Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Penn Station COO Craig Dunaway: How Concentric Growth Strategy Built a Fast Casual Empire | Restaurants & Franchises Series

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Penn Station COO Craig Dunaway: How Concentric Growth Strategy Built a Fast Casual Empire | Restaurants & Franchises Series · 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 Craig Dunaway, Chief Operating Officer at Penn
0:22
Station East Coast Subs. Founded in 1985 and
0:26
headquartered in Milford, OH, Penn Station lives by the motto
0:31
it's all about good taste, delivering delicious Subs, fresh
0:35
cut fries and refreshing lemonade.
0:38
Now Craig has been a part of Penn Station for a long time,
0:41
initially starting as a multi unit franchisee and now
0:45
overseeing daily operations and keeping the brand's reputation
0:49
for quality front and center. Before joining Penn Station, he
0:53
served as a partner at an accounting firm in Indiana,
0:56
gaining valuable expertise and financial management.
1:00
Under Craig's guidance, Penn Station has continued to grow,
1:03
delighting customers across multiple states with its focus
1:06
on fresh ingredients and friendly service.
1:09
The brand has cultivated a loyal following thanks to its
1:13
unwavering commitment to quality.
1:15
He brings decades of experience and hospitality, and has played
1:18
a key role in Penn Station's ongoing success.
1:21
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1:53
All right, back to our guest today, the CEO of Penn Station,
1:57
Craig Dunaway. I appreciate you making the time
2:00
to Share your story today. Anthony, thanks for having me
2:02
on. It's an honor to honor to be
2:04
here with you today. All right, let's hop right into
2:06
it. So great.
2:08
Let's go back a little bit before Penn Station and tell us
2:11
a little bit about your time at Macaulay Nicholas, an accounting
2:14
firm. What kind of work were you
2:16
focused on there? And maybe we'll segue into like,
2:20
how did that later help the work that you were doing as a
2:22
franchise? Yeah, You know, my, my father
2:26
was an accountant and at a very young age, and this is probably
2:30
a little bit unique, I knew I wanted to be ACPA, didn't know
2:34
at the time what ACPA did, but I knew I loved numbers and I
2:37
wanted to be around numbers. And so, you know, the first
2:40
chance I got in the ninth grade to take an accounting class, I
2:43
took it and loved it. And so progressed through high
2:45
school, 11 math, went on to Indiana University in Southern
2:50
Indiana, IU Southeast. And, you know, majored in
2:54
accounting and kept saying what I just told you is I wanted to,
2:58
I wanted to be the managing partner in an accounting firm
3:00
one day having no clue what a managing partner did, but that's
3:03
what I wanted to do in my career.
3:05
And so I always migrated towards numbers.
3:08
I felt like early on in my career that if you did not
3:11
understand the balance sheet or an income statement intimately,
3:15
it puts you to competitive disadvantage.
3:17
You know, you'd go out with friends and you're young and
3:19
you're just hanging out talking to people and you know, people I
3:22
don't, I don't, I don't pay attention to the numbers.
3:24
That's, that's not a concern to me.
3:26
And numbers to me were the, it was the math game.
3:29
I mean, that's what business is all about.
3:30
It's about numbers in the bottom line.
3:33
And so just early on I migrated, you know, I migrated that way.
3:38
I had an opportunity at Macaulay Nicholas and company, as you
3:41
mentioned to you know, it was, it was an early lesson in my
3:45
life. I went through a lot of
3:46
interviews on campus. At the time it was the Big 5
3:49
accounting firms or Big 6. And I went through all these
3:53
interviews and was having a little bit of success.
3:56
And Macaulay Nicholas and Company happened to be the very
3:58
last interview that I scheduled on the last day.
4:01
And I was tired of the process. And I said, you know what, I'm
4:05
just going to go in and I'm going to be myself.
4:07
I'm not going to try to impress anybody.
4:08
I'm just going to talk, tell them what's important to me,
4:11
what's not important. And I got a call back and offer
4:14
me an internship. And so, you know, there was,
4:16
there was a, there was a lesson wrapped up in there for me.
4:19
Definitely just be yourself and not try to impress anyone else
4:22
and SO. You were kind of putting on a
4:24
little bit of a of a positive front, or so you thought, but
4:28
other folks maybe saw through that.
4:30
It's felt a little bit forced. 21 years old and you're just
4:33
trying to get knowledge in the business world and what works
4:36
and what doesn't work. And I didn't know any better at
4:37
the time. So, you know, went back to the
4:40
lesson my mom and dad taught me. Just be yourself.
4:43
And as an intern at the firm, I'd had an opportunity to really
4:47
be exposed to a lot. I mean, it was a smaller firm,
4:50
regional firm. We were, I think, the second
4:51
largest regional firm in Louisville, KY.
4:55
And so I was exposed to the tax side and I was exposed to
4:58
accounting and auditing. And I really migrated towards
5:01
auditing, really for a number of reasons.
5:04
It was bigger picture than just doing tax returns every day.
5:09
It allowed me the opportunity to work on the firm's larger
5:13
accounts, very successful businessmen and women.
5:16
And you got to see what made them successful.
5:19
So, you know, even going into this at 2324 years old,
5:23
certainly I've got, you know, seniors and managers and
5:27
supervisors and partners ahead of me.
5:28
But I'm getting to sit in on these meetings with business
5:31
owners and see what makes them tick and what's important to
5:35
them. And So what really, really
5:37
shaped what I wanted to do, you know, from the world of public
5:41
accounting, I didn't want to sit behind a desk and do individual
5:43
tax returns all day. I wanted to work with business
5:46
owners. And so, you know, to kind of
5:49
further your question, you know, when you're working with
5:52
business owners like that, they always have some need that's
5:55
either they've had bank financing going on or they have
5:59
litigation going on or they have to put projections together.
6:03
And so over time, over my career at Macaulay, over that 14 years
6:07
I was there really, excuse me, 16 years I was there.
6:11
It allowed me to focus on all of those things where, you know, at
6:14
a fairly young age in the business world, I'm meeting with
6:16
bankers and I'm meeting with attorneys and I'm helping a
6:20
client or clients work through, you know, projections because
6:23
they're thinking about selling their business.
6:25
And, and the number side of that just always fascinated me.
6:29
I was always really, really, I'm good at numbers.
6:32
Maybe it's my sports background. I just migrated that way and so
6:36
really, really just took off and honed what I've done.
6:39
I feel like my entire career understanding, just just having
6:42
that understanding. And I don't mean that in an
6:44
arrogant way. I mean, I mean, I know
6:45
everybody's not good at numbers, but I think if you're not to try
6:49
to understand as much of this you can is extremely important.
6:53
So at some point you decide that you want to become a business
6:56
owner yourself. Well, the, the, the story of
7:00
that is, and, and at the college I went to, I mean, it was a
7:03
smaller school and they had a, they had an area dedicated for
7:08
the student athletes to study. And I played basketball and
7:12
another buddy of mine played baseball and he was also an
7:15
accounting major and we used to study together.
7:18
And you know, you're 1920 years old, you have no money, but you
7:21
got a lot of dreams. And so Charlie and I used to,
7:25
you know, we, we'd study together and we talked about,
7:27
you know what, when we graduate from college, one day we should
7:30
buy a piece of real estate. That's what we should do.
7:32
Let's buy real estate and we'll start, you know, we'll start a
7:35
real estate company. And we both graduate.
7:39
Charlie goes his way, I go mine. And three years later or a
7:44
couple of years later, Charlie comes to work at our accounting
7:47
firm as our controller. And I hadn't really seen him and
7:50
stayed in touch with him. But we started this discussion
7:53
about real estate again and said, you know, we, we should
7:57
consider this. We talked about it in college.
7:59
I mean, you know, we're having a little bit of success in the
8:01
business world now. Maybe we should do it.
8:03
And I think it was a little bit serendipity for us at the time.
8:07
We had another friend of ours who was looking to become a Papa
8:11
John's franchise. And at the time there were only
8:14
about 20 or 30P John's. I mean, Papa John's was very
8:17
small. I mean, you're talking 1985 time
8:20
frame. And so there were very few Papa
8:22
John's in the, I mean, in the city of Louisville, there were
8:24
very few, much less the country. And so Charlie and I worked with
8:28
this individual gentleman by then, Greg, and help him put
8:32
projections together, you know, something that I had started,
8:35
you know, honing my skills on. And Charlie said to me one day,
8:39
he said, you know what? Instead of buying real estate,
8:42
why don't we meet with Papa John's and see if we can become
8:44
Papa John's franchisees. And I'm like, all right, let's
8:48
do it so. Sign me up for anything.
8:51
Right, right, right. I mean.
8:52
That was our first. I'm looking for opportunity.
8:54
Franchising. So we met with Papa John's like
8:58
what they had to say. They were looking for young
9:02
aggressive business professionals to, you know, kind
9:05
of spearhead the company of franchising.
9:08
As for and Charlie liked what we what we, we both liked what they
9:12
had to say. As I said, and you know, I grew
9:14
up in Louisville, The Cincinnati market was available.
9:17
We wanted a big market. You know, don't ask me why.
9:20
We just wanted a big market. We wanted to get as big as we
9:22
could get and ultimately acquired the rights to do Papa
9:26
John's in Cincinnati, OH. And are those rights that you
9:30
guys still hold today, are you still involved in that?
9:33
Boy, there's a long story there. Anthony, Charlie, Charlie and I
9:38
began we, I'll say we made good money, but we made money in
9:42
spite of ourselves. And, and the, one of the things
9:45
that I've learned about the restaurant industry is it's very
9:47
much a penny's business. And you know, being ACPA, you
9:53
can imagine how I see the world through, you know, the black and
9:56
white lens. And you know, one of the first
9:59
lessons Charlie and I had is we met with a banker and asked to
10:03
borrow $100,000 from the bank And he loaned us, he loaned US
10:08
the money, the restaurant cost us $94,000 to build and we split
10:14
$6000. And we thought we were rich.
10:16
And it's kind of funny to look back on that now.
10:19
But you know, we opened our first restaurant, had some
10:22
success with it. We put a little bit of money in
10:26
and opened another one. And if we just kept parlaying
10:29
it, I mean, it, it worked out really well for us.
10:32
We we wanted to continue to grow and you know, Papa John's was
10:36
becoming unbelievably popular. I mean, I owe part of our
10:39
success to the fact that this brand just really Papa John's
10:42
was not an overnight success, but there was about a five year
10:45
period where they just exploded. And that was good news, bad news
10:49
for us. It allowed us to have really,
10:51
really strong sales. But at the same time, we had a
10:56
first ride on the market and so other people were coming into
10:58
Cincinnati wanting to develop restaurants.
11:01
And we either need needed to develop a restaurant or we
11:06
needed to give up the territory. And I did not want to have
11:10
partners. I had a partner.
11:11
I didn't want a bunch of partners where ultimately
11:13
Charlie and I had maybe 40 locations and we each own 3%.
11:17
That's not what we wanted to do. We wanted to control our own
11:20
destiny. And so we just kept building and
11:23
we would give up the territory. And over the course of about 11
11:27
years, he and I opened 12P John's restaurants in
11:29
Cincinnati, OH. And, you know, it's not a
11:32
passive business. I mean, I said it's a penny's
11:34
business, but it's also not passive.
11:36
And he and I were in Cincinnati every weekend visiting our
11:41
restaurants and meeting with our operating partner and really
11:44
just trying to make the restaurants the best that they
11:46
could be. And Charlie, ultimately, he got
11:49
out of the business of of public accounting and I stayed in, I
11:54
mean, I stayed full time. So I really wore 2 hats at the
11:56
time. I had two full time.
11:58
Jobs it was, I mean, that's you had to have been stretched then.
12:01
I was stretched then I was stretched in.
12:04
I, I went, my golf game's not very good because in my
12:07
formative years of golf, I was stretched very thin.
12:10
But I loved it, you know, I loved, I loved the culture that
12:14
we were trying to create with Papa John's.
12:17
I, I loved what we had formed and I loved us opening
12:21
restaurants because you could instantly see the success or the
12:25
opportunities when you did that. So, but I stayed true to my core
12:29
because I, I tell people public accounting is what gave me white
12:32
hair, not the restaurant industry.
12:34
I love public accounting. I just love working with clients
12:38
and you know, you're helping people make money and help them
12:41
maximize the, the, the profitability in their business.
12:43
And that was a lot of fun. A lot of stress, but a lot of
12:46
fun. And so do you still have those
12:49
12 locations, Papa John's now? So what happened was the Segway
12:53
of of really from Papa John's into Penn Station is in 1997.
12:59
You know, Charlie and I've been travelling back and forth for 12
13:01
years now. I've got a, you know, I've got a
13:03
family at home, couple small children and, and really three
13:07
things that happened in 1997. Charlie told me that he was
13:12
tired of traveling back and forth to Cincinnati all the
13:14
time. And I guess I wasn't smart
13:17
enough at the time to just say, well, why don't you move?
13:20
But that happened. And then a gentleman, the
13:23
second, we were the largest franchise of Papa John's in
13:26
Cincinnati at the time and the second largest franchise
13:30
approached us and said I'd be interested in buying your
13:34
restaurants. And we told him, he said, Mike,
13:37
we're not interested. And he said, well, let me make
13:39
you an offer. And he made us an offer and we
13:40
became interested. And then the third thing that
13:44
happened that was really fortuitous for us is we stumbled
13:46
upon Penn Station and based out of Cincinnati, OH, Milford's
13:51
where our corporate offices, as you said.
13:53
But we we ate at a Penn Station and loved the food and thought,
13:57
man, this is this product is special.
14:01
So between Charlie being tired of traveling, we having an offer
14:04
on the table to potentially sell our Papa John's and loving the
14:08
food, we decided to meet with Jeff Osterfeld, the founder of
14:11
Penn Station. And we met with Jeff in 90.
14:14
It was 96 time frame. Loved what he had to say.
14:19
I loved his focus on the quality of the product, customer service
14:23
and just his detail oriented us. Because again, with my
14:25
background of public accounting, the way I see the world, you
14:28
know, it's through that black and white prism.
14:31
And so we decided to sell our Papa John's and begin opening
14:34
Penn stations in in Louisville, KY.
14:37
Interesting. And so was there something from
14:40
a financial perspective? I mean, you, you've had nothing
14:43
but good things to say about the Papa John's brand.
14:46
And you didn't leave, from what I can tell, because there were
14:49
any issues or, you know, cracks in the foundation.
14:53
But, you know, there were other things going on.
14:56
The opportunity to, to, to transition out of Papa John's
15:00
into Penn Station. Penn Station was newer in its
15:05
sort of growth trajectory where there are things from a
15:07
financial perspective that you saw in the models there that you
15:12
were like, oh, this is even better than what we've been
15:14
doing before. You know, that's, that's a
15:17
really, really good question. I think what was different I,
15:22
the, the Papa John's model on an individual restaurant level and
15:25
a Penn Station restaurant at the time were very similar in nature
15:29
and I wanted something a little bit closer to, to home.
