From A to Franchisee: The Podcast for Smarter Franchise Buying

Industry Spotlight: Mobile Food Franchisees

• Franchise Business Review • Season 1 • Episode 18

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Host: Michelle Rowan, President & COO of Franchise Business Review
Guests: Russ O'Rear, Franchisee of Travelin' Tom's Truck and Kona Ice since 2019, Tim Valiant, Franchisee of Travelin' Tom's and Kona Ice since 2012

Episode Summary of Industry Spotlight: Mobile Food Franchisees

This podcast episode from "A to Franchisee" delves into the world of mobile food franchising, featuring insights from Kona Ice franchisees Russ O'Rear and Tim Valiant. They discuss transitioning from traditional careers to mobile food businesses, emphasizing the flexibility and lower costs associated with mobile franchises. The episode covers strategies for scaling operations, building community relationships, and managing seasonal staffing challenges. It also highlights the importance of passion and community involvement in achieving success as a mobile food franchisee.

**This episode features franchisees from Kona Ice and Travelin' Tom's Coffee Truck. This is not sponsored content, but we can tell you that they survey their franchisees regularly and make the report available for download.

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Michelle Rowan (00:52)
Welcome back to our podcast from A to Franchisee. And today we're going to be focused on the mobile food industry. If you've ever dreamed of owning a food business, but the thought of a brick and mortar restaurant felt too overwhelming, today's episode is for you. We're diving into one of the fastest growing segments of the food industry, mobile food franchising options. From shaved ice to cold brew coffee, food trucks and trailers are giving entrepreneurs a flexible, lower cost way

to bring great food and fun directly to their communities. To give us a firsthand look at what it's really like to run a mobile food franchise, we're talking to two franchise owners from the Kona Ice family. They both operate Kona Ice and Travel and Tom's Coffee. They'll share what drew them to the mobile model, how they've built relationships in their local communities, and what life is really like when your business runs on wheels.

Whether you're craving a sweet new business opportunity or just curious about what it takes to build a mobile franchise empire, you'll want to stick around for this conversation. Welcome to the podcast, Russ O'Rear and Tim Valiant. Thanks for joining us today.

Tim V (02:04)
Thank you.

Russ O'Rear (02:05)
We're having us.

Michelle Rowan (02:06)
So let's start, I'm gonna start with Russ, you start and then I'll go to Tim. What were you doing before you became a franchise owner with Kona Ice? What drew you to the franchise?

Russ O'Rear (02:17)
So I was a school principal for 20 years and I actually was introduced to Kona, believe it or not.

And I was introduced to Kona by my assistant principal. She came to me and she said, hey, can we have Kona Ice come to our school? I said, if you want to know really what I said, I I really don't care as long as you handle it. So she handled it. I didn't even go outside anything. And the next day, the franchisee owner who's my neighbor now, my franchisee neighbor, brought me a check. I'm like,

pretty easy you know I didn't even have to do anything and so I saw my assistant later that day and I said hey line that truck back up for next month too and so the rest was history after about two or three visits I went outside and I thought you know at this time I had been in education 27 years so I was planning on working three more you can retire at 25 in Alabama but I wanted to work to 30 and so I go outside and I thought you know

our kids were kind of rolling off the, I guess, the payroll at home. They'd never really do, but they were, I guess, in the government's eyes. So we were like, you know, we're gonna have to, you know, this next stage in life, we need to start a business, blah, blah, blah. So I don't know, it's just very intriguing to me. seemed, you know, I could give back to a lot of the organizations, kind of on the other side of it, where in the past I had really, you know,

went out and in fact I've actually apologized to some people that I hit up a lot for donations and stuff because I'm like, okay, I know what it's like on the other end now. I'm sorry for all those times I called you to help my teachers or whatever. But it was just a great way to give back and honestly it's just, it's really changed my life in a lot of ways. So it's been awesome.

Michelle Rowan (04:17)
Awesome. And Ross, how long have you been in a franchisee with Kona?

Russ O'Rear (04:21)
February 22nd, 2019 was my first event. And I turned in my retirement papers at the beginning of May, 2019. So it did not take long to say, okay, I'm moving from a place where everybody wants to see me in the Kona truck, from a place where nobody wanted to see me as a problem. So.

