#10 Henry Roberts on Building Two Hands: Resilience, Brand Loyalty, and the Path to Restaurant Success"

In this episode of Restaurant Leaders Unplugged, we dive into the inspiring journey of Henry Roberts, founder of Two Hands, a thriving café and restaurant brand that started in New York City and has since expanded across the U.S. Henry shares the origins of his career in hospitality, driven by a love for community, culture, and high-quality, accessible food.

Listen as Henry discusses the strategic growth of Two Hands, his decision-making process in selecting new markets like Austin and Nashville, and the importance of creating a strong brand presence. He opens up about his commitment to sustainable farming, challenges in team-building, and his philosophy of resilience—especially through the ups and downs brought by the pandemic. Henry’s candid insights into balancing family life, running a multi-location business, and creating a culture-first brand make this episode a must-listen for any restaurant owner looking to grow with intention and adaptability.

Key Topics:

• The initial inspiration behind Two Hands and its unique brand identity
• Challenges and triumphs of expanding into new cities
• Building a resilient, people-focused culture that attracts and retains talent
• Why patience and adaptability are essential for sustainable growth
• Insights into sustainable farming and integrating it into a restaurant brand

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Transcript

Henry Roberts - Transcript

(0:00 - 0:34)

If you don't have the people, you don't have the business. And as we all know, it's such a challenge to find good people in any position right now. And who knows if that'll change.

So it's like, we can't wait for it to change. We got to adapt and how we're going to manage that. And I think that's what creates a good business other than, you know, hey, like this just isn't working because it's not like it used to be.

It's like, well, we got to get smart and round table this and figure it out and take risks and execute and see if it works. And if not, we're still in a young stage of the business. We're not tied down by any major fund or anything where we can be pliable and make changes on the fly.

(0:34 - 0:42)

And if we make a mistake, we make a mistake. It's not the end of the world. And I think that has allowed us to be adaptable in this market that we're in.

(0:42 - 0:58)

Welcome to the Restaurant Leaders Unplugged podcast, where real talks with restaurant leaders take center stage. Discover the challenges and victories that define success in the culinary world. Dive into essential strategies from marketing to operations and gain insights that will transform your approach to your restaurant business.

(0:58 - 2:36)

Don't just keep up, lead the way. Join me, your host, Sebastian Stahl on this journey to excellence. All right, Henry, welcome to the Restaurant Leaders Unplugged podcast.

It's really a pleasure to have you. Anyways, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, I'm excited. All right, Henry. So let's start, of course, at the beginning for the people that might not know about you and your trajectory.

So how did you get started and what really drew you into the restaurant industry? I know it's not a common story of in your case and how you got into it. Yeah. Yeah, I think what it all started with, I wanted to own my own business.

I wasn't really book smart. I wasn't great at school and working for a company. And that was more scary to me, trying to find a career like that than actually having the balls to go start my own business.

And so it all kind of started with that. The restaurant part of it kind of came later in terms of when I moved to New York, having worked in hospitality and then having the experience of hospitality in America and particular New York and the energy and realizing the opportunity for what I could bring from where I came from and the opportunities there. It all kind of came together and getting the confidence that New York City brings.

Yeah, it kind of spurred that entrepreneurship inside me and gave me the confidence to go out and get into the hospitality industry, but ultimately start my own business. Right. And so what was the inspiration behind bringing an Australian coffee shop into New York City? It wasn't common at the time when you started it.

(2:36 - 3:05)

Yeah. No, I think like right at the time where we were thinking about opening and the juices were flowing was right around like the third wave coffee movement, the La Cologne, the Blue Bottles, Stumptown. There was becoming more interest in good quality coffee, espresso-based drinks, latte art, all this kind of stuff.

And that was in Australia for years and years. That's what we were used to and that's what we missed. The difference was that they were just coffee shops.

(3:06 - 3:26)

There was a few pastries and it was coffee or you had obviously New York fantastic restaurants. But there wasn't a place where you could get a really well-designed community sort of space where you can have good coffee and good food, you know, healthy kind of food in the one place where there was like it was kind of part of your identity. It was part of your everyday routine.

(3:27 - 3:46)

And so that was the sort of inspiration was like, hey, we can't find this. We're finding sort of like reclaimed, dark, laptop-filled coffee shops with uninterested baristas in beanies that don't really want to say hi or remember your name. And we were like, we can do better than this.

