From Family Pizzeria to Fast-Casual Success: Joey Cioffi's Journey with The Salad House

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Join Fast Casual Nation hosts Paul Barron and Cherryh Cansler as they sit down with Joey Cioffi, founder and CEO of The Salad House, to explore his inspiring journey from working in his family's pizzeria to building one of the industry's most promising health-focused franchise concepts. Recently named to Fast Casual's 2025 Top 100 Movers & Shakers, Cioffi shares valuable insights on hospitality, franchise development, and how staying true to core values while adapting to market changes has driven The Salad House's growth from a single New Jersey location in 2011 to a thriving franchise system that prioritizes community wellness and exceptional guest experience.

FastCasualNation #TheSaladHouse #RestaurantFranchise
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Capital & Advisory: Are you a fast-casual restaurant startup or a technology innovator in the food service industry? Don't miss out on the opportunity to tap into decades of expertise. Reach out to Savor Capital & Advisory now to explore how their seasoned professionals can propel your business forward. Discover if you're eligible to leverage our unparalleled knowledge in food service branding and technology and take your venture to new heights.

Don't wait – amplify your voice or supercharge your startup's growth today with Savor's ecosystem of industry-leading platforms and advisory services. Visit https://www.savor.fm/capital-advisory


Get Your Podcast Now! Are you a hospitality or restaurant industry leader looking to amplify your voice and establish yourself as a thought leader? Look no further than SavorFM, the premier podcast platform designed exclusively for hospitality visionaries like you. Take the next step in your industry leadership journey – visit https://www.savor.fm/

Capital & Advisory: Are you a fast-casual restaurant startup or a technology innovator in the food service industry? Don't miss out on the opportunity to tap into decades of expertise. Reach out to Savor Capital & Advisory now to explore how their seasoned professionals can propel your business forward. Discover if you're eligible to leverage our unparalleled knowledge in food service branding and technology and take your venture to new heights.

Don't wait – amplify your voice or supercharge your startup's growth today with Savor's ecosystem of industry-leading platforms and advisory services. Visit https://www.savor.fm/capital-advisory

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, guys, this is going to be a good
one today, SHERA. What's going on?

Speaker 2 (00:03):
I think I'm doing great. I'm in my orange for
Te Swift twelve. The album's coming out soon, so I
had to wear orange and Taylor yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Well is okay? So what is the what is the
connection between colors and Taylor?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
What is every era of Taylor Swift has a different
color and the only color she hasn't used yet is orange.
So everybody's been saying, okay, the new album is going
to be associated with orange, and then yesterday she came
out and said she introduced a new album. It's all
orange and a mint green, and she's going to be
on the Travis Kelcey and Jason kelce podcast tonight. So

(00:38):
I'm so excited.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
That's a big podcast that's like the number two podcast
right behind Fast Casual Nation. No, Okay, that didn't work.
It didn't land. All right, hey listen, we'll be right back.
You guys are gonna love this one. We've got, of course,
Salad House coming in and also a company to talk
about local storem marking that you don't want to miss it,

(01:01):
So stay tuned. This episode is brought to you by
Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Chefs take the heat all day, every day.

(01:24):
Performing under pressure is what we do. Just like Philadelphia
Cream Cheese, Phillies creamy texture holds up every time, less cracking,
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Cheese originals deserve the original. All right, so here we go.
We are back here on Fast Casualation, the podcast that

(01:45):
started all would be a good one.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
And in honor of my favorite queen, Taylor Swift, joining
our favorite podcast later tonight or second favorite podcast?

Speaker 1 (01:55):
What do you mean favorite podcast? This is the favorite podcast.
This is the favorite podcast exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
But in honor of our second favorite podcast, New Heights,
we want to introduce our next guest, like Jason Kelsey
would Are you ready?

Speaker 1 (02:09):
All right? All right, let's go for guys. We got
a guest on today who's not just talking about food.
He is in the food game. And I'm talking about
a guy who was born into it. And the cool
thing is is his family came from Italy, so he
came here with nothing like zero. This is the American dream.
This is what the restaurant industry is all about. It's
a recipe for some good food. They built an empire,

(02:31):
a deli, a pizzeria, the whole thing, and our man here.
He grew up in that business, washing dishes, ringing people up,
doing body slams because he's a football player.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
But he did try to get away from it. He
went to college, played some damn good football at Monmouth.
A tight end, a guy that's doing all the dirty work.
He even went to Wall Street. He was going to
be a finance guy, but then after a tragedy, he
got called back to his roots, the family business.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
I love it all right. First of all, how do
you play football and go to Wall Street? That's a
big one. He took everything he learned from football, grit,
Wall Street, hustle, and he built his own empire. And
that one is a little bit healthier, but also it
has all heart kind of like him.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
So yeah, And he's a founder and CEO of the
Salad House. He's building a franchise, giving back to the
community and showing everybody that you can take that blue collar,
hard working mentality and pull it into it chopped salad.
I'm telling you this guy's the real deal. Please welcome
the one and only Joey CHIOFFI.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Whoo boom, there is. We dropped it right there. That
was That was a rehearsed intro, Joey, So we don't
do those very often.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Just so you know, I love it. I love it.
I gotta be fired up, man. I'm seeking a correlation
of like being a bull, like being a bull on
the football fields, you know, bull on Wall Street. You
gotta be bulling.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
I like it. I like it. How long were you
on Wall Street?

