Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right. Hey.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:00:03] Speaker A: It's the. Yeah. Show.
[00:00:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:00:04] Speaker A: The day is wrapping up. It's something o'clock. It's five o'clock somewhere almost.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: It's. It's four minutes till.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm really excited about this. We.
You know, honestly, I'm just gonna say it. I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy. We were the guacing. Yeah. The Gua King. Yeah, Go ahead, give them the full name.
[00:00:28] Speaker C: The Gua King. I'm Akash. I'm known as Akash. Akash Nair. But the Gua King, I'm known. I'm not sorry. I'm known as. Known as the Gua King. My government name would be Akash.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: There you go. So we all have street slang names, right? We're not going to go over mine, but we have the Guac King. Okay. And so when the king is in the house, you have to give the king a present. And there's only one thing that the Guac king wants. It's guac.
[00:00:55] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: And we shall.
Guac to the king.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Guac to the king. There you go.
[00:01:01] Speaker C: Some good guac. Some good guac. Good smelling guac.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Shout out to Poe's Tavern next door. You know, we were in a pinch, had the Guac king coming and you know, it's just one of those things that we had to do. So like it's thick. So I broke the chip.
Oh, the chip to guac Ricchio.
[00:01:22] Speaker C: Really good.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: I would agree. And that, that is like twice chipotle amount of guac. I would love to know.
[00:01:28] Speaker C: Really creamy guac. Really?
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Let me get a hit.
So what's the technique? All right, see you want some now?
[00:01:40] Speaker C: All right, so there's gonna be a Chips keep breaking.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: It's gonna be an ASMR session where we're eating guac is gonna be really annoying for everybody.
[00:01:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: So sorry about that. Jelly is the worst. She's in our office. It's always crunching, always crunching. I'm like two doors down. Crunching.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Two doors down.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: I know. You know the big like doors we have in the office.
All right, so this is a shit. Yeah. Show. We got the Guac King. He was born as a Kashi and he is now baptized as the guac king in Zunzis. I think he might be our number one review person that we've ever had.
[00:02:17] Speaker C: One of.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: One of you are.
You know, we probably should rank our. Our people. We should do that. Rank our. Our people named in reviews and rank them have a top 26 list. All right, so we're gonna go Sarah on that.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Got it.
[00:02:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Because there should be something. I mean, reviews are the way the business runs.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: We have all the.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: So we're gonna probably talk about shit. Yeah. And how you get so many reviews. So it's a shit. Yeah. Show. The restaurant business sucks. We're here to change it. We talk about what sucks. We talk about what we love about it. What makes they shit. Yeah. Why we're in the restaurant business. Why? What's fun about making other people say shit? Yeah. And then also, what are we doing differently as a company, you know, in your company for, you know, with. Right now you're with us. Zoom Zoonza Bar. Doing amazing things, selling guac, hustling guac, pushing guac. Yeah.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: I'd love to hear the story of exactly how you.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Yeah. So let's. Let's go.
[00:03:12] Speaker C: How I redeem the Guac King.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: Okay, so elephant in the room is, how did I get it?
[00:03:17] Speaker C: How did I get it? So I started working at Tybee, and the gm, Brad over there, he would incentivize some days on, like, who could upsell the most guac on the slap chips? And for that, that day, I guess I sold a lot of guac. And our bartender, Jenna, she made a little sticker that said Guac King and just, like, slapped it on my thing, like one of those jolt stickers. I just walked around. And for the whole, every customer loved it. They're like, oh, my God, are you the guac king? I'm gonna write that in the review. And that's the most reviews I got that. And I was like, oh, something kind of works here. And then the next day, I, like, wrote another sticker and put it on there, and it worked. And then I was like. Kept doing it, and it just took off.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: So by putting the Guac King title, people were like, then.
[00:03:55] Speaker C: Yeah. But it was the bartender at Tybee that named me that.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: That's a marketing thing. So, like, we need to have, like, Dank King.
[00:04:04] Speaker C: We gotta have Perry Perry God. I heard Perry Perry God was a good one. Review queen Kendra. I think Kendra deserves a shirt.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: Coming.
[00:04:11] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: Review shop.com.
[00:04:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: You have an idea for a shirt, text us on the 26th club. We will make that shirt.
[00:04:18] Speaker C: Mm.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Somewhat fast. Someone fast. So when you. When I heard about the Gua King, I went to Tybee.
[00:04:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: And I had a feeling you had an aura about you. I don't know if it was like, you're glowing. Your skin has just all of the natural oils just of avocado.
