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The Pizza Party Experience: Mikey Sorboro's Journey Building Late Night Slice | Restaurants & Franchises Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
• 0:08
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 0:11
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:14
  adversity. My name is Anthony Cotespotti,
• 0:16
  and today's guest is Mike Sorboro.
• 0:19
  He is the owner of Mikey's Late Night Slice, a pizza business he
• 0:23
  launched in 2009 that began as a food truck concept and has grown
• 0:28
  into several popular locations around Columbus, OH.
• 0:32
  Mikey's mission is simple, serve delicious New York style pizza
• 0:36
  and create a fun late night experience for everyone.
• 0:40
  Over the years, Mikey's Late Night Slice has been recognized
• 0:43
  for its creative pizzas like the Pizza Dog and Cheesus Crust,
• 0:48
  which had delighted crowds looking for something different.
• 0:51
  He has grown the brand from a single truck to multiple
• 0:54
  thriving spots, all while receiving praise for a lively
• 0:58
  atmosphere and late night vibes. Before launching this venture,
• 1:02
  Mike got his start in entrepreneurship with ECT
• 1:05
  Pedicab in 2008, showing his knack for building unique
• 1:09
  businesses that stand out. He studied at The Ohio State
• 1:13
  University exploring liberal Arts and Sciences before
• 1:16
  pursuing his passion in food and hospitality.
• 1:19
  Now before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
• 1:22
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• 1:49
  All right, back to our guest today, the founder of Mikey's
• 1:53
  Late Night Slice. Mike, I appreciate you making
• 1:55
  the time to Share your story today.
• 1:57
  Excited to be here, thanks for having me.
• 1:59
  All right, so before we get into how you started the pizza
• 2:03
  business, what was ECT pedicab? So environmentally conscious
• 2:09
  transportation, ECT. That was kind of like the first
• 2:12
  thing I ever did as far as I would say like an
• 2:14
  entrepreneurial business. So it would be a loose version
• 2:19
  of a business. But I traveled a lot in my 20s
• 2:22
  and one of the things I I saw while I was kind of traveling
• 2:25
  around was these pedicab, these human powered bike taxis that
• 2:29
  were all over the gas lamp district in San Diego.
• 2:33
  And I knew at the time I was, I was living in Vegas, I was going
• 2:36
  to be moving back to Columbus. And I was like, what am I going
• 2:38
  to do when I get back there? And I thought that these human
• 2:41
  powered taxis would be the perfect thing for my
• 2:44
  neighborhood, which is the Short North District of Columbus just
• 2:48
  north of downtown. So I got obsessed with this idea
• 2:51
  of these pedicabs. I, I dug in, which I, I often
• 2:55
  do. I think this will end up being a
• 2:57
  theme for, you know, kind of my, my, my story here is I just dug
• 3:01
  in, got obsessed with these things, learned everything that
• 3:04
  I could possibly learn about them, ended up buying five of
• 3:07
  them and got back to Columbus. And these things got delivered
• 3:10
  about two weeks later. And that was the start of ECT
• 3:14
  Pedicab. Where do you buy a pedicab from?
• 3:18
  There's actually a lot of, there's a, there's a number,
• 3:21
  probably not a lot, but a number of pedicab manufacturers
• 3:25
  stateside that that create these things.
• 3:27
  And it's a, it's a little, it's a thriving little industry into
• 3:31
  of itself, which is kind of cool.
• 3:33
  So when you say you did a deep dive, you were obviously looking
• 3:35
  at multiple manufacturers, but what were you doing to better
• 3:38
  understand the business opportunity there?
• 3:40
  I mean really just learning. The business of bike taxis and
• 3:46
  by business, I mean it was really pretty simple and I
• 3:48
  would, I think this is still applicable today, even though
• 3:50
  this is, you know, 1415 years ago, 16 something years ago.
• 3:54
  So, you know, for a little business where you ride one of
• 3:58
  the bikes and then rent out the other, you know, few that you
• 4:01
  have, it's a really cool little business, you know, and I would
• 4:04
  say it's enough to, you know, be really independent and make, you
• 4:08
  know, some decent cash. You rent out the sides for
• 4:10
  advertising, you rent the bikes out, just like, you know, a taxi
• 4:13
  company would rent out a taxi. Got a little garage for him, a
• 4:17
  little repair shop. And it's just, it was a really
• 4:20
  cool little business. I'd say it was a a wonderful way
• 4:23
  to kind of dip my toe into what entrepreneurship would end up
• 4:26
  being like. And so you get these five taxis
• 4:30
  delivered. Are you driving or or writing
• 4:33
  propelling one of them? I don't know what the right verb
• 4:35
  is one of them yourself. And then you've got some buddies
• 4:38
  who were signing on to do this too.
• 4:40
  Or how does it work? When you, you absolutely nailed
• 4:43
  it. It was all friends.
• 4:46
  I had my bike and then I had four other bikes that I would
• 4:50
  rent to my friends. And this is this was, you know,
• 4:52
  we were in our mid to late 20s at the time.
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  So the perfect thing for a bunch of nomads to just hop on, make a
• 4:58
  few bucks at the end of the night.
• 5:00
  I mean, we were just like a little biker gang.
• 5:01
  We just happened to have these giant tricycles and we'd hang
• 5:04
  out at night and we'd take people to and from their last
• 5:08
  mile. You know, we, we were never
• 5:09
  really a long form of transportation, but it was a
• 5:13
  really fantastic way to just get from your parking lot to the bar
• 5:16
  or from bar to bar or from bar to home.
• 5:19
  So, you know, in, in the neighborhood, you know, the, you
• 5:21
  hear about the last mile. We were like a really cool, hip
• 5:25
  version of the last mile transportation.
• 5:28
  And so how did you charge? Is it like per ride per?
• 5:30
  Mile, you shouldn't charge per pound because we had a, we had
• 5:34
  a, we had a strict limit of four people in the back of a cab.
• 5:38
  Now that could be 4 ballet dancers or that could be 4
• 5:42
  linebackers. It doesn't matter.
• 5:44
  You can just fit 4 bodies in the back of one of these things.
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  And I tell you one thing, when you're driving these things, you
• 5:49
  know, you think you might be when you're in a car driving
• 5:51
  along the flat, flat area, but when you're in a bike taxi
• 5:55
  carrying four other humans, you know, little hills become very
• 5:58
  apparent when you're driving up and down a road.
• 6:02
  So it was absolutely the best exercise you could have probably
• 6:06
  gotten and still made money. And so you, you just charge per
• 6:09
  ride or per per body or what was that?
• 6:12
  What? Was that, yeah, I guess, I guess
• 6:13
  I, I probably dipped the question there.
• 6:15
  We did per minute. So it was, you know, and a lot
• 6:18
  of times we just estimate like, you know, from here to there
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  that's, you know, about a 6 minute ride, you know, that's
• 6:23
  going to be about, you know, $25, something like that.
• 6:26
  And so, but you're leasing the bike to your friend, so he's
• 6:32
  paying, I don't know, 100 bucks a night for it or something like
• 6:35
  that. And then whatever he makes, he
• 6:36
  keeps. Exactly.
• 6:37
  So on the, you know, weekday nights, early shifts, 10/15/25
• 6:42
  bucks, weekdays, 35 bucks for the night, weekends, you know,
• 6:45
  it gets up to like 50 or 60 bucks depending.
• 6:48
  So we never really tried to, you know, make a ton of money off of
• 6:51
  our other drivers, but just enough to keep the bikes out
• 6:53
  there and to make sure everybody's making money.
• 6:56
  And how long did this last? ECTECT pedicab is still in
• 7:00
  existence actually, so I don't No, I'm not.
• 7:04
  I don't own it anymore. I got, you know, I I had to
• 7:07
  sever ties only because I was just more distracted with pizza.
• 7:11
  But yeah, my buddy ended up buying that and I think it's
• 7:14
  still on the road today. Like you, if you see the white
• 7:17
  bike taxis in the short North, those are how how how those
• 7:21
  things are still roaming around and mechanically sound is a is a
• 7:26
  testament to modern engineering but and modern repair methods.
• 7:30
  But yeah, they're still out there.
• 7:32
  OK, so you got distracted with pizza.
• 7:34
  How did this come about? How did the idea for the pizza?
• 7:36
  So by being on those bike taxis at the end of the night, like I
• 7:40
  said, you're taking a lot of, you know, people from the bar to
• 7:43
  home. And at 2:30 in the morning,
• 7:45
  you're hearing a lot of like, all right, hey, where's the
• 7:47
  pizza by the slice of this neighborhood?
• 7:48
  Where's our, you know, where's our late night food?
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  And I kept hearing that so much by being on the back of the
• 7:54
  pedicab or be by by driving all these people home.
• 7:57
  I started to think like, I'm like, all right, well, where is
• 7:59
  the pizza by the slice? You know, we had plenty of euro
• 8:02
  carts, plenty of sausage options.
• 8:04
  You know, there was there was a lot of street meat, but there
• 8:07
  wasn't really a place for late night pizza.
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  And this was at the time an emerging busy bar district.
• 8:13
  So that's where the inspiration came from.
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  It was literally just of of hearing it by, you know, being
• 8:19
  being in that late night spot and realizing that there was
• 8:22
  probably a need for this. So that kind of became my
• 8:27
  mission. Like let's try this pizza thing.
• 8:29
  And So what was the first step? Did you like buy a food cart and
• 8:34
  start slinging up some pizzas? Or, you know, it's funny, I
• 8:37
  would, it's, it's almost the exact opposite of anything that
• 8:40
  you could probably imagine if I were to be like write, write a
• 8:43
  probable story down and we'd just like flip it upside down
• 8:46
  and you'd be like, all right, start, let's start there.
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  So we had a, there was a, there was a little food shack and it
• 8:52
  was directly down from my apartment.
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  There was a, a big parking lot directly downstairs from where I
• 8:57
  was living. And it had, and it, I guess back
• 8:59
  in the 80s, it used to be a like a office for a used car lot that
• 9:05
  operated there back in the 70s and 80s.
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  So there was this little lean to and it was about a 7 foot by 20
• 9:11
  foot shack that used to operate as the office for that.
• 9:15
  So I asked my landlord like hey, do you mind if I rent this
• 9:18
  thing? And he's like, it was a storage
• 9:19
  shed at the time. And he's like, what do you want
• 9:22
  it for? And I'm like, I want to try this
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  pizza thing. He thought it was crazy.
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  He's like, go ahead, you got to clean it out and fix it up
• 9:28
  yourself. It's, you know, 250 bucks a
• 9:30
  month or something like that. So I, I did, I got in there and
• 9:34
  I started hauling out all this old like car lot stuff that was
• 9:38
  still lodged in there from, you know, just 30 years ago.
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  It hadn't been touched since. And I ended up doing all the,
• 9:44
  the, the painting and the plumbing and the electric.
• 9:46
  Anything I thought that I could do to get this little 140 square
• 9:50
  foot shack ready to be a pizza shop.
• 9:54
  And I even, you know, one of the first things called the health
• 9:55
  department in and I was like, I want to make this a pizza shop.
• 9:58
  And they're like, how? But they said if you have, if
• 10:02
  you have this sink and you have this other sink and you have,
• 10:04
  you know, the walls are cleanable and the floor is good.
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  They gave me all this little checklist of things that it
• 10:10
  needed to be to be a restaurant. And so that's what I did.
• 10:13
  I just went down that checklist and made sure that, you know,
• 10:16
  this place could technically be a kitchen.
• 10:19
  And I would ride the bike taxi for a week or two.
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  And at the end of those week or two, I'd have a, you know, $1000
• 10:26
  saved up from pedicabbing. And I'd go on the auction site
• 10:29
  that I found or Craigslist, and I'd find the cheapest piece of
• 10:33
  restaurant equipment I could possibly find that I thought I
• 10:37
  needed for a pizza shop. And then I'd ride the bicycle.
• 10:40
  And the, I always say I'd ride my giant tricycle for, for
• 10:44
  another week or two and have, you know, 5 or 600 bucks saved
• 10:47
  up. And I'd get on there and buy
• 10:48
  another, you know, used oven or a used refrigerator.
• 10:51
  Or I mean, really, I'd just piece this thing together as
• 10:55
  much as I could. The funny thing is, is I'd never
• 10:58
  really worked in a restaurant. I had done a lot of front of
• 11:01
  house stuff, serving tables, stuff like that throughout my
• 11:03
  20s. But I never really worked in a
• 11:05
  restaurant. I certainly never worked in a
• 11:06
  pizza restaurant. And I had no idea how to make
• 11:09
  pizza or I didn't have a recipe for pizza like, you know,
• 11:12
  grandma's recipe that I have to get to the people.
• 11:15
  In fact, at some point we were like, all right, hey, there's a
• 11:18
  pizza shop ready to go. Who knows how to make pizza
• 11:21
  here. That's why I say it was kind of
• 11:23
  done in reverse because, you know, we literally, I, I worked
• 11:27
  for months to set up a pizza shop and then we had a pizza
• 11:31
  shop set up and then it was like, all right, now we need a
• 11:34
  pizza recipe. This.
• 11:36
  Is funny because right there is this theme of sort of you like
• 11:38
  doing this deep dive into like, OK, like I called the health
• 11:41
  department and like, you know, I, I came up with this checklist
• 11:45
  of things to do, but somehow your To Do List part of it got
• 11:49
  inverted. And so down at the bottom of
• 11:53
  that list was like, OK, let's figure out how to make pizza.
• 11:55
  Yeah. Oh yeah, exactly.
• 11:57
  And we didn't even for the first little while we were open, I
• 12:00
  would say the first like 2 months, we never even made our
• 12:04
  own pizza. We would buy pizza from other
• 12:07
  pizza shops and we would just like, essentially we were buying
• 12:12
  like ready to go pizza and just like heating it up and selling
• 12:15
  it. And if that, you know, at one
• 12:17
  point the pizza shop we were kind of partnered with, they're
• 12:19
  like, all right, listen, we, you know, we got our own pizza shop
• 12:21
  to deal with. Go, you know, buzz off, find
• 12:23
  somebody else. All right.
• 12:24
  And I had no idea that food service companies existed like
• 12:27
  the GF s s and the Cisco's and the RDPSI had I had no idea
• 12:31
  those things existed. So I started buying like raw
• 12:34
  ingredients from Trader Joe's for a little while and we I
• 12:36
  literally like brown grocery bags of like they're dough balls
• 12:40
  that you can still buy to this day.
• 12:41
  You know, when they started making those and then at some
• 12:46
  point I found out about, like, you know, the GFS of the world
• 12:51
  and ended up partnering with them.
• 12:52
  But yeah, for the first little while, we were just cooking
• 12:55
  other people's pizza, selling it out, and we were just getting to
• 12:58
  capacity of all these things until people were like, yeah, go
• 13:02
  get a food service partnership and like, actually order raw
• 13:06
  ingredients. And so and So what was the, the
• 13:10
  reception like on the the consumer side in the early days?
• 13:15
  Was it just like, hey, you're in the right place and so you put a
• 13:18
  sign up and people just showed up?
• 13:20
  Or how did you sort of promote yourself?
• 13:22
  Yeah, and that's, that's, that's the the whole other side of this
• 13:25
  thing is that we didn't just take this crappy little shack
• 13:28
  and start slinging slices out of it.
• 13:32
  Like we did some really cool stuff back in the day that I
• 13:34
  think, you know, really set us apart and continues to set us
• 13:38
  apart to this day, or at least in the the spirit of those old
• 13:42
  days of the shack. And like, one thing we did, we
• 13:45
  had, we were, I think we were actually one of the first people
• 13:48
  to hang big patio lights, like from our little shack out to
• 13:51
  this like chain link fence. And it just created this really
• 13:54
  like inviting atmosphere. Also, one of the, the big things
• 13:57
  that we did against the, the brick wall that was across the
• 14:00
  parking lot from us, for some reason, it was just painted this
• 14:03
  big white square that was painted.
• 14:04
  It was probably the old sign or something, but we had this giant
• 14:07
  white square. And so I was like, that looks
• 14:09
  like a movie screen. So I bought a projector and we'd
• 14:12
  project movies on that screen every night.
• 14:16
  And, and we started doing like movie nights, like we play like
• 14:18
  all three naked guns, you know, in one night.
• 14:21
  And we'd, you know, get on social media and be like, Hey,
• 14:23
  we're showing the Naked Gun trilogy, you know, come on out
• 14:26
  and and watch this or we'd have Disney night or, you know, teen
• 14:30
  movie night, stuff like that. So it was a little bit of just
• 14:33
  this like quirky little pizza shop that did this quirky little
• 14:36
  stuff. We had a lot of like signs on
• 14:38
  the building that were just funny.
• 14:42
  My background when I was serving tables was at like Dixter Last
• 14:46
  Resort. I'd worked in a number of those
• 14:47
  around the country so. Service that's sort of played
• 14:50
  over the top. Exactly.
• 14:51
  Just, you know, kind of like sassy service.
• 14:53
  So you know, and I I live in Key West a little in my 20s as well.
• 14:58
  So I mean, just having those like it was those shacks with a
• 15:02
  little bit of personality is what I really intended to make
• 15:05
  this thing. It was never necessarily about
• 15:07
  pizza. It was about the spirit of this
• 15:09
  little shack and the personality of it that really I think drew
• 15:13
  people to the uniqueness of it. Because it really at some point,
• 15:17
  and we didn't maybe know this at the time, but we are kind of
• 15:20
  creating a little bit of pop culture in this dark little
• 15:23
  corner of the shore N that I think still has a little bit of,
• 15:28
  you know, there. You can still, it still
• 15:29
  resonates today. You know, we still try to be not
• 15:32
  only a pizza shop, but we try to be just a really cool spot to
• 15:35
  come out and take people to and to hang out at.
• 15:37
  And we happen to sell pizza. So I want to ask about the
• 15:41
  licensing of showing those movies.
• 15:43
  At what point did somebody let you know that that was an issue?
• 15:47
  I'll tell you an even funnier story when it comes to
• 15:49
  licensing. So around July 4th weekend of
• 15:51
  2009, you know, I had this pizza shop ready to go and I had spent
• 15:57
  every dollar I had getting this thing ready to sell pizza and I
• 16:01
  had rent due. You know, it was, it was July
• 16:03
  4th weekend And I, you know, I think I had, you know, rent at
• 16:06
  the time. And I called the health
• 16:08
  department up and I was like, all right, we're ready to go.
