Ownership Is Key (with Sam Polk)

the federal government, the university, my own mother. I learned about recruiters, these people from corporate America who would come to the university, set up shop in a local hotel, and try to woo us with promises of impacts, but mostly money. And I went to one of these events at uh local hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was overwhelmed by the amount of food, free food in the middle

of the day, and not just any food. Shrimp. Yeah, daytime shrimp was not a part of my regular diet, and I devoured it, and I was kind of sold on some of the promise. So I found myself after graduation in the corporate world working in strategy consulting, which is still a hard job to explain to anybody. I wore khakis and had close cropped hair and ate out way too much, and it helped me pay off those loans.

My first year out of college, my salary was higher than my mother's peak lifetime annual earning across our whole life, and that was a big deal. It was a big deal for me to go to Harvard is a bigger deal to graduate, and it was the biggest deal to pay for it. I'm in this corporate life and I'm making a decent living, but there's limits. I realized this

is not for me, it's not my full purpose. And I found my way out and found my way in many ways to you right here, right now today, we're gonna talk to someone who's got a bit of a parallel story. Lived the most capitalist life one can in this economy by working on Wall Street, like for real Wall Street, and he didn't stay like me. For him, it wasn't enough, but he did keep building businesses, different

businesses though, those that try to address the opportunity. Heather McGee laid out for us that we can deal with our economy's historic exclusion by significantly increasing those who are included in it. That we can all win and make money too. We live in a world where the zip code that you're born in and the color of your skin is very determinative of sort of where you're going to end up, at least economically, and so the idea

of social equity is balancing the scales. In order to do that, you need to give a leg up and give support because we're not starting all from the same sort of level. After the break, we speak with Sam Pulk, founder and CEO of Every Table. Yeah, thank you, it's much better. Okay, so quiet on set. Sam Pulk, Save in the World, episode thirty seven. Growing up, Sam Pulk didn't know what he wanted to do with his life, but he was sure he wanted to make money. So

he at his start in Wall Street. Then he pivoted hard to the far other side of the street and dove headfirst into the world of nonprofits, literally the opposite of Wall Street. One day, he realized he needed to create something that drew from both worlds, that wasn't completely extractive and dominated by profit seeking, but that also wasn't steeped in this top down world of charity. I know, capitalism and business get a bad rap. They're exploitative and

extractive and maybe just bad for the planet. But I also know there are better ways to use these tools. I wanted to talk to Sam because I also believe that there were ways to do business that help people, that help us citizen, that help us show up, and that are good for our society. Hello, Sam, how you doing good? Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for for being head. Is that that doesn't sound right? Thanks for being here. Let's just keep it normal. Thanks

for being here. Do you remember the moment you decided you wanted to work on Wall Street? First of all, like you know, my agenda when I got out of college was to figure out a life skill that would allow me to make a hundred thousand dollars a year forever, and so Wall Street was a sort of place for that. That's a very specific post college agenda. How did you come up with a hundred thousand dollars as your threshold?

Hundred thousand was the number that I thought sort of people that were, you know, wealthy or comfortable would sort of make. But I wanted like safety and comfort is what I wanted. Where does the Wall Street decision come into that? The real sort of moment for Wall Street. For me was when I walked onto a trading floor at Credit Squeets First, Boston on the first day of my summer internship, and it was have you ever been

on a trading floor? But it's it's wild. People yelling and you know six means in front of traders and you know, people like you know, talking and shouting into their phones, and also like how they were dressed. You could see that this was like a level of sort of like elite sort of wealth and class in a way that that I had no experience with. Hundreds of billions of dollars are flowing through those people and their decisions just sitting there. And you saw that, and you said,

I wanted I wanted in. It meets the hundred K threshold that you set for yourself. What is it like once you're in the life, what's it like for you? I just worked like a maniac. I was waking up at four thirty in the morning, and you know, getting to the office of the first one on the trading floor every day, last one to leave, you know, analysts and the trading program lived in these sort of like

swanky apartments downtown. And I got this like six hundred square foot apartment twenty five minutes away that I could pay four hundred dollars a month for just so I could sort of like save enough money. Do you feel rich yet? Do you feel powerful? Yeah? I mean Wall Street in general? Did I mean like the expense accounts, you know, flying to see sort of traders in the Midwest?

Wall Street was really a place like even my first year, where I would like get sick of these sort of like five star dinners because I would just go there every night and I'd be like, oh God, I need a night off from Nobu. You know. Did you just say that for those who may not know what is Nobu? Nobu is the fanciest, most sort of elite sushi restaurant in the world basically, and it was like your McDonald's.

