CEOs You Should Know. Ashley Morris, CEO of Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop, Inc

On our latest CEOs You Should Know we talk Ashley Morris, CEO of Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop, Inc.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hi, I'm Ashley Morris. I'mthe CEO of Caprioti Sandwich Shop and Wing
Zone and one bite of a sandwichchanged my life forever. Hear my story
right now on the CEOs You ShouldKnow podcast on the Free iHeartRadio app.
All right, welcome to CEOs youShould Know Podcast. I'm a j McGuire
joining me right now, we haveAshley Moore, CEO of Caprioti's also Wing

(00:21):
Zone. First of all, you'rea fairly young guy, but you have
been a CEO since two thousand andeight. It's gone really fast. But
I've been doing this now for quitea while and I love it. It's
it's awesome. Did you ever imagineyourself being a CEO right now even on
your radar? Absolutely not so.I thought I figured out what I was

(00:41):
going to do when I was aboutthirteen years old. The two major influences
in my life, my mentorship camefrom my dad primarily and from my grandma
father, and both of them wouldtell me you've got to get into sales.
You've got this sort of quote unquotegift of gab and and said you
got to either get into stockbroke likeyou know, like financial services, sales,

(01:02):
and you got to get into pharmaceuticalsales because both are something you do
well at and there's lots of moneythere to be made, and all the
things parents and grandparents say to rightto influence their you know, their kid.
And so as I started to growup a little bit and decided,
hey, I'm going to go tocollege, I wanted to stay in Las
Vegas. I just absolutely love LasVegas. I grew up here. I
was born in Los Angeles, butI was growing up here, and I

(01:23):
said, I want to stay hereand make my life here. I looked
into pharmaceutical sales for about thirty secondsand realized I couldn't pronounce any of the
words, and I just didn't thinki'd be any good at that. But
I did have this affinity for finance. My brain does work mathematically, and
I gravitate towards numbers, and soI went into financial services, and so
I got a degree in finance,and I started doing that. And I

(01:45):
would have bet you then if youwould have got me between thirteen and probably
like twenty five years old, Iwould have laid a lot of money on
the fact that this was what Iwas going to be doing for the rest
of my life. But it turnsout in college, I fell in love
with this place called Capriotis. Andyou know, I'm a big sandwich guy
myself. I love a sandwiches ohman. Once I found it, which

(02:06):
actually my best friend who today isthe president of the company, you know,
introduced me to it and he triedto make me eat this thing called
the Bobby and I had cranberry andand mayonnaise on it, and I was
like, no, I'm not goingto do that. I don't really like
those two ingredients. But they havea cheese steak on the menu. Let
me go for it. And Iordered a cheese steak and that was it.
It was. It was life changingfor me. I just was.
It just was everything I knew acheese steak was supposed to be. And

(02:28):
it was really hard to get acheese steak out on the West Coast that
was any good. And this onejust rocked my world. And so I
eventually went on to try the Bobbyand it is fantastic and I love that
and I eat it from time totime, but the cheese steak is is
my passion and literally changed your life, literally changed my life. I didn't
know even at the time when Iwas ordering it that you know, I
got to a point where I waseating this thing three times a week,
and I'd walk into the store nearUNLV and and literally the guy behind the

(02:52):
counter, Dave, he'd just belike, hey, it's coming right up,
Like I wouldn't have to order.He just knew when I walked in
the door. He knew I wasgoing to have a mushroom cheese steak with
onions and hot peppers. And that'sjust how it was going to go.
And so it was a passion ofmine for so long, and you know,
as I started to get into mycareer make a little bit of money,
I just felt this. I justfelt something. I felt like I
needed to get involved with this company. And I don't know if you remember,

(03:14):
way back in the day, therewas now maybe i'll date myself,
but there was a commercial from aguy who you bought this brand, and
he said, not only am Ia client, but I'm the owner.
Two Like, I went out andI love this thing so much. I
went and I bought it. Andso some of that was maybe in the
back of my head, and Ijust thought, I really want to get
involved with this company, and sowe bought a franchise and one turned into

(03:35):
two, two turned into three,and at three my passion pendulum completely swung
and it swung away from finance andit was in this brand. And I
was sitting in my office at Wellsfar Ago thinking about price matrixes and labor
models and food cost analysis and howto do marketing and how to get technology
into the store so that I couldlearn more things about my customers. And
frankly, I was making a lotmore money in these shops than I was

(03:57):
for my clients. Right, likea great financial or make you eight to
ten percent on your money, andthese shops were making like thirty and forty
percent ROI for me. So itwas one of those things where at that
point I knew and I said,I got to do this in a big
way, and I went out andI tried to become a larger franchise.
So still didn't think I was goingto be a CEO at that time.
I thought, I'll continue to bea financial advisor, but I'll just continue

(04:20):
to take my money and roll itinto these sandwich shops and eventually I'll have
ten or fifteen or twenty and it'llbe just like it'll be a great deal.
And that's what's great about franchising,right, Like it's it's one of
those places where if you wanted toown a business with you and your husband
or wife and you just wanted onebox and you wanted to run it with
passion, you could do it.But if you wanted to build a big

(04:42):
company within a company, you havethat opportunity in franchising. And I think
that's just super cool and it reallydoes for me keep me really passionate about
the industry. So I went andI tried to do that, and the
owners of the company, who werethe founders, were like, no way.
You know, you're twenty something yearsold. You want to own all
these stores? We only have thirtystore was in the system. No chance
are we going to let you ownmore than three. And so they continually

(05:04):
told me no, and it waslike no, no, no, like
for a year, and I finallywas like, okay, well that's over.
Let's just go back into you know, stocks and bonds and mutual funds.
Thought that was it and that wasit. I thought, you know,
well got three right, that's good. I mean, I even you
know, again, here's more datingI sent a fact to every single store
in Las Vegas saying, hey,I will buy you a restaurant from you.

(05:25):
So I thought, maybe I'll acquirethe stores, right, like,
if I can't build new ones,I'll just I'll buy I'll acquire them.
And none of them were for sale, unfortunately. And I was sitting on
my sister's couch. I went overand visited her for a weekend, and
I was sitting on her couch.And back then, this is like two
thousand and six, you know,poker was like all the rage, right.
It was on almost every weekend.It was on ESPN some version of

(05:46):
the World Poker Tour, World Seriesof Poker, and Mike Sexton actually was
the announcer, and a twenty twoyear old one two million dollars and he
goes, there, you have atfolks, two million dollars, twenty two
years old. That's the new prime. I'm in poker. And if you're
twenty seven, you can't win thisgame. You're a dinosaur. And something
inside me just clicked and I went, holy crap. Mike Sexton just called

(06:06):
me a dinosaur because I'm twenty sevenyears old, and everything made sense right
then and there I said, they'regonna tell me no, and I'm gonna
wake up and be forty and I'mgonna have missed out on something that I
was really passionate about. I wasgoing to miss out on the stream.
So I picked the phone back up. I called the founder. I said,
you won't sell me another franchise,I'll just buy the whole company.
And and that conversation changed the courseof my life even farther. And a

(06:29):
year and a half later, weclosed the deal. We put an investment
group together, and we bought Capriotti'sthirty eight operating restaurants in a few states,
and I became a CEO by defacto. That's incredible. I mean,
obviously you think about huge risks whenit comes to only franchises and growing.
Were you like fearful that at allor was it just kind of like
you thrived off of that? Well? I think I think I was twofold

(06:53):
lucky number one. Yes, there'sabsolutely risk in doing things like this,
There's no question about it, right, and I don't want to belittle that.
But again, what franchising does that'sso unique is that they've perfected a
system, or they try to perfecta system before they scale it, and
they say, here's the proven processof the brand. You know, if
you do this one thing, thenyou do this second thing, then you

(07:14):
do this third thing, you canexpect a return similar to the average of
the stores. And so in Caprioti'sworld, there was a three step proven
process. Number one, take apiece of real estate where you had the
right psychographic and demographic customer for capriotis. That's sort of a checkbox, right,
you do that when you're done.Step two, operate your business.
Pursue into the operations manual. Sofollow the system right, make the bobby

(07:36):
the way the bobby's supposed to bemade, make the cheese stake the way
the cheese steak is supposed to bemade, service the guests, and step
three market your business outside the fourwalls. And so that proven process,
if you're able to do those threethings, you were able to achieve a
return. So the risk associated withoperating the restaurant was greatly greatly reduced.
That was sort of luck number one. And I had done it three times

(07:59):
right, so I had seen somesuccess. But luck number two really was
the fact that I was twenty sixyears old negotiating for this thing twenty seven
years old when we finally did it, Like like, I was naive.
I didn't know what I didn't know, right, I didn't have this like
weight of the world on my shoulders. I didn't have three kids like I
have today. I wasn't married,and so I didn't have anything to lose,
really, and I think that playeda part of it. You know,

(08:20):
I look back today and I go, that was naivity. For sure.
I should have done more homework,I should have done more analysis.
Right, it probably could have paida little less for it. All those
things come in, but at theend of the day, I got it
done. Right. When you lookback, you sort of go, Okay,
well we did it and that's reallycool. So yeah, there was
risk, but it didn't at thetime seem that risky, right. I
believed in myself. I knew ifI were to do something, I would

(08:41):
If I failed, it would notbe for lack of effort. And so,
you know, I do think thatis an attribute you need to have
if you're willing to do the thingsthat were discussing, right, you have
to believe in yourself. You haveto know that if you put yourself in
a position where you write a verylarge check that you know, you have
to rely on yourself and you haveto really know that you're you're you're willing
to do the hard work. Let'sgo back here. You mentioned a couple

(09:03):
of times, you know, lookingback. Speaking of looking back, what
if anything would you like to havedone or wish you would have done differently
knowing where you are now when youstarted out, you don't have that kind
of time on this show. That'sthat's like a five month conversation. I
still make mysterious though that you thinkabout, oh my gosh, I mean,

(09:24):
there's there's there's so many things.But when I really if I was
really being honest, like yeah,Hindsight's twenty twenty, I can nuance this
question and give you all kinds ofdifferent answers, but the reality of the
situation is probably the biggest mistakes wasI did not understand the importance of building
you know, the team correctly.I was, I just had never done

(09:46):
it before. You know, Ihad never built an organization while I worked
at Wells Fargo and I had seenwhat a big organization look like. I
did not fully understand corporate hierarchy.I did not understand the role of a
CEO, versu all of a president, the you know, the role of
the c suite verse, the rolesof the senior vps and then the regular
vps and then the directors and managerlevels like all of that stuff. I

(10:09):
don't know if they taught it incollege. I must have not been paying
attention. But I just didn't understandthat piece, and so it took me
a long time to get that right. And when you don't have that piece
right, it definitely can slow yourgrowth and it can be a hindrance.
So, you know, I didn'tknow anything about franchising. The best I
had was while we were an escortto buy it. I went to Barnes
and Nobles and I bought all thebooks that had the word franchise in it,

(10:31):
and I read them. So Itried to give myself a head start,
but at the end of the day, I needed my ten thousand hours
in running a company to be proficientat it. And so the first five
years was a lot of ups anddowns, and ups and downs and ups
and downs, and just grinding andhiring people that I thought would do a
job and not being able to actuallyhave that person do the job. I
wanted them to do. And itwasn't until I got mentorship from some amazing

(10:56):
people that I was really able toimprove that part of the business. So,
you know, going back, thefirst thing I would have done is
I would have found a team ofmentors. I would have found a team
of advisors. I would have founda board, even if a board is
not quote unquote like what you wouldsee on Wall Street. I would have
found two or three people that haddone this before that could help advise me
get that experience. Yeah, andit took me too long to get enough

(11:18):
of those people. I was veryfortunate though. I did have one from
the start, and he saved thiscompany multiple times, helping me think through
things. So I did have one, but I didn't have anyone in restaurants,
and I didn't have anyone who hadbuilt a large organization before, and
I think that would have helped mepropel this much faster. I always enjoy
a good Caprioti sandwich. I livednot too far from the location off Saint

(11:39):
Rose. Oh awesome, No onedoes in Vegas, right, We're five
minutes away from every single person.How many locations are there now more than
forty in Las Vegas, alone,and we will will end the year in
Caprioti's probably right around the two hundredmark, just depending on what stores open.
That's incredible. So you're staying busy, You're we're very busy. I

(12:00):
want to ask you specifically about likeideas for sandwiches, sure, because I'm
ready. You guys get super creative. I mean, you walk in there,
you look at what's in like theBobby, so he just don't see
these kind of sandwiches anywhere else inthe country. How often do you guys
experiment and try new sandwich ideas?And is there some sort of like playbook
to that? Yeah? Sure,So we've got a lot of them.

(12:20):
I mean, as you can imagine, you know, working behind the counter.
We have a lot of employees andfranchise's that are behind the counter day
in and day out. And youknow, after you eat the Bobby six
thousand times and you eat the cheesesteak eight thousand times, you start to
experiment a little bit. And sowe've got some unbelievable creative things and a
lot of sandwiches actually that are onthe menu today that weren't there in O
eight. We're actually started by franchise'sonce, specifically is the Chipotle Chicken cheese

(12:43):
steak. One of our franchisees andon the East Coast came to me and
he said, I want you totry these Do make this sandwich exactly this
way. And I did, andlike he took ingredients off of our salad
bar and he put it into asandwich and I was like, Wow,
this has to go on the menutomorrow. It's amazing, and it's it's
been on there for you know,eight years, and it's fantastic. But
it wasn't until about two years agothat we got serious about ltos or limited

(13:05):
time offers, And it just hadnot been part of our general marketing philosophy
at the time because we just wejust weren't there yet. It's hard to
execute those kinds of things. Andyou know, about two and a half
years ago, we really looked inthe mirror and said, what do we
do different than everybody else in ourspace? Right? I mean, our
space is crowded, there's a lotof sandwich shops, there's a lot of

(13:26):
options. But what do we doWhat is our true competitive advantage? And
it really is in the quality ofour proteins. So the differentiator of Caprioti's
right, is that when you're eatingturkey in our store, that's a twelve
hour slow cooked turkey that we didin house, that we pulled apart that
morning and put in your sandwich,has one ingredient. Turkey. Right when
you're eating steak in our in ourstore and you're getting cheese steak, that

(13:48):
steak is thinly sliced choice top roundsteak. It has one ingredient. Three
years ago we added wogu to themenu. So wagu is a big buzzword
now right. You see it inevery steakhouse in America and can still mispronounced
it. People still, yeah,I might be doing it right now,
and you know, it could bewig, could be wag. You I'm
not entirely sure either. But youknow the idea with rating in steaks,

(14:09):
right, you have your select,then you have your choice, then you
have your prime, and now youhave WAGU and so all it's it's a
measurement of quality, and it isthe highest beef that you can get in
America is American WAGU. And sowe were able to put you know,
we went out and said form qualityof proteins are better than everybody else's let's
make sure that we put the verybest that we can put onto our menu.

(14:31):
So now we have American waggu fromSnake River Farms, which is the
highest quality producer of wagu. Soyou can go in and get a wag
you cheese steak and it's I meanyou too. The old cheese steak's life
changing, but this one is.It's decadent. It's amazing. You literally
can cut the sandwich with a fork. It melts in your mouth. It's
next level. By not eating lunchbefore we sat down and had this conversation

(14:52):
because I'm regretting it. My stomachis growling. If you're hearing that,
that's my stomach. All right,Well we're gonna salve for that, yeah,
very soon. So we did that, right, and so again to
kind of further that point, westart looking at other proteins. If anything
we put on the menu, howcan we go after the highest quality protein
that's out there. So at somepoint in the near future, probably over

(15:13):
six seven months, you're going tosee a brisket on our menu. That's
a double our ranch brisket. It'sagain, melted in your mouth type of
food. We so we just dida woggy French dip about six months ago.
It was a tremendous success. Wetook it off the menu. Customers
started getting mad at us, Heybring this thing back, you know,
throwing throwing things at us. Andit will come back, and it's going
to be one of those, youknow, sandwiches that make its way onto

(15:35):
the menu every year. And todaywe're doing it a New York chop cheese.
And so one of the other playswas, if there are sandwiches that
are that are sort of becoming verypopular across the country, how can we
put our own spin on it.And so some bodega and Harlem invented this
thing called the chop cheese a fewyears back, and it became the sandwich
that that sort of took the TikTokcommunity and the Instagram community by storm.

(15:56):
And we thought, well, they'vegot one, and you know, it's
been on a bunch of menus,let us go do it. And so
we did one, and ours isway better than there is, in my
opinion. It's way high quality,that's for sure. And you get it
on our role and everything, andit's fantastic and it's in our stores right
now and it'll be there for anotherprobably thirty days, and then we'll turn
it off and we'll go after somethingelse. So we are now starting to

(16:17):
experiment with limited time offers, andas we find ones that customers really say,
man, that's extraordinary, you needto keep it on your menu,
will eventually have six or seven ofthose that just pop up from time to
time. Switching gears here for anybodywho might be thinking like you were when
you're younger, like I need totake this leap. I want to own
a franchise, I want to grow. What advice can you pass along to

(16:41):
others? Absolutely, so I thinkfirst of all, anyone who feels like
they want to take that leap shouldgive an serious consideration. I will tell
you that that you know, lifeis not certain in any way, shape
or form. But what is certainis that at some point in your life
you're gonna look back and you're gonnareflect on this decisions that you made.
And so if you have any passionwhatsoever and taking a leap, whether it

(17:03):
be professionally, whether it be inany part of your life, my feeling
generally is, give it serious consideration. I'm not saying leap always right,
but give it serious consideration and theway that I have grown to learn what
serious consideration means is first and foremost, you got to look in the mirror,
and you got to be honest withyourself. And if you don't have
the ability to be honest with yourself, you got to go to two or

(17:26):
three people that will give you realhonest feedback and help you look in the
mirror. Right, Like I wantto be a professional basketball player. Okay,
that's the leap you want to take. Well, you're five foot seven
and you don't know how to dribblewith your left hand, like my story
right now, right, exactly right, So you have to have real honest
feedback with yourself. And the waythat I tended to look at these decisions,
you know, and the way Iwould probably do it again today if

(17:48):
I went back in time and wastalking to my younger self, is make
sure you have the chops to seesomething through, right, Like, Ay,
if you do this, are youwilling to do whatever it takes to
succeed? Are you willing to worktirelessly? Are you willing to work more
hours than you want to? Areyou willing to get up on your Sunday
and when you really want to justsit there and watch football and you may
have had a few drinks the nightbefore, get up and actually go to

(18:10):
work because the job needs it.Right, you have to be honest with
yourself. Do you have that kindof character? Do you have that kind
of discipline? If you do stepone, the most primary step checked off
the list, right, step two, just know, get people around you
that can help you as fast aspossible. Right. You don't have to
go at it alone. It canbe in the form of advisors, It

(18:30):
can be in the form of partners, It can be in the form of
you know whatever, you know,family members that have done this before.
But but put people around you thatagain will have real, honest feedback conversations
with you, and be open tothat feedback. Right. You never want
your mentors to be saying, hey, great job, keep going like that's
not helpful, Like it's nice tohear, but that's not what you want.

(18:51):
What you really want is, hey, you're putting a lot of effort
out and these things you're doing well, but these are the things you suck
at, right, so go fixthese, Go fix your deficiencies. You
need that coach, and without thatcoach, it's you're on your own and
and that's a tough place to beand you never know when you might be
taking that one bite of a sandwichthat could change your life forever. Right,
yeah, I mean it could happen. Right, We could definitely hear

(19:11):
your passion for Capriotis. But youalso have wing Zone, Hot Chicken and
wings. I am really passionate aboutwing Zone as well, because that was
a recent acquisition for us, andit's a thirty year old brand and we're
finally bringing it to Las Vegas.And so we now have the two brands
and the portfolio, and we havethree stores. We have three wing Zones
here in Las Vegas off of theStrip, and we already have two on

(19:33):
Las Vegas Boulevards. We actually havea wing Zone in the New York New
York Hotel and the Flamingo Hotel.But wing Zone is super cool. So
it you know, obviously based onthe name, right, you know what
we sell. We sell wings bonein boneless, but we also have a
whole line of Hot Chicken Nashville HotChicken, and it's extraordinary, Like you
can come in and get a hotchicken sandwich, cools law on a King's
Hawaiian roll, and it is it'sspectacular, right, it's it's it's on

(19:56):
point with quality that capriotis is servingand it's something that really no other wing
place in America is doing, issort of hybriding the chicken space and being
in the wings as well as thehot chicken at the same time. And
so we're really excited about that.It's a it's got a really cool vibe
you walk in. I mean,the food is it's it's outstanding, so
outstanding food. We're just getting startedhere. My hope is we'll have forty

(20:18):
of these one day and no morethan a five minute drive. But we
have one on Las Vegas Boulevard andRobindale, and we have two in the
north in the northwest around the DurangoCentennial area, and then again the two
on Las Vegas Boulevards. So we'restarting to build that name, we're starting
to build that customer base, andwe are really excited about it. You
think you'll keep them separate or willyou ever have like sometimes you see the
restaurants that have like two of thesame owned restaurants in the same building.

(20:41):
Yeah, the co brands, theco brands. Now we probably won't do
that because I actually do think thatthese two stores are They're vastly different in
operations, right, So the onlything you'd really be sharing is like a
dishwashing station, right. It's notone of those things where you're you're sharing
too much, so it doesn't reallymake a ton of sense. I also
think they both are totally different brandsand they should stand on their own.

(21:03):
You know, Caprioties is it operatesin a in a class of one in
my opinion, and and wingsone.We hope to get it in to do
the same. And what was thethought behind, you know, let's branch
out from Caprioties and move into theWings. The short answer is is because
you know, the best of usis yet to come, and so we
want to continue to grow our portfoliobrands. And we want to you know,

(21:25):
when I look out at the restaurantspace and I look at the franchising
space, the guys that are doingit the absolute best are the ones who
own multiple brands and have built sortof a portfolio of brands across the country.
And you know, the way Ikind of look at things is if
they can do it, so canwe. So we should be able to
do that too, and let's operatein the space that the best of the
best they're doing it. But secondarily, we've built an infrastructure that can support

(21:48):
it. So to have that infrastructureand be in a position to do it,
we wanted to test the thesis andsee if, in fact, you
know, we could be successful atit. So that's what we're doing,
and it sounds like you are.We're trying really hard. It's challenge,
there's no question about it. Butit's fun. That's awesome. Well,
best of luck, thank you,congratulations and all your success. Thank you.
You've inspired me so to get lunchor to open a business both.

(22:10):
Okay, probably the lunch first though, all right, that's fair. Ashley
Morris, CEO of Caprioti Sandwich Shopand Wing Zone Hot Chicken and Wings.
It's the CEOs you should know.