An Owner on the Cutting Edge of Restaurant Growth and Management

Hey, the restaurant pros. It’s David Scott Peters, and welcome to the restaurant prosperity formula. For over two decades, I’ve been guiding restaurant owners to success with the proven principles of something I call the restaurant prosperity formula. I originally created the formula based on the daily practices of the most successful restaurant tours I coach, and it’s now the foundation of what I teach restaurant owners like you so you can achieve success. What do I mean by success? Success is a restaurant owner who dictates the terms of their life and their bank account, instead of their restaurants dictating those things for them. Success as a restaurant owner who has the freedom from the restaurant and the financial freedom they never thought possible. How you define success is up to you, but I do know the way to achieve it is using the restaurant prosperity formula. This season, I’m diving even deeper into the core elements of the formula, leadership systems, training, accountability and taking action along with my insights, you’ll hear from special guests, industry experts and inspiring success stories from fellow restaurant owners who’ve turned their businesses around and found their definition of success.
In this episode number 112, our guest is Avery ward. Avery Ward is the CEO of Little Italy pizza in Grove port, Ohio, a repeat guest and one of our very own member mentors. Avery is a talented entrepreneur and restaurant industry leader. He is someone who is on the cutting edge of restaurant growth and management. Listen in is that Avery shares insights every restaurant needs to hear from leading with your vision and why to getting the most out of your management team and growing your business with video and more, it’s always a good and lively conversation when Avery is our guest.
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Abraham, excited to have you on again. I really appreciate you doing this.
Absolutely excited to be here
well so people can understand. They’ve probably, we’ve, we’ve done a couple of these at this point in time. But there’s a different, a different side of this, because for years now, you have been not only a member, but a member. Mentor. I want to talk about what that means to you. We’re gonna talk about some of what, what your best practices are, things you can share with people and learn more about you. But as we hear, as you talk, there’s a little bit of an echo, because you’re growing your business so much that we’ll talk about at the end here, that you now needed office space, and you’re in the process of building that, I think that is pretty damn cool. Do me a favor. I talk about member mentor. I don’t think people understand what that is you talk about, what it is to be a member mentor, and maybe what the best part of that is, yeah,
so you know in your program, when members come through, we want to make sure that they are kind of guided along their experience and process of growing and changing their Business one week at a time for what is you say? Supposed to be 26 but actually something like 30, right? Weeks? And you know, we want to make sure that they are guided and supported in that process. So as a mentor, I meet with assigned members on a weekly basis to check in on their progress and their kind of where they’re at, and make sure that they don’t have any questions that are not getting answered, or, you know, help through issues that may be popping up along their journey that I’ve been through and I’ve experienced, and can help kind of guide them through it as an active restaurant owner. So
what’s good? What do you like about being a mentor? Because this is not something that’s it’s not a paid position. For that matter. It is literally you giving back to other restaurant owners who are going through the same journey you went through, certainly different paths. But what makes you want to do that?
Yeah, I mean, you know, I’ve said it many times to you, and you’ll always go, No, you did the work, but quite literally, three and a half years ago, you allowed me to change my life through information that I didn’t have readily available in my head, or, you know, the experience to be able to do. And so, you know, with that being said, I’m very grateful for that, and feel very passionate that the systems that are in the program and you teach can quite literally change people’s lives, because it’s changed Ryan so want to help be able to do that for more people, because there’s a lot of restaurant owners out there that struggle on a day to day basis. For you know what is required to run a restaurant, and it’s not easy. It’s difficult. Every day is different. Every day is a challenge and brings new opportunities and new obstacles to get around.
But as somebody that’s kind of started from that spot of being, you know, kind of burning that candle at both ends and struggling through running a restaurant, to someone who works outside the business on it, not in it. You know, has grown to a team of 80 people from 12 when I came back to the business. You know, there’s been a lot of opportunities that have come up along those just a few short years. But as more and more opportunity comes up, I take on less and less so that’s kind of I now have the capacity to be able to help others kind of go down that same path.
Yeah, it’s pretty cool to watch again, those people who are listening to us, maybe for the first time, go backwards and listen to some of the podcasts that you and I have done from you going from working the pizza ovens and driving and doing all the things to building what is a multi unit fantastic business with media empire that’s on its way, we’ll talk about at the end. Here it is. It is gratifying to see, and you’re pretty damn young, which means your trajectory is just to learn the lessons that you’ve learned and put them into practice change your life now just means, as you go on, when you’re my age, holy crap. I dare, I dare say how successful you’re going to be and what you’re going to be doing. Who the hell knows? We’ll see.
I mean, you know, I have pretty strong feelings about what we call running our leg of the race. You know, when the batons in your hand, you’re running around that track that’s been passed to you, what are you going to do with it? And I’m not one that’s going to sit around and kind of hope and pray. I’m going to take it and we’re going to run with it as far as we can. So that way that next generation, or whatever comes next, is set up for success and has a really great foundation to take that baton and keep running with it.
