Latest / Entrepreneurs, Executives, & Eccentrics / Gregg Majewski on Scaling Restaurant Brands Through Trust, Teams, and Discipline
Transcript
- Scott Turman: Welcome, Gregg. Tell me who you are and what you do. Gregg Majewski: Hi, I'm Gregg Majewski I'm CEO and founder of Craveworthy Brands. Now, what is Craveworthy Brands? ⁓ I mean, that's going to be the next question. ⁓ So Craveworthy Brands Scott Turman: Okay, so yes, is it's Craveworthy Brands. ⁓ It is, it is, let's get right to it. Yeah. ⁓ Gregg Majewski: is a restaurant platform company that today has 15 brands underneath the portfolio, 200 restaurants and 500 in development. We started in January of 23 with zero of everything. And today we're 200 million in system wide sales, 200 restaurants, 500 under development. So, short little runway with our goal of being a billion dollar company in the next five years. Scott Turman: How the hell did you do that? Okay, wait, okay. Let's back up. So what were you doing? Like what led you here? Where did you kind of get into this kind of business model? Gregg Majewski: So I cut my teeth at a company called Jimmy John's. I joined Jimmy Scott Turman: Okay. Gregg Majewski: right out of school when basically he was nothing and neither was I. And he had 23 restaurants when I started. I started as an intern, slowly moved up to controller, CFO, COO, and then CEO. And I held all three titles at one time and built the company from 30 restaurants at that point to 300 and 700 sold when I left. And I fell in love with the franchise business and the fact that the franchise business is a way to create millionaires over and over again, because you're partnering with people that want to achieve the American dream. And that just resonated with me and continues to resonate with me as it's a life changing type of investment. Scott Turman: What was the timeline of Jimmy John's? Is that one year, five year, 10 years? What is the? Gregg Majewski: ⁓ '98 to 2003 is when I was there. And then I went on to become the biggest franchisee after that. And then I did two other companies up to 300 that I can't ever talk about. And I consulted for every major restaurant company in America. And during this time, I just sort of realized when we started putting Craveworthy together, my old employee from Jimmy John, someone who I was really close to, gave me for Christmas a coaching tree. And that coaching tree, like all the coaches listed all the people that I helped and developed that are now VPs and higher in the restaurant. And there was like 5 or 600 people scattered across all the biggest brands. And he looked at me the one day and he said, why are you continuing to consult? This is what you're best at. You need to do this again. And even if you don't want to do it for yourself, you got to do it for the people that you're going to have their lives changed. And I looked at him and I sort of went, hey, screw you, I'm not doing this, I'm happy. And then I went home that night with this thing and I started looking at it. And I realized that I really do love the building of the team and that part and changing people's lives. And I was like, I want to do this again, but I want to do a bigger and better than we've ever done it. And that was the idea behind Craveworthy. Scott Turman: So why are you good at this? ⁓ What I mean by that is, you started from almost, it feels like your serving floor is the metaphor for it, right? All the way up to the leadership of the company. Why are you good at this? Why are you uniquely built for this? And I have a feeling you Gregg Majewski: So. Scott Turman: are, but I want to know what you think it is. Gregg Majewski: I mean, I don't know if I'm any better than anybody else. And, I mean, that's... you put the chip on your shoulder. And what I do better than everybody else is I create a friendship and a partnership and a belief in the brands that we have that we're going to work with our franchisees to make sure they're always winning. And that's truly what I believe with every part of my heart, that we're going to make them win. And when you have that and you want your team members to continually win and you're looking out for them first, if it's real. you sort of are successful because it's a real emotion. Now there's a lot of people in the industries and a lot of CEOs out there that are full of it. When they say, I care about my people and making sure they just care about their bottom line and their bonus. I don't need anymore. Like when I started this, I was okay. I was good. I was living a great life. And this was truly because I want to go and prove that we can do this with multiple brands. But more importantly, I want to change their lives again. And when that's really what you believe, people follow you. And when they follow you, they'll work as hard as you, they'll run through walls with you, and they'll do the impossible. And if you can get people to believe in the impossible, then you can do anything. Scott Turman: That's okay, so so business model wise, I'm looking at the at the 2-4-6-8-10-12 brands that I see on your website. Now, are you are you simply partnering with them? Like, let's let's let's make this a franchise model, and then leading them down the path? Or are you acquiring them? Kind of what's your if don't mind me asking what's your business model? In that respect? Gregg Majewski: ⁓ We fully yep We either fully acquire the brands or we do a JB and we have one JB left after the acquisition of Dirty Dough Where it's a 50/50 split everything else we own wholly I I don't want to do the hey, we're gonna lead you there now I take the founders with me when we go and find a brand that I like or if I want to buy a brand I give them an opportunity to stay in and build it with us But Craveworthy hones everything and they get shares in the company To sort of say hey, no, I want you to win and that's again back to that We want to change lives and we don't want to screw people that founders are selling and coming into this with the expectation that they're getting X now but they can get way more if they ride this with us and every founder to this point has decided to ride with us When we brought in their brand because they know what we're capable of and they also know they can't Scott Turman: Well that speaks - Gregg Majewski: get there without us Scott Turman: This speaks volumes. I mean, you've clearly got the the kung fu, so to speak, right? To to go make any of these kind of scale franchise, all the things happen. You know, as an outsider who does not who's never kind of been in the franchising world. You know, where do you where's this directionally how things are going? You see these kind of semi roll ups kind of happening in the food industry? Or is this kind of your model? Gregg Majewski: Hmm Scott Turman: And this is kind of how you got into it. Gregg Majewski: So there was always PE in the restaurant space that would buy multiple brands. And you can look at Roark Capital as the biggest and the best in the industry. They're the largest restaurant owner when you think of everything that they do, but they don't really operate the brands. They're a PE group. They tell you how to run. They put leadership in place and they just watch their investment. I wanted to create a system for those emerging where we're operating them because right now if a brand is not working, We want to be able to say, okay, let's not go any further. Let's fix what it is. Let's try it again. And instead of having that force growth that PE requires, that's sort of the difference in it. But there's always been those consolidations, you know, we're consolidating operating companies and doing a shared service model, which is relatively new into the, all the spaces, all industries are looking at it right now, but we were. ⁓ I would have to say I was one of the first that openly talked about it in the industry. Now there's others trying to copy, which is, I guess, copy is the biggest flattery, especially if they're copying you after 18 months. I guess that's a good thing. Scott Turman: So, you know, I mean, typically as a side note when you're diagnosing an engine is normally airflow, its the refuel, it's normally it's only two or three things. Typically when a brand is failing, what are those things is obviously probably food quality is probably one of those one of the many things. ⁓ What do you find are the other Gregg Majewski: Hmm Scott Turman: inefficiencies are things that are making them fail? Like what's a sniff test? Gregg Majewski: I mean, a lot of the time it's, I mean, it depends on where they are, but food, like in the normal restaurant world, it's food and service you know? Food, service, bad location. Those are your three death sentences. If you have all three of them, you're done. If you have bad location, great food and great service, you may survive because word of mouth may get you to where you need to be, depending on everything else. If you have great food, bad service and a great location, you tend to do okay. If you can put all three together, it's... ⁓ That's when brands get different and restaurants get different. And that's been the same model in this business forever. Like it hasn't changed. Great food, great service, great location, you know, and you can raise the bar and look at every restaurant in America and grade them on that. And you can pick what their volumes are. Now there'll be someone who says, I have a shit location and I do a fortune. You're right. It happens sometimes, but it's a rarity, not the norm. Scott Turman: Right. So I would imagine there was this, this other upending thing called a COVID, right? Where you realize that, ⁓ I guess we can have these ghost kitchens. We don't even need a storefront in some cases, right? If we, if we have certain types of food and then now that that location's almost, you know, kind of a, kind of a variable, depending on kind of the, the, the takeout models that you have, you know, like, so with that, but you weren't, you mean, you could have started this after, technically speaking, you were after, after COVID, you only been this a handful of years. you were at Jimmy John's during COVID though, right? Gregg Majewski: ⁓ I mean, I owned restaurants during Covid. I was CEO of Mongolian Concepts. I mean, yeah, Scott Turman: Okay, how'd that go? Right? How did you survive that? Gregg Majewski: I cried like everybody. I mean, when March 15th or whatever it was and they closed everything, I sat on my couch and looked at my wife and I said, I have no clue how we're going to get through this. And she looked at me and she said, well, you took all of your I ⁓ in January of that year, I cashed out everything because what was going on in China, I cashed out all my stocks. And I looked at her and I said, we're going to need this. And on March 15th, she said, you have all this money. said, yeah, but what I didn't tell you was all that money is going to go to pay our staff because I can rebuild, they can't. And she looked at me like I was crazy. And I'm like, I promise you, I will, we'll rebuild everything that we have, but I can't let them not survive. I was scared. I mean, it was so bad. I felt so bad... The hourly employees that live paycheck for paycheck during that time. The restaurant industry has never gone through anything like that. And if it ever goes through something like that again, it will never survive because it was no one knew what to do. But the restaurant industry, like always, found a way to build sales back. And that was the virtual brands and the ghost kitchens and everything else. I mean, we did drive throughs in the parking lot of brick and mortar with no drive -thrus where people came up, we were taking orders down at the entrance, pulling them through and we made self -sufficient drive -thrus to get sales going. I mean, you do just remarkable things when you have to pay your bills that you don't think and you learned a new model, which was how do you package food to go not subs or pizza or Chinese food, but how do you really package that product to have an experience when you go home? Now it amounts to most restaurants 25 to 30% of their sales are still delivering carry out. I mean, that was never the case. When did you go to a fine dining restaurant and order carry out prior to COVID? Now people are ordering steaks and gourmet salads and they're paying a hundred bucks for delivered, you know, meal that they would normally pay 60 or 70 in the restaurant. But these restaurants have these other revenue streams and that's never going to change. That's now just part of what we are. Scott Turman: Yeah, I look at Chick -fil -A who are now building drive -through only stores. They're gonna, there's, you can't even walk inside the Chick -fil -A in some cases on the ones they're building in Orlando, Florida. I think I read that. ⁓ And it feels like it's a holdover from the COVID days, but it turns out it's probably not a bad model, right? Now, you don't Gregg Majewski: I mean... Scott Turman: even have to worry about inside the store. You just have to worry about outside the store. Gregg Majewski: I mean, Chick -fil -A is what now almost 9 million or 9 .4 million AUBs and maybe it's still eight, but I mean, that's an average unit. I mean, that's an unheard of number in this industry. And that's because one, they were consistent, they had good food and they were, you know, have really good locations and their drive -thrus were able to promote. But I mean, it's a direct, those three pillars, if they're there, and you have them, you can do remarkable things. Then adding great branding and loyalty and this cult following that you get. Restaurants can be the greatest investment in the world if you ⁓ do it right or partner with the right companies. Scott Turman: Yeah, and they're not open on Sunday. They're only open six days a week and there's still this, and it's gotta, I mean, every time I, every time I, I don't typically like want for Chick -fil but it's always on the Sunday if I do. ⁓ so, okay, so your business model is you find these brands that have ⁓ one of the legs, their barstool broken. So that's what it feels like, right, from an outsider. as the ⁓ correct captain of that broken ship. As that captain, you know exactly what to do. Immediately go, I see the problem. ⁓ You fix it, you acquire it, and then you own the next one. That sounds like a lot of fun. Gregg Majewski: Correct. Scott Turman: Because all you're doing is you're building empire, a little mini empires to make the big empire happen, right? Gregg