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Passion for Poultry: Abraham Rizek’s Unique Entrepreneurial Path · Go Big with Gib Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Go Big with Gibb podcast, where we talk to professionals, business owners and entrepreneurs about their big wins.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome to this episode of Go Big with Gibb.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Today I've got a good friend of mine, abraham Reisig, with me from HCK Chicken.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Abraham, how are you today?
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm doing well, gibb, how are you?
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on today.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Abraham, tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: I'm 30 years old, originally from Buffalo, new York, been in Greenville roughly 16 years and love the city of Greenville.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Don't see myself going anywhere else.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: I graduated from JH Rose High School.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: To be quite honest, I didn't think that going to college and all was for me just because I wanted to be like my dad.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: He wanted to be a spitting image of him.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: So right after high school I got into the car business, did six years in the car business and then I got into.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: After I started going to car business, started to do my own little thing and be like silent partner investor.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: All that good stuff got out of the car business.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: After six or about six years worked for a equity company out of New York and did like commercial business all that good stuff.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Stopped working, traded the stock market for a little bit and here I am you know, opening up my own restaurant, so very excited about this restaurant.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: There's a ton of things that make us completely different than of a ton of other food chains, and I think one thing for me, it's extremely important for my customer base to know exactly what makes us different.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: But yeah, pumped up excited here every single day, seven days a week, about 13 to 14 hours a day, was something I told myself that I wanted to do for the first year in business, because I thought it was important really coming in and setting a standard to not only myself but my employees so that they could understand how I want my business to operate.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: And they do a very good job at that too.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: So I'm extremely happy with all of my employees.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I've got a ton of them that have been with me since the very first day, and yeah, so Talk to me a little bit about why you chose HCK.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Like I said, I was doing a lot of silent partner investing before I got into this and HCK really just put me in the right direction on what I wanted to do in terms of brick and mortar.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: I actually had a few ideas before this to do a few other things.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: I actually had a few ideas before this to do a few other things, and one of my buddies graduated from East Carolina in 2019.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: His dad is the CEO of HCK Hot Chicken.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: They own the original HCK in Woodbridge, Virginia.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: So when I found out they were starting to franchise all that good stuff, I looked more into it and really understood what made them different and just reading the story behind it and took a trip to Virginia, Really wanted to see what this was all about and the God honest truth man.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: I got there toward the corporate restaurant and I probably had two, three hundred dollars worth of food on the table and it was by far the best chicken wings, the best chicken sandwich I've ever had in my entire life anywhere, but I didn't understand how or what made it that way.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: So our sauces we've got a ton of product that are proprietary Um, we manufacture, we distribute, bottle and package our own stuff Um, we offer four levels of heat in house.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Uh, that are all proprietary.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Uh, our chicken batter and our French fry seasoning is also proprietary as well.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: So I knew that, um, they had their stuff together and they were offering something that a lot of other food chains were not doing, you know, and that's what truly made me pull the trigger.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit about the ingredients and some of the other things that really differentiate.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Hot.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Chicken Kitchen from other restaurants.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: So, starting from the top, all of my chicken is fresh.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: It is 100% halal, so we don't serve a single piece of frozen chicken here.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: There's a ton of places that are serving frozen chicken, you know.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: So I've only got a two door, two door freezers back there and the only thing that's inside that freezer are french fries.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Everything else is a cooler.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Everything else is a cooler.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: So our chicken's fresh.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: When the chicken comes off of our truck it goes into a brine.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: We kind of marinate that a proprietary brine for 24 hours and then we make our wet base and then it goes into a dry batter and then pan.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: So there's pretty much a two-day step, two-day process before that chicken that comes off the truck actually goes into the fryer.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Our proprietary products don't have a single GMO or a preservative in any of our proprietary products, which I think is extremely amazing Nowadays.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Honestly, it's like the things that they are putting inside food nowadays is absolutely unreal.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: We don't use a single GMO or a preservative in any of our proprietary products.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Everything here is made fresh to order.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: So what that means is we do not start dropping chicken in the fryer until an order is being placed, just to keep a level of consistency.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: There's not a lot of places making meals fresh to order.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Just to keep a level of consistency, there's not a lot of places making meals fresh to order.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: So when a customer comes up to the front counter and says that they want a chicken sandwich, that ticker will then fire off to the back and then at that point we'll go ahead and start dropping a chicken breast into the fryer.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit about the sauces.