Latest / The Weekly Run / I Miss When We Only Had One Store | #40

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I Miss When We Only Had One Store | #40 · The Weekly Run

• Jeff Perera: We spent years trying to open more stores, so I wonder why I find myself missing the days of just having one. Aaron: Just one that's unthinkable. Jeff Perera: It feels nostalgic, Aaron. Aaron: That's is that is this the kind of nostalgia I have about having young children where, you know, it's not, yeah, having babies is great, you know. This is is this is it that sort of thing? Jeff Perera: Yeah, you forget the sleepless nights, you forget the Aaron: Yeah, exactly. Jeff Perera: two AM feedings, you forget all the nonsense that you had to carry around with you, whether it was whether it was like formula or diapers or changes of clothes. It's yeah, I mean, I guess maybe I don't know, I I kinda miss one store. I was in a store today, I was just in the Ocoee location and I worked all day today and it was it was fun. It was fun. Aaron: This is just but just to call this out, you're saying you were back to you were you weren't Jeff, you were just Jeff. You were just in the store, employee Jeff. what roles did you what did you work today? Let's get specific. Okay. Jeff Perera: I did it all. I worked every s I worked every station today. I worked main pack, you know, slicing packing bagels. I was on cream cheese. I did register for a bit, coffee. I did not do any did not do any baking today. No baking. Aaron: No baking. All right. Jeff Perera: Yeah. baker staff was was good. I was front of house all day. So but it was fun. I you know, there was It's like there's like an ease to just working in the store. Aaron: What does the simplicity of a single store bring back for you? Obviously, it's a lot different between being in store and then being here in corporate office and dealing with the scaling of the overall business, but just why has that nostalgia hit for you? what brought back the good feels? Jeff Perera: You know, the first thing was our guests. I saw a lot of people that I've seen throughout the years today. And it was fun to like reminisce and it was fun to catch up and have these conversations with people who I got to know in those first few years that we were open. You where was Danielle and I just run in the one store? that part was really nice. And while I know that experience is unfolding, in forty two other locations all over the country now, with owners, with, you know, teams and managers and whatnot in those stores, I guess it was just something that I realized was some was missing. I just realized it was missing. Aaron: Were people surprised to see you? Jeff Perera: so much shock. People are like, my gosh, Jeff's here today. It was wild. Aaron: What is so ha so I'm curious, is is a that's a pretty good benchmark, I think. Because that wasn't true when we first started scaling. Obviously, you you and Danielle were still in your shop a lot, for a lot of different reasons. One, just continuing to run Jeff Perera: Yeah. Aaron: the shop, but also, you know, we prototyped and and used Ocoee for, you know, building out a lot of the things that we've scaled on. So that's gonna be a little weird for you, but I mean to even have somebody notice that you've been gone to then be surprised that you've come back. Like it it must be an interesting thing, like, man, yeah, I really haven't been in the store for you know, your store for, you know, a month, two months, whatever it's been, you know, consistent. So your regulars would notice. Jeff Perera: Yeah, it felt it felt good, you know. I think there's like surprise. Obviously the guests like, what are you what are you doing here? Like I haven't seen you in forever and then it just fell right back into like the playful you know, banter and Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: kind of engagement that it had always been. And so I was I was kind of taken aback by how surprised they were, which is fun because I guess they got used to it without me and Danielle there, which is also a good thing. You know, there's that's Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: great. Like I they still find it to be their bagel shop, you and obviously they can go in and get a great bagel and have a great experience and still feel that. But, you know, I I was I was enjoying it. I just I just loved being able to see some of our longtime guests and people came in and they were like, my gosh, like I can't like you're here today, this is incredible. Wow, awesome, I'm glad you're here. Like I remember you when, you know, Lucas was in a diaper and I was picking up bagels at your front door. That was the conversation that I had today, like six or seven times and it was just fun. It was fun. Aaron: What's just you know, morbid curiosity, what was your what was your favorite station? What was the station where you're like, man, I haven't done this in forever? It just felt like just felt like getting back into the grind. Jeff Perera: Ps okay, so I always I love baking. Like to me, that's like the