[00:04:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Flowing or whatever it was. Essential oils.
[00:04:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: You know, you got the, the nice mane going. There you go. You get your, your, your Alpha omega's where they are.
But yeah, the first thing like you were like, I need a shirt. And I said, we're going to make you a shirt.
[00:04:48] Speaker C: I think you said I needed a shirt.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: I think so.
[00:04:50] Speaker C: I would say you came up to.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Me like, you need a shirt.
[00:04:54] Speaker C: I was like, sure.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: And that was pre shit. Yeah, Shop. And I was like, we're going to get you on. And then, you know, now we can knock them out quick, which is awesome. And celebrate our team. We should do that on their shit. Yeah, Shop is do it to where it's like team inspired and you have walking and you know, there you go.
How ideas come out.
[00:05:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: Writing it down.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Okay, so Gwa King amazing story of that. And now you're driving incredible amount of reviews. You're on Tybee. Now you're downtown as well, right?
[00:05:21] Speaker C: Yep, I'm just downtown, yeah.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: Okay. So how did you get the restaurant business? One of my favorite questions.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: Okay, so funny enough, my, my dad went to culinary school and it's just been restaurants my whole life. So like all throughout I kind of grew up around him, you know, running his restaurant or this or that. And that's kind of just like what I've done. And yeah, just soon these is where I started working out.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: A restaurant.
[00:05:42] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. He's had multiple different restaurants, like every sort of cuisine and cool perspective then.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: For what we do.
[00:05:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: So it was the restaurant business, right?
Yeah, we're changing it.
[00:05:53] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So it kind of came into it of like, you know, you kind of like take care of the place that you work at. You know, you just like put in everything you have and work as well as you can. Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Very cool. So what restaurants have you worked in? You were there, you had that, right.
[00:06:09] Speaker C: So I mean I always kind of would just like, like he would always, you know, bring me in and kind of show me around and teach me a lot of things about it. But really funny enough, Zunzies is like my first job that I've had outside of that with a payroll. Like I've done other kind of like gigs and this and that, but not like a job where I'm like, yeah, here I am at Zunzies.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: Shit, yeah.
[00:06:28] Speaker C: Shit, yeah.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Zunsa bars. Zunzies.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: So you've worked downtown and Tybee, right? Yeah, love that.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: And we just talked to Kai who Has similar experience.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So Kai's bounced around. I mean, you know, I think that's. That's what's cool about having different locations. The seasonality, we can roll our. Our best people. If there's someone who has some name with king in it, we usually try to move them to our locations and keep.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Show them.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: All right. If it was like, show off our kids, the guac peasant probably wouldn't be like, yeah, probably gonna let you go during off season, but hey, can you.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Hang out in dry stores?
[00:06:58] Speaker C: George.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: So awesome. So what do you know? Your dad has a lot of experience. Obviously, there's passion in it, but the restaurant business is hard. What do you think sucks about it? Ooh.
[00:07:10] Speaker C: And I thought about that coming year too. I was like, I really don't know. Like, to pinpoint a specific answer, I think it's more of just like the way it is right now where it's like, you know, prices of everything are just so high. Like forgetting just rent and, like, the cost of goods to, like, now you got to give your customer a good price so they come in. And, like, as an employee too, like, you know, the wages haven't really gone anywhere in years. So it's like, there's a lot of small, small things that suck. And I don't think there's just one thing. It's like a lot of things that need to change to make it better.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: So that's why we're changing.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: If you look at it and you go, you know, the way we change the restaurant business is by growing at an accelerated rate that gets attention by doing business differently.
[00:07:49] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: And so I think the restaurant business is broken. Right. I think the ways of doing it in the. In the past really aren't working. You see large chains that they would never be able to grow with their business model now, but they're legacy brands and they've got the. The financials and they've got the name that they're able to do it, but it's a totally different world in regards to it. And, you know, I've got a philosophy of we're never a fully baked concept. 10% at least a year. We should be evolving and growing because in five years, technology changes, tastes change. Right. But what never changes is people want it up. An amazing experience. And so I think what you're talking about is as prices go up, expectations go up. Now people are very mindful of the pricing of the menu. And to stay in business and to be successful in this environment, you have to be aggressive in your pricing. If you're chasing the menu, right. And you're trying to keep up and you aren't aggressive in it and really, you know, believing that our team can follow through with it through, you know, really a menu price is perception. It's what's the value and what's the feeling that they leave with and what you're doing, you know, they're leaving, they're leaving five star reviews. I don't leave reviews. I'm not a review person. Right. I care about reviews in the company, but it's just not my personality. So to get somebody to do that, you're really wowing them. And you aren't doing that if you're not having fun.
