Episode 112: Nelson Monteith with Honest Mary's

Welcome to another episode of The Corner Booth, the official podcast of RestaurantOwner.com.

Today, the restaurant industry is changing faster than ever. Learn from successful independent restaurant operators and other industry leaders as they share best practices that will help you engage your team, delight your guests, and grow your business. Hey, welcome everyone to Corner Booth. I'm Chris Tripoli with restaurantowner.com. We're taking you to Austin, Texas today, where we're going to be talking about counter service, multi-units.

We're going to be talking about healthy green bowls and expansion outside your immediate market area. In order to do that, we brought in Nelson Monteith. Nelson is the founder, CEO of Honest Marys from Austin, Texas. Nelson, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to Corner Booth. Thanks so much. I'm really happy to be here and share anything I can. Well, I think our listeners love the fact that independent operators seem to share experiences and we seem to learn from one another.

And that's what we do a lot of right here on Corner Booth. Maybe we could start by you telling everyone a little bit about yourself, how you got involved in hospitality, what was the keen interest, and we'll go from there. Yeah, I am from Houston originally, and I moved to Austin in 2007 to go to UT and figured out a way to stay in Austin.

It's kind of a fun, coveted place to live, but the traditional jobs of Houston and Dallas seem to kind of yank people back to those cities and figured out how to stay. And my wife, who I met here in Austin, is from here. And so we figured it out. So I am definitely in the camp of folks that was never really all that interested in being in the restaurant industry. Of course, I loved going to great restaurants, but I never imagined a world where I would be in the restaurant industry.

I worked at a smoothie shop in high school, Island Grill in Houston, Texas, which is six or seven locations and basil the owner there and pete the general manager at the original and now becker hill they're just they are wonderful people that was a great little intro to the restaurant world but again never i would have imagined that'd be a career for me i was making smoothies i was you know 16 years old and it was a summer job so you know fast forward many

years college i i did everything but restaurants i did multiple different sales jobs really i was I was in ministry, I was in software, I was in oil and gas, and in all of these things, I was, you know, selling some version of a different thing. And what I noticed about all of those was that I... Each of those products were not something you hand or to a customer or touch or smell or really can just, it wasn't tangible to me.

And so when I ended up going to business school here in Austin, it was a school called Acton, which was focused on entrepreneurship. And I came out of that business school itching to start something. I was trying to focus on something that was more tangible. I was kind of zeroing in on coffee and beer. I had this idea of like coffee, like a craft coffee delivery service to businesses.

And I was tinkering with roasting coffee in my garage and I had an idea of, you know, for beer and, but that was a pretty saturated industry and really was sort of wandering around. I got another sales job in the meantime, while I was trying to figure out what do I start? And really the Honest Mary's story started in a hotel room in Dallas.

We were, my wife and I, the winter of 2015 were up in Dallas for a wedding and we were hanging out in the hotel room and she was scrolling on her phone and came across some article and it happened to be from Business Insider. And it was about an organic fast food restaurant out of California. This concept was called the Organic Coop. I think there's one location left. But the idea of healthy fast food struck an immediate chord with her.

And she kind of looked up from the phone and said, hey, babe, what about healthy fast food? And I kind of thought about it for a second. And it sounded so crazy and so out of left field that I immediately called like four of my friends and was like, hey, what about healthy fast food? That's like, does that sound exciting? And I got the response that you would expect from most people, which was like, yeah, man, like that's that's cool.

Like do you know anything about the restaurant industry i was just gonna say sure yeah we love the idea uh do you know what you're doing yeah yeah yeah but it was just you know when you have an idea and it latches on it just builds that immediate immediate momentum that many times will end up fading away but this one like by the end of the night we had the concept we had it was going to be a chipotle style line walk through walk through line build

your own grain bowl which was something that we made at home a lot just grain bowls from the vegetables that we got from our csa box or the proteins that were left in the fridge you know throw in a sauce that mary had made at home a dressing and it was so it was a walkthrough style line build your own grain bowl and we were working on the name of the restaurant by the end of the night talking to people about it at the wedding.

And it was just, it just, I don't know, it immediately resonated. And part of it was that. We both had to have our own health histories and struggles with health. And so healthy food was something that was really important to us. Eating on the go was something that is important to most of us nowadays, just with busy lives and whatnot, but trying to find something that was both of those things and also fresh and affordable.

So we immediately kind of had this Venn diagram, literally like the first day we had a Venn diagram, healthy, fast, and fresh. And the fresh was basically like not just like salads, but like cooked food, real food, like something you would make at home for a home-cooked meal, healthy, fast, and fresh. And the more that we thought about it, we could not think of a single restaurant in Austin that was firmly in the camp of all three of those things.

Well, sure, because this was, yeah, yeah, that's right. This was just a very new then to try to do counter service that meets that goal, something that is actually affordable but healthy yeah exactly so we ended up spending you know so we come home from the wedding and and we sort of come on come come down from that immediate high and then the question was like okay what do we do with this excitement and and we boiled it down to two things to get started we needed to

we need to try to find this concept as close to this concept that already exists as possible it probably exists and and and lo and behold it did you know places like sweet green on the coasts and dig in was a great concept up in the northeast a place called fresh kitchen was in tampa and so we just started traveling like we were you know we were married but with no kids it was like the perfect time in our life just to hop on a plane and start going

places and we just started eating at as many of these places as possible you know one of the beautiful things about restaurants it goes both ways but like on the front end when you're trying to research everything. Restaurants are kind of an open book. Like you can figure out how much money they're making just by sitting there and counting customers and looking at the menu. So we traveled around and we immediately saw that the concept was a good one. Lines to the door. People were excited.

I could tell it was, it was like the concept was good. And then part two of that was just trying to talk to as many restauranteurs as I could possibly get a hold of, you know, friends of friends, anyone that It was in the restaurant industry. And really both of these things, the finding comparable concepts and talking to restaurateurs was trying to talk ourselves out of this conversation.

Probably very stupid idea of starting a restaurant that was kind of my disposition and so we spent you know six months doing that and we got to about mid 2016 and the more that we learned about it the more we just felt like it was a challenge worth taking on like it felt really hard but it felt like there was just that fire in me uh i did it was just like i want to like prove that I can do this to myself.

And so we jumped off the, we jumped off the ledge and I quit my job and got real, started looking for real estate and started raising money. And, you know, I kind of started doing the thing. We know, we've heard that story before. I mean, it's wonderful.

Welcome to the industry, but you did two steps that were really smart, you know, by making sure that you felt comfortable with the concept and it helps when you visit similar concepts. So you travel, you sit, you eat, you watch, you learn from those customers. Good Yeah, that's a very good thing. I love the second one, too, because this is a fairly talkative industry. And I've heard that before, that if people are thinking about getting into it, go talk to people who are in it.

Go talk to the owners of restaurants you currently visit in. They seem to sit down, grab a cup of coffee, and they tell you. Do's and don'ts and, you know, vendor information and costs and whatnot. So it sounds like those two steps were really, really worthwhile six months that you spent.

So how did you find your first location and when did it open yeah so again jumped off the ledge mid-2016 started looking for real estate started raising money i had built a pitch deck at that point the both of those things are very hard to do finding a good restaurant location and raising money are wildly hard and i i feel like we were just blessed to find both of those the raising money took a long time and it was really hard. I could go down that road if you want to.

But the real estate one actually kind of just fell on our lap. It was this vacated spot in Northwest Austin, which usually when you see a vacated spot and this market and this industry and this time, like it's, you know, run to the hills because it's not a good location. But it was up in the Arboretum, which was kind of an older 80s shopping center. And it was sort to this corner spot inside of the parking lot and we ended up just really exploring it.

And it felt like it was a little bit hidden in the, in, in the shopping center, but it.

From a pin drop perspective it was just about perfect it's surrounded by tons of households it had a great a lot of office buildings nearby and what we knew we needed for our concept was accessibility something that was easy to get in and get out because to go was going to be a big emphasis for us and moving fast you know chipotle like we just wanted we wanted to be able to crank through and when people think like hey i need healthy food on the go where's

my go-to spot i know i can find a parking spot i know i can get in and out so part of part of what we did there was we from the very beginning we've always had our to go our pickup to go shelves kind of by the door so you don't have to come in to interact with anyone if you've ordered a line you just grab your bowl and you get out so anyways we found that spot and hold the trigger on it and you know felt like i signed my life away signing a personal guarantee on a lease and all those things but.

Just at that point we had done the research and it was like we had to take the risk at some point and that was that was the big jumping off point other than quitting my job was like when you sign on for a 10-year lease, I mean, I still get butterflies in my stomach thinking about the commitment of that. And, you know, no one, people care. We have a lot of friends, like our community cares about how we do, but like no one is on the line like you are.

It doesn't mean the same to anybody else but you. And the landlords, you know, they're just doing business.

And this particular landlord up in the Arboretum is, you know, some group out of Chicago that's owned by a teacher's fund out of florida it's like they don't really you're just a number and you better pay the bills and if they don't you're gonna first marys was born then and i love the name by the way i've got the connection wife's influence i'm putting her name on it good for you and this now is what 2017 when it opens.

Correct. Yep. October of 2017. So can you tell us a little bit about it? Paint the picture now. Size, hours of operation, type of customer. What was the original menu like? Yeah, 2,500 square feet. So pretty like standard, fast, casual size. It was a walkthrough style line. And there's really kind of two options. You can pick a signature bowl or build your own grain bowl.

You know some cookies at the end of the line and some drinks at the end of the line but really simple was key trying to just limit the menu and limit the options as much as possible.

Customers are probably 55 female 45 male we tried hard even though you know marys is in the name we tried hard to make the brand very much one that feels approachable to men and women and it's definitely for the more health-minded, health-conscious customer who wants to feel good about what they're eating, about what they're putting in their body.

There are a lot of folks don't necessarily, there's a lot of folks that eat plenty of cheeseburgers on the weekend, but they need those one or two meals a week where they feel like they could keep going and get back to work.

And so we found that, you know, our busiest times are actually when people are in their best rhythms you know the weekday lunch is our best crowd the weekends we get slower kind of a fun little fun little like stat for us is that mother's day is pretty busy but father's day it's it's like crickets in there so you kind of get you kind of get the feel like when people are on their best rhythms and and and doing the right thing quote-unquote they're coming on sparrays,

well seeing that that makes great sense you know because during the week we might be a little bit more conscious of what we're doing we're trying to treat our bodies good trying to make up for what we did to ourselves over the weekend where maybe we overindulged. So this is lunch and dinner, or do you also have sort of a breakfast component to it? Yep, just lunch and dinner. So we open at 11 and close at 9 every day of the week. Excellent.

So obviously things worked out pretty well because you started in 2017 with one unit. And maybe you can talk a little bit about those early days and how you developed structure to start feeling confident in growth. Because here we are and you've got, what, four units already in one city. Yeah, I mean, probably the standard stories you hear from a lot of restaurants, which is the first few months were just absolutely exhausting, grueling.

You're trying to just you're trying to survive and serve the customers while also you're overwhelmed and so you're trying to create any semblance of a process to work your way out of the business so that you don't have to be there every hour of the day so that you can then continue to create processes to make the thing thrive and hopefully one day try to create another restaurant so you know i had hired a general manager before we started and then a couple months before it,

we opened. I realized it wasn't going to work out with that person. So I felt like it was just better for me to let that person go and do it myself to start it out. And so that's what I did. And the first three or four months were just a complete blur. But one thing that I immediately did see was that customers were showing up. And that's number one. You've got to have the sales. Of course, operationally, we were just flooded and overwhelmed,

but I knew we had something. And then it was just a matter of time before we could find a general manager, create processes and start to start to think about building that second location. And so it ended up being another, I guess, two and a half years after that is when we opened our second location right before COVID early 2020. We opened our Rosedale location in central Austin.

Got it. You know, you just kind of hit a really important point there that I would like the listeners to make note of. And that is how operations really start with proper people. Sometimes we do stumble. You had to replace your GM. I know that's difficult. But boy, if you open just like you said you did, and the good news was the guests were there. The not so good news, I guess, is you realize that the person that you were maybe counting on wasn't just the right fit.

It's really good when you're trying to develop a brand and you're trying to grow a business to make sure that you got the right people in the right place. So if they weren't there, the sooner you throw the flag down, penalty on the play, replace the person, go to the bench, the better. I've had way too much experience the other way, you know, where people have told me, ouch, you know, I'm stumbling and I kept the wrong team and it hurt.

So it took a couple of years. I would imagine now that you initially, once you did get the right GM, that you probably had to make sure that you were comfortable with systems, policy, procedures for consistency. Was there any particular programming that you used, any particular technology that you found that you wanted to implement for things like cost control, labor management before you grew? Yeah. I mean, our tech stack is like, is toast, which has been really great for us.

Restaurant 365 is the accounting side of it. And those things talk to each other. And so from the beginning, every, every bit of technology that we added was sort of like able to plug in to one of those two things. And, you know, gosh, we use Google suite for most things and creating docs and spreadsheets. And, you know, I, this is not quite answering your question, but I wanted to share, I think, what ended up being one of the most challenging parts for me the first couple of years.

You mentioned in your Ten Commandments, one of the things you mentioned is having restaurant experience. And of course, I didn't have that going in. And it's not necessarily a regret because that's just the way it was. That's just the way it played out for me. And I was ready to start the thing. But I think one of the challenges that I felt was I never felt comfortable with the way that the restaurant was supposed to operate.

And so I found myself like hiring these managers, these shift leaders, and then almost just hoping that they would run these shifts without giving them any sort of like proper training, because I literally didn't know what it was like to be in the kitchen.

And so I think in retrospect, like having restaurant experience, genuine restaurant experience, like being an hourly worker somewhere would have helped a lot, or hiring a. Bringing on a partner at the very beginning who had that experience would have made a huge difference because I ended up spending like the first 18 months were just especially hard because there was so much turnover amongst my managers.

And even though I always meant so well to like, I always had a heart to care for my employees. If you don't have the systems in place, then you just aren't going to care for them.

Well, they're just going to turn over and they're going to get be exhausted and and it's just this like it's just this terrible wheel where you mean better but you can't provide what your what your employees need to be happy in their job and that was that was that like really like war on my soul those first 18 months and then we finally figured it out and now we've got a great team and things are a lot different now and

our turnover's low and people love their jobs but like took forever to get there and that was a hard part of those first couple of years. Well, and a good point there is you identified it and you can. You can overcome those hurdles. You're right. Inexperience of the industry is tough. However, there are many people, some are probably listening, that also came to our industry from having some success in some other industry.

Sales, distribution, whatever, real estate. They just, you know, wanted out and opened up their own restaurant. And the good news is it is possible. It's nice. I know to have a lot of experience. You made a good point there. But if you don't out there, but you are driven by a passion to do this, there are ways of being prepared and building the team and getting the systems so that you can create that confidence.

Took you about a year and a half, but congratulations. You got there. So now- And one quick note I'll make on that is that I think that there is actually. So there's definitely a deficit to coming in as a newbie, but there also are some advantages, I think, to coming in with fresh eyes to the restaurant industry that can be rote with just challenges and sort of like ruts of how things have always been done. So I think it does go both ways. And I was able to use the good parts to make

Honest Mary's great in other ways. Good point. That's true. So you had a good perspective. Love the concept. There's a certain simplicity, obviously, to the fast casual. As it gets more and more established, you're also hitting a time where we went through COVID, post-COVID. People's habits changed a little bit. Did that play into your advantage by habits? You know, I'm talking about online ordering, curbside pickup, the convenience of delivery.

Your menu seems to work very well with those. Am I right? Yeah. Yeah, our menu structure and the fast casual kind of mindset definitely helped us a lot during COVID. We still struggled a lot and it was grueling and terrible and our sales plummeted, but we fared better than other restaurants that were more focused on sit down for sure. I think, honestly, the best thing that we did looking back on COVID was just

bite like heck to stay open and be consistent. I think customers were just looking for. Places that they felt like were going to be reliable. And it was hard because we did have to shut down, of course, because we got sick and there were those moments. But like, we were always, of course, like everyone's safety was the ultimate priority. But then like with that in mind, we were very committed to keeping our doors open, to getting deliveries out. I was doing deliveries all around town.

It was just like, we needed to be consistent. And I think once the clouds started clearing on COVID, we found ourselves in a better spot than we were before because I think we just established a sense of trust in the neighborhoods that we were in, that we were committed to serving the food that we were creating, you know. Excellent. And, you know, I think you're right. People did need that sense of social connection. I mean, even if it was that little bit in the car, the curbside pickup,

people were reaching out during COVID. And I think post-COVID, of course, now we don't let go of that want demands, really, for convenience. I've noticed it, you know, with other concepts as well, that they're surprised that they're hanging on to such a high percentage of revenue that is done by either car side, third-party delivery, online ordering. What type of percentage of your revenue comes from that direction today?

Yeah, about 40% of our total revenue comes from either, well, I guess it's ordered online in some form or fashion. About half of those orders, so 20% comes through our native online ordering, and the other 20% is third-party delivery. And like it's like you just said third party delivery is just this inevitable beast at this point we resisted it for so long and then at some point you just got to embrace it and you know figure out how to make it work for you yeah.

So that's what we do now. Have there been many modifications, updates to menu offerings as you've gone from unit one to two to three and over the past years? What have you seen happen there? Not really. We have a new seasonal bowl every season. So there always is freshness on the menu. But for the most part, our overall menu structure has stayed almost perfectly constant from what it was before. where it's build your own bowls, signature bowls.

And then, of course, we change the snacks and the drinks around a little bit. But for the most part, they just stay very consistent. Excellent, excellent. So let's switch gears now to talk a little bit about structure. You know, we talked about that challenge initially and getting the initial structure right with management, shift leads, and systems. How has your role changed now that you go from unit one to two,

then two to three, three to four? and how do you, you know, not only have your role changed, but then how do you structure each of the units? Yeah. So we are committed to a restaurant or, you know, owner owned restaurants. We won't franchise, at least I don't think we will. And so as we went, we opened up the third store in 2023 and the fourth store, we just opened this past October and we've got a fifth store coming to Houston, the River Oaks area in 2025.

I mean, the simple answer is people. And it's so it's it's what everyone says. And it's probably it's kind of a rote comment. But like, you just have to have the right people in the right spots. And it starts with the general managers at the stores. And then you've got to have someone leading them that knows what they're doing. To us, that's probably, frankly, the most important person in our company right now is the person who's leading our general manager.

His name is Jorge, and he is just an 11 out of 10 person and worker and grew up in the restaurant industry. He's everything that I wasn't in those first 18 months. He understands fast, casual, fast food restaurant better than anyone I know. He understands how to motivate people, understands the workers that are in the building, how to serve customers well. He just has done it before so many times, and he is a linchpin to what we're doing.

And then I brought on a partner a couple years ago as well, it seems to be Andrew Weishart. He started Contigo. He's had a lot of successful restaurants in the past, and he's kind of ahead of me in age and experience and all these things. And he brought a ton of wisdom and experience. So he's effectively our COO and co-pilot partner of mine. He's over Jorge.

And then just we had to build out more structures. Like someone needed to run with the guest success, the digital guest success, the reading the reviews and handling emails and feedback from customers. And then we just brought on another office assistant to help us with bringing our payroll in-house. I don't know.

I think it's just this continual adding, like seeing the holes and where our current team is spending too much time doing things that are not their forte and then trying to afford as affordably as possible, finding either outsourcing or bringing people in-house that can start to specialize in those particular roles as we grow. Because we're trying to get to a place where we can open two to three stores per year over the next few years.

And so the amount of just like processes and firefighting and all these things that need to get built to get to a place where we can crank out a couple of stores per year is daunting. And we're just kind of right in the middle of that right now.

Great points. I do. I really like that because I think that other successful concepts that have expanded would probably be agreeing with your points that it does. It starts with people. Obviously, you know, we have to talk about finding the right location. Sure, we have to talk about raising additional funding, maybe bringing in a partner. But I think the people that have grown correctly are the ones that would emulate what you just said.

They would agree with the fact that you've got to have the right people first. So good note, good note to be taken. Now we did our second, our third, our fourth unit in the same city. Walk people through how you make a decision to leave, you know, the comfort zone of one initial marketplace and do a company-owned store in another. How did you decide that? What research is required when you start jumping into another geographic area?

Yeah, well, everything that I'm about to say, we have not been proven yet to be successful in Houston at all because we haven't even opened it yet. So everything I might be saying just right now could be totally wrong.

But from the beginning i i want you know our mission is to to impact positively impact countless lives through life-giving fast food that has been sort of the tagline the purpose the reason we exist from the very beginning and part of countless lives inherent is that in that is that we wanted to create a business that could scale and have far-reaching impact and you know one of the main reasons for that even is giving the the people that work at honest marriage the ability to grow within

the company and experience more success personally than they ever would have experienced or thought that they could have experienced and so that means we got to make more locations so 20 to 30 locations in 10 years has always been kind of this like pie in the sky mountain that we're trying to reach and maybe you know maybe i just kind of kind of grabbed it out of a hat one day but like that for whatever reason that's been our focus and so how do we get there it's

it's building two to three stores a year and how do you get there you have to eventually make a jump to a new city and you know it's a huge risk i'm i'm a little fearful honestly i i just finished listening to a guy ross how i built this episode about todd graves the raising canes founder and then he talked about how he jumped over you know it's had such success in Louisiana. And then he jumped over to Texas and just fell on his face. People had, people didn't know about him.

And, and like, gosh, I mean, that is real. Like you get so confident with, with the, the brand you've created in a particular place, but then you go to another physical place that doesn't know about you. And I mean, you just got to start from the beginning again, from a marketing perspective. So, I mean, there are definitely some, some nerves there. I. The reason that we chose Houston was because I'm from there.

And so I think that gives me an immediate leg up versus Dallas, which was the other kind of obvious place to jump to. I understand the roads and the intersections. I've driven those places before. And that was part of the process, too, of where do we find a location in the new city. It's like finding locations is art and science. And there's a lot of science. You hire the real estate person. You do the data research.

We started doing cell phone data research a few years ago. So we will never sign a lease again without doing some thorough research. But then again, it's all about like driving those intersections. How easy is it to turn in? What kind of cars are parked in the parking lot? Where's your competitor nearby? And are they showing up to that restaurant, et cetera, et cetera? Fortunately, we landed a really, really great spot in Houston. And so I think it takes out a little bit of the risk.

But yeah, I mean, I don't know if I'm totally answering your question. And I've definitely got some nerves about the next city. Operationally, it's just going to be a huge mountain to climb to. How do you, where do you hire these people? How do you train them? Do you ship people? Do you bus people in from Austin to Houston to train them or vice versa? Like these are all questions we're kind of in the middle of working through and trying to figure out right now.

But what a great plan though. I think you hit a couple of cornerstones that I think, again, might be the right foundation for success. First off, I appreciate that, that there is no guarantee. This is a risk, and you're right. Your plan may be really well accepted or it may struggle. That is the reality. But when you're talking about, you know, using professional services, real estate, understand the market, research, that's a great hedge.

I like the fact that working into a geographic area, but something that is close to where you are now, so it's easier to support. Someplace that is familiar, that's also good. I have talked with people that regret their struggle because they chose to grow. They went too far or they went to where they maybe just had a really good influence, partner interest or franchisee interest, and then they regretted it later because it was too far to support or they didn't really understand the market.

See, so I think you're kind of hedging your bets. With regard to, say, the handling of the opening ops, I bet you're probably going to do a little bit of both. I would guess that you're going to be building in your opening budget and your opening timeline a certain point to where maybe some key people. Initial trainers, shift leads, assistant manager, KM or somebody hired there but brought to Austin to practice, train, observe the culture.

Then they go back to where they're going to be and it'll be easier to train on site with some key people being brought. I bet you'll wind up doing that as well as your pre-opening training. So yeah, I wish you the best with this step to another city. That's a heck of a vision, 20 to 30 units in 10 years. There'll be the opportunity.

I mean, there's no doubt listening to the concept as you describe it and the way the market is going of the percentage of revenue with your, you know, inside dining, which means you don't really need that big of a space, but the convenience for the to-go pickup and heck, the markets that you're looking at, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, you could probably saturate and get, who knows, a couple dozen units that have to leave those major markets.

I think so. So I think it's possible to hit that 20 number and just in Texas, we will see. Yes. Yeah, it is. It's going to be fun to see. I'm going to look forward to staying in touch and listening more to it as you grow forward. There's no doubt this is going to have to be a revisit. You're going to get to come back to Corner Booth and say, now let's talk about how my first store outside of my base in Austin really worked.

We'll have to take a look at that and maybe do a little review after the fact. So I think you hit some of the really good strategic goals that you probably have short term, building a team for growth, additional units. I love that you mentioned that part of that is to provide some growth for your key people. If you've got key people that are interested in this industry, they want to continue to grow. It's another reason for expansion. What do you see as challenges, though, in getting this done?

What are you concerned mostly about right now that the industry might have to kind of overcome during these next four or five years? Yeah, finding good real estate opportunities has been a real challenge for us since really since opening the first door. We've that has continually been a bottleneck to our growth. For instance, we've been trying to find a location in South Austin for seven years and have not found the spot that makes sense.

We've made a run at a couple of them and have gotten beat out by other, you know, more national tenants, more national players. And so that's going to continue to be an uphill battle for us as we just don't have the credit of a public company. So that's a big one. You know, I think financing is a big one. Like we're building and the cost of build outs are just killer right now. We're not building, you know, we're building more higher end fast casual restaurants.

That's just kind of ingrained into our brand. And that's a constant tension we have is like, how nice are our finish outs? How nice are our restaurants? But then even if the finish outs aren't that nice, just the basic MEP of getting a restaurant open is really expensive right now. And so that's a battle is how do we keep those costs low? And of course, the other part to that is just like, how do you finance this growth?

And then pairing those two things together, like how do you find the right location at the right time that you can finance because you don't just get to pick and choose exactly when that location comes. So I think that dance of like finding locations and financing those locations is just this continual hum of a challenge that we're having to constantly face.

And then, I mean, you know, the operations because of some key hires, I feel like our operations have been in a superb spot over the last couple of years. And I am immensely grateful for our team for that. But we're going to face massive challenges as we continue to grow. And, you know, I hope we have our team forever, but I know that people move on and people, you know, the company has to be bigger than individual people.

And so how do we make sure that the company can continue to thrive and grow and build, even as potentially people come in and out and you lose a great team lead or whatever that is, like people move on and we want them to.

Sometimes that's the right thing for people. So how can we sustain that success and and and keep our culture and keep our operations and keep our focus on the customer all those things going over the years as we do continue to expand at our old stores and at the new ones going forward huge challenges well those are those are those are funds sites and team yeah yeah i could see that but you're you're acutely aware of it and you're working really really well in each of those directions.

I know we're going to have to kind of wrap up. We're running out of time, but I'd like to ask you one last thing to contact, to comment on if you wouldn't mind. And that's a marketing strategy. Is there a particular promotion, marketing, or PR tactic that works for you in order to find and retain guests? If so, what is it? What do you guys do mostly? Yeah, man, this is a tough one for me. And I don't feel like we necessarily market well.

The biggest thing that we have done in the last year that has gone well is we realized that we had accrued about 55,000 emails from online orders over the last seven years. And so we looked at that number and that looked like a heck of a lot more than the 10,000 Instagram followers we had.

And we said, wait, we need to stop focusing so much on pretty pictures on Instagram, though you know it has its place and we need to focus on how do we talk in a personal way how do we communicate as personally as we can with those 50 000 60 000 emails and growing as we continue to to open new stores and so we brought on a company they're they're called speak scale and hunter the leader over there one of the leaders has been a good friend of mine for years and and they just basically helped

us like leverage our email database and we we brought we started using a tech called thanks it's like an online ordering app and it allows us to basically like personalize and kind of a b test and segment our customer groups based on their buying habits and and how they spend how much they spend what they buy how frequently they come to the restaurant all these things and start to like send specific email communications to those groups in a segmented way.

And so that's been really great to like just stay on people's radar, be in people's inbox. I think that the email is, continues to be even over the years, like the most powerful way to communicate with customers on digital perspective. And so we've really leaned into that. And I think it's been helpful for retaining our guests.

Great. Well, I hope that continues. Listen, everyone, we are running out of time, but you've been listening to Nelson Monteith share his steps of success and his plans for growth.

Honest marries is the concept. If you're not in the Austin or, say, fairly soon Houston market, you won't be able to enjoy a fast, healthy experience just yet. But it sounds like it's coming your way. How can people find you? If they would like to talk more, what's the best way to contact you, Nelson? Yeah, nelson at honestmarys.com. I would love to be helpful.

Send me an email with specific questions and I'd be happy to shoot an email response, shoot a video response or send you a calendar link to get 30 minutes or whatever. So happy to be helpful. I love helping people try to figure it out. Well, thanks again. That would be great. Everyone go to the website, Honest Marys. Cool concept. Check it out. Nelson, thanks again. Thanks so much. And we wish you continued success. And for everyone else, hey, go make it a great shift today.

And hopefully we'll get connected again on another Corner Booth real soon. Thanks so much. Thank you for joining us on the Corner Booth. We'll be back next Tuesday with more inspiration, insights, and industry best practices to help you engage your team, delight your guests, and grow your business.