Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Building Championship Teams in Healthcare: Mike Fidgeon's Leadership Journey | Healthcare Series

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Building Championship Teams in Healthcare: Mike Fidgeon's Leadership Journey | Healthcare Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
0:07
share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
0:10
how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
0:13
they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
0:17
the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
0:20
experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
0:24
by how they've overcome adversity.
0:26
My name is Anthony Codispotti, and today's guest is Michael
0:29
Houck, founder and mad scientist of Tony Baloney's and Mad Mutts.
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Tony Baloney's is the right place for freaking amazing pizza
0:37
Subs and other crazy grub. They have three locations in New
0:41
Jersey, Hoboken, Atlantic City, and Jersey City.
0:45
This is not your grandpa's pizza joint.
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They've been tossing out tradition and serving up
0:49
delicious, experimental grub for over a decade.
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You'll find things like a Taco pizza and it's not what you
0:56
think, a sandwich with AT Rex Bone in it and a pizza with
1:00
waffles and fried chicken on it. They offer cooking classes and
1:04
food trucks to cater your next event.
1:06
And they've been featured in more media than you can shake a
1:09
pizza at, including Man Versus Food Cooking Channel and Live
1:12
with Kelly and Ryan, as well as the Today Show.
1:15
Mike opened his first Tony Baloney's in 2009 as a small
1:19
deli convenience store. We'll hear how he morphed into
1:23
the creative and edgy cuisine media magnet that he is today.
1:27
And we'll also hear about his latest food innovation, which is
1:30
just about to drop something called Mad Mutts.
1:33
And we'll see if Michael will tell us how to get to the top of
1:36
the waiting list for it. Now before we get into all that
1:39
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1:42
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Add Back benefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today, the
2:11
founder and mad scientist of Tony Baloney's and Mad Mutts.
2:15
Mike, I appreciate you making the time to Share your story
2:17
today. Yeah, of course.
2:18
Thanks for having me on. So take us back to the
2:22
beginning. Did you always want to start a
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food business? Did this happen kind of
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accidentally? How did this come about?
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So actually I had other businesses at the time.
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I've always had my own business since college.
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I started out with Dirty Business Laundry delivery
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service in Amherst, MA that started as like a school project
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for our entrepreneur club. And we've created a business
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plan and the, the, the premise was you have $0.00, you have no
2:50
resources, what business can you start and what business can you
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scale? And we chose the laundry
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delivery service and we basically said, well, we don't
2:59
have a laundromat so how would we do laundry?
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We would sub it out. So we found the laundromat that
3:06
would process laundry overnight and, you know, pay them per
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piece or per unit or or whatever.
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And we don't have vehicles to deliver it.
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So how would we do that? You can't use our cars.
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Like it was like literally you can't, you have 0 anything.
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We'll contract with a newspaper delivery service that delivers
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newspapers from 2:00 in the morning until 7:00 in the
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morning. And then from 8:00 you use their
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vehicles and pick up and deliver laundry and stuff like that.
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And little by little to be able to, you know, piece together a
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business plan that, you know, work that was scalable, that we
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didn't need any resources for. So, you know, since then I've
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always had my own businesses. I had 30 business laundry
3:50
delivery service. Then we had the off campus meal
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plan, OCMP, then Boxho Box, which is a college care package
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company. And at the time I had businesses
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in New York, in Chelsea and we moved to Bushwick and my father
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called me up and was like, Hey, you know, I want you to get into
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real estate like I'm into and start investing in things.
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And I said, OK, you know, I'm, I'm down to try that out.
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And my buddy was from Bedford, MA, good friend of mine, Dave.
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And he said, you know, let's pick up a property here.
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It's like a six family. I went to the property with my
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father, the realtor, the owner. We did a walkthrough.
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Before we walked in, I saw someone get thrown out of the
4:33
third floor through the window. Whoa, yeah, 4th to the chest guy
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came out with a metal rake over the head, dragged them out.
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I don't know if the person died or not.
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And my realtor pulls out a gun. The owner is just chilling.
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My dad, who's from Newark, NJ, who was in real estate, he's
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just chilling. And I'm like, Oh my God, I'm not
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like, this is not, I can't, I can't do this.
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Like, there's no way I'm going to be a landlord in general.
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And then years later he's like, listen, let's buy this property
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in Atlantic City. It's literally, you know,
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inexpensive and we're going to outfit it and rent it out to
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Bodega because they're building The MGM at the time was massive
5:19
construction project, the entire inlet of Atlantic City.
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And I was like, all right, like I'll go in on it with you.
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We'll figure it out, help them outfit it, get it going.
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Turned out no one wanted to rent it.
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So we had all these construction workers that were ramping up.
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MGM ended up turning to being called Revel.
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They started construction 5000 construction workers.
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No one can rent it out. We outfitted it for Bodega Deli
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and I had my buddy from Nick from Brooklyn just come down and
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run it for like a year selling frozen shit to construction
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workers and it was fine. No big deal.
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We sold stuff and whatever. And then Revel went out of
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business and they they stopped doing construction. 5000
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construction workers are gone. China, I think, pulled the money
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out of the project and basically said, I'm in New York, I'm
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coming down once every few weeks to check on things.
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And, and I was like, holy shit, like, what do we do?
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Because no one's going to rent it now.
6:16
There's no construction workers. There's yeah, you couldn't get
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somebody to rent it before when there were construction.
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Wow. So it's like, what are we going
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to do? And I said, you know what, let
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me just shut it down for a little bit.
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Start creating my own recipes. I was never a chef.
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I never did culinary stuff. I was always the kid late night
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in college, all my friends, you know, dorms, frat houses,
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whatever that I'd make with Buffalo chicken, ramen noodles
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and like pasta mazzool. When I always grew up with my
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one grandmother who, you know, was on the Italian side, you
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know, she had rose, rose rosary beads in one hand and making
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pasta mazzool with a wooden spoon and, you know, yelling at
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me and whatever, but all love. Then my other grandmother was
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Jewish, Russian, Polish. She'd be cooking for me,
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snuggling me with her moo moo. So I always like was around
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food, like food cooked and messed around with things.
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And I said, you know what, let me just try out my own recipes
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and see, you know where that goes.
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And I'm going to make what I like to eat.
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And I don't really care what the cuisine is per SE.
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And I asked my employees at the times like, Hey, you guys have
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worked at pizzerias in the past. We're going to start making our
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own dough. And they were like, oh, I'm not
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showing you my recipe. And I was like, all right, let's
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like, let's create our own recipe.
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And they were like, oh, I'm not, you know, this is like my
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secret. So I'm like, OK, I was like,
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you're gone. I called my food suppliers.
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I was like, Hey, listen, we're going to start making our own
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dough, our own sauce, our own this.
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And they were like, no, no, no, keep buying our frozen dough or
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keep buying our our canned sauce.
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And I'm like, no, like I'm going to make it like, no, we don't,
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you know, said I'm like, well, how do you make like cheese?
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And they're like, oh, you need curd.
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I'm like, OK, well, how do you, how do you get curd?
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All we could sell you curd. It's a pain in the ass.
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No one wants to do that. Were you crazy?
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So then I'm like, well, how do you make curd?
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They're like, no one makes curd. Like you need milk and you have
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to whatever. And I was like, all right, well,
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sell me milk. I want to start messing around.
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They wouldn't. And I'm like, all right, well,
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everyone's gone. And I got rid of everyone clean
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the slate burned down, basically.
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And Tony Baloney's really came about.
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My dad was the one who really came up with the name because he
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was called Tony Baloney as a kid by his grandfather, who was
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father then called him. He then called me.
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I called my two sons and it basically means naughty kid.
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So guy, you little Tony baloney, get upstairs and wash your face.
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It's time for bed. And it was a thing from like way
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back in the day 50s movies. You see, like, you know, the
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father walk in with the horns and glasses and the pipe in his
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mouth and the suitcase and the newspaper under his arm is a
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guy, a little Tony Maloney. Get upstairs and and it was like
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a naughty play on otherwise regular pizza and Subs and
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Italian food. And I ran with it and I said,
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you know what? Let's just do Tony Baloney's my
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favorite food's Indian food. I'm Jewish.
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I'm 1/8 Italian, you know. It's quite a combo.
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Yeah, if you were really technical about it, my
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grandmother's great grandfather's brother was like
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Pope Leo the 13th. So like there's some hardcore
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Italian heritage there, but ultimately, you know, it's like
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a fun plan. Otherwise, you know, Italian
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pizza food and we get some pushback.
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We used to anyway sometimes like, oh, you know, what kind of
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self respecting Italian place doesn't have like deal Parmesan
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or whatever. I'm like, well, I don't know,
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we're not that Italian And B try this.
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This is my grandma's recipe bullshit, you know?
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And and I give it to them and they have this pizza.
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They call this just delicious. And I'm like, yeah, it's tikka
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masala pizza that's like Indian tikka masala, coconut Curry
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sauce with pineered cheese, sesame crust and a green
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chutney. But I called it something else
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just to get them to eat it. And they're like, oh, this is
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phenomenal. I'm like, hey, you're eating
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Indian food. There's no way you got my
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Sicilian recipe. And I'm like, yeah, I know.
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But like, was it good? Like, oh, it was amazing.
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Like, I never had that on pizza before.
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I'm like, all right, well, there you go.
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So let's back up a little bit Mike, because you, you, you did
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a deep dive on a brand new idea. At least it seems like that from
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what, from what the part of the story that I'm hearing.
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And you didn't have a background in food or culinary, like what
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made you so interested, excited, passionate, confident to, to go
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down this road? I mean, you cleaned house,
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you're telling your supplier, you're out of here.
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You're telling the people that were working for you're out of
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here, like you were very strong in this direction that you
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wanted to go, but you didn't have any experience in any of
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this. No, but I mean my philosophy in
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general and like sometimes it gets me in a little bit of
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trouble, but it's always like if there's a will, there's a way,
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but more important than that, like, you know, there's a option
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ABCD and you know, I'll expense the alphabet 1000 times before I
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give up and I won't, I'll just keep expensing the alphabet
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until I come to some sort of conclusion and or you know,
11:13
place that is going to work for everyone, myself, the business,
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the brand, the customer. So, you know, I think ultimately
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the, the need was for this property, not the Sid vacant it
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was to have it generate some kind of income.
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It was to maybe find a gap in the market that wasn't currently
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there because ultimately in Atlantic City there's a lot of
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boardwalk places. There's like, you know,
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legendary pizzerias, old school bar kind of thing, sub shops
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that have been there for a long time.
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But nothing was like really moving the market or getting
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people excited. And, you know, I don't want to
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cannibalize anybody's business. I don't want to ever go into a
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market and try to cannibalize people's sales or what they do.
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So everything I do is really genuine to, you know, what we're
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creating. And I said, you know, no one's
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doing this anywhere really. It's a tourist destination in
12:16
general, Atlantic City or real people that live here and work
12:19
here and do things. So let me try it out and let's
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see how it goes. And it ended up working, and
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people really liked it. A lot of casino execs start
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coming in, and then you get big vans that are the high rollers
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that are coming in on comps. And, you know, little by little,
12:33
these people just start coming into this place where at the
12:35
time, you know, it was set up for like a bodega.
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You had racks of like honey buns and toilet paper and, and random
12:43
stuff, which we got rid of. We had plastic lattice literally
12:49
separating the eating area from the kitchen with a couple like
12:53
stools. We made it into a wall, you
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know, and little by little we adapted knowing that customers
12:58
are coming in here. And then you have some
13:00
celebrities that came in and they're like, dude, where am I
13:03
right now? Like this place is, I mean, it's
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150 year old building. It's so beat up.
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It's barely branded. And then I was like, you know
13:11
what, let me rebrand it and brand it appropriately and, and
13:15
have it stand out and make it, you know, representative of the
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food we're serving and the things that I like to do and the
13:21
vibe and people coming to Atlantic City and they are here
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from God knows where they're from Norway, they're from Ohio,
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it doesn't matter. We want them to come in and feel
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they're getting like that experience.
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So the food's gotta match. The the aesthetics have to match
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to a degree, and the service has to match.
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We have to, you know, do the best we can do to highlight
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those things. So for those listening who maybe
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aren't from the East Coast or you know, haven't been a bodega
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because it's a little bit unfamiliar in certain parts of
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the country, it's kind of like a, a small corner store that's
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like a combination of like a little grocery convenience store
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as well as serving food. So that's kind of how it started
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out. And then quickly you realize,
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hey, we're on to something with the, the, the food service part
14:08
of this. Let's get rid of the rest of it,
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rebrand it, clean it up. At what point, Mike, did you
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realize we're on to something like this is actually going to?
14:17
Work, I mean, in creating all the different recipes and weird
14:23
stuff, people really start taking two and saying, Oh my
14:26
God, this is really good. At the time, a cheese steak was
14:30
a cheese steak was a cheese steak was a cheese steak.
14:32
Like this Buffalo chicken cheese steaks.
14:34
It's a brick of shaved chicken packed out and they put it on
14:41
the grill and they put some maybe Frank's Red hot sauce on
14:44
it and they just snack it on and American cheese.
14:48
And to me, I'm like, well, you know, I love a lot of different
14:52
foods. I love Mexican food.
14:55
I started making our own cheese queso, Oaxaca, Mexican string
14:59
cheese, and I made this cheese steak that was called the Olay.
15:03
It's still on the menu. It's one of our top sellers and
15:05
it is steak usually take the steakum ish thing they put on
15:10
the grill can be rib eye sirloin.
15:13
They grill it up and they put some spices on it, maybe salt
15:15
and pepper and smack it on the sub.
15:18
And I'm like, you know, let me use rib eye like just straight
15:22
up rib eye and shave that down. And it had a lot of cartilage in
15:26
it and or fat. It just wasn't so like
15:29
appealing. So like I know why they use
15:31
steakum. So they use, you know, this like
15:33
shaved chip steak if they call it, well, why don't I take rib
15:37
eye and let me marinate it in almost like they do ceviche, but
15:41
I'll do it in like mezcal. I'll do it.
15:45
I'll cook it first. I'll marinate it in mezcal with
15:48
some spices, some lime, whatever, and then let me put it
15:51
back and shave it up. And it ended up being really
15:54
soft. Really, you know, held its
15:56
fiber, but it it was not as like, you know, gritty.
16:00
And I came up with something called the Olay and we started
16:03
making it. I mean, this homemade Chipotle
16:05
ish house crema sauce, homemade queso Oaxaca string cheese.
16:11
And I enter the Food Network diners Dr. insurance and dives
16:14
Guy Fieri cheese steak battle where the time was all like the
16:17
big guys that were competing in it from Philly, all these like
16:20
legendary places. And it was in Atlantic City at
16:23
the food and wine Festival. And I was like, yeah, I'm going
16:26
to enter the cheese steak Olay. You know, everyone's doing
16:29
Philly cheese steaks. They're very proud of those
16:32
things. And we're just not that place.
16:35
So I'm going to bring to the table what we bring to the
16:37
table. Anyway, we did it.
16:40
Everyone's like, you're out of your mind.
16:41
Like, you know, everything's classic, classic this, classic
16:46
that. And by the way, I love a classic
16:48
cheese steak. Like anyone says to me, oh, who
16:51
has a better like Philly cheese steak?
16:53
You or you know, Pat's or Gino's or Tony Luke's or whatever, and
17:00
I'm like, they do like Pat's invented the cheese steak.
17:05
So you may not like it or not, but like that's what a Philly
17:09
cheese steak is. So like, that's not to me, it's
17:13
not even an argument. They they make a Philly cheese
17:15
steak. I don't.
17:16
You do something different. Right.
17:18
So it is what it is, you know, so I brought it to the
17:22
competition and I ended up winning.
17:23
I beat all those guys out and and that was like 2010, I think.
17:28
And, and people then start noticing like, wait, what are
17:32
they doing over there? What are they what are they
17:34
doing on their Subs or what are they doing on their pizza or
17:36
whatever it is? And I started really diving into
17:39
that because ultimately, like, we can build your own sub.
17:43
You can make a sub with steak and sauce and cheese and, you
17:46
know, we have that on our menu. You could add potato chips to
17:49
your sub and like, you can make your own crazy concoction.
17:52
But ultimately we have Subs that we really, you know, put a lot
17:55
of work, time and effort into that are way different off the
18:00
grid. And we hope you enjoy it.
18:02
So when you come to the shop and you have one of our Subs, you
18:06
know, there are own creations. We make it ourselves.
18:08
We make our own chimichurri. We, we, we do different stuff.
18:12
And it really took off and people started coming in the
18:14
shop and instead of them saying, yo, let me get a cheese steak
18:16
with American cheese and, you know, fried onions, I want to
18:21
fry it hard. We say we listen and we're like,
18:25
hold on. First, what's your name?
18:27
The second for a year to go. Third of all, have you looked at
18:31
the menu? And most times it's no, I just
18:33
came in here and I heard about you guys and I want to see your
18:36
cheese steak stacks up against the rest.
18:38
And we tell them if you want a Philly cheese steak, there's a
18:42
million places you can go with. You don't want a Philly cheese
18:44
steak. If you've come here, you want
18:46
it. Is or whatever it is.
18:47
I mean, if you want something simple, you want the whole.
18:49
It's our Cooper sharp smoked cheese whiz that we make in
18:53
house fried long hots, caramelized onion, Sicilian
18:57
chili spread that we harvest in Sicily ourself instead of like
19:01
wet hot, you know, pickled Peppers.
19:04
Try that if you like a Philly cheese steak.
19:06
This would be like the closest thing to maybe that And they get
19:08
it and they love it. Oh my God, this is amazing.
19:11
It's one of those things where we'll do it for you.
19:14
That's just not really a stick, so.
19:17
So how do these ideas come to you, Mike?
19:19
Do you have like a process where you're like, OK, we're we're
19:22
starting with the Philly cheese steak.
19:24
How can we make it creative? Let's pull from Indian flavors.
19:28
Let's put no like you just sort of sitting there and like crazy
19:32
thoughts pop into your head. Yeah, and, and I like something.
19:35
I like to eat something I'm interested in, something I, I've
19:39
had an idea rolling in my brain about something that I would
19:42
like to eat or make or a customer take on it.
19:45
And a lot of times it's, it's, you know, what will a customer
19:49
be OK with and what will they not be OK with?
19:52
So, you know, there's always like that, that fine line where
19:57
you can't push it too far because it's either a price
20:00
issue or it's a menu item that is just really like wacky, for
20:06
example. Everyone loves chicken fried
20:10
steak. You wouldn't know it because
20:12
most people don't eat chicken fried steak unless they're in
20:14
the part of the country where they make that in the South or
20:16
whatever. People don't know Alabama white
20:20
sauce, but when they have it, they love it.
20:23
So, you know, one pizza we put on the menu I think was called
20:27
at the time bestiality, but now it's a different pizza.
20:30
And it was Rocky Mountain fried oysters, which are bull
20:35
testicles, a Alabama white sauce, smoked smoked homemade
20:40
mozzarella. And it was delicious.
20:43
But like knowing that people are are you're selling them
20:49
something and they're eating testicles.
20:52
Like there's a very like small niche of the population that
20:57
will actually eat that pizza versus US just having fun and
21:01
doing what we're doing. And that eventually turns into
21:04
something else because you can't put down the pizza.
21:07
And then I put chicken fried steak in the sub.
21:09
I call the rodeo clown and it's smoked grits, homemade smoked
21:13
mozzarella, Alabama white sauce, fried chicken, fried steak,
21:18
which is basically, it's not, there's no chicken.
21:20
It's a piece of hanger steak pounded out that's battered and
21:24
fried and people love it. But people also don't really
21:28
know what chicken fried steak is.
21:29
They think it's chicken. They think so like there's this
21:31
fine line between like what you can can actually put out there
21:35
that people will adopt versus a great idea that actually tastes
21:39
delicious. And then it's going up to the
21:41
staff to be able to shove it down their throats in some sort
21:45
of sense or find that, that that medium marketing angle and word
21:51
it properly or, or, or market it properly.
21:53
So people would actually eat here to it.
21:55
And some things just don't work out.
21:57
And some things, you know, as amazing as the sub repeats is
22:01
people just don't get and there's other things that they
22:04
really do get that you have to dumb down to such a degree
22:08
because they are so familiar with a certain product, they're
22:11
so familiar with a flavor. So there's a fine balance of it.
22:15
And for me, I always want to go off the rails.
22:18
You know, I want to fully go off the rails and have to tame
22:21
myself down sometimes and say, you know what?
22:25
I don't think, you know, we could put this on a pizza or a
22:29
sub or, or there's just no way to get around this.
22:32
And if I'm going to do it, it's just going to be for like my own
22:34
enjoyment. I.
22:35
Was going to say, do you ever just put something on the menu
22:38
with a strong suspicion that people won't adopt it, but you
22:41
just enjoy that shock factor? I mean, like the Rocky Mountain
22:45
Oyster pizza, did you think that people were going to adopt that
22:49
or you're just like, I'm just going to have some fun?
22:51
Here, I wanted to see, Yeah, you know, I wanted to see what it
22:54
was like another pizza called the Jerk.
22:56
Oof. So it's a it's a beef jerky
22:58
pizza, my buddy James Jerky down in South Jersey, but we used his
23:06
jerky on it and it's called the Jerk.
23:07
Oof. Like, oof.
23:08
Like, wow. Like, you know, you eat
23:10
something. Oof, that's a lot.
23:11
And it was smoked ranch beef jerky.
23:15
Like to me, Jerky's like the new pepperoni.
23:18
It's so good on a pizza. And it worked really, really,
23:22
really, really well in Atlantic City store in the summertime.
23:25
It didn't work so well in Hoboken Jerky City, just
23:29
because, you know, I think the, the high transactional value of
23:33
what we do in slices there. And it just didn't, it didn't
23:37
like translate. We're in Atlantic City.
23:39
People heard about it and knew about it.
23:40
They came in for it. They were excited about it and
23:43
they still asked for it every single day.
23:45
Like can I get, you know, jerky on as a topping on a pizza?
23:50
So, you know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
23:53
Sometimes it's the marketing thing.
23:54
Sometimes it's the right time, right place, Luck, like a lot of
23:57
things, you know? Tell us about the Taco pizza.
24:02
When I first heard that you had a Taco pizza, I'm like, oh, it's
24:05
got, you know, probably some, you know, Mexican flavors.
24:08
It's, you know, some Mexican sauce.
24:10
It's, I don't know, maybe they crumbled up some, you know,
24:12
tortilla chips and put it on top of it.
24:14
But when, when you see this thing, it's, it's out of this
24:18
world. Can you describe it for us?
24:21
Pizza basically came about because we're in Hoboken.
24:24
I was definitely a little bored that day.
24:26
We're busy going through the motions.
24:28
I just sounded like one of those days.
24:29
You just get a little bored. And these kids came in and they
24:33
were all stoned and they're like, yo, what's up?
24:35
It's Taco Tuesday and they get can I get some tacos?
24:37
And I'm like, dude, it's Tony Baloney.
24:39
He's like, we don't make tacos, pizzas, Subs, whatever.
24:41
Like I know, bro, but it's Taco Tuesday.
24:43
And I was like, you know what? I was these kids at one point
24:47
skateboarding around. I got you.
24:50
I went back in the kitchen. Lena was like, yo, can you make
24:52
up some tacos? They they're always making tacos
24:55
for themselves. We got massaca, which is the
24:57
corn flour. And she's like, how many do you
24:59
want? I'm like, I don't know, make me
25:01
up like 3 orders, like 99 tacos. I don't know.
25:04
Whatever. Anything on them.
25:06
Yeah, whatever. I don't care.
25:07
Any Subs, just make it into tacos.
25:10
And they they were loving it. They it came out like, oh, yo,
25:13
thank you so much, you're the best.
25:14
Whatever. And then I came back in the
25:15
kitchen and I was like, you know what?
25:17
Fuck this. And I just, I had something in
25:20
my brain. I'm like, you know what?
25:21
I gotta like, I'm like getting a cage.
25:24
I get cagey little times sometimes.
25:26
And I said, you know, fuck it, Lena make me up like 24 tacos.
25:30
And she's like, of what? And I told her what to make.
25:34
I made the pizza. I took our mole sauce and my
25:38
grandmother's babushka sauce, which we use for the password
25:41
brisket, and I mixed it up and I made my own sauce with it.
25:45
Took queso, Oaxaca, string cheese, put down the pie, put it
25:47
in the oven, popped it out, assembled over tacos, made some
25:51
guacamole. And I kept telling the guys,
25:54
yo-yo, don't leave, I'll be right out.
25:56
And I brought this pizza out to them and they bugged out.
25:59
They were like caught the Holy Ghost.
26:01
Like, holy shit. Like, I want you to adopt me as
26:03
my dad. It was hilarious, but they were
26:07
loving it. And I was like, but listen to me
26:09
favor, don't tell anybody about this because ultimately, like,
26:12
my staff's going to kill me if I actually try to like sell this
26:15
and make this on the menu. It's just a lot, right?
26:19
The next day, literally, yo, I heard about the Taco pizza and
26:24
like one after the other after the other.
26:27
So now I'm like, all right, AC at the time was a little slow.
26:30
It's like offseason. So I called up our our manager
26:34
there and I was like, listen, Fernando, we stole this to to
26:37
this day. He actually heads up mad mutts
26:40
production and I said, listen, I want to start making tacos
26:44
shells, tortillas. He said, well, you can buy them.
26:47
There's factories out there. I was like, no, I know, but like
26:49
I, I want to make them. So we started making like, I
26:53
don't know, 2000 tacos a day in Atlantic City in between what's
26:56
going on? We had a, a Mercedes Sprinter
27:01
truck, refrigerated truck. We'd bring them up to Hoboken.
27:04
You know, at the time we were selling like 300 Taco pizzas a
27:08
day, only on Tuesdays. It was lying out of the door
27:12
crazy. I mean, every single show we
27:13
were on, the only yards, I was offered to be flown to to, to
27:18
buy and make Taco pizza for someone.
27:22
We brought pizza at the Teterboro airport to go to the
27:25
Bahamas. I think it was Michael Jordan.
27:29
I mean, from what I understand, you know, they wouldn't tell us
27:33
who it was for a lot of stuff like that.
27:36
And it took off. And then we start offering it
27:37
every day because people would come in and I'll never forget it
27:40
was like a Wednesday and these two guys come in, shops packed
27:44
and they're like, yo, we want the Taco pizza.
27:46
I'm like, oh, I'm sorry, it's only Tuesdays.
27:47
And they're like, dude, we just drove from Denver and I was
27:50
like, get out of here. Like, no, I'm serious.
27:53
Like we literally just drove from Denver and like we and I'm
27:58
like, all right, I got to make it for him, you know, and we
28:00
made it for him. And then so we started saying,
28:03
you know, we're offered every single day.
28:04
We have to just figure out how to do it and do it properly and
28:07
do it, you know, in some kind of scale.
28:11
And from there it took off and. So for people who are listening
28:15
to the audio version, I brought up some images on screen.
28:18
Find your way to a video version Spotify on our website YouTube.
28:23
So there's a like a semi traditional pizza crust
28:27
underneath, but then there are soft Taco shells arranged around
28:31
the edges and each of those Taco shells is filled with a
28:34
different kind of Taco. And then in the middle there's a
28:38
giant portion of guacamole. And so I mean just.
28:43
That homemade crema carne asada is 1 Taco beer braised pulled
28:49
chickens. Another Taco with some jalapeno
28:51
crema. We have our mezcal marinated rib
28:55
eye steak with Chipotle. Underneath is this base of like
29:00
a molay ish sauce queso Oaxaca. The crust is actually a mesecca
29:07
cornmeal dough and crust. So the whole thing through and
29:12
through and they're all corn tacos pressed, you know, through
29:17
and through. It's it's it's own animal and it
29:19
is a beast to make. It's not this thing that you
29:23
just throw together. A lot of people think that it's
29:26
just like things on things on things in general.
29:28
And it's like. No, this looks like it would be
29:30
incredibly time consuming and, and I mean, you've got a lot of
29:35
really high quality ingredients, lots of meat in here, lots of,
29:38
you know, avocados for the guacamole, the cheeses, these
29:42
are not inexpensive. I I have to imagine, I mean
29:44
what? What is one of these pizzas go
29:46
for typically? That pizza, right?
29:48
There's 100 bucks, Yeah. And people think that's.
29:50
Unique Oh, you guys are killing it.
29:52
It's like. No, that that's that actually
29:54
sounds pretty reasonable to me. Well.
29:56
And if and if like people walk in the shop and the slice is
29:59
$15, there's tacos on it. Fuck $15.00 for a slice when you
30:03
guys crazy. And it's like if you went to any
30:06
taqueria and got 3 carne asada Tacos.
30:10
Forget brisket, forget whatever. 3 chicken tacos.
30:13
What would it cost for them? I don't know, 8 to $12.00
30:20
minimum. Yeah, right.
30:21
So call 10 bucks if you got a cheese quesadilla.
30:25
How much would that cost? 6-8 dollars.
30:30
Yeah. If you got an order, a side
30:32
order of guacamole, what would that cost?
30:36
I don't know, 5-6 bucks, right? So you're getting every one of
30:41
those things in a slice of pizza that is absolutely delicious.
30:46
You'll probably not be able to finish.
30:48
And then they get it and they're like, Oh yeah, I guess that
30:50
makes sense. So, yeah, for those listening,
30:53
if you're in the New Jersey area, I recommend you go and get
30:56
one of these before Mike wizens up and jacks up the price
31:00
because it sounds, sounds like the deal of the century.
31:06
You, you get a lot of great press, like, like I'm, you know,
31:10
looking at your website, like, I mean, every food show you can
31:13
think of a lot of the big morning shows.
31:15
How did you get to be so good at this?
31:18
Do you just have the world's best PR agent or or what?
31:21
No, I do it all myself in house. You know, it's, it's, it's, I
31:30
think people think it's just, you know, you do things and
31:33
people notice and get on, you know, TV shows or whatever it
31:38
is. But like a lot of it is, you
31:40
know, relationships that you form over time.
31:43
A lot of it's you actually producing the thing you say
31:47
you're going to make a lot of times for Instagram.
31:49
People just make crazy things and hope that like someone
31:51
catches on to it and the next thing you know, it takes off and
31:54
there's like a need for it to then you start making it more.
31:57
And like that in business is always something you test things
32:00
out with and you mess around with.
32:01
But like for this, like if we're making the wagwan for even
32:04
example, or the swine fighter, these are pizzas that really are
32:10
their own things to facilitate. They're not easy to manufacture.
32:14
There's a lot of prep, there's a lot of recipe, there's a lot of
32:17
coordination behind it. And like when the Drew Barrymore
32:20
show calls and says, we want to feature this, you can't just
32:23
like do it for the show and then not have it for the customer.
32:27
He was ultimately that wouldn't be helpful to the business, but
32:29
it wouldn't be helpful to their show either because they're
32:32
letting their credibility or whatever, whether they need
32:35
content or not, it doesn't really matter.
32:37
And you got to be set up for it. So for us, it's like to get to
32:41
the place and over the years, like I've been way better at
32:47
this. But in the in the beginning, you
32:49
would do things that you maybe weren't fully set up for, but
32:52
running a business and having, you know, 50 to 100 points at
32:55
any given time, there's a lot of, you know, spinning plates.
32:58
There's a lot of things in motion.
32:59
And everyone's got to be on the same page.
33:02
So if we're saying that we're doing this thing and then the
33:04
Drew Barrymore Show has it on national television and then
33:08
people want to buy it, you got to be ready for that.
33:11
You got to be set up for it. And you can't be this like cross
33:15
your fingers and like hope it works out.
33:17
You got to be ready in some way, shape or form.
33:19
You can run out of things, which you know, we often do because
33:23
we're making everything. But it just, it's a lot of time
33:26
coordination, relationship building, you know, being
33:29
consistent and you know, showing up when you say you're going to
33:32
show up. So you had the one store
33:35
location, the first one that started out as a bodega, you
33:38
know, quickly realized where the money was coming from and where
33:42
you should put the attention, did a rebrand.
33:44
At what point did you decide this is going so well?
33:47
We need to open up a second and then a third location.
33:51
I mean, I won live with Kelly's nationwide food truck
33:54
competition for the cheesesteak Ole.
33:56
Also, it's like Chef Jean George and Josh Capone, who at the time
34:07
I used to love his restaurants. I still do.
34:09
But he had some, you know, in New York City, very well
34:13
respected chefs in general and good people.
34:17
And I won their nationwide food truck competition.
34:20
Start with thousands of trucks and then whittle down to this
34:23
and that. And, and I said on the show,
34:26
they said, well, what do you want to do next?
34:27
And I was like, I'm going to open up at Hoboken.
34:30
You know, that was that was kind of what I had in my brain and my
34:32
wife and I were talking about it.
34:34
And so we ended up starting looking for leases shortly
34:39
before then maybe a little bit after that.
34:41
And we opened up at Hoboken shortly after that.
34:44
And then we were at Hoboken and we got approached by some
34:49
gentleman that came in the shop that we're running, the food
34:52
hospitality for the Prudential Center.
34:54
It was Legends at the time. And we got into Legends.
34:59
We had like 2 kiosks in the Prudential Center for like
35:04
hockey games. And little by little we just
35:07
start building on brand, building on, you know, our menu,
35:11
building on the business and little by little, so, you know,
35:15
in Atlantic City, we started with that shop.
35:17
Then I got a food truck because people were scared to come to
35:19
Atlantic City. And I was like, what are you
35:21
scared of? Like, well, we want to have a
35:22
birthday party. And I'm like, you know what, I'm
35:24
going to get a food truck and I'm going to drive to your house
35:27
and I'm going to serve Tony Baloney's menu.
35:29
So we had a food truck and then I got to push a new farmers
35:31
markets and sell fresh mozzarella.
35:33
So I started making fresh, manufacturing fresh mozzarella,
35:36
which is called Tony's Farm Table, which is a separate
35:39
business that we harvest on olive oil in Sicily.
35:42
We manufacture mozzarella, we do focaccia, flatbreads, vincone,
35:46
and we start doing farmers markets and then we open in
35:49
Hoboken and then we open in Prudential Center.
35:51
And then from there we started, you know, shipping out DTC to
35:56
customers because people in Ohio and California, whatever, like
36:00
we want Tony Maloney's too. And I'm like, well, how fast can
36:03
I open up shops like, you know, let me just start shipping stuff
36:07
and we open up in Jersey City. We had a store in Long Branch,
36:10
which is a very seasonal market on the Boardwalk that we since
36:15
closed and then and we just started, you know, pushing
36:19
forward and. What kind of food are you
36:21
shipping nationwide? Like can I get one of these Taco
36:23
pizzas sent to me? Is that traveled?
36:26
There's a wait list right now for it on Gold Belly.
36:29
But yeah, our Taco pizza, our swine fighter, the baloney Rex,
36:36
we, we ship it nationwide. I mean, we started doing it
36:40
right before COVID, COVID had started picking up and you know,
36:44
we were doing 2000 packages a week shipped nationwide.
36:48
And we picked that back up I think next week on Gold Belly
36:55
and we, yeah, we shipped pizzas and you could choose you.
36:58
Know and so are they shipped like cooled or frozen or they
37:01
come in hot like frozen, they're all frozen.
37:04
Packaging has gel packs, ice liner, great unboxing
37:09
experience. We do pizza making kits.
37:11
We ship nationwide. We teach virtual classes.
37:13
So we have a lot of corporate customers that we ship
37:16
worldwide. We ship everywhere, by the way.
37:19
So we'll have a customer that is in, let's just say
37:22
cybersecurity. They have a team all over the
37:25
world, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, London, and we'll ship
37:32
pizza making kits everywhere. Then we hop online and it's
37:34
like, hey, what's up everyone? We have the studio upstairs in
37:36
Atlantic City where we film all the classes and we teach pizza
37:40
making classes in Montreal and Brada making classes.
37:42
And we do this for corporate where, you know, corporation, we
37:45
white label their kits and in the kit that is branded for
37:49
their company, all the packaging, a pizza cutter, an
37:51
apron, whatever. And we ship this out, you know,
37:54
worldwide and do these classes. So we, you know, that's kind of
37:58
part of DTC. And so these classes did the
38:01
idea, the online virtual classes that did that come about during
38:05
COVID. That was basically us saying,
38:07
holy shit, what are we going to do?
38:09
We, we don't even know like how to operate a restaurant right
38:12
now like you. Know.
38:13
You have to shift everything. That was the massive upheaval.
38:16
And I went online on Instagram one day and I was like, hey,
38:19
whoever wants to do a class on Sunday, I'll teach from my
38:22
house. Come pick up a pizza man kit
38:24
from an Antonio balloon's location and go on Instagram
38:27
live at like 6:00 and I did it and like thousands of people
38:32
bought the kits and went online. Wait, thousands of people came
38:36
locally to buy kits? Yeah, the next week we said, you
38:39
know, we can deliver them to your door.
38:41
People are like, well, I'm in like Montclair, NJ, I'm in
38:44
whatever said you know what, I bought some software that was a
38:48
truck routing, mapping software and sign up pay for your kids.
38:52
We put in the software. It calculated a route.
38:55
I had a guy go around the whole entire state of New Jersey
38:57
delivering kits literally to your door.
39:00
And we did that. The next week we had more, a
39:02
couple more 1000 people and then we start getting funny with it.
39:05
And I was like, you know what? Next week we're going to do like
39:07
a Peaky Blinder steam class and I would dress up like you can
39:09
Google it on YouTube. Tony Baloney's calzone class.
39:14
We did meatball baking class. We did all different kind of
39:16
classes and we made it fun for kids.
39:18
So everyone throughout Hoboken, Jersey City, Atlantic City or
39:22
Jersey in general would log on to these classes and we would
39:25
have a themed kid. I dressed up like bad boy brat
39:28
crazy wig. I was the the the Tiger King.
39:34
I fake tattoo zombie with a mullet and bangs.
39:38
I dressed up like him. I talked like him the entire
39:40
time. I got my Cubs tire Cubs and we
39:43
did these classes and we then we started shipping.
39:45
So I was like, this is, you know, it's not sustainable for
39:48
us to drive over the state with these kids.
39:50
So we figured out DTC. We linked up with Gold Belly.
39:53
DTC direct to consumer. Consumer up and we started
39:57
shipping these kits, you know? Nationwide and people were
40:01
logging into these classes that we were doing for, you know, a
40:04
good maybe two months. And then corporations started
40:07
getting involved and saying, hey, listen, we want to do this
40:09
for our team building. We want to do this for our
40:11
company. And we started white labeling
40:14
them. We've done a lot of TV shows
40:16
like sci-fi network, Alien TV show.
40:19
We got on with Alex and their whole entire crew and we had
40:24
glow in the dark dough for the class along with a fully brand.
40:27
What do you put in the dough to make it glow in the dark?
40:31
OK, All right. Don't tell us.
40:33
But but you know. Will it make me glow in the
40:35
dark? That's what I want to know.
40:36
Am I going to be radioactive? OK, so it's safe to you.
40:39
We do. A lot of stuff like that, we do
40:41
a lot of corporations where we'll manufacture you know kits
40:46
for them. Some are are constant.
40:48
We do a lot of classes with them on an ongoing basis where you
40:52
know at least once a month, once a quarter we are facilitating
40:56
them. They have their own little
40:57
storage locker in our, you know, in our, in our, in our shipping
41:01
warehouse. And you know, we, we basically
41:05
drop shipped for them. These kits that we manufacture.
41:07
Scott's Pizza Tours, he was doing it for a while.
41:11
We, we manufactured all Scott's pizza making kits for all of his
41:15
customers fully branded for him during COVID and slightly
41:18
afterwards. So, you know, we started doing
41:21
that and then, you know, we operate the stores and we're
41:24
always keeping busy with that stuff.
41:28
Tell me about the food truck experience.
41:29
Do you park these trucks in like, you know, busy areas or
41:32
are these just like rent for your event kind of a thing?
41:36
Event for your event we have a private party come to our house
41:38
2 hours Tony Baloney's experience and we're out.
41:42
I've never done the street pull up.
41:44
I've never done the street hustling business.
41:46
There's a lot of mercantile things involved, especially in
41:49
Atlantic City. There's permitting involved,
41:51
there's it's all parking the truck and space and it it's just
41:56
one of those things where like you're really just crossing your
41:58
fingers and saying like, hope it doesn't rain, hope it doesn't
42:01
snow, hope it's busy. Our truck, you know, keeps busy
42:04
enough where we just bring it out for private parties.
42:08
How far will you go with the truck?
42:10
Where can people get it? I mean, we've, we've had our
42:13
truck freighted to Chicago before for an event.
42:16
So if they want to pay for it. You'll do it doesn't matter.
42:21
So tell me about mad mutts. What is this?
42:24
So we started manufacturing mozzarella 2010 in Atlantic City
42:30
and I started taking milk and making curb.
42:33
You coagulate the milk. I'm in Sicily at my buddy's
42:36
place and I'm like, well how did they make mozzarella here?
42:38
And basically they kill a calf, take it's stomach out, take the
42:41
bacteria, alcohol, rennet, put it in the milk, boil it,
42:44
coagulate it and it separates out.
42:47
It's like if you had milk in your refrigerator for three
42:49
months, what would happen? It would separate into curbs.
42:52
Well, they do it quickly to then be able to re stretch it, which
42:56
is called pasta filata, stretch curd.
42:59
So I came back and I was like, that's kind of gross.
43:01
I can't imagine that's how people do it.
43:04
A lot of cheese on the market in general, not vegetarian.
43:07
People don't know that. So if you're vegetarian, most
43:11
times the cheese that you're eating is not.
43:13
They use an animal rennet. So for me to go and use a
43:16
vegetable rennet, start researching this kind of stuff,
43:18
boiling the milk, coagulating it, making curd, making
43:22
mozzarella, selling at farmers market, selling it in our
43:25
restaurants. And then I was like, how come no
43:27
one has like truffle mozzarella? And it's really difficult to
43:31
take milk, flavor that milk in some way shape or form.
43:34
Make truffle curd, stretch the curd like you're talking about
43:38
pH levels, fat, the structure of the cheese, which is the
43:42
buttermilk solid versus the buttermilk fat, like the
43:44
exoskeleton. Like, there's so much into it
43:47
that I learned with trial and error over the course of God
43:50
knows how many years. And I started making flavored
43:52
mozzarella and perfected that spicy mozzarella, truffle,
43:57
chimichurri, whatever. And then I started saying, well,
44:00
why isn't there no mozzarella sticks with fresh mozzarella?
44:04
And the truth is it's typically, you know, fresh mozzarella's too
44:08
moist to fry. It just explodes, which is the
44:11
reason why people use string cheese or blocks of cheese.
44:15
They cut them down, they roll them out and they do whatever.
44:18
And I was like, well, why don't I really try to perfect this
44:20
because of my menu. I think our customers would
44:22
really appreciate my flavored mozzarella in the form of
44:27
mozzarella sticks. So I started manufacturing them
44:29
and we have a whole mozzarella laboratory in the Atlantic City
44:32
used to be called Tony Bologna's mozzarella laboratory.
44:35
And we're making, you know, in the summertime, thousands of
44:37
pounds of cheese and, and all these different things.
44:40
And then we start putting them on our menu.
44:43
They're really popular, some of our top category sellers.
44:47
Truffle mozzarella sticks, It's truffle mozzarella plus truffle
44:50
batter and the outsides of homemade Panko truffle crust.
44:54
We use real truffles from Italy, Urbani truffles, which is like
44:57
the largest, you know, they are like the name in truffles
45:01
worldwide. Look them up, Urbani.
45:03
So we start working with buying our bodies, real truffles and
45:06
and you know, going through that process and then we came to a
45:10
point where we start getting hit up by a lot of restaurants, food
45:13
service providers, grocery stores.
45:15
We want to carry your mozzarella.
45:17
We want to carry your mozzarella sticks.
45:19
And I was like, well, first of all, a couple problems.
45:22
One, I'm not really set up license to like sell to you in
45:26
that scale, but that's can be overcome.
45:29
You know, I can figure that out at the 2000 square foot
45:32
manufacturing facilities. So like we can figure that out.
45:35
And the second thing is, you know, how do I produce these
45:38
things at scale? And I spent really the last few
45:40
years perfecting that process to be able to get it to the point
45:45
that we can produce at scale. We can produce 60,000 sticks a
45:48
day, fresh mozzarella. You're talking about clean,
45:53
honest product. You get it from the, you know,
45:55
milk from real farms. And I called up my friend
46:01
Michael, who owns a real estate investment company.
46:04
He, he's got his hands in a lot of things, but he's a super well
46:08
oiled machine. He's got a couple of mature
46:10
companies. And I said to him, listen, I'm
46:13
getting hit up from everyone from ShopRite and Driscoll Foods
46:16
and Performance Food Group and Restaurant Depot.
46:18
And like, I can do it. I'll get it done.
46:23
And I said, but I, I love a partner that, you know, really
46:27
can help me facilitate this, whether it's on the bookkeeping
46:30
side, the AR side, the compliance side.
46:33
I know how to make a really good product, interesting, fun,
46:36
honest, but, you know, this is a little bit different of an
46:40
animal. And I got involved.
46:42
And since then, we've been able to not only, you know, have the
46:47
idea of getting the scale, but we actually built this, this
46:52
factory out and tweak things and, and add it on to things
46:56
that we can actually hold over a million sticks in inventory,
46:59
produce 60,000 sticks a day. We just got into Restaurant
47:02
Depot. They, they, they, they just did
47:04
a second reorder of our product that's down here in Egg Harbor
47:09
Township, which is super exciting.
47:11
Great partner of ours. By the way.
47:13
We're getting at the shop right in the next few weeks for the
47:15
retail packs. And we're starting DTC probably
47:19
early next week where we already have a waiting list that it's
47:21
over like 9000 people right now that are that are waiting to
47:27
order and us to go live with a direct to consumer.
47:31
So between these things, you know, I was able to, you know,
47:34
find the great partner in Michael Burns, he's on the
47:38
website. It's kind of funny, you know,
47:42
really put all that hard work, heavy assets and, you know,
47:46
investment to good use. And instead of just making it
47:49
for Tony Baloney's and being a top category seller, you know,
47:52
now we have a lot of restaurants in the local South Jersey area
47:55
or over the years, I'm sending out packages to Canada.
47:59
Literally people, can I get the, the, the hottie stick?
48:03
Can I get and I'm literally I'm packing it up.
48:05
I'm doing, I'm sending it to them.
48:06
They're like, I don't care. I'll pay for the shipping.
48:09
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of packages.
48:11
This is a little bit more hub and spoke and we're able to
48:14
really get it out to the masses and scale and get it out to
48:17
those food service providers. We're working with Seashore down
48:22
in the South Jersey area that feeds a lot of the restaurants,
48:25
LBI to Cape May, Restaurant Depot, Driscoll Foods,
48:29
Performance Food Group, ShopRite and retail.
48:31
You can make them at home, you know, at your convenience, the
48:36
Unicorn mozzarella sticks. And so it's exciting.
48:40
So if I have this, if I have these cheese sticks shipped to
48:43
me, how am I prepping them? How am I heating them up?
48:46
Getting them? Ready.
48:46
So, so on the website once you select your flavor of stick,
48:52
there is going to be on your box of QR code, but more importantly
48:56
on the website cooker like the Cacio Pepe and and if you Scroll
49:02
down a little bit, yeah, there's the instructions on there.
49:07
Air fryer, deep fryer oven. Yeah, so we always recommend
49:10
deep fryer, pan fryer, 100%. These are mozzarella sticks.
49:14
Mozzarella sticks are literally like such an indulgent, awesome
49:20
food and they come out the best. It's like any food in the air
49:23
fryer. Like you can't really expect it
49:25
to be as good as like even French fries, like it just
49:29
doesn't do that. But anyway, they are set up to
49:33
be in the air fryer or oven. We recommend pan fryer deep fry
49:37
and we give you the instructions along with that on those little
49:40
drop down tabs. There's going to be a video and
49:42
you'll see me in video form and stick skew form explaining how
49:49
these sticks operate and what to do with them and how you can do
49:51
them. Plus get a lot of fun little
49:53
competitions that go along with the box that are fun unboxing
49:57
stuff, Instagram posting videos and little competition so.
50:02
So again, for those not watching a video version of it, recommend
50:06
that you check out their website.
50:09
Madmutz is spelled MADMUT, z.com, madmutz.com.
50:14
And there's currently I'm showing a picture on here.
50:17
I just think it's the greatest picture.
50:18
There's what, 5 different cheese sticks that are kind of cut in
50:22
half, but you know this long, gooey, delicious looking stringy
50:28
cheese stretching from end to end.
50:30
But the really fascinating thing is the different colours of the
50:34
breading and then the different colours of the cheeses inside.
