Raising Cane’s secret recipe for scaling, with CEO Todd Graves

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0:53 Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more. Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, We want you there with us too.

1:20 Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscom slash apply. Twenty six. I'm going to open my restaurant. I'm gonna do it.

1:40 I'll never give up. And when I tell myself that and it's a human condition, right? The subconscious believes what you tell it. And that's where I could get that fuel to keep working hard. Still does today too.

1:58 This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Herman, your host this week on the show, Todd Graves. Todd is the founder and co-CEO of Raising Cain's Chicken Fingers. He blitzscaled his fast food concept into a brand worth billions. And it's well known both for its deliciously simple menu and its refreshingly friendly staff. We talked about how he perfected the recipe for success, why he thinks should be wary of private equity, and much, much more. It is a tasty conversation. Stay tuned. Todd, welcome to Masters of Scale.

2:33 Thank you for having me here. I'm thrilled to have you. I discovered Raising Cains in I want to say twenty twenty. Yeah. And for my now sixteen year old and I it absolutely changed our chicken eating habits. So thank you. Uh fired up to talk to you and and get into the story. Let's start at the start. Where did the inspiration for Raising Kings come from? It really started when as a kid, and I was uh always entrepreneurial. I was the kid that did the the lemonade stands in the neighborhood and then, you know, cut people's grass for five dollars and just always thought around business. And when I started working, you know, high school years, I worked in the restaurant business and I did that'cause I I like to cook with my mother. Like food like was

3:17 You know, for me is expression of love. You know, spending time with my mother cooking Cajun food, like we'll say a gumbo, right? Or my grandmother made me a pie. And so I'm like, you know, my first job, go work in a restaurant. And I like the pace. I like the media of gratification of cooking something and then serving it to somebody and them being happy, right? And working with teams, things like that. So for me during college, you know, I was trying to consider what I was gonna do and that entrepreneurial streak, you know, s went back in me and I'm like, you know what, I wanna open a restaurant and I wanna open it when I get out of college. And I had no idea. how hard that would be at that point, but that was that was the dream. It was just a natural thing for me to go into to do the food business.

3:52 And when I was in college, and if you remember back in these days, this is ninety ninety four. Back then it was like ground meat was bad for you, beef was bad, and chicken and fish was good for you, but chicken became the number one protein. And I could see and I grew up Louisiana well fried chicken, right? But it's all bone fried chicken. And and during that time was college. People started eating the boneless chicken. Well there was chains like chilies having that sauce or it was going to mom and pop's and it's like man this is this is gonna be the next thing Yeah. So okay, so you're you're colleged in the nineties, you had this idea, start working on a business plan back then?

4:26 had a partner when I started the business and he had one more year of college and he enrolled in business classes. And uh we took a business planning class, couldn't actually go to the class, but I actually wrote that business plan with him for that class. And um man, he was good because I knew the business, right? I mean, he was a well done business plan uh that he presented, but it then ended up getting um the worst grade in the class. Why? What was the response? Actually I was really glad it was worse great, um, because it motivated me. But the professor said The plan's exceptional. I mean, I knew details. I knew exactly. I knew what our aprons would cost to get washed, right? And so because I was I worked in the business. Um but he said, you know, you didn't follow the concept and understand the industry and and at that point.

5:08 quick service restaurants like McDonald's is adding menu items. They're worried about a veto vote. One person in the car doesn't want something, you know, from that restaurant, then they're gonna go to another restaurant that has more variety. So they're adding variety and they're also adding healthy menu items. They're adding salad and wraps and things like that. So he said overall the plan was good, but you didn't hit what the industry's doing, so that's why I did it. And um You know, I was like, you know what? I'm use that as motivation because I knew that point you go to a place because it's cravable food.

5:38 And you're gonna go there and even though it has a hundred different menu items, you're gonna get what you really like. And I'm like being a execute. On one thing and do it better than anybody else. is gonna be a s recipe for success. And it ended up being there. Look, it's in an outburger's done it since 1948. And I didn't have that as a as a model then, but I just had that intuitive sense that Serving something cravable, people will come back for it.

