Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So check it out. This week I'm hosting two free webinars. January 24th January 25th, I'm going to teach you my five step framework for marketing your restaurant the right way. Yes, if there's a right way, that means there is a wrong way. Space is limited. We're capping each day at a hundred people. It's totally free, but go ahead and sign up now. The link is in the show notes. Pause the recording, go do that and then come back because I'm sitting down with Deuce Raymond. He is the managing partner of a little brand you might have heard of called Baby Ray's Bar Barbecue. He runs the restaurant and the catering division. Tons of insights on today's episode. Don't go anywhere.
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Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Quoz and this is Restaurant Strategy, a weekly podcast dedicated entirely to the hospitality industry. We cover marketing, operations, everything in between. Each week I leverage my 20 plus years in the industry to help you build a more profitable and sustainable business. I also work directly with operators all over the world through my group coaching programs to address and overcome the specific challenges we face in our industry. Curious to learn more? Set up a free 45 minute strategy session at restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule let me show you how simple it can be to run a profitable restaurant again. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule as always, you'll find that link in the show notes.
Now, we all know managing costs is one of the most important parts of running a profitable restaurant, especially now. But between fluctuating vendor prices, waste labor, and the never ending list of tasks that demand your attention on a daily basis, it can be challenging for even the most experienced of us to manage costs. Well, that's where Margin Edge comes in. Margin Edge is a complete restaurant management software that automatically uses data from your POS and invoices to show you your food and labor costs in real time. Don't wait until it's too late. Margin Edge gives you tools to make decisions in the moment, like a daily P and L price, alerts on key ingredients and real time plate costs, all without ever having to touch a spreadsheet. Take control of your costs, work more efficiently and be more profitable. Learn more and@marin edge.com chip as always that link is in the show notes.
So my guest on today's show is a gentleman named Deuce Raymond. He is managing partner of a little brand you might have heard of. It's called Sweet Baby Rays Restaurant and Catering. We're going to get into so much over the course of this next hour. Deuce, welcome to the show.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Awesome, Chip, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: My pleasure. We were introduced a couple of weeks back through a mutual friend of ours, a guy who's appeared on this podcast not once, but twice, Sean Walshef. So you're part of, like, the. The Barbecue brotherhood?
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Absolutely. It doesn't surprise me that Sean has been on the show twice. He. He's very much an inspiration to me. We. We met a few years back at the National Barbecue Convention in Texas and became quick friends. I mean, have. See a lot of the same direction of the business, and he keeps me going with my social media prowess, if you will. And he's very much an inspiration to what I'm doing right now. And I can't say enough. Enough nice words about Sean, you know, and as.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: As talented as he is, as smart as he is, he is just that nice. He has been. He's become a real friend and colleague over the last couple of years. We've only known each other, I guess, for like, two years now, and we've shared the stage a couple of times together at different conferences. We've. I've been on his podcast. He's been on this podcast, and he's just someone to. To your point, that I am continually learning from. And he has also challenged me, I'm sure, in the same sort of ways that he's challenged you with social media, because that's what he does. He travels around the world challenging people to turn on their phones.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: The answer is yes. Every time with him, the answer is yes.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Yeah, you can't say no to that guy. He's. You just don't say no.
But I'm really glad he connected the two of us, and when we got on the phone together, I don't think either of us really sort of knew where the conversation was going to go, which is often the best time, the best kind of conversations. And over the course of, I guess, 45 minutes or so, we were just. We had already mapped out sort of future conversations and we had gotten this interview on the books. So I'm so glad you made time. I appreciate it.
You are sort of the shepherd of a very, very famous brand.
Sweet Baby Rays. People listening to this show, if you don't know the. If you don't know the restaurant, if you don't know the catering business, which we're going to get to you for sure. Have seen this barbecue sauce in supermarkets all over the world. It's an iconic look. You can stop, pull over to the side of the road and Google you will recognize this label.
Talk to me about the brand, how it grew, where it's at now, when you intersected with it and sort of what you've been doing. Give us the, give the audience sort of context for what Sweet Baby Rays is.
[00:05:50] Speaker B: Sure. So Sweet Baby Rays was started in the early 80s by my dad and my uncle. My dad's the chef that actually created the recipe for Sweet Baby Rays. And then his brother Dave Raymond ran the business with a business partner, Mike o'. Brien. And they started by entering into a rib contest, believe it or not.
And at the time it was like the nation's largest rib contest. It was a Mike o' Brien hosted by the Chicago Tribune and sorry I said Michael Bryant. It was the Mike Reicho Rib Fest in the early 80s and Mike Reicho was a columnist in for the Chicago Tribune and they held this massive rib contest. And if you talk to some of the older barbecue guys in the scene, like Ray Lampy from Dr. Barbecue and Dave Anderson from Famous Dave's, those guys were all there and, and then a million other people. I mean it was just, it's crazy if you look up some of the footage on YouTube to see some of these old rigs and these guys were just having a blast. And I mean it's so 80s when you watch it. It's so funny.
But my dad was a chef by training. He.
And so they, they cooked ribs, they used their sauce and they ended up winning second place out of 700 contestants. And my uncle basically quit his job and started marketing, you know, selling the sauce. They came up with a plan, how they tell the story. It was $2,000, barely a high school education and a dream. And they took that and grew it to a 33 million dollar brand in 20 years. And then they sold to Ken's Foods.
When they sold, we retained the rights to use the name for restaurants. And that's what we're doing today. In the last 20 years, Ken's has taken that 33 million dollar brand and grown it to north of 800 million dollars.
They sell more barbecue sauce in the country than all the other sauces combined. It's really, they have a 50.1% of the market which is unheard of. That's more than Coke has in soda. That's more than Hellman has a mayonnaise. It's just. It's just an unbelievable story. It gets. Gives me tingles every time I tell the story. And. And my. My dad, bless his soul, passed away last year. And we just got all the old memorabilia out and saw all the old pictures and everything, and it's just. Yeah, it's just one of those. It's a. It's American dream story. I mean, it. It. They did that all pre Internet, of course. I mean, just knocking on doors and to get started and.
I mean, our fan.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it's.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: It's. Go ahead.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: No, it's.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: I mean, it's. It is like a totally different world. I mean, the way that food service and the way that CPG worked back then is different. And certainly people listening to this will recognize just how different and difficult it is.
And yet we've got things at our disposal to make it easier to get things in the hands of people all across the country. Yeah, it's just. It's different. I can imagine it back then.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Right. So I'm very blessed to be in the position I am. And I was always interested in food as a kid, and my dad was a chef. I, you know, grew up working in restaurants, dishwashing, busting tables, started cooking on the line. And. And then I kind of realized that maybe I don't want to do this because it's a lot of hard work and everything. So. Yeah, so I went to regular, like, community college for a year. That really wasn't for me. And so the nice that I. Then I continued to kind of find myself. I moved out to Utah for a year with some buddies and. And started working at a California cuisine kitchen out there. And it was during the 2002 Winter Olympics where I really realized my passion for food. I just loved the stuff we were doing out there and came back to Chicago, started going to Kendall College, and that's when I started living with my uncle Dave. He was retired from the sauce business, and I was going to culinary school and kind of twisting his arm, I said we should open a restaurant, knowing that when they had sold, they retained the rights to use the name for restaurants and catering.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: So.
So I finally twisted his arm hard enough, and we opened our first Sweet Bay raised restaurant in 2005 and kind of been slowly growing ever since.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: So that's interesting. So I was going to. So there's so many questions. First thing I want to say is what's really interesting and your story is you're not. Not unique in this respect, is that you grew up around food. You ran away from food really hard and sort of took the long way around to come all the way back to food. It's not dissimilar to Sean. Sean grew up in his grandfather's restaurant. The restaurant that he now owns was a very different kind of restaurant when he grew up. Sort of washing dishes and bussing tables there as a kid. And he tried to do just about anything.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: But.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: And that's not me saying it. That's. That's how he says it. And he sort of came back to it, you know, you know, kicking and screaming. They sort of dragged him back into it.
To know that about Sean is interesting to me, given how passionate and generous he is in the industry around that. It's not dissimilar to my impression just in these few conversations that I've had with you that, like, just how sort of warm and open and generous and passionate you are about it. So I find that really, really interesting. And I'm guessing that.
That there are a lot of people listening who sort of have. That.
Have that in common. And I'm endlessly fascinated in sort of the trajectory that people go through. You know how they always say, right, you can't connect the dots moving forward. It's only when you look back, you can see how everything got you to the place you were. You were at now or the place you were. Yeah, you were meant to be.
I want to go back. All of that's a long way of helping us go here.
So your dad was a chef by training, came up with this sauce, entered a rib contest, but didn't have a restaurant of his own. Didn't have a barbecue restaurant of his own at that time, no.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: So they were really not experiencing, like, authentic barbecue, like how. How we do things here today and how they do it down to Texas and things like that. But my dad was a chef. I mean, he was a hardcore chef, you know, kind of gruff, made servers cry if they messed up. Like, he was just kind of like a, you know, old school chef. And my uncle wanted to enter this rib contest because he was kind of, like, challenged by some guys. I kind of forget that part of the story, but he was, like, challenged to enter this rib contest. My uncle asked my dad to come up with a sauce for this contest, and they came up with this method of cooking ribs on a Weber grill. I made a video on it actually, actually on YouTube, where they have the briquettes on the Side and they cook the ribs standing up on rib racks and then they brush the sauce on at the end. And that's how I grew up eating ribs. And it really brings me back my childhood. Anytime we make the ribs like that, it's just such a unique flavor with the charcoal, you know, so they did
[00:13:03] Speaker A: this as a bat, as a, as a pissing contest, as a. Let's just, let's see if we can show the, show them up. But all that time. So then they grew this brand. Grew it grew it, grew it, sold it, and it becomes what it's going to be, you guys. So they had the presence of mind, though, and this is really interesting. They had the presence of mind to retain the name should they want to open a restaurant or do catering at some point. But that wasn't part of the business plan at the time, which I don't think I realized that when you and I first started talking.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: No, I mean, it really wasn't. My dad was kind of like a fine dining chef when he was in Wasa, Wisconsin, where I grew up. He ran the Wasa club, which was all the, you know, the wealthy people in the city we grew up in. And then he went on to own his own restaurant on a country club. Again, more of like a supper tub kind of, kind of like a higher end supper club feel to it. And that's where I got my, A lot of my experience and my training before I went to culinary school.
It was so interesting. Yes. So, and I, I mean, I'm not tooting my own horn, but I knew a lot more than the average kid when I went to culinary school. And that almost hurt me in a way, because the chefs wanted me to do it their way, not the way I learned already, which was cool. I mean, I will not give that experience up for anything. I learned so much at culinary school and built so many great relationships. I met my wife there that now we have three kids and everything like that. So it's. It was a awesome, awesome experience.
And I forgot where I was going with that story.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: But no, we're. This is my fault because I'm, I'm bouncing a little bit all over because already the stuff you said is so interesting. I told, I told you before we hit record, I said this ends up being sort of a meandering conversation more than anything else, even though it's an interview. And I've said this on, on this show before.
When I started this show, when I started this podcast almost four years ago, I swore that I wasn't Gonna do any interviews? Because I just thought, you know, the Internet doesn't need any more interviews. Well, and that I was wrong because I was meeting really interesting people. I knew a lot of interesting people. I was constantly being introduced to interesting people. And I thought those people, like you had value to provide the audience. And so I very much been proven wrong.
The audience does like these interviews. I think they get a lot out of the interviews. I'm constantly hearing from people, you know, thanking me for. For doing interviews and all of that, but I'm still not gonna do it any other way except the way I wanna do it. And I just think it ends up being a cool conversation. If I get really smart, interesting, passionate people on the show and we just sort of talk about what we're dealing with, what we're struggling with, what we've succeeded with, I think people are gonna get value out of that. So it's my fault. I've let it meander because you've said things that I just. I wanted to talk about all of the things all at once.
You opened a restaurant, so you came back and you said, hey, I'm gonna do this. We retain the rights.
Talk to me about that decision. You said, hey, it's about time we do this, or what went into that.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: So I was still in culinary school and living at my uncle's house, and I really wanted to do it like I was in school and I wanted to start the career.
And my uncle kind of realized, like, he was retired because of the money they got from the sauce business. But everybody else was still working. All his friends and, you know, associates were still working. So he wanted something to do too. So we went in into it as partners.
And, you know, I was still young. I knew stuff about food, but I didn't really know a lot about business. He knew about the sauce, retail business, but not about restaurants. We brought on an executive chef from a place I did at my internship at Heaven on 7 in Chicago. It's a well known Cajun brand.
Who the owner actually has a connection with our family too, is Jimmy Banos. And he went to culinary school with my dad. And that's where I did my internship.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Oh, too funny.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: So we brought executive chef from Heaven on Seven, Paul Papadopoulos. And then we just started. We started writing the menus. We found the location, and we picked the wrong location. We're still in the same wrong location, but. But it's, you know, there's a lot that went into it.
We had way too much stuff on the menu. When we opened, you could argue we still have too much stuff on the menu, but it's a lot less. Like, we had some Cajun items. A lot of. Of course, it was barbecue focused, but we had, you know, 14 different sandwiches when you only need three sandwiches at a barbecue restaurant. And, you know, so we learned so much. We lost so much money in the beginning, and we continue to learn and streamline and things like that. And, you know, one of the best learning experiences was the pandemic. I mean, it really was in a lot of different ways. It pushed me to get a better POS system.
Sean says I picked the wrong one because it's not toast. We went with Clover because they had a better deal at the time, and we got fully integrated with all of the third party Uber eats Grubhub DoorDash. But, you know, we use.
It's called. It's a checkmate. It's kind of like. You probably heard of Otter. Same thing.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Yeah. It's an aggregation software.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And we streamlined our menu. I mean, we had, you know, not just baby back ribs with St. Louis ribs and rib tips. So we got rid of the St. Louis ribs, which is a big deal for us, you know, because people come here for ribs. But most of the people 80% pick baby back ribs because Chicago is a baby back town. And it's, you know, it's.
It just has helped so much, streamlining the menu. I can't stress that enough to people. That is, if we opened up with pulled pork only, that's the only thing we. We had on our menu, we would be more successful today than if we had all the other stuff.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: I want to get. I want to get. I want to get into this, because. I totally agree. I was just working with a client earlier today, and we took their menu from about 18 items to. I think six is where we're at now. I said, I want you to cut so deep it hurts, and you have to make really hard choices. I do these thought experiments with my clients. I say, hey, listen, it costs us nothing to wander down this avenue, and if we find it's a dead end, all we got to do is turn back around and come back to the. The main road. Right. But it's a thought experiment. Let's wander down the road. You said a lot of really interesting things, and I don't want to let you off the hook, because I think there's a lot of learning here. It seems like you've learned a lot, and. And I think there's probably some wisdom we can Pass on to the, to the audience. So you said we opened up with the wrong menu way too much. And you opened up in the wrong location. You're still in the wrong location, but you're succeeding because you're here now, some almost 20 years later. So I want to understand what you mean by wrong menu, wrong location, and how you still are doing okay. And I want to also make sure that the people understand that we say Sweet Baby Ray's Restaurant and Catering. The catering is a significant portion of your annual revenue, which we talk about learnings during the pandemic, not that you learned it then. I think you had this already optimized by then. One of the things we learned during the pandemic is that if you made your money one way, you were pretty much sunk. Right?
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Meaning if you made your money when people came in 8 page you and left and the government shut us down, you couldn't make your money that way anymore. You were sort of screwed. And I think there's one of the things I was talking about on this podcast long before the pandemic was the importance of diversified revenue streams. Understanding that you've got, you've got in person dining, you've got takeout and delivery, you've got third person takeout and delivery, you've got private dining, you've got off site catering, you've got a cpg, you, you know, retail merchandise, you've got cooking classes and bake at home kits and all the different ways that you can make money. And you might have one that brings in a significant portion of your revenue. But there's an importance for doing all this. So I want to make sure we're eventually going to get to talking about your catering, how you discovered that, how you grew that, where it's at now.
But again, go back to the beginning. Wrong menu, wrong location.
Why do you say that?
[00:21:35] Speaker B: Well, I mean, we picked a restaurant that was close to my uncle's house and it was small enough. I mean, it was on Irving Park Road, which is a major thoroughfare, but it's just not in, you know, it's definitely not an A or probably not even a B location. There's not a lot, a lot of other. It's not next to a Starbucks or a Panera or McDonald's, put it that way. You know, there's just a lot, not a lot going on right there in Wooddale where we're at.
I mean, what we had is the name Sweet Baby Rays. And when we opened, we had a lot of traffic just from the Hubbub about a barber. And I'll tell you this, when we opened, barbecue was not a big deal outside of the south. And we were one of the first restaurants. I bet if you looked at like a graph of barbecue restaurants in Chicago and.
And it started when we opened in 2005. It's probably exponentially higher now. I mean, there's.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Yeah, barbecue got really cool. Barbecue got really cool really quick.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: And we were like, on.
On the early side of that, which. Which definitely helped us. And people came to us and we have these, like, quarter sheet pans as our trays like that you eat off of. And now if you go to half of the barbecue restaurants in Chicago, people are using. And then we, you know, I'm not going to take total credit for it, but we started that trend in a way, and a lot of people are using that now, but we were kind of on the early side of that. That helped us. Being. Still being in the wrong location. The name helped us. We had great food. That helped us. But it still, it was really tough for us to get Nighttime Business Lunch. We were good because of the industry that was around us and stuff like that. But yeah, it. It, you know, that's another reason why we had to focus on catering because we just weren't getting the revenue. And we would definitely, definitely needed to take a page out of your book about, like, kind of having your plan before you go forward, you know, that was not in the cards for us. We were like, we're gonna open Sweet Baby Rays, and it's gonna be awesome because we're Sweet Baby Rays. And that was.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: Yeah, it's gonna be awesome because the name's awesome. We were awesome. So talk to me about that. How long did it take you to. I mean, I talk a lot about profitability, and that's the whole thing. Right. We do everything to drive towards the bottom line. The bottom line doesn't make sense, and I don't care what. What else makes sense. So how long did it take you to be profitable?
[00:24:09] Speaker B: We opened in 2005, and the first year we were profitable was 2010.
And.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Yep. And it took a long time.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: That's a long five years.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: Now. Think about it, though. It's a little different for our. Our scenario because Dave was flush with cash because he sold the sauce business. So. So there we. We took more liberties and. And less precautions than most people would have because he had deep pockets, so to speak. But we're not in that case anymore. I mean, we're not taking any more money out of Dave and Kathy's pocket. It's the business is the business. And we're, we are where we are right now. Having said that. Okay, go ahead.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: Yeah, no, sorry to interrupt you. So, okay, so you're right, you can say, hey, we had, you know, we were flush with capital. We had somebody who was willing to keep putting in to keep it afloat because I assume because he believed in it and said, hey, we're getting closer, we're getting closer. Yeah. So say, okay, we're getting closer, we're getting closer. Was it a huge loss in the beginning? And you sort of kept cutting that loss year by year. And so you could see a trend or what it was kept him believing.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: I mean, there was always opportunities every year. I mean, and it's still that way to this day. There, you know, growth with the, the catering business kind of kept us going. So we opened in 2005, and there's a lot that happened in those first five years too. We opened in 2005. In 2007, they opened a larger restaurant that I wasn't really a part of, the Sweet Baby Raise in Elk Grove Village, which was a 236 seat restaurant.
And that was kind of, that was run as a separate business with my uncle and his business partner.
And then in 2008, well, no, in 2010 is when we bought True Cuisine and started building this whole catering kitchen right across from the Little Rest, the first restaurant in Wood Dale. So a lot of things were going on at the same time and the books weren't exactly clear. We had someone really strict on the books and I wasn't as, as involved on that side of it at that time. I was more like in the kitchen, head down, chopping onions and grilling ribs, you know, so, but, so, but there
[00:26:24] Speaker A: was a, there was a moment of like, hey, there's something here. We can do this. Obviously cared enough to double down for sure and open another location and then push the catering arm, you buy another catering company to sort of. Let's talk about that in a second. But. So there was like, there was belief in the, in the vision of that.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: There was total belief. And we had a lot of good people working for us. It was not just me and my uncle by any means. We had an executive chef, we had a director of operation, a director of sales. We, we were running the, you know, pushing this like a legit, you know, restaurant arm and catering arm, and we had salaries behind it. And that's a big reason we lost money too, is because we invested in people.
And, you know, it took us a long time and then there's still years after 2010. It's not like we were just making more money every year. There was years we still lost money after that until, you know, 2021, I think. I feel like now things are a little more stable and we're going to be steady and a very good profit margin going forward.
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So at what point in those, I assume in those early years did you stumble upon catering or did you know that that was going to be a significant revenue stream?
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it was the early years when people started reaching out and it was when we really found like the corporate catering sector where we were could cater for 500 people or a thousand people. And you know, there was really decent margins there. And now it's even, it's even better now because I've learned so much. We've learned so much and we have systems in place and we have a PNL structure where we cost out every single full service menu where we know going into it if we're going to be profitable on that particular event or not. And yep, it's, it's really easy to make decisions when it's black and white. You know, if, if we're not going to make money on it, it doesn't make sense to do it. You know, let's repeat that.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: Black and white. It's right or wrong. It's over budget, budget or under budget, it's. It's profitable or it's not profitable. I, I can't overstate that. I'm so glad you said that. It becomes really easy to make your decision when you're really clear. Yeah, yeah, please.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: One thing that, That I feel like restaurants get in trouble with and there's. I'm sure you've heard of it, Fuda and Foodworks.
They're. It's a pretty much a group that wants you to vend at a certain building down in cities, they have it. Have you heard of that before? Futa?
[00:30:21] Speaker A: No. Okay. No, go ahead.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: So it's a company that got started where this guy saw that there was an issue with all these people leaving the office buildings to go get food, and it was taking too much time. And the. The people that owned the business wanted the people to stay, and a lot of times the people wanted to stay, but there was no place to eat. So basically what happens is Futa kind of contracts other restaurants to come set up a station in the lobby where they vend food, sell food. And then, you know, it's just like, almost. Almost like having a mini food truck. You go downtown, you set up your station, and they know about how many people are going to be there, but that's about it. So we got sucked into that whole situation. And by the time you figure in waste and travel time and employees and the food cost and everything else, there was no way we were making money. And that they.
They said, well, you should think about it as a marketing expense. And I said, no, we're losing money like crazy. And we were doing. We, you know, we were. I mean, at one point we were bringing in over $300,000 a year from this, but we were still losing money from it.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: You know, so it's like things like that we've learned so much about and that I just don't do it. If it doesn't make us money to the bottom line, I don't do it anymore. And it. A lot of times it's hard to say no. We have a minimum to go down to the city for catering, so over $600.
Well, they're nice people. And it's a $400 order. I'm sorry, we just can't do it for less than $600. You know, we don't make money. We have to pay for the truck, we have to pay for the employee, we have to pay for the food. And by the time it comes back, it just doesn't make sense, you know,
[00:32:10] Speaker A: and so obviously you were unprofitable for a little. I mean, you're speaking from experience. What you're saying is not like, this is what I believe. This is. This is what I have learned.
Talk to me about how else you learned that because you did the FUTA and you threw yourself into it. If you're generating that kind of revenue and you obviously learn the hard way. So now you've got a barometer that you, that you use to decide whether yes, we're going to do this or no we're not going to do this. Talk to me about, about that because I love this that you're, that you're laser focused on the bottom line. Talk to me about how else that came to be and how else that sort of manifests itself in other parts of the business.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: I mean basically. So once in 2007, there's a whole nother side of the, like the story that I tell you about it. In 2016 we purchased a full event planning company called Meeting House. And that was the biggest debacle of them all. Where we lost money, we got sued by the original owners. It was bad, bad, bad. It took my focus away from the catering business because I'm trying to figure out how to do lighting and floral and all this stuff that the Meeting House did and run a ca. We were going to be a one stop shop for all big events, you know, and, and that just did not go good for many reasons, but it took my focus away.
After that.
I had no choice. It was like we have to be profitable or we're out of business, you know, and, and I think to me that's almost. It was a curse, but it was a blessing in a way because you don't really learn a lot until your back is against the wall. At least that's the way for me is. And so, so now we're to the point we were, you know, really heavily focused on the bottom line in 17, 18 and, and then 19 came and we had an awesome year. Our best year ever in, in catering sales.
We still didn't make any like, didn't make that much money, but we were there. I could feel it. And 2020 came. We had so much booked. We were like ready to rock and roll. Like, like I was so stoked about what was going to happen in 2020. We had more weddings on the books than we ever had we had. We were just on a roll. And then I knew March 28th, I was at a wedding. 250 people.
The down in the city. The place was rocking and all this was gonna crumble around us. And it was like so eerie leaving that wedding knowing that it's, it's not gonna be the same anymore. And you know, fortunately we got to keep our restaurant Open because, you know, you talked about having other revenue streams. And my big revenue stream was completely closed because there was no catering at all. And.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: But we got to keep the restaurant open. And I put my head down and I made it lean. And it was basically me and three other guys at that restaurant. I was washing dishes, cooking, doing whatever, putting a stock away. I was so grateful to have a job.
But, you know, a little PPP money, a little ERC money, and, you know, we're off to the races. And you know, unfortunately, some places went out of business.
The Elk Grove Restaurant, the Sweet Baby Race Restaurant, and Elk Grove went out of business. That, you know, affects us positively because some of that customer base is coming to us. Some of that catering business is coming to us. And, you know, we've just been. We've been on a roll since we started opening UP catering in 21, probably, you know, in May or.
Yeah, May. It really started in 2021 and. And we're not looking back. I'm going full steam ahead.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: Yeah. So. So catering, I think, represents such a huge opportunity for so many brands out there.
Talk to me about how you grew, because you grew it in a really interesting way.
You also bought this other company, which is a totally different brand. You just happen to run that as well. Talk to me about how they work, how I assume they sort of run parallel to each other. Talk to me about what that company is and talk to me about the relationship between the two companies and how it all. How it all fits in and makes sense.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: Well, we're lucky to have a great team, of course, and we have a sales team that they know there's two brands. They can sell both brands.
What's really cool about Tru Cuisine. So true. I don't even think I told that whole story. So we bought Tru Cuisine. There were a boutique caterer in Wheaton, Illinois, and more on the upscale side, Sweet Baby raises, obviously, down home barbecue. And we bought True Cuisine to kind of speed up our learning curve in catering as we saw there was an opportunity there.
And now as I look back, I see it as a good decision. When it was kind of all coming about, I wasn't sure what to think about having two separate brands for the business.
But now I think it's a positive. I know it's a positive. I think, you know, a True Cuisine client is not the same as a Sweet Baby raised client and vice versa. And we know there's a bride that wants a True Cuisine wedding, which is kind of higher end, more fancy elephant Elegated, I can't talk elevated or elegant. And then there's somebody that wants barbecue.
Now having said that, there's some fancy brides that want barbecue because it's on trend, you know, so there is a little bit of crossover there, but anyways.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: But for the most part, yeah. Somebody who comes to one is looking for one sort of. It's one kind of customer is looking for one sort of experience and the other kind of customer is looking for another kind of experience. Experience. This is how we position a brand in the marketplace. I talk a lot about this on the show. Right. They're not all your, they're not all your customers. They could be to your point. They could want something because it's trendy on all of that. But for the most part, if this bride wants this kind of wedding, they're gonna go get that kind of wedding.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: And Right.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Alternately on. On the, on the flip side, that's also true. Talk to me about. You said we bought this kind of company.
You've said it now a couple of times. Because we wanted to speed up our learning curve. Talk to me about that. What, what did you learn? Well, so faster than you would have learned otherwise.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: Catering is such a.
Is full service catering is a whole different ball of wax than restaurants or just dropping off aluminum pans to somebody's house. Full service catering, talking about bars with bartenders.
We call them event directors, which is kind of the leader of the whole event. You have servers, server captains, porters, renting flatware, renting linens for the tables. Sometimes renting the tables and the chairs themselves. Knowing what venues to cater at. It's a whole different ball of wax. And we learned so much from the people that started True Cuisine and, and the people that work there. And now they, A lot of them still work for me today. But I mean if you're a catering salesperson, you know exactly what size linens goes on a six foot table. It's you know, 192 by. The girls in the office would laugh at me because I don't even know exactly. But, but it's like they know, you know, and if you have a party for.
[00:39:42] Speaker A: They know the business.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: Yeah. If you have a hot. If you have a party for a hundred, you know, you need 110 forks because, you know, so many fall on the floor and blah blah, blah. It's like there's, you know, there's so much stuff. Stuff that you just need to learn. And then we've learned, we learned some from, you know, that process with True cuisine. And then we've learned just a ton by being in the business for this many years. And that's some of the stuff Uncle Dave talks to me about, is like, you know, the longer we stay in business, the better opportunity we're going to have to be successful because we're going to know more and learn and continue to learn. And we're going to have better relationships with their venues, better relationship relationships with their vendors, better relationships with their clients. And it's so true. I mean, I see it every day. Is. Is. It doesn't get easier, but it gets maybe less painful is the right term. You know, just because you've been doing it, you see it. And I can't. Can't remember who says it, but it's like you start seeing, you know, cycles. You've seen this before, you know, Tony Robbins, what does he say? It's like you start seeing the same thing over and over again. It starts becoming easier, you know, if
[00:40:50] Speaker A: you do what you've always done, you get what you've always gotten. And so that's what he always says. So, yeah, I love this. I want to go back again to that difficult time of 05 to 2010. And you have to keep going. You keep dipping into the well because it's losing money, and you keep dipping into the well to keep it afloat. Was there a point, I don't know if you could think back there. Was there a point when you were like, maybe this isn't going to work work. Maybe I'll just throw in the towel. Maybe I'll go do something else.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: So you have to think I was. I was still, you know, in culinary. I graduated culinary school in 2005, so I was fresh out of school. And there was. There was other partners, There was executive chef. There was, you know, many notches above me at that point. So I wasn't like, on the P. Ls and on the financial side of things. So I personally had that feeling. I knew we weren't making money, you know, and I knew things were. Were tough. I personally had that feeling of maybe this isn't for me, maybe this is. Is too hard or we're not going about it the right way.
But, you know, I always came back to there's such an opportunity with the name Sweet Baby Rays. I'm super passionate about barbecue and food. And there was kind of, like I said, there was always opportunity. There was always something new going on. And that kind of, like, is good for me because I need to keep on moving and Doing the same thing. That's why catering works for me, because I, I wouldn't be good at the same restaurant, doing the same menu, doing the same thing every day. Catering is great because there's always new challenges. You're talking to different people, you're at different venues, different menus. You know, everything's kind of moving a lot. Yeah, that's really good for me and my personality. But for the business wasn't, it wasn't like, you know, if, if we lose another hundred thousand, we're going to close the business. That never really was the story, you know, but because we always felt there was an opportunity. There's such a huge opportunity gap. And we had so many, even though we weren't making a ton of money, there were so many successes along the way too with, you know, doing this event in the city called, it's the Chase Corporate challenge. And from 2007 to2014, we did this Chase Corporate Challenge, which was a huge run down in the city. It was a, you know, a 5K and all the major corporations were down there. And at the one of the last years, we did it. We catered for over 55 different organizations at the same time. We had 125 employees down there. It was over $250,000 in revenue. We had gators, we had guys with headsets, we had the whole nine yards. I mean, it's just running a whole orchestra of things going on at the same time. Yeah, and, and that's like catering at the highest level, you know, when you're, when you're trying to manage all that stuff at the same time. And that was so interesting to me. And guess what? We didn't make that much money at that thing either. Yeah, because it's just so. There was so much cost sunk into it. You know, we had to rent refrigerated trucks, we had to rent the gators, we had to rent the headsets. We had to. I mean it was, at the end of the day that was, I mean, we did make money, but it wasn't for the amount of effort. It was.
I'm not doing that again either.
[00:44:10] Speaker A: So talk to me about how, how you think about profit because you and I have, I think, are aligned in this. I'm very vocal of saying what we do is way too hard to not, to not make money doing it. And, and I think it's really scary, all the statistics you hear, not the failure rate of restaurants, because that's going to be what it's going to be, but just the Profit margin numbers, you hear.
[00:44:34] Speaker B: I couldn't agree with you more.
[00:44:35] Speaker A: Toast puts out this and says the average restaurant won't make more than 5% profit margin, which is scary thinking. You get a really bad weekend one month, you go from the black to the red.
So talk to me about how you personally think.
You're obviously nodding your head. People can't see that. But you're saying you agree with me. Talk to me about how you think about profit because you're obviously as laser focused on the bottom line as I am.
[00:45:01] Speaker B: Well, you know, and my position has changed basically this year where, when we realized months, you know, not as, not for the entire year, but months where we were 211 1/2% profitable. And you know, the problem with catering is it's notoriously slow in the first quarter. And I'm working on kind of figuring out that gap and I think I will be able to get some headway this year. I'm.
That's what I'm focusing on for, to really kind of close that gap. But, but from May to December, we're looking at from 18 to a 20% profit margin, which is outstanding for the amount of volume we do. And, but our restaurant is the same. It's about that 5%, you know, and it's, it's really tough to make money at 5%.
I don't care what you're doing. It's.5% is hard to make money.
[00:45:59] Speaker A: I hear you.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: So, so, but it gives me hope where we know if we can generate the right.
It can't be just sales. It has to be the right sales because we're looking at P Ls on every single event to, to get to that 20%. I mean, that's my target, you know, and, and that, that lets me pay my employees fair, fairly, that lets me feel good about what I'm doing and that helps me pay back Uncle Dave for everything he's put into the business now.
And yeah, for sure. It's really.
I could see where there is a path to that 20%. And it comes down to knowing what you're selling and making sure it makes sense for your business model. Because you can't do it just selling everything and you can't give your stuff away.
All sales aren't good sales.
[00:46:57] Speaker A: So there are these famous case studies you read about and hear about. The New York Times did one a couple years ago for one of the biggest restaurants in New York City. One of the, you know, three Michelin stars that basically says this restaurant has lost money for 17 straight years or something like that. But it ends up being sort of the centerpiece of a larger portfolio of restaurants. The idea being, hey, this, the flagship can lose money because no spared expense. We're gonna get all the best stuff, we're gonna have all the best staff, we're gonna overpay to get all really great everything but that. Being able to have that feather in our cap of saying, hey, we're in one of the greatest markets in the world and we're three Michelin stars, that allows us to sort of make money on the portfolio beyond.
So you talked about how the catering arm now is very, very profitable and you sort of have that all figured out, but that the restaurant is still just sort of making this modest, this profit margin.
How do you apply the same learnings from catering to the restaurant? Or do you just think about it in the terms, in the same terms as like this fancy Michelin star restaurant and say, well, the restaurant can be sort of operated, break even because that's our calling card to get the big catering business. Tell me what you think about that.
[00:48:20] Speaker B: So I, I really think that's a great point. And I kind of am in the middle on it. Yes, we need, we don't need, but it really makes a lot of sense to have a sweet baby race storefront when, when you're talking about the, the catering business and, and things like that.
But basically I need to do better and branding myself on social media to get more business people in the door. You know, it's, it's a small restaurant, it's 36 seats. And we just have to do a better job getting more people in there, getting more revenue in the restaurant to get more profitable because everything's dialed in there and the, the same employees that have been there. I can't make it any leaner. You know, leaned out the menu. We got the right pos.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: So it's about growing just straight revenue, just getting more covers in or increasing the spend, the guest spend, or how. Because it's small. I didn't realize it's that small. Yeah, yeah. So how are you going about that? Do you set goals? Do you work with your managers on that? How are you, how are you actively pursuing that?
[00:49:26] Speaker B: Right now? I'm trying to do some. We talked about this on the phone. We're doing some work with America's best restaurant. We're doing some more Facebook offers and paid ads and trying to get more awareness out there. It sounds ridiculous, but everybody knows the sauce. But not that many people know about the restaurant in the Chicagoland area. So that's our big focus on social media, is getting the word out there. You know, we don't actually promote the restaurant or promote the catering. We just do barbecue education just to get the name in front of people, you know, so Sweet Baby Race Catering. And I mean, if you see my. Our Tick Tock page, Sweet Baby Raised Catering, we have over 318,000 followers. And I mean, we get tons of impressions, you know, every week. It's like millions of views on our stuff, and we do more barbecue education than anything. But, you know, now we're trying to how can we convert those views into some real dollars? And that's kind of the process of trying to work with abr. And someone that knows more is a specialist on that side of paid promotions through social, because that's not my area of expertise. But so, I mean, to answer your question is I don't know exactly how. If I did, we wouldn't be talking to you. But we have to get more great people in those doors.
[00:50:47] Speaker A: And I have to tell you how refreshing it is that you said, I don't know. I think that it's something that I learned from one of my mentors a long time ago how attractive that is in a leader to say, I don't know. Because if you're willing to say, I don't know, then you're willing to say, okay, great, so then where. Who has the answer? Where am I going to find the answer? You're talking about working with abr. America's best restaurants run by a guy named Matt Plapp, who has been also a guest on this show, is a very, very smart guy who wrote a really great book that we talked about when he was on here. So you're. I appreciate that you say, I don't know. I'm not. You know, there's things that I think you can help the audience with because it's sort of the wisdom of experience.
And I think there's also something, again, really, really helpful about you saying, I don't know. So it's funny, you talk about social media, and I always like to think of social media in two pieces because there are two pieces to social media. There's organic and then there's paid social media. And I think for a long, long time, we used them in the wrong ways.
[00:51:54] Speaker B: Right?
[00:51:55] Speaker A: That organic was about raising awareness and all that.
[00:51:57] Speaker B: That.
[00:51:57] Speaker A: And it's not. It's not meant for that. It's not what it does. Well, famously, the reach is notoriously limited, and they do that on Purpose to get brands to spend money on the platform. What it does well is it, it's good at keeping you top of mind with people who are interested in that.
And it's good at engagement, right? Staying, you know, in, you know, within a circle, staying in contact with your people. So, so that sort of thing is what organic social media does. Well, meaning I open up the app, I post a photo or I open up the app, I take a video, I post that to my feed, it's an organic post. The opposite of that or the other side of social media is paid social media. And paid social media is where you do thing like things like drive away awareness or drive conversions, first time visits through offers, through retargeting through all of these other tools, right?
And too often, probably because, you know, all these brands got on social media in 2007, 8, 9, and that the name of the game back then is very different than the name of the game now that they do, they do different things. And I think we have to get really clear on what the goal is, right? What are we trying to accomplish? And say, you know, and I coach a lot of my clients on this now, where I say, what are you trying to accomplish? Start with that. I'm trying to raise awareness for my brand.
Then is this specific action helping me accomplish that goal?
Well, if I post to my feed, my Instagram feed of 20,000 followers and it shows my post to roughly 900 people or 1100 people, which is about what you'll get, well then is that really helping me raise awareness? No. Everybody who follows me is already aware of my brand. So if I want you, and it's not even really good at like reaching every one of my followers, you know, it's just a fraction of it. So if I want to raise awareness, then the answer to that is no, this is not a tool that can help me accomplish this stated goal of raising awareness.
So we stop, we take a step back and we say, okay, but what can do that? What tools are available to me to help me raise awareness for my brand? And when you start doing that, it changes the whole game. Is this accomplishing the goal I set out to accomplish? And it lets you be. It's that black and white. It's like you said, it helps you see things really clearly if you just, if you get really good at asking the right questions. Something I learned from business school, one of my favorite professors when I was, when I was at St. Joe's said, hey, you know how you get better answers? You start by asking better Questions and you don't have to have all the answers. I guess this is where I'm coming all the way around to you is that, I don't know is a really powerful place to begin from because then it allows you to say, well, great, let me. Let me figure out the answer. So what's the question? Question? What's the right question I should be asking, which I hope everybody at home sort of takes that if there's nothing else you take from this, it's. It's just how the whole hour worthwhile
[00:55:07] Speaker B: now I can ask the right questions.
[00:55:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Listen, you get better answers by asking better questions. And so you can't ask good questions if you think you know it all.
Anyone who's gotten to where they are.
[00:55:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:55:21] Speaker A: I feel this way. I'm sure you feel this way. A lot of the people I talk to got where they are because I think we're curious.
We've become really good and experienced and knowledgeable about what we are. Right. We're passionate and driven and skilled. Right. Like we've got wisdom in our area and it's okay to say, but I don't have wisdom in these other areas, or my wisdom has come to a dead end. Everything I know about this subject, I've exhausted. I don't know what else to.
[00:55:50] Speaker B: To do.
[00:55:51] Speaker A: And we're living at a time when we can just give so much free information, so much resources. You can get access even if you have to pay for that access. It's never been easier to get access to people who do have other answers. I'm constantly learning, reading, listening to podcasts, seeking out coaches on my own, things like that, because it just helps me be better. My coach changed my life life two years ago. The woman that I work with, now that I partner with, who handles all my marketing, has helped me grow my. Me, my personal business in unimaginable ways, has changed my life in such a profound way, which is sort of like a whole different podcast I should start.
And I think it begins by saying, I don't know. Somebody else knows more than I do.
[00:56:35] Speaker B: That's awesome. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And that's one thing that I'm always working on too. I mean, same thing as you. I'm always listening to a podcast. I'm trying to start reading more, which I always said I wasn't a reader. And this year I've already read three books, and that's a big deal for me, you know, so I'm. I'm excited to keep going down that path. I mean, it's.
Business is exciting, you know, and I'm never, I haven't been more excited than I am right now to be in business and, and I want to keep getting better and keep learning from guys like you. I was going to say something when we started the podcast, like I never want to be the smartest guy in the room and I know I'm not today or something like that because, because listen, listening to you, listening to your message online is just you, you have so much knowledge and you just presented in such insightful way. So I want to say thank you for that.
[00:57:28] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. Listen, thank you. I appreciate that. There's stuff that I learned the hard way. There's stuff that I figured out that I've distilled down and I found an easy way to think, think about it. And if things are too complicated, we just won't do them. That's why nobody does math or science or medicine, because it's hard.
But when we're talking about business, there's just a threshold we have to get over to be able to be successful at what we care very deeply about.
And I know people listening to this will understand that I'm really deeply passionate about cooking about this kind of cuisine, about, about opening a restaurant in my, in my neighborhood, in my town, in my market. There's people feel that. And so let's just give people the frameworks, the structures, the basic systems to be able to not only survive but thrive in whatever it is they want to do. I hate math. I'm notoriously terrible at math. When I went back to school and you know, back to business school, my first class back was a statistics class. I was so, so scared and I decided to do it in a seminar format which was basically three days thrown at me, like three nine hour days. And I, and I'm not good at math. And that is like math math, that's real math. That's not recipe costing, measuring out grams and figuring out yields, but statistics is like, like P values and stuff. I still wake up shaking when I think about it. But I needed that to be, be able to do projections and to understand how we build a regression and how we figure out what we're going to do in revenue next month, right? We can make that as complicated or as simple as we want, but coming up with a projection allows us to build a budget so that we can make our money. That's how we make a set profit every single month. We say, well, if I'm going to make this Much money.
And I want my labor to be at 30%. Then I already know before I start the month where I need to hit my revenue and where I need to, you know, where my weekly schedule needs to be at, what my payroll burden has to be at. That's how we make money. Same thing with cogs, right? If I'm going to make $100,000 in revenue next month, I know I can't spend more than $30,000 on my food and beverage. Everything I'm bringing in to turn around and sell.
It's.
And I take great pride in being able to just simplify what people pretend is really complicated. And it's not, it's not that complicated. There's a pie. We cut that into 100 pieces. If you want some leftover, let's say 20 pieces at the end, right? 20 points, 20% profit margin. Well, then we got to keep all of our expenses to 80% of revenue. It's just so easy. Which you figured out on the catering side and now we're working to figure it out on the restaurant side.
[01:00:11] Speaker B: Can I, can I ask you run something by, what do you think about, about this? So one of the books I read this year was Rich Dad, Poor dad. And he talked, he talks highly about owning a business.
And that business, you don't create yourself a job in that business. The business is to run and to make money for you to do other investments or to do what you want into. How do you talk to people? Because I'm sure 90% of you, the people you talk to are in the business, working in the business and running the business. How. That's right. I'm starting to work my way out of that day to day business and I'm kind of like 50% there, maybe even a little better than that. But, but I don't think, and I think as the business is bigger, it's even more important that you don't have a day to day job in that so you can oversee and manage, you know, larger issues as they come up. What do you, how do you feel about that?
[01:01:12] Speaker A: So in our industry, we've got a word for that, right? You're an owner, operator, which means you own it and operate it. I always love when people tell me, I said, hey, you know, one of the first questions I always ask when I, when I'm talking to a prospective new client, I said, last year, what did you. Top line and then what did you. Bottom line meaning what with net sales, you know, gross sales, but net of sales tax, right? What's your top line revenue. And then after all your expenses, what came out of the bottom? What did you take home? They say, well, it wasn't very much, but you know, but I get a salary and my, and my partner gets a salary and all this. And I said, do you work at the restaurant?
And they say yeah. And I said, well then you're a manager, you should be paid. You're working at the place and if we take you out of the business, you're going to need to hire someone to replace you. So you're going to have to pay them what you're paying yourself.
[01:02:02] Speaker B: Currently.
[01:02:03] Speaker A: It's an, it's an owner, it's an owner operator. I think it's the most dangerous thing out there.
Because if you get hit by a bus, right, if the success of your business, let's say, is determined on your ability to show up, if you get hit by a bus, your business is done. The guests who count on you to create food, to make food for them, the staff who rely on those jobs, your family who relies on you to provide for them, right? If you can't go in and the restaurant can't open, there are a whole bunch of stakeholders that, that lose really big if you don't show up. So I always say I think it's irresponsible and dangerous to do that. Now we do that in the beginning. We can do that for a while because that's what's required, right? We do what we have to do to get it up and running, but that's not a long term plan. And so I think you do have to build a business that can run itself that shakes a little bit of profit that pays you or use. You use that to invest in the next location or the next venture or whatever. That's that rich dad, poor dad mentality. And I was raised with the poor dad mentality, right? You work hard, you get a good job, you work at that job, you, you know, good, honest work work.
[01:03:19] Speaker B: It's just, it's just nothing like I thought it was, was supposed to be. I thought the harder I worked the better. And then that, that, that time I talk about where I kind of figured like this might not be for me because it's. The harder I'm working, it's like I'm not even getting any further along.
And I just can't tell you how, how good it makes me hear you feel the same way about that because I, it's clear to me now that that is the right way.
[01:03:45] Speaker A: I always say this, right? I Always say, restaurant owners deserve a restaurant that works as hard as they do. And in order to do that, we just have to work smarter. Right. That, to work as hard as we do for 3% profit margins.
Right. It's just, it's, that's, that would defeat me every single day. And I think it does. I got to believe that that resonates with a lot of people listening. There is a, a different way. It's about building a path to profitability.
You look on paper and say, hey, I got a million dollar restaurant, $1.2 million, right? The average restaurant in America is something like one, you know, million to a million and a half. So let's say $1.2 million. That's $100,000 a month in revenue. You deserve 20% profit margin. You, whoever's listening to this, you deserve 20% profit margin, which means you deserve to make $20,000 in profit every single month. You do the hard work. You created something that people want, that people love. You're creating jobs, which is allowing people to support their families and all of that. And hopefully you're teaching them how to go create a business and they will outgrow you and go create their own businesses and all of that. But if you've got a business that generates $100,000 in revenue, you deserve $20,000 a month. And I always get people going like, oh, I'd be okay with seven, of course, but you deserve 20. So figure out what are the things, what are the high value things that only you can do and delegate everything else, offload everything else that doesn't have to happen overnight. You can slowly offload that, right? Who's going to do the schedules, who does the ordering, who does inventory, who trains who? All the things that you need to offload so that you can focus on growing your catering business, you can focus on new revenue streams, you can focus on, you fill in the blank, whatever else only you can think about, only only you're going to be able to wrap your mind around. I just, I wish it's the again, we got to work smarter, not harder. We got to be able to work on our business, not just in our business. Because everybody I know, and I did it for a long time, I spent a big chunk of my career working 60, 70, 80 plus hour work weeks. I opened eight restaurants in nine years.
I know all about hard work. And when you're working that much, you're too tired to do anything. You're certainly too tired to be creative or think outside the box. And I just Want people to create space to think for that, to think outside the box, to go, well, what if. Right. I always talk about that thought experiment. Let's wander down this avenue and see if there's something worth exploring down here. And you need the time and the space to be able to do that.
[01:06:28] Speaker B: Absolutely, Absolutely. I'm pretty. I'm good in the restaurant where I'm not there. I don't do anything day to day in the restaurant, but I do some in the catering. I mean, it could probably go without me, but I make a lot of decisions on the, on the higher end, the, the HR type decisions. And, you know, the salespeople come to me all the time with different questions, can I sell this? Can I do that? And basically the, the answer is, are we profitable doing it that way? You know, and, but I, I mean, I'm here every day from, from 8 to 5, pretty much. And I, but I enjoy it too. And, and we're not quite.
[01:07:10] Speaker A: That's the key.
I want you to be right. And so this is. I say this to all my clients. I want you to be where you want to be. I don't want you to have to be on the line. Right. The restaurant can't survive without you being on the line. And there are a lot of restaurants out there. I think that's what's dangerous and irresponsible. I want you to be able to take yourself out of the operation. I say you, not just you, but everybody listening, take yourself out of the operation to the point where you don't have to be there.
And then you put yourself back in wherever you want to be.
[01:07:42] Speaker B: That makes sense.
[01:07:43] Speaker A: And that's the big difference.
That's the big difference. So talk to me because we got a few more minutes left and. And I know you gotta go. I've just. I love this conversation.
What's the hardest lesson you've learned since the pandemic? And, yeah, listen, I know we've all been through hell and back over the last three years, but what's something as much as you learned in your formal education and your sort of experiential education, what's still something that you were like? Man, I learned that lesson the hard way. What's something that really came out of the pandemic?
[01:08:12] Speaker B: I mean, I think it comes back to, you know, building the menu the right way. It really blows my mind when I look back and think about all the stuff we had on the menu and was it all great? Yeah, it was the best New Orleans style barbecue shrimp you could Have.
But nobody bought it. So we were throwing shrimp away. You know, I mean, that's kind of. That's make dumbing it down. But.
And I seriously meant what I said. Our restaurant would be more successful if we just opened with pulled pork and we didn't have anything else on the menu. And I believe that to my.
[01:08:47] Speaker A: So is that if you were to open this restaurant. If you were to open this restaurant today, the restaurant didn't exist.
[01:08:53] Speaker B: Three items.
[01:08:54] Speaker A: That's what it would.
[01:08:55] Speaker B: It would have three items and two sides. Three. Three meats and two sides. And that's it. 100%. And I think we would be way more successful because the meat would be fresher, the sides would be perfect every time. We wouldn't have to worry about juggling everything else. And the people, you know what, they. Guess what, People come to Sweet Baby Rays and order.
What do you think? They barbecue. They don't order. They don't order crab cakes and they don't order a Cubano sandwich and they don't order Greek style green beans. They order barbecue because that's why they're going to Sweet Baby Rays. And we had all this stuff on the menu. And, and it's hard. Like you've talked to a thousand clients when you tell them to trim down the menu. We could never take the jerk chicken off. Johnny comes every Tuesday.
How are we going to take the jerk chicken off? And. And it's like after the first week, nobody cares, you know, so just take everything off your menu except for the stars, you know?
[01:09:55] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm so glad you said that. I, I think that's. I heard. I've talked to a lot of people who have learned that lesson over the pandemic and I've talked to a lot of people who are resisting that lesson.
I love, I love that you're saying it. I could not agree more.
[01:10:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And they. I think we'd all learn a lot from places like Chipotle. You know, I mean, that's as. As basic as it gets. You know, a couple meets, a couple of ways to have it do what
[01:10:20] Speaker A: they do and they do it really well.
[01:10:21] Speaker B: That's it.
[01:10:22] Speaker A: Yeah, they do what they do and they do it really well. And we know if we're going to Chipotle, we're going for this, this little box and they, they don't do anything. You know, I always joke around, I say, listen, we're never going to out Cheesecake Factory. The Cheesecake Factory. Like, like we're never going to outdo them. So don't even. Don't even try it. Sort of like it's like a garish, you know. Exactly. Example of trying to be all things to all people. But we can do the three. Three proteins, two sides, and crush it.
[01:10:50] Speaker B: And that's what. That's kind of the culture. Now I'm gonna go get the best Italian beef in the world, and that's where I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go get the best cheesecake, and they have it over here, and I'm gonna go get the best hamburger. I saw it on Tick Tock. It's right here. That's the only place to have a hamburger.
[01:11:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:11:06] Speaker B: You know, and that's the culture that we live in, too, so. So I think there's so much.
[01:11:11] Speaker A: So how do you think about that? Because I think that's a really good, great thing. So if somebody said, oh, I've got to get the best, what are they coming to you to get? I mean, everybody experience. They're collecting.
[01:11:20] Speaker B: I mean, by and large, sweet baby rays is known for ribs. I mean, people say sweet baby ribs. Ribs and sweet baby rays are, like, synonymous. They go together. So ribs, ribs. But, you know, ribs are expensive, so pulled pork is a great second. And now we're really strong with brisket. Where. Brisket. When we first opened the restaurant, people didn't even know what brisket was up here. You know what I mean? But barbecue education has come full circle. No one knew what a smoke ring was. Everyone thought our chicken was undercooked, and our ribs were undercooked because they were pink with the smoke ring. It was a big learning curve in the beginning with barbecue up north. And it's. You know, I. I feel like I've told you, like, my whole life story. I've. But over.
[01:12:06] Speaker A: I love it. That's the best part about this show. It's the best part about what I do.
[01:12:10] Speaker B: I've learned so much in this industry, and we're still learning, and I feel like we're in a really good spot right now to move forward with everything. And I just. It just got to stay focused on the black and white. Like, we talked about what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. And if that's kind of the guiding factor, I know that that's the right decision for my family, for our employees, and for the business. You know, it's.
[01:12:40] Speaker A: It's so true. Listen, you got an audience full of owners, operators, managers, marketers, people who are, you know, were born and raised in this industry, making their life in this industry any Last words of wisdom you want to share with them.
[01:12:54] Speaker B: I would say ask for help.
My. I would say ask for help. And that's something that I've talked about with Sean a lot, and I don't have all the answers. And, and I'm always learning. And I, you know, like I said before, I read, I listen to podcasts, I talk to guys like you. You know, I'm always looking, looking for that next, that next stave. How can I get just a little bit better and, and make a couple less mistakes and, and try to do the best that we can, and that's all we do. And, and give back. You know, you're never going to get anywhere trying to think you can do it all yourself or take everything for yourself.
[01:13:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:13:34] Speaker B: I've learned that along the way. Your employees, your friends, your family, they are going to help and support you. You have to give back to them as much as you can, too.
[01:13:43] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. Listen, I think that's a great place to end it. I appreciate you taking time out of what I imagine is a very, very busy day. We're going to include all the links that you talked about today. Your social media handles all of that. Anything else, any other link you want us to include, places you want to send people to learn more about you, the restaurant, the catering.
[01:14:03] Speaker B: Sbrbq.com you can go see. That's kind of a landing page for all of our websites. True cuisine, Sweet Baby Raised deuces Wild.
And then at Sweet Baby Rays Catering on all Facebook, Instagram, Tick Tock. You can see all our stuff there. We do a barbecue show on Tick Tock weekly every Friday. Barbecue like a boss. If you want to learn some fun tips and tricks with barbecue, that's a good place to go.
[01:14:29] Speaker A: I love it. My neighbor just across the street just bought a new smoker and he's like, you're in food. How do I smoke? How do I do? And he's. And I said, I don't know, but I'm gonna get you a bunch of recipes and I'm gonna find some. Some smart people to get your recipes. Recipe.
[01:14:44] Speaker B: There you go.
[01:14:44] Speaker A: So I'm under immense pressure to come up with these recipes so I can tell him how to smoke brisket in his backyard.
[01:14:51] Speaker B: Oh, boy. He's gonna guinea pig his family with this guy's really.
[01:14:57] Speaker A: This gets really good and handy. I. I trust him, but, yeah, and I've. I've promised to be a guinea pig as well, because that's the best part about what I do.
[01:15:04] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[01:15:05] Speaker A: Listen, I appreciate you being here taking time out of your day. Thank you so much much. Again we'll include all those links.
Really appreciate it. My man.
[01:15:13] Speaker B: All right, take care. Thanks Chip.
[01:15:14] Speaker A: Thank you.
Once again I want to thank Deuce for taking time out of his day to sit and chat with us. All of the links are in the show notes. And remember in the show notes you will also find the link to sign up for the webinar. This week I'm giving this webinar two times only. It's an hour long webinar on January 24th and January 25th. We are capping each of those rooms at 100 people. So go ahead sign up. Secure your spot now. Totally free but space is limited. Teaching you all about my five step framework for marketing your restaurant the right way. Promise you tons of actionable insights in that webinar. Go sign up again. Link is in the show notes. Appreciate you being here. I will see you next time.
[01:16:00] Speaker B: Sam.
Sa.
