Retail Intel
Retail Intel
Ep. 55: Angry Chickz
This week on Retail Intel, host Brian Sheehan connects with Mike LaRue, Angry Chickz Franchisee, for an in-depth conversation about what makes Angry Chickz a standout brand. 🐓💥
Discover their insights on balancing perfection vs. revenue. Explore the unique philosophy behind their partnerships. Learn about their franchise development strategy and growth goals.
Welcome to Retail Intel, the podcast where we dive deep into the dynamic world of commercial real estate. I'm your host, Brian Sheehan, and I am thrilled to be your guide on this journey through the bustling streets of retail, the aisles of shopping centers and the world of commercial property investment. Today I'm excited to welcome Mike LaRue, Vice President of Franchise Development at Angry Chicks, to the show. Mike has a remarkable story of driving growth and innovation in the fast, casual dining industry, leveraging his extensive experience to expand Angry Chicks into a thriving franchise. Angry Chicks is known for its bold flavors and unique approach to Nashville hot chicken, creating a memorable dining experience for all. I'm eager to learn more about his journey and the story behind Angry Chicks. It's so fascinating with your background and how deeply involved you are with Angry Chicks, and you were starting to talk about the franchise development side versus being a franchisee and how that's different.
Mike LaRue:Yeah, you know, being on the franchisor end you know you're at least I've always from my own perspective it's like, okay, you know what's the most amount of support that we can provide to put franchising in the best position to be successful. Where do you guys need help? Where do we need to be? What can we do? How can we make this happen? How can we obviously make this successful? Obviously, when you're dealing with construction timelines, it's fine. I just did a video of this yesterday and it's like how many times have you gone through a project and you actually nailed your construction schedule?
Mike LaRue:And it rarely happens 100% of the time right.
Mike LaRue:Yeah, and we ran into a situation to where it's like, I mean, the restaurant looks like it's almost ready, but I guess the utility company in Houston is dealing with some lawsuits from that huge energy blackout that they had last year and their staffing is a little less dealing with some lawsuits from that huge energy uh blackout that they had last year and, um, their staffing is a little, a little less and so it typically takes two to three days to install a gas meter. It's now taken two weeks, but you don't find that out until the city provides authorization to the utility company to come out actually install the meter. And, uh, you know, we're finding this out like last minute. It's like crap. We have, you know, grand opening dates and I said from like an anxiety standpoint, just different being on the franchisee and as well because now in before, obviously you have.
Mike LaRue:Yeah, it's like this is, this is your role, this is your job, it's your reputation, you want to. You know you want to provide the best service that you can and you want the franchisee to feel like, hey, this is your franchisor, it's a great partner, and obviously that leads to stronger and longer term growth when your capital is now invested. And you know it's like if you stop, that clock starts ticking on rent. And then obviously you know from day one it's like you want to get that return on investment kicking as soon as possible. And there's always it's like you want to get that return on investment kicking as soon as possible. And there's always a philosophy there it's like do we get open to start driving revenue or do you wait until it's all perfect? And it's never all going to be perfect. But there is an element of you want to do it right and you want to be able to provide the best customer and guest experience. You know, obviously, especially in a market, that people don't know who you are, and so you want to be able to provide that great first experience.
Mike LaRue:And so with the position I'm in, it's very unique because I mean, I'm super grateful to have the opportunity and even you know our founder was was okay with me. You know, partnering with the franchisee, I'm fully confident in my partner. I mean he's by far probably one of the best. Actually I think he's probably the best operator at least I've ever seen in almost 19 years I've been doing this.
Mike LaRue:So I have no doubt that obviously it's going to be a success, but being on the franchise or end and you have to take a bipartisan role on the way things are done, because, yes, I'm a franchisee but you can't be one-sided on. It's like you're coaching your kid. It's like you almost want to be farther on your kid because you don't want people saying, oh well, you're the coach, your kid's going to play no matter what, and so challenging is not the right word. It's been. I mean, it's been fun and it's just been a different experience that I've obviously never have gone through before. But yeah, I'm not sure how many openings I've ever been a part of. I mean, just, it's a lot.
