1165: Scott Lawton, Co-Founder, former CEO, and Chairman at Bartaco

Summary

Restaurant Unstoppable Episode 1165: Scott Lawton, Co-Founder, Former CEO & Chairman at Bartaco

Date: March 10, 2025
Host: Eric Cacciatore
Guest: Scott Lawton, Co-Founder, former CEO, and Chairman at Bartaco

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the lessons, philosophies, and operational strategies behind Bartaco's dynamic growth, as told by Scott Lawton, its co-founder and now chairman. The conversation explores personal reflection, leadership, data-driven innovation, brand building, scaling challenges, equitable practices, and the current and future landscape of hospitality—making this a must-listen for any aspiring or established restaurateur.

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Main Themes

• The value of introspection and radical transparency in leadership
• Innovating business and service models for long-term sustainability
• Building scalable, lifestyle-driven brands versus traditional chains
• Leveraging technology and data while protecting ownership and independence
• Navigating organizational growth, equity, and partnership structures
• The evolving labor market, legislative hurdles, and future-proofing hospitality

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Leadership Philosophy: Introspection & Transparency

• Scott’s Success Mantra:
  "Be introspective. Emotional intelligence still matters. And talk straight and require that the people that work with you." (03:49, Scott Lawton)

• On Organizational Culture:
  Lawton stresses humility, learning from mistakes, and a non-punitive environment—“sniffing our pits”—for self-assessment. He likens Bartaco’s team to a professional sports team, not a family, with learning moments made collective and constructive.
  [00:00, 05:19, 06:17]

• Notable Quote:
  "Don't correct the person, correct the process… mistakes are opportunities. Mistakes are ways to get better."
  (05:10–06:17, Lawton)

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2. Growth Metrics & Operational Structure

• Bartaco at a Glance in 2025:

  • 34 locations (soon to be 35)
  • $5.2M–$5.5M annual unit volume (AUV)
  • Prime costs mid-50s (%)
  • Store-level EBITDA in the 30+% range
    (07:10–10:47)

• Strategy: Prioritizing value and guest frequency over short-term margin gains, intentionally steering clear of aggressive price hikes to preserve guest loyalty.
  "We really, really wanted to make sure that we were staying engaged with our customers and offering them value and driving frequency over profit, short term profit." (09:48, Lawton)

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3. Service Model Evolution

• Server-Leader Model:
  Reimagined service structure: eliminating traditional server roles, favoring a zone-based, hospitality-first “service leader” who floats, reads the room, and provides personalized guest interactions while tech handles ordering/logistics.
  [41:58–43:16]

  "When you don't have to take the orders, it frees you up to do those things." (43:02, Lawton)

• Legislative Hurdles: The difficulty of standardizing labor/tip models across markets; advocacy for adaptable structures and shared equity.
  [43:25–45:22]

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4. Origin Story & Career Trajectory

• Scott’s Restaurant Journey:

  • Early days grinding in the trenches—Tribeca Grill, Buckhead Life, Marriott Group—learning cost controls, negotiation, and scaling basics.
    [12:28–16:21]
  • Key early lesson: “If the restaurant is what you love, then you need to get great at it.”
    (13:01, advice from Scott's father)

• Rising Through Ranks: From purchasing and metrics (the “linen report”) to digitally tracked KPIs, Lawton’s data-driven approach laid foundations for Bartaco’s innovation.
  (20:27–22:05, 22:14–22:53)

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5. Technology, Data & Protecting Ownership

• Tech Stack & Data Strategy:

  • Emphasis on integrated, POS-agnostic, and processor-agnostic, cloud-based solutions that preserve data and customer ownership.
  • Challenges: Data silos, technology consolidation by large conglomerates, and risks of becoming beholden to outside tech giants.
    (24:03–33:17)
  • “If AI is really the biggest technological thing to ever happen in our lifetimes, the fuel that it runs on is data.”
    (23:13, Lawton)

• Bartaco’s Tech Investments:

  • Early adopter of customer data platforms (Wisely), moving to OLO, and piloting proprietary UX for better data utilization across guest touchpoints (e.g., NFC, surveys, loyalty tokens).
    (34:34–41:30)
  • Gamified training via One Huddle—making information sticky, leveraging analytics to spot and nurture talent.
    (35:15–36:55)

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6. Equity, Scaling, and Partnership

• Negotiating Equity:

  • Lawton’s jump to Barcelona/Bartaco was predicated on direct negotiation for higher salary and Class C shares—“stake in the upside” model.
    (47:24–53:28)

• Lessons Learned:

  • Be diligent: “A lot of people promise shares... and people become disillusioned. So you have to be careful.” (52:14, Lawton)
  • Equity needs to be earned, clear benchmarks and guardrails are crucial. Not everyone has an “ownership mentality.”
    (54:14–54:49)

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7. Building a Brand vs. a Chain

• Defining a Lifestyle Brand:

  • Bartaco is positioned as a “lifestyle brand” not a chain—“We started with, what do we want this place to feel like?” Bartaco's approach: inspire a coastal, beachy, health-driven vibe, appealing to psychographics, not just demographics.
    (58:07–60:55)

• Quote:
  "Sears is a chain, and Lululemon is a brand."
  (58:11, Lawton)

• Customer Experience Ethos:

  • The details, from menu choices (no queso, focus on coastal lightness) to use of chopsticks, are dictated by the brand’s emotional destination, not category expectations.
    (65:29–66:23)

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8. Scaling, Exits, & Organizational Structure

• Organizational Evolution Post-Acquisition:

  • Lawton’s journey saw Bartaco change hands (Del Frisco’s, El Caterton, Uncle Julio’s), illuminating the need for cultural fit in mergers and the unique challenges when parent company culture clashes with acquired brand DNA.
    (87:48–91:14)

• Support Structure:

  • Building a modern, digitized, “support center” (not “corporate”), emphasizing paperless processes, direct lines of operational communication, and data-centric decision-making.
    (93:45–96:50)
  • Key hires (e.g. Anthony as President), and empowering on-the-ground leadership (regional directors, VPs of Ops).

  "You don't want to play that telephone game because things get lost in the message. So the tighter you can keep it, the longer you can keep it. I recommend that." (99:31, Lawton)

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9. GM-Driven Loyalty & Guest Intelligence

• Philosophy:

  • Real loyalty is built around strong on-site leadership (GMs), not by shallow discount-driven loyalty programs. GMs enable the guest experience through presence, attention to detail, and empowerment via data.
    (101:25–103:32)

  "We don't sell tacos. We don't sell margaritas. We sell fun. We sell life. We sell a vibe." (102:32, Lawton)

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10. Restaurants as Social Fabric

• Industry as a Stepping Stone:

  • The restaurant’s role in coaching young people, instilling tangible values and social skills, and providing first-job experiences that shape lives.
    (75:56–77:35)

  "The most common job that people have had in the US is restaurants. ...We have such an opportunity with young people to get them started... These are all skills that will carry them through the rest of their lives." (76:55, Lawton)

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Memorable Quotes

• On Humility & Growth:
  "I'm better because I'm not the most important person in the room anymore." (104:54, Lawton)

• On Brand:
  "We started with, what do we want this place to feel like? We didn't know it was gonna be tacos." (59:18, Lawton)

• On Partnership:
  "If you're giving somebody a piece of your business, there's an expectation... you need to find the right DNA with people that really appreciate what that is." (55:25, Lawton)

• On Tech Independence:
  "If you have it [data] carefully kept and well organized and not siloed, those will be the first ones to really benefit." (24:05, Lawton)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introspection & Team Learning: 00:00–06:17
• Bartaco Today & Economics: 07:10–10:47
• Evolution of Service Model: 41:58–43:16
• Equity/Partnership Structures: 47:24–54:49
• Brand vs. Chain Discussion: 58:07–61:34
• Acquisitions & Organizational Rebuild: 87:48–96:50
• GM-driven Loyalty: 101:25–103:32

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Resources, Tools, & Companies Mentioned

• Technology: OLO, Wisely, One Dine, One Huddle, Micros, Craftable, Great Plains (accounting), Seven Shifts
• Books: Power and Progress (re: technology and industry consolidation)
• Restaurant Brands: Bartaco, Barcelona Wine Bar, Urban Outfitters/Anthropologie (brand analogy), Angie’s, Havana Hot Chicken
• Peers to Follow: Jack Gibbons (Front Burner), Ford Fry, Rich from Mecha

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Actionable Takeaways

• Prioritize Introspection: Make honest, open feedback a team cornerstone.
• Invest in Tech (Wisely): Seek platforms that allow for true customer-data ownership and integration.
• Build a Brand, Not a Chain: Focus on the sensory and emotional experience, not just the menu.
• Equitable Partnerships: Create clear, structured equity models tied to performance and longevity.
• Futureproof for Laws & Labor: Be ready for legislative changes and workforce expectations—protect your people, and your business will thrive.

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Closing Thought

Hospitality businesses succeed when they tie together introspective leadership, innovative service, scalable and data-driven systems, and a unified sense of purpose. Bartaco’s journey, as told by Scott Lawton, is an inspiring blueprint for building not just restaurants, but enduring lifestyle brands and transformative teams.

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Connect with Scott Lawton:
Find Scott on LinkedIn (search “Scott Lawton, Bartaco”).
Bartaco: Website

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Subscribe to Restaurant Unstoppable for more transformative conversations—and make your restaurant dreams, unstoppable!

Transcript

[Scott Lawton]

How can we all learn from each other's mistakes in a safe way? It's a great question to ask and I think when you do that we can all sort of collectively, when we humble ourselves and we are sniffing our pits and being introspective, then we trust and we trust our leaders. Then we're in a position where we can grow faster and we can learn from the team faster. Because mistakes are opportunities, mistakes are ways to get better, and God knows we've made plenty. But but I think we've learned fast, we've pivoted well, and we're going to continue to do that.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Welcome to restaurant unstoppable. For 10 years and over 1,000 episodes, I've been traveling the country chasing word of mouth leads and having in person only long form discussions with the industry's finest owners and operators. Our mission is to inspire, empower and transform the restaurant industry by bridging the gap between this generation's leaders and the next. Listen to today's guests and so many others and get one step closer to becoming unstoppable. This episode is made possible by US Foods and did you know US Foods is hosting the Food Fanatics 2025 event at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's all going down between August 19th and 20thiet. This is going to be one you do not want to miss. I'm going to be there. I want you to be there. Here's what you got to do. Clock is ticking, so be ready to register on April 16th for the Food Fanatics 2025 show. To learn more, head to www.usfoods.com foodfanatics2025 or just go to usfoods.com and you'll find the banner. Do you wish you could have all of your restaurant needs and solutions under one roof? Well, you can. It's called Restaurant System. And with Restaurant Systems Pro you get accounting systems, budgeting systems, costing systems, purchasing systems, inventory management systems, labor management systems, training systems, and systems to create and implement checklists. And on top of all this, Restaurant Systems Pro has their own native general ledger and they're in the process of launching their own pos, which they are so appropriately naming served because that's exactly what they do. To learn more, head over to restaurantunstoppable.com RS RSP where you can schedule your own demo, watch a demo that I did with Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley, or catch every and all testimonial we've ever recorded on the show. That's restaurantunstoppable.com RSP with excitement. Allow me to introduce to you today's guest, co founder, former CEO and chairman of Bar Taco, Scott Laughton. My man. Scott, are you feeling unstoppable today?

[Scott Lawton]

Feeling pretty good today. So, yeah, you know, we're almost out of February. Yeah, man.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I'm stoked to be here. To prepare for today's conversation, I went through the archives. I listened to Andy Forstheimer's episode 829. I listened to Sorry I said Anthony Forzeimer. Andy Forzeimer. And then Anthony Vetta. 976. These guys blew it out of the water, man. Like, I remember why I love the Bar Taco brand so much, and it's because these stories that I've captured in the past couple years. I was talking to the the boys over at Haven Hot Chicken. They said, if you haven't talked to Scott Lawton yet, you're missing out. So they made the introduction. I' here to get a third perspective of the Bar Taco story, and I cannot wait to get into it, man. I know it's going to be good. No pressure. But before we dive into who you are and how you got to where you are today, let's get that motivational inspirational ball rolling with a success quoter mantra. What do you got for us?

