- 9 months ago
Matt Ensero and Justin Egan, founders of Wing It On and members of the Craveworthy Brands portfolio, built the concept from a single store into an award-winning wing brand with nine National Buffalo Wing Festival trophies.
Watch now to learn how Wing It On grew from a homegrown idea, earned national recognition, and found the right partner to scale.
Sponsored by:
• TOAST - All-In-1 Restaurant POS: https://bit.ly/3vpeVsc
Watch now to learn how Wing It On grew from a homegrown idea, earned national recognition, and found the right partner to scale.
Sponsored by:
• TOAST - All-In-1 Restaurant POS: https://bit.ly/3vpeVsc
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00How did it feel to actually get recognized, that first trophy?
00:03I mean, the first year was surreal, and then the second year, back-to-back?
00:06We were like, how?
00:08The best-wing restaurants across the country are here, and they want to win this award.
00:11We just won it twice in a row.
00:13And then three times.
00:14And then the fourth time.
00:15So we have nine trophies in four years total.
00:17Wow.
00:18Welcome to Restaurant Influencers, presented by Entrepreneur.
00:31I'm your host, Sean Walchef.
00:33This is a Cali BBQ Media production.
00:35We are coming to you live from Chicago at CraveCon, and we've got one hell of a story to share with you today.
00:42This is the wing-it-on story.
00:44And I have Justin and I have Matt, the two co-founders.
00:47Welcome to the show.
00:48Thanks for having us, Sean.
00:49This is a dream come true.
00:51In life, in the restaurant business, and in the new creator economy, we learn through lessons and stories.
00:58Let's hear the story, the oh-shit moment, when you decided a life in finance wasn't for you.
01:05Let's go after restaurants, and not only restaurants, but let's build a wing empire in Connecticut, of all places.
01:13Go for it.
01:14Well, I think finance decided I wasn't for it.
01:16Because I graduated in 2006.
01:20I got into financial advisory services right out of college.
01:24You know, had a great first year.
01:26But then 2008 rolled around, 2007, 2008, and everybody knows what happened then.
01:31The Great Recession hit.
01:32And nobody wanted to invest with a 22-year-old kid straight out of college.
01:36Go figure.
01:36So I had to go find something else to do.
01:38The office I was in went from 100 advisors to 15 in less than a year.
01:42And they were all the gray hairs.
01:43None of us young guys were kicking around.
01:46So then my father and I, we started a school supply and technology company in Connecticut.
01:51Did that for two years.
01:52And then we got bought out by our biggest independent competitor in the state.
01:55And I was kind of in between gigs.
01:57And at the same time, I was hosting a group of friends that would always get together for Sundays, watching NFL games, just hanging out.
02:03And we would always just end up arguing about who was going to go pick up wings.
02:06Because there was just, we were in a wing desert.
02:08Within 30 minutes of my house, there was just no good wings.
02:11So we'd always have to go drive to some sports bar, dive bar, 40 minutes away.
02:15Missed the first quarter.
02:16Nobody wanted to do it.
02:18So finally, I just got, I bought one of those little at-home deep fryers and started making wings at my house.
02:24Like, toying with the recipes, writing it down, A-B testing them on my friends.
02:27And I got the recipes down pat, and one of my buddies finally said to me, well, these wings are really damn good.
02:34Like, they're better than the ones we're driving halfway across the state to go pick up.
02:38You know, you just sold that other company.
02:39You ain't doing nothing right now.
02:40Why don't you just put a wing joint here in Waterbury, Connecticut for us so we don't got to go pick up wings.
02:46It's just one of those right things at the right moment.
02:49And that night, I just started kind of putting the business plan together, seeing if this would become a reality.
02:55You know, and then I had everything nailed.
02:57I had the recipes.
02:58I had the theme.
02:59I knew I wanted to be QSR and takeout-centric.
03:03What I didn't have was the branding and the name.
03:07And that's where Justin comes in.
03:08So I don't know if you want to tell that part of the story.
03:10Yeah, so I remember, you know, I actually helped Matt and his dad in his first business.
03:15Had a little web design company with my partner.