Mike LaRue:It's so rare to have to get to see both sides of it. I guess and in some ways I'm a hear that more because what could better prepare you to help develop the franchise than to have that experience as a franchisee yourself?
Mike LaRue:Yeah, it's so true because, at the end of the day, I mean especially in franchising. I mean I've been doing this long enough to where there's a stigma in franchising and it's you're either selling. You're selling something to a person who's got a heartbeat and can cut a check, or you know you're selling something to a person who's got a heartbeat and can cut a check, or you know you're selling something that, um, may not be, or the actuality may not be what. Everything's a period, obviously, I think with franchising, I think brands a lot of times go on hike and you're, you know, going out and you're selling territories, and but to be able to, have a conversation with an operator and just saying, yeah, I'm basically putting my money where my mouth is.
Mike LaRue:It's not just hey, I'm trying to, we're not just trying to sell a territory and I even hate using the word sales because it's more recruiting. We're trying to find the best partner who's going to fit our culture and is going to fit our goal and vision. Going to fit, you know, our, our goal and vision to develop this brand, you know, across the U? S and obviously across the globe. And so being able to say and get the questions like hey, like, like, so our location is the first gray shelf that we're building in angry chicks and everything else, everything up to this point has been second gen and so you know you got a new franchisee. Then we're looking for real estate.
Mike LaRue:It's like, hey, what are you guys looking at? And obviously we probably under budgeted a little bit, but it's okay. I mean we're, we're in line with where any you know fast, casual, you know restaurant should be anyways. But to be able to share that, you know, with the franchisee and not necessarily have a franchisee be the Guinea pig, it's like, almost I'm kind of the guinea pig. It speaks volumes in regards to that. You know kind of building that trust you know with, with your franchisee partners, as you, you know, as we go through this process.
Mike LaRue:You have a ton of incredible experience in this business and I'm curious, thinking back, what drew you to Angry Chicks, both from the franchise development perspective and then what made you think, hey, maybe you know I'm interested in taking this journey as a franchisee yeah, yeah, of course.
Mike LaRue:well, it's funny. I had no intention to get into franchising and um and you'll. This is kind of funny, not a? I had a good friend of mine. Troy hooper is the ceo of uh pepper. He didn't even know this because I was having a conversation with him.
Mike LaRue:I've actually never worked in a restaurant. I think in our industry you got guys who are in operations and it's just in their blood. I mean, that's where they live, that's where they play, that's where they love to be. I just never wound up having that opportunity. I first got into the industry on the franchise sales end by chance when Monstercom was out and there was an opportunity and it sounded exciting and just fell in love with the industry and it's funny. It's like I feel like people get like once you're in the restaurant industry, you're never living If you do. You go to the brokerage side and you want to be the broker and you're still doing food and beverage, but you're just in a different capacity.
Mike LaRue:So when I first started it was more on the franchise sales side. I was in that role for about seven years and came across Simon's signing video how Great Leaders Inspire Action, and that was super inspiring and just kind of got me thinking how can we do this differently? I started the consulting advisory firm with a buddy of mine and we wound up partnering. He was the gc, builds hundreds of restaurants, you know, across the country. And so we figured and just kind of by chance, we started, started helping brands kind of get set up. I found that a lot of franchisees you know, when it comes down to their capex and their initial investment you know there's a lot of franchisees when it comes down to their CapEx and their initial investment there's a lot of mistakes on the front end because if you don't know how to evaluate a GC bid or if you're not getting multiple bids you don't know if you could be getting screwed big time and you wouldn't even know it.
Mike LaRue:So my partner built, actually, the second Hallgeist location here in Southern California. Our body put together a group and they were developing Southern California and that kind of led us into creating an onboarding process for the Hallgeist and they were actually a client for up until the pandemic kind of middle of COVID and 2020, my wife and I had a baby and I was like what do I want to do when I grow up? And I always thought it would be cool to work specifically for a brand, not necessarily be on the consulting end or, you know, obviously on the franchise development end, but actually work with a brand. And I took a role with Jimmy Ramen Bar and that was super fun. I never had any experience in the full service. I had incredible concepts, incredible food, incredible food, so had a good run. There wasn't looking to leave. This is actually where I'm at.
Mike LaRue:My current partner, jim lang. He's actually their number one franchisee and, uh, you just got to know and see how he does things, how he runs his operations, how he treats his people. He takes care of his people probably more than 99 of the operators I've ever seen. And when I got presented with this opportunity with Angry Chicks I always laughed because I wasn't really looking. But I got plucked, no pun intended. And it's interesting too because I was curious. I'm very familiar with Dave's Hot Chicken. So my former business partner actually built it was either their second and third brick and mortar or their first and second brick and mortar, so it was very pretty to how they started that story, obviously the incredible amount of success that they had.
Mike LaRue:I wasn't sure if it was a fad, I think over the years my best relationships I built with franchisees and it's funny because a lot of those guys I've never even done anything with before and so I didn't want to get a part of something that I knew was going to die out in three to four years. I didn't want to be a part of something that I knew that was going to sell in four or five or six years. But I was intrigued and did my research on national hot chicken and I actually found that there's certain types of chili peppers that when you ingest it it actually releases dopamine and endorphins. And so I'm like, okay, this isn't going to go anywhere, this is going to be around, but again, you know I wanted to figure out. Okay, you know Dave's Hot Chicken is obviously the leader, everyone knows the brand.
Mike LaRue:How was this? You know, how does this match up? And obviously Dave's has. You know they exploded. You know I mean probably fastest growing brand in history and obviously now the current, you know they're talking a billion number of. You know a billion dollar exit and I mean to do that in less than 10 years is insane. So I want to figure out how is this going to differentiate? How is this going to compete, differentiate? I was just going to compete. It doesn't necessarily have to compete because usually I think any category there's going to be anywhere between three and four guys that really stick around that can scale across North America. So I kept doing my due diligence, fell in love with the product better than anything else that I had actually tried up to that point. But what really got me was the story of our founder.
Mike LaRue:You know just the American dream, just it's very humble beginnings and really got into this because he just loved hot chicken, he had never tried it before and you know he was the type of guy that when he was a kid his friends would dare to eat like a jar of jalapenos and he would do it, no problem. And so he just loved the taste profile and so that's what he was interested in in just that, that type of hot chicken and opened a restaurant, didn't go so well and had to close it, and it was like kind of came to the fork in the road. Do I go home with my tail between my legs Because everyone told me I was going to fail, or do I try and do something with this hot chicken thing? And at the time this was probably early 2018. So Dave's had just started franchising and obviously they were exploding, and so he opened in Hollywood in November of 18. And when I tell the story, this is like my favorite part.
Mike LaRue:So first 10 days didn't go that great. And he's like, okay, well, I guess this is not going to work. Well, they show up one morning and there's a bunch of people outside and there's an AT&T store that's right next door to the space and he thought there was some big iPhone promotion. Well, they opened the door to the restaurant. Everyone starts walking in, and he still didn't have any idea what people were doing and they're like, oh, we're here to eat. And that was the beginning. And he just talked about his story, about how him and his wife had a two-year-old in the bassinet in the back. They couldn't afford a babysitter and so they would be crying and they'd be serving customers and at the register and going back to get the baby and coming back, and it was just total chaos. And then it obviously continued to go. Well, he opened a second location and then he thought, okay, well, maybe we can scale this. Where do we go next? Maybe we can scale this, when do we go next? And he went to Bakersfield or Fresno, for, I believe, a third location, because that's where he had family and that's when it really kind of dawned on him of what this could be. You know, sold out of chicken, like at 2 or 3 pm. But his strategy was maybe we go into these B markets that you would typically, you know, not your big DMAs, like around the LAs or the Bay Area or San Diego, or you know Houston's and Dallas, the Fresno's, the Bakersfields, stockton, modesto, tracy, and he's like, if I can go to these markets first, then we'll be the brand that everyone will have to be, and that was a strategy. So I absolutely love the story.
Mike LaRue:I started to hear about numbers they were doing, I think, up until we opened Salinas. I think the record they did close to I think it was 790,000 in the first 30 days in an opening Wow, that and so that got me intrigued and the one thing that kind of helped me kind of make the decision was number one if I ever had the opportunity to become a franchise, could that be a possibility? And it was a yes. And then I asked the question if a Brinks truck drives up to your house and it's stacked with bricks, you know, would you sell? And it was funny because at first I said what's your exit strategy? And I don't think he knew I was asking. And then, finally, going through that, he said you know, if my kids don't ever want to take over the business, then I would probably sell. And his kids are five and seven and so he's going to be around for a while. And so, yeah, it's been.
Mike LaRue:It's been amazing and just super grateful that I made the move and kept my business partner intrigued about, uh, about angry chicks, and then signed on to do Houston and San Antonio and ultimately the goal will be all of Texas and then had the opportunity to actually link up, and now our partners in uh in the development. So it's been fun. You know I've I've never, in almost 19 years I've been doing this, I've never had as much fun. I've never been as excited to be a part of a brand, regardless of whether or not I'm a franchisee. Just from the perspective of like, I really do believe we're building something special and my goal with prospective franchisees is, when they go through this process and after they meet with our team, I sincerely want them to feel like this is different. This is different than anything we've ever seen or experienced or you know, kind of met with before. And so far I think we're I really do feel and believe we're hitting that mark. We've turned down groups that I've never thought would ever turn down. We turned down a 40-unit operator a few months ago and never would have thought in a million years that I would have done that.
Mike LaRue:But we're a very culture-driven organization and if you don't run your organization putting your people first and that is culture-driven it's just not right or wrong. It's just not really a fit for what we're looking for and we're very fortunate to not be in a position where we have to sell franchises. Yes, that's a part of our growth model. But we are very aggressive and bullish on our corporate growth and this is actually kind of funny. So when I was interviewing for the role, david, our founder asked he's like well, are you okay if we don't franchise in California? And I laughed.
Mike LaRue:I said well, there's a lot of people who are trying to open restaurants outside of California now, not actually in California. So if you can make the economics work here, then I think people will be pretty excited to develop outside the state. And right now we have six lease, five or six leases signed by another half dozen that are in the works, all between California and Arizona. And so our corporate growth is very aggressive, our franchise growth. I think it'll probably be another 24, 36 months for the franchise growth We'll start to outpace corporate. But we're not sitting tight on. Hey, all right, let's just focus on franchising Our founder, david. He loves operating. He loves owning and operating the restaurants.
Mike LaRue:For anyone that's not familiar with Angry Chicks, and you've touched on a lot of different elements of it that help make it unique, but how do you explain it to people?
Mike LaRue:The simple one is have you ever been to Dave's Hot Chicken? Pretty much the same thing Simple menu. We do actually have more of an emphasis on our bowl, which is mac and cheese and the tenders in the middle and then fries in the bottom. That's actually a fan favorite, I think, from the typical consumer. And this is one in the middle and then fries in the bottom. That's actually a fan favorite, but I think from the typical consumer and this is one of the incredible things that Dave's Hot Chicken did A lot of people are still unfamiliar with Nashville Hot Chicken.
Mike LaRue:Like when people see Nashville they see Angry Chick's Nashville Hot Chicken. It's like, oh cool, next time I'm in Nashville I'll have to try you guys out. It's like we're not from Nashville. So from a consumer awareness perspective, there's a lot of people are still unfamiliar with what Nashville hot chicken is. And Dave's really did an incredible job and obviously it took a lot of risk in going into you know, obviously new markets. So when we talk about what is it? It's just it's just like Dave's very similar. There's a bit, I mean, and there's there's some like Dave's Very similar and there's some differences.
Mike LaRue:Well, and to your point though, mike what's the difference between Nashville hot chicken and any other chicken tender? I honestly wouldn't know how to explain it to somebody.
Mike LaRue:So it's really just the spice. Yeah, it's the spice profile. That would be the best way I can explain it. What's pretty similar in most menus is you'll have, like we have, like our country, which is like there's no spice at all, it's just a tender, and then we have medium, then we have mild, so we have mild and then medium, and then we have hot, ex-hot and angry hot. Then the angry hot is where, like, people actually have to sign a waiver because it's like Carolina Reaper, like it's actually it's pretty. I can't go above medium and so you know, some people's palates can take it, but Is it a dry rub or is it a?
Mike LaRue:it's a wet barbecue sauce or it can be either.
Mike LaRue:So great question. So we actually have. I wouldn't necessarily call it a dry rub, but it's just, it's different, I guess rubs kind of put together, that's, we have a process that helps bind it to the tender. A lot of brands who are trying to do Nashville hot well, I don't say trying who are doing Nashville hot chicken, or a lot of concepts that have Nashville hot chicken on the menu. It's more of a sauce versus an actual. You know, we take our tender, we dip it in the secret stuff. You know we season it, then it's ready to go. But like, if you look at that, like the Hattie Bees and the Princes, like you know the original, as far as I know, it's not a sauce, it's more of a rub.
Mike LaRue:I think there's a lot of folks that listen to this podcast who maybe have a single location restaurant, maybe they have a couple of locations. They want to grow and expand. They're not really sure how, or maybe they dip their toe into it and weren't successful with it. What are some of the challenges that you know, given your background? Probably, walking into this position, you knew a lot of what you were going to be dealing with. But how do you think about growing from a few locations to 20, 50, 100. What were some of the key challenges that you have to overcome, or that you did have to overcome, in getting that goal?
Mike LaRue:Yeah, it's like the proverbial questions like how do you scale? I know it's gonna work. I would say one of the biggest things and it's funny I can say I'll specifically talk about our founder. He just started opening. Maybe just not knowing and just not having that experience, he'd just go. But I mean, at one point he had say it was like 16 locations, 400 employees, he was HR, finance and operations and he thought that was normal, that's a way to do it and it was ready to implode. But he had enough foresight and enough humility to reach out and ask for help and really kind of built that infrastructure that you're going to need to, kind of, you know, obviously carry and grow and sustain that type of operation. But I would say one of the biggest things brands miss or don't have.
Mike LaRue:When they have, let's say you know, and usually when I'm explaining it, it's just like hey, you have three to four locations in the market, you're successful. Now you want to grow. You got people who are sending you emails saying, hey, I'm in this market, I love the franchise. Are you franchising? Well, supply chain, generally speaking, when you're talking to, when you're a local guy, you're talking to like a local Cisco rep. You're talking to local US foods rep, whatever it might be, just talking to like a local Cisco rep. You're talking to local US foods rep, whatever it might be. Just because you're talking with Cisco doesn't mean that's a supply chain strategy, because from a scalability standpoint, you're almost selling your brand and the growth prospect of your brand to Cisco as much as you're selling to any type of franchisee or customer. So, when it comes down to like your mix and your menu, having a good understanding of how that's going to translate 1500 or like 2000 miles away is huge. I mean, because who's those who've been doing this for a long time? How many situations where you know pogs are great in one market and you open up 1500 miles away and all of a sudden your food costs are 12 points higher and no one knows what happened? Well, when you start to mix in freight, you start to mix in shipping, because you don't have the volume to get in the distribution center of that call it cisco or warehouse, whatever.
Mike LaRue:There's obviously costs that are that are incurred and that's a huge thing that a lot of brands don't miss and so and so it's funny, one of the attractive things that I saw with Angry Chick is actually a good friend of mine. He's now he's our head of supply chain. I saw him in a video. I'm like, hey. I'm like, are you working with Angry Chick? He's like, yeah, I'm actually building. And it helps with prospective franchisees too, because one of the first questions that they're going to know they're in a market that's not in California is are your COGS, what's your supply chain strategy? And right now we're acting as if we had 250 locations and so any market that we go into, we have a pretty good idea of what that impact is going to be on COGS, just based off of the strategy that we have. Cisco's our distributor, so food costs is the biggest thing.
Mike LaRue:One thing that is interesting a lot of brands will start franchising pretty quickly. They have been in between one to five locations, one of the things that David did. Theoretically speaking, the location that we're opening next month in Houston is really like the first. We have one franchise location, but it was our founder's best buddy back in the day. He's like hey, man, if you ever franchise, you're going to be our first guy, and he honored his word, which is cool, and the restaurant's great. It's doing well. So when we opened Houston, we're already going to have 28 locations.
Mike LaRue:Well, when you go from 15 to 10, your GNA is different. When you go from 10 to 15, 15 to 20, your GNA is going to change and a lot of brands won't take that into account and you're really not going to know like if you only have one to four or five, six locations and you haven't been involved in scaling a brand that's 10 to 15, 20, 25, 30, you're never going to really know what that GNA impact is going to be. And obviously there's a lot of a balance there to you know how do you maintain, you know consistency with, with operations and how you treat your guests and the overall guest experience, if you don't have the ability to have oversight on those locations. And so understanding what that G&A looks like and how you grow is big. And so I think if someone who has four or five locations, if you do decide to open in another market, don't open 1,500 miles away. Make sure that you can get there in a reasonable amount of time to maintain some of that control.
Mike LaRue:Let me ask you a few questions about growth and thinking about the future. Five years out, where do you see Angry Chicks? Where do you want it to?
Mike LaRue:be. We're going to continue our corporate growth. You know, right now we're keeping California and Arizona corporate. We actually just recently determined, or we just recently decided, to keep Arizona corporate. So we're not franchising in California and Arizona. We might actually hold off on like two kind of maybe some Midwestern markets for for future corporate growth. So our corporate growth strategy is going to be anywhere between, I would say, 8 to 12 a year and that's going to mean, as far as I know, that's going to be consistent and that's going to be kind of the goal Continue with franchise growth. I'm not doing any math in my head. So if we were to maintain, call it, 20 to 30 locations a year, in five years, what would that put us? Like 120? I don't know, I don't have a calculator.
Mike LaRue:How do you think about the markets where you're targeting for franchise growth versus corporate markets? I mean, obviously California based. You know California well and to your point. If you can be successful there, why can't you be successful in other places? But how do you think about other corporate states or territories outside of that?
Mike LaRue:So right now the discussions we're having is based off of experience our leadership team has in those markets. Our VP of Ops spent a few years with Raising Cane's opening in Missouri. He was with another concept developing in Oklahoma. Our VP of Marketing did a lot of development and a lot of familiarity with Oklahoma and so it's more around being familiar with these markets not necessarily a bright, shiny object syndrome of oh man, these guys opened in this market, they're doing this amount of sales, let's go here. It's really we want to go into markets that we're familiar with from the corporate standpoint.
Mike LaRue:That makes sense. Let me wrap up with a few quick real estate related questions.
Mike LaRue:Yeah.
Mike LaRue:In case we have some brokers that listen to this. People want to get involved. Get engaged, maybe as a franchisee. What's the size requirement for an Angry Chicks? What's the sweet spot, size-wise?
Mike LaRue:Yeah. So as of today, we're saying about 2,500 square feet. Out of the 28 locations that we have, only two are drive-thru, so we can be inline, we can be end cap. I say 2,500 square feet because right now, on a $3 million restaurant, we're still kind of bursting at the seams a little bit and so from a takeout and delivery standpoint it's actually over 50% of our sales. So there might be some plans in the future where we might make the kitchen a little bigger. We take into account for that off-premise business, but I would say 2,500 to 3,000. Salinas, california, at 2,800 square feet. We did 890,000 in the first 30 days.
Mike LaRue:Congratulations. That's incredible.
Mike LaRue:Thank you. Yeah, it's mind-blowing. I mean, who knows what it'll level out at, but it's probably going to want to be in a $5 million to $6 million restaurant out of 2,200 square feet. In that case it's going to, like I said, we're kind of bursting at the seams and so we still have so much upside in actually what we can bump out of four walls and actually what we can bump out of four walls. I can't necessarily see that our minimum expanding to 3,000 square feet. But long answer to your short question.
Mike LaRue:You're pushing towards it. Yeah, who do you guys like to be near in terms of co-tenants? Who are you looking for when you're out looking at real estate? Yeah, so we actually use.
Mike LaRue:So we use Placer as not the silver bullet, but it's a pretty darn good starting point, target. So we use Placer as not the silver bullet, but it's a pretty darn good starting point, target. So we start looking at a market. We'll look at Targets, we'll look at Raising Cane's Dave's Hot Chicken, obviously Chick-fil-A, and then, based off of their guest traffic and how they relate to you know, if they're like in the north of the 80th percentile with their counterparts in the state that we're looking at, then we know that we're kind of in a good starting point.
Mike LaRue:It sounds like you don't need a drive-through. You're looking for end caps. You can go inline. Are there any other demographic requirements? Who's your core customer?
Mike LaRue:Yeah, so good question. I feel like we're still kind of learning, because it's funny, because if you look at Dave's Hot Chicken, based on what I've seen, we have to be in predominantly Caucasian markets or predominantly Hispanic markets, and so, as of today, that's the mix that we see. As far as income levels, you know average income, you know $65,000, $70,000 and up. But again, we've seen some outliers, some locations in you know, like in Bakersfield, the median income is super low and in California, discretionary income is a little lower than maybe some of those markets, but it's a $3.2 million restaurant. So I feel like there's a lot of blue ocean, if you will. I mean, there's a lot of green space for us to go and new things to learn, but it's exciting.
Mike LaRue:Oh, incredibly so. And how about this last question, thinking back to the markets that you were originally expanding in in the future, and to your point, there's a lot of opportunity out there. How do you balance the secondary, tertiary market? You know that well, you know you do well there. I would think there's less competition. But talk a little bit about from a strategy perspective. Was it again kind of like if we can do well in that kind of a market, we could do well in a bigger market? Or was there some other thing going on there?
Mike LaRue:I wouldn't necessarily call it a strategy. You know, with David, again, he's just, he's brilliant when it comes down to just. He's got an incredible palette and he knows that if he likes something he knows that people will like it. But he knows kind of what those markets and what those areas look like. But even still to this day, we're just more on what some of these locations are doing from a volume standpoint in areas that I would have never gone into with other brands that I'm a part of, and so I think the availability of real estate really dictated that growth and that strategy wasn't necessarily hey, this is specifically what we're looking for. It was, for example, so there was what 50 or some Rubios that just went dark in California last year. We've taken probably half a dozen of those and not necessarily specific of hey we were. You know we were looking for this market. It was just the, the opportunity kind of steered.
Mike LaRue:What that, uh, what that growth looked like yeah, good locations, good second gen restaurant spaces right yeah, second gen is always great if, especially if the hood is there.
Mike LaRue:But right now, now I think there's two ways. We're not necessarily targeting specific markets, we're more interested in the operator, and the best operators are going to have the relationships and they're going to know where, to know that we're going to really thrive in. Then we might kind of hone down on finding and operating a franchisee in that market. But it's really franchising, that franchisee group is kind of driving that direction. Well, Mike, this has been I'm not sure if that answered your question at all.
Mike LaRue:No, I'm just going to say this has been great. I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for joining me on Retail Intel. Yeah, I'm just going to say this has been great. I appreciate you taking the time. Thanks for joining me on Retail Intel.
Mike LaRue:Yeah, no, this was awesome. I appreciate it, enjoyed it.
Mike LaRue:Yeah, be sure to check out Angry Chicks in person and on Instagram at Angry Chicks. Whether you're an aspiring real estate mogul, a seasoned pro or simply curious about the places where we shop, dine, play and work, this podcast is your all access pass to the world of commercial real estate. Connect with me on LinkedIn If you're interested in being a part of the Retail Intel podcast. Send a message to nationalaccounts at phillipsedisoncom. If you want to hear more about new and expanding brands like Angry Chicks, keep tuning into Retail Intel and please subscribe, follow, like and repost. Talk to you next time.