1221: Mo Pittle, Owner/Operator of Jewboy Burgers and Root Beer Industries

Summary

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Restaurant Unstoppable Episode 1221: Mo Pittle, Owner/Operator of Jewboy Burgers and Root Beer Industries

Date: September 22, 2025
Host: Eric Cacciatore
Guest: Mo Pittle

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Overview

In this dynamic and candid episode, Eric Cacciatore sits down with Mo Pittle, the creative force behind Jewboy Burgers and Root Beer Industries, for a long-form discussion on entrepreneurship, branding, marketing, and the harsh realities and rewards of the restaurant industry. The conversation moves beyond surface-level tactics, providing deeply human insights into what makes a restaurant brand not just successful, but meaningful and lasting. Mo shares his journey from a career in advertising to founding his own restaurant group, running through pivotal moments of risk, self-discovery, and staying true to one's narrative—all with a focus on genuine connection with staff and customers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mo Pittle’s Background and Path to Hospitality

• Pivot from Advertising to Restaurants

  • Mo spent two decades as a creative director and agency owner, then “needed a break.” Overhead and the client dynamic were draining, so he decided to consult, eventually starting a food truck as a case study for his marketing clients.
  • “The whole purpose of that endeavor was to create a case study for my marketing firm. I wanted to prove to some of my clients that, look, listen to me, give me a chance, let’s do it my way.” (06:32)

• Case Study Turns to a Calling

  • What began as a temporary project to demonstrate the power of branding and narrative in food turned into a passion and business. His experience on the food truck—handling everything from orders to operations—radically shaped his hands-on, narrative-driven approach to hospitality.

2. Branding, Narrative, and Authenticity in Business

• On Building a Brand

  • Mo’s central thesis is that narrative is everything. Brands should be rooted in who you are, not manufactured for effect.
  • “You have to have a narrative. We are a narrative-driven society. If you don’t have a narrative that somebody can internalize and, in the best of situations, externalize, tell people about it… who cares?” (18:03)
  • Jewboy Burgers reflects Mo’s multicultural upbringing, fusing Jewish and southwest Texas influences—an authentic celebration of culture, not a cheap gimmick.

• Rejection of Inauthentic Marketing

  • Mo never paid for influencer marketing, avoided yelling superlatives, and never succumbed to manufacturing hype. Instead, he focused on organic word of mouth and letting the customer’s experience (“the vibe”) do the talking.
  • “My brand is laid back. My brand is: hey, come in, tell me a story, I’ll tell you a story, we talk some shit, eat some burgers, and you’re good.” (73:57)

• Controlling the Narrative

  • “If you don’t own your narrative, someone else is going to. And when they tell your story, it’s never going to be as good as when you tell your own story.” (23:43)

3. Operational Realities and Lessons Learned

• From Food Truck to Brick & Mortar

  • Mo stresses the importance of grit—highlighting the grueling, unglamorous daily grind of life on a food truck.
  • “At 8 o’clock… we would then shut down, clean, pack all the food up, put it back into these coolers, and I would drive all the way out to Cedar Park, unload the food into the commissary because I couldn’t run the generator all night. I’d get home about 10 o'clock, sometimes 11:30… not to mention the cost of fuel, the cost of maintenance.” (57:47)

• Numbers and Transparency

  • Across five locations, the business runs about $5 million a year in revenue (07:19). Prime costs hover between 55-60%, with labor specifically at 26-27%. Mo offers transparency about starting capital (~$100K line of credit), and the realities of closing unprofitable or off-brand locations.

• Proof of Concept Before Scaling

  • He recommends food trucks as proof of concept for product and market, but they are no substitute for running a full restaurant.

4. People, Team, and Culture

• On Management and Motivation

  • Mo’s guiding mantra: “You must give a shit. Please.”
    • “I love the vibe of giving a shit… There’s very little that’s worse than walking up to a place and the server looks at you with that dead look… I pay [staff] well. I show them I care. We do weekly payrolls… that are designed to help them understand that I know what you’re going through.” (10:06)
  • Pays above-market rates and looks after employees in and out of work, acknowledging this isn’t “scalable” but is at the core of his current success and workplace culture.

• Empowering the Team

  • “I think it’s the true faith I put in the employees. If I believe they give a shit, I will have faith in them.” (113:57)

• On Transformation

  • “I now have a better understanding of who my staff is and what matters to them and how to make that work for me.” (114:33)

5. The Evolving Landscape of Restaurant Marketing

• The Rise and Fall of Social Media

  • Early on, Mo saw Facebook as an opportunity: “It was no longer about who had the most money… but whoever had the best message gets the attention… If you were good at exposing things and storytelling, you could get exposure.” (22:33)
  • But now, giant platforms dominate—“There’s three companies that own the Internet. Google, Meta, and Tiktok… We kind of had this moment of wild, wild west and now the money came back in.” (23:05)
  • Mo hopes the shallow “AI-generated creativity” is a death spiral and authenticity/word of mouth returns to center stage.

• Influencers and PR

  • Spent $12K of $100K startup funds on PR, but fundamentally relies on organic relationships, grassroots customer interaction, and authentic storytelling.
  • “The bulk of that 12K went towards identifying influencers… you have to know who the players are, who matters, who’s doing what and why.” (66:24)
  • Focused on getting the right people talking about Jewboy Burgers naturally rather than via paid posts.

6. Customer Experience & Feedback

• Direct Personal Engagement

  • Mo personally greets and chats with diners:
    • “I talk to the customers a lot. I walk around, I look at what they’re eating, what they’re not eating… You’re not gonna get any better marketing research than talking to a customer eating your food, right?” (16:12)

• Back-End Data

  • Doesn’t engage or automate digital feedback (like marquee dashboards):
    • “I have a policy. I’ve never responded to a review, positive or negative, and I never will. I want to hear what they’re saying, but… we’re not so big that I can’t do that myself. Plus, I go and talk to people.” (94:21)

• On Collabs and Expanding Brand Reach

  • Collaborations with other chefs or concepts are both fun and practical:
    • “We did a collab with a Chinese restaurant… it's a great way to scale a brand, by the way, doing those collabs, partnering with people and putting your spin on their food and pulling from that audience that they have.” (91:28)

7. Philosophy, Wisdom, and Mo’s Rules to Live By

• Happiness, Caring, and Community

  • “Find a way to be happy. Life’s too short… Give a shit. Care about what you do, because again, life’s short. If you can help—help, why not?" (115:57)

• No Magic Beans

  • Beware of “magic bean” solutions—success comes from hard, consistent, authentic work and building real relationships with staff and customers.
  • “Everybody has a different approach. Everybody has a different narrative. What they’re lacking is the ability to tell it and the understanding of why it’s going to matter to people.” (108:35)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Delusion in Entrepreneurship:

  • “You almost need a level of delusion to keep going in this industry.” (05:04, Eric)
  • “Delusional thinking can generate some very interesting ideas.” (05:08, Mo)

• On Building a Business:

  • “You gotta give before you get.” (12:03, Eric)
  • “You can’t ask somebody to give a shit about you if you don’t give a shit about them—100%.” (12:02, Mo)

• On Industry Awards:

  • “If that’s what’s defining your success, then you’ve missed a lot… Tangibles will dictate success… but it’s the intangibles that give you the really big pops.” (34:21, Mo)

• On Customer Feedback:

  • “The only thing that’s going to hurt my feelings is if you never tell me.” (90:00, Mo)

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Timestamps of Important Segments

| Timestamp (MM:SS) | Segment | Key Topics | |------------------|---------|------------| | 04:45 – 10:06 | Mo’s unstoppable attitude; the power of “delusional” resilience; how many locations and business structure | Entrepreneurial mentality, Scale, Structure | | 12:12 – 18:03 | Branding roots, importance of narrative | Authentic branding, Marketing origins | | 23:12 – 26:20 | The marketing/communication landscape: internet, social media, and authenticity | Social media, Narrative ownership | | 27:19 – 31:28 | Human connection vs. automation; customer experience insights | Tech vs. human experience | | 34:21 – 35:18 | Awards, success, the dangers of chasing external validation | Restaurant awards, Ego checks | | 54:33 – 59:18 | The daily grind—real food truck operations | Startup reality, logistics | | 66:01 – 73:57 | PR as brand-building; role of influencers, organic “anti-marketing” strategy | PR strategy, Influencer culture | | 80:32 – 83:03 | Product-market fit, authenticity, evolving menu to fit personal/artistic vision | Menu development, Originality | | 91:28 – 92:22 | Partnering with other brands, cultural celebration, embracing customer curiosity | Collaborations, Brand celebration | | 113:57 – 114:33 | On unstoppable systems and personal transformation | Team trust, Leadership evolution | | 115:57 – 118:36 | Mo’s top three rules for life and leadership | Happiness, Caring, Helping others |

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Closing & Recommendations

Mo concludes with a call to focus inward, understand your unique story, and build your restaurant concept around deep authenticity. He emphasizes the importance of caring—both for your team and your guests—and the need to appreciate that there are many ways to be successful in this business.

Recommended Guest:
Mo nominates Eric Silverstein (Peach Tortilla) as a next-level operator and someone with a broad, valuable perspective.

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Connect with Mo & Jewboy Burgers

• Website: JewboyBurgers.com
• Social Media: All managed directly by Mo — reach out via DMs and website.

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Final Takeaways

• Authenticity and narrative trump “quick fix” marketing.
• Direct feedback and real relationships with your team and customers shape culture and brand.
• There’s no one formula—success is a deeply personal journey, rooted in self-awareness, grit, and a willingness to care.

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“There is no question in my mind, you are unstoppable.” – Eric Cacciatore (121:07)

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Transcript

[A]

What up Unstoppables? If you've been enjoying Restaurant Unstoppable podcasts and you want to take your growth and your learning to the next level, we highly encourage you to join Restaurant Unstoppable Live where we literally are going to work with you creating live events for your needs, your interests. And if, if I can help you, I can help a thousand people. That's the mindset. So we have some great live events coming at you this week. Today, if you're listening to this early, you still have time to join us at 11am Eastern for coffee with Eric where I just make myself available to listen to you. And this is really where you get to influence the direct of the podcast. On Tuesday the 23rd, we have the Profit First Power Hour with Casey Anton at 10am Eastern. If you've been hearing about profit first and you want to leverage it in your restaurant, this is where you want to show up. Casey's the author of Profit first for Restaurants. She is the authority on the subject. She's making herself available once a quarter to serve you. And then on Wednesday at the 24th at 11am we have Rudy Mick who's going to be doing part two of his three part series. The first part, Part one, we covered vision, purpose and values. Values as tools. And then on Wednesday the 23rd we're going to be talking about Cartman's drama triangle and conscious communication. I'm excited for this part, so it's going to be awesome. And then be sure to join us the following week we're going to be talking about integrating these three pieces to define excellence. Head over to restaurantunstoppable.com live, be a part of the conversation and let me go to work for you. We'll see you. Welcome to restaurant unstoppable. For 10 years and over 1,000 episodes, I've been traveling the country chasing word of mouth leads and having in person only long form discussions with the industry's finest owners and operators. Our mission is to inspire, empower and transform the restaurant industry by bridging the gap between this generation's leaders and the next. Listen to today's guest and so many others and get one step closer to becoming unstoppable. This episode is made possible by me M 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 Restaura 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 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 restaurant unstoppable.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 Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's all going down between August 19th and 20th. This is going to be one you do 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 fanatics2025 or just go to usfoods.com and look for the banner with excitement. Allow me to introduce to you today's guest owner, operator of Root Beer Industries, which consists of JBoy burgers, sliders, subs and Cantina. Mo Piddle. My man Mo, are you feeling unstoppable today?

[B]

You know, look at me. You want to try to stop me?

[A]

I don't want to try. No. I'm going for your ankles. If I do, though.

[B]

Yeah, it's 100%. And I'm not just saying that. That is. You know, I've been an entrepreneur since I was 29 years old, and if you don't feel that way, I feel like you've got problems.

[A]

Yeah, man, you almost need a level of delusion to keep going in this industry.

[B]

I'm okay with that? Yeah, yeah. Delusional thinking can generate some very interesting ideas.

[A]

I'm here because Jeff Gothard called you out from Kick Hospitality. Spoke to both Jeff and his partner doing great things with Kick Hospitality and he had amazing things to say about you. You at your. You currently. How many different brick and mortars do you have today?

[B]

Okay, so Juboy Burgers is our quote unquote flagship. And I have to quote that because I'm not so sure that that's what I really want to call it. But that's where we started with. And then I have the Juboy Sub shop, which is also brick and mortar. Then we have two trailers doing sliders. Juboy Sliders. And then a third that is under construction right now is going to be part of a company called Pins Mechanical, which interestingly enough, is out of Ohio, which is where I was born. Raised in Texas, but born in Ohio, so I am a Browns fan, sadly. But. And so we're going to be inside of there. So it's not exactly a truck, but it is still sliders and a very limited menu. But it's with that in mind that where people drink, they like to eat, vice versa.

[A]

Got it. And real big picture. In terms of like. So those concepts, would you say that Juboy Burgers is like your. In terms of like your cash cow. It's the one that's like the leader.

[B]

It's the heavy lifter for sure.

[A]

And it's been around. You started with that in 2017.

[B]

So 2016, October of 16. I started as a food truck.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

And the whole purpose of that endeavor was to create a case study for my marketing firm. So at the time, I had had started with a full service ad agency, did that for 12 years, and then realized that I felt like I needed a break. The overhead, the nature of the clients you have to take when you have overhead. Yeah. Can. Can really affect you. So I was going to consult. Yeah, we're going to pull all the.

[A]

Layers back on that real quick. I just kind of want to give us an idea of like where you are with like numbers.

[B]

Okay. So. So with those five locations we opened and then had to close for a number of reasons. The cantina concept, which is border style Mexican comfort food, still under the Juboy brand. So with those in mind. Let me think. I got to do the math and it's not my strong suit. We run in about five million.

[A]

Five million?

[B]

Yeah. And. And our.

[A]

And that's three brick and mortars, two trailers.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Got it. And with your. With The Juboy burgers, I think that's probably we're going to be talking about most today. Right. Because that's where most of your time has been spent.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

In of prime costs. Where you at with your labor?