[00:09:12] Speaker C: Right?
[00:09:13] Speaker A: And so, you know, we talk about that, you know, what sucks about the business right now? You know, prices. But that's affecting everybody. And how do you react? I think great people that are engaged like you is a way, as a company, you know, we can combat that. But what do you love about it? Well, makes you say shit. Yeah.
[00:09:30] Speaker C: I think what I love about it is that, that, that opportunity to, like, you know, serve people and give them that experience and like a good thing. And I think, especially within this company, I love that, like, we are very customer focused and like, we do just about anything and everything to make that customer happy. And like anywhere else you work in a restaurant, it's like, hey, this guy didn't like their food. You're kind of like arguing with your manager even to get a comp. But here you're like, hey, here's the food. Like, what else can I fix for you? Here's that, here's that, like, how can we help?
[00:09:58] Speaker B: The freedom of it is.
[00:09:59] Speaker C: The freedom of it is so nice because it's like you can truly take care of your guest without having to worry about anything else.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: And so that falls into the 2.6% shit. Yeah. Fee, right? Everybody thought I was insane when I rolled that out. And they were like, chris, you can't do that.
[00:10:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: I'm like, where's the rule? Right? Right. There's like, that's. That is cool. No one else will do that, right? Because they don't have the shit yet. Promise. I encourage every restaurant owner to put a guarantee on their menu and then charge for it. Right? Whatever it is. Because it actually empowers your team to fix the problems. You know, when it happens, the problems happen all the time. And it can really be solved with, let's just go and go ahead and make this sandwich without tomatoes, right? Like whatever it is. Right. But then you're going back and it's a pissy conversation in the restaurant with the guy who made it. And it's like, no, guys just make a new sandwich. It's all good. It's built and it's baked into our model and doing it. And so it empowers everybody and also allows me to sleep knowing that, hey, you know, if we're not ringing that up and we're not seeing a certain number which is usually around 0.6% of total sales, to be honest, is what we're refunding. We're comping to make up for all of those errors. You know, I mean, it's a no brainer from a business perspective. I want to see that happening. It means we're engaged with our fans. I know we're messing up. The busier we get, the more we're going to mess up sometimes. And so that's really, really, really awesome that you use that because it's a competitive advantage, I think in our business that we have that and it should be used for sure.
Let's see. So good stuff there.
What do you think that we're doing different? You've been with us how long?
[00:11:41] Speaker C: Almost a year now.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: Almost a year.
[00:11:43] Speaker C: Almost a year.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: Like next month in zoom z years.
[00:11:46] Speaker C: It's a lot.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: It feels like at least three.
[00:11:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: Because we move pretty quick.
[00:11:49] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: And we're evolving and like we have a very high standard.
So. Yeah.
[00:11:55] Speaker C: Multiple menus, so many new cocktails. This, that. Yeah.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Everything is because we're building something. I want everybody to know, like we're not a business that's been focused on making a profit. Sorry, investors. But you're. But the good thing is our investors getting there. It's a 50 year business plan.
[00:12:10] Speaker C: Right?
[00:12:10] Speaker A: Right. Most people are opening a restaurant, trying to make money, you know, right away. We're trying to change a restaurant business, build something that can actually do that. Right. That takes time, it takes energy, it takes creativity, it takes testing, takes failing. Right. It takes pushing limits on things. And we're super close. We're really in the last stages of this. So to. To share with you. Q1 for us right now is enormous bar innovation to the point that we just tore a whole bar out. We're redoing it. So, you know, brand new. It's going to be the focus of our downtown spot. Really excited that m the training program. It's going to be best in class with Tony leading that.
And then from there Q2 is going to be menu Innovation. So whatever you think we serve, right? Of course. We're known for our award winning sandwiches, wings and chips and that's our cornerstone. You know, we're going to always want to be the place that you want to come for a great lunch and sandwiches and meet and have that experience. South African sweet tea, the signature, you can't beat it, you know, sauce it up. But we're going to try to fill the gap and really be a place where in the morning, you know, you can come in, we have some fun, some really fun ideas for that, especially the service industry to engage them.
I hate when I see our team go spend $10 at Starbucks. Yeah, that pisses me off. And we're gonna fix that.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Do you know what's so funny? I have to tell you because I guess you don't know. Every morning, right before a morning meeting, when I was working in store, we'd be like, do we have time to run to Parker's? And everyone would go to Parker's, get breakfast and a drink, come back, sit down for the meeting, every single person.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: So we're gonna be doing some really cool stuff.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: Shout out Greg.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Yep, Greg Parker. Doing great things.
Yes. So, but that's awesome. But we're gonna get a piece of that. Yeah, so we're gonna get a piece of that.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: You said everyone needs something, everybody needs it.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: And so, you know, from a concept, innovation, you know, we'll have that piece that's gonna be a surprise for everybody. They're gonna like that. And then for lunch it's going to be sandwiches. We want to be your favorite sandwich shop and go back to our roots and from a price point, from a value, from a speed of service, you want to be that place, but in a really fun atmosphere. You have that. Then we're going to transition to happy hour. Wings, chips, bar, food. Awesome Happy hour. Live music with a Zoonza bar concept. And then we're going to have a big surprise that you're not going to expect to pair with our elevated mixology program. That's going to really, I think, separate us and really be something that you guys don't, don't really expect. And it will make you say shit. Yeah, it's going to tie with local vendors. It's going to be a really cool thing that we can also scale as a concept. So, you know, I think, you know, excited to share that, you know, so doing things things differently.
I don't know where I got, I got excited talking about what we know, all the change that we're doing. But so, yeah, to come back to earth as I get to share that. Right. Let me just. I'm gonna let you talk. I need some block.
There we go.
[00:15:04] Speaker C: Shit. Yeah.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: I mean, what are we doing different that you think? Well, I mean, you've been with us in your dad's spot, but as a customer perspective, what do you think?
[00:15:12] Speaker C: Purely just the experience. I don't even think it's just like, it's from any other restaurant standpoint. Like, you're not getting that experience that you would hear, like, forgetting just that we say shit. Yeah. All the time. There's other sort of chains that have their own little, like, gimmick or whatever they may do, but, like, we're really, like, believing that shit. Yeah. And, like, you're leaving feeling like shit. Yeah.
And I think that's really cool. It's like every. Every guest that comes in, like, really is like, whoa, I really love this spot. I'm glad I stopped by. Like, if it's their first time, they're like, the food's amazing. The atmosphere is amazing. There's just nothing they can complain about.
So, yeah, I think it's just the atmosphere and the shit experience is what's just so much different.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: So that's really important. You know, if you're watching and you're. You're. You know, I've. I've said if there's one thing that I would like, it's the. It's the sacred cow. It's shit. Yeah. If I had to just throw everything, and I'd say the one thing that would be, it's the shit. Yeah. Experience.
[00:16:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: For all stakeholders, team franchisees, fans, community, vendors, investors, in that order.
That would apply to any business.
[00:16:17] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: And. And so for you to talk about that. Right. Be passionate about that, there's no way there's going to transfer across the table.
[00:16:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Right. And that's how you get named Gua King.
[00:16:27] Speaker C: Shit. Yeah.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: No. So incredible. What. So a little bit personal. So what brought you to Savannah? You know, what are your personal aspirations? Our mission is to inspire you to live your dream.
[00:16:39] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: You know, you're Guac King, so it's hard to go up from King.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Don't know if this was your original dream or if this is a dream for you.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: It's a great dream. Don't get me wrong. Well, I came to Savannah because of scad. I still am at scad. I'm at film school.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: I've still got, like, the recent tagline that we've realized as we've hired Team Members from scad. It's SCAD for kids who can't read or do math. Good.
[00:17:03] Speaker C: Yeah, right? I can't. I still want my diploma, so I can't say anything. I'm not going to agree or disagree.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: It's okay, because that's why we're cashless. Because we are not going to have SCAD students count money and give the wrong money back.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: I think that too, but you're not.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Supposed to say it out loud, you know, but we're going to have a dope coloring book coming out pretty soon. It's going to be pretty cool. Inspired by a SCAD student. So I'm very excited.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: We'll come out with our apology podcast next week.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: Please let me graduate.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: It's all good.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: No, it'd be funny if it was.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: It's all good.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: All right, continue.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:35] Speaker C: What was I saying? I want to. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. SCAD brought me to Savannah. I used to come to Zunzies all the time as a customer. Just like here at Drayton. I loved it. Food was amazing, drinks were amazing. And then every time, I'd always be like, you know, maybe I should work there. And then one of my friends got the job at Tybee, so that kind of brought me there. And then now I'm here because I was like, I love the company. I want to stick. Like, I just want to stick.
