Nate Minnis, VP of Real Estate at Smalls Sliders

Guest: Nate Minnis, VP of Real Estate, Smalls Sliders

Host: Chris Hatch

Listen on Spotify

Summary

Chris Hatch talks with Nate Minnis, VP of real estate at Smalls Sliders, the Baton Rouge-born slider concept from Walk-On's founder Brandon Landry, backed by Drew Brees. Recorded the day Smalls opened its 26th location, the conversation covers 335 franchise agreements sold, AUVs reported above $2 million, and a 750-square-foot modular building topped by the brand's orange sea can. Nate walks through the site types Smalls targets, how the modular build and multi-lane drive-thru work, how long permitting and openings take, the franchisees Smalls wants, and the site selection habits he has built over about 1,300 openings with brands like Jimmy John's and Great Clips.

Key Takeaways

• Smalls targets dense regional retail areas where Cane's, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle and Dave's Hot Chicken are already thriving. A freestanding pad needs about three-quarters of an acre, and carve-outs with shared parking can work on as little as a quarter acre.

• The modular building is set in about six hours. A typical opening takes around 100 days with training, and the record is 72 days on an existing parking lot.

• Permitting is the bottleneck. Louisiana averages 30 to 60 days, while Texas, Florida and North Carolina can take nine months.

• Smalls favors well-capitalized multi-unit, multi-brand operators, averaging about seven agreements per franchisee, with $1.5 million liquidity and $2 to $2.5 million net worth required.

• Nate's site discipline: say no to every site first, then work back to a yes. It takes the emotion out, and franchisees should tour every option, not just the first one they love.

• Drive the market yourself, day and night, weekdays and weekends. You can't learn traffic patterns, access and U-turns from the passenger seat or a tour book.

• Respond to every personal email, especially from junior brokers. Even a quick "not of interest" earns lasting respect.

Transcript

Editor's note: Several moments the guest asked to have cut during recording were left out of this transcript. Compare it against the published episode, since Porter's final edit may differ. ICSC booth [19V] should be confirmed.

[01:45] Chris Hatch: Welcome back to the Dirt Dog Pod. Today we've got a great guest. We have Nate Minnis, who is the VP of real estate at Smalls Sliders. Thanks for joining us, Nate.

[02:07] Nate Minnis: Thank you, Chris. This looks exciting.

[02:09] Chris Hatch: Yeah, we're happy to have you here. I was kind of wondering, you don't have like an orange Connex background here as your background on the screen. Is that by design or? I love that. I have noticed that your background is not the traditional Smalls, orange Connex background. So are you at the corporate office?

[03:00] Nate Minnis: We are. We're in an Industrious, so we actually do have a small office where we all work and it is all branded. Love to get you some photos, but I had to go to a private room just so I didn't interrupt other business.

[03:25] Chris Hatch: Yeah, that makes sense. So tell us about the Smalls brand because being located in Salt Lake, I'm around the country quite a bit and I've seen some of your stores. Actually not been a customer yet. I need to fix that ASAP. But tell us about the brand and what's going on. What is Smalls Sliders?

[03:45] Nate Minnis: Yes, it's a very unique concept that is just really disrupting what we're able to do with freshly made, cooked to order sliders. And we have seasoned fries, queso, which I think is just amazing, and shakes. So we're doing this all out of a 750 square foot modular building. And it was founded by Brandon Landry, Brandon started Walk-On's. Do you guys know Walk-On's out there in Salt Lake?

[04:19] Chris Hatch: I definitely know the Walk-On's concept, but again, haven't been a customer, but understand the concept.

[04:24] Nate Minnis: Yeah. So Brandon started that with a buddy of his. Then years later, Drew Brees got involved and Drew called him up and was on a plane with them and just said, Hey, what are you working on? And Brandon's like I'm always thinking, I'm always thinking. And I really think that I can make a business out of this. And Todd Graves, who started Raising Cane's is good friends with Brandon Landry. So Brandon wanted to get some support and understand if this is going to be something that could really be made and went and introduced it to Todd Graves. Todd's like, I think you can make a business out of this.

So he's talking to Drew about it and Drew backed him on the first Smalls, on LSU's campus in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And it was right before COVID. And it's, as I said, it's a 750 square foot modular building with a sea can on top. We have multi-lane order point around it. We actually have three ways of getting the product. So the drive-through, a walk-up patio with about 32 seats. And then we also have third party delivery. And like I said, it's just fresh, made to order sliders, seasoned fries, queso and shakes. And we're not going to go and change this out. We're not turning into a chicken slider.

We're not turning into any other kind of concept. We're going to keep it simple. And we're going to make everyone's day a small bit better. And so Brandon started this and then COVID hit. As some of these brands really were assisted by COVID, right. Because we didn't have to worry about the spacing and some of the regulations that were put on some of the other brands. And so our drive through and sales really took off and he just wanted to do a million dollars and he well exceeded that. And we continue to well exceed that with each of our openings, which is exciting because today we open our 26th location and it's our 10th state that we're open in.

And so we have a lot of great growth. We have 51 in due diligence all the way through construction right now. And so you're going to see the brand here shortly. What's exciting also is we've opened up Vegas. We're about to sign our first deal in Vegas. And with ICSC 2026 coming up, I'm really hoping that we can get some sliders coming to the booth and we can get all of the developers and brokers more involved with the actual taste of the burger than just seeing what it looks like and not being able to have it.

[07:07] Chris Hatch: Listen, as like an almost 20 year attendee of the ICSC Vegas show, I'm a huge proponent of you serving sliders at the show. That will go off like a rocket. No doubt.

[07:18] Nate Minnis: Well, when I was at Jimmy John's from 2006 to 2012, I can tell you, I did all the prepping and did a lot of the getting the food, everything beforehand, ready for that show. A lot of people wanted to talk to me, but they really wanted the sandwich more than anything from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., from the night before.

[07:39] Chris Hatch: You know, I've always wondered that. The way you bring stuff in there, the union has to kind of bring it in and then handle it for you. So do you have to pay the union employee? Do you guys prepare it at your Jimmy John's store? How does it work?

[07:51] Nate Minnis: Yeah. Yeah. So I did all the prepping at the UNLV location there and I would put it in a cargo van and I would just take it to the booth just through a separate door. And then we had our own marketing and our own ops team there actually making the sandwiches and handing them out.

[08:11] Chris Hatch: That's wild. So you'd bring in all the supplies and then you'd bring in some kind of key team members that that's so was it actually like administrative people that got to go serve sandwiches for a couple of days?

[08:23] Nate Minnis: It was more of the field marketing team and the ops team and the training that got to go and do it. Then it was the office, internal office people.

[08:33] Chris Hatch: Okay, so that's amazing. So it's the people who are training the on the ground frontline people at Jimmy John's that are actually back there preparing those sandwiches. Yeah.

[08:42] Nate Minnis: That's right. At least they did. Not anymore. But they were that way.

[08:45] Chris Hatch: Yeah, yeah, that's so fun. That's amazing. We've had a lot of guests on the pod so far, and a lot of them are hyper growth concepts like yourself. I'm not sure I'm sure we've had other guests that have been opening a store on the day of recording, but you're the first person to announce that, which is pretty amazing. That's cool. Where's store 26 opening?

[09:04] Nate Minnis: Wichita, Kansas. To give a little more background on what we've sold. We've sold 26 open, 335 sold franchise agreements. And it really ranges from Phoenix, Arizona up to Denver over to Indianapolis down to North Carolina. And we're really trying to stay into that Southeast South and Southwest portion of the states, but we are open for development in 30 states and continuing to sell in a total of 30 states at this point. So we do have a lot of growth in not just franchise sales, but real estate and actual openings.

[09:40] Chris Hatch: And when you say 335 franchise agreements signed, are those single store franchise agreements or some of those multi store agreements?

[09:53] Nate Minnis: So they're technically single, but they're a part of a bigger picture with an ADA (area development agreement). So we are averaging about seven franchise agreements per franchisee.

[10:04] Chris Hatch: So if you look at kind of fast forward the clock here, look at year end 26, year end 27, what do you think your store count looks like?

[10:12] Nate Minnis: We're going to be about 50 to 55 just because of permitting time and the due diligence period and such. We are taking our construction portion of this is really quick, but our permitting and all of the competition that we have from a land standpoint, the Dutch Bros and the 7 Brews all focusing on that half acre, two or three quarter acre. They're my competition. In addition to that, they're my friendly go-to tenant when we can find an acre and a half to go parcel it up and get open. So, it's just been a little bit more challenging in the sense of the last year to get the right dirt where we want to be.

And so it's a domino effect. Now we signed 50 leases last year slash PSAs, which was really exciting. I think that was very rewarding for me. In addition to that though, we got to get those 50 open and permitting time in a lot of the states that aren't in Louisiana where you average 30 to 60 days, we're seeing nine month permitting time in Texas and Florida and North Carolina and such. We have a really good plan where I think 2025 is going to end up around 50 and then 2026, we should be really able to accelerate from this year's deals that we're signing and get you know, get to 100 locations by the end of 2026.

[11:43] Chris Hatch: What type of what type of AUVs are you seeing in your FDD right now?

[11:51] Nate Minnis: So we don't actually post it in the FDD, but if you do Google it does say it's over 2 million. We have locations that are really exceeding every single day. We are setting new records. And Brandon said the other day on restaurant spaces, back in February, it's like Ocala, Florida. It did about 120,000 the first week. And so we're seeing that trend and it's going well. Everything has a honeymoon period and we start to see where we're going to balance. But from a cost of getting the modular building, the seven year depreciation, the overall investment to then having a much better AUV that we expected is really being beneficial for the franchisees.

[12:42] Chris Hatch: I mean, even if you notch that down 10% call it a 1.8 million for a moment on AUVs, I mean, that still puts you in the top three in the burger category, right?

[12:54] Nate Minnis: Yeah, right. And we don't do breakfast, right? And so we, that's where a lot of the competition does do get their additional sales. I mean, if you look at a Burger King and McDonald's and a Five Guys and such, Five Guys doesn't do breakfast, but if you compare us to them, then yeah, we're, higher than them on the AUV.

[13:15] Chris Hatch: I love the fresh approach though, and it's just of simplifying that menu, right? I mean, I think we're seeing some of the top volume QSRs out there that are really streamlining, really narrowing the focus, right? Back to the Todd Graves of the world, right? As you know, we do chicken tenders, right? That's it. That's what we do, right? We don't do 50 other things. I love that thought.

