How Two Foodies Bought a Restaurant and Found Success

Hey there restaurant pros. It’s David Scott Peters and welcome to episode 84 of the restaurant prosperity formula. I’ve been coaching restaurant owners since 2003. And the restaurant prosperity formula is based on what the most successful restaurant owners I’ve worked with do on a daily basis to achieve their success. The basic premise of the formula centers around achieving prosperity freedom of your restaurant that financial freedom you deserve. To achieve prosperity, you have to follow a very specific formula made up of leadership systems training, accountability and taking action.

Now I want to tell you about our guest today. Joshua Powell and Joseph Farah Sela

Joshua is a real estate agent turned investor turned restaurant owner who never thought he’d owned the restaurant he worked in as a kid, where his partner Joseph has a long and successful career in hospitality. If you ask them both, they probably tell you, they’re both foodies at heart.

Joshua and Joseph are owners of clays cafe in Hebron, Ohio, clays opened its doors back in 1934, and has been a local staple for generations.

Listening as they share with us the challenge they face taking over a restaurant that has a long standing traditions and long term employees to their transition to change that gave them their lives back and exploded their profitability.

I want to welcome Joshua and Joseph to the show today.

Joshua Joey, I really appreciate you doing this for me today. I’m so excited to have you as my guest today. Thank you guys. Thank you

Thanks. Happy to be here.

Do me a favor.

Tell us a little bit about the background about your restaurant and your journey to restaurant because it started as an employee and then took a long respite and then next thing you know, you guys are restaurant owners. Can you share that story a little bit?

Yeah, yeah, it’s

it’s very it’s, it can be long winded if we wanted it to be but pretty much the short story is I worked at this little cafe when I was a teenager.

And you know, it was a mom and pop shop.

And then you know, I went off to college. I you know, I moved to Los Angeles, I met Joey and this little mom and pop shop that’s now in its mid 90s. It’s 90 something years old.

And the last 15 years it’s grown tremendously since I worked there because that was back in 2005 when I started and we went back to Ohio and 2018 at the end of the year and we approached mark and Glenna which were the old owners about buying this little tiny little box of a place in Zanesville near our farm because we owned a farm at the time.

And they’re like, no, no, buy our restaurant.

And I was like, Absolutely not. I know that it’s turned into a monster. And you know, they’ve expanded the building, you know, four times in the last decade. Like I know that that place has grown like crazy even since I worked there and she’s like, No, I want to retire. I trust you like Come eat with us.

And we’re like no, a couple of times. And then she like called me and she’s like, please come meet with us while we show up at their house. Their whole family’s there. And not just her it was her whole family at a roundtable and they’re like we want you to buy clays and I was like

But eventually they talked us into it. We you know, we had a really good contract. They really helped us through the whole process.

And so before we started your program, was all of us training with them on how to pay our taxes. So we did everything ourselves.

The first year. And then it was right around. The first year was over is when we met you. November of last year, October last year was almost our full year. So we were practicing like how to pay our taxes. How do we do monthly? How do we do quarterly and we we learned how to do all of that ourselves and I’m so glad that we waited to meet you because we understood how all the programs worked before giving it over to somebody else.

But can we talk a little bit about Yeah, you got taxes but you also had to learn employees you had to learn scheduling you had to learn software you had to learn you know the equipment and what was good and what was bad and like there was there was a lot going on describe a little bit about what it was like before we left what was life like for the two of you?

Because I mean, if I remember correctly, you were both in the restaurant. damn near every day, every hour.

Yeah, I mean, we were there like seven days a week. Well, well, six days a week because we weren’t open on Sundays then. Now we are and we don’t have to be there.

But when we first took over, it was expected that the owners were there every moment the building was open, who would staff the staff, the managers, the old owners even told us like you have to pay your dues.

And I’m like, Well, my dues are when I paid for this building. But you know, we were there every moment and we would get yelled at by our staff if we you know, even like we I remember the first month we owned the restaurant. We went to my best friend’s wedding on a Friday. And I had multiple employees yelling at us that we weren’t there.

And we had given them a whole month’s notice and freaking out on us because we weren’t physically there.

There was no problems. We just weren’t there. That was the lifestyle we were living when we first took over.

Now Joey What was it like for you? Because you were if I remember correctly, primarily driving the front of house and what was going on there? What was life like for you when you have employees who have been there way long time like, I mean you have some 20 year employees if I remember correctly. Telling you that man you need to be here you’re not doing this right so on and so forth. What was that like? You know, why were they throwing so much shade?

