1217: Aaron Franklin, Chef, Co-Owner, and Head of Maintenance at Franklin Barbecue

Summary

Restaurant Unstoppable – Episode 1217: Aaron Franklin, Chef, Co-Owner, and Head of Maintenance at Franklin Barbecue

Episode Overview

In this highly anticipated episode, host Eric Cacciatore sits down with Aaron Franklin—the famed Chef, Co-Owner, and Head of Maintenance at Franklin Barbecue (Austin, TX) and Uptown Sports Club. Together, they dig deep into Aaron’s unique entrepreneurial journey, the philosophy underpinning Franklin Barbecue's cult success, the gritty reality of restaurant life, and the importance of detail, discipline, and hospitality. This episode offers a masterclass in starting small, scaling smart, staying true to your values, and continuously evolving—an essential listen for restaurant professionals, entrepreneurs, and anyone interested in the operational soul behind iconic hospitality brands.

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Main Themes

• Starting Small, Scaling Thoughtfully: The virtue of beginning with low liabilities, letting demand guide growth, and resisting the urge to overextend.
• Relentless Focus on Quality & Consistency: Detailed systems, a hands-on approach, and incremental improvements underpin every success.
• Vertical Integration Without Losing Soul: Franklin's model of leveraging his expertise into products, media, and beyond—without sacrificing authenticity.
• Hospitality Over Hype: Why Franklin Barbecue stays local, avoids overexpansion, and builds a brand around deeply personal customer experiences.
• Leadership & Letting Go: The challenge and necessity of stepping back, building a team, and evolving from technician to leader.
• Adaptation in a Changing Industry: Reflections on the evolution of restaurants post-2009 and the ongoing importance of small, independently-owned eateries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

I. Humble Beginnings & the Value of Starting Small

• No Grand Plan—Just “Don’t Fail”: Aaron and his wife Stacy began in 2009 with a trailer, minimal funds, and a goal to just “stay up” day-to-day—cash flowing forward without debt. (19:11)

  “We didn’t have any goals. Our goal was to not fail. Stay up.” – Aaron Franklin [19:11]

• DIY Growth, Not Scaling for Its Own Sake: Instead of seeking investors or chasing rapid growth, they focused on quality, growing capacity only as demand and cash generation allowed.

  “All the profits have gone back into building more smokers until you max out on the amount… you can fit on the property… 53 cows is our limit.” – Aaron Franklin [57:11]

II. Crafting a Unique Brand and Experience

• Importance of Authenticity & Detail:

  “We just kind of wanted to make it really good and that was always good enough.” – Aaron Franklin [07:47]

• Service as Differentiator:

  “Our hospitality is off the charts. I mean, our hospitality is way better than the food.” – Aaron Franklin [87:01]

III. Evolving with the Times & the Power of Systems

• From Technician to Manager: Aaron describes the emotional difficulty—and necessity—of stepping back from day-to-day pit work, and the learning curve of becoming a better manager.

  “I think I became an entrepreneur because I’m such a bad employee.” – Aaron Franklin [18:01] “I've become a better manager… being more forgiving, just being less particular about things that may or may not matter.” [65:01]

• Systems and Data-Collection for Consistency:

  “We map everything out, we keep track of everything. We're obsessive about the details so we can backtrack stuff and correct paths.” [105:24]

IV. Vertical Integration—But Only Where It Fits

• Know Your Strengths and Limits: Franklin leverages his BBQ knowledge through sauces, seasonings, pits, books, YouTube/media, events, and Goldbelly shipping—but always as satellites to the core restaurant.

  “Franklin barbecue is the cash cow. Everything else orbits around and they kind of come and go.” [73:21]

• Skepticism about Scalability: Franklin resists franchising or major expansion to protect the integrity of the product and the brand’s personal touch.

  “If we compromise that just to open another restaurant… we have totally not done what we set out to do.” [75:09]

V. The Financial Reality of Barbecue

• High Food & Labor Cost:

  “Our brisket is probably in about the 55% [food cost] range… probably 60% [overall COGS]… pretty bad.” [34:06] “It takes us about 40 hours of labor to get every brisket to the cutting board for lunch.” [34:44]

• The Constraints of Physical Growth:

  “We encroach all four property lines... We just physically can't fit more food.” [37:22]

  • Max output: ~106-120 briskets/day, determined by property and smoker capacity.

VI. The Power & Challenges of Local Sourcing

• Ethical, Consistent Sourcing: Longstanding partnerships (e.g., Creekstone Farms) and a strong commitment to animal welfare and consistent quality—but acknowledges the logistical barriers to sourcing locally at scale.

  “A local farm can't grow 53 cows… it's not feasible.” [45:26]

VII. Leadership, Culture, and Retention

• Organizational Structure: Day-to-day operations and systems run without Aaron’s constant presence, owed to the long-term, well-cultivated team and thoughtful processes.

  “This place hums right along. I could leave for a month and they wouldn’t skip a beat.” [65:21]

• Retention & Growth: Staff average 5-6 years, many over a decade. Franklin views the restaurant as a springboard for careers (and is supportive when team members move on).

VIII. Reflections on Restaurant Trends & the Future

• The Rise of the Small, Locally-Owned Restaurant:

  “I really see just smaller restaurants thriving… Maybe big restaurant groups aren’t really where it's at… it's kind of like, know your farmer, know your chef.” [98:23]

• Swiss Army Knife Approach: Restaurant owners should be ready to do everything: maintenance, marketing, cooking, service.

  “Just learn how to be a Swiss army knife. That's proven to be our most successful trait.” [101:30]

• Community & Hospitality as Key to Survival:

  “What really makes this restaurant are the people that work here… It's the other 40 something people that have the same passion.” [89:06]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Just Getting Started

  “I'm going to steal one from Nike. Just do it.” – Aaron Franklin [05:09]

• On Learning by Doing

  “You can’t learn jazz overnight.” – Aaron Franklin [20:34]

• On Why Not to Scale

  “To compromise [our experience] just to open another restaurant would mean we’ve lost… We have totally not done what we set out to do.” – Aaron Franklin [75:09]

• On Why Details Matter

  “It is attention to detail. It’s being super meticulous, crazy disciplined.” – Aaron Franklin [85:33] “We’re obsessive about the details... That’s really what makes this place.” – Aaron Franklin [105:24]

• On Motivation

  “Really, my thing is: I want to make something better every day.” – Aaron Franklin [13:49] “We just want to be ourselves. We want to be authentic. We want to be kind.” – Aaron Franklin [94:05]

• On Staff Loyalty

  “The average stay here is probably about six years… we've always been the springboard for people to go off and open their own things.” – Aaron Franklin [49:43]

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Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Show opening, Aaron’s first remarks | | 05:09 | Aaron’s Success Mantra: “Just do it” | | 08:33 | The necessity of staying small and aiming to “not fail”| | 11:55 | Harsh realities: “Restaurants are free—freaking hard.” | | 19:11 | Aaron and Stacy’s “goal was to not fail” | | 30:39 | Letting cash flow and demand determine growth | | 34:06 | Discussing sky-high food and labor costs | | 45:11 | On vertical integration and ethical sourcing | | 49:43 | Franklin as a career springboard, staff loyalty | | 57:11 | Profits reinvested in growth—building more smokers | | 59:48 | Aaron on training others and letting go as an operator | | 65:01 | Evolving from technician to (better) manager | | 73:21 | The restaurant as the cash cow; CPG/media as satellites| | 85:33 | Attention to detail and discipline as keys to success | | 88:44 | Community, regulars, and customer relationships | | 98:23 | Industry trends: small, passionate, local restaurants | | 101:30 | The importance of “being a Swiss Army knife” | | 105:24 | The obsessive detail in kitchen communication | | 108:55 | Three pieces of enduring wisdom from Aaron Franklin |

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Conclusion – Wisdom from Aaron Franklin

Aaron Franklin’s journey is marked by humility, obsessive attention to craft, and a fierce commitment to both people and product. He proves that legendary status is forged not by scale or hype, but by starting small, obsessively iterating, focusing on relationships, and never trading authenticity for easy expansion.

Aaron Franklin’s three-part legacy:

1. Teach and share what you know—be generous with knowledge.
2. Lead with kindness and example—hospitality is more important than food.
3. Master the details—big and small—it’s the little things that compound into unstoppable success.

“Be yourself. Be kind.” – Aaron Franklin [93:34]

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Connect with Franklin Barbecue: franklinbbq.com
Aaron’s Books:

• Franklin Smoke (2023)
• Franklin Steak
• Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto

For more resources, links, and episode recaps, visit RestaurantUnstoppable.com.

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For aspiring restaurateurs, Aaron’s journey is a testament: Start humbly, iterate relentlessly, and never lose sight of what makes your place—and your people—special.

Transcript

[Aaron Franklin]

Lot. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So, I mean, you've pretty much been at full throttle from day one in terms of scale. Like, it's just like as, as, as money's coming.

[Aaron Franklin]

Our scale has changed, but we've been full throttle.

[Eric Cacciatore]

All the profits is going back into building more smokers until you max out on the amount of actual smokers you can fit in the property. And he said 53 cows is our limit.

[Aaron Franklin]

That is the most. And it's also the most we can comfortably cook and keep them really good.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. What up, Unstoppables? Today's episode was. Man. Aaron Franklin has been on my radar for a long time. It's a very special episode. I can't wait to share it with you. We get popping off. Quick reminder. The work we're doing here at Restaurant Unstoppable, for me, it's about impact, not about reach. I'm here to serve my listeners and the best way I know how to do that is to leverage my greatest asset, my two greatest assets. Really. Number one is this podcast has a lot of influence and I can leverage this podcast to get access to people you can't get access to on your own. And I already have this massive network. That's my second asset is this massive network. So I am ready and willing to go to work for you, to serve you with my assets, my network and my podcasts. But you gotta engage me. And the best way to engage me is to join Restaurant Unstoppable Network or head over to restaurantstoppable.com live. And when you join those live events, I make myself available every other week to listen to you. What are your pain points? What are your interests? What are your challenges? Then I go to work. So head over to restaurantunstoppable.com live. Come hang out with me. I can't wait to meet you and to learn how I can serve you. See you there. Welcome to restaurant unstoppable. For 10 years and over 1,000 episodes, I've been traveling the country chasing word of mouth leads and having in person only long form discussions with the industry's finest owners and operators. Our mission is to inspire, empower and transform the restaurant industry by bridging the gap between this generation's leaders and the next. Listen to today's guests and so many others and get one step closer to becoming unstoppable. This episode is made possible by me. Me is a digital recipe platform that helps you stay creative, build profitable menus, and nail food execution at scale. We know to scale you need consistency because consistency builds trust with your guests and your staff. We all want to know what the job done right looks like. And when you have systems, your systems are a picture of perfection, of what that job done right is. And that puts us to peace. We are so happy when we know we're doing a good job. Me will be the one source of truth for your entire team. It's time to take control of your profitability. Learn more at www.getmes.com unstoppable. That's www.g e t m e z.com unstoppable. Do you wish you could have all of your restaurant needs and solutions under one roof? Well, you can. It's called Restaurant Systems Pro. And with Restaurant Systems Pro, you get accounting systems, budgeting systems, costing systems, purchasing systems, inventory management systems, labor management systems, training systems, and systems to create and implement checklists. And on top of all this, Restaurant Systems Pro has their own native general ledger and they're in the process of launching their own pos, which they are so appropriately naming serve because that's exactly what they do. To learn more, head over to Restaurant Unstoppable.com RSP where you can schedule your own demo, watch a demo that I did with Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley, or catch every and all testimonial we've ever recorded on the show. That's restaurantunstoppable.com RSP this episode is made possible by US Foods. And did you know US Foods is hosting the Food Fanatics 2025 event at the Mandal Bay Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's all going down between August 19th and 20th. This is going to be one you do not want to miss. I'm going to be there. I want you to be there. Here's what you got to do. And the clock is ticking, so do not delay. Register now at www.usfoods.com Food Fanatics 2025 or just go to usfoods.com and look for the banner with excitement. Allow me to introduce to you today's guest chef and co owner and head of maintenance at Franklin Barbecue and the Uptown Sports Club, Aaron Franklin, my man. Are you feeling unstoppable today?

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh, sure. It's a Monday, dude.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Awesome, dude. I'm stoked to have you here. Arlen Smith called you out. Arlen is up in Portland, Maine. You've been on my radar for years. I've spent a total of like nine months in Austin, Texas. This has been a big one for me, man.

[Aaron Franklin]

Awesome.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I'm so. I'm stoked to be here. I can't wait to dive into who you are and how you got to where you are today. But let's get that motivational, inspirational ball rolling with a success quarter mantra.

[Aaron Franklin]

What do you got for us, huh? I'm going to steal one from Nike. Just do it.

Yeah, man.

That.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That easy and that hard, right?

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah. I mean, there you go. I'm super excited to do this. This is fun. And, you know, you've spent a total of nine months in Austin, and we're sitting at the Franklin barbecue break table right now on a beautiful Monday.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's gorgeous, man. And I can't wait to get into, like, where you are today and how you got here. Real big picture. Like, what is your portfolio? So you have Aaron Franklin Barbecue. You have Uptown Sports Club. What else is going on in your world that you're monetizing?

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, so, you know, Franklin Barbecue is, like, the main thing. This is. This is the Aaron and Stacy mom and pop little business that, you know, we've been doing for 15 years or so now. But, you know, we can kind of allow, like, all these other little things to dance around. And for us, you know, it's Uptown Sports Club right around the corner here in Austin Hotluck Fest, you know, our little food festival that. That I operate here in Austin, and a bunch of other stuff. I mean, we do barbecue sauces. We do seasonings, Got a bunch of books, you know, just kind of the normal stuff, you know, YouTube videos that we did a long time ago. Old PBS, an old PBS show masterclass.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You got a lot going on.

