How the Right Oven Solves Your Labor Problem | George Clark, Edge Ovens

New episode this week on the Pizza King Podcast. George Clark drives the Edge Ovens test truck across the country — Maine to Miami, Seattle to San Diego — baking real pizza in real shops to prove one thing: a conveyor oven can absolutely make a great pie.

In this operator-to-operator conversation, George breaks down why heat is the most important ingredient (and why he can dial a pizza in by the second bake), how a deck oven leaves your quality "up to an opinion" while a conveyor delivers the same perfect pie every time, and how consistency quietly solves your biggest labor headache. He also makes the case that the pizza business is far from dead — the closures were COVID oversaturation, and the hustlers are thriving — plus portion-control money-savers and catering hacks that once pulled in $6,900 before the doors even opened.

George is Director of Market Development for Edge Ovens, a company founded by pizza operators who started out rebuilding ovens in 1999.

👉 Subscribe for weekly conversations with pizzeria operators: https://www.youtube.com/@PizzaKingPodcast?sub_confirmation=1

🎧 LISTEN EVERYWHERE Apple Podcasts • Spotify • YouTube — search "Pizza King Podcast"

— OUR SPONSORS

🔥 EDGE OVENS — This episode is powered by Edge Ovens. George brings the test truck to your shop and bakes your own dough, sauce, cheese, and toppings through the oven so you can see the quality before you commit. Book a test bake at https://www.edgeovens.com/test-bake, and follow #wheresgeorgetoday to see where he's headed next.

📬 MAILWISE SOLUTIONS — Thanks to Mailwise Solutions, direct mail that actually works for pizzerias, with no contracts. Menus, postcards, table toppers, and full mailing services. Pizza King listeners get $150 off. Visit mailwisesolutions.com or call (859) 341-3400.

George rolls up in the EDGE test truck and invites you to step inside, where you’ll bake your own pizzas in our oven—using your dough, your toppings, your process. It’s the simplest way to experience firsthand why EDGE powers some of the best-performing pizza kitchens in the world, and why our bake is widely regarded as market-leading. 

https://www.edgeovens.com/test-bake

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_04 1:11

That's the bad thing about a deck oven, is you're leaving your product quality and integrity up to an opinion. And I can tell you right now, there's a hundred of us in a room. That's a hundred different opinions of what's done, what's burnt. You cannot get that consistent. I don't care what anybody tells you, you cannot get that perfect consistency out of a deck oven. You just can't. There's gonna be too many variables.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

What do we call you? Because all I'm just jealous.

SPEAKER_04 1:50

Director of Market Development.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Director of Market Development for Edge Pizza Ovens. Yeah. I mean, title aside, you got the best job in the world.

SPEAKER_04 2:01

I I drive around the country and bake pizza. I mean, how does it get better than that?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

You have the best job. My wife's like, I'm like, she's like, how are you doing? Like, if I was any better, I'd be George Clark. That's what I'm thinking. That's who I go to sleep with and I was I could just wake up, wake up, George.

SPEAKER_04 2:20

Just jump in a truck and take off the back pizza.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

We see you everywhere now since you, first of all, congratulations on on uh making the move over to Edge and working with those guys.

SPEAKER_04 2:32

Yeah, it's been a been a blessing for sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Yeah. What's been the biggest thing that you've seen as far as because you, I mean, you've been in the in the game, you've been dealing with um it, you've been selling equipment for a while, but now that you're you know on the conveyor side, what are you seeing as different?

SPEAKER_04 2:49

You know, it's the the misconception of a conveyor oven. People that think that you can't get a quality pizza, you can't get a New York style, or you can't get a New Haven style. I mean, there is I don't think I think the only one that I've really not tried to get, and I've got some tools on the truck that I can do now. I've actually got dough in my freezer that I'm gonna start working with is Neapolitan style. And I think that's just about directing heat some different direct angles.

unknown 3:19

Right.

SPEAKER_04 3:19

But other than that, I mean, there's been no pizza that I can't nail.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Because it uh it's gotta help that you got a ton of pizza experience yourself. So you walk into a shop, they can they can put down all the skepticism.

SPEAKER_04 3:32

Absolutely. I mean, you know, coming from an owner's standpoint, again, I go back to the day we talked about this on a previous podcast. I I was the Marsaw die that you could never switch. I was like, it's it's part of who I am. You can't, you can't switch me, you can't change me. And it's sort of what intrigued me, and it's kind of one of my strengths is so, you know, comparing, you know, going to a shop that's got a middleby XLT or a Lincoln and doing a test bait with them, pretty easy for me to figure out. Because I can go in there, look at the oven, and say, okay, here's where the finger pattern is. But going, I like that challenge of going from a deck oven, somebody telling me that I can't get that same bottom, I can't get that same cook through, I can't get that same taste in a conveyor oven created a challenge for me, you know, eight, nine years ago whenever I started doing this. And I took it upon myself to make that a personal mission to get to switch B.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

So you had to prove it to yourself that it can be done.

SPEAKER_04 4:32

I had to prove it to myself that it can be done. And once I proved that, it was it was it was game on. And that's where I've had my most success, honestly, is these people, these old school people that can't find help, that just want consistency. And I always say this, this is uh one of my favorite lines that I use. Are you here to make money? Are you here to are you here to do a certain amount of pizza? So if somebody looks at you and says, I want to do 300 pizzas an hour, you can't do that in that company.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

It's just it's it's it's impossible.

SPEAKER_04 5:06

It's impossible unless you've got like 20 of them sitting there. I mean, it's just it's impossible to do. Can I do it on my conveyor oven all day long? Never misses a beat, never changes temperature, nothing changes. As long as somebody is there to catch it, that's all I need.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

What like legitimately, what's the the most amount of production the conveyor can do?

SPEAKER_04 5:27

So there is one shop that I know of in Torrell. You'll you'll you'll laugh about this. Because I challenged the guy. I looked at him. So thirty, if you look at, depending on the size, our 3870 model is the highest volume oven that we make. It'll do. I've got people who's got that thing doing 200 pizzas per hour per deck, and this guy's one of them.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:50

He uh I said, there's no way you can back up a triple stack. It's just impossible. You can't do it. You can't back wow. On a Friday night, he sent me a picture of two speed racks full of pizzas waiting to go in. Ovens full, all three ovens full, two speed racks waiting to go in. And I don't care to drop his name, Pizza Crossing up in up in Luman, Ohio. I I just could not believe the volume that is was going out of that little shop.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 6:18

But I mean, he that is the only time that I can truly say that I've been backed up. I've got I've got a guy in San Antonio who's got six 4460s, which is the big 44-inch wide ones.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Right.

