Hospitality Hotdish with Preston Lougheed

Preston Lougheed with Terratron Inc stops by the pod to talk about Shepherd’s pie, his realized dream of running hotels next to the Mall of America, and the very specific issues found in the hotel industry.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Hello, and welcome to hospitality hot dish fresh
from the oven. I am Kate Conroy, vice
president of strategic partnerships here at Hospitality Minnesota,
which is a member driven organization dedicated to
educating, supporting, and advocating for Minnesota's
hospitality industry.
What you can expect from the hot dish
are conversations with restaurants, hotels, resorts, campgrounds, and

(00:24):
the allied members who who support those businesses
in the state of Minnesota.
We release a new episode every other Thursday,
so be on the lookout for those. Speaking
of which, you can find the hot dish
just about anywhere you can download a podcast.
We even put them up on YouTube, so
check us out. And don't forget to leave
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gets us in front of other awesome people
just like you.

(00:45):
With me today is Preston Lougheed with Terratron
Incorporated. Preston, say hi, and let the audience
hear your voice.
Good morning, Minnesota, and thanks for having me,
Kate. I appreciate it.
That was so warm. Good morning to the
whole of Minnesota. That's fantastic. That's right.
I love it. Alright. We're gonna jump right
in with a very hard hitting question. Preston,

(01:06):
what is your favorite hot dish?
Well, such good debate, but I've listened to
all your podcasts, and, I told my wife
I was gonna be talking about
hot dishes on
a podcast. So this week, she made 3
different ones for dinner.
One each different day. And so shepherd's pie,

(01:28):
which I think is a hot dish.
She made a chicken Alfredo bake, which was
delicious.
And then,
last night, we had tater tot hot dish,
which
is what I hear is the favorite, but
it's not mine.
One more I want to sprinkle in there.
One of my associates made me a thing

(01:49):
called sushi bake, and it's got sushi rice,
salmon,
crab meat,
Japanese mayo,
Japanese seaweed,
sesame seeds, and it was delicious.
But my wife's favorite, her name's Elaine,
is her shepherd's pie. It's absolutely
fantastic.

(02:10):
Shout out
to Elaine, that's amazing. That's right, love my
wife.
Oh, I like Shepherd's pie.
It's one of those underrated ones because it's
sort of British, and so Americans
maybe scoff a little bit,
but it is delicious.
I don't okay. So let me pause.

(02:32):
What is the meat that she uses? Because
it's ground it's usually ground lamb in in
Britain, I think. Right? Ground lamb. We use
ground beef, but we have used beef tips
before. But
her ideas was if you put it in
a pan
and it had some sort of potato and
then you bake it,
it's a casserole
aka
hot dish.
100% correct.

(02:54):
100% correct. I love it. That sounds really
yummy. I'm ready for lunch now.
Me too. Okay. And the the chicken Alfredo
casserole, that sounds amazing.
It was I I don't eat leftovers,
full disclosure, and I ate leftovers of that
earlier this week because it was it was
really, really good.
Oh my gosh. I want the recipe because

(03:15):
I'm guessing it's, like,
grated Parmesan with a cream of chicken
soup
and,
maybe a little cream.
I'm just
so real obviously and some a little bit
of
bacon and then cheese on top, and it
was just delicious.
Damn.

(03:36):
Yes. You got you did well. You got
married to somebody who knows how to cook
really good stuff. Well done to you. Good
job. A great cook. And and I wanted
to do a little research, so I I
did my I did my duty for the
week.
I really appreciate that. Nobody has ever come
to the podcast with research in hand. That's
amazing.
Alright. Preston, in terms of hospitality,

(04:00):
what is your why?
Well, I've been with the company I'm with
for 24 years,
and,
we're a franchisee of, Wyndham Hotels and some
Marriott Hotels,
but one of our biggest things is we
have the spirit to serve.
So we serve our associates.

(04:21):
We serve our guests
and we serve our community. So we
we find things quarterly to do as a
team,
to donate money to.
And, we we
wherever our hotels are
positioned,
we like to give back to the communities
in that area. So to answer your question,

(04:42):
it's the spirit to serve.
I love that.
You know,
far and wide, every single person I have
talked to in this industry
has displayed so much heart.
It's just so, it's so gratifying to be
a part of this community. I had no
idea when I started this job

(05:02):
9, 10 months ago that there was just
gonna be so much heart and love as
a part of it. I just love it.
Yeah. You you said the right word, a
heart. So, you have to have a servant's
heart
to be in the hospitality industry, whether it's
on a restaurant,
an attraction, a hotel, is you're there to
serve others.
So one time I had an associate telling

(05:22):
me, like, I don't really like people.
And I'm like, you're probably or you're definitely
not in the right,
industry then. So you have to love people,
and you have to have our servant's heart.
And again, we just call it the spirit
to serve.
It's fantastic.
I love that.
Alright. On that note, we're gonna take a
quick break and come back with more questions.

(05:48):
Welcome back, Preston Lougheed with Terratron Incorporated. What
is your favorite Minnesota escape?
Well, like I said, I've listened to your
podcast,
and I've heard the lakes, and I've heard
the beaches.
In the hotel industry,
you know, we never close, so we do
work a lot. And

(06:10):
my favorite is
or one of the my favorites, I should
say, is the Mall of America.
Great choice.
Yeah. So,
when I was in college, I actually,
did a research study about opening a hotel
next to the Mall of America.
And this was,

(06:31):
back when the mall, you know, the mall
opened in August of 92
and I was still in college. So I
dreamt of running hotels and
and now we have 3 hotels right next
to the mall of America.
You know, a town place suites, an AC
by Marriott, and an element by Westin.
Anyway,
part of my research as well is I

(06:52):
I I stayed true to myself, and I
went to the Mall of America, and I
made it around 2 of the 3 floors
yesterday.
That's amazing.
But I'd be,
I'd be rem if I didn't mention, you
know, another top favorite of mine is Mystic
Lake.
I don't get there a lot. I haven't
been there a while, but, you know,

(07:14):
before they opened, you used to have to
travel
far out of Minneapolis
or get on a plane to Vegas. So
to have a a world class casino
right here in Minnesota,
Just, you know, 20 minutes from downtown or
from Bloomington
is really it's it's I I love it,

(07:35):
and it's great for the hospitality business.
Agreed.
Agreed. Those are 2 of my top.
Those are fantastic answers.
So can you talk a little bit about
what you do for Terratron?
Yeah. I'm, like I said, I've been here
for 24 years. I'm the area manager,
and we are a hotel.

(07:57):
So we we call it hospitality,
retail,
and housing.
So, we currently have 5 hotels.
I'll talk about another one a little bit.
We used to have 80 Hardee's Restaurants.
And, before I came on and Hardee's was
starting to close some restaurants,
our company retained a lot of the real

(08:18):
estate.
So now we're landlords and some retail
where we
are the landlord for some
McDonald's,
Burger Kings, Dunkin' Donuts. But some of them
we sold off, and we use them that
capital to get into the hotel business.
So we currently have
5 hotels.

(08:39):
I oversee
all 5 of the properties,
and,
you know, I'm in charge of revenue management,
working with working with and hiring the general
managers,
sales and marketing,
budgeting and planning.
And so it's,

(08:59):
it's definitely a full time job.
Seriously, it sounds like it. It's hard to
imagine
sort of managing 5 different properties with different
needs, different locations, different personalities,
in all of the key
spots. Like, general manager is a key spot,
but, like,
accounting and finance is a key spot. Right?

(09:21):
And facilities is a key spot and managing,
like, all of the
the people attached to each
bigger property. I that's gotta be such a
big job.
Yeah. We currently have probably about 250 people
that work for us.
And
in my position, I worked more directly with
our managers and our associates

(09:41):
than our guest.
But
a lot of guests still know me or
as our managers have turned over the years
and I'm still here. I'm the one thing
they can,
come back to and say, I know that
person or I know someone at Tera Tron
or this hotel, and my name falls in
that category. But,

(10:01):
you know,
you said maintenance. That's probably one of the
biggest jobs, maintaining
all the grounds
to preventative maintenance.
And then the probably the next trickier one
is sales and marketing,
trying to,
you know, let people know about your product
and
try to have them spend money with you.

(10:24):
So those are but most of our accounting
is based in Park City, Utah, which is
where our corporate office is.
But we have one hotel
accountant here in Minnesota and she is,
works from home hybrid
kinda like yourself. So she gets to come
in the office when she lights, but she
works out of her office and,

(10:46):
it works for us. So
Very nice.
Can you tell me what keeps you up
at night, Preston?
Well, I think when you first asked me
that question maybe a week or so ago,
I was like,
and I I wanna give you 2 answers
again. One is hotels never ever close.

(11:08):
So,
I thought about, like, why didn't I get
in the banking business? No nights, no weekends,
no holidays, close at 5 PM,
but hotels never ever close. So in the
hotel world,
we're always waiting and wondering
if the night otter
is gonna show up, the person that has
to work overnight.

(11:29):
If that person doesn't get there,
you know, their supervisor, their manager is on
the hook. If I get 2 or 3
properties that do that,
then I'll send I might be on the
hook. So I've always it's always been a
little you watch for 10 o'clock at night
to make sure the the night auditors have
arrived at all the hotels.

(11:50):
Secondly,
this is worldwide, but crowd strike in the
the last week, the
disruption
of credit cards and computers
caused a major,
you know, distraction and meltdown in the

(12:13):
mentioning specific names, but it hit hotels too.
So 2 of our
5 hotels had no
credit cards for 5 days.
Oh my god. We were handwriting
name, address, phone number, and credit card authorization
forms
for 5 days.
And the funny thing is we didn't have

(12:33):
CrowdStrike
5 months ago,
and our brand said, you gotta do CrowdStrike.
So we did CrowdStrike, and then we had
the first,
you know,
IT issue in very long time.
Oh my goodness.
You must have just been eating stress. That

(12:54):
must have been so difficult.
More so my associates
and my managers, but even for the guest.
You know? There was guests that were stuck
at the airport
because they couldn't get on a flight, and
then they come to a hotel.
And then, you know, it was stressful getting
them checked in because the systems weren't up
and running.

(13:16):
Okay. I can't imagine. That's so what
a nightmare.
Preston, anything that you'd like to promote coming
up?
Well, thank you for the opportunity.
We are
probably breaking ground on a brand new hotel
in Mankato, Minnesota.
It's a town place suites by Marriott, and,

(13:37):
we plan to start moving dirt next week.
So it will share a parking lot with
our courtyard by Marriott
in Mankato, right next to River Hills Mall,
and it will be Mankato's first true 100%
extended stay hotel. We are Saruplex.
Yes. Amazing. Mankato is, like, up and coming.
I go there maybe once a quarter, and

(13:59):
every time I do, it is just bouncing
with activity. There's so much happening.
Yeah. New hotels. There's a few others coming
to that area.
Walmart distribution is doubling the size of their,
facility.
Minnesota State University is the 2nd largest
university next to the U of M in

(14:19):
the state of Minnesota,
and, it just continues to grow and grow.
That is fantastic. Good for you. I'm excited
to come visit when you have your grand
opening. I'll I'll put you on the invite
list.
Thank you.
So how can people get in touch with
you if they need to?
Yeah. I mean,

(14:41):
my cell phone is always on, 5073404334,
or my email is [e-mail].
Maybe it'll put it on the screen,
or I'm very active on LinkedIn because we're
always recruiting
and looking for,
new leadership in our hotels.

(15:02):
And so those are the 3 best ways
to get ahold of me.
That is perfect. Thank you so much. Preston
Lougheed with Terratron Incorporated. Thank you so much
for joining me today. And to all of
you out there listening, we'll see you next
time. Bye.
Bye.