[Aaron Franklin]

Gosh, I don't know. I mean, just stuff. Stuff that keeps me excited and that we're passionate about.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, it's interesting. There's so many different paths you can take. And that's one of the things I love about this show, is that the work I do is that I get to shine a light on all the different paths. There is no one way to be successful in this.

[Aaron Franklin]

There's a thousand ways to do so.

[Eric Cacciatore]

A million ways, man. And it's. There's more ways happening every day. As the world evolves, the. The restaurant industry is being fractionalized in a million different ways. And it seems like what you've done is like you've. You've created this brand around yourself that's synonymous with quality and just good barbecue. And then instead of just doubling down and scaling Franklin's to a hundred locations across the country.

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh, that sounds terrible.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And we'll get into why you think that is the case. You've chosen to kind of like, like, almost vertically integrate your knowledge into a business model where it's like, okay, like, here are all the elements of Franklin. Like, my recipes. I can scale the recipes and sell the. The rubs and the sauces. I. I figured out pits, and I can.

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh, yeah, we make barbecue pits also.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, barbecue pits. And then just getting your knowledge out into the world, you know, and like, there's so many different ways. And I. I hope that this podcast helps people understand that there isn't just own a restaurant and make it as big as possible.

[Aaron Franklin]

That I. For me, that's, like, the wrong way to do it.

Okay.

You know, because if you think about barbecue and also if I go back in time and, like, how I got into this mess, like, I grew up in a little mom and pop restaurant, you know, that was also a barbecue place. I grew up in a record store that my grandparents owned, a little locally owned mom and pop business. So, like, local business is really my thing, you know, like, and, you know, we never started Franklin barbecue to make it huge. Like, we just kind of wanted to make it really good and just make it, like, that was kind of always good enough. And really, you know, in the early days, when I was thinking about, you know, how many people we needed to serve a day or like, oh, how much food can we make? Really wasn't more than, like, you know, initially we needed to feed 20 people a day to make ends meet.

Okay. Wow.

Stacy also kept her job to pay our real bills. That's a good piece of advice, right? Very. Did not have much money and didn't for a long time, but that's kind of how we made it work. You know, it's just like, we were just, you know, I was in my early 30s, Stacy was still in her 20s, and we just started off in a trailer in 09. But really, you know, the organic way that we started Franklin Barbecue is really carried through. And, you know, we started off with, like, backyard barbecues, and just one thing led to another. You know, bought a cooker, worked at a place, learned what not to do, and just really wanted it to feel like going to grandma's house.

Yeah.

I mean, that's kind of the. The goal of everything, Franklin.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And you said something that kind of resonated with me. You were just trying to make it work. Right. You were just. You're just trying to get by 100% trying to make it work. And I think it's getting harder and harder today for independence.

[Aaron Franklin]

Absolutely is getting harder. But we also hit at a special time, like, when we opened Franklin, it was 2009. And if you kind of like go back in time to that era, like 2009, 2010 and stuff, and that was kind of like the last era of restaurants. They were able to open on shoestring budgets. Like, I mean, you had, you know, like who was going on around that time. You got like Pok Poc out of Portland, going on Andy's Place.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Aaron Franklin]

You know, Mission Chinese in San Francisco. Franklin Barbecue. You've got all these like really. That became like really iconic, you know, restaurants and food trucks or whatever that were able to start so small without big investors and everything. But, you know, things change, things evolve. Things are a lot more expensive now than they used to be. And it's kind of, I don't know that we could do that now.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Aaron Franklin]

The.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think the new food truck or the new like, like, you know, suit shoestring budget restaurant is the pop up. I think that's what people.

[Aaron Franklin]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, like that's what people are doing. Because now you don't. You can get your brand out there without the restaurant. It's about growing the brand. Well, kind of like what you doing, you leverage your brand.

[Aaron Franklin]

Absolutely. But like when we opened, there wasn't Twitter. Right. Like, Twitter started right around that time. Instagram didn't exist.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Instagram started in 2015.

[Aaron Franklin]

Maybe.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I'm not sure that was your first post. I went back to see.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well then that must be. Sorry. So we didn't really. I mean, food blogging was sort of just barely becoming a thing. But that was like the early days of social media. It's like other people writing about things. So we didn't really, you know, we're just living in a totally different era.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What were you doing before 2009? You were in your early 30s, dreaming.

[Aaron Franklin]

Of opening up a barbecue place for many, many years. But outside of that, playing music and just cooking, barbecuing, doing odd jobs.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Did you have a career path prior to barbecue?

[Aaron Franklin]

No, that's why I ended up in barbecue.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Did you go to school for anything?

[Aaron Franklin]

I'm still trying to decide what my major is going to be.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I love that. So when did this dream to open a barbecue pit happen for you or barbecue restaurant happen?

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, you know, I always kind of had the nostalgia of it and that's kind of always been my thing. It's like not necessarily nostalgia, but just like being more creative and just like, you know, never really wanted to like open a. We didn't open a restaurant, be like, you know how we're Gonna make money. That's the worst way to make money. You know, restaurants are not. They're not there for that. They can be, but it's really. The stars have to align. I mean, restaurants. And that's what this whole podcast is about, is restaurants are free. Freaking hard.

Yeah, man.

Like, it's a lot of energy that goes in and very little comes out.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, my number one goal is to talk people out of it. And if you're still sticking around, if you're still sticking around, let's.

[Aaron Franklin]

Let's.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Let's try to help you be successful, right?

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, absolutely. And people ask for my advice all the time. And the first thing I say is, don't do it. Like, know what you're getting into, because it's really hard.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You probably heard the how do you make a million dollars in the restaurant industry by. Not by starting with two.

[Aaron Franklin]

So. So go ahead. So starting off, you know, it started off really. It's just like backyard barbecues. And I think 2002 would have been the first brisket I cooked. And I kind of, you know, before that, from childhood and just growing up in Texas and, you know, every good Texan loves barbecue. It's just factual. In O2, Stacy and I got our first little apartment together, bought a cheap little $99 barbecue pit from a hardware store here in town. Called up my dad, and I've told the story a gazillion times, but, you know, like, call them. And I was like, hey, you know, you own a barbecue restaurant that I sort of grew up in for a couple years. How do I cook this thing? Like, how do I cook a person? He's like, I don't know. Just. I don't know. I mean, just build a fire.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And. Was this your dad or her dad?

[Aaron Franklin]

Sorry, this is my dad.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Your dad?

[Aaron Franklin]

He's like, I don't know. Just, you know, when it's black on the outside, it's probably pretty good on the inside. And I was like, well, do I put salt and pepper on there? It's like. I mean, we never did, but yeah, sure.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Were you, like, in your early 20s at this point?

[Aaron Franklin]

I would have been 24.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean, this is such a beautiful example of just start.

[Aaron Franklin]

And now I'm 109, but just start.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And, like, you're gonna start. And if it's black on the outside with a little salt and pepper, it's probably good. Turns into possibly. The Franklin brand is synonymous with success in the world of bob barbecue. You went from, you know, not really having a clue but just starting, and then, you know, from there, you just. I'm assuming you just try to do it a little bit better every day.

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh, absolutely. And we still do. I mean, like, we literally change things all the time. We're just constantly, you know, fiddling with things and fine tuning everything. I mean, even just this week, we've. We're, like, gradually evolving, like, our rubs in a different way. Like, we just always change. I love that because we can always be better. But. Yeah, so starting off in, like, 2002. Cooked the first brisket, built a fire. And I remember sitting in the backyard, you know, like, drinking a Lone Star, and just, like, could smell the smoke and the fires. Like, oh, my God. Yeah, I love this.

[Eric Cacciatore]

There's something primal.

[Aaron Franklin]

So much. Something so primal and so just, like, nice. But, you know, it didn't have any money, but I had a lot of time on my hands because I played music then and I toured a fair bit. So I would be gone for a while, Home for a few weeks, on the road for a few weeks. Weeks. I was just in and out of town constantly and really kind of starting to think about. I was like, well, you know, Stacy and I were getting pretty serious and. And stuff. Like, well, you know, I kind of maybe don't want to spend all my time on the road playing drums.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It wears on you after a while.

[Aaron Franklin]

It really can be exhausting. And, you know, like, being in your early mid-20s, like, heck. Yeah. I mean, that was some of the funnest stuff I ever did. But, you know, priorities kind of change. You kind of grow up a little bit. It's like, all right, man, what am I going to do? You know? And I think barbecue just kind of hit at the right time for me. But it's mostly, you know, I remember thinking that while I was cooking that first brisket, I was like, man, I think this might be kind of my thing. Like, I really love this so much. But it was never just, like, I want to open a restaurant. I want to make all this money. Because I grew up in a restaurant. I knew how hard it was. Like, I saw my folks do it. Yeah, I already kind of knew, but maybe didn't quite catch the memo because it turns out to be so much harder than I thought it was going to be.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I told my parents I wanted to open a restaurant. They owned restaurants, too. And they're like, have you learned nothing? Like, we are trying to get out of this cycle. Were you not paying attention?

[Aaron Franklin]

Like, duh.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you grew up in it. You have this Dream. You're. You're pursuing it. What was Stacy doing around this time? Was she. What was her profession?

[Aaron Franklin]

She. I mean, we both just kind of had jobs. Like, Stacy worked in restaurants, and she'd worked in restaurants for a really, really long time. Front of house. You know, she was, you know, manager at a pretty cool restaurant here in town, but she had worked at a bunch of different restaurants.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Also grew up in the industry, too. Right?

[Aaron Franklin]

What's that?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Her parents owned some like, was it an ice cream or like a. Oh.

[Aaron Franklin]

They have like a snow cone trailer or something, like when she was in high school.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it.

[Aaron Franklin]

But yeah. And you know, her family is also just kind of like jack of all trades. Oh, let's just do whatever, you know, and they've, they've done some really cool stuff, but, you know, so Stacy has always been the more like, business minded person. Like, I want to just, like, make stuff and like, really just like, out. Like, how do we. There's got to be a better way.

Yeah.

And that's always kind of been my thing. Like, I'm super into, like, you know, carpentry. Like, know how to, well, to do electrical work. Like, I like to work with my hands. Yeah, Stacy does too, but she's also so much smarter than I am that she's the one that can actually make it work. So really I blame Stacy for all of this because she really enabled me to follow my dream. And I don't know that it was ever her dream, but I think together we've made this whole thing work. But obviously it wouldn't have worked with just one of us.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, and I'm thinking of the E. Myth. Michael Gerber. I don't know if you're familiar with the book, but he talks about three different types of people. Generally in the world of restaurant or in the world of entrepreneurism or just business in general, you're either a manager, a technician, or an entrepreneur. You're usually one of those three people. And just doing my little bit of research on Franklin's and like, or, you know, what was going on with you and your wife. I was like, okay. Aaron is, is definitely seeming like the technician to me. Like, he seems like a technician. He likes working on cars, he likes building pits. Like, he, he, he sees something and he goes, how can I make it better? You know? And then you got Stacy, who clearly seems more like the, the integrator, visionary, entrepreneur type, where she's looking for opportunity and she can piece it all together.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, she is really good at problem solving. We both Are. But that's kind of like her unicorn, you know, trait is like, okay, how do we make this work? She's just so freaking smart. But really, both of us, like, I. I think I became an entrepreneur because I'm such a bad employee.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Unemployable.

[Aaron Franklin]

I am completely unemployable. My resume is junk. I'm. I'm such a bad employee because there's always a better way. Like, ah, I think you're doing it wrong. I know you're my boss, but can I. Can we just try one little thing? Like, I just want to tweak things. Like, I always want to just, like, adjust and just kind of, you know, so the. The technician side of that definitely comes out.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you're both wearing a little bit of the entrepreneurial hat, for sure. And you're the. You're the technician, and she's the integrator or the. The person that can like, manage it and piece it together.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah.

But Stacy's really good. So, like, you know, we opened up in a trailer, and initially we were just doing two briskets a day. Stacy kept her job for a few months, and then I would work the trailer, and then she would help on the weekends. And then eventually we got busy enough where she quit her job, and then we both worked in the trailer. So as we were going, you know, it's kind of weird when you start a business and, you know, a lot of people start a business and you're like, oh, what's our. How are we going to grow? Like, and they'll kind of, like, figure out, like, a pro forma or whatever, and, like, start to figure out, like, where we want to be in goals and stuff like that. We didn't have any goals. Our goal was to not fail.

Yeah.

Stay up. You know, I mean, we opened with, like, no money in the bank, and just cash flowed each day into the next day. Like, we didn't have anything. Like, we built that trailer in our backyard, you know, it was, like, real as DIY as you can possibly get. So as we were kind of growing, our. Most of our energy went into, like, holding it back so we could keep it good. We could keep it super authentic. We didn't want to feel like sellouts in any way. But as I was getting into, like, cooking overnight, cooking every day, doing all that stuff, Stacy was, you know, congruently going through, like, okay, well, how do we pay our bills? Oh, we need to set up this kind of account. Oh, we need to do this. Oh, my God. So it was organic how we grew, you know, started off with no employees to now, like, you know, an office and a restaurant and, like, all these other things. So, like, now we have, like, real hr, we have accounting, we have all those things. But that's all Stacy figuring out how to make that stuff work.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So we started this conversation by saying.

[Aaron Franklin]

So you should probably really be talking to her.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I would love.

[Aaron Franklin]

Because I'm the dumb. Dumb.

[Eric Cacciatore]

No, I mean, I'd like to get the perspective, and I think that it takes a team of people to make it happen and to, like, share the. The different lanes and perspectives of each person in. In an organization. I love doing that. But I think we started this conversation with just do it. But just. Just do it where you can start. Right. And I think so many times people get in trouble because they try to. They see what you've built, and they say, I want that now.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah. And you can't have it now. You can't learn jazz overnight.

Right.

You have to start somewhere.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And just keeping your liabilities as low as possible. You started with a trailer, right?

[Aaron Franklin]

Absolutely. It's not because we wanted a trailer. It's because that's the only way we could afford to do.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Just start where you can just make.

[Aaron Franklin]

Make something happen, you know? And, of course, you don't be foolish about anything. I mean, like, we had no liabilities when we opened, so we wouldn't have lost anything.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think that's the other big piece of advice. Start small where you can and eliminate all of your personal liabilities, because it's gonna.

[Aaron Franklin]

Absolutely. I mean, we worked for a year to, like, have super low rent, you know, cars. We didn't have any car payments. We had. Our cost of living was so low. Just getting ready to open up the barbecue thing.

Yeah.

You know, like, it's. Having. Having good foresight really goes a long way. And that's kind of what Stacy and I are both really, really good at. There's kind of, like, looking, you know, so far ahead and then reverse engineering, but that's also how I cook. That's just kind of how we do everything.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

This episode is made possible by me. Me is a digital recipe platform that helps you stay creative, build profitable menus, and nail food. Execution at scale, consistency builds trust with your guest and your staff. No more messy spreadsheets or scattered systems. Whether they want to admit it or not, your team loves systems because systems equals peace of mind, because we all want to know what the done right looks like. And Mies paints the picture of perfection. And Is the one source of truth for your entire team. By locking in recipes and training before service starts, ME makes sure every dish is consistent, every team member is aligned, and every location runs like clockwork. So when the report rolls in after the sale, they tell the story you're after. Higher profits, better margins, and repeat guests. It's time to take control of your profitability. Learn more at www.getme. that's G-E-T M E-E-Z.com Unstoppable 2009. Was that when you were rolling the trailer, or is that when you found this brick and mortar location?

[Aaron Franklin]

December of 09, we opened up the trailer, and then we signed a lease on this building almost exactly one year later. Okay, almost to the day. And then kept operating the trailer for three months, and then we opened up here on the first day of south by Southwest and March of 11. So it took three months to, you know, fix this place up and do a little remodel.

Okay.

Which we. Cash flowed out of the trailer, which I did most of the work with the help of a few friends, like paint and stuff. But, yeah, we. We didn't hire anyone for this building. We just took over an old restaurant, cleaned it up, pulled out some stuff, fixed everything that was broken, painted it, and just made it work.

Okay.

So this cost us $12,000 to open this restaurant.

[Eric Cacciatore]

$12,000. That was my next question is how much. How much money did you need to raise or did. Was that all cash you put aside while running the. The trailer?

[Aaron Franklin]

It was really money we made on the first south by Southwest.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Because it. Because that was also the first time the trailer got really busy. Like, you know, it was cooking two briskets a day, three briskets on one cooker that maxed out at 12 briskets. So pretty early on, once we hit 12, like, oh, my gosh.

[Eric Cacciatore]

How long did it take you to get to 12?

[Aaron Franklin]

A month and a half.

Oh, wow.

A month.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So what?

[Aaron Franklin]

I mean, it was like somebody flipped the. Flip the ghost switch.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It was crazy going on in Austin, Texas. Relative to the world of barbecue, how many players were there at this point in 2009?

[Aaron Franklin]

I mean, there are a couple places. No one doing what we were doing.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What were you doing that was different?

[Aaron Franklin]

Tender? I don't know. I mean, it was like, just hopefully it was good. Well, it obviously was pretty good. I mean, people got excited about it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You think barbecue, you think, you know, Texas, you think Arkansas, you think the Carolinas.

[Aaron Franklin]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But I guess what I'm trying to get at was it still blue ocean effect at this time? Meaning was.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Aaron Franklin]

It was the. The seam was wide open. So, you know, in 2009, if you wanted to get barbecue anywhere that wasn't cooked on an oven or like in a rotisserie or like some like chainy. Just not good stuff, you know, like, it was not really tender. It was. People were still like scraping the knife and. Or the scraping the fat off the top of the brisket and then like cutting stuff paper thin. Like it was just kind of like a real 80s style, like Cookie cutter corporate kind of barbecue. And that was kind of in most big cities. And then if you wanted anything better than that or cooler than that, that looked pretty or was the buildings were aesthetic or whatever was going on, you had to drive out of town. So you could go to Lockhart, you could go to lulink, you could go to Taylor, you could go, gosh, a handful of other places.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, I mean, there's salt licks that's been around for a forever.

[Aaron Franklin]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

They are technically barbecue, but it's like their own. Like, I've never seen anybody do barbecue like that. Am I thinking the right spot? Like, way out in like the, like southwest.

[Aaron Franklin]

The hill country.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where they have that huge pit and they just kind of hang the. The meat around it. I guess my point was like, they were here. I know. For a long time. Yeah. They kind of have their own approach.

[Aaron Franklin]

They were probably. I mean, they were of course there. But. Yeah, I think maybe it didn't. Like when we opened, the idea of like super small. I hate to say boutique, but boutique kind of barbecue, like really just artisanal, hands on. Like, that stuff didn't really happen. Like, people didn't really cook over real fire.

Yeah.

You know, at all. There was one place. Well, there are a couple places in town. There was Sam's. It's been there since. Since the 60s. Right around the corner from us, there was Ruby's barbecue. Not Rudy's, but Rubies. And that was a little mom and pop place off of 29th in Guadalupe, over by campus. They used real fire and maybe a couple of other places, but most places were using gas ovens.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So did you have an inspiration of what you were trying to achieve, or were you kind of just off in your own world?

[Aaron Franklin]

Playing off my own world. I'm. I'm that guy that likes to buy stuff from Ikea every once in a while, throw away the instructions, figure out how to put it together, and then put it on Craigslist. Free section.

Okay.

Like, I love a good puzzle, and I love to dissect things. And, you know, and I'm also. I don't want to know what anybody else is doing, or I don't want to look at a cookbook to learn how to do something. I just want to figure it out on my own, because the inspiration and.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Then take it and make it your own.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah. Like, I, you know, like, okay, cool. We got this piece of meat. How are we going to do that? Like, I never really cooked a rack of ribs until we opened the trailer.

Okay.

Because I a couldn't afford.

[Eric Cacciatore]

This is a restaurant business podcast that's taking place outside in a very active city.

[Aaron Franklin]

It's definitely going on holes for audio.

Yeah.

But, yeah, like, I didn't have the money to buy rack of ribs, and also, you know, just never really cooked a rack of rib. Pork ribs until we opened up the. The trailer. And it took me about six months to finally figure out how I wanted them.

Yeah.

But, you know, that's just kind of. I. I didn't want to. I didn't want any of our stuff to taste like anybody else's barbecue. I wanted. Really wanted it to be ours.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And having that unique selling proposition is important, but, I mean, at this time.

[Aaron Franklin]

But now there's a design places. And the fact that you're doing it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

From scratch over live fire is a unique selling proposition at the time. Right.

[Aaron Franklin]

Especially in a city.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. So, I mean, so one month ago, from two briskets to 12 briskets, you fill the grill how long? And this was basically for about a year until you got to this brick and mortar.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah. So in that year.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Gonna love these leaf blowers too, huh?

[Aaron Franklin]

Man, I mean, whatever happened to the rake? It's the gift that keeps on giving. I didn't know they did that on Monday. Sorry about this.

[Eric Cacciatore]

No, it's all right, man.

[Aaron Franklin]

It's either this or, like, smokehouse noises.

[Eric Cacciatore]

As long as one of us is talking, that's what people.

[Aaron Franklin]

So, like, we opened up the trailer and did a couple of briskets, and I remember, like, we got to six briskets, and that was when I could do half the cooker on pork ribs, half the cooker with brisket, and then nine briskets. Twelve briskets. And then I welded in a top rack to finish briskets while I was doing pork underneath. It's like, always, like, troubleshooting is like, oh, man, how do we do this? Well, this is a new thing. I've never cooked this much food before. Well, the schedule Changes as well. How do. Okay, so then maybe I hire somebody to do the front half and then I finish it while cooking ribs. Like trial and error. But then over that year, before we got into the building, I had built another 500 gallon cooker, brought that on, and I think I started using that around that first south by because I knew it was going to be busy. Things were getting weird. South by, those were kind of like the crazy years of like big corporate activations and Doritos stages and all kinds of crazy stuff going on. That was also the year that I think YouTube launched at South By.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Aaron Franklin]

So this kind of dates it. Like YouTube didn't really exist.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So south by was. Was. Wasn't a thing until this point. Or is this the first?

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh, it had been a thing for like 20 years.

Okay.

But it had just gotten so big because that's when interactive started. And those were kind of the crazy years for South By. Now interactive is just normal. Like it's not even a thing anymore. But that's where like YouTube would launch, you know, like these big companies. I think probably like MySpace launched here or something like that. So a lot of people were in town. People are getting excited about food. But that's like how we got real busy that first year. Knowing that that was coming. I started building the barbecue pit. Got it, got it up in the mix. So then we went from 12 briskets to 24 briskets overnight.

Okay.

And then. So we were always throttled by how much food we could cook.

Yeah.

How dare these people not make more food? It's like, well, I don't have anything to cook it on. I'm building literally welding cookers in the backyard while cooking for the next day service.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But you're also better to sell out of everything. Like that is.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, that wasn't a thing back then though. That was like we were. Because even when we opened, our hours were till 8pm and then the original sign has like razor blade marks where we took off 8pm or 8 and they replaced it with a 6 and then took that off and did 4 and then eventually just ripped all of them off until sold out. Yeah, like with a Sharpie over, it's like, man, you can only make so much.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean, you want to keep your cost of goods down.

[Aaron Franklin]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And one of the best ways to do that is by.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, it is, but that's not what it's about.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What is it about?

[Aaron Franklin]

It's about that you make the most you can possibly make. And for us, it always was, geez.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is that thing getting closer. Where is there even a lawn around here?

[Aaron Franklin]

There's not a lawn living in the city. See, Austin used to be really lazy.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, this didn't happen. I secretly just am not a fan of, like, leaf blowers. I'm like, they're just so loud, man.

[Aaron Franklin]

They're really obnoxious.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's like.

[Aaron Franklin]

And they just blow leaves to other places for somebody else to clean up, or the wind blows them right back where you just moved them from.

[Eric Cacciatore]

All right, let's just go for it. All right. We think the leaf blower is going to be slowly moving away as I say it.

[Aaron Franklin]

Just leave it alone.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So I think the big things I want to point out is just, you know, it was unintentional, but start small. Let demand cash flow, and people, like, determine your growth.

[Aaron Franklin]

Right.

Well, so barbecue is a weird thing in. Franklin is the weirdest restaurant I've ever worked in. And the fact that we, you know, make as much as we can. And these days, like, we're plateaued. We cook hundred. We can cook 120 briskets a day, and that's max. But we. Our sweet spot is really about 106.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you went from two to 106 briskets a day?

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, yeah.

Over about six years. But that's how long it took me to build the cooker.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What were the biggest challenges for you in the early days? Days, like, listening to this. If you had any advice, what would.

[Aaron Franklin]

That advice be like for cooking? That much?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, well.

[Aaron Franklin]

I don't know. I mean, because it's tricky. Because, you know, obviously it's a lot more difficult to cook 100 briskets than it is 30. Like, 30 is easy. 24 is really easy. 1. Watching five smokers as opposed to one is a huge difference. So I think the. The thing that makes us, I think, better and as good as we are is that the devil's in the details. Like, we look to put out the same product, if not better, every day. But it's all the other things that dance around.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, that's kind of what I'm curious about, is the other things. And I know it's hard for you to not talk about the barbecue. Right, Right.

[Aaron Franklin]

Because that's what Franklin barbecue is literally about.

Right.

Like, it was never. I mean, we need to make money, obviously, but our food cost is terrible because we have to sell meat. We have to give pickles and onions away. We have to put sauce, put white bread on there and all these other things, and then pepper and butcher paper and all these Other things that go. That get lumped into it. But if you're not selling a composed dish, the economics don't look particularly good for barbecue.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So the composed dish, meaning the whole, like, the layout, the bread, like the pickles, all these things.

[Aaron Franklin]

Or a normal restaurant where you're serving pasta and then you have, like, a certain portion of protein or you have, like, cheaper ingredients. Like, we're only selling meat, and we actually. This is terrible. But looking at the spreadsheet, you know, of what our loss is. If we get a brisket that comes in at £15, we're actually selling less than £4 of that because of all.

[Eric Cacciatore]

The fat or the moisture that gets.

[Aaron Franklin]

Cooked out of it and trim and cook down and bits that fall off on the board there, the pieces of fat that you can't sell. Like, it's really terrible.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So in terms of the economics, what is your prime cost? What is your cost of goods percentage? Do you know it?

[Aaron Franklin]

It's different. But our brisket is probably in about the 55% range. Food cost. That doesn't calculate total cost of goods.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Just the brisket alone.

[Aaron Franklin]

Just the raw meat.

[Eric Cacciatore]

If you had a guess, where would you say your cost of goods are? Out of the total percentage?

[Aaron Franklin]

60%. Probably 60% pretty bad.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So 55% of that is the brisket. 5% is literally everything else. Pickles.

[Aaron Franklin]

Okay.

Wow.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And what about labor? Where you at with labor?

[Aaron Franklin]

Labor's pretty bad because it takes us again. And this is why barbecue is different. Yeah. That's why it's hard to scale, because labor's so high. Like, it takes us about 40 hours of labor to get every brisket to the cutting board for lunch.

Okay.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is that across?

[Aaron Franklin]

We're only open for about three or four hours a day.

Okay.

We serve a lot of people, so.

[Eric Cacciatore]

There'S at least 10 people working here at all times.

[Aaron Franklin]

It depends. I mean, we're 24 hours a day.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So I mean, you're close today. I smell barbecue.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, we're cooking for tomorrow.

Yeah.

Yeah. And we got here at 6am to start cooking for tomorrow, but we prepped that stuff on Saturday.

Yeah.

