Welcome back to the show. This week’s episode is about concepts what lends itself to being the next hot concept and how you execute a really hot concept and how you keep it relevant. It’s gonna be about the changing tastes or what diners are really looking for today. And it’s also about a collaboration with a famous music personality named Ludicrous.

You probably know him as a rapper. Famous in Atlanta and around the world. And my guest today is Todd Richards, chef Todd, we call him, and he’s from Jackmont Hospitality Group. Now. He spends 160 days in the air and he’s traveling constantly and his job is to put together these amazing concepts that we all like to relax in airports and.

Eliminate or lessen at least the stress of travel. So you’re not gonna wanna miss this episode. Stay tuned. You’ve probably heard about a restaurant academy, and I know a lot of you are struggling with systems in your business and being tied to your restaurant. The academy is literally a crash course in increasing profitability, leadership, accountability, staff training, proven marketing.

That’s trackable. But the best part is you can actually assign. Any number of your employees to learn a piece of your business, execute it, and then give them an incentive for doing so. Don’t try to do it all yourself, wouldn’t it be amazing if you created what I call intrapreneurs in your business that gave them a reason that they wanted to stay with you, which lowers your turnover and it rose them up in your organization.

It was really powerful in all of my restaurants, and now I’ve got that program just for you. It’s called the academy at academy.restaurantrockstars.com. So check that out now on with the episode.

You are tuned in to the restaurant Rock Stars Podcast, powerful ideas to Rock your restaurant. Here’s your host, Roger Beaudoin.

Welcome. This is the Restaurant Rock Stars Podcast. So glad you’re with us. And Chef Todd, welcome to my show today. How are you? I’m doing well. Staying cool? Compared to the rest of the country, I’m staying pretty cool today. And you’re down in hot Atlanta. Yes. The name speaks for itself.

It’s always hot down here. There’s only a few months where, the temperature is pretty cool, but, it’s one of the greatest cities to live in, and I’m glad to be here. I’ve only been fortunate to visit their airport several times. I’ve never actually had any time to, to visit Atlanta and explore it.

My audience really appreciates those crazy, unbelievable stories because they happen to all of us.

Those, I can’t believe it happened. How did I get through this? I’m sure you got a few. Is there anything that comes to mind? Being in, in airport restaurants, especially my first time opening a restaurant in Atlanta Airport and you said you flew through here. And I tell people, if you’re going to heaven to hell, you gotta go through Atlanta Airport to get there.

It just seems the way to get there. One thing I was not prepared for in opening the restaurants in Atlanta’s airport is there are all our knives are tethered down. Imagine as a chef that’s used to walking around to different parts of the kitchen and you can cut anything anywhere.

All our knives are chained down. Wouldn’t have known that. Wouldn’t have known that as neither did I, and us having a sushi restaurant. Imagine the amount of fish that we’re cutting. And on a given day and to have your knives chained down and you can’t, move them outside of the area in which you’re standing.

It makes sense. I understand, why we have to do it now that I’m in the airport, but just have your knives chained down every day in your daily operation. Is something foreign to probably 99% of the chefs in in, in the world. How do you clean them constantly? Are they quick release or they have to be permanently attached to something so they’re permanently attached to something?

We bring sanitation solution over there to the knife to the knife. Also you imagine, with a sushi restaurant, our knives have to be very sharp, so we are sharpening them all the time. And people think you’re talking about, I’m thinking about big knives. They said, no, I’m talking about pairing knives.

Everything. Butcher knives, every knife has to, be in it in its place in the airport. Yeah. What do you know? God, I don’t think any of us would really know that unless we actually worked in an airport restaurant, but it absolutely makes sense. It’s a little inconvenient at first. Like you’ve never worked in a restaurant kitchen in an airport, and then suddenly it’s wait a minute, I can’t take this here.

I can’t, I gotta use a different one. I gotta bring the sanitation to the knife. Wow. All right. It’s also, just think about, it’s on the tether, so you can only turn so many different ways and me being a left-handed chef. All, everyone is right-handed. So I had to set all the knives up, in, in a right-handed format, and I’m an oddball there trying to squeeze in around trying to slice things.

It’s a logistical, sometimes as a chef, I don’t think people understand that being a chef is more about, being logistical officer of UPS and FedEx and it is actually cooking on a daily basis. You’re the culinary developer of major restaurants in different airports across the country, and we’re gonna dive into deep into what that means and how you come up with these concepts, because obviously they’re designed for quick service and all that kind of stuff, but they also have the peel.

Before we go there, let’s talk about your backstory. Chef. How did you get into this business and why were you inspired by cooking as a young person? Did you go to school for it? Were you a. An apprentice? What’s your story? I would say d all of the above. All of the above. Yeah. Except for culinary school, I didn’t go to culinary school.

I went to the apprentice program. And the thing is that not because I didn’t want to go to culinary school. I can say I didn’t wanna go. I, first of all, I moved down here to Atlanta. I was transferring from University of Illinois to Georgia Tech. I really. Thought I was going to go into the physics program and really just got bored with college and got a job at a grocery store being a butcher.

And across the street from there was another restaurant and I went to work at that restaurant across the street and fortunately, sometimes just happens that, the chef there, chef Eddie, his wife at the time, Joni, was on the Olympic team for the Culinary Olympics and she worked for a great chef in Atlanta called Tom Karo.

That’s, I met him. And I was hooked, but my background in food started as a kid with my parents and my parents. Every holiday, Christmas birthday was always at our house. We cooked, fabulous meals for not and our family was bigger at that time, so I took about, there’s no, it was no recourse to have a hundred people at our house.

Okay. Cooking these delicious meals and at the time I moved to Atlanta, I was lost and I found my way into a kitchen because I grew up in a kitchen environment. I cook, grew up around people. I grew up around food, and also the science behind cooking really feeds into that scientific mind that I had.

And my parents were both creatives and also scientific, and it just fed me and I just love being in the kitchen every single day. Now, customers, on the other hand, customers, you can get a little dicey. I leave that to the front of the house sometimes, to deal with customers. But, being but just being the face of a lot of restaurants, it’s really just genuine hospitality.

I love. I love that word. That is the foundation of our business, and that’s a beautiful inspiration of how you came to this. So do you get any time to cook anymore? That’s your passion, yet you’re developing winning concepts. Do you find a balance? Do you cook at all? I do. I cook often.

The first time, in any restaurant, regardless if we opened it, you. 10 days ago or 10 years ago, the first thing I do is I walk into the kitchen and I grab my apron and I want to cook with the team. I need to know, like everyone can tell me, they can send me emails, there’s nothing like standing there in the kitchen cooking with the team.

There’s nothing like standing in the dish pit. Understanding what’s going on in the restaurant. You wanna know what’s happening in your restaurant, go to the dish room, watch the plates as they come back, understand that, talk to the dishwashers because they have the most insight.

They’re the most, people say that’s what is a dish it’s like an offensive lineman, they don’t get any credit for blocking and everything like that. They are the linchpin to the tire offense of NFL team and the dishwashers are the exact same. So I celebrate them more in, in my public speaking than anyone else in my kitchen.

That’s gotta be, there’s gotta be a statistic to how many people started out in this business in the dish pit. I certainly did, and I never thought I’d be in the hospitality business, 40, 50 years later. But it’s true, right? And a lot of people do. And it’s a beautiful thing that you can literally start in the dish pit and then own restaurants or, run a chain of restaurants or manage.

Restaurants or even start an empire just starting there. And you’re right, it’s it’s amazing what you learn just from that one founda foundational job in every restaurant. So yeah, it’s observation, it’s the, it’s the biggest point of observation you can have in a restaurant next to the host.

So let’s talk about what’s key to developing concepts, because this is, when you go to airports, we’re talking about people from all countries around the world are traveling everywhere all the time. And the concept have to have certain universal appeal, they have to have fast service, all these kinds of things.

And yet you’ve gotta come up with something that’s gonna be the next hot thing that not just works in one airport, but literally works on the other side of the country. How do you do it? One thing is you have to be invested in the people and understand what’s actually happening in the city that you’re in.

Fortunately I get to travel to la, New York, Jersey, Philadelphia, DC of course, Atlanta, and then my just natural travel around the world. So you have to have a vested entrance. And people, and then you have to understand what’s happening on the concourse. If it’s a California, flights coming from LA across, having avocado toast makes sense.

For those people flying in and out of those, area. If if someone’s traveling in and out of Memphis on that concourse, it makes sense to have something with barbecue and things like that. There’s universal truths, like breakfast that, like you had to have a two egg plate.

No matter what, you have to have a yoga parfait, you have to have a great muffin, but you have to invest into the local economy, understand what local people want, and understand why everyone is traveling into the city and in order to understand the concepts. Then you get into other areas of, okay, so what makes us unique?

What makes this restaurant stand out? Opening, one flew south the first sushi restaurant in the airport in the world, why did we do that? Korean Airlines was, took up 10 gates right next to us and it made sense that their layovers are two hours, that we wanted to give ’em something to welcome them to Atlanta.

But we also infused a lot of Southern ingredients into those things. Like our smoke trout roll makes sense because we smoke trout here and things like that. So we have that blend of cross culture. But it makes sense because we’re representing Atlanta and the South, and we’re inviting people, so we have to give them something familiar.

I always have a saying, you gotta give people what they want, so they take what you have to give. And that’s how we approach every menu item we put on the menu. Oh, that makes perfect sense. Now, do you also come up with naming these concepts and creating the the ambiance or the vibe of them as well?

So it depends, like chicken and beer, that’s definitely, a something that, Jackman and all of us collaborate on. One flew south, but also, the airport wants local representation. So we partnered with a lot of local restaurants and then tried to interpret their restaurants into the airport.

Just recently we opened Oyster House and Hanock Oyster, one in one in Dulles and one in Philadelphia. Two oyster concepts, which you wouldn’t necessarily. Necessarily think that you would have an oyster restaurant in the airport, which already been widely successful and people are like, wow, this is great.

To be able to sit down and have an enjoyable meal. Our job at the airport, in, in restaurants is to take the stress outta travel. And and we use food, beverage, and hospitality to do you have to get dressed, to get to the airport, you have to get undressed, get scanned.

If you have something, foreign on your body, you get touched by other people. Yes. You gotta go find your gait, you have to sit down. All that is stressful. And then you see this oasis over here, and our job is to take that stress away from you. Yeah. Now what’s really interesting, I remember something in an airport maybe five, six years ago, I don’t remember what airport I was in, ’cause I still travel quite a bit.

And it was self-serve kiosks where you literally sat at a counter or a table or whatever and you had to do everything through the kiosk there. Literally, the food was delivered to you, but there wasn’t any table service because obviously it’s. Speeds up service, and I really haven’t seen that since.

And now every time I travel, we really have servers and bartenders that are serving us. Again. Did that kind of fall away or was it ever a thing. We have to understand we came outta pandemic and what happened in the pandemic? The touching. Yeah. Yeah. And then, so then post pandemic there was a lot more opportunities out there for people in the hospitality industry that they took advantage of.

You think about ride share formats, like Ubers and all that stuff where they don’t have. To, do those things. So we lost a lot of people in the industry. Secondly, also our policies in, in, in government, have taken a lot of people out of the industry. So it made sense that they were trying to find a way to still service people with lower amounts of staff.

However, that’s not hospitality. It has never been that way. It’s not, you’re right. And it never will be that way. We don’t, like the robot craze, having robots coming around, that’s not, it’s cool, it’s a fad. It will last, but only for so long human interaction is eating and drinking together.

And if you take that away, then you might as well just, give us a test tube and put us down the straight. I’m glad you said that because I’ve always been a believer in technology to increase efficiency, but not take away from that human interaction and what hospitality really means.

So if you can enhance the guest experience through tech, then it’s great, but if it somehow takes away and puts an artificial element into it, I’ve not been a fan of that. So thank you for stating, are these long-term leases of your restaurants in airports? What are the terms generally? Generally, there’s nothing less than 10 years, it takes a lot.

First of all, the cost of opening a an airport restaurant, it, it is magnitude, one and a half times what a street restaurant would be. And think about it, that not only do we have to just build the restaurant, we have security considerations, we have staffing considerations. We have a lot of the things that most people wouldn’t think that we have to think about in opening a restaurant, which costs, actually more dollars.

And having a short term lease, no one could ever recruit. What they put into the restaurant of course also makes the restaurant profitable, so they have to be long-term lease leases. Also, again, like taking the stress out of travel if you can, if you’re a business traveler, if you come to this restaurant for five years straight and all of a sudden this restaurant is gone.

What does that do to your psyche as a consumer and airport operators are invested into the consumer experience as well? No one wants to sit on a tarmac for, for hours. No one wants a flight delay, it could be storming outside. And 90% of the time they’re gonna blame the airlines for being delayed, knowing that they can’t control the weather.

So everyone has a vested interest and if you start moving things around, you take, guests and airport, patrons out of their comfort zone. It just brings more stress to the travel experience and owners of airports don’t want that. I feel comfortable already. I can’t wait till my next

Let me ask you something. Is relevance important? Do you have to keep things fresh every so often and put a different spin on it? The menus have to change. Does the vibe change at all even though the name stays the same and the tried and true works, but you keep, giving guests a new experience along with, is it a balance?

Is it important? There’s always a balance, but it depends on what time of year it is. We have to look at things in season, summer season, we add more items to our kids’ menu in the summertime than we do, in the wintertime because there’s more kids traveling, in certain destinations.

Our business travel goes up in, in the first quarter of. Of, because there’s more business travelers happening. So we, an example, we may not carry all of the high end spirits that we would normally carry throughout the year, but we know during certain, at certain restaurants, especially our higher end or full service concepts, it makes sense to carry those higher end items because there’s more business travel happening at that time.

Food wise, there has to be some seasonal element for our restaurants, because that’s what we specialize in. And just understanding the cost of operating in the airport, it does not make sense to carry things all around. And people say, can I have my tomato on my chicken sandwich in January?

A, you could, B why would you want to do it? And C, why are you gonna pay a dollar 25 more? For us to bring in a tomato that’s not going to be any good on the sandwich anyway. There’s just things like that, that I look at, that us as a whole look at and then from a cocktail standpoint, what is seasonal, what makes sense to serve in there is you can’t have a, high briss watermelon margarita in the summertime, and then in January you still have it on the menu.

That’s not right. That’s just not who we are. Are you seeing guests taste changing at all, or are they still seeking the same types of things in their dining experiences when they come to your concepts? I would say that guests are way more educated or they think they’re more educated, than ever before.

If you scroll on any social media, you cannot scroll past three four without seeing some type of food related, content on them. You cannot, watch television without seeing, advertisements more in food. And certainly even something like watching, sports events where the constant, addition of food commercials is always there.

What did I say though about guests that I. See after, post, post COVID is that their tolerance for different things has expanded. Far more than what it used to be that people have gotten outta their comfort zone just a little bit more, slightly different than ever before.

And I would say that I can say that honestly, when I look at the amount of chicken that we used to sell prior to COVID and then Mount Chicken, we sell, post COVID that people, where we keep a stake on the menu because we have to have it that stake. A option has gone up more and chicken has gone down.

That tells me that people are breaking away from just, ordering the norm. This, what they feel good at, and why shouldn’t you though you’re traveling. That’s the whole thing. Make the airport experience part of your travel. Don’t shun away from it. Embrace it, get into it, because you’re going to be there for an hour.

You might as well have the best time while you’re there. Absolutely true. Do you, does your portfolio, in terms of price points, is it diversified? Are you at all levels of price point or are they pretty much consistent across all your concepts? All concepts have different price points, and when.

The great thing about it is us as operators, there’s levels that we can go way further than what we charge, but we have the consumer in mind. We’re not here to gouge people. And that’s one thing that, that when I see it I get infuriated by it because I know what it costs and like, why would you.

For what benefit are you, besides just throwing money to the bottom line that this guest might only come? Why? You look at a place like One Flu South that we opened in 2008? We see people who have gotten engaged there. People who come back to have their anniversaries there. It’s because, we charge a fair price for what we’re offering and we offer some of the highest ingredients, that you can find.

Our fish is flown in three times a week. But we don’t go overboard in what we charge you for that, because we want to have repeat customers. People call the restaurant, ask ’em, can they make a reservation? How can you make a reservation in an airport? Do you have a ticket? We don’t know when you’re coming and when you’re arriving.

But those are the kind of things that separate us from other people. But that’s why it’s important to be a hospitality group that’s not necessarily focusing directly on the bottom line, knowing that how we get to the bottom line is feeding people delicious food and cocktails and having great service.

I’m sure your guests, you’re done, and guests appreciate that because I have been in airports where I’ve felt gouged, and that is outrageous, and I can’t believe you’re charging that for this when you’re not providing something special or any value added. So that’s a, that’s a solid formula for sure.

Now, what about marketing? I’m walking through an airport and the only time that, or the only thing that influences my decision is what the concept looks like from the outside. Think the menu is, but I don’t necessarily pay attention if there’s certain marketing pieces or advertisements somewhere in the airport that’s supposed to draw me to that concept.

What do you guys do? What’s your marketing strategy for your concepts? It starts with understanding, what gates are around us and who our consumer is and really the menu is the biggest tool for marketing. And you can have everything for. Everyone. And then you end up not having anything for no one.

You really have to really focus on what’s around you, who your customer base is and things like that. You look at chicken and beer, which is a great concept in concourse D. And the Air Airlines around us are, frontier spirit, Delta, Alaska Airlines. That fried chicken concept makes so much sense for that group of people that are coming to that restaurant, to that concourse, one flew South who, you know, who’s the flagship of our company.

That would not make sense for that. There’s, there’s not a lot of business travelers during, on that concourse. There’s not a lot of international travelers on that concourse. So our biggest, marketing tool is the menu. And then partnering with great people, of course, whether it’s street size or entertainers also is the biggest marketing tool that we can have.

And then finally, the word of mouth. The amount of people that come to our restaurants and really talk about our restaurants and say, I can’t believe this is in the airport. You, we can’t pay for that. We can’t pay for that type of marketing. That’s genuine, that’s organic, that’s grassroots, and that’s where we want to be.

Very good. Let’s talk about chicken and beer, because that’s a collaboration with ludicrous well-known music personality. I’ve seen him on some television commercials lately also. How did that partnership come to be and whose idea was it? You can’t come to Atlanta, without talking about ludicrous.

It’s really great to, to understand that our owner, CEO Daniel Halprin understands the pulse of people. He wanted to create something that really represented, where Atlanta stood at that point in time. In 2014, who was celebrating Atlanta and who was the most celebrated and at that point in time, and still to this day, Ludacris is one of the most celebrated, musicians and rappers.

He’s also a great. And partnering with him. And then the album title, chicken and beer. The album already tells you the name. It fits, it lends itself to the concept chair, to the concept, awesome. So it was very easy to present that to the airport and we’re ambassadors.

Every restaurant’s in airport, especially ones that are made or are concepted on their own, are ambassadors. So we want to be part of being the, a great ambassador to tell not only his story to the world, but also tell the Atlanta story to the world. And it just makes sense. Those type of collaborations, and we’ve always been in the forefront of doing so.

You’re in Los Angeles with that concept as well. Has it opened yet? Yeah. Yes. We’re in LAX as well, but also in LAX. We have a a native with Naisha Arrington, who’s on next level chef with Gordon Ramsey, who is a great friend of mine, and to have her restaurants, on the same concourse as chicken and beer.

Now we have two celebrities in, in. And one and definitely submitted in the food world. And another one is the international star to, to partner with them and to tell their story through food and beverage and hospitality. I don’t know what, what else anyone can dream of doing, but that to me is how any she should live.

Would you consider that to be a new marketing strategy or one that’ll be ongoing with celebrities of some type? I don’t believe, I believe we are the best at it. We created it. I’ve seen it done other ways and always people still revert to us, but it makes sense because you’re telling the local story, especially that person is from there and planted there and they also become ambassadors.

For the restaurant as well, they have a vested interest in the restaurant. A lot of times when people think on paper that you’re just buying someone’s name, I can tell everyone 1000% wholeheartedly that everyone that we partner with are vested into the restaurants, that we bring into the airport.

It has nothing to say that when ludicrous, comes through the airport, he might be totally disguised and everything, but he will go into all those restaurants. Naisha just text me, yesterday, say, Hey, I’m coming through, I bring in another chef with me and everything. Let everyone know I’m coming.

So our celebrity partners are definitely invested in coming to the restaurants and they wanna showcase, themselves to the world and use us as a vehicle to do has labor challenges affected your business at all in the last couple years? Most restaurants are struggling with short staffing and finding great people and you have the added I’m not sure if pressure is the right word, but you have to find people that consistently deliver hospitality quickly to get people in, get people out.

They’re, racing to catch flights. They have to, have that personal touch, but you can’t spend too much time at any one person. ’cause you gotta make sure that everyone is served when they need to be served before they have to catch. Plane. What’s labor? Been like, you have to imagine, the first thing, the great thing about the hospitality business is that we take in everybody, from all backgrounds of life and walks.

Unfortunately in the airports, we can’t take in everyone. ’cause everyone can’t, get security clearance in order to get, to work in the airport. And so our labor pool is already shorts and shortened because of that. And then also, you imagine that what we a airport patron, what they go through on every single day of going there, getting undressed to get dressed and things like that, we have to do as well.

We don’t have any difference type of clearances just to walk into the airport. So every time you gotta go through security, every time we have to go through security. So we have to have a certain type of individual that is willing to do that on a. On a daily basis just to come into the restaurant now, on, on, on the service side, on the front side, there’s big rewards in that.

We have servers and bartenders that went through South who have been with us since 2008. Now we have people and at chicken and beer that have been with us since 2014. People, from the back of the house side, we have people that come, it is stressful working in the airport, in, in the back of the house and they might say, okay, I gotta take a break.

But they always come back because it’s a try true way of treating people. And I can tell you personally with any of the chefs I work with, I tell them from day one, only thing I want them to do is be better than me. That’s, you can take what I take, you can sit here and use it here, and when it’s time to go, you can take it and go and have luxury career.

And I believe I can speak for everyone in the company that we just want people to come in and be better, when they leave. And that’s why people come and work with us. But there’s always labor challenges, especially in the airport. Let’s talk about training and onboarding of new hires.

How how is that conducted and is it a formal training that lasts some time? Do they mentor and shadow other veterans that have been there a long time? What’s the key to that? Hospitality and quick service piece. Treating people like they’re important. The most important thing is just really walking people through the onboarding process.

If you’ve never done that in the airport, imagine you have to get, your background checks done and things like that. You can literally, in some occasions be hired on day one and may not start your actually work in the airport in for 45 days. Wow. No kidding. So imagine that, that we have to keep that person engaged and everything like that.

We also have to keep them funded because they’re leaving another job. So they might have 30 days that they may not have physical work in the airport. And so we have to keep them engaged. We have to keep them employed, we have to keep them, in certain financial status. So that right there is always there.

Then the training program, part of it is it’s. Not necessarily formulated in the sense of understanding, what we do, but the airport itself operationally is formulated that Tuesdays and Saturdays always the slowest days. Sunday and Wednesday can be the next busiest days, and the Thursday, Friday are the busiest days.

So we always start people on a Tuesday. Because it’s the slowest day in the airport and we start their training and then we’ll, give ’em a couple days off and start ’em back on a Saturday ’cause it’s the slowest day. So those things like that, that we, those nuances that, that, in a regimented society of operating in the airport that we know and we use those tools in order to give people the best opportunity to succeed.

The unexpected happens in every restaurant. We can’t see around corners, and sometimes things just happen and there’s a natural disaster, or planes are grounded and all of a sudden you’ve got hundreds and hundreds of people in a terminal that are all stuck there for hours and you’re the, you’re the first line of giving them a great experience and making their experience better.

But yet you got lines out the door and you gotta move people quickly, but you can’t turn your tables. And it’s I can only imagine these things happening sometimes. And I’m sure you’ve dealt with all of that. How do you deal with it? Oh, of course. First of all, bottled water is very important, okay. Yeah. Just, to keep people hydrated and, but honestly, and I use the word honestly, the first line is to be honest with people and communication and tell them, communication, what’s the expectation? And then flexibility. There’s nothing to say that, yes, we’re a sit down restaurant.

We don’t have a grab and go section, but certainly we can make all our sandwiches to go. How can we feed the customer? Also, we stay open. We don’t, just because it’s 10 o’clock and we normally close at 10 o’clock. If there’s four concourse, four terminals around us that are stranded. We stay open.

We keep feeding people. Now, there’s been occasion that we ran out of everything because we fed so many people. That’s just how we all regroup and figure out how we do it the next day. So those things are always important for us to make sure that we, that we’re doing so and including, and making sure that the guest is always taken care of.

Yeah. Are there any, you keep bringing up things that we wouldn’t normally think about. The knives are tethered and everybody has to go through security checks. So did the deliveries right before you just come on the tarmac, every truck, are they inspected? If you need something in a hurry, are things delayed?

If how does that work logistically? I can tell you that if you need something in the area, in the airport, it’s already too late. It’s not coming forward that day or maybe even the next. Stay. So you just won’t you just won’t, you just won’t get it. It just doesn’t it, it doesn’t happen that way.

It will never happen that way and nor should, and you have to plan meticulous, meticulously to understand and think about it, our deliveries, most of our restaurants open between four and 6:00 AM every day. Regardless of, we’re just like Waffle House. We’re, we’re at 24 hours in some occasions.

And so really understanding that you have to plant. You have to plan. There’s things you can’t plan for bad weather. I don’t, our real estate, we don’t. The airport is vast. Our real estate, our footprint in airports are very small. Very seldom will you see a restaurant in the airport bigger than 2200 square feet.

And that’s including the kitchen, all those things. So some restaurants, are three days a week’s delivery. Some restaurants, we have deliveries come every single day. It just depends on the size of the real estate that we have, for operation. But anything that you want and, quick, fast, and hurry, that’s a two day process, in order to make it happen.

Thank you so much for answering. I was gonna ask you about the deliveries and the frequency, and you just answered that question. What about technology? What’s a must have technology in all your concepts that make things more efficient or something you can’t live without? Y the thing is that we switched out of.

Paper tickets, for the most part in the kitchen. And we went to KDS, kitchen to play system for for our listeners here. And it’s really important that the recall function on something like that is so important in understanding, making sure that the tickets went out.

Of course when you have tickets in the old school and the paper comes out. Throw the ticket away. You can never find it. You throw it in the trash, you know it’s a lost cause. Absolutely. But, but just having that, that, that system that where you can just recall information relatively quickly is invaluable.

Especially for our quick pace and in operating a restaurant. Secondly, also just making sure that. Our refrigeration has to be of the top quality because if the refrigeration goes down, we can’t operate. We don’t have a backup place that we can put things in and look at items as so you really have to look at yourself as an insulated operation, and there’s no parachute to pull.

And if you’re not doing that, then it will never, ever work, in understanding and standing what those items are and making sure. So I always tell people, if you’re not looking at the refrigeration properly, if you’re you not using up-to-date POS system, you’re gonna be far behind than most people in their operations.

Very good. What about growth strategy? Are there spaces opening up in airports across the country with such long leases, or do you, are you looking to grow elsewhere besides airports when you know, when there’s literally no vacancy? Or how often do vacancies come up? I. Vacancies, depends on each airport, you know what the world of travel, keeps expanding.

There’s always going to be more. And you have to decide which space that you want to be in. And most hospitality groups understand that. So there’s some that want to be in quick service. Who hire them, who partner with McDonald’s or Chick-fil-A and those, there’s some people that just wanna do retail and coffee, which makes sense.

You and there’s people that wanna do full service. Like we do and understand that’s our niche. So you always look for those and then the airports really understand what they’re looking for. The trend for local representation has increased a thousand fold. Everyone needs to have a local partner, a local restaurant in their location and under to understand.

To represent what their city is about and tell that story and that trend is not going to die up for any time and it shouldn’t. Now, there’s always a national brand component that you have to have that which is usually anchors part of your airports and those make sense. But if you don’t have that national brand, then you know the traveler who is coming from anywhere, it doesn’t really know what’s going on and how, you know how to feel comfortable dining here.

And if you don’t have that, then it won’t make sense. How often do you travel to the different airports just to maintain consistency or, oh, man, all the time. You’re always in the air. Ask my wife that. I literally it’s almost July. I’ve been on the road 110 days this year already.

No kidding you. So I, so over two and a half months I’ve been gone, and it’s a whole different way of living to, to do in walking into a foreign place a foreign bed. Fortunately I picked up painting. So I bring all my all my tools with me and to paint consistently in order to really take my mind off it.

I always stay at a hotel that has some type of cooking capacity so that I can always keep the same routine. That’s very important to me. ’cause it’s not, US chefs and everything. We’ll go down to the bar, eat and everything. Next thing you know with the life of the party, we’ll be there for four hours, and have to get back up at five in the morning.

So I just learn that this is my way of keeping things normal and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Fantastic. You found a balance. It’s been my pleasure hosting you on the show, Thank you so much for being with us. It is my pleasure. And I look forward to seeing everyone you know in the airport near me, son.

I’m gonna look for your concepts when I travel. I’ll be heading to Los Angeles. I know I’ve got at least one, I think I’ve got two layovers on the way out and only one on the way back. So I’m sure I’m gonna come across your concepts, but I look forward to trying. All right. I hope to see you out there.

I’m always out there, so I’ll see you soon. Maybe I’ll run into, and that would be a pleasure. That was the Restaurant Rock Shows podcast. Thank you so much to our audience for tuning in. Thank you to our sponsors this week. Can’t wait to see y’all and next time stay well, stay tuned and I will see you then.

And that’s a wrap. Listen, don’t lose birthday business to your competition. People celebrate birthdays seven days a week. The check averages are high, and when they have fun in your place, they’ll come back again. Talk to my buddy Dyson. He’s an operator also just like you and me. But now he runs a done for you birthday club.

Go to jointhebirthdayclub.com/birthdayrockstar. It’s a piece of cake.

Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Rock Stars Podcast. For lots of great resources, head over to restaurant rock stars.com. See you next time. I.

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