David Roberts, COO of Hangry Joe's Hot Chicken & Wings

Guest: David Roberts, Chief Operating Officer, Hangry Joe's Hot Chicken & Wings

Host: Chris Hatch

Listen on Spotify

Summary

Chris Hatch talks with David Roberts, chief operating officer of Hangry Joe's, which was named the fastest-growing fast casual franchise concept of 2024 by store count. Founded by the team behind sweetFrog, the brand went from 13 restaurants at the start of 2022 to about 110 open, with dozens more under construction and early international stores in Korea, Japan and Dubai. David explains how he's adding structure to "controlled chaos," moving from a scratch kitchen to a supply-chain partner, why value matters more than price, what he checks first when he walks into a store, and how Hangry Joe's evaluates new sites and builds local sales without advertising.

Key Takeaways

• Hangry Joe's has never advertised to sell a franchise. Its growth has been grassroots, driven by founders' relationships and restaurant-industry franchisees (many from Subway).

• Scaling meant moving hand-cut chicken and from-scratch sauces to a supplier partner, matching the look, marinade and texture of a hand-cut piece after about two dozen tastings.

• Customers care about value, not price. If the product is worth what they paid, price isn't an issue.

• Manage the details. Burnt-out bulbs, dirty grout and missing name tags signal bigger problems. If you manage the little things, the big things take care of themselves.

• Site selection uses AI-generated data on traffic, demographics, density and competitors' estimated sales and loyalty within about three miles, plus a look at community activity like food festivals.

• New markets are won locally: chambers of commerce, hotels, car dealerships and guerrilla marketing instead of paid ads.

• Advice to franchisees: follow the pre-opening plan, and lock in a location and a good contractor early, because the trades are booked up.

Transcript

[01:45] Chris Hatch: Welcome back to the Dirt Dog Pod. Today we have a wonderful guest, our first chief operating officer. We have David Roberts, COO with Hangry Joe's Chicken and Wings. Thanks for joining us, David. So you're joining us from HQ today, is that right?

[02:00] David Roberts: Thanks for having me. That's correct. I'm in our headquarters office in Tysons Corner today.

[02:09] Chris Hatch: Wonderful. And was the first Hangry Joe's in Tysons Corner or somewhere close there?

[02:14] David Roberts: So the first Hangry Joe's was actually in Ashland, Virginia. The brand was completely unknown at that point. And our founders kind of built it themselves. Opened it with no marketing, no word on the street, nothing. And it was just an explosive success right away. And the growth kind of came from there. It's very organic. We've never once advertised to sell a franchise, not one time, not one ad. So everything's very grassroots. This is our biggest market in the DMV area here, partially because of the community connections that the owners and the founders had here, and partially just because it's a brush fire. It caught fire and it just spread out over in Northern Virginia, DC, and Maryland.

[03:10] Chris Hatch: How long ago was that? When did they open the first location?

[03:13] David Roberts: So the first location was, I believe, in 2020. By the beginning of '22, we only had 13 restaurants. So all of our growth has happened really in the last two years. There's a target for how big we want to grow. At this point, we're just trying to keep up. We have so many inquiries and so many requests. We've got about I want to say 46 stores under construction as we speak across the country. And we're moving into some international territories as well. So we have two in Dubai, one in Japan, one in Korea. And then we're exploring India and the rest of the GCC right now.

[04:00] Chris Hatch: How many stores are open today?

[04:03] David Roberts: About 110.

[04:04] Chris Hatch: 110 and you did how many last year? Because you guys won an award last year, right?

[04:08] David Roberts: We did. So it was about 60 last year, I believe. I don't have the number right in front of me, but I think that's right.

[04:16] Chris Hatch: And that puts you at the fastest growing franchise concept? Yeah, kudos to the team on that, you and the team. And then this year, it's pacing for about the same kind of growth.

[04:19] David Roberts: That's correct. Hopefully more. My personal goal is to open 100 stores this year. We're probably at close to 20 at this point, after a full quarter plus a little bit. But it's rapidly growing. Like I said, the 46 that are under construction right now will certainly open this year. And what it comes down to really is can we expedite the building process. So to build one is probably at best like 90 days, 75 to 90 days. But there's permitting involved and there's contractor involvement and you can't predict human behavior, that kind of thing. So I would be surprised if we don't have at least 200 by the end of this year.

[05:27] Chris Hatch: It's pretty wild when you consider that's the end of 25, and you said at the start of 22, you had 13. Tremendous growth, unreal. What's it like being at a concept and being the maestro of the orchestra here from the operational side? What is it like to run this thing on the operational side growing at that kind of pace?

[05:48] David Roberts: I call it controlled chaos. There's so many moving pieces. Everybody's running 100 miles an hour in every direction. And to bring everybody back to center on a regular basis is really my job. And, it's herding cats. I don't know if you've ever heard that phrase or not, but it is it's a difficult process. But I'm a process and structure guy. So that's what I've done my whole career and building structure into the organization while we're growing this fast is challenging. Luckily everybody in the organization is amenable to it, excited about it, about having some kind of structure and a more defined plan moving forward. The plan changes a thousand times, but we have a battle plan every day.

[06:56] Chris Hatch: Wild. What time of day does your day typically start?

[07:01] David Roberts: So I try to get here between 6:30 and 7 in the morning into the office if I'm in town. Sometimes with entertaining franchisees or potential franchisees or market partners, what have you, I can go late. Last night went till about 10:30. But it's funny when you enjoy something like I love solving problems. And that's really what my job is, is to solve problems. It's the job of everybody in the company to define what the problem is, game out what the strategy is to fix it, and then putting a series of steps in place to achieve the result. So one of my biggest problems is I oversimplify things. But things just aren't that complicated.

[08:02] Chris Hatch: It's interesting, those hours that you're rattling off there. I spent a lot of time with people that are new to the commercial real estate industry. And it's so amazing to me how often I just continue to reiterate the same thing. It's time in the chair, right? You got to put time in and without putting that time in, you're a far cry from being an expert in anything.

[08:28] David Roberts: First rule is be there. Right? You've got to be there, wherever you are, whether it's in a store, in a meeting, in an office. We're trying to figure out who's going to travel to India and meet our new franchisee over there, but somebody's got to be there. If you're there, then you're there to intercept any potential challenges to voice your opinion on what the solution might be and maybe control the outcome.

[09:01] Chris Hatch: So we've had a few brands on that have talked about Dubai being one of the first places they chose to grow internationally. Was it the first for you?

[09:09] David Roberts: Yes, it was.

[09:12] Chris Hatch: Why is Dubai a logical choice for you? It seems like it's quite a distance away from where we are, and culturally it's a bit different from the US consumer in general. Maybe I have that wrong.

[09:28] David Roberts: No, you definitely have it right. I think food sometimes transcends culture. I mean, look at the United States, right? I mean, we've incorporated such culturally diverse foods into what I would say is kind of the American cookbook these days. Sushi's kind of become American. Korean barbecue has become American. Pizza didn't belong to us originally, right? So that's number one. Number two is the GCC and Asia are gigantic chicken consuming markets. Take India, for example. A large part of the population considers the cow to be sacred. Chicken is by far the number one consumed protein in the country. We have some of our partners, as matter of fact, our major vendor who supplies our chicken actually has a presence over there as well.

So it'll be easy to build consistency into the product. And we've already done it in the UAE. We have in Dubai two stores. As a matter of fact, one of our founders is heading out there next week just to check on the locations and see if we can help them or support them. It seemed like a kind of a natural migration. The first one for me was the UAE, but the first Hangry Joe's we had internationally was in Korea, and both of our founders are Korean. So there was that connection there. And then we moved kind of naturally into Japan where we have contacts, and then to the UAE, but everything is six degrees of separation.

So all the people involved, all of our equity partners, which we have quite a few, the founders, they're all connected at high levels inside the restaurant community in the US and some international markets, as well as generally in business, these guys are all restaurant guys. The connections and the relationships kind of breed these business relationships.

[11:58] Chris Hatch: So let's go back to location one. Right. So we're there in Virginia and what was the layout? Did they open in a parking lot? Was it in a strip mall, an old Burger King?

[12:10] David Roberts: It was in a strip mall and it was a second generation store. Derek and Mike are the original founders. They took it over and they did a lot of the work themselves. So they were pulling wire through the walls, dropping the data terminations from the ceiling, putting up sheet rock, stuff like that. We talk about fire in the belly a lot in the company, right? Like you got to have, you got to have that oomph and the gusto and the determination, call it whatever you want. When you have a vision, and Derek and Mike are visionaries for sure, you got to have a vision and you got to be determined to see it all the way through to the end.

Lots of people have good ideas. Not a lot of people have the follow through. And these guys did it. And managed to grow it very quickly. And of course, they don't go in and hang sheetrock anymore, but they're involved. They're at every opening that we have, deeply involved with the franchisee community within the system.

[13:28] Chris Hatch: So, okay, so they opened in 2020 though, right? And what time of year in 2020?

[13:32] David Roberts: In 2021, I think. I'd have to go back and check the data. I wasn't around at that time.

[13:39] Chris Hatch: But obviously in the middle of COVID, right, clearly. Yeah. And so did they just like to fry chicken? Where did the passion come from?

[13:43] David Roberts: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So they've been restaurateurs for quite a long time. They're actually the founders of sweetFrog. I'm not sure if you recognize that brand name or not, but it's a frozen yogurt concept also started here in Virginia. And they built that into 470 stores and sold it. They were trying to figure out what they were going to do next. And I think, traveling around the United States internationally, especially in the U.S., they started seeing Nashville hot chicken and they started trying different concepts and thought they could do it better with their culinary expertise and that kind of thing. And in my opinion, it's the best Nashville hot chicken out there on the market.

As a matter of fact, when I first started with the company, first or second day or something like that, I went into the kitchen for the first time and I realized that they were cutting all the proteins by hand, they were making all the sauces from scratch, they're mixing actually, they're mixing their spices from scratch in the store. And I mean, it was a fast casual concept with a scratch kitchen. And I come from scratch kitchens and full service dining and I was absolutely blown away by that One of the first things I said is, you don't have to be a scratch kitchen. You design your recipes, determine the flavors, and then we'll take it out and have somebody do it for us, so we can build efficiency into the business and you know control costs a little bit better have more consistency in the product around the world.

[15:51] Chris Hatch: So they figure out they've got lightning in a bottle because the store takes off right in middle of COVID.

[15:57] David Roberts: Right. Yeah. It's crazy enough to open a new concept in the middle of COVID. That's just nutty to me.

[15:59] Chris Hatch: And from there they grow. Yeah, I will never forget we were opening a hotel property with a partner and our opening was December of 2020. And at the opening, my partner had all the investors there and he said, hey, by the way, we might need to give the keys back on this deal because I have no idea how this is going to perform. COVID was a wild time, right? And, on that project, we were already building a hotel and so it was just set to open and there was nothing you could do. It was like watching a slow-moving train wreck. Yeah, thank goodness it actually has performed quite well, which is great, but could have definitely gone the other way, right?

As it could have for these guys, right? Yeah. You know, it is interesting, there was such a shot in the arm. I feel like COVID advanced the US consumer habits on the food side, like maybe a decade, and then just absolutely shoved us into this entire meal delivery world and, kind of last mile restaurant delivery.

[17:05] David Roberts: Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. It was such a trying time for restaurants and everybody could see it. You know, the kind of bootleg outdoor dining that they put out. I was working in New York a lot of the time and all of Manhattan they were taking over the streets with the tents and the outdoor tables and stuff. And it was just restaurateurs trying to survive. I mean, that's what it came down to. And it was a scary time in the restaurant business. At the time, I was actually in airport restaurants. That's what I was doing, is developing and running airport restaurants. And it was a really terrible thing to be a part of, at least for a while. But you're right. It forced us into the DoorDash and the Uber Eats and all that stuff.

[17:59] Chris Hatch: Yeah. So, okay, so the brand's surging at the moment. You're knocking on 200 stores by the end of this year. I would imagine you're signing up some pretty good area development franchise agreements with some of these operators. What's the typical franchisee look like for your concept?

[18:19] David Roberts: So a typical franchisee, many of our franchisees, I should say... I'm not going to say all, but let's say 95% of them are restaurant people. And they come from restaurants. We have a contingent in the area representative group that came from Subway a couple years, a few years ago. Subway started buying back all their territories. And again, it was these restaurant folks that were looking for what they were going to do next. And so several of those gentlemen have come over and are equity partners with us and area representatives. And they're developing regions all over the United States. But they're not just Subway folks. I'm not a Subway guy.

I came in and worked in full service dining, developed all kinds of different concepts. I think most of our area representatives are attracted to the concept initially and then they get involved and they feel the energy that comes off of our group. Everybody really drinks the Kool-Aid. We really all believe that this is the best thing on the street. I've tried pretty much every other hot chicken there is out there. And I find it hard to believe that anybody's even within a spitting distance of us. Our food's great.

[20:00] Chris Hatch: For those ex-Subway people, that's got to be kind of a fascinating social experiment, if nothing else. I think of Subway as a concept and it just has a long history of not being known to really do great support for its franchisees it's more of a hands-off operation. I would imagine a lot of those folks come into your system and you show them a little bit of love and it's kind of like, hey, what's this?

[20:26] David Roberts: Yeah, I think that's true. People management is really what I do. It's not restaurant management because I'm not the one cooking in the stores or running it or staying open until three o'clock in the morning. Just like I think in any industry, people respond to recognition. The simple question, how can I help is not just an olive branch, it's a bridge between the two of you that builds that relationship. And it's all loyalty and trust and, it may sound silly to somebody listening right now, but that really is what the restaurant business is about. It's about heart and soul more than anything else. Following standards and executing the product and the concept, all that stuff's important. But it all starts with people and relationships.

[21:28] Chris Hatch: Okay, so you shared a little bit about moving from a scratch kitchen to doing some things, I would imagine more of like a commissary type facility and streamlining some efficiencies. Tell us about some of the other things that you've done to implement some enhanced operation procedures.

[21:48] David Roberts: So first and foremost, our biggest product is chicken. We're hand cutting chicken in the back. And while that's very stylish and looks cool, it's not sustainable at the rate of growth we have. So we partnered with a major chicken purveyor who kind of shares our same principles. Meaning the things I just talked about: honesty, loyalty, hard work, all that stuff. That's number one. And we went through, I want to say, two dozen tastings and cuttings of chicken before we got the format and the footprint right, so it looks the same as a hand-cut piece. The marinade, right? The texture of the chicken, the eatability, which is probably not even a word, but that's one of my favorite words.

How does it feel in your mouth? Is it chewy? Is it woody? Is it that kind of stuff? And we really dug into it, and this company that we partnered with just did everything they could to accommodate us. And we actually believe we're like 30 days from rolling it out across the whole company. So a gigantic victory for efficiency in the back of house. But it's not just that, right? So the food product is a piece of it, but it's also we're in the hospitality business. Everything with the concept contributes to the experience, which is what we want to deliver, not just a meal. You know, what kind of music?

That was one of the first things I noticed. Everybody played different music. What kind of music should we be playing in all of our stores? What speaks to the brand? Just yesterday I went to a dessert tasting because we want to put something sweet on the menu. Our whole operations team was there and we tried 15 or 20 different things, made notes, gave them back to our vendor and said, go take these notes, put them back together and come back. We'll do it again in a month. So, but it's also not just the food product. The system, I said I'm a systems and process and structure guy.

So I believe every action we take should have value while we're in the building. And part of that is making sure that we're following cleaning standards, right? Pulling equipment every night and cleaning behind equipment. Cleaning out equipment, checklists for checking temperatures, inventories, production schedules, everything that you can imagine is part of a kitchen system for execution. The expediter is the key to the whole thing. So we've been putting systems in place in the back of house so that they're easy to follow and easy to replicate in a new store. So when we're training somebody, they're learning all the best practices right at beginning. And when they walk into the store, they're fully focused.

[25:21] Chris Hatch: Of the stores that you've got out there, do you have any that have drive-thrus?

[25:26] David Roberts: I do. Yeah, we have seven stores with drive-thrus. And then we have, so we've tested a few things like the drive-thru. Our cook times have been probably a little bit long to fully execute at a drive-thru effectively anyway. The stores that have them have figured that out. But it's one of the things that's on my list to further evaluate, because I do think a standalone ground-up unit with a drive-thru could be really beneficial for the concept.

[26:10] Chris Hatch: From point of sale to serving the customer food, what is a typical check turn for you?

[26:17] David Roberts: We try to keep it under five minutes, which is probably twice as long as any quick serve or fast casual out there. But we cook for check. So we don't cook a big batch of fried chicken and put it under a heat warmer and wait for an order. When an order is placed, it rings in and prints in the kitchen. We then take the chicken breast, dredge it, and fry it. So everything's cooked to order. Cooked check for check. It makes it hotter. It's more enjoyable. Everybody's had that burger that comes out of the slide or the chicken sandwich comes out of there. It's just not very good.

[26:47] Chris Hatch: At the end of the day, I think yourself and a lot of your peers, you have a premium product and a premium price. And I think, to me at least, it appears that consumers are willing to wait a little bit more to get that premium product, right?

[27:14] David Roberts: Yes, so I think I'm trying to outlaw the word price in the company because I'm of the opinion that nobody cares about price. What people care about is value. If something they buy brings them the value they expected for the money that they paid, then it's never going to be an issue. I use the example with all these guys. I rolled out a steakhouse menu in one of my other companies long since. And there's a $90 steak on the menu. And all my staff was saying, there's no way people are going to buy a $90 steak. Our most expensive item is $26. And so this concept called Copeland's of New Orleans, Al Copeland, founder of Popeyes, his full service division.

And we rolled out the steakhouse menu and everybody's complaining. Like, you're going to mess with our clips. And it was, I think the first three months that steak was the number one seller on our menu. And because if you're spending $90, all you care about is getting $90 worth of steak out of it. It's got to be worth $90, right? And the chicken sandwich that we sell needs to be worth the price that we sell it for. Every company has hiccups and guest feedback and stuff like that. I've heard a lot from the customers. I try to read every guest comment that comes back. I've never heard anybody say we're too expensive. Not one time.

[29:02] Chris Hatch: That's an interesting remark right there, right? So clearly, value proposition is dialed for Hangry Joe's, right? Yeah. What was the $90 steak? What are you getting when you order the $90 steak at Copeland's?

[29:05] David Roberts: It was a center-cut, baseball-cut, 10-ounce prime filet. So it was absolutely just a delectable steak. It's fantastic.

[29:32] Chris Hatch: I was going to say between that and the chicken, my mouth is watering already, right? And we're like a couple hours out from lunchtime here. So there we go. That's good. The chicken business is interesting, especially with some of those cook times. Can you order your product today on like the meal delivery apps? DoorDash, Seamless, Uber Eats?

[29:35] David Roberts: Yep. All of those: DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats and I think we have Seamless in a couple of stores but I don't think it's pervasive yet. Or you can order through our website and pick up. And that's usually pretty effective. I mean, if you don't want to wait, we are pretty efficient at getting the orders placed. You have to choose the time you're going to pick it up. And we pretty much always have it ready and hot.

[30:34] Chris Hatch: What are you seeing in the US as a percentage of total sales for kind of that online ordering process?

[30:42] David Roberts: So right now it's running about 30% across the company. In some markets it's as high as 60. Just depending on where we are and the hours of operation for the stores. So in I would say downtown areas, so downtown Philly we have four stores. Baltimore, Ellicott City, we have a couple of stores under construction in DC. New York, New Jersey, these downtown areas we stay open until three or four o'clock in the morning and it's almost entirely after 11 o'clock it's almost entirely third-party delivery service.

[31:27] Chris Hatch: And are most of those, so if it's 30% chain wide, is most of that being delivered or is it order pick up?

[31:35] David Roberts: Most of it is being delivered, but there is a significant piece of pickup. I think that happened during COVID, right? People just decided, I think that even when all the restrictions were lifted, that they were used to getting food and bringing it home. And I think restaurants generally figured out how to get the food hot. Change the packaging a little bit to make sure the fries don't get soggy, the bun doesn't get soggy, and no heat escapes, stuff like that.

[32:14] Chris Hatch: You know, it's kind of nice with COVID because I feel like everybody got a nice shot in the arm and had a lot of sales lift. Where you guys were opening new, you may have just experienced your new norm, right? But a lot of the legacy concepts had a big sales lift. What's interesting, though, is for folks like yourself on the operational side, is it came with learning this entire new methodology of how to deliver to the customer, right? And everything attached to that.

[32:42] David Roberts: Yeah, I mean, if you're going to do it, why not do it the hard way? I mean, that's, it builds character. I tell both my daughters that every time they complain that, any adversity is just making you a better person. I think one of my favorite terms is emotional fortitude. I think Derek and Mike have this emotional fortitude call it a steel spine. They didn't even consider COVID as far as I know when they decided they were going to do this. They just said, this seems right. They spent a bunch of time developing and redeveloping the recipes to get them right. We import spices from Korea to blend into our Hangry hot spice.

I don't know if you've tried it, but it's pretty d*mn hot. And there are a lot of Korean elements we built into the concept that aren't necessarily super obvious. It wasn't an easy thing to pull the pieces together to get Hangry Joe's to what it is today. And, they did it at maybe the most difficult time they could have.

[34:21] Chris Hatch: Back to the hot part. I mean, now it makes sense why you would want to add a little dessert in, maybe a little soft serve, something to kind of cool it down, right? Yeah.

[34:27] David Roberts: That's right. Yeah, so we were trying these pies that I don't know, I don't know how many are going to make it on the menu or maybe none of them. I don't know. But there were a couple that had like a strawberry cream and a chocolate cream that we were saying that's pretty perfect for the concept. When you eat something hot, the cream can kind of soothe your palate at the end. And, and it tastes really good at the same time. Yeah, and we also do milkshakes. And one of the Korean elements that's built in is boba tea. We have a boba tea menu that is really extensive and delicious.

[35:19] Chris Hatch: What's it like for you as you walk into stores and you're looking at what your operators, your franchisees are doing and you're looking at the point of sale and maybe you've seen a menu item that you just know that that's one that's bugging you because it's hard to get operational efficiency. It's hard to make a margin on it. How long do you kind of let it simmer before you decide to make a change? I assume once you make a change to a menu item that that has got to be extremely involved, right? Because it's got to go chain wide and everywhere.

[35:53] David Roberts: That's right. You can't do it piecemeal. It's a rollout if you're making a decision for the brand. You know, how long we leave it on there? I think it depends on the product. So there's an item that I really love that's only on maybe 25% of the menus, but I want to make it a permanent item. We call them the hangry dogs. And it's a hot dog bun with a chicken finger, chicken tender on it. And then coleslaw topping and some other toppings if you like. But I think it's just a, it's perfect late night food. And it just seems like something I would make myself at home if I was up at midnight and hungry. Maybe after a couple of beers.

[36:46] Chris Hatch: Yeah, back to those 3 a.m. open hours, right? I'm sure you have plenty of late-night customers that are just trying to sober back up.

[36:49] David Roberts: Exactly right. Exactly right. You've got to soak up the booze from the bar. We love the late night folks because depending on the market, it's kind of like adding in a whole other day part to the business. There aren't a lot of places open at 2 a.m. These days.

[37:16] Chris Hatch: So you make a pop-in to Philly and you're checking on one of your units. What is it that you, David, the COO of Hangry Joe's, are looking for? You walk in the door. What's the first thing you're looking at?

[37:30] David Roberts: Typically the first thing I look at is the light bulbs. I look up make sure we don't have any burnt-out light bulbs. You know I do have a process and even a checklist when I go into a store to check but most of the time I fall back on one of the first books I read on the industry. Now the name is going to blank on me. Broken Windows, Broken Business, I think is what it's called. And the premise is that if you manage the details, if you manage the little things, high dusting, right? Everybody forgets that. A burnt out light bulb. A manager will look at that 100 times over two weeks and not change it because it doesn't seem important.

It's just a little thing, I'll get to it. But a kitchen fire gets taken care of right away, no matter what. We haven't had one, but I've seen them happen in the past. Everybody's focused on putting out that kitchen fire. Right away, you don't have to give direction. You don't have to hold people accountable. Everybody goes and gets whatever they need to put out the fire. With a light, a burnt-out light bulb, they don't necessarily do that, or a cracked window, or the grout is dirty between the tiles and we haven't cleaned it, or somebody forgot their name tag, right? And those all seem like trivial things, but I have found that if you manage the details, if you manage the little things, the big things kind of take care of themselves.

[39:23] Chris Hatch: You know, it's interesting that appearance thing, because most of the things you just mentioned really are appearance and back to your selling hospitality, right? You got to have those customers feel comfortable.

[39:35] David Roberts: Yeah, it's an experience. I mean, we, so in my opinion, when a customer walks through the door, we immediately have an unspoken obligation to meet their needs. And they have decided that they're going to give us a try if it's their first time or they're coming back because they love the food or what have you. But every component of the concept is a part of the experience and the cleanliness is absolutely critical. I'm not military, where I go in and get a toothbrush and scrub the floor. But I have, before in my career, taken a toothbrush and scrubbed the floor because it needed it. And, it's really about fulfilling the obligation we have to the consumer more than it is about anything else.

And, I start at the front out front of the store to make sure the signage is right. You know the windows are clean things like that when I get in. I'm looking for cleaning and sanitation in the front of the house. If there are tables to bus that's the first thing I do I go in I start busing tables because I want the dining room to look as good as it possibly can look. I'm listening for the music levels and the music content to make sure that it fits the brand, that it's what we're supposed to be playing. I look at uniforms as I walk through and I do a full kitchen walk through all the coolers freezers check the equipment, open all the doors, look behind the equipment, check the temperatures of the oil in the fryers.

And I try to work expo for like 30 minutes or an hour while I'm there so I can see the food quality as it comes out.

[41:57] Chris Hatch: This is great, by the way. We haven't had as much COO. It's very helpful, right? It's a different perspective than we've had previously.

[42:06] David Roberts: And I'm a dyed-in-the-wool operator. That's all I've ever done. So I say to my operators that work in the parent company, and I say to the franchisees, that Operators are not marketing people or facilities guys or equipment techs, but we all have like 10% of each of those, right? Because you at least have to understand enough of it to comprehend what those people are telling you. It's a tough job to do maybe the toughest in the restaurant business, but man, it's fun if you really love it. And you kind of have to.

[42:57] Chris Hatch: I think one of the things I appreciate the most about meeting great operators is they are dialed. To your point, right? There's usually not a question if they're all in. I mean, they are like all the way in. And to your point, you have to be, right? I mean, because that's the thing is you get that emergency. Your day might start at six and before 6 15, you have had 13 emergency phone calls already, right? And you've already put out one crisis, fire after the next, right?

[43:10] David Roberts: 100% both feet. That's it. But yeah, you wake up to text messages and emails and I have a rule: if I hear it while I'm sleeping, I don't check it. Because I've got to get some sleep. I work too hard not to sleep Your body will shut down eventually if you don't. So I got to keep the volume on because that's my alarm too. But I do not check it. I've got a big Great Dane that sleeps with me every night. So I just snuggle back in with her and go back to sleep.

[44:03] Chris Hatch: I always envisioned operators like yourself, kind of like the Marines getting dropped off in a war zone, right? And it's full scale pandemonium and you're like, walk to the left 10 feet and crouch there and they're still communicating calmly, coolly and collected, right? Because you have to be.

[44:21] David Roberts: Yeah, that's what I was saying earlier. Like none of what I do is super complicated. It's not easy. It's incredibly hard at times, but the complexity is not that tough to get. I mean, if you, especially growing up in the business, I mean, you know all this, it's all like muscle memory for most of it. Muscle memory and managing people and there's always new ground to break. Which I've been a part of here. It was kind of a big learning curve for me here to figure out the dynamic of the company and the different ownership and the board members and stuff like that. Derek is our CEO, but he's probably not a traditional CEO.

So there's nobody else really in the organization that I answer to, except for those guys and the board of directors. I've always had a CEO that was present, so it's a little bit different, but I think I've adapted really well and they may bring in a CEO at some point I don't know for sure but in the meantime, I've got to figure out how to move the business forward.

[45:52] Chris Hatch: You know, it seems like a lot of the concepts that are in rapid growth, about where you are, at some point end up selling to a PE firm, or at least selling the majority of the equity to a PE firm.

[46:06] David Roberts: Dave's Hot Chicken just sold to Roark Capital, right?

[46:09] Chris Hatch: Yeah. Yeah. And I get that and I understand the move and I understand then putting in kind of the Ivy League trained MBA, right, as in the C-suite. It is interesting though, because it does seem you always lose at least just a little bit of the charm, right? You lose a little bit of that authenticity. And it's always just one of the more fascinating moves I think that I've watched with the PE firms.

[46:38] David Roberts: There's no plan to do that right now. But at some point, the company will get big enough that we're considering an IPO or a sale, or like you said, a sale of the majority of the shares. But when you institutionalize heart, I don't know how to say it any different than that. Like this business was built on and runs on heart every single day. I won't say who the company is, but there's a company that I used to reference all the time because they took the, I said they took the hospitality out of the hospitality business. By over-engineering the efficiency in the business, there just wasn't any feeling or emotion in it anymore.

And there's got to be. You've got to get mad when there's something to get mad about and you got to you got to hurt when there's something to hurt about and you got to celebrate when you get it right and we're good at all those things here so.

[48:02] Chris Hatch: And not to say that it happens every time, right? I mean, we build a lot of Dutch Bros here, for example, and it's been interesting. The first unit I built was like number 94, and now they're just over 1,000. And what's been interesting, at least from me watching their company, is they've replaced – again, they've had a new CEO come in, a lot of new C-suite, a lot of new executive leadership up and down the ladders. And what's been really fascinating to me is you open a new location and it's still kind of that same high energy broista out there taking your order at these new locations. And it's kind of mind blowing when you watch somebody scale it, right?

[48:39] David Roberts: That's great. Yeah, that is true operational expertise. So if you can maintain the rhythm of what I think hospitality in the restaurant business is and still effectively manage the commercial side of it. In my experience and what I've seen just in my careers, private equity wants to get their money out quick and they don't want to wait and it's not a long term investment. The business gets stripped down and takes a little bit longer when you're publicly traded for restaurants in particular, but kind of the same thing happens over time because the returns have to grow every year. The board is not going to accept it.

You can't submit a budget to make five million less this year than you did last year. There are companies that have walked that razor thin line really well. And all I can say is those are the people I aspire to get in an empty bar one night and just have drinks and pick their brain.

[50:01] Chris Hatch: So, our show is called the Dirt Dog Pod and a lot of what that is alluding to is just thinking of like a good hunting dog out in the field that's zeroing in on the pheasant or the quail that you're after. And so hunting out kind of that next great real estate site. If you were dropped off in a new market with a franchisee and you're looking at five sites that they're looking at and exploring, should this be the next Hangry Joe's? What is it that you decide or what would you look at as you're looking at that potential site to determine if that's going to be a good high volume restaurant?

[50:39] David Roberts: I have the benefit of being old enough that it was way before AI and everything else. I actually had to go and meet with brokers and realtors and stuff to get data on the sites I was looking at took a long time. Today we use an AI solution. That kind of generates all the data. So we look at traffic counts, demographics, population density. We also look at our competitors around, let's say it's a three mile radius around the site we're looking at. And we kind of evaluate them based on their sales, which we have an estimate of. And we also use the AI to figure out what kind of loyalty they have.

So how many people are going there once a week or once a month instead of just a one time visit. And it's all the standard players that are our competitors. You can probably pick them out and say the same names that I would say. Because it's not just hot chicken. It's chicken in general. Chick-fil-A is kind of the master of the QSR field right now. But we open near Zaxby's and some other concepts that are not hot chicken but still compete with us. So we look at all the standard data. I think some of the other things I look at are what kind of community activities there are.

So in Northern Virginia, we do, I mean, there are food festivals all the time, all year long, through the winter. It doesn't matter if it snows. There are food trucks. There's a Korean food festival. There's the Italian food festival. They're everywhere and every style of food you can imagine. I'm big on community engagement. Even though we are a pretty fast-growing business, we're still a small business. And each one of our franchisees is their own small business. And the recipe for success for a small business is to be engaged with your community. Some of the things I am a proponent of are like, be a member of the Chamber of Commerce and go to the meetings.

Get to know the other business leaders in the community. Some of those folks have been around for 30 years and they can give you insight and advice that doesn't cost you a penny. And could be a deciding factor in how successful you are. But it's not just that. I'm in the process of rolling out a local store marketing plan. This is something I've used for 25 years, adjusted for the times and for this concept. But I mentioned earlier, we don't do a lot of marketing at all. We do some digital stuff. There have been a couple of radio spots that we've done. But that's about it.

I mean, we don't spend a lot of money on marketing. We don't advertise. We go in, especially in a new market, when we go in, we have to get to know the people in that market. And that means sweat equity and beating the street, guerrilla marketing, that kind of stuff. Going to hotels and car dealerships, getting to know the sales managers and concierges, things like that. Relationships. Again, it all comes back to relationships and people.

[54:59] Chris Hatch: Yeah, I love that. That's a great perspective that you've offered there. And interesting about the food festivals and thinking about some of the community activities.

[55:10] David Roberts: So I just started rolling this out about two weeks ago. And to get it in all the stores probably take four or five, six months or something like that to do it and do it right. But, I try to focus on things, especially for the franchisees that aren't too expensive. You know, you could spend all kinds of money on advertising and not really realize. The only true measure for a franchisee is more dollars in the bank. But with the local stuff, you're putting your own time into it, and you're responsible for the relationships that you build. At the end of the day, I think restaurants do what you tell them to do.

And with the right people running them and displaying the right behavior like all the stuff that I said like getting out knowing the other business people in the community. All that translates into sales and profit.

[56:27] Chris Hatch: If every single fry cook in the entire system was listening to this podcast right now, what is the one piece of advice you'd give every fry cook in your system?

[56:40] David Roberts: Use the timers. We have timers for a reason. You know, we say six minutes and 45 seconds, not seven minutes, not six minutes and 30. We've done a lot of work on it. You know, I really love growing people too. Like getting people who don't know that they're talented at this stuff. But I can see it and elevating them and being hard on them and expecting a lot and holding them accountable and good people crave structure and they crave recognition and there's nothing better than giving somebody something that they don't believe they can do and watching them get it right because then it doesn't really matter if I recognize it. Because at that point they realized that they're better than they thought, right? And I've made an impact on that person's life.

[57:44] Chris Hatch: Okay, so same thing if you had every single store manager in your system listening to you. What is the one thing you'd tell every store manager today?

[57:59] David Roberts: Suggestive selling, probably. I think we don't do a lot of that. It's there, we try to get people to buy a combo instead of just a sandwich or what have you, but there are some concepts out there that have it really dialed in. They hit it every single time. The nomenclature, the language, the phrasing that they use. Being professional and but being inviting at the same time. I would go back to what I was saying earlier is one of my founding principles, which is be there. That's the rule number one. And be there doesn't just mean physically, although it does mean physically. It means have your mind in the right place and have your thoughts in the right place.

Don't bring the things that are troubling you into the business and let them cloud your mind while you're trying to be effective. I probably use work, and you probably do too, and a lot of people do, as an escape, mentally, to get out, shut everything else out, and just focus on the task at hand. And I used to do that with running, but I'm too old to run anymore. Now it's work. As an operator, I also get immediate gratification from the things that I do. I used to work with a bunch of developers, and those guys would start working on a deal that wouldn't come through for three years.

And I'm like, how do you do that? I pat myself on the back like 10 times a day when I get something done. I love the immediate gratification of being an operator. And I love to conceive something and put it in place and have it work. That's the best feeling ever.

[1:00:19] Chris Hatch: Yeah, on behalf of some of the developers, I would just contest that similar to you, it's putting out fires. The fires sometimes rage really hot quickly, but for the most part, they're very slow. And you have to come up with more of a methodical response on a regular basis. And then it's really fun when we have really stable government environments, like the last five years, as a great example. Whether it's a worldwide pandemic or taking the interest rates up 5% in six months or whatever, right? Who knows? Anyway, last one in this series, because we're on a roll. If you had every franchisee sitting here today, and to your point, franchisees are primarily focused on putting more in their checking account, right? At the end of the day. What's your piece of advice for them?

[1:01:18] David Roberts: Follow the plan, believe in the plan. It's a path that from the get-go, as a matter of fact, right before this, I was looking at our pre-opening path that starts from the time that the franchise agreement is signed, and we kind of lay out every step along the way. Literally, it tells you: as soon as you sign your franchise agreement, here are the things that you can do. These are the best things to do right away. Start looking for a location, start looking for a contractor because their schedules get filled up, especially the good ones get filled up really quick. And the trades are not as readily available as they always have been.

We haven't even talked about the labor market, but it's completely different than it was before COVID. People don't even think the same way about work anymore. And that's not necessarily a negative, I'm not saying that in a negative way, I just mean it changed the way we perceive, Americans at least, perceive work. I have two daughters. They're 20 and 12. And when COVID hit, my 20 year old was 15 and she was just starting to look for a job, a part-time job while she was in school. The job she was looking for at the pay scale that she was looking for was all entry level, minimum wage, but with a higher premium for the DC market.

But it was still $9 an hour, 9.50, maybe 10. And the way she perceived her value as a worker, during and after COVID, was: $10 an hour isn't worth it. My time's more valuable than that. So I need to go look for jobs that maybe require a little more skill or a little more training, but they pay more. It wasn't just, now I demand more money for the same work. It was, I have to go and grow my skills, because that's not enough money. My time's more valuable. And I think that was a, that was a big mindset change for a lot of skilled labor out there, including the trades, including servers and bartenders and cooks and everybody else.

[1:04:08] Chris Hatch: Yeah, what a wild shift it's been over the last few years.

[1:04:12] David Roberts: It's a different world. It's a different world that COVID has launched us into. And it affects everybody. But the restaurant business really went through some major changes that were not intended or not expected.

[1:04:33] Chris Hatch: I've not had the pleasure of being a customer of Hangry Joe's yet. So when I get there, what's the go-to? What's your recommendation on what to order?

[1:04:41] David Roberts: The Mega Sando combo. With the Mega Sando, the chicken filet is almost three times the size of Chick-fil-A's sandwich. We serve anywhere from eight to eight and a half ounces. That's our margin of error. And I think Chick-fil-A does like a three and a half ounce, a three and a half ounce filet. It is a lot to eat, but we also have a smaller sando, and even that's still like six ounces of chicken. But I would say there's a couple of other things that are guilty pleasures of mine. I can't eat our food every day as much as I love it because I'd be 500 pounds and unable to move.

But the loaded mac and cheese is really incredible. And then we've got another one on there that actually that's been my favorite item because it's a little bit healthier. It's a [chibap]. It's a Korean word. It's rice in the bottom of the bowl. And you can pick your sauce. Use our soy glaze, spicy soy glaze. And it comes with fried chicken. It's eight ounces of fried chicken on top. And then some greens and some more sauce, a white onion sauce on top. Amazing. It is really, really incredibly good. I'm also working on a non-fried chicken because we think that's in today's health-conscious society we need to have something that's a little healthier so it's likely going to be a grilled chicken but we're testing out some other roasted options all the same marinade spices everything else but expect to see that probably sometime the end of the summer in a big promotion where we will advertise.

[1:06:59] Chris Hatch: I love it. I love it. Well, there you go. So if you haven't been to a Hangry Joe's get out there and go try the Mega Sando. That's the move. Perfect. David, thank you for joining us today on the Dirt Dog Pod.

[1:07:07] David Roberts: That's the move. Signature right there. My pleasure, Chris. Thanks for having me.