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: So our base is the level one that one's infused with cayenne pepper.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: It's more of like a sweetened savior that one's really good got a ton of good flavor to that, something that a kid could eat.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, even a kid could tolerate it.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: There is.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: There's there's a believe it or not there's kids coming here between the age of 8 to 12 and you mean always getting the base.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: So, um, yeah, for sure, the, the base is definitely something that the kids can do.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: The the afterburner is my favorite.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: It's also my best seller that one's infused with habanero pepper, and my tolerance for heat is extremely low too.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: To me, that one's just got an enjoyable amount of heat with an enjoyable amount of flavor.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Because habanero can be extremely spicy, but you're saying it's a moderate level of spice All of our sauces.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: Man, there's one thing you won't find at too many places not saying everybody doesn't have the same thing, but all of our sauces have got heat and flavor.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: So our Angry Hot is the level three, that one is infused with Trinidad Scorpion.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: I tell everybody that jumped from the Afterburner to Angry Hot is a big step up.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Like I said, my tolerance for heat is extremely low so I've never got up there.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: And then the Medic is infused with Carolina Reaper.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: There's a ton of people that sell Carolina Reaper, but our Carolina Reaper our Medic is hot man.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: The other people that have Carolina Reaper, they dilute it with so much vinegar where there's not really.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: You know that you don't get the full effect to that.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: But our medic sauce is thick.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: It's thick, man, when you take a piece of.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: It's so funny when you take a piece of chicken breast and drop it into the wet base, it literally just sits right on top of the look.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: We have to like push it down into the medic sauce.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: That's how thick it is really it's hot 2.5 million scovilles yeah wow, yeah, I mean how.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: How often do people order the medic?
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Is it often man?
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: there's two, um, every, just about every day.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Uh, there may be, I'd say maybe once a week, where we don't sell any of it.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: It's funny because I've got a medic challenge, I've got a medic alert board over there and there's a gentleman up there that has been an extremely loyal customer of mine since day one and he's in here at least three days a week and all he gets is the medic tenders or the medic sandwich.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: So he wanted to do the medic challenge one day.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: He's like what's the medic sandwich?
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: So he wanted to do the medic challenge one day.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: He's like what's the medic challenge?
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: So I said you've got to do eight bone-in wings dipped in the medic sauce.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Uh, eaten in 45 minutes or less.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: He was actually sitting at the same table you and I are sitting at.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: I did not know.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: He was facebook live at that time and uh was sitting here eating his wings on live and the back of it and he's a big guy the back of his neck man was just sweating, he was hurting man and he finally got through.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's impressive yeah.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Got through with about a minute and a half left and was proud to take that picture.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: But yeah, so just a little challenge.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Man, I tell everybody, when you're doing that medic challenge, as soon as the wings hit the table, go to town, go right to work, cause the longer that sauce sits on that chicken, the hotter it gets.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: So if you're down to try that, I don't know, I might, I might pass on that one.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: What would you say are the most popular menu items?
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Great question that you recommend.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: I'd love to know what you'd recommend to to somebody coming in that's maybe never eaten here absolutely so.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Uh, the nashville style sandwich is always really good, man, um, not being without being biased or anything, man, I feel like everything on the menu is really good, um, and the only reason why I say that is because our menu is a lot smaller than a lot of other food chains, but the reason for that is because of the level of quality of food that we serve.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: You know, it's easy to add a thousand items on the menu, but when you do that, you really lose focus on what you're trying, what your mission is, what you're trying to put out there.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Um.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: I will say this though uh, depending on the days of the week, you know, uh, one like today is monday, um, so we've got mac bowl monday.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Um, mac and cheese bowls is a 32 ounce bowl of white cheddar mac and cheese with, uh, shredded cheese, two chopped up jumbo tenders, um, and our signature goods, uh, in-house good sauce.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: On top of that.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: That's 10 bucks every monday.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: When I first opened, I sold a ton of mac and cheese bowls, so I said I'm to make a promotion day out of it.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: So every Monday they're $10.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Tuesday, we do the 85-cent boneless.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: We do sell a ton of bone-in, traditional classic wings.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: We go through a lot of classic wings just because our classic wings aren't that small they're a jumbo wing, and I mean that when I say that.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: So we go through a ton of them.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I've lived here in eastern North Carolina my entire life Actually moved here in 1988, so almost my entire life and I know people from eastern North Carolina love chicken wings, myself included.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: How many chicken wings are you going through on average per day?
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Let's see each case I go through.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: I'd say right at about a thousand pieces.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: So you're selling 1,000 chicken wings traditional bone-in chicken wings per day A day, that's amazing.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: So I mean the eight-piece.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: We've got eight-piece 10, 12, 14, 25, and 50.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: The 25 and 50-piece bone-in wings are actually pretty normal for people to get around here every single day.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: So 1,000 pieces of bone-in chicken wings every single day.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: So, uh right, a thousand pieces of bone and chicken wings every single day.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: So wow.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Um, and there, you know, they come out, they come off.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: You know, I've got a truck coming in today, so I've got a few cases of chicken coming off the truck, um, chickens coming off the truck and it's immediately going to go into being prepped.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Um, that chicken won't be sold until tomorrow.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Um, and that's because we, we, we brine our chicken, we season the chicken and then tomorrow it'll go into.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: I can't tell you all the secrets, but it'll go one step, two step into the pan.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: This episode of Go Big with Gibb is brought to you by Irons Equity.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: At Irons Equity, we specialize in helping investors like you create long-term generational wealth and save money on taxes through recession-resistant real estate investments that create passive income for you and your family.
• 12:23
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• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Gib Irons Again, that's investwithgibcom.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: I love how fresh all the chicken is.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can't get chicken that fresh at the grocery store, you know.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: There's a big difference between selling frozen chicken and fresh chicken.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: You know, hear that fryer going off right now, man.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do yeah.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: So essentially an order was just placed, so our expo person called it out to the fry cook and then they dropped whatever it was that the customer ordered in the fryer what else are the best sellers?
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: the nashville salad sandwich.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Um, the uh, loaded mac and cheese bowls.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: The east carolina athletes, um, love the love of loaded mac and cheese bowl and they uh a sandwich.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: A ton of them will come in here and get both One mac bowl, one sandwich.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: A ton of really good supporters out there from East Carolina football.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: But the loaded fries are really good.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: The chicken waffles are awesome and I tell everybody again I say this without being biased I feel like everything on the menu is extremely good.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: I ask everybody it honestly just depends how hungry you are, the more you come in here.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Another thing that I mentioned is you'll kind of figure out which level of heat you like with what meal.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Like on my boneless wings, I like getting our in-house wing sauce.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: It's 80% base, 20% honey and butter.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: We make that in-house.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: And my bone's 80% base, 20% honey and butter, we make that in-house.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: But my and my bone-in wings I like getting the wing sauce.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: But, like the chicken sandwich, I like getting the afterburner because the coleslaw kind of helps cool it down.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: The boneless wings, the tenders, I'll get an afterburner because I'll just soak it in ranch, you know.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: So yeah, but yeah, it's one of those things, the more you come in here, you'll kind of figure out which flavor you like with what heat.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: You mentioned, uh.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: The east carolina students come in here a lot.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: I see a ton of the sports teams coming in here and supporting your restaurant.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: What have you done to um get so much support from the community?