[13:39] Nate Minnis: Yeah, And if you talk to Brandon, he's just likable. Everyone that a lot of our potential franchisees are like, oh, I know Brandon. And we're like, well, do you really know Brandon or are you really good friends with them or it's like, oh, I passed him. But he made me feel so good about myself. And he does. He goes and comes and says hi to every single person in the office. And I was listening to him talk a few months ago and something that really resonated with me is the team aspect of it. So he started Walk-On's and he will tell you that, he played seven minutes in his college career or I think junior year.

And, but his role wasn't to go and play on a team. It was to support the team, to make them better. You know, it's kind of the Rudy way of looking at it, right? And he asked the question to his staff is this is a team. We are a team. If the GM were to walk out on a Friday at 7:30 at night, what would happen? And they'd be like, we're fine. We got this. We can handle it. And then he's like, now if the dishwasher walks out on a Friday night at 7:30, what happens? And the staff's like, we're done for. It's going to be a challenge.

And it's true. Like it's kind of the way that, you have certain mentalities and I really had that same mentality that you got to take care of everyone. And it's not just about the CEO. It's, about the dishwasher. It's about everyone through. And he's really, really focused on hospitality and, from a person that if you ever get to meet Brandon Landry, you're going to walk away from that conversation feeling like, man, I think that guy's my friend. And. And I feel that way every time I talk to them. So it's all about the hospitality. He said, he'll tell you anyone can make a cheeseburger, but it's about the service and the, how do customers feel when they walk away?

Do they feel like you're a friend? Do they feel welcome and do they feel special or did they just go to a concept and walk away and be like, okay, I got good food. And so you have to give hospitality. It's not operations. You have to give hospitality when it comes to having a simple menu. Like if we had a menu of 50 different things, then you're having a more diverse customer base versus what just having a single menu. So you got to keep them not just the food memorable, but you got to give them the experience that they want, that they wish for.

[16:31] Chris Hatch: I was trying to think as I was getting ready to do the pod here with you today of all the other concepts in the burger world that might serve a slider. And I could think of White Castle and I could think of Jack in a Box. And that's where I ended my search in my head. Are there other competitors I'm not thinking about?

[16:51] Nate Minnis: There's one more, Savvy Sliders, out of Michigan and they are, they're similar concepts to White Castle and Krystal's. But you know, for us, it's really, it's about the premium, right? We're not, what is the word, what does White Castle do? Steam. Like we're not steaming it, right? We are cooking. On the grill right then and there, a premium product at a value. And so, when you look at our number four combo, which is typically the most sold because a lot of people think they look, they eat with their mind, right? And so they see this visual of four sliders and they're like, I can eat all four of those plus the fries, plus the drink.

And so we sell a lot of combo fours when we first open up. And people start to realize I can't eat a combo four because it's not just this tiny little slider. And it is just shy of two ounces of patty with cheese, pickle, Smalls sauce and bread. I get the Biggie Smalls, which is two patties, two pieces of cheese, pickles, Smalls sauce and bun. And, what's beautiful about it is it's a premium product that kids love all the way through. I've seen many elderly eating on the patio and enjoying their time. And, what's interesting to me about the brand and what I really love about it is two things.

One is when I think about sliders, I can eat this at 10:30. I can eat this as a full meal. I can use this as a snack at two, three o'clock in the afternoon, or I can make it my dinner meal with the kids. And so when we actually break down the numbers and see it, a lot of restaurants are 40, 50% lunch, 40, 50% dinner, right? I know Jimmy John's was significantly higher, about 55, 60% lunchtime than they were in the evening. And that's not Smalls. Smalls is consistently having one of those three ways of getting the product, like third party, multi-lane and walk up.

We're seeing about 30 to 33% lunch, 23 to 26% snack time, meaning 2 to 5 PM, and then 30 to 35% dinner. And then everything else is late night. And so we're just seeing constant traffic throughout the day because we cater to so many different demographics that we just see that consistency happen throughout the day.

[19:51] Chris Hatch: Yeah, fascinating.

[19:53] Nate Minnis: So we're not going to have that late night thought process like a White Castle that people are drinking and they go get White Castle. We want to be the premium product that is family fun, friendly, and we're going to sell you a premium product at a value.

[20:09] Chris Hatch: I love that. So tell us about how like a typical site looks, right? So what is it that it looks like? How big is the acreage? You said a 750 foot building. I know there's kind of a few components. It's a prefab process. Tell us about a typical development site for you.

[20:28] Nate Minnis: Yeah, so we're really focused on dense regional retail areas. And we don't have to reinvent the wheel. We have 26 open. So we're parasitic by nature. If there's a Cane's or Chick-fil-A and a Chipotle and other like brand, Dave's Hot Chicken, right? All people that you've had on this great podcast. And so if they're there and they're all exceeding AUVs, why would we not want to pursue that area? And they're typically in dense regional retail areas with interstate access or dense traffic, right? And so that's what we're focused on right now. Just due to the fact that we have a simple menu and we want to continue to get new customers along with our existing customers coming back frequently We're really focused in front of a shopping center, if we can do carve-outs.

We are focused on our smallest is 0.26 acres, but we also have shared parking. And in a carve-out, standard is about a half acre, if we're on a standalone pad by ourselves with no cross parking, we're really about three quarters of an acre. And that's just due to the fact that we need the parking and we want the multi-lane order point. So what's fun for this role for me is we can configure the modular building at an angle if we need to. We can change the drive-through. We can make it a one-two-one. We do angle parking to make it one-way flow. So we can get really creative with our design.

[22:04] Chris Hatch: What do you mean by the multi-lane? Go back to that for just a moment. What is that?

[22:11] Nate Minnis: Instead of saying a double drive-through, so we say multi-lane approach where essentially maybe you have a single drive-through or a double lane and you go around and you have two menu boards right there and then they merge down. Or you have a single lane with a double, with two menu boards right there and then a merge down. So that's the one, two, one. And so we can, so we always want to have a multi-lane approach, meaning that there's always going to be two order points for customers to order from and through the drive-through.

[22:47] Chris Hatch: And then as far as what gets constructed on the property, how is the building typically built? I know you do prefab. Are they all prefabs?

[22:56] Nate Minnis: They are all prefab. The modular buildings are, we have three vendors now. We have one in Florida, Arkansas, and Texas. And those are all getting completed. What's nice in a lot of these states is we don't have that extra step with building permits because the state, the building plans are already stamped by the state. So they have to already get them stamped before they can actually go and ship them to the location. So what happens is when we get our permits, we get GC on-site, they get all the MEP, all the utilities to where they need to be. Some will work on, some GCs will put canopies together and maybe some concrete, but essentially about three weeks after we start construction and we get the utilities where we need to, we have, we order a big crane.

The, one of the vendors will drive two trucks. They will get the modular building lifted up. And they will set it down, get all the MEPs connected. The second truck has the sea container that sits up on top, the big orange can. It's actually a two-time-used sea container, one time in the actual sea. But second time is we actually store all of our extra material that we need to construct the rest of the modular building in that. So we actually use it again as a cargo container. And we take all of this, everything out of that. We dropped the can on top. So we call it a can, but we want to always be careful with our terminology because we don't want to scare or make cities or municipalities concerned when you talk about a sea container.

And so we, the modular building is on top on the bottom and we have the sea can that sits up on top. And then the rest of it is we have the parapet that goes behind on top of the modular where we put additional signage. And so it's six hours, all of a sudden you went from this landscape of just dirt and utilities for, so someone driving into work and now they're driving back and all of sudden they see this. a midnight bronze modular building with a Smalls can sitting on top. And then about four to five weeks later, we were open for business.

[25:19] Chris Hatch: Okay, so start to finish, what are you seeing for typical build time right now?

[25:40] Nate Minnis: With training and everything?

[25:49] Chris Hatch: Forget the entitlement, you've got permits are ready, sites ready, if there's bank lined up, whatever, everything's ready to roll, how soon until you're opening a new restaurant.

[26:03] Nate Minnis: 100 days and we've had our best is 72 but on average, so I would say we're about 100 days with training and such but we yeah 72 is our best.

[26:08] Chris Hatch: 72. That is. What city in America got a 72 day Smalls open?

[26:22] Nate Minnis: It was in Pensacola. We were sitting on top of an existing parking lot. And when we can do that, we just saw-cut for the utilities. It makes it, you can get that done in a week. You know, if you have the right utilities and the right setup. So it makes it a lot quicker. If we do raw dirt, it's more than a hundred days.

[26:36] Chris Hatch: Yeah, I think we need to send the city administrator for Pensacola, Florida, probably like an award or like congratulations. Here's the orange ribbon that we cut, right at the grand opening something.

[26:52] Nate Minnis: Yeah, no, it's been great to get involved. We're really involved with cities and municipalities because of the design and making sure that there, we alleviate any concern that they may have, just to the fact that it's not your typical brick and mortar. And we have adapted it without removing our branding to some of the city, municipal. I got to stop saying city and municipalities. But we have done a really good job to adapt to municipality codes and also some PDs that we have. So plan development language has gotten in the way a little bit with some of the states that have put regulations on cities where the cities then require the PDs to be formed to make sure that it's conformed to what they want and not what the state wants.

[27:46] Chris Hatch: You know, it's interesting in the prefab process. One of the prefabs that we did was a drive through only Starbucks west of Salt Lake City in a city called Lake Point. And when we submitted the plans to the county for approval the site plan set going to the county, but it included our building set, right. That was the prefab. And it was interesting because they commented on the building set and you're like, yeah, that's actually not your jurisdiction. So that's at the state. And it is it's just one of the extra components that you don't really think about when you start thinking about a prefab.

[28:20] Nate Minnis: Yeah, the more that you can get proactive with it, where when I have that pre-op meeting and I'm talking through in the health department and the building inspectors on there, I say, Hey, I will get you the link to the plans right now. So you can understand what we're working in. And anytime that I can see concern or be ahead of it, it's so much easier to be proactive and alleviate it than it is to be reactive and just try to get through a process where, you have code, you have language, but you also have emotions and you have opinions. And, I've, we've had a lot more rewarding feedback than we have a negative feedback.

And so it's been a lot of fun to be a part of it with the growth and, putting a footprint down in a lot of these cities where I think that they're they don't know what they don't know. But they also are like, really want to bring something exciting to my town. And that's Smalls.

[29:26] Chris Hatch: Yeah. So, okay. So we're fitting on three quarters of an acre on a freestanding lot. You're building the 750 foot building with the sea container kind of on top of the prefabs. Do you put anything in the sea can?

[29:37] Nate Minnis: We're dropping the modular building, not building the modular building.

[29:41] Chris Hatch: Right, dropping the module. Do you use the sea container for storage or something else?

[29:47] Nate Minnis: Nope, it stays enclosed. The really the purpose of it is one, it's our branding, right? Brandon always had the theme or the idea that it is a rustic view, that it's going to really help you show your branding throughout the market. And so one, it's branding. Two is we put our signage on it. Three is it covers our air conditioning and our ventilation. And so I kind of tell the city that it's there to use for screening. And so those are really the three. I did have an alderman one time where the city was concerned with the overall design and the alderman said, well, I think that's an accent.

And I, like, every time I have new conversations, I'm like, well, I'm going to use that in the future and see if that can get me over any humps and such. So. I think that's kind of a good way of looking at it too, is it's an accent to the overall design.

[30:55] Chris Hatch: Yeah, it's interesting. Okay. And then you have the three different methodologies for customers getting there. And I assume that kind of drives the three quarter acre size. Yes, because you have to have the three separate distinct lines of point of sale, right? Both the drive through or sorry, the drive through the pickup and then also the meal delivery.

[31:17] Nate Minnis: Yeah, that's the third party delivery side of it. So yeah, the way I look at this is do you want to build for the sales you want, or do you want to build for the sales that you can handle? And we want to be able to maximize it. You know, there may be a time that we start looking at an acre lot. I know Dutch Bros just increased their lot size. And I know 7 Brew and some of these others that were really focused on that half acre have really been pushed up to a three quarter acre to possibly an acre. And so I don't, we're not there quite yet, but the interesting part for us is we can get creative with dimension so we can go more, more narrow as long as it has depth to it.

We can go into a pentagon, we can go into a square rectangle. So, it's a little bit different for us. It's all about, can we make it efficient and can we make this a $9 million brand location?

[32:16] Chris Hatch: Yeah, you're probably also moving less cars through the drive-through than they need to because your ticket price is higher. Just serving beef, I would think, right?

[32:24] Nate Minnis: We're slightly higher in that sense, but we are, we just installed and did a whole new center line design inside. And so I don't have the new record time or the new times for the drive-through, but I do think that we're, expecting ourselves to be more of a two to four minute drive-through. And that will be much faster than the most other concepts out there.

[33:02] Chris Hatch: Okay, so you've sold 350 some odd franchise locations or franchise agreements. What is a typical franchisee look like for Smalls right now? Is it a operator of some other QSR like a 7 Brew or something like that? And they're looking to diversify their business plan or are you looking for more like just, hey, I'm going to operate this, put my blood, sweat and tears into the single location and knock it out of the park here?

[33:33] Nate Minnis: Yeah. So we do have some of those maybe considered mom-and-pops from, and from the beginning, but a lot of our original franchisees were Walk-On's franchisees or something related with Brandon. And we progressed out of the mama pop side of things and really focused on MUMBOs. So multi-unit, multi-brand operators. And that's where a lot of them have been a part of to your point of 7 Brew or Yum! Brands. Or Dave's Hot Chicken or Jersey Mike's that they really want to diversify their portfolio because of maybe they're not in that market or they can't get that market for what they want to do with that brand.

And so we have been able to get a lot more of those MUMBOs and we do require a million and a half to two and a half million net worth. So million and a half liquidity, two to two and a half million net worth. And that's just because we want to be able to that they're coming on, they have to get their first can open within a year. And then typically thereafter is a year after each one. And so we just want to make sure that we have well-resourced franchisees that can operate that have been a part of the business. But that's not to say that we won't have mom and pops because me personally, I love more of the local side of franchisees because they put their blood, sweat and tears into it.

And I've had the opportunity to work with over 2,500 franchisees in my 17 years. And some of the best operators I know are guys that had $0 to their name and became multi-unit franchisees with great success.

[35:26] Chris Hatch: Interesting. What are you seeing as the biggest challenges that are facing Smalls?

[35:37] Nate Minnis: Yeah, right now it's the real estate side. We got to get deals open. We have the 26, but as a lot of people listening probably know, milestones of getting 50 and then to 100 are really key for any brand. And if we can get to the 50 and the 100 and we're still keeping the AUVs, then we're going to get a lot more time and attention with potential franchisees and then really be able to accelerate even more from there. And so, for me, it's real estate. It's a matter of being able to get the deals locked in and being able to get through the permitting period and setting the right expectations internally.

I think just like every other brand out there right now, I think that you have some concerns with recession. And of course, I'm sure I don't really don't want to say tariffs on this today, but a lot of concern there with a lot of people. And so I think the beauty though of being in franchising all my life is if there were a recession, typically, at least every single time there has been one, franchising has increased and it actually has provided more opportunities. So When I was at Jimmy John's in 2008, I went from doing 75 deals a year to 108 deals a year because we had a lot more opportunity and a lot more people.

When they lost their jobs, they were able to take their dollars and go and invest into themselves and become their own boss. And so, I think it'll be interesting over the next six months. I've talked to a lot of people and a lot of people think over the next 120 days is going to tell us a lot on how we're going to finish out the year. And for the rest of the brand, it's getting the cans open and keeping the consistency. And keeping the consistency in the hospitality and making sure that we don't lose the hospitality with the great product.

[37:41] Chris Hatch: You know, I always describe it as the brands that have that sizzle, right? Like the it factor. And it's so hard to keep that it factor once you're at your size and going to 100. We've watched a lot of brands, somewhere in there, just lose it, right? And it's hard to convey it at scale.

[38:04] Nate Minnis: Yeah. And some of what Brandon would say, too, is when you see these brands, and this was more for Walk-On's, but when you see these other brands faltering and bankruptcy the number one feedback item is, well, that's how we always did it. We didn't want to adapt. We didn't want to change. And so we're not in the position to change. We're not going to go discount. We're not going to change who we are. We're just going to have better hospitality and make everyone's day a small bit better. Right. Just by providing a consistent product of the freshly cooked slider, seasoned fries, shakes and queso. And I'll tell you what the queso alone is by far one of the best quesos I've ever had. It is the best queso I've ever had.

[39:05] Chris Hatch: Yeah, I love that. So for your fryer, just fries are going to the fryer, nothing else, all right? There you go. You might be one of few celiac friendly fry places out there in the world.

[39:05] Nate Minnis: And kids love it.

[39:26] Chris Hatch: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's amazing. So you've walked us through what a typical small location, small locations looks like for you, how you're operating there and how you're trying to keep that customer service that customer experience there. At what point does a franchisee get a signed football from Drew Brees? Is that like right when you signed the franchise agreement or is it later?

[39:52] Nate Minnis: He is an investor and a board member. I've had the opportunity and this is my claim to fame in my career right now is I did Drew's first three Jimmy John's in New Orleans. And really I did a site tour with his wife, Brittany and his agent at the time and met Drew at his house for just a short sit. And just such a down to earth guy. I could only imagine what it's like to hang out with Brandon and Drew in one day together. And it would just be smiles all day. So the day that I started at Smalls, an employee of ours had had a conversation with Drew the night before and told Drew that we had hired a real estate person and he asked who it was.

And they said Nate Minnis. And he's like, that guy did my Jimmy John's deals. And I'm like, 12 years later, this guy remembers and he comes into the office for a board meeting and he walks up to me and he's like, man, that one in Metairie is still in the top 5% best performers. It just crushed me. And I'm like, no, I'm 40 pounds heavier than I was back in the day and everything else. So for him to be able to walk up to me and be able to tell me that. Then I was awake one time at like four o'clock in the morning and I looked at LinkedIn, of course, and I had a notification.

I had a new connection request, and it was Drew Brees asking to be connected with me. And I'm like, you know what? It's all kind of full circle at this point. I don't know how much I believe in certain things, but it is fate that I'm here at Smalls and being able to work with Drew and the team to work on real estate and continue to see that every can that has opened has exceeded the prior can. So. It's very rewarding to see that, but to be a part of a team effort when it comes to Brandon and Drew and TenPoint Capital, who is our Capital group that's supporting us. So it's been a lot of fun and very welcoming and warming.

[42:37] Chris Hatch: Yeah, what a fun experience. He comes across like such an amazing person, right? And every interview he ever gave every time, every clip you ever see on him, he just really comes across as a good old boy.

[42:50] Nate Minnis: Yeah, no, I was talking to one of our franchisees who was, he blew out his knee and it's the reason why Drew became a quarterback at Westlake High School. And he was telling me that Drew was the guy that was always in the honors classes. He was always learning, always reading books and was always the guy that that pumped everyone else up. He and Brandon are just two guys I'm envious of. Brandon has eaten cheeseburgers since he was a kid and he's still very fit and I'm like even if I ate, you know salad and worked out I still couldn't be as fit as you so I'm envious of that guy, But those guys are just they talk with such passion, but without overdoing the emotion.

I can't do that. I'm very passionate. I want to express everything that I have. And those guys are just so down to earth and just, they just want everyone to succeed and have a great time and be a team.

[43:57] Chris Hatch: Back to your team, by the way, that you have. You have a brand new CEO, right? Charles, and he came over from Tropical Smoothie. I think he added like 80 something percent store count growth for them over like five years while he was CEO there.

[44:02] Nate Minnis: We do. Charles Watson. Yeah, to 1,500 locations and he's a development guy and I've had a three-minute conversation with him this week and, I've been out traveling on tours, but I got the chance to talk to him yesterday and he's just wants to go get the right deals. He wants to be able to see this really. Take off like it should be taking off. And it's really exciting because he is a transparent guy. And he's also made me feel very welcome just in that three minutes conversation where I'm like, okay, I'm ready to go run through the wall for you and let's go crush this together. So he's a relationship guy and I think he's going to really excel for us.

[45:05] Chris Hatch: Amazing. That has got to be a lot of fire. I mean, nobody grows like that without having just one of those people in the room that's got to be electric, I would assume.

[45:16] Nate Minnis: We had a solid meeting as a group yesterday and it's just, you already feel like your back is covered and that whatever we want to do and how we want to do it, as long as it's logical, you go do it.

[45:36] Chris Hatch: That's amazing. Okay, so this is the Dirt Dog Pod. And a lot of the followers of the pod are looking for the nuggets of wisdom that great site selectors have in their head. Okay, and you are a guy who has opened a lot of locations, right? Like a lot of locations.

[45:52] Nate Minnis: I think I'm about 1300 in 17 years.

[45:55] Chris Hatch: That 1300 is nothing to sneeze at. Right. And that is, that's Great Clips. That's Jimmy John's.

[46:04] Nate Minnis: That's Subway. I was in operations with Subway and Cold Stone Creamery. I've done consulting with Wahlburgers and with Sonny's BBQ. I've done. My last role was with Level 5 Capital Partners. We had multiple brands: CorePower Yoga, Orangetheory Fitness, Big Blue Swim School. Yeah. So yeah, franchising is what I know, even though I've done corporate deals as a franchisor, franchising is what I know.

[46:33] Chris Hatch: Okay, so your whole world survives on opening the next great store. So you look at real estate all the time and you've grown accustomed to looking at real estate and you've, with those concepts you just described, you've been looking at strip stuff where maybe you have an end cap drive-through or an end cap opportunity. You've also been looking at freestanding pads. How do you determine if this is the right site and the right spot to be? What are the, walk us through the process, what goes into your head and how do you decide? That's a good idea.

[47:03] Nate Minnis: Yeah, so one, I think market knowledge is very important. Now companies have spent a lot of dollars investing in my travels. And I do truly believe that being on the ground, being in the market over and over, not just during the weekdays, but on the weekends and being there day and night as it's just very important. So for me, I have market mapped every city over, well, every metropolitan market. I haven't been to Juneau, but that's the only capital I haven't been to, but I've been to all 50 states. I really think spending the dollar and spending the time in market is so valuable that I think a lot of deal makers miss.

And I work with brokers, but I don't rely on my brokers to tell me if it's a good site. I want to be able to go and do that with franchisee and get their input. The first step that I do, though, is when I get a site, I say no to it. And the reason for that is because I know on the other side with a franchisee, they're going to be emotional and they, which they should be. I would be emotional too excited, but that when you get excited and you get emotional about a site, you miss red flags. And so I always say no to the site and I have to work myself back into why we should do the location.

And that removes the emotion aspect of it. And my goal always is I should be able to ask five, seven questions to the franchisee. Now, I may love it. I may dislike it, but I want to see the path that they're on and how they went through their step, their steps to understand that they liked the site or not. I don't want to give my input, my feedback right away. I want to understand. And so like one, one story, hopefully my franchisees don't get upset with me in Houston. They got a list of 10 sites. And I had known all of them because again, I've had the opportunity to be in all of these markets multiple times throughout my life.

The first one on the list was the site that it was okay. It was on a frontage road, but it was the last parcel and there was nothing thereafter. And you had no other on-ramp to the interstate or to the highway or off-ramp. So they get on the phone and they're like, we got our number one site. This what we want to do. And I just went through a few questions and they said, well, that site doesn't look that good anymore. And I was like, okay. I was like, well, what about the other nine? And they're like, we didn't even drive them because we got so excited about the first one that we didn't even look at the other nine.

And I was like, well, that's why we, that's why I do what I do in that sense is because I think you, when you get emotional about this And Kyle [Lenzon] asked the question on LinkedIn about my perspective 20 years ago versus today. It's still the same and it is interesting to hear the feedback when you first start in the business that this is a relationship type business. Don't burn the bridges. And I, as a young guy, was really focused on, admittedly, proving myself, right? Because I hadn't been in real estate and I wanted to prove myself at getting into Jimmy John's and they, took a risk with me not having real estate experience, but they I had operations experience, which they liked.

And they liked the fact that they didn't have real estate experience so they could train me and teach me how they wanted it to be versus going into it with a different mindset. The difference today is I'm still very passionate about getting the right deal. I just go about it in a different way. And I've learned to be a little bit more subtle and a little bit smarter and terminology and such about getting the right deal. For me, the attitude part of selecting the right site is: one, are you going to invest your own money into it? Would you? And two, do you think that franchisee's grandchildren are going to be able to see that same site, the same brand, still operating 15, 20 years from now?

If the answer is no, then it doesn't really matter about all the other attributes and everything else that you add into the evaluation. If your gut is right off the bat, no, and it's terrible and you're, you have concerns, then you definitely need to analyze a lot more. So does that all make sense?

[51:50] Chris Hatch: Yeah, total sense. And that's great advice. I love the concept of separating the emotion out because I think sometimes you just get excited about something and then you miss, well, the axis is kind of lousy. Actually, it's terrible, right? You can see it. You just can't get to it. There's a lot of those sites that are out there.

[52:10] Nate Minnis: What I always do is I always drive past it first. I always want to know, am I paying attention? And I just pass the site first and then go do U-turns. I'm supposedly known as a U-turn person all the time on tours. And that's it. The other thing: I think I've had five tours or five drives with broker and franchisees that they drove versus me. Like, I don't believe that you're going to be paying attention and that you're going to be aware of all of those red flags if you are not the one driving and paying attention to what you need to be paying attention to.

And so I have always driven the majority of the time. I have to say not all. But I do think that that's a very important part of this, where I think if you sit in a car and just let brokers drive you around, you don't actually truly understand traffic patterns and the access and how you can do a U-turn or how you can see it and such. So I think a lot of those side attributes, you have to be driving them. You can't be sitting in the passenger seat in the back looking at a piece of paper. I don't do market books, like market tour books.

I've never had one. Some brokers will still print them out. Again, I take it back to the deal-maker should have market knowledge and we shouldn't need a tour book to tell us demographics and such, I believe that we should be doing that work and making sure that all of our information that we have is consistent. Because when you go and do comparison of, let's say, the 600 deals that I did at Jimmy John's or 500 deals, you use brokers, different demographics on every single site, you're going to see so many inconsistencies. And so internally here, we plan the work and work the plan. So planning the work, we've already worked on where do we want to be, where are the demographics, what type of site attributes are we focused on.

In addition, we have now a bunch of great programs with behaviors, with restaurant trends, and a lot of the other cell phone data. And so I'm a believer that if we plan the work and we understand where we're focused in guiding franchisees,. then all we need is the broker to go get a partial right there. So in Salt Lake City, I already have a market plan. I already know exactly which intersections I want to go to. Broker, here you go. Find something within a quarter mile of each one of those. Now a market plan can adapt, right? But we don't use a Buxton and we don't use other programs to tell us because we only have 25 open.

We're just focused on where are customers traveling to, where are other QSRs. And where the anchors and along with then residential and daytime population, we're not really focused on just a neighborhood center. due to the fact that it's more like four hours of business. And we're really focused on getting 12 hours worth of business. So a lot of rambling there, but maybe you guys can tie it all into whatever. But that that's how I, like, I have a lot of methodologies and a lot of ways that I do this. I don't know necessarily if everyone else does it that way.

[55:39] Chris Hatch: I think everybody who is at least all the guests that we've had on the podcast today, everybody has their own unique flavor for what they do. And I think what's very helpful to a lot of our listeners is really taking little piece of little nugget of wisdom from each one and deciding how it might help them better. It might be a young broker listening, might be young landlord rep at Regency or Brixmor or somewhere like that. Could be some young real estate representative in house at a corporate shop at a tenant. And I think for them, it's just incorporating all the information that comes back and how do they get better at selecting sites. That's what we're all doing at the end of the day.

[56:18] Nate Minnis: One more thing, and I've actually had someone speak up about this: one thing you will always get from me. If you send me an email and it says Nate, and it doesn't say unsubscribe below and it's a personal note to me with a site, there's not an email that I have not responded back to. I will respond back to every single email. And, I truly believe because I've seen a lot of junior landlord side where they're they're just trying to make a dollar too. And I have to respect that. And it goes back to the whole dishwasher comments story from Brandon. And I respect that they're hustling out there that what they have to go through for their first few years.

And I want to make sure that they know like they can, I've had junior anchors come up or junior tenants, junior associates come up to me and say, you were the one of 95 people that actually responded back to me. And I was able to say they're not of interest. They just they get they give so much more respect for that. So I don't I'm one of those that I have, I don't know, probably 90 folders in my outlook. And the email stays in my inbox until I respond or I take care of it. And I think I average about 20 to 30 a day that stays in there for long term projects, whatever.

But if you send me a site or you send me an email and you want to know something, I will respond back to you. It may not always be that day, but it's going to be within a week or two.

[57:54] Chris Hatch: I was going to say, that's 20 years, 1300 stores open. Is thousands of emails that have come in over time. That is a lot of emails.

[58:04] Nate Minnis: I calculated one time in 2011, I went on Outlook and I had done this like from top to bottom in that month. And I had typed over 10,000 emails.

[58:21] Chris Hatch: That is wild.

[58:23] Nate Minnis: That's just it's like, and they're not always long emails and everything, but at the same time, I'm like, do I even have time to be able to do that? But I mean, at the time I was working six AM to one AM.

[58:36] Chris Hatch: It's amazing. Okay, so for anybody who hasn't tried Smalls and is driving by one today and they're to go in, you said you get the, your go-to order is the Biggie Smalls combo. Is that what you said?

[58:48] Nate Minnis: Get the Biggie Smalls. You can add bacon to it. I did forget to say that earlier, but you can add bacon to it. And I get the Biggie Smalls and I get queso. And sometimes I'll get a regular Smalls slider and I just pour the queso right on top of the slider. And I just, yeah, I don't need a fork. Your hands are going to get dirty, but you know, it's well worth it. That's right.

[59:13] Chris Hatch: Game on. All right. Well, for all the commercial real estate people out there listening, look up Nate and Smalls at ICSC, coming up here next month. And otherwise, Nate, thanks for joining us on the Dirt Dog Pod.

[59:25] Nate Minnis: And we do have a booth there, [19V]. Right when you walk into the South Hall on the first floor, you're going to be able to see Smalls Sliders again, just like last year. So I'm excited. And if anyone wants to email me, I have a calendar ready to go booking 15 minute meetings every 15 minutes. So I'm excited for ICSC and I really appreciate it.