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rick---kyla_1_05-13-2025_125637:Hey everyone. Thank you for listening to Risky Benefits where we dive into the stories behind great organizations, the people who lead them, and the benefits that keep them thriving. This week we will be talking about coffee, community and culture, and we're thrilled to be joined today by Lindsay Sheets, vice president of branding at all of our favorite coffee shop, lucky Goat, a beloved local coffee shop turned growing regional brand that's made its mark, not just with incredible coffee, but also with an incredible people first culture. So yeah, before we get started Lindsay, if you don't mind, thank you so much for coming in. Yeah. And why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself.
lindsey-sheets_1_05-13-2025_125637:All right. Thanks for having me. This is fun to get outside. Our normal caffeine kind of flow. Um, Lindsay Vice President branding for Lucky Goat. I have the very unique job and ability to cultivate not only the employee experience. But our customer experience as well. I oversee all branding and marketing as well as all of our corporate cafes, expansion into our franchising world, educational platforms, and our human resource division as well. I will hit 10 years in October, which I'm very proud to be at a company for that long, but a company that is just uniquely different in what we do. It's a cool place to work and, and we're doing some pretty big things.
rick---kyla_1_05-13-2025_125637:That's awesome Lindsey. We love having you. And to all those who are listening who know me and know that I work at Lucky Goat every day, actually work at Lucky Goat you probably know I'm thrilled to have Lindsay on here today. Mm-hmm. Kyle just sent us a picture as Lucky Goats. Growing. You guys have expanded well beyond Tallahassee and you're in Frisco, Texas. Come to find out. And so, David Perry, one of our, one of our managing principals, sent a fun photo. It's so cool. It's awesome. It's crazy. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So before we were getting started, I, I just mentioned that you guys sell killer shirts. So who, who's like the. Who's the person behind the actual logo? Who, who's like the person behind that design?
lindsey-sheets_1_05-13-2025_125637:So it's our in-house branding department. Okay. So we have taken a team of one myself for years and years, and now we have a whole design house within our corporate office. So they are pumping out the designs. We do it all inside, uh, no freelance. It's a group of really talented people.
rick---kyla_1_05-13-2025_125637:Yeah, that's cool. When we, um, used to work out at Active Movement, which is mm-hmm. Near Costco for us in Tallahassee, and it's not too far. It's probably a quarter mile, maybe a little more to Lucky Goat. But there, when you guys are. I guess you're roasting your beans. Mm-hmm. You can smell'em like if you're on a run and I'm always like, I'm like, man, this, it smells good. It is. I mean, really out of all the occupational smells, I picked a really good one. It is really, it is. It is fantastic. It gets into the pos but it is a great occupational smell. Yeah. Well, we got some question for you. Kylie kick it off. Yeah. So, um, let's start at the beginning. For those who might not know, lucky Goat is a bit of a Tallahassee staple. It's, but can you walk us through the Lucky Goat story and how the brand has grown?
lindsey-sheets_1_05-13-2025_125637:Yeah, so this is a story that most do not know, right? They see as a, as a coffee shop and. So thrilled to have that meat there. But our 15th anniversary will happen in July. We are much older than maybe others think. But our story begins a little bit farther back than that. About 20 years ago, we were the shop that you could come to for a restaurant concept, a beverage concept, a coffee concept. Mm-hmm. We could supply everything but coffee, right? So we thought, well, that's cool. How do we become the one-stop shop? Coffee had to enter, the catalog had to enter into the lineup of products. So when we did that, we wanted to offer a wholesale tasting room just like you would taste a wedding cake. Prior to making this massive purchase, we had a tasting room that you could come and try out what lineup of coffee you wanted to sell in your restaurant, your cafe, what have you. As luck would have it, it became more of a retail hub than a wholesale tasting room. Um, and in April of 2015, we went. Okay, now is a pivotal time to go. Do we embrace this retail component? Do we stick to, no, we wanna be a wholesaler and that's what we wanna do. And we went the retail route, which is completely backwards in the coffee world. You start as a retailer and you go into wholesale because you're so popular and people want to carry you in their cafes, their restaurants. We did it in reverse, which is kind of kismet to our story overall. And then came in October, I joined the company. Um, we had this massive production facility, this one location. The next year, 2016, we thought, let's just throw a couple more cafes in there. Yeah. Within eight weeks of each other, we went from one cafe to triplets. We had three kids in our cafes, and the growth hasn't stopped from there. So today we have six corporate cafes in Tallahassee. We have hundreds of wholesale customers across the southeast. We have a, a thriving and budding franchise program, right si signing 18 franchise locations just in the past 16 months and now really a thriving and budding e-commerce business. We sell to all 50 states, which is pretty cool. We hit that 50 mark a couple years ago. It is quite the growth initiative and really proud of where we've taken it to look back and go, we never intended for this to happen and our founder to this day will go, I never wanted to do retail. It's hard, it's hard to maintain status quo in growth initiatives. But looking back, it was the best decision that was ever made for our brand. And look at where we are now because. You took a leap of faith into doing something unconventional.
rick---kyla_1_05-13-2025_125637:Yeah. Very cool. I'm curious, so I don't even know if this is on there, but I'm just gonna ask. Mm-hmm. So holiday favorites. Everybody loves your guys' holiday coffees. Oh yeah. Snowflake in particular. I'm just curious, this snowflake crunch, like when, how has that been around for the full 15 years or was that something that came about like later in Y's?
lindsey-sheets_1_05-13-2025_125637:It has been around nearly the full time when flavored coffee entered the scene, the lineup. Okay. Our founder and his wife created this blend and it is a cult classic. It is a favorite, yeah. At one point you could get it year round. So to add more to the intrigue in that limited a good idea. We limited, you know, when you have it available, but it. It is synonymous with our name at this point is Snowflake Crunch. Okay. I was curious. That's the one I always take to family during the holidays as she should. It is excellent. Yeah. But that's the funny thing is I'll tell'em, I'm like, listen, they don't sell it year round, so if you want it, like I gotta get it now. And so it's like give the big bags, you know, stock up and. That's right. Yeah. Oh, I forgot. Kind of. We do, we give a little kind of bridge to get you until November. Okay. But just for those, those 31 days.
rick---kyla_1_05-13-2025_125637:Super cool. Well, uh, you guys have a very people first approach, right? Mm-hmm. It's very evident. And I imagine that kind of growth comes with its own challenges. How have you kept the heart of the brand intact as you've expanded? I mean, so I guess, let me ask real quick. How many states are you in now?
lindsey-sheets_1_05-13-2025_125637:We are now about to be in three states. Okay. We are on the cusp of Georgia and growing Gabriel. And growing and growing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So like as this happens, how, how, how do you maintain this culture as you expand? Gosh, that's got the, the million dollar question. That's what keeps you up at night as you grow and expand, is how do you bottle up what you've cultivated for years. And pick it up and drop it somewhere else and it still go forward. For us, I think we did three distinct things that kept us in line, that kept that heartbeat. Still going and still going. Right now as I'm here with you all. One is we took the head knowledge out. So much of what we built, we built very quickly. In my 10 years, there has never been a season that we were not on a rocket ship ever. Yeah. It just depends which department was that rocket ship. And we realized pretty early on that we had so much head knowledge. So if I was to walk out of the company and say, Hey, I'm gonna try something new. This years of institutional knowledge went out the door with me, right? Mm-hmm. Which is not good, right? That is not how you set up a company for success. Yeah. So we took out this head knowledge and made it policies, procedures, practices. We can actually name our experience. We have defined it. It was not so much what you felt when you walked in. We have a name to our experience and we've built a very robust training program now that. Teaches this next generation, whether you are a franchise concept or you're a corporate concept how you make it happen, how you bring forth Lucky goat. In your market and in your department. The second is we never stop focusing on recruiting. Recruitment is everything. We are a people folks com, uh, people focused company. And we believe that our experience is because of the people that we employ. Mm-hmm. Like they have to go hand in hand. That's lot of sense. So recruitment for me is, my interviews are five minutes or less. Because I am so confident in my educational team that they're going to bring the technical skill, they're gonna bring the coffee knowledge. It's the soft skills that are hard to cultivate within a classroom style. So my five minutes are filled with, are we smiling and engaging? Right. Um, are you able to hold a casual conversation and we are able to easily flow as if we're at lunch together. Mm-hmm. And then for me. Why are you in front of me? Out of all the places that you could be right now interviewing, why is Lucky Goat at the top of that list? Mm-hmm. And a lot of times when you find out this meat cute with our brand, it's, you know, grandma got, you started on coffee when you were three years old and you were looking for that traditional experience, which we provide, or it's where you had a life-changing event in a cafe. We've seen so many first dates and we've seen babies straight from the hospital. The mom is getting their coffee as they're on the way back home. Oh yeah. We have been. Our brand has met people in their lives at so many different stages. For me, that is so important because our, our industry is very passion focused. People love coffee. People love to be around coffee. When you get bit by that specialty coffee bug, it stays with you and impacts you for years to come. So that why is everything in my recruitment journey. And now that I'm not the sole recruiter for our company, that style and that desire has now permeated into so many different departments and outlooks, but it got out of our head. Yep. It went into recruitment. And the third one is we established a hierarchy of success. We wanted to build careers in coffee. Coffee is such a transient workforce. It is the college student who's here for a stint of time. We wanted to reshape that. How do you build a culture? How do you build an experience? Well, you don't have a revolving door of people. Mm-hmm. That, okay, who's leaving this semester? Who's graduating? What's happening is we wrote, we wrote the script. I. We made careers we gave you technical training, we gave you a salary, we gave you benefits, offerings that you actually could build a personal life while still having fun in what you did. And it has changed everything for our brand. And now I fully believe and in confident that you can bottle us up and you can drop us in Frisco, Texas. You can drop us in Knoxville, Tennessee, and you will feel and be a part of the same experience that was born and bred in Tallahassee.
rick---kyla_1_05-13-2025_125637:It's interesting, just even with our own business scaling, learning to grow efficiently, a lot of things that you said resonate with me. Hopefully they resonate with the people listening. Mm-hmm. I almost feel like just listening to you talk about your experience. Mm-hmm. I, I, to be very candid, feel like companies that are designed or set up to franchise. Are really probably model companies for how to scale in general. Mm-hmm.'cause if you think about what a franchise really is set up to do mm-hmm. It is to scale efficiently, no doubt. Mm-hmm. Right. And so in order to do that, you have to document and create that so that it's transferrable. And I think it's what most companies actually fail to do. Mm-hmm. Right? And so succession planning or whatever it is, like when you really think about, even for us, right? Mm-hmm. So we're working on our sales playbook, which for us, it's like if I hire a salesperson and I bring'em in the front door from that day forward, there's, there's like very important things they need to know. Like, who are we? Why should somebody hire our company? Mm-hmm. Why should somebody hire you as a consultant? What are the differentiators for our company? Like, what are all these things that like we have to know about ourselves and then we have to replicate it from person to person to person so that the not, not like. The cheeseburger tastes the same from from every person. So they're the pillars of your company, right? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've gotta cure the cement though. But if you talk to people, most everybody you talk to, their company has not written all of those things down and has not rolled out a systematic, let's call it systematic way. Yeah. To transfer that knowledge from one person to another, to another. And then what's interesting is when you talk to employees, void of having something like that, they say, I don't feel supported. And this is like, I, I, I started to ask questions like, well, what do you, what do you mean when you say that? You know what I mean? Yeah. And what I think they're trying to articulate is this, this whole documentation of who we are, why somebody should buy my coffee, or why somebody should buy my benefits consultant. Like they're looking for that meat and potatoes and it's like they want that structure, but I feel like. It doesn't always exist. So I absolutely love, love, love that you guys have done it. And your answer within the context of how you're gonna keep your culture going is perfect. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Because I think, and you don't necessarily know this, but I think many of our listeners, especially many companies out there are struggling with how to do that, how to answer that question. Yeah. But they don't have that plan.
lindsey-sheets_1_05-13-2025_125637:Yeah. It, well, it's scary to make it right. Yeah. Franchise forced us to do it. But I think we will always look back and go 10, 20 years from now going, that was a pivotal time in our company that it left head knowledge and became institutional knowledge. Yeah. And it became inbred so many other policies, procedures, positions, because we knew we needed either more people to make it happen. It is such a scary thing to think, you know, a tenured employee to walk out the door and go, oh my gosh, what did they do? Like, what did they do every single day that we just didn't know? It was just innately in that role. Right? But no one, I think, will look back as my personal opinion. We'll look back and go, that was a waste of time. Why did we waste this time? Writing things down? You'll go, why didn't I do it sooner? Yeah. Like, why didn't I write down the core pillars? And cure the cement at the foundation. That's when we bill it for your company for years to come. It is a major turning point for our company, and now we can refine everything because we have it written and we know our core and our baseline. And now it's all about refinement to make us better than we were yesterday.
rick---kyla_1_05-13-2025_125637:That's exactly what we're talking about. The playbook too. It's cool. So just to tie a few things back for you. Sure. From a consumer perspective, my, when I was a kid, we, my dad was in the military, so we moved around a lot. Sure. And you know, we didn't really have consistency outside of our family. That was it. You know, it was like every year we would move, every two years we would move. And so the thing my dad used to do is when coffee shops weren't a thing back then, like everyone had Maxwell House back in the day. And, uh, but like here, but like, I remember the bx, which is the base exchange they had a little coffee shop and my dad on the weekend when he could scrounge some time together, would take me and he'd get me like, I dunno. Like a croissant and some coffee and he'd get coffee. Because at, at that time in history, which you guys are all, who are older and listening to this are gonna laugh. All of us kids were told that drinking coffee was gonna stunt our growth, which we now know is not true, but Oh. Of all the things that we were told. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? So, so that, that was my initial tie. Right. So fast forward. Yeah. Then I was getting my master's degree while working, and I have three kids and there was, there aren't very many places that are open super early in the morning where you can go sit and, and like study. Yeah. Because for me, I didn't wanna study when it was family time. So I would get up before everyone else and I would go do that and then I would go to work. So I got my master's degree in a coffee shop is I like to say. And the coffee was awesome, but it was just a quiet place where I could go do that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then I remembered after I graduated, I remembered the experience that my dad gave me. I was like, you know what, I'll start taking my kids. So every weekend I, I've been going up there with the kids and the people at the coffee shop have seen my kids since they were in a, a car carrier. Mm-hmm. And so they've watched'em get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And so it is super interesting when, as a kid. Community member, it's just a place that I have consistently gone over time and the people that actually work there do it. Indirectly as a result of that. No, my family. Mm-hmm. Um, and they care deeply about your family too, right? Yeah. You know, and it's like, back in the day, what was it? Uh, cheers or whatever, it's like Right. Where everybody knows your name. Yeah. And, and that was like kind of where people went. But you know, for those of us who aren't hanging out in bars all the time, like coffee shop baby, to a. It definitely matches with what you're, you know, my experience matches with what you're saying. Your I love that. Yeah. Intention is, and so it's super cool to see those two things meet. Mm-hmm. I I feel like when they do meet, that's when you, oh my gosh. It's kismet. Right? Right. It's perfect. Yeah. And what a, that's where you're able to franchise this beautiful brand and be humbled daily by. You want us like you want to be with us, but we have a cool thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. My kids grew up in the warehouse and I have so many videos of shipping boxes being pulled with my daughter on, on the wagon to get it there. It is such a family approach to what we do. Yeah. But I have the same experience and I'm not a consumer. When my daughter and my son walk in, it is, how you doing? You want your normal, like, here's, here's what your normal is. It's heavily coated in chocolate and serving all those things, right? Hot chocolate. It is not. I love to hear that. It's not just in the family. Right? In the family. We take care of our own. Because everyone is a part of that family and that culture, which I think makes us so attractive to franchise concepts, but it's not disingenuine like, we truly care for your family growing. Yeah. We wanna see that, that baby who we have served that mom all throughout their pregnancy, we wanna see that baby straight from the hospital. It's a beautiful thing and and that is the coffee industry in general. We just get to be vessels of that in Tallahassee, but it is really beautiful about that coffee industry. Cool. Very cool. So as the VP of branding, you touched a lot of areas from customer perception to internal culture. Oh yeah. So how do you see leadership? Playing into brand growth?
lindsey-sheets_1_05-13-2025_125637:Oh, I love this question because for so many reasons. Lucky Goat is not my first stint in my professional path. It has been my stint for nearly a decade. But I came from a company that was a hundred years old, right, to a company that, um, was not a hold hand, like when I started. Right? Completely different. And we've grown immensely and I have the very unique, um, job. I think I have the best job in the company because of how and what I'm able to touch and do with not just what I envision, what my team comes alongside to do with me. And there's no doubt I give the creative direction for our brand where we go, how we strategically achieve it. Not so much into what colors I'm able to move out of the color coding at this point. Um. The same concept remains a ship still needs a captain. Mm-hmm. Right. No matter how large or small that you are, I can give you creative direction and say, I'll come back, I'll check in later. But that is not helpful. Right. It's not helpful to the overall growth and development of my team because I wanna give the direction, but ultimately my job as a leader isn't to instill the confidence. You can do these really big things, right? We are doing really big things right now. Um, scary things. Most of my workforce is under five years of their professional journey, okay? Many. I am their first professional scent, right? And stop, which is really empowering and inspiring and overwhelming at times of I am making the standard and the baseline of your career success and what you view a journey, a professional journey be like, but knowing that they're so new in what they're doing, and so. Who is gonna give'em that confidence to go, you got this hard yesterday is not hard today. It's new today. And look how well we pass these major milestones and landmarks. So I'm driving and I'm pulling the right levers, and I'm changing up the sales when I need to change'em up because I have the foresight to do those things. But ultimately, my job as it is, as a parent, is to lead and guide you and to instill the confidence. That we can do big things and we can do it together. That as I lead and direct the creative strategy, we've got this team that I just imagine, you know, 50 other people locking arms with me right now. I don't get to do it alone any longer and how, what an honor it is to do it with these individuals and also how like terrible and it is for me when they go. Okay. I'm ready to leave the nest. I'm ready to go try something new because we've done and cultivated something so big here. Um, but it is a balance of how do I still direct you, but ultimately give you the confidence that we've got this covered. We've got big strategies and growth potential some lofty goals, but when your team believes that they can do it, we truly are unstoppable to make that happen. That's cool. A a lot of what you said lends towards empowerment. Mm-hmm. Or, or the empowerment of your team. Yeah. Especially at the front lines, which. We used to have a saying in consulting, it was like, connect the frontline to the bottom line. Mm. Right. And that, that often happens when you have a very engaged frontline and they understand how they impact everything. So I'm curious, how do you empower those teams to be ambassadors of the lookie go brand? What does that look like? So it is all about. Do they feel they have growth potential in our company? Right? So when I joined the company years ago, there was not even a step stool you can climb, right? Mm-hmm. To achieve growth you may have just demonstrated at your, your ceiling, and that was it. And not only ceiling, like technically, but financially too. Right. That is the most deflating part of one's journey to go. Makes sense. I've, I've achieved it. Right. Here we go. And I'm done and done on, on day two. And you're completely finished. So it was instilling not just a step stool, but a ladder that someone could truly climb. We truly believe careers in coffee are what? Are going to sustain or accompany and grow our company. Yeah, that I'm able to raise three children in Tallahassee and be successful at what I'm doing and I'm not an abnormal story. Right? That's a common story in Lucky Goat. So establishing a hierarchy of success and that they could grow technically in their skill. They can grow financially and they have a path of success that they can clearly pave forward to go, all right, I could do this, I could do this, or I could completely course correct from front lines to back of house things and look at how I could aid the operations back of house. It is incredibly empowering to know you didn't come in at your ceiling. And then as they rise and you know, rising tides, we rise together. The next generation is able to come in and start to feel. Those, those vacant positions that are still remaining within our company. Yes, we get bit by the specialty coffee bug. As I said before, we are a very cool industry. We are fun to be a part of. Our coffee conventions are so caffeinated that you have to paste yourself, right? How's your water and intake and all these things. So there's no doubt we are in part of a very exciting, innovating, fun industry. There's nothing about feeling like you can actually be a part of something big, right? That you can pour into these families coming in. You can know their name or know their order and make magic for them, and then maybe you carry it behind the scenes and you're making magic without anyone ever knowing that you're doing it. That you're designing the T-shirt that is hitting the masses out there. Um, you're packaging the order that is going to no Alaska. Snowflake crunch every Christmas. We love it. We're sending it to know Alaska. Um, there is something really empowering when you're part of something bigger mm-hmm. And that there's a spot for you in something bigger. Um, I think it has changed everything for us. There is a ladder of growth. When I joined on October 15th, I went. What do I, what do I do af after this? Like what? After this job, like what is there? I have been able to pave my own path in this company, and then my goal was to ensure that my fingerprint was able to be left and that everyone that came after me saw their fingerprint and all that they did. And it has changed our advocacy. Our brand ambassadorship. It's changed everything for us. People want to be at work. Doesn't mean we always get it right. Right. We have to continue to refine and define what we do. But we get it right a lot and I think it changes everything for the culture that you all see in the cafes, but also the cultures. They're all behind the scenes that you may never come into contact with, but truly help drive and steer the ship.
rick---kyla_1_05-13-2025_125637:Quick, quick follow on question. Mm-hmm. To, because I'm just thinking about like Chick-fil-A. Um, they hire great people. Mm-hmm. And one of the things that they do is, um, when they open up a new place, a lot of times the people that are working within those facilities end up being one of the ones to go and run that place. I'm curious, is that, like, when you talk about the empowerment and creating career pathways mm-hmm. Is that one of the pathways or do you kind of, or is that more of an entrepreneurial. Kind of separation from, from, from maybe some of these people coming up from the front line.
lindsey-sheets_1_05-13-2025_125637:Yeah. So corporately, yes. We internal, a job is promoted and, um, offered internally before it ever goes external. Yeah. So absolutely we want the next, we opened our Lafayette Cafe, which is about to hit a year in July. We raised up a leader within our workforce already before going externally. Now, sometimes you don't have someone who's ready and prime to do that or even wants to go Absolutely. It is always our desire and it will always be posted internally prior. Okay. You know, with the franchise world, it's completely separate, right? They are completely independently owned and operated. We get to come alongside them and run parallel to. But on the corporate side is we want our team to fill those vacant spots. So it's just raising up that next generation of professional Okay. Use careers in coffee. And I feel like that's so evident in everything that you're saying, right? Yeah. Without it is interwoven into everything. Mm-hmm. And to look back even a year ago, what jobs we had to offer versus the jobs. I just promoted someone who's been with me for four years into a brand new role, an art director, we never had one. She fits the title so beautifully of this is a perfect example of someone who is coming at an entry level for their department. Has grown, has grown, has grown. Now is leading a department, is now overseeing people. And that next generation that we're raising up of graphic designers to carry our mission forward. And she is one of tons, dozens of stories just like that. Very cool. Hmm. So with that careers in coffee and that growing workforce, how do you guys approach benefits, especially as a small business? Gosh, the scariest conversation of 2015. Um, you know, you know you need benefits, right? They're expensive, right? Um, they're a big investment to do, it was one, and I am so proud. If my founder was here, he would say it too. We are so proud that we were able to offer benefits and offered it early on. And we've been able to grow our benefits package as our company grew. But if you looked at my Google, uh, search in 2016 is how to write an employee manual. Um, so I wrote the employee manual. That came our first wave of benefits. We offered paid time off for the first time. Mm-hmm. It was foreign. Like most of our staff went. What, what is that? Right? Like def define what paid time off actually is. Um, so paid time off came and then we went, well, let's level this up. How about health benefits? Right? And as I, I mentioned before, it was almost begging of like, I really need you to enroll because we needed a certain number of people to get a good rate. Right? Right. It was 2016, it was a different time in the healthcare world. Mm-hmm. But we said, all right, let's level this up. We're gonna pay part of this premium for this employee'cause we want you to have this. That was foreign and, and specialty coffee and small coffee shops, small companies. Yeah. Um, and then, you know, I had the unique privilege and I was the first one expecting a baby in our company. Yeah. When I say unique privilege, hearing you by saying a very uncomfortable position to go. Write the maternity leave policy, right? Like your personal desires of like, well, can I like do like European time? I'll see you in a year. And also, oh gosh, I gotta come back to my job. So part of it was situational, like as these opportunities started to come up, we needed a maternity leave policy for people who have made a career at our company. And then it came paternity leave, and then we went, okay, like something's missing. Yeah. How do you retire with us? And then came 401k. And proud to say we have a company match that comes with that. So we had a founder. Have an owner, have an exec team that is very focused on giving a very robust benefits package. You can get all the salary that you want, but if they don't have a way to support and balance that personal life demands health insurance paid time off when you have someone that is unwell, right? FMLA was huge for us. When we hit 50 employees, we qualify. This was awesome. But it has really changed. Yeah. So now I have a whole one pager of benefits when I'm offering a position. Yeah. And continually, as we had a candidate last week go. Didn't expect that. That's a little bit more than I thought y'all would have at this stage in the game, but it's a discipline and a commitment that we wanted to be a place that people wanted to work and then they stayed working here. And so our package ranges from absolutely health insurance to retirement benefits to life insurance, to paternity leave, to paid time off. You see the smorgasbord of all that you would see in a standard corporate environment. It's interesting. So. It is, it's, it is cool to hear you say those things. You know, we have a saying and it's actually plays at the beginning of our podcast. It's like, benefits isn't your main business. That's why we make it ours. It's like you get into the business to, to, to do coffee or whatever. It's Yeah. You create an experience. Yeah. Not so that you can do benefits, but then you find you're like, have to have, but I have to do this. Yeah. You have to operate. Yeah. You know what I mean? And, and, and it can easily become like, I don't wanna say a distraction, but it can easily become a distraction to like your main objective. Mm-hmm. Right. And even though I know one of your main objectives is taking care of your employees, it's like, but you also exist to provide a service. Yeah. And then that piece of it becomes so like important that it becomes like, okay, I gotta look over here now. And so it's super interesting for me to a think something, but to hear like how you experience it. Mm-hmm. Right. And I think for everyone who's listening to this podcast, like we all deal in the business of trying to help remove interference from others. Yeah. That, that at the core of what we do, like that's what we do. Right. Whether it's through purchasing insurance, so that like, when you are going to have your child, you, you, you're not worried about am I covered? Absolutely. Yeah. Can I go and do, you know, am I gonna go into debt over this? Right. And it's really just removing interference so that you can be effective, fully focused on what's happening at hand. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so I think about that and I'm even processing from a recruitment perspective how challenging it must have been to create a a local. Regional coffee company and compete against the likes of, of say, Starbucks. Mm-hmm. And I know, you know, I can't even believe I'm saying their name in this podcast, but it's all right. I'm saying it because I, I think I realized the challenge of they offer. Benefits. They're massive. Massive, yeah. So you guys probably at some point are like, we have to do this, or, or it's, it's less competitive or it's perceived as less competitive when I'm, now, I don't even know if you're, if you're going for the same targeted type of employee. So it may not be a fair comparison, but it seems to me that that could be a real challenge. And so I guess like as I think through that. I'm wondering like what is the impact on your benefits, your benefits strategy on retention or recruitment? Oh my gosh. It's everything at this point, right? Um, when I'm able to send a one pager along with an offer letter of the benefits, your entire compensation package mm-hmm. Yes. People are shocked to go, wow. Like, I didn't expect that. I didn't expect that. Right. Okay. Maybe I thought pee time off. Sure. It has allowed people who now support families, right? Yeah. They've grown their family with Lucky Goat. I did not start Lucky Goat with any children. I've now had three kids being within this, this environment I. And my story is not unfamiliar. We have several that have built their families and grown their families underneath the Lucky Goat umbrella. They're able to stay, now they're able to invest back into a company we already know they love, right? And didn't feel the societal pressures to leave, right? Because we could not offer what their family needed. It is worth every dollar you invest and gosh, you know, a census takes time to go and say, alright, what offering do we have among our staff? Do we have enough? Full-time, part-time enrollment to meet these headcounts that we need. But we will never look back at Lucky Goat and go Wasted time, man. Oh man. No. Gosh, look at who we were able to retain for even longer periods of time. We have some that will retire at our company, which is crazy Talk, right? They will retire at Lucky Goat, but it no doubt it's because we are able to afford, they're able to afford their personal life and able to balance and have a personal life without the constraints and confines of. How do I have health insurance? Yeah. How do I get time off and it, I don't have to worry about the paycheck coming in. It's changed everything. And to being in a government city where. That health insurance is at an incredible cost, right? Absolutely. Um, to be able to go and work and, and retain those benefits. And we, several dear friends that go, Hey, that is the path for me because look what it affords my family. I am thrilled that we're able to actually compete with that. That you don't feel like you have to go to that type of agency if you didn't want to. Right? If you wanted to stay passionate about coffee and pouring that latte, do it for years to come. You can't now and not feel that stress and that burden. That's really cool. I, I'm just thinking through like all the different parts and pieces of that. It's like you're basically expanding your recruiting pool. Mm-hmm. Right? Because I guess I hadn't really thought about it, but. You know, how many people can you recruit from if benefits is a, is is a requirement. Sure. Right. You're just reducing your pull right out the gate. So that, congratulations to you guys for doing that. It's super cool. Yeah. It is a, a shining achievement and pillar of our company that we're very proud to offer and I hope it just gets even deeper and, um, and the offerings that we're able to provide as our company continues to grow. Cool. Absolutely. So what's, what's next for Lucky Go? What are the exciting expansion plans? I'm pretty sure you've heard franchising a couple times in this conversation. That's kinda the chapter we're writing at this moment. Mm-hmm. Um, it is a team effort to get these things off the ground. When I think years ago, our last corporate cafe opened last summer, but there had been a big gap in time. So 2021 was the last corporate cafe. That rolled out in Tallahassee. So we luckily had just kind of greased the gears again, like, alright, yeah, we know how to do this. Yeah, we got this down. It is completely different when you're doing it in a different city zip code, time zone at times. Oh yeah. Um, so we're in a very unique season of picking up our brand and dropping it into brand new markets. Jacksonville we opened up in April 3rd of this year is cool, right? We were in that market before and it's very close to Tallahassee. So the overlap. The seminal name, right? So we've got some connections. We're entering Texas markets that have very little concept of our brand, have never seen our logo before. So it has been a fun, exciting challenge to see how do you replicate this homegrown brand in markets that are completely foreign to us? So that is the, the chapter we're in, what we're writing. But also, as I mentioned before, it's we're having these positions and these unique opportunities because of rapid growth. Yeah. Start to pop up. So this wave of new people are coming in that we're really cultivating for these next stages. I feel like you should only sell the big bags in Texas. Right. Everything's bigger in Texas is a thing. Right, right. Absolutely. A thing. We continue it on in our bags. No, 12 ounce bags, only five. Well, Lindsay, absolutely a pleasure to have you. Thanks. I feel like. It's nice. Every now and again, people are, we all live our lives, right? Mm-hmm. And you go to work, you're trying to build a business and you just run into realities and things get hard. You, you kind of make your way through it. I was reading a book the other day that said, most people, they, they learn obviously through failure, right? Mm-hmm. But that's not the only way to learn. Right. Like you can choose to mm-hmm. Prep in advance to reduce the failures. Mm-hmm. And I hear a lot of that coming from you with your planning, with like building a business to franchise. Even if you're not franchising your bills, your, your business. If you build it so that it could be franchised, imagine how much more documented and how much more planned out you would be. Well, it just, it's your safety net, right? Yeah. Is what it is, right? Yeah. That as crazy as it seems. There was a time I looked at our founder and said, what happens to us if something happens to you? Right, right, right. Because he had all the knowledge, he had all of it, and he went, oh gosh, we probably need to build that, that plan. Hope we never have to enact it. Yeah, but what if you had to like, what is the plan for success? And that's reality, right? It is a reality. Yeah. Yeah. I love that, that safety net. Well, we always reserve a question for you at the end of one of these shows, and I think that I would like to put it back to you and basically say what else is there that you'd like our listeners to know? Hmm. Um, for me, I, I love to tell the lucky goat story'cause I think people each time go, what? Like what? You're more than the shop I visit down the road. We are, we are so much more complex than what you see. If you haven't had your meet cute with Lucky Goat yet, I encourage you too. Either by way of cup or back through our website.'cause we've got big things happening and we will continually have opportunities that people can join these big things happening either by way of sipping a drink, which is such a job security for me. Thank you so much for your frequent flyer. Um, yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate humbling experience. Um, but it's also in, I, I've said 15 times, we are building up this next generation to come join. The efforts of expanding our great coffee into new markets. Cool. Check us out. See what we have, because you never know when you're that next puzzle piece to come in. But you gotta investigate now to see,'cause those, those times are coming. Alright, well I'm gonna throw you a plug, ki Downer. If you're listening to this buddy. Um, you might wanna open one of these in Charlotte, please. We would love to go to Charlotte. We would love, yeah. no. Well that's awesome. Yeah, so, well, thank you very much. Thank you to the listeners and for everyone else that came in today. Uh, I did hear Lindsay say something that I just wanna highlight if. Out of Florida or out of Tallahassee. Sounds like you can order online if you wanna buy it. Bag. Oh yes. We will ship to the Continental as well as military bases as well. Okay. So see us, check us out. So good to know. So there you go, guys. Go to, I'm assuming lucky goat.com. coffee.com. Lucky Oak coffee.com. Thank you. You'll find us. Yeah. Lucky goat coffee com. And you can find and get you some coffee. Give it a try. And remember what we said earlier about the holiday one. If you like, when the Snowflake crunch comes out, if you miss it, that's on you. That's not on us, I warn you. Yeah. Um, we've got a good warning period too. You got plenty. You got plenty of time. Don't mess it up. Don't mess up. Mess it up. Thank you so much for the listeners, Lindsay. Thank you. Thank you. And thank Lucky Goat from Tallahassee on behalf of Tallahassee. If you have any questions, please contact us or look us up on our homepage@www.fbmc.com. Visit a lucky goat today for some great coffee and culture. Remember, you can find us and subscribe on any podcast app. Thanks and have a great day.