• 16:10
  I need you guys to come in, inspect this thing And I got to
• 16:13
  sell pizza And they're like, all right, well, we're really busy
• 16:17
  right now and it's going to be about 5 to 6 weeks because we're
• 16:20
  backed up. And I was like, all right, put
• 16:25
  us down and I hung up the phone and we opened quietly that
• 16:27
  night. It was like 5 or 6 weeks of late
• 16:32
  night slices existence. You know, we, we were unlicensed
• 16:35
  just because I didn't have an option like that wasn't even,
• 16:38
  that wasn't even a possibility to wait 5 or 6 more weeks.
• 16:40
  Like I had sunk everything. And, and here's by by by sunk
• 16:44
  everything, we're talking like 5 or 6, maybe $7000.
• 16:48
  Like in the grand scheme of things, in the grand scheme of
• 16:50
  starting a business, practically nothing.
• 16:53
  But when you're, you know, a 20 some year old who's just trying
• 16:57
  something out, that was, you know, that that was that was
• 17:00
  blood money that I needed that so were you.
• 17:04
  Nervous at all that you were going to get caught during those
• 17:06
  five or six weeks. You know, I think the
• 17:08
  invincibility of just, you know, being that age and having
• 17:12
  nothing to lose made me not really care all that much.
• 17:16
  And of course, if I would have, we would have dealt with it and
• 17:19
  we would have, yeah, we would have made something work.
• 17:21
  It wouldn't have, it wouldn't have stopped any of the momentum
• 17:23
  or or any of the enthusiasm. But yeah, I would have worked
• 17:27
  through it. It would have been fine.
• 17:28
  But yeah, it was. We opened.
• 17:30
  I say we opened. We opened unofficially July 4th
• 17:34
  weekend of 2009 and we officially opened about six
• 17:37
  weeks later. So if anybody from the health
• 17:40
  department is listening, I'm sure that they've long since
• 17:42
  moved on from their. Position yeah, I I am
• 17:44
  comfortable telling the story at this point because it's it's
• 17:47
  just a fun. Anecdotation statute of
• 17:49
  limitations are. Running beyond.
• 17:51
  And so did anything ever happen with you guys showing the movies
• 17:54
  or does that still happen till today?
• 17:56
  No, we, we don't, we don't do that anymore because, you know,
• 17:59
  we have, we have things to lose now.
• 18:01
  Yeah. It's funny when you're, you
• 18:03
  know, when you have nothing to lose.
• 18:05
  Like things you're like. I'll deal with that.
• 18:07
  What are they? What are they gonna do?
• 18:08
  Yeah. What are they going to take for
• 18:09
  me? Yeah.
• 18:10
  So at what point did you realize we've got something here?
• 18:14
  You know, I, I, I can, I can tell you almost with like
• 18:18
  pinpoint precision. And this is before we opened,
• 18:21
  when I was building this thing, I used to drive up and down the
• 18:23
  shore north and you know, I'd always see Jenny's, the first
• 18:27
  Jenny's location, I guess the second one they did outside the
• 18:29
  north market. Is it a popular?
• 18:31
  Ice cream shop where they serve very creative flavors, correct?
• 18:35
  Jenny's splendid ice creams. They're coast to coast at this
• 18:38
  point and that their, their second shot, they'd have a line,
• 18:41
  you know, almost at any hour they were open a line like just
• 18:43
  wrapped out the door down the block.
• 18:46
  And I always thought like, if I ever had a business that had a
• 18:49
  line out the door and down the block, I'm doing something
• 18:52
  right. And it, it, it didn't take us
• 18:54
  too long to start getting lines out the door and down the block.
• 18:59
  And it wasn't just because pizza, I mean pizza by the slice
• 19:02
  in a busy bar district. Is it all that earth shattering?
• 19:07
  It's not a ground breaking concept, but when you combine
• 19:09
  the things that we were doing with it, the way we made that
• 19:13
  shack look and call it luck, call it first of the draw or
• 19:17
  whatever. But you know, something about
• 19:19
  that little shop had a little spark of magic and people just
• 19:23
  latched onto it because I think it it really started to like it.
• 19:28
  It became a destination. And I think that was a fun thing
• 19:31
  about it. It, it, it, it kind of defined
• 19:33
  what our little funky neighborhood, not by itself, but
• 19:37
  it added to what that neighborhood was becoming.
• 19:39
  And I think that's the that's the cool thing about that shack
• 19:42
  at the time. It's just, you know, people
• 19:44
  wanted something unique in that kind of played on their
• 19:48
  personalities. They were proud to show it off.
• 19:50
  They were proud to bring people to it.
• 19:52
  They're proud to say like, you know, this, this is what this
• 19:56
  neighborhood is all about. So yeah, it was, it was, it was
• 19:59
  fun to, you know, kind of be a part of that spark.
• 20:02
  How did or how has it maybe it continues to this day.
• 20:07
  The quality, the taste, the the consistency of the pizza
• 20:11
  evolved. You started out selling somebody
• 20:13
  else's pizza and you migrated to buying stuff from Trader Joe's
• 20:16
  and you found Gordon's and, and so like how?
• 20:20
  Like what have been the steps in the evolutions of the product
• 20:22
  along the way? Sure, sure.
• 20:24
  You know, the, I would say a number of the things that we did
• 20:29
  back in the day are, are still the way we do things today.
• 20:32
  Of course there's been efficiencies.
• 20:34
  We, you know, have created, we've spent 15 years creating
• 20:38
  systems and processes and efficiencies around this thing.
• 20:42
  And I wouldn't say we've done it quickly because I, I will
• 20:45
  certainly say a lesson about my, my business along the way is
• 20:49
  doing it slow, hard and expensive.
• 20:53
  If I write a book, it'll be called Slow, Hard and expensive,
• 20:55
  the late night Slicer. But yeah, the pizza itself today
• 20:59
  is just it's it's, it's very similar to the way it was back
• 21:02
  then. You know, maybe some of the
• 21:05
  ingredients have changed ever so slightly to reflect just better
• 21:09
  and bigger buying power and just things that we had to do to be
• 21:13
  able to scale. But the flavor profile is pretty
• 21:16
  damn close to what you'd get if you were to taste that pizza
• 21:19
  from that long ago. And so at what point did you
• 21:23
  decide, OK, this is going really well, we're going to expand
• 21:26
  beyond this one little shack in a old used car lot?
• 21:30
  Yeah. So number 2 was the pizza truck.
• 21:33
  So it's, it's pretty common to think that we started off as a
• 21:35
  pizza truck, but we really started off as in a pizza truck
• 21:38
  without wheels because it was about the same size.
• 21:40
  It just happened to be against the building and be its own
• 21:43
  thing. And does that original location
• 21:45
  still exist? So yes and no.
• 21:48
  So there is still a pizza trailer in that parking lot to
• 21:52
  this day. That's our Short North location
• 21:55
  connected to Odd Fellows Liquor Bar.
• 21:56
  Although the original shack that used to house the original late
• 22:00
  night slice that has been gone for about 10 years give or take
• 22:03
  because it it got to the end of its useful life.
• 22:05
  Let's just say it was never. Duct tape finally fell apart.
• 22:08
  It was so bad, like it was a it was a danger to be in.
• 22:12
  By the time we tore that thing down, it had it had got to the
• 22:15
  end of its useful life for sure. So you expanded into a pizza
• 22:18
  truck? And where does the pizza truck
• 22:20
  park itself then? Yep.
• 22:21
  So the pizza truck came about because we just, you know, we
• 22:24
  weren't trying to get in and this was, you know, later in the
• 22:26
  year in 2009, I would say this was before there was a, you
• 22:31
  know, pizza truck rage that kind of went on, you know, the the
• 22:34
  whole gourmet pizza truck movement.
• 22:37
  That's this was before that. We just wanted something that we
• 22:40
  could take to the festivals and to, you know, private parties
• 22:45
  and stuff like that. And the idea of a food truck
• 22:48
  made a lot of sense to us. We ended up finding one about an
• 22:51
  hour South of Columbus. And it was a old box truck that
• 22:55
  happened to have a pizza oven already in it.
• 22:56
  Like it was literally made for what we were doing and asked my
• 23:00
  buddy if he had wanted to get in on this business with me.
• 23:04
  And that's how my partner, Bryce got involved in the business.
• 23:06
  He ended up buying the food truck and entered in the
• 23:09
  business. He's our CEO at this point.
• 23:11
  OK. So and was it instant success
• 23:15
  for the truck as well or? Yeah, yeah, I know what we one
• 23:19
  thing I I will, I will talk anyone out of buying a food
• 23:22
  truck anyway. But the one thing I will say
• 23:26
  about having a food truck is it's a wonderful way to take
• 23:29
  your brand to the people, to big groups of people.
• 23:33
  So the pizza truck for us was an amazing way to build our brand.
• 23:38
  And we didn't really realize we had we had we went into that,
• 23:41
  you know, unintentionally, we got this truck just to see if we
• 23:44
  could take, you know, pizza to big groups of people.
• 23:47
  And we ended up realizing that this was the best form of
• 23:49
  marketing that we probably could have done because it took the
• 23:52
  brand to people, you know, that that, you know, people in Dublin
• 23:56
  that we're going to come to the Short North for whatever reason,
• 23:58
  or people that would only come to comp Fest for whatever
• 24:01
  reason, or people that went to Buckeye games, but would have
• 24:03
  never, you know, seen our brand in the short North.