SPEAKER_04 6:31

He's doing 66-inch pizzas, so he has to have that big of an oven.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

66?

SPEAKER_04 6:35

Yeah, 44 is his regular large. 66 is an extra large.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

And y'all make an oven that can cook, that can bake that. Yeah, he's in one pass.

SPEAKER_04 6:43

Half of it at a time and then pieces it together when it comes out.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Okay. What?

SPEAKER_03 6:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

I would love a pizza that I only got to sell five of them a day and then make my rent.

SPEAKER_03 6:55

But no kidding.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Dang, 66 inch? That's got to be a $150, $200 pizza.

SPEAKER_04 7:01

Yeah, I did one Friday. I did one this past Friday, I did one up in uh up close to Evansville, Indiana. Place has been around for 51 years. They do a 30-inch pizza. And we cooked it on the truck. It was a pretty cool, it was a pretty cool. I got a video of it. It was pretty cool watching that thing go through. And it, even on that 3240 model, which is our kind of, I call it, I call the 3240 the beginner model and one in the conveyor oven. It's for that guy that's going to do pretty consistent business. It's going to crank out about 50, 55 pizzas per hour per deck. Give you a good solid cook. Just a good solid oven.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

It's an entry model.

SPEAKER_04 7:42

It's an entry model. Well, there's there's smaller models, but it's kind of your entry model. It's kind of the one that introduces you. It's the one compares with the old Lincoln 1450s and 1000s, if you've ever seen those old Lincolns that that are pieced together by nut tape now. This is the exact footprint model with it. It actually is the same footprint of a 1600 model. So it was a thinner model that could be triple stacked. So so that you know, and to give you the history behind the boys at A Edge, I always love their history. This is what this is what sold me on this company. And the reason I wanted, I mean, it was the thing I wanted to go to work for them. I had multiple job offers from different dealers, different oven manufacturers. And these are the guys that I wanted to work for. Number one reason was that they are phenomenal human beings. Like they are just salt of the earth good people. If you made either one of them out in the street, you would not think that they own the third largest, second largest oven company in America. You would not know these guys from that. Okay. When they started out, they were uh and this is kind of a point that I always like to push across with us at Edge. We are all just pizza operators. We're all pizza shop operators. Mike was a pizza shop operator, Mark was a pizza shop operator, I was. So, you know, Mark or Mike over in England, our other sales rep, he's over, lives over in London, England, covers the worldwide sales. We were all pizza shop operators. It's the background that we come from. So, Mike and Mark, how they got started was they had two stores called Pepper's Pizza up in up in by West Virginia. And they were rebuilding, they had gone to a pizza hut and bought an old set of the uh bloggett ovens and was rebuilding them to open their third location. And a guy came up and offered to buy the ovens they were rebuilding, and that started their company. So they started out as a remanufacturer of ovens in 1999. So they would buy all Lincoln's, Middleby's, whatever they could find. Refurbish them. Refurbish them, put them out, and always tell the story of when that's still a good business too today. Yeah, well, but you know what? When can you look at the price though, Trail? Like you, a price of a new one of my ovens, you can't rebuild one for the price of that.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Well, I guess that's true.

SPEAKER_04 10:00

So that's kind of why it started. So the rebuild refurbishing side has kind of gone down because why would you get a refurbished if you can get a brand new one?

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Why are they charging so much? Because I still see them, which makes me think, because you know, I still I got a deck sitting on top of my, what do I have a 3270?

SPEAKER_03 10:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

And I got that deck sitting there, and I keep thinking, like, man, I can get some good money for this deck.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

If the right with the right buyers.

SPEAKER_04 10:25

There was a guy that I just sold. He he sold a set of Baker's Prides that were not, that were not in great shape. Like it was cooking 15-minute pizzas. And he just switched, a guy had been there for 60 years and switched to conveyors because it was believe it or not, so the the dad, this is a son and a dad, the dad was all, you know, the older guy was all about going to the conveyor. The son was like, son's already. He's like, No, we're not gonna go. And the first pizza came out, he's like, can you make that just a little bit lighter? That's too crisp. And I said, sure, I can get that done.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

How long does it take for you to really dial a pizza in on one of these test bags?

SPEAKER_04 11:04

Yeah, and you there's a lot of people on here that know me, so this is no lie. Usually by the second pizza, I've got it.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Second pizza, and is it is it more understanding what's going in? Because I I think when we talked before, you said you always ask him, What's the what's your end goal?

SPEAKER_03 11:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:23

So I've always said, Terrell, you know, you can look so heat, I always say, number one, heat is probably, if not, it's an ingredient, if not the most important ingredient in a pizza. Because I can make any pizza look good. You can get online and I can make you, I can make you a plastic pizza, and it looks edible, right? Yeah. It looks great online.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

But is it cooked?

SPEAKER_04 11:44

Is it but is it cooked? That's it. So uh so I always go and I look, I get online, I study, like, let's just say, for example, I'm going next week's kind of an odd oddity of one that I'm doing. But I've told you earlier that I'm going to be doing some cold calls a day. And the minute I get somebody, the first thing I start doing is researching. Are they top heavy? Are they light? Are they New York style, Detroit style? What's the style? Then I'll know in my head, so when I walk into them and I talk to them, I feel them out. Like, okay, so maybe they have one person there on a Friday night trail and they don't want the business, right? Then I'm gonna slow that oven down to get it to where it you know it fits.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

So they can so one person can handle it.

unknown 12:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:24

One person can handle it. You look at me and you tell me there was a great example. I I'm trying to rem Howard University up in Washington, D.C.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 13:34

Good good friend of mine who owns a chain got an invitation to be in Howard University. So they invited me up in the oven truck. I go up there, and I know his normal bake time, right? I know what his normal is. His normal is like five minutes, 25 seconds, 470, 480, something like that. And I was under the impression that we were gonna have to feed 50 people. No problem, got this, no problem. Easy, easy hour and 20 minutes can do that, no problem. We get there, we're feeding the entire student body. We had 100 pizzas, 10 trays of subs, 10 trays of pasta, and I looked at everybody, I said, Close your eyes. Do not look at what I'm doing with this oven, but we're getting ready to cook some pizzas. I said, I need somebody to feed the back of the truck, I need somebody catching it as soon as it comes out. And I crank that oven to like 610 and was doing pizzas in like three minutes 50 seconds.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

So what's what's the fast? Is that about the fastest you've seen it run?

SPEAKER_04 14:32

That's about the fastest I've seen it go, is about three minutes 50 seconds.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

How does that, how does that, how does time and temperature wear on the internal components of the oven?

SPEAKER_04 14:44

It does. So our our oven time, if you so we we we give a lot of safeguards. Remember, again, I'm going back to where Mike and Mark started. That they they invented these ovens for operators, right? So, Terrell, you've got, you know, you've got a shop. The last thing that would be a critical part to you is on a Friday night, you be down, right? So it's as bad as it gets, right? So one thing that we always do, we try to make this oven simple enough for somebody, guys, anybody who also knows me knows that I'm very dumb mechanically. And I don't, my wife can tell you the only thing I can fix is dinner. And that's the truth. But we try to uh, you know, we we get this machine where we can walk you through fixing anything on this oven. Because anybody who knows the worst thing about the restaurant business is calling a repair person.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 15:35

They give you a two-week lead time. When they come, it's some person that really don't know your oven or don't know your mixer or don't know your cooler, and then they, oh, well, we got to get a part. Well, that part's on two-week back order. We have completely eliminated that process. So we have a log file, USB log file, that you plug into the back of the oven. It's like going to the like going to a mechanic and getting your car read. You download that, you email it to Logan and Adam and our support team. They're gonna say, okay, it's X part. We're gonna overnight that part. Now, we're gonna schedule a tech if you need a tech, but you can really be back up and running the minute you get this part if you follow these instructions.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

It's not it's not that bad to really take the oven apart.

SPEAKER_04 16:18

When you, when you when you really look at our oven, and again, I'm very, very not much not mechanically inclined. I can fix anything on this up.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

What do you what do you guys run on the truck?

SPEAKER_04 16:28

Do I we run a 3240 on the truck?

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Do you find yourself having to do any just regular maintenance on it as you're because you're running, you're changing it, you're changing time, you're changing 10, you're taking it on the road. Are you guys taking care of the oven on your own?

SPEAKER_04 16:42

You you know, I'm I'm gonna be, this is the I'll be lying to tell you that I've had to work on that oven. That oven is from 2018. The only thing I've done to that oven is cleaned it. What?

SPEAKER_00 16:55

So it's I mean that's taking a beating. You wanted something.

SPEAKER_04 17:02

Right. It's, I mean, because it's on the road, it's being bounced across potholes, it's going through 120 degree temperatures, it's going through I've had it out, you know, 10 below zero. I mean, it's it's got every element. There's not a spot of rust on that truck. There's not it Friday, Friday and Mike was telling me this that I've got a I need to do a software update to it, because I've never done a software update. That it was as I would drop the temperature, it would say, like, no gas flow, then as soon as it gets the temperature, it would go away. I'm like, what is going on? Am I out of propane? He's like, no, you just need to do a software update. That's you've not done anything to that oven since 2018.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Is it is it efficient enough to run in a food truck situation, like someone wanted their their full-time food truck operation with a conveyor?

SPEAKER_04 17:49

Absolutely. I had Benny's Pizza, so Benny's pizza, he caught his carry-out location caught fire. And the quickest way for him to get back up and running was to put a trailer out in his lot where the building burned.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:01

He he ran a triple stack of 3240s on a trailer, no problem.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Like uh, what'd he got? Like a hundred-gallon propane tank?

SPEAKER_04 18:09

Yeah, he had several of them. He had like, yeah, I think he had four for 100-gallon propane tank.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Four hundred-gallon tanks, or there's two of those 250s.

SPEAKER_04 18:15

But you know what, guys, I'll this is I'm that's something I really want to talk about too, is the efficiency of the oven. So people see this little tank that I carry on my truck. It's a small little hundred-gallon propane, uh small propane. This past week, or the past, I'm sorry, all my days started to run together. So it's it was it was a two-week time period. I went to, I did it several tests, like three test bakes. Then I went to the Pittsburgh Pizza Fest, and I baked there from like 10 o'clock in the morning until like five o'clock at night.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

That looked like a lot of fun. I saw the five.

SPEAKER_04 18:48

It was a blast. Number one, that was probably one of the most challenging ones I did. I've got a good battle wound from that one, as you can see. It was one of the most challenging because I had five different pizza shops cooking their pizzas all at the same time. And you was getting 250 people all at once. So you was it was cooking five different styles of pizzas, how five different people wanted them. It was, I was really jockeying some pizzas in that to get it to work right.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Do you how fast can the can you adjust the time and temp on seconds? If this guy needs to run a different temp at a different speed, you can change it.

SPEAKER_04 19:24

Maybe you got exam, you know, slice on Broadway. You know, he he had some par bake Roman style crust that he was doing. I I knew that his wasn't going to take as long, so I would just basically slide him in a little bit at the back.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

You'll slide it past that first.

SPEAKER_04 19:38

Yeah, slide it past, and then it would it would be fine. You know, we had some that would be crisp, they're like really, really crisp. So I would just take it off the screen and put it directly on the belt.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

So that's that caliente.

SPEAKER_04 19:51

Caliente was who I'm talking about. Caliente, he wanted his crisp. So when it came in, I put it straight on the belt and come out perfect. Everybody had a little bit of different style there, and I had to just do the, you know, uh Milanos out of the Pittsburgh Market, three locations. Probably, and I'll say this, and I don't, I'm gonna remember my settings because it was probably I always say my hardest pizza to nail is a New York style pizza. And I'm telling you, I nailed it with this product. It was coming out perfect every single time.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Send me those settings.

SPEAKER_04 20:21

I mean, I'll have to, I'm gonna go look. I'm pretty sure that I was running, you know, and uh, you know, Terrell, you know, as Terrell knows, and you're all you guys, anybody who's following me on Facebook knows I drive a lot of miles. A lot of miles. So to me, that's a lot of podcasts. I've heard every one of Tyrrell's podcasts. I've heard I was going back to the other day, I was listening to Siler's podcast that he does when him and Michael was doing them, Michael Shepard was doing them. And I laugh about this because this was this one in particular, I remember listening to. They were talking with Siler was talking about conveyor ovens. And Siler was probably, and Michael was probably the two that were right on this. It's all about the finger settings, right? And I showed you, and I showed you that. It's all about showing that air, where to go, where it flows. That's why test bake is critical. We every pizza is unique and different. So you want to make sure that you get that right. And when you get that right, man, it's every single pizza is going to come out exactly the same. So the the misconception, you was back to what we talked about earlier, the misconception of you saying, What is my biggest challenge? Is getting that misconception that you cannot make a good pizza on a conveyor oven.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Yeah, I think understanding that there can be adjustments was the biggest hurdle to overcome. Like I didn't, you I guess you don't know what you don't know.

SPEAKER_03 21:45

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

And you think that think this oven can only do one thing. Just because it's consistent doesn't mean that it's it you have to just put it in a box. It can do what, you know, it can bake different ways, it can cook at different speeds, we can close off, you know, fingers or change pattern, and it'll it'll change the way that it bakes. So I think that was the biggest thing for me. I I thought we were just stuck with what we were getting. And no, we can make adjustments. That that was that was one of the biggest things for me to overcome.

SPEAKER_03 22:12

Absolutely. Yeah, no, it's uh I I you know I there's one real close to you, not far from you at all. El Primo's?

SPEAKER_00 22:20

El Primo, I don't know. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 22:24

He probably had one of the most unique ones I've seen. I walked into it, I walked into my head thinking, oh, this is gonna be a simple one, it's a conveyor. He does a ton of school pizzas. And I mean, when I say a ton, I'm talking like I've not seen a pizza shop this busy. I mean, it was crazy when I walked in there. And five minutes is critical to him, right? I mean, like it's it's a it's critical. He has to have pizzas in five minutes. It was the hardest one I've ever seen to dial in. I mean, then I'll go and I'll think, oh man, this is gonna be tough. And then it's simple.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:56

That's the thing about the pizza. Again, every pizza is so unique and different, but spend that time to learn that.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Just like when I come down.

SPEAKER_04 23:04

Terrell, I'm done. We was talking earlier before we started recording that I'm gonna I may come down your way. I I'm probably gonna spend some time down at your shop because I want to give you that perfect New York style pizza.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Yeah, I wanna, I wanna, you know, we still got a little bit of work to do on it, but we're so close.

SPEAKER_03 23:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

I mean, what we were able to do just on the phone and and making a few adjustments changed, completely changed and eliminated the deck for us. Because we were still finishing, you know, trying to pull them out and finish them off in the deck just to get it right, but we got it to the point where we, I mean, I probably need a I need a second conveyor at some point.

SPEAKER_04 23:41

I know a guy, Terrell. I know a guy. That's all I'm gonna say.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

We're getting pretty close to that point. We got like a little rack to make sure that we can become a few.

SPEAKER_04 23:50

And you know, that's saying that's saying something for you. Congratulations, because that oven you've got, that oven will put out some volume.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Yeah, we're we're we're sending some pizzas through it at this point.

SPEAKER_04 23:59

Yeah, I was gonna say that's that 30Q70 will put some pizzas through it. So for sure.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

I don't I don't know what we've never tracked like how many we've done in an hour, but. We've had some pretty some pretty strong hours and some pretty big orders and for the most part two of us can handle all of it with that oven.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

With that oven or something I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Uh I can't even a hundred pizzas pretty easy.

SPEAKER_04 24:24

I was gonna say a hundred pizzas, hundred pizzas is about what that oven's gonna do in hours, about a hundred pizza.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Probably about a hundred, yeah. It's pretty easy between the two of us. I think uh Yeah, I think that's pretty pretty good.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

And that's and that's moving, but it's it it just kept going.

SPEAKER_04 24:39

Just eats them. I mean, it just eats them, spit's about done. I mean, it's always tell anybody, guys, the what is the worst thing that's gonna hurt for do to do a test make? You're gonna waste a couple of pizzas, an hour of your time. That's gonna be the biggest thing you're gonna miss. If you don't see it and you don't know it, you don't know what you're missing.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

What what other, you know, as you're traveling and you're hitting all these different pizza shops, outside of oven trends, what else are you noticing out there in the industry? Because you get to you got a unique perspective.

SPEAKER_04 25:08

You know, that I've told everybody I've been from Maine to Miami, from Seattle to San Diego, at all points in between. I've test baked, you know, in Laredo, Texas. I've test baked in pretty far north of Minnesota, I've been in Miami. I mean, I have a kid about every corner of this place or the United States that you can think of. Uh the biggest thing that I've the number one guy in this one has been driving me crazy, Terrell. This has been driving me nuts is I've got to pick up the phone.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Don't say pineapple oil pizza.

SPEAKER_04 25:41

Do I?

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Don't say pineapple oil pizza.

SPEAKER_04 25:44

Well, you know pineapple on pizza bothers me, but I I I can't give everybody that trouble, you know. The one thing that I've watched, and it's it's right now this has been driving me nuts, is everybody thinks that the pizza business is dead. Oh, you're seeing 300 Papa John's close, and you see this is closing, and you're seeing this. Guys, guys, come on. Let's get back to reality. There was oversaturation during COVID. There was a lot of people who lost their jobs. They had money, they thought the pizza business would be easy business. We all know the pizza business is not an easy business. It takes the it takes a true hustler to be in the pizza business. So the shops that are still out there truly hustling, yet they're making really good money and they're doing very, very well. So get that misconception that the pizza business has done. Look at Tony G, what he's doing right now. What Tony G is doing in the pizza business right now is pretty freaking incredible.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

This dude is Yeah, I think we've seen a huge influx of independence, too. So the the chains, yeah, some of the chains are taking a step back because they, you know, it was easy then and they were.

SPEAKER_04 26:46

It was oversaturated. It was oversaturated.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Huge oversaturation. And then, you know, third party closed a little bit of the territories for them. So it just made sense. And trust me, they can close 300 Pizza Huts and Papa John's, and those guys are still gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_04 27:02

Just fine.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Those guys are still gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_04 27:05

They are not hurting, I can promise you that.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

So yeah, they're still selling a lot of pizzas.

SPEAKER_04 27:10

So, like everything else in this world, the news feeds you what they want you to believe. Okay, and there's no truth to this, guys. I'm telling you, I was I I love to brag on Janet. Janet Zapata down at 550 Pizzeria. That that has got to be one of the busiest shops I've ever seen in my life. I mean, she is in Laredo, Texas. You know, decent economy, not a great economy. And I will tell you this that shop is packed, man. I mean, it is just packed. And so the ones that are out here hustling, they're doing the Instagram videos, they're doing the Facebook lives, they're doing the marketing, they're doing the out the hustle out in the community. They're killing it. I mean, they're just killing it right now. Now, is food cost high right now? Sure, food cost is high right now. I watch Cheese Market, though. Cheese market's dropping like a rock right now. So could be a good time to, you know, run some specials, get yourself known. It could be a good time to do that.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

I love I love to see cheese coming down. Chicken's been down quite a bit for us too, but produce is just crazy.

SPEAKER_04 28:13

Yeah, well, produce is nuts. I don't know what's going on with that. But you know, you know, and all the talk of the you know, the blow bromate flour and the unbleached and all that. I mean, guys, there's these distributors have got that figured out. You can't let this stuff scare you right now. Just go do run your business and market. I mean, that's the key.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Yeah, I love to I love to start changing that conversation myself. We've been, we talk so much about dough, and we never talk about operations, we never talk about cheese. Let's talk about portions.

