Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: We are live.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: Yeah. First time ever in the Office Shit yeah.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: In the new Office studio for the podcast. So big thank you to Live Nation and John and the team over there that helped us take a little dream that I had of telling stories of the restaurant business and the shit show that it is and actually just being able to launch it. And now we're on episode 20. 2020. So six more until it gets to our lucky number. But, yeah, this is really, really exciting. So now we're taking it up a notch. Hopefully we'll be able to get a couple more episodes a week. Done.
You may see some of our team members walking through. We are a restaurant that is doing a podcast in our restaurant home office franchise headquarters.
So it may get weird in regards to that, but episode 20 of the shit yeah Show. If you haven't been a part of the Shit yeah. Show before, we talk about what sucks about the restaurant business, what we love about the restaurant business that makes us say Shit yeah. And then what we're doing to change it and make it better.
So I've got Tyler Cook, content creator.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Shit yeah. Tyler.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Shit yeah. Check out his handle on Instagram.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: TylerLCook.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: There you go. Look it up. He's doing great things out there. Great guy. He's really been taking the torch of the Shit yeah. Show and been able to get us to this point and, you know, the production. So now the help that they were doing at Live Nation, that's all on your shoulders, but very capable guy to be able to do that.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: No pressure or anything.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: And then Sam Case, our private events catering retail manager, also has been on episode eight, I believe.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Episode eight. Highest views ever.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: It's an amazing episode.
Just throwing that out there.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: Yes.
So two very important people in my zoomsies and zooms of our life here and excited to get this show going. So let's see what sucks about the restaurant business. Let's start about that. And maybe what sucks about starting a podcast in the restaurant business. That could be it.
Tyler, you're up.
[00:02:20] Speaker C: Three microphones took way too long to set up.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Three microphones took way too long to set up. There's a lot of moving parts. It's funny, like, the amount of people that say, hey, you should start your own podcast and go do it. It's like, it's not as easy as you think. And especially with the goals that we have as a company, we really, you know, we focus on excellence and being a pro at everything we do. One of our values. And so coming in here and just Saying, let's wing a podcast. Like, absolutely. If you have an idea, go ahead and, like, fire off the email or make the call and go ahead and initiate it and go. But with, with our goals, we, you know, really wanted to do it right. And that's why we waited a while, had the opportunity through. He didn't like it. And Jesse Blanco, who doing a podcast with him, introduced us to John Bonus, who's now, I think he's in Denver doing amazing things over there. Excited to get him back, and I'm sure he'll be watching.
But, yeah, it's not as easy as you would think.
So Mike's big help there especially.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: I think what sucks is it's hard to stay consistent when you're trying to also build your brand.
There's a lot of moving parts. You're always constantly, you know, doing what you do to build this amazing brand. And then you've also got to, at some point in time, find time to find guests to actually come down on the podcast. So there's a lot of moving parts.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Well, that was the goal of this is it's literally in the lobby of our office. So we're doing it at lunchtime so our office can go clear out. We have some calm and peace. So, you know, everybody should be out of the office during lunch. That's our peak hour anyway, so we can focus here doing this. But really, it should be in this new setup to where when we have guests that are coming in, hey, do you want to go hop on a quick podcast? And we knock it out during lunchtime for 26 minutes, and it's very impromptu. That's what the restaurant business is. You've got to be able to bob and weave and make things work and take a, you know, a shitty experience and turn into a shitty experience.
And. And so I'm excited to see the organic nature that we're going to have of the UPS driver, FedEx guy coming in.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: You're like, hey, have a seat. Why don't you just pull up a chair?
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Different deliveries you've got, you know, it's going to be summer, so there's going to be people that are a little sweatier than normal coming through. And we're a growing company. You know, we're kind of busting at the seams now. So exciting there.
What's, you know, what's been the biggest.
The biggest thing that you think has come out of us doing it? What's, like, the big shit. Yeah. Of us doing the shit. Yeah.
[00:04:50] Speaker C: Show the biggest thing we've gotten out of it. I think we've gotten to meet a lot of really cool people, people in the industry.
Like, for me, I met William from Banana Burger, like, great business owner, just opened up a new restaurant. He's doing that. I've met like, Matt from Origin, like all these, like, very successful people who like, are either just starting or they've been doing it for years. Yeah, it's a good mix of people.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: And, you know, I think that's probably the cool thing of podcasts is it's allowed people to just be able to create their own brand.
