1263: Eric Reed, Chief Development Officer at Layne's Chicken Fingers

Summary

Restaurant Unstoppable, Episode 1263: Eric Reed, Chief Development Officer at Layne’s Chicken Fingers

Date: March 23, 2026
Guest: Eric Reed, Chief Development Officer, Layne’s Chicken Fingers
Host: Eric Cacciatore

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the rarely discussed intersection of real estate development, franchising, and operations in the fast-casual restaurant industry. Host Eric Cacciatore interviews Eric Reed, whose extensive experience spans corporate and developer roles, and now drives Layne’s Chicken Fingers' aggressive national expansion. Key themes include strategies to select optimal restaurant sites, the relationship between franchisees and franchisors, the impact of private equity, and how operational excellence scales.

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Key Discussion Topics & Insights

1. Core Philosophy: Protect the Brand, Protect the Franchisee

• Reed’s guiding mantra: “Protect the brand, protect the franchisee, which is 100%. We stand by every day.” (05:10, Eric Reed)
• “Our job is to help you on the real estate side, on the development side. We have the expertise in that, you know, trust us as we kind of take you through this journey. Right. That we’re protecting you from yourself.” (07:07, Eric Reed)

Key Takeaway:

A franchisor’s value isn’t just branding and process, but comprehensive support, particularly with real estate and site selection—the highest stakes investment a franchisee will make.

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2. Eric Reed’s Career Journey: Real Estate Roots to QSR Growth

• Early career with brother Garrett: Both started in retail real estate, then transitioned to the restaurant industry.
• “Our passwords were very similar. If you want to go way back to us working at Wendy's together...after college...I went to work for Sally Beauty Supply. My degree was in finance because they didn’t have real estate back then.” (07:54-08:41, Eric Reed)

Key Milestones:

• Ground-up development work at Chili's/Brinker.
• Main & Main: Their own development company executing build-to-suit restaurant and retail projects for clients like Starbucks and Chili’s.
• Real estate and growth roles at Raising Cane's: From regional to national footprint.
• Acquisition of Layne's Chicken Fingers, focusing on being both landlord and franchise operator, then pivoting primarily to franchising and support.

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3. Inside Restaurant Real Estate Development

Anchor vs. Opportunistic Developers

• Anchor developers (build for targets like Walmart/Target) and control surrounding pad site developments.
• Opportunistic developers (like Reed’s Main & Main) target land near anchors to benefit from overflow and create “shadow” developments.
  • "It's kind of like those fish that draft the shark... we're going to be close enough that we can benefit from the existence of the shark." (14:24-14:42, Eric Reed)

Triple Net Leases:

• Tenant pays for maintenance, insurance, and taxes.
• “It’s very appealing to a landlord...because landlord has nothing to do.” (27:51, Eric Reed)

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4. Lessons from Previous Industry Downturns

• The 2008-09 financial crash: "The bad thing about becoming a millionaire overnight is...you can un-become a millionaire overnight. That’s literally what it felt like." (31:21, Eric Reed)
• Conservative development strategy kept Main & Main alive while many developers folded.

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5. From Corporate to Franchise: Strategic Growth Models

• Reed’s time at Raising Cane’s and Chili’s taught him to study markets as blank canvases and build analytical frameworks for site selection.
• Major insight: Chicken QSRs (“one thing really well” model) perform differently in customer perception—sandwich vs. finger vs. bone-in segments.

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6. Building Layne’s: The Franchise Rollout

• Layne’s was acquired post-recession as a way to own both the operator and landlord sides, but soon pivoted to a franchise growth engine.
• Initial slow, methodical expansion before operations leader Samir Watar came onboard.
• “We were the operations on the real estate side, but he was the operations on the restaurant side. That was that rocket fuel you needed.” (51:47, Jason Cacciatore)
• Current model: Layne’s HQ acts as expert consultant for new franchisees, especially in site selection and construction.

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7. Franchisee Support Model

• Layne’s handles everything from initial market mapping to broker selection to construction handoff.
  • “First you identify the markets, then you identify what’s actually on the market…We never actually, we never hand the process off. The process is always there as we’re acting more as consultants to the franchisee.” (74:13–74:32, Eric Reed)
• Franchisees can own their own real estate, unlike corporate-owned models at McDonald's or Chick-fil-A.

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8. Site Selection Science and Intuition

• Prime site formula: "Hard corner, full access at a traffic light, a huge shopping center behind, going-home-side of the road, biggest signage…cheap dirt." (82:52–83:54, Eric Reed)
• The costs must be evaluated against projected sales, not just price (“is it too expensive? I don’t know, how much in sales do you think you can do there?”)
• Explains common mistakes and the importance of analyzing impulse access and competitor positioning.

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9. Data Tools & Technology in Modern Site Selection

• Uses modern mapping software aggregating Google Earth, traffic counts, Placer.ai, and Restaurant Trends data.
  • “We have a software that basically takes all...traffic count data, restaurant trends data, puts it into one thing.” (93:14, Eric Reed)
• On predictive models: “Oftentimes accurate, but there’s so many variables that go into it.” (97:26, Eric Reed)
• Human insight plus technology delivers strongest decisions.

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10. Current Market Dynamics & Private Equity

• Private Equity’s role: Tends to buy in when brands are proven but not yet maxed; speeds up scale with capital. “They want to grab a brand that’s big enough that they know it works, but hasn’t been able to make that huge leap…[then] invest…to grow much faster.” (57:17, Eric Reed)
• Challenges for mom-and-pops in competing for A-tier sites due to developer preference for creditworthy, national brands.

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11. Industry Evolution & The Future

• Reed believes that automation in fast food (kiosks, mobile order) may reverse toward higher-touch human interaction because “we need that.”
  • "I think we're gonna see us going back to our roots...We miss the personalness." (103:52, Eric Reed)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Franchisee Support:
  “We really pride ourselves on the protect the brand, protect the franchisee…we're going to help you as much as we can so you can have successful restaurants. Because at the end of the day, no matter how many restaurants a franchisee signs up for, if they open one and it doesn't make money, they're not opening another one.” (101:16, Eric Reed)

• On Data and Human Insight:
  “If the computer says it's good and the local guy says it's crap…it’s not a green light. You’re looking for correlating data.” (100:17–100:26, Eric Reed)

• On Layne’s Franchise Philosophy:
  “Let me lend my expertise. Let me lend my team’s expertise…Let us help you so you don’t have to worry so much about that, that you’re in good hands.” (101:17–102:04, Eric Reed)

• On Personal Growth:
  "I think by getting to know the franchisees and really, really having our vision of having a successful worldwide brand become their vision of having a successful brand in their backyard..." (109:45, Eric Reed)

• On the Human Side of Food:
  “Eating is such a personal experience for everybody… I think we're going to go back to that more. I think the kiosks, all those things are going to fall out.” (103:52, Eric Reed)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Core Philosophy: 05:10–07:36
• Career Journey & Main & Main: 07:54–21:25
• Developers and Land Strategy: 12:03–21:45
• Triple Net, Passive Investor Model: 25:09–30:11
• The 2008-09 Crash: 31:21–32:52
• Lessons from Raising Cane’s: 33:05–44:53
• Layne's Acquisition & Early Growth: 45:45–55:26
• Private Equity Discussion: 55:39–64:22
• Site Selection Science & Mistakes: 82:24–88:25
• Franchise Support Process: 71:37–78:35
• Predictive Tools & Technology Limitations: 93:14–100:26
• Industry Evolution & Personal Experience: 103:06–106:17

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Conclusion: What Makes Layne’s Unstoppable?

Layne’s distinct advantage is deep expertise in site selection and a franchisee-first ethos. Their consultative support reduces franchisee risk and increases odds of sustainable success. As Reed says, “That we care so much about the franchisee and their success” is the company’s truly “unstoppable” value. (109:25, Eric Reed)

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Three Pearls of Wisdom (Eric Reed, 111:51)

1. Love your family.
2. Always take care of those around you.
3. Take full advantage of the opportunities that come your way.

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Connect with Layne’s and Eric Reed

• Franchise Info: laynes.com
• Direct Contact: [e-mail] | LinkedIn: Eric Reed

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Transcript

[Jason]

A couple things before we get started today. First, thank you so much for showing up week after week making my vision for Restaurants Unstoppable come true. Your downloads are allowing me to do this show the way I've always wanted to do it. Boots on the ground, word of mouth, leaders, referring leaders, giving the industry an uncensored, no BS platform to share their perspectives and truth. That's on you. Thank you so much. And we're just getting started. So if you're enjoying what we're doing here and you want to help us do it even better, Please subscribe to this podcast on your platform of choice. And if you do that, I promise to do everything in my power to continue to improve the show. I'll deliver the restaurant tours you want to hear from and we'll continue to make everything you love about this show better. Thank 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 brought to you by Restaurant Technologies 3, the leader in automated cooking oil management. Their total oil management solution is an end to end closed loop automated system that delivers, monitors, filters, collects and recycles your cooking oil, eliminating one of the dirtiest jobs in the kitchen. Restaurant technologies services over 45,000 customers nationwide. Automate your oil and elevate your kitchen by visiting RTI Inc.com or call 888-779-5314 to get started. This episode is made possible by Serboni your all in one bookkeeping and financial solution. We're talking about reliable tax preparation, business incorporation, seamless payroll and compliance reports, strategic CFO services that drive business growth, detailed custom reporting for complete financial clarity Dedicated support for restaurants in multi location businesses. Did I mention bookkeeping, Sir? Boney handled the numbers so you can focus on the vision. Call Serboni today at 281-8882-2413 to schedule your free 30 minute consultation and discover House BONY can streamline your operations and boost your bottom line. Limited time Offer an exclusive to Restaurant Unstoppable listeners. Mention this Message and get 20% off your first month of services. This episode is in partnership with Giving Kitchen. The restaurant industry takes care of people

[Eric Reed]

that's what we do.

[Jason]

But historically, we haven't always been great

[Eric Reed]

about taking care of our own.

[Jason]

That's why I want you to know about Giving Kitchen. They're a national nonprofit supporting food service workers facing real crisis. Medical issues, accidents, unexpected hardship. The kind of thing that can really derail a career. Since 2013, they've helped more than 35,000 restaurant workers across the country and awarded over 17 million in financial assistance and stability resources. If you're an operator, chef or anyone food service, this resource is worth knowing. A lot of restaurants choose a rally around Giving Kitchen because at some point in the business knows someone who needs it. Go to giving kitchen.org to learn more and see how you can be a part of it in your own way. This episode is made possible by US Foods. Running a successful restaurant takes more than just great food. With US Foods, you can expect more high quality products, advanced tools and flexible deliveries to grow your business. Their industry leading moxy platform also does more than just place your US Foods order. It uses AI to help you take control, save time and increase profitability. Visit usfoods.com/expect more to learn how to become a US Foods customer one more time, that is usfoods.com expect more with excitement.

[Eric Reed]

Allow me to introduce you today's guest partner and chief development officer at Lane's Chicken Fingers, Eric Reed. My man. Eric, are you feeling unstoppable today?

Yes, absolutely, dude.

I'm stoked to have you here. It was about a year ago I had your brother Garrett Reed and Samir Watar. Am I saying that correctly? It was episode 1193 and 1193. 97. Awesome dudes. I was really pulling back the layers on Garrett and I was like trying to get into his mind about site selection and development and he's like, really? My brother's the guy to talk to in that. Like, there's nobody that I know who knows more about engineering a location for a restaurant than my brother and I tried then to get you to, to get on the show. We couldn't make it happen. I was only in town for a little bit, but we're back. We, we're making it happen. I can't wait to dive into your story, your expertise and I know it's going to be good. But before we dive in, let's get that motivational inspirational ball rolling with a success quote or mantra. What do you got for us?

So it's, it's protect the brand, protect the franchisee, which is 100%. We stand by every day, man.

This is a Brand that is consistent, I'll tell you that. What does that mean to you though, specifically protecting the brand and protecting the franchisee?

Well, that's, that's our job at the end of the day. We got to protect the brand. How everything about the brand, it's, it's look, its feel how the, how the public sees us, how they're served as our guests and the protecting the franchisee is doing everything we can to make sure that they are set up for success.

Yeah.

In any way possible.

And how does that look from your role as chief development officer? What are you doing to protect the franchisee? Because I think you're, we're. Would you say you're closer to the brand in terms of the design, the culture, or are you closer to working with a franchisee to empower them? Like which one? Or you're right in the middle. Where would you say you are?

I mean, I'm in both, obviously. I think probably protecting the franchisee maybe a little bit more. Protecting the brand is more, you know, the design of the location, how it looks, just the layout, the consistency of all that. So when you walk in a lanes, you know, in one part of the country, you walk in lanes another part because, you know, it's a lanes it doesn't like. Is this the same lanes? I don't know. Is it a different group? Which does happen with some brands. Protecting the franchisee is probably a lot to do with us going in and making sure that they're selecting locations where they can be successful. There's a lot of, there's a lot of variables that go into that.

Yeah.

Which I think we'll get through as we go through the day. But yeah, there's, there's a lot to protect them. We like to say in our, in our, in our discovery days, our franchisees that we say no a lot as a, as a, as a development department. Yeah, we say no a lot. And sometimes that can be very frustrating for the franchisee. And what we've got to kind of convey to them is that look, we've got expertise. We, we, you know, our, our job is, is development. You know, your job is to run restaurants. Right. And then hire the right people and do all those things. But our job is to help you on the real estate side, on the development side. We had the expertise in that, you know, trust us as we kind of take you through this journey.

Right.

That we're protecting you from yourself.

Well, when you're buying into a franchise as a franchisee, you're, you're Purchasing the systems, the intellectual property, the branding. But you're also buying into the extended network of specialists that you're getting access to.

[Jason]

Let them do their job.

[Eric Reed]

Right.

You know, trust that the, the entity, the. The franchise that you invested in has surrounded themselves with the right people to make you successful. And that's how it should be.

Yes.

So, great way to get this thing started. I love the Reed story because, you guys, the cool thing about the restaurant industry is that there are an infinite amount of ways to break into this industry. So you and Garrett have a background in real estate development?

Yes.

That's how it started for you. So take us to where it makes sense.

Okay. I've always, always said the greatest thing about Garrett and I is there's two of us. So it's kind of like, you know, double the experience going through. Our passwords were very similar. So, you know, if you want to go way back to us working at Wendy's together, we were in high school. Right. That's kind of our first, you know, jump into the restaurant world. But, you know, post, post college, once I got out of school, Garrett actually was doing real estate at Radio Shack on the corporate side and said, man, you really got into this real estate thing. It's really great. Talked me into it. I went to work for Sally Beauty Supply, when the reason I went to work for them is because they basically hire you with no experience. And that was just the. That was just the bare bones. What'd you go to school for? I went to school for finance.

Okay, so you're working for Sally's in the finance department?

No, no, I was working for sales in the real estate department.

Oh, okay.

So, yeah, so. So I got a degree in finance because they didn't have a degree in. In. In real estate back then. I didn't know 100% I was going to real estate at the time, but I knew I didn't want to be an accountant like my dad. And with the business degree, finance made sense, like math. So I went to work for Solid Beauty and just got started off, I mean, the most basic things, leasing, you know, just finding every Walmart, every target I could, and putting a, you know, 1400 square foot inline space. The leases were very basic, but I learned what a lease was. I triple nets, where I learned all the basic things, how to negotiate with landlords and all these kind of things. And in the industry, people like to call it Sally U. Like Sally University, because most of the people that go to Sally Beauty Supply move on from there. So it's A kind of a lodging pad.

Yep.

Went from there to pay less shoes a little bit bigger box, a little bit different, learned a few more things. But my next stop was the one that really kicked me off in the restaurant world, which is I went to Brinker, which was. They owned Chili's and at the time they owned Chili's on the Border, Macaroni Grill, a lot of brands. But I was on the Chili side. So that was my first opportunity to start working for restaurants or for a restaurant and going in and finding actual dirt and building a building ground up.

Who's the.

I've never done that before.

Who's the older brother?

Garrett.

Okay.

He's two years older.

And so he was in real estate ahead of you because that was the path he took. He was doing this for Radio Shack.

Yes.

Right. So did seeing him do this, is that. Was that part of the draw? The appeal of having like, like or had he always wanted to do real estate?

No, he fell in love with the real estate when he was in college because he had a real estate professor. Yeah. That he just, just thought was an amazing mentor.

He shares that. He shares the story again. If you guys want to go. If you have not checked out Garrett's episode, it's 1193U. If you want to get that side of the story.

Yeah. With Dr. Bain. Yeah. And so Dr. Bain actually mentored a lot of guys that are in the business today that are. That are very successful. So Garrett was saying, you should get into this. This world. And I did about a year after he did. So he was in the business about a year before I got into it. And then. But I was working at. I was working at Chili's. He had since moved on Radio Shack. I think he was doing Starbucks at the time. And so now we're in the restaurant world. Now we're doing ground up development. I was going out to small towns, believe it or not, for the younger listeners. There was no Google Maps back then. You couldn't zoom in. We had a Maps Go, which is a book that had all the streets in it. And I was going through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, you know, going to these towns, trying to find a suitable piece of land to, to purchase or to ground lease and so we could build a Chili's.

Yeah.

And then presenting the case to the, the real estate committee back at Brinker on why we would be successful there.

Yeah.

So that was really cut my teeth on, on ground up development and the restaurant world.

One of the things I hope to get out of this conversation is something I, an area that I could really educate myself on more is the, the game of real estate development and the strategy of developers and how to get in with these developers. And it seems like in my travels across the country, like I, I drive by these developments that look like they probably are. You can tell that there's a similar design, that there might be a correlation in the Midwest between these developers going into different markets. And it's like I've seen this before, but it's just in a different place.

Right.

And you also notice that the same brands are in those locations. Yes. And is it like, I guess, is there like, what is the, what is the game that the developer is playing? Like, like if I can get into the mind of a developer, how are they approaching this?

So there's, there's, I could bring it on two different types of developers. So there's the, there's the developer that we all wanted to be when we were developers but never seem to achieve that is the developers that run with the anchor tenants, right? The big developers that develop Target, they develop Kroger, they develop for Walmart. They're kind of these preferred developers whose large anchors. And so those guys have the ability, they'll go in and they'll buy, you know, a huge tract of land for Target. Right. So Target goes in there and then they're going to build then that developer, I mean they almost give it away to Target. Right. I don't know exactly how the whole thing works, but it's, you know, the, the rumors are that it's kind of, they're almost doing that like the loss leader. Right. Because then they now have the right to build all the shadow space near that Target and then also carve out all the pads out on front of the street and then. Excuse me, and then on the pads.

What do you mean by pads?

Pads are. So you got, you got the Target here, you got their parking lot and then the streets out here, they just, they carve out tracks of dirt.

So you got the all out giant building that's attached to Walmart or Target or.

Yeah, Target.

And those are like the adjacent. Right. And then the, the pads are the standalone units that are surrounded.

Right? And then that's where you get the bank on the hard corner. You get. Or Chick Fil A or whatever. You get McDonald's. And that's where you're seeing all those same, like you said, you see the same tenants in each one.

So. And that is the, the, the one of the two types of tenants we're

talking about two types of developers.

Developers. Thank you. Which is the tenant developer.

The one that. Yeah, the one that controls the anchor. Yes. Anchor. Tenant developer.

So what is the. The other example?

So the other example is the other guys is kind of what Garrett and I did when we were developers, and that was try to get the land across the street from the Target or the Land Caddy corner from the tart. Right. You're not going to get on the parcel that the guy that builds targets on. So can we get right across the street? Can we. You know, you're the Lowe's approach. Exactly. Go right next door. Right, yeah.

So, like, let somebody else do all the research. And we're just going to kind of. Kind of like how you see those fish that draft the, like, shark.

Yes.

You know, like, get close to the shark. The shark is going to eat up a bunch of business, but there's going to miss some crumbs, and we're going to pick up those crumbs. We're going to be close enough that we can benefit from the existence of the shark.

Right, exactly. And inevitably, like, say, McDonald's goes in. Chick Fil a goes in. In front of the Target.

Yeah.

I like using Target as an example because they're very popular. And then, you know, bank of America goes on there, and so does Chili's. Okay, well, those guys are going to. They're going to restrict, like Chase is going to restrict Bank America and all the other banks because they won't say we want to be the only bank in the shopping center. You know, Chick Fil A is going to restrict, you know, other chicken users. Right, right. McDonald's, burger, Starbucks and. Yeah. Okay, so then, well, Burger King still wants to go there. You know, bank of America wants to go there. So they want to go right across the street. Right, right. They want to be as close as they can to that main anchor.

Right.

So then everyone's trying to scramble to gobble up all the property that the. That the anchor developer didn't get.

Got it. So your approach as the. I'm going to call this the across the street developer versus the anchor developer.

The opportunistic developer.

Yeah. So you guys are just kind of paying attention to market trends. And as like you're hearing noise of a developer or a Walmart going into an area, you're like, okay, let's go scout it and see what we can pick up to be close to this.

That's one way of doing it. And some developers do it that way. The way Garrett And I always did is we would approach the tenant because we both had experience being on the tenant side. Right. We worked in house for Chili's. He worked in house for Starbucks. So we had the knowledge of how to develop land, how to do all the things that we needed to do. So what we would do is we'd go to a tenant. I'm trying to think Starbucks, an example. That's who we built for them. I also built for some, some casual dining clients as well. We would go to them and say, hey, how many Starbucks do you need to develop this year in what areas? And then we would go scout the sites out, take them back to Starbucks and say, hey, here's five potential sites that you could do. Yeah, we can, we can buy the land, we can build you the building, and you sign a long term lease with us, and then we become your landlords. It's a build to suit program.

Okay. So I want to make sure I understand your. This is Main in Maine.

This is Main in Maine, yes. Yeah.

And when was that established? What year was it?

Like 2004, I think.

And your approach is you are contracting yourself out to Starbucks and Chili's or.

[Jason]

Well, this is after.

[Eric Reed]

This is after Chili's, right?

Yeah, this is. Yeah, we already did any develop for Chili's, but yes.

So you were cutting your teeth, learning the game, working under Chili's, and Garrett was doing the same, working for Starbucks.

Starbucks, right.

So you guys develop this ability to negotiate tenant leases and contracts and you learn the game of real estate. You see, there's an opportunity in the market to start your own company where you take these newfound skills and you go and you find clients that you go work to acquire property for.

Right, exactly. Help them achieve their goals.

And you're, you're purchasing the property, right? You own the dirt.

Yes.

And that client becomes your, you're the landlord for that client.

Yeah, there are tenants.

They're your tenant.

Cool.

So you don't want to be in the business of running restaurants. You want to be in the business of creating land for restaurants and then to, to have tenants. That was your business model. Where'd you learn this? Like, what was the inspiration for this?

The inspiration for. I mean, I mean, developers have been developers for a long time, right. So it was. How do, how do we get in that game to where we can be the one that owns the, the building and collects rent every month?

Yeah. How many buildings did you get up to during the peak of Main and Main? Is Main and Main still going today?

Yes, we still Have a few things going to maintain. We're just working with one client now. Only one client left. Peak. I don't know. We've done what we typically do. We would sell the property after we built it and the tenant took, took place. Because how it would work is we put a piece of property under contract, right? And then during the due diligence phase of the contract, we would make sure that we got it approved to the city, got all the plans, done all those kind of things, right? Then we would build the building and Starbucks, Starbucks moves in, they start paying rent and they're going to sign a long term lease. So say it's a 10 year lease. So now what we own at the end of the day is we own a building and the dirt and we own an income stream for the next 10 years guaranteed by Starbucks, right? So then we'll take that and we'll go sell it to a passive investor. Someone who wants to own a Starbucks, wants to collect rent every single month without lifting a finger of work. And they'll pay us a really good price for that. So we, we get a spread between what we, what it cost us to buy the dirt, build the building versus what they're willing to pay for it.

I want to make sure I understand. So you don't own the Starbucks, you own the dirt and the building and you are collecting rent from Starbucks and then you're selling that to somebody who wants to own a Starbucks. But, but you don't own, how are you able to sell Starbucks if you don't own it?

They're not buying Starbucks, they're buying the building and the land and the tenant and they're getting the rent. They're, they're becoming the landlord. So selling our, we're selling them the building and land. So now they're the landlord, not us.

So if I'm, I guess guessing here, the play is you, you're going in, you're buying dirt before it has value. And then as that dirt becomes valuable because of what gets built up around it, you can go in, buy cheap. You have the, you know, the frictionless network of people that want to buy that dirt so you can fill it fast. And then as it increases in value because the space around it over 10 years has been built up, that property becomes more valuable and you can basically cash out at like a net positive.

Not really, no.

This is why I don't make it.

No, it's a great note, it's a great way to look at it. But the value, the value is given to the dirt because there's a Starbucks on it. Right. And they're getting a rental stream every month.

There's already passive income tax.

There's a passive income tied to it. So when, when that investor comes to buy that, that building and land from us, they don't, I mean it's a little important to them what's around and everything else. But they're going to them, to them, they're saying Starbucks isn't going to go in a bad location. Yeah, Starbucks isn't dumb. Right. They went to a good location. They're paying, I'm just throwing a number. They're paying 100 grand a year in rent. So if I buy this building and dirt, I'm gonna get 100 grand a year in rent? Yeah. Every month I get a check for 8,000, whatever the math works out to, Right?

Yeah.

And so that's good for them because they got millions of dollars they need to invest and it's a great return on their money. And then at the end of the 10 years, Starbucks most likely will renew their lease. Right. Most likely at a higher price. So hedges against inflation a little bit. And then if Starbucks ever does go away, you still own a building in dirt that you can least to someone else or sell to someone else.

Right.

So it's a great investment for, for a passive investor that doesn't want to have to go out, find locations, get the drawings done, go through the permitting process and build the whole thing, which is what we do.

Right. But generally I'm assuming in most cases the asset that you invest in originally is a piece of dirt.

Yes.

You build something of value that is appeal, looks good, a number. And I'm assuming that at like, you know, after you've bought the dirt, after you built the Starbucks, after you found like, you know, you, you have a tenant in that Starbucks or you know, the, the tenant, that snapshot of the value of that Property on year one is probably lower value than 10 years later. You're like, that whole asset is probably appreciating in value.

I would assume it is appreciating in value. Yes. But again it's, if I, if, if you're selling me a, if you're selling me a brand new Starbucks that just signed a 10 year lease and I buy it from you Today, I've got 10 years of guaranteed income. If I buy from you five years from now, I only have five years of guaranteed income. Right. So it's actually, it's actually worth a little bit less to me to buy it later. In the, in the process. Okay, so, so these buyers that are out looking for triple net properties, that's what we call them. These buyers, they're wanting to buy as, as soon as that rent check starts coming in. Right. They want, they want to get it early because they want, they want to get all 10 years of payments right.

While that brand is still hot. Because they might lose steam after 10 years. So there's more risk afterwards.

Exactly.

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[Eric Reed]

I have one other thought and you can correct me if I'm wrong.

No, go ahead.

Before we move on to my next question, are you almost looking at like when you invest in this property and you build out the. The. You know, you take your cash, you put it into this real estate, you have the tenant, you're getting the. The check, the rent check. But are you also looking at that almost as like a high yield, like, savings account where like. Like it's appreciating over times? Or is that not part of the game? Or is that, like, not a good way to look at.

It's a good way to look at it. Depends on what your business model is. Like. Like when we first started out, you know, we didn't have, say, a million bucks. We did say it cost. Again, I'm making these numbers up. These aren't accurate. But say the land cost half a million dollars and to build the building cost half a million dollars. Right. So you're a million bucks in. So when we first started out, we didn't have a million dollars. Right, Right. Sadly, yeah, we didn't have that. So what you do is you get investors to give you some equity, you give a bank to give you debt. Right. So. And you do that deal. Well, what we had to do is we had to sell it, take our profits, and then roll that into the next project. Right. So the value we looked at was how fast we could flip it and make that spread as early as we could so we could invest in more deals. Got it. That was more of a production thing.

Got it.

But had. If I had all the money in the world, absolutely. I would buy it like a bond almost. Right, right. It's like you buy it, you build it all cash and then whatever. Where that monthly check came in, it was just going on, going. But. And then to your point also, the land is appreciating just with inflation and everything else.

And as that area is being built up around it, like, you know, it's adding value, but you're getting ahead of the wave. So you're getting it like a discount and you're kind of like. It's kind of like those. These momentum markets. Right. Like in the city. Like, everyone wanted to be in the middle of the city, but then they started to realize that the opportunity was on the edge of the city. And you go there and if you can hang on for two or three years, eventually this. The city is gonna. You're gonna be in the city because he's gonna expand around you. I wonder if that's shifting right now. I don't think. I think the momentum in the cities is kind of going away unless you're in a small city where it might be picking back up. But the big cities are kind of like. There's. They're not really. I mean, maybe this is later on in the Conversation of like, what's happening on macro scale of trends in different markets. We'll save that for later. Yeah, I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves. I'm gonna put that as a note though. Macro, trends, markets. You said something. We've talked about triple net in the past, but can you describe what triple

net is so true. Basically means that the tenant is going to pay for their own maintenance, their own insurance and their own taxes.

Okay.

And that's very appealing to a landlord.

Why?

Because landlord has nothing to do.

So how do you make like.

So the toilet breaks in a Starbucks. Starbucks does not call the landlord. They fix it themselves.

Originally, you and Garrett started negotiating on behalf of tenants, right? You were looking out for the tenants, the tenants interest. How is this a win win? Why is this a win win?

Why is it flipping the landlord side?

Yeah. Is triple net good for the tenant?

I mean it, or is it good?

Is it, is it more in favor to the landlord like the, the landowner or the property owner? The landlord.

I honestly, I just. That's actually a really good question. It's just always been done that way. I mean, I guess, I mean, some at least aren't. Let me break it down for you. And so you'll see. So as, as a landlord, as an investor, you're investing a certain amount of money and you know, if the tenants paying the rent, that's covering your investment, Right. Well, you own the land, so there's still taxes. Right. So if the tenant agrees to pay the taxes because they're using the land, they should pay the taxes and the taxes rates go up really high. As a landlord, you have no risk in that, right? You have no risk. Yeah, because they pay it. If insurance costs go up really high, you don't have to, you know, your insurance rates aren't going to go up. The advantage the tenant has is if taxes go up and insurance goes up or maintenance goes up, they can raise the price on their product to cover those costs. The landlord can't raise your rent because taxes went up or because something went up.

So. Right. So the, the, the tenant has more flexibility on pricing to match variable costs.

Yes.

Whereas the landlord can't deal with those inflations with a fixed lease.

Right.

So by putting the variable expenses on the owner, it protects both in a way. There's more flexibility on the operator.

And technically the landlord could put something in the lease that says, hey, if taxes go up, I'm going to increase your rent, blah, blah. It's just a lot cleaner to say, hey, yeah, you guys, you can do variable cost. You can do something about a lot easier than I can.

So when you were still doing the game with Chili's and you're looking out on the, the interest of the tenant of Chili's, your, your boss, like, what were the things that you would make sure you would negotiate for you would

get the best rent possible that you can get. Yeah. And I mean, and then I mean there's, there's a million things negotiating in a lease. There's condemnation if something happens.

Is that what you're doing today? Well, you know, because you're building, you're not buying, you're, you're, you're not going into second generation spaces, right?

For, for lanes. For lanes. No, we go into second gen. Yes, we do.

Okay, maybe we'll save that for later because that's kind of more of what you do now. You're looking out for your franchise. Protective franchise.

Yes.

So back to your journey prior to liens. You guys are from 2002, 2003, when did 2004. So you had about a 12 year run of being main and main developer program. You kind of shared your business model with us. What was going, I mean, anything in that story that needs to come out in terms of like ways you grew as a professional, things that you learned from like a, I guess, developer entrepreneurial perspective that you're applying today, that's worth getting out probably.

So, yeah, I mean the real big thing that happened was and May was 2006. I don't know, I'm getting old now. I'm half a century old. So, so don't, don't quote me on all the dates. But the one thing I do remember was around about 2008, 2009, if you remember. You know, the whole world crashed, right? Yeah, everything crashed. And you know, 80% of developers were going out of business. We'd been very conservative in how we did everything, so we were able to avoid going bankrupt and avoid that. But I always, I like to say it's a funny phrase. You know, the, the, the bad thing about becoming a millionaire overnight is become you. Is that you can un. Become a millionaire overnight. And that's literally what it felt like. Like, everybody's like, man, you developers are making all this money. It's the greatest thing in the world. And we're like, yeah, it sure is. And then the whole world crashes and you go, oh, that's why we were making all that money, because there was a whole lot of risk and what we were doing. Right. So, so During a period of time, we survived. Put it that we survived, but we kind of put main and main on hold because there was no one was developing, there was no work, There wasn't a tenant that was out there looking. So in that case, I actually went back to the tenant side, went back to Chili's for a couple years and worked there, and then was planning to go back to the development side. But that's when raising Canes called, and they were looking for someone to run their real estate apartment. And so I went to work for them in 2013, I believe.

So you're with Keynes for three years.

Almost four years, three and a half years.

What did you learn about the. That model of, you know, one thing really well, fried chicken in real estate that set you up for success.

What did I learn from the model?

Well, I mean, Canes, right. Very similar business model. Qsr doing one thing really well, understand, like you were negotiating for Canes on real estate. Yes, correct. I mean, I guess being close to what would be your future competitor, I'm sure you. You pulled a lot of lessons from just being close to it that you could then apply later in life. So, like, what were those big things getting close to, closer to this business model that you think served you later on relative to what you do specifically?

Well, So I don't know, there was so much. I don't know so much canes as. It just was the. The opportunity to look at things in a different way. And I'll explain that. So when I was at Chili's, everything was corporate. The same thing when I was. When I was at Cane's. But we were rolling out at 1.1. I think my last year there, we did. We opened up over a hundred corporately run casual dining restaurants, which had never been done before by any company.

Cane's.

No, no, Chili's. Chili's. So casual dining. Chili's. We opened over a hundred.

Wow.

I think it was like 105 or something like that. But that was. That was a big thing. So at the time, you know, raising Cane's, they had 196 restaurants. When I got there, they were primarily in Louisiana, part of Texas, Oklahoma. They had some. Some franchisee out in, like, Nevada. We didn't really mess much with them. 196.

196.

And so their thought was, hey, we need to bring somebody in who's been at a really big company to help us grow nationwide. Because they realized their brand worked, they were making money, and they're like, we want to go we want to expand out from here. So why it intrigued me was, you know, working at Chili's, they'd had. By the time I got there, and, you know, the early aughts, there was already Chili's all the way across the country. So it was more of going into a market and trying to say, okay, we've already got five or six Chili's here. Is there room for a seventh? Where do we put it so we don't cannibalize it? All that kind of stuff with. With Cane's, it was like green space. I mean, they're like, hey, we want to go into Colorado. You know, we've never been to Colorado. Let's go there. We want to go into California. And I was like, this is fantastic. Because the way I would analyze real estate with Chili's was I'd look at a map and say, if. If I had a clean slate today and I had zero restaurants and I had to build seven, where would I put them? Right? And I'd map that out, and then I'd say, okay, well, the five we or the six we have today are here. How does that kind of line up? Maybe we need to relocate this one. Maybe these four cover where we should be, and we need a new one here and there. So maybe we close this one, reload this one. You know, we kind of work like that. With Cane's, it was. If. If. If it was a clean slate, where would you go? Oh, it was a clean slate. It was just really fun to go in and look at Ocean effects. Yes, exactly.

I mean, Chick Fil A was probably the only other competitor at that time that was really similar in model and scaling like it was. I think it was around 2016, 17, that the hot chicken trend starts.

Right. Well, what's funny is, is we and Raising Kings don't consider Chick flag competitor.

Why is that?

Because in the analysis, the. The. The surveys that. That are. Have been done on the customers, the customer sees Chick Fil A and raising canes or lanes as a completely different thing.

Really?

It's really interesting. I'll give you another example, too. Anyone who sells bone in chicken, they're not. They're not considered. No, no. Like Popeyes.

Okay.

I mean, Popeyes sells chicken.

Kfc.

Yeah. Poppy or kfc. They sell chicken fingers. Yeah. They're on their menu.

Right.

You know, Chick Fil A sells chicken fingers. But the way the consumer sees it that we've seen in all the, you know, different surveys and research that we've done is they see Chick Fil a as a chicken sandwich. Even if they don't buy a chicken sandwich, they see it as that. They see us as chicken fingers and they see popeyes/kfc as bone in chicken.

Got it.

And people will literally eat Chick fil a for lunch and eat Lanes for dinner and say they ate two different things, even though it's both fried chicken. Wow.

So it's really kind of just like this idea. And you must know Kathleen Wood if you're. If you're close to canes. Kathleen Wood work with canes as. I think there's like, fractional COO or whatever. I think she came in and helped scale canes.

When was that?

Like, before you got there?

Okay. Yeah, no, I didn't know her before I got there.

Yeah. Like, I want to say, like, it was just a couple locations and she helped them get to, like, hundreds. So what was my train of thought? She talks about what. What is your one thing? Because the consumer, even if you offer different things, is going to see you as one thing. So you need to be that thing. When they're in the mood for bone in one thing. KFC or Popeyes. When they're in the mood for fingers, one thing, you know, Lanes or Canes. So it's like, so, like, doing that one thing or at least convincing the. The public that you're the best at that one thing. So when they desire that one thing, you're. You're top of. Mind you, that's a better place.

Yeah, exactly. And that's, if you think about that, you know, Chick fil a, that we didn't invent the chicken. We invented the chicken sandwich. Right. Did they invent the chicken sandwich? I don't know, but it sounds like they did. That's what everybody believes. I'm sure someone had a chicken sandwich before, though.

I'm sure.

But that's the one thing, right?

Yeah.

Chicken sandwich, Chick fil A. And then, you know, they got one love at raising canes. So that's their chicken fingers. Right. So, yeah, got it.

So what was our train of thought with the. We're talking about different markets. Cane's. We're talking about canes and what you learned.

Oh, yeah. So. So I went there. I went there with the idea of, hey, you've worked at Chili's. You've worked at a big, you know, company. The guy that hired me, he had worked at. At Chili's. He was actually working at Chili's when I was there. Then he went on a Chase bank and then, you know, raising canes. Picked him up. So he brought me in and it was kind of, hey, build a real estate team that can, you know, really, really grow this thing. And we want to, we want to blow it out. So I just immediately started out going out and market planning these markets and then bringing it back to the board or the executive. Not the board, the executive team. And explaining to them why we needed to be in a certain market, why they thought we could be successful. It's funny to look at it hindsight now because there was a lot of angst about that, like, well, can't. Can we be profitable in Denver? You know, can we be profitable in Salt Lake City? Can we make money in California? I mean, it was. And you look at it now and everybody's like, duh. Yeah, it's easy hindsight.

People like chicken fingers.

Yeah, it's easy hindsight. And, and I love, I love chicken fingers. Growing up, it's, it's, it's an interesting. Well, I know, but like, I almost think, like, it's something special to me. It's probably not as price special to everyone. It's like when you loved Rocky as a kid, then you grew up and realized every kid loved Rocky. But it always seemed really special to me. So it made sense to go to work for them. And it made sense to see that because I truly believed in the product. So I was. You know, they always say real estate guys are way too optimistic.

Yeah.

Like they think every site's going to work because we probably are too optimistic. But I like that quality. Yeah.

What would you say was. We said four years. You're with Canes.

Almost four.

Almost four years. How did you grow the most as a professional in your niche?

That was my first time where I had direct employees underneath me. Like a team, Like a team of direct reports. Direct reports. Like a number of direct reports.

What was your title?

I was a director of real estate. Got it. So I had a number of direct reports. You know, in the past, I mean, I've managed brokers, I've managed, you know, consultants, I've managed GCs, all these different things. But they weren't employees of the company. They were contract employees or they were contracted to do their work. So that was the first time I was actually hiring direct reports and then having to teach them what I knew to go implement the strategy that the company had to grow and set goals with them, motivate them to accomplish all the goals that we needed. And we did. My last full year there, we were the fastest growing restaurant in America, which was a Great. That was a great award to get. Kind of a. Kind of a cool thing that. It was in Restaurant News. They published it. We were number one. I think Jersey Mike's was number two. It was based on percentage of growth. I put an asterisk on it to the positive because Jersey Mike's was all inline stuff and ours was all ground up. I'm like, man, ground up's way harder than inline. So we should get. We should get a double bonus for.

What does that feel for growing to achieve that?

It was great. I was. I was extremely proud of our entire team. Yeah, they did the construction team, the design team, the people that got the permits, you know, the real estate team, everybody to make that happen. And, you know, it just motivated me to. To continue to want to do it again and again. Yeah.

You know, being seen as the best, like. Like to have that title to be seen and valued, to know that, like, you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. If you can be the best at it.

Right.

That that has to feel good. You talked about the challenge was directing or managing, having all these direct leads. You grew, like, how did you get better? Like, how did you evolve? How did you improve at that?

So as you're asking that question, I thought of something that, that my. My last boss at Chili's had told me. He said. He gave me a compliment. He gave. He gave me a very good compliment and, and made it a teachable moment, which I love when people do that.

Those compliments are how we become self aware. We aren't aware of what we're good at, but keep going.

And so, so we were. The reason he did is because we went to the real estate committee. We're explaining all this stuff. And he said, he said, Eric, he goes, he says, you really know your stuff. Like, you really know your real estate stuff. You've got it all figured out. You do the research, you do, you study it all. He goes, when you explain it to the guys in the room, you need to know that they don't know everything, you know. Yeah. And apparently I was skipping over a lot of stuff and I'm. And I'm obviously a little self conscious. I'm doing that here in this conversation as well, because I just kind of get ahead of myself and I start, you know, just talking about other things. And so he said. So that hit me later on. The reason I tell you that story, because it hit me later on when I was at. I was at raising Cane's. I was trained a couple of real Estate managers. And they were, they bring their package in the site package into me saying, hey, this is the site we're looking at. And I'm just like, wait a minute, did you ask this question? Did you look at this? Did you look at that? They're like, no. And I realized I didn't tell me to look for it.

Right? They don't know, right? They didn't know that standard yet.

It wasn't a standard checklist, right? Yes. And so I'm like, I need to, I need to not make these assumptions that everybody knows what I know. I need to ask them what they know, see what they have, and then see where I need to coach or teach or whatever.

Right?

And so that was, that was a real big thing for me.

And that's like literally how you systematize any business. When a restaurant or any business starts, it's usually an owner who has a process for doing things and then they have to remove themselves from the day to day grind so they can work on the business. So they hire people and then they show them how to do it and they say, you got this. And then some shit happens. And like, why didn't you think of this? You're like, oh, I never told you that that could happen. And then you're like, well, I'm just going to like write down like my process on how I would do this and we're going to document that and we're going to think about, you know, if this, then that scenarios. But right now you just start with something, right? And as the kaka hits the fan, you're like, oh, add that to the list. Oh, and eventually less of it hits the fan until. Because you're like, you're like, oh, I should like train people on these scenarios and what happens and they get their own experience, you know, walking in your shoes that eventually they can, they, their shoes get bigger, you know.

Right.

Like, you know, I don't know that was a good analogy.

But you know, it is a good analogy. I remember a quote this guy said, he goes, because when you have a business, you, you hire someone, you teach them to do what you know how to do, you pay them less and the rest is profit. But that's, that's the whole system.

Yeah, but that, that, that process of creating, process never ends as a company scales, as new roles are being developed, you go into that role with your experience. But eventually if you want to ascend beyond that role, you need to systematize what you're doing to create room for the next person. To come in.

Right?

And then that happens again and again and again.

Right.

So, like, anyway, should we move into Lanes?

[Jason]

Do you know we've been talking for almost 40 minutes now.

[Eric Reed]

Oh, gosh.

Oh, 43 minutes, man. We're going. But I'm loving the conversation. So at what point are you guys, like, you know, when do you have this idea, like, to do the next thing?

So the. It actually came out of the. The real estate crash, honestly?

2008. 2009.

Yeah, 2009. That was. That was a dark time. Like, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna lie. It was. It was rough because you didn't know, you know, was. Was someone to file for bankruptcy? Was, you know, were they gonna pay rent this month? It was really tough. Nobody was buying our properties that we had built. It was a very difficult time. And. And, you know, I've been two little girls and a little boy that was actually born in 2010. So, like, my wife's pregnant in 2009 while this is all going on. Fantastic time, but so I went back to the tenant side because it was a steady paycheck, and that was great. And then I really wanted to see the challenge at Lanes. That was very good, too. Garrett, being the consummate entrepreneur that he is, is like, we got to get back to development. Got to get back to doing this. And I honestly was. I still had. I still had kind of a little. Kind of shell shock from it. Right. You know, I'm still, you know, traumatized from. From that, and. And I just knew all the ways it could go wrong. And so I said, you know, if we could build for ourselves, that would be really cool. Like, what if. What if we were the tenant? Like, if we're the tenant, then the tenant can't screw us over. Right? Like, if we're. If we're the landlord and. Or the tenant, then, you know, we don't have to worry about the.

The diversifying your portfolio. So now if the market gets crap and you're making all of your money on new deals, then at least you have the cash flow from the. The food, the business.

Right, Exactly. And. And. And the. And, you know, the thing when the crash happened is, you know, tenants were just walking leases, right? And you're like, we're not gonna walk our own lease. We're gonna. We're gonna find a way to make it work. Yeah, we looked at. We looked at a lot of things during. During those years. We looked at, you know, franchising, you know, different businesses. Sonic, I think, was one we looked at some different companies, like, how do we. How do we, you know, how do we use our real estate expertise, you know, to. To grow a business? Right. We know we can do it. And then it. And then I don't think it ever really dawned on us that we could. That we could be the franchisor. Right. And then the opportunity, not as the

exponential, because you don't have to be the one.

Right? Yeah, exactly. And so. So then it was, okay, there's a chance to acquire Lanes. Okay. And, you know, initially looking at it, I think we were saying, well, we could get lanes and we could grow it. Right. We could build buildings, we could expand it and do all that kind of stuff more from a corporate standpoint. And then we realized, wait a minute, we can grow 20 times faster if we franchise this. So it was. It was kind of. It was kind of an evolution as we went through.

Was this a realization before you owned it or after you owned it?

Some of it. Well, the real. The realization of being. Being our own tenant. That was before. Once we got on board, I don't. I think we first started. I think we were just so trying to keep our heads above water and running. The three restaurants that we had, which

is where you should, like you. Yeah. Like, I think that's where people get in trouble.

Right.

They have that mindset that you guys had. They're like, oh, look, you can get rich off of franchise. Like, let's just buy this thing and just kill the crap out of it and get that mailbox money. But what they don't realize is that, oh, running restaurants are hard. Like, I gotta actually be present and figure things out and dial it in and make sure I actually have a machine that, you know, and then put the wheels on it so it. Or the legs on it, so it can't. Like, there's so much that goes into it that getting it to the point where you can franchise can take five or ten years.

Yeah.

You know, and you guys about what, four.

Four years. Yeah.

From one location to two.

No, we. So there was the original three in College Station. Yeah. That. We didn't actually buy those initially. We just bought the rights to SO

Lanes on its own. Got the three locations. You purchased the business. The original.

No, the original three locations were still owned by the founder.

Got it.

And basically it was like, hey, we're going to draw, you know, 50 mile, whatever protective ring around your three restaurants.

Yeah.

And then we won't develop anything inside there, but give us the rights. You know, we bought the entire Business.

Yeah.

So we have the rights to grow lanes everywhere in the universe.

Got it.

We won't mess with your locations.

Right.

He. He became a de facto franchisee of ours because we were the corporate owner.

So.

But, you know, is he under the

same stipulation as other franchisees where, like, if you change the brand, he has to then also keep up with it?

Well, we've since bought him out now. Okay, so we own those now. But originally. Originally, yeah. So then we. We did the three stations in Dallas.

So that's six total.

That was six total. Yeah, but we were only running three. Okay. We weren't running the ones in College Station. The original founder still running those. And it was, you know, it's. I fell victim to the same problem that a lot of people have. They're like, well, I'm a great operator. I know how to run a restaurant. Real estate can't be hard. I mean, heck, Eric does it. It should be really easy, right? So I'll just do a bunch of real estate, I'll grow my business, and they get themselves in trouble.

Right?

We had the opposite effect. We're like, well, real estate. We know real estate. Run a restaurant can't be hard. Right? Like, we just got to hire a good guy to run it. We're fine. Yeah. And as you know, that. That didn't. It didn't go like, they're both really in, like.

Yeah, you hear it from the other perspective. More of like, hey, like, the money isn't owned in the real estate. I'm a restaurant. I'm just going to buy real estate. Well, did you plan on being a landlord and, you know, all the regulations and laws and, like, the, The. The challenges that become with being a landlord. Like, you know, I think the way that you guys did it was right where, you know, you were the. The developers, you kind of stayed in your lane and you. You started surrounding yourself with people who did know how to run restaurants. You didn't learn from scratch. You built a team.

Right.

And even then, it was an uphill battle until probably like, 2021, 2022, 2023. Like, when you guys had, like, Samir,

come on, it's like, yeah, when Samir came on, that was a huge, huge game changer for us.

How many locations did you have on a miraculum?

I want to say we had seven.

Seven. And, like, he really helped you guys. Like, he was the rocket fuel that really, like, you guys were the rock. Like, you were the operations on the real estate side, but he was the operations on the restaurant side. That was that fuel, that rocket fuel that you needed to. To go double size every year.

Yeah. Samir knew the things we didn't even know to ask. Yeah, right. He'd been in the business so long, you know, from a supply chain standpoint, from, you know, all these different things that, like, we didn't even know to ask the question. Right.

You don't know what you don't know.

Exactly.

Yeah. Ignorance. Ignorant. The word ignorance. I think people are offended by it, but it just means that you don't know.

You don't know.

And there's. And you will never know it all. I will never know at all. I've interviewed, like, what episode number is this? 1260 something. And the more I learned, the more I realized. It's so complicated.

Yes.

Like, I will never know it all, you know. Anyway, so during. From when did you open the first lanes that you owned? That was in Dallas. What year was that? 2016.

Because it was January of 2018. January18, I believe, but don't quote me on that.

During this time of acquiring lanes, getting everything, like, situated so you get the first location open. What were. What was your role before you were doing what you do today, which is getting out there and being the chief development officer, developing.

So interestingly enough, I really didn't have a role. Yeah, my. I mean, my role at that point was to run Main and Main.

Okay.

Because Main and Main made money.

Right.

And Lanes did.

Got it.

So.

So that was kind of floating lanes.

So I was. Yeah. So I was developing for grocery outlet, Dutch Bros. Doing. Doing the same thing for them that I'd done for Starbucks and everybody in the past. Right. And so that was. That was. That was my main focus for probably the first.

You know, so you're paying the bills while Garrett's out here trying to get the thing going.

Yes.

Yeah.

Again, back to my original quote. The greatest thing about Garrett Neiser is two of us.

Yeah. And you also compliment each other because the way that he described you is you're the attention details guy.

Yes.

You're the, you know, the. The how guy. He's the why guy.

Yes.

And that is rocket fuel. That is visionary operations, and that is a deadly duel. It is definitely one of the most common themes among successful restaurant tours is that they didn't do it alone, that they went into it with partners. And there's a lot of people that say, like, never get a partner. And I don't tend to agree with that. If you want to be the best, you can't be Everything. A few people are like freaks of nature. And they are really just good at whatever they decided to do. They're socially, emotionally intelligent. They have good with numbers. They're like. They're visionary. Like, those people are, like, are like.01% of people.

Right.

And even if they have all the skills, they still have to have the desire, you know, to do the other things. So I think you guys, from day one were set up because of the complimentary, like, the symbiotic relationship.

Absolutely.

That you guys have.

It's funny because I'll give you, say Garrett talks good about me. I'll give him all the credit in the world for everything. And he'll turn around and say, well, I couldn't know about Eric. And I'm like, I could know about you.

Well, you couldn't do it.

Yeah. That's the truth.

Not only do you guys compliment each other with, like, you're just your. Your hard wiring of why guy? How guy? But also, you had the same culture. You're literally brought up the same exact way. You have the same values. They also, they say, don't go into business with friends and family. Like, I think that's the only people I'd want to go into business with because at the end of the day, I want to trust those people. They're going to be your family whether you want them to be your family or not.

Oh, yeah.

You know, like, and if. If you have the same values and I don't know, like, it's. It's a playing with fire, but if it works, it works better than anything else.

Yes, I agree.

Yeah. Sorry, I'm doing all the talking.

[Jason]

You should know.

[Eric Reed]

You're great now. I love listening to this.

So I guess. So you're working at Main and Main. There's one thing I'm curious about, and I don't know if this. I'm just curious if, you know, I'm. I'm so curious about the world of private equity.

Okay.

And how private equity gets involved with development. Did you ever play with, like, did you work with private equity people?

I never worked with private equity people. Obviously, Matt, one of our partners here, he came from the private equity world.

So if I have any head of actual, like, building.

Right, Matt?

No. Is that the big dude? I just.

No, no, that's Justin. He's head of construction.

Got a good head of construction. Who's Matt?

Matt is. Matt and my brother have been friends for years, and Matt made his money in private equity, and so he was, you know, he invests in Lots of businesses, right. As a private equity does. And he left the private equity world, but he has his own money. And so when, when Delane's idea came about, he was, he, he was one that put up a lot of the initial money to get the thing going.

Right. It seems like private equity in the world of restaurant space is a relatively new thing in terms of a game. To achieve or win is to build something, to only turn it around and sell it, right. And then cash out and build the next thing. Because you like, you like building things did like, what is your comprehension of that game in that world?

So the comprehension that I have of it is just watching tenants that I've worked for become acquired by private equity and then watch what they do with that.

What do, what does private equity do with that relative to the world of development?

Right. So what they've. Well, so the companies that I've. That I, that I was a developer for and watched it happen, basically. What, from what I understand, you know, again, I'm not the expert on this, but they want to grab a brand that's big enough that they know it works, but hasn't been able to make that huge leap, right. Like when I, when I got on with raising canes, 196 restaurants, you know, we probably weren't right for private equity, but when we got to, right, about 300 and, and man, it looked like, you know, you could see it then. I mean, you knew there was, there was no stopping the train, right? That's, that's when I think product wants to get in. Because if you, if you, if private comes in and buys you, then you don't have a huge valuation. You got a big valuation, but it's not massive, right? But all the hard, hard work's been done, right? You've got that system, you've got that just plug in another person, plug in another. You know, we had three real estate managers, let's get six, right? And we can have twice as many locations in a year, per year, Right, right. And so what private equity does. They come in and say, hey, we're going to buy you or buy part of you. Like we'll buy 50% of your. Whatever it is. And they say, but we're going to Invest, you know, $100 million in your development, right? So, so, whereas. So we're so even, even like raising canes, they still have a finite amount of money to build new buildings. Every year there's a new building, they spend $3 million on a new building. I don't want they spend, I'm just throwing that out. To spend $3 million on new building, you want to build 100 a year. It's a lot of money, right? And if you don't have that money, you don't want to go on the debt, then you say, well, we're only build 50 a year, right. So private equity comes in and says, oh no, no, no, I'll fund 100. If you can build 100, let's go do it.

Yeah. There seems to be these tipping points in the world of restaurants. So zero to one is the obvious tipping point, right. And then you can get to three running status quo. But once you get to three, you really got to start changing the way how, how you do things with systems and processes. And then the Next is like 4 to like 10 is another one of these hurdles. And then I would say like 11, 10, that ballpark to you know, 20, 20ish, you know, but if you wanted to scale to 100, then it's a whole new. That's when you have like the, the, the chiefs, like you know, you have to, you get that C suite and each one of those people comes with a six figure salary. And then to your point, with all the real estate and if you're, especially if you're first to market and your other people are realizing, oh, they figured something out now you, there's a, like a rush to get there and you can't do it organically and still have that blue ocean effect. So you need that 3 million do or that $300 million investment to, to, to continue to scale and own what you've created.

Right.

But I sometimes wonder, that's how I used to see it is private equity is just like investing in a good concept. But I, I wonder now, is private equity more about investing in owning the concepts? Very similar to how you and Garrett were like, well, if we can own the property and the business, then we can diversify our portfolio. I mean, what am I trying to ask here? Is private equity more interested in real estate or are they more interested in concepts?

[Jason]

This episode is in partnership with Giving Kitchen. Restaurants run on tight margins and even tighter teams. Anyone who's been in the business long enough knows one injury, one diagnosis in one family emergency can take a great employee out of overnight. That's where Giving Kitchen comes in. Giving Kitchen is a national nonprofit that supports food service workers in crisis. They provide emergency financial assistance and connect workers to resources like housing support, counseling, and physical and mental health appointments. Not someday, but when it's actually needed since 2013, they've helped more than 35,000 food service workers and awarded over 17 million in support nationwide. This isn't theory, it's cooks, dishwashers, bartenders and servers being able to keep their apartment, get access to mental health resources or cover bills when recovering from an injury. Operators keep giving kitchen bookmarked, not just in case they ever need it, but because they want their staff to know it exists. If you're in the industry, this is an organization you should know about. Learn more, share it with your team and find a way your restaurant can stand alongside the [e-mail] this episode is made possible by US Foods. It takes more than great food to run a kitchen these days. With US Foods, more means consistently high quality products, industry leading tools, inflexible deliveries that let you grow your business on your schedule. Whatever your goals, US Foods helps you turn them into reality. As a US Foods customer, you'll gain access to their industry leading Moxi platform, which doesn't just make it easy to place your US Foods order, but it uses AI powered technology to help help you take more control of your business and increase profitability. You can also explore the latest issues of Food Fanatics magazine from US Foods. In each issue you'll find real world success stories, bold culinary inspiration and practical profit boosting ideas you can put to work immediately. Visit usfoods.com expectmore to learn how to become a US Foods customer again. That's usfoods.com expect more I think they're more interesting concepts.

[Eric Reed]

Okay.

Because I watched, I won't mention the name of the tenant, but watch this tenant. They were bought for $3 billion. Private equipment bought him for 3 billion and five years later they're trying to sell for 8 billion. Right. Because they scaled them, they grew them faster. They, you know, they're, you know, they have, I don't know, you know, they've, they've more than doubled in size. Right. In a five year period of time or six year period. Five year period of time. Right. So they're just so private equity standpoint, what I think, and again, I'm not the expert. What I think is you're like, hey, I'm investing $3 billion. If I can turn around in five years and sell it for 8 billion, I got a $5 billion profit. Yeah. What's the annual return on that? Looks great. I'll give my investors their return, I take my piece and I move on to the next thing. Yeah, Some private equity guys, they'll, they'll buy and then they'll take the company public and same thing. It's just a different way to cash out. But it, it kind of comes back to, kind of goes back to what we were doing. We were buying a piece of dirt, putting value on it, flipping it, moving to the next one.

Right, right. But it just had a greater, like

a bigger scale, just much bigger scale.

I was curious because I know you guys are so close to the world of real estate and I'm like, is this so. Part of the reason why I'm thinking about this lately is because I, I've noticed that it's getting harder and harder for independent, you know, 10 unit, 20 unit local operators to get the dirt because they're in competition with national brands. And those national brands tend to be in bed with the developers already. So the decision before the dirt's even broke is we know what's going in here because we have a network, a machine of, of developing these properties. Like you don't have a chance of getting in here. But I think that might be changing at the same time. Well, am I often saying that?

Well, no, that, that's part of it. But I think a bigger part of that is that almost all of these developers that are anchor developers with all the, they've got all the multiple pads out front there, they don't sell those pads. They ground lease them. Right. And so when, when, when, when you ground lease to Chick Fil A, right? Their, their credit is stellar. I mean, they have just phenomenal credit. Right? So if you go to sell that to an investor, they're going to pay a higher price for it because it's just like, just like a bond, AAA bond versus a, you know, you know, a junk bond. Right? So even so, if the, if, if, if Chick Fil a says, I'll pay you $200,000 in ground rent and a Mom and pop says, well, I'll pay you $200,000 in ground rent. The, the, the developer is going to go, well, if I take mom and Pop to the market, you know, I'm not going to get as good of a price.

Right.

I take Chick Fil A to the market, I'm going to make a lot more. So Chick Fil A doesn't have to pay more than mom and Pop. They can pay equal. Their credit makes them more valuable to the developer because of the draw that

they pull people into that space.

Not, not that, not just that. When they go to sell that on the triple net market. Right. I'll back up, go back to the Starbucks example when I built for Starbucks. Starbucks had amazing credit. Right. So when I go to sell that, people would say, oh, well, I'll pay you. I'll give you a five cap for that. Right. If it's a Mom and Pop. Because they know Starbucks is going to pay their rent. They know they're, they're not going to go out of business. They're not going to pay their rent.

What's a 5 cap?

So this is real confusing. It's going to sound funny because it's, it's. You look at it from the buyer versus the seller. Okay. So if you're the buyer and you want to buy something on a 5 cap, that means you're going to get a 5% return on your money. Right. So if, if I'm paying $50,000 in rent, you'll pay a million dollars for that $50,000 a year rental stream, you're getting a 5% return on your money.

Got it.

Right.

That's the interest rate.

Yeah, basically. Yeah, yeah. It's the return you're getting on your investment. So I'll buy a Starbucks and get a 5% return because I know I'm going to get that return. Buy a Mom and Pop.

You're gambling. High risk.

Yeah. I may pay an 8. I need an 8% return on the money. Right. So I'm going to pay less.

Right.

And that's. Right, that's where it's kind of confusing because the lower the cap rate, so there's, the more you're paying.

At the core of it, because there's a better opportunity for Chick Fil A is because they, for the, from the developer's perspective, it's low, lower risk, lower risk and, you know, established relationship probably too. You probably know that the, the real estate buyer for Chick Fil A, you don't have to go through that dance of like courting each other, like, got another opportunity for you.

Yep. You've got, it's, it's all the things you're saying. It's, they have better credit, so you know they're going to pay their rent. You, you probably have a conformed lease with them. Yeah, right.

You've, you don't want to do work.

[Jason]

Why would you do more work?

[Eric Reed]

You've done 10 leases with Chick Fil A and you, you send your attorney, hey, here's the last lease we did. Sorry. We can form the leases. The only thing we change is the address and what the rent is. Boom. You're saving money on attorneys cost. You're saving time.

Lower risk, lower energy. You're developing a better relationship. All the reasons at that level. It makes sense.

Yeah.

But my concern sometimes, because I'm looking out for everyone.

Sure.

You know, what's that due to the independent in those markets where they like, they can't get into these opportunities. It's just that the bar is getting higher and higher. Cost of goods going up, labor is going up, opportunities to get into these, these markets is going up. It's, it's, it's just like I'm honestly just trying to figure it all out and learn it and because I don't at this level, I, I don't really know that like this is, like this is the, the, the, the edge of my knowledge, my scope of knowledge. The kind of stuff that, like where you play, you know. Yeah.

It's definitely more difficult for, for a mom and pop and even, even for us. I mean, if I show up and I'm lanes.

Yeah.

And I say I want to go in your shopping center and they go, well, chick fil a is interested.

Right. Guess what, you're still a little guy right now. You know, you only only got 40 locations.

Like 41.

Yeah. Excuse me. So, yeah, but I guess where my mind, at one point where I was going, I was thinking to myself, like, is, is private equity really in the game? Real estate? And to your point, if they play the same game that you play where they can acquire these brands that know that work and then they can go in and then put their own brands across different developments and like, to me that just seems like an unstoppable machine. Like how you're supposed to go toe to toe with that. I don't know if that's the case now. I'm doing it. I don't know if that's the case, though. This was just a thought that like,

I mean, is, but it's, it just like anything else that's more nuanced. I mean, a lot of people are like, well, you know, okay, let's say, you know, some private equity groups comes in and they have billions of dollars and they're like, we just, we got, we got hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to just spend on real estate. So we're just going to go buy every good corner we can see. We're going to go, you know, talk to Target, talk to Walmart. We're going to tell them we own all the dirt in the world. It, there's, there's too many variables to make it that simple.

Yeah.

Because maybe, you know, they can get 20 acres, but they can't buy to the little lady next door that owns the other five that they need to make it a 25 acre development.

Yeah.

Right. And so they need 25 acres. They can only get 20. Or maybe they can buy all the land in the world. But once they go through all the thing of. Does Target really want to be there? They not want to be there. Does Kroger really want to be there? Do they not? And there's a time value to their money. So if it takes them five years to get all that done, they may say, man, we, we, we built it, we did it all. But man, we needed to make our money back in three. And it took us five. Yeah. So there's, there's. And then, and then interest rates can change, Cap rates can change. So there's a lot of variables in there that if you're not in the game and you're not. You don't have the right people, you can, you can get lost really quickly and a lot. And I saw that happen, you know, before the crash, and it still happens today. Come with a lot of money and say, I can do this. It's got to be easy. Eric does it. He's not so smart. You know, we can make this and watch a lot of them get in trouble. Yeah, they overpay or whatever.

We haven't even gotten to what you've done in the past since, like, so you guys purchased lanes 2000 or 2016 is when you started doing the dance and it was 2018 when you started building your own units.

Yeah, I believe so. Yeah.

And you're still main in Maine, focusing on keeping, you know, the cash flow alive until this thing got off the ground. When did this thing get off the ground, in your opinion?

When did it get off the ground?

Like, when did you get more involved with what you bring to the table as the chief development officer?

Probably when we signed our first franchisee. Really? 29, 2019.

And then there was a pandemic which kind of slowed.

Yeah, pandemic kind of slowed things down.

So really for you, it's only been the past like, like four or five years that you've really been kind of in this the way you are today.

Right.

So I guess take us to, like what, I don't know. What has the evolution from your role been over the past four or five years?

So. Well, let me just say what I do now. Yeah, that's probably the easiest way to do it. So I'll just take it. Say a new franchisee comes in and they say we Want the, We want the state of Kansas, right? So the first thing a franchisee normally tells us is they say, oh, I got a great site. And you're like, oh, really? Why is this site great? Well, it's right by my house, a lot of people live there. And you're like, okay, no, we don't hold it back up.

[Jason]

That's great for you, it's great for you.

[Eric Reed]

But that might be the best thing for the brand, right? Might be great for you getting home on time. So what we do is we go in and we, before we even talk about a specific site, we go in a market, plan the entire area. And what I mean by that is we go in and we, we map out every big box. Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's. We map out all the grocery anchored centers. Kroger. If it's Kansas, it's Hy Vee or you know, or Dillon's or whatever, whatever the grocer is in that market, the predominant grocer. We map out all that. We map where the schools are, the high schools, the colleges, all these things. And we create these two mile rings that we call trade areas. And we say, like I said way back when, when I, when you know, I was at Chili's and what I always wanted to do and always did is I'd say, if I could have any piece of real estate in the world, where would I want to go? Where's ground zero in this? So we'd say this two mile ring. If we could get a restaurant there, it'd be perfect. Population is good, growth's good, traffic counts are good. There's lots of other traffic generators, grocery stores, other fast food people, schools, all those things, right? And so we just start dropping these circles in all these areas and we call them trade areas. And so we do that whole thing and then we kind of say, all right, well it looks like you have 20 potential trade areas, 20 potential restaurants you can open. And then after that then we go back and we drive every one of those trade areas with the franchisee. We look at all of them and say, what's the best piece of real estate available today?

So first you identify the markets, then you identify what's actually on the market, right?

And what's the. And then we go back and say, okay, this is what we got. We got. There's 20 trade areas. There's only seven pieces of real estate today that we would even consider. Let's go after those.

That includes dirt and turnkey operations or pre existing standing building.

It could, it could be. It's a great question. It could be both. So we'll do second gen spaces or we'll do ground up.

Got it.

So in a more mature market, most likely it's gonna be a second gen space. You know, if it's more on the fringe or in an area where there's a new development, then it's. It's most likely gonna be ground up. Yeah.

So that's step one and two is identify the markets, find the opportunities in those markets and then you go in. What, what do you. When do you hand this process off? So how far do you take it?

Well, we never actually, we never hand the process off. The process is always there as we're acting more as consultants to the franchisee. To the franchisee.

Yeah.

So we get them to hire a local broker, someone else they're doing and.

Real estate broker.

Real estate broker. Sorry. And if they. I forget that people listen like stockbroker. Sorry. But we, if they have a broker, we'll interview and make sure they know what they're doing. If they don't, we'll try to probably help someone, then find somebody.

Yeah.

But we approve their broker. And then because they have the, you know, the local, the local knowledge. Right. And then we tour with the broker, we teach them what we want. We teach the franchisees. So the franchisees, it's their job, but we're consulting them every step of the way. Right.

You're bringing the specialists perspective.

Right.

But in terms of you and your role of chief development officer, eventually you hand that off to Justin. If there's, if you're breaking ground, they're building a new location. Like you're not there overseeing.

No.

The construction.

No. So. So I've got, I've got a couple guys that work for me in the real estate department. So I kind of break out my role. I'm over real estate and then construction.

Okay.

Or development, however, to call it. But I guess let's say real estate.

Like, like contracting with the construction or. No, no. Okay.

So the way. So, so the handoff works like this. So Cordell, I'll use Cordell's example because he's my director of real estate. So say Cordell tours with the franchisee. They identify a second gen building that's available and they identify that we want to go into and they identify a piece of dirt that they can buy or ground, lease. So Cordell will help the franchisee get an LOI out to the landlord, help negotiate that letter of intent. Letter. Sorry. Letter of intent. Let. Help them Negotiate that. And then once it goes to lease, the franchisees negotiating the lease, but they come to us and say, hey man, this lease says xyz. Is that normal? Is that not normal? And then Cordell will go, hey, yeah, you should push back on this, push back on that. Once that gets done, then we hand it over to Justin in the construction department and that's where we start the due diligence phase of doing the design of the building. If it's a ground up prototype, we kind of know what it's going to look like. If it's a second gen, then we've got to bring in an architect which is hired by the franchisee. But again, Justin's consulting.

So under the scopes of what the brand is, what with what like Natalie does of like we have to make sure we design to these brand specs, right?

Exactly. So we get, we get, we get a matterport done, which is basically a 3D rendering of the existing building. And then Justin says, okay. He sits down with the design, with the design team and with, and says, okay, this is what the exterior is going to look like. He sits down with the architect to say, this is how the kitchen is going to line up. Because our kitchen needs to be exact, it needs to be the same all the time, you know, if possible. So does the kitchen fit in that building? And then what's the exterior going to look like? And then gets with Natalie's team and marketing to decide what the interior is going to look like. They put all those plans together. Franchisee is hiring the architect to draw it. But we're telling the architect, this is approved. You can do this, this look, this brick, this color, whatever. And then, then we, then they go to the city and get a permit, a building permit to do the construction. Then the franchisee goes to hire a gc. Justin will vet that GC to make sure that they know what they're doing. And then when the franchisee goes to sign a GC contract, Justin will be involved. He'll review that contract with them and say, hey, you could probably save some money here. You could do this, make this change, value, engineer something. So we're really step by step with them all the way through the process. The franchisee hires the gc, right? They're ultimately responsible for it. But Justin and his team, they'll go visit the the site, they'll make sure the GC is doing it correctly. When the equipment installation comes, they make sure that's being installed correctly all the way up. And then the graphics come in. And get installed and then we open the restaurant.

Got it. So right now, the franchise, I guess the model, like you're providing the specialists and the guidance and the standards, but you're not actually going through and developing and building the buildings. All that's being contracted out through the franchisees. With your guidance.

Right, with our guidance.

Is there a vision, a future where you vertically integrate a construction company?

We, that was kind of initially one of our thoughts is we like Main and Main could be the developer for the franchise if they wanted it. Right. Like that would make sense, but it just never materialized that way. And then it, you know, I would do my absolute best if I was a Main in Maine. I would do everything in the world to try to save them money and that kind of thing. But if something does go wrong, it's very easy with the franchisee to say, hey, you're, you're double dipping this, that you kind of plan for the worst case scenario. I don't think that would happen. But we've got to the point where, like, hey, we don't want to develop for our franchisees. We want to be consultants to them, not actually be in a contract with them on that.

So vertical integration makes more sense maybe in the corporate setting when there isn't a us and them situation.

Right, Exactly. Yeah. And it can be done, obviously. I mean, Chick Fil a does it, but it's, it's, you know, McDonald's does it, but it's. Yeah, it's, it's. It's a very different Chick Fil A.

Corporate or they're not franchise or. No, they are franchise.

They are franchise, but the corporate always buys the building, does the real estate, and then they kind of lease it, as I understand, they kind of lease it back to the franchisee. So it's.

So the franchisee never owns the property? No, but like McDonald's.

Same thing. Same thing. McDonald's owns it and they lease it back to the franchisee.

But what's interesting, which I actually like this about Lanes, is that you give the franchisee another opportunity to build wealth by owning the property.

Right.

That's cool. Why is that a better path? What are the benefits to that approach? As somebody who's well versed in the world of real estate development, like, you're not. You guys know what you're doing. Why would you choose that path?

It's a good question. I think ultimately what we finally decided was everything has an opportunity cost. Right. And if I'm, if I'm trying to, I mean, if I'm If I, I would have to have a very large staff at Main and Main to do that. Right. I have to hire a bunch of people to manage gcs, to do construction draws, to do all these things. Right. That. Because we used to have much bigger stuff maintained than we do now because we were doing a lot more deals and then, then my time is pulled away from what we're doing at Lanes. Right. So, I mean, it's an opportunity cost. I only have so many hours in a day and trade off, I'm spending 50% I'm trying to be a developer and 50% trying to. To grow Lanes that I'm really not giving Lanes, you know, as much as I could. And so our vision, what Garrett and I and the partners, what we decided was like, if we just focus on growing Lanes and don't focus on an ancillary business trying to be tied in, we're going to grow Lanes a lot faster and ultimately be more successful.

Right. And is in the future, is there an opportunity to go back and combine the business models of Main to Main and Lanes, where you do what you were doing, where you find the dirt, you build, and then you find franchisees to take over and they become your tenant and also your franchisee?

There's always that possibility, but that's not the plan.

It's on the table.

Right? It's, it's, it's. Honestly, we don't think about it anymore.

Right now. You're just trying to focus on executing the franchise.

Yeah. And honestly, I mean, we don't, we don't plan on ever doing that in the future. Like, we just kind of, we just kind of decided we're not going to do that. We're just going to focus on Lanes and do that.

So one thing that came up in my conversation with Garrett, when I like, really, my. My ears perked up with, can I talk to Eric? Because it sounds like I'm really interested in what is, like, the things that you got to consider when selecting a site that is like next generation or next level. Like, experience teaches you of, like when I'm rolling up on this place, like, how much time from when the sign, the actual location is visible to how much time. What they call it degress or ingress.

Like ingress or egress.

Yeah.

Ingress. Yeah. You're going in.

Yeah. Like all that kind of stuff. Like, I guess what I want to know. You spent a whole career talking about or learning about how to find optimal real estate. So, like, what is like your. In your internal checklist of what is the perfect location in terms of it. In like, this is worth investing in for. Like, here's a list of all the things you want to look for. Like, what is that? Is that something you can even like produce for me on the spot?

I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a million, it's a million different factors. So like, if I could have the perfect site, right, I would be, I would want to be right on the hard corner with, you know, full access at a traffic light off both side streets. I'd want, you know, a huge shopping center behind me with a, with a massive grocery, like an HEB or a Kroger or something that's producing all this kind of traffic. I would want it to be on the going home side of the road because it's a lot easier for mom or dad to pull in and grab chicken on the way home than it is just like Starbucks wants to be at the going work, going to work side.

IHOP or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. Versus the going home side. Right. I don't want to be on the going home side. I would want the biggest signage in the world. I'd want the tallest pylon in the world so you can see us from as far away as possible. And then I would want, you know, tons of community things around there, schools and all that kind of stuff so that we could, you know, close to an exit.

Yeah, if you're seeing from the highway.

Yeah, if you see it from a highway. Yeah, you'd want all those things. And then plus I'd want it to be extremely cheap.

So that's from like, I want the

dirt to be really, really inexpensive.

So what about like, like when you get, when you're shooting, standing on the dirt. So now this is like leading up to the dirt. You don't, you're not on the dirt yet. But when you're standing on the dirt, what are the, the variables that people tend to overlook in terms of good like location, for example? Was it formally a laundromat?

Oh, well, yeah, that, that kind of. That, yeah. Formally laundromat. Formally a gas station.

I mean all that stuff, hazards, you

know, all that stuff can be dealt with. It's just a hassle. But what it all boils down to is you, you've got, you've gotta, you've got to take a, all the variables and then kind of run a math equation on it. So we had, we had a franchisee looked at the site and it was a second gen building and it was. There was like $300,000 in rent. And the franchise is just like, that's just too much rent. You can't pay that much rent. And I said, what if you did three and a half million in sales there? Because we can't do three and a half million sales. We don't, we don't do that in sales. Our auvie can you there. Right. We had that when I first. When I. We first went to California with, with raising canes. And the dirt was obviously really expensive. The labor is expensive, all the stuff. And they're looking in committee like, man, this, like the sales number we gotta make to, to achieve our pro forma numbers is, is so high.

Yeah.

And I'm like, okay, well, look at California. They, they don't have, you know, they don't have as many restaurants per capita as they do in Texas. Texas, they've got a restaurant at every corner. California is much more restricted where you can build restaurants.

You spend so much time in Texas. Do you live in Texas? I'm like, no. Texas is just like next level when it comes to the amount of concepts, the willingness. Because it's such a congested market, I feel like there's a lot of creativity.

Oh, yeah.

Too. There's a lot of different business models. I don't know. I think it's just a really hot market. I think also a lot of brands come here because if they can make it in Texas, it's like a market that can prove a concept.

Right.

So I think it's. There's just a lot of. I just keep coming back to Texas because also if I'm living in a camper, which I am, like, it's better to be here in December, January, February, March, than it is New Hampshire in a camper.

Yes.

So it's like plenty of opportunities. Weather is good. Let's go to Texas and learn. But this is a crazy market.

Yeah, but that's, that's the thing is like, if in Texas there's making numbers up again, but one restaurant per 50,000 people, and in California there's one restaurant per 300,000 people, you've got a lot bigger. Bigger pool. Right, right. So. So those are all things you got to take into consideration. Is the site too expensive? I mean, people say that. Is that too expensive? I'll say. My first answer is, I don't know. How much in sales do you think you can do there? Oh, well, this is going to be the greatest site in the world. We're going to do double our normal euv. Okay. Is it too expensive? And they say, well, no, I guess. No, I'd make money at that.

Yeah.

But, man, it's expensive. Yeah. The flip side of that is I get franchisees bring me deals all the time that are cheap. Like, oh, it's so inexpensive. I can do it. And I was like, what do you think your sales are gonna be there?

Yeah.

And they said, well, the average. I go, ah, is that an average site?

Yeah.

And then they got it. They gotta break it down. Wait, this is not an average site. One of the things that threw me when I first got in the franchise side, because I've done mostly corporate development most of my career, and I went to Samira for this question. I said, you know, because I'd see. Not to rag on, you know, Chicken Express or some of the other guys, but, like, I saw this Chicken Express that opened, and it was a horrible location. I was absolutely terrible. And I know why they thought it was good, because it was off the highway, and the highway has 110,000 cars a day that went down it. And some broker, some real estate broker told the franchise, yeah, there's 110,000 cars. You should be right there. Everybody can see, see you. Well, the problem is, is everyone sees you going 70, but they have to exit after they see you. Yeah. And nobody's exiting and coming all the way back around when you're fast food.

Yeah. This literally happened to me today with a gas station. I saw, like, a. Like, a sign for a qt, and I was like, oh. Like, I need gas, like. And I saw it up on the horizon. Then I saw an exit, and I was like, it must be the next one. Yeah. And then by the time I'm passing the sign, I'm like, where's the exit? I was like, oh, it was a half mile back there. I missed it. I was like, I'll go just get the next gas station.

Right?

So, like, another example of.

And that's death for fast food, because fast food's a very impulse thing. And I asked Samir, I said, why in the world would they let them do that? And he said, because a lot of franchisees are just like, our franchisors say, well, do your money to the franchisee. They'll say, the franchisee is your money. If you want to do it, go ahead. And that's where we get back to protect the brand, protect the franchisee. That's why we say no all the time.

Yeah.

The franchisee brings me a site, says, man, this is really inexpensive. It's this old crusty Sonic and we can convert it for next to nothing and the dirt's really cheap. Then I'm like, okay, well why did Sonic close? Well, they didn't close. They just relocated. Where they relocate about a mile down the road where the brand new Kroger is, where the Chick fil A is. And everything else is like, okay, we want to be there. Yeah. Right.

So on that mindset of like relative. The micro market market, right. We're talking a lot of the micro right now and like micro markets relative to specific markets. But you're scaling nationwide right now.

Right.

How do you, how do you decide what markets you go to? Is it franchisee first, then?

It's franchisee first.

Okay.

It's. It's have the right partner first.

Yeah. And are there markets that you in terms of macro, like what's happening with opportunity across the country? Like what markets. I'm assuming you're paying attention to this because you're in that world. What markets get you really excited right now?

Oh man. I again, I'm eternal optimist. I mean all markets get me excited. I, I'm obviously very excited about California from, from a sales standpoint.

Like most people don't want to touch California with a ten foot pole.

Well, so that's. Those, those are the pros and cons. So the restaurants there drive massive sales volumes. But from a development side, it's very difficult to develop real estate there.

Right?

It's very, very difficult. Tons of regulation, tons of restrictions and all that kind of stuff.

That's just on the development side then the actual restaurant owner operator regulation side.

Right. And that's, that's where it goes back to getting the right partner.

Right?

Right. Because you get a partner who operates restaurants in California, they know that, they know the, the score. They know how to, how to, how to navigate all that because they've already done it.

They're specialists in the California market.

They're special in the California. Right. Some guy comes to me and he's from Kansas City and says, man, I want to open in la. We're going to be like, yeah, no,

yeah, like we're not doing from Texas to California where it's like goosey to hyper strict and like constricted, like.

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so you know, I'm very excited about, about just like we're excited about. I'm excited about darn near everywhere the product we have. It translates no matter what, where you go. It was funny. It's funny. When I was at raising canes I'm like, well, you know, why don't we, why don't I go more up north? They're like, well, northern people. North. Don't, don't eat, don't eat fried chicken. I was like, why? Oh, they just don't. I go, do they have it? Well, no, they really don't. Well, you think if they tried it, they'd like it? Like, yeah. And I was like, well, okay, let's look at the, this location you have across the campus up in Minnesota. It does huge numbers, right? And they go, yeah, but it's a college campus. That's the only reason it does it. I was like, no, that's not it. Sure enough, we open in these northern climates. If you're like, oh, they don't like fried chicken up there. They absolutely do. People love it.

I'm from the north and I can testify on behalf of the north. Yes, fried chicken's delicious.

Exactly. That's the great thing about our brand is it translates everywhere. Everybody loves fried chicken. They may not know it yet, but I guarantee you, the first time you eat one of our chicken fingers, you're gonna absolutely love it. Yeah. No matter where you're from. So, you know, there's, there's states that are more difficult to develop in, but we have the. We're nimble in that. We don't have to have a ground up. We don't, we don't, we don't tell the franchisee, this is our prototype. Now don't be wrong. I love our prototype building. I think it's fantastic. I think it's great. But we don't tell people, hey, this is our prototype. You have to build this or you can't open. We're flexible enough and I have enough faith in my construction team and design team that if there's an old jack in the box that goes out or there's a Carl's Jr. Or whatever, that we can take that, build ol Dairy Queen, we can take that and make it look like a lanes. And you know, you could open quicker when you do a second gen space. Typically it's a lot shorter permitting time and design time and in a lot of cases, it's less expensive to get open than doing the prototype. Right.

Because the, the, the, the, the hoods there, the, the, the septics.

Well, the building's there, the parking lots.

Right, right, yeah, all that. So. Oh, I had a question. Locked and loaded for you and I lost it.

Throw you off?

No, you're fine. What about just, I mean, when you first started this you, you mentioned earlier that you had like this book with all the highways and you would, you'd go and like with your magnifying glass and try to figure out like, where am I going to put like, like what are the markets? There are so many tools today that are available to you to, you know, I can't, like I should have wrote them down but like I guess what are you interested in the tools that are place. Your AI, I know is one of them. Right along that line, like, are you using any tools like that? Like what, what do you like?

Yeah, we, we have a software that basically. It's a mapping software. It basically takes all.

Mapping software.

Yeah, I guess that's what you call it. It basically takes, it basically takes. Best way to describe it is it takes a Google Earth, right? And then it takes restaurant trends data because restaurant trends reports like how much sales different restaurants do and it takes place or data, it takes traffic count data and it puts it all into one thing. Right. So I can, I can zoom in on Dallas and zoom in on the intersection of Preston and Forest and I can know exactly what the traffic counts are go in each direction. I can know what the income is in that area. I can know what the revenue of all the surrounding restaurants is.

That's all public.

Well, you got to pay for it. But.

Well, I mean in terms of the revenue each restaurant's doing, you know what their total revenue is.

We don't know what all the restaurants are, but Restaurant Trends is an organization

that are they pulling from pos company companies that aggregate that information. And like I'd be surprised at what, how much of that could be public legally.

Well, I've heard a couple of different theories on how they do it. I don't know exactly. You probably have to ask them. But tax records are one way to look at it.

Right?

How much sales tax are they paying? Yeah, it's not hard in order to back into that. Right.

But what year is that tax record from?

I mean, last year.

Yeah, I mean I guess that's pretty accurate. I know Toast has like benchmarking where you can go and look at what different restaurants in that market are doing and. But they conceal the like the actual restaurant.

So.

But you can see where you benchmark relative to other restaurants in your community. You just don't know which restaurants that those are.

Right.

I don't know if you can segment it down into like model. Like if you're comparing yourself to other 200 seat full service casual restaurants.

Well, well, restaurant trends will do. They'll say, they'll say. I mean, say they say fast food company X is doing 3 million in sales. And then the below that, they'll say that's an A plus for their national average. You're like, oh, wow, okay, the national average is maybe 2 million. They're doing 3, so they're an A plus. And then it may say they're a C for the market. You're like, oh, well, in this market, maybe the average is 4 million. Although nationwide they're too. Right. So it'll even give you a grade of how well is it performing relative to other restaurants in that market. And place. Their AI is trying to do something. They're doing something similar to that as well.

So the, the tool you're talking about, it aggregates from Placer AI from Google Earth from this resource that gives you revenue. What is that tool that brings all this together called?

I just, we just call it a mapping software. But there's, there's several different companies that do it. Sitewise does it. I think Buxton does it. There's. There's a couple different companies.

I mean, what companies that do you. I mean, this is in full transparency, I like to say I do journalistic work. So the companies that I want to reach out to to say, hey, I want to get you on the show to learn more about what you do. I discovered those companies through conversations with people like you who know, like, which ones are good. So I'm leaning into testimonial word of mouth to work with and promote certain companies. So with that being disclosed, what companies do you really get behind that you like to leverage to discover the marketplace?

I mean, site Wise was who Dutch Bros Used when we worked with them.

Okay. Site wise. And that does. Similar to what Placer id, Placer IQ does. Is that what.

No, what they would do is they would, they would. A company like Sitewise would take the Placer AI data and put it into their mapping software.

Okay.

And also these companies like, like Sitewise is one, Buxton's another. There's a bunch. I can't think of all of them.

Buxton.

Buxton, yeah. What they like to do, they'll also create a sales predictor model for you, which is another cost to do. What they'll do is they'll say, hey, you have 300 locations nationwide. We're going to take all the demographic psychographic data we have of those 300 restaurants, we're going to put that into a formula, and then we're going to tell you where you should build your next Thousand restaurants in America.

That's kind of scary.

It's very scary.

Why is that scary?

Well, because I don't. I don't believe it.

You don't believe it?

I mean, I'm sure there's a guy there. I hate me for saying that, but.

But I think it's important that we talk about this stuff.

Yes.

Before it becomes mainstream.

No. Because this can get me in trouble, but whatever.

[Jason]

Yes.

[Eric Reed]

Yes, we'll get in trouble. I've used those predictor models since Chili's, and they're oftentimes accurate, but there's so many variables that go into it. Right. Because you could say, let me give you this example, and you'll understand this. Say that the model says, perfect traffic, perfect population, perfect growth, perfect world. Perfect world, boom, you're there. But say they can say that. Say that it's so damn smart that it actually says it can. And you have a shitty restaurant manager and you have zero marketing.

Right.

How does that restaurant perform? It does. Terrible. So you got to think about that. When they say you have 500 restaurants and this software company collects all that data and there's a crappy manager in 50 of those restaurants.

Right.

Well, it doesn't know that.

Well, that's order and chaos right there. You can't have order without chaos. You can't have chaos without order. Those two things need to exist with each other, and you need to have it both figure like, you know, the, the human side is generally the chaos because people are chaotic. Nature, they're unpredictable. You know, you don't know what's going to happen. That person might have a bad day, they might get sick, or they might just want to sabotage for what, whatever reason you piss them off. Like, that's chaos.

Right.

You can't predict for that.

Right? Yeah. And so where I think those tools are most useful is for executives that are answering to a board because they don't fully understand real estate. They don't fully understand why a restaurant was successful or not. So they buy this expensive software, and then if they open 50 restaurants this year and seven of them fail and the board says, why did those seven fail? They can go, I don't know. The software we bought, they're gonna be successful.

So it's just a way to minimize risk by. From. At that level, like you have some data that can support it and also minimize liability when something goes wrong. Well, the software said right.

And, and, and, and, and I'm really, it sounds like I'm really negative on the software. I think, I think it's beneficial, but it's, it's to your point, it's not a silver bullet.

Yeah.

You can't say the computer said if we go here, we're going to be successful 100%. If you treat it like that, then it's not right. If you treat us directional like, hey, you know, the real estate guy says this is good, the software says it's good. You know, the local regional operations man on the ground or guy on the ground says it's good. Okay, then, you know all. There was a point of green. That's probably a good site.

Right?

Right.

Yeah.

But, but if the, but if the computer says it's good and the local guy says it's crap and the real estate guy says it's crap, well, maybe we should.

You're looking for correlating data.

Yes.

Yeah, exactly. We've been going at it for an hour and 36 minutes, man.

Oh my God.

Fast it goes.

That's amazing.

Yeah, well, I really enjoy talking too much, but I want to make sure. Is there anything that you think you should bring to the conversation, anything you'd like to discuss before we start to wrap things, things up?

I mean, the only thing that, that I think is important is kind of the stuff we say in the discovery days to the, the potential franchisees just in case there's some potential people listening that we really pride ourselves on the protect the brand, protect the franchisee. And you asked me earlier what does my job have to do with that? And I got to touch on it a little bit, but it's really about protecting the franchisee to make sure they, they end up selecting a site in a trade area where they have a chance to be successful or they have the best chance to be successful.

Increase their odds.

Increase their odds. Right. And that's what I want to do. That's what my team, that's all we care about doing, right, Is trying to help them to get there. And like I said, I've seen other parts of the Franchise Z world. It doesn't seem like a lot of companies do that. My thing is, look, I look a franchisee in the eye and say, look, you're the expert at running a restaurant. You're the expert at making this work. You're going to hire the employees, you're going to, you're gonna, you're gonna be in that kitchen, the greasy floor and all the things that you're gonna do. Let me take some of that burden off of you when it comes to real estate. Let, let me lend my Expertise. Let me lend my team's expertise. Those guys are all smarter than I am. Right. As on top of being taller than I am, they're all. They're all smarter than me too. Right. Like, let us help you so you don't have to worry so much about that, that you're in good hands.

Yeah.

We're not gonna throw you to the wolves in the real estate world. We're gonna help you as much as we can so you can have successful restaurants. Because the end of the day, no matter how many restaurants a franchisee signs up for, if they open one and it doesn't make money, they're not opening another one. Yeah.

And that is a very unique selling proposition. To what Lanes offers is that the expertise in real estate, in really looking out for your best interest of where are you investing your money? What assets, what land? Beyond the franchise model, the tangible things that will also help you be successful.

Right.

Physical location.

Right.

Where do you think the future of the restaurant industry is going? I think I like to wrap up every conversation before we ask our standard questions at the end of, like, you know, I think traditionally the restaurant industry has been a very, you know, siloed head in the ground, trying to survive, reacting to the market, just trying, like in survival mode, reactive mode. How do we move into the future more proactively to create a better industry? What does that look like? Do you have thoughts on that? Like, what would be better about the industry?

I do. I don't think many people would agree with my thoughts on it, but it's what I'm thinking. I think that we've gone too far in the changes that the fast food world has come. And I think we're gonna see. We're gonna see us going back to our roots. What I mean by that is, you know, you go into a McDonald's, you go into these places, and you order on a kiosk. Right. Or you order on your. Your phone and you have it, you know, you go in and it's like, okay, yeah, Eric, you're 50. You're a fogey. You know, that's. No, that's the future. The future is, you know, instant gratification. You order on your phone, you don't want to talk to anybody, you got your headphones on, you go in, your head down, all kind of stuff. I think it's going to be the opposite. I think that we. We miss the personalness of.

We need that.

We need. We need it.

Right.

Whether we know it or not, we need it. And I think when we get little bits of that. I think our, as human beings, we latch onto that. Right, right. And I don't have really data to back this up other than just anecdotal, but it just seems like we're going back to, man, I need a personal experience. And eating is such a personal experience for everybody. Everybody eats at some point. You ate at home with your family, you know, you've, you go out on dates. When you're dating, you go out, whatever it. I, I think we, we're going to go back to that more. I think the, the, the kiosks, all those things are going to fall out.

I agree. I think there's going to be place

[Jason]

for those things, I think.

[Eric Reed]

Yes.

But I, I think you're going to probably see the marketplace further fragment in the full service. High touch places are going to be there or even like more high touch. Qsr.

Right.

You know, I think the, the hyper automated concepts will also be there and then there's just going to be further fragmentation of marketplace. And those people that prefer, you know, the super, what's the word? Not extrovert, introverted, maybe awkward. Like what's, what are the people that are like on the spectrum that don't want to avoid all social interaction at all costs?

On the spectrum? Yeah.

Like they're gonna gravitate towards that. Like, thank God I don't need to talk to a person today. I could push a button and it shows up in my front door. Those people are always going to exist.

Yes.

But then there's the people that have a high social appetite, that love to be out and engage with people and that there's going to be a market for those people too. I think that you're probably just going to see a fragmentation of meeting people where they're at.

Right. That's a good way to say it.

But I agree that I don't think we're all going hard in that direction of automation because that's not human.

No.

And Moore's law might be exponential, but humans don't evolve at an exponential rate. Human culture theoretically evolves at an exponential rate. But our hard wiring, our biologics, they

were social creatures at the end of the day.

Exactly.

At the end they were social creatures. And like to your point, maybe today I don't want to interact with somebody, so I'm going to go to that place that I don't have to see anybody because, man, I had a bad day.

Right.

And there's other days when you're just like, man, I, I crave human Interaction. And every time I go to Lanes, the nice teenage kid behind the counter smiles at me, remembers my name, and says, hey, how's it going? And it makes your day. Right?

Right.

So I think, I mean, that's the space we're going to be in as Lanes, and we're going to be there for that customer.

Protect the brand, protect the franchisee. Scaled from 24 to 2041. 44 locations in one year. And you're planning to do double in size again next year?

Yeah, we started. We started 25 with 19. We ended the year with 40. Okay, so it's just a little over 100.

And your 20, 26 goal is we

should have 80 by the end of this year.

So at what point are you. Are you gonna have to start to protect yourself from yourself to prioritize relationships and to not make it transactional from, like the franchisee perspective?

Between us and the franchisee? Yeah, at a certain point. Harder.

Yeah. Like you, like it might be more relationships than you can manage. Well, right. And because you're putting so much emphasis on that, like, I'm curious, I believe that you want to protect the franchisee, but what checks and balances are you putting in place to protect you from you.

What, Jackson? I mean, right. Right now, I mean, we. I can't think the other day, we're actually, we're all talking about it, that it's kind of the old adage that people don't care how much you know if they know what you care. Right. And so I kind of put that. I said, hey, the franchisee doesn't care how much we know until they feel how much we care. Because we do care tremendously. Obviously. Protect the verification franchisee. It's there. And, you know, Samir and Garrett make the trips to meet with the franchisees face to face. I've been on a lot of those. I'm planning on going on more of those. The real estate team has, as we every other week calls the franchisees, the construction team purchase weekly calls the franchisees. Your point is once we get too big, I think what you're asking is what you can do that with 30 franchisees. But what happens when you have a hundred franchisees? Right. And I think that's just more of just finding touch points to be with them more often. Finding new ways to do it. I mean, do as many in person business as you can, but instead of doing it every quarter, it's maybe twice a year. Yeah. And. And getting it from, you know, Garrett, me and Samir being on all Those trips to just, you know, hey, maybe it's me and Samir one trip, maybe it's Garrett Samir another trip, and. And kind of divided and conquering and then really that when it gets to a really big scale, there's 500 franchisees. It's. It's having people like, like Natalie in marketing, having people like, like Kyler and operations like them growing up into the role where they're going to be doing that. Yeah, right.

Yep. This has been a lot of fun. We gotta start thinking about wrapping it up because I'm looking at my cameras and we have killed the auxiliary giant battery sacks and we're now on our camera battery. We're running out of time. So three interviews, one day, man. I've been here for almost six hours and it went by so fast.

You're a trooper.

I've really enjoyed talking to you all though. Honestly, I. My mind's blown. I feel I got here an hour

ago

and an hour ago is 9am, but it's actually 4pm and I don't know how that happened. It's crazy. So what's one thing about your business? A value, a process, a system that makes you truly unstoppable.

That we care so much about the franchisee and their success.

The mission statement is to change the world by inspiring, empowering, and transforming the restaurant industry. And we're going to do that by chance, transforming one owner at a time. How have you personally transformed. How are you a better man today than the man you were when you got started in this industry?

I think by getting to know the franchisees and really, really having having our vision of having a successful worldwide brand become their vision of having a successful brand in their backyard where they live. And then, then me realizing that that is also my vision. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's kind of like. It's kind of like the vision went to them and then they brought it back to me, and now I'm. I'm living it on an individual basis. Yeah.

And I think when I, in my more naive version, younger self, used to be very anti franchise or corporation because I thought you, you're taking money out of communities. Right. But I think that at the same time, you can create opportunity from afar within communities if you select the right people that want to make a difference.

Right.

And they want to create. Like you can use a franchise to be an opportunity within that organization.

Right.

But you have to have both.

Yeah. And that's. And that's how I see it. You know, I look at, you know, Our competitors, if they're a corporate corporation, you know, they've got a gm, great, probably lives in the community. That's awesome. An area director or whatever. That's great. But if you've got a franchisee comes to mind. Our franchisees in Wisconsin, I mean, those. They are Wisconsin. I mean, they grow their whole lives. I mean, to meet them and know up there where Lane's a new brand. You may think Lane's is a mom and pop brand because, man, I met the owner and I met, you know, the owner is a dad and his two boys, right? And they're just amazing and they're in the community and everybody loves them and they're just the most genuine people, you know, salt of the earth guys. And if you didn't know Lane's was a big corporation, you'd say, oh, this cute little mom and pop chicken place that popped up, right? Yep. And. And when the franchisee, the owner is in the community and living like that, then it's. To me, it's kind of almost the exact same thing. Yeah.

Awesome. This is the last question before we wrap it up and we let the folks at home know how they can connect with you. If you got the news, you'd be leaving this world tomorrow. All the memories of you, your work, and your restaurants will be lost with your departure. With the exception three pieces of wisdom.

Easy question that you can leave behind

for the good of humanity. And you're like, what would those three pieces of wisdom be?

Three pieces of wisdom. The first thing would be to love your family.

1.

Remember to always take care of those around you. 2, and just take full advantage of the opportunity that comes your way.

3. So this last question is a selfish question. I really try to find my future guest through my current guests. I don't want to be the one to decide who gets made an example of. So who do you believe is doing it right? Who. Who's out there in the world of restaurants? Ideally, restaurant owners, restaurateurs that are doing it right that you think need to be made an example of.

Restaurant owners.

Yeah,

I can't think of one off the top of my head. You got to give me a second on that.

Or if anybody in the industry adjacent, similar. Any. Anybody that comes to mind.

I'll tell you one guy that. That comes to mind that from the franchise world that's been an amazing person in the franchise industry is. Is Greg Smith.

Greg Smith. Who's Greg?

So Greg Smith and I worked at Sally Beauty together. We're both cutting our teeth. We're the same age, same height. Our boss would call me Greg all the time and call him Eric all the time. It was hilarious. Like our boss couldn't tell us apart and we took very different paths. I jumped to Payless Shoes and the exact same time he went to Sport Clips. And Sport Clips I think had like 99 locations at the time. And he, he, he stayed there for like 20 something something years, ended up becoming their chief development officer. He took him from I think that to 2000 or whatever and just has a wealth of knowledge in the franchise world. He's now with a different, with a different group now. He's, he's, he's, you know, kind of did everything he could do at Sport Clips, but he's a guy that I like to go to and ask him about.

Where is he based?

He's, he's based in Rome, Texas.

Okay.

That's where he lives.

Awesome walk.

Just right off the road.

Always looking for perspective. Greg Smith, look out. Coming your way. And how can we connect if we. You're now the first, second, third, fourth interview I've done with Lane's chicken in a year. And if my listeners went back and listened to the Garrett episode and the Samir episode, they just listened to Alex and Kyler. Kyler, thank you very much. Kyler. Your name is cool, man. But I look at it written down,

I'm like am I spelled it really weird?

And Natalie, so we're aware of liens, what you're doing. We might be interested in franchising. What's the best way to connect? What should we know if we are interested in franchising?

Just go to the website.

Yeah.

And there's a franchise and you can click on there and it'll get you in touch with, with Matt and he'll reach out to you.

And what if we want to directly connect with you? Is there a way we can connect LinkedIn or anything like that?

Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. All right. Very easy. My email address is [e-mail] so you can find me there too.

Awesome. I cannot do what I do without people like you making time to get vulnerable, to share knowledge, to go further together. There is no questioning Eric. You are unstoppable.

Thank you.

Cheers.

[Jason]

There's another episode wrapped up here at restaurant Unstoppable. Special thanks to our guest today, Eric Reed, for coming on the show, Chief development officer for Lanes Chicken Fingers.

[Eric Reed]

And just a special thanks, two Lanes, for being so generous with your, your team, your, your staff of specialists.

[Jason]

And on that note of specialists.

[Eric Reed]

That's really what Restaurant Unstoppable is all about.

[Jason]

I'm interviewing these restaurant tours. I'm diving deep into their mind. I'm also diving deep into their network and trying to find out who they're going to to become unstoppable in Restaurant Stoppable Network. Ru Network is all about bringing these people together so you, our listeners, the future leaders of the restaurant industry, can surround yourself with the best. Ask the questions you wish I was asking on the show and just we,

[Eric Reed]

we all go further together. That's the whole idea. We would love to have you be

[Jason]

a part of it. If you want to join this conversation with Eric Reed, head over to restaurantstoppable.com C W E that stands for coffee with Eric.

[Eric Reed]

You can join this conversation. We'll get the. We'll get you the zoom link.

[Jason]

Also joining us for that conversation is

[Eric Reed]

Natalie Hurley, the VP of marketing for Lane's Chicken Fingers. So if you enjoyed these conversations with Lanes, you'll enjoy this coffee with Eric again will be April 20th, 11aM Hope

[Jason]

we can make it.

[Eric Reed]

We'll see you there.

[Jason]

And if you want to join this and all future conversations, head over to restaurantstoppable. Com.

[Eric Reed]

Live and grow with us, learn with us, and be unstoppable with us. We'll see you there.