So it's like we're always two days ahead on prep and. Yeah. I mean, it's the thing, though. It. And that's kind of why barbecue is so different than normal restaurants is. Barbecue tends to be led by passion. But then you just have to figure out how to make the economics work. Right. It's like, how do you do it as opposed to other restaurants, you know? And of course, we're in a weird spot too, because we serve, like, super traditional. I mean, now it's traditional when we open, it wasn't really, but now it's painfully normal, you know, so we don't. If we don't cook those five meats, people lose their minds. They come to from all over the.

[Eric Cacciatore]

World to eat brisket here, brisket, ribs, sausage, chicken, turkey.

[Aaron Franklin]

We don't do chicken. We do turkey. We do beef ribs on the weekends. And pulled pork.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay, Yep, got it.

[Aaron Franklin]

So cost of good, like, food cost is good for pork.

Right.

You know, but it's all the, like, the sleeper thing. So, like, barbecue tends to be led by passion. And I think that's why you have, like, more like mom and pop places that do that. Because when you own the place, it makes a lot more sense to go cook it yourself. It's when you own a restaurant kind of situation where you have all these cooks. And we do have all these cooks. I don't really cook much anymore. But that's because our volume is so high. If our volume was lower, I don't think it would work out.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Exactly. And that's what I was going to get to is because you're doing 106 briskets a day, right. And you have a line. Oh, that's wrapped. If that line isn't there queued, and you're not selling out every day, like, would you be able to do this?

[Aaron Franklin]

It would be a much different restaurant. I mean, we would obviously start cooking less because if we can't sell it, right, we're not going to cook it. You know, that's. That's not smart. And the thing is about barbecue also is in a lot of restaurants, like, you can park hook things and then pick them up to order. You know, like, you can't do that with barbecue. It's got to be cooked fresh, like, can't be frozen, can't be chilled, and re therm can't be really cooked in two stages. Like, you can't just, like, have something cold, slice it up, plate it, send it out like it does. It has to be totally sandbagged in warmers and sliced fresh.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean, it is kind of nice that, like, in terms of, like, predicting, like, how much should we buy? It's like, as much as we can. And we're gonna sell out.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, as much as we can fit all the. The cookers well.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Aaron Franklin]

Like, if we could cook more, we could do more, but we encroach all four property lines on the building and we just physically can't fit more food.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, you've maxed out.

[Aaron Franklin]

And we also can't build more cookers.

Right.

Because there's no place to put them.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So when did it take you to get to that point?

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh, about 2014.

[Eric Cacciatore]

2014. Two years after.

[Aaron Franklin]

But that is because we built our space first smokehouse, and it got finished in 14. And that was. That was the plateau thing. So that's when we started getting really good. Because before that we were just cooking out in the backyard. If it rained, if it was cold, if it was hot, you're just out there in the weather all day. And it was really. And that's when I cooked overnight every night? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I did. I was the midnight guy for the first seven or eight years of this place. No more than that. Gosh, probably eight or nine years, I guess.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So. Eight or nine years in. So that would have been basically from 1999 to like 2000. Sorry, not 99. 2009 to 2016.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, that.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That time. Right around the time you started getting.

[Aaron Franklin]

That's probably about the time I stopped cooking overnight.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So we kind of talked about a lot of the growth during this time. I mean, it sounds like you were kind of. You're profitable from the very beginning because you kept your costs low, right? You were, you were only scaling as we.

[Aaron Franklin]

Our costs were super, super low. I mean, now, like, things are insanely expensive. I mean, beef we used to pay and granted, you know, we use like crazy nice stuff. We have our own USDA spec, we have our own fabrication spec. We are vertically integrated and in almost everything for this place. Like our own proprietary pepper grind. Like, we, we do all that stuff. Stuff in house or work with people that provide us exactly, like really consistent things. So our stuff's really expensive because of that. But like, even when we started, briskets were a buck 72 a pound, I think for like all natural, never ever stuff. And now they're almost seven bucks a pound.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, well, I mean, this.

[Aaron Franklin]

But our prices have gone up.

[Eric Cacciatore]

The demand for brisket has gone up. How much since you started when you started. Like, now there's so much barbecue places across the country. And how many pieces of brisket. Brisket does a cow grow?

[Aaron Franklin]

Two.

Yeah.

Two briskets.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So like, that's like, you gotta think every time you see that piece of brisket, like two of those things is a whole animal. Right? And then.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, and you know, it's tricky. I. I could talk for days about this, but for us. So we use EU spec And we have. What is eu it means no growth hormones.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Pretty much European.

[Aaron Franklin]

European. Because they, they know better than us and don't do that to their animals. So that's what we use. Antibiotics are fine. We all get sniffles. I got no problems with that. Just not forced. But when we started doing that and started developing these programs, so it was like, build a cooker, make more cows. And all these things had to be in harmony, right? Because you can't just go buy £40,000 of brisket, you know, and then you think about like your carbon footprint and is this ethical? And how are we going to. Is it sustainable? Like, all these things play in to how we run this place and how I think about these things. So build a cooker. And like, okay, well, I think I'm going to be doing an extra 24 briskets a day because each cooker holds about 24 briskets at this point, except one of them that's a little shorter. And okay, so tell the, the meat partners, like, hey, I think I'm going to have this cooker done now. But you know, and it's always like a year out, you know, or something like that, because we like slightly older cows, as old as we can get them. So you have to like make sure the supply is there, the demand is here. That's our constant. So it's like pulling back, you know, it's like, how much can we do comfortably? Bring on a cooker and we build all the stuff ourselves. It's like, okay, build a barbecue pit, raise the animals, bring on the smoker gradually, learn how to do it, because they're all a little bit different. So get good at it and then start selling the meat. So it's all, it's all super backloaded.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, man, it's. It's definitely complicated. You're talking about vertical integration. When you say vertical integration, are you talking about.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, I don't like, technically vertically integrated. Like, we don't own like all these ranches and stuff like that would be. That would put us out of business in no time.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Our friend is in the parking lot now.

[Aaron Franklin]

I think he's on. I think he's on my lap.

[Eric Cacciatore]

We thought he was done. He must have missed the spot.

[Aaron Franklin]

Sorry about this.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean, it is what it is, man.

[Aaron Franklin]

I can't help the leaf blower guys. They're not ours. They're from the apartments across the street.

It's.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It is what it is. It's just, it's the nature of recording an on site, in person restaurant business podcast. You know, we don't have.

[Aaron Franklin]

You were hoping for like, clanking plates, like that's tires crackling and stuff.

[Eric Cacciatore]

People putting glasses on away chatter. Like soft, gentle chatter in the background.

[Aaron Franklin]

But yeah, but I mean, the. The in quotes, you know, vertical integration for us is working with ranchers and like, local farms that can raise these certain, you know, animals with certain genetics with certain feeds. And we don't do feedlot stuff and, you know, 100% about the ethical treatment of animals.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Who are you sourcing your. Your beef from?

[Aaron Franklin]

We get the beef through Creekstone, but we kind of have our own little program.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you've worked with them, probably because of the amount of volume you're doing. You're doing 106 brisket a day. That's 53 cows a day.

[Aaron Franklin]

That's pretty gross when you say it like that.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, I mean, it's not going to waste.

[Aaron Franklin]

It's definitely not going to waste. So now. And what I was going to say and I kind of forgot. So, you know, the briskets were always considered the off cuts. That's why it used to be cheap, and that's why you could cook it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Slow and slow because.

[Aaron Franklin]

Which is kind of not entirely true because actually, the worse the meat is, the hotter you have to cook it.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Turns out it's interesting.

[Aaron Franklin]

I didn't know that.

Oh, the things I've learned.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But what is this, a master class in barbecue or something?

[Aaron Franklin]

It could be. So, like, if we're taking the two briskets, that becomes. You mentioned the demand of brisket since we opened. The demand of brisket is so high that as we grow these animals, instead of like having these off cuts, like the strip loins and the tenderloins and the rib eyes and all this stuff, that opened up a whole European market for that. So all of the off cuts, which are now like the good pieces, the steaks and stuff, go overseas.

Okay.

From our cows.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Interesting.

[Aaron Franklin]

I guess we had to figure out a home for the. For that stuff because you don't. You're not just gonna grow an animal to. For the. A little bit. I mean, it's wasteful.

[Eric Cacciatore]

We're getting pretty good at that. Supposedly. We're getting really good just growing meat in laboratories.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I don't know.

[Aaron Franklin]

It's weird though, right?

[Eric Cacciatore]

I don't know if we want to go down that path.

[Aaron Franklin]

Not quite sexually. Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But, you know, I had Dean and Peeler on the show. Are you familiar with those guys?

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Those guys are great.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And what they're doing to vertically Integrate their farm. Because this is. Is part of, like, my concern. We started saying, you know, we're saying it's, it's. It's getting harder and harder for independents to get started. And I'm wondering, is part of the solution, how do we. How do we do. It's getting harder to do the right thing, I. E. Support local business and pay our people. Right. Is vertical integration a part of that solution?

[Aaron Franklin]

I mean, I think it can be if you have the money. And like, we've been lucky with high volume to be able to build relationships. And people we've been working with for 10, 15 plus years, you know, the same people, you know, they know us well, we know them well. We trust each other. But I think if you were gonna. Gee whiz, you know, I, If I was gonna open up a restaurant, I would make it so small that I could actually run it with just a few people. And we could go to farms, get the right things. We could go to ranches, get the right things. Like, that's the right way to do it.

Right?

But, you know, and you run into.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Sorry, go ahead.

[Aaron Franklin]

But. Well, it's kind of hard with barbecue, though, because you have to get to a certain volume to actually make the economics work.

Right?

And like, you can't just sling five briskets a day and raise a family on that.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It doesn't work. A local farm can't grow 53 cows.

[Aaron Franklin]

And a local farm cannot grow that much stuff.

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And then you run into issues with the genetics of the consistency of the cut. When you have all these different. Like, how consistent are your. Your briskets?

[Aaron Franklin]

Like, they are so consistent. And they fluctuate throughout the year, of course, because we grasses grow differently throughout the year and all that kind of stuff.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And that's probably because they all have the same dad. I'm assuming. We're like, they're, they're like the genetics.

[Aaron Franklin]

Are pretty dialed in. They, they, they've been moving around a little bit, but they've. They started from the same place.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I had no idea how much goes into this.

[Aaron Franklin]

It is so much. And I don't even know, like, I don't know much about it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So is this farm that you're working with, what is it called?

[Aaron Franklin]

It's Creekstone Farms.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And they do they vertically integrate? Like, are they kind of from, like, you know, selecting the semen to the birthing to the growing to the.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Creating their own feed.

[Aaron Franklin]

So. And this is kind of like how a lot of that stuff works. Like, they'll have like, genetics and they, you know, we do the procurement, you know, like, they know how we like our cows, you know, certain stances and certain age and looking pretty good. You can, you can look at a cow or I can look at a cow and feel. Be like, oh, that's. That's going to be a good one.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah.

[Aaron Franklin]

You know, yeah. Anyway. But what they do is they'll do like a program like, okay, well, these are the genetics. And then it's little, you know, like locally owned farms throughout the Midwest. And maybe they've got 10 head, maybe they got 30, maybe it's 50, it's 100, you know, and it fluctuates a lot. And then they do this program through Creekstone, and then that's where we get them. So we're all Midwest, we're a lot of Nebraska, all the way, pretty much from Oklahoma up towards Chicago. Got it. Because that's where the good grasses grow. But you get into a problem also, and this is where it gets really tricky. And you know, when you look at all the nastiness of like, big corporate feedlots and stuff like that, I want no part of that. I don't want to cook it, I don't want to eat it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Don't want to support the system.

[Aaron Franklin]

I don't want to support the system at all. And create. And you know, we go through a lot of meat, but we are so small on the scale. Like, we don't even make a dent on the consumption.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You're doing 106 briskets, but you have one location. Now, if you were to scale and.

[Aaron Franklin]

Say you had 50 locations, ethical, it's not feasible.

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And it's. That's kind of where I struggle sometimes because, you know, my whole thing is looking for patterns and success in the restaurant industry. And one of those patterns, undeniably, is doing one thing really well.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, like, and I love that.

[Aaron Franklin]

That, yeah, there's so like Japanese. It's just 100. I love that, that way of thinking.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And it scales really well. But, you know, in terms of, like, does it have legs? Is it scalable? Is it something that you can take and put into any market? But then you start to realize, well, you know, like, America is addicted to fajitas. You know, like, how many.

[Aaron Franklin]

The guy that invented fajitas was from Austin.

Is.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Was he from Austin? Wasn't the nymphas in Houston, like, the first one to do it or something? Or. No.

[Aaron Franklin]

Who.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Who's. Okay, well, look, all this history on meat. So anyway. But the point is, it's like, okay, doing one thing really well is like the way to go. Can we sustain that if everybody is just buying brisket, you know, or.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, and that's where we get lopsided, you know, and that's where, you know, you start to get into. To ethical issues, you know, and that's where, you know, the man's keeping us down, man. Not to sound like a total hippie, but, you know, that's. If we were. If we did another location and we had a chain or whatever, a. It would never be half as good as we want it to be. Like, we cannot replicate this. This takes so much work. And it's just. It's not feasible to do more. You know, like we. It takes a cook about three years to start getting really good at it.

Wow.

That's a lot of time and money and effort to put into someone.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, I mean, you were bringing up other issue or things I'm curious about now is like, you so many people that I've talked to over the years or like you hear people when they're opening their barbecue joints across the country, trained at Franklin, you know, like, what is it?

[Aaron Franklin]

Like, I don't keep up.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, I mean, how many people have come through here and learned from you? If you had a guess.

[Aaron Franklin]

It'S not that many. I mean, we've been open for 15 years.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And.

[Aaron Franklin]

A lot of people that work here have been here for over ten of those years. The average stay here is probably about six years.

Okay, wow.

Five or six years. So that's a lot for a restaurant. Yeah, I think the. Yeah. So I would think maybe people that have taken off, worked here, thought they got it or did like it or wanted to do their own thing, whatever. Less than 20 over 15 years.

Wow.

I would think. And probably people that have opened up restaurants and a lot of them not barbecue at all, they just, I mean, we're always kind of. We've always been the springboard for people to go off and open their own things. Not barbecue entirely, but yeah, I can think of like maybe 10 people.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is that a part of working here? Is that there's a non compete.

[Aaron Franklin]

We say, oh, I mean, we, we do. But I mean, what. How are you gonna enforce that? I mean, it's just like, hey, like really. I think at the end of the day it's like, hey, just be ethical.

Yeah.

Like just don't do barbecue, but don't.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Do it in our backyard or just be nice.

[Aaron Franklin]

I mean, I would totally support, you know, and I, I've even, you know, Offered to get. You're like, hey, do you need to borrow some cookers to get started? Like, what do you need? How can we help you, like, move on to the next thing? We've done that for a lot of people.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Aaron Franklin]

But it's really like, who's going to leave in the right way? And sometimes people don't always leave in. In good ways.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I'm tempted to give, like, what is an example of a bad way to leave?

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh, just, you know, I mean, any. Any job that you leave, I mean, you don't want to burn any bridges. I mean, you always want to, like, leave with a hug or a high 5 and 100%, you know, be like, hey, thanks a lot. I learned a lot, you know, really care about you guys. Vice versa and good man. Have good luck to you. Let me know if I can help in any way. Yeah, but other people, you know, like, you don't want to leave a job. Like, yeah, I hate this place and maybe you do. I don't know.

Right.

But I, you know, I've left a couple jobs when I was much younger, you know, and not great ways. And I look back on that stuff now that I have a place, it's like, ah, man, that was.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Wish I could get that one back.

[Aaron Franklin]

I wish I could take that back. I just don't. And I have actually reached out to some old bosses, be like, hey, I didn't leave in a great way, and I'm really sorry.

Yeah.

You know, I think, you know, we. We really try to hire people that have, like, a baseline of just epic kindness and that are just good people. And, you know, pretty much everyone that's ever worked here has been in that zone. Not all of them, but, you know, it's running a business. That's. That's just how it works.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So 2015, like, when did the awards really start rolling in for you guys?

[Aaron Franklin]

Golly. I also don't really pay much attention to that stuff.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, I love that about you.

[Aaron Franklin]

I don't really know.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, 2015 is when you got James Beard.

[Aaron Franklin]

Is that right?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Best Chef, Texas.

[Aaron Franklin]

Cool.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Was.

[Aaron Franklin]

I thought it was 16.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Maybe it was 16. It was around that time. So it was around that time, did business. I mean, at this point, you're already selling out every day. Were you doing 166 brisket? Were you tapped?

[Aaron Franklin]

No, no, no. We were still building cookers.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay, well, you started in 2014 building the pits, and by 2016 you were selling them.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, we don't sell big ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We make little backyard size one. So we started that really during COVID Like, I'd been working on it for years. Like, the design and getting everything just as you can imagine, just perfect.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. Well, I mean, one of the things I'm trying to get at is, like, the evolution of Aaron Franklin. Right. So from 2009 to 2015, it sounds like you're here. You're just.

[Aaron Franklin]

You're just. I was 100 here. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You're just doing the thing, making it.

[Aaron Franklin]

Travel a lot for, like, events and doing some things. But for the most part, you know, up until maybe 16, 17, somewhere in there, I was still getting here at 12, 18, you know, several days a week cooking ribs. Do it. Like, I probably wasn't cutting up front so much then because the line started getting too slow, so it was easier to let someone else cut, and then I could.

[Eric Cacciatore]

The line was getting too slow. Meaning they wanted to talk to you.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it.

[Aaron Franklin]

And I also kind of maybe talk too much.

Yeah.

So that was a. That was a move to get people through faster. But really, cooking that was probably the biggest hurdle for me. I was like, oh, I don't want to let this go. Like, this is. I just want to make sure everything's good. But in hindsight, obviously, it's way more sustainable, and we're better for it.

Yeah.

As a group.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I had Ali Klem on the show as well, and I was talking to her, and I got to kind of witness her operation. And I was really surprised. They only let one party in at a time, and the reason for that is because they really want to be able to focus on that person. And really, you know, and when there's too many people in there, it just kind of gets kind of like, it's.

[Aaron Franklin]

It can be.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I was surprised, and I was thinking to myself, I wonder what would happen if they, like, increase their counter and they just, like, you know, like, let more people just move people through the line. But they're still selling out every day. So if they're selling out, you might as well just make that experience as good as possible, right?

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah. And that's what we do. You know, we. We do. We move really, really fast. I mean, we might shovel 400 people through that line and, like, less than three hours.

Wow.

Like, we can. We can really move. You know, we have one cutter. I mean, if you think about, like, you know, the. To go. The big orders go through. Through the back for pre orders over here, but through the line on a Saturday, we'll probably shovel through 5560 briskets on that one cutting board. And before, before 3 o', clock, like 2:30. Three is kind of where we're wrapping it up. But if we did serve more people quicker, then we don't have enough seats. And then if we run out of seats and people stand around with food. So if we do that and then if we added the tables, then we're cooking the same amount of food, but then we just run out at noon and people get mad. So it's like you got to have, you kind of have to orchestrate the timing of all this stuff. And we move really, really fast, but we can speed up and slow down. If we're running out of seats, then we'll maybe slow down just a tiny bit. No one really notices, but the cutter will be like, oh, you know, and then if people start talking a little much, maybe you need to speed them up a little bit because we got too many empty seats.

Got it.

You know, so you kind of always, it's, it's just real fluid.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So 2015 is an interesting time for you because you're, you're at this point where, you know, you're, you're getting the national acclaim. You already had the national.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, that stuff was already happening before that. Like, I think the first thing, if I remember right, and I only really remember this because somebody mentioned it earlier today when we moved into the restaurant in March of 11, that June or July, a bon appetit thing came out and that, you know, I didn't really know what it was about, but like a photographer like documented all the stuff, you know, like the really early days of this restaurant. And we were cooking, I think 24 briskets a day. Didn't have a thousand gallon pit. I was working on one, but I ran out, this thing happened and then I ran out of. Bought just a random barbecue pit. I actually knew the guy that owned it because I'd worked at this place. But anyway, and that gave us nine more briskets.

Okay.

So then we're doing, you know, like 30 something briskets a day. And I remember that was June, I think of 11. The line went from here to here. And it's like the second you make the food, we just let more people in line.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So I mean, you've pretty much been at full throttle from day one in terms of scale. Like it's just like as, as, as money's coming.

[Aaron Franklin]

Our scale has changed, but we've been full throttle.

[Eric Cacciatore]

All the profits has gone back into building more smokers until you max out on the amount of actual smokers you could fit in the property. And he said 53 cows is our limit.

[Aaron Franklin]

That is the most. And it's also the most we can comfortably cook and keep them really good.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Aaron Franklin]

Like, you start to spread yourself a little thin when you get to too high volume.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You got to this point, by 2015, you're doing that volume.

[Aaron Franklin]

Were you. We plateaued when the. In probably 1514, when the first smokehouse was done. And that's when I stopped building cookers.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So this is what I want to know. When did your life start changing? Where you say, I've had enough of being here every day, being on the. Like, when what was going on internally?

[Aaron Franklin]

We're still here every day.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You're still here. But you know what I'm saying, like, you have to. You can't. The business can't hinge on you. Up to 2015, if Aaron didn't show up.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, I mean, there were. I mean, there were years here where if I had gotten sick, we would have not been open.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Aaron Franklin]

So I couldn't get sick. And I still can't get sick. I refuse. But, you know, we had a kid in December of 13, and really, I think just growing up a little bit, and it was really hard on Stacy, you know. You know, there's certainly a lot of, like, challenges with, like, holding back something like this with all these moving pieces, and everybody wants this and everybody wants this, and, you know, and it's. It's a lot to keep up with for two people. So we finally, you know, we had a kiddo. She's awesome. Can't take her back now. Love her to bits. And so we. We had the kiddo, and then we started kind of like, Stacy went back to work, and then I was still cooking midnights, you know, and then I would try to come home, but I was so tired all the time. It was really hard on the family. And that's really what it was. That's like, man, this is not sustainable, you know, And I always. In the early days, it was small enough where, you know, doing 30 briskets a day, it seemed like a lot because we had never done that before, but it really wasn't, you know, and it was really sort of sustainable. But as we grew, you know, the questions come in. It's like, okay, well, how much is too much? And, you know, I decided it was like, man, I just don't want to have this run my life. I want my kid to know who I am. I want to spend time with Stacy. I want to Spend time with my family. I want to be able to celebrate this awesome life that we have instead of just working myself to death all the time. And that's really what it was. So at that point, it's like, okay, I'm going to teach somebody else how to do this. And it was a long, long process.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, that's what I'm curious about. How did you remove yourself from the process?

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, it was really hard, and I'm such a control freak, and I just want everything done just the right way. And if it fails, I want it to be because I didn't do a good job. Like, I don't want to. It's really hard, you know? So you've been doing this for 10 years. If I don't back out, I'm going to have a freaking brain aneurysm and fall into a fire by myself one night, and then I'm going to leave my family, and I'm going to leave Stacy with this spot, you know? And, like, that's not okay.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So how did you do it? How did you remove yourself? What did that process look like? And how are you getting back?

[Aaron Franklin]

I just had started training other people, and then once they got good enough, kind of old, manned my way out of here, and it's like, all right, I'm going to let you take over today.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Was that hard for you?

[Aaron Franklin]

Absolutely. Probably the hardest thing I've ever done with this restaurant. How'd you get over it?

[Eric Cacciatore]

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[Aaron Franklin]

Well, I got to start sleeping and it felt good. I mean I slept an hour and a half a night. Yeah, for every day for seven years. This place.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I mean, did you get better at letting go? And like, how. How did that evolution of being able to step back look for you?

[Aaron Franklin]

It. It went well. Ish. Now it's great, you know, but this is also like, quite a few years later.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So what are you doing now that is. Has made it great? Other different things you're doing?

[Aaron Franklin]

I've become a better manager.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Aaron Franklin]

That's. That's really the gist of it, you know, Like, I don't think I would find it hard to believe that anyone that loves cooking barbecue by themselves is naturally a good manager. I'm not. I'm not a good manager. I'm great at talking to people. I'm really passionate about a lot of things, and I'm good at teaching people how to do things, but I'm not good at managing.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Which part of managing?

[Aaron Franklin]

All of it. I'm much better now. Like, that's been my biggest learning curve.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So looking at yourself today as a manager versus then as a manager, what are you doing? Doing better today.

[Aaron Franklin]

Just being more forgiving, I think, and just being less particular about maybe things that matter, maybe they don't. Maybe, you know, I think. I don't know. Just having. Just being a better. Being better at getting people to do what they need to do and ever. This place, like, hums right along. They do not need me.

Yeah.

You know, at all.

Yeah.

Because we've got a great gm. We've got great kitchen managers. Like, this place literally hums right along. I could leave for a month and come back and they wouldn't skip a beat. They wouldn't even miss me.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So.

[Aaron Franklin]

Except the mustard might be on the wrong shelf.

Is it a.

And that would drive me.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is it a systems, processes, procedures type.

[Aaron Franklin]

Place or is it okay, it is now, but it wasn't then.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Aaron Franklin]

Because Stacy and I spent all of our days running and prepping and cooking. And then once we were able to back out a little bit, we were able to get back in there and be like, okay, now we have a great manager. That's awesome. Now some people that have been working here for a while are able to step up, and we've been able to build a really amazing family of people that have been here for a long, long time. A lot of them that know what to do and know how to do it and have also, you know, cooking, especially barbecue, is all about collecting data. And, like, just kind of, for me, it's about building up my bag of tricks. Like when I get, like, in a weird part of the world and I'm cooking something strange with weird meat, weird wood, weird cooker. Okay. I got a huge bag of tricks, and I know what to do, and I can really, almost always make something really, really flipping good. But everybody else has also been building up their bag of tricks and put together. We have a lot of tricks, and we know what to do.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So in 2015, 2016, you're getting to the point where you can remove yourself. You don't have to be here every day.

[Aaron Franklin]

But I still am.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But you choose.

[Aaron Franklin]

I'm cooking.

Right.

I'm just catching up on emails, doing stuff like this.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You're working on the business, not in.

[Aaron Franklin]

I'm working on the business side of it. I'm not. I haven't cooked in years outside of events. But I'm still up in the mix for lunch. Right. Like, I'm still up. If I'm in town, I'm here.

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But if you have something, like something, an opportunity you can choose to go.

[Aaron Franklin]

To, that I can totally book an event and go and be like, hey, guys, I'll see you on Monday.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it.

[Aaron Franklin]

I'm out for a couple days.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it. So in 2015, 2016, was your soul, like, your only form of income coming from basically the barbecue that you're cooking here?

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's all. Our timeline is kind of a blur.

Yeah.

Because the whole thing. Lack of sleep. Really doesn't remember.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But I guess I want to know the evolution for you as an entrepreneur.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, so, you know, it was Franklin Barbecue, and then just once this thing felt stable, which was probably around 1716. I think it really hinged on having a smokehouse. Like, that was a big deal, because before, like I said, we were out in the backyards. The variables were just too great to wrangle. Like, once we got a smokehouse, like, okay, now we can build systems. Now we can know exactly what time this is going on. We had developed the. The supply side of this with our turkeys and our pork and all this stuff.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So is that because you had. You needed to be able to control the environment, to have consistency, to be able to build a standard.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, yeah. 100%.

Yeah.

But then also, once you get that built, then you go and you start whittling down, like, the sourcing of the meats and the cows and the turkeys and the pigs and where potatoes are coming from. And that's when I was able to back out. That's what allowed me the time to start backtracking. And then we were all together, able to start building systems.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you're on the front line doing the. The thing and then you're slowly moving yourself away from the front line and saying, how can I improve this system all the way down.

[Aaron Franklin]

How can we really make this thing work?

Right.

Yeah. And get better?

