Raising Cane's Founder Todd Graves | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #340

0:00 today's guest is a business entrepreneur in the food realm and he started his deal uh right in baton rouge his first uh outlet his first food locale right there in baton rouge louisiana where i was attending school and you know now he's built it into a billion dollar industry i'm grateful for his time today just to learn about what his ride has been like and what he's learned and what we can learn from him uh today's guest is uh the chicken finger champ from raising canes it is mr todd graves

0:47 i'll sit and tell you my stories [Applause] todd graves how are you man well i'm great i'm even better being up here with you yeah thanks man thanks so much for coming in uh i uh so your business now so raising canes is it's a chicken finger company yeah and how big is the business now now we're pushing 600 locations in almost 25 years of business so it blows me away we're about to start cranking about 100 a year good locations man so wow blows me away

1:32 and do you have like a say on what locations are approved or not or do you have other people that do that well i have a team a great team that does it they work with local brokers but i approve every site everyone yeah um okay so that's where it's at now so then i want to go back to like so you grew up in louisiana right yeah yeah born in new orleans raised in baton rouge oh nice where'd you go high school at uh episcopal high school in baton rouge yeah my kids go there now my wife went there so we're like episcopal family or alumni huh yeah alumni um yeah i saw your son came out here with you right now yeah yeah he's at his exams later in the week and so he had some time off so i like to bring him uh when i'm doing business and be around be exposed to it he's just 17 you know but it's good to get that stuff in his head yeah is he a pretty decent kid oh great kid man great kid you know plays baseball makes a's you know just like

2:19 it's great his sister's older sister twos at lsu and uh good student too great they like to have a good time but they keep it uh they keep it good and that so it's been easy raising them yeah yeah yeah um was it did you start being a dad like in the middle of well you must have started being a dad in the middle of your company growing yeah yeah you know so canes for me was a college business plan you know and so i started and opened up like i said almost 25 years ago that first location north gates lsu yeah i think i went in there man uh i think i went in there probably i mean i was probably high honestly you're under the influence of something which is okay they still serve you yeah well yeah it says that actually you get go get that chicken man so that's good late night man even hungover on sunday man it's uh that's our bread and butter yeah yeah it was good man uh yeah so i guess and so then take me

3:04 through that so like um there's like a lot of rumors out there yeah you were a fisherman and you got you were doing fishing and so then what happened like you're yeah take me how you kind of started the first one yeah you know it's a college business planning class so i grew up working in restaurants and bars and high school college and i was like the kid that did the lemonade stand in the neighborhood always entrepreneurial right yeah so i wanted my own restaurant okay but i'm a college student right so i'm like i want to do something that caters to the students i wanted to hire students because i knew the work environment they wanted uh i knew college kids would work hard man they'll bust their ass but they need some somebody that cares about them let's listen some fun music you know what's what serve our customers make them feel good about coming in and spending their money with us but let's have a good time when we do it was one of the first restaurants that actually had music going on in the

3:50 background things like that but that was my vision and so for business planning class i had a partner then when i started and we wrote it for his business plan class at lsu got the worst grade in the class oh yeah in there baby in the hair yeah you know but that's fuel right yeah that's exciting especially so so if you get that though do you feel like like were you guys deterred was the business you were the partner at that point yeah do you have a partner i did back then he sold out after the second one he just wasn't a he wasn't a fry cook cashier didn't make him happy you know but i love working drive-throughs i like working fry lines you know it's what i love which is important i tell these students now i'm like whatever you go into making sure it's something you like to do you're passionate about because if not you won't be successful at it right and if you love what you do works comes down to a grind but if you love it then you're always happy doing it it wasn't the right business for him

4:35 we've stayed dear friends but he sold after the second one but we have those memories together because worst grade in business planning class and he's just a b minus he wasn't a hard grader but it was the worst grade in the class but for me man it's like okay tell me tell me i can't do it let me show you i'm going to okay okay so there you are so you guys get a little bit of neglect there from the grading system and then what happens like um so then where do you go from there yeah so i thought you know we needed money to do a spot right and so i took that business plan look i thought businessmen you know needed to look the parts bought a cheap suit right oh yeah bought a briefcase from like office depot the one with the little uh brass locks on it you know like to look official right i'd go in like like a little bit some of the locks they never even opened dude i had one once it never

5:22 you couldn't even get in it they were so cheap right yeah i had it on the zero zero zero i'd crank it up bring up the business plan talk to him about this chicken finger dream i had right banks were nice enough but every one of them were like hey man you know you might want to work in the industry for 10 years you might want to do this and the other you're not in a position for us to lend you money once again no no no makes you want to do it that much more but had you had any experience in that line of work at all i mean yeah i've always worked in restaurants right and did it and knew it like i knew how much my aprons would cost you know what i mean like i knew it so well but people had a problem back then of just a chicken finger only concept right because quick service this is what happened to business plan they said you didn't do your research because like mcdonald's is adding all this variety and all these different things you're doing the opposite you want to do just one thing these chicken finger meals and

6:07 it's not where your industry's going but i knew doing one thing and doing better to anybody else would always pay off okay and was there that option out there at the time because i remember growing up they had popeyes and that's turned more into like a place where people fight i feel like dj's it's more like a boxing it's almost like a mini ufc over there sometimes but um was there anything that was serving just that chicken finger yeah guthrie's they had started guthrie's chicken versus started off in auburn years years before and they did uh university of georgia they did florida state and so the model was out there this wasn't in louisiana right and so it's hard for them to see that vision and for me i just knew college kids like good food and if you can do that chicken finger meal like you said and our busy biggest business business was the late night business to start off with and it went into the days

6:53 so i stayed i stayed true to it i knew i could do it but this to me was like this is my dream right so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna shut down i'm not gonna stop i'm never gonna give up so i got a job through a friend of a friend working as a boilermaker in refineries right to do turnaround shift work to raise money okay so boilermaker what is it well so like when they when a refinery needs one section to be fixed right put into equipment replace old stuff they'll get a group of boiler makers to go in and do all that grunt work okay but they pay you big money because you work long hours during the week and they want that section that refinery come back as soon as possible because with the oil production going everything welding cutting trays out putting in new equipment i mean it's pretty much everything and you have to learn it on the fly but it's like they want that thing open as soon as possible to get the oil production going so you can make a ton of money if

7:38 you're willing to work hard okay so you got down there so you're working to or finally so how long after you guys have this business plan that you're able to put it together and kind of get out to full two years because after my refinery stent i needed more money and i met a guy named wild bill tolar no kidding everybody had nicknames mine was hollywood longer story oh dude we had a guy i remember we started work used to work at this summer camp and they had a guy who would come down and i shouldn't even work in there man i was dating a girl and she got fired and then i was like they were like oh you can work here right and so then they had a guy would come and take pictures of all the kids swimming and stuff every day and his name was wild bill right so finally well one day i'm like hey are we ever going to see those pictures from wild bill and i'm like they're like who's wild bill like the photographer like we don't have a photographer it was just some guy some random dudes i'm while building the

8:24 photographer yeah taking pictures of kids swimming which was a little not not ideal so wild bills can be interesting yeah it can be this guy was a wild ass and uh he he earned his nickname but he said look you don't you don't mind working hard and you're trying to raise money for this chicken finger dream these bullet makers were incredibly encouraging to me like man you're going to open your restaurant while bilson has summer's commercial fishing in alaska so were you running around and saying like chicken fingers chicken face i mean you were just chirping about it yes man like you threw my passion right i was on chicken finger dream dude you know so it's like everywhere and everything and so people weren't just discouraging but they're more like hey you got a degree you know you should do this you should do that maybe later in life you will come back but like i'm like no this is what i want to do those boulder makers were the most encouraging people i've seen along there really all of them like man you go for your dreams they saw me working hard next to

9:09 them every day they're oh yeah out here for your chicken fingers and uh anyway and so while bill said look you can you can cut it go work go up to knack neck alaska and get a job in bristol bay gill netting for sakai if you want to make some real money go up there and i did called a float plane to king salmon my sister gave me her freaking flyer miles flying to anchorage got hit king salmon hitchhiked up to knack neck went in tent city took a month to get on a boat talking the captain into it that summer commercial fishing in alaska is crazy what uh so what was that time like up there like are the wha are you working with like a lot of inuits are you working with like a lot of just local people like that are kind of hiding out because it's almost like the like the the icy key west i feel like alaska is almost that strange kind of like place where people can go to kind of get

9:55 like really get away yeah yeah it's a mix so and you would indians hold the permits right they're the original boats so you have the inuit population but a lot of fishermen from washington you know oregon things like that and they go up to spend the summer to make money and uh they're highly motivated because you can make a ton of money most people just work that summer but then it was interesting because when i got on the boat i realized how motivated they are right so there's like you can go out and during the peak of the season some are born in a stream right they swim out to the ocean they're these beautiful silver fish all of them have a cycle between four and like seven years okay then they know to come back to the original river up the same river they spawn and they die and it's the cycle it's crazy yeah so when they're coming in during the summer man it's droves of fish and so it's like a boomerang almost yeah man boom and boom and so then we were fishing for sockeye

10:42 salmon the japanese were buying like 95 of it paying top dollar oh yeah and you can't keep going out into the ocean intercept these fish right you have a lorraine line you couldn't cross so if you set your net on that line in front of another net you just made like 10 times more money right so but is there a lot of jockeying for position out total jockeying man you picked you nailed it man so it's like you will play chicken with other boats because you want that better set for your net and these captains are motivated man we ram boats boats ram dust my partner went out with me then his boat ram his captain rammed another boat and sunk it out there man some crazy stuff man people were dying out there all this stuff because you're working 20 hour days during the peak right and it's not just four hours of sleep it's like an hour here and there go take a nap you're working so hard so people get tired and then they they get

11:27 lazy they get not careful and they get thrown out with the nets or whatever's going on so imagine a kid on a chicken finger dream the back of this 36-foot boat national geographic's going to film the madness medical helicopters are taking people out you're hearing so and so boat just how to death and all this and you're filling up the boat with fish waves are crashing over the side you're scared you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna crash you're gonna you're gonna either get hit or you're gonna sink when i was out there for that chicken finger dream dang it's almost like that's almost like the ufc out there it sounds like the ultimate fishing champion championship or something like yeah i can't even imagine people jocking and and the the the hours that you're on those boats like what's that kind of time like the hours that you're on this you just stay out and so like you know time's money so if you have to go into the dock you know i mean you miss some money so

12:13 they have tender boats that you drop your fish off to so you just live out there you're staying on the boat oh you're out there now and then the little boats come by and you guys fill and you guys will just fill them up with fish fill them up fish yeah you take a tinner boat take your nets off boom put it back in and you go right back at it now was there any drug use or anything like that on the boat because i could imagine some people would be adderalled up or something during it you know back then you know adderall hadn't hit it hit its stride you know so you just you just work and your body just gets conditioned to it man you become so hard like when i came back it was hard to get back into society a little bit because you're just like you have to just constantly work then it gets cold and it gets that you get beat up and then like i came back i was kind of like man i don't i don't know if i've fit in just that a couple weeks later i got soft again you know yeah but uh start using scope again yeah exactly now so that's interesting so

12:59 what do you think about like because that takes a certain type of person you know to go and do that type of work that type of grueling environment where it's almost like a testament of your will in addition to you having to be employed at the same time yeah you're doing a job but you also have to have this internal kind of thing going on where you were gonna hold the line you were going to keep going do you think that that was something that was always with you even as a child like were you always just kind of like a not a sucker for punishment but were you always somebody that wanted to be like in the fire or when you look back on your youth do you see moments where you kind of understand your behaviors then and you still see them in yourself

13:44 now yeah you know a lot of it and so i use sports as an example right and so just playing something like football right well what's on the football team i was i mean look i went to 2a private school so i've been like not like working everybody plays not like yeah everybody plays so it's not like i'm saying i'm some great athlete right but like i wanted to be the leader on the team right like i wanted to be leader so i could have played receiver or running back or whatever but i want to be quarterback because i wanted to man the offense and 2a football also played on the defensive side went to defensive end but i wanted to be in charge and then i knew i could pull the most out of everybody right so the best thing about playing to a private ball is everybody plays you got to get the most out of them so i knew how to motivate them versus chewing their ass it was like get their faces we're going to do this man we're going to do good and i think those leadership things and that hard work because i left everything on the field i also want to do well in school you

14:30 know and things like that so that determination was always there and it really paid off later in a big way when i wanted to start this dream right you know right because yeah i guess now that's something you notice in some people some people are just good motivators you know you feel like that's probably one of your strongest suits yeah because look man you know when i went and worked in high school college and restaurants it was more of a you're doing wrong i yelled at you you know and this negative reinforcement doesn't work in my business if you go through raising cane you'll see a bunch of happy smiling people but they're going to crank out your food as quick as they can good quality but it comes from positive motivational management look like i go through my kitchens go see my crews all over the country right but i go through the kitchen hey that's nice toast right and you think telling a college kid they're like yeah i'm just grilling toast big deal they're like hey thanks hey thanks for the hard work y'all appreciate it hearing good things you're doing here the community loves you

15:16 positive positive positive because look it comes down to it's hard it's hard to work long shifts in a restaurant right but they know i care about them then they work even harder right we got a question that came in right here actually um here we go right here for you and this isn't live just so you know okay and you know what i'm gonna pour my liquid death into a cane's cup for you today you want to do that with me bro i don't know drinking something called liquid death but i trust you yeah it's just water man i mean unless you don't make it through this it's a good water man they it's actually a really good water but uh it's good it's delicious it really is man i don't know how they did it but they did it somehow yeah that's delicious i'm a big water guy by the way so that's good stuff me too well cheers brother cheers um yeah let's get to this question right here here we go hey todd hey theo uh just wanted to come

16:03 and ask a quick question i'm out of raising kane 61 in monroe and i wanted to share my favorite story with todd was one time he came through and bought a whole bunch of cookies for everybody on staff and i always thought that was such a nice thing to do so i wanted to ask todd what is your favorite memory from raising canes would it be your first store would it be somewhere else would it be your time before as like a boilermaker sockeye salmon fishing uh what you got gang gang boom boom gang baby that's a good question man and so yeah do you have a favorite moment you have any there could be many but you have one that kind of stands out to you or a sentimental moment something that happened along the way man you know i have so many of them and here's the thing when it's so hard to start something you build a culture of appreciation like every restaurant matters to me every crew member matters to me

16:49 every box that goes out to every customer matters to me and so when you have this appreciation all these moments so like going through there and seeing a crew working hard i'm like hey go get them some cookies they're working hard do this thing is and seeing them care well he remembers that it's just interesting i mean we you know we just asked for any for submissions of thoughts or questions so that you know like uh it's just interesting that that's what someone would send yeah you know he remembered that moment right and look he's going to carry that other things he does throughout his life and say look treat people well and when you do that it comes back so everything is just the evolution of it and where we're going now and now be able to do hundreds of locations a year and things like that they're all special but i tell you the thing that means the most to me is is now having we you know we do well and financially and then be able to do the things on behalf of my crew that help out people

17:36 right you know like helping people that aren't as fortunate as us and i involve my crew when we do that but i'm the representative i'm like it's off y'all's hard work i'd have to say those moments are the most priceless to me because it's me and my team doing that and we can help out some people that need it is there one that kind of stands out because or just cheap one you'd like to cite even to kind of like well so so here's a good example so uh baton rouge has a big buddy program right and so it was the first thing i got involved with her office is right down from the mother ship our first location but gay and i she's a wonderful woman she's devoted her life to help out these these kids that just don't have the same opportunities i didn't really uh do what now gay who you're gay back she's she's in charge of the big buddy the director there okay but seeing these kids go through and helping them when their kids and expose some other things and then be successful later in life they all come

18:21 back they'll send letters and giggles these letters back hey you influenced me here you did these things and now hey i got my law degree or hey i went into entertainment or i did i went for my dreams and you didn't give up so i did i'd have to say that's the best also just getting from our crew members man like the biggest moment recently is you know last couple years my crew has breaking me as a top 100 ceo in the country it's this glass door deal at all categories there's only a couple of restaurants in this deal but that's them voting for that and so that was the biggest recognition personally for me is i'm like my crew just said you know that i'm a good leader i got almost 40 000 crew members i can't see them i don't know them all by name and things like that but because of that leadership right that their leader treats them right and does that man you talk about it what an honor right that's amazing man congratulations well

19:06 it was quite an honor where does it come from so like uh what was your dad like when you were young yeah just uh he was just uh just always exposed me to business kind of like i'm doing now and just always about hard work and then always about be polite to people things like that those values and so i do the same things with my kids now you know i'm like taking them through it's like like you met charlie earlier he's a good young man you can tell he just has a good uh he's a bit yeah you can just tell he's a kind guy right when you meet him yeah and that's what's the most important thing in life right i tell them the most important thing you could ever do is be kind be kind be kind be kind to people man and no matter where and look we they've grown up they've always had their own money and nice things and this amazing stuff like he gets to come here with you and he meets all the we from kane browns today with the cane's food truck he gets to meet all these people oh cool yeah kane was on a couple of months ago

19:52 what a great dude but you know i mean like but but he gets it like hey and so what i'm trying to teach these kids is we're in a great position yeah and for us we need to help other people out amen yeah you know it's interesting i find um it's tough cause like i find it tough whenever i get stressed not to carry that on to who people that i'm working with or in my work environment it's been tough for me sometimes just personally just to like you know to it's been tough for me to manage some of that sometimes yeah i think and i don't know if it's because i don't take proper maybe enough care of myself or like invest in enough of my self-care kind of to make sure that i'm comfortable you know yeah sometimes i have this thing where i always want to struggle yeah but that keeps you that could probably keep you driven right

20:37 yeah it keeps me driven but also it keeps me a little bit stressed out sometimes i think you know and so especially now as my as my life has gotten bigger in the past couple years it's like so figuring that out for myself has been kind of tough you know because yeah i'd love to be more in that space where i'm leading through kindness all the time you know well you know i wish i could give you some some advice on that and so the people that are closest to me working all the time they see the stressed out todd they see because man you know how it goes stacked you're a detail guy like me and you have to all the details and we need to be driving i hate the efficiency of time it's like we getting to be cranky so the people as close see just kind of see that other tie that's like zip zip zip zip zip and like we're supposed to be on this in 10 minutes but they understand and then i'll tell them look sorry distressed and so they know this and then i'll take the times when i can get a breath i appreciate you i do but i make sure

21:25 when i go see my restaurants or i'll go see the big offices and do those things i make sure they just feel nothing but love right because if they're not around me enough they don't understand like todd's just stressed right now i need to be there they're busting their butt every day all the things they're doing so even if i see something that's not right where it should be you know and they do a great job always but i'm not gonna go in and tell them anything negative now i'll talk to the district manager later and people say hey we probably need to get this better and i saw this but motivational but i'm the same way around your tight group and they just know you and they love you and they know you've got all the pressure on you you know i think it's hard for that that to leave but uh i can figure it out someday yeah or i guess i should just do a better job sometimes i communicate with people when i am stressed or say hey look i'm i'm not i'm not i'm a little stressed right now just to let you know if i act stressed it's because i am it's not personal yeah

22:12 and that's what i do but you always have to be on for everybody everybody wants theo you know and the theo and that's a lot of pressure man that's a lot that's a lot to have but yeah them understanding hey i'm tired i didn't sleep last night hey i'm going to be stressed right now just and they know you they know you they love you and i only got one chicken finger i'm the chicken finger so you know the batter's been all chewed off i feel like sometimes man that's for sure um we got a question right here that came in for you man what up todd what up theo this is uh barrett from sulphur louisiana what's up brother uh first of all theo i want to say it's real up that you announced the tour schedule and there's no dates in louisiana thank you big time now bouncing back and forth between la and nashville and you forgot where you came from okay show some love man i will give us some shows alexandria i'm gonna come to

22:58 alexandria um todd i wanna say uh personally thank you so much for uh opening up the the cane store here in sulphur uh right after the hurricanes whenever our area was affected by hurricane laura and here at hurricane delta you are one of the first companies if not the first company that was uh you know serving food giving people jobs like giving people stuff to eat man like just giving us some semblance of life being back to normal so we really appreciate that honestly my question is you've already conquered the chicken tender game so what's next you know when you got people like like chick-fil-a they got all the sauces y'all gonna start messing with some new sauces uh you're gonna start doing like bone-in

23:43 chicken uh the real question when are we getting spicy tenders all right so let me know what's next in the pipeline gang gang baby that's a good question yeah have there been uh is there anything kind of new on the horizon or there have been items answer his question first i'm sorry go on no it was a great question um but no i mean i've always believed in doing one thing and do it better than anybody else and uh that's why we have raising cakes chicken our tack line is one love and i have one love it says quality chicken finger meals and so if you do what you do well and consistently do it great your customers will come back and let me give you a a reason let me tell you this like it's us and chick-fil-a are one and two in quick service average unit volumes like mcdonald's sales are like a million less than mine right it's my repetitive customers that come back because they're gonna get that

24:29 quality every time with a smiling face and so if i added different things right added spicy i've added these one i wouldn't be as quick in the drive-through right because the choices go down i wouldn't be able to cook it cook to order like if you come through our line we have a cook to order system that literally goes through i have that whole fry line set up to deliver that quality meal right with the best quality you can get but if i added all these different things bone-in chicken takes different times i'd have hold times my quality would go down my speed would go down and it wouldn't be our concept our concept is quality food spurred with fast food speed and convenience and adding different things and losing focus would lose while we're special so when you even say the choices so you're even talking to the minutia of the fact that somebody then at a drive-through is having to make choices and that's going to take more time that's going to take more time right wow it's

25:15 interesting i've never thought of the time it takes not only on the time on my side of the counter as the as the as the company but the time it takes the uh like managing the time of the person showing up without even real without them even really realizing it yeah i mean we're over 60 drive through people want to come through when they want to get it quick right people know they're order canes box no salt extra toast extra sauce boom sweet tea you're out the door or you're out through the drive through and so we want to keep that time to anneal some even like not distracting things you know that are going on like so even we have like right now i did this russian recovery show but i got you know a picture of me and snoop helping this one restaurant out even that makes people stop for a little bit and go do to do maybe ask a question the window then we're like hey we need to rethink this right i want them getting through because they got 20 cars behind them yeah you know wow

26:02 wow that's interesting man uh was there now was there ever a moment along the way where somebody's like hey man you know you guys need to do uh always always have always the the experts are always like hey you know you guys really need to add a chicken finger salad you know the health trends on the da da da da and the other and when i was younger i listened a little more because i'm like wait maybe these people are smarter than me maybe i know more than me and i'm look i'm always constantly learning but my gut said no because if i do that chicken finger salad chicken fish salad the quality is not not really there you know it's not the same thing it won't be craveable and they want to come back and say that people told me but they scared me they were like well you're gonna get the the cancel vote like if one person in the car one of the parents wants it they're not gonna go to you to go somewhere else i'm

26:48 like no if the kids are gonna push them because they want that quality right staying true to what i've done not listening i know who i am and i'm not trying to be all things to all people right because if you try to be that then you're gonna you're gonna not not be anything to anybody right i want that craveable customer we call them kaniaks and uh it's paid off brother yeah and i thought it was cocaine at first man trust me because i remember the first time i ever did cocaine was down at lsu man and i took a run i thought it was performance-enhancing drug i didn't know that it was like a drug for just night use or whatever so i went on a run down by blue monitor down by the railroad tracks dude i probably ran almost 15 miles jesus yeah that was not good dude that was a bad that was a not good for the heart yeah good for the heart bro i still sometimes i can still feel my heart feels like it has a horse hoof in it man every now and then

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28:21 favorite marvel heroes marvel's modoc series premiere may 21st only on hulu the most joy i have i had in my career was before people knew that i was funny i mean some people knew but before like a decent amount of people knew man because then you had the element of surprise you know there was something nice about the element of surprise like you're going to be surprised you know you can be surprised when i like this joke but yeah this thing's right right yeah and now people probably expect it right yeah now people expect it which is great but it it's you can you can't really replicate that when you when they didn't know yeah yeah yeah yeah was there moments like i noticed in my business as my career goes on that there are times where it's like my

29:06 career feels like it's on a little bit of like a you know on elon musk's golf cart like it's really cruising you know and then there's times where it kind of has lulls and i start to wonder what's going on take me through some of the trajectory of how you guys got out of one location and then what started to happen and if there were times where you felt like okay this is where we've kind of maximized um did you get into the business like how do you have to transition from being at the place to then getting more into the business side of it and uh just take me through some of that please well except for me you know the whole business has been one series of getting uh getting your butt kicked and learning from those mistakes right so if you're not making mistakes you're not getting out in the middle of things right and so you know one restaurant to the second was the hardest growth we ever had

29:51 you know i grew too quick you know it was other side of campus the one on lee drive you probably went to that one too i probably fried your chicken late night there and but but i wasn't i didn't have my staff ready i didn't have all my people together and like i thought some people wouldn't show up on shifts and i'm like i can't be at both restaurants and then getting butt kicked there that's actually when my my partner ended up saying hey man this just isn't for me wow so it really rattled the cage a little well you just was like look you're okay coming back all the time and like when i have time when you have time off you'll go work on schedules and doing learning better training programs he's like i want to go back read the wall street journal he was just more of that business side of it you know but like going from there then i grew five restaurants in five months these old drive-through double drive-throughs and baton rouge were going once again i stretched us too much we did a good job opening up in lafayette which is the first in lafayette louisiana the first one out of the market uh crushed it there but then

30:37 i'm like i gotta hit dallas and houston there's lsu grads there but i grew in both those markets i didn't set them up properly i grew too quick got my butt kicked in both of them lost a bunch of money until i could bring it back up series of things like that and now what so if there was suggest so how would you have done it differently looking back on it a little bit if you could have done it differently well just so people can learn yeah yeah so for me personally it uh and now with the scale of the business is it was actually good for me to go and make those mistakes because now like i know it sounds like 100 locations down is a lot but look i'm 25 years in the business right we're at that point i can open quality locations so i didn't learn the hard way that's the way i learn you know but if i if i didn't have to learn the hard way when i moved to dallas and houston to put those restaurants in there i would have slowed down made sure i had the right team and that they were properly supported i mean

31:23 these people more people didn't have the right support for me they worked themselves to the bone that didn't feel good right you know i would've gone the right way taking my time done it right now still quick you know and got open and did the things this but i would take a lot more time setting it up plus the branding in those areas i thought you just opened the doors and everybody knew you and came in no no it's like a ghost town now i'm back on the streets trying to get people in and so i would have taken my time built a more strategic plan and then grew from there but that helped because when i went to new markets still today look i'm coming into nashville now i got the food truck here it's going around to see people like seeding the location i'm here personally people getting to know me things like that those things have stayed with me and our openings since those times have been a lot more successful you know it's interesting to hear some of that like jimmy john uh john leotoe you know he came he's been on the podcast and he stopped

32:10 by this morning to say hey to you which i thought was really nice and um he talked about whenever they first started franchising how it just got away from him and the stores weren't how he needed them to be and he had to go on like a cross-country tour to all of the locations and this and and neither buy them back from the people if they felt like it wasn't really the right fit or to keep them you know to inspire them and kind of you know give actually put his stamp on the way it should be done right and to help them you know and uh i thought that was pretty fascinating that that seemed like a moment where he really had to get back out there and almost do more work than he had to do in the beginning absolutely because you know entrepreneurs you're excitable and you want to grow and you want to build you create look that's our art our art is our business is growing right and spreading

32:56 it we get happy when new people become braving fans of our brands it's it's what our gift of the world is and uh but you get you get sucked in and you grow too quick and then you go back and fix it it's way harder to fix it than to go in the right way yeah and so the right way would be what just a little bit just be a little more patient you think like let things take longer than you think they're going to yeah look go in with the right team and so look so my growth i'm just about all company restaurants in the united states i got the franchise what does that mean sorry just so we know well so like so most of the people at quick service are franchise models right right so you have corporate they have all the intellectual properties the names like mcdonald's is a franchise model franchise model right subways franchise model taco bell and so they have the systems and processes then you go with local franchisees who basically license

33:42 or franchise your concept and then they go run those restaurants so they do it you lose a lot of control when you do that you have to have a real good franchisees and so for me i would rather open company restaurants because i can control them i mean i want these things run exceptionally well it's all personal to me and so i have more control and i choose to partner with the restaurant partner i have at that restaurant who he or she is like working their butt off they're the todd graves in their trade area where they live and so for me it's a lot more debt you know people from corporations will franchise because the local franchisees will have to put in the debt on the building and you know all the startup money and things like that i'd rather take that on with my credit facility partner with my internal people let them become wealthy and and their family get to enjoy that and to do it but so

34:28 but taking your time is setting it up getting the right people during your restaurant whether it's a franchisee or its company you need to set those people up for success you need to train train over train you need to have so much support going in to get them started because it's hard to get get that cash flow going it's hard to get that buzz going in your community so slowing down being strategic with growth and i'm glad you're bringing this up because this someone might be listening right now that's going to grow or something and they're going to go too quick and it's like you will have to come back and fix it and then you'll slow down your growth so much set it up with the right people train properly then give them support i want to let you guys know that tickets are now available at theovonne.com tour we have added shows in st louis and durham as well as albany new

35:17 york and we are adding another one in columbus as well they're on sale for charlotte cincinnati chattanooga knoxville wilmington wilkes-barre minneapolis charleston richmond baltimore buffalo thank you very much check it out theovan.com tour and thank you so much for letting me live out my dream i'm excited to see you there um i'm gonna look good here yeah your hair looks great by the way oh thank you very much man amazing yeah it's coming in well man i've had hair transplants too i've had air taken out of the back and put in the front oh no your hair's thick man thanks man it's pretty cool i like getting surgery so it's like for me because i like just you wake up there and there's there's people around like everybody cares about you you know i feel like so cared about when i'm at the surgery place but

36:02 um well i've got the same haircut since i've been three have you i guess you know what i could almost see that man that's was it did you go to church with that cutter no yeah they just put a bowl around my head and cut it now i'm not that thick anymore so i can't use the bowl technique dude my mom used to take me to this lady miss bobby well first of all our our our bus driver would cut our hair in covington so mr this dude mr nat every like two weeks he would park the bus on the way home for a dollar fifty he would cut your hair dude he literally would just go around the bus everybody get the same cut there you go like literally we all looked like we were part of some cult without kool-aid right like just everybody was just you show up you just have hair all over your mom was like what happened the bus driver i love it i got my hair cut by a guy named r.l it was a place called headquarters and remember back then like the barbers

36:49 like they were family like they got it and we got in high school see all my friends went to rl we were like hey can you do this cool cut this thing i'd be like he'd listen yeah yeah yeah z folly had to leave rl you know and we all did and he took it personally he hadn't talked to me to this day i am i believe that man i remember those days they always had the combs in that little cup oh that thing remember that blue liquid or whatever yeah just sitting in there it always felt like it was for your dad you know yeah oh god that was crazy man and they would get that other thing with that kind of like smoke in it or whatever and put it on your neck yeah what was that i don't know it's like that dust yeah it was that powder it made me all chalky man i'm like what is this they thought that was like the nice touch in the end yeah yeah it was a little bit old school yeah it was a little bit i always left out there looking like benjamin franklin a little bit i feel like

37:35 we got a question that came up right here for you uh let's get into it hi todd and theo this is ethan from long beach california todd i'm a huge fan of your company everyone at your stores is always in such a good mood and is so friendly i would love to hear more about this restaurant recovery project you're doing it sounds like an awesome cause to support small businesses and yeah i really think it's going to be a great thing for especially during this time have a great day thanks brother great thank you yeah so when the pandemic started our business sales actually went up okay okay so we have drive-thru format so that became a thing i don't know if you remember when it when it started of course you do but it was like essential business and like people couldn't go to restaurants but they could go through drive-throughs oh wow so drive-through is suddenly just

38:20 the luckiest thing on earth dude exactly and so man like our sales go up but we're up like 10 even up to 20 percent right it didn't feel good because where we're getting that business from was these family-owned independent restaurants that predominantly dine in and so i thought what we could do and i mean i got on social media and stuff like support small business think about going to them they're suffering us chains are fine you know and it's like what can i do i've done tv before i understand the the power of it and i said well you know what being an entrepreneur i said like i went hired a production company started restaurant recovery i knew i could do it during that time my team was good so i picked 10 markets where kane's markets are so i could use our help with our people pick these legendary restaurants these family restaurants are just really going through a hard time took in a team kind of like an extreme home makeover deal got him exposure and involved a lot of

39:07 my celeb friends to come help out too which was really special and neat yeah rob schneider did one yeah yes i was nice enough to come out and do uh the phoenix episode and like just this family she's a pakistani lady and does the business with her son omar and i mean look they they serve just really really good food but they're in tempe and the university shut down no classes about that going you know overnight and so i brought rob in uh also deandre hopkins came in oh that's cool dude he came in the monday after the catch these famous cats in the end zone yeah and so i got him to come out and these are just community guys right so uh rob's like yes i'll help out deandre's like yes i'll come out so deandre fired on my team we had to get this thing done in 48 hours so he started off they were like wow work production even went higher than i could think this group works real hard

39:53 and then rob came in with a family like look they're good to see the stress on their face but him coming in funny guy caring they're laughing like look let's we're gonna get through this together really great man and basically the thing i was able to see more than anything else is they're all pretty predominantly dining room business that was gone taken away so needed to put them into like make them a to-go machine right which sounds easy but it's not like to do it right you got to have mobile ordering you got to have curbside delivery takes a lot of technology right right it's not something a restaurant owner is just trying to keep the business open every day doing racking up credit card debt keeping their people employed yeah you could do that right especially if it's not a man like a you know you think of a small business guy he shows up he puts the pot on the stove in the morning and starts making the gazpacho or whatever it is like so yeah that person

40:38 isn't going to go from that to having that app or that ability to uh to make things mobile they don't have the resources for that right so i could go in and help them do that and then preserve these places right i mean look you know i'm a chain and i like getting business obviously right we do a good job and we work hard for it but we have all the advantages i got a huge marketing budget right got big shiny buildings right in the best locations and people see that and it's that constant state of mind so what i try to tell people is hey i'm glad you came to keynes but look think about that neighborhood restaurant that you love like they need your business they don't make that much money and when they're gone they get replaced by high-rise or a chain we don't need more of those we need those legendary restaurants diversity of thoughts small business go to that small hardware store you got to go the big box to get some

41:24 stuff go to that little hardware shop go go support that small business a background backbone of our country plus different thoughts it makes things great they're the cultural centers of our neighborhood we need to support them yeah do you worry about i know like minimum wage increase and stuff like that do you worry about that affecting businesses like i hear stuff about like that do you worry about that affecting small businesses yeah i worry about the people that just don't have enough sales to support it and might not have as sophisticated pricing strategies okay so for me you know quick service restaurants might make between five and ten percent bottom line okay so everybody that comes in you're doing good if you made five cents on a dollar ten 10 cents on a dollar you're doing great and so that means if somebody spends a dollar you make 10 cents you make doing well it's usually five between five cents and ten cents so there's just not much margin there right

42:10 wow and between that five and ten cents for every dollar spent there when you have commodity pressures and things like that which price a chicken goes up then it just goes down and so you just got slim margins that's four before taxes that's five cents to ten cents a dollar before then you go get the taxes so if i spend ten dollars at a raising cain's right at a what's the quick service you talking about yeah quick service fast food okay so if i spend ten dollars at a quick service restaurant then if they're making 10 cents of that so if they're making a dollar out of 10 dollars that i spend then they're doing well doing well wow that's 10 percent doing well then that's before taxes right and that's real numbers huh that's real numbers and so when you think about it we don't have margin to share right because um if labor prices go up right and you got to do it you have to

42:55 pass it on to the customer there's no way that you can supply because if it goes below five percent and gets lower you can't lose money well and then you can't go you're not gonna go put the uh investment in to build and grow and create more jobs and do it right so the next location the roi is not there and so you won you wouldn't spend the money and two the banks are gonna be like hey you're not making return on investment like we're not gonna continue to lend you money and so just the margins are that small but so for me it doesn't it doesn't hurt keynes because you're gonna eventually pass it on right wages go up then you're going to raise the price of the chicken finger box right it's just going to go up and we have and you can't do that overnight you have to stage into it and so we're we just have a lot of resources man i mean like i have a strategy for pricing the tough artists for small business that don't think about that pricing and then they don't want to do it the next

43:41 thing you know their their margins go too small but look it's going there fifteen dollars uh uh an hour minimum wage we're going there i just i give advice to small business i'm like you have to pass it on and we're going to go up but plan your pricing strategies ease into it and let your customers know hey look just it's it's labor prices and so it goes up so it doesn't really concern me it's a pricing strategy for small business right because you have such a bra such a breadth of of information you can pull in and you can look at it and you can like plan on a big scale but for someone who's just kind of like made their menu and it's very basic and they're not thinking like oh well if the cost of this goes up 50 cents then i don't even make any money until probably six months down the line when they look at their books and like what happened what happened that's exactly what happens and they don't these all these

44:26 small business owners they are so reluctant to take price increases they don't want their customers to pay i'm like i know you have to or you're going to be out of business you know isn't that interesting about that about that about sometimes about people don't want to charge like i get that way sometimes like i don't want to make my tickets real expensive you know i don't want to even though sometimes i'll see other people like holy smokes you know that guy's tickets that price that's crazy you know but i'll get nervous about that i i don't even know if it's nervous i don't want to bother i don't want to i don't know what it is i know i i think i only take a crack at it you start it from nothing and you appreciate every fan and it means something to you so it's you take it personal right and so you generally hold back same with small business right they started from nothing they've scratched they called and now

45:12 they have a a living and they don't want to pass that on they're like i don't want to do that to my customers i would imagine you're probably the same way yeah and it's exact opposite in big corporate america especially in restaurants like those cfo types are like they already have their pricing it's not a personal decision it's all a financial decision that they're doing it's different for people that that care you know is it interesting at a certain point as you grow and as things turn more from like sit like manning a fryer to um to like business like i noticed with business the more business i start doing the more business i have to do you know and so it's tough because you want to grow and you want to make things bigger and give other people opportunities but

45:58 it also like it's it's tough to be like how much is enough business you know how much is enough revenue like how much is enough you know have there been moments in your world where you've kind of battled with that kind of stuff or yeah absolutely you know all on the way and so what i had to set for myself was my personal goals and what ultimately i see happiness being for me okay and so i set the vision for raising canes and this is our vision statement is to have locations all over the world be known as the brand for quality chicken finger meals okay great crew cool culture and active community involvement okay so that's me happiness right and so look i believe god made me good at this for a reason and that's to be able to help

46:43 people right but when i set that vision you think about it it's not just i won't have locations all the world there's nothing about i want to make a bunch of money i've got all these things in there it's literally while i went to keynes great food then oh wow friendly crew cool culture and then they give money back and they work in the communities so that's guided me right and so when i know i i know i need to do that then i'm going to grow it and so mine's an infinite vision like i i won't see it all over the world you know i mean i'm gonna we're starting to grow but i can't develop the whole world you know i mean by the time i'm you know god willing to live a long life but you know those things are going so that's helped to guide me right and so i passed up my financial goals really early on and so for me is when time hits the grind hits and it always hits it kept me motivated when i didn't have

47:29 the team around me that helped support me always had people that worked hard and did but i couldn't afford the teams i do now right i knew i'd get to this point and look by the grace of god right now i got really really solid teams very much more smarter than i am and in the respective things they do so we're a stronger team and i feel like now just now and i'm pushing 50 i'm 49 now almost 25 years in business just now that i'm not like waking up every morning with that thing in my belly but i'm i'm hitting that vision so wow anyway but different times it hit i'm like oh my god todd you know you're so stressed out you know you haven't you haven't relaxed or you haven't done time family and things like that and then i was like but look that vision puts me through ultimately it's going to really help people and and you just got to stick with it and go you know and so that was just my personal thing and so

48:15 that's paid off by setting real goals like people need to set real goals and real vision considering what you're working for some people get beyond that and look they don't want to grow like me all over the world they want to do certain things and in all walks of life and then they get lost in wait a minute this is what i really wanted to do and it wasn't what i wanted to do to be happy right so now they're bigger they're this but they're not happy right and that that's kind of a heartbreaker you know at times you know something people need to think strategically where am i going you know yeah it's interesting man yeah i think about that sometimes like i think one of our original goals with podcasting was just to kind of share what we're thinking and feeling and then to we started getting into like helping and like giving back we do some stuff for single moms and things like that where we try to we haven't gotten it like incorporated yet so we could make it like a real non-profit you know that that arm of it but i certainly hope to at some point um but sometimes i have to remember that

49:01 that's what's kind of important you know yeah that's leaving something positive you know it almost feels so stale to make money if there's not some positive part of it in a way there's got to be something greater than us to go do it right and look man i'm at a point now where i can do a lot of things and with the scale of the business and do it giving you get so much more back right and then it just gives your life purpose right so giving comes in other ways not just charity just giving money to these things is it's inspiring people you know it's it's it's someone saying hey i have this dream and like look this chicken finger guy did it even commercial fish in alaska reconstructed the first place but he's working hard and i can do it you know what i mean those things are gifts that you can give people look how much we learn from people on the way you know what i mean people say hey

49:48 you're self-made man i'm like no i'm not man i'm a collection of what i wanted to do but help but people along the way right you know so giving back parts really cool what were some um was it was there an item so i don't forget was there a uh was there a menu item you guys ever tried like a banana pudding was there something you guys ever came out with or tried or that was the closest one even early on man no i just stick stuck with that one love brother same menu since day one man and just knowing that but that's been a big key to my successes is just like i said knowing that's what i do stay focused man i've never even added dessert and i'm not anti-dessert not anti-dessert it just would take focus off of what we're doing you know and so look so here's the interesting thing in san

50:34 antonio airport we went in there they have city mandates and so you had to have a healthy item you had to add uh breakfast and then they even wanted dessert when it well-rounded so we added a chicken finger salad for them right it started off 20 of sales of chicken finger salad and then it slowly dipped it back then it went rapid and became one percent of sales because people are like once they try the chicken fingers it just shows you like right it's it's a non-item for me right we have these great cookies all this stuff is people need to deserve canes you finish that man you're good to go so then but but for those locations you had to have that city mandates right they just need yeah they just the city council says hey we need healthy we need we need these things to make it well-rounded because like sometimes it

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