Well, let’s, let’s harp on that point very quickly, because one of the reasons why you’re so successful is you share your vision with your team like you are crystal effing clear. I just did a podcast with our good friend Matt Clapp at America’s best restaurants, and he put out his vivid vision and sent us a damn eight page glossy, you know, magazine, to share with him what that is. You follow that same process, and I think that is critical. When you talk about rate the race and handing the baton if they don’t know the direction they’re going, if they if they don’t know where victory is or what you’re trying to get to, you can’t get there. So can you talk about the importance of sharing your vision? Because I think that’s critical to why you’ve been so successful.
Absolutely. I mean, you know, money follows attention, and attention creates hype, and people don’t want to come to work for some boring company who’s the same day over day over day, and just serving customers, and they don’t understand what the, you know, end goal is. They don’t understand what they’re doing it for. And so creating a vision for your company and where you are now and where you want to go, and how you’re going to get there, and it’s crystal clear your team can align behind you and execute on that vision every day.
It’s not just serving another guest for us, it’s creating lasting memories worth sharing. And what that means is, when people come into our restaurant and they dine with us, we want to provide such that great experience that they have a core memory locked in their brain. And anytime something gets brought up about slice of pizza or going to a restaurant for this person’s birthday. Again, you know, we celebrated XYZ birthday at literally three years ago, and this was the experience we have, and it’s locked in there. And you know, when they drive past their building, they’re always thinking about that birthday experience, right? And the worth sharing part is creating such a great experience that they’re going to go out and tell others about it, whether that be word of mouth or on social media. They’re posting about their experience or leaving us that Google review, whatever it may be that’s memories worth sharing.
I had one of our team members experience the other day that she used to serve them all the time, every Friday they came in this year, and one of the kids has Down syndrome, and so he always kind of communicates and expresses himself through drawings. And he came in the other day and has been looking to see her, and had a drawing that he drawled, drew for Halloween. And I said, Happy Halloween. Love you, Mallory. We miss you, you know, because she’s not serving them anymore, and that’s a memory that’s worth sharing, because, you know, that kid is just so fell in love with her through the experience that she provided that, you know, he’s creating drawings and bringing it back to give it to her.
That’s fantastic. I you know that that’s the part where I think a lot of people lose sight of we’re here to create memories. Hospitality is about memories, and it could be something as simple as just I had a great experience, and I was left alone so I could work on my stuff, on my iPad, my tablet, whatever. And it was just perfect to the anniversaries and your restaurants been around for how many years?
45 years is here. So that’s really, you know, I didn’t really get to finish the vision part there. I kind of got sidetracked. Sorry. But, you know, 45 years is a long time, and a lot can change in 45 years, and so it’s important to keep it fresh. And it’s, it’s very easy to have a 45 year old business that gets in that stuck rut of, we’re doing it day after day. We’ve got our stuff together. We know our processes. We know, you know, we know everything. And it’s easy to get in that mindset and not go, oh, we could be better. We could be better. We could grow. We could grow. And so a vision allows you to kind of put all that onto paper, share it with your team, and be that excitement every day where you’re sharing that excitement. Hey, don’t forget, we have two years left on this goal. Here’s where we’re at. So far, we’re doing great, but I want you to hone in on this, this and this, because that’s really going to put us to that end, and once we get there, this is what’s in it for you. It’s important for employees to have, you know, a buy in factor of where they’re going, what’s the purpose for them, of why we’re going there.
Why do I work harder? You know, and sharing that every day is super important, and getting your management team aligned with it, but also you as the owner, being extremely passionate about that vision where we’re going and how we’re going to get there is super, super important
well, and I think that two things tie together. The 45 years of longevity is you have created memories for multiple generations, from your grandparents to your father to now you, the community obviously loves you and comes back. What people may or may not know, if they’ve not listened to our past interview, is you went from this little, tiny, tiny restaurant into this magnificent building and exploded your sales, and all you’ve done is, instead of losing the magic of the small place, because it was the feeling, because it was the service, because it was the food, it was the great hospitality, that feeling came along into this shiny penny, and people still come in and just create memories like you talk about with the the kid who brings the brings the picture, because there’s a connection with the community. There’s a connection with the guests. And that can only happen with a vision that your team buys into your vision, that you train to your vision, that every day, your management team keeps the ship moving towards the goal. It doesn’t mean that you don’t go off course from day to day, but you’ve got everybody knowing where they’re going. They are riding the ship and getting you back on course, which gets to you to your destination for success. And I think that has been probably one of the most powerful things I’ve seen you exemplify, not just words, like you didn’t just read the book, vivid vision, and that was a great book. Like you freaking live it, and it is truly powerful. As a leader, you get your team to do what you need them to do, and again, doesn’t mean they don’t screw up. We’ve had days where we’ve dropped a bunch of F bombs together about why these people didn’t do but that’s those are few and far between. Instead of it being a daily thing, it’s a every now and then, yeah,
well, you mentioned something really important there. You know, I see restaurants all the time. Do this, and they do it wrong. And there’s, there’s one specifically in Columbus. I’m not going to drop their name, but it used to be in this huge, huge warehouse and huge name in Columbus. They’ve got some other locations around Ohio, and I think maybe a couple other states, but very antique warehouse. And you know, their service was very subpar, but it was the food and it was the atmosphere, why this place was on our way every weekend, and the roof collapsed, and they were not able to salvage this location at all. And they built a new location in a brand new build out from ground up and move the business into it. And every single post on social media that you’ll see there’s 50 to 100 plus comments of people going not the same. You ruined it. It’s horrible.
And we could have easily had that because we were in a very small location. It was very nostalgic. The wood floors creaked when you walked in, you know, you were shoulder to shoulder. There was photos all over the wall of all of the softball and sports teams and the baseballs and the footballs that we supported over the years, you know, dating back to the 60s.
And none of that carried over, not an ounce of
anything that was super old, right? We we carried over some old historical photos of the location and some graphic branding, like telling that history, right? But you’re exactly right, that the experience was that what we were providing time and time again, and that’s what people loved about literally, it wasn’t necessarily the location, and so, you know, when we moved it over there, there was a few comments, of course, but nowhere near what it could have been with losing that nostalgic factor. Well,
it’s, it’s in the sales. I mean, you almost tripled your sales by getting a bigger place where most people, if you build that restaurant and you move it from this little place that is, again, I would say that your building looked a little tired and nostalgic, be a great word, right? Not dirty, just tired. It was worn. And then you got this shiny Penny again and made it so big that often people go, Oh, their expectation of service goes higher, expectation of food goes higher. You start to feel like, oh, is this a chain? Whatever. That didn’t happen for you. Like, they came in and went, Oh, this is really pretty. You did a great you did a great job. Love the food, love the people. It’s the same. And you have new people coming in all the time. You expanded, if not doubled or more your your team, and it still feels the same. And I think that’s a great testament to how you share your vision, and in everything that you do, everything points towards that vision. Everybody’s on the same page, and that’s critical for you.
I mean, back in 2020 like I was sharing that vision of where we’re going to go in the next three years. And the big, the big end goal, was the new location, like we’re going to be at a cornerstone landmark. You won’t miss it. It’s going to be a beautiful store. You know, that was, that was clear, and you’re right, if they didn’t watch the other episodes, we unlocked our doors at that store, and we doubled our sales that first day, and we went, Holy shit. We were expecting a 30 to 50% increase. We immediately doubled the staff that we brought in, brought them up to 80 from 46 employees that we had staffed up to for the new location. Crazy. And you know, we continued that upward trajectory. You know, year over year, last year from the first year of operation completed, and this year, we’re already over last year’s sales by trailing like 22 to 21% and just continuing that growth up. And that’s, you know, you’re exactly right. New people come in and they’re like, this place is beautiful.
And I just had an experience the other day. I was at a neighboring restaurant down the street. We went to dinner after after our level 10 meeting, and the server, she was serving us, and she kept looking at it sideways, and she was like, I love that shirt. And I made the mistake, and I said, Oh, thanks. I appreciate it. And I need to stop doing that, because I get that compliment at least 10 times a day, and I always just go, thanks. I appreciate it when really the shirts and opportunity for me to talk about the business and share that with them, and I just kind of brush it off. But anyways, at the end of the meal, she comes back, she’s
like, do you work for a little early? And I was like, Yeah, you
could say something like that, I work there, right?
And she was like, she was like, Oh, that’s cool. And she walked away, and she came back. She was like, so you do work there? And I was like, Yeah, I’m
doing her. And she’s like, Oh
my God, let
me tell you what. I just went there for the first time, the new store a couple weeks ago. Me and my husband absolutely loved it. She was like, we’ve been wanting to check it out, but we’ve heard it’s been so crazy busy and always on a weight. We’ve been waiting for that hype to die down. And we were driving Pat together to go to a restaurant in Columbus, and we saw your store wasn’t super busy, so we went there for dinner instead. And she was like, it was amazing. The sky. Oh my gosh, your team’s amazing. She then, like, trailed into how, you know, you’ve got an ice cream shop, and I’m bringing my kids back. And it was just like, she hit on all the points.
Well, then she talked about our rewards program and how she loved the fact that we gave her offers and she can’t wait to come back and and she said something like, I’ve worked for five or six different restaurants over my years, and she was probably in her late 30s, early 40s, and she was like, I would love to work for someone like you, because I can tell that your whole management team and your staff there, it’s a well run restaurant. They’re disciplined. You know, people do what they’re supposed to do every single day, and they take care of one another. And I was like, You’re exactly right. That’s exactly what we try and do. And I was like, we don’t have any positions open right now, but you’re more than welcome to apply. And you know, if something comes up, we’ll reach out to you.
But you know, crazy, crazy experiences like that, really just solidify for me that we’re on the right track. We’re doing the right thing. And like you said, not every day is perfect. There’s a lot of those days where I throw around all the words, right?