• 24:05
  So, you know, the the brand became mobile and that was one
• 24:10
  of, I think one of the absolute keys to success for Late Night
• 24:13
  Slice in those early days. So why would you talk somebody
• 24:16
  out of a food truck? Food trucks are oh God, food
• 24:18
  trucks are so hard. They're so hard.
• 24:21
  I mean, there's, there's, there's a reason that it's an
• 24:23
  easy point of entry. And that's the good thing about
• 24:26
  food trucks is it's a low cost, low cost, low risk entry into
• 24:32
  food, food service to starting your own, you know, restaurant.
• 24:36
  But if you look at what a food truck is, you know, I mean, you
• 24:39
  have all the problems of a normal restaurant.
• 24:42
  You have, you know, the food issues, you have staffing, you
• 24:46
  know, you know, team issues and you have all of the problems of
• 24:50
  a 20 year old step van. So like, not only do you have
• 24:55
  all the problems of a restaurant, you have all the
• 24:57
  problems of an old car. So I had this joke that like not
• 25:00
  there hasn't been anyone in Columbus that hasn't seen a late
• 25:03
  night slice food truck broken down on the side of the highway
• 25:06
  trying its hardest to get to its event, because that's what food
• 25:10
  trucks do. They just unless you have, you
• 25:12
  know, 250 to 400 grand to spend on a brand new food truck,
• 25:17
  you're getting a 20 or 30 year old step van that's been
• 25:20
  modified to be a food truck. And those just come with
• 25:23
  inherent problems. I mean, it's just the nature of
• 25:26
  the beast. So food trucks are just problem
• 25:30
  management. And when it gets cold out, you
• 25:34
  know, there's an eighth inch of aluminum between you and you
• 25:38
  know, 20°. So inherently it's a little bit
• 25:40
  seasonal. Not a lot of people are out
• 25:42
  walking when it's cold. So there's a seasonality aspect
• 25:46
  to it as well. So it's a, it's a rough
• 25:48
  business. You know, it's, it's a, anybody
• 25:51
  in the food truck business that's been in it for a minute
• 25:53
  will tell you how damn hard it is.
• 25:54
  So it was good for you guys from a branding marketing
• 25:57
  perspective, getting your brand out to more people in the city
• 26:00
  of Columbus. Was this sort of a a pathway
• 26:04
  then to you guys opening up a first sort of traditional
• 26:08
  physical location? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 26:12
  You know, if you, I would say the third thing we did was
• 26:15
  Woodlands Backyard. I'm sorry, Woodlands Tavern.
• 26:18
  So they had a kitchen that was, you know, built into their bar
• 26:22
  and they, it was dark. I had some buddies in there.
• 26:25
  They looked over and they're like, hey, why is that kitchen
• 26:27
  dark? And the bartender told them
• 26:28
  they're like, yeah, our owners don't want to deal with the
• 26:30
  kitchen. So they, they called me right
• 26:32
  then and there and they're like, hey, we're at this bar.
• 26:33
  It has a, you know, a kitchen that the owners aren't using.
• 26:36
  You should talk to them. And that was our, you know, our
• 26:39
  first, I would say first brick and mortar, although we were in
• 26:42
  somebody else's house. That was our first, like that
• 26:46
  was our first actual spot, so. How did that proceed?
• 26:51
  Good success right from the start or?
• 26:53
  That was a good visibility. Yeah.
• 26:55
  That relationship is fantastic. You know, that that got us in
• 26:58
  front of a lot of people and me and that those bar owners, you
• 27:02
  know, we really, they opened about a year before we did.
• 27:05
  And you know, we've, they're still dear friends to this day.
• 27:09
  We really grew up together. And so it was really nice to
• 27:12
  have, you know, somebody willing to not only take a chance on us,
• 27:16
  but be patient while we grew and, you know, let us kind of
• 27:19
  try some things with our brand in their house.
• 27:21
  And it's been a it was a fantastic way to build brand.
• 27:25
  And so what's the state of the brand today?
• 27:28
  How many locations? How many employees kind of paint
• 27:30
  a picture for? Us, yeah.
• 27:31
  So late night slice to this day and we have 9 locations, one out
• 27:35
  of Columbus and Cincinnati. We have a partnership with the
• 27:39
  Hollywood Casino, bunch of brick and mortars of our own.
• 27:45
  We still have the trailer down there.
• 27:50
  We, we employ 220 or so team members at this point and we
• 27:57
  just opened three locations at the end of last year 2024.
• 28:00
  So the last quarter, we did a partnership with Penn's
• 28:04
  mechanical company to open 2 locations in in their spots.
• 28:07
  Small tent pin bowling? Yep.
• 28:09
  Correct. Yep, Yep.
• 28:11
  Really large format anchor tenants of large developments.
• 28:14
  So they had a hot dog concept that they didn't want to spend
• 28:18
  any more time on. So we took over those hot dog
• 28:20
  shops and those have been absolute slam dunk locations for
• 28:23
  us. And then we just recently opened
• 28:25
  on Ohio State campus as well. And all three of those locations
• 28:29
  are going great. Essentially, those three
• 28:30
  locations are going to practically double the size
• 28:33
  revenue wise of the business. So yeah, it's been a busy year.
• 28:38
  We've become really laser focused on, you know, what we
• 28:41
  want to do, where we want to go, how we want to do it.
• 28:45
  So we're we're excited, man. It's a, It's a It's a good time
• 28:47
  for late night slice. Three locations just in the last
• 28:52
  quarter of 2024 that for a company your size that's, that's
• 28:57
  a lot of growth all at once. Hell of a Sprint.
• 29:00
  It was an incredible Sprint for us.
• 29:03
  But I think it goes to show you, I mean, I think it's common to
• 29:05
  say in a in a growth spurt like that that, you know, the wheels
• 29:08
  got shaky, but they never came off.
• 29:11
  And at this point, you know, we had such a great team that the
• 29:14
  wheels never really even got shaky.
• 29:15
  It's not saying we were without, you know, incident or hardship
• 29:18
  or we had, you know, our with our struggles for sure.
• 29:21
  But you know, as far as opening 3 locations in as many months
• 29:24
  goes, it was really smooth. So, you know, we, we realized
• 29:29
  that, you know, we got AI always use this metaphor that we have a
• 29:32
  really good car, we have a really good pit crew and we want
• 29:35
  to drive fast. So we just got to make sure
• 29:37
  we're on the right Rd. in the future.
• 29:38
  And that's that's what we're really focused on right now.
• 29:41
  So what does the future look like?
• 29:44
  Future looks like more more locations in and out of
• 29:47
  Columbus. So we think there's still room
• 29:49
  to grow in Columbus, but really for the brand to be able to, you
• 29:53
  know, stand up as high as we wanted to, we've got to have
• 29:56
  proof outside of Columbus. Unfortunately, our Cincinnati
• 30:00
  spot, you know, that that was kind of a victim of, I'm going
• 30:03
  to use that say a victim of COVID.
• 30:06
  The, the area that we opened up in wasn't progressing as as fast
• 30:11
  as we thought it was going to. So I don't think that's our best
• 30:13
  foot forward as far as an out of market location.
• 30:16
  It is still in Ohio. But yeah, I'd say that's the
• 30:18
  future right now is, is, is looking for a, you know, outside
• 30:22
  of Columbus location or two or three and making sure this brand
• 30:26
  can stand on its own without being as, as recognized as they
• 30:31
  are in Columbus. Are these going to be corporate
• 30:34
  owned locations? Are you guys exploring the
• 30:36
  possibility of franchising? Yeah, all corporate end, Yeah,
• 30:39
  we haven't really done any franchising and we don't really
• 30:41
  have much interest in it. And what particular challenges
• 30:46
  do you foresee going into new markets where exactly like you
• 30:49
  said, maybe you don't have the same name recognition that you
• 30:52
  do here? Sure.
• 30:53
  You know, I mean, we have a we're, we're we're very, very
• 30:57
  lucky to have as much brand equity as we do in, in Columbus.
• 31:00
  That's a, it's a really awesome thing to be, you know, to be
• 31:04
  known for what we do in the in this market.
• 31:06
  So I think what we really got to see is, you know, how far is
• 31:09
  that brand equity stretch, You know, will that, do we have
• 31:13
  recognition in Cleveland? Do we have recognition in
• 31:15
  Dayton? I think the answer is yes.
• 31:17
  And we just got to make sure that, you know, in a, in a, in
• 31:20
  an area or a market where we have less brand recognition and
• 31:23
  less brand equity that, you know, we're still providing a
• 31:26
  really good service, a really good product and a really good
• 31:28
  difference in a arguably A crowded market.
• 31:31
  You know, no matter where you go, pizza's always a crowded
• 31:33
  market. Do you guys feel like you're
• 31:36
  ready? Are there announcements coming
• 31:39
  or are you still catching your breath from that growth curve of
• 31:42
  the end of last year? Yeah.
• 31:44
  I mean both, I mean, I would say there's not an announcement
• 31:46
  ready, but we're looking really, really hard at outside markets
• 31:49
  right now. So it's a combination of really
• 31:51
  finding the exact spot and making sure that we don't mess
• 31:54
  it up. So we're certainly, you know,
• 31:57
  this is one of those things we'd rather do it right than do it
• 31:59
  fast. And it's taken us this long to
• 32:01
  get this far. So, you know, we're not in a
• 32:03
  hurry, But at the same time, you know, we, we want to keep this
• 32:06
  momentum. We want to keep this enthusiasm
• 32:08
  going because it's, it's fun, you know, and, and we found that
• 32:11
  we have the team that is chomping at the bit to keep this
• 32:15
  kind of momentum going. And that's that's that's what
• 32:18
  pushes us is the team's ready and the team's excited.
• 32:21
  So you've kind of touched a little bit on what the vibe of
• 32:24
  the brand is, kind of paint a little bit more of a picture for
• 32:28
  us on what the experience is like going to the the
• 32:31
  restaurants. You know, you've got these
• 32:34
  unconventional pizzas like Cheezus crust and Pizza Dog
• 32:38
  DAWG. Like, yeah, kind of walk us
• 32:42
  through how all this connects. Sure.
• 32:44
  So in, you know, in the early days and I think the locations
• 32:46
  that we talked about up to this point, we're all kind of like an
• 32:50
  old style of our locations. You know, they were a walk up
• 32:53
  shack, a concession stand, really a pizza truck, a food
• 32:57
  truck. And you know, the third thing we
• 32:59
  did was a bar kitchen, you know, so really just a counter that
• 33:02
  you can walk up to. You know, it took us probably
• 33:06
  five to seven years to get our first brick and mortar that was
• 33:10
  just ours. And I think one of the hardest
• 33:12
  things when you're, you know, your entire experience, your
• 33:16
  customer facing experience to this point was standing in line
• 33:20
  outside and waiting for a slice of pizza.
• 33:23
  Our challenge there was how does that convey to an in shop
• 33:27
  experience where people actually walk in a door?
• 33:30
  And that was one of the most fun things for me, being kind of the
• 33:34
  experienced guy on the team was, you know, how do we take that
• 33:38
  that experience of people standing outside in a line and
• 33:42
  make that, you know, a fun and engaging indoor brick and mortar
• 33:46
  experience? So once we opened our 4th Street
• 33:49
  restaurant, which was our first real, you know, brick and mortar
• 33:52
  space, that was the big challenge there.
• 33:54
  Like, how do you, you know, how do you teach people that this
• 33:57
  isn't just, you know, standing outside and waiting for, you
• 34:00
  know, a slice of pizza at a concession stand?
• 34:01
  You know, we have a bar now. We have, you know, a lime queue.
• 34:05
  We have, you know, things on the wall.
• 34:07
  We have entertainment on the TV's.
• 34:10
  So I think to answer the question, like the, the, the,
• 34:13
  the vibe of late night slice is pizza party.
• 34:17
  And that's how it's always been. Everybody loves a pizza party,
• 34:19
  and that's what we try to do. And that's where we try to
• 34:21
  compete, which is, I think a lot different than, you know, most
• 34:25
  people in the pizza realm try to do when you're in pizza.
• 34:32
  A lot of people compete on the traditional forms of pizza.
• 34:36
  They know that we have the freshest ingredients, we have
• 34:38
  the best tasting pizza, we have the cheapest pizza.
• 34:42
  So you have people competing on quality, you have people
• 34:45
  competing on price, you have people competing on enthusiasm
• 34:50
  like they had just won a big award or you know, the, the, the
• 34:54
  pizza guy came to their place and gave them a big score.
• 34:56
  You know, they compete on, on that kind of momentum.
• 34:59
  And there's probably like 4 to 5 other ways that traditional
• 35:02
  pizza shops compete. And technology, that's another
• 35:06
  one. We have the best app think to
• 35:07
  not our Domino's. You can compete on the style of
• 35:11
  pizza. You have, you know, edge to edge
• 35:13
  toppings, you have deep dish, you have, you know, cheese crust
• 35:18
  style stuffed crust. You can compete on innovation,
• 35:21
  stuff like that. So where we choose to compete is
• 35:24
  completely different. We choose to compete on
• 35:25
  experience. So you know, we take the world's
• 35:28
  favorite thing, which is pizza. We take the world's second
• 35:31
  favorite thing, which is booze. And then we take everything
• 35:35
  around that, from our social media, to our in shop
• 35:37
  experience, to the stuff we play on TV's, to what we have our
• 35:41
  team members wear, how they talk, our menu design, our
• 35:43
  interior design. We take every aspect of the
• 35:48
  world's two favorite things and we make those things fucking
• 35:51
  awesome. So that's what we've really
• 35:55
  focused on doing, and I think that's what makes us really
• 35:57
  stand out in a arguably crowded market is that we don't really
• 36:02
  compete on pizza. In fact, if a pizza play is
• 36:05
  like, you know, Donato, Domino's or Donatos or Papa John's opened
• 36:08
  up next to us, I wouldn't consider that competition
• 36:11
  because, you know, yeah, we happen to sell pizza.
• 36:13
  We happen to sell the same thing.
• 36:15
  But people don't come to us necessarily for pizza.
• 36:18
  They come to us for everything, the fun atmosphere that we have,
• 36:21
  that we've designed around pizza.
• 36:23
  Caveat to that, we have one best pizza that's tasting pizza in
• 36:27
  Columbus for about 8-9 years now, first place in the 614.
• 36:32
  So we actually do have good pizza.
• 36:34
  We just don't choose to make that, you know, say we're the
• 36:36
  freshest and the best and the cheapest or the whatever.
• 36:38
  You know, we really compete on everything around the world's
• 36:41
  two favorite things. That's fascinating because it,
• 36:43
  if anybody's listening to that first part of your story about
• 36:46
  here's what we compete on, we're probably secretly thinking like,
• 36:50
  OK, like that's all great, Mike, but that sounds like you're
• 36:54
  covering up for mediocre pizza, but it's not.
• 36:59
  I mean, you've won best pizza in Columbus for eight or nine years
• 37:02
  in a row. And so I don't know, it's just
• 37:05
  sort of credence to what you were saying of, hey, we don't,
• 37:08
  that's not what we're promoting. We're what the brand is really
• 37:11
  built on is this whole experiential thing.
• 37:14
  And, and the fact that you led with that in your description
• 37:17
  and it wasn't until the end where you said, oh, by the way,
• 37:20
  yeah, we've got the best pizza in town.
• 37:21
  And you know, here's the award to prove it.
• 37:23
  I think speaks to exactly what it is you guys are trying to
• 37:26
  accomplish. Yeah, I mean, you ask any,
• 37:30
  anybody within my earshot right now, what is your favorite
• 37:33
  pizza? You're going to get 150
• 37:35
  different answers. And they're all going to be, for
• 37:38
  the most part, based on the pizza that they grew up with and
• 37:42
  wherever they grew up at. You know, you always have this
• 37:44
  affinity to the style. And it could be the best or the
• 37:47
  worst pizza, and it probably is to somebody else the best or the
• 37:50
  worst pizza. But pizza's such a personal
• 37:54
  thing to people. It's such a, it's such a private
• 37:56
  thing that you you practically can't compete on.
• 38:01
  And there are groups that try to talk about the best pizza.
• 38:05
  There is no such thing as the best pizza because it's such a
• 38:09
  personal thing to people. And like, do you want to talk
• 38:12
  the best Chicago deep dish? Do you want to talk the best New
• 38:15
  York style? Do you want to talk the best
• 38:17
  Detroit? Do you want to talk the best
• 38:19
  Philadelphia style, the best Columbus style?
• 38:20
  Like, and then it goes into the whole, I mean, there's, there's
• 38:23
  so many layers you can do to dissect pizza that the perfect
• 38:27
  pizza doesn't exist because it's all personal preference.
• 38:30
  So we just try to make a damn good pizza and we have a lot of
• 38:34
  fun in doing that. So I've lived in Columbus for, I
• 38:38
  don't know, over 30 years now what is Columbus style pizza?
• 38:42
  This is no, it's. It's a thing.
• 38:44
  So picture the Massey's, picture the Donatos.
• 38:46
  So the edge to edge toppings, party cut, which is that, you
• 38:50
  know, the square cuts as opposed to the triangular cuts.
• 38:54
  They use a flavor profile wise, they use a mozzarella and
• 38:58
  provolone blend of cheese where depending on where you go
• 39:01
  throughout the country, it's either sometimes all provolone,
• 39:05
  all mozzarella, you know, the slices and whatever.
• 39:08
  So there's definitely a different flavor profile to a
• 39:11
  Columbus style pizza, but it's kind of the one that if you've
• 39:14
  grown up in, I would say in the the like the Ohio Valley area,
• 39:19
  the Midwest, you have that similar, you know, taste of, of,
• 39:23
  of that flavor profile. You're just used to it.
• 39:25
  It's what you've kind of grown up on.
• 39:28
  So and that differs by region. It really does.
• 39:31
  Walk us through surviving COVID and then how the business has
• 39:35
  evolved coming out of it. Yeah, hey, we're still here.
• 39:38
  So how about that? It says something.
• 39:43
  It says something, man. COVID was COVID was hell.
• 39:46
  I mean, it was, it was hell. It wasn't.
• 39:48
  It wasn't all awful, you know, because there was a certain
• 39:51
  amount of this like, I don't know, camaraderie that we got a
• 39:55
  certain amount of closeness that, you know, brought not only
• 39:58
  like me and my company together, but our peers within the
• 40:03
  industry. Like it, it, it really did bring
• 40:06
  us together. And it was kind of like a, we're
• 40:08
  all going through this type thing, you know.
• 40:10
  So, you know, when we got shut down, we did the absolute best
• 40:15
  we could to make sure our people were taken care of, but we also
• 40:18
  did is we made some very swift measures.
• 40:21
  And very swift decisions to make sure the business was in
• 40:25
  survival mode as well. So those decisions were very,
• 40:29
  very hard. We had to let some very like key
• 40:31
  and very awesome people go in those early days.
• 40:35
  One, because we wanted to serve, you know, we wanted to mothball
• 40:39
  the business essentially, but we wanted also those people to not
• 40:42
  be just drug along. You know, we wanted to make sure
• 40:45
  that they had the best way to survive as well.
• 40:47
  And that I, you know, we didn't think that the best way was be
• 40:50
  strung along in a restaurant that may or may not survive.
• 40:53
  So, yeah, a little bit of mercy, a little bit of self
• 40:56
  preservation. And you learn along the way, you
• 41:00
  know, when there's not a playbook to read from, you know,
• 41:02
  you do your best to survive. You do the best you can with the
• 41:05
  rules that you're provided with and the box you're, you know,
• 41:09
  allowed to operate with it. And we just got through it, you
• 41:12
  know, the best we could. And it, it was hell.
• 41:15
  And it still to this day, we have ghosts of that era.
• 41:20
  I would say we're a better company on the way out of that.
• 41:23
  And five years. Oh, just when you're forced to
• 41:27
  make decisions that would have when you're forced to make quick
• 41:29
  hard decisions, decisions that you probably knew you maybe
• 41:36
  needed to make moving on from a person or, you know, getting,
• 41:43
  you know, getting some certain things done that would have
• 41:46
  probably taken you a year because you just didn't have the
• 41:47
  pressure. You know, when you have all that
• 41:49
  pressure, the kind of like the everybody get in this room, shut
• 41:53
  the door, we got to figure this out type of problem.
• 41:56
  And when you're forced to do that really, really quickly for
• 41:59
  the survival of the business and the survival of your livelihood
• 42:02
  and the survival of the brand, you know, it's not necessarily a
• 42:05
  bad thing, although it's just it hurts and you would have just
• 42:09
  done it differently otherwise. But on the other side, you know,
• 42:12
  you're a better company because you had to make those quick,
• 42:15
  hard decisions, which, like I said, they you may, you may have
• 42:18
  got to the point of those results.
• 42:20
  I think it just would have taken you a long time.
• 42:22
  And that's, that's the hard thing about, you know, hiring
• 42:25
  friends and liking the people that you work with and just
• 42:29
  having a small business. You know, small businesses are
• 42:32
  they're, they're inherently small.
• 42:34
  You get to know everybody really well.
• 42:36
  They're your family. Yeah, Yeah.
• 42:37
  You've talked about team and wanting to take care of the team
• 42:40
  and, and it's a really good point.
• 42:41
  And I, and I'm kind of curious, you know, as you guys were going
• 42:44
  through this really aggressive growth curve at the end of last
• 42:47
  year, how, how, what strategies have you found to kind of do a
• 42:53
  better job of recruiting folks, retaining folks, You know,
• 42:57
  especially in a time like that in, in a market where it's hard
• 43:00
  to find folks as it is, you know, why is it people that want
• 43:04
  to come work for you and, and once they're there, why do they
• 43:06
  want to stay? Yeah.
• 43:08
  You know, that's company culture is, is, is one of the hardest
• 43:12
  things not only to grow and to foster, but to maintain.
• 43:16
  And I think that's, you know, the hardest thing to understand
• 43:19
  about company culture is you never stop working on your
• 43:22
  company culture. You know, it's not just about
• 43:24
  creating a system, a single system or a single process or
• 43:28
  hiring a certain person. And then you're like, all right,
• 43:31
  we have culture now. Like culture is something that
• 43:33
  you work on and especially in the restaurant industry or any,
• 43:37
  you know, hospitality, let's say, or anything with a higher
• 43:39
  turnover rate, you know what, in a year or two, you know, we
• 43:42
  could have a completely different team.
• 43:44
  And if you're not completely working on, you know, the
• 43:47
  culture of the company and what the company means to people and
• 43:51
  what it means to its customers, you lose your way really quick.
• 43:54
  And that's, I think one of the hardest things about COVID is we
• 43:57
  turned our, you know, we turned the restaurant and team members
• 44:01
  into the front line police and that sucked.
• 44:04
  And that was really hard on a lot of people.
• 44:06
  And no matter how you know how strong your cultural culture is,
• 44:13
  you know, when you're asking that much of A, of a, of a
• 44:16
  really scared workforce, stuff just brakes, you know, but I
• 44:21
  would say a, a good, what we learned is a, a good company
• 44:24
  culture along the way. We've learned, you know, a
• 44:27
  strong company culture acts as an immune system for team
• 44:32
  members that you would have, you know, probably would have failed
• 44:34
  out easy. So, you know, you say it, it
• 44:36
  acts as an immune system for bad hires because when they see such
• 44:40
  a strong, when they see such a strong culture, you know, they
• 44:46
  automatically know whether they'll fit or not.
• 44:48
  And that's one of the things I think we learned on the outside
• 44:50
  of this is you have to maintain culture.
• 44:52
  You know, you can't let it, it's something you got to work on.
• 44:55
  And the results will be longer term team members.
• 45:00
  And of course that means stability.
• 45:02
  And when you have a stable team and they're excited to come to
• 45:05
  work, they're going to allow you that opportunity to grow.
• 45:09
  And that's where we got to in these last year or two.
• 45:12
  We got to the point where our team was, our team's restaurant
• 45:16
  level, corporate level were so strong.
• 45:19
  They're like, all right, we're ready to grow.
• 45:21
  Like we, we're good. The shops are good.
• 45:24
  Now, it's not saying they're perfect.
• 45:25
  You know, there will always be work to do.
• 45:27
  There will always be cleaning to do.
• 45:28
  There will always be projects. There will always be systems and
• 45:30
  processes that need to be more efficient and that need to be
• 45:33
  better and that need to be stronger.
• 45:35
  But we got to a point where we were pretty good and that
• 45:38
  allowed us that gave us the permission to grow.
• 45:43
  What's 1 suggestion you could give to another brand owner
• 45:46
  listening who's like, man, I, I, I want to build my culture.
• 45:49
  I want to make it better. Visibility, you know, that's a
• 45:54
  huge thing. You know, if, if, especially
• 45:57
  when you get to the, the point of multi unit, it's easy to kind
• 46:01
  of hide up in the corporate office and you know, no longer
• 46:05
  touch, you know, the things that your, your frontline team
• 46:08
  members have to touch, you know, and that's, that's customer
• 46:12
  interactions. So the best things that best
• 46:16
  when I feel the best is when I get into a shop and you know,
• 46:19
  I'm like, how you guys doing? And they're maybe they're
• 46:21
  getting their butts kicked. And I'd, I'd jump in and I'd
• 46:23
  make pizza next to some new team members and man, that's awesome.
• 46:26
  And that goes such a long way. And then not forgetting that,
• 46:31
  you know, they have a life outside this place too.
• 46:33
  You know, I mean, being flexible with their lives and, you know,
• 46:36
  with, I think, the current workforce giving them some, you
• 46:39
  know, opportunities to express themselves for them to have
• 46:42
  ownership of the place for them to make decisions.
• 46:45
  And those things have to be, you know, systematized and they have
• 46:48
  to be within a box. You can't just let you know your
• 46:51
  new team members make all the decisions for you because there
• 46:54
  has to be guidelines and, you know, bumpers along the way.
• 46:58
  But providing opportunities for ownership and having corporate
• 47:01
  visibility, it goes a long way, a long way.
• 47:05
  Mike, what's a serious challenge that you've overcome, personal
• 47:09
  or professional, maybe both of them intertwined.
• 47:12
  How did you get through that and what did you learn going
• 47:15
  through? Sure.
• 47:15
  Sure. I mean, COVID was COVID was a
• 47:17
  huge thing, you know, going through that.
• 47:19
  We almost lost the company a number of times.
• 47:21
  You know, I mean, it wasn't like we just sailed through COVID.
• 47:25
  You know, we were like most hospitality outlets, we were not
• 47:29
  immune to the hardships of code. And there were there was a
• 47:33
  number of times that we were like, all right, hell of a run,
• 47:36
  pack it in. I don't think we're going to
• 47:37
  make it, you know, through this next thing because of either
• 47:40
  lack of money to get through or, you know, hardships in business.
• 47:45
  We had, you know, a bad decision or two.
• 47:49
  One especially hard thing that was rather recent is going
• 47:51
  through, you know, a funding, A funding thing that, you know,
• 47:56
  that me personally, I was kind of responsible for tanking.
• 48:00
  And, you know, we had a, a really good relationship that
• 48:06
  was about to, that was about to go out, that was about to like,
• 48:10
  it was about to change the way we did banking.
• 48:11
  And it was a, it was a banking relationship that was going to
• 48:14
  allow us to grow. And that ended up falling apart
• 48:17
  in the, the 11th hour. And it's because of a COVID
• 48:20
  decision I had made. We'd taken out, you know, a very
• 48:23
  small, a couple 100 or like a couple $1000 like loan that
• 48:27
  they, that everybody was trying to take out for an Airbnb and
• 48:31
  that I was operating at the time an Airbnb That, that, that, that
• 48:35
  decision, you know, through a couple of, you know, SBA things
• 48:40
  nullified this deal. And we almost lost the company
• 48:43
  because of that. And just because we were, I
• 48:46
  mean, we were, we had already spent a, this is, we already
• 48:49
  spent a ton of the money expecting to be reimbursed.
• 48:51
  And at the 11th hour, we did not get reimbursed for that.
• 48:55
  And we're talking millions of dollars here.
• 48:58
  So that was, that was a really hard thing to get through.
• 49:01
  And that was, you know, especially when you feel
• 49:03
  responsible for it too. And, you know, there's of course
• 49:05
  there's a lot of nuance and details in there that I'll,
• 49:08
  I'll, I'll spare you guys. But yeah, it's, you know,
• 49:10
  decisions like that. We're just like, oh shit, this
• 49:12
  thing that I did, you know, six years ago, five years ago that I
• 49:16
  never thought, you know, very innocently, you know, did, never
• 49:19
  thought it would come back to haunt us, you know, and cost us,
• 49:22
  you know, a million, $2,000,000 deal.
• 49:25
  So, yeah, getting through that, that was, that was hard, you
• 49:27
  know, a lot, a lot of hard conversations between my partner
• 49:29
  and I on. That one how, how do you get
• 49:31
  through something like that? Who?
• 49:33
  Who do you lean on? What do you take for support day
• 49:36
  by day? You know, like you literally get
• 49:38
  it, you go through it day by day and that's that's the only thing
• 49:41
  you can do. So it, you know, you, you talk
• 49:44
  to the people that you, you can your, your, your kitchen
• 49:48
  cabinet, you know, wife, family, whoever you got talk to your
• 49:53
  partners and you talk to your friends that are in the same.
• 49:57
  You know, luckily I have AI have a, a group of guys that are in
• 50:00
  the, you know, all multi unit restaurant guys that a lot of
• 50:04
  times if one of us is having, you know, some kind of issue,
• 50:07
  you know, we speak the same language.
• 50:09
  We're all multi unit restaurant guys.
• 50:10
  So you know, it's there's there's not a language barrier
• 50:13
  in there. So that's nice.
• 50:14
  It's a great help to have, but you need, you need that along
• 50:17
  the way. You need to have not only a a
• 50:19
  really strong, you know, the, the kitchen cabinet, you know,
• 50:22
  the, the family there to bounce ideas off of, but.
• 50:26
  Any silver lining to that experience?
• 50:30
  Yeah, for sure. You know, I mean, I would say
• 50:32
  that sometimes you got to, you know, sometimes in some ways,
• 50:37
  whether it's, you know, your partner, the universe, your
• 50:40
  wife, your friends, business partners, banks, somebody's
• 50:43
  going to tell you to get your shit together.
• 50:45
  And sometimes you got to hear that and sometimes it's time for
• 50:47
  you to get your shit together. So, you know, it's not always
• 50:50
  the best thing to hear, but. But was it really a matter of
• 50:53
  you not having your stuff together?
• 50:55
  I mean, it sounds like this was. Yeah, it it was.
• 50:58
  It was an. Innocent mistake that who Who
• 51:01
  could have foreseen? Kind of a thing it, it was more
• 51:03
  that than my, you know, it was not an intentional, you know,
• 51:08
  thing. It just happened to be, you
• 51:10
  know, dots got connected and I didn't think they needed to be.
• 51:13
  But I certainly don't think the punishment reflected the crime,
• 51:17
  I'll say that much. And it wasn't a crime or
• 51:18
  anything. But metaphorically speaking, it
• 51:22
  seemed, it seemed to be a little unbalanced.
• 51:23
  But nonetheless, it was something we had to get.
• 51:26
  Through, Yeah. How recently was that?
• 51:29
  About two years ago, OK. It still stings, but it's a bit
• 51:34
  in the rear view mirror and you guys are obviously strong today
• 51:37
  as you have, you know exhibited from the growth of last quarter
• 51:43
  and you know the aggressive growth that you're you're
• 51:45
  looking forward to in the future.
• 51:47
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
• 51:49
  I mean, like, if you can, if you as a company can make it through
• 51:54
  COVID, the hardest thing that, you know, we've had to collect a
• 51:57
  little deal with and, you know, you're resilient enough to, you
• 52:01
  know, be here on the other side, then, you know, I'd say you got
• 52:04
  a pretty strong chance of making it.
• 52:05
  And I'd say we're in a better position now than we've really
• 52:08
  ever been in to be poised for growth.
• 52:11
  And we are going to try to do it rather aggressively.
• 52:14
  Not, not stupidly, very calculated.
• 52:16
  Of course, like I said, we'd rather do it right than do it
• 52:19
  quick. But you know, like I said, we
• 52:22
  got the car, we got the pit crew, and we want to drive fast.
• 52:25
  Mike, you and I have known each other for a number of years, so
• 52:27
  I know that you're somebody that's always interested in
• 52:30
  growth, advancement, personal development.
• 52:33
  Curious if you've got any recommendations for the audience
• 52:36
  in terms of like a book or a podcast or a course, something
• 52:40
  that was really instructive to you that might be helpful for
• 52:43
  other folks. Sure, sure, sure.
• 52:45
  You know, I kind of have a rule that, you know, if anybody ever
• 52:48
  recommends a book, I just get on Amazon like that minute and I
• 52:51
  buy it, you know, so that's that's been really fun to like
• 52:54
  build out my library by just being like, what's the book
• 52:57
  you'd recommend? And I'm just like, boom, got it.
• 53:00
  So that that's I think that's a fun thing to just like build
• 53:02
  your library. I think dedicating some time to
• 53:04
  reading is invaluable, whether it's, I think everybody can,
• 53:08
  can, can set aside 30 minutes a day and I'm sure there's not one
• 53:12
  of us within earshot that be like, I'd like to read more, You
• 53:14
  know, that's a, that's a fairly common, I'd like to do this
• 53:17
  more, right. I don't think there's a lot of
• 53:19
  people out there like, well, if I read less, my, my life would
• 53:21
  be better. So, you know, getting through
• 53:24
  some of those, you know, the top 10 famous business books, the,
• 53:29
  you know, God, I can try and name 10 of them, but you know,
• 53:34
  the, the, the so who's. Who's your go to?
• 53:36
  Like what, what's what's your top one?
• 53:38
  Who would you recommend? If people are listening and and
• 53:40
  you know that they're going to go and they're going to click
• 53:42
  that buy now on Amazon button because of your recommendation,
• 53:45
  what's the one they got to have? Sure, sure, sure.
• 53:47
  Oh God, the Millionaire next door.
• 53:51
  That was an awesome one. That was one that was.
• 53:54
  It was a really fascinating book that was written in the 80s and
• 53:57
  I forget the authors there, there was 2 researchers and
• 54:00
  basically they're, you know, talking about, you know how some
• 54:05
  of the it's, it's actually become a little bit more
• 54:07
  fashionable lately to be like buy boring businesses.
• 54:10
  But this book was one of the first books to to talk about how
• 54:15
  the guy next door to you who drives a 30 year old truck but
• 54:19
  owns the lawn care business, He's the actual wealthy
• 54:23
  millionaire. And the people that are next to
• 54:25
  him that are really flashy and have, you know, all the nice
• 54:29
  cars and the clothes and everything that, you know, they
• 54:32
  might have high income, but they're not wealthy.
• 54:34
  And so it was a really fascinating book on, you know,
• 54:38
  the wealth of boring businesses and the wealth creation of
• 54:42
  boring businesses. Boring businesses is a relative
• 54:45
  term, their words, not mine. But yeah, I would say A
• 54:48
  Millionaire Next Door, that was that was a really fun read.
• 54:50
  For me, that's Thomas Stanley and William Danko.
• 54:53
  Were the authors. Yeah, published in.
• 54:56
  Well, maybe it's a republish in 2010, as you're saying it's an
• 54:58
  older book than that. Yeah, I believe, I believe it
• 55:01
  was 80. That could be wrong.
• 55:02
  Yeah. How about some daily practices,
• 55:06
  Mike, that help to keep you targeted and on center?
• 55:12
  I'll start with my morning routine.
• 55:13
  And I'm not going to say I'm great at morning routines,
• 55:16
  although when I when I do do them, I feel a lot better and
• 55:19
  when I don't, I feel a lot worse.
• 55:23
  Funny how it works. Yeah, it's funny how that works.
• 55:26
  So I try to get up between 5:00 and 5:30.
• 55:29
  I find if I go to bed early, I get up early.
• 55:32
  If I go to bed, yeah, early, I get up early.
• 55:35
  So if I get up at 5:00, I mean, I got, I have young kids, a
• 55:38
  fairly young family, three and five year old boys.
• 55:40
  So, you know, the, the first hour of hour to hour and a half,
• 55:44
  two hours of my morning I find are the most productive because
• 55:47
  there's nobody around asking me stupid questions.
• 55:49
  Like, do you know, sharks eat cheeseburgers and stuff like
• 55:53
  that, which switch turns on the garbage disposal.
• 55:56
  I guess what I'm saying is I have a family with a lot of
• 55:59
  border issues. You know, they, they, they don't
• 56:02
  know when to cross. So they, they have, they have
• 56:06
  all boundary issues, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
• 56:08
  So if I have that hour and a half or two hours in the morning
• 56:11
  where I can just like, you know, get a little bit of work done,
• 56:14
  do some reading at that, at that time, I, I usually spend about
• 56:18
  an hour working out. I'll go to the gym.
• 56:20
  I've been doing the CrossFit thing for about 7 or 7 or 8
• 56:24
  years now. And that's been amazing.
• 56:27
  Not for my joints but but for every other aspect it's pretty
• 56:32
  awesome. So can.
• 56:35
  I just switch up and do what Tom Brady does with the bands.
• 56:38
  Maybe for? His pliability.
• 56:40
  I don't think I can do this forever, but it's working right
• 56:42
  now. Best decision you ever made for
• 56:45
  your business, Mike. Best decision ever made, I'd say
• 56:50
  to go indoor. You know, when we when we moved
• 56:53
  from the outside experience to like an inside experience, that
• 56:56
  really turned this into an actual real business.
• 56:59
  And that's, that was that's something that's you can look at
• 57:02
  that as like a pivotal spot when this became an actual real
• 57:06
  business as opposed to just an experiment.
• 57:11
  I think I've just got one more question for you, Mike.
• 57:12
  But before I ask it, I want to do a couple of things.
• 57:14
  First of all, for everyone listening, this has been a great
• 57:17
  episode. Mike's been a terrific guest.
• 57:19
  Please hit the like follow, share, subscribe button on your
• 57:22
  favorite podcast app so you continue to get more great
• 57:24
  content like this. Mike, I also want to let people
• 57:27
  know either the best way to get in touch with you personally or
• 57:30
  to follow your story or that of Mikey's late night slice the.
• 57:34
  Brand yeah, I mean, I would, I highly recommend following our
• 57:37
  social media because it's just hilarious.
• 57:39
  Again, it's something that we spend a lot of time on.
• 57:42
  You know, it's not a lot about pizza, but it's just about stuff
• 57:44
  that makes us laugh and just really well done.
• 57:48
  So I mean follow our social media.
• 57:50
  What are your handles? At Late Night Slice, so you can
• 57:53
  pretty much just look up Late Night Slice and you'll find us
• 57:57
  on IG, Facebook, TikTok, a couple others.
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  So last question for you, Mike, as you look to the future and
• 58:06
  you can answer this question from 2 perspectives, 1 for your
• 58:10
  industry and one for your business specifically.
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  And you think about all the exciting changes that are
• 58:17
  unfolding, What is it that you're most excited about?
• 58:19
  If we were to talk again in one year, 2 years, three years, what
• 58:23
  do you think it is we we would be talking about that's?
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  Different, you know, I think for any restaurant that's coming up
• 58:28
  and you know, I've had a lot of conversations and this goes
• 58:30
  maybe for the for the business side.
• 58:32
  First, what I call the four points of access and what those
• 58:38
  are, are how our customers experience late night slice, how
• 58:44
  they experience our brand. And when we get into, you know,
• 58:49
  what is the next location look like, we are often thinking
• 58:54
  about what are these four points of access?
• 58:55
  And that is people coming in and dining into our restaurant,
• 58:58
  people taking away a carry out, people driving up to our
• 59:02
  restaurant and then our food being delivered third party.
• 59:06
  So, you know, we're looking at these four points of access as,
• 59:11
  you know, something that if we can maximize in these next
• 59:14
  restaurant builds as best we can, you know, maybe a location
• 59:18
  won't have a drive through or a pick up window or something like
• 59:20
  that. But if we can maximize the other
• 59:22
  points and make it easy for people and enjoyable to come in
• 59:25
  and dine with us, we can make it easy for them to push buttons
• 59:28
  and get pizza delivered to their house or make that fun for them
• 59:31
  to just come in and grab some pizza and, you know, take off on
• 59:34
  their way home back from work. You know, we think we're going
• 59:37
  to have, we think we're going to have better success than just
• 59:41
  opening our doors. So we spend a lot of time
• 59:43
  thinking about all points of access.
• 59:45
  I would say secondly, is having a really, I, I would say like a,
• 59:51
  a, a destination based offering as far as our food goes.
• 59:55
  So, you know, when we look at our pizza, you know, is our
• 59:59
  pizza enough to drop people in? Let's say yes, but.
• 1:00:02
  Where are the other opportunities to drop people
• 1:00:05
  into our brand, our dessert program?
• 1:00:07
  I think we're going to be spending some time on that to
• 1:00:10
  where we really want people to want to come in because we have
• 1:00:15
  a, a really unique and alluring dessert set.
• 1:00:18
  Likewise with our drink program. So, you know, we have our main
• 1:00:22
  set of thing and 99% of people are going to walk in for a slice
• 1:00:26
  of pizza. But if we can make our dessert
• 1:00:29
  program and our drink programs amazing as well, and maybe some
• 1:00:32
  people will come in specifically for those too, I think it's
• 1:00:35
  really going to set the locations and the brand up for
• 1:00:37
  success. What do you think the dessert
• 1:00:39
  programs going to look like? I don't know, man.
• 1:00:42
  I've been thinking about it everyday.
• 1:00:43
  So we just have these, we have these Rice Krispie treats that
• 1:00:45
  we call them Unicorn bars and they're made with Fruity
• 1:00:47
  Pebbles. So those are, you know, one part
• 1:00:50
  of our dessert program. Not bad.
• 1:00:53
  I think we'll always have those things, but we want to make
• 1:00:54
  them. We want to make the program a
• 1:00:56
  little bit more, a little bit better, a little bit more, a
• 1:00:59
  little bit more alluring and, and drawing.
• 1:01:03
  We just decided to launch cinnamon breadsticks because
• 1:01:07
  we're already making breadsticks, so we might as well
• 1:01:09
  make a cinnamon version with like a, you know, icing drizzle.
• 1:01:13
  They're super good too. It's it's very common things
• 1:01:15
  you'd expect. We want to get a couple things
• 1:01:17
  in there that are unexpected that, you know, really drop
• 1:01:20
  people in just because of that and make us a destination.
• 1:01:23
  So something that's unusual or I mean, are we talking like
• 1:01:25
  chocolate cake and ice cream, apple pie, or like something a
• 1:01:29
  little bit more wild and bonkers?
• 1:01:32
  Wild and bonkers. That's what we're aiming for.
• 1:01:34
  It's just something that's going to make people, you know, maybe
• 1:01:36
  there's something nostalgic that, you know, used to get
• 1:01:39
  served at the school lunch or something like that that we can
• 1:01:41
  bring in. That is really, it's going to
• 1:01:43
  make people really make people like think like, hey, I want to
• 1:01:47
  go there not only for their pizza, but because they have
• 1:01:49
  this awesome dessert as well. What can you say about the drink
• 1:01:53
  program? You guys have got a full bar at
• 1:01:55
  some of your locations already. Are these like, again, sort of
• 1:01:59
  like bonkers like wild crazy cocktail combinations that
• 1:02:02
  you'll come up with? Sure.
• 1:02:03
  So there's two sides of that one as well.
• 1:02:05
  So we have our alcoholic drink program, which I think is is is
• 1:02:08
  going really well in the places that we do have alcohol.
• 1:02:11
  And there might be different versions of that.
• 1:02:13
  Like we have a version of our alcohol program where it's
• 1:02:16
  nothing but cans, ready to drink cocktails, you know, martinis in
• 1:02:20
  a can, cans of wine, you know, ready to drink cocktails,
• 1:02:23
  seltzers, stuff like that. But then on the other side,
• 1:02:26
  there's a whole movement going on in the non alcoholic drink
• 1:02:30
  side. This is kind of, I would say
• 1:02:33
  pushed really hard by maybe even started by this brand called
• 1:02:37
  Swig out of Utah. And they're just drink focused
• 1:02:42
  Dr. Thrus. And that's all they do is these
• 1:02:44
  really crazy drinks, dirty sodas, stuff like that.
• 1:02:47
  So I think, and this is going around industry ride right now,
• 1:02:50
  McDonald's has a a spin off concept called the Cosmics
• 1:02:54
  that's really just heavily crazy drink focused.
• 1:02:57
  Starbucks is doing this as well. So, you know, I think if we can
• 1:03:00
  combine awesome drinks, awesome dessert, awesome pizza and put
• 1:03:04
  that all into one house where people are, you know, maybe
• 1:03:07
  coming in for a slice of pizza, but they're really excited about
• 1:03:09
  the drinks we offer and maybe even people are just coming in
• 1:03:12
  for the drinks. I think we're going to have a
• 1:03:13
  real winning combination. Well, fun stuff on the horizons.
• 1:03:17
  Well, Mike, I want to be the first one to thank you for
• 1:03:19
  sharing both your time and your story with us today.
• 1:03:21
  I really appreciate it. Hey, it's been a real pleasure.
• 1:03:23
  Thanks for having me. Folks, that's a wrap on another
• 1:03:25
  episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
• 1:03:28
  Thanks for learning with us today.