Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Why Mid-Sized Markets Create Better Opportunities: Derek Sorrells' Multi-Concept Strategy

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Why Mid-Sized Markets Create Better Opportunities: Derek Sorrells' Multi-Concept Strategy · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
0:16
today's guest is Derek Sorrells. Derek is the founder and
0:20
managing partner of Scion Capital Partners, president of
0:24
Sweet and Saucy and founding co-owner of The Arcade, founder
0:28
of Papa's Ice Cream and Treats, and also founder of Just A Sip,
0:32
a beverage provider in Wichita, KS that offers a variety of
0:35
drink options for events and fundraising.
0:38
They focus on bringing people together through great flavors
0:41
and community driven initiatives and operate multiple locations
0:45
and aim to make every gathering memorable.
0:48
Derek's track record as an entrepreneur includes launching
0:51
successful startups and guiding them through strategic growth
0:55
and exits. He is a Guinness World Record
0:58
holder and recognized for his innovative business concepts and
1:02
positive impact on local communities.
1:05
With ventures spanning food, entertainment, and capital
1:08
investments, Derek consistently champions new ideas that
1:12
resonate with customers. Now before we get into all that
1:15
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AD back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
1:57
today, Founder and managing partner of so many different
2:00
businesses that we'll get to touch on today, Derek Sorels.
2:03
Thanks for making the time to Share your story today.
2:05
Absolutely, thanks for having me.
2:08
So, Derek, you've got a pretty interesting background, highly
2:11
technical to start with, computer information systems,
2:15
data intelligence. You are a professor, PhD.
2:18
When I look at your past, just on paper anyways, it doesn't
2:22
suggest to me that you were on the path to found an investment
2:27
firm. Walk me through how this
2:28
happened. Well-being a child of the 80s,
2:32
when the Apple two and other computers really became popular
2:38
and became mainstream, I was very interested in those and
2:41
that's what really led me down the road of computers.
2:44
But one of the things I learned coming from a lower middle class
2:48
family is if I wanted one of those computers, I had to be
2:52
able to earn it myself. My parents didn't have the money
2:55
to to pay for those computers. So I started working.
2:58
And as I started working, I quickly realized that working
3:01
for someone else over the long run wasn't going to be the best
3:05
way to earn the maximum amount of money to buy the things that
3:08
I wanted to do. So I actually started with
3:11
wanting to be able to literally buy stuff, for lack of a better
3:14
word. OK.
3:17
And so tell us how many businesses you're involved with
3:21
today? Several in the intro.
3:23
I don't know if we got all of them.
3:25
Yeah, we missed a couple of them.
3:27
OK, sometimes I forget myself. There's 8 total.
3:31
We have a soda shop just to sip Papa's ice cream and Treats
3:35
Sweet and Saucy, which is an odd store that carries candy and hot
3:40
sauces and novelty socks, which none of that goes together, but
3:44
it works really well. We also have a brick store, what
3:48
one might call a Lego store. A bar, a very small neighborhood
3:52
bar, and then of course, the arcade, which is a classic 80s
3:55
and 90s video arcade. And so are these all ideas that
4:00
you've cooked up? Are these investing in some
4:02
other people's ideas? A mix of the two?
4:05
Everything we currently have is something that I dreamed up or
4:08
dreamt up and it's for a variety of reasons.
4:12
When I used to travel for a Fortune 500 IT company, I would
4:16
travel into these different cities, Omaha, Austin, Salt Lake
4:21
City and I would see businesses and think Wichita needs
4:25
something like that. And many times I would do the
4:29
due diligence and would decide to not move forward.
4:33
And there's several times where I did and decided, let's try
4:36
this and let's see if we can make a go of it.
4:38
And I, I think the, the amount of time and the due diligence is
4:42
what's really important before you open a business like that.
4:45
But we're currently only at 8 with a total of 10 doors and
4:49
it's it's a little crazy everyday trying to to keep all
4:52
the balls in the air. Is there ever a thought of, hey,
4:56
let's focus on just one of these concepts and replicate that?
5:00
Because I'm guessing that it would be a lot easier if you had
5:05
10 just a sips rather than, you know, onesie twosies of several
5:09
different concepts. Yeah, that's the there.
5:12
There's always that thought in mind.
5:13
So for the just a SIP, we have three locations here in Wichita
5:16
and same with our Papas, we have three of those as well.
5:20
It really kind of depends. Wichita is that an interesting
5:22
size city. There's about 600,000 people in
5:26
the metro area. So given our size we're at,
5:30
we're at a very interesting point where there's a West side
5:34
of Wichita on an east side of Wichita.
5:36
So for large companies they may have one restaurant on the West
5:39
side, one on the east side. So the the limit for growth
5:44
unless you're like a Starbucks or A7 brews, the soda shops are
5:48
probably the only stores where we could have multiple around
5:51
the city and still do well. Some of the other things such as
5:55
the Lego store and East and a West is about all you're going
5:58
to get out of those. And then when you look at things
6:01
like our neighborhood bar, it is extremely successful because of
6:06
its location and because of the neighborhood around it.
6:10
And so that would be hard to duplicate and still be at
6:15
successful and still have the the look and feel that it does
6:18
have today. So part of what you want to do
6:20
is keep everything there in Wichita.
6:23
Pretty much, you know, there's the thought of franchising is is
6:27
always is always out there. And when you have to look at
6:30
who's already in your space, so who's franchising in your space.
6:33
So if we look at our ice cream, for example, there are many
6:37
different companies that are ice cream franchising, whether
6:39
they're large like baskin-robbins, whether they're
6:41
a little bit smaller, like the Yard.
6:43
There's many of those people that are out there and you have
6:45
to look at it. Is what you're doing a
6:48
differentiator enough that's going to allow you to franchise
6:51
and take that to the next level? Is that something that you're
6:54
currently doing that's going to interest somebody over who's
6:57
currently in the market? And sometimes that's yes, but
7:02
there's still a heavy lift to get to that franchising.
7:05
The point of being able to franchise.
7:07
And sometimes it's let's take what we have, let's run with it,
7:11
Let's do it better than anybody else can do in the space that we
7:15
have. And let's create, you know,
7:19
stark raving fans from what we have here.
7:23
So why do you think Wichita is this place that didn't have a
7:29
lot of these concepts that you were seeing around the country?
7:32
I mean, it's not as it's not a huge city, but it's also not,
7:35
you know, a tiny little village either.
7:38
Yeah, it's, it's interesting. You know, Wichita as I mentioned
7:40
has about 600,000 people. We don't have an Apple Store, we
7:44
don't have a Cheesecake Factory. We're in that what I would call
7:48
right before you get into the sweet spot where you passed 3/4
7:51
of a million or a million people.
7:53
So because of that, there are many franchises that, you know,
7:56
we're one of the last places that a franchise is, is going to
7:59
typically look. They're going to look at an
8:01
Oklahoma City, a Tulsa, Kansas City before they look at a
8:04
Wichita. And for an entrepreneur, that
8:07
opens up the possibility of being able to take what you love
8:12
or what you think will work and do it on your own here without
8:16
the constructs and requirements of a franchise company.