6:02 We have so many entrepreneurs on masters of scale who hear a hundred no's before they get their first yes. Um the the first no sounds like it was a professor saying like this is the worst grade in the class for this reason. I appreciate the instinct was there. But to go launch a business takes more than instinct. There's a lot that goes into that. Where do you think that conviction came from not just to believe it and feel it, but to follow through on it? Yes, so I was like one of these nerds in college. I was part of the entrepreneurial club and would read business magazines, you know, reading the paper, and what I saw was a lot of people that had really good ideas that they were passionate about. never go and get it done because it's so hard to start a business, right? And so it's like

6:43 If I wanna do this, and this is my dream to go home restaurant, I gotta be committed. Like to success. Or eventually failure, whatever it is, but never stop till I get it done. Took that business plan to every bank in town, you know, bought a cheap suit and you know cheap briefcase and went in and presented the plan and no after no after no. They're nice enough, right? But then they also give me some advice like, hey, why don't you you don't have any money, why don't you you got a college degree, why don't you work in the industry for ten years and then you can do that. And whether we know, you know, it's the best thing for an entrepreneur.

7:14 to be told, hey, I don't think this is gonna work because it just you use that as fuel. You you want to g get a chip on your shoulder, you're like, I I believe this, I'm gonna do this. And you know, to back that up. You know, I I when I couldn't get any money, um, I'm like I'm gonna go work and and work as long as it takes for me to to to fund the restaurant myself. And so I got a job through a friend of a friend working in um as a bowler maker, which is turnaround shipworking refineries, one in El Segundo, uh and the other one in uh Torrance in LA. And that's when I came out to LA and worked hard. Ninety hour weeks, um, California you get some double time in there. It's it's a great way to make money if you wanna work hard.

7:52 And uh met met met a guy there interesting, named Wild Bill Tolar. Okay, Wild Bill. Everybody had nicknames there, and mine was Hollywood, which is a whole nother story, but Well Bill's like, Man, you're not you know, you're not uh afraid of hard work and I know you w you have this chicken finger dream. He's like you should Come with me, come up to Alaska and I'll introduce you sh show you around. And you can work the Alaskan fishing trade, catching Saka salmon, um with gil gill netting.

8:18 And uh he says, You'll get a job on a boat, you're determined. He's that's gonna make some real money. So now it's dangerous, the hours are incredibly hard, but you can make some good money. So sure enough, uh called a plane to Anchorage, flow plane to King Salmon, hitchhite to Natneck and Spent that summer commercial fishing in Alaska. So a guy named Hollywood, nickname Hollywood, goes up to Alaska to start doing commercial fishing, which um to say it's dangerous and to say that the hours are are tough and the working conditions are rough is is an understatement. I mean, this is one of the toughest jobs in the world. It is, yeah. How'd you manage it? You get about it. Four hours of sleep at night, and that's thirty minutes here, an hour here, twenty hour days just like working hard, hard manual labor. You know, boats are filling up with fish and captains don't want to go to the tender boat and you might sink and boats are ramming each other, National Geographic helicopters going over, uh medical VAC helicopters are going, it was this insane deal.

9:11 And I was just like, I'm doing this, I'm fueling my chicken finger dream. Nothing's gonna stop me, but that resolve. Having that resolve. going and then eventually opening up. And you were telling everyone your why. You were telling I'm here because I'm gonna make enough money to go open my restaurant. That's right. That's right. Wow. And do you think that there's something psychological when you say it out loud that commits yourself to it?

9:35 Is there a psychological insight there? It it it absolutely is for me. And so being able to say, I'm going to open my restaurant, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna I'm I'm not gonna stop until I do. Nothing's going to ever stop me for this. I'll never quit. I'll never give up. And when I tell myself that, and it's a human condition, right, the the subconscious believes what you tell it, right? And the blank brain believes it. And that's where I can get that fuel to keep working hard and to do it and still does today too, right? And so you know, you can choose your your you can choose your mood during the day. You get up in the morning and say, Hey, I'm gonna have a great day, or you can get up and go, My gosh, this is gonna be a tough day, right? And whatever you say is pretty much right. By the end of that Alaskan summer, how much had you saved up?

