The Real West Michigan
The Real West Michigan Podcast brings you powerful, personal conversations with creatives, entrepreneurs, community builders, and go-getters from all walks of life. Hosted by Eldon Palmer, each episode dives into honest stories of resilience, reinvention, purpose, and passion—stories that resonate far beyond geography.
Whether you’re here for inspiration, a fresh perspective, or a reminder that extraordinary people are doing meaningful work in everyday places, this show is your invitation to listen, learn, and be moved.
Real stories. Real people. Real impact.
The Real West Michigan
The Pizza Journey: From Italy to Michigan's FAVORITE PIZZA!
From flour bag naps to award-winning pizza, Dan Uccello's journey embodies resilience and entrepreneurial spirit. Moving to America from Italy at age 11 without speaking English, Dan watched his parents build a life from nothing, working seven days a week in a small pizzeria to support their family.
When banks laughed at his 22-year-old ambition to open his own restaurant, Dan persevered through liquor license rejections, surprise fees, and trademark lawsuits. Today, his five Flo's restaurant locations stand as testament to his unwavering determination. His proudest achievement came when he represented America in Italy's prestigious pizza competition, winning "Best Pizza in America" despite his ingredients being lost in transit.
But success hasn't come easily. Dan pulls back the curtain on restaurant economics, revealing the razor-thin 1.02% profit margins his group faced in 2024. "If you don't think a penny matters, think twice," he cautions aspiring restaurateurs, stressing that today's industry requires hands-on ownership and meticulous attention to detail. His implementation of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) transformed his business, allowing him to step into the "owner's box" after years of 90-hour workweeks.
Diversification has been key to Dan's broader success. Beyond restaurants, he's built a substantial commercial real estate portfolio and hard money lending business, where his relationship-focused approach has helped new investors succeed while generating 13% returns. Throughout his ventures, Dan maintains that authentic connections matter more than transactions.
As the restaurant industry faces technological disruption with AI and robotics, Dan believes the hospitality element will always create space for human-centered businesses. His story isn't just about building restaurants but about embracing challenges, rejecting victim mentality, and creating value for others along the way. Connect with Dan on social media for business advice from someone who's lived the entrepreneurial journey from immigrant dreams to business success.
Video Podcast available here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRealWestMichigan
THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY: THE PALMER GROUP real estate team. The Palmer Group is an energetic team within 616 REALTY led by Eldon Palmer with over 20 years of experience helping people navigate the home buying and selling process in West Michigan. To support the channel and all of our guests, contact Eldon@ThePalmer.Group, drop a COMMENT, SHARE, LIKE or SUBSCRIBE to this podcast.
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Welcome back. Today we have Dan Uccello of Flo's pizza lover maker, extraordinaire hard money lender, and we're just going to hear a little bit about his backstory and what he's doing these days. So yeah. Welcome Dan.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. Yeah, and so I want to kind of you know, start, maybe, on how we came to where we're. Second, we're immigrants from Italy, ok, so kind of how our family moved um to uh, grand rapids and uh, how we started in the pizza world, sure so? Um, so, oddly enough, my mom was actually an american citizen. That's how we were able to get our citizenship, okay, um, she was born and raised in new jersey and then her family moved to Italy and they came, her and my dad came, to Grand Rapids on their honeymoon.
Speaker 2:My dad fell in love with Grand Rapids. So for like 20 years he kept bugging her on, saying we got to go, we got to go and he wanted to move here. So finally, 1998, april of of 1998, they decided to pack up their stuff in italy and, uh, moved the entire family, which is me, my brother, my sister, mom and dad, to grand rapids. Um, what brought him here was a family, other family that was already here and established. So that's kind of how our story began in West Michigan.
Speaker 2:And you know, as a, as a 11 and 12 year old kid coming to America, not knowing the language, not having any friends, I left all my childhood friends back home and I know nobody here. So a lot of my cousins were very welcoming and those were my best friends for a very long time until I started developing kind of like my own group. So we lived in the Kenwood area for a couple years and our story actually started with what at the time was called Florentine's Pizza on Plainfield, a five-mile, and my parents ran that from 1999 until 2014. So that place is actually like it's very emotional to talk about that place because you know, our family didn't have any money coming here. My dad moved here at the age of 41 I think it was um with very little cash and we're trying to establish a new life at that age. I'm sure that it couldn't have been easy, um, when my mom was the only one out of all five of us that could speak English yeah, I didn't realize that.
Speaker 1:How did um? Yeah, how did they get that started? That's kind of interesting. I don't know if you have a lot of those details.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I can tell you what I remember. I was a kid so it was another Italian family that owned that pizzeria and they put it up for sale or they let kind of like the Italian community know they wanted to sell this place. My dad took, I think, almost every dollar that he had brought here to purchase this place in cash and the place was losing money. I'll never forget I remember my dad working at another restaurant in the mornings, getting out of there at like three o'clock. That was on the south side of Grand Rapids, driving to Northview, opening up the store from four to 1030 or midnight on the weekends and doing that seven days a week. Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:you know, that's what it takes. Yeah, I mean it's hard. A lot of people like we kind of glorify entrepreneurship which I love entrepreneurship but I think a lot of people don't see how much it takes to work a job to pay for your business.
Speaker 2:quite often yeah, and the toll that it takes on your family. Honestly, me, my brother and my sister all graduated from Northview High School and you know, after school, like most families go home. We didn't go home. We were in that pizza shop and I remember taking naps on flour bags.
Speaker 2:Oh man, that's what it was. I mean, there was no bed there, obviously, right, it's a restaurant. So after school, if you wanted a nap after you're done with your homework, flower bags are about the most comfortable thing. That were back there, sure.
Speaker 2:So I think it kind of created, you know, a really just a really great culture in our family with me, my brother and my sister of you know, watching our parents work hard, come in here and struggle for a very, very long time to, you know, make ends meet. We lived in a very little house, I think it was probably like 750 square feet. There was five of us three of us me, my brother and my sister were sharing one room. Three of us me, my brother and my sister were sharing one room, and then we had my parents' room, so sharing one bathroom as five. So it was tough, but, you know, I think it kind of humbled. It's an humbling story to talk about because you know a lot of people that have met me now. Essentially, they think that our family kind of, you know, has always had maybe a little bit of extra cash or been in a good place, but that's not at all.
Speaker 2:I remember those years and my sister is 10 years younger so she doesn't really remember a lot of those tougher times. You know, financially, that my parents had my brother a little bit, but he's five years younger. So, yeah, you know, growing up in that little pizza shop, that pizza shop, uh, we were just so attached to it because I know every corner of that place. I can tell you everything we'd done in that place. I mean, my brother and my sister were not old enough to work, um, so they were just roaming around for six, seven, eight hours a day inside this pizza shop while I was helping my parents in the kitchen, and so we built a lot of great relationship with our customers because my mom would work the counter, me and my dad would work the kitchen, you know, and we would be my brother and sister would be just be roaming around, you know, in the pizza shop. So I think a lot of people like that actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know being able to talk to my mom and watching my brother and sister running around that little lobby. You know playing video games at the time, or you know coloring books or whatever it may have been.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very real. You know, I've heard the same from you. Know Chef Jenna was talking about that. Yeah, kids hanging out there.
Speaker 3:I've heard the same from you know, chef Jenna was talking about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, kids hanging out at their, put them to work or they're just wandering around, and I do think it creates a different connection. It feels like much more like when I grew up a little bit older but people it just seemed more normal, 100% In a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:More family it brings the real people out right. I mean this is who we are. Yeah, we real people out right. I mean, this is who we are. Yeah, we can't afford a babysitter yeah, so um.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I go ahead. Oh, I was just curious, what did you, what kind of work did you do, like, um in the parent shop? Like were you tossing pieces or you just running um?
Speaker 2:so, uh, you know my dad was trying to build the brand right, um, so he was making a lot of the food himself, pretty much almost every order, from start to finish, whether it was sandwiches or pastas or uh, um, or pizzas, Um and uh, I would, uh, I would be more on the uh. Hey, make sure your line is stocked, you know, make sure your ingredients are there uh kind of sweeping behind them, folding pizza boxes.
Speaker 2:So, um you know, I I wasn't old enough to like handle a knife or anything of that nature. At the time we used to have the old school brick ovens and I think my forearms still have the burn marks. All the sizzled hair?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you know you're reaching in into these big ovens, next thing, you know, your elbow kind of drops and all you hear is just sizzle, yeah, yeah. So you know those were great times. You know it taught me, honestly, how to be an entrepreneur because, as I grew up in that place, it taught me cash handling, customer service skills, employees, how to treat employees good or bad, right, it just taught me so much about, uh, just entrepreneurship and how to uh, how to act, I guess, in public in a way too right. Um, so, uh, it was a great first job. Um, we, uh we had a lot of fun as a family and, uh, we just made the best of it.
Speaker 1:um, so did you eat a lot of pizza and sandwiches or did did you have something different at home, or wasn't there a separation?
