Million Dollar Meals with Andrew Kowal COO of Foodie Fit | The Power Move Podcast EP 60
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From the art of the deal to keeping it real. Live from the Simply Vegas studios, it's The Power Move with Jon Gafford. Back again. Back again. It's another episode of The Power Move. My name is Jon Gafford. I am your host.

To the left of me, as always, in... I'm just telling you right now, guys, if you have never watched this on YouTube, if you've never liked and subscribed... Put a towel underneath your seat. For no other reason, you've got to go on and check out this jacket. The cold is rocking. Because, my man, that...

Is a deep tartan. That's a solid, solid tartan jacket. I'm jealous. Appreciate it. So as always, welcome to the Bulgarian Mongoose. How are you, buddy? Doing well. Doing well? The podcaster formerly known as the Green Bubble. Yes, the Green Bubble, formerly known as the Green Bubble, back as the Bulgarian Mongoose. I still regret that decision. No. Seriously. No, you can't. Yes, I do. We love you for it. iPhone sucks. Everyone loves you for it, Cole. Oh, we love you for it.

We totally love you for it. Also in the studio, as always, Chris, the counselor. Connell, how are you, sir? Living the dream. 702 Law for all your legal needs. 702 Connell. So we got 702. Can I ask you a question? Cool. I got to ask a question.

I copied. Did you? Did you copy? Because you started the roofing company. Colt also now owns a roofing company, and he's 702 Roofing. You're welcome. And now there's 702 Connell. One day I'll tell the story of how I got that phone number for free. Yeah. I'm trying to get roofing. All it cost me was a Walmart burner phone and like 18 hours of calls to like the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Hawaii.

I had to wait for some. I feel like this is also the story how you got hardcore German pornography, but I'm just telling you that. No, no, no. Same difficulty, different search terms. Same difficulty, different search terms. I get it. Ed with a suit is probably already regretting his choice very quickly as he's sitting in the seat next to us. We have a local business here that is really, look, man, you're going to hear the word local business and you're going to think, great, now they're rolling in like the knitting club. No, that's not it.

On this show, if this is your first time joining us or you've listened to us before, this is where we talk about business, things to make you better, things to those things. And we believe success leaves clues. So we like to talk to people who are successful. And this is a business that has taken Las Vegas, dare I say, by storm. I would dare say it. Dare say by storm. I mean, everybody I know just about, I mean, literally as we're walking back into the studio, as we're walking into the studio, one of our guys that has worked for us forever goes, hey,

is that the dude that owns Foodie Fit? I go, yeah, it is. And he goes, man, I get, and he stops him and he goes, I get 95% of my meals from this place. And that he's, and this is a, and by the way, the guy that was talking to you is not, no joke. He's a seven figure agent. He makes a ton of money. He does well. So when he says I want to invest, he's dead serious and he's got the quants. So,

So that's not one of those, oh, thank you so much, sir. Move on. That's like, okay, let me get your number and I'll call you in a couple months. And he's fit, too. Yeah, and he's fit. Yeah, no, no, no. So it was fit. I didn't know if it was scripted or not. No, no, no. It just boosts my ego as I walk in. No, no, no. It really was not. We should do that now. Number one. No, it really was not. But,

Andrew, who owns Foodie Fit, is in, and we're going to talk about his story, some of the things that he has done to build a very, very successful brand that is now looking to expand into many other markets. So as you grow, we're going to be able to look back at this podcast and say,

Man, I bet he regrets that now, five years later, is what we're going to be able to say. Five years time, so we're looking forward to that. He's charging $25,000 an hour for consulting gigs. But before, as we always do, let's talk about kind of the current events and some news that are going on to make us not evergreen. So the first thing I want to talk about that I thought was-

What was it? Pete. What are you talking about? Pete and Kim. Oh, it's not what you're excited for? Okay, seriously. No, no, we can talk about that because I will say... I cried over it for the weekend. Is this the first dude that has escaped the Kardashians with his career intact? I think he out-Kardashianed the Kardashians. I was thinking that the other day. I thought...

This guy actually came out ahead. I think he sucked some of their fame, and now he's better for it. Playing chess. He's playing chess over there. All right, seriously, though. All right, let me ask you a question. If Pete Davidson was to write a book, right, called How to Satisfy a Woman in Bed. I feel like I could smell it. How many of those could he sell? Because obviously you look at that dude, and you look at the women that he's dated.

He's got something. Just rockets. But like I said, he could, I could smell the book. It should be a scratch and sniff. I may or may not buy it. Yeah. It doesn't seem like a good idea. So there was that. The thing that caught my eye this week that I thought was pretty amazing was, did you guys hear there was a Chick-fil-A somewhere? I don't even remember where it was.

but they were trying to hire people not as employees, but as volunteers to help them work their drive through. And they would pay them for every hour they worked with five free meals, literally will work for food as a business model. I saw that. And it's actually not that bad. How is it not? According to the fair labor standard. Yeah. No, go knock out two hours. You feed your family. Oh my God. For somebody not making money.

I mean, well, there's a way that they can compensate employees. It's with currency. I'd rather sometimes today when I went to a deposition at an attorney's office that was literally in a, in a, in a get, well, not a gas station. It was a car wash. As I stopped at the gas station over off of Nellis, wherever I was to get some gas. And there was, there was a dude at the gas station. They're offering to clean my windshield. Obviously he was a homeless fellow and I was, you know, it was nice enough about him, but that would be the extent of the,

The gas station saying, I'll give you a gallon of gas for every 10 windshields you wash. I mean, there are literal laws against barter. There are literal to protect this. Literally. It's not surprising that you think this is going to be true. Andrew, you ever try to barter with your clients? Just straight barter, not like...

Oh, as a supplementary bonus, our employees get X amount of meals with their... Well, I mean, you've helped us for food before. Well, again... He's easy. I'm exempt under Fair Labor Standards Act. Oh, my God. I'm an exempt. Don't you love when people barter, though?

I love barter. Barter is wonderful. I'm not slagging barter, but when it's talking about feeding your family to work at the volunteer window at a minimum wage job. Same difference, though. If you're working to feed your family, if you go knock out two hours and they're giving you $30 worth of food,

what's it matter and you're not paying taxes they're not it's not 30 worth of food it's it's four dollars for the food we know it's actually funny is they have something called the tendy index which actually tracks the price of chicken flour oil basically things that make a chicken tender and uh i swear to god this is a real thing and so actually right now on the tendy index uh

Chicken tenders are more expensive than they've ever been. Is this an actual index? An actual index. So maybe, Colt, maybe I'm going to walk it back. Colt follows the Fajita index. Is that going to be, since we're getting rid of LIBOR, I believe, right? That would scale right with the Tandy index. Maybe we go Tandy index. I think it's good. Is it like a CPI basket index or something? A CPI basket. Yeah. All right.

Some people want the gold standard back. I don't. That ship has sailed. Some people want to use Bitcoin. I think you're out of your absolute mind. But the 10D index, I'm listening. It's a commodity. Look, if you look at Forex, future...

changes you took it pig bellies orange juice or whatever flour chicken oil those are all pretty you know i like that pretty great i actually like it can you can you hear the phrase talking about trading pork bellies and not think of trading places it's impossible it's impossible there's no way i was at a at a korean barbecue and they had pork bellies and i almost did my best dan ackroyd

That's it. Oh, sure. Like he went to Harvard. There it is. All right. Well, enough of this nonsense. Andrew, let's get to you. So first of all, for the three people still listening, thank you for still being here. But I'm going to give you a little incentive. So if you hang out long enough, at the end of the show, we will do five questions into the mind of cult, which has become, honestly, my favorite part of this show now.

Because it just allows us to dive deep into the anomaly, the enigma, the mystery, the abyss. I don't think I've said anything bad. I think that most people really want to... You mean eating humans for sport? Not eating humans. Hunting. Just hunting. So you're even going to waste the meat. That's...

Let me ask you this weird question. But if you had a chance to try human meat, Chris, I feel like you would do it. I feel like Chris would do it. Chris? That's actually Foodie Fitz's number one. That's the number one combo. Just kidding. Just kidding. Oh, my God. Connell, if you had a chance, would you? No. We've already gone over this. I'm not going to...

I'm not going to help you hide bodies by consuming them. Oh, my God. All right. So, Andrew, tell us about you, my man. Where did you grow up? Where did you start out? Yeah. So, I'm originally from San Diego. I went to school in Santa Barbara. The classic entrepreneur, you know, kind of...

route dropout of a college, you know how that goes. I was a business major economics and didn't go all the way through with that. Ended up working for some nightclub in Santa Barbara where I met my now business partner and at the time was my roommate.

Anyways, as time goes on, I ended up moving to Vegas because that's kind of the next natural progression in hospitality. The nightclub world. Sure. I thought you were going there with how beautiful San Diego, San Barbara, and then Vegas. You were going to lose me on that one. Here's the thing. I want to go back a little further, though, because here's the thing. Entrepreneurs and people that are high level entrepreneurs all have similar traits, I think. What we found through this show as kids, what was your first hustle as a kid to make money?

Well, outside of the normal lemonade stand, we used to go paint addresses on sidewalks. So we just knock on someone's doorstep, get five bucks and, you know, offer to paint their address. Stencil it on there, buddy. That's pretty cool. I've heard that hustle before. I've never heard of that one. You've never heard that? Yeah, that's a good one. And that's one that anybody can do. That literally, spray paint, stencil, anyone can do that. Make it easier for the Amazon driver, for the Uber driver, for whatever else.

The Grubhub, you lazy bastards. At the time, the pitch was we would go into kind of older neighborhoods. Like, what if you need an ambulance, right? You're getting older. You know, you fall. Because at the time, Amazon wasn't really a thing. It wasn't a whole lot of deliveries. So, you know, it was more like for like, oh, you know, emergency services. And how old were you? How old was this when you were doing this? Oh, I mean, pre-driving, probably 12. 12? Yeah. But you had to drive. It was just you by yourself? Myself and I had a friend named Scott that I used to do it with. Okay.

And then when I was actually really young, in retrospect, looking back at it, it was very similar to your Chick-fil-A. I used to work at my dad's store. So my dad was an entrepreneur as well. He had a couple of businesses. And he used to pay me $2 an hour to work in his store as a kid. And at the time, I thought that was great money. And in retrospect, I see he was taking advantage of it. Were you making Nikes? Is that what you were doing? It's a statute of limitations, Andrew. We can talk about it later. The statute of limitations. It is over. So who came up with the sidewalk hustle?

Um, I think it was more or less just stole it more or less. I mean, like we just saw some good idea. Like, why are we not doing that? Yeah. Um,

you know so we do that on the weekends and summers things like that save enough money to you know go buy some toys and get into trouble um and that was kind of the first thing we did that kind of make some side cash but my first what's your first job what was the first job that you had well actually they're out of business now so i think it's okay to say so uh i was 14 and i worked full-time on over the summer at a fuel dock we used to fill up these big fishing boats with fuel i'm 14 years old and these are like fuel pump yeah the big industrial

three, four gallons a second of diesel. And it's not like a normal gas station where they shut off. They don't listen to it. But if you leave it on like 30 seconds too long, you have a geyser of 200 gallons of diesel in the air. All over you. Oh my God, it's horrible. You know, and I remember at one point, I'm 14 years old, and we used to have

I have to crush oil filters in this big hydraulic press. I'm sitting there trying to put them in and the thing's crushing, trying to take one out. It was something out of like 19. Can somebody call OSHA? Like this place is out of business, but I feel like they could do a retroactive. Our field manager, Stumpy, was really helpful in training me. Isn't that crazy? You could not do that. You could not do that, A, for just standards, but B, kids are so dumb at 14 anymore.

Are you saying that kids would be incapable of doing something because they would just de facto be injured with every transaction 20 years later? I think that... No, I'm not arguing with you. But I think kids nowadays, a 14-year-old is not the same as a 14-year-old now. 25 years ago? I saw somebody posted a meme or something and it said, why not to mess with people over 42? And it was like...

These people apparently were like, they had some skill set they needed by the age two. They knew how to cook meals by age five. They had a key to the house by seven. By nine, they left the house in the morning and didn't come back for the rest of the day. All they drank was out of a garden hose. Maybe they got a sandwich if somebody's mom in the neighborhood happened to go to the grocery store when they were there. They might have got a sandwich. They're like, yeah, these are the real people. These are the real screw-downs who would happen, people. Some real psychos. Yeah.

Now my son would be locked out of the house for like 20 minutes and be like, I'm starting. Whose fault is that though, right? Well, yeah. Okay. I'll take some responsibility for that. It's true. It is. Strong times. It is. Well, you know, I'll say that. He is a little tougher now. We just in high school now, which is crazy to me. You guys started yet? You started high school? No, next week. Next week. It's crazy. Crazy when you see him off to high school. It's nuts. So speaking of high school, you're done with high school. Now let's go back to college now.

So obviously the institution had nothing further to offer you, which I think is a story that most entrepreneurs, me included, can appreciate. Well, it was actually kind of a freak accident. So I used to ride motorcycles and I got T-boned when I was on my motorcycle. And that kind of put me out of commission for quite a while. And kind of coming back into that, I was, you know, $80,000 in debt from that incident. I was like, man, I really need to get back to school, but I also really need to work because I was kind of supporting myself through college.

And so it was like, well, do I take classes? Do I go to work? I was like, I'll take two classes and I'll work full time. And then two classes turned into no classes and kind of just ended up working.

And, you know, at the end of that, I was like, I need more. Where were you working? What were you doing? I was like a bar lead at a little cantina in Santa Barbara. It was fun. Don't get me wrong. Being a bartender in a bar town is like a celebrity. Oh, it's the best. It's the best.

Great. It's the, it's a few years my future wife will never know about. You know, great, great time. But I knew, I knew in order to progress and kind of hospitality, you know, Vegas was the next logical step. So I kind of put the feelers out and, you know, made my way out to Vegas somehow leaving the beach and coming to this hot, dry desert. Logical. Smart move. Smart move. Smart move.

So you're in Vegas now. What year is this you moved here? 2010. 2010. Yeah. Right. Okay. Good times. So I worked for one of the resorts on the strip for seven years. Got hired on as a bartender originally. Kind of worked my way up to a bar lead into management, into an operation management role. But I'm not a big drinker. I was never really a party one. You know, I wanted to go out and party. I'm kind of an introvert. And so...

the one thing that I was always kind of in a pinch for was, was food. I worked, you know, five, six to sometimes seven days a week at the win. And, uh, oops. Yeah. Oh,

We'll let that out. But you did. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm a workhorse, and that's kind of all I've known. I had my first full-time job when I was 14. In Andrew's defense, I've never actually heard you besmirch the good name of the wind. So it's not like I didn't worry about it. If there's any room you don't want to do that with, it's this one being sound. Colt is a shareholder. Hey.

One share. He has one share of the win. I'm sorry they missed earnings today. Well, he has one share. I already saw that this morning. He has one share not doing well. I'm getting murdered in the market. He's getting murdered. Down $3. So you're working for Colt at the win. What happens then? To be honest, I loved it. I love the culture there. But I'm not one to party, and I was always in a pinch for food.

And so at the time, my best friend was working for a company that did meal prep out in California. He was like, man, we really need this grocery store concept where I can just go in, grab meals off the shelf because I don't cook. I think I've probably cooked three meals in the past 10 years. I just don't do it. Some of the future wife also doesn't want to eat. Well, I don't enjoy it. I don't enjoy dishes. And so we kind of thought of this idea like, well, maybe we can reach out to this company, get the franchise rights and open up the model here.

They said no. So he said, screw it. We'll do it ourselves. So having no idea really how this operated. Obviously, you're coming out of the bar business. So you're figuring you understand food. You understand liquor costs. You understand bar costs. You understand labor. I guess you pretty much got that down. You just applied the food costs and the same metrics and the same...

the same cogs, everything, everything applies. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think understanding business fundamentals from a nightclub perspective is easy because the metrics are really easy to understand, right? It's how much does each person spend? You know, what's, what's the head count? You know, it's very simple metrics. There's no logistics, supply chains to deal with things like that. And so, uh, bar liquor, bar,

and shipments though can be a pain like you miss a keg shipment for your, honestly, just working in bars, that was the only time that was applicable. Yeah. The biggest problem with bars is somebody's always stealing. Yeah.

Somebody's always like, I don't care how good you are at running a bar. You're getting stolen. There's, there's, there's breakage everywhere through overpour, through skimming, through just not ringing. It's called relationship management. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So anyway, so you understand that, um,

And so you're not going to get your franchise. You're just going to start this out. So, okay. So let's, let's walk all the way through the building of foodie. What year was this? So this was in 2016. And, uh,

We kind of developed the model, and part of it is I have a business partner who is one of the most incredible salespeople I've ever met in my life. He moved to Vegas and within a year had a key to the city. He's an extrovert. He's great at connecting people. He's like that guy that has a guy for everything. It's phenomenal. And I think actually... Love that. Yeah. That's how I got connected with Chris was...

Alex met somebody who got referred to him and then Amy Lee, shout out to paleo angel. Yeah, there you go. Um, and so we had basically kind of the sales, Amy Ma, sorry, Alex Lee, Amy Ma, Lee Ma connection. Yeah.

So we had kind of the marketing sales side. You're ruining the podcast. You're ruining it. Stop. I'm just trying to give props where they do. Ruining the podcast. Ruining it. Jesus. And so the only part we were actually missing was kind of the kitchen aspect. And so we were kind of interviewing chefs and talking to people, and we couldn't really find anybody to execute our vision of what we wanted out of the food. Can I go back just a little bit, though? So let me ask you a question. So who developed the actual business plan?

Me. Okay. Was it a written business plan? Was it 30 pages, 50 pages, 20 pages, 10 pages? Was it? Five. Five. So five pages. So the reason I think this is so important and the reason I want to mention this is because I think when people go to start a business, they go online and they read, what do I need for a business plan? And then there's this like executive summary that's nonsense. And then there's just all of this filler that's nothing. Yeah.

And I'm here to tell you as somebody that has invested in a lot of companies, when I look at a business plan, I just want to really see the numbers, the vision, and I want to understand the drive of the founders. Outside of that, it's all noise. So I love that your plan was only five pages. I love that.

So were you guys going to bootstrap this up? Were you self-funded? Did you go look for outside investors? What did you do? So, you know, I'm a very frugal person by nature. You know, I was making good money what I was doing. So I had some money saved up. Same thing with Alex. And so, you know, our original idea was just to self-fund. We had enough to kind of get a small business going.

But we couldn't find a chef. And so I'm actually not the original founder of the company, believe it or not. So we ended up trying to find a chef, couldn't find anybody. And so we said, you know, maybe there's somebody out there already doing this that we can jump on with who could use our help, mine and operations, Alex and sales and marketing. And so what we did is we started ordering food from every meal prep company, every private chef in town, and just started trying food. And we ended up ordering...

up ordering food from this company called Ninja Fit Meals. And this guy, Bo, made it and had someone drop it off. We tried it and it was so far beyond what anybody was doing. We just approached and said, we want you for our model. This is what we want to do. And Bo at the time, I think I had like two employees like, no, I have my own company. I don't need anybody. I said, well, what would it take for you to get over? He said, no, no. I have my own company. I don't want you. And

And so we said, okay, let us buy into your company, your chef, you know, by trade. You went to culinary school. You used to, you know, work in the world of gourmet, took a step back to do this healthy cooking thing. Let us help you or you can get back to your roots and just cook. Because at the time he was kind of getting to the point where he kind of had to do a little marketing and had to do customer service and all these other things that he didn't want to do. And so we actually, to this day, I kind of joke around. We overpaid for his company.

by a lot sure um you know i think we paid like 50 grand for 66 of it which was way overpaying let's see again but we wanted him but but this is dude this is going to be like a master shout out to chef boba this is like a master class in what you do because for example as you're walking in and one of my guys says oh my god i love your product i want to buy in well he wants to buy in because he knows the product because the product is now successful

If you want to do what you did, what you've got to do is, like you said, try everything and find the diamond in the rough and find the guy that is the best roofer in the world that has no idea how to run a business. And then you come in and say, look, you just got to be a good roofer and I'll handle all the business, which is essentially what Colton's done. Right. So if you want to sometimes the easiest and best way, I love that you said that I'm not even the founder. The best and easiest way to start a successful business is not to start one.

It's to find one that's underperforming for reasons that you can solve because they lack in, they lack in the places where you are strong. That's a great way to say it, John, for the way, not, not,

not chasing down insolvent concepts that are going downhill. Right. Because I've heard of some really crazy stuff where people are like, no, no, I can revitalize it. No, no. But it's to say, okay, this thing is solvent. It's not that it was insolvent. It's not that it's going anywhere. It's just stagnant. Yeah. It's not growing because they don't know how to do it. They were in city athletic club. They were in a couple of different places. The concept was there. And I remember eating it at city athletic club, but it was just sort of a one-off. I couldn't remember the name. If you told me, I only found out the name way after the fact. Yeah.

And I think a lot of business owners...

Let their egos kill it, right? Like I know a restaurant in town that is grossing more than anybody. They are killing it, but they are leaving so much meat on the bone because they just will not take any outsider in. No consulting. Yeah, but maybe they don't want to. No, it's not that they don't want to. They truly think that they're doing it right and they're just bleeding left and right, but they're making so much money. Like the bear on Hulu. So let me ask you a question now.

All right. All things being considered as to where you are now with the company, you say you overpaid for it. How much more would you pay for it now? No, no. If you knew the outcome was where you are today, I bet you would have paid four times more than 50 grand. I mean, probably knowing the outcome, but that's kind of thing though. Well, it's kind of one of those things where by himself, you know, that single component, it wasn't worth that much. Even with just him and me, it probably wasn't worth that much with, uh,

him, myself, and Alex, who does the marketing and sales, that's the synergy that works, right? That's what actually made it work was the fact that we all have such different personalities, different talents, different temperaments. I mean, we bicker like old married couple, but it's great, you know, and that's really what's

has pushed us forward is we all know what we're good at. We all stick with what we're good at. And we consult everybody else because we, I know I can go to Alex, like I suck at sales, man. I, this person wants to do this collaboration with us. I can't close this deal. I need you to jump in for me. And he'll be like, great. I got this. And just like with him, he is, I have this crazy idea. Will it work? I'll sit there and crunch the numbers and be like,

No. Right. And so like we, and we don't hold that against each other. That's great. Yeah. Some preach that all the time. Some of the partnerships fall apart because they partner with the same, they partner with themselves. Yeah. Can you say who you guys partner with now?

As far as like influencers or like local influencers, major organizations? Oh, yeah. Well, so the last big partnership that we actually did is we are the official sponsor for the Raiderettes. So that's like the last, I guess, big sponsorship that we picked up. And, you know, looking back five years ago when we were doing, you know, like.

a thousand meals a week, maybe like the fact that like, we're that we're getting that high. How many meals are you doing right now? Uh, I think last month we did somewhere in the realm of around 120,000. So averaging between three, 4,000 a day. Okay. All right. So let's get back to chef Bo. Cause I gotta know how we go from chef Bo. We're going to give you too much money to get in where we have a production facility capable of doing that type of business on a fresh product. Yeah. Non-frozen.

That's quite the journey. And this is, what's the timeline? That was five years? That was five years ago, yeah. Actually, we just celebrated our five-year anniversary last month. Okay. So one of my favorite things, if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, I can't get shit done, you literally have no excuse. This is pretty amazing. So let's go back to this. So Shepo agrees. You overpay for him. You've got it. You're using his commissary, his two guys to start out. Mm-hmm.

Tiny kitchen. So what comes first? Obviously, you like the product. Is it let's start driving sales, and then we'll staff to the sales, or do we staff before we drove sales? So the kind of first thing that we had to do is really pick apart the business and pick apart the books and do a full audit. And what we kind of found out was, in some cases, he was actually selling food for less than it cost him to make it. He was losing money. And again, he wasn't a business person. He's a brilliant chef. Yeah.

Not, you know, he was, I think he'd missed some tax payments and he didn't have his, you know, finances in line. So the first thing was like, well, we need to figure out where we're bleeding money first. Cause if I drive sales and I'm selling food for less than it cost me to make it. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Right. So I'm increasing the loss every day. Exactly. Right. And so we, uh, we kind of had to plug the holes first and, and we knew we were going to rebrand, uh,

And so we kind of almost used Ninja Fit Meals name as a testing ground. Because we said, you know what, the first year, money isn't the currency, information and data is the currency. And so for the first six months, we basically rotated the menu every single week, went off the wall with dishes, just try things,

Got tons of feedback, reformulated the model, reformulated the recipes. So really the first six months, it was just a learning curve. Let's back up and talk about that. So when you say the first year weren't about sales, they were about data and learning, how much were you guys prepared to lose in that first year?

How much going into it? Did you say, okay, look, we're going to look at this as an investment in the product and investment, our future. What is the number we're willing to swallow for, for your one? Right. So, so part of the deal in buying in was that we would provide essentially a safety net capital, you know, and it was somewhere in the realm of, I think, $80,000. Okay. And we were, we were on track to lose that. I mean, we're losing one to $2,000 a week. Um,

So he was bleeding slow. It wasn't like a... He's still bleeding. It's small overhead, though. His shop was only 900 square feet with two employees. And we weren't paying ourselves yet, which was...

you know, half the staff. So, so yeah, we weren't, we weren't bleeding, but we were where we were bleeding was just trying new things, right? All the food we're having to buy for R and D and we're delivering seven days a week. And sometimes we only had like one or two people on, on a route for deliveries and they're on opposite sides of town. So just to get the food to the customer, losing tons of money on. And, but, but it was such a good learning opportunity because what we found out was

well, it's not just like a bunch of bodybuilders and fitness gurus that we're catering to. It is real estate agents or doctors, lawyers, like those young professionals and people that are just busy but want to eat healthy. And so that was really our chance to kind of

tweak the brand, if you will, and change the menu development concept to kind of cater to that niche of people. So it was great, that learning. So you go through the first year, you get all your data, you understand where you're going, and you've narrowed it down.

Obviously, just from the model of delivery, I would say, so your problems probably were going through, were getting food costs in line, pricing the property properly, pricing the product properly. You can tell what industry John works in. Pricing the property properly. Well, exactly. But getting the right price on things was probably tough. And then I'm guessing the second problem was probably going to be logistics, because how do you figure that out? Yeah.

Yeah, so, I mean, when we first started, you know, we were trying to...

you know, go as bare bones as possible. So our, even our route, like our routing software was horrible. We're using this app that's, that was made for road trips, like, you know, like mapping out how to get to people's house. You know, now it's a little more complicated, but at the time we were said, okay, what's it, what's it, what's, how will we not bleed, you know, as fast. And so, and at the time too, my, my girlfriend at the time was like, I never see you. You, you, you leave before I wake up, you get home after I go to bed. I never see you. I'm just going to start coming to the office with you and helping out. I'm like,

Hop on board. Threaten me with free labor. Yeah, great. Can you make Nike tennis shoes? And she's actually a huge asset because she has a great attention to detail. So for the first year, she worked side by side with us as well.

And so, you know, the problems in the beginning were really kind of just figuring out what, you know, the model. Right. And so there's like standard ways to run a restaurant. Right. There's a kind of a operating manual of how restaurants typically run or how to run a real estate agency. But when you come into kind of such a new business model, there's no kind of standard way of operating. So one of the hardest things to figure out was, well, how do you actually operate this business? Yeah. And that was a lot of trial and error. And it took us probably a good, I would say, year.

and a half, two years, it kind of developed even to where we are now to kind of get to a point where we said, okay, yeah, this is kind of what the model looks like. I would think with three people involved like that, right? I would think that there would be some ego bruising during that period. Like I'm going to come up with this idea. We should do it this way. And then it's all of a sudden like that this ain't working or it doesn't work.

Was everybody pretty flexible through that time? Did everybody understand the need for flexibility? Because this is that that's also what you just said is one of those crucial times that burns a lot of businesses down because people get so married or fall in love with their own ideas and their own process. They can't let it go when it's not working.

Oh yeah. And I think like if I look back at Andrew five years ago and Andrew now, two totally different people because the things I've learned through that process as far as just, you know, kind of like psychology of people and even how I, how I, how myself operates. And in the beginning it was, we don't, we all know, knew we didn't know what we were doing. And so we were very open to everybody's ideas. You guys were incredibly open ideas. Yeah. Like,

Carte Blanche. It was just a tabula rasa. Hey, what do you think? And you guys were extremely collaborative. That's why you get successful faster, right? Not by shutting down good ideas because it's not your idea. Like, for example, Colt, you could have recommended –

if the delivery driver is 30 minutes late, I get to hunt him. If I kill him, then I get to buy food for free. On Thursdays, like a special. Some pugilistic Friday. How many meals do you think you could get out of the average human body? Anyway, Andrew, sir. Anyway, back to reality. Equivalent of 600 chicken tenders. Oh, gross. What's your demographics for

for that kind of stuff. It always intrigues me because I would always think your demographics were certain sex, certain age, certain income. And I feel like Vegas...

is just throws those out the window. I feel like, you know, you got people lower income that still are eating healthy like that. Do you find that in Vegas or is there a pretty set demographic you deal with? - Yeah, I mean, one of the nice things is everybody needs to eat, right? And so everybody is a potential customer. There's, you know, maybe the bottom earners in Vegas where it might be priced out of their, you know, a little bit out of their price range. You know, so we're less than a restaurant, maybe a little more than the grocery store.

So most of our consumers, we skew actually slightly female as far as our current customer base. But yeah. I would not have thought that. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And hang out at their stores. It's wonderful. I would have thought that, but I'd have thought it would have been a big gap between female and male. No, it just, it's slightly skews female. Um, but it's really just anybody from, you know, 21 to, I think the starts to maybe to downtrend a little bit after 40, but even people in the retirement ages, we still have a really strong showing for, um, are you guys, are you guys actually priced?

more than grocery because i swear to god i've looked at some things and you look at the price per meal what's your average price per meal like 899 9 bucks yeah yeah nine bucks price per meal but it's yeah the whole thing like go to a grocery store now go buy your ingredients figure it out you may have some leftovers it's crazy it's like the difference is leftovers but it's not packaged ready to go it's crazy so let's get back to what the trap the trail here so

You figured out the first year, you got it done. When do you do the rebrand? And when you do the rebrand, again, do you staff to the projected business or are you growing in size as you scale in sales? Because this is something a lot of people struggle with.

And you obviously have scaled up very, very large. Right. Option three is triage. Well, actually one, one thing we actually were horrible at and we still are, I guess, horrible at it is, uh, you know, guessing the market size. We didn't know how popular the model was going to be. And so when we kind of were first opening, we, we designed everything to say, okay, we're probably going to be averaging 30,000 meals a month. We think that's a, you know, about full market penetration for, you know, the meal prep industry. Uh,

And so we built the kitchen. So when we did the rebrand, we actually now we kind of did that to coincide the store opening because before we were just online, we would just deliver. And then when we opened the stores, when we kind of did the rebrand, rebranded as foodie fit, open the store and the delivery service kind of together in one, one big push.

Um, and so we built a kitchen to only handle a thousand meals a day, something like that. And by the time we got that going a few months into it, we'd outgrown it. And, uh, yeah, it was so, so we staffed up to do that, to do that. Well, real, real quick. When you, when you, when you, when you built the comma, you have a commissary, right? You don't have kitchens in your stores.

It's commissary. Well, so the first door actually had a kitchen attached to it. Okay. Got it. Okay. And so, you know, the whole space, the whole unit was maybe 2,600 square feet. Was there, was there a chance to expand in that current space? So we actually knocked out the, uh, the office and expanded the kitchen. But by the time that construction project was done, we had basically already outgrown that.

Well, this is, you know, again, here's another little fun lesson. Kids, if you're going to go rent commercial property, if you think your business may grow or you're looking at it to grow, always try to make sure that where you're buying, there's expansion.

Because otherwise, all the TIs that you spend to improve that space are going to go pretty much up in smoke, which is what happened to you guys. Here's a little fun tip I'll give you. If you're going to rent space, if there's an end cap and an infill piece, always rent the end cap because the chances, if you have the end cap, if somebody's renting the end piece are going to be pretty low, you can always grab it. Man, it's really strange that he said that. Is it? Is that what you did? Well, yeah. So we actually ended up- Hey, look at that. And most landlords-

- Don't want that. - They won't let you. It's called first right of refusal. Put that in your lease for sure. - Yeah, so we actually ended up taking over the two units next to that store as well for our kind of corporate office space. And so we were able to take over the majority of that building that we were in. And we ended up, what, two years ago now is when we actually opened up our large commissary facility. And I always said, "Oh, if we outgrow this commissary facility,

I probably won't. These are good. These are good problems. And now we're like approaching that because we built it to say, okay, we can do 10,000 meals in a day. And our, and our business is very cyclical where, you know, everybody wants to come in on Sunday, Monday and load up for the week. So, you know, I think on this past Sunday, we are, we, we did something like 6,700 meals. Um, so they had to cook, cook during their shift. Um,

And we're getting to a point now we're opening a third store, working on a third store, Northwest. And by the time that one opens, we're basically going to be maxed out at our current facility. Again. Again. So question, what is the, and I'm just curious, this is going to be like a nerd, a nerd stat, but how many humans per, like how many meals per human? Like how many, like for example, how many, when you're looking at hiring or staffing or expansion, how many,

How many humans do you need to make 100 meals? I mean, what do you need? So currently in our kitchen, the ratio is somewhere in around one human for every 150 to 200 meals. It actually really depends on the menu. And so one of the things that's so nice about, let's say, like a Chipotle is it's

It's really the same thing in just different variations. With us, we have 35 vastly different menu items, everything from Italian to classic American to Mexican. So the, the, you know, breadth of food that we cook, it's much more detailed and we do everything from scratch. So all the sauces are made in house. We grind our own meats, you know, so we, we like to make sure everything is as fresh as possible and gets to the customer. So it is pretty labor intensive and,

And actually one of our kind of big initiatives right now is like, okay, what processes can we automate? And that's kind of the next big investment for us is how do we squeeze a little bit more production out of our current space? Yeah. How do you handle it? So you're making...

thousands and thousands of meals a day. How are you handling the logistics of getting them where they need to go? How are you handling that? So we do all of our logistics in-house. So we have, as of right now... Did you bring on a consultant or did you guys just figure this out? You guys built an actual logistics program with...

Like just all different types of technology involved. Yeah, yeah. So we have this expression that I would say, FIO, figure it out. And so we figured it out. So yeah, we didn't bring in an outside person. It was kind of just trial and error, you know, constant reiteration of how the process should work.

And so, you know, currently we have, you know, on a busy day, we'll do something along the lines of maybe a little over 200 deliveries. So we deliver every day. And so it was kind of just constant reiteration of how it should work. And that was kind of part of that first year was we were delivering multiple times a day in the beginning to figure out when people actually wanted to deliver and how they wanted it. So kind of going into scaling, we already had a lot of the answers of how it should work. Well, I mean, obviously with food being so expensive and

And it's so expensive right now. How do you forecast? I mean, what KPIs do you look for that really drive your purchasing decisions so you're not throwing...

thousands of dollars worth of food in the trash every day. What are you looking for there? How do you forecast? Yeah, so one of the nice things about scaling a food business is as your volume increases, you have more negotiating power with your vendors and things like that. And so we actually haven't had to increase pricing as fast as inflation because as prices increase, we go to our vendors and say, look, we used to do 50,000 meals a month. Now we're doing 100,000.

change our cost, you know, our cost plus how, you know, or change this contract, how it's working. We hedged a lot of our costs during the lockdown. So we actually went to a lot of our vendors, ordered, you know, pre-ordered

you know, truckloads of containers, things like that when stuff was next to nothing because we knew eventually, you know, things were going to turn around. And so, you know, we've been able to kind of offset a lot of that cost to the consumer through just the increase in volume. And so, you know, kind of that economy of scale as you get busier, the more efficient you get. And, you know, so we revisit, you know, our food pricing, you know,

but we actually kind of created a position who only manages inventory. So we have literally one person who just sits there all day and watches prices, orders, checks the pars. And actually I wrote a SOP this morning on how do we refine that process as well. So we actually have one person that kind of just sits and watches that whole thing. All day long. Yeah. But I would think you'd be more concerned about orders to back it up because you're such fresh. Right. You don't freeze anything. Right, right.

I mean that, I mean, so we actually, that's, that's hard. So I actually, so in the stores, I actually built an algorithm that learns essentially buying habits and predicts the pars of what we should stock on the shelves of the grocery stores. Um, and it's, and it's, it's pretty accurate where we very rarely run out and we very rarely throw things out. What are the strangest things that affect the algorithm?

When like one person comes in and buys out the entire shelf of one meal because they love it so much, they're going to bring it home and freeze it. That'll kind of throw off the numbers. But it's an aggregated buying pattern over a few weeks and it has adjustments based on if we sell out of something or if we have too much of something. So that tells us what to stock on the shelves. And the kitchen actually cooks overnight. So that way the...

The stores are stocked with fresh meals every morning. So we're not trying to basically forecast too far ahead. We're trying to forecast essentially half a day ahead. That's it, yeah. Do your stores send inventory? Well, obviously you see what they buy through the computers because you know which meals got purchased. You know what's gone. You do automated inventory management that way, yes? It's actually really hard to do it with us because it's so cyclical. We're on a Sunday and a Monday, for example, we'll sell three times as many meals on a Friday.

And so it's just the cyclical nature of the business through the week. So we kind of have to really keep an eye on the pars and the algorithm is basically just learning day by day. And so we don't actually have an automated inventory system because I built the program and did all the math for how the algorithm learns.

As far as the inventory that's in the kitchen though, what's nice is because we're so busy, our inventory turns are so fast that if I buy chicken, I know it's gonna be good for seven days.

I order it every other day. So as long as I can stock four days worth, I know I'll never run out and I know I will never have to throw any out. I want to point something out for those of you like me right now who are listening to this. If you are not someone that feels you can design an algorithm to track things in your business, there are plenty of consultants and plenty of people that can help you do this outside the math. You don't have to be Doogie Howser here that can apparently figure all this shit out on his own. You don't have to pull that together. But that's what I was talking about. So I know these, I know all of the owners. Yeah.

When you talk about three people that got together and fill each other's gaps. Yeah. It's one of the funniest because when you look at it,

Alex isn't sitting there running algorithms and crunching numbers when I walk into the office or something. You know who is? He is. When he said, I'm an introvert, I want to own the process. That's not the bloviation or the hyperbole. It is literally what you are doing Monday to Sunday. He went bloviation to hyperbole. I mean, back to back. That was bad.

back to back just that quick. It's been a while, actually. Oh, look how smart I am. Glowation, hyperbole. Look how smart I am. No, but trying to compete now because the algorithm guy's here. Oh. We got us over here. So their successes, though, from an outsider's perspective and partial, I've had inside glimpses, become...

because there is somebody that has their nose to the grind and is doing the data and the hard work and the stuff that most people don't want to do. And he's putting it on paper and is reviewing it and is writing out standard operating procedures and is reviewing resource manuals for the human resource department and talking to different companies. That is the absolute core and backbone of a successful company when you're scaling, in my opinion. I'm one of those people that I understand it's cool to be flash and get, you need both.

Yeah. Well, it's like, it's Alex is like, he's a brilliant like salesperson. And I always tell him like, he goes, well, I feel so bad. You work 90 hours a week. And like, I, you know, I just don't have that in me. I'm like, I don't need you to have that in you. Like just do the stuff that I don't want to go be the face, go, go shake hands, kiss baby foreheads, do whatever you got to do. And it's, and it's 90.15 hours a week. So let's be very clear. Yeah.

I see what you did there. He's like, actually, yeah, it's 90.15. Six, six, seven. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

you know and I hate cooking and so you know Bo you just cook you just do you and let me be an introvert and crunch numbers because I'm a nerd and I love that stuff and so the synergy is great partner with people who are smarter than you kids or those who want to do the jobs you don't want to do Bo's never been happier in his whole life I get it so how many employees now how many

So we were having trouble hiring. So we have one 105 that worked for us. And then we actually just now have a temp agency that's helping us backfill positions. So, you know, kind of total on staff right now is 120. 120. How do you keep them motivated? How do you keep them happy? That's a lot of folks. Yeah. I'm still trying to figure that out. You know, I think part of it is we have a core set of people who, you know, as a business grows, they see the growth and they want to be a part of that. And that's, and that's motivating in itself.

But, you know, everyone talks about, you know, you have to build great culture and, you know, everyone is so stuck on like foosball tables and, you know, beanbag chairs. Like, dude, just treat people with respect. You know, like that's all it takes is when they have an issue, listen and do your best to understand where they're coming from. And I can't tell you how many times I've been burned, man. You know, loaning money or, you know, helping someone move or, you know, like I've been burned so many times by staff, right?

But in the end, like that's kind of just what it takes. Like they have to trust you and you have to trust them. Yeah. You just, you can't, you can't let the sins of others affect the relationships with all. I've had that. I've had three or four clients that either worked for you at the time or then went and worked for you after they were my clients. And I've had them say, Oh, I'm working for this great company. Well, what is it? Oh, it's foodie fit. They make these meals are so wonderful, blah, blah, blah. So you get that organic, you know,

sort of feedback it's been pretty nice for me to hear because I you know I'm lucky I get to see them grow into what they're becoming can I ask an uncomfortable question because I'm just curious because your company has something that does kind of drive me crazy and it's not your company specifically it's not it's just this thing that is it is becoming very prevalent in a lot of businesses the default tip me when you purchase something in a store

So this was actually a- Can we talk about that on the point of sale? Yeah. When you go into the store and you grab your own food and you walk it up just like you would at Walgreens or Sprouts or anywhere else-

They turn the screen on you. They turn it. So can you talk about that? It is an interesting question that I struggle with personally. Yeah, we've talked about it on this show. And it's not a shot at you. It's not a shot at Foodie Fit. It's just a question as to from the business owner, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, and so I am one that is conservative by nature. And so...

That was kind of always my argument and was, well, this is a retail environment. This isn't like a normal tip environment. And so the standard we have for customer service in our store, I believe, is probably...

you know, one of the best in Vegas. Um, and I don't, you know, anytime you go to the store, I mean, when we tell them is when people walk in the door, make them feel like they just won an award, do whatever you can to delight them, open the door, carry that, carry their, their groceries out, shop for them, like do whatever you can. And we kind of have this metric where we say, okay, with every customer, you have to have a connection that isn't related to the food, right? Start conversation, right? And, and have that connection. And,

And so we do have a kind of like default tip thing if you want. However, you know, it's not like 20, 25%, 30%. You know, it's more along, I think we have it set for like 4%. Can I ask a different question? Can I ask a different question based on what you just said, though? You are a self-proclaimed introvert. Okay. You're walking into your own store. Isn't that your worst nightmare? Yeah.

i'm just and it's my super bowl so yeah no no i mean it's somebody's super bowl but but but as an introvert is that like dude i just want to get my own basket i just want to pick up my food at peace i don't want to talk about my life they're not over there because you usually have like pretty young energetic like yeah they're great they're great don't get me don't get me wrong i have i have never been treated with anything but the utmost cheerfulness and respect when i've gone to your places man but i just i'm curious based on the what

the experience you just described, that would be a nightmare for you. Yeah. Well, I think there's certain levels of introversion, right? So like, like I just have a tank that will run empty if I spend too much time doing big social activities. Right. So you give me like a big dinner with a bunch of strangers and I have to small talk the whole time and it's not meaningful conversation. I got to talk about myself here. So that's a good thing. It is a buffet. This is buffing my ego. It's great.

He gets to hang out with Chris. Chris, by the way, is the most interesting man in the world. I swear to God. That's what I said. I thought he'd eat a human. He's that interesting. Cole, there's a difference between eating a human and admitting you would eat a human on a show that could be used as evidence one day. What he does in his own personal time is his business. We'll talk later. Who he chooses to eat is up to him. There's a difference between peeing in the pool and peeing in the pool.

Shout out to Demetri Martin. I went out to dinner the other night. You know what their auto gratuity was? What?

Do you know how much it was? Autograph. It was probably the default now. It was 23. Autograph, huh? Yeah. I was shocked at that. Yeah, I think that's... I worked in the service industry. You worked in the service industry. I love the service industry. I always tip. I do, too. But 20% is fine. Like I said, I like the fact if you say, okay, 10% to the retail clerk, I'm thrilled if that was an option.

They say 20%. I'm like, this is a weird type of inflationary activity, right? Where you're now subsidizing people if they don't pay their employees well or if they don't treat them well. If you're going to this thing, well, I don't, I'm not going to pay them well. You pay them better. So it's a 20% inflation. It's a 20% tax. Yeah. Right. On a, on a, for a retail without service.

Yeah. That's asking for something you're not getting. So if you're serving somebody and you're doing something and it was really charming person behind the counter and they're shopping with you and doing all this stuff, then I have no problem. And I will say this in the experience that you described is the experience you get when you walk in there, they're like, what do you like? Can I help you with anything? So they are trying to go above and beyond.

And that was more of a... Stores that you walk in and they're like, here's your free dinner. Yeah, it's literally nothing and they turn it around. You know what's worse? The charity donation. Yeah.

Isn't charity terrible? Speaking of which, Foodie Fit just dropped off 1,700 bags of school supplies. Erasers, glue, pencils. I think I have a clap on here. Hold on. Give them some. No, that's not it. That is not it. That was absolutely horrifying. That's the cult brain music. Foodie Fit, they do this thing called...

Prep for school. Prep for school. Yeah. With lower income neighborhoods. I love that. I love that. 1700. So these kids come into their first day of school. And they have stuff. And they're walking. Because you know a lot of times public school teachers are subsidizing their students. These guys do their own efforts with Justin Bloom of Bloom Fitness and with Mike

Michael. Yeah. We have a few, a few kind of sponsors that help us. Michael Sheedy fitness, Justin Blum from, from raw fitness, you know, a bunch of other incredible sponsors. And we started off with just doing one school. So we kind of concentrate on, on title one schools. And so this past year, you know, shout out to Alex Lee, my business partner, cause he's kind of the spearhead of, of all this.

You know, they were able to provide school supplies for every grade for three schools for the entire school. I love that. Unreal. You have to see the effort. That's unbelievable. You know, it's funny. One of our agents, Ryan Ngo, that works here at Simply Vegas, his team this weekend did something similar. They donated. It wasn't nearly that to that level. He's obviously his business is at your level, but...

They donated 250 backpacks, which I thought was amazing, to a Title I school. And I kind of came on and I celebrated him to the rest of the company. And I was like, look, this is a lesson in life. If you want the community to be interested in you, first become interested in the community. It's how to win friends and influence people at its best.

greatest level through business so i i i commend you to do that i love i love purpose-driven businesses i i am a purpose-driven business with my real estate stuff i i love that i think it's amazing they had so many people there packing bags the community was involved because your business partner all those people were saying hey by the way you're now doing this you're now coming out and packing these schools and different firms everyone's invested involved they had a uh

Henry Ford era conveyor belt of human beings packing all these things for these kids. It's not completely altruistic. It's basically a way for us to try out new... New Pena Cafe mocha menu items. I'm curious about this. What do you do? So you have waste. You obviously have stuff that's on the edge. You're getting rid of it. What do you do with it?

Do you donate it? Do you pitch it? We actually have very little waste. Good. Yeah. So part of it is because we know what the numbers are exactly what we're going to need for the following day, we cook to that. And then if it gets to the stores and it starts getting close to expiration, so if it's on the shelf for more than two days, it gets discounted.

Um, and then it gets picked up pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we, we, we end up throwing out almost zero meals from the stores. And then as far as the stuff, you know, kind of in the kitchen that gets thrown out, it's very little. Yeah.

So now, dude, you built this amazing business here in Vegas. So the plan now is going to be to grow this thing exponentially. Give me the plan for worldwide domination. Let's hear what it is. So the next step for us is kind of focusing on technology. And we focus on a lot of technology in the cooking aspects. We have like self-cooking ovens, right? So Bo will go in our kitchen at our headquarters, right?

We'll say, all right, for this dish, I need this cooked, you know, the steak cooked medium rare, but charred on the outside, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the ovens essentially have, you know, can sense the temperature of the product, the condition. It can change the humidity temperature. The giant brava. Like I have a brava at my house. Same thing, but in giant. Right. So he programs that, it uploads it to the cloud, and then all the ovens in the network know how to cook that thing.

And so, you know, the next kind of step for us is on the packaging side. So we're actually working with a food scientist right now. Okay. Okay. Okay. I for one, stop for a second. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop for a second. So,

You guys made a considerable investment in equipment. I mean, just monstrous. Is that something you guys were able to finance? Is that something you were leasing? Is that something that you have purchased? Finance. So we took advantage in 2020 when the market took a dump and then basically they were handing out free money. Yeah. You know, so for a business that didn't have incredible revenue to go get, you know, a few million dollars at 3% is...

historically unheard of. And so, yeah, we, we, we took advantage of that and we ended up actually buying a kind of dilapidated building, um, that used to be a USDA kitchen. Uh, it had been, been abandoned for a little bit. So we basically went and got a loan, stripped the whole building, built it to use, um, you know, specifically for our business. And, and so it's, it's served us well because we got to basically design it from the ground up exactly how we need it to operate our business. Awesome.

So doing the worldwide expansion, is this something, are you going to go the, the canes route where you're going to do them all yourself? Are you going to try to franchise them out? What's the plan? Yeah. So, you know, uh,

Alex, my business partner, actually is in pretty close contact with Andrew Turing, who's the founder of Panda Express. And I've always had this dream like, oh, like how cool would that be to go public though? It's probably not a great idea because you have shareholders and people get upset when you don't make earnings like win over here. No, the worst thing you can do as a public company is make money. Keep your valuation as a startup. You start turning a profit. Now you got to multiply. I mean, you don't want to do that. But you know, it's kind of one of those things where we know that the food is at the core of the business and we need to do what we can to

to control the food. And that was, you know, one of the good lessons that we learned from, from Andrew at Panda Express was, you know, keep that stuff in house. And so, you know, our, our kind of plan now is to totally capitalize full market penetration here in Vegas. We think we can basically reach that ceiling by the end of next year. And then 2024 start expanding into new, the new markets. Are you going to try to, I mean, you're going to open up obviously new kitchens in those markets. Are you going to try to ship food from here there? Yeah.

- We don't know. - Investors, maybe you. - So we'll probably need an investment, but actually one thing we just did is, we knew this next phase is kind of outside of our expertise. And so we did some restructuring and so we used to kind of have this equal partnership and we knew in order to drive the company in one direction, we were gonna have to kind of change some stuff. So Bo and Alex had basically moved me into more of like a CEO role essentially.

with the kind of caveat knowing that I've never done this role before. And so we actually hired a CEO coach slash business advisor who used to be an executive for Tyson Foods, had his own food startup, ended up exiting, selling it for, you know, 300 million, something along those lines.

And so, you know, we actually brought him on. We've been working with him now for a couple months and he's going to really help us, you know, drive this model forward because this is something he's already done. Sure. It's easy to know success. Just follow success is an easy way to do it. Has anybody come with a check yet for you? Has anybody been looking to buy it? We get probably investment opportunities, you know,

once a week offers, you know, people coming in. Um, but we just don't have an efficient way to deploy capital yet because the model still isn't a hundred percent done. And so we think by the end of next year, we'll, we'll have a firm understanding of how we need to grow moving forward, whether it's shipping meals or moving to, uh, you know, modified packaging or, yeah. So, um, we think by the end of next year, we'll probably start looking for outside investment to kind of reach our ambitious goals, if you will.

Well, brother, when you get there, man, hopefully I'll be one of your first calls because I love the product. I think it's a great business. And obviously, you know, you guys got it down, counting down, Pat, which is amazing. Yeah, it's been fun. It's been a journey. Let me tell you. Well, this has been an absolute master class in how to build and scale a business. And I love it. It's so interesting. But you know what else is interesting? The mind of Colt. This is actually why I'm here. Yes, now it's time for a trip into the mind of Colt. Here we go.

Tripping in the mind. Five questions. That's what you guys think of me, that theme music? Yeah, that's it. That's it. So if you're just listening to something new that we're doing. I'm thinking human beings. Somebody gave me these. They're guaranteed fresh pod decks, interview decks. And they're questions you can ask if you have a podcast. And I just find them entertaining. And rather than ask people to come in, we just ask Colt. Because I figure his answers are probably going to be stranger and more interesting than his. So Colt, are you prepared for question number one? I really thought you guys had theme music that was...

No, just for you. Why can't we be friends? We'll add that. See, the problem is if we add that, then we'll get pegged for having copyrighted material. First question. You ready, Colt? Here it comes. If you could hire any wedding singer, who would you choose and what song?

Weddings? Tony Bennett. To sing what song? The Way You Look Tonight. Okay. Fair. Then it'd be Shakira. I'm going to say that while she's in jail in Spain. If you could try out... Why would you cheat on Shakira? You mean the tax man? No, I'm talking about her ex-man. Because have you heard her voice? Wait. What, Shakira? You did not watch my breakfast movie. You did not watch my coffee. Wow. No.

Shakira is a freaking icon. Keep her name out of your mouth first. Okay, here comes the next one. Ready? If you could try out a job for a day just to see if you like it, which job would you choose? A trial attorney. I feel like I'd be a great trial attorney. I feel like you'd be a great trial attorney.

No? You're a fucking liar, man. Can you curse? No. The judge will yell at you. Decorum is expected. I think you should be able to curse. I thought you were going to say Shakira's massage. I think you just want to go in and go, aha! Not Shakira's masseuse like Andrew said. You'd rather be a trial attorney. I think

You got to be a good trial attorney yelling at people. Not a cupcake tester or something. Yeah, no. Trial attorney. No. Human flesh chef. You don't want to try that for a day? I'm telling you, there's got to be a documentary about that. Bobby Flay. Yeah.

I don't like Bobby Flay because of what was he on? Entourage. Oh, yeah. Because he's an entourage. He did too good of a job acting. Don't like him anymore. What? Him and Tom Hanks, huh? That's it. Okay, we're going to get started. What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?

It's a story about being having a good life saved by that angel. Yeah. Oh, yeah. What do you tell the angels? That's it. I was going to say. I was going to say a lady came up and gave me a hug once. That was super nice. But, yeah, the angel. I mean, I don't think it's a...

That's not a human being, but an angel. Okay, the angel saving me. Yeah. All right. He just came in the form of a human. Six foot one. Six foot one, 180. Blue eyes. Blue eyes. Gorgeous. Incredibly specific stats. White hair. For a five-year-old. Incredibly specific. I think he had some khakis on. Okay. Six pack abs.

If you were in charge, what three items would you put in the office vending machine? I already know one of them. Oh, scotch, cigars, and...

Scotch cigars. More cigars. Burritos. Burritos. So I can see it now. Somebody comes in the office to talk about buying a house. They got a kid. Dad, can I get the vending machine? They come back with a glass of scotch, a cigar, and a burrito. Do you think your kids would be better if they had just a taste of scotch every day? Yeah, man.

I feel like they'd grow up. Then they could go and do 14-year-old jobs like you're doing. They don't drink enough. That's the problem. You know what I found? In a grocery store. A convenience store in the middle of Utah. They had the smoking...

the fake cigarettes, fake cigarettes, the Popeyes. How awesome are those? When men were men, the candy cigarettes that would put a file. I was up to a pack a day on them. God, we have to get a little cancer. I got two diabetes. That's a cancer, but diabetes is on the way. That's it. All right. Last question. Colt, if you could bankrupt one person or company, who would it be? That's not even a question. I,

I get two for him and his wife. And his kid. And for that, we will leave you. God. Oh, my God. You guys might have good dreams tonight. If you're still watching this for some reason somehow on YouTube, please make sure you like and subscribe. And if you listen to us on whatever podcast service you are, make sure you give us the maximum amount of stars. We're just going with that.

And again, the thoughts and feelings of Colton Amon and do not reflect the power. I feel like you'd like, you don't have to answer all resemblances of persons strictly for the purpose of the show. Do not resemble anybody in real life. They do not. They do not answer this question. Tom, who exactly? Right. So smart.

Jesus. Guys, remember, if you're going to move, move forward. We should. Do you want a vending machine of scotch and cigars? Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we have things we talked about on the show as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout.