We were lucky to catch up with Tomas James recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tomas, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Honestly, after i left my job in 2019 i took a 4 month break from work before i got back into the swing of things. I picked up another gig and ill say about 4 months later the PANDEMIC/COVID happened and i ended up getting “furloughed“. Being that i had just came off a 4 month break i just couldn’t stand being at home, since earlier in my Chef career i knew at some point i wanted to open my own restaurant. The first week of me being home from being “furloughed” every day i’d think too myself “it has to be something i can do”. It didn’t take long before I decided i wanted to start selling food but i wasn’t prepared to start, I didn’t have a name, concept, literally nothing at all. So, i begun to search for a concept.. I was living in the “low country” (Bluffton) and im from Savannah we are huge on seafood, so i begin to create a list of all of our seafood restaurants from Bluffton to Savannah. It’s in my humbled opinion that at the time there was no true representation of what we the culture would consider AMAZING seafood.. so i knew i had to do seafood but with so much of it already present it had to be perfected from flavors most importantly as well as textures and presentation but i still felt i needed more to separate myself from the crowd, a day later i thought what about Cannabis infused seafood then I thought about infused seafood boils and thats how the name came about i took Canna from Cannabis and added Boils to it (CannaBoils). That very next week i just created a menu as well as a instagram page and we’ve been building every since!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Well, it all started as a kid actually when I was about 12 years old, I recognized I had a “unique interest” in food. But I would definitely say it’s a family thing most of us are great cooks. As a kid, I would always watch my mom and grandma in the kitchen (they are my favorite). I remember the very first time I watched my grandmother make spaghetti sauce from scratch and that’s where it all started. From that day I would make sure I was somewhere around when all the cooking started.

It wasn’t until a little after when no one was around I would go in the kitchen and cook, the very first thing I cooked was a pack of noodles second was a burger I got to say they both weren’t half bad. At this time in age, I wouldn’t say I knew I had a “passion” for cooking. I think I was 19 when I started working at a “country club” in Savannah, GA as a busboy. Being that I’m a visual learner I learned a lot about the front of the house by just being observant and literally paying attention to all moving pieces including managers.

I bussed tables for about 3 months then decided I wanted to cook so I spoke to my manager about it and then I spoke to the chef at the time there weren’t any cook positions available but there was a position for dishwasher. I really hated washing dishes but I saw it as a way to get my foot in the back of the house so that’s exactly what I did.

So, I washed dishes for about 2 months and during that time I would be in the dish pit watching the cooks get down. The grill station was close to the dish pit so that’s what I learned the quickest. Towards the end of my second month in the dish pit, I would come online and just start helping the guys on the line when it was slow. At some point, it got to where I would work the grill alone and still made sure the dish pit was cleaned and it was about two weeks of me working the grill and dish pit without being asked, Chef, pulled me aside and said “You’re horrible at scrubbing pots but one hell of a cook.”

I laughed and agreed the gm happened to walk by during chef and I talk and stopped to suggest I get $4 raise, no I did not get that but I did get a $2 raise but I was grateful for that I just wanted to be able to cook. Chef asked if I could continue to run both positions until he could get another dishwasher and I continued to do that for about 1 month.

After I became a cook full time, I would trade workstations because I wanted to learn it all, I was hungry and didn’t really ask to do anything I just did it and that’s how it was throughout my entire career from busboy to cook, from cook to lead cook and eventually I made it to sous chef which is the farthest I wanted to go because I never wanted to spend much time in meetings, office, etc.

I wanted to be in the kitchen with all the fun stuff. 4 years of growing and sharpening my culinary skills I knew I wanted to run my own restaurant someday, I continued my career and eventually left the country club and got a taste of the restaurant world what I like to call “the real world” no offense. I moved to Atlanta to look for work but it just wasn’t going as I planned so after talking to my girlfriend and my prior chef matt, I decided I would put in applications back home where I knew the city better and to get some money rolling in.

I came across a newly opened restaurant called “the Florence” owned by celebrity chef Hugh Acheson in savannah off of victory DR. Chef Kyle Jacovino was running the place and when I say I learned more from that place in three months than I had learned in my whole career I mean just that; it was a game-changer.

Then I learned that Hugh owned a restaurant in Atlanta back where my girlfriend and kids were so as much as I didn’t want to because I felt I didn’t put in enough time at the Florence, I spoke with chef Kyle about my situation and expressed that I would like to go work at empire state south because I wanted to be back with my family. Luckily, Chef, Kyle liked me a little and reached out to chef josh Hopkins who ran empire state south.

I worked out an agreed date with chef Kyle and had a date scheduled to talk with chef josh, he wanted me to do a stage and that’s what I did and got the job… I enjoyed working there I also learned so much from chef josh but not just him, in that kitchen, it was like everyone was a chef everyone was held to the same standards, responsibilities, etc. It was about the work and I respected that.

I worked at empire for about 6 months before I started having car trouble which made things extremely tough. My girlfriend worked in tucker, GA on the outskirts of Atlanta and we lived in lithia springs on the outskirts of Atlanta empire was midtown Atlanta so with one car that was extremely tough to manage.

I became uncomfortable and said things had to change especially once I started being late to work and had to tell chef josh what I was going through before I got fired, he understood completely and asked if he could help just to make sure I was communicating with him and that was a relief to me.

But still, it was like either Atlanta wasn’t for me or I just didn’t like Atlanta but I spoke with my girlfriend and explained my feelings about Atlanta, I loved the food scene but that was about it for me. So, one night I was up late searching for random jobs in random cities/states and I received a text from old chef matt from the country club. It was a link to an application for a sous chef position and I was just so confused so I replied and asked “what’s this?” He said, “it’s yours if you want it”.

Mind you, I never talked to him about what was going on in Atlanta so as much as I did not want to go back there, I considered almost even turning it down but I felt like it was something I was seeing at the time is why that position just fell in my lap. My girlfriend and I talked about it and I asked her to see if her job would let her work from home so we could move back and if her job wouldn’t approve it, I would have to come up with something else.

Her job was cool about it so I submitted an application, did a tasting, and boom I got my first sous chef gig, they moved us back to savannah worked there then eventually ended up at a resort on Hilton head island as sous chef and stayed there for about 3years after leaving the resort I took a four-month break at the time my brother steven was working at a hotel called the Drayton in downtown savannah and was always telling me great things about the Drayton and the chef in charge chef Christopher Meeman.

I decided I wanted to work with chef Chris so I applied and of course, my brother put in a word. But at this time, I did not want any major responsibilities I just wanted to prep. After working with Chris for about 1 month he had my respect. He’s very talented learned so much from him in a short period of time as well. Then Covid-19 happened and I eventually got “furloughed,” literally a week after I started Cannaboils after the idea came about that week, seafood boils with CBD in it.

I literally made a menu and started posting it on my Facebook and people started slowly catching on to it faster than I expected. I mean I had no doubt that it would work but I never thought it would pick up as quickly as it did. I quickly made logos and social media business pages for Cannaboils and since then, I’ve been tightening loose ends and strengthening the business as I grow through it and have been at it ever since march 20th 2020.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

The best advice i can give is to be YOU. Do exactly what you would do on the other side of that app. Thats all i did, came up with a product, presented it well, stayed consistent and always offering a new menu items such as specials of the day and frequently changing the menu(you don’t wont your customers getting bored). This in itself makes your customers talk about you and everytime they talk the more your followers/customers but its up to you to keep them talking!

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

WORD OF MOUTH! 95% of my new customers all say “ i was referred to you”.. that just goes back to me saying “its up to the owner to keep the people talking”

Contact Info:

• Instagram: CannaBoils
• Facebook: CannaBoils
• Twitter: CannaBoils
• Youtube: CannaBoils