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

“We went to, we landed and went directly to one last night, and just greeting every single person that went to the door. I love this idea because, again, focusing on one thing and being the best in the world at it, right? To me, that should be completely obvious. I think humans crave simplicity, but our default state is we tend to overcomplicate things. So your competitors, like, okay Just going to have chicken fairs. I'm going to have chicken fingers and nine other things. The problem with that is the distracted do not meet the focus.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What you're good at when you execute on a consistent basis, consistently, and you can teach other people how to do it, and they can execute and operate the same way, and you stay focused on that and delivering that high quality, cravable product with fast food, speed, and convenience and being friendly and doing that. When you focus on that day in, day out, the whole organization is around that, then you can look at stuff like Haynes Love. You have time to do those other things that enhance that crew member experience. And when crew's happy, they're going to be friendly to your customers. That's what people come back. They don't just come back to Keynes because the food's so cravable. They come back because they know it's going to be food safe. They know people are going to be friendly. They know people appreciate, right? Customers want to be appreciated. They want to say thank you for your food. And our people mean that. It's like we appreciate you spending your hard-earned dollars here. They want to go to the restroom. It's going to be clean. Those things get you that repeat visits.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Chicken stirrup, whatever type sales. It doesn't affect our sales. It doesn't affect it because people say they might try it, but two days later they're coming back getting their chicken finger meal from us because it's the best. Actually, I love it when they run all these specials. They do all this stuff because it adds more, it adds more advertising out there for chicken fingers, and we're known for the chicken fingers, man. It's like when I want people to talk about chicken fingers, chicken strips, whatever they're talking about, bonus chicken being dipped, I want them to say raisin canes in their mind, like Xerox. It's not a coffee anymore. Go give me a Xerox of that. That's what you want to be known for. Do what you're good at.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Food, how clean is our restaurant right now? What's the general vibe here? Oh, wait, wait, the music's a little lower. Someone knocked it down. Where's those things? So our management can focus on that. The crew member and customer experience and make sure that goes because there's not these LTOs they have to learn. Go through training modules and do that. You focus on what you do good. And so like you go back to that business plan, they talked about not having all these different menu items. No veto vote don't happen. They're like, you're not going to get the frequency because you need frequency gets driven by different menu items because you get all that stuff. Our frequency is just as high as any other Quick Service restaurant, meaning how many times somebody comes back in a month period of time. I see the DoorDash bills. I know how. But you come back, right? You come back. So it's anti what they say is what drives this stuff. It's like there's no veto vote. There's no variety drives more sales. It's actually frequency. Our frequency is as high as anybody else is serving the exact same thing people have day in, day out because it's good because it's good. Our competitors can run chicken.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then you know what, here's the engine, here's what drives, here's what drives sales, what eventually drives profitability, it does. There's other benefits too. In the restaurant business, you look at a lot of the quick service competitors, they're adding all these LTOs, limbertime offerings, management and crew have to learn a new product that's going in and how that works in the service model and do it. And as they learn that, they do that. It's a distraction of what you do. Then the next 60 days, there's another one. Then there's another one. Then there's another one. There's all these things going on. Management has to spend so much time on learning those new products, delivering those new products, hitting the sales of activation, all that. Where's the time to encourage the crew and do positive motivational management? Point out, that's good toast. You know, you're great in the driving. Where's the time to walk out and talk to the customers and actually see?”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If we added different products and we lost two seconds, every two seconds that I can get faster is a point on sale. So let's just say just roughly 1%. If we do 6 billion in sales this year, what's 1% 60 million dollars in sales you can do if you can tweak that order time two seconds. Now it flips on the other side, right? If you had two seconds, you add two seconds, you add two seconds, then those sales go down and then you flow through dollars. Once you get to the flow through point, then you lose that's money. So not having all those different things that keeps the concept. So knowing what your concept is and sticking to that concept.