15:33
You know, I was, I lived in Cincinnati and, and restaurants
15:36
are definitely not a passive business.
15:39
I think people think because they have a good recipe or they
15:41
can fix BBQ a certain way that maybe I should open a
15:45
restaurant. But I don't think what can be
15:48
lost is how much this is a penny's business and you just
15:51
have to micromanage every cost. I tell prospective franchisees
15:56
that it's really the land of lost opportunity.
15:59
And I was good at that. And, you know, Charlie and I
16:03
love the food. There were no Penn stations in
16:06
Louisville. And we felt like bringing that
16:09
product would create more opportunity because, you know,
16:12
as I said, Papa John's really took off.
16:14
I mean, in the 90s, I mean, Papa John's was starting to explode
16:18
and it's an unbelievable brand and I love being a franchise,
16:22
but it, it was changing. I mean, they were going, they
16:25
had gone public, you know, and, and you know, amongst the inner
16:29
circles of franchises, it was Papa John's unfortunately now
16:32
has to answer to Wall Street. And so we were concerned about
16:36
that. We weren't coming.
16:37
We, we trusted the leadership there and we like the product
16:40
and the brand and all. But, you know, when you have to
16:43
answer to somebody else, IE Wall Street, the decisions are made
16:46
more short term in nature. And we wanted a more long term
16:48
vision. And so we started opening Penn
16:51
stations. We opened our first one in 1999
16:54
in Louisville and over the course of, over the course of 18
16:58
months open for and, you know, really just love that too.
17:03
And it was different. I mean, Papa John's at the time.
17:05
I don't remember how many locations Papa John's had when
17:08
we got out, but you know, when I came into Penn Station as the
17:11
franchise, I think we were restaurant #37.
17:14
Oh, so you guys got in real early there too.
17:16
We. Did.
17:17
But I'll tell you, Anthony, I, I saw similarities between Papa
17:21
John's and, and Penn Station and, and you know, John
17:25
Schneider, the founder of Papa John's, I remember, I remember
17:28
John saying that we want to be at 2000 units by the year 2000.
17:32
And this is 1987 and you're looking around a room and
17:34
there's 50 people in the room. Like, what's he saying?
17:37
But John had a vision. You know, Jeff's vision at Penn
17:41
Station was different. It was he wanted every franchise
17:46
who opened up to be profitable. And that really resonated with
17:50
me one-on-one. It wasn't about the brand as
17:52
much as it was about taking care of franchisees.
17:56
And, and I liked what I heard from Jeff when I came into the
17:59
system. And, you know, he asked me, he
18:03
asked me in around 1997, right after we had gotten in, he
18:06
called me and said I'd like for you to run for the franchise
18:10
Advisory Council. I think, you know, we have, it's
18:14
a group made-up of different people from different
18:16
geographical areas. And everybody looks at this
18:18
through an operational prism and you're looking at it from a
18:21
financial present, return on investment.
18:24
And so I ran, you know, and, and, you know, was able to serve
18:28
on our franchise Advisory Council.
18:30
And I think what I didn't know at the time was I think Jeff was
18:33
really interviewing me. Charlie and I, you know, when
18:38
you get in business and you're 23 and 24 years old, you're just
18:41
starting to form your business ideas, right?
18:44
And then after, you know, 10 or 11 years, Charlie and I had both
18:49
strong opinions and the opinions didn't necessarily align with
18:53
each other anymore. And so ultimately what I
18:57
decided, and we had some contentious meetings early on
19:00
with Penn Station because we weren't doing some things that
19:04
the brand thought we should be doing.
19:06
And you know, my partner is fighting corporate, yet
19:11
corporate's the founder of the brand.
19:12
And I'm like, we should be listening to them.
19:15
They created the model. They know this model.
19:18
So you were more on board with following what corporate was
19:21
asking, but your partner kind of had other ideas?
19:23
Yeah, Charlie had other. It wasn't because he was a bad
19:25
guy. He just had strong opinions too.
19:28
And ultimately, I bought Charlie out and, you know, I bought him
19:31
out. And I think early 99, Jeff asked
19:36
me as I'd gotten to know Jeff, as I'd served on the Franchise
19:40
Advisory Council. And periodically he would call
19:42
me asking my opinions about things.
19:44
And I never thought it was odd. He would just ask my opinion on
19:47
something. I'd give you my opinion.
19:49
And there was an annual meeting that I came to.
19:53
And after the annual meeting, he asked me if he could meet, if we
19:55
could meet. And he asked me if I would move
19:58
to Cincinnati to become president.
20:00
Of Penn Station and and Jeff's a very entrepreneurial guy, great
20:03
guy and was building a golf course knew he needed someone to
20:08
run the business day-to-day, knew he was going to have to
20:10
step aside and, and I'll be honest with you, Anthony, I was
20:14
flattered, but not interested. You know, I wasn't sure I could
20:19
do it, but I love public accounting.
20:22
I mean, there's, I really liked helping people make money and
20:27
working closely with them. But you know, I was, you know, I
20:30
guess when Jeff offered me that, I was 34 years old and I
20:34
remember thinking something I said to you 10 minutes ago,
20:37
which is I don't want to be 60 years old and have Gray hair and
20:40
stay in public accounting because it's really, really
20:42
hard. And so I asked Jeff, I said, I
20:47
want to talk to your team. I want to talk to the team about
20:51
it. And so I drove to Cincinnati and
20:52
met with everybody and said I think this brand is really
20:56
special. I see a lot of similarities
20:58
between Papa John's and Penn Station.
21:00
But I've got a good job, I've got a good career, I love what I
21:04
do, but I think we can go places.
21:06
And I want your all's input. So it's not like they
21:09
interviewed me, but I wanted to know that the team was behind me
21:13
and and would support me and everybody was.
21:15
So it, it worked out, it worked out great.
21:17
So I've been here since August of 99.
21:19
August of 99. So I want to take a step back
21:22
because you said something interesting about how the the
21:25
goal sort of the vision for Penn Station early on wasn't to get
21:30
to 2000 stores like it was for Papa John's, but it was, he
21:34
wants every franchise to be profitable.
21:39
I'm kind of curious how that showed up in sort of the
21:43
franchise or the franchise support.
21:46
Well, I mean, that's a really good question.
21:49
I mean, if, if franchise, you know, a brand's going to grow
21:53
and, and we've got, you know, for context, I mean we've got
21:56
323 locations actually we have 1 opening today in North Carolina
22:01
with a great franchise of ours. But I mean, if we only have one
22:05
company owned unit out of all of those.
22:07
And so the way Penn Station Inc makes its money is off of a
22:11
royalty and that royalty is based upon sales.
22:15
And so if you just really think about this from a common sense
22:17
standpoint, if franchisees are making good money, they're going
22:23
to want to continue to grow and expand, they're going to want to
22:26
open more units. And if they're not, they're not
22:29
going to grow. And I know that seems kind of
22:33
logical and simple in nature, but what it does is for us in
22:37
particular with only one company owned unit is you have to create
22:40
a model that's you can duplicate, but it gives
22:44
franchisees the tools to maximize that return on
22:47
investment. And, and we're not, you know,
22:51
when I think about if I could compare and contrast that to to
22:55
what Papa John's did early on, I mean, what John envisioned that
22:59
he saw was he wanted to be national pretty quickly.
23:02
I mean, you get to 2000 units by the year 2000 and that's only 15
23:06
years away at the time you're jumping all over the country.
23:10
And so every time you go into someplace new in the country, no
23:14
one knows who you are. Logistics is tough because you
23:18
have to get the food there. And from a corporate standpoint,
23:21
you need oversight. And so the biggest difference is
23:24
John saw this scale of wanting to get big quickly and Jeff just
23:28
wanted to grow concentrically outside of Cincinnati over time.
23:31
There's no right or wrong to that.
23:33
It's just, you know, it was just a different philosophy.
23:36
And that philosophy resonated with me.
23:39
I mean, you know, coming from a background where you're trying
23:41
to help people make more money in hearing pop, hearing Jeff
23:45
say, I want each restaurant to be successful and profitable and
23:49
if it is franchisees will open more.
23:52
That just resonated. I mean, it just, it just hit me
23:56
between the ice because it's so much what my core was.
23:59
Do you still have ownership of any of the franchise locations
24:02
or did you give those up as you kind of migrated into the
24:05
president? I, well, I, I, I sold actually,
24:08
I, over the course of between 1999 and 2013, I had opened 15
24:15
Penn stations in Louisville and then I'd open four in the
24:19
Raleigh, NC area. And you know, when I took a look
24:23
at the brand of where we were at the time, I don't remember how
24:27
many units we had, but, but I've always felt like Penn Station
24:30
can be a national concept. I mean, our, our food, our food
24:34
is not regional in nature. I think it'll sell anywhere.
24:37
And you know, when when I looked at where I was in my career and
24:41
the time that I was spending being committed to both running
24:44
the company as the president and being a franchise, I felt like
24:48
my time personally would be served better devoting all my
24:51
full time efforts to Penn Station.
24:54
And again, I happen to be approached by someone who's a
24:58
Penn Station franchise, he's from Louisville, and he asked if
25:01
I'd be interested in selling my restaurants.
25:04
And so I did. And so on January 1st of 2014, I
25:08
sold my restaurants to to this individual and and you know,
25:12
they didn't look back. I mean, I love the experience
25:14
and love what I did. And when franchisees would talk
25:17
to me about you don't understand my problems when you've got 19
25:22
locations, you understand their problems.
25:25
And so I think it gave me St. credibility with, you know, with
25:28
our franchisees. I want to talk a little bit more
25:31
about the franchise opportunity itself, but let's go back to
25:35
actually do something we probably should have done a
25:37
little bit earlier. I want to talk more about the
25:38
customer dining experience. I mean, you talked about your
25:41
first experience sitting there and you're like, wow, this food
25:44
is really good. But for somebody who's never
25:46
been to a Penn Station, kind of paint a picture, what's the food
25:49
like? What's the dining experience?
25:50
What's the whole customer experience like?
25:52
Yeah. So our core product, you know,
25:55
we're we're hot grilled Subs is our main product.
25:58
I mean we're, we're 93% hot and 7% cold Subs.
26:02
But when Jeff started, he only, he started with four sandwiches.
26:06
And you know, as we expanded, when I became a franchise, we
26:09
were the second location that worked on what we called the
26:12
expanded menu where we went from 4 to 14 sandwiches.
26:16
And Jeff felt like that in order to, you know, really expand this
26:20
and make this more from a local concept to regional than
26:23
national, we needed a broad, we needed a broader menu.
26:26
And so that's when he expanded it.
26:28
So, you know, I don't think when Jeff started this in 1985, he
26:33
really began as Jeffrey's Deli in 1983.
26:36
And he was in a mall and he was in the Dayton Mall in Dayton,
26:40
OH. And one of our competitors
26:42
happened to open up in the food court by Jeff and they were
26:46
selling cheese steaks and just had a huge line and Jeff's
26:50
selling bagels, I mean, Jeffrey's deli and bagel.
26:54
And so, you know, that intrigued him.
26:56
And so he started going to Philadelphia and going to the
26:59
Jersey Shore to figure out what's this all about this
27:03
cheese steak and, you know, the fresh cut fries and, you know,
27:07
the Atlantic City and spent a lot of time doing it.
27:10
He thought, you know what, I think I know what tastes good.
27:14
I'm going to give this a try. And so he created a Penn
27:17
Station. The first one he opened was in
27:19
downtown Cincinnati. And I'm telling that preface to
27:22
your question because I really think he was ahead of his time
27:26
with respect to fast casual and really fast casual.
27:29
The definition, I mean, from fast food is it's better food,
27:32
but it's fast. You know, it's getting it quick.
27:35
And so when you first walk into a Penn Station, you place your
27:38
order. You know, it's display cooking,
27:41
something which was really unheard of at the time.
27:44
And, you know, fresh cut fries that are always dropped to
27:47
order, you know, made from an Idaho potato.
27:50
And it used to be you would walk down the line and your food
27:52
would literally be made in front of you.
27:55
And it takes about 5 1/2 minutes to get the food from the time
27:58
you order it. So I mean, long since you still
28:00
place your order, you go sit down and then we run it out to
28:03
you. You know, we're going to run it
28:04
out to your table. We're not going to call a name
28:07
or a number and have you come pick it up.
28:09
But, but the biggest seller for us is the cheese steak.
28:12
I mean, system wide, it's about 25% of our sales.
28:16
But that I think that really that expanded menu has allowed
28:19
people to, you know, really migrate towards us and have a,
28:22
it's a very craveable product. I mean, survey after survey has
28:26
said your food is unbelievably craveable.
28:29
So it's, it's been a good ride definitely with, with respect.
28:33
Obviously there are other sandwich shops.
28:35
Other, you know, sub shops, other, you know, sandwich places
28:40
trying to do similar kinds of things.
28:42
What What do you think really separates Penn Station?
28:46
Well, I think that, I mean, certainly having hot food is, is
28:50
different. I think people view us more as a
28:52
meal. I mean, if you take a look and
28:54
if you take a look at the sandwich category just across
28:57
the country, most restaurants that sell primarily sandwiches,
29:03
about 70 to 90% of their sales come through the door at lunch
29:06
and they're not that busy in the afternoon and at evening.
29:10
And because we have a hot and cold mix, we're about 60-40
29:14
lunch versus dinner. Wow.
29:16
And, and I think what that does is it allows people to view us
29:19
as a meal and not a sandwich. And I think it creates an
29:24
attraction for more families to come in as well.
29:27
You you go in at night or you go in on the weekends.
29:29
You see a lot of families in our restaurants.
29:32
You guys do catering? Is this a part of your?
29:34
We do, yeah. Catering, I think that's a great
29:36
opportunity. In fact, we just hired a senior
29:39
VP of marketing who's she's been in the rest of the sandwich
29:42
space for about 16 years, only been with Penn Station for about
29:46
120 days now. But she's been awesome and she
29:49
talks about catering and the opportunities that we have with
29:52
catering. So we're we're excited about
29:54
that going into 25 and 26. So already something that
29:58
there's the foundation in place. You guys are already offering
30:00
the service, maybe just not a whole lot of people are aware of
30:03
it. And so you're extra excited
30:05
about this new role being filled because there's going to be an
30:09
increased emphasis put on it. Yeah.
30:10
I mean, I think when you've grown up as a brand that we're
30:12
celebrating our 40th anniversary this year.
30:15
And so when you're primary sales driver for the last call it
30:19
353637 years has been hot food, it definitely takes time for
30:25
customers to understand that you also offer code cold.
30:29
So we've started shifting some of our marketing efforts for
30:31
that. I mean we've got phenomenal
30:33
bread, it's a proprietary product.
30:35
And you know when we put our hot product up or our cold product
30:38
up against our competition, everybody's like this is
30:40
phenomenal. And so I think ultimately what
30:43
wins is the taste of the product.
30:45
We use quality ingredients. I mean, the steak is a USDA
30:48
choice steak. It's not the cheapest product
30:51
for us to buy, but we know it creates a great taste profile.
30:55
So that's really, you know, you asked what the customers
30:58
experience on the customer service and experience side,
31:01
it's that. But on the taste profile is we
31:04
seek out national name brand suppliers for us and we want the
31:10
husband and wife or whomever to walk in when they look in the
31:14
deli case or they look on the shelf.
31:16
We want them to know that it's a name brand product and you know,
31:20
something that they can get in their grocery store that they
31:22
see in the grocery. You touched on something
31:25
earlier. I want to go back to sort of
31:26
the, you know, the challenges and people outside the
31:29
restaurant space. You probably aren't aware of
31:31
this, but as you're expanding into new markets, like the
31:35
supply chain of the food and the ingredients becomes something
31:39
real critical to figure out. You know, it's not like you're
31:41
going to the grocery store to, you know, the local grocery
31:44
store to buy your stuff. It's like you guys have a
31:46
certain way that you've, you know, that you want a certain
31:50
beef, you know, it's been seasoned a certain way, like it
31:53
meets your criteria. So as you guys have been
31:56
expanding in over 300 locations now, how do you kind of think
32:01
about that logistical challenge of making sure that your
32:06
distribution of the the raw ingredients can sort of keep up
32:10
with the geographies that you're moving into?
32:12
You sound like someone who knows a little bit about the space
32:15
because that's a really good question.
32:17
You know, the way we do that, the the way you really have to
32:22
do that. As I mentioned logistics earlier
32:24
and ultimately keep in mind the logistics component with what
32:28
I've said to you a couple of times is maximizing return on
32:31
investment. And the further away you get
32:33
from Cincinnati, I mean our distributor is US Food Service.
32:37
And if we open one location in Denver, Co tomorrow, I can
32:41
assure you they don't want to have a truck delivering to 1
32:44
restaurant. And so the way we manage that is
32:47
we're very, we negotiate all of the contracts.
32:51
That's actually one of my jobs at Penn Station is I negotiate
32:54
all of the contracts with with the vendors.
32:57
And what we try to do in that is we're very set in those
33:03
products. You mentioned the proprietary
33:05
products we have, you know, our steak has to be seasoned a
33:08
certain way, our breads proprietary and the way we
33:11
control this is growing outside of Cincinnati concentrically.
33:15
And you know, I don't want to go, I mean eventually do I want
33:18
to be in Washington state or Denver, Co or Arizona?
33:21
Sure. But you need to do it profitably
33:24
and successfully and you need to do what got you there.
33:26
Well, what got us there is the proprietary items that are on
33:28
our menu. And I know that these
33:31
distributors do not want to deliver to one or two
33:33
restaurants that are located 1500 miles from Cincinnati when
33:37
that's the only restaurant. So we, we want to continue to
33:41
grow concentrically because when we do, logistics means the food
33:44
gets there. And if we open a restaurant 20
33:47
miles from Cincinnati, OH, I know I've got enough brand
33:51
recognition that it's going to open up really, really well.
33:53
So the further we get, I think, I'm not going to say the sales
33:57
won't be as strong, but certainly the risk of sales not
34:00
being as strong is greater than if you open 20 miles away.
34:04
So talk more about the franchise, opportunities it
34:07
looks today, geographies, what's what's the advantage of being a
34:11
franchise for Penn Station? Well, I mean, franchising, I
34:16
think it's, it's really a proven model, right, Regardless of the
34:19
industry. I mean, if it's restaurants or
34:21
painting or HVAC or whatever, you're looking at a proven
34:24
model. And, and I think that's to me,
34:27
first and foremost is you want to get involved in something
34:30
that's been proven. And, and I was on, I was on a
34:34
panel a few years ago when a gentleman walked up to me.
34:36
I don't remember what the panel was about, but he walked up to
34:40
me afterwards. He said, you know, I really
34:41
appreciate, you know what you said.
34:43
He said, I've got a question for you.
34:45
How do I get to 10 units? And I said, well, how many do
34:48
you have today? And he said two.
34:51
And I said, are they profitable? And he looked down in his shoes
34:54
and he said, no. And I said, well, you got to
34:57
make them profitable. I mean, you got to, you've got
34:58
to be able to demonstrate you can scale.
35:01
I would do whatever I can to make sure those two restaurants
35:03
are profitable. And once you get them there, I'd
35:05
open a third one and eventually you'll get to 10, but you can't
35:09
get to 10 if the first two aren't making you any money.
35:12
And so for us, the way we do this in this concentric circle
35:16
is we're, we're really targeting 350 miles less or within 350
35:22
miles of Cincinnati, OH. You know, we tell people who
35:26
call from outside, we really appreciate it, but we're just
35:29
not interested in going, you know, outside of that circle
35:33
today because again of the logistics, the the oversight and
35:37
the brand recognition. And so we're really in 14 states
35:41
today, and we're working very closely when, when I take a look
35:45
at where does Penn Station want to grow?
35:47
I mean, certainly, we want to be national.
35:49
I mean, who wouldn't want to be national?
35:51
But there's really 7 markets that we have a presence that
35:54
have a lot of opportunities for growth.
35:56
I mean, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Raleigh, you know,
36:00
those are just some of the markets where we have a present
36:02
that if we just fill out those seven markets, we can more than
36:05
double in size. And so why go to Seattle, WA,
36:10
3000 miles away when I've got 11 locations in Charlotte and
36:13
Charlotte can handle 38 locations?
36:16
It's, it's, it's very much. And Jeff, this was Jeff's vision
36:20
from the start. And I bought into that vision,
36:24
which is just it's a long term play.
36:27
Do you want to make money in the short term as a franchisor or
36:30
would you rather make money in the long run as a benefit
36:34
because your franchisees are making money?
36:37
And that just totally has always resonated with me.
36:40
So we don't want to do these one offs all over the country when
36:44
we want to stick to our core. And that core is closer to
36:47
Cincinnati than further away from Cincinnati.
36:49
But you know, the second part of your question really dealt with
36:53
systems and procedures. And you know, when when I was
36:57
looking at getting involved in, in Papa John's or looking at
37:01
getting involved in Penn Station, I wanted to know, you
37:04
know, what did my royalty check I cut every month pay for,
37:09
right? Because after you get open,
37:11
you're going to what the brand do for me lately.
37:13
And excuse me. And I always try to make sure
37:17
that I and our team are always cognizant of that, that we know
37:22
that franchisees understand why they are paying us monthly.
37:25
What benefits am I getting? And when I looked at Papa John's
37:29
and Penn Station early on, I wanted to know the systems, you
37:32
know, what systems are in place and, and the good.
37:34
The good is Papa John's had a system for everything and Penn
37:38
Station has a system for everything.
37:40
So, so as a franchise, you didn't need to reinvent the
37:43
wheel. What you did was as the
37:45
franchise because it's your model.
37:48
And I think for people who don't understand franchising, I think
37:51
this is an important point is you're really leasing a system
37:55
for 20 years and you have to, you have to enhance that system.
38:00
The brand is giving you the playbook, but it's up for you.
38:03
It's up to you to execute the plays, and the franchisees who
38:07
perform the best are the ones who enhance our systems.
38:13
This would be a good tie in because I was thinking to the
38:15
example you just mentioned about gentleman that you met who had
38:18
two stores. He's like, how do I get to 10?
38:20
Are your stores profitable? No, not yet.
38:23
Like what? What is it that that guy was
38:25
missing? What, what levers did he need to
38:29
pull to get from where he was to where he wanted to be?
38:32
And having those, those two stores be profitable?