03:18And I'm a creative guy.
03:20Like, I'm an entrepreneurial spirit, but I always had, like, the full-time gig.
03:23And anything that I did, really, for Wing It On in the early days was just kind of side hustle stuff, you know.
03:28But he brought me in for the branding of Wing It On.
03:31And I remember sitting in the coffee shop.
03:33We were talking about the business plan.
03:35And Matt was going into detail about, like, demographics and what we're going to hit.
03:39And I looked like I was zoning out because I was on my phone on GoDaddy.com.
03:42Trying to think of every chicken or wing pun on the planet as a domain, right?
03:48So he's like, are you listening to anything that I'm saying to you?
03:51I'm like, wing it on.
03:54Wing it on.com.
03:55He's like, wing it on.com.
03:56He's like, that's available?
03:57I'm like, that's available.
03:58Let's go.
03:59I was like, just buy that domain.
04:00That's too good of a name.
04:01Buy that domain.
04:02So that's the story of how Wing It On the name started.
04:05But I remember, I'm also, like, my background is financial services.
04:08And I mentioned side hustle.
04:10The night that the Wing It On sign got installed in Waterbury, I drove with my wife.
04:16And I remember, like, the light was on.
04:18I'm like, that's the logo I designed.
04:20And it was just like this moment, like, this is going to be something.
04:23I don't know yet, but this is going to be something.
04:26So I think the scary part, I mean, this show is for an entrepreneur.
04:29I have Cali Barbecue.
04:30We have restaurants that are operating right now.
04:33I've been in business for 18 years.
04:35We talk about taking that jump off the entrepreneurial cliff.
04:39And so many people that watch the show, maybe they're thinking about opening up a restaurant.
04:42Maybe they make some great food and they have a buddy that tells them, hey, yeah, you should get into this crazy business that we all know.
04:50Bring me to the tough times, like the beginning of, like, you know, when it goes from seeing the sign, because we all know as restaurant openers, once you see that open.
05:00If you build it, they will come.
05:01You know, Kevin Costner, the allure of if you build it, if you build it, they won't come.
05:07It actually takes a lot of blood, sweat, tears to get to where you guys are now.
05:12But bring me back to the beginning of, like, some of those dark times.
05:15I mean, when we started the business, I was luck.
05:17I was beyond blessed.
05:18I didn't know a lot about the restaurant industry, but we were in the black making money by month two.
05:22Wow.
05:22And I didn't know that was, you know, uncommon.
05:24That's impressive.
05:25But, I mean, that involved, I was working 80 hours a week behind the fryer.
05:30How much were you getting paid?
05:31Nothing.
05:32Getting burned up with oil and everything like that.
05:35You know, washing dishes at two in the morning.
05:38But, yeah, no, I mean, it was all worth it because we were building something that would become the franchise model.
05:44So, I think when you talk about, like, the tough times, I mean, the hard work, I mean, I was brought up on hard work.
05:49That wasn't hard for me.
05:51I think the hard times came when we first started franchising because we really didn't know what the heck we were doing.
05:55We probably did it, I would say, probably two or three years earlier than we should have.
05:59I thought I had some good documentation of our systems and processes, but we needed a lot more capital.
06:05Justin and I tried to wear all 9,000 hats.
06:08And our early, you know how it is.
06:09You franchise, right?
06:10When you start franchising, you're nothing to nobody until you start getting that snowball rolling down the hill.
06:15So, the first franchisees aren't going to be, like, these multi-unit, big-time guys.
06:20They're not going to take a shot on some company that just filed their FDD last week.
06:23So, the first few franchisees, they need a lot more hand-holding.
06:27They're new to franchising.
06:28They're new to restaurants.
06:29And that's where I think we hit kind of our first roadblock is, you know, trying to support these people that needed a heck of a lot more support than we could give.
06:38And, you know, it was tough.
06:39We had some franchisees in the early days.
06:40How many stores did you have once you started franchising?
06:43We had two.
06:43Two stores.
06:44Two stores when we started franchising.
06:45And how long did it take to get to two stores?
06:48What was it?
06:49About a year and a half.
06:49A year and a half.