You know, I think to to anchor this in reality they they were brought up that way a lot of them this is the only place they’ve worked.

That was the environment that was put in front of them, you know, for for various reasons, you know, to no one’s fault, but that that’s just what they were accustomed to.

And it wasn’t about, oh, we have this open position the owner needs to fill it. It was just I’m distracted. I can’t focus because my safety net isn’t there. And just what if what if what if the owner has to be here because what if someone comes in and asked for the owner?

You know, my world you take a message?

Yeah, like they would do that. thing where like, like they couldn’t make a decision on their own because I think Glenna had in like instilled in them that every decision had to be ran by her.

And I didn’t want to micromanage my business. I wanted to own my business. And that’s where it was at when we first took over

the big operation so that’s how they felt that they could best control it and run it that way. It’s just unfortunately has the side effects of you know, needing that safety net there all the time.

But, but you know, in general the I know all the staffs want for us to be there all the time comes from a place of them wanting a good experience for themselves in the customer. So can’t fault them for that.

But yeah, in terms of the lifestyle it was, you know, by all means enjoyable is this awesome project that we get to be a part of, but it was a open to close thing. Was the normal there was no Oh, are you opening are you closing? It’s you’re just there to the restaurant today. That means I’m gonna wake up roll out of bed and be there till you know it’s time to close my eyes and it was a lot of work.

A lot of figuring things out.

A lot of needing to build trust with the staff because we were, you know, we were the new people. They were the ones there for 10 years.

So, um, it took a little bit of time, but yeah, learning lingo of the industry learning how vendors worked because remember me and Josh didn’t set up those relationships we were introduced or thrown into it. So you know, and every single vendor is under different billing cycle and yada yada so yeah, it was a lot.

I have no doubt and you know, I can remember when I first met you guys, it was you were working so much and feeling so tied to the business again, because these employees like oh my gosh, like if I’m not there. Again, all they were doing was modeling what the old owners have done with traditional restaurant, old school restaurant tours would do work morning, noon and night where the value for me as an owner is how many hours they put in and how hard I work really had nothing to do with the success of the business or setting people up to be able to operate without you being in the building.

Certainly not a thought process because that thought processes it can’t be done without me.

So now you wanted to change but before we get to where you found me talk about maybe one, two or three of your top pain points, things that were really challenges for you that that sets you on a path to say something has got to give. We can’t continue down this path.

But I think for me,

the biggest thing I noticed was that yes, we had all of this documentation on the computer of like this folder just called claims that was handed to us.

And we took over and of course we went through all of it with the old owner.

But the truth of the matter is everything was in everyone’s brains and not in a system.

And I remember when we first started talking to you were started talking about systems all the time and I was like, What do you fucking mean by system? By systems? I’m just like, What are you talking about?

But I started to realize when our GM left because the GM was the old owner’s daughter.

That’s when I realized, oh my god, like the person that trained everyone, the person that did everything. She it was all in her head. And there was nothing on paper.

We had to relearn how to retrain how to train new employees, because that’s what she did. She just whenever a new person came in, she was there she just walked them through did the work. And then we had to create a system on Hey, this is what we do now when we hire people.

Because we were noticing that the new people weren’t getting the training that they deserved.

And even today, we still can be we there’s still some things we want to work on with training new hires, and we’re finally now getting to the point where we can you know, start increasing the way we use our systems now like job and stuff like that.

So what other things so that was the employee part, the training part. What about costs? What about ordering? What about Were there any other things that were like man we need to get a handle on this?

Well, we are a very lucky restaurant, and I know that you know, we’ve worked with a lot of different restaurants during your group. And a lot of people are in a lot worse position than we are.

We luckily took over a restaurant that was heavily popular. So it innately was profitable.

And when I took it over, you know I did research on what an average restaurant made profit and I was like, we’re killing it. 10% 11% We are knocking it out of the park

and then I met you and I realized we’re idiots.

Now we’re 25% and we’re doing a full remodel that we can afford now and not even batting an eye canceling a contract or $10,000. So it’s yeah, we’ve learned a lot with that.

Like did we some of the things that you’re asking, like we didn’t realize that we needed help in that position.

We knew our food costs for everything but we thought 40% is great. Like, this is fine. Oh, this item it’s 60% but it’s the only item you know now if I saw that creek

so that kind of goes down the path of you didn’t know what you didn’t know like, so you came in for one thing so what was the one thing that made you decide, hey, I want to join this group coaching program. And then what were maybe some of the unexpected things that that you got out of it.

Well, we met like one of one of Avery that went through your program and he owns Little Italy. And Avery was close with the old owners actually an almost bought a restaurant long story. But so we spoke with Avery and we were talking to him about how tired we are. And then he was showing us all these stats and all this stuff from this program. This David Scott Peters program he went through.

And we were like, um, I think we need to do I guess, and he’s kind of the one that told us to finally have that meeting with you.

And so what were you hoping that you were going to so you decide you see Avery and for everybody listening? Well, you know Avery has been a an episode of this podcast. He is now a member mentor for me in the group just completely changed his life. And he’s an evangelist. I mean, hence saw you guys you talk and he’s the first one to go hey, here’s a solution for you which is incredible for me and incredible for you in the long run. Because you made the decision to come on board.

But what was the what was it? You wanted your life back? Was it you wanted to make more money? What was the one the one thing that said, Oh, my God, what Avery has.

That’s one thing. This is great. I want that but what was the one thing that said let’s let’s sign up?

I think it was, you know, even before before the program, we knew we wanted to improve quality of life. And we knew we wanted to not just mimic the ownership. We wanted to take the business to the next level.

But we didn’t know that the how we didn’t think we could be focused and disciplined enough to go out, seek out all this information and make it make sense for us.

And you know, there’s there’s books there’s YouTube, sure, but this program really made it digestible. It held us accountable.

You know, when to go back to 70 us a little earlier, what was something unexpected that came out of this? You know, not to jump ahead, but it’s really the confidence in being able to to trust ourselves to be comfortable with it.

The staff and the customers uncomfortableness, if that makes sense.

We were not we were Oh, you know, I’m getting judged. So we’re doing something wrong.

And we we found our backbone with you and to no one’s detriment you know, we weren’t rude about it. We didn’t walk all over customers or staff of course but we found the value in our decisions and stuck with that and it paid off and it is paying off and you know, like you were gonna mention in your program, it’s okay to to lose some staff and lose a customer not because they’re not important not because you know, their opinions aren’t valuable. But you have to have a healthy relationship both ways.

And I know we had impostor syndrome, at least I did. Maybe I can’t speak on behalf of Josh but it was like, Yeah, we’re the owners but the am I qualified to do this?

I don’t know.

Right, and like, and that’s the other thing. That’s the probably what you’re trying to get us to say David is the our biggest issue whereas our employees, our employees made us feel like we didn’t own our own fucking restaurant.

And they made a and it made us feel like we had no control over any decision and when we finally started your program and got far enough and the one thing I did realize is, I was tired. I was exhausted. Yeah.

And I actually was getting to the point already, the first year of owning the business before I started your program was how much longer can I own this business before I can afford to sell it? Because that’s how tiring This is. Right?

And because we owned a farm we had a we had foster kids, we were doing all this other stuff outside of it. We could no longer you know, maintain our farm anymore. Like we couldn’t even fucking we couldn’t even move our yard and because we didn’t have the time.

And I’m like, I can’t live like this anymore.

And now I think we’re finally I still thought up until getting through most of this program. You know, we’re only going to keep the restaurant till we paid off. And now I’m like, I can now see that we can own this restaurant forever. And now live a normal life. And before your program, we wouldn’t have been able to ever think about keeping the restaurant forever.

Now we will.

And it wasn’t an easy journey to get there. I mean, I want people to understand that that, you know, the three of us at some point in time would go toe to toe on, hey, we should make this kind of change. Like you Dave, you understand. You don’t know this business. We’re in a small town and you don’t understand our restaurants different I’d be like No, Joshua, no, Joey, this is what it is. And we’d go back and forth back and forth.

But at some point in time, some of the battles I’d win very few I’d lose but some of them I would win.

And then it was interesting to see that Aha, and that change in your business change in your confidence, change in what you were doing.

And you know, you always kept me on my toes because it was like, if I’m gonna make that change, you better prove it to me. You better show me that that really is going to do it.

And so it allowed us to dive into numbers. It allowed us to talk about people and situations.

I mean, heck, during that time, you learned the importance of an implementer and even had brought on a new GM that became the wrong person and made yet another change and so on.

And you would have never had the competence to do that until you guys gain the knowledge that you need it. You know, it’s it’s never possible to you know, it’s possible so that makes sense.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I wouldn’t have known who was a toxic employee until now to like, now I also can like nip it in the bud that I used. To not be able to I can now see preempt. I can see the red flags before the red flags even come up that I couldn’t see before.

Talk about a little bit. Maybe one of the first changes you made that you went, Oh, shit, this actually works.

What is one of the big major changes I mean, we kind of went out of order in your program and like still there are certain things we haven’t finished in your program because I mean, now we’re doing a whole remodel and now we’re, we realize what we can become now. So now we’re so focused on the remodel and growing and like keeping up with the fact that our restaurant is naturally growing. Yeah.

So we’ve been all over the place with your program and I think one of the biggest things we implemented it first was not it wasn’t job actually because job we still are struggling with. Even to this day.

I think the biggest thing was getting the staff on board for us to not live there. Like constantly, I think, you know, instilling that, hey, it’s gonna be okay if we’re not there, like and we finally just stopped showing up every day.

And we’re like, listen, we’re gonna not show up every day. Get used to it.

And at first, you know, people were getting angry. I had managers calling me upset.

The staff is complaining that you’re not here every day and I was like, let them go. Like, nip it in the bud. Like you have to be supportive of us having a life outside of this place.

I think that was one of the first things we did one of the major things we did plant a curiosity before you go into next thing sorry, Joey, how often are you in the restaurant now?

Right now we are only in the restaurant to deal with the remodel. We are not doing anything operationally at the moment. Like for the last, I don’t know two months. We have fully put all of our attention towards anything new in the building. So like if we your

general contractor, you’re not in there serving a guest. Flipping a burger, making sure writing a schedule, you’re not doing any of that placing an order. You’re have managers that are doing the things for you and they’re confident enough to run the shift without you Yes.

100% And we have a new GM that’s doing a great job.

And we have a management staff now like we have new supervisors. We saw that there were employees now in the restaurant that were worth it. And we gave them a raise. We made them supervisors we created new positions and we wiggled some stuff around.

And even though we’ve made new positions, our labor is actually way lower, because now we track shit and you know, and then our food cost is lower like it’s in an all kind of combined into this.

It’s gelling. Finally and everything’s running more smooth. It’s reminding me of how it ran before we took it over. But the way they ran it was so like we

never received that it ran smoothly. That’s the key. Right? So, Joey, I didn’t mean to cut you off. So sorry. Hopefully you still have that thought.

We’re just thinking about like first systems. And, you know, of course, yes to Josh’s point, but also, I think even though we did it a little bit out of order, just the embracing of technology and there are programs out there that you don’t have to figure it out. They figured it out.

But really the big first changes is setting up a proper communication stream with our management, getting everyone on the same chat regardless of which program you use that has the chat, right like getting that door communication and the manager log the manager log which you know, we’ll throw a plug in there we use seven shifts. They have a manager logbook that’s very easy to add sections and update. So it can you know, mirror the program as as David, you know, suggests, but that has been really beneficial helping us keep track of things.

So that when we say we’re not there, it’s not like we’re not involved in our restaurant or we’re just involved with the staff. It’s just we’re not needed on the floor.

And we’re able to take a step back and really do the the macro managing that. We hired to do what we signed up to do. So

the manager logbook I yeah, I guess that’s one thing that we are stellar at now. Our manager communication, our communication is phenomenal compared to when we took over the business.

So how important like how important is that? I mean, that’s a major change. People don’t understand from manager meetings to the log. They think I see you every day I’ve communicated talk.

The manager log is essential to how we run.

So we require every supervisor manager to read the manager log every night. Like even if they’re off work, they’re required to read it. Or the day they come back and they have to read all the days they were off.

Do you know like just being able to write something in there like hey, the new you know, the the new table for grill is coming on Thursday. And then so people are asking me Hey, what’s that new grill table come in? Like it’s all there like there’s no question like, oh, Amanda called off work today.

And then every employee has a manager chat, which is something that we do specifically that we kind of talked about in one of your one hour sessions. Each employee has a manager Chat, where when she sends a message it it goes to all of us all the managers.

So like hey, I’m calling out sick here’s what’s happening.

We all know it once. It’s not like phone tech. Hey, Amanda called off. Well, what happened? Why did she call off? No, we all know exactly why she called off and then if we need to have a private conversation, we’ll go over to the manager chat, like the one where it’s just all of us together. Like Hey, she’s been calling off a lot. What should we do? You know, it’s now created this thing where we, you know,

I’ve the biggest thing I did when I introduced this program, as I said, this program is not to bitch moan and complain. This program is only to get facts across to you know, you know, hey, what’s going on here? Do not use this as a as a tool to complain. Yeah, I was like, that was one of our biggest things and we still have to kind of every now and then be like, hey, this program is not to complain. This program is to keep us all in the loop of what’s going on. Don’t get butthurt because someone mentioned like, hey, we forgot to do this last night. That’s just what this program is for. But the commute our communication at the restaurant now, like everybody knows what’s going on at all times. And I love that

and that translates into all the other systems. So number one, everybody’s on the same page but it also means you and Joey are guiding people beating the leaders your restaurant needs and saying these are the systems we’re going to use this is why we’re doing this is how we’re going to do it. Oh, by the way, we’re going to hold you accountable. And you know kind of Joe you talked about yet. Here come the systems and sometimes it’s technology like your tech stack and so on but a tech stack is no good if we don’t understand where all the numbers come from, why and how they fit together and how we’re going to share it with others.

Because now a seven shifts goes from being a scheduling tool that kind of puts up a schedule to one that helps you control labor. You know, it is

you remember, at the very, very beginning. I’ve just thinking about this now, the first thing we did was a new thought we were absolutely insane. We introduced all of our programs at the same time.

We did margin edge, seven shifts. QuickBooks integration, toast integration, which we already had those but we introduced all of our programs at once and that we did everything out of order because we were already on step seven and didn’t even realize we were at Step Seven already because we already we already started using it and the crazy part is in our conversations are like the program, my program alone is going to consume a ton of your time and effort and people’s and you’re like, No no, we’re gonna do this and this and this. I’m like, holy crap.

And while a lot of work, it was a lot of work.

But now Now it’s all done. Like you’re maintaining it. It’s kind of like the analogy if you had a basketball how much and you want to spin it on your finger Yeah, it takes all this effort to get the basketball moving but after that you just tap it and you guys are tapped stage. You was like all so let me ask you this, all the effort, all that Herculean effort you had to put in putting all those software the tech stack in place. Starting the program, going through a couple managers having the push back, was it all worth it? Like would you do it again?

Would I do it again? I hope not.

It was worth every bit of all the effort like

Well, here’s an example if something goes down like Like let’s say margin, like margin edge change their system recently that went down and it affected us like You’re like we were so used to doing this and it’s just running perfectly well margin edge and toasts change the way they integrate. And so our margin edge has been down for last 30 days. Like with toast. Yeah, we were like freaking out and we like got the GM on the phone finally for the CEO of margin edge and finally got them to fix it. I’m like, Listen, I’m paying all this money for fix it.

And now we’re back up and running and I have nothing else to worry about. Now I’m back to doing this.

It becomes your systems become how you run your business. It’ll

Wow, Poser without being there, you know, get the pencil now.

And the other part of it is we talked about when we worked on your budget, and you saw what was possible to view like, oh, we can do this. Now we can do that because you could see it. And all that information helps you achieve those budget targets.

Like you guys are really impressive on how much you did do. I mean, are you still sick? Yeah, there’s a couple things you didn’t do. But they aren’t the things that didn’t change your life as far as having a life didn’t change your bottom line.

Let’s I mean, we, I remember when we first did our budget, like I don’t know back in April, now, are we hitting the numbers now?

Here’s your never hit your budget.

Honesty, you know, you know, we talked about like increasing our food costs, and you’re like, well, listen, he’s like, I was like, well, we’re gonna lose all this business because people are gonna think we’re overpriced. Now you’re like, Listen, if you lose 5%, five to 7% of your customers, here’s how much you’re still going to make.

Now I’m going to be honest, since we’ve raised our prices in July, we’ve lost our actual item count sales have went down 7%.

But we’re up over $100,000 in sales, which means our food cost is way lower. Our labor is way lower. Yes, less customers are buying food at the moment. It’s growing back. But like, we’re so much more profit that now we’re doing a full remodel of the restaurant like we’re going from 78 seats to 120.

And you were already like your operating expenses were pretty much in line. So when you talk about 11% profitability to 25 now I hope to get people 15 to 20 like you guys are stellar and a part of that is you also have incredible volume. So like you are a busy busy restaurant. But with that said, the majority of that was prime cost that was food cost, Port cost, it was labor cost. It was the things that you weren’t looking at all the operating expenses hadn’t like dialed in and like but the people and the product was a little bit out of out of control, even though you were doing well.

Well, and we didn’t know that we just went with the prices that you know we did a price increase one month before we took over and we did that as with the old owners and honestly we just guessed and a lot of shit and she was just like, oh well. 40% food costs is fine. Like let’s just wiggle this around, wiggle this around. And we were just like, Sure.

And we ran with that for like six months and then realized like we could be paying our staff better. And that’s when I realized like I have to increase food cost for food prices to pay my staff better

talk a little bit about that. Because when we do budgets, a lot of IT people don’t understand that. It’s not just about the bottom line. It’s about your core values and what you believe in and what you want to do, and you both you enjoy, wanted to make sure you were an employer of choice and there was a huge culture change which means you were not the employer of choice for the first term in it. Right? Yeah. You are now and a part of that is pay part of that supervision. Part of that’s the training part of it’s all the things you put in place, but why did what made you make the decision and what did you change when it comes to people’s wages?

I mean, okay, when we took over we have 50 employees, we still have 50 employees now. Ish. You know, I’d have been close a little bit but you know, we used to pay people just a tiny bit over minimum wage. And yes, some of our employees don’t make lower than others, but it depends on the position.

But we realized like Ohio’s, you know, cost of living is way above that minimum wage, and we want to make sure that no matter what they’re walking out the door with everything that they’re making, plus the tips that they’re making above that so we wanted to make sure everyone was minimum hitting the $14 $15 an hour.

And so I started looking at how many how much they’re making and tips per day because all my stuff gets a share. And I was like, We got to work on this. I was like, it was so I went through every staff member last year during Christmas, right after I started the program with you actually before we even did major changes.

I gave every single employee a raise.

I was just like, This is unacceptable. I don’t care what happens. They need to be fed at night. Their children need to be fed at night. I just didn’t feel comfortable.

And then we majorly increased, you know our supervisors and manage your wages. We gave them a huge raise this year. And we plan on actually giving them another big one and Christmas. Don’t airless till after Christmas.

We plan on giving them another large one now that as soon as this remodel is over, we plan on paying them just as good wages as the factories in our area because that’s what our goal is. You know we are surrounded by fat factories. That’s where a lot of our business comes from. And so how are we competitive? One fun loving atmosphere, we’re a family oriented business two, they get paid well, and you know, three, we do a lot of special stuff with the staff like we do parties and not just pizza parties like we we go all out and that’s what we’re known for.

And we’re not owners that are going to be up your ass all day. Like, we’re going to check in on you and make sure you’re doing your job. But we’re not going to be standing behind you hovering, because I just I didn’t like that lifestyle when we took over the business that was expected. And I think they’re all starting to finally get to appreciating the ones that are still there.

Culture change takes time. But the other part is there’s this other message in that and that is a lot of people have I’m worried about minimum wage going up. I’m worried about you know now with the the labor shortage after COVID You know, my gosh, people are paying $20 an hour for a cook in this market and so on and so forth. Like it’s going to kill me. You raised everyone’s wages, and because you’re at a labor shortage, well, there is no labor shortage.

It’s a culture shortage, right. It’s a culture shortage, right.

And so you were able to raise their wages, keep them and still make based on your 14 points more to your bottom line. Like I want people to understand that, like you raised your labor, but because you started scheduling more efficiently, because you started to get people to reduce their food costs and reduce waste and theft and all these other things. All of a sudden, you were 14 points to the good.

That’s amazing. Did you ever think that was possible before?

No, not even. I mean, I thought we were already running the best citizens could run when we took over.

And let me say there’s good news that’s above the national average of five to 8%.

But again, 15 to 20 is is is what is possible in my world, but based on your volumes and what you’ve done, you know, 25 that’s, it’s outrageous, and honestly, it’s higher than 25. Like honestly, we’ll leave it at 25 That’s just what I remember.

That’s one thing, but it’s definitely above that.

Now, you know, of course, you know, prime cost. We have all these extraneous fees, which are, you know, the remodel and all that stuff. So it’s not like we’re putting all that money into our pocket. We’re really reinvesting into the business because we believe that doing this will make us be able to hire more staff, pay them even better next year.

So it was a new term. I learned I did one of my shoot the shifts on Friday, just recently. And you know, we talked about growth mindset versus fixed mindset, but I learned something called the Freedom mindset and it’s again, fits great with the restaurant prosperity formula, which is freedom from your restaurant, the financial freedom you deserve, which is kind of the deal but the big thing, you exemplify a freedom asset as we look at our business as an asset, not something that needs me to be there all the time to take care of it something that grows on its own.

And I think that’s that’s really summarizes a lot of how you both view the business now it’s no longer man I gotta be I you know, it needs me these are my children. They need me to it’s, that’s an asset. It’s supposed to make us money. It’s supposed to give us time off it’s supposed to do the things we bought it for. Not become a prison, right? Yeah.

Now there are times where things derail where I’m like, we gotta go in there and get that manager off this fucking floor like we have. We had a manager that I was like, I see the things that are happening, and it’s up I have, you know, employees messaging me like, hey, this manager is doing this or this manager is doing this inappropriate thing. And then we’re, you know, we’ll fly right in that’s the only time we have to emergency go to work. We don’t have to emergency go to work because you know, so and so called off know we have systems in place for that now.

We only need to come in it’s like our management is not do

you mean it’s a restaurant and there’s people that say Oh, yeah. Billy favorite, I really appreciate this. I you know, I get excited about it all the time. And you know, I’m consistent. He loves me hate me. This is what it is. But I love hearing the change. And I got to see it. I had a front row front row seat. With that said, if somebody was looking at my program right now, and said, Should I do it? What would you tell someone? Would you be like Avery, would you sit them down and say, here’s what it is or would you just bomb with a you know, a two by four and say don’t do it or do it? What would you say?

I mean, honestly, there are certain caveats and I think there are certain businesses that might not fit your your thing because I think it would have been harder to do this program if we weren’t already profitable.

Okay, but because like we had put a lot of money into this, and luckily, we had a little bit to throw in. But honestly, even if we weren’t profitable, I still think your mindset works.

My first thing would always be absolutely yes. Like it’s the best decision we’ve ever made for the business.

And it is truly I think there are certain businesses that if, if you should do this program, if you believe in your product and you already have a good, good luck in product layout, we have a great product and we are very blessed to have a great club product. Now some people I’ve written to restaurants, your products junk, you know, if you don’t already have something good to stand on, your program is useless.

But if you have something that you truly believe in that you truly believe people love this and will come for this for years and years and years to come. Your program is essential.

Thank you appreciate that.

And I’m gonna agree with you. It is not right for everyone.

There are low volume people it’s not good for there are people who have fixed mindsets that say, oh, it’s somebody else’s fault.

And I’m not going to disagree with you as far as 100% restaurant one on one I’ve got to I’ve got to understand or assume that you do hot food hot cold and cold clean, safe work environment for your guests. Employees. Wow, customer service, incredible product like you do restaurant well, because I can’t fix that from a zoom call. Right? I

can’t I know, you would have to be physically in the building. Right?

And then you would still be like, I don’t like the recipe that this like, if you don’t have a good product, and you know, that’s why, you know, once I saw Avery’s restaurant, I was like, that makes sense. He has a good product. He has family owned recipes. Yeah, and we do too. We have family owned recipes that we’ve used for 30 something years.

I think it’s perfect for mom and pop shops that have been around for a while and just need to get out of the old school. Yeah.

I appreciate I would definitely like dress I’d say to yes that you know, it should absolutely be considered I think, you know, David in his introductory calls, you know, you’ll make the call if it’s a good fit, but absolutely everyone should consider it and there there is value in it.

And I think what’s great about the program is there’s so much depth all these 30 Some restaurants participating they’re going to get different values from what they’re running and where they’re at in their life.

And Mmm, that’s awesome. You know, like I said, there are systems there are, you know, the budget and increasing profits being more efficient.

To me, that’s all secondary to the the mindset that we obtain by going through these programs. We can possibly forget terminology or budgeting rules, you know, whatnot, and we can refresh ourselves with a Google search one day but you can’t refresh yourself as easily with your mindset and that yeah, that’s that’s always going to be invaluable. That’s going to be worth the investment.

And, you know, Josh brought up that term earlier. I think it’s important for to be an employer. of choice.

Your employees have to see that this isn’t some place that’s unstable, that’s going to go under this is a place where we’re making improvements. We’re making positive changes, not just change for the sake of change, positive changes. We’re taking steps forward, and the owner is you know, we were grateful because of the amazing product and because of this program that we were able to invest into this restaurants future, both from an abstract sense via this program, as well as from a physical sense with our remodels and our purchasing of software.

And, well, new equipment and supplies.

Well, you remember when we first announced that we’re going to start changing things in the restaurant and doing the remodel? Our staffs eyes almost came out of their head and they were freaking out. And they were not on board at first. Yeah.

And then now that they’re starting to now that you know we were doing it in phases, were on the second to last phase. Now that we are getting ready to put in the new tables.

They’re all like, Oh, this is going to work. This is nice. Like this is cool. Like it’s bigger. It’s cooler in here you got more AC like they’re starting to get excited like I have always a continuity like what you’re doing is amazing. Like, this is awesome. And we didn’t have that kind of conversation before. Like no one ever said like, what you guys are doing is awesome.

Now they’re starting to see it.

Well, I think one of the biggest things is and I think you’d agree with this. It’s no longer the old owners restaurant. It’s now your restaurant.

Right and I’m starting to feel like that too.

That’s awesome. Joshua, Joey, I really appreciate doing this for me today. Just absolutely impressed and couldn’t be prouder with the change you guys made because again, I wasn’t lying about how we would go toe to toe about you know, you’d be like show me to I’m not making that change unless you prove that to me. And we go through the battles but he never said no, you just said prove it. And you guys both were never afraid. I shouldn’t say that beginning you were afraid but later you were never afraid to make the change. You realized you’re going to do what you’re going to do and it is ultimately your choice. And the changes you’ve made in your business are really just amazing. What it’s done for your life, what it’s done for your business, and your future. I’m truly impressed.

Do me a favor. Was there anything you want to share with people a favorite quote? A book, something you wish I had asked you. In closing, what would you guys like to share with me?

I don’t know. I think one of the biggest things that I try to do every day is I have a mantra. Everyone has a mantra, but my mantra is every day. I’m required to put a smile on at least one person’s face. No matter where I go. I like that mantra and it works.

Excellent. What about you, Joey?

Um, I think you know, you have to in terms of like, whether this is the right client, this is the right program for you.

You have to be someone that you know, obviously you’re not gonna have all the answers that that’s why you need something like this, but you have to be open minded enough to hear someone out. You have to you know, you mentioned it, you have to be prepared to put in the effort and do the hard work but just know that this effort is you’re gonna get results from this effort and try to pace yourself you have a well paced program. Yeah, but don’t let yourself fall too far behind. Yeah, it’s you know, you take a few too many steps behind. It’s harder to catch up, but you know, be be organized about it. Like take notes, think of questions, be involved in the group calls, like that’s how you’re gonna get the most out of this. Yeah.

And, you know, that’s another great thing. An aspect of the program we haven’t talked about yet is those group coaching calls you’re with so many real live examples and we’re we’re all different we’re all in different parts of the country, yada yada, but are world I should say.

But at We’re also running a restaurant and I was surprised by how many more similarities there are versus differences. Someone’s gonna bring up labor laws and that’s always going to be different. per se. But yeah, loud aside labor laws and maybe state tax laws. But that aside, yeah, there’s a lot of value there from your peers.

And that’s what I think helped build at least my confidence a little is knowing that like,

yeah, I belong in this space. And this space is a group of professionals and we are one of those professionals and we have something to add, and, of course, something to learn. And

yeah, I I didn’t really realize how much we were going to end up, you know, helping other people.

Why? You know, I didn’t realize all these things that I know that other people didn’t and it was nice to be able to bump your brains off of all these other people that are, you know, very smart, very, like smarter than me and like you there was so much we learned back and forth from each other like hey, actually, this is better if you guys try this.

Have you thought about this like do this like that kind of information is so important and like that’s the other part of your whole program is the group part.

And we you know, we don’t talk about it enough but that group part was just as knowledgeable as the the other part where like it was just as needed.

100% Either you have a community of restaurant owners who actually care about you, and everybody has, again, that’s the mastermind principle everybody has knowledge to help each other and it’s it’s when you come aboard I go hey, man, you know, if you’re gonna join this program, there’s 30 weeks of group coaching calls I need you to make all if not, but a few of those because you not only make a commitment to yourself, you make a commitment to others, because you’re sharing your knowledge helps someone else and their knowledge helps you and I don’t know everything. I learn every single day from that group.

Our group is amazing, and it rotates and changes and there’s new information all the time and I really appreciate you bringing that up. Because I think there’s a lot of special people in it because they’re just like you they want to make change in their business. Not make excuses.

Yep. It’s awesome. And I think it’s funny like whenever you get the next group of people in because of course, you know, you know, people are coming in and coming out at different times.

You get the new people that are coming in when you’re close to the end, and they’re asking the same questions you asked at the beginning. You’re like, oh,

yeah, I remember. I remember being confused about that. And then I’m like, it’d be fun in five weeks.

Amen. You’re Joshua Joey, I appreciate you very much. Hopefully, we can do a follow up interview because I want to hear how things have changed when you get that renovation finished. Absolutely, sure. Thanks, guys. All right. He did. Thank you, David. 

He that was an awesome episode. I want to thank you for taking the time to take action on building a better, more prosperous restaurant.

Before you go.

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