10:14 That point about maybe like Forty to sixty grand at that point, which was significant money and enough for me to to get the project rolling. And so and also this point too is I was able to get a small group of preferred uh investors. uh because they had seen, you know, it'd been you know, roughly two years to where when I opened it up, they were like, You know what, you are committed to this, you know, a little five thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars. Some of them bowler makers. Some of'em Laskin Fisher people, you know, s my bookie.

10:41 Who invested in cash, but it was a little five, ten thousand dollar increments and uh and then got a small SBA loan. And uh since I had that equity side of it, and I had to live off it too, because I had the money I made, I had to live off that we're paying ourselves like five bucks an hour or whatever we were doing. And it was able to open up. building um the the broker was a great guy, Red Reynolds and he said I believe he'd actually like told the landlord to Lou Larber, she was like ninety six years old. And said Todd will it was all kind of college concept that just was in a year, Al. He's like, he will make a long term thing that we can just wait for him. So let's just wait for it. But going in, I wanted to be prudent, right? And have a I didn't have a ton of money going in to renovate this place. So I just learned what to do, right? I learned how to do plumbing. I learned how to

11:25 do contracting work, things like that, and then bring in the experts when we really needed, you know, electrician, things I couldn't do, so figure that out. Same with going to the restaurant. I knew the restaurant business, but I've never gone out to hire people, never done these things before is so I'd learn it. Was there a piece of advice you got from someone who'd been there done that before that was particularly instrumental in this phase of of the process? You know, not at that point,'cause I to be honest with you, I had a lot of bad examples. So when you know, working in restaurants, you know, high school and college, the restaurant business was It was more militant. It was do this, do that. No music going in the kitchens there wasn't a semblance of having fun or teamwork. It was you know, it was the yes chef type of deal. And so I knew what I didn't want, you know what I mean? I I I I knew I wanted I wanted people to wear

12:12 casual uniforms, just a raising king shirt, jeans, short, whatever. I wanted people to listen to music. I wanted them to have fun, but taking pride while they worked and did those things. So those types of things help me on doing that. So like a lot of these restauranturs were just Just not. Good people.

12:29 people. There were good culture people. So But the National Restaurant Association gave us a lot of good things on like actually the formats on how to do things, how to do templates for scheduling and things like that. And then I reached out to the restaurant tours I did respect in Baton Rouge and be like, Hey man, how are you getting good people and what are some incentives you go into it? Um My wife who I started dating uh back then was a McDonalds franchisee. So we spent a lot of our time just talking about, you know, how do you motivate the crew, how do you salt your fries, things like that. Was there a point where there was an there was an inflection where you said, Oh, we we've got this. We we we we really have this right now. Luckily we made money from the first month, right? Let's say thirty bucks, then we started doing well. And actually we had so much success.

13:09 That I opened my second location eighteen months later, got a full SBA loan, eighteen months on that, and construction from the ground up. on this building. And so I was always fortunate that we're making money and doing it. So I never had the it's not gonna work moment. I had the look, I'm just hoping I keep this energy going, because I was working nonstop and doing it and doing that, and I I need to get other people to come help me and do this. But the the thing that was the inflection point when it worked.

13:33 I thought this was just a college concept, right? Open my first location on one side of campus, the second on the other side. But that other location had traffic flow of not just students, right? And so now I'm having mom and dad pick up food on the way home from a work. I got T ball teams on Saturday, uh church groups on Sunday, and you know, business people come in for lunch. Then I'm like, Wait a minute, this isn't just college concept. I think this can work and that's when I got the bug, man. I was like I'm enjoying this. I'm figuring things out. I'm enjoying having teams. build and I'm enjoying this man. I'm like, I want to go. I love serving customers. And I was able to start doing a few things in the LSU community.

14:09 And I got that bug, man. I wanted to grow. And I never thought that would be that. But that point I was like, and that's where the vision was from that point was like As many rays and cane as I can do. in the world. That's what I want to do. I know you have eskewed a franchise model, I'm keen to hear about that theory of growth and scale. maybe we can enter some of that through how do you come into a community and really get to know it's you're serving their needs and not serving your own objectives first.

14:34 For us it's hiring local people. And so hiring local leaders and being there. Now we send our crews to go help get this, you know, established, bring in the cultural things, the training and things like that, but hiring local leaders and people that are intrinsically motivated and meaning you know they want to take care of the crew and they want to create great opportunities for them and they want to give back to the community. And it's actually seen you can see it all the time in the restaurant business. is and most restaurant business chains are into doing community things. You can tell the ones that are into it and the ones that are not into it. You can tell the ones that are into their crew are really not into the crew. Why didn't you go the franchise route as you look to start scaling outside of either side of the LC point? When I s when I started, I I did start with franchisees, and my idea was gonna be that I'd be mostly company, maybe six percent company. and about forty percent franchised, right? And that was going with strong restaurant operators that have the same intrinsic values.

15:27 crew people community and those sorts of things. And we did well with them. They were great franchisees and they cared. They just didn't operate as well as us. And so let's say we're rated our company wrestle as ninety five hundred. They run it like eighty five out of a hundred, which is really good because most franchises are sixty five out of a hundred, I would say. That Five, ten percent.

15:47 difference drove me crazy, you know, and um it's also the efficiency. So with working with those franchisees. It's their business and they care about it. But like maybe we have a new training program, a way to get faster and drive through things. It was such a talk into certain things. No, we like to do it this way and did a da that I spent more time on convincing versus moving forward on things that I knew that worked, right? But for me it's a it's an expression of my family, you know what I mean? We want to do a good job and do that. So we bought them back. They're happy to and I'm like a hundred percent Company restaurant operations. How many restaurants now? We're al almost at a thousand right now.

16:21 We're in an era where Whether it's private equity or it is You know, simply like uh squeezing out every last penny to achieve the best returns for that quarter and uh and appease the market or appease investors. And there are a lot of companies, a lot of companies that are doing this to the detriment of the well being of their team members or their crew members. Um you've taken a bit of a different approach. Can you can you just talk a little bit about

16:46 how you've approached building a team at a thousand and and growing number of locations around the world. But I want to be the brand known for not as cravable chicken finger meals, great crew, cool culture, active community involvement, right? Guides everything I do. And it's timeless. It's it's like Those are the basics, right? If you want a great crew, you treat your crew right. You know, you do those things. And you have the culture, you power the people that can seem like that culture, which is a culture of appreciation. So for me is look, I feel like God made me good at chicken fingers to help people. It's my purpose, right? So I have purpose. It's why I continue to grow this. And if you have that purpose, then you're gonna take care of your crew, you're gonna take care of your communities, you're gonna do that. And if you if you can't execute on that, then you're not executed on vision. Then the whole idea's over. I try to talk these uh business founders into not selling the private equity is and look, they're not all bad. And so I'm not talking about all but a lot of them are. And and look, if you have

17:41 investors, if you have shareholders that their concern is what financial return I'm gonna get. Then things go bad because people are not they're caught in that deal. If you're if you're if you're private equity and you need to be out of this deal in three to five years, that's your goal. When you've out and sold major money, there's still people that are running these restaurants whose lives are just as important as yours, their families are just as important. And now you're gone, and the next people come in, might come down and hack it down again, and it's it's you just see when it happens, you know. And so there's a few out there.

18:12 that I've seen in our space, restaurant space, that that do a good job and they take care of the people, most of the time these other ones don't because it's not what they're talking about in the boardroom, right? So let me give you one example. So you know different CFO types and different people and different advice. So something as simple as this if you're sitting in a boardroom and you're talking about CFOs and they're like, here's these fifteen things I can cut. to to make it cheaper, right? I mean to make us more profitable. the music system we have. It's number one top music system has all these choices. This one we can say we can do half that amount for the music system and it has the basics. And the reason why the crew members love it is they have the newest music and they can jam where they go and they're happier and they're doing the deal. Now they don't have that music. They're listening to music they don't like. Their attitude goes down, they're not quite as happy, customer service not as good, speed goes down, all those little cuts, like those fifteen things go, right? We can get our sauce made at a commissary. Commissary keeps up calling, we can save fifty percent, but another slash, you know, it's death by a thousand cuts in that deal.

19:11 It happens over and over again. Most of the time that's what happens. Yeah. Go ahead, more with Todd Graves on whether he's ever tempted to expand his menu. Why he brought in a ko s much more. The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world.

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21:23 Yeah. Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and much more on our YouTube channel, and be sure to check out the link in the show notes to subscribe to our newsletter. You all are known for your marketing. It's it's exceptional. The product is phenomenal. Uh uh my the my youngest and I especially are are massive fans of the product. Um uh in this world of um you know we we're deluged with marketing messages nonstop. Um

21:51 H how are you generating the ideas and having the courage of conviction to to go after non obvious plays that that that actually break through? So starting off being an entrepreneur, another great thing is you learn marketing and you learn it how you get great impressions, cost per impression, right?'Cause it's like you don't have the money to do it. So I just started doing. The LSU radio, you know, and getting them to do that. But I'd meet the DJs and be like, bring'em food and they talk about and got it good in with them. And then when I was able to afford, you know

22:20 Billboards, T V things like that added. So in my business, quick service restaurants, uh, you have to be top of mind, right? You need to see the billboard on the way to lunch because at lunch everybody says, Hey, what do we want today? Oh, canes, right? It's that it's that speaking it. Like I'm speaking it here on the radio or see the television night for so that's a really important part of the deal, right? But there's so many of those messages in that. So for me, it's being literally in the moment when something is gonna happen, we may be a part of it, right? So Cynthia Rebo, she At the Oscars going for the triple, she goes to Kane's afterwards. She wins, she goes there, she gets this amazing shot, and she's a Kanyak and she's a friend, right? She gets that shot, right? It's like after the Super Bowl, it's gonna be out on the quarterback from either team with the winning team, but doing it immediately after, like doing Saquon two days after the Super Bowl last year, uh going and do it. It's it's timely. I like tapping into celebrities fan bases, right? And so obvious that's an obvious thing, and then customers comes loyal because hey, Saquon loves it, right? And he's friends with Todd.

23:18 But having that And Real time. is to me so important when it's the top of people's minds, right? And it's in the press and it's going and doing it. So it is anything. You can be creative, right? So fashion week and teams like, what my idea teams like, hey, let's do a Kane's fashion show. We're not taking stuff seriously, but we like this design or we can do Kane sauceress and dah da. And we did it, you know.

23:41 the day before, like Wednesday or Thursday cranked up and we had all the press came because it was something different, right? And so we were also part of that and hit a different group, hit the fashion world group and and got that different dealers. So for me it is like if I think about doing my job For my crew. Right. It's like how do I get them more sales and we stay relevant and and do things because it means their bonuses and what people can make and you know, all that good stuff that goes with that. So I just push myself constantly to do that. So I run our marketing Marketing for a founder, obviously is a very personal thing. Um, it's also it's a slippery slope being top of mind all the time and doing so much. Because you can

24:17 s flip and not be cool, right? You could pick the wrong person, you know, it's you know, somebody that Might not be a genuine Kaniac. It might be somebody that later gets in trouble for things. So it's it's that deal. It just takes quite a bit to do it. But the activations are great. Well celebrity's so often misused and it does strike me that the celebrities you work with truly are Keniacs. I mean they they they love the you can feel that from them.

24:42 It's fun. It's it's not so serious. It's a good time, right? S working at at at a drive thru, like Who doesn't want to h the hang out with that? Yeah. That's a that's a good time. It isn't people want to see their heroes doing something like that, work a drive through. It's just the humanization of it. And then like just someone like Snoop's so funny with doing it, and he's just so clever, and the and the the the crew loves it, the the customers love it. It's a really fun way. So uh actually Snoop's the one that I broke into doing the celebrity drive thru with, and uh you know, we we help each other business, we've been friends for a long time. And he literally called, hey man, what can we do? What what do you want to do that's going on? I said, Where are you? He's I'm about to be in Little Rock and do a show. I was like, Man, you know what? I've been wanting to do someone in the drive thru. If you do it, I know I can get everybody after it. And he's like, What are you talking about? I was like, just

25:23 Go in and work canes, man, and put f secret cameras out. He had a blast doing it and after he did it. As I will say hey. With different you know, different people. I'm like, hey, Snoop did it, you gotta do it now. But you you hit on a really good point is the whole um being a brand and bastard, they have to be Kaniacs. And so it starts with that. And uh you know, I think a lot of brands do it really, really well. Some don't though. They end up getting somebody then you you can see through people have so much messages now, marketing messages, they can see through things that aren't genuine in two seconds. You know, it's like Then it's then it hurts the brand, right?

25:55 I wanna go back to the professor who gave the business plan to B minus, um, because the the other um element here beyond customers seeking, you know, a range of options and what have you, um, uh is supply chain risk, right? I mean, you know, God forbid, Knockwood, we are, you know, one bad bird flew away from from a really bad quarter or year for for you and for your customers. Um how do you think about managing for that kind of risk when you've got such a limited menu? Yeah, so for me, well one's just redundancy within the products you have, right? It was takeout burflu, anything like that, was just you know, look at it. So it's you know use most of the the poultry providers. They're about to do it, right? Like fries. We get fries made to our specs by several different fries companies. Like in the beginning When I couldn't get that.

26:40 Redundancy. Look, if they had a fire at the plant and couldn't give me potatoes, I'd have to change the product that I was doing, I can still get fries and then do that. So it's redundancy in all our suppliers. Plus in case they're very honest, we have good really good vendor partners. So it's not that they don't, but it's, you know, good competition, healthy competition is always a good thing. So as far as like protein, let's say a burr flu and that sort of thing, chicken is a extraordinarily resilient protein. The poultry houses or on and stay up up to date and do it. I just don't see that there'd be, you know, something that would go in with the first bird flu would happen in China, I think um KFC cells went down maybe twenty percent for a period of time. um and then bounce right back and was studying those different things is so for me is you have, you know, we do fresh chicken, but we have frozen supply to get us through any kind of

27:25 outbreaks. So we still have that going. So long term on a frozen supply on that dealers. But ultimately if people just stop eating chicken, then I'd be extinct. I would absolutely be extinct. I wouldn't start serving steak fingers or something like that. I'd go look it's time for me to hang this up. Yeah. But I think we're at low risk there. I love the simplicity of your menu. I have to imagine that certainly outsiders have advised to to diversify the menu. Have you has there been a point where you've really questioned this and thought about adding a new item that goes beyond your core? You know, I think it's a

27:55 Thank God that I'm just hard headed, you know what I mean? And not listening. So from the get go, I just do this product, this, you know. serving that one thing, right? If you if you try to be all things to all people, you're not serving any of them well, right? And so doing one thing. And so If you lake down our concept It's crable foods, sort of with fast food speed and convenience, right? So if you have to do it fast, food, speed, and convenience.

28:20 Then you gotta be fast. And if you want to serve crable food, you have to do it homemade style and do that. So it comes down to the simplest procedure to get that food through. Right. And so I can do it all basically scratch cooking because I have just that many. outside that it's the customers coming in. And the customers come to the or window. I mean look. They don't look at them anymore. They pull up the speaker, I'll take a box combo, no slal, extra toast, da da da. Everybody's got their order.

28:48 It doesn't take extra time to do it, right? So people like Man, you know you know, Texas gotta add barbecue sauce, cream gravy. I'm like I hear you. But it would come up to the window and they go, Ah, you know what, I I don't know if I want that cream gravy or I want that. Like you're getting cane sauce. You're gonna like it. You know, and you're gonna do that. And you train people to go not on those extra choices.

29:08 If if you had spicy, you know, people like you should do hot chicken and That deal is. Once again, it would be slower from the cooking procedure because we don't hold food. So how much are you gonna estimate for each one of those type of orders? Then they're gonna come up and go, Ah, you know what, I'm gonna change that to spicy, even at the window, you know, come up and do that stuff. All those seconds matter. So I knew the concept, but uh yeah, I've got had quite a few uh suggestions, not as many now. Not as many now, but even when we went to the Middle East, we kept the product exactly the same. We kept the same thing. And there was a lot of talk there about there's another sauce they had there. It's like a mayo base and garlic and all this stuff. It's the most popular sauce. I'm like

29:42 They will come to love cane sauce. And we gotta stick to our guns. And sure enough, they love cane sauce as much as that other sauce I got. Because it's awesome. You are now shark tank famous. Um not pitched your business there, but having having the the role of a shark. How do you think for you as a CEO about your personal brand and and and how that helps build the business globally? So I I grew up seeing Dave Thomas on the commercials for Wendy's and for me

30:12 It was like wow, there's really a person, it's not a corporation and that guy cares about the quality of the food and that guy's making the decisions. So from Young had seen that. So right now it's it's even more important because there's a lack of founders in the restaurant space and that's because they sell the private equity. And so it is something different. So I believe that when people see hey This guy and his family care about quality, they care about food safety, they care about those things. It just gives me an another advantage over other competitors that just don't have that.

30:40 Yeah. Strikes me you seem to really enjoy doing it also. I do, I do. It's just something when you're c when you're when you're happy about and do it. And I can actually do it okay. A little bit of acting but like it it's I get to have fun with people like um You know, Peter Billingsley, you know, and the you know, the Ralphie and like to get to actually do a commercial with him and he wrote'em and all that stuff. It back could actually be a little bit of that part of that deal was really fun. Like I'm acting with Peter Billingsley, you know, one of my heroes. And same with everybody else and that doing stuff with Snoop Dogg. And actually having him do that. It's like fun. It's like when I did um Arch Manning and Us Meyer, but like Cooper Manning wrote the scripts, you know, and he's like, Todd, you're gonna do this. And I'm and Archie's one of my heroes. It's a blast. And For me is I do take off time. So it's not like I don't have fun and do things like that, but for me it's like work productivity. So I can actually go goof off doing that and have fun. And I know it's productive, so I can spend half a day with Kirk Curb Street shooting commercials with our dogs because I'm like, I don't feel guilty about like

31:36 I should be answering those questions, you know. I should be in a meeting right now. So your original co founder left, but eventually brought in a a co CEO to the business. Can you share what happened there? When I was thinking about my skill sets, right. And good operator, good marketer. Okay IT, okay finance when I say okay, just barely okay, a lot of the components supply chain that you hit on that's so important.

32:00 And so I'm like talking to the business people and I'm like, I want to bring in a co CEO. And um They're like don't do it. co-CEOs, who do they answer to, who's in charge, and then that sort of thing is. And they're like, why do you want to do that? And I'm like, I want somebody that has like the title of co-CEO, that they know that I trust them to handle all these things and and to supplement the things that I'm not good at, but to work together as a team. Right. And so my co-CEO

32:28 You know, AJ's been with me for ten years. He is better at me than all those components that went, including operations, right? But I know the fundamentals that had to build all those things up. where I can add value, operations, I can still add good value. I don't have to worry about finance and banking and supply chain. I get the right when I test products and make sure everybody staying up there, but I can spend very little time on that where I can spend it on operations, crew resources, right? Culture, that's going well, and the marketing end of it. And AJ has the pride that I'm co CEO with Todd. Right. Like I'm not Some people call it president, I mean EVPs and all those different things. It's like when it comes down to it, Todd and I may we have to build make the decisions of the for the company and he's intrinsically motivated because he's there. So for the model for me works because we're symbiotic is the it's the respect out of it. My goal is to eventually

33:16 When AJ is at the right time to become CEO, full CEO. to where when I'm when I'm chairman uh you know I'm chairman now, but but I'm so much in the weed. Sometimes I d I won't look at globally what the business is doing to add value everywhere, right? Sometimes it gets whack-a-mole. For me, and I think I'll be even better at chairman, not not in the details less, but be more global on what's constantly going on. bringing that to the team, looking at it. I'll have more time to get some other advice, right, from other people more than I do now, uh and things like that. So but uh the co CEO is a it it's been a great model for me.

33:51 As we sit here in the first quarter of twenty twenty six, um, uh there is not a company in the world that isn't thinking about artificial intelligence. Um, how are you approaching the integration of new technologies into the business? Yeah, so for us, um one is just starting on, you know, how do we get information quicker and get it compiled quicker and doing it and also thinking and saying, Hey, look, I I could I could have chat GBT that myself. You know what I mean? Like let's use that stuff and we'll use it to make our decisions, but we're doing that to get better decisions and done.

34:23 We use it right now too as like it's prediction for the future, right? So right now we use all the technology can the drivers, right? Handhelds, great systems, if all this stuff to go faster is what's coming up of robotics, how quickly is it gonna come up? And so I wanna keep the human touch as we go, but I do believe, you know, someday you will have all ro uh you know, robot restaurants. uh serving food, doing it, and I'm gonna use that as a competitive advantage. So one, my a lot of my competitors and and I'm I would never mention any, but Not the friendliest crew, right? Not the best experienced when you go there,'cause they're not being treated right, by the way. Uh it's really not their fault. It's no intrigue to right. But in the future, when you have robots doing that, robots can be friendly every time. So, right, she could look at this from Keynes going, Oh man, we're gonna lose that. friendliness component with my our crew, that could be an advantage. But no, I think people can go

35:09 Hey look, there's a real person back in that kitchen cooking. There's a real person at the counter doing it, so I'm not planning to crew members with uh with robots. It'll be a while, if ever.

35:20 Exactly, huh? We're in a moment that is incredibly exciting and also daunting for young people as they are coming out of college or otherwise entering the workforce. If there's a twenty-one year old soon to be Georgia graduate who bumps into you uh and says, you know, what's one piece of advice? What what should I be thinking about? What should I take away from a conversation with you? What are you telling? You have to be good.

35:47 at what you're doing, right? I was good at the restaurant business. I couldn't have been professional quarterback and things like that. So that was not my dream to do that, but I knew I was good at the restaurant. But whatever you want to go into, be good at it. And make sure you're passionate about it. Then It's gonna be so hard you can't even believe it's gonna go. So be committed to do it. then go in and when you start business or whatever your field you go into, treat people well. Maybe treat people well, then things will always do well. And I think this generation has Even more opportunity.

36:16 than we've had in recent years because If you're a go getter, I think some points, you know, uh I love the younger generation, but sometimes in some areas people getting more soft, you know, and and think of different things. The old work ethic, you know, we had to work, you know, there's like you had to do these things is for people that want to go out there and get after it, I think they're gonna just smoke it and people will Follow good leaders, being aggressive. For what you want to do.

36:40 working hard, doing those great values while you're taking care of people and doing those things. I think I think that's a great opportunity for young ones out there right now. I tell my kids right now too, my kids um one's my daughter graduated two years ago from LSU. She works in the business. My son's graduating uh from SMU this year. He did business for to understand the coming to the business. I'm like, You can come in immediately and start adding value, right? And come in and and like Go for it. place to wrap. Thanks for being with us. I appreciate it. Enjoy the conversation. Thank you. Thanks again to Todd Graves for joining us. Todd's tenacity is inspiring. His story is a testament to what's possible if you live by your principles, take care of your people, and stay incredibly focused on your goals.

37:26 It also doesn't hurt if your signature dipping sauce is darn delicious. Every drop is worth a dime, Todd. Take my money, please. You already have. I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening. Masters of Scale is a Wait What original. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our senior producer is Trisha Bobida. Associate producer is Masha Makatanina. Senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern.

38:07 Mixing and Mastering by Aaron Bastanelli and Brian Pew. Original music by Ryan Holliday. Our head of podcasts is Letal Mulad. Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode, and to subscribe to our newsletter. And please make sure. To check out our YouTube channel.

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