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: first and foremost, man, it's, uh, keeping a healthy relationship with anybody and everybody that you come into contact with.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: You know there was a point where I tell everybody I was young and dumb at one point and you know, at the end of the day, it's all about the relationships and the values that you bring to the table.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: You know, I cherish and value every single customer that walks through this store, and I mean that when I say that.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: You know you've got to greet every customer.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: That's first and foremost.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: I will do things like if I see a family at the table and they've got their kids, and I'll just randomly drop some fried donuts in our fryer and bring them out to them.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: That's every day, you know, because there's not a lot of places where you're getting a level of customer service of like that.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Our motto here is bringing unity through food.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: So, regardless of who you are, what color you are, what you believe in, um, it doesn't matter if you're buying.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: To me it doesn't matter if you're buying a three dollar side of fries or ordering a two thousand dollar cater.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: We're all the same.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: We, uh, we bleed the same, we walk the same and that's all that matters, you know.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: So, um, but, uh, just having a level of respect, you know, and bringing value to the table, um, trusting and believing, building great relationships and, uh, standing by what you say you are going to do or whatever the case may be.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: So, um, but you had mentioned east carolina, um, coach houston.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: I met him when he first came to Greenville.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: You and I both get our haircuts at the shave with our buddy Mike, and Coach Houston met him at the barbershop.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: Really good guy man, pumped up to come to East Carolina, and I think East Carolina itself knew that Coach Houston was going to bring a ton of great things to the university and he has done just that.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: So I'm very pumped up for him excited.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I met him at the barbershop at Chavon.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Fifth as well, and you know great, great, great coach running a great program.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: You know putting in a lot of work over there and very supportive of you as well, and you have that magnetic personality.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: That I think I think you're right, though it comes down to the way you treat people.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: I know when I walk in the door here, it's not just any other customer, I'm not just a number.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: You know, like we know each other.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: So you come out and speak to me, but I see you speaking to other customers.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: You don't even know that's important man very, um, like you know, welcome home like a very, you know, good mentality that, you that you foster here with your customers and and and they that respect that you show them.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: They show it they show you a lot of loyalty and because of that and the man, they do the same.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: You know how I got involved with the East Carolina football athletes.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: I met Coach Houston at the barbershop and then, years ago, stayed in contact with him through Mike.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: You know we'd always see each other at the barbershop and you know the NIL thing has taken over college football, soccer, all athletic programs.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: So months before I opened, I created my Instagram account right and get this friend request and I'm going to name drop him.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: I love him to death.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: His name is Noah Henderson and he messaged me one day on my Instagram and he's like one of the first athletes I came across with and asked if I had any NIL opportunities coming up.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Right, I wasn't open yet.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: So, to be honest with you, I didn't have the funding quite yet because all my funds were going into being put into the restaurant.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, starting a new business.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: So I didn't have the funding to really start any NIL thing going on because at that point when he reached out to me, I probably had at least three or four months before I opened up the restaurant and he said look, let's just go out to lunch sometime, get to know each other and just talk, you know.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: So him and I went to McAllister's, we took, I took him to lunch.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: This guy was massive.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, he was huge.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: He made me look like a Skittle, you know.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: And then we just built this brotherhood.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: You know he got drafted to the Buffalo Bills and then now he's playing for the know, he got drafted to the Buffalo Bills and then now he's playing for the Renegade Arlington Renegades.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: And I respect him more than anything, you know he's that was one of the first athletes that showed me true love and support.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: He was here on my grand opening day and also brought a few other athletes with him, and then I just started to meet one athlete after the other after the other and started offering athlete discounts.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: And there's times, man, where I don't even 80% of the times I don't charge these athletes for my meals, and I know it's.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: The whole NIL thing is crazy, but at the same time, man, I look at it like they've got to eat too.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: You know, with the whole way the NIL thing has changed college sports man some people are getting more than this person, that person, so at the end of the day, I feel like they've got to eat too.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: This place is a place where they know that if they're ever hungry or want something to eat, all they've got to do is just come, walk through these doors and I ask for nothing in return.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: I've got guys that come in here.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: They'll get food, man.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: If they want to post on their social media, that's great.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: If not, I still love them the same way I did before.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: They did that.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: July 13th.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: You celebrated six months, so it was January 13th that you opened.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Six months ago would you have ever imagined that things would have gone this well?
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: How do you feel about how things have gone since opening?
