Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Million Dollar Meals with Andrew Kowal COO of Foodie Fit | The Power Move Podcast EP 60

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

This was quite simply an AMAZING conversation about the beginnings and scaling of Foodie Fit with COO Andrew Kowal, the leader in healthy fresh meals to go. ☑️ If you liked this video, consider subscribing to The Power Move with John Gafford The Power Move podcast stands to be one of the top sources of knowledge and insights, specifically into real estate and entrepreneurship out there! Not to mention tons of coverage of topical events and insights into our non-commercial lives as well…

From the art of the deal to keeping it real. Keeping it real. Live from the Simply Vegas studios, it's The Power Move with Jon Gafford. Back again. Back again, back again, back again. It's another episode of The Power Move. My name is Jon Gafford. I am your host.

To the left of me, as always, in... I'm just telling you right now, guys, if you have never watched this on YouTube, if you've never liked and subscribed, for no other reason, you got to go on and check out this jacket. The cold is rocking because my man, that is a deep tartan. That is, that's a solid, solid tartan jacket. I'm jealous. Appreciate it. So as always, welcome to the Bulgarian Mongoose. How are solid, solid tartan jacket. I'm jealous. Appreciate it. Appreciate it.

So as always, welcome to the Bulgarian Mongoose. How are you, buddy? Doing well. Doing well? The podcaster formerly known as the Green Bubble. Yes, the Green Bubble, formerly known as the Green Bubble, back as the Bulgarian Mongoose. I still regret that decision. No. Seriously.

No, you can't. Yes, I do. We love you for it. My phone sucks. Everyone loves you for it, Cole. We love you for it. We totally love you for it. First phone ever. Also in the studio, as always, Chris the Counselor it for it we totally love you for it also in the studio as always chris the counselor connell how are you sir living the

dream 702 law for all your legal needs 702 connell so we got 702 can i ask you a question cool i gotta ask a question i copied did you did you copy because you because you started the roofing company on colt also now is a roofing company and he's 702 roofing you're welcome and now there's 702 connell connell one day i'll tell the story one day i'll tell the story of how i got that phone number for free yeah i'm trying to get roofing cost me was a walmart burner phone and like 18 hours of calls to like the philippines sri lanka uh really i had to wait for some i feel like this is also the story of how you got hardcore German pornography, but I'm just telling you that. No, no, no.

That's the same. Similar. Different search. Different search. Same difficulty, different search terms. Same difficulty, different search. I get it. Ed with a suit is probably already regretting his choice very quickly

as he's sitting in the seat next to us. We have a local business here that is really, look, man, you're going to hear the word local business, and you're going to think, great, now they're rolling in like the knitting club. No, that's not it. On this show, if this is your first time joining us or you've listened to us before, this is where we talk about business, things to make you better, things to those things. And we believe success leaves clues. So we like to talk to people that are successful.

And this is a business that has taken Las Vegas, dare I say, by storm. I would dare say it. Dare say by storm. I would dare say it. Dare say by storm. I mean, everybody I know just about, I mean, literally as we're walking back into the studio, as we're walking into the studio, one of our guys that has worked for us forever goes, Hey, is that, is that the dude that owns foodie fit? I go, I go, yeah, it is. And he goes, man, I get, and he stops him and he goes, I get 95% of my meals from this place.

And that he's, and this is a, and by the way, the guy that was talking to you is no joke. He's a seven-figure agent. He makes a ton of money. He does well. So when he says, I want to invest, he's dead serious and he's got the quants. So that's not one of those, oh, thank you so much, sir. Move on. That's like, okay, let me get your number and I'll call you in a couple months.

And he's fit, too. Yeah, and he's fit. Yeah, no, no, no. So it was fit. I didn't know if it was scripted or not. No, no, no. Just to boost my ego as I walk in. No, no, no. So it was fit. I didn't know if it was scripted or not. No, no, no. Just to boost my ego as I walk in. No, no, no.

It really was not. We should do that now. Number one. No, it really was not. But Andrew, who owns Foodie Fit, is in, and we're going to talk about his story, some of the things that he has done to build a very, very successful brand that is now looking to expand into many other markets. So as you grow, we're going to be able to look back at this podcast and say, man, I bet he regrets that now five years later is what we're going to be able to say. Five years time, so we're looking forward to that. He's charging $25,000 an hour for consulting gigs.

But before, as we always do, let's talk about kind of the current events and some news that are going on to make us not evergreen. So the first thing I want to talk about that I thought was – Pete! What was it? Pete! What are you talking about? Pete and kim people oh okay first of all no no we can talk about that because i will say i cried over it for the weekend is this the first dude that has escaped the kardashians with his career intact i think i think he out kardashianed the k Kardashians. I was thinking that the other day. I thought, this guy actually came out ahead.

I think he sucked some of their fame, and now he's better for it. Playing chess. He's playing chess over there. All right, seriously, though. All right, let me ask you a question. If Pete Davidson was to write a book called How to Satisfy a Woman in Bed. I feel like I could smell it. How many of those could he sell? Because obviously, you look at that dude, and you look at the women that he's dated.

He's got something. Just rockets. But like I said, I could smell the book. It should be a scratch and sniff. I may or may not buy it. Yeah. It just doesn't seem like a good idea. So there was that.

The thing that caught my eye this week that I thought was pretty amazing was, did you guys hear? There was a Chick-fil-A somewhere. I don't even remember where it was but they were trying to hire people not as employees but as volunteers to help them work their drive-through and they would pay them for every hour they worked with five free meals literally will work for food as a business model i I saw that, and it's actually not that bad. How is it not that bad? According to the Fair Labor Standards Act. No, go knock out two hours,

you feed your family. Oh, my God. For somebody not making money, I mean, Well, there's a way that they can compensate employees with currency. I'd rather. Sometimes, nah.

Today, when I went to a deposition at an attorney's office that was literally in a gas station. Well, not a gas station. It was a car wash. Nails along. As I stopped at the gas station over off of Nellis, wherever I was, to get some gas. Oh, nice. And there was a dude at the gas station there offering to clean my windshield.

Obviously, he was a homeless fellow, and it was nice enough about him. But that would be the extent of the gas station saying, I'll give you a gallon of gas for every 10 windshields you wash. There are literal laws against barter. There are literal laws to protect this. It's not surprising that you think this is going to happen. Andrew, you ever try to

barter with your clients? Just straight barter, not like, oh, as a supplementary bonus, our employees get X amount of meals with their... Well, I mean, you've helped us for food before. He's easy. I an exempt under Fair Labor Standards Act oh my God I'm an exempt don't you love when people barter though I love barter wonderful no I love it but when it's talking about feeding your family to work to volunteer window at a minimum wage though if you're working to feed your family, if you go knock out two hours

and they're giving you $30 worth of food, what's it matter? And you're not paying taxes on it. It's not $30 worth of food. It's $8 worth of food. You know what's actually funny is they have something called the Tendi Index, which actually tracks the price of chicken,

flour, oil, basically things that make a chicken tender. And I swear to God, this is a real thing. And so actually right now on the tendy index uh chicken tenders are more expensive than they've ever been is this an actual index so maybe colt maybe i'm gonna walk it back i think if you broke it down is that gonna be since we're getting rid of libor i believe right i think we're just going maybe we go tendy index, which is like a CPI basket index. A CPI basket. Some people want the gold standard back.

I don't. That ship has sailed. Some people want to use Bitcoin. I think you're out of your absolute mind. Absolute mind. But the 10D index, I'm listening. Yes, you got me. It's a commodity.

It's a commodity. Yeah. Because look, if you look at Forex, future exchanges, you took it, pig bellies, orange juice, whatever, flour, chicken, oil, those are all pretty, you know. I like it.

Pretty great. I actually like it. Can I ask you a question? Can you hear the phrase talking about trading pork bellies and not think of trading places? Ever? Pork bellies. It's impossible, right? It's impossible. It's impossible.

There's no way. I was at a Korean barbecue and they had pork bellies and I almost did my best Dan Aykroyd. That's it. Oh, sure. Like he went to Harvard. There it is. All right. Well, enough of this nonsense.

Andrew, let's get to you. So first of all, for the three people still listening, thank you for still being here. We won't, but I'm going to give you a little incentive. So if you hang out long enough, at the end of the show, we will do five questions into the mind of cult, which has become, honestly, my favorite part of this show now. Because it just allows us to dive deep into the anomaly, the enigma, the mystery, the abyss. I don't think I've said anything bad. I think that most people really want to.

You mean eating humans for sport? Not eating humans. Hunting. Just hunting sport so you're even going to waste the meat that's let me ask you this weird question but if you had a chance to try human meat chris i feel like you would do it i feel like chris would do it chris That's actually Foodie Fitz number one. That's a number one combo. Just kidding. Connell, if you had a chance, would you? No. Colt?

We've already gone over this. I'm not going to help you hide bodies by consuming them. Oh my God. Alright, so Andrew. Tell us about you, my man. Where did you grow up? Where did you start out? Yeah. So, I'm originally from San Diego. I went to school in Santa Barbara. The classic entrepreneur, you know, kind of route dropout of college. You know how that goes. I was a business major, economics, and didn't go all the way through with that.

Ended up working for some nightclub in Santa Barbara where I met my now business partner and at the time was my roommate. Anyways, as time goes on, I ended up moving to Vegas because that's kind of the next natural progression in hospitality. The nightclub world. Sure. I thought you were going there with how beautiful San Diego, Santa Barbara, and then Vegas. Yeah. You were going to lose me on that one.

See, here's the thing. I want to go back a little further, though, because here's the thing. Entrepreneurs and people that are high-level entrepreneurs all have similar traits, I think, what we found through this show as kids. What was your first hustle as a kid to make money? Well, outside of the normal lemonade stand,

we used to go paint addresses on sidewalks. So we'd just knock on someone's doorstep, get five bucks, and offer to paint their address. Stencil it on there, buddy. That's pretty cool. I've heard that hustle before. I've never heard of that one. You've never heard that?

Yeah, that's a good one. And that's one that anybody can do. That literally, spray paint, stencil, anyone can do that. Make it easier for the Amazon driver, for the Uber driver, for whatever else. The Grubhub, you lazy bastards. At the time, the pitch was, we would go into kind of older neighborhoods, like, what if you need an ambulance, right?

You're getting older, you know, you fall. At the time, Amazon wasn't really a thing, wasn't a whole lot of deliveries, so it was more like for like, oh, you know, emergency services. And how old was this when you were doing this? Oh, I mean, pre-driving, probably 12. 12?

10. But you had to drive. It was just you by yourself? Myself and I had a friend named Scott that I used to do it with. Okay. And then when I was actually really young, in retrospect, looking back at it, it was very similar to your Chick-fil-A. I used to work at my dad's store. So my dad was an entrepreneur as well.

He had a couple businesses. And he used to pay me $2 an hour to work in his store as a kid. And at the time, I thought that was great money and in retrospect i see he was taking advantage were you making nikes is that what you were doing it's a statute of limitations and we can talk about it later the statute of limitations is over so who came up with the sidewalk hustle um i think it was more or less just stole it more or less. I mean, like we just saw some good idea. Like, why are we not doing that?

Yeah. Um, you know, so we, so we do that on the weekends and summer, things like that, save enough money to, you know,

go buy some toys and get into trouble. Um, and that was kind of the first thing we did that kind of make some side cash. But my first, what was your first job? What was the first job that you had? Well,

actually they're out of business now, so I think it's okay to say. So, uh, I was 14 and i worked full-time on over the summer at a fuel dock we used to fill up these big fishing boats of fuel i'm 14 years old and these are like fuel pump yeah the big industrial three four gallons a second of diesel and it's not like like a normal gas station where they shut off you had don't listen to it. But if you leave it on like 30 seconds too long, you have a geyser of 200 gallons of diesel in the air. All over you. Oh, my God.

It's horrible. And I remember at one point, I'm 14 years old, and we used to have to crush oil filters in this big hydraulic press. And I'm sitting there trying to put them in, and the thing crushes, trying to take one out. It was something out of like 19. Can somebody call OSHA? Like this place is out of business,

but I feel like they could do a retroactive. Field manager Stumpy was really helpful in training me. Isn't that crazy? You could not do that. You could not do that A for just standards, but B, kids are so dumb at 14 anymore. Are you saying that kids would be incapable of doing something because they would just de facto be injured with every transaction 20 years later?

I think that – No, no. I'm not arguing with you. But I think kids nowadays, a 14-year-old is not the same as a 14-year-old now. 25 years ago? Yeah. I saw somebody posted like a meme or something, and it said like why not to mess with people over 42 and it was like

these people apparently were like they had some skill set they needed by the age two they knew how to cook meals by age five they had a key to the house by seven by nine they left the house in the morning and didn't come back for the rest of the day all they drank was out of a garden hose maybe they got a sandwich if somebody's mom in the neighborhood happened to go to the grocery store when they were there they might have got a sandwich they're like yeah these are the real people not to screw these are the real screw-downs who would happen people real psychos now i'm seeing my son would be locked out of the house for like 20 minutes and be like i'm starting yeah whose fault is that though yeah well yeah okay i'll take some responsibility that's true

it is strong times it is well you know i'll say some responsibility that's true it is strong times well you know i'll say that he is he is a little tougher now we just in high school now which is crazy to me you guys started yet you started high school no next week next week it's crazy crazy when you see him off to high school it's nuts so speaking of high school you're done with high school now you're let's go back to college now so obviously the institution had nothing further to offer you which i think is a story that most entrepreneurs, me included, can, can appreciate. Well, it was actually kind of a freak accident. So I used to ride motorcycles and I got T-boned when I was on my motorcycle and that kind of put me out of commission for

quite a while. And kind of coming back into that, I was, you know, $80,000 in debt from that incident. I was like, man, I really need to get back to school, I was, you know, $80,000 in debt from that incident. Um, that's like, man, I really need to get back to school, but I also really need to work because I was kind of supporting myself through college. Uh, and so it was like, kind of, well, do I take classes? Do I go to work? I'll take two classes and I'll work full time. Uh, and then two classes turned into no classes and kind of just ended up working. And, you know, at the end of that, I was like, I need more. Where were you working?

Where were you working? What were you doing? I was like a bar lead at a little cantina in Santa Barbara. It was fun. Don't get me wrong. Being a bartender in a bar town is like a celebrity. Oh, it's best. Great.

It's a few years my future wife will never know about. You know, great, great time. But I knew in order to progress in kind of hospitality, you know, Vegas was the next logical step. So I kind of put the feelers out and, you know, made my way out to Vegas, somehow leaving the beach and coming to this hot, dry desert. Logical move. Smart move.

So you're in Vegas now. What year is this? You moved here? 2010. 2010. Yeah. Right. Okay. Good times. So I worked for one of the resorts on the strip for seven years, got hired on as a bartender originally, kind of worked my way up to a bar lead into management, into an operation management role. But I'm not a big drinker. I was never really a party one, you know, wanted to go out and party. I'm kind of an introvert. And so the one thing that I was always kind of in a pinch for was food. I worked, you know, five, six, sometimes seven days a week at the Wynn. And, oops. We'll let that out.

Yeah. But you did. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm a workhorse. That's kind of all I've known like my first full-time job when i was 14 yeah in in andrew's defense i've never actually heard you besmirch the good name of the wind so it's not like i didn't worry about if there's any room you don't want to do that with it's this one being sound colt is a shareholder one share He has one share of the win. About one share of the win. I'm sorry, the misjournings today.

Well, it's one share. I already saw that this morning. It's one share not doing it. I'm getting murdered in the market. I'm getting murdered. I'm down $3. So you're working for Colt at the win. What happens then?

To be honest, I loved it. I love the culture there. But I'm not one to party, and I was always in a pinch for food. And so at the time, my, my best friend was working for a company that did meal prep out in California. It was like, man, we really need this like grocery store concept where I can just go in and grab meals off the shelf. Um, because I don't cook. I think I've probably cooked three meals in the past 10 years. I just, I don't do it. Future wife also doesn't want to do it. Well, I don't enjoy it.

I don't enjoy dishes. And so I kind of, we kind of thought of this idea, like, well, maybe we can reach out to this company, get the franchise rights and open up the model here. They said no. So he said, screw it, we'll do it ourselves. Do it our own. So having no idea really how this operated, obviously you're coming out of the bar business.

So you're figuring, you understand liquor costs you understand bar costs you understand labor i guess you pretty much if you got that down you just applied to the food cost and the same metrics is the same uh the same cogs everything everything applies yeah yeah i think i think understanding business fundamentals from a nightclub perspective is easy because the metrics are really easy to understand right it's how much each person spend? You know, what's the head count? You know, it's very simple metrics. There's no logistics, supply chains to deal with, things like that. And so moving to-

Bar liquor days and shipments, though, can be a pain. You miss a keg shipment for your- Honestly, just working in bars, that was the only time that was applicable. Well, the biggest problem with bars is somebody's always stealing. Somebody's always- Like, I don't care how good you are at running a bar you're getting stolen there's there's there's breakage everywhere through overpour through skimming through just not wringing stuff it's called relationship management exactly exactly exactly so anyway so you understand that and so you're not going to get your franchise you're just going to start this out so okay so let's let's walk all the way through the building of

foodie what year was this so this was in 2016 and we kind of developed the the model and and part of it is i have a business partner who is one of the most incredible salespeople i've ever met in my life he moved to vegas and within a year had a key to the city um he's an extrovert he's great at connecting people he's like that guy that has a guy for everything yeah um it's phenomenal um and i think actually that yeah yeah that's how i that's how we got connected uh chris was alex met somebody who got referred to him and then amy lee shout out to paleo angel yeah there you go um and so we had basically kind of the sales. Amy Ma, Amy Ma, sorry, Alex Lee, Amy Ma.

It was a Lee Ma connection. So we had kind of the marketing sales side. You're ruining the podcast. You're ruining it. Stop. Just trying to give props. Ruining the podcast. Where did I do?

Ruining it. Jesus. And so the only part we were actually missing was kind of the kitchen aspect. And so we were kind of interviewing chefs and talking to people, and we couldn't really find anybody to execute our vision of what we wanted out of the food. Can I go back just a little bit, though? So let me ask you a question. So who developed the actual business plan?

Me. Okay. Was it a written business plan? Was it 30 pages, 50 pages, 20 pages, 10 pages? Was it? Five. Five. So five pages. So pages, 10 pages? Was it five, five, so five pages. So the reason I think this is so important and the reason I want to mention this is because I think when people go to start a business, they go online and they read, what do I need

for a business plan? And then there's this like executive summary that's nonsense. And then there's just all of this filler that's nothing. And I'm here to tell you as somebody that has invested in a lot of companies, when I look at a business plan, I just want to really see the numbers, the vision, and I want to understand the drive of the founders. Outside of that, it's all noise. So I love that your plan was only five pages. I love that. So were you guys going to bootstrap this up? Were you self-funded? Did you go look for outside investors? What did you do? So, you know, I'm a very frugal person by nature. You know, I was making good money what I was doing. So I had some money saved up. Same thing with Alex. And so, you know, our original idea was just to self-fund.

We had enough to kind of get a small business going, but we couldn't find a chef. And so I'm actually not the original founder of the company, believe it or not. So we ended up trying to find a chef, couldn't find anybody. And so we said, you know, maybe there's somebody out there already doing this that we can jump on with who could use our help, mine and operations, Alex and sales and marketing. And so what we did is we started ordering food from every meal prep company, every private chef in town, and just started trying food. And we ended up ordering food from this company called Ninja Fit Meals. And this guy, Bo, made it and had someone drop it off. And we tried it and it was so far beyond what anybody was doing. We just approached and

said, we want you for our model. This is what we want to do. And Bo at the time, I think I had like two employees, like, no, I have my own company. I don't need anybody. And I said, well, what will it take for you to get over? He said, no, no, I have my own company. I don't need anybody. I said, well, what would it take for you to get over? He said, no, no. I have my own company. I don't want you. And so we said, okay, let us buy into your company. You're a chef by trade. You went to culinary school. You used to work in the world of gourmet.

Took a step back to do this healthy cooking thing. Let us help you or you can get back to your roots and just cook. Because at the time he was kind of getting to the point where he kind of had to do a little marketing and had to do customer service and all these other things that he didn't want to do. And so we actually, to this day, I kind of joke around. We overpaid for his company by a lot. Sure. You know, I think we paid like 50 grand for 66% of it, which was way overpaying. Let's see again.

But we wanted him. But this is, dude, this is going to be like a masterclass. Shout out to Chef Boba. This is like a master class in what you do. Because, for example, as you're walking in and one of my guys says, oh, my God, I love your product. I want to buy in. Well, he wants to buy in because he knows the product because the product is now successful. If you want to do what you did, what you've got to do is, like you said, try everything and find the diamond in the rough. And find the guy that is the best roofer in the world that has no idea how to run a business. And then you come in and say,

look, you just got to be a good roofer and I'll handle all the business, which is essentially what Colton's done. Right. So if you want to, sometimes the easiest and best way, I love that you said that I'm not even the founder, the best and easiest way to start a successful business is not to start one. It's to find one that's underperforming for reasons that you can solve because they lack in the places where you are strong. That's a great way to say it, John. Yeah. Not chasing down insolvent concepts that are going downhill. No.

Right? Because I've heard of some really crazy stuff where people are like, no, no, I can revitalize it. No, no. But it's to say, okay, this thing is solvent. It's not that it wasn't solvent. It's not that it's going anywhere. It's just stagnant. Yeah, it's not growing because they don't know how to do it.

They were in City Athletic Club. They were in a couple different places. The concept was there. And I remember eating it at City Athletic Club. But it was just sort of a one-off. I couldn't remember the name if you told me. I only found out the name way after the fact. I think a lot of business owners let their egos kill it, right?

I know a restaurant in town that is grossing more than anybody. They are killing it, but they are leaving so much meat on the bone because they just will not take any outsider in. No consulting. Yeah, but maybe they don't want to. No, it's not that they don't want to. They truly think that they're doing it right and they're just bleeding left and right but they're making so much money like the bear on hulu yeah so so let me let me ask you let me ask you a

question now all right all things being considered as to where you are now with the company you say you overpaid for it how much more would you pay for it now? No, no. If you knew the outcome was where you are today, I bet you would have paid four times more than 50 grand. I mean, probably knowing the outcome, but that's kind of thing though. But you don't know the outcome.

Well, it's kind of one of those things where by himself, you know, that single component, it wasn't worth that much. Even with just him and me, it probably wasn't worth that much with him, myself and Alex, who does the marketing and sales much. With him, myself, and Alex,

who does the marketing and sales, that's the synergy that works, right? That's what actually made it work was the fact that we all have such different personalities, different talents, different temperaments. I mean, we bicker like old married couple, but it's great, you know? And that's really what has pushed us forward

is we all know what we're good at. We all stick with what we're good at. And we consult everybody else because I know I can go to Alex alex like i suck at sales man i this person wants to do this collaboration with us i can't close this deal i need you to jump in for me and he'll be great i got this and just like with him he's i have this crazy idea will it work i'll sit there and crunch numbers and be like no right and so like we and we don't hold that against each other that's great yeah some preach that all time so many partnerships fall apart because they partner with the same they partner with themselves yeah can you say who you guys partner with now uh as far as like influencers

or like local influencers major organizations oh yeah well so like the last big partnership that we actually uh did is we are the official sponsor for the Raiderettes. So that's like the last, I guess, big sponsorship that we picked up. And looking back five years ago when we were doing like 1,000 meals a week maybe, like the fact that we're getting that high. How many meals are you doing right now? I think last month we did somewhere in the realm of around 120,000. Jesus.

So averaging between 3,000, 4,000 a day. Okay. All right. So let's get back to Chef Poe. Because I got to know how we go from Chef Poe, we're going to give you too much money to get where we have a production facility capable of doing that type of business on a fresh product, non-frozen.

Yeah. That's quite the journey. And this is, what's the timeline on this? doing that type of business on a fresh product, non-frozen. That's quite the journey. And this is, what's the timeline? What's the timeline? That's five years? That was five years ago, yeah. Actually, we just celebrated our five-year anniversary last month. Okay.

So one of my favorite things, if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, I can't get shit done, you literally have no excuse. This is pretty amazing. So let's go back to this. So Shepo agrees. You overpay for him. You've got it. You're using his commissary, his two guys to start out. literally have no excuse this is pretty amazing so let's go back to uh to this so chef bo agrees you overpay for him you've got it you're using his commissary his two guys to start out so what comes tiny kitchen so what what what comes first obviously you like the product is it let's start driving sales and then we'll staff to the sales or do we staff before we drove sales so the the

kind of first thing we had to do is really pick apart the business and pick apart the books and do a full audit and what we kind of found out was in some cases he was actually selling food for less than he was than it cost him to make it he was losing money um and again he wasn't a business person he's a brilliant chef yeah not you know he i think he'd missed some tax payments and he you know didn't have his you know finances in line so the first thing was like well we need to figure out where we're bleeding money first. Cause if I drive sales and I'm selling food for less than it cost me to make it, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Right. So I'm increasing the loss every day. Exactly. Right. And so we, uh, we kind of had to plug the holes first and, and we knew we were

going to rebrand. And so we kind of almost used, uh, Ninja Fit Meals name as, as a testing ground. Cause we just said, you know, at the the first year money isn't the currency information and data is the currency. And so for the first six months, we basically rotated the menu every single week, went off the wall with dishes, just try things, got tons of feedback, uh, reformulated the model reformulated the, the, the recipes. Um, so the really the first six months, it was just, it was just a learning curve. Well, let's back, let's back up and talk about that. So when you say the first six months it was just it was just a learning curve. Well let's back up talk about that. So when you say the first year weren't about sales or about data and learning, how much were you guys prepared to lose in that first year? How much going into it did you say okay look we're going to look at this as an investment in the product, an investment

in our future, what is the number we're willing to swallow for year one? Right so part of the deal in buying in was that we provide essentially a safety net capital um you know and it was somewhere in the realm of i think eighty thousand dollars okay um and we were we were on track to lose that i mean we're losing one to two thousand dollars a week um so he was bleeding slow it wasn't like a oh yeah still bleeding it's small overhead though his shop was only 900 square feet know, with two employees and we were paying ourselves yet, which was, you know, half the staff. So, so yeah, we weren't, we weren't bleeding, but we were where we were bleeding was just trying new things, right? All the food we're having to buy for R and D and we're delivering seven days a week. And sometimes we only had like one or two people on, on a route for deliveries and they're on opposite sides of town. So just to

get the food to the customer, losing tons of money on. But it was such a good learning opportunity because what we found out was, well, it's not just like a bunch of bodybuilders and fitness gurus that we're catering to. It is real estate agents or doctors, lawyers, like those young professionals and people that are just busy but want to eat healthy.

And so that was really our chance to kind of tweak the brand, if you will, and change the menu development concept to kind of cater to that niche of people. So it was great, that learning. So you go through the first year, you get all your data, you understand where you're going, and you've narrowed it down. Obviously, just from the model of delivery, I would say, so your problems probably were going through, were getting food costs in line, pricing the property properly, pricing the product properly.

You can tell what industry John works in. Pricing the property properly. Well, exactly. But getting the right price on things was probably tough. And then I'm guessing the second problem was probably going to be logistics because how do you figure that out? Yeah. So,

I mean, when we first started, you know, we, we were trying to, you know, go as bare bones as possible. So our,

even our route, like our routing software was horrible. We're using this app that's, that was made for road trips, like, you know, like mapping out how to get, right.

You know, now it's a little more complicated, but at the, at the time we were said, okay, how will we not bleed as fast? And at the time too, my girlfriend at the time was like, I never see you.

You leave before I wake up. You get home after I go to bed. I never see you. I'm just going to start coming to the office with you and helping out. I'm like, hop on board. Threaten me with free labor. Yeah, great.

Can you make Nike tennis shoes? You know, and she's actually a huge asset because she has a great attention to detail. So for the first, you know, kind of year, she worked side by side with us as well. And so, you know, the problems in the beginning were really kind of just figuring out what, you know, the model, right?

And so there's like standard ways to run a restaurant, right? There's a kind of a operating manual of how restaurants typically run or how to run a real estate agency. But when you come into kind of such a new business model, there's no kind of standard way of operating. So one of the hardest things to figure out was, well, how do you actually operate this business? And that was a lot of trial and error. And then it took us probably a good, I would say year and a half, two years. It kind of developed even to where we are now to kind of get to a point where we said,

okay, yeah, this is kind of what the model looks like. I would think with three people involved like that, right? I would think that there would be some ego bruising during that period. Like I'm going to come up with this idea, we should do it this way and then it's all of a sudden like that this ain't working or it doesn't work.

Was everybody pretty flexible through that time? Did everybody understand the need for flexibility? Because this is that that's also what you just said is one of those crucial times that burns a lot of businesses down because people get so married or fall in love with their own ideas and their own process. They can't let it go when it's not working. Oh yeah. And I think like if I look back at Andrew five years ago and Andrew now, two totally different people because the things I've learned through that process as far as just, you know, kind of like psychology of people and even how myself operates. And in the beginning, it was we all knew we didn't know what we were doing, and so we were very open to everybody's ideas. You guys were incredibly open to ideas.

Yeah. Like carte blanche. Like it was just a tabula rasa. Hey, what do you think? And you guys were extremely collaborative. That's why you're, that's why you get successful faster,

right? Not by shutting down good ideas. Cause it's not your idea. Like for example, Colt, you could have recommended if the delivery driver is 30 minutes late, I get to hunt him. If I,

if I kill him, if I kill him, then I get to eat my food for free. On Thursdays, like a special. Some pugilistic Friday. How many meals do you think you could get out of the average human body? Anyway, Andrew,

sorry. Anyway, back to Rihanna. Equivalent of 600 chicken tenders. What's your demographics for that kind of stuff? It always intrigues me because, you know, I would always think your demographics were certain sex, certain age, certain income, and I feel like Vegas just throws those out the window. I feel like, you know, you got people lower income

that still are eating healthy like that. Do you find that in Vegas or is there a pretty set demographic you deal with? Yeah, I mean, one of the nice things is everybody needs to eat, right? And so everybody is a potential customer. There's, you know, maybe the bottom earners in Vegas where it might be priced out of their,

you know, a little bit out of their price range. You know, so we're less than a restaurant, maybe a little more than the grocery store. So most of our consumers, we skew actually slightly female as far as our current customer base, but it, yeah. I would not have thought that. Oh yeah. Yeah. And hanging out at their stores. It's wonderful. I would have thought that, but I'd have thought it would have been a big gap between female and male. No, it just, it a big gap between female male no it just it slightly skews female um but it's really just anybody from you know 21 to i think the starts to maybe to downtrend a little bit after 40 but even people in the you know retirement ages we still have a

really strong showing for it um are you guys are you guys actually priced more than grocery because i swear to god i've looked at some things and you look at the price per meal what's your average price per meal like 899 999 nine bucks yeah yeah nine bucks price per meal but it's yeah the whole thing like go to a grocery store now go buy your ingredients figure it out you may have some leftovers it's crazy it's like the difference is leftovers but it's not packaged ready to go it's crazy so. So let's get back to the trail here. So you figured out the first year. You got it done. When do you do the rebrand?

And when you do the rebrand, again, do you staff to the projected business or are you growing in size as you scale in sales? Because this is something a lot of people struggle with. And you obviously have scaled up very, very large. Option three is triage. Well, actually, one thing we actually were horrible at and we still are i guess horrible at it is you know guessing the market size we didn't know how popular the model was going to be and so when we kind of were first opening we designed everything to say okay we're probably going to be averaging 30 000 meals a month we think that's a you know about full market penetration

for you know the meal prep industry um and so we built a kitchen. So when we did the rebrand, we actually, now we kind of did that to coincide the store opening. Cause before we were just online, we would just deliver. And then when we opened the stores, when we kind of did the rebrand, rebranded as foodie fit, opened the store and the delivery service kind of together in one, one big push. Um, and so we built the kitchen to only handle 1,000 meals a day, something like that. And by the time we got that going, a few months into it, we'd outgrown it.

That quick? Yeah. So we staffed up to do that. Well, real quick, when you built the commissary, you have a commissary, right? You don't have kitchens in your stores. It's a commissary. Well, so the first store actually had a kitchen attached to it.

Okay, got it. And so the whole space, the whole unit was maybe 2600 square feet was there was there a chance to expand in that current space so we actually knocked out the uh the office and expanded the kitchen but by the time that construction project was done we had basically already outgrown that well this is you know again here's another little fun lesson kids if you're going to rent commercial property if you think your business may grow, or you're looking at it to grow, always try to make sure that where you're buying there's expansion plans. Cause otherwise all the TIs that you spend to improve that space are going to go pretty much up in smoke, which is what happened to you guys. Um, here's a little fun tip I'll give you. If

you're going to rent space, if there's an end cap and an infill piece, always rent the end cap because the chances, if you have the end cap, if somebody's renting the end piece, they're going to be pretty low. You can always grab it. Man, it's really strange that he said that. Is it? Is that what you did? Well, yeah. So we actually ended up –

Hey, look at that. And most landlords won't let you. They won't. And it's called first right of refusal. Put that in your lease for sure. Yeah. So we actually ended up taking over the two units next to that store as well for our kind of corporate office space.

Um, and so we were able to, to take over the majority of that, that building that we were in. Um, and we ended up, uh, two years ago now is when we actually opened up our large commissary facility.

Um, and I always said, Oh, if we outgrow this commissary facility, like I probably won't build another one. These are good problems. And now we're like approaching that because we built it to say, okay, we can do 10,000 meals in a day. And our business is very cyclical where, you know, everybody wants to come in on Sunday, Monday and load up for the week. So, you know, I think on this past Sunday,

we did something like 6700 meals um so they had to cook cook during their shift and we're getting to a point now we're opening a third store working on third store uh northwest and by the time that one opens we're basically going to be maxed out at our current facility again again so question what is the and i'm just curious this is going to be like a nerd a nerd stat but how many humans per like how many meals per human like how many like for example how many when you're looking at hiring or staffing or expansion how many humans do you need or for to make 100 meals i mean like what do you need so currently in our in our kitchen uh

the ratio is somewhere in around one human for every 150 to 200 meals. It actually really depends on the menu. And so one of the things that's so nice about, let's say, like a Chipotle is it's really the same thing in just different variations. With us, we have 35 vastly different menu items, everything from Italian to classic American to Mexican. So the breadth of food that we cook, it's much more detailed and we do everything from scratch. So all the sauces are made in house. We grind our own meats, you know, so we, we like to make sure everything is as fresh as possible and gets to the customer. So it is pretty labor intensive. Um, and actually one of our kind of big initiatives right now is like, okay, what,

what processes can we automate? And that's kind of the next big investment for us is how do we squeeze a little bit more production out of our current space yeah how do you handle so you're making thousands and thousands of meals a day how are you handling the logistics of getting them where they need to go how are you handling that so we all over uh logistics in-house so we have uh as of right now did you bring on did you bring a consultant or you you guys just figure this out? You guys built an actual logistics program with just all different types of technology.

Yeah, so we have this expression that I would say, FIO, figure it out. And so we figured it out. So yeah, we didn't bring in an outside person. It was kind of just trial and error, constant reiteration of how the process should work. And so, you know, currently we have, you know, on a busy day, we'll do something along the lines of maybe

a little over 200 deliveries. So we deliver every day. And so it was kind of just constant reiteration of how it should work. And that was kind of part of that first year was we were delivering multiple times a day in the beginning to figure out when people actually wanted to deliver and how they wanted it. So kind of going into scaling, we already had a lot of the answers of how it should work. I mean, obviously with food being so expensive and it's so expensive right now, how do you forecast? I mean, what KPIs do you look for that really drive your purchasing decisions so you're not throwing thousands of dollars worth of food in the trash every day?

What are you looking for there? How do you forecast? Yeah. So, you know, one of the nice things about scaling a food business is, you know, as your volume increases, you have more negotiating power with your vendors and things like that. And so we actually haven't had to increase pricing as fast as inflation because, you know, as prices increase, we go to our vendors and say, look, we used to do, you know, 50,000 meals a month. Now we're doing 100. Change our cost, you know, as prices increase, we go to our vendors and say, look, we used to do, you know, 50,000 meals a month. Now we're doing a hundred. Change our cost, you know, our cost plus how, you know, or change this contract, how it's working. We hedged a lot of our costs during the lockdown. So we actually went to a lot of our vendors, ordered, you know, pre-ordered, you know, truckloads of containers, things like that, when stuff was next to nothing, because we knew eventually, you know, things were going to turn around. And so, you know,

we've been able to kind of offset a lot of that cost to the consumer through just the increase in volume. And so, you know, kind of that economy of scale, as you get busier, the more efficient you get. And, you know, so we revisit, you know, our food pricing all the time, but we actually kind of created a position who only manages inventory. So we have literally one person who just sits there all day and watches prices, orders, checks the pars. And actually I wrote a SOP this morning on how do we refine that process as well. So we actually have one person that kind of just sits and watches that whole thing. All day long. Yeah. But I would think you'd be more concerned about orders to back it up because you're such fresh right you don't freeze anything

right right i mean that i mean so we actually the way we got that's that's hard so i actually so in the stores i actually built an algorithm that learns essentially buying habits and predicts the pars of what we should stock on the shelves of the grocery stores. And it's pretty accurate where we very rarely run out and we very rarely throw things out. What are the strangest things that affect the algorithm? One-offs. When one person comes in and buys out the entire shelf of one meal because they love it so much, they're going to bring it home and freeze it. That'll kind of throw off the numbers. But it's an aggregated buying pattern over a few weeks and, and it has adjustments based on if we sell out of something or if, you know, we have too much of something. Um, so that,

that tells us what to stock on the shelves and they, the kitchen actually cooks overnight. So that way the, the stores are stocked with fresh meals every morning. Um, so that, you know, we're not trying to basically forecast too far ahead. We're trying to forecast essentially half a day ahead. That's it, yeah. Are you, do your stores send inventory? Well, you're obviously, you see what they buy through the computers because you know which meals got purchased.

You know what's gone. You do automated inventory management that way, yes? It's actually really hard to do it with us because it's so cyclical. You know, we're on a Sunday and a Monday, for example, we'll sell three times as many meals on a Friday. And so it's just the cyclical nature of the business through the week. So, you know, we kind of have to really keep an eye

on the pars and the algorithm is basically just learning day by day. And so we don't actually have an automated inventory system because I built the program and did all the math for how the algorithm learns. You know, as far as the inventory that's in the kitchen, though, you know, what's nice is because we're so busy, our inventory turns are so fast that, you know, if I buy chicken, I know it's going to be good for seven days. I order it every other day. So as long as I can stock four days worth, I know I'll never run out and I know will you know never have to throw any out i want to point something out for those of you like me right now who are listening to this if you are not someone that feels you can design an algorithm

to track things in your business there are plenty of consultants and plenty of people that can help you do this outside the math you don't have to be doogie hauser here that can apparently figure all this shit out on his own you don't have to pull that together but that's what i was talking about so i know these i know all the owners when you talk about three people that got together and fill each other's gaps yeah it's one of the funniest because when you look at it alex isn't sitting there running algorithms and crunching numbers when i walk into the office or something you know who is he is when he said i'm an introvert i like to like i like i wanted to own the process was it's that that's not that things the the bloviation or the the hyperbole it is literally what you are doing did you hear what he just did monday to sunday he went

bloviation to hyperbole i mean back to back that was back to back just that quick wow actually look how smart i am look how smart i am no but trying to compete now because the algorithm guys here oh we got us over here today though it comes down so their successes though from an outsider's perspective and partial i've had inside glimpses become because there is somebody that has their nose to the grind and is doing the data and the hard work and the stuff that most people don't want to do and he's putting it on paper and is reviewing it and is writing out standard operating procedures and is reviewing resource manuals for human resource department and talking to different companies. That is the absolute core and backbone of a successful company

when you're scaling, in my opinion. I'm one of those people that I understand it's cool to be flash and you need both. Yeah. Well, it's Alex. of those people that I understand. It's cool to be flash and get, you need both. Yeah. Well, it's like, it's Alex's, like he's a brilliant like salesperson. And I always tell him like,

he goes, well, I feel so bad. You work 90 hours a week. And like, I'm, I know I don't, I just don't have that in me.

I'm like, I don't need you to have that in you. Like, just do the stuff that I don't want to go be the face, go, go shake hands, kiss baby foreheads, do whatever you got to do.

And it's, and it's 90.15 hours a week. So let's be very clear. Let see what you did there. He's like, actually, yeah, it's 90.15, six, six, seven. Yeah. I don't want to call a spade a spade, but there you go. You know, and I hate cooking. And so, you know, Bo, you just cook, you just do you and, and let me be an introvert and crunch numbers because I'm a nerd and I love that stuff. And I hate cooking. And so, you know, Bo, you just cook. You just do you. And let me be an introvert and crunch numbers because I'm a nerd and I love that stuff. And so the synergy is great.

Partner with people who are smarter than you kids or those who want to do the jobs you don't want to do. Bo's never been happier in his whole life. I get it. So how many employees now? How many? So we're having trouble hiring. So we have 105 that work for us. And then we actually just now have a temp agency that's helping us backfill positions. So kind of total on staff right now is 120.

120. How do you keep them motivated? How do you keep them happy? That's a lot of folks. Yeah, I'm still trying to figure that out. I think part of it is we have a core set of people who, as a business grows, they see the growth and they want to be a part of that. And that's, and that's motivating in itself. But, you know, everyone talks about, you know, you have to build great culture and, you know, everyone is so stuck on like foosball

tables and, you know, beanbag chairs, like, dude, just treat people with respect. You know, like that's, that's all it takes is when they have an issue, listen and do, do your best to understand where they're coming from. And I can't tell you how many times I've been burned, man. Loaning money or helping someone move. I've been burned so many times by staff. But in the end, that's kind of just what it takes. They have to trust you and you have to trust them. Yeah.

You can't let the sins of others affect the relationships with all. I've had three or four clients that either worked for you at the time or then went and worked for you after they were my clients and i've had them say oh i'm working for this great company well what is it oh it's foodie fit they make these meals are so wonderful blah blah so you get that organic you know um sort of feedback it's been pretty nice for me to hear because i you know i'm lucky i get to see them grow into what they're becoming can i ask an uncomfortable question? Because I'm just curious.

Because your company has something that does kind of drive me crazy. And it's not your company specifically. It's just this thing that is becoming very prevalent in a lot of businesses. The default tip me when you purchase something in a store. So this was actually a- Can we talk about that? On the point of sale? Yeah. When you go into the store and you grab your own food and you walk it up just like you would at Walgreens or Sprouts or anywhere

else, they turn the screen on you. They turn it. So can you talk about that? It is an interesting question that I struggle with personally. Yeah, we've talked about it on this show. And it's not a shot at you. It's not a shot at you. It's not a shot at Foodie Fit. It's just a question as to from the business owner,

what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, and so I am one that is conservative by nature. And so that was kind of always my argument and was, well, this is a retail environment. This isn't like a normal tip environment. And so the standard we have for customer service in our store, I believe is probably, you know, one of the best in Vegas. It's great. And, you know, anytime you go to the store, you know, we tell them is when people walk in the door, make them feel like they just won an award,

do whatever you can to delight them, open the carry that carry their their groceries out shop for them like do whatever you can and we kind of have this metric where we say okay with every customer you have to have a connection that isn't related to the food right start conversation right and and have that connection and so we do have a kind of like default tip thing if you want however you know it's not like 25%, 30%. You know, it's more along. I think we have it set for like 4%. Can I ask a different question? Can I ask a different question based on what you just said, though? You are a self-proclaimed introvert.

Okay. You're walking into your own store. Isn't that your worst nightmare? It's my Super Bowl. Yeah, no, no. I mean, it's somebody's Super Bowl, but as an introvert, is that like, dude, I just want to get my own basket. I just want to pick up my food and peace.

I don't want to talk about my life. They're not overbearing, because you usually have pretty young, energetic. Yeah, they're great. Don't get me wrong. I have never been treated with anything but the utmost cheerfulness and respect when I've gone to your places, man.

But I'm curious, based on the experience you just described, that would be a nightmare for you. Yeah, well, I think there's certain levels of introversion, right? So I just have a tank that will run empty if I spend too much time doing big social activities, right? So you give me a big dinner with a bunch of strangers and I have to small talk the whole time

and it's not a meaningful conversation. So this. I got to talk about myself here. Okay, that's true. That's a good thing. This is buffing my ego. That's great. He gets to hang out with Chris. Chris, by the way, is the most interesting man in the world. I swear to God.

That's what I said. I thought he'd eat a human. He's that interesting. Cole, there's a difference between eating a human and admitting you would eat a human on a show that could be used as evidence one day. Well, he does it in his own personal time. We'll talk later. Who he chooses to eat is up to him.

There's a difference between peeing in the pool and peeing in the pool. Shout out to Demetri Martin. I went out to dinner the other night. You know what their autograt was? Do you know how much it was? Autograt. It was probably the default now. It was 23. Autograt, huh? Yeah. You know what their auto gratuity was? Do you know how much it was? Auto grat is out. 22 was probably the default now. It's 23.

23. Auto grat, huh? Yeah. I was shocked at that. Yeah, I think that's, I worked in the service industry. You worked in the service industry. I love the service industry. I always tip.

I do too. But 20% is fine. Like I said, I like the fact if you say, okay, 10% to the retail clerk, I'm thrilled if that was an option. You say 20%, I'm like, that was an option. They say 20%. I'm like, this is a weird type of inflationary activity, right? Where you're now subsidizing people if they don't pay their employees well or if they don't treat them well.

If you're going to this thing, well, I don't. I'm not going to pay them well. You pay them better. So it's a 20% inflation. It's a 20% tax. Yeah. Right? For a retail without service.

Yeah. That's asking for something you're not getting. So if you're serving somebody and you're doing something and there's a really charming person behind the counter and they're shopping with you and doing all this stuff, then I have no problem hitting 15, 20. And I will say this. The experience that you described is the experience you get.

When you walk in there, they're like, what do you like? Can I help you with anything? So they are trying to go above and beyond. And that was more of a... Stores that you walk in and they're like, here's your free an i was i was stores that you walk yeah it was literally yeah it's literally nothing and they turn it around you know what's worse like the charity donation isn't charity terrible speaking of which foodie fit foodie fit just dropped off 1700 bags of school supplies erasers glue pencils i think I have a clap on this. Hold on.

Give him some. No, that's not it. That is not it. That was absolutely horrifying. That's the cult brain music. Booty Fit, they do this thing called Prep for School. Prep for School. With lower income neighborhoods.

I love that. In Clark County. I love that. 1,700. So these kids come into their first day of school. And they have stuff. And they're walking. Because you know how a lot of times public school teachers are subsidizing their students.

These guys do their own efforts with Justin Bloom of Bloom Fitness and with Michael Lee. Yeah, we have a few kind of sponsors that help us. Michael Sheedy Fitness, Justin Blum from Raw Fitness. You know, a bunch of other incredible sponsors. And we started off with just doing one school. So we kind of concentrate on, on, uh,

title one schools. Um, and so this past year, you know, shout out to Alex Lee, my business partner, cause he's kind of the spearhead of, of all this.

Uh, you know, they were able to provide school supplies for every grade for three schools. I love the entire school. I love that. Unreal. You had to see the effort. That's unbelievable.

You know, it's funny. One of our agents, Ryan know that works here. here um it's simply vegas his team this weekend did something similar they donated it wasn't nearly that to that level he's obviously his business is your level but they donated 250 backpacks which i thought was amazing to a title one school and i came it kind of came on where i celebrated him to the rest of the company. And I was like, look, this is a lesson in life. If you want the community to be interested in you first become interested in the community, it's how to win friends and influence people at its greatest level through business. So I, I, I commend you to do that. I love, I love

purpose-driven businesses. I am a purpose-driven business with my real estate stuff. I love that. I think it's amazing. They had so many people there packing bags. The community was involved because your business partner and all those people were saying, hey, by the way, you're now doing this. You're now coming out and packing these schools and different firms. Everyone's invested and involved.

They had a Henry Ford era conveyor belt of human beings packing all these things for these kids and it was just it's not completely altruistic it's it's basically a way for us to try out new new uh new pena cafe i'm curious about this what do you do so you have waste you obviously have stuff that it's it's on the edge you're getting rid of do you what do you do with it so you donate it we actually have very little waste um yeah and so so part of it is you do you do with it? Do you donate it? Do you pitch it? We actually have very little waste. Good. Yeah. And so part of it is, because we know what the numbers are exactly, what we're going to need for the following day, we cook to that. And then if it gets to the stores and it starts getting

close to expiration, so if it's on the shelf for more than two days, it gets discounted. And then it gets picked up pretty quick. Yeah. So we end up throwing out almost zero meals from the stores. And then as far as the stuff kind of in the kitchen that gets thrown out, it's very little. It's minimal. So now, dude, you built this amazing business here in Vegas. So the plan now is going to be to grow this thing exponentially. Give me the plan for worldwide domination.

Let's hear what it is. So the next step for us is kind of focusing on technology. And we focus on a lot of technology in the cooking aspects. We have like self-cooking ovens, right? So Bo will go in our kitchen at our headquarters. We'll say, all right, for this dish, I need this cooked, you know, the steak cooked medium rare, but charred on the outside, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And the ovens essentially have, you know, can sense the temperature of the product, the condition. It can, blah. And the ovens essentially have, you know, can sense the temperature of the product, the condition, it can change the humidity, temperature, the giant Bravo. Yeah. I have a brava miles, same thing, but in giant. Right. So, so he programs that it uploads it to the cloud and then all the ovens and the network know how to cook that thing. And so, you know, the next kind of step for us is on the packaging side. So we're actually working with a food scientist right now. Okay, okay, okay. I for one welcome our alien overlords. Stop for a second.

Can you imagine doing this 20 years ago? Wait, wait, stop for a second. 10 years ago. So you guys made a considerable investment in equipment. I mean, just monstrous. Is that something you guys were able to finance? Is that something you were leasing? Is that something that you had purchased?

Finance. So we took advantage in 2020 when the market took a dump and then basically they were handing out free money. Um, you know, so for, for a business that didn't have incredible revenue to go get, you know, a few million dollars at 3% is historically unheard of. And so, yeah, we, we, we took advantage of that and we ended up actually buying a kind of dilapidated building, um, that used to be a USDA kitchen. Uh, it had been, been abandoned for a little bit. So we basically went and got a loan, stripped the whole building, built it to use, you know, specifically for our business. And so it's served us well because we got to basically design it from

the ground up exactly how we need it to operate our business. Awesome. So doing the worldwide expansion, is this something, are you going to go the canes route where you're going to do them all yourself? Are you going to try to franchise them out? What's the plan? Yeah, so Alex, my business partner, actually is in pretty close contact with Andrew Turing, who's the founder of Panda Express. And I've always had this dream, like how cool would that be to go public?

Though it's probably not a great idea because you have to have shareholders and people get upset when you don't make earnings like win over here. No, the worst thing you can do as a public company is make money. Keep your valuation as a startup. You started turning a profit. Now you got to multiply. I mean, you don't want to do that. But you know, it's, it's kind of one of those things where we know that the food is at the core of the business and we need to do what we can

to control the food. And that was, you know, one of the good lessons that we learned from, from Andrew at Panda Express was, you know, keep that stuff in house. And so, you know, our, our kind of plan now is to totally capitalize full market penetration here in Vegas. Uh, we think we can basically reach that ceiling by the end of next year and then 2024 start expanding into the new markets. Are you going to try to, I mean, you can open up obviously new kitchens in those markets. Are you going to try to ship food from here there? So we actually, so investors, maybe you, so we'll probably need an investment. Um, but actually one thing we just did is, you know, is we knew this next phase is kind of outside of our, of our expertise. And so, um, we, we did some restructuring and so we used to kind of as equal

partnership and we knew in order to drive the company in one direction, we were going to have to kind of change some stuff. So Bo and Alex had basically moved me into more of like a CEO role essentially with the kind of caveat knowing that I've never done this role before. And so we actually hired a CEO coach slash business advisor who used to be an executive for Tyson Foods, had his own food startup, up uh exiting uh selling it for you know 300 million something along those lines um and so you know we actually brought him on we've been working with him now for a couple months and he's going to really help us you know drive this model forward because this is something he's already done sure it's easy to know success just follow success is an easy way to do it has anybody come with a check yet for you? Is anybody looking to buy it? We get probably investment opportunities once a week.

Offers. People coming in. But we just don't have an efficient way to deploy capital yet because the model still isn't 100% done. Got it. And so we think by the end of next year, we'll have a firm understanding of how we need to grow moving forward, whether it's shipping meals or moving to modified packaging. Regional commissaries.

Yeah. So we think by the end of next year, moving forward, whether it's shipping meals or moving to, you know, modified packaging or yeah. So we think by the end of next year, we'll probably start looking for outside investment to kind of reach our ambitious goals, if you will. Well, brother, when you get there, man, hopefully I'll be one of your first calls because I love the product. I think it's a great business. And obviously, you know, you guys got it down, counting down, Pat, which is amazing. Yeah, it's been fun. It's been a journey. Let me tell you. Well, this has been an absolute masterclass been a journey. Let me tell you. Well, this has been an absolute masterclass in how to build and scale a business. And I love it.

It's so interesting. But you know what else is interesting? The mind of Colt. This is actually why I'm here. Yes, now it's time for a trip into the mind of Colt. Here we go. A trip into the mind. Five questions.

That's what you guys think of me, that theme music? Yeah, that's it. That's awesome. I don't know. So if you're just listening to something new that we're doing, somebody gave me these. They're guaranteed fresh pod decks, interview decks, and they're questions you can ask if you have a podcast, and I just find them entertaining. And rather than ask people to come in, we just ask Colt, because I figure his answers

are probably going to be stranger and more interesting than his. So Colt, are you prepared for question number probably going to be stranger and more interesting than his. So Colt, are you prepared for question number one? I really thought you guys had theme music that was five or happier. Why can't we be friends? Yeah. We can add that. We'll add that.

But see, the problem is if we add that, then we'll get pegged for having copyrighted material and we'll drop down and get to that. First question. You ready, Colt? Here it comes. If you could hire any wedding singer who would you choose and what song weddings tony bennett to sing what song uh the way you look tonight okay fair then it'd be shakira all right now i'm gonna say while she's in jail in spain

if you could try out who why would you cheat on Shakira? You mean the tax man? No, I'm talking about her ex-man. Because have you heard her voice? Wait. What, Shakira? You do not talk to me. You do not talk to me.

Wow. No. Shakira's a freaking icon. Keep her name out of your mouth okay well you can here comes the next one ready if you could try out a job for a day just to see if you like it which job would you choose uh trial attorney i feel like i'd be a great trial attorney no you're a fucking liar, man. That's what I'm saying. Can you curse? No. The judge will yell at you. Decorum is expected.

I think you should be able to curse more. I thought for sure you were going to say Shakira's Masoud. I think you just want to go with a go. Aha! Those moments. Not Shakira's Masoud like Andrew said. You'd rather be a trial attorney. I think I'd be a good trial attorney.

Yelling at people. Not a cupcake tester or something. Yeah, I know be a good trial attorney. Yelling at people. Not a cupcake tester or something. Trial attorney. No. Human flesh chef. You don't want to try that for a day. I'm telling you, there's got to be a documentary about that. Bobby Flay.

I don't like Bobby Flay because of, what was he on? Entourage. Oh, yeah. Because he's an entourage. He did too good of a job acting. Don't like him anymore. What? Him and Tom Hanks, huh?

That's it. Tom Hanks. Okay, we're going to get started. What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you? It's a story about being having a good life saved by that angel. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wait till the end.

That's it. I was going to say. I was going to say a lady came up and gave me a hug once that was super nice but yeah the angel I mean I don't think it's a that's not a human being but I'll tell okay the angel saving me

yeah he just came in the form of a human 6 foot 1 180 incredibly specific stats incredibly specific stats white hair five-year-olds incredibly specific i think he had a uh some khakis on okay six-pack abs if you were in charge what three items would you put in the office vending machine i already know one of them oh scotch cigars and um scotch cigars more cigars burritos burritos so i can see it now

somebody comes in the office right to talk about buying a house they got a kid i'm dead can i get the vending machine they come back with a glass of scotch a cigar and a burrito do you think your kids would be better if they had a just a taste of scotch every day yeah man i feel like they grow up then they could go and do 14 year old jobs like you're doing they had scotch they don't drink enough that's the problem you know what i found an actual in a grocery store or no in a convenience store in They never do. A convenience store in the middle of Utah. They had the smoking. The fake cigarettes.

The fake cigarettes. The Popeyes. How awesome were those? When men were men, the candy cigarettes. I would puff out. I was up to a pack a day on those. God, we have turned out. I got type 2 diabetes.

That's a country. You can't get cancer, but diabetes is on the way that's it all right last question colt if you could bankrupt one person or company who would it be that's not even a question i get two for him and his wife and his kid and for that we will leave you god oh my god I have good dreams tonight. If you're still watching this for some reason, somehow on YouTube, please make sure you like and subscribe. And if you listen to us on whatever podcast service you are, make sure you give us the maximum amount of stars. We're just going with that.

And again, the thoughts and feelings of Colton Amon. And do not reflect the. Andrew, you like Tom Hanks? And the rest of the power move. I feel like you like Tom Hanks. You don't have to answer that question. All resemblance is a person. Strictly for the purpose of the show.

They do not resemble anybody in real life. No, they do not. You're a Tom Hanks fan? I need to answer. Do not answer this question. Tom who? There you go. Come on.

Exactly right. So smart. Jesus. Guys, remember, if you're going to move, move forward. We should. Do you know what? Vending machine of scotch and cigars? Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go

to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we have, things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at TheJohnGafford. I'm here. Give me a shout.