And
you know, you get through it, you know, you just gotta, you gotta figure out and get to the root of the problem. You know, with us starting a new, new journey of a mindset for running the restaurant, one of the things I really like about it is it’s called IDs, identify, discuss and solve. And so when we come up to a problem, we’re gonna throw all the cards out on the table, and we’re going to whiteboard out all of the pinpoints of what, what this so, you know what we all think the issue is at the root. We’re going to really get to that bottom line. This is the problem. We’re going to discuss it. We’re in we’re going to find a solution to it. Because, you know, if you just let those issues fester and linger and don’t, you know, communicate it with your team and find the root cause and get to the answer. You don’t. It just stays around, and then it kind of becomes cancer within the business. Yeah,
I want people to understand when we talk about your growth and all these wonderful things that you’ve had, the same challenges they had going through this process, and it wasn’t a straight trajectory up as going backwards as you said, Oh, we expected a 30, 40% increase in sales. We doubled sales and so on. Those were some painful months where you did not deliver on your vision. You did fall down. You did hire some bad employees, and have to go route through it and re implement your systems and do all the things. And so I want people understand that when you focus on your vision, as as detailed as you get with it, you can write the ship again. This is not a journey.
We we’ve been through three kitchen managers, you know, and we still don’t have one in place. And we’re, we’re actively, you know, thinking of how we want to solve that. But,
you know, it’s not perfect. There’s,
there’s no days that are perfect, you know. There’s always, I
had this thing where,
every day I want a manager and myself included when I’m at the restaurant, to point out somebody doing something right and give them that phrase for it, and really solidify that home as to why that behavior we
witnessed was the right one.
And me, personally, I’m like, a perfectionist, and so when I see one thing, when I go in that I don’t like, I have a really hard time pulling out that good thing that I saw 15 minutes ago. I’m like, You know what? Now, fuck that. I’m not, I’m not telling that because I saw that. That’s, you know, it’s off the table. And there’s a really bad habit of mine. But, you know, it’s super important to, you know, have the team aligned behind you know where you’re going and the vision, and just know, as restaurant operators that there will be challenges. It’s all about how you solve them. It’s all about how you communicate you know, about what’s on the table. And it’s all about getting your team to know where you’re going to figure out how to get out of the rut that you’re in, to keep getting back on the rails, keep going forward.
You know, we’ve operated without a kitchen manager for going on three months now. It’s been great. It’s we’re in a better spot now than we were three months ago, and that’s because we’ve put a temporary solution in place with, you know, changing some AORs for shift leads and kind of giving them a little bit more responsibility. And we kind of took that, that monetary that we were spending on a km, and distributed that salary and brought one more person up into that role, and, you know, found a creative solution to it, and they’re doing better now than they were three months ago, like I said, or six months ago or a year ago, but that’s because we found a solution. You know, now if we would have just not done anything and kept operating without one,
probably wouldn’t be
where we’re at the systems in place to share with them. It’s not like you the person. When you lost one km, lost another, lost another, you lost your systems. You have your system, your process, your way. How, from prep systems to storage systems to ordering systems, budgeting, systems, labor systems, like you’re able to say, just do this, versus, oh, I hope you come in and fix it.
Yeah. I mean, I built a sop book. I don’t know many other members in the program have built one of these, but I’ve got a 74 page SOP book that, quite literally, there’s a whole reference sheet on the first four pages that like, what’s your issue? There will be something in the book. Here’s the page you go to, and it’s a step by step. How do you fix it? That has reduced our calls, you know, on days off or at times we’re not in the restaurant by 100 fold. You know, management all the way down.
Because, you know, we got to a point a couple years ago where I got all this responsibility off my plate. But then it was all in the managers. And I took them out to dinner, to a nice steak house, like two years ago, and they were getting there was two, two members of management team. They kept getting blown up at the dinner, like their phone would take lightening up, or they stepped away from the table and answer the call, like, what do you do it? They’re like, ah, the restaurant like, is this? Is this a regular thing? And they’re like, yeah, and no, we’re gonna, we’re gonna find a solution to that.
And so, you know, I started having them write down everything every time they got a phone call, what was it about? And me saying, if managers were calling me, what was it about? And I’d write it down. I had this whole notes going, and I had like, 113 different issues that we had written down. And then I went through and I delegated those off, and I go, you know, who knows these answers, you know? And they raised their hand. I got that, I got that, I got that. And then the members of management, you know, created that SOP book of, you know, these issues. Here’s the solutions, and I compiled all that together into real big document with a three ring binder. And when things update, we go in there, we update it and throw it all the way and print it all out and whole punch it and put it in the book. And so, you know, systems,
let’s, let’s stay on managers for a second. I think one of the the biggest challenges we have is one identifying managers. You have certainly embraced the process of stacking your bench, starting with the the supervisors, moving them up into different positions until they finally become true managers.
But you can cover every shift you’ve got. You’ve got a depth chart that says, if somebody’s gone, I can move people up like you truly embody there’s a system, a process away. I have people who understand the systems, and I can develop them as people, as leaders, and move them up the food chain versus, oh my God, I don’t have anybody. Nobody has had anything. Everybody’s stupid that, like the common things we hear restaurant owners talk about how their managers can’t do and it’s ultimately their responsibility. They don’t have the training, they don’t have the systems, they don’t have good leadership going like it’s it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. When you see it that way, you’ve been able to buck that trend, following what what you’ve learned in the program.