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would slow me down. And then say, well, could speed it up is then I'll put heat lamps and keep all this other food assembled done. So then quality goes down. So your speed goes down, then your quality goes down. Then your quality goes now worse if you'd been adding heat lamps. And we don't have heat lamps whole times with any of that stuff. Riding that cook to order process. Like you go up in and out burger. You know what you want and you're cooking ahead. So it's literally like you're cooking ahead. Now if you show up, you're the first customer at Raising Canes could take you four minutes to get your order. four to five minutes because we're dropping the chicken we're doing that but when the line picks up then you're cooking a little bit ahead then you know during your rushes you're cooking way ahead you're just meaning it's coming out it's getting served immediately right where two minutes 35 seconds drive through and counter service right”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Concepts cravel food serve with fast food, speed, and convenience. That's what it is, right? Fast food speed and convenience, cravable products. So both of those together. So if I added menu items, right?”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then I saw the value of how quick I could do the drive-thru, right? And so it starts from when customer pulls up to the order deal, the first time at a raising gains they look, they have to decide what they want, they do it after that, they know what they want, box combo, sweet tea, extra sauce, you know, whatever their order is. So the order is quick. Coming to the drive-thru, we have a singular product focus, right? For that one menu item, we have one line. I'll take you back in the kitchen later. You can see down the line. Toast is grilled on the end. You got chicken fryers. You got fry fryers, and you got the board. You can watch that cook-to-order process happen. Like you're cooking. And so you can cook and you have that product and you're making one basically one meal just with three, four, six chicken fingers so you can make an assembly quicker. You'll have your drinks that are popular. Comes up in and out. It gets out there. Thank you very much for your order and you go through. And so then I saw the speed on that deal. So it's like our.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, no, no, I didn't. No, what I wanted was. Cravelable product. And I knew from restaurants. You had that. The one credible product on their menu, and then they'd have all these other menu items, all these other distractions you're like, but everybody goes to Genoese to get that delicious Carbonaro, right? It's like focus on that, that and do it extremely well. Don't try to be all things to all people, or you're going to be nothing to anybody, right? You have to be what people will be fanatical about, what they, in the restaurant business, is cravable. But what I want to do is create that cravable product everybody do.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but this is what I'm obsessed with. This is exactly what Harry Snyder thought the way he thought as well. It's not just a principle of doing one thing, doing better, and everything else. It's just like how it applies to every single thing. And you talked about in that podcast where it's just like, well, a simple menu has all these other positive effects that you can really focus again, all the details good, you can make it better. But also you even had the concept that it's going to allow you in the future to serve more people because it's a shorter order time. Right. When did you figure that out? Did you know that at the beginning?”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sometimes you can just hear a person say a sentence. About delegation, it's like if I that's the first thing I ever heard, I was like, I know him. I'm like that. I feel that way too. Walt Disney has a great line about this, right? If we lose the details, we lose everything. These are not after, is that something you think about after. It's like this is what makes the magic, you called it cravable, like the magical experience, like why people have an emotional reaction to your company. Your product evokes emotion just like his evoked emotion. But the reason the very first, I didn't I was unaware of raising canes. There weren't any in Florida where I live. And I actually saw a clip when you were on Theo Vaughn's podcast. It was a ticket. And you said something, and I was like, I know him. I have to find out who”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you also refer people to products that can help consolidate the information right quicker, efficient, more decisions like that. You get better at that, but stay into things. Stick to what you know. Second on the concept, man, I fully believe be good at one thing and do it better than anybody else. Be relentless. I do it better than anybody else. Can you expand on, but that...”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Than me, but I'm still into the details to make sure we're doing what we need to do and we're supporting our operators we're doing and we're being innovative and we're getting faster in drive throughs and doing it. Our co-CEO in the business is a much better operator than me. I'm still in the details with him and the business and I know enough about it. I'm good at it to add value in the deal. So the word delegation is used way too much like trust your instincts, learn and grow and let people grow themselves, but be into what they do and absolutely stay into the details of your business. If that's what made you successful, don't lose those things. Get better at it. Get more efficient. Get the reports and things like that. Y'all have products.