YouSaid · the spoken record

Antonio Swad

lines on the record: 91
first: 2026-04-06
most recent: 2026-04-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, exactly. And then I developed the compound seasoning sauce, the lemon pepper was one, the garlic parmesan was another. Then we used the hot sauce as a base and mixed Cajun seasoning with it. And then that was a Cajun, you'd sprinkle Cajun seasoning on top of the wings, and it just looked fantastic. You could just eat them with your eyes, you know? And then we developed using fresh habanero peppers, the sauce that became known as atomic.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's Kay and Pepper and Vinegar based sauce. And we had a mild version of that, which was essentially half that and half butter. This butter called whirl, it's not real butter, but it's the base. It's a butter base. So we had that for sure. So we had that covered. But then we had a Hawaiian chicken, which was essentially a recipe that Rex brought over from his days in the cafeteria. Like a terrible.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And keep in mind, too, that these sauces that we developed were proprietary. None of them, a food salesman couldn't just open his notebook and say, oh, I'll sell you the same sauce that they're getting down the street. It was none of that.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're correct, and that's good for growing a company because you can buy chicken at a certain spec pretty much anywhere in the world. It's the sauce that makes the difference.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was, it had to be. I only had 22 seats. And in order to achieve the sales that I really wanted to achieve, majority of the business was takeout. Takeout business is great business. You exchange the money for the product and they turn around and leave, you know? Yeah. The integrity of the food, I don't think, is as good because as soon as you put a hot item, particularly a fried item, it starts to degrade. But people didn't care. It was good enough and people loved it enough. The flavors were interesting enough. That they came back”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Them back because again, it wasn't that I had to teach people to love chicken wings. I had to teach people that you can buy chicken wings from us.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The location wasn't the best. It was on the road takes a radical curve and this space in the shopping center was kind of like where the curve was most extreme. The blockbuster was on one end and there was a Remco rent-to-own furniture store on the other. But right in the middle where it kind of did this big bend. So it wasn't very visible. And again, it didn't have a lot of money to advertise. I ran these little tiny ads in the We had a free paper called the Dallas Observer and I would make up these catchy little ads and the observer was given away free all over the Metroplex. But you still had to convince people to drive from wherever to try it. You got to get trial. And once we got people got the food in their mouth, you know, we had a real good shot.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it wasn't. It was like, you know, people couldn't believe that I had a place that sold only chicken wings. And we were building it. Rex helped me with the construction. We were building it. Went into a Home Depot to buy some of this stuff. And a guy waited on me and we had our tape measures on our waist. So he thought we were like the contractors. He didn't really know that we were the restaurateurs. And he said, what are you fellas building? I said, oh, we're building this little place over there in Garland. He said, well, what's it going to be? I said, it's going to sell chicken wings. And he's like, and what else? I said, well, pretty much just chicken wings. He said, come on. I said, no, it's true. He said, let me give you some advice. You be sure and get all your money from that man because there's nobody can make a living selling nothing but chicken wings. And man, you talk about a gin drop. I remember walking out of the Home Depot going.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I thought that it was a great food to go with movies. And I had people coming on the lot already. And that's why we sampled to them, you know, and a lot of our customers were developed from that, you know, and eventually, you know, blockbuster, you know, went out of business, but by that time, you know, Wingstop was. Pretty well established”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a suburb. Yeah. And the shopping center, this is what it had gone for. It had a blockbuster video as the anchor. And to me, that was gold”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It didn't have a type one hood. It had a heat only hood. I don't know, but it wasn't big enough and it wasn't the hood I needed, but it had two restrooms. And to put in a restroom, especially an ADA compliant restroom is pretty expensive. So it had two restrooms already. And the first manager, Rex, very important in this story. He had some construction skills and he also had some good food training. And he worked for a cafeteria chain. And we used, even used a couple of the recipes in the first wing stop, you know, that he knew from the cafeteria.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh man, I was a vegetarian because of it was my way. And I remember the last time I had meat in my mouth at this time, it was when I was working up in Watertown. I came to the conclusion that the industry of commercially raising these animals was so full of cruelty. And the only way that I could personally protest it was to not eat meat. Quite honestly, it was all I can do. I was in the restaurant business. I had to sell meat. You know, but hopefully we'll get to that. I mean, I had to sell meat right up into the moment I decided I didn't have to sell meat.