Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Family, Food & Growth: Ric Gruber's Billy Bricks Story | Restaurant & Franchises Series

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Family, Food & Growth: Ric Gruber's Billy Bricks Story | Restaurant & Franchises Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories where leaders
• 0:07
  share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
• 0:10
  how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
• 0:13
  they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
• 0:18
  the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their
• 0:21
  experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
• 0:25
  by how they've overcome adversity.
• 0:27
  My name is Anthony Cotespotti and today's guest is Rick
• 0:30
  Gruber, CEO of Billy Bricks. Wood Fired Pizza started in 2005
• 0:35
  in Chicagoland when the area was nearly devoid of wood fired
• 0:39
  pizza. Today they have 7 corporate
• 0:42
  owned locations, a few more coming, 6 mobile pizza trucks
• 0:46
  and one mobile ice cream truck, as well as a brick and mortar
• 0:50
  franchise and two mobile franchise trucks.
• 0:54
  They have food trucks which can be booked for special events and
• 0:57
  wherever you go to get your Billy Brooks pizza fixed, you
• 1:00
  can count on the same high quality ingredients being used
• 1:04
  in the Neapolitan pizzas. The recipe took two years of R&D
• 1:08
  with design recipes and different techniques to get just
• 1:12
  right. We'll hear about how they are
• 1:14
  able to accommodate different allergies and why they don't use
• 1:17
  seed oils in their restaurants. Also, how the idea for Billy
• 1:21
  Bricks actually came about from a family vacation.
• 1:24
  Now before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
• 1:27
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• 1:31
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• 1:55
  Now back to our guest today, the CEO of Billy Bricks Wood Fired
• 1:58
  Pizza. Rick Bruber, I appreciate you
• 2:00
  making the time to Share your story today.
• 2:02
  Yeah, thanks for having me on. So let's hear the origin story.
• 2:06
  How did the idea come about for Billy Brooks?
• 2:09
  So yeah, it was man. Now this is going to be our 20th
• 2:13
  year. So I guess it would have had to
• 2:15
  been about 22 or 23 years ago. I was out in California and we
• 2:22
  went on a family vacation and we tried our very first wood fired
• 2:27
  pizza that any of us had ever had.
• 2:29
  And Bill, he was just obsessed with it from then on.
• 2:34
  He just couldn't get it out of his head.
• 2:36
  And after that trip started researching and developing to
• 2:39
  figure out how we could bring the style of pizza to Illinois
• 2:43
  by us. And at that time, there was
• 2:46
  nearly the void of completely in Illinois of any sort of wood
• 2:51
  fired brick ovens, anything of the sort, like you just couldn't
• 2:54
  find that. Today, it's so easy to find an
• 2:56
  oven, but it takes for granted that 20 years ago that was one
• 2:59
  of the biggest challenges was actually finding someone to
• 3:03
  build or make or deliver an oven to us.
• 3:05
  So that, you know, that's certainly changed a lot.
• 3:08
  We talked about it as well. If you looked at the old
• 3:11
  magazines back then covering the industry, there'd be maybe 1/4
• 3:17
  of one page dedicated to wood fired brick oven pizza.
• 3:21
  And now, you know, for the last 10 years that's been
• 3:24
  predominantly what everybody has talked about.
• 3:28
  There's certainly other styles now that are coming into, you
• 3:31
  know, coming into the mainstream, but wood fired pizza
• 3:34
  has been dominating for probably about the last 10 years.
• 3:38
  And your connection to Bill? He's my step dad, OK?
• 3:43
  And you talked about the challenge of finding an oven.
• 3:47
  Why was that so hard? You would think there's
• 3:50
  restaurant supply companies all over the place, right?
• 3:52
  Yeah. So there wasn't a lot of people
• 3:54
  making wood fired pizza at that time, especially then, you know,
• 3:59
  the Neapolitan style that kind of got brought to the United
• 4:03
  States that wasn't very popular because it's very different than
• 4:07
  what most people have become accustomed to in all different
• 4:09
  regions when they thought of pizza.
• 4:11
  It wasn't that type of it wasn't the same type of flour, wasn't
• 4:14
  the same type of bake time, traditional ingredients.
• 4:17
  So it really was a different flavor profile bake.
• 4:20
  And you know, it just wasn't what everyone had become
• 4:22
  accustomed to in different regions because every region has
• 4:25
  their own kind of style that they've developed in the United
• 4:27
  States. So that type of oven wasn't,
• 4:30
  there wasn't a high demand for it.
• 4:33
  And then you saw some of the bigger names like California
• 4:35
  pizza and those people, those types that were creating brick
• 4:38
  oven pizza, but it was still with gas ovens.
• 4:41
  So the wood fired brick ovens were not something that we're in
• 4:44
  like a high demand here. And there were very few people
• 4:47
  that actually made and manufactured them.
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  Again, this is 20 years ago. So this is 2004, 2005.
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  And this just wasn't a thing, you know, that was all over the
• 4:58
  place. So now the size, scale,
• 5:01
  availability and options is just a completely different world.
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  And so describe for us what is Neapolitan pizza?
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  How is that different from what maybe most Americans have been
• 5:10
  accustomed to in the past? Yeah.
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  So it's really interesting. Neapolitan pizza has to be made
• 5:18
  in a brick oven with a that's wood fired.
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  But not all wood fired pizza is Neapolitan and not all brick
• 5:25
  oven pizza is wood fired or Neapolitan.
• 5:28
  So, you know, it's where things get kind of confused and it's
• 5:31
  mostly just marketing. You know, you can have a brick
• 5:34
  oven that's run with gas. And if you do that, then you
• 5:36
  can't really have a traditional Neapolitan pizza.
• 5:38
  You can certainly crank it up to the heat, but you know, to be
• 5:41
  AVPN certified or considered classical or traditional
• 5:45
  Neapolitan, you need a wood fired brick oven that's cooking
• 5:49
  at around 900°. So you know, that's where you
• 5:53
  get into traditional Neapolitan. Now, I always say that Billy
• 5:56
  Bricks was the original Neo Neapolitan pizzeria in the
• 5:58
  United States because we took so many things from the Neapolitan
• 6:02
  tradition, but we slightly tweaked some things to try to
• 6:06
  just make it, you know, make it our own and how we liked it.
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  So we generally cook it about 7:50 to 800° and we have a
• 6:12
  slightly longer bake time. Traditional Neapolitan is like
• 6:15
  90 seconds, but to me that's a little too soft, a little too
• 6:18
  floppy. And I don't think that matches
• 6:20
  up with most Americans taste buds anyways.
• 6:23
  That's certainly not mine. So we usually cook between 2:00
• 6:26
  to 2 1/2 minutes at about 7:50 to 800°.
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  Makes it a lot crispier and gives it that nice crunch and a
• 6:32
  little, you know, less flop. The only time we get that flop
• 6:35
  is when people do the build your own and they had so many
• 6:37
  toppings. It's impossible.
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  And that's always a fun one to explain of why is my pizza like
• 6:42
  this? Well, you made it that way.
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  You know, you have all these veggies and all this other
• 6:46
  stuff. It's releasing water.
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  It's impossible to make it not softer or flop, but you, no
• 6:51
  matter how long you cooked it because you know, that's just
• 6:54
  the nature of food. So less is more for us.
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  And that's always one of the the tenants of Neapolitan Pizza as
• 7:01
  well. And why do you think wood fired
• 7:05
  pizza in particular has become so popular recently?
• 7:09
  This is the best, you know, I think now there's a lot of
• 7:13
  things that bring people to it that maybe weren't initially
• 7:16
  into it. The flavors are so much better.
• 7:19
  The taste is is just one-of-a-kind.
• 7:21
  When you have that, I just, you know, I always say, like, I
• 7:25
  wouldn't be in this business if it wasn't my favorite.
• 7:27
  I wouldn't I'm not just doing it to make money, but our pizza is
• 7:29
  truly my favorite pizza. And I and when I find others
• 7:33
  that I like just as much or sometimes, you know, maybe just
• 7:35
  a little bit more or whatever, it just motivates me to elevate
• 7:39
  to that level too. But that's, that's rarely
• 7:41
  happened in the last, you know, ten years or so.
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  But then certainly early on there was a lot that we learned
• 7:47
  and improved on. The original pizza that we
• 7:50
  researched and developed is nowhere close to what we produce
• 7:54
  today in quality, you know. But I guess back then, since
• 7:57
  there was no other competition, nobody knew any better.
• 7:59
  So, you know, the competition helped us grow and expand and
• 8:02
  improve as we went along and make the best product that we
• 8:06
  could. And you know, it, it starts with
• 8:09
  the flower. Most people in the United States
• 8:12
  are usually like American milled grain and flour for all their
• 8:16
  types of pizza, all-purpose and all these.
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  Now there's a million kinds of flour, but if it's made with
• 8:22
  American milled wheat or flour, you know, and flour and grain,
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  it's all the same as far as digestion, flavour, all that
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  type of stuff. So by using Italian imported
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  flour and having the the standards that the EU upholds
• 8:37
  all their people to and their Millers, it's always produced a
• 8:41
  much better tasting pizza, lighter, fluffier, easy on your
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  stomach and digestion, not heavy in the yeast, no GM OS, all
• 8:51
  organic. And that's always been what
• 8:53
  we've used. And that was a great thing even
• 8:56
  before it became popular. You know, we were doing that
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  before it became a thing where people again were slapping
• 9:02
  labels to show off that they were those things.
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  We always did that and we probably picked a lot of those
• 9:06
  things before we even thought about it seriously.
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  It was more of the, it was just obvious the superiority of the
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  taste, the flavor and the digestion.
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  So it became an easy, an easy choice for us.
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  And now there's all those added benefits and knowledge out there
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  that people actually discuss and know these things and who
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  appreciate that. So sometimes you don't know why
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  you appreciate it, but you do, and then you know you figure it
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  out later. I'm curious if the type of water
• 9:35
  that you use plays a big part. So everyone says that that's one
• 9:40
  of those things. That's a really New York thing.
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  You can't make the bagels, you can't make the pizza outside of
• 9:45
  New York unless you have the water from New York.
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  But I will tell you, I've lived on the East Coast.
• 9:49
  I lived in Connecticut, I spent a lot of time in New York.
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  The pizza there is great, but there is no water to me that's
• 9:57
  better than Lake MI water here in the Chicagoland area.
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  Anyone who knows like you can drink.
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  We've always bragged that you can drink our water straight out
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  of the tap and you can't say that about a lot of places.
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  So we do have really good water here.
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  That being said, I've made the same our pizza down in Florida
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  using water from Florida and it performs and tastes exactly the
• 10:15
  same way. So I think some of that is, you
• 10:19
  know, lore and myth and legend and people just like to brag
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  about where they're from and that's all terrific.
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  There definitely can be though, some effects on the dose
• 10:29
  performance based on pH levels, fluoride levels and all those
• 10:33
  types of things in your water. So if you're using, if you're
• 10:36
  someplace where you suspect the water is not as high of quality
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  and it may affect the flavor slightly, you know, you just you
• 10:43
  can put a filter on it and make sure that you're really
• 10:45
  standardizing it to wherever you are.
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  And there, there are as water filter systems that we've used
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  in dough rooms before that help you where you can set those
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  levels. So whatever your water comes
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  through, you can, you know, if you're making dough in different
• 10:57
  locations, different States and all that, you could set it to be
• 11:01
  exactly what it is back in your home and make sure that that
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  that tastes and is there the consistency, But I, I don't
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  think it's as as. Big but, but the flour.
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  The the flour makes a much bigger deal a. 100%.
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  And so they're using a different strain or it's non-GMO or
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  something about it is different than what's commonly grown here
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  in the States. So you notice a difference on
• 11:24
  how you feel like the digestion part of it, the flavor, the
• 11:28
  texture, everything. Correct.
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  It's the milling process. We have people who have said
• 11:35
  that they needed to be gluten free and by the way we make the
• 11:37
  best in house homemade gluten free pizza also using imported
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  Italian gluten free flour. However, unless someone has
• 11:46
  severe or has like diagnosed celiacs, most people when they
• 11:51
  want to take that chance try our regular pizza.
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  They will find that they can digest it just fine and don't
• 11:59
  have any issues like they have with normal pizza that they eat.
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  And it's because of the flour. It's because of the high quality
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  of the flour. I was one of those people who
• 12:07
  had a lot of stomach issues and was eating gluten free
• 12:09
  everywhere and realized that I could eat my own pizza and I
• 12:13
  never had an issue after I would eat my pizza.
• 12:15
  Wow, that's fascinating. Yeah.
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  So I tell people that like, hey, it's on you, you know, like I'm
• 12:19
  not trying to convince anybody and make their stomachs upset
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  or, you know, be, you know, feeling, you know, feeling ill
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  or any of that. But we've had multiple people
• 12:29
  who we've said just try it and if it hurts your stomach and all
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  that, then go back to our gluten free.
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  But you know, I, I don't think it's necessary given the quality
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  of our flour. And they'll try and go, you
• 12:40
  know, I have no digestive issues at all if I eat your pizza.
• 12:43
  Oh tremendous. What other, if any, allergies or
• 12:48
  dietary restrictions can you guys accommodate?
• 12:51
  Yeah. So especially on the catering
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  side, we do, we meet a lot of different needs because we can
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  do halal, we can do kosher even like our ice cream is certified
• 13:00
  kosher and we can do a lot of halal menus and things of that
• 13:05
  nature. But even more than that, we have
• 13:07
  so many vegetable options that we can accommodate vegetarians
• 13:12
  very well. And then we have a vegan cheese
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  and a number of options that we have vegan.
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  So our dough is also naturally vegan.
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  So as long as you don't add any meats or any proteins of that
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  kind to like a pizza, you can have selfish cow vegan cheese
• 13:28
  added to our regular dough, our standard sauce and then pick
• 13:32
  whatever vegetables you'd like. And, and most places do not
• 13:35
  offer all those accommodations to be able to do that.
• 13:38
  There used to be a pizza place close to me here in Columbus,
• 13:40
  OH, that I like going to because I don't do dairy.
• 13:44
  Well, it's not a vegan thing for me.
• 13:47
  It's just a digestive issue. And so I like they had an option
• 13:51
  where they would do like an oil and garlic topping and then, you
• 13:56
  know, put my meats on top of that and it was great.
• 13:59
  And it was well, you know what it was oven fired.
• 14:01
  I, I don't know until, you know, you educated me here, if it was
• 14:05
  gas or if it was wood fired, but it was a, a very tasty pizza
• 14:09
  that I enjoyed. Do you guys offer a similar
• 14:11
  option something like that? Yeah.
• 14:13
  So we have a a garlic and oil base that we use.
• 14:17
  It's on several of our standard specialty pizzas and we do also
• 14:20
  offer that like our whole, yeah. And then our whole peeled crush
• 14:26
  Alticochina tomato base, which we use for like the classic
• 14:28
  Margarita that also has no additives that would have any
• 14:32
  dairy in it. And our standard pizza sauce
• 14:35
  also doesn't add cheese to it. So, you know, in that sense
• 14:39
  there would be no dairy in that either.
• 14:40
  So there's a lot of options for people who have any sort of
• 14:43
  issue. And then with our, we have build
• 14:45
  your own pizza, salad and sandwich options on our menu to
• 14:48
  allow people to go up there and, and basically say, like, this is
• 14:51
  what I like or what I can have and make it simple for our
• 14:54
  kitchen to be able to read the ticket.
• 14:56
  Instead of seeing a standard option with a ton of
• 14:58
  modifications, they just will see it as protein, vegetables,
• 15:03
  cheese, sauce, you know, they, they, they see it all broken
• 15:06
  out. So whatever you want, they're
• 15:07
  just reading down the list and making it in the order that we
• 15:09
  know for the build and we'll go, well, don't need to know.
• 15:13
  We're just making it how you want it.
• 15:14
  That's what you want. Do you ever coach the customer,
• 15:17
  though? Hey, that's a lot of toppings
• 15:20
  there. It's not gonna come out as
• 15:22
  crispy as maybe you're hoping it will.
• 15:23
  I'll say that when you have a customer in front of you, that
• 15:28
  generally doesn't happen. It's more of the online ordering
• 15:31
  where people are just clicking buttons and in that case, you
• 15:33
  really have no ability to tell them.
• 15:37
  I think that's where most of the confusion with things comes.
• 15:40
  And so we've been working over the past few years too of
• 15:42
  adjusting like what's available on online ordering, but what's
• 15:46
  versus what's available in store because there's some things that
• 15:48
  don't deliver as well. They don't carry out as well.
• 15:51
  There's some things that we don't want to allow them to do
• 15:53
  because we don't have the opportunity to talk them out of
• 15:55
  it. And so you just got to kind of
• 15:57
  take that option away. What would be an example of one
• 16:00
  of those options that you want to talk them out of?
• 16:03
  Like you said, like so we would put a button to limit how many
• 16:05
  toppings they could add from each category because, yeah,
• 16:08
  it's great to have someone make a build your own individual
• 16:10
  pizza that's $30. That's great for us.
• 16:13
  But it's also, it's not great in the sense that that person
• 16:16
  probably won't order that again because it's not going to be a
• 16:18
  very good pizza. So we, you know, we have our
• 16:21
  rules of how we design pizzas and the amount of toppings that
• 16:26
  we'll use to make sure that it's a great pizza.
• 16:30
  And you know, we kind of want to keep people to doing that no
• 16:33
  matter what they want because we just want them to have the best
• 16:36
  experience with the pizza and we know better than to have that.
• 16:40
  Rick, why don't you guys use seed oils?
• 16:43
  So that's one thing that with our traditional style of cooking
• 16:47
  like in Europe you would never have that anyways.
• 16:49
  So when the types of foods that we order and import, the type of
• 16:53
  menu that we have, there's really no need for a lot of
• 16:55
  oils. So we've stuck to just olive oil
• 16:59
  for years. That's all we've ever used.
• 17:01
  And me being Italian as well, that's all I've ever cooked with
• 17:07
  in my house. I've never liked the use of the
• 17:10
  sprays and all those things because I just never trusted
• 17:13
  them. And you know, you know, that
• 17:14
  olive oil, if it's pure, it's organic olive oil, you have no
• 17:18
  issues with, you know, utilizing that to cook with.
• 17:22
  And it adds more flavor, it's cleaner, it's better for you.
• 17:25
  And we've always stuck to that. We also don't have fryers in our
• 17:28
  restaurant, so a lot of restaurants have fryers and
• 17:31
  that's where they get caught in with using a lot of seed oils.
• 17:34
  Now we're learning that there's a way that we used to do things
• 17:37
  in the United States, which is using tallow and people are
• 17:40
  going back to tallow. It's only slightly more
• 17:43
  expensive, but not to the to the degree you would think,
• 17:46
  especially not for the difference in the quality, for
• 17:49
  your your health, the flavor and all that.
• 17:53
  A buddy of mine owns a fried chicken place and so they do a
• 17:57
  lot of obviously they fry everything and they also have
• 18:00
  fries on the menu, which we do not.
• 18:02
  And he switched to beef tallow and that was one of the big
• 18:06
  reasons why was because of flavor and taste and health.
• 18:10
  And people really appreciate that.
• 18:11
  And come to find out from him, like that's McDonald's.
• 18:15
  Everyone used to rave about their fries.
• 18:17
  Well, McDonald's, the 57 method, I think they called it, used
• 18:20
  beef tallow to to fry their fries.
• 18:23
  And they stopped doing that. I don't know how many years ago,
• 18:25
  but they still do it in Europe. They still use tallow in Europe.
• 18:29
  So there's a lot of things where, you know, I know that we
• 18:33
  in the United States get it right and a lot of places don't.
• 18:36
  But one of the things that I noticed from travelling abroad
• 18:38
  is that we get food really wrong here.
• 18:42
  We just do. And you know, when you go to
• 18:44
  Europe, there's not even a discussion.
• 18:46
  There's no debate, there's no arguing over this things.
• 18:48
  Everybody eats. So we should all be invested in
• 18:51
  eating the best food possible. So we stick to olive oil use.
• 18:55
  We don't do any oil based cooking here.
• 18:59
  So we're just using finishing oils.
• 19:01
  So our finishing oil is always extra virgin olive oil and
• 19:04
  that's basically it. We fry a few things for catering
• 19:08
  only. And when we do that, we also use
• 19:11
  either tallow or we use a very expensive process of using olive
• 19:14
  oil to fry. You don't have.
• 19:16
  We don't, but we don't. Yeah, exactly.
• 19:18
  But I mean, not a not a pure extra virgin olive oil, but we
• 19:21
  will use an olive oil and it's not, it's not the most cost
• 19:25
  effective way to do it, but it definitely gets the job done if
• 19:28
  we're doing a small order like a one off thing, but we don't do
• 19:31
  it on a regular basis. You know, Rick, to your point
• 19:33
  about the beef tallow, Malcolm Gladwell, who has a great
• 19:36
  podcast series, did a an episode specifically on McDonald's fries
• 19:42
  and sort of the trajectory of how good they were in beef
• 19:44
  tallow. Then perhaps misguided.
• 19:48
  It seems like they got away from it because they thought they
• 19:51
  were doing something that was better for people's health.
• 19:54
  And they ran into all kinds of quality issues, how the oil
• 20:00
  would sort of hang in the air and it would, like, fall on
• 20:02
  people's clothes and in some cases, create fires.
• 20:05
  And. Yeah.
• 20:07
  And then they, they eventually came around.
• 20:08
  They did a blind taste test. OK, beef tallow with, you know,
• 20:11
  some of the against some of the other.
• 20:13
  Oil concoctions that they they came up with and it was, you
• 20:17
  know, hands down blind taste test like beef tallow fries one
• 20:20
  out. Yeah, The only thing that would
• 20:21
  create a cloud like that in the air would be chemicals.
• 20:24
  So when you're frying in something like that, you have to
• 20:27
  ask yourself, you know, how could this possibly be good?
• 20:31
  And it's one of those things where he said we've made
• 20:33
  decisions before. There was a lot of literature on
• 20:36
  these things. And I'm an analytical person,
• 20:38
  and I like to dig deep and read and do all that.
• 20:40
  But I also have common sense if something doesn't pass the test
• 20:45
  for me. And I also look at this like,
• 20:47
  we're, you know, one of our tag lines is we're wood fired and
• 20:50
  family inspired. But we also say we make real
• 20:53
  food by real people real fast. And this is a family business.
• 20:59
  I don't believe in serving anything to anyone that I
• 21:02
  wouldn't want to serve myself or my family on a regular basis.
• 21:06
  You know, I have young kids and my family and I, we eat at our
• 21:09
  own restaurant or I bring food home all the time and I just
• 21:13
  don't. And that's a big part of our
• 21:14
  customer base. I just don't believe in
• 21:16
  producing a product or spending my life on a brand and product
• 21:20
  that is not something that I would bring to my family on a
• 21:24
  daily basis. I believe you could eat at Billy
• 21:27
  Bricks seven days a week and you could live a healthy lifestyle
• 21:31
  doing that, not eating pizza for three meals a day, seven days a
• 21:35
  week. There's a lot of carbs involved
• 21:36
  in that, but there's enough options in healthy conscious
• 21:40
  choices. Like you eat a classic
• 21:41
  Margarita, it's around 450 to 500 calories.
• 21:46
  You know, you can eat that. Like it's not something that's
• 21:48
  going to blow you or have all these other concerns.
• 21:51
  So it's, you know, I, I truly believe in that.
• 21:54
  And I think that's, you know, that's where I want us to stay
• 21:57
  no matter what because I think that's our biggest value
• 22:00
  proposition to our customers. So for somebody who hasn't been
• 22:03
  into a Billy Bricks before, kind of paint a picture, customers
• 22:06
  walking in for the first time, what's the environment, what's
• 22:09
  the vibe? What do they see?
• 22:10
  What are their options? Obviously lots of pizza options.
• 22:12
  You mentioned salads kind of paint a picture for us.
• 22:15
  Yeah. So the initial concept was to
• 22:18
  have a open kitchen Prem. Look what we now call Premier
• 22:23
  Casual because we're not like a Chipotle or Five Guys where
• 22:26
  you're walking up, ordering, you sit down and it's like it comes
• 22:29
  fast food. It's not that.
• 22:31
  So it's Premier casual in the sense that once you place your
• 22:33
  order at the counter, it's full service for you.
• 22:36
  But we don't do order at the table.
• 22:37
  We don't have waiters, waitresses, you know, all that
• 22:39
  type of stuff. But the original name was Bricks
• 22:44
  Wood Fired Pizza Cafe, and it's now Billy Bricks only.
• 22:48
  But the cafe part of it used to confuse people because they
• 22:51
  thought we had coffee. But the real reason that Bill
• 22:54
  included that in the name was that he wanted people to know
• 22:56
  that it was a cafe like environment.
• 22:58
  It was going to be like a coffee shop vibe and the feel of like a
• 23:03
  Cheers where everybody knows your name.
• 23:05
  You could come in, you can hang out for a while.
• 23:07
  You don't have to be in a rush. Correct.
• 23:09
  Our food's going to be fast, but you don't have to be.
• 23:12
  And that was how we always wanted it to be, that
• 23:14
  comfortable environment. Most of our stores have that
• 23:17
  vibe completely. A few of them that we tried
• 23:19
  different things where they're in a more of a business strip
• 23:22
  center type area, you know, the commercial centers, it's a
• 23:28
  little bit more of the casual of like, I don't know, I would just
• 23:33
  say it's a little more industrial of a feel than it is
• 23:35
  casual. But our best performing
• 23:37
  locations are the ones that stick true to the original
• 23:40
  model, which are the downtown suburban locations that have
• 23:45
  that exact feel with the lights just right.
• 23:48
  You're, you're relaxed, you're being taken care of, but you're
• 23:51
  also not breaking the bank. And it's a place where you feel
• 23:54
  comfortable with your kids there and your kids can spill on the
• 23:56
  floor. And it's not the end of the
• 23:58
  world. You know, it's not embarrassing
• 23:59
  the whole family in the middle of the dining room.
• 24:01
  So we wanted that happy medium of high quality at an affordable
• 24:06
  price at a place that you not only would go on a date, but you
• 24:09
  would also be wanting to take your kids.
• 24:11
  And you can be in there. It's quick.
• 24:13
  You know, I, I, whenever we go to a restaurant, we're starting
• 24:15
  the clock with our kids, how long we've got before we can get
• 24:18
  out of there. So you could take care of that
• 24:21
  customer just the same. But if you wanted to hang out
• 24:24
  and have a nice relaxing meal with somebody, you could do that
• 24:26
  also. You mentioned there's a
• 24:32
  certification that exists. What is that?
• 24:35
  How does that work? Yeah, so the the Squalo Italiano
• 24:40
  Pizzaiolo out of Naples, Italy has AVPN certification that they
• 24:45
  do, which means you have the right flour, the right process,
• 24:49
  the right room temperatures, the right mixer, the right oven.
• 24:53
  You know, they come in and they certify your place.
• 24:55
  We started thinking about going down that path a long time ago
• 24:58
  and then got away from it because it seemed to me it was a
• 25:01
  lot of the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, so to speak.
• 25:06
  And there was just things that we weren't going to be willing
• 25:07
  to do on our scale, which, you know, creating a dough
• 25:10
  temperature controlled room in every store to make sure you
• 25:13
  know, that it's held in the exact conditions that they make
• 25:17
  dough in Naples, Italy and all those things.
• 25:19
  There's a little bit of overkill, but that is the that's
• 25:22
  the certification that's out there now.
• 25:24
  I think more of their certification has switched to
• 25:26
  focusing on training pizzaiolos to make pizza and make things
• 25:32
  the way. So there's a lot more focus on
• 25:35
  the certifications of the pizza makers than it is on the
• 25:39
  facilities all having that, because they probably realized
• 25:42
  pretty quickly that people were not going to invest in all that
• 25:44
  stuff. Yeah, sometimes these, I'm not
• 25:47
  familiar with this particular one, but sometimes these
• 25:49
  certifications, they're a good thing and sometimes they exist
• 25:53
  as more of a revenue stream for the people providing that
• 25:57
  certificate, so. Yeah, they they seem to do that
• 26:00
  for them and not so much to us. I don't know that there is a,
• 26:03
  you know, like you just said, what is that?
• 26:05
  Most people don't know it here. So it's really not the thing
• 26:07
  that's going to be driving anyone, you know, running into
• 26:10
  your business. So for us it didn't seem really
• 26:13
  worth the investment of doing that you.
• 26:15
  Know, you mentioned that in recent years there's some other
• 26:19
  styles of pizza that have started to pop up.
• 26:21
  What? What are those?
• 26:23
  Yeah, so interestingly enough, like the one that's caught fire
• 26:26
  recently has been like the New Haven style pizza, which is
• 26:31
  really funny because I went to College in Connecticut.
• 26:34
  I, you know, I, my late night college pizza was like the New
• 26:40
  Haven style pizza, the Connecticut style.
• 26:42
  So I guess I was really spoiled in that sense because I was
• 26:45
  eating terrific pizza, you know, in my dorm at that age and most
• 26:49
  people are ordering Domino's. So I was really spoiled with
• 26:51
  that. And it's very similar in the
• 26:54
  sense of like it's traditionally coal fire, but you can make it
• 26:56
  in these electric ovens now you can make it in a wood fired
• 26:59
  oven. You can you can do it in that
• 27:00
  tradition, But that's really caught on, funny enough, because
• 27:05
  I loved that style of pizza and I realized how it could be made
• 27:10
  very easily, you know, and mimicked with our dough and in
• 27:13
  our oven just before COVID when we started playing around with
• 27:17
  larger sizes. I said, you know, why don't it's
• 27:20
  a traditional Neapolitan or a pizza Leo Neapolitan like we
• 27:23
  make should be 12 inches, 11 to 13 inches.
• 27:25
  It's not. I don't want to make a big
• 27:28
  Neapolitan pizza because that's just not what it is.
• 27:33
  Why? Because the the crust doesn't
• 27:34
  cook correctly or what? Yeah, and it's just, you know,
• 27:37
  to me, I'm all for bucking tradition, but also to call a 16
• 27:42
  inch pizza and Neapolitan pizza just isn't.
• 27:44
  It's just not what it can't be. It can't be in any way.
• 27:48
  So to me, I thought, why not offer something that I think is
• 27:53
  going to be really cool. We'll add another style of pizza
• 27:55
  without having to upend our operations.
• 27:58
  It just requires a different stretching technique and a
• 28:01
  different baking technique inside of the same oven.
• 28:03
  So this is a pretty easy change to make or to addition to add.
• 28:08
  And it's something that I love. I love the New Haven style
• 28:11
  pizza. So it was probably in four or
• 28:15
  five years ago that when we added the larger size pizzas, we
• 28:18
  described them as a New Haven style.
• 28:21
  So our larger pizzas we bake a little bit longer, we emphasized
• 28:26
  the crust cornuccioni a little bit, you know, a little bit less
• 28:29
  and bake them like the New Haven style pizzas.
• 28:32
  And that has been one of the biggest increases in our revenue
• 28:36
  was adding the bigger sizes because that was always
• 28:38
  something that people asked us. We don't cater from you because
• 28:41
  you know, when I got a big party, I don't want to order 30
• 28:43
  pizzas for 30 people. I just want to order like 5
• 28:47
  large pizzas. And so that was a big thing that
• 28:50
  I heard from friends and family. So friends and family are
• 28:54
  telling me that imagine that has to be in the minds of most of my
• 28:57
  customers who don't care nearly as much for about us and our
• 29:00
  success as our family does. So I was like, OK, this is
• 29:03
  something we have to figure out how.
• 29:04
  And and that was my answer to how or why.
• 29:07
  And then, you know, these pizza reviews started with Dave
• 29:10
  Portnoy and then he said declared Connecticut was the
• 29:13
  pizza capital of the world. And now everyone's like, I got
• 29:16
  to try New Haven style pizza. So it drew like drove a lot of
• 29:18
  people to us to where we are. One of maybe 2 pizzerias in all
• 29:23
  of Illinois that actually offers New Haven Style pizza.
• 29:26
  Now I know there's gonna be more coming, but there was nobody
• 29:29
  doing that. And when you search New Haven
• 29:31
  Style Pizza in Chicago, we were the 1st result and we were
• 29:35
  basically doing it brand new, doing it because nobody else was
• 29:37
  in that space. So that was what we did.
• 29:41
  And most people that are set up to do our style of pizza don't
• 29:43
  have the size ovens or facilities to facilitate
• 29:46
  offering another style or a larger size pizza.
• 29:49
  So we could. And so we did.
• 29:53
  And it's one of my favorite styles of pizza.
• 29:55
  In fact, like no matter what I make, I usually make it thinner
• 29:58
  and crispier because that's just what I prefer.
• 30:02
  And so I think it's our best option, like when you get our 14
• 30:04
  or 16 inch pizza and the 14 is our thinnest crust and we call
• 30:08
  it the ultra thin, but really it's more of a Barre Italy
• 30:11
  style. It's no emphasis on crust rolled
• 30:14
  all the way out, toppings all the way out.
• 30:15
  And we cook it for about 3 1/2 minutes instead of 2 1/2.
• 30:19
  It's. Awesome.
• 30:20
  And so that's the one of the big differences then from New Haven
• 30:25
  to Neapolitan is that the crust is even thinner.
• 30:28
  The crust is thinner and they'll cook at a lower temperature, so
• 30:32
  about 5:50, so that 550, but they'll do about 6-7 minutes on
• 30:36
  their bake. We don't drop our temperature as
• 30:39
  much, but we'll cook the pizza off to the side.
• 30:41
  So we're only doing about 3 1/2, maybe 4 minutes because our
• 30:44
  temperature is hotter. So like I said, it's a New Haven
• 30:46
  inspired pizza. It's not the exact way that you
• 30:49
  would set it up if you did it, but it mimics it pretty damn
• 30:52
  close. And again, I would know because
• 30:56
  I ate a lot of them before just trying to do it.
• 30:58
  And so I'm I'm a fan and, and a lover of that style of pizza.
• 31:02
  And so I think it's terrific and I love that it's a New Haven
• 31:05
  inspired pizza, meaning just like we do in Neapolitan, we
• 31:08
  stayed as true as we could, but we kind of doing it our way.
• 31:12
  So it makes it worse. You're not going to get this
• 31:13
  anywhere else. In fact, you know Frank Pepe's,
• 31:17
  which was the original New Haven style pizza.
• 31:21
  Frank Pepe's sign at his original store says Frank Pepe's
• 31:25
  Pizzeria Napolitan. So what he was doing as a a
• 31:30
  native of Naples before he came to New York and then to
• 31:33
  Connecticut, was making what he knew how to make in Naples,
• 31:36
  Italy, which was a Neapolitan style pizza.
• 31:39
  But when he set up his shop, he had a bread oven that was using
• 31:43
  coal, which is not what you would use in Italy.
• 31:45
  And so the product was coming out very differently than that.
• 31:49
  But so it was a very unique new style of pizza.
• 31:52
  And so he was his dough. And the process is very similar
• 31:56
  to the Neapolitan style. But again, he just added his own
• 31:59
  twist because of what he had available to him.
• 32:00
  And I say, like, that's exactly what we want to do in our
• 32:03
  pizzeria. We're not trying to copy or
• 32:05
  mimic anything, but we certainly take inspiration and use what we
• 32:08
  have available to us to make our pizza.
• 32:11
  So what would a a consumer notice in difference from
• 32:17
  coal-fired to wood fired to gas fired pizza?
• 32:21
  Well, I think coal-fired, they, you know, they, it's going to be
• 32:26
  a lower time and the way that the top heat versus bottom heat
• 32:28
  is different than a wood fired oven, which is predominantly top
• 32:31
  heat and where the coal-fired is going to be predominantly bottom
• 32:34
  heat. So they'll bake it longer.
• 32:36
  The bottoms on a coal-fired pizza are going to be a lot more
• 32:39
  charred and crispy. The top is going to have more of
• 32:41
  that charcoal charring. You just think about it like if
• 32:44
  you put a burger and you left it on a charcoal oven too long,
• 32:47
  like the, the, the charring on the outside of that and the
• 32:49
  flavor of those charcoals, you will have that.
• 32:51
  So if that's what you like, you're going to really enjoy
• 32:54
  that. And I love charring.
• 32:56
  So I always like the coal-fired like New Haven style pizza.
• 32:59
  Now, the fact that we bake in a wood fired oven, my preference
• 33:04
  now is for the wood fired oak flavoring, you know, in our in
• 33:08
  our crust and not having it nearly as charred on the bottom.
• 33:12
  But if I was going to choose pizzas like I would choose
• 33:15
  between one of those wood fired or coal-fired.
• 33:16
  I don't particularly like gas ovens.
• 33:20
  They make a pretty decent pizza, but I don't think it adds
• 33:22
  anything to it. You don't get any smokiness.
• 33:24
  You don't get all that extra flavor that really separates it
• 33:27
  from, you know, a pizza that you could make at home or get from
• 33:30
  any of your chains around the country.
• 33:33
  Rick, let's talk about the food trucks.
• 33:35
  Tell me about them. Yeah.
• 33:37
  So in in 2012, I think it was, I was living in the Bay Area and
• 33:47
  there was a guy who was also a lawyer that I knew, and he had
• 33:51
  this truck that I saw. So I was working in North Beach
• 33:56
  in California, in San Francisco, and I saw this truck and I
• 33:59
  couldn't believe it because my family had started this business
• 34:02
  back in Illinois and making wood fired pizzas.
• 34:05
  And so now this guy has a wood fired oven inside of this
• 34:08
  gigantic truck with a shipping container and it's all
• 34:11
  fabricated out of this thing. Now, the guy was a patent
• 34:15
  attorney, so he's a engineer. So it's very, it was all
• 34:19
  function, no form. And so for me, I was like, man,
• 34:22
  this thing's really cool. This would be awesome to make
• 34:25
  one of these, but make it sexier.
• 34:28
  So I sent a picture to Bill at the time.
• 34:30
  And, you know, he didn't have nothing to do with pizza trucks
• 34:33
  or mobile and nobody. A lot of people didn't want to
• 34:36
  get into food trucks. And back then, you know, it was
• 34:38
  the old food trucks or Roach coaches.
• 34:41
  Yeah. And that's all it was.
• 34:42
  You know, the whole scene, it was.
• 34:43
  Gross for a long time. Not a super chic, Yeah.
• 34:46
  Yeah. So it was not the thing that was
• 34:48
  not the move and that they had that stigma attached to it.
• 34:51
  So I ended up moving back and then I got back into the family
• 34:54
  business and started, you know, working my way up here and sort
• 34:59
  of taking over a little pieces at a time.
• 35:01
  And I said I'd really want to do this.
• 35:03
  He said, well, I don't want this box truck Roach coach.
• 35:06
  He said, I don't think that's we're not on the same page.
• 35:08
  Let me show you what I'm thinking.
• 35:09
  So I started showing him more of these and my ideas of how to
• 35:12
  design it and what we could do. And he was sold.
• 35:14
  He was like this. That was awesome.
• 35:15
  I've never seen anything like that.
• 35:17
  So then it was who can build it? Well, my, we were trying to
• 35:21
  figure that part out. And then we thought, you know,
• 35:25
  let's ask my cousin Austin. He designs and builds custom
• 35:30
  vehicles. Maybe he could design this.
• 35:32
  It's just a vehicle with a fabricated box dropped on it.
• 35:35
  Let's see if he's interested. So we talked to him and he's
• 35:37
  like, man, that's such a cool idea.
• 35:38
  I'd love, I'd love to take it on, you know.
• 35:42
  And so that's basically how the first one happened, was I had a
• 35:45
  rough drawing and sketch an idea of what we wanted and what we
• 35:48
  needed in it. Sent it off to him and we worked
• 35:50
  through a lot of stuff. We built a second one where we
• 35:53
  changed some things up from the first one, thinking we have
• 35:56
  learned a lot. Some things we learned some
• 35:59
  things. Now when we built another one,
• 36:01
  we were like, we're going to go back to a lot of the stuff we
• 36:03
  did on the first one because I think we started overthinking
• 36:05
  it. But it is nice to have some that
• 36:07
  are set up differently because they serve different types of
• 36:11
  events better. And then we kind of do that
• 36:14
  logistically, assigning them where we want based on the type
• 36:16
  of event, the size of the oven that we have in each one, the
• 36:19
  way the line works, how many people we have staffed in them
• 36:22
  that night. And so it's nice having the
• 36:24
  variety and the options. But yeah, so he's built all
• 36:27
  those for us and our ice cream truck.
• 36:29
  So yeah, that's how it came about.
• 36:31
  And then from I want to say that we got the first truck built and
• 36:37
  delivered to us mid season, so around June, July, the year
• 36:43
  before COVID. OK.
• 36:46
  So we were in the midst of our first full season and wrapping
• 36:50
  that up as COVID started hitting.
• 36:53
  So we were a year and a half in and then COVID hit and man, was
• 36:56
  that a blessing to have that available to us.
• 36:58
  And it just went went crazy because that's what we were able
• 37:02
  to do at the time. You know, in a lot of places
• 37:04
  everything was shut down, but we could bring a truck and make
• 37:07
  food outside. And then so we built another
• 37:09
  one, then we built another one and then we got trailers and we
• 37:12
  started doing that to bring that.
• 37:14
  And now that hasn't really slowed down.
• 37:15
  And that's still something that people now have found that they
• 37:17
  really enjoy and is a great way to do catering and really just
• 37:21
  took off. And it's become a whole separate
• 37:23
  thing where a lot of our growth people say, oh, you're going to
• 37:25
  open up more stores. We are, but we've opened as many
• 37:30
  trucks as we have stores. And so you know that growth,
• 37:34
  it's like we've focused and spent a lot of time there not on
• 37:36
  the brick and mortar because these are servicing the areas
• 37:40
  all around the stores that we have.
• 37:42
  And so now that we're kind of catching up stores to trucks
• 37:45
  now, it doesn't make sense to add another store in another
• 37:48
  like an area, start opening up that zone and then adding more
• 37:52
  trucks to service those areas. So yeah, you know, we we focused
• 37:56
  a lot on that for a while. So people can hire A truck to
• 37:59
  maybe come to a party or an event that they're having.
• 38:02
  Do you guys park it in a place on a regular basis for lunch or
• 38:06
  for dinner? No, we've never done that.
• 38:08
  There may be something, especially if we open up in a
• 38:10
  new market that we do, but we've never done that here. 90% of the
• 38:15
  stuff that we do is prepaid privately booked weddings,
• 38:20
  corporate events, graduation parties, birthday parties,
• 38:23
  engagement parties. Also if you think we do a little
• 38:25
  over probably do over 100 weddings a year now.
• 38:29
  Yeah. So we so there's a lot of that,
• 38:30
  that was not something that we thought about at the beginning.
• 38:32
  I mean it just something that developed and those those types
• 38:37
  of events. And then of course, we do some
• 38:39
  of the festivals and that type of thing, but those are
• 38:43
  generally focused specifically on the areas where we have a
• 38:47
  store. So if we're going to do a
• 38:48
  festival, because it's hit or miss based on weather, all that
• 38:51
  type of stuff, variables, we do it in the in the neighborhoods
• 38:55
  that we have a brick and mortar because there's the added
• 38:57
  benefit of being able to pass the literature, get in front of
• 39:00
  people who can be customers to drive them back the traffic.
• 39:04
  So we don't do a lot of festivals outside of our core
• 39:06
  areas where we have a brick and mortar location.
• 39:10
  So say more about the growth. I mean, you talk about, you
• 39:13
  know, the trucks catching up with the the physical locations
• 39:15
  and now maybe it makes sense to open.
• 39:17
  Some new physical. Locations like what are the
• 39:20
  plans there? Yeah.
• 39:22
  So we kind of look at things in pods.
• 39:24
  The western suburb, we have pretty much locked down now.
• 39:28
  You know, we have a lot of locations in a in a small area.
• 39:31
  And so with all within 5 to 10 miles of each other.
• 39:33
  So I can see that little area where we're really saturated and
• 39:37
  we get a ton of events. And so we need XYZ amount of
• 39:40
  units to be able to service that plus those stores.
• 39:43
  And then that's like a pod. And then we've opened one
• 39:47
  further E that's our location closest to the city in the first
• 39:51
  suburb of the city in Old Park and then LaGrange.
• 39:53
  And those kind of serve a similar area.
• 39:55
  They're closer to each other. So if we opened up one more
• 39:58
  within a geographic region there, it allows us to set up
• 40:01
  operational infrastructure just for those 3.
• 40:05
  And you could conceivably leave one truck of each kind in that
• 40:09
  area to just serve that area. And then we have one about an
• 40:13
  hour up north here. We're looking at two to three
• 40:16
  other areas up there to open up one to two more stores.
• 40:20
  And then that would justify having a truck and a pizza truck
• 40:23
  and an ice cream truck of its own up there to stay up there
• 40:26
  because we get a lot of work up there right now.
• 40:28
  But we're driving 45 minutes each way from our commissary to
• 40:32
  get up there. And that's a lot of wear and
• 40:35
  tear on the trucks, a lot of extra labor for the time of the
• 40:37
  guys driving back and forth. It'd be really great to have one
• 40:40
  of those planted up there. But I think you need to have
• 40:42
  about two or three in each location to then have one truck
• 40:45
  of each each kind there. And so that's where I say like
• 40:48
  we're catching up with that growth and opening up new areas,
• 40:50
  starting to expand where you get the one store now we should add
• 40:54
  a truck up there, help build that area, build the brand,
• 40:57
  build the, you know, the, the knowledge base within the area
• 41:02
  of people knowing, you know, the brand and knowing us then there
• 41:05
  being a demand for us to be in more places.
• 41:07
  And so that I think that's where we're going to be focusing.
• 41:10
  And that's why out of market opportunities might be something
• 41:13
  that we're interested in because for instance, if you're in Ohio,
• 41:17
  you know, like in the Dayton area, it's a place we've looked
• 41:19
  at, you set up in several suburbs around the Dayton area,
• 41:23
  plus you have those trucks and you're able to serve a place
• 41:26
  like UD. And then you have those other
• 41:28
  areas around there that could be a really great opportunity to
• 41:30
  capitalize on a region and to have these trucks that are
• 41:34
  incredibly unique and can also serve a very cool community,
• 41:38
  like a college town atmosphere. So, you know, we're working
• 41:41
  through all this stuff right now, but to make that possible,
• 41:44
  it's really important that we're on solid financial ground, solid
• 41:49
  organizational ground, operational and all that stuff
• 41:52
  first before we go back out there.
• 41:54
  But every time we've tried to expand or try something
• 41:56
  different, whether it's worked or not, has been a great
• 41:59
  learning opportunity to see what we should be doing.
• 42:02
  So hopefully we're through a lot of those growing pains and
• 42:06
  expensive learning experiences and can take that knowledge to
• 42:09
  open things up the right way in other places.
• 42:13
  As you think about going into other geographical markets, do
• 42:17
  you think those would be corporate owned locations,
• 42:19
  franchises, How do you think about that?
• 42:22
  There are certain ones that if the right partner presented
• 42:26
  itself, we would consider going in corporate because there might
• 42:30
  be an operational partner that we had on the ground.
• 42:33
  But more so if we can prove our model and numbers here, it may
• 42:37
  be something that is very attractive as an investable
• 42:39
  opportunity for a franchise in their own region where they have
• 42:43
  a lot of knowledge and experience because they've grown
• 42:46
  up there or they, they already operate something there or live
• 42:49
  there. You know, that's important
• 42:50
  because we understand this area really well because this is
• 42:53
  where I grew up. This is where my family is.
• 42:55
  This is where a lot of our, you know, our workers are like we
• 42:58
  know this area very well. So know how to navigate it.
• 43:02
  We haven't talked about the fact that you're a lawyer.
• 43:04
  How does that come into play? Well, it hopefully doesn't come
• 43:08
  into play that often. It definitely helps.
• 43:13
  I don't know that practicing as an attorney helps in the sense
• 43:16
  that like I'm not doing things like bringing cases all the time
• 43:19
  or, you know, filing things all the time.
• 43:22
  However, the training that you get as an attorney, the highly
• 43:27
  research based analytical basis and you know, problem solving
• 43:31
  training that you get is hugely important because that's all
• 43:35
  businesses at the end of the day is identifying issues,
• 43:39
  researching potential solutions and then coming like choosing
• 43:43
  them and implementing them. And that is pretty much all
• 43:45
  lawyers do. You know, we we read and study
• 43:48
  and we have all this stuff, but you will never remember all
• 43:50
  those books in every line that's in every one of them.
• 43:53
  But when someone you know, you're trained in something
• 43:55
  called issue spotting, that's what all of operation and
• 44:00
  oversight of any sort of business comes down to, right?
• 44:02
  Is spotting issues as they come up in identifying potential
• 44:07
  solutions and so that and I think conflict resolution is
• 44:11
  another big piece of being a lawyer.
• 44:13
  And so that's one of the biggest things in probably any business.
• 44:16
  But this one I can just speak to.
• 44:18
  I think more than anything, the biggest challenge is and the
• 44:21
  biggest learning curves and the day-to-day stuff that comes up
• 44:25
  is not what topping on this and should we pick this, this cone
• 44:29
  or that cone or this box or that box.
• 44:31
  Those things are pretty cut and dry of hey, this one cost this
• 44:33
  and this is this. That's all fine.
• 44:35
  I think it's the management of the the people day-to-day in
• 44:40
  your mentality towards that and patience and what you see your
• 44:44
  role as. Those are the harder soft, those
• 44:46
  are the softer skills that are harder to develop or have and
• 44:51
  continually have the patience for.
• 44:53
  And I think being a lawyer does it makes you comfortable with
• 44:57
  confrontation, but it also where you may be Morehead on about it,
• 45:03
  which is my approach. If I have a weird feeling, I
• 45:05
  just bring it right up because I don't like that looming over.
• 45:10
  But it also makes you a little bit more reserved.
• 45:12
  It makes you hold your hold your tongue a lot more and listen
• 45:17
  first. The best lawyers listen more
• 45:20
  than they talk. And so it may be confusing to
• 45:23
  some people, but I think that helps as well.
• 45:26
  And then just getting more mature, getting older, you know,
• 45:32
  you have kids. Nothing tests your patience and
• 45:35
  your ability to to slow down than your kids.
• 45:39
  And so I think that's helped a lot as well.
• 45:40
  But yeah, being a lawyer definitely helps in
• 45:43
  understanding all those things and then putting some of those
• 45:45
  more practical skills that you learn, not necessarily the
• 45:48
  knowledge of the law, but that definitely helps in some some
• 45:52
  instances that I probably don't even realize and I take for
• 45:57
  granted because they're just things that I know.
• 46:00
  They don't come up as question marks in my head when something
• 46:02
  comes up because I just, I just instinctively know that that
• 46:06
  answer. So I probably overlooked some of
• 46:09
  those more technical things that come up.
• 46:12
  Let's talk a little bit more about the people's side of the
• 46:15
  business, right? Because most folks I talked to,
• 46:18
  it's still the labor market's still tight, you know, hard to
• 46:22
  find good folks, hard to hold on to good folks.
• 46:26
  What are some things that you guys have tried and found?
• 46:30
  Are working for you? Well, pay usually helps, but it
• 46:36
  doesn't guarantee that you have the best.
• 46:38
  So as far as finding and retaining people pay definitely
• 46:41
  helps. Being competitive or overpricing
• 46:44
  the market because of what you're able to do and efficiency
• 46:48
  or scheduling and, and being smart about that and, and all
• 46:52
  those things are that helps. But I think it's, it depends on
• 46:58
  the age group you're looking at. Having flexibility is a huge
• 47:02
  thing. Now you know, a lot of people
• 47:03
  want to do the work from home. Obviously you can't do that in a
• 47:06
  restaurant business. So how can we create a flexible
• 47:09
  enough scheduling and work environment where we aren't as
• 47:11
  rigid with people? So, you know, when we're
• 47:13
  interviewing them and we know the demands that they have on
• 47:15
  themselves with families, potentially other jobs, you
• 47:20
  know, is this a part time thing for them to make extra money or
• 47:22
  is this a full time gig? But you have kids that need to
• 47:26
  be picked up from school so that it's like normally a shift ends
• 47:30
  at 4, but your kids need to be picked up at 3.
• 47:32
  Those are things we like to work out like treated on a human
• 47:34
  level and don't have a very rigid like, OK, well, we never
• 47:37
  allow people to work this shift unless they can leave at this
• 47:41
  time. No, it actually benefits us,
• 47:43
  right? If we have the person who's not
• 47:46
  wanting to be cut because they want the hours and another
• 47:48
  person who absolutely needs to be cut because they need to pick
• 47:51
  someone up. That's something very easy to
• 47:52
  work through when you have managers who are taught that
• 47:56
  that is an important thing and not to be, hey, this is not a
• 47:59
  rigid system. These are guidelines and
• 48:03
  planning, but to take it from a human perspective of, you know,
• 48:07
  yourself and what you would expect.
• 48:09
  So I think that's a big thing is flexibility, pay, competitive
• 48:13
  pay, and then I think also not micromanaging people.
• 48:16
  So I think the clearer we've become with our expectations and
• 48:19
  training and outlining those things of like this is what your
• 48:22
  job entails. This is what we expect of you.
• 48:24
  You know, there are ways to go above and beyond, but there are
• 48:27
  things that are these are the basics.
• 48:30
  And if you meet those like you're not going to be met with
• 48:32
  a lot of like resistance or we're not going to be all over
• 48:36
  you while you are handling the mundane tasks of the job.
• 48:40
  And so we give people a lot of, I like to give them a long
• 48:44
  leash, I guess I should say. Because if they're there and
• 48:48
  they're in that role, they should only be there if we're
• 48:50
  trusting them to do that job in the 1st place.
• 48:51
  If we've lost that and they become someone that we feel we
• 48:54
  have to micromanage, there's only a few times where you can
• 48:57
  have that conversation where then I would say, I think it's
• 48:59
  time to make a change here because this person is taking up
• 49:02
  a lot of our energy and brain power just to make sure they're
• 49:06
  doing the basics. So that means that there's
• 49:08
  something going on there. So let's check in, see what's
• 49:11
  going on and if it doesn't get any better, then it's time to
• 49:14
  move on and let's replace that person with with an A player.
• 49:18
  And, and we take that and approach that from a perspective
• 49:21
  of it's not going to be impossible to find someone
• 49:25
  better. And I think that's that's
• 49:28
  usually the issue that most people have is there's a fear
• 49:30
  that if I let this person go, I have no one to fill that spot
• 49:33
  and I'm not going to find anybody.
• 49:34
  And I haven't found that to be true.
• 49:36
  And I find that it's usually that person, your low performer
• 49:41
  or your negative energy or your your bad attitude player is
• 49:44
  actually costing you the people that you're wondering why you're
• 49:48
  losing or can't get. That person's costing you those
• 49:51
  people. Yeah.
• 49:52
  Like so you can't have eight players if you have a bad.
• 49:54
  Team, do you feel like you can communicate this kind of
• 50:00
  scheduling flexibility and overall flexibility with
• 50:03
  employees in a franchise model? Because, you know, with a
• 50:07
  franchise model you want to lay things out as clearly as
• 50:10
  possible so that there's not room for interpretation.
• 50:13
  Do you think there's a way to sort of coach and train that to
• 50:16
  future franchisees? You hope so.
• 50:19
  I mean, it's one of those things where you can tell them like,
• 50:22
  hey, this, you don't have control over that aspect of the
• 50:25
  business. You can tell them like, hey,
• 50:27
  this is what we've done and how we handle employees and to make
• 50:31
  sure that our issues are lessen than what other people are
• 50:35
  experiencing. And we have those hiring
• 50:37
  guidelines and, and and sort of training for them that we've
• 50:41
  provided. But at the end of the day, if a
• 50:44
  person doesn't fundamentally subscribe to that same world
• 50:48
  view or perspective, they are going to treat it very
• 50:50
  differently. And so it's on, I guess it's
• 50:54
  incumbent upon me that if we're going to reopen the franchise
• 50:57
  window that we do it by picking people who we think or believe
• 51:02
  have a history or track record of behaving more like we do and
• 51:05
  treating their staff more like we do than having some
• 51:09
  alternative like outlook on it. Because I also don't understand
• 51:13
  the people who want to have a franchise and then don't want to
• 51:15
  listen to the franchise. Or if you're, you're here and
• 51:18
  you're wanting to do this for a reason, it's because we've had
• 51:20
  some success and, and basically know what we're doing to a
• 51:23
  certain degree. So why you'd want to reinvent
• 51:27
  the wheel on something that you've paid so much for doesn't.
• 51:30
  That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
• 51:33
  You know, Rick, as business owners, one of the things that
• 51:36
  gets us, you know, most excited is coming up with new ways to
• 51:40
  drive growth, drive sales, revenue, maybe, you know,
• 51:44
  outside of opening up new locations, what's some fun
• 51:47
  things that you've tried to to grow the top line?
• 51:51
  Yeah. So, you know, COVID was great in
• 51:53
  a sense for us in that every traditional Ave. of sales and
• 51:59
  revenue was taken away. So we had to come up with all
• 52:02
  these things to try to like make it or survive or whatever.
• 52:05
  And so we did those things and then when the traditional
• 52:09
  avenues of revenue came back, we didn't just get rid of all those
• 52:12
  other things. So we actually saw a nice, you
• 52:14
  know, a nice curve in our growth at most places because of that.
• 52:19
  Now, some of them dwindled. They're not as high producing as
• 52:23
  much as they did during COVID. But there's things that we kept
• 52:25
  and you know, we're doing things like we do pizza classes, we do
• 52:29
  pizza making on site, for instance, I think next week,
• 52:34
  next Saturday, we are doing one at a brewery that's very popular
• 52:39
  around here because they have a very large event room.
• 52:42
  And we said, how could we do these with more people because
• 52:44
  there's a huge demand in our stores for it, but we don't want
• 52:46
  to. We just get to shut down the
• 52:48
  restaurant for those two hours when this happens and not be
• 52:52
  able to get as many people as we'd want anyways to make it
• 52:54
  worth it. So what we started doing was
• 52:57
  coordinating them with the brewery and we give them a
• 52:59
  percentage of what we sell because people are buying their
• 53:02
  beer as a part of the ticket. And we have the facility and
• 53:05
  we're able to do 40 to 80 person classes inside of there, but we
• 53:08
  bring our pizza trucks outside. I was going to say, how are you
• 53:11
  cooking all those? Oh, yeah.
• 53:12
  So we bring the pizza truck outside, one or two of them
• 53:14
  sometimes depending on the size of the class.
• 53:16
  And we teach the class inside and then we bring them out in
• 53:19
  groups of like 5 to 10 to the truck at a time.
• 53:21
  They build their pizzas and we put them in the oven.
• 53:23
  And so we were able to bring our kitchen to them in a facility
• 53:26
  that's, you know, arguably more fun and they can just do
• 53:29
  whatever they want inside of there and and drink.
• 53:31
  So that was the way that we got creative and took two ideas and
• 53:35
  turned them into one. Yeah, to make that continue.
• 53:38
  So that's really fun. We focused a lot on our
• 53:40
  catering, which has developed more.
• 53:44
  So it developed a ton out of COVID when everybody was buying
• 53:46
  meals for their staff and we started doing more of the bag
• 53:50
  lunches, box lunches. So we really solidified those
• 53:53
  catering options and that's been very successful.
• 53:57
  And then the things that we've learned from the mobile side of
• 53:59
  catering has really helped us come up with more creative
• 54:01
  ideas. So there's things that we needed
• 54:04
  for catering that we did that ended up now on our standard
• 54:06
  menu. And then there's things that
• 54:08
  were on our standard menu that we developed into how we would
• 54:10
  cater them. And then the last thing was, you
• 54:14
  know, I saw, I've seen and watched our alcohol like beer
• 54:18
  and wine sales over the years and they've never made a huge
• 54:21
  impact on any of our top lines because we're just not that type
• 54:25
  of place. But we like to offer it as
• 54:26
  something that people can have, but we're not a destination for
• 54:29
  drinking and that's really not who we want to be.
• 54:32
  So when I look around the room and see the people we had all
• 54:34
  the time, it just made a lot of sense that and we would have our
• 54:37
  pizza trucks and ice cream trucks to pull up behind us at
• 54:39
  every event. I was like, you know, people
• 54:43
  always tell us how professional we are, how easy it was to work
• 54:46
  with us and book us and have us at their events.
• 54:48
  I bet if we got that call for the pizza truck and said, hey,
• 54:50
  by the way, we also have an ice cream truck, would you be
• 54:52
  interested? It would take a lot of work and
• 54:55
  effort off of them and we would have this truck behind us
• 54:58
  instead of these other people's trucks at all these points.
• 55:00
  That's definitely what happened. So we started it from there and
• 55:03
  then figured out, OK, how do we reverse this and take now the
• 55:06
  ice cream and put it into all the stores so that the ice cream
• 55:09
  that people know is with us, that we have from this level of
• 55:13
  our operation is now available everywhere and we do our
• 55:16
  tastings for weddings and events at the stores.
• 55:19
  I was like, man, it's gonna be hard for to sell people on the
• 55:21
  ice cream truck if we don't have the ice cream available for them
• 55:24
  to do it. The tasting as well.
• 55:25
  So now that was this last year we've spent integrating the ice
• 55:27
  cream into the shops as well. And that's where we see or want
• 55:32
  to see the highest amount of growth.
• 55:33
  I want to grow our pizza sales and sort of get off of a lot of
• 55:37
  the other types of sales. I want to push more pizza and
• 55:39
  push more ice cream, and that's why, you know, that's where I
• 55:42
  see the most focus coming from an opportunity.
• 55:46
  It feels like adding ice cream into your existing stores would
• 55:51
  be a bit of a heavy lift. Don't you need special coolers,
• 55:53
  special freezers for that? Something that you didn't have
• 55:56
  in place before. Well, fortunately a few of our
• 55:59
  shops when they opened, we actually did have ice cream a
• 56:01
  long time ago. And then we took it out and I
• 56:04
  basically, I, I laughed because, you know, I would always or not
• 56:09
  always, but I would frequently butt heads with Bill about one
• 56:12
  thing or another. And I just wouldn't, you know,
• 56:14
  he would want it. I wouldn't want it or I would
• 56:16
  want it and he wouldn't want it. And one of the things that I
• 56:18
  went on during COVID was I got ice cream out of all the stores
• 56:22
  because I just, you know, that and the taps on our beers, we
• 56:26
  want to just all bottles and cans.
• 56:27
  And I was like, you know, servicing these things.
• 56:29
  We don't have the money for it. We're not pushing inventory
• 56:32
  because nobody's taking our ice cream out of here and there's
• 56:34
  nobody in here. So for 2 1/2 years, I was like,
• 56:36
  this doesn't make a lot of sense.
• 56:38
  So we repurposed some of that space in a few of the locations.
• 56:41
  Then I was like, hey, you know, what would look after we had the
• 56:43
  truck? I said, and he laughed because
• 56:46
  he knew where I was going. I was like, you know, it would
• 56:47
  look really good right here, an ice cream cabinet.
• 56:51
  And he just shook his head like, you know, because it was already
• 56:55
  had been there. So then we put them back in a
• 56:58
  few spots and no, trust me, we do a much different and better
• 57:01
  job now than we did before because there's more of an
• 57:06
  emphasis and we have more experience and expertise serving
• 57:09
  it and all these options. And then our newest location
• 57:12
  that we opened, we actually purchased a existing ice cream
• 57:16
  shop and converted the back end into a full kitchen.
• 57:20
  So we took an ice cream shop and made it a pizzeria and ice
• 57:23
  cream. And that was really great for us
• 57:26
  to see the numbers there where people knew it as an ice cream
• 57:29
  destination because we kept probably about 70% of those
• 57:33
  numbers going there, but then added our full restaurant around
• 57:36
  it. And so that's a model that
• 57:37
  really looks nice for us and you know, it shows that we can
• 57:41
  absolutely run a full service ice cream parlor inside of one
• 57:46
  of our other restaurants. So the other ones don't have as
• 57:48
  much of a full scale as that one does, but that's going to be
• 57:51
  definitely the focus and model going forward for us.
• 57:54
  And so the three new locations that you're working on
• 57:56
  presently, we'll have more of that kind of set up. 100% and
• 57:59
  that's also why we created a separate brand for the ice cream
• 58:03
  and so you know what's it. Called.
• 58:05
  Mujo's. How do you spell it?
• 58:08
  M00J 0ES. OK, I like it.
• 58:13
  You know, so we have Mujo's ice cream served inside of Billy
• 58:16
  Bricks and the the, the great thing about that is it gives us
• 58:19
  the flexibility of if there's a future location that I see that
• 58:23
  I'm like, you know, this would be a great place for Mujo's on
• 58:25
  its own. We could do that.
• 58:29
  Brick, I want to shift gears for a moment.
• 58:32
  I'd invite you to share maybe a particular challenge that you
• 58:36
  have worked through in the past, personal, professional, and some
• 58:38
  lessons that you learned coming out the other side.
• 58:41
  Well, professionally, I think personal and professional kind
• 58:46
  of overlap, right? When you're a business owner,
• 58:48
  everything kind of becomes 1. So time management is always one
• 58:52
  of them and being able to give the amount of time that you need
• 58:55
  to not only your business, but your staff and your team, as
• 58:59
  well as juggling family and, and trying to be there for everybody
• 59:02
  all the time. So that's definitely a
• 59:04
  challenge. But I would say the hardest
• 59:09
  thing to work on is all the relationships and, and really
• 59:13
  spending that time with people, developing that, developing
• 59:17
  trust and getting people all on the same page.
• 59:20
  Communication, you know, that's probably it.
• 59:22
  That's probably the number one is communication.
• 59:24
  Whether that's communicating to your guests, what you're trying
• 59:26
  to do for them and the purpose of your brand and what your
• 59:29
  brand means. Communicating to your family,
• 59:31
  what your goals and dreams and visions are for your business
• 59:34
  and how that plays into everybody's success because
• 59:37
  they're all sacrificing one thing or another to make that
• 59:40
  happen with you or for you, for everybody.
• 59:43
  And then, you know, with the staff understanding what it is
• 59:47
  we're here to do, how you feel about them, how you want them to
• 59:50
  feel about the guests and making sure that everybody's on the
• 59:52
  same page. That's the biggest challenge.
• 59:53
  The other stuff is I don't think it's unique to us or any
• 59:57
  particular business. Every business has the same
• 1:00:00
  administrative challenges, the getting off the ground
• 1:00:03
  challenges. Anyone can say, oh, it's a
• 1:00:05
  challenge growing my sales. Well, that is true of every
• 1:00:08
  business. But I think the ones that
• 1:00:10
  probably resonate that are the that are.
• 1:00:12
  You know, the most that keep people up at night is not how do
• 1:00:15
  I grow my sales? Because there's a million books
• 1:00:17
  written on that. There's a lot of ideas.
• 1:00:20
  Some of it just comes down to you doing it.
• 1:00:22
  You know, just you got to do it. You got to execute.
• 1:00:25
  You could listen to that all day long.
• 1:00:26
  But I think the it's the communication side of it and
• 1:00:29
  realizing that no business is really without those, without
• 1:00:35
  those soft skill issues. You have to develop those and
• 1:00:40
  that's the hardest, most difficult part is managing the
• 1:00:44
  people and and that mission. Rick, I've got just one more
• 1:00:49
  question for you, but before I ask it, I want to do 2 things.
• 1:00:53
  Everyone listening today, if you like today's content, please hit
• 1:00:55
  the like, share or subscribe button on your favorite podcast
• 1:00:58
  app. Rick, I also want to let people
• 1:01:01
  know the best way to get in touch with you.
• 1:01:03
  Your website is billybrickshq.com.
• 1:01:07
  If somebody wants to connect with you personally, how would
• 1:01:10
  they do that? Yeah, so any of those general
• 1:01:13
  ones somehow make a way to me. But if you wanted to find me
• 1:01:16
  personally, you just look up my name and I'm available on every
• 1:01:19
  platform at Rick Gruber. Or you type in Pizza Rick and
• 1:01:23
  you'll find me. But just don't use AK because I
• 1:01:25
  don't use AK. It's spelling my name.
• 1:01:26
  It's Ric. And then I have a website,
• 1:01:28
  pizzarick.com, which I basically neglect all summer season when
• 1:01:33
  we're really busy and don't put anything on it.
• 1:01:36
  But as the fall and winter months come, I start putting out
• 1:01:38
  a little more content in some web series now.
• 1:01:41
  So my personal contact information and the links to all
• 1:01:44
  of my personal accounts are are on Pizza rick.com if you want to
• 1:01:47
  get a hold of me. Terrific.
• 1:01:50
  Last question for you, Rick. What do you see being perhaps
• 1:01:53
  the biggest change that's coming to your industry in the next
• 1:01:55
  couple of years? You know, I see a lot of people
• 1:02:00
  moving more and more with technology and trying to do a
• 1:02:03
  lot more automation. I think in some instances it's
• 1:02:07
  going to do great things in the business, you know, machines
• 1:02:10
  that help produce things faster or make it easier on staff to
• 1:02:15
  operate. But I don't believe that it ever
• 1:02:17
  replaces people. You know, so we have dough
• 1:02:19
  machines, like with the dough roller, you know, you still need
• 1:02:22
  a person that puts the ball into the roller.
• 1:02:25
  So I don't think it's like it's going to replace things, but
• 1:02:27
  that right there is going to make it so much easier for
• 1:02:29
  people to produce high volumes of dough consistent.
• 1:02:34
  So I think there's changes like that that are going to be
• 1:02:36
  incremental and those pieces of technology are going to help us
• 1:02:40
  all produce more, more product more consistently faster and
• 1:02:44
  make the job easier on staff physically and mentally, all
• 1:02:47
  that kind of stuff, which will help us in retaining people
• 1:02:50
  because they're not having that high physical, you know, wear
• 1:02:53
  and tear and abuse that we've had for so long.
• 1:02:56
  I think where people are going to fall short, it's getting more
• 1:03:00
  and more difficult to justify spending the amount of money
• 1:03:02
  that it costs these days to buy anything when you have
• 1:03:05
  absolutely no level of service whatsoever.
• 1:03:08
  I think that is where people are going to see the challenges that
• 1:03:11
  you know, where McDonald's burger costs the same as it does
• 1:03:14
  to go to your local Tavern that or pub that has a great bar
• 1:03:18
  burger. You know, all these gourmet
• 1:03:20
  burgers that are out there. It's going to be hard to justify
• 1:03:22
  spending the exact same amount when you have an atmosphere.
• 1:03:25
  I'm going to have a beer and I have someone serving me and
• 1:03:27
  taking care of me versus going there, tapping a screen that
• 1:03:31
  hasn't been wiped down, that is dirty, you know, and you're
• 1:03:35
  touching that screen and then all of a sudden someone just
• 1:03:37
  slides this thing to you. You're not going to be tipping
• 1:03:40
  those people. You're there's no experience
• 1:03:42
  there. That's just, to me, that is
• 1:03:44
  purely transactional. It's a.
• 1:03:46
  Little cold. It's a little cold and
• 1:03:48
  transactional. Now.
• 1:03:49
  I know that people like to say the younger generations prefer
• 1:03:52
  that because they're used to being behind the phone and doing
• 1:03:55
  all that. I think to a certain degree
• 1:03:57
  that's probably been true, especially for people who have
• 1:03:59
  kind of survived through COVID or, or those ages through COVID.
• 1:04:02
  But I mean, you know, you're a little older, like I am like
• 1:04:06
  we've gone through enough cycles of life to see things come and
• 1:04:09
  go and come back around. And I think that's what we're
• 1:04:11
  going to start seeing is that more and more people when times
• 1:04:14
  are tough and hopefully those things are going to be turning
• 1:04:17
  around here. But when times have been tough,
• 1:04:19
  look to what is the what's the value add?
• 1:04:22
  You know, I want to go out, I want to not have to cook.
• 1:04:25
  I'm exhausted, we're stressed. I want to go and have a stress
• 1:04:28
  free thing. I don't want to be doing the
• 1:04:29
  work and I and I want to be taken care of for my money
• 1:04:33
  because I'm spending good money. Otherwise it's going to go right
• 1:04:36
  back to the grocery store. I'm just going to put something
• 1:04:38
  at home, a simple meal because you have to make it worth it for
• 1:04:42
  people to spend that money right now.
• 1:04:44
  And I think that's where we're going to see a lot of those
• 1:04:47
  changes and emphasis that people have been making in the
• 1:04:50
  industry. We're going to see them sort of
• 1:04:52
  be failed experiments. At least that's what I think, or
• 1:04:55
  I hope. Now that being said, we're
• 1:04:57
  working on testing out some kiosks in our stores to grow
• 1:05:00
  sales to see what that option is.
• 1:05:03
  But we will not take away or replace anything that we
• 1:05:05
  normally have. So one of the challenges of
• 1:05:07
  having a order at the counter restaurant is like a dessert
• 1:05:11
  thing is an afterthought. And now we have the ice cream.
• 1:05:13
  So you've already paid, you sat down and you had your dinner.
• 1:05:16
  Where do I go back up to get my dessert?
• 1:05:19
  And I don't want to get in line with all these people that are
• 1:05:20
  waiting to order their food or coming for their pickups.
• 1:05:23
  So that's where I think we're going to be implementing the
• 1:05:25
  kiosk, just at the dessert counter so people don't feel the
• 1:05:28
  need to have to get back up into the main line of ordering or not
• 1:05:33
  know where to go get dessert or wait for someone to come to
• 1:05:35
  them. So when you walk up and you can
• 1:05:37
  see all that beautiful ice cream just waiting for you, you can
• 1:05:41
  tap looking at a picture of what it's going to look like to do.
• 1:05:45
  That ticket will print. And then that person is going to
• 1:05:47
  walk right over and go, hey, just give me one second and I'll
• 1:05:49
  have that cone ready for you. And there's still going to be
• 1:05:51
  that person physically doing that.
• 1:05:54
  But no, but less confusion of like, how do I order that?
• 1:05:58
  And I only believe in that because we're that type of your
• 1:06:01
  check is already closed once you're once you've ordered your
• 1:06:04
  food. So how do you get add more
• 1:06:06
  drinks? How do you add more for dessert?
• 1:06:08
  And do that if you decide, hey, I think I still have some room
• 1:06:10
  for ice cream. And so that's one place where we
• 1:06:12
  are going to utilize it. So I see it as something that
• 1:06:15
  can potentially help us drive revenue and make a more
• 1:06:17
  streamlined visit for our guests.
• 1:06:20
  But I don't see it as replacing anything.
• 1:06:21
  And I think long term, a lot of people are going to try those
• 1:06:23
  things and they're going to ditch them.
• 1:06:26
  Yeah, I don't think human connection will ever go out of
• 1:06:28
  style, but Rick Kay, I want to be the first one.
• 1:06:31
  Excuse me to thank you for sharing both your time and your
• 1:06:34
  story with us today. I really appreciate it.
• 1:06:36
  Yeah, thanks for having me. Folks, that's a wrap on another
• 1:06:39
  episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
• 1:06:41
  Thanks for learning with us today.