SPEAKER_03 28:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

I promise there's more money going out that door in cheese than there is in flour.

SPEAKER_04 28:49

Terrell, what was we saying earlier? So I don't know of any I don't know of anybody on here that looks at me and says, I'm gonna say this back because I actually had this shop where I thought it was more of a hobby to me than a moneymaker. But all the rest of us, guys, let me tell you right now, we're out here to make money. I don't care who we are. We want if we want to do something for our health, we're gonna go fish, we're gonna go do other things, but we're all right here to make money. And nobody says I want to do 60 pizzas an hour and I'm stopping at that. Nobody says that, right? Nobody says that. So there's ways to make money. Number one, increase volume. Number two, Terrell just dealt it, Porsche Control. And I mean Porsche control on everything. The have you have you seen the Randell Cheese Station, Tyrell? You you would not, right now, if I own the loan shop, I would not open a shop without that piece of equipment.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Say it again.

SPEAKER_04 29:36

It's the Randell Cheese Station. They call it the Cheese Station.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Oh, I have seen it. Where it Yes, I have seen it.

SPEAKER_04 29:42

Just you could not have, I would not even own a shop without that piece of equipment right now. That thing, I call it the ATM of the shop because let me just tell you, that thing just sits there, automatically prints money.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Zero waste. It with the with it has the cheese falls back down and you can still oh my god, yeah, we've seen it. We've seen it. Bob almost bought it on the spot. He did end up buying because they have the double stack table, too.

SPEAKER_03 30:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

He did end up buying the table, but that cheese station was incredible. He didn't have room for it.

SPEAKER_04 30:11

I don't know why more people have not come up with that. It's a pretty ingenious design.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

It is. Everybody needs it, but it and if you're not doing any version of Porsche Control with your cheese, then you're just throwing money away.

SPEAKER_04 30:23

Yeah, and you know, Terrell, we stopped the one thing I want to go over with that we talked about was uh, you know, what I see while I'm traveling.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

What do you see while you're traveling?

SPEAKER_04 30:33

So many cool stories and places. Like I, you know, last Thursday, I was in a you pulled in this town, it's Mansfield, Indiana, which is right middle of nowhere up by Terre Haute, Indiana. And you would thought you were in a ghost town. I mean, it was a ghost town. And this guy's opening this place called the Red Barn Saloon. They have a weekend called the Covered Bridge Festival, where they get three to 500,000 people in this town. Yeah, I mean, they it's nuts. But when you I got all the pictures, it was so cool. And then I went to a shop of a lady that was from Seattle, Washington, who came to Indianapolis. And when I tell you, she was putting out a very, very high quality pizza for a good price. She was putting out a very high quality pizza for a good price. I'm talking grating or cheese, dough from scratch, ham-pinched sausage. I mean, she was doing everything right, which is not very common in Indianapolis. Indianapolis is known for sliced cheese and parmate crust. This lady was doing it right. I mean, it was a good pizza. And then from there, I went to a place called Mug and Bun, who's been there. They had a 1942 set of Vulcan ovens that they were still cooking on.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

How do they still work?

SPEAKER_04 31:48

The guy is an electrical engineer, master electrical engineer by trade, and he knows how to manipulate parts. So he'll find a part that's close, and then he'll tweak that part to make it work for you.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

He'll get it, he'll get it working just good enough.

SPEAKER_04 32:01

Yeah, I mean, it was cooking just fine. It was taking him 20 minutes to cook a pizza.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

I had a guy, I had a guy that I worked with here in Brandon, and he opened a shop. It was an old Fox's pizza den, but he he bought it and put in like the the carousel style.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

Middleby. Middleby, and the story was that they were from Chicago, some old Capone place, but like it was old. The guy that had to come in and rebuild it said that thing had to be, it was every bit of 60 years old.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

That's pretty wild. What's what's the coolest thing? So that's pretty cool. What are some of the other cool things you're seeing in shops?

SPEAKER_04 32:42

You know, and and then you see uh, you know, family stories. Like, you know, I was in a shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the owner got shot and killed in a robbery. And the oven was, you know, this was something he always wanted to do was have a bigger, better oven and all this stuff. And, you know, it this was kind of a tribute to him. Kind of stuff is touching, man, when you go and you hear these stories and stuff like that. You know, because this this dude was in there working his shop and he, you know, he was truly a character when you read a lot of stuff. Like this guy got on Jay Leno's show because he wrote Jay Leno. And told you, he said, Hey Jay, we both love pizza and cars. And him and Jay Leno become really good friends. The whole store was covered with like Leno memorabilia.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_04 33:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

So it takes a special guy to just say, I'm gonna write Jay Leno.

SPEAKER_04 33:35

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, seeing the heart and soul of all these shops is uh just goes to show you pizza's not just pizza and it's not just a business, it's a heart of the community. And you know, on our last podcast, Pharrell, we talked about when I opened my first shop, I always wanted to be that shop that when my kid, when a kid comes back to town from going to college, he comes back, first thing he wants is that pizza. It's a it's a memory, it's a nostalgia. And I've I've got to see a lot of those shops, and it's probably been one of the coolest things that I've got to see. I'm very blessed and fortunate to see.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

I imagine that with with those stories and and seeing those shops and those those histories, that it's also probably hard to let go of what's been working for so long for some of these guys.

SPEAKER_04 34:20

It does, but then you get the good operators. Well, so you don't get you get the younger generations come in. You know, it was grandma or grandpa that started it, and they go, you know, it goes down eventually they know that they can't do it no longer, right? I mean, there's there's technology out there in Deck Ovens now that work, but it's still, again, it's a man, it's a person. The one thing, if anybody in the pizza business wants to truly become a millionaire right now, figure out the human conceptions, the human process of this, how to get more people to work. When you can figure out how to get more people to work in your shop, you are going to be a multi-millionaire because you're gonna have to share that recipe with the rest of the world.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Without, without giving up all the profit?

SPEAKER_04 34:57

That's yeah. That's it. That's right, without without paying 50 bucks an hour, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:02

Yeah. Another big trend has been, you know, the rise of just AI and intelligence in not just in marketing and social media, but also in operations. Are you seeing any shops that have deployed any of those types of situations? AI order takers or you know, things like that.

SPEAKER_04 35:23

No, I'm seeing some of the chains while I'm out. I always, you know, I watch other businesses, not just the pizza business. Because the restaurant business, you know, you can steal ideas from a burger chain that would work in the pizza side.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

I learned my best, my best lessons from the burger business.

SPEAKER_04 35:36

I was gonna say, so you learn a lot of, so I watch trends, and that's something guys always tell, and and Mike and Mark, which are the owners of Edge, I can tell you they are very adamant about this on for me. That we're not just there, we're not high pressure salespeople. We don't go in. We come in to talk shop. When I come to your store, we'll talk something about ovens, probably 10% of the the of the deals about ovens. Other than the other 90% we're talking about, is if I see something in your shop that would make your shop easier, or if I know a recipe of a pizza that would you've got all the ingredients to let's make this pizza and see what happens. You know, that's the kind of things that we like to do. We like to show operators that look, we're your friend. Because here's Terrell, here's the here's the here's the simple part of it. We've learned this. When I pull into a store, are they gonna buy an oven that day? It's happened maybe once or twice to me, right? Do they buy one of the first 30 days? Two or three times that happens. But if you stretch that out over a two to three year period, they eventually buy an oven.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Eventually they come back to it because of the relationship.

SPEAKER_04 36:42

That's why I don't need to be high pressure. I don't need to be high pressure at all because eventually it's gonna come back. Because I I'm very good about my relationships. I consider all my people friends. Try to think about how me and you met. We're friends now. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. Absolutely. I've got friends from this business for 30 years of doing this. I've got friends all over that I still talk to. I mean, and sometimes it'll call and it'll never be nothing about business, and I'm okay with that. That's you, you guys are my family. My restaurant people, my pizza guys, this is my family. I mean, this is it's what I am.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

Hell yeah, man. What uh what's the best way for somebody to sign up for? I mean, I know we'll we'll drop like a link or something like that, but if someone's listening and they're like, I want that dude to come to my shop and show me that an edge can do my pizza.

SPEAKER_04 37:28

I don't gladly challenge anybody who says that a conveyor will not work, promise you call me, we'll do it. Call me on my cell phone. That's the easiest way.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Okay. Call George. He'll get you on the schedule.

SPEAKER_04 37:41

859-404-8089. It never turns off. And it's always ringing.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

He does answer the phone too. He sure does.

SPEAKER_04 37:50

Yeah. So it's uh that another thing that you know goes back to it. A lot of people call me on technical advice. Some things I can help you on. Other things I'm gonna tell you, wait, guys, you've got to call Logan. You don't want to call me. You want to call Logan or Adam in the circus. You don't call me. I'm not gonna tell you something that's gonna be wrong. But a lot of times I can help you, and I'll at least say, hey, you're not getting enough airflow at the back of the oven or something. Like I'll know the common things that'll happen to them. And I'm glad to help anybody. I don't care if it's who who you are, what oven you've got, I'll help you if I can help you.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

That's a good man right there. I also imagine you you got folks that are, you know, we we talk about making money in these things, and a lot of us are here to, you know, run run a certain type of business, high production, you know, make money, but then we have folks that are that are out here for the art of it, and the artist and pizza maker, and you know, they do they're they're here for the love of the craft. How do how do you present what you do to to that guy who's saying, it can only I can only do this in a wood fired oven or I can only do this on a deck. Is that is is that conversation you know hard to have?

SPEAKER_04 38:57

It's I'll be the first to tell you, Terrell, if I can't do something, I can't do it, right? I'm always that guy. There's one that I'm working with right now in Texas. It's the same, same scenario. You know, he's cooked on a woodstone 700-degree oven, and we've got very, very close on the conveyor. It'll just have to be to the point, Terrell, he'll have to make that decision when he gets to the point where he can't find that person. Or when that 15-year guy leaves him that he can't trust anymore.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:28

And he's got to be there.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

Yeah, that's the hardest part, is it's overcoming the labor trouble of it, right?

SPEAKER_04 39:35

Right. And as third-party delivery, and I go back and I laugh and I laughed about this because you know, I was talking to Soler and Michael was on that podcast, that old, old one I listened to, boy, they were so anti-third party delivery, and now everybody's on the third party delivery.

SPEAKER_00 39:52

I think we I think we all started hating it because we didn't want to share, but now they are they are Main Street. It's not like before where, you know, location matters so much, and you want to be at Maine and Maine, and I got drive traffic. Now these guys have endless traffic.

SPEAKER_04 40:10

You know, and you know, Terrell, you know what the one thing that I always like to talk about that we we that we have a lot of discussions on with pizza shop operators is there's very few people in this world that is tight like I am. Like, I'm that guy that will I've not given DoorDash $60 to deliver me and my wife, our favorite Mexican restaurant. I'm just not gonna do it. I will get in my car and drive down there and spend $32 instead of $60. I'm just not gonna do it. But I want you to look at the majority of people.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Majority of people there's a lot of people that will spend that money in a heartbeat.

SPEAKER_04 40:44

So, guys, when you walk up here and you say, Well, I can't raise my prices, you know, my large cheese pizza is $12, and if I go to $15, they're not gonna pay it. Guys, you're wrong. You are so wrong. They gladly will pay $12 to have a cup of coffee delivered to their house.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

So somebody, somebody spent, I don't know, $16 to have an order of french fries for me. We don't we make French fries, but we're a pizza shop. They literally just ordered an order of french fries.

SPEAKER_04 41:13

For $16 is what it cost them.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

That's what it cost them.

SPEAKER_04 41:16

I just see to me that's just mind-boggling. I'm not, I don't care how bad I want french fries.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

It ain't that, it's not that serious. And it's and let's be honest.

SPEAKER_04 41:24

That's the serious case to munchies right there, buddy.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

It ain't it ain't even gonna be that good. That's the other part of it. Let's just be an honest, we make great fries, but once you get it, that's 45 minutes later.

SPEAKER_04 41:35

That's right. Because it's done with the five other people's houses that come back to you. But that's why I'm saying, guys, don't be afraid to don't be afraid to raise your prices.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

What's the most expensive you've seen across the country? Just I guess from an average, I I know that there's specialty pizzas out there, but just like average pricing. Are you or are you looking at menus too much?

SPEAKER_04 41:56

Yeah, you know, California. I was out, I did uh quite a bit out in California a few a few weeks back. There's a but they're getting they're getting 28, 30 bucks for a large cheese pizza. Yeah, I mean, so but it's quality. I know, you know, that's one thing I've been, I will say I have seen a lot of quality products. One big difference that I've been seeing right now, and it's kind of a trend, you know, we talk about trends of the foods and what a lot of people grinding their own cheese right now. I'm still grinding, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've been I've really been floored at how many people are still you know grinding their own cheese. And I will tell you from a baking standpoint, there there is a there's a difference.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

I'm still grinding. I want a cheese hog so bad. I'm still. Scott's made it.

SPEAKER_04 42:39

Scott's made it an equipment.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Have you seen the cheese? Have you seen that thing?

SPEAKER_04 42:42

Oh my god Scott, I know Scott very well. The cheese hog guy. Scott's made a piece of equipment. That thing's like a tank. I don't even know how you how you make something that solid.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

Yeah, I need that in my life. That's like, that's at the top of my wish list right now. You know, we're still fixing a lot of stuff in the shop. You're six months in, but like, like first piece of equipment that we get, as soon as we we're ready to step up, is we're getting that cheese off.

SPEAKER_04 43:06

Just the time savers on that that piece of machine. And you know, here's what amazes me is unless you're kind of in this little tight little pizza circle like we are in, Trip, yeah, you don't even really know about it.

SPEAKER_01 43:18

Yeah. It's just a pizza guy thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:21

They don't know about that piece of equipment. I'm like, so I was out with one guy, and he was doing like, I don't know, 50 cases of cheese a week, and I'm like, dude, like a cheese haul would save you so much time. I'm like, you literally pull the paper off, yeah, put the block in it, and no more cutting those blocks into threes.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

I have to cut them into three. Oh my goodness. I talked to Scott. He's like, no, you just put the whole block in.

SPEAKER_04 43:42

I'm like, what?

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Oh, yeah, I've seen it do a whole block, a whole log of provolin, 12-pound log of provola. I can't wait. It's gonna happen. I'm like putting that on my, it's on my vision board.

SPEAKER_04 43:52

Yeah, no, he's that dude, that dude's got something that's cheese hog and then, you know, a dough roller. Yeah, and so so we go back to all the technology stuff that's out here, right? Guys, it goes down to just pure good ingredients. I'm telling you, there's a chain, and I'm not gonna mention a chain, but I was so shocked at the quality of their product. Still using hand-pinched sausage, hand-pinched raw beef, grinding their cheese, a 12-step dough process. I mean, I was just floored at the quality of this place. And it was a great product out of a chain.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

So, and and then when you when you use the efficiency of a conveyor oven, you're not, you're not devaluing the quality of that pizza. You're just enhancing the quality of your operation.

SPEAKER_04 44:39

And there's so Terrell, I don't know whether you've seen it. Did you see where I did the test bake with with 550 down in Laredo?

SPEAKER_00 44:45

I saw that, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:46

Did you see the two pizzas side by side?

SPEAKER_00 44:48

Mm-hmm. You can't tell me.

SPEAKER_04 44:49

Did you tell the difference?

SPEAKER_00 44:51

You cannot tell. And you can't tell me that a customer can tell once you put that pizza in a box, cut it, ship it off.

SPEAKER_04 44:58

It was a it was about a 50-50 split. She baked a hair bit lighter than I did. I mean, I'm talking just a hair. I mean, you'd have to really know her pizza. Like you had to eat her pizza every day to really know it. And some of the guys that came in and tried were people that were her regular customers every day. But they were some of those coming in saying, but that pizza right there, I like the crispiness of it.

SPEAKER_00 45:20

Yeah. So then that's a that comes out to a matter of personal preference.

SPEAKER_04 45:25

Absolutely. Absolutely. So, and and again, the same thing with a deck oven. That's the bad thing about a deck oven, is you're leaving your your product quality and integrity up to an opinion. And I can tell you right now, there's a hundred of us in a room. That's a hundred different opinions of what's done, what's burnt. That's a hundred different opinions. And you cannot get that consistent. I don't care what anybody tells you, you cannot get a that perfect consistency out of a deck oven. You just can't. There's gonna be too many variables. You got the same guy watching the oven, he's gonna get pretty close. He's gonna get pretty close.

SPEAKER_00 46:01

Yeah, but the it but it's you know, it's so much nuance. Look, I've I'm an oven guy. I'll I tell you, I got all the battle rules. Yeah, I work. Been working that deck for years and it took it because I thought I had to. I had to know I'm the one that knew the cold spots. I'm the I'm the one that knew what the bottom of it was was gonna do versus the top of it. I knew if we needed something out quicker, which spot I was gonna keep hot. You know, so things like that. And you have to train somebody in that position. Now I can literally throw my 14-year-old son on the on the end of that oven and he can catch pies all day long.

SPEAKER_04 46:35

Which I I have to say, I'm a little disappointed that he's not conducting this interview.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

They're not up. They're they're like avoiding me right now. It's summertime, so I gotta drag those kids out of the bed.

SPEAKER_04 46:47

I hear you, man. I hear you.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

You know, you you know the other thing that that surprised me the most, and uh another reason that we don't turn on the deck. I didn't know that I could cook pastas the way I cook pastas through that conveyor. Yeah. That thing is a beast when it comes. And we've been catering, and that's you know, we've talked, you know, appreciate you, you know, talking about how the business has grown, but catering has been like where we decided that was we had the competitive competitive advantage. We had a small staff, the store wasn't very busy, but we can go after catering. And when I tell you we sling pasta and pizza through that thing like nobody's business, pasta trades, so easy.

SPEAKER_04 47:29

Yeah, I will tell you guys, and uh this was something Terrell just brought up something that when I had my shop, the one thing that we were known for is baked pasta. So we did Alfredo's, baked spaghetti, lasagnas. That was my three that I did. Pretty much keep it simple. And I mean, they were not hard to make, very easy to do. You keep them, chill the noodles, put the sauce on, run it through the oven. Great catering item. Schools eat it up. I mean, they the schools tore it up because everybody offered pizza. If you give them something different, no, they're all about it.

SPEAKER_00 48:03

Dude, the schools and the churches are just and they love the so we do baked spaghetti, baked ziti, and lasagna.

SPEAKER_04 48:10

Yeah. And it is just hey, throw the Alfredo out there. Alfredo turned out really.

SPEAKER_00 48:15

I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna add it. We don't do an Alfredo, but I'll do it on the catering menu.

SPEAKER_04 48:19

Yeah, it was it actually turned out really well. And I'll tell you guys, I'm gonna give you a little hint. I'm gonna leave this little hint with you guys because this is something coming up. And do I think that the world has changed a little bit with Amazon? Because I've got to remember, guys, I'm getting old and I go back to the old school ways of marketing. I remember one of the worst days when I had my pizza shop was Black Friday. Black Friday was horrid in the pizza business because everybody would get up, they'd be standing in their lines for their tickle me elmo or their $100 79-inch TV or whatever it was. And then that night they were just eating leftovers from Thanksgiving. So it was just a perfect recipe for a horrible Friday in the pizza business. And I said, you know, I'm gonna change that this year. I went to every Lowe's, Walmart, Target, anything, any like big retailer that was around me that I knew they were gonna need their employees for that day, and said, Hey guys, here's my catering menu. Take a look. If we could help you, I did the first year that I did that, I delivered to two different Lowe's, two different Walmarts, several little small like boutique shops. I did $6,900 before I opened my doors that's a cheat code right there. I mean, it's it's beautiful. I mean, you can plan your boot courts, you can plan your employees. It's that's why I'm saying catering, Terrell, I think you're on to something there. I mean, the catering is that's a cheat code right there.

SPEAKER_00 49:46

I like that one, the Black Friday, because because you're right. And we always said, look, our Wednesday and our Friday are switching this week. So we would full staff on Wednesday because the day before Thanksgiving is crazy, right? Yeah. And then we would go short staff on Friday because it's typically pretty slow.

SPEAKER_04 50:00

But I'll waste that day.

SPEAKER_00 50:02

Now we're not gonna waste that day. We're gonna we're gonna plan a different way. I like that one a lot.

SPEAKER_04 50:09

And especially down over where you're at. You gotta remember, I was in a town of 1,300 people. I had each way to get to retails.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

Yeah, I got a lot of retail around us.

SPEAKER_04 50:19

You got a lot of retail down there where you're at.

SPEAKER_00 50:21

So that's a that's a great one right there.

SPEAKER_04 50:23

Yeah, you may be you may get more business you guys for if you're careful.

SPEAKER_00 50:27

That's all right. That's all right. You know, we're you know, we we decided to go about it a little a different way. Something I learned, you know, from Rick Gruber, who came on the show last year. And he runs his catering like a like a true sales team. You know, he's got the funnel, the Legion, he's got all, you know, quick follow-up, and they close catering deals just like they close sales costs. And we wanted to mimic that. So just set up a site, easy, easy form for people to fill out. We get all their information, we call them back quick, and we just try to close those deals as quick as we can. And that has been a game changer for us. And we and we use Easy Cater a lot.

SPEAKER_04 51:03

Yeah, and I'll tell you another uh another little trick in the book that I used to do back in the day is any place that anybody that's in an industrial area, so like where a lot of factories are at, let me tell you the secret to getting into factories. You find one person that works in that factory, you make them a deal and say, look, if you can get me 10 orders, yours is free. And if I'm telling you they are all about that, you will have 30, 40 orders going to that factory and keep it simple so when you deliver it, you just make it. It's a flat rate deal that you do on it. And it works pretty well.

SPEAKER_00 51:36

I think, yeah, easy custom menu, something real simple. Make it easy for yourself.

SPEAKER_04 51:41

Three sandwiches, three or four pizza options, a couple pasta options.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

That's what we do. That's what we do for the schools. They do we do slices for the kids, like for lunch for uh First Baptist Church here. And very simple option. We don't go through the school. The parents pay us directly. There's you can get cheese, you can get pepperoni, you can get combo. And it's so easy for us to do and so easy to deliver. I uh I appreciate. I mean, in the oven makes it so easy. So two of us can run it and we just deliver, and it's so it's it's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 52:12

Yeah, I mean, so there's like when I say, guys, there's the way to hustle, get in and hustle just a little bit. Man, there's, you know, God rest my dad's soul. You know, yesterday was Father's Day, so there's a good story on him. My dad got to the point when I had my shops down in Arkansas that I made a deal with him that he would buy the pizzas, like a large one-topping pizza for me, 20-inch one-topping pizza for $10. And he would go set up and sell by the slice at like vocational school factories. He was almost running a little roach coach out of his truck. And he would do some days 30 pizzas.

unknown 52:46

That's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 52:46

It was nuts. That's a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 52:48

And he could charge you $4 a slice.

SPEAKER_00 52:50

He just he just made a few hundred dollars, like easy.

SPEAKER_04 52:53

In two hours, he made a couple hundred bucks and he's done, he's going home today. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:57

I've been trying to teach my sons the same thing. My my little one is selling brownies in the shop.

SPEAKER_03 53:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:02

And I'm like, dude, like I'll I'll give you $10 for a pan. I can make $15 on it. So I'm making five, he's making $10. I'll donate, I'll I'll provide you all the ingredients for you. You can make it all. You just got to manage the inventory.

SPEAKER_04 53:14

Well, good, good for you, Pops, for teaching that, because that's a good lesson to be taught to these kids.

SPEAKER_00 53:18

Yeah, we don't we don't do allowance, but I'll support your business.

SPEAKER_04 53:21

That's it. That's it, my man. So again, man, there's there's all kinds of ways to hustle. You know, I I get up every day. It's it's what drives me. I love the hustle. I get up every single day saying, what can I do more today than I did yet that I didn't do yesterday? It's every day. It's not, it's not, it's seven days a week I go at it. And I love do I love what I do. It's a passion. It's not I love what I do.

SPEAKER_00 53:46

The two, man. So I know you, I know you got to get to it. I appreciate you. You spend a strong hour with us here. And uh anything you want to leave on the folks before before we get out of here, I'll drop the phone number in the show notes if anybody needs it, or just shoot me a DM or shoot George a DM. We'll we'll make sure we provide that. And uh, you know, appreciate you for coming on. Any any last words?

SPEAKER_04 54:07

Yeah, wait for so guys, if you're not following, so Mike French, one thing I'll say about Mike is he he's had a blast out of he sort of makes fun of me, he sort of promotes me a little bit, whatever he does. I like what he does. So if you're not following, just Google on your on your search bar, on your Facebook, Instagram, yeah. Where's George today? If you want to see some crazy shops, Terrell's seen a lot of them. He follows us, he likes a lot of them. I love it. Uh it's it's pretty cool because you can see different styles of pizza, what people's doing, what works, what don't work. You can see the you know styles of pizza we're doing. Please follow us. Get on there and help us get some likes and shares and stuff like that. Get us in your shop. What's the worst case scenario? You know, I I there I do a lot of shops that I know are never gonna switch from a deck oven. But that just that one day, that one day when that 200-pie order comes in, there that's gonna be in their mind and it might happen.

SPEAKER_00 55:04

You can say yes with confidence.

SPEAKER_04 55:06

That's right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 55:08

Hashtag where is George today. Go check out, go check out the journey. Go follow Edgeovens, follow George, check the hashtag. It's a lot of fun seeing him. And and who knows, he'll probably end up in your area. So reach out to him, come get a test bank.

SPEAKER_04 55:23

Absolutely. Terrell, I appreciate you.