saddle. Like that's me, like I haven't yeah, Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: you know, like riding a horse or riding a bike or whatever the saying is. I can go into any kitchen and bake like I haven't missed a beat. Coffee I struggle the most at. It's like to me it's the most perishable skill in the entire shop. You have to remember like it drinks, you have to know like where they are in the setup and to push the pumps and Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: whatnot. And so for me, that skill is so perishable that I struggled the first like ten orders. I was slow. Like it was painful. But then I was like, okay, you know, cinnamon vanilla latte, this many pumps. Like I figured it out. Aaron: Trying to get there. Yeah. Jeff Perera: Yeah. I instantly got in a groove on the pack station when I was making bagels. Cream cheese was easy. Cream cheese I think is like the the easiest station we probably have. It's also a great opportunity for me to engage with guests because they're kinda standing there in front of the counter waiting and I'm just chatting them up. So that part's fun. Register register kills me. I I struggle the most on register. Aaron: I find the the cream Yeah, I find the cream cheese station seems to be that's the sleeper station. Like if you put your most sort of customer engaging person on cream cheese, but they have to Jeff Perera: Yep. Aaron: be good at cream cheese because they almost have to do it while not paying attention. They can sort of detach from the motion of of you know prepping the orders to then 'cause you can be working on somebody else's order, but you're still you're still chatting and like sort Jeff Perera: Yes. Aaron: of but it it's a great station. that I found and some of the stores that do it the best, you know, they're all about giving out samples. have you tried this this new one we have? And we have little sample sticks. And I don't know, it's a huge engagement point. Cause the register, the register sort of has that decision that they have to make where it's like, okay, I'm really engaging this guest, but I see the guest behind this guest, wondering how much longer I'm gonna have a conversation before I move them along. And And then take their order. So like you're always on a clock, I feel like, when you're engaging people at the front register. But as long as the cream cheese orders are coming, you can chat anybody up. Jeff Perera: Yeah, I love cream cheese. To me, cream cheese is a lot like baking. You know, it's Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: I can I can chit chat, I can do other things and just Aaron: Kinnergroove. Jeff Perera: understand the motion of scooping bagels out, decorating, like following the checklist of things I have to do. That's cream cheese station. So I can I can do six or seven other things while scooping cream cheese. you know, Danielle probably say I'm not as fast or efficient, but Aaron: Danielle has high standards. That's hard to meet. Jeff Perera: It's hard to it's it is. It's hard to hard to meet some of them sometimes. But she she was in the shop today too. She came in for a couple hours. Yeah, yeah, we were we were down bad, no Ocoee We had Aaron: really? Wow. So OG crew. Jeff Perera: we were down bad. We had a few few little illnesses, you know, pop up and some sick kids and not kids, but I think there was actually one sick kid and a mom couldn't come in and then we had two employees that w were like feeling ill, so it's the time of year. So but Aaron: What was the most surprising thing being back in the shop? Jeff Perera: wow. You know, I'm in shops a lot. So I don't think I was yeah, I'm in shops a lot. Aaron: I was gonna say that was sort of my core questions like your how would you can yeah, compare and contrast this to just opening stores, which you guys do constantly? Jeff Perera: And so I think that's the that was the surprise, right? I am in a lot of shops, we open a lot of stores, you know, we go out with the training team and you know get new stores up and running. So the to me the biggest surprise was like that contrast between our most mature store with an experienced team and a brand new store. That was the biggest surprise. And it's just like nice to be able to see a teammate doing the thing that they're supposed to do without any direction. You almost are like you're cued up and like ready to be like, I need you to and then you're like, wait, I don't have to tell you. I don't have to guide Aaron: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jeff Perera: you. I don't have to coach you in the behavior because you've been doing this for, you know, a period of time longer than someone in a new store environment who I'm literally training days three and four, you know. Crazy. Yeah. Aaron: And starting that process over and over again. So it must be comforting to just come into a a sist an established system and just plug in. Jeff Perera: Yeah, a hundred percent. Listen, I miss I miss one store, but I would never go back to one store. Aaron: Yeah. Hence hence my position on having small