YouSaid · the spoken record

Craig Culver

lines on the record: 99
first: 2022-10-17
most recent: 2022-10-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“There was a lot of work, a lot of hard work, a lot of care, a lot of love. I'll take Lucky anytime. But, you know, as the golfer says, you know, the more I practice, the luckier I got. It's the same thing in the business world. I take our business so personally because I do love it so, so much. But I think if you don't take it that way, you may not care as much about it. So I can't just let it go. I can't. It's who we are, who I am, who my family is. And yeah, I have sleepless nights. I had a sleepless night last night as a matter of fact. I'll always have a fear of it going in the wrong direction. I will. That's just who I am.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably more once. You started this business with your dad. Really 1976 sort of. And, you know, it came from a tiny place in Wisconsin. And here you are, the guy who started this business with eight almost nine hundred locations, one of the most profitable quick service restaurants in the US on a per restaurant basis. High demand to open new ones. And it's made you very wealthy. It's a pretty remarkable, right? Especially given that you came from a tiny place and some butter burgers and frozen custard turns into a national chain. How much of that, of everything we've talked about, do you think has to do with just how hard you worked and how much you grinded away and how much of it do you think is connected to just getting lucky and just the world being what it was at the time and it kind of bringing your business to cruising altitude”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It certainly is innovation is very, very important. But just because you bring in a new product doesn't make your business necessarily stronger. New things, I mean, it's great if you hit a home run and it's on your menu board forever or whatever, but usually give it six to eight weeks and it loses interest. So innovation is important, but being a leader in the business, that's far more important. And continuing to attract the right people to your organization, that's far more important as well.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know what to think. Nobody knew what to think. And I think the first thought that went through many people's minds was we got to lay everybody off. And I thought about that for a day or two. And I said, wait a second, we can't do that. We got to keep our people. We have to. For one, we got to keep them working. But the other is we've got a drive-thru. And let's take care of our guests going through our drive-thru as if they were coming into our dining rooms. In other words, hospitality. Let's keep our hospitality going strong. And like most people in the QSR segment, we had positive years. We were up. During the pandemic, we opened 101 restaurants and we were up a combined like 26% in comp sales. Wow. And I think most of our competitors would probably tell you similar stories.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, a lot of our competitors, as a matter of fact. But I'll tell you what Their assilent partner and their great partner”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was taking some money off the table, not that we needed to do that, but I'm glad we did it. And I'm glad that we did it with Roar.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You decide to sell a percentage of it in twenty seventeen, and that was because, I guess you couldn't really take much money out of the business, too much money out of the business up until that point.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we've had many, many offers and people calling and where you're going as we sold 30% of the business to our capital. Minority share family still has 70%. So we truly own the company.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yes. I mean, Dad and I and Mob too, I mean, we were business partners. They were my parents. But we were also great friends. I mean, we'd get together at least once a week. Dad mellowed as he got older. Mom was always as sweet as she always was and had a lot of great times together.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's interesting because the way you talk about your dad, your dad was always working. And he was not around all the time, but you talk about him with incredible fondness. He was tough on you, tough on your brother. But it's also almost as if your memories of him have changed and shifted as you've gotten older and you've kind of seen life through your prism an understanding his better. Am I right about that?”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Balance of life was very difficult for me because my life was Culvers, Culvers, Culvers, Culvers. I wasn't the best spouse and I probably wasn't the best father either in order was I probably as good to myself as I should have been. And I also talk about spiritual life as well. I believe it's very important to find time for your spiritual life. And I'm not saying don't work hard. But I find if you can find more balance in your life, you're going to be better at all walks of your life. I believe that. And so I probably should have stayed home more than what I did. I should have told my wife I loved her more than what I did. I should have gone to more of the volleyball games and soccer and stuff with the children. You know, I... Can't take it back, however, but I can be a better person going forward.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did have a philosophy on how we were going to grow. And it was kind of like within the 50 miles of the last restaurant that we opened. And we stuck to that until we opened in Texas. And my sister wanted to open a restaurant in the Dallas area and another gentleman who was originally from Chicago was living in Austin. He wanted to open a culver's there. And me forgetting how big Texas was said, okay, if I got two, we can do this. Well, it's so difficult when you don't have any scale. So I made that mistake many years ago, but we continue to grow in concentric circles. So we take our brand along with us. And that's very important because that takes a lot of the risk out of it for that operator opening just outside the last restaurant.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Yeah, that's right. Know, I wanted to punch him in the nose, but I never said anything, but I thought to myself baloney with that will be just fine. And I'll never forget that. I'll never will.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there was an event. It was a McDonald's event in Madison, a fundraising event for them. Ronald McDonald House, and I went and... As I was exiting that evening, a friend of mine, McDonald's guy came up to me and said, Culver, you know, you're as far as you're going to go.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's correct. And I think that was a mindset of most people back then. The most important person in your business, it's the customer. Stupid. It's the customer. No. It's your team members. And if they know that they're that highly regarded, they're going to take care of our customers or our guests, as we like to say, as if my mother was taking care of them. So, yeah, I learned that after enough people tapped me on the back and said I'm going someplace else to work or going to go do something else. I always hated that tap in the back because I knew what it meant.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How did you read that you have said in the past that your approach to the business was early days, earlier, you focused really on the customer. The customer was king, which is... Certainly not a bad way to approach it, but you realize ultimately it was your employees who had to come first. I mean, it sounds like that maybe there was a You know, it was a hard lesson to learn that maybe you were not focused enough on your employees as much as you should have been, certainly in the early days.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course of course and yes that's that's very frustrating but today and I visit a great deal of restaurants and I'm not going in there to be an inspector I'm a cheerleader but obviously if I see something that's definitely wrong I'll change it on the spot but that's not why I visit the restaurants that's the job of other people in our organization. They're the so-called inspectors but It's a partnership, it's a collaboration between everybody in our organization.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. But I mean, it requires a lot of hand holding, a lot of management, a lot of presumably a lot of travel too. Like now you're running a network of culvers. You are in charge of preserving the brand integrity. Did you ever go into any of the restaurants early on in the 90s and just get frustrated? Like, no, you're not, this is not right. You're not doing this right.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I remember that meeting finally I slapped my hand down on the table and I said, we're not changing the name of the butter burger to the better burger. It remains and will retain the name ButterBurger. And he stormed out of my office and eventually they sold a short time later. I wasn't going to change the name of the Butterburger. No way. Boy, am I glad I did.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Early on had a gentleman from Chicago that he wanted to change the name of the butterburger to the better burger. You can't call it the butter burger. My God, what do you think? And he said to me.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And really be leveraged. And that wasn't how we thought. And we assumed, or I assumed back then that franchising is easy. You just find somebody like yourself. And, you know, and it'll work. Well, that's not how it works. The first franchise experience we have was Went Sour. And it isn't as simple as just finding somebody like yourself that's going to work every freaking hour of the day. It just doesn't work that way.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Franchising is a quicker way to grow and it's not all your money going into each location. In order for us to grow that way, it would have been very slow. And eventually we would have probably had to go public to get more funds.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, so early on, yeah, we did grow by about 14 restaurants in a year's time in the early 90s. And we couldn't handle that growth. It was too much for us. We didn't have the infrastructure in place, meaning we didn't have the people in place to open those restaurants, to train those people. But so what happened is we decided to close down franchising for about a year to get the infrastructure in place. And what I found out was when you tell somebody that's interested in a franchise that they can't have one, they want it even more. So when we finally reopened, about a year later, I mean, we had a lineup of people that wanted a Culver franchise.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's true, and still yet today, I mean, yes, we continue to grow, and I know growth is important, but, you know, I'll never forget one of the things my dad said to me early on. He said, Craig, it's not important. How many restaurants you have? What's important is how many good restaurants you have. And you need strong leadership in every restaurant to make it work”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, but I'm curious. I mean, you had a successful business, then you've got the first successful franchise, and after that you really think you opened many about fourteen of them in the next year, nineteen ninety one, ninety two, but you still weren't, I mean, what was limiting your ambition and scale of this thing? Like, why weren't you thinking we can be the biggest fascist? Like today, you meet entrepreneur, right? And they'll say, and they have one shop, and they might say, we're going to be the biggest taco place in the world in 10 years. You hear that a lot, right? And of course, it doesn't always happen. You understand the ambition, but it seems like you were very, you weren't really that interested in becoming that big. Am I right about that?”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I still wasn't looking, you know, on a grand scale whatsoever. How could you? I mean, we weren't successful in the first one, but now we got a shot at a second one. What I did learn is we've got to put together a formal training program if we're going to be in the franchise business. Which we really didn't have before for the first franchisee. I think it was two weeks. Well, you can't learn this business in two weeks. Today is a 17-week program at Culverse. The other thing with an extended training period is you really get to know the franchisees, the trainees. And that's a culture building opportunity for your company. The stronger the relationships are, the stronger your culture.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And why? What was that? Because your vision for what Culver's could be changed, or were you starting to think it could be a national business, or were you still thinking, no, it's going to be maybe just a small number of locations?”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I won't say that they decided they didn't want us involved in it. And in other words, they have to pay a royalty and things like that for the name and everything else. And they decided they could do this on their own. They didn't need us. So they hired an attorney. We negotiated out of the deal. And I said after that event. I'll never franchise again.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After our third year, Dad and I looked into the possibility of franchising, and we hired a company out of Chicago, and they got us licensed to franchise in a few of the surrounding states and Wisconsin. Really didn't do any marketing on that, but family approached us. I won't mention the town because one year later it, uh, We got a letter in the mail from them saying, you know, we don't want to be part of this story.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, Craig, for the first few years it seems like it was clear to you that this was going to be a standalone family business, Culver's great community restaur That was going to be it. That was it Four years in, you did get somebody who was interested in opening a franchise. And I guess you agreed to do it.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, French fries, it didn't make sense to us. We looked at cutting our onions for onion rings and flowering and batter dipping them ourselves. But other than that, I mean, you know, as far as the produce and stuff, it all came in fresh and we sliced and diced everything. We made our own soups. We made the chili. The pot roast we used to buy inside rounds. They're about 20 pounds of big chunks of beef roast and we salt and pepper it, put onions over it, leave it in the roaster overnight, and then come in in the morning and it would be at a stage where it literally would fall apart. And I mean, when you came into the restaurant in the morning and you'd smell that beef rose, go, man, did it smell good? But today it's different. We've got suppliers that probably do a better job at what we were doing. Doing back then what we did”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It just fell in place. Dad counted the money in the morning. I'd take care of ordering the provisions for the restaurant. Lee and I were both involved with hiring our staff. But they had took care of the back office with the financial stuff.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, as somebody who runs a business with my wife, it can be really great, but also tough because everything's integrated, work, life, it's all the same thing. Did you, I mean, from a business perspective, your dad was involved, your mom was involved, you, Lee, how did you all decide who did what?”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Lee was a full-time mom and also working, I don't know, 30, 40 hours at least. Wow. In the restaurant. And one of the most difficult things and probably for any business is balance of life. And I mean, my balance was totally out of whack and Lee's was not easy. And I got three great daughters. And if it wouldn't be for Lee, don't know. I wasn't always there.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were doing more business. Just play more business and not all through the drive through. The dining room became much busier as well. Back then, I mean, our drive-thru was maybe 20% of our sales. Today it's in excess of 60% of our business. It energized our business even more than what it was.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we weren't very good at it, certainly to begin with. And still yet today, I mean, we're still in the kind of the Car Hop service.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was, yeah, it was. And it was just too difficult to have the carport and a drive-thru as well and the inside dining. I just thought that would be way too difficult. But a friend of mine who sold us our custard mix at that time said, Craig, if you put a drive-thru in this business, I think we did like six, seven hundred thousand dollars the prior year. He said, if you put a drive-thru in, you'll take this place over a million dollars in sales. And at that time, that was a milestone to have a million dollar restaurant. And so we made that decision. And yes, it was a tough decision because I remember, you know, the local TV stations from Madison coming out and do stories about us, frozen custard and carhop service and all that stuff. But we made the decision and we took it over a million dollars in sales, just like that gentleman said.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was something you originally did not want to do. You like the carport idea because it was still like AW style carport, right? You would go out and they take your order, they'd bring the food to you. Very nice, very personable. A drive-thru seems could be a bit more impersonal. Right? It was that your feeling about it, your”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's why the hiring process is so important. And just to hire bodies, it's not the right answer. I'd rather go without than hire people that just don't have a heart. And then once you bring them on your team, do you have a training program in place on not only the operations, but also on hospitality? Yeah. And then the leader has to set the example for everybody around them.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But how do you get the people in the restaurant who are hourly workers, hourly employees, to do that, to believe in that in the same way? It's very hard when it's yours when you're cleaning the floor, it's yours a little different. When you've got an hourly employee who, you know, for a variety of reasons may not have the same incentives to be like that”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I mean, I want to go where I'm treated with respect and kindness. And they fuss about you. Heck, why wouldn't you want to go to that place? But man, if you can add great food with great hospitality, that's a powerhouse. I don't want to compete against people like that, as a matter of fact.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's also such an easy, well, I shouldn't say easy, but it's a fairly simple hack. It's not expensive, right? If you have a restaurant that is in a competitive environment like a pizza place or a burger place, You can really differentiate it with customer service. You can really, if it's exceptional and people come in there and walk out of there feeling like they were treated really well, they'll go back.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What are they going to do? Do they do whatever it takes? Do they bend over and pick up some trash that might be on the floor or clean the floor or do whatever? Do they carry bus tubs back to the kitchen? That was my mother.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I'll take that story way back to my mother. Mom was one of those people when you walked into her place of business she just made you feel warm and fuzzy and she made you feel like she knew you like family, like she knew you for years and years and years. And what a competitive edge that is. And she set the example for us kids and for the other team members in like the farm kitchen, the Rits. And also the guests. When you go into a restaurant and you know who the owners are, don't you watch them? I do.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so our business started. People were coming from 50 miles around to have frozen custard or a butter burger. And it was a third year when we made money.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we had a banker that believed in us. He didn't believe in the concept of culvers necessarily. He believed in the Culver family. He had worked with us in other businesses that we've had, and he knew how hard our family worked, and he knew that we would do whatever it took. But saying that, midway through that first year, Man, if I didn't have my family around me, I would have thrown up the white flag. Got out of there and done something else. But my family was there in that second year in business is when we started to, the business started to work. Nothing really changed. It didn't. What changed was we had a marketing program? And you know what the marketing program was? Our guests were telling other people about this little place in Sauk City with a blue roof that serves butterburgers of all things.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, so you open up 84 and you're right across from a Hardy's and a Dairy Queen. Which is tough because our national brands And so, how did you do? I mean, were you sustainable by year one? Were you making a profit?”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had to attract everybody, and including all those people going by in the highway. We needed them in the worst way, and we needed the townspeople as well to support us.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you got to remember where we came from. We're in a small town. Small town in Wisconsin. And for example, Taco Bell, you know, has a pretty defined audience. Audience is maybe 18 to 30 or 16 to 30. Well, in a small town, you've got to attract everybody. Young people, the middle-aged people, the seniors. And coming from the supper club business, we were used to big menus and things like that. Thinking back, I mean, I would have loved to have had a simple menu like In and Out or something like that where, you know, it's just basically a burger. I mean, it's so much easier to operate. But again, in a town of $500 or $6,000.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we had other things. We had an extensive menu, chicken, bone and chicken. Park tender lines and of course our cod filet sandwich Really was a carryover from the Friday night fish fries at the supper clubs that we had.”
2022-10-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Culver's: Craig Culver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT