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Naki Soyturk (00:00.63)

Lift off, okay.

Hello everyone. Thanks for joining me today in the Bottom Line Podcast. Joining me today are Rich Dunham and Matt Molaski. These are two of my favorite gentlemen in the inventory management tool perspective. Two super smart, super experienced industry veterans. And today I’m lucky that they joined me.

in talking about the contemporary issues in restaurants and how margin-edge, where they work, can help you reach to a higher profitability, officiate your processes, establish SOPs, and manage your inventory, your recipe costing in a better way. Thank you gentlemen for joining me. I would love to…

get an introduction if you could introduce yourselves and marginage.

Matt Molaski (01:09.074)

Yeah. So my name is Matt Mulaski. I’m a strategic account executive here at Margin Edge. I’ve been with the company a little over five years now, but prior to joining Margin Edge, I was 100 % restaurants my entire career. You know, for about 22 years, I started out as a dishwasher slash bar back slash prep cook, and then eventually, you know, followed the path to culinary school and cook professionally for about eight years.

Then as chefs would say it I went to the dark side and I went to the front of the house there and You know began, know managing dining rooms and then eventually all the way up into operations So margin edge we were founded about ten years ago by two restaurateurs one of which did have a extensive technology background as well

Naki Soyturk (01:39.852)

Amazing.

Rich Dunham (01:54.477)

you

Matt Molaski (02:04.082)

So it’s really a marriage of technology and hospitality, which we all see a bunch of hospitality tech and restaurant tech now, but in regards to cost of goods management and how important that is. And that is, to this day, our primary focus. We are not a point of sale system. We are not an accounting software. So really just those tools that operators and owners can depend on day to day.

to really keep the finger on the pulse of their profitability at their businesses.

Naki Soyturk (02:39.646)

Amazing. Thank you, Matt.

Matt Molaski (02:42.322)

you

Rich Dunham (02:43.477)

Hi everyone, my name is Rich Dunham. I’m the director of accounting partnerships here at Margin Edge. I’ve been with the company for a little less than two years and I was introduced to Margin Edge when I was running an accounting firm that only dealt with restaurants. I bumped into this tool and we working with a number of restaurants and to me this was the Swiss Army knife for restaurateurs and the financial side of the business.

And I just said out loud one day, why doesn’t every restaurant have this? And it would make everybody’s life easier. A little bit more about me, I have a history of operator, distributor, and accounting firm manager, and now I’m in the software space. And again, I think that in today’s world where it’s getting more complex to run a business, if you can have

a great team of financial side and operator side working together. It’s your best path for success. And to me, margin edge is that Swiss army knife that brings those two groups that speak different languages some days. And it really makes things accountable and efficient on a day to day basis.

Naki Soyturk (04:07.2)

Amazing. Thank you, gentlemen. An amazing intro, amazing experiences. So my background is actually like public accounting. 10 years public accounting. After that, you know, finance executive. I worked in many startups, brought them to different sizes. managed a restaurant company, started as the CFO, opened many, many restaurants.

So my experience is from a big picture to a small picture standpoint. That’s how I have always looked at things. from my perspective, we implemented several inventory management tools. Like number one, you don’t want to spend any time on anything that’s not crucial to the…

to the core task of the restaurant, is serving the guests efficiently, consistently. And MarginEdge and other inventory management tools provide that efficiency standpoint. And MarginH has three super important qualifications, I think, that really sets them apart from everything else that I have seen. So why don’t we…

go into how margin edge can help in terms of like back office efficiency and then providing financial clarity as it pertains to inventory and cost controls, recipe costing.

Matt Molaski (05:54.426)

Yeah, absolutely. you know, it’s, it’s, you know, the next evolution of, you know, really elaborate Excel spreadsheets, I like to say. and, know, just touching on, you know, what you just said is, is the most important part of running a restaurant is the food quality, the consistency, the customer experience, all of that. None of that happens in an office. None of that happens on a computer. Right. And a lot of time is spent.

If you really want to keep a close eye on everything, a lot of time is spent on doing that data entry, sifting through your invoices, calculating the conversions, all of that. And with margin edge, the foundation of everything that we do comes from our invoice processing. But one of the things that really sets us apart is we don’t rely entirely on technology for our invoice processing.

We have teams of analysts that every single invoice that we process, which can be upwards of 200,000 invoices a week at this point, goes through at least two to three stages of analyst review before it’s fully processed. So we’re making sure not only that the information that the restaurant is providing us for the purchasing is correctly accounted for, but even more things, right? Like if there is a substitution.

or if they’re switching vendors for particular ingredients, our team recognizes that. And so we actually will do a lot of this conversion work for them as part of our invoice processing. And so that allows us to always report every single product that they’re purchasing at the restaurant based on the most recent purchase price, regardless of the vendor that it’s coming from. And so then that trickles down into our inventory functionality.

and our recipe costing functionality. So if you think about it, you write a recipe for, let’s just say, your mama’s meatloaf or whatever it may be, right? You write that recipe once, no matter where you’re buying those ingredients from, your plate cost is always going to be up to date without any additional intervention from the operator. So in that,

Matt Molaski (08:16.397)

It’s essentially setting up the system, making sure it’s set up correctly. But once you have it set up, we’re doing all of that work for you, right? So then you can step back out of the back office, focus on your guest experience, focus on your staff training, focus on your consistency, but still always have that reference point that you can rely on to see.

what is going on day to day as far as the financial performance and profitability of your business.

Naki Soyturk (08:49.646)

Absolutely, One thing that I think sets up Marginedge different than the other softwares that I have used is that you guys, to the most part, SKUs and distributors, unit of measurement is already in the system and known, right? So that’s brought to the most part.

And I want to mention most, right? That is broad. That singular thing, that singular small looking thing unit of measurement is the source of most heart ache the source of most errors. In one of our clients using another system, their chicken sandwiches were, know, recipe cost came to like $1,500 a sandwich because

garlic powder and cayenne pepper, unit of measurement were wrong. So anything that goes in, anything that uses those in the recipe costing, huge, huge difference. Then you can’t go back and fix the invoice in the system. Thus you have to wait until you buy a new one, which is like three months later and we had to like manually adjust it. Now we can do, we are, you know, at the…

Rich Dunham (09:50.136)

Thanks.

Naki Soyturk (10:18.254)

at the end of the day we are finance people who are also operators. So we can do a of these things that a normal restaurant cannot do. So once those errors are in the system, you have to wait three months until you buy the next batch or maybe just order a new cayenne pepper to fix the system. So that was…

That’s what I saw is like a huge leg up in preventing mistakes. And now it might seem simple, like what is the unit of measurement? Why is like answers? There are like, I think like in craftable there were like more than a dozen different units of measurement. Even I was sometimes confused on what should be the, what should match in that specific circumstance. And some.

So it’s confusing and when a sous chef is ordering like something that they usually like when there’s an 86 we need to think about all the things that happen, right? Their primary product is 86. They order a replacement product, right? They need to go into the system, enter everything like correctly, which never happens, right? Let’s face it. So what that means is like then

Rich Dunham (11:32.854)

Bye.

Naki Soyturk (11:46.574)

you start buying like that new SKU this week because the regular one that you buy is 86 and the system cannot figure out for the life of it like what to put in there. So my understanding is like margin edge like solves this problem like 90-95 % of the time. that correct?

Matt Molaski (12:09.81)

Absolutely, And that’s really, you know, as Rich likes to say, that’s our secret sauce, right?

Rich Dunham (12:11.96)

you

Rich Dunham (12:18.422)

sauce. I mean, it’s just, you know, and look, my cliche to it is that we can now allow operators and the back of house finance folks become reviewers instead of doers. Because we’re doing all of that work for you. And, you know, we’re building that database so that

Naki Soyturk (12:20.536)

Secret sauce revealed.

Matt Molaski (12:22.994)

You

Rich Dunham (12:46.678)

your products are aligned and the chef can be where the chef needs to be and the general manager can be where the general manager needs to be because yes, there’s an initial product review and that’s fine. That’s just how you set the system up correctly but then you want to get it to that point where you can go and take care of your clients, your guests and create that experience but our system is built at that product level so that you can focus on what’s important in your restaurant.

Naki Soyturk (13:18.318)

So if we are to look at this from three different standpoints, one is a restaurant without any inventory management system. A restaurant that has any inventory management system and then marginedge. These are the three, think, to me, these are the three different standpoints where a restaurant can stand.

In these changing times, changing times I’m going to include this post-COVID world when prices change substantially every week, You used to be able to tie in like Rich, used to be on the real dark side, Cisco. No, we love Cisco. We love Cisco. So, 86s are much more frequent, right?

Rich Dunham (14:00.598)

Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (14:14.014)

Package sizes are different thus, so it’s very hard for you to know the unit price. And given the restaurant buys what, like at least 500 SKUs or for the kitchen alone, right? Let alone the liquor side, right? Which I’m always super confused about. So it’s close to impossible.

to have a benchmark in your mind unless you are super smart, unlike me, to basically memorize all these numbers and stuff. think about the price of this was this unit price. Okay, different SKU, but it’s still chicken breast. It’s, I think, for a human, it’s not really possible when you are doing invoice review.

recipe costing. We all like do recipe costing at one point in time and establish a benchmark food cost expectation, right? 29%. And we are so confident that six months later, a year later, sometimes three years later, when somebody asks you, well, what’s your food cost? Well, it should be 29%. When we change the menu price like six times in that time period, introduce new specials.

nix bunch of the menu items and are not and the prices change on a weekly basis, right? But we are so confident that it’s 29%. So with the system, what you get is weekly recipe costing because your prices change, recipe costing is updated. So you would have real life, real time, real time what the food costs should be.

Now Rich as he ran an accounting firm specializing in restaurants. Even if you know your theoretical, which is the recipe cost times each item, each item’s sales quantity, weighted average cost, a lot of accountants can’t deliver because they do cash basis accounting. They can’t deliver you what your actual cost should be. The system, what I’m saying is even more reliable.

Naki Soyturk (16:39.118)

in many cases than the accounting department itself. Because to deliver that actual cost, the accounting department and the operations need to be one tight unit. Like all invoices accounted for, account reconciliations are done, so all invoices are transmitted one side to the other side, And accounting does a reconciliation, inventory counts, needs to be done.

Rich Dunham (16:39.48)

you

Rich Dunham (16:43.64)

Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (17:07.662)

on a recurring basis and like close to 100 % accuracy. But always surprises me is like, as I’m like interviewing like new clients, like, okay, tell me like, I talked to them about theoretical actual cost, right? The variance in between the two, whereas the statistics tell us like 78 or 72 % of restaurants reported.

like some kind of a variance, like non-adherence to the recipe. 72 or 78 % but the ones that I talk to are usually like, no, our operations are super efficient. And like, okay. So what these tools also show you is how your operation is actually doing. When you know your actual cost, when you know your theoretical cost,

If you give it to the system, the system does what it does and gives you on an itemized basis the variance between the two, right? And if you sold 100 burgers, and this is a real example by the way.

Rich Dunham (18:20.792)

you

Naki Soyturk (18:23.278)

100 burgers sold, 150 buns were depleted in that period and 128 patties. So usually like, they probably missed counting, you know, they are new in counting. They probably missed counting a location. No, no, we send them to recount the inventory.

and like these items that we identified. So the system does the math. Then we say like, okay, like these 15 units seem kind of weird, go recount them. And they come back, we, the results entered into the system. It’s piece of the variances, right? And the results are really every time, like nobody wants to believe them in the first three weeks. That’s why you’re like a…

the five stages or seven stages of grief or something, the first stage is denial. Every time, every time, like nobody wants to believe me. I’m like, guys, like I have done this in like the third largest manufacturing company in the world. So I think I know, I know what we are doing. And every time for three weeks, so they must have counted it wrong. But you were saying like they were excellent in counting. What happened? You know? So.

Rich Dunham (19:27.544)

So true, so true.

Matt Molaski (19:28.58)

Okay.

Rich Dunham (19:37.228)

Guilty.

Matt Molaski (19:38.694)

Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (19:52.672)

And these are the folks that we train to count the inventory, like not the companies. If that was then I would agree with the owner in that case. That’s why we train them. We give them a limited SKU, which marginedge can allow you to do like a partial count and still deliver the results, which is something I want to touch base. So you do a partial count of the most highly significant dollar items.

we investigate the variances immediately and send the kitchen team to recount again, that way there is no argument. Because even slight bit of suspicion, Matt, I’m wondering your thoughts on, to me, the dark side. On like slight bit of suspicion, you know? Or maybe we receive this product like between like…

Rich Dunham (20:46.722)

Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (20:51.214)

10:02, 0, 2 and 10:15 know, slight bit of suspicion like the whole count is, the whole count and accountability is off the table. So it’s crucial if you want results like now, not six years from now, to have all of this work in a cohesive manner, right? SOPs, the human element, right? And…

3 weeks I always give for the stage 1 denial, okay? And after that, now we need to address the situation, right? 100 burgers sold, 150 buns, 128 patties. Next week, something very similar. But then the third week, and this is the Hawthorne effect. Hawthorne effect is, when people are observed, they do the right thing. This was discovered.

in my favorite state, Michigan. Chicago, I think. Yeah, Chicago, Yeah, but I think it was in auto manufacturing. Yeah, I’m gonna cut, edit this part. This was found in a GM plant, if I’m not mistaken, in like 1920s. People do better when they are observed. So even the impression of being observed,

Rich Dunham (21:49.432)

you

Matt Molaski (22:06.022)

Thank

Naki Soyturk (22:17.218)

which the tool basically gives you, like not even the depths of the 30,000 feet depths of the sea that I’m mentioning now, you ask like five questions, there is a system, immediately you will see that your results will improve.

So deploying systems like these, like we cut foot costs by 20%, you know, 15 to 20 % in a lot of locations. And sometimes, I’m gonna say half of it is like our efforts, half of it is the Hawthorne effect. When people are observed, people do better. But the most important thing is you need to that.

Discover where the variance is coming from which system gives you from an SKU standpoint and identify why in that specific SKU there is a variance Is somebody stealing? Let’s face the facts is Now we will go to the consistency and customer experience standpoint if There are a lot of like returns or comps right? Does that mean stakes are you know, overcooked or undercooked or something like that that?

It’s going to the trash, you know, it’s going to waste. And there is a return, there is a comp element to it, which then ties into the customer experience. Like you can glean a ton of different things in these various reports. So then you can train your employees. We have seen like in one location as Rich and I, were discussing before the recording started. If you had three locations, odds are…

Rich Dunham (23:39.192)

you

Naki Soyturk (24:01.71)

two of the chefs are aligned with you and one of them isn’t, right? And that chef is probably using like breast in a thigh recipe for no good reason. Because everything is like verbally communicated, that guy heard thigh. Is that really like his problem? Is that his fault? Maybe, maybe not. Did you give him in writing? Is there a written recipe? Did you give it to him? Did you have him study it?

Maybe, maybe not. So we can identify those situations as well. In one location, a fried chicken is coming out from breast and other locations coming from thigh.

Matt Molaski (24:44.816)

Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s you hit the nail on the head right there. So.

The reason that margin edge exists is precisely that, right? You can have those tools, you can hold your teams accountable for doing the processes that you want them to do as part of running your business. Because if you’re 10, 15 points over your target food cost,

And let’s just say you’re not a super busy restaurant, right? But you’re a small business, maybe doing 2 million a year in sales, maybe even a million. It’s a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of food you’re purchasing every year. And so if you’re over purchasing by 10, 15 percent, you know, that takes a significant chunk out of your profitability. And then you don’t, you know.

Then like you said, you know, is it a customer experience thing? Am I a burger restaurant that’s overcooking or under cooking my burgers consistently? Right. So, you know, if you’re, you know, just like if you’re a steakhouse, you should know how to cook a steak. You should know how to temp a steak, you know, same thing with a burger. but you spend hours and hours and hours in spreadsheets trying to determine that, which we can then

Rich Dunham (25:54.528)

Thanks.

Rich Dunham (26:03.96)

you

Matt Molaski (26:16.218)

show you in a matter of how long does it take you to actually count your inventory, right? And not even a full inventory, just your high impact items, the items that you want to focus on. And so just having those tools can really give an operator those calls to action, where you can say, OK, what is going on with this? I see this significant variance.

we need to dig in here. Because otherwise you’re just flying blind. You’re just seeing how much money you have left in the bank after payroll. And one month it’s good, one month it’s not so good. You don’t really know why. And so we can provide all that data for restaurant operators, owners, chefs, GMs, to understand the why and then be able to take that action.

Naki Soyturk (26:50.968)

Exactly.

Naki Soyturk (27:14.446)

I love the fact that, you know, a lot of the things that we in as like we as restaurant operators think that we got covered are actually covered with margin edge Like what I mean by that is I asked the question to the owner as like the initial interview, like how do you make sure that, you know, the price

The purchase price is right. the GM reviews it Okay, what does that mean? What does he do when he’s reviewing? Well, when was the last time he identified a pricing error or like an SKU that doesn’t belong there and I’m not really putting any blame on the GM’s or the guy who is being sent outside to receive the products, you know that guy thinks his job is just bring the

Rich Dunham (28:06.52)

you

Naki Soyturk (28:13.676)

carry this stuff to the cooler. Not to get to the purchase order, get the purchase order, compare the purchase order with the shipping label, and from the shipping label count what was received. That guy doesn’t, like, what is his job? What do you expect him to do? If he spends more than like three minutes outside, somebody’s gonna shout at him. That’s what he knows, right? So carry the products.

Rich Dunham (28:39.628)

All right.

Naki Soyturk (28:43.086)

Now, what’s GM’s job? Keep the guests happy. Keep the lights on, right? Now, is our expectation for him to dig into the invoices and spend hours like this and that, and then call the chef, and chef and GM calls the distributor on, tell us why the tomato price has increased by 12 % since last week.

the distributor Rich knows better than I do. There is always a drought in Mexico, right? That caused the prices to increase, know, hail, like hail in California, right? Nobody, and then, okay, okay, thank you. then, so it’s like there is a perception of control, perception of things done, and then is it really done?

Rich Dunham (29:17.578)

always.

Naki Soyturk (29:41.516)

And the answer is no. And the reason why, how do we know it? Average restaurant profitability is between three to five percent, right? National Restaurant Association announces it.

There is no other manufacturing industry that has and restaurants are manufacturing plus service, manufacturing and service combined in the same physical location. Make no mistake. I mean, any operation that’s buying 500 SKUs just for the kitchen and probably another 500 SKUs for fine dining, maybe even more for the beverage operation, right?

is a manufacturing operation. And only five percent in the riskiest business ever, you know, with the highest failure rate. That’s why there needs to be a better way. That’s why we are having this conversation to educate the folks who don’t know about these things. And it’s not their job to know these things at the same time. Right. In manufacturing companies, they have dedicated resources that operate between

finance and operations, usually on the operations side, who have, whose job is to manage, maintain these tools and communicate with everyone. Which in the restaurant industry, we really don’t. And we don’t give time or training to the folks whom we expect so much in return.

I want to emphasize like partial counts like Matt said that’s a huge game changer because if you want to if you analyze if you want to change anything Occurrence frequency is the most important tool that you have like if you do multi counts and everybody’s like maybe the count wasn’t correct then wait another month to do the to do it.

Naki Soyturk (31:48.716)

Well, like five people were sick, they didn’t show up. So wait another month. When you do weekly, know, excuses can only be on a weekly basis, right? Because excuses happen in the same frequency. Like twice is okay. Third time, not so much. So do you want to lose like three months before you do a count? Or do you want to lose two weeks before you do a count? And I haven’t seen any other tool that gives you…

the chance to do partial count as if it’s a full count, meaning getting systematic results in variances with a partial count. And the reason why partial count is important is, again, goes back to the 500 SKUs. You need to prioritize for your people to do well. Count the first top 25 items. Then count on the Hawthorne effect. Give the illusion that you actually know stuff, understand stuff, you can…

You can identify variance, ask smart questions, right? And to do that, you need the top 25 items and margin edge. In another tool, we literally jump through hoops to get there. are Excel wizards, so we can do it. Most restaurants can’t do it. So use margin edge, partial counts is super important in getting the results that you need.

Rich and I, were discussing like a few minutes before this call like tariffs, Tariffs, price changes. I don’t know what’s gonna eventually happen. don’t think anybody knows. But if prices are gonna change, which it seems like they are gonna change even more drastically now, Now knowing your cost and acting accordingly is even more important. Gentlemen…

Has there been internal conversations on MarginEge and on how MarginEdge can help in these even more challenging times that we expect to happen?

Matt Molaski (33:56.496)

Yeah, well, Rich?

Rich Dunham (33:59.83)

Yeah, I mean, look, I’m a very go back to basics. OK. And let’s all be very frank about the world has changed so much since 2020 and it’s changing faster and faster every day. And I think the simplest answer that I could give anybody is do the right things. You’re uploading invoices every single day. You’re providing you’re building your database. If you just stay on the home page of margin edge, you are going to have

Matt Molaski (34:13.166)

you

Rich Dunham (34:29.75)

daily call to action by looking at those impact items, by looking at those budgets, by looking at those product specifics that are affecting what’s happening on the financial side. All of this is, that’s the simplest way and then you can dive deeper into the tool with the help of your finance partner to understand where to find that gold because it’s there and I just think Marginedge gives you that most user-friendly experience.

with the best data right in front of you, day to day.

Matt Molaski (35:06.832)

Yeah. mean, it’s kind of, you know, so I first joined the company in January of 2020, right? And then everything was great. And I was like, this is awesome. I was a self-proclaimed Excel wizard, as you, as you just mentioned as well. And, know, and I was like, this is wonderful. Where has this product been for the last 10 years that I was doing financial analysis for, you know, restaurants that I was running, or I was required to do things.

to send reporting to our finance department. And then the world changed, right? March 2020, we all know what happened then. And I think it was really a significant time when restaurant owners who might have been a little removed from their businesses were forced to scrutinize them overnight. So I think, you know, the marriage of front and back

or operations and finance was something that a lot of corporate or larger restaurant groups were very good about doing, but a lot of small business owners just weren’t. And so with these tariffs, who knows what’s going to happen with that? But if we can provide a service and a tool for those businesses to really, really

scrutinize what they need to, then, you know, I think we don’t know what’s going to happen in the weeks and months and year to come or, you know, whatever. But as long as we can, you know, provide them some actional data day to day, you know, that’s, that’s a really important part of implementing margin edge at your restaurant.

Naki Soyturk (37:02.1)

Awesome. Who is your ideal ideal client? Who benefits the most from Margin Edge

Matt Molaski (37:10.172)

someone who counts inventory consistently. Honestly.

Rich Dunham (37:12.76)

Yep. They’ll get the best bang for the buck, this for sure.

Matt Molaski (37:18.352)

Yeah, yeah, I mean that’s you know, it’s it’s a tool, know, it’s you know, the cheap the tree isn’t going to chop itself down, right? You got to pick up the axe and use it. you know, you know, operators who understand the importance of consistency in systems. And, you know, I think that’s really our ideal as far as, you know, business size or cuisine type, you know,

We work with everyone from fast casual smoothie shops all the way up to Michelin starred fine dining restaurants, know, single unit, single location, small business up to 30, 40 location hospitality groups and everything in between. But inventory is so important and it’s going to become, it’s one of those things that it’s.

It’s restaurants 101. You know, you’re creative, you put together a great menu, you know your steps of service, but then the business side of it is you have to count inventory. As much as the sous chef might complain about it or as much as the GM might not want to stay until 4 a.m. counting all their liquor and wine and all of that is absolutely critical to the health of the business to do.

Naki Soyturk (38:43.935)

Could you talk to us about, so we talked about food, I talked about food a lot, and the beverage sites. Is that side covered also?

Matt Molaski (38:55.376)

Yeah, with margin edge, absolutely. Even more so, just last year we introduced an actual physical piece of hardware. It’s called a FreeForce Smart Scale, which allows operators to weigh their bottles of all of their liquor so they get the most accurate count and the most accurate inventory possible.

Because if you don’t weigh it, then you’re just holding up a bottle and you’re guessing how much is in it, right? And so it really takes out all the guesswork. But utilizing the scale, you can also cut down the amount of time you’re spending counting your inventory as well. Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (39:39.779)

No.

Naki Soyturk (39:43.766)

And what kind of results have your clients? Like do you have a before and after?

Matt Molaski (39:52.048)

So, you know, we have a couple examples, but typically what they’re seeing is, you know, the same thing on the food side, like your burger example, right? You have that call to action, right? So if we’re talking about alcohol, and let’s just say Jameson, so you’re counting your alcohol once a week, and then the first week, you know, you’re missing three bottles of Jameson. What happened? You know, was it overpoured?

Was the bartender giving away shots? Were they not bringing things in correctly? You know was the stat and God forbid was the staff drinking it, you know on shift whatever it might be Guilty as charged, you know, I think we’ve all done a shot or two in our restaurant career And then you know, just like you said when somebody knows you’re watching You know, they Stand a little straighter, you know, they they cut less corners all of that

And so just like the importance of counting food inventory with beverage as well, because your margins are probably going to be a little bit better on your beverage costs than they are in your food. So why not protect that? And, you know, so it’s just the same philosophy, just that consistency of inventory and the accuracy of counting it to make sure that the reports that you’re looking at are as accurate as possible.

Naki Soyturk (41:19.918)

What does it cost to implement, to subscribe to MarginEdge? And what kind of plans are there?

Matt Molaski (41:28.946)

Yeah, absolutely. So we have our margin edge software, which is available for $330 a month or $3,600 on our annual plan. That covers all of our features. So unlimited invoice processing, unlimited users, training support, all of that. We do have tiered onboarding packages that are available for our clients to choose from.

depending on what will best suit them. Onboarding packages are available at $250, $500, or $750 per restaurant. And those all include how much training and hand-holding does someone need during the implementation of it versus someone who is tech savvy and experienced and

might have worked with other similar systems in the past who might not need as much during a setup. And then if you’d like to add the free for smart scale for liquor inventory, that’s available for an additional $150 per month.

Naki Soyturk (42:45.432)

Got it. And how long does the implementation take and how difficult is it?

Matt Molaski (42:50.994)

Not difficult It’s not difficult at all And you know, I would say most of our clients are up and running in between 60 and 90 days and Really? A lot of that is just you know Fine-tuning right getting their recipes in you know Organizing their inventory count sheets, you know, but it’s it’s really you build that foundation

Rich Dunham (42:53.12)

No, not difficult.

Matt Molaski (43:19.844)

and then you just grow into the software. You know, don’t need to do absolutely everything overnight, but at least start just like you mentioned with your top 25, right? So don’t worry about taking a full inventory the very first time, just count the top 25 for the first couple of weeks, you know, and then grow it, grow it, grow it.

Naki Soyturk (43:44.352)

Amazing. Anything you gentlemen would like to add?

Rich Dunham (43:50.92)

I think the, if I could add one thing is that the restaurant industry itself to me is so, it is the grit and grind and happiness of small business in America. I love it. That’s why I’ve been in it for way too long. I wanted to say how long. And I think if you, but I think in today’s age, when you put technology and brains together with creativity, you can have a lot of fun.

and you can make money. And those two things are really powerful. And it’s like, just come and take a look and hold yourself accountable and work with great people and work with great tools and just have fun in the restaurant business. That’s what it’s all about. So enjoy.

Naki Soyturk (44:37.826)

And how can people reach out and demo and have conversations to subscribe to margin.h?

Matt Molaski (44:49.414)

Yeah, absolutely. They can go check out our website, marginedge.com. They can email me directly if they want to. I’ll share my email address with you. Yeah. But, you know, one of the things that really drew me to this company is everybody who’s client facing, we come from a restaurant background, whether that’s, you know, back a house or front of house operations, ownership.

Rich Dunham (44:56.876)

Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (44:59.554)

Yeah, we will put links, email addresses at the bottom of this video.

Rich Dunham (45:03.5)

Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Molaski (45:17.86)

even the finance side of the house. So we’ve been there, we’ve been in the trenches, we’ve been in the weeds, you know, we know what it’s like. And we love the restaurant industry. And we just want to do our part to help the industry that we love continue to flourish in 16.

Naki Soyturk (45:39.81)

Thank you for that. Thank you for that, man. Amazing. Me too. And Marginage enables me to do the thing I love, which is CSI restaurants. Basically, the variance is the murder and we try to solve like who murdered it. Sometimes it’s it’s gang related. Gang murder. Sometimes it’s not.

Sometimes the husband, who knows? You find it though. It’s always the husband. Or the wife, or the wife.

Matt Molaski (46:11.346)

It’s always the husband. It’s always the husband, right?

Rich Dunham (46:13.65)

As always.

yeah.

God.

Naki Soyturk (46:23.502)

Alright gentlemen, anything you would like to add?

Rich Dunham (46:30.7)

good. This has been a pleasure and I can’t thank you enough for the opportunity.

Matt Molaski (46:31.676)

Good. Yeah. Yeah, this has been a lot of fun.

Naki Soyturk (46:34.702)

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Okay, I’m stop recording now. Please hang on.

Naki Soyturk (00:00.076)

Lift off, All right. Okay. Okay. Hello everyone. Thanks for joining me today. I have with me my mentor, a great restaurateur and advisor to many successful restaurants, Greg Provence. Welcome Greg.

Greg Provance (00:17.777)

Thanks, man. So good to be here. Really happy to be here, man. Thanks for having me.

Naki Soyturk (00:24.106)

Awesome. has an amazing positive energy, super knowledgeable, love every conversation I have had with him. So thank you very much for joining me today. So Greg, why don’t you introduce yourself to the audience and talk about yourself, your IMDb page. There is an inside joke over here.

Greg Provance (00:34.683)

Likewise.

Naki Soyturk (00:52.878)

about somebody whom I don’t know if it’s a mutual love and respect or it’s just me with love and respect for that certain individual. Maybe Greg is just a professional, like a professional. And then your experiences as a restaurateur and as an amazing consultant helping restaurants.

Greg Provance (01:14.101)

Yeah, no, thanks. I appreciate it. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, so I used to be in the entertainment industry. that was, you know, kind of how, you know, well, my career in restaurants started before that. My first job was at 14 years old at Popeye’s Chicken. And it was a cool way for me to hang out with my friends and make some money to buy, you know, buy a new surfboard when I was a kid. You know, but

Naki Soyturk (01:31.7)

love it.

Greg Provance (01:40.357)

But all along the way of kind of working in entertainment, of course I was bartending and waiting tables and stuff to make ends meet. It’s kind of what we do in New York and Hollywood and all those places that we were kind of trekking around. And it was interesting because there was a point in life where I started to kind of sprout a family and started to think, man, I might need to get really serious about a career.

And you know, there’s some good things in entertainment happening, but as you may know, it’s probably it’s pretty up and down. And, and, you know, had to kind of take a step back and get serious about a career. And you know, the only skill set I think I’d felt like I’d developed over those years was restaurants. And so I figured, okay, might as well, might as well go that direction. Because there was one point in my life where I used to think, man, if I became a restaurant owner, or a restaurant manager,

Naki Soyturk (02:23.523)

Heh

Greg Provance (02:33.153)

that was like the kiss of death. Like it means I’d failed in life, you know, and that’s what I really thought for many years. But then, you know, it actually, you know, the restaurant industry really afforded me a way to still, kind of, you know, scratch that creative itch and really be, you know, involved in, in people and developing people, which is something I became very, very passionate about over the years and still am. and it has afforded me an amazing life.

I mean, with all the talk of the grind and the hours and all the risk and all that kind of stuff, I mean, I can’t imagine any other industry really kind of having devoted this many years to, and really it’s enriched my life in so many ways. Just not that kind of nine to five office kind of guy, as many of us probably relate to, right?

Naki Soyturk (03:26.474)

I know. Definitely.

Greg Provance (03:31.141)

You know, it’s so, so yeah, so it’s, it’s been great. You know, I mean, my career has spanned, you know, decades now I’ve worked in pretty much every type of concept. I’ve owned multiple concepts now. and now most recently, I’ve devoted most of my energy to, as you mentioned, my consulting firm. and that allows me the opportunity to really help a lot of different types of organizations and different independent, owners.

to scale their brands. We have clients all across the United States now, and it’s just been great. It’s been a really gratifying sort of way of being, and really, really enjoyed it. And especially these last few years in particular, it’s been amazing because I’ve really been able to dive deep into a lot of different types of operations.

And as much as I’m helping people, I’m also learning from them as I go, right? You probably feel that way too, right? Like, know, you work with your clients.

Naki Soyturk (04:30.04)

Same here. Yeah.

I have two concepts. One is the ultra mega fine dining steakhouse, right? literally like one month worth of like McLaren’s production at the door, of the lambos in Dallas at the door, know, like supermodels and like celebrities. The second concept is the fast casual burger brand that didn’t really take off.

Like what I knew was, yes, I did it in a regional, like in the US, did work with the Middle East part as well, bounced some ideas with the folks in Europe, which is what happens in a global, it’s not global, maybe like, so it has half the globe,

Naki Soyturk (05:30.816)

What I knew in terms of systems processes was possible or the business models were limited to what I worked on. I learned so much, so much more into this and met with awesome, awesome people, learned a of systems, learned a lot of different ways of tackling. I’ll wait, there is one way to operate, but what is important is different in a ultra mega high-end versus

fast casual versus casual, like the importance and what’s the priority basically is different across all of these different channels that we have.

Greg Provance (06:12.261)

Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (06:15.5)

And Greg, you owned, as far as I know, a very successful Italian restaurant business. You developed a franchise. You developed it into a franchise. Am I right?

Greg Provance (06:27.939)

Yeah, so I actually, it’s interesting. I actually sold that restaurant a little while back, you know, and we had built out a franchise model and it was a healthy Italian fast casual concept. And the units that are still there are doing great. They’re doing amazing actually.

I’m not sure if my former partner is really continuing along the franchise route that we started. I’m not sure about that, but we definitely built something pretty amazing. Very proud of that.

Naki Soyturk (07:00.93)

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And one of the things, so in my past life, I worked with like the largest companies in the world. But what I love about working with restaurants is like entrepreneurship, right? Somebody put their blood and sweat, their whole ideas, every day they went and tinkered with it and developed something better.

day in eat and they out and that’s the entrepreneur like right in front of you, right? Like vice president of whatever division, know, like is, you know, like as smart as that guy is, never really had to like scrape on a day to day basis as we did in the restaurants, you know, deal with the crisis that we had to deal with. So it creates a tough.

smart and solution oriented individual, think restaurants do maybe, I think like business schools should, you know, study restaurants and maybe like put their people in restaurant management, you know, for a year or two.

Greg Provance (08:12.999)

absolutely. I wholeheartedly believe that. mean, restaurateurs are some of the most innovative, you know, hardworking, you know, know, group of people out there. I mean, and talk about having to come up with solutions on the fly, right? I mean, you know, look, any business is not without its challenges, but I really feel like our industry is very unique in that sense. There’s so many moving parts. There’s so many things that, you know,

There’s so many ways to make money and so many ways to lose money. And it’s just, and it never ends, right? And so, mean, you the resilience I think that, you know, restaurant owners and operators portray on a daily basis is just nothing short of amazing. They’re heroes. They really are, you know, and we believe that at our core. And I also, you know, the innovation piece, you know, I love working with the entrepreneurial side of things because

Naki Soyturk (08:41.752)

Lose money.

Naki Soyturk (08:46.37)

in the evidence.

Greg Provance (09:08.515)

It does, you know, it really kind of puts into perspective of like the idea of putting solutions in that maybe are kind of out of the box, right? And I think the best operators and the most successful long-term operations that I see are those that, you know, are able to apply solutions that aren’t just the status quo, right? It’s like, we don’t want to just keep doing things because we’ve always done them.

We always want to be kind of like innovating and thinking outside of the box and seeing things from a different perspective. And I think those are the most successful operators that I see. Those ones that can kind of think quickly, that can pivot, that can see things almost before, you know, I don’t want to say before they happen, but can anticipate, you know, and yeah, and that can execute, you know, and that aren’t afraid to kind of get in there and try things and, you know, some things work, some things don’t, but

Naki Soyturk (09:54.402)

Be prepared.

Greg Provance (10:02.971)

just really being innovative. And I think restaurateurs are uniquely disposed to be those types of people. Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (10:10.03)

I think like, if I look at the people whom I have spoken to, there is, and the people whom I enjoy talking to most of this, so like life always throws us like lemons, right? Like one lemon after another lemon. Like I got like so many like, and I was an operator, like now, right now I’m doing exactly what I enjoy. Like take this, make it better, you know, spread happiness,

in my past life, not every day was so joyous, right? So life throws us like constant lemons. As I always say, product goes bad. know, bad product doesn’t get good all of a sudden. So all of the surprises, I mean, maybe other than maybe like some events or something that’s happening in your city and, but most of the events, like somebody who wasn’t scheduled isn’t gonna show up, but somebody who’s scheduled will not, may not show up, right?

Greg Provance (11:08.549)

Yes.

Naki Soyturk (11:08.714)

an equipment may not work at a crucial time, know, Friday evening service, you will scramble to get it fixed, but a magical equipment isn’t gonna, so all surprises are bad. You know, so I think like the people who actually made it, yes, like life throws like constant lemons at us, yes, and it, I mean, there are so many like struggle, know, there are so many struggles along the way.

but the people who the persistence angle and who stay curious, who I think restaurateurs are also as much as we are innovative, right? I’m not gonna put myself in the innovative bucket, maybe solution oriented bucket I would be. We are also conservative in our thinking in a way that’s like, we always think like we are,

I’ve done it, you know, this is how it is done. You know, like I don’t, I’m not gonna, you know, like explore other, angles unless my best buddy next door tells me otherwise. So the, the difficult thing about restaurants is it’s a manufacturing and service operation combined into two. So I spent like a good seven, eight years working with manufacturing operations all across the globe, like Ford motor company.

Greg Provance (12:21.361)

Mm.

Naki Soyturk (12:38.402)

Dana Corporation, know, Clarion, a lot of, excuse me, lot of automotive and chemical manufacturers. I’ve been to 25 manufacturing plants and their plants and their other businesses are separate, right? They are different divisions. So these are different skills and nobody claims they are an expert in every single thing, So.

Like I see restaurants, like restaurateurs who are having like eight, nine restaurants and they are doing their own bookkeeping, right? They are experts in procurement. Maybe marketing isn’t the thing that they deal with since it involves actually revenue. But also like, I think these challenges, so I caught a little bit abroad with me, a bug from Italy, from my trip from Italy.

I do apologize. So that comes through and there were times I was in the same mindset as well. When like there are some like buckets of buckets of lemons thrown at you even if somebody says like here is a you know like basket of gold you only need to do this like you know like not now but when is when will it when when are you going to

make that change. I think the problem is we have such a skill gap in the restaurants that when I say skill gap what I mean is somebody who does operations and when we say operations it’s basically like there’s someone does back of house, someone is front of us and the job descriptions are so like tiny meaning back of house job descriptions put the food on the table. So what it means

Greg Provance (14:07.352)

Mmm.

Naki Soyturk (14:35.192)

buy the food somehow, cook it somehow, put it in front, right? And front of house in many restaurants, it’s super simple. Get the order, put the guest on the table, this and that. But nobody’s really like, and then the intersections, right? In terms of how the money angle is always avoided by everybody. And everybody just, I think we play and…

I was guilty of the same again in many years of doing this. We tend to ignore, willfully ignore how some things are done. Just an example, stock counts are super important if you want to learn what your cost is, right? And without this one component, then you don’t know what your foot cost is. If you don’t know your foot cost, how are you going to manage the entire business? Unless…

you are a Michelin star restaurant, everybody comes in at like $700 per person, then yes, I wouldn’t care it either, right? How much you paid for the plum doesn’t really matter, right? If that plum is sold at like $700, right? So when will the time come? I think is the crucial element. Like we open the restaurants, one month passes, two months, three months, right? Four months.

But time never comes. Two years later, we are opening a new restaurant when the existing restaurant is at the same level as at the time, maybe like two months after opening. Now we know who is employed there. People aren’t coming and going all the time. But still, you have retention issues. You have guest issues. You have like 4.1 stars in Google Maps. You still haven’t solved like

lot of the issues and before you stabilize, put that into a system because if you are going to open this restaurant, deal with the freaking construction, which I freaking hate, if  going to do the construction, all of these decisions, hire and bring people in, all this bunch of things, then you shouldn’t be thinking about a ton about like solving the problems of the existing ones. If you are doing that, then suddenly I think like

Naki Soyturk (16:57.07)

all the eggs in the same basket and you will drop the eggs and like collapse and all that kind of stuff. I think that as innovative as we are, as problem solving as we are, there comes a time when I think we say like enough is enough. I’m not gonna deal with any new things and this is it. This is as far as I go. And I think that basically limits like certain restaurateurs into like one or two after 20 years.

Versus you see, like I talked to a guy, a very young guy recently. He has like five restaurants at the age of like 26. You know, so I think that is the difference between one group and then the ones that don’t hold them. I’m not gonna say don’t hold them. Because I understand I’ve been there, like it’s painful, right? Some of the most painful and some of the most cherished memories that I had in my 20 something years of career were in restaurants.

There should come a time that like, okay, like a lot of lemons, I take it, take it, rest a bit, maybe one week, but then you need to like, like change the gear a bit, put a bit more gas and like go back to your normal life. Don’t live with the trauma is what I’m saying. Otherwise 20 years, you will have one or two locations when you could have had like six that you can pass to the next generation.

Greg Provance (18:26.265)

Yeah. mean, I think what you’re describing there is that these, this, this attention to basic business fundamentals, right? And, you know, look, so many, you know, people start any business because they’re great at what they do. Right. And restaurants are no different, right? You have a chef that just can, it has the best recipe for, you know, I don’t know, flan, you know I mean? Or whatever it is. Yeah. Like passed down through generations and it’s like, my gosh, people come from miles for this. And that’s great.

Naki Soyturk (18:48.066)

Mama’s special sauce.

Greg Provance (18:55.749)

Right, that’s a good reason to get into business. The problem that we see time and time again is that those people are not necessarily business people, right? They’re not, they don’t have a business acumen and they’re certainly not necessarily great at managing people, right? Different skill sets, as you mentioned. And so, you know, one of the things that we really need to encourage, you know, these, you know,

great operators or these great chefs and these wonderfully talented people to do is to get really masterful at those basic business processes that are necessary for us to build and grow and scale a business. And so, I mean, I see it time and time again, man. I can’t tell you how many times where I’ve met with a new client, we’ve got all these great…

thoughts around how to scale, help them scale their business. And I say, okay, let’s look at your inventory and let’s look at your P &L. And I mean, I can’t tell you the percentage, it’s a way higher percentage than not that look at you like deer in the headlights. well, you know, we just changed bookkeepers or, yeah, we really haven’t done inventory in a little while or, know, those types of things happens all the time. And I’m not even talking about just your mom and pop one or two locations. I’m talking about

I’ve seen operations that have multiple units that are not doing these fundamental things. And it’s not because they don’t want to, or even maybe because they don’t know how. Maybe they just, you got tired, or they don’t have the resources, they just decided, something else was a priority. But it’s really so, so important that we get back to those basics if we really wanna get serious about growing and scaling our business, right? And that’s why we, you know,

you know, when we work with people, we look for those operators that are serious about growth, they really want to master these things. And sometimes it’s sometimes it’s it’s just a little bit of shame and guilt, you know, because they feel like embarrassed about the fact that it’s not going on, they know they should be doing it, but they’re not, you know, and that’s kind of the unspoken, you know, you know, secret, you know, that, you know, people, the dirty little secret people don’t talk about behind closed doors.

Greg Provance (21:19.607)

But it happens a lot. It happens way more often than you would think. And so, you know, what that tells me is that there’s a real need for that level of support, you know, for people to just get really, you know, serious about learning those and practicing and getting consistency around those fundamentals. Super, super important.

Naki Soyturk (21:40.854)

It’s exactly why I started this. My options were to be a CFO for another super successful brand. But then I asked myself, am I really excited to do that again? I’ve already done it once and I enjoyed it tremendously, a lot of challenges and stuff, but why do it for one when I can do it for 20 different businesses?

Greg Provance (22:07.121)

Mm hmm. Yeah, that’s exactly, that’s exactly my feeling. 100%. You know, we’ve done it for ourselves. We’ve been able to be successful and, and it’s not that we don’t like it. I mean, I’m kicking around the idea for a concept right now that I’m, thinking I might pull the trigger on. So there’s always that pull to keep, you know, going in operations. But no, it is great when you can, when you can help out people in this way. Yeah, for sure.

Naki Soyturk (22:27.15)

that you know what to do, right?

Naki Soyturk (22:34.19)

That’s awesome.

Greg Provance (22:38.704)

you

Naki Soyturk (22:42.19)

that’s… Ella, close the door! Do you want to say hi to… …baby?

Greg Provance (22:52.165)

Hey! How you doing?

Naki Soyturk (22:55.746)

Okay, you need to go and close the door. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go. I’m sorry. Close the door.

Greg Provance (23:01.146)

I love it.

Greg Provance (23:05.081)

love it. You should leave that in.

Naki Soyturk (23:05.976)

So, Einstein. Have you seen the British guy? Like he’s talking about like World War 3 or something and like super like British guy and then like his kids are like…

Greg Provance (23:17.678)

Yes!

Greg Provance (23:22.863)

Yeah, it’s so great. Such a sign of the times, man, you know? I mean, I’m in my underwear right now. You can’t tell,

Naki Soyturk (23:26.646)

Me too!

Greg Provance (23:38.387)

that’s great. I love that.

Naki Soyturk (23:42.318)

So we covered that. We talked about how we could.

Naki Soyturk (23:54.144)

At the end of the day, what I want to say is like, there isn’t like 50 different ways to be successful in business, especially in this business. Like I worked in a super niche concept. Yes, we were making money and over first. Yes. I went to Dubai and Abu Dhabi to help with them. The reason I say this is like you have never seen like more money made in restaurant touring. Yes. But.

They could still make, you could still lower their food cost by 40%. Literally 40%. 40%, yes. Ridiculous amount of money, more ridiculous amounts of money. yes, there is this like super duper niche, like this is rockstar territory, right? Maybe Taylor Swift territory, like I’m gonna put it over here, yes. Taylor Swift, I feel like restaurants are like musicians, right?

Greg Provance (24:32.229)

Mm.

Greg Provance (24:38.534)

next

Naki Soyturk (24:53.504)

We always talk about the Taylor Swift that I’m gonna put like here on the screen, but most of restaurants are actually here. Are actually here. They are right here, right? We always talk about Taylor Swift so everybody thinks like the business is Taylor Swift. Yes, I worked with the Taylor Swift. Yes. And money was made like there is no tomorrow. Niche concept, amazing stuff. I pulled in so many levers that created the…

the most profitable restaurants in world. But for anybody here, for anybody over here, maybe not even here, for here, it’s about survival. Every restaurant’s profitability is only 5%. When it’s only 5%, the construction starts next door, you lost one of the three restaurants that one owns, is now in the red. So we need to create, we need to…

look at this and manage this as a business. the thing is, it’s not really like one thing or another. What I mean is, it’s not really like profitability. We are not doing this for the sake of money. Like in Spongebob, the crab says money, money, because money. No, it’s because you do this because of consistency. So there is this restaurant in a state that I have never visited. Maybe I went to a plant there, but not to this restaurant.

Greg Provance (26:13.201)

Mm.

Naki Soyturk (26:19.822)

And I knew more about what was not happening in his restaurant than the owner itself. How? Looking at the data. So I’m not saying that data replaces everything, but one of the three restaurants is using like breast instead of, know, thighs in a recipe. You sell 100 burgers, 125 patties are used, 150 buns are used. Why? Is this a consistency issue?

Is this a training issue? Are you providing your guests with subpar products that they are returning? What is going on over here? is somebody stealing? Like all of these things that… That’s why these integrated systems, these SOPs were created in industries like 100 years before restaurants. Before the time of the restaurants, right?

Ford Motor company was manufacturing 500,000 model teas in like 1907 and like 98 % of restaurants are still not there. When I talk to these like inventory management tool companies, I ask them questions that are like, they are like, you are the first person to ask this question. And why? Why? Because, know, people aren’t really taking full advantage of these tools and resources that are available to them.

And because we are here in terms of our business management skills doesn’t mean that this is ridiculous. You know what I mean? If I’m asking a question over here, doesn’t mean that this is needless or unnecessary. Yes, there is a big gap in between, but you need to maybe raise the bar a bit.

Greg Provance (28:11.217)

Yeah, no, absolutely. mean, what I hear you saying too is, you know, there, we need to install the systems. Yes. Right. We need to have the systems and the systems should be something that are going to solve a particular problem. Right. So if I, for instance, if I’m trying to, you know, uh, streamline my to-go process, let’s say, right. And I want to make sure that items aren’t being forgotten and that everything is.

put in the right bags and it’s in a timely manner, all that stuff. We need to come up with a system for that, right? And then, but the problem I see sometimes is people, A, they don’t have the system number one, but then if they do, they’re not managing it, right? So once the system’s installed, it actually needs to be managed. So there needs to be accountability. And, you know, the way I see it in terms of training our teams to that level of accountability, it’s like, we need to pick one or two very, very impactful

crucial things to focus on and then just be relentless about making sure that that system is being worked and optimized and continuously improved upon until it’s just part of how we do things. And there’s never a question. That way when any new person comes into our team and they’re automatically trained on it, because that’s just how we do it, right? And no team member is going to let it drop because that’s just part of the fabric of what we do.

You know, this item goes here, it gets checked off here, it gets put in this here, and then this person, you know, I mean, every part of that system has to be sort of relentlessly trained until it’s part of what we do. And that goes for every system that we have. I’m not, it’s funny because I’m, in the camp of, know, we want to have smart systems, but we don’t want death by process either, right? We want to be able to be malleable. We want to be able to be able to make quick decisions.

Naki Soyturk (30:00.003)

That’s right.

Naki Soyturk (30:05.216)

and solutions.

Greg Provance (30:05.411)

I want operators that are going to be able to make quick, decisive action when things are happening. They need to be able to break the mold and break the rules sometime to get things done the way they need to be done. But they also need to be accountable to making sure that the systems that we put in place are optimized, they’re managed, the data is used, just to your point. And so that’s what makes great operations is when we…

When we’re able to really focus on those things and put the time and effort we need on the front end to get that system just well oiled, then it becomes a part of a fabric of what we do. And then we move on to the next and just build it like brick, brick, brick, brick.

Naki Soyturk (30:45.992)

What’s great about restaurant industry is like, if you think about all the operational psychologists and whatnot, what they are going to tell you is like, changing a behavior requires one to repeat something like seven times. It’s super hard to change established behavior. And in restaurants, it’s actually like, I found this to be like the easiest industry to change the behavior.

And I’m gonna come to why but I think the most important thing I want to emphasize is if you if one has like two three locations for a sprinter is two three locations They are looking to go up to eight like now Yesterday was the time to establish the systems nuts when you open them the the next location or the next location over because it’s harder to change the behavior than to open up something in you then to

Greg Provance (31:44.665)

Absolutely.

Naki Soyturk (31:45.294)

When you open up, when you open the new locations, when you’re hiring those folks, it’s easy to train them. It’s hard to change the behavior. To change the behavior, the reason why it’s good in restaurants is number one, people want to do well. Number two, I think what boils down to the heart of the second thing that I love about restaurants, so I love automotive, right? Like automotive is in my heart. Literally probably like mercury and plastic is in my blood.

at this point in Jackson after visiting a million plants, right? So, but people aren’t excited. Like even in Detroit, people weren’t really excited about like their grandfather and their great grandfather worked at Ford. They work at Ford. They don’t look at Ford the way that I look at, I looked at work. I felt like my blood was like running blue from Ford, restaurants, when they are successful, people associate themselves with that brand, not.

the axle manufacturer, like you don’t associate yourself with, we make the best stabilizing bars in the world. people, people. So when I worked with like billion dollar organizations, nobody gave me a call about, you know, the reservations. When I worked on this side everybody was my buddy, right? That’s the power of the restaurant. You know, you get friends with like celebrities and what, and that affection, that…

Greg Provance (33:04.763)

Yes. Yep.

Naki Soyturk (33:14.35)

connection with your restaurant, like when you can pump that, when your brand is successful, people wanna be, it’s more important than money, it’s almost like a drug, it’s almost like a drug, that you wanna be associated with that brand, be part of that. And it’s more important than if the next door pays you 10 % or whatever. The great thing is when we come in and change the economic dynamics, like we pay them 15%.

more because the restaurant is making so much more money and we want only the good people to stay, the people who will abide by the new rules, accountability and whatnot, right? So we pay them, but they’re also part of something more successful, right? And I know that part of the part like you created a new like third party delivery system, right?

that is changing the odds for so many restaurants.

Greg Provance (34:15.887)

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that we’ve found over the years that a lot of restaurant owners tend to struggle with obviously is the marketing piece, right? You know, and, you know, people are looking at, you know, they, typically, the scenario is, you know, they hire a marketing company, hoping that they’re going to be the silver bullet, bring a bunch of people in, they promise them the world, and then they don’t get the ROI they’re looking for. They’re spending all this money on ads and they just don’t know where it’s going. There’s churn, there’s burn, all that.

of stuff. And that’s a typical scenario. We’ve probably seen it across multiple industries, but especially in the restaurants. hard to quantify the ROI when you’re on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and those types of things. It’s necessary. We want brand awareness. We want to be able to utilize those platforms for what they offer and the organic sort of connection and all of that stuff is very important. Google all of it.

But it’s interesting because I have a lot of conversations with these restaurant owners and the frustrations that they’re feeling. And one thing that always comes up is the conversation around third party deliveries, Uberies, door grass, Grubhub, all that. And the first thing that I hear when you mention something like that is, oh, 30%, right?

And, you know, I’ve polled many audiences on this and I’ve asked the question many times, you know, how do you feel about these part, these third parties? And most of, most operators feel like it’s a necessary evil, right? It’s like, they kind of got us because we have to use them and they, and we have to pay them this 30%. Right. And so, well, I mean, first of all, you don’t have to do anything, you know, I mean, you probably should because, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s kind of the way things are going.

Naki Soyturk (35:59.0)

This right?

Naki Soyturk (36:06.018)

dollars because it brings you the dollars

Greg Provance (36:07.119)

Right? Right. And, and, but, but, but I, but I have to say, have a bit of an opposing view on how I see these platforms, right? Because where most people are kind of playing the victim role, let’s be honest. we’re the victim here because we’re getting raped by these companies, right? They are then when you’re in that mindset, you’re not opening yourself to the opportunity that those platforms actually present to you.

And I say that because, and I feel strongly that a lot of these platforms, Uber, East Door Dash, Grubhub, depending on what, you they’re all, you know, have a bit more market share in different markets. You know, these platforms are a huge marketing opportunity for your brand and guest acquisition opportunity, right? And they’re different in the way that if you think about it in terms of like, if I go and spend say $5,000 on ad spend,

in the meta in Google. And I’m trying to track that ROI and I can see, well, somebody clicked my menu or clicked for directions and maybe they came in. I still don’t know if they came in and bought, right? Or maybe I gave them a coupon code on there or something and they used it and I could track it that way. But if you really look at your spend versus the ROI or the conceived ROI that you can get from some of these measurables,

it’s kind of tough to see where your money’s going and if it’s really worth it. And I would contend you’re probably spending upwards of that 30 % without really knowing if you got a sale. However, on the third party platforms, you’re not paying that 30 % until they buy, number one, right? Number two, the way the markets are going, and if you track the numbers and you can see how people buy.

Naki Soyturk (37:49.902)

That’s right.

Greg Provance (38:03.233)

More and more and more people are buying on these platforms, right? The younger generation, you look at my kids, where do they buy? And they’re buying on DoorDash or they’re buying on whatever, know, GrubHub or whatever they’re doing. And then if you then look at this and you say, okay, where’s the opportunity here? Right? Well, there’s a huge opportunity because number one, you can optimize your menus in such a way, and that doesn’t cost you any money. You can optimize it in a way that you will essentially rank in the top 10 or 11 of those, you know,

Naki Soyturk (38:10.232)

Hmm.

Greg Provance (38:32.753)

of those users, which is where about 80 something percent of the action happens, right? If you’re not in that top 10 percent, you’re missing out on all those potential sales in the first place. And then, of course, you’re probably raising your prices just a little bit on this platform. So you’re absorbing some of that 30 percent. So that’s going to bring it down to about 20 percent on average. Right. So you’re really not paying 20, 30 percent. You’re really paying about 20 percent.

Naki Soyturk (38:40.206)

That’s right. In the first page.

Greg Provance (38:58.673)

And then if you you direct some of that ad spend that you’re spending on others platforms and you put it very targeted and very intentionally on these platforms which by the way it really really allows you to do because the the buying habits of these people are so so Sort of presented forward because the buying patterns are there. They’re actually people that are clicking and buying so your ad spend is more It dollar per dollars. Yes way more targeted than even on these other platforms

Naki Soyturk (39:23.438)

Targeted.

Greg Provance (39:28.465)

You’re going to see an increase in top line sales like you haven’t. We basically guarantee about 100K annual per unit per operator, per concept to come into your top line sales through those third party platforms. We also then help you to optimize those menus to where you’re getting your most highly profitable items sold.

plus upsells, people on those platforms tend to spend anywhere between 26 and 32 % more on those platforms. So they’re actually buying more than they would have if they were sitting in your restaurant. Then you factor in the labor costs. You’re not likely hiring an extra person to stand there and baggage those orders, right? So this is all on top of, so it’s bringing your overall labor costs down. So you’re making margin there, right?

Naki Soyturk (40:16.27)

That’s right. Yeah.

Greg Provance (40:25.433)

And so when you put all these pieces together and you ask yourself, wait, where do I want to put my marketing dollars and put my, you know, spend it comes out clearly third party on top. Right. And so what we’re seeing in this, in this space is I’ve got an operator out of Michigan. He’s got a couple of, a couple of, like Japanese grills. He does about close to 70 % of his business and each of his locations is on third party platforms.

That’s crazy. Out of that 70%, I think in his market, he’s doing about 56 % or so of his sales on DoorDash, because that just is the proprietor place. Out of that 56 something percent, over half of that is pickup, which he only pays about 3%, by the way.

Naki Soyturk (41:17.358)

That’s right.

Greg Provance (41:17.691)

So his overall spend on third party platforms with all of that volume is about between six and 8 % of his overall sales, right? Which is actually lower than that. I think it’s between four and 6 % of his overall sales, which is from a marketing perspective, nothing, right? And he’s running a 24 % EBITDA in each of his stores. He’s self-funding the third location currently, right? So I mean,

Naki Soyturk (41:34.318)

Nothing.

Naki Soyturk (41:39.406)

Cheers.

Naki Soyturk (41:45.08)

Congratulations.

Greg Provance (41:46.705)

I love to talk about this stuff because, you know, it kind of takes that whole conversation of third party and what’s possible and flips it on its head. Now we don’t just focus on third party. We also teach people how to take people off of those platforms and put them into their own, you know, right? Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (42:02.958)

That’s what I love. But you need to first bring people. First bring people to obtain you to basically like make them your own people. You need to first acquire the people.

Greg Provance (42:14.213)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it’s a guest app. So you use the third party for guest acquisition. And by the way, they’re basically paying you to do it. Right. And then you take them and you get them into your own system on your own proprietary apps and all those other things like you should do so you can own the data. And then you come up with another system. The third part of that system is to, to remark it to those people through your own channels. And when you do that, you experience exponential growth. And this is the part that people aren’t really talking about. This is the.

Naki Soyturk (42:40.27)

I’m go.

Greg Provance (42:43.653)

you know, the piece that, you know, a lot of people are, you know, are leaving out. And so we’ve, we’ve developed a system that is incredibly and highly successful for our clients. And I just love to talk about it because it’s, I don’t know, I’m a rebel, man. I got a lot of tattoos and I’m like, you know, I like to, I like to go zig when everybody else is zagging. And, and this is one of those ways that we’re just finding phenomenal results. And, know, and we like to the compensation upside down.

Naki Soyturk (42:59.138)

Ha ha ha ha!

Naki Soyturk (43:09.646)

I think it’s basically like one of them, going back to what I said, this whole COVID and third party commissions, people see this as a change for the worse, And I think if you can see it that way, or you can just accept the fact that this is the world that we live in now, and you can ask yourself, how can I provide a customized…

experience for my guest who is in many cases are on these platforms looking for me. Like we don’t usually do like turnarounds but in one case that we worked on a turnaround our when our client came to us their revenues year over year revenues are 20 % down.

And like they weren’t really making so much revenue that like a lot of the hours of the day, like 2 PM, 3 PM, 4 PM, 5 PM, you know, they weren’t really profitable because their labor costs were so high. So the labor wasn’t really, you know, the denominator, numerator, denominator, like labor cost divided by revenue. Revenue wasn’t big enough to…

Basically, the prime cost sometimes in some restaurants was coming to 80 % when they came to us. And prime cost is the cost of good salt plus the labor cost. The denominator that’s revenue became so small that labor cost alone was turning into a loss, let alone the cost of good salt. So obviously, we are cost experts, right?

Greg Provance (44:36.945)

Mm.

Greg Provance (44:54.608)

Mm.

Naki Soyturk (45:00.802)

take myself as the revenue expert. So I lowered the cost. But in this case, in order to do the turnaround, the cost just wasn’t enough. So we had to do like go full on headstrong on revenues. And when I, and I’m going to talk about the marketing piece as well as this piece. So the restaurant owner was doing

Marketing tech company who does the same kind of promotion with hundred other units, right? hundred other brands and Like the person who was responsible account manager didn’t really understand the the the economics But they were paying like $1,500 per location fixed cost then you don’t advertise because they the owner didn’t think that the advertisements ads were working so he wasn’t spending money on the ads or

He had a cash flow problem. He had a cash flow problem. So he was paying the fixed fee, but not so much on the ads. I mean, $1,500 and why are you paying? When I showed him, this whole scheme has been negative for him. And with the returns for each restaurant, he needs to put in X amount of money in order to turn this fixed cost.

Greg Provance (46:09.041)

Hmm.

Naki Soyturk (46:28.308)

into like, into like, to break even on the marketing spend. But you have to spend money to make money, right? Without, if you’re not spending money on the ads, like the fixed spend is basically like a mental relaxation. I’m doing marketing. Where are the guests? Don’t blame the guests if you are not spending money on the actual ads. Just because you’re paying money to a company doesn’t guarantee you getting the guests because…

Greg Provance (46:46.737)

.

Naki Soyturk (46:56.482)

You’re not paying for the years that that company is contracted to do. So, and that’s why the marketing is super hard, right? Like people do TikToks and this and that, but it’s basically like bunch of things coming together in a cohesive way. So what we found out, what I, when I was looking at the total markets, everybody else is, everybody else, you know, the menu prices are super low in that market.

And these folks are in the gourmet, in the higher, in the upper scale. So what I figured out is like, if they can only tap into the markets, get their fair share, you know, we will have a winner. And I saw the DigiBerry platforms as that, to basically use as the customer acquisition tool.

Greg Provance (47:43.643)

Hmm.

Greg Provance (47:54.64)

Absolutely.

Naki Soyturk (47:54.668)

We fixed the menus, went all in, and like very short period of time, because that market wasn’t super competitive. And after a while, they started drinking in the first page. And what we figured out through, they were using Toast. What’s great about Toast is although individual solutions aren’t perfect, it’s so easy to implement. So they had

their guest data and their loyalty data in the same place and with the data analysis and what we found is omni markets when a guest becomes omni markets and omni channel and omni channel guests meaning like they consume they basically become your guests in more than one channel dining delivery

Greg Provance (48:45.904)

Yes.

Naki Soyturk (48:48.59)

take out, you know, each one of them is a separate channel. They spend like multiple times over than another guest. And thus, by, if you’re able to bring that delivery guest, create some kind of loyalty, bring them over to your restaurant, right? Then, that’s basically like a huge win for the restaurant. Each one of these guests will be a huge win for the restaurant. So,

In about six months or so after we started maybe even less the year revenues were up 40 % 20 % more than the highest year they have ever had in a market in a their market the year Metro was actually in a downturn before the other other Metro

And the year revenues were never higher with what you said. And after that, this company started to work with our mutual acquaintance, the delivery wizard, our mutual acquaintance. And I heard that he has done an amazing job. But even in this…

turn around that we didn’t initially intended to do. And it basically proves that it’s not super hard to bring it from here to here. What you are doing is you bring it from here to here basically and changing the whole dynamic of the business because when you have enough revenue then labor costs. Then we can talk about the cost cutting and negotiating vendor the contracts and all that.

Greg Provance (50:33.681)

Yep. Yep. You need the oxygen. You need the oxygen. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. that’s in the end.

Naki Soyturk (50:37.39)

That’s right.

Naki Soyturk (50:41.44)

Oxygen is super important, can tell you. Oxygen, I need it. I need it. Super important.

Greg Provance (50:46.257)

You need some more.

Greg Provance (50:52.721)

No, that’s great. And you’re absolutely right. mean, all of these things and we’re talking here about strategy, right? It’s like, do we put all of these pieces together to form our overall strategy? Every little piece kind of plays its role. And when we understand that and we’re intentional about it, then we can actually drive change because we can measure the results. And it’s one of the things I love about the putting together really effective marketing systems for restaurant owners because

You know, the, you know, posting ads is only part of the story, but it’s the only part of the story most people talk about. Let’s talk about the in-house, you know, teams that should be your, your best marketing team or the people that are working for you. You’re already paying them to be there. They can be building your loyalty lists. How many restaurants or coffee shops or wherever you’ve walked into, then you know they have a loyalty program. They’ve got toast, right? They’ve got some other POS or something.

And who’s ever asking you, would you like to be part of our loyalty program? It doesn’t happen very often, right? So there’s so many underutilized opportunities for, you know, operators to really leverage the tools that they actually have that they’re not necessarily using. And that’s one of the things that we love the most is getting them to go back to those basics. Just as we talked about the beginning of our conversation, it’s those basic foundation fundamental principles that we need to be masked for that before we can take it to the next level.

Naki Soyturk (51:54.414)

That’s right.

Greg Provance (52:18.639)

You know, and so instead of searching for that shiny, this is my best, this is my takeaway advice. Instead of searching for those big shiny pennies and chasing squirrels and the next technology and the next AI, there’s great stuff out there. I can recommend quite a few different platforms that’d be very beneficial for your business. But before you go to all those places, let’s talk about mastering the fundamental principles that you need to make sure you’re running your business, right?

Naki Soyturk (52:45.134)

It’s so funny you said that. I’m gonna open up my latest, one of my latest stuff that I posted on LinkedIn. It’s basically like, I don’t know how people create like super sophisticated, like, I don’t know, like a president talking shit about somebody. I don’t know how people do that because I barely, it took me like 45 minutes to create this.

thing that I’m gonna share now. Obviously people are significantly smarter than I am. Okay.

Greg Provance (53:19.985)

AI baby, it’s AI.

Naki Soyturk (53:22.72)

I know, know, yeah, here. Here. People chasing shiny, whereas they are passing by systems and consistency. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Greg Provance (53:28.752)

Yes!

Greg Provance (53:32.687)

That’s right. love that. That’s great. That’s perfect. So perfect. Yeah, you’re absolutely right.

Naki Soyturk (53:40.118)

I mean, this is what AI Chit Chibi Deep thinks a restaurateur

Greg Provance (53:49.755)

That’s a good one. That’s a good one.

Naki Soyturk (53:50.794)

if only CHPT was aware of your handsomeness.

Greg Provance (53:56.241)

I’m telling you, you got the best hair, man. I’m jealous.

Naki Soyturk (53:59.15)

One thing going for me.

Greg Provance (54:02.127)

We should put our two pictures together and see what it comes up with.

Greg Provance (54:09.838)

Love it, love it.

Naki Soyturk (54:11.852)

What I also think about our existence, We both bring in multiple tried and true methods that worked in dozens of places. We don’t fool around. And like multiples of return. And we do the work, we do the implementation, we do the trainings and everything, it’s pretty like, isn’t that, I mean,

Greg Provance (54:30.202)

Yes.

Greg Provance (54:37.339)

Yep.

Naki Soyturk (54:41.836)

people spend money on marketing because it’s going to bring in bigger bucks is the assumption. is, you know, and the marketing companies are going to tell you there is no guarantee, right? Like we guarantee the results, you know, like it is going to work out because, and it goes back to the diminishing returns. when a company has done the same thing and only like

Greg Provance (54:56.069)

Yes. Yes.

Naki Soyturk (55:11.118)

work their arm muscles and their right arm is super strong but everything else isn’t, right? So if you just put a little bit of work on the other parts of the body, then those parts are going to flourish greatly. That’s the whole diminishing returns, the diminishing marginal return story. So the fact that a lot of the parts of the business

hasn’t really gotten the right amount of attention from the right skillset. When the skillset is spent, enormous results are inevitable.

Greg Provance (55:52.207)

Yep, 100%.

100%.

Naki Soyturk (55:56.942)

Greg, I loved our conversation. can go on for like hours and hours. I know I held you significantly longer than I promised.

Greg Provance (56:01.329)

I agree. Let’s do it again. We’ll do it again.

Greg Provance (56:12.879)

It was my pleasure, man. Absolutely my pleasure. I never have a bad time talking to you, man. So let’s definitely do it again soon.

Naki Soyturk (56:17.71)

Same here. Same here. Anything you wanna add before we wrap up?

Greg Provance (56:25.229)

No, listen, I just appreciate this conversation because it’s really like, you know, our goal, and I you feel the same way because we’ve talked about this many, many times is really just, you know, anything that we can do to, you know, give some leg up to the independent restaurant owner that’s out there, you know, trying to just, you know, get their piece of the pie. you know, that’s, that’s what we’re here to do. you know, I always say, look, anytime I can be of service to you or to anybody in that way.

hit me on LinkedIn, shoot a note through my website, let’s connect. I’m always happy to have a conversation with anybody that wants to. And I always offer my time to do that because it’s important.

Naki Soyturk (57:06.402)

And how can people reach out to you, email you?

Greg Provance (57:10.053)

Yeah, so you can, there’s a couple ways. Hit me on LinkedIn is a really great way. I’m pretty active on there. And you can also go to our website, scaleyourrestaurant.com and check out what we’re into.

Naki Soyturk (57:24.558)

I’m going to share all of these links at the bottom of this video in the comments section so people can reach out to you and get a part of your wisdom.

Greg Provance (57:37.435)

Cool, I appreciate that man.

Naki Soyturk (57:39.678)

Awesome. Thank you so much, Greg. Awesome to have this conversation with you. Thank you so much for your time.

Greg Provance (57:45.67)

Thank you.

Naki Soyturk (57:48.942)

story

Naki Soyturk (00:49.154)

Beat!

Peter Boniface (00:50.898)

Hey, there you are.

Naki Soyturk (00:51.976)

How are you?

Peter Boniface (00:54.26)

Good, how you doing?

Naki Soyturk (00:55.32)

I’m doing great. Thank you. Thanks for joining me today.

Peter Boniface (00:58.696)

Yeah, yeah, you got it. I don’t know why it wasn’t coming up. It just kept saying meetings are to start soon.

Naki Soyturk (01:05.742)

I know that tech sometimes is like that, this podcast stuff. So thank you very much for joining me. My voice is a bit gone. I caught a bug in Italy on my way from Italy. He’s been with me still, just like some of the pizzas are here. So is the bug. So I’m sorry, my voice.

Peter Boniface (01:23.178)

Great.

Naki Soyturk (01:35.04)

isn’t the best and I’m sorry in advance if I cough and sneeze and do things in that nature but I have something warm and something like water hopefully hopefully it will be it will be alright my hopefully I can make my voice blast about half an hour Pete I would love it so when I listen to your podcast

Peter Boniface (01:47.05)

Great.

Naki Soyturk (02:03.662)

You talked about you started from dish washing, then became immediately a cook, right? You have an economics degree. So do I, by the way. And so when you were in college, when you were doing this, then you pursued this as professional. You worked in many restaurants and you saw glaring problems in all of them. And when you started Yampa, right?

Peter Boniface (02:09.94)

Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (02:32.565)

you said to yourself, things are going to be different here. I’m not going to make the same mistakes that they have done. So I’m thinking like, if this works out for you, you make an intro about yourself, about the Yampa, what sets the Yampa apart, why is Yampa so successful, and talk about like what kind of problems that you have seen and you didn’t repeat.

Peter Boniface (02:36.82)

Great.

Naki Soyturk (03:02.414)

those problems you talked about. I think also like the incredible if we had enough time I would have loved to cover the story that you know the part that you are in in Colorado grew just like Yempa did so it’s like your restaurant is also a a mirror of what has happened in Colorado right like in that in that part of Colorado.

Peter Boniface (03:27.026)

Yeah, little bit for sure, for sure. Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (03:31.662)

And you have two partners, two Daves.

Peter Boniface (03:35.434)

Two Daves, right? Two Daves.

Naki Soyturk (03:38.222)

Got help from professional marketing, three branded, that’s an amazing thing to hear. Some kind of controversy, if this was Joe Rogan, we would talk about Cuban sandwich. You said like better than Miami. There will be the Joe Rogan controversy moment.

Peter Boniface (03:55.624)

Ours is pretty good. Our Cubans solid for sure.

Naki Soyturk (04:00.064)

Here, like 15 years ago, when I first visited, that time I was visiting, most of them were pretty darn good, but over time, you know, like they don’t even like warm up the ham in the sandwich, you know, like you…

Peter Boniface (04:18.666)

Yeah, they’re not heating the am up, They’re just pressing it, pressing it, huh? Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (04:23.48)

Five seconds, nobody understands this. It’s just like, I don’t like when they cut corners like that. I you are charging three, four times, know, and I’m gonna like, and Miami is super expensive, by the way.

Peter Boniface (04:34.398)

Right. Yeah, no, I’m aware of that. Where are you from originally? know you mentioned Turkey, that’s right. Okay, okay, great. I couldn’t remember Greece, Turkey. I knew it was somewhere around Mediterranean region. Yeah, that’s great.

Naki Soyturk (04:40.034)

Turkey. Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (04:47.48)

Somewhere around there, somewhere around there. Apparently I’m 25 % South Italian, 14 %… Yeah, 14 %… Apparently I’m like half between Mediterranean and Aegean, which I didn’t know. I was thinking with my eyes and stuff, I’m more like a Turkic from Central Asia. I was so devastated. I’m like, what’s going on here?

Peter Boniface (04:54.664)

Peter Boniface (05:03.114)

Hello.

Peter Boniface (05:12.586)

Who did you do the 23 and me? Is that what it was? Yeah. Yeah, I did that too. My, my daughters got it for me for a, like a Christmas gift. And I was like, well, why, why are you giving me that? I’m Italian. And they’re like, well, you might find something else in there. I found that I was a 97 % Italian, 2 % Greek and 1 % North African. So yeah. Yes.

Naki Soyturk (05:15.106)

Yeah, something like that, yeah. Ancestry.

Naki Soyturk (05:27.074)

What did you fight?

Naki Soyturk (05:32.322)

Ha

Jeez, you’re like Conan. Conan is like 97 % Irish. like Conan’s doctor told him, you know, Conan the talk show host. So then they migrated from Ireland, like they moved into this like neighborhood, everybody’s Irish. like his brothers are like joking with him that his wife who is Scottish, like he’s…

Peter Boniface (05:40.074)

You’ve raced.

Peter Boniface (05:45.972)

Right, right, yeah.

Naki Soyturk (06:03.982)

They are telling him like, oh, jungle fever, you know? Because he is like in the last six generation, he’s the guy who ventured out of the lane and that was Scotland, you know? So his doctor told him like the most Irish person in Ireland is like 85 % Irish and you are like 98 % Irish.

Peter Boniface (06:26.154)

That’s so funny. Excellent.

Naki Soyturk (06:29.068)

Yes, sir. And you said people create personal touch, people trust you, loyalty, consistency, credibility, reliability, just do a good job, stand behind your product. These are all my like, mottoes. Like consistency. Yeah.

Peter Boniface (06:44.329)

Right.

Peter Boniface (06:48.722)

It’s all super simple really when it comes down to it. It’s not that complicated. Obviously when you’re in the restaurant business, you are a customer-based business. It’s not just service, it’s hospitality. So you’re trying to provide that hospitality just going way back from when restaurants started. It was providing hospitality and a service.

to people and so you need to take care of those people and you have to.

get them to trust you and how does that happen? It happens through consistency and providing a good product and a good value to people. It’s not that tough to identify that. Those are things that are constant every day trying to coach your teams to do a better job with customer engagement and being proactive with the customer experience.

That’s something that I’ve been working on a lot lately, because inevitably in the restaurant business, you have high turnover in your stores. We’ve been really lucky that we have had pretty solid staffs. And that goes back to what you were talking about earlier. When I worked in restaurants, I wasn’t treated very well by the people I worked for.

You know, at some I was, but at a lot of them you just, were, know, and I, and I get that, you know, restaurant owners, get tired of, of just the hiring and the training and whatnot. so, so their employees just become a, another commodity, like, like anything else that they’re using. And they don’t, they, as, as owners, they miss out on that piece, you know, the, the, the respect piece and the trying to coach and.

Peter Boniface (08:51.58)

and bring it up and so I’m trying to not, after 25 years, not lose the energy that I put into that, but I want to connect with the people that work for me and I want to have them understand my philosophies and what it is that I think Yampa should be and the way we should treat people to build the business because I always.

I always tell everyone in my organization, there’s only three ways to make more money in the restaurant business, right? There’s only three ways. Those three ways are, you know, getting that person that’s there to spend and has come to see you already to spend more, right? And that’s going to impact your numbers exponentially just by getting every person to spend a little bit more money. And then second, it’s to do such a great job for that person that they come more often.

Right? So they come twice a week instead of once a week or twice a month instead of once a month. And that again, will grow your numbers exponentially. And then the, you know, the third way is from, you know, new customer acquisition and that’s, you know, marketing and, and, and it takes a lot to, gain new customers and financially and otherwise a lot of effort and a lot of spend. And I always tell my employees, I would rather spend the money on you. I’d rather pay you the money than some marketing firms. So.

Why don’t you get out there and make a connection and up your customer service game and be proactive about it. And then I’ll be able to afford to pay you more. So it’s as simple as that, really.

Naki Soyturk (10:31.192)

There’s also like everything that I’m preaching, you know? Like I have this like chart that I’m gonna share with you. basically like a consistency chart. When you don’t have consistency, you don’t have revenue. When you don’t have revenue, you can’t have, you can’t pay your employees a good amount. When you don’t pay them a good amount, then they don’t take ownership. When they don’t take ownership, you don’t have consistency. When you don’t have…

consistency like it’s basically a circle.

Peter Boniface (11:02.334)

Right, and it compounds on itself. It compounds on itself. I like the one thing I talk about as well is the sandwich continuum, right? So it’s all a continuum, know? Everything hinges on everything else, you know? It’s this, right, right. But it’s this.

Naki Soyturk (11:20.696)

System, systems.

Peter Boniface (11:29.148)

It’s that right there, right? And everything hinges on everything else. And so the systems are created not to have boredom, but just if you systematize everything and you can then repeat it with your eyes closed, know, it’s the whole system. Everybody needs to practice it on the staff. Like it’s practice every day. You’re coming in and practicing, you know, practicing your game. And how can I…

Naki Soyturk (11:29.784)

Yeah.

Peter Boniface (11:58.864)

execute this more efficiently and faster and better and put out a better product and do a better job. And every day you have to come in just like a baller and be like, Hey, my game is going to be good today and I’m going to win. And you’ll make mistakes and whatnot. But at the same time, if you have that attitude and that mindset that you’re going to be present every day and you’re going to follow the systems and

Naki Soyturk (12:15.522)

Yeah.

Peter Boniface (12:27.774)

You know, play the game to the best of your ability. There’s there’s no reason you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t win people over. I mean certainly go ahead.

Naki Soyturk (12:34.976)

I wrote this article of goals versus systems. Everybody in our industry, are goal focused, right? I’m gonna raise my revenue by 20%. I’m going to keep my food costs at this percent. All of these are goals that is one thing that you aiming to do. It’s not, and even if you, like,

You and me both know, like if you wanna lower your food cost by 29%, it’s easy, right? Use cheaper ingredients. Like if you are only aiming to like do this like one thing, like there are 10 different ways of achieving that. But if you wanna create something that has a continuum, a system, there is only one way that it does work. And that is basically like everything tying into.

Everything else, everything is part of everything else in a business. You can’t afford to not include all of the different specialties like marketing folks, accounting folks, operations, back of house, front of the house, all of these are your tech pieces to work separately and detach from each other. Everybody needs to understand how they affect the next guy.

Usually when I’m interviewing restaurant owners, I ask them this very simple question. What’s your receiving? How do your people receive the goods? And they basically wait for like 30 seconds and they are like, well, I hope they know how to receive, you know? Because like receiving is the door to inventory. Inventory counting is a complicated process. Receiving is a simpler version of it.

If you don’t have, if you haven’t put up anything for receiving, Alzar, you definitely didn’t put up anything for inventory count. If you don’t have inventory count, you don’t have your cost of goods sold, if you don’t have your cost of goods sold, then you’re not really managing back of house.

Peter Boniface (14:48.906)

Right, right. So it starts right there with receiving and you can have leakage in your receiving if you’re not following the systems. so, yeah, but then you can have all the best systems in the world that you’re training people on, but they have to actually do them. And that’s something that’s again, a constant battle is just like, well, why wouldn’t you do it this way? Because we’re doing it that way because.

Naki Soyturk (15:06.638)

Very important.

Peter Boniface (15:18.058)

We’re trying to let everyone know the why. Well, this is why we do it this way because we, we, and we’re also, um, you know, these, these are all, all things that we’re working on as we grow because I can’t be everywhere. You know, Colorado is a big place. And so, um, we’re somewhat geographically challenged and I don’t, I don’t actually know everybody that works in my system. I mean, I, I know all the leadership team and we try to meet with them. Certainly once, once a month, we have a leadership call and we discuss.

these things, but you’re relying on them to pass it down, but we’re trying to have them buy into the systems and help adjust or create some of the systems so that they have a part in it. If you’re just telling them what to do, you need to do this or you have to do that and you’re not giving them the why, what are your challenges with?

What challenges are you having and how can we, how do you see we can, we can fix these things and make these better. so involving your leadership team, I think is is a key to having that, having that buy-in and getting everyone to, follow your systems. But you know, it’s complicated with all the people you have involved. That’s where it gets complicated.

Naki Soyturk (16:33.87)

I believe…

That’s exactly right. That’s why I always think about like every single person, every single person, like from the host or the hostess, right, to the guy who actually does the receiving because all of these are unsupervised tasks at the end of the day. Think about the, in a full service restaurant, the bar, the drinks that come out from the bar are completely unsupervised. You can argue that.

Peter Boniface (16:49.385)

Right.

Naki Soyturk (17:07.342)

You know, in a fine dining establishment, a chef approves the dish before it goes out. But in a lot of the cases, a lot of the activities that people in our industry do are unsupervised. So you have to rely on that person to do the right thing. There’s a health code, whole bunch of risks involved. They are customer facing. So everything that they say is…

can basically make or break the relationship, right? One move and like money can be, you know, wasted. So every, the way that I think is like, how can I get the buy-in from every single person in here? And it’s usually like, what people don’t like is change.

Peter Boniface (17:41.343)

Right.

Naki Soyturk (18:06.754)

So I’m an agent of change, right? As an agent of change, I’m the first one to say people don’t like that doesn’t really matter. So when we wake up as the operators, we are taking a shower and we have a terrific idea. We go and put it up into execution. Tomorrow we have another fantastic idea that people really hate. What people like is stability. And even if you tell them, we are going to like walk through lava for the next like…

Four months, but at the end we are going to go into this like meadows and like all like like heaven people are fine like in that four month period But if you are coming up with a new idea every day people don’t like it The second thing is like what’s in it for me agent versus principal program? The problem why would I bother doing the inventory right when it’s hard, right?

It’s not something that was asked of me in the past. So why would I do it now? Agent versus principle. We are the principles, right? As the business owners, they don’t have any say, any control, nor any additional benefits in that, in basically doing the right thing.

Peter Boniface (19:12.777)

Great.

Peter Boniface (19:22.154)

Right, or they don’t see it though. So it’s a matter of making them see it. like I was saying before, trying to explain the why or ask them, well, why do you ask the question rather than tell them? Why do you suppose we wanna do it this way? Or what do you think about it? So then they can actually contemplate why you’re doing something a certain way. And then when they understand the why, I think that’s where

you start to get that buy-in and people execute better. So, you know, it’s always a moving target, right? It’s always a moving target. Yeah, and maybe they’ll give you a great idea. Because now at this point, you know, I’m not in the restaurants every single day. mean, occasionally, when I have to, you know, we were super busy a month ago and needed there needed to be some help. And I just jumped right in and that, you know.

Naki Soyturk (19:57.698)

Maybe they will come up with an idea.

Peter Boniface (20:19.274)

That’s an opportunity for me to reevaluate my systems and see what’s missing. What can I add or do to enhance this? Or it’s just an opportunity to connect with your crew and show them how you do it as a leader. So lead the charge.

Naki Soyturk (20:38.528)

And Pete, how do you motivate the employees? You pay them well, What else do you do to motivate them? You treat them with respect, you give them good amounts, know, good communication. What else?

Peter Boniface (20:42.226)

Right,

Peter Boniface (20:52.786)

Right. Well, we, you know, again, first off, we try and pay them well, because at the end of the day, it’s a job and they want to be, they want to be properly compensated and they want to be treated well. And so, you know, we try and have that, that personal connection with, with as many people as we can in our organization. But again, at this point with eight restaurants, it’s really through the, through the leadership team and trying, trying to expand that leadership team, but to motivate everybody.

You know, I, I give motivational, little motivational talks on, I have them in my training program, but I also, you know, if there’s something we, we see some guest reviews and that, that tells us something about where we might not be performing well. I’ll communicate to them through our, scheduling app where I can reach out to the whole team and I’ll, I’ll make a little video and give them a talk so I can reach the entire staff of AD.

80, 90 people and have them just listen to me. I let them know, hey, if you have any questions on this, please give me a call. I’m happy to talk about it and go from there. So that’s how I try and motivate everyone at the crew level. I also try and inspire them and let them know that I started where they are. And if they want to get where I am,

then I know they’re not going to work for me forever in a crew position. But understand that this is part of your professional development and you can learn a lot from me. And I’m very open to being a mentor and discussing my ideas on the business as a whole. these are principles that you can take to any business, not

not just the hospitality business, you really can bring it and bring it into your personal life. Concepts like being consistent, being reliable, being a good team player. If you bring that stuff to your marriage, you’re going to be a better partner. So it goes there too. On our core values, the number one…

Naki Soyturk (22:51.864)

this way.

Naki Soyturk (23:06.803)

I you both a partner!

Peter Boniface (23:16.852)

thing we have on our core values is it starts with you. It starts with you. need to look at yourself first before you, you, don’t want blamers. We want people that want to take, take action, take initiative and take responsibility. And, and, and that starts with showing up on time, right? That’s the first initiative and responsibility and, we’ll, we’ll promote consistency and, being a good teammate by showing up on time and being willing to support people.

Naki Soyturk (23:37.006)

That’s the first thing.

Peter Boniface (23:46.26)

because it starts with you. yeah, just trying to have them understand that you can learn something every day if you open your eyes and you listen and it doesn’t have to be a boring job, which it can be because ultimately it’s manufacturing, right? You’re manufacturing a.

a product over and over and over over again through the lunch rush. you you look at the ticket and you’re just hammering out these menu items. at the same time, you know, that you’re building consistency and trust and value in yourself through doing it properly every day over and over. And then the…

The part of that manufacturing though that makes it special in our business is that in our business in particular is that as a crew member, you have an opportunity to service the customer at the register, then go make their food, then bring it out to their table. You’re the waiter, the chef, the host, the whole deal all at once or can be.

you know, depending on where your station is that particular day, but it can give you some variety in the position. you know, hopefully you see satisfaction in your guests being excited about the product that you produced for them.

Naki Soyturk (25:26.818)

Absolutely.

Peter Boniface (25:27.486)

which you don’t get to see that in a lot of other manufacturing businesses.

Naki Soyturk (25:30.518)

No, not at all. You can get to know the guests, what they like, what they don’t like, from their orders, like what they are up to.

Peter Boniface (25:36.104)

Right.

Peter Boniface (25:41.054)

Right, right. It’s an opportunity for you to get to know somebody, which, you know, it’s all about community as well, especially in the hospitality business. You you want to build your business, build a community around your business. And again, with the continuum, it goes back to consistency and trust and, you know, being reliable. And that’s where people trust you and you become their spot and getting to know them and people.

You know, in this day and age with technology, we’re all shifting away from that personal connection, right? Like even, you know, pre pandemic, the phone calls that used to come in, people placing an order on the phone. Now, places orders on the phone or very rarely. It’s all through online ordering systems and technology. And then, you know,

Naki Soyturk (26:19.054)

That’s right.

Naki Soyturk (26:30.338)

Yes.

Peter Boniface (26:34.89)

all these restaurants are going to kiosks now, or people just step up and they can go to the kiosk and place the order and it comes up and you’re eliminating that human element. And in one sense, I totally understand from an economic standpoint why people are going that way because that kiosk shows up every day. The kiosk is not gonna be laid or in a bad mood or whatever. It’s gonna be reliable and take care of the job effectively.

and in some ways better. But people are craving that human interaction, I think, to a certain degree. And we don’t want to eliminate that from our business. Although I know the trends are going that way and you have to pay attention to the trends. But at the same time, you have to be true to yourself and who you are. And I would rather have customers come in where I can be like, hey, Jay, how’s it going today?

Naki Soyturk (27:22.018)

Pee-Dah-Ting!

Peter Boniface (27:30.004)

What are you up to? What would you like? Are you having your ridgeline or would you like something else today? And just having that little discussion with them and that sense of community builds the business because people want to do business with people that they like. And they’re not going to like that kiosk any better than the kiosk somewhere else on a human level. So that’s something that I think about often because I’m just like, where?

Naki Soyturk (27:50.274)

That’s Yeah.

Peter Boniface (27:58.43)

Where’s this go? Where’s this business going? And what do I need to do to put myself in the best position? And that’s something that I don’t want to lose because that’s big part of the joy in it for me is the customer interaction.

Naki Soyturk (28:12.514)

with the custom interaction. I think the kiosks are there because there are several retailers or restaurants that I went to, let’s say, I went to, I no longer do. But I think a machine would have been the better analog for me to interact. Because the employee was just terrible, terrible.

Peter Boniface (28:39.487)

Right.

Naki Soyturk (28:41.87)

I prefer to go do my own thing in the back of the house than to deal with that employee. So in those situations when I think the restaurant doesn’t have a good handle on the situation, doesn’t have good training, good employees, employees that care, I mean, sometimes feels like some employees wanna hurt the establishment rather than be part of the establishment and for whatever the reason. I think…

kiosks have all these economic benefits, yes, but at the same time, if a restaurant doesn’t have a strong, they don’t have strong employees, I think they rather should have just have the kiosk. But at the end of the day, then what are we left with? So the employee, the employees then you are saying like, in this example, okay, like let’s put the kiosk instead of the terrible employee. Then like you can.

Peter Boniface (29:28.532)

Right, right.

Naki Soyturk (29:40.078)

You’re not really managing a business then. You can manage your employee, For whatever the reason, there are like 10 reasons at least that that employee is in that situation. I mean, you shouldn’t have hired that employee in the first place. Not everybody is like hospitality qualified in my opinion. You need to like people in the first place to work in hospitality.

Peter Boniface (29:55.124)

Right, right.

Peter Boniface (30:04.926)

Right. Yeah. You want to hire good people, hire nice, nice people. Really? That’s what it comes down to hire someone who’s a nice, who’s a nice person and someone who cares. Don’t hire on experience or any of those factors. can train anyone to do anything. And so you have to have a good person that their, their ethics and their fundamental, fundamentals have to be there.

Naki Soyturk (30:11.405)

Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (30:24.012)

Anyway.

Peter Boniface (30:33.874)

and they have to enjoy meeting people and being in contact with people, which some folks are not. And so that’s important. Like you said, you have to have people that are qualified to interact.

Naki Soyturk (30:50.26)

with people. So I think that what’s what’s going on is that given the rush, a lot of people got out of the business in in COVID, right, especially on the beverage side. And we are we work with a reduced talent pool. A lot of restaurants are opening, especially in places like Miami, like tons of restaurants are opening. So everybody’s drawing from the pool. And employees know that.

lot of these employees know that if you put them out of qualifications, if you basically give them lot of goals and targets and performance appraisals and all that, they can just go and work in the next restaurant over. So again, this goes back to the, need to generate enough.

profit in order to pay down something of a higher wage and with that higher wage now you have access to a better talent pool. A talent pool that you can manage like a business because in this example that I give you with the kiosk and a terrible employee, I’d rather deal with the kiosk, a kind kiosk than a horrible human person, Then like they screw, I think they screw themselves over like the

Peter Boniface (32:11.198)

Right, right.

Naki Soyturk (32:17.644)

the operators because they put that person in of me. They don’t generate enough money because their business doesn’t allow it. By putting that person in front of me, I will never go to that restaurant again. Thus their revenues will be lowered. Again, this goes back to the continuum as you pointed out. Everything ties to…

Peter Boniface (32:40.362)

Great, great.

Peter Boniface (32:44.618)

Everything ties to everything else, right? It all flows downstream and builds on itself. so, yeah.

Naki Soyturk (32:53.964)

with kujo-

Peter Boniface (32:53.972)

Yeah, so training is key too. You have to have them buy into the training and have them understand that, hey, this is an opportunity for you to learn something. And I understand that you’re probably not going to work here forever. And I get that, but you have an opportunity here to learn some things and take these things with you wherever you go. so that’s where I have to be committed to.

trying to help them and coach them and have them grow as people, not just team members. And so I think that’s an important piece is just trying to help my crews grow as people personally. And in that way, hopefully they feel fulfilled working for me.

It’s really hard to connect with everybody when you have a lot of people, know, and certain people aren’t going to connect with you because they might not have been the right hire in the first place. But you have to still strive for it and have their best interests in mind for you because that’s what’s going to help your business ultimately, because they’re going to perform better. And then as a result, your business will perform better. then

Naki Soyturk (34:02.67)

That’s right.

Peter Boniface (34:17.084)

Again, as a result, can pay them more and they can be more satisfied. And some of that doesn’t just come with the pay, it comes with involving them, you know, again, in what’s going on, having them have buy-in, you know, giving certain KPIs to crew members. Most of them have worked in a number of different restaurants. They don’t even know how the business functions. They have no idea because no one ever taught them, well, hey, this is how the business functions.

And we need you to have an understanding of your position and the value of your position. And so if you want to get paid more, you have to create that value in yourself. And we, I’m happy to discuss, you know, the paths and that comes from, you know, quarterly reviews where you can sit down with them one-on-one and have a discussion with them and be very clear and set goals for them to obtain.

You know, and those things are hard for our managers to do because they’re, they’re trying to do a hundred different things. And, and, and then that, that comes down to me being like, Hey, Hey, where are you this month with your, your quarterly reviews? Who, who are you doing? You just, know, and explain to them, Hey, you don’t have to do the entire staff all the time. Do, do one a week. Spend, spend an hour with one of your, one of your employees a week and do, and do a formal review. So, um.

Naki Soyturk (35:21.26)

different things.

Peter Boniface (35:45.736)

Yeah, those are the things that we try and do. And I think we’ve been successful for the most part with it. You know, we have good customer ratings. People like what we do. Try and create really craveable items that are unique and then execute.

Naki Soyturk (36:07.534)

Pete, could you talk to us about Yampa and your journey?

Peter Boniface (36:14.004)

Sure, sure. initially in 1998, my partner Dave, who he and I went to high school together, we’d worked in restaurants in the past together. We knew he worked well together. We had this idea that there was a gap in the market here in Steamboat Springs, which is again, a resort community. And we knew…

Naki Soyturk (36:42.358)

in Colorado.

Peter Boniface (36:43.53)

In Colorado, yes. It has a ski resort and summertime people come out here to enjoy the mountains, hiking, fishing, all that kind of stuff. And so we were just like, hey, we can provide a lunch for the fly fishing guides, the ski guides, the people going up on the hill, a good lunch to go. That was something that was missing here.

and I couldn’t get it myself. And I was working in other restaurants where I just felt unfulfilled. I didn’t have respect for my employers. And when I say I didn’t have respect for them, I did a great job for them because I had respect for myself. But I knew for my personal growth, I needed to be more challenged and

And I knew that these people were not going to get me there or I wasn’t learning anything from them. And quite frankly thought that I could teach them a few things, but they weren’t listening. They weren’t open. didn’t treat me that way at all. so anyway, Dave and myself opened up and our mission was to put out the best product we could.

but the highest quality, best product we could and have it be unique and be consistent and show up. And so we opened up and we were working two jobs. We worked at night pouring drinks to support ourselves while we were trying to grow this business. Well, so currently we’re in the, almost in the off season here, right? It’s starting to be the off season in between spring.

and summer and then in between fall and winter there’s what they call a mud season where it’s really not conducive for recreation for that six weeks or so. And everybody leaves town. They take off and then they’re like, well the ski area is closed. My job’s done. I’m heading out of town. I’m leaving. And I’ll come back when the snow melts and everything dries up and the summer season starts.

Naki Soyturk (39:04.259)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Boniface (39:05.896)

Well, we decided to stay open every day and be here. And all of a sudden in that first off season, boom, we gained market share because we were there and we were open. So whoever was available was coming to us because we were the only option. Right. And that was a huge lesson in just reliability and consistency for me. So we gained a lot of market share.

Naki Soyturk (39:09.358)

Stay on.

Naki Soyturk (39:32.194)

Wow.

Peter Boniface (39:35.294)

Bang, business took off, we were doing great. We didn’t really have any ideas that like, we’re gonna expand other markets, anything like that. But this being a resort town, people were coming in from all over the country, all over the region. man, you guys do a great job. I wish you were in our town. That’s what everybody was saying.

Naki Soyturk (39:57.102)

And Pete, at that time, was it sandwiches, Was there any other products besides sandwiches?

Peter Boniface (40:10.342)

We were doing side salads and soups. then, you know, we now have a salad program. We don’t really do the side salads because they weren’t really selling, but that was pretty much it. There were other products to go, know, fresh baked cookies, know, trail sausages, jerky, things like that. So that was our business model. We then opened up in Jackson, Wyoming, which is really the next town north from here.

Naki Soyturk (40:37.25)

Buh.

Peter Boniface (40:39.558)

similar demographics and all. We opened up there in 2005 and it took off right away. Again, we were like, we’re onto something here. People really are going after what we have. But one thing that we found out was that resort towns are difficult to manage because of the seasonal waves and the transient populations and stuff. so then

two years later, we opened in Fort Collins, Colorado, which is a town of about 180,000 people. And we, we just figured, it’s going to be a slam dunk in this, in this town because there’s so many people there’s density. There’s, but one thing that we learned was our, marketing plan was not suited for a major Metro area or, or, or a sprawling Metro area. And so our, our marketing.

Naki Soyturk (41:20.451)

Yeah.

Peter Boniface (41:37.746)

methods that we had used in these small nuclear communities didn’t work in a larger community because we weren’t hitting our target customers. So it took us a little bit to be like, okay, well, we need to focus on the mile around us because really the rest of it doesn’t matter. People are not going to drive and everything is convenience down there. Convenience, convenience, convenience. That’s what it is. And we’re seeing that.

those trends continue with third party delivery and whatnot. But anyhow, we adjusted our marketing and then we met the other Dave who wanted to bring our concept to Denver and we sort of were just like, yeah, well, that’s not really what we, we’re not really set up to do that, but just got to know him as a person and his skill set and who he was and

decided it would be a great move to partner up with him. And we opened up two years later, 2009, in downtown Denver, and boom, it took off right away. So we took the lessons we’d learned in Fort Collins and brought them to Denver. And he had a lot of knowledge on the Denver market, which helped us out. so he’s a CPA, so he brought a lot of

Naki Soyturk (42:58.53)

Mm.

Peter Boniface (43:06.706)

of systems as far as tracking KPIs and whatnot into what we’re doing. And he’s been a great partner. so, and myself all have different skill sets. And I think we work well together because we don’t have egos. We can sit down and talk about things and think about them. And we’ve since grown our team at the corporate level, bring in…

you know, our gaps and what are we not good at? Who do we need to step in and help us out with this? And so, you know, at this point, we’ve been in business for 25 years and we’re only eight units, which once we started to grow in Denver, we thought that we would progress faster, but certain swings in the overall markets, you know, the real estate market.

You know, Colorado is expensive and we’re just trying to sell a lunch and keep it at a price point. And so it makes it hard to real estate that that’s going to be good for us. And so we’ve tried to be disciplined and keep our growth. You know, only go for deals that we know we can win. And that’s slowed our growth down. But at the same time, we don’t really, we’re all

very satisfied individuals and enjoy what we do. And so I don’t need to take on a partner or go into a deal in a space that’s… Right, right. I’m not greedy. I’m not trying to… I do it because I love it. I believe in what we do.

Naki Soyturk (44:40.92)

that’s going to be risky, that will jeopardize the entire business. Yeah.

Peter Boniface (44:56.37)

And I want to be a value add to whatever community we go into. I don’t, and those are the, those are part of our, you know, our core values. so, you know, sticking to that, we, should minimize any, any bad moves just by, taking it slow and being thoughtful and, and being ourselves, being true to who we are. So.

Naki Soyturk (45:21.614)

From the first to the second location, seven years. Second to the third, two years. And after that, another two years, fourth location. And now eight locations. After Denver, four new locations. How do you… What kind of changes after Dave came in, you said…

Peter Boniface (45:33.322)

Three years, right? Yep. Yep.

Naki Soyturk (45:49.602)

He’s a CPA, he brought in systems, tracking and all that. know, managing three or four locations to now, you know, operating eight locations. What changed? And I would love to learn more about how do the three partners fit responsibilities? The first day, what does the first day do? And what does the second day do?

Peter Boniface (46:12.105)

Right.

Peter Boniface (46:16.806)

Okay, sure. let me, I’ll just, I’ll circle back to the growth and what’s changed. Well, what’s changed was, I guess in that period, so then it was two years to the third, two years to the fourth, and then it was like another, it was like a year to the fifth. And then all of a sudden, I found myself like running around.

everywhere, trying to make sure everything was made consistently. And at that point in time, we were making everything in house, all our sauces, all our chutneys, all our soups, making our own cookie dough, doing everything in house. And as the business grew and the volumes got more intense, I was having a hard time with consistency. So I did a couple things. First off, I took the recipe book from

text form and we put it onto a digital platform where it’s now recipe cards, our photos step by step, rather than just text line items. There’s visual interaction with them as well as a video on how to execute the recipe embedded in that. And that’s all on an online operating system that we use. So now they

you know, your team comes in in the morning, they open up the system, it goes to the opening checklist, restroom checks, temp logs, prep lists, all that stuff, so they can just go through the system and check things off as they go. And it should be a lot easier for them to operate, to execute and to train with the new systems that we put in place as well.

then I started to peel things back from the stores and the store level because we had grown enough and we had enough volume that I could go to Copackers in Denver and work with a chef there. And so like, this is my mom’s cranberry chutney recipe that we’re making in all six stores at the time. And so you…

Peter Boniface (48:32.17)

you scale it up. You’re like, okay, make it with that chef and a two and a half gallon batch like we’re doing in the restaurants. And she sees it and then we go to a five gallon batch, then to a 200 gallon batch, then to a 500 gallon batch. they know how to scale it up, measure viscosities, pHs, all that kind of stuff. And then all of a sudden I was finding that we could actually

produce the items a lot cheaper through these co-packers because you’re buying everything by the pallet rather than each store buying a 50 pound box or whatever. And you’re eliminating the labor and it’s more consistent and it’s safer. They make it in these giant steam kettles, pump it out, bag it, flash freeze it. So those things were instrumental as far as me and my job and making it.

Naki Soyturk (49:18.744)

Consistency

Peter Boniface (49:28.81)

a lot easier. So that’s what’s really changed. And we’re looking to go that direction with more products as we grow and the usage becomes, we have to obviously get to certain levels where it works, but peeling products away from the kitchens. so it’s key in this day and age where labor is inflated so much. Pre-COVID, you started people at $12 an hour and they made

you know, eight, $10 an hour in tips. You’re like, that’s a pretty good job. Well, now you start at 18 and they’re making 15 and you’re just like, my God, I can’t believe how much money they’re making to work at a sandwich shop. But then again, for them to go out to one of our competitors and buy something, they have to be making that kind of money. You know, rent’s gone from, you know, $500 a month to a thousand. So they need to make that money in order to live. So it’s a…

It’s interesting. Yeah, so those are the things that changed, I think. just our communication, embracing technology, and operating our business as a larger entity was something that really has helped a lot and helped us keep control of it and keep our profitability where we want it to be. Then as far as what Dave, Dave and I do,

You know, we just try and look at who we are as people. know, Dave, Dave number two, who’s the CPA, he’s a numbers guy. He’s not an operations guy and he’s not actually like a people person. And, he’s great at crunching the numbers and, and, you know, doing, doing those, those things, which is something that

Naki Soyturk (51:13.07)

Telling the story.

Peter Boniface (51:17.594)

I’m not great at, you know, I’m good at cowboy math and I understand that stuff. have a degree in economics and I know how everything works. But as far as like building out Excel sheets and platforms and things for our managers to use, that’s not something that I do. What I do is product development, product selection, supply chain management, training.

Those are all the things that I do and it’s more the training systems and stuff that I come up with than Dave, who I went to high school with. He’s an operations guy. He needs to be in the stores, being active, meeting the people, talking to the teams and trying to inspire them and show them, set the pace and teach them how to do things. He’s a better hands-on teacher.

than I am and he also is great at communicating with our guests. So he handles any guest complaints or guest compliments. We have a platform that gets us everything that’s out there that anybody might review one of our stores and he can respond to that and he does a great job with that. yeah, so we’re all sort of in our…

trying to stay in our own lanes in order to have things operate efficiently, but we do collaborate well. that’s, yeah, that’s pretty much how it works for us.

Naki Soyturk (52:55.006)

Amazing amazing Pete. I have taken a lot of good notes and if I were to somewhere if I if I were to emphasize or give summary in this

One of the achievements that turned the corner for you is the marketing plan. The marketing plan going into Denver was different, tailored towards resort towns. The marketing and going into a big metro like Denver, you had to adjust and that’s…

You described the convenience, convenience, third party delivery and adjusting the approach. think Yen Pavas was rebranded at that time.

Peter Boniface (53:57.748)

Right. Right. We rebranded because we couldn’t get a patent on our on our initial name. And also there was some confusion in the major metro areas with with our backcountry provisions name. People were calling up like, hey, do you have snowshoes to rent or whatever? You know, they didn’t understand what we were. So we were like, all right, we have to we have to get that out of the way. And we have to have a brand.

that we can scale at this point because that’s really where the value in our business is going to come in the future if we want to take on a partner. We need to have tight intellectual property and tight, tight numbers. And that’s really what someone looks for if they’re looking to buy a business. those were two things that we worked on. And we did the rebrand.

through the rebrand, we worked on all of our packaging and having branded packaging, because we again, reached that size where it made sense to get branded packaging and things like that. so in doing those things, know, branded bags, branded boxes, a whole, a new website that had a good catering program, you know, we found that our, our food lent itself really well to office lunches.

as well, but it needed a different packaging for the office lunches than it does for a guy taking it out to the river. So we enhanced our packaging and all that. did all this pre-COVID and then, you know, we were realizing at that point in time, several years before the whole COVID thing happened, it was probably a couple of years before that we launched this program that

you know, 60 % of our food was going out the door, which is how we were originally designed, even though when we opened up in the metro areas, we had more seating in those restaurants for people to come in and sit down. But even so, at those stores still, 60 % of the food was going out the door, going to office lunches, know, catering for office lunches, law firms, accounting firms, you name it. People are ordering and we’re wheeling out these sandwich trays and bringing them up.

Naki Soyturk (56:12.078)

Hmm

Peter Boniface (56:12.522)

up the elevators and dropping them off in all these firms. And then COVID hit and we were just like, oh my God, what is going on here? How’s this going to look? What do we do? I mean, nobody knew what to do at that point in time. We were just like, okay, we got to just hang on and see what happens. Go to a skeleton crew, our leadership, tell everybody else, hey, get yourself on unemployment and we’ll let you know if we can keep you going or not.

Naki Soyturk (56:21.553)

Naki Soyturk (56:26.926)

This right.

Peter Boniface (56:42.266)

And we ended up doing great because we were already set up to send food out to go. we ended up, you know, a lot of that catering work dried up in the inner cities because people weren’t going to their office. But people still wanted to support their restaurants and our packaging and our online ordering systems and the ability for people to order online, come in, pick up contact lists, all that.

Naki Soyturk (56:53.454)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Boniface (57:12.042)

we were already set up for it. And so we looked really smart and we ended up doing well during that time. And then of course, the post COVID, everybody wanted to go out again and get out in the restaurants. And so we saw a time of, you know, extreme growth in our business, which was great, but it was tough to handle, you know, we had to buckle up and strap our helmets on and get it done. was tough, but now we’re seeing,

You know, a downturn again, you’re seeing a downturn here. And so what is it five years later after that, you’re seeing things swing the other way where things are tightening up. so just really at the end of the day, in these down times, these are the down times are when you can make your mark and make it have the growth happen. And

Those are the times as the biggest opportunities that I’ve seen over the last 25 years, not the boom times. The boom times prices go up because everything’s booming. When things tighten up, like Buffett says, when the tide goes out, you see who’s not wearing pants. you’ll find a lot of a lot. We’re starting to see restaurants are shutting down. They’re shutting down. Well, so what happens when they shut down? Well, all the customers that went to their place now.

Naki Soyturk (58:19.181)

up.

Naki Soyturk (58:26.85)

Yeah, that’s true.

Peter Boniface (58:38.696)

are looking for somewhere new to go. And we want to be the place that they come. I don’t want to see people go out of business, but at the same time, it’s an opportunity for us. We’re not going to go out of business because we’re going to be consistent. We’re going to show up every day we’re going to take care of our customers. And so, I know there’s a lot of fear out there right now, especially with last week and what’s going on and people are all being reactive and

You know, I don’t think that that’s a good thing overall, but at the end of the day, you still have to show up and go to work and, you know, go show up, go to work, do the best job you can, and you know, you’ll probably still have a job.

Naki Soyturk (59:24.97)

Amazing, amazing. 25 years of developing, inventing, problem solving, eight restaurants, employing 90 people. An amazing, amazing story. An amazing career.

Peter Boniface (59:41.012)

Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, it’s been fun. It’s been fun. I, you know, I’m really proud of what we’ve done. I’m proud of the work that Dave, Dave and I and our entire team does every day. And, you know, we’ll keep swinging.

Naki Soyturk (59:58.144)

Amazing. Anything you would like to add?

Peter Boniface (01:00:05.118)

Well, I’ll just, think I said a lot, so the only thing I’d like to add is, hey, if you’re in Colorado, check out one of our stores and let me know how it goes. All right.

Naki Soyturk (01:00:15.32)

Definitely we are going to put all the blinks in this video

Peter Boniface (01:00:21.364)

Great. And you can reach out to me personally, go to yampasandwichcompany.com. You’ll see my email is in there and you can reach out to me personally if you want to reach out to me. So I’m always happy to have conversations and this is the fun part of the job is having conversations with people and getting to meet other individuals like yourself and customers that come in through the door. So appreciate the introduction and the conversation.

Naki Soyturk (01:00:43.406)

Same here,

Naki Soyturk (01:00:50.328)

Thank you very much Pete. Amazing reviews everyone by the way. You can check them out. Amazing reviews. Everybody’s super happy. Pete, there is one more thing I promised you, which is if you have any kind of question regarding the restaurant, that is if I can be resource to you. Any kind of question that I can provide guidance or share my…

knowledge of. I’ll be happy to do that. Do you have anything in mind?

Peter Boniface (01:01:25.61)

What was, do you see as the most instrumental thing that’s helped out your restaurants in the past? If you could pick one thing that helped elevate those restaurants, what was that?

Naki Soyturk (01:01:37.87)

systems as you already have. One thing that I’m gonna tell you that can help your restaurant is immediate. Like this is basically like what we do is like immediate. Doesn’t take a lot of work is implementing a group purchasing organization, GPO. And like they negotiate the contracts. This helps you in…

in two ways, which I don’t know whether it’s going to be the best solution for your site because you do a lot of the things in house or you have these contracts with the packers. But if you buy something from the outside world, like the year, like for a lot of the restaurants, national restaurant associations official statistics is 15 % savings in food and APEX.

My experience is between 12 and 13 percent. But I have seen upwards of 20 percent average savings and also 10 percent, between 10 and 20 percent. Usually the average is like 12 to 13 percent, which is super substantial if you think about it. Take your food cost, take your Apex, combine, I 15 percent savings from that is huge and immediate cash flow. Remember we talked about the

Peter Boniface (01:02:58.708)

it’s massive. It’s massive.

Right, continue on.

Naki Soyturk (01:03:03.47)

So you can pump that money into the marketing, into employees, and immediately get more of the continuum. That’s why the number one step is accounting for us. We put in place accounting because I want to see what I’m walking into to know how the company is doing, or how the things that we do are going to change before and after.

Peter Boniface (01:03:21.236)

Great.

Naki Soyturk (01:03:34.1)

And number two is GPO because it pumps up immediate money that we can turn around and do a bunch of stuff with it. Those are two. You already have systems and processes and all of these things in place. And to me as a previous operator, the biggest, what I loved about systems process obviously started as, know, cranking up the cost of good sold and you know.

eliminating the waste. what I love the most is how few of like fire drills that I was called for. You know, before everything was a fire drill. And afterwards, you know, like when you put in place like repair and everything and then the last step is usually the last brick is usually the repair and maintenance contracts, right? Like when you put in place like

Peter Boniface (01:04:11.583)

Right.

Peter Boniface (01:04:27.583)

Right.

Naki Soyturk (01:04:29.71)

you know, supply chain, employees and all that. Usually the last brick is the repair and maintenance contracts. After you do that, now you are golden. Now you want to be fired real slow. Let’s talk about strategy.

Peter Boniface (01:04:41.599)

Right?

Peter Boniface (01:04:47.176)

Right. Right. Yeah. You know, we, we, signed on with a group purchasing organization. it was, it was a while ago. And, and that was, you’re, you’re so right. was instrumental in us. you know, moving, moving the needle as far as our food cost goes. And I, I won’t, I won’t name names, but we, had been using a, an organization, a broadliner and.

You know, they, they were had a representative sales rep for each of our stores. So each store had a different sales rep and I would go in the stores. This was at the same time that I was trying to iron out the soup recipes and stuff. And, and I’d go into a store and I’d see different products in there that it weren’t the approved product, the products that I wanted to see. And I was like, what, what’s this new like, well, you know, Julie said that that was, you know, what I want.

What is going on here? Go back to the regional manager that we had and we were just like, you know, we need one rep for all the stores. When do we get to that point where we have one rep for all the stores? When do we get to the point where we get pricing based on purchasing from all the units, not just one? What’s the number?

Where do we need to be? What’s the number? Tell me what the number is. And he just was like, well, you know, actually to answer your question, there is no number. And my partner Dave’s like, what are you talking about? There’s always a number. There’s always a number. What’s the number? Just tell me what it is. If I’m not there yet, I know. Just I want to know what it is. But this is what we need in order to grow our business. And he was trying to protect his street salespeople and not take the business away from them.

Naki Soyturk (01:06:45.922)

Yeah, to a regional or a national person.

Peter Boniface (01:06:47.61)

And to right, right. So, you know, we ended up signing on with a group purchasing organization and they, they lowered our food costs by like 20%. We shifted to a different broadliner who gave us everything we wanted.

Naki Soyturk (01:07:03.138)

The other side of the, this whole arrangement, by the way, like in my experience, anything that can go wrong does go wrong. you have the perfect, number one, broadliners change prices on a weekly basis, right? And like you pick up, let’s say chicken breast this, and for five weeks it is the best price, very good price. Six weeks, there is another item, the price of this goes up and price of this that was here now.

Peter Boniface (01:07:17.876)

Right.

Naki Soyturk (01:07:33.004)

goes down. So like they’re almost like curveballs. And I think there is an AI, this is my conspiracy theory here, there is an AI in the back looking at what you are purchasing and they are throwing curveballs. So inventory management tools are I think super vital, especially with the tariff world, to understand like before and after like what’s happening every week. Because another thing that like when people think

Peter Boniface (01:07:35.123)

Right.

Right.

Naki Soyturk (01:08:01.868)

Just like I talked about the receiving inventory, that third thing that people think that does happen. doesn’t happen is a GM reviewing the invoice. I mean, do you, every restaurant is buying at least like 500 SKUs. What do you expect from the guy? Like there’s like a brain of like super brain and memorize every single price. What happened in the last five weeks that he will be looking at the commodity markets or

Peter Boniface (01:08:14.186)

Great.

Naki Soyturk (01:08:30.7)

What happened in the pineapple markets in wherever pineapples are produced? No. You need a GPO to have negotiated prices in place because they have those people. They have the people who know pineapple commodity markets.

Peter Boniface (01:08:48.424)

Right, right. And they’ll get you contracts to go out. know, some of them you can do, you can go as far out as six months. They’ll give you a contract and you might not get the best price ever because the supplier is like, hey, well, we have to hedge against it going up, but at least we can keep you steady and in the price point where you want to be at. that way, you know you’re making money for the next six months. And so those,

tools are really important for sure. Yeah. It’s, it’s important stuff. We also recently started working with a new inventory management system where our, our, we had to build out all the recipes and the backend and it syncs with the POS system. So the recipes are built in there. And so the, when the managers purchase, they can scan the invoices into the system.

and then it syncs with your POS system and so you can target your leakage like that. It’ll tell you exactly what’s missing or where you can make your money.

Naki Soyturk (01:09:53.304)

Yeah, which system is it?

Naki Soyturk (01:09:59.224)

They say, which system is it?

Peter Boniface (01:10:03.306)

God, what’s the name of it? It’s through consolidated concepts. and let me see.

Naki Soyturk (01:10:12.43)

craftable marginage market man.

Peter Boniface (01:10:17.414)

Yeah, I can’t think of it off the top of my head, the exact name of it, but it’s through Consolidated Concepts, which they’re our group purchasing organization. So then they had this software program that works with our toast system, syncs with our toast system.

Naki Soyturk (01:10:24.63)

Thank

Naki Soyturk (01:10:33.71)

Yeah, that’s exactly right. SKU based leakage analysis. like, I consider us as like the CSI leakage. And here is why. Like when you are looking at the SKU level leakage, and in order to get to that point, you need to nail down both accounting. Accounting needs to be super duper good. And secondly, inventory counts need to be like 100 % good.

Peter Boniface (01:11:02.687)

Right.

Naki Soyturk (01:11:02.872)

So when you get there, you’re looking at the variances, right? And like where, why is it happening? Like sometimes one restaurant uses chicken thighs instead of chicken breast. Sometimes it’s the employee meal. Sometimes it’s the folks cooking the steaks, just overdoing it and you know, like it’s going to waste or like comp. Maybe somebody is like doing a fraud, maybe steal.

Peter Boniface (01:11:31.806)

Right, can evaluate a lot of that stuff just when you go in and you do your site checks, just look in the trash. Or the dish pit, you know, go to the dish pit and you’ll see who’s wiping, who’s using a spatula to scrape out their bowls that they’re making the sauces in and who’s scraping out the finished sauce containers because…

Naki Soyturk (01:11:32.28)

bunch of stuff.

Naki Soyturk (01:11:38.434)

Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

Peter Boniface (01:11:58.41)

If you’re not scraping those things out and you’re losing a dozen units a day of that one particular product, well then multiply that by 31 days on the month. And all of a sudden you’re purchasing an extra case of that one product every month. And that case is $60, $70. so then…

Naki Soyturk (01:12:15.064)

That’s right.

Peter Boniface (01:12:24.168)

Multiply that by 12 and that’s one product and then so if you add all those things up you have to have those efficiencies or else you you won’t survive and and you know Back to the continuum. That’s that’s where you see who’s not wearing pants You know, you can’t wing it Like you said you have to have tight tight numbers and tight accounting and tight inventory controls Or else you just you won’t make it in this business, you know, it’s a very very low margin business and you know

Naki Soyturk (01:12:40.427)

right?

Peter Boniface (01:12:54.25)

I think a lot of consumers don’t understand that. They’ll walk into a restaurant and they’ll be like, man, this place is so busy. printing money. it’s like, well, you know what? They’re probably doing 10 cents on the dollar like everyone else if they’re lucky or a restaurant will close. And they’re like, I wonder why that place closed. It was so busy all the time. Well, because their inventory management systems.

Naki Soyturk (01:13:00.504)

They’re printing. Printing money.

Peter Boniface (01:13:20.819)

were not good. Their business model was not operating efficiently and they weren’t bringing money to the bottom line. So even though they had cashflow, they weren’t profitable.

Naki Soyturk (01:13:30.902)

And Pete, like most restaurant tours, they look at the revenue, right? Revenue and revenue, like maximize revenue, marketing revenue, marketing revenue. You and me both know that like anybody and everybody, there is like an imaginary line in front of the door who is like taking your like repair and maintenance, you know, like something broken that needs to be replaced, you know, new something, know, a produce guy, this guy, that guy.

Do know how much money the restaurant that I was managing, spending in a cleaning a year? Take a guess. Food cleaning? Food cleaning on a annual basis.

Peter Boniface (01:14:07.69)

In cleaning. Hoot cleaning. Oh, probably $100,000 if not more, Yeah.

Naki Soyturk (01:14:18.765)

$140,000 in who like outside of the industry would guess you will spend $140,000 for freaking hood cleaning. So like how many dishes do you need to sell just to clean the hood?

Peter Boniface (01:14:25.93)

Right.

Peter Boniface (01:14:31.786)

Right. Just to clean the hood. Right. Just to clean the hood. People don’t understand that. And that’s an interesting thing that you bring up because when we look at our numbers and our profitability and where we have opportunities, it’s just, you again, it’s like you have to work like half the year just to get to your break even.

And then you start to make some money, you know, and it’s really, it’s really a challenging business. you know, there needs to be right now in the environment that’s out there with all the social media and everything, people feel like they can go into a place and everybody’s a food critic and they can just drop a bomb out there to the public. What they don’t understand is that at that business, people are working very hard to take care of them. And, you know,

Naki Soyturk (01:14:57.454)

That’s right.

Peter Boniface (01:15:27.184)

As restaurant owners, would prefer, well, just let me know if you had a problem, let me know and I’ll fix it. I’m here to make sure that you’re satisfied. But when we’re putting out an average of 250 units a day, you’re bound to have a problem once in a while with one or an unsatisfied guest that might not be your problem. It might be their problem, but at the same time, it’s just reach out to the. Great, great.

Naki Soyturk (01:15:49.39)

Don’t make a TikTok about it. Before you make a TikTok, just reach out.

Peter Boniface (01:15:53.448)

Yeah, just reach out before you throw a bomb on social media. Like, the place was, was terrible. My, my, my food was no good or whatever. Like what, what gives you the right to, to, you know, beat people down like that? mean, granted, I want to know if there’s a problem because I want to fix it, but that’s where the training comes in. Hey, you know, if you can, if you can do table visits or callbacks to your catering orders and Hey, just wanted to check in. How was everything? How do we do for you today? That’s it. Just, just that.

That little check you can cut a lot of those off before they get out there. But it’s tough business. It’s tough business out there.

Naki Soyturk (01:16:32.172)

this this this has been an amazing amazing episode amazing speaking with you

Peter Boniface (01:16:40.958)

Yeah, it great talking to you.

Naki Soyturk (01:16:44.75)

Thank you very much. Yempa sandwiches, Check them out. And thank you so much for your time, Pete.

Peter Boniface (01:16:55.358)

you’re welcome. Thank you. Thanks for your time.

Naki Soyturk (01:16:57.678)

I’m going to start recording and I just want to thank you in… okay.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (00:00.14)

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining me and Antonio today. I have with me Antonio Gambino, the co-founder of Tonos Pizzeria and Cheesesteaks, a super duper successful brand out from Minnesota. They have 10 locations. They started only a few years ago. Him and his co-founder Shaz and their two other partners, they have created a very successful brand.

I’m lucky that he’s he joined me today to talk about his brand, his success and his success stories. So thank you very much, Antonio, for joining me. Welcome.

I certainly appreciate it.

Of course, by the way, I learned a few months ago that I’m quarter South Italian. There we go. You are? I am. Alright. I was expecting more on the Turkic Central Asia. And then I learned I’m only like 1%. 1 % Central Asia. I thought like my ancestors like rode their horses all day, you know, in the steps and stuff like that. Apparently they just like…

guys, welcome to.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (01:11.262)

Are you just a mix?

Yeah, a lot of stuff. I’m 3 % Iranian, like Shaz. You know, 25 % South Italian, 14 % Greek Isles. I would have never guessed that. Yeah, apparently my ancestors didn’t discriminate when it comes to finding matches. We love everybody.

That’s the Mediterranean though, it’s kind of a mix.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (01:36.706)

I did ant ancestory.com or whatever and I did my DNA test. My dad’s full Sicilian, Southern Sicilian. My mom’s a mix of German, little Irish, little English. So I’m also a little bit mixed up in there.

We do a lot of prep going into these. When I first looked at your videos and stuff, I was like, God damn, this guy is both handsome and so young. I was like, Thank you. you. Thank was like… Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then we talk and we are about the same age. Although I don’t think we look like we are about the same age, but… We look the same age. Yeah.

The sauce and olive oil.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (02:21.282)

We got it. We got it.

Okay, let’s do the test. Do you have a heartburn after 8pm if you eat a pizza?

I, unfortunately, I eat at like 8.30 every night. So usually my heartburn starts at like 10.30.

You

I had to borrow my friend’s medicine the other day. like, man, I’m Help me.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (02:41.23)

getting old sucks and my mom told me you know enjoy every day and I’m like I’m gonna live forever mom. Right, right. I’m gonna eat whatever. I’m gonna eat whatever. Nothing is gonna happen to me.

right right now unfortunately that doesn’t work like that i got a strong multi-vitamin plan though so it’s keeping me keeping me getting good

Of course. Antonio, why don’t you talk about yourself, Brent, whatever you want to… Could you give us an introduction?

Yeah, so, you know, I grew up on the East Coast until I was about 10 years old. I moved to Minnesota. My dad owned his first pizzeria in 1972 before I was born. So I grew up in the pizza industry. know, summer breaks, I was working for my parents. I loved it. I loved pizza. I loved, you know, the whole customer experience.

So throughout high school, know, middle school and high school, I worked at my family’s restaurant on the weekends. And some days, you know, if someone didn’t come to work, I’d get a call and I get a knock on my door and, Tony, are you not going to school today?

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (04:01.72)

Let’s go.

another hour of sleep and I don’t have to go to school. Right. Throughout high school I was like, you know, I kind of want to follow in my dad’s footsteps and, you know, kind of take over and expand on that and continue my family’s legacy. My dad, my uncle also, my uncle Mario also on Pizzerias with my dad. So he’s a big part of what we did.

Sweet! Let’s go!

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (04:34.318)

So yeah, I graduated high school in 2003, full time at my family’s pizzeria, making pies and learning, working with, you know, employees and trying to make my own way, not being the owner’s son. You know, get away with stuff. I wanted to be treated like anyone else. I wanted to work harder than everyone else. I didn’t want the easy hall pass that this is my dad’s restaurant. So those between, you know, my dad

Thank

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (05:04.446)

teaching me hard work and other employees teaching me hard work to level up. It made me, you know, who I am. I definitely love the industry. I love working hard. I love seeing other people work hard. I love other people being successful through our restaurant, whether it be, you know, hiring someone and they become a shift lead to a general manager. All that stuff is amazing. It makes it all the hard work worth it.

So graduated high school 2003, worked for my parents. I had this idea of opening a pizzeria in Minnesota and pairing it with cheese steaks. We did cheese steaks out east. When we moved to Minnesota, we just did pizza by the slice, like in downtown Skyways. I don’t know if, did Michigan have Skyways?

I don’t know.

downtown now. Okay, so so we’re like in the downtown district with a big high rise

Our downtown was basically like when my fiance came to visit me, like I took her to a crime crime drive. Detroit, I mean Detroit. I mean, when we were when we started moving in our like last years in Michigan, Detroit became became the cool hipster place to be. Yes. But still you would live in the suburbs and visit Detroit.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (06:36.75)

And when I first started making RoboCop jokes, nobody was laughing. I’m like, only RoboCop can clean your city. nobody was laughing. It’s a completely different thing. Detroit and the suburbs are two separate things. other than watching a sports game or something, people used to never go there.

Yeah.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (07:06.264)

normal for cities and suburbs. Yeah, so I graduated high school in 2003, worked for my family, had an idea of doing pizza and cheese steaks. Me, my best friend, Shaz, my brother, and my dad, we opened up Frank and Andreas on the University of Minnesota campus. Our other locations, we were in the Skyway, so we were basically open 10 to 3 p.m.

on campus we’re open 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. so you can imagine it’s a big a

shocker.

Yeah, big window, a big work day. But I was up for the opportunity. We opened up in 2016. We knew who our audience was. Obviously, being on a college campus, our main audience would be college students.

Is that how the cheese steaks came to be? Like I know you answered this question  20 different times. You guys have been like in TV shows, in everywhere and probably everyone asks you the same question, right? Like cheese steaks, how did it merge with pizzeria? I’m sure like many people told you like it’s going to be confusing. Is it two different things people will be confused? How did you say like no, like cheese steaks it is.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (08:29.902)

Yeah, mean, mean, between, you know, talking to my food providers, they’re like, oh, you should do this roast beef in this terrible role. I’m like, listen, I know what I want. I want to do a cheese. It’s getting the role was the number one most important piece of, you know, before we even got to is it confusing between the pizza and the cheesesteak. So we had to get the emeralds overall. We had to get either ribeye or prime inside.

See you.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (08:59.174)

Once we got that, was kind of educating people on the cheesesteak in Minnesota. A lot of people didn’t know what it was. They’re like, what’s a cheesesteak? I’m like, it’s bread, steak, onions.

Well, it’s basically like, I had it in Philadelphia, Like 98 % of the places can’t put that flavor in that thing. Like when it marries, when all the flavors marry, it’s the most amazing thing in the world, right? But putting that flavor in,  is an amazing challenge. So I want to congratulate you for,  achieving that. Of course, you as an Italian, like, number one, like, you guys.

As an Italian American, want to say like your ancestors, I mean, they figured out bread like like no other country, like no other country, no other country. Quality ingredients infusing the flavor into this  not and everything like fusing together like it’s an amazing experience. And I think most people who are saying or putting like cheesesteak as a simple thing or not as

The thing that I have in my mind is the one that I had in Philadelphia, because I never had anything close to that. The real thing is an experience. Congrats for nailing it down.

Quality ingredients, I think that it’s the beginning of any food, It’s like you have a lot of people that, you know, try to knock off pizza, right? It’s just cheap ingredients, cheap cheese, just throw things together. Even with the cheese steak, you know, mean, you know, from moving to out east to Minnesota, you know, to get a cheese steak, they serve it like in a hot dog bun. And the meat would be in like a jus and they put it on. It’s like, well.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (10:50.86)

You’re doing nothing right, right? Just do it right, right? Get the right ingredients. Don’t use processed meats. mean, our meat is never frozen. I mean, it’s a real piece of meat that we have a meat company slice very thin for us. We chop it on the grill. Throughout time, we’ve elevated the cheesesteak, not doing the basic steak with onions or mushrooms.

We’ve added all types of options between garlic aioli, barbecue aioli, habanero jam, caramelized tomatoes, all that stuff to like, you know, kind of what they did with burgers, right? I mean, they’ve elevated burgers where you can have a classy cheeseburger with a bunch of crazy toppings. You know, the standards are still good.

Yep.

But in my head, I’m like, why can’t we do that with cheesesteak? As people go to Philadelphia, they’re like, it’s an experience to be in this, you know, Pats or Dinos. It’s an experience plus the food. When you’re in Minnesota, I can’t copy that experience to the tea, right? You’re not in Philadelphia. You’re not at this vintage spot that’s been around forever, that’s been on TV, right? So we started with.

That makes sense.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (12:12.62)

the basic traditional Philly style cheese steaks and then we added to that to excite people in Minnesota. Like for instance we did my favorite cheese steak and the cheese steak that gets the most compliments is our fat Tony, P-H-A-T Tony. You know with the habanero jam, garlic aioli, bacon, jalapenos, onions. Like this the blend of that is delicious.

And it’s you can’t get anywhere besides tonal so that that was a You know one of the things that I want to accomplish is keeping it Traditional you can still get the traditional stuff, but we’re also in it. We’re also changing the cheesesteak game Which you know? All I feel like you know between burgers tacos pizza Asian everyone’s innovated the cheesesteaks kind of stayed the same

Totally.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (13:11.372)

And people tried to copy it, they tried to cut the corners.

So you have an amazing product. I looked at the restaurants, they are super clean and minimalist and it’s inviting and people… The restaurant is an experience. How did it take off? How soon was the lift off for you? After you opened the first restaurant?

So we’ll go to Tonno. We opened that in 2019 in the suburb of Minnesota. any restaurant that you open and nobody knows who you are, that’s a challenge, right? It’s like people drive by. Who the heck is Tonno, right? It takes those first customers, knock that out of the park to let other people know. I mean, that’s huge, right? We take that.

Yeah.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (14:12.074)

Extremely serious because they’re gonna tell their friends. I Just have the best cheese steak I just had the best pizza and you you know you you grow Organically, it’s slow, you know you’re doing the right things right you don’t have a ton of money You know you can’t be McDonald’s and these guys running ads everywhere So that that was it that was a huge challenge. I mean I would I’m there all day every day the first location we open. I’m making sure every customer

that walks in is greeted with a hello, the best service possible with the best food. So we opened six months before COVID. And we thought this is the end of us.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (15:06.05)

But it ended up being, know, pick up and delivery and our presence online, you know, through my other partners knocking that out the park. We looked very enticing. We looked professional. And people went on DoorDash and searched us online and were like, well, this place looks good. Let me give it a try when I’m sitting at home and can’t leave, right? So we got extremely busy and we did really well.

listening.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (15:34.478)

Through that, we kind of took advantage of the fact that, you know, let’s open more locations now and expand as much as possible while everyone’s nervous because of COVID. Obviously, it’s unfortunate event, COVID. You know, we wanted to, you know, take care of customers, take care of employees. You know, we’re hiring tons of people during COVID while, you know, a lot of people are getting laid off, right?

Definitely.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (16:03.862)

So we took that as very prideful to be able to pick up some of these people that have been working in the food industry for a lifetime that got laid off overnight, right?

and give people something to keep them sane. Right? Great food.

Yeah, yeah, right.

