This is the restaurant technology guys podcast, helping you run your restaurant better.
Before we move forward with the show, I wanted to share about a product that I came across recently. We're in the middle of the summertime. And so you're going through dads and grads and I know the holidays are just as bad. But it's a product that's trying to become the OpenTable. for large parties. The name is restaurant rent. Nick and his team have created a online booking solution to allow restaurants to book large parties and do them online in such an easy way. It's
a brilliant solution. And having just gone through graduation for my son, I would have loved to have had a solution like this check out Nick and his solution restaurant when you get a few minutes after the show. Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys. Podcast and now YouTube show. For any of you guys that are only listening on
YouTube. It's kind of fun. It's been fun learning the video world but at about I don't know 180 or 190 or so episodes I went from audio only to now audio and video and so today we have a previous guests that joined us 18 months ago 12 months ago something like that, who is joining us again to give us some updates and so I'm gonna throw out his name hopefully, many you guys longtime listeners remember Robert but remember, why don't you Remainer Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Who are you and then we can talk about what what you get the privilege of doing in your day job. Cool. Well,
Jeremy, thanks for having me, bro. I appreciate it. Great to be here
and be on the show a second time and putting up with my my dumb questions. Please for a second time.
Well, your antics? Yeah.
Yeah, my ethics exactly.
I just do the quick you know, we we run a company now called One Life brands, which owns, operates or and acquires other franchise brands. And in the restaurant space in the service space, we become more of the franchise side franchise experts and really wanted to be able to diversify. Specifically after COVID Being in restaurants we know a lot about it. know a lot of our restaurants for us know a
lot about franchising. And we felt if you can really do well in the in the restaurant business and franchising, you can probably do well in other parts and which has been, which has happened, you know, we don't famous history, which is the breakfast lunch brunch concept.
And we have a company called FlowerPower, which is a kid's cooking school are the nascence now fastest growing kits, cooking schools, we have cartridge world that we bought last year as well, these are all these last two in the last year, cartridge roll has been around for a long time. And we found a way to expand that brand and really offer it to folks in a way that can be very beneficial
to them. It's there's also a company called via it is a national roll off dumpster concept, which is another great brand. And then another spot called big burger spot. And that is in kind of in the Greensboro tribal triad area. Yeah, it's been it's been exciting, this is all a lot of it's been done over the past call it you know, 12 months and famous toaster has been around for a very long time, you know, we're gonna be, you know, 20 years and in 2025, which is still a little bit time
away. But you know, when you start to realize is you do this stuff long enough and you you one day you wake up, you're not the not the young whippersnapper in the room, and you start to you've been through it, you've been through the good, the bad, the ugly, you know how things work? And, you know, it kind of it's almost like a moral obligation to do things. Well, you know, you can make a difference at this point. You know, it's restaurants are
great. running businesses are great, but making the difference is what gets me out of the bed in the morning. You know?
Well, I don't know, we'll get into, like, part of me wonders, when you slept in the last 12 months if you've if you've dealt with all of this stuff, but for those that are not familiar didn't hear us on our first episode. You talked about breakfast brunch, lunch concept. You know, I guess what sets famous grocery apart? And why do you think it's been so successful over the last 20 years and and then we'll talk a little bit about the learnings as you guys have grown into this
other franchise space. But for those that are either unfamiliar with the brand, or even from, from the founder, CEO perspective, like, tell me a little bit about about what makes that brand different and why should I go there over over some of the other better breakfast concepts that are that are always seem to be nipping at your heels
popping up? Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, we look at it as you know, there's this competition in space. Like if you're everything from a waffle house, I have dunk into a very, you know, high end spa like a FirstWatch. Right. But we don't really look at it as competition. We're not we're not competing with people. We're competing with ourselves, right? So the difference between us and pretty much every better breakfast spot is. We make food that day for that day.
Everything is made in house. So we don't say things like it's fresh. We don't say things like oh, we made it in house. To actually is which has been the differentiator, right. So we don't, we don't play the game we don't, we don't bring it about a bag of potatoes and just caught it and dump it and heat it like it's made, right. So that's not it's also not as easy. But that's what kind of sets us apart, right? So. And that's what we enjoy the winter. So we're not competing to be with
the next whoever it may be. But we are competing with ourselves to stick to that, meaning we make really great food. And as you start getting bigger and bigger, people start taking more shortcuts. So we're going in the opposite direction, we're getting as fresh as we possibly can. Well, how do you handle that though? Like, you know, somebody may listen and say, well, that's, that's great.
