Virtual Kitchens Unleashed: Inside Kirk Mauriello's Profit Secrets

In this episode of 'Bread for the People,' host Jim Serpico talks with Kirk Mauriello, founder of Profit Cookers, about the concept of virtual kitchens. Kirk explains how Profit Cookers helps independent restaurant owners increase their delivery profits by utilizing a range of virtual restaurant brands. He details the beginnings of virtual kitchens around 2019, the importance of capital and correct pricing, and how Profit Cookers guarantees a 30% or more profit margin. The conversation covers various aspects of the virtual kitchen business model, the efficiency of using existing staff and equipment, and the challenges of marketing and menu optimization. This episode offers valuable insights for restaurant owners looking to optimize their operations and profitability through innovative virtual kitchen concepts.

00:00 Welcome to Bread for the People
00:06 Preparing for a Big Even
t01:04 The Concept of Virtual Kitchens
01:24 Interview with Kirk Moriello
02:00 How Virtual Kitchens Work
02:56 The Evolution of Virtual Kitchens
03:43 Challenges and Solutions
04:45 Implementing Virtual Brands
06:16 Maximizing Restaurant Profits
08:39 The Role of Technology
12:39 Expanding the Business
16:03 Financial Considerations
30:05 Challenges in the Restaurant Business
30:46 Importance of Correct Menu Pricing
31:58 Profit Cookers' Approach to Menu Pricing
32:49 Regional Pricing Differences
35:20 Operational Efficiency and Online Sales
38:32 Simplifying Online Ordering
40:45 Maximizing Restaurant Profitability
45:19 Success Stories and Market Insights
53:30 Summary and Conclusion

Contact Kirk Mauriello at 701-314-4849 or www.profitcookers.com

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jim-serpico-bread-for-the-people-sourdough-pizza-life--5704379/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to bread for the people. I'm Jim Surpago. Boy
am I fired up today? I am getting ready to
do a big event on the tarmac of Laguarde Airport
for one of the major airlines. Myself and my team,
we're making the most pizzas we ever made.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
We're making one hundred and seventy pizzas for.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Safety Day and we're excited to be out on the
runway making pizzas as a lot of you know, I
don't really have a physical location. I bake in a
friend's deli and wherever else I can, and I do
a lot of the prep myself, So it's a lot.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's a lot.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
But hopefully I get a commissary and I get a
full time staff soon. And you know, when I'm out,
people ask where could I buy your bread? Where could
I buy your pizza? And I say, right here on
the street, guys, I bill myself as a virtual location. Now,
virtual locations in the food business can have different meeting

(01:05):
I became familiar with the real term virtual around the
time of the pandemic, when a lot of people were
trying to subsidize the business they lost and the customers
that could no longer eat in. So there were a
lot of talk about people trying to come up with
virtual concepts. My guest today, Kirk Morielo, is an expert

(01:28):
on the topic. I am curious to see where the
concept of virtual kitchens has gone from two twenty to
twenty twenty four. I think I kind of get it,
but I think it's changed a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Kirk, Welcome to the program.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Thanks Jim, glad to be here with you.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
So you founded a company called profit Cookers. That's a
virtual restaurant company dedicated to helping independent restaurant owners grow
their delivery profits.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
So am I correct in saying if you happen to
be a pizza place, but you have the equipment to
make chicken wings, they could reach out to you and
you could pair them up with a brand. Yes, and
they could output chicken wings under this brand that has
a national presence.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
Yes, It's a little more complex than that overall, because
having one single brand probably isn't going to be enough
to justify doing the business. So we have a basket
of brands. We have thirty different restaurant brands that someone
can choose from and based on the equipment they have,
the ingredients they have in house, or if they want

(02:41):
to invest in bringing in ingredients as there are certain
brands that sell more than.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Others, just like any other business.

Speaker 4 (02:48):
Right, you know, some breakfast items might sell better than
some nighttime items, even though it might be sold at night.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
The breakfast items.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
So, how long has the concept of virtual kitchen been around?

Speaker 4 (03:00):
Well, the virtual kitchen concepts started back in twenty nineteen,
probably summer of twenty nineteen is when you started seeing
them pop up. There were two companies there was Virtual
Dining Concepts and Next Byte that were the first to
come up with it. My restaurant in Plainfield, Illinois was
the first Next Byte licensee. And that's why I learned

(03:24):
and had the idea of Okay, I see what they're
trying to do. I know we can make it better
because Next Bye with more of a technology company, and
I was a restaurant tour, so I saw some of
the things that they were missing that restaurant tours could use.
And the main thing was the profitability piece overall.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Did it start with I don't know what Next Bite is.
The way I've always thought of this was like a
company and the one we heard about was Chuck E
Cheese wanted to figure out another way to make money,
so they kind of marketed that pizza and the food
they're already making under a different brand that might appeal

(04:03):
to adults. And I believe they were working out of
a holiday inn near me in Blamesview, New York.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Does that make sense.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yeah? Yeah, it was called past Quality's Pizza. Yeah, and
they came up with another brand.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
The issue that they had a problem with is that
the quality wasn't much better than their Chuck E Cheese pizza,
so that became an eyesore on their brand. And in
the end, what this is really about, what we really
put together was new culinary options that people have a

(04:38):
choice to order online more specific to the type of
food than to the type than to the name of
the restaurant.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Got it?

Speaker 1 (04:45):
And so let's walk through. Okay, let's I have a restaurant.
What's the pitch to me? Am I coming to you?
Are you coming to me?

Speaker 3 (04:53):
For the most part, we come to you.

Speaker 4 (04:55):
And the reason is is that it's a whole new
business model.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
So what we're what we're.

Speaker 4 (05:01):
Bringing to the market is a business model, not just
the idea of a virtual kitchen, but the business model
of virtual restaurants, right, So there's a basket of different
restaurants that we have under the virtual brands. So there's
everything from any Time breakfast burritos to Gramma's pasta company,
to high burgers. You name the category of.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Food, a mac and cheese, a patty melt.

Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yes, if you took if you took a diner menu
and broke it into its components of types of food,
think of making them all into an individual.

Speaker 5 (05:31):
Restaurant or brand or brand.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
Right.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
So now that brand then gets marketed on an uber, door,
Dash and grub Hub. I was going to ask that, yes,
and then we license the making of those recipes and
that food to a local restaurant. How do we pick
that local restaurant? We go in, we look to talk
to the owner, We find out what their capabilities are. Now,
obviously you can say that a diner would probably be
a better place to bring have more brands than a

(05:58):
pizzeria might be, depending on what the pizzeria is doing
outside of making pizza, right, and they might have different
equipment in a diner than they do in a pizzeria.
But for just argument's sake, a restaurant commercial kitchen right,
And that's the way you have to look at it.
If you're a restaurant, you're a commercial kitchen. What else
can you produce out of your commercial kitchen that can

(06:19):
become profits for your business? And that's what we built
was this model that can be dropped into any type
of restaurant and you can pick the brands you want
and we market them. We do everything, and the sole
purpose for the restaurant is to make the food and
make quality food. Now we give them guidelines, we give
them menus, we give them guidelines on how to put

(06:39):
things together. But every market's a little bit different. So
they're guidelines. They're not franchising. You have to do it
exactly this way. No, it's guidelines, and your market might
be a little different than somebody else's market. Online customers
only order from home or work for the most part,
so it's not an issue of the quality that you're
putting out is always going to go to that particular

(07:00):
person from that one restaurant.