[Eric Cacciatore]

And what were the biggest tweaks you've made since like say 2015, 16, 17, when you were able to work on the business? Like, how has the business improved from those efforts in that period of time?

[Aaron Franklin]

Structure wise? It's a lot better. I mean, we do.

[Eric Cacciatore]

When you say structure, what do you mean?

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, just like all this is systems in place, you know, like our admin side of it is now pretty robust. You know, we operate a lot like a real restaurant, which we did not in the early days. It was just real, just mom and pop.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Can you share your hierarchy with me? You're like your organizational.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah. So Stacy.

Yep.

On the top. Well, Stacy and myself, she's the boss. I'm more on the restaurant side and she's more on the office side. Our offices are right around the corner from over here. So Stacy does that stuff and then from there it's someone in the office that does all the night parties. Then we have.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What's a night party?

[Aaron Franklin]

Like we book private parties at night here since we're closed. So like corporate things and stuff like that. That. And then we have the whole system for pre orders. So we built that software, have all the online ordering system set up, which also plays into the restaurant, obviously. So there's that. Then we have four people in accounting. We have commerce at our shop down south, which is where we used to build the pits. And now we. We outgrew that. So now we have another shop that's up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So we fulfill E commerce orders and ship cookers out of our shop down south. That's two people that hang out down there. And then we have the office with design. And then we have two people up there. One of them mostly runs barbecue pits and does all help Stacy with all the things. And then the other person up there helps me mostly with all the things and she helps with hot luck events. If I go off and do a thing, you know, we travel up there together. She'll ship things. We. She also does graphics. We do all that stuff in house. Stacey.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Or this.

[Aaron Franklin]

Her name is Mickey. And then Stacy just kind of oversees all things office.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it.

[Aaron Franklin]

And all things things business.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So when you say all things office, all things business, you're talking like, like hr.

[Aaron Franklin]

Could be hr. It could be. We all kind of Swiss army knife pretty heavily. You know, we're a nimble team, that's for sure. Like, you know, Stacy and our CFO are probably more like the HR side of it. Like I deal with like the piddly stuff here, but we don't really have anything. But it's like they do the benefits, you know, all the public relations. We don't really, I mean Stacey and I do that stuff.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, used to do three accountants. Four, four accountants for. So between the, the brick and mortar restaurant, the, you know, the, the, the pit business, which is basically a business in itself and like what are the other.

[Aaron Franklin]

They're all separate businesses technically under the umbrella. So Franklin Barbecue, Uptown Sports Club, all the, all the accounting for all the stuff goes through.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's right.

[Aaron Franklin]

But yeah, so Uptown Franklin bbq, Franklin BBQ pits, Franklin sauces, that's all the CPG stuff. And then I think I said barbecue pits in there. And then media stuff is a big one and then books is another one. And media and books all live under one umbrella, but we have to do all the counting for all that stuff.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So. So you get a lot of. So you're vertically integrating and this is kind of like where I was hoping would get to the conversation now. Now we're here, what it looks like today.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But like, so you have your, you know, your production, your, you know, consumer product goods, the sauces and the rubs, the media, the pits. You're also doing gold belly. You're also.

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh yeah, there's that. I forgot.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I mean, is that really bull? I've heard that doesn't really pull in a lot of revenue for a lot of places.

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh no, it does, it does for you guys. Yeah, I think we ship out 120 briskets a week.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you're doing 120 briskets on top of the 53 that goes out through the restaurant or is that just 53 total?

[Aaron Franklin]

Total, no. So we can cook up to 120 briskets on one batch. So we're closed on Mondays as we found out today. Yeah, so we max our gold bellies at 120 because if we can't save any throughout the week, we can always put an emergency Sunday night cook in the mix.

Got it.

So we can, we can cook one batch chilling. We have a 20 foot blast chiller here that we can chill everything down in. And yeah, so that's why that's 120. But yeah, that's a pretty good revenue stream.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So when you talk about media. Like, so there's books and what, what's the other media?

[Aaron Franklin]

If I do TV stuff, like the occasional podcast maybe called Restaurant Unstoppable.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Thank you.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah. Like TV shows, book stuff, appearance things. Any, any of that stuff.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So if we're like listening from the like, in terms of like what you're monetizing and like where the, the primary source of your revenue is coming from.

[Aaron Franklin]

Is it the cash cow? Is Franklin barbecue?

[Eric Cacciatore]

The barbecue.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah. Everything else kind of orbits around and they, they kind of come and go. Like barbecue pits Right now aren't, you know, super hot. But they were in Covid.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah. When everyone's cooking from home.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah. And then now there's a whole bunch of stuff going on, but, you know.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What do you mean?

[Aaron Franklin]

Like tariffs and stuff. Oh, right. The steel and just the general economy is not great for people buying a six thousand, thousand dollar barbecue pit.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Aaron Franklin]

You know, normal, normal ebb and flow kind of stuff.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So it would be Franklin's barbecue, then it was the pits. What. Where is the media come close in line there? Or is it the sauces and the, the production?

[Aaron Franklin]

Sauces and media are probably about even. Sauces are really starting to take off right now.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay.

[Aaron Franklin]

That's a pretty big expansion.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What percentage of total gross revenue would you say that makes up?

[Aaron Franklin]

Gosh, I couldn't tell you.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Ballpark. If you had a guess.

[Aaron Franklin]

I have no idea. Idea. 10% have no idea.

Okay.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Stacy.

[Aaron Franklin]

Leave it all to Stacy.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So, I mean, I should know that.

[Aaron Franklin]

Stuff and I do look at, at the reports and like, okay, well that's cool. And then I'm just so much more like, oh man, I'm going to replace that toilet today. So I guess, which is pretty sad, but I am lead maintenance guy.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, what you can tell us, you know, is when it got to this point where, you know, you're killing it, like you could clearly scale this thing. You could do like the, the P. Terry's approach where you're, you know, opening like one of these every five miles to make it as convenient as possible.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, I think there's a point of diminishing return though.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, well, you know, I mean, and.

[Aaron Franklin]

Also it would crush our souls. It would make everyone that works here feel so less proud of where they work.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But I guess when you started to have to have these internal conversations of like, what's next? Like there's opportunity. We can, we can go in literally any direction. With the amount of like a national media, we're getting an attention how long the line is like like, what was going on internally with you and Stacy?

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, it is, you know, you don't want to let go of your, your little restaurant baby, you know, like, it's not this thing. It's, you know, it's a real humble little spot. Like, we seat less than 50 people. It's not big, you know, but we crank out a ton of food. We, people come from all over the place to eat here. So the number one goal is to make sure that every single person that waits in line and comes through the door has an experience like they've had nowhere else. Like, we really literally think of this place like grandma's house. The amount of like one on one attention, you know, we're with these guys throughout the whole line. We know what they're, you know what they're going to do, we know what they're going to eat. We've talked to them. They get up here, it's their birthday, you know, the restaurant will like shut down and the whole restaurant sings somebody happy birthday. Like, like the amount of hugs that go on in this restaurant, I've never seen another restaurant like it. It is off the charts. And to compromise that just to like open another restaurant would mean that we've lost. We have totally not done what we set out to do. We didn't set out to like have a place that, you know, you could have 50% of your guests one day be from a foreign country. That's crazy. That is totally 100% bonkers.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's wild.

[Aaron Franklin]

But that's what we have. And we're gonna take care of it the best we can. And I'm gonna be up there as many days as I possibly can to bus tables and chit chat with people and look at pictures of brisket on some guy's phone and tell him what he did wrong and how he can do it better. Like, this is kind of like going to barbecue school.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What was that stat? How many, what percentage of your customers are from different parts of the world?

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh, it varies. But like, right now it's got spring break around the country, so it's a lot more than usual, but it's probably half and half.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You've never won a Michelin star, have you?

[Aaron Franklin]

We're not Michelin territory.

[Eric Cacciatore]

The reason I, for the record, I think award culture is probably the, one of the worst things for this industry.

[Aaron Franklin]

I also don't want a Michelin star.

What's that?

I do not want a mission. Well, I mean, and we're not eligible to begin with.

[Eric Cacciatore]

The joke I Was going to make. Is that like the whole stick of Michelin stars travel to this place. Place and go to the go here for this place.

[Aaron Franklin]

Check that box.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's what I'm saying. That's the whole point. It's how it all started.

[Aaron Franklin]

We also are counter service.

Yeah.

We. We don't check all the boxes. But I can't think of another barbecue restaurant in the world that people travel to like us that's sure they exist. I just haven't been there because I don't really leave there.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's just such a joke, man. I just. I just think it's funny.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, but I mean, if we compromise that, you know, like, kind of. My background is kind of like old punk rock. Do it yourself. Like make a. Make a band, get in the van, hit the road, go on tour. Like, we're such do it yourselfers. Like, we built this table. Like, we welded all the stuff here.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Why. Why don't you want a Michelin star?

[Aaron Franklin]

I think the stand. We would. It would be a false representation of what we do.

Okay.

I think people would come in with certain expectations, like, oh, it's going to. To be fancy. Oh, it's going to be this, and it's not right. It's about making a memory for somebody.

Yeah, I hear you.

I don't want people to feel let down. I. I don't. Yeah, we're just not. Technically, we're not even eligible.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So when you're looking to the future, or when you were looking in the future not so long ago in the past, and you're trying to decide what. What does the future for Aaron Franklin and Franklin's Barbecue look like? What was the clear path, a clear destination, the vision you had for yourself? And have you been living that path?

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, absolutely. I have the coolest job in the world. I can't think of anything I would rather be doing other than just a little bit less of everything.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What are the things you love the most? What are the things that you get most excited about?

[Aaron Franklin]

Really? Kind of like new projects. I get excited about learning things. And that's kind of why this place changes all the time, is because we also get excited about learning new things. Like. Oh, man. Never thought of doing it like this before. Hey, that worked out really good. Let's. Let's explore that. You know, so we're always, you know, rearranging our building blocks. You know, it's like a big Tetris game over here. But the things I get excited about are obviously making food, hosting parties, doing stuff you know, and that's hot luck. The food festival is, like, a huge extension of this that happens on Memorial day weekend every year, and that's about 50 to 60, 65 chefs from around the world come in, and it's not barbecue, although this year, we have two barbecue people, and, you know, that kind of stuff. Uptown sports club was really exciting to do. We got to save an old building full, like, historical rehab, historically zoned. Like, I love that kind of stuff. Like, I like building things.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Are you the chef for that location? Awesome.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, there's a cdc. His name is James, but it's.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But you're part of the creative process.

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's like a. Yeah, It. It operates a little more like a real restaurant than Franklin does, but I think it would be, like, me and then, like, you know, the guy you just met, Vio. Like, he would be the CDC for this place, and then there's another one over there, so.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So that restaurant was your first partnership outside of a marriage, right? What was that like for you? I mean, that was 20, 23.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, we started around there. Well, we opened then, but we'd been wearing it for about five or six years before that. So my partner on us uptown and Stacy's also partner on that, for sure. And because it all kind of goes under the Franklin umbrella, we've moved a lot of that. A lot of the uptown stuff through our offices just because we have the infrastructure already built. You know, it's a lot easier. But my friend Moody, that owns Mohawk up the street and some other stuff.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Music venue.

[Aaron Franklin]

What's that?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Music venue.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah.

Yeah, music venue around the corner. He's also my partner on hotline. Look. So we've been doing stuff together for years, and I trust him. One of my good buddies. We work so well together, and that was, you know, that was kind of the uptown thing.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So was this a unique challenge for you, doing the uptown? Because this is, like, you said, more traditional, more like, in terms of, like, P. Ls and, like, you know, you don't have lines going around the corner there every day, do you?

[Aaron Franklin]

No. No, we don't. And it really does operate like a real restaurant. I mean, it has a different set of challenges than this place does does. This place has the volume, but different challenges. Like, man, like, brisket sure is getting expensive. You can only charge so much, right? Labor sure is high. Well, it's what we got to do.

[Eric Cacciatore]

To make care of people, man.

[Aaron Franklin]

It. It. It is what it is. Like, you can't. We can't fudge much around here. Uptown, on the other hand, you know, has a great management team that we hired and people that I've worked with before and other places. Like, hey, working on this thing, kind of like any restaurant is like, hey, you should check this out. Like, oh my God, I'm in. It's like, ah, love this, you know, and like, really, really awesome people. But it does operate like a real restaurant. But yeah, it was not hard. I mean, I'd been cooking that food for a long time in terms of.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Coming up with the menu, but in terms of like, I mean, are you guys, like, are you like, sold out every day? Is it like, is it a full restaurant?

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh, it's a normal restaurant. We don't. We wouldn't be able to sell out.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay. So, I mean, I guess what I'm trying to get at with this is like you're. You're dealing with the more. More of the realities of running a restaurant that, you know, doesn't have a.

[Aaron Franklin]

Line out the door every day.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. Like, you can't count on selling out of everything that restaurant.

[Aaron Franklin]

But it also operates like a real restaurant where you can prep things, you know, a couple days ahead and you grill a steak when somebody orders it or you have like, the, like, the prep is like a traditional style.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Was there a learning curve for you guys in terms of, like, that's a first time, like, you know, kind of a first time experience for you to do a traditional restaurant?

[Aaron Franklin]

No, I mean, not really. I've. I've worked in a bunch.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Oh, that's true.

[Aaron Franklin]

You know, I mean, I know how to do that stuff. And also I've been doing this for about 20 years. Like, I've. And also running a food festival, like cooking events, you know, flying to wherever to do a dinner. Like, I kind of.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Were there any challenges associated with this?

[Aaron Franklin]

The biggest challenge we've had with uptown is how expensive the building was. Like, we were funded by before the pandemic. And we were supposed to start construction in March of 20.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And you opened in 2023?

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah.

Wow.

So. But the pandemic happens. I was like, man, times are. Times are dark. This very dark time. And we had the money, but we had also budgeted everything for pre. Covid numbers. Covid happened. We come out of it, we didn't start building. We just sat on it and everything more than doubled in price.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Price.