Right. Create, you know, talk about whatever they're passionate about. And I think that's a critical piece of it is you have to have passion about this. And the restaurant business serves everybody. And for us, we always talk about the six stakeholders. Our team is number one. Right. That's that, you know, our business exists to serve our team and serve the service industry. I think that's one of the things that.
Going to make a really big focus. We've got a phenomenal new director of marketing. We've never had a director of marketing before.
That's one of the hats that I've worn and really focused more on brand building, but not really just the actual marketing and driving people to our restaurant in a way that most people understand marketing as spend money to make money, create awareness, bring people in. And so I'm excited to see now as we start taking some of those aspects of general marketing and pair it with our branding of what that that does with us, including the podcast and expanding that. Not sure where I was going with that.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: Well, also some of the positive stuff that's coming out of it, I think it's allowing the people that do tune in and see it. It's allowing them to see the different layers that's behind the scenes, a restaurant business. Because, like, if you've never worked in a restaurant business, you don't know some of the stuff we're. We're more than just people taking your order and bringing you food. Plus, it also allows people that have come on maybe to get exposure that they might not have gotten. Like Josh with the animal prints. You know, he's. He's doing stuff now. Then you actually. We brought.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: He was doing stuff before. He was, but now he's doing a.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Little bit more stuff now that he's in two of our stores and he was on the podcast. And then you have Mark Sperling, who now you get to see the other side whenever we've.
Drop the shit. Yeah.
Experience but we've how we recovered it.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: This business is imperfect people serving imperfect people. Unfortunately there's a lot of people that think they're perfect when they're getting served by imperfect people and that standards there. And it makes it very hard for the servers that are doing that or the bartenders, the people that are on that side of the counter or that side of the table to go back to. What I was saying though is the six stakeholders team is number one. Service industry is number two. A big part of what our new director of marketing is going to be focused on is really that we serve the service industry.
All service industry gets half off food seven days a week.
Half off food seven days a week. The reason why is we are not trying to make money off of the service industry. Working in the service industry can be a shit. Yeah. Experience. But it sucks a lot of the times. Nothing pisses me off more. When I go watch our team go drop $10 on Starbucks, I'm like, come on, like what? What can we do? And so I've got some big visions on what that's going to do and how we're going to change restaurant business with that employee meal and with, with the half off service industry and, and, and us doing that and getting other restaurants on board. Imagine a world where all service industry got half off seven days a week.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: That's crazy everywhere.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Especially when you make restaurants busier. Yeah.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: And especially with Hilton Head where we have a ton of new amazing seafood. Just to go get 50 off seafood.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Is ridiculous to talk marketing and where we're going. I think what Zunzibar is right now and our big focus right now is Zunzibar. That's what we're growing. Zunzies is the seed brand that we started. Exciting stuff. We're working on a Zunzies location downtown. So we're not, not growing that. But that's gonna allow us to really go all in on Zunsa bar downtown. Go all in on Zunzies. Keep refining that model, keep focusing on our fans saying shit, yeah.
But the seafood menu is how we're evolving Zunzibar. When Zunzibar initially started, it was let's take our award winning sandwiches and pretty simple takeout menu and pair it up with a vibey beach bar experience. And it worked. We tripled sales overnight.
We moved two blocks away. It was incredible. But the restaurant business sucks. It's now costing twice as much to open a restaurant. Food costs are up 29% of what they are. Up 29%. Right? Yeah. Insane. Of what that Impacts the business. And so what we have to do is we have to evolve. If restaurants are not evolving and focusing on marketing, innovation and marketing are the two things you have to succeed in this environment.
We're going to be tip of the spear on doing that. We're going to do things that everyone's going to scratch their head and go, that's not Zoom Z. That's not Zoom Zbarb. Zoom these. And Zunzibar exists to make you say, shit, yeah, that's it. So whatever that is. Right. And I believe growing a concept that does that will make more people say, shit. Yeah. If we don't focus on marketing and innovation and constantly evolving and moving to where the shit. Yeah. Experience is, we'll actually be going in the opposite direction. And you're seeing that in the restaurant business quite a bit. Restaurants closing left and right, bankruptcies happening left and right. It is a very hard place to be in the restaurant business.
And in my role as co founder, CEO of a company that I want to grow, my position impacts a lot of people. Those six stakeholders are really, really, really important to me.
And in general, the restaurant business is a terrible steward of the two most important stakeholders that they have to succeed. I'll talk a whole lot more about this over the next year, two years, as our company evolves into something much, much bigger. Little teaser on that, but your team and your fans are really the key to your entire business. And I would say restaurants are terrible stewards of both of those. They're constantly now hiring. And then you go in there and it sucks. And it sucks a lot of times in our restaurants. Even now, even though we're mindful of it, it's about direction, not perfection. Getting better every day, better training every day, hiring better. Just all of our practices, let's just keep moving in the right direction. We'll never be perfect.