But you you blew it up another step. If I use your SOP manual, your standard operating procedure manual, as just an example, there’s one thing you’ve done that is incredibly powerful, and that is communicate. You have communicated what you want done, how you want it done, how well you want it done by when. And you’ve been using a software system that I use in my business, and a lot of members do, called Asana, but you’ve blown it up. You’ve put it on steroids. Can you talk about what Asana is? And really the way it changed how you manage your manager,
absolutely. I mean, you know, let’s talk about the route and why I needed it first. You know, it I was at a point where we had all this stuff on the table. We had all these things we wanted to do, but there was just a lack of accountability and a lack of follow through to ensure that what we have on the table was actually getting accomplished by a certain date. Lot of it was in our minds, right? Some of it was written down on multiple different pieces of paper or different Google Docs throughout scattered through Google Drive, and it was just a lot of information everywhere, and we all created this great plan, and it’s like, Where was that again, and who’s doing it? And it’s gotta be do right like why do we not have that in place yet.
Yeah, and so I was on the hunt for something that I can bring all of this information together into a program and delegate out different tasks. People could, you know, have a project, have tasks within that project, kind of rocks to accomplish, right within sub rocks and sub tasks to complete the project and different assignments of Yay. I need you to complete this part. I need you to get me these revisions back by, you know, the second week of October, and I need you to get me this printed by the first week of November. But you can’t get that done until you get those revisions. And just kind of all of these web, spider, web, who needs to do what by when?
And that led me to Asana. We’ve been on it for about three years, I would say now two and a half, three years. It really was started coming up in your program, because we had all these new things we needed to implement and do. And it’s like, okay, yeah, the implementers in place, I need you to have this built out, and you’re gonna tell me when it’s done and started to not see it get done, or they kind of got stuck and didn’t ask for help. And so that’s what started us getting on there.
And so at a very high level, you can create projects which have tasks inside of the project, which tasks can have sub facts inside of that. Everything can be assigned to someone with a due date or a date range of when they have to complete it. You can view all of that information once it’s all in there, and several different formats, such as list view, a board view, which is basically like all these boxes on the huge project. Board Timeline view, which is one of my favorite ones, is a really high level scope. I’m looking out way zoomed in, and I’ve got all my dates of what’s coming across and what tasks fall within those dates. And then there’s calendar view, and there’s the ability to sync all of this to your calendar or calendars.
And so when we go to schedule things, you can pull up the calendar and go, that’s not a good week for me. It’s, I’m going to be heavy on many development that week, because that’s our plan. And so we’re able to plan out what the next six months to a year look like in Asana. So that way, we’re all working towards that goal, but there are rocks and tasks to accomplish by certain dates to get to the end goal.
I think the best way for me to get people to visualize it. If you ever opened a restaurant from scratch, meaning you had to do build out, whether it’s ground up, or just redo the inside, whatever it may be. You had a construction timeline with inspections, and you couldn’t do this until the plumbers did this and you got inspected. You couldn’t close the walls until the electric was done, and you got the inspection, and so on and so forth. And these, when we do projects, when we’ve got these tasks that need to be done, these these projects are that timeline and every step and who’s responsible and when it has to be done, because you can’t continue that project till each one little thing is done.
The other part that is fantastic about Asana or other project management softwares, like monday.com, and there’s a bunch of them, but Asana seems to be the easiest that most of our members are using, including our company, and that’s this. You’ve got one solid place for communication. So it is. Everybody’s got the app on their phone, yes, another app or an app on their computer, and they can see what their assigned projects are. They can create, they can communicate, but you lose this. Why wasn’t that done? Well, I never got that email bullshit. It was put into Asana. It’s right there timeline, the original document, the edited document. The next step is there, the the five people that contributed. It’s all there in one spot. There’s, no, I didn’t see it. In fact, with this, with the software as as the owner, you can log in and go, Oh, I didn’t see it. Well, no, I saw you logged in on Sunday at five o’clock. You actually did see it. And so there’s this level of accountability that goes along with it that keeps people moving forward,
right? So any task you hit on a great point there any task has communication inside of it. And so when your team needs help from someone, they can seek that help in one solid pace, and all of the communication about that project or task is in one simplified spot. So you’re not losing that conversation that someone stopped you dead in your tracks when you were in the middle of processing payroll last Monday, and you gave them an answer and they’re like, I remember we talked about it, and I don’t remember what you said. Like, no, it’s all in one spot.
And so that’s been super critical to eliminate and remove the distractions within the business. We say that, you know, if, if you’re needing to come bother somebody and ask them a question, it’s probably about something that should be in Asana, and so that communication needs to be in there. And if you’re stuck on something that needs the entire group to put their mind behind. Let’s put that in our weekly meeting, because that’s something we need to identify, discuss and solve and get through the solution so you can get back on track and keep moving forward.
So sign a great, simplified communication, get everything in one place, but you got to use it, and you’ve got to be strict with your time as an owner if you’re going to use it and really be disciplined to push people away. Now it’s not the right time. I don’t have capacity to have this conversation with you right now. Let’s throw it in Asana so we can work on it together when we both do have time, and I can give you an answer when I have time, and you can give me a response back when you have time, and that’s been really critical, because we all work in a restaurant business, and your staff don’t doesn’t understand that when they come up to you and ask you a question about why they only got scheduled three days next week instead of four, that that takes you off track from what you were working on, if your Heads down on your computer and you’re nailing out budgets, or, you know, you’re creating that new menu for the upcoming launch, you get interrupted, and you lift your head up and you answer that question, or you go, Hey, now it’s not the right time. You look your head back down. It’s going to take you five to maybe upwards of 30 minutes to get back on track and then that real deep work groove, avoid work.
And so getting those distractions eliminated on the management level is critical, because managers always got all these things on their plate they want to work on and get done, and they’re very capable of taking all those things that need to get done and wanting to have a 20 minute conversation of how we fix it? No, we’re disciplined with our time. That 20 minute conversation goes to the weekly meeting. We’ve got time allocated for that. So I
want to kind of finish this part of our discussion with two questions that you get asked, I swear to goodness, every three months as new members come into the program and so on, how difficult or easy? Is it to implement asana and do I need the paid program, or can I use the free version of it?
Oh, it’s super easy. You can use the free version Absolutely. I didn’t start paying for it up until about a year ago, when I wanted automations, which is when I really crank this thing up another level, when it’s like, if this happens, then these things happen, and it will automate tasks and push them to different projects and create comments automatically and forms and just all kinds of crazy stuff, reporting metrics, all kinds of stuff. There is so much capability, the base level way that we used it, that I’m talking about in this right now, of creating tasks, projects, sub tasks, assigning dates, communication, all that completely free. You don’t need to pay for the paid version, unless you want to crank that up another level and start doing rules or form submissions and all kinds of other things.
So it’s free. And how do you start using it? Just start throwing your things in there. When you’ve got something on your plate, as an owner, throw it in there and use it yourself personally, to keep yourself accountable to what’s on your plate. And once you get comfortable with it, enough, release that to your team, add them on, create projects and have them start doing the same thing. Hey, this is a way to keep yourself on track. Put what’s on your plate in here, get it out of your mind and on a system. Assign yourself the task, assign yourself a date, and let’s talk about it in here.
And then just really be not I don’t want to say strict, but hold yourself accountable to making sure that you’re going to really push people away and onto the system whenever they’re coming to steal your time, because everybody’s time is valuable. I always say that, like we’ve got 45 hours a week in our business, our managers work 45 hours a week. Got 45 hours a week to accomplish what we want to accomplish this week. And when you take 20 minutes of my time, with 30 minutes of my time, I’ve only got 44 and a half hours left. And so you know that time is ticking, and we got to be very strict with their time and hold them accountable to not be leeches of it, because they will quickly take it and you will feel like you got nothing done at the end
of the week. That sounds like a familiar thing. I hear from restaurant owners all the time, right? We get stuck in the poor communication. We think we’re communicating well, because we’re communicating well, because we’re communicating every single day, every time I see you, that is not communication, that is not keeping people on pace, that is not setting goals, that is not being clear. And so again, what people don’t know is what you’ve done to blow it up and make it automated is just amazing.
Let’s shift gears for a second.
You have changed your life, from again coming back to help your father with the business, to working the pizza ovens and driving and managing and doing all those things, to building a brand new building doubling, if not more, your sales. You’ve added some other things, your rent, you got a couple renovations, like you’re sitting in in a your new office that’s in the process being renovated. But talk about the trucks. Let’s talk about the coffee shop. Talk about what you’ve got coming up and and how you have the bandwidth to do that when you were the guy on the pizza oven not three years ago.
Yeah, I don’t know how many calls I got on a weekly basis and told you I’m not doing nothing else, but I’m not thinking, here we are nothing. But how do we get here? Where are we at now? So, man, so much. You know, we built a new store in 2023 we opened that Super Bowl Sunday. Our former location where the riddle used to be is two blocks down the street from our new store, and it was going to be rented out, the renter fell through and just realized that the cost of construction for them to get what they wanted done was just far beyond what they had the capacity to to invest in it. And so I was kind of at a crossroads, do I spend another year in some change, finding the right renter, allowing them to develop their plans, you know, to go through with construction and all that before we start seeing income off of this place? Or do we make it something?
And so every day, on my way to work, I stop at some form of a coffee shop, and I pick up a coffee and so I was like, you know, I’d love to own a little coffee shop, because I feel like coffee shops kind of really tie into what we’re all about at literally creating those memories. And, you know, being like a hub for the community to come to and have great conversations over and connect, and all of that. And so we’re turning it into a coffee shop. It’s called main ground coffee. The reason why is, both of our businesses are on Main Street, so main, you know, treats in there. It’s our main stomping grounds where things got started, and where our journey got created with my grandparents. And then obviously, coffee gets ground up. So it hits all of those little things in the name, which I think is always fun to share, and that will be opening in March of 2025 it’s deep in construction right now. We are in the drywall phase of construction, and so that has been anything but easy. You know, plans, planning for construction. I absolutely hate it. I don’t know why I do it, but it’s so critical, I guess. But it’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be a really great place for people to come connect over a cup of coffee.