Speaker 2:You know it's funny because we would close the shop at like 10, 10.30, and we would all go home and eat dinner. Yeah, so my mom worked all day and then she would go home and cook dinner for the entire family at like 10, 10.30. And these are school nights. Sure, right, family, I like 10, 10, 30, and these are, these are school nights, sure, right? So then we're going to bed and I'm back up at you know me, my brother and my sister back up at 6, 6, 30 to, uh, either get on the bus or some mornings my mom would bring us, yeah, yeah so what did do?
Speaker 1:uh, I guess what. Maybe is there a little takeaway that you kind of learned from that. You talked about how to deal with customers and and all that. But did it kind of spark, because obviously you've taken it from? Hey, I had to work in dad's shop, we learned a lot but it must have kind of inspired um, your own entrepreneurship. How did that transfer into maybe other things you've done? Um, like earlier before, before we got on camera, you were talking about um doing some other things as a kid that were kind of entrepreneurial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I've always enjoyed, I guess, having money. I didn't want to be the kid that couldn't afford to go to a game a football game and even something as simple as pay your entry fee, Because I knew my family couldn't afford that. Something as simple as pay your entry fee because I knew my family couldn't afford that. And I think one of the things that my parents have always done a great job in is teaching us how to be responsible with our money and how to create our own future with their guidance. But they also let us fail a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They weren't essentially trying to build this bubble around us where you know they they didn't. Let us fail, they let us fail a lot, um, and I think that's kind of where where my entrepreneurship uh started. Uh, I, um, I remember working for my dad and uh, when we were living in like the Kenwood area, um, I remember, you know, grabbing my mom's vacuum cleaner and, uh, running this thing up and down 52nd street, knocking on people's doors and saying, hey, can I vacuum your car? I can't remember what I was charging 10, 20 bucks, whatever it was right. Can I vacuum your vehicle? I'll wipe it all down? Um, so I did that, you know, just to have some extra cash in my pocket. Um, and uh, when I was old enough to drive, I actually took a job, um, at a lake management company, um, because the, the pizza shop that my parents were in, that, oh, they owned um, was closed during lunch.
Speaker 2:So because, remember, my dad was working that other job to try to make ends meet yeah so, um, I took a job at a lake management job while he was working in the morning and I would spray lakes and ponds for weeds and algae and stuff like that, and at the time I was getting paid like eight or nine bucks an hour and I thought I was just I mean, I know I was making more money than most of my family quite frankly, because I was working two jobs and I didn't have kids to support, right, so all this money is going to the bank essentially.
Speaker 2:Um so, um, you know then, uh, I think I was 16 or 17 years old, uh, um, I, uh, I started a company with a buddy of mine and, uh, we were going around and, uh, picking up a dog poop. You know as a side hustle who loves doing that yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:So we were having a ton of fun with doing that. We did that for a couple years. The company didn't really go anywhere, but it was fun, still had a great time. We made some good money. And that's when I started kind of getting serious of. You know, what do I want to do? School was never for me. It wasn't something that I enjoyed. I knew that I had to, you know, finish high school. But college I was very unsure about it. So I remember graduating I'm the oldest kid, I'm supposed to set an example and my mom and dad were like you have to go to college. I'm like, oh, so I did. I signed up for GRCC and I went for one semester and I remember sitting there in a business class that they were teaching and at the time I was actually like also buying and selling cars. Okay.
Speaker 2:Like buying them at a cheaper.
Speaker 1:Flipping them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, flipping them essentially right. And I remember sitting in a classroom with the professor trying to teach me business and I'm already applying half of what he's telling me in the real world at that age. And I remember just packing up my books that day and right in the middle of class, and I looked at him and I said I don't think I'm coming back. And I walked out of class and I never went back to college. That was kind of like the story on that. I went back home. Of course, parents are super upset. You know, like what are you doing? You know you're supposed to set this example for your brother, your sister. We want you to have a better future than us. You know, instead of working all these hours and I'm like I just want to go to work yeah, you know, that's what I wanted.
Speaker 1:Now, when you did start going to work or whatever, did you feel a lot still from from the family, or do you?
Speaker 2:pretty much. Or yourself you just like, hey, I just want to do, I'm gonna get after it, or yeah, I just wanted to learn, um, I wanted to learn the family business. I knew that that's what I wanted to do. I love hospitality, I love food, um, and I was always very creative with it, um. So when all my friends and family or cousins are out having fun in the afternoons, I would ask my dad, like, like, I want to go to work.
Speaker 2:I don't care to go ride bikes or play basketball or soccer, whatever it may be, I just want to go to work and make some money. So, you know, that was that's just always been me. I've always been a worker. I've worked ever since I can remember and so, no, the pressure wasn't there really. You know, my family was starting to build a better foundation financially, so they were able to move into a bigger home where we all had our own bedroom. So it was getting much better on that end of it. But I had a goal of opening up my own restaurant, right. So I'm starting to work for my dad and I'm asking him to teach me all of these things, right, um, on how to run a business, and, uh, I like, I think I was like 19 or 20.
Speaker 1:I'm like dad, I'm ready, and he's like you're out of your mind well, part of it, you know, I think a lot of people don't really understand too especially small businesses are getting started is employees make more money than the owners? A lot of times that whole time they just paying the bills and making trying to grow something. You're watering that, that seed over and over and doing all the work, but employees often make more money.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, I mean, there's still. There's times, even now. You know, I have five restaurants now, but, um, uh, there's times now there's weeks, that, yeah, our employees are making more money as us, as owners, um, at one local. They're working at one location and making more money than I'm making them five. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's crazy and people don't often I appreciate that. I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know those are tough weeks, you know, but yeah, so that's kind of our story. So fast forward a little bit to 2011. I at that time I was 24 and my dad had just beat skin cancer. Beat skin cancer, so he, we had a lot of medical bills as well. You know, still still not by any means anywhere close to being in a stable financially. They had just actually, for the first time ever in their life, built a brand new house and it wasn't anything fancy, but it was a nice home for us and and so I asked my dad I said hey, I think I'm ready.
Speaker 2:And he agreed I think you're ready to open up your own store. Um, but my dad again is always let us fail and do things on our own. Um, he, uh, he helped us out tremendously, um, with his hands, essentially. Um, whatever we needed, you know I'll come and help you lay tile or put the ceiling together or whatever that may be. Um, but you, you got to do this. Um, so he taught me the basics of, like the kitchen stuff how to cook, right the recipes, and so on. Um, but, um, then he helped me out. Um, not financially, but just with his hands. Um, so's how Flows in Belmont was started in 2011 and we actually flew in a friend of his from Sicily to help us lay tile because it was cheaper to hire him than it was yeah you know, to to hire somebody here.
Speaker 2:So just very crazy stories, right, like I built that place with my own hands. We laid all the tile, we built the bathrooms, I laid every single ceiling tile. I had somebody come in and do the grid, but we couldn't afford for them to cut and put the tiles in in the ceiling, so we were put, you know, so very, very hands-on. You know, at that time I was very, I was very young and uh, uh, every bank that I went to was like laughing at me, like what do you mean? You're trying to get like a million dollar loan. You're like 22 years old, right? Um, so, um, you know it, it that was probably, uh, the time that, uh, you know, I I struggled the most because every day I felt like giving up. You know, I kind of reversed back when my, before the construction, we had to get approval for like a liquor license and building permits and stuff like that, right. So I remember for almost two years fighting the township because they didn't want to release a liquor license to me because I was too young, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That always is crazy to me. You're 23, 24.
Speaker 2:Well, at the time I was 22.
Speaker 1:22.
Speaker 2:Trying to get a liquor license. But that wasn't the crazy part. The crazy part is that my business partner is my brother and he's five years younger. Yeah Right, the crazy part is that my business partner is my brother and he's five years younger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, so I have a 17 and a 22-year-old getting in front of the board saying we need a license. One of them can't even drink, yeah right. The other one is only one year older than the legal drinking age. So it was very tough At the time. The board I, I feel like, was very rude at times. I got told to go home and do my homework, multiple times in front of a room full of people.
Speaker 2:So, but you know, I could have easily given up and moved on and I don't know where the heck I'd be today if I would have done that. But I've never given up on anything and I have always fought for what I wanted good or bad, but what I believed in. So I never gave up. So I started still keep saving up money and the meetings are every, I think, three or four weeks. So after so many times of trying and then saying no, I actually hired an attorney with a little bit of money that we had and I said I just need you to present this thing because they're not going to be able to talk back to you. They talk back to me, right? So I put him up there yeah.
Speaker 2:I put him up there with him and my accountant because they had a lot of financial questions. You know, they wanted to see my business plan and I'm like I just want to cook pizzas yeah right, that's what I know how to do, like I know this will work. Um, so my accountant put some numbers together and a business plan and helped me through that and um, and I only took one meeting of them presenting and I get my approval. So I wish I would have done that, you know right.