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. Be introspective. Emotional intelligence still matters. And talk straight and require that the people that work with you.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. When did you realize the importance of introspection?

[Scott Lawton]

You know, I would say it came in my 40s, I think, when I became a parent, and I realized that. That, you know, I didn't. I couldn't control everything, and I wasn't the most important person in the world. You know, Sniff, we call it in our company. Sniff your pits. We like to sniff our pits a lot. And, and we like to have a safe place where we can have those types of conversations. We can take an employee or a team member or a leader in the group and say, hey, you know, I don't agree with you. We both agree that we're going to do what's best for the customer, but I don't agree on the means. So let's have that conversation. You know, so it doesn't become personal. It becomes about the goal, and it becomes about us working together as a team to achieve the goal.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. Don't correct the person, correct the process. Right. And you're reminding me, you know, one of the biggest aha moments I had starting this podcast and learning is that behind every great restaurant is a great person. If you want a great restaurant, the work doesn't start. You don't get to work on your restaurant.

[Scott Lawton]

That's right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You get to work on you. And that compounds and spills into your restaurant. And that introspection is so important.

[Scott Lawton]

Well, it's funny, you know, I always say, people like to say we're a family in the business, and I don't like that we're not a family, because I can't fire my uncle. I can't fire my. My mom, But I can fire an employee. Or I could as a chairman. I mean, as a chairman, as a CEO, But I like to think as more of a professional sports team. You know, when you think about sports and athletics, when you're on the coaching field and say it's a soccer practice or whatever it may be, the coach blows the whistle. He doesn't pull the person who made the mistake over to the side and have a quiet conversation and do a annual review with them about how they could maybe play better soccer. No, he blows a whistle and he points it out to the entire team. And it's a learning moment for everyone.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, Sometimes he gets in your face and says, chewing tobacco in your eye.

[Scott Lawton]

That's right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Flashbacks to football practice.

[Scott Lawton]

But how, you know, how. How in business, can we. Can we. Can we do that? How can we all learn from each other's mistakes in a safe way? It's a great question to ask. And I think when you do that, we can all sort of collectively, when we humble ourselves and we are sniffing our pits and being introspective, then we trust and we trust our leaders. Then we're in a position where we can grow faster and we can learn from the team faster. Because mistakes are opportunities. Mistakes are ways to get better. And God knows we've made plenty. But. But I think we've learned fast. We've pivoted well, and we're going to continue to do that. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Great way to get this thing started. So before we dive into your specific story, your backstory, paint a picture. Where is Bar Taco today? When I last spoke to you? 20, 23. You're at 26 locations. You're averaging about six new openings a year. So are you at, like, 32 now?

[Scott Lawton]

Close. 34.

[Eric Cacciatore]

34.

[Scott Lawton]

Soon to be 35. Okay. So, yeah, we've grown. We've had a nice spurt of growth. The last six or seven restaurants are doing really well. There's been a lot of excitement around the brand coming to a lot of these markets. And that's been really great.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, you are in most of the markets I go to. And it's great because it's a brand I recognize and I love. So like, and I know what to expect and the food is so good and I don't know, I love seeing you guys when I'm on the road. So. And you know, when I spoke to Anthony in 2023, he said that your job was, you know, when you were the CEO was to basically build the train and his job was to make sure it stayed on schedule. You're the chairman today, so what's your job? What's your life look like today?

[Scott Lawton]

My job is to support Anthony. Well, my job in regard to Bartaco is to support Anthony as he's building the train.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So he knew the new CEO.

[Scott Lawton]

He's the new CEO. Yeah, Anthony has moved into that role and you know, from the day I hired him four years ago, I told him, I said, I am grooming you for this position. It doesn't mean you're going to get it, but if you work hard and you earn, will be there because this is not a long term plan for me. And Bartaco needs a young, strong leader that's, that's ready to continue to drive what's so great about the brand.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So this is technically your third exit as CEO?

[Scott Lawton]

Well, when, when we sold it to Del Frisco's.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's right.

[Scott Lawton]

I was the president of Bartaco and he was the CEO of Barteca. So I was running the entire Bar Taco brand. But we were under the umbrella of Barteco, which was also Barcelona.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, we'll get into all that. I don't want to get too far into that rabbit hole yet. But real quick, give us an idea of like the. Can you get into the unit economics, approximations, prime cost, percent profit to give us an idea of what you've achieved.

[Scott Lawton]

I mean, roughly, bar Tacos run between 5, 2 and 5, 5 AUVs. You know, I think. And what is, just what is that for?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Like.

[Scott Lawton]

Oh, I'm sorry, like 5.2 million to 5.5 million annual unit volume. That's around the average. And you know, our prime costs are typically in the mid-50s, you know, 55 to 56. In that range. We've seen it even lower at other times. You know, there, there's been some pressure and we, we did not react as much as everybody else in the last couple years. So we've taken a little bit.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Just when you have that room, you.

[Scott Lawton]

Know, we had the room and we felt like the consumer wasn't ready. And I think we've seen that all the pushback that other brands have gotten around price. We really, really wanted to make sure that we were staying engaged with our customers and offering them value and driving frequency over profit, short term profit.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it. So you gave total revenue on average, per unit. You gave prime costs. Where are we at with percent profit?

[Scott Lawton]

Well, we use a term which is called sleep. It. Oh, store level. Ebitda, essentially. You know, I, I don't know the exact number today. As the chairman, I don't have to follow it every day, but we, we run in, in the 30s.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay. And when you were the CEO, how long ago did you actually step back to chairman position?

[Scott Lawton]

In, In December, recently? Yeah, actually January.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Where were you. Where were those numbers in December?

[Scott Lawton]

I don't exactly know. I'd have to add 30.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Profit. I heard that correctly.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. I mean, that. We've been doing that for a long time. You know, I would say with the prime cost challenges, we might be a little bit under that.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right?

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I mean, that's a universal hurt right now. You are not alone. So I'm sure the listeners at home understand.

[Scott Lawton]

No, it's still, it's still a very healthy business with an incredibly great ebitda. You know, I think we will, we'll get through this winter and through all this. And, and, you know, we're, we're built for success. We're in a good place.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And there's a bunch of little nuggets I pulled out from my conversations with Andy and Anthony. And I think what you guys are doing with your, like, economics in terms of your, your service model.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is going to be the new normal, and I kind of hope it is, because it's kind of like we're just kind of operating this 1906 business model and, and we're just like, so, like, set in, like, repeating what those did, you know, that what those who came before us did in terms of how we have servers and full service. And it's just like, what are we doing? Like, like, is this sustainable?

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, we're still developing it. It's still a, a ongoing thing. Labor laws are changing. Labor laws are different in every, every state, so there's, there's multiple versions of it. But I do believe that we have to work leaner. Teamwork really matters and, you know, equity matters too. So. So as we continue to develop it, we're going to always use those types of goal posts to get there.

[Eric Cacciatore]

We have a lot to Cover, man. And I can't wait to get into it. So let's just get to where it makes sense to start sharing your story. So we're, I mean, I, I could go back as far back as 1996. I saw you're with the Marriott Restaurant Group. Is that a good place to start.

[Scott Lawton]

Or should we go? Sure. That's great. Yeah, I, you know, I was, I went up to New York in my 20s to work for Tribeca Grill, which was in the mid-90s. And that was an amazing time for me. It was, you know, I had college. I did six years at University of Georgia. Go Dogs. But at the end I didn't have a degree. And I say six years. Yeah. And I've had plenty of fun. But, you know, college wasn't for me. I always had a great restaurant job, though. And my dad sat me down at some point and he said, you don't want to be a red faced bartender when you're 40. And I know you think the money's good now, but it'll never change. And you need to figure out a way if the restaurant is what you love, then you need to get great at it. And the more we talked about that, we kind of, you know, I went to culinary school, which I graduated. But after that I realized, okay, maybe culinary school isn't this, like, it's not gonna launch me into some restaurant career. It's about who you work for. And, you know, Andy did the same thing. I think Andy went to France.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

But I have a similar story with New York. I flew up to Tribeca Grill eight times, begging for them to hire me as an intern for $400 a week. And so I finally got hired and got to work there as a steward in the basement purchasing. Show up at 6 in the morning, checking in salmon and making sure the facility was clean. And, you know, it was a $15 million a year business in 1995. So you can imagine that was real volume. Yeah. And I got to work with all of these chefs planning banquets, running the, running the a la carte service, chefs coming in for James Beard dinners. So I just was suddenly immersed in food and business and the hustle bustle of New York. And I loved it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you're there for about four years?

[Scott Lawton]

I was there for about two years.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Two years.

[Scott Lawton]

Two years. But it was just a high impression to me. I stayed close with those guys even after I left. I had moved back home to Atlanta where I was a manager for Buckhead Life.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Scott Lawton]

And then I finally ended up In Florida, working for big time restaurant group.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So real quick.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Biggest impression from the Marriott Group. What was the biggest influence they had on you?

[Scott Lawton]

There's so many, but I think they taught me true business skills. I suddenly learned how to negotiate with vendors.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I don't know what an invaluable skill, Right. Being steward. And those prime costs, getting a cost of goods down, weighing everything. Tracking inventory like that money is.

[Scott Lawton]

I was the guy. So. So they had this internship program, and there would be about six people in it every year. And I got put in the basement weighing food and doing that while all the other guys from Cornell were upstairs with sommelier jobs and the fancy stuff. They all fell out. I ended up staying around and at the same, you know, as. As sexy as it is that, you know, you think of the flash of the restaurant industry and wine and, you know, certifications and all these. I really liked being down in the pit with the chefs and the cooks and trying to actually make the business run. Grinders, you know, I learned to grind. I worked that. I would work that day job from 6 or 7 in the morning until 4. Then I'd throw on a waiter's jacket and try and earn a little money in the. In the evening so I could at least pay my rent. And I did that six days a week for two years. And I actually got offered a great promotion from them. But at the time, I needed to go home to my family, so I went, because there was stuff going on, and I went down there back to Atlanta. But I will never forget it. Tribeca is about to close in the next week or two. It's the end of an era.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Wow.

[Scott Lawton]

And there is such a network. Our regional director right here, Mike, the guy who was in the restaurant, you know, he's also a Tribeca alum. And I had Drew on the show. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I did not know what I was getting myself into. I'm going to. He was like. Like, I try not to psych myself out too much, but in that circumstance, I kind of wish I did a little more research.

[Scott Lawton]

Research. What a guy, right? Yeah, he is. He is a character. You know, to this day, I think he knows every single person that ever worked for him. And. And he taught me also how to treat people, how to treat employees, how to celebrate them, but hold them to high standards.

[Eric Cacciatore]

How does. How do you do that?

[Scott Lawton]

You're honest. You tell them the truth. But you. You make. You make sure that they know you're for them. Ultimately, it's not really about being for them. We're all for the same thing. We're for the customer. And if we're all for the customer, we share that. And at the end of the day, you do have to filter through people who have that gene and are willing to do that and the ones that aren't. But when you can get a team like that of people that are obsessed with doing a great job and making people happy and running a great business, when you can get all those people together, it's powerful.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. So two years with Myriad, I needed a quick stint at the Burkhead Restaurant Group in Atlanta.

[Scott Lawton]

That's right. I actually had cut my teeth at 15 working there. And I came back and managed the Atlanta fish market for a little while. Then I moved on down to Florida and that was. That was my next sort of big learning.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Seven years.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, seven years as a CEO for Big Time Restaurant.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So this is a big position for you to step into.

[Scott Lawton]

Well, I didn't step into that position. I stepped in as the assistant to the head chef and purchasing person.

[Eric Cacciatore]

All those years of the steward paid off, huh?

[Scott Lawton]

That's right. They had, I think at the time, 14 or 15 restaurants and there wasn't a lot of corporate infrastructure. They had kind of grown organically with multiple brands, but you could get away.

[Eric Cacciatore]

With them in the early 2000s.

[Scott Lawton]

That's right. And that was the thing back then. It was multi concept restaurant groups, you know. So after working at Buckhead Life, working for Myriad, I. I think I'd had the right sort of groundwork to see where they should be going in some directions. And I was able to kind of. I would grab whatever they'd let me do. So eventually they, they gave me the title and the position. I, I kind of worked my way into it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

This episode is made possible by US Foods. And did you know US Foods is hosting the Food Fanatics 2025 event at the Man Delay Bay Resort in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. It's all going down between August 19th and the 20th is every second counts. And that cannot be more true. If you want to be unstoppable, you really got to be intentional with your time. And there's no better way to be intentional with your time than going to this year's event. Because I'm going to be there and there's going to be so much going on. Here's what you can expect. Networking opportunities with 5000 industry peers. Live demos, giveaways, games and more. Celebrity chefs and keynote speakers. Billboard musical performance at the Mandalay beach, exclusive Zook nightclub reception. You can also sample the latest on trend dishes and what's an event without expert breakout sessions to learn and get inspired by. They'll be covering marketing, staffing, profitability in the future of food service. I know I'll be attending the training to retain session and there's also a dynamic pricing demystified session that I do not want to miss. It's time to get inspired, get connected, get fanatic. The clock is ticking. Be ready to register on April 16th for Food Fanatics 2025. To learn more, visit www.usfoods.com Food Fanatics 2025 or just go to usfoods.com you'll find the banners. So how do you go about navigating that kind of like almost demanding, like growth, right? Like you kind of grab whatever title you could like. How do you approach that?

[Scott Lawton]

The same way I did my internship, which is quietly come in and work hard and, and then take whatever opportunities are there and find ones that nobody even thought of.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So just knowing what could be the, what the job could look like done, right, and then maybe filling gaps that aren't.

[Scott Lawton]

I remember. I'll give you one little micro example. When I was doing the purchasing for Big Time Restaurant Group, I came up with the linen report.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Scott Lawton]

It's. You know, to this day I still remember the linen report, which was I was just basically measuring covers and napkins used in every restaurant and we suddenly realized we were using three. I think it was four napkins per customer. And we were spending, you know, a lot of money, maybe, I don't know, $500,000 on linen a year. And when we got it down to two napkins per customer, you'd think they don't only need one, but really, two is the best year ever.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean, I'm guilty. I am always dropping my napkin.

[Scott Lawton]

I know. And then they use it for bread and other things. But. But yeah, so. So to cut that in half by creating this usage report got me started super excited. And all of a sudden I just started grabbing everything and figuring out metrics. I got really interested in measuring things and I think that's been sort of a hallmark of my career is creating these sort of KPIs and even digitizing them to some degree. That allows our teams to really measure success. It's sort of that introspection digitized. It's real, it's there, it's real time. There's so much, you know, in the restaurant business, it's getting better. But, but think, back then there was no data, right?

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean, which is really interesting because as somebody who is a data driven individual, you must be like a kid in a candy shop right now with the technology and the, the data that's being spit out.

[Scott Lawton]

It's. Well, it sort of.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Or overwhelming drinking.

[Scott Lawton]

No, here's what I'll say is I want it to go faster and I do believe we're right kind of sort of standing at the edge of that. I believe data is super valuable. We have 4.2 million customers in our database with their, with their check history. The problem is we're not doing it enough with it yet. But I believe that AI is going to unlock that in huge ways. You know, it's funny, I was watching 60 Minutes Sunday night and Bill Gates was on and he said that the biggest technological breakthrough in his lifetime is AI.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, it's weird, man. It's like scary. It's like, I don't, it's like. Morla, are you familiar?

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Technology exponentially gets better.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think as human beings we're already struggling to keep up and it's only going to get faster and it's just like, what is going to happen? Like the overwhelm is there.

[Scott Lawton]

Right. You know, I agree, but I'm focused on professionally what can, what, what can we do with it? You know, how does it work for us? And you know, we're not there yet. But, but I can tell you just some simple facts is that if AI is really the biggest technological thing to ever happen in our lifetimes, the fuel that it runs on is data.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

So as a, as a brand, or as in Cobalt. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Which is kind of scary.

[Scott Lawton]

That's funny. But as, as a brand, you got to start to, to think now, okay, data hasn't been that valuable to us. I mean, we've tried, but, but everybody, you know, data siloed and there's so many, all these different connects that it's really hard. It's siloed in the marketing departments, it's siloed in the pos. It's all over the place and nobody knows what to do with it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's there though. It's in storage.

[Scott Lawton]

You know, that's right. But, you know, so if you have it carefully kept and well organized and not siloed, those will be the first ones to really benefit, I think, from the use of it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

We're getting a little ahead of ourselves. But what is your tech stack today?

[Scott Lawton]

It's changing, so I can't actually tell you. I can tell you that you were just in the restaurant that's piloting some of the new stuff, but we'll get into it. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean, I would love to hear what you guys are doing.

[Scott Lawton]

There's some stuff that's staying the same, but, you know, through the digital ordering at the restaurant level, we've managed to capture a ton of data, more than anybody in the full service industry.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I know you guys were involved with then Wisely. Correct.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And now olo.

[Scott Lawton]

Olo. So I don't know if you're so Wisely. I. I found Wisely. I was. I brought Mike in to meet Andy and the whole thing. And I was really interested in. We were using a wait list application at Bartaco. We have crazy weights at the door in Portchester.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Was it weightless?

[Scott Lawton]

It was called no, wait.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Oh, no, wait. That's right.

[Scott Lawton]

It was called no, wait. And I had tried to reach out to these guys multiple times because I was really interested in the consumer data. Like. Like, I want to be able to reach these people. And you're getting their phone numbers. They're checking in. Like, is there something we can do with this? And they stonewalled me. So I kind of made it my personal mission with every sort of CDP customer database type companies that were talking to me to throw out this challenge. Hey, I want to be able to have the data, and I also want it to be able to tie out to the checks so that I can tie all that together. And Mike, visit Mike from Wisely. Basically, he took the challenge. He said, challenge accepting. Yeah. And that's where we started.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Interesting. And that's a big thing. And I think so much restaurant, like, restaurant owners at the end of the day. And I don't think this is a negative word.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think it's just the right word. Ignorant. I think we just don't know what we don't know. And especially when it comes to technology. Like, we're not. Like, we know that we need to leverage it, but at the end of the day, like, we just want to fix the problem. And if it fixes the problem, sweet. But, like, at what cost? Sometimes they're not really paying attention to. We're not getting access to that data because we don't know how. We didn't know how important it was five, six years ago.

[Scott Lawton]

And the reality is, you know, there's only a few companies out there that I think are really thinking about it correctly. I mean, as far as the companies that are. That are supporting restaurants. And I don't want to give shout outs yet, but I think, you know, I think Wisely was built the right way and when OLO acquired it, they've realized what a gym that is and that it's built for the right reasons. There's also some stuff out there that's really scary. There's. There's companies that are, I think are doing it for the wrong reasons. Bigger companies that have a lot more money than restaurant companies that are supporting lots of restaurants now with pro. With processing.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, man, I'm so happy you're saying this. And I've been trying to. And this is. Okay, full transparency. I've been talking about getting away from my sponsors. It's because I want to talk about my sponsors.

[Scott Lawton]

Okay.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I was getting to a point where only the people with the biggest budgets could afford my, my rates.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I was like if I even taking money from these organizations and I'm learning things about these and I, I'm not pointing out any specific organizations but I'm thinking, I just, I read this book and it's called the Power, Power and Progress. And it's a, it's an, it's an anthropological approach to technology over time. And what happens when whoever controls the technology, like the answer is good things don't. Like whoever owns the technology and controls the technology wins. And they ever heard the expression whoever has the most money wins. And like in terms of marketing.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So now you have all these giant conglomerates absorbing all these companies who have all the money and all the. They control the agenda in the narrative of the industry. And that's not good for any of us.

[Scott Lawton]

Agreed.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So like it's like what the are we doing? And it's the biggest reason why I took a thousand dollar pay cut this year so I can like chase the truth.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. So I'm happy you brought.

[Scott Lawton]

So, so I'll tell you this right now. If you're out there and you're trying to figure out what your new tech stacks can to be, we'll start with pos. You've got really three choices, I guess. Well, I'll tell you there's three types that. Because I've just gone through this whole process and this is, this is kind of how I've distilled it in my opinion. There is one you can go with legacy stuff. The micros and alohas of the world. They are, they're able to do a lot because they've got so much history and they've been built with so many requests and they have, they're, they're robust. However, they're not modern and they're not easy and they're not. The modern workforce is used to phones that are super easy, and it's just not intuitive. And they're. And I think they're. They're just not growing the same way. We've been on legacy stuff for a while because of all the integrations, and it makes sense, but it's been a lot of work and data gets siloed and all these other problems. Then there's a class of POS which I like to call the processors, if they are processors, and POS clothing, which. You get the, you get the analogy there. I personally. Process processing platforms have always been sort of a necessary evil that we all need. We. We have to pay them a large percentage of our transactional business. They're our partners, but they're not, you know, and the only way I've ever known to keep them at bay is the threat of competition is to say, I'm going to replace you. Yes. If you don't leave.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And that's why it's good that we fragment these organizations. The more the companies they are, the more competitive the market is, the better the technology.

[Scott Lawton]

And when you see these processor POS companies, they're losing billions a year building all this. Do you think they would just keep losing billions for multiple years if there wasn't a prize at the end? So if you read their contracts, you'll see there's some interesting things I think everybody discovered at one time when everybody got charged, a bunch of customers got charged a few dollars without anybody knowing or permission. Yeah. But it was fully print, it was fully legal. So if you read it, they own the customers, they own the data. So I think there's. There's a lot of talk about tokenized data and things like that. And, you know, so if you think about that, there's some real challenges long term. They make a lot of sense for mom and Pops right now because they're cheaper to get in the beginning, especially square because the.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's. But they get you with. They're like, oh, you need $100,000. Well, we'll just give you that loan and then we'll take a percentage out of every transaction, which is honestly great for small mom and Pops that maybe aren't great at cash flow management. They can pay back those loans as a percentage of the profits, but. Or at the percentage of every transaction. And I'm not sure exactly how it works, but there's a slippery slope there.

[Scott Lawton]

Well, yeah, I mean, their contracts are really tough. And if we move into a area with less regulation, there's A possibility, potential of some predatory stuff. And it's all going to be on the restaurant operators at the end of the day. Yeah, so, so I don't want to, you know, I mean, just. You can draw your own conclusions. And the third one, and there's a few of them out there that are newer. They don't, they're not as robust, but they're cloud based. They're credit card agnostic. And they're, they're, they, they say credit card agnostic.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You're saying processor. They're open platforms that you can choose your Processor.

[Scott Lawton]

Processor agnostic. And, and they allow you to own your data. But if you look at big companies that are publicly traded or privately owned that are not going anywhere, if you see what they're doing, that's what I pay attention to. They're the right, they're doing the right things. You know, you look at Chick Fil A, I mean, the way they've built out their tech stack is eons above past anybody.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But how many people can do that?

[Scott Lawton]

No, I know. Yeah, yeah. So they, that's a custom text, right? So, so now you kind of got to say, how do we find something that, that we can have access to that has those types of capabilities without you having to make them a third partner in your business?

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I think this is the key that unlocks that is conversation.

[Scott Lawton]

That's right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is sharing information, sharing the tool like and like that, like diversifying the marketplace and having specialists that are. There are no two restaurants that are exactly the same, but you can generalize like, like there are generalizations. Right. And there are certain POS companies that might form, that might specialize towards a model. Right. And I think that's the future is the fragmentation of the industry because we're going to be meeting people all over, like all touch points of life, whether it's on the way home and they want something quick or they want to find dining experience or they want to QSR like, or if it's in their bedroom, you know, they want it delivered to like their house right now.

[Scott Lawton]

I mean, that's the goal with us, you know, with our customer. We want, we, we want it not to be. Right now, it's sort of a binary choice. When you come into Bar Taco, people would choose paper or digital. And we want it to be Omni Channel. You don't even know. You still feel like it's full service. You know, I think ultimately we want the QR code to kind of evolve to where it's not a QR because that's. People don't like the looks of a QR on the table, but maybe just an NFC tap if you want to.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

And you could do it any way you want, which is like you're going to be greeted by a server in the beginning and they're going to take your order on a handheld. But that handheld, if we've identified you through checking in, through logging onto the social WI fi, through anything else, we'll provide that server with your check history. It'll provide them with the last surveys you filled out. Because, you know, we send a little survey out and we buy you a taco every time you fill out a survey. So we get tons of feedback, which is huge. And it also brings people back to eat because they have their taco tokens. But now when you check in, we know Mr. Jones came last time and we were half an hour past the wait and the food came out cold, let's say. So now he wrote that in the survey and we're going to make it up to him that time, even though he's in a different bar taco in a different state.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay, so when I was here, your last, you were using 1D, right? You were using seven shifts. You were using. I'm not sure what POS you were using. You're with legacies right now.

[Scott Lawton]

We're still, we're still on micros. Yeah, yeah. And we're still using 1D, but we are again, there's another. There's some other stuff under the hood right now that we're working on.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Are you still working with One Huddle?

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, we love One Huddle.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think that's another company that I'm really excited to watch them scale. What they're doing in terms of making information Sticky is so powerful. We talked a little bit about it with Anthony, but what is, what, what do they do? How does that work?

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, One Huddle gamifies training, which it makes it really approachable and it gives, it gives it in bites that the modern workforce understands. Especially we have a young workforce. You know, it's, it's also, it's proven that they retain the knowledge better and that it makes it less cumbersome for them to learn. So it's all these things. I have kids and they're ages between 15 and 22. I show all the stuff to my kids and if it's intuitive to them and they're like, they're like, duh. Why, why, why wouldn't you do it this way? You know, that's, that's the win for me, that's when I know it's working. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I tie the. The correlate. There's. It correlates to how pilots get trained, which is ironic, right? Where you get. You get literally handed all the question, like the questions and the answers to everything. You memorize the answers or you, like, you just go through and you take the test a bunch of times until you get a hundred, and it might be 10 questions. Right. But what ends up happening is you. Your brain is wired that way to basically just remember the answers, because that's what you're doing is remembering the answers, and it just sticks. Then you can see your score. Then you're going to see who took the test the fastest. Now it's not just about getting 100, but it's about getting the 100 the fastest.

[Scott Lawton]

Right. And it's also good competition. These guys competing against each other, and there's prizes.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You can see how you stack up against everybody in the organization. So you don't want to be a dog.

[Scott Lawton]

And there's also great analytics behind it. Now you can actually find out, oh, my gosh, we have a dishwasher that's scored on the liquor test. Because you can take any test you want higher than anybody else.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

Why.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Why are we sleeping on them?

[Scott Lawton]

Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You find the. You find all these opportunities because of the analytics. That's. That's the most interesting thing is what you do with the data.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What. Where would you say a restaurant has to be in terms of scale to invest in a tool like that?

[Scott Lawton]

That's tough. You know, I mean, if you're four or five restaurants, it's not easy. I think at 10 restaurants is where you can start really looking at these things. And frankly, I think a lot of these SaaS companies aren't really looking for mom and pops to do it. So there's, There's a certain sort of break point, but as the technology develops, I think it'll. It'll be easy to subscribe and do it for anybody. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And one more thought. We're in quite the rabbit hole right now, and I just love this stuff, so I'm like, screw it, let's go. Let's. Let's see where we end up. You're talking about the, the, the future of Bar Taco. When somebody comes in, whether. When they get on, if they get remembered through the WI fi, they can tie the purchase to the history of the guest and who's doing this right now. Like, it sounds like you're shopping so like.

[Scott Lawton]

No, no, no. We're, we're. It's built. It's. It's a custom.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is it like, is it.

[Scott Lawton]

So, so, so the. Where we landed was we. Before we had one dine, which is a sort of a built system, semi custom, but not really scan a QR code we have. That's the. That. So that's the ux, that's the QR code which feeds into the pos. And then we have our sort of engage with olo, which is our.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you are using our data?

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, we do. We're still using it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I assumed you would have been.

[Scott Lawton]

And we're sticking with that. That database is great. It's working.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. What they're doing is really interesting.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, yeah. And they're really leaning in on it. I'm really excited. Noah's a good buddy and we've been talking about this a lot where we're excited about the Bartaco case and how it can really sort of show some of the opportunities here. So the trick is, well, anyway, the UX is one dine. So we're actually going with a custom UX now. We're building our own. I mean not ourselves, but we've hired a company to build our own and that's just so that we have the ability to continue to develop it at our pace, not necessarily at another company's pace. Then we have a cloud based POS system which I, I think I already told it. And so that's our new system. Essentially what's great about this is we're. What we're building for is, is all this data can sort of flow along the highway without hitting roadblocks now. And the customer data can pop up in a handheld where the actual staff member can use it, where it could be at the front door where they're checking in. And eventually you go to AI bots that can actually dig into this data and really give you great ideas, things to do that. I mean, at the end of the day, we're not trying to have robots take care of the customers by any means. We just want to give information to our teams that can help them at a glance, deliver really memorable hospitality. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And that's another organization. Noah Glass and OLO had them on the show. Share that story. Yeah, really cool story about how they started just literally with online ordering and how that has evolved to this holistic approach of basically the. This. The digital and physical space is bleeding into each other.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So they just continued that evolution and they're, they're, I guess like the front of house digital touch points is just spilling literally into the four walls. So they're like, okay, how can we use all this technology to tie it all together together? So it's a holistic online versus in store. It's all using the same information to process the, the, the payments and the data and, and like whether it's facial recognition or was it near technology. The tap technology. I always forget what's the acronym? Close proximity or when you just get your close your. Like the tap with your phone. I can't remember what it's called or a QR code or whatever.

[Scott Lawton]

Right. NFC chips.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. But that holistic approach down to the WI fi. So when you just get walk in if as long as you filled out that WI fi once it remembers you when you get back on the network. That's right, like that stuff.

[Scott Lawton]

And that's the problem. You know, I mean we've had sort of. We've had olo, which is one area that's all, it's all unified there. But our pos, it hasn't been. And you know, so putting all this together where it works in a fully unified way is really exciting. Yeah. Now again, this is all pilot. We, we don't have proof of concept yet. We're getting really close. So we're really excited about it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But how long do you think you need before I come back to share how it's going? I would love to come back.

[Scott Lawton]

I need about a month.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay, well, yeah, I'll give you a year.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, yeah. I can actually give you a little preview after this if you want, but I'd love for you to come back and see it full force. Yeah, we're excited about it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I would definitely love to continue this, the share of the progress in that front because I think what you guys are doing is really interesting. Are you still leveraging the business model of server leader or is it server service leader? Service leader?

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we still are, but. But at the same time, you know, we have different markets where it's valuable in other markets where it's not as valuable because of the laws where you can't share money with a kitchen and things like that. At that point we're, we're looking at other ways to do it. So service leader is continuing to morph. It's still a really important of exists but it's continuing to be developed.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Just a little context for listeners. So you basically got rid of the server role and you created zones and you have like a hybrid server manager who floats and basically just Delivers hospitality.

[Scott Lawton]

That's right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I think that that streamlining use, leading more on technology to replace the server role, but not losing hospitality, just having that person who is just light like eyesight, learn. What's the word? Line of sight or. I like the sight lines. Just reading the room, reading the room. Floating, filling water, engaging, like you know, learning about the guests being human.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And actually when you don't have to take the orders, it frees you up to do those things.

[Scott Lawton]

That's right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Like, I think it's a really interesting model.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, we've learned a lot from it. It's continuing to be developed which, which what I mean by that is, is as laws change, as labor costs rules change, we have to, we have to adjust fast.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

And that's been really challenging. And there's certain markets where it's super challenging.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean we're getting way ahead and I'm just letting it go because I want to make sure we leave time to talk about this stuff.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's another whole other conversation on package is the legislation associated with our industry. And I don't think these legislators know thing about the restaurant industry and we're trying to like make these laws to standardize things. But do you show me two restaurants that are exactly the same?

[Scott Lawton]

Right. No. You know, I think there's, there's been poor lobbying to speak for the restaurant industry and there's been some really strong lobbying for things that, that don't work. Which you know, one fair wage is sounds great, but they really didn't think through the model or if they did, they, I mean it's killing restaurants, you know, where it's, where it's been passed where maybe the model's broken anyway. But you can't, you've got to reconcile tips and, and hourly wage and if you don't look at the tips at all, you have a real disparity of what's going on between the back of the house and the front of the house. It's very confusing.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's the biggest argument I have when people argue to like keep tipping and I'm like, okay, you as a server, yeah, you want to fight for this but like you're telling me you're working harder than that? That like beast in the kitchen who's pulling 80 hour weeks and like what, what a good line cook can do, right? Like they gotta be mad.

[Scott Lawton]

No, no, it's always been a problem in our industry and it's something we have to keep really paying attention.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I don't have the answer But I love hearing perspective.

[Scott Lawton]

You know, Danny. Danny Meyer worked at an answer. I've been working at an answer. But you just keep bouncing around as the laws change and you try to figure it out.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think the. The true answer is we. Whatever is done, we all have to do it.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think that's because the consumer needs the bend at the will of the industry, and we can't make it happen unless we're all in.

[Scott Lawton]

Well, yeah, it's really hard to have a tip business if you have to pay a full wage to waiters. And that's. That's the reality. Especially if. If it's a high minimum wage. It's just the math doesn't work anymore, at least unless you don't. Unless you raise price. But the consumer is not ready for that.

[Eric Cacciatore]

They're already paying for it. Technically.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, get confused.

[Scott Lawton]

You know, you always hear about we want better jobs and better wages, and then you also hear we want cheaper products. And. Yeah, I don't know how the two work together without sacrifice.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. I feel like we could keep going, but I want to go back to your story. I mean, we went down a hell of a rabbit hole, and there was so much gold in there. I'm happy we did it. We left off in your timeline, you were at Good Time.

[Scott Lawton]

Big time.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Big time. Big Time Restaurant group.

[Scott Lawton]

Yes. I was there seven years, and we grew a lot of restaurants. I got to be really engaged in running the businesses and learning concept development and also all sorts of things before Andy found me.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So did you hit a ceiling there or were you discovered?

[Scott Lawton]

I hit a ceiling. I love the guys down there, and I love their. Their. What they do. But, you know, there was a point when you. When you come into a company and you come in organically and you work your way up, your title sometimes might not match your pay. And also, I was really. This was 2007 ish, which I was in South Florida. And this was before the 2008 crash. It was unaffordable to live down there. And I had a baby and a wife, and we wanted to get somewhere where we wanted to raise our kid. And so I just started this national search, sort of quietly see what's out.

[Eric Cacciatore]

There was Connecticut coastline.

[Scott Lawton]

I don't even know where Connecticut was on a map. I knew that I rode through it on the Fung Wa bus to Boston a few times, but that was all I knew about Connecticut.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So in 2007, Andy's looking for a COO he's trying to replace. He's Trying to move himself slowly out of the organization at this point. And I'm only saying this because I was speaking to him, so I know the story. And he found you. He offered you $75,000. You said, I'll take $125,000 and a piece of the business.

[Scott Lawton]

That's right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Great advice. I mean. I mean, I feel like there is great advice here in negotiating for yourself.

[Scott Lawton]

It was what I needed. So for me, it was. It was like I wasn't. It was what I wasn't going to move. I had a good job.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Scott Lawton]

You know what I mean? So. But I think Andy appreciated. I think the other part of that story is I had. I was about to accept the job in D.C. and Andy had found my resume. It took him a while. I'd submitted it, but I think he had been working through a stack. And he called me and I'm like. He told me about it and I started looking and I found it interesting. I almost said, no. I said, let me call you back. And I again, I called my father on this and I said, what do you. What are you doing? He goes, he goes, you might regret it. Get on a plane, go there tomorrow. And so I called Andy back. I go, are you around tomorrow? He said, yeah. And I said, I'll be there tomorrow. So I flew there. It was crazy because my flight got delayed and I ended up being up all night having to hitch a ride from somewhere in New York to get here. But I showed up and that's where I met Andy. And. And it was not a normal restaurant group like I had been with. It was five restaurants.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What was different about it?

[Scott Lawton]

Small five restaurants. They were doing 2 1/2 to 3 million in sales each. And you know, these were small numbers, but there was this one restaurant, it was Barcelona, New Haven that I went to, and that was their newest one. And I met Sasha. And Sasha's sort of the creative drive of the brand. And I fell in love with it. I just fell in love with it. So. And I saw the potential. I was like this. The thing that I. We said this before, but we were talking about in the. In the 2000s and 90s, it was these multi concept restaurant groups and that's what I had worked for. What I had seen of that and what I had learned was, that's great. It's fun for. To do a lot of different things. The owner can make real money, but at the end of the day, they don't really have anything to sell.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. What do you mean? They don't really have anything to sell. Are you talking about like a product to basically scale?

[Scott Lawton]

I'm talking about if you have 10 different concepts. I mean, unless you want to. Nobody wants, Nobody's going to pay a lot for one brand, one location.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So when you're saying they don't have anything to sell, you're talking about, about scaling a business that you can turn around and sell.

[Scott Lawton]

That's right. So. So there's no, there's no cash out at the end, you know, too much.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Too many of those concepts are dependent on a, a talent behind the, the concept that if they leave, then it hinges on people, not processes and systems.

[Scott Lawton]

And that'll lead me into sort of the power of the brand. That's where I realized brand matters. I hate the word chain and I hate all the chain restaurants. The idea behind it, sort of, but that was why we were trying to be the anti chain. Sort of like how can we do this better cooler and be something that's real, that matters? Like, you know, Houston's is a great anti chain in my opinion because they execute all day.

[Eric Cacciatore]

They build beautiful Texas roadhouse too, where it's huge. But they take care of their people.

[Scott Lawton]

They do. They have room for strong. Yeah, they have really strong standards and they have a real ethos about their culture. Yeah. And, and that, you know, I had learned that working for some of the greatest. But I. This idea of a brand really struck me and Andy and I talked about that and scaling Barcelona made a lot of sense. So yeah, we went on that path to scale and he taught me a lot along the way.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. So what's interesting is you joined, you saw the potential in Bar Barcelona Wine. Barcelona Wine, was that the full name.

[Scott Lawton]

Of the Barcelona wine bar?

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's right. And at seven units, I think you, you opened a whole nother concept Bar Taco. Wait, before we get into that, I gotta find out. So 75,000 was the offer. 125,000 is what you asked for. And stake in the business.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I wanna, I wanna talk about that. The stake in the business. I'm seeing a trend where. And I think this might be a solution to the disparity in pay in the industry where the industry is getting more and more competitive. You can't do it alone like you used to. You to attract onto yourself the people you need to be the best. You can't just give them a paycheck.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And plus the, I think the, the employee is also getting smarter and realizing you need me and I want something more than a paycheck. I want to have a piece of it. Right. So you're seeing more and more partnerships in the industry than ever before.

[Scott Lawton]

Yes.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing?

[Scott Lawton]

I think if it's done correctly, it's a good thing. But I think a lot of people promise shares and things like that, and they end up not being what they thought they were, and people become disillusioned. So you have to be careful.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay. Break that down a little bit more. So if we, if, if we want to replicate this model where we are offering equity in the business as part of, like the deal when you join a new organization or what, like, what are the things to consider and how should you set that up?

[Scott Lawton]

Well, I think Andy did a good job of that with Barcelona. I'll tell you what he did with me. He gave me something called Class C shares. So I benefited from the royalties, but I didn't have the actual ownership tax liability when he gave it to me because it was valued at the current valuation of the company.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Was the company public at this point?

[Scott Lawton]

No. No, it was privately. Yeah. So. So I was basically my. The value was zero because I was starting from that value point and, and kind of moving up. Okay. Grew. So if we sold it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you got the equity in the. And.

[Scott Lawton]

But I got the, The.

[Eric Cacciatore]

The skit. The growth from that point on, you didn't. You want to get a piece of ever. Whatever was created, you use that as a benchmark and what.

[Scott Lawton]

So the only way I was going to make money and I knew this was we had to make Barcelona scalable and we had to scale it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So we had incentive now.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's kind of like profit sharing.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. So I worked really hard on making it scalable and Andy worked really hard on scaling it and finding locations and building. So that was a great team.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So Andy was the building the train and you were making sure it was on schedule.

[Scott Lawton]

That's right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

So you get the. You see, kind of we have a tradition of this.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yes, I do. I like it.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. If, if you look at it, it's funny that you interviewed Andy and then Anthony, and now I kind of fall right in the middle there.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. Yeah. And so. So anything more on that before you move forward? Things like that, we should consider when. I mean, it's weird because it's such a silver.

[Scott Lawton]

There's a lot. It is. And you know, I, I'm a fan of people earning it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I. I think that's important.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. I, I think I, I Hate.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You earned it, but you just earned it underneath other roofs.

[Scott Lawton]

That's right. That's right. Yeah. And when I mean earn it, I mean, you. You can't just give somebody shares. It's a bad miss as an owner. You could end up with a lot of trouble. You have to have guardrails around that, you know. But if you can set clear metrics and ways of getting there and they accomplish it, they deserve it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. I'm thinking of a restaurant group in Charleston, Bodega, Uptown Social. Can't remember the. The parent company, but they originated out of New York and they have like a sister company in Charleston. And the way they do it is they basically, they offer. I think you have to be with the. You have to be a tenured employee, like a certain. Like maybe like five years or something like that. And then if you. And they would make you a partner, but they would get the value of the business. Say it's valued at $2 million, and you can buy one point of that business. You can buy a percent equity, but you're going to pay the value of that.

[Scott Lawton]

Sure.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So, you know, that's $20,000. So. But I think it's a great way for a server or, you know, a bartender who wants to get started in the industry, they can come up with $20,000 to own a percent of that business. I think that's one thing I've seen.

[Scott Lawton]

Listen, I think not everybody has an ownership mentality.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Scott Lawton]

That's the reality. And there's even great employees that don't have it. So you really need to be able to filter through and find people where ownership drives them and pushes them. You know, I always treated my businesses, the businesses that I ran, I even speak of them that way, as if they were mine long before I ever had a share. And I think if you can model that early in your career and really learn to live that way, then you will get it. It's not an entitlement. It's something, you know, if someone's giving you a piece of their business, there's an expectation and it needs. You need to find the right DNA with people that really appreciate what that is.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And you can also write down the terms. So if they are not meeting their end of the deal as a partner, you can, you know, buy back their shares.

[Scott Lawton]

Sure.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Of course, you know, or like, there's things you can do ex. To exit the partnership. And that's what partnership agreements are all about.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So. So back to what Andy did for you. What was the name of that Approach. You said it was class C shares.

[Scott Lawton]

Class C shares.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Who would I go to to learn more about that? Like how to set that up?

[Scott Lawton]

That's a great question. I. I don't know. I haven't done it since. But I just remember that was how Andy set it up.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Class C shares I'm taking out. Okay. So.

[Scott Lawton]

In.

[Eric Cacciatore]

In terms of your time with Barcelona Wine, I don't know why I'm struggling with. The full name is Wine.

[Scott Lawton]

Bar.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Wine Bar. Thank you. What. So your focus is that that's what pulls you in.

[Scott Lawton]

But I was living it day in, day out.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But you become a partner in. Well, you actually were a partner at Barcelona. But now when you. When developing Bar Taco, how did that all.

[Scott Lawton]

So that was funny. 2008 hit 2009. You remember that? That was rough. And so growth slowed for about a year or two. You know, we couldn't move as fast as we liked. And Sasha, who's Andy's partner in Barteca and also one of the co founders of Barcelona and Bartaco was bored. He's a creative genius and was working on all these ideas. He's always working on, working on ideas. But he shared my, mine and Andy's belief that brand matters, that we. If you can scale a brand, not a chain, a brand, it's going to have a lot of value.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What's the difference between a brand and a chain?

[Scott Lawton]

Here's how I think about it. You remember, it's easier to think about it in terms of retail. Sears is a chain and Lululemon is a brand. New Fattery is a brand.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So Brand Morris, like Psychographics, Belks is a chain.

[Scott Lawton]

It's more like it's an identity.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's a lifestyle.

[Scott Lawton]

They've created a lifestyle. Yeah. So Bartaco, we think of it as a lifestyle brand. We think we've built a place where people want to be that feels like the life they wish they were living to some degree. If you go to Urban Outfitters, you'll see all the staff looks like Urban Outfitters and the kids are Urban Outfitter. Ish. And if you go to anthropology, you'll see they look like anthropology. And what do they actually sell? I mean, you might get a bar soap and, I don't know, a plant. But at the end of the day, it's a lifestyle. And everything fits within this ethos of a lifestyle they created.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's psychographics. What does it say about me when I'm seen in this restaurant?

[Scott Lawton]

Right. And it's a different way of thinking about, like the way we created Bar Taco was we started with, what do we want this place to feel like? We didn't know it was gonna be tacos. We did. We hadn't even thought about the food yet. Most people say, I want to open a steakhouse. I want to open a burger joint. We said, we want to open a lifestyle restaurant. That feels really cool. And then we decided beach, healthy, surfing, Uruguay, Hampton.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you started with the.

[Scott Lawton]

We started with Word Classic.

[Eric Cacciatore]

The person that you're trying to appeal to, and then you basically, like you. You built a. You built it for target market, Essentially.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say we suddenly went through a list of psycho demographics and said, we want this person. We want this person. We want this person. We. We went with this. What is this feeling that we want to see sell? And we were really selling it to ourselves, which. Which is like, our customers. So what. What would we think was cool? You know, what would. What would. What would women think is cool? You know, we. We spent a lot of time thinking about that because we wanted this to be a female brand.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. And you're at this point, this is almost 20 years ago.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Scott Lawton]

So you were in your 14. 14. Well, no, it was 20 years ago when we were conceptualized.

[Eric Cacciatore]

2007.

[Scott Lawton]

Almost 20 years. Yeah, you're right. You're right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. So you were in your early 30s.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So, like, you wore the demographic.

[Scott Lawton]

I was, yeah. Yeah. Which is why, you know, we. When I talk about passing the baton, that's. That's the demographic. I think people who work need to kind of understand the demo. Yeah, yeah. I've aged out well. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I think there is something to be said about, you know, fresh eyes. Yeah, you know, totally.

[Scott Lawton]

No, this bar Taco needs to continuously change and. And. And, you know, Urban Outfitters doesn't have the exact same things it had when I used to go do it in the West Village 20 years ago. Actual customers, timeout, not the brand. You know, you hear this term customer lifetime value, and I think chains have misinterpreted that to say we want to keep the customer until they're old and gray and have an oxygen tank. And the reality is you want to keep the customer through that period of.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Their lifetime of the restaurant, of the life.

[Scott Lawton]

The restaurant should stay young, forever young. The restaurant should always stay the same. And then people age in and age out. You know, I mean, obviously, you want to appeal to as many people as possible, but if you get too wide, all of a sudden, you're turning the music down because the music is annoying older people. So now the kids don't like it as much.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So it's interesting you bring that up because it crossed my mind earlier. I think the really smart brand developers are now starting to develop more of an overarching brand. I'm thinking of Angie's in Arizona. I've heard of Angie.

[Scott Lawton]

No, I don't know.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So have you heard of Salad and Go?

[Scott Lawton]

Yes.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So the founder of Salad and Go, his name is Camp Man. It's killing me. If it comes into my head, I'll say, I think Christopher. Anyway, he sold Salad and Go and he developed Angie's and Angie's. Angie's Prime Grill, Angie's Burger, Angie's Lobster. So it's like this overarching brand that people associate with quality, but then he does one thing in each one of those brands.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So he's developing the overarching lifestyle brand of quality. And what he does, his whole thing is like prime is that he's trying to get prime cuts of meat, high quality meat. And then he's doing lobster rolls. And instead of just purchasing lobster from the pier, he goes and buys the piercing. So now he vertically integrates everything.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

He buys the beef, the cattle farm, you know, and so he's vertically integrating all these concepts. But then he's just doing one thing really well with each one of the concepts. But you recognize Andy, Angie's or sorry, Angie's. But I think what you can see going forward is people are gonna be like, okay, well, we want to own that customer, to your point, through their life. So we're gonna have a concept for the young Angie customer, for the middle age Angie customer, and for, like the different graphic. But you're going to associate that psychographic, the lifestyle brand with the Angie's, and then fill in the blank.

[Scott Lawton]

Yes.

[Eric Cacciatore]

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[Scott Lawton]

You know, I think it's really resonated with our customers. Part of. Even once we knew how we wanted Bartaco to feel, we knew what could and couldn't work in Bartaco, and we still have to live by that. And the example of that is we have chopsticks on the table. People would say, well, you're a Mexican restaurant. No, we're a lifestyle brand. We're coastal, but we could be on any coast eating here. And there's some Asian influence on the food. And also, we serve everything. Tapas, small bites, sort of. So people want to share, and sharing with chopsticks is more fun. So it makes sense because we started with, we want it to be fun. We want light bites that are coastal and that are from anywhere in the world. So chopsticks make perfect sense.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

You see what I'm saying? Yeah. So. And it makes sense to our customers. We said, we don't. We don't want you to feel full. We don't want you to walk out feeling full. Gross. Part of the feeling we're selling is this feeling of health and wellness. So we don't want you to feel like you swallowed a bowling ball, because you're not going to like us as much when you get Home or the next morning. So we took out sour cream. We took out queso. Those things don't make sense for what we do. And so there's all these weird things that are different about Bar Taco than a typical Mexican restaurant, but it's because we didn't start with a Mexican restaurant. We started with a feeling. Yeah. You see? And it's a different way of thinking about it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, I love that. The name that I couldn't remember was Tony Kristoffelis. For the record.

[Scott Lawton]

Okay, Got it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Credit where credit is due. They're doing cool stuff out there with Angie's.

[Scott Lawton]

I gotta check it out.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, really. If you're ever in Arizona. So, okay, so you started one of the things, like, what was the evolution, your personal growth with the barteca group. So 2011 is when you guys opened Bar Taco.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, that was the first one you sold by 2000. I was COO for the company when we opened the first one. And I think we got up to, I'll say seven of them. And at a certain point, I went to Andy and.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Seven bar tacos.

[Scott Lawton]

Seven bar tacos. And we probably had 12 Barcelonas, maybe, maybe more. Barcelona was growing at the same rate, if not faster than Bartaco.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Why was that? Does it. That was the horse you guys were betting on at the time, I think.

[Scott Lawton]

I think Bar Taco was viewed by many as. As a side project, which, you know, it. It became a real horse. But. But I think there was still love and care for Barcelona. The original, the og and so. So I. I'll get to that. To explain it to you sort of deeper. This is how I'll unravel that for you, because it'll explain my move. I was a founder of Bar Taco, not a founder of Barcelona. I love Barcelona. Love it. You know, it was great. But Bar Taco mattered a lot to me. And I saw the potential. I thought it was really. So I was the one in the corporate office maybe banging my chest about resources for Bartaco, whether it's the purchasing department, whether it's marketing, whatever it is. I felt like we're. We were always getting the short end of the stick. And Andy, being very wise, said, why don't you just run it? You go run Bartaco. Which meant there was going to be a loudmouth who's been. Who had real pull in the company, was going to be its champion. I didn't have to be the dad of two kids. I could be the dad of that kid. So I moved to president of Bartaco from Coo very intentionally to scale Bar Taco.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay. Did somebody move into your place for Barcelona?

[Scott Lawton]

Several.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay. Well, I think the other variable, too, is that the marketplace was also changing around this time, where the focus was more tapas, full service. That was the trend. But then as, like, cost of goods went up, labor costs went up, tacos. Just. Just that. That model caught fire. It was trendy. I think that the consumer trends started to favor Bar Taco.

[Scott Lawton]

Our timing was great. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we were a breath of fresh air to Everybody. The first seven years, we comped up 10%. Wow. Every store, wow. Crazy. No, it was. The timing was right. It was something different. It, you know, small plates were just becoming a thing. Healthful food, spice margaritas. Like, not those big bowls you get, but really fresh handshake and margaritas with fresh juices. All the things we were doing were spot on.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. I mean, it's. It's really an amazing story. So when did things really start to catch traction with Bar Taco? Was that when you took the. The president role?

[Scott Lawton]

Well, no, we had momentum from day one.

[Eric Cacciatore]

How many locations were you at with Bar Taco?

[Scott Lawton]

I think we're about six or seven. When I. When I came into the president role. Got it. At that time, we were starting to open more quickly.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What year was that? Six or seven.

[Scott Lawton]

I'm terrible.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That you sold in 2018. Yeah, just before, too.

[Scott Lawton]

So it's probably 2000. Let's call it 2014 maybe.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So 2014, you're moving into the president role. How was that different from what you've done in the past as coo? How was that transition hard for you, or was it easier?

[Scott Lawton]

It was easier because I was also founder. This, to me, was about really running the hell out of this brand. And that's what I had already been doing with Bartok with Barcelona. That's what I'd been trained to do in Florida. So I felt empowered.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it. How did your life start changing at this point? Like, what was your day to day like versus when you're the coo?

[Scott Lawton]

Well, it changed drastically. My life changed in so many ways when Bartaka opened, you know, just to share a little personal part of it. At the time, my wife actually had severe mental illness and drug addiction, so she was out of the picture. And I had two little kids around the same time we opened the first Bartaka. So I had to learn how to be a single dad and also had to figure out how the hell I'm going to pay for everything. So this had to work. So I was. I Was I went through a, you know, a tough year or so just trying to adjust to what the hell was going on. And Andy was very patient for me. But after that, you know, I was hair on fire. That's why I'm bald now. But I was here on fire to get it done. So that changed. My whole life changed in so many ways. It's. It's hard to say. You know, I went six years without even dating because Barcelona Bartaco was my. Was my wife.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. You know, and. And so it was just, you know, like I said, you have to be sort of radically committed. I was radically committed. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You really do. Do you think that's a good thing?

[Scott Lawton]

It can kill you.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, it's weird because, like, we almost were like this unreasonable dedication to our restaurant as a badge of pride in the industry.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. I mean, if you're talking about work life balance, I don't know what you're talking about. You know, I'm starting to try and figure that out. Like the. I. Like I said, I've left bar taco. You know, this will be the second time. So I did, when we sold, I got some time to try and figure that out a little more. I came back a little more Zen this last time, but I don't know much about work life balance.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. Well, I mean, I like the. I used to say, and I still think there's some truth to this is that there is no such thing as worth work life balance. There's only your life's work.

[Scott Lawton]

That's right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And when you find the right, why, you can deal with anyhow.

[Scott Lawton]

You know, I think it's work life balance is more important today to younger people than it ever has been. I'll acknowledge that. And I think we as employers, if we want to get the right people, need to respect that. You know, not to the point that we get stepped on about it, but. But it. If you're. If you're unaware of it, it will.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Be a better balance.

[Scott Lawton]

You know, I mean, the restaurant industry, notorious. Well, just by its nature. You're working weekends, you know, you're working Sundays for most of your life. You're working holidays. You're not on the same schedule as everybody else.

[Eric Cacciatore]

One of the things I love about the restaurant industry is you can literally be anyone. But if you can bust your ass and you have a little bit of talent, but you can work your ass off, like you can get places. And I think that there's, like, it just attracts this character of person that just goes all in. So now you have like this. This type A personality that is just willing to outwork everyone. You have more people in this industry that are like that, and it just becomes like this benchmarking against each other. Like, I did 80 weeks. I did 85 weeks. Well, I work 120 weeks.

[Scott Lawton]

It's like lawyers are private equity, but you don't make the money. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, so it's just like.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, you're actually maniacally dedicated to making other people happy. Like, that's what we do. If you're really into hospitality, you know.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, they got our own payoff.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, it's true. That's true.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So it's weird.

[Scott Lawton]

It is.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But we don't talk about this stuff, you know, because I think it's. We're in the business of. Of transporting people and literally creating these experiences. You're not supposed to know the reality, but we've been so. We're so good at like creating that mirage, you know?

[Scott Lawton]

Well, I mean, most of the restaurant industry is transitory. They're coming in and moving out. They're. They're getting a job for a period of time till they can figure out finish school or they can do, you know, whatever their next goal is. So you're constantly dealing with people in our industry that are not professional. They're. They're there to maybe learn. I see as a great opportunity this is raising my kids is the greatest thing I've ever done in my life and the thing I'm most proud of. And I see the Bartaco staff as my kids. I see Anthony as this incredible coach and leader. I think if we're doing anything like existentially good for society, we're taking kids that have gone through Covid. Have been, you know, lock latchkey children with screens who have really first generation of health care parents, very little social skills because they just didn't learn them the way we did because the digital world they live in and everything else. And we're taking them first job. We're their first job. You remember your first job, right?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. I grew up my parents restaurant vividly.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, yeah. Everybody remembers their first job. We get to be that for a lot of people, thousands of kids, and we get to teach them hard work, hospitality, values, looking people in the eye. Pick it up, don't step. Pick it up, don't step over it. Just basic stuff that really matters. So I don't know how I got on this tangent, but no, I love it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I think, you know, I say.

[Scott Lawton]

That'S why I do it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Restaurant Unstoppable's mission is to inspire, empower, and change the world.

[Scott Lawton]

Y.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, and I think it's precisely what you're talking about that is why. That's. That this industry is set up better than any other industry to actually change the world.

[Scott Lawton]

We do.

[Eric Cacciatore]

We have transformative power with young people and in communities. And if we get more restaurant owners thinking like you, Scott, across the country, like you don't tell me what if we can change communities around the country, we can't change the world.

[Scott Lawton]

The largest percentage of people. How do I say this? The most common job that people have had in the United States is restaurants. Almost everybody's worked in a restaurant at some point. You know, if you're looking at the most commonality of jobs, we have such an opportunity with young people to get them started. Doesn't mean they have to work in the restaurant industry for the rest of their lives. But if we actually have real building blocks of. Of good. Touchstones. Good. We call them touchstones. But you know, real morals that we teach and hard work that we teach and putting the guest before you and taking care of people, these are all skills that will carry them through the rest of their lives.

[Eric Cacciatore]

100.

[Scott Lawton]

My first job at 15 was working at Chops Steakhouse in Atlanta, which, you know, I was a busboy and I worked there through high school and that was a great organization. And I remember going in to apply for the job and I was wearing, I think a T shirt because I was really applying at the ice cream place below, but they couldn't hire me. So I just went upstairs and this guy, Nick Nichols was the manager. I still remember his name. He goes, kid, next time you wear a button down shirt, you come in here with a pin. But you're hired because I need you tonight. And he started kicking my butt for a couple years after afterwards. And I learned so much. I loved it, you know, and. And that's an opportunity. It's a coaching opportunity. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, I'm hopeful for the future of the restaurant industry right now. There's like this real disparity with trying to find people. Right. Like harder than ever to find people. But I think as AI progresses, there's going to be a lot of white collar jobs that go away and there's going to be this influx of people looking for work. And guess what? Industry is not going anywhere.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. People still need to eat. And hospitality is not going to come from a robot.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

And.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Exactly. And you know, it's funny because if you look, if you look at food for as long as it. As we've been around like food has literally been at the. It's the keystone to what transforms humans.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's literally dictated our entire evolution if you look at it. And I think that's going to be the case going forward as we evolve as a species. You know, food is going to be the. The thing that sears the ship.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It always has.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. You know, 100%. I don't see Eaton going away.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Scott Lawton]

And. And really hospitality goes back. I mean centuries. I mean well long before restaurants. You know, I mean there's cultures that were built around hospitality.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I would love. One of my dreams is to do a whole documentary on the. An anthropological approach to hospitality from way back to caveman.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Because it's one of these things we need to survive.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. I mean just look at. If you study Greek history, the guest host relationship is very much about this and you know, so. Yeah. I mean it really. It's. It's.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is there a resource but the Greek history that I can look into.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. I'm trying to remember the book that I read about that. It was a long time ago. Oh yeah. There's plenty of books. Well around the. Just, just Google guest host relationship Greek. I don't know if I'd be Greek mythology but it's been 10 years since I read it. But I remember I used to do some pre meals on that a long time ago.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You can keep talking about. I am looking at.

[Scott Lawton]

But what I'm saying is it's human nature. It's human nature to want to be cared for and taken care of. It is, you know, in respectful society. It's deference to take care of someone and serving is an act of that I think, you know, is humbling which we need more humbling in our world these days.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. I mean I think that's our. Our you know, look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Like really like somewhere in the. The middle of that pyramid above like food and like shelter and the sense of security. It's being seen. It's that important. And I think you. It was so important to feel seen because if you weren't seen and valued in your tribe. Tribe, they're gonna get rid of the dead weight. You had to. You had to carry your weight.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, you had to bring something to a value to the tribe. And being seen for that is like. That's a survival mechanism.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know.

[Scott Lawton]

You know we celebrate great hospitality moments in Bartaco. I told you about the survey we send out you know we read that every morning. We get 400 to 600 comments every day. And I know Anthony reads everyone. I. I read everyone. The regional directors read everyone. It's a fun.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Sorry.

[Scott Lawton]

It's the first thing we read in the morning. We don't go through sales and labor and P L. We go through sentiment.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Are you fishing for these reviews?

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

How are you finding, how are you getting them?

[Scott Lawton]

So when you eat at Bar Taco, if you order digitally, you will get a survey sent to you within an hour after you leave that and we'll offer you a free taco when you come back. If you answer these five questions which we get about four to 600 responses daily.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is that ovation?

[Scott Lawton]

No, we did it through, through olo.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Oh cool.

[Scott Lawton]

We built it sort of custom through olo.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. You know I had a follow up question about OLO to again this idea. Like I think OLO is doing really interesting things. I'm following them. But again, when does it make sense for you to join and leverage a tool like olo? Is that like five, six units?

[Scott Lawton]

Well, that's a good question. You know I've never, I've never been small so it's hard for me to know. I think their digital order just for third party makes a lot of sense. You know, I mean that, that's a simple system that works really well.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Two way tokenization, is that what it.

[Scott Lawton]

No, no. What I'm talking what where you know, third party ordering like Rails and, and all of that where if you order through Uber Doordash, it's one way it punches in straight into your pos. You know, OLO also owns Omnivore, which is the middleware to most POS systems.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So what I'm. I think I, I'm not an expert on this so if anybody's listening they want to correct me. Two way tokenization is information can come from the third party but you can also push information to the third party. Say if they, the guests order something but you're out of it, you can, right?

[Scott Lawton]

Oh yeah, yeah, that's correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well all of that. I didn't know that term.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I don't know if I'm right.

[Scott Lawton]

You might be right. I don't know. But yeah, I mean I think that's, that's really basic. It makes a lot of sense. The engage product with their weightless technology is super useful and to have it all integrated. Got it. Makes a lot of sense.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So again back to your story, the evolution 2018. What's going on between 2014 and 18, you know, you took from this period, you became the president of Bartaco. And then in 2018, you sell.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. So it was. We brought on a new CEO as Andy was looking to move on. And I did not want that position because I had two kids and I had been working my tail off, and I needed to be with them. They got a little bit older. 10, and I think they were 7 and 10 at the time. And it was time nannies couldn't do it all. I needed to be dad.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

So we brought on Jeff Korkar as CEO, and he did a great job.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Barteca or Bartaco?

[Scott Lawton]

Barteca. And we began the search for a replacement for me, because I didn't want to go either. So we did find that replacement about a year or two after I asked for it, but they. And. And. And I was replaced. And then we sold to del Frisco.

[Eric Cacciatore]

$325,000.

[Scott Lawton]

325 million. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Thank you for that. Correction. $325 million. That's a good payday.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Congratulations, man. So that was a 2018. How many bar tacos at this point?

[Scott Lawton]

We were about 15 and 15. I don't remember the exact number. We're about 30 restaurants total. So I think we had gotten. And we were like, neck and neck with the number of units.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So, I mean, what's interesting is after this, I think this is. Is where Andy starts his basically private equity group, where he starts investing in other concepts, Right?

[Scott Lawton]

Well, yeah, and he joined some boards, and, you know, we.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I said, Anthony, I think you mean Andy.

[Scott Lawton]

No, you said Andy. Andy, you know, he joined boards and he, you know, did some private investment and things like that. And, you know, we did some tech investment together. Things like that. Like that. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You invested in.

[Scott Lawton]

Correct.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What I'm curious about at this time, 2018, I know right around this time, IPOs are starting to take off. Like invest. Like these. These IPOs is. Right. The right term.

[Scott Lawton]

Independent.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Basically, investors going.

[Scott Lawton]

You're talking about SPACs.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yes. Specific purpose. But what's the acronym stand for again? I don't.

[Scott Lawton]

I don't know. I didn't spend a lot of time with the spacious idea.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Oh, yeah. So, like. But I'm just kind of curious, you know, was it because of the experience you had with the Dell Frisco taking over and, like, was any. Like, there's got to be a better way or, like, because ultimately you ended up back like Del Frisco didn't.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. So those two years, 2018. Those two years I met my wife got married. She has three kids my age, so we're like the Brady Buns. Full custody, both, which was wonderful. And I wasn't really that focused on business, honestly. I was focused on life, which I had never done. I've worked my ass off, you know, since I was 15, really, in restaurants, so I was focused on that. I did some tech investment, and I was going to some of the conferences. I got to kind of ride shotgun with with the Wisely boys. I was helping them kind of pedal the product a little bit. And I learned a lot about sort of the inner workings of restaurant tech, which, you know, I had no idea about coming back to Bar Taco. I didn't even thought about it. I was a little frustrated because once Del Frisco's had sort of taken over, they really didn't talk to me or Andy or Sasha at all, and they started making changes that we didn't think were great ideas. So there was some frustration there. But I. And the way I felt like it, they'd written me a check as to go away, so I was gonna go away. You know, what was that? Like, weird and super frustrating, but. But at the same time, you know, I was grateful for the position I was in. So.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, but, you know, it's weird because, like, yeah, like, you work your ass off to get to this point, to have this. This freedom. Right, right. But then this. This. This, like, brainchild of yours, this baby, you know, that you've nurtured into adulthood, like, restaurant adulthood. Like, it can't be easy just to, like, walk away from that.

[Scott Lawton]

No, no, no.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Handing your child over to an abusive parent, you know?

[Scott Lawton]

Well, I was excited at the time of the sale, and I thought that they were going to do a good job. And, you know, I didn't realize all the internal challenges they were having. And I also just didn't. I was naive. I didn't know what I didn't know. And what I know now is, you know, big companies that buy small companies will typically put their culture onto the small company. In this case, Barteca was a much healthier, better company at the time. Del Fresco's had been great, but was. Had some problems, and. And they could have learned from us, probably, or maybe we were just too different. I don't know what that answer is, but I know that you have to be really careful about thinking you can slap this with that, and that'll kind of lead me into the next part.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But lead away, my friend.

[Scott Lawton]

So, you know, obviously, Del Frisco is kind of you know, got. They got bought. Got taken private by El Caterton. And I didn't know that was going on, but once it was announced, I heard that, and then I heard that they were going to be paired under Uncle Julio's. And so you heard what I just said? Like, taking them from one Texas brand that's old and established and throwing them under another one, to me was, like, going to be the end of Bartaco.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So did you have an option to, like, buy it back? Like, how did that even go down?

[Scott Lawton]

That. No, I didn't know anything about it. This was all done, you know, I mean, we couldn't have bought it anyway.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. So that's what. I'm kind of confused.

[Scott Lawton]

Well, El Cater got paid to go away. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And then you somehow end up. End up as the CEO.

[Scott Lawton]

Well, what I realized was that Bartaco probably shouldn't be under Uncle Julio's. Okay. And Andy and I chatted about that. We connected with El Caterton to say, can we maybe talk to you about this? And they were gracious and let us come. Not come and explain our case. I wasn't looking for a job even then. I was like, maybe a board seat, maybe advisory. But I just think you. You guys need a little bit of the founder juice in here culture. Something's wrong, you know? And it sort of boiled down to, if I didn't do it, it wasn't gonna happen. So. And do it being come back and run Bartaco.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it. So 2020.

[Scott Lawton]

This was 2019, when we're talking about it. I started January 2020 back.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Ouch.

[Scott Lawton]

So. So, yeah, yeah. So anyway, so the original idea was maybe, you know, I would come in and work under Uncle Julio's and run it as a president. I said, I don't want to do that. It doesn't interest me, you know, either Bartaco becomes free of. Because we were under Barcelona, and then we were under Del Frisco's. We had always been sort of the kid brother that got kicked around a little bit, you know? So my terms were that Bartaco be free. And El catered in, believed in that and let us do it. So, you know, right around January of 2020, we pulled out of the support center of Uncle Julio's, or we're pulling out, and. And we started running Bar Taco as its own company.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay. At this point, you're. You're financially free.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. Like, you don't need a job?

[Scott Lawton]

Well, I mean, yeah, I'm good.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. So, like, what was it that pulled you back in? Why did you care so much?

[Scott Lawton]

There were three reasons when I think about it. One was the team, the regional directors, the guys that had been. Just been there in the trenches with us the whole time. We had told them this was going to be a good thing, going to Del Frisco's and, you know, eventually you'll get stock and it's a great company and. And they just got beat while they were there. So I. I wanted to right that wrong in some way if I could. The other one was financial. I mean, it's nice to make money, you know, and, you know, so, of course it was financially interesting. And the third one is I was pissed. That was a lot of it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

I was pissed that the. I just. I believe so much in this brand that, you know, I want it to be run right, and I want it to be all the things it can be.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So when you came back in 2020, how many locations was it still? 15 to 15 or this. @ this point, it's just.

[Scott Lawton]

When I came back, there were 23 locations.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So the opened eight locations.

[Scott Lawton]

They had opened eight locations, of which varying success, not the same success we had had. And. But. But some were doing well. So, yeah, I came back and then March of 2020 happened, right, Covid? Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean, is it worth getting into all that or just like, how did you come out of it stronger?

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, I mean, you know, everybody's got their Covid stories. We came out of it stronger because we had great operational teams there in the restaurants that were able to do all sorts of the crazy things we did. We learned a lot, and we were actually able to develop, you know, the. The. The service model that led us out of it, which was fantastic.

[Eric Cacciatore]

This is when you pivot to the server leader.

[Scott Lawton]

That's right. Right. And there, you know, there are multiple iterations of it. But, yeah, it led us out. And at the same time, what was really cool about it from sort of the. The support center. Some people call it corporate. I like support center. We had nothing. So here I have a brand that's highly functional, that's doing all right, but I don't have payroll people. I don't have.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Scott Lawton]

HR built your.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Your C suite yet?

[Scott Lawton]

I have nothing. There was like four of us, maybe five of us, and. But I know this brand. I know what a good C suite looks like, and I get to. It feels so broken right now, but I get to build it from scratch, which means I don't have any of these other legacy brands creating friction around what I need for Bartaco. So we were able to build what I think is a really great support center that is modern, paperless.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Can you paint the picture of what a modern and good support center looks like? This is the kind of stuff I'm really interested is the organizational structure. Because I think that's where people really start to lose it when they start to scale. You know, you get to that, like, you know, you're at like eight locations, seven locations. You're thinking we could scale this. But like you, you have to scale the, you got to build the house before you move in it. Right now, now you're at 23 locations and you got to build this, this, this C suite, this organizational structure. So what does that look like? And like, why do you like what you did?

[Scott Lawton]

I tried not to be desperate and I was always super picky. So, you know, we got the right people. I'd had enough failure in my life and all of these different things to kind of have a better sense of who, who works and who doesn't work. That, that part I can't really lay a map out. That's something you learn life experience and, and you know, your brand and you know what works. But you know, I mean, from the modernization of it, you know, a lot of it, like, it's just we had, I don't know, hundreds of the white boxes full of the old credit card slips and all that stuff. And you know, I hired one lady, a temp, she scanned all of it over three years time and ended up being a great employee for us. But now we have no paper. Like, just getting off paper is a game changer. Once you're, you know, once you're ordering becomes digitized and all of these things you're able to, you can build on this. You can have real time data. You need less people, you need less AP clerks. You know, it's just when you build it on sort of a modern structure, it's more efficient. You know, we have way less AP clerks than an average restaurant group would have because of the efficiency.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So we're using margin edge for that or just scale?

[Scott Lawton]

No, we use craftable.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, craftable works great for us.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Inventory management. Do you, are you leveraging like a restaurant365 or anything?

[Scott Lawton]

No, what. We've built our own sort of modules or we, we use certain things. One of the things we did, another thing we did that's really important and I think this is at a certain size, but we have our own database and business intelligence system. So it doesn't matter if I take one Product and toss it in the garbage and plug in another one. I don't rely on any of the reporting off of any of the products I use because we can build it all in our own system, if that makes sense.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Are you using QuickBooks or something like that?

[Scott Lawton]

Oh, no, no, no. We have zero. No, we have great planes right now. And eventually we'll move. Move over, but to something newer and more modern, similar to the PoS we've been sticking with. Kind of old, tried and true, till we find exactly what we want.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it. So the system today, the big part of what I'm hearing that what you built that you like, is it's digitized. So you're not relying on paper you got off of paper. It's fully digitized at. In 2020, at 23 locations. You said you want to focus on the. The getting the right people. Right. It's not. It's not what. It's who.

[Scott Lawton]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Getting the right. Who's on your bus.

[Scott Lawton]

The right ones on the bus, and make sure they know what to do and they have clarity.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So what, like, what did that organizational structure look like? You were the CEO. You had a president in Anthony. What were the other chiefs in the house?

[Scott Lawton]

Regional directors. So, well, go back to Covid. I was the CEO. I was the VP of Ops. I was the culinary director. I was the real estate person. I was all of those things for. I was wearing a lot of hats when I came back. Like, more hats than I'd worn in a lot of years. And it was awesome and horrible. You know, the good news was my kids were home with my wonderful wife, and everybody was fine, and I could go work. And I. So I was able to really dig into each department and sort of mold it and get it right and then hire the right person for it. So, you know, Anthony being one of those really key hires was I knew I needed at the time. When I hired Anthony, he came on as VP of Ops, not because he was already a coo. He was qualified to be the COO of us. But I talked to Bendell. The regional directors will not respect it if I just throw in a leader and I step aside. That's what happened last time. It doesn't go well. So I need you to get in there with the troops, prove yourself. Which he did for a year. And, I mean, I knew within three months that he was going to be fine. Yeah. But my phone stopped ringing, which is. You know, I think Andy always says that about me, too. But when your phone stop stops ringing, you got the right guy. Yeah. You know, and good things are happening. So yeah, it's now we have two VP of operations that are under our president and multiple regional directors. But, but you know the lines of ops communication, you want to, you don't want to play that telephone game because things get lost in the message. So the tighter you can keep it, the longer you can keep it. I recommend that.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What does your communication look like? How does information flow?

[Scott Lawton]

A lot of it flows around reporting, but of, you know, everybody has regional meetings, their store level meetings and then there's sort of higher level meetings. We try to avoid having too many meetings. You know, if everybody's sitting on a zoom call all day, what else are they going to be doing? You know, it really matters. You know, we're talking about sort of the corporate structure. But the most important thing to me is the restaurant and how they perform. Obviously that's what pays our bills. And the idea is to keep managers out of the office. I hate when people say the GM is the CEO of a business. I don't think that's the case. I think if you're running a restaurant right, you're on the floor, you're with the staff, you're with the customers. So the more we can compress the office side of their job, the better. And the more information that we can sort of flow through the regional directors that can be hands on with, you know, rather than them having to read a whole P and L. Hey, we got a problem with your chemical usage. Let's take a look at this right now.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, I've totally lost track of time. It's almost 3:00'.

[Scott Lawton]

Clock.

[Eric Cacciatore]

We blocked two hours. We're, we're almost at the end of it and I've just been just loving the conversation, man. There is one thing. I think it's a great segue. When I was speaking with Anthony last, when I was last here talking about, about Taka, he. We were talking about second and third time visits and how at the core of that it's GMs are at the core of loyalty and how you've never had a loyalty program. I don't know if I necessarily buy loyalty programs. I think it conditions consumers for the wrong things. It's like you're conditioning them to value discounts, not actual loyalty to the people in the brand.

[Scott Lawton]

So we're leaning in on, we're leaning in on guest intelligence, like I told you before.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

Trying to build a true guest intelligence platform. To me that trumps loyalty. Loyalty is norm. And cheers. Norm yeah. Beer slides up when he. When he sits at the. At the bar. If we can use technology to help empower managers to recognize second, third time visits to recognize drops in frequency when somebody comes back. All of those things, if we can use that to help them and then really make sure we've got the right manager on the floor who really does have that correct DNA to make sure people are happy all the time and drive that through their staff. We think that's real loyalty.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. But the thing that struck me was this idea of really behind how you create that loyalty is by putting a GM in place. Place. And the. The. The loyalty. The loyalty will hinge on a good gm. And I was just hoping we could unpackage that.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah. I mean, that, to me, is, you know, 10 commandments of the restaurant business. I mean, your GM, you're only as good as your GMs.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Scott Lawton]

The end of the day, your GMs are the people that you need. And. And then. So what do you define? What is a GM for you? What are they doing? And I. I've always found that the best GMs are on the floor with the customers, with the staff, you know, really making sure we sell what we sell. And what do we sell? We sell as a lifestyle brand. We don't sell tacos. We don't sell margaritas. We sell fun. We sell life. We sell a vibe, we sell a party. We sell engagement. Those are. That's what we actually sell. Tacos are just the cost to come in. And the GM has to get that in a real level. He's not going to get in front of the computer in the office. He has to be checking the air conditioning, the music, making sure the restaurant's super clean, all of these things, making sure the flowers are beautiful. All of these little thousands of details that we have to get right every single day. Create that feeling that you feel when you walk into the restaurant and that thing that makes you want to come back.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, man. I've loved today's conversation. Thank you for that. Anything we have not discussed, now's the time to get it out.

[Scott Lawton]

No. Well, I'm gonna cover the lie. I'm gonna go back to what I said when you asked me first about. And I said, introspection is my thing. I'm gonna read our touchstone. That came back from the Barteca days. Andy wrote this, but I think it really covers it says we are radically transparent. The flip side of introspection is how we communicate with each other. We say what we mean, and we Mean what we say. We don't tell one person one thing and another person something else. There are no details too small, no secrets to keep, no behavior to overlook. Being unendingly critical and self critical of your work performance while simultaneously enjoying life and being a good human being with your co workers is how you should approach your daily routine.

[Eric Cacciatore]

The question I was just about to ask you when my the wrapping up questions is what's one thing about your business I value a process or a system that makes you truly unstoppable. I think you just answered it, so great job there. The mission statement is to change the world through inspiring, empowering and transforming the industry. How have you personally transformed. How are you a better man today than the man you were when you got started?

[Scott Lawton]

So many ways but. But I think I'm better because I'm. Because I'm not the most important person in the room anymore.

[Eric Cacciatore]

If you got the news you'd be leaving this world tomorrow. All the memories of you, your work and your restaurants would be lost with your departure. With the exception of three pieces of wisdom you could leave behind for your, your legacy for the good of humanity. What are those three pieces of wisdom?

[Scott Lawton]

Oh my gosh. Okay. The guest first concept is always one. My, my, my email, my other email is s. [e-mail] so I don't care about that one. Put the customer first. I think the transparency is absolutely one. Even though I just read it, I should have waited. But that's, that's how you should behave. That's how humanity should behave. If you watch the news, we're missing a lot of that right now. You know that that's the big thing. And I think the act of teaching people and helping people and taking care of people will always make you feel better. Yeah, man.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Scott, I've really enjoyed this. I like to let this last question really be my North Star. This is who I chase. This is who I try to get on the show. This is really word of mouth leading the ship of restaurant unstoppable. Where are the other Scott Lawton's? Like I want like this was a great conversation. Who do you respect and admire? If you found out there were a guest on the show, you'd be like, I want to hear what they're saying. Who is that for you?

[Scott Lawton]

There's a lot of them, but give me many names. Jack Gibbons is a good one. Have you talked to Jack Gibbons yet?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Front burner.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah, Front burner.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yes. Actually I'm headed to Texas. I've had him on the show. He's always welcome back. Maybe I can reconnect with him.

[Scott Lawton]

I love Jack. Ford Fry is an interesting one.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, he was also great. I'm starting to.

[Scott Lawton]

Doug Ford. Yeah, he's my buddy.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I'll be driving through Atlanta too.

[Scott Lawton]

Okay, well, you've got you. I already know all the ones we've had of my circle.

[Eric Cacciatore]

This is making me feel like I'm really getting the right people. But you know, I have learned that it's not about how many people you know. It's about finding the right people and nurturing those relationships.

[Scott Lawton]

Have you talked to Rich from Mecha yet?

[Eric Cacciatore]

No.

[Scott Lawton]

That's a good one.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Rich from Mecha.

[Scott Lawton]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Look how Rich. I'm coming after you. And Ford Fry, Jack Gibbons, gentlemen are always welcome back on the show. It's been only a couple years since it happened, so I might have to let some more time elapse. Some more happens in their businesses that we can talk about. But I love those guys. They were great. And Mitch or Rich. Mecha.

[Scott Lawton]

Mecha.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is that.

[Scott Lawton]

That's the Rastrap.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay, got it. Rich, look out. I'm coming after you. And how can we connect with you? Maybe we want to join your team. Maybe. I don't know. If you even make yourself available publicly. You kind of climb the corporate ladder. It gets harder and harder to find.

[Scott Lawton]

I've got a linked account. It's easy enough to y. Send me a note. I read them every day. So most of them are just silly sales calls, but I. I do. I do read them all. So. So.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Scott Lawton on LinkedIn. And that is L, A W T O N Lawton. And I'll have the bar Taco link in the show notes as well.

[Scott Lawton]

Great.

[Eric Cacciatore]

This is where I say I literally cannot do what I do without people like you being so generous with their time, their knowledge, their perspective. You make my work possible. And it was an honor to make an example of you. And there is no questioning, my friend. You are unstoppable.

[Scott Lawton]

Thanks, man.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Cheers.