can answer that question. I will tell you that about 44% of the people that visit are are members of all of our attendance, of the 1.4 something million that we saw in 2023, 44% of them were members.
Annalee Cate 55:46
I thought, I remember we just re upped, and I remember thinking, wow, this is a really good deal for for the price of membership to be right, going as frequently as you know, you only takes a couple visits to make that really worth it.
Jim Bartoo 55:57
Exactly, yeah, and they're purposely, they're purposely priced that way. Most, most zoos are kind of priced in that sweet spot to be either right at two or just over two visits on average. And it depends. You know, if you have a family that has six children, then you might look for us.
Annalee Cate 56:13
It was like, Well, definitely should do That's right, yeah, it literally comes with six kids, which I was like, this is perfect. We can have another baby? I know, yeah, yeah, that's my actual thought. Yeah. I'm curious, too. I think one of the things that I've always been impressed by specifically with the National Zoo, and I don't know how common this is across other zoos, but when you think about, you know, boo at the zoo, or zoo illumination in winter, it's like the ability to create some really sensational activities that are not so seasonal, but year round, that you have that pull to come to the zoo even when it's not beautiful and sunny out, and you think, Oh, what a perfect day for the zoo. Is that, is that stuff pretty unique to Nashville? Or how much effort do you guys put into those kind of off season activities to try to keep it consistent?
Jim Bartoo 56:56
It's not, it's not unique. Most zoos run special events throughout the year, usually they're targeting a particular goal or objective. You know, zoo illumination was created to help bolster a shoulder month for the zoo, from December through February, we were seeing maybe 25,000 people, or 50,000 people, maybe. And when we started zoo illumination, we went from that to about 150,000 people during that time frame. So it made sense for us to create an event that gave people another reason to come out to the zoo. Boo at the zoo was was set up to be able to attract 20 somethings, 30 somethings, people that may not have children and don't think about the zoo because they're just not that's that's not, it's not sitting in the middle of the road of life for them. So you give them another reason to think about it that way, and you put it in front of them, they're like, Oh man, drinking beer at the zoo, this might be fun, right? So they come out and they have fun, right? And then during that time, they recognize the value of the zoo. They see the zoo and they see what's out there. So the when they get older and they get married and have kids, they know that the zoo is going to be a solid investment, right? They know that they can come out there and still see something that's really good to have. And if there's, God forbid, ever a point where somebody says, I'm not sure we need a zoo anymore, there's enough people in the community to say, Absolutely not. Yeah, we this is important for us to have this in the community. So that's kind of goes back to that. What would you tell people that are that have a zoo, that don't see that in the community, that's it's problematic. You need to be creating something that creates that relevance, that value to them, be it a new animal exhibit or new events that bring people here, another reason to bring people out and engage with that property.
Annalee Cate 58:58
I'm curious to two trails that my brain just went down. Because I know, for me, like, yeah, having kids, especially small children, was a whole wake up call for the zoo. Of like, what are we going to do this weekend? You know, trying to fill that time. And so I'm curious, you know, obviously, just with everything that we've seen, you know, in the in the world of, you know, frequency of people having children, and birth rates and birth rates and all those different things. I'm curious with that, combined with also the moving to Nashville, what has your demographic of customer for the zoo changed?
Jim Bartoo 59:29
Well, um, they've gotten they've gotten younger as I've gotten older, okay, I found that the couples that are having children are are now in a completely different generation, and because of that, our messaging changes right over time. So that's kind of what I've seen, more than more than not. But outside of that, it kind of they all kind of fall right together. They want to spend time together. They want their children to be engaged in something educational and whole. Them and fun, right? They don't active and active, right? They everybody kind of wants the same thing out of that. And that really hasn't changed over time, but how you deliver that messaging and why that's important has changed over time. The newer generation is very much more involved in the environmental stewardship of it, which is great for us, because we're all about environmental stewardship, so that helps us with our messaging, and it helps us drive membership and attendance in that regard. But as far as the changing wants and needs of what people want, I don't think that that is I don't think that that's changed that much. Really, people still want to get as close as they can to animals. They'd love to touch things that they probably shouldn't touch. You know, it's that kind of stuff, so, and we would love to have you touch those animals, but we also are required to make sure that you're safe.
Spencer 1:01:00
Well, last question for me, Jen, this has been so fun, is when you go on vacation and you're taking your family, you mentioned you've got daughters now, 26 and 21 do you go to the zoo when you're on vacation and your girl is like, No, Dad, not the zoo. Like, do you subject them to that? Because I feel like you should? Or do you when you're on vacation? Say, all right, I've had enough of the zoo. This is vacation.
Jim Bartoo 1:01:24
No, I'll go to zoos. If I have not been to a zoo, I'll go if, if our children are still traveling with us, they both love zoos. So they will. They would go and do something like that. That won't be our the only reason why we go visit a place, we won't, we won't target a city, saying, well, because there's a zoo there, we're going to spend a whole week, you know, it's not like that, but here we go, yeah, but we, but I, but I will visit, particularly if it's a, if it's a very notable zoo, or a zoo that in the zoo community, zoos are going, Oh, you got to go see that one, you know. So I'll definitely carve out some time to go out and see that. The problem with it is, is that I tend to spend less time looking at actual animals in exhibits, as I do looking at exhibits and the educational elements and and even I know this is going to sound nerdy, the way finding Yeah, yeah. No, I will. My wife will catch me taking pictures of arrowed signs that point people in different directions. All this an interesting look at the way that they've laid this out. This is actually engraved in wood.
Spencer 1:02:30
That makes you an amazing dad, right? I mean, that's exactly what you should be doing in that role. So and I feel like touring a zoo with you would be really interesting, because you're gonna pick up on 40,000 things that the average zoo attendee is never going to see. So sometime I'm gonna tap you on the shoulder, and maybe at the next boo at the zoo, you can go with us for a second and just point us out a couple of things I will try.
Jim Bartoo 1:02:58
But usually if I'm at boo at the zoo, I'm stuck. I'm the I'm the magical talking pumpkin. So yeah, that you well, sometimes I don't, you know it's it runs for 16 nights. So they don't have me working 16 nights in a row, but, but I do it from time to time. And even more fun, right before we start boo at the zoo, we have another adults only event called booze at the zoo, which is a costume party for adults at boo at the zoo. It's like right before boo at the zoo starts. So all the setups there, everything's the same. It's just for adults only, and we serve alcohol.
Spencer 1:03:33
Everybody pre games boo at the zoo, right here, about this, right?
Jim Bartoo 1:03:37
So they go the night before and and I get to be the magical talking pumpkin at booze at the zoo, which is a very different character than the one that talks to four year old children, right? Yeah. Now I'm talking to, you know, 22 year old children that have had maybe a couple too many. It's, it's, it's a lot of fun. It really is, yeah, great.
Spencer 1:04:03
I can't wait the next time I'm there, I'm gonna be walking up to that pumpkin gym. Is that you, you Jim, and that might get removed from the zoo, and I'd be like, no, no.
Jim Bartoo 1:04:14
The technology for this, for this contraption that we have, this pumpkin, that you that, that you can talk out of is you do it all remotely, right? So you're sitting in a different area, and for me, it's usually behind you, sitting in the woods, in a in a chair, like a camp chair in the woods, and and I've had, I've had people parents report me to security as someone who's staring at children, the creepy guy sitting in the woods staring at children with the zoo and security essay, that's actually the pumpkin guy. I know great. I know Jim,
Spencer 1:04:53
you're amazing. Your sense of humor is fantastic. It your The zoo is in great hands. Oh, thank you. And messaging. Thank you for what you do for Nashville and for Tennessee. And, I mean, I imagine you pull a lot of visitors from non Tennessee too, like, I mean, the way that Tennessee is structured, yeah,
Jim Bartoo 1:05:10
We're starting to right. We're starting to see more and more people come from outside the area. We actually see a lot of interest through Google Analytics and everything else that we look at, we're seeing a lot of interest out of Chicago and Atlanta, Huntsville, these areas are really starting to look at the zoo as a stopping point, as people are making their way into Nashville or through Nashville, for whatever means they're seeing the zoo as one of those things that they absolutely have to do. And that's that's great. That's saying something for a zoo that that honestly will never be the poster child for Music City, right? We, we will not. We're, we're a family organization, and we're not. We're not downtown Broadway. It's, it's not that aspect of it. So to be able to say that is, is something.
Spencer 1:06:00
Thank you for your time, Jim,
Jim Bartoo 1:06:01
Thank you.
Spencer 1:06:09
You know, it's really interesting remembering that first a zoo is a business, so they have real employees. Not everybody's taking care of the animals. Yeah, you know it, they work to hide it. But there's a significant administrative portion of this whole experience and financial burden on that too.
Annalee Cate 1:06:29
Of like, it's like, you want to think that all the money gets to go to bringing in orangutans and fun new exhibits, but it's like, like, the parking garage is a big deal for them, and that's such an expensive thing to do, but it's so necessary to lay a foundation to have any of the magic. And that's that was. That was interesting to me.
Spencer 1:06:52
Because when you think about a zoo, they're doing a lot of things simultaneously and being held to a high standard in all of those that this is a lot of families, one experience together, either in a week, in a month, I mean, a year, it's really important moment. They are a restaurant multiple fold over. They are a customer culture experience. They've got to sell tickets. They've got to have their technology, right? They have to be able to help you navigate through, in the Zeus case, 100 acres worth of property. They're trying to do, not just one thing, well, yeah, and they could do it all right? And, you know, some animal could be hidden in the back, and, like, the whole thing is, like, that wasn't that great, yeah,
Annalee Cate 1:07:39
Or Yeah, I was gonna say all of that under the veil too, of like, the safety and the compliance, of, like, you get one animal loose and it's like the whole thing's gone. So you're, I mean, you're right. I hadn't really considered it like that. But there's a lot of complexity to what they're balancing there
Spencer 1:07:55
Especially with, I mean, like, my kids, your kids, I mean, everybody's tapping on the glass and, you know, finding ways to break the system. Yeah, that you have to be super intentional around all of that. Because, you know, Jim's worst nightmare, clearly, is someone getting hurt, someone, you know, getting kidnapped. I mean, there's real things that they have to think about from security. I mean, they're doing a lot of things simultaneously,
Annalee Cate 1:08:22
Yeah, and it, and really, my experience has always been so flawless, like that. Is, it is impressive that they are executing so many of those things simultaneously, and then, and then all the other takeaway I had for me is all the background stuff, like the research and the, you know, the behind the scenes of planning for these animals and the conservation efforts. I mean, there's, there's so much happening outside of even just the tourist experience. That is what generates the revenue. It's feeding such a bigger beast.
Spencer 1:08:52
I thought it was interesting when he talked about other zoos, how friendly the discussion was, because just the inner competitor in me, right? Is like, if I'm the one zoo with a rhino and a hippo and like,
Annalee Cate 1:09:09
My snow cloud leopard, yeah,
Spencer 1:09:11
I want to bring people to my Zoo. I don't want to give other zoos. But that, also, on some level, makes sense, is that the overwhelming majority of the traffic to the zoo is local. There's probably only one or two zoos in the United States where people are making it a travel destination, like the San Francisco Sandy Yeah, San Diego Zoo.
Annalee Cate 1:09:35
It's not a competitive landscape in that way, yeah, but probably just having their own unique poll might be important. I could see, like, where he was kind of going with that, that it's like you have to have your thing. But other than that, you are you're really not competing, because it is such a geographic experience.
Spencer 1:09:54
I think the inner free market, small government guy in me couldn't help but. Notice in the beginning of the narrative, the entire reason why the zoo exists. I don't know if you caught this. The entire reason is that there was a family that could pay the taxes, and so in a concession to the state, said, Let us live on this land until we die, and then you can seize this land from us, under condition that you use part of it for a nature conservatory. The State, once they pass away, acquires all the land, sells a significant portion for a business park that is still there today, Grasmere business park, office buildings, all the rest that are desperately in need of rehabilitation. But I really think that's an interesting point that you forget about the real implication of taxes when you own meaningful plots of land, and even smaller plots of land these days, the taxes are meaningful in your decision of what to do with it.
Annalee Cate 1:11:08
And there's there was an interesting element to me, too, of like scarcity, that that when you think about what it takes to have a zoo in a city and where real estate is and has been over the last decade across the country, you've got, you've got a real scarcity of opportunity there that, I think, is it's a, it's an interesting underbelly to what the future looks like, of zoos and that, that consolidation, or that ability to create competition. And, I mean, yeah, that's a the cost of trying to get a 200 acre zoo just outside of Nashville today, not possible, like, yeah, so no one will ever compete with them. But it's a matter of of what it would take to stay competitive or grow and expand that Zoo. So it's just, I don't know that that's an interesting element to to think about, that I'm glad somebody had the forethought, or that those sisters, and it's interesting that the sisters would even go to a nature conservation type thing that was like, What are the chances that had they not said that it would still be a zoo today? No way, you know, like they would have done something completely different with it. But instead, now we have a zoo. Because all that time ago, the sisters were like, we just like the animals. We like to have some conservation. I mean, that's incredible to me.
Spencer 1:12:29
I just don't think people think that way, and I don't know their story, but you know, from what he said, their family were farmers. They were growing sugar cane in Cuba, which that's a whole story. Like, through the 18 and 1900s of growing sugar cane in Cuba, like, there's probably some cryptic stuff. Jim was a little cryptic.
Annalee Cate 1:12:50
That'd have been great if we were, like, sugar cane scandal, and we didn't even get into, yeah,
Spencer 1:12:53
it's like, Wouldn't that have been amazing? I'd be like, where do you get the animals from? And it's like, well, there's this sugar cane farm in Cuba.
Annalee Cate 1:13:01
All of our animals are coming through Cuba, yeah, we didn't get there.
Spencer 1:13:05
That would have been a whole other PR element for him to have to deal with. On the backside of the podcast, his messaging around relevance to the community was one of the more powerful parts that pulled both you and I in to say if his priority was remaining relevant to the community, and it was an experience, visually, of touch, of smell, of Sound, all of these things that brings animals to life. And I also we both reacted in the same way it is that everybody remembers their first trip to
Spencer 1:13:49
Oh my gosh. That for me, was a messaging that said you got to fundraise on that. Yeah, yeah. Everyone has that spot in their heart.
Annalee Cate 1:13:59
And even more, like, for me, the literally, I was just about to say the same thing that my first thought. So, you know, my 16 month old daughter, like we just did, you know, Animal Kingdom at Disney, and it's like, I will, I will treasure forever seeing her have those first interactions. And so it's even beyond the person, but it's like, as a parent, that the magic that is wildlife in that way, and seeing a child experience that for the first time, like it's a magic that is pretty hard to replicate anywhere else.
Spencer 1:14:33
Maybe last thing I'll say is the story that he told at the end, where he is operating this giant pumpkin. So for those that haven't seen it, it's probably 12 feet wide and seven feet tall. It's a talking pumpkin that he is controlling from the woods somewhere, which was a great story in and of itself. But what shouldn't be lost in that is that the culture of the zoo is. Is still entrepreneurial enough where their director of marketing, their Director of Public Relations, is running a pumpkin, running a pumpkin from the woods for 16 consecutive nights, maybe for most of them, he's doing it that tells you something about the culture and why that's successful, it's scrappy, it's entrepreneur love that that's
Annalee Cate 1:15:23
Right, that's right, and and that I love to just seeing the, I guess, the range that they're approaching the customer base with of even though it is this family friendly, like Kid centric experience in that way that you know they like, I don't know, the The levity that he brought to this, this whole dynamic world in, like an animal kingdom, almost, world that's like, you know, they're, they're targeting, you know, young, young adults that are wanting to, you know, still experience the zoo in that way. And you know that I loved, I love, just the the openness, I guess, that they have to trying to appeal to so many different people and make that wildlife Animal Kingdom experience something that is appealing to, you know, to everyone, because it's in all it's it transcends age too, that everyone appreciates the magic of the the jungle and the wildlife, and that, you know, day at the zoo. So it was really, really cool.
Spencer 1:16:18
I love, I love the approach they're taking. They don't take themselves too seriously. That's for sure. That's really good.
