Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Transitioning a Legacy Brand: Chris Rockwood's Vision for On The Border | Restaurants & Franchises Series

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Transitioning a Legacy Brand: Chris Rockwood's Vision for On The Border | Restaurants & Franchises Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
• 0:07
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 0:10
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:13
  adversity. My name is Anthony Cotespotti,
• 0:15
  and today's guest is Chris Rockwood.
• 0:18
  He serves as the Chief Operating Officer at On the Border Mexican
• 0:22
  Grill and Cantina, the world's largest Mexican casual dining
• 0:27
  brand. Founded in 1982 and
• 0:29
  headquartered in Irving, TX, On the Border delivers authentic
• 0:33
  Tex Mex specialties and a vibrant atmosphere with a
• 0:37
  mission to bring the bold flavors of the Texas Mexico
• 0:40
  border to guests worldwide. Chris brings over 25 years of
• 0:44
  experience in the hospitality industry, having previously held
• 0:48
  leadership roles at Putt Shack, Alamo Drafthouse, and Del
• 0:52
  Frisco's Restaurant Group. He earned an executive
• 0:55
  certificate from MIT Sloan in Artificial Intelligence for
• 0:59
  business strategy, LED operational enhancements at
• 1:02
  Alamo Drafthouse managing $185 million in annual revenue, and
• 1:07
  facilitated successful ownership transitions at Del Friscos.
• 1:11
  Now at On the Border, Chris continues to elevate guest
• 1:14
  experiences and Dr. innovation in casual dining.
• 1:17
  His passion for teamwork and operational excellence has
• 1:20
  helped On the Border stay ahead in a competitive dining market.
• 1:24
  Now before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
• 1:28
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• 1:31
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• 1:53
  Now back to our guest today, the COO of On the Border, Chris
• 1:57
  Rockwood. I appreciate you making the time
• 1:58
  to Share your story today. Andy, thanks for having me.
• 2:01
  I'm excited to be here. All right, Chris, so how did you
• 2:04
  first get started in the hospitality industry?
• 2:06
  What drove you into that? That is a quite an interesting
• 2:09
  story. So growing up, the second oldest
• 2:12
  in the family of five children in central Pennsylvania, little
• 2:15
  town, Carlisle, PA, probably middle of nowhere.
• 2:18
  You know it best if you're into cars.
• 2:19
  They have an amazing car show that's pretty nationally
• 2:22
  recognized or the Army War College is also there, a small
• 2:26
  town of about 18,000 people. I grew up in a Catholic family.
• 2:30
  You know, for us, going out to dinner was Ponderosa.
• 2:34
  That was an exciting event. That was a birthday celebration.
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  That was a I'll take eat the number 14 and all you can eat
• 2:39
  salad bar. And we thought that was just
• 2:41
  really tops. I, I grew up in the Catholic
• 2:45
  schooling system, grade school through high school.
• 2:49
  It went out to attend Saint Joseph's University in
• 2:51
  Philadelphia, where I got a, a couple degrees in business
• 2:55
  management in psychology and really anticipated getting into
• 2:58
  the business world and going and just conquering, you know,
• 3:00
  young, energetic, competitive, played a lot of sports in high
• 3:04
  school, going out there and just conquering the world.
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  And the true story I think is when I was graduating senior
• 3:10
  year back in the early, early 90s, they had this program where
• 3:15
  you went and you sat down and you punched in all of your data
• 3:17
  into a computer. This is old school computers.
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  And it kicked out what you, they thought you would be really good
• 3:22
  at. And I can't make this up, but,
• 3:24
  you know, I sat there for an hour and a half and got working
• 3:27
  hard and I decided to really concentrate on studies.
• 3:29
  And I, I got through four years of school with a couple degrees
• 3:31
  and I'm like, let's go. And it kicked out this little
• 3:34
  piece of paper at the bottom that said you'd be a really good
• 3:35
  restaurant manager. I went you, you got to be
• 3:38
  kidding me. Restaurant manager.
• 3:39
  I, I'm going to be a restaurant manager at Ponderosa.
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  But there's no way. Like I spent four years working
• 3:44
  hard and really trying to do well.
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  So Fast forward, I went in and, and did a couple businesses
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  after school with some friends. I found myself, funny enough,
• 3:54
  back in Pennsylvania after living in a couple different
• 3:57
  states. And I was looking for something
• 3:59
  to fill some time. And I went into a, a restaurant
• 4:03
  concept in Exton, PA. My older brother had lived out
• 4:06
  there and I say I'm going to move back from from Florida.
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  I've seen the stopping off point.
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  I'm going to go, you know, find something in the back in the
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  Philadelphia area. You see, I got extra room.
• 4:13
  Come, come stay with me. So I got a part time job waiting
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  tables because I'm like, that's easy.
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  Who, you know, serving tables is easy.
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  Let's go. Just, you know, make some quick
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  money. So I went and I got a job, this
• 4:24
  place called Eastside Mario's. I'm like, this is kind of fun.
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  You know, it's full fast-paced and it's interacting with
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  people. And it was, you know, super busy
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  place and I had a lot of fun doing it.
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  And then one day the the director of operation came by.
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  I said, you should be a manager. I'm like, oh, no, I don't be a
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  manager. No, I'm, I'm just here part
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  time, man. This is this is beneath me.
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  This restaurant stuff. I'm not going to be a, you know,
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  restaurant manager. Well, Fast forward there, eight
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  months later, I was the general manager of the Exton location of
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  Eastside Mario's quickly became a director of operation.
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  This was back when, you know, 100 hour work week were typical
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  and just grinded it out. And I was young and energetic
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  and single and this is OK. I just work hard and get it
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  done. But realized that this probably
• 5:05
  wasn't the right path for me. I started another business with
• 5:08
  some friends. I believe it.
• 5:10
  I got into the cigar business for a little bit back in the mid
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  90s when that was real hot and did some real entrepreneurial
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  things with that. And then, you know, I found
• 5:18
  myself, well, I just fell back into the need to find a little
• 5:22
  part time job as I was building my business because that's
• 5:24
  really my business degree. I was going to go and you know,
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  conquer the world and I found myself in this place called
• 5:29
  Sullivan Steakhouse looking for a bartending job in, in the
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  weekends. Couple, you know, I've done this
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  before. I'm going to go wait some tables
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  and I got a job at Sullivan Steakhouse to realize, hey, this
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  isn't Ponderosa. This is, this is kind of big
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  business. This is these people are coming
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  and spending real money and they're enjoying themselves and
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  they're, they're leaving a lot of, you know, gratuities.
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  And this is this is kind of interesting to me.
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  So Fast forward then I became a manager with Sullivan's.
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  I became a director of operation, regional vice
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  president of operations, running the brand and helping build all
• 5:59
  of the concepts under Del Frisco's restaurant group, which
• 6:02
  are the Del Frisco's double Eagle, the Sullivan Steakhouse
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  concept, Del Frisco's Grill, Frankie's Italian Grill,
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  actually. So multiple concepts under that
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  umbrella, even Lone Star Sea Gals and Saloon, believe it or
• 6:13
  not, back in the day was part of that group had gone from a
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  publicly traded company to private public.
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  And I spent a good more portion of my career at Del Frisco's
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  restaurant group, which it ended up becoming called after a
• 6:26
  couple some sales and and going public and then private and had
• 6:30
  a real good history and real run and realized that the restaurant
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  industry is real big business. It utilized every single thing
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  that I learned in school from marketing to finance to how to
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  deal with people actually use my psychology degree, which is kind
• 6:43
  of fun and realize that this was, you know, it was fun.
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  It wasn't sitting behind a desk. I'm not a static person.
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  It's hard for me to kind of sit still.
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  So I'm like, I can be up in mobile and move around and, and
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  really learn how to influence in, in groups of people to get
• 6:58
  results. I'm like, OK, this is this is
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  whole different idea of what I thought the restaurant industry
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  was going to be. And I laughed because, you know,
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  20 years after doing that, I look back and think about that
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  day when I was graduating from CHS University and said you'd be
• 7:10
  a really good restaurant manager.
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  I'm like, here I am running a, you know, $100 million brand and
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  really kind of deep into this. So my love of it became kind of
• 7:21
  solidified during my course with Del Frisco's Restaurant Group.
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  I left them after 19 years because I figured that was time.
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  It was a long time to be with the company.
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  And I moved to Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, which was completely
• 7:33
  different. Like I went from serving $85
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  long bone steaks and $1000 bottles of wine all across the
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  country to 15 our burgers in the dark in a movie theater
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  watching, you know, the Star Wars, the, you know, the sequel.
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  So it's been quite a journey. I spent 2 1/2 years at Alamo
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  Drafthouse, which was amazing. I got an opportunity to kind of
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  move on and I worked for a company here in Dallas called
• 7:57
  for Roy's Hawaiian Fusion Restaurants.
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  I was the chief operating officer for that concept for for
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  a little bit of time. And that was fun.
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  And the opportunity came along to work at Putt Shack, which is
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  this really kind of fun, you know, new concept of the
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  entertainment space. Brand new came over from
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  England, high tech took it from 2 locations here in the United
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  States up to 14 locations, which was amazing.
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  You know, it's a start up opportunity work with some
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  amazing people and high tech environment with food and
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  beverage. So I kind of, you know, found
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  some really amazing companies to work for and work with and
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  learned everything along the way from how the movie industry
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  works to the technology behind that to high tech industry like
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  put Shack. Then I found an opportunity with
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  On the Border. Here's a legacy brand been
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  around for 42 years that has kind of found itself in the mix
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  of all the other casual dining spaces and an opportunity to
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  come in and really transform this brand after a long time of
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  kind of just being, you know, stagnant to flat sales.
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  Kind of just like, hey, nothing's really happening here.
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  There hasn't been really a kick start and I saw it as a huge
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  opportunity for me. I was brought in with three
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  other people, the rest of the C-Suite to kind of come in and
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  say, listen, shake this up. We've had some amazing leaders
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  come through on the border, but none that have really kind of
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  given it the pop that it needed and needs to kind of transform
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  the organization. So we definitely came in as a
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  turn around group. We're, you know, still in the
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  first year of what that looks like and we're still kind of
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  working through some of those nuances and some of those things
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  as we kind of transform on the border.
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  But the best, the best days of On the Border definitely had for
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  us and we're excited to kind of where we're sitting right now
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  and kind of the things we've done and changed and really to
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  kind of get this thing moving in 2025.
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  South, before we hear about some of the exciting things that are
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  coming for on the border, I want to go back to a little bit of
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  your beginning because it's to me, it's a little bit amusing
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  that it seemed like for so long there was this magnet almost
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  that kept trying to pull Chris into the restaurant space.
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  And he kept saying, no, no, no, no.
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  Like, you know, I went through all this business education.
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  I got, you know, college degrees.
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  Like there are much more important things for me to do,
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  right? Like I'm, I'm a serious business
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  guy and you know, so you take this test and I think, you know,
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  we're kind of a similar age bracket.
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  I remember some of these tests and I don't, you know, did they
• 10:17
  work? Did they not?
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  Well, on your case, you know, now that we can look in the
• 10:21
  rearview mirror, clearly it was on to something.
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  But I'm, I, I'm curious to hear your perception of this now that
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  you have sort of that benefit of looking in the rearview mirror.
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  And you know, you saw that test results and you resisted, you
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  resisted, you resisted. But now you found a ton of
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  success in this industry. What is it about your
• 10:42
  personality that you think has made you such a good fit and
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  allowed you to kind of move up so quickly through the ranks?
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  It's a really question. I feel that there's a switch
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  where kinetic energy is definitely something that's
• 10:58
  needed in this industry. In the hospitality industry, the
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  9:00 to 4:00, nine to five hour lunch break commute to work,
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  sitting behind a desk, leave at 435 o'clock and clock out and go
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  home and do something else. Is, is not a mindset that works
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  very well in this industry because the majority of our
• 11:15
  business is done during the dinner hour.
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  If you think about meal periods, whether it be breakfast, lunch
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  or dinner, and a lot of our, you know, full service
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  establishments are, are lunch and dinner, primarily, the
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  majority of the business is at dinner.
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  So you have to have the, the, the kind of the inclination to,
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  hey, you're, you're the term night owl.
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  I work at nights because I'm in the hospitality industry,
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  because I'm in that, you know, the nightclub and all that.
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  And I think that there's a kinetic energy and a kinetic de
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  force that will get you to a certain point that you can just
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  work hard. You can come in and you can put
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  in the extra hours if you're able to and want to work more
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  than the typical, you know, forever talks about a 40 hour
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  work week. If you don't mind working 50
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  hours, 60 hours back in the day, which admittedly now it was way
• 11:56
  too much, But working those 6570 hour work weeks just because you
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  could just work hard and get it done got you to a certain point
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  that could get you to the point where you were successful and
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  maybe running a unit or running 2 units.
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  Because you could just work hard and get the work done.
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  And maybe you wanted to work harder than the next person.
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  I think there becomes a point where you have to realize that
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  that kinetic energy is not going to get it all done.
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  You have to think of the business differently and you
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  have to think about how you start motivating other people,
• 12:24
  other groups of people to start getting some of that work done.
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  And I think the switch for me, you know, 1517 years ago was
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  like, hey, I can get only so much done working 70 hours a
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  week, 60 hours a week, whatever it was, whatever it took,
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  whether it was a holiday week or whether it was Valentine's Day
• 12:40
  weekend, I can only get so far by doing it all myself.
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  And I think it also has a little bit to do with some of my
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  challenges in this industry because I, I just wanted to work
• 12:49
  harder than everyone. I was a competitor.
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  I was big into support sports. I figured if I just work harder
• 12:55
  and not work them, then I would be more successful than them.
• 12:58
  And I think that works well again, when you're very kind of
• 13:01
  in a box and you can have a, a very finite, you know, sphere of
• 13:06
  influence. But if you want to influence
• 13:08
  hundreds or even thousands of people, you got to realize that
• 13:11
  you're, you have to start influencing, motivating other
• 13:14
  people to get the same work done and to really start energizing
• 13:17
  the base and form your guiding coalition.
• 13:20
  Then you can have people say, come on, we're going to run up
• 13:22
  this hill and you turn around and there's fifty, 100 and 1000
• 13:25
  people behind you running up the hill.
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  That's when you start really making some, some headway.
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  That's when you really start moving things forward,
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  initiative, strategic planning. That's where you can really
• 13:35
  start getting the momentum of a group or organization and you
• 13:38
  can get outside of just being successful in a small group and
• 13:41
  you really start driving things forward.
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  So I really think that my success and part of it was I
• 13:47
  realized maybe earlier on that I can't do it all myself, which is
• 13:52
  also part of my problem because I wanted to do all myself.
• 13:54
  I wanted to fix everything. I wanted to just work harder
• 13:56
  than the next person. But over the course of time, I,
• 14:00
  I also being a competitor, didn't want to fail and I was
• 14:03
  failing like, why can't I get the results I want?
• 14:05
  Why can't I make this move forward?
• 14:07
  What, what is it that I'm not doing to to get the results that
• 14:12
  I want to go because I want to grow.
• 14:13
  I want to become the executive, the business leader that I
• 14:16
  wanted to be. And I finally realized it was me
• 14:19
  holding myself back. I need to let other people in.
• 14:22
  I need to let other people in and start motivating and driving
• 14:24
  them forward. And then as a group, we can
• 14:26
  start moving a whole bunch of things together.
• 14:29
  And the success came rather quickly.
• 14:31
  I was going to say, was this kind of a slow transition for
• 14:34
  you or was it like building, building, building and then more
• 14:37
  of like a, a light switch kind of a thing?
• 14:41
  Yeah, I think it was. I think during my time,
• 14:43
  probably, you know, my 19 years at Del Frisco's Restaurant
• 14:45
  Group, I got to a point where I'm like, OK, I'm here, but I'm
• 14:47
  not. I'm not seeing the Ford
• 14:49
  momentum. What?
• 14:50
  What am I missing tonight? You know, had probably one of my
• 14:54
  biggest fall was I got it, I got it.
• 14:56
  I got I got this. Just tell me what to do, coach.
• 14:58
  I'll get it done right. And I think there became a point
• 15:02
  where I had to be humble and say, I don't have this.
• 15:04
  What am I missing? And you start asking for advice.
• 15:07
  You start talking to people like, hey, maybe you could get
• 15:10
  some input from other people. Maybe you could start listening
• 15:13
  to peers around you. Maybe you could start asking
• 15:15
  people, hey, what they want rather than telling them what
• 15:19
  they think they need. And I think that's been a huge
• 15:22
  kind of a, a turning point for me was realizing that if you
• 15:26
  just ask people truly what they want and have human
• 15:29
  conversations with people, they'll tell you what they need.
• 15:31
  And then our job is to support them and see if we can give it
• 15:34
  to them. And if we can find that
• 15:35
  crossroads where what I'm providing you is exactly what
• 15:38
  you're looking for and you're giving me what I need to drive
• 15:41
  the business forward, then it's a very good symbiotic
• 15:43
  relationship. At that point, then things
• 15:44
  really start moving forward. Can you give maybe a, a concrete
• 15:48
  or specific example of a time you went to somebody and asked,
• 15:51
  hey, what is it that you need to, you know, be successful in
• 15:54
  your job? And they gave you some feedback
• 15:56
  and you were able to sort of connect the dots and everybody
• 15:59
  wins. Yeah, I think that's, I'll give
• 16:02
  you one that's pretty interesting is that we had in
• 16:05
  every single playbook I've ever seen, I've always taken this
• 16:07
  page and ripped it out going back 20 years ago.
• 16:10
  And that's the one where can't have your cell phone.
• 16:12
  These crazy things we're all attached to and we all have in
• 16:14
  our hands probably, you know, 20 hours a day while we're awake.
• 16:17
  You can't have your cell phone on you.
• 16:19
  You can't do these things. It's, you know, it's against
• 16:21
  company policy. If we see you with your cell
• 16:22
  phone, we're going to write you up and fire you and terminate
• 16:24
  you and all these horrible things.
• 16:26
  And I would take that page of every single manual I was a part
• 16:29
  of any company and throw it away because I asked our employees.
• 16:31
  I said, hey, tell me, tell me what?
• 16:33
  Why do you need that? Like what's going on with that?
• 16:35
  Well, I have something outside going on.
• 16:38
  I have, you know, my, my daughter or son are sick at home
• 16:41
  and I want to make sure I have access to them to reach out and
• 16:43
  call me. My mom is sick.
• 16:45
  Or it could be just something as simple as I guess I use my, I
• 16:48
  use the computer on my phone to just bring up my tips and make
• 16:51
  sure the check is accurate. So when you start talking to
• 16:53
  people and say why do you need your phone?
• 16:56
  And then the other thing we would tell them, we'll put it in
• 16:58
  your car, put it in your locker, lock it up before you come to
• 17:01
  work. You can't have it on you.
• 17:03
  All these rules and stipulations, a big company
• 17:05
  telling people what to do. And I just asked people like,
• 17:07
  what are you doing with your phone and how do you need it and
• 17:10
  what do you use it for? And I, and they told me why.
• 17:12
  And they said, OK, I'm, I'm fine with that.
• 17:14
  And I would take that page out of every playbook and throw it
• 17:17
  away because to me it didn't make sense.
• 17:18
  How, how could you have someone who, that's their connection to
• 17:21
  the outside world just be the company that said, because it
• 17:24
  says so because I told you you can't have your cell phone.
• 17:27
  And we actually flipped it around.
• 17:29
  I remember the day when I was sitting at one of our locations,
• 17:33
  our steakhouses in Denver, Co. This is probably 2004, 2005.
• 17:38
  And we had 20 some people we call pre shift where you sit
• 17:41
  before and then chef comes out and shows you what their feature
• 17:43
  is for the day, tells you about all the amazing things.
• 17:45
  And the chef had stood up there and he was all proud of this
• 17:48
  amazing sea bass feature he had. And I said, OK, hang on chef,
• 17:51
  everyone take out their phones. And the look of the spare in the
• 17:55
  entire room was like Oh my God, he's going to make us put our
• 17:57
  phones away and take them. And I said no, take your phones
• 17:59
  out. They're like, Oh no, we're all
• 18:00
  in trouble. And I went around the room and I
• 18:03
  had someone write down for every single person the number of
• 18:07
  Facebook friends or likes or people they had on their
• 18:10
  Facebook pages, Facebook back in the day.
• 18:12
  And then we went around the room and with the 23, I think there's
• 18:15
  23 servers there. We had over like 197,000 people
• 18:19
  that were connected to the 23 people inside that room.
• 18:22
  I said great, that's an amazing opportunity.
• 18:24
  Now what I want you to do is every single person come up here
• 18:27
  and take out your phone and snap a picture of this amazing sea
• 18:31
  bass feature that the chef just put together and posted on your
• 18:34
  Facebook page. And people are like, that's kind
• 18:37
  of interesting, I said, so why are we fighting the machine
• 18:40
  rather than just enhancing it and going no.
• 18:42
  So at that point we had everyone in the every single day.
• 18:45
  I mean, it's been something I've leaned into a lot.
• 18:47
  Like we need to use the technology we have.
• 18:50
  We have to leverage the things that our teams are telling us
• 18:53
  and lean into those things rather than being like, no,
• 18:55
  we're the boss, you're the subordinate.
• 18:57
  We tell you what to do. You have to listen to us.
• 18:59
  I'm your manager, I say. So all those things are really
• 19:03
  counterproductive, particularly to the way that the teams work
• 19:06
  today. Like tell me why you need this,
• 19:08
  tell me what's going on. Tell me, tell me how I can help
• 19:10
  enhance you. And at the end, the result was,
• 19:12
  well, one, we had 197,000 people that knew about the seafood
• 19:16
  feature and it drove sales one, for the business and it also
• 19:20
  drove sales for them because people would come in and spend
• 19:22
  more money because they want to come in for the seafood feature.
• 19:24
  So kind of a fun little story I've told multiple times, but
• 19:28
  just talking to your team and asking them what they want and
• 19:31
  what what you need from us and how we can all work together.
• 19:34
  So here's something we turned into instead of a negative, we
• 19:37
  turned the cell phones into a huge positive.
• 19:40
  We then had them marketing machines out there and went
• 19:42
  across, imagine across a company of 100 locations, if you had
• 19:46
  three or 4000 people with all their connections talking about
• 19:49
  the product that they're selling every single day.
• 19:52
  I mean those marketing dollars you can't buy that just doesn't
• 19:55
  doesn't, it's not it's not conceivable.
• 19:56
  So that's just one example, but I have a million more.
• 20:01
  I think that listening to people has been kind of a a fire
• 20:04
  starter for me going, Hey, what exactly?
• 20:05
  Why do we do this? I I do believe that management
• 20:08
  styles are very important when you think about the hospitality
• 20:12
  industry. I like the Toyota lean
• 20:13
  management. If I asked why five times and
• 20:17
  you don't give me an answer that makes sense, then maybe we need
• 20:19
  to change it. Maybe it's something that needs
• 20:21
  to go away. Maybe it's something that we
• 20:23
  shouldn't be doing. And I, I've asked a lot and
• 20:26
  every time I've started with a company, I tell people I'm going
• 20:28
  to ask why 1000 times and I apologize, but I really want to
• 20:31
  learn. I want to learn what you believe
• 20:34
  helps us move forward and how I can support you.
• 20:37
  And if there's things that we're doing that doesn't support the,
• 20:39
  the mission, doesn't support our teammates, doesn't support our
• 20:42
  guest experience, then we get rid of them.
• 20:44
  Then we just make them go away and figure out what we need to
• 20:46
  do to to support those things. And so even today, if we were to
• 20:51
  go into an on the border location, our employees
• 20:54
  sometimes taking pictures of the specials and posting them on
• 20:58
  their social channels. We hope so, yeah, that's the
• 21:00
  goal. If we if and again, you have to
• 21:02
  change a little bit the mindset, the managers going, what do they
• 21:04
  want us to do? They want their cell phones out.
• 21:05
  That's against our company policy.
• 21:07
  I'm like, well, the fortunate thing is we can just change the
• 21:09
  company policy. So we can just kind of think
• 21:11
  that and just cross a line right through that in the playbook.
• 21:15
  But that, that that's the things where, where we have this
• 21:18
  archaic, you know, mentality and philosophy of like, we're just
• 21:22
  going to tell them what to do and they're going to do it.
• 21:24
  That's not how it works anymore. You have to, you have to be a
• 21:28
  partner with your teams and you have to make sure that they know
• 21:31
  what the expectations are. And I think that also gets in
• 21:34
  the slippery slope of some of the stuff we saw after, after,
• 21:37
  you know, 2019-2020 where everyone kind of threw their
• 21:40
  hands up and went completely the other way.
• 21:42
  It completely went the other way.
• 21:43
  Like, whatever, we need you to keep our employees happy.
• 21:46
  Whatever they show up late, who cares, call out sick, it doesn't
• 21:49
  make a difference. And I believe that the industry
• 21:51
  had a big kind of awakening and they gave, we gave in a little
• 21:55
  bit. And it was frustrating for a
• 21:56
  time there because it was hard to staff the hospitality
• 21:59
  industry. It was hard to staff bartenders
• 22:02
  and servers when everyone's, you know, driving for Ubers and
• 22:05
  Lyfts and going around the country doing other stuff that
• 22:07
  was, you know, maybe easier money for them in their, in
• 22:10
  their mind. But once you find and get past
• 22:13
  the mental block and then this the, the, the thinking error,
• 22:17
  there are great people out there that want to come in and do a
• 22:19
  good job. And as long as you can find
• 22:21
  those people and you can nurture those people and you can show
• 22:24
  them that this is a place where there's accountability, where
• 22:27
  you can be very successful. And but we're not going to let
• 22:29
  people come in and just kind of skate by.
• 22:31
  I think that that switch a lot of companies have realized
• 22:34
  after, you know, 2020-2021 where kind of the industry went
• 22:39
  through a big shake up and a lot of people had left the industry.
• 22:41
  Go out and find those good people, but don't, don't
• 22:44
  acquiesce to the them and don't, don't allow them to be mediocre.
• 22:48
  I think is the the charge and the, the direction I give us.
• 22:51
  We don't allow mediocrity. Like if there's a reason why
• 22:54
  you're late or a reason why you can't show up and I'm concerned
• 22:57
  and I care for you as a human being.
• 22:59
  But the end of the day, we're running a business and the
• 23:00
  expectation is, so you're helping us run the business and
• 23:03
  we're going to provide a real safe environment for you to make
• 23:05
  some really good money, so. As I hear you sort of talk about
• 23:10
  how things have shifted, the, the visual that pops into my
• 23:12
  head is a rubber band, like it's sort of got pulled back really
• 23:16
  far in One Direction. And then it sounds to me like
• 23:20
  the the trigger, the let go of that rub, that very tight rubber
• 23:24
  band was COVID. And that caused this rubber band
• 23:28
  to snap back really far in the opposite direction to where I'm
• 23:31
  hearing you say, oh, you know, hey, if you're late, no problem.
• 23:35
  We just want you to show up at some point, right?
• 23:37
  Yeah. Just, you know, you're not going
• 23:39
  to show up today. Hey, that's fine.
• 23:41
  Please just show up tomorrow. So it went a little bit too far
• 23:43
  this direction, and now it's coming back.
• 23:45
  Is this sort of visual that I've got in my head?
• 23:48
  Is this sort of accurate? I think it is.
• 23:51
  I think it is. And I, I think the big rub
• 23:53
  there, Anthony, is that you'd have young men and women who
• 23:56
  were servers and bartenders before who are now managers.
• 24:00
  And we have not given them the full skill set on how to manage
• 24:02
  that situation, right? Because they were hourly team
• 24:05
  members six months ago, a year ago, whatever.
• 24:08
  And now their manager is expected to manage those people
• 24:11
  and to hold the standards. And we have to make sure we're
• 24:13
  giving them the skills to do that.
• 24:15
  And I think that that's the big gap I was talking about earlier
• 24:17
  with you is that we haven't shown our young men and women
• 24:21
  how to manage people. We've told them how to shake a
• 24:24
  martini. We've told them how to surf on
• 24:26
  the left and race from the right.
• 24:27
  We've told them how to make sure that the fork is set this way
• 24:29
  and the nice fork this way. But we haven't really done a
• 24:32
  good job. I feel as an industry of taking
• 24:34
  these young men and women who are passionate about this
• 24:37
  industry and teach them how to manage the human side of it.
• 24:39
  And the people said. That's such a good point.
• 24:42
  You know, in so many careers and so many businesses, it sounds
• 24:46
  like this is certainly the case in the hospitality industry.
• 24:49
  The people who are getting promoted to assistant manager
• 24:51
  and manager, they're people who performed really well, as, you
• 24:54
  know, hands on operators and you know, they they showed
• 24:58
  themselves to be smart and capable, good at solving
• 25:00
  problems, you know, very reliable.
• 25:02
  And then so you you elevate them, you reward them, you give
• 25:05
  them more responsibility. But you're right, like that's
• 25:08
  the people component is the one that most of us never really got
• 25:12
  formal training on. You know, maybe we had a
• 25:14
  psychology class here or there, but applying that into like a
• 25:18
  work environment and you know, how to those soft skills of how
• 25:22
  to manage people and, you know, difficult situations is
• 25:26
  something that I think really gets overlooked.
• 25:29
  I'm curious to hear what your approach is to that.
• 25:31
  How do you go about trying to teach those skills?
• 25:36
  It's a real good question. And I think that's part of the
• 25:38
  rubber band that you said that got stretched and kind of got
• 25:40
  snapped back. So in a previous company and in
• 25:44
  fact in this one as well, I've worked with our learning and
• 25:47
  development team, our training team.
• 25:48
  It's a new catch phrase for training, learning and
• 25:50
  development team. And I, we're about to roll out a
• 25:53
  human management development program or MIT training the
• 25:57
  manager in training process. And right before we're about to
• 26:00
  get to roll this out, I went to our team and I said, I know this
• 26:04
  is going to throw you for a curveball, but I do not want
• 26:07
  managers in training ever working in an hourly position.
• 26:11
  And they looked at me like, what are you talking about?
• 26:13
  How's that going to work? I said, listen what I'm saying,
• 26:16
  I do not want you putting these managers into a prep position, a
• 26:21
  broiler position, a bartending position, a server position,
• 26:24
  because that's typically how MIT training work.
• 26:26
  That's how the training was. It's been that way for decades.
• 26:29
  And I'm sure there's companies out there that are still doing
• 26:31
  it that way, but they're training you functional stuff.
• 26:34
  You have a person who's probably been in that hourly position and
• 26:36
  you're just going to take them and train them how to do it
• 26:38
  differently or better because that's what the MIT book said.
• 26:41
  So I went to the team and said, think about this and think about
• 26:44
  the people we have today in the industry.
• 26:46
  They know how to shake a martini.
• 26:48
  They know how to put a plate in front of a guest.
• 26:50
  They know how to serve a drink. They know all the functional
• 26:52
  stuff, but they don't know how to manage people.
• 26:55
  So instead of them working specific functions inside of
• 26:59
  their training program, I want them managing those programs.
• 27:03
  So instead of doing the prep, I want them managing the prep
• 27:05
  team. So instead of them actually
• 27:07
  being a bartender for a busy Thursday, Friday, Saturday night
• 27:10
  to show them that they know how to bartend, I want them managing
• 27:12
  the bartenders. And I want them back there and
• 27:14
  giving them instruction and managing through the process the
• 27:17
  host to stand, whatever it may be.
• 27:20
  And what it did is it did a couple things.
• 27:21
  It shortened the training time, which from a financial aspect
• 27:24
  makes a lot of sense, rather than spending two weeks as a
• 27:27
  server, 2 weeks as a Hostess, 2 weeks as a bartender.
• 27:30
  I mean, the training programs back when I went through
• 27:32
  training were 16 weeks long, 4, four months to learn how to do
• 27:36
  what, to learn how to prep every single item, to learn how to
• 27:39
  peel shrimp, to learn how to, you know, make a drink.
• 27:42
  Like I can do that. Just give me a test.
• 27:44
  I can learn that. Especially in an environment
• 27:45
  with a lot of employee turnover like you want to get them to the
• 27:48
  end result. You know, faster.
• 27:50
  Yeah, Yeah. So we shrunk the training, we
• 27:53
  made it more management based and we had them really interact
• 27:56
  with the other people that they were gonna be managing and
• 27:58
  taught them some soft skills and the management skills and
• 28:01
  allowed them to be managers. And not that kinetic.
• 28:04
  I'm just gonna work hard and get it done.
• 28:06
  Because what we found also over the course of my career is when
• 28:10
  things got really, really busy, all those managers would jump
• 28:13
  back into hourly positions. We were so busy, I had to jump
• 28:16
  behind the bar. We were so busy, I had to jump
• 28:18
  behind the line. We were so busy.
• 28:20
  And there's gonna be a time when you have to do that.
• 28:22
  But that became their safety net.
• 28:24
  Well, I'm just going to go back into an hourly position because
• 28:26
  everything got crazy and I don't want to manage all the situation
• 28:29
  out here. So I'm just going to become an
• 28:30
  hourly teammate again because that's my muscle memory.
• 28:33
  That's where my skills lie. So I think it's fundamentally
• 28:36
  the industry needs to start doing a better job of training
• 28:39
  these men and women who are passionate about the industry
• 28:42
  and really kind of moving that forward and giving the soft
• 28:43
  skills to get it done. What?
• 28:45
  Does it look like from a practical point of view to
• 28:49
  introduce that kind of people training?
• 28:51
  Are you kind of doing some role-playing in a difficult
• 28:54
  situation where maybe a customer's upset and you know
• 28:57
  the server's upset and you know how to sort of walk through
• 29:00
  that? For sure.
• 29:02
  I think that's probably the best part about it.
• 29:04
  The way that people learn today is also much different as we
• 29:08
  know, the way that, you know, here's a manual of 400 pages and
• 29:12
  read it all and do the checklist and take all the exams and take
• 29:15
  all the tests. That's very old school and it's
• 29:17
  not how people learn particularly now since we're so
• 29:20
  attached to all of our digital devices.
• 29:22
  We're very much, you know, visually learners for sure with
• 29:26
  all the stuff out there, our young men and women who went
• 29:29
  through, you know, social distancing learning or have been
• 29:33
  taught to, this is how we learn. We learn our computers and
• 29:35
  tablets and iPhones and all these things.
• 29:37
  So I think it's a really important for them to give them
• 29:39
  very specific situations and to, to make sure that they are
• 29:43
  walking through that with someone who understands it,
• 29:45
  which goes back to the point of having a certified training
• 29:47
  location rather than just, Hey, I'm going to send you here
• 29:51
  because it's cheaper for the company or hey, just just train
• 29:53
  in the same location where you're going to work.
• 29:55
  They have to have some places that you've certified as
• 29:58
  training locations that are going to be your, your North
• 30:01
  star. This is how we operate.
• 30:03
  This is how it's done. And if you have the right
• 30:05
  leadership in that location, Anthony, then that leadership
• 30:08
  there can try to transfer that information down and work
• 30:10
  through those situations. But it has to be hands on, you
• 30:14
  know, the, the, the school work and learning all the recipes can
• 30:17
  be done in an afternoon and you can give somebody a test and
• 30:21
  there's a lot of amazing technology that will allow you
• 30:23
  to do that. But unless you're getting hands
• 30:25
  on people training, I think that we're, we're doing them a
• 30:27
  disservice. And then throwing them into the,
• 30:29
  into the fire, as they say, and going, Hey, good luck.
• 30:32
  Go, go take care of that situation.
• 30:33
  And it just, it's not a, it's not a good recipe for success, I
• 30:36
  feel. You know, I'm curious to get
• 30:38
  your perspective on something. Chris, I had the privilege and
• 30:41
  the honor to interview lots of people.
• 30:44
  And I hear a common refrain from folks that the workers, the
• 30:49
  employees of today, they're different than they were five
• 30:53
  years ago, maybe 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago.
• 30:56
  And I, I always wonder like, how much of it is that the employees
• 31:02
  have truly changed? And how much of it is that, hey,
• 31:05
  now we're the old people. We're the old guard, right?
• 31:08
  Like, because from the time I was little, I remember hearing
• 31:10
  people say, oh, the generation today And then as I got older,
• 31:14
  it was, you know, always the generation behind that, you
• 31:16
  know, they're just not the same. They don't appreciate this.
• 31:19
  They don't value that. And like, I think that's just
• 31:22
  like a refrain that we repeat as we get older because we grew up
• 31:26
  hearing it and because now we're the old people that are set in
• 31:29
  our ways and we want the young people to do it the way we want
• 31:32
  them to do it. What's your take on this?
• 31:35
  You know, you've worked at a lot of big restaurant groups.
• 31:37
  You you work at a huge one now. You get to see like a lot of
• 31:41
  employees and you get to see the changes that have happened over
• 31:43
  the years. Is it more that, hey, we're just
• 31:46
  the old guys now, and now we're stuck in our ways?
• 31:49
  Or have things truly evolved from an employee perspective?
• 31:53
  I think it was probably somewhere in the middle without
• 31:56
  Anthony. I think that there is a
• 31:59
  breakdown in maybe some of our hiring practices.
• 32:02
  I think that the, the pool of talent, when you think about the
• 32:06
  full service industry, right? I'll speak about that because
• 32:09
  that's where I have most of my knowledge is full service
• 32:11
  Polish, casual, casual dining. Is it the cache of employees
• 32:14
  that you're looking to hire from?
• 32:16
  They there was a lot of professional servers.
• 32:20
  There were servers that were just really, really good.
• 32:21
  This is what they did. Bartenders were really, really
• 32:23
  good and that's what they did. And they could just walk into
• 32:26
  any system, any company, no matter, just plug them right in
• 32:28
  because that's what they were. Did they choose this as a
• 32:30
  career? They chose this as this is what
• 32:32
  I'm going to do. And they really were really good
• 32:35
  at it and had all the skills to really be effective as an hourly
• 32:38
  team member. I think during the last probably
• 32:41
  three or four or five years, maybe even longer, I think that
• 32:44
  some of the novelty of being a full time server, a bartender
• 32:48
  has worn off and it's now a temporary position.
• 32:51
  I feel that, you know, people are like, I'm just going to go
• 32:52
  make some money. I'm just going to go work for a
• 32:54
  couple months. I have a summer off or whatever.
• 32:56
  So the the pool of talent out there is is still good, but you
• 33:01
  have to be a little more discerning.
• 33:03
  And I think that some of the effects of just getting people
• 33:07
  to work after, you know, COVID, getting people to come in and
• 33:10
  just please show up for your shift so we can have bodies to
• 33:12
  be able to take care of our guests.
• 33:14
  Combined with the fact that maybe we were just too quick to
• 33:16
  put people in those places, hire a warm body rather than the
• 33:19
  right warm body and spend the time to train them has kind of
• 33:24
  fueled this idea that maybe we just hired some of the wrong
• 33:27
  people. And maybe we just did it because
• 33:28
  it was easy for us, because it was a path of least resistance
• 33:31
  and not because we took the time and energy to say, no.
• 33:33
  What I know I'm going to be short one or two servers for the
• 33:36
  weekend, but I'm going to wait for the right person rather than
• 33:38
  just hiring that warm body that hey, I need somebody come on,
• 33:41
  let's go. And I think that there is a
• 33:45
  bigger emphasis needs to be put on the training because we don't
• 33:48
  I have not found that we have the superstar cache of talent
• 33:51
  pool out there for employees that are walking in with, you
• 33:55
  know, wine knowledge or food knowledge.
• 33:57
  And the, the seriousness I think of the, the kind of the career
• 34:00
  mentality that we had previous, I think is not there.
• 34:03
  I think like I could just become a server and they just want to
• 34:06
  do the the least possible work because I have technology now
• 34:09
  that tells me everything I need. I can just ask Google or chat me
• 34:12
  to you or I can just ask what it you know.
• 34:13
  I mean, my son who's 13, love him.
• 34:17
  This is last year. I say he was writing something
• 34:19
  down, something with some homework because hey, buddy, you
• 34:21
  spelled that wrong. He goes well, So what?
• 34:23
  I said Ethan. Yeah.
• 34:24
  You know, it wasn't a super hard word, but it wasn't easy.
• 34:26
  I said, you need to make sure we spell that.
• 34:27
  Can we check the spelling? He said, Daddy, I don't even
• 34:29
  know how to spell. I can just ask Google like I
• 34:32
  just right, and I said, you still have to learn.
• 34:35
  You have to know how to spell all the words.
• 34:37
  You have to go through the work, you have to do the work to be
• 34:39
  able to be successful. So I think a little bit of a
• 34:42
  combination of one, being a little bit more discerning and
• 34:45
  teaching our managers how to hire the right people for those
• 34:48
  positions and also making sure we're providing them with the
• 34:51
  right training. I think that the people want
• 34:54
  everything they've always wanted.
• 34:55
  They want a great environment to work.
• 34:57
  They want to come to work in a place that's safe, that it's fun
• 34:59
  to work, especially in this industry.
• 35:01
  They want to make some good money in a short amount of time
• 35:04
  and they want to be able to go home and come back to work the
• 35:05
  next day. So I think that part of it
• 35:07
  hasn't changed. But we just have to do a better
• 35:11
  job of being a little bit more careful or set the expectations
• 35:16
  up front with who we're looking to hire and then make sure we
• 35:18
  give them the training in the right format so that they can be
• 35:21
  good employees for us moving forward.
• 35:24
  So let's talk a little bit about on the border itself and sort of
• 35:29
  the dining experience. You guys have lots of locations
• 35:32
  around the country, but there are probably some folks
• 35:35
  listening that haven't had the opportunity to to dine at one.
• 35:38
  What, what can they experience? What can they expect to
• 35:41
  experience today in one of your locations?
• 35:45
  Yeah, it's, you know, it's a the, the Mexican food genre is
• 35:50
  definitely taken off. It's the, one of the highest,
• 35:53
  you know, chosen cuisines when people go out.
• 35:56
  It's a it's and think about it like a comfort food almost, you
• 36:00
  know, think about something that makes you feel good.
• 36:02
  It's very filling. You know, when you go out and
• 36:05
  you get the chips and the salsa and the tanginess from the salsa
• 36:08
  and the hot warm chips with the salt on it and you order a
• 36:11
  Margarita. It's just, it's an escape from
• 36:13
  maybe a little bit what they're normally used to, but you get
• 36:15
  that environment where the music's fun and the people are
• 36:18
  fun and seems like you're just kind of taking back a little
• 36:20
  bit. And we call it a flavorful
• 36:22
  escape from the everyday, right? You sit at the table and people
• 36:25
  are having a good time and drinking margaritas and the
• 36:27
  flavor flavors in the Mexican cuisine are amazing, right from
• 36:31
  Chipotle's to the salt on the rim of a of a, you know,
• 36:34
  strawberry Margarita. Everything we have is just in
• 36:37
  your face. It's fun, it's exciting.
• 36:38
  It's a little bit like where am I?
• 36:40
  So you can come spend, you know, 40 minutes with us or an hour or
• 36:43
  sit at the bar for a couple hours.
• 36:44
  And when you leave, you can go back to the rest of your life.
• 36:46
  You can go back to everything that's out there.
• 36:47
  You can go back to all your bills and the work and
• 36:49
  everything. But inside of one of our
• 36:51
  cantinas, it's meant to be fun. It's meant to be a lively.
• 36:55
  The food is flavorful, you know, scratch kitchen still and
• 36:59
  everyone use the word scratch kitchens.
• 37:00
  What does that mean? Yes, we still make the salsa.
• 37:03
  We still make guacamole fresh every single day.
• 37:05
  We're still making stuff fresh in the kitchen.
• 37:07
  We're still hand pressing tortillas in front of the gas.
• 37:10
  So just an experience and I feel that you know, 42 year old
• 37:14
  brand. It's like, what are you doing
• 37:15
  different than than over the last 42 years?
• 37:17
  How have you evolved? I think we've listened to our
• 37:19
  consumers and we've said that they want more flavor, that they
• 37:22
  want more spice, they want more excitement.
• 37:24
  They want to make sure that when they come in, they feel that
• 37:27
  they're getting a value. I think that word means a lot of
• 37:30
  different things to different people and they think that to
• 37:32
  me, value can be driven by the experience.
• 37:35
  Doesn't really have to be a a price point.
• 37:37
  You know, we're not an expensive evening out.
• 37:42
  You can go out on the border, a family of four.
• 37:44
  We have a, a family feast that's, you know, 5995.
• 37:46
  You can basically $15 a person come out and have an amazing
• 37:50
  proteins and chips and salsa and everything that comes with it.
• 37:53
  So I think there's the approachability of the Mexican
• 37:58
  cuisine and the approachability and the value Leave when you're
• 38:01
  you leave, you're like, I'm full.
• 38:03
  I feel great. Had a Margarita or two.
• 38:05
  I had some chips and salsa. I had some amazing fajitas.
• 38:08
  And you leave there and you go. That was a really good
• 38:10
  experience. And even if you don't remember
• 38:12
  the next day what you had, I tell people I, I hope they
• 38:15
  leave. And the next day people say,
• 38:17
  where did you go? I went on the border.
• 38:19
  Oh, what did you have? I don't let me think about that.
• 38:21
  I'm not really quite sure what I have, but it was amazing.
• 38:23
  Did you had such an amazing time?
• 38:25
  Did you have a good time? Yeah, it was a blast.
• 38:27
  OK, then we win, right? So on the borders, Brandon,
• 38:32
  that's been around for a long time.
• 38:34
  We're not going anywhere. We're excited where it's going
• 38:35
  moving forward. We've had some really smart
• 38:38
  people come through and we have some A-Team now that's really
• 38:41
  kind of super engaged back on the hospitality side, really
• 38:44
  engaged with the guests. We want them to walk in.
• 38:46
  We want them to to know our guests and to feel like, hey,
• 38:49
  this is my go go to spot for Tuesday night at the bar.
• 38:53
  I'm going to come in for a Friday night dinner with the
• 38:54
  family. Sunday afternoon hang out.
• 38:57
  There's there's just a whole bunch of different uses that on
• 38:59
  the border provides for our guests.
• 39:02
  So you know, there's one thing that's constant in life, right?
• 39:04
  And that's change. Change always happens.
• 39:08
  And so I imagine it's been difficult for on the border to,
• 39:12
  I don't know, sort of stay attached to its legacy and its
• 39:15
  roots of, you know, what has made it successful over the
• 39:18
  years, while at the same time embracing the inevitable change
• 39:23
  that comes from what consumers expect.
• 39:26
  And from what you've described, it sounds like there was a
• 39:29
  little bit of a wall in that, right?
• 39:32
  Things kind of got stagnant for a while.
• 39:34
  And so you as well as a few others have been brought in to
• 39:36
  kind of shake things up. What does that look like?
• 39:40
  How do you balance that and what are some of the exciting changes
• 39:43
  that you hope to bring in? Yeah, I think there has been a a
• 39:47
  renewed focus on inside the four walls and the actual experience,
• 39:52
  right. I think that for a time there it
• 39:54
  was really financially driven based upon well what what can we
• 39:58
  do to make sure we're driving profitability, which is very
• 40:00
  important always in the business.
• 40:02
  But really, what are we doing to make sure that the guest leaves
• 40:05
  and goes, holy crap, that was fun.
• 40:07
  That was a great experience. And not necessarily concerned
• 40:10
  about, oh, was that the best price point?
• 40:12
  Could I've gotten this cheaper someplace else?
• 40:14
  Did I spend too much money? Not enough money?
• 40:16
  I think that there's a lot of stuff that the atmosphere of a
• 40:19
  restaurant will dictate a lot of that.
• 40:21
  The music level, the the temperature, the lighting are
• 40:24
  very important. We think about the atmosphere of
• 40:27
  an environment. If you walk into some place, you
• 40:29
  know, like, oh, it just feels off.
• 40:31
  It doesn't feel right. It's like this doesn't feel
• 40:33
  comfortable. It doesn't feel like I'm in
• 40:35
  someone's home. It feels like I'm in, you know,
• 40:37
  is this a hospital room or this just doesn't feel like it's a
• 40:40
  place I want to kind of hang out and have some margaritas.
• 40:43
  So we've done a lot of work with some assets that are that are,
• 40:47
  you know, decades old, refreshing.
• 40:49
  Some of that, some of the lighting and the music and the
• 40:51
  atmosphere and the temperature and some of the interior
• 40:54
  decorations and some of the stuff that just maybe a little
• 40:57
  neglected over the course of time because it really wasn't
• 41:01
  something that felt it was important.
• 41:02
  And I think it's very important. I think the experience is what
• 41:05
  people come back for. I've said this and I've worked
• 41:08
  with some of the most amazing chefs in the country and I've
• 41:11
  said this to them privately and publicly is is that they're not
• 41:14
  coming for the food. And I said, what do you mean?
• 41:17
  I told somebody, I said, do you if you think that they're coming
• 41:20
  down the border because we have the most amazing margaritas or
• 41:23
  the best margaritas in the world or the best fajitas or the best
• 41:26
  chips and salsa? I said they're, they're not.
• 41:27
  They're coming for the experience.
• 41:29
  Is our food amazing? 100% our outside skirt, fresh
• 41:34
  juice, margaritas, you know, chicken seasoning all, it's
• 41:37
  amazing. But if you feel and believe in
• 41:40
  your soul that they're coming because we have the best chicken
• 41:43
  fajitas in the planet, then you're a little misguided.
• 41:46
  They're coming for the experience, they're coming for
• 41:48
  you. They're coming for the music,
• 41:50
  the atmosphere, the, the flavors of the whole experience.
• 41:53
  And if we give them amazing food, amazing service,
• 41:55
  hospitality, welcome them when they walk in the front door, say
• 41:59
  goodbye when they leave, they'll come back.
• 42:01
  And they may not know what they had from day-to-day, from trip
• 42:04
  to trip to visit, but they'll come back because he experiences
• 42:06
  what they were looking for. And that's what I think people
• 42:09
  want. They want an escape.
• 42:09
  They want to, you know, turn off for a minute.
• 42:11
  They want to put their phones down.
• 42:13
  They want to come and listen to some music and have some chips
• 42:15
  and salsa and really enjoy themselves.
• 42:17
  So I think that we're providing that now more so than we ever
• 42:20
  have. And The funny thing is, Anthony,
• 42:22
  when I talk to people who've been with the brand for a long
• 42:24
  time, I said 20 years ago, describe on the border.
• 42:27
  Oh my gosh, 3 deep at the bar and people doing, you know,
• 42:30
  shock and just, it was amazing. I said, OK, what's changed?
• 42:33
  And like, huh, we, we changed. We, we gave in to our guests who
• 42:39
  maybe have been around for a long time, who've been coming in
• 42:42
  for a decade or two or longer and say, Hey, listen, I'm a
• 42:45
  little bit older now. Can you turn the music down?
• 42:48
  Can you turn the lights up? Can you I just this is
• 42:51
  different. Can you?
• 42:52
  And we acquiesced them because we were so afraid to lose those
• 42:56
  guests that we forgot what our brand DNA was, which is
• 42:59
  exciting, vibrant, flavorful place to come and have a little
• 43:03
  bit of an escape. So we're getting back to that.
• 43:05
  It's been quite a transformation over the last probably six
• 43:08
  months or so. I did feel that taking the first
• 43:11
  couple months to understand the brand was important.
• 43:13
  But over the last six months, we've made a lot of exciting
• 43:15
  changes. We've put some amazing people in
• 43:17
  place where they can drive those changes and get excited about
• 43:20
  the brand again. And we're really starting to see
• 43:22
  some very nice momentum with what's going on.
• 43:25
  So people who maybe have experienced on the border in the
• 43:28
  past coming into a location now or a few months from now,
• 43:31
  depending on, you know, how these changes being rolled out
• 43:34
  throughout the country, they may experience a little bit more of
• 43:36
  a lively atmosphere than what they've seen in maybe the last
• 43:40
  few years. I think that's a very active
• 43:41
  student. They're going to see excitement.
• 43:43
  They're going to walk in their front to go, wow, what?
• 43:46
  You know, this is this is amazing.
• 43:47
  This is fun. This is what we want it to be.
• 43:49
  This is the escape we're looking for.
• 43:50
  This is the flavor, not only flavor in the food, but the
• 43:52
  flavor in the atmosphere, the flavor with the smile, the
• 43:55
  flavor with the feeling of hospitality when they walk in
• 43:57
  the front door. So that's the goal.
• 43:59
  And that's that's what most, you know, restaurant companies have.
• 44:03
  That's the magic sauce. Everyone thinks that there's
• 44:05
  some magic sauce or some magic thing that's going to, you know,
• 44:08
  that's the one deal. I think that the overall
• 44:11
  experience and the way that people leave and how we make
• 44:13
  them feel, that's the true magic sauce.
• 44:16
  But it sounds like it's still very family friendly, right?
• 44:19
  Like it's not like I'm going on spring break and, you know,
• 44:22
  people are doing keg stands at the bar.
• 44:24
  I mean, you mentioned your, what was it, 50 or $60.00, you know,
• 44:27
  family pack, you know, everybody gets to eat.
• 44:30
  So it, it sounds like there's something for everybody here.
• 44:33
  Is that right? There is, there is absolutely
• 44:35
  something for the entire family. Again, people use on the border
• 44:38
  for a bunch of different stuff. They use it for a Tuesday night
• 44:41
  to ski because I don't feel like cooking at home.
• 44:43
  They use it for date night, come sit at the bar and have some
• 44:45
  margaritas and just unwind with either family friends or, or, or
• 44:48
  significant other. But we have a lot of families
• 44:52
  that come in all the time because you know what, we're
• 44:54
  approachable. It's a, it's a, you know, it's
• 44:57
  not a lengthy dining experience. You can come in and out in, you
• 45:00
  know, 40 minutes and sit it on the border and have an amazing
• 45:04
  meal and feed your family. And the other thing is because
• 45:06
  the environment, you don't feel awkward if you bring kids in,
• 45:09
  like, Oh my gosh, be quiet. You have to simmer down and you
• 45:12
  can't have fun. We want them to have fun.
• 45:13
  Like we want them to come. And you know, the parents are
• 45:16
  going, Oh my gosh, people are looking at us.
• 45:17
  Well, no, you're, you fit right in.
• 45:19
  Like this is part of the deal. This is part of the fun, part of
• 45:21
  the excitement. Well, it sounds like the place
• 45:23
  for us. My wife and I have two very
• 45:25
  lively boys who are 8 and 10, and we have the exact same
• 45:29
  thought process when we're going out to dinner, You know, where
• 45:31
  can we go that it, you know, we, we won't be a problem.
• 45:34
  And it sounds like sounds like on the border is the spot we
• 45:37
  should be trying. It's a blast.
• 45:39
  Yeah. We have lots of families and
• 45:40
  they come in a lot and and they on the way up, like, thank you.
• 45:43
  Like what? Like, thank you for just giving
• 45:44
  us a break. Because mom can have a
• 45:46
  Margarita, Dad can have an ice cold beer.
• 45:48
  The kids can have fun and not worry about being too quiet and
• 45:50
  really enjoy themselves and leave.
• 45:52
  And it's a, it's a great family experience for sure.
• 45:55
  Chris, you've got an executive certificate in AI from MIT.
• 46:00
  Explain what that is and how you see kind of the role of this
• 46:04
  tech unfolding in the restaurant space.
• 46:08
  Yeah, I am pretty pragmatic when it comes to the business side of
• 46:14
  of, you know, hospitality and what it means and what it drives
• 46:17
  forward. Realizing that things are
• 46:19
  changing and realizing that we have to be better at our jobs as
• 46:22
  executives. We've got to take the resources
• 46:25
  and tools outside and bring them inside the four walls and figure
• 46:28
  out how we can give our teams the resources to do their jobs
• 46:31
  better. One of the things you hear from
• 46:33
  ages a lot is I have so much paperwork.
• 46:35
  I'm always stuck in the office. I have inventory and orders and
• 46:38
  all the things we have going on and scheduling and really,
• 46:41
  really want them is you want them in front of the gas.
• 46:43
  You want them out there creating the environment and throwing the
• 46:45
  party. So I'm a strong believer in
• 46:48
  technology and how we can leverage that inside of the four
• 46:51
  walls and how we use AI, particularly with some of the
• 46:55
  stuff. I mean, it took that class, you
• 46:57
  know, five years ago, six years ago, and it's even from 5:00 to
• 47:01
  six years until now. It's exponentially grown with,
• 47:05
  you know, open AI and all the stuff that's come out.
• 47:08
  I think that we have to embrace those things and we have to
• 47:10
  realize that that's how most of our people are coming in with
• 47:13
  that knowledge already. They're coming in with some of
• 47:15
  that. Like how you guys don't have
• 47:16
  this? Like this is I'm doing this in
• 47:17
  my elementary school, in my high school.
• 47:19
  Like what do you mean how we utilize AI in guest recovery?
• 47:23
  How do we utilize AI and scheduling of order
• 47:27
  procurements? There's a lot of ways to
• 47:28
  leverage that technology. And the only thing that I see is
• 47:32
  the biggest benefit is it frees up your managers to do the
• 47:35
  things you really want them to do, which is to be on the floor
• 47:38
  interacting with those humans, team members, guests, making
• 47:43
  sure they're having an unbelievable experience because
• 47:45
  that's why people are coming back.
• 47:48
  You know, been in a lot of different price points.
• 47:51
  I've been in a lot of different stuff.
• 47:52
  It doesn't matter what price point you're sitting at.
• 47:54
  It doesn't matter what you're doing.
• 47:55
  People are coming in for the experience.
• 47:56
  They can stay home. There's nothing forcing people
• 47:58
  to come into your establishment. There's nothing forcing them to
• 48:01
  come into your establishment rather than another
• 48:03
  establishment, except how we make them feel when they leave.
• 48:06
  If they leave your establishment, go, that was a
• 48:08
  heck of a good time, then they're going to come back.
• 48:10
  And that's our goal. But they can't do that if the
• 48:12
  managers are sitting in the office, if the teammates are not
• 48:15
  doing what they're supposed to be doing.
• 48:16
  So I have some bigger broad goals with the AI part of it,
• 48:21
  with machine learning and, and there's some things I can think
• 48:24
  you can really get into if you have multiple concepts under one
• 48:29
  umbrella. You could definitely use some
• 48:31
  machine learning and start getting pretty myopic with it.
• 48:34
  And there's some pretty fun stuff, but that's probably a
• 48:36
  different conversation. But the point is that we're
• 48:39
  evolving. The world's evolving.
• 48:40
  If we don't keep up with it, we're going to find ourselves
• 48:42
  way, way behind. At the end of the day, it gives
• 48:46
  our team members their time back and our managers their time back
• 48:49
  to do what we really want them to do, which is interact with
• 48:51
  the guests. Are you looking into industry
• 48:55
  specific off the shelf tools or are you looking to sort of
• 48:59
  develop your own in house tech? That's a really good question.
• 49:04
  We don't have the bandwidth or the amount of people that would
• 49:07
  take to create their own technology.
• 49:09
  I think there's a lot of smart people out there that are
• 49:11
  building stuff that are off the shelf boxed components, which is
• 49:15
  amazing. So I have a firm believer that
• 49:17
  if there's something off the shelf that provides what we're
• 49:19
  looking for as far as the tool, I'd much rather use that than
• 49:22
  having to spend the time or the energy and the resources to do
• 49:25
  it ourselves. We're not technology people.
• 49:27
  I'm a big believer in utilizing the technology, but I don't
• 49:30
  think we have the, the bandwidth or even the the, the abilities
• 49:33
  financially or time wise to build something that's probably
• 49:36
  already built. I think that's real important.
• 49:37
  Everybody wants to, we can do that when you build it
• 49:39
  ourselves. Like, why would you, if you
• 49:42
  could buy something that's not, that's why would you build it
• 49:45
  like it's already there. It's all, all the stuff's out
• 49:47
  there. I think just being open to it is
• 49:49
  probably one of the biggest mental blocks from a lot of
• 49:52
  people is like, well, we don't need that.
• 49:54
  OK, well, what if it helped us do better?
• 49:56
  What if it helped us improve the experience for our team mates
• 50:00
  and also the experience for our guests?
• 50:01
  So I'm very open to those things.
• 50:03
  And I'm, I'm always looking for new ways to kind of incorporate
• 50:05
  it and see what's out there. But I'm I'm a big fan.
• 50:08
  Yeah. Do you think that that the tools
• 50:13
  are ready now? I, you guys have obviously been
• 50:16
  very focused on making a number of big changes sort of inside
• 50:20
  the four walls as you put it. This is probably next or you
• 50:25
  know, some, somewhere on the priority list.
• 50:27
  Have you even had the opportunity to sort of take a
• 50:30
  look at the tools and do you think that they're in a ready to
• 50:33
  go state yet? They are for sure.
• 50:36
  We have implemented some of those already on our CRM site,
• 50:39
  the guest recovery site. We are going to be implementing
• 50:42
  a lot of those here in Q1 and Q2 for on the border, which is a
• 50:44
  more on the ordering, scheduling, procurement side to
• 50:48
  help us kind of take those young men and women we talked about
• 50:51
  and give them the right tools to be able to be more effective
• 50:54
  inside the four walls. So some of them we've already
• 50:56
  deployed, some of them we'll be deploying as we move into 2025.
• 51:00
  And then probably towards the end of the year, we'll have a
• 51:02
  lot of those things already implemented and be ready to move
• 51:04
  forward, have a pretty quick pace.
• 51:06
  So to answer your question, some of it's already in place and
• 51:09
  then some of it's actually being deployed here at the beginning
• 51:11
  of 2025. Yeah, here we are recording this
• 51:15
  on January 3rd, 2025. So when it talks about Q1Q2, it
• 51:19
  is now. Basically.
• 51:21
  That it's unfolding, so it'll be exciting to see how that
• 51:25
  actually shapes up. I want to shift gears on you for
• 51:27
  a moment, Chris, and invite you to talk about a serious
• 51:31
  challenge that you've overcome, whether it's something personal
• 51:34
  or professional, what it was like getting through that, and
• 51:38
  some lessons that you learned coming through the other side.
• 51:42
  Yeah, I think I touched on this a little bit earlier, Anthony,
• 51:45
  was the idea that I could just outwork the next person, that I,
• 51:50
  that I can do it all myself. Growing up in a family of five
• 51:53
  children and the second oldest, it was always outdo your older
• 51:57
  brother. You know, whatever he, Jim, my
• 52:00
  older brother, whatever he did, I would do better.
• 52:02
  And that was my marker for success.
• 52:03
  As long as I beat the person and ran faster than the person in
• 52:07
  front of me and chase them down and I could, you know,
• 52:09
  breakthrough the tape 1st and I would win.
• 52:11
  And I think there's, there comes a point when most leaders and
• 52:14
  executives will say, I, I need some help like that.
• 52:17
  That's doesn't get it done. Like you have to go reach out
• 52:20
  across the aisle to people and say, listen, I have, you know,
• 52:23
  one of the hardest things to me to say is I have no idea what
• 52:25
  you're talking about, right? And you have to be humble enough
• 52:28
  and kind of say, listen, I, I screwed that up.
• 52:31
  Like I was not successful in doing that.
• 52:32
  What could I have done differently or what could I have
• 52:34
  done better? And how can I make sure that I
• 52:36
  don't mess it up in, in, in the future?
• 52:39
  I've, I've told people, probably some of my biggest learning
• 52:43
  points is all the failures I've had, right?
• 52:45
  I, I think that not being afraid to fail is a, is a very strong
• 52:51
  trait for people. Obviously you can't put the
• 52:53
  business in jeopardy, but being able to make decisions, go
• 52:56
  listen, if this doesn't work, it doesn't work and be able to own
• 52:58
  it and say, listen, I screwed that up.
• 53:01
  I think there's a little bit of credibility, a lot of
• 53:04
  credibility that you get from your team when you say, listen,
• 53:06
  I don't have all the answers. I, I'm going to ask you to be
• 53:10
  thoughtful and I'm asking you to give me your opinions.
• 53:14
  I, I tell my teams always that I reserve a 15% veto vote, meaning
• 53:18
  if you come up with something, I'm like time out, that's going
• 53:21
  to be a brain killer. Like we can't do this.
• 53:22
  But besides that, the majority of the stuff we come up with
• 53:25
  comes from the field. If you are not reaching out to
• 53:28
  your people and having the ground swell and kind of
• 53:31
  navigating the conversation where you kind of wanted to go
• 53:34
  and having, you know, kind of behind the scenes.
• 53:35
  But you still need to get these masses of people, whether it be
• 53:38
  hundreds or thousands of people to move the business forward.
• 53:41
  And you have to do that by getting them to buy, buy into
• 53:44
  your buy, buy into what you're trying to do.
• 53:45
  And I think that if you put yourself out there was I know
• 53:49
  everything and just listen to what I tell you and you're going
• 53:52
  to be great, then you've already failed.
• 53:54
  Like you've already, you're already behind.
• 53:56
  If you can't say, listen, I, I, I feel in my heart with my
• 53:59
  experience, this is what's going to work.
• 54:01
  And we're going to think about the unintended consequences and
• 54:03
  we're going to think about how we can deploy this and what
• 54:05
  tactics and strategies can use. At the end of the day, if it
• 54:08
  doesn't work, I'm the first person to take full
• 54:10
  responsibility. I tell the story.
• 54:13
  When I first joined on the border, I was in front of the
• 54:15
  all the multi units, the vice presidents, the entire executive
• 54:19
  team. And I stood up in front of the
• 54:21
  room and I said, hey, I'm real happy to be here.
• 54:23
  And they've made some transition with some previous, you know,
• 54:25
  the whole leadership team. So we're here, we are the new
• 54:27
  leadership team. And I said, hey, I'm real
• 54:29
  excited to be here. My name is Chris Rockwood.
• 54:30
  I'm the new chief operating officer from the border.
• 54:32
  And I want everyone to know that it's my fault.
• 54:35
  And people get people and I tell the story and I tell it now and
• 54:39
  I'm out in the field. I said, what's the first thing I
• 54:41
  said like, yeah, you said it's my fault.
• 54:42
  I go it is, it's all my fault because I don't want you hung up
• 54:46
  on who did something wrong before, whose fault it was or
• 54:50
  who who made the mistake. I said it's all my fault.
• 54:53
  I take full responsibility for everything up to this point.
• 54:56
  Now what I'm asking is I need your help to get it to get it
• 54:58
  right sized. I need your help now to move
• 55:01
  this brand forward. I need your help to make sure we
• 55:03
  can all move forward together. And it just, you can see the
• 55:05
  relief in the room just kind of go, OK, who he's not, he's not
• 55:08
  going to start blaming us for all the stuff and all the it's
• 55:10
  all my fault, everything. I'll take full responsibility.
• 55:12
  And I think as a leader, you have to take the responsibility,
• 55:16
  you know, share the praise, all the catch phrases and all the
• 55:19
  books you've read and, you know, share the praises with your team
• 55:21
  and take all the responsibility. But I think it's important for
• 55:23
  people to have the psychological free space to make decisions and
• 55:27
  to speak up. Like, hey, we've tried that
• 55:30
  before. Like, OK, I understand we may
• 55:32
  have tried that before. Let's try it again.
• 55:33
  Maybe we think about it a little different way, maybe think about
• 55:35
  it differently. You think that could work?
• 55:36
  Yeah. OK, well then let's maybe do
• 55:38
  that. So I'm, I'm very much try to be
• 55:42
  humble in how I approach things. At the end of the day, I, I have
• 55:46
  very little problems making those tough decisions.
• 55:51
  Unfortunately, sometimes you have to make the tough
• 55:53
  decisions. But I think really trying to get
• 55:55
  your guiding coalition and kind of getting them involved from
• 55:58
  the beginning is huge and say, listen, I don't have all the
• 55:59
  answers. If you're, if you're looking for
• 56:01
  me for all the answers, then this isn't going to work very
• 56:03
  well because I need you to help me through this and work
• 56:06
  together as a team. It's the only way that I've seen
• 56:09
  to really get some success. I had a lot of success early on,
• 56:12
  just many people what to do. And that became there was a
• 56:15
  ceiling to that. There was always a ceiling like
• 56:17
  if I'm going to tell you what to do and they're like, OK, what's
• 56:19
  next? And you don't give them the
• 56:21
  ability to think for themselves. You don't give them the ability
• 56:24
  to solve the problems. Then you just become a become a
• 56:27
  teller. And I want to be more of a
• 56:28
  teacher rather than a teller. You know, I'm really glad that
• 56:32
  you're giving voice to this, Chris, because this is something
• 56:33
  that I certainly went through early on in my entrepreneurial
• 56:37
  career. I started my first business
• 56:38
  right out of college. And, you know, I had a small
• 56:41
  team of folks that I was wholly unqualified to lead.
• 56:45
  You know, I had a little bit of work experience in college, but
• 56:48
  I didn't know what I was doing. But I thought part of my role
• 56:51
  was to have all the answers, to have the vision, to have the
• 56:55
  framework to tell everybody what to do and they would follow it.
• 57:00
  And it took me several years to realize exactly what, you know,
• 57:04
  you were just talking about, which is man, everything became
• 57:08
  a lot better, more efficient, a lot more creative ideas.
• 57:13
  When I wasn't bringing it from the top down, I was sort of
• 57:17
  saying, hey, here's the big picture.
• 57:19
  First of all, what do you guys think of that?
• 57:21
  Like help me fill in the blanks, you know, help me color in the
• 57:24
  spots that I missed. And then also, and here's the
• 57:27
  why I think that was a huge thing for me in, in, you know,
• 57:31
  helping the team understand the why we're doing this and then
• 57:35
  ask for their help in putting together the framework.
• 57:37
  Because I didn't have all the answers and I, but I, I felt
• 57:41
  like it as a person in leadership that I, I was
• 57:44
  supposed to. So I'm, I'm so glad to hear, you
• 57:47
  know, you kind of give voice to having gone through that
• 57:50
  yourself on a much bigger stage. And then what you did when you
• 57:54
  came into this very large, well known brand, you know, on the
• 57:57
  border was brilliant in my opinion.
• 58:01
  You get everybody's attention. You defuse the situation by 4
• 58:06
  words. It's all my fault, right?
• 58:11
  You just took the attention out of the room.
• 58:12
  Clearly this guy's going to come in here and he's going to start
• 58:14
  kicking us in the gut and telling us all the things we've
• 58:17
  been doing wrong. But you're like, hey, Nope,
• 58:20
  that's not the approach. I'm not here to point fingers.
• 58:23
  Everything that happened in the past, it's all my fault.
• 58:26
  So let's just look forward. I, I, it's, it's really
• 58:28
  refreshing. So I'm curious to hear how you
• 58:31
  got there. Was this something you read in a
• 58:33
  management book or was this just something that kind of came to
• 58:35
  you? You know, I try to be a student
• 58:39
  of the business world. I try to be a student of people.
• 58:43
  I think no matter what the industry is, whether you're
• 58:45
  selling tires or you're in the hospitality industry or you're
• 58:48
  building, you know, planes for Boeing, you still need people.
• 58:51
  My father was an executive for United Telephone Services in
• 58:56
  Pennsylvania, became Sprint Corporation.
• 58:58
  There's a piece of advice that he gave me early on, amongst
• 59:02
  other stuff, he said, Chris, I've got to tell you, I'm in the
• 59:05
  finance world. He was a controller treasurer.
• 59:07
  Because I'm in the finance world, I work with some of the
• 59:09
  smartest people you could ever imagine.
• 59:11
  People can look at financial computations and before
• 59:14
  computers back in like the 60s and 70s and just going to come
• 59:16
  up with this amazing analysis, looking at numbers, but they
• 59:20
  can't deal with people. They have no social skills.
• 59:23
  They can't have a conversation, they can't go into a room and
• 59:27
  explain anything. They're the Super analytical
• 59:31
  numbers people, but they don't have any people skills.
• 59:33
  So in order to be successful in business, the one piece of
• 59:36
  advice I can give you is you have to learn how to deal with
• 59:38
  people. So I've always tried to take
• 59:40
  that piece of advice in the kind of quest for learning well, how
• 59:44
  do you deal with people? What's the best way to do it?
• 59:47
  You know, am I the most well read person?
• 59:49
  No, Do I lot of do, I read a lot of books and kind of take little
• 59:52
  Nuggets here and there 100%. And there's one thing I read one
• 59:55
  time that that made sense to me and said, anytime you're in a,
• 1:00:01
  in a relationship, and I do feel that with your team members,
• 1:00:04
  you're, you're in a relationship, not a, not a, you
• 1:00:06
  know, funny relationship, but you're in a relationship with
• 1:00:08
  them. You definitely have a, a
• 1:00:09
  relationship inside the business.
• 1:00:10
  If anytime you're in a relationship and you're worried
• 1:00:12
  about whose fault it is, the relationship's already failed,
• 1:00:16
  you're already done. And I was like, what?
• 1:00:18
  Explain that to me. And I, I might have been my, you
• 1:00:21
  know, someone I talked to or you know, someone who has a much
• 1:00:24
  more of a psychology insight than I do.
• 1:00:26
  And I said, so in business world, think about that.
• 1:00:28
  And applying that. If we're worried about whose
• 1:00:30
  fault it is, if we're worried about who did something wrong,
• 1:00:34
  then this relationship's never going to work because all you're
• 1:00:36
  doing is building up barriers, you're building up walls, you're
• 1:00:39
  building up to even the point where, and I'll just break it
• 1:00:42
  down real simply to the hospitality industry managers a
• 1:00:46
  lot of times or multi unit managers, when they see a bad
• 1:00:50
  guest complaint come through, will call up and give the
• 1:00:52
  manager a hard time. How could you let this happen?
• 1:00:54
  What did you, how, why weren't you on the floor?
• 1:00:56
  Why, how could you be? What were you doing?
• 1:00:58
  And Oh my gosh, in the, you know, e-mail or they're, they're
• 1:01:00
  kind of using that the the the communications to give them a
• 1:01:04
  hard time about this guest experience.
• 1:01:07
  And I've always had a much different approach.
• 1:01:09
  I wasn't there. I even I was multi.
• 1:01:12
  I said no sense of me calling you and blaming you for
• 1:01:17
  something when I wasn't even there to witness it.
• 1:01:19
  You were in the middle of the situation.
• 1:01:21
  So my response to always was I came in, what happened?
• 1:01:24
  OK, how could we have done that differently?
• 1:01:27
  Not whose fault it was, not blaming the server or the
• 1:01:29
  bartender or whatever, Not blaming people, but saying how
• 1:01:32
  can we do better? I have run some of the busiest
• 1:01:36
  restaurants in the entire country and I'd have crashed and
• 1:01:39
  burned on some of the biggest holidays you can ever possibly
• 1:01:41
  imagine because we overbooked because we ran out of food or
• 1:01:44
  whatever. And I've had some of the worst
• 1:01:46
  crazy shifts where you're doing, you know, 60-70, eighty, $1000 a
• 1:01:49
  day and you're like, wow, that really wasn't good.
• 1:01:52
  And at the end of the shift, I would take the entire staff
• 1:01:55
  together and I and they'd be like, Oh my gosh, she's going to
• 1:01:56
  yell and scream at us. Here it comes.
• 1:01:58
  I'd be like, wow, that really sucked.
• 1:02:00
  How do we not do that again? And they're like, huh, so how do
• 1:02:04
  we, by my fault, we, I, we over booked it.
• 1:02:07
  I took too many guests and we didn't, you know, check the
• 1:02:09
  schedules, whatever. How do we as a team make sure
• 1:02:11
  that never happens again? Like, huh, that's an interesting
• 1:02:14
  question. And we would figure out the
• 1:02:15
  solution so that it never happened again.
• 1:02:18
  And I think that's a part that people want to be right instead
• 1:02:22
  of rich. You want to be right, be right.
• 1:02:24
  You want to be rich, then there's a different way to do
• 1:02:25
  it. But if you just want to be the
• 1:02:27
  right person in the room all the time with all the answers, it's
• 1:02:29
  going to be a real hard time getting people to do what you
• 1:02:31
  need them to do. Chris, I just have one more
• 1:02:34
  question for you. But before I ask it, I want to
• 1:02:35
  do 2 things for everybody listening today.
• 1:02:37
  I know that you love today's content.
• 1:02:39
  Chris is great. Please hit the share like
• 1:02:42
  subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.
• 1:02:44
  And Chris, I also want to let people know the best way to get
• 1:02:46
  in touch with you. What would that be?
• 1:02:48
  Yeah, I think you can reach out to me at chris@ontheborder.com.
• 1:02:51
  It's probably the best way for sure.
• 1:02:53
  Love to hear from you on LinkedIn as well.
• 1:02:55
  My LinkedIn profile's up there, but I think this is a great
• 1:02:58
  opportunity to share some insights my 2530 years of this
• 1:03:02
  business and kind of where we where we've been and where we're
• 1:03:05
  going and where we're headed. And hopefully a couple little
• 1:03:07
  tactics or tools I've used have been successful over the last
• 1:03:10
  couple decades, particularly to drive large organizations
• 1:03:14
  forward and really kind of have people say, Yep, let's go.
• 1:03:17
  And I without telling them. I think that's the magic of it
• 1:03:19
  all. Is that it?
• 1:03:20
  I haven't told anyone what to do in the whole time I've been it
• 1:03:23
  on the border or project. I didn't told them.
• 1:03:25
  I've guided them and showed them the tools and given them the
• 1:03:28
  tools and they figured out most of them themselves.
• 1:03:30
  And my job is to say, hey, nice job.
• 1:03:32
  Or if we screw up, I go, hey, it's all my fault.
• 1:03:34
  How do we make sure we don't do that again?
• 1:03:37
  So last question for you Chris and first of all, that's very
• 1:03:39
  generous of you, you know offer to be available to folks like
• 1:03:42
  that. You've got a lot of wisdom that
• 1:03:45
  you know very valuable to a lot of folks.
• 1:03:48
  Last question for you, I'm kind of curious to get your
• 1:03:50
  perspective, whether you think about on the border the, the
• 1:03:52
  business specifically or the larger industry in general, what
• 1:03:56
  do you think the big changes are that are coming in the next
• 1:03:58
  couple of years? I, I, I think that the industry
• 1:04:03
  has definitely gone through sometimes over the last probably
• 1:04:05
  36 months, right? Sales and you think about who
• 1:04:08
  the ownership groups are and what their objective is, whether
• 1:04:11
  it's just profitability, make money.
• 1:04:12
  I'm a publicly traded company or privately held or, or, you know,
• 1:04:15
  trying to grow or there's some consolidation amongst companies
• 1:04:19
  going through there. There's a lot of companies going
• 1:04:21
  through a hard time. I mean, we're still, you know,
• 1:04:23
  struggling through and fighting through what we're going through
• 1:04:25
  it on the border as a large, you know, legacy brand.
• 1:04:30
  I think most people are realizing that the experience is
• 1:04:32
  going to be really the driving force.
• 1:04:34
  There's some brands out there that really, truly have always
• 1:04:37
  leaned into the experience. And I think we put them on a
• 1:04:39
  pedestal like, Oh my gosh, look what they're doing.
• 1:04:42
  Yeah, they've been doing that for decades.
• 1:04:43
  They just never changed. They never got away from their
• 1:04:46
  mission statement of taking care of the guests, providing the
• 1:04:48
  experience, providing a consistent quality message,
• 1:04:51
  providing value. And they've always done that.
• 1:04:53
  And we're now looking at them going, Oh my gosh, they're
• 1:04:55
  amazing. When you realize these
• 1:04:57
  businesses have been doing this for twenty, 30-40 years, it's
• 1:04:59
  not new. And I think some, some of the
• 1:05:03
  legacy brands and some of the industry people have gotten away
• 1:05:05
  from that. Whether it's quality, they've
• 1:05:07
  gotten away from truly what the what the guest is looking for.
• 1:05:10
  They want quality. They want value, they want an
• 1:05:13
  experience, they want to leave your place and go, wow, that was
• 1:05:15
  a lot of fun. Thank you.
• 1:05:17
  I got everything I need from nourishment to my soul to my
• 1:05:20
  heart Feels good. And I'm going to come back next
• 1:05:22
  week. I think that that that full
• 1:05:23
  package is going to be more more of a focus over the next couple
• 1:05:29
  years because guests can go everywhere.
• 1:05:31
  There's a lot of seats, there's lots of doors and lots of
• 1:05:34
  cuisines and lots of things out there.
• 1:05:35
  And the competition is going to continue to grow.
• 1:05:37
  There was definitely some consolidation and probably some
• 1:05:42
  reduction in seats over the last three, three or four years.
• 1:05:44
  Some companies have closed doors, but I think that we
• 1:05:49
  moving forward have to really lean back into the guest
• 1:05:52
  experience and make sure that the guests are taken care of.
• 1:05:54
  And whether you're giving them, you know, a value meal, you
• 1:05:58
  know, $6 quick service, fast food, or you're serving them
• 1:06:01
  something at a higher price point, they're still looking for
• 1:06:04
  the value, right? And I think there's a, a segment
• 1:06:06
  we all play in. And as long as we know what our,
• 1:06:08
  our guest is looking for, we can give that to them.
• 1:06:11
  We'll come out on the same side. And I think it's all going to be
• 1:06:13
  very successful. It's going to be an exciting
• 1:06:14
  time for sure, especially as technology really kind of gets
• 1:06:16
  its hands around this and really kind of see what we can do as
• 1:06:19
  far as efficiency goes and how we kind of optimize a lot of the
• 1:06:22
  the technology in our space. Well, Chris, I want to be the
• 1:06:26
  first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your
• 1:06:29
  story with us today. I really appreciate it.
• 1:06:31
  It was great. Anthony, thanks for having me.
• 1:06:33
  Best of luck to you and thank you.
• 1:06:36
  Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
• 1:06:38
  podcast. Thanks for learning with us
• 1:06:40
  today.