[B]

So labor, it's interesting. The way we work it here is we incorporate the tips. And tips were a real sticky point for us, but we're running about 26 to 7% labor cost of goods, high 20s, low 30s. Kind of depending on what the economy is doing and what our. Okay. We don't buy a whole lot of stuff so that when one thing changes, it has a dramatic beef.

[A]

For example, you're floating between 55 and 60%, correct? In that ballpark, yeah. And what about your occupancy rate or your percentage there? Like, how much was rent?

[B]

Minimal. I mean, comparatively speaking. Because 4%. Yeah, if that, if that, yeah. Okay. Now specifically on you boy burgers, obviously the trailers are different because they have very little rent. The new space we're going into, we negotiated a trailer style contract. Okay. So same thing.

[A]

Got it, got it. And with your Jew boy concept, would you say was it like 50, 40 seats?

[B]

I don't know. It was an old Kentucky Fried Chicken. So whatever that is, I should know these things.

[A]

I've gotten pretty good at like going into a space and being like, okay. Because I'm looking around, I'm trying to figure out the economics from like in this counter service.

[B]

Well, it is. Counter service will always be counter service for me. Nothing against servers, but I just don't have the bandwidth for them. Yeah. If you include the patios, it. It expands dramatically.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And we built an extra patio on. Because we started during COVID so.

[A]

So anywhere from like 30 to 60 during, like pre. Like when you're on all cylinders.

[B]

God, all cylinders. We could. Could probably be closer to about 200.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

Yeah, because you've got. Those patios are big and there's a lot of. One side has larger tables for larger groups. Like, you can get like, you know.

[A]

Eight people at one of those if you want to.

[B]

Yeah, I've seen. We've had people come in and do impromptu bachelor party type things and birthday parties and stuff like that.

[A]

The. The product looks phenomenal. Like, from the branding to the actual product itself. The food. I was shooting some B roll. I. I don't always shoot the B roll before the conversation. So it's kind of cool to get in there and see the food. And I'm definitely leaving with.

[B]

With a bird, please. Gotta have both.

[A]

Hey, twist my Arm. So counter service, you know, are they running food or calling food?

[B]

We use toast. Has a function where you can text them and people will come get it. If it sits for more than a couple, you know, minutes, I have them go looking for people, but. Cool. We're. We're trying to be as lean as possible. I love that.

[A]

Let's get into that later, too. Okay. So before, we kind of. We kind of went a little out of order today. I'm not going to lie. I usually have you share the success quote or mantra first. Let's have you get that motivational ball going with that. What do you got for us?

[B]

Yeah, my. My mantra is, you must give a shit, please. If you work for me, if you work with me, if you. I love the vibe of giving a shit. It shows me so many things and it's so important. Yeah. Whether it's from internal purposes or external purposes, customers can tell. I can tell. There's very little that's worse than walking up to a place and the server looks at you with that. We want.

[A]

How do you get somebody to give a shit?

[B]

I pay them well. I show them I care. I. You know, we. We do weekly payrolls, things like that, that are. That are designed to help them understand that I know what you're going through. I may be the one driving a nice car, but you're the ones that make that happen for me, and I want them to understand that.

[A]

I don't have more than one car.

[B]

Yeah, I got a couple.

[A]

Okay. The car that you said that was yours in the parking lot.

[B]

No, that's. That's a 99 Isuzu vehicross for sale. By the way, if you're looking for one, I've got a 71 Mustang Mach 1 that I'm. Same thing. Trying to get rid of. Got an F250.

[A]

You might be the one driving the nice car is what you're saying. And I was like. I raised an eyebrow. I was like, what car are you talking about, buddy?

[B]

Although it's got a hell of a stereo in it back to my days in high school.

[A]

So basically, like, what was that? Trans. Thought you might be the one driving the nice car.

[B]

But what. But. But I know that. That I'm not the end all like, yeah, I started this. Yes, I'm accountable. Yes, I'm the one that has something on the line, but it just doesn't happen without them, and I can't be here all the time, and I don't want to be here all the time. So I show Them that I care. I've bailed employees out of jail, I've paid for medical procedures. And I get it. It's not something that's scalable, but at the time and for right now, it's who I am. It's what I want them to know about me. And you can't ask somebody to give a shit about you if you don't give a shit about them 100%.

[A]

You got to give before you get.

[B]

Yeah. And it works itself out. You know, I've even had people quit. They say, cuz, you know what, Mo? I just, I really don't give a shit anymore. Yeah, fair.

[A]

You know, looking at your background, I got really excited for today's conversation. Clearly branding, marketing, understanding who you are, communicating that is a big part of your background. It was what you were doing up until 2016.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I mean, how much should we go? How far back should we go? Where should we start sharing your story?

[B]

Um, that's a great question. I, you know, for me, it's probably my fourth year of college when I decided after four years of pre med I did not want to be a doctor and had to explain that to my four years. I went through the whole thing. Yeah, I've.

[A]

I wish I. Yeah, I can relate, man.

[B]

I mean, I'm good at trivia. I got enough useless crap in my head. But you know, I realized then that I wanted creativity to be a part of my existence. And it took a while to figure out that you could actually make a living doing that because I come from a background of fairly straightforward thought process. You're a doctor, you're a lawyer, you're an engineer. You know, you, you have to be one of those three things. And I've probably made it worse in my head than it was, but the pressure's there, you know, when you grow up in a certain way and you want to exceed what your parents have done. And I never realized that there were multiple paths. And the reason I'm telling you this is because I then spent, let's see, so that would be from 96 until basically until 2016. So was that 20 years? Yeah, yeah. In, in a field that was driven by creativity, as a creative director, as a copywriter by trade, you're. You're trained to, to look at things from all angles. You're trained to see different ways to achieve a result. And when I pivoted and created the food truck, it was not with being a restaurateur in mind. It was a case study. I really wanted to prove to Some of my clients that, look, listen to me, give me a chance. Let's do it my way, and if it doesn't work, I'll be accountable. And I tried different types of incentive billings and things like that, but really, at the end of the day, if you can't show them something, they're not going to go with it. And even then, I hated the fact that I was told what to do and then held accountable. To this day, it still bothers me. You came to me. You know what I do and why I do it. Now let me do it. And you come off angry. And I'm not an angry person. I want to be an angry person. It's bad for the heart. So once I got into the food industry, I realized how much I liked it. But I approach it like a marketing project. I still approach it like a case study, for better or worse. And I think in most cases, I mean, because we're sitting here today, I think you could argue for better. But there are certainly some times that I'm just not a good restaurateur because I'm looking at it through that objective creative lens and not through a real hard business lens. And so over the last few years, I've gotten better about taking a step back from that. But you asked where the story begun. It's when I realized that creativity can be a way to make a living, that you don't have to be a starving artist. You don't have to be, you know, from the outside, fighting in. I used to say to my political clients, I would say to them, the Death Star never blew up from the outside. Each time it blew up, somebody had to get way deep inside there and do something to it. And I feel the same with, with, with whatever type of endeavor you're doing. If you're going to propose change, you have to be in the inside.

[A]

Yes. Dude, you're. Yes. I say it all the time. Change comes from the inside out.

[B]

I mean, this is the. The. The Trojan horse thing, you know, I mean all these things. But for whatever reason, the angry people like to stand outside the walls and throw rocks. When the people that can actually do something and get change made, you got to go on the inside. And so for me, like I said, I still look at it that way, and it's a little heavy thought for cheeseburgers, but to me, I had this conversation of the other day with somebody. I talked to the customers a lot. I like talking to the customers. I think you talk about marketing research. You're not gonna get any Better than talking to a customer who's eating your food, right?

[A]

Feedback.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're there. I walk around, I look at what they're eating, what they're not eating. But what were we talking about? That made me laugh. Oh, man. Too much gummies these days. I gotta back off on those things. I lose my train of thought a lot. You know, I was wondering.

[A]

I mean, did I smell something when I watched in here?

[B]

You know, we think that. I don't. I don't personally smoke. I'm a big fan of the. The chemistry availables. Yes. I. I like that.

[A]

I was like, maybe it might be that kind of interview today. We'll see where it goes.

[B]

I can't work high.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I'm there with you, man.

[B]

I've tried. I've got a few guys that work for me that. And I've always told them, I said, look, you do what you have to do to be the best you.

[A]

Right. And I've, you know, like, I will say I love most of the things in life that you're not there that are not good for you, but I've learned also that, like, I like being productive more.

[B]

Yeah. It's like.

[A]

So there's a time and place and there seems to be fewer. Fewer places and times in my life right now. But no. No judgment there.

[B]

Yeah. And I've got kids. That was a weird period. Now. Now they'll get high with me, but that's a different story.

[A]

Hey, man. Maybe that's a conversation for another day. But where does it make sense to start? Like, going back, I think you kind of. You kind of give us a glimpse of what you were doing. But I think there's lessons there, and I don't want to just pass over the marketing and the copywriting. And I say this often, and it's a pattern I'm seeing in the people that I'm interviewing is that it's no longer the. The chef general manager combo. That is like the, like the. The rocket fuel, the visionary integrator, like, combination, you know, creativity management that, like, seems to make it. There's more going on today, and it's almost like you need the. The culinary talent, you need the operational talent, you need the. The. The legal talent, you need the, like, the CFO talent. And you also need this marketing talent. You're seeing more marketers getting into the game, and that's their lane, and they have equity, they're partners in the business, and they focus solely on marketing.

[B]

I'm going to drop a Word on you that I'm going to use ad nauseam and feel free to stop me from saying it. You have to have a narrative. We are a narrative driven society. I don't care what you do, who you are. If you don't have a narrative that somebody can internalize and then in the best of situations, externalize it, tell people about it, it's great to come up with all these great things, but if nobody knows about it, who cares? And when it comes to marketing now based on things like social media and the way that the Internet has just diversified communications, I mean, we could get very academic here, but for the better part of the modern society, it's been a very linear path. It's been print, then it was radio, then it was broadcast. You had billboards, you had newspapers, things like that. But it was all very linear and very few people controlled the narrative. The Internet comes along and it goes from this very linear, streamlined thing to out of control, fractionalized information coming at us. And I personally believe that we as human beings are undergoing an evolutionary period.

[A]

Oh, for sure.

[B]

I don't think our brains were wired, especially our age, you know, guys that are my age and older. To get this much information all at once is overwhelming. And so when you think about how you're going to communicate, you have to take these things into consideration. So with the idea of Jew boy burgers was a way to learn social media, start a narrative. I would have clients come to me. This is back in 2014 and 15. We want to be on Facebook because it's free. And wait a second. And you know, I got on, I checked it out. It's like, at first it was fun. Like, I haven't seen that dude in a long time. Oh, look at him. He's fat, he's skinny, he's rich, he's this. And then the human highlight reel took over. And next thing you know, so much of this stuff is curated and created and most people don't have the bandwidth, the intellectual bandwidth, to recognize what's real and what's made up. And, and I think it's created a mental block for a lot of people. I think you could consider that about half this country is, is not able anymore to discern between reality and, and, and fiction.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And I don't want to get political or anything.

[A]

No, please do. I. I kind of want to get more political. It's one of the reasons why I'm like, hesitant about getting newer sponsors on the show because I'm worried about, like, what I want to Say, you know.

[B]

Look, racism isn't enough to split a society down the middle because the numbers don't make sense. It can't be racism. Racism is nice to put out there to say. Yeah, because it's bad.

[A]

Right?

[B]

We all know it's bad. But what is causing half of our society to think completely different from the other half? And I'm not going to get on one side or the other here, but I'm asking the question.

[A]

It's politics.

[B]

What? But it's politics for a long time. When have we ever been so diametrically opposed?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And for me, this comes from that inability to figure out what's real and what's fake.

[A]

This episode is made possible by me's. 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 job done right looks like. In me's pain 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, M 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.com stoppable that's G-E-T-M-E-E-Z.com unstoppable. Right? So you said something earlier and I think you were right and I agree. And I. So there is like, the evolution of media has been very linear, right? Or communication. It started with the printing press and then it went to print media. That which was all stem from the printing. Before that it was word of mouth. Yeah, it was all word of mouth and then went to stone tablets and the printing press and then to your point, radio, television and. And then the Internet came and it was a really great time because we could. It was no matter. It was no longer about who had the most money, had the message. It was whoever had the best message gets the attention. And if you were good at exposing things and communicating and storytelling, you could get exposure. And that was cool for like 20 years or maybe 15 years. And then the money started to figure it out and like, they're like, we really need to get our hands around this, this Internet thing. And we're going back to linear where now it used. So like the money controlled the print, the money controlled the radio, the money controlled the, the television. There were three TV stations for like the longest time that owned everything. Right. And now there's three companies that own the Internet. Mostly if you're talking about eyes on the screen, it's Google, it's Meta, and it's Tick tock.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then you get like the other players and the restaurant industry, like Yelp and all those other things too. It's back to where we were.

[B]

Please ask me about Yelp later. We'll keep that in your file.

[A]

The point being is like, we kind of had this moment of like wild, wild west and like opportunity.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And now the money is kind of came back in and said, no, no, no, no, no, we control this. Again, to your point, the marketers and I say this a lot and it's exactly what you're talking about. I've had now into 1200 episodes I've recorded, plus no one's ever discussed this that, you know, it's. You cannot tell what's real anymore. And I, as I'm saying this, what's going through your mind? I don't want to talk too much. What do you think?

[B]

No, no, no, it's. It goes back to the narrative. You have to own your narrative because if you don't own your narrative, somebody else is going to. And when they tell your story, it's never going to be as good as when you tell your own story. When you control the customer experience, when you control things that had, had felt like they were commoditized for years are now right back into the forefront of what you need to do. I've said this, and I'll say it.

[A]

To everybody, when things you commoditize for years is now at the fore. What do you mean by that?

[B]

Well, I mean, certain things were just given. They were, they were understood and they were. Restaurants didn't. Weren't as concerned necessarily about their customer experience because they knew they could control that by the food looking a certain way, the servers falling into a script. Like everything was. This is very much a McDonald's thing. Right. They turned everything into the set. They, they kind of lost their creativity. Yeah. Now that's. It's a little high of me to say. I mean, but certain true aspects, not.

[A]

Everybody, but like verticals of the industry.

[B]

Yeah. It became programmed and programming is, is good in certain sense, but in other ways it just shuts down innovation. It Shuts down creativity. It shuts down a broader perspective. You're stuck within, in those, those rails go up and you can't get outside of those rails. You don't want your people getting outside of them. You don't want your business getting. You make sure that everything stays here. Yeah, it works if you've got however many thousands of locations McDonald's has. But that's not the model moving forward for anybody who's trying to break into the industry. I mean, yeah, I've seen a couple of fast food things spark up. I don't know, man. I worked on the McDonald's account when I was back east. The numbers I saw the. At the time they had 45% of the QSR Market. Market, which is a trillion dollar market. I mean, it's crazy when you think people don't realize how big McDonald's is, how influential McDonald's is. And so for that reason, so many people kind of fall into that, whether they realize it or not. They're running, they've seen the founder, they're running their business the way McDonald's runs their business. Even fine dining falls into that category. And I'm not suggesting a complete revolution, but what I'm saying is that if you're going to try to talk to customers now you're competing with McDonald's for voice. You're competing with some of these big entities that can just squash you just because, like you said, it's now back to being money. So what are you gonna do to get outside of that? How are you going to create something that is relevant to, to a consumer and, and is relevant enough that they're gonna tell their friends about it? We're back to word of mouth. Yeah, yeah. And, and that's really what this is, is a very fancy way of saying we now have just a very big mouth.

[A]

Well, you know, it's, it's interesting. I think that as we're talking a little bit before we got started about the world of AI and what's happening here, I wonder sometimes if we, if the Internet is starting to go so far. Like, like you're seeing more and more AI on social media and like you're. I don't want to be entertained by artificial creativity. I don't. I have no desire to be entertained by artificial creativity. And I think that because people are just so over social media, nobody's doing it because they want to, they're doing it because they have to. And they're going to delegate it to social. They're going to delegate it to automation and fake creativity. And I. I hope it's a death spiral, man. I hope. I hope. I hope it's a death spiral, and I hope things go back to word of mouth, because I think as we learn more about the human element and, like, at the end of the day, business is all about relationships, and relationships are a human thing. And word of mouth is still to this day, king in terms of what people trust.

[B]

Let me give you an example. We. We tried, and I'm not unwilling to try anything. Honestly, I. I look at this as house money sometimes. And again, that's coming back to that creative director's look. We went into a food hall, and it's a really great food hall. I, like, the general manager convinced me to go in there, and I was curious to see if we could exist in a corporate entity in a corporate environment, something that was really regulated and structured. Like, I was talking about. The first thing they suggested is, we don't need a front of house. You just put a kiosk up there, let people order their own food. Well, is a kiosk gonna give a shit about what you want to eat? Is a kiosk gonna be able to answer your questions? And even if it could, even if there's a beautifully descriptive, you know, part in there about what you're gonna eat, is it the same as, you know, when people come up to me like, well, what should I get? I go, well, let's start with a couple questions. Do you like savory? Like, spicy? Oh, I like spicy. So most people come in, especially if they've been waiting in line, they're just like, I'll just have a cheap boy burger and cool. No, man. Do you like lettuce, pickles, mustard and cheese? They think about it, and I go to see.

[A]

They.

[B]

Either they build to the side, they build up, or they build down. Nobody builds their burger in front of you. Like, I don't really like mustard. Cool. Our house sauce is a smoky aioli that we created. It's awesome on that burger. I love it. So you've just. From that one little piece of human interaction, you've just made their. Their experience infinitely better because they may get it and eat it with mustards. Whoa. It's the Jew boy burger. And I've heard about it, and I've been waiting in line for 30 minutes to get it. But that's not enough. They have to. What? You know, all these questions are so important in making sure that they get the experience that they want. It's not that big of a deal, to ask questions, to have a conversation. Does it slow us down a little bit? Yeah. I'm not on the register as often as I used to be because apparently I slow things way down now.

[A]

I had Aaron Franklin on the show a couple days ago and he was saying he's like, I had to get off the line.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Because everybody wants to talk to you. They want to. You know, it's funny, we just did a little project with Aaron and him and I have had those conversations before because obviously he's light years ahead of me in terms of progress and what he knows about the industry. But I think there was something very cool and always is that he's a real person. Oh yeah. That you can still get that. Especially in markets like Austin now.

[A]

Well, you know, it's funny that I bring. Sorry, do you have something to add?

[B]

Well, I was just going to say I can't speak further market. I know that they're different, but Austin really requires some type of personal connection. I want to know you a little weird. Yeah. I mean, and I have used that in the past, even though as a copywriter, it burns me. It's almost like, do you have to tell someone if you're truly weird? Do you really have to tell them you're weird? Yeah. And that is something that I've had issues with for a long time in terms of branding of the city. But it doesn't mean that it's the wrong thing. Yeah. It just the way it's executed well bothers me.

[A]

I shot a little video after my conversation with Aaron because I was reflecting and I was like, you know, is the. Is the age of the Aaron Franklin's of the world dead? Like, is he a dying breed where he come into this world and just be passionate about a thing and just do it better and better and better every day to the point where he creates his own basic, like vertical in the world of barbecue. Very unique. But that is almost now like the standard. Right. For like. Like so many people do similar things to him. He wasn't on social media, he wasn't promoting himself. He was barbecue. He was smoking meat every day and he loved it and he got better at it every day. And then from that he has grown the Aaron Franklin brand or the Franklin barbecue brand. He only has one location of the barbecue joint. He opened a second restaurant, but he only has. But in terms of the Franklin brand, he didn't scale a restaurant.

[B]

He scaled a brand because it stays special that way. And I've had this discussion with Investor types and with just, you know, family and friends. And I'm back and forth on it. One thing about me, I do flip flop. I'll be the first to admit it. I get in a mood and I hear something and it makes sense. I go, oh, well, then we should do this and, oh, we should do that. And I have to. I've learned to give myself time and space. But yeah, you know, it to me makes all the sense in the world, right? That is Franklin Barbecue, right? And when you come to Austin, it's on every list of must sees and must dos, right?

[A]

And ironically, he will never qualify for a Michelin star. When the whole idea of the Michelin star is you must travel to this place. And how many people who travel to Austin are going for Franklin Barbecue? It's just so stupid.

[B]

Sorry, I don't really understand. I mean, the world of advertising is loaded with awards. Like, I've got somewhere in my garage got a box of them. And my wife asked me the day she goes, what are you gonna do with those things? And I, I said, you know, they just kind of remind me of the nonsense that you can get yourself into. But how important sometimes nonsense may be. The, the whole line of playing the game.

[A]

Oh, my Lord, dude. I mean, what do you mean by playing the game?

[B]

Well, I, it's funny. It was an intern that explained this to me that I had when I first opened my agency. 29 years old, 30, and we'd been doing some great work. That's truly what I wanted to do. I wanted out of corporate America so I could do really kick ass work. It's. I felt like it's all that mattered. I said, the better your work is, the better your success is going to be. Not super naive. That's just a classic creative guy not thinking about the rest of the business. But one of my interns early on was a student and the students had taken over the Addy Awards. Addis are the local regional national awards. The American Advertising Federation puts them on. So if you win local, you compete regional and then you compete national. And he said, dude, you got to enter some stuff into the Addies. And I said, you know, I've got a box full of awards. I've done that. He goes, you have, but two Ton has not. Two Ton Creativity was the name of my agency because two Ton needs that. Damn, you're right. So we did it and won a bunch of awards. And what it did is it brought me media, brought me press, it brought me eyes on things like that that I Didn't think I really needed. I thought. I'm still thinking. So I think in the restaurant industry, some of these awards are similar in that case, like, yeah, it's cool when you win the best of competition, and I'm super proud of them. But if that's what's defining your success, then you've missed a lot. You. You've stopped looking at the bigger picture, and you're just. You're just being little led along by your ego. And I said, it's a balance. I'm not saying it's entirely unnecessary, but find the balance and respect the balance. Don't. Don't find yourself just chasing around after every little dinky award you can get and put it up on your wall. I respect people that put celebrities up on their wall. It's not my thing. It's not my vibe. I have no issues with it. But, you know, they've come in here. I don't take pictures with them. I don't. It's funny. I had a picture of me and Ryan Reynolds up because I met him at a party one time years ago, and I was just looking for anything to put up on the wall, and I put the picture of me with Ryan Reynolds up on the wall, and my wife gave me a hard time. She's like, you're full of crap. It looks like he came into the restaurant. Yeah, well, so. And she's like, that's bullshit. And that's not you. And I respect her, and she's. We're the yin yang couple. She's the one that tells it like it is, and I'm the one that tells it like it. Like I want it to be so. Just little things like that, that, that you have to come back to this concept of narrative. What's the narrative that people are taking away from your place? Beyond the food? What's the. What's the atmosphere? What's their customer experience like? All of it matters. And I think to. To the traditional restaurateur, they're skeptical of the marketing and these things that are intangible because they've been so involved in tangibility for so long. First thing you asked me is about prime costs and things like that. And yes, they're very, very important. Tangibles will dictate success. I get that. But it's the intangibles that will give you the really big pops. It's the intangibles that give you the opportunity to go to the next level, to see things that you might not have seen before because you were so Focused on tangibility. You forgot to control your narrative. You forgot to look at some of these small things that can have a very big effect.

[A]

Right?

[B]

So I realize it's very preachy, but that's genuinely how.

[A]

No, I'm 100% aligned with everything you just said. And I was really trying hard to keep my mouth shut because I want to, wanted to just go off. But, you know, I'm 100 with you. And the reason why I ask about tangibles and numbers is because I'm like you. I'm a visionary, I'm a dreamer, I'm a. Don't play the game, expose the game. The game.

[B]

Like I like.

[A]

I get myself in trouble because I could be a better game player. But at the same time, my. I, I realized that, like, you can go out and chase awards, you can get the Michelin stars, you can get the James Beard, you can get the best of, you can suck thrill, stick and eater's dick. You can do all that. You can play the politics. But at the end of the day, if you're chasing awards and you're not making money, you're not going to make it. And I think that to your point, the intangibles are so important in this industry, but they are nothing unless you can run a business. And that's where people get in trouble in this.

[B]

This is the diners drive ins and dives conundrum, right? I like it, I watch it. It's fun. He's a funny dude. I dig him. I don't have any issues with him. The reality of it, though, is a little tough on a lot of restaurants closed for three days, you know, and a lot of people. He reserves the right, as he should, to not air your footage if you're not good. He's not gonna put you on there, right? So you've closed for three days. You've had to bring in your friends, you've had to do all this stuff. Obviously it works very well for most people, but I've, I've heard otherwise. I've heard stories otherwise. And again, if you don't know what your narrative is, you're allowing him to come in and tell your narrative. And it's no different than customers. It's just, again, it's this manic control of what's being said and what's being felt. That to me is, is so much bigger than success based on numbers, because. Let me rephrase that. Let's. Let's stop that. Numbers are what defines your success. Let's, let's not but big picture thinking along with a great team is what I look for.

[A]

Yeah, you need a balance. You definitely need a balance. And I think that's really what I'm trying to do with this show is to get in and to get into the mind to get into. It's not just about what is your brand, you know, it's, it's, it's not about just the marketing. It's not just about, you know, the food. It's. It's literally hr, like, you know, prime costs, labor costs, rent, give a legal.

[B]

Every department, every entity that's involved in your business gives a. Those things tend to fall in place a lot easier. Right, right. And so for me, having that as a mantra, having that as a directive, it gets a little thin when you get down to dishwashers and floor employees. But I still like them to smile. I still like them to. We went through a whole discussion about dress code early on. I'm 53 year old, dad of two daughters, I'm far from conservative, but at the same time it was like, can she wear that? Can we do this? And then the more I thought about it, I was like, you know what? But I trust my 25 year old manager to tell me that's good. And if not, I said, well then if one of these girls comes in and one of these guys comes in with something. We had a guy come in with a shirt that said, what did it say? It was something inappropriate. And at first it was a punk rock shirt. And I was like, how can a place called Jew Boy Burgers tell somebody something's inappropriate? Right? And that's where you find yourself. That's, that's tough.

[A]

Well, yeah, and it's weird. It's like. And I think people have to understand that like you can your brand, like, like what is professional, right? Like what is on brand? Like what's allowed here? And I think that your, your brand guide and like as long as you are understanding of like what is allowed and what isn't allowed, as long as it supports your brand, like you can be anything you say you are. Right. And as long as. Exactly. And it doesn't have to be like quote unquote, professional, like you can be whatever you say you are and you can draw your own lines. Right? And I think that that's one thing people don't understand. And as long as the people who are, you know, working for you are agreeing to the terms, you know, and you get that in documentation someplace where like here are the lines, don't cross these lines but outside of that, like, as long as the lines are clearly drawn, I think that's what's well.

[B]

And I. I would hate for somebody watching, listening to this to think that, well, I just need to come up with something contentious. I just need to come up with something that gets. You know, we used to talk about this with advertising. I wrote a headline one time for a gym. I went in there and I did my research, I talked to the members, and overwhelmingly, their initial response was something health related. Well, I'm in here for my heart or for my weight or for this or that. Once you got to talking to them for a little while, you realize it was mostly vanity.

[A]

Yeah, they won't get laid.

[B]

And so the headline on the billboard said, do it for your loved one. They have to see you naked. Yeah. People freaked. They're like, oh, my God, you can't say that. You can't, you know, do this, that. But there's strategy behind it. If I really just wanted to get people's attention for no reason, with no purpose in mind. Pair of bare boobs on a billboard gets it every time. You know, you could do things like that. I am not a big believer in it. This is another phrase that I take issue with. Yes, there is such thing as bad press. Yes, it will tear you apart. It will take you down. You should not be just throwing yourself out there. Car dealerships have done a good job of arguing otherwise, but at the end of the day, what they're doing is more just annoying than it is contentious. Right. I don't want people coming out of something like this thinking, well, if I just come up with, you know, something, you know, other terms that are. That are loosely coming back into the lexicon, you know, still don't hear a whole lot of people using the term wap, but that's been thrown to me a few times, you know, with. No, no. I'm actually 100% gringo man.

[A]

People.

[B]

People have changed the narrative a little. They think I'm Mexican and Jewish. There are a lot of Mexican Jews. But now I'm as. I'm Ashkenaz as you can get.

[A]

I'm not gonna lie. When I saw your brand, I was like, how can I play on that with Italian? Like, whop. Burger King burger? Like, that's fun. Like, it's a little, you know, but I think so. It doesn't match.

[B]

And I stood on the shoulders of giants. I saw that in. In your part of your. Your branding as well. Kinky Friedman laid a lot of groundwork for me. Kinky. Kinky. Kinky. Friedman was a singer, songwriter from the 60s. He had a band called the Texas Jew Boys. Okay. And he played throughout the 70s, 80s, very, very well known here in Central Texas. His shtick was he'd spend half his time in Kerrville, Texas, the other half in the city in New York. And. And it worked. His contemporary of Bob Dylan. Those guys, you know, he was respected. But I always just assumed that Juboy had kind of passed over that magic barrier, which is. Yeah, if you use it with the right tone. I mean, what's the discussion with the N word? Like, if you leave off the R at the end, it's okay.

[A]

You know, I still think it matters what your skin tone is when you're saying that.

[B]

And again, I'm always. Cracks me up. First thing, a lot of people ask, are you Jewish? Yeah, man. Yes, I am. Am I the world's greatest Jew? Based on the theology? Absolutely not. There's bacon and cheese and meat in there. But I have grown up in a fairly traditional Reform Jewish household, and I took from it a lot of the heritage, the traditions, the customs, the humor. Who's not a Mel Brooks fan, right? I mean, these things just. They created a position for me to work from.

[A]

Right. So why did you get out of that world of marketing for you? You said you were tired of the game, you wanted to get out of, you know, like, what was like the straw that broke the camel's back.

[B]

I just despise this. Being told what to do and then being held accountable.

[A]

What do you mean being told what to do?

[B]

Well, okay, so you come to me and you want to. You got a product, a widget, and I come up with a position and a strategy and a line and a logo and a look. And you look at it and you go, wow, that's really creative. But I'd really like to focus on you change this and do that and do that with the same strategy, with the same end goal in mind. They just feel like. Imagine going to your doctor and saying, my elbow really hurts. And he goes, that's fine. Let's do some knee surgery. It doesn't work that way. And for whatever reason with marketing, because so many people feel so connected to it and feel as if they have a good idea. I'm not saying they're not. You know, not all my ideas are great and not all the clients ideas are bad. But in general, when there's money on the line, when there's a true deliverable required, I would rather be accountable for my own work. And not something that the client has twisted and turned. And when I was younger, it didn't matter to me as much. I just worked. I saw it as just another hurdle.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But then when. When you're the agency owner, much like a restaurant owner, it's your money, it's your accountability when you have to make payroll and they're just turning your work into garbage.

[A]

Right. And it's not gonna.

[B]

It's.

[A]

They're not going to be happy with the end result. And it's not because you didn't tell them what to do. It's because they didn't. They didn't listen.

[B]

Or if it does work, then they say, well, I didn't need you. I knew what to do. Right. It works both ways. So it got. And that's. This is an older guy speaking about marketing. When you're younger, I'd walk through a wall, man. I don't care what you put in front of me. I would sit there till 3, 4, or 5 in the morning, throwing ideas up on the wall and talking with my art directors and saying, look, let's. Let's get this. Let's figure out a better way. And there's a. There's a guy named Luke Sullivan who wrote a book called hey, Whipple, Squeeze this. And it is textbook for any creative that really wants to. To be deep into the industry. And he talks about if somebody makes you do something 15 times, the 16th is likely to be the best. I don't know, man.

[A]

It's like the widget, like, if you're, like, if you're given, like, this competition where they say, like, if you, like, you're. You get two groups and you're tasked to create something that's the best. It's the one that just starts making things.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That wins because they. They get repetitions in. But you're saying that maybe not might not be true.

[B]

Let me throw another book at you. You know? Gladwell. Matthew Gladwell. Malcolm. Matthew. Malcolm Gladwell. Blink was the first one that I read that made sense to me. Blink was one that got in my head where it's like, you got to start trusting your instincts. You've been doing this for a while, but then when you read Outliers, he talks about those 10,000 hours, and I believe that he's on it. I mean, 100.

[A]

I think it's a combination of the two, right.

[B]

Like.

[A]

Like there's something to be said about just starting. Right? And just like, trust your gut and, like, you know, just keep showing up and getting better. And better and better. But there's also something that to be said, that if you do that for 10,000 hours, you're gonna have an unfair. You're gonna be an outlier. So it's like the multiplier.

[B]

Right. My first four years on a food truck, I cleared my 10,000 hours personally talking to customers, cooking burgers myself, cleaning the place, filling it up with fuel, doing all the things that you need to do to run a food truck. Those were my 10,000 hours. And so when we went into brick and mortar, I had a nice, crisp view of what I thought things should be across the board. Without being a seasoned restaurateur, I still understood because of what we were able to do with the food truck. And it's why I often recommend it. It's like, look, food trucks gonna give you proof of concept and proof of product. It cannot give you proof of performance. Performance is a different story. You. You really need some. Some more factors to come into play for you. Being a physical space where. Where our supplies could be delivered to us. Can't tell you how many hours I spent driving a Restaurant Depot. And I'd go to Heb's, a local grocery store. Here. I got my produce from them because I didn't need. I didn't need it in bulk. So I'd go and get three or four heads of lettuce per day. Yeah.

[A]

So you. You decide after, you know, playing that game and, you know, trying to coach these clients of yours in the right direction that you need to show them what you're talking about with a. Basically a test subject.

[B]

Yeah. Case study.

[A]

Case study.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So you started a restaurant as a case study that.

[B]

Well, the food truck was a case study. Okay. The restaurant is a business. I just didn't think it would get to that. I was looking for a metric, because any good case study has to prove that you started from A and you got to B, and then this is what happened. So in the spring of 2020, right before the pandemic was really kicking in, we were awarded best burger in Austin by Austin Monthly. So that, to me, was, boom, there's my metric. You know, I've been on lists and things. The lists are nice, but this was a definitive best burger, which I, again, like I said earlier, I'm not a huge fan of these things. But in terms of marketing, it gave me what I was looking for. So the permit expired in October. My plan was just to run out the permit and then go back to work. You know, really refocus on marketing and Sell the truck off and go out on top, so to speak. Like, you know, I want to be Tom Brady. I don't want to be one of these guys anyways. So I.

[A]

So that whole point of you starting this trailer was to go out there, get proof of concept, get a case study, and say, listen to me, I just developed this brand. In three years, I became the best burger in Austin.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You're gonna leverage that, like, to go.

[B]

Promote yourself different candidates and say, yeah, you know, whether. Whether it was going to be politics, whether it was going to be. I could go to different restaurants and say, look, here's a restaurant branding case study that I did without any outside influence. I said what I wanted to, I did what I wanted to. I made the. The design however I want to do it when I felt like something was. And. And that's how I also learned social media, because I did all the posts. I still do all the posts. I could see which ones people responded to, which ones they didn't respond to, who out there meant, you know, when an influencer would come, who moved the needle, who didn't move the needle. So it gave me a personal opportunity to learn something that made no sense to me before. That, like I said, looking at people's pictures of their kids, their dogs, their trips, that made sense to me. Next thing I know, it's just a completely different animal. It's nothing like that. So that was my plan up until 2020.

[A]

Okay, so let me ask you this question. Was it the best burger or did you have the best marketing?

[B]

That's a great question. And it's still. It's a great question. Like the term. You know, we're trained in marketing to avoid superlatives. Best, ultimate, this, that, and the other. Now, clearly the industry doesn't pay attention to its academics, but I held to that pretty much. I try to avoid that. The. The analogy I use is. Is interpersonal relationships, dating. And I realize I may be a little old school here, but let's. Let's just take that for a second. When you walk up to a girl, in my case, I'm heterosexual, and so I'm at a bar or something, and I want to try to get to know this woman. Am I going to run up to her, get ready right in front of her face and yell my name three times and tell her I'm the best every time, too? How's that going to work out? And maybe there is a girl out there that's like, okay, I've never seen this spot. But for the Most part, you, you want to establish a narrative.

[A]

You're going to say, I love that dress. That is beautiful. Or you stepped in toilet paper. You might want to take that off the bottom of your foot.

[B]

Look out for you. Let me give you an even better analogy before you come up to see her. What if all her friends had, oh my God, that's, that's Mo. That's Mo Piddle. I've heard he's the nicest guy. Heard he's this. I mean, whatever. But if they're saying positive things about you, by the time you approach her, she's predisposed to want to talk to you to get to know if it's true or not. But it's a much better place than yelling in her face. I'm O and I'm the best 50 times. And that's standard marketing strategy. I never liked it. I know that it's easy for me.

[A]

To say so the standard marketing strategy is yelling at people's face. I'm the best.

[B]

Don't you think? Yeah.

[A]

And that's not what you do.

[B]

No.

[A]

It's not what you did during this three year test period.

[B]

No, never. I never, I never paid for any posting. I never, I never pushed it like that. I was. I also firmly believe that a city like Austin, your marketing strategy is almost like an anti marketing strategy. I've never been the coolest guy in the world. I'm the first to admit it. Like, I try. You know, we're all grew up, I grew up in the 80s. We all wanted to be some form of cool. But what I've learned is, is the more yourself you are and the more that that's a believable thing for people, the better results you're going to get may not be what you want. You may not become a rock star. You may not become, you know, all these things, but being true to who you are and creating that narrative with that in mind, it's more effective.

[A]

Well, yeah, I mean, I think in the world of sales, right, if you believe in what you're selling, if you're not a salesperson but you're, you're a influence, you're influencing something that you like others to take advantage of. This thing that I discovered because I love it and I've, I've heard of other people and if you believe in the thing, if you believe in yourself and what you're saying about yourself, it's, it translates different. There's a different like, like, you know, frequency that, that comes off as, as authentic and people can pick up on.

[B]

It and they know it. They. Whether they realize it or not, they. They feel it. And. And I just go back to that analogy. Like you walk up to a woman. If you're a woman, you walk up to a man or you walk up to another one. You know, again, I'm not an interesting. Yes, I know that it's a dated analogy now, and I struggle to just put it out there, but it's the truth. These are interpersonal relationships. This is getting to know somebody and having them feel good about spending money with. You had an old mentor, he was cranky, old madman type, and he said, look, we're not in the business of separating people from their money. We're in the business of separating people from their money and making them feel good about it. Yeah, I think a lot of restaurants lose sight of that. They become so myopic. They. They're so mired in what they're doing. And. And that's what some of these awards will do. That, you know, the movies. Was the one burnt, you know, you. Oh, yeah. You know, they turned it into this drama. It's not a drama if you don't want mustard. I would rather know that. And I'd rather put a different dressing on there. I'd rather, you know, one of the rules we have, and this is bit. A bit of a joke at these points, but I don't do tomatoes. I hate them. I always have, since I was a kid. I just think they're the devil's fruit. Just an invasive and bitter type thing.

[A]

There are fruit is surprising. It's all you need to know.

[B]

So when I started the food truck, I had a friend of mine who's a chef, and he was helping me figure out the menu and stuff. And I'm like looking at the tomatoes. I go, they're expensive. And he goes, yeah, they're expensive. They go bad quickly. You got to make sure you get the good ones. You don't put a bad one, it'll ruin the whole thing. I said, well, I don't want tomatoes on my burgers. I don't ever eat them. He goes, well, don't have them. And I was like, but how can I? And again, this is where be true to yourself. I don't like them. It's not a deal breaker. I mean, it's one of those things. I've had a few people walk off, mostly drunk people, but they have walked off. Now, my latest, because I remind people, McDonald's doesn't have tomatoes on their burgers.

[A]

That's crazy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Probably because it's an operational cost. That's what they're looking at.

[B]

Yeah. But I look at it both ways, and so it was a win win for me.

[A]

Yeah. So, I mean, you're dropping a lot on us right now. So back to that three years, right? So you, you had this case study. You win best burger in Austin, mission success. But what about that three years? Did you learn about the restaurant industry in terms of like, were you trying to make money or were you just trying to get number one?

[B]

I was avoiding losing money, put it that way. Yeah. I mean, and it was okay. I mean, I only needed. I had two employees, typically. I had a lunch cook and a dinner cook, and they had other jobs. So that one would come in and get me opened and we would work together and do lunch. I would take a break from two to five, and that's when I would do my advertising work. That's when I would either go home and sit at my computer or bring my computer with me. I also had to run errands, had to go get more food if we ran out. I had to get gas, things like that.

[A]

How many days were you open?

[B]

Five.

[A]

Five days a week.

[B]

Five days a week. 11 to 2 and 5 to 8.

[A]

Are you putting the whole world of marketing on the back burner so you can prove this case study?

[B]

I was both.

[A]

Three hours a week, you're. Or three hours a day you're focusing on marketing.

[B]

Then sometimes at night, sometimes in the morning, early. It just depended on what I was doing. I was doing a lot of consulting then, so a lot of it was just emails.

[A]

Okay, so what was the first, like, getting started in 2017? Did you have money from your marketing? Were you making money?

[B]

Did you have. I was, but I did take out a personal line of credit.

[A]

Okay, so how much do you need to get started?

[B]

Well, I'll tell you this. I took out a hundred thousand dollar line of credit and 12 of it went to a PR firm. About 45 of it went to buying the truck and equipping it.

[A]

Was it a truck or a trailer?

[B]

It was a truck. It was a big truck and it was a lemon. It broke down several times. It's huge. It was a. Built on an old armored truck chassis. It was in. It was a. What do you call it? A utilities vehicle.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

It was massive. Yeah. But I also have that ego. I'm from Texas.

[A]

I thought you were from Ohio.

[B]

Born in Ohio, raised in Texas.

[A]

So, okay, so 12. You said 12,000 went to PR.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

45,000 went to the truck.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So now you're at 57 or 62,000. What was the 38,000?

[B]

Where did that go? So some of it was operating capital. I tried to give myself at least three months of operating, three months of Runway.

[A]

Where you did not make any money?

[B]

No. And, and it wasn't quite that. But you know, the rent was initially rent was nothing because one of my clients at the time was mattress firm. And at one point mattress firms were everywhere. They had gone through a period of expansion and acquisitions. And I went to them and I said, hey, I've got a proposal for you. Right now you're the cold corporate store on every block. What if we put a hyper local business in front to raise, bring eyes on, you know, just make it feel like it was more of a community outreach type thing. So I parked in a mattress from parking lot. No power, no nothing. I had to take that thing out. There were days, I remember these days, I'd wake up about 7:30, 8:00 clock in the morning. I would go to the store, I would get the things I need, then I would go to the commissary. The commissary for me, because I didn't know how to find them, was way out in Cedar Park Drive. Out there I had two huge coolers, yeti style coolers. I would take all the food from the commissary that I needed, the beef, the cheese, whatever I hadn't used the day before, and I put it in these coolers and then I would head to the truck. And usually about that time is about like 9:30 or so, 10 o', clock. And we'd get the cooler started. So you start the generator, hope the generator starts, get the coolers cooling and then you put the food, transfer the food in there, whatever type of prep we needed to do. The guy who worked for me would do, you know, portioning the beef, things like that. And then if I needed to go get anything else, I would go before we opened at 11, I'd come back at 11, do lunch from 11 to 2. Between 2 and 5 if I needed to, I'd go to either Restaurant Depot, Home Depot or any of these places, get gas, all that stuff, do whatever advertising work I had to do, come back by 5. The dinner guy would have showed up by then. He would have gone in and done whatever prep needed to be done. Then we were on dinner from 5 to 8. At 8 o' clock on certain nights, we would then shut down, clean, like you have to do, pack all the food up, put it back into these coolers, and I would drive all the way out to Cedar park, unload the food into the commissary because I couldn't run the generator all night. Right. I'd get home about 10 o' clock or so, 10:30, hopefully I didn't have any advertising work to do. And then I would just pass out and go to sleep. But sometimes I'd be up for another 2, 3 hours working on certain nights because I had no power on site, because I had to get rid of the gray water. I would have to drive the truck, this massive piece of junk truck, all the way out to Cedar park because that's where my commissary was to dump the gray water.

[A]

Where would you dump.

[B]

Did they have like, they had a tank there that they had, you know, they were licensed to have that there. Gray water is very serious business. You don't want to. I know a little something about it.

[A]

Driving the country in a camper, you know, you don't think about that stuff.

[B]

It's awful. It smells, it gets all over you. And then I had to refill the tank up so we had fresh water in there. Then on the way back, I would go to the gas station, put gas in the vehicle itself and in the generator tank and then take it all the way back down. And then I live in Round Rock, which is also north. Yeah. So I'd get home those nights usually between 11:30 and midnight.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Have to do it again at 7:00 in the morning.

[A]

Not to mention the cost of fuel, the cost of maintenance.

[B]

I mean.

[A]

Yeah, it's. I think a lot of people are romanticized about the idea of a food truck or like that is the way to get started if you can't afford a brick and mortar. I think the pop up is the, like the new food truck.

[B]

Yeah. I dig them. I got a couple of friends that do them and, and I'm happy. I, you know, they call me, we talk about it, I tell them, you know, the ways to get something better, more efficient. But it was about three and a half months of that. That. And then I got invited to be at a food truck park.

[A]

Three and a half months was your, your operation, operating capital. So you had that. So is. So it was a 12 for the PR.

[B]

The.

[A]

I can't remember what you said. The 45, 000. You said the 38, 000 was essentially your three months of operating capital to pay your employees to pay yourself. Were you living. Was this like you had clients?

[B]

So you had other cash flow. So I was. I did. And. And I'm married to a wonderful woman who makes. You know, she's very corporate. She's got her job, her benefits. Like, she truly supported me for those four years. I mean, she really did. She. She was cool about it. You know, a lot of people would have said, this is ridiculous. What are you doing? Yeah, you're a copywriter. Why are you making cheeseburgers? You know, she was cool about it. And I think that, again, this is where this whole premise of being in the right place at the right time, I could tell you this. My ex wife would not have stood for it. No freaking way. She would have lost her mind. Ironically, though, she wears the swag all the time. She's like, sent me a hat.

[A]

Okay, where was the support before?

[B]

So a whole nother podcast. 3.

[A]

Three years of this were. After that, three months of operating capital. Were you in the black?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, but it was never about making money for you hundred bucks. You know, I mean, what was the.

[A]

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[B]

Well, that was right before we went into brick and mortar. And that's because after we get best burger there was a couple of and that was in 2020, 2020, early 2020. And then a couple of different influencers showed up and they actually came before the best burger. But they did move the needle back then big time. I mean I got a post on one of these play and next thing I got a line. You know, I got people waiting to try it and to talk to me and all that type of stuff. And so that happened. Best of happened and then the pandemic happened. Happened? No. Couple things went. Went on during the.

[A]

Still had the food truck at this time?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Was that food truck, the one that's parked in the parking lot?

[B]

No, that's our. That's a catering bus. Okay, Got it. Oh, I sold it the minute I got this thing. Give me money, get me out of here. Yeah. But everything closed for two weeks. There was nothing.

[A]

But you could still do a food truck, right?

[B]

Food trucks were open, so then I got even busier. So all of a sudden, here I am, I'm like, okay, I got press, I've got awards, and now I have exclusivity in a sort of way, you know, and it was strange, you know, that's when the whole 6ft thing. Not for that two weeks.

[A]

I was gonna say Pete Terriers. Were they still ripping?

[B]

Not for the two weeks. Two weeks. Anything brick and mortar, they needed to shut down while they figured this whole thing out. And then they, you know, then the deliveries came out. The. The. I still love it. I hate to admit to being lazy. I love curbside, especially at the end of the day. I like driving up, texting them here, and they hand me my food and I leave. Yeah.

[A]

This is their level of convenience.

[B]

I love it.

[A]

I think part of the game is you got to just learn how to meet everybody, where they're at.

[B]

Yeah. And. And for some businesses, I'm impressed that they still keep it. Yeah. I would have thought by now they would have gotten rid of it.

[A]

So during that three years, can we talk about some of the strategy in terms of your PR approach? Like what? Like your whole thing is to test. This is a case study. Yeah. So what was the actual strategy? The approach? Like what was. Like what was your plan? What was your strategy?

[B]

Well, the first plan was to learn the actual atmosphere. Learn. Learn the environment, who's out there, who matters, who's doing what and why. This is something big from advertising that you don't want to come up with an idea that's already been done. That happens all the time. And most places don't care. But if you're, you know, one of the creatives that really cares and gives a shit, you want to be original. You want to come up with something. So you have to know what else is going on.

[A]

So you're studying the market, you're looking for holes.

[B]

Studying the market, looking. Well, not necessarily just looking for behaviors, looking for opportunities.

[A]

What behavior did you see?

[B]

Food trucks. Food trucks at that time were an up and coming consumer behavior. They were still novel. Austin was. Was right at the Front of that trend, too. So opening a food truck wasn't as crazy. I always reference Luke's Inside out was a food truck that it was on diners drive ins and jives. He was parked out front of the Gibson street bar, which is ironically now where I have my trail, one of my trailers. He was the first non. What's the word I'm looking for here? Food trucks up to that point had been hot dogs, and they were just real simple type stuff. You didn't expect to get cuisine out of a food truck.

[A]

Tacos, cilantro. Jay was a J. Kim on the show. He had his.

[B]

What's the term?

[A]

Torchies.

[B]

Now, when you go to the baseball stadium, the football stadium, they call it concession. Yeah, they were like concession stands. Okay. And. And now all of a sudden, you've got some of these places that are making just amazing food out of a food truck.

[A]

You got chefs that are putting out.

[B]

Real it, normalized it. Yeah. And Luke was one of the first. And his. His interview with. With Guy was just so cool. And if you ever go back and look at it, it's what that whole show was built on, things like this. He truly found a place that was making these rabbit sandwiches and things that nobody had seen before. And he did it so well, and it was so consistent. And I don't know if he ever made a ton of money out of it, but he definitely made a living doing it. And so, you know, food trucking as a. As a culture was something that I was learning about Austin. You know, the market you're in, you got to know what makes them tick. I mean, that's. That's marketing 101. So just by going around, before I opened, I went to several different food trucks. Kind of caught the experience. Never been a big thing for me. I. You know, it's funny. The more I'm into restaurants, the more I'm into just give me my food, let me take it home and eat quietly. You know, I grew up with. I'm the oldest of six kids. I hate big meals. I always have. Everything was a big meal. Trying to get a word in. Everybody's talking, everybody's complaining. Where are we gonna go to eat? There's seven, eight different opinions. I like serenity now. You know, I'm a Seinfeld guy, too.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I think today, again, it's just about that, like, there is opportunity. Wherever people need to eat, there's an opportunity to meet them. Where they're at, whether that is, they want convenience, they want value, they Want experience, they want to be wooed, they want to impress somebody. They just want to, like, have an adventure with food. Like, there's so many different points of, like, touch points.

[B]

The bulk of that 12k went towards identifying these. These influencers.

[A]

So the PRs.

[B]

PR. Yeah. The bulk of that was really about getting me. Because as much as I know about advertising, advertising is a small portion of. Of marketing. It's just a part of the mix.

[A]

What is the majority of advertising like? What was it like for you? Is it just about the communication of the brand and the. The creating the. The emotion?

[B]

Yeah. I mean, when I was employed, I was just tasked with making cool ads. Whatever. Whatever media it may be. What's radio, tv, any of that stuff. When you become an agency owner, you're forced to see the bigger picture you become. And especially I was in a small market. I was in El Paso. So you become their market marketing director, which is very different from. From big ad agencies who work with companies that have marketing directors. So strategies laid out, focus is laid out. The agency just needs to execute. But in smaller markets and as a. As a business owner, you have to develop the strategy. You have to burn both ends of that candle.

[A]

So the strategy was pr, Public relations.

[B]

Yeah. Strategy was again. Remember, I wanted to learn social media, so the strategy was get me engaged in social media and how it matters.

[A]

Why did you hire who you hired?

[B]

Recommendation from a friend. Okay. Just, you know, I went to a friend who I knew was in pr. She did more tech stuff. She didn't do food.

[A]

You still work with this publicist?

[B]

No, no, they. They closed down.

[A]

Do you still have. Do you have a publicist today?

[B]

Not really. I. I did just hire somebody, and. And that's where I would like to see her grow into. She's very young and very intelligent, but young.

[A]

I think that matters. I think it's, you know, they're. They're pan. Like the market's driven by young people.

[B]

Well. And I think I'm driving her crazy. She's same age as my kids, and I used to think I could stay up with what was relevant. No. Yeah. And I never thought I'd be the guy to say music is garbage. It's garbage.

[A]

I was talking to Jason Carrier. Do you know Jason Carrier? So he was behind a lot of the big bars on 6th Street. He got out of that game. I can't remember any of the names of the bar bars.

[B]

Jason.

[A]

I'm sorry. But now he's behind Mama Betty's.

[B]

Oh, yeah, I just heard about them.

[A]

Yeah, they're killing it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But he had owned 11 bars throughout his career on some of the highest. I think the first and second highest grossing bars in Texas. Yeah, that's not easy to do, folks.

[B]

No.

[A]

People in Texas like to drink and there are some big venues second to only, like sports venues.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, so they were doing volume and he was. I don't know if this is. He was doing over a million in revenue with three partners. Like, not revenue, but profit. On his own.

[B]

On his own.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, that's a testament to what he was doing before. Right. Why am I bringing Jason up right now? What were you saying? Oh, my gosh. What were you just saying?

[B]

Too many gummies, dude. I'm telling you, man, I. I have this. I've had this effect before too. Like, I want to mention that. I want to mention that. I want to mention that every once in a while. Yeah, that's the. I bought on Instagram. Isn't that funny? Look at that. No.

[A]

So, I mean, I think going back.

[B]

To the PR element of it and the publicist element of it, I needed to create an identity for the business that was driven by me, but not me. And that sounds. It's almost like talking about yourself in the third person.

[A]

I remember what I was gonna say, okay, so he, like, he was killing it in the bar scene, but he also opened his first bar when he was like 22, 23, and he was creating what he wanted and he was the target market. You only have like a 15 year Runway of. If you start when you're in your early 20s, that where you can figure out eventually you age out of the drinking market and like, you are no longer the target market. You don't know what the consumer wants. And that was the point that I wanted.

[B]

What. It's funny when. When I.

[A]

Which is not why he owns family restaurants now.

[B]

That's. I, you know, what were things that I could talk about and never become irrelevant or at least not dated. And I told you I did a lot of work in the car culture industry and sit around with these guys and they're so tight knit. Like if you mess up and you say, well, you know the 57 that had the 281. What? 57 didn't come with a 280? What are you talking about? They'd get on you. I mean, sports guys can be like this too. So what is the category that I felt I could continually be at least not up to date with, but relevant and food is what came to mind. Yeah, yeah. I'm a large man. I like food. And so that was what drove me towards the food truck. That's a step further back.

[A]

So in terms of the publicist, she was. What was like, what was the strategy that. I mean, does it even worth getting into this? You think that strategy eight years ago. Eight years ago still applies today?

[B]

I think you need to know who the players are. I think it's important to recognize who is moving the needle and who is not. I think. I think it's important to develop a strategy that you can maintain so that you're consistent. Consistency is one of those words that people misuse. But I treat every influencer like the same.

[A]

So was that a big part of your marketing strategy was going to the influencers?

[B]

Well, I only went to a couple. And then they start coming to you. Okay, once. Once they see that so. And so came to your truck, then other people want to come.

[A]

How much money are you spending on influencers?

[B]

I don't spend any.

[A]

You weren't spending any of that?

[B]

No, and I don't spend any Now.

[A]

Now, should you or could you. Would you recommend or not?

[B]

This is a discussion that we're having right now with my current publicist. I gotta get a better title for her. That seems pretty pretentious. I think there's a balance like everything else. I just felt that it was not my brand to. To be like that. My brand is laid back. My brand is, hey, come in. Tell me a story. I'll tell you a story with tuck some shit, eat some burgers in, and you're good. You're full. When you leave here, you feel good about the money you spend. So paid marketing felt very contrary to what that whole thing was about. It felt very forced and especially early on when it was paid for by. It just reeked of, I need you, so come help me immediately. And sometimes that works. But I'm an independent brand. I'm one dude. So at the time, it just seemed named.

[A]

So you. It wasn't all just pub, like hiring influencers, though. You also developed the brand. You developed the tone that. That. So the beginning to, like, the strategy of, like, what was the brand that you think was gonna resonate and hit? And, like, what is it about Juboy? I think part of just saying that is obvious that there's juxtaposition just in the title, right?

[B]

Yeah, I think it's. And I've always told people it's not a license to come in and tell me your. Your stupidest Jewish joke. That's not what I'm about to. It's not about anti Semitism, and obviously, I recognize that. I. I do tempt it. I just don't want to bait it. Does that make sense? Like, yeah, obviously, calling it this is going to bring out some people. It's provocative.

