1199: Steven McAloon, Partner and Co-Founder of KIC Hospitality

Summary

Restaurant Unstoppable Podcast #1199: Steven McAloon, Partner and Co-Founder of KIC Hospitality

Date: July 7, 2025
Host: Eric Cacciatore
Guest: Steven McAloon

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Eric Cacciatore sits down with Steven McAloon, partner and co-founder at KIC Hospitality, to dig deep into the pivotal transitions and lessons learned across Steven’s 25+-year restaurant career. From his roots in the UK (Costa Coffee, Whitbread, Elior) through his rise in U.S. franchise operations (Schlotzsky’s, Moe’s Southwest Grill, Aramark), Steven shares what it takes for operators to evolve from single-unit owners to multi-unit restaurateurs—and why scaling successfully is about both people and systems.

He offers an unfiltered look at franchising, operational excellence vs. brand relevance, the economics of growth, management versus leadership, and how KIC Hospitality helps independent owners solve their most pressing challenges. This episode is densely packed with actionable wisdom for multi-unit operators, aspiring franchisors, and anyone struggling to break through their next growth ceiling.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Mantra of Engagement and People-First Leadership

• Opening Success Quote:
  “People participate to the extent that they believe and believe to the extent that they participate.” (Steven McAloon, 05:07)
  Steven emphasizes that high team engagement hinges on integrity, clear plans, consistency, and recognition. Leadership is about building trust and living the mission.

• On How to Get People to Believe:
  “You’ve got to have integrity about what you are trying to achieve… people follow good people most of the time… You have crystal clear plans… you do it with integrity, you follow up, and you show results. Reward and recognize 100%.” (Steven, 05:46–06:39)

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Scaling a Restaurant: The Painful Growth Milestones

• Biggest Hurdle for Small Business Owners:

  • Major pain points occur at the 1-3, 4-10, and 10-20 unit marks. Each stage requires a shift in mindset, systems, and leadership.
    “Other than choosing the wrong real estate, I would say going from 1 to 3 or 3 to 10, 10 to 20 is the biggest hurdle of a small business owner in the restaurant business.” (Steven, 00:00 & 10:09)
  • Throwing a top-performing manager the “keys” to become a district leader without support/training is a classic mistake.

• Growth Phases:

  • 1–3: Proving the concept, hands-on leadership
  • 4–10: Fine-tuning for scale, installing processes
  • 10–20: Adding a new layer of leadership and infrastructure, often needing external investment

• Quote:
  “You almost have to redefine and start from scratch to get forward with every evolution.” (Eric Cacciatore, 10:49)

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Steven’s Career Journey & Key Lessons

UK Roots: Café, Coffee, and Contract Food

• Self-employed family background—developed a “small business owner” work ethic.
• Rose from bar work in Bristol to General Manager to regional leadership at Cafe Rouge and Costa Coffee (owned by Whitbread).
• Key Learning:
  • “No matter the concept, it’s all about relationships and people; every segment has its own operational complexity.” (25:13–26:12)

U.S. Franchise Experience

• First U.S. role: Schlotzsky’s, post-bankruptcy, helping to rebuild trust with franchisees.

• Key challenges: Lack of brand recognition for UK companies in U.S. talent market (45:55), adapting to new business models, and learning the dynamics of franchising.

• “It doesn’t matter what kind of concept… when it involves people, it’s all relationships… It’s all difficult.” (Steven, 25:41)

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Operations vs. Brand: The Power of Concept

• Major Evolution:
  • Realized that operational excellence is essential, but a “compelling concept” is required for growth beyond 20 units. (27:56)
• On Brand Relevance:
  • “Operations can get you to 20, but you need to have a brand that will get you beyond 20… It has to have legs and be what the consumer wants.” (Eric, 28:45)

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Franchising: Good, Bad, and Lessons Learned

The Franchisee-Franchisor Relationship

• Advisory, Not Authoritarian:
  • You cannot drive franchisee performance by “cracking the whip”—relationship, integrity, and transparency are crucial (56:18).
• Integrity & Trust:
  • “I like [franchising] when the franchisor has a philosophy of integrity… The mission was to make franchisees happy—which really meant helping them grow sales.” (Steven, 59:07)

Economic Levers in Franchising

• Making money through royalties is primary; upfront franchise fees are “gravy”; supply chain markups should benefit franchisees through lower prices (77:34–80:51).
• Quote:
  “If you make money from the supply chain, it should be fed back into the business and costs passed to franchisees. The more profitable they are, the more locations they’ll open.” (Steven, 80:34)

Characteristics of the Best Franchise Operators

• Most successful: Hands-on, detail-oriented, maintain standards, know the recipes, stay connected to the operation.
• “The further up the chain you get, the further away from the detail… I think you should always make a habit of staying close to the operation.” (Steven, 61:14)

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Brand Innovation & Change Management

• Moe’s Southwest Grill:
  • Led a brand revitalization as market competition intensified, focusing on consumer research, updating prototypes, and driving operational and marketing alignment (69:53–73:48).
  • Emphasized the need for a remodel and reinvestment process franchisees can actually afford.

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Contract Food & Management Companies

• Aramark & B2B Food Solutions:

  • Operated large-scale, subsidized foodservice across diverse environments (corporate, healthcare, education).
  • Success depends on “predictability”—delivering consistent financial and guest experience performance, with great managers being the most critical asset (40:17).

• Workplace & B&I Challenges:

  • “Companies pay for a service—to keep employees on site and happy… It’s about volume of client relationships, and standardizing the experience in someone else’s environment.” (Steven, 88:49)

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The Formation of KIC Hospitality and Modern Restaurant Consulting

• Origin:
  • KIC stands for “cheers” in three languages—reflects the idea of celebrating team synergy and energy in restaurants (07:10).
• Focus:
  • Helping independent, multi-unit operators overcome the 3–20 unit hurdles—specifically around operations, people, and profit optimization.
  • Developed “scientific,” data-driven processes for business assessment.
  • “We’re not critiquing to say ‘you’re terrible.’ It’s about optimizing and getting you to the best place you could be.” (Steven, 52:55)

Case Study: Empire Slice House with Rachel Cope

• Consulting Approach:
  1. Discovery:
     • Secret shopper/consumer perspective, gathering holistic brand and guest experience data (115:06–116:10).
     • Back-of-house observation and process audits (116:14).
     • Executive/team evaluation & accountability charting (117:24; 121:39).
  2. Analysis & Plan:
     • SWOT analysis by function, identifying actionable “levers” to pull: catering, beverage, loyalty, operational efficiency, etc. (118:07; 118:16).
     • Specific, measurable improvement goals with clear accountability.
  3. Integration & Execution:
     • Ritualizing accountability (weekly, midweek focus) and prioritizing “rocks.”
     • Using frameworks such as the Four Disciplines of Execution:
       • Wildly Important Goals (WIGs)
       • Lead Measures
       • Compelling Scoreboard
       • Cadence of Accountability (125:00–131:12)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Operations vs. Brand:
  “It’s as complicated running a coffee shop as running a polished casual… They’re all about people, and all are difficult.” (Steven, 25:41)

• On Manager Development:
  “Typically, you throw the keys to your best manager… but a large portion of those folks fail because you sent them off with no training or structure.” (Steven, 11:23)

• On Restaurant Evolution:
  “How do you capture the magic and scale it? It’s subjective—there’s the brand, the experience, and the food. Onesie-twosie operators can actually do it better sometimes, if not for scale.” (Steven, 48:44)

• On Value & Consumer Shifts:
  “Portions have gone down, prices have gone up. People are spending the same amount overall—they’re just going out less often.” (Steven, 107:56)

• On Consulting Philosophy:
  “The science behind the plan. We get to a calculated plan based on fact and science, and that gives you a higher chance of succeeding.” (Steven, 132:02)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |----------------|------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00-10:09 | Growth hurdles: 1-3, 4-10, 10-20+ units | | 05:07-06:39 | Leadership, Engagement, and Mantra | | 25:13-27:56 | UK coffee/restaurant ops, operations vs. brand | | 45:55-47:15 | Brand recognition & talent challenges | | 52:55-53:27 | Consulting = optimization, not criticism | | 59:07-59:52 | The franchise relationship: mission & integrity | | 77:34-80:51 | Franchise economics: fees, royalties, supply chain | | 115:06-121:12 | KIC Hospitality consulting process for clients | | 125:00-131:12 | Four Disciplines of Execution: management cadence |

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Guest Details & Contact

• Steven McAloon
• Email: [e-mail]
• KIC Hospitality (website coming soon)
• LinkedIn

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Three Final Pieces of Wisdom (134:56–135:07)

1. Have a clear goal or two.
2. Have a plan.
3. Respect and develop your people, but don't be held hostage by them.

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The Restaurant Unstoppable Takeaway

This episode is a masterclass in scaling a restaurant brand, managing people, and keeping profitability at the core while protecting the heart of hospitality. Steven’s cross-continental perspective, combined with his direct, data-driven consulting approach, supplies actionable frameworks for any operator at an inflection point—whether you’re seeking to grow from one to three units, solve systems issues, or move from survival mode into prosperity and opportunity for all.

Notable shout-outs: Rachel Cope (Empire Slice House), the Hunt Brothers (Via 313), Aaron Lyons (Dish Society).

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For complete resources, tools, and guest recommendations, visit RestaurantUnstoppable.com and check out episode #1199.

Transcript

[Stephen McAloon]

Other than choosing wrong the wrong real estate. I would say going from 1 to 3 or 3 to 10, 10 to 20 is the biggest hurdle of a small business owner in the restaurant business.

[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 guest and so many others and get one step closer to becoming Unstoppable. Do you wish you could have all of your restaurant needs and solutions under one roof?

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Allow me to introduce to you today's.

Guest partner and co founder at KIC Hospitality, Stephen McAloon.

My man. Stephen, are you feeling unstoppable today?

[Stephen McAloon]

I am, I am. Most days I am, but the older I get, the more the odd aches and pains I feel. But yeah, no, I'm good, I'm good to go.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, I'm psyched to be here, man. Like, you are a shining example of the work I'm trying to do in terms of how I find guests. And I, I disc KIC Hospitality. I was talking to Rachel Cope, who I had on the show in the past. I reconnected with her. I went deeper. When I talked to her this time around, I found out that she who I actually introduced her to the Hunt brothers, Brandon Hunt. She reached out to him for advice, he referred you to her and then she recommended you during the podcast. So like this is like exactly. The work I'm trying to do is to go deep, to dig deep, to look for leads to, to find amazing people who deserve to be made an example of. And we're here today. We're making happen. I can't wait to dive deeper before we dive into exactly who you are, what your business is all about. Let's get that motivational inspirational ball rolling with a success quote or mantra. What do you have for us?

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, I, I think my one comes from, I've stolen it from an ex boss, but it was all about engagement and really in reference to people. So, you know, he, he, he used to quote and it was something along the lines of people participate to the extent that they believe and believe to the extent that they participate. And I think when you, when you're trying to coach, develop, push a team to a place where it's going to lead to success, you know, if they believe in what, what you're doing and the, the mission, then you've got a high chance of a high level of engagement and participation.

[Eric Cacciatore]

How do you get people to believe?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think you've got to, You've got to have integrity about what you are trying to achieve and how you're going to approach it and how you deal with people. I think people follow good people most of the time.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

So, you know, there's so many. How many times have you been in a situation or managed a project or a restaurant or whatever, and as soon as you, you throw out an initiative, people start backing out the room because they either don't believe in what you're. You're saying or, you know, they're not inspired by you in some way. So I think you do that with integrity. I think you share. You, you have crystal clear plans.

[Jeff Gothard]

You.

[Stephen McAloon]

You link A plus B equals C. So it makes sense to people. Yeah. And you, you know, you do it with integrity and you, you follow up and you, you show results.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

Reward and recognize 100%, man.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I'm 100% on board. Behind every great restaurant is a great person and great people, you know, and at the core of what we're trying to do here, restaurant unstoppable. The birds of the same feather flock together. So when you start talking to one, you know, you find more, you know, and like, in, you know, that there's a lot of weight to what you just shared right there. It's the, it's my North Star, you know, so I can totally get behind that, man.

Before we kind of dive back into.

Your story and kind of share how you got to where you are today, what is KIC Hospitality paint the big picture of what you guys do?

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah. So it's, it's, you know, a business that myself and my partner, Jeff Gothard formed probably.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's my coffee, by the way. Thank you.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

The beauty of the pod, you and Jeff, it was something that we, we put together. Well, we started really maybe nine to 12 months ago. We both came to the conclusion in our sort of professional life that we wanted a influence for ourselves out of corporate structure or out of working for somebody else, and we formed KIC Hospitality or Kick Hospitality. And that kind of stands for, essentially the mantra of cheers. So Kanpai is a Japanese for cheers. The I part, I'm from Wales so it's yaki dala. So that's, that's Welsh for cheers. And then of course the C is cheers in English. So it's really about, you know, in hospitality, whether you're large or small, when things are really clicking in a restaurant or a coffee shop or whatever, when the team's doing what they're meant to be doing and having fun and bringing energy, you know, you kind of, it's cheers, cheers to that moment. And you know, you can have fun at work, you can have fun in hospitality and restaurants. So it was really about celebrating that moment and hence the, the three letter acronym.

[Jeff Gothard]

I love that, I love that.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is there like I know you guys are 12 months into this, right. So still relatively new organization. Is there a niche you're carving out for yourself, an area of focus?

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, we, we actually both worked for a period of time there myself a little bit longer than Jeff, but we've both worked a lot in franchising and I think when you've, you've, you've been in that side and you've also worked with non franchise business, you realize that helping independent business owners, whether you've got one restaurant, three restaurants, 50 restaurants or whatever, there's a real skill to that and it's all about relationships. And you know, I, well we both get a lot of personal satisfaction helping small businesses. Yeah, small operators and restaurants.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And that's really my target audience is the one to three unit operators or maybe the low four is trying to like four, five, six in that ballpark, get to that next level. That hurdle of like, okay, like I can't carry this on my shoulders anymore. Like I want to scale if I want to create opportunity for others. If you're not growing, you're dying. Like where do we go to get that information? And that's one of the reasons why going forward I'm really trying to focus on whether it's a multi concept operator like that, that 4 to 10 or if it's a single unit or a single concept multi unit operator that, that 10 to 20. Because that's where the lessons are. There's the amount of growth that an individual has to go through to get to that point. Yeah, but to your point. Yeah, like also like that. There's so many lessons that these people can share that have reached that point.

[Stephen McAloon]

You know, it's, it's probably other than choosing wrong, the wrong real estate, I would say going from 1 to 3 or 3 to 10, 10 to 20 is the biggest hurdle of a small business owner in, in the restaurant business.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I just had Matthew Mabel. Do you know Matthew? He's based in Dallas.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So he identified and I, and I love it because I, I kind of came to the same conclusion and he reinforced. What I've learned is that there seems to be tipping points between it's, you know, 1 to 3 and then 4 to 10.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is the next like, you know, point of evolution and then you get over 10, 10 to 20. There's that, that next phase of evolution and there's the over 20.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And those four points, like you almost have to redefine and like start from scratch.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

To get forward.

[Stephen McAloon]

I, I first heard that in the United Kingdom and this is probably 25 years ago and it was a leader of a, of a large business over there. And he said the same thing. It's like if you're, if you're running a business, you tend to throw the keys to the car to your best manager. So let' started with one, now you're at three or four. I'm going to throw the keys. You're now the district manager, the area supervisor, whatever, whatever.

[Jeff Gothard]

And.

[Stephen McAloon]

And that's typically the process. And you know, a good, a large portion of those folks fail because you just literally sent them on the way with no training structure, processes. And so the, the learning curve is like, you know, steep.

[Jeff Gothard]

Right.

[Stephen McAloon]

The, the 3 to 10 is not quite as steep and then the 10 to 20 is a little bit easier. Different challenges. Absolutely. But you've cut your teeth really, you know, between 1 and 1 and 4, 1 and 5.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. Proof of concept is what Matt was saying, Matthew. And then the, the 4 to 10 is really about fine tuning everything to scale. And then beyond 10, it's like, well, now I need a whole nother layer of like chiefs. The, the CEO, the CEO, the, you know, the cmo, the cfo. And like you usually you're not making enough money to pay all those salaries. So there's some level of like venture or like going out and raising money to get to that next step and then it's a completely different business model.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So.

[Stephen McAloon]

Or you try and pay for it, which it's like you say it's, it's tough. And quite often when you come in from a large business, you're not necessarily, you know, you may have been in that large business for a long time and you're not necessarily, you may not have the ability to roll your sleeves up and do what matters in a smaller business because you. You're used to large department or, you know, you've got a bigger team. And now it's just you, yourself and I just running marketing or operations or whatever. It's. It's a. It's a fine balance, but you can't do anything without people.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. It's kind of the challenge I'm currently experiencing with Restaurant Unstoppable, as I feel like I've gotten it as far as I can get it on my own. And I'm starting to, like, realize I got to learn something from these people that I'm interviewing. And if I'm going to get to the next stage, I have to go out and, like, find people to surround myself with.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So it's a real challenge. But let's dive into your story now. I mean, just, I give myself, like, 30 minutes to kind of wrap my mind around who I'm going to talk to. And thank God for LinkedIn, because it makes my job so much easier. But, like, you started in 99. You were with White Bread Area. White Bread.

[Stephen McAloon]

Whip Bread.

[Jeff Gothard]

Whip Bread.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Thank you very much. That was from 99. And then 01 to 04, you're with Costa, which was a coffee company.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And then you were with elior. Elio Elior UK did that until 2006. 2006-20, Thursday 13, it looks like you jumped the. The pond and came over stateside. You're with Shlotsky's.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You did that until 13 and 13 to 18, you were with Moe's Southwest Grill. And looks like with most of these titles, you're a VP of Franchise and operations. Some sort.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Of combination of. And then 18 to 23, you're with Airmark. A little pivot there. Different kind of business model. Right.

And then you were with Game Box.

Never heard of that.

[Stephen McAloon]

Immersive Game Box.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And then that is when you left. And now you started kic. So we have a lot to cover today.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah. Ye.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But in all these roles, you were in operations, safe to say.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, operations. A little bit of marketing, brand innovation with Mose. And then most, I would say, you know, from Schlotsky's through Aramark has some form of client relationship.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So where does it make sense to.

Start sharing your story? I mean, where do you think you really started to, like, figure out what you wanted and you started living intentionally to get it?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think it's probably. I. I see it as a bit of a tale of two halves, you know, one half. Well, it's more than a Half now in the UK and the other half in the US you know, I, I, I, I come from a, a self employed parental background. You know, you're, if, if you want to go on vacation, your, your, your dad or your mom, whoever's running the business has to pay for somebody to take their place. So they're few and far between.

[Jeff Gothard]

Right.

[Stephen McAloon]

Great childhood, you know, all that good stuff. But it kind of spoke to me in terms of like the small business owner and what they have to do to make a living and some of the sacrifices that you have to make and the risk associated with it as well. So that's sort of the work ethic I guess was instilled in me pretty early. Went to, went to college, did biochemistry and stats, kind of taught me that's not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And then joined Whitbread which is a large company, multiple brands, but joined a concept called Cafe Rouge which is sort of polished, casual, French, loved it. Worked the bar, wait, waiting, waiting on work, the kitchen management. Then went into the multi unit side.

[Jeff Gothard]

Of it.

[Stephen McAloon]

And then they also own Costa Coffee which is kind of like the Starbucks but in, in the UK and now, now in this, coming to the States, owned by Coca Cola now actually. So did a little stint with Elior, which is a large food contract provider. And then my other half decided to move to the States. Two years long distance. And then I decided to come over here in, you know, once I got here I joined Schlossky and that was the first time working with franchisees.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Stephen McAloon]

So that was an interesting time because about 18 months or so before I, I, I joined the, the, the leadership of that brand, which I think was probably about 350 at the time, took them into bankruptcy.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Oh, wow.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah. So of course if you're a, if you're working for the corporate side, working with independent business owners, franchisees, you know, you're scum of the earth because you know, you're part of the reason why I can't get, it's cash on delivery. I can't, you know, I can't get my delivery. Because you've been, you know, the franchisor has taken us into bankruptcy to some degree and so that, that was a real, and that's where I met Jeff, my partner. So that was a real learning about working with independent business owners.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And building relationships.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Let's bookmark that, let's get to that point. But during your time in the UK, when you were with Costco and WIT 99 to 2004. This is your first, like venture into food and beverage, right?

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Like when did you know this is what you wanted to do for the rest of your life? Was it during this time?

[Stephen McAloon]

It's probably when I first managed as a gm, first managed my first location.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You're a young guy at this point. This is going back 25 years ago. Like you're, you're just out of college.

[Stephen McAloon]

25.

[Eric Cacciatore]

25. So you, you, what were you doing before that?

[Stephen McAloon]

Finished college, age 21, 22 ish.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And you said you were in chemistry and what, biology?

[Stephen McAloon]

Chemistry.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That wasn't doing it for you?

[Stephen McAloon]

No, I, you know, I, I, you kind of looked around at the time and there was a lot of vocations like pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical representing and things like that. And I'd done a year out, I'd managed to get a couple of published papers. Nothing really directly because of my influence. More luck than anything else. Anyway, it was great experience. I went, I went through, you know, the four years there and stuff, so. But although actually all the way through college or pretty much all the way through, I worked in a nightclub which kind of gave me a little bit of a taste for working in hospitality.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What did you love about it?

[Stephen McAloon]

I love the fact that at the time I worked me and a good mate of mine who's, I was his best man. He was my best man, he's Irish. And there was me and him working the bar in Bristol, England, and we, we worked Thursday, Friday, Saturday through college. And so on the one hand you could earn money because it was cash in hand.

[Jeff Gothard]

Right.

[Stephen McAloon]

And on the other hand, you were in a nightclub environment so you could have a little bit of fun at the same time. And it was pretty casual as well. So that was probably the draw. One of the, one of the draws. The starting ones anyway.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, for sure.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So when you started working, when you left your old career of biology and chemistry for food and beverage, what did your family think of this? Behind every great restaurant is a great person.

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[Stephen McAloon]

You know they they they always kind of trusted me to get on with, with. I was pretty self sufficient, you know, always got on with with whatever I was doing and very supportive. You know, again my, my mom and dad live, you know, worked in a self employed environment. So you know, they, they underst, they understood change and making decisions like that.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What kind of brands did we have?

[Stephen McAloon]

They, well, it's a big public company so they, they owned Costa Coffee, they owned Cafe Rouge at the time. They were in hotels, they had, you know, traveling. I think they were the franchise or of Marriott as well at the time. So very large publicly traded company with actually one of the oldest, I think it was one of the oldest brewing companies going back to the 1700s.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Stephen McAloon]

Originally they owned, you know, a few thousand pubs basically.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So when you joined where like what.

[Stephen McAloon]

Was your point of entry within that opening a restaurant? I was working. Me and a good friend of mine out of college worked behind the bar.

[Jeff Gothard]

Okay. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And how long were you doing that before you started climbing the ranks?

[Stephen McAloon]

It was probably the difference between, you know, 22 and 25, 26.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And did somebody see something new or did you go after promotion or were you asked to take a step up?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think in the first couple of years, yeah. Because hard work, you know, always, always willing to put the, the effort in working, you know, New Year's Eve, Christmas Eve, all the, all the things, you know, and then you get offered, you know, the typical sort of approach of assistant manager, manager, manager on duty, general manager, things of that nature and then different volume restaurants.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What rank did you climb to before departing that organization?

[Stephen McAloon]

I was a, a retail development manager for Costa Coffee. So I switched brands. Same same company with Whitman, same parent company, Whitbread. But I went from Cafe Rouge to Dome. Multi unit leadership in Dome restaurants which were like French brasseries, 60, 70 food, 30 beverage, wine, liquor or whatever in central London. So high volume. And then I, my boss at the time for Dome Dome Brands moved over to Costa Coffee and then he asked me would I come with him.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And so that's what I did.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What's that quote? People don't work for brands, they work for people.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, exactly. And I, you know, about three years earlier than that, maybe two years earlier, a colleague moved to Costa and I was kind of like questioning, why are you doing that? Like coffee, how hard can it be? And so that's another thing I've learned is it doesn't matter what kind of concept it is. They're all, when it involves people, it's all relationships. Yeah. And it's all difficult. Yeah, it's all difficult.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What do you mean by that? Go deeper?

[Stephen McAloon]

Well, I, I thought, you know, how hard can running a coffee shop mean be or running 30 or 40B? And it was as complicated as running a polished casual or a, you know, an upscale restaurant was. Even though, you know, in the restaurants, at that type of restaurant you had head chefs, sous chefs, chef to parties and, and all that kind of stuff. And now you're dealing with a, a manager, an assistant manager and baristas.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

You know, so it was, it's, the landscape is always challenging, I think, in hospitality. And just because you're in one space doesn't mean it's any less easier or harder than, than the other.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. What would you say your biggest point of evolution was during this time, but by the time you left Casos04, you're what, in your late 20s? At this point? Almost 30. Like where, like, how were you starting to see the industry differently by this time?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think I was getting a good grasp of the difference of, you know, being a good operator versus what a good brand is and how far a good brand or concept can take you. You know, at that time when I joined Costa, I think it was about 350 and I was running normal High.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Street location, 50 locations.

[Stephen McAloon]

Locations in the United Kingdom.

[Jeff Gothard]

Wow.

[Stephen McAloon]

But I was predominantly in, in the, in London. And so I was running locations on normal high street coffee shops like you might get in New York or whatever, but also locations in exhibition halls or airports, theme parks, you know, open clothes, open, close. And I think when you try and grow your brand or your company, you can't just grow because you've got a great operations team. You have to grow because your concept or your business is compelling to the consumer. And I think understanding a bit more about that sort of really helped me.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you started getting out of the four walls of operations and started seeing the bigger picture of what works in marketplaces and how marketpl places work. It's funny you mentioned that, because my last interview was Matt, Mabel or Matthew first. Matthew. He says. Matthew's what I was called when I was a child or something like that. He's like, I'm, I'm Matthew now. But he said that, that, you know, when you get to that 20 unit mark and there's like two things are happening. Like either you're, you're getting attention or you're not getting attention. And it's the brands. To your point, operations can get you to 20, but you need to have a brand that will get you beyond 20 and that's something that has legs, that's something that's scalable, that's that the consumer wants. Right. And how to, how to think with that in the end of mind if you really want to create something like reverse engineering it from unit one so that it has legs.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And being relevant. Right. So I mean we, we were talking about Aaron.

[Jeff Gothard]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

Dish Society. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So Aaron Lyons.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah. So I mean Aaron's farm to table approach with Dish Society when he wrote, when he wrote the concept, you know, probably 10 years plus ago now. He's just opened his last restaurant in, in Austin. A couple of.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Meeting him there.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I love it when my interviews come full.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

It's just such a small world. But I, you know, I'd be curious to, to know what he thinks is relevant now from, from when he set the concept up 10 years ago.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That'd be interesting.

[Stephen McAloon]

And people how consumers expectations have changed.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You said one thing that I want to kind of hover over before we move over to your next point of evolution or experience. You said that you left one brand to follow a manager to the next brand. What was it about this individual, this mentor?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think he had, I, I think he had the, the chops for me to learn something. So I, you know, I, he was a well rounded business development manager, if you want to call it that. There's different titles for different things in between differences between the US and the UK but you know he was responsible for the, for the brand at the time for dome brands and, and then he went to, to run a smaller piece of Costa and I, and I think I knew I could learn from something from him.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So when you say brand development, this is kind of what we're talking about getting out of the four walls of like operations but really focusing on brand and like what did he teach you? What were the biggest lessons you learned from, from him? What's. And give him a, if you want to give him a name, feel free.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, his name was Foggy Desilis actually. He's great Greek. Greek name sort of nickname was Foggy.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

You know he, he brought a lot of energy. He'd actually, you know, a lot of his thinking was based on American sort of hospitality and sort of the, the wow factor experience.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And really sort of brought that to the table I think, but was really good with his people. He would, he would do stuff like you know, set up a, an incentive of some kind for, for the managers and then you know, somebody would win it and he would, you know, he would give them a gift of take a ski trip to Austria or something, like real sort of. He wasn't paying for it, but he was rewarding in the right way. And it was always a wow factor to it as well.

[Eric Cacciatore]

How'd that make you feel?

[Stephen McAloon]

I mean, it was awesome. I mean, he, you know, I, I think he, he was guest. Guest focused, guest forward, knew the business inside out. But it wasn't just about operations, it was about the finances, it was about the brand evolution, it was about the culinary side of the business. And, you know, he got you involved in that, which meant you were constantly learning and constantly growing, you know.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So give me an example of some of like the KPIs that he would measure in order to like, met, like to figure out when you would achieve that and unlock that award or that reward of going on like a ski trip.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, I mean, a good one, you know, especially in the coffee business at the time. And this was, this is a time where, you know, Starbucks was just creeping into, into the UK and, you know, there was third wave coffee or whatever was just sort of getting out there and the, it was really about having a metric and then the ability to influence your team. And of course, if you're running 30 or 40 or 50 locations, that's quite a, you know, responsibility. So an example would be typical small, medium and large drinks. The goal is to change the product mix between having more medium and large than small and medium. So by doing that, theoretically, you're increasing Check.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

Increasing revenue.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So, you know, so you'd measure the amount or the difference between small versus large shift.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And if you hit that goal, then you would unlock the reward.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

So you, you put out a target. Let's just say that no more than. No more than 50% of cup sizes should be in small and small and medium, and the shift should be more like 70% medium and large.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it.

[Stephen McAloon]

So, yeah, and that's something that the managers can get behind. It's directly quantifiable. But then really what you're doing is offering a better level of customer service because you're engaging with the customer in front of you.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yep, yep.

[Stephen McAloon]

That's kind of a win win.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So what made you leave this organization? We got a delivery.

[Stephen McAloon]

I think at the time it was, I was approached by Elior, which was a different business, different form. Well, it's a large food contract.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So what do you mean by that?

[Stephen McAloon]

So it's, it's a bit of a. It's A massive business, but it's a business that a lot of people, especially even in the restaurant business, don't really have a lot of knowledge.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So what would be equivalent in the US like a US Foods or Cisco.

[Stephen McAloon]

No. Aramark or Compass.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it, got it, got it. So like food service contracting.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yes, got it, yeah. And those segments are typically, you know, healthcare, workplace, hospitality, sports and entertainment. You know, some, some of these companies are, you know, 20, 20, 20 billion dollar companies. Plus Elio was a smaller company but French, trying to get a footprint in the uk and so what they did was there's a supermarket chain in the UK called Tesco. It's a, it's actually an international company as well, but kind of think, think like Kroger, 24 hour, 24 hour operation, super centers and they had restaurants in their, the front of their locations at the time. And so Elior won the business to operate, to take over and operate those spaces. So put a, refresh the menu.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Like a management company.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

A lot of people say contract catering. Yeah, they're not, not like catering catering, but large food contracts. And so that they, they needed somebody that could help them scale and go from zero to 64 locations over two years, which was not geographically defined. It could, you could be opening one on the southern coast of England and then up in Scotland and, and you know, talk about relationships. Your, you're operating a business within somebody else's four walls and you're being held accountable for the, the customer service as well within somebody else's business.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So lots of dynamic there.

[Stephen McAloon]

It's tough, it's tough because, you know, the likes of Walmart and companies that size like Tesco are, you know, they've, they've got high standards and they, they're not restaurateurs.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, so you were recruited out of Costa to be a part of Elior, were you? What was your role going to be? Was it, was it launching, was it getting these, these contracts on, like started and operating? Or were you, were you more about managing the teams or were you more about finding the opportunity to go into.

[Stephen McAloon]

It was, it was, it was all really, it was a regional director position. So there was two of us at the time. We sort of split up the country a little bit and it was, we had, we knew we had a pipeline of at least 64 locations, probably end up with 200.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So when I say pipeline, this means like you have like a, like this is what's on the table to start.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And then you have to scale it to 200.

[Stephen McAloon]

So this is what Tesco's are saying they've got. I don't know how many locations the Tesco's have, but they, they, you know, let's just say they had 500 in the UK. They, they came to Elior and said, you know, we've got, got where redeveloping our restaurants in these 200, we'll sign off on the first 64. But if you do good and the sales go up and because they would take a commission of sales, a percentage of sales, you know, there's, there's unlock more.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What, what made you want to like leave Casa? Was it just a great opportunity you could enter now or you kind of. What was going on there?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think it was, it was more so just again growth, getting out into a different business, a different model as well. I mean it's all food and it's all, you know, hospitality, but can contract food, you know, large food contract.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You wanted more perspective, you wanted to see something different, learn more.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What were the biggest challenges for you during this time?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think being predictable. It's a very, it's a very different business. It's not necessarily like a straight P L type business where you make more sales. You, you know, you, you can change a labor model, you can do this, that and the other. Quite often you're in a subsidized environment. So you've, you've agreed, you know, some of those locations might be loss making, but you've agreed a subsidy which you know, essentially is, you know, could be 10,000amonth, could be $20,000 a month.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you're looking for brand consistency. You want all these retail stores that have. But one might be underperforming it, but.

[Stephen McAloon]

As long as not necessarily underperforming, they just might not get enough traffic in there.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So that the other locations would float those locations in order to maintain the same experience.

[Stephen McAloon]

Or Tesco's are just happy to subsidize that experience for their consumer.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it. Yeah, got it. So you said that the, the challenge was being predictable. So moving from more chaotic to a more structured organization.

[Stephen McAloon]

Well, financially predictable.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So how was that a struggle though?

[Stephen McAloon]

Well, if you're, you know, if you're running a subsidized business, especially in the food business, you're basically saying to your.

[Jeff Gothard]

Partner.

[Stephen McAloon]

These, these 15 locations, I'm okay.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I'm gonna make partner being the Tesco. Got it.

[Stephen McAloon]

I'm making money. You'll get your percentage of sales. Everything's good. Right. But these, these 15 locations we know don't have the same foot traffic of Tesco customers. So their sales are going to be lower, which means we can't break even, which means you need to subsidize the cost. Any additional cost after, after, you know, going below break even. And some, you know, sometimes that could mean tens of thousands of dollars. So, but that's somebody's budget, right, for Tesco. So if in one month I'm budgeted out to lose $10,000, but I lose $25,000, that can be really detrimental.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So the challenge was being able to predict how. Well, yeah, it wasn't the, it wasn't the ability of it being predictable. It was being able to predict. Right, got it. So how did you, like, how did you overcome that challenge?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think it's a bit of a theme through this conversation is like the better the caliber of management you have running the locations, the more engaged they are within that environment, that, that environment itself, Tesco's, the more they're in tune that they are they're in with, you know, the, the footfall, the traffic flow of the business and the four walls that they're operating in. And you know that there's a direct correlation between the higher caliber managers having better results or more predictable results. So that was a big piece of it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So how did you evolve as a leader, as a manager during this time? Like, what skills did you pick up that have carried along with you to this day?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think that again, along with, with franchising is the ability to, to manage more senior relationships because you're having business reviews with representatives from, from Tesco or an equivalent like Tesco. So if you, if you, if you've got, if you've developed the ability to have a rough conversation about results, but you can still maintain a relationship because they either understand the challenge and understand the bigger picture.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

That, that's, that's been a bit of a theme all the way through my career. Whether it's, you know, Costa Coffee, dealing with Madame Tussauds Group or British Airways, you know, with the London Eye, places like that, managing relationships, they might have a big name behind them, but they're all people at the end of the day. And you know, if you can get common ground and if you can articulate yourself correctly and with integrity, I think you've, you've, you're halfway to maintaining a contract or maintaining a business, business relationship, especially if you can get results, which is ultimately what matters.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So I'm like, I'm thinking things like transparency, thinking win Win. You know, really just like good communication.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

Metrics being, being transparent with your metrics. Yeah, my traffic was, you know, guest count was up, down, but I made the most from that, that guest count then I, you know, in terms of check, in terms of experience, in terms of executing brand standards.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you were with Elior from 05 to 06. A short period of time.

[Stephen McAloon]

Just under two years.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Just under two years.

[Stephen McAloon]

So.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And you said that it was your, your partner coming to the States that kind of pulled.

[Stephen McAloon]

You dragged me across.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So did you have something lined up when you got here?

[Stephen McAloon]

No, I didn't.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you're. So let's just kind of jump to that. Unless there's anything else you want to share from that experience that you think is certain served you?

[Stephen McAloon]

No, I, I think, you know, I.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Mean Slaskies was probably Schlotsky's.

[Jeff Gothard]

Am I saying.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, sorry, did I interrupt you?

[Jeff Gothard]

Go ahead.

[Stephen McAloon]

No, it's good. You know, I think living and working in, in London, you know, is. Was a big learning curve. You know, it's operating in New York is very different from operating in Dallas and it's, it's the same as, you know, in the uk Right. Operating in say, Liverpool is very different from operating in London. It's much bigger scale, different challenges. So, you know, good learning.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you, you end up coming stateside. The year is 2006. Did you have any intention of like, what you wanted to do? Like did you have a plan for yourself? Were you saying, like the next thing I do will, you know, F. Xyz I.

[Stephen McAloon]

You know, I, well, first off, my, my wife had moved. I wasn't, we weren't married at the time. We didn't know we were going to get married. And we'd been dating for three months and all of a sudden she's like, you know, see ya, I'm off. And she ended up moving over to do a second for Pizza Hut, which is based in Dallas.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What was she doing with Pizza Hut?

[Stephen McAloon]

Marketing. Okay, Pizza Us. And so we did the long distance thing. I did a lot of flights over to Dallas. Kind of probably about halfway through that two years, we just, we decided to get to marry. Get married. And so we got married midway through 2005 and she came back to the UK we got married. She left, you know, four days after we got married. I finished out a contract with Elior in London and then I turned up at DFW airport with my suitcases and yeah. Never lived together.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Never seemed to be go, all right, you saw, you Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

I think she probably thought, oh, my God, what have I done? You know, you know, I, I knew I wanted to continue in the restaurant or retail space. The challenge that, I think the biggest challenge that I had was a, I had to wait a little bit before my visas and stuff came through and I could legally work and all that good stuff. The other piece of that is, you know, the job roles are slightly different and the titles are slightly different. And when you're applying for jobs, it's like the understanding of maybe some of the brands or companies that I've worked with, you know, you might not know about. Right, right. So that, you know, when you're applying for roles, that was a tough, a tough challenge, got past it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But, you know, so what were the, the roles you were looking for?

[Stephen McAloon]

Mainly, you know, regional or, you know, getting into a, you know, 10, 15, 20, 20 location operation with a reputable.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Stephen McAloon]

Company.

[Jeff Gothard]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I won't lie. When I was doing my research, you know, just like, I never heard of what, what's Elior. Right. What's Costco?

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, what's, what's whit. Brands.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So like it was Whip Bread.

[Stephen McAloon]

Whip bread? Yeah, bread.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, so like, these are companies. I'm like, oh, like you must be working for some small operations in the uk, Right. But they're giants, so they're probably running into the same issues of like, brand recognition.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And that's much of what success in the US is, is like. Yeah, you see this with like, on a smaller scale with like the more like Michelin James Beard world of like, especially like during 07 to like, you know, that, that like 10 year period, 07 to 17, where retail was dying and everybody wanted to put restaurants in these retail spaces and like, oh, did you work for James, you know, you know, Thomas Keller? Did you work for a James Beard chef? Okay, well, you're going to get a restaurant and like, like, if you could tie your brand and associate yourself with like these other successful chefs, like you could open a restaurant. And it was all about brand recognition. But the, the same is true at the corporate level. Like, what were the big companies you work for? So you're running into this challenge of nobody.

[Stephen McAloon]

Same challenge? Yeah, same challenge.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And it's the same challenge. Actually. You might not think it, but working for some of the big companies still, it's a people business. It's the same, it's the same challenge. It just, you just might not have the same budgets and the same scale.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I almost feel like it's a human fly. Sometimes we're so hardwired to go with like to associate success with brands, brand recognition.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Especially with like job, like, you know, getting jobs. Like, who did you work for?

[Jeff Gothard]

What?

[Eric Cacciatore]

College?

[Stephen McAloon]

There's a ton, there's a ton of companies associated with, I guess James Beard that.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

Have failed.

[Jeff Gothard]

Right, Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I interviewed a lot of them. You know, when I first, earlier in my, my career, like, I was really not sure how do I find these successful people? And I would go after awards thinking that if these people are winning awards, surely they're successful and they know how to run business businesses. And then I started getting more into like the numbers and the curious about that. And I started asking these, these Beard winning chefs, Michelin chefs, like, about the economics of their business. And I realized dying you're not making money.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And that's when I started to pivot to go towards word of mouth.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Because like, people know like other, other owners know how other owners are doing because there's people talk.

[Stephen McAloon]

Oh, absolutely.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Stephen McAloon]

Even on a national scale, like, I mean, where's Ruby Tuesdays?

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

I'm sure at some point they were a compelling concept, but TGI Friday, Amazing.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Amazing organization out of Florida. I think that's where they're like Orlando or something.

[Stephen McAloon]

They came out. So.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But the challenge is how do you, how do you capture that magic and scale it? And that's.

[Stephen McAloon]

And it's subjective as well. Right. As a customer, like, we're all customers at the end of the day, what you think is a good coffee might not be what I think is a good coffee or experience. But, you know, I, I think there's the, there's the brand, the way the brand comes across, and there's the experience that you get when you're in the location. Then there's, you know, then there's the food aspect to it. And small operators, onesie twosies can do that just as well as, you know, anybody else, if not better.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Stephen McAloon]

A lot of the time than a, than a brand with 500 or a thousand or 3,000, that it's more about corralling them to the right standards. Both have to do it at some point corral to the, to the, to the brand standard that you want to see. Is that food good enough to be, to be on the plate for the customer? It's just you're doing it on a different scale.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, you're, you mentioned something earlier. I think you were talking about getting out of the four walls of like, how to like the operations to thinking bigger picture and like, you know, marketplace and like, what works. And, and now you're talking about just, just like how like the smaller organizations can almost do the, the experiential, the quality, like the food better. But it's just a matter of how do you figure out how to scale that. Right. Or how do you figure out how to monetize it? I, I went to Goldies. Have you heard of Goldies?

[Jeff Gothard]

I've heard of it, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Barbecue joint recognized by Texas as like the number one barbecue in Texas, which is an easy thing to do. Right. So I went and I introduced myself because one of my listeners said, you should go check. Check out this brand. And I had heard of them and I introduced myself. Five owners probably. I, I was there during off hours. I'm sure that they're very busy. And I said, hey, you know, I'd love to get you guys on the show and hopefully we can still get them on the show. And I was like, it's. And I told them, it's not about the food. We're not going to talk about your food. I want you to know it's going to be talking about the business, the economics. And the, the gentleman I spoke to said, oh, we're more about, you know, we focus more on the food. You know, we're more about quality over, you know, financials. And I'm like, why can't you have both health. You can, you know, like, and like, that's. I think the, the issue with our industry is I think a lot of younger people who get involved, like, they do it for the food, the passion for the food, the service, the hospitality, the craft. And they get so lost in the craft and the quality that they kind of aren't at all worried about fiscal responsibility and like, how to like, provide security opportunity for others.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, unfortunately.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. And I didn't say anything, but that's what was going through my mind. I'm like, dude, if you're the number one one, like food, like barbecue in Texas, like, like you should be making money.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I'm sure they are. But like, he. I think it's just because of the, the, the amount of volume they're doing. Right? Like, volume takes care of a lot.

[Stephen McAloon]

Of problems, I think as well. Like, you know, what you, what you hear. And like we were saying before, what you hear or what you socially see on. On posts and things and versus the reality behind the scenes sometimes are very different. You know, face value, things look good. But you know, dealing with franchisees in the past. And when somebody says, I know, you know, how, if I said how, how do you know if you're successful? Because I'm rated number one in barbecue in Texas. Okay. That's one measure of success. It's not such a good case or business case if you can't pay your rent in six months time.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right, right.

[Stephen McAloon]

You know, so. And I've had franchisees that will say, I know I'm successful because I know how much is in the bank or in my, I'm a, you know, in my checking account. You know, the other way to look at that is you might not have what you should have in your checking account because you're not running your business the right way or you're not maximizing or optimizing.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Maybe you're the number one barbecue spot in Texas and you're making money. You're doing like, you know, 10 profit, but you could be doing 20 profit.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, if you have doing that much volume, you tightened up operations.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah. You know, and that's that. So that's the bit that I look, I love.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

That KIC hospitality love is like, you know, we're not, we're not going into somewhere like critiquing it to say like you're terrible. But it's more about optimizing and getting you to the best place that you could be.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

To make the better results.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I think we're going to get into some examples of that as we kind of get to where you are today. Right. And I want to talk about the case study of Rachel. Coke, Dope. And you know, I'm willing to talk about this because she's the one that brought you to my attention. She was talking about it and she identified specifically communication and training was where you really helped her. But before we do that, Schlotsky's from 06, 2013. This is your first time working with franchising. Like what was like for you? What was the challenge when you came in? I think you were hired as the franchise operations director, regional director. So like what, what was that like?

[Stephen McAloon]

Franchise consultant first and then regional director, consultant for franchises.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And you had worked in one before?

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

I mean they're all restaurants at the end of the day and actually it was, it was, it was a journey. Right. So I, I getting interviewed. I. So the company that bought Schlossky probably, you know, within a year of joining now is the company called Goto Brands, formerly Focus Brands. So when I joined Schlotsky's, they were owned by A, A couple of guys called Bobby Cox and Bob Barnes, who were based out in, you know, Odessa and Midland Tech east, you know, West Texas. Okay, so here's like British, British dude interviewing, literally interviewing with, you know, cowboys, you know, Bob, Bob, Bobby Cox, very successful entrepreneur. I think he was maybe late 60s at the time. And Bob Barnes's partner, who was running kind of running the show, had just bought Schlotsky's out of bankruptcy, I think, for maybe 28 and a half million, something like that. So, you know, I'm, I'm. Now, it's like a scene from the soap opera Dallas, you know, like, what's going on? Cowhide on the table, you know, that kind of stuff. And anyway, it was, it was great. They, they gave me a job. They subsequently sold about a year later to Focus Brands, big franchisor owned by Raw Capital Private equity. Massive, massive private equity company.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Were you working there when Rachel was the CEO? Was it Rachel who was the CEO of Focus Brands?

[Stephen McAloon]

There was, there was, there's been a few. So Russ Upper now was one. Steve De Sutter, another one.

[Eric Cacciatore]

There's a, I think there's, there was a woman that was referred. I think she's the CEO of AG1 now.

[Stephen McAloon]

Oh, Cat Cole.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Cat Cole.

That's what.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So did you work with Cat?

[Stephen McAloon]

I, I've worked. She was there when I worked there.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, she was, she was overseeing Cinnabon.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Stephen McAloon]

At the time. She, she's a great leader.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, she, I, I, I'm, I'm, she's on my hit list.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I'd love to get her maybe if I come at her from different angles.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Make it happen someday. But so, so, okay, so back. So they, they sell this, this concept to Focus Brands.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

At this point, you're on board. This is a year in after you join.

[Stephen McAloon]

This is after they've come out of bankruptcy as well. So. So Bobby Cox and Bo ran it for 18 months, got, you know, put air in the tires, got a little bit of confidence back to the franchisees, got the marketing cogs turning again. Got, you know, got the relationship back to a certain degree and sort of rebuilt the.

[Eric Cacciatore]

This is all before you came on.

[Stephen McAloon]

This was sort of on in process. I, I joined and it was still in process.

[Jeff Gothard]

Got it.

[Stephen McAloon]

It. Franchise relationships is a big deal.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

You can't get franchisees to do what you want them to do by cracking the whip or throwing, throwing a legal contract about and the franchise agreement about you. It doesn't work that way. You can but you're not going to be very successful.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So what made them successful in turning this around?

[Stephen McAloon]

Integrity again, like doing what they said they were going to do. Getting the marketing wheels going, sorting out the supply chain, being transparent, you know, having a franchise advisory council where you could collaborate.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So what was your, what was your specific responsibility when you joined?

[Stephen McAloon]

I had a region of franchisees, you know, that, that changed occasionally. But you know, it could be, you know, from north of Austin through to Dallas, through to Arkansas, through to, you know, El Paso, Omaha. It was, it was interesting because you are literally dealing with sometimes a franchisee that has one in Greenville, Texas. You know, Joe Mabry or remember him fondly, you know, him and his wife ran the little old Schlotsky's out there, made a successful career out of it while fostering kids at the same time. You know, and you know, dealing with, dealing with us. You know, somebody like that that's on a budget, that doesn't have a big marketing budget and can't, you know, necessarily promote the concept on TV or whatever at the time. You know, you have to, you, you have to be able to develop a relationship in order to, to help them get better business results and also represent the brand.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So when you're saying, you know, dealing with your, what you were doing, you mentioned this earlier that it was really client relations and the client was the franchisee. And you're representing the franchise order.

[Stephen McAloon]

Correct. And I'm consulting with them on improving either their operations, their P L results, them, you know, supporting their marketing tactics. So you know, it's, you know, everything in the United States is, you know, there's a lot of businesses that are franchised. Hotels, battery companies, restaurants, whatever, whatever. There's a, generally speaking, the majority are probably franchised. And so you're providing the model for a franchisee to follow really. Hopefully in the restaurant business they've chosen the right real estate with your, with your help. And if they follow the recipes, the marketing playbooks, the operations platform, they'll have a high chance of making money.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. How do you feel about the franchise model today?

[Stephen McAloon]

I like it when the franchise or has a philosophy of integrity around what they're doing. There's, there's a lot that don't, maybe not intentionally, I think focus brands at the time, did you know there. I remember the sort of, the mantra really was the mission was to make franchisees happy. And that really meant not literally happy, but helping them grow sales. So say help them be successful. Yeah. Make more money, drive sales, make them wealthier, make Them realize their investment is a good thing because, you know, the franchisees aren't corporate entities. They've put their own.

[Eric Cacciatore]

They're mom and pops.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And some of them are mom and pops. Some of them have grown to be big organizations in themselves. But, you know, the vast majority are probably putting their livelihoods on stake. You know, they're putting the mortgage, the house and taking a risk. So the only difference between that, that, that and say, you know, an independent is that they've got a brand name above the door and hopefully that might help be successful.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What were the difference between the successful operators, Franchisees. Operators and the ones that were struggling?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think the ones that are closer to their business.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Non absentee, not looking for passive income.

[Stephen McAloon]

They know they, they still, I, I think the best operators, whether you're corporate or independent, are those that still have a grasp on the standards of what you're selling. So, you know, there's, there's folks that I've worked with, you know, regional vice president levels or whatever in different concepts where they still know the recipe for a product. They still know the rice is made with these four ingredients. They don't make them on a daily basis, but they know what they taste like and what they should look like so they could coach it back. So I think once you, you know, there's a bit of a, I see it as a bit of a dial. The further up the chain you get.

[Jeff Gothard]

The.

[Stephen McAloon]

Further away from the actual detail of running the operation you are. And I think you should always make a habit of staying close to the operation and being able to go from 0 to 10 on the dial. 10, meaning you could kind of jump in if necessary.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And you know, then go back to your day job.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you were with them for seven years? Six. Seven years. And this is what you did the entire time?

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, different, you know, maybe more of a responsible region, more volume maybe by the time I left. So. Started as a franchise business consultant and then ended up managing franchise business consultants.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay, so you kind of just like, you know, you were the next layer above the people that were doing what you were doing doing.

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What were your points of evolution and points of growth during this time?

[Stephen McAloon]

You know, learn. Learning the drive thru business. That was interesting.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's a whole different game too, huh?

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, learning the difference between, you know, just because you're part of a bigger brand. You know, 350 restaurants isn't a national brand, it's a regional brand.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I want to see that. I think that's a part of my goal with this podcast is to see more regional brands.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Like do we really need more like 1, 000 unit operators? Like how big is big enough? Yeah, I think you could get to 20 or 30 units and still do pretty good for yourself.

[Stephen McAloon]

I think you could get TO I think 50, you know, on the large end. Like that's great.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Know that the, the, the. There's two concepts that I absolutely love and that I'm Excited to be connecting with both of them on this road trip. I'm reconnecting with P. Terry's.

[Stephen McAloon]

Okay.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I love what they're doing in Austin. And have you heard of PAL Sudden Service?

[Stephen McAloon]

No.

[Eric Cacciatore]

They're based in like eastern Tennessee. Like Johnson City is there.

[Stephen McAloon]

Okay.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And they have I think like 20 locations being up there before all in that area. So like, like Pete Terry's never scaled beyond Austin until they got to 17 units.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

They're on fire.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. And now they're scaling. There's. I think the next market they went to is pretty far away.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

San Antonio.

[Stephen McAloon]

Not really.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Slow regional. Like, you know, like. Like owning a market.

[Stephen McAloon]

You know, they would call it like concentric growth.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yes.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I love that model where you just grow slowly circles out, out, out. I want to see more of that. And I think that I used to think I was really against corporations and franchise. When I started this podcast, I was all about like, I came. My parents owned an independent restaurant and like I really existed to serve the small single unit, multi unit operators to help them compete with the big corporations of the world. But then I started. Started realizing that, you know, some of these bigger companies aren't all evil, you know, and the franchise model can be successful when done right. So in your opinion, I mean, we're also going to be talking about your time at MO Southwest, which was also a franchise model.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Are they casual dining or they kind of casual. Kind of like Chipotle.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I've never actually never been to a mo. How are those, like, why did you leave Schlossky's? For most. What was going on there?

[Stephen McAloon]

We were moving out of Dallas. Dallas. Actually that's part of the reason. And there was a position, a regional vice president position, sister brand, you know, for focus brands. We moving out of Dallas being myself and my wife.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it. You're still in Dallas. You came back.

[Stephen McAloon]

We went up to New York for a couple of years.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Stephen McAloon]

So I looked after a region of most southwest grills in the Northeast.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Stephen McAloon]

So you know, Philly, Mass.

[Jeff Gothard]

New York.

[Stephen McAloon]

You know, so spent. Spent some time up there, which was different.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And then I took on some responsibility for. Which is. Which is another interesting aspect to this is we sort of divided that the MOs into sort of new emerging and established markets. So as you try and grow, you know, it was heavy on the. On the east coast, but on the west coast, nothing even when you got into Texas. And that that's kind of an interesting because you think, you know, know growth of A concept which may have had 500 when I joined and 700 when I left. 715. Maybe. Opening one of those concepts in California was absolutely difficult.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Was it just market saturation with that type of food, do you think?

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, they.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean, brand loyalty to other brands.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

They've been doing it there for decades.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. That's where it came out of. Yeah, yeah. Southwest.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

Right, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So they're doing Southwest food in different markets. So there is more blue water. But then they brought the concept to a saturated market.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

No wonder you're having challenge.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, it's nothing special.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right, right. So what was different about your experience with mo Southwest?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think I got involved in the last sort of 18 months that I was there. I was asked to do a brand innovation role, which they needed somebody that could sort of cross functions.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Prior to that, were you doing what you were doing with Schlotzkis?

[Stephen McAloon]

I was a. I had more Schlotzkis. Yeah, right. I had more. More scope. So a bigger, you know, $200 million or whatever of sales. Got it. So more franchisees, bigger scope.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Managing more relationships.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, more relationships. And then I was. I was asked to do a brand innovation role and step into a more of a project role, which was they needed somebody that knew the operations, knew marketing, knew the footprint, could influence, like a franchise advisory council could influence project work. And what. This project was unique because when sales and. And this is kind of what an important point to get to even small business owners or independents is that when sales and transactions have been going up year after year and they slowly start to peak and then they start pointing downwards at that point, a lot of companies will sit back and say, okay, we need a bit of an intervention. We need a. You know, it's called a brand revitalization. Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you juxtapose from what you were doing before.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

You've. You may be 20 years into it, 10 years into it, and now, you know, competition has come in, they're doing exactly the same thing. And with Moe's, you know, we. We used a big branding agency. They came in and did Consumer Insights. We already had Consumer Insights. But in. In essence, it. At that point in time, which was, you know, I want to say maybe the start of end of 2016, 17, something like that, if a customer came out of their front door and Chipotle was a mile to the right and Moe's was 1.1 miles to the left, they would just simply go to the Chipotle because they all served or Qdoba, they all serve tacos, burrito bowls, salad bowls, whatever. It was all the same sea of sameness. Yeah, yeah. And so when you get to that point, you have to really take a look at your, what you're doing and sort of say, well why am I different? What's, why am I differentiated and what do the cost? Why are the customers using, using us and why are they going to other places? So it, you know, is it customization? Is it price point? Is it convenience, values, story?

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

So then you, so you then take that research. I mean we, we at the time did look, you know, we would go out into heavy, medium and low user markets, interview them in their own, interview customers in their own home and like, why do you come, why don't you come more often? What do you, like, what do you buy? What would you buy? Did all that kind of research and then came back and put a plan together as to what the next prototype would look like for the, for that concept, which was the project that I was, was leading. So what does the evolution of that footprint look like? Everything from a logo through to the operating model. And you've got to remember at the same time, you know, third party delivery was just coming into its own, you know when, yeah, I think when I moved, moved up to New York, it was 2013, maybe 2014 was when Postmates was just starting up and they were only in New York, I think maybe Atlanta at the time. But that was the only third party company out there. So how do you set the footprint up? How do you set a prototype up also to include a drive through which they'd never done before. You know, how do you set that prototype up for the future? And also when you're franchising, you have to, you can't have, have 50 brand new looking restaurants and everything else looks 20 years old or 30 years old. You have to provide like a remodel refresh program that those franchisees can follow.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Stephen McAloon]

So it was. How do you create bridging plans where the franchisees can reinvest into their buildings and their model, but all do do all that so it makes sense to the consumer, but also do all that so it makes financial sense to the owner and the operator. That that's quite difficult to do. How did you do, you know, we, we made a, by the time I'd left, we'd, we'd had three or four prototypes open and we'd had maybe five or six of the drive throughs open. The drive throughs were awesome. You needed about 250 square foot of extra space, a little bit more equipment, an extra 30 to 40% of sales on the average unit volumes to the point where I think all, all locations. Now for most, they do want a higher proportion of drive through business and the, the bridging plan for the new prototype, you know, they're, they're following the prototype. I mean it evolves. But the brand standards, the footprint, the, the package, you know, the FF&E, the fixtures and equipment package, you know that they're going down that road. I've been for a few years.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So why did you leave this organization?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think I. Well, I know, I know I left that probably for the same reason as I went to Elior. I think moving to the States was more of a, not a leap of faith but you know, if it didn't work I knew I could go back to the uk. Right. So I remember feeling at the time that I'd worked six and a half, seven years with Schlotskies under the same parent company and then I'd with Schlotzkis, we'd done some co branding with Cinnabon. So I was familiar with Cinnabon and I'd at that point done six years with Moe's. Great team, great, great business, great franchisees in both. So it was a case of, you know, what do I do next? Do I go and work? At the time they had McAllisters, Carvel, Auntie Ann's Pretzels and now they own. Yeah, Focus Brands, Auntie Anne's Pretzels.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's another person, the founder of that company. She's based in Austin, Texas. Yeah, I'm trying to get her on the show. She's not around this trip but.

[Stephen McAloon]

Okay.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think she's got a really cool story.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Her name is, excuse me, escaping me.

[Stephen McAloon]

For some reason and by.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

I've listened to her speak a few times but I kind of got to the point where I was thinking, do I want to go into a. I felt like I was going to do the same thing that I did prior to going into the brand innovation role. And at the same time somebody, a recruiter called me and sort of turned my head towards Aramark.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And you had experience with spread out your alley in terms of like you have this portfolio.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, yeah. So different sort of different space. It's a much, much bigger business actually. But so you know, they, we kept in contact for a few months and I knew the project with Moe's was going to come to an end at some point. So it was kind of like, well, what, what?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, before we move away from the whole franchise model, like, where are you today in terms of franchising? And like, is that, is that a model that you would encourage people to get into? Is it what you're passionate? Because now you're not working with franchises, you're working with independence primarily. Right?

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And I want to, I think we could, we could help some franchise groups maybe look at market by market performance, things of that nature. What, what, what could you do better? Why? Maybe why sales down or the trajectory is down? You know, most of those businesses are pretty well set up and pretty well resourced, but maybe, you know, some of the smaller groups that are trying to franchise and there's quite a lot of those could do with some help. So I wouldn't say we're, we're not, we're never going to work, you know, or wouldn't focus on that. But I think more the independent route is where we, where the passion lies.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So I mean this, it's a subject I'm, I've never really tried to go deeper into, but I'm opening myself up to it more now. I had the founder of Intercanola law firm on the show. I don't know if you know Charles Intercanola. He does franchise law and he has a bunch of franchise clients. You know, I just had Lang's chicken fingers.

[Jeff Gothard]

Lane.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Sorry, Lane's chicken fingers on the show. They're growing like crazy right now. And I think the big takeaways I'm getting from these leaders are that like, you know, there's three ways to make money with a franchise and it's through the actual selling of the franchise to the franchisee, the, the royalties that you get. And then there's, you know, making money on the supply chain. Where do you, where do you lie with those three verticals of cash flow?

[Stephen McAloon]

I, I think making money on the franchise deal, it's not, it's not where you should be playing too much. That should be the gravy if anything, you know. Nice, nice, nice. Add on.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

You can make money on franchise fees. Right. So you buy a Subway from, from Subway and they might charge you 20,000, $30,000 per franchise agreement, per location.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you're not making a ton of money.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And it's a one time thing, Right. Unless you're renewing and then you might pay a renewal fee. Okay, so if you own 20, then normally typically a 20, you know, most franchises are a 20, 20 year agreement with it, maybe a 10 year extension. So you're in it. It's like a relationship. Right. It's like a marriage. You're in. Royalties are where you should be focusing purely because it's a percentage of sales.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. So if they're successful, that's where you have the most potential.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And so a lot of, a lot of franchises in the restaurant business might charge a 5 or 6% royalty and they, they'll charge you know, 3 or 4% on top of that. That, that goes to marketing. So you know, if you've got 10.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Of your total revenue is going towards royalty and to promote your business. I mean I'd rather pay a percentage of my total sales to have somebody covering my marketing for me. That's a no brainer because that's a world of its own.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

There's scale with that that you can't, could never do as a single.

[Jeff Gothard]

Right. Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And you can't play in the same spaces. It's normally, you know, you, you, you would have to be more community oriented which is, which is great. But you know if you wanted national buys and things of that nature and presence, you know, a bigger, on a bigger scale that you would have no chance. So yeah, the more, the more you can drive that average unit volume up for the whole system, the more royalties you get, the more marketing dollars you'll get. So there's that side of it and then there's opening and I don't mean openings. New, new openings because of the a one time franchise agreement fee. It's, it's basically adding to your pot of revenue. Right. So you're getting 6% of. If you open another million dollar store you're going to get 60,000 as a royalty and if you open a hundred you're going to get a lot more.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you being the franchisor.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah. So it's growing your base business, your like for like business, your same store sales and it's growing the number of.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Actual locations, opportunities for revenue, the royalty opportunities.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So what about that third part of making money on the supply chain?

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean this seems to be the most controversial.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah. Of the ways it is because there's a, there's a natural skepticism let's say or healthy skepticism of a franchisee on look, my opinion is if you make money from a supply chain it should be fed back into the, into the business and it's that the cost should be passed on to the franchisees.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Why is that?

[Stephen McAloon]

Because the franchisees will be, you know, be more profitable and they'll want to Open more locations and they'll want to commit to more marketing dollars. They'll, you know.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So is this like a new. I think, I think it seems like a hot, like I'm not super familiar with like the world of franchise. It's like a hot substitute just like a new thing that like, it's not.

[Stephen McAloon]

It'S not a new thing. I, I, you know, GPOs, group purchasing is, is common. It's common outside of franchising as well. So if, if quite, quite a lot of the time I think the bad franchise franchisors, you know, if, if they've signed a deal with certain vendors or suppliers and they take 10 cents on the dollar or whatever, then and they, they keep it it. Not sure you should be doing that. If you're passing that on to reduce the cost of an item that go, the franchisee is buying through the supply chain because then their food cost is lower then to me that's the better way to go because ultimately what you're selling is in your financial disclosure document that you have to put out there every year. You have to put the ratios of sales and profitability of your franchise system. So you have to say Chick Fil a was took 9 million on average and their profit, you know, their average unit profitability was X, Y or Z. You have to disclose that. So it makes sense to keep improving your profit margins so that if you want to open a franchise, more people.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Buy in so you can make way more money opening more locations than you can.

[Stephen McAloon]

It's a more viable property opposition to franchise with Chick Fil A than it is with somebody that's not passing those margins on a lot of, a lot of franchisee franchisors now and, and other, other places are going to group purchasing, you know, organizations where they will almost pool the buying power so they'll say, you know, if, if brand A is, is takes a billion dollars and they've got half a million of group of purchasing of food and beverages every year, we're going to combine that with this, this company over here and then we're going to go after contracts with this combined buying volume so that you can negotiate a better price in chicken or packaging or whatever. And then they pass the, pass the flow through back to those organizations which should then pass through it back to the, the franchisees.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got my wheels turning right now.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I'm thinking, you know, I'm trying to bring this community behind restaurant unstoppable together. Right in my mind it's like, okay, like the ways that you make Money with the podcast aren't too far off.

[Jeff Gothard]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean, there's some similarities. Like for me, it's sponsorship, you know, like selling ad space and you know, promoting the companies that I, I believe in and like having them like working with those companies that like promote like more actively. And then it's affiliate marketing, which is kind of like, yeah, charging on the supply chain. Right. Where if I sell something or promote something and I get, I get a, you know, an affiliate commission. And then the other way is to basically create a product or service behind the podcast that you're using your podcast to promote that service that you offer. So in my world, it's like, okay, well, I don't have a product or service. I started this because I just wanted to talk to people and learn and pay that knowledge forward. But now I'm like, what is my product? And I think my product is you.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, knowledge.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's, it's access to people like you and people like you in all different walks of life in the restaurant industry. And, and if you're a one to three unit operator, you don't have the, the budget, the pocket to like go out and hire you all the time, you know, and things might be tough, but you still need that help. Right. So if I could like crowdsource, bring all these people together and you pay $47 a month to get access to these people into like, you know, have like this, this, this filter of like word of mouth to find the good people that you should invest in with your restaurant to get the tools you need. Well, what if I, instead of earning an affiliate commission, pay that forward to my, my, my community and say if I, if you're going to give me a $200 commission on, why don't I just pay that forward right. To the member?

[Stephen McAloon]

Perpetuates it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. And that incentivize the community to join, to be a part of these incentives and then that drives reoccurring membership.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, I, I agree.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean, I, how do I like build that though? Like the systems around that and managing all that?

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, I mean it's, it's an interesting model and I, I think there's those that, I mean, if, if you've got a network, if you're providing, you know, subscribers of some sort to a network of knowledge like you say, I mean, if you don't know where to go and you don't have resources around you as an independent business owner. Yeah, you can go online and contact various folks and it's going to cost you, you don't know what you're getting either. So I think if you've got, like, verifiable, almost like resources that, you know, if I'm. If I'm an independent owner and I'm following you and I'm, you know, potentially willing to pay the subscription or. Or, you know, gain access to a program or maybe it's a customized. Customized resource of some sort. You know, I would find that invaluable.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think that the parallels I was drawing was to add value to my. Like, protect the franchisee. Right. Is the. The model that's successful do everything to protect the franchisee. Because if you make the franchisee successful, then you are successful. And that parallel for me is if I make my listener successful.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And if I can pay forward savings for them, and then there's value in restaurant, unstoppable network. And more people sign up, there's more potential earning for me.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

If I take care of my listener.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And that's where you're sharing the.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's just a universal lesson, I guess, is the point I'm trying to make, that when you take care of the person you exist to serve.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It comes back around.

[Stephen McAloon]

You're sharing the knowledge and you're sharing the resources.

[Jeff Gothard]

You're sharing. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's what I was trying to communicate. You know, I think that it's like whenever you take whoever.

Whoever the core.

Like if you're a franchisor, your core market, your core customer is the franchisee. How do you make them successful? Right. If you ever. Whenever, like. So if you're a restaurant owner, same idea. Like your core customer is your internal customer, your team member. How do I make sure my team members, the people I employ, are successful? When you focus on that, it spills out.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

No, it should perpetuate. So.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you leave Moe's and you join Airmark either 2018-2023. Half of that time was during the pandemic. I mean, what were. Like, what was the big going on here? Like, what. What should we focus on during this time? I want to get to where you are today.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

I mean, it's a. It's a big business. It's, you know, a big company running. I, you know, my job was over overseeing a team from Texas to California that we would put Food Solution into corporate. At headquarters or could be blue collar, white collar, could be. You know, these are quite often, you know, multinational international companies that we provide a cafe or a restaurant or even a licensed branding. It's. It's it's a different fiscal model. It's normally a subsidized business. Again, they're paying for a service. It's about volume of client relationships. Volume, volume of client contracts. But ultimately, you know, Our Mark employed 270,000 employees internationally as well. My, my job was to run, you know, $300 million worth of business in, in different, in somebody else's environment with, with a team. So it's interesting because you, you know, it's a, it's a breakfast and lunch business. This whole contract food contract model. You know, hospitals, K through 12 college campuses. A college campus, A campus could be a million dollar contract a year. Sorry. 100 million dollar contract. Sports and entertainment. So running stadiums, facility management, uniform services.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think there is some like overlay here because I just recently had strategic hospitality on the show. They're out of Nashville. I don't know if you know the Goldbergs. Ben and Max Goldberg.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

They have their own one off concepts. We're really, they're a management company and they invest in chefs and help chefs manage their vision. And they, they're like, they take care of like the financials, the operations, the marketing and then they let the chefs be chefs.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Like that's their model. But they asked to do a management portion. Where for example, they, the Friends in Low Places bar that Garth Brick owned. Garth Brooks owns. They sold that property to Garth Brooks, but now it's his brand and his, he owns the building and the concept.

[Stephen McAloon]

But he doesn't want to run it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Strategic Hospitality manages it.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So I think that this is, there is some overlay here in the world of like if you're a badass manager and there are, everyone today wants to own a restaurant. You got millionaires and celebrities that want to own restaurants. Right. But they don't want to actually run the restaurant. They just want to be able to say, I own a restaurant.

[Stephen McAloon]

Gordon Ramsay.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah. Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Wait, what's, tell me more about that operation.

[Stephen McAloon]

Well, I think, you know, I think he, he's got a presence in, in North America. Right. He basically gives, you could say so gives the business to somebody else to run.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Let us use his celebrity to promote it. Yeah, yeah, but so he doesn't get, so.

[Stephen McAloon]

Oh, he'll, he'll, he'll have the standards and you know, he'll put, he's putting his name on. There's a certain, I'm sure there's certain approval levels for menuing and things of that nature. But you know, it's, he's, he's not necessarily running his food business in North America, you know, some. Somebody else is managing it for him.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, it's interesting. I. I really love the, the restaurant groups that have diversified portfolios. I'm thinking of like us, the show, the Social Order in Oklahoma City. They have. They started with a franchise, Texadelphia.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And then they sold that and then they got into the fuzzy Taco franchise and then they started opening their own one off. They had the Jones assembly and 747 and now they're doing Dave David franchise.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But they're pun intended. But I love that like, that, you know, that getting into like diversifying your portfolio. And I think that that management, if you're a good operator, like just managing is another portfolio that we don't explore often enough, in my opinion.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, you put, you know, can't put all your eggs in one basket.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, especially with like the world of influencer marketing now where people, you know, you can. You kind of see it with ghost kitchens where the only ones that are really successful are the ones that are tied to like a Mr. Beast.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, because of that influence, that marketing arm, the drive.

[Stephen McAloon]

If you know they're a ghost kitchen, you know, there's probably quite a few out there that you don't know that.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, I agree with that. I think even for a company like Aramark through Covid, I mean the division that I worked in was probably the long. Took the longest to come back because.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What division was that?

[Stephen McAloon]

It was workplace hospitality. So you put in food solutions into corporate headquarters and facilities. So of course work from home doesn't help.

[Jeff Gothard]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think that's a huge missed opportunity too, too. But finish your training thought.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

I mean the other divisions were things like, you know, college, colleges came back quicker in terms of return healthcare didn't miss a beat. You know, providing food and beverages. In hospitals and things of that nature, they were busier than ever.

[Eric Cacciatore]

No offense to earmark, but you feel like it's weird like in schools and hospitals and corporations. Like, I feel like, like these are the areas where like there's probably a big issue with just like the quality of food that's being served. And I think there's a ton of opportunity for like, you know, chefs like, like quality food, actual, like better like sourcing local food programs. Like that's a great way in my opinion for a corporation to add value to their employees is to have a high quality food, like good food, scratch food, with like a team behind that.

[Stephen McAloon]

That kitchen that, that's that's normally the, that's normally how it works. If you get into the school side of it, it's very restricted. It's very, A lot of governance.

[Jeff Gothard]

Right.

[Stephen McAloon]

And it's. There's so little dollars to spend on it that it's. That's a, That's a tough formula. There's so many restrictions and even now nutritional, you know, restrictions and things of that nature. But most, you know, the businesses that I worked in, we did have executive chefs nearly in. In every location. And you know, we could be serving CEOs of, of multinational companies on a daily basis. So, I mean, there was a high culinary bar.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Stephen McAloon]

That come, you know, in different segments of that business. You know, if it's college campuses, you're more likely to. To.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I remember the food I was eating in college. There's a reason why you gained the freshman 15. You know, it's not just the drinking. It's the buffet every night of like chicken fingers and french fries. And like, you know, I, I think it's weird because, like, there's no question that America is the most unhealthy.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Like one of the. At least most unhealthy countries. And it starts up with our food system and like the kids. Well, we feed our kids.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, we just don't put. And I think this, the culture, this value around food, like, we just don't value the food system like other countries do. You look at like Japan and France and what they do to like, really, like have good, holistic, like, thoughtful food programs and they're built into their society, like regulation around it. In America, it's just about corporate.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah. You know.

[Stephen McAloon]

Do you know how many wings are recommended in a portion, by the way?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Like chicken wings?

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

Oh, man.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Probably like three.

[Stephen McAloon]

Three?

[Jeff Gothard]

Three.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, it is three.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's about the size of a portion right there. I will crush nine chicken wings easy, if not 12. You know, usually do you want six or 12?

[Stephen McAloon]

I mean, I think three is the recommended.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's for the average side size person, like 170 pounds. What if you're like 220 pounds?

[Stephen McAloon]

Probably go up to four.

[Jeff Gothard]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I don't know. It's just. It's there. I think the point I'm trying to make is I think that, like, my mission statement is to inspire, empower, and transform the industry. And I think that if we can transform the industry by injecting values, then we can change the world.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But I think really, at the end of the day, it's. It comes down to the Consumer not understanding the value of food.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

I mean my, my team were challenged with whatever you could get on the street, you had to bring to the, to the client. And what do you mean by that? Whatever it means, you know, you, the client sees the food that, the food side of it as an amenity to their employees fees. Right. So if you, if you work for company X and it's a campus of 3,000 people and I'm providing, my company's providing the food services there. So maybe you've got a few, few coffee shops and a cafe, a couple of restaurants. We want you to stay on campus and not drive off to go to McDonald's or whatever. So we would provide a range of food that is subsidized so it's cheaper but still has great quality so that you, you see that as an amenity to your daily working life and it's costing you less money as well. So companies pay for that privilege and are willing to subsidize that to keep you happy as an employee.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it.

[Stephen McAloon]

So that's the whole game there. The, you know, if you went into like Google's office, they're probably getting free food every day. Breakfast.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is that because people are more productive than they don't leave.

[Stephen McAloon]

They'll get food.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And it's also like a, you know, a workplace benefit too.

[Stephen McAloon]

Attraction.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I get to save money on food.

[Stephen McAloon]

So that's really, that's really the game.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

Is how to provide a service to your, to your employees and to your point, you know you do, you do hold. You can't serve chicken nuggets five days a week. You can't serve french fries for those who want it can get it. But you know, we'd provide rame and we provide, you know, top end burgers, 100% grass fed, you know, salad bars, all sorts of stuff. So it's really evolved. Even you know, there's a big sustainability push there in those companies where the packaging that you're buying non plastics, the diversity of the companies that you're buying from, you know, the Compass, Aramark, that are probably a $5 billion plus supply chain company as well or purchasing power. So you know, they want whoever they're buying from. A certain portion of those have to be, you know, a certain, you know, ethnic minority or a diversity quota. So they are, they are pretty progressive or more progressive than you remember because.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Lots changed since I graduated college I guess. I mean that was almost what, how old am I? 20. Jesus, man. So I mean I want to get to where you are today. I mean, it's been about. I mean, what is game box? Just answer that question.

[Stephen McAloon]

Gatebox is. It was an interesting one. You know, it was. It's basically mixed bricks and mortar locations. And the founder really was. His mantra was social gaming. In a social environment.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Would you say mix bricks, Bricks and mortar. Mix bricks and mortar, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

So basically you have to go to a venue.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Stephen McAloon]

And you would go to mix bricks, bricks and mortar with social gaming, social interaction.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So it's a, it's a, it's a game cafe. Gameboard cafe, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

So you'd go into a game box, touchscreen walls, you'd wear a visor, track body movement. It was, you know, immersive. Immersive within a game game. And you could play against, you know, four or five, six, up to six people.

[Jeff Gothard]

No.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What was it?

[Stephen McAloon]

No body motion. So. And then the game would be displayed on four walls. So you're interacting with the game. So the deal there was you, you'd have IP relationships with like squid games. Was one of them. One of the games. So you turn up on date night or with your kids or, or you know, your college buddies, you, you check in, you go and play a game for an hour. It could be Tetris, something like that, but it tracks your body movement. So you're interacting.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Your body movement controls the gameplay.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yes.

[Jeff Gothard]

Got it. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I never heard of this.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

So it's just kind of breaking through. There's, there's about 30 locations in the.

[Jeff Gothard]

U.S.

[Eric Cacciatore]

They'Re all under the, the, the brand of game box.

[Stephen McAloon]

Immersive game box.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's. I mean, that's interesting. I think they're. You're seeing more of the entertainment, right? Like the, the bowling alleys of the world or like the, the Hampton socials.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

I think.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is that what it was? Where you can go bowl or play Batman or.

[Stephen McAloon]

It's kind of like escape room. That type of, you know, philosophy, you know, the, the founder was. It was really more like instead of playing Fortnite as a, you know, 14 year old up in your bedroom, not socializing or, you know, you're on a headphone and you're blowing people up. It wasn't shoot them up, you know, it was more socially engineered and socially interactive that you meant to, you know.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You'Re not, you're not shooting anybody wherever there's people congregating.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

To like, whether it be for like socializing or gaming or like pickleball is another one that you're seeing right now or.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Like those concepts are killing it, but they're making their money on the pickleball courts, not necessarily the food. When you have like you're charging $50 an hour for a court, you have 10 quarts.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, and you got two people paying 50, maybe, I don't know, 50 times 10, that's 500 an hour of reoccurring revenue.

[Stephen McAloon]

Well, the labor model associated with it.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

Unless you're running a restaurant next to it and providing food and beverage. I mean, you know, if I'm just taking, taking your, your money when you've paid for an hour, the two. Is it a two person job and instead of running a restaurant when it's, you know, maybe a 20 or 30 person operation?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, I think. Yeah, sorry, it's just a different, you.

[Stephen McAloon]

Know, different model is kind of an interesting model as well.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I can't remember the concept when I was on Arizona. I can't remember the name of the concept, but I had the right hand man of Sam Fox, Regan Jasper on the show. I don't know, you probably heard of Sam Fox, right? Fox Concepts. He was getting to like the economics of their pickleball. Like he like, you know, invested in this pickleball concept. And I think that those, you know, it's like they're also using the whole QR code ordering model where like they have runners. So like you might have this huge facility that might be thousands of square feet and multiple pickleballs and like you can like have drinks delivered to your court, you know, or you finish up top golf types. Yeah, you spend a couple hours playing pickleball, you're hungry, you're gonna go to the bar, bar and order some food. So like you like, it's just, you can kind of like, I don't know, like they're using that like that model of like you don't necessarily need to have high quality like, like, yeah, like, you know, high touch server experience, but like you have runners that could do ton of volume.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's interesting. I mean it's, you know, it's an experience and you're adding food and beverage, you're bringing food and beverage to the.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Experience and then the, the, the other revenue of actually charging food for the experience.

[Stephen McAloon]

Absolutely.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Whether it be at the door or for like, like to like. Yeah, play pickleball or whatever it might be. So is this kind of the same business model with the game box? Are you paying like by the hour.

[Stephen McAloon]

To play the game? You're booking online it's, it's a low labor model. You know, it takes one or two people just to run a location. So what you, what you gain in, in a low labor model you can put back in terms of advertising and social campaigns and things of that nature to really market it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think that's a big part of the future. I think, I don't think fine dining in full service restaurants are going to disappear. No, but I think you're going to see them take up a much smaller portion of the market. And I think the consumer is going to value being able, they go out to eat because they want to socialize. It's not so much about the being served on hand and foot.

[Stephen McAloon]

Like, I, I think, I don't know, part of me thinks it's going to come full circle. You know, the, the, the just the domination of third party delivery and off premise and things of that nature. I don't know. That coupled with inflation and price increase after price increase and I could probably name, you know, five places locally that I used to go to that I won't go to anymore because the value of what I would previously bought cheddar fries or something is now like, I'm looking at it thinking, not spending 10 bucks on that like it used to cost me four. You know, it's so I, I think there's a bit of a tipping point where, and I think it's probably going to come sooner rather than later of the value of what people are paying for and the experience which is, you know, it's the formula that's always been there, values price over experience or whatever. But I think the price is so out of whack now that. Well, I heard an economist talk about this recently, worked for the chief economist for the Coca Cola company. People are generally spending the same amount of money, but they're just going out less frequently. So there's a lot of companies, even fast, you know, fast food companies now, they're really hurting for transactions. Their traffic count has gone down now they're having to put lots of marketing dollars into discounting or bundle deals and things like that. They're having to buy visits and pay for it. You know, they're paying for customers to come in because they're giving two for one burgers or you know, whatever. But I, I don't know, I, I just think there's a, there's a tipping point somewhere that is around pricing and what, you know, the value that people are getting from the product that they're buying because I think portions have gone down and prices have gone up. And prices never really come down.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, I mean, have prices gone up or are they going back to where they were? And that's an interesting.

[Stephen McAloon]

They're either flat or they go. They're going up.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So relative to what period of time, though?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think, you know, through. Through Covid, I'd say the last five years. I think the COVID years. And I was part of a big organization with a lot of purchasing power. Right. So 8 to 12% food and labor inflation every year, year over year.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's interesting. I think as a. I'm so this is where I'm a little weird, like outside the box, like maybe a little ungrounded. But if you look at like, people and our, like our relationship with food over time talking like 10,000 years, our. Literally everything we did centered around sourcing and eating food. It was our existence. So when you think about the cost to get a meal 10,000 years ago, it was literally everything you did centered around getting and feeding yourself. It was your life's goal to find and eat food.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That was your purpose. Right. So how much did we invest?

[Stephen McAloon]

A lot.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Everything, literally our life, existence went into food. So. And then you fast forward, you know, to like the 20th century. Right. That's when things started to change in terms of our relationship with food as we know it today. Really started to change where we started to commercialize and like scale the food system and centralize the food system. And if you're alive today, that's all you know, because it was.

[Jeff Gothard]

I think.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, because if you look, I think in the. The book is the. The Town Food Safe. It profiles a town in Vermont where like, they. They like decentralized the food system and they really big into like sourcing locally. And they're going. I think. I don't quote me exactly, but it was like in like the 1920s, the average household income spent like 20% of their income on food. Like, that's a big chunk today. It's like we're like not that long ago, like in like the early 2000s, it was like 9%. So what I'm asking is, are we.

[Jeff Gothard]

Is it. Is it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is the cost of food getting more expensive or is it. Did it get really cheap? And all we've known for our existence is really cheap food.

[Stephen McAloon]

The stat that I listened to maybe six months ago was dispose the. The same amount of disposable income is being spent on the same things as it has done really in the last 60 or 70 years, inclusive of economic crisis. Wars, things of that nature. People are still spending the amount, the same amount. They just might be spending it a different ways.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. Like where's, like that's my next question is where is our money going? Going? You think about what we spend money on today, like how many like subscription fees, how much money are we burning.

[Stephen McAloon]

That you know about or, and like.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You think about like food and like not food like the consumer good, like just a clothing.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, and shoes. Like you bought a pair of shoes 100 years ago, you'd go to the, you know, the, what's that? The cobbler and you'd get the soles replaced like 20 times until like the leather was just gone like on like.

[Stephen McAloon]

It'S not the same shoe anymore.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Exactly. And I think it's just like this, this world of consumerism and like where is our money going? How many people have giant, giant, giant homes? Two people. Like they bought these homes when they had three kids and now they still live there and like the house is empty and they're heating it and they're, you know, it's like where are we spending our money?

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, I think that for, for the food business or the restaurant business. What's, what's. Where a lot of restaurants are now are. If you, if you, if you're working in an office and you went to Subway every day, five dot got you five dollar foot long. Right. That's your thing. Subway, well, Jimmy John's, whatever. And you're doing your five dollar foot foot long. What's happened now is because of pricing, I think the equivalent of a five dollar foot foot long now is eleven dollars. You're not going five days a week anymore. You're going two or three. You're spending the same amount. But you, you can't go five days, days a week anymore.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Stephen McAloon]

That to me is the worry where because you're, you're as a restaurant an independent owner or a franchisee, your rent has not gone down, your, your fixed costs have not gone down. You're still paying the, the AC bill but you're having to charge more and people are coming into your restaurant less. And also you've got this off premise dynamic that's spinning around. Can you, does your food travel well? Are you representing your restaurant? Well, when I get it at home and I've paid 30 bucks for a burrito, am I getting value? Am I going to reorder? So I, you got to keep a real close eye on that foot traffic. How many people are actually going to your space and if it's starting to peel off. You know, you better be getting revenue from somewhere else.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah. Time.

[Stephen McAloon]

Because your fixed costs are not going to go down.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

How you doing on like, we. We're almost at our.

[Jeff Gothard]

Our.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Our hard stop in terms of time we blocked. Do you. Do you want to go a little over or do you have things you got to do in the back?

[Stephen McAloon]

I mean, I'm. I'm good, if you will.

[Jeff Gothard]

Okay.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, I'll keep going. I'm enjoying the conversation. I want to get to. On the formation of KIC or kick.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

For Kick hospitality.

[Stephen McAloon]

Kick's good.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Kick Hospitality. So you. You. How do you know the. The Hunt brothers?

[Stephen McAloon]

It was through, actually. Jeff.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Stephen McAloon]

Jeff. Jeff was brought. You know, Jeff ran a. Was a COO of the Ramen group.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Tatsuya.

[Stephen McAloon]

Tatsuya in Austin. So I think, you know, they kind of knew about each other and. And then I think they. They officially met and whatever. And I think he. He, you know, mentioned Jeff to Rachel and what we were doing, and that's how that came about. So we. So yeah, I met Jeff at Schlotky Keys.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Stephen McAloon]

So Jeff is a consultant as well.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So how do you two. In quick. You know, just VF313. Zayn and Brandon Hunt, past guests on the show. I've actually had them on the show twice now. Yeah, I talked to them. You know, I think when they were at like 10 or I think they're maybe at four or five locations. And then they were scaling. They were at 10 locations.

[Stephen McAloon]

They got some funding, right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Private equity from Saver Fund, Savory Fund. And I talked to them and Tony. I think it's Anthony or Tony from. From Save Refund. Anthony Smith. We talked about what that evolution was like of going to get the capital to get to that next point where you scale, like nationwide or whatever. And we're gonna. I don't know, we're gonna talk about this time, but Rachel actually asked for my con for Brandon and Zayn's contact information because she started listening to the show after the first time I had her on the show. I just love how it's a small world. Like, you know, like, this is my dream is helping good people connect with.

[Stephen McAloon]

Well, yeah, I mean, you've.

[Jeff Gothard]

On the.

[Stephen McAloon]

On you've unclogged a connection there. Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Like, that's like the most rewarding thing for me and like, to. To know it's all starting to come together and I can connect these people. But. So she reached out to Brandon. Brandon, connect her with you two this was right around the time you guys were.

[Stephen McAloon]

For me, absolutely.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

It was literally probably about two or three months after.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So was she like your first client, like one of your.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

I mean, we've entertained other ones. I mean, we, you know, we, we've had people approach us. We're trying to, you know, get a philosophy correct in our approach. And, and Rachel has been gracious enough and, and open enough to, to help us go through that and worked with us, and obviously we're working with her. So, you know, it's, it's interesting how we're going to sort of evolve and, and who do we want to work with? To your, to your question before, do we want to work, work with franchises or do we want to do small project work or innovation, you know, roles? I, I, we're getting, we're having a lot of fun with Rachel. That's fun.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And we're being very sort of scientific about it at the same time, with a, with a clear plan and a clear pathway for, for her to, to hopefully by the end of 2025, you know, improve results. Yeah, pretty dramatically.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So, so it's interesting because as, like, these interviews are happening, I'm learning more and more about eos. Are you familiar with eos, the entrepreneur operating system? They talk about the, the visionary integrator relationship in that. And I'm 100 on the visionary side. Like, I'm a dreamer. I'm big picture connecting the dots. And every visionary needs an integrator.

[Stephen McAloon]

Absolutely.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And there's different ways to find you. Either you, you.

[Stephen McAloon]

That's the role whereplay.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yes, exactly. And that's what I was gonna get into. You can either start a company where it's a visionary, like a, you know, your chef GM combination, which is like the, probably the most traditional one. Then there's like the CEO COO relationship. And in many cases, or very, very few cases, I should say that there are CEOs that also have the COO ability, which is rare. But Rachel is one of these cases where she is very much a visionary. Concept development. And I think that it's cool to understand that you can, if you are a visionary, one of the options is to find consultants who are the integrators.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Who you can outsource. And I think she's also doing fractional cfo. So, like that, that's an example of the, the visionary integrator relation where you can outsource it with consulting.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So what, what I'm curious about, what is your relationship with Jeff like? What lanes are you two in? Are you both integrators or like, how.

[Stephen McAloon]

Do you guys compliment? You know, it's, it's, it's interesting. We've, we, we have our moments occasionally, but we're, you know, we both like to have fun. We both are pretty laid back but also very competitive, which kind of, that's why we like to get results. You know, Jeff probably comes from a smaller, smaller business, you know, with Tatuya in Austin, but has worked in, in bigger places as well. So I think we bring a really good cross section of skills, you know, whether it's marketing operations, be able to pick a grain of salt out of a P L, you know, the whole cross reference people management, understanding, you know, what a good structure should look like in a, in a restaurant operation, whether it's single or multi unit. So, you know, we bring a lot of, of the same skills but also different perspective.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So when Rachel reached out to you and you started working with Rachel, and I want to respect client confidentiality, like I want to ask questions to learn about how you served her. But when you got there, what did that process look like in terms of trying to figure out how you could help her?

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, we kind of laid that out pretty clearly. We said that it was going to be a discovery period, mainly with her larger concept which was Empire slice house, Empire slice shop. And so we, we took an approach of the first X amount of weeks. We're going to look at your business from a consumer perspective and then we're going to look behind the curtain. So when I say consumer, we're going to go to every location, we're going to try the food, we're gonna like look at everything, bathrooms, curb appeal marketing, your scores online, how you're rated on, you know, where you are in the, in, in, in the lineup, on UberEats, DoorDash or GrubHub. We're gonna, we literally did surveys, we created our own surveys for her and then sort of packaged them together to gain some trends to think about, like what's really happening here. And then so, so did that kind of anonymously and then the flip side of that, so that was stage one, stage two of the discovery.

[Eric Cacciatore]

How long did that take?

[Stephen McAloon]

Probably four or five weeks for that. And then stage two, stage two was more about back of house. So getting to know the people, understanding the processes of how to make the product. You know, she's got other concepts and we started taking a look at that but you know, really understanding the efficiency of the operation. So I guess you know, from our perspective, you gotta, you've got to be able to put the marketing hat on. You've got to be able to put the consumer hat on, look at the brand holistically, but then understand where are you delivering on what you should be deliver. Delivering upon in terms of the pizza or the coffee or whatever you're selling. So, and then we, we know, we, we looked at the team.

[Jeff Gothard]

Team.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's stage three.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

So. So after all that, we, you know, we presented a, a 2025 plan based on.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Stage one is like secret shopper, essentially.

[Stephen McAloon]

Like a secret shopper gathering data on steroids.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Stage two is looking at the back of house operations.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

Standards, the how you execute, are you efficient? What's your labor like?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Stage three is like executive level team, team develop.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

So her organization got it. And then from all that, from all that observation and a lot of it's factual, obviously. And you know, Rachel was great because she opened the door for us and she gave us access to, you know, data and POS systems and things of that nature and P. Ls or whatever. But from that we, we had a baseline of where the performance. And then from, from experience you can start to say, okay, well you're either very consistent, not consistent, you know, your products, good, bad, ugly, whatever. Whatever that case may be. We built a plan. We be built a plan based on very specific levers that we believe could be pulled together to a better.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What are. Give me an example of some levers that catering.

[Jeff Gothard]

Okay.

[Stephen McAloon]

It could be beverage sales.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What's K3?

[Stephen McAloon]

Catering. Sorry.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay, sorry.

[Stephen McAloon]

Catering. It could be marketing improvements. It could be. Or efficiency. It could be loyalty. It could be. Check average drivers.

[Jeff Gothard]

Got it.

[Stephen McAloon]

Guest service, you know, and then you can do the science right behind it. You can sort of start to calculate the math behind. Example. If you, if you've got an underutilized loyalty database, you can say, well, if I get a higher level of engagement or I change my users from low to a medium or a medium to a heavy user. How you do that is another conversation. But if it results in another visit, another, another, you know, spend, then you can start to do the math on what that tactic could mean long term over the course of the year. So, you know, we've, we developed a plan. We're in the process of helping to your point, integrate the plan with her team, but actually also holding that role of like holding accountability there as well. Working alongside her.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I'm tempted to ask more questions, but I also don't think it, I Don't put you in the position to get into those details with, you know, it's not really, you know, client confidentiality. But she did expose that you helped her with training and communication. So in terms of, like, what the training, like, I think it would be fair to ask you, like, what does the training look like today? Like, how did you, like, after you went in and you made the changes, you. You did, like, what does that look like today?

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, I mean, you can't do everything at once. So if. If you, if without talking specifically about Rachel's business, you know, if you're. If you're running a group of coffee shops, right, and you're making coffee.

[Jeff Gothard]

Wrong.

[Stephen McAloon]

The coffee not to the standard it should be, then, you know, you. It's hard to influence everybody. But, you know, we. We took it in terms of sort of like, the oversight of roles, and we got them dialed back into the. The core and the standards of what should be happening in the locations.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So the oversight of roles, meaning, like, looking at every, like, like job description, job title, and the responsibilities with each.

[Stephen McAloon]

One of those, we did it. We did a SWOT analysis on the culinary side, the operation side, the marketing side, the financial side, and the people side, and made clear recommendations of what we saw was value add that would make a tangible difference in the business. And so we started almost positionally, like the oversight of the locations, say the coffee shops, or the ops director role. What are they doing? What does their working week look like? Because quite often, you know, you find with small, small businesses, like I said at the start of this, this session was your. Your district manager, your ops director or your area supervisor is. Has come about because they're the. The best that you have in terms of running a single unit. So you give them the keys to the car are. And so, you know, we're sort of recalibrating roles and giving them the tools to be able to do the job at a higher level and having higher expectations that gets, you know, a better, you know, a better quality of work for. For that owner or that, that brand.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So what you're talking about is literally going through and creating an accountability chart. It's like, you need. You need to have like, a hierarchy of like, who's at the top of this. This organization? Who or the jerk reports under there, like, what are the titles and like, what are the responsibilities and what are they doing?

[Stephen McAloon]

What are they currently doing? How are they spending their working week?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And. And then you have to, like, kind of like make it ritualistic for each One of those.

[Stephen McAloon]

Which is exactly what we did. Yeah, right. So we, we, we almost, well, we did do, we went through a process of saying, okay, what is, what does your working week look like? Right. And you'll tell me what you do on a Monday, Tuesday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And we, we, we sort of set it up whereby your, your meetings, your administrative administration tasks are really done on a, on a, on a Monday and any follow up is really Friday or Saturday.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So now you're time blocking.

[Stephen McAloon]

Time blocking, very minimal. Right. So maybe an hour for this, on a Monday, maybe an hour. But we've, we've done the due diligence, we've understood what's on there, what are.

[Eric Cacciatore]

The most important things that you do in your role and when does it happen?

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, so that kind of bookends it, which leaves focus on the restaurants, which is where it counts. Yeah, right. So, and even, you know, we kind of call it midweek market focus. Right. So. Or prime time. So even Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. When you've done your admin, but you're in the restaurants, what are you doing when you're in the restaurants? Are you coaching, leading, mentoring? Are you looking at the standards? Are you helping to service, to upsell, to enable, to drive check. Are you tapping into catering opportunities? Are you, you know, are you executing? Do you have standards that you're executing against? Quite often, you know, especially when you've been in business a few years, the sort of tribal knowledge happens and maybe you don't have a set of recipes anymore that you, you, you once started with. Maybe what you thought you were 10 years ago isn't what you've turned out to be today in terms of your product. So yeah, we, we, we, we kind of clarified management routines above store and then we'll get into the, you know, what are the managers doing when they're in store? We put some processes in, in place that when they are in store that they're following.

[Jeff Gothard]

Right.

[Stephen McAloon]

Looking at standards, looking at measuring. So yeah, it's, that's just, that's just one aspect of it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean it kind of reminds me, I think when it comes to culture, you think of culture as like, what is my mission? What is my vision? What are my core values? Like, and like that's at the very surface level of culture. Right. But beyond that, culture is also rituals. Yeah, like, like in america we celebrate the 4th of July every year.

[Jeff Gothard]

Right?

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's a ritual, it happens annually. It's an annual ritual. Well, what are your, your rituals at for like, you know, Your restaurant. Like, what are the annual maintenance. Maintenance things, the quarterly maintenance things, how.

[Stephen McAloon]

To keep track of them, you know?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And like, who's responsible for these things? And like, what, what are those. What do those rituals look like on a daily basis for these, for these different roles and responsibilities? And when do those things happen? And like, put it on the calendar.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, and I think the other, like, then, like, you have. You're also blocking time for, like, if I'm talking EOS language, because that's like the entrepreneurial operating system. Like, when do you have time to work on your rocks?

[Jeff Gothard]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

The things that are like the three things that you're going to do, do to make a difference and to improve the organization. Like, when does that happen? You got to block time. Yeah, that's what I'm hearing from.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, I. I mean, we, we use the four disciplines of execution.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So I'm really interested in eos, the entrepreneurial. The entrepreneurial operating system. But tell me more about this that you're talking about, because I think it's similar.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, it's very similar. And if you like EOS, you. You'll. You'll really like. The abbreviation is 40x, right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So this was all born out of the mind of Stephen, Arkansas. McCovey.

[Stephen McAloon]

It's.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

McChesney, what's the name of the book?

[Eric Cacciatore]

One more time.

[Stephen McAloon]

The Four Disciplines of Execution.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay, keep going.

[Stephen McAloon]

So the premise is that. And it's, It's. It's a management philosophy and practice, right? So the words discipline and execution, if you put that into, into the context of restaurants, you know, it's, It's. It's hard. It's hot. It's. It's hard. I think it's harder to run a. Run a restaurant and execute a standard on food than it is to say, I don't know, make. Make a car. Because you. All the parts is consistently and put together and more robotics involved or whatever. But when it comes to people and putting, you know, culinary plates together and cuisine together, being consistent is. Is tough.

[Jeff Gothard]

But.

[Stephen McAloon]

But in terms of a management philosophy, the four disciplines are narrowing the focus, so creating wildly important goals. And there can only be one or two. The second discipline. So the wildly important goal is basically saying, I'm going to do this by then, so create. The second discipline is acting on lead measures. So lead measures are something that you can physically do. An influence that. That influences the wildly important goal. A lead measure is something that you can influence. A lag measure is the P L from last month. You can't do anything about it. It's done. It's your bank statement.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Scorecard.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah. It's not, not the scorecard. It's just a, it's a met.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's a slipping back, not forward.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's a, it's a point of data, not a goal.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

So widely important goal. Act on the lead measure. Create a compelling scoreboard. The philosophy here and the example that they sort of give you here is if you've got a group of kids playing basketball on the local court and they're just, you know, they're just messing around, and all of a sudden you bring in a referee and a referee is keeping score, the level of performance comes up because they're now being measured.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Stephen McAloon]

And then the last, the fourth one is having a cadence of accountability. So your D10s, your EOS processes very similar. The cadence of accountability is a set meeting every week short. And it's about what did I commit to doing last week specifically to impact what are my lead measures? You've already decided what they are. So, example with, with, with restaurants, I'm going to do five catering drops. I'm going to bring samples of my, my product to five businesses. These are the businesses. That's what I'm committing to do because I believe by doing that my catering business is going to go.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, but it's saying specific goals.

[Stephen McAloon]

Very specific.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And so, and again, that's something that I can actually do. It's not like talking. Right. I can actually do achievable.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's realistic.

[Stephen McAloon]

So on a cadence of accountability meeting on a Monday, I'm saying, eric, I committed to doing five catering drops. Last week. I only got to three. Kind of didn't get to the other two. This week I'm going to do this, this and this. So that's, that's the cadence of accountability cycle. So, you know, you can do that at all levels of the organization. You know, if you're, if you're a large organization, you could say, my, my, my wildly important goal is 5%, same store sales. Okay, well, now that, that goal needs to be actionable by marketing, operations, real estate, legal, whatever the discipline the theory is that you've got, you need to create lead measures that will influence your piece of the 5%, same store sales. Now that, so there's that side of it. And then what? There's something that they describe as the whirlwind. The whirlwind is everything that you do on a daily and weekly basis that is not influencing the goals which is pretty much in a lot of examples, people filling their days up with tasks. And the tasks have nothing to do with actually driving the goals. They might have stuff to do with running the business. Like, like making payroll or, you know, paying invoices or putting out a fire between two. Yeah. Like, employee doesn't turn up, I'm. I'm running a shift. You're not necessarily driving the sales goal or the. Or the goal that you've set. So it's about, you know, there's a lot of coaching about managing your whirlwind. Hence what I just talked about.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Distractions.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

But put your admin stuff on a Monday and focus on the restaurants during the week.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So it's like the same idea of Brian Tracy of like, how do you eat that frog?

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, it's like you. You do the, the ugliest, hardest thing that. The most important thing to move towards your. Your. Your big goal to move the business or get that done first. Block it first thing on Monday because, like, that's what's going to move the ball down the court.

[Stephen McAloon]

Absolutely.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Or down the field.

[Stephen McAloon]

So, you know, analogy you want to use.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

No, it's exactly right. So that, you know, it's. We believe in it. I've seen it work.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So I'm just going to summarize real quick. So it's the four disciplines of excellence. Achieving your Widely. Widely.

[Stephen McAloon]

Why?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Sorry. Wildly important goals.

[Stephen McAloon]

And four disciplines of execution.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Sorry. The four disciplines of execution. Thank you. Achieving your wide, wildly important goals. And they said really what it is, is narrowing your focus. And that consists of wildly important goals, acting on lead measures, creating a compelling scoreboard and having a cadence. Accountability.

[Stephen McAloon]

Correct.

[Jeff Gothard]

Got it. Correct.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And there's a D10. Is that the. The name for the weekly that.

[Stephen McAloon]

No, that's eos. Oh, that's lt. Yeah.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Sorry.

[Stephen McAloon]

Sorry. I was like.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Oh, cool. It's really similar.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

All right. I mean, anything we haven't talked about up to this point that you want to get out, we covered a lot. We're over two hours. Does it go by fast, though? Yeah, this is why I travel on site.

[Stephen McAloon]

It's fun, though. It's. It's interesting to get other people's philosophies.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I love it, man.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And you were really great. And, you know, it's fun to see my world starting to connect.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, and. And I can't wait to be talking, maybe talking to Jeff. You're probably partner, and he's going to be down in Austin. I'LL be talking to him next week. A couple questions I ask all my guests before we officially wrap up. What's one thing about your business? A value, a process, a system that makes you truly unstoppable?

[Stephen McAloon]

I think where we've got a. The science behind the science of a plan. We, we, we kind of, they're very, it's. We'll get to a very calculated plan based on fact and science, you know, data. And I think what that gives you, if you've assessed the business that you're working on correctly, it gives you a much higher chance of succeeding in improving the business results for the client than wishing it, you know, and hoping, hoping for better results. So you know that that's an important piece of it.

[Jeff Gothard]

It.

[Stephen McAloon]

I also think the ability to integrate yourself with a client, knowing, knowing both, both side, both parties need to know what their role is and how they can influence each other for the greater purpose of improving the business is, is really important.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

The mission statement is to change the world through inspiring, empowering, powering and transforming the restaurant industry. We're going to do that by sharing one story of transformation four times at a time. We, we shared your story of evolution and how you've grown and what you've learned. You've dropped a lot of knowledge on us. But how have you personally transformed. How are you a better man today than you were when you got started?

[Jeff Gothard]

Oh, man.

[Stephen McAloon]

I, I think, I think the term cutting your teeth comes to light from early on when I was in the uk, like working with people, different nationalities, different cultures, like, you know, Americans.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That must have been so hard for you.

[Stephen McAloon]

It's been great over in the States. But, you know, I think working with the diverse people, diverse groups of people that you find in hospitality and restaurants in general, I think helps educate you, helps you learn, helps you so have, have respect for different cultures, cultures and different people. And, and I think that that kind of almost makes you become a better person, a better coach, a better leader, a better manager, whatever, whatever. But a friend because you've, you've been in the trenches quite often with some of these folks. You've served the customers, you've been on busy shifts, you've been on working in a busy kitchen, you've, you've been on the fire, you know, with, with, with, with a team. And I think once when you've been through that, especially working in restaurants, you kind of, you kind of, like I said, cut, cut your teeth to a certain degree in terms of working with people and respecting people.

[Jeff Gothard]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Understanding human Nature.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

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

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, I would say have a, have a clear goal or two, have a plan and respect your people, develop your people, but also don't be held hostage by your people.

[Eric Cacciatore]

3. This has been a lot of fun, man. Thank you so much, Steve. I literally cannot do what I do without people like you taking time to sit with me, to share your story, to share your perspective, your knowledge. And I find all my guests by asking this last question, which is, who do you respect and admire in the industry? I'm connecting with Jeff, gonna make that happen. But I'm in Austin next week for actually a couple weeks. San Antonio or anyone across the country, if they come to mind. You really want to call them out? Who is that for you?

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I mentioned one that you've already working with, with, with, with, with Aaron.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, you can reinforce that.

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, I would say Aaron, I think he's got a really good philosophy on, on restaurants. Yeah, I, I'll leave it there, but I, I think there's, there's others that maybe for different disciplines that I could, you know, untap for you as well at the same time.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, I hope to be able to continue to work with you and to share your knowledge in the future, man. Hopefully this is the beginning of a long relationship and I literally cannot do what I do. How can we connect? I almost forgot. How can we connect with you? If we enjoy today's conversation, we won't work with you. What's the best way to connect?

[Stephen McAloon]

I mean, telephone, email, KIC Hospitality, LinkedIn. We're in the process, or we will be in the process of developing a website, but, you know, we're, we're similar to yourself. We're building contacts through organic relationships.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah.

[Stephen McAloon]

And recommendations.

[Jeff Gothard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So is there a specific email you want to share?

[Stephen McAloon]

Yeah, Steve, Kick Hospitality. Steve@kick hyphen hospitality.com. got it. Cell phone. [phone].

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I think this is going to be episode 1,900 and sorry, 1,199. So you can, we'll, we'll get all that information in there if you want to find that information. Now, I'll say it. There is no question, man. You are unstoppable. Cheers.

[Stephen McAloon]

Thanks, Eric.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Thank you.