Speaker 1:well, sometimes we got to learn the hard way and we don't even know, you just slump through. You got to learn the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right On how to do that. So we finally get our liquor license approved and we start construction. They approve all of our building permits and our plans and we're probably about halfway through construction, maybe a little bit more, like three-quarters of the way, almost done with the place, and I get a letter of them saying you need to stop construction because we missed a very small detail on the approval process. So I'm like, okay, so I call them, or I can't remember if I went in, whatever it was, but that was when, I think, plainfield Township was detaching their water system from Grand Rapids. Oh, okay, and so every building that was opening that needed a lot of water usage, such as a restaurant or hair salon or anything like that, you needed to pay what they call the water tapping fee. Well, the water tapping fee was $42,000. Oh my.
Speaker 1:That's crazy.
Speaker 2:I have zero money left.
Speaker 1:I'm always in awe about how they can make those decisions. Yeah, it was just fine before, but not now, and $42,000?.
Speaker 2:Yeah, $42,000, right, I remember having a conversation with them. There's no physical way for me to have this money. Like, I don't have it, I can't go to family, they don't have it. Um, I, I don't know how to do this. Um, so, um, I already had signed a lease. So now I got I'm liable for this lease with a personal guarantee. Um, I have most of the construction done. And uh, again, do I walk away? And uh, I didn't. Um, I literally begged my landlord and I said can you please pay for this and add it to my rent over the next like two to three years? Um, and uh, after a little bit, he agreed Um, and uh, I think he wanted to see us, you know, succeed. Um, this one of the, the guy that I was dealing with, the landlord, uh, it was the son and he was closer to my age, so I think he kind of understood like, hey, yeah, I'll help you.
Speaker 1:You know it doesn't prove their value as a landlord. I mean, it might be difficult for him to re-rent it to somebody else without doing the same thing anyway. So there's a little leverage there if he's thinking like a business person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, perhaps You're right. Yeah, 100%. So he did. He paid for it. He billed it back to me at a small interest rate, which I was very thankful for. So we billed the place and I'm 24, my brother's 19, and we have no money for marketing and we opened the place as what is called at the time, florentines, a bump post drive, so the name was the same name as the one on Plainfield that my parents at the time were still running. You got some brand recognition that you're continuing.
Speaker 2:North side of town, you know. But the name wasn't owned by us. The name was owned by another gentleman that is still around. So my dad said, hey, before we decide on this name, I know that I have paperwork to use it at this location, but we should probably ask for permission. Yeah, right, oh, yeah, absolutely. So we walk into this guy's office. My dad is an old school sicilian dude. Um, we make the pitch. He goes absolutely, the more the merrier. Um, I, uh, I want you to be successful. Um, I'm like cool. So my, so my dad shakes his hand, and that was it to my dad. I shake my dad's hand. We just agreed to something. So I order my signage, my uniforms, everything. We get open.
Speaker 2:Six months after opening, I get sued for using the mail. So, again, you start from the beginning. All the way to here, I feel like all odds were against me right, age, money, you know all of it. But thankfully we were very successful when we opened and we did a great job with the community that surrounded us. And because it took us so long to open, we kind of like built up this huge hype, you know, and finally we're coming right.
Speaker 2:So we get sued, um, at the same time that was summer of 2011 my brother was in college and, uh, he, uh, he took, um a study. He did a study abroad in sicily for three and a half months. Okay, so I'm running the business by myself, um, with at the time, my girlfriend, um, and now she's my wife. But, um, so we're running the business by myself with, at the time, my girlfriend, and now she's my wife. So we're running the business and I remember calling him.
Speaker 2:I'm like I don't know what to do here. We're getting sued, we have no money in the bank. We can't fight this thing. I have no paperwork. The guy literally just shook my hand and looked me in the eyes. So I'm sitting there trying to figure out what the heck I'm going to do, right, so you know I'm sitting there trying to figure out what the heck I'm going to do, just stressed to the max. You know I'm again 24 years old, like I've never gone through this. I call my dad and my dad's super furious, of course and you know I'm like what do I do? And he's like you've got to change your name.
Speaker 2:I'm like I've built the last six months of success in this name. Yeah, like it's gonna. It's an identity, right, um? One thing that I knew is that if you change the identity, you have a very high chance of failing. Yeah, you know, um. So one day I was like you know what everybody always calls us flows, because florentines is too long yeah so where are you going? We're going.
Speaker 1:Sure, it's quick and easy too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's how the name Flo's came. Yeah, well, it's for my regulars. That's how they would always tell us. You know they would tell others where they were going. So quietly I changed the name, changed their uniform, changed any sort of marketing material or signage up front, and I made no advertising on that. I just quietly did it because I didn't want the consumer to all of a sudden be like whoa new place.
Speaker 2:You know the new place already went out of business, yeah Right, so I changed it and like two, three years later, we still had people going. When did you change your name?
Speaker 1:Right, that's amazing. Yeah, yeah no three years later, we still had people going when you change your name, right? That's amazing. Yeah, yeah, no, that's interesting story.
Speaker 2:So the lawsuit just kind of went away when you changed the name. Yeah, yeah, um. So yeah, that that was kind of, uh, you know the the kickoff to our what I call our company now, and, um, we just kept going and that place did really well for us. Um, next door was another restaurant, was like a breakfast place, um, they weren't doing too hot, um, so I actually offered um. I said I you know, like, can I take over your lease?
Speaker 2:um, because I need more room yeah um, like we're blowing the doors out of this place, um, so we literally punched a hole through the wall and, uh, kept as much as we could. You know, like, the flooring still to this day was from that restaurant. So we kept as much as we could. We remodeled next door and we made what we call our dining room, kind of like the quieter side of the restaurant. So that's Flows in Balma, that's Flows in Belmont. We had a great start there. We did very well from day.
Speaker 2:One In 2014 is when my parents wanted out of that little pizza shop on Plainfield, but they weren't just going to hand it over. Me and my brother had to pay for it. Maybe it was below market value at the time, maybe it was above, I don't know, but to pay for it, yeah, you know, um, it wasn't. Uh, maybe maybe it was below market value at the time, maybe it was above, I don't know, but we paid for it. Um, so, um, we paid for the place and uh, um, so that was technically our second location at the time, um, but it still had the florentine's name and I was so angry against that name.
Speaker 2:I'm like I'm changing the name yeah so that was the first thing we did. Uh, we changed the name to Flows to match the one up up the road. That same year we started a company called Flows Catering and Banquet Services, expanding yeah, and that that came from. You know a? Just a personal experience with a caterer that I'm like I can't believe how much you're charging. You know a? Uh, just a personal experience with a caterer that I'm like I can't believe, unless you're charging, you know, for this stuff there's profit here. Yeah, um, so, um, we knew we couldn't run out of Belmont, so we were running it out of our, the small little pizza shop.
Speaker 1:Okay, um and uh it was still keeping business going as normal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was chaos. I mean, weekends was complete chaos. I had my catering team in there, I had my pizzeria team in there, um, and they were just you know in a way, but in heads too, um, because it's like you're in my way, you're in my way, you know, we're running out of oven space, um. So we knew right away hey, this is actually working. We have a good business plan here. We're providing a product which is like an Italian catering menu that no one else was really providing at the time. Yeah, so we need to do something. We need to either go to a different building, build a different kitchen or, quite frankly, we need to acquire, like a different catering company, Sure. So a friend of mine, dan Corhorn, which you know, oh, that guy yeah.
Speaker 1:Might have already seen him on a previous episode of this, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Introduced me to the Johnson family out of Holland and the kids were trying to get mom and dad to sell a catering company out of Holland so they could enjoy a retirement. So he introduced me to Joe, which was the son, and um, um, then Joe introduced me to the parents and uh, we met the parents and uh, you know, we told them our story and what we wanted to do with what they had built over the last 40 years in that company, and that company was called Catering Concepts. So we striked the deal with them. We bought the building, so we moved our operations from Grand Rapids to Holland and operated out of Holland for three years. I tried everything I could to make that place sustainable financially and I just couldn't.
Speaker 1:How did that work? Because the distance, I mean you're kind of in that Belmont Plainfield area and now I mean Holland's not that far, but it seems like a long way from where your normal market might be 100%.
Speaker 2:That was that. That's the toughest part, right, we the, you know, logistically it didn't work. Yeah, um, because we're catering downtown grand rapids, you know, and we're on the south side of highland, so even further. Yeah, right, so we have a 45 minute drive. Um, all of our food is cooked in our kitchen. It's a nice, beautiful commercial kitchen, uh, at the time, and we have to bring it all the way to grand rapids.
Speaker 2:Um, sometimes we would have things like in northern grand Rapids, like Cedar Springs or Rockford or Sparta or Greenville. So then you're talking about an hour, hour and 15 minutes of packing food up in a van and trying to deliver it and hope that you still have quality when you're serving it. So that was a big part of it. But we had such a big book of business that we had bought from Catering Concepts and we're like, ok, well, if we move this thing out of Holland, we will lose that. Yeah, because we were doing a lot in Holland as well. So we just couldn't make it financially anymore and we decided we need to sell this building, we need to tell the book, we need to grab the book of business and we actually need to move it closer to us. And again, when you start crunching the numbers on a building, there's a lot of overhead. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I couldn't make the numbers work on paper. So I'm like, okay, I got two choices here. I made a bet, investment, you know, or I need to figure out how to incorporate this um inside like a current location. Okay, so, um. So, oddly enough, almost that same year which that would have been 2016 now, um, two years later, um, we, uh, we, we were opening our Greenville location and I oversized the crap out of that location to bring catering concepts in.
Speaker 1:Okay, makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, um, that's what we did. We opened that location, we let it launch and then, as soon as it launched, we moved catering concepts into Greenville, um, into the Greenville market, which was a little bit closer, but still not that close, right, but at least I didn't have all that building overhead. But that created its own chaos in its own right, because you know inventory stuff, you know having two different teams working out of one building. Don't touch my mozzarella cheese right.
Speaker 2:You know, don't touch my steak, you know, because we still only have one big cooler, you know, and we try to split it as much as we could. So it created a lot of issues operationally, but we made it work, and so that was. We ran that and then, two years later, in 2018, we opened up Flo's Woodfire Pizzeria up in Rockford in conjunction of San Julian Winery. The Bragagnini family is a great family. They ran that winery for well over 100 years now, and when they wanted to open up a location in, uh, closer to Grand Rapids, um, they wanted a restaurant partner. Yeah, that's a great little setup there. We love it. Um, it's, uh, it's one of my favorite places. It's my baby, Um and uh. So, um, we, uh, we decided to say yes to that. Um so um, that same year as we're opening that, I traveled to Parma, Italy, and I competed in one of the largest pizza competitions in the world.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:We call it kind of like the Super Bowl of pizza. Yeah, one of my first competitions, I had competed locally a few times and we won, you know, some smaller awards, like best pizza in Grand Rapids or best pizza in Michigan. You know, we, we went to Vegas a couple of times, even though at the time that that competition wasn't nearly as big. We won a few like best pizza in the Midwest awards. But when I got to Italy, this is a whole different level. Yeah, these are like true chefs, professionals. You know all of them have gone to school, you know, for cooking you know, and culinary.
Speaker 2:So I I brought a good pizza, but you know I was nervous to top it off. All the ingredients that I had put in my luggage to bring to italy get lost oh no way. So now I'm in a different country, right, yes, I know how to speak the language. Thankfully, right, I can get around. Um, I'm in a different country and, uh, I have no, none of my ingredients and I'm at one of my the biggest competitions that I'll probably ever be a part of. Sure.
Speaker 2:Um so, um, last minute I started tweaking my my recipe. Um and uh, I tweaked it to the ingredients that I could find there and um I, I, I didn't even believe it when they were calling me, but um I, I won first place.
Speaker 1:That's amazing yeah.
Speaker 2:Um. So that's an award that, um, not many people, uh, in our industry can really speak on. Um, you know, because you win the award of best pizza in America, because you're representing America out there. Um, so we, uh, we really started earning our spotlight in the pizza industry, um and uh, not just in West Michigan but kind of all over. So that same year I joined what well, I got recruited by them, joined what they call the US Pizza Team.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah. So it's sort of like the Olympics of pizza, you know. In a sense that's exactly right Interesting, that's exactly right Interesting.
Speaker 2:So almost every country's got one of these teams and so I was very honored and we would travel all over the world and all over the country and we would compete as a team but still have individual awards.
Speaker 1:So do you have? I mean, what kinds of pizza are you making? Is it kind of a broad group? I mean, there's a lot of different styles. Is it all the same style?
Speaker 2:So the style is going to be like a New York style pizza. It's the closest thing that you're going to be able to find in the Midwest. It's a New York style pizza. So most of the pizza, even at Flo's what we serve, it's not a true New York style but it's the closest thing to it. It's what the Midwest likes. But then there's categories traditional, nontraditional, pan, detroit style, grandma style. Okay, can we do this time out for a?
Speaker 1:second, I think the one camera stopped. I'm not sure how to.
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm still recording, so I'm still catching all that, okay. But when I'm not sure how to, I'm still recording. So I'm still catching all that, okay.
Speaker 1:But when I'm in this one, the close view, Just hit reactivate, reactivate again, so I can just get it right up here. I didn't know if I could do that during, that's why I didn't know. I don't know either. So better to stop. I don't think it'll pick it up over here. I don't think it'll come back.
Speaker 2:Oh the noise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my phone ringing. I meant to put it on airplane mode. I'm doing that disturb before I'm like ah, Is it this one? Okay. I'm going to deactivate. I did activate. Let me just shut it off. Turn it on. Okay, that happened before.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was just. I wasn't sure, if I hit deactivate, if it was going to deactivate this one. This is the other one you're on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because, and that's what's recording, but that's what I mean, yeah, so we'll just start over with the pizza styles a little bit and we can.
Speaker 2:So start with, like the pizza styles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we'll figure out a way to merge that in We'll be you know Edit it. Yeah, are we recording both? You didn't pause.
Speaker 2:Didn't pause, okay, cool.
Speaker 1:Good, okay, cool.
Speaker 2:Go ahead. So, yeah, there's different types of categories, from traditional, non-traditional you can compete in, like the best cheese pizza, that's it. Then they have Roman style, they have Detroit style, they have a Roman style pizza and now, you know, at the time they didn't have much of this, but now you have gluten free, you have vegan, as that world has kind of expanded. So we're traveling around and we're doing very well with with more and more awards. Just, you know, we competed in California, we got an award there. We we've competed in Ohio multiple times, um. We we've competed in ohio multiple times, um.
Speaker 2:So it's, it's why we created this like family, in a way like my pizza family. Yeah, I call it um and, uh, you know, it made the experience way bigger for me because we I started learning, honestly, the science behind pizza. You know how does the dough react, you know to this and that, and the water and the yeast and the temperatures. That's stuff that I never knew. Yeah, I knew how to make dough. I just knew that you add this, this and that and it makes the dough you're good.
Speaker 2:Right, but I had no idea. Hydration levels, you know all of that. So being around those professionals really taught me all the science behind a pizza. You know, the acidity in your sauce, what kind of tomatoes to use, the best tomatoes to use, you know. So we were able to elevate our brand by the quality of the items that we started providing.
Speaker 2:And I remember getting a call from a tomato company and they're like hey, we want you to start using our tomatoes. We recognize you from these competitions. Um and uh, we're going to pay for you to come out to California. We'll take you on the field, we'll show you how the tomatoes are grown, how they're canned, you know, and how they get over to you. Um and uh. So that was a great experience, you know, to be able to provide the story behind that, even to my consumers, right to my customers, and say I literally went to the field, I was able to see how the tomato comes from that plant all the way to a can and all the way to me. Cheese company was the same way they called me. Hey, you know, why don't you come out to Buffalo? It's an Italian cheese company. We want to walk you through our entire process, how pizza's made, and so on. So you know now, you know you fast forward. Well, let's back up a little bit.
Speaker 2:I want to talk about how we opened up Franca's Pizzeria, and that was three years ago, so that was in 2022. So, after the pandemic, we're figuring out. Okay, what do we do with this restaurant group? You know, most restaurants are closing its doors and they're not doing well, and we decided, you know what we want to take a chance on a location, but this one, I want it to be special and I want it to be something that means more to us than just a shortened up name. You know, um, so we opened up what we call Franca's Pizzeria, which is my mom's name, to honor her and, uh, everything her and my family had done.
Speaker 2:You know, up to that point for us. You know, um, we're very appreciative to be in America. Um, we're, we're. I think it's the best country in the world. Um, you know, growing up and living in Italy is beautiful. I mean, you've got beautiful scenery and I love vacationing there. I'm not sure I could ever live there again. So we wanted to open up Franca's. So we're three years strong there and that brand means a lot to us. It's a really nice brand. It's something of our own that we created from the ground up.
Speaker 1:So is the business model different there, or the style or the atmosphere?
Speaker 2:No, it's a takeout and delivery only brand.
Speaker 2:So it's very much like the Flo's on Plainfield almost identical menu but we simplified even that a little bit more by not having like fried foods. Everything is baked. So our menu is slimmed down just slightly. But we simplified even that a little bit more by not having like fried foods. Everything is baked. So our menu is slimmed down just slightly and some items got tweaked so that they're not fried, they're baked. But overall, I would say 99%, you're going to find the same menu and the same quality that you did at Flo's on Plainfield and the same quality that you did at Flows on Plainfield.
Speaker 2:So then you know, we fast forward to earlier this year, 2025, and I'm still part of the US pizza team and they've asked me hey, you haven't been competing in a couple years.
Speaker 1:I'm like well, I kind of earned like the highest title, best pizza in America.
Speaker 2:Yeah, quit on top, or what you know, like you know, what else do you want from me? You know, um, so, uh, uh, they said, well, if you don't want to compete this year, we need judges. How about you come and judge in vegas? So I hadn't been to vegas now in five years competing b I I was there before the pandemic, okay, but I never went back after the pandemic and um, so, um, I'm like I'm all in.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's an honor like you're asking me to be a judge, are you kidding? And I love pizza like this is the best job in the world, right? Um? So, um, I uh fly out to Vegas, um, and I'll tell you that was my first time in five years and that show had like doubled in size.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So in a way I felt like almost overwhelmed but thankful after seeing the quality of pizzas that were coming out. I'm like I'm thankful I'm on the judging side, because I haven't been here so long. I would have brought a product that may have may not competed well, because now I'm bringing a totally you know that may have may not competed well. You know, because now I'm bringing a totally different product that these people are bringing.
Speaker 1:You know these people are nowadays the stuff that you see on pizza is crazy sure as some of these competitions and things change too, and tastes, you know the creativity is insane.
Speaker 2:I mean, you'll eat gold on a pizza like straight up, 24 karat.
Speaker 1:No way. Yeah, I was curious on how the show went. I hadn't heard since you were there, like that's the new. What else was like really interesting.
Speaker 2:You know, the biggest and I'm not a fan of it yet, and I don't know if I'll ever be a fan of it is the amount of robots that are in my industry. Okay, and they're coming. Oh, I believe that.
Speaker 1:I think they're going to hit every industry really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, robots and AI. So there's great telephone AIs now that I would say, probably less than five years from now, most pizza shops that you'll be calling, the phone is going to be answered by a computer, and they are so smooth.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You can't tell that it's not a human person. I mean, they are trained to your menu, they know every little aspect of your menu and they get smarter as they go. Oh sure, when they're having those conversations and I basically test drove one and they said call it, call this number. I couldn't throw it off.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:I could not throw it off. I was throwing pizzas, I was throwing burger questions, I was throwing salads. I was saying minus this, plus that asking the craziest questions, it did it all.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. I think that's going to really come along. It'll be interesting to see, like like every massive innovation um it'll bring a lot of changes, um, for both the customer experience and the the owner. Um, it'll be interesting to see what goes from that. I'm excited. There's no, there's no like fighting, something like that. I mean you can still have an alternative, but, um, it'll be really interesting to see. Yeah, I mean you can still have an alternative, but it'll be really interesting to see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know the reason why I'm not a fan for our industry. I think there's industries that it fits Sure Right, but we all go out to eat because the hospitality part of it. We like to have that interaction with the server or the manager, or the host, you know, or the hostess, you know, checking you in. I think that I'm not even exaggerating. There is a system out there for every single one of those positions and I've seen it all in Vegas.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've seen from high-capacity pizza-making robots where they can grab a pizza, they can flatten it, they can sauce it, they can top it, they can put it in the oven. There's a robot on the other side of the oven that is picking it up, it's cutting it, putting it in a box, labeling it, putting it on a shelf. That's everything we do, literally everything we do in the restaurant, and you have one person that loads up ingredients in this huge machine. So will it be the future of our industry? I'm not sure, because of the hospitality part of it. You can't replace people and the way that you interact with them. A computer will never be able to do that.
Speaker 1:I can agree. I think it's going to be everything like. There'll be companies and brands that do that. You'll have your McDonald's, where it's still like it's all kiosks and stuff pretty much anymore, but then you'll still have the flows and the more personal things where you go to. I went to a, I went to a steak and shake with my daughter, so I'm not steak and shake but a shake shack.
Speaker 1:Maybe we were out of town and I walk in. I want to go sit down, have a meal. And I walk in and all it is is a kiosk and I'm like this isn't the experience I want. I don't want to. I mean I don't mind using a kiosk, but I don't want to just punch in my order like I'm at McDonald's. I'm paying a premium already. I'm like this stuff is 15, 20 bucks, 25 bucks for a meal. And I'm like, if I'm going to do that, I want more of the sit-down experience. I want somebody to come say hi, smile at me, you know, bring me my stuff. And we just walked out Like I'm like, man, this isn't what I wanted. So I can see that.
Speaker 2:So that's the downfall, right, and that's where I don't see that I think there's going to be its place for it. I don't think it will be at a small franchise like ours, um, not in that full level of it. You know, I can see us, uh, quite frankly, um, you know, integrating something like the phone services. Sure, um, it cuts down on uh mistake, um, which is huge in our industry because you know, if you don't express yourself well enough, you know um to to our, to our people, or if our phone people. Most of the time, these are 16, 17-year-olds. It's their first job, right? They don't really know how to interact with, quite frankly, nowadays, when our face is in a screen most of the time on our phones, a lot of these kids have a really hard time interacting with customers, whether it's over the phone or in person.
Speaker 2:Um, so I can definitely see uh that taking over um the the phone part of it, it's smooth. I, I couldn't believe it. You know, like how smooth it was, um, but uh, the other stuff, I don't know. I'm optimistic and maybe, uh, maybe I'm too old school in some ways where you know I, I don't, I don't want a robot making my pizza. Yeah, you know, um, but time will tell you. Know it really. The market and the uh, employee market will dictate that you know if people don't want to work I've noticed my daughter works in a pizza place pizza in florida and tampa.
Speaker 1:We went in the other day and it was interesting because they have seven, eight people and it's just assembly line, um, kind of like a subway type of thing, and you customize your pizza and I noticed you know the first couple kids, um, they seem newer, they're making and saucing the pizza and different. My daughter, because we were there, she came around, she was working the till but came around, made her pizzas for us and she was so much quicker.
Speaker 1:It was like quick, like it's just different. So I appreciate the standardization aspect and I could see a place like that being much easier. Instead of five employees, there's really five people working on that line. Um, I could see something like that turning going down to one or two.
Speaker 2:Yeah so there's, there'll be a time and a place for for some of that stuff. But yeah, going back to your question, that was the biggest take that I I got out of that show. I couldn't believe how much technology is out there nowadays, uh, you know from even even something as like a robot?
Speaker 1:uh, bartender yeah, um, oh, I, I've heard of those too, yeah yeah, there are.
Speaker 2:And I'll tell you, one of our hardest things to control is overpour. Sure, right, so these robots don't overpour. Yeah, it's exactly to the ounce. You know every single drink, um, so there are, there are parts of that that are very attractive. I'm saying, if the pos can talk to this robot, yeah, make those. You know even something simple like a shot and pop, sure, but be perfect every single time.
Speaker 1:That's an asset yeah, it's great for the customer too, because they're getting the same same thing, every consistency and, uh, yeah, more efficient. Like I could see that, especially on a bartending. Then I've seen them where the bartender, the, the robot does everything, but I still like the idea. Like, to me, bartenders are a great part of the whole experience too, so maybe the back end machine's making the drink bartender grabs it and still having the back and forth with you yeah, you know I'm not a.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure that I would ever be a fan again. Going back to the hospitality part of it, you know I can see, like the table drinks. The drinks are going to the table, right, the server is still bringing those, maybe that being part of the robot, you know, making those drinks, right. But if you're sitting at the bar rail, that's literally your experience. You, the bar rail, yeah, that's literally your experience. You sit at the bar because you want to be able to interact with that bartender, right, you want to talk about the sports or on tv or whatever else, right? Um. So, again, time and a place for for all of that. Um, I uh, it was kind of sad in a way, yeah you know, these guys are talking to me like it's exciting and I'm like this sucks yeah I find some.
Speaker 1:I'm the same way like a little bit old school um, a little bit I appreciate um, and I think there's just no stop in some of it just going to change. But but there are certain experiences that don't need to change and people will pay extra for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in my opinion, yeah, no 100, you know. So that was probably my biggest take um out of the that that show that I went to yeah, so um any current plans to expand or in terms of the flows franchises, um great question.
Speaker 2:Um, no, not at the moment. Um, so the pandemic really put a hurt into our industry. You've probably seen it, you know, not just here, but I know you traveled to Florida too. A lot of great restaurants went out of business. I'm not sure that the industry ever recovered from that, from the pandemic that we went through, pandemic that we that we went through. To top it off, and you know, the state of Michigan put some different legislation on tipping, wages and so on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, onto restaurants this year, and I think more, more restaurants are gonna close down. So we really are looking at the next like five years as a year of not only restructuring but also just hang on to what we got. Um, you know, we can't lose them. I don't want to lose them. Um, I don't want to shut down a location. Yeah, um, you know. So, um, it's really about, uh, making the ones that we have efficient, um, restructuring our team, which we've done a lot of that already this year to cut costs, um, so that we can stay profitable. You know, most people, most people really don't believe me with the percentage that I made last year in 2024. And I'm going to ask it to you you know, what do you think we made out of five locations on a percentage base in profit?
Speaker 1:I don't know, because I always look at drinks and bartending. It's a different profit margin, um, and I'd be curious to hear but me I would. I would think you're probably 10 percent range. I don't know. I came from the manufacturing background, yeah, and our goals were often 10, 11 percent, um, 10 percent, what's that I would kill? For 10%, what's that I would kill?
Speaker 2:for 10%. Yeah, 2024,. We came in at 1.02. Wow.
Speaker 1:That's such a fine margin.
Speaker 2:It is you screw up one period, you're done for the year. And so we knew we had to make some really big changes if we wanted to stay alive, if we didn't want to just be another statistic of closing down one or two locations. Um, so, uh, we made a lot of changes. Um, we, uh, we're. We aimed for 2025 to be at 6%. Um, that's the best we could do with even making a ton of really tough calls.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, um, we are about half of that right now, so, um, I'm hoping the rest of the year we can really fine-tune some more stuff to get to that 6%. But yeah, when you're running a profit margin of 1, 3, or 6, that's not very sustainable for a long time and if it is, you really got to be all hands on deck. You got to watch every single penny coming in and out, whether it's labor or cost of goods sold. All of that Right. So we have an amazing team that takes care of all the day-to-day stuff and does just a phenomenal job. Looking at that, all those little dollars and pennies coming in and out.
Speaker 1:So maybe for the you know aspiring restaurateurs or people that do have something, they're kind of in the middle of it struggling. Also, is there kind of any advice that you might give them or things that, hey, you've learned through this process trying to be more efficient, that you could kind of share on a high level? Yeah hey, these are some things you should probably look at or that have worked well for us.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent. Um, you know, my biggest advice that I would give anybody right now trying to open a restaurant, um, is, don't look at growth. If there restaurants can be successful today, uh, but, uh, if you're a family, get ready for everybody to work. Yeah, um, you know, if you're a husband and a wife opening up a restaurant, you're working it, because the minute that you want to start plugging in management in those positions, those are seventy five hundred thousand dollar jobs in management, depending on the size of your operation. You could probably go down to like fifty thousand, fifty five, but we still got to pay people to make a good living. Yeah, right, so you know, nowadays a salary 50, 55,000 doesn't really go very far. No.
Speaker 2:Right. So the biggest advice I would give is if you're going to open up a restaurant, get ready to put your sleeves up and work as many hours as you possibly can. So we're in 2025. I would say you need to ride this wave out, and this wave is not going to be two, three, four years. Would say you need to ride this wave out and this wave is not going to be two, three, four years I think, we're riding a five to ten year wave until it starts to.
Speaker 2:Our industry starts turning around and unfortunately, what's going to happen is that I think there's going to. The only way to turn it around is for the week to fall. We're going to lose a lot of weak operators, operators that don't. That may have still great food, but maybe they just never were good at marketing so they couldn't get the word out there, right? It doesn't mean that they're bad operators, but nobody knows about them, right? So my biggest advice is that. And then, if you don't think that a penny matters, you think twice, because a penny here, a penny there, a penny there next thing you know, at the end of the month you can't make rent. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, and that's reality in our industry. You know people, even some of our current employees. It's like why does it matter if I put an extra ounce of cheese on this pizza? That extra ounce of cheese costs X amount of dollars, right? We push out hundreds company-wide. Right, you start tying, you know, you start putting all those dollars and pennies together. They add up to a lot of money at the end of the year. So it's very important that you keep your eye on two things. And it's our prime cost, right. So you have cost of goods sold and labor. Those are your biggest two expenses of goods sold and labor. Those are your biggest two expenses. Yeah, and you have to be able to pay attention to every little detail in that. If you're not somebody that is used to doing like an inventory in the restaurant business, do it. You can't, you won't be able to survive.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I could see that for sure. I've worked a little bit in restaurants and as a younger age and retail and all that stuff like it finds ways to disappear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you go crazy trying to find where the leak is if you don't do inventory. By doing inventory, you should be able to go back and say this is where we're missing. You know this is what we need to focus on. You know, it's like pizza cheese to us is one of our biggest expenses that we have. We buy more cheese in dollars than anything else inside our restaurants Interesting. So cheese has to be something we pay attention to. So that's like a big focus for us, right? So, yeah, paying attention to your prime cost is huge. Obviously, everything else below your prime cost is still very important. You know, don't go out and get the best TV subscription if you don't need it. You know stuff like that. Right, Be very frugal. But I think we have a very rough patch in the next few years in the restaurant world and if we're not careful as operators, we're going to close our doors. There's just no, no way around it. So how do you?
Speaker 1:see, because a lot of industries. How do you see companies like private equity or large change versus the smaller regional chains or franchises versus the mom-pop shop? Do you think there's going to be a big shift in any of that over the coming years? With the robots and things I mean, how do you see that playing out?
Speaker 2:You know it's funny. You mentioned private equity, because I hate the fact that they're in the restaurant world.
Speaker 1:A lot of people hate. I keep hearing a lot of it about any like owners that are trying to get out of the business. They kind of like it.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, they love it.
Speaker 1:They love it. It's a great more money than they could get from anybody else. But others that are still trying to operate and trying to grow. I mean, I've seen a lot of them that they just come down and then the business is out of business because they're using it to restructure other debt or other business models or other things. But I'm just kind of curious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean private equity companies. What do they do? Right, they get into something, they maximize profits and they sell. Yeah, it's a flip game to them, right? So, as a restaurant operator, I absolutely hate that, because what they're doing is they're grabbing these smaller or larger groups of restaurants from either even chains are doing this or selling, you know, like bigger franchises that have like a whole market to a single franchise group or operator. You know, those guys love selling to those for those exact reasons, right? But what are those guys doing is they're going in. They're cutting positions. They're cutting quality. For what? Because they need to maximize the profits, because the next guy buying he's not going to care about the quality of the food or the people that are working in it. Right, these are big operations. So the next guy buying it is looking at the bottom line. Oh, you're profiting 10%, Because that's what they're trying to get to, right? They're buying these places profiting at 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, whatever it may be. Maximizing it to 10%, they just double the value of that company.
Speaker 1:Oh sure, and then yeah, if you're looking at 2%, 3%, x, 5%, x, 10%, whatever their factor is to sell.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So private equity is my least favorite part in the restaurant world because it happens all the time. I interviewed a gentleman sometime last year and he was let go from Panera Bread and that's exactly what they did. It was a bigger restaurant group that operated them. They sold to a private equity. Private equity eliminated all these positions without creating any other structure. So, the stores are running like garbage.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, because you had all these positions in charge of X, y and Z. Now there's nobody in charge, right? There's no quality control, there's no, nothing. And he said that's their whole goal. It's not really sustainable. It won't be for the long run, you know. But the whole point is I need to get some 10 percent, 12 percent profits and I need to sell this thing, right, so that's how they make their money. So you know, to answer your question, I think what you're going to start seeing is a lot more mom and pop shops pop up. I think the larger corporations will win only in one aspect, and it's going to be consistency.
Speaker 2:Because in today's world, it's very, very tough in our industry to teach, I guess, this working generation on how to actually care about the product that they're putting out. So we're having a very hard time with taking pride, right, these people need to take pride. That's hospitality. You need to take pride in the food that you're putting out and the service that you're providing. And it's gotten tougher and tougher and tougher as generations have gotten to now to actually teach that Franchises have an upper hand on us on that, because their operations are much more slim as far as what their offerings are and they repeat it. I mean, think about Chick-fil-A. They have what six items?
Speaker 1:on their menu. Yeah, you know, I have over 300 about Chick-fil-A. Yeah, they have what? Six items on their menu?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know I have over 300 combinations on my sports bar menu.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, when you take, like your build-your-own pastas and so on, right? So when you take, you know, a product like a Chick-fil-A that has six items, you can stamp it every single time the same, right. It's a simple item to put together. It's not scratch cooking like we're doing, right? So those places are going to have, will always, they always have and they always will have an upper hand on us, you know. But then the mom and pops I kind of go back and I say if I was cooking, right, if my brother was cooking or my wife was running the register, or if we were serving the tables, we care, we're going to care, always the most Good or bad. Sometimes we take everything personal. When you care so much about the product that you're serving, that side of it I could see how it could be successful because you go and eat at a mom and pop shop, you most likely got the husband or the wife in the kitchen. You might have maybe one of their kids, you know, running the front of the house or register, depending on the concept, and I think the product will come out great and that's what people want, right?
Speaker 2:One of the biggest complaints I think that you hear in our industry is consistency right now, and it's because the pandemic eliminated a lot of our veterans. You know, the servers that made a living off of serving, um, the cooks, they made a living off of cooking. Well, when we had, uh, what I call the roller coaster of open and close, you know, restaurants are open, restaurants are closed. Restaurants are oh yeah, restaurants are closed. Restaurants are open. Restaurants are closed. Right, had to find something consistent. They did so. A lot of them went to manufacturing or whatever else. Right, that had a steady paycheck. Right, because when we were closed, we had to lay those people off and then we're trying to bring them back and they're saying, sorry, found something else. Right. So we started rebuilding, you know, since the pandemic, but all the rebuild is off of people that don't have experience. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we've had to really tighten up our training manuals, you know, to improve those Um. You know we, we've always done training on paper, um, and now our entire training program for all of our locations is digital. It gives us the opportunity on a corporate level, to go in on every single location when we know there's people training, you know, to see where they're at. You know, on paper you can advance to the next step, right, okay, sure, yeah, digital. Unless you pass you, you can't advance, right? So you need to actually study and you need to get this right. So we've had to tighten up all those things. But what is that? That's a cost.
Speaker 2:Oh sure, right, to build an entire digital training platform for five restaurants has costed us thousands and thousands of dollars, yeah, right, so in a time that we could use all that money, you know I'll swear right. So, um, so I mean, we're doing our best, we're doing the best we can. Um, you know, I, uh, a couple years ago now we're on year actually three years ago now, um year three um, I was sitting in my backyard talking to a buddy of mine and he said um, hey, have you ever heard of eos? Um, because I, honestly, I was. I was burnt out.
Speaker 2:Coming out of the pandemic, I was like I don't know what to do anymore. Man, I'm working like 90 hours a week. Um, I feel like I'm doing all this by myself, you know, with my partner, you know my brother's obviously always there. Um, I was like I, I know I'm not being one, a good leader, one not being a good dad, I'm not being a good, uh, husband. Um, just, I feel like it's just not cool right now. So, um, that's when he was like, have you ever heard of us? And he runs a very successful company, and I said, no, I have no idea. So he tells me a little bit about it and he's like read this book and it was called Traction. Um, I read that book and I fell in love.
Speaker 1:I've heard that. I've read it many years ago now, but, um, I've heard that same story from a lot of business owners. It's one of the life-changing, business changing books that they've read. Yeah, so um and implemented.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we try to implement, uh, eos in-house self-implement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um horrible, we didn't know what the hell we were doing.
Speaker 2:You know, it was terrible. Um so, uh, we, uh, we're sitting here, you know, and we're having these meetings and they're not going anywhere. Things are not getting better. Um and uh, I, uh, I looked at my team and I'm like we got to get an implementer. Yeah, somebody's got to teach us how to do this. Let you know, let them teach us for a few years, um, and then we, maybe we can take this thing on our own. Um so, um, we contacted an EOS implementer. Um, she came in and uh, uh, we were a great fit, uh, culturally, uh, the culture that we and the values that our company hold. And uh so, uh, we hopped on her platform. Um and uh, we ran with her for two years and uh, her fees unfortunately, we're getting way too high, because every session is like six grand with uh, with an experienced implementer.
Speaker 2:yeah, um so when you're on tight margins yeah, and you have to have one session every quarter, so you have four of those and then you have a year end, which is a three-day event.
Speaker 2:Okay, six, six, six, yeah. So you have seven, right, seven sessions. You could probably cut it down to six, you know, but seven sessions, um, in order to be successful in this and um. So, after paying a ton of money that was one of our cuts we're like we gotta cut this. What can we afford? This is what we can afford. So we put the word out and we're like we love you, but we need somebody cheaper. Yeah, um. So we found somebody that was just becoming an implementer usually as, uh, as the newer guys, um, or girls are, are a little bit cheaper, yeah, um. So, uh, we're with this guy named Josh and we love him. Yeah, I mean, this dude is amazing. Not that I didn't love our previous one she did a great job for us but me and him connect on a level that is like we've been like friends forever.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's great, yeah, so he's taking care of my team. Oh, that's great, yeah, so, um, he's taking care of my team. Um and uh. So we started working last year towards uh, uh, what we call me and my brother being in the owner's box. Um, which means that, um, we, we let everything, all of our duties, go and, uh, make only owner, uh, I guess, uh, uh, decisions. You know that's opening new stores, closing new stores or closing stores or any major decision, right, you know we need to go get a loan or whatever that may be. So we worked very hard with our first integrator to get to that. So when we came to Josh, I was already in that owner box, but I really wanted to get to that. So when we came to Josh, I was already in that owner box, but I really wanted to get to know the guy. So we've been now running on four months of me and my brother being in the owner's box.
Speaker 2:It's been life-changing. I'm able to be a husband and a dad and I'm not grumpy all the time. I feel like I'm able to be a husband and a dad and I'm not grumpy. Yeah, you know, I feel like I'm human again and the team is doing such a great job running the Flows franchise. They're running five stores and, quite honestly, I think they're actually running, believe it or not. Sometimes they run better without us. Yeah, because of that personal attachment that we have, right. So when something goes wrong, yes, you should care, but we kind of lose our mind, you know, because this is our baby. You know how can this happen.
Speaker 2:You know, versus they handle it more logically of systems and data, you know, and, and figuring out the cause of the issue, um, you know, so, in a way, I think the restaurants, uh, in many aspects, uh, run better without owners. Sometimes, um and uh, we, but we worked so hard to create systems. I mean, I think I, I think I've put together like 140 SOPs, you know so, like that's almost too much. You know, structure is great, but maybe not to the extent that I was taking it, you know, but so it's. We're just in a really good spot on that and I'm just really proud to be there and proud of the team that we've been able to put together on that.
Speaker 1:That's great. I've seen a lot of business people struggle, struggle and even in my business, like taking that next step to having a team or having employees or owning a brokerage. Um, there's that. There's always that transition and growth that everybody seems to struggle with and then it becomes you, do you take everything? No, I mean, I remember years ago I had amazing year before I hired my transaction coordinator, I was doing all the back-end paperwork and everything and my wife would see the back of my head.
Speaker 1:I'm on vacation with the kids, we're at a park, an amusement park, and I'm sitting in the cabana on the phone and the calls. I went on like two rides with the kids and I just vowed never to do that again. That's when I hired a transaction coordinator. Now there's new steps to growth. Having being able to step back and give off up some of that stuff um, it's so freeing and it makes the rest of life so much better.
Speaker 2:But it was hard right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, super hard. Cause now I've got to trust somebody to do you know. They say you know if they can do 80% as well. Hey, giddy up. Yeah as well. Hey, giddy up, yeah, um, and because yeah, one mistake sometime could really impact my client my deal and maybe even tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 2:Yeah, letting go was my hardest part. I had my hands in every part of my business every little you, you name it, I had my hands in it. Um, so you know, having to let go of, and I told him I was. I was like we got to do this slowly. There's no way that I can just let go. I think I will lose my mind. So, yeah, it took us a couple of years and letting go here, letting go there a little bit at a time, and I got to say it's been life changing.
Speaker 1:Great.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I guess, before we wrap up, I know there's some other things that you do and I think a lot of times, even in real estate, a lot of times agents will work, will make their living and same with a lot of jobs and then, but that's still trading time for dollars. So they want to invest and so a lot of times for people like us it's buying a duplex or buying other real estate assets that'll kind of rise with inflation and sort of be there when we're, when we're done, trading that time for dollars. In a sense, what are you, what have you done to expand?
Speaker 1:yeah on that yeah, great question.
Speaker 2:Thanks for bringing that up. So you know, the entrepreneur in me and my brother has always been there, and the great thing about the difference between me and my brother is that we're completely different.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I have always been the face of the company you know and creating the connections. And David is really good at handling our books, analyzing numbers, putting business proposals together, talking to banks. You know all of that. That stuff I'm not very good at he has an education behind it. He understands it. It's a whole different language when you talk accounting. I don't have the passion for that, nor do I want to learn it, to be honest.
Speaker 2:So we just make a really good team and one of the things that we've always done is invest in real estate when we had extra money. So over the last now 13 years or 14 years actually, we're going on all of our restaurants we really just focused on investing our money smart. What does that mean? We've invested into newer locations. Obviously, that's how we've grown our restaurants. But anything that has been left over, we've always invested in real estate and I'm not talking about like, really like flipping, it's buying assets. So we've bought single family homes, we've rented them out, we've hung on to them for a few years, we've unloaded them for a higher you know, a higher price. You know. Things like that have been, have been very, very, very great for me and my brother, and what it got us to was to realize that commercial real estate is a lot more fun than residential yeah.
Speaker 1:My accountant said that years ago he's like man you, you make a lot more money. And residential yeah, my accountant said that years ago. He's like man you, you make a lot more money and that's a lot less work, in a sense, better, better trade it is um um so, like you know, for example, you have a rental property.
Speaker 2:If you have a duplex or whatever, water heater goes out, who's it on?
Speaker 2:yeah they're calling you two o'clock in the morning, whatever that may be hey, my water doesn't work or um, commercial. You give them a white space. You know a white box space. Do your thing, unless that roof or the front door just broke. It's on you, right, you know. So you know there's tradeoffs to that right as well.
Speaker 2:But you know that's what we like, you know, because we've always been so busy running the restaurant. We needed hands off, you know we needed, and residential was not that we were buying ourselves a job, to be honest, you know multiple doors, and so we kind of got away from that. We started buying commercial real estate strip centers, bigger single units. You know operators, but we really wanted to start focusing more on commercial and we've done I feel like you know a pretty good job with building our portfolio. Right now we're building 18 apartments and a strip center, so that's right off of Post Drive in Belmont, so it's a mixed use right in plainfield township.
Speaker 2:It's uh, um, there was a house on there, yeah, um, that's how kind of we got started. And then when we're converting more to this, you know, because once you get to like 16, 17, 12 units, um, that becomes more commercial and there's enough money there that you can hire a property management company where you don't have to be the guy fielding all those phone calls. Yeah, right, um, so that's, um, you know, that's kind of our future of, uh, of real estate investments for me and my brother. Um, we want to focus more on the bigger stuff. Um and uh, you know that that kind of has led us in a in a whole world that I never thought I'd be into, which is hard money lending, right.
Speaker 1:What is that for people that don't know what hard money is?
Speaker 2:Hard money lending is essentially private lending right. So let's say you're trying to buy a fix and flip. No bank will give you money for that unless you're taking it out of some sort of equity that you have in your home or another piece of property that you have. But you can't go to a bank and say I need $150,000 to renovate this home and to purchase it. They just won't do that.
Speaker 1:And it's only worth $100,000. Yeah, they won't do those loans.
Speaker 2:So that's where we come in. Um, I did my first loan with a buddy of mine and, um, I never, I never thought about it, to be honest, of that world, but he, he, he's a great, great friend of mine. I knew he was good for it. We, we hired an attorney, we draft up the paperwork. You know all of that um and uh at the entrepreneur, I mean, as soon as those checks started coming in every single month, I'm like wait a minute. Yeah, I said there's actually a world out here for this.
Speaker 2:Um, so it's better than 1.4 percent margin oh yeah, much better um, so, um, you know, our, our average, uh return on money is 13. That's awesome, um. So, yeah, I started with this loan. It came back, I saw how much we made and I'm like, okay, we have properties that are paid off. We've done a great job.
Speaker 2:You know, eliminating debt, because that's the family we grew up in. You don't have debt. You know you pay things and you pay them off. You know if you're going to have a bank, you pay them off as much as possible, or as fast as possible, or pay cash, you know. But we started realizing that in reality, that that's not really the way to get ahead, you know. So what we started doing is we started pulling equity out of the properties that we had paid off. Right, and, uh, we started uh, lending it and, uh, we first did it only to friends and family. You know that needed. You know, a loan for the, for this fix and flip or that, and uh, it's uh, it blew up like this thing just took off. Um, we celebrated, uh last month. Um, we've, uh, we've, we've now lended over $5 million in in total.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it helps other people, helps you win win.
Speaker 2:Um, we have 2.7 out right now. So it's uh, it's a great uh, it's a, it's a great product to offer, um, you know, to uh to investors, uh, cause that to investors, because that's our bread and butter, is the fix and flip guys. And I'll tell you, it's also very rewarding because, coming from that hospitality world, I need to have connections, Like, if I'm lending to you, it's not about the money only, but we need to have a great connection, we need to become friends. You know what I mean. I need to know about your life. I want you to know about my life. You know that's how I do business.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter where I do it, whether it's in real estate or hard money lending or restaurants, that's how I do business. So, you know, a couple months ago I had one of my investors and one of my clients call me and she was like darn near in, like tears, and I could like feel it on the phone and uh, you know she had called me strictly to thank me. Um, because she was a newer, uh, investor and uh, everybody turned her down banks, family, friends, everybody. You know, um, and. But she wanted to get in the flip world and I met her at a networking event and, uh, I, I got the sense.
Speaker 2:Sense you can tell when people have that go gator attitude right oh yeah, for sure you can tell um, and I got the sense from her that I'm like you're gonna work hard and you're gonna make things work right, um, so, um, I gave her a chance, I said I'll do a deal with you, so let's see how it goes. And from that that one, we went to the second and third, and I think we've done over 20 deals now together in the last two years. And but you know, the point of the story is that I made a difference in her life and to me, that's what it's all about is making a difference in each other's lives. Right, like you know, I benefit from people all the time. You know whether it's just picking up the phone and and I I have a question, or you know, somebody do me a favor, you know. So I try to return all of that because when I was, when we were building our restaurants, we had a ton of that, even to this day.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, I have a gentleman that uh is is a friend of the family, but he's been in commercial real estate for like 40 years and he's my, he's my go-to, he's. I just had lunch with him yesterday and, you know, if I ever a question, that's what I'm calling right, he's like my consultant. He doesn't charge me but he's my consultant in that world. So everything that he teaches me I try to teach other people too.
Speaker 2:Hard money lending has been one of those things that it's a little bit cutthroat when it comes to other hard money lenders, but I have created myself such a great group of hard money lenders where when I run out of money, I'm pushing them to my friends right, and I've taught those people how to operate a hard money lending company. So we all have a similar culture and a similar way to do business and I don't charge them a referral fee because I know they're going to do the same thing back to me. You know what I mean if somebody's out of money. So you know, to me, that's what it's all about is creating that difference in people and just working hard. You know one of the things that you know, an advice that I try to give any newer entrepreneur or to anybody really is never to give up.
Speaker 2:Don't have a uh, don't have a mentality of being a victim. Yeah, um, you know, be a warrior, um, and uh, you know, I don't mean you talked about that book, but uh, it's called can't hurt me by david david goggins and uh, there's some bad language in there, but, um, it is an amazing real, it's very real. He's an ex-marine and uh, that became an entrepreneur and it's, it's, it's a great book, one of my favorite books that I've ever read in my life, and uh, um, it really taught me to uh, to look at things through a different, you know, lens on on things, and I try to pass that on to anybody, anybody. Anytime somebody's complaining about something in their life that somebody else did, I'm like like you got to change that, you know, because they're not holding you back. You're holding yourself back. That's reality, you know so.
Speaker 1:I think that's great advice. Jocko Willink had sort of a similar take.
Speaker 2:He's in the same book. Oh, okay, yeah, they co-wrote the book.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that. I've read his other, his book. Um, I can't remember. What is something like radical responsibility or something like I can't even remember. It's been a few years now extreme ownership, extreme ownership, that's what yeah, and I was like man that is so powerful. It's like, yeah, whatever happens to you, great, you know, figure it out very similar books, a little bit different, but I love extreme ownership Ownership.
Speaker 2:I read that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that you know it was hard, to hard to try to teach our kids that in some ways I mean every generation we've kind of been a little easier. They always say the um, you know, hard times make what is it? Hard times make strong men and good times tend to make weak men, and then it kind of goes through a cycle and it's always hard because I felt like we grew up. I grew up in a similar I didn't come from another country, but similar you know socioeconomics, yeah, um, and had to work hard early and I learned so much from that struggle and you take that on. You don't want your kids to go through that at the same time. How you teach them some of the lessons and is it it possible to kind of do the in-between there?
Speaker 2:That's so funny. We literally just had this conversation at lunch yesterday. Yeah. And I'm like, I feel like I'm like, in a way, spoiling my kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because, I'm trying to provide them a better future and a better life than I had, and it's such a fine line between when are you giving them too much and now they're not appreciative right of what they have. You know, we talk about that in our household all the time. You know, um, I'm like guys, it's not normal for a family to have a place in florida like we do have a place in grand rapids to be able to go to florida three, four or five times a year. You know, out of nowhere. Um, it's not, and I have. But my kids are eight and 10 years old, so they're listening, but they don't understand what I'm saying, you know. So I have to keep having these conversations. You know, as they get older, to like this is not normal. We're just very blessed, yeah, and and dad's where mom have worked really hard to be able to provide this, you know. But you talk about Jocko. He's got great kids books.
Speaker 1:Oh, I haven't read them. I heard about them, but my son has them, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my son's 10 and I bought him the first three books. I think there's a series of five and they kind of just like the books that you read. Extreme Ownership Can't Hurt Me, it's a much more kid-friendly part you know language of it.
Speaker 2:It teaches you essentially to get out of that mentality as a kid. I think there's some parts where it's showing how this kid couldn't do push-ups and how do you get to do push-ups and pull-ups and stuff like that. So it's a very cool thing that my son's really learned, and I think one of the best things that I did for my son because he lacked a little bit of self-confidence was I put him in karate. Karate is one of the best things that I could have done for that kid. He did it for three years and it brought so much self-confidence in his life. I mean, that's a big part of martial arts and what they teach you. So not only can he protect himself, you know if he ever needs to, but his confidence level is through the roof now. That's awesome, yeah, yeah. So I'm on Facebook and Dan Uccello. I'm on Instagram, dan Uccello, or LinkedIn. You can find me, you can follow me. Um, you know, if anybody uh needs any sort of business advice, the you know for the little that I can.
Speaker 1:You know I can offer I would love that it's.
Speaker 2:It's one of my favorite things to do is to be able to meet new entrepreneurs and, uh, kind of guide them and what they should do in their in their business if they want to listen. If they don't, that's okay, too awesome.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on. This has been great. So many takeaways, I think, for people, especially business owners or aspiring business owners. So thanks again and we'll see you guys next time.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
