YouSaid · the spoken record

Todd Graves

lines on the record: 177
first: 2025-11-09
most recent: 2025-11-09
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

“On. I love the conversation. We could actually talk for another five hours. All right, let's go. Yeah, yeah. I want to show you the kitchen here, then I want to go back, and then let's go check out the apartment. All”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up, and I made more one of the first, man. It's like, because everybody's going to want to watch it and see it, and it's like, uh,”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Todd, you're going to do this for the rest of your life. I'm going to have conversations with founders the rest of your life. I really appreciate you taking a risk and being one of my first guests. Absolutely, man. I'm a big fan of.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No disrespecting Ross was like the startup founder that ran the business for two years. Nothing, they're like a baby, they're still in diapers. And even you, I love that you keep hitting, you haven't met, I'm just implying here, but like you're like, yeah, we can get to 95. Yeah, because you know there's no such thing as ever getting to 100. You're always looking for different ways to improve.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have an insane amount of information and knowledge. How many people work on the same thing for 30 years? This is like so few people because everybody wants to work we talked about earlier. They want to start scale sell. It's just like my favorite entrepreneurs. Sometimes I've got to speak to entrepreneurs. I just had dinner with one of the wealthiest people in the world. He's 76 years old. He's been working in the family business. He was six. Do you understand what's in that guy's head? Absolutely. It's so much more impressive than...”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In purpose, right? And so what excites me about talking to you today is that the people that listen, if they get a little nugget from this, a little nugget that changes their life that helps people, like that fires me up. The reason why you're doing this and you're so fanatical about having, and then the questions you sent me before, right? I had those questions I was able to wrap my mind around it because you wanted to be good for the listeners. But that's purpose, man. If he was just slapping something out to say, this is success and do it. It's what people learn and what people will benefit out of this conversation is what matters.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. I've been a customer's ears for, I don't know, four years, and then they make a podcast I've been listened to by like half a million people. You couldn't have predicted that. There's probably going to be millions of people that watch what we're doing. The fact is it all stems from the fact that you're a fanatic.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She would get letters from people that she gave a free makeup on a train talking about how much they love the products. Think about how many people that one woman that you spend 20 minutes with has told if she's a customer beer. Absolutely. Fanager fans telling everybody they...”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, big Neiman Marcus opened in Houston. That makes a lot of sense. You're going to have a thousand customers. Why estate? Why are you going down to Corpus Chrissy? There's going to be 20 people there. And just like every single customer matters. And so what she would do is on these trips, she wasn't, she didn't have any money to fly, so she'd have to take trains and buses. And let's say you're sitting across some S-Day, just like me and you're sitting across and she sees a woman. She's like, hi, I'm S.A. Lauder. Would you mind give me 20 minutes your time? I'll give you a free makeup. I make beauty products or makeover rather. It's like, oh, I guess we're just in here. Let's do this. And then she does it one-on-one attention. People like, oh, that doesn't scale. You can't do that. Bullshit. It's going to scale because you're going to do this for the rest of your life. And so she says 30 years later.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The one thing that comes to mind about this sounds crazy, but one of my favorite entrepreneurs I've ever come across I found this biography, autobiography of Este Lauder, published in 1980s. At the time, S.A. Lauder was not the public company. It was still very successful. It was a family-owned business. And she would get a lot of shit from people because they're like her main distribution channel was she wants your Bloomingdales or Neema Marcus to take care as a distribution center. So she goes, okay, if you're willing to sell my products that I love, that I gave my life to, I'm going to show up when you do that. And so she would go.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They maybe never would have tried raising canes that didn't happen, but you're the only game in town. And then you're like, oh, this is pretty good. And then think about how many customers that one person has given you.