50:37
We've got red cheese and black cheese and red coating and black
50:41
coating. And so it's it's.
50:43
By the way, yeah, artificial colors.
50:45
We use red numbered dye and 40 dye and this and that.
50:49
It's all natural. So like, you know, our our
50:52
truffle mozzarella sticks were on the left.
50:54
Those are real black and white truffles from Italy, and there's
50:59
a yellow hue on the outside of the stick.
51:01
It's a panko we make, and the cheese actually has a little bit
51:04
of like black and yellow speckled to it.
51:07
The Caccio Pepe sticks are black pepper and pecorino.
51:13
They're slightly different color.
51:15
The one in the middle is the weary weary, which is a Jamaican
51:19
beef Patty, golden flaky crust. So it's like a yellow kind of
51:23
Curry crust. On the inside is a Guyanian
51:26
weary, weary pepper fresh mozzarella.
51:30
It that colours come from the pepper has nothing to do with
51:33
any kind of colouring. Those are the hottie.
51:35
They're like, if you want to call them like, you know, we
51:38
can't legally say like Flamin hot Cheeto, but like we make our
51:40
own style of Cheeto and it's almost like a a savoury, spicy,
51:46
dry aged fresh mozzarella on the inside and they snack Cheeto
51:51
outside. The one in the end is called the
51:53
Lucifer. It's 2.9 million Scoville unit,
51:56
black Carolina Reaper, scorpion, Indian blue pepper, 10 different
52:01
Peppers in there with a Sicilian charcoal crust.
52:05
It is ridiculously spicy, disturbing to a point, but it
52:11
has milk, so it kind of cuts out a lot of that.
52:14
You can still eat it, but like it's semi painful in general, a
52:19
lot of fun and like they're a top seller of ours and it's just
52:23
it's it's kind of a little bit of a mind fuck to eat them too,
52:25
which is fun. You know, a lot of customers eat
52:28
them and they're they don't know what to expect.
52:29
And they're black cheese. Like, you know, I still listen,
52:32
close your eyes and just eat it. And they're like, Oh my God,
52:35
it's disturbingly spicy. If you can get over the look of
52:38
the black cheese, you're good. So as we promised in the intro,
52:44
here's how you can get on the wait list. madmutz.com/contact.
52:49
There's a place to join the wait list there and.
52:50
And when did you say it's going to drop?
52:52
Mike I. Think Monday.
52:54
Oh, OK. Next Monday.
52:55
So by the time this episode comes out, you guys will have
52:59
been rolling in this for a few weeks now.
53:01
So that's exciting. Let me shift gears on you, Mike.
53:07
We've talked a lot about the successes along the way, which
53:10
has been a lot of fun, and look forward to following more of
53:13
those. But I'm kind of curious to hear
53:15
maybe about a particular challenge that you've overcome,
53:17
personal or professional, what that was like and some of the
53:20
lessons that you learned coming through it.
53:23
Yeah, I mean, there's a will, there's a way and, you know,
53:28
ABCE, you know, expensing the alphabet.
53:31
But there's also sometimes a cost to that because, you know,
53:33
nothing's guaranteed and there's nothing that is, you know, so
53:39
calculated that you can anticipate COVID or you can
53:41
anticipate, you know, unforeseen events.
53:46
So, you know, that's one of the things that to me, you know,
53:50
being on like the creative type side and really enjoying living
53:54
in that world. There's also the real unit
53:57
economic side or business side that you need to make sure that
54:01
you're living up to your end of the bargain and you're paying
54:03
your bills and you're paying your employees and you're,
54:05
you're able to make money out of these things that you're
54:08
selling. And sometimes there's businesses
54:10
with massive burnt years of burn, like an Amazon, I guess,
54:14
or, you know, those business models are different than what I
54:18
deal with on a daily basis. So, you know, to me, I've always
54:22
be conscious of cash flow versus, you know, really
54:26
investment and, you know, leverage and what I can and
54:30
can't do. And you know, over the years,
54:33
there's some things that I've had to just put on the back
54:35
burner or not fully pursue because, you know, it just it,
54:42
it may, may not work out or it may be too much of A risk for me
54:47
to do. I mean, there are certain stores
54:49
like our Long Branch store that we opened up.
54:52
And I had a different partner at the time that was in the
54:54
nightclub business and he ended up living down towards Long
54:59
Branch and he was familiar with the market and he thought it
55:01
would be a great place to open up.
55:03
Well, for 2 1/2 months out of the year, it's really busy.
55:07
For the rest of the year, it is flat.
55:11
On top of that, Cam fees or HOA fees, you know that we're at
55:16
$2000 elevated to $6000 within four years because they were
55:20
going to be the Boardwalk and who knows?
55:23
I don't know. And to me, I can't anticipate
55:26
that. I think it's going to be a good
55:27
market. I can control my labor in the
55:29
summer and I can keep it stable at 28%.
55:32
I can control my food cost. But ultimately, how much can you
55:36
do and in those period of time and how much are you going to
55:39
eat it or float the rest of the year?
55:41
And unfortunately I took an L there, you know, like you can
55:44
call it a successful store if you put it on paper and looked
55:47
at the numbers, I guess. But you know, ultimately I had
55:50
to make a decision to close that store and and you know, and take
55:53
A and take a loss because I just wasn't willing to continue to
55:58
invest in this two-month out of the year market.
56:02
I had to stay open. You can't close your doors to
56:04
the mall kind of thing. It was a hard lesson for me to
56:08
learn because to me, I always think I could figure it out
56:11
either way, any way. And I can, I can make it happen.
56:14
And ultimately, you realize, like, it's just not worth
56:17
sometimes making it happen. Sometimes the best way to move
56:21
forward is to take a step back. First, Yeah.
56:24
So that, that's hard to do. Yeah, it's hard to do same thing
56:28
with our Margate store. Margate store, we opened up in
56:31
summer 2023. That store was a last minute
56:35
kind of thing. We opened that up and we had a,
56:39
you know, great summer. If you know the restaurant
56:41
business, you know, you start off with inventory and training
56:46
and labor. You don't really ever see those
56:48
dollars until you either liquidate close or you float
56:51
throughout the course of how many years you're in business.
56:55
And then, you know, seven months ish later they decide to do some
57:00
construction in the building. That was going to be for three
57:02
days, then it was three weeks, then it was three months.
57:05
And you know, that's another thing that you, you don't
57:08
anticipate that you don't think that the landlord's going to
57:11
knock down your building and you're going to be out of
57:14
business and you really run the numbers and you're like, wait a
57:16
second. Oh my God.
57:18
Like it was like $80,000 just in labor start up food cost and and
57:24
waste at the end that you can't recoup plus plus plus plus plus
57:28
and like that was another really good lesson for me to learn what
57:33
I could have done different. I don't know.
57:34
I don't think there was anything different other than.
57:37
Sometimes life just throws you curveballs.
57:39
And yeah. Yeah.
57:40
So like, you know, between those things you learn and you figure
57:43
out and you know, you try to take corrected action and not
57:48
make those mistakes again. Yeah, it's not how many times
57:51
you get knocked down, right Mike?
57:52
It's how many times you get back up, dust yourself off and and
57:55
take another swing. You guys have obviously been
57:58
super focused on getting mad mutts off the ground, but are
58:01
there any thoughts to open more physical store locations in the
58:04
future? Yeah.
58:06
You know what, I'm always approached a lot of times by
58:08
like franchise companies and that sort of thing, which I've
58:15
gotten on that road before and I've looked into extensively.
58:18
Ultimately, it is a huge lift and you know, unless you have a
58:23
company or partner that you're working with that does this and
58:25
that's all they do and they're the vested party behind it and
58:29
they, you know, get involved on that level.
58:32
For me, that lift right now is just not something we're focused
58:37
on. So, you know, we get hundreds of
58:39
requests every single week to open up locations, to franchise,
58:43
to partner up licensing and branding deals to a certain
58:47
extent in food halls. And like we're always exploring
58:50
them. We're always open to talk to
58:51
everyone about it. But for right now, you know,
58:54
we're we're kind of exploring options of what we can handle
58:59
and what would make the most sense that wouldn't be the
59:02
craziest heavy lift like me going literally and opening up
59:05
locations and we're working on some things.
59:09
So there are some things in the works on the Tony Maloney side,
59:12
but just not. Not Mike doing the whole thing.
59:18
Exactly. Yeah, which I love to do, by the
59:20
way. I'm down for it.
59:21
I love it. It's like it's, it's like, you
59:23
know, part of my my vernacular at this point, although, you
59:30
know, it's not that scalable and for me to do it.
59:34
So we're always looking for, you know, different deals or getting
59:38
it pushed by. Different partnership, yeah, to
59:40
help move forward. That's the main thing.
59:43
What's, what's the labor market like where you are, Mike?
59:45
Is it still pretty tight? Yeah, I mean, we've had the same
59:49
people on board for many years. So you know, Atlantic City shop,
59:53
we have some employees that have been there for 13 years.
59:56
We've opened for for 15 years. The first two years were weird,
59:59
you know, Bodega and this and that so.
1:00:04
We're lucky in that sense. We've taken, you know, some of
1:00:06
those employees have transitioned over to Mad Mug
1:00:08
side that have been me for those 13 years and they're now heading
1:00:11
up production and compliance, which is super exciting.
1:00:15
It's a new role for a lot of these people, but it's a clean
1:00:18
slate of like a new process of what we're doing and it's not
1:00:22
serving the customer food. It literally is a different kind
1:00:24
of focus, but it's still an exciting, you know, brain power
1:00:32
worthy exercise that they're really enjoying.
1:00:36
So that's amazing. Hoboken, same crew, really has
1:00:38
been there for 10 years. Jersey City, same crew for six
1:00:41
years. So we don't have as much
1:00:43
fluctuation and turnover as maybe other places.
1:00:47
We keep it really small. We have a tight little group in
1:00:49
each of the stores that all really communicate with each
1:00:53
other and talk to each other. And in the summertime, you know,
1:00:57
it's really a lot of seasonal employees.
1:01:00
So we, we balloon from 40 ish employees to maybe over 100
1:01:03
employees in the summertime between the farmers markets, the
1:01:07
food trucks, special events, the Atlantic City shop is crazy in
1:01:12
the summer. And you know, we always seem to
1:01:16
figure it out or get by. So I can't, I can't say it's
1:01:20
rough or it's tough or it's, it's, you know, we've always
1:01:24
been able to get the right people on board and we've
1:01:29
learned that if usually they're not the right person from like
1:01:32
to get, we got to move on because.
1:01:36
But it seems like it would be a pretty fun place to work.
1:01:38
I mean, you guys are taking a very creative approach to
1:01:41
things. You've got kind of an irreverent
1:01:42
sense to you. It's not like super buttoned up.
1:01:45
I mean, business is business. You got to take care of things.
1:01:47
But my, my, my perception from the outside looking in is that
1:01:50
that this would be a a place that people would enjoy coming
1:01:53
to work to. Yeah, I mean, the, the, the
1:01:56
tough thing is on the kitchen side, a lot of the kitchen staff
1:02:01
over the years that have come in seasonally and or just for a
1:02:04
job, they're really well versed in the normal pizzeria or diner
1:02:11
or sub shop. And for us, we don't do that.
1:02:13
So like there are fundamentals like hygiene and compliance and
1:02:20
stuff that is standard everywhere, like first in first
1:02:24
out and checking temperatures or hot holding temperatures, like
1:02:27
all that stuff is the same. Nothing changes.
1:02:30
I'm sanitizing a a slicing machine like in washing dishes,
1:02:35
like none of that changes. Although the way we do things
1:02:39
that would be build our sandwiches and or pizza, the way
1:02:41
we manufacture our ingredients and treat them, that is
1:02:43
different. So a lot of times that's
1:02:46
something that some employees have a hard time getting into
1:02:50
that mode because they're like, I got to make a Taco pizza.
1:02:54
Like like I just want to make cheese pizza and like go home.
1:02:58
And it's like, we're not that place.
1:03:00
I mean, for me, I don't want to be in a robotic state in any
1:03:04
sense at any time. So for me, I don't want to be
1:03:06
that robot that does the same thing over and over again.
1:03:08
I want to mix it up sometimes. I want to have fun with it and I
1:03:11
want to be able to put a spin on it.
1:03:13
So, you know, you do weed out a lot of, you know, people that
1:03:18
otherwise just can't fit that mold and they're so used to
1:03:21
doing that same thing. And for a dishwasher, that's OK
1:03:25
for a pizza maker, for us, it's not same thing encounter, you
1:03:30
know, employees like they have to have a little personality.
1:03:32
They have to be able to articulate the product.
1:03:35
They can't just take an order like a robot.
1:03:37
That just that's not what works in our ecoverse.
1:03:40
So sometimes, you know, if we're seasonal and we're short
1:03:43
staffed, luckily we have some like tech to to rely on and we
1:03:47
have self oriented kiosks. So like sometimes those things
1:03:51
are needed because we just don't have the right staff.
1:03:53
We're enough of the staff to be able to articulate those things.
1:03:57
Yeah, so. Mike, I just have one more
1:03:59
question for you, but before I ask it, I want to do 2 things
1:04:02
for everyone listening today. You like today's content, please
1:04:05
hit the like, share or subscribe button on your favorite podcast
1:04:08
app. I also want to let people know
1:04:10
the best way to get in touch with you.
1:04:11
Like what would that be? And the best way to get in
1:04:14
touch, Mike at tonybaloneys.com or mike@madmutz.com.
1:04:19
You can hit me anytime. Doesn't matter what it's for,
1:04:23
you know? Pretty pretty open and
1:04:24
receptive. Oh yeah, people.
1:04:26
I mean, that's my pizza main class.
1:04:28
I tell everyone, you know, I talk about the, the, the most
1:04:31
disgusting ingredient I ever had on pizza, which is the Icelandic
1:04:36
fermented shark, you know, and, and I tell people, listen, if
1:04:40
you're ever in Iceland, you want me to hook you up with the
1:04:42
people that I went to, to do, you know, to, to get the shark
1:04:46
from, I'll hook it up. If you're ever around the world,
1:04:48
I have pizza friends everywhere or you're at home making pizza.
1:04:51
I'm more than happy to help you if I can.
1:04:53
That's great. Last question for you, Mike.
1:04:55
What do you see being the big changes coming to your industry
1:04:57
in the next couple of years? I mean, AI for sure on a number
1:05:04
of levels, on the marketing level, on the customer
1:05:07
acquisition level, on the quant level, which excites me the
1:05:11
most. I love numbers and I love unit
1:05:14
economics. So, you know, on the quant side
1:05:16
of things. I wish I had a little more time
1:05:19
to spend on that because, you know, I wrote my own numbers, I
1:05:25
wrote my own formulas. I have macro spreadsheets like,
1:05:29
you know, I, I go crazy with that stuff, but ultimately there
1:05:32
are certain things that like I wouldn't even know what to look
1:05:35
for were trends that I wouldn't even see.
1:05:38
And I think that's where probably some form of AI would
1:05:40
be extremely helpful in understanding, you know, make
1:05:44
customers a little better or their propensities or ordering
1:05:47
habits or manufacturing practices and stuff like that.
1:05:51
So that that's change wise. I think that's probably part of
1:05:56
it. And then the other piece of it,
1:05:57
I feel like, you know, we've done, you know, a great job for
1:06:02
a long time, vegetarian, vegan, like it seems to also be
1:06:06
continually on the rise. So for us, and I was vegetarian
1:06:10
for 16 years, vegan for five of them.
1:06:12
Like I'm super sensitive to those things.
1:06:14
I understand, you know, the multitude of reasons why people
1:06:20
are those things and, you know, want to be vegetarian or vegan
1:06:23
or not. So I get it.
1:06:26
And it seems to be, you know, a focus of ours year after year
1:06:30
where people really do want more and better options for those
1:06:34
things. And you guys are going to
1:06:36
continue to offer those. Oh yeah, for sure.
1:06:39
Well, Mike, I want to be the first one to thank you for
1:06:41
sharing both your time and your story with us today.
1:06:44
I really appreciate it. Now I appreciate you having me
1:06:47
on and listen to anything else comes up, any questions you
1:06:50
have, anybody either listening who wants to get in touch with
1:06:52
me, reach out to me anytime, doesn't matter what it is and I
1:06:56
will do my best to get back to you.
1:06:59
Very generous. Well, folks, that's a wrap on
1:07:01
another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:07:03
Thanks for learning with us today.