38:35
You know, I think he was, I think he was too focused on
38:39
getting big and he wasn't focused enough on on ensuring
38:43
that the systems and the tools that you put in place create a
38:48
system to be profitable. And you know, for example, I
38:53
mean, every one of our, you know, every one of our
38:56
sandwiches, we, you know, has a six inch sandwich has a certain
39:00
weight of protein that needs to be put on it.
39:03
Well, at the time, I don't think this, I think he was going more
39:06
from gut, but you have to tell people, I want 3 ounces of meat
39:10
on this sandwich. If you put 4 ounces of meat on
39:13
the sandwich, I mean, I think to the uninformed person, they say,
39:16
well, it's only one ounce of meat.
39:17
What's the big difference? But I can assure you the CPA is
39:20
saying, hold on, that's 33% more protein that you just put on
39:23
that sandwich. And I think it's giving them the
39:26
tools and then teach them why those tools are important.
39:28
I, I just, I don't think that he was focused enough on creating a
39:34
system that anybody could duplicate.
39:36
And, and you know, I, I learned that becoming a multi unit
39:40
franchise and being passive, having another job, you know, I
39:45
had to work with my partner for us to have a system for
39:48
everything because I was only in Cincinnati on the weekends
39:52
visiting my restaurants. That meant five and six days a
39:56
week. I was never around.
39:58
So if you're not giving people systems and tools to follow and
40:01
you don't have an ability to follow up on that, you've got an
40:05
opportunity to lose money. And so I just think, you know,
40:08
in answer to your question, I just, I don't think at the time
40:11
he was so focused on creating a duplicate, a model that can be
40:14
duplicated. You just want to get restaurants
40:16
open. He was focused too far down the
40:19
road. He wasn't paying attention to
40:20
the short term details that he really needed to fine tune.
40:23
Yeah, I mean, nobody wants to hear how do you run a marathon?
40:26
Well, you start running a marathon by going out running a
40:28
mile, right? So.
40:31
Craig, I want to shift gears on you and I'd like to hear about a
40:34
serious challenge that you've overcome in your life.
40:37
What was it? How'd you get through it and and
40:40
what did you learn coming through the other side?
40:43
You know what I I when I was in, I've been very fortunate in my
40:49
life and I've not had anything. I had one incidents that
40:54
happened to me about 3 years ago that was pretty rough, fracture
40:57
my pelvis cycling. But when I was in college, I
41:02
happened to play, I mentioned IU SE and I happened to play
41:04
basketball there and I was a three-year starter and about
41:08
halfway through my senior year I tore ligaments in my ankle.
41:12
And I was never a quitter. But you know, when you're
41:16
sitting on the bench and you've got a boot on your foot and
41:20
you're going to class on crutches and it's snowing on the
41:24
ground and you're trying to maneuver and you're seeing your
41:27
friends play and you're not, it was tough.
41:30
It was tough. And it, it, it causes you to
41:33
challenge what you're doing. You know, should I be doing
41:36
something else? There's only a couple months
41:38
left. It's my senior year.
41:40
And and I decided, you know, I'm not a quitter.
41:43
And I decided I was going to gut it out.
41:45
And I think for many people, it's, I shouldn't say from it.
41:48
For some, it's easy to just quit and move on to the next stage or
41:52
next page, you know, in their life.
41:54
And I wasn't prepared to do that.
41:55
And it, it humble. It was very humbling and it told
41:59
me it taught me a lot about leadership.
42:01
I was a captain. It taught me about teamwork.
42:05
And even though you're not there to play, you can still
42:08
contribute in other ways. And so it really I think set the
42:12
stage for me going forward and what I wanted to do in my
42:15
business career of I wanted to be a leader, I didn't want to be
42:18
a follower and I didn't want to be known as a quitter.
42:21
And even though I look back on that and I think, well, I don't
42:24
know, just Gee, you got a chance to play basketball and you had a
42:27
slight injury, what's the big deal?
42:29
But at the time, it was, it really meant a lot to me.
42:32
And I think it was something little like that that told me,
42:34
don't quit, never give up. You know, don't, don't give up
42:37
in anything. Keep pushing through, keep
42:39
persevering. And you only have to get up one
42:41
more time. Then you did not get knocked
42:43
down. And that's what I decided to do.
42:45
And that really is one of the things early on, before I even
42:47
started my career, that really set the stage for how I've
42:51
approached my entire business career.
42:53
You know, and I've had the opportunity to talk with other
42:56
folks in similar situations where, you know, they were a
42:59
pretty good high school or college athlete.
43:01
That's a big part of their identity.
43:03
And then something happens that takes that away.
43:05
Maybe it's an injury. Maybe they just discovered that
43:08
they weren't as good as they thought they were.
43:10
And, you know, they didn't have sort of the the career
43:13
possibilities with it. And now all the sudden it's
43:16
taken away from you. And this is the core piece of
43:18
your identity. And it's like, it's very
43:20
destabilizing. Like, you know, for you, hey,
43:23
I'm a basketball player. I'm a captain.
43:24
That's part of who I am. That's how I sort of contribute
43:27
to this, you know, my corner of the world.
43:28
And now that's gone. And it's like, oh, who am I now?
43:34
That's very, very true. I think we've all got
43:37
identities, but you can't be so married to that identity that
43:40
you can't become something else, right?
43:42
And I I still, I joke around with my buddies.
43:44
I also play baseball and I'm I'm I golf, but golf fights me and I
43:50
tell my buddies when I'm golfing with them, I say, I swear, I
43:53
used to be athletic. I really was.
43:57
But you're right, you can't just you can't focus on that.
43:59
You can't be so myoptic in your view that that you know you lose
44:03
sight of the bigger picture. Where do you think your
44:07
resiliency comes from? Like is it genetic?
44:13
Like were your parents like that?
44:14
Was it sort of like, you know, kind of like ingrained in you
44:18
growing up, something you just sort of discovered in yourself
44:22
when you hit that that wall for the first?
44:24
Time Wow, I think it was my upbringing.
44:30
I grew up in a, I thought I was middle class, but then I looked
44:34
back and maybe I was in middle class and I grew up in a little
44:37
bit of a tougher neighborhood. I mean, not horribly tough,
44:41
just, you know, just just a little tough.
44:44
And I, I had the luxury of playing sports always against
44:49
older kids, you know, 2-3, four years older than I was.
44:53
And you, you were either going to play and compete and stand up
44:56
for yourself or you were going to go home crying to your Mama.
45:00
And I wasn't going to go home crying to my mom.
45:03
And so I think that just taught me perseverance and, and just
45:08
that stick to it approach. And my dad, I mean, my dad was,
45:12
you know, he was an accountant. He worked for Ellen and railroad
45:15
for I don't know how many years, but he put me through college
45:18
because early on he had two jobs.
45:20
And you know, you don't forget things like that.
45:22
And so I think it's just, I think it's my upbringing that
45:26
taught me never quit. You can do this.
45:29
You know, as I said earlier, you just need to get up one more
45:31
time. I think too many people get
45:33
knocked down and beaten down and they quit.
45:35
And I just, I didn't want to be that way.
45:37
I didn't want to see myself that way.
45:39
And you know, it makes it tough because I set such a high
45:42
standard for myself that, you know, you as a leader, you have
45:46
to be careful that you don't hold people to unrealistic
45:51
expectations just because you hold yourself to those same
45:54
things. I had to learn that early on.
45:56
I mean, you, you early on in my career, You cannot inconvenience
46:00
me. If you wanted to meet at 7:00 AM
46:03
on a Saturday morning, let's do it.
46:06
And you know, I, I've changed somewhat over the years because
46:10
I don't want to inconvenience you.