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Love what you said. It's like, I watched the levees break, and there's no way I'm ever going to jeopardize. Like, this is my life's work. This is a part of me. I cannot let this die. One of my great favorite quotes about this, as Steve Jobs says, victory in our industry is filled survival. You see this over and over again, biophysics, like, just stay in the game long enough to get lucky. You took two gigantic, you know, tragedies that were outside of your control, which of course you're going to run into things that are outside of your control. And you turn them in to not a light, you flipped it from a liability to an asset and it goes back to what have we been talking about? The fact that you're a fanatic, the fact that you're trying to create the world's best product in the category that you're in, the fact that you limit the amount of details you perfect every single detail. So now these people”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go to the next restaurant, wait, fly the next market, wave, you know, and do that sort of thing. But that's how you get galvanized, but that same entrepreneurial fanaticism. Like, I'm sorry, you're not going to get that from some private equity group with a bunch of corporate people. I mean, are they going to fly out of the country to do that and say, let's go take this in the restaurants and do this stuff? Is when it's personal to founders, these are my people. These are my customers in my communities. You figure out a way out a way. And that's why I just wish more founders would hold on. and stay with the business”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like the first that figure that out, could you imagine people now have a place to go get some food and not just eat at their house with what they get from the grocery store, man? It's like, our sales went crazy. We were able to do huge crew bonuses, customer bonuses, but it's that fanaticism to figure it out right now. And it's like me leading with the people. And I have so many people who are better at it than me, but like in the weeds with them in the restaurants, I flew to all of our markets and saw everybody. But at that point, too, I couldn't even go in the restaurant because he'd be cross-contamination. Like if I had it and went in. So I just waved everybody outside.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my God, you can't serve, can't do food. We were a necessary business. They said essential business to be opens, we need to feed the public because they felt okay with going through drive-through COVID because there was limited contact. But we had to learn everything. It was like literally, hey guys, we talked to the restaurant industries, all the authorities were like, we're going to tape off every six feet for people to be. We're going to put shields between people. It's like symbolizing the team like that. And then we took parking lots and we had three drive-thru lanes. When I tell you, when like we were the...”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some areas we open up like in Metari, which is just a mass population of people. We're the only restaurant. We opened up 30 days after the storm. Other restaurants didn't open like 90 days. We opened up in the West Bank. So you had the whole market to yourself. The whole market yourself opened up in the West Bank. We opened up in Harvey and like, it wasn't 100.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're coming back. They don't have a job. And we don't have money now, like we have vendors and things like that, to pay for their livelihood. And then three, people are going to start coming back to New Orleans and they need a place to eat. And we symbolize as a team and we have that same fanatical view of we're going to do it. We figure it out. I figured out how to get into New Orleans right away, talking to the governor's office. They got us passes to go in. They weren't letting anybody in. We worked with the state on doing bull water acts because we didn't have formalized bull water acts. You have to bull the water because some of the rivers and all these things that hit everything you had to boil the water. But we came up with working with them on like, how do you boil the water? How do you test it to where it's safe? Those sort of things. And we reopened, man. We reopened like we start off on the North Shore, you know, slid down those areas on the West Bank.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Every single Keynes location is 21 out of 21 out of the 28 were down from either power to damage to flooding to whatever it was. And so no cash is coming in. I got the companies levered to the hilt, right? I owe everybody. And in times like that, you think that the banks still want their money. Landlords still want their money. And I gathered people together. We had teams that helped people that actually had damages houses and do all these things. We had to keep up through like SMS texting to make sure everybody, we actually set that up pretty good before. And I'm like, look, we need to rally. And when I tell you, we need to rally, we need to rally to save this business. And I explained to them how we financed everything and they understood. And I said, we need to open up because one way to save the business. Two, we need a place for our crew to come back to work because they have bills too. You got managers and things like that.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Used to hurricanes. We knew what to do. We put crew to safety. Shut down the restaurants, buckled everything down. Hurricanes would come through. We opened up the next day. We'd have some power outage, whatever. But Katrina was different because it came up, went over New Orleans and it hovered. And then the levees broke, right? And we're watching on TV from our second location across here where you all go. We got this whatever cracks up this power to where we could actually watch television. And when the levees broke, we're like, we've never seen this before. What is this? flooding terrible, awful whole bit. And I thought, I said, man, you just screwed up bad. You screwed up bad. You just put this company in such bad financial condition because now there ain't no sales coming in. And we knew it was going to take a while to open up.