[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey there, Chip Close here, host of the Restaurant Strategy Podcast. You know, I founded the P3 mastermind. It's a group coaching program where I work with independent restaurant owners to help them increase the profitability of their restaurants. I also host two live events every single year. Those two pieces of information are very important for today's episode Number one. I'm thrilled to welcome Todd Redding to the show. Todd is restaurateur in Iowa. He and his partners own three different concepts. He and his partners are members of the P3 mastermind and over the last year we've helped turn around their concepts, turn around their business to make a wildly different business model more successful and profitable than ever before. I want you to come back and listen to his story. Also I want you to come back because I'm going to talk about the next event. The next in person event is actually almost sold out. It happens in October in Fort Worth. I'm going to talk to you about what it is, how you can get tickets and why you might want to join all of that on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Don't.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. This is the Restaurant Strategy Podcast. Two episodes every single week. All meant to help you level up and increase the profitability of your restaurants. Today you're going to hear from Todd Redding. He is one of the P3 members. He's also a restaurateur. Together with his partners, he owns and operates three different concepts in Iowa. Small market, big ambitions. I can't wait for you to hear his story and to hear more about his trajectory and his journey through the P3 mastermind. But first up, I gotta let you know our next live event. I host two live events every single year. We cap these events at 100 people. It is a small room. It is power packed. Two days, two full days in Fort Worth, Texas, October of 2025. We have general admission tickets. We have VIP tickets still available. Fort Worth, Texas October 19th, 20th and 21st. What do you mean three days? I just said it was a two day event. Yes, it is still Monday and Tuesday, October 20th and 21st. But if you buy a VIP ticket, you get in invited to our special VIP welcome dinner on Sunday night, October 19th. Also, you get catered lunch on Monday And Tuesday also you get front row seats at the event. Also you get a special workshop for you, your managers, your servers and your bartenders via Zoom on the four Mondays in November. So after the event, so you can help actually apply all the stuff you learn in the room in Texas to your team. That is all included with the VIP ticket. Of course. We also just have the general admission tickets. Here's the very important thing. We cap this event at 100. We have already sold 72 tickets to this event. It will sell out. We are months ahead of time. It sells out every time we throw it. But if you want to be a part of it, you're going to find the link in the show notes and you can go grab your tickets. You can Visit my website, chip close.com c-I p k l o s e.com you can find the navigation button that says Summit. You can go learn all about it or you can just click the link in the show notes and it'll take you right to the page. You can learn about what we're going to cover, the prices, the locations, all of the details. You watch a cool video from last year's event when we hosted in St. Louis. I think you'll get a sense of the kind of impact we make, the kind of energy that's in the room. It's the P3 profitability summit all focused on how we actually manage cogs, how we actually manage labor in the year 2025 and how we drive more revenue because we know the power the top line revenue growth can have on bottom line profitability. So for an operational standpoint, how do we grow business? How do we grow ca?
Check average private events. All of that is covered. And then from a marketing standpoint, how do we acquire new customers? How do we build customer attention, Increase the frequency of visits? All of that is covered in two full days of education. It's in Fort Worth, Texas October 19th, 20th and 21st. If you have never been to a live event, you have to get yourself to the event. Click the link in the show notes and I look forward to seeing you in Texas.
Now, are you tired of juggling schedules.
[00:04:31] Speaker C: Tracking hours, worrying about HR compliance and dealing with all those last minute no shows?
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Well, it's time to say goodbye to.
[00:04:37] Speaker C: The headaches and hello to Time Forge. Time Forge is a labor management solution designed for the fast paced world of restaurants with product offerings ranging from recruitment to retention of your team members. With Time Forge you can simplify employee scheduling with automated AI schedules based on sales, weather and other events. You can track attendance and labor costs in real time, keeping up with compet complex labor laws like fair work week and meal penalties.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: You can recruit staff who live near your stores from our more than 11.
[00:05:08] Speaker C: Million hourly job seekers. They have 11 million plus job seekers on their platform. You can pay employees their wages and tips on a daily basis after every shift. And you can communicate proactively with your staff, using messaging, surveys and more. And that's not all. Time Forge integrates seamlessly with most POS systems, giving you full visibility into labor and sales performance and suggesting when you should staff up or staff down. Whether you manage one location or dozens, Time Forge saves you money, time and stress so you can focus on what really matters, delivering exceptional service and growing your business. Thousands of restaurants trust Time Forge, so why not you visit time forge.com restaurantstrategy today and see how Time Forge can help your team and your restaurant run like clockwork again. Timeforged.com Restaurant strategy As always, that link is in the show notes so I am thrilled today to welcome a friend, a colleague, one of the P3 members to the show. Todd Redding is one of the partners of Prairie Hospitality Group 3, a three concept group in the smack in the middle of Iowa. I'm going to let Todd get into way more about who he is, how he came to this, what his restaurants are all about. Todd, thank you for sitting down with me. Welcome to the show.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: Hey Chip. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. I've been on the other side of this for so long as a listener, so it's, it's fun to be talking to you face to face and I'm.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: Trying to be better about this. We did this in 2024. We had a bunch of current P3 members and former P3 members come in to talk about their experience and that's what we're going to do today. So full disclosure, I want you to share your experience there, but I think your trajectory with where the restaurants were at when you stepped in and took a more active role and sort of the reinvention that has happened in the year since we've been working together is pretty stark and pretty incredible. And you're a very thoughtful entrepreneur. You're a very thoughtful and committed business owner and I think all of that will resonate with the listeners here. And full disclosure here also, you do not naturally come from the restaurant industry. You took the side door or the back door, which I love because I think more, more often than not, we do take the side door and Back door. I certainly was one of somebody who took the side door. So I know you're sometimes a little bit sheepish about that, but it's one of the things that I love most about your story and your trajectory.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Thank you so much. Well, you're very complimentary. I really appreciate that. And doing the best I can to learn all I can as fast as I can.
[00:07:53] Speaker C: Okay. So when you had two locations, you sort of came in, judged them up.
Not a reinvention, but reinvigorated them, I'll say.
Got them back on track. Track I want to go back then. Now there's a third location, a third concept that's coming on.
Paint the picture for everybody here. Where are you guys in Iowa? Talk about the market. Talk about these three different concepts.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So where we were a year ago is probably very common for a number of listeners. You know, there were two restaurants at the time, this is the summer of 2024, that were started and operated as independent LLCs by a chef, my good friend and business partner, Paul Durr, and his wife, Kaylyn Durr. And they have been in the restaurant business most of their lives.
And they certainly had seen the battles of what it's like to own an independent restaurant and to layer on top of that. We are in Grinnell, Iowa, a town of 10,000 in the middle of the state, an hour from Des Moines, an hour from Iowa City, the two largest larger metropolitan areas in our state.
So if anyone's listening who understands the rural market, and Rural's defined as 10,000 residents or less surrounded by agriculture and a good distance away from larger cities. So you're not really competing with them in any way, but you also don't draw the audiences from them in an active way. It's a struggle. The rural communities are very, very difficult to recruit talent to get customers. So that's where we were. That's where we are today, geographically.
And last year, these two restaurants that Paul and Kalyn owned, they were doing everything literally, like so many people probably listening to this podcast. Paul is the chef.
He was the scheduler, the orderer, the menu designer, the marketer, the manager, Everything under the sun.
And my W was working at one of the restaurants, Prairie Canary, the sort of the flagship.
She was working there almost full time, running the front of house operations.
I started my first company about 10 years ago, so I was nurturing that. And then in the evenings coming in to help out.
Shannon was there. Our kids have all grown, So I was coming in, and Paul would let me sort of work on the line and learn a few things here and there and try to learn from him, from his culinary expertise. Because I have a passion for the restaurants, restaurant business, certainly for the kitchen.
And we'd been doing that for the last, really, seven or eight years. And it just got to a point where I saw, from my business perspective, saw the struggles that they were facing trying to run these two independent restaurants.
That's really how this whole thing kind of came together last year.
And I took a more active role at that time.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: Great. So the restaurant's been around for a while. They sort of were stagnating, stuck where they were.
So you stepped in and took a more active role. I mean, now you are a partner in this.
In this entire venture.
I want to give people an idea like, what are these concepts here? I mean, I know them, obviously, Hometown Heroes and Prairie Canary. But for the listeners, what are these? Because you've got. You describe the market really well. So you've created now products. You've created experiences, restaurants to serve these markets and in very different ways. So paint that picture.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Well, we.
An important element of our community is that we have a private college, liberal arts college, as well as a solid regional hospital and a couple of significant employers. So we do have a good, vibrant community.
Prairie Canary is, you know, certainly wouldn't put it in the class of fine dining, what most of this audience might consider fine dining, but it's also not fast casual. It's somewhere in between. We have burgers. They're really good burgers. We have a chicken to Burgo. We'll do a duck. We have good steaks. And the environment is what would be considered in our community, more of an upscale environment, upscale price point, some craft cocktails. The level of service is very high. You know, it's the nicer restaurant, certainly in our community. And the concept could compete with some of the better restaurants in the Des Moines and Iowa City area. I'm not suggesting that it's necessarily better than them, but we'd be in the same ballpark with them, for sure.
And then the second concept, Hometown Heroes, is really a traditional sports bar with a custom menu. So we have wings and hamburgers and things of that nature. But Paul has really invented a menu that tries to be unique.
Not just a hamburger and wings, but a lot of custom sandwiches, smoked meats, some cool salads, and again, some good cocktails and some quirky names on the thing that go with the sports theme. But Paul and Kalyn invented this concept. They did an amazing job with Hometown Heroes and Any listeners that are thinking about a sports bar that's tying into a local community should really reach out and talk to us, because we have a Hall of fame wall that has any collegiate athlete that went to Grinnell High School or any of our sort of community high schools in our county, their pictures, while they're performing at the collegiate level are on this hall of fame or on this kind of hall of fame wall. Love it. And then there's pictures of athletic icons all around the restaurant for people that have gone on to do sort of amazing things. So it really ties in that sports bar theme to the local community in a way that's really cool. And I give Paul and Kalyn complete credit for that. They really invented an amazing concept.
[00:14:26] Speaker C: So when you stepped in and around the time maybe when you and I met, what was going on? What did you feel like, need to get fixed? And what ultimately led you to seeking out outside help, whether it's consulting or coaching or program? I mean, obviously you ended up working closely with me through the P3 mastermind, but I assume I wasn't the only call you had, so.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:52] Speaker C: So talk to me about about that process and what went into it.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great question.
I certainly do not consider myself the savior of the day in any way. In this whole model, I am not an expert chef.
I love cooking, and I try to get better at it all the time.
But what I am is what I've spent the last, really 25 years of my life doing is being a good, solid business person and doing everything I can to learn and operate successful businesses. And I have an MBA from Northwestern, and that's really my focus, my concentration of my skills. So when I came into this situation, some of the things that I wanted to apply my time and energy to were quite obvious in my mind as a business person. And Paul and Kalyn, they were so entrenched in the business, trying to keep it going. Right. Like so many people, they're just keeping it going.
So part of it was just another brain in the mix. Right. And I think one lesson for the audience is that the more brains you can get helping think of all of these things, the better. I see businesses fail all the time when the business leader thinks that they are the one that needs to control everything, needs to think of everything, needs to be everything.
Those are just the kisses of death in my mind. You have to be open to learning from as many people around you as you can, empowering as many people around you as you can.
So I really brought that and Paul and Kaylan were like, sure, the more people, the better. Here, take the apron.
Help us, because we're trying to do everything. So Shannon and Paul and Kaylin and I really just started to divide up, up some of the responsibilities of this. More than anything, it was just sharing in the workload and then reaching. You know, I heard your podcast while driving across the country. I listened to a ton of episodes and everything you were saying sort of sounded like the things I was hearing Paul tell me about his business.
And I was like, wow, okay, this is. We need resources around us. Learn. And for me, particularly, need to learn.
And you were just, you know, Chip. And I think this is what I say to the audience. Audience is that you were talking about real life stuff.
Like, I listened to a lot of podcasts that were talking about real hypothetical stuff or things that tap into our emotions about food and restaurants.
But when it comes to paying the bills, it doesn't have anything to do with emotions.
It doesn't really have a whole lot to do with what's on the plate. Right. It has to do with running a fricking business.
[00:17:34] Speaker C: It's true.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: And so that resonated. As a business person, that message really resonated with me. I went back to Paul and Kalyn and Shannon said, we gotta listen to this guy because he's telling us how to do the fundamentals of the business.
So we said to Paul, you take the food, buddy. You make sure whatever food's coming out of the kitchen is top notch and meets your standard. We're going to divide everything else up and start helping build the things, you know, the finances, the budgets, the ordering, the inventory, the hiring, all of the other stuff.
We're going to start attacking that. And that's where we started last August.
And I think we came to your first conference was in St. Louis, the first one we attended.
[00:18:23] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: I think Paul and Kaylin and Shannon would agree that they thought I was off my rocker and they were dreading the weekend. And they're like, we gotta take all this time to drive down to St. Louis and what are we doing? And they walked away.
Complete 180 degree turn. I mean, we all came away just like, oh, my God, there's other people dealing with the same stuff. There's answers to all these millions of questions we have.
It was such a relief to know that this struggle that we're facing is common and that there are a lot of. Of basic fundamental solutions. You know, if you follow these formulas, you can really turn this business around. And that for us that was life changing, literally.
[00:19:11] Speaker C: Pop Menu has reimagined the restaurant. They're breaking the mold of the menu, taking the kitchen doors right off the hinges and serving up their most comprehensive technology solution yet. Pop Menu Max. It comes with the previous ingredients that.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: We'Ve talked about here on the podcast.
[00:19:26] Speaker C: Right Websites designed with SEO marketing tools that help keep you top of mind with guests, and of course, that patented interactive menu technology.
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[00:19:53] Speaker A: To pull a staff member away from.
[00:19:54] Speaker C: Your in person hospitality.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: So all those questions that people ask.
[00:19:58] Speaker C: Can be answered by the AI server, by the AI phone answering service. So no more missed reservations. No more people asking for your hours or if there's parking or if you've.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Got a gluten free whatever.
[00:20:10] Speaker C: Also, no more missed revenue. And that's just the beginning. You have a passion for food. Pop Menu has a passion for technology. Together that's a recipe for restaurant success. And now even more digital ingredients are in their technology pantry. And Pop Menu is helping restaurants attract, engage, remarket and transact with their guests on a whole new level. Trust me, if you're a restaurant owner, you need to look at Pop Menu to take your business to the next level. For a limited time only, get $100 off your first month.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Plus you get to lock in one.
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[00:21:54] Speaker A: This fits in perfectly with what we're.
[00:21:56] Speaker C: About to talk about again. Davosalestax.com RestaurantStrategy and yes, that link is in the show notes.
Yeah. So for the listeners here, Todd and I first met last July. I guess it was early July and we were ramping up for our P3 profitability summit, which happens once a year. Happened in July last year, the end of July in St. Louis. It's going to happen in October this year in Fort Worth, Texas. It's a big event for me. I would say it's a huge event. It's not huge because I know a bunch of listeners have been to Bar and Restaurant Expo or FS Tech or Restaurant Leadership or the National Restaurant association show, and those are huge shows. But for me and my little company and my Little team, getting six sponsors and nine vendors and 110 people in a room all together is a herculean task. And I dread it every time we go about doing it. And the second I get off the plane, I'm so glad we ended up doing it. I spend the entire week leading up to every event saying, I'm never doing this again. It's so much work, work. It's so much stress. I'm so anxious about, you know, all of the different details. And then I do, I step off the plane, I get into that first event and to your point, I mean, it's an incredible community and you're surrounded by people who are going through the exact same crap that you are for two and a half days and bonds are forged. And I think it's not therapy, but there's something therapeutic. And I hope 100%, and I hope it's an overwhelming amount of information. So you leave there going like, oh my God, even if I just put into practice 10% of what I've learned, I've got to be better off. Which, which I know to be true.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Well, I have started companies. I have failed more times than I can count. I have been successful as well. And I have absolutely learned that you cannot run a successful business if every day, every hour of the day, every day you are down in the business reacting to everything around you, trying to put out fires. There's just, you can't grow, you can't be successful and you'll, over time, you'll be miserable as a human Being so your conference forced us to drive out of the town of Grinnell. You know, forget about the speakers and the content.
It forced us to get the heck out of the business and to spend a lot of time thinking about the business. And that for me, that is so important.
Now, the cherry on top is that we're surrounded by you. And the people that you assemble were really, really valuable for us.
And not only the speakers, but the other attendees, I mean.
[00:24:43] Speaker C: Agreed.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: I love our mastermind group, Chip, and I truly mean that.
I've gotten to know them on the screen, but hearing them talk about their stories and we've gotten comfortable enough with one another, we can kind of directly reach questions out to each other. And that is a game changer for somebody trying to run a business to be able to be around that environment. So the St. Louis thing certainly kicked that off for us. But then we attended the one in Salt Lake City and brought another general manager we have working for us, press with us because he's kind of the future of our business.
[00:25:22] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: And, and we're, you know, we talk about it every time about, you know, we talk about our budget and we talk about expenses and the investment we're making in your council, to us and in these events. It's not even on the radar for getting rid of. It's not even, it's like, no, that's, that's like saying we're just going to stop serving food.
It's just not. That's not possible because it's so valuable.
[00:25:48] Speaker C: Okay. So. And I appreciate you saying that. It's something I tell almost everybody I meet who is considering joining the program. And I always say, I always say the same thing. So most people stay for years. You'll, you'll find that when you get in there. But all we ask for is a six month commitment because I can't fix this stuff in a month. I might be able to make headway in three months. Give me six months. Do everything I show you to do. I feel like in that time I can, I can show you everything I know, help you implement all that. At the end of that, if you've gotten everything out of it, cool, goodbye and good luck. Buy me a slice, buy me a beer, buy me a dumpling next time I'm in town, whatever it is. But I think you'll find that you'll be in it for years and years and years. I always say we've still got three people in the program. From the very first group I launched, I launched a beta group in the summer of 2021, there was 10 people in it. We still have three of those 10.
And I still get emails from most of them every single week. But the fact that those three have stuck around all this time, it's not by accident. I know the power of the.
What the momentum can create of just showing up every week. Like it's two hours every single week. Two hours to get your answers, to get answers to your questions and all of that.
Go back a little bit and talk about. So you come in, the restaurants are good but struggling.
You're applying your sort of business mind to it. You say, okay, I just think I need outside counsel. Talk to me specifically about what was it? Literally just you listened to the podcast and said, I want to have a deeper conversation with that guy, meaning me, or were there other. Other programs you explored? Can you. Can you remember back then?
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Yeah, there are. I listen to all of them. Like, I just googled, you know, restaurants information. I didn't even necessarily focus on podcasts. I was looking for books. I was looking for speakers. I did listen to a lot of the other podcasts that are out there. You know, if you. If you remember only one thing from this podcast for your business, I cannot stress enough the importance of vision for the future. Where are we headed? What are we doing this for? What are we trying to create this for? You know, covey, in his 7 Habits for Highly Effective People, wrote all about beginning with the end in mind. Habit number two, I believe so strongly in that, not only for your personal life, but certainly for your business. Where are we headed? What are we trying to do?
And so, as I really pushed Paul Kaylin and Shannon to answer that question, what are we going to create?
Once you get your arms around what that looks like down the road? Because we all want to create something that's going to contribute to our families, our financial success, and allow us to spend the next 25 years of our life sitting on a beach, if we're lucky. Right? Or certainly doing the things that we want to do, not what we have to do.
[00:28:44] Speaker C: And it's counterintuitive. Right, Todd?
I acknowledge this because I feel really powerfully.
I feel really strongly about how powerful that is. I mean, it's the foundation for everything I teach and I coach, but it's counterintuitive, especially when you're struggling. So, again, for anybody out here listening, when you're just trying to tread water, keep your head above water, it seems strange to say, but if you put that same amount of effort into just swimming to Shore, you'll actually be getting somewhere, which is the best analogy, the best version of that that I'd ever heard way back in when I was in business school. And it was, you know, it sounds counterintuitive, but just start doing that same motion, but with purpose, with intention.
Pick a direction, doesn't even matter what, and that'll change your business. And it was like, yeah, that's a writer downer.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: I think it drives everything that you do. Having clarity around that vision drives your character, your principles, your. It drives everything.
And so your question about how I came to this content was like, we need tools to get there.
The vision. Let's assume we all understand that vision. We're going to be at 10 to 15 restaurants in somewhere between five and 10 years, and that's going to financially let us achieve what we want to achieve. We're not going to get there doing the same thing we've been doing. And Paul and Kalan absolutely knew that. They embraced that 100%. They didn't know what the answer is, that they needed to do differently, but they knew what they were doing was not going to get them there.
When Shannon and I took a more active role, the four of us said, okay, what tools do we need?
That's when we really looked into your content more and said, all right, this is one of the critical tools we need is that direction.
What do the ratios look like? How do we organize our finances? How do we build our budgets? How do we get our servers to sell more?
All of those questions seem to be answered in your content.
And so for us, that's what led to the decision that this was the right resource.
[00:30:48] Speaker C: I want to go back and talk about the first three months in the program. So we met in July. You came to the event in the end of July. You started coming then to the weekly sessions the beginning of August. If I've got that timeline right, that's about right, yeah. So then talk to me about your first three months. Talk to me about if you had to say, what was the one or two things that made a big impact that was able to sort of turn things around for the two concepts?
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Well, I can say the first three months were really painful. I think my partners would agree with that because it was so much change, and it still is to this day, so much change in the way that Paul and Kaelyn have done things in the past. And I've never done this before. So I've started companies before and run businesses, but this is a whole different industry, whole different group. Of people. And then you mix in the fact that I'm married to one of my business partners and that the other two are close friends and that we're all embedded in this little community together.
It was hard, and it still is very, very hard. Change is very hard. But to your question, some of important things were some of these fundamental metrics. And I tell people, I'll even tell customers, you know, they'll say, well, why is ranch $1.50? And I'll say, because if it goes over 30%, we're toast. You know, if the cost of that ranch goes over 30%, we're screwed. Like, that's why it's a dollar fifty.
[00:32:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: And. And the other 30% is labor. Right. So we're already at 60%. Right. Show me what you know, how you would structure the cost of this ranch.
I mean, I'm very transparent about those numbers that you really helped us understand.
And I knew this before, but you really reinforced it to our whole group.
Looking forward is so fundamentally critical. Now, I talked about vision, which is really, really important.
Getting to that vision requires you to plan. What's the 90 day goal for us? Right. What's the pro forma? What's the budget for this month? And then drilling it all the way back.
[00:32:57] Speaker C: Your.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: Your spreadsheet of daily sales targets.
The restaurant business moves faster than any business I've ever. I've ever worked in. Yeah. So a decision you make at noon is being sold at 5. Right.
[00:33:10] Speaker C: Amazing. Right?
[00:33:11] Speaker A: Which is a good.
[00:33:12] Speaker C: Which is a.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: Which is a.
[00:33:15] Speaker C: Liability.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: Yeah. You better not get it wrong. Right. You scheduled all this labor for this weekend. Well, it's happening this weekend, so you know that. I think that's where you really helped us. You use the term guardrails, and I like that a lot because we did. That's what we did in those first 30 days. We started to structure some guardrails for the business that had. I think Paul and Kalyn would agree. They've never really had that in the past.
And so for our group, it was really important.
[00:33:47] Speaker C: Todd, in 2023, I was invited to give the keynote down in New Zealand at the New Zealand, the Restaurant association New Zealand. Their big event is hospital Hui. So it's like a big trade show and then a. A smaller event upstairs. And I gave the keynote there, and they said, oh, would you be willing to come down here? And basically I said, you know, if you can. If you can help me get my whole family down there so that we can make a vacation out of this cuz. Yeah, yeah, it sounds, it's a long way to go and it's not, it's not inexpensive to get all the way down there. And so we did and we ended up tacking on a week in Queensland. Queenstown is on the south island. So I gave the talk in Auckland. We got on a little plane headed down to Queenstown. We spent a week there. And it's a ski town, so it's a big lake and there's snowshoeing and snowmobiling and hiking and skiing and helicopter rides and all this stuff, right?
The scare. The most scared I've ever been in my life. And this whole idea of guardrails really solidified back two years ago. The most scared I've ever been in my life was when we decided to drive up to the Remarkables which if, you know, when you land into Queenstown, there's one Runway way, it only goes one direction because the shearing of the wind is so great.
You take off and land in the same direction and you land between two massive mountain ranges. And it looks like, it looks like a Mission Impossible.
Actually they filmed the most recent Mission Impossible down there. You're flying this plane and you are, you know, the, you are, you know, you have these massive, you know, thousands of feet tall, I mean 7,000ft tall, these mountain ranges on either side of you. We decided to go skiing. We drove up there.
It was the most scared I've ever been in my life. I'm driving on the wrong side of the road. I realize you have to chain up halfway up because they're not paved, they're all just gravel and they grit the road instead of salting the road. So everything's frozen and snowy. I mean we're spinning out, we're fishtailing. It was like very treacherous. And there were no guardrails.
Guardrails on like, you know, so some of the switchbacks, right, which all had names, it was like, you know, Red Eye Turn or like the W's.
I mean they were like really, really frightening.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: And I was like intimidating names too.
[00:35:55] Speaker C: But most of them, they don't have these guardrails. And I just thought, I can't go fast because there's no guardrails. And the higher I go, the more treacherous it gets. And you are 5,000, 6,000, 7,000ft up, looking straight down a mountain. And it was jaw droppingly beautiful. And I was like shaking. I was so scared because I had pretty much everything that mattered in my life. My wife and my son there with me as we're going up there. And it solidified this idea of guardrails as I told this story over and over and over again. Right. And I said, if there were guardrails, I would have been able to breathe.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: Yeah. I would have damaged the car.
[00:36:29] Speaker C: I would have banged into it, but the guardrails would have saved me from plunging 6,000ft to our collective depths.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that I think this idea of.
[00:36:38] Speaker C: If you have guardrails so that, you know nothing really, really bad can happen, then you're able to enjoy the ride a little bit more. It's a long way of saying. It's my long story of saying that, like, that's why I think guardrails are so big that you can still make a mistake.
But the worst that's going to happen is you're going to dent the car and have to pay out the insurance, you know, the. Whatever the deductible is. Like, okay, you're going to get a. You're going to get dinged by the rental company.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:37:03] Speaker C: You're. The worst possible outcome is never going to happen. Because you have those in place. And especially in the restaurants, because you said it's so hard. Hard. It's so immediate. It moves so fast.
It's even more important to have those, those. Those guardrails on you. We're not a software company, we're not a manufacturing company where we're selling quarters ahead of time. We're coming up with something at noon to sell tonight. And so understanding how we stay safe and enjoy the ride, even when, Even when we're doing. There's so many moving parts.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: Well, I love that story, Chip, and it definitely resonates because you feel like you're hanging off the side of the cliff a lot.
For us, the guardrails had one added piece, which was just awareness that when we were outside of those realms, we're aware of it. I'm not even suggesting we knew what to do.
[00:38:01] Speaker C: But you're aware of it.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: But we're aware of it. It's just, you know, something needs to change or some. Some effort needs to be put into correcting that course. Right?
[00:38:13] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: Because you're not going where you thought you were going. Whereas I think, you know, many, many restaurants are flying blind and they believe that if they can get this number of sales, you know, if the Saturday night's busy, then it's going to perpetuate us into next week. And, you know, so for us, that having the guardrails and the awareness of the path has been probably the most important piece that we've pulled out of our work with you. But there's a lot of other stuff that contribute to that. But yeah, that's been really, really central.
[00:38:53] Speaker C: I love it. So you came to the event last January. I'm sorry, last July.
You've been in the group since August. You came to the event in Salt Lake in January.
Yeah. You've been, you've been a very active member of the community.
What else? Have I not thought to ask? What else? What else has been really, really helpful over the course of your time?
[00:39:15] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think this is really important no matter whether a listener signs on with Chip Close or any other consultant or workshop or program.
But it's the age old adage of you only get out of it what you put into it.
And so that's critical. If you are a business owner out there, you have to be putting, I'm going to say, 20% of your time at a minimum into working on this business and finding resources like this and reading and reflecting and planning.
Without that work, you are just reacting.
And that is the kiss of death.
Eventually it is the kiss of death. You might get lucky and extend that Runway of reaction, but eventually you're going to go under.
And so that for me is probably the most important thing is put a lot into it. Yes, we've been active in your program and you've given us a lot of value. But we made a commitment for all four of us to attend every week, to attend every, like St. Louis or Salt Lake City and now down in Texas, we are going to those events. Everyone that you host and we are all in.
And I'm sort of the asshole that says if we're not all in, we're stopping paying for it because we're making this investment, therefore put your soul into it. And my partners are all in agreement with that. So go all in. You have to.
[00:40:59] Speaker C: So you said two really important things I want to highlight. Number one, I appreciate that you get out what you take. You get out of it what you put in. Because I completely, completely believe that I am not a consultant. I was a consultant for a while where you hire me to come in. I identify the problems, I put all the fixes into place, I get it all good and I walk out the the door. And I have just found that that doesn't work as well as coaching. Whereas if I can give you the tools and help shape you and ask questions and give you advice and share insights and you can pull from the group and hear all of their insights and all of That I find it just a more productive way. Also, to anybody listening, I think there's a time and a place for a consultant, but I think what happens is the consultant walks in and they're the guy or the gal, right? And they ultimately and immediately usurp authority. And I don't think that does anybody any good, right? So whether Todd and his team, right, Todd, Paul, Kalyn, Shannon, whether they go back in and they say, hey, we learned something really great from Chip in this Mastermind, I don't ever care.
That shouldn't be right. Then, then, then I'm the smart one in the room, so to speak, and I shouldn't be. It's their restaurant. They know more than me. I've told you this, guys, but, right? You guys know your market. You guys know your concept, except you're doing all the hard work. Never for a second do you want someone to come in and take over that authority. It just messes with the hierarchy, and it sort of does some damage for at least a little while that I said, you can give credit to me, or you cannot just say, hey, I just had a really great idea. I don't care. The whole point is to get you guys where you're going. And that goes for you and the other 149 people in the program.
I really, really believe that you get out of it what you put in. I'm glad you highlighted that. The other thing you sort of skipped over, and I really want to highlight it.
I'm obviously talking to Todd because I've known Todd through my program, the P3 mastermind. It's the coaching program that I run that I know can and has made a huge impact in hundreds of restaurant owners all over the world. But, man, it does bear mention.
I am not the only show in town. There are other very qualified, very passionate, very gifted, very experienced coaches and consultants out there, many of whom my quote unquote competitors who I am friends with. They are collaborators.
They are colleagues of mine.
[00:43:22] Speaker A: And again, we connect over and over and over.
[00:43:24] Speaker C: We send emails, we have phone calls. We zoom with each other. Once a month, on some occasions. This afternoon soon, I've got calls with two different ones, two different guys who basically do what I do, who I.
[00:43:35] Speaker A: Adore, and they are very good.
[00:43:37] Speaker C: And I'll tell people when they come, they say, oh, we've got calls with other people. I say, you should. You should explore other options because your business is too important to mess around with. You should find somebody you really jive with that you feel like has your Best interest mind, all of that. And if that means you come back to me, great. And if that means you don't, that's okay too. Like you gotta find who works well for you. But. But the idea is there is outside help, there is network, there is support that's available. So doesn't have to be me. It really doesn't.
But perspective and objectivity and pulling from other experiences can be incredibly, incredibly valuable.
[00:44:15] Speaker B: Agree with that entirely. Yeah, absolutely. Chip.
[00:44:19] Speaker C: Love it. Todd, I want to be really respectful of your time because I know you're a busy guy. To your point earlier, what have I not thought to ask? What have I not brought up? Any other last words of wisdom, any other insights you'd share with the listeners?
[00:44:31] Speaker B: If you ever want to talk to me or my business partners, reach out to us. Happy to answer questions about what we've gone through, what we found most important.
We're sort of a all ships rise kind of people, so we would love to talk to other restaurant owners or people interested in this topic if you have helpful suggestions for us. We're looking to grow, always looking for other locations and other concepts, so please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Our website's prairiehg.com P-R-A-I-R-I-E h g.com I think you can find all of our contact information on there. So reach out if we can be helpful.
[00:45:13] Speaker C: Perfect. And we'll include all of the links in the show notes. Todd, I appreciate it.
I want to ask one more question. You sort of just sort of sparked in me. So you had two locations. Now you're, you're going to open a, you know, going to launch a third concept. And you mentioned a few minutes ago, you know, if this, this idea of vision, getting really clear on where you want to go. And 10 to 15 restaurants was the number you threw out there.
[00:45:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:40] Speaker C: Does that, is that directly tied to. Well, one restaurant will generate this much in profit and so we just need to do that 10 times over in order to have the lifestyle or to be able to have the, the result that we want. I mean, is that where that came from?
[00:45:56] Speaker B: It actually came from looking at restaurant groups that have grown from our size and what type of revenue number it takes to build a management infrastructure that is independent so the owner doesn't have to be in the building every single day.
So that takes eight to 10 highly paid professionals running the locations, that's a $10 million company or more to really have the right infrastructure that can then have a succession plan so that you're bringing people perhaps who have worked in the restaurant locations themselves, you're growing professionals out of that group into the main office group that are then potential buyers of the company.
So in our mind that's really where we're headed.
We don't foresee our company selling to a larger enterprise because we really are going to remain focused in the rural markets and there's just doesn't seem to be a lot of big dogs that want to come into the rural markets.
So we're going to grow from within, we think.
And that requires an entity that's at that, that 10 million plus size and annual revenue. And the only way to get there is more locations.
[00:47:20] Speaker C: Love it.
[00:47:21] Speaker B: That's really where that vision came from.
[00:47:23] Speaker C: I appreciate that. Start with the end in mind. Todd, I appreciate you, I appreciate your whole team. It's been a pleasure getting to know you guys. I appreciate you taking a few minutes to chat with me today and share your journey with the audience. Thank you very much.
[00:47:37] Speaker B: Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: Once again, big thank you to Todd for taking time out of his busy day to sit here and chat with us to share his experience being in the P3 mastermind and the journey in turning these restaurants around. One final reminder, the P3 Profitability Summit happens in Fort Worth, Texas October 19th, 20th and 21st. We always cap the event at a hundred tickets. There are 72 tickets sold, so you do the math. It's less than 30 spots available. We have general admission tickets which get you into two full days of education, plus the big P3 party on that Monday night of the event. So food, music, open bar, all of that is included in your ticket price. Or we have VIP tickets available which includes all of that plus a VIP welcome dinner plus catered lunch Monday and Tuesday. So you get to hang out with me and my team, get extra time to ask your questions to get to the bottom of what you want to learn. Plus there's a special workshop, four hour long zoom sessions for you, your managers and most importantly for your servers and bartenders so we can operationalize the things that you things you learn and actually teach it to them. How do we increase check average? How do we sell those additional drinks? How do we upsell? How do we downsell? How do we do these things to grow top line revenue? That link is in the show notes. I really look forward to seeing you in Texas. This event sells out every single time we do it and I can't wait to see you in Texas again. The P3 Profitability Summit, Fort Worth, Texas, October 19th, 20th and 21st. That link is in the show notes. As always, guys, I appreciate you being here. Thank you very much and I'll see you next time.