And we’re super excited. We launched a food truck this year, 2024 and around May or June, it was done. So I bought a brand new box fan that used to be a it was outfitted for a FedEx van, bought it brand new and had it outfitted for a food truck. So we’ve got a 33 foot food truck that we launched this year. And the purpose of that, and the vision of that, was to really connect with the community on a different level that we weren’t able to inside of our fixed brick and mortar location. So we can go be a part of festivals, events, community events, farmers markets, all of that stuff, and just connect with people. Never really intended for it to be super profitable because it’s an expense on wheels that continuously drive the rail bumps around and has expenses with it, but it’s just a branding element for us, so we’re super excited about that.
Our catering side of the business has blown up. We’ve done a lot of wedding caterings in the last year, and so we just bought a new Sprinter van to support our wedding side of the business, because we’re doing pretty large weddings that need a lot of space to transport stuff. And so we got sick of sending three to four employee cars on caterings, and, you know, they obviously don’t like driving around vehicles and having to reimburse them and stuff. So we bought a nice printer van to commute to the venues and stuff and and then the office space is kind of a brand new decision. Managers need a place to work, and our leadership team with the growing businesses and Restaurant Group, which is soon to be that’s kind of like the 10 year plan becoming the Restaurant Group. And I want to kind of be called like a restaurant mogul. You know, Cameron Mitchell. He’s a huge name in the restaurant business here in Columbus, Ohio. He’s got some in other states, including anyone in Vegas, but he’s kind of always been somebody that I looked up to. You know, he’s up as to his 100th and I think 10th restaurant. Now, don’t want to get that large, but, you know, having a place for people to do their best work in is super important, because the restaurant business is distracting. We create those great experiences for people when they see you working out at a table at the dining room, it’s like, Hey, I’m free to shoot you today. You know, it’s not just your staff that can cause you to get off rails. So we need a place that they can come and have important conversations or get some really important work done in a quiet place. And then we’ve got our in house marketing team that we have created. So Nathan, our creative marketing director needs an editing studio to put out the work that we’re doing, and so giving him a place to be able to do that and get some stuff done is super important
touch on that last piece right there, because that is another direction you’ve gone. You have created a dare, I say, video magazine, blog. I don’t know what we want to call that. You’ll tell me what it is that is impeccably done. It talks about your connection with the community. It promotes businesses that you use. It shares with them a little insight on you and your dream. And it is truly powerful how you’ve used the power of video and telling a story and bringing on your marketing director, talk a little bit about that direction of this side project, if you will. That is not necessarily restaurant, but it is restaurant related. Yeah,
so Little Italy media is a little side project. It may turn into its own company if it gets to that point, but we’ve created a dare I say media company to share our story. Nobody’s going to tell your story for you if you don’t. And so every week, we create an episode in the series called Slice of life.
And slice of life gives people restaurant tours like yourself, people in our community, friends and the restaurant business, whether that be suppliers to a chance and our internal team as well, a chance to look in behind the scenes of what we’re doing, how we’re growing issues in our business, how we’re getting over them, new things that we’re going new, you know, new roads that we’re going down, new relationships that we’ve come across, highlighting our vendors that we work with, and showing off the amazing operations that they have, and giving people a pee behind the scenes of what goes into their dishes, a peek behind the curtains in our culture, how we, you know, interact with our employees, how our employees interact with one another, all of those things in a weekly video series that we drop every Wednesday. It’s on YouTube, Apple Little Italy growth port, and it’s also on our Facebook and Instagram pages, also Apple Little Italy growth port and nation, my creative marketing director have been friends with him for about 10 years now. We actually work together at Apple. Great guy loves video work. He is a creative at heart. He sometimes will obsess over the small details that I would never, ever notice until he points them out, and then I get mad when he points them out because I can’t unsee them. But he loves being creative, and so this was an avenue that we went down to allow him to do that have great success within the first few episodes, and we’ve been doing it ever since, I think we’re up to like 30 something weeks now.
And so it’s a great series. We love it. It’s really fun. I’ve gone to a couple restaurant friends that are in mastery plus, and highlighted their business and just kind of showed that friendship off in some episodes. And it’s fun. I really enjoy it. And we hope to be able to kind of take this to another level in some way, shape or form, by securing some funding and from companies within the restaurant space, to be able to kind of elevate it to another level.
We do a couple different segments, one of them being called growth port greats, which is the town that we’re in. We highlight really important people who are moving and shaking in our community, and highlight what they’re doing and just really love on them for some time, on on on air. We also have another segment where it’s giving back, and so in some way, shape or form, we’ll go out in the community and give back. We’ve got an episode coming out soon where we take our food truck and we roll up to the local prison, and we feed the team at the prison, the guards and stuff, but we also feed the prisoners, and we talk about their prison reform program, what they’re doing and how they’re really trying to shape and develop people who made wrong decisions in their life, and giving them opportunity to get back on track. And so kind of just being able to share what we’re doing with people, and it’s been great. We get upwards of 15 to 20,000 views a week, sometimes 30, 40,000 views a week on each episode across all the different platforms that we’re posting to.