Speaker 5 (07:01):
In most cases got it.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
So do the restaurant tours Like me, I start this
because I have I I had a hobby and a
passion and I wanted to do you know, I wanted
to be an artist, but now I guess I get
into If I get into a retail situation, I'm kind
of getting by, but I'm just making ten percent and
I have a whole staff there, right, So it might

(07:27):
makes sense to find another way to make income so
I could continue my passion. But now making this food
may not be as passionate. I might not have the
same omph. But I guess I have the staff and
the equipment for it, right, And.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
That's the whole idea behind our model is that you
already have the staffing, you already have the equipment, you
already have the ingredients, and you already have the hours operation, right,
how do you maximize that those assets right right?

Speaker 3 (07:57):
That are there?

Speaker 4 (07:58):
So, for instance, your typical restaurant open for you know,
let's say breakfast, lunch, and dinner three day parts, right,
is busy for about an hour and a half in
the morning, gets busy for an hour and a half
at lunch, gets busy for about two and a half
hours at dinner. Right, but you're open twelve hours, it's
only half the day. Are you really maximizing your kitchen

(08:19):
or can maximize your kitchen based on a number.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
Seats you're at.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
Yeah, but your kitchen is designed to serve to create
a lot more than just for the people that are sitting.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
In the restaurant. Sure, So what is bring is a
turnkey system. Here you go.

Speaker 4 (08:33):
We're gonna market it, we're gonna put it out there,
We're gonna get it where it needs to be.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
You don't have to worry about any of that.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
From an electronics standpoint. You have a tablet and a printer.
The orders all flow into the tablet from all different areas,
so it doesn't matter what the platform is that someone
ordered on. It's going to flow over our single tablet technology.
It'll print in the kitchen, the staff gets it, they
make the food, they package it, the driver picks it
up and delivers it, and we guarantee a thirty percent

(08:58):
or more profit margin to our restaurant partners.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Damn, it's pretty damn good.

Speaker 4 (09:03):
Yeah, especially if you're doing a million dollars a year
in delivery.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
It adds up, you can imagine.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, So what is the minimum number of concepts? So
we have to lock in with you.

Speaker 4 (09:18):
Yeah, So we require a restaurant to take five brands,
which is very simple. So like if you're in the
breakfast business. We have nine brands. You would make all
of them because you probably make all the items at
breakfast time.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
Anyway, give me an exact, give me an example of
those of breakfast brands.

Speaker 4 (09:32):
Okay, so you have any time breakfast burritos, anytime breakfast sandwiches,
which are different, right, ones in a rapids burrito. Ones
is a sandwich on either bread or bagels, croissants, Famous
French toast, it's just French toast. It's nine different French
toast items. Pancake paradise, nine different pancake items. Hot skillets,

(09:55):
so nine different skillets. And then there's always to build
your own in there also so you can can choose
ingredients to put on them. Then we have we have
a couple of catch all brands. So we have the
Best Breakfast Company, which is the top items of all
the other brands in one brand. And then we have
Cammy's Breakfast Cafe, which is a pretty much the biggest

(10:17):
menu of all the brands. So that's like your typical
diner or breakfast restaurant that has a huge menu, and
that's Cammy's Breakfast Cafe.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
And how that's.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Done so how are you packaging or how is the
restaurant packaging the material and who's ordering the packaging and
who's paying for the packaging.

Speaker 4 (10:34):
Yeah, so the packaging is all generic packaging. We give
a guideline on what that packaging is. Every part of
the country is a little different. Some are required to
use sustainable packaging. Some can use the plastic packaging that's
out there. You know, your typical black with your clear
top type of thing. So we give the guidelines for
each item and how it should be packaged, but we

(10:55):
leave that up to the restaurant to the discretion what
they feel is the best packaging for their market.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Okay, who's on the hook for the health permit?

Speaker 5 (11:03):
The restaurant.

Speaker 4 (11:04):
It's the same thing you're running. The restaurant is running
just like they normally would. They're just making different items
out of their kitchen. And a lot of times it's
a similar item. You know, it might be an omelet,
but it may not be the omelet that they have
on their menu. It might be something specific.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Right, And the POS that you're using to get it
all through one tablet is that proprietary POS?

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Are you using a third party POS?

Speaker 4 (11:26):
We use a third party. For ours, we use a
company called Cubo.

Speaker 5 (11:29):
Okay, they and we've.

Speaker 4 (11:31):
Worked with them for many years and the system is
designed very well for what we do. And a lot
of restaurants use this Cubo system also to consolidate tablets.
So instead of having in your regular restaurant, instead of
having an uber door to ash and a grub up tablet,
you can have one tablet from Cubo that consolidates all
those orders into one spot.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Sure, and I know there's a couple other POS systems
out there that allow restaurants to do that. I would
find it hard and distracting to have three separate tablets
in addition to my in store tablet.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:05):
Well, we always recommend that you know a lot of
companies that will want to be POS integrated things like that.
With our business, because it's as separate business model, we
recommend that it always stays separate. So our tablet and
our printer will always be there. And the reason why
is that it's our sale. The restaurant is truly a
fulfillment partner. We're hiring them to make the food. We

(12:26):
pay them. They don't have to worry about collective money.
They don't worry about any of that stuff. We take
care of all of it so it doesn't have to
go through sales tax issues with them. We take care
of the sales tax. They're our sales We do everything
that needs to be done. The restaurant truly gets to
just make the food.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
So how many restaurants do you have participating in this.

Speaker 4 (12:43):
Well, we have one hundred and thirty currently in twenty
five states.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
Twenty five states. Are they A markets like New York
and Los Angeles?

Speaker 3 (12:53):
We have New York City, La isn't am.

Speaker 4 (12:56):
We haven't really broken into the West coast yet, but
we have Tampa's big more market Georgia and at the
Atlanta Market Chicago. We just got into Austin, Texas. But
we're pretty much all over Indiana Indianapolis, so we're barely
touching the surface.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yet it's it's a fascinating concept, it really is.

Speaker 4 (13:19):
The restaurants really love it because it takes all the
well for one thing, think about owning your restaurant. Right,
you have a restaurant, you have your kitchen, you're busy
from twelve to one o'clock, eleven thirty to one o'clock
every day for lunch. Well, The difference online is that
online orders come in a little bit after the peak

(13:39):
times of what a restaurant has, usually half an hour
to an hour after the peak. And the reason is
that you know, people determined to go out to lunch
or go out to dinner at a certain time. We're
all we've all been trained that way in our lives, right.
But online you order when you get hungry because it's
such a convenient, fast way to order food. You don't

(13:59):
worry about ordering at lunchtime. You order when you get hungry. Well,
when do you get hungry? If you go to the
restaurant at eleven thirty, you get hungry at twelve because
you get there a half an hour before your food's
going to get there, right, and you're ordering and you're
sitting having drinks and doing all that stuff. So a
lot of ers come in so now instead of the restaurants.
When you look at those those graphs on labor, where
the labor dollars spike and then they come down when

(14:20):
it gets busy, and then they spike again, it starts
to curve when they bring our brands in and.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
Start working with us on that.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
Also, they're reaching a huge market that they're not reaching
with their own brand.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
So they're doing this.

Speaker 4 (14:34):
They're using Uber, they're using doordask, they're using grub hub,
and they have their one brand. Well, what are the
odds of somebody ordering every day on your brand if
they order online, and there's a lot of people that
do this.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
They order every day.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
Really, they're not ordering your brand every day. So now
you have a variety of brands that your kitchen's making
every time. So we have customers and the data shows
that we know who the customers are that order. So
we see the addresses and we know who's ordering what
and today they might order a BLT and tomorrow their
order in mac and cheese. So you have this opportunity

(15:07):
to grab a bigger market and the territory is dedicated
to you. So you're going to get a three mile
radius that every order within three miles for those brands
are going to come to your restaurant.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
Okay, that seems to make sense for densely populated areas,
and maybe it coincides with the delivery range of the
restaurant's doing. Any Way, usually they probably don't deliver more
than three three miles.

Speaker 4 (15:29):
Well, the delivery radius is really determined by the delivery
service Uber Door, d Asher g Repo. Okay, so in
some markets they'll go ten miles depending on because they're
very dynamic systems. Now, they know the traffic patterns, they
know how long it's going to take to get the
food there based on if you order from this address
at this time. So their systems are sophisticated enough to
be able to determine that, and they won't offer a

(15:50):
customer won't be able to order a brand that's too
far away to meet that timing of that delivery.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
Got it?

Speaker 1 (15:56):
So do you fancy yourself as it's like a marketing company.

Speaker 4 (16:04):
In the end, we're a marketing sales technology and more
of a restaurant consulting company.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah, because not.

Speaker 4 (16:12):
Only do we bring our brands well when you become
a partner of ours, we also help you get your
brands in line and usually we increase their sales.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
What do you mean by what do you mean by
help get your brands in line?

Speaker 4 (16:24):
So basically, what a restaurant will do is they'll send
their menu into Uber door, aster g rebhub and then
somebody in their staff, most likely overseas somewhere, then puts
their menu online, but they have no idea what really sells.
They don't have they don't have any information. Accept what's
on the menu, their regular menu, their regular menu. Right now,
you know, you go into a restaurant and when you

(16:45):
have a server talking to you, it's very easy. You're
not going to make mistakes because you're going to be
able to tell them exactly what you want, how you
want it. But online you don't have that communication. Also,
some things don't travel well. Not everything on a menu
should be on a menu in restaurant is opposed to
outside of the restaurant, right, because there's delivery times, there's
how how hot does it sday? Does it travel well?
Does it get saggy? What's going to happen to this item?

Speaker 3 (17:09):
Right?

Speaker 4 (17:09):
So understanding that is what we're pros at, right, because
that's we're strictly on the delivery side of it.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Understanding that for the brands that you.

Speaker 4 (17:20):
Own, right, But then bringing that same mentality to the
restaurant owner and saying, Okay, it's great that you're online,
but do you really want to sell a steak medium
you think that steak is ever going to get to
that customer medium, it's going to cook the whole way, right,
it'll be well done by the time it gets to
them and you're going to get a complaint. You'll help
them be smart about what you what you offer.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Also you'll help them with their own menu.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Yeah, we do. Yeah, we help them. You know.

Speaker 4 (17:46):
One of the things is there's algorithms that the third
party delivery use use it so picture picture, uber, DoorDash
and grew up up. They're really an Amazon of food, right,
it's a marketplace, that's what they consider it. Right, So
that marketplace, you need to know how that mark the
place works, and you need to understand how the algorithms
work because you don't want to be on page nine.
You want to be on page one or two, right,

(18:07):
you don't because no one finds page nine. They buy
something before they get to page nine. So you want
to make sure your brand is showing up more often. Well,
we have the advantage over a regular restaurant. For one,
regular restaurants don't put photos of all their food.

Speaker 5 (18:19):
Right.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
Well, if you don't have photos of all your food,
you get knocked down in the algorithm.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
Really.

Speaker 4 (18:24):
Yeah, And because people won't buy something they can't look at.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
But they can, but they just don't know to do it.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
They just don't know how to do it.

Speaker 4 (18:30):
They don't take the time to do it, but they
know they have to be online, so they're not maximizing
all the tools that they have at their hands.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Are you advising them to change their pricing too.

Speaker 4 (18:41):
Yes, that's another thing I was going to ask I
was going to tell you, is that you know, from
a pricing standpoint, pricing is the most important part of
this model, right, because you have different costs involved in
getting delivery somewhere. So if you were going to hire
a delivery driver in your restaurant, you want to be
able to charge the same price because you're paying for
that drive to be there. Now, a pizza restaurant, everybody understands,

(19:03):
the people that owned pizza restaurants understand there is a
delivery model. But if you're not a if you're a
mom and pop diner and you don't have delivery drivers,
well you don't have that built in to your model.
Like you know that in the pizza business, that driver
costs X amount, there's insurance span, there's all this. You
have to model your pricing around that.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Right. That's changing. That's changing.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
The newer pizza entrepreneurs are pretty savvy and they're using
some of them are using all third parties.

Speaker 5 (19:33):
No staff today today.

Speaker 4 (19:36):
And my background is I was the coover really Its
Pizza in Chicago for six years.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
So when I was the CEO of there, I stayed away.

Speaker 4 (19:45):
From the third party delivery companies because they were quite
weren't ready for it. Now, if I owned a pizza Rea,
I wouldn't use anything but.

Speaker 5 (19:52):
Those delivery drivers exactly.

Speaker 4 (19:54):
And now they offer that, like DoorDash offers that you
can hire them just to do your deliveries. It doesn't
make any sense not to utilize that network because you
don't know when you're gonna get busy and when you're not.
But when there's a network of drivers out there, it's
much easier to not have to worry about that.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Right.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yeah, But I'm a lot of pizzaia owners don't understand
what you're referencing here, uh, And I'm going to try
to spit it back in another way.

Speaker 3 (20:19):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
By using door dash to deliver your pizzas, it doesn't
always mean they have to order through door Dash.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
It could be.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Linked up through your POS system and your online menu
system and the customer might not even realize it's from
Uber or door dash, right, they're getting their pizza.