06:50Yeah, to get that second one open.
06:51Yep.
06:51So, they had a lot of early success in the first store.
06:55Yeah.
06:55Because it was the first wing joint in Waterbury.
06:58Was it a good location?
06:59Or is it just because it was the first?
07:01I wouldn't say it was the best location, but I think everybody knew about it.
07:03Yeah.
07:04It was cheap rent.
07:04Our rent was $1,000 a square foot.
07:06Sweet.
07:07Gross lease.
07:08No triple nets.
07:09$1,000 out of the pipe.
07:10So, that helps.
07:12Even though it wasn't, like, super polished, like, you guys did a lot for, like, community
07:16involvement.
07:16I remember going in and seeing, like, each high school of the city.
07:20Waterbury has a lot of high schools for some reason.
07:21Every high school had their own flag.
07:23Remember you guys did that?
07:24Yeah.
07:24And, like, people would just come in and students would come in and they'd want to sign the flag.
07:29So, little things like that just, like, pulled people in.
07:31And I think they just really liked Matt and his family and they were just hard workers and
07:35they were the wing nuts.
07:36Yeah.
07:36My dad's one of those guys who knows everybody in town.
07:38So, like, he spread the word.
07:39So, like, day one we had a line.
07:40We actually ended up shutting down three days after we opened because we were overwhelmed.
07:44Like, our first opening was on a Wednesday and we sold out by, like, 3 o'clock and, like,
07:52the ticket times were two hours and people were already.
07:54Were you on the line?
07:55Yeah.
07:56Oh, yeah.
07:56Yeah.
07:57I was just, I didn't work in restaurants.
07:59I was just sweating profusely not knowing if this was just the end of us.
08:02We're just going to go out of business in a day.
08:04But it was actually, we opened August 31st.
08:06That was Labor Day weekend.
08:08We ended up shutting down on Labor Day and just regrouping, kind of just fixing a few things
08:12in the kitchen and just kind of re-strategizing how we were going to be able to handle that volume.
08:17And thankfully, I had a manager who was a buddy of mine in college and he worked in restaurants
08:21and it was really helpful that I brought some people with actual food service experience
08:25in early on.
08:27We made a lot of mistakes with the franchising stuff early on.
08:30Like what?
08:31Well, you know, like Matt said, you're nothing to nobody, right?
08:34So, when you get somebody who's interested, right?
08:37Yeah.
08:37You're like, you know, you can't necessarily say, you can't be so selective when you have
08:42somebody who's going to give you a check because, you know, you have to fund the business.
08:46So, I think those learnings of like, who do you let into the system?
08:50Who do you not?
08:51Who's going to be a great fit for the culture, right?
08:53That's what you really should be focusing on.
08:55But we wouldn't have known that unless we made all those mistakes.
08:59So, mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake is what makes you a champion at the
09:04end of the day.
09:05I think we got a little too addicted to bootstrapping.
09:08Like a lot of people are proud of bootstrapping, right?
09:10The owner-operator badge is a serious, it's a serious problem, honestly, because like
09:14in the beginning, you wear it as a badge of honor that you do wear 9,000 hats and that
09:18you are on the line and you're doing the marketing and the sales and the hiring and the firing
09:22and the insurance and literally everything.
09:25But then you can't work on the business.
09:27Right.
09:28You know?
09:28Yeah.
09:29Yeah.
09:29So, eventually you have to graduate from that, you know, mentality of, hey, like, we're
09:34so proud of ourselves.
09:35Look at us.
09:35We bootstrapped our way here.
09:37But at some point, to support franchisees and to scale the system, you need to either
09:42bring in outside capital or bring in people who have done this before.
09:46And that's kind of like, you know, transition to where we ended up today with Craveworthy.
09:50That's kind of the inflection point Justin and I had is we could keep plodding along, opening
09:53one or two stores a year, working 80 to 90 hours a week.
09:57Or we could find a strategic partner that has done this before, that has the resources,
10:02the support, and the knowledge to take this thing national like we know it deserves to be.
10:07So, before we get to the Craveworthy Greg Majewski story, I want to hear about the hardware.
10:13The hardware, baby.
10:14The championships.
10:14Well, that's part of the story.
10:16That is part of the story.
10:18That was 2022.
10:19We went to the National Buffalo Wing Festival in Buffalo, New York.
10:22You got invited.
10:23We got invited by Drew Serza, who's the wing king.
10:26He's the guy who founded the National Wing Festival in Buffalo, New York.
10:30And it's really hard to get into.
10:32They don't just let you in.
10:33There's no just open registration.
10:35He handpicks the best restaurants in the country that are really authentic to the Buffalo Wing.
10:41And after reaching out to him a few years back, he finally had heard a bunch of PR and media about us.
10:46And we opened the food truck.
10:47We opened the, yeah.
10:48Tell that story about it.
10:48Yeah, so on top of all the franchising headaches we had, we decided we were going to open a food truck, too.
10:54And that was going to be a corporate-run food truck.
10:57Yeah.
10:57And then we were spending another 40 hours a week on a food truck, too.
11:00We actually got some pretty good publicity out of that.
11:02I think that's how Drew kind of pinged us and got on his map.
11:06So, we're forever known as two guys who started a wing food truck in Connecticut to him.
11:10That's how he introduces us to this day.
11:11We'll never shake the food truck.
11:15Yeah.
11:15But, yeah, so that was how we got invited to the festival.
11:22We got on Drew Sures' map of that.
11:23Did you know that Toast powers over 140,000 restaurants across the United States, Canada, and UK?
11:31It's an incredible company.
11:32I'm on the Toast customer advisory board.
11:34They are proud sponsors of this show, Restaurant Influencers.
11:37We couldn't do it without their support.
11:39They power our barbecue restaurants in San Diego.
11:42If you have questions about Toast, if you're thinking about bringing Toast on to be your primary technology partner at your restaurants, please reach out to me.
11:51I'm happy to get a local Toast representative to take care of you.
11:55You can reach me at Sean P. Welchef on Instagram.
11:58Once again, thank you to Toast for believing in the power of technology, the power of storytelling, the power of hospitality.
12:05Back to the show.
12:06And then bring me into the festival because we have a barbecue concept in San Diego.
12:11So we know how competitive these are.
12:14It's a camaraderie.
12:15Everybody's in it.
12:15The pit bosses, you're all like, yeah, yeah, this is cool.
12:17But then as soon as it's time for the awards, it's like, whoa.
12:20Yeah.
12:20You kind of want to win.
12:21You want to win.
12:21It's very serious.
12:22But the way we got in was the sponsorship first.
12:25So it was when Wing Zone sold to Capriottis.
12:29Capriottis decided, Wing Zone was the headline sponsor of the National Chicken Wing Eating Championship, which is, a lot of people don't know.
12:36They know the hot dog eating competition at Coney Island is the big one.
12:40A lot of people don't know that the second most popular eating competition is the one they do at the wing festival for chicken wings.
12:45So Wing Zone was the sponsor.
12:47Capriottis bought them, and they decided they were going to pull out of that sponsorship.
12:50So it was like two months before the Wink Fest went off, and Drew just called us, and he's like, hey, guys, I got an opportunity.
12:58I don't want to put a big national chain in here.
13:00Do you guys want to do this sponsorship?
13:02I'm like, thanks, Drew.
13:03There's no way we could afford it.
13:04Yeah.
13:04We have no business doing that.
13:06Yeah.
13:06Yeah.
13:07He ended up, he's like, no, he's like, I want you guys here.
13:09He's like, whatever, name your price.
13:10So we ended up getting into the National Wing Festival as the headline sponsor.
13:15You know, we had Joey Chestnut up there.
13:17Talk about all your skis a little bit.
13:18Seriously?
13:19Yeah.
13:20So that's how we started the first year.
13:21But then the second year, we went back, and we actually had time to plan, and we decided we were going to, you know, enter the sauce competition.
13:28So year one, we're sponsored the big event.
13:30We just showed up, like, you know, executive team going on stage making a little announcement.
13:34But we're like, man, we need to get here.
13:37We need to put our tent in with Restaurant Row.
13:40And Drew's like, yes, definitely.
13:42That's what I ultimately want for you guys to be here doing.
13:45So when you're a restaurant serving your sauces, because the festival provides all the chicken.
13:50Every restaurant that gets the same chicken, you're saucing them with your sauce, and you're serving the guests as they come up to your tent.
13:55Yep.
13:56Those sauces is what you're going to enter into the taste test.
13:59They're your best stuff, you know.
14:01So you enter in, you know, you pick, like, four or five categories you want to enter into.
14:07We always pick medium buffalo, hot buffalo, and then either a barbecue or, like, a savory.
14:13So four years in a row, we took home first place trophies for three times for our traditional medium buffalo and one time for our extra hot buffalo.
14:23Wow.
14:24In the mecca of the wing.
14:26The award that all these restaurants want to win, which is the traditional medium buffalo award.
14:31Wow.
14:31Because it's the homage to the original buffalo sauce that came out of the Anchor Bar.
14:36That's the one.
14:37If you're a wing nut, that's your go-to sauce at any wing joint to see if this place is credible or not.
14:43What makes a legitimate buffalo?
14:44What makes a legitimate?
14:45Medium buffalo?
14:45Traditional medium buffalo.
14:46Traditional.
14:47What makes it legit?
14:49What makes yours legit?
14:50What makes anyone that's watching this for a wing nut?
14:52Do I have another?
14:53I want the whole recipe right now.
14:56So you've seen our logo.
14:58It's orange, right?
14:59Yes.
14:59And there's a reason that our logo is orange.
15:01Because real, authentic buffalo sauce should be orange, not bright red.
15:06It's not some red corn syrup goo that comes out of a bottle.
15:08But when you mix Frank's Red Hot with real butter, it's orange.
15:13It's not red.
15:13Yes.
15:14So that's why our logo is orange.
15:15So you can't just buy something that's ready to use off the shelf.
15:19Like, that's the point of differentiation is in QSR.
15:23I don't think anybody else is making buffalo sauce in the store.
15:26You know, we still have ranges in the store where our staffs cook the sauce every day fresh.
15:32And we use that as a buffalo base that we then create the other sauces from.
15:36But, yeah, it's not rocket science.
15:37It's Frank's Red Hot.
15:38It's butter.
15:39It's garlic powder.
15:39And there's a couple other little secret ingredients I can't tell you today.
15:42But, yeah.
15:43It's just making it fresh from scratch.
15:44How did it feel to actually get recognized, that first trophy?
15:49It was surreal.
15:50Yeah.
15:50I mean, the first year was surreal.
15:51And then the second year, back to back, we were like, how?
15:54We were like, this is unbelievable.
15:56Yeah.
15:57Yeah, we were literally competing against Anchor Bar.
15:59They're entering their sauce, the original buffalo sauce that was invented in the 60s, against that.
16:05And we end up winning first place.
16:07It was super surreal.
16:07The best wing restaurants across the country are here, and they want to win this award.
16:11We just won it twice in a row.
16:12Yeah.
16:13And then three times.
16:14And then the third time, and then the fourth time.
16:16Yeah.
16:16So we had nine trophies in four years total.
16:18Wow.
16:19So tell me the Greg Majusti story.
16:22So that kind of ties in.
16:23So that was 2021 is when we got the sponsorship.
16:272022 is the year that we did the sponsorship, and we entered our sauces in the competition.
16:32And that was, you know, starting to come out of COVID.
16:35And that was obviously a rough time for everybody.
16:37Probably took 20 years off our lives.
16:39So we had an inflection point where Justin and I-
16:41I was not as bald before.
16:43I don't think I was either.
16:44I don't know.
16:45I'm bald there.
16:45I don't know.
16:45You are.
16:47So Justin and I had kind of a conversation.
16:49We were like, look, we keep doing what we're doing.
16:51Yeah.
16:51Plotting along, bootstrapping, being all proud of it.
16:54But, you know, opening one or two stores a year.
16:56Or we could go out and we could start to seek some strategic partnership that's going
17:00to be able to accelerate this brand and take it to the levels we truly believe it can get
17:04to.