And then the most important thing that we’re doing with this is we’re creating tons of content to be able to pull out long form content. We’re creating tons of long form content to be able to pull out short term content out of it. So we use some programs. Opus clip is one of them that, you know, we’re compiling hundreds of hours worth of footage that we can pump into these programs. And it’ll pull out the best little 92nd 62nd 32nd segments to use on our social media. And so the long form content, once we build the subscriber base on YouTube, will be posted there, but then all of our social platforms like Facebook and Instagram will get that short form content that people can kind of chunk out and lead them back to the long form videos. So we’re super excited about it.
And it’s funny because the episodes that we do every week when I’m in the restaurant, customers always go, I see your little commercial, and they love to call it a commercial, and they’ll tell me about what they saw and why they loved it. And it’s great because, you know, I know people are tuning in, and they get excited about what we’re doing, and gives us an opportunity to share what’s going on in our four walls that people normally won’t see,
telling your story. You know, I want everybody to go watch your videos. I have told you that I’m jealous. I think I’m pretty good on camera, but my goodness, I’m waiting for this Food Network show because you are going to you’re getting it. The way you tell a story is just fantastic. The connection you have with the viewer is just instantaneous. And I think that also translates to why your sales are higher, why your vivid vision works so well, why your team understands what’s going on because they can view it as well. It’s all the little things you’ve put together that are truly amassing great success for you. And I do want people to understand it’s been three years customers.
Customers want to support something they can get behind and someone they can get behind. It’s not this company, it’s someone. And so they want to support that local person in their community. And I’ve had this conversation with so many restaurants that come through our program, that get yourself out there on social media. Stop posting pictures of your stupid ass food, and get your face on there. Hold that plate of food and tell who you are, why you’re passionate about this dish that you’re showing them, why they should come try it, you know, Comment your favorite thing, favorite, you know, breakfast item, and tell me what it is and use it socially rather than just food, food, food, food. And Matt talks about that a lot, but it’s so true that people want to support you, and so giving them your story, your voice, your reason, your why, where you’re going, only gives them that extra step to be able to support you on that journey and cheer you on along the way, because that’s what they want to
do. And for those of you thinking I’m terrible on camera, I’m afraid to do just be your authentic self. You’re gonna suck at the beginning, and then it’s just gonna get easier and easier and easier
and easier. Yeah, I
watched, I watched episode one back a couple weeks ago. Man, I suck. But it was funny because I was remembering what we did on episode one, and we would reshoot the takes two or three times, and now it’s just, I’m so comfortable to everything’s a one take. It’s just like, bang, and Nathan’s like, man, you’re a one take. Wonder you’re making editing so easy, but, you know, you get comfortable with it, and it just kind of becomes second nature. And I always talk to Nathan, not the camera. You know, he’s holding it up right here, and I’m always looking at him and talking to him, and we’re just kind of goofing off and having a conversation. So it’s not difficult. Well,
it’s a I got to tell you, having a front row seat to what you’ve done in three years time is is just amazing. And I truly am impressed you, and I have talked about it at some point in time, I think you could be a me Absolutely. You’re a fantastic coach, you’re a fantastic leader, you’re an incredible entrepreneur. I mean, the sky is the limit. The key is going to be controlling that growth for you. But it is. It’s impressive, and I’m so thankful that you were willing to come back Share, share some of your insights as now a member mentor versus a member store success story, you’re changing not only your life, your team members life, your community’s life, but by sharing and being a mentor, you’re changing other restaurant owners lives.
And it’s just, I’m,
it’s gratifying to watch, and I’m really, I feel thankful that you’re a part of the team. I appreciate you, my friend. Is there anything else you want to share before we before we we sign off?
Well, you gave me all those kudos, and it would be unfair for me to not, you know, give them back right to my team, because I’ve got such amazing people in my corner that allow me to be able to have the time to come on here and do this with you and other people and and help others in the industry. And without the amazing 82 people that are on our team right now, none of it would be possible. I would still be working the pizza ovens.
And so getting the right people in your corner, developing right race relationships, and being open to the fact that not everybody has bad intentions, because a lot of restaurant owners have been burned, and they use that to block up, you know, a callous over themselves, and so be open that the right people are out there, and you just have to find them, and you have to have systems and processes within your business to keep them accountable, keep them honest, and people will do the right stuff.
So I appreciate you and all the viewers for watching because I love what I do every day, and I’m excited for what the next five years is. We’ve got a great vision to go off of, and man, if we can achieve it, it’s going to be something else. My dream is, within the next five years, we want to get to a point in our business where I can have a private jet, a fractional ownership in a private jet, and we’re going to take 10 to 15 members of our team out to Pizza Expo and kind of relish in that whole experience with them. So we’re super excited.
I’m sure it’s going to happen. Thank you. Avery appreciate you very much. Thank you.
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Hey, that was an awesome episode. I want to thank you for taking the time to take action on building a better, more prosperous restaurant.
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