But, yeah.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: Stuck.
[00:17:58] Speaker C: I'm stuck. I'm stuck.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: Stuck on avocado.
[00:18:01] Speaker C: Yeah. Aspirations wise, like.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: Yeah. So what are your, you know, what's your industry?
[00:18:05] Speaker C: It's down right now. Very down. And I always knew, like, that was just my passion. It's not gonna be my main moneymaker. Like, I'm just like a more like, I guess you could say, like more business and everything other, like, oriented guy.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:17] Speaker C: And I just, you know, did that. Cause that's my passion, what I want to do. But yeah, money is just like. Yeah. You know, as I said, you know, maybe opening up a guacing, you know, little taco truck this. That. Bunch of little ventures and like.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:30] Speaker C: Yeah. Real estate's another the big thing. But yeah, just a little different.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Little amazing. So when you graduate.
[00:18:35] Speaker C: A couple quarters.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:37] Speaker C: This summer.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Amazing. Well, you should help us with our podcast. We're building a studio in our office.
[00:18:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: And so you have that film background. I'm pretty sure you could figure out.
[00:18:44] Speaker C: How to, of course.
[00:18:45] Speaker A: Upload it to the tube.
[00:18:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: Right. And something like that. What's the question you have for me?
[00:18:49] Speaker C: Oh, I don't know. This Is a real tough one because I didn't think I'd. I'd get to that point.
Desires anything my heart desires. I mean, I guess, like, my question would mainly revolve around your involvement with the company or, like, how it initiated, but I feel like I know a good amount of, like, you know, I'm assuming you're a customer and.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:08] Speaker C: And that you just love the company.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: And that's one of the reasons we have the podcast.
[00:19:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: Is as the company grows, like, I want to be able to communicate our story.
[00:19:15] Speaker C: Right.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: And have that. It's why we're going to expand our podcast, you know, a couple of days a week and be able to do impromptu ones to just talk about different things as I kind of get that wild hair. Like, let's go do one. I want to share a story, be able to do that.
I fell in love with as a customer. Yeah. I used to love getting a conquistador, a South African tea. Buy my bottles of sauce. When I'd run out, you know, I'd go buy some more, wait in line and do that.
Yeah. So that's why I'm passionate about the food. That's why I'm passionate about the people. I remember Kenny chopping chicken and doing that and all the people associated with it. And. Yeah. So I would say that's how I got in it, why I'm still in it.
It's really because of the opportunity and the growth and to be able to really impact a lot of people through the business. There's no business.
It's really been in the past year that I've realized why I'm in the restaurant business. And I said this before, no business will give you the opportunity to have as many relationships as the restaurant business. It will introduce you to the coolest people.
It will challenge your beliefs about people. Right. Because you're dealing with all of the population. Right. And it's my job as a company to build a company that can make everybody say shit. Yeah. Right. And also choose the ones that you don't really care if they say shit. Yeah.
[00:20:30] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: And say no to some of them. And, you know, in general, it's the people that say no to shit. Yeah. We almost always win them over. They just don't understand it. And I think that's in our business, one of our biggest opportunities is to bring clarity to them. So it's like, instead of it taking three visits for them to understand us, it's like we hit it home right away. And that's why we do Some of the things of, like the wooden nickels to get them to come back. You know, if you sign up for the 26 Club, it's a chance for us to keep engaging with you because I know if you have three interactions with the guac king.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: There's no way we're not going to become in your top five list of restaurants.
[00:21:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: You know, with that. Because one, you know, there's, you know, you know, we all have our things, but if we're. If we're that place, you know, then three visits with. With somebody like you. Yeah. You know, that that's what really drives becoming your favorite restaurant. And people are always testing it. You know, it's like, oh, that was great that time. But, you know, well, it's good because of him. They come back and then they got tangy or Kendra or.
[00:21:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: Somebody else just doing, you know, doing a great job. It's. Now it's the company winning and it's the company making people say shit. Yeah. And that's what to me, you know, one location restaurants, man, they should be able to do that.
[00:21:46] Speaker C: Right, Right.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: You get a founder, someone that's passionate about that. Like, it's a really hard business. But, you know, that's, to me, that's expected. Like, I would hope they can do it, but to be able to scale that, that's the biggest challenge for me. And what I'm finding is the culture is becoming. It's the company culture. You know, I haven't poured a lot of time into you, but you're appreciating it. Yeah. You're preaching it. It's coming across in the reviews and, you know, making me say shit. Yes.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: When you ask that question, do you know about Chris's like, merge from five guys to like, buying Zunzies?
