Restaurant Possible

“Do I think brick and mortar is going to disappear? Of course not. I love brick and mortar.

Food is how everyone in the world celebrates and commiserates.

Do I believe the pandemic has introduced the mass of the world to the convenience of using technology? 100%. 

I do believe virtual restaurants and virtual dining will only grow. I believe that DoorDash, a $200 billion valuation, and Uber and GrubHub -- these companies are not going to let delivery disappear.

They're going to continue to find ways to push and grow the business. I think technology is only going to continue to enhance both this platform and others in every realm of the restaurant industry.”

“Now, myself, I have an award that I renamed after one of our most Chick-y District Managers and General Managers. Her name was Pam Ashley, who put up such a fight against cancer. With that, I give off that award. The award is really to recognize someone with a lot of tenacity. Someone who is very balanced between hard-wired, which is the results aspect of things; and then also heart-wired, which is that heart-felt leadership and the heart-wired leadership approach. And we give out those awards.

We do in-the-moment recognition. Those things do carry a long way. And again, it's finding people where they're at and connecting with them that can really help them grow. Be it all the way from our team members that are frontline to our Team Leaders, Assistant Managers, General Managers, District Managers, Directors, whatever level they are.

We want to recognize what's doing well and help coach and help them win at the end of the day.”

“There is no successful company that doesn't have a family inside and outside. It doesn't exist. If you don't feel safe or you don't feel like it's an environment of caring or engaging, it's not successful.

However, I think the things we do on diversity and inclusion, the goal is not just to be more diverse here. It's to get people to raise their thoughts and opinions.

It helps families outside of the company as well as inside of the company. That's where, when we look at head spaces, it's just understanding where those stress levels come from, where those differences are coming from. What's causing this situation that's causing you to be uncomfortable.”

“I would tell any restaurateur, any cook or any manager to work your tail off. Become as good as you can get in understanding restaurant P&L. Be realistic about what the expectations are for each role.

If you want more, there's more out there. The “more out there” is to work your way into an equity position, become an owner, even if it's a small owner. I think the restaurant industry is famous for giving people sweat equity. I don't know a lot of other businesses that essentially do that.”

“I had a vision for Blaze being 350 locations. I met that objective, and I felt like the only way to get there was to go this route and to bring in manufacturing partners from day one.

We had a national distribution agreement in place before we had one restaurant open, because supply chain is the cornerstone of the business.

And so is financial modeling. If you do your financial modeling for your business and you have supply chain figured out, you will probably succeed in a very challenging industry.

All the rest of the pieces, operations and construction. Those are all important, but you need to have those fundamental pieces in place.

The product needs to be able to get to the restaurant and it needs to be consistent and it needs to be there when you need it.”

“I think the definition of excellence needs to be defined in your own brain to not mean every single detail to be perfect. Once you can define excellence as, "Hey, my company is on the right path, our sales are trending upward, our processes are getting better and more effective." 

To me, that's excellence because you're going to continue to get better and better.

You can't expect a 22-year-old who is going through finals to be excellent all the time. It's just not going to happen. What you can guarantee is that you're setting them up to succeed. They had the best chance of being excellent that night, and they're on their way to better development for themselves in the company. 

I try to focus on excellence, not being in the details of operating the restaurants, but in the culture and the path of the team.”

“There's got to be some kind of cohesive fit amongst the team. One of the things that is critical is that we do hit those DNA points. We have conversations along the lines of “this is how we are." Part of the culture is unwritten, it's how we act and we want our team to see that.

It's how we treat them right off the get-go when we sit down and we feed the team, when we're doing orientation, when we're doing training, they're getting to taste the entire menu. Yes, it costs money to do that. Yes, it's time consuming. Yes, but it's like breaking bread with family at the table.

We'll build a great restaurant. We'll have great food. We need great people to understand and buy into that. It starts with the DNA, and that really defines our culture.”

“There's got to be some kind of cohesive fit amongst the team. One of the things that is critical is that we do hit those DNA points. We have conversations along the lines of “this is how we are." Part of the culture is unwritten. It's how we act, and we want our team to see that.

It's how we treat them right off the get-go when we sit down and we feed the team, when we're doing orientation, when we're doing training, they're getting to taste the entire menu. Yes, it costs money to do that. Yes, it's time consuming. Yes, but it's like breaking bread with family at the table.

We'll build a great restaurant. We'll have great food. We need great people to understand and buy into that. It starts with the DNA, and that really defines our culture.”

“There were absolutely things we were doing and we would throw things out there and just throw it against the wall and see what stuck and see what had an impact.

There was a lot of learning. Obviously, the pandemic was devastating and impacted a lot. There was a part of it where we would sit there and a small team in survival mode where it's just anything goes. We can try anything.

This went for the operators as well. We have some amazing operators out there that were putting together random new dishes on the fly. We had a certain inventory that we wanted to use, and we didn't want to order much more inventory. We didn't know what the head count was.

We have operators going back to their roots of their  initial days being cooks in restaurants and putting together menu specials, figuring out the other new items, figuring out the food costs, trying to sell it.”

“But just get out there and take that first step and get out of the office, get into the store, even if it's sitting in there and watching for a while, but then try to find something you can do in the store. 

Sometimes I go in, I just push the garbage down. Sometimes I go in and clean the windows. Just get yourself a little bit involved.

And then take that next step and try to get into that expo side where you're working really shoulder to shoulder with your crew at that point. And again, the biggest part of it is really being transparent. No surprise visits, let them know you're coming and I think you'll get really open arms at that point.

Hey, this guy is running 76 units or a hundred units or 200 units, but he's still showing us. He has the time to come in and see what we're going through day to day.”