Restaurant Leadership Podcast: Overcome Burnout, Embrace Freedom, and Drive Growth

61: How to Scale a Local Restaurant Chain

• Christin Marvin

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What happens when a local breakfast spot in Bisbee, Arizona, transforms into a thriving chain of ten locations?

Join us with Terry Kite and Sean Stone of Bisbee Breakfast Club as we explore their inspiring journey from a single eatery to a beloved regional staple. Terry’s family gave the business a fresh start in 2010, not anticipating expansion, but a stroke of fate and a touch of ambition led them beyond their initial vision. Sean’s arrival as director of operations sparked a pivotal change, bringing in foundational systems and a focus on cultural development that fueled their success. Together, their camaraderie and humor shine as they share the challenges and triumphs of growing a restaurant business.

Throughout the episode, Terry and Sean offer a behind-the-scenes look at the complexities of scaling a restaurant chain, revealing their strategies for maintaining consistency and integrating a strong cultural identity. Discover their ventures beyond the breakfast table, including a coffee roaster, a chili water product, and a collaboration with a local hot sauce maker. They also candidly discuss future expansion plans and the indispensable role of staff development in scaling successfully. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a foodie, or someone keen on leadership dynamics, this lively conversation is packed with insights that might just spark your own business aspirations.

Resources:
The Hospitality Leader's Roadmap: Move from Ordinary to Extraordinary
Bisbee Breakfast Club
Local First Arizona
Good Food Expo
Chocolate 66

More from Christin:

Grab your free copy of my audiobook, The Hospitality Leader's Roadmap: Move from Ordinary to Extraordinary at christinmarvin.com/audio

Curious about one-on-one coaching or leadership workshops? Click this link to schedule a 15 minute strategy session.

Podcast Production: https://www.lconnorvoice.com/

Christin Marvin:

Are you ready to take your leadership from ordinary to extraordinary? If so, I have the perfect resource for you. My new book, the Hospitality Leader's Roadmap Move from Ordinary to Extraordinary is now available on Amazon in ebook, paperback and audiobook formats. This book shares over 30 leadership lessons I've learned in my 20 years in ebook, paperback and audiobook formats. This book shares over 30 leadership lessons I've learned in my 20 years in the industry, starting as a line cook and working my way up to managing partner. It also includes six special episodes of my podcast to dive deeper into key leadership topics. Grab your copy on Amazon and don't forget to leave a review so others can learn from your takeaways. Thanks so much.

Christin Marvin:

Welcome to the no Hesitations podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics and habits from the world's greatest operators. I'm your host, Christin Marvin, with Solutions by Christin. I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant owners to develop their leaders and scale their businesses without wasting time and energy, so they can achieve work-life balance and make more money. You can now engage with me on the show and share topics you'd like to hear about, leadership lessons you want to learn and any feedback that you have. Simply click the link at the top of the show notes and I'll give you a shout out on a future episode. Thanks so much for listening and I look forward to connecting.

Christin Marvin:

All right, everybody. Welcome to this very special episode of the no Hesitations podcast. I am your host, Christin Marvin. We are at the Local First Arizona Good Food Expo today 80 vendors locally, very, very exciting event. This is in Tucson today and I have the honor of interviewing the owner and director of operations from Bisbee Breakfast Club. Please welcome Terry Kyte and Sean Stone to the show today. Hi guys, how are you?

Terry Kyte:

Hello, good afternoon.

Christin Marvin:

If we're lucky, they might sing some songs for us towards the end. They're also going to know a ton of people here at the expo today, so this is going to be a good time.

Sean Stone:

All right, should we open up the phone lines?

Christin Marvin:

We're taking calls. Caller. Yes, please, and request and dedication.

Sean Stone:

We also need everybody in the room to shut up. It's really loud in here. It's very loud. The place is packed to the gills.

Christin Marvin:

It's packed and the door's just open. We're just getting started here, so very excited today to talk about the story of Bisbee Breakfast Club. We're going to talk about Ombre Coffee, their coffee business, too, on the side, and some of the local products that they're using, that they're seeing here at the expo. So, Terry, why don't we start? Would you introduce yourself? And then, Sean, would you introduce yourself too and tell us a little bit about what you do with the company?

Sean Stone:

Sure, my name's Terry Kyte, I'm the owner-operator of Bisbee Breakfast Club and Sean Stone here is director of operations of Bisbee Breakfast Club.

Christin Marvin:

So now we know Terry can't follow directions.

Sean Stone:

Oh, I'm supposed to let him introduce himself. Apologies.

Christin Marvin:

It's all good. I'm understanding how your management style is now.

Terry Kyte:

Hi, I'm Sean Stone. I work for Terry. You can tell that now I love it.

Christin Marvin:

I love it. We had some good camaraderie before the show, so this is going to be a lot of fun. So let's talk a little bit about Bisbee Breakfast Club. So you have 10 locations now.

Sean Stone:

That's correct, Kristen.

Christin Marvin:

Take us back to 2005, where this all started. So I've been to Bisbee once. It's a tiny, tiny town. Is that where Bisbee Breakfast Club started?

Sean Stone:

Yeah, the original location opened in 2005 in Bisbee Arizona. I myself was nowhere near Bisbee at the time. I was out of state, so in my wild oats. So in 2005, it was opened by a Bisbee couple named Pat and Heather and they started it and ran it for about five, six years and it came across my family's radar in 2010, 2011. We actually bought that location from them December of 2010, something like that. So it was started. We didn't start it, but we purchased the original location back about 14 years ago or whatever it is.

Christin Marvin:

So when you purchased Bisbee Breakfast Club, did you have a vision of growing it to 10 plus locations?

Sean Stone:

No.

Christin Marvin:

How did that come to be?

Sean Stone:

I can safely say that we probably didn't know what we had on our hands pretty early on. My family has been in restaurants for forever and my dad, my, my brother and a couple other partners uh had a breakfast concept already that they had been running um, and so it just came across our desk as this sort of interesting little place down in bisbee. We thought we knew how to do breakfast, so we uh, they took it over. This was before I was involved, and it turned out to be quite a special idea. Welcome, hi, everybody.

Christin Marvin:

This is Pablo Valencia coming up to the table Amazing private chef. He's been on the show too. Check out his episode.

Sean Stone:

So when we purchased it it was doing well, it was very popular, it was profitable and all that. I don't believe there were any plans to expand it outside of bisbee that I know of when it was originally purchased and that only changed when I moved back to tucson, uh, and couldn't find a job. Nobody would hire me and I reluctantly decided to get back into the family restaurant business and that was around the same time and we said, oh, we got this other thing going on. Maybe we try one of these outside at bisbee. That's crazy, it seems weird, but we'll try it. So yeah, it was a lark, maybe something like that what brought about the change besides you?

Christin Marvin:

the stormy cloud coming into the company? What brought about the change to really start to grow this thing?

Sean Stone:

it.

Sean Stone:

Uh, sean I would say sean brought about the change because I was very, very green when we first started that second location.

Sean Stone:

Um, you know, I went down to bisbee and lived there for quite a while and tried to get a sense of the place and learned that you should refrigerate food and that hot food should be hot, etc. I was kind of thrown into it and I ran that one location on Ina Road in Tucson that was the second one outside of Bisbee for four or five years until it sort of took off at a certain point. It took a few years, that first one outside of Bisbee, but it finally took off and sort of proved itself to be a viable concept outside of Bisbee. And that's when we only then, 2015, did we start discussing ideas of possibly opening more and we quickly opened two more locations in 2016 in Tucson. One was open in Mesa in the meantime, which my older brother runs that location. We opened up two locations in Tucson in 2016 within six months of each other, and about then I was treading water in way over my head, so we called in the big guns and that's when Sean came into the picture.

Christin Marvin:

So Sean entered the company in 2016 when two new locations had just opened. You said six weeks, within six weeks of each other, or six months, six months. Okay, still, that's pretty fast. Sean, when you came in, what were your first observations of the company?

Terry Kyte:

It was a shit show. A shit show. It was missing some stuff. Structurally. It had all the core parts and I knew that who Terry was was good.

Sean Stone:

I knew that food needed to be refrigerated.

Terry Kyte:

You did. You did. That's a start. That was true. It was being refrigerated and hot food was hot. It was being refrigerated and hot food was hot, but I helped bring in some systems, solidify recipes, and so I jumped in at second store opening and was there for that location when third store opened in Tucson. I was part of the entire process of that and continue to grow from there.

Terry Kyte:

Where did you learn how to implement systems? So I'm a pretty structured individual. I think I've always been that way and I like taking on more than I can chew. So I think for me it was an exciting opportunity to be able to help grow something and I knew that I would do well with it because it felt just right. As far as coming up with the systems themselves, by working in corporate restaurants I understood what would work and also what wouldn't work, and I could implement the good parts and maybe not take the corporate assholey parts and incorporate that.

Christin Marvin:

What were some of the systems that you saw that needed to be implemented? Created and implemented when you first came into the business.

Terry Kyte:

So, as an example, say, one of the sauces had like 15 ingredients and uh, so when I went to their recipe book it had nine of the ingredients written down uh nap described the recipe book, the original bisbee recipe book, which was in diary form yes, yellow pages.

Terry Kyte:

It was handwritten like a journal, okay and the nine ingredients were handwritten with a photocopy of a napkin that had add-on ingredients with no directions on how to go from point A to point B to C. To end result it worked. It worked. We got it done as long as you knew what you were doing. But to scale it, you couldn't do that version, couldn't do that version. So I helped create a recipe book that actually made sense for somebody who you could hire that had no knowledge and could actually do it.

Christin Marvin:

It sounded like you saw an opportunity to create a lot of systems and implement a lot of great change. How did you prioritize which ones you wanted to work on first?

Sean Stone:

That is a great question. These are all great questions. I'm interested to hear the answer Me too. What was the question?

Christin Marvin:

Hi everybody, we're taking a quick break to offer you an exciting opportunity. If you're a restaurant owner or manager looking to enhance your leadership skills, I invite you to join my 12-day leadership challenge. In just 12 days, you'll receive a guided packet with actionable strategies to transform your leadership in less than five minutes a day. Join the challenge and the community and grab your copy at kristenmarvincom. Slash 12 days. Now let's get back to the show.

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Christin Marvin:

How did he prioritize what systems needed to be created?

Sean Stone:

How did you prioritize your systems, Sean?

Terry Kyte:

Well, sir, let me just tell you I started it with people, so my primary focus was to understand how Terry operates and how Terry thinks. So then I would understand what to prioritize. First, I needed to make sure that there was recipes in place, knowing that a new store was coming and that was going to be a challenge. But things like cooling log and temp log and a sanitation checklist and those things came much further down the road once I knew that the core components, structurally, were there. So I had to just get people to go all right, well, we're going to wear gloves and we're going to wash our hands and we're going to consistently do those things. So then it made sense to go with everything else.

Christin Marvin:

Did you find that, because of those handwritten recipes and all the alterations, that the food at all the locations was wildly inconsistent?

Terry Kyte:

No, because they were only open with the second store for maybe a month and a half before I came on board. So the people from the second store had worked in the first store in Tucson and actually one of them had worked down in Bisbee, also at the second store. So they had some knowledge already of stuff that I just didn't have knowledge of.

Christin Marvin:

Terry.

Sean Stone:

Yes Kristen.

Christin Marvin:

What was the point Just making sure you're still here? What was the point when you decided you needed some help? You wanted to bring somebody like Sean on, and what was your approach when you hired him? Did you let him do whatever he wanted to do?

Sean Stone:

That's a great question. I'm glad you asked it. I knew that we were going to need some help. A fellow Tucson original restaurant member advised me that two locations because we only had two at the time there's one in Bisbee, one in Phoenix, but we're in just charge of operations for the Tucson location. So two locations is hard, one location is really tough. I know that Two locations is very, very hard and three locations is slightly easier because by that time hopefully you have people like Sean helping you out. So at two locations it was pretty clear that I would need help. We would all need help. So I reached out to a friend of a friend and said Do you know anybody with experience who can deal with me at the same time as helping to grow, which we had plans to do? So I got hooked up that way. And what was the second part of the question?

Christin Marvin:

Yeah, I mean, what was your approach when Sean came in? Did you just really empower him and say come in, show me or tell me all the things?

Sean Stone:

that you're finding and then roll with it. I would say he's pretty well empowered. I came in and said help and he immediately jumped into action. He needs very little direction for better or worse, probably, depending on who you ask but he's very proactive, very hands-on. He knew what to do. Yeah, he saw the issues like he's describing today and jumped in and, yeah, jumped right in and figured it out. I gave him very little direction. I had very little to teach him, if anything.

Christin Marvin:

Did you guys have a lot of conversations when you were starting to grow Bisbee around culture and community and what that meant to you?

Sean Stone:

Yeah, somewhere down the road we had to have that conversation, but early on it was staunch, the bleeding type of a situation.

Christin Marvin:

And how did Sean fit into the company from a cultural standpoint?

Sean Stone:

Sean, how did you fit in? Hi guys, we're doing great. Thank you for stopping by. You're with Fast Prince USA. Yes, do you have anything I can have from you. Can I have any of your stuff? Of course, that's awesome. I'm Terry. This is Sean. We're from Bisbee Breakfast Club. This is Kristen. It's her podcast.

Terry Kyte:

Oh, congratulations. Are you guys doing it live right now?

Sean Stone:

We are doing it live right now.

Christin Marvin:

Do you?

Sean Stone:

have. Are you a shop beer company?

Christin Marvin:

Fast Prince is featured on the podcast right now, can I have one of those things?

Sean Stone:

That's great, can't have one, thank you Cool. Thank you, I'm going to come visit you guys.

Christin Marvin:

Terry knows how to advocate for himself. I'm understanding that right now.

Sean Stone:

Thank you very much, fastprinceusacom. Yes, com. Okay, cool, all right, we'll send you an invoice.

Christin Marvin:

When you tell Terry that he can't have something, he just doubles down. That's what I've just learned about Terry. Always, always always he said can I have that? She hesitated, he said I can't have that and then just kind of took it out of her hand that was awesome.

Sean Stone:

So when did we have the culture conversation? That came later, I guess, after we had three locations in Tucson for a number of years, and by that year or so in when did we start thinking seriously about culture With a K, with a C?

Terry Kyte:

C this time.

Sean Stone:

With a C okay.

Terry Kyte:

I would say culture was probably predominant for me, way before it was for Terry, because, as Terry described, he didn't know what he didn't know, and so it's a learning curve.

Terry Kyte:

I would say I was the culture up until a certain point and that only lasts for so long 100% true, and I think that was a huge part of understanding the culture. It meant that I had to understand how Terry thought, what was important for him, what were his factors of trigger and also what wasn't. So then I understood how to direct accordingly. Fortunately, I think I'm fairly good at reading people, and that is uh because I wasn't just going to tell you no, you weren't.

Terry Kyte:

I had to kind of read between the lines a lot of times in order to figure that out, but once I started it out, the culture piece just became very easy conversation because I had a basic understanding of it.

Sean Stone:

How are our ratings right now? Can you see how we're doing?

Christin Marvin:

Number one Do we?

Sean Stone:

need to pump up the energy Number one, do you?

Christin Marvin:

want to yell at somebody from across the room? Do you want to ask for something else that you can't have, like somebody's banner or something?

Sean Stone:

There's a lot of great stuff in here. There's some bottles. Come on down, guys. We're here till 4 pm. El Conquistador.

Christin Marvin:

This was the hotel actually. My husband and I were on vacation in the pool here in February staring at blue skies and palm trees, and I looked at him and said would you consider moving? And he said what the fuck are you talking about? And he said where I said here he goes. What? So anyway, this is Elkin Keystore's fault that we're here, so it's a beautiful property, and how does he feel about it now? Love it. Best decision we've ever made. He's from here. He knew.

Sean Stone:

Oh, he's from here.

Christin Marvin:

Yeah, happy to be back okay so let's talk a little bit about scalability and local ingredients. Did you have a lot of local ingredients with the first couple locations?

Sean Stone:

yes, uh, my memory is not that great, but yeah, we actually, early on we were buying coffee all the way from bisbee. There's a great coffee roaster in bisbee, there's a a couple of them. But we were buying from Bisbee Coffee Company for a number of years early on, before I got into coffee myself, and they would ship it up. What else would we use locally from Bisbee? We were getting local tortillas for as long as we could, and that was a little bit easier with one or two locations. But as soon as, like you're implying, as soon as you get into larger scales, it gets a little tougher and some of the local folks struggle sometimes, I think, to meet the demand that we've asked of them. We've come across that issue a number of times dealing with local vendors, smaller scale vendors. What was the question?

Christin Marvin:

Yeah, no, that's great. I'm curious, like, as you started to scale, what were some of the pain points that you saw with working with local vendors?

Sean Stone:

Tortillas have been a struggle over all the years. There's a lot of great tortillas made in Tucson, there's some crummy tortillas that are available and we can certainly get crummy tortillas any day of the week delivered to our doorstep.

Terry Kyte:

but we tortillas have been tough for some reason or another right yeah, tortillas have been tough, uh, due to humidity and due to the way that they're produced. In order to make a fresh tortilla, you're making it in an environment that needs the moisture, but to package that and then go through the quantity that we go through becomes a challenge, and so that it's been a an experience to have to sort through that and then figure out, okay, how do we navigate to find the right product that's still locally arizona local but can handle the abuse that we're gonna or the volume that we go through.

Sean Stone:

And we early on also. We're always deriving our inspiration from Bisbee and I just remembered early on what's up. Oh man, I just did the what's up Early on. I remember we did a fish fry on Friday nights and I would drive down to Bisbee once or twice a week to buy Dave's electric beer so that we could do which was a Bisbee beer, so that we could do the beer batter with Bisbee beer and we called it the electric fish fry. So that was tasty, it was good.

Christin Marvin:

Nice, let's talk about how Ombre came to be.

Sean Stone:

Yeah, we were buying coffee from Bisbee Coffee Company and the coffee was great and it was probably just initially a cost-saving measure. You're always reevaluating where you're getting stuff from and if there's a smarter way to do it. And just Googling or looking on the interwebs or whatever, we sort of realized, oh, some people roast their own coffee. And I'd been down to Bisbee Coffee Company down in Bisbee and seen how they do it. I said, well, geez, we got a bunch of breakfast restaurants. Maybe it would be smart to look into doing it ourselves. And then I sort of went down the rabbit hole and got pretty obsessed with coffee and we bought a commercial roaster, started up a sister company and now we roast a lot of coffee lot of commercial roasters, started up a sister company and now we roast a lot of coffee.

Christin Marvin:

Did you start roasting with the intention of just supplying the bisbys and supporting the growth and selling to other businesses in town and nationally?

Sean Stone:

originally the intention was just to supply our own restaurants, and even now that's our focus. We do have some outside wholesale accounts, but it's very limited. We don't necessarily go out of our way to advertise ourselves as such. We are distributed through Merit Foods, who's also here, so you can buy ombre coffee through Merit Foods. But our focus is I mean, we have our hands full with our own restaurants. I guess is what it comes down to. So, short of hiring a coffee Sean stone to grow that side of it, we're just sort of happy where we're at.

Christin Marvin:

What were some of the challenges that you encountered opening the coffee roaster?

Sean Stone:

That's a great question. I'm glad you asked it. Struggles Space when to roast the coffee, because the commercial roaster is it's a big guy, um, and we originally had it in the back of our ina bisbee breakfast club location and it was taking up a lot of space. We would roast there once a week at night, um, which was not fun for the person roasting uh sort of overnight who is roasting?

Sean Stone:

it was me in the early days and we were roasting for probably 10 restaurants at night at a breakfast restaurant in the very back and storing the unroasted coffee was tough and us being in the way of the restaurant operations in the back was tough. So we were there for maybe two, two or three years until we finally decided to jump, make the leap and we purchased a building specifically for roasting coffee and that allows us a lot more working space and storage of green coffee, which is pretty key because now we can order multiple pallets of green coffee at a time, and which helps save money and it's just a lot, makes a lot more sense. Much better systems now.

Christin Marvin:

Ombre was one of the first coffee shops I visited and I'm going to say I'm sorry I wasn't targeting Ombre. I was going to Barrio Bread and we happened to grab an espresso to wait in line.

Sean Stone:

That's the only reason we're there. We're riding on Don's coattails.

Christin Marvin:

Because Barrio Bread's right next door and so that was one of the first places we came in town. But I will say it was. It is some of the most delicious coffee I've had. I was absolutely blown away by the quality.

Sean Stone:

Thank you.

Christin Marvin:

Yeah, would you go through this process again of creating a side business with another product that would benefit your restaurant costs?

Sean Stone:

Yeah, I'd probably do that too much. We have several. It seems like a bunch of other side projects going on at the same time. We also make a product out of Bisbee that's called. It was originally out of Bisbee called Agua Chiltepin. It's a chili water using the Chiltepin chili that's native to the Sonoran Desert and we came by that by luck. We found it at the Merritt Food Show and it's a great product and it was going to be stopped. Manufacturing was ceased so we decided we didn't want manufacturing of that product ceased, so we purchased that product and now we make it. And what else? The hot sauce. We partnered with Jabari, which is a local hot sauce maker here in Tucson, and we sort of collabed. Is that the right way, collabed?

Christin Marvin:

I think that's what the kids say today.

Sean Stone:

On a Bisbee Breakfast Club branded hot sauce. So we have our own hot sauce and we've got just a bunch of other things, stuff to keep me busy.

Christin Marvin:

Sean, I have a feeling Terry's always coming up with ideas. Do you have to tell him to slow the fuck down or, are you like, bring it on? Let's continue to incorporate all these products into the restaurants.

Terry Kyte:

I say bring it on, let's continue to incorporate all these products into the restaurants. I say, bring it on and keep it exciting. It's constantly moving and growing and evolving and I appreciate that. So sometimes it gets dropped and we're like, oh, we need to start this tomorrow, okay. So sometimes there's some structural things that could be improved upon. Hey, so sometimes there's some structural things that could be improved upon. But outside of that, I actually enjoy having the constant movement of let's try this, let's do this, because I think that's where growth happens.

Christin Marvin:

Absolutely. So sounds like, Terry, we need to work on some communication skills with you. I don't know what you're talking about.

Sean Stone:

He's just not listening. That's completely ridiculous and unfounded.

Christin Marvin:

And Sean's real good at getting uncomfortable and finding growth on the other side. I love it. So what's next for you guys?

Sean Stone:

We're going to open more restaurants. Busby Breakfast Club restaurants.

Christin Marvin:

Okay, you're going to stay in Arizona.

Sean Stone:

Where do you want us to go? We'll go where you want us.

Christin Marvin:

Wow, I don't know Colorado. It's very expensive to do business there. Minimum wage is $18. Tip credit, obviously, is a little bit lower, but a lot of independent restaurant owners are moving out of Denver because it's so expensive to operate there. Texas is a good market.

Sean Stone:

Yeah, and they're moving here.

Christin Marvin:

They are those motherfuckers. Okay, so you're opening more restaurants, Sean? What are some of the systems that still need to be put into place in order to continue to scale?

Terry Kyte:

I think that there's operationally, there's continuing growth of the people in order to be able to have scalability possible, so I need to have kitchen managers and GM-ready individuals at all times for new locations and constantly growing myself and growing the GMs that I currently have. To be ready for more, I think that's first and primary. Be ready for more, I think that's first and primary. I would say, continuing the relationships with different vendors and different manufacturers on distribution to be able to help us scale and hopefully, just like with Jabari coming up with the collab, finding new ways to be able to elevate who we are differently than all the other breakfast, lunch or dining segment as a whole.

Christin Marvin:

Yeah, terry, if somebody gave you tens of millions of dollars, what one major thing would you change or innovate about the business?

Sean Stone:

Oh, do I have to invest it in the business? Is that what you're saying?

Christin Marvin:

Yeah.

Sean Stone:

I can't just abscond.

Christin Marvin:

No.

Terry Kyte:

How much?

Christin Marvin:

How much did you?

Terry Kyte:

say let's say $50 million $50 fucking million, Terry. What would you do with it? I'm swearing a lot.

Christin Marvin:

Oh, I'm sorry, it's okay, I checked the explicit box.

Sean Stone:

That. What would you do with it Swearing a lot? Oh, I'm sorry, it's okay. I checked the explicit box. That's a hard question. What would we do if we had so much money? We would open a bunch of restaurants real fast.

Christin Marvin:

You would. You'd invest in more locations.

Sean Stone:

Yeah, what else would we do with it?

Christin Marvin:

Okay.

Sean Stone:

Yeah, I think that's. I mean, yeah, we're, I guess, married to the brick and mortar. I think we're married to full service at this point. We're open to other concepts. I mean all my partners and Sean and everybody Bisbee Breakfast Club is the thing but we're open to other concepts and other partnerships and stuff and if something else comes along then we're all ears. So, other than building more Bisbee Breakfast Clubs, there could be some opportunities in partnering with other folks on other concepts and growing that route. What do you think?

Terry Kyte:

Yeah, I agree Wholeheartedly.

Christin Marvin:

I love it All right. Well, thank you two. So much for coming on. This has been a blast. Appreciate you being at the Expo.

Sean Stone:

Thanks for having us, absolutely. Where do we go to the website wwwnohesitationscom? Is that right?

Christin Marvin:

Oh, I think we're going to plug your restaurant. Nohesitationspodcastcom.

Sean Stone:

But if they're listening to this, they have already found it, so that doesn't make any sense.

Christin Marvin:

But go visit Bisbee Breakfast Clubs and own my coffee.

Sean Stone:

Go to wwwbisbeebreakfastclubcom.

Christin Marvin:

Awesome. Thank you guys so much. We'll talk to you soon, thank you.

Christin Marvin:

Thank you guys so much. We'll talk to way in supporting the show. If you've been loving the content I'm providing, please take a moment to leave a rating and review. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, Not only does it make my day, but it also plays a pivotal role in helping the show grow. Your reviews boost my visibility, attract new listeners and encourage exciting guests to join me on the mic. So if you want to be part of my show's growth journey, hit that review button and let me know what you think. Thanks a million for being awesome listeners. All right, Kimberly Briggs. We are back at the Good Food Expo today and my next guest is the amazing Kimberly Briggs. I'm going to have her introduce herself and talk a little bit about her company and then we're going to hear her amazing story. Kimberly, welcome to the show.

Speaker 5:

Hi, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here, absolutely, so tell us about your company. So my chocolate company is Chocolate 66. I'm a local chocolatier and confectioner, which is different than a chocolate maker. I just want to say that right away. A chocolate maker, you might have heard the expression bean to bar, which is just that they work with the cocoa, the cacao bean, and then they grind it and conch it and add sugar and various flavors and then they create their product. Me, I'm a chocolatier and a confectioner, so I start with an already made chocolate product. I use a beautiful milk chocolate from Belgium, a Calabo chocolate, and I also work with a dark chocolate that's dairy-free, 100% dairy-free, and vegan. Not all dark chocolates are the same. They're not all dairy-free, so you kind of have to have an eye for that, for allergens or preference or whatever. So, yeah, chocolate 66. I work with those products. I fashion, dare I say, beautiful bars. They are beautiful.

Christin Marvin:

Thank you. I can attest to that. They're delicious.

Speaker 5:

I have 23 different kinds, now that I made.

Christin Marvin:

Amazing.

Speaker 5:

The whole list. Yeah, thank you.

Christin Marvin:

Where did 66 come from?

Speaker 5:

Oh funny, you should ask. So it's a nod to Route 66, right, albeit, not traveling through Tucson but through Arizona, right. And it has a secret meaning. I hail from Wisconsin, that's where my roots are, and it was my father's favorite Green Bay Packer player, and I'll give you a chocolate bar if you can tell me who that was Ray Nitschke.

Christin Marvin:

I love it. Where did this passion for confection come from?

Speaker 5:

Oh well, um, I'm currently a nurse, but my prior life I was a chef, and before that, um, well, back up to my teenage years, which was like 40 years ago, when I was 16, my mother, in her infinite wisdom, uh, signed me up to keep me busy, right, because teenagers need to be busy, to keep them out of trouble. And she signed me up with the nuns to learn hands, polygraphy with the quill. She signed me up for language camps in the northern part of Minnesota where I learned French and I studied Chinese, and she signed me up for a chocolate class, and that started the whole thing. So I've been doing it for 40 years, unofficially, so wow, that's awesome.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, do you still speak French and Chinese? Just enough to get in trouble? Yeah, I love that.

Christin Marvin:

So the chocolate business stuck, yeah, and how long have you had your?

Speaker 5:

business now Officially since 2022. Yeah, awesome. And what's your dream? Oh, that's a great question. So I'm stair-stepping things. I tend to do it that way. My ultimate dream is to have a brick and mortar chocolate cafe, like a little bistro or bistro. Where do you want to have your cafe? I want to have it in marana. I live up there, um, and it's growing. It's kind of booming right. So I want to be hooked into my community where I live. That's what I wrote. It's all about connection for me. You know, originally, you know, my idea was connecting through chocolate and while that's a great tagline, I decided my new tagline is life can be hard, chocolate is easy. Life can be hard, chocolate is easy. But anyway, getting back to connection and community, I want to have my business there in Marana so that I get to know the community and the people and have classes and mommy and me spots and chocolate classes for kids and adolescents, just like I had. Right, that kept me busy.

Christin Marvin:

So yeah, I love it. And where can people find your product now?

Speaker 5:

So I'm currently in three locations wholesale. I'm downtown at le macaron, on congress, next to the hub, I am at gallery of food bodega and tohono chul gift shop. Just picked me up. What other locations would you like?

Speaker 5:

to be in you know, I'd really like to be in floral shops as well. I'm here at the Good Food Forum, you know, and there's a lot of activity, you can hear it, a lot of buzz. There's a woman that just opened a charcuterie business and so she wants to have my product there and that's kind of fun. And in Chandler there's a woman that has a little gift shop, and so there's just all kinds of businesses I didn't necessarily think of but that are approaching me and so as I sift through them later after this event I'm excited about that. City of Tucson is having their visitors thing up by the Presidio. Wants to have my thing. So that's exciting.

Speaker 5:

I love it, it's just wonderful, there's so much talent in this room and opportunity.

Christin Marvin:

Well, Tucson supports Tucson. I mean it's great, it's wonderful and you are building community through chocolate, which is just beautiful yeah.

Speaker 5:

One chocolate at a time. I love it. Um, how can people get ahold of you? How can they get ahold of me so they can find me on Instagram? It's all one word chocolate 66 Tucson. Um, I'm not very great at Instagram, so forgive me, um, and also, my email is on there chocolate66tucson at gmailcom. But yeah, that's the best way. Direct messaging DM.

Christin Marvin:

I love it. And then any upcoming events or anything that you want to plug.

Speaker 5:

Yep, I'll be at. Let's see. Now we're in September, end of October, beginning of November, I'll be at Tohono Chul with their Day of the Dead Festival, chili and Chocolate Day of the Dead Festival. So that's the big one.

Kimberly Briggs:

That's kind of on my radar right now. Awesome, All right, Kimberly. Thank you so much.

Christin Marvin:

Thank you for having me. I appreciate you and thank you for joining us at the Good Food Expo today. I have to give a special shout out to El Conner Voice for helping me produce not only the show today, but every episode on the no Hesitations podcast. Please share this with any other listeners in the hospitality space that you think would benefit. Thanks so much. We'll talk to you next week.

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