46:13
And so it's hey, Anthony, when, when, when's a good time for you
46:16
to me? But, but all of that's come from
46:18
just this. Stick to it.
46:19
Never quit, never give up attitude that I'm sure my
46:23
parents instilled in me. I, I was, I was fortunate enough
46:26
to receive an award from my college about five years ago.
46:30
And it was from the athletic department.
46:31
And one of the things my parents were there and one of the things
46:35
I said in my speeches, I said for everything good you see, and
46:38
Craig Dunaway, you can thank my parents.
46:40
For everything bad you see, you can blame my friends.
46:46
How, let me ask you this, Craig, do you feel like you've done a
46:50
good job as a parent instilling those values in your kids and,
46:55
and what, what lessons could you pass along in terms of how to
47:00
accomplish that? No, no.
47:01
Now you're gonna make me cry. I think, you know, as my
47:07
children have become adults, yes.
47:09
I was too hard on them growing up.
47:12
You know, it's I was. But they're great kids, great
47:18
adults. I don't want them to be like I
47:21
was. Totally.
47:22
But you know what? They work hard.
47:25
My son has a daughter and I see how loving he is to her.
47:29
And so you know what I would say let people have fun and enjoy
47:33
themselves a little bit. You don't have to win at
47:35
everything all the time. Take time to celebrate.
47:39
You know the moment. And so, you know, that's what I
47:43
look back on and say. And it's interesting you say
47:47
I've got two young boys, they're 8 and 10.
47:50
And so like I'm constantly asking myself and questioning
47:53
the parenting that I'm giving them.
47:55
Is it, am I being too hard on them?
47:58
Am I sort of, you know, letting them sort of get away with too
48:01
much? And, and it's tough, right?
48:03
Because it's all coming from a place of love, as I'm sure you
48:07
know, your parenting has always come from a place of love.
48:11
But it's, you know, like you see like an 8 year old kid and
48:15
you're like, wow, I don't want him to be like that when he's
48:17
28. And of course he's not going to
48:20
be, there's going to be all kinds of maturation and
48:22
development that takes place. But, you know, and at the same
48:27
time, you know, I think guys like you and I, we can look back
48:29
and realize that, you know, a, a big part of our resiliency comes
48:33
from the fact that we had hard stuff that we overcame early on.
48:38
And as a parent, there's sort of this like this weird mix of
48:42
like, you want to protect your kids from, you know, hardship
48:45
and suffering, but you, you also understand that it's sort of
48:49
the, you know, the way to develop calluses and, you know,
48:51
to get tougher and, and, you know, be able to withstand
48:54
things going forward. I think it's OK to strive for
48:57
perfection, but I'm not sure that it's OK to not celebrate it
49:03
once you get there. And it wasn't perfection.
49:06
And, and I think there's a difference between the, you
49:08
know, there's a difference between the two.
49:10
It's it's, it's this push pull that you were talking about with
49:12
your kids. You want them to do their best.
49:14
You want them to strive. You don't want them to quit.
49:17
And so you're trying to, you're trying to push in both
49:19
directions. And what I wish I would have
49:21
done is I wish I would have pulled back more and said, all
49:23
right, you did a nice job. You didn't win, but you did your
49:27
best. Yeah, that, that's a good
49:29
lesson. I, my son came to me the other
49:31
day and I said, oh, you know, how'd you do on your test?
49:34
He's like, oh, I got a, a 90%. I'm like, how do you feel about
49:38
that? He's like, great.
49:40
And I'm like, you know, which ones did you get wrong?
49:43
And like I, I immediately went away from celebrating the 90%
49:47
and I, you know, wanted him to learn from the 10% that that he
49:51
got wrong. And I kind of had to catch
49:53
myself. And it's like, just like you
49:54
were saying, Craig, like take a moment to celebrate, you know,
49:58
what they got right. And and then, you know, hey, at
50:00
some point, let let's revisit what you got wrong because it's
50:03
learning opportunity, right? Right.
50:05
Yeah. I'd be curious to hear about the
50:09
community oriented initiatives that you guys are involved with.
50:12
I know Down syndrome support, student athlete programs.
50:16
These are things that are important to you guys.
50:18
Can you say more about this? Yeah.
50:20
So I'll talk about the athlete of the year first.
50:23
That was actually started by franchise of ours many years ago
50:27
in Dayton, OH. And you know, what he did over
50:31
the course of the high school season was each month a student
50:34
athlete was nominated by the community, you know, which
50:38
really embodies some of the things we were just talking
50:40
about. You know, it's being a student
50:42
athlete, it's giving back to the community as a 17 year old and,
50:46
you know, contributing to your team and contributing to the
50:48
high school. And so So what he did was he he
50:52
started this and there are I believe 8 nominees over the
50:55
course of the school year. And then at the end of the year,
50:58
there's a, you know, there's an athlete of the year, they're
51:00
given a scholarship. And so it's, it's really been
51:04
good. I mean, it's localized for us
51:06
and that it's in Dayton, OH. But it's interesting now this
51:09
has been around about 30 years and now you're seeing people who
51:13
are almost 50 years old coming in talking about how they were
51:16
student of, you know, athlete of the month one time.
51:19
And so it was really a way to give back to the community
51:22
because and, and he was smart. The franchise who did this was
51:25
smart. I mean, he knew, you know, the
51:27
best way to grow your sales is to get involved in the community
51:30
and, and to get involved with the kids.
51:32
And that's what he wanted to do. And the other thing that he did,
51:35
I think was so special as part of that is all these
51:37
sponsorships of Little League teams, boys and girls and you
51:41
know, football and basketball and softball and all of these
51:44
things just to create this culture of community
51:47
involvement. And then, you know, the, the
51:50
other one you mentioned Down syndrome, which we're very
51:52
passionate about at Penn Station.
51:53
Jeff, Jeff has and, and they're my friends now.
51:57
They have several children with, with Downs.
51:59
And Jeff and I were talking about 10 years ago that the
52:02
brand is of the size. We, we, we need to give back.
52:06
It, it's our, you know, it's our obligation to give back.
52:10
And we talked about what do we want to do?
52:13
You know, we talked about veterans and we talked about
52:15
children and, and Jeff had been sponsoring the Downs on his own
52:20
for years. And he said, what about Downs?
52:23
I'm like, Oh my God, that's a great idea.
52:26
And so, you know, there's what, what people who aren't involved
52:28
in Downs may not know is that, you know, there's a there's an
52:32
adoption agency, you know, for people to adopt A child with
52:36
Down syndrome. And that just resonated with us.
52:39
And you meet with these people and they are the nice, sweetest
52:43
salt of the earth people just so selfless, giving back every day.
52:48
I mean, it's just amazing. It's like these people have a
52:51
much higher place in heaven than I will ever have.
52:54
I mean, it's so impressive. And we wanted to do something.
52:57
And, and you know, Anthony, what we, what we did was, you know,
53:01
we, we do, we've, we're changing it a little bit this year.
53:04
I mean, we were doing a roundup campaign, but we're also
53:08
matching those roundup funds. What we didn't want to do is
53:11
just use Penn Station and our restaurants to collect money,
53:15
pass it on to someone else and take credit.
53:17
We wanted to match it. And so we look around.
53:21
So, so we've done that for about the last five or six years.
53:25
You know, we've given Jeff gave money forever.
53:26
I mean, we've raised a couple $1,000,000 for the adoption
53:29
network and it's awesome. I mean, we did a presentation
53:34
we're, you know, based in Cincinnati.
53:36
We work with the Cincinnati Reds and we did a check presentation
53:40
where, you know, some of the kids were on the field and the
53:43
executive director and it was, I mean, it's a tearjerker.