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By this, and this is Edison's West, a large shipping company here in Louisiana. And actually, one of his partners in another shipyard business had told me when I was explaining this to the YPO Forum business group and saying, people are saying I'm just too much in the details. They're like, hey, Gary Swiss knows exactly what the bottled water cost at his place. And he's like, look, and there's formulas to give it to him. He doesn't go and count water bottles, right? He looks at the program because he's like, If we're paying 25% too much on bottled water and people aren't going up to the thing and getting out of the big thing and they're using, which is wasteful to little bottled waters, it means they're doing that in every phase of the business. So knowing those details, but that reaffirmation from me going, yes, me into the details matters. So I say you don't delegate. You hire great people. You help them and do it. And if they do it better than you, then you can back off and you make sure all those components of the business. Look, I'm not great at IT. I've accepted all IT team. They do it better.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I hire good people. And let's say out of a 100 point scale, if I can do it at 95, pretty good. None of that's perfect, but let's say operations, I'm it at 95. But if I hire somebody good, but they end up being an 85. But we need to be at that 95 to have success. I can't just delegate that. I have to supplement to get us back up to 95 working with that person to do it. And over time, they might get to the 95. So at that point that they're at the 95, then I'm like, hey, you can run this good. Then they get to 96. How you can run this better than me? So now I'm going to ease off on some of those things that I was supplementing on the deal is, but I'll still check and make them, but I still know enough to where I can still add value on improving and doing things like that. And so, like, did you say it can't be in the details? What do you mean on the details? Oh, man, look, you're down to the minutiae and all this stuff. You're wasting your time doing that stuff. You should be big picture. You should be that. I'm like, well, you got to be big picture too, but the devil's in the details on this thing is. And so I got reaffirmed.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Me, you know, when I was growing and seeking advice, and I got a lot of really good advice. I also got a lot of bad advice that I was able to see through it. You know what I mean? And learn from. You learn from good and bad. Good examples, bad examples. People started saying stuff like, hey, look, you know, Todd, you're so much in the details. You just need to delegate. Delegate. I hated hearing that word, delegate. I'm like, explain to me, explain delegating to me. What do you mean by that? Well, delegate means you give up. I'm like, no, I know what the word means, but how do I delegate this off? Well, you just hire good people and you delegate down to do the work.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they were doing 300 million a year in sales. And then what happens? Now his company is doing billions of dollars a year and he's got a bunch of different products. He's in markets all across the world. The compounding between 44 and 75 was so important. And it wouldn't have happened if he couldn't endure the pain. I have one of my favorite quotes.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is my number one recommendation because this is not a celebration of success 90% of this book is James Dyson failing. He goes through 5,127 prototypes. He gets screwed over by Partners, joint ventures. He was just like you, please, I want to sell you a piece of my company. I need to raise investment. Please take it. Everybody's like, no, your company's not worth anything. So that's why he owns 100% of his company to this day. But the reason that's so fascinating about this, right? is because he has the idea. I think he's 44 by the time he finally has a product up to his standards that he owns completely that he is now selling. And the book ends where he's just like, listen, it's easy for me to say to not give up, right? But there was times where my kids grew up seeing their dad as a failure. He would go in the back and do prototypes, be covered in dust because he's doing vacuum cleaners, carry himself inside and I cry himself asleep, covered in dust. That's what his kids see. But he's like, so it's easy for me to say, like, not to give up, but because I'm on the other side of that. And where the book ends, he goes, they have one product, which is the vacuum cleaner. They're in one market.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, that's a multi-billion dollar mistake on Michael's part. The funny part is, and I'm not doing this to shame Michael because in the book, later on, he goes, he's saying years later, he goes, that was a mistake because I severely underestimated the level of Elon's determination. That's why I don't like shows like that. You don't know what's inside that person's heart, inside that soul. It might take them five years, might take them 10 years. There's a book next to me that I just showed you before we started, okay? The reason that I've read 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs. Yeah, so I've read that book four times. I'm about to do another episode.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It doesn't matter. I actually hate that show. No offense to them. But it's just like the idea of I'm all knowing I'm an expert. There is no such thing as an expert entrepreneurship. You know what you're going to be an expert in? Raising canes. You're an expert in raising canes. And I'm sure you have a ton of ideas, which are obviously transferable to other businesses, but we don't have predictive ability. I just did this episode on Elon Musk. Let me give you an example. There's any Michael Moritz who might be the most successful venture capitalist of all time. He's at Sequoia. He invested in PayPal, which is a successful exit. They sold it to eBay for $1.8 billion or something like that if you want exits. So they sell that. Then he already knew who Elon was. He invested in PayPal, which was Elon's company. Then Elon goes to start Tesla and he pitches Michael. And Michael's like, he's like invest in my new company. You just made money with me. Michael's like, you're trying to compete with Toyota. That's impossible. I'm past.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I think doesn't matter. I was like, I don't know. I have no way to predict the future. All I know is when I started my podcast, people were like, there's too many podcasts out there. It's like 2000, it was 10 years ago. There's no podcast out there. They're like, no one's going to listen to a solo podcast. No one's going to listen to a podcast where you can't make a living reading books for like that's ridiculous. It's”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the tough lab is No disrespect to shark tank, but fuck that. Like, I cannot stand. I said this in the episode I did about you. It's just like, the future is unpredictable Like, if you read history as much as any, like, I think I read history more than almost anybody else. It's like, all it is is humans failing to predict the future accurately. Why would you sit there and think that you sit on a stage in a suit and a bunch of makeup on and tell, say, this kid's not going to succeed? Fuck you. How about that? Like, let's see how it got actually going to go. I hate people that do that. And so my idea is like obviously there's a shoot millions of founders listen to founders and I get emails and all this kind of stuff and we have conversations like, what do you think?”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really important. It absolutely is. But it's our own encouragement. Edison knew he had it, right? You know, and so some of that's tough love. I had to learn that on Shark Tank. Tough love is also When you get different entrepreneurs and things like that, and sometimes the ideas aren't good. And I wasn't good at it. Like, it was always encouraging and you'll find a way and do. But like on Shark Tank, they're like, hey, man, you're going to have to learn tough love. Cuban knew me, right? And then be interrupted, Mr. Wonderball, then they're like. I know it's heartbreaking, but sometimes the ideas aren't good. And are they doing it the wrong way and you're not doing them a service doing it that way? So the tough love is to say, say, but then help them to focus on what's really important.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then Henry Ford says his autobiography, which he's writing 40 years later, he's like those seven or eight words of encouragement. There was a hell of a lot of pain between him telling me that and me succeeding at this idea. But I heard that in my mind and it kept me, I was going to keep going, but a little boost was very freaking helpful. And I heard Edison, my hero, saying, you're good at this. You have a good idea. Don't give up. I think it's really important. Fantastic. Yeah, it's really important. Absolutely.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Henry Ford, no one knows who he is. He's not successful. I think he's already failed. He had two or three car companies before he finally succeeded with his third, too. Again, just I'm coming no matter what. Thomas Edison is the most famous person, one of the most famous people in the country. He has a hard time hearing they're at like a huge dinner. But Henry Ford's an engineer, and so he gets a minute with his hero, Thomas Edison, and he's having to like yell in his good ear about this. And I think it's like seven words or something like that. But Edison, obviously brilliant. He just gets it right away. And he hits the table and he goes, that's it, young man. You have it. Keep at it.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, man, Grace, I believe in you. And it makes a difference even to hard driving, you know, psychotically obsessed fanatical people like you. Absolutely. It does work. Words of encouragement matter. And so I remember reading a biography of Henry Ford, who I already mentioned. And at the time, he was not successful. He had this idea. He was like, hey, all the cars that were on the road at that time were either electric or steam. That's what people don't understand. It's like electric cars are not new. They were the default at the very beginning. He had this idea to make one with an internal combustion engine because he's like, then the fuel source, you carry the fuel source with you, right? And so he winds up meeting Thomas Edison at the time Henry Ford meets him.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just being clear. It's like I'm kind of obsessed. That just knowing that is actually helped me interact with other people better and to kind of like modulate my behavior. It's just like they just want, that person wants to feel special, just like you do, just like the person that helps you secure this.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the best pieces of advice that I've ever read in a book came from Mary Kay, who built that massive, remember the Mary Kay Cosmetics. They would have people with the pink catalogs and everything. And I feel Mary Kay was a master in understanding sales and human psychology. So she had one of the biggest and most successful sales departments. And the piece of advice that she gave the organizing principal for her salespeople sounds like a lot like what you're doing with Crew Love. And she goes, remember that every single person goes through life with an invisible sign around their neck that says make me feel special.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Recognizing rewarding crew members every day and put a bunch of brilliant people, most of them came from operations in the restaurant, and they know this stuff build systems. So our next thing with that is versus saying, here's the gift card or here's a new Keynes hat or things like that. It's like build a coin system, right? It's kind of right. You'd be like You know, you come in, you get it for every year you work, every month you work, you build shifts, right? Like, hey, so-and-so was sick. Do you mind coming in and working? They come in. You get points. And I want to build it up a really exclusive type merch and stuff you could build up to and do, but like constantly getting better at that, raising the bar, but have people around that. Not just the feel. You have to put programs and things around”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And things like that, I want to be there. So, if I saw the crew was dragging. I was here working with them, right? But they're like, because all their friends were doing something fun, their family doing something fun. I was like, you know what? That's not worth it. So that's respect. Recognition is something you should recognize achievement. You should recognize tenure. You should recognize all these things. There seems to recognize all the telling you starts from the simple things like, hey, that's great toast. Thanks for being so friendly in the drive-through. Man, they loved you today. It's things like that. They're like, you work a year raising canes. You get a hard hat. You symbolize the first year I was there. All the crew members signs it. It's fun, right? Five years you're getting the salmon. Those are the recognizing things, recognizing that deal and rewarding. So it's like, whether it's a $5 gift card to go get a coffee at the local coffee shop onto other bigger and better things that you get, there's rewards that you get. And I don't want to build that better and better. But if I just think of these ideas and they come and go, it's like, no, create a department around that. Like, like literally department that thinks of nothing but we're respectful.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, literally it is. If it means no sleep that week, it is what it is. It means I can take off a day and go climb a mountain. I'm going to do that. Whatever call for the business, then you answer that. So there is no schedule. There is no doubt. And so the discipline comes from the focus and the fanaticism. You're always going to be there. You're going to do it. But there are the things you have to structure and do it. And so for me is to scale. I created the Keynes Love department in our business. Respect, recognition, and rewards, man. So, you know, when you have crew members that are working hard, right, one things of respect are things that you should just do. You shouldn't get credit for them. So like we're closed on every major holiday. That's not a reward. That's not recognition. It's just respect, man. It's like, do I want to work on July 4th? No, I don't. I want to be my family and friends. I want to enjoy the holiday. I want to take off Christmas Eve. I want to not work on Christmas Day. I want to be holiday.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Entrepreneurs are very erratic, unscheduled that. You know what I mean? So, you know, most of us are a general beel. It's like people are like, what's your schedule like? I'm like, my schedule's all the time everywhere, however, whatever. It could be three o'clock in the morning.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ladies and gentlemen, that's where we do our business. And our job is to support them because when you go to bed at night, they're going to be working. When you get up in the morning, they're going to be opening the restaurants. We got 75,000 crew members across the system. We're here to support them. We're here to make their job better, easier, more efficient, more fulfilling the whole bit and keeping that going.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100% why we call it a restaurant support office. We're not close office, we are a restaurant support office. We're here to support the people that are serving our customers 100%. We have these monitors set up in our offices. It has restaurants, and you can pull up any restaurant, our whole system. I want people when they're leaving our office or restaurant support office to see there's people still working, right? When they get there in the morning, there's people opening up doing the restaurant, doing it. There's constantly working. So you see it every day. You're walking by that every day. You're like,”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Old school guys cursing all the other boys like god damn it and he's just like I'd always tell the goddamn people in the office like the only reason they have a job is because the people in the store selling tires and then he would talk about this he's like if you if you're out you're you're gonna love this guy I already know this for a fact I'll send it to you He's like if you spend 30 days outside of a store you forgot half of what you know He's like you have to be he's like every single thing He's like we exist to serve the people that are serving our customers”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know Lesch Schwab Tire Company on the West Coast? Okay, I'm gonna send you his book. It's very hard to find. I found this because Charlie Munger is like one of my heroes and he had the complete history of American business in his head. And if this, he's like, you need to read about this guy. I just read the book. You would love Lesh because he sounds exactly what you're saying where he competed in very difficult business. You come into fast food QSRs is like that was an established thing. You're coming in and like compete. There's competition everywhere. And he goes into selling tires and he just smokes every single other person. And the book starts because he's like in his 60s. The business is named after him. Okay. So he goes, I need to put this in a book just so you know I didn't have a ghostwriter. I wrote this all myself on a 60 on a 50 year old typewriter. He goes, this is how I want the business to run. If the business is not going to be run this way, take my name off the business. Take my name off the business. And he's like.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like Like, what is actually happening? Separate from the customer and separated from the crew. Corporate environments. Like when I started up, I was the first guy to wear a canes t-shirt to conferences. Everybody else is in a suit and tie. But there are crew members in the restaurant are wearing like, you know, jeans and t-shirts is like, you know, it was this business mentality from here. You're separated from the customer because you're not in your restaurant seeing who's being served. And you're also not with your crew to see what gets it. You're in the suit. So immediately when you go in with your suit into a restaurant, they're immediately like there's a separation. There's a divide. When I walk in a restaurant, I'm dressed exactly like them. And I speak their language and I talk to customers. They're like, there's no separation. Like, oh, that's the boss. They're like, oh, that's the founder, right? That's a different title.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love the idea that you said that they have this almost like theoretical academic understanding of business and that usually only survives in an environment where you're separated from the customer. If you're working here, there is no theory. It's like we made it. We can see the customer eating it. Look at their face. What is actually happening?”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like to be excited about what I'm doing at work. Those are the things that when you hear that, you're like your intrinsically motivated. I like what y'all do back in the community. Hey, have you ever thought about supporting this? I think this is a great organization. When you hear that kind of stuff because there's plenty of brilliant people. There's so many brilliant people who do the same job or that have the experience that will learn that, right? They have the intelligence to do it, but it's hard. It's 100% heart. If you're intrinsically motivated to do really well, Kate.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Type of things like that, like, look, man, I'm learning every day. And I'm the first one to always say, man, I screwed up on that, and that was a bad decision. Then the team knows. Hey, well, once it's validation too, he doesn't think he knows everything. And two, it's okay for me to make mistakes. But we do need to learn from him. Like, Todd's not going to make that same mistake over and over. Like, we know that. And I won't either, right? And so that's some of the challenging growth. We get the operators. And if you're an operator, man, you just have that culture. And we have to get as people that are intrinsically motivated, right? And so we can pay people really well because we do good. But pay doesn't matter, man. It's like to the people. They want to make a good living, of course. Kyle doesn't matter, right? You know, it's like this VP executive, all these like titles and stuff like that. People are like title crunching up. I can literally interview somebody and I can see the things that's like, it's like they're going after title, they're going after pay. They're going after these things versus intrinsic motivation. Like I like to lead people. I like to be part of good teams. I like to be part of high performing teams.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Take constant coaching and is coaching, right? You know, it's like, well, no, we should meet every six months on an eval and how we're doing and blah, blah, blah and all that stuff. It's like, no, every day is an eval. Like every day when we get better and a lot of corporate people, one, if you make mistakes, like I encourage make mistakes, and we're not making mistakes. We're not pushing ourselves. We're not trying new things. We're not doing things. But let's learn from them. But let's admit our mistakes. I see corporate people come in and it's like you don't address an issue. You just say, oh, we're doing da da da da da da da da da. It's just like, hey, man, we screwed up on this. We learned this. We're going to do this differently. Let's move on. Like it takes all of 30 seconds. When you create that kind of environment, like in a coaching situation or in operations, that's a challenge for me on growing the business because we're bringing in some really experienced people from other organizations. Yeah, right now, as we do that, a lot of the culture is you don't admit mistakes. One, you don't admit mistakes. And two, you want to be coached.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know what I mean? So it was just this negative feeling. I can get people from other restaurants where they're not treated right and they're not like giving good customer service. They come here, they're treated right. They have a good environment. We've got music crank in the kitchen. We're having fun. We're a teen and it's positive motivational management. It is like good job. Hey, thanks for.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Articulated that way. Well, so I thought the vision was there. I just didn't put it down. And so I'm like, I asked myself, you know, it's like, you know, why do you want locations all the world? I'm like, because I want to go in every community because I love hiring people to come in and build teams, creating opportunities, job growth, teaching them values. And I'm like, man, he's like, I get turned on by customers coming in and loving the food. I'm like, and I'm going to keep giving them quality chicken finger meals, that cravable product. And I was like, now I'm able to give money back to the community. I'm like, now I want to be able to give money back to the community, that active involvement. I'm like, but we have this cool culture, man. I want to emulate that other places. I want to be the place that, look, I worked in the restaurant business, high school college, man. It was like, it was not positive motivational management, man. It was like, do this, do that. You screwed up. Yeah. No music in the kitchen. Can you imagine working back there? It was just negative environment because the manager was negative because the owner didn't appreciate everything.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and open up 18 months after the first one. It took two years to start this first one on a shoestring budget. The second one, I have a piece of property, and I got a brand new building that we opened up and it showed efficiencies there. And what was really amazing with that location is that it was on the other side of campus. It also had traffic flow from neighborhoods, office buildings, things like that. So we had not just students coming in. All of a sudden we had businessmen and women coming in for lunch. We had moms and dads picking up food on the way home. We had T-ball teams on Saturday. We had church groups on Sunday. And that's when I got the vision. I was like, this isn't just a college concept, that's what I thought it was if I just worked for college kids. I'm like, this works for everybody. And that's when I got that fire, man, to grow at that point. That's when I got the vision, man. And the vision at that point was, and it wasn't articulate this way, but what I wanted was locations all over the world. And I'm like, I want to be known as the brand for cravable chicken finger meals, great crew, cool culture, and active community involvement. Like those are the things.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I need something to laugh because I know as soon as I prove this will work, I know I can get another loan. Thank goodness we made money. And so we opened up like I was so excited, we reconstructed, we're ready to open up. We got registered backed office depot. There are these little registers. And once they figured out how to program them, I went and started waiving people in the restaurant. And people came and people liked it. And man, we made $30 the first month. That's what we made. People are like, that's all you made. I'm like, no, dude, that means I could pay my crew. I could pay rent. I could pay literally payrolls taken care of. I can pay the vendors. We're working and steadily off of that. We started making more and more money. I could replace equipment as we went. Just basically dumped everything back into the restaurant. And sure enough, I was like, this is working great. We can go to the other side of campus and we can go in and do that. I brought the business plan to the SBA lenders that did us. And I got to that one 18 months later, I was able to buy the piece of property, construct a new building.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But this location was available, and I knew it was going to be awesome. It took two years, two years from the business plan to where I actually opened up the restaurant. It took me two years. And so literally from riding the business plan from class, going to the banks, getting turned down, working in refineries, then working in Alaska for the summer, then coming back that fall. And we opened in 96, so it'd be the fall of 95 when I got back. So I had somebody on the deal. I went and got that SBA loan and got the investors. And from there, then we started the construction process. We started getting the used equipment. And look at the equipment I went, I got from, I went into Houston and Dallas restaurant supply houses because, you know, restaurant business go out nine out of ten go out of business. I could go buy stuff. And I'm like, I need a fryer that'll work 60 days. Like give me your cheapest fryers. They had to be 85 pound fryers. And they're like, well, this one's good. I'm like, yeah, that's 10 times as much.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, they like being a part of it, right? But they give me a good, I got a good lease term on here. And plus, you know, what I put into this place. Look, I had to learn things. Like I said, I had to learn plumbing. I had to learn construction. I had to learn the stuff. I really didn't have a lot of money too to come in and spend much money on this. But this place is sacred, man. I can tell you every square inch and later on after we get on our discussion, I'll show you all these little points in this. This is original furniture that I went. I got a U-Haul went around to all these equipment supply stores in Texas. I hope they're bedsheets that look like this somewhere. That's a damn good idea, but just some pajamas too, right? But it means something, right? And keeping this like this, I can bring in management to here and show them this place. We have big, pretty buildings, all functional, everything. They come here and go, this is our soul. Just remember, this is where we started.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wherever I can, absolutely wherever I can, I do just good real estate, aid quality real estate. It's just there's so many people that own it. It's part of larger shopping centers, larger developments. A lot of it's in trust, family trust and things like that. But everyone I can buy. Absolutely.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Somebody you respect, that was just a good man and a really good real estate broker. I really respect that because he saw that. It was affirmation that why I was being so fanatical and trying to talk everybody into it. You know what I mean? Except for the bullermakers, he believed in me. I'm like, okay, okay, that's his little wind in my sails to do this. And basically told her, hey, it's going to take him a year to put all this together, but I believe he'll do it. And then I believe you have a long-term tenant. Look, sure enough, we've been here for almost 30 years and we got like 100, 100-year lease going forward and the family, she passed away, but the family's like, no, I'm trying to buy. They're like, we just have pride in this, you know, so we'll just keep doing a lease. I said, but we'll give you 100 years and options to stay in this original location.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT