Next Level Burger Aims to Change US Eating Habits

how you doing today? I'm doing fantastic, brother, great to see on a Friday. Same man. So, so, can you start by telling the audience a little bit about Next Level Burger, your mission, your menu, and anything else that you think would would be important for them to to kind of get a feel for for the brand. Absolutely appreciate that might. So we are America's first plant based

burger joy and burger joint chain. Uh. We started way back, if you can remember, so many years ago now, way before the Kevin Harts of the world had gotten into

the vegan burger joint game. Uh. And we really founded Next Level Burger on a value set of plant based Sure, even though there are only a couple of plant based multenew concepts at the time, but we wanted to take it to the pun intended next level by committing to organics, non GMO and before anybody was really talking about it, living wages and really what we asked ourselves, Mike, is Okay, if you were reinventing the burger joint for the twenty one century, what would it look like? And for us,

it looks like Next Level Burger. So I am the CEO and co founder of Next Level. My partner in life and crime or chief visionary Officer, Sierra, who I met way back when I was out of the Rain Corps and it just gotten into college and she was in college. Uh and little did you know, uh, we were meeting at a restaurant. But we eventually build one together.

So it's been a pretty unbelievable journey so far. It's very cool, very cool, and and you know you you have a great backstory, you know, you and Next Level Burger, and you know everybody loves a good backstory. Um, so can you talk a little bit about kind of your journey, how you got here and then what motivated you to start slinging vegan burgers? Yeah, absolutely so I am long winded, as my wife will definitely attest to let me see if I can put this in a nutshell so um.

I grew up on a hundred percent not plant based diet, and not plant based diet. My mom was an amazing chef cook really uh you know, we always had pies and cakes and brownies and cookies, none of which forever vegan of course on the counters um it was scratched in her is every night, roasts and steaks and pork chops and mashed potatoes, piled high with as much dairy

as you could possibly get into a plate. And and that was that was my idea of a really healthy way of living life, you know, um, you know, avoiding process what we would call it at that point, just fast food, uh, and for the most part, eating this amazing food that my mom will prepare from scratch and our home kitchen with lots of love. And that was the diet that I carried forward into my late twenties.

By the time I was in my late twenties, I was consistently eating you know, ten pounds of red meat a week in sixteen to twenty four ounce porterhouses every night, big salad, baked potato, wash it down with the beer. Uh, And I felt like that was as good as a man could eat. And so this what was that? It tastes pretty good? Oh? It does it? Do? It tastes good it indeed? I mean I don't look forward to

that steak. I would have it five six nights a week, and every night I would look forward to that steak like like nothing else. Um. But when I was twenty seven, um, and at this point just kind of set the stage. So I'm I had joined the Marine Corps of High school Infantry. When I got out of the Marine Corps, I had, I had gone to school, and I had planned to go to law school at DU in Denver, UM. But my wife and I UH found out that we're

having our firstborn about ten years ahead of schedule. Okay, So I realized that I need to pivot quote friends ross from friends, pivot uh, and I needed to shift in a different direction. And so I ended up getting a job, um. And that job was in oil and gas venture capital. Now what's funny about that is that I come from a family of oil and gas and

I never ever intended on going in that direction. My dad is a geophysicist, so he would bore me to tears as a kid and a teenager, show me all this three dimensional seismic and so I never expressed any interest in it. But I ended up through an interesting series of events in a position where I'm wearing a Versace suit and I'm in this oil and gas venture capital business on the finance side, not on the expiration side.

And so you know, I'm moving forward in life. I'm feeling great, beautiful wife, beautiful son, working hard on building a career. And on the tenth anniversary in two thousand and ten of my mom beating breast cancer stage four, uh, she is diagnosed with it again and we lost her less than two weeks later on June two thousand and ten, and I was heartbroken. I I adored my mother, uh and and and she was only fifty six years old.

And so four days later, on June the two thousand and ten, my son is turning three, and I met

his birthday party in our house in Dallas, Texas. And you know, we're obviously a wreck, but we're you know, smiling, and we're trying to make it as as magical a third birthday party as we possibly can, and I remember so well this sense of sadness and grief um in my heart, uh, and looking across the table, and in the equal measure and perhaps greater measure, this sense of love for my son and wanting to see him grow old and and and and for whatever reason at the time,

it just hit me that if I could get myself to a hundred healthy, that means I'm getting him to about seventy. I've done my job, right. And so what was happening at the same time that we were saying goodbye to my mother is that my wife had gone just in this very strange direction called being a vegetarian the year before the first Mike, the first vegetarian I

ever met my whole life, Okay, my whole life. And I know that sounds crazy because it's not like you know this is this is literally two thousand nine, uh, two thousand and eight, two thousand nine, when she decides to go on this path, and I say, honey, I love you and I will support you, but do not try to guild me into going vegetarian because it is never and I mean never gonna happen, right, famous famous last words. And so what she had started with in

this vegetarian shift. Uh, became this even stranger concept that I couldn't conceive of, which was this vegan word which I never even heard, right, vegan. Um. I've met a couple of vegans. They were very nice, but very strange. And that was like my association with this this word vegan. Uh. And so my wife and I are both big readers. She started buying all these books, right and and the one that stuck with me was a book written by

Alicia Silverstone called The Kind Diet. Okay, And of course, you know I'm forty now, so so I grew up on clueless and as if way hard tie, I mean you know, the sort of classic move Oh yeah, classic thought out of the nineties. I mean, I can't even tell you anytimes I saw Paul Rodd looks the same today as he did when he was in that movie. So some of the years ago, so I had been so long I forgot he was in it. Yeah, I know, and he doesn't look at any different. I mean it's hilarious.

And and so I'm making fun of Sierra for taking, you know, diet and life advice from Alicia Silverstone, right and and and of course all in good fun. But after my mom passed away, Um, I was, you know, a Saturday or Sunday, and I pick up this book and I'm kind of like rolling my eyes and I start flipping through it, and it's actually really good. It's like written, well, it's interesting, she's citing her sources, and so I flipped back to the bibliography and I'm like, wow,

this seems like some legit stuff. And my wife had already bought a bunch of the books. So I started picking up those books. And I started reading books by doctors and and and scientists. You know that in his study which has sold like three million copies at this point, by a Collin T. Campbell, How to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by cold Will Esselston, famous probably one of

the most famous heart surgeons in the world. And these guys are all saying the same thing that there's this unbelievable correlation between diet and health outcomes, particularly heart disease, particularly cancer. And you know, my mom uh passed away from a breast cancer that metastasized her whole body. Um, but her heart gave out. That That's that that final moment when I was holding her hand that's what I

watched happen. And and and six months after my mom passed away, her younger brother had his first and only heart attack, widow Maker, that was all she wrote. And my and her dad had had four heart attacks. He had four open heart surgeries. Um and And I had kind of always just run with the assumption that cancer, heart diseases are like it's the Russian Roulette of life.

Like you get it, you don't get it right. And yet here I am, I'm reading all this science that does not support the way that I am eating, and you know, living every day on this type a personality. I'm eating ten paths of red meat a week. I drink more than that should if I'm being honest. But I had always, you know, felt like that was part of living a whole life. And I exercised a lot uman. I grew up in a family uh that that that prioritized that, and had played sports and in the Marine

Corps and so on and so forth. So I felt like I was doing everything I could. But then I Mike, I was open up to this fact that I wasn't.

And then I was at this crossroads moment where I was going to choose whether to take the blue pillar or the red pill, you know, take it to the matrix, right, And so I decided that I'm all right, all right, thirty days, thirty days, I'm gonna try this this this this no meat thing for thirty days, right, which at the time was like asking me to walk around my hands for the next thirty days and not my feet. I mean, it just felt impossible, And so I don't

even carrian or vegetarian at the time. Was just pascatar, right, which which which I wouldn't have put it as that because I didn't even know the word at the time. But I was just gonna sypically where people start, right, yeah, but more intelligent people than me, Mike. It was. It was less like, Okay, I'm gonna go pestytarian. It was more like, okay, I'm gonna stop eating this, you know, massive amount of animal protein, and I'm gonna go real

light on the dairy. But at this point, like all I'm thinking about is this, Like I mean, ten pounds of beef a week, you know, every once in a while, pork chop, every once in a while, some chicken, but for the most part is beef, bison. If I could get it. And and so I don't say any sier because I like have very little, you know, confidence in this being a long term shift, which sounds so crazy at this point, but was the case. And I and

I just started. I just started. And two weeks into it, brother, I was sold. I mean, I felt so damn good. I was at the gym, and I remember I was just like, dude, I can just keep going. I just I felt late. I felt clean. My sleep, uh, you know, felt so much deeper and so much more restorative. Uh. And the stress at work, it just felt so much less. Nothing had changed, right, My stress was still high, my environment was still ultra competitive, you know, stakes were still high.

No pun intended, but but I felt better about it, and and so I was sold. And I just I just kept going. And I of course told my wife once I felt pretty competent in my ability to keep going with this, she was thrilled. And I went on this three year, four year journey of shifting from uh, you know what was a very I mean, I wasn't a carnivore technically, but leaned in that direction to what you would call a Pasketerian with a little dairy here and there um and over that three years, my entire

family shifted to this plant based diet. Um and my daughter was born. Uh in Mom was vegan the whole time, has been vegan since birth, except for one time with dad screwed up better some egg addressing, which he still brings up to this damn like I didn't know. I didn't know. But other than that one time, um and uh. And so in two thousand thirteen, I am coming up on my thirty first birthday. I made my first million

by thirty. Um. And you know, we're living the all American dream right living Laguna Niguel in Orange County, southern California. In my office is in Newport Beach. I drive a red race car, red bmw M three, my dream car from high school, you know. And I've got two beautiful kids, beautiful wife, and like we have hit the jackpot. And yet my wife and I are feeling this sense, this

itch to do something bigger than just ourselves. And I've come to this conclusion that my whole life, my whole life orients around making money, and that's it, Like that's it. It's that taking care of my family of just so thankful for because that's what I set out on as a journey when I left the path of becoming a lawyer. Um. But that in the charitable contributions flash four thirty five years and maybe I made a bunch of money and that was it, and I was just not comfortable with it.

And so we had all sorts of ideas, all sorts of directions we felt we could go, but we chose the most insane path, Mike, and that was this idea that my wife had had three years earlier when we first started this journey of a plant based burger concept, and in two thousand thirteen, it didn't exist. And so we made the insane or the inspired probably a combination of the two decisions that we were going to be the crazy people that we're going to start America's first

plant based burger joints. So, you know, under the age of thirty one, two kids under the age of six, leaving a career that was very lucrative behind selling our house, moving from California to my wife's home state of Oregon, and opening up America's first plant based burger joint. And oh boy, oh boy, did we have any idea what we were signing up for so I left my career on July thirty one. We opened up our prototype next level Burger a little less than a year later in

July a fourteen, and we did not know. And any restaurant tour can tell you, if they're being honest, that one of the most anxiety inducing, one of the most nerve racking aspects of building restaurants is you never know if anybody's gonna show up, right. I mean you hope and you think, but you never know. And and we were taking that to the punt intended to the next level, because we're building something that didn't exist, and we didn't know if there was an appetite for it in the world.

And so we opened up with this deep like breath hold it, what's going to happen? And our doors got blown off and people were just, you know, lining up out the door excited about what we brought. Now, Elon Musk has said famously something that I have I have I have felt myself time and time again that entrepreneurship is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss. And and I I our CFO brought that to my attention.

I laughed when he said it because so many times I have I have felt the layers of that, and it's this sort of roller coaster ride of being an entrepreneur. So the journey of Next Level Burger just from two thousand thirteen when we incorporated fourteen when we opened up our prototype UH that same year, employee number seven from Twitter, speaking of Elon musk fellawame Alex Paine, walked into our prototype restaurant two months after we'd opened and said, love

what you're doing, Vision Ethos Alliance. He became our first seven figure outside investor. We opened up in Portland in two thousand and fifteen. It was insanity, Mike, I'm talking line out the door for days. We actually had to close our seven and a half day in business because we couldn't keep food on the shelves or distributors couldn't keep up, which is good because our staff had that

like thousand yards stair. Just absolute overwhelming insanity. UH. The explosion of of of of excitement around Next Level Burger in Portland put us on Whole Foods map. We ended up doing business with Whole Foods at their three six five concept That led to John McKie and I co founder and now former CEO of Whole Foods getting to know each other. That led to Whole Foods investing on us,

becoming our biggest shareholder. UM. It led to a national expansion from coast to coast, with locations not just in Oregon, but in Seattle and San Francisco, Austin, Texas, Brooklyn, uh in New York City and uh, you know, just unbelievable alignment again of mission of ethos Um. And of course we just kept that good thing going. So we now

have nine restaurants in six states, three time zones. We've served millions of guests, helped conserve billions of gallons of water and stop millions of pounds of carbon emissions from going to the atmosphere. And peck man, we're just getting started. And that's awesome and and uh, you know, I can relate to so many aspects of that story, but I love how um you know you've used you know, a grief stricken moment, you know some misfortune, and you know you were able to change your own life and the

lives of your family members with your diet. And then you know, from there searching up for a higher meaning right and trying to do some good in the world. And and this bringing you into the crazy world of restaurant. It's it's awesome, man, It's it's a fantastic story. And I think it's very important to you know, the ethos of the brand and understanding what Net Level Burger is

all about. So so thank you for that. So let's thinking a little bit about your business, um, you know, UM, I guess we'll start with why beyond meat and not impossible burgers? And I love that question. Yeah, and what percentage of your sales are coming from from that product? So that is a phenomenal question, Mike, and I love it. We started there, you know, at the beginning. Thank you for your kind of words to um. And I think I think our mother's whole important places in our respective

hearts for sure, for sure. So when we started Next Level Burger, the first version of the business plan was a thousand units okay, because we didn't start NLB to just drive some impact. We wanted to drive global impact. And the first part of that was health. Uh you know, the average age today in America, Mike of being able to uh measure the initial symptoms of heart disease. It's not forty Like I just turned in September. It's not thirty, it's not twenty. It's eleven years old. Eleven years old.

My daughter is about the tournament. And we have an obesity epidemic, We have a diabetes epidemic, we have a cancer epidemic, we have a heart disease epidemic. We have all sorts of challenges that are pushing our species in the wrong direction from a health perspective. And that was I've shared my reason for shifting gears, and it was our number one reasons for starting next level burgers. Diet makes an impact. Man. All the research points to diet

making a massive impact. Huge, you know, so huge, huge, and so much of our problem in America. It is is the process bit, which you know is a whole another conversation that I'd like to have. Um, But let me answer your question. Why beyond and not impossible. It has to do of our perspective on health. So when I said value set, you know, I said, that's plant based. Yeah, but it's also organics. It's also non GMO, and so I highly respect what impossible is doing, highly respect what

impossible is doing. That being said, they do use genetically modified ingredients that they are very very forthright about that. They're very bold about it. It is nothing they're doing in the dark that they're hoping doesn't come into the light. But it is not something that we plan to sign up for. So our non GMO policy is absolute and really at next level, the unofficial official way that we determine whether an ingredient or a menu item is going to make its way into a restaurant is would we

put it in front of our kids? Because look Beyond Me Burger, which is, you know, a healthy percentage of our sales, but just part of our sales. We've got lots of housemade burgers that that are some of our absolute top sellers. But they're processed and that's okay, right, They're made out a whole food ingredients that are processed. Uh. You know, it's like my my protein shake every morning. You know, it's got a few things in it, but it's baseline of protein is organic yellow p protein growing

in Canada. Right, That's how I start my day almost every single day. And my kids eat Beyond Me probably about once or twice a week. You know, it's it's more of a treat for us as opposed to something that's absolutely whole foods based um and and so for us, what it really boils down to is creating a spectrum mic. You know, my father in law who has been one of our biggest cheerleaders from the beginning. He is a cross between John Wayne and Yosemite. Sam. I kid you not.

He is got the handlebar mustache. He built a steel rebar infrastructure company from the ground up, got it up to twenty million, and revs built the Trump Tower in Toronto and said bomb boyage retiring. And he's eating it every diner between here in the Mississippi back I mean literally, uh. But he loves our food and and my father in law with the guy he is the cartoon character in

real life that he is. He can walk into the next level Burger with my wife, who is a vegan, college educated, yoga loving mother of two, and they can both eat at the same restaurant and have an awesome experience. And the reason for that is the spectrum of offerings from our housemaid Ummi mushroom and Kimwa burger organic top with organic avocado and lettuce and tomato. Uh and uh a garlic a oli um and you know, a whole

grain bun just you know, really good for you. My wife's meal actually gluten free for her, so gluten free bunk. And then my father in law will get him be on burger with spicey halpenos as he called him, and the whole nine and he'll have a ball and he'll feel great. He'll have had a good time and my wife did too. And they're is so few places where

that's the case. And so at next level, we didn't want to build a concept that we just attract a few, right, but that's just the vegans of the vegetarians or what have you. We want to attract nine of the people. And so when it comes to a menu that is built to attract that that broad spectrum, we knew we had to have just about everything. And so while you won't find beef or bison on your menu, everything else that you're looking for that a burger joint could offer,

we've got it. Yeah, that's great because it will broaden your impact. And I think, you know, using you know what I what I would I what I you know, feed this to my kids as as a great you know, guiding for you you know, I think that's that's critical and it's been brought up by you a couple of times. So obviously it's you know as I you know, as I know as well, right, it's it's the most important

job we have, right, So absolutely absolutely kids, you know. So, m I think that's a great way to judge what should be on on your menu and what should be left off, right, Yeah, And I think, you know, without going too far down the rabbit hole, we used to build businesses that were a reflection of our families, right, whether it was the stonemason or the clockmaker, uh, you know, whatever it is you did, it was like a family business, and you thought about your kids and the decisions that

you made, which inherently meant you were thinking about the future. Right. It wasn't about just the next quarter or what can I get out of my career. It was about setting up your kids for a brighter future than you had. Um. And and I think there have been all sorts of amazing aspects of American business for the last hundred years, but one of those shifts that has has come with the double edged sword is to a more compartmentalized career. Right.

My dad wasn't you know, working at Royal Dutch Shell thinking about you know, me joining the company someday and taking over as the geophysicist in chief. Right, he was just thinking about putting food on the table, finding oil and gas being successful, and then providing first family, retiring and going into doing whatever that next chapter was going to be. And it's just a inherently more short sighted perspective.

So I think if we all spent more time, whether it's climate change or its health or its business, thinking about our kids in those decisions, and our grandkids and those decisions, I think the world be a much better place. Uh kind of agree with you more, alright, So, uh, you know, sticking on the plant based meat um topic just quickly, you know, it's selling out a premium price point.

It seems like beyond sales have slowed partly due to inflation, right, consumer consumers wallets are are kind of crimped right now.

They're they're pulling back a little bit on the low end. Particularly, Are you concerned about consumer demand from these for these products in the long term M and and UM You know, I guess, uh, you know, in terms of the beyonds and and the impossible obviously, you know other products veggie burgers have been around for a very long time and think they're going anywhere, but but just more so and in terms of the plant based meats man, Mike, that is a question that I all right, So I could

answer that ever about thirty minutes and a cup of coffee, um and and, and we could digress into all sorts of rabbit holes that that would be fun to go down. I also want to be cognizant of respecting the companies that have been blazing the trail in some cases alongside of us in other cases like Impossible Little after we debuted, um and, and being cognizant of not getting into too much inside baseball. So maybe I'll dance around in a little bit without not answering your question. Um So, okay,

let me start with the story. So earlier this year, during Pride Month, which is a big deal at next level burger uh, we had the Boys and Girls Club in Seattle reach out to us about catering an event. Okay, and the focus this event was lgbtwo Q plus and they're gonna be two kids at this event. And there we're gonna be two different caterers. One was gonna be Dix, which is like in and out for the Seattle Market.

You know, it's like Bill Gate's favorite fast food burger. Uh. And the other was America's first plant based burger joint, Next Level Burger. Okay, And that's some stiff competition. Man. It's like, you know, you're going up against people's childhoods and and and you know, like me going to McDonald's with such a treatment, I was a kid, and so you know, we were absolutely excited to sign up and support.

We didn't know what percentage of these kids we're going to sign up for the vegan burger, you know, at this at this event, and forty percent of these kids chose Next Level Burger. So when you can, yeah, it almost brought a tear to my eye because I was like, man, this is the future where God Lord and Heaven we're moving in the right direction, right, hallelujah, We're moving the

right direction with more sustainable future. Um. And and so when you consider, in fact, there's a Wall Street Journal article just a few weeks ago that was basically saying, and I will be careful to share only so many of my personal opinions here, but it was saying that, well, it's a silly premise if five percent of the population is vegetarian, that beyond me, it is ever going to be a big thing, much bigger than they are. Right,

you got five percent of the population. But what that article, either intentionally or unintentionally missed, is that sevent of people right now are flexitarian, that ten percent of millennials are self described vegan, and that this next generation the numbers could be staggering because they're waking up in a world that they realize as on fire from a climate change perspective. They're much more cognizant of their health choices when it comes to what they decide to eat and not eat,

and how they live their life. And so what I believe, Mike, is that it is an inevitable march toward a plant based and a cell cultured future, a combination of of things that feel like meat from plants and things that are meat but not from a slaughtered animal but come from cell cultured technology. And I think that is inevitably

the future. So, you know, it is amazing to me how people that are much smarter than I am can assume that just because something is happening, it's going to continue to happen at the pace you know that you can say, oh, well, look at these sales, they jump three year every year. That's just gonna keep going, right. Well, maybe it doesn't, right, because how many things grow at

three percent a year every year? Right? Almost nothing? And even if it happens for two or three years and it starts to slow down, and at the end of the day, I think what we're in is the infancy of this shift that has never happened before in human history,

where we fundamentally change how we eat. And we're at a very blessed time in human history where we get to care what we eat because a lot of our grandfathers and grandmothers going back hundreds and thousands of years weren't thinking about how many calories were in lunch today, right, They were thinking about full bellies and making it through to the next meal or the next day. And so we have a great opportunity. But I think we have a significant responsibility to make sure that our food system

reflects a sustainable future. And you can you can looby all sorts of arguments about all sorts of things, but what you cannot argue against is that a plant based meal has about fifty less carbon emissions upwards of less carbon emissions than a non plant based meal. And in a world again the u N has come out just this week with a bunch of new reports in a world that is heading toward disaster if we do not

how do I put this politely change course? If it can be as easy to do your part to fight climate change is one of the steps in the week to eat one plant based meal. Is that really compromise? You know, I think the question is shifted not so much from y E. Plant based Why not at least some of the time it tastes great. You know it's gonna be better for you, you you know it's gonna be better for the planet. Why not incorporate that to your life?

And that's what we want to be here for, Mike, is to be your easy option where sacrifice looks like a burger, fries and shake. Not a bad sacrifice, not a bad not a bad deal. Um. Alright, so let's talk about your business a little bit more. Let's uh, what are your customer demographics? What's a split between men and women? Uh? Income, average income, age, uh? And anything

else you could share. Yeah, so, in some cases, I think it wouldn't surprise people to hear that a lot of our demographics look like the demographics and the psychographics that you'll find in a whole fits right. You know, they tend to be more educated, they tend to do a bit better on income. Um. What's uh, what's interesting about our demographics and psychographics. And one of the things that brings more Joe to Joy to my heart than anything else is that families make up such a percentage

of who walks through our doors. Uh. And of course that's where and how we started next level was, well, this is special for our family and we wanted to share it with others. But we have a bunch of the young, cool kid crowd, you know, the the happening engineers and lawyers and doctors and teachers and professors. But what I am as proud of is almost anything, and I've seen this in every single one of our restaurants, is is how many people walk through our doors that

you wouldn't expect. The contractors that come in with drywall and paint on their pants, right and and and you know, as a guy that didn't know a vegetarian until my wife decided to become one, to watch you know, so many times I've seence happened from from Oregon to Brooklyn. I'll watch usually, you know, because this is a kind of classic. We were kind of bamboozled and the feeling and I was absolutely guilty that like many meat right, and you couldn't be a manly man and and be

a vegetarian. To this day, my association with the term vegetarian is negative because of it. Um and and you'll watch these these these classic you know, contractor g C looking guys walk in and you're gonna expect them to walk into a McDonald's if you were just stereotyping, and they walk up and they're like, I'll get the Maverick, which is one of more beyond Burger variants and decide

of fries, and uh, I'll have a salad. Yeah. It's like, Okay, here's this guy that's gonna sit down to this big meal, uh full of awesome plant based and organic ingredients. Who breaks every stereotype that there is, you know. Uh, Or you watch the football team in Lake Oswego, you know, come in after a game or a practice and like here are all these these young athletes that are super

focused on maximizing their performance, you know. Or it's after a d U game in Denver, right, and you know, hey, hockey players rolling through to get their plant based on So you know, we're not going to get everybody, and our demographics and our psychographics don't get everybody. You know, they're gonna be the means at twenty five they're like, it's not a burger if you don't have b for bison in it. And and we hope eventually those people decided to try either us out or plant based eating.

Many people are surprised to find that they have eaten vegan food like that baked potato. It starts vegan, right, Um, it can be really good at trust me. But but the piece of the puzzle that really makes my day on a daily basis is that, yeah, you'll see some of the demographics and the psychographics you'd assume to see, but you'll also see some of the people you wouldn't expect. And you know, my grandparents spent thirty five years in

Colombia as missionaries. Unbelievable uh sacrifice in their life to serve others. Um, something I didn't appreciate until even just recent years. Really uh, a mere sliver of what they really did and sacrificing their lives to try to help others. Um, And uh, you know you can stay, you know, in front of the choir and you can preach to the choir and they're gonna make you feel real good, like, oh, you're so right now, you're right right. But where do

you make a difference in the world. You gotta get out and talk to the people. You gotta get out and the people that don't agree with you and have

that conversation. Right, that's where you got to preach. And so are kind of plant based gospel if you will, Mike, is to get out and to preach to the people that you wouldn't necessarily assume we're gonna walk into the doors of a vegan burger joint, because every single day, more and more of those people are and we're here to meet them with an awesome meal that's hopefully going to change their paradigm of what eating plant based can

look like or reinforce their existing behaviors of eating more and more sustainably. Very cool, and Uh, you have an aggressive expansion goal. I think you mentioned it earlier. A thousand units was the original goal because you wanted to make a real impact. Um, can can you talk a little bit about what your biggest obstacles to growth are

at this current moment. Yes, and so I want to carry out that thousand units because now everybody that gets into the restaurant business is like, I'm gonna build two billion restaurants, you know, and it's like you can say anything, right, you can say anything, uh, And so I will say that our commitment, like our next step is that we quadruple our footprint from the seven units we started this

year with twenty through. But my commitment to our team members has been that we will grow as aggressively as we can do so wisely and so and you know, and there's some great examples of companies that have successfully modulated their growth and built billion dollar brands. Patagonia of course comes to mind with Vanchard, you know, and they had to realize that, okay, fifty growth, we can do that.

Anything over according to let my people go surfing Vonard's book, like you get over that mark and we start to watch the teams come apart. And so we're gonna have to figure that out for us as as we go and as we grow. And obviously is you know, with ten restaurants, a certain graded growth feels like this. With fifty it'll look and feel like that, and so you know, we'll we'll modulate accordingly. But our goal is to build a solid foundation and a company that's really built to last.

Not to rip off on Jim Collins book Built the Last too much, but I love Yeah, well it's a great book, and I fell in love idea of becoming an entrepreneur at nineteen is a marine. When I read Good to Great, I was like, wow, it's like, well, my father actually recommended both of those books to me. Great both that was my man, you know, without digressing too much, and I'll keep it short and sweet. My brother picked up a guitar at fourteen and fell in love.

He's never put it back down. Um, I didn't have one of those things growing up, Like I like playing sports, you know, whether it was rugby or whatever. I liked, you know, chasing girls in high school. And I enjoyed like living life. But I didn't have like the thing. I didn't pick up a paintbrushing but I love to paint, or a guitar and say I love to play guitar.

But as a nineteen year old marine, I read that book and like a lightbulb went off in my head and I said, Man, someday I want to start a business, and I had no idea what it would become. In the last thing, I want to guessed as a vegan burner John. But anyway, I digress. Uh. From the standpoint of growth, we and that which is standing in front of us is the number one obstacle is is leadership

at the shop level. Because I strongly believe in the last two and a half years is only driven this home more and more that you cannot have a great ship, great restaurant without a great captain, a great general manager.

And so for us, what we're very aware of and we have an awesome class of leaders at next level Burger, that we are not going to be able to grow past our shop leadership if we're going to continue to commit to awesome food, awesome service, and tight operations on a daily basis and knocking people's socks off when they come to the door. So that is the number one thing that stands in our way to growing as fast

as possible. And so what that means for us, and it's been true from the beginning, is that we invest heavily in our leadership we invest heavily and our culture, and it is going to be up to me on our leadership team that we mark a course that is not exceed our ability to lead at that shop level, because if we do, we're gonna end up with the mediocre result and we're gonna end up sacrificing that commitment to excellence, and that will be you know, a short

term gain, long term loss. Yeah. Simon Sinek uh just a few weeks ago posted on his LinkedIn this brilliant video. Uh. I usually prefer people that have built companies to listen to them, whether it's the film Knights, the John Mackey's in the world, because there's it's like becoming a parent. You can read all the books you want to read, you can get a pH d in parenting, until you're up at two thirty in the morning and questioning your life decisions more than you ever have in your life

in exhaustion. You don't know what it is to parent um And so I usually willin hard in that direction. But I continue to be thoroughly impressed by Simon Sinek of course many millions of other people or two, but he's on this stage and I don't know, I'm assuming the CEO of the company that paid him a handsome sum to come talk is on the other side, and he's talking about uh, goal setting, and he's talking about why stewardship, and he's talking about how, you know, like

these company goals are arbitrary. They kind of come out of nowhere. You're in a board meeting or a leadership meeting. You're like, well, let's build two hundred restaurants or in his case, it's two hundred stores next year. Just randomly, somebody throws the spaghetti against the wall, and then somebody else is like, I love that idea, Let's do that.

And then you build this entire plan around two hundred restaurants, and then you incentivize everybody to hit this two hundred stores excusing me two hundred stores mark, and you hell are you high water it? And no matter what, you go for this goal, and then the next year you open up two mediocre stores, because what you should have done is maybe opened up thirty stores, and those thirty stores would be awesome and they'd be, you know, performing

exactly how you want them to. And so his point was, is the good leadership, great stewardship adjust accordingly and what was and no shade being thrown to the CEO on the stage with Simon Sinek. I'm sure he's a brilliant leader that has done many more amazing things that I have. But real time, you literally watched this guy interrupt Simon and go to this entire audience of probably hundreds, just so everybody knows we're not changing our forecast for next year, right,

and he laughs and the whole audience laughs. But literally, real time, he goes, I hear you, Simon, but we're not going to do what you're suggesting we do. And I think so often in politics and in business we make decisions at the highest levels like that and stick to them hell or high water, and sometimes the catastrophe, sometimes just to detriment, and maybe every once in a

while it works out well. So for us in our expansion, we want to grow as aggressively, Mike as we can do so wisely, and we want to make sure that when you walk into an ex elevel Burger, no matter where it is in the country, you have an awesome experience. And that is only going to come if we've got an awesome leader who's dedicated, focused and and and and really driven to make the experience for each and every one of the guests in their community happy, filled up

and ready to go tackle the day. And and it's it's smart. Um. You know, our friends at black Box Intelligence have done some work on this and they find the number one predictor about a restaurant's success or failure is the quality of the GM right running the store. So so yeah, you know, um, and with the labor issues that that we've seen over the last up years

in the industry, you know, it's it's more important than ever. Um. You know, i'd imagine I'd imagine that you know, it's a good motivation for some of your hour lease and assistant gms uh to kind of you know, bust our ass to to you know, work towards a GM job if you're if you're planning to to grow as much as you are over the next couple of years. Right, absolutely,

And that's what's exciting, you know. And again, and I want to be comous at the time here ten minutes ago, um, and I'm going to digress too much, so I'll say this short and sweet. So we have this horrific Ukrainian war going on, right, and and you have watched Ukraine UH perform to a degree that almost no one in the world can believe, and the Russian military struggling UH

in a way that no one could have anticipated. And the I read this a nominal breakdown by US retired US general that that drew the analogy to the French in the thirties, who were similarly perceived as one of

the best militaries in the world. And one of the things that was seemingly the case in nineteen thirties French army and is seemingly the case in the Russian army as that they lack a strong n CEO class, a non commissioned officer class, your sergeants, your corporals, not the not the you know, not the lieutenant, not the captain, but the sergeants and the corporals and the lance corporals

which aren't you know anyway, I digress. But the point is is that at the end of the day, if the sergeant doesn't know what he's doing, the platoon's not gonna do well. The captain can be great, but if you have that breakdown in strong leadership, then you're going to see poor performance. And so for US and and and I appreciate you sharing that black box, but I'm gonna steal that Mike, so just y. I uh yeah.

At the end of the day, we have a general manager who we believe is one of the absolute most important people in our company, and what we are developing right beneath them is a junior leadership team that is the next generation of general managers. And so we believe in investing at every level of our company from a team member perspective, and that we air on the side of investing in that part of our business too much

and never not enough. And so there are all sorts of initiatives, both that we've had going for years, some that we're rolling out next year that are focused on making sure that a we respect the hard work, because being in the restaurant business is hard work. These people work very, very hard and if you if one has worked in a restaurant, you can appreciate how difficult it can be. And so we believe that our team members

should be paid, and they should be paid well. We also believe they should be able to be put on a track for a career and something that they can work on over a number of years would be very proud of and become very lucrative over time as they put in the effort and the consistent effort, and we believe that, you know, ultimately they're the keepers of our culture. So you know, at every point we're investing in leadership.

But you never know when that team member that you just hired for the front of house in two years is going to be the general manager for that story. And we've seen that happen in time and time again, so you know, it seems overly simple, but we believe in respecting and supporting and developing our team members across

the board period um. And we believe that doubling down on leadership is you know, a path of quality over quantity and making sure that at the end of the day, when it comes to next level Burger, whether we have twenty five units, a hundred, or a thousand, that when you walk into any of them, you're gonna be treated to an out of this world, knock your socks off experience because we have people that care and they're there

to take care of their community. Because what we've quite many of us have forgotten is that in the restaurant business man, we're participating in an ancient practice. It is this ancient magical practice of inviting people into our space, preparing food for them, and then putting it in front of them and saying, you know, this is this is us, this is this is putting ourselves out there, and that's magic, man.

And we commoditized it too much. And I think if we got back to some of those sort of ancient principles of what we're really doing when we're engaging with our guests and our communities, we respected a lot more um. And I think and I think that I think that the restaurant business would be a better place, and we're trying to do our part in that regard. And I appreciate that. And listen, I think that's a that's a perfect place to wrap it up. I really appreciate your time.

I'm looking forward to getting to to my first Next Level Burger and trying that Maverick Burger out. Uh. And I'm definitely looking forward to, you know, checking in on your progress and seeing how, uh, you know, seeing how Next Level Burger continues to change the eating habits of Americans. Amen. Brother, Well, I'm looking forward and I hope at some point we can cross past in person because I'd love to meet

you in person. Really have enjoyed our chat today, Mike. UM. You know, one of my favorite things about Next Level is getting to hang out and have conversations like this talking about why we do what we do. UM and hopefully those concentric circles that we all think about when we think about and our impact on the world, they just go further and further out. So thank you so very much for having me on the day, brother. I think Bloomberg Intelligence is a service provided by Bloomberg Finance

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