It was totally so you're over ordering sushi, you're working hard, you're making more money, you have some sense of power. When does this start to turn sour? You know? By the time I got to be thirty, I was then, you know, the senior distress trader at one of the largest hedge funds in the world. This was sort of during the crash about eight no nine. It was the worst day on Wall Street since the crash of seven. The Dow tumbled more than five hundred points after two

pillars of the Street tumbled over the weekend. Lehman Brothers, a one and fifty eight year old firm, filed for bankrupts. It was a crazy time on Wall Street, you know, like Lehman went down, and you know, Countrywide went down. Came to the America Dream. No one was better at selling it than Angelo Mozilla as founder of the mortgage giant Countrywide Financial. And more and more people find themselves

at or near underwater with their houses. The propensity to reach into their pocket, grab their house keys and leave them on the countertop and walk out goes up. We have to stop that problem. In the nobody knew what was going to happen. But but the interesting thing about it was that all of these sort of bankers, we're not going to get their bonus that year. And people

were very very upset about that. And so I was looking at these guys and being like, huh, this doesn't seem right, Like, of course you're not gonna get your bonus. And we basically took the entire country down into financial catastrophe and at the same time, I picked up Taylor Branches three part series on Martin Luther King, and I was sort of like struck by this juxtaposition basically about sort of what I was dealing with on a daily basis.

And then I'd be, you know, coming home and reading stories about the Freedom writers, and like, you know, these are some of the most gripping stories real life that you could ever imagine, right like activists on buses pulling into Montgomery, Alabama, amidst mob of people, you know, ready to beat them. And there was something that was so

jaw dropping lee courageous about that. And it wasn't that I was, you know, pretending that I was about to do something like that, but I was aware that at that time in the sixties, there was plenty of guys trading bonds at Goldman Sachs, and so I just based sically, you know, took a hard look at my life and said, where do you want to be fifty years from now? What are you going to be proud of? What are your kids going to be proud of? What do you

want your life to stand for? And at the end of the day, being a successful hedge fund manager, it was definitely a world where people that got a million dollar bonus were completely devastated because they should have got a three million dollar bonus. There was never enough. It's this crazy sort of like cloistered relative deprivation amidst absolute abundance, you know, um, and it just seemed so empty, basically, and I wanted to figure out something else. So after

you leave Wall Street, what next? Sam My wife and I, you know, one weekend ended up sitting down and watching you know, all this food documentaries, you know, Forks over Knives and food inc. Etcetera. But there was one that was sort of like a lesser known one. It's called A Place at the Table by Laurie Silverbush. The recent people are going hungry is not because of a sualty of food. It is because of politic One out of every two kids in the United States at some point

will be on food assistance. I was one of those kids. It was hungry. It messes with you. The average food stand benefits three dollars a day. It was the first one that really made this argument about this sort of intersection between food and poverty. And they even described the neighborhood South Los Angeles. I was five miles from where I was living at the time and said that a kid born in that neighborhood would live twelve years less than a kid born in the neighborhood that I live

in right now. You know, and there's a lot of reasons for that, but one of the core ones is food. And I didn't know it then that that was going to change my life and you know, become really you know, life's work in some level, but it did. And you know, this idea that healthy food should be a human right and not a luxury product was like self evident to me on some level. Yeah, So you watch this food documentary with your wife called A Place at the Table.

Take us from that to starting Feast. So Feast is a it's a nonprofit that basically helps parents who are living in difficult food situations who want to give themselves and their families healthy And you know, I'll stop there to say that most times the following things you would hear from this would be we run nutrition education and diet cooking classes into that. I am proud that we

did not structure it like that. There's plenty of sort of moralizing when it comes to healthy food, which is like if only these people knew what good food was and what you know, how to cook, then they would make the right choices. I knew that was not true sort of from the beginning. Food is a fraught and multifaceted, multilayered, complicated situation for most people, no matter where you live.

That is then exacerbated, you know, when you've got you know, no options for healthy food and underserved neighborhoods and a massive amount of stress. Sort of overlying that, we structured Feast basically as almost like a support group. We're running dozens, if not not yet hundreds, but getting up there of groups across now five states. And these are basically, you know, a group of ten moms that meets once a week for two hours, led by somebody who has taken the

program before. Somebody that was in the group will then go on to lead another group and then you know, at the same sort of school or at the same you know, community center, or at the same house and will just sort of keep perpetuating itself over time. You are a white man, Sam, and you are working in a lot of communities that are not white, and people who never worked on Wall Street. Uh a hundred thousand

dollars a year will be like an extraordinary situation. How do you manage your own presence as a white man going into many communities of color, working with a lot of moms in particular, um and and avoid any kind of savior complex you think about that? Has it come up for you in some way all the time? You know? I think from my experience with Feast and sort of running these groups, we're just all sort of people basically.

And then how I sort of work with my you know, privilege in some sense and what I look like to other people and is to just acknowledge it. And I do this with my team all the time, but like speak to it and own it and try to create a situation where I'm standing next to people as opposed to reaching down to lift them up. Mm hmm. It's

a powerful image. What does social equity mean to you? Yeah, I've become on some sense like a reborn capitalist sort of this journey for each person to figure out where they sort of need to exist in the world and what is right for them and how they can be

of service and contribute. That is a system and an idea that works only on on the on the fundamental foundation of you know, equality of opportunity, and yet we live in a world where where you you know, the zip code that you're born in and the color of your skin is very determinative of sort of where you're to end up, at least economically. And so the idea of social equity is balancing the scales in order to sort of like make you know, equality of opportunity for everybody.

But in order to do that, you need to rebalance the scales and sort of give a leg up and give support um, because we're not starting all from the same sort of level. After the break fast food franchises, and how ownership may be the key to building wealth that lasts. Ye, all right, Sam, you told us about your wild West days on Wall Street. You broke down what you're doing with feasts and this community support group. Now I want to move on to your newest endeavor.

Tell me how you came up with the idea for every table. So I was running feasts and kept hearing from these moms basically that the reason we go to McDonald's is because it's you know, it's the only thing available that and so I quickly came to realize that, like what people in underserver communities. It's not they necessarily love fast food. There's just no other options basically, and

so every table is a lot of things. At its base, it is a food preparation, production, distribution, and retail system that includes restaurants, smart fridges, which are basically healthy vending machines, home delivery. That is building a company that that is making healthy, made from scratch, delicious prepared food for cheaper than fast food, and in the in the process is

literally like building a new food system. I know that sounds big, but it really is like in some sense, I think we're building the food system that should have been built fifty years ago. Basically, what should have been done fifty years ago that wasn't And how does our current food system look in ways that aren't serving us. The way to understand sort of how and why the food system was built as it was. The fundamental thing to understand is that people didn't understand that processed food

was going to be bad for you. Yes, thank goodness for Jello instant putting the terrific busy day dessert you can make at the very last minute. See how quick They just didn't know it. And so if you think about the decisions that were made with that sort of misassumption within sort of spurred the creation of the food system was exactly what you might guess, which is like, how do you make food really delicious and really cheap?

And so when I think about the food system, I think that, you know, the largest food companies in the country are what are called CpG with consumer packaged goods, so that's your cereal and chips, derritos, etcetera. CpG companies and fast food companies. And the reason that they're the largest is because they figured out how to sell food the cheapest. So, so how is every table dismantling or

reimagining this system? Well, when people talk about food deserts, I can't tell you how many times people call me and say, hey, Sam, you know I I'm I too, am passionate about this issue of food deserts. Let's get a bus and put a bunch of produce in it and then drive around sort of you know, streets and underserved communities and what is the food So a food desert is a community that doesn't have access to fresh,

healthy food. If you go to South Los Angeles, for example, there is fewer grocery stores per capita than there is on the West Side. But there's grocery stores for sure, food for less Superior Ralph's isn't underserved neighborhoods. Like, it's not that there's no grocery stores. What it is is that there's no prepared food. There's no press juicery or Tender Greens or Sweet Green or Lemonade or Creation or

flower Child. I mean, I could go on like there the amount of sort of fresh, healthy, prepared food that there isn't and more affluent communities is massive, and I think that's the things that people miss. People in underserved communities are both short on money and they're also short on time, sort of like we all are. And so what every Table does as we say, look, we like where Sweet Green is going in terms of quality and freshness of food, but can we do it in a

way that makes it accessible and affordable to everybody? And all we do is we apply the principles of CpG and fast food, namely centralized production and massive distribution, but to fresh food. And so what every table is is preparing incredibly fresh, healthy, delicious meals from scratch every day and then packaging them and grab and go contain meiners.

And then as far as pricing goes, every table sort of got known in the press for this variable pricing model where you know, same food, same concept, but if it's in Brentwood will charge seven or eight bucks, which is basically half the price of sweet Green, so an incredibly good deal. But then we open in Compton or South l A or East l A will charge five or six dollars for the same meal. And it's not charity like our stores and underserved communities are amongst our

most profitable. But it is about, you know, creating a system that works for everyone, that includes everyone, um, and that respects everyone. I've heard a lot of tension in the goals of running for profit business and creating something that's sustainable or achieve some sort of equity goals, and

this choice that we are forced to make. It seems you can either be a real capitalist and lower your costs and jack up your prices to whatever the market will bear, or where you can go do your do gooder business and have your social equity and your social justice. How do you approach those tensions? How do you see it? You know, fifty years ago it was the norm for companies to be focused on the good of the community

and all the different stakeholders. And now this was obviously helped by the fact that we had like a real labor movement, so there was collective bargaining, etcetera. But we've sort of like developed this sort of like rapacious sort of lobbyists supported idea of capitalism. But I don't think

that's what it has to be. And then the other point I'll make is that actually so many sort of quote unquote social enterprises are frankly stupid and and what I mean is, you know, you know, think about like Tom's Shoes, and Tom's invested in us, so I want to be don't bite the hand that feeds you, so to speak. I love where this is going, go for it.

But like so, so Tom's is a company that was probably like the O G sort of social enterprise really that basically created this model where for every pair of shoes that they sold, they would donate one to somebody in need. But it's basically like they were part of this idea that that there's one group of customers that you sell to and there's another group of customers that you do charity for. And I don't like that Tom's was about making the affluent customers feel good about their purchase. Now,

why is every table different. The more stores we can have underserved high income, the better, and every table gets the same benefit that we do with sort of that any sort of franchising business gets. We get these royalties off the top. We also get brand benefit from this. I'm trying to design a system that works across the board, and I'm sure there will be tensions along the way

and often make some decisions. But it also you know, there's plenty of arguments for example, like Costco pays its employees incredibly well, and they they've done that from the beginning, and they have lower turnover and you know, lower labor costs because of at etcetera. So some of these assumptions that we made, which are sort of like spurred by the whole private equity cost cutting, you know, things are

are just wrong. Like if you treat your customers well, if you treat your people work for you well, if you share the wealth a little bit, the company is probably more sustainable over time. I want you to paint a picture for our palates what some of the food people can get from every table. We we have this crazy, you know, very actually white sort of idea of what

healthy food is. But actually all cuisines and all cultures have basically two things in common, which is that their food is delicious and it's healthy because it's made by whole food, you know, over time, you know, by scratch basically, and so for us, it's really just going back to that.

And so for example, you know, our menu is really about celebrating the cultures and cuisines of Los Angeles, and some of our best sellers include, you know, Jamaican jerk chicken with coconut beans and rice and plantains and uh carnitas bowl that does incredibly well in a black chicken tinga that's an amazing seller. Actually, our best selling dish

of all time is called Trap Kitchen. Chicken curry and Trap Kitchen are these two Compton chefs who started a soul food Instagram delivery business out of their grandmother's kitchen that got so wildly popular that they got you know, three thousand Instagram followers and then got shut down by

the government because you can't really do that. But you know, there's sort of Compton celebrities, and so we partnered with them to make a version of their chicken curry and it's been the best seller since we launched it, not only in Compton, but in Brentwood as well. So how does every table work? I know you have multiple locations you're running under a franchise model, but what does that look like for y'all? So franchising is a sort of tried and true and great way for restaurants to grow.

And the reason is because it's a very mutually beneficial sort of relationship up between the franchise or which is usually the restaurant and the franchise. And the mutual benefit is if you're a franchise e about to start a franchise, you're basically about to start your own business. But starting

your own business is risky. So isn't it great to be able to start a business with a proven concept that you you basically know is going to work from the point of the franchise or I can start a bunch of stores, not have to spend money to build them, and still make you know, between five and ten percent of their revenue. But as we looked at franchising, we realized that there was a big problem with franchising. You know, like so many other industries, there's a lot of privilege

baked into it. You have to have a significant net worth and capital available in order to start a franchise. Well, you know, given the sort of racial wealth gap, people are more likely to look like me that have sort of accumulated capital, right, And so we said, can we create a system that promotes ownership for entrepreneurs who have been sort of marginalized historically? And so what that looks like is we've gone to, you know, some of the

biggest foundations in the country, Kellogg Foundation, Annenberg Foundation. We basically built these partnerships where these foundations either lent us money at incredibly low rates or even in some cases just donated to us with grants, so that we now have this big pool of capital that when we find talented entrepreneurs from underserved communities who want to start their own business, we can train them in our stores and lend them the money to build and own their own

Every table franchise. What was your first franchise was the history of that relationship. We've actually only got one operating right now, and it's and it's Dorcas and it's Every Table Hollywood. You should go see it and so Dorcia, you know, over the year's head. You know, she was in the second ever Feast group. Then she had gone on to lead many more groups and Feast and become such a leader in that organization that she eventually joined

the board. And then you know, after a while she came and started working for Every Table as a store manager and was the manager of our Watt store. And so when it came time, like you know, I was, I was both sort of like creating this franchise program with Dorcia in mind, and then when it came sort of time to choose the first person, she was sort

of the natural, you know selection. And I've known her for eight years now, and during all of that time, she's been a single mom, working two or three jobs,

supporting her three kids. And like the the the amount of work and stress that she has had to carry her whole life is like, you know, all of these Wall Street guys would crumble in the face of that, as far as I'm concerned, you know, So, so what changes for people when they have access to capital, to financial resources, especially in the consideration of historic restriction from access to those resources, I mean, everything changes, Like I

think that's I think that's the fundamental thing understand is that capitalism is ownership. Like it it is about ownership, and the real issue for me and I think the change that needs to happen is the focus on ownership. And what I mean is like I'm I'm all for fifteen dollar minimum wage for sure, but I also think that that still ends up to be like thirty dollars a year. And for the real change is you've got to spur ownership in whatever form that needs to be.

Are there other companies doing this social equity franchising thing making it easier for people to to get in? Well, you know what's funny is, like you don't. We actually studied Domino's Pizza a lot, and they they didn't sort of think about it like this. They would never have called it that, but they actually did some version of this, which is that most of Domino's pizzas franchise ease came up through the restaurant business, so we're drivers or cooks

in the kitchen, etcetera. So you know Domino's, you know, they didn't call it that, didn't do it specifically, but they should get some credit for that. What do you think it would do for our democracy to have people who have been historically excluded from this ownership to be included. How it would impact democracy, I think is clear for

me on sort of two levels. The first and probably most important is that it would bring back, or at least democratize access to the American dream, which I think is so sort of fundamental to our culture and our identity as a country. And so it just brings back and spreads out the access to power in the voices and uh, you know, democracy the vote that is so important to this country. Sam Paul, thank you so much for spending time with us. This has been quite the education.

Great talking to you. Next week we'll be talking to Knowny Session, the executive director of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative. She's working on a way to help people claim ownership of their own communities literally. You know, we call this show how to Citizen. So here's some of the how to parts from our producer Ali Okay. I want you to turn inward and think about the businesses in your neighborhood. Are they mostly local small businesses

or national chains? If more of one than the other, why do you think that is? Who works there and who owns them? When you hear the word entrepreneur or business owner, what do you see in your mind? Who is that person? What do they look like? Now it's time to inform yourself. Success for entrepreneurs often means selling their business to a bigger company or going public on the stock market. These successful exits can generate a lot of wealth for the few people at the top a

k a. Owners and investors. What if there was another path for those entrepreneurs to take, one that rewarded those most connected and impacted by the business, including employees, customers, founders, and investors. There's a movement called Exit to Community which

is doing just that. Learn more about it by searching online for Exit to Community or visiting E t C dot how fund domain name, the letter E and the number two and the letters ce, dot ho W And lastly, we want you to publicly participate in a safe way. Of course, consider joining or giving to a few of the community movements working to build a more inclusive economy. Here are two we are especially fond of. Zebras Unit Cooperative believes the most urgent human rights project of our

time is to reimagine business. Then there's the effort to make the donut economy real and communities and countries around the world. Search the donut Economics action lab to learn more. Hint, it's not about pastries. If you're take any of these actions, please brag about yourself online using the hashtag how to Citizen and send us general feedback or ideas for the show to comments at how to citizen dot com. Speaking of that domain name, we have one and we're using it.

Visit how to citizen dot com to sign up for our newsletter. Will learn about upcoming events or even more stuff than that. And if you like the show, spread the word tell somebody. If you don't, definitely just keep it to yourself. Appreciate you. How does Citizen with baritune Day is a production of I Heart Radio Podcasts and Dust Like Productions. Our executive producers are Me Barrett tun Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusuf. Our producers are Stephanie Cone

and Ali Kilts. Kelly Prime is our editor, Valentino Rivera is our engineer, and Sam Paulson is our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen. This episode was produced and sound designed by Ali Kilts. Special thanks to Joel Smith from i Heart Radio,