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Blessed, humbled, thankful, overwhelmed.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: You know the day.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: You know it felt like this day was never going to come, from the very first day that I got my keys.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: The day I got my keys, man, I was in here every single day, 12 hours a day, building this place out every day.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: And I had this place built out in about 45 days, from electrical, you know, like I said, six o'clock in the morning till seven, eight o'clock at night, and I never thought this day was going to come.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: Grand opening day comes around, man, and I had.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: I remember being inside the dining room having a team meeting with all my employees and there was probably five or six people in line.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: It's 10 minutes before I opened.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: So I went to the kitchen by myself, said a quick prayer Thank God, my family and just wanted to take a minute to really walk around this place and let it all build up like, hey, this day is finally here.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: And it was five or 10 minutes.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: I was in the kitchen and I came out.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: I came out to the dining room and the line was all the way to the dumpster and I just started breaking down in tears, man, because I didn't, you know, I didn't think that was that would have happened, or I knew I had a ton of support, but I didn't think that I'd walk out here five, 10 minutes to a line of five or six people, to a line all the way to the dumpster and it felt good, man.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: That's a feeling that I'll never let go.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: You know just the way it all happened.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: And then, ever since then, man, it's taken off.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Things are doing really, really well.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: I'm thankful, like I said, humbled, blessed and thank God for this opportunity.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: There's a ton of different things, man, as a young, as 30, 30 year old restaurant, I'm probably one of the youngest restaurant owners in the city of Greenville and I feel like there's a ton of things that really set me apart from a lot of other business owners and I just want to be like a mentor to everybody you know, just kind of give advice on what made me successful.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: You know I'm here seven days a week at my restaurant, 12 to 14 hours a day.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: I told myself when I opened that I was going to do just that.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: I've lost time away from my family, my kids, my fiance, and she's one of the biggest support systems I've had since the day I've opened, of the biggest support systems I've had since the day I've opened, and my kids, you know, and that's what kind of sets me apart from every other business owner, because they everybody thinks it's so easy, man, just to open up a brick and mortar turn the keys and walk away.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: No man, there's levels to it, you know, really setting us, having practices set in place, setting a standard.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: I've got 11 of my employees, man, since day one that have been with me since day one, that's amazing and that should speak volume, you know, because I'm in here and I tell every single one of them.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: There's nothing that I would ask you to do that I would not do.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: I will get on my knees and scrub baseboards.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: I will get on the fry station and I'm on the fry station twice a week.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: It's just because of the love and the passion that I have for this place being an example, having practices set in place, and that's where I think the respect from your employees come from.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: When they see a man that owns and operates a business in here working as hard as they are, they respect that.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Two of my employees, uh, their names are Gianna and Riley.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: They've been with me since I've started and, um, you know two of the most hard-working employees and saying the right with the rest of them and um, for the longest time, while they were here, they said, uh, man, we want to go travel and study abroad, study abroad.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: And for months, that's all they said they wanted to do.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: And it was one day I was like, man, I'm tired of you guys saying you guys want to go study abroad, let's just do this thing.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: So this is what I'll do for y'all, I'm going to start a GoFundMe.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Anything that we get or anything that's raised, I'm going to match that for y'all, and uh, I did just that for them.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: We were able to raise, I think, a little bit over four thousand dollars and a lot of money.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: So they, um, and this was, uh, that was four thousand dollars raised in less than a week.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Um and um, here they are.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: I miss them to death.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Um, they will be back, they're studying abroad for one semester.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: And then, uh, they, I believe they've got three or four semesters left at East Carolina, so they'll come back in January and then come back to work.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Love them to death.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Man, that's how far I'll go for my employees when you show me loyalty and when you show me that you understand how much time and effort I put in this place and just work hard.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: That's as far as I'll go for my employees.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: It's been fantastic to have you as a guest um.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: For anybody that wants to reach out to you and connect with you, what's the best way for them to contact you?
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: yeah.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: So, uh, gib, first and foremost, I appreciate you giving me opportunity to sit down and speak with you.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Um, it's a really special moment, man, and I had a ton of fun.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Um, I am located at uh 920 criswell drive, right next door to the Ruby Tuesday.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: It's a Criswell address, but I'm off of Memorial.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: My phone number at the restaurant is 252-751-6349.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: If you want to call in to order, you're more than welcome to.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: My Instagram is 252HCKHotChicken.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: I also just recently started a TikTok, doing a ton of content on TikTok now, and built a large following up there.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: It is the same name as my Instagram.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: It's 252HCKHOTCHICKEN, so follow me on Instagram, follow me on TikTok.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: I do go live every day now on TikTok, so, yeah, but that's where you can find me at.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, abraham I appreciate you, Gib.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: Thank you for the opportunity.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this episode of Go Big with Gib.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: If you haven't already, go follow us on social media at Gib Irons.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: We'll see you next time.