(3:46 - 4:12)

It was an opportunity from a business standpoint, but it was really just, it was driven from something that we missed that we wanted. Like, I want to go there. I want this to be down the road in Nolita because this is where we hang out.

And that was the main inspiration for bringing the concept over. The idea of it being sort of this Australian cafe or Australian style coffee, that was never part of it. We didn't really want to be identified as that at all.

(4:12 - 4:34)

What we wanted to do was just bring the quality of Australian hospitality, produce, and aesthetic and friendly service into New York. That's where we sort of saw our niche. Man, and doing what you did, it was of course a big risk.

I mean, I know that jumping into restaurant business in any capacity is a huge risk. That's right. Yeah.

(4:35 - 5:11)

Did you really know or had an idea of what you were getting into at the beginning? And like, what was the stink? Well, I moved here when I was 23. So, I'd like to say that my youth contributed to a lot of de-risk factors in my head at the time to just go and do it and maybe not think too deep about the risk. But we started small.

It wasn't like, hey, if this doesn't work, it's the end of the world. We didn't go in thinking we could sign a big lease. We went in small.

We went and got a 600 square foot little hole in the wall. We built it basically ourselves. We're spending $150,000.

(5:12 - 6:39)

And then everything else was built organically once we opened and we're busy. We put that money back into the business and the rest is history. So, it was kind of like a passion project that even if it had failed, it would have been like a great learning experience.

It would have been a great life experience. So, we're kind of coming at it from that angle. It wasn't like, hey, we're getting a bunch of investors, millions of dollars.

And if this goes south, we're going to be locked up behind bars. That wasn't the thought. So, that was kind of a free organic look at starting a business from scratch.

And look, we had a lot of support from friends and family in the decision. And we took our time. Once we decided we wanted to do this, we took about nearly 2 years before we actually executed.

Yeah, it was one of those things that if it hadn't worked, if it had failed, it wouldn't have been the end of the world. And it certainly wouldn't have been something to look back and be upset about. So, yeah, that's kind of how we approached this sort of risk factor.

Yeah, that happens when you're younger. You don't think about that stuff and you just go in it. That was my experience as well, man.

So, looking back, when you first opened the first location, Alita, did you ever imagine that you guys would grow into a multi-location brand as you guys are now and continue to grow? No, I mean, there's a lot of effort opening the first one, not only just opening it from a business standpoint, but like the labor of grinding walls and painting and doing all that kind of stuff on top of that. It was exhausting. And then we opened and it's long hours and trying to find support and stuff.

(6:40 - 8:35)

And there was a moment where I was like, I don't think I could do this again. And then like everything, that subsides and things go well and you get the itch. And it only took us 9 months to get the itch to sign another lease.

But even after that, the second one, I went through the same thing again where I was exhausted. I was like, I'm done it too sort of thing. But to go back to your question, the concept and the idea and the inspiration and everything, it never was built back by an idea that this would be multi-unit, the same name.

In Australia, the idea of like a chain, which I hate that word, but they're not big in Australia. It's very individualized stores. There might be groups that do different concepts and they kind of have their own identity.

But the customer base doesn't really go for like the chains. Like Starbucks came to Australia and didn't work, right? For a lot of reasons. But one of them was like, people want to go to their spot, their individual spot that they have a connection to.

Not one that everyone has one in their backyard type thing. So, that was never on my mind to be like, all right, two hands, coffee shop, small bite, this, this, this. It wasn't like that.

There was no business plan with multi-units. But really quickly after we opened, it was clear that we had not only a business and a brick and mortar, but we had a brand. There was really quickly that people were identifying with the brand.

And so, when we decided to open a second location, there was talks of like calling it another name, doing another concept or whatever. But then we were like, hey, we've kind of got this free goodwill of brand that is going to de-risk store number two, store number three. In America, people are more likely to identify with a brand that they trust and like.

And so, maybe we grow this two hands thing. And that's we went into store number two, which evolved as a concept. It's definitely like we got a full bar.

(8:36 - 9:55)

We did dinner service. It was an evolution of the little cafe that was store number one, which was great. But again, and we kind of call it two hands restaurant and bar.

It was kind of that was like the evolution. And then when we had the two stores and we were looking at sort of the next phase, that's when we were like, all right, we've got a concept that we can grow and there's value in that. And there's a formula that we have that's working and people are responding well to the concept and the offering.

So, that's when in like year sort of two, three, that's when we started to be like, all right, we can kind of grow this brand of restaurants. And so, as you were expanding with two hands, you know, across New York and into other cities, what was the biggest challenge in scaling the business? Because I know that's not an easy task, especially when you're trying to maintain consistency. And not only in food and service, but just, you know, brand, everything.

Yeah, look, I think like there's a few. I honestly feel like there's probably less challenges than one might think. And what's important is finding good people in those markets.

And if you're finding good people, whether they're incubated within the company first, and then you're sending them to a location outside New York or they want to move, putting that leader in there as a flagpole is like number one. That's like the number one challenge. Because, you know, everything else from a concept we have, we can replicate that.

(9:55 - 10:37)

But finding the people to represent that and then being able to identify very quickly how that market might differ from New York or another market that we've been in conceptually and how we can slightly adjust, but not obviously take away from the concept, that's the biggest challenge. The idea of like suppliers and finding the same quality of food with the small purveyors that we use locally, that's definitely a challenge. But it's also like really like a fun and exciting part of going into a new market.

There's a lot of people that you meet, you know, that's what hospitality is all about. There's connections, partnerships. And so that part is challenging, but it's definitely also a very fun part of the process as well.

(10:37 - 12:05)

The technicalities of like minimum wages in certain markets obviously like present challenges these days. And I think structurally, it's nice that the company is at the stage that it's in to be able to be pliable in those situations and make adjustments so that the business does thrive. I mean, I guess for me personally, like the travel, you know, I got two kids, one on the way and I've got to jump around four different markets.

So that's obviously a challenge and plane tickets add up and that's a cost to the business. So again, if you find that person that can represent your company in those markets and lead the ship, you shouldn't have to fly down there every month. So that's really, really important.

And I think that's built off the backbone of like the company systems and culture and all those things. So I hope that answers your question. Yeah, no, and it's about people at the end of the day.

And finding the right people and taking the time to find those people, right. And just dedicating the time to training them and instilling what your brand is about. So in that regards, Henry, how do you guys go about developing or instilling your culture, your way of doing things from the top to the bottom as you scale? Because in my experience, it's a difficult task.

So that whatever you preach at the top, it actually trickles down and people do get it. Because at the end of the day, the people that are in the front lines, they're going to represent your brand. If that doesn't trickle down, then the experience is just not the same.

(12:06 - 17:11)

Totally. And I think that the number one step with that is as a company at the top, you got to identify like what your purpose is, what your mission is, what your values are, core values are. And we only really just did that earlier this year in March.

We talked about them and it was like, everyone knows what we represent. And we had some stuff in our handbook that was pretty loosey-goosey. But it was like, hold on, us, our core corporate team, which at the time was those six of us, we all went away for a couple of days to nut out a clear, concise document that represented our mission, our vision, our core values, our vision.

And then, you got to take that as a team at the top, you got to live and breathe it, you got to tweak it, and then you got to trickle it down. And it starts with a lot of this, the feedback was like, oh, this is exactly how my work life is. This makes a lot of sense.

You didn't come up with like new concepts about how you want the business to be and what your visions are. So it's very basic stuff, but it's important that it's really clear and concise, and that you're living and breathing in everything that you do. And that I'm doing that, and my corporate team's doing that, and store management are doing that, because that then creates that strong culture.

And then within that, there's staff retention, typically. And with that, there's growth. So as the business has grown, we've created more ladders, rungs in the ladder for people to grow from the ground up.

As an example, we had a dishwasher at Tribeca, one of our stores in New York, who's now the head chef of that store, who's lived in New York his whole life. He wants to move to Dallas. We're opening in Dallas in Q1 next year.

So he wants to be the head chef of Dallas. And for us, that's awesome, because that's our flagpole. That's our flagpole in Dallas, that the lift for us to open in that market has just got a lot easier.

And we can incubate people in Tribeca to move up into his position. And so, all of that, to be said, it just creates putting that energy and investment into the people, and a lot of which our whole team has grown internally in the company besides me. And so, also the people coming into the business who see that and who see those stories of the barista who's now the COO of the company, that is very encouraging for people.

And so, that's our major focus. I think it's something that we're doing really well. But to your point, I don't feel... If I was talking to you about opening 10 stores a year for the last 3 years, the challenges are huge.

