Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Restaurant Growth Strategy: Old Scratch Pizza & Eric Soller's Path from One Location to Multi-Market Expansion

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Restaurant Growth Strategy: Old Scratch Pizza & Eric Soller's Path from One Location to Multi-Market Expansion · 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
0:17
today's guest is Eric Solar. He is the owner of Old Scratch
0:21
Pizza, a community focused restaurant offering casual
0:25
Neapolitan style pizzas and craft beer.
0:28
Founded in 2016, this welcoming spot emphasizes quality
0:33
traditional recipes and a friendly atmosphere steered by
0:37
the mission to welcome everyone, they are renowned for
0:40
consistency and respect for pizza traditions.
0:44
Under Eric's leadership, Old Scratch Pizza has earned
0:47
recognition as one of the Best restaurants by Dayton Eatery,
0:51
and it was named Pizza Company of the Year by Pizza Today.
0:55
They've also made Yelp's Top 100 pizza spots in the Midwest, and
0:59
they have plans for an exciting expansion in 2026.
1:03
Before running Old Scratch, Eric spent over a decade in marketing
1:06
at ITW, focusing on the food service equipment sector.
1:11
He brings a deep understanding of customer needs and a passion
1:14
for delivering great food. We're going to hear how he built
1:17
a thriving business and the challenges he faced along the
1:19
way. Now before we get into all that
1:21
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AD Back benefits.com. Now back to our guest today,
2:01
founder of Old Scratch Pizza, Eric Soler.
2:03
I appreciate you making the time to Share your story today.
2:06
Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for the great
2:08
introduction you make us seem. You make us sound awesome.
2:11
I think you are and I want to hear more about.
2:12
That I think we are. I think we are too, and I'm
2:14
excited. One correction I want to make is
2:16
that you guys are recognized as one of the best restaurants in
2:19
Eight and Dayton by Eater. I think I said by Eater.
2:24
Eater.com, Yeah. Eater.com OK, great.
2:26
I wanted to clear that up. OK, so before we talk about how
2:29
awesome some old scratch pizza is, tell me what first drew you
2:33
into the culinary space. I mean, I started fairly young.
2:38
I started working in, I kind of age myself because I say that my
2:43
first job in the restaurant world was at Subway.
2:46
And that was when we were really excited that Subway was coming
2:51
to town. You know, I lived in a small
2:52
town in Michigan and like, Oh my God, we're getting a Subway,
2:55
which is like not that big of a deal anymore, but it was a big
2:59
deal back then. And I was 15 at the time.
3:01
And I just kind of, you know, latched on to restaurants.
3:05
And honestly, I was not a great student.
3:08
And my parents wanted me to go to college.
3:10
I went to college and I showed them.
3:14
I flunked out my first semester and, and I went back and started
3:18
working in restaurants again. And eventually I did.
3:21
And so eventually I convinced my parents and I went to culinary
3:23
school when I was 19, and everything clicked for me.
3:27
Yeah. I mean, everything was just it.
3:29
It made sense. And it's just what I've been
3:32
doing ever since. So started out with the
3:35
excitement around the first subway in your small town in
3:38
Michigan. Yes, I was a sandwich artist.
3:40
Yeah, and a sandwich artist. I love that.
3:43
And I remember, you know, I here in Columbus, OH, when I first
3:47
came to town back in 92, there was a Subway, and I'd never seen
3:50
anything like it before. And I'm like, this is amazing.
3:53
Yeah, you know, telling my friends back home about it.
3:56
And so, yeah, I get it. Like the the initial excitement
3:58
back then long time ago, it was it was pretty cool.
4:01
Yeah. OK, so so then you went to
4:03
culinary school. Not great in sort of a
4:05
traditional education environment, but something
4:08
clicked about culinary. Yeah, I ended up with a degree.
4:11
I have a degree in I have an associate's degree in culinary
4:15
arts and a bachelor's degree in food and beverage management.
4:17
So I went, I went to culinary school for a while.
4:19
I went to culinary school, went out, worked in kitchens for 345
4:24
years, went back to school to get a bachelor's degree in food
4:27
and beverage management. And you know, I've sort of been
4:31
in consulting and and then corporate marketing and then
4:38
this ever since then. So let's talk about the
4:40
corporate marketing, you know, substantial role in ITW.
4:43
Yeah, there's some food service. Equipment sector tell, tell us
4:46
about that. Yeah, I worked for several of
4:49
ITW is a parent company of several of the brands that
4:51
people in the restaurant industry know.
4:53
Hobart, which is mixing and food preparation, Vulcan Range, which
4:58
is stoves, fryers, things like that.
5:01
Charleston Refrigeration. And I was the, I had many roles,
5:07
but ended up in director of marketing for the ITW Food
5:09
Equipment Group. So I'm sort of in charge of
5:12
brand level marketing for most of those brands.
5:15
So web trade show press, all the go to market marketing.
5:20
So I did that for about 10 years before I started old Scratch.
5:24
And you had a a good job in a in a nice corporation, you know,
5:29
steady paycheck. Where why, why fly out on your
5:33
own? Where did the idea for Old
5:34
Scratch come about? I mean, I you know, so I didn't
5:38
open old scratch. So I was, I understand.
5:41
I was 44, you know, maybe a little bit late in life for
5:46
opening your first restaurant. But I you know, I always joke
5:51
that I was a wantrepreneur, you know, like I always wanted to be
5:55
an entrepreneur. I wrote business plans for fun,
5:58
you know, and I kind of still do.
6:01
And I just had this idea, you know, in, in that, in my, I
6:07
mean, honestly, this probably happens to a lot of people.
6:09
I mean, I had a bachelor's degree.
6:11
I had AI, had an unconventional entry into the world of
6:16
corporate marketing with my background.
6:19
And, you know, I mean, in, in what was actually happening
6:22
around me was that people, people who started to get hired
6:27
into, into similar roles in the larger organization younger than
6:32
me, had a master's degrees, MBA S and I did and, you know, and,
6:37
but, and I, I just didn't know where my future was, was going.
6:42
But primarily I just, I just had an idea that I couldn't get out
6:47
of my head. You know, I started down a path
6:50
of wanting to, I used to travel a lot for work and when I would
6:55
go, I would go to different cities and I had this idea about
6:58
pizza. I would go to every time I was
7:01
in a city, I'd go to 3/4 pizza places in a night to try and get
7:06
like see how other people were doing pizza places.
7:10
Even though pizza is a super crowded market.
7:12
I thought there was an opportunity and then I mean, how
7:15
did we come with the idea for Old Scratch?
7:17
Like everybody, there's some sitting out there.
7:21
I don't know it exactly, but most good entrepreneurs are
7:23
thieves, you know, like we're just stealing other ideas and
7:26
we're borrowing. Yeah, we're borrowing these
7:30
ideas and repackaging them in new ways.
7:32
And there was there was a place, I mean, I the first one I saw
7:37
was a place in Atlanta called Antico Pizza.
7:40
It's kind of famous. And they have these big wood
7:43
fired ovens and they had sort of picnic tables in the room.
7:47
It was class sort of C real estate, you know, industrial
7:51
real estate. And I just fell in love with it.
7:54
I saw another place in Nashville that was similar.
7:56
And when I saw them, they had these big long like communal
8:02
picnic tables. And and then as soon as I got
8:04
this idea in my head, I said Neapolitan pizza beer hall.
8:08
And as soon as I had that idea like that, I, I saw these.
8:12
I'm like, they didn't have full bars.
8:14
Actually, Antico at the time was bring your own BYOB.
8:17
And I thought, this looks like a beer hall.
8:20
It's like a German beer hall. And I thought old Neapolitan
8:23
pizza beer hall. So we have a similar vibe today.
8:26
We have relatively large restaurants between 6008
8:31
thousand square feet. They're huge.
8:32
For a pizza shop. Yeah, they're big.
8:35
So we have large communal tables, lot of big tables that
8:40
seat 1012 people. We have three big Neapolitan
8:46
ovens and like right on the edge of the dining room, brighten the
8:49
kits right in the dining room and all of our locations we have
8:53
20 taps of beer, 6 taps of wine. So it's just a big.
8:58
Wine on tap, too. Yeah, it's just a big friendly,
9:03
you know, family oriented environment.
9:04
I mean, in the beginning when I first opened, it was like
9:06
downtown date. And I thought it was going to
9:08
be, I don't know, urban hipsters.
9:11
I don't know, I don't know how many of those we have in Dayton,
9:13
OH. But I had this vision as we like
9:14
college kids, but as it turned out, we're a family place.
9:17
You know your, your, your customers find you and.
9:21
What do you think it is that draws families in?
9:23
What? What are they really attracted
9:25
to? I think it's a variety of
9:26
things. I think we've got a great the
9:28
way we do our kids pizza. We sort of squish it and it
9:31
comes out looking like, as I always say, a non trademarked
9:35
mouse when it comes to the when it comes to the table.
9:39
So it's like mouse ears. Kids love the the the way the
9:41
pizzas come out. We give away free ice cream,
9:44
which I'd like to talk about at some point and why we do that.
9:49
These big communal tables, really the big communal tables
9:52
made it so that when I first opened, when I first started and
9:55
I said, Oh yeah, we're going to have these communal tables,
9:57
everybody said, you know what, people don't want that here.
9:59
People maybe in Europe, maybe in Europe, that works.
10:02
But but it did a couple of things.
10:05
One thing it did is if you have big family, 10 to 12 people and
10:11
you need some place to go where you know you're going to be able
10:13
to get in, you know, everybody's going to like all the food.
10:17
It's a fun environment. Like you don't have a lot of
10:19
options. And so it just and you know,
10:22
doesn't matter if it's that or it's a sports team or it's a
10:26
work party or whatever. Like these, this sort of big
10:31
party environment is just something that I think created
10:35
success and and it and it and it made it successful for us.
10:38
Yeah, and as you've been talking here, Eric, I've been checking
10:41
out your website. You've got some, you know, a
10:43
handful of really great pictures from each location and it's
10:46
exactly as you described, like big, like open air ceilings.
10:50
Yeah, lots of like longer seating options.
10:54
Bar. I see these beautiful, you know,
10:57
wood fired ovens. Am I seeing?
10:59
Is this a drive up at one of them there?
11:02
There's somebody's like holding a beer out of a window.
11:05
Yeah. Well, we, yes, we do have a, we,
11:08
we have a, we have a like a that you're probably looking at our
11:10
Beaver Creek location. We have a window that opens from
11:13
the bar onto the patio. So yeah, so that's like.
11:17
That makes a lot more sense than somebody serving a beer to like
11:20
an open air beer to like a a car coming through the drive
11:23
through. Yeah, I think you have to live
11:25
in Montana for that to work. I think you have some weird laws
11:28
there like that. Well, this is beautiful.
11:31
Yeah. So tell me about the the free
11:32
ice cream. How did How did that get well?
11:34
One of the things we started early on, it was really kind of
11:37
my wife's idea. We, you know, you're thinking
11:41
about a pizza place, you want dessert.
11:44
We, we actually, we have, we have soft serve ice cream.
11:48
You can get any flavor you want as long as it's vanilla and it's
11:53
technically free, but 100% we call it cones for a cause and
11:57
100% of donations go to charity. And so, so far to date, we've
12:02
given about, we just crossed $300,000 that we've donated to
12:07
charity just from ice cream. So, and the more that locations
12:11
that we get and the more that we grow, the more impact that has.
12:16
So, and that has been just, it's been a total unlock for the
12:20
business right from the beginning.
12:21
I mean, in addition to obviously, you know, it's, it's
12:25
great for the community, employees get behind it.
12:29
It's, it's fun because we have these big money boxes at the
12:33
front of the bar. So you can have like a, it's all
12:37
counter service. So there's a, you know, there's
12:39
one line for food and there's one line for adult beverages.
12:43
But in that same line for adult beverages are also kids who are
12:46
waiting for ice cream because the same bartenders get ice
12:50
cream and they also get beer for adults.
12:52
And so it's it's just it that like another thing that kind of
12:57
ensures us like family friendly, everybody's included
13:01
environment. So, yeah, so we have a we have a
13:04
foundation that we started called comes for A cause and we
13:06
give away money to sort of micro grants throughout the course of
13:11
the year to all kinds of different.
13:14
A lot of it around food insecurity that, you know,
13:19
homelessness. There's a lot of there's,
13:22
there's a lot of different causes that we're focused on.
13:26
So that's a big thing for us, yeah.
13:29
Tell me what it means to serve or to be midwesternly
13:34
Neapolitan. Well, you know, I hope that it's
13:38
something that I said a long time ago.
13:40
We started putting it on our T-shirts and I hope that people
13:42
can envision what it means. I'll tell you a real quick funny
13:46
story. I was at the International Pizza
13:48
Expo, and there was a guy, Scott Weiner, who's a big, like, big
13:54
guy in the pizza world, and he was giving a talk.
13:56
There was like 400 people in the room giving a talk about new
13:59
styles of pizza. And during the presentation, he
14:03
put us up on the board with this Midwesternly Neapolitan saying.
14:08
And I'm like, gasp, I'm like that.
14:09
Was his word. He came up with that.
14:11
No, I came up with, it was an article about us and he put it
14:16
up on the board and said this is exactly what I'm talking about.
14:20
This is somebody who has said, and I didn't he, he never talked
14:24
to us before. He just read the article and it
14:26
is basically that we are taking Neapolitan traditions.
14:32
If you went to if you, if you were to come certified for
14:36
Neapolitan pizza, which is a thing out there in the world, we
14:38
would meet that certification, we would meet that requirement.
14:42
But the only word that's Italian on our menu is Margarita, right?
14:48
There's no other Italian words on the menu.
14:50
It's everything about it. You can get chicken, bacon,
14:53
ranch, pizza, but it's cooked in the style in a way they would
14:57
have in Italy. And So what does that mean to be
14:59
a Neapolitan pizza then? What's that?
15:01
Well, Neapolitan pizza in the traditional Neapolitan sense,
15:05
you have to the the regulations. There's an organization in the
15:10
world that regulates Neapolitan pizza and you can pay to be a
15:13
member certified by it. We don't, but you can.