[Aaron Franklin]

But we did raise more money. So I think the cost of the building by far is our biggest problem with uptown. The restaurant's great. It Operates good. It's. It's, you know, hitting targets. You know, you own the building, though, right?

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you don't.

[Aaron Franklin]

Not technically.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Oh, okay.

[Aaron Franklin]

But, yeah. So the cost of the. Of the rehab was really expensive.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you own the business. You don't own the property, technically. Where did tenant improvements come in with that? Like, how much of that were you guys on the hook for?

[Aaron Franklin]

We spent a lot of money on that. It. You know, it's a bit of a sore spot because some of that stuff was a little squirrely. And the way that project kind of came up was really to save the clock tower. Like, it. I didn't want to open another restaurant. Was not looking to take on another project. Stacy definitely didn't want to. I kind of did it anyway. I regret that because it's so much work.

Yeah.

You know, and it's just old building was 1959.

[Eric Cacciatore]

49.

[Aaron Franklin]

1800.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Sorry, 18.

[Aaron Franklin]

The building was built in the. In the late 1800s.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it.

[Aaron Franklin]

But the sports club started in 1948, and it had been vacant for, like, 37 years or something like that. So it really gives this building. I looked at it for Franklin. Everybody's looked at this place. It's just this really iconic building. I could check it out, and we were worried that. That if somebody else got it, they would just tear it down. And, you know, the city is changing so quickly. A little less fast than it was, but, you know, Austin's really good at just tearing down old stuff and building something new and gross.

Yeah.

Like, no. Like, this is our city. Like, we need to preserve some of these older buildings. So that's why uptown exists, was to save an old building. And we all kind of, you know, really got excited about the romance of this building. It's like, oh, my gosh, we've been staring at this place forever. I used to live right around the corner from it, you know, drove by it all the time. Like, that is such a cool place. I hope somebody does something cool with it one day. And it turns out we were the people that did something cool with it to really try to preserve it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So if we only have a half hour together left to talk about whatever it is that you think you should uniquely talk about that isn't cooking, but has to do with, like, what has contributed to your success, what would you say those things are? Like, how do we replicate what Aaron Franklin has done?

[Aaron Franklin]

I think it is attention to detail. It's being super meticulous, crazy disciplined, you know, like, really. And Stacy and I kind of reflect every Once in a while, you know, maybe a glass of wine on the porch, like, wow, I just can't believe the things we've been doing for, like, the first 10 years of this restaurant are just. And we've dealt with so many bizarre things. Like how many restaurants are there that, like, you know, you're not shocked when a car drives through the dining room overnight and then you have to fix a wall to get open that day? That's not normal stuff. Or like, the president pops in. That's not normal stuff. Like, we're. We're living in like la la land over here for, like, restaurant stuff. And a lot of restaurants do really just have just the luckiest and most successful full of times. But our place is such a unicorn. It's always been such unicorn. But it wouldn't have been if we hadn't started off so modest and we hadn't have just, you know, made all the decisions and poured our heart and souls into this in a very smart way. Like, you can't just blindly be like, man, I. I love doing this. It's going to work out.

[Eric Cacciatore]

What was smart about the way you did it?

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, I think not taking on any debt, I think lining up everything where we had a very low cost cost of living, and also just being so, you know, friendly. And our hospitality is off the charts. I mean, our hospitality is way better than the food. You know, food's great.

Yeah.

But I mean, you come here because you want to, like, you want to get a big brisket hug, you know. Yeah, it really warms the soul. But I think just having our personalities in there and like, I don't need a corporate restaurants, you know, and I love going to a locally owned restaurant. When I get to a city, like, where's the local? Like, where am I going? And it's not going to be a chain, Right? You know, maybe if you really have to, but Shake Shack's probably the only one that I eat at.

[Eric Cacciatore]

How many, like, how many consistent regulars would you say you have here? With the amount of, you know, every day there's a line, do you think?

[Aaron Franklin]

I'd say about 15% of them are regular.

[Eric Cacciatore]

That's awesome.

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's people that have been there. We have a plaque on the wall in there. People that have been. Been here. It's called the Franklin 100 Club. And it's people that have been here over a hundred times, and they get a plaque and we make them a chair.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, I was curious about that because they say, you know, the 8020 rule 80 of your revenue comes from 20 of your guests. And I was curious about that with. Because it's such a destination for people that when they come to Austin, like, has the. Has the. The thrill eater, the travel eater, the. The tourists pushed the local out in the sense where it's.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, maybe a little bit. A little bit. But the locals show up at the end of lunch. So, like, once the line gets a little shorter, people kind of pop in. They're like, hey, what's left? And they'll get a thumbs up from the cutting board. Be like, oh, yeah, yeah. Or we just finish it all. Like, yeah, maybe Let me just make you a sandwich. Don't worry about it. But we know what people. Like, we have so many regulars. People that, like, it's people that bring us, you know, like, show up and bring donuts on Saturdays.

Yeah.

You know, like, hey, I'm in line. And they'll just kind of walk into the kitchen or I'll make them a cup of coffee. Like, it is totally the locally owned diner of the barbecue world. Like, it is. And it's really just an open house throughout lunch. Anyway. People through the smokehouse. People come through the kitchen. Meat pulling shots of espresso for people.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I got that.

[Aaron Franklin]

I love that touch. But that's what it's really all about. Like, it is. The food is like, you know, it takes a long time to prepare. It's good. It really means something with somebody puts that much effort into it. But what really makes this restaurant are the people that work here. You know, it's not just me. It's not just Stacy, but It's the other 40 something people that have the same passion.

Yep.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I. I experienced that hospitality when I came here. I think the. When I first introduced myself, I was like, hey, I'm in town. I just want to introduce myself, let you know that I'm a crazy person. Maybe not for fully accurate statement, but.

[Aaron Franklin]

I think that's weird. And then.

[Eric Cacciatore]

But you were super great. You pull the Chavez espresso for us. We sat down, you made time for me. It was. It was very.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah. And that's just how a restaurant should be.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, exactly.

[Aaron Franklin]

Like, I don't want somebody to spend, you know, an hour, two, three hours in line and just go up and just get a sandwich, right? No, man, you're gonna have the whole experience. You're gonna. And it wasn't really set up that way, but it turned into that once we got busy and we're like, man, what do we do? With all these people, we gotta take care of them. Oh, man, your forehead's getting kind of sunburned. Here, have some sunscreen. Like, we do all that stuff.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, I mean, some of the things we discussed that. I think you said, this place is a unicorn. Right. And I think part of it is when you like, perfect timing. 2009, barbecue wasn't what it is today.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yep.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Blue Ocean effect. You had a unique selling proposition in the way that you were doing it. It was very much you, Aaron Franklin, your approach.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, and, you know, funny thing is, we actually tried so hard to come up with a different name that wasn't Franklin for this place. I did not want to put my name on it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, how did you guys get there?

[Aaron Franklin]

We just couldn't come up with a name, and we had to make a sign and we just had to open.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So those are some of the variables. Right? Blue Ocean effect, unique selling proposition. Maybe the market just wanted it. Like, what were some of the other things that you think make you a unicorn? Make this whole thing?

[Aaron Franklin]

I think, you know, maybe the influence that we've had on just, like, the culinary world and barbecue in particular, and how many people around the world have opened up barbecue places or cook in their backyards that watch the old PBS show, that watch the masterclass that come here, ask us questions like, hey, I can't get this to turn out like this. Oh, here, come over here. Poke at this. This is what it should feel like. Oh, my God, that's amazing. Like, I think that hands on experience, but also just being able to, like, help people.

Yeah.

I think really goes a long way. And that's just kind of our nature anyway. I mean, that's not like, like, you know, we said it like, what's our. What's our thing gonna be? Well, our thing's making good food. It's all the other stuff that we kind of learned along the way and.

[Eric Cacciatore]

All that other stuff get into that, like.

[Aaron Franklin]

And it all kind of plays back to, like, the epicenter of it, which is Franklin Barbecue.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Okay. Is that other stuff like the. About the. The teaching other people how to do it, the creating culture around it?

[Aaron Franklin]

It could just be like, you know, the level of service where you go watch somebody's like, baby bottles in the dish pit. Like, you take them back out to the line. Like, it's just that nuance of, like, delicate and, you know, like, just delicate hospitality, I guess. But I think, you know, being out in the world and just, you know, we sell knives and people like, oh, I can't find the knife that you want, it's like, all right, well, here you go. Like, we'll give knives away during lunch. Like, well, it's an old one. Here, take this. Yeah, you know, I just, you know, I think it means. It means so much more for people to come to a place like this. This. I've had those experiences at restaurants. Maybe not on this level, but like where you just like keep thinking about.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Aaron Franklin]

Man, that really spoke to me. I love that so much.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Like, how much that knife cost?

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, they used to be 10 bucks. Now they're about 35.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So $35. But what is that story? The value of that?

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, exactly. And if we've already worn it out, we'll just give it to somebody.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. But just that. That little act, a little gesture of like, okay, this thing isn't new. It's used out. It's worn out. Like, here you go. This is a souvenir. That person is going to be cooking barbecue.

[Aaron Franklin]

And every time they pull, they were like, dude, check out where I got.

[Eric Cacciatore]

This is from Franklin Bart. Like that. That's the kind of stuff that echoes, you know, like, that's generosity, that's hospitality.

[Aaron Franklin]

That's absolutely. Well, you know, we also, you know, music plays a pretty big role in what I do. But you know, the fact that we started this place like super diy, you know, like you would a band or. Because that's just what I did before, this will still what I do. You know, it kind of plays back into like, you know, you're putting on a show, like you practice, you're cooking all this stuff, and then once you're on stage, like, hey man, it's go time. Like you're throwing a party every single day. We throw a big party for a lot of people.

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So if you. You've been really good about just creating this brand around yourself and making your name.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, we didn't try very hard. It just kind of happened.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, that's kind of what I'm keeping curious about. Like, if we're out, we didn't have.

[Aaron Franklin]

A North Star for any of this other than just ourselves.

[Eric Cacciatore]

It's. It's so. It's. It's weird. The more I learned, the more I realized everything that I needed to learn.

[Aaron Franklin]

We kind of just been failing upwards.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I knew it when I was five years old. It's the biggest lessons that you. That you're. Everybody echoes the golden rule.

[Aaron Franklin]

Be yourself, be kind.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, be. Yeah, be kind. It's. It's. So why, you know, why aren't. Like, why doesn't. Why don't we see more of this in the world then? Like, why. You know what I'm saying? Like, what is it about your story that, like, it's just amplified and echoed so much?

[Aaron Franklin]

And I'm also keeping on the blinders because maybe I don't want to know, because I don't want that to affect any decisions that we make.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Keeping on the blinders. What are you afraid to see?

[Aaron Franklin]

Like, barbecue blinders?

Yeah.

Don't know. Don't know.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Just doing. Just doing barbecue or.

[Aaron Franklin]

We just want to be ourselves. We want to be authentic. We want to be kind. We want to put out really great food, and I'm totally happy with that. Like, we need to make money. Obviously. This is a big ship to steer, you know, but I think the modesty, when people come in and they feel like they're home, I think that means a lot. And you can't really, you know, if you're, like, trying to open another spot, like, oh, man. How do we. How do we maximize profits, which we do need to do. We just don't want to lose touch with the personal connections.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

In terms of the other projects you have, like, do you get propositioned often.

[Aaron Franklin]

To, like, be a. Yeah, constantly. Not so much anymore. We really did in the beginning, but I think everybody kind of knows the answer now, so they kind of beginning.

[Eric Cacciatore]

2009 or, like, 2015.

[Aaron Franklin]

I mean, it's like, the second we have people like, hey, of space in Tokyo. Hey, Vegas. What's it gonna take to do this?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Well, not just the restaurant, but, like, hey, do a master class. Hey, be on this show. Hey, do this interview.

[Aaron Franklin]

I do the things that seem like fun.

Okay.

You know, masterclass was awesome. I love doing that. And, you know, we're still friends. I'm actually working on another project with them. Just really awesome people. But really what it comes down to is the people, like, I'm gonna do a TV show. It's like, oh, what is it? I don't know. Maybe that's not a good fit. Oh, but this feels good. So I kind of rely on my instinct a lot for all those things. You know, I really only do events, for the most part for philanthropy. You know, if it's raising money for a good cause, that's. That's what I do.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, I love that, man. So one thing you mentioned earlier, and it kind of raised my eyebrow. I'm curious about it.

[Aaron Franklin]

I noticed that one just went up a little tiny bit.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Do you remember when it was Nope, Nope.

[Aaron Franklin]

Totally forgotten.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So you're talking about costing and, like, you know, brisket's expensive. And are you not factoring in all the other food that goes on that plate, like the pickles, like the bread? Do you not cost that stuff out?

[Aaron Franklin]

We don't cost. It is our direct food cost. Because it's just kind of hard. You don't really know. But we could average it out. It's kind of tough. It's just kind of like an absorbed, like, just side cost.

Okay.

Because you don't really know. It's kind of a weird thing about this place is, like, the amount of food we go through. Most restaurants would be able to say how many covers they did. Well, that doesn't really work right for this place. You know, we can count physical bodies, but each person might be ordering enough to feed 10 people.

Yeah.

So it's like, okay, well, what's a normal portion per person? Well, how much food did we sell? Okay. It's just a kooky. It's a kooky restaurant.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So in terms of where we are today, if we're at present day, the year is 2025. Like, is Franklin barbecue the healthiest it's ever been in terms of, you know, growth and opportunity?

[Aaron Franklin]

Absolutely.

Yeah.

We're the healthiest we've ever been on being efficient. That's probably our biggest thing, you know, as the cost of everything goes up around us, you know, like fuel surcharges. Now we've got this tariff stuff that's affecting our meat because we do EU specific. So it's like, you know, it affects the barbecue pits. We use only American steel for those, but that's gone up too, you know, like, everything is going up around us, and we look at prices. It's like, well, what's market value? Well, it is what it is. So we can only feel good about charging so much. So we've been doing a really good job at just finding efficiencies all over the place. Maybe it's like, you know, these forks are just a little bit cheaper. Just normal restaurant stuff. Normal, normal things that, like, a restaurant group would do. But when you're, you know, such a small group and you're working all the time, you don't really always have the time to be able to, like, do that stuff. So we've gotten a lot better at that and better than we've ever been. We're also just better cooks.

Yeah, yeah.

We're just getting better at everything.

[Eric Cacciatore]

When we look to the future, you know, the mission statement is to inspire, empower, and transform the industry. And I feel, fully believe that if we can transform the industry, if we can lift up restaurant owners across the nation, we can lift up the world.

[Aaron Franklin]

Absolutely.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Restaurants change communities. Right. So in that, along that, that, that note of the, the future of the industry, where do you kind of see where we are right now as an industry and where we could be or we should be or like what. As you look into the future of where we're heading the trajectory of the industry, does anything concern you? Is there anything opinions or you want to voice?

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, I mean, I think, think, you know, I. And this comes from mostly running a food festival and just inviting chefs personally and, and just kind of being in the mix, you know, pretty heavily for all this kind of stuff. What I see is big restaurants, like, I would never, never want to open a big restaurant, like a 300 seat restaurant, 200 seat, 100 is even too big. But I think, you know, kind of post Covid, so many people left big cities for smaller towns like in the Midwest and over opening up, you know, smaller, and I hate to keep saying like mom and pop shops, but like, you know, locally owned smaller restaurants I really think is where it's at. And I think if you can build a restaurant that could sustain itself and maybe like put aside a little bit of greed and just like be like, okay, well what makes me really happy? What do I really want to do? And I think, and this is just food in general, like, if you can lead with passion and then let all the other stuff, just kind of just be smart about it, figure out how to make it work, you know, I really see just smaller restaurants thriving, you know, around the country. Well, yeah, and, and they should be, and people should go support those restaurants, the neighborhood spots, you know, like, we don't necessarily need to go eat at a big chain. Like chains are obviously down across the industry, you know, but I think that's kind of where I see the trajectory. And like, maybe big restaurant groups aren't really where it's at. You know, they were a number of years ago, you know, but I don't know, I just say, you know, it's kind of like, know your farmer, like, no, no, your chef.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

You know, the whole mission of this podcast is to share that big organization knowledge. Like, what do the big organizations know in terms of cost?

[Aaron Franklin]

You got to know that stuff. But then you apply it on a small scale.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Exactly. And like, how do we bridge that gap to give the independent restaurant owners the, the, the, the operational savviness of like controlling cost of goods, labor, you know, all these things. But then at the same time it's. The independent still has to deal with the, the cost associated with marketing. And maybe, maybe social media is free, but how much time and energy.

[Aaron Franklin]

That's the thing though. If a small restaurateur is going to do social media, they're going to be doing it themselves. You know, like hopefully they are because it's so expensive. You know, we got lucky. We started Franklin before that stuff existed, so we didn't really have to mess with it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right.

[Aaron Franklin]

We do a little bit, but we don't do, you know, a lot of it. But yeah, I think like taking that stuff into mind. But like also, you know, big tip for, for people starting restaurants or running small restaurants is just to learn how to be a Swiss army knife, learn how to do a little bit of social yourself, learn how to be the maintenance person, learn how to, to, you know, do, you know, building maintenance in general. Like learn how to cook this, learn how to serve this, learn how to repair this equipment that's going to keep going out. Be smart and have backups for, you know, certain things that you're going to rip through pretty quick. You know, like I think just being a. And that's kind of where Franklin barbecue has really thrived across everybody is they were all just a bunch of Swiss army knives. We can all do so many different things out of necessity but, but it's proven to be our, our, you know, most successful trade.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Why do you think there's a shift happening towards the mom and pops and the independence and you said not even like the what. When you say like, like what about a 10 unit operator, like multiple concepts, is that falling into the bigger operations or.

[Aaron Franklin]

I think it does, but I'm such like a small time. It's like run a barbecue place, man. You know, I think running a small place. No, I just think with you know, the expense of like real estate and just, just the cost of everything. I mean I think that's really kind of how you could make it work and still make a living.

Yeah.

And it's also hard to hire people. You know, like if you need 150 people to operate your restaurant, that's going to be flipping hard. But if you only need 30, it's, you're probably gonna have a better time with it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So.

[Aaron Franklin]

And you could be more hands on.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Again, the mission statement to inspire, empower and transform the industry. We're going to do that by transforming one owner at a time. How are you a better owner today than the person you were when you started in this industry? How?

[Aaron Franklin]

I am not spending 22 hours a day cooking and serving.

Yeah.

I can actually have relationships with everybody here and, like, talk to them, and we get to just communicate them much better than that we did there.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So by removing yourself from the day to day, you're able to have a better. A bigger impact. Impact on the business.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

But we also wouldn't have gotten here if I wasn't cooking.

Right.

And working 22 hours. Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Right. I'm curious, too. 2,000, like, nine years ago or six years ago, like, it seems like you kind of, like, ramped up with the YouTube and then you kind of, like, took a break from it.

[Aaron Franklin]

Oh, we did YouTube. We did that show in 2013 or 14, I think.

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Was that like a project you guys were trying? I mean, I noticed that the production quality was really good on that.

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, we did it through the local PBS station here, kru, and we did the BBQ with Franklin online videos, and then we put out a TV show after that. Got it. That was on pbs and that. I think we did that. And we shot it in 14, I think maybe came out in 1516.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So is this repurposing the content like you had rights to it to host on your. Your YouTube channel, or is that not your.

[Aaron Franklin]

I think it just stayed on there.

Okay.

Although we are doing some work on there now. We. We've added. Oh, you know, we. I did make a couple videos where we put off the barbecue pits.

Okay.

Yeah, maybe that's what you're thinking too, but I will say almost 500,000 followers on that. Yeah, it's kind of. Kind of ridiculous. Yeah, it's crazy. And we even started that stuff when YouTube was just in the early stages of people doing those videos.

Right.

But I think. Yeah, so the. The BBQ with Franklin YouTube page has a ton of subscribers. We're actually actively shooting things to upload right now, and there may or may not be a really fun project coming down the road.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Teaser.

[Aaron Franklin]

Right, that's it.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So what is one thing about your business? A system, a process, a core value, a belief that you think has made you truly unstoppable.

[Aaron Franklin]

Again, the attention to detail in the constant. And not like tinkering, just a tinker, but the level of detail that we go through every day. I mean, for example, not just the briskets and the pepper and the seasoning and all that kind of stuff. We. We do adjust things accordingly. But, like, the way we Cook, like, we have a chat. We all talk about the food every day. I'm like, hey, you know, the three fats on a brisket, they all render at different temperatures. They cook in different ways, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we'll go through each day, day's cook in real time to affect the next day's cook. So we're constantly like, hey, raise three degrees between hours five and six and a half on this cooker, blah, blah, blah. We map everything out, we keep track of everything. We're obsessive about the details so we can backtrack stuff and correct paths, like when the weather changes a little bit throughout, like during a cook. Like today, it's a little windy, obviously, but the weather's beautiful. We're going to cook, cook different today than we did on Friday.

Yeah, yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

In that humidity, you know, I'm sure it plays into how the wood burns.

[Aaron Franklin]

Or maybe all the stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, barometric pressure has an effect. Like, everything has an effect. But the fact that we communicate so heavily and I could be anywhere in the world and go on our text, on our cook's text thread, zoom in on a picture, and then we'll talk and be like, hey, little, you know, a little off on this one, blah, blah, blah. Send more pics from Cooker 3, you know, and then they'll start coming in during lunch because we take pictures during lunch. And they'll have the code of where it, what position it was on which cooker. They're like, okay, hey, so and so I think you finished a little bit too hot last night on this cooker and be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I struggle with fires.

Yeah.

Or then like, I can pinpoint when somebody's having a hard time with something. Like, it's us being so proactive and excessively detailed. That's, that's really what makes, likes this place. Maybe other people do that, but I don't know.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Aaron, I've really enjoyed today's conversation, man. Thank you so much for letting me share your story. To pull back the layers, to get into your mind a little bit, to understand what it is about.

[Aaron Franklin]

It's pretty dark in there.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, man. I thought it was pretty bright, dude. I really enjoyed it. You know, really what we're trying to do is to, to make an example of the people behind the restaurants. It's not just what you're doing with the food in the hospitality, but it's your beliefs, it's your values. It's. It's the, the, the energy you're putting into the world. And. And you're one of many people here in Austin. You know, we think of, like, a concept like P. Terry's. Right. That has now 36 locations. But you think of how that organization scaled, and they were at 15 locations, and they never left their backyard.

[Aaron Franklin]

You know, it's true.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And they've scaled well, and they open.

[Aaron Franklin]

A new location, and you still, like, I'll pop in and I'll still see Patrick in the back working a fryer with a little paper hat on. That's flipping cool, right?

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I mean, they have left the market, like the. The Austin market, but they got the San Antonio in Houston and one in.

[Aaron Franklin]

Dallas very thoughtful about.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And they're like, in Round Rock and Pflugerville. And for P. Patrick, he's like, that's outside the market, you know, so, like. But the point I'm trying to make, like, I'm thinking like Jay from Cilantro. J. Kim, you know.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And, like, there seems to be this. This running theme in Austin right now, yourself included, where it's not so much about how big can you create something, how can you scale something, but it's about, what is it that makes us special? How do we hang on to that? How do we protect that? How do we protect the brand at all costs?

[Aaron Franklin]

Well, I feel like that's a real Austin thing, like, a lot of other cities, too, but, like, not every place is like that.

Yeah.

And a lot of communities don't really care about that stuff, but Austin certainly does. And, you know, with Jay and Patrick and all those guys, like, they've both lived in Austin for a really, really long time, and I think that's just kind of how we roll around here. That's one of the many, many things that many makes Austin truly a special.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Place, and it's an honor to make an example of it. And I think when you talk about the future of the industry and how we're moving to a more mom and pop place, I think you're right. And I think that it's because we're starting to understand the significance of relationships and being seen and being valued. And I. And I. You know, you see it in the world right now where people are starting to value their menu, their, you know, the food they're putting in their bodies. And I think we're starting to realize that the relationships are having the same effect on our mental health.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yep. Absolutely.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And I'm so hopeful for the future. And it's people like you echoing these sentiments. One last question before we. We have you call somebody out 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. With the exception of three pieces of wisdom that you could leave behind for the good of humanity and your legacy. What would those three pieces of wisdom be? It's a doozy.

[Aaron Franklin]

These are tough questions. Yeah, I mean, I guess how to do this, this whole like barbecue thing, you know, is, is the big one, I guess.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think you're doing that. I mean you're, you're.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, I mean, I think we've already done everything. I can't think of anything new.

[Eric Cacciatore]

So the wisdom is, you know, paying for the knowledge associated with barbecue. That's what, what's number two?

[Aaron Franklin]

You know, just example of being nice and kind to people. Yeah, I think goes a long way. Obvious, low hanging fruit.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Number three.

[Aaron Franklin]

I don't know, I'm gonna throw a random one out there. How to fix a carburetor.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Also attention to detail. It's about the little things.

[Aaron Franklin]

Right.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I think that's been a big underlying theme in today's conversation. And I try to find the majority of my guests through word of mouth, through networking, at asking successful people who they respect and admire. That's how I found you. Arlen Smith called you out. Who do you respect and admire in the industry? Who do you think is doing good work? Who has good knowledge? Who needs to be made an example of? We're going to change this industry.

[Aaron Franklin]

I think there are so, so, so many people out there. But you know who I think you should talk to?

[Eric Cacciatore]

Stacy.

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, you should talk to Stacey. Stacy.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Is that, is that who we were?

[Aaron Franklin]

Absolutely.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I would love to talk to Stacy. Should I just keep this stuff set up?

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, sure.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I would love to make that happen. Stacy, look out. I'm coming after you. And how can we connect if we are interested in your master classes or if you want to maybe, I don't know, buy one of your pits. Like is there a place where all this is centrally located?

[Aaron Franklin]

I would say get on the Franklin BBQ website, franklinbbq.com and everything should go from there. Like you can get a hold of the YouTube page. You could do the masterclass. There's just links everywhere.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Yeah, it's well, it's well organized.

[Aaron Franklin]

Or probably just Google.

Yep.

Would work fine too.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it. And you know, tons of stuff going. We didn't even talk about your books. You want to give a little shout out to the. How many cookbooks?

[Aaron Franklin]

Yeah, there's three books. The most recent one is Franklin Smoke. You know, it's more of like a backyardy kind of like smaller scale cooking. The second book is called Franklin Steak. It's all about getting super nerdy on steaks. Lots of kind of experiments in there. And the first one was the Barbecue Manifesto. So that was more like our story, how to run a restaurant. I kind of like the new one because it's newer, but it's also kind of of a state of the union. Like, we wrote the first 1 in 13 and a lot of stuff has happened. So then it kind of gets it up to date and.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it.

[Aaron Franklin]

You know, I don't know that we'll ever do another one, but yeah, those books are out there and.

[Eric Cacciatore]

And that's right in the backyard.

[Aaron Franklin]

The Smoke one is. Yeah.

Yep.

[Eric Cacciatore]

Got it. Awesome. We'll have a summary of today's discussion in the show. Notes, any links to tools or services. We'll try to get the links to the book and your website in there as well. And I literally cannot do what I do without people like you who are very busy. I recognize that. Stopping to carve out two hours of their day to sit down with me and to share your story.

[Aaron Franklin]

Turn my ringer off. Who knows what's gonna be.

[Eric Cacciatore]

To share your perspective, man. Thank you so much.

[Aaron Franklin]

Absolutely. Thanks for chitchatting.

[Eric Cacciatore]

I appreciate it. There is no questioning, my man. You are unstoppable. Cheers.