Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, we got 1, 2, 3, go.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: Yeah. All right. Kendrick. 1, 2, 3, go, man. Super excited to be here on episode three of the Shit Yes. Show.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Shit yes. Shit.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: I've got Sarah.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hood.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: What's good in the hood, Sarah.
[00:00:11] Speaker C: Hey, how you doing?
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Living the dream every day. Got Kendall with us.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Hey, hey, hey. What's up, everybody?
[00:00:18] Speaker B: All right. And then, of course, we've got Dahlia Simpson. Hello. Hello. Gonna be moderating, keeping us on track as we are in the restaurant business, and we can get in the weeds pretty quickly in conversation and in tickets and all sor. Of stuff.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Super excited for this episode. Episode three, because in the shit. Yeah. Promise. We have six stakeholders. The first one is our team. And I've got Sarah and Kendrick, who've been with us. Really what I consider OG since I've been with the business almost 10 years. And 2015 for you. 20.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: 2018.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: 2018. Going back to the York street location where we were getting weird every day.
[00:00:59] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: With that. So excited to talk about in all things Shit yeah. What sucks about the restaurant business, what we're doing to improve it, and also what we love about it, what makes they shit. Yeah. So, yeah. Just want to get this started. Thank you so much for coming.
[00:01:14] Speaker C: Thanks for having me.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for inviting me to this.
[00:01:17] Speaker C: I'm excited.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: So I feel like this is officially getting going with the Shit yeah Show because now we can really get into the weeds of what sucks about the restaurant business. And we were able to talk, you know, a little bit offline as we were waiting for Delia to get here.
[00:01:31] Speaker D: I hit the train. I didn't actually hit the train hit the train, but I hit the train tracks while the train was going.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Yeah. The trains in Savannah are no joke. They will blow up your schedule, and you'll be late to your shift for sure.
[00:01:43] Speaker C: Every time.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: And I think everybody understands it in Savannah with that being the case, but, yeah, let's just dive right into it. So I would like to ask, how did you get in the restaurant business? When and how?
[00:01:54] Speaker C: My first job was checkers. I was in high school, actually. The worst job I ever had.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: All right, let's get.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: Worst job I ever had. They didn't really train me well.
They fired me on my day off.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: So it wasn't.
[00:02:10] Speaker C: It wasn't really good. So I didn't. It wasn't a good experience for me.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Where'd you get fired for?
For having a day off.
[00:02:17] Speaker C: No. I don't know. They said I wasn't grasping It. But they wasn't teaching me anything too.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: So there you go. Okay.
[00:02:23] Speaker C: They fired me, right?
[00:02:25] Speaker D: I fired them.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Me. I had a lot of family that owned restaurants, so I was always helping out. But when I was in high school, I got luckily enough to be invited into a dual enrollment program through where I could go to culinary school, like a professional culinary school, while also finishing my high school classes. So I worked there and I kind of just learned nice skills cooking, making soup stocks, the master sauces and things like that. And that kind of just led me into keep pushing to go to restaurants. And then pretty much as soon as I moved out here in Savannah in 2018, I immediately got hired at Zunzki. Like, immediately. I stepped foot and my friend brought me over in William. William? Yes.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: The William from episode two that everybody.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. William leflower Bandana burger.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Yes. Everybody knows William laflower. It's kind of all roads lead back to William and he'll be back on. I'm super pumped because we can talk a lot, but both of you. So you were hired by William.
[00:03:15] Speaker C: I was hired by William.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: There you go. I stole William because he was trying to steal my people. We talked about that at the five guys on Whitmarsh. So let's kind of talk about that. So you know that that's your experience with how you got in the business?
[00:03:30] Speaker C: Yes. Well, then my actual. I consider Chipotle my real fresh job. So I was working at Chipotle. That's how I met Will. He was a GM there, and Larry, he was the assistant gm and we worked there for a long time. And I was getting tired of working at Chipotle. And my mom at the time, she worked right across the street from New York street location. So I was visiting my mom and he was like.
And I was like, that sounds familiar. I turned around as well. What are you doing? Come on. Steal you from Chipotle. I said, wait a minute.
I don't know how this work or nothing like that. I'm just like, what kind of food is this? You don't need to know none of that. I teach you when you get here. Interview tomorrow at 3. I'm like, okay, I got an interview when I was hired. I've been having since.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: That's amazing. So Larry, who will definitely be on the Shit yeah show. Well, he was there too. So he was at Chipotle. So that's all kind of really on purpose to get a Chipotle following. They've been one of the best companies for a super, super long time now. It's 15, 20 years. Started in Denver. Everybody knows Chipotle, right?
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: And they're getting texts about free guac all the time, which is good.
So there you go.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: William with you, my William story, it's pretty simple. Pretty sweet, man.
I've known him for a while, but I came into Savannah. My best friend at the time, Thomas, he was at Zunzi's.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: And one day he just kind of called me. He's like, hey, can you come pick me up? Cause I had just moved here and he was kinda letting me stay with him for a little bit. So he's like, come pick me up. I come, I pull up. And he's like, you want some food? And I walk in and it's William. And he's like, hey, man, you gotta get some food. This, that, whatever. I'm like, oh, what should I get? He's like, you gotta get this bread bowl. I'm like, why? Why would I get that? That sounds terrible. It's like 9:00. I don't want that. He's like, no, you gotta get this. And I'm like, all right, well, if you're pushing it, it must be great. So it built me pretty much an Oliver's lunch. And it was amazing.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: And then that was in the Bunny Chow.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: The Bunny Chow.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Bunny Chow. You gotta bunny chow, bunny chow. He pretty much pulled me to the side. He was like, hey, you need a job? I was like, yeah, Under Armour's not working out. I don't know what's going on. I'm trying to get back in the restaurant business. And he was like, hey, come tomorrow. I said, come tomorrow what? He's like, come tomorrow. Bring some jeans. Bring some non slips. She was like, I don't own either of those things. I've been working the Under Armour. I only own sweatpants. He's like, all right, we'll figure it out tomorrow. Just come tomorrow and we'll figure the rest of it.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: Everything is tomorrow. Just come tomorrow.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: And I came.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: Everything is.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: We'll figure it out. And I came. I told him, I'm like, I'm on the way back from Walmart. I just got some jeans and some non slip shoes. He's like, all right, cool. And you're just going to go straight into the kitchen when you get here. And I. It's been up since then. Been in the kitchen. Went from the kitchen to the line and been.
[00:06:01] Speaker C: He gonna throw you in there. There's no training. Just go in there.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: You train as you go. Which I think in some businesses is like a really good, like the way to like, kind of see where people are. Like, you gotta figure out, well, you.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: Know, you know, especially when you're starting off. We had one location, we were trying to figure things out. It's not like we're, you know, a franchise at the time, that we've got everything buttoned up. And I'm a huge believer of constant and never ending improvement. So 1% better every day. We're constantly doing that in the restaurant business. What that means is we're constantly changing a little bit, sometimes a lot as we find things. And that's not easy. You know, really what you guys want to do is you want to show up, you know, be on time, have people to work with. Right, Right. Then just have a regular day. I say the restaurant business, the goal is Groundhog Day. You know, maybe we get busy and hopefully we're staffed for it outside of what our projections are. But anything outside of a normal day, I think sucks for you guys. Like, you don't want surprises, you don't want something to break or there's call outs and these things. It always comes back on you guys. And, you know, I think that's one of the things that, you know, when you're small, it's a hard thing to let go. And you got to find the right people that I think have the empathy for your frontline people. And what I find as I go to a lot of conferences and I'm very blessed to get speaking opportunities, is I think there's just this building gap of empathy for the people that are actually making the experience happen in the restaurant. And then you talk about tech and how that's layering in. And we're trying to add tech to the business, call it tech stack of all these different software that has to speak together, you guys have to use it. They're all companies that are big or small that are changing things because everything's changing. Everything is changing at such a fast speed. Now you add AI, and who knows what that's gonna happen to.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:49] Speaker D: So we'll talk to Kevin about AI. He was scared.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: So one of our big initiatives, one of our big initiatives for next year for me is to make AI like one of our X factors of a business on the internal side of the business, meaning we use it and leverage it so we can be as efficient as possible. Because I think if you aren't doing that in five years, you're going to just be completely elapsed. It's Moving so fast. But I wanted to enhance the guest experience, and I don't want it to replace when, you know, when that goes from our team to our customer, you know, turning them into a fan. I don't want that to be replaced by AI and robots.
That's not where I want to be with this. And I think, you know, hopefully that's a positive thing for you guys with that. But talk about the tech stack. So what sucks about. Here we go. So that's how you got in the restaurant business. That's how you got into Zunzi's. You're on the shit. Yeah. Show. Because I love you guys. I've been in the weeds with you guys many times.
I think, you know, one of our value, just live with passion. I'm super passionate about it, and I'm more passionate now than ever, and that's why I'm able. You know, I'm excited to be able to do this because now I want to give you guys a voice. I would love for, like, 26% of all of our podcasts to be interviewing our team, other team members, or restaurants, and it's really give them an opportunity to talk about what it is, not just people that really aren't using the product. Right, Right. It's really important. So let's see what sucks about the restaurant business right now, I would say.
[00:09:19] Speaker A: And you just kind of brung it up, being in the weeds with us, which is always. I feel like just like one of the. My favorite things about working at Zunzies, especially York Street Zunzies, is that if Chris comes to the line and he sees the line isn't going right, he'll kick everybody else off the line and put people back in place the way he thinks it should be in places. And at that point, when Chris is on the line by himself, you're waiting for him to look back and point at you and be like, you come right here. You're like, me first coach put me in the game. Now he put me in the game. I feel like I've worked at a lot of restaurants, especially in my time away from Zunzies, with the experience I built here. I've worked at restaurants where I'm like, the owner, maybe the managers of this, that whatever, they can't get on the line. They can't serve the guests. They can only tell you about what you did wrong and this, that, whatever, but you can't also show me the correct way to do stuff. And I think that's just a big issue. Everybody from the Top to the bottom. Should be able to come in and make a conquistador. Sarah from the office can come in right now and make three booty rolls in a conquistador and have no problem.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Just.
[00:10:16] Speaker C: Yeah, right. She might have a question, but she knows. She knows how to make it. She knows how to make it.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: She knows the base.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: So we're gonna have Sarah in the office. You know, Sarah's with me. Shoot. Almost 13 years, I think. Now I always ask her how long it's been, because in Zunzi's time, it's always 26 years.
So, you know. Awesome. It warms my heart to hear you say that. You know, I talk all the time about York Street. I've never had more fun in a restaurant.
[00:10:44] Speaker C: Right? That was the most fun.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: I've never had more fun playing Chromeo. Right. We were getting so weird and we could do whatever we wanted, and everybody just said, shit. Yeah.
[00:10:55] Speaker C: It's just like when you go upstairs, like to the prep, you just never know what somebody up there doing. Like, they could be having so much fun up there.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Everybody has their own energy, own vibe in that section.
[00:11:06] Speaker C: Right. It reminds me kind of like upstairs of like Club 51, where one side is like, they playing disco music.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:12] Speaker C: The trap music over here.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Just like, what is. What is going on up here?
[00:11:16] Speaker B: You got chicken wrapping, concrete mixer. Right. Sauce. Right. You got, you know, all. All this stuff going on. The half floor is two and a half stories in a fire stairwell.
[00:11:26] Speaker C: It was so much fun.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: There were birds flying back to tourist. It was like. It was. It was crazy.
[00:11:31] Speaker D: Birds in there.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Cuz all the doors were kind of open. Like, the. The wind curtains are on. So, you know, health department's happy, but the birds are not stopping that wind curtain. They're going straight through there.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: They're like, hey, we've made lots of improvements.
[00:11:43] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: I mean, I caught a rat at the door.
[00:11:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Got the video of it.
But I caught a rat on a Saturday with a.
[00:11:50] Speaker C: Seen the rat for the first time.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: That was it. So, you know, I appreciate you saying that. What sucks for you about the restaurant business? I know we kind of touched about the tech stack, which is sometimes for.
[00:12:03] Speaker C: Me, it's the communication. We still working on that. Like, just everybody being on the same page with everybody. Cause, you know, like, one person can say, well, I ordered this. And then they told the rest of the people, we don't order more. So now we got two orders of that. And it's just like, if we all just could have communicated get out of the way. That would've been different. But what I can say about like just being in a restaurant, period, this is the first restaurant I ever been in where there's no drama with the team. You know what I'm saying? Like you go to other restaurants and stuff like that. They always beefing with somebody at the team. You never can have like a good day. This is the first restaurant that everybody get along from the back of the house to the front of the house to the managers. Like it's all like a big family. Even like when we busy or something like that. And we kind of get caddy at the end.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: I just need caddy.
[00:12:53] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
We've had our moments, right? We have. And you know, that's first of all, I could have been fired. That's the start there. I mean, when we get into it, it's kind of intense, but I think it's as real. Like it's not. It's passionate. It's like we both have passionate for the job and the store and stuff like that. So it's just like it's not being nasty or trying to be respectful to each other. It's like we both have the same.
And it's just like you not hearing me. I'm not hearing you. And it's just instead of us, it's taking a moment. It's like, be quiet. We already had. It's just like we already had.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: I think one of the like, if you want to get me and Sarah, Sarah Hood worked up, doing soft sides, right?
[00:13:32] Speaker C: And then it's the same doing soft.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: Sides when it's like rusty, where too much are not enough.
[00:13:37] Speaker C: We both talk, we both look at each other and the eyes is very intense. Like just go home. It's like he said, you fired for.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: The people that can see this. I'm fired for the people that can see this. Sarah and Chris are tall people and I'm a very large guy, but Sarah and Chris are slightly taller than me each. And when they're like doing that, I've never felt smaller in my life. Like, I've never felt like, am I still 6 2?
[00:13:59] Speaker C: And it's never an apology. It's just the next day we're at work, we're good. We all know what happened.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: We're good. You know, it's. And now I think, you know, it's tough in my role that it's been as like, you know, it was a founder led company, right? And now it's leader led. We've grown the company now we're committed to our org chart. We've got Kevin running operations and he's had such a great track record. And I think it really gets me excited because we've been in this transition in order for us to grow and do what we're doing in the next six months to a year with franchising probably five, six locations opening next year. Tripling in size as a company, sales wise. All the opportunity that's there.
It's great to see that you're talking about that now when I'm not in the day to day. Right. And now we're building a company. And so that culture and that vision that I've had for a long time, man, I've always known the restaurant business sucks, right? And so it's been this bullseye that I've had and now there was clarity on it and now we can bring light to these things. So there we go. There's a few things that suck about the restaurant business.
Let's see what the tech stack though. I want to talk with you guys about that. We operated in Covid with you guys. I'm Already pretty sure UberEats rolled out while we were at York Street. And you've got the disruption of what that looks like. When we were doing bike delivery and.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: We'Ve had all the delivery platform. If there was a delivery platform we could have got. We had waiter before that went away. We had everything before they dissolved in the one GrubHub.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: We had Amazon. We were buying it all doordash. It wasn't integrated. So we're having to enter.
[00:15:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: It would come in. You'd have to re enter it into the screen, like put in comments. It wasn't communicating, reconciling all of that. I mean, we had so many orders coming through at that little location.
I'm gonna create a Zunzies and my goal is to make that the model of like that feel. And that's what, you know, we'll talk about it. Of how do we create that feel?
[00:15:57] Speaker C: I love that it was just interacting with the guests, like all the puns, you know what I'm saying? And just having fun with them. I feel like the servers, I'm so jealous of them. The servers get to have so much more fun with the fans. And we like in the bag that's doing the food and stuff like that. Like we could come outside and interact with them, but it's not the same feeling where they was in the line and you making their food and you entertaining them. And then the line used to be so long wrapped around your screen, where you had to have other people go out there with popsicles explaining the sandwiches, how we got the number one sandwich, the number two sandwich, you know, just interacting with bada bing, bada shit, all that stuff with this.
I miss that.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a, you know, our tea puns, I think were the number one. You know, if you spill your tea on your, you know, shirt, you have a T shirt.
[00:16:47] Speaker C: Tea test.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: Sometimes I. I drink so much, I tee my pants to infinity.
[00:16:52] Speaker C: Those were Chrissy's puns.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: I didn't say that.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Infinity and tion. Yes, there were. There were so many of them. And they were like the lulls of the business there to where you like just completely, you know, lose your mind and flow with it. But no, I think there's, you know, that's part of the secret sauce, you know, that we put together. And, you know, we're seeing amazing results with it. You guys are seeing what's happening. In nine months, we had 980 reviews, averaging 4.7 now in the past nine weeks since launching out, you know, our internal program 26X, really focused on the 26 Club. 960 reviews in nine weeks.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: An average five star rating for all locations. And the star of all of this, actually what we're talking about is Atlanta. Atlanta has probably gotten half of those reviews, you know, in the Zoom these model, which is smaller and a lower volume.
[00:17:44] Speaker D: Yeah. They still have the intimate, like across the glass vibe.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: And so they're getting weird. The personalities are there. We're getting. Gary's getting common and Larry's there. New manager, Xavier. Like, amazing stuff that they're doing. Chico is pushing dank sauce down there and just having a lot of fun with it. And we're doing it not at York Street. And so to me, it's like, now that's the next step of the Zoom disease model is they're showing the power of the shit. Yeah. Experience the power of the shit. Yeah. Sauce.
It's coming through in reviews. And then leverage the 26 club. So let's talk about that. Of what, you know, what do you love about the restaurant business?
[00:18:23] Speaker C: Just like for me, I love the people. It's just like we spend majority of our time at the store. So you have to get along with these people to, you know, have a good day. I just love the energy and how much of a family we are. Like, family's a big word. I know, but it's.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: I don't like calling it a family in my mind because I'm like, family is so important to me. And it's thrown around so loosely when you say it. I'm totally down with it. Cause I want that. Right? Cause, like, when it's family, it's like, those are people that at 3am you can call them and they're gonna be there, but there's a feeling of work, family. I'm with you.
[00:19:07] Speaker C: Right? Cause, you know, like, you talk to them like, you know, when you're having a bad day, you can rely on them to give you that good energy when they're there. So you're like, I'm having a bad day. But when I get around them, it's just like, they bring my energy up and stuff.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: So let's talk about that. What's your number today?
[00:19:21] Speaker C: My number is an eight.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: Eight? Shit, yeah.
[00:19:23] Speaker C: I'm an eight.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: I'd have to agree. I'm definitely an eight or a nine. I'm up here today.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Eight or a nine.
[00:19:29] Speaker D: So, Delia, I'll give it a eight and a half.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Shit, yeah, I'm a nine. This is fun.
This is why I'm in the restaurant business, is we're here to change it. And the way we do it is by talking about it and to talk about it being family and relationships. I believe the restaurant business, we have the ability to have so much impact on people. The industry employs so many people. It takes so many people to make a sandwich and a cocktail. Right. And do that. Right. And then we serve so many people, thousands of people in our couple of restaurants that we have. And as we grow, it's gonna have more and more impact. And I believe that's the. You know, your relationships are the greatest thing that God gives you in this business. Your team is number one relationship. Your fans are number two. And we get to have so many of them. And so I think you have to be passionate about people to be in this business, you know, and there are opportunities where it's like, we got people who just, like, they just love washing dishes.
[00:20:27] Speaker C: Right?
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: We got Gage and Gage.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Gage crushes dishes. Right. He's in the zone. Right. And he's knocking them out. And there's a place for everybody, I think, in the restaurant business, and I think everybody's got those stories. So, you know, I love that. That's certainly why I'm in. It is the restaurant business sucks. I want to grow our company to build a big umbrella that we can fit more people under it. So the more locations we have, the more impact we have with that Kendrick how about you?
[00:20:58] Speaker A: I would just say I just love making good food. Like, I feel like I've worked in place. Like, I have a thing where I say I never work somewhere where I already know I like to eat there, because you never want to meet your heroes. I started working at Publix, and I found out things were working a certain way, and I was like, I wish I'd never seen this. I like this before I saw this. The chicken at Publix is always great. Don't even worry about that. But Zunzi's, I feel like I didn't know what I was going into. And then after a while, I'm like, this food is actually super good. Like, everything I'm eating is good. Like, anything that even changed slightly, I'm like, this still tastes really good. Like, people are like, oh, I want to like, no, this still tastes really good. I don't know what you guys are looking for, but it's delicious in here, right? So I think as long as you're in there and you feel like you're making good food and the people around you want to make good food, and I feel like that is what everybody is trying to do at Zunzi's. Like, everybody. No one wants to serve something bad. Like, I don't even see people. Like, even me. Like, I'll put something together, and someone next to me be like, you need to put more of this on there. And I'm like, you think? So you telling me I need to make this better? Me from 2018, Zunzi's, you telling me I'm not making this right? And then they'll probably be right. Honestly, you can always, you know, improve on what you're making. So I think the want and need to make really good product and get it out. And then, like you said, we're getting a lot of reviews, so if it's coming out good, they're eating it, it tastes good, and it's gonna come back and reward us in so many ways. So I think that's just my favorite part.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: So it's passion. You're passionate about the people. You're passionate about the food. I'm passionate about both. I'm sure it's a combination of both, but I think if you're gonna be successful in our company, you gotta be passionate. There's no way around it.
[00:22:27] Speaker C: There's no way.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: Live with. Passion is one of our values, and I love hearing that. And passion can be fiery sometimes. We've gotten into it. We've got into it, but it's just.
[00:22:40] Speaker C: Passion because where you started from and then now that you can see where it's going, it's just like.
It's totally different.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: We're so close. Like, if you guys knew what's in my head and what I see coming. It's like all the things that we've talked about are literally within the next three, six months to a year.
[00:22:57] Speaker C: Like, I'm so happy. Like, I'm here now. Like, I'm super, super excited because I just see the growth and I just see what's going on. I'm just like. Just like you always say, if you're not here the next five years, you missing out.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Oh, Amber Alert.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: There we go.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: It's also that one of those things where it's like, I feel bad for people who didn't get to experience some of the downs. Like, I've been in a lot of restaurants. I've helped restaurants open and this, that, whatever. But to experience the York street and, like, all the things. And, like, to see how many things in a restaurant can break so easy and how many, like, little things, like, for. Sometimes Chris will come in and he'll see something wrong, and he'll go around and just close the doors, and that means we have to fix this thing. And then he'll open the doors. Once everything's fixed, everything's back in order. And that is just really.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: That's one of my. One of my things is, like, we're in a business where you're open, you know, six, seven days a week, 11 to 11. Right. Some restaurants are more than that. But we got people in the restaurant, 5, 6am, stay until 1 2am doing stuff. It's a 24, 7 business. Yeah, right. And so it is death by a thousand cuts. And to think that you're gonna be open every day, right. And not have problems. And, like, you gotta build that into the expectation of what are you really trying to do? And I think I come back to. And why we're here is what makes you say shit. Yeah. Right. We talked about that. But my number one priority is to make our team say shit.
[00:24:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: That's it. I know. If our team is doing it and our franchisees are saying shit. Yeah. And their team is doing it. Our fans, our guests, when they come in, we're gonna turn them into fans.
[00:24:30] Speaker C: Shit.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: Yeah, Right. And we have those lag indicators we talk about of reviews and sales and membership of the 26 Club. You know, I think that's probably the biggest thing we're doing that I Think you love. And you know, you know, what you both brought up is, you know, what are we doing to change the restaurant business? I think that's the number one thing we're doing different is I believe that all restaurants are not good steward of those two most important relationships that God gives us. Yeah, every restaurant's, you know, I say every, but like every restaurant's now hiring.
[00:25:01] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: It's always right. And then there's always deals that are running like crazy to try to get people in the door. But then when you go in the restaurant, they're nasty. It sucks.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: Right?
[00:25:12] Speaker C: It sucks attitude.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Right. Or then when you go to work there and there's no orientation, it's like, it's like OG 2018 William's like, go up two stairs to the left, go past the rat, right?
Two roaches, that's your spot.
[00:25:27] Speaker D: The rat's your trainer, by the way.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: Right. And so that restaurant should have never been opened probably. But, you know, that's part of the stories that, you know that's there. But so the 26 Club is just. I love it because it's not a loyalty program, it's a fan club. It's where I want to build relationships with our fans when they join. Right. Our goal is to turn them into fans. And it's two way text communication. And the more we get, the more we got to engage and keep on doing that. We have the phone number for you guys as well. To be able to text me, you know, we probably need to call that a club or something. Something so as knowledge, like, you know, text, text me. And then it's weird. But I think that's different is it hit me one day where I'm like, we're not being a good steward of the existing team we have at the level we could be and we're not. And I'm gonna ask you this question. The same thing with our customers. We have people that are coming in that they're not getting the shitty experience that we want. And then we want sales to go up. Right. But they're already in the door. I don't believe we get more in this life of what we waste or we're not good stewards of. And so both of those with 26x and this program we've launched internally, you know, Kevin's on fire about it. You know, it's such a focus. We're seeing the results of new fans in the 26 club with that, but it's really being a good steward of those relationships. So with that being said, the question I ask a lot of people, what percentage of people do you believe in. Zunzi. Zunzibar. Are getting the shit. Yeah. Experience.
How many of our. Like, what percentage of our customers?
[00:27:00] Speaker A: I wanna say somewhere in the, like, 60 percentile, I was gonna say. Cause I do see a lot of returning people. Especially as someone who, like, sees all the ticket names and things like that. Like, I see people who almost order every day the same item.
[00:27:14] Speaker C: Like, Phil.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Yeah, Phil for sure. Shout out to Phil. I don't know if you know who you are, but you know who you are. You know what you're ordering.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Comes on Wednesdays. He gets the double booty on the Olivers with extra dressing.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:27:24] Speaker C: Now he's moved on to, like, in the peach chutney. He loves the peach chutney.
Cause he used to love the dank sauce, but now he's at the peach chutney stage.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: And that's a good thing about our sauces, man. If you're not feeling some sauces one day, the next day you might be feeling the dank. You might be wanting the hottest shit days. The Perry. Perry is good. And now we have these wings. We didn't have wings at York Street. These wings is a game changer, people. Someone stopped me last night and was like, you make the wings in here? I'm like, yeah. He's like, you're killing it. I'm like, shit, man.
[00:27:50] Speaker B: I'm just following the rest of the best wings and wings. That's a big statement. Atlanta is really popular with the. Well, the dank wings are coming up there. And the new Limon Pepper.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Limon, Right.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: So it's our version of lemon Pemon.
[00:28:04] Speaker C: This is new to the fans because they're not used to us having wings and nachos and, you know, handmade chips and stuff like that. They used to just the sandwiches, the voodoo chips and the cookies.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Yep. So what we're doing is we're elevating, right? And, like, you know, take the time that we've got for our sauces here that we're, you know, constantly changing and improving and working with our vendors, taking that time and saying, how do we elevate the quality of our chips? Right.
[00:28:28] Speaker C: This is a big deal right here. Like, from where we started from to.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: You were making the OG Gabby recipe, which it was like, on a sheet of paper, and it was like 150 teaspoons of cayenne pepper or whatever. 150 teaspoons? Yeah, it was like milk cups.
[00:28:42] Speaker C: Teaspoons were splashing, and then it wasn't like a blended. It was just like garlic powder, onion powder.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: It was all the spices, small containers that we were getting. It was like.
It was different all of the time. You look at the colors and, you know, it's funny to have that foundation of what it was. So you've done that. And then we got to where we finally got the spices. So the recipe is where it wasn't. So we broke that down into bulk recipes like a normal restaurant would be. Right, Right. Once again, you know, what does Zunzies mean? An Urban Dictionary. It's a bunch of effing idiots.
So thank you, Urban Dictionary, for making us just be a restaurant of that. We would be like it every day. Right. But, yeah, you know, there's change, and there's good change, and we've always talked about that.
[00:29:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Like, we tried to get bottling, but, yeah, you know, we're constantly elevating.
[00:29:31] Speaker C: I was so excited. They said we're getting new bottles. Like, yes. They say we getting. We don't have to make it anymore. Yes.
[00:29:38] Speaker D: It's consistent now, too, right?
[00:29:39] Speaker C: It's very consistent.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it's consistent. It's getting better. You know, I'm super excited about the quality of that. We got the dank sauce. Right. My goal is to have 10 bottles of sauce that we've got, and I don't want to sell it anywhere. I want it to be where you got to get our sauces that you love.
And then we're basically hustling with wood nickels, and you can get a bottle of sauce almost every visit. We want you to enjoy it at home.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: And then when you're, you know, when that bottle hits empty.
[00:30:03] Speaker C: Let's get some more.
[00:30:04] Speaker B: There you go. You're only getting some dank or shit. Yes. All sad. Zooms. These are zooms.
[00:30:08] Speaker C: And just make it special for them, like, to come. They can only get it from this place, like, a little. It's like, I say, a little club. You come and get your own stuff and go home and put on food that you like.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[00:30:19] Speaker C: I like that. Enjoy your day. And they be so pumped and excited for us to give them a free bottle of sauce. That makes a big difference today. When you give them, like, sauce, they'd be so excited.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: Oh, and it's also, you know, when we mess up, because, you know, we mess up. And one of my favorite lines is makeup sauce is the best sauce, you know, so it's like, you know, you mess up. It's like. But, you know, you give Them a bottle of shit. Yeah. Sauce, you forget, it all goes away, you know, and then if you need to give them a bottle of drizzle, if you need to get weird, you know, add some dank. But we can give them all the sauce.
[00:30:49] Speaker C: You know, it's okay if you mess up and, you know, it's okay if you, you know, make a mistake with the customer. It's just how you fix it and how you make it better at the end, you know?
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: It's all part of the shit, I promise.
[00:30:58] Speaker C: Right. You don't want them to leave mad or upset or potentially give you a bad review. You want them to leave even if they messed up, that you acknowledged it and they leave him out happy.
[00:31:10] Speaker D: Same as in any relationship.
[00:31:11] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: So, you know, from. From that standpoint, what's cool with the 26 Club is we're getting. We're getting texts from our fans with ideas. They're asking about our business.
[00:31:21] Speaker C: You show us all the time the text messages.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: Oh, there. I mean, and that's like, a little bit as a company, we got to do way better of sharing how amazing you guys are doing. You guys are seeing the reviews, but.
[00:31:31] Speaker C: It'S also good to see that. I like that we with more focus now on the reviews because you get to see the good things that your team do. So it just empower you and make you be like, okay, I gotta do better today. Okay, we got this many now I gotta do better. I gotta make the food even extra better. I gotta make the experience extra better today to get more reviews. This is, like, good to see, like, this person's doing good and they enjoyed the food, they enjoyed the experience, and that's what you really want in restaurant, for them to keep coming back.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: That's it. I mean, you know, we all vote with our dollars. I think there's three to five restaurants that we kind of go to all of the time. And, you know, I think what we're doing is we're starting to, you know, see more frequency in the business. We're seeing sales come from it, but it's just because we're. I believe we're being better stewards of the relationships that we have in the business with our team.
[00:32:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: They're enjoying it. You know, we're having more customers, more guests come in, we're turning them into fans, leading with our sauce and having fun with it. And, you know, it all ties back to the shit. Yeah. Promise. Where we just want. If you engage in our business, we want you to leave saying shit. Yeah.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: For sure.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: You know, my goal, which is a crazy goal, is that when you leave for the shift that day, you're leaving at a better number. You're saying, shit, yeah. After the shift, you know, if we're doing that, then we're running a great company. And I feel like we're, you know, life. And the restaurant business is really direction, not perfection, Right. If we're living in perfection, we're never gonna hit it, and it's gonna be frustrating. But. But we're certainly moving in the right direction, I think. And I think that's in this conversation where we look at it. We're now growing a company that's gonna do really fun things. And I've said it for a long time. I'm gonna look back and we're climbing a mountain. And when you climb a mountain, you start off at base camp, right? And I've never climbed a mountain with base camp, right. But I've seen it, and it looks treacherous. But you're going up that mountain and you leave with. You start with a certain group of people, and there's a vision to get to the top, and you imagine what it's going to look like when you get there. And in my role, it's to explain what that looks like and why and how fun it's going to be of what that is and what's in it for you in the process and doing that. But along the way, there's storms that happen. And personally, in your own life, there's storms that happen in the business, it's just. The restaurant business sucks. It's a shit show, right? And we all kind of. There is the straw that breaks the camel's back for you guys. You know, you've left when it happened, and you come back and, you know, we're never the same people.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: You know, like, there's. There's the old story of, like, there's the river and, like the. You know, you never set foot in the same river because the river has been moving. And you're also a different person. Right. And it's no different in the restaurant business. I love when we have people come back because it is the devil, you know, you kind of know what, you're getting back in more. Things haven't changed. They've gotten better. But as you keep climbing and you're doing it, there's people that left, right? And I'm gonna think about all those people. I'm gonna think about Kenny, right, chopping chicken, you know, and then he, like. I think he hit 30 and he had the family and kids coming. He's like, I gotta do something different, Chris. Like, man, I can't imagine, right? You know, you're welcome to come back whenever and do that. And he's doing awesome things with Blue Door, right?
[00:34:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: Doing fun stuff there. And there's these. All these faces of people that I think about, and those are the relationships that are there. And so we're gonna all get there. And I say, if you're coming on board now, like, you're coming on at a really lucky, blessed time to be able to get in at this point that we have, if you've been in the past and you loved it, now's a good time to come back and knock on the door and do it. And if, you know, as we grow, it's just gonna create more opportunities for, really, for you guys to do things that you're passionate about. It's like, you love the food. There's gonna be a time where we need RD and culinary and all this stuff. And, you know, you can improve that area from a relationship standpoint as you develop and, you know, you now takeout managers have been promoted in our org chart. Amazing there. That's why the reviews are going up. Because now you're focused on the throughput of the line and quality of the food. Really laser focused. You know, there's many more opportunities that are there, and that's. That's the beauty of this business. And, you know, seeing what William's doing, right, you know, upward mobility of the business, there's a lot of impact we can have. So this is. This makes me say shit, yeah. Gets me fired up. And I'm just so thankful and blessed to have you guys at the company. And this made my day.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having us in here because this was super fun.
[00:35:52] Speaker C: Shit, yeah.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: All right, well, keep doing amazing things, right? Don't let a rule keep you from doing the right thing. We have to have rules, but if it makes them say, shit, yeah, go ahead and do it. And then we'll pick up the pieces with whatever that is. So we'll let. Let's do what we always do. Grab your bottle, grab your sauce.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: Try to get shaking, pre shaking.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Nothing like, sip of the sauce.
There you go. Shake it up.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: Getting a little saucy early in the morning.
[00:36:22] Speaker B: Getting the sauce. Oh, yeah, you got that little. My fridge is full now.
[00:36:26] Speaker A: The bubble right now.
[00:36:27] Speaker D: Taking one sip.
[00:36:29] Speaker B: Here we go. All right, everybody, you gotta say shit chat on me.
[00:36:33] Speaker C: Shit chat on three.
[00:36:35] Speaker A: 1, 2, 3.
[00:36:36] Speaker B: Shit chat all right.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: Oh, shit. Yeah, that's the sauce.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: That's it. You got the sauce stash?
[00:36:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Gotta get sauce in the bottle.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: That was.
[00:36:47] Speaker C: I never drunk it from the bottle before, so I feel fancy.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: Yeah, we got bottles of sauce.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: These bottles are not getting sold. Don't worry, guys.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: This is home. We got bottles early in the morning.
[00:36:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: Shit. Yeah. Thank y'all so much.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:01] Speaker C: Thank you for having us.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: You got it.