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Long? I was there for about a year, so my
series seven. Uh, you know that was an interesting, uh
long exam and I got you know, like with that.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
You know, I'm gonna stick with I'm gonna stick with
the food business. Yeah, your family, of course, uh started
in the restaurant industry here really build did they? Was
that like their first business to get going where you
were raised in it?

Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yeah? Well, you know, they never really had a plan.
They were coming over here to you know, they were
gonna you know, they wanted a cheap the American dream.
They wanted to They came here eighteen years old on
the boat eleven days at sea, which you know still
blows my mind. Yeah, you know they talked about the
conditions of that boat. We're not talking a carnival cruise
line exactly like you know, a little box room, uh,

(04:49):
you know, and it was pretty and it was pretty scary,
you know, being so young and not knowing what they
were gonna, you know, come to here. They came at
the UH. The immigrated to North New Jersey and you know,
the streets. They thought the streets were going to be
paved in gold. And I don't know if you ever
been in North New Jersey, the streets are not paved
in gold there. So and they and they started working

(05:10):
in a factory. It was it was very difficult because
they didn't they know language. They had a tough foreman
and they were like it was very it did not
seem like they made the right choice. They were definitely interesting.
They were second guessing being you know, coming over. But
my father had a friend, you know, Paison, a fellow

(05:31):
Paison that had a pizzeria and he said, Tony, why
don't you come work, you know, on the weekends, you know,
and you know, learn a little bit about business. Helped
me out. So he started doing it every you know,
he was working every weekend. He'd worked in the factory
during the week working uh pizzeria during the weekend. On
the weekends, and at the end of the weekend, the
guy would like throw break him off twenty dollars, twenty
five dollars, and back then in nineteen fifty seven, twenty

(05:53):
twenty five dollars was his basically his whole week's pay
working at the factory. And he was making that in
just a couple of days of helping this guy pizzeria.
So he was like, wait, there's something to this. Yeah,
and he just he struck a deal with the guy.
The guy was kind of at the end of his
line working, you know, with the pizzeria. He held a
note for the business and the apartment above the old building,

(06:14):
and my father started.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
That's what a great story. I love Yeah, I love
these these are you know, this is kind of the thing.
One of the unique things about the industry is we
get a chance to hear these kind of stories. It's
interesting the passion that connects food and entrepreneurial spirit, which
is very American dream esque, and I think you guys,

(06:37):
of course, have kind of driven that home. We're going
to be talking about local store marketing, scaling a brand today,
a little bit about what Salad House has been doing.
Give us just a quick update on what Salad House
is up to right now.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
We have twenty stores open, nineteen in New Jersey, one
in Brooklyn. We have another thirteen sold not open for
hopefully four or five will be open by the end
of the year. On the currently on the construction and
salad ows is just you know what it was my
interpretation of a salad concept that basically eliminates a veto vote.

(07:14):
It basically has every everybody in your household. You know,
there's something for everybody. And that's something that we pride
ourselves in. We're not too fancy. We're in our own lane.
You know, we do the staples right. You don't have
to google any of our ingredients. You know, we have
and we feel life about balance. I mean that was
that was the mission early on, was to make healthy

(07:34):
eating and you can be as healthy as you want
to be at salad ouse. Make it convenient, approachable, you know,
I have you know, some of my favorite optics when
you walk into a salad ouse or you know, seeing
like these big burly construction workers walking walking and having out,
you know, sharing a plate of fries. You know, we
have fries, we have appetizers, you know, so we we
really we believe we have something really special, unique, and

(07:57):
we're so excited to you know, expand we're expanding and
Marian hopefully Virginia soon, New York and you know, and beyond.
So we're excited to share what we're doing. We're a movement.
And uh, I'm just I love what we do and
i love what we've created, and I'm excited for the future.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah, this man there looks amazing.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yeah, it's a little bit about everything, you know, It's
like we uh and and I'll be honest with you,
it's just just just seeing the growth and seeing like
my my children, you know, my children were like I
call them the first you know, the first family of
Salad House and watching them, you know, because because really
the menu was created to basically have my wife, you know,

(08:41):
we always fel like we are you gonna get a
teat and chops out healthy. I wanted something a little
bit like Krispy Chicken sandwich or trim sandwich, and and
my kids obviously chicken fingers, you know, case da stuff
like that. So you know, that's what this was. And
then the kids they progress and this is this is
one of the things I'm most proud of is that
we're kind of making it easier for a younger generation

(09:05):
to be able to eat healthier because like you could
just you can make the slid the way you want,
like they would take it, you know, a bite to
my wife's salad and they're like, oh my god, we
could put carrots and egg whites and cucumbers and all
the stuff that they like, you know, maybe ran stressing
of course, and then you know, put some crutads for
the kids. But but then you know, they're they're eating
their vegetables and they're transitioning to eating healthier, you know.

