Maverik: Adventure's First Pod

Maverik is in the podcast studio this week! Joe Tonumaipea, Maverik's Senior Real Estate Development Manager sits down with Newmark Mountain West's own Preston Miller, Spencer Greer and host Chad Moore and talks all things Maverik. Will they ever put a Maverik in Lake Powell? Tune in to find out! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What happened was I I enjoyed it. I enjoyed meeting people. I enjoyed putting deals together. That's what I like to do best. Um and and and really over the years just watching Maverick this explosion you know over the last decade.

SPEAKER_03 0:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Um not only here in Utah but elsewhere. And and it, you know, you were, I feel like you were a part of that world.

SPEAKER_04 0:28

Welcome everybody to the podcast. Today we have a really exciting episode. We have a special guest with a couple of brokers. The special guest, Maverick, where what is it? Adventures first stop. Nice. I got it. So we've got Joe. I'm gonna get this right, Tonu Mypea.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Perfect. That works.

SPEAKER_04 0:50

So Joe, Preston Miller, and Spencer Greer. Spencer and Preston are representing Maverick, and uh Joe obviously works at Maverick. What's your title of Maverick?

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Senior Real Estate Manager.

SPEAKER_04 1:02

Senior Real Estate Manager. Awesome. So this will be really cool. We'll get a little bit of uh interaction between how a broker works with a client and also what a client thinks of brokers. Um why don't we start with some intros? Joe, would you mind giving us like your origin story, how you got to Maverick?

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Sure. Um happy to do it. So uh I'm Samoan by Heritage, grew up in New Zealand, came out here in the States uh several years ago, and um has stayed ever since. Got to Maverick. Um my background, I'm a graduated from the University of Utah, did my MBA over there at uh West Minnie uh when it was a college, now it's a university. Um spent a lot of my career in uh finance. That's really my background uh at Wells Fargo for several years, then Goldman Sachs for a couple of years, and uh and uh I ended up at Maverick uh because we were losing our jobs and one of I would we were they were moving the um uh some of the uh our our office elsewhere. So ended up uh a friend of mine, uh a friend of ours actually was a VP at uh uh at Maverick, and uh he was kind enough to say, hey, come over and do this if you want, you know, real estate at the time? No way. I was not the only real estate I knew at the time was to uh bought a couple of homes. That was it. I had no idea about commercial versus uh in retail and all of that, but uh obviously 12 years later, um got a little bit of experience in that uh in that field, and that's how I ended up with uh with Mary.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

That's cool, that's really awesome. Um, it's always funny. Real estate managers or real estate directors or whatever, in my experience, they never start in real estate. Like they never set out to do real estate for a company. Most of them came from a different background, finance or whatever, and it's like that opportunity appears, like I'll do this for a minute, and then they end up sticking with it. I don't know if that's a condemnation of real estate.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

No, so when I got into it, I like I said, I I I didn't know a whole lot about real estate, but what happened was I I enjoyed it. I enjoyed meeting people, I enjoyed putting deals together. That's what I like to do best. Um and and and really over the years, just watching Maverick this explosion over the last decade.

SPEAKER_03 3:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Um, not only here in Utah, but elsewhere. And and it, you know, you were, I feel like you were a part of that growth. And so that just made it even more fun and decided to hang around.

SPEAKER_04 3:42

Yeah, and I'll get to you guys in just a second, but I just made me think of something when you said that. When I was not a kid, but like in the early 2000s, late 90s, Maverick was, if you guys remember, was just like a kind of a quirky, weird country store. I don't know how many locations there were, maybe like a hundred or something. Yeah, the country store. Country store and had like that country facade and the like two pumps. Yeah, kind of old and tired and weird and clunky. And something happened in 2008 or nine or ten, you could tell us, that just completely changed the trajectory of Maverick, and now it is this massive behemoth.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Yeah, but it's pretty cool. It it's cool, it's cool. And I and and I felt like I was if if you picture an airplane sitting in the tarmac, right? I joined right when it was the engine was just starting to rev and you can feel and it was starting to head down the the uh the the the the tarmac there and all of a sudden it just took off. It took off and it it things were happening so fast. I from day to day I wasn't sure where I was gonna be because we were growing so fast. Yeah, still are you know we are uh we're growing, we're expanding. Um as you uh well aware, a former Come and Go guy. We uh acquired Come and Go a couple of years ago, so that expanded. Uh I mean we're when I joined, it was uh about 250 maybe plus stores uh in the market, and uh uh we're we're honing in on a thousand stores. And how long have you been at Maverick? About 12 years. That's incredible 12 years. So in that period, in fact, we build more Mavericks within the last uh 10 years in the history of the of the company, right? Which started in 1928. It's it's so but yeah, um the the the growth, I mean we it all starts with leadership, man. And the the the way they envisioned it, uh the where Maverick was going, uh the the new site planning, they went away from the uh the country store look uh to bring it into kind of the modern um convenience store look. Right. And then we since we've had like maybe two or three different generations of buildings, um, then it became uh strategy where where we're gonna place the next door, how we're gonna place the next door. So it it just building on top of those uh fundamentals, yeah. And now we are as uh what we are today.

SPEAKER_04 6:04

It's incredible growth. Yeah, let's do some housekeeping here. This is interesting because we're on this podcast putting brokers together with their client. And so let's give an intro to Preston and Spencer here, who, as I mentioned at the beginning, represent Maverick. Uh, give us your quick story, guys.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

On how we got intro to Maverick.

SPEAKER_04 6:24

Whatever story you want to your origin story or whatever you feel compelled to say.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Yeah. No, Maverick, uh what with the very first deal we worked on with Maverick, we were actually on the landlord side rather than the tenant side, and that's how we kind of got to know them. And uh and then yeah, quickly we we worked hard, we we were efficient. I think there were some kind of loose ends we were able to put together that really maybe the procuring broker should have, but we did, and then yeah, as luck would have it, we ended up working with a director of real estate that moved from one company to another and then and moved back to Maverick, and then um, so then we started working on the tenant side. So it was just a move of a director of real estate. That's pretty common in the industry, but then that's how we got introduced and started doing deals ever since.

SPEAKER_04 7:13

How many deals have you guys done or how many have you done? How many are in the pipeline? Like we're talking a significant amount of deals that you guys have represented Maverick on.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Our first assignment was actually Montana, and we worked Montana hard and got a bunch of sites with LOIs, and and then that was we didn't know at the time, but then they were working on the acquisition of Come and Go. And so they put the kibosh on Montana. I think we had 12, 14 LOIs out, cold called every dotted along every freeway, and uh, and then they you know pulled the rug out, which we didn't know at the time. There was something bigger in store, and then um, but we worked that that market so hard that we were able to now transition down to Utah where we're from.

SPEAKER_04 8:00

Mr. Spencer Greer. What about you? Tell us about yourself.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

I wait, what do you want to do? Any detail you want to provide? No, um, I think like Preston said, we that was probably late 2019 um when we started working with that. Um we had a really interesting deal because that deal we were working down in Sandy happened, you know, went under contract and then we had COVID. And obviously all deals started to change. Um I think we were all sudden dealing with the dynamics of what does fuel look like? What is uh what does our future look like on traffic? Because now suddenly the freeway traffic that we were targeting, you know, was a lot different. Um I think we learned a lot on the brokerage side that they look ahead, um, they look ahead to you know, what do these things look like in the long term and how does that gonna affect their store growth? And so we had that weird glimpse of six months that was longer than that, but we're during our due diligence period understanding that. And so that was interesting to learn. Um I would say it's the first company we've worked with on that level that had that much knowledge to look ahead and understand exactly site plans, um, traffic patterns, in and out access. It was just a completely different spectrum of looking at it to understand all that.

SPEAKER_04 9:25

Love it. Yeah, so just for the record, I actually was a broker representing Cum and Go on the other side, which was a convenience store chain out of uh out of Iowa, which was almost the same size as Maverick, maybe a little smaller, but um, we were doing tons of deals and had a bunch of stuff in the pipeline. And then we, just like everybody else, got told that Maverick was going to acquire Cum and Go, which was crazy. We that's another podcast altogether about how much exposure you can have as a broker doing a bunch of work and just getting left on the curb.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

If you're the industry long enough.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, I don't envy, I really don't envy. I I don't know if I can do what you guys do, right? Uh it's a tough word. It's uh, you know, doggy dog, if you want to call it that. You know, if you don't so we've also seen a lot of brokers come into the market and leave because they just don't they can't handle the that type of work. But I was gonna say part of the reason we we like the we hire these guys or work with Preston and with Spencer is um it's the very simple stuff. Can I get a phone call back from a broker? Yeah, and can I get it back quick?

SPEAKER_04 10:38

And can I that sounds so dumb, but it's so true.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

But it's so true. And those little things like that develops these relationships that we have today. Preston is one of the the most creative guys that I'm I know in the in in that I've been working with. But when you find people that you like to work with, you you you tend to stick with those guys.

SPEAKER_04 10:56

Right. For the reasons you just said, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

For the reasons I just said you trust them, you uh uh they they get creative, uh they they work, and that's that's all you're asking for as a an end user or a client, right? Is to have those types of relationships.

SPEAKER_04 11:11

So don't you think that interplay is funny between a broker and a client? Like it's it's so interesting. Really depends on the market cycle. Like in 2008, 2009, 2010, when the market was just crushed, yeah, nine times nine out of ten brokers would have died to be a manager of real estate, working at a company, getting a paycheck, getting benefits, having an income that can be steady. And I always wonder like, does a real estate manager ever think about that in the opposite direction? Like, man, I wish I could be a broker, or do you always just say I would never want to be a broker?

SPEAKER_00 11:48

No, well, personally, no. Okay. Maybe there's some people there. But but one of the arguments we always have, and and and I think Preston and I discussed this or talked about this in the past, is like, there are times when people are like, Well, I hate brokers. I don't like work. Okay, go do what they do. When you go do what they do, you're gonna realize that they you you may not be as good at what you uh what you do as what they do. So there's there's this um I don't prevailing conversation out there that brokers are greedy and they they do a lot, you know. They they they um they'll do whatever it is um to do to get a deal done, regardless. So maybe a small percentage of that. I don't even know what that is. It's out there, yeah. But but definitely the the 90% of the brokers we work with are honorable guys. Just trying to just like me, just trying to keep the the lights on, you know, uh and and trying to build a career. So I'm not one of those that think that way. I in fact, I absolutely believe our success for myself and for Maverick in some instances has to do with the fact that we use the brokers and we use them in a way that benefits both of us.

SPEAKER_04 13:04

It's an extension of you, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:05

It's an extension of us. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_04 13:07

How do you see that as a benefit, or how do you leverage that having these guys be your broker? Your it makes your footprint way larger. But for you, what are the biggest benefits?

SPEAKER_00 13:17

I can't go and look at every corner from here to wherever I operate, right? That's where the brokers come in. That's number one. So number two, so you're you're more efficient with your time. Number two, brokers have relationships that we don't have. So especially into newer markets, no one's gonna care who Joe Totemaipe is because they don't have a relationship. But if I'm hiring the right person in that market, yeah, they're gonna trust them. And they go, oh, oh yeah, okay. So Preston is the guy. Yeah, all right, I don't know who Joe is, but I do know Preston, and I'm gonna do a deal because Preston is is I we've had relationships in the past. So that those are just two of the reasons why you um you would want to use brokers.

SPEAKER_04 14:03

Yeah. Let's talk about the evolution of just Maverick and its footprint and and what it's like today. I mean, as I referenced before, the Maverick Country Score store used to be just a little tiny postage stamp. But now, like I go, my son and I um we go to Lake Powell a couple times a year, and the the stop at Fillmore Maverick is like a pilgrimage for us. Like about a hundred miles before, we're talking about what burrito we're gonna get. And you get there, and it is like the busiest place in Utah. There are probably more people that visit the Fillmore Maverick than most people for sure, though. For sure. But yeah, I just think that's so interesting how it's this. I don't know what the size of that store is, probably 6,000 square feet. But it's got a it's got a full kitchen, it's got everything in there.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

It's so it started off as a uh traditional, you know, um country store, we used to call them, right? And it that thing has been like uh what's the monster that they keep the famous Frankenstein? Oh, the Frankenstein adding parts and parts you know uh to it, so to where it is today. And uh one of the things that uh uh so so now it's um it's one of our top performing stores. It's a really good store for us, but it's also it's located appropriately, like it's a really good distance from Salt Lake to St. George, right? I stopped. It's almost like a halfway point for most people, so it's properly located. Um what was the other part of that question?

SPEAKER_04 15:40

Well, what I think's interesting too about that is there are like three creek gas stations right there in that same area. And there are people there, but like one one hundredth of the amount of people that go to Maverick. So the brand of Maverick It's a very strong brand. Very strong.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

It's in our backyard, right? So Utah, um, if a store doesn't do well here, something we're not we're doing something wrong. Because uh Utah is Maverick, uh the way we see it. That's that's our back door, uh backyard, sorry. And and so we expect when we open a Maverick here, uh, we're gonna do well.

SPEAKER_04 16:14

Uh I would have thought, I mean, I I think you said that Maverick or the Fillmore Maverick wasn't the busiest, but uh man, I would have thought that was the busiest. Is there a busier?

SPEAKER_00 16:23

It's yeah, there are. There are that's incredible. It's busy. Uh when I say it's not the busiest, it's probably top five in our network. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 16:32

What's the busiest or one of the busiest?

SPEAKER_00 16:34

We have we have um a few other stores in the network that can do well, not necessarily in Utah.

SPEAKER_04 16:39

Okay. Um that North Las Vegas one. I've been to that one many times.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

North Las Vegas is is amazing. Uh uh, it performs extremely well in terms of gallons, in terms of but uh there are uh some of the stores that you would never think would do well are actually outside of a freeway system. They're they're in a an area where uh it's it's a highway. It's not the the the truck counts or the uh the the car counts are not that, you know. You look at it and you go, hey, what you know we're gonna have a great store, but we're not gonna be, it's not gonna be the number one or two stores in the in the network. And they happen to be. Wow. So uh so it's not necessarily it's but again, it takes so many from choosing the right site to to uh operating it, um, to marketing it, all those things have to marry. You you can't do one without the other. We can choose the best site in the world. Yeah. But if we can't operate it, you're not gonna, it's not gonna be profitable.

SPEAKER_04 17:40

I heard a crazy I heard a crazy rumor about the Vegas, North Vegas store. You can tell me if it's or you don't have to tell me, but I heard that that store gets multiple truck deliveries a day for fuel.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

There may be some truth to that.

SPEAKER_04 17:55

That's unbelievable. That's how much fuel that's going through. Yeah, that is crazy.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

And again, we have uh not just North Las Vegas, we have a a few that are like that in in the network.

SPEAKER_04 18:05

So what's your favorite burrito at uh Maverick?

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Oh, easily the steak. Hey, the steak guy. For sure.

SPEAKER_04 18:12

It's actually the food is actually really good.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

I know that sounds crazy. Yeah, I and that's credit to the operations, credit to the the chef. You know, we actually have a test kitchen that can uh and every now and then they'll call us and say, hey, come try this new stuff. And we I love that.

SPEAKER_04 18:30

They're actually making it. I'm sure most people listening to this have been to the one, but you're you're making the food on site. Like the other one we go to all the time is the Page, Arizona um Maverick, which is kind of in a weird location if you're coming from Antelope because you have to go all the way around town. So we pass 67 gas stations to get to the Maverick so we can get a buffalo chicken burrito before we go.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Yeah, and and we're one of the few that that actually um has a kitchen in installed inside. It's called a bonfire grill, right? So you go in there and you order food, um, so you can have fresh food right there and then. So, and that's you would think everybody does that. Not everybody does that. Everything is off the the roller grills or you know, prepare the night before kind of situation. But you you can right now kind of see that trend because people are uh are catching on, you know. It's like, okay, all right, they you know, they have a lot of people go to that store. I wonder why, you know, you go inside and they're they have fresh food right there.

SPEAKER_04 19:32

And so that reminded me of a story. I I was with Come and Go once, and we were touring the Salt Lake Market, and they were trying to get as much intel as they could on Maverick, and we visited the Draper location on 146th at in the morning, and that bonfire grill was going off. There were so many contractors there. There was a line literally all the way in the store out the door for breakfast burritos.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Yeah, it's it and we don't lose the look. Um I'm sure there if you if you want to find a burrito, you can probably find it somewhere else, yeah? Yeah, but the the point the point is you make great food and it's convenient for people to pick up because a lot of those people aren't gonna have an hour to sit down, they're there to pick something up and go to work. Yeah, that's our clientele, that's who we we cater, we try to go after.

SPEAKER_03 20:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Well, another thing I think that's been that Maverick specialized in was taking the store and orienting them the same. So most of them, yeah, the newer ones, they'll you they're you want emphasizing the word convenient, bathrooms are gonna be to the right, soda machines are gonna be to the right, bonfire grills in the middle, checkouts, you know, come in the doors, it's quick to your place. Beer cave is in the same place. Yes, so they can find that. Um, but then and so it's convenient. So we when you know where things are, you can get in there faster, more efficiently, and get out of there. And and then the bathrooms, right? We all we gotta talk about the bathrooms. Yeah, number one cleanest bathroom in America.

SPEAKER_04 21:12

I thought you were gonna say the number one busiest bathroom.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

That one I yeah, that's why we're the number one because we were able to keep the line moving.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

They are clean though, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

So clean bathrooms.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

So they did a some measurement.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

I don't know who did the a few years ago, and I don't remember now, but you know, we always do these studies, you know. What do what does the client want? You know, and and that's actually one of the number one things. Uh hope they don't get mad at me for taking uh uh you know uh giving away the trade secret, but that's actually one of the things that people say all the time is we want bigger, cleaner bathrooms. And and especially if you're traveling, right? When you're you know in an urban area, okay, I can make it home. Right. Don't care. But when you're when you're traveling for you know between here in St. George or between here in Texas, whatever, uh, you want to be able to go and enjoy a moment in silence in the clean bath.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

That's the number one thing for us on travel. With totally three kids, wife, three kids, and family. You got a diaper you gotta change. You want to go to a place that's clean. Well, but we don't decide. No. Wives.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Let's all just say it like it is.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

But we we cater to to to the ladies. Yeah. You know, they're they're the ones that asked for it and and and rightly so. And uh and Maverick responded. And so, you know.

SPEAKER_04 22:38

So for people listening to the pod who have a site or could have a site for Maverick, what are some general specs that they should know? Like what's the acreage, how big is the building, any kind of details like that that you guys want to provide?

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Yeah, so two there's two sites, right? There's the high flow sites, which is the semi-trucks. And high flow is interesting. I didn't even think about this until I kind of watched it, but semi-trucks put two fill nozzles in their trucks on both sides, right? And so when they put high flow, the outside lanes are kind of worthless. It's really the inside lanes because they'll put two nozzles in their trucks. And so high flow is if it's a high flow site, it's three to four acres, can go up to five even.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

You can go up as big. We have sites that are ten acres.

unknown 23:28

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

So we we we can build monsters. Uh, but in addition to what you're saying there, Preston, is it's also not just the fact that you have these two nozzles, it's also the rate of flow. And that's a good and that's just the common practice.

SPEAKER_04 23:41

And yeah, I used a high flow once on my on my truck. There you go. The tank got filled really quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had no idea how to use it either because it has like numbers and stuff, like the it's like using a telephone or something.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

I couldn't figure it out. So, so yeah, and then the the regular, the non-high flow sites are 1.5 acres. That's kind of the magic number. As square as possible.

SPEAKER_04 24:04

Almost like your urban concept for lack of a better description.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

No, they wouldn't have a separate lanes for RVs or trucks, it's just the automobiles.

SPEAKER_04 24:12

Looking to purchase primarily is these is the idea.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Yeah, yeah. For sure. They self-develop. We get that question a lot. You know, do could a developer get out in front of them and build for them? No, they self-develop. So they hire their own contractors, they manage it. We work with their engineers quite a bit. They are awesome. They have an entitlement team, they do their own uh site plans. We call test fits, like every site will do a test fit, but really sometimes before we offer almost simultaneously just to see if the site works, and they do that in-house. So so much of it is efficient, vertically integrated, and in-house, which makes our job really nice. We don't have to sit and wait for weeks and weeks on some outside architecture.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

You always know that it's gonna get done. Yeah, and the amount of people that have come to us and said, How about we change this on their store design? How about we do this? Yeah, they know what they're doing. Yeah, there's a reason they have what'd you say, a thousand stores now?

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Well, we're gonna, yeah, it'll probably in the in a year or two, we're gonna probably uh we'll come in on a thousand. But yeah, you you absolutely comments are are very fair. We have everything in-house, and we've had we have a design team too. So, you know, any any standards, um that so an engineer has an idea or you know, may have puts the pump somewhere else where our design team, they're very vocal about that. We'll come back and say, no, you've got to do it this way, or the spacing between the canopy and the parking apron has to be this or this. So so it so to your point earlier, it makes it uh similar for the customer. So they walk in, all right. You know, I don't have to squeeze through here. I can I know where the bathrooms are, I know where this is, and I know where that is.

SPEAKER_04 25:53

So there's something so cool about a company, a retailer or whatever, who's just like really going like crazy, growing like crazy, doing a ton of locations. It's so fun as a broker to represent that client. It's so fun to be in-house with that. And it's also really cool that you guys have like a great fit between broker and maverick, just makes everything work so much quicker. I mean, we've all been on different sides where you're working for a company who's not doing anything, and it's it's sort of depressing.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

Yeah, because you're spending a lot of time and effort, yeah, you know. Uh, but because of the growth and our growth goals, uh I I just don't see us slowing down. Now, obviously, COVID kind of put a kibosh on that for a little, just for a tiny moment, but we came back roaring not too long after that. So, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:49

All right, I gotta push you on something.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

All right.

SPEAKER_04 26:52

So we all love Maverick and we love the burritos, but we want a Maverick or Mavericks in Lake Powell. So we got uh our guy Zach over at Powell Heads, and there's been, I don't know if I'd call it a conspiracy theory, but definitely like a theory that Maverick might be interested in taking over the convenience stores at Lake Powell. And so gonna put you on the spot.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

If if if they are, I have never I haven't heard about it. Okay, how do we make it?

SPEAKER_01 27:29

How many likes do we have to get to get a Powell store? 2.2 million.

SPEAKER_04 27:36

That's too many.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

Come on.

SPEAKER_04 27:38

But there's this uh for everybody that knows, there's this there's this place called Dangling Rope, which actually closed, but it's it's out on the lake. It's like 50 miles up lake. And how cool would that be if that was like a floating maverick in the middle of the middle stop in the back.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

It fits the theme, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:56

That's it. It fits the theme. It really looks like logistically, it's it'll be a nightmare. Yeah, but we know that already. We talked a little bit about it uh before the podcast is you know, uh, you know, we've had some crazy ideas over the past, you know, floating maverick with some pumps and there we go. See?

SPEAKER_02 28:15

There's no danger in that.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

You know, we haven't talked a little bit, we haven't talked about this, but part of the reason we uh um we're we're not at those types of locations is is very simple. Uh we are you've gotta have, if you look around and you see a Maverick somewhere, we we look at traffic and uh and rooftops.

SPEAKER_04 28:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Right? I mean you gotta have the volume in order because you you're putting down um you know $10 million asset here in Utah, and you've got to be able to return something to the owner. So, and over the years, we've we've looked at Bear Lake. You know, that's an area that I covered, uh uh I c still cover. It just doesn't make any sense. Yeah from a return and ROI standpoint.

SPEAKER_04 29:04

Especially you've got the winter time, it's a little and you caught it right there.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

I didn't want to uh it's very seasonal.

SPEAKER_04 29:09

Maverick's not making a lot of money in the middle of the winter out at uh dangling rope.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

We may have to shut it down for the winter at that point. Yeah, yeah. Like a school, you reopen in in the summer. But you can sell gas at twelve dollars a gallon. That's guaranteed.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

We all agree to pay fifteen dollars. Will you agree? Yeah, make it out. Ice cream cone is $25.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

But if you you you had mentioned you were a page. So part of the reason we had a story in page is because there's a population which is very isolated, but it's very there's a population right there. Yeah. That all kind of funnels to where you are. Right.

SPEAKER_04 29:42

It's gonna be incredible in the summertime, but you can also supplement in the wintertime with real traffic.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

And and and we do and we do well. So so that's you know, we we joke about it, but that's in in terms of real analysis, that's part of the reason why we don't uh we don't generally look at those types of sites as uh um sites where we need to build.

SPEAKER_04 30:03

The other thing that we always hear as brokers, and I'm sure you get it all the time, is why can't you do a maverick that's just EV, that's for electric vehicles, that has charging stations. Like you go to the one in Fillmore, uh rather Beaver, Tesla has their supercharger there, and there's like no convenience store, which I always thought is such a myth. Like you're especially in an EV because you are stuck there for 10 to 30 minutes charging your car. It's not on gas. You pump it in five minutes, you're gone.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

It's a it's a it's a question we we've we've debated and bounced around internally. The answer always comes back to it's it's not a moneymaker. Uh and so, and we would do EVs, and we do have sites with EVs. And the last few sites that we've done, especially in California, are requirements. So we're required to have EVs. And so and that would probably the only reason why uh why we would do uh EVs is because we're required by a government entity, whoever's approving it. Uh, but for the most part, it's the way the this is my personal view on it, is the technology is not there yet, uh, where it becomes a consistent um uh profit um margin for us.

SPEAKER_04 31:20

Because like at an urban site, you you're charging your car at home, so you're there's no reason to stop at a Maverick to charge your car.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

And and so the the data is just not there yet. I I'm not saying I'm not discounting at all. I think maybe 50 years from now, uh EV is gonna be very much part of uh of our uh uh of of of how Maverick operates. And you'll still be doing the site.

SPEAKER_04 31:44

Yeah, I'll be dead. But you can you guys are welcome to keep doing deals that way.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

Yeah, it'll be incredible how I'll be doing it from the next life. But the the the the point I'm trying to make here is we don't discount it. We we we think it's definitely a legitimate technology, but we just at this point there's not enough there to to have Maverick uh build, like you said, just a massive and I've seen those between uh Baker and uh um and the Mojave there. Yeah, and Mojave they have a lot of those uh and out there and look if it works for some, great, but right now it's just not something we're we're really pursuing for those reasons.

SPEAKER_04 32:26

I don't know why this question just popped up in my head, but I was thinking to myself, site tours are awesome. Site tour basically means everybody jumps in the in the car and we all go out and we look at sites. Yeah, but from a broker perspective, they're generally not our favorite thing to do. Really? And I just wondered like, what's your take on a site tour?

SPEAKER_00 32:49

Do you equally dislike site tours? No, actually, no, because that's actually part of the of what we do. Uh, because every now and then uh when we have a market set up, we uh the ownership and some of the C suite people will want to go see the sites before they dump millions and millions of dollars into into uh uh sites, they want to at least see if it meets uh so it's it's uh it's almost a uh um a have to for us to put eyes on uh on on a corner to to have the ownership group or uh the the the uh the people that makes the decision to go to move. Okay. And we prefer that as uh as as as brokers, because it's the last thing you want is is to choose sites on Google Maps.

SPEAKER_04 33:33

Yeah. Google Earth. Right. Yeah. We call that freeway brokerage. Freeway brokerage. Now it's called Google brokerage.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

There you go. And and and you want the people that are gonna make the decisions to go on these tours, to look at these sites, tell us why do you think these sites are not gonna work, and you have that debate.

SPEAKER_03 33:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Because when you have that debate, it eventually will end up at the right decision. You know, a site that I might love, uh, someone with more experience or or someone uh uh, you know, uh like a VB of uh or director of uh of real estate may go, well, you didn't think about this. And I'm like, you're right. Yeah. Um okay, we're not gonna do that. But if I if I just bring him site and go, oh great, yeah, go build them, you're you're gonna you're gonna make a lot of mistakes. And and and taking these folks on these tours is prevalent for them to make the proper decisions. So yeah, you may hate them as brokers.

SPEAKER_04 34:26

Yeah. But for us, I don't know if I hate it, but I think for us it's critical. Yeah, everything you're saying actually is is makes perfect sense. And I hadn't really thought a lot of those things. I think from our perspective, and maybe you guys could speak to it, but maybe I'm just the only one that doesn't like site tours. But we've been to the site already four times. What we've talked to everybody, like, we know everything about the site, so of course we have to present it in the best light. But for us, it's a little bit like been here 40 million times. I've done this, like, here's the site. But yeah, you've seen it.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Maybe I'm the bad guy here. Well, they're pretty they're exhausting too, right? I don't know why they're so tiring, but your mind is in hyper load and you know, answering questions, answering questions, but you're drawing information you learned from long ago to make it applicable to the site, and you're speaking the whole time. We we joke that it's like a first, like a 12-hour first date or something, but you're you sleep really well that night. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

Well, and and that's uh and I picked up on a point you you you made there, which is really, really critical. As a broker, right? You you you're not really hearing from me, but you may have hear something different from uh a person that's actually making the decision to move forward, right? Right? They you might hear that and go, hey Joe, did you think about that? And I'm like, ah, I missed it. All right, cool. So so there is great benefit going on these tours, especially with the decision makers.

SPEAKER_04 35:43

Yeah, so does it feel like uh convenience stores, C stores are just like bigger and bigger and bigger every single year?

SPEAKER_00 35:53

It feels that way, and I and I'm seeing that in the markets, actually. Um you know, California, for example, uh, you know, Circle K is coming out with some big sites. Uh yeah, they open that one in page. Yeah, Arco is huge. Arco is opening up some big sites, but it's not new. If you travel east, you you're very familiar with QT, Quick Trip. You're familiar with Wawa.

SPEAKER_04 36:15

Yeah, you know, all the great operators, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Great, great operators. So, and their and their stores are humongous, just as big as just as big as Maverick. So, but that's where the trend is. Now, it it's not everybody's not gonna do that because everybody doesn't have the operations or the capital to be able to do that, but that's the trend. And that seems like the trend that I'm seeing out there.

SPEAKER_04 36:38

Yeah, no, I think it I think it is. And then you got obviously Bucky's, which is announcing Bucky's is a different beast. A store in Utah, and it's it's like what a hundred thousand square feet or something.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

It's a it's a Walmart.

SPEAKER_04 36:49

It's a crazy pumps.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

There's nothing convenient about that.

SPEAKER_04 36:54

Yeah. What's your take on that?

SPEAKER_00 36:55

From a Yeah, again, it's one of those things we always debate and we always look at, we analyze to death, and and but the bottom line is they they are a different player than we are. We don't they're gonna obviously um take um um gas customers away from us. Yeah. But we we we don't uh we we generally don't see them as competitors.

SPEAKER_04 37:19

Sometimes you're almost like a destination.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

It's a destination, and that's exactly we're we're in the convenience business. We we we we should never lose sight of that. That's who we are. So at some point, you know, you might want to go to Bucky's, but you're not gonna go to Bucky's every day along your trip to work or along your you know, because it's not convenient. You get okay, I got it. Great fudges, but I can wait.

unknown 37:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

I can wait till next week, that kind of thing. Getting into a Bucky's is also not as easy, easily accessible. I was looking at one site uh at Bucky's and we've been studying Bucky's. One of the sites that I saw somewhere, I'm not gonna tell you what we went to, but you have to go almost around the building just to get into the site. And they're always like way out there, and they're way out there in the middle of nowhere, which is fine. But again, we don't we try to we don't see ourselves as that. We don't lose sight of the fact that we are a convenience business. And so the easier in to get out, the easier to get out, easier to get in, easier to get out. We're going. So, but we're also under no uh disillusion that uh that Buckey's will will hurt us to some degree.

SPEAKER_04 38:27

It's definitely a great operator. They have they have a really cool presentation, and like everything about it's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 38:33

Huge following, huge, huge following. Yeah, stop.

SPEAKER_04 38:37

Give me a crazy deal that you guys worked on horror story for Maverick. Maybe a horror story, it could be a success story, it could be a whatever you want it to be.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

It was a horror, but it ended up being yeah, yeah. I've got one. I I thought of while you were talking. So we secured a site on highway 40 headed from Park City to Heber. So it's yeah, north of the dam. Yep. Before you go up over the hill. So there's the new Mayflower ski resort there, backside of Deer Valley, and heightaway or whatever. Height or hideaway, height of the the site is Quinn's Junction, and this was extremely complicated. So there are the site is contaminated, not from fuel, want to be clear about that, from tailings from the mines. Oh wow. So they come down the river, and it the site is the lower part of the site is is contaminated, and so when it took three years for the seller did a lot of it, but they got the EPA to approve the site. But this was very technical because Maverick had to buy the entity that owned the dirt because that only that entity had been cleared to to up for that site, and so it was contaminated, still contaminated, but not with fuel, with uh tailings. So every spring the runoff picks up the tailings and brings them down the river again.

SPEAKER_04 40:00

So you have to mitigate that every spring.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

Not necessarily. They're they're basically because the Maverick site will be up higher, it's just acknowledging that the the kind of eastern edge of that parcel will get contaminated every single spring. Wow. So no one's really solving for it, but everyone's aware of it, and that's why they had to buy the entity rather than buy it with their own Maverick entity. So the contract wasn't a purchase and sale of real estate, it was a purchase and sale of an entity that happened to come with real estate. Wow, that's interesting. That was technical. Yeah, we got that done though. That's wild, but it was a success in the end. When do we start construction on that one? It's under construction.

SPEAKER_00 40:38

Under construction. So we we should see that opening. I think it's uh early next year opening, 2027. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:45

What's your guys' view on just having a great client like Maverick? I mean, as brokers, we have awesome clients, we have tough clients, we have, you know, the whole spectrum. What does it feel like to represent a client like Maverick and just have an incredible opportunity to do these deals with Joe?

SPEAKER_01 41:04

Yeah, well, I think they're they're very hard. They're hard deals, they take a long time. And the good part about that is Maverick isn't difficult. So to have both a tough client and a tough site, and and also cities don't necessarily love fuel, underground fuel tanks. I mean, that's true.

SPEAKER_04 41:22

Historically, historically, there's a there's a stigma, right? About it. You say a gas station, cities are like, no.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

Contamination. They immediately think. Yeah. So it's a it's not a drive-thru restaurant, it's not a strip center, it's it's a underground fuel tank, and cities push back. They don't necessarily love that. Their zoning is tougher on convenience stores than it is on those other uses, usually conditional use, right?

SPEAKER_04 41:47

In almost all municipalities.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

Yeah. So they it's they make it really easy because they're they communicate like I mentioned before, they're vertically integrated, so they have a lot of the third parties we call them in-house, and they'll quickly spend money on a site, get through those third-party, you know, phase one environmental, um, geotech survey if need be, and they'll do that quickly. And without us even pushing them, they just do it, and that makes our jobs really easy so that we know if the site works or not very quickly. So they're an easy client on a tough ass, yeah, tough business.

SPEAKER_02 42:27

Yeah. Hard to find the the right size, I think a lot of the times. Yeah, it's not like you can just find five acres sitting in the middle of nowhere, and then when you do find it, in milk creek, just need five acres of milk creek. Often there isn't enough power, or there's other problems we've had to bore underneath the freeway on sites, and that's been an interesting process to learn you know the things that you have to do with Rocky Mountain Power, Dominion, um, getting the transformers there. Um, so that I I think just like you said, they have enough people in-house. Joe and his cohorts are all very talented in knowing exactly the next steps that need to happen. And then knowing how to navigate cities. I think that's one thing that um you guys probably don't get enough credit for is there's a lot of laws that go into restrictions and zones and everything, and whether it's a rezone or lot line adjustment, um, you guys are have a very talented team, um, top down. And it goes into they know how to get through a city, they know how to talk to people, um, and they know how to get things done in an effect effective manner. I don't think you guys are uh a bulldog or a bull in a china shop. You guys come in and you want to solve the issue. You've we've done deals before where it's been let me help the neighbor get signage if we need to move something, where you're playing nice with everyone, and um ultimately they're a great player for the community at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

There was a they're they're they listen to the city too, which is rare. I mean. A lot of times they you'd think they would sort of flex or bulldoze a city. So there was a site in Cedar City. This is kind of funny, but it went on 200 North Main Street, so like kind of main and main of Cedar. There was some opposition. There's there's some historic buildings nearby. And this is kind of interesting. But when the there was there were some people that kind of protested the site, didn't necessarily want to see the best wet best western go away. And so the engineers came back in for comments from City Council. And City Council, the previous meeting, had given them a bunch of requirements, and they came in and hit every single requirement. So there were maybe five people there ready to speak their mind against Maverick. But um when Maverick presented and showed that they had met all the requirements City Council had asked of them, City Council praised them. So they were they basically said, Thank you. You guys are this 800-pound gorilla, and you listened to us and you actually did what we asked. So they praised them enough that the five people there to protest were so sheepish they didn't even say anything. So they were kind of like, Oh, city council loves it, so what are we gonna do? So it it's pretty amazing they're that nimble that they'll still listen to the community that yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:17

Well, I mean, that's you guys live here, you're in the community, you're headquartered in downtown Salt Lake. So I think there's a sensitivity that's that's different than a lot of other retailers or convenience stores or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

That's 100% true. The other part that's also true is we're in the relationship business, right? You you can't go in there and say, Well, Maverick, you gotta do this or we're not gonna cut. That's that's not our approach. The Maverick approach is building partnerships with cities because you never know when you're gonna build the Nest Maverick. Yeah, and it becomes easier the second time around. So you've always got and you're right, uh Spencer, uh, we've got a very talented group of entitled. If I had to do that, I don't know. I you know, I'm I'm very specific. Yeah, talking about what I do.

SPEAKER_02 46:00

Talking about jobs that you don't want to do.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

Yeah, talking about like that's a tough that's speaking in front of a city council or in front of a uh planning commission. Now we are at we are at at certain times required if the uh the entitlement manager isn't available, we get to do it. But we do that rarely. Uh, but we do have uh a group of people that go and tell uh and and to some of the most talented people that we know. But the first thing that they do best is the ability to be able to build those relationships and and and respect the process. We have to respect the process, otherwise no one's gonna give you any approvals.

SPEAKER_02 46:36

But I think that's one thing we've seen just on some of the other sites we've worked on is you guys adapt to trying to make sure that it's not a nuisance to your to your neighbors. Yeah. Whether it's by building a higher wall or some sort of sound barrier. We do that all the time. And you know, when you don't have to when you don't have to.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

Yeah. And it will work with cities to be able to do it. Neighborhood comes out. I remember one deal to say, hey, you're gonna, you know, the lighting here is gonna flood the the the zone here where we're trying to sleep. Okay, we put lights on, you know, uh uh uh internally into cans, and we we've done amazing things just to make sure that that um that the neighborhoods are are we're listening. I don't know who said listening, but we listen to those kinds of things because again, it always comes back to the relationship we have with the community because you never know what if you need to come back later or um to to ask for something. If you don't have those relationships, you're not gonna get anything done.

SPEAKER_04 47:38

Well, guys, um I could keep talking about Maverick and burritos all day. But uh But you're hungry. But now we're gonna leave here and we're going to Maverick. Oh, well, I guess one thing I I just keep thinking of questions. This is bad, guys. This is I love this topic. But the downtown Maverick at your HQ, is that just a convenience store?

SPEAKER_00 48:00

Just a convenience store. Does that thing do volume or is it more of just like it does volume, it does it does volume and it does well. But uh as you notice, it it's more of a marketing yeah, you know, uh beautiful store. It's yeah, but it it's it's also places we can go test stuff, you know, if if we need to. But uh we were talking about earlier because in in the weekend it's dead, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's downtown Salt Lake, yeah. Downtown Salt Lake is in the weekend is is dead. But yeah, the stores the stores, I love it having there. Just walk down the office there. Oh, I would love it. Don't have to go anywhere, just go get my my fix in the afternoon and fix in the morning.

SPEAKER_04 48:40

You know the cook by name.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Yeah, just and yeah, and the great people that work down. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:47

It's awesome. Joe, Preston, Spencer, really appreciate it. Thank you for coming on. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

Maverick's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 48:54

Yep, and thank you.

SPEAKER_04 48:55

Adventures first stop, clearly Maverick.

SPEAKER_01 48:58

Hit us with his la last name one more time.

SPEAKER_04 49:00

Tony Mypea. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 49:05

Thank you, guys. Thank you.

unknown 49:15

Thank you.