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

“Halloween haunted houses in my house and like, you know, go around, put flyers out, and five bucks for kids to go through. So I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and that's when I got serious about it in my senior year.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we're never going to be perfect, so what can we do better? Well, you know, the uniform program be better if we could do this, that great. Let's get some input because you can get system-wide really good things from focus groups with crew or management, and you get good stuff from surveys. But when you actually talk, you can pull it out of them a little bit more and do with me. They feel comfortable, and then they'll tell me. But then I'll work with them and they shift and it's fun because you can just everything goes away. You're like focused on delivering good product and good service to customers right there. It's great. So I was in the restaurant business. And so like when I went to college, you know, I actually studied writing for script writing for television and film. I thought I might want to be in movies, but I always went back to business and when I was working because I was at an original kid in the neighborhood that had to lemonade stand. I was a kid that was going to cut your grass for 10 bucks. It was just always set up like...”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Restaurant and food and delivering food. It's an expression of love. And then the camaraderie when you're working in a kitchen and it's rolling and drive-throughs going. And I can work any position, but it's that teamwork and it's immediate gratification when you're like, someone spent their hard work money or hard-earned money and they give you their money and they look at that chicken finger box and they're like, oh yeah, like that's a good feeling. It's immediate gratification. So much stuff with corporate work and administration work and things like that. That's not immediate gratification. It comes over time. My favorite job is that I can literally come in the restaurant and just crank out a shift. Like that to me is fun, man. That vibe, that energy. And you still do that? Right. Yeah, when I can go to restaurants, I'll go visit like a market and I'll go to one restaurant and I'll get all the crew to come there and we have like a town meeting. Hey, my main job when I do that is same thank you. Y'all are doing great. Thank you so much. And then what can we do better? And I can get that out of crew and management. You know, it'd be like, you know, first they'll be like, oh, no, the support's great. I'm like, yeah.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to talk about how you finance the business because it's one of the craziest stories I've ever heard. But I just pray that today there is a Boil America named Wild Bill that owns a couple hundred million dollars of equity and raise a case because he bet on your chicken finger dream when you were like in your 20s. He did. He did. Let me take you back a little bit on the start of it. So I worked in restaurants and high school and college. I love the restaurant business. Food symbolized, love to me. So what that means is like when I could spend time with my mother cooking in the kitchen, she's the one that taught me how to cook. We cook Cajun meals, so we would make a gumbo, right? You make a gumbo, you start with a roux, and you add your onions. And you really, you take all day making a gumbo. Does it take that long to do it? I don't know if it does. It's more about spending time with somebody that you love. And we're cooking for the family and our friends that we love. So that time together and then you make a good gumbo, then you sit out and all your friends and family are like, oh man, that's a good gumbo. That's good. And they start talking about, well, I do mine a little different.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Came up the recipe with the bread purveyors there. And this was an outside advertising. Highland Road going from downtown Baton Rouge through LSU was the main core thoroughfare here. And Lula took this as a sign. This is what we came up with our logo for Keynes. We took this design. Lulu took it as a sign to say this is going to be the Raisin Keynes logo. And that's what we ended up with. But I learned this stuff because I didn't have enough money. I got a small SBA loan for $90,000 for $90,000. I'd raised equity in a sense of like $60,000 with original shareholders. And I carried them over a little bit of the business today. It's been fun being with them. I pray. One of the things, I don't even want you to tell me if it's true or not.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I literally don't know electric, but plumbing, I did plumbing, I learned how to do plumbing, I learned how to do minor construction, all this place is resurfaced. So when you came in this place, it was a lot of different concepts, college concepts that just didn't work. But they layered on paneling, even arcade was here, paneling after paneling. So rip off one layer of paneling. When there's like there's a rainbow strike paneling going down this way because it was an arcade at one time and they had ripped up through this old paneling here on the wall, which was actually an Italian restaurant where it started. This was the outside of the building and they built this onto here. So when I pulled all these things off, I noticed this stucco all down the wall, but there was one little place I saw brick. I was like, oh man, we can have a brick wall. So I started ripping it out with a crowbar, left stucco down the side, and I got here and I uncovered this old mural. And look, I took it as a sign, man. This was an outside advertising for this bread mural, for this bread bakery downtown batteries where we actually started with our first bread at Canes.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Started this restaurant. We were open every day of the week We are open until 3:30 a.m. And except for Sundays, we closed at 3 a.m. And look, when we were closing up, it took us two hours to close down. When we opened up in the morning at 10.30, we had to be here at 8 in the morning. And so getting about three hours of sleep a night. I have my apartment right back here that would go up. And then during the day, we'd be like, hey, go take a nap. Go get a nap. I'll go get a nap for like two hours and then wake up and come back to work. The hours were just all the time. It was just nonstop and I was young enough to have that stamina, just a role. And plus this environment, I love this environment. Cooking in this restaurant was very important for me to be in this restaurant so you could feel the vibe here. You could feel the soul this play. It's right there. It's just here, man. You're not separating from your customers. You're not separated from your customers. You're right here in the middle of this place that I constructed with my own hands. And it's like you just work personally. You constructed what with your own restaurant. I literally reconstructed all this with my own hands. Everything except the electrical.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But they stop and the world never sees that product or service because it's so hard to open a business and it's so hard to make that business successful. Then it's so hard to scale that business and grow. And if they just didn't stop and they knew how hard it's going to be because they're like, how do you have quality of life and work-life balance when you're starting a business? I'm like, you don't. Flat out you don't. You're going to live the business every day. You're going to think about the business every day. You're going to be tired. You're going to be fighting through a bad mood because you're not getting enough sleep and things like that. It's like you don't have it. So you have to be committed that you're not going to have it. Now, once you get your business open and you get it established and it's working, then if you want to grow, then you're not going to have quality of life then because going from one to two is your hardest step you'll ever have. Then two to six and six to twelve and all those growth phases are there. But I just wish people wouldn't stop when they go. Because like my hours in the beginning, you know, when we...”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, when I started up, and I gave young entrepreneurs this advice, I'm like, imagine how hard it is to start your business, then multiply that by infinity. And if you're still committed to do it and you have a stamina to stick with that, then you'll be successful. Obviously, you have to have a good product and concept, and you have to have something that's going to work to make something go, which is often hard for people to see, the vision of chicken fingers down here in Baton Rouge was like, just chicken fingers, you know, just chicken fingers. We like our plate lunches. We want variety, things like that. I'm like, wait till you have this product. And then when I was able to start cooking for them, oh man, that is good. And when they start talking about the next day, hey, man, you can cook some more of that. Yeah, yeah, come on by and have it. When you have to start up, there's so many amazing ideas by just promising entrepreneurs.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, now I can say, hey, you know, actually, we've had the same thing over the United States. Ranch was popular out west and different things like that, you know, and Louin to Texas. They said you had to have cream gravy. You got to have barbecue sauce, you know, things like that. But through tried and true over time, customers love the cane sauce. And so we want people to have cane sauce with our meal, not with ranch, because it's not nearly as good with ranch. And so then it can understand.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. The best thing for an aspiring entrepreneur to be told is, I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think you can do that. People haven't done that before. Why do you think you can do that? Because entrepreneurs have something to prove. They have a vision. They have an idea. They have a passion. If you're an entrepreneur, you're passionate about what you want to start. You're like, I know this is going to work. And you're so passionate about it when someone tells you, you know, do that facial expression. I don't think that's a good idea. Your first thought, immediately, is, you know what? I'm going to prove it to you. That is a great idea. And all those no's that you get, you just use that as fuel. It's like entrepreneurial fuel. It's putting gasoline on a fire because you have something to prove. Later in life now is, you know, I can take, you know, now that we're established and good, I can take those things and not let it fire me up. We still get it times going into going into different countries. They're like, you know, like this mayonnaise type sauce, it's much more popular as a dipping sauce. You're not going to be used for sauce.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know the answer to this, but I want to get it on record. It's just like your kind of personality type, these history are all the same. If you tell them that you can't do something, you get the opposite reaction that you think you're going to get, which is like, it's just going to make you want to do it more”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the way Steve Jobs would describe that is like you want to make products that people lust over. Lust over. And so you nailed the cravable because I told you I brought my 13-year-old daughter with me today. She's obsessed with raising canes, and she door dashes it to her house constantly. She's definitely craving the quality chicken finger meals.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They lost the crave ability. So then it comes down to just a cheap calorie option versus a cravable meal that I'm dying to go get.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, oh my God, I love that chicken part from Craig's. So I'll go when I go there. I'm like, I want to go back and get that chicken part. Other stuff on the menu is pretty good or whatever. I'll sample this to try different things because I like food, but I want to go back to that chicken parm. If they didn't have that cravable chicken parm with Craig's, I wouldn't make it a point to go there. There's so many good restaurants. There's so many great places you can choose from in LA. There's so many great places that you can have good vibe and good atmosphere and good people. But that craveable product is what brings it back. And if you cut that quality, and I've had CFOs over time, not current with CFOs, but over time that have been like, hey, you know what we just cut this just a little bit. You know how much money? Because it's a penny's business, right? We're doing well if we make 10 cents on a dollar. But like if you start cutting a little bit here to save a penny and you start cutting a little bit here and a little bit here, it's death by a thousand cuts. Then your food one day is not cravable. That's what's happened to so many quick service chains over the years. They've messed with their quality so much.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right? So it's culinary making sure that all those products, as raw products we get, are all perfect and make sense there. Same thing we opened in the Middle East. It took two years, two years to get the supply chain just right to make sure it tastes just the same. Two years to do that. It took two years to procure the chicken, two years to get all the ingredients right because a lot of stuff you can't import in plus it's very expensive to do that for them to import it in from the United States where we get it currently. You have to spend the time to do that. So two years people would look at that and say man, you know, you should be open in a year. That extra year is going to cost you X amount of dollars. And I'm like, no, those X amount of dollars are going to make us more money because our sales are going to be higher because our food is in quality and grievance great and a proper cook system creates cravable products. So like in the food business, like, and I say this to all entrepreneurs that are in the food business, like whether they're willing to open up or they have restaurants open, it's like your food has to be cravable.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because we get bread made by bakeries all over the country, but that recipe has to be exactly right. It's not sliced loaves. Sliced loaves end up being more stale. This is dense, moist, flavorful bread. Our coleslaw, we secure all over the country. We've got to make sure all those vendors have the right type of slaw that we want for the right type of growers growing a certain amount of time. In that slaw, you have cabbage, but you also have purple cabbage. You have carrots. All those things. And so you go down to your tea. Our tea gets brought for three different countries, the tea leaves, where we have to get at the right time of the year. We might pay more for that, but it's that focus on that. So my team can focus on those menu items and deliver it every time to it. It tastes exactly the same around every hurricane across the country. So since we're focused, it's not a simple thing. We can focus on those things. We have a large culinary department. It's not R&D. It's culinary.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have to focus on doing one thing and do it better than anybody else. And so since I have that singular product focus, right? And so some people call it like a simple menu. I say, well, it's not simple. It's focused. And here's why it's not simple, because our chicken has to be exactly right. Look, it comes from the weight of the bird that we want to get the size tender we want. It comes from the species of bird that gives the most tender and flavorful chicken. It comes off a lot of technical stuff, rig and mortis on the bone, after the chicken solder, then it stays on the bone a certain amount of time. Then you get it fresh. Then you brine it for 24 hours. All those things are that are fries, right? So we have crinkle cut fry. But like a thinner crinkle cut fry, you get fries from different times of year, right? They do the crop harvest and it sits in the warehouses. At certain times of the year, you get more sugar tips in the fries of sugar tips have to come out. So we have to remind our crew, hey, when you see those black sugar tip ends, take those ads, not visually pleasing our brain.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not to drive through, why can't we find anywhere to sit? We have to wait for it. We look at people to get up. I was like, just taste it, and you will understand. And then I thought of you that day because we're eating outside. And I look across the street.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, how can we do this better? That's right. Because remember the prehistory to that was you had drive up restaurants. You didn't have drive-thru restaurants. So in that episode, I was induced into a state of rage because all these people are telling you, oh, you can't have a simple menu. It's like, no, just go to the west coast. They're thriving. They have a cult like following. Went to visit my brother and sister in Orlando. And you guys had just opened up. You weren't in Orlando before. And I was like, have you guys ever had Raising Canes? This is after I did your episode. And they're like, no, what's that? Go, first of all, you should have listened to the goddamn episode. Second of all, I'm going to take you to raising canes. And so I saw exactly what you said where you're like, I don't hide, you know, we put racing canes right next to, you know, McDonald's or a Chipotle or whatever the case is. It's like, I'm just going to do one thing and do better than anyone else. So we pull up my brother and sister's like, what the hell is going on here? It looked exactly like when I was just in California two days ago. Looks exactly like when you pull into an in and out. They're like, why is there a line?”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To add in and out burger as a successful change since 1948 with the banks at that time. That's when I got that SBA loan after I raised that”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And get an animal style, get the fries, get whatever beverage you like, and then get a chocolate shake. And it's my same order every time. So when I first win, I kind of held up the order line for a second and, you know, went inside and done. Next time I went there, I went through the drive-thru, double, double animal style fries and a Coke. And then I also want to get that chocolate shake. And so seeing that really reaffirmed that belief for me, because since 1948, you think about how many different burger chains opened up and then went all around In and Out Burger and they added all different menu items. They added unbelievable marketing. In and out burgers not much generally they put big billboards on the interstate and say here's where it is. Here's where we're at and they continue to do well, raise their sales because they stuck to what they're good at. And for that, that really reaffirmed my belief. And when I was able to come back from going to LA to working refineries, then going to Alaska, when I came back, I think that was a big selling point being able to.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not until I went to LA to work in the refineries. That's when I went out there and to work in the refineries, when I went to In and Out Burger, that's reaffirmed my belief that, hey, you can do one thing and do it better than anybody else. And then I've done a research. I started studying the in and out model since 1948. So 1948, they have the exact same menu, right? And people know what to go in. It took me one time to go there. And someone to recommend, get a double, double”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So having a dream to start a chicken finger only concept was just back then was in Louisiana was kind of unheard of. It was just a totally new idea. We're known for our Cajun and Creole food here. Like at launch, people could get a plate lunch. Some Cajun dish, and that's what people are used to. Also in the industry at that time, you know, McDonald's and these other big quick service restaurant chains, they were adding menu items because they didn't want the veto votes, what they called it. One person in the car that might not have the choice at that restaurant that they could get, they said they would veto the whole car and go somewhere else that had that menu item for their deal. They're also adding healthy items back then. So starting a restaurant and having an idea to do one to focus just on one thing, one single product focused menu, which is just really unheard of at that time. We didn't have in and out burger in Louisiana, right?”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're almost at your 30 year anniversary for running racing canes and starting this. I want to ask you a question. I've heard you say this before. What is the advice that these so called the bad advice, these so-called experts gave you when you were trying to start the very first racing canes?”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's very fascinating how you see the same personality type appear throughout over and over again throughout history. So we are in the very first raising canes. You were very kind enough to let us record in here.”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have a really erratic sleep, so I'll go some nights, I'll go maybe three hours of sleep. The next night I'd be three to four hours. The next night I'd be five hours. And usually about that point is the next night I have to crash. So I'll sleep 10 or 11 hours to catch up. And then I'll actually wake up feeling great, feeling I don't have to muscle through a day keeping myself awake. And then I'll be caught up. I'll go another three hours that night, four hours and five hours. But what really dictates it is what I have going on in business and what I have to be thinking about, what might give me a little bit of anxiety about things I got to decide on the teams, what I have to work through. So my brain will be working as I'm sleeping. And I think it's trying to figure out solutions. So then I'll just wake up. And I'll actually wake up pretty refreshed thinking about, you know, that problem I had and then go jump on the computer in my underwear. And I know I wake up and go first that and then start sending out emails just actually solve that problem. But if I get caught up at work and there's nothing like really pressing that I can sleep like a”
2025-11-09 · Founders · My conversation with Todd Graves · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT