Restaurant Possible

“The franchising model, at its core, is about empowerment. It's taking folks who aspire to do their own thing and be their own boss but not be on an island. Obviously, at Freddy's, with only 50 operating groups and 400 restaurants, our franchisees see value in what we do and how we support them along the way. But for me, I think that's the foundation before you start thinking about all the dollars and cents. It's the concept of empowering people to be in business for themselves, but not by themselves.” - Chris Dull, President and CEO at Freddy's

“The basic premise behind ‘They Is We' is in our everyday lives, we always want to point the finger. ‘Hey, this is my situation because they put me in that situation.' In the restaurant business, that can often be, ‘Hey, here's what corporate is doing or here's what the brand is doing.'Very early on at Del Taco, we really wanted to establish a much more bottoms-up approach to how we lead and manage the business. The simple phrase is ‘They Is We'. If there is a challenge, obstacle or problem, it's not something that somebody is doing. It's all of our problem. How do we work together as a leadership and support team with the general managers, with our team members to solve those problems?"- Chad Gretzema, Chief Operating Officer at Del Taco

“A people-before-profit mindset brings in the profit,” shares COO of Mitchell Management, Georgia Hatzidakis. She expounds that when leaders have a give-and-take relationship with their employees, they are more motivated at work.Listen to our latest podcast as Georgia pays tribute to her parents for helping her develop the people skills she has and to the people she works with for fostering a people-first culture in their company.

“Part of the reason I was attracted to the brand was I lived my life by three cardinal rules, and they just happen to align with the same stuff that Joe Whitty believed in.The first one is to have a servant's heart, serve others first. Make others the priority, not yourself.The second one would be to have a warrior's spirit. We need to be nimble. We need to spin on a dime. We need to take advantage of market conditions. We need to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves.The third and the last one is love what you do."- Tom Sacco, Chief Happiness Officer and CEO at Happy Joe's Pizza

“It's tough enough to run a restaurant. We all know most restaurants fail in the first year, and a lot of those are probably independents that are trying to create their niche. Be passionate, have fun, understand there's going to be setbacks.With inflation, cost of commodities, and tight labor, it's hard to look and say, "I'm having a lot of fun,"  but then we bring that food truck out and we see the smiles we get. You can't imagine the little kids who want to come up and just look inside the cab and hear the diesel horn go off. You know what? It's good to have fun. When you're having fun, your crew's having fun, your guests are going to have fun. Guests who have fun and have great food, they come back.” - Pete Pascuzzi, CEO at Mexican Restaurants, Inc.

“Immigration plays such a big part in North American Palates and exposes us to so many different cultures and cuisines. Regardless of which region you're from, there is a unique way to present your cultural offerings in a way that appeals to the masses. Sometimes you're just driving by, you see a new sign and you wonder what that restaurant is, what they're offering. And sometimes, it can be very intimidating to figure out what to order. That being said, I think the beautiful thing about Osmow's and why we were able to become the largest shawarma franchise in Canada is because we found a really unique way to modernize our cultural offerings, and this is all credit to my Dad.” - Ben Osmow, CEO & Head of Franchising at Osmow'

“Too many things got layered on and the company had really hit the skids in 2008, with the recession, probably moved too far off the brand by that time and went through a bankruptcy process in 2010. The company also owns a frozen pizza manufacturing company, and that had been basically in decline since 2013. The company was getting smaller and smaller and smaller. You literally had to say, "Folks, this line leads to oblivion unless we do something very, very different about it because hope isn't a strategy."The idea of growing our casual dining restaurant base was probably out of the question. Meanwhile, we had this terrific product and the pandemic was fantastic for frozen pizza manufacturing because people, one way or another, are going to find their way to pizza. We had figured out before the pandemic hit, how to get profitable again. We really got our cost and our margin under control. We really got to think through if we're going to create value here. Let's make the incremental improvements on them now that we've got the right people and the right restaurants. Let's really focus our growth not on being a restaurant company or operated restaurants, but new franchise concept and revitalized manufacturing.” - Erik Frederick, CEO at UNO Restaurants

Cultivating a service-oriented culture not just for your customers, but as importantly, for your employees, is a competitive edge a restaurant can have over others shares The Hickory Tavern President & CEO, Paul Baldasaro. With this business culture, they make sure their customers experience the kind of service they ought to give.Discover more insights on cultivating a company culture in our latest episode!

The restaurant industry has been behind the automation trend. And for Jim Balis, CEO of Sizzling Platter, it's their industry's time. We will see innovations and technologies applied to our restaurant experiences soon. Learn specific automation application tips from this seasoned restaurateur and hear insights on restaurant technology on our latest episode. Check our latest episode here.

The restaurant industry is in the business of serving people and they come in different forms: from your staff, to the communities up to the customers you serve. Pickleman's understands that with their tagline, “Whole Lotta Love, One Big Pickle,” — there's gotta be a touch of love in everything they do. Ken Rice, Chief Operating Officer of Pickleman's Gourmet Cafe, highlights how important it is to translate that love first, from their internal team and the way they treat their staff up to the food banks they partner with. When it comes to their customers, love comes in the form of providing great food and experience.Don't miss out on this insight and more. Listen to our podcast now!

Great customer service stems from an efficient system. From ensuring that everyone in your team is performing at their best to cleaning even the most overlooked places, you have to keep your systems and procedures in check.Gregg Majewski, CEO of Mongolian Concepts, shares his philosophy when it comes to leading a team and how detail-oriented systems give your business an edge.

“Everybody's obsessed with food and everybody's obsessed with diet. My experience has been that it's really about that person's curated way of eating. One of the big pluses to Pokeworks is you can go a lot of different ways with our menu on how you want to eat. At a basic level, Poke is very healthy.If you want to go indulgent, you can go indulgent too. But at a baseline, I think Poke is inherently healthier than maybe some other types of fast-casual foods. And it's very obvious what you're eating. There's no like, what's in that? You see the product. You come into a Pokeworks, your bowl's built in front of you.So you see the product and you know there's no hidden nutritionals behind it that are going to bust your diet. In general, the trends for our kind of mindful consumer, we appeal very strongly to millennials and very much so to Gen Z is clean proteins, managing carbs, a lot of people are into managing carbs, and sort of these omnivorous diets and the pescatarian diet has emerged as sort of the gap between people that don't want to eat meat, but they're not ready to completely give up eating animal protein. That's where we meet a big need out there in the consumer market for those folks that they haven't given up protein, they want to eat healthy, but they want clean protein.” – Steve Heeley, CEO, Pokeworks

"Have you ever walked into a restaurant and everybody turns and looks at you and no one acknowledges you? And then they turn back. You feel like you walked into somebody else's living room that you weren't invited to. And it's all about how you make them feel.”– Mijo Alanis, Owner, Beyond Juicery + Eatery

Choosing which product to offer is one thing. Choosing which product to focus on is another. For Daddy's Chicken Shack founders Pace Web and Chris Georgalas — it's all about paying attention to that aha! moment, the moment when something strikes you and makes you realize which product to fully offer your customers. After that, bringing together the technology and the promotions will be so much easier.“I never really thought I'd end up in the restaurant industry but I truly love it because of the people involved and because it is just such a resilient industry.There is a lot of change going on in this industry, and there have been a lot of challenges.  I took a bite of Pace's sandwich and thought that there was a real opportunity to try something in this new restaurant paradigm. So that's where we embraced the technology and started to really think about how we could deliver a high-quality product through a multi-channel approach.We were thinking about how to launch Daddy's Chicken Shack. Nobody had ever heard of us! It's a new brand. How are people going to find out about us? We decided to take a chance and put the technology together to try to really meet our customers where we thought they might be at the time, which would be through their smartphones.In late 2018 we created a website that had an order button that was a first-party ordering channel for us. We had kiosks, we were on 11 apps. We had no choice but to optimize the space, optimize the menu and optimize labor with the help of this tech stack that we implemented on a budget. – Pace Webb and Chris Georgalas, CEO & President/Founder, Daddy's Chicken Shack Holdings, LLCDon't miss out on this insight and more. Listen to our podcast now!

When growing a brand, it's important to prepare all the ingredients to make the growth a continuing success. For John Dikos, president of Killer Burger, those ingredients include the capital, the plan, the team and talent. While his business has grown, KIller Burger didn't just magically scale up—it took putting the right elements in place and adding more sunshine and water to continue to grow it.Don't miss out on this insight and more. Listen to our podcast now!

"You've got to have a mindset that you're going to be bringing in real partners. Those who will be spending their capital, blood, and sweat to help create the brand, continue the brand legacy, and hopefully, create opportunities for others to succeed in the business.The organization itself has got to have a mindset that's not just EBITDA-based, but it's also franchise-based, where you're growing the brand with other people and other people's money in a partnership. As part of that mindset, you've got to have the foundation right, and you've got to have the infrastructure set up to be able to do that. That's constantly morphing for us; how better to support our franchise partners and thinking forward now as we have a larger percentage of the restaurants that will be franchised, how we will better support them.We've done a few things that we've moved along on the infrastructure piece. Having that foundation throughout, even how do we make our IT systems more franchise-friendly or make them accessible to our franchisees to ensure they can share our IT and POS system's robust nature, is a big part of it.Of course, operations is always front and foremost for us. The operational management partners that are out there helping us and helping our franchisees be better operators, they all come from within." – John Phillips, Chief Global Business Partnership Officer, The Habit Burger Grill

When it comes to leadership: are you a buffalo or a cow?For Paul Macaluso, president and CEO of Another Broken Egg, being an effective leader means being brave enough to weather the storm and embrace change. As a 30-year veteran, he's seen all sorts of change that could have made him walk away — from changing company structure to leadership and even going through changes brought about by the pandemic. Instead, he decided to adapt while building meaningful relationships.Don't miss out on this insight and more. Listen to our podcast now!“The buffalo will be on the plains with like cows. When a storm comes in, the buffalo see the storm coming. The cows will turn away from this storm and start running, right, as most animals would. You see a storm and hail and snow, and they try to outrun it. What happens to the cows is they're not fast enough. They get tired. They end up staying in the storm longer because they're running along with the storm. They're taking more damage, and they're getting exhausted.What's interesting about buffalos is when they see a storm coming, they run into the storm, which is super counterintuitive, right. But because they know they're going to get through the storm quicker, they're going to take it. They're willing to run into the storm to get to the other side."– Paul Macaluso, President & CEO, Another Broken Egg Cafe

Mike Mohammed: “We really pride ourselves on authenticity. So authenticity in the food, as Randy said, it started with authentic recipes. But then an authentic vibe with the people and how we interact with our customers and with each other. For us in our culture, we really value creativity. We value progressiveness, and we value having fun.So that's kind of at the core of our culture. And then from there, obviously, we have pillars that drive us. For us, it's unparalleled flavor, elevated vibe and an irresistible edge. And when we're talking about the irresistible edge, it's just fun, it's playful. But we want to create a different vibe when you walk in with the music, with the art, with the entire decor.So it's very authentic to who we are. We're always looking at what we're doing.Randy Wyner: To me, it's just having fun. It's doing it the way you want to do it. Like when you go into our restaurant, you make it how you want it, and that was a big thing. I'm a picky eater, and I want to make it how I like it.”Mike Mohammed: “Be who you are.”Randy Wyner: “Be who you are.”– Randy Wyner, Founder/President, Chronic Tacos Enterprises, Inc. & Mike Mohammed, CEO, Chronic Tacos Enterprises, Inc.

"For me, it's been an extremely exciting transition that has helped educate me on a different part of our business.As I've transitioned into the quick-service world, it's really interesting that what attracted me to Biscuitville was that, yes, we do serve food fast, and we serve a lot of it. But ultimately, we also make real food. We work with as many local suppliers as we can to try to keep our product integrity where it needs to be from just a clean label standpoint, and we try to work with a lot of local businesses as well. We can give a little more money back to the local farmer and the local business owner.Ultimately, as I look at the QSR world in which we live in at Biscuitville, the biggest magical piece, which we're trying to do and we've had some great success doing it, is bringing a little bit more of that elevated, full-service menu experience and product to the QSR world and doing it well and with integrity and being able to stand behind it."– James McCurley, VP of Culinary Operations and Learning Excellence, Biscuitville

"You learn very early there that customers like new things, and you've got to be representing yourself to the guests or your customers constantly. The importance of new flavors, the importance of new items, it's vital to people. I stopped going to some of my favorite restaurants in the world because the menu hadn't changed in two or three years. You're looking at the same menu over time, and it just gets stale.From our standpoint, not just from a culinary perspective, but from a drink standpoint and an environmental standpoint, we always like to be and are trying to find new ways to represent ourselves to the guests, as our guests change and the things around them change.We think it's critical and essential to what we do."– Tom Fricke, CEO, Bar Louie

'It's incredible how much we're focused on labor shortages as an industry and the challenging labor market. Just like it's easier to get an existing guest to transact with you one more time, it's easier to focus on retention to address the challenges that we have as an industry than it is to find a new guest effectively, to find a new employee and bring them onboard. That's why I'm so passionate about this topic. The other reason I'm passionate about this topic is it literally affects every area of the business when you improve retention. It improves your service. It improves your food consistency. It improves your labor, your cost of goods. Today, I'd love to see if we could just organize the conversation around 3 major keys to driving improvement in retention. Those three are: one, selection of employees and initiatives to improve selection; two is onboarding experience; and three is the post-onboarding experience, often looked at the 30-day mark, 60-day mark, 90-day mark. Certainly, post-90 days, the employee is onboarded. They're trained. They're fairly familiar.What is that experience like for them after 90 days or however long they're going to stay on beyond that? We have major initiatives underway to drive improvement in retention, focused on those 3 major topical areas."- Alex Eagle, CEO, Freebirds World Burrito

"What's most fundamental is making sure that we've got talent within the ranks. We're continually developing our future leaders. My Penn Path was born out of saying when we hire someone, let's talk to them about what their future looks like with our company from day one. That way, we don't lose sight of that with every shift that employee is on board with us.We've kept it simple. It is a two-page document that walks you through your first day with the Penn Station brand through rising up the ranks and putting yourself in a position to be one of those 250 general managers who are looking for the next latest and greatest to help them manage their business."– Lance Vaught, Senior Vice President of Operations, Penn Station Inc.

“When we created the vision for the Pacific Northwest to be the healthiest region on the planet, that was really our stake in the ground to say, "We're going to look at this through pillars of people, product, and place. The people part being our employees and our guests as well as our suppliers. The product being really, what are we doing for stretch goals in our region around locality. And then place being, making sure that every decision that we're making goes through that lens of the vision around our region specifically.And then as we all know, March of 2020 hit, and really quickly, we were looking at our business to say, "How are we, one, going to stay in business? And two, what do we stand for going through this time period?"The forefront of everything we decided from that point forward was to stay proactive. That has been one of our brand tenets, and it has helped us a lot manage all sorts of crazy disruptions none of us could have foreseen, or we could have, but maybe didn't.”

“How are we successful from a franchise standpoint? How do we work with them?The first thing is to take care of your existing franchisees. If your existing franchisees aren't happy, you're never going to get new franchisees.Let's talk about how you help existing franchisees. First of all, you make them extremely profitable and they make money. Franchisees that make a lot of money are extremely happy. The other thing is, make sure that you collaborate with your franchisees. What people don't understand is that the majority of our franchisees have 2 to 5 locations, and their operators are in their restaurants 5, 6 days a week. I'm in the office 3, 4 days a week. I'm lucky to be able to hit a restaurant once a week unless I'm doing a restaurant tour where I'm on the road for a couple of weeks.Our operators know it way better than I do. You want to be not creating without the franchisee's input. You want to be making sure that you collaborate with your franchisees.” – Carl T. Howard

Through her experiences and learning on both sides, Mary Jane Riva, CEO at Pizza Factory, is able to resolve conflicts between the franchisor and the franchisee by meeting halfway through proper communication and transparency. Tune in to our podcast today for more exciting learnings on building good relationships with your franchisee.“I think the best place to start is being a franchisee and coming into this position as an executive. How much I learned so much on the other side that I was never privy to because I wasn't in the corporate structure that way. On that part, it was an opportunity to be more vocal and transparent on the other side, being the franchisor side to the franchisees, really opening it up more and explaining or telling or giving the whys. Why do we do it this way? Why this, why that?Yes, the butting the heads - I do that with myself. If I had 2 heads, they would be butting together sometimes. I have such a feel for the franchisee side because my husband and I still have 4 stores. There are varying issues just like everybody else.I really come into the corporate meetings with that hat on and presenting another side when I feel that it really needs to be – maybe explored a little bit more, at least, what's going on for the franchisees.”

CJ Lewis:“I was looking up quotes, just cute quotes on simplicity, and one that stood out was from Steve Jobs. He says, "Simple can be harder than complex." That stood out to me. I'm like, "I wonder if that's true." Maybe not in all cases, but focusing on simplicity can be a difficult thing because it just feels natural that we, as humans do, we naturally complicate things when they don't need to be.”Joe Gale:“When I look at other systems and I see their complexities, it's generally in SKUs. They have so much they have to have on hand. They have to think of, "Where is this product right now? It's frozen. It's in the back. We've got to get it out and make sure it's ready to roll." I think the quote really does relate to Pancheros because being 100% fresh is not easier. I think it would be easier to have frozen things. I think it would be easier to not make our own tortillas. It would be easier to have everything come in and ready to go. Where it is a little more labor-intensive to be fresh, but it sure pays off when you're biting into that burrito.”

“The magic number we hear from talking to other people in the industry is 20 stores.You've got to get to 20 stores, but it's got to be sustainable.It's got to be scalable. What we did over the last year is we turned that into a 5-year vision plan that's going to take us to 2025.Within that, there's 2 phases. Phase One, which is the 20-mile march to 20 stores, that's 2021 in 2022, where we hope to get to our 20th store. Phase 2 is 10xing the brand, taking us from 20 to 200 units, and that's going to come in 2023 to 2025.What we're focusing on today is that phase one, 20-mile march to 20 stores. The way that we're going to accomplish this goal is by getting an A-grade in the 8 pillars we've identified as being critical to the success of any emerging brand in the QSR space.”-Matt Ensero, CEO and Founder, Wing it On!

“If you want to build sustainable sales and sustainable profits, the only way you're going to do it is to put the team first.You focus on building a great team.That doesn't mean that we don't value the guest as much as any other customer. We absolutely do. We've got several guiding principles that are focused on making sure we deliver a great experience for our guests, but you cannot bypass the team member experience in your quest for great service.The guest experience will never exceed the experience of your team member. If you hire the best and the brightest and figure out how to keep those people engaged and you keep those people on your team, you can't help but deliver a great guest experience.”

Bill Fry:“We've been using rewards, and recognition for our team members and for the folks that work here in our corporate office, because we just believe that when you treat people right, you're going to get better results. And during these really trying times, this has become even more important, and we've doubled down on that. So we start off certainly with recognition. And recognition, for us, is we believe it's that team member motivation. It's a point of differential. You don't need to write any of this down. This has been around forever, but it's really important that you find things that are right.Our team members know that there's a good chance someone is going to get pointed out for doing something right, it just promotes that type of behavior. We really like to go with the positive approach, and this way we hope that all of our team members know that you're going to get recognized for doing something well.It's catching them doing something right and making sure that they know that when they work at A&W, it's going to be a positive experience for them. They're going to hopefully walk out feeling a little bit better about themselves.” CJ Lewis:“I love what you're saying, is that recognition, this is nothing we need to write down.It's thanking people for doing a good job and finding the good in the world, and positive reinforcement. And what I love, you just said, is this doesn't just need to apply to our own businesses. This can apply to us as a human race, of calling out the good we see in the world.”

“We've got almost 5,000 employees. I said, 'We've got too many layers of management. We needed to break down the barriers and provide access to all levels of our management, including the most senior levels here.'I really am a big fan that when I go into a restaurant, I'm an employee just like the servers or the dishwasher or one of the lines cooks. They should feel that they have that access to leadership and not the hierarchy or formality of saying, 'President's here. We all need to change our behavior.'We've really been encouraging that behavior. You know the old story. You find out what's really going on in the restaurant from the dish pit guy because he's going to tell you what food's coming back on the plate, what's going into the garbage, what's being done and what's not being done. Nobody pays attention to that voice, but it is a wealth of information."

“Do I think brick and mortar is going to disappear? Of course not. I love brick and mortar.Food is how everyone in the world celebrates and commiserates.Do I believe the pandemic has introduced the mass of the world to the convenience of using technology? 100%. I do believe virtual restaurants and virtual dining will only grow. I believe that DoorDash, a $200 billion valuation, and Uber and GrubHub -- these companies are not going to let delivery disappear.They're going to continue to find ways to push and grow the business. I think technology is only going to continue to enhance both this platform and others in every realm of the restaurant industry.”

“Now, myself, I have an award that I renamed after one of our most Chick-y District Managers and General Managers. Her name was Pam Ashley, who put up such a fight against cancer. With that, I give off that award. The award is really to recognize someone with a lot of tenacity. Someone who is very balanced between hard-wired, which is the results aspect of things; and then also heart-wired, which is that heart-felt leadership and the heart-wired leadership approach. And we give out those awards.We do in-the-moment recognition. Those things do carry a long way. And again, it's finding people where they're at and connecting with them that can really help them grow. Be it all the way from our team members that are frontline to our Team Leaders, Assistant Managers, General Managers, District Managers, Directors, whatever level they are.We want to recognize what's doing well and help coach and help them win at the end of the day.”

“There is no successful company that doesn't have a family inside and outside. It doesn't exist. If you don't feel safe or you don't feel like it's an environment of caring or engaging, it's not successful.However, I think the things we do on diversity and inclusion, the goal is not just to be more diverse here. It's to get people to raise their thoughts and opinions.It helps families outside of the company as well as inside of the company. That's where, when we look at head spaces, it's just understanding where those stress levels come from, where those differences are coming from. What's causing this situation that's causing you to be uncomfortable.”

“I would tell any restaurateur, any cook or any manager to work your tail off. Become as good as you can get in understanding restaurant P&L. Be realistic about what the expectations are for each role.If you want more, there's more out there. The “more out there” is to work your way into an equity position, become an owner, even if it's a small owner. I think the restaurant industry is famous for giving people sweat equity. I don't know a lot of other businesses that essentially do that.”

“I had a vision for Blaze being 350 locations. I met that objective, and I felt like the only way to get there was to go this route and to bring in manufacturing partners from day one.We had a national distribution agreement in place before we had one restaurant open, because supply chain is the cornerstone of the business.And so is financial modeling. If you do your financial modeling for your business and you have supply chain figured out, you will probably succeed in a very challenging industry.All the rest of the pieces, operations and construction. Those are all important, but you need to have those fundamental pieces in place.The product needs to be able to get to the restaurant and it needs to be consistent and it needs to be there when you need it.”

“I think the definition of excellence needs to be defined in your own brain to not mean every single detail to be perfect. Once you can define excellence as, "Hey, my company is on the right path, our sales are trending upward, our processes are getting better and more effective." To me, that's excellence because you're going to continue to get better and better.You can't expect a 22-year-old who is going through finals to be excellent all the time. It's just not going to happen. What you can guarantee is that you're setting them up to succeed. They had the best chance of being excellent that night, and they're on their way to better development for themselves in the company. I try to focus on excellence, not being in the details of operating the restaurants, but in the culture and the path of the team.”

“There's got to be some kind of cohesive fit amongst the team. One of the things that is critical is that we do hit those DNA points. We have conversations along the lines of “this is how we are." Part of the culture is unwritten, it's how we act and we want our team to see that.It's how we treat them right off the get-go when we sit down and we feed the team, when we're doing orientation, when we're doing training, they're getting to taste the entire menu. Yes, it costs money to do that. Yes, it's time consuming. Yes, but it's like breaking bread with family at the table.We'll build a great restaurant. We'll have great food. We need great people to understand and buy into that. It starts with the DNA, and that really defines our culture.”

“There's got to be some kind of cohesive fit amongst the team. One of the things that is critical is that we do hit those DNA points. We have conversations along the lines of “this is how we are." Part of the culture is unwritten. It's how we act, and we want our team to see that.It's how we treat them right off the get-go when we sit down and we feed the team, when we're doing orientation, when we're doing training, they're getting to taste the entire menu. Yes, it costs money to do that. Yes, it's time consuming. Yes, but it's like breaking bread with family at the table.We'll build a great restaurant. We'll have great food. We need great people to understand and buy into that. It starts with the DNA, and that really defines our culture.”

“There were absolutely things we were doing and we would throw things out there and just throw it against the wall and see what stuck and see what had an impact.There was a lot of learning. Obviously, the pandemic was devastating and impacted a lot. There was a part of it where we would sit there and a small team in survival mode where it's just anything goes. We can try anything.This went for the operators as well. We have some amazing operators out there that were putting together random new dishes on the fly. We had a certain inventory that we wanted to use, and we didn't want to order much more inventory. We didn't know what the head count was.We have operators going back to their roots of their  initial days being cooks in restaurants and putting together menu specials, figuring out the other new items, figuring out the food costs, trying to sell it.”

“But just get out there and take that first step and get out of the office, get into the store, even if it's sitting in there and watching for a while, but then try to find something you can do in the store. Sometimes I go in, I just push the garbage down. Sometimes I go in and clean the windows. Just get yourself a little bit involved.And then take that next step and try to get into that expo side where you're working really shoulder to shoulder with your crew at that point. And again, the biggest part of it is really being transparent. No surprise visits, let them know you're coming and I think you'll get really open arms at that point.Hey, this guy is running 76 units or a hundred units or 200 units, but he's still showing us. He has the time to come in and see what we're going through day to day.”

“In your casual and even more forward business conversations, you can start to understand the skill sets that are needed at a multiunit role. Once you understand them, you can start mentally interviewing these people to try to understand whether or not they have those skills to move on to the next level.And then obviously before you put them in that role, you give them some development and you put them through some assessments. And the assessments that I've used in the past, they are highly predictive. You start looking at your team and you start understanding who are the next people that you need to start preparing for this role.”

“On Tuesday mornings, we do a P&L call. Having a call with all multi-units and reviewing the profit loss statements for each restaurant on Tuesday morning. The profit loss statements. They don't just affect the operators... They affect the finance team... They affect the technology team... They affect culinary.What we've done is we have invited individuals from those departments to be on that call. If we have questions as operators, or if my multiunit individuals have questions, they can have a conversation with the finance department. If there's some misunderstanding. Everybody understands where the sales are, where are the issues that we're having, and how is profitability looked at for each restaurant, how is it different by each region?There's more than just one department reviewing those. We're breaking down that barrier of silos. Everybody in the company understands the sales, the profitability and everything that controls it.”

“We show by example. Growing up in this industry, I owned the restaurants, I owned multi restaurants, and I had to handle management and then started franchising.I would clean out grease traps, show them how to clean.As an owner, you have to know all aspects of the business, enough that nobody can pull the wool over your eyes. My philosophy is to lead by example. If I come to work and I hide in my office all day long, what does that show to other people?When you're in your restaurants, you're going around to your customers. Employees will see that, they'll duplicate it.”

“What I tell folks when I'm working with them is that learning a job station is like playing a piano. When you start, you have to go slow because you want to get it right. It's muscle memory over time. This is not just for a job station, but it's how to write a schedule or how to coach a team member. You start slow and you make sure you get every step.For operations that is really essential. You have to teach the right way the first time and you let them go slow and you let them learn at their pace. Then over time, once you internalize the steps, you can start accelerating and really become an expert. When you think about playing a piano, you're marrying skill with art and the art comes in when you don't have to think.Here is a good example from my restaurant days, being an expediter. If you watch a good expediter in the kitchen, they are not watching the orders. They are watching everybody around them. The orders are second nature to them. They're not even thinking about pulling the plates together and looking at the receipt and making sure the order is accurate and whether it's the server or whether it's out the drive-through getting that order out. That has become so second nature to them that they don't even need to think about it.”

“We've landed on an idea that we will carry forward probably forever. It's called our Biscuits For A Cause Program. At the beginning of the pandemic, when it was just a devastating time for restaurants, everyone was having to scale back operations.We looked really hard into what we could do for our people.  That was top of mind for us. We had always prior to this time given away biscuits. It was our staple.  Free of charge with the meal. In this takeout environment, we said, “what if we charged for biscuits”?Crazy, crazy idea, because, prior to that we knew we could get a lot of pushback on that. We said, what if we did this with the intention that every dollar of profit goes straight back to our employees, and every dollar profit from our biscuits goes to this fund. Throughout the year, when we were met with difficult circumstances, when we were met with employees in need, we had this fund which has now raised over $350,000.”