Majewski: Yes, in a way. I mean, and it is a lot of fun because I absolutely love getting to learn about the brands and seeing. And when I walk into a restaurant, it's like, it's almost like a Lego building, a Lego that I just see the steps and what's wrong. And I'm able to layer in what we need to do. And I can walk into a restaurant and within 30 minutes, I can give you a plan of where it should go, what was moved, how the kitchen needs to be redesigned and then branding and all that. And my mind just works. But But that's the fun part of what we do. I mean, it's that's the excitement building something and making it better and then taking it and letting the consumer decide now we have thought we've designed the perfect thing many times and it doesn't resonate with the consumer and that's what's so great about the industry You don't know what brand I have that's gonna resonate with the consumer and be the next big thing. The consumer decides what's hot, you know, no one in the world thought Dave's Hot Chicken was going to be what it is today. No one would have thought that, you know, CAVA would have been a seven billion dollar valuation like it is. You know, you don't get to decide. The consumer decides based on what they're feeling at that time and what they feel they're getting. you know, and neither of those brands hit all the points, you know, when they first got started. But yet they still caught on. Scott Turman: Yeah, there's also this kind of X Factor two right? A perfect example is Dirty Dough, right? When they get they get they get a lawsuit dropped on them. They completely did a judo move. ⁓ Right and turn that into an asset. Right? Who could have saw that coming? No one could have saw that coming. But they had the worth all to kind of make that all that happen. But it's, you know, it is funny when I when you talk about walking into a new restaurant, you should go back to this video. The look on your eyes is almost misty. It's almost like it's really it is. It's almost it's almost like you're like giving someone flowers. The moment you say the first time you walk into a restaurant, you really love this. You really love it. Gregg Majewski: I I do. This industry has given me everything and I love every minute that I get to be a part of it. And that shows every day when I get up and I joke all the time with people, if you don't wake up in the morning and want to go to work, you're in the wrong industry. You know? You've got to go and find something else. If you're not going to bed, happy about where you're going in the next morning. and there's a problem with, and we all get tired and we all have stress and all that, but you gotta love what you do to be great at what you do. And if you don't have that feeling, you're always just gonna be living pay for a check to paycheck and not find, you gotta find that thing. And everybody's capable of finding that thing in life. Scott Turman: So what is Craveworthy Brands on the hunt for? Like what are you scanning for in terms of these kind of restaurants and the food and beverage industry? And what are you looking for exactly? Gregg Majewski: I mean, right now, as far as additional, we still need a pizza concept. We still need a couple others that we don't have with Mexican stuff like that. But really we're looking for the consolidation play. We have a great bench of a ton of brands. Now, if I could find another Mediterranean brand that I can use with my Mediterranean, another hot chicken brand to go with the two that I have. Now we're looking for acquisitions that sort of scale our usage. across the country where we can blend like brands that aren't too far along already. So what we did with Hot Chicken Takeover and Budlong, Budlong had five locations. Hot Chicken Takeover, I believe, had seven. That's now one company will be called HCT Southern Chicken. But we're now at 16. That's a valuable option for us to now go on franchise and show our franchisees. Look at what it is. Look at the scale. Look where we're going. And we're no longer being that mom, pa type situation. Scott Turman: There's a it's a it's just because I mean, I imagine you go, okay, well, if it's Mediterranean, well, we get to save money and scale on these like items. Is that most of it? Or is it more of a it's it's kind of a roll up and there's other things that kind of go along with that. Gregg Majewski: I mean, there's more to it because we want one common name eventually. But again, it's Scott Turman: okay. Gregg Majewski: putting the best foods in place. So we just did this with Taim and SoomSoom, SoomSoom has a lot of better options and Taim has some better options. We sat there in a blind test and everyone sort of picked what was the best of each one. And those were the ones that sort of moved on. And now the consumer is getting the best of everything. And so you elevate again your product to that next level. What was catchy here or wasn't? We did it with HCT and Budlong. That new menu's rolling out actually, I think it rolled out this week in Budlong and HCT in a week or two, but it's a menu change, but yet we're improving the product where the consumer is gonna have this crave -worthy or crave -able experience. And again, part of the Craveworthy name is because that's what I want my food to be. I want people to crave it. And that's sort of how we've driven this message repeatedly. Food has gotta be king. Food is first. Scott Turman: Have you ever I mean I'm just because I did we have this one chicken place in Orlando that I really think about probably three days a week I don't I don't really I love food but not like that it's almost like you is there heroin in this? Like what's going on? Have you ever discovered a brand like that where you kind of heard someone's like Gregg, stop what you're doing right now and drive over to go over to this this one place immediately, like have you ever run into things like that or is this really more well they've got 30 stores You know, we did that. did the P&L. We looked at the balance. Everything looks good. Or how's that work exactly? Gregg Majewski: No, that's exactly what we do. I mean, what I have personally invested in one offs still that we're mentoring and getting through because I felt that way when I walked into the food, like, wow, it's amazing and all that. So we have a bench of things that I've personally invested in that if we can get them right, that will bring them into Craveworthy long term because of that exact reason. The food is just so good that you're like, hmm, it's not there yet. I don't want to go full in, but let's go ahead and take a baby step with them. to see where we can go. But absolutely. And Jimmy Scott Turman: You are. Gregg Majewski: John's was exactly that. I mean, we, our food was people came in and ordered it three, four, five times a week that they were coming in and ordering their sandwich. We knew customers, every customer that walked in, we knew. And there was something about the bread that just was so different than everything else that we got that following. And it's no different than Dirty Dough and the craving from the cookies or, or even people are saying it about, ⁓ another chicken concept that the same thing people are just craving this product or Raising Canes, you know, and they have this cult following because of what the value and the quality is. And now everyone's copying them, you know, because they've got this down to science and it's because people thought the food was incredible. And it's chicken tenders and fries. Scott Turman: If you're ever in Orlando, right? How good could it be? How amazing could it be? And as it turns out, pretty amazing, pretty incredible, right? It's like they took the thing that everybody just, I know what that tastes like. No, you don't. You haven't tried this version of it. Yeah. If Gregg Majewski: Nope. Correct. Scott Turman: you're ever in Orlando, you have got to, got to, got to go to a place called Chicken Fire. I'm, I'm three days a week. I'm literally thinking about it. It is 30 minutes from my house, 30 minutes from my house. It is insane. Gregg Majewski: It's really good. I've had it. It's really, I've had it, it's really good. Scott Turman: Okay, then yeah, please go franchise that they need to be everywhere. They need to be on every corner, Gregg Majewski: Yeah. Scott Turman: because it's so far away. But anyway, so okay, so Gregg, what is it kind of you're just kind of point the boat, you're acquiring these kind of brands, is there some exit for you is or are you gonna do something else or is this this is it for you forever? Gregg Majewski: So I mean, we set up a 10 year roadmap. So in 10 years, we know the company is going to be X-size, and that we will have a company valued that changes what their industry sort of respects. I want to be Rourke Jr. That's where we want to go looking at as an operator. And then yes, an exit. I mean, everyone plans for an exit. You'd be stupid not to. I know enough about myself that that wouldn't be the last journey. I have one more chapter I want to do after this. And then we'll see what happens. Scott Turman: Gregg, thank you for doing this. You're awesome. You're just, you're just, just, ⁓ I, it's just, it's, you don't really meet someone every day who truly, absolutely adores what they do. And you clearly, you're, very muted. You're very calm. But when you talk about Gregg Majewski: Hahaha Scott Turman: you're not, your, face lights up when you, when you do it. It's an absolute honor to meet you. And thank you very much for doing this. Gregg Majewski: Well, thank you for having me and thank you for having Bennett and you know, we'll stay in touch. You guys do great things. Scott Turman: Thank you.