Speaker 4 (20:40):
Yeah, you're you're utiligning, utilizing Doordasher's delivery services. Yeah and yeah,
it may seem like it's costing more, but when you
figure out how much that driver is to sit there,
what happens if you get eight orders at once and insurance?

Speaker 1 (20:55):
There are a lot of other stuff that goes into it. Yeah,
fringes and uh all taxes.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:02):
Yeah, it's an expensive part of the business.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
That's pretty cool. Man.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
So six years ago, what was your position at what
was it called Orielos.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
Or Orelio's Pizza. I was the COO of a company.

Speaker 4 (21:16):
I started off as the franchise director, moved into the
COO position, and you know, we built that company, but
we did it. You know, you didn't do it back then.
It was twenty ten to twenty sixteen. You didn't have
the third party delivery companies were just coming out.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:31):
When I left there, I went into the I uh
went onto a company that was a breakfast lunch concept
and that's when I got into the door dashes of
the world. When DoorDash came to us, I was like,
who's going to buy breakfast online. Well, you know, four
hundred thousand dollars worth of customers bought breakfast online that
first year.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
I mean when I worked in the city for many years,
we used to do that all the time.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
We would we would, we wouldn't leave our offices.

Speaker 4 (21:59):
Right, that's exactly what happens. And you know, and and
and it's just it's just where the business is gone.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Then COVID happened, right, Oh man, did that change the world?

Speaker 4 (22:08):
Well, what did COVID do? COVID taught every everybody had
to learn how to use this technology now and that
was the big that was a big thing. So it
probably I would say that COVID moved the industry up
probably three to five years in time, because you had
to learn how to use these tools in order to
get what you wanted.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
And I was.

Speaker 4 (22:25):
Thinking, all right, what's going to happen after COVID, And it
probably slowed down a little bit. We probably have to
do things a little different. Nope, it got busier.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
You're talking about the end user, how to you learn
how to use the tool?

Speaker 4 (22:34):
Yes, the end user having to learn how to use it,
which then obviously makes it much more important for a restaurant.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
To have it right, and the restaurants needed to figure
out other avenues to make money.

Speaker 4 (22:43):
Oh, absolutely, they had no choice. So the guys that
didn't want to talk to me when I when I
start because they were busy enough, now all of a
sudden need me and they're like, what's that thing you have?
So now it's just become a model within the business.
If you want a restaurant and you're not doing brands,
if you're not making food for brands outside of your
own brand, you're missing out on a huge part of
the market.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
It's so interesting you came up with this idea.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Yeah, and what size company are you at this point
in terms of staff and where do you gut?

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Where are you based?

Speaker 4 (23:12):
We're based out of Fort Mars, Florida, Naples fart Wires area.
We have about three employees and some outside sales reps.
We're not a very big we're not a big companies.
It doesn't take a lot.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
It's a lot of technology, but the sales part.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
You have outside sales reps. Do you do any of
the sales yourself or are you relying on the sales reps?

Speaker 4 (23:32):
No, I do some of the sales myself, but I
have a I have five reps that are independent. It's
kind of like I try to find guys that understand
the restaurant business. You know, might have consulting companies or
they work for a food distributor that type of thing,
that understand and know restaurants right, because you also want
to get to the right restaurants.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
Right at the same time.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
So you have a chief operating officer background, yes, so
your mind works in that way. Help help me understand
the role. At what level does a restaurant group bring
in a COO and what is that person's role.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
Well, I mean you have to have you probably have
to have at least five restaurants to get to that
level because you have to be able to pay for
a COEO, right. But the role of that person really
is to just keep operations straight lined, so understanding profit
and law statements, understanding the supply chain, and how are

(24:32):
we getting things where they need to be for that
restaurant right, be able to say to those restaurants, hey,
this is what we should be in labor, this is
what we should have here, and getting some sort of
an assemblance of order to all the restaurants at once. Now,
when you were with a franchise group like I was,
there are forty five restaurants.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
Wow, right, so my job was.

Speaker 4 (24:52):
I had people under me that did certain things quality controls,
some other you know, marketing things like that. But it's
understanding how that all plays together. And that's the biggest
problem that most restaurants have is that they wear so
many hats. Yeah right, they can't get it all done. Well,
now you throw technology into it, God help them, right yeah,
because nobody has the money to put a technology person

(25:13):
on to just run their technology stuff out of their restaurant,
Like there's there's not enough there until you start to
really get into that part of the business, right right,
And even when you do, why bring somebody on when
you can outsource it?

Speaker 3 (25:25):
Right? Uh So.

Speaker 4 (25:27):
But internally for a COO, it's it's understanding the profitability.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
It's constant profitability. Right.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Have you seen, uh somebody who's had two restaurants try
to make that leap, No, you have.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
It's financially not not not the leap to bring in
a COO, but the leap to get five restaurants to
expand Oh yeah that.

Speaker 5 (25:49):
Level Oh yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
Have you experienced that they're they don't even have a
pro former and their financiers are a mess.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
Yes, that's normal.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
It's normal. It's probably more more common than not.

Speaker 4 (26:01):
It's probably ninety percent. Yeah, I mean, I can tell
you even in franchising. Okay, so we had a franch
it was at the franchise company, right, we have forty
five franchises, all right. When I came in, the average
when I start pulling the p and ls and start
putting together, which nobody had done before. They just let
the restaurants run right on their own, and as long
as they paid their royalty, that was fine. But that's

(26:23):
not that's not why you buy a franchise. You buy
a franchise to have that expertise that can help you
make sure you're maximizing all your opportunities as a restaurant.
And we were at six percent, even though when I
left five years later, the average store was.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
At eighteen percent.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Eveit of what does that mean?

Speaker 4 (26:39):
So the earnings before income tax and depreciation and amorization,
so their net profit basically got it what they made
at the end of the day.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
Well, if you're only making six percent in a restaurant,
you're you're doing something.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
Wrong, right, You need to be making eighteen to twenty
percent minimum in order to be able to survive long term.
You're just dying a slow death at six percent.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
In terms of what you're calling EBO, that's not necessarily
what they're bringing home.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
Right.

Speaker 4 (27:07):
Yeah, But if you ever want to say, if you
want your business to be a real business that you
can sell someday, you need to have books that reflect profitability.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Correct.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
We all know how restaurants operated in the past. Now
it's ninety percent credit card. Almost everybody has to go
to this type of model.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
There are some people that I know well that do
farmers' markets and sell bread and there's still a lot
of cash flying around yep there, And it becomes a
problem when that person tries to get a small business loan, yes, or.

Speaker 4 (27:40):
A mortgage on a house for themselves, or there's a
lot of things. How do you sell your business? You know,
the whole idea is to build a business to be
able to put a value to it.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
Now I kind of know the answer to this, but
let's pretend I don't. If you've taken the leap and
you're going to open your first restaurant as a COO
who's not going to be involved in that, but you
certainly know what they should be thinking about and preparing financially.
What is the What preparation financially should be one of

(28:11):
the most important steps before they pull the trigger.

Speaker 4 (28:15):
Well, first, as you gotta have access to capital. Okay,
I did start my own brand before I started Profit Cookers,
and I made some mistakes when I did that. I
bought a restaurant out, I didn't capitalize it well enough.
The sales dropped off because I changed the name too quick,
I changed the concept too fast. Oh and lost customers.

(28:37):
Made those mistakes. It happens. So capital is the most
important thing.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
So let's dive into that a little more. Why is
so we know this that the transaction price that you're
buying the assets, and you're buying the right to pay
rent at that location, and obviously you're going to pay employees.
But a lot of people are going into this thinking
this is what that restaurant was making weekly. So I'm

(29:03):
going to have my labor being no more than thirty
percent of that, hopefully twenty five percent of that. What
do you need this other capital for that you didn't
have at the time.

Speaker 4 (29:14):
Yeah, so your inventory, and then you have to you
have to assume that your sales are going to drop off. Okay,
the average restaurant will when it's taken over, even if
it stays the same brand, will most likely lose twenty five.

Speaker 5 (29:27):
Percent of its sales. I didn't know that in that
first year.

Speaker 4 (29:30):
Yeah, it's it's a change of ownership. It depends on
how that restaurant was run and operated. Locally owned restaurants
tend to have that issue because now that owner isn't
there anymore, and people went there because he might have
had relationships, he might have had whoever with previous people
were maybe some of the quality changes. You make some
changes to it, and you take the bread and basket

(29:50):
off and you put something else. There's different things that
you won't You don't realize people will move away from
that brand or go somewhere else when it's not exactly
the same. So having enough capital there and I always said,
you know, the main thing is have enough capital.

Speaker 5 (30:04):
For rent for how long?

Speaker 2 (30:06):
For how much?

Speaker 5 (30:06):
Rent for at least six months?

Speaker 4 (30:08):
Okay, yeah, because because when you realize it, you're going
to when you're in the restaurant business, you don't see
it as fast as you do. When you're in the
electronics side of the business, like what I do, I
see things much faster because we're using data that's coming
in electronically every day on orders. But when you're in
the restaurant, it's so much more difficult to see what's happening,
right because you're you're involved in the every day. You're

(30:30):
running around, You're you know today's fire is. You know
three employees didn't show up, and now I got to
wash dishes. You know, you're doing all these other tasks
that need to be done to keep the restaurant moving
along that you sometimes don't have time to step back
and say, Okay, what's really happening. The other issue that
ninety five percent of restaurants I've done consulting for in
the past is that their menu pricing.

Speaker 5 (30:51):
Is not correct.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Okay, I'm into that, and you will die a slow death.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
That's based on cost of goods plus packaging, right.

Speaker 4 (31:01):
And I can tell you right now the majority of
restaurants when they build their menu, they look at what
the competitor is and they price things based on what
the competitor is selling at.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
And they're not basing. They don't take the time to
actually cost out each item on the menu.

Speaker 5 (31:17):
No almost.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
I can tell you.

Speaker 4 (31:21):
Right that are independent people that are starting a restaurant,
not not your big chains and things like that. They're
doing that, but most of the restaurants at the local.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
Level are not.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
So I study with a group called Unsliced Restaurant Operating Systems,
and that's he he will not let us open a
restaurant until we have our costing cards for every item. Yep,
until we have a pro former done, until we schedule
out our labor. It's amazing because like, when you have

(31:53):
this knowledge, you're setting yourself up to succeed.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (31:59):
So that's why what what I do with profit Cookers
is we're very transparent with our restaurant partners too. So
before we even bring a restaurant partner on, we go
over and we show them what's called a profit pro
is what we call it, and that is every item
is costed out based off of based costs at US
Foods or Cisco or.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
One of the majors.

Speaker 4 (32:19):
Okay, right, knowing that they probably get a little bit
better pricing depending on what business they're in. If they're
in breakfast, they're going to pay better for eggs. If
they're a nighttime business, that might be better for Staate.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Do do that work for them?

Speaker 3 (32:29):
We do that for them.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
So we price it all out.

Speaker 4 (32:31):
Now we don't take their pricing, we take ours we have,
but we price it out and we also put the
packaging into it and then we then we put our
set our margin after that to ensure that's how we
can guarantee the profit for them. We make sure that
they know exactly what we're selling at and they have
a say in where we're selling at. So it doesn't
mean like in New York for instance, right, And this

(32:53):
is the interesting part about this is a very interesting
part about the online business. So in New York, a
burger myself twenty two dollars online. Yeah, because the market
bears that. Right, the food cost isn't going to be
any different for that burger than it is in Florida. Florida,
you might only be able to get fifteen dollars in
that burger.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
I don't think that's the only reason. And I think
about this a lot.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
It's not a food cost issue.

Speaker 4 (33:15):
It's not operational, is correct, right, Labor and rent is
so much higher.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
Correct.

Speaker 4 (33:22):
But what we're doing what we're bringing to you is
additional sales. So in New York they're making more than
thirty to thirty five percent because we sell at such
a higher margin level, because the market takes into account
the higher expense levels that a restaurant has.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
In that market.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
I'll give you a beef I have with the world.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
A friend of mine has got a successful pizzeria restaurant
and in the last four months he's blown up on
social media, I mean big time, you know, hundreds of
thousands of followers, and he's hearing Long Island where there's
strip malls everywhere, there's pizza shops everywhere, but the rent
is insane. When I say insane, I'm telling you, you know,

(34:11):
you can't get a twenty five hundred square foot shop
for less than seventy five hundred dollars.

Speaker 5 (34:18):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
And he had a thing, a gag a skitty was
doing where he showed the actual price of a slice
of cheese pizza for three seventy five And the problem
with social media is, depending on how you use it,
you're playing to a national audience and they think this
guy's ripping everyone off, but the truth is he's not

(34:41):
making more than ten percent on that three seventy five
slice man, and people don't know that. And he's getting
bashed a lot for the price of his pizza from people.

Speaker 4 (34:50):
Pizza place in outside Baltimore is paying two thousand.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
A month for that same space exactly, you know.

Speaker 4 (34:58):
Yeah, so, and so the advantage, you know, if you're
in a more expensive market, we actually bring even more
profits to you if you're operating expenses are higher in
the bigger cities. So because we can sell at such
a higher price because the market bears it, it already
has all those operating costs built into it.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
But why does the market bear that higher price.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Let's just use chicken wings, and I know we need
more brands than the chicken wing company that you have.
Are you saying that, well, are you saying that the
competitors price doesn't even matter to you? It sounds like
you're pricing it correctly based on everything. Yes, the rent,
the labor, the cost of goods, the whole thing. So
you're coming up with the right price.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
Is it going to be higher maybe than the competitive
wing place that just tells wings.

Speaker 4 (35:46):
Yeah, But the difference online is that it's not a
it's not a competitive market when it comes to pricing
by brand to brand a brand, So it's about positioning, okay,
getting being on the first page, it's about having a
nice photo, and it's about making the price what someone's
willing to pay. I bring it back to the same

(36:08):
thing that you have, like in Las Vegas. All right,
you go to Las Vegas and you go to buffet. Right,
the buffet may be the same food at the Golden
Nucket that it is at the Bolagio. Guarantee you it's
probably the same distributor selling that item there, right, Yeah,
but you're willing to pay one hundred dollars to sit
in Blagio? Why because of his experience?

Speaker 3 (36:29):
Well?

Speaker 4 (36:29):
Online, what is the experience online?

Speaker 2 (36:31):
The experiences the photos. It's got to be the photos.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
And photo and the ease of ordering.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
And but this goes So you guys are experts in
that for the brands you're controlling. But people should take
note and take this information and do this for their
regular restaurant.

Speaker 5 (36:47):
Yes, absolutely, but.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Ninety five percent of them don't.

Speaker 4 (36:50):
They don't because they don't have time or it's cumbersome.
You remember, we go in. What they're having to do
is they're going to have it. They're having to go
into door dash, Uber grow up up three different platforms
that have three different technology platforms that work in three
different ways. And guess how many times a year they
go into it.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
To check it.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
There's a way around that once or twice.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
That's it. We're doing it every day. That's all we do.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Right.

Speaker 4 (37:12):
So when so DoorDash changes the look of their screen
because they had an update done to their website, Well,
last time you went into it didn't look like that.
Now you've got to relearn it all over again, right y.
And and restaurant owners get they get tired of it.
So what happens is it's a small part of their business.
So we all gravitate is it?

Speaker 2 (37:34):
Is it small? Why is it small?

Speaker 3 (37:36):
Because they don't know how to market it right?

Speaker 4 (37:38):
Oh see, they don't know how to market it right.
So when we come in to a restaurant, we will
triple their online sales and within two weeks.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
Okay, will you guys do this for if let's say
I owned a restaurant and I wanted your consulting for
this purpose only, and I did not want to start
being a virtual kitchen. I wanted to focus on optimizing
my takeout online sales.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Ye, could I hire you?

Speaker 5 (38:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (38:09):
Yeah, I mean I guarantee you'll probably end up doing
a lot of our brands too.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Because once you once you under once you see how
it's done.

Speaker 4 (38:17):
And you look at it and you start to say
that makes total sense, like it's there's some proprietary things
we do, but for the most part, we just organize
it differently. We organize it the way a consumer online
will order, as opposed to a consumer ordering in the restaurant.
You go into a restaurant, for instance, you go into
a restaurant, You're going to.

Speaker 5 (38:35):
Order breakfast, right, yeah?

Speaker 4 (38:36):
Yeah, Well what do you what are you going to
order today? What's what's the item that you like to order?

Speaker 2 (38:41):
I'm gonna get Uh, let's see a bacon, egg and cheese,
coffee and home fries.

Speaker 4 (38:47):
Okay, do you want would you like some toast with
that fruit?

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Fruit?

Speaker 5 (38:51):
I'd like fruit, okay because it comes with toast of fruit.

Speaker 4 (38:53):
Well you like some fruit? Okay, we have fruit. Now
try doing that online.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Right, Well, I've seen some of them do it successfully,
but yes, but there's a lot of clicks yes.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
Along the way. So what we do is we make
it very simple.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
We do everything a la carte everything everything.

Speaker 4 (39:10):
So by doing everything a la carte, it makes it
really simple for the kitchen. The kitchen never has to
wonder what.

Speaker 3 (39:16):
Goes with one.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
See I just did this today on my food truck.
I'll tell you give you my example. I've been getting
really busy and doing these school events and a winery.
And I was recently in Los Angeles looking at in
and outs menu and I saw they have the as
ordering as easy as ABCD or one two three whatever.

(39:37):
So I created these combo packages, six of them, which
gave them like a two dollar discount if they got
a pizza, a drink, and a salad. I was driving
myself crazy keeping track of that compared with the a
la carte orders.

Speaker 5 (39:52):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
So today, for the next ones coming up next week,
I took away all the freaking combos and made it
all all la carte. I don't want to deal with
this packaging crap anymore.

Speaker 5 (40:02):
It's hard.

Speaker 3 (40:03):
It's hard.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
You're just confusing everybody that's having to put it together, right,
unless that's the only way you ever do it.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
Like, then it's different and the same thing that.

Speaker 4 (40:14):
Now, picture a kitchen that's making food for people at
a restaurant that now have orders coming in online that
now have because you're adding you're adding work, right, which
for the restaurant owner is great because it's more productive,
which means those employees are creating more value and bringing
more profit for you.

Speaker 3 (40:30):
Right, that's the whole idea.

Speaker 4 (40:31):
When you hire somebody if they can do five hundred
dollars an hour in sales making foods for five hundred hours,
or making one thousand dollars worth of food, which which
employee do you want there? And how do you want
them doing a thousand an hour? It's the same thing online.
We're adding these orders so that these the same staffing
can make those make that food and now they become
more productive. But the issue is it has to be profitable, right,

(40:56):
doing more work just to do work is not.

Speaker 3 (40:58):
Good for you.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
It should be six times right your return on investment.

Speaker 4 (41:02):
Right, you cannot have like when you look at there's
some of our competitors out there that don't understand pricing models.
So because so they don't give a guaranteed pert nobody
gives a guaranteed profit except us in the whole industry. Well,
we're able to do it because we price things. They're
just putting stuff out there and saying, oh, sell it
this price, because that's what it sells out in the market. Well,
they're not taking into account what these things actually cost,

(41:23):
and then what profit do you want this restaurant to make?
And so the restaurants are pushing back of them, saying, no,
you need to charge more for it. Well, then their
sales go down because now they're charging more for something
that they didn't price out properly in the first place.
And you can never go you can't go the other way.
You can't have customers pay nineteen dollars and then all
of a sudden make.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
It twenty nine.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Right. No, this is the key. This really is the key,
and you're saying it in a way that's somewhat simple,
but also what goes into that. You need to know
what your guaranteed profit is. But the only way to
know that is lock in on a percentage of labor
that you will not go over. Like it's layered, it's
very complicated.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
When we come in.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
When we come in, think of what happens to the
P and L I come in. Let's say you're doing
one hundred thousand a month in sales in your restaurant internally,
you're online, whatever it is, everything you're doing in that
restaurant for your brand. I come in and I bring
you twenty thousand dollars more a month in sales. Now
they're my sales technically.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Right, But you're going to take the brand you licensed.

Speaker 4 (42:21):
Right, the rands I like to, You're going to bring
in another twenty thousand in revenue to us, right, you're
getting a portion of that revenue. So what we do
is we take this full sales and you put them
into your number, right, so now you're doing one hundred
and twenty thousand. Then we take out the cost. So
this food cost, right, So the food cost is in there.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
So because you're saying it's twenty times because you're giving
them thirty percent, right.

Speaker 4 (42:42):
Well, we're giving them guaranteed thirty percent profit. We give
them sixty percent of the sale. So we assume that
the food cost is going to be between twenty and
thirty percent.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
Correct, that's the way it should be anyway, Right.

Speaker 4 (42:56):
We're closer to twenty percent. Then the fees that you
pay are part of delivery our profit, So that's a
management fee basically, So that goes into your expense lines. Yeah,
so you increase your revenue coming in by twenty thousand. Yeah, right,
that it shows, but then you expense it out, but
your profits say it's thirty percent. That's six thousand dollars

(43:17):
more profit to your bottom line because you didn't add
any people.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
It's not amortization, but it kind of you're sharing the
labor with the other All the businesses are contributing.

Speaker 4 (43:28):
Yes, and labor's being spread out, right, that cost of
that restaurant's being spread out. That's why the profitability has
to be a certain amount because it's not worth doing
the extra work unless you can make a certain amount.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
Of profit with it.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
So do you come in with financials and projections.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
We don't. We let them.

Speaker 4 (43:46):
We let them know we have a we have a
We basically have a pro forma that they can look at.
That's a white page that says, okay, here's some samples
of restaurants that we have and what they do, and
this is how it affects your bottom line, right, so they.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
Can look at it.

Speaker 4 (43:59):
And what happens is the labor doesn't change the amount
of labor and the number of people you have doesn't change,
but the percentage of your total labor changes drastically, of course, right,
you go from from thirty percent to twenty two percent
when you add in twenty percent more sales.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
Yeah, is there a term that this restaurant has to
lock in with you to try this out?

Speaker 4 (44:19):
And no, we get we are. It's a twenty four
hour out. Nobody ever leaves. I mean, it doesn't cost
anything except to make the food. And you already have
the ingredients and we only we pay you to make
the food.

Speaker 3 (44:33):
So unless you make something, nothing to get done.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
Yeah, it's the it's the simplest model for them.

Speaker 4 (44:40):
And I look at it and say, well, and I have,
and believe me, I have restaurants that tell me now
we don't want to do it, And I'm like, are
you serious? Like I have, I have twenty thousand dollars
a month in business.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
But I think that stems back to well, it's probably
two things. One of them is the hey, man, I
make pizza, and they're not even thinking about the business
and the profitability, and probably that in the long run
that's going to be a problem. They want to make
their art and they don't want to be bucked and
they're overwhelmed.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
They don't want to deal with this and they don't
want to manage it.

Speaker 4 (45:12):
And then there's guys. Then there's business owners that are like,
wait what is this? And then all of a sudden
it clicks and they're like, wait, so I have so
now think about it. And so Deluth, Georgia is a
big market for us all right outside of Atlanta that
store ten thirty at night. The top twenty brands that
are sold online.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Are ow mind is it a college town?

Speaker 4 (45:33):
No, it's just a suburb of Atlanta. They just do
a very there's a lot of orders. It's the demographic.
But the top twenty online restaurants on overpub are profit
cooking restaurants.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
I notice a lot of your companies start with the
word high.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
Well two of them do.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
Okay, are you catering to college stoners?

Speaker 3 (45:53):
There was there was there was a thought there.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yes, okay.

Speaker 4 (45:57):
Some of the brands have interesting names. Yeah, But it's
interesting to watch when you watch the data when it
comes in, like the sales cycles. Yeah, the different types
of food that sell at different times a day. Like
you'd be amazed to how much breakfast sells after ten
thirty at night.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Yeah, how much pasta sells.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
So the famous saying in the restaurant business location, location location,
does that apply to online ordering.

Speaker 4 (46:28):
Not at all, because you don't need the customers not
coming to your location. So here's a great example. This
is I'm going to tell you a story. Yeah, so
I had a store in Lawrenceville, Georgia. Okay, little sleepy
suburb an hour outside Atlanta. I think fifty thousand people
population within five miles. Yeah, guy starts with me during
COVID doing seven thousand dollars a week his restaurant did

(46:52):
I think thirteen or fourteen thousand a week. His restaurant
was in a industrial park off a highway and it
faced into the industrial park. All right, now, this is
something we learned that we didn't know what happened. We
have four hundred drivers a week coming to pick up
food at his restaurant. Wow, well, guess where all the

(47:15):
drivers are from that area? That area, and it's easy
to get to guess who knows where this restaurant is?
Now four hundred new people.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Damn.

Speaker 4 (47:26):
His inside business went to forty thousand dollars a week
within six months.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
That's a great story.

Speaker 4 (47:32):
So even though you think that this is cumbersome and
that you have four this guy had four hundred people
coming in every week every week to pick up orders,
to deliver food. And he said hi to them, He
got to know them, gave him a drink, let him
use his bathroom. Next thing you know, they're showing up
on Saturday and Sunday morning with their families having breakfast.

(47:54):
You just what would it cost a restaurant are to
get four hundred people to come into the restaurant every week,
A lot, a lot of money and you probably never
do it. There's probably no marketing out there that could
even get that to you. Yeah, okay, because I know
I've used all the different marketing companies over the years.
They're going to bring you orders, are going to do
disc Nah, it doesn't work. But the drivers all live

(48:15):
in the community and now they know where you are.
And every year a new set of drivers gets their licenses,
another younger generation that's doing this gig economy.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
How important is the density of the area you're marketing too?

Speaker 3 (48:30):
You know, we have a.

Speaker 4 (48:32):
Sweet spot that we know of. Okay, that's proprietary to
our stuff, But believe it or not, overall It's not
about the density so much, it's about how much competition
there is. So in New York City you have great density, right, Yeah,
but Duluth Georgia outsells New York City all day long.
Because there's so many restaurants vying for those that page

(48:55):
one and two, it's harder to get it. And Duluth
Georgia is very easy to get page one and two.

Speaker 3 (49:02):
There's not as many restaurants.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
And getting that position has to do with how well
you understand designing for best practices that they recognize.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
There's a lot of things that are involved in it.

Speaker 4 (49:15):
One is are you utilizing everything that the platform gives
you to use, So make sure your photos are there,
make sure your descriptions are all there. There's things that
are needed from a standpoint of esthetics.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (49:27):
Then there's other parts of it that are are you
spending marketing money? You can buy promos, you can do
all this stuff that puts you in different spots. So
most restaurants don't do that because they feel like they're
giving the money away. They because they didn't set the
pricing model.

Speaker 5 (49:40):
Right.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
Let's go back to something real simple, right, you understand
the pizza business.

Speaker 3 (49:44):
Correct.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Oh yeah, all right, I would.

Speaker 4 (49:46):
Say understand the pizza business greatly.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Okay, okay, yep.

Speaker 4 (49:51):
When I went into a Rilios, the number one reason
why we weren't making any money was because our menu
price was.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
Wrong because you didn't factor marketing and all the other
things marketing.

Speaker 4 (50:00):
And promos and coupons. So the menu, the menu price
was an MSRP.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
Right.

Speaker 4 (50:07):
We never sold it that price, right because once you
took a coupon that day, you discounted your menu for
the rest of the day. Didn't matter how many more
orders you got. You didn't take the full price. So
the question was you have to build these things in
and get it to the right level.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
But what if your neighbor doesn't and his piece is
going to be less than.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
Yours, Well you have to you have to play with
that a little bit.

Speaker 4 (50:30):
In our case with Aurelios, believe me, I had a
lot of people wanting with the pitchforks. The franchise is
ready to like take me out right when I told
them we're going to raise the prices ten percent and
we're going to drop our discounts in half, and they
were like, you're crazy, We're going to lose all this business. Well,
you know what ended up happening. What all the competitors
moved to the same level we were at. So it's

(50:51):
not so much, you know, because they all were if
we were. If we were feeling that, they were feeling
it too, but we weren't. We had had no logic
to why we were putting we would raise the price
and raise the discount. I was like, well, what's the
point of that. All we're doing is churning dollars, then
we're not. Nobody's making anything more. So we were able

(51:11):
to build that spread another twelve percent and guess what,
we could lose so much business and still end up
being more profitable and work smarter not harder. Right, Yeah, Well,
the reality was we didn't lose the business because people still.

Speaker 5 (51:25):
Liked our pizza.

Speaker 3 (51:27):
Now did we gain business from it?

Speaker 4 (51:29):
I would say the marketing help with that, putting billboards up,
doing different marketing things that helped with growing the business.
But from a standpoint of getting new customers based on pricing,
now that didn't happen.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
What percentage range can I count on that your brands
will bring into my business?

Speaker 4 (51:49):
Are an average store that we have will do one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year in additional business.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
So it's not a percentage. It's one hundred and fifty thousand.

Speaker 4 (52:01):
And you're going to make thirty to forty percent profit
on that one hundred and fifty thousand for your restaurant,
So forty five thousand to sixty thousand in profit will
come in, right, And that's you know, you remember once
we that's on the brands we currently have. We're always
creating new brands as new trends command as new things happen,
we create a new brand. Well, you get first right
or refusal for the new brands.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Also, then when in addition to that, you're offsetting some
of your labor costs, right, oh, absolutely on top.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
Well, your your labor is becoming more productive, okay, right, And.

Speaker 4 (52:32):
And what happens too is and this happened with a
couple of stores, the one in Duluth in particular, they
did so much more business because they were doing about
eight hundred thousand a year with us for the first year,
we'll get so much more food they bought from the
distributor twenty five percent, thirty percent.

Speaker 5 (52:49):
So you go back and.

Speaker 4 (52:50):
Leverage that if you can get another one or two
points back on your food costs back to dollar one.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
That's a big win for you.

Speaker 4 (52:56):
You're not just getting it on our stuff now you're
making one to two percent more on ours, but you're
making it on everything you do. Right then, on top
of that, how much fressure is your food when you're
rotating it fast?

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Right?

Speaker 1 (53:07):
When you're selling to prospective customers, do you allow them
to reach out to any of the restaurants that are
currently partnering with you?

Speaker 2 (53:15):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (53:15):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, Yeah. My restaurant partners are happy to
talk to anybody. Like every time they do that, it's
like that's the best love. Usually I have the contract
signed back to me within a couple of hours.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
All right, this is fascinating. We're going to end it.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
Give me give all our listeners of they've been listening
through this whole thing, and I'm sure they understand what's
going on. But gave us a three to five sentence
summary of this company and what it does.

Speaker 4 (53:45):
Okay, So, Profit Cookers was developed to help restaurants to
level the playing field for independent restaurants against the major
competitors in their markets that are the bigger companies. But
along with that, it was about profit. Everybody goes to
work to make money. You need to make more money.
We will help you make more money by fulfilling our food.

(54:07):
You will also learn a whole bunch of things that
you can do better and more efficiently in your restaurant
to improve your profitability within your restaurant. If you can
use another forty five sixty eighty thousand dollars a year,
this is a no brainer for you. You just put it together.
You make the food. The brands are simple. It's all
simple food. The three top selling items we have are bacon,

(54:31):
egg and cheese on our croissant, of plain French toast,
and a stack of pancakes. Those are the three most
popular items that are sold across the country no matter
what state. It is simple, simple foods. So breakfast restaurants
do very well with our brands. But then also we
have nighttime brands that do great too. The main thing
is it's a simple, drop in model, turn key. You

(54:54):
just start making the food. We turn it on at
whatever pace you want to go at. We customize the
men news to make sure we get drinks and sides
and all the ancillary things that are even more profitable
for your business in the end. And that's what we
do for you.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
What do we have to lose by signing up with you.

Speaker 4 (55:10):
Nothing, There's no cost to get started. We provide the technology,
the tablet in the printer. We expect to get it
back if you ever leave. We have a ninety six
percent rate of what we call hold rate. So our
restaurants that come on, ninety six percent of them stay
with us for over two years. Now it becomes part

(55:31):
of their business. And what's really nice is that this
becomes party business. We've had a few of them leave
us because they sold the restaurants and the new owners
they wanted, but they sold the restaurant for more money
because this was a business that went with it. Now,
some of these restaurants should start to change concepts. So
they just weren't good partners for us in that market.
But we found other partners to take over that business
that we had. But we want to bring this business

(55:52):
to you, and it's it's you're already paying for all
these assets. You already have the employees, you already have staffing,
you already have ingredients, you already have your supply chain setup.
You have all these things you have this wonderful kitchen,
and you're not getting the full use of that kitchen
without doing something else. And there's other virtual brands out there.
I'm not saying we're the only ones were. I believe

(56:14):
we're the best at it. We're the only ones. I
guarantee the profit margin for you, and we make sure
that you're involved in the pricing models, because if we
can make even more money because the market you believe
is better, we can even do that, So.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
You're involved in everything.

Speaker 4 (56:26):
Some of the other companies don't do those type of things,
but they're good brands also, and they may be worthwhile
to have. And I never anybody's allowed to have anything
they want, Like, if you have our brands, you're welcome
to have somebody else's too. And I would even suggest
that because I think that makes you a better partner.
I think the stronger you our as a restaurant, the
stronger the partner you'll be for long run.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
Well, I'm in I don't have a restaurant yet, but
when I do, Kirk, I'm seriously, you sold me. I
didn't know what I was getting into in this episode,
but it makes a lot of sense to me. I
hope it makes sense to our listeners. How could we
reach out to you, Kirk?

Speaker 4 (57:01):
You can reach me via email at Kirk at virtualprofitcooker
dot com, or you can reach out on our website
at www dot profitcookers dot com. Or you can reach
us by phone at seven oh one three one four
four eight four nine.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
Fantastic. I'll add that information to the show notes. Kirk,
thanks for joining me.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
Hey, thanks, Thanks Jim,