Sounds good. But how am I gonna run a restaurant and everything fresh when I could, you know, buy it premade and whatnot? Well, you have to have the menu engineering, and you got to make your menu a little bit smaller, and you got to make sure it's profitable, all the basic stuff that will go along with it. But you have to commit to something, you have to have a purpose you have to have, why are you doing this? Right? If it's just, I'll
throw a fryer? And because it makes sense, because people keep asking for fries. Then what do you you know? What, again, what gets you up in the morning? Like, we don't have priors, you know, we don't, we don't make any we don't have anything that comes out of cans, and, you know, that's frozen, and etc. So that's a big deal on the brunch business. And we still have the goal of four to six minute ticket times, you know, eggs a quick look if you do them, right. And it can be done
quickly, right? But that's the big deal. I mean, that's what we do. It's been the feedbacks. Great, you're, obviously unit volume, show it how we're doing shows it and it's been an incredible ride since COVID. Me in COVID. It's how you talk with now it's like pre COVID like the Bible, right? Yes. For Christ after Christ. It's that's how we talk now, right? Yep. So if you didn't learn if you weren't like hungry to learn something from that, it's a problem. Because you got to everything had to
shift right? So you know, we look back and say, you know that it's it was an opportunity to get better to get stronger to really dig into everything, you better at labor, be better food costs, be better menu engineering, and be better when the guests walks in the door. Because so many,
even the different service models, I was on the I was on a call recently with another another concept. And they're like, you know, what are Brecker? Because they happen to be a breakfast concept out of the out of the Midwest, north north food. So yeah. You're not competing with anybody. We're good. I just have to compete with him, right? Yeah. No, but he was seasoned. He's like, You know what, we had less than less than 5% of our sales were out the door in a breakfast world.
And during COVID, you had to go to almost 100% You know, where people weren't eating in your dining rooms. And so to your point, menu, engineering, making sure that product travels well, and or the messaging to a guest that says, hey, cold eggs probably aren't the best thing if you got to take this home for 30 minutes, you know, kind of thing. And so, so going through that it was just kind of interesting. Every time I talked to restaurant operators, they
they've had to learn. And it's and but it is it is part of what I press what I'm passionate about the restaurant industry is they're resilient. They figure it out, they work through it, and it's awesome. So you have to love the business. You do? You absolutely do. Talk to me a little bit about because you said it and kind of your intro, Robert franchising by acclamation of your phrase, I would assume that that some of what you guys were doing with famous industry was franchising.
So, talk to me a little bit about kind of did you get started as a franchise group where you guys had no corporate stores? Was it mostly corporate? And then somebody said, I really want to do this talk to me about the journey of learning over the last 20 years or 18 years. What? When did you guys get into
franchising? And let's talk a little bit about that, because I think it's gonna go into the story, not only of your passion, but also, you know, why you guys are doing some of the other stuff you guys are doing with one life?
Yeah, no, that's, um, you know, it started in 2005. And it was a friend of mine that I grew up with. He was the first first person I met when I moved from the Bronx to Long Island. And amazing that we're still friends and partners today. We would started in a small little house, he, he wanted me to get involved, I got involved, it turned into something much bigger than expected. 2008 We opened another location, it was just very slow. It's never meant to have the franchisor back then call it the
F word. Right. Yep. And just to kind of fast forward in 2013. We started looking into it and for and then we started selling it was to the point where people were like, How can I do this? How can I do this? Right? Yeah. And we didn't you know, like most folks, you didn't know anything about franchising. So you just run in you do it and we had a heck of a run. It just was unbelievable how quickly it went. You know, it's a different
time. You know, we were it's one better breakfast wasn't as popular it is now, even though better breakfast is still not there's still so much room, right? Yes. For you know, we can open another 500 locations and we're not really stepping on people, right? Yep. And, you know, going back to why you do other brands too is like you learn so much, right? You know, it goes from one extreme to
another. You start opening stores, you start learning about things, you know, you do, you basically, we opened up a bunch of stores, and it was almost perfection, and then you start to realize where perfection is not going to be happening anymore. And that's when you start learning and and you'll learn the hard way when you
don't know. So you have to, you know, it takes you a while to make the adjustment and the adjustment, which is why out of all the things we can do, right, we can get going in so many different types of businesses, but you know what, you know, right? Yeah. And, and I'm sure there's a lot that we don't know, still, but we've been through the wringer. So for us to give value to franchisees.
It's like almost a moral obligation to keep you in franchising, because we know like, if you're not gonna be a good fit. Well, it's gonna be very quick now. There's no feelings about it. Like you're not it's not going to work. Like if we were clear that your do not want to do X. You, there's no, there's no way forward. So we really coach the folks when we're talking to them. And really, you want to get to a no before? Yes, because most of the time, it's like, oh, let's let's
sell franchise deals. Yeah, we don't want to do that. And they feel I'm sure a lot of people talk about awarding them and we were really do we're not really interested in like, hey, buy our brand, we have a lot of corporate stores, we do very well. We have franchise locations. Now it's like, we want to make sure it's the best fit for the franchisee and the end for us
and for your guys's brand. And I've seen lots of brands grow too fast and not go through that same, that same passion that you guys have to pick the right people and they pick too many, they grow too fast, they lose control. And at the end of the day, they don't get back to that perfection that
you talked about. So talk to me a little bit about the things that you guys put in place to create the consistency because you guys are doing everything from scratch, which is the hardest restaurant to run.
It's insane. When you look back, I mean, yeah, it's not it's not an easy thing to do. And for the look. And for those that are looking for a franchise, right for this, these famous Telestream. And they're looking for like, hey, I want I want it to be simple, as simple as humanly possible. This, isn't it, but it's not it. There's not it's full service. You know, it's got beer, wine liquor? Yes, it's seven to three, which is great, right? That's the that's the big deal.
But it's a lot of work. You know, this isn't like you just open up and you have one person working there. It's a lot of work. And you have to have you have to have talented people and great leadership. But when you've been through this before, how do we make the changes you were asking? So we stopped franchising and 17, we just stopped taking people's calls. We had so many locations, we had a lot of great ones. We had some good ones, we had some bad ones, and we didn't like having one
bad one. So we made an enormous amount of adjustments, right. And we also realized what we were going to sacrifice, not going to sacrifice and food was number one. That's what made us who we were. Even today. I don't know anyone who does what we do. And zero because it's hard, right? And somebody listening to this may say, Well, yeah, well, we would do, hey, you'd have a better margin if you just did this. And well, that's that's their choice. Yeah. If
internet is famous, I mean, people have been lining up to franchise in and out for years. And they're like, No, I know that. I mean, I happen to know, the founding family, and they're just like, No, I appreciate that. You want to franchise our group? No, I mean, she's kicked back here, you took many, many years before they decided to franchise, and they only franchise
internationally. And I know they sent teams to their first franchise partner for years, to teach them how to do it, they had to ensure that that they could get supply chain and do all of the things which again, you guys have had to deal with, from that 13 to 17. And, and as you said, probably made, you know, also made some errors, but had some opportunities to be better. And that
will look down make it clear. And that's what's interesting about these things, right. I mean, and I watched these sometimes, and people come on the shows and like they're talking about how they killed it, and they've murdered it, and they've destroyed it. And they've and what are all the buzzwords that you just get whatever here. And the truth is, you know, it's highlight reels, right? If you're not making mistakes, you're not working
hard enough. So it's like, if you gotta come on and talk about stuff, it's like, yeah, we we made a lot of mistakes. Yeah, and we fix them, and we figure them out, and you learn from them. And you can't keep doing it over and over again. But like with anything, if you're not acknowledging it, you know, cuz you see, look, if you take a clip of something like this, right, and it's all about, you know, you can make this you could do that or it although, again, highlight reel stuff.
Yeah, a lot of hard work to it. Right. And it's just the I'm a big fan of talking about what doesn't work. I know what works when you execute. When you run any restaurant, and you execute and you have great food, great people great culture. It's like, you know, you can't mess that up. Yeah. When you don't you have problems period, pick the wrong people have the wrong GM, you know, or are making making decisions very quickly. That's another thing that can really help. But yeah, it's not you
know, it's it. Look, if this was easy, everybody would do it. Right. Absolutely. Building a building. That was easy. Everybody would be developing a device prints, right? You know, because that's another one of our businesses that we do. It's not easy. It's not in crazy stuff happens all the time. But you have to do this for more than just the idea of like, running a brand and wanting to make money. You gotta want to have a different purpose to it.