And then your fans, you're always running deals, you're trying to do things to get them in, and then you go and it sucks. It's like, well, why do you run the deal anyways? Right? So then it goes back to, what are we trying to do? Be good stewards of the people we already have? And it's why we're so focused on the 26 club, is if you join and you give us your phone number to text you, that's a relationship that we now have, and we want to grow that relationship. And the way we see that as more engagement. And so we're not perfect at it. We're testing things. Right. If you're a part of a zooundies and zoonzibar now, you know, you are a lab rat, and I'm kind of the chemist testing a lot of things out because we have bigger plans, and that's kind of how we have to grow it. So two key stakeholders there, but then you've got second are the franchisees.
And I'm really excited about to have our podcast here because we're gonna have prospective franchisees coming in. We have 17 franchises sold down in Florida.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Shit. Yeah.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: So we've got really exciting things coming up.
New locations happening in Florida. We haven't really teased that because we haven't had a director of marketing to kind of go and do all those. But we've waited till the last minute.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: Now we do.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: Now we do. Which is fun. But a bunch of Florida locations opening up, selling territories in the southeast in 10 states.
But as people are coming in in franchising, one of the things that sucks about franchising is what they call Discovery days.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: Discovery Days. And everyone calls it a discovery day. And good buddy and mentor of mine, Jeff Senelli, from which witch is the only one that I know that calls it something different? He calls it a leap day. And I was just in Dallas, spent six hours with him, so grateful of time, and he called it a leap day. And I did a leap day with him. Back before I bought Zundi's, I almost franchised which Witch? One of my favorite sandwich shops.
And I never knew what to call it. And so we're gonna call our Discovery days Shooting the shit.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Oh, I love it.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: And if you come as a prospective franchisee, you're gonna have to sit in one of these seats, and we're gonna shoot the shit about what sucks about the restaurant business, what you love about it, and what you're gonna do to change it, or what you are doing to change it. We're not giving the keys to the Zunza bar or Zunza's Castle. Right. And that name to just anybody. They're gonna be people that are successful already operating other restaurants. They're running great organizations that are people focused. They're already taking care of their six stakeholders that they have. They're good stewards of that because they have a proven track record. I believe success leaves clues. And so that applies to the restaurant business as well.
So that's franchisees. You talked about three. And you got vendors over these next, let's call it 126 episodes that will knock out between now and end of the year. Maybe you'll Be very busy.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: Very busy.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: Our vendor is going to be a big theme. Look at all the sauces. We have an amazing partnership. Went through five different vendors over now 10 years to get these sauces done. Look out via the 26th club. We'll be running a bunch of deals to where you can buy sauce.
I think that probably the first one's gonna be five bottles of sauce for 26 bucks. Insane deal.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: That's a steal.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: So you can get the rainbow of flavors delivered to you anywhere in the country. But sauce is our sword. We want to take, you know, average food that you probably have that you're getting from somebody else and, you know, make it a shit. Yeah. Experience. Add some hottie shit sauce or some curry sauce or whatever it is. And. But our vendors over at Frogmore Bottling have just been incredible.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: You know, seaside growing. They're the largest, I think, tomato farmer. And in South Carolina, they go way back and got in the business from, you know, having extra tomatoes and making Bloody Mary mix, and now they're bottling our sauce. So cool stuff there.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: And it's cool to see the process going there and visiting.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Yes. You've been able to do that.
I think you refined your. Your sauce.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: Yes, I can tell.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: The dank is amazing. Now with a new honey mustard, I've got to get so shout out to that. And the drizzle is really, really good as well. They're all fantastic. But.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: And so we're doing small batches, right? So they're small batches. They're around 2500 bottles each. And we're doing that because we're constantly trying to improve. Every time we have an initiative that we're trying to move away from seed oils or trying to move towards healthier fats, doing all these things. And so all this, it's over time. If you can improve a little bit every day, a little bit every week, you can transform your life and your business. And that's what we're doing.
So you've got that you get your vendors, right. So we just talked about them and then let's see. Investors. Right? And so we are going to have restaurant investors coming on board. We have amazing investors that are currently on board. We're always looking for more investors. I like more, not less, because I get to have all the relationships with them and talk about the business and see why they're crazy enough to invest in the restaurant business.
But, you know, that's the six stakeholders and that's what we do with the shit. Yeah. Show. So podcast let's see. We know what sucks about it. I think, to me, what I've enjoyed the most of the podcast is hearing from people. You know, to be honest, I don't really care if you necessarily listen to the whole podcast. We try to keep it at 26 minutes. So that way you have four minutes to go.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: To go potty.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: To go potty. There you go. Yeah, show. Just keep it on brand before your next meeting. But that 30 minutes that you have 26 minutes, we value it, but it's really for some clips to where we can kind of engage. And our LinkedIn has been really, really good. We've had multiple investor leads come from that. Multiple franchise leads come from that of just the podcast of us talking about the restaurant business.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: Well, you just don't see it. You don't see a lot of restaurant podcast out there.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: There's a lot of. A lot of restaurant talking about just restaurant business. And it's usually vendors that are talking about scheduling or managing cost of goods or hiring or these different things, or private equity groups, investment groups.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: Boring stuff.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Not actually a boring.
There you go. And so I think giving a voice to all six stakeholders is a lot of fun, but it's fun to talk to people that, as I meet them, they're like, hey, I saw one of your podcasts, or I listened to it, or I saw a clip that's really awesome. And it's cool because it's getting able to share not just my story of what it is, but it's really getting to celebrate all of the amazing people that go into a business that really is, if not the first, the second largest employer in almost every state.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Impacts everybody. And if you don't go to restaurants, I don't know what you do. At some point, I think everybody engages it, and that's a critical piece of that.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Well, everyone's got to eat. Are you dying?
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Everyone's got to eat. Yes, it is one of the essential things. Real.
Um, let's see. So what do we maybe, you know, from talking about the changes. I think we kind of talked about some of the changes of the restaurant business and the podcast of what we're doing.
Clearly, I'm excited about it.
What, what do you guys have any thoughts? I'm going to have a sip of my Hawaiian punch about the changes or.
[00:18:13] Speaker C: Like what we're doing to change.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you know, there's. There's probably a lot for you because now you're in like a whole different. You're like the dj.
[00:18:21] Speaker C: I mean, this is a lot of fun.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: You did an amazing job. I mean, just the design and getting all this set up. I'm excited to see how it comes through on the camera.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: Yeah, me too. I love the fact that I don't have to leave, lose my parking spot whenever we film a podcast now.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Yes. I was always greasing the wheel with sauce bottles and wooden nickels, passing them out to the valet, and they were, you know, they were great with us. But, yeah, you know, I think the best part about this is going to be just that we're going to be able to do more. I've got some ideas on different segments that we can do.
You know, let's get Weird Wednesdays. That can be a fun one.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: And I love that we're right in front of the window because we've already had people walking by kind of looking like, what is going on in there?
[00:19:04] Speaker A: There you go. There's always something weird going on in our office, but you got a time check, Anybody? There we go. 19 minutes. 19 minutes. Got it. Well, very good.
Well, I think for purposes of this, we're gonna go ahead and give you six minutes back of your time. This is really as a test run of the new podcast and the setup, and we'd love to get any feedback from you guys on what you'd like to see moving forward of the podcast as well.
Yeah. Now we've got all these sauces, so we can play sauce roulette. Which sauce do we want to crack open?
[00:19:42] Speaker C: Which sauce?
[00:19:45] Speaker B: I.
Any of them for me?
[00:19:47] Speaker C: I think I'm gonna go for the curry.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Nice. There you go.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: Oh, nice.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: Like that. I'm with a new dank.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: The new dank. And I think I.
I'm gonna go with hottest shit. It's normally not.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: My Hottest is my new favorite.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: It's not my cup of tea, but I do tasting it that day at 9 o' clock in the morning.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: We've tweaked the recipe so it's a little sweeter on the front.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: It is.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: And then the heat kind of catches up to you at the end.
There we go. We got the Jose's coming in, putting a door in the new office.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah, we should. We should have them on the podcast.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: Yes, that would be amazing.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: All right, well, cheers to the new podcast.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: To 106 more episodes.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: That's really good.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: It really is.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: That's like the OG Dank, because it's.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Made with more of the honeycomb.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: It does get hot when it settles. Oh, it gets hot.
I tasted it that morning, and it was fresh, but now, I guess after.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: It ferments, it kind of breathes and. There you go.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: It's good. It is really good, though.
I don't know if I should take a shot of it.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: It's. Thank y' all.
That was a big shot.
All right.
Yeah. So.
[00:21:07] Speaker C: Yeah, let's go.