8:20
And that's exactly what I did. So before I would open up a
8:24
store, I would literally go to similar franchises in multiple
8:28
States and just see what they're doing.
8:31
You know, independent ice cream stores, franchised ice cream
8:34
stores, what works and what doesn't?
8:37
What are the customers buying? What are they excited about?
8:41
And so, you know, Freddy's Ice Cream or Freddy's Burgers and
8:46
Custard was founded, you know, just two miles from where I live
8:50
here. And if you would have asked me
8:51
in 2003 if you to open a hamburger stand if it was going
8:54
to be successful in Wichita, KS, I would say no.
8:57
And Freddy's is very successful. So I look at things like you
9:01
don't have to do it different than somebody else because
9:05
there's already plenty of burger chains.
9:07
You have to do it better. And I think that's what we do is
9:10
we do it better than a franchise and better than a chain.
9:13
And that's why we have repeat customers and that's why we've
9:16
been so successful. So I'm trying to put you into a
9:20
box right now, Derek, which sometimes is a a dangerous thing
9:23
to do, But I talked to, you know, a number of restaurateurs
9:28
who enjoy the process of opening up different concepts because it
9:33
allows them to be creative in their craft.
9:36
I want, you know, a a seafood restaurant and I want to do it
9:39
in a certain way. And I want a, a Mexican themed
9:42
restaurant. I want to do it in a certain
9:44
way. And I've got all these different
9:45
ideas for you is, is the driving motivation to have multiple
9:51
concepts like the, is the fuel sort of this, this drive to
9:57
express your creativity? Or is it strictly more from a
10:01
business sense like, oh, this area doesn't have an ice cream
10:06
shop And I think we can do one very well and very efficiently.
10:10
And so let's get a good piece of land and do it.
10:13
I think it's a little bit of both.
10:15
I, I definitely get get my endorphins from you know, the
10:20
idea starting the new business, doing the research and the
10:23
launch. I'm not as much of an operations
10:26
person as which I think is a typical entrepreneur.
10:30
I would prefer to, to do the start up.
10:32
I would prefer to do that initial growth and then I prefer
10:35
to let it go. We're not at a point where we
10:39
can, we can do that with many of these these businesses yet.
10:41
So we continue to, we continue to run them and and that's
10:44
perfectly fine and, and we're successful in doing that.
10:47
But the start up phase is definitely, I think what's the
10:50
most exciting, you know, all of these businesses I've I've
10:55
learned over time are very, very different.
10:57
Now you might think, well, of course they're very different,
11:00
but from a different point of view, like my, my candy store,
11:03
sweet and saucy has one person that works there.
11:06
It's one shift and it's all day. So it's, it's very simple to do
11:11
where the arcade may have eight or nine people working at the
11:14
same time and a variety of different positions from kitchen
11:18
to bartender to management and things like that.
11:20
So it, it very quickly evolves into something that is an
11:26
operations, what an operations person is, is very focused on.
11:30
I'm more interested in in in that that initial thought and
11:33
creating something that may not have existed before or or even
11:37
if it has existed, doing it in a way that other people haven't
11:40
done to make it better, to make the customer say wow.
11:45
How do you think about scaling so many different concepts?
11:50
Yeah, I think it was, I think it was Andrew Smith from Savory
11:54
Fund who said in a session I was in one time and and in Salt Lake
11:58
City, he said, you know, going from 2:00 to 3:00 actually feels
12:01
like going from 2:00 to 20. And at the time I did not have
12:05
3. So I kind of scoffed at that.
12:07
And IIA, 100% agree. It's almost like going from 2 to
12:11
50. If you don't have your process,
12:14
your people, and your processes set correctly, it becomes
12:18
unwieldy very, very quickly because you have multiple stores
12:23
and different things are being done in different ways and the
12:27
customer is not getting a consistent experience.
12:30
And that's what it's really about is ensuring that the
12:32
customer's experience is the same.
12:36
If you go into a McDonald's in New York City and going to
12:38
McDonald's in San Francisco and order a cheeseburger and fries,
12:41
it's going to be the same at everyone.
12:43
And that's what the customer wants is a consistent
12:45
experience. So I think that's the biggest
12:48
challenge on scaling is ensuring that the customer service and
12:52
the customer experience is the same across the board.
12:55
Yeah. And I've heard from a number of
12:57
other restaurant owners and founders that a big mistake a
13:00
lot of folks make is thinking, oh, well, I've got one location
13:04
open and we're not quite profitable yet, but if I open up
13:07
a second one, then I'll have economies of scale and be able
13:10
to order things at a better price.
13:12
It says a really common trap a lot of people fall into.
13:16
What are your thoughts on that? Absolutely fell into that trap
13:19
myself. You know that we have three Just
13:23
a Sip stores and two of them. One of the problems is if you
13:28
want a soda shop or you want to do a soda shop just like a
13:30
coffee shop, one of the things that's really important is a
13:33
drive through. Everybody wants a drive through.
13:35
Well, when we decided to open the first Just a Sip, there were
13:38
no Dr. Throughs in Wichita, Not a single drive through anywhere.
13:43
It was 18 months before a drive through became available and
13:47
then another one came available in 20 days.
13:52
So we opened two. We opened two stores within 45
13:56
days of each other and the the absolute insanity of that is off
14:03
the chart. Both stores were open, both
14:04
stores looked amazing. The customers loved everything,
14:08
but it immediately became an issue of well, we believe this
14:13
is going to be profitable because of all the research that
14:16
we've done and we did a significant amount of research.
14:19
But until you actually put that into play in your market with
14:22
your customers, you never really know if it's going to be
14:25
successful. And that's exactly what happened
14:27
that we thought we were going to be able to scale and and the
14:30
first couple of years were were quite a challenge.
14:33
What was the biggest challenge that surprised you?
14:38
You know, I would say I was lucky in, in, in many of my
14:43
businesses where I was able to open the door and, and be cash
14:48
flow positive literally within 90 days.
14:51
You know, there is this thing, the harder I work, the, the more
14:53
sick, the luckier I get. And I certainly was working
14:57
hard, certainly was working hard.
14:58
But I, I, I, I think, I hate to use the word ego because I
15:02
really don't think that I always thought it was me that was
15:05
making it happen, but it was my team and we were, we were making
15:09
it happen. And so when we opened the door
15:12
of the first soda shop and we gave free drinks away for two
15:15
days, we gave 5000 drinks away in 2 days.
15:20
And this is out of a, a building that has no inside.
15:24
This was all drive through. The drive through line was 50
15:26
minutes long. And that was giving, I mean,
15:29
literally people were making drinks all day long and standing
15:31
them out the door. My feet really recognized my age
15:35
at that point. But we thought, well, it's not
15:38
going to be that way every day. It's not even going to be 1/4 of
15:41
that every day. We fully recognize that.
15:43
But it drops absolutely significantly more than we
15:46
thought it was going to. So then it became, OK, now we
15:49
need to really focus on marketing and going after the
15:53
market that we know is interested in the product that
15:55
we're selling. And that was a little bit of a
15:57
mountain to climb. How did you overcome it?
16:00
What was the what was the biggest growth?
16:02
Lever, you were. Able to pull for just a sip.
16:05
You know, I, I think the biggest challenge, and this is, this is
16:08
a problem for a lot of, for a lot of owners and is that you're
16:12
the wrong person to do everything.
16:14
You think you, you think you know best and you may know best,
16:17
but you're probably the wrong one to do it.
16:20
And so I, I hired a, a marketing company, a female marketing
16:26
company. Soda is very soda shops are very
16:28
female focused, very female focused.
16:31
And that's not on purpose. It just is over 80% of your
16:36
customers are female. Over over 80% of my employees
16:39
are female. None of that's on purpose.
16:40
It's who applies and it's who comes.
16:43
So you know, you have to you don't ignore you don't ignore
16:46
them, the men, but you have to focus on the females when you're
16:50
focusing on your your social media, because those are your
16:52
customers. It's the moms that are picking
16:54
up their kids after school and bringing them by for a drink
16:57
afterwards. It's, you know, wanting
16:59
something different than you. You're just going to get at a
17:02
Sonic or a McDonald's and those tend to be the people that
17:05
drive, so your marketing needs to do that.
17:07
So we hired a female marketing company and they're driving the
17:11
marketing and are doing the amazing job.
17:13
You guys do some on site event services and some fundraising
17:17
initiatives with just a SIP. Can you talk more about this
17:21
kind of multifaceted approach? Yeah, the one thing we did with
17:25
both are just a sip and also our Papa's ice cream and treats is
17:30
we started doing things on site. So with Papa's for example, we
17:33
do a on site Sunday bar because there's lots of events, whether
17:37
it's whether it's after prom, whether it's a Christmas party
17:41
or a holiday party for a company or whether it's just a birthday
17:44
party or at a wedding. We do a lot of weddings and that
17:48
can be an ice cream bar or it can be a soda bar.
17:50
So you know, there are there are many people that have started to
17:54
to back off alcohol. They're not having alcohol at
17:57
their weddings. And even those that are having
18:00
alcohol, many times we are there as well.
18:03
And we're a great collaboration with those, those bars that are
18:08
there at, at the wedding. So this allows people whether,
18:11
whether they're kids, whether they're not drinking, whether
18:13
they just want something different and they love our
18:15
product. We set up a full a full bar with
18:18
all of our syrups, our ice, all of our drinks, or a Sunday bar,
18:21
which has 10 toppings. And it allows people to do
18:24
something that's different that they might not have done in
18:27
traditional catering. There's many businesses that'll
18:30
have have food for in the afternoon for employees or
18:33
something like that, or, or do a dinner around the holidays.
18:37
This is something that we can do in the afternoon, especially
18:40
during the summer. We do hot chocolate, our
18:42
flavored hot chocolate bar in the winter time.
18:45
It's something that businesses can do that's different and
18:49
they're always looking at doing things that are different for
18:51
employees. And this is something that
18:52
really stands out. And so, Derek, across all the
18:55
different concepts that you have open, what was the first one
18:58
that you open? So the first one currently open
19:01
is is the arcade I had at one point.
19:06
Excuse me, I had 48 full size arcade games in my basement.
19:10
I was a collector in your. Personal basement.
19:12
In my personal basement, it was a really nice basement.
19:15
By the way, I bought 1 and you know, there's, there's that old
19:19
Lays potato chip ad that said you can't have just one Lays.
19:23
And it kind of started out that way with the, with the, with the
19:26
arcade machines. I'm a child of the 80s.
19:28
I bought 1 and then it became 2 and then it became 48.
19:32
And the problem was I love the nostalgia.
19:36
I love the way it felt when I played them.
19:38
It took me back to, to being in high school and middle school,
19:42
but I didn't turn them on, but maybe all of them.
19:45
Maybe twice a year I'd have a friends over and have a party
19:49
and turn them all on. But nobody really ever got to
19:51
play them. So I am the gentleman that I
19:54
know very well. Michael Jensen is my co-owner at
19:58
the arcade and I, I mentioned to him what I was thinking about
20:02
doing. He can fix absolutely anything.
20:04
So I run the business side of everything.
20:06
He fixes all the machines and it is a it's, it's a perfect
20:10
business partnership where we can do what is best for us and
20:16
the customers absolutely love it.
20:18
And so this was kind of taking a hobby and turning it into a
20:21
business. Is that sort of the thought?
20:23
It really was. And it was taking, you know what
20:27
we both had because he had 30 games himself and we took them
20:30
all and we put them into a building with no food and no
20:34
alcohol. And when I, I had signed the
20:39
lease, it was a few days before, a few days before Thanksgiving,
20:43
I signed the lease and I was standing in the building and I
20:46
was doing the, I had a spreadsheet, a simple
20:49
spreadsheet that I had done. And I realized that I needed
20:52
fifty people a day to walk through this door to pay rent,
20:56
just to pay rent. And I thought, does anybody
20:59
really care about that? And it, it was, it's when it hit
21:01
me that, you know, your hobby is not anybody else's interest.
21:06
And going from a hobbyist to being a business owner can be
21:09
extremely dangerous because you're going from what you want
21:12
to what the customer wants. And it is 100% about the
21:15
customer wants. So we signed that lease.
21:18
We opened December 15th of 2017. It was 34° in Wichita, KS.
21:25
There was a line outside for three hours to get in.
21:28
We were at maximum capacity in 24 minutes.
21:32
It was, it was crazy. It was absolutely kind of.
21:34
Marketing did you do, how did, how did you generate?
21:36
That much interest, just Facebook.
21:38
There was again, there was no classic video arcade at that
21:42
time. We only had 63 machines.
21:45
We have, we have well over 150 now, but we only had 63 machines
21:50
at that time and all the machines were on free play.
21:53
He just paid us 12 bucks and you could play all you want it.
21:57
And so it, it was something that wasn't available in Wichita.
22:01
It was inexpensive. And this is 2017.
22:04
It was inexpensive and people loved it.
22:06
And they love to bring their kids in.
22:08
And one of the best things to hear is when you know, a dad or
22:12
a mom or what they're walking out with their kids and they
22:14
say, this is what it was like when I was a kid.
22:17
Because you don't have a headset on and you're not playing
22:20
somebody around the world, which is cool, but you're playing
22:23
somebody that's literally right next to you there.
22:25
You know, you can elbow them as you're playing and you can have
22:28
a good time and you can, you know, talk crap literally right
22:31
there. It, it brings that camaraderie
22:34
together. It's it's a, it's a different
22:36
kind of screen time than what kids are getting today.
22:39
So what's your overall thoughts? You know, for listeners who are
22:43
thinking, well, I've got a hobby, I've got something I'm
22:44
interested in, I'd like to turn that into a business.
22:48
Couple of things, if, if it's, if it, if their businesses like
22:51
that already exist, I would highly recommend that you try to
22:55
get a part time job there, you know, work it.
22:58
I, I see way too many people that I know that have opened a
23:02
coffee shop, for example, and they'll say to me, Derek, I
23:05
haven't paid myself in two years.
23:07
That was literally a conversation I had last week.
23:10
When you leave a job, when you leave corporate America, it's
23:15
very difficult to replace that income.
23:18
I had the arcade and the candy store, and I was still working
23:23
Fortune 500 ITI built both of those businesses so I could be
23:27
an absentee owner. I always wanted to be an
23:29
operator. I'm sorry, I always wanted to be
23:31
an owner, not an operator. I didn't want to work in the
23:34
businesses. I wanted to work on the
23:37
businesses, which is very different.
23:39
There are many people that that say, you know, Oh yeah, I want
23:42
to run a coffee shop because I love going to a coffee shop.
23:46
I love being there. I love how it feels.
23:48
That's, that's a real dangerous way of thinking about starting a
23:53
business. The goal of a business should be
23:55
to make money. That doesn't mean you can't take
23:58
care of your employees. It doesn't mean you can't give
24:00
back to the community. But the number one goal in a
24:03
business is to make money. And if you're leave your
24:07
corporate job with those corporate benefits and you start
24:10
something that is likely to not make money for a year, 2 years,
24:15
maybe three years potentially, you may break even.
24:18
But again, that doesn't necessarily pay your salary.
24:20
It can be a challenge and it can be dangerous.
24:22
So make sure you do your due diligence, which two things make
24:27
sure if you can get a job and and a coffee shop or some one of
24:30
those kind of businesses do. So secondly, sit and watch what
24:34
are other people doing, what are making them successful and that
24:37
may be in your market or it may be in a different market as
24:39
well. Now, prior to opening the
24:42
arcade, you didn't have any experience owning physical
24:47
location like this, a retail operation.
24:50
Oh, I've had several. I've had several others, too.
24:52
So in 2003 to 2005, I had an eBay resale store.
25:01
Again, it was not a franchise. There were several franchises
25:03
that were out there. But we took in items from people
25:06
off the street. We photographed them, we sold
25:08
them on eBay. We shipped them out, we got the
25:10
payment and we gave a portion of that to the to the end user.
25:14
eBay was kind of new at that point, not super new, but kind
25:17
of new. And, and we sold a, a, a ton of
25:19
product for people that was here in Wichita, KS.
25:22
I sold that business oddly enough on eBay to somebody else
25:27
who who bought that and took that on.
25:29
And then prior to that, from 97 to 2000, I was a, an authorized
25:36
wireless agent for Southwestern Bell Wireless.
25:39
And I sold cell phones as we called them back then, wireless
25:43
phones now back in the, the, the, you know, the late 90s.
25:48
So there's that entrepreneurial spirit has always been there.
25:52
And both of those were were doors.
25:55
So those were, those were retail doors.
25:57
The entrepreneurial spirit's always been there.
25:59
I just took a step back after the eBay store to go into
26:03
corporate America to do a little teaching the collegiate level,
26:07
but that spirit was always there.
26:09
How do you think about when to scale a business versus when to
26:14
exit? You know, I, I think that that
26:19
can be a challenge. A part of it, part of it is
26:22
about you and part of it is when you're, for lack of a better
26:25
word, bored. If you're not interested in it
26:28
anymore, I think it's absolutely, it's always time to
26:30
get out and you always need to have an exit strategy of, of
26:33
some kind. The other thing is, is, is there
26:37
an easy ability to scale? Because there's two ways to do
26:40
that. Obviously you can franchise.
26:42
The other thing is you can grow it organically.
26:46
Wichita, for example, if we were to grow from here, there would
26:49
be a couple of other spots in Wichita.
26:51
We could likely go for the soda shops, and then we would need to
26:54
look outside of Wichita. Wichita's 2 1/2 hours from
26:58
Kansas City, 2 1/2 hours from Oklahoma City.
27:01
They're a long way away. There are some smaller cities in
27:03
between, but the next closest city probably would be Salina.
27:07
For us that we would look at. It's an hour and a half north.
27:11
So for us, it's where are you going to go?
27:14
Do you have the geographical area to expand in and does that
27:17
make sense? And then do you have the
27:18
wherewithal to do that? So I think you have to, you have
27:21
to look both inside and outside to make the decision that makes
27:26
best sense. So.
27:28
What is your road map look like? Do you want to go outside of
27:32
Wichita? I hear some resistance to that
27:34
and you seem like a an idea, an idea guy.
27:37
You can cook up lots of different concepts.
27:39
Do you just want to kind of stay in the Wichita greater metro
27:43
area? Yeah, I think so.
27:45
We have, we have a great team here in Wichita.
27:48
And I think that the benefit of of being here is that we have
27:51
control of everything here. So I, I have my, our director of
27:55
operations knows what's going on at all of the businesses and it
27:58
gives us the ability to stop in and work with a business for an
28:02
hour or so and then move on to the next one.
28:05
So we've done extremely well here.
28:07
Wichita is our home. Having travelled all over the
28:10
world when I was teaching salespeople how to sell, I've
28:14
been able to see everywhere and go everywhere.
28:16
But Wichitas has a special place in my heart and it's a great
28:20
place to to grow businesses. It's a great place to raise a
28:25
family and I still believe Wichita, the best things are
28:29
here to come for it. So we're continuing to look at
28:32
opportunities that are here and we think the best opportunity
28:36
for growth for us is here in Wichita.
28:38
And is it new concepts? I mean, you've already expressed
28:41
kind of the size of the city. It only allows for so many kind
28:46
of replication of existing concepts.
28:48
So do you have some new ones kind of cooking?
28:51
There's always something. There's always something on the
28:53
on the stove. It just depends on how much
28:55
heat's under it. There's things that I think are
28:58
not necessarily worth bringing out at this point because we're
29:03
not, for example, there's there's a ball, we have a
29:06
ballpark here in town, we have the Wichita Wind Surge, there's
29:09
building that's going on next to that, but it's a relatively slow
29:12
process. It was stalled by COVID.
29:15
You know, we, we believe there's a few concepts that would work
29:18
well in the, in the retail area that they're building there, but
29:21
they're specific to that particular retail area.
29:24
The other thing is looking at your concepts and is there room
29:28
for horizontal growth or I'm sorry, vertical growth?
29:33
So instead of, you know, looking at the soda shops, as you
29:35
mentioned, we do catering and we do or we do on site, but we also
29:39
do catering as well. So how do we take what we're
29:42
doing now with the physical space that we currently have and
29:44
the employees that we have and how do we grow that deeper
29:47
instead of just wider? So instead of more businesses,
29:50
how do we add on catering? How do we get people to, you
29:53
know, come and pick up some of our amazing pretzel bites or
29:56
some of our cinnamon rolls and take those to their office and
30:00
it's in a large tray. That way, you know, we're not
30:02
having to do on site, which requires more people.
30:06
When you do a catering, they stop by, they pick it up and
30:09
they take it with them. So they pay less money for it.
30:12
They still get the product, they still have an amazing
30:14
experience. So we're looking at all of our
30:17
businesses and seeing where we can go deeper instead of
30:20
necessarily wider. Give us another example of going
30:24
deeper on one of your businesses.
30:27
Sure. So our our candy store for
30:29
example, well, let me let me jump back to the soda shop for a
30:32
second. So one of the ways that we've
30:34
been really successful with our soda shop and our ice cream
30:36
store is we've, we've started with DoorDash many years ago,
30:40
but we added on Uber Eats and Grubhub and, you know, being
30:45
able to add on two additional ways that you can sell it a two
30:51
additional channels really is increased revenue.
30:54
So we started looking at our candy store and there's over
30:57
5000 items in that candy store. There's 400 different hot
31:01
sauces, BBQ sauces and salsas, 400 different glass bottles of,
31:06
of soda, over 1500 different pairs of novelty socks.
31:09
The, the number of skews is just kind of mind boggling.
31:12
So putting all of those on a DoorDash or something like that
31:15
just really isn't going to work. But we do have a product there
31:18
that sells extremely well and it's our chocolate and our
31:21
chocolate truffles. So one of the things that we're
31:24
doing is, is we're creating a DoorDash.
31:26
It gets it'll, it'll launch next month.
31:28
We're creating a DoorDash that is that we're calling a
31:31
chocolate shop. So it doesn't even have to have
31:33
the same name. Again, it has to attract
31:36
attention on DoorDash and it's going to focus on being able to
31:40
sell our chocolates and our our artists and chocolates and our
31:43
artists and truffles and sell those not only to people that
31:47
are just on DoorDash, but people that are looking for gift
31:50
baskets and things like that, that might be on DoorDash as we
31:54
come into those holiday seasons. So it's taking the products that
31:57
we already have, utilizing a channel that's out there and
32:00
available that we don't have to build out and being able to turn
32:05
that into additional revenue and do it in a simple, easy way.
32:09
You mentioned that it's not really practical to put all 5000
32:12
of your skews onto a platform like DoorDash.
32:16
I'm not super familiar with the platform.
32:18
What what's the challenge there? I think if it's sort of like any
32:21
shopping cart platform where you've got a database or even a
32:25
flat file spreadsheet of different SKUs and their
32:28
information and links to the images you just uploaded into
32:32
the system, but clearly there's a roadblock there that I'm not.
32:35
Oh, it's, it always seems that simple.
32:38
That's the way it always looks. You know, spending spending 20
32:41
years in corporate IT, we always, we used to always joke
32:44
with the engineers that just create a checkbox.
32:46
That's all you have to do is turn it on or off.
32:48
It's just a checkbox, right? And they used to laugh at us.
32:53
Everything is more complicated than it looks there.
32:55
There's many systems that tie into DoorDash, whether your POS
32:58
system is toast or whether you're using Square, whether
33:01
you're using Aloha, many of them tie into DoorDash and they tie
33:04
in relatively easily. That that's where, that's where
33:08
the easiness stops. There's the issue of our photos
33:12
going to be approved by DoorDash because every photo has to be
33:15
approved to show up correctly. And if you have a pair of socks,
33:19
for example, if you can't see what the socks look like, you're
33:22
absolutely not going to buy them.
33:24
Even if it says football socks because I have 5 different
33:29
football socks. But what's the footballs look
33:32
like on it? You know, does it say, you know
33:34
#1 football team or things like that?
33:36
So it, it becomes and then managing stock, there's always
33:41
it in it with the large number of products like that, there's
33:45
always going to be stock that was entered incorrectly.
33:47
So it shows that you have it in stock and you actually don't
33:50
have it in stock. You have, you have, you have
33:52
theft issues. So you're always going to have
33:55
issues where what's showing in DoorDash is available is not
33:58
actually what is available because it's matching with what
34:00
the POS says. So what we decided to do was
34:05
what's one of the most popular things that people buy?
34:07
It's chocolate. We have 18 different colors of M
34:09
and Ms. We have all different kinds of actual chocolate bars
34:13
that we know we have. And then we have our chocolate
34:15
truffles and we knew that we could take those, keep a pretty
34:19
good idea on the amount of them that we had in stock and that we
34:22
could easily control on DoorDash to, again, have an amazing
34:26
customer experience. Because at the end of the day,
34:29
if the customer feels good about what they buy on DoorDash,
34:31
they're going to leave a positive review, which is very
34:35
important to show up in, in Doordash's algorithm.
34:38
The more positive reviews you have, the higher you're going to
34:40
show in their algorithm. And then you're also going to
34:43
have likely repeat buyers, which is also what we want to have as
34:45
well. How did you guys navigate COVID?
34:51
You know, you know, a pandemic, you know, was right on my radar,
34:57
slightly under alien invasion. So it was, it was interesting at
35:02
that time we had, we only had two stores kind of three.
35:08
So the arcade was open at its original location.
35:11
The candy store had been open. It opened in June of 19.
35:16
So it had been open for about 9 months.
35:18
Sweet and saucy. And it was, it was a little bit
35:23
of a challenge, you know, for a couple of different reasons.
35:28
You know, the arcade is a gathering place, you know, at,
35:32
at a candy store, you can go in, buy product, walk out and leave.
35:34
But the arcade is a place where you go and spend hours.
35:37
So it's a gathering place And, and no one wanted to do that.
35:40
First of all, you couldn't for a while.
35:43
And then at the at the candy store, we shut down on our own.
35:49
We technically could have been open because we're we have a
35:52
food license, a retail food license.
35:55
So we're we were considered like a grocery store.
35:57
So what we decided to do it the arcade was we decided to start
36:02
having private parties that were very, very inexpensive.
36:07
How do we drive revenue? So we had smaller private party.
36:11
So for $250 you could have up to 30 people in there.
36:15
And we just suggested these all be your family members that
36:18
you're already around all the time anyway.
36:20
That way we're not trying to spread everything because two
36:24
things A, we don't want to make people sick and what people
36:29
think and what reality is as many times two different things.
36:34
So if you're suddenly posting on Facebook that you're allowing
36:36
all these people to get together, that can turn against
36:39
you and social media very quickly.
36:41
So we wanted to make sure that what people were seeing and what
36:45
people were thinking of us was not negative as well because
36:49
perception is reality to a lot of people.
36:52
So that worked out overall pretty well for us.
36:54
What was a little more challenging is that our first
36:58
Papas, I signed the lease on the building January 31st of 2020
37:04
and I took possession of the building on April 1st and the
37:08
world changed a lot in that 60 days.
37:12
So we went from getting ready to open an ice cream store, a brand
37:17
new ice cream store in an amazing location in about six
37:20
weeks to a pandemic where that first year was extremely
37:27
challenging just to keep the doors open.
37:30
But you know, every, everybody got through it because everybody
37:32
wanted to get outside. So when it was over, it was a
37:35
little different than what I would consider a, a normal
37:38
economic situation where people don't have as much money to
37:42
spend. People wanted to spend.
37:45
And so when did you was it sort of like a a light switch where
37:47
things were suddenly back on again?
37:50
And when was that? I, I think that really didn't
37:52
happen until probably mid 21. It was slower, but people
37:57
certainly came in and we certainly, but I don't think,
37:59
and we certainly sold quite a bit more.
38:02
I think, you know, our, our Christmas that year was very,
38:06
very good. The Christmas shopping season
38:08
was very, very good in 2020, even though we, you know, we
38:12
were looking at Delta, the Delta variant was coming out.
38:16
That's one of the other things I did.
38:18
I ran the largest. There was director of operations
38:20
for the largest COVID only testing lab in the United States
38:24
during that time too. How did that come about?
38:27
Yeah. Let me finish that other thought
38:32
first. So I think it was mid 21 when
38:34
everything really, really kind of picked up.
38:36
People felt more comfortable, they were less concerned about
38:39
COVID. They weren't not concerned about
38:41
it, but they were less concerned about it.
38:42
And it became something where they had the opportunity to
38:45
finally get out and spend a little more money.
38:47
And I think that's when it really hit.
38:49
It really wasn't for a couple more years.
38:51
I think, you know, we really started seeing the effects of
38:54
inflation in in March of 23 is when we really started seeing
38:57
that hit the customers. So in August of 2020, I left
39:02
corporate America, I left my Fortune 500 IT job.
39:07
And I was asked by one of the vice presidents at Wichita State
39:11
University to join them to operationalize a COVID lab that
39:16
they were spinning up in a warehouse on the Spirit
39:20
Aerospace campus, the former Boeing campus in South Wichita.
39:24
And they were concerned that, you know, they had most of the
39:27
equipment, but they were getting ready to fully operationalize
39:29
this. And the issue was, you know,
39:32
they were having trouble getting reagents, they were having
39:33
trouble getting tubes. And so we had an amazing woman
39:39
that was a the technical director of the lab, but they
39:41
needed someone to be the to operationalize it, make sure
39:44
that it was running OK. And at our height, we were doing
39:47
anywhere between 18 to 20,000 COVID tests today for locations
39:53
all across the state of Kansas into Oklahoma, into Missouri.
39:58
And these were schools, businesses that were doing
40:01
testing every single day and they would overnight the test to
40:05
us. We would interim and run them
40:06
and have results for them online within 24 hours.
40:10
Why were you approached specifically?
40:13
I was approached the the the VPIII know her very well.
40:16
I've worked with her in the past.
40:18
She knew of my my skill set as far as being able to run
40:22
businesses because at that point I had multiple.
40:25
She didn't have time to do it and she needed someone who could
40:27
come in and make sure that everything was taken care of.
40:30
My background is, is absolutely not in the Biosciences, but it
40:34
is in in ensuring businesses run and run efficiently.
40:37
And that's why she brought me in to do that.
40:40
All right, what is the Guinness World Record that you hold?
40:44
Yeah, that's, that's, I think that's the best thing I have on
40:45
LinkedIn certainly starts the most conversations anyway.
40:49
So there was at the time in my certificate I have have, it's
40:53
right over here on my on my desk.
40:57
It's the most amount of people playing pinball at the same
41:01
time. So it's not, it's not a, it's
41:03
not A1A1 off award. That is 331.
41:07
There was a facility in Banning, CA, the Museum of Pinball, which
41:12
is now gone, and Guinness was there and we all started the
41:15
games at the same time. 331 that's outstanding.
41:21
All right, I'm going to take a total left turn here.
41:23
I want to hear about a big, hairy, serious challenge that
41:27
you've overcome in your life, Derek, personal or professional.
41:31
How'd you get through it? What did you learn?
41:33
You know, I think that I think the biggest challenge, it
41:36
definitely would be personal. You know, relationships are hard
41:40
and I think the biggest challenge is navigating those.
41:45
And when you navigate those, you have to remember, and this is
41:49
hard for employees too, because you know, a lot of times
41:52
employees think that everything is perfect and that you, you
41:56
drive a nice car. I have, I have a BMW
41:58
convertible. What most people don't, most of
42:01
my employees don't realize this is that it's 22 years old.
42:04
It's older than most of them. They just see this nice car.
42:07
It's an old, old car. And they think the same in your
42:12
personal relationships. They don't even think about it.
42:14
Well, you're obviously happy, you're successful and you're
42:17
driving this beautiful car. You have no problems at all.
42:21
I think the biggest challenge was, you know, personal.
42:24
I'm divorced. I have two, two beautiful
42:26
daughters, but I am divorced. And that was, I think one of the
42:29
biggest challenges is, you know, when navigating personal
42:33
relationships, because they're not, they don't work like
42:39
business people are very different in the way they act
42:42
and they interact. And having to maintain that,
42:45
that wall between home and work. It's very difficult sometimes to
42:50
not take your your home, your work home, and sometimes it's
42:53
very difficult not to take your home into work.
42:56
So, you know, being able to navigate that and, and being
42:59
able to successfully do it in a way that you don't alienate your
43:04
employees, that you're still able to be successful and make
43:08
important decisions that are affecting you and them was a
43:13
challenge. But it, it, it took a while, but
43:15
we all came through it OK. And I think everyone is actually
43:20
on on to be on the better side for it.
43:23
As you look back at that really challenging time, what advice
43:28
would you give to folks to maybe try to avoid some of the same
43:32
pitfalls that you experienced? You know, I think it's, it's
43:36
always good to have somebody to talk to.
43:40
So whether that's a therapist, whether that's a, a best friend
43:44
who's not involved in the business itself.
43:47
It you can sometimes want to talk to Co workers and, and
43:52
sometimes that's OK, depending on the on the level of your
43:54
relationship. But you do have to remember that
43:56
it is a business relationship. So I would say that you don't
43:59
have someone to talk to that allows you to have to be able to
44:03
burn that off that that's frustration that you have with
44:06
your, your partner or whomever it might be that you're having a
44:09
challenge with have a way to burn that off that isn't burning
44:12
it off at work because we have a, we have a propensity to want
44:17
to get upset. We don't want to, but it
44:20
happens. We get upset with the littlest
44:21
things are employed as something that's small and we blow up
44:24
about it and that's the wrong thing to do.
44:26
So if we have the ability to burn that energy off in a
44:29
different way with a friend or a or a therapist, it allows us to
44:32
to run the business I think in a much better way.
44:35
I like how you put that burn the the energy off right.
44:39
Sometimes it's just like you need to get something off your
44:41
chest, off your mind, like it's just sort of burning a hole in
44:46
your brain as you're trying to hold it in and just running over
44:48
and over, over over again and and you just get stuck on it.
44:52
And so having whether it's a therapist, a friend, you know, a
44:55
Co worker, it's sort of the appropriate level that you can
44:57
give voice to have them hear you have them, you know, give some
45:01
feedback or response, I think is some of the best medicine that
45:05
exists. Yeah, absolutely.
45:07
It, it, it can be, it can be a challenge.
45:08
And this isn't just when you're going through a bad time.
45:10
This can be when you're going through good times.
45:12
Because you know, in any relationship, there's, there's
45:14
hills, they're not all mountains you have to overcome.
45:17
And the hills, they're going to be many more hills than there
45:19
are mountains. So if there's someone that you
45:21
can talk to about that, you know, it allows you to, when
45:25
you're focused on the business, it allows you to focus on the
45:28
business and not bring that personal relationship issue
45:32
into, you know, what's going on with the business.
45:36
So you're making decisions that are smart about the business
45:39
because you're not being drug into the drudgery of your
45:43
personal relationship. That's that's holding you down.
45:47
Derek, what's your superpower? I, I think it, I think it's,
45:56
sometimes it's being able to see things that others don't.
46:01
I have a really high attention to detail when it comes to I
46:06
think knowing what the customer really wants.
46:09
I pay a lot of attention when I talk about, you know, before I
46:14
will open a business, I do research on what other similar
46:17
businesses do you know. Before I opened my ice cream
46:21
store, I went to seven States and 22 different ice cream
46:25
stores. And I would sit and watch, you
46:29
know, who was walking in, who is walking out, what they were
46:31
buying, what time of day it was. I, I think one of the things you
46:36
have to do is you have to pay attention to what your customers
46:40
want. And I think Steve Jobs famously
46:44
said, you know, you know, quoting Henry Ford, I guess, you
46:48
know, if I would ask them, you know, what they wanted, they
46:50
would have said a faster horse. And so you have to, you have to
46:54
sometimes figure out what the customer really wants.
46:57
And sometimes it's not what you're selling, it's what
46:59
somebody else is selling in a totally different business.
47:02
And you take that idea and you morph it into what will work in
47:06
your business. Because you may look at
47:09
something and somebody's doing something in a pancake store and
47:12
you know, breakfast place and you're not making pancakes and
47:14
you're not making breakfast, but that idea of what they're doing
47:18
would work perfectly with ice cream.
47:21
So it's taking those ideas. I think it's morphing and taking
47:24
great ideas and making them work for you and your particular
47:28
situation. I think that's kind of a
47:30
superpower in a way. That pancake to ice cream
47:35
example, was that a real one? Did you find something in a
47:38
pancake operation that you were like, oh, we can borrow that
47:41
idea? Yeah.
47:42
So what we were doing was I was at a restaurant, some friends of
47:47
mine own it, and they sell cinnamon rolls.
47:48
And we were trying to figure out what we could do that that would
47:52
work at the soda shops. Did we really want to add
47:54
cinnamon rolls, which we did add cinnamon rolls, but is that
47:56
something that we really wanted to do is did it make sense for
48:00
what, how we wanted to do things?
48:02
So we thought, well, what are we currently doing?
48:05
And we came up with we, we have pretzel bites right now.
48:08
So we added cinnamon pretzel bites, cinnamon sugar pretzel
48:11
bites, and then we also do ice cream.
48:15
So we came up with a cinnamon roll shake and on that cinnamon
48:20
roll shake, it's an extreme shake.
48:24
So our extreme shakes are about 12 inches tall.
48:26
So our extreme shake has the cinnamon and the vanilla, so it
48:30
tastes like cinnamon vanilla ice cream.
48:32
And then on top of the shake, we put a full size cinnamon roll,
48:38
full size, full size cinnamon roll sits on top of the shake.
48:42
And then the straw goes right through the cinnamon roll.
48:44
And then of course you have to have have to have whipped cream
48:46
on the top. So we took and we we took
48:48
something that was breakfast related and we said we can make
48:51
this into a shake because extreme shakes are one of the
48:54
things that we do really well at at Papa's Ice Cream and Treats.
48:57
So we wanted to take that to the next level because people love
49:00
cinnamon rolls and they think of it as a breakfast food.
49:03
But how do we make that into something that's that could be a
49:06
dessert as well that isn't always thought of as a dessert.
49:08
So sometimes it's just a little bit of a pivot.
49:11
You use the term extreme shakes. Do you have more shakes that
49:16
have food sitting on top of the shake with the straw going
49:19
through? Oh, absolutely.
49:20
We have a, we have a, we have a cheesecake shake or a caramel
49:24
cheesecake craze, which has a full slice of cheesecake on it.
49:29
So it's a shake, 16 ounce shake, full slice of cheesecake on it.
49:32
Course drizzle, caramel whipped cream.
49:35
We have a, we have our cake shake.
49:37
We have our cake shake which has a full slice of cake on it, a
49:40
full big slice of cake sitting on top of it as well.
49:45
And and that's a cake batter flavored shake with sprinkles.
49:49
And and then we have a cookie shake, which is made with Oreos
49:53
that has a giant Oreo on top of it as well as a a giant moon pie
49:58
on top of it. Yeah, it's.
50:00
They're they're pretty ridiculous.
50:02
So how is the cake or the pie or or whatever that's on top?
50:06
How is it being supported by the shake?
50:09
So what we did was it and, and this is, this is all part of the
50:12
process. So we initially started with a
50:14
a. What you would call a normal
50:17
plastic cup that you would get at a convenience store.
50:19
Well, we figured out the mouth is too big, so it's too wide.
50:23
So we move to a Mason jars with handles.
50:26
So the hole in the Mason jar is much smaller, which allows you
50:29
to have a product that goes across it and touch on multiple
50:32
edges. So the piece of cake actually
50:34
covers almost the entire hole. So it's actually sitting on the
50:39
ledge of the Mason jars. Which you wouldn't be able to do
50:43
with the traditional 16 ounce cup because the hole is too big.
50:46
So you, you learn it. It's almost like building as
50:49
well. You have to figure out how are
50:50
we going to be able to do this and how are we going to be able
50:52
to serve it to the customer. And then you have to figure out
50:56
how do I make this to go because a lot of people wanted to go or
50:59
for DoorDash? So how do you do that?
51:00
You have to figure that out too. So what we do is, is we, we
51:05
deconstruct it so you get the shake, you get everything you
51:08
need to build it. And then, and, and then we
51:11
include a card in the package that says if you were to come
51:14
into our store, because if you buy it online, it shows the
51:17
picture of it built. So there's a card that comes
51:20
with all of these that say if you come into our store, it'll
51:22
be fully constructed, but we've given you everything you need to
51:27
construct the shake at home and enjoy it just like you would be
51:30
in the store. That way they understand why
51:32
it's deconstructed and that they have everything to reconstruct
51:36
it because we do use about some 8 inch like dowel rods to hold
51:42
some of these things up. So we include those as well.
51:44
And there's a picture of the shake.
51:46
So if they really want to remake it at home with their kids, they
51:49
absolutely can do that. How do you see most people
51:52
consume these? Are they eating the cake 1st and
51:55
then getting to the shake or a little bit of both back and
51:58
forth? It depends.
51:59
So all of these come on a, on a, on a plastic plate because
52:03
they're very messy. And it really kind of depends on
52:06
the on there's sometimes that it's one person eating.
52:09
We see a lot of couples that will come in and get one because
52:11
they are they are massive. What they'll usually do is
52:14
they'll take the cake off, they'll put it on the side of
52:17
the plate, they'll take the, the, then they'll move the mug
52:21
over and then they'll, they'll do a little bit of both.
52:23
So you get a little bit of ice cream, little bit of cake.
52:26
It's the best way to eat it. And, and then the edges of the
52:29
mugs are frosted and then, you know, and have sprinkles all
52:32
around the edges of the mugs. So it's not just the mug.
52:35
There's frosting around that with sprinkles or, or crushed
52:38
Oreo. If it's the Oreo shake and it on
52:41
our website, you could see all of our shakes and they're
52:44
absolutely amazing and absolutely extreme.
52:47
Are there one of your concepts that we haven't given much voice
52:49
to today that would be worthwhile?
52:53
You know, I think the, I think the, you know, the, the, the
52:56
local bar is, is a fun one. Flight 18681868 is the year
53:02
Wichita was founded, not incorporated, but founded and
53:07
it's an aviation themed bar. Wichita's the air capital city.
53:10
We have Boeing, we have Spirit, Airbus, Bombardier, Cessna.
53:14
They're all here. And my mother also is a former
53:18
flight attendant for Western Airlines.
53:20
So we decided to do something with a little bit of an aviation
53:25
feel. So the bar has all kinds of
53:27
aviation memorabilia in it. It also has first class seats
53:31
from American Airlines, so you can sit in a first class seat if
53:35
you've never sat in one and you can enjoy and sit and kind of
53:39
relax. And we've got monitors up that
53:42
show the flights coming in and out of Dwight Diaz and our
53:45
International National Airport here in Wichita.
53:48
So you can see the flights coming in the airlines, the
53:50
flight times and things like that.
53:52
So it's kind of a, a unique take on a, on a, on a neighborhood
53:55
bar and it's, it's a lot of fun. Is it strictly a bar?
53:58
Is there bar food? Is there a menu there as well?
54:01
It's a very small place. It has a 14 seats inside and a
54:05
very small kitchen. But we do very cozy.
54:08
Yeah. But we do have appetizers.
54:10
And so we do. We do chips and salsa and queso
54:12
and salsa and charcuterie boards.
54:15
We do have a patio out front too, which is, it all pretty
54:18
much double s our capacity. So it it takes us up to about
54:20
28. And it's perfect for this time
54:23
of year because we have fire pits out there and people on
54:26
Fridays and Saturday nights will sit out there by the fire pits
54:28
and listen to live music that we that we have pretty often.
54:32
Nice. Derek, I've just got one more
54:34
question for you, but before I ask it, I want to do a few
54:37
things. Anybody who's looking to get in
54:39
touch with Derek Sorrells SORRELLS, you can find him on
54:45
LinkedIn and we'll include a link to that in our show notes.
54:48
As a reminder. If you want to get more
54:50
employees access to benefits that won't hurt them financially
54:54
and carries a financial upside for the company, reach out to me
54:57
at adbackbenefits.com. And finally, if you take just a
55:01
moment to leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast
55:04
app, we will be forever grateful to you.
55:07
So last question for you, Derek, you and I reconnect one year
55:10
from today and you're very excited.
55:12
You're celebrating something big.
55:14
What's that big thing that you hope to be celebrating one year
55:17
from now? A massive upturn in the US
55:22
economy would be, would be pretty great.
55:25
The economy is a little challenging right now.
55:26
And, you know, I, I think as Tony Robbins once said, you
55:31
know, when it is winter, you have to be ready for spring.
55:34
And so that's what we're doing. We're doubling down on some of
55:37
the things that we're doing because we know when things turn
55:40
around, we want to be ready. I think the thing that we're
55:43
most excited about honestly is, is our our on site and our
55:46
catering at it just a sip and at Papa's, we've seen it.
55:50
We've seen it really explode. And as we look over the next
55:55
year with weddings in the spring and in the summer, we're really
56:00
excited about about where that's going to go.
56:02
And we're also making some, some positive changes at the arcade
56:06
too. It's kind of a unique business.
56:08
It's not a restaurant, it's got food and it has a bar, but it's
56:12
not a restaurant and it's an entertainment venue.
56:14
So we're looking at making some pretty big changes there as far
56:18
as growing beyond where we are now.
56:21
So I think those would be the two places that I would that I'd
56:24
really focus on. But we're really excited about
56:26
the future and, and we're always, we're always bullish on
56:29
America and the American people and this city.
56:33
We should have a great group of people here in Wichita.
56:37
Derek, do you want to get more specific about the changes that
56:40
are coming to the arcade? Not yet, not yet.
56:43
Don't want everyone to know just yet, but we are making some, we
56:46
are making some changes. I think they're going to be
56:47
exciting for everyone. We are going to change what we
56:50
are. We've always been an
56:51
entertainment venue that has alcohol.
56:54
We're not a bar with video games and we're we're going to stay
56:56
that way. We've always been an arcade that
56:58
happens to have alcohol. We are family friendly and that
57:01
has always been what we have been.
57:03
In the end, that certainly is not going to change.
57:06
You know, it's interesting to hear about how you want to
57:08
double down what you're doing sort of we're in the winter now,
57:11
so to speak, you know, waiting for spring to come back around
57:15
the economy gets a boost. I also hear some operators
57:19
talking about, hey, in the time being we want to create more
57:23
options that are for the cost conscious person.
57:27
Is there any thought about that or is it, hey, we're on the
57:30
right track, we're going to keep doing what we're doing?
57:33
No, we've absolutely already done that.
57:35
We, you know, one of our slower nights at the arcade, which is
57:37
Tuesday, we've created a family night that night and entry is,
57:42
is half price. So normally it's $12.00 for
57:45
adults, $10.00 for kids. We've cut that in half.
57:48
So if you want to come in on a Tuesday, you can play all the
57:50
games, 105 classic 80s and 90s video games, 6 bucks for adults,
57:55
$5 for kids. It's a, it's a crazy, crazy
57:58
deal. And then we've also added on
58:02
pizzas. So our pizzas are, are, are, are
58:05
half price on those days. And so that allows you to save a
58:08
little bit of money as well. So you know, we recognize there
58:11
are those that are, are cost conscious.
58:13
There's a lot of people that are hurting right now, you know, a
58:16
lot of businesses that are hurting right now too.
58:18
So we want to encourage everyone to be still be able to have a
58:22
good time and still be able to get out even though you may not
58:24
be able to spend as have as much disposable income as you did,
58:28
you know 2-3 years ago. All of those people are still
58:32
people, they're all still customers, and we want to still
58:35
be able to show them an amazing time.
58:38
Derek Sorrells, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing
58:40
both your time and your story with us today.
58:42
I really appreciate it. Really appreciate you having me.
58:46
Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
58:49
podcast. Thanks for learning with us
58:51
today.