That’s awesome. This is the amazing… That’s my uncle. Yeah, your uncle. Family affair.

There you go.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (16:31.918)

That’s what I thought.

He needs his own TV. Podcast. Yeah, my dad’s retired. He’s retired. My mom and dad come to Minnesota for the summer. They are snow birds. They’re sick of the cold.

I bet.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (16:51.938)

Did they sell the business?

No, no, me and my brother took over.

Wow, so you have, I got you, wow. two. Yeah, Andrea Pizza. Yeah, four locations in Minnesota. So you have Tono and Andrea.

Andrea.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (17:10.71)

Yep, Tono, Tono Pizzeria Plus Cheesesteaks. We have Frank and Andrea, which is our college campus brand. And then we have Andrea Pizza, which is in the Skyways downtown.

in Geez, you are… Pizza King. We have Pizza King. Wherever somebody turns, guy is mad at you for something and he’s like, I will never come here. And then he turns the corner, another one of your restaurants. Kingpin. Kingpin of Minnesota. And cheese steaks.

Just trying to get a good pizza man. fun, everything. We try to cover all aspects of the pizza. I love it. I can make pizzas all day.

And look at all these reviews.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (17:59.182)

4.7, 4.8, great reviews. like this, I guess people will be within an Uber distance anywhere in Minneapolis, right?

So yeah, we kind of covered the suburbs around Minneapolis. That South Minneapolis location is like a suburb of Minneapolis. then so that’s like the west side of Minnesota, which we’ve recently been opening stores. We had started on the east side of Minnesota, which is like St. Paul of the Twin Cities.

By the way, shout out to your architect. I did a lot of constructions. It looks like an experience. I love the lighting like this. There are a lot of smart touches in there. It’s an inviting place, warm at the same time. From a business standpoint, doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to build these. To me, it’s

As I look at this, it’s like the best of both worlds.

Yeah, we wanted to not feel like a copy paste franchise that just is blah and looks fake. We wanted to cozy, like when you’re sitting in our restaurant, you don’t feel like you’re even in Minnesota. You feel like you’re in New York, you’re in the East Coast, you’re in Philadelphia.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (19:23.849)

Warm.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (19:37.708)

And there are these like touches like this, like neon sign like this.

design is awesome. Get a little retro vibe feel. The wood floors are just, you know, you feel, you know, it just feels cozy. feels nice. It’s hard to put words on that, the value of that, right? You know, those feelings you get when you walk into a store and you’re like, this is, this feels right. It’s hard to hit, you know, that’s, you know, my business partner,

and would create the

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (20:10.83)

Dario, he owns Classic Property Services and he builds all the restaurants and his guys are amazing. I mean, you can see their work. They have a true passion for building things and creating things and they just, they do a fantastic job. It’s amazing and it’s fun to watch the whole process.

And I wanna show her.

There’s an empty shell to the slow process of putting walls up and doing plumbing. then they build the seats. The oven gets built in the store. We use a Mara Forney oven. They build that in the store. Every location’s been built in the store. It takes about seven days. Five days, sorry. And then another five days to cure.

It’s fun. Every step of it’s fun, you know.

It’s a good thing one of us had fun during, I built many, many restaurants. Many of them were like, you know, 10, $15 million bills, like five to 15 million, like huge, huge bills. ours was, you know, ultra mega fine dining, charcoal, like getting permissions, hoods were a huge, know, always a heart attack moment, you know.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (21:34.03)

So at least one of us enjoys construction. To me, when I look at this and imagine myself going through the plans with the architect and everybody talking to me about, you know, Iron Ducks and like going 10 stories high and this and that, that takes me back to those days. But very, very beautiful locations.

Will say we open Frank and Andreas the worst part of opening that store was the construction I didn’t have Dario. We I wasn’t super close to Dario at the time and You know I learned a lot you know I did to go to construction meetings every week and these guys are saying things I don’t I don’t know what you’re I Don’t know the language

Yeah.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (22:19.554)

Yeah. Do you want polished concrete or, you know, or painted concrete? All these calls.

Right.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (22:30.092)

You know, it’s a tough business. So that was one of the things I was happy to bring a partner in. And obviously, he brings a ton of other skills to the game. man, when that weight is off your shoulders.

Are you open to location?

on what we each do well. We each do what we do well even better because we have all that extra time and not all that weight on our head. I can focus on the menu. I can focus on creating new ideas. We work together and marketing ideas and all that and community outreach, things that I do pretty well.

not a construction.

That’s great. Talk to me about Shaz What does he do?

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (23:26.29)

A lot. He wears a lot of hats as we grow. We’re able to kind of offset some of those responsibilities off his head as we have more stores and able to afford more help. He’s been a huge part of operations as far as back end, you know, between apps and like ADP and toast.

So we use Toast for our POS, use Toast for our payroll. We switched to ADP recently. He’s an engineer by trade.

Yeah, physical engineer. System, process oriented.

processes extremely organized the opposite of what I

You are the creator, the creative party. Yeah.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (24:15.579)

I like to have ideas. He also has a lot of ideas too. And we work together. Our skill sets really…

Well, you know accounting we’re hiring an accounting now is pretty much the CFO the CEO He’s it yeah, he’s an amazing guy amazing friend he’s just genius and You know With when things get hard. I’m like, you know, we’re I’m lucky to have a great friend that also is a great businessman

Did you guys meet in Minnesota after you did the move to Minnesota? We met in high school. In Minnesota, right? Yeah, in Minnesota. Because you moved in when you were 10, right? From New York to Minnesota. This is a clip from one of the openings. I think this is the seventh location. I opened many restaurants, so when somebody that figured out from marketing what to say in marketing, everything is structured at this juncture.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (25:24.366)

There we go. The look. The opening look. This is what I call the opening look. The super stressed business owner. Right now you have… Heat vision. Right now you are basically torching with your heat vision.

That’s the let’s we gotta make a lot of pies very fast

And somebody’s like, somebody’s screwing up, you’re seeing that person slow or talking to somebody basically like enjoying themselves a bit much. This is that look. Enjoying the opening a bit much when you’re trying to push the pizzas. That look.

Making the pies can I videotape you can you say something? yeah, I can do it all just let me know whatever you need It’s fun hi that the the stressful in-store stuff can be fun like, you know, I’ve a DD so my My ad is my gift when I’m in store working

So 10 locations, right? And then you have two other brands, know, how like, you have Shaz business guy, you as the creative, the operational guy, you have in your belt, like decades of recipes, decades of…

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (26:57.194)

On top of it, maybe 100 years of recipes and then like decades of restaurant experience, Between you and your father. You have Shaz and then two partners who help you basically build, find locations and build. But at the heart of it, what would be your guidance, advice to people who would like to repeat?

the success because like I always say like restaurants are like tech companies in a in the sense that when you have something that works I mean you can it’s basically you can spread like  wildfire right they’re just like tech companies but one day you have five employees the next day you can become you know like a giant like Instagram and you know when done right you know hospitality like what we do can be that so some people have one restaurant

throughout their lives, 40, 50 years, one restaurant. And then people like you come in. I mean, what I call is the Rock star. You are basically one level, in my opinion, one level, maybe you will get there. Taylor Swift, category. Taylor Swift is like Shake Shack, is like Taylor Swift. What I mean is creating something unique, explaining that to people.

and figuring out all the economics and turning this into a machine. I think that’s the beauty part of it. Because unless one has like a Michelin star restaurant, like one is okay, right? If you are doing this as a business, like what you achieved should be the goal of everybody. So you can share it with more people. More people talk about your creations and…

You can experiment because you will have more money to experiment, more buffer zone, can hire the best people, use higher grade ingredients to basically, what I’m saying is like Michelangelo and the statue of David, right? Like if he used like sub quality marble, you know, because he didn’t have the funds, it wouldn’t have been David, right? Or if he didn’t have like two or three years to build it and he had to rush, he had to build it in six months.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (29:13.07)

It wouldn’t have been the same thing. Like, funds do help. Telling your story, doing much of stuff. What is your advice to the audience? What should people take away? What would be the one or two things that should be, like, critical in everyone’s mind?

I think the most important thing is actually love doing it. If you’re just doing it for the money, I don’t think you’re going to do the necessary work. I don’t think it’d be authentic. think people would know that this is just some place to make money. I think if you love it, the quality will follow. And then finding.

Here.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (29:59.084)

Don’t, you know, if you want one store, you could probably do a lot of it yourself. If you want to have multiple locations, I would, you know, suggest finding people that complement your skill set that obviously you could trust. And you’re all on the same page of what your goal is, you know, whether it be three stores, five stores.

Ten stores, all are amazing, right? I mean, you open one restaurant and it’s successful. That’s awesome, right? Especially if you’re doing huge build-outs like yourself where, you know, one restaurant, you have, you know, $5 to $15 million in investment and, you know, you have 200 employees or something. I mean, that’s massive, right? And you’re successful at that. That’s already amazing.

I opened one in 6 weeks.

Six weeks, yeah. That’s right.

I was told we are not opening that store, take it easy. four weeks you need to open the restaurant. Beverly Hills, COVID. 2001 and we are talking about freaking California. So I live in Florida. we are living in like 1970, 1987, know, like love, thy neighbor and party your ass off, Like in the eighties.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (31:22.094)

In California, I mean, it’s a whole different story and six weeks I am in order to open at that time, you you know, we for a lot of the corporate, I had to first build the corporate to open the restaurant. So I can hire 120 employees in a state that we have never ever operated before. Yeah. So that’s

And each state has their own laws too. And to figure those out is, I mean, that’s, that’s a challenge on its own. Forget about operating and hiring and getting open six weeks is amazing. Good job. Great job. Yeah. mean, typically we like to hire, you know, a few months in advance when we open a new store, especially for, you know, training and

Thank you.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (32:17.174)

and finding management and all that stuff. But yeah, I I think if you love what you do, your recipe or whatever you’re serving is authentic to who you are and what you believe in. People will follow that, It’s like going to Austin, Texas and trying barbecue, right? And those are barbecue guys.

Here.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (32:46.39)

Right? it’s so authentic. They live it. They breathe it. And when you go in there, you feel it. Right? That’s not fake. Right? That’s passion. And people love that. I I went to Terry Black’s in Austin. And there’s a line all day long. it’s like, their food’s great. But it’s like, it’s a known spot. Right? It’s like, you feel the authenticity. So I would say that.

Also, you know, just taking care of a good culture for staff. Appreciate them. Show they matter. Their work is important. They’re not just a number that clocks in and out. You care about them. You want them to succeed. And you show a path to success for everyone. It’s super important, I think.

You know, some of our staff’s been with us, team members, family, whatever. They’re family to me. They’ve been with us for 20 years. And that’s amazing, right? Just that alone. A lot of things make it worth it, hearing your food’s good, hearing this is great. But know, when customers walk in and they can see the same face every day, they’re like, what are you guys doing to keep all these guys together? Every time I go to somewhere else, it’s someone new.

Two days of training.

Don’t try to be the do-all person. Find someone. Like if you can cook really good, find someone that loves the back end stuff. If you’re a back end guy that loves food in the restaurants but doesn’t want to cook every day, find someone that loves to cook. That has a vision.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (34:36.525)

Yeah, yeah. Complimenting.

Otherwise it’s like, I mean, it can be draining. There’s a lot of little things in restaurants, right? Opening a restaurant and walking away, there’s a lot to manage. I mean, it’s a people industry, right? Whether it’s customers or employees, there’s a lot.

This is not

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (34:55.68)

I think that’s why like for many restaurateurs it is so draining and they don’t see any other way of doing it because like they are stuck in the loop that they can’t hire the people that they think they can really like rely on and because of that like they need to fix every single problem in the restaurant like your second location calls or like let’s say like

or they are like warehouse told me they are out of chicken or something, you know, not the most core product, but still a very important product. And then you have to call the sales rep or the guy above him to basically like raise hell or they ship you whatever it is that you need. So you don’t, mean, like these kind of fire drills are no fun. think there is a way to do this that

is fun, is rewarding, that you can see that your brand is elevated, your people are elevated, and you live a long, prosperous life. The fact that you don’t have any wrinkles tells me you have achieved that.

I got some gray hairs coming in. So I don’t know. But yeah, you have to trust people. I know a lot of people that just like, they don’t feel like they can walk away from the store. It’s like, not everyone’s gonna do it exactly like you. Like, that’s just, it’s just not possible, right? Everyone’s brain’s different, right? Like, I’m gonna process something different than any manager, general manager, operations manager.

I have to trust that they’re making what they believe is the best decision and just put them in the best position to succeed too, right?

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (36:52.364)

The second part is the most important thing. They know that they can’t rely on that general manager because they didn’t hire the best and the brightest and the most promising guy. Okay, because they don’t have the funds. It’s a whole like vicious cycle of you don’t generate the funds, you don’t hire the best and the brightest. When I say best and the brightest, you hire the guy who shows up for work.

your GM shows up work slightly over served. And guess what kind of example that sets up for the whole staff. Then you know that you can rely on that guy. You didn’t really give him a lot of responsibility like the administrative responsibility. So his job is to open the restaurant, know, answer like some guest complaints and close the restaurant. So strictly like front of the house operation. And the…

There is a beginning and an end. It’s not really like a GM role in that sense. You hope that if something breaks down, that guy is gonna call the repair company, but these roles and who’s responsible for what or what needs to be done hasn’t been established. That’s why when it’s not really established or communicated, can you rely on that person? Number one, you didn’t hire a reliable person. Number two, you didn’t really set up any kind of instructions or training or…

You just hope that when that happens, you’ll be there to take that call and you will do the fixing, fixing. So it’s a whole, like just like you said, and this is my contribution, vicious cycle. And because the restaurant operates like this, and the problem is why these restaurants can’t really scale is that like everybody works with the agent versus principal problem, right?

Everybody looks at a… People would look at in such a restaurant, people would look at the problem and they would say, like, what’s in it for me? It doesn’t pay me to take care of this or communicate that. And in those restaurants, problems aren’t really communicated higher up. So say, like, you gave this order and something else came up from the distributor. You won’t know this. Do you know who could know?

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (39:16.46)

Your accountant could know.

I think it’s being clear on what each position is responsible for and holding people accountable to that. As we grow, we’ve begun to use EOS, is from a book called Traction, Entrepreneurial Operating System, which puts a very clear

bucket list of things, of positions and responsibilities. And we run meetings through that and it holds everyone accountable. And I think most people want to know what they’re accountable for and how they’re measured. Know exactly what to do instead of like all this gray area. And as you grow, as we grow, you know, we were kind of sitting in that gray area where we have

This was for me.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (40:07.168)

Older, greater district.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (40:16.652)

GM’s for maybe one store or two stores and there’s like a lot of cross Like should I do this or should I do this everybody wanted to do it something and help but when you give that clear Vision you give that clear instruction what you’re responsible for what you’re going to be held accountable for and Making sure those people want to be in those seats

Very important thing. Super important. Write people in the right seats.

It’s not a big deal, but some people maybe want to be a shift lead some people just want to be a cook some people want to be general managers like it’s your job to be to know to tell them what those roles and responsibilities are and how you can achieve that step ladder through the restaurant and You know we’ve we’ve we’ve really picked up on that on the last year. I think we started EOS a year ago, and this is Shaz’s thing. He’s

very good at organizing, setting up these meetings and doing all that stuff. But people like, you know, and we get feedback from, you know, our general managers and they love it because they just know exactly what they’re supposed to do and what metrics we use to track important information and to do’s and, you know, labor and sales and, you know, reviews, all those things. And I think

you know, generally speaking, whatever position it is, if someone knows what they’re supposed to do, they’ll succeed.

Naki Soyturk, The Bottom Line Podcast (41:53.196)

There’s the vicious cycle that I was referring to. Without the right employees, trained right, you won’t have consistency. Without consistency, you won’t get guest loyalty. Without guest loyalty, you can’t build your revenue. Without revenue, you won’t get good employees. So it goes on and on and on.

And it’s like, where do you start? Which part?

That’s why I think like number one, what you said is super important. Everybody should do the thing that they are competent on, right? Both in terms of the segment of the restaurant and then the job within the restaurant. So you need to have good people like Shaz complementing, you know, founder, two founders going in like and forming one unit, right?

And then you guys had an amazing concept, executed very, very good. That’s you had you generated money to hire the right employees. You train them and you got consistency. Then with consistency, you got guest loyalty, people raving for your brand. then the development and so on and so forth. That’s why like, that’s why I say like restaurants can be like tech companies because yours is a cycle of

You know, generate money, borrow, open new restaurants. know, repeat the formula, repeat the formula, repeat the formula. 10 could be like a thousand. Like what’s to hold you up in opening their 150th location in Dubai? Nothing. And hence the investor side. So tell me about that. What’s the next step for Tono’s?

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (43:34.55)

Yeah, mean, we hired an operational consultant just to kind of go through what we all do, how we do it, and how we can improve. He started maybe six months ago or something. So we have that going on. We’ll hire him.

So the person is going to write the SOPs. We have those.

and it’s you know these big books and all that stuff and you know I talked to people that worked at you know big franchises and all that stuff and I’m like so how many people actually read this book and he’s like not a ton but you know so we have that we can always improve right now we’re hiring a fractional CFO so we’re we’re more as far as accounting and all the expenditures and all that stuff is more

specific to restaurants. So that started like this week, believe it or not. And then we met with a of a venture capitalist that finds restaurants, works with them, and then finds people that want to invest and continue that culture. So whoever were to invest would be a like minded person, not just a guy with money. So yeah, mean, that’s it. We’ve gone through many

Like, do we try to franchise? We went to the Vegas Franchise Expo or something maybe three years ago. That was horrible, I mean, some of these guys you talk to, they’re like, oh, what’s your margins? Is it like 40%, 50 %? I’m like, dude, if my margins were 50%, I wouldn’t be coming talking to you. Right? It’s like 50. Like, come on, dude. And people I talk to, it’s a cutthroat game. A lot of these guys that would help you find.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (45:30.402)

Franchisees are just they just want to open up they just want to find someone and get their commission and Leave and that’s not how we operate like we’re like if if we ever expanded through like a franchise franchise Which were not like my main focus would be to make sure that guy is successful because that also represents Tono, right? like Okay, right, I don’t care how much I own in that like

Tono is you.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (45:59.35)

I want it to be 4.8 stars, man. 4.7, period. That’s our reputation. I don’t care if it’s a franchisee or not. So we’re thinking more of the corporate route and learning. We’re learning as we go on how to expand our organization and what that looks like. Obviously, we can probably, ourselves, only take it so far. We’ll eventually bring someone in.

And to help you know, maybe get out of state and all that stuff We are open up Frank and Andreas in Madison, which is the University of Wisconsin So that’ll be that’ll be fun that’s like six out it’s about four hours away from us So yeah, I mean that’s kind of our our next goal to hit, you know, maybe 25 or 50 stores What that looks like I have no idea my job is just to make sure

Yeah.

Antonio Gambino, Tono’s (46:58.732)

We serve good food, we have a good culture, people are trained in and we’re making food right and we’re taking care of customers and all that stuff.

I want to congratulate you Antonio, like your amazing success, Shaz and your other partners, your father and your uncle for bringing the business to today. I hope they are doing great in Florida. I mean, I’m in Florida as well. It has been such a pleasure speaking with you. I know I have taken a lot of your time, but I think this, you gave such great information here.

very actionable stuff. Is there anything you would like to add?

That’s everything. I appreciate you taking your time and wanting just to hear our story, how Tono started, how it began, where it’s going. So thank you for your time. That was very nice, very nice of you.