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Subordinated debt. I mean, this is a one-page deal. Subordinated debt means subordinated to the banks. I know I can take that subordinated debt at $200,000, and the bank will look at that as equity, right? So it's $200,000 and a million dollar deal. So I could go into the location, get that finance. Boom. And I was creating cash when I did that because basically I could open up. I didn't have to pay my rent for 30 days. I didn't have to pay my vendors for 30 days. You know, all those things came. So opened up, got this cash flow in and do it. Boom, do the next one. Subordinated debt, no equity. And it was a really stupid way to finance a business, man. But I was young. I was 10 feet tall and bulletproof. We're going to work. I mean, I had zero fear of any kind of risk on debt, right? And so I was going in, creating cash, doing this stuff. I gave up to 28 restaurants and all of a sudden we have a storm coming in named Katrina. It's coming into Louisiana. We're used to...”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Comboing meals. I didn't combo, I had, you know, it was the box and a drink. We said it was combo it because people makes it easier. You don't have to decide to. It's like just get those menu items. And we created that. And so, but I got that on another conventional low. Now I'm like, you know, with the money coming in and doing this thing is I'm bankable, but I'm not bankable to where I want to grow, which ended being the 28. And so back then, bank regulations were a lot more lenient, man. So what I said was Why don't we go in to all these communities to go to these community banks? Let's say we want to open up in HOMA, Homa, Louisiana, go to the community bank in Homa, and let me go to Angel Investor. And this was Dr. Hill who had those fast tracks. He wanted to be a landlord. He also liked New Deals. And he said, hey, let me buy equity in the company. I don't want to have equity partners, but I'll give you a sub-debt deal. So Dr. Hill, let's say I borrow $200,000 from you. I'll give you a 15% interest.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're going to set up what the prototype is. And by the prototype, I didn't mean just architectural design, kitchen design and where our look and feel was, everything. Marketing systems, human resource systems, training systems, everything globally. And I used to go to restaurant conferences to learn from people that were experienced. I was able there to get the marketing guy. I know the human resources, training and operations person. I know the crew relations. So I was able to assemble a team together with architects and with interior designers and branding people and I was able to assemble a team coming in. We call them partners, not consultants who's like they were partnered into the success of the business. And we came with that first prototype, Raisin Canes, opened up in Lafayette and we just went gangbusters, dude. We killed it. It was just like we had operational efficiencies. Our drive-thru's got faster. We could stack more people around the restaurant. I had all these really good people that came in and gave us great things. We came up with original black and white logo. We changed it to this logo because we got it.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was able to get into those. There, I was like, okay, I'm going to come up with a prototype. Like, what is Raising Kane's ultimate location, the prototype I want to do, and I want to do it out of town, and so out of Baton Rouge. And we chose laughing yet because I wanted to prove the prototype, starting off when no one really has the brand recognition that we have and show what this thing can really do. So Lily, one year I'm like, no more growth.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I didn't want to go into him because I was like, it was these like double drive throughs. I thought like, you know, this place had a lot of soul, big dinoins and all that. But I said, you know what? It's an opportunity to get in cheap and prove what I want to prove that we can work on. We can not just on campus that we can do well. We can do well all over town. And we went into those places. We just painted them, used the equipment they had in there, and we started just doing sales, man. I mean, like people loved it everywhere. And they loved it. And so eventually turned all those into big, you know, dine-in drive-thru locations. So I was able to do that into a mall food court. So I was able to get all these places. So we went from, what is that, two to eight restaurants. We opened five restaurants in five months, man. We started rolling. Made a lot of mistakes, learned a lot, burned myself out, like, like I couldn't be at all the locations. So then I really learned how to set up leaders in different restaurants and give them the support they need versus me bopping around to restaurants and then like putting out fires basically is all I was doing. I did that and then from there”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hell, man. So this is interesting, man. I said, look, after the second restaurant, I had an opportunity to go into some of these failing double dry-through burger places. And so Greg got Dr. Hill, another great mentor of mine. He's like, look, we're just not operators, man. They had like 30 something called fast track. And then burger joints. We're down to like four of this our best units and our best. We consolidate the best crew. We want to be landlords. Like we're not operators. And you can use equipment. You can have all this. Look, whatever you need and look, just we'll give you cheaper rent.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You get a valuation of the 6% you're getting off that restaurant. That's part of the idea. But it's based off a valuation of what franchises markets go. So let's say franchise multiples, awfully EBIDA minus debt. Franchise multiple would be like four to seven percent is what they could sell in their market, right? We're trading, we're not trading. We don't trade, but we're valued on over 20 times EBITDA. Those company restaurants. Go into that. So the profitability that comes into all of it gets on that higher multiple.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's like For this book. Exciting getting in. It's exciting to open up New Russia and exciting to teach what we do and do well, exciting to learn. A couple years into it is when I started seeing the lack of efficiencies and a little bit less, you know, like I said, they still did a good job. And so I want to give them credit. They did a good job, but not as good as we could do it. So if we couldn't do it as well, we might be like, oh, wow, look, they took us another level. They just didn't operate as good as we did. They cared about the crew. They cared about the customers. They just didn't operate as well as we did. And so that started a couple years into it. I started seeing it. We bought them out probably about the 10-year mark, which was good because they were able to grow. They were able to make good money. Another advantage of having company-owned restaurants is the business valued way higher. Like for franchises, you'll get...”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm only interested in fanatics. My entire podcast is just about think about to get on the podcast, right? It's like you had to live a life, you had to be so good at your job that somebody wrote a book about your life. And in cases of people I'm super fascinated with like you, it's like, oh, no book, fine. I'm going to make my own. I literally printed out the transcripts for every single one of your interviews and I went through it just like I did for this book. It looks the exact same way it's the same personalities like whether you're playing basketball or you're building raising canes. So wait so how many years of doing the franchise you're like this is not the right move? Yeah, I mean so it was exciting.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, 100%. Oh, it's funny you say that because there's this line in this elon biography. So Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, he's only ever joined two boards and he was best friends of Steve Jobs. He was on Apple's board. He's good friends with Elon. Elon Consistent Mentor. He's on Tessa's board. And he's like, oh, and he was asked one time, what do they both have in common? He goes, OCD. OCD. 100%. 100%. What do you mean when they have in common? It's obvious what they have in common to him. Yeah, be Molly obsessed with Caballos.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so you have to love it. It has to be, you have to be a rationally obsessed with it. And then what happens? It goes back to the anti business billionaires. The people that are rationally obsessed with it, they make better products. And then customers, you know how many people I've told about raising canes? Even before I knew I was going to meet you or I was going to meet you? It's just like, because it's in human nature when we find anything that we love, it could be a chicken quality chicken finger meal. It could be a movie. It could be a podcast. It could be a piece of art. It could be a city. Nonprofit. No one keeps it to themselves that just humans don't do that.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've heard this for 200 years of entrepreneurial history. It's like people think it's like some Willy Fufu stuff. Oh, yeah, you should do what you love. There's an underlying reason to that because work is going to be a grind. You are going to run in time where you are crying when you're in pain and you want to give up. And if you don't love it, you will give up because you're sane.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Obviously, Sam Walton, right? He gave away the equity in Walmart to his kids before it was valuable, and that's how they wind up being very tax efficient. But if you look at his combined wealth that came from Walmart, right, that's still concentrating the family the last time I looked it up was like a month ago, it's like $432 billion, okay? So one of the greatest fortunes that have ever been created. Do you think Sam Walton woke up every day like, oh, I need to maximize shareholder value? What's my stock price? No, he woke up serving his customers. And then they're like, why didn't you ever sell? It's like, why would I?”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have one thing to add to that. I think it's super important that you said that there is this something that I've come across in a lot of biographies. It's like many times the best financial decision are not financial at all. And so there's this investor named Nick Sleep who with these legendary letters to his partners. And he made a great line. He's like, the best investors aren't investors at all. They're entrepreneurs who never sold. And what he was talking about is the fact that if you took”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Raise sales that's going to lose your focus. There's all kind of bad things that go with that. The only way I do a partner is they believe 100% in what you believe in. And then you also believe that they're not going to sell that stock to somebody else that doesn't in the future. And rarely does that work out. If it's special to you, hold on to your equity. Take the risk, get more financing, but keep it yours because you'll always be able to protect your baby. You know what makes it work better than anybody else.