So you want to see people succeed, you want to see their kids be happy, you want to see to have a better life, you want to give, you know, you want to have the dishwasher become a franchisee, right? Or go from making x to make it a lot more, we're living in a one. And we have we have we have, we have stories of people that were the cook, and now they run to locations and do great, right.
And that never would have happened if we weren't in that type of mindset of trying to be in a position to help folks.
I want to get into your passion in just a few minutes, Robert, but I'm going to, I want to take it back just a little bit because you talked about four other franchise groups that you guys are working on. And one of the things that I love that you said, and you didn't say this directly, but I'd love to have your thoughts on it. And then we can talk about these other brands is you guys know who you are. You know who you are, you know who you're not at famous grocery, you guys
figured it out? When somebody came in and said, Well, why don't you just get the hashbrowns out of a bag, or whatever it might be whatever product that might be, instead of doing what it is that you guys do, you guys, you guys were able to have a pretty clear decision that says no, this is not who we are, this is what we're going to stand for. And I
think that's important. Because if you're blowing with it with the wind, based on whatever the whim is, or whatever the suppliers doing, or whatever the latest greatest thing is that people are looking to do. There's opportunities for those to be really successful, but they're oftentimes not sustaining. And so I'd love for you to, I guess, go through a little bit of that, because I think it's important to
understand who you are. And and I'd love to then talk a little bit about why that's so important in franchising and and in the world in general.
Well, in in one word helps you make decisions, right? Decisions. That's the word. So if you have a standard and you know what you stand for, and you know what you're about. It makes life easy. If you don't, then you just you'll fall for anything out there, or there's always options. There's always something to do differently. And that's how people get into these rabbit holes of Yes, going down. You know, if you're in the breakfast business, all of a sudden, you're you're serving, you know,
pizza and chicken, tandoori. And it just doesn't make sense because someone thought it was a good idea. Yeah. It helps with clarity to like when you get people, especially with franchisees, if they're coming into like, Hey, I love the brand, I'm going for yours. But I really, you would really be better if you did X. That's not a good fit, because we're not now going to mend that. Right? And it also helps them know that maybe they need to be an entrepreneur in a way of starting their own place.
almost solely on the outside and he's say Joe's burger place or whatever. And that's why people do that. help them do that. I think it's I think it's something that's, that's a worthy cause if that's something they choose to do,
it's clarity, right? You've got to have the clarity on who you are like anything, right? If you don't know who you are. That's a problem. Right? And then you get a we're just going back and forth with the wind. Right. So we've been doing that since the day we started. And instead of sacrificing food wise, specifically we just tried to get even we try to dig in even more now the sacrifice you have to make gotta have a smaller menu gotta get those skews
smaller. You got to make sure you getting the right deals with your, your food purveyor, you got to work hard, right? It's like anything else. You can't just listen. Just go puff. Right? Yeah. Well, and you
gotta measure and I it reminds me of my daughter is in culinary school. I mean, she was in high school, but they have a culinary program at our high school, which is awesome.
And I love it, especially since when the restaurant business and they made her watch a few of the episodes of the History Channel's some show the food that built America, which if you haven't checked it out, it's a fun show, because it goes back to some of the original franchise groups McDonald's, Burger King and talks about the burger wars back in the 50s, or
whatever. And, and, you know, there's a there's a very true story that they talked about where Ray Kroc walks in, and he's selling tacos inside of his McDonald's and he's like, this is not who we are, we sell burgers. And I think it's, I think it's, it's true. It's
true. And it's important for people to understand that there are very few that can do it the way Cheesecake Factory does, where they've got 300 menu items, and they can make essentially anything to your point and and so with that, understanding that and then being able to scale it, how is that translated to FlowerPower
and cartridge world? I mean, you said you've learned a lot of these things and you want to take those into the world to help better people and I you've thrown in why you do what you do, and I'm gonna probably spend a good 10 or 15 minutes talking about that, but talking about cartridge world FlowerPower via like, what talk to me a little bit about how are these things translating because to an outsider, running a kid's cooking school and running a famous street like they don't
match or running a you know, roll away dumpster doesn't match with famous history, but obviously you guys have been able to both make them successful and it's been an important part of your one life brands growth.