Michelle Rowan (04:42)
It

was bad news if you called them in. Got it. Yeah. Well, and I think that you're a very similar ⁓ story of how you were introduced to the brand, which we hear is that franchisees usually are a customer of the brand first, and that is how they find out about it. Thank you so much. So Tim, tell us your story. What were you doing before you became a franchise owner? And also, I'm curious when you joined the brand as well.

Russ O'Rear (04:45)
It was kind of nice, you know, because people liked me.

Tim V (05:09)
Yeah, so we started in 2012, June of 2012. So quite a, quite a long time ago. ⁓ I was a, at the time I was a store manager for Walgreens. I had managed Walgreens stores for over 20 years and I ended up ⁓ keeping that job for quite a long time. I did not turn in my papers as quickly as Russ did after I started the Kona business. you know, but also the Kona business, the Kona brand was not.

was not very well known in 2012. In fact, ⁓ I didn't even know about it. I just literally went to Google and I typed, we were looking at franchises. I literally typed in the word franchise. Kona Ice was one of the things that came up. I had never seen a truck before. I'd never had a Kona before. But within 30 days, I was driving a truck home. So it went pretty quick.

Michelle Rowan (05:56)
Awesome.

Tim V (05:59)
But it was like, wow, this just seems like it's too easy and it might be a good way forward in terms of maybe supplementing my income, maybe replacing my income at some point,

Michelle Rowan (06:10)
So Tim, what I love and too it sounded like from Russ, you both were able to start this while you were doing something else and then made the decision of when you could go full time. Is that typical what you hear from other franchisees that it is something you can kind of...

ease into the business. don't have to quit everything immediately to start ⁓ this type of franchise.

Tim V (06:32)
Yeah, a lot of people start it as like a side hustle. There are some people who jump all in. I can tell you from my experience, I waited nine years to quit my other job and my wife kept saying, hey, you you should just, just take the leap, take the leap, take the leap. Well, finally after nine years, it got through my thick skull that I should take the leap. And, and I, after a couple of months, I was like, I should have done this like.

like four years ago. And my wife was like, no, you should have done it seven years ago. I was like, thanks, honey. if I had to do it over again, I would have taken the leap a lot sooner. Obviously the hindsight is 20, 20, but ⁓ you know, the opportunity was so good. And with a singular point of focus and with the growth of the brand, there's, it's incredibly.

Michelle Rowan (07:05)
Yeah.

Tim V (07:24)
I don't know the best words, incredibly amazing. I guess is the best way to put it.

Michelle Rowan (07:27)
Yeah. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about the way you scale a mobile business. So I don't want, I want to ask you if my assumption is correct. Do you start with one truck and then as you're building out your territory, are you adding trucks for that brand? And then I'm going to ask you added another brand as well. did you start with one truck and grow it out? Russ, I'll go back to you to start with that question.

Russ O'Rear (07:49)
Sure, so we started with a truck, just one truck, and it was fairly evident pretty quickly we were turning down a lot of business opportunities. just for us, we bought a kiosk, which is just a, ⁓ ancillary unit that you have. And... ⁓

just because the entry to that was a little bit lower than a truck. ⁓ And so that allowed us to serve more events. We had those two things for a year ⁓ and we quickly realized, okay, this thing has some serious legs to it. So ⁓ we bought another truck and Tony is such a great salesman. We ended up buying another kiosk.

This was history, we're up to, I don't know, four trucks, three kiosks, a mini and three Tom's trucks and a Beverly Ann's truck. he's a pretty good, but it is, it's just, it's kind of slow and in the beginning, just like any other business when you're building it, I was fortunate enough to, when we started with Kona, there was a lot of brand recognition. started in 2019, they'd been around for 12 years, whereas Tim was kind of a trailblazer.

Michelle Rowan (08:51)
Okay, yeah, he sure is.

Russ O'Rear (09:12)
at the beginning and I realized how fortunate I was when we started Tom's in 21 from the ground up. I'm like, holy cow, know, this was those initial Kona people, they didn't even have Kona to lean on. they were, you know, they were trailblazers for sure. I told Tim yesterday, he was like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, you know, just taking off and going after it. So except Mel had a lot more hair, but you know, we went.

Michelle Rowan (09:33)
you

Yeah.

Tim V (09:39)
Yeah.

Michelle Rowan (09:39)
Yeah, yeah.

So Tim, I want to go to you then. So Tony Lamb, the CEO of Kona Ice and the founder started Tom's Traveling Trucks. So, and it started with existing Kona Ice owners were opening these trucks. So Tim, I think that Russ brought up a good point of when you become a franchisee of a brand, it's much different if you're part of that early on franchise group versus if you come on after the brand is established. Tim, can you speak to what drew you to being one of the early franchisees or

how your role was different being one of those first franchisees, how were you involved with the brand as far as how they probably were using you to help figure things out and really nail down that model.

Tim V (10:22)
Yeah, when I got into Kona in 2012, think the corporate Facebook page, the national Facebook page had like 3,000 likes, which we kind of laugh at now, because I don't know how many likes it has now.

hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, I don't know. But there's individual franchise pages now that have, you know, five, 10,000 likes and so forth. So it was just a, you know, nobody had ever in our area, nobody had ever seen a Kona truck. Nobody ever understood what a Kona truck could do. You know, going up to a school and saying, hey, I can serve 300 kids in an hour. They didn't know what to do with that. They didn't understand. So it was a lot of a lot of education at the beginning.

people were blown away that you could add your own flavor. It's like that was a whole new concept. you know, we were trying to figure things out. Like we would do crazy things, ⁓ you know, like with our local Facebook page. And of course, social media has changed over the last 13 years that we've been in, you know, but one of our highest posts was guess what color shirt the Kona guy is wearing today, right? And so people would be highly engaged with that. And

you know, guess how many miles we put on the Kona truck in the first year, right? Those are things that's like, we probably would laugh at them now and we probably necessarily wouldn't do them now, but ⁓ you know, people didn't understand what Kona was. So once they figured out what it was, they were like, wow, I've never seen anything like this. You know, this is amazing. can you come back? we would, our business model was serving in neighborhoods, you know, driving like the old ice cream truck. ⁓

Michelle Rowan (11:36)
you

Tim V (12:01)
you driving through a neighborhood and the kids would be like, can you come back tomorrow? Can you come back later tonight? Can you come back every day? You know, so it was, was just a completely different than, than now when most of the country is, is very well aware of what Kona ice is.

Michelle Rowan (12:16)
Yeah, they seek you out. Okay, so let's talk about what your day to day was like when you're starting. assuming you guys are involved in all the parts of the business. So if you can put on your thinking caps and go back to that beginning, tell us what your day to day was like as a new franchisee. And then I'd like to hear what your day to day is like now that you've built out your territories, have more trucks and kiosks, including the number of employees that you have between that and what it looks like to kind of manage those people. So Tim, if you want to start with that.

Tim V (12:46)
Yeah, sure. When we started, you know, I still had a full-time job, so I would get off at five o'clock and I would get in the Kona truck and drive through neighborhoods. On the weekends, I would drive through neighborhoods. You know, that was that was the deal. And then we would get invited to an event or we got invited to a school and it's like, this is good. We would get invited to a football game, middle school football game or a high school football game. And then ⁓ people would see us. Other athletic directors, other principals would call us and say, hey, can you come to my school? So it was a lot of just getting the truck on the road.

because there was know, posting on the social media account at the beginning when we had 12 likes, all of whom were my family, wasn't gonna get the audience that we needed to get to. So it was just getting the truck on the road. And it was me in the truck every single day. You know, didn't have any employees. Fast forward to when we started scaling, you know, it was a breath of fresh air, of course, when we got employees, but now it's...

So that was the day to day then. The day to day now is making sure that my leadership team has all the support they need to succeed. So we have an event coordinator who schedules all the events, who answers the phone, who responds to all the emails. We have a general operations manager who makes sure the employees are trained correctly, makes sure the trucks are up kept properly. At our peak season, or at the peak time of the season, we have anywhere from ⁓

My guess is 75 to 85 employees. We keep about 25 to 30 on year round because of Toms. But it's kind of crazy on a day to day basis during high season.

Michelle Rowan (14:18)
So your role has really changed into managing the business rather than being the person that's delivering the treat at the level of the, you're in the community. Russ, how about you? What was your experience like in the very beginning? And then what does your day to day look like now as you've grown the business?

Tim V (14:28)
Correct.

Russ O'Rear (14:37)
Very similar to Tim, when we started just, you when you first start any business, you're doing it all. And we laugh about it all the time. You know, you're kind of in survival mode. That's what you're doing. And then as you get to that point to where, hey, you know, you want to scale, you've got to make some decisions, you know? And I specifically remember going to a training that corporate held for franchisees that were looking to grow their business.

was a being a type A personality and a principal, I'm a little bit of a control freak, just to be honest. And so I'm like, okay, nobody's gonna drive my stuff, nobody's gonna, but it got to the point where we had more equipment than we did employees. So I mean, that's really not a good investment. So I was at that crossroad. I remember asking a franchisee in a meeting.

during the break, said, you know, how do I get past this? Because the question was actually posed in there. Hey, you know, if you could, if you could walk away from your business right now for a vacation, how many people in this room could do that? And it still runs smoothly. And there was like, I don't know, maybe a hundred people in the room and two people raised their hand. And you know, I was not one of those two people, but boy did I want to be so bad. And so, so I just was, had this struggle with, okay, how do I,

trust other people to do this. I talked to a guy during the break, he had like 20 trucks and, you know, his advice was, you just got to do it. It's part of business. There's going to be mistakes. There's going to be things that happen. But, if you're going to grow, that's part of it. So.

Basically at that point we kind of shifted our thinking and really started looking at hey, we've got to put some scalable processes in place We're gonna have to hire people that we can trust build them out train them those kinds of things and we we've been very fortunate to to have good employees and get to learn from other franchisees all the time things that work didn't work, which that's great, and That's probably helped our

Michelle Rowan (16:44)
Yeah, and Russ

Russ O'Rear (16:45)
Today to day for

me now is very similar to Tim. I talk with my management team.

set the direction of the company, things we need to do.

what he needs to do, those kinds of things. So ⁓ very not involved in the day to day, but more of, hey, what do we need to do to keep this thing growing and moving in the right direction?

Michelle Rowan (17:12)
Yeah, and how helpful or was the franchisor helpful in that creating those processes and helping you get out of that day to day so you could go on vacation? Were there resources beyond the franchisee community that they offered you to help train your team or help you understand what those next steps look like?

Russ O'Rear (17:30)
I think the coolest thing for me because I had a leadership background, so when I came into the business, I was filtering everything through that lens. I was blown away by the amount of support and resources that were available to me. I kind of got in thinking, okay, these people are selling snow cones. I got this. And I go in and dude, there's just so many.

incredibly smart people. Like I feel like I'm the dumbest person in the room a lot of the time. You know, I know I sound like it, but I feel that way too. But, and so I've just learned so much from people. It's just, it's my favorite part. It's my favorite part about this business is being able to just hear what other people are doing and try to figure out, how could I apply that to my, or at least part of it to my, to our business is just.

It's amazing, I love it.

Michelle Rowan (18:28)
Yeah. Tim, I want to go to you. So we've talked about the way that you were able to scale a mobile food business, the way that you were able to kind of grow slowly or leave your job and go into it. So there's a lot of pros to having a mobile food business versus people that are in a brick and mortar. What about some challenges that you have as far as running a mobile food business? What are the biggest things that keep you up at night or the things that really have challenged you over the years?

Tim V (18:55)
I think there's two things. One, it may not be specific to mobile food, but we always have the challenge of making sure we have enough employees. in the mobile food business, what we like to say is we work when others play. When you go to a baseball game, there's food vendors there.

you know, if there's a festival and you think you're going to enjoy the night at the festival as a person, that's fine. There's somebody on the other side of the counter who's actually working, right? So yeah, we work when others play. just understanding that is one component. The other component, and this varies by state, city, municipality, so on and so forth, is, you know, there's different regulations everywhere. Some states, you can have one health department certificate for the entire state. ⁓

where I'm at in Indiana, each county has their own. So we've got to go through and have, we operate in like 20 counties or something like that. So we've got to have a food permit in every county. So there's a little bit of ⁓ red tape that you just kind of have to push through and to be able to operate.

Michelle Rowan (19:58)
And then ⁓ Russ, if you have different challenges, I'd love to hear that, but also to the seasonality of those employees. Are there things that you've learned that help you have people coming back for the seasonality part of it? Are you really starting from scratch in those hires that you only need for specific amounts of time?

Russ O'Rear (20:15)
Yeah, I would think staffing has probably been our biggest, other than our getting out of our own way and shift in our mindset about growth. That was probably the biggest thing. But beyond that now, you know, it is staffing. You know, it's just, it's a phenomenal job. I usually tell people when we interview them, you know, I'm going go ahead and get the bad out of the way because there's only really one thing. And I actually use that thing that Tim said, you know, you have to work when other people play.

schedule is very fluid. We're an event-based business. Chick-fil-A knows they're going to be open 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Now, next week, three weeks from now, two years from now, six days a week, it's easy to make their schedule. For us, because we're dependent on events, our schedule is very fluid. What's kind cool is when we talk to our employees, the thing they love about our job the most is the flexibility.

So that kind of that's who we're looking for because that's what motivates them. And so, you know, trying to trying to fulfill that is probably our biggest challenge now. I think to go back to the seasonality question, I think what makes it a lot easier for us is we have Tom's now and Tom's while our Kona does operate all year long. Obviously, it's, a little slower in November, December, January, February.

big time conversation is from March to the end of October but Tom's is really kind of lines up really well from that because you know November December are pretty good months and you know just complements each other and allows us to keep you know some of our superstars all year around and give them opportunities for growth and a path to stay with us because that's really what we want.

Michelle Rowan (22:03)
Yeah. Tim, I'm going to ask you, because Russ brought up as a principal, he was the one asking for fundraising or help on that side. How important is fundraising or your involvement in the community to your business when you're operating a mobile food business?

Tim V (22:21)
I think it's paramount that you're able to give back to your community, no matter what business you're in. What I love seeing is when we added the brand Toms, people were used to getting good checks from us. We would go to a football game, write a check to the school, go to a soccer tournament, write a check to the organization, so on and so forth. And then when we brought on Toms, we simply asked the school,

if we could bring that Tom's truck to the football game along with the Kona truck. And the answer, you know, it was always yes, you can, you know, bring it, bring it. And then we would give them a check based on a give back check also from the Tom's side of it. And time and time again, athletic directors and principals were not expecting it. They never, you know, they never asked us because they had a, they just, they knew we brought a good experience. made

the experience for the fans better. And I think that's really what they cared about at the end of the day. And then when we would give them a check, they'd be like, oh, we were just glad to have you guys here. And we're like, no, we want to give back with everything we do. And it just cements that relationship. And now it's to a point where, like, Russell probably agree with this, a lot of our business also outside of school events or vending events, a lot of it is corporate catering.

We will have clients ask us to come out, hey, can you come out two hours? I got 50 people. Yep, sure, we'll come out. And they don't even ask about pricing because the trust is there. They know that when they do get the bill, it'll be a fair bill. It'll be a great value. ⁓ But they're more interested about the experience we bring and they know they can count on us.

Michelle Rowan (24:06)
Yeah. So what you're saying is as a franchise owner, you give a percentage of your revenue or your profits back to a school when that's the location that you're ⁓ servicing, but you're not paying a fee to set up there. So it's kind of, you don't pay a fee to be there, but you're giving them a percentage of your sales back to them. Okay. Understood. ⁓ Russ, I want to go to you.

You had mentioned how much you've learned from your franchise, your fellow franchisees. What are some of the ways that you stay connected with them? What's the frequency that you're talking to people or how is your franchisor facilitating those connections and those learnings between your community?

Russ O'Rear (24:51)
It's great. We have all types of opportunities. have,

KevSerc classes, BevSerc classes, so you're able to go and they hold classes to learn more about your equipment. There's master's classes where you go and learn how to scale your business. There are online ⁓ Genius Bar type things that you can participate in. So if you have ⁓ any questions about some of the features of our operating system that they come to develop, they can help you do that. We have a Facebook group. We have base camp groups that are out there.

that are from different cohorts. I still talk to people from my original Kona College 72. Tim was probably Kona College five. don't know if it's next. Okay, I didn't even know if they had Kona College back then, ⁓ but anyway, they just do a really, really good job of networking and providing those opportunities for you to learn. And then just the resources they provide.

Tim V (25:32)
Six, six.

Russ O'Rear (25:50)
that really have been developed by people that are in the business. So it's not like you have all these people that are just, and this is terrible in education. You have people that have never been a principal that are telling principals what they need to do. Or you have people that have never been a teacher, might be a superintendent, or whatever. I think what's really unique about, or may not be unique to our franchise, but it's unique to me, ⁓ is

The people that have developed a lot of these resources have been in the trenches. And so they work. I think that's just, again, to me, that's the most exciting thing. And I just love talking to other people and hearing what they're doing and trying to figure out a way that it could help us grow and be better.

Michelle Rowan (26:38)
Yeah. So when we look at our data, so we work with, we get feedback from franchisees across all types of business models. Food and beverage franchisees do tend to have lower satisfaction scores than other sectors of franchising. And I think that has to do with the food costs, the staffing issues that you've talked about, which touches a lot of industries, but I think there's seasonality to it. I'm going to go to Tim for this to start with.

When we look at the food segment of data, 80 % of franchisees agree that their fellow franchisees are supportive of each other. So I think that community piece is extremely important for your success as a franchise owner. You get to tap into people running the same business. But one of the things that surprised me is only 56 % of franchisees agree that the total investment into their business, including both time and money, was consistent with the expectations and information provided to them by their franchisor.

So there's a big opportunity, I think, to educate people before you buy a franchise. How do you get at that? How did you guys do this? Or how do you talk to candidates to really have an understanding of what it takes to run this business, what it takes to break even? How can you as a franchisee educate people on what are questions they should ask or how can they get at those numbers so they walk in with the best expectation of what it takes to be successful in a mobile franchise?

Tim V (28:00)
I think what I would advise people who are looking at getting to any franchise, particularly Mobile Food, read the franchise agreement closely. But two, and more importantly, go talk to franchisees in that system. ⁓ Go do your homework. ⁓ Don't jump into anything real quick.

Don't be overly optimistic, be realistic. Starting any business is hard. ⁓ It is hard work. ⁓ There's no other way to say it. ⁓ everybody, Russ and I just had this conversation last night, if you could start a business and in three months recoup your entire investment and already make money, there would be five billion small businesses on the planet, right?

It's not that way. It's hard work. I think we've got a lot of benefits for us in the system with Tom's and with Kona. You know, we have a low cost of goods. We have a pretty efficient operating system. We have a very quick serve time. know, the ingredients are there for great success and great success to happen much sooner than maybe other food concepts. But do the homework, talk to the franchisees and ask the hard questions. Don't just ask the questions like how good is it?

You should ask the question, how hard is it? How many times did you cry in your first year? How many times, what are your biggest challenges? If you had to do it over again, what would you change? What would you do differently? Ask those types of questions. And then be honest with yourself. It's like, yeah, that's not a good fit for me. Or, okay, I was born to work hard, I can get through this. But it's hard work. Incredibly rewarding at the end of the day, but it's not a cakewalk.

Michelle Rowan (29:26)
Yeah. Yeah, great question.

Yeah. Russ, is there anything that you would add to that? think those are all great tips. so cost of goods, number of employees it takes to run day one. Those are great questions that you called out too. Russ, anything else you would add to that?

Russ O'Rear (30:05)
Yeah, I think those are great. I think it's really easy for people to see at an event, festival, whatever, a mobile food truck or a mobile truck, and a long line, and they start doing the math, and they're like, man, he made up so much in 10 minutes. And they have no concept really, and I didn't, to be honest. They have no concept really of the amount of work it takes behind the scenes. You're just seeing a...

small slots of the work that it takes to do it. you know, I think that people don't really realize when they get in to the mobile food industry ⁓ how much work it is. And, you know, really until you can learn to scale and be in a position to scale, you know, just like I said earlier, you're in survival mode. And, you know, when you are trying to survive, you're...

Michelle Rowan (30:59)
Yeah.

Russ O'Rear (31:00)
you start, it's, if you're going to be successful, it's 60, 70 hours a week, that's just what it is. And they're not the good hours, you know, so they're the bad hours, you know, so while everybody else is having fun, and, but it's incredibly rewarding. it's just, I like said, it's changed our life. we've been able to help a lot of people, not just, and I know Tim does this too, not just people that we're

specifically working with. It's put us in a position to be able to help other people. I have a heart for teachers. because that's where I'm from. So I help a lot of school districts and sponsor a lot of things that, you know, I know teachers and staff people that work in schools deserve some credit. They have tough job for sure.

Michelle Rowan (31:48)
That's right.

Yeah, I think that is so that's really good advice. I'm going to ask you one last question. If there's anything we didn't cover, Tim, I'll go to you first. What advice would you give to someone that is listening to this podcast and considering ⁓ becoming a franchisee of any any system across any segment? What advice would you give to them?

Tim V (32:11)
Do your homework. Make sure it's something you have a passion for. We've seen this, know, people will come in and candidates will come in, right? And the first question they ask sometimes is, well, what's the ROI? How much money can I make? Right? If those are the questions that you're asking, you probably shouldn't get into this business. You need to find something that you're passionate about and that you enjoy doing.

I know that when I was much younger and got into the business, I was like, well, how much money can I make? I was one of those people, right? But I had a transformation shift, I think, in my thinking.

It turns out the world is not all about me and I shouldn't be I shouldn't be worried about me. But when I started thinking about well, what kind of a workplace can I create for my employees? Can I create a place where everybody wakes up and they can't wait to come to work for me? And if we can do that, well, my my goodness, to me, the brand doesn't matter in that case. It's like, what do you why do you want to go into business for yourself and make sure it's something that you're passionate about? and I mean,

know, Russ mentioned his passion for teachers, like, I want to employ as many people as possible. I want everybody to wake up and again, look forward to coming to work. life is too short to not enjoy what you're doing every day. So ⁓ let's try to employ as many people as possible so that everybody has a chance to earn a good living, but you know, enjoy their day. You don't want to have a like, man, I got to go to work today. I got to do this today. I got to do that today. No, it's like, I can't wait to get to work today. I can't wait to

to do what I do every day. just be passionate. Choose something that you've got a passion for. Because with passion, that's gonna keep you motivated when you're tired. It's gonna keep you motivated when you don't wanna be motivated. But the passion just burns forever.

Michelle Rowan (34:02)
Yeah. Well, and I like your comments about being a leader and creating that culture within your own organization of, you know, it's the saddest day when we lose employees, but if they have great things to say on their way out, your job has been done. You know, you provided them with a paycheck, but you also are providing experience for them while they're with you. So that's great. Russ, how about you? What advice would you give to people considering a franchise?

Russ O'Rear (34:26)
Well, Tim went first, so he stole a little bit of my ⁓ idea. a lot of the same, do your research. It's going to get tough. So you better enjoy what you're doing, because you don't want to buy a job. But the best thing that I would say to kind of piggyback on what Tim said is we're in the experience business.

We like to really create experiences for people. And what's so cool about owning your own business is you get to set the direction. You get to make the decisions. You get to set the culture. All of those things. if you've ever had a job that you did not enjoy, and I think most of us probably have, ⁓ you know how great it is to have one you love to go to work to So to Tim's point.

It's great that I know, I got 30 employees and I work every day to try to create the best environment for them because my best recruiting tool are those 30 people. So it's just super cool to be able to do this journey and do it besides other people that are experiencing the same stuff and can really give you some insight on how to be better and grow.

Michelle Rowan (35:26)
Absolutely. ⁓

Yeah. And plus it doesn't hurt that your customers are either getting a snow cone or coffee, which makes everybody happy. Yeah. You're delivering happiness. Literally. I love that. Yeah. I always say too, you think about when your, when your employees leave.

Russ O'Rear (35:46)
No.

Michelle Rowan (35:55)
how they leave and who they talk to after that also helps you recruit or make it more difficult to hire. So always treat people with kindness. I thank you both for joining us today to talk about this. Again, if you're listening to this, we have several food franchises on our site. If you want to go and see people that have data available to you about their own specific brand, Kona Ice and Tom's Truck, two options in the mobile space. And we wish everybody the best luck and research that they can do before they make their decision. Thanks for joining us today, guys.

Russ O'Rear (36:25)
Thank you.

Tim V (36:25)
Thank you.