17:05And we decided to let's go all in and let's find a partner.
17:08We had a couple people come and talk to us, but the fitness didn't feel right.
17:12It was people that are either just private equity or just sharks.
17:15And, you know, they didn't really have any operational bones.
17:18And then finally, I decided to go to the Restaurant Finance and Development Conference in Las Vegas.
17:22Wow.
17:22And I was actually supposed to meet someone else out there, a group from California.
17:28And the lead partner blew me off.
17:30I was down waiting in the lobby.
17:31I was fuming mad.
17:33We were like, this is like do or die situation, too.
17:36Like, we were banking on this.
17:37This had to happen.
17:38Yeah.
17:39Like, just blew me off.
17:40Just, I texted him.
17:41He said, hey, sorry, I tied up.
17:43I can't make the meeting, whatever.
17:44So I'm just standing in the lobby like fuming mad.
17:47And the head of our PR company at the time saw me.
17:51And he's like, Matt, what's going on?
17:52You look all upset.
17:53I'm like, oh, I came all the way here.
17:54I was supposed to meet with this guy.
17:55I bought a plane ticket and, you know, three nights in a hotel for nothing.
17:59This guy blew me off.
18:01He's like, well, where are you meeting him for?
18:02I'm like, we're looking for, you know, a partner.
18:03We're looking for a strategic partner or somebody can inject some capital.
18:07He's like, you got to come to my happy hour.
18:08You got to come to my happy hour.
18:09There's somebody there I want you to meet.
18:11So I said, all right, all right.
18:12I have nothing else going on.
18:14So I walked down the street to whatever bar they were having that happy hour at.
18:17And he introduced me to Greg Majewski.
18:20And Greg was just like, hello, tell me your story.
18:23So I started telling him, you know, winging on.
18:25And I didn't think he gave a crap.
18:26He was listening.
18:27He was on his phone.
18:29And I guess he looked this up.
18:30And he saw the PR, the news about us winning first place,
18:35best traditional buffalo sauce at the National Wing Festival.
18:37And then all of a sudden his eyes lit up.
18:39Yeah.
18:39And he's like, okay, I'm interested now.
18:41And then he started telling me a little bit about Craveworthy Brands
18:44and how their philosophy is if he's going to have a wing restaurant,
18:49he wants to have the best darn wings.
18:51It's got to be truly Craveworthy.
18:53And that's no matter what he does.
18:54It's going to be hot chicken.
18:55If it's going to be pizza, pasta, burgers, whatever he does,
18:59it's got to be truly Craveworthy.
19:01So he said, all right, looks like you guys got good food.
19:03Let's check out one of your stores.
19:04I was living in North Carolina at the time.
19:07He flew to North Carolina, checked out one of our stores,
19:10had lunch with me and Justin, loved the product, loved the brand,
19:15saw some things that he could definitely help us fix.
19:17We kept the conversation going.
19:19And then in early 2023, we struck a deal to come in as one of the first brands
19:23to join the Craveworthy portfolio.
19:24That's incredible.
19:25Yeah, it's been awesome since.
19:27And tell me, what are you guys doing now with Craveworthy and with Wing It On?
19:30So I'm still the brand president of Wing It On,
19:33but I'm also helping out a little bit on franchise development.
19:36So I'm still VP of franchise development and franchise operations,
19:39helping with our East Coast brands over there.
19:41But I'm still remaining as president of Wing It On as well.
19:44Still heavily involved in Wing It On,
19:46but more on the franchise development, specifically marketing.
19:49But I get to handle marketing for all the brands.
19:52Any brand that Craveworthy brands is franchising.
19:55So all those mistakes that we made paid off.
19:58I learned a lot how to market franchises and really target the audience
20:01and make sure your messaging is on point.
20:04At the end of the day, a franchise candidate just wants to see
20:08what they're going to get for their money.
20:10And if you could simply explain that to them,
20:13either visually or through the messaging with some clear call to actions,
20:16it makes it a heck of a lot easier.
20:18But what makes it even easier than that is having world-class brands
20:23that are performing every day throughout the country.
20:26So that's where the operations and Greg's playbook comes into play.
20:30Whatever had to happen for Wing It On in those early days
20:33when Craveworthy first came in and took over has helped amplify things.
20:38So, for example, the logo, it was redesigned for the better.
20:43It was simplified.
20:44It was bolder, a little bit brighter color orange.
20:46The interior graphics, right?
20:49We changed the layout and the decor of the stores
20:51to just be a little bit more multi-unit look and feel.
20:55We tweaked the menu, right?
20:56We put combos and family packs and larger platters up front
21:01rather than making those sub-modifiers deep within the items themselves
21:07just to get the average check value up.
21:10So that's the little things that came into fruition
21:13with the expertise of the Craveworthy playbook.
21:16It sounds like minutiae, but it all adds up.
21:18I know.
21:19It's a pretty fun experience.
21:20We just never put the frosting on the cake,
21:21and that's kind of what Craveworthy helped us do.
21:23It's like they knew we had a great product, so he didn't come in.
21:26Greg didn't come in and just wipe our menu and change all of our sauces.
21:28Obviously, we're out there winning awards.
21:30But we want to scale this thing and take it nationally,
21:32and there's some changes that need to be made,
21:33and there's some expertise that you don't know what you don't know.
21:36So, you know, the same thing I tell my franchisees.
21:40It's great to learn from your mistakes,
21:42but it's easier and a heck of a lot cheaper to learn from other people's mistakes.
21:45I think that's actually a Warren Buffett quote.
21:47So I want to give a special shout-out to Toast.
21:49They're our technology partner.
21:51They invested in this show, believed in this show,
21:53sponsored this show, Restaurant Influencers.
21:55Last year, we actually got to interview Shaquille O'Neal,
21:59thanks to Sam Stanovic, at the Big Chicken Conference for this show.
22:04Toast is now a part of the Craveworthy ecosystem.
22:08Can you share a little bit about technology and how you guys view technology?
22:12We were actually an early adopter of Toast.
22:13Yeah, 2017.
22:14We started with Toast 2017.
22:15Sweet.
22:16We didn't get converted to Toast after Craveworthy.
22:17Look at that.
22:18We were like an OG.
22:18You were early adopters.
22:19OG.
22:20That's early before Cali Barbecue.
22:22Look at you.
22:23Yeah, I mean, I wish I had thought of the unboxing.
22:26We were so early.
22:27Unboxing video.
22:27There you go.
22:28We were so early that we were a little tiny company.
22:30They actually had Justin on stage at their national convention in Boston.
22:34Oh, very cool.
22:34I was trying to get into their customer retention marketing program that they do.
22:40So they hooked us up.
22:42So tell us about technology and how you guys view it.
22:45I mean, it not only got us through the pandemic, it excelled us.
22:50We had record sales because we had the right partners lined up.
22:54We had Toast as our POS, right?
22:56And then we said, okay, Toast, what kind of integration partners do you have for loyalty,
23:00mobile app, online ordering?
23:01And we just stuck to the playbook, the Toast playbook.
23:04We bolted on other partners that all just work seamlessly.
23:08So we were actually getting curbside, online ordering, anything that you needed to survive
23:15the pandemic.
23:16We were the first ones to have it.
23:18And I remember you pushed me.
23:19He pushed me to get a full tech stack before the pandemic.
23:23And I was like, ah, we just don't have the money.
23:25And he was just, he was relentless.
23:27He would not let it go.
23:28I just, because I couldn't, I couldn't see it.
23:30I mean, we had like this dinky loyalty app that was not even integrated.
23:33I'm like, this is not just a thing for somebody to punch a card.
23:37Like this is a revenue generating channel.
23:39But it was a game changer because during the pandemic, you saw so many brands trying to
23:44rapidly reverse engineer loyalty solutions and a full tech stack.
23:47We were just worried.
23:48We didn't have to figure that.
23:49We didn't have to worry about that because we already had it done.
23:51We could talk, we could figure out how to just adjust our menu, right?
23:55Bring in new products, help the franchisees make money.
23:59Tech stack's already done.
24:00It's a beautiful thing.
24:02It's amazing.
24:03So the last thing I'd want to ask about is storytelling.
24:06Obviously, we created this show.
24:07We have a barbecue business.
24:09We turned it into a media company.
24:10We interview the best storytellers on earth.
24:12You guys have an incredible story, inspirational story.
24:16How do you guys view storytelling from the lens of not only Craveworthy as the marketing that
24:21you do for Craveworthy, but individually for all the brands now that you have, what, 20
24:26brands in the Craveworthy portfolio that you have to tell 20 different stories, but also
24:31one unified story?
24:33Yeah, I think that storytelling as an art or a skill is very underrated.
24:40I think that, you know, I wish people would feel more comfortable telling their story.
24:46I know this is my own personal perspective, but I don't always like to get in front of
24:50cameras.
24:51I don't always like to talk, but we do have an amazing story, and it's about time the
24:55world heard it, right?
24:56So if you just kind of get yourself out of the way and just realize that what you have
25:03to say, what you have to share, what you've experienced, what you've experienced needs
25:09to be shared with other people, and the more you can do that, the better, you know?
25:14You've got to get out of your own way.
25:15100%.
25:15Yeah, and the, I mean, anybody that's watching this, listening to this, no one's coming.
25:21Ideally, you start telling your own story, and then people start to take notice.
25:25You guys made the steps.
25:26You went to the festivals.
25:27You got the food truck.
25:28You started doing the work, and now you're getting the opportunities to build an incredible
25:32company as part of an incredible portfolio.
25:34Any lasting words that you'd like to tell an entrepreneur that's listening to this that
25:40maybe has an idea to jump off the cliff and get into this crazy restaurant business?
25:45Yeah.
25:46My advice, if I had to do it all over again, is just do whatever it takes to surround
25:51yourself with people that support you and that strengthen your weaknesses.
25:55So, like, if I tried to do everything without bringing my partner, Justin, on, we would, like,
25:59again, I would be still in a 700-square-foot hole in the wall in Waterbury, Connecticut,
26:02today, like, it's the people that are going to accelerate you.
26:05It's people over everything else.
26:08Yeah.
26:08I mean, Matt said it before, also, like, the balance, getting, like, two partners that
26:12have an amazing balance of personalities, amazing balance of skill sets, it's, like,
26:18it's as you could dream come true, man.
26:20I can't imagine partnering with anybody else.
26:22Yeah.
26:22Yeah.
26:24There it is.
26:25As always, stay curious.
26:27Get involved.
26:28Don't be afraid to ask for help.
26:29Check out Wing It On.
26:30We'll put links to all of their socials if you're interested in becoming a franchisee.
26:34There'll be links for how you can do that if you're interested in Craveworthy Brands.
26:38You can learn more about that, and you can check out our previous episodes with Greg Majewski,
26:43with John Taffer, with Shaquille O'Neal.
26:46We've had some pretty epic work here, and we're only getting started.
26:51It's, like, day one.
26:52It's, like, day one.
26:53Every day.
26:54Appreciate you guys.
26:55We'll catch you next episode.
27:00Thank you for listening.
27:01If you've made it this long, you are part of the community.
27:04You're part of the tribe.
27:05We can't do this alone.
27:07We started.
27:07No one was listening.
27:08Now we have a community of digital hospitality leaders all over the globe.
27:12Please check out our new series called Restaurant Technology Substack.
27:17It's a Substack newsletter.
27:18It's free.
27:19It's some of our deep work on the best technology for restaurants.
27:22Also, go to YouTube and subscribe to Cali BBQ Media.
27:26Cali BBQ Media on YouTube.
27:28We've been putting out a lot of new, original content.
27:30Hopefully, you guys like that content.
27:32If you want to work with us, go to etheshow.media.
27:35We show up all over the United States, some international countries.
27:39We would love to work with you and your growing brand on digital storytelling.
27:43You can reach out to me anytime, at Sean P. Welchef, on Instagram.
27:46I'm weirdly available.
27:48Stay curious.
27:48Get involved.
27:49Don't be afraid to ask for help.
27:50We'll catch you next episode.
27:52Bye-bye.