Yeah, franchising? is all about support. Right. So we happen to own some corporate stores and some of these things. But it translates across the board, whether you're doing a math franchise, our kids franchise, a, you know, a steak franchise, it's about their buying the system that you've created are you've done really well, or you've, you found it, and you need to give them tools to execute. So we kind of, we've kind of got that down pat. So it doesn't really matter what you
do. Restaurants are not easy. I mean, there's a reason why, you know, a, for instance, a cartridge world may cost 55, to 70,000 to get in. And a famous toaster is going to be a lot more than that. Or even if even a flower herb wouldn't be as much as the famous grocery, but there's all we want to have, it's all levels that we can, we can actually add value to folks at all levels of investment. But it's the support side, and we you know, how you can bring
value to folks. By your experience, I mean that our team, like we have a an amazing team, there's anything we've been really good at is finding great talent, that run these brands, famous teleserye FlowerPower, via cartridge world, big burger spot. These are people who go to bed at night, we have to worry about anything, this is just on top of
me, these people are awesome. So you're getting an enormous amount of support, and we get to make a difference to them, right, we get to show them the path and be very honest, the same time. It's like, sometimes it's like, it ain't gonna work.
This isn't for you. Right? Yeah, if you're gonna be in the business of cartridge world, right, and we have the executive office model, you do not need to be having a retail location to buy a franchise, you can literally walk out of your home, very cheap to get in, etc. But if you're not, if you're not passionate about sales, then we cannot sign a franchise agreement. Like if you're like, hey, I really don't like making calls, I don't really don't like talking to folks, then this
isn't for you. Like we got to be very clear. But that's the value too. Because again, we don't need to take, you can never run a business, a franchise business when you have to do a franchise deal. We're gonna we've never been in that position. But I see a lot of that over the years. So you got to have a buttoned up. And for example, we bought Flower Power last year. And we've invested an enormous amount of money into rebranding
the whole thing. From from I mean, everything's redone, from the logo to the curriculum, we've brought in a chef, we brought in marketing folks, PR folks, a great president. So the value when someone buys something like this, they're getting so much value, that for me, that's what life's all about, like getting getting what you're paying for and more. Right? Yeah. And that's it also, that you learn a lot from other things that happen in other brands and other brands. Like when I first saw a car,
what not to do when you're watching other brands that are not succeeding?
Well, it's, it's, you know, you take somebody who's a franchisee of cartridge world, and you take someone's a franchisee of famous toast free. They're very, very, very, very different businesses, right? Yeah. But a lot of mechanics are the same. And you get to see problems that we wouldn't really see in famous history in another franchise, and then you but when you find these other weeks, there's always something weird going on.
Like, here's the deal, you're running a business no matter what business you're running, right? digital marketing agency, PR computers, tech, something goes wrong. People do dumb stuff. You make mistakes, that's okay. Right. But being able to see so many different lines of success or failure, or get to learn from for us, helps us accelerate the rants, if that makes sense. Yeah, like we don't waste time on certain things. Like, you know, what, I didn't
know about franchising? There are certain decisions, you're like, ah, that doesn't really matter. They're not really I know, they're not really, you know, they're opening late, they're closing early, we'll deal with it. No, this these are the hours this is what this is
what people expect. And it's not fair to the franchisee, you know, a half an hour away, if you're serving something else, or if you're not at the same standard, then that goes back to training and making sure you get in front of it and not being afraid of the consequences. Because you know, you don't want to be in position to say you're policing the brand. You want to be able to you're giving value to the brand because I always say to everybody, you pay a
royalty, right? Every week, every month, whatever the setup is, but that's the value like we're if we're not we're not creating the value that we need to know like you say I say to people, you pay us hold us accountable. There's something you need we're not doing we'll get we want to be all over it. Yeah, so I think it has to go but you know, got to do that both ways. But we lead with that I lead with you pay us every week. Yeah, which you you know, you deserve to get paid.
Well, and Robert, I'd love to talk a little bit about who you guys see as a customer because at times I find in the franchise business, the end consumer that's consuming the product they see as the only customer. And then I've seen the opposite, where the franchisee, because they're their money train at the franchise or side.
They're their customer. And I've seen brands struggle, and I guess I'd love to understand how you guys balanced that because the customer, the consumer of famous grocery, or the burger concept, or any of these things, ultimately is the one writing the check to the franchisee, and the franchisees write a check to
you guys once a week. And at the same time, you've got to manage the perception of the end user to your point, they don't open at 7am like they're supposed to because they can't get staffing or 6am. Or whatever the time is, you know, you've got to you've got to manage both that tension, how have you guys been able to manage that tension across the across the different franchise groups?
There's a very simple our customer is the franchisee, right? So if the franchisee is unhappy, the end user is not going to be happy if the if a store is not performing, because the franchisee isn't showing up or that we haven't, or we haven't done what we needed to do. That's, that's how we have to look at it. If a if a franchisee is following the system, we're providing also the value and we're making sure we're checking
on things. That's the customer to us now you would say well, so is the the person coming in and paying for the eggs? Yes, but before that we have to make sure that the person running it General Manager, franchisee that's, that's our customer. And those are the people we need to make up you can't have unhappy staff, unhappy staff equals unhappy people. Right? Yeah. And they're not going to go the extra mile, they're not going to make a great experience, they're not going to go out of their way
if they're not happy, right? Or they're not feeling supported. Yeah, that's that's very simple in our in our world it's we support our customers to franchisee
so that really goes into and I'd love for you to talk a little bit about because the first time the first time that we got on on the show, you blew me away with your
passion for people. Robert, at the end of the day, you're passionate to see people succeed to see people be able to you know, get off work and be able to go see their choir, you know, their kid in the choir, go get to a football game or, or really, you know that that that cook that that, you know, was there and he was working for a lower wage and now he owns a store? Where does that come
from? Talk to me a little bit about where that comes from and how it how it really permeates everything that you guys do at one life because it is something that's admirable. And I guess I want the world to know that that's something that you're passionate about you personally, as well as it permeates everything that you guys do there.
Right now, it's interesting, you know, I don't really think about that as much. But you know, when I look back from when I was younger, to where I am today, I shouldn't be here I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing. I don't have a college education wasn't good at school, I'm still not that great at spelling. And by pure grit, and just not like I didn't know how to do anything, I just went and did stuff. And I did well on things I did not good things.
But I had the I had the passion gets thrown around a lot, I was pretty obsessed with just finding something right. And I didn't really have the help I didn't have the mentor, I didn't have the the person that can help me along. So it's like you want to kind of pay that forward where you can create value for
folks that. Like, I try to look for things that I wish I had someone to pull me along, even if it's a someone in the store who's you know, looking to buy a business and I hear about it, I want to hey, let me let's talk for half an hour. Let me hear your plan, what do you want to do and, you know, etc, you want to know what it is you just you know, you want to pay it forward with doing, you know, being grateful for where you are being grateful for where you're not.
And you're one life you know, the ideas if the motto of one life friends is if not you then who? Yeah, so I love that guy someone else has taken if he's not going to be the CEO of someone who's going to be CEO, if you're not going to start that brand someone was going to start that brand you're not going to buy the franchise someone else could buy the franchise. So it's you know, it's you're gonna get one shot.
I mean, the truth is, there's a reason why we call it one life with a W and you want to win, you want to win at life, but the truth is, there ain't no do
overs. In one game is over game's over, we don't know when that's going to be and you want to you want to inspire folks to think that way and give the opportunity for that right so that's what kind of keeps you can't just be motivated by money because yeah, once you have some money and you know that okay, money doesn't buy you happiness, it helps you be less stressed in paying your electric bill. Right? It does not guarantee you happiness, it doesn't guarantee you love it doesn't guarantee
you many things right. But what it does do is it fills your your heart and your soul to be able to see people succeed, to be able to move them along in the right direction. lead them out of the path. This ain't for you, bro like this. This is not for you. You should get a job This is where you're going to, you know, lots of times, especially in franchising, people will have the money, they'll have the passion. And they'll be like, well, you know, I just want to
do this for my kid. Well, if your kid doesn't want to do it, bad idea, like you're not signing your deal, because you want your something for your kid. He's not motivated yet. Maybe he will be one day. But do you really want to spend all this money to do something for your kid? Yeah, yeah, you want to work somewhere else, right? So look, at the end of the day, you I feel to be fulfilled, you can't just be trying to chase
the next dollar, right? You got to plant your seed, you got to you know, raise your family, you got to build their legacy. Again, do the right thing. You know, I probably talked about this last time, my dad was a New York City fireman. And growing up, you know, all I heard was, you know, your dad's a great guy. You know, he's, he always did the right thing. You know? So the New York guys, right? Oh, in
New York accent? You've moved south. But but some of that came with? Yeah,
it sure does. And it always stuck with me. So what do you would do with deals, how you treat people how things go down, right? You know, life won't always be fair stuffs gonna happen. It's how you deal with how you treat people and how people treat you back. Right? Sometimes it's not gonna work out for you. But life is so much more than just running a business and collecting a fee. Right? Yeah, you wanna you want to be able to, you know, you want people to be like, This is
great. And we want to a, you know, one of the brands has a cartridge world, which has been around for a long time. Yeah. Right. And had it at a conference a couple months back. And, you know, it's been through a lot of stuff. And in, you know, six months time, we've done a lot of work, you know, we vote Well, you know, when I've been into it for a year yet. And we were expecting it to be a little funky at the conference.
And the truth is, because of the value that we've done in this short amount of time, and what we've been able, like what we we expect from ourselves much more than what people are expecting us to get. So because that's the mindset that we have, when we walk in, and we're expecting, oh, man, they're gonna be they're gonna need to get their many years of mistakes out on us, even though we didn't own
it. And it wasn't like that, because they saw that, wow, this is a great, you put a lot of time into the, into the conference, you great care fellows, the President did a great job and the team, Eric and Tina to put this thing together and really just create value, and people appreciate value, right? The end of the day, but it's also the mindset, you can't just be like, I'm going to buy the brand, I'm going to sell it, sell it, sell it and sell it to
private equity. Now, it's all very cute, but it just doesn't work that way, right? You have stores that don't make money, no one's buying your brand, right period. So there's a lot of buzz stuff out there, right like that. So you've got to have, you got to look at these brands that you'll like, as if you'll never sell them, and you'll have to have them forever. And how you treat people is also how you
exit a brand. Right? Yeah. So, you know, if you want to be in a position where one day, and I'm talking to people that have brands to exit, how you treat everyone is going to be the difference that people you know, don't like you to
figure out how to get into that deal or not.
I mean, it's look, it's the hospitality business, right, and restaurants, or anything, it's all about people. It's a people, business, people need people, even if you don't like people, you need people to pay the toll to check you out at at the store, everything can't be ordered online through Amazon, and you can't get a face.
Gotta pick the packages. Even with the robots, they're gonna figure out ways that they're gonna have people in the middle of it, whether it's producing the goods or services. It actually reminds me, Robert, when you talk about it to a book that was super formidable for me when I was a kid is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And it's like, begin with the end in mind. Begin with that end in mind that says, What do I want?
You know, and it might sound morbid, but like, I talked to my family about what I would want them to say about me if I were to pass away, and I hope that it's some of those same positive things like you talked about, because it's important to live your life and live with integrity in that way that that you're living towards that end in mind.
Well, mine was easy. I have mine right here. It says he was a putz. Have a good night? That was it. That's all I'm asking. You do. Let me know, I also have to have your own galley stuff to keep you you know, to keep you grounded. Because when you're doing lots of things, and you're trying to, you're going from different meetings, you're going from different concepts and different. You've got to find a way to show up for everybody. Right? Meaning for your kids and
you walk through that door. Like you can't be in that crazy mode of like, rah rah rah when you walk in, you've got to be in a different space, right? Yeah. Or you're not gonna be showing up
for your kids. And you've got to be grounded and be you know, spend the time in the morning and evening to, for whatever what people want to do, whether it's praying, whether it's just being grateful, taking 15 minutes out of the day to just breathe, right because you do wake up one day and you're much older and either successful or not successful, happy, not happy
and it goes like that. And that's why we're looking at I'm running a business, it's almost like you're running a life, and you're helping other people run their lives and you're, you're contributing to theirs. They're contributing to yours. And, again, it can't simply be, at least for me, like anybody, like, I'm just some people may look at this, look at this and be like, Wow, whatever Scott is talking about, but it's what gets me going, like if Yeah, you have to care, you have to care.
And it's not hard creating a brand that can do well. It's hard creating a brand that has the culture that wants everybody to do well. And like you said, We'll do well, when you're long out or, or if you owned it for 50 years and make it a legacy brand. Because franchising can be very, very, very hard. It can also be very, very easy. It's your choice.
Yeah. And I think you've given given our audience a huge swath of how you guys have done it successfully. And I am certain, based on this has now been the second time we've talked that, that if and when you leave a brand, there's gonna be people lining up to say, Thank you, Robert, for what you put together for to say thank you for helping them get to
their lifetime goals. And so if we've got audience members out there that want to learn more about how to engage with you how to engage with the team, how to learn more about how to get into this franchise world, or even just glean from what you guys have learned, because they're running a franchise group now. And they're like, I don't know, maybe Robert can help me out? What would how would they engage with you? How are they engaged
with the team? You know, what, what would you want our audience to be doing? If, if they're listening going, I want to be part of whatever Roberts got going on.
Yeah, but we have a website OneLife brands.com. And it gives a little bit of background on us and in our in our brands. And to engage in a we do start, acquire, invest in other brands as well. So that's how we found others, we don't really, we're not out promoting that as much because we're just running our brands. But when things come along, that make a lot of sense. We, we talk and we listen. And there's a lot of brands there that everything's growing,
everything's selling. Right now we're selling deals, and we're, you know, we have, again, the team is just so amazing. So if people want to talk to folks, you know, look, even if people wanted to reach out and said, hey, you know, I've just started my brand. I'm not really sure how I've done X, Y, and Z. We love talking. That's the paying it forward. Like I tried to take a day where I can talk to folks externally, where I can have those calls, whether it's once a month, or somebody can't do that
all the time. Yeah, but I wish I had that person, right that they said, Hey, don't go sell penny stock, not
skinned your knee, when you skinned your knee so many times back whatever was in 17, and 16. And such,
it happens and they'll look it's and you have to make mistakes to learn, because then you start to think you're invincible. Right? So if you're making mistakes, that's good, right? You can't keep making them. But yeah, that's the best. That's where to get get in touch with us. And look. It's funny when people say to me, you know, what do you have the passion for to do and the really is to grow brands, and to create value. I love the
restaurant business. I actually love the dumpster business, I love the kids, I love all this stuff. But it really gets to the end of the day. But it's the it's the it's the people business and being able to give them the opportunity and all the stuff that we've learned from because our team has been around. Like when you put all the people together, it's like, you know, hundreds of years, right of like experience. So it's like, we get to have those
conversations. And instead of ours taken five years to figure it out, we can figure it out much quicker. And you know, sometimes it doesn't, right? You just got to get in there and learn. But when you're in it, and you care, and you're creating value, you also get an enormous amount of opportunities that come along with it. Whether you're a franchisee locally, or you're doing what we're doing. I mean, even for us with stuff that we haven't spoken about. And I've told you about this
before. We're working with. We're opening a bunch of different restaurants with Chef David Burke, celebrity chef, that's yeah, you know, I haven't gone to his restaurants for many, many years before I knew him. Before we were doing deals together. And you know, that's a guy that went as some of the best restaurants I've ever been
to. Yeah, and treats his people great, knows people's names, loves his the people that work for him and the people coming, you know, in his restaurant, and I never thought I'd be doing deals with other people in restaurants. I think we have our own stuff. But it's you know, it's a blessing to be able to do that. And be able to create other chains and be able to create fine dining and make fast casual. Again, you do the right thing for people and it comes back to you.
And they see the world we feel it. They feel it in the food they feel it in the way that you treat them and, and I mean, at the end of the day, Robert I love I love talking about success stories, not not only of the people that we get to work with but but of the job that they've done to create a better world for the restaurants. I'm incredibly passionate about restaurants has been what I've done for 30 years of my life and I love seeing
restaurants succeed. I hate seeing restaurants struggle and part of where even the show came from was for that and so I appreciate the fact that you're willing to share Share that insight. Again. I know I know when when we started the show you guys have tons of choices as to how you guys can spend your time so I appreciate you guys spending time with Robert and I
on the show. If you haven't already subscribed go subscribe either on YouTube LinkedIn connect with restaurant technology guys Robert, thank you for coming on again you know maybe a year from now you have another eight brands you guys have bought and you can you can come on and and share some of those stories and to our listeners guys make it a great day.
Allison Thank you. Appreciate it man.
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