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Makes the difference in being whole, I believe. So, one of the disadvantages of having other partners in your business is that they might have different goals in mind that you have in your business, right? So an entrepreneur and a founder brings on an equity partner, whether it's an individual or whether it's a professional group, private equity. I'll be very careful on what their motives are. And if their motives is about a financial return, you're generally going to end up bad because you have a fiduciary responsibility to the other owners of your business to meet their goals, right? And if those goals are financial on that deal, it can change your thinking. It can change your thinking on quality in my business. You could change vision on quality food. You could try to lower food to make more profitability, which is a short-term gain. You could cut wages, right? And so your crew members aren't as happy. They're not as appreciated on the deal. You could try to do different avenues of sales just to.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't like this. Like, this is all we're doing is being fry cooks. It doesn't turn me on. It doesn't do it. And so I encourage people like do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life, right? It's just a part of your DNA. Like there's no work. I'm working. I'm not working now. I mean, like I'll be at the beach and it's like, you know, checking in and we've got calls and I'll be able to roll heads on the beach, you know, talking, doing. And then you get back to, hey, what's happening, Margarita? You know, it's like, it's a part of what you do. So you have to do what you love, right? And if you do, you'll never work. Work. Words like career. It's not a career. It's a passion. It's just what you do. It's the same thing as I get up and I go take a walk and I love my dogs. I love my business. I love my kids. Things like that is what makes...”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably three years I started talking about it because the second restaurant was second restaurant was 18 months after the first restaurant Then from there I had an opportunity when I really knew I wanted to grow and that's when my partner got out which was really interesting you said it has to be natural to you my partner Craig who was great he loved the finance part of he loved the IT he loved the business administration stuff he won the fry cook like me and he's like Todd when I get a night off I get a night off I go read the Wall Street Journal He goes you know what you do you get a night off you're writing new schedules that lead better on the deal is he's like I just doesn't make me happy and so he ended up getting up we didn't get much money to buy out then but he ended up getting a scholarship wake for us business he did all the things he did he actually came back to Keynes for several years doing the things he likes to do has his own business now he does he does really well still one of my dear friends but it wasn't happening he had the courage to say”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eight hours yesterday hand editing the transcript that no one gives a shit about because I care about it. This is like, I don't, and it was like. Everybody tells me outsource, delegate. They use that word all the time. No, I don't want to delegate. Like, I want to feel it. I have a feeling for it.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thrilled. He's like energized because then he said in this great line he goes, Because Michael built a business of this natural to him. It was unnatural to me where my body is shutting down. And Michael's like, yes, let's do this like natural is a better description than authentic. It has to be natural to the creator. It has to be natural to the fabric. Absolutely. I'm the same way. I'm obsessed with control. I spend...”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he was in his early 20s, so he's like, shit, man, this is really hard to compete with IBM. So he actually gets a guy to come in to be, I think, the vice president and president and help him. And the guy's like 20 years older than him. And I found an interview with that guy who's now in his 80s talking about what it was like working with Michael Down in his 20s. And he's like, you know, I loved it, but I can only last four years because we're playing for high stakes. There's a thousand other computer companies. taking on some of the biggest companies in the world. He's like, so after four years, like, I'm losing my hair. My back hurts. I got digest. He's like, I've been there. I got digestive issues. I'm drinking too much. And he goes, and Michael.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I Well, I think the important part that a lot of people like, hey, what should I work on this or what's the idea I should pursue? And I actually get this idea from Michael Dell, where I used to say, well, you just have to build a business authentic to you. It doesn't even matter if you could make more money from franchise. It's not suited for your personality. So it doesn't matter. It has to be, and I used to use the word authentic all the time. You should build a business authentic to you. And then I was reading Michael Dell's autobiography”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Quick. So we got way more efficient. We bought them out. We actually operated 95. Sales went up, and all the franchise markets. So literally sales went up. Wages went up. Everything went up. And it actually improved out better. So look, I think it works for some organizations. I, for me personally, especially in the restaurant business, I think the company model just rules.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Efficiency on us building the business and making our existing restaurants better and getting higher same restaurant sales. And so I ended up buying all them back. And they did really well and they were great and they were all happy. And the action too is they looked at like more of a merger because we kept their teams and they had more opportunities for growth. It worked out really well. But for me is like, you know, franchisee is never going to run it like you do because it's your baby. It's your thing. And they're not going to take quite us personally. And they're not quite as fanatical as you are, right? I'm a fry cooking cashier, man. That's what I live to do, right? And they were 85. That was at 95. And so I could hire the people that had those same types of values as I did. And so like franchising for me, it's just you're going to lose quality, service. You're going to lose those things. And you're also going to lose a tremendous amount of efficiency because you're talking into things versus just adopting something system-wide.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had tested in our company restaurants. We knew it made us faster or it was better for management and crew, it was a better system to talk them into changing that system took so much time that was just totally inefficient because it's their business. You had to respect to show them like, this doesn't work for us because it's different. It's like, well, what's different? The crew and your customers are exact same in both these areas. No, we just like it better this way. We think. Or even crazy things. Like, we don't want to get that much faster because we like the longer interactions. Like, well, the longer interaction, you can still be just as friendly, but quick because they want to get out the door anyway. But talking them into things took too long. And I was spending, I mean, the team were spending too much time on something that should have been implemented overnight. And I'm like, our company restaurants, once we tested out in like five restaurants and we felt good about it, our operator said, man, great system, boom, let's roll it. And so that time was less.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I'm like, I'm not going to be able to grow fast enough, and I'm not going to have the capital to be able to grow in all the areas. So I got really great at people from the industry, people that were CEOs and other great big billion dollar businesses, and they were good people. There are people that I trusted and good people. And so I'm like, that will fuel my company growth, right? Getting franchise royalties in, and I'll be able to grow and we'll grow quicker. And so I did open up in different boxes of the country. I opened up in Ohio, opened up in Minnesota, opened up in Nevada, opened these different areas. And they were good franchisees. And because I had the real friendship with them, we could talk through any problems or anything like that. The thing is, they operated, we were saying, say we're at 95 out of 100. They were about 85 out of 100, which I think other franchisees were like 65 out of 100, honestly, what they're doing. So other people have been thrilled with them as franchisees, but that 85 to 95 gap drove me crazy. And I was just like, I know we could operate these better. I know I could do it better. It's the same we're going to change operational perspective.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, there's a lot of advantages. One is less capital cost. If you can grow off franchisees' money, so let's say you have a good concept, you have a few locations, and then from that, for you to grow company restaurants, then you have to keep putting in, injecting a lot of capital. And on top of that, you have to take in a lot of debt to do that. Restaurants are very expensive. That's not a manufacturing plant. If I could do all chicken fingers in one location, send it out, right? The cost wouldn't be there. The capital cost, but every month is a new restaurant, a lot of money. So people are like, you can grow in different areas and use other people's money to grow. There's also the thought of that other restaurateurs will bring other things to the table, other knowledge. They're good in their regions. They know the local knowledge better, and it's better to grow that way and do it. But I think mainly it's the money play. It's literally, we don't have to keep growing with our capital. We'll take a royalty off the deal. So I had the model of like, I'm going to grow 50%. I knew I wanted to go company.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, when I started out, when I had that vision, grow canes, so franchising was like one of the obvious ways to do it. And so everybody was franchising.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is what we love. It's like last night we were like, okay, what do you want? You want three chicken fingers? Four chicken fingers or six. Like, that's all you have to, you already know. That's all you think. So another way that you buck, so you have this limited menu, right?”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can actually. I'm a friend that knows how to do it. So Jiro's really old, so he only comes in frequently, but his son was the one that served us. But you don't even get to choose. You sit down and he's like, I'm the best in the world. Am I to do? And I'm going to serve it. Brilliant. It's actually nice. I don't have to think as long as you can get in, then I don't have to think about anything else. I'll flip through menu. Like the like the, what's that, the restaurant that has a book this size, something...”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're going to say, we're going to do chicken fingers, but we're going to have 100 different sauces. People go back and get their same sauce. They might come try it one time, and then it's also slowing down their order process, slowing down turnover time and all that stuff. And then they go back to the same sauce. So how much time did you spend on all those different sauces that when it comes down to, you might have, they're down to three sauces. What are the most popular? Narrow down your menu items. You're seeing more and more by ninety restaurants narrowing their menu. It's happening now. I'm not saying I was a part of that, but maybe they looked at Keynes and said, wait a minute, I bring my kids here. We come here all the time. Maybe I don't need 50 different menu items on this.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT