[00:05:17]
You know, seven habits uses. You know, boulders, rocks, and pebbles, but basically big projects. You need to chip away at over time, moderate size projects. You need to kind of be diligent about focusing on, and then the little rocks are kind of the day to day whirlwind, right? Try not to get caught up and be a firefighter and put out fires all day, but really try to be as proactive as you can.
[00:05:36]
So that's ingrained in me in a lot of ways, but I'm not as diligent with that as I should be. I'll give an example. I used to spend every afternoon, an hour, hour and a half every Friday afternoon at the end of the day. Okay. And I would plan the entire next week, right. As much as I could, and I would make sure to build in to work on certain things.
[00:05:55]
And I have not done that as diligently as I would like to. And I think, and I think I'm kind of saying it out loud so that I'll re focus on that here in the near term going forward, because there's some things that I want to accomplish for this brand and for other things in our life in that first quarter of new year.
[00:06:10]
And I want to, I want to kind of set it up now. So, you know, you're never going to be perfect. You're going to have to. You're gonna have to like reset and, you know, re-evaluate and re tool yourself every so often to get back on track.
[00:06:22] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I mean, when you have multiple projects, you know, and you have a lot of them, I have struggled with this of like the feeling of shit, I feel bad that I'm doing this one right now because I'm not doing this one.
[00:06:34]
And that for me is the hardest part, right? Because like while I'm working on it, you know, and I don't know how you do this. I'm really curious. It's like. Do you literally just, and maybe it's just a personal mental decision to say, okay, I'm not going to do anything but this, or if, let's just say you're working on Project X, right, and something happens at Project Y, I'm not going to name any of them because I don't know which one it is, I know which one is obviously top of the top, but like, Do you context switch?
[00:07:01]
Or are you just very diligent about like, okay, if I'm doing this, this is all I'm doing right now for this hour or two.
[00:07:06] Troy Hooper:
No, I context switch. You know, this is public. I bought a wine bar with a couple of partners. I helped back a good friend of mine in the wine business. And there's a couple things going on.
[00:07:16]
You know, we bought it. We reopened it within about four weeks. And, you know, we're still trying to stand it up and retool it and, and make it what we want it to be. Right. It was an existing business and we're, we're just on that path. And some of that's like the tech stack. Well, I'm Mr. Tech stack. So the toast equipment arrived at my house on Saturday, right?
[00:07:33]
So I've got to run the toast equipment over there. That's a really inefficient spend of my time is to run the toast equipment over there, but I'll have two or three phone calls on that drive each way. And then when I get there, I'll spend an hour just focused on the wine bar for an hour. Then I'll get in the car and be back on pepper lunch on the drive home.
[00:07:49]
Right. So, you know, trying to make the most of. The time and be as efficient, but, uh, yeah, no, I context switch, you know, uh, on a Saturday afternoon, I'll put two or three hours in and, and do stuff for the wine bar or work on a, uh, you know, work on, uh, helping somebody out who I, I offered to, you know, be on their board of their business or whatever.
[00:08:10]
Sometimes I just say yes to, well, you know what? I always say yes to too many things. So it's tough. And, uh, and it doesn't mean sacrificing other. Aspects of my life, which is why time blocking for family was so important, right? Yeah, my wife's a high achieving executive as well. And, and so we have to balance that, you know, we don't have a nanny and we don't like have house help and all that kind of stuff.
[00:08:29]
So, you know, we, we make sure that we give each other, each other's schedule. And so we talk regularly about our, each other's time blogging and when's the babysitter coming? Cause we're both not here that night or I'm on a phone call with Asia. So it's, uh, it's a juggle, and you look at it like, I look at a lot of parents with multiple kids or single parents with any kids, like, I, I can't even imagine when everything falls on you and there is no help or, or you don't have that luxury that I have, and I'm, I'm very blessed and, and don't take for granted, but I also, I earned that by working my ass off, so.
[00:09:01]
At the end of the day, it'll all be, it'll all pay off in the end, right? As they say.
[00:09:05] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. It's tough, man. Yeah. I have, I have two kids and even when, I mean, we have help, we don't have family around, but we have, you know, like cleaners and babysitters and things that come, but you know, there's no substitute for the time.
[00:09:15]
Just, you know, making sure you're, you're with your kids and it's the energy piece is the, is the one that I, I try the hardest on. That's tough.
[00:09:22] Troy Hooper:
No, that's the hard part, right? Having the energy for the thing. Look, I'll say this as, since you started off this way. You just got to be okay with letting it go.
[00:09:32]
Sometimes I don't perform at my best all the time. I don't do all the things I say I'm going to do for others. It eats me up alive. I can't stand it. If I fall short or fall short of somebody else's expectations, try to do a better job of setting clear expectations, better timelines, giving myself more time.
[00:09:50]
But at the end of the day, look, if you get a cold or the flu or your kid, you get a call and your kid has to come home from school or their school is closed, love that, they just close on random days for fun, you know, it is what it is and I'm not curing cancer and I'm not launching rockets with humans on them.
[00:10:05]
So at the end of the day, if I go silent for four, six hours or a day, uh, or two, the world's not going to end. The work's going to pile up. It is what it is. A deadline gets missed, it gets missed and there has to be grace. It becomes about being better at predicting and it becomes better about managing the future and learning from it and doing your best, but you got to give yourself room.
[00:10:26]
We're all humans. And, you know, I have a rule. We actually just talked about it in my staff meeting with my pepper lunch team is, you know, it's the holidays for one, let's give each other time and space and, uh, and everybody's got things going on and birthdays and all that. But also like, it's also flu season, right?
[00:10:43]
Two of my team members had the flu last week and couldn't be in person for all hands and one couldn't even be online. They were not well. And I just said to the team to remind them, like, there's no judgment. Like if I get sick, I'm the biggest baby on the planet. You're not going to hear from me.
[00:10:57]
Everything's going to pile up. And by the way, if that phone rings right now. And it's, if family needs me, anywhere in the world, it, it's it, I'm out. And it doesn't make me altruistic or better than anybody. I'm giving you permission. If that phone rings, or you get a text, or something happens in your life, and the thing that's of a higher priority than this person.
[00:11:17]
Job today needs to take over. It needs to take over and I'm okay with that. And you need to be okay with that. So the team will rally, we'll pick up. We've had it happen already. We've had somebody have a medical situation where they unexpectedly, they have, they have a lot of responsibility and we all had to pick up.
[00:11:32]
So everybody will pick up. You know why? Because one of us will need it and you'll pick up too when that time comes. Right. So I think it's about giving yourself and others grace to be a human being and. And be okay with it.
[00:11:44] Josh Sharkey:
And I think a lot of times also yourself, especially as CEOs or just, you know, like people that work a lot or entrepreneurs, high performers, we tend to be the worst at giving ourselves the grace.
[00:11:54]
A hundred percent. I had 103 fever yesterday. I mean, I was a chef most of my life. And um, up until very recently. There wasn't even a, you know, the culture has changed a bit, which is good, but you didn't miss work. It didn't happen, you know, it wasn't like, Oh, I'm sick today or it's my wife's birthday or you just didn't ever miss work.
[00:12:12]
And I think that that was really a big flaw in the, you know, in the, in the culture. I think it definitely has changed a bit.
[00:12:18] Troy Hooper:
Well, I'm not perfect. I've, I've made all the mistakes, right? Forgot to buy the gift. And so on the day of it's like, Oh yeah, it's in the mail. Uh, you know, Amazon was like, whatever, right?
[00:12:30]
No idiot. You didn't, you didn't plan and didn't give yourself enough time to order the thing or go to the store. You know, I'm notorious for, I used to be really notorious for New Year's, uh, Christmas Eve shopping. Yeah. In person running around like a crazy person. Now I've got that down to maybe the weekend before.
[00:12:49]
Uh, so I'm with all the crazy people the weekend before, but at least I'm a few days early. Yeah. You just, you know, you gotta, you gotta reprioritize sometimes.
[00:12:57] Josh Sharkey:
Thank God for digital gifts, the stuff that you can plan to have arrived that day and via email. So, you know, we only met very recently through, uh, a mutual friend, uh, and I'm spacing, uh, Jordan.
[00:13:09]
And then now, you know, it's funny, like it's, it's surprising that we hadn't met before. But every time your name comes up, everyone's like, Oh, of course I know Troy. It seems like everybody knows Troy and you're really embedded in this, in this industry in so many ways. But I am curious because I don't, I don't know you that well, other than now knowing a little bit of your, of your work and getting to talk a little bit, like how the, how did you go from super yacht captain to doing what you're doing today?
[00:13:33] Troy Hooper:
Yeah. Yeah, well, the, the super yacht captain thing was like a, always a side project and passion. I started off as a young man, very interested in, I grew up in boating, grew up in Miami, spent a lot of time on the water, had neighbors and friends and my dad's colleagues always had boats and spent a lot of time in the Bahamas, Jamaica, Cayman islands, very, very fortunate, did not grow up wealthy or anything, especially privileged like that.
[00:13:56]
But, but grew up in an affluent community in Miami that, Um, people had toys and, and, and like to have parties and bring friends and neighbors along. So I, I got to ride along and mooch a lot of my life, but you know, there's two things I was really interested in as a young man, one was owning my own restaurant, uh, via V being a chef.
[00:14:14]
So I went to culinary school and I was always interested in boats. And I dated a girl in high school whose dad was a doctor and he owned a 72 foot sport fish. That's a very large sport fish boat. And, um, I showed a keen interest and he said, ah, Being a chef, restaurants, it's, you know, too much work, not enough money.
[00:14:31]
You should be a diesel mechanic. I was like, look, I have no interest in being a diesel mechanic. I don't care what they get paid 300 an hour. It's insane. But, uh, but I, but I love boats and I'd love to be a captain, love to be able to drive big boats like this one day. And so he took me under his wing and put me through maritime school as a young man and let me use his boat.
[00:14:50]
He taught me on his boat and let me use his boat to learn and, and practice and all that. And so I always did that as a side hobby. I did as a side job, really. I went and had a professional career and stayed on this hospitality ladder and, and climbed as quickly as I could. But, um, living in Miami in South Florida, when I moved to Fort Lauderdale.
[00:15:08]
Very convenient to just have that sort of side job where you could be what we call the cash captain. You could just have no responsibility over the boat day to day, but they call you and say, look, we just want to take it out for the day or the weekend or go to, and by the way, people take their yachts out just to go to lunch, uh, because you can pull up to restaurants and stuff in South Florida on your boat.
[00:15:27]
And so. I used to do that. I did that for many, many years, just as a side gig. And then when I got burnt out for a while, I wanted to take a break from the hospitality industry. I decided to do it kind of full time for a little while. And I went and moved to the Caribbean for a few years. Well, and, uh, and I did that.
[00:15:42]
I ended up, I ended up on some big boats. I ended up on the. 10th and 17th largest yachts in the world. And, and really just got to cut my teeth and enjoy that and hone my skills and all that fun stuff. So yeah, when I do something, I don't, I don't, I don't do it lightly. I tend to go pretty hard at it. So, uh, when I did that for a little while professionally, I went really hard and ended up in a good spot, but yeah, it's just been my life.
[00:16:06]
And, uh, when I, I don't, I don't have anything else to do. So I just do, I do what I do really, really hard. Well, you, and you also, uh, cooked, right? Yeah, yeah, so I was a chef for six years, went to culinary school, worked my way up, really, uh, never made it to executive chef, but that was okay. It wasn't, the goal was really to learn the skills in the business, the back of the house business, ended up being a kitchen manager, ended up in the Hilton hotel system, uh, on the corporate side.
[00:16:32]
And so, uh, definitely learned the business from the back of the house and then switched to the front of the house. I got my business degree. And, uh, really wanted to switch to the executive management side of the business. And so I went from back of the house to the front of the house and worked my way up through fine dining and finer resorts and hotels and private clubs, you know, fast casuals only been in my life since 2018, uh, QSR fast casual.
[00:16:53]
So most of my career has been in the full service, fine dining, um, arena, but yeah, both, both sides of the system. And I thought that was going to be very important. I knew pretty early on. I didn't want to cook for a living forever. And as an owner of a restaurant, you know, uh, no offense to chef owners out there.
[00:17:09]
Uh, there's a lot missing if you don't do the time in the front and the business side and the, and the culture building of the front of the house and the customer facing side. So I just wanted to get a well rounded education in the business. And so I invested my time and basically what that means is you just start at the bottom of the ladder every time.
[00:17:26]
All right, I'm switching from hotels to private clubs. Great. I'm switching from the kitchen to the front of the house. You basically just start at the bottom every time and then you learn you learn all those things from the ground up the foundations Which I think are important
[00:17:37] Josh Sharkey:
100% I was one of those chef owners by the way.
[00:17:40] Troy Hooper:
Oh, yeah, by the way, we all have look I started as a bus boy Everybody's like well, where'd you get your start in hospitality? My dad built restaurants bars and nightclubs as a construction owner of a construction company I thought I was going to be an architect when, when I decided that wasn't it. And I was going to be a chef, you know, look, first job was a bus boy at a Bennigan's just happened to be the second busiest Bennigan's in the world at the time, got very lucky, but you know, ended up becoming kitchen manager there before I was 18 years old.
[00:18:05] Josh Sharkey:
No, you're, you're right though. I mean, the, the skills and knowledge that you need to run a business or more than just being a chef. Right. I learned that sort of the hard way, um, with my first bunch of restaurants, uh, just the things that you don't, you take for granted that you don't know, and you think just being a great chef is enough and, uh, it's not.
So am I right that you also, you also work at Procter and Gable?
[00:18:24] Troy Hooper:
Yeah, I did it. I did a short stint when I got recruited in business school. I actually resisted pretty hard. To not go into that corporate world. I really wanted to stay in hospitality, but a couple of things, they convinced me pretty healthily that there was a lot to learn and that I didn't realize until I got there.
[00:18:42]
I mean, Procter and Gamble is a university of, of business and culture and leadership at the end of the day. Like, yeah, they sell products and they sell a lot of products. They sell a lot of brands. Well, my goodness, especially in the nineties, they invest so heavily in their employees, or at least I'm sure they still do, you know, it just was one of those legacy businesses that understood that, you know, developing your people led to longevity and success in your business.
[00:19:06]
And so, you know, they convinced me that there was an education, a continuing education, sort of an MBA to be applied right there. And then they made it, you know, as a young man and, uh, you know, They wrote a number on a napkin, ultimately, because I actually said no three times, and they wrote a number on a napkin, and I was a young man, and when I saw When I saw six digits plus, I was like, Hey, wait a minute.
[00:19:28]
I'm making 60 grand over here. What, what I can go, I can get more, I can get how much money. So I, you know, I did it for the money and the education turned out being the best thing in my career, my life that ever happened. You know, I found a lot of structure. I learned about leadership. I got a lot of humility, but I also was given a lot of empowerment, a lot of opportunity, and that taught me my.
[00:19:48]
Leadership style. It taught me the importance of investing in your team, the importance of building a culture and the ROI of that, the direct impact on the results of the business and in the empowerment, giving people the tools, resources, knowledge, and experience being on the sidelines and available to them if they need help, but giving it to them and letting them do the job don't micromanage.
[00:20:09]
And so, um, really empowerment was a huge thing and they would let you fall on your face. They would. Absolutely let you fail and then hold you accountable and then give you the new resources to try again and give you, give you another chance and let you try again without fear of, oh, you're going to get fired or you're going to, you know what I mean?
[00:20:25]
Not get promoted or whatever. Like it was, it was full on. They were all in on you when they brought you in. And yeah, so I did that for about five years and uh, that really set me on a path to accelerating whatever success I would have for sure. It, it molded me in a way that I needed in my mid to
late twenties.
[00:20:43]
And, uh, put me in a situation to, uh, to really do what I wanted to do and do it well.
[00:20:49] Josh Sharkey:
Was the next thing Kiwi? Is that what you started after that?
[00:20:50] Troy Hooper:
Yeah, so, so after Procter Gamble, I started working for corporate, uh, Hilton corporate and Vale Resorts corporate in a joint venture and then realized there was an opportunity on this consult.
[00:21:00]
I was always getting calls, especially because of the Procter Gamble thing, I was getting calls To be a consultant. Procter and Gamble is like the practical Ernst and Young. Like it's sort of like Ernst and Young or Deloitte practical. Like, uh, so I actually was learning how to sort of consult and give people advice on their businesses and, and things like that.
[00:21:16]
And, you know, I saw an opportunity. After working early in my career. And then again, after Procter Gamble on the corporate side, I just saw an opportunity to help brands fix their problems. Like, so I ended up starting a management company called Kiwi Hospitality Partners at the time. And we put a little team together and we went and did what we did called turnaround consulting, where we would go turnaround management.
[00:21:40]
We would come in and consult or take over and manage resorts, uh, hotels, private clubs, golf clubs in, in some restaurant groups as well. And, uh, help them, you know, repair, whatever was broken, set the right systems and processes in place and, uh, manage it to some level of, uh, new success, get them on a traction and then turn it over, turn it back over to the ownership.
[00:22:02]
To the new management we hired or to even a management company outside, which is very common on that side of the business, we've even sourced, like we would hire our replacements. Like we always said that our highest form of success was when we could fire ourselves, right? The goal was to get the business to where they didn't need us anymore.
[00:22:18]
Uh, and, uh, and so we got pretty good at that. And my business partner at Kiwi on the restaurant side, uh, Mark Bailey was out doing a one man version of that in the restaurant, QSR and fast casual. And he was, he was the guy to go in and help new emerging brands set up their systems and build a prototype and.
[00:22:36]
Get ready for franchising and all that good stuff and put all their processes in place. And he just got too much business coming his way and he invited me to come help him. So, you know, the hospitality thing, uh, I was getting burnt out and looking for something, what was the next thing? And I just love restaurants.
[00:22:50]
I really want to focus on food and beverage. And, uh, he said, Hey, come help me on a couple of these projects. And I did. Man, I got the bug, you know, helping emerging brand founders and small groups, uh, particularly strangely enough, almost of our, all of our clients were private equity or venture capital firms that had made investments or acquired things and didn't have the talent on their team.
[00:23:09] Troy Hooper:
So they outsourced it. So we ended up being the group they went to. So we kind of got into that. Club, so to speak into that cohort. And that's been our clients ever since, including pepper lunch. I mean, that's how pepper lunch came about in our evolution, but yeah. So we got to get out there and help some emerging brands and, uh, help them set themselves up for success.
[00:23:27]
And, uh, we did that for, as a consulting practice, as a fee for service business for a number of years, we've converted to a fee plus equity and we're moving towards a full equity model where we're really only getting involved in any kind of project that we have significant. Partnership in, but that's just the evolution of, of our practice.
[00:23:43]
And what we've decided to do is we've gotten older and spent more time in the business, but that's how we ended up at pepper lunch. They actually called us as Kiwi first. And my first mandate as the CEO, when I was hired was to hire Kiwi as our outsourced infrastructure initially, until we could onboard our own infrastructure here in the U.S.
[00:23:59] Troy Hooper:
So, um, kind of a full circle moment, pretty, pretty interesting path that was never planned or expected. But I guess I'd say I wasn't too surprised by it either.
[00:24:08] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yes. Pretty awesome. You also mentioned a little bit ago that you're the tech guy, uh, or the tech. Well, at Pepper Lunch
[00:24:16] Troy Hooper:
I am because we don't have a tech team or a CTO.
[00:24:18]
I look, I, I spent about the last four, four and a half, maybe years. I realized I've always been interested in technology, but I just, I saw what was coming. And in a way I saw some of. These new things being made. And I was like, Oh, what are all these new little companies popping up? And what are all these one off singular service or products that they have?
[00:24:38]
And once I started seeing integrations, you know, the API world of how things could start to work together and maximize efficiency and, and really one plus one at equal five, 10, 20, I decided to study it. And so studying meant just spending time, spending time doing demos, spending time saying, look, I can't hire you as a customer today, but one day I, I I know I will be able to, so please spend some time teaching me about this thing and, and asking just questions, all of being very curious about the whole restaurant tech industry and, you know, know a lot about the hotel and private club tech side of operation systems and legacy systems had to be a micros programmer, right?
[00:25:19]
I had to go to micro school, uh, fricking actually have a micros point of sale. That was insane. So. You know, seeing the evolution of it over the, my career, I got really curious about it. And I just thought, man, there, there's a lot of momentum here. I'm going to really need to know what's going on and really wanted to be at the forefront, really wanted to be one of those people that was willing to test things and try things and get in early to see if there wasn't some, you know, a value proposition that could differentiate a business that I was working on or working for or with.
[00:25:47]
And, you know, not just shiny objects for shiny objects sake or, Cute toys and, you know, gimmicks to, you know, fake your way to the, to success with your customer. But really things that I, my biggest interest is the back of the house stuff is business operations systems. Really let I'm less, I'm less interested overall in the consumer facing stuff than I am in the author operational efficiency and profitability improvements that an economy is a scale that can come from these APIs and these companies working together or, and any, and by the way, consolidation as these companies start to consolidate a little bit and things become a little bit more feature rich, I think.
[00:26:21]
It's an important aspect. So I put in the time and it paid off when pepper lunch, when I came to pepper lunch, they had no infrastructure, they had no plan. Um, the company was just being stitched back together from being disparate across different master franchises over many years. And so there was an opportunity for me to really dig in and get, get real educated, real fast and make real decisions that had global impact on this brand.
[00:26:43]
And we've, we've put together a really good package that I think we've got more tools for our franchisees and our franchise or business for the money than most get. I think we've gotten a really good value package put together, but you know, we didn't get involved with any tech that didn't have a real purpose and a real value to the company and didn't solve a problem for somebody in the company, if not multiple, somebody's in the company.
[00:27:06]
So it's a big part of what we've done over the last two years. Thankfully, I think we're, we're kind of done for now. So I'm excited to like hand over those reins and not be the tech guy. People like, Oh, you're going to, you're going to FS tech this year. It's like, no, I'm speaking at the one in Singapore and I'm not going to the one in Dallas.
[00:27:23]
I just don't want to talk about tech anymore. Like in the day to day, like I'm just tired of shopping for tech. Right? And like I'm sure, I'm sure I can take six months off and I won't miss the boat on something.
[00:27:32] Josh Sharkey:
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[00:28:59] Troy Hooper:
It's a lot. I empathize with anybody trying to make one decision about tech, how alone, uh, we have 19 SAS products that we put together as part of the pepper launch technology stack. And, uh, whoo, it's,
[00:29:14] Josh Sharkey:
That's a lot, man. I find, and I find the number one driver of. Lack of success and success, at least for us, was just adoption.
[00:29:23]
Well, people actually use this thing and there's so many technologies that are, that are, that are great. But, but you know, nobody uses them and it's, it's just pointless. But well, I'm excited to talk about Pepper Lunch. I'm going to just preface this by. Saying, I haven't been to one yet. I live in New York, there's not one here, and I haven't traveled much in the last few months, but I will, I'm excited, I'll be out west soon, and I will check one out, and I think I heard you're actually, you're coming to the northeast soon anyway.
[00:29:49] Troy Hooper:
Yeah, we have a few coming, we have a few coming. Yeah, northeast, hopefully soon, we got some conversations going on in New Jersey, we're hoping for some New York stuff, but, uh, yeah, coming soon to a city near you, for sure.
[00:29:59] Josh Sharkey:
Well, you know, I heard you chat a little bit about this, it's, I mean, the metrics sound super impressive, the 1.5 million AUV, like 1,700 average square, square foot of the space, and like, unless I'm wrong, I think you said like three to five employees is all it needed to, to run.
[00:30:14] Troy Hooper:
Yeah. Yeah. So we're an inline 1,700 square foot concept. We don't need to drive through. Is there anything special? Theoretically that's easy, but it's not easy to find real estate stuff these days.
[00:30:23]
But you know, you're going to build a store for under 800 grand. Yeah. 1.5 AUVs. Now we expect that number to go up pretty dramatically over the next two years as these new prototype stores open in new markets, my goal is a 2 million AUV in the next three years. I think we'll hit. 1.6 this year, 1.8, uh, in 26.
[00:30:43]
And then hopefully by 27, we're pushing something close to 2 million a store. You know, one thing that's really good for us, uh, is our EBITDAs are very high. Um, we're not audited, don't provide an item 19. So I can't make a specific claim, but I can tell you that. Their industry leading competitive EBITDAs or a fast casual concept dramatically impacted by that labor model that you referenced.
[00:31:05]
We have no prep labor in the building. We have no skilled labor. You don't have to have anybody. With kitchen experience or skills, uh, from a cooking or slicing dicing standpoint, and we do run the stores between three and five staff members per peak period, really it's four to six people in a properly busy store at peak day part, but as you've kind of come to know, too, is.
[00:31:27]
Day parts are sort of waning. It's sort of like humps, not peaks and valleys. It's sort of flows up and then down. And then all of a sudden you got a line at 1:45 in the afternoon. You don't know why, you know, so, uh, so we, you know, generally run the store between three and five people. The busier stores have six or so for the head peak period.
[00:31:45]
But you know, that as compared to many, many concepts out there is a lot less humans. So your total labor costs are a lot lower because of all those things and the efficiencies of the simplicity of the concept, look, we portion and we assemble. And then you do the cooking on your plate at the table. So, you know, the dishwasher is the dining room attendant, you know, the food runner, uh, is the cashier.
[00:32:08]
And then generally we'll have two people in the kitchen. So really efficient, high throughput, fast service model. You know, we're serving dishes. If you're, if there's nobody in front of you, it's three minutes, three and a half minutes. If there's anybody in front of you, uh, it's five, five and a half minutes.
[00:32:22]
Our busiest store, it's like seven and a half to 10 minutes max delivery time for food from the time you order to the time it's at the table. You know, we're, we're averaging a 24 minute table turnaround time from the time you order, the time you leave. You're in and out in under 24 minutes for generally under $20.
[00:32:38]
So, so it's just an efficient model that has high net returns for the franchisor and a franchisee investor. And it is, you know, a real convenience play, but a real high quality, hot meal, experiential, fast, casual, interesting concept, uh, for the consumer, but they can also, you know, get in and out for a reasonable value and, and at a reasonable timeframe.
[00:32:57]
So it plays a lot of the best practices that you look for in, in developing a concept or growing. We're scaling a concept. It really has a lot of these things that other brands are striving for. Today, one of my favorite things that I've coined as my own little catchphrase is I say that pepper lunch was built 30 years ago for today's challenges.
[00:33:16]
You know, they didn't know when they did this design and this concept and this model 30 years ago, how important it would be in an environment of such high labor and high commodity costs today and real estate and all the other things that have come along with this, particularly the U S market cost basis, but those costs are not isolated to North America.
[00:33:35]
We're seeing. Those challenges in many, many countries around the world. So, uh, we're really fortunate that this model was made a long time ago for solving today's problems.
[00:33:45] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah, well, I just want to pick your brain a bit about the franchisee beforehand I mean, it's it feels like it like a DIY teppanyaki and you said there's no prep So I'm assuming everything all the vegetables are just pre cut and shipped to the store
[00:33:59] Troy Hooper:
Diced chopped ready to go. Our fish is hand cut custom for us in Ventura, California You know, by specialized fish purveyor, you know, everything is sourced direct. We know where every ingredient comes from. The quality of these ingredients are incredible. They're far outweigh the value proposition of the price that you pay for them.
[00:34:20]
But we really good at negotiating. We're really good at global supply chain management and logistics. Uh, and we pass those savings on in the way of investing in the ingredients at a higher level. But yeah, everything's done outside the store. Our steaks are custom cut to our spec, our meats and chicken is, uh, chicken is, uh, custom flavor blended, very high spec, uh, white chicken, white meat chicken that, uh, is made for us and then sous vide to our specification.
[00:34:47]
So. You know, everything we need that we would normally do inside of a kitchen to make this food available to you is done outside by our purveyors and not even a commissary kitchen. You know, it's not our own commissary. We're not managing that production as a brand or you're not managing that production as a multi unit franchisee.
[00:35:03]
Um, that's all done for us by our vendors and purveyors. And so it just allows the store to focus on what matters most, which is doing a really good job of managing portion, managing a consistent build of the product and educating and providing hospitality to the customer, which is what. You want your restaurant to be able to do.
[00:35:21] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah, I know for sure. It's definitely like a very, very simple execution setting them up for success. I love that. I'm talking to some friends of mine on Wednesday for another podcast with these guys, uh, Bruce and Eric who have a restaurant group called Blue Ribbon. I learned from them very early on 20 years ago.
[00:35:37] Josh Sharkey:
I just remember Eric just hounding in like you have to make everyone else for success. You know, and that's not easy in a restaurant. There's so much complexity. So it sounds like you've, you've removed a ton of those complexities. I am super curious, like how that supply chain works, like the, the, you know, the vegetables and the fish, the fish, is there one distribution center and how do they package that and send it to you?
[00:35:57]
Is it, is it, um, like slice daily? Like what is that? What is that like? And also I'd love to learn about the QA process.
[00:36:02] Troy Hooper:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you asking that. That's something we don't talk about very often, but one of the highest to this brand, look, being a Japanese concept, most people don't realize that the Japanese, particularly in Asia as a, as a whole, but, but the Japanese in particular have the highest standards in the world of quality assurance and quality control and, and production cleanliness, et cetera.
[00:36:24]
Highest, absolutely by far by multiples. And they look at the best, best, best purveyors in the United States. And they're like, there's some things we could. Require you to do. And we do, we require our vendors to do that. So I'll go backwards from the QAQC, which is really interesting. We have a global QAQC team.
[00:36:41]
We also have a team here in the US assigned to support that global team on the local, on the ground level here in the US but that QAQC team came here every five weeks for a year and a half and every single vendor we already had and any vendor we looked at. We do a first and a third party food safety and facilities inspection.
[00:37:02]
And we tell them what our spec and what our health and safety standards are. And they have to adopt those when doing our production. So if they're slicing our beef, cutting our steaks and cutting our fish, et cetera. When they do that, they have to stop production, retool the line, make sure the training is right for the team.
[00:37:23]
Make sure that any extra measures we're requiring are in place when they do our food and that we will spot inspect that. Um, and that we monitor the quality of every one of those ingredients. You cannot source, produce, process, hold, uh, store or ship our product without us doing that. And so going to a new country, when we go to Canada next year, it's going to take us at least six months to replicate that in Canada because of the QAQC process that we have to go through.
[00:37:52]
Most brands don't do that. Not to that level and certainly not to the depth that we do it. That's just to say that it's particularly an Asian and Japanese specific cultural and business mindset that drives that, which I just absolutely appreciate because the investment is there and the investment is significant.
[00:38:11]
You know what it cost to fly over here from Japan every five weeks, you know, like the hotel and the flights and, you know, That those people's time and then hiring the third party companies for every single one of our purveyors, it's thousands of dollars for every inspection, but we do that because we wholeheartedly believe in ensuring that our quality is in our standards are maintained and met, you know, on the global supply chain, we're very fortunate in that my superior, uh, who hired me comes from, uh, the food and beverage global supply chain industry.
[00:38:40]
He comes from working in sauce manufacturing, food, additive, manufacturing logistics and shipping, global supply chain establishment for brands, et cetera. So he has been, he and the entire team that he has stood up in Asia have been phenomenal. I'm really lucky that Mark Bailey, our COO has a very strong, uh, procurement and supply chain negotiation history here.
[00:39:03]
So he was our liaison and, uh, but we became our own importer, licensed importer. We import products from Japan and Thailand and soon from, from other countries. We were able to source. Things that we normally would buy in Asia. Some of those companies have production here in the United States. So we were able to work with them and get some of our products actually made here.
[00:39:23]
Uh, we're working on our equipment to potentially be made here. We have a proprietary hot plate and induction unit that's manufactured for us in Asia that we're working on potentially producing here. To reduce some of those costs and, uh, logistics challenges that come with that. So, you know, this is a huge part of our business, uh, is the logistics.
[00:39:42]
We stood up an entire logistics company for the brand just to manage, um, these partnerships and, and globalize the brands that we have standards that are equal like, look, the fish that we serve here in the United States is sourced into and processed in Ventura, California. We're not importing fish from Asia and they're not exporting fish from the United States.
[00:40:00]
But most people don't know this is that Japan imports all of its beef from the United States. So pepper lunch in the United States has the great advantage of leveraging the volume of our global purchases of beef to Asia. Like I have a five store chain, I'm paying 50 store prices because I have five stores.
[00:40:19]
Right. Yeah. Because I'm leveraging that, um, economies of scale and that relationship on a global scale. So, you know, when you have that volume, uh, and you can leverage any of it anywhere, it always is going to result in, uh, you know, A consistency and, and security, but also in, in, uh, the, at the day, cost reduction.
[00:40:39] Josh Sharkey:
Right. That's awesome. So you, it's, it's produced in, in fabricated in, in, in California. If you go to the East coast, like New York or something, how does that work? Do you just, do you fly it every day or something? How does it, like, how do you get that?
[00:40:50] Troy Hooper:
Yeah, that's a really tricky mathematical equation and I take zero credit for having anything to do with it. I understand national pricing parody as a concept and have been involved in it, uh, multiple times. But I'm very fortunate that our global, my superior, but it's funny. We all wear a lot of hats, which is really fun. We all have our areas of responsibility, but we also have our areas of highest competency.
[00:41:14]
And so he's my boss, he's my co CEO, but he's also my employee on procurement. So literally he'll take that hat off and go, okay, boss, I'm your procurement manager. Now let's talk about logistics and supply chain. And I think it's awesome. It's just fun. I love that dynamic. That's awesome. But yeah, so, so he, he, along with Mark, they, you know, they basically, after we selected our vendors and our suppliers and our distribution, they went to work negotiating the contracts and negotiating what we needed.
[00:41:42]
And here's the reality. Every brand participates in that supply chain. And when, and since we are actually organizing, specking and ordering the products, we are the importer. There is some margin in that when we sell that to a distributor and the distributor sells that to our franchisee and we're able to use that to offset this investment and to, to make further investment.
[00:42:08]
And one of the things we can do with that is we can invest it into the supply chain so that our venn, our franchisee in Pinellas park, Florida, St. Pete, Tampa Bay, Florida, is going to pay the same price, every single ingredient, no matter where in the world it comes from, as we do in LA, which is where it lands, right?
[00:42:28]
All of the stuff from Asia lands in LA. When it lands in LA, it's one price, but getting it from LA to Tampa, Florida, or St. Pete, Florida, or to New York or to Miami or to Oklahoma. Boy, those are, those are really specific costs, like expensive costs. That's a real supply chain challenge. And when you can take, when we can take our investment and reinvest it into the supply chain, we are subsidizing those cost differences.
[00:42:55]
So if the product is 20 to 30 percent more to get it to Florida, if we can. Offset that in a subsidy and pay down that difference and take the savings in LA and the savings in San FranSysco and the savings on the West coast and apply that back into the supply chain so we can reduce the cost to our Florida franchisee.
[00:43:17]
That's what's considered national pricing parity. We're able to get national pricing. From our distributors on every single product to every city in America. That is a huge advantage because it's a major disadvantage as a franchisor trying to sell franchises to people who are like, Well, I'd love to open a New York, but it's 45 percent more on everything.
[00:43:36]
I, how am I supposed to make any money in this business? You know, I'm going to make 45 percent less than you're at the guy in LA. Come on. That doesn't, that's not going to jive, especially on a national brand or an international brand going national in North America. So we made that investment very early.
[00:43:50]
Um, and we're very, very proud of that. And it's, it's going to pay off massive dividends for our franchisees. And we're going to be able to be very. Very transparent about what our franchisees are able to accomplish in their stores from a margin standpoint and profitability standpoint. Uh, going forward because of that, that system being in place.
[00:44:08] Josh Sharkey:
That's awesome. I mean, does it come by air? Like, do they have a different like way to place the order in Florida than say in California? Nope. It's all national distribution.
[00:44:16] Troy Hooper:
So we have two national distribution channels. Uh, one's called Wismitech, which if you're not in the Asian business, you don't know what it is, but Wismitech's like the world.
[00:44:25]
It's the Sysco of Asia of the Asian, uh, uh, food products of the world. And so every sushi restaurant, every ramen restaurant, every. Korean barbecue restaurant in America probably buys from Wismitech. And then we use Sysco, uh, on a, on a number of products as our secondary channel distribution. There's, there's items that Wismitech as an Asian, um, distribution partner doesn't carry a lot of the regular daily commodities.
[00:44:48]
They don't carry, uh, like the vegetables and, and certain sauces and, uh, dry goods and things like that. Uh, so Sysco's our secondary distribution channel, uh, nationally for that as well.
[00:44:58] Josh Sharkey:
Gotcha. So, I mean, this is true for any company that you start to, to license as a franchise, you know, you have two customers, basically, you have the customer dining there and then you have the customer that's going to become a franchisee.
[00:45:11]
It's very clear for you that both are equally important, you know, that they both have to be really successful. So I'm curious how you think about sort of vetting these, these franchises. I know you talked a little about the commitment, like a five store commitment, and you could pay some, you know, at least 150K up front.
[00:45:26]
So that certainly means somebody needs to have that capital, but what is it? What's required in order to become a franchisee?
[00:45:33] Troy Hooper:
Yeah. Look, there, there's a game that's been played in our industry for a long time. And I'm just really happy to see, I had a call this morning with a group, a really impressive group that is a lot like my Kiwi group in what they do, basically an outsourced fractional.
[00:45:46]
Csuite to help franchise brands become franchisors and do it right. Look, the industry has a bad reputation in some circles. Uh, and I think over the last five or so years, it's gotten a lot better. I think there's a lot more people in this that are taking this more seriously and being very professional at it and having great success.
[00:46:02] Troy Hooper:
So that breeds other people to do it right. But look, we've got a, we've got a history in this. Industry of a lot of people, uh, cutting corners and, and, and sort of saying things, making claims that come back to bite them in the butt. So I've always been really sensitive to that. I don't like to be, I don't want to say, ah, we've sold 700 franchises in a hundred open, right?
[00:46:21]
You never opened the other 600. Uh, that's a game that I don't subscribe to and don't like. And, uh, I think that that's. Become more obvious to the market. And I think people are more savvy and doing more due diligence and taking a, these investments more seriously. Look, we're, we're, we've got a unique model, a little bit more unique.
[00:46:38]
It's, it's less and less unique today. Thankfully than it was five or eight years ago when we started doing it. We require a minimum of a five store commitment, all franchise fees upfront. So for us, that's a minimum of $150,000 check on day one. You know, the old school way was I'll sell you a $30,000 franchise, or even a $50,000 single unit, and then you just gimme a deposit, five, 5,000 and a thousand or nothing on the others, and there's no skin in the game.
[00:47:03]
There's no, no incentive for them to open those stores. Look, if you wrote me a $30,000 check times five times, 10 times 20. That's money. You're not really is excited to walk away from. Uh, obviously if we're doing our job and we're not the brand we said we were, and we're not doing the things we promised we were going to do, you should walk away and you should probably sue to get your money back, you know, that that's the way America works, but if we do our job, then we've earned that and we think that we're worth that investment upfront.
[00:47:30]
So we've set a bar of five units, 150,000 upfront day one. And we also. Took the development schedule to a more aggressive level because most brands will give you five years to do five stores or basically a store a year, no matter how many stores you buy. And so if you will buy 10 stores, it's 10 years till you open the last door.
[00:47:49]
For us, we know that this brand is simple to operate, easy to scale. You don't need skilled labor. You don't need a lot of labor total. You don't have to hire a lot of people. You know, most of our stores are 15 to 18 total employees on the payroll for part timers. And you don't need a GM for per stores.
[00:48:06]
You don't need high skill or high executive type level, and there's no cooking and there's a lot less equipment. So, so these are very simple to build quick, to open, easy to operate. And so in that vein, there's no reason that you need extra time, so to speak. Really, it's a real estate problem, uh, more than anything.
[00:48:21]
So if you can solve the real estate problem and your experience, because you have already operated or currently operate restaurants of one or more brand in your market, it's a win. Then you should have a knowledge base that, and an infrastructure and a resource base that allows you to do that. And so we make it five stores in three years or 10 stores in six, even our 20 unit franchisee told us he'd have them all open and under five.
[00:48:43]
And so we think that that breeds a more, um, serious franchise partner, somebody who's higher invested. Somebody who's probably more experienced, somebody who wants to get stores open quickly so they can start. Realize their ROI. And for us as a brand, it just takes a lot of the work off the top. We actually reinvest the work.
[00:49:02]
It would be to have a bunch of single unit franchisees. Into those large franchisees by providing them a lot of hands on resources, very, very professional hands on resources. And most of our system is mandated anyway. So we're helping project managing guide and shepherd that process along to be as quick and efficient and make sure the quality and standards are upheld across the board.
[00:49:23]
So, uh, we're really involved. And, uh, so we invest, we'd rather invest in the relationship. Uh, with high quality experience, sophisticated operators, and not be in the, you know, no offense, mom and pop, single store, first time restauranteur type environment. Uh, it's just a different business model we subscribe to.
[00:49:43] Josh Sharkey:
Sounds like it's working. So I, I want, I want to make sure we don't leave this episode, by the way, without you giving, um, a little advice to like the, the folks that are starting to scale their restaurants that are in the three to five location scaling up from there. But before we do. You launched a podcast recently.
[00:49:59]
I'm curious just because it's, you know, it's been a couple years of this one, you know, initial learnings. How's it been going? How has it impacted things? I'd love to just hear your thoughts. So many people are now are now doing it. I think it's such a great medium just to have conversations independent of everything else, by the way, just to block off time to chat with people, but how has that, how has it been going?
It's the pineapple perspective.
[00:50:20] Troy Hooper:
The Pineapple Perspective, yeah, with Troy Hooper. It's sponsored by Pepper Lunch, thankfully. Yeah, look, I wanted to do something like that for a long time. I want to share my experiences, share what I've learned. Also share my resources of my network and community and in sharing and, and helping also I learn, right?
[00:50:41]
I learned what people are doing, how they're doing it, where their mind comes from, how they came up with so many cool concepts, so many great innovations, so many interesting. Developments of how people are doing things in the industry when you play in that world. And so the podcast, like you said, is really just a place to have those conversations with people of all levels across the entire industry.
[00:51:02]
You know, the idea of the thesis is I believe every business should be in the hospitality business. And what does that mean? And what does that mean to a CEO of a tech company, right? What does that mean to a vendor supplier? What does it mean to uh, millwork or a sign maker, right? What does it mean to a restaurateur at different levels or an executive at different levels?
[00:51:19]
How does that come to life every day? Right? How do we bring that to life? And then I like to just talk about a couple of topics that are relevant that I think they have a perspective on. Look, just having those conversations. The purpose was to record what was already happening in private and, and share it with the world.
[00:51:35]
And hopefully people can learn something and learn about new people, learn about new companies, learn about new products. Um, that's always fun. And, and it's part of the end of the show. I make sure everybody gets their infomercial in and gets to promote themselves. At the end of the day, I'm building trust and authority and awareness of me and my brand and pepper lunch brand along the way.
[00:51:52]
And then, you know, ultimately be the show, not the commercial, right? You know, have interesting conversations. Where people discover you and your brand and learn about it and want to know more. And they'll reach out, like, it's not a hard sell. It's not a commercial. Uh, we actually don't even do commercials in the show, right?
[00:52:05]
Pepper lunch is just the sponsor of the badges there. We say it at the end, at the beginning and the end. And, uh, we leave it at that for people to, uh, to volunteer and, and, you know, ask for more information if that's what they're inclined to do. But yeah, I've wanted to have these conversations out loud for a long time.
[00:52:20]
And I'm a big subscriber to Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary Vee, most people know. And you know, that between that and Sean Walsh of kicking me in the ass for four years saying, get your show, get your show. You need a cell phone and or a zoom link and a conversation. You don't need to, you don't need a big, fancy production to have a podcast.
[00:52:35]
So. I think all the stars aligned to make it easy and available. And so I took advantage of it and it's going great. I think we're 30, 35 shows recorded. I think 25 or so published. We put one out every Thursday afternoon on all the channels and platforms. We do the video recording on and put that out on YouTube like you do.
[00:52:54]
And yeah, it's been really interesting. I'll say the biggest surprise with the podcast is people. I don't know, walking up to me at shows. And telling me that they've listened to every episode and I'm like, excuse me. Well, what? Cause I don't consume like that. I consume based on the person or the topic. So I follow probably six podcasts, but I've never listened to all of any of them.
[00:53:15]
Like I'm, I scroll through them and I'm looking for, Oh, I want to hear what that person has to say, or I'm really interested in that topic or the perspective of that person on that topic. That's how I consume. So I just assume that's how a lot of people consume, but some people just. Listen to every episode and you know, like, like you, you binge watch your show, Yellowstone or whatever on TV, on Netflix, they, they do that for podcasts.
[00:53:38] Troy Hooper:
So that was a surprise to me. I wasn't expecting that anybody would want to listen to me over and over again like that, but
[00:53:44] Josh Sharkey:
It's been fun. Great, man. Congrats. It's cool to see that happening in the industry reacting that way.
[00:53:50] Troy Hooper:
Yeah, it's, it's different. I mean, I don't, if that's what celebrities like, but You can't leave your house that I don't think I want that.
[00:53:58]
But within our industry, you know, if 200 people know who I am, Hey, that's cool.
[00:54:03] Josh Sharkey:
Well, you've consulted on a ton of brands and obviously now are running a really, a really large one and have done a lot of this along, uh, you know, along your career path. I'm thinking specifically of like the folks with like two to five plus locations are starting to scale, starting to see the problems with scale, so not like, you know, folks at scale, maybe before they get to that private equity, you know, venture backed state, any advice you could share that that you think would be helpful for them?
[00:54:30] Troy Hooper:
Yeah, this comes from experience. Get help. The answer is get help. Raise your hand. Admit that you don't know what you don't know and ask the people who do to help you, especially in the restaurant industry, hospitality, man, anybody who's been where you want to get before you. They are happy to share it.
[00:54:49]
There's just, there's just no secrets, right? It's a formula and just pick the formula that makes the most sense to you or reconfigure the formula so that it's your version of it. But there's a formula of success in this business and QSR versus fast, casual versus full service, casual versus fine. They all have their nuances, certainly, but fundamentals are fundamentals.
[00:55:09]
Businesses, business employees, and, and culture and leadership, it all applies equally across. And so I just tell people to get help. There's no reason to spin your wheels. To lose money and to lose precious time and lose momentum, especially in a moment, if you've got something that is popping off as a concept or an industry in the industry, or, you know, a genre or something, but if you think you've got something and you know it, because you've Got three, five, 10 stores open in different sub markets of a major market or whatever you've done, you've proven that you can do it now.
[00:55:44]
You just need help to understand how to do some of the concepts we talked about on the show here and, and, and all the other concepts, just get help. And I'm really happy that Kiwi, my firm has grown up to where we are in managing and building out this brand and things like that, but there are others like.
[00:56:01]
That out there. And there's, there's one man shops and there's groups and there's, there's firms and all, there's just a lot of help out there and it doesn't have to be super expensive, but it's not free. And by the way, on free, you just tell the world what you want to do. Just tell everybody what you're trying to do.
[00:56:17]
Hey, I've got five of these stores and so and so place, and this is what we do. And man, I'm, I'm just looking to, I'm just looking to figure out how to get it. From five to 50 or five to 15, like just set your sights reasonable and tell the world because like attracts, like, you know, be a magnet, right? Like attract people to you rather than try to sell people or buy your way in, into the solution.
[00:56:39]
There's just a lot of people out there that would love to be an advisor on an advisory board, a strategic advisor. Maybe a small investor, right? You find the right person that's in it for the right reason that believes in you, believes in your brand and wants to help you. Or if you know, you just keep asking and they introduce you to other people.
[00:56:55]
Eventually you get introduced to enough people. And the other part of that is in asking for help is you got to get out there. You got to go to a couple of conferences or summits or, you know, regional, local, or national events where the topics are of the things that you need to learn. Because if the topics resonate with you in areas you need to learn, then the speakers are people you want to speak to stick around at the end and introduce yourself to the speakers, ask them for their contacts, give your contact, say, Hey, can I get 15 or 20 minutes, you know, in a couple of weeks from now and pick your brain about just that one topic.
[00:57:28]
I'm trying to learn more about technology and restaurants trying to learn more about supply chain. I'm trying to learn more about marketing and restaurants, whatever that thing is that you feel. You need higher competency in ask for help and, and when necessary, uh, and it makes sense, maybe even pay for it.
[00:57:44]
But at the end of the day, you got to ask for help. It's the only way you're not going to do it on your own.
[00:57:49] Josh Sharkey:
I love it. All right. You heard him ask for help. We're going to put all your links and everything in the show notes and we'll, we'll post about it as well. So people don't have to remember it, but Troy, grateful for the time, man.
[00:58:01]
This was awesome. Awesome to talk to you. Thank you for having me on. Thanks for tuning into The meez Podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the song Art Mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist, fresh daily. For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/podcast. That's G E T M E E Z dot com forward slash podcast.
[00:58:21]
If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it if you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts. Keep innovating. Don't settle. Make today a little bit better than yesterday. And remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know. See you next time.
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