[A]

But it's the people going as a.

[B]

Narrative, you gotta be able to tell us, or why did you call it that? And I typically have two different ways of going about. I said, do you want the academic version or do you want the, you know, the. The personal version? They always want the personal version. Nobody wants to hear the academics behind it. Yeah. I grew up in El Paso with a bunch of Hispanic kids. Back then, we, you know, I always thought that the whole cholo culture was killer. Like, you show me vintage suicidal tendencies, and Psycho Mike is my spirit animal. And that dude is just. Man, he's. He's big, he's tough, he's loud, he's fun, he's cool. Like, they just move. And like, I dug it. I like the way it looked. I like big clothes, you know, all. Everything about it. So, you know, we use the term homeboy all the time back in the 80s. So to me, I just want to. Just want to be Jewish cholo man. You know, my wife would let me wear the Pendleton and pull my socks up. I would. But she stopped that a number of times.

[A]

So you're just looking. So. So how did you, boy, remind you of that?

[B]

Well, it is a cultural mashup, and that's the PG version, that's the academic version, is that it's a celebration of culture. As a writer, it bothers me when people try to fit things into small boxes.

[A]

So the idea of homeboy tying that.

[B]

With your Jewish Jew boy, it's, you know, the cuisine, if you can call it that, the fair is a mixture of a lot of these things. Things that I found. For example, the way we make the burgers. If you go to these little border cafes, it's a weird calling a Mexican food because they're just border cafes. It's the local cuisine. So a lot of them will have Mexican food and burgers on there. One of my favorite spots in El Paso, I've been going since I was a little kid with my dad. They put onions down on the grill. They were raw, minced onions. And the old man would take a handful and he'd throw it down. Grill was scorching hot because he wanted to get going. And then he had a second bin. He'd take a handful of ground beef, throw it down on top of the onions, and he had this huge spatula, and he would just go, whack, whack, whack. And just smash the beef into the onions. Onions, the onions. Grill into it. Little bit of salt and pepper, but not like you normally see. You see, some of these places make burgers. They're dumping this in people trying to.

[A]

Get that caramel a lot. Yeah, that crust.

[B]

So. And we try to get it. It's not as pretty as some of the other things. So, yeah, it's a smash burger. But I never really smashed because I wanted those onions to cook into the meat. That's what you see at these Mexican cantinas. Scrape it, flip it. I double cheese it. I like to put cheddar on there. I like real cheese instead down there. They're putting. Putting the cheapest American you can put on there. Doesn't need to be steamed. Go back to White Castle. Steaming everything makes it taste better. You know, steam bun, all that stuff. So we would then put the two slices of cheese on there, cover it, steam it, and then sit it on a soft potato roll. Well, the potato roll comes from Pennsylvania when I spent my time in the mid Atlantic. And Martin's potato rolls, everybody knows them now, but back in the day, that was a trick. That was something different. And the only reason I was able to get Martin's here is because Shake Shack moved into the market and they knew it, so they had Martin's. So you get the Martin's roll. Lettuce, pickles, mustard and cheese. That's all very standard Texas cheeseburger. I know a lot of people from the east coast can't stand the mustard on the burger.

[A]

I like it.

[B]

I grew up with it. Whataburger to me is still, you know, I'll go there. I'll leave here and go to Whataburger.

[A]

I call Whataburger Texas Burger King.

[B]

Yeah, it's better than that. I. I would say if Peter's is.

[A]

Texas, in and out.

[B]

Yeah. And I would say whataburger. I'm trying to think of all the places I've lived. Culver's probably comes closer to mine. Culver's a little better product, you know, but anyway, so I just pulled from the different places that I had been, the cultures that I liked. I find the Pennsylvania culture fan. It's just. It's fab fan. Fantastic. Intrigue. Fantastic. Thank you. I keep going too fast. Brain and mouth aren't always connected. Yes, sir.

[A]

What I'm hearing from you is behind every great Restaurant is a great person. And the people who really just keep it authentic, genuine to who you are, what you love. You can sell that because it's real to you. You love it, you want to share it.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

But there's also that fine dance of, you know, there, there's that. There's that approach of like reverse engineering what you love because it's true to you, and you can sell it and you want to. Bringing that to the market, but also there's giving the market what the market wants. Because maybe what you love, maybe if you're from, you know, you know, the border of. Of you grew up on that, that. That border mentality. And you go to, I don't know, some market, like some upscale place in wherever.

[B]

I moved to Atlanta after I, you know, growing up in El Paso. I went to school here in Austin. Went to first job with San Diego. Second job was Phoenix. Third job was Atlanta. First culture shock for me, not finding the foods that I'm used to.

[A]

That's a good market.

[B]

Not finding. Yeah. And so it was very different. And just seeing how I personally adapted. And I don't know if these things are always conscious thoughts. They're just more of a subconscious way you go about living in a market. But for me, it was okay. It was worth it to take that chance.

[A]

So I guess the question is, like, some people would argue, you don't create what you want. You give them a market, what it needs, what it's missing. You reverse engineer based off where the holes are.

[B]

Yeah, that's probably more thought than I put into it, but that's what ultimately happened. Here's a good example. We opened the Sub Shop six months later. Now, Sub Shop didn't have four years of food truck, so I had to.

[A]

Come in six months later after opening.

[B]

The brick and mortar here.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So I. I had no background with that. I had not done. Sat in a truck for four years and made Philly cheesesteaks. So my initial response was to go classic, was to go purist. I got Omarosa rolls, I got ribeye. I did a Philly like you would get in Philly. And it stayed that way for a while. I did try to do. I used to make these carne asada Phillies for myself on the truck. Yeah, if you're not a chef, you are super excited when you get yourself a fryer and a flat top. I mean, I take the cheapest stuff I'd buy at the grocery store and put it in a deep fryer. Amazing, man. It tastes so much better. You know, you've been microwaving the little totinas pizza rolls. You haven't lived till you put them in a deep fryer. All of a sudden you're like, this is the best food, and it's so cheap. But point is, I see things a little differently. I'm not bound by these culinary constraints that I believe should be there. And as I've grown with the company, we put more and more on there. We're careful to use certain products, not to mix match certain things. But. So I had this idea for the carne asada Philly. What I realized is that people that came in there were looking for what they get in Pennsylvania, what they get in Philadelphia. They wanted authenticity. And I bent and I don't think it made as much of a difference. People were like, yeah, it's a good sandwich. But they didn't leave believing that it was that, you know, there wasn't soul. There wasn't.

[A]

There was an originality.

[B]

So it was a while. But then we revisit figured the menu. I changed the bread. I went with Toronto rolls, which I. Which you get from Chicago. So if you ever had an Italian beef from Chicago, it's likely to be on a Toronto bakery roll. Very durable, very soft, but can handle cold or hot. You know, they dip those whole sandwiches in the jus. So we changed from ribeye, which is never, to me was true ribeye. It was kind of scrapped. Yeah. To tri tip. The tri tip is a beautiful cut of meat if you slice it super thin. So we cool it. Slice it. We changed from onions and green peppers. I put poblanos on there. Okay. And then instead of cheese was. I do queso. And all of a sudden I was like, this is my Philly cheesesteak. And sales really have done much better with that version in there.

[A]

Well, it's a juboy.

[B]

It is a Jew boy. Yeah. And there is a sign up in there that what is a Jew boy cheesesteak? And it's. It's an infographic, you know, advertising background.

[A]

But so similar to Franklin's. Right. Like, you develop. You're developing your Jew boy brand. And I was hoping to bring this to the conversation eventually. I used him as an example earlier where he, like, he just decided to build this brand and then scale the brand. He's scaling it through his consumer product goods. He's got his rubs, his. His barbecue sauces. He. He is manufacturing books. He's got his books. He's manufacturing pits. Now his grills that he's selling. And he had now he's manufacturing and scaling his knowledge through master classes, and it's all just the Franklin barbecue brand that he's finding he's scaling. You also remind me of Angie's. Have you ever heard of Angie's? Out of. Out of Arizona. Angie's Prime, Angie's Burger. Angie's.

[B]

I should know because Lobster roll. I lived in Phoenix for a while, and my kids went to U of A.

[A]

Like, this is recent. Do you remember salad? There was a salad concept that scales really fast out of Phoenix. There was like this, like. Like super, like. Like healthy, like salad. Qsr just salads or salad and go. Or something like that.

[B]

I still remember that.

[A]

Yeah. So he was behind that, and he. That got. He ended up, like, bringing on private equity or venture capital or something like that. They scaled it. He got out of it because he was like, this is no longer fun for me.

[B]

It's not fun.

[A]

Yeah. Like, he's like this. They, like, according to him, like, they ruined it, right? Took whatever was special and they just.

[B]

Like, tried to, like, hurt that story before, right?

[A]

So he. He got out, you know, liquefied his shares, and then he went on to go start Angie's now. Angie's. Angie's his mother.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Angie is like, there's. So there's that. The human. Like, it's a. It's a Jew boy, right?

[B]

You know, there's a personal narrative, right?

[A]

And he decided that he wanted to be able to bring really healthy food. I think his mother, like, passed away from cancer or something. So he wanted to be able to bring really healthy food to people who can't really afford it. It to. So to keep people healthy. So what his whole brand is vertically integrating from, like, buying the farm, owning the cows, owning the slaughterhouse, owning the distribution. And he. His. His first concept was lobster. Angie's Lobster rolls.

[B]

He.

[A]

He has his own boats, he has his own pier.

[B]

He has Arizona.

[A]

Yeah, he has his own production. Like. Like what they do is they. They break down the processing of the lobster, and they just ship the already processed lobster in bags and they just heat it up and put it on.

[B]

A roll and this with bagels, by the way.

[A]

But the cool thing that he's doing is he has Angie's Lobsters, Angie's prime beef, Angie's Burger. And he's using the. Vertically integrating the farm and using all the bits and pieces, but delivering quality product to people at an affordable price point. But he's using the Angie's brand. So there's. There's. They. People recognize Angie and then they have a whole concept built around a single item. And, and there's like trust in the brand. But you're similar with Juboy. So you're leaning into the Juboy brand. Fill in. There's something there.

[B]

And, and, and we did, we. Like I said, we had the canteen open for a little while. We're looking for a new space for it. That was a really border Mexican food. Border comfort food is what I called it. The stuff that I grew up with that, you know, certain markets give you those opportunities. You got a lot of high end stuff. You got a low end stuff. I always tell people we're somewhere between craft and comfort. I don't want to commit to being craft because I'm not a craft burger. There are some places here in town if you've never had a burger from Dai Dewey before. Salt and time closed. Their burger was amazing. Leroy and Lewis, you know the barbecue places. Now he's taking on the show. Leroy Lewis Evans. Great guy. Great guy. I mean, talk about a smart, talented, like, dude, you settle down, have a flower or something. Anyways. But you know, it's. Where were we going with that? Remind me.

[A]

I was talking about Angie's. Talking about the brain.

[B]

Okay. Yeah. Have you ever seen the Papas family out of Houston?

[A]

No, but they're on my radio.

[B]

So it's a similar concept too. I think what he's doing with Angie's is probably a little bit more noble than I am. And I'm always the first to admit it.

[A]

Nobility aside, like it's. The idea is like, like the brand. Yeah, take, Take the brand. So you could have a concept, a full service restaurant and you could have Jew boy sliders, Juboy thick burgers, Juboy burritos, Juboy subs, all under one brand. Or you can take the brand and make individual concepts that are focusing on individual menu items which can. Then you can build efficiencies around that thing. Do it really well, but be your rendition of that thing.

[B]

Oh, we've definitely. I mean this, the scaling is. Is as much for making more money, which everybody wants to do. It's also for efficiency. 100% order more. And having, you know, prep done in a central facility and making sure that, that we're as efficient as possible. That comes from that. I, I just, I'll be honest with you, I just get a little bored. I mean it's. I wish I had.

[A]

You're a creative man. Like you didn't get into this for the operation. That's not your passion.

[B]

And I have Some really good people doing that now. Like, they have really grown with me, and we've learned these things together. And, you know, learning process is going to come with some ups and downs, and we certainly have had some downs. But, yeah, for me, I don't. I don't know. As a creative director, I've been asked, is it scalable? I don't know. I don't know if it goes beyond Austin.

[A]

Well, that was one of my questions. Right. Because the challenge with building a brand that has a person behind it, like, you are the Jew boy.

[B]

Yeah, that's called that, too. So it's a little weird. Well, you're the jubilee. Well, you know. Yeah. Whoa, whoa.

[A]

Sorry.

[B]

Excuse me. On my better days, I guess.

[A]

But, like, that's one of the challenges associated with building a brand. Reverse engineering from you is like, you're not scalable, right?

[B]

No, but. But I do believe that cult celebrating cultures is. And that's at the heart of this concept is, let's stop trying to fit everything in small boxes and let's start saying, hey, you know what? That sounds like fun. Let's try it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But with customers, I say the same thing. I said, look, you don't like it, bring it back. I'll replace it. I would much rather, no pun intended, eat the cost of a burger and have you walk out of here with something that you like. And this is something I say quite often when I work to register. Tell me what you think. You're not going to hurt my feelings. The only thing that's going to hurt my feelings is if you never tell me. And that's a hard customer behavior to break. Instead, they go home and. This is what I asked you to tell me to ask about. Yelp said, they go home and they write a review. Expected more. Did this. Would have liked it. I've had so many reviews. Were like, I'm not really into mustard. Well, then, God damn it, Ask me for mayonnaise or something else. Like, it's okay, right? I was shocked when I first opened the truck. How scared? I mean, you could call it a Soup Nazi syndrome. Like, I remember this one dude, he's like. He says, okay, I think I wanted you, boy. And I said, okay, that's got lettuce, pickles, mustard, and cheese. Cool with that? And he's like, would it be. And he literally took, like, a half step back, like I was gonna come out of the truck at him. Would it be okay if I didn't use the Mustard. Like, yeah, man. I mean, am I eating the burger? You eating the burger? I'm like, it's okay. But the culture is so constrictive in so many ways. Like, oh, this is a chef. And if you dare, you know, the.

[A]

Way that was intended to be experience.

[B]

I don't think people should go out there and put ketchup on steak. But, you know, whatever. If that's your thing. My dad used to do it. It was so bizarre, you know? But again, I'm gonna catch up on.

[A]

A lot of later. I'm not gonna lie. You know why? Because I'm trying to eat healthy. And ketchup is, like, one of the few things, you know, like, you can put brown. Or do you say ketchup or mustard? I thought mustard.

[B]

We put mustard on there.

[A]

Was it we saying. You said ketchup, though?

[B]

Yeah. You could. Well, you could.

[A]

Sorry, I meant to say. I meant to say mustard. I don't know why I was thinking. I don't put ketchup on that. There's a lot of sugar in it.

[B]

Sugar in it? Yeah. If you're trying to eat healthy. That's why I was like. But no, I mean, again, think about this. Like, it's okay. It's all right. I have my rules. No tomatoes. You don't want to. And I tell people, bring them in. I don't care. Bring them. Bring your tomatoes in. It's all right. I just don't do it that way. And as long as you're not over the top with it. But this idea of celebrating cultures beyond just cuisine, but really, as it relates to what we're talking about today, I like different things. I want to try different things. We've done collabs with different places. We did a collab with a Chinese restaurant. We did a crab rangoon burger. We took their crab rangoon filling with some fried wonton strips, put it on top of the burger with a little bit of the sauce. It's fantastic. They, in turn, took our picadillo mix, put it into their rangoons, and made this picadillo rangoon. That was tremendous as well, which is.

[A]

A great way to scale a brand, by the way, doing those collabs, partnering with people who have followings and putting your spin on their food and pulling from that audience that they have.

[B]

And it's fun.

[A]

Yeah, it's cool.

[B]

Some work better than others. Some don't, you know? And my point is, is that having. Having this as a celebration of culture is definitely scalable.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Me personally, I mean, Juboy Is, is a, a way to define me rather than just calling it Moe's Burgers. It is a market marketing trick. It's a way that you generate some interest. You know, people drive by. I've had people walk in and go, is this place real? Cats are really around. You know, it's. And I'm cool with that. Obviously over the last four years, four and a half years, things have evened out a little. I don't have as many people that come in are like, I had this one guy come in one time. I guess he, he had never really been to a, anything Jewish related. And he walks in, it was quiet.

[A]

It was like four o' clock in kosher Delhi. Jewish, right?

[B]

Well, yeah, but he, he was clearly East Texas and he clearly had that look on his face. And you know, he, he comes up, he's like, so can I get a burger? And I was like, yeah, man. Lettuce pickled me the whole stabil, right? And he's like, he goes, oh, okay, okay, okay. And then the last thing he asked me, he goes, are you Jewish? And I said, yes, I am. And he goes, you know, I've never actually met a Jewish person before. And I said, oh yeah. And he says to me, he says, are they all as big as you? He was so genuine. It was really great, man. I mean, I'm not out there. I'm not on a soapbox. I, I want people to buy burgers. And like I said earlier, I have a problem with cars. You, you've talked to Brandon, you know him and cars. Like, I'm right there with Hunt.

[A]

Repeat guests on the show. I love the, the Hunt brothers, Zane and Brandon. I mean we. Would you believe, believe it's 3:46 right now. We got a few minutes before we get to wrap this thing up. I do want to get to kind of where you are today. Some advice, marketing advice on what you're doing today in terms of marketing and feedback being a big part of the success, listening to your customers. Are you leveraging any technology today to tap into that feedback?

[B]

No. And a lot of that comes down to maintaining the vibe, if you will. I, you know, we capture their phone number so we can text them when their food's ready. But I don't, I don't really want to, to abuse that privilege. And that's what I tell them. So right now, even though it's a bit hypocritical coming from a marketing background where data is king, I would, I would rather focus on still this organic feedback, meaning I Talk to people. I get a lot of feedback from them. I, I read, you know, the different, whatever posts that are out there.

[A]

What about on the back end with like, say a tool like Marquee Key, for example, that is like a dashboard that will take all of what's being said on the Internet, like Yelp, Google, TripAdvisor, and it pulls all the feedback into one spot so you can see what people are saying and respond to them.

[B]

I, I haven't, so I have a policy. I've never responded to a review, positive or negative, and I never will.

[A]

Okay, but you still want to hear what people are saying.

[B]

I want to hear what they're saying. But, but you, you know, I don't know how much in my current situation with two brick and mortar and two trailers, you know, I can get it, I can get on there and still see it. We're not so big that I can't do that myself. Plus, like I said, I go and I talk to people. I learned early on that I had to wear my logo on the shirt so I didn't scare people. But that kind of goes twofold. Like, I'll be out in public and I'll be places people like, I know who you are. I've been on a few different TV shows, regional ones, man, a couple of them really still turn to really move the needle. Texas bucket list. Shane is, is a beast, man. I, I, I wasn't too, I was like, yeah, it's cool. Come in, do a segment, whatever. I like. I clearly like talking to people, you know, and, but man, he moved the needle a lot. But I will get recognized just at the airport the other day.

[A]

I don't know if this podcast is going to move the needle for you in the Austin. No, this is my target market is not Austinites, unfortunately.

[B]

This is very therapeutic, I think, to not only me speaking, but hopefully for people listening. Like, I want to be honest, I want to be truthful about it. I don't want anybody to think that there's magic beans. Everybody's success is going to be based on different factors that they personalize that they put in there. And I'm very conscious of this one too, because oftentimes and you haven't and asked the question, but the question is, what's the secret to your success? And I always say I don't know because I am not successful. I am succeeding, but I'm not successful. Successful is an end.

[A]

What is that? What is your vision of success? When will you have been there? Like, what are you aiming For.

[B]

I don't know. I'm so old now, I just figure I'll work till I die. So I don't know if that's.

[A]

You're making money, right?

[B]

Making money.

[A]

You're paying the bills.

[B]

Paying the bills.

[A]

You're fiscally sustainable for now. For now?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, you've scaled. You had a shift, close a few locations.

[B]

Yeah, we've. We've closed. We've closed two so far.

[A]

What happened there?

[B]

The first one was that corporate entity I was telling you about. It just. It wasn't my food hall. The food.

[A]

How long were you there for?

[B]

About a year. Okay. And we. We got. It was affordability.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

It wasn't. It wasn't terrible. It just became an afterthought. It was. I felt like it was kind of dragging my brand down. I wasn't able to do the things that I like to do. And the money we were making didn't justify it. And that has to be a very real.

[A]

The money you're making, meaning barely in the black.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it wasn't enough to the. The good wasn't outweighing the bad.

[B]

Well, the nice thing is when you open multiple locations, you don't need to make a lot to do. Well, meaning, you know, if one. One. One entity gives you 5,000amonth, another one gives you another three, another, this, that, plus, you know, your main lifter, you're okay. You don't feel the pinch. Yeah. As if you were the only. It was your only one. But it just never. It never felt who I was. And it was part of an experiment to see if I could exist in this corporate entity. The other one was an experimental thing, the cantina that I was talking about, and there was just some issues with the landlord, issues with the location. That is something, man. As much of a cliche as it is. Location is so big. Still so big. And then depending on your market, parking is everything to some people.

[A]

I had the CEO of Lane's Chicken Fingers on the show, Garrett Reed, and he and his brother and his father had a real estate development company, Maine. And Maine was their job. And he had specialized into helping franchises scale and find real estate. And his brother is the real estate guy. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we can get his brother on to lead a workshop on, like, what to look for in real estate. There's such a. That in itself is such a conversation.

[B]

Huge. There's so many variables, so cliche, you know, old location, location, location. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard all that. They're not kidding, man. You could, you could put five more locations to that statement and it becomes that much.

[A]

What was your challenge with that one spot?

[B]

Parking was a big one. Demographics were not as I had anticipated them. It was location by the campus. And when you look at things, and.

[A]

This is, that demographic would kill with you.

[B]

You get this 40,000 population base within 2 square miles. You know, you're like, oh my God, how can I not succeed here? Well, what you don't realize is that over half of that 40,000 are freshmen and sophomores their first time out of the house. They're, they don't know how to act like grownups yet. They have meal plans, they, they live in. You know, I didn't dig deep enough. I got a little bit cocky and a little bit arrogant. And that's something we all go through. And you hit a couple of, you know, I don't think for that, if you're gonna use a baseball analogy, I think I'm a pretty good, I hit a lot of doubles and an occasional triple, you know, like that. But it just, I didn't, I got cocky. I didn't look deep enough into it. And you realize that now that 50,000, 40,000 is down to 20,000 and still very good. But a lot of them are faculty and staff and you know, they, they don't want to be around other kids. They want to get the hell out of there. So they don't eat by campus or. We did get a lot of catering out of it. Catering has been a pleasant surprise for me.

[A]

What percentage is something that I usually ask? What percentage, like what is the breakdown of your like marketing mix in terms like where is it going? Like what of, of all of your orders, how many are from in house?

[B]

So here at burgers, at the, at the flagship, It's a solid 50. 50, I think people still come in.

[A]

Get it to go in house. 50 take out or do we don't.

[B]

Do any delivery from the main restaurant. Burgers don't travel.

[A]

Yeah. So you don't do any third party or anything like that?

[B]

Not at this location, not at the full size burgers. Sliders on the other hand, travel quite well.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's a younger demographic. Look, I respect everybody, but I'm not paying a 15 markup plus a delivery fee, plus of this, plus of that to get two sliders and a bag of fries.

[A]

What about a marketing, like you're a marketing person. So a lot of the argument is you're not paying like you're getting access to this Marketplace you wouldn't otherwise have access to.

[B]

So with the trailers, it has been a really pleasant addition to the whole thing. And that makes on one trailer, it's closer to 70. 30. Meaning 70% is coming from delivery. 30% is coming from people within walking distance. Okay. The trailer in 6th street benefits from foot traffic. It's a late night place. It's. I look on the cameras at night, there's drunk people feeding each other. You know, it's, it's cool. It's, it's. It fits the vibe. It's at a dive bar. And the dive bar chart, you know, it all works.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But the new one we're opening is predicated on delivery.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We're expecting to get significant percentage from that.

[A]

Okay. And you were saying. And I, I cut you off to kind of get more into it. You said catering is a big part of the business. Where is that? How. What percentage of your revenue comes.

[B]

It's a new part of the business. It's not quite big yet, but it definitely pulled us through the summer when things get hot.

[A]

Yeah, summer's weird around here. People leave Austin during the summer now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's almost May. It's still in April. And I'm starting to get barely. I'm barely surviving in my camp.

[B]

Right. You're from New Hampshire. Yeah. You're gonna, you're gonna feel it. No, I lived in Phoenix. I know what hot is. But this is different. It's sweltering. It's.

[A]

Well, it's. There's still a little humidity from the. The Gulf of.

[B]

A lot of it. Yeah, you'd be. I mean, I. I lived in Atlanta, like I told you. You get a couple of those days where it's 95. Yeah. And I sweat. I got no hair anymore, so it's awful. You don't want to be in a food and be a sweater. But. No, catering has been a new thing. Like, you saw the bus out there. We're doing mobile. We'll cater on site. It's fun. It's mostly sliders. In fact, it's all sliders. Again, I'm very protective of the full size burger because it does its best when you eat it fresh.

[A]

Yeah, man, I'm eyeing those burgers.

[B]

Soon you're fed. Trust me, you're going to get fed.

[A]

What happens? We discussed that. You think you need to discuss that. You think that you can uniquely speak to. In terms of. This is what I've learned and this is what I can pay forward.

[B]

I think you, you have to look inward more than I ever realized. Because as it got bigger, the more I have to rely and trust the people around me, the people I hire and take care of them. And I think that this business has oftentimes forgotten about that. And I see other restaurant owners and I got friends that own restaurants, and they see my labor percentage and they choke on it. What the hell, man? You're making burgers. Why are you paying this, that, and the other? My executive team gets paid well. And I know that I could be making more money, but would I truly be making more money?

[A]

Right.

[B]

No, I'm probably not. Because the business would be smaller, right. And I'd be working harder and killing myself. And you're never good when you're killing yourself. You're just never that. So I think, thinking about the people that work for you and with you, I very often say they work with me, not for me. And I know that's a goofy semantic, but it's true.

[A]

How's looking anywhere address what you're talking about right now, Taking care of others.

[B]

Being aware of what's going on, Being aware of what happens within your restaurant. I think too many places within.

[A]

You're looking within the four walls.

[B]

Yeah. I think there's a lot of. It's sexy to advertise. It's sexy to get on social media, and it's fun and you get those results. But at the end of the day, once you've got them there. And this comes back from my experience working at ad agencies, like, man, I went. I had a car dealership client one time, and I drove up. I was better shape back then. Wearing shiny shirts, had a watch, you know, the whole deal. Hair. I think I was driving a BMW at the time. Pulled up to this Chevy dealership. There is no reason to look at me and think, this guy's not a buyer. I sat there for 30 minutes before anybody said, I went inside, I looked around. I didn't say anything. Nobody came up to me and said, hello. Nobody said, is there anything can help you with? And I went back and I called the dealership owner and I said, look, man, before we do advertising, you need to think about a few things. He was angry. He's old redneck guy goes, bullshit. My company knows to say hello to people. I said, all right, we'll do this again. I'll come back in a week. Let's see if anybody says anything to me. And I'll tell you when I'm coming so you can watch. And I did. When I did the same exact thing, his face Was his. His office had a window out onto the dealership floor and he pressed up against it. I could see getting redder and redder. Sure enough, man, nobody said hello to me. I said, well, look, what's the point in spending for advertising if your folks can't say hello to somebody? And. And I still, I still think about that a lot. Like, say hello to somebody. You don't know what kind of day they've had. And some people come in and like, look, I want a jubilee with this. I want that one that. I said, okay, you're gonna have about a 22nd window here when that credit card is processing. How's your day? Everything good? Doing all right. You know, look at things. Look at, look at. We have the children's hospital nearby here. You see someone with that children's hospital badge on, give them a cookie, say, I don't know what's going on over there, but just hoping that things go well, that's all. Little things like that, that go so far. And, and not only that, I think that they honestly, they make you feel better doing your job.

[A]

100, why not?

[B]

Yeah. And so many of these companies just. They spend so much time wanting to be sexy and get out there. And I get it, it's. It makes perfect sense.

[A]

But what are you saying? These companies. What, what companies are you talking about?

[B]

Some of these small chains. Yeah, Restaurants. I mean, you go in there and when I went the other day to get a burrito, and I won't name the place because I don't want get to get anybody in trouble, but this was right out of a bad sitcom. The two dudes working in there were just over it. They were tired and I could tell. And I was there towards the end of it. So I'm waiting, I'm patient, you know, Again, logo on shirt. I'm not going to get in any trouble. But the guy finishes at the register and he's walking towards me and I'm getting ready to give him my order, and he gives me one of these. He goes, pulls his phone out, puts it back, and he goes, gonna get free. Just like that. Now, normally I would be like, what the hell? But he owned it, man. He was. He was so miserable. The food was fine. He did a good job with the food. He just didn't want to be there. But, man, as a restaurant owner, as a. I just look at that. And if I knew that that type of crap was happening in my place, excuse me, I would lose my mind. Yeah. You know, that, that type of stuff. So I think that we're all looking for those magic beans when a lot of times they're right there in front of you. Little things that you can do, little things that make people feel better. Even at the trucks down on 6th Street, I still get feedback from people. You guys were so sweet. Why is it such a big deal to be sweet?

[A]

Right? I mean, it's not the way that I was expecting this conversation to go in terms of the marketing advice. And I agree with everything you're saying, but the, The. The trend right now. I mean, there's just so much energy going into the how. Like into marketing, into social media, into these platforms. And I would. I was expecting more advice on that if I'm.

[B]

Well, if you. If you have a good brand, if you're comfortable with communicating, you don't need it as much. And. And I hate seeing people throw good money after bad, you know, Is that the other way around? Bad money after good? Point is, is if I have a background in it, I can curate what's being said, what's being shown. I put things up on the walls. I do those types of things because I think they matter. Other places are. To me, they're just looking for that quick fix. They think it's easy. Put an ad out there, get an influencer, and it'll be fine. There's so much more to it before you get to that point. And then at that point, you're dealing. You're in a very saturated area now. All food industry is saturated, let's be honest. Like, I'm in burgers. There's burgers everywhere. But it's okay because I know people want them. So I don't need to convince them what a burger is. I don't need to convince them that burgers are good. What I need to do is convince them that buying a burger for me is worth their money. And so much of that comes from inside. You can't do that with an ad. All my years in advertising, you can get them to the door, but once you get to the door, there's a whole lot more that needs to go into it. It. And so many people just think that it's a. Like I said, it's a magic bean. And I hate seeing that as an ad agency and now as a restaurateur, when I see these marketing firms and these different media outlets come at me, well, you know, then the Yellow Pages used. I used to call them terrorists. They would go to these small businesses and say, nobody will know where you are. Right. You better have the biggest ad possible. You know, my dad, we had his. Yeah, nobody's gonna know about you. Right. Let's not be terrorizing people. Let's be honest.

[A]

Marketing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's different for everybody. And that's the other thing, is that everybody has a different approach. Everybody has a different narrative. What they're lacking is the ability to tell it and the understanding of why it's gonna matter to people. They're so focused inward that they don't think about having a conversation with somebody else. And what's gonna matter to them? Why are they going to leave here and say, that was cool? Yeah, I had a good time.

[A]

I mean, but at the end of the day, you did spend 12% of your total operating SAR on PR, right. So there's some like. Like, what's that?

[B]

Well, it was a new. It was a new business to me. I hadn't done it myself, and I had seen how so many of these businesses suffer from, you know, just being out there. Plus, I also knew that something called Juboy was going to require a little bit of. Of. Of hand holding and wanted to make sure that that initial message was put out there properly. Yeah, it wasn't a hard sell. Obviously, the media found out. Some guys opening a chuck called Juboy Burgers, you know, they're in it for the click. Let's look into this. But what happens after that is. Is what's most important. And that's why I knew what I was doing from that point. I just needed to get to that point.

[A]

I'll be honest, man. You're making me feel like, you know, lately I've been pretty straight stressed out. I've been pretty, like, questioning what I'm doing. Literally everything I do is the antithesis of what you're supposed to do. In terms of how I find guests, I. My operational costs are crazy because I'm driving around the country, I'm living on the road to get these interviews. I'm going in person. You know, I am using word of mouth to find my guests.

[B]

Like, I was surprised that you were coming in person. I have to admit. I assumed it would be a zoom.

[A]

Or something like that, that there's just something about the. It's not just the interview.

[B]

It's.

[A]

It's the, like. Well, you know, the communication is better because there's the energy. I can actually focus on you for two hours when I'm in the same room as you. When you're staring at a screen, you just get.

[B]

You just.

[A]

It's so hard to focus you can.

[B]

Always tell when they're looking at their phones too.

[A]

I did, I will say I did look at my phone a couple times today and I was trying to get onto the WI fi so I could look something up. That's why if you're wondering why I.

[B]

Was on, I was like, all you had to do is disconnected. For me, I feel like we, we've. Like I said, everything is so black and white. We started the conversation talking about a society that is 50% split down the middle. I don't know if that's ever truly happened before in human history. Like, we really, half of us believe that the other half are crazy, right?

[A]

And you know, that's really what I'm trying to do is to get out of the Internet to give to. I'm chasing word of mouth and I'm chasing. Nobody knows a market like the, the, the people that are in that market working, they know who their competition is. They know what people are saying behind the scenes. A publicist is going to paint this image for me. They're going to say, this is my guess and these are all the amazing things. And this is why, like, I don't know that person. Are they making money? Do they have a good reputation? If I go into a city and I start talking to people and I say who's doing it right? Who should I talk to? Who's respected? I'm going to get real. I'm going to see patterns of people. The same name that keep on bubbling to the top are the people I'm going to talk to.

[B]

And what's important about this is not that I'm giving you some secret. Like I said, I do not like that question. Secret to your success.

[A]

That is a whole marketing ploy. The whole idea of secret is you're missing something. And like it's mind trick.

[B]

Sorry, but, but you're, you're, you're absolutely right. Be, be okay with yourself. Whether you're a numbers guy and you want to run it that way, whether you're a, you know, somebody like myself who's tends to be a little bit more cavalier, which is a good word I like to use that one. But look inward. Figure it out. There's people out there that can help you, that will help you, but if you don't have your shit straight, you're just gonna flounder. And I seen it with ad agent. When I had the ad agency, I'd get so frustrated with these clients that would come to me and so we got a good product. We should look at this, this, this and that. No, I want to do tv, but it's cost prohibitive and, you know, we can't do production. Yeah, but I want to be in on tv.

[A]

Yeah, man. I could keep talking to you. And I really wanted to. Honestly, I'd love to come back in the future and pick up.

[B]

We'll see what happens in the next year. It's always each year is. That's the crazy thing about only four years in brick and mortar. I'm still shocked. And a lot of it has to do with the pandemic. Obviously, that was a weird and different time, but how different year after year becomes. And one of the things that I was concerned with when I got into this business, I don't like having the same day 12 twice. Yeah, that was a big push for me to go out of being a doctor, to go in advertising, because every day was something different. Clients come, change new problems, new things, and. And I felt like that was the way to stay sane. My concern with this place was that it would become the same day over and over again. And it has some elements of that. There are moments that I'm thinking, you.

[A]

Can also outsource a lot of the rapidity, you know, you can surround yourself with, you know, frontline employees or account accountants or the things. The inventory, like the things that. The meticulous things you do over and over in the details.

[B]

And that is where I'm at now, which is great. But I don't wake up as early as I used to. I don't have to. And for better or worse, and I think it's worse, my wife works from home. She's up and working. I come stumbling out of the bedroom at 9:30 or so, and she's like, why don't you wake me up? She goes, oh, I tried, you know, like that because I like the peace and quiet because, you know, you take the dogs with you, and I finally get to sleep. So it works.

[A]

I have a couple questions. We got to wrap it up. We're over time, so I want to make sure we get these out quick. What is one thing about your business? I value a process, a system that's truly uncommon and makes you unstoppable.

[B]

I think it's. It's the true faith I put in the employees. When that goes back to the give a pos, you know, if I believe they give a shit, I will have faith in them.

[A]

I love that. And the mission statement is to inspire, empower, and transform the industry. We do that by making an example of people like you, who have these values or sharing values, and we're helping one individual at a time with an aiming point. This is, this is how I can transform. So how have you personally transformed? How are you a better man today than the man you were when you started in this industry, which was only eight years ago, but maybe like the younger version when you're in, in Martin marketing.

[B]

So pretty much everybody listening to this is going to fancy themselves an entrepreneur. And whether they are or not. One of the things that I struggled with when I opened the ad agency was employees. Things that I thought were going to be the best part became the worst part. And I had, at one point, my ad agency had 15 people or so, all college educated babies, man. And I was younger, so a lot of people that worked for me were either my age or older. And that, that created some issues for me. But I hadn't learned how to be a manager yet. Even when I worked in big corporate agencies, people did what they were told to do because they had to. I like getting people to do what they need to do because they want to. And one of the things that I think I'm slowly getting better at, and I say getting better at because I don't think I'm great at it. Still building a team, having faith in your staff, making sure that people understand what, what matters to you so that they don't let that happen, you know, they don't let anything happen to that. So if, if I'm better in any way, it's because I now have a better understanding of who my, my staff is and what matters to them and how to make that work for me.

[A]

I love it, man. And this is the last question before I have you call somebody out and it's a doozy. So get ready for it. If you got the news you'll be leaving this world tomorrow, all the memories of you, your work and your restaurants would be lost with your departure. With the exception of three pieces of wisdom that you could leave behind for the good of humanity and your legacy. What would those three pieces of wisdom be?

[B]

Find a way to be happy. One, Find a way to be happy. You just. Life's too short. There's no reason. We have come so far as a species. We have. I mean, we poop and it goes away. We don't have to worry about it, you know, I mean, there we live in a golden era. Be happy. I never understood my really wealthy clients that were such.

[A]

Right. And the cool thing is happiness is a choice.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think people in today's world. I think we believe that money is happiness, status is happiness. And I think that narrative is so further from the truth. And we can literally be, we can choose to be happy today with what we have.

[B]

So I want, I want people to know that, yes, you're right, choose happiness. And I know that's hokey, but it's, it's real and it will change how you produce in real life.

[A]

What's number two?

[B]

Well, I'm come back to give a shit. I mean, care about what you do because again, life's short. Why. Why are you doing it if you don't care about it? Now, I have people, specifically my wife, who disagree with me. She looks at work. My dad was this way. Work was a means to an end. Yeah, I look at it simple as this. We're 50% of our life, we're asleep of the 50%, we're awake, 70% of it. We're either in school or we're at work. So you're left with what? Do the math. You're better for me, 30% of your life, 25% of your life for you to do what you want to do with it. And actually half of that because you're asleep, the other half.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Make it relevant, man. Just find a reason to be engaged. I don't care if you're, you know, if you're doing spreadsheets, just enjoy it. Try to find a way. And if you can't, and maybe you, you're the flip of me. Maybe you're like my dad. He was a podiatrist. Nobody wants to look at feet. Well, I got one friend that's got a fetish, but other than that.

[A]

Here's the thing though, we're all different. And I think that that's the beauty in us as a species, is we're meant to go further together. There are the dreamers, they're the visionary people, the, the idea people, the people that can't sit still. The people that get distracted easily. And those are tend to be entrepreneurs. They're pointing where this is where we're going, we're going this way. And they surround themselves with the people that want the security.

[B]

And it's easy for me to tell you to do that, but at the same time, and I have had help, I'm not. I genuinely dislike people that talk about, you know, starting from nothing self made. There's nothing self made about me, man. My parents helped me when I needed it. My wife helped me when I needed it. I am fortunate and I hesitate to use the term blessed because that's a whole nother story. But I've had help. Help other people. That would be probably my third one. If you can help help, why not? Yeah, because it'll make everything better. And, and like I said, I'm not self made. I hate that.

[A]

Choose happy, give a help others. This has been fun.

[B]

Why not?

[A]

Thank you so much.

[B]

My pleasure.

[A]

Who do you respect and admire? That's how I found you. This is my North Star who's out in the world doing good work. People that you know, you think I should get on the show. If they were a guest, you'd be like, I want to know what that person has.

[B]

Well, Eric Silverstein comes to mind immediately. And he's peach tortilla and I, that's when I just met with him the other day. I mean, talk about people that you're able to talk to and that help you and see things from a broader perspective. What I never liked, I went through this with my old man when I was figuring out colleges. He figured I should do it his way because his way had been successful. And I think that that's unfair to people. Like there's multiple ways to get to a success, especially in this industry. Yeah.

[A]

And that's one of the biggest lessons I've learned is that there is no one way. You got to share all the perspectives.

[B]

Take what you hear, internalize it, but don't feel as if if you're not doing exactly. If you don't have exactly what Mo did. God, I hate talking about myself in third person. You're okay if you've got your own vision, your own, all these principles, if you'll just own them and believe in them, then you're going to be much better off. So Eric Silverstein definitely comes to mind. Who else have I talked to?

[A]

Well, you think of that. I'm taking a selfie because I haven't done it yet. And in today's world, if you're not doing selfies or something wrong with you.

[B]

Cool. Yeah. I've had to learn to take pictures of myself or be in pictures. I'm not photogenic, man. And I see these pictures up, people post them. I'm like, good God, look at me, man. Look like a cartoon character these days. I used to be a powerlifter in college. And it's cool when you're 25 and you can bench press £450. When you're 55 and you can't lift your arm up past here using. Well, then Eric, Eric's a big one.

[A]

I actually had him on the show, and he was somebody who I thought you should. I reach back out to Eric to get him back on the show to see what's going on these days. I can't remember where he was at with Bar Peach when I last spoke to him, but I would love to get him back on the show. And this is where I say, man, actually, I got to give you a chance. How do we connect if we enjoyed today's conversation?

[B]

You know, all the social media still comes to me, me. So all those DMS, the websites come to me. Mooboyburgers.com. that's, you know, I'm. My cell phone number is a little tricky because that's what the number I use for the truck for four years, and I've tried to get it. I get some weird texts. Okay, we don't have to give that up.

[A]

Their social media and emails.

[B]

That's good enough.

[A]

And this is where I say, I cannot do what I do without people like you. Willing to get open, willing to get vulnerable, willing to share. There is no question in my man, you are unstoppable.

[B]

I appreciate it, man. Thanks for the time.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

Cheers, my man.

[A]

Yeah, of course.