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Midnight, one in the morning. I mean, we had so much energy back then, you know, we were all younger and full of energy. And I would make up different sauces and we'd try them out on these people and say, what did you think? What'd you think? I didn't eat the chicken, but I licked the sauce.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Totally. Right. Totally, totally. I bought a used propane powered deep frat fryer that we set out back of our house on the deck. And after we closed the pizza stores, we had the employees come over and they were kind of my guinea pigs.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The chicken market, the price of chicken is set on what was called the Erner Berry market, and it was all based on the breast meat. And at that time, I'd never witnessed this, but they said a lot of the wings went to pet food manufacturers. Wow. And they boiled.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, a couple of reasons. The pizza restaurants had type two hoods. Okay, it's a heat-only hood. And even back then, you couldn't deep fat fry without a fire suppression system. It's called a type 1 hood”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm in the pizza business and I go to visit my friend and mentor Jean in Atlanta, Georgia, and he took me to a place with funny. It had a name, it's called Taco Mac, but the number one thing they were known for was chicken wings with a name like Taco Mac. Go figure. So he takes me there and I've never seen a dining room full of people and they're sitting there and there's chicken wings in front of every one of us.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, back in those days, there was a product made by Pierce Foods. It was called Wing Dings. And they were the tiniest darn chicken wings. They must have come off a pigeons. I mean, they were really small. But they were salty, and they had this kind of like a coating on them. And on Wednesdays, that was the free food. We gave wings and then a couple other things. And I could remember a time my manager, the general manager, came to me and he said, He said, man, these Wednesday happy hours, they're even bigger than Friday. People come in and load up on these wing dings, on these pierced food. They're terrible. I mean, there was just a little bit of meat on each one. They were so tiny, but people absolutely loved them. And I kind of remembered how people would have these big plates of bones and stuff. So fast forward a couple years later.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Columbus, I'll make this make sense in a moment. One of the side jobs of the waiters was keeping the free buffet in the bar side. They had free hors d'oeuvres every day from like 4 to 6.30. So then you would order.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And very difficult. Even with the Hispanic piece, which at that time, I didn't think that that was enough of a point of difference. I kind of wanted something else. And I had been studying franchising and I found what I thought was the reasons a lot of them fail. But I also studied and realized that if you want to build a company that's worth a lot of money, franchising is a way to build it and it's primarily the growth of the company is funded by other people. It's funded by the franchisee. And as long as I can control all the intellectual property and control the brand, that's what I was building intrinsic value in, in the brand. And that was kind of the genesis of getting in the chicken wing business. But I had a couple of Things in my past that made me believe a guy could make a living selling chicken wings when nobody believed that.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yet exactly. That's the old school way bootstrapping, I guess they call it, never borrowed a penny along this journey from anyone. And I can see why. It's very difficult to get somebody to loan money on a restaurant. The failure rate's incredible. But I used my own money all the time, used equipment, and did the work, the construction work myself. And then opened a third and then eventually a fourth store. Pizza Patrone. And by this time, it was kind of, at least in my head, it was a brand, you know, it was the Hispanic pizza brand. I got interested too in studying franchising. And people would say to me, why don't you franchise the pizza store? There was a million pizza franchises at the time.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And after being open a little more than two years in that first location, I was able to open store number two. And this time, instead of being the second densest Hispanic neighborhood, I looked for a location in the first, most dense area of Dallas called Oak Cliff. And Bernadette and Bernadette eventually moved. She moved to Dallas and was a tremendous help. We rented a third floor, one-bedroom apartment, and every penny that I made, I put aside to open a second store. That store from the beginning got off to a great start and produced profit from the first day”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it was a concept based on respecting the customer and showing them respect, but they never got. Most of these people were laborers. And they would come in after work and they were the people that were coming down off the roofs and a lot of construction people. They're working people. They were able to order in Spanish. They got exactly the pizza that they wanted. It was an incredible value and high quality food. And they told their neighbor. And the business grew organically that way. We didn't have any money to advertise, but they told their neighbor and then you go from 50, 60 pizzas a night to 80, 90, and eventually 200 on a Friday night or 300 on a Saturday night.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was in business and I hired a guy that spoke mostly Spanish, a little English, Juan Salis. He became my first store manager. And we had this system when somebody walked in the door, if they were black or white, I would wait on them. And if they look like they were Hispanic, he would greet them in Spanish. And we were never wrong. And it got comfortable in that customer base kept building and building and building. And eventually the store started to do very well.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I spoke no Spanish, none. And I always worried, man, what if I'm not getting the exact pizza that they want? And so I kind of had this idea, what if I could get all the Hispanic business and didn't worry about anybody else and made it easy for people to order in Spanish? And that's when I decided to change it to Pizza Patron. And I looked first thing I did was I looked in a Spanish language dictionary to the peas because I wanted a P word, the double alliteration kind of work. And one of the first words I came across was the word patrone. And it was about the same number of letters. And what it said, a patron was really stuck with me. It said the benevolent leader of the community.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you know, people would call that we had a phone, we took orders by telephone, and the first question is do you deliver? And we would say, if we said no, they'd hang up immediately. So I trained my guy and myself to say, we sell a large pizza, cheese in one topping for $4.99. And a lot of the customers were made that way. But the thing that really turned it around was, and I didn't know this when I leased the space, was the preponderance of Hispanic people. I didn't know that it was the second densest Hispanic neighborhood in Dallas. And many times I would take a pizza order from a child who was translating for their mother or dad.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really rough. It was like order of robbery, you know. But we had something different. I had five dollar pizzas, a large cheese and one topping pizza was $4.99. Wow. And even back then, that was a good value because pizzas were actually way more expensive than that even in the mid-80s.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it was whole pies, but I had a point of difference, you know. Here's my point of difference. We didn't deliver pizza. And everybody in their brother, pizza delivery was poppin' and people would say, you're never going to make it if you don't deliver. But even dominoes wouldn't deliver in this immediate area because it was too dangerous.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There is nothing. I couldn't hire anyone. I bought a used blodge an oven just like the one that I was used to. I bought a used 30 quart mixer, just like the one they said was way too small. And I didn't have money for a sign, but I did have enough money to buy a roll of red vinyl and I cut the letters out of vinyl and stuck them on the front window because that's all I could really afford.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Innate two things from you, and I'm like, oh man, what could these two things be? He said, I'm going to need a check for the first month's wreck, $500, $750 square feet. He said, and then a check for the security deposit, another $500. I said, those are the two things. He said, yeah, two checks. I gave him the two checks and he put a key in my hand and said, I'll be back in 30 days. I collect the rent in person. He said, be sure you have your money ready.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Back in those days, you know, it's a lot different. You could literally go into the city hall with a drawing you made yourself on a piece of notebook paper and walk out of there with a building permit. I mean, a lot has changed. My friend Gene Perkins introduced me to a guy that had a bunch of property around Dallas and it was not the best real estate, believe me. And I didn't know anything about this particular part of town. But I met, he introduced me to this guy, Victor Ballas, and he had a 750 square foot space in the southeast part of Dallas. And he agreed to rent me the space, but I was pretty nervous because I had a finite amount of money and not a great credit history. And he said, I'm going to.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Watertown. In Watertown, she came in for lunch, and I met Bernadette. I had this newfound knowledge of how to make pizzas. And I eventually I'm like, well. Think I'll move back to Dallas because I like Dallas and I didn't want to kind of go back to Columbus, Ohio with my tail tucked between my legs. But I always wanted to have my own business, you know. I always did. And it was just a matter of how I would get the money. I had this $11,000, a little bit more, and I thought I could come to Dallas and start a pizza business.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's always a woman involved, too. And I had met the woman that eventually became my first wife. Bernadette. Yeah, I met Bernadette like in the 10th month.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was called the Village, and it was actually not even in Watertown. It was in a suburb of Watertown called Black River, New York. And during that year, one of the things they offered was they offered, they had a pizza, they made pizzas literally in the corner of the restaurant with a little four-foot sandwich table the guy used as a pizza make testable and had a 30-cord hobart mixer, which is everybody will tell you that's too small to make pizza dough. But they had a guy there that was studying to be a motorcycle mechanic, motorcycle Mike, and he was the pizza guy. And I had... I work seven days a week. And, man, I grew up a lot. I was there a year. And by that time, I used it as a laboratory for learning all about pizza and how to make pizza. And I was able to save $11,500 by saving all my money.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it said beautiful finger lakes region known for its dairy production. And I said, man, that sounds great. So once again, I got all my stuff loaded and drove and kept driving and driving and driving. It was in February. And I've never seen winter or cold like that in my life.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, being kind of always competing with myself, when they didn't know what glass or how to get it set up, it would frustrate me. And they would get their feelings hurt, I guess. So, you know, they say a lot of times things are a blessing you don't think they are at the time, but all of a sudden I'm here in Dallas and I found myself without a job. allowed me to be kind of in the job market. And one of the people that I met over the bar was a young lady whose father owned a restaurant in a place called Watertown, New York, and I had no clue where that was. And she said to me, hey, my father is looking for a general manager. Would you like to talk to him? I looked up Watertown, New York in my funk and wag. No encyclopedia”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I said, You're kidding me, right? I've set all the records. I'm possibly the best bartender here. He said, yeah, that's no question about that. He said, but you're too intense. I've got too many complaints from the cocktail waitresses. You've made too many of the girls cry. He said, and it's a lot easier for me to replace bartender than it is for me to keep replacing these cocktail waitresses. And I made him cry because I didn't mean to, but the cocktail waitress at the service bar was supposed to know what glass every drink went in. And their job was to pull the glass, ice it, and get it set up so the bartender just had to create the drink.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, with all the growth and all the opportunities, and I got the job, and I was a service bartender because I was very fast. But one night they called me in the office and I thought, honestly, I thought they were calling me in to give me an award because every time I would set a new record pouring so many drinks, they kept track per hour. manager said hey when you're done come in i'm going to need to talk to you in the office i'm like That's good, man. I knew I was busy tonight. He sat me down and he said, man, I'm going to let you go. You're fired.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, defining moment. I had a, he's a friend and a mentor of mine, a little bit older than me. And he was. A guy named Jane Perkins, and he was the area supervisor of the smugglers in. We formed a friendship and he provided a mentorship for me. Well, he eventually left that job, moved to Dallas, Texas, and I left Columbus to come out and visit him. It was a time in the 80s and the late 80s, and Dallas was pop and Dallas was really on fire. And while I was out here in Dallas, I learned of a new nightclub that was opening and I decided I'm going to apply for the job. And it was a nightclub owned out of by a group out of Houston that had some of the”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not only was there no expectation, there was no money, there was no money for that. My parents, both born in the 20s, and they were products of the Depression, and no one ever went to college. We were more, you know, I consider we were worker bees. You know, we were the blue-collar worker bees. And by that time, I was already pretty deep into working in restaurants. I was in the restaurant business since I was 15. And I remember graduating from high school and I had my Pondrosa Steakhouse uniform on under my cap and gown. And as soon as the ceremony was over, I went straight to work and pulled my shift. At that time, I was working at the steakhouse and I was there for a number of years. That's where I started washing dishes. And I eventually got promoted to the line, got to come out and see actually the...”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The principle of this group contacts me and he said, Hey, I'd like to have a meeting with you because I said, what's it about? He said, well, it's about paying you your money. I said, well, I've always got ears for that And we go upstairs at the Pizza Patrone office building and we sit at the conference room. And he said, I think I'd be able to buy your note from you. He said, I think we can give you $2 million for it. Said, wait a minute, you want to give me $2 million, but you owe me $12 million. Is that right? He said, yeah, you could look at it like that. And I looked at it and I said, let me tell you something. I said, I'll spend every dollar I have collecting every dollar I'm owed. And with that, the meeting adjourned.”
2026-04-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Wingstop: Antonio Swad. A Brilliant Idea — And a Nail-Biting Exit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT