Heroes in Business - Luke Kory, Owner of Boondocksaz.com Patio and Grill

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

Listen as David Cogan sits down with the dynamic entrepreneur and business strategist Luke Kory, the Owner of Boondocks Patio and Grill, Boondocksaz.com. Known for his innovative approaches and sharp insights, Luke Kory delves into his journey of building successful ventures, the challenges he faced, and the strategies that propelled him to the top of his industry. Tune in to gain exclusive insights from one of the most forward-thinking minds in business today.

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. That's right. And welcome back again to the show. And by the way, too, thank you so much again from the feedback we continue to have when I interviewed John Paul DeGioia, the co-founder of Patron, who ended up selling it to Bacardi. So again, make sure you listen to past episodes by going to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-S.com. Click on the radio invitation information, and you'll be able to see past episodes of people that I've interviewed. So I'm excited today for a number of reasons. Number one is our community of entrepreneurs had what we call our version of happy hour.

We call it deal hour at this place, which is phenomenal. And we're honored today to have one of the partners with us. And that's Luke Corey. He is the partner of Boondocks Patio and Grill. And that is also too can be found online to make reservations and stuff at boondocksaz.com so luke welcome to the show let's just jump right in what uh what's the what's behind the name of boondocks how did that come to be well it um you know a couple things came together for that name we were on the outskirts of where everybody wanted to be

a little bit and we were talking and we wanted to be the kind of vibe where it'd be very comfortable place kind of out in the boondocks of the of the square there were all the clubs and all the high profile places so we're like boondocks we're in the boondocks let's call it boondocks and we have a huge patio to our scottsdale our first location in Scottsdale. So we wanted to be a little different with patio and grill because everybody in Arizona wants to be out in the patios and so did we. Absolutely. And then if one location wasn't enough, again, you open another one. Talk to us about, was this the first uh restaurant that you guys had opened up you know my uh i'm partnered with my brother jacob cory so we own boondocks pretty much outright which is unheard of out here uh you have a bunch of different people involved but right we started

with a partnership with another restaurant tours that had a handful of businesses and looked at the space that boondocks is in now to make a huge pool outside of the restaurant and connect it and be the first of its kind in arizona to have a pool connected to a bar that's not in a resort it's called fly i thought that was a brilliant idea i thought it was great you know you have a pool at uh you know the bar and it could be great i'm all about it and hindsight it was probably the worst idea we could have done for a while but that's how we essentially got our feet wet and we uh we we uh invested into that business uh minor investor under was 40 percent or so less than the majority so we kind of sat back and that was going to be our first go and got all the systems processes and how to run a business.

Info from that debacle. It all worked out. Nice. And again, we're interviewing Luke Corey, partner of Boondocks Patio and Grill. They've got a couple of locations here. Make sure that you go to boondocksaz.com. And I think you nailed it. The vibe there, I'm telling you, we got a phenomenal amount of feedback from members in our community. When we had our happy hour again, we call it deal hour there because deals get made. But man, the vibe there was great. It was just like it was comfortable. It's not I don't want to say like some of the other places may be a little bit stuffy. But, you know, you walk in and just it's, I mean, that's it. At the end of the day, it's like it's comfortable.

You know, food is great, too. Boy, yeah, you guys have, in fact, what are some of maybe the popular dishes there? Well, you know, you go to a typical bar and you think, okay, I just need to get something to eat because I'm going to have a beer. And I'm probably watching the game or doing something we uh we want to be a little different we wouldn't want to go crazy and say we're a gastropub and you get this crazy food that's you're like i'm in a bar give me some just good everyday good food so we make everything from scratch i mean you can get chicken tenders and i'm not knocking other bars who do this but you can get frozen chicken tenders you you throw in the fryer,

and it's pretty good, and it'll sustain you for a while. But we went a step further, and we got real chicken tenders that we prep them prior to. We baste them for a day, and we hand-bread them, and we throw them in a pressure cooker so they're kind of crunchy on the outside but not just a piece of fried meat. So it's a pressure cooker that comes out, and we have phenomenal tenders. And they're like, why do you do so much of it? You know, you can just do the regular frozen stuff. It's like, you know what, but when you go to a place that you like, and you enjoy, and you know that the

food's made from scratch, I think they're going to stay longer and it seems to be working so absolutely so one of the things too that just is i i know a challenge well with all companies and stuff and certainly you know in the restaurant industry is is how do you find staff that'll stay i mean the thing is is it did you know what's how do you do that because your staff they seem very happy. They were very attentive to us. We're very lucky because we've been in business for 10 years in Scottsdale now as Boondocks. And we're a couple of years in their Tempe location. People is the heart and soul of what we do. We're not like when we opened up Boondocks, we were in the heart of a Scottsdale that had multimillion-dollar competition that could have the best building, the best build-out, the more money they can throw at it to have the best equipment.

So we're up against David and Goliath situation. And what sets us apart is our people. People want to come in and feel comfortable. We want to say, hey, you coming back? This is the second time you've been here? Great, what's your name? They're just blown away at being asked, you know, what's your name?

So we, our speech to our guys when we opened up the first day is, hey, that was going to be bigger, better, shinier and everything else. What's the difference of boondocks? It's the people, it's us. We're boondocks. We call ourselves boonies. Like those boonies kind of uh 80s movie but we're boonies and that entails

a lot of different things than just being hey i'm going to get you your service i'm going to order a drink you're going to get a drink i'm going to drink it then great we did our job no we didn't we want the hospitality piece of it saying that our people asking about how your day is are you comfortable is it right how's it taste um get to know people we're a neighborhood bar in a huge uh city that has a lot of different faces but when we see the same faces you want them to feel like they're at home that's the difference and we have people that have worked us for 10 years and they're still with us because you know we're we rather have the right people than churn and burn people that are just, you know, serving you that drink.

It's like, no, we don't need someone to serve you a drink. We can make a robot to do that. We want somebody to feel comfortable about the person that cares about me as a customer and is asking me about myself and making sure I'm doing good. Nice. Excellent. And again, make sure you go to Boondocks. A couple of locations here in the Valley. You can go to the website, boondocksaz.com. We've got with us again, Luke Corey, one of the partners at Boondocks. So how is it, you know, what are some of maybe the favorite drinks or what drink specials and that takes place? Well, you know, that's a, that's an ever, ever changing thing. I mean, when I was a bartender and I've done everything from barback into bartending to door guy to everything.

When I was a kid, there was a bunch of different things. So nowadays, there's just so many new hot drinks and hot alcohols and hot things that I would never have thought would ever work. For instance, we got seltzer world now. I mean, we're one of the biggest and highest high noon accounts, which high instance we got seltzer world now i mean we're one of the biggest and highest high noon accounts which high noon is a is a seltzer that has like real vodka in the seltzer and they have a bunch of different flavors and we're the supposedly i was told the number one account in the region of the person that i was talking to and then i asked their boss well how

what do we rank on the on the scale of everything i think we're up there in the top five of the of the country in volume in one location for this product called High Noon. I remember the first time someone tasted me on a seltzer. I'm like, is this beer? Like, what are we drinking here? And they're like, no, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a beer ish. And it's a, it's, it's in a can and you can just open it and drink it. And I was like, this is, I mean, it tastes good, but I don't see it. And I don't ever think it's gonna do well so i just asked the manager and the people because i'm not the gatekeeper if i were we'd be out of business yesterday you know and for sure tomorrow uh so they're like yeah it's

a thing you know try it and sure enough it's blown up and it's i do more seltzer volume than i do our traditional you know domestic beer. That's phenomenal. So it's very interesting. Phenomenal. Congratulations on that. Luke, tell us the secret. Any expansion plans? Any plans for opening up any other bars, boondocks? Tell us what's happening. What's the reveal? We're slow burn on our growth. We like to do it ourselves. We started by ourselves. We want to see as big as we can get by ourselves without outside influences, investors and such for now. But it's getting big and it's getting exciting to do new things. We have a couple of new properties we bought. One in Old Town Scottsdale that we're looking to do a Mexican restaurant because we were born and raised in Nogales, Arizona, on the border of Mexico and Arizona. So we know we'd be going across the border to have lunch at some of our

great Mexican establishments and then crossing the border really quickly to hit football practice. So we want to bring that authenticity to Mexican cuisine down to Scottsdale when we get that going. Demo should start in September. Location will be out pretty soon. We got a couple years on that one. We also bought a property in Midtown Phoenix, central and Osborne-ish area. We're looking to put a boondocks

number three there if all goes well. We have the space to do it, about an acre worth of land to work with, about hopefully 10,000 square feet-ish of property so we can about, you know, hopefully 10,000 square feet ish of, of property. So we can have the live music. We can have the, the outdoor feel, the good food that's made from scratch at home. So if we, I think Phoenix would like, and it's in the little off the,

it's not on Roosevelt road. So we'll be in the boondocks again on our own spot. So it works for us, but with those two big projects coming up, we already secured the land and we own the property. So it's now just planning and with those two big projects coming up, we already secured the land and we own the property. So it's now just planning and getting, getting, getting going. Nice. Congratulations on that. On the success.

Look for the grand opening. Hopefully I'll get an invite to the openings of your future places again. Thank you so much, Luke. Corey, partner of Boondocks Patio and Grill. Go to BoondocksAio and Grill. Go to boondocksaz.com. Better off, go directly to their locations. Order a beer on Luke. All right. Thank you again. This is David Koga with the Alliances Hero Show. Make sure you go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-S.com. The only place where all the entrepreneurs align with you.