53:46
It's really cool. Everybody's so happy to see what
53:48
you're doing. And so, you know, you feel like
53:51
you've had some success as a brand and we want to give back.
53:54
I mean, you know what, we're selling return on investment,
53:57
but it's about community involvement and giving back.
53:59
And that's really super important, you know, important
54:02
to us. So we love it.
54:04
It's, it's great. And, you know, I see people all
54:06
the time who thank us for it. And you know, you're doing the
54:09
right thing when people walk up to you and, you know, kind of
54:11
tell you unsolicited that, hey, that's awesome.
54:15
That's great. Yeah.
54:16
Not only return on financial investment, but I don't know
54:20
what, what do you think like return on sort of the human
54:22
experience, human capital? Yeah, I like that.
54:26
I don't know, kind of thinking about the human experience, Like
54:29
what is your approach? What have you kind of learned
54:32
when it comes to recruiting and retention of team members,
54:35
whether it's sort of at a corporate, you know, level
54:38
environment like you have now or like at the store level?
54:42
Recruit for culture. I think that I learned that
54:47
early on. I mentioned to you, I bought out
54:50
my partner Charlie and you know, Charlie was the one who was full
54:54
time in the business and I was doing my thing and I had to go
54:58
in and talk to everybody about culture and you know, and, and I
55:04
felt like that I was very much, it was about my team members 1st
55:08
and we talked about, you know, how we wanted customers to be
55:11
treated and how we wanted fellow team members to be treated.
55:15
And we do that here. We hire for culture now.
55:17
I think if you're interviewing somebody in a marketing
55:20
position, you know, you have to check out the resume and check
55:24
all the boxes of their experience to make sure they're
55:26
qualified. But beyond that is how well do
55:29
they fit into this team? Because I've got a team, we've
55:32
got a team at Penn Station that some people have been here now
55:35
30 plus years. And what you don't want to do is
55:38
bring in somebody who could be a potential cancer to that
55:42
culture. I think culture's everything.
55:44
I mean, I've learned that. I've been on sports teams where
55:48
we did phenomenally well and I've been on sports teams that
55:51
we didn't do as well and played poorly and most of the time it
55:55
was a bad culture. And and you know, I've.
55:58
Trained, not the athletic talent of the the players, but just
56:02
sort of the way that you guys mesh together.
56:04
Right, right. I mean, you, you know, look at
56:06
pick any professional sport. Why is it that some teams are at
56:09
the top every year and some teams are at the bottom when
56:12
it's basically the same players, you know, and and so culture's
56:17
everything. So when I owned restaurants, we
56:20
always interviewed to see how well will they fit into this
56:22
organization. And we do that at Penn Station
56:25
corporately as well. And so that's the one thing that
56:28
I, I think in in we've not talked about COVID today.
56:32
I don't want to talk about COVID, but that's the one thing
56:35
that I think allowed people to get away from was the importance
56:40
of culture because we went from face to face to day-to-day
56:44
interactions to either Zoom meetings or no meetings.
56:50
And you know, you have to be able to look your team members
56:53
in the eye and they understand what's important to you and you
56:55
understand what's important to them if you're going to maximize
56:58
what you're trying to get out of your team or your business or
57:01
your family. As we record this in late April
57:06
2025, do you feel like things have gone back to the way they
57:10
were? Do you feel like there's more of
57:12
that ability to build that culture there because we can be
57:16
in person now? Great question.
57:19
I think that the brands or the organizations that are doing
57:23
that are performing well still and I think that if you're not
57:27
willing to do that and make the time to do it, are you going to
57:31
fail? No, I just don't think you're
57:32
ever going to have as much success as if you are trying to
57:36
enhance and build that great culture on a day-to-day basis.
57:40
I think it's changed a little bit.
57:41
I mean, the environment's changed where people are
57:43
starting to come back to work. But I mean, you've got some
57:46
people in the workforce now who have never worked in an office.
57:50
And so, you know, you need to understand what that dynamic
57:53
looks like for everybody to be rowing in the same direction.
57:57
Craig, let's say you and I reconnect a year from now and
58:00
you're celebrating something. What would you hope that is?
58:03
You know what I, well, great question.
58:06
You know, from a business perspective, I want to see, you
58:09
know, the brand. We've also, I mentioned we hired
58:11
a senior VP of Mark and we've also hired a senior VP of
58:14
development. And I want to see success come
58:17
to the brand because I know I don't mean this self-serving.
58:21
I mean this for we've got a great team.
58:24
We got a great group of franchisees.
58:26
And I want to see the brand get this, the success that I think
58:30
the people deserve for working so hard.
58:32
So, you know, if you said what would that look like?
58:35
It would be more restaurant openings.
58:36
The franchisees are doing well. They love what they're doing.
58:40
They like being a part of the brand and part of the culture.
58:43
And me say, you know what, there haven't been any issues this
58:46
year. Everything's been going really,
58:47
really well. Just one more question for you,
58:50
Craig, But before I ask that, I want to do 2 things.
58:52
First, I'm going to invite all the listeners to go ahead and
58:55
hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app.
58:58
That way you can continue to get more great conversations like
59:01
we've had here today with Craig Dunaway from Penn Station.
59:05
Craig, I also want to let people know the best way either to get
59:07
in touch with you directly or to follow your story or that of the
59:11
brands. What would that be?
59:13
Well, they, I appreciate that. I mean, they can look at
59:15
penn-station.com, you know, on our website and we have
59:18
information there just about the brand, if they're in this, you
59:21
know, concentric circle of where we have restaurants and learn
59:23
more about our menu, or they can go there and visit for
59:26
franchising information. And I, I honestly, I mean, I've
59:29
done other podcasts and I have no problem giving my e-mail.
59:32
If anybody wants to reach out to me, it's CND his name, Craig
59:35
nancy.david@penn-station.com. And I don't have all the
59:40
answers, but I've certainly have the ability and the willingness
59:43
to, you know, chat with somebody about anything.
59:46
That's great. We'll make sure we include those
59:48
links in the show notes for everybody.
59:50
Last question for you, Craig. As you look to the future, what
59:53
exciting changes do you see coming to Penn Station called in
59:57
the next three years? I think that what well I
1:00:01
mentioned Covad. Before COVID, Anthony, what
1:00:05
happened with restaurants is restaurants told customers how
1:00:07
they were going to get served their food.
1:00:09
And today consumers tell you how they want their food to be
1:00:12
served. I want it delivered.
1:00:14
I want to order it online. I want to order it through the
1:00:16
app. I want to dine in, I want to
1:00:18
call in or whatever. And So what I we, we are rolling
1:00:22
out loyalty with a point system literally next week.
1:00:27
And I hope in three years that I'm telling you the success that
1:00:30
we have from that because we really want to be where the
1:00:33
guest is. You know, what's interesting
1:00:36
today is I think the guest values, they value value and
1:00:43
speed of service more than the quality of the product.
1:00:46
I think that's cyclical and I think that will change.
1:00:48
But I hope I tell you that we're firing on all these
1:00:50
technological cylinders that we've been putting in place over
1:00:53
the last 24 months to take care of our guests for the next 5 to
1:00:56
10 years. Well, we'll have to check back
1:00:59
in and get an update from you then.
1:01:01
Happy to anytime. Well, Craig, I want to be the
1:01:05
first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your
1:01:08
story with us today. I really appreciate it.
1:01:10
I appreciate that very much. Humbled and honored to be on
1:01:12
your on your show. Folks, that's a wrap on another
1:01:15
episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:01:18
Thanks for learning with us today.