And I think that comes back to how you want to grow as a company. Because I know if we did do that, there would be things that would be going terribly wrong. There would be ups and downs.

There would be things lost in translation. Quality would go down. Reviews would start to drop.

And I think different concepts work in different ways. If it's a QSR, it's a little bit more transactional. We try and create a hospitality and that creates more challenges.

So, we want to grow in a way that allows us to continue to create consistency and quality, but also have a steady growth and a strong business in that sense. So, definitely, the way that we've grown outside New York, we've put one store in Texas, we've got one store in Nashville, and we've got one store in Denver. We are filling in those markets.

That's the plan. But we've gone through the learning process of like, how do you do this? And you kind of got to dip your toe and just learn. Experience it.

You can't read a book on it. So, that's how we've approached it. But really building that internal team to right now in the immediate fill that growth.

That's how we do it. And look, we potentially will get to a point where it's not always like that or it's not, you know, the chef from Tribeca isn't always going to just move to a new market. But it certainly helps in these early stages.

And how did you go about choosing these markets, Henry? Because I mean, I know that from experience also, the biggest cities are not usually the most profitable ones necessarily, because costs are higher. There's a lot of things that you have to deal with. So, how did you go about choosing the markets where you're expanding and what challenges are you facing? Because I know some markets are so different, for example, Colorado, where your wages are higher.

So, how did you guys go about that? Yeah. I mean, a lot of them were opportunities that came to us from whether we had a connection to the landlord in Austin where we are. And that was actually like a conversation that went for about four years.

So, that was like always kind of in the back of our mind. And Austin at the time, even more so recently, was continuing to generate buzz and grow as a city and a destination from tech or more office blah, blah, blah. And also like in the early stage of growth outside of where I was based for a founder, CEO, like it has to be places that you want to go.

You know, I've been to Austin many times before we opened there and I loved it. I love going down there. I love visiting.

I love the people. I love the Southern charm. My wife's from the South.

You know, she's from Tennessee. So, that's kind of why I was looking in Tennessee, in Nashville. We got married in Nashville.

(17:11 - 22:53)

Like there was a lot of personal connections to these markets. But they're also obviously business analysis on, you know, Nashville is very similar to Austin in terms of its growth, in terms of its kind of fun vibe and like customer base that would resonate with our concept. Also knowing that like, hey, is your concept going to be like a shiny new toy in these markets? Is there much like us here? And Denver was a big one in terms of like healthy lifestyle, outdoorsy, like healthy.

We knew the concept would work for the customer base. Another city that I love and would love to visit, work from and spend time in. And so again, as I said earlier, like the growth will... There'll be a time where that's not the case and we'll be putting stores in markets that make sense on a more sort of in-depth data analysis.

But you know, I mean, look, there's benefits comparing it to New York. Obviously, there's pluses and minuses for everything across the board. But definitely having a concept born out of New York is extremely helpful for a brand.

That's huge. I believe that very much. We wouldn't have resonated going to Austin like we did.

And we opened in October of 2020 in Austin, our first store outside New York, which wasn't great time for obvious reasons. But a lot of people knew the brand and that was so helpful because it wasn't the traditional, hey, we've grown in New York, we're going to go to Boston or we're going to go to DC next or Philly. We went to Austin.

I'm very glad that it worked out. And that success that we had in Austin was very inspiring for my thoughts on growth outside of New York and the markets that we're in now. Right.

So as you're scaling, Henry, and as you're growing the business, just working quite a bit, what are some of the challenges, personally, have you faced growing two hands that you didn't expect? I think like on a personal standpoint, like family, time away from family, travel, all of that is obviously a challenge. I think like the more we grow, the more responsibility is on my shoulders as a CEO and founder, whether it's taking on more investment and having more people on your cap table and having more money that you're managing, or whether it's the amount of staff that you now have and in all the different markets and understanding that. But I think also it's like patience.

Like when you're growing a business, you go through phases of, I really wish we were growing faster, or I really wish we had more stores than this person, or we should be at this level. And patience and discipline is, I feel has been key to our success. And I think having COVID hit around the 50-yard mark of our sort of career at Two Hands, it was almost like, hey, we kind of restart the engine, and we're going to rebuild the business.

And for me, at the time, my partner, my original partner had decided to leave the business. So, for me, it was like, all right, now this is my ship. We're going to start afresh.

We actually had to close all the stores for about nearly three months. So, when we reopened, it was like, all right. And that created a little bit more life and a little bit more patience to really look at the business and say, hey, what's working? What's not? How do we really want to grow? What are the goals here? Rather than just being like antsy to just get a big check and open a bunch of stores, which I don't think at one point, that's what I wanted.

Now, I don't want that at all. And well, I have a happy medium, I guess. But I understand, I'm more mature in understanding that that wouldn't have been good for the business or for the staff or for the concept, the quality, the consistency.

But that's a challenge because you're also feeling the pressure from whether it's investors. They're kind of sort of the major challenges that I face personally. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I think you said it right. I mean, it's having that patience.

I guess this happens to all of us in entrepreneurship, but we try to go faster than we can. Yeah. Many times.

Yeah. And having that patience and understanding that things take longer than expected every single time. But just knowing that you're on the right path, just stick to it and just show up every day.

Yeah. Yeah. So Henry, tell me about Dockwood Farms.

Are you still involved in that? Yeah. So we live on the farm now here in the Catskills in upstate New York. So, yeah, we bought this place in 2017 with the mission of putting Paddock to plate and not just talking about it or like literally raising the cow, raising the sheep, raising the pig, locally slaughtering it and then taking it to the restaurants.

And it took a while to build that up. And my wife and I did a course at Cornell in livestock grazing and regenerative farming. And kind of just like starting the business, we learned organically on the go and read lots of books.

But as you know, you can only read so many books. And so we built this up and we started supplying beef to New York and Austin and pork and then we also sold wholesale locally and did some sort of online sales. But we downsized when we had to move to Nashville to open up when we expanded there.

And so we were living there for nearly three years and we've just moved back about two weeks ago. So the plan is to rebuild and we've still got livestock that we're planning on rebuilding. And how do we create the story between the two? This farm's mine.

It's not owned by the business, but it's definitely, we want to marry it with the business. And how do we tell that story? And how do we utilize it in motivating staff and educating? One of the main things that particularly chefs mention when they're doing the interview process, if they're applying for a job is, I want to know more about the farm. And so it's obviously a challenge like running both and putting the time and energy in.

(22:53 - 24:39)

And so I'm trying to this year and into next year, how do I build the farm into the business? And not only from a supplying food standpoint, but like I said, like telling the story and educating, and we're going to be rebuilding that over the next couple of years and then hopefully get a good flow with the proteins heading down to the city. And yeah, so it's been sort of like a passion project that definitely marries with the restaurant, but I've decided to go into the two most difficult professions is owning a restaurant and being a farmer. That's what I was asking, man, because that's definitely not an easy feat.

And that's always a question that I like, how do you keep it sustainable? Because it's production is not cheap. And then how do you transfer that to the restaurants and make it still that it's that you don't have to raise your prices so much that you cannot price yourself out. And then the education process that you're talking about, of course, also takes time, right? So that people actually make that connection, that the food that they're getting comes from a certain place and the quality of it is worth their while and they're spending more.

Yeah, no, I think it's like we've strived to get source our food locally and from small farms as much as we possibly can, but it's a huge challenge. And a lot of people don't understand what's behind the curtain, but it's important to continue as a company to try your best to implement it where you can. And that takes time.

It's very easy to just get on Cisco and order everything you need. No offense to Cisco, but we don't use Cisco because we don't want to, it's a little bit more effort to have smaller purveyors. And maybe the accounting is a little more tricky because it's a little slower, but you got to do it.

You got to push. And I feel like everyone has to do this because it's important and it creates meaning behind the brand and a reason why we do what we do. And look, our farm, we can't supply all the meat for two hands, we can't.

(24:39 - 28:45)

But how can we implement it into the menu, tell the story and have it be a part of the fabric along with all the other purveyors and partners that we have as a company? How do we tell that story more? Because that's what the customer really connects with, particularly for two hands. Like we're not a Michelin star restaurant where you can only go and get that one thing. We're an everyday approachable, affordable sort of place to eat.

And so it's really about quality and consistency rather than technique and tweezers and all the rest of it. That's a big, obviously, part of our sort of purpose. Yeah.

So a lot of challenges there, Henry. So through your career and through these projects, because, I mean, it's a beautiful project, but also it's tough. Were there any points where you seriously considered giving up or making a major pivot to your business? Yeah.

I mean, there were definitely times where it was less about giving up, but it was like, you know, what's the kind of lifeline here? Like, can I slug this out for another five years or how do I package it so that maybe we could sell it in three years? All of which I've learned is like not really possible of any quality. I mean, some people can do it and that's great. But that really, when I look deep into myself, personally, that's not what I wanted.

I don't want that. You know, I want to grow a good company. And to my earlier point, I think it just takes that patience and discipline to get to that next, that second half.

How do we get that second half re-energized? And the business has grown now to a point where I was jumping on the line in the kitchen, like for three months, I was on the line every day. And I was like, I mean, I'm the owner and operator of this business. I got to build myself out of here.

And there are times where you felt like you're stuck in mud. But looking back and now as you build yourself out and you get better systems and better people, you can get to a more comfortable position where it's less strenuous and you can forward think a lot more. And look, it goes up and down, right? We'll hit challenges for whatever reason and, you know, it's tough and it's stressful, but you're in the restaurant industry, so that happens probably more often than not.

But I think as you grow, like I use this as an example, like when we had one restaurant and we would have our health inspection, I had anxiety for months. It was such a big deal in my life when they came around. And then now when we get a health inspection and I have six stores, it doesn't really faze me.

It's just like another day at work. That's just one example. But there's just a little bit more of a stronger foundation to not be stressed about every little thing.

That's how I think about it anyway. Makes sense. So now switching gears here to marketing, Henry, because I know you guys built a pretty strong brand and it's been pretty organically in many regards, but what do you think is something that's actually worked for you guys in terms of marketing? I know social media has been a component for you guys.

And how do you guys stay ahead of the curve? I mean, honestly, there's no secret sauce to that answer from a two hands perspective. We opened at a time where Instagram was becoming not only popular, but the idea of expressing where you're eating, aesthetics of places, the color of your food, the pop of the latte art on your coffee. That was a big thing that was starting to really generate a lot of buzz.

And we opened right at that sort of start of that. And a lot of people started to capture that in New York. And we were putting out good product and it was deserving of the buzz, I guess, but that was all just organic.

We weren't paying influencers or we didn't do PR for our first three stores, I think. And then, you know, PR is a whole nother thing. And then in terms of marketing, we still don't have any sort of internal marketing.

What we have done well, I think, is positioned ourselves with really good partnerships along the way. We've done some really cool stuff with some great people, some great companies, some like-minded brands that I think just continue to keep you relevant as a company, continue to broaden your audience. And then the obvious one is expanding to new markets, whether it's from an awareness standpoint, but opening in a new market is huge for whether it's Instagram followers or just generating.

(28:45 - 29:59)

And it kind of rises all the stores. I remember talking to Nate from Sweetgreen about their expansion. He was like, when we had three stores and then the fourth store, everything sort of started to rise after that.

And I do think even opening a store in Denver recently, I think that's trickled through the whole company in terms of whether it's boosting revenue or just awareness or that's the obvious one. But yeah, I really don't have any secrets to share in terms of restaurant marketing and how to get followers on Instagram. I think it's just about learning how to tell your story in different ways.

Yes, there's different tactics, but especially now getting into the project of the farm and integrating that into the brand, then you might have to rethink a little bit of how you do that. Yeah, yes, yes. Awesome, Henry.

So future plans. I know you've done quite a bit here. What's next for Two Hands? And are there any markets or business ventures you're excited about? 

(29:44 - 32:40)

So, yeah, I mean, we're expanding over the next sort of six months. We're expanding to a new store in Franklin, Tennessee, in Dallas, Texas, which is super exciting and got sort of a renewal coming up on one of our leases. So there might be some time there for a little bit of a refurbish. What we're really trying to grow at the moment is our events and catering business. I think there's a real like market for that done well. And we get good business out of that just through the stores.

But how do we level up and really take that to the next level? Again, like, yeah, finding the right brands that we want to partner with, whether it's pop-ups or just working with cool brands like Equinox and lifestyle brands that work with our concept. A lot of that is like, you know, where do I build my team from here? You know, as the sort of brick and mortar grows and the revenue grows, like what are the next hires? What do we want to focus on? So, you know, events and catering manager and looking at those sort of marketing partnerships as well. And then, you know, growing the idea of like this lifestyle brand, like the brand in itself and how do we grow that? We've tested the waters with some CPG products, but that's definitely something that's like in the sort of three-year plan is how do we make all our sort of everything in-house? So, you know, how do we monetize that? Not only an in-store, but online and potentially on shelves.

So that's definitely something that we're learning and we're testing and distribution and all those kind of challenges. Like how do we sort that out? You know, I think like it's really important. Yeah.

If you have a brand that people trust, like you can capitalize on that with store products. But yeah, I mean, we're trying to like, as I said earlier, control the growth, grow consistently and cautiously, but with some sort of trajectory. And yeah, just making sure that we're really, really focused on creating a really good work environment and culture.

Because going back to the whole thing of people, if you don't have the people, you don't have the business. And as we all know, it's such a challenge to find good people in any position right now. And who knows if that'll change.

So it's like we can't wait for it to change. We got to adapt and how we're going to manage that. And I think that's what creates a good business other than, you know, hey, like this just isn't working because it's not like it used to be.

It's like, well, we got to get smart and round table this and figure it out and take risks and execute and see if it works. And if not, we're still in a young stage of the business. We're not tied down by any major fund or anything where we can be pliable and make changes on the fly. And if we make a mistake, we make a mistake. It's not the end of the world. And I think that has allowed us to be adaptable in this market that we're in, which honestly has sort of been going on since 2020 in terms of the uncertainties, the ups and downs, the labor shortages and minimum wage rising and all those kind of things. And I think, yeah, we fortunately have a concept that is able to be pliable in that way and maybe more than like other restaurant concepts. So, yeah. 

(32:40 – 33:00)

That's fantastic, man. I think you guys are well positioned and with your type of concept, even in the market that we're in. So in closing, Henry, this is the last question. If you had to start all over again tomorrow and everything you've built so far disappeared, but you could choose any market to launch in, where would you go? And what will you do differently this time? That's a great question.

(33:00 – 35:15)

Honestly, I'd say New York. And really, I'd say New York because challenges aside, I feel like we've created such long lasting goodwill around our brand because we came out of New York. That's such a unique market to be like New York-based, this, that. It just really helps your brand. I think it gives you a leg up from the get-go. Again, that's my opinion.

I can't say because I haven't grown a business outside New York and brought it to New York or LA or whatever. But I just feel like that outweighs the potential challenges of New York because you could talk about the competition and the success rate. However, if you are successful in New York, that sort of gives you the confidence that you may probably be successful elsewhere.

So yeah, I would still choose New York. However, yeah, Austin's great market. Nashville's great.

They're all great markets in my opinion. But what would I do differently? There's probably a lot of things I would do differently. A lot of smaller things. But the main one, I think what's maybe like important is if you're starting a business and you're maybe you think you need to find a partner because you're just scared to do it on your own. I'll tell you this, having a partner can be just as challenging as doing something on your own. And it's really important.

I think most people can do it and build good people around them. But these people that start restaurants with like four or five mates, I'm like, that's going to be tough. And you're not going to be able to support yourselves on the salary that you want because there's just too many of you.

So, I think that's something that I may have done differently. But yeah, I mean, it's been such a kind of roller coaster ride of good times, challenges, learning curves. Luckily for us, it's been the people have shown up and there's been consistent business.

So, if there was a mistake, we got through it. That's been fantastic. I mean, I've had some trouble with some trademark stuff that I won't go into. But like trademark your business, even if you don't think you're going to expand and be a chain or whatever. If you think it's just, hey, I'm just going to do this one coffee shop, it's going to be a hole in the wall. Yeah, just trademark your business. That would be my advice. 

(35:15 – 35:36)

100% man, experience that too. It's good advice. Definitely. Well, Henry, that was fantastic, man. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your insights. I think there's a lot of value in what you shared and hopefully our audience will be able to get a lot from that. Lastly, Henry, of course, if people want to find Two Hands, I know you're in a few markets, New York, Dallas, Austin, Denver. 

(35:36 – 35:49)

Yeah, Nashville, Franklin. Go onto our website, twohandshospitality.com. You can see all our units and some future plans. And yeah, thank you for having me. This has been great.

It's been lovely to chat. 

(35:49 – 35:51)

Thank you, Henry. Appreciate it. Thanks for your time.