15:16
And Neapolitan pizza traditionally has four
15:19
ingredients for for the dough, it's water, flour, yeast, and
15:22
salt. That's it.
15:23
It's naturally fermented. You have to use a particular
15:28
style of oven, either wood or technically now you can use gas
15:33
that is of a temperature around 800°F.
15:39
They have to be cooked in less than in somewhere around 90
15:43
seconds in the oven. So the idea is that that that
15:47
this oven is is so hot that the the dough quicks quickly and
15:51
there's there's certain like texture crispy to it.
15:55
Texture and actually one of the things that's interesting about
15:58
what we do is why we call it midwesterly Neapolitan.
16:02
If you if you go to Naples and eat Neapolitan pizza, it is so
16:07
soft. I mean, it is they don't even,
16:09
they don't cut it. I mean, it's served with a fork
16:11
and knife in most places when you eat it.
16:14
We try to add we the way we formulate our dough, we add a
16:18
little bit more structure to it. Most people don't want floppy
16:21
pizza in the Midwest. I mean, they want they want sort
16:24
of crisp, you know, you can pick it up.
16:27
Ours is softer than most, but we still try.
16:30
And we're trying to build a pizza that, you know, people in
16:34
the Midwest want to eat crispy, delicious, but we do it with,
16:39
you know, we have organics where you have organic tomatoes, we
16:43
have the finest cheeses. I mean, all of our ingredients
16:46
are top quality. We have no freezers.
16:48
We have no microwaves. We everything is made from
16:51
scratch. Every dressing, every sauce,
16:53
everything is made from scratch. So it's just, you know, we're
16:55
trying to do the best version of what we can.
16:59
Tell me about the Angry Beekeeper Pizza.
17:02
That's quite a name. Yeah, so we years ago, that was
17:06
on my first menu. Very first menu was the angry
17:09
beekeeper. And you know, again, we borrow
17:13
ideas at that time, you know, mid, you know, 2016, at the
17:17
time, there were some people out there that were starting to
17:21
experiment with hot honey. It's kind of like everywhere
17:24
now. Everybody's got hot honey on
17:25
their menu now. But in 10 years ago, it wasn't
17:28
as big of a thing. And there was a guy, Paulie G in
17:32
Brooklyn, who actually had the location in Columbus.
17:36
He's kind of started that whole thing.
17:37
And we wanted to do a variation of that, make our own hot honey.
17:42
So we started a hot honey brand. We serve We sell hot honey in
17:46
our stores as well as in. And what makes it clear?
17:48
Are you just like? In our version, in our version
17:52
it's Calabrian Chili's, so that's sort of like the Italian
17:54
version of it. We steep honey in Colombre and
17:58
Calabrian chilies from Italy and garlic, which gives it this very
18:04
sort of spicy, sweet flavor. So you we put and it wouldn't
18:09
angry beekeepers. It's basically a Margarita
18:11
pizza, Margarita classic pizza, which is, you know, crushed
18:15
tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, olive oil, very simple
18:19
cheese, Italian cheese pizza. We had a spicy soap resata,
18:23
which is a spicy salami. And then we drizzle it with
18:25
spicy hot honey, house made hot honey at the end.
18:29
So it's sort of our signature pizza.
18:31
It's the best seller sometimes. Some weeks it's pepperoni pizza,
18:34
some weeks it's most weeks it's angry beekeeper is the top
18:37
seller. Well.
18:38
It's a great name in addition to a great culinary concept.
18:41
Yeah, on the back of our of our of our bottles of hot honey, it
18:45
says, you know, it says made by 1 angry beekeeper.
18:49
So. I like that.
18:51
So how did you scratch together enough money to open up the
18:55
first location? You know, I mean, I think that
19:00
for me, I mean, you know, everybody has a different story
19:03
about how they did that. And I, you know, I didn't have
19:08
enough money to do it. And but I had one of the things
19:13
I'd say that I had was I had a large social group and I'd, and
19:21
from being a professional in our city for a long time, I had a
19:26
long social group. I had a large social group at a
19:28
large network of friends and I talked about opening a
19:33
restaurant a lot. And a friend of mine, one, one
19:35
of my close friends, and I was always complaining about money.
19:38
And he's like, that's I said, he's like, I guarantee you
19:41
that's not going to be a problem.
19:43
Like, you know, people and there are people with money and
19:47
they'll give it to you. And I'm a very detailed person
19:50
and I wrote a highly detailed plan with lots of data, lots of
19:58
spreadsheets and, and, and a presentation.
20:01
And, and because of my marketing career, I used to have to do
20:04
presentations and pitches all the time.
20:06
And so I was sort of good at that.
20:09
And I went out, I went to three people who I knew well.
20:14
One of the person people introduced me to somebody else.
20:18
Somebody else interested to somebody else.
20:20
And I pitched five times and five people said yes.
20:25
What? And so that doesn't happen, You
20:27
realize that? I know, I know and so.
20:29
I was just at a big event with a lot of venture capital, you
20:33
know, people raising and that that kind of hit rate is they
20:37
would they would laugh, they wouldn't believe.
20:39
We just did. We just did another round
20:40
because we're going to grow and similar thing happened.
20:44
So we're just, but you know, again, I credit it.
20:49
Obviously we've proven ourselves now, but I credit it to, you
20:54
know, you can't have, you can't have, you can't do too much
20:59
point. I mean, once you plan, you got
21:02
to live within, you got to, you know, you got to go live in the
21:05
world and things change. But you know, planning is the
21:08
key. Creating a great plan is really.
21:11
Well, I think the other key that we're sort of uncovering here is
21:14
the power of your network. Yeah, I mean, I was also, I was
21:18
also, you know, 43 year old professional with a respectable
21:24
job who had years of experience. And the thing about opening a
21:28
restaurant, to this day, you know, I count, I talked to a lot
21:31
of people who want to open restaurant and it is, you know,
21:36
nobody, I mean everybody in the world knows how tough of a
21:38
business it is. But the thing that you don't
21:40
realize when you open a restaurant is it has something
21:44
to do with food, right? But it also has something to do
21:47
with just general business operations, has to do with
21:51
facilities, has to deal with vendor management.
21:55
It has to deal with math. It has to do with motivation.
21:59
There are so many has to do with marketing.
22:01
So you have to, when you're a small restaurant and 1st
22:03
restaurant, you have to be everything.
22:05
You're in charge of marketing, you're in charge of financials.
22:07
You're like any other small business operator except for
22:10
it's one of the most complex businesses out there with so
22:13
many moving parts. And so, you know, I just think
22:16
it took for me to really find something that I was good at and
22:20
to be successful at. I mean, it took me to have a
22:23
have a have a culinary degree, have a food and beverage
22:26
management degree, have your some years of experience at it,
22:30
then 10 years of corporate marketing and also
22:32
understanding, you know, the bigger one is ITW is a world
22:37
class manufacturing operation. And in essence, that's what a
22:40
restaurant is. You know, we take raw goods, we
22:44
add value to them and we deliver finished goods, right.
22:47
And so thinking about all sorts of things that I learned in the
22:51
corporate manufacturing world about that I apply now to how to
22:54
run a restaurant. You know, just for me, it took
22:57
me that long. There are a lot of people I see
22:59
that are young, have less experience than me, that just
23:02
rush it and they do a fantastic job.
23:05
But for me, that's what it took. It took me to have the
23:07
confidence of all of those different skill sets in order to
23:10
make a restaurant work. So you had a a really good
23:14
foundation of skills from the experiences that you'd have, the
23:18
degrees that you had earned. But you start this business,
23:22
it's the first time that you're owning and running your own
23:24
business. What was maybe the biggest
23:26
surprise to you? Like oh, here's an area that I
23:28
need to level up and fast. Well, in the beginning when I'm
23:37
running it, when I was running the restaurant, you know, my,
23:42
I'm very well suited for what I'm doing right now, which is
23:45
managing multiple restaurants. I'm much, I am, I am not a great
23:50
individual restaurant operator. I, I, I, I, I, I do fine at it.
23:55
But I I am too quickly moving on to something else like I am
24:01
just. And what I had to learn how to
24:03
do is focus like I had to learn how to OK, I can't move on from
24:10
this thing. I can't, you know, whatever this
24:12
issue is that's in front of me, I just have to grind every day
24:17
and do the job of a restaurant operator, even though I want to
24:20
be thinking about always think about this marketing idea that I
24:23
have and maybe we'll start a new restaurant.
24:25
And if we had this new menu item and all of these things.
24:27
There's so many detailed structural step by step
24:33
processes that have to happen everyday in a restaurant that is
24:37
not or not in my nature. And really focusing in on that
24:44
was something that was hard for me.
24:46
You know, and that makes a lot of sense.
24:47
Even though you took until you know your 40s to become an
24:50
entrepreneur, it's clear that that that spirit was in your
24:53
blood and that it what you're talking about, like the the
24:57
problem of focus is such a classic like entrepreneurial.
25:01
Trait right? Like.
25:02
One of the things that makes us really good at what we do can
25:07
also be an Achilles heel of like, oh, I've got this idea and
25:09
I want to move on to this thing and create this other.
25:11
Well, I today I one of the techniques I use is I go to my
25:14
staff. I, there was something I was,
25:16
I'd, I'd like, I had an idea about something about dough
25:19
fermentation this morning and in the morning I like, had the
25:22
idea, call the vendor, call the refrigeration specialist that I
25:27
knew to see if this thing was possible.
25:29
And then got on a call and I was, I just haven't had another
25:31
call with my team. And I'm, and I'm trying to
25:33
explain it. And I have to say, I just want
25:36
you to be clear that I'm just talking about something like,
25:39
I'm not saying we have to do anything.
25:40
I'm just telling you like because I just have this way of
25:43
I just have to talk through all of these ideas that I have,
25:46
which which is, you know, and and it can be exhausting for the
25:52
team like that's. I'm glad you said that word.
25:54
It's exactly what I was thinking.
25:56
I've been guilty of this myself in the past.
25:58
A lot of other people I've talked to.
26:01
And here here's a process that I've kind of implemented for
26:04
myself. And be curious to hear if you've
26:06
ever tried anything like this or if you think it would be
26:07
helpful. Yeah, Yeah.
26:09
Oh, so, So I got this new great idea.
26:11
Before I go and I talk to anybody about it, I have to
26:13
write it down or type it out, whatever.
26:16
That process of writing it down, typing it out helps me flush out
26:20
like, oh, there's a hole here, there's a hole here.
26:22
Just helps me kind of think through the process of it more,
26:24
kind of see where the gaps are. If I get through writing it all
26:28
out top to bottom, somebody could read this, it would
26:30
explain everything to them, and I still feel good about it.
26:34
I stick it in a drawer for a week.
26:35
One week timer goes and if I come back to it a week from now
26:39
and it's still a good idea, something I'm excited about,
26:42
then I approach my team about it.
26:46
They'd probably love that. Yeah.
26:48
I and I. I saw the look on your face as,
26:51
as I'm talking about that and you're like, oh, I don't think I
26:53
I. Was with you until you said hold
26:55
on to it for a week because of The thing is I usually I usually
26:58
I'm I'm you're I I could use some discipline.
27:01
I could definitely use some discipline in that area because
27:04
I do have, you know, I have a lot of ideas and, but I think
27:11
that, and one of the things that I, I don't know, you know, all
27:16
of everything we have is as you know, all of our, all of our
27:20
traits are strengths and weaknesses.
27:22
And there, you know, that there was one of the personality type
27:28
indicators that we are working on a consultant I was working
27:30
with said, you know, your weaknesses are often your
27:34
strengths overused, you know, and, and, and one of one of my
27:42
strengths and weaknesses is just when I have an idea, just such a
27:48
confidence that it is right, you know, like, and, and, and, and
27:53
so you and not, it's not about confidence.
27:55
It's just like an intuition that this thing is right.
27:58
And so usually when I'm talking to my team, I'm usually not, I'm
28:02
selling, you know, I'm usually selling ideas all the time,
28:05
right? As opposed to like trying to get
28:07
consensus and you know, it's more, which is also a weakness,
28:11
right? I mean, it's, I mean the, the
28:12
strength is that I have such, I know that this thing is going to
28:15
work. Like I just have a gut reaction.
28:17
Usually it's in the business. That's usually right.
28:21
The weakness is that I probably could, I need and I have people
28:25
in my group, in my organization that are that can say, Hey, hold
28:29
on. That's great.
28:31
You got me the check and balance built in.
28:32
Yeah, every, every, every, every team needs gas and brakes.
28:37
Yeah, you know, and so. So what percentage of the time
28:40
do you go to your team confidently with an idea that
28:44
later on you're like probably shouldn't have done that well,
28:49
or does that not happen because by the time you go to them,
28:51
you're you're ready and. You know, I'm usually, I'm
28:54
usually ready, but often there's something because the farther
29:00
away from daily operations you get, the more you might be
29:04
missing something that that somebody who's like one of our
29:09
operations managers will say, yeah, but you know, there's this
29:14
thing that happens in the course of that process that, you know,
29:18
we have to address that. Like if you want to do this
29:20
thing you want to do, we got to address this other issue first.
29:23
So there's a lot of that that goes on, right?
29:25
It's never like I just come in with some idea and it's like,
29:27
all right, let's move forward with.
29:29
So let's talk about one of these entrepreneurial skills, the
29:33
positive traits as you mentioned that there's growth coming.
29:37
Tell us about that, You know, because that doesn't happen in a
29:39
vacuum without strong leadership to say, hey, we went from 1:00
29:43
to 2:00 to 3:00 to 4:00. Now we're ready to go to 5.
29:47
Is that what I'm? Hearing So we're, we're making
29:48
the, we're making the next big jump, which is that, you know,
29:51
we're in Dayton, OH. The market is kind of saturated
29:55
for us. We have 4 locations in this
29:57
market. And so next year in 2026, we're
30:02
going to open 2 new locations in 2026, one of them I can talk
30:06
about. And so we're going to open in
30:09
Columbus in 2026. My backyard, which is where?
30:13
Your backyard where in what? What neighborhood in Columbus do
30:15
you live in? So I'm in Victorian village,
30:18
Short North area. Where?
30:19
Where you guys going? You're right in the heart of it
30:21
all. So there's a new development
30:23
called True Point in Hilliard going on right on, right on 270.
30:27
So it's 300 apartment units, big new hotel, Medical Center,
30:36
thousand person office complex. So and then we're going to sort
30:40
of be the freestanding anchor tenant on the park at the at the
30:45
center of the development. So yeah, we're really excited
30:49
about it. Equity development in Columbus
30:53
is who's developing the project and we've got had a great
30:56
relationship so far and we're really excited to bring this to
31:03
Columbus. Like, I don't think there's
31:04
anything like there's no city that you can go to that's short
31:09
on pizza, right? Everybody's got plenty of pizza
31:13
that there's no doubt. But we bring, I think that we
31:17
bring in experience that's beyond pizza.
31:20
And I think we're going to do something.
31:24
It's going to be really exciting.
31:25
It's going to be an exciting project.
31:27
So let me ask you this, when you guys went from 1:00 to 2:00 and
31:31
then again to three to four, it was all in relatively the same
31:35
geographic region, kind of all in in the Dayton area.
31:38
And so I'm going to guess that you had some name recognition,
31:42
some credibility built up. So as you go into a new
31:45
neighborhood, you've got, you know, some clients or some
31:49
customers that are there or have heard of you guys.
31:52
And so that kind of helps. Now you're going into, you know,
31:56
Columbus isn't that far away, but you know, probably an hour
31:59
down the road and it's a whole new group of customers.
32:03
Are you going to borrow some ideas from what you did to open
32:07
your very first location in terms of how do we get the word
32:09
out? How do we, you know, fill the
32:12
the seats like right from the very beginning or what?
32:14
What's the strategy here? Well, first of all, we're going
32:18
to do from an operational standpoint, we're going to do
32:21
exactly what we do here, right. So it's going to be the same
32:23
concept. And from a seeding the market
32:29
standpoint, one thing we've done over the last couple years as
32:32
we've just become way, way more sophisticated about marketing
32:39
and digital marketing. And so we're using pretty
32:45
sophisticated traffic data to understand exactly who our
32:52
customers are and how to reach them and then reaching them.
32:57
So basically when we go into a new market, we know exactly who
33:01
the customer base is. That cup comes to old scratch
33:04
pizza. When you say that, you mean
33:05
like, oh, they're 35 to 45? Yeah, we use like, I'm not sure
33:10
fulfill with, but familiar with like like Experian mosaic data.
33:16
If you know what this is, this is like, you know, Experian,
33:19
Experian. The credit?
33:22
Yeah, They know everything about you.
33:24
Yeah. And they have broken the world
33:27
up into very specific demographic segments.
33:33
And through other services, like we can track exactly the exact
33:39
mix of the people they're walking into our restaurants and
33:42
the frequency of those people. We know exactly where they live,
33:47
who they are, what are their demographic profiles, How do
33:50
they want to be reached by media?
33:51
What are their spending habits, What are their interests?
33:55
And then we can take that specific data, plug it into
33:58
Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, different channels and directly
34:05
reach those customers with a message that's relevant to them.
34:08
So that's part of how we'll that's, you know, but we'll do
34:13
all kinds of other things. You know, you got to do
34:14
influencer marketing, you've got to do, you know, we're going to
34:17
also have as part of our deal at True Point, we're going to have
34:23
large signage right on 270. So we're going to get lots of
34:28
traffic every day seeing our name, you know, it's going to
34:31
take we, we do actual very, we do a lot of paid digital media.
34:37
We do very little advertising other than social media and paid
34:40
digital. And we but we know that going in
34:46
a new market, we're going to have to do a lot more, right?
34:48
There's going to be a lot more work to introduce us to the
34:53
community then we have to do. We open a location around here.
34:58
And so when is the Columbus location opening?
35:00
Late 2026. Late summer, probably late
35:03
summer 2026. OK.
35:06
And wait 2026 or 2025? 2026, we're in late summer 2025
35:13
right now, yeah. So it's a year from now.
35:15
OK. And there's did you say there's
35:19
another location coming? There is another location that
35:21
we're working on. I'm not we're we're in lease
35:23
negotiations right now. So I'm not ready to announce it,
35:25
but little 2 we're going to. So we're going to open 2 in
35:27
2026. That's the goal.
35:30
Are there any other, I don't know, sort of evolutions of the
35:33
service and the customer experience that you're working
35:36
on that you want to get voice to?
35:39
And you know, I think that in our newer locations, one of the
35:45
things that limits us in our current locations is food to go
35:51
just continues to grow for almost every restaurant.
35:55
And actually our facilities and our the way our buildings are
35:59
structured right now, there's limitations there.
36:02
So I think we're going to continue to put way more effort
36:05
into making pickup and 3rd party delivery even easier and also
36:10
increasing the operational capacity of our restaurants so
36:13
that we can put through even more product during those peak
36:18
hours than we can now. I mean, today we're turning off
36:21
limiting online ordering, turning off DoorDash because we
36:24
just can't handle the volume during peak hours because it's
36:28
just math. These ovens, all these
36:30
Neapolitan ovens only fit so many pizzas.
36:32
There's just a math equation, You know, I say, yes, they cook
36:35
in 90 seconds, but you might have 40 pizzas in front of you.
36:38
So just because they cook in 90 seconds, you could be waiting 20
36:42
minutes for one because there's just a lot of them.
36:44
So, So I think that the evolution, I mean, I think the
36:48
evolution of take out, I mean digital or even in store
36:53
digital, I mean, I don't know that we'll ever do kiosks or
36:57
tableside ordering. But I mean, you know, all of
37:00
that is happening. I mean, you know, the young
37:03
kids, the younger people that we that work for us, they love it.
37:07
They they want to order on their phone, they want to order in
37:10
kiosk, You know, they're they're into it.
37:12
So, but I, but, but I believe in hospitality and I think that no
37:17
matter what, no matter what happens with AI and, and kiosk
37:23
ordering and ordering at the table and all of those things,
37:26
people want to gather. People want to be together in a
37:30
place that makes them feel good, that they feel like they're part
37:34
of a community, that they feel like this is a place that's
37:36
meant for them. And people will always want
37:40
that. And so I think there's always
37:42
going to be a place for restaurants like that.
37:45
You know, obviously as we're talking here in late summer
37:48
2025, you guys have got quite a bit of momentum, you know, 4
37:51
locations, another one coming next year and it probably
37:54
another one after that. Still at least negotiations like
37:57
things are going well. At what point when you open the
37:59
first one did you feel like, OK, we've really got something here?
38:05
Because for some folks it happens right away.
38:08
For some folks it takes a while. It's sort of like tweaking the
38:11
dials, kind of ironing out the wrinkles before things really
38:15
start to catch on. Yeah.
38:18
I mean, it happened. It happened pretty quickly.
38:23
I mean, we were fairly popular from the beginning.
38:29
I mean businesses you know, we're doing 40% more this year
38:35
than we did our first year, so or 50% we're doing way more this
38:38
year than we did our first year. So like business has grown and
38:40
grown and grown over time. But I would say, you know, when
38:45
I first talked to initial investors and we talked about a
38:49
second like a multiple locations, hey, I would have
38:52
just been happy if the first one works and it was we opened the
38:58
second one about three years in. I mean it took a year to be
39:04
like, OK, this works. We think we have a system and we
39:07
know how the system works. If looking back on it today, I
39:12
feel like we were flying by the seat of our pants back then
39:14
compared to how detailed in our systems and our operational
39:18
standards and everything now. I mean, when I look back at the
39:21
way that we ran the business back then, I mean it was, you
39:25
know, it was a much different thing.
39:29
It was a question what? Do you think is the biggest
39:31
change that you've made that time?
39:33
Oh, just structure, just just, you know, standard orders of
39:38
procedure documentation, lots and lots of systems.
39:44
I mean, my, my staff is probably my team is probably like, Oh my
39:47
God, not another app. You know, like, you know, we
39:50
have apps for all of our training programs.
39:52
We have apps for all of our, you know, checklists for everything
39:57
in the restaurant throughout the course of the day.
39:59
We have. You know, just they're just
40:02
systems for everything. I mean, that's the difference
40:04
that if you want to know the difference between like, you
40:07
know, any, any business, I guess, but probably, but a
40:11
restaurant that's kind of, you know, in its early stages and
40:17
something that's just starting to get more refined is just
40:21
systems. I mean, is it documented?
40:24
Do you know your costs? How often are you meeting about
40:27
financials? How off you know what, what,
40:29
what, what is the process for every job in the restaurant?
40:35
And, and then how do you measure it?
40:37
Then how do you go back and measure it and make sure you're
40:39
actually doing those things? What sort of system do you have
40:41
for measurement? So those are really the things
40:45
that that make you capable of growing.
40:48
And because you can grow, but you're going to go crazy like if
40:52
you're, you know, if you're, if you're working in the business
40:56
all the time in multiple locations, trying to make things
41:00
run properly, It's not you can't and it's almost impossible to
41:04
grow and you need, you need, do you need systems that can be
41:08
monitored, can be adhered to, the people understand what they
41:11
are, that can be measured, can be repeated, replicated.
41:15
So that's the big difference. And I've heard you talk a lot
41:18
about your team. In today's environment, it's
41:22
hard to find good folks. It's hard to hold on to good
41:25
folks. What are some things that you
41:27
found success with when it comes to recruiting and retention?
41:33
Well, I mean, recruiting, we're known as a great place to work.
41:41
We and we monitor that, you know, we do like ENPS scores,
41:47
which are employee Net Promoter scores on a regular basis to
41:50
understand the sort of temperature of the staff and how
41:53
happy they are and feel. Don't know ENPS scores where you
41:56
would just ask on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to
42:00
recommend to a friend or family member working at Old Scratch
42:05
Pizza? And so just that simple
42:07
measurement of whether or not people are promoting you or
42:11
detracting from you. And so we kind of measure that a
42:15
lot to make sure that we're, we're doing the right things.
42:19
One of the things that we did, which is harder for a smaller
42:21
operator is that we on the recruiting side is we're very
42:25
picky. We actually don't make it easy
42:27
to, to join the company, especially for the type of
42:32
employees that we're hiring. So we, we back in the beginning.
42:36
So this is how you become more sophisticated in the beginning,
42:39
you know, you needed a you needed a cook, you need a
42:42
runner, you need a dishwasher and you're kind of desperate and
42:45
the managers are going on indeed and they're looking at all the
42:49
applications and then they're only so many people will talk to
42:54
you. Then you get them in and you
42:55
know, if, if I need a dishwasher tomorrow and this person came in
43:00
today and they're available and your manager, you're desperate,
43:03
you know, you're likely to hire them.
43:05
But we may be at three stores. We stopped doing that and we so
43:11
we have somebody whose job it is somebody in HR whose job it is
43:14
this which is kind of what bigger companies do.
43:16
They just pre screen candidates. And, and because the the
43:23
statistics for us are if you put an add on indeed for an
43:26
employee, you'll get, let's say you get 100 applications, maybe
43:32
20 of them are meet the qualification in some way.
43:36
I know worth talking to. Of those, only 10 will actually
43:40
talk to you. Even though they applied, you
43:42
can't get in touch with them. They won't reply.
43:44
Something will happen. And of those ten, really only
43:47
one or two you really want to talk to.
43:50
And so that's one to 2% of the candidates like fit all of your
43:56
criteria. So now we pre screen those all,
44:00
all of them. They have to get on a video call
44:02
with a, with a HR person, which is in our business is some
44:06
friction. Like we just put some friction
44:07
in place to make sure you're really want to join the company.
44:11
And then we only send those one or two people to the store to
44:14
talk to the manager. So once they've talked to the
44:16
manager, we've already pre screened them for culture.
44:18
We pre screen them for, for qualifications, We pre screened
44:21
them for kindness, which is like one of our core attributes.
44:25
And then once they get in the company, you just, you know, we,
44:28
we try and treat them right. We try and pay them fairly.
44:31
We try and be clear about their roles or responsibilities.
44:35
And, and as a result, you know, we have about 280 employees now
44:42
and some of them, you know, the first employee we ever hired
44:46
still works for us. And, and our management team,
44:52
like our operations team, which is 3 people on our operations
44:55
team have been with us for 9-7 and six years.
44:59
So it's, you know, we've got we, we, we, we keep people around.
45:04
You're doing something right there.
45:05
Yeah. Yeah.
45:06
People enjoy the workspace. Yeah.
45:09
So let's take a a little detour for a moment.
45:11
Eric, I'd like to explore a serious challenge that you've
45:15
overcome in your life, whether it's personal or professional.
45:18
How'd you get through that and what did you learn?
45:23
Well, it's a, you know, there's a couple of things.
45:25
One we've already touched on some is that I made a decision
45:28
to, you know, with a very good job with benefits and insurance
45:37
and, you know, all those things to against the guidance of many
45:43
people with a house and two kids and a family, you know, to put
45:51
that all on the line and start a pizza restaurant, you know, in
45:56
Dayton, OH, which in a in a questionable location, which we
46:01
didn't talk about. But, you know, and the, I mean,
46:06
the general error that anybody feels during that period of time
46:12
is just, you know, you have to be somewhat delusional about
46:18
your chances of success. You know, and you know, somebody
46:25
said, you know, an entrepreneur needs to be somewhat forgetful
46:29
about the past. I'm realistic about the present
46:32
and delusional about the future. You know which I like that
46:36
because I think that that's true and getting, you know, getting
46:41
through that, you know, waking up one day and being like, Oh my
46:45
God, you know, I, I, I'm working all the, I'm working all the
46:48
time, you know, every weekend I'm working nights.
46:51
I have no help. I mean, you know, I have to pay
46:54
for my own health insurance now. I don't have any 4O1K anymore.
46:57
You know, all of the things that you know, sort of are the
47:00
measurements of success in the traditional world.
47:05
All of a sudden just have that all go out the window and have
47:09
the uncertain, just the uncertainty in your life of that
47:14
is something that you know, it took an it took an emotional
47:18
toil. But every time I open a
47:20
restaurant now, you know, I mean, I think, go.
47:23
Through that same like emotional turmoil every.
47:26
Time. I mean, I think that you, you,
47:29
you know, there's a period of a couple months before a
47:32
restaurant opens where I'm probably not, you know, I don't
47:36
know. I don't know what my wife would
47:37
say, but I'm probably not. I'm not, I'm certainly not 100%
47:41
mentally here, you know, and those are, you know, those are
47:48
tough times. I would think that any
47:49
entrepreneur when they make some big advancement in their
47:53
business, that's, that's takes a lot of risk, takes a lot of
47:58
capital, takes a lot of effort and focus.
48:02
I think that most people, most people would go through that.
48:06
But I think that, you know, the other challenges that the
48:09
business faces, what I personally face is just, you
48:11
know, it's just, it's the reason like what?
48:14
And I think this part you for most entrepreneurs is like, when
48:17
asked what is the biggest challenge to your business?
48:19
It's just me, you know, like it's my personality.
48:22
It's, it's, it's, you know, say. Say more about that because
48:26
obviously it's your personality and the goddess here.
48:29
They got you. But I mean, it's, you know, but
48:31
it's my impulsiveness. It's how it's how I'm confident
48:38
I am that an idea is real and maybe overwhelming my staff with
48:43
my own confidence that they don't aren't able to tell me the
48:45
truth, you know, and maybe it is that I, you know, I, I, there
48:53
are certain parts of the business that I probably should
48:55
pay more attention to that I don't because I don't I have
48:59
very limited and very actually, I have very limited focus.
49:02
You know, I'm sort of all over the board and it's, I always
49:05
think that if I, you know, had a partner, I'm a lot, you know, a
49:08
lot of you have business partners and I'm alone in this
49:11
and sometimes business partners. If you know, if one person's
49:13
like a outstanding like salesperson and another person's
49:17
a great financial person, like that's a great, it's a good
49:19
balance. And for me, I'm sort of
49:21
everything. So there's of course I have
49:23
weaknesses. There are things that I'm not as
49:24
good at as other things. And so, you know, whatever.
49:29
Those like mentors or like peer support groups or.
49:33
You know, I mean, I, I talked, I, I am in multiple groups.
49:36
I'm in one of the things that I find the most value in it is
49:40
being in groups that are other restaurant operators because it
49:49
is so refreshing. I mean, and what I usually find
49:52
is that I am, what I find is that I'm so hard on myself and
49:57
that nobody has this figured out.
49:59
I mean, I talked to people with 50 units that don't have it
50:03
figured out, right. You think like, oh, they're
50:06
surely using some software system where like everything
50:09
comes wrapped up together in a nice bow at that, you know, in
50:13
your financial and it's all just like feeds.
50:15
No, everybody hates their payroll system.
50:18
Everybody hates their their, you know, back office.
50:23
There's some limitation to their back office system.
50:25
Nobody has a perfect way that. Everybody's got duct tape behind
50:29
the scenes. Kitchen, their kitchen screen
50:31
doesn't give them exactly the information that they want,
50:34
like, you know, And so being a part of organizations, I'm on
50:37
the, I'm on a, I'm on the, I'm on a customer Advisory Board for
50:41
a QoS manufacturer. And when every, I meet 4 * a
50:45
year with 20 other restaurant tours to talk about that so
50:49
refreshing to hang out with those guys.
50:51
And I want a couple of other peer groups that I meet online
50:54
and that, that above all is, you know, probably the thing that
50:59
helps me. And I have some then I have some
51:01
some friends locally. You know, when you when you in
51:05
the restaurant business, when you have a couple like multiple
51:08
units, it's sort of narrows the group of people that are doing
51:12
the exact same thing you're doing, right.
51:14
And so I do have some friends of mine that are operating
51:17
independent restaurants around here that we talk a lot.
51:19
I have friends that are opening have multi unit restaurants that
51:22
we talk weekly about, you know, you know, different issues.
51:26
So yeah, but, but I mean that's. Certainly some great support
51:28
system, right? Be able to share those stories
51:31
if there's nothing else you hear, Hey, we're not alone in
51:33
this, but then also a lot of times you're getting ideas on
51:37
hey, we had the same kind of problem here's how we solved it.
51:40
Maybe there's? Well, this is an example of
51:42
where I come in so confident about, oh, I'm telling my this a
51:45
friend of mine the other day about this thing that I'm going
51:47
to do that I'm like so confident about.
51:49
He's like, yeah, we did that three years ago and this is what
51:52
happened. And I'm like, I thought, oh, OK,
51:54
well, maybe I should, maybe I should take, maybe I should
51:58
think that a little, think about that a little bit longer.
52:01
Yeah. And and I think you highlight,
52:03
you know, one of the challenges of you're you're alone, like
52:05
you're on an island, like you've got a great team with you, but
52:09
you're the only owner, right. And so you're all things well.
52:13
And every and, and everybody, almost everybody on our team
52:20
came up with me, right? So they all came through the
52:22
company. So we only know what we know,
52:25
right? We don't know what anybody else
52:27
knows. We only know what we know,
52:28
right? So, I mean, I've been in the
52:30
business long enough to know a lot.
52:32
But you know, I'm always, that's why I'm always trying to talk.
52:37
I'm always trying to talk to peers because I want to know how
52:39
they're doing things, because we just do things how it works for
52:43
us. And there's a.
52:44
Ton of value in that. Yeah, and and what we do is not
52:47
easy. I, I, one of the things I say
52:51
about our business is that in some ways has successfully been,
52:54
we have the world's worst business model.
52:56
That's like a that's like a joke that I have because I say we're
52:59
trying to do world class pizza in the most difficult way
53:03
possible as fast as you possibly can, right, which is like not a
53:07
recipe for success. Like I mean, there we could.
53:11
I couldn't have had a more difficult way.
53:14
There's really no more difficult way to make pizza than what
53:17
we're doing. I mean, teaching 16 year old
53:19
kids to hand stretch dough, top Neapolitan pizzas, manage fires
53:24
in ovens that have to you don't just it's not a conveyor.
53:27
You don't put it on. It comes out the other side.
53:29
You got to turn them halfway through.
53:31
You've got to be constantly managing temperatures.
53:34
They can only go to the right place.
53:35
In Italy they say you know you need 10 years to become a pizza
53:38
Yolo and we teach 16 year old kids in about 3 weeks how to do
53:42
it so. You're stretching the laws of
53:46
pizza and business. Business, this is, yes, you're
53:49
right, you're right. What's the whole thing about?
53:50
Like you can get it fast and cheap and quick, but you can't
53:54
have all three. It's like that kind of a rubric.
53:57
You shouldn't be able to do all those things at once.
54:01
Eric, if you were going to recommend a a resource for our
54:03
audience, call it a, a podcast, a book, maybe a course, a class
54:08
that you took, what's what's been helpful for you?
54:11
I mean, in our industry, it's about, you know, we're very
54:16
focused on hospitality. There's a big There's a book
54:19
that's out recently, Unreasonable Hospitality.
54:22
I just read it. Yeah, it's great.
54:24
I I just sent our operations, but he, he just did a conference
54:27
in Nashville. I sent our operations director
54:29
to it and she was blown away. It's a great weekend for her.
54:34
The classic is setting the table by day Meyer of Union Square
54:39
Hospitality. You know, I mean, the resource I
54:43
use as much as anything now is one of the ways you were talking
54:47
about your little process of how you, you know, write stuff down.
54:50
I mean I I'm not sure if this is legal or not but anyway when I
54:56
drive in the car. I talk to chat.
54:58
GPT and I haven't talked through scenarios and things that I'm
55:03
considering and have it and it listens to me and I say and
55:07
it'll tell me something and I'll say no, no, don't don't be nice
55:10
about this. Like don't just tell me that's a
55:12
good idea. Tell me why this isn't a good
55:14
idea, you know, and it's good. It's pretty smart.
55:17
I mean, of course it's not perfect, but I mean, I've, I've,
55:20
I, we use, as a matter of fact, I'm, I, I use AIA lot in our
55:25
business and at the, in Columbus in October at the international,
55:31
the, well, I guess it's the Midwest or whatever.
55:33
The Pizza Expo put on by Pizza Today magazine.
55:35
There's a big conference coming up and I'm doing a presentation
55:39
on AI and pizza restaurants because I just think that
55:44
there's so many ways you can streamline your operations with
55:47
it. Well, and what's cool about the
55:49
use case? That you talked about there
55:51
about talking to it in your car. I love because like a big way
55:57
that I use it is like, it's a brainstorming partner.
55:59
Yeah. And that's exactly what you're
56:01
talking about. And I I.
56:02
Haven't. Thought about, hey, I got 20
56:05
minutes in the car driving my kid to football practice.
56:08
I've got this idea that I'm noodling on.
56:10
Well, this is the thing. I mean, you can.
56:11
You can anytime you do it. It, it not only helps you
56:14
brainstorm the idea, it documents the entire brainstorm,
56:17
right. So now you might come to some
56:19
conclusion at the end and you can go back and you can see, Oh,
56:22
well, this is This is why, this is how I got to this result, you
56:26
know, in my mind. So I find it just, you know,
56:29
again, it's, it's not, it's an expert on a lot of things.
56:33
It's not an expert on everything.
56:34
But I find that it really helps me organize my thoughts.
56:39
Yeah. And I that, that's great.
56:41
It's not an expert on. Everything and not everything it
56:44
gets back to you is something that you should run with, right?
56:47
You have to put it through your filter.
56:49
It is just a brainstorming tool considered a a Co worker who you
56:53
know, they gave you an idea and it didn't sound right.
56:55
So I'm no, that's not for me, but there's a lot of things like
56:58
this, this speech that I'm. Giving at the the conference
57:01
it's it's the whole idea of it is 10 things that every pizza
57:06
operator can do today in ChatGPT to make their business run
57:11
better. And so we're going to the most
57:14
obvious 1 is like answering your reviews for you So I mean
57:20
creating a brand voice that answers your reviews that's a
57:23
pretty strange that's like that's like level 1 we'll get to
57:26
like level 10, which is having it interpret data out of your
57:30
POS system. So like that's like level 10
57:33
but. Or level maybe actually today
57:35
was like level 5, but it there's there's and there's a lot of
57:39
things in between. Yeah, Eric, setting aside all
57:43
humility, What? Is your superpower How?
57:47
How many times? I said.
57:48
Confidence like like I just believe I'd like my my ability
57:53
to delusionally believe that the thing that I think is right is
57:59
correct and is possible right that that.
58:03
But I think that's the biggest thing is that when you go to
58:05
your team and you say this thing that all of them, what they're
58:10
thinking is that's a lot of work.
58:12
Like that's going to be a lot to implement.
58:15
Like, do we really know that's going to work to be so confident
58:19
and to keep pushing the boundaries of like, is this this
58:23
thing? Is this thing we can I believe
58:25
that we can do this thing, we can be better than we are now.
58:28
Like this thing like not settling and being havoc, not
58:34
settling and then being overconfident in what we should
58:37
not settle on. Like I think it's that
58:39
combination, you know, I mean, obviously anything can be taken
58:43
to. Extremes.
58:44
But I think in general, most people in the world suffer from
58:48
a lack of confidence rather than too much confidence, right?
58:51
And I think it's that lack of confidence that holds a lot of
58:54
people back from pursuing really good ideas.
58:58
Well, I mean, it's not that I don't have a lack of.
59:00
Confidence. I mean, I, I am unsure of myself
59:03
all the time, but once I once I know something to be like, once
59:07
I've worked through it and my wife will say this about me all
59:09
the time. Like I can't, I can't.
59:13
Also, I can't come to a decision unless I've really talked it
59:17
through, thought it through, done a bunch of research.
59:21
But once I know the thing, like once I know it, then we go out
59:26
and I'm like, I'm so sure that we can make this part of our
59:29
hospitality better. And if we do these three things,
59:32
like we're going to get better. And I think it's, I think it's
59:37
that is the part of confidence that you need to have.
59:41
It's like once you've done the research, you believe in the
59:43
thing to go out and sell it with confidence and, and be confident
59:49
that is actually possible. You know that this week we can
59:51
do it. You know that all of the little
59:54
things that get in our way is is you know that the that we can
59:57
persevere and make this thing happen.
1:00:00
I love that. I love that.
1:00:03
Eric, just one more question for you, But before I ask it, I want
1:00:05
to do a couple of things. First of all, everyone
1:00:07
listening, pause for just a second.
1:00:08
Go ahead and flip to your open podcast app and hit the follow
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or subscribe button. Want you to get more great
1:00:15
interviews like we've had today with Eric Solar, the founder of
1:00:18
Old Scratch Pizza. And if you take just an extra
1:00:21
2nd and leave us a review or a little bit of feedback, that
1:00:24
really helps other people find the show too.
1:00:27
Make sure that they're getting the benefit from it as well.
1:00:29
Eric, I want to let people know the best way to get in touch
1:00:32
with you to follow your story or that of Old Scratch Pizza.
1:00:36
What is that? You can follow us at Old Scratch
1:00:39
Pizza dot. Com with our website old scratch
1:00:41
pizza on Instagram. That is big one.
1:00:45
Those are the big places to find us.
1:00:47
OK. And we'll have links to that in
1:00:48
the show notes. Last question for you, and I
1:00:51
think I have an idea where this might go, is a year from now,
1:00:55
you and I reconnect and you're super excited because you're
1:00:58
celebrating something big. What's that big thing you're
1:01:02
celebrating one year from now, Eric?
1:01:04
Restaurants. Yeah, you know, growth.
1:01:06
And and by then having announced more so I love it.
1:01:11
So growth is on the horizon. You guys are marching forward.
1:01:15
Terrific. Well, Eric Soler.
1:01:17
Founder of old scratch pizza I want to be the first to thank
1:01:20
you for sharing both your time and your story with us today I
1:01:23
really appreciate it great thank you so much I appreciate it too
1:01:26
You have a great. Day, folks, That's a wrap on
1:01:28
another episode of the Inspired. Stories podcast.
1:01:31
Thanks for learning with us today.