[00:22:21] Speaker C: Well, yeah. So I know that kind of, you know, path and that's. I guess I was also going to ask is like, what made you, like coming from five guys is like, what made you realize that Zunzies is the customer service is really what drives it? Because, I mean, I've been to five Guys and I wouldn't say there's like a shit. Yeah. Experience. It's a good burger. It's great. You know, but free peanuts. Right. But what made you realize with Zunzies is it's like, okay, I really, really need to focus on the customer relation.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, they were operating. So when I first ate there, the first time in 2008, I ate there because everybody told me to go there and waited in line, got the sandwich, the tea, the sauce, and I said, someday I'm gonna buy this and franchise it. So I put it out there.
[00:23:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: But it was because I was going through a checklist that I have. It's concept, location, operations.
[00:23:08] Speaker C: Okay. And you.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: So you can look at a chain of a thousand locations and you go, why did that location, that, that concept.
Why did they close that location? Right. Well, it's not the concept.
[00:23:20] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Right. So the concept is clearly proven. There's the location and operations left. So then you can look at it and go, okay, well, location. We can kind of see if it's a good location. It's a great location with a great concept. All it's left is operations. You know, there's some other stuff, the, the lease and stuff. But in general, if you're a great concept, you're, you know, so it's operations, it's the people. Yeah, Right. And so when I, When I, I, I saw the old location was not a great.
Was not a great location. Right. It was hard to. To serve. It was hard to, you know, it wasn't. Wasn't good for the people there. It wasn't main in Maine, you know, it was. So you've got that. So it wasn't. Location.
Operation sucked. They were closed up in the middle of a line. Being there because they were fighting. Okay. Like, the line was stalled. The line was stalled for 30 minutes. Just because they're like having, Having, like, oh, okay. Yeah. So, like, it would, like, the line would be long, a lot of days. Just because they were serving no food. Everybody was waiting.
[00:24:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: So I was like, operations not good. Right. They had their good days, right. From that. But it wasn't like, hey, we're turning 360 customers an hour. Right? There was opportunities and operations, equity and operations. And then so I was like, well, the concept, right? The team is saying shit. Yeah. The customers are saying shit. Yeah. Right.
You know, they have a unique name, unique offering with their sandwiches, Sauce centric. We're in America, right? I mean, we are. We are a country that buys food to put sauce on it. Like, it's like everything is a vessel for sauce, you know, and so that's why we have our sauces. I'm a big believer of that. And we have more coming out. We've got our hottest shit coming out. Our Mustafa curry coming out. We're gonna keep rolling these out to keep saucing it up.
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: And. And, you know, and make our fans say shit. Yeah. But, yeah, so it was that checklist that I went through and. And then finally from the experience. So it was like, well, the people are. Are doing it. There was a secret sauce say of the experience that led it. And it was one of the things when we bought it, we were like, is this a one off, like a one trick pony that's like this is location. It's so weird. And one off. That, that's, that's why it's successful.
[00:25:33] Speaker C: Right.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: And so that's why we chose to open Atlanta. Everyone's like, why didn't you open in pool or another location in Savannah? It's because I wanted to figure it out. See that we can make people say shit, yeah, up there. And it was. It's been a brutal part process. Extremely expensive, right. Figuring all of that out. But I knew if we could figure it out in a location that doesn't know us, right? And we can now they're 4 point, 4.8 rate, I think their highest rated. Atlanta. Atlanta.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: So they're a 4.8 rating and they're the highest rated, I think 1700 reviews on Google. Right. Highest rated restaurant in that area.
We figured it out. Yeah, right. We figured out how to scale shit. Yeah.
[00:26:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: And so now we're, we're doing that everywhere where we're, you know, or six straight months of five star reviews. I keep saying that because it's unheard of.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: It's insane.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: It's. It's, it's ridiculous results. But we're doing things that are different, therefore we get results. Different is very hard, but it's happening. Yeah. We're about to 86 this episode and call it a day. But because we're 86 on time, I think we should all have some guac, right? Thank you for everything you do.
[00:26:39] Speaker C: Of course.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: There you go. Ladies first. There you go.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Got it.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: All right.
[00:26:44] Speaker C: Chip the guac.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: All right.
Nice form.
There you go. Cheers. Cheers. Oh, good. Yeah.