children at this point in my life. I think Jeff Perera: Yeah I Aaron: think of it fondly but there's no going back. Jeff Perera: I love babies. I love They're cute, they're cuddly, they smell good, like they're but they're just, you know, too old for that. Aaron: Yeah, you know, that's true. That's true. what do you appreciate most now that we don't have like like you know, 'cause you're you're going back, you're taking yourself back, you know, mentally, emotionally. It's not all sunshine and rainbows. Like being in the store, what was the one thing you're like, man, I'm glad I'm glad I'm not always in stores anymore. Jeff Perera: I think because the workload that we do in the stores now is I wanna say it's heavier than it was when we were f Aaron: It's different store. Jeff Perera: it's it's it's a different yeah, I mean, in the first couple of years that we were in Ocoee, you know, cream cheese was prepackaged, labeled and in a container and put into a cooler and it was grab and go. we didn't have espresso. We were drip like drip coffee and cold brews. And so the The workload has definitely increased in the stores relative to relative to sales and to labor. And so there's like obviously there's people there to help and do the jobs. It's not like, you know, two or three people are still doing them, so it's it's a it's it correlates together. But there's just so much more so many more things to do. we did have one new team member who was working today and it's like I showed him a checklist and he's like, this is great. He's like, I go to b I go to some jobs, you know, I've started where they're just like Good luck. Which is wild to me that that still happens, you know. Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: but it does. So I think I think that was probably the the thing about the shop today that I like, wow, there's just so many more things to do. And it's okay, 'cause you have people to do you have Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: you have the levers to pull to make sure you can get done. In the past, when it was just Danielle and I and like, two or three teammates, it was you had to do all the work. There was no there was no one to assign a task. There was no one who just knew what the task was to do and so that that part's different. but I think that like The bad shifts are still bad shifts. The like the hardships of like being in the store, grinding Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: it out through a a rush where you're in the weeds and you know, the bakers are like just barely trying you're just barely keeping up because someone came in and ordered Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: a dozen Asiago and there was thirteen in the basket. You're just like, you know, it's like those those Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: moments are still there. Nostalgia like deletes those. The ma the y this is like it's like that black hole in your mind where Aaron: Yep. Jeff Perera: it just that didn't happen in the past. Everything was like rainbows and butterflies and it was easy and it's not easy. Our teams go through a lot, they work hard every day and they have these hurdles they have to get over and they have these challenges that they have to face and you know, I think getting through the rush is like gotta be like the biggest thats definitely the biggest challenge that our stores have just 'cause that business is so compressed. for what we do. You Aaron: It is very compressed. Jeff Perera: know, we're not we are not spread out over the entire day part, you know. And we've had this conversation definitely before in the past, but man, when you're in the store and you're like on an eight hour shift to do a thing, like I wasn't there to train people. I was there to like run register, pack cream cheese, Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: make coffees, like when that when those tickets start popping in, mm it's just you gotta you gotta lock in and go or you're behind. Aaron: And I think that's that's interesting about how like from our perspective, and you get to switch hats constantly, which is a a net benefit for just understanding the realities in the stores. But I think that's the hardest thing to really appreciate when you don't go and spend time at a store or work in a store, is that you can't that's it that's an experience. Right. Like you can't really build a pro you you can build processes to support it, but you can't build a process that lets you experience or avoid that experience of having a line out the door and people just want the business. I mean, that's great. Like it's you you obviously want that, but you gotta feel it to know what it feels like, and then to come back and say, Oof, what I really needed was to not have to tap this button 17 times, you know, Jeff Perera: Yes. Aaron: or geez, if I could just If this would just print out automatically for me, whatever, I'm making things up. But those are the sort of experiences that you can't simulate. You just have to have people that have been through those rushes because thinking through it a business is very level. It's like, okay, yes, we get an order, order comes in. We, you know, we pack the order, we send it out. None of that singularly is unique, but you know, when you try to compress a whole day's worth into an hour and a half, it becomes a lot. Jeff Perera: It changes, yeah, it changes the dynamics greatly. Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: And it changes the mechanisms you need to execute consistently and yeah, it's but it's it's good to be in the store and it's good to experience it. It's good to, you know, relive it with the team and you know and the it was that was the other part I think that was fun is the team really enjoys it. So it's great to like spend time with the team and they have such great insights and such great feedback and And you can just cut up a little bit and have a good time and it's Aaron: Well that's another thing that I was curious about with that, you know, just sort of coming back and and you know, getting into the groove with the team is do you find do you find that you get insights for your other roles? Again, training new stores, building, you know, processes, things like that. Jeff Perera: Did see what's happening here with this animal? Hold on, we're gonna start that conversation Aaron: Yeah, we can start over. Jeff Perera: over again. That was ridiculous. It literally shut. This cat is come here, get down from there. Not your tower. Not your tower today. I think we're gonna have Aaron: That cat is amazing and it Jeff Perera: to keep this in like the outtakes. That's just insane. Because I could see it in the reflection the whole time. Yeah. Aaron: What's insane? Yes. I was gonna say what the best is that everybody's just enjoying the cat in that thing. So it's clear that you're fighting the cat. There's no qu there's no question. Jeff Perera: I'm fighting the cat. I need a proper podcast studio, Aaron. We're definitely not editing this. This stays. yeah, go ahead. Aaron: Anyways, point being is do you do you pick up insights from like when you go into the store and you're back into just a working capacity, not a training capacity? Do you pick up stuff from your team that you're like, man, we really should train better on this, or man, we really should, you know, bring this, you know, into a new store so they don't have to fight through these these learning curves. Jeff Perera: Yes. It's completely different working in a store with an experienced team when they come across a problem because they've already thought of solutions for it. They've already they experienced it three days ago. They experienced it a week ago and didn't tell anybody. They just kinda solved for themselves in that moment. And then you're there to like live it and they're like, this is what we do now And I'm like, okay. That's interesting And, you know, you're you're cataloging it and you're trying to see like how frequently does it come up? How often do you run into that particular challenge? Is this like a once a week thing? Is this a once a day thing? Is it a once an hour thing? Like what is the the hurdle and is it a something that needs to be solved? Or is it something that is just like, okay, they've they've figured it out for their setup, for their personal self, like And it's fine. You know, like there's there's that there's that measurement. Wherecause in the new store environment, they hit a hurdle and it's like, okay, well this is how you overcome this because this is a known hurdle. We've trained to this, we experience Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: this time and time again, and it won't become a problem for you in the future once you understand the rhythm, the you know, the business rhythm or you understand the the best practice behind it. So Yeah. That part's that part was pretty neat. But I enjoyed it. I had a great day. It was super fun. Aaron: Do you think do you think like in other brands, the Papa John's guy is like, man, I wish I had one pizza I I wish I could go spend time in my original pizza shop. You know, I like I'm just I'm just curious if other founders in in a business like this, because obviously some business businesses just materially change. Like if it's not. Something unique about franchises is that we're actually stamping the original business just over and over and over and over again. And growing it and improving it, of course, but like it's really, it's not like if if I have like a single company and I triple the size of the company, it's a different company at that point. Like this is Jeff Perera: Right. Aaron: a weird sort of, you know, balance. And do you think do you think that that's a pretty common thing for founders like you to be like, man, just back when it was simple. Jeff Perera: I think founders definitely reminisce and feel nostalgic about the early days. I just think that's that's part of the journey. But I believe the ones that have built businesses, like the Dave Thomases, like to the thousands of stores. I look at like Craig Culver and what they've done Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: with Culvers. That is like I mean, that is like a gold standard for how you keep a business feeling small, feeling local, feeling like it's a part of the community and one to emulate. So I think they look back on those periods of time with fondness with a sense of I think they look back on it with like a sense of fondness. They but it's important Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: to do that because it's how you push forward and maintain that feeling as you go forward. Because if you allow the the size and the scale of the business to kind of take over the feelings you had, it's like you I don't know. Being in that store today and I was building coffee boxes and talking to this young couple that was in the store, they had their nine month old with them. They'd never had her batels before. They live literally in Gotha, which is like a two minute drive from where the Ocoee store is. They're like, We're two minutes from here, we've never been here, we've lived here our whole life. And I was like, Well, I'm glad you're here, and we just chatted. And Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: that experience was one that I need to remember so that when I'm talking to franchisees or when I'm onboarding a new team. I can infuse that into the experience that they're providing in their store. So it it's it's important. Yeah, Aaron: It helps us not lose the plot along the way. Jeff Perera: yeah, yeah. 100%. Like you just you have to have that. That memory kind of always has to be there. You can't get stuck in it. And you and I have actually had this conversation a lot offline as we've grown. It's like, how do you how do you stay small? And you said something, you're like, you know, I don't think it's about staying small because inherently we're trying to grow a big business. And so you're like, it's not about staying small, it's about feeling local. Which I thought Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: was a great way to position it and to to frame it. And so for me as a founder of this business, we're like, I can Talk about how we started in our home kitchen, like and how like I would never want to go back to a home kitchen. Baking bagels Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: in a like standard home kitchen oven on a tiny little pot on a stove is nightmare fuel. And I just don't envision a world where like that memory does a ton for us as a as a bigger business and as we grow. But knowing where you came from is really important. And Remembering, you know, the the things that got you to where you are in the moment is is certainly important and certainly something that you need to share with other people. Aaron: I yeah, and I think with a brand like ours too, where I think the charm of that and the charm of what we, you know, the way we sort of train our staves and we set up all of our processes to sort of create that that create that environment. You know, we don't want to be transactional. We want to go the extra mile. We want to create an experience. And so that that gets hard if we can't if we if we as a as a corporate office don't understand what that even is anymore. And it's kind of like your coffee skills, it atrophies. Like the the f the Jeff Perera: Yes, it does. Aaron: further that you get from you know, really being grounded in stores is, you know, you just you sort of lose touch with it. So, you know, getting back into touch with it again, even if you Jeff Perera: Yeah. Aaron: never want to go back to to a single store, Jeff Perera: No. Aaron: knowing why a single store is important is super important for us so that we can make each each new store feel like a one store chain. Jeff Perera: Absolutely. Absolutely. 'Cause it is just that's you know that store for the guests that comes in there, it's their store. It is the one they go to. Right? And we're such creatures of habit, especially in the morning, that we build that routine and if we can get if we can break into your morning routine and you come and get a big one of cream cheese from us and a coffee, like that is so valuable that we want that store to feel like your store. We want it to feel like the only just big one that exists. And then like if you go on vacation and you end up in, you know, Charleston, South Carolina, and you're cruising down to the beach and you happen to see a Jess Bay Ron, you're like, wow, let's stop in and get breakfast because it's always such a good experience at my store. You know, you don't even associate it with it being like something else. So it's hard. It's a it's a tricky balance and you know, it takes great franchisees, it takes great you know, like corporate culture, you know, to be able to like find that bit. in all the things we do. So whether it's the marketing, whether it's like your your technology team, you know, how does how does the technology play into that so that the teammate on the other side of the, you know, the counter there, with all the technology in front of him, can make that experience happen in a way that is meaningful. And so, I don't know. It never going back to one store. It's so much more like it it running more r Well, the beauty of the franchise program is I don't run all the stores, right? Like there's these owners. But like having all these stores makes Jeff Spagel run as a unit easier. And the challenges that we face as like a single store operator, as a you know, as a entrepreneur, like trying to those some of those hurdles go away and some of those challenges go away, but yeah, having Forty Two sets up a different set of challenges that you have to think about as a as a founder, as a business leader. So It's good times, Aaron. It's good times. Listen, you're deep in it too, Aaron: Hey. Jeff Perera: man. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Aaron: You'll be reminiscing about forty when it's a hundred. And you'll be and we'll we'll reminisce of a hundred at a thousand, you know. There's Jeff Perera: R what I wish someone Yeah. What's the saying? Like my friend George my friend George always says it, he's like, just remember these are the good old days. Aaron: Yeah, today. And then tomorrow yeah, tomorrow Jeff Perera: Today, right now, these. These are the good old days. Yeah. Aaron: tomorrow will be the good old days as well. Jeff Perera: Yeah, like you're living in the good old days and if you you know, you have to you have to identify it a little bit and appreciate it and enjoy it while you're in it, but it's it's definitely it goes by quick and and then it's gone. Aaron: I will say that I will say speaking of going by quick and it's gone. I there was an old school Jeff's tradition from your first store that I learned about when we first started, but when we were building out all the tech and I was living in a Koei for that period there, just learning. And it was the cream cheese portioning race. Jeff Perera: Yes. Aaron: That you guys did, and you had a and so we don't even do that anymore. We don't even portion cream cheese that way anymore. So, like Jeff Perera: No. Aaron: it is literally lost to time. I don't even know if you had if you still have the the leaderboard up posted up on the wall somewhere, but there was a leaderboard. for those listening, there was a leaderboard, and they would race to see how I mean you guys would process like six pounds of cream cheese into individual little cups and Jeff Perera: Yeah. Yeah. Aaron: Like once it was whipped and and and sort of made and you portion it all out. And you get and again, take it back to Danielle, you had to be within spec. Like each cup had to be exactly at point three Jeff Perera: Yeah. Aaron: two grams or whatever. So it was like it was a very specific process. You had to weigh each one. And I always want to take, you know, take a crack or two out of that. I I love me a good race. I love a good Jeff Perera: Yeah. Aaron: leaderboard. I probably would have been dead last on it, without a doubt. But you know, I want to throw my hat in that ring and now it's lost time and I missed my chance. Jeff Perera: I know. That was so fun, yeah. We 'cause we we pre we preportioned the sides of cream cheese and I think they were like at the time they were little smaller plastic cups and were like two ounces. Now they're bigger, they're like three ounces, but that Aaron: Ounces, that's what it was, I was worth. Jeff Perera: They ounces, they two ounces. But we measured to the gram. I think it like fifty five grams or fifty seven grams. Like Danielle had it down to the gram. And the the team had yeah, we had a leaderboard in the store and it was how fast could you process like plain in like eight pounds or whatever and you had and it included portioning and liding. And then we had penalties after you'd go back and you weigh each cup, like afterwards. There Aaron: That's right. Jeff Perera: were penalties if you were over or under significantly. I think it like more than plus or minus one gram, either way, you were you were penalized. Because Aaron: It's like a gymnastics routine. You know, you had your ideal score and then you started getting Jeff Perera: Yeah. Like you started at a ten point but you were gonna lose points all the way down. Yeah. Aaron: Exactly. Jeff Perera: what was interesting about that was that if you didn't properly whip the cream cheese and this was this was fun because mass and volume are two different things. And Aaron: Sure. Jeff Perera: when when you didn't properly whip the cream cheese, your cup could be full, like full full, but be overweight because you didn't get enough air into the cream cheese Aaron: Yes. Jeff Perera: and so you might be like sixty three grams of cream cheese, which doesn't seem like a lot. But when you're portioning two hundred cups, you know, four grams per cup adds up really fast. It becomes, you know, you're missing three or four cups at the end of it. So that was always fun to like see somebody be like, I'm done and I'm like, well why do you have so many less cups than I have? We s it's the same Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: amount of cream cheese. And so that was always a that was always fun. But yeah, I these are the Yeah, and those are the those are the moments. Those are the the good old days, right? we'd have like the number of bagels rolled and baked in a day, that was always a fun challenge. I'd have a leaderboard in the store as well. Aaron: No. I remember that. Jeff Perera: yeah, like who could like if you baked the most bagels, rolled the most bagels in a day, either solo or with like a partner baker, like we had a leaderboard for that. Some of the things that hold over in the Ocoee store that are still there, we have a board on the cooler. with like a little Polaroid of the team and each teammate is up there and there's always like a weekly get to know you question like this week the question Aaron: Hmm. Jeff Perera: was, if you could pick a pet, any pet, real or fictional, what would you pick? Aaron: Solid question. Jeff Perera: It a great question. It was cool. Like the team was like someone was like, I want a Phoenix and someone was like a unicorn, a hundred percent. Like, why wouldn't you want a unicorn? I think someone else had put like a pink dragon. Like, okay. Like I'm here for this. Like this is what This is like the these are the riveting questions that our guests want to know. So it's it's perfect. Aaron: This is important stuff. Jeff Perera: Yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. It's like way more way more important than like when gift cards are rolling out, right? Details, details. Aaron: It's those are details, you know. This is this soon. Answer soon. Sooner th sooner than a unicorn. Jeff Perera: Soon. It's always soon. I got that question today. When is Fisher's Indiana opening? Soon. When is Cooper City Aaron: Also sooner than a unicorn. Jeff Perera: opening? Soon. Aaron: And that's one of the advantages of the one store is less of those sorts of things. I would say probably this is my and I don't have a store or any of this, but I I would say that from my perspective, probably one of the hardest things is with a franchise business at the store level, you're just always starting over. Always starting over. And so you when you have a single store. Kind of to your early points, you solve a problem and it's generally solved. Maybe if staff turns over, you get a retrain, but like you can only encounter something for the first time once. By definition, the next time it's the second time. So that's not true of the franchise. With the franchise, you just keep reliving the hardest part of the store life cycle over on purpose, over and over and over. Jeff Perera: Over and over and over. the the Groundhog's Day, right? Groundhog's Day. Is that was the Bill Murray? Was he in the movie in that movie? Aaron: Yep, he was, yeah. Jeff Perera: Every time that alarm went off, it's just like he experienced the same thing over and over again. I I think that the hardest part about that as a franchise business isn't the the first guest, isn't overcoming an objection, isn't explaining someone who the brand is. Like those are probably the things that immediately come to someone's mind. The hardest part is getting our franchise owners to trust us that what that question that they come to us with that we answered four and a half years ago, even though it's brand new to them, is not a Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: new question. It has been solved for over and over and it's just new to you. And it's either been solved for with technology or a process or We tested it, it didn't work, and we just scrapped it. Like there's that's the hardest part. That's the hardest part. Aaron: Makes sense. I mean, Jeff Perera: Yeah. Aaron: 'cause again, it's that's another layer of firsts. You know, all the in-store firsts are true, but for from the franchisee to us, for them it's all firsts. Jeff Perera: It's all firsts. And then you and and and we're, you know, at forty two stores now we're dealing with franchisees with three and four stores and we're dealing with franchisees who are just getting their first store up and running. So even inside the would diaspora be the right word of franchisees? That's a good word, yeah. Aaron: So it sounds fancy. It is solid. Jeff Perera: you have a a big differentiation in experience with Jeff Spiegel run. And so you you do have you do almost have to like separate like you have like new store folks and then you have ex mature store folks. So Aaron: been as an example of that, it's been interesting to see the South Florida, you know, the South Florida team really just pour on the gas at the end of this year with store openings. And just to kind of compare the pace that they're opening stores at. And then some of our other franchisees that are ramping up compared to, you know, again, and it's just experience. They'll all get there, but to see some of these first stores Really struggling to open doors and these other guys, gals, just have them pipelined and it's like store, store, store. It's just it's wild Jeff Perera: Yeah, I Aaron: to see that experience sort of click in for because then we're exp extending that family of like experience in the JBR system beyond just corporate office. Sure, we've done this a bunch of times now, you know, 42 at a minimum. Jeff Perera: Mm-hmm. Aaron: but when franchisees start getting into that fold of like, hey, we know how this goes, we've solved these problems multiple times now, too. There's sort of Jeff Perera: Yeah. Yeah, like well like Aaron: How others have the table? Jeff Perera: you've got South Florida opened and they're gonna probably open at least one more this year. they opened Plantation last weekend. Robin Teresa Sheffield and Casey, they opened Bloomingdale, which is their third one this year 'cause they had did the villages and Gainesville and now Bloomingdale and the the difference in store one, two and three, just in their Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: short window of ramp and maturity made all the difference in the world when it came to that opening. And it's nice to see it, it's great. And it is I think going slow in the beginning is important and then at some point you've gotta like push that like big snowball over the top of the hill and let it just go down and roll, pick up steam. So And we're gonna pick up a lot of steam. We a few more stores open this year and then next year, like looking at that list, it's like lining up to be a crazy Q one. Aaron: You guys are gonna be busy. Get your rest over eat your turkey, get your rest. Cause you're gonna need it. Jeff Perera: Yeah. Well I think we were looking at the calendar for the remainder of the year and when you take out the week of Christmas and New Year's, which are just awful times of year to open a store, and the week of Thanksgiving, I think there's only I think there was only like five weeks left in the year or six weeks left in the year Aaron: Yeah. Jeff Perera: that we can open a store. And so we're gonna scramble, we're gonna get a couple of more open this year and then twenty twenty seven's gonna start off probably like January week one with the brand new store. It'll be the third year in a row we've done that. You know, we We're used to this now. We did it was Houston, the West U store. First week January last the in twenty five. This year it was South Tampa. Next year could Aaron: Yeah, that's right. Could it's it could be multiple. Jeff Perera: I put a pr should I put prediction on which one it's gonna be? Let me Aaron: Yes, actually that would be good. Jeff Perera: throw it out there. Let me see. I let me pull the list. I want this to be as accurate as possible. Where's the where's the list? Aaron: To our New Year's store, our New Year's baby store. Jeff Perera: Yeah, who's the New Year's baby store? Okay, this be fun. Because I think the I think the rest of our predictions were pretty much trash earlier this year, so we do. We do. Yeah, for sure. okay, Aaron: Yes. We still have to revisit those. That's still on the calendar. I don't want to see what they are. It's could only imagine. Jeff Perera: I I'm gonna go. man. Okay, I'm gonna go with Saint Augustine, Florida as the January Week One store. Yeah. Aaron: Wow. All right. Jeff Perera: Saint Augustine, Florida. Aaron: That'd be a good one to open on Jan first. I like that. Jeff Perera: Yeah, and it's actually the second. It would be like whatever that whatever the week after wherever the first falls, Aaron: Yeah, the hall is. Jeff Perera: whatever the week after is, that's the week we would do it. So but I'm gonna go with Saint Augustine. I'm probably wrong. Aaron: I like that. I like that. Jeff Perera: So probably wrong. But Aaron: Jake's gonna be out there going nowhere. Jeff Perera: I know. Well they just they just started construction. So if you think of like a ten to thirteen week construction cycle and permitting and all that stuff, Aaron: it lines up. Jeff Perera: it lines up. I'm doing math. I I can count by twelve. Aaron: You've done a couple of these. Jeff Perera: That's just a couple. Danielle probably has a completely different answer, I'll have to ask her later. So Aaron: It's she knows too much. She's she has a real answer. The we're we only Yeah. She ac Jeff Perera: Sh she has too much d yeah. I'm guessing. She has data. Aaron: She actually knows things. I'm not interested in that. I want completely unqualified guessing. That's what I'm interested in. Jeff Perera: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. Unqualified guessing. That sounds like so much fun. We're gonna have to make odds for this too. Start a start like a poly market or like a calcium market for this, yeah. When Aaron: There you go. There you go. Jeff Perera: new stores open. That'd be hilarious. We could run it internally. I wonder if they'd do that for us. They probably would. degenerate over here. Anyway. It was fun to be in this store today. It was fun to reminisce, it was fun to you know, work with the team again. I enjoyed it. Happy we have many of these now, because it's it's exciting to know that that experience is happening in so many places. So but I think this was a great chat, Aaron. I'm excited for what's to come for the rest of the year. But for now, bake fresh, bring joy, build community. See ya next week. Bye.