(09:25):
So that's you know, one of the things that we
really are so proud of. Yeah, it's really nice.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
You guys also have it seems like a strong connection
to the to your local communities. So it's interesting how
you are able to take that connection when you had
this like the one or the two locations and now
you're scaling. So how are you, you know, teaching your
franchises how to do that marketing and to stay connected
with the community, because I mean, you can't be everywhere.
You're only one person.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yeah, so you know, it all sims back from my
family business Chiefestelli in Springfield, you know where I grew
up and started working at an early age twelve years old.
By uh and uh, you know, seeing what it took
to be successful, you know, on all levels of the business.
One of the things that was most important, I think
was the connection in the community. You know, knowing people's

(10:11):
names when they walk in the store. You know, giving
something out for kids, like you know, a bag of
chips or a cookie or something to kids, you know
when they're coming in. Things like that, Sponsoring teams, constantly
being involved, you know, with with different things that are
that are happening in the community. And it's just you know,
that's so important because people are spending their harder and

(10:32):
money and you know, there's so many choices out there
to make. And when you have that connection with somebody
and you're able to you know, make them feel good.
You know, they're coming into your home. Kind of sell
the house, I guess, but like you're coming into your house,
it's you know, it's it's it really is your home.
I mean that you spend more time in your work
than you do it in the restaurant business. Spend more
time at work than you do at home, so you know,

(10:54):
just the hospitality aspect of it, but it's got to
be enhanced and it's got to not feel so corporate
and stuff like you know, you walk into you know
some of I'm not going to name some of my
competitors we walk in. It's just so it's so transactional
and never really like uh, you know, we we try
and encourage our franchisees and to do it, and then
they take a step. Then they end up, you know,

(11:15):
showing us something that works. And like for instance, uh,
Fernando was one of our franchises and Sea Caucus guy
was amazing. We sponsored a baseball team. We've done it before.
It's great. He showed up at their first game. He
showed up there to support the team. And and one
of the and one of the guys I played football
with in the college. Uh, this guy, Kevin Francis, was like,

(11:35):
he goes. I love the fact he goes. We've never
had a sponsor, like they've always wrote the check and
never ever showed up and actually supported the team. He
was there and then coincidentally ended up having after Ali
a party after at the end of the season, and
they were all there and it was just amazing. They
were chanting saladouts, which is really cool.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
So yeah, I was showing some video of this of
your of your event that you did at your alma mater.
When you get involved in local communities like this, what
has been I guess? I know it's a give back
a lot of times for many brand you know operators,
But is there a specific thing that you feel this

(12:13):
really does for the brand itself. Is it something that
kind of creates a legend status or is it something
that just connects you to a community. What is it
that you guys are trying to do there?

Speaker 3 (12:23):
Well, the MoMath thing was more, you know, coming back
to my school and speaking. I like to do that often.
You know. I'm involved with the alumni association and they
have like an entrepreneurial like a new division at Momouth
when and when we went there, and obviously the football
team is near and dear to me. You know, I

(12:45):
play four years there. That really molded me as a
as a human being and as an entrepreneur. And I
love to share and give back to the to the
team like this. This was a collaboration we did with
Uber Eats and we were giving away five h drid
free raps to the entire campus and right and at
the same time, they were having spring practice. So I

(13:05):
went over and spoke to the spoke to the team
and kind of you know, I, yeah, got well, you
know what I I spring football. And you know if
you don't if you don't know, spring football is difficult
for you know, college teams because there's no there's no
paycheck at the end of the week. Speak, So you know,
I kind of, uh, I gave them the parallels the

(13:27):
salad house in the beginning and how early on when
we were you know, we were just getting started and
just trying to figure out how we're going to scale
and how we're going to mold our menu. But you
put things together. You know, there was no paycheck. You know,
there was no money. Yeah, it was just you know,
it's effort. Yeah, And so I kind of made that
you know, kind of correlation between the two and and
and it resonated with the kids and with the kids

(13:49):
and the guys on on the team, and it was
it was really exciting. And you know, fun fact, my
coach is still there twenty five years later.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
I still that coach con coach.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
Klaan Man's it's amazing that he's still there. It makes
me feel young that that Mike could still save my college.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
So the hel those are great. You know, that's a
great give back too. I think sometimes young people really
like to see that because it's difficult for them to
kind of manifest, you know, out where am I going
to be in five years, ten years after this, because
maybe I'm playing football now, but I'm not going to
be doing this forever. What is it going to look
like beyond? So that's kind of cool. We're going to

(14:29):
get into how local store marketing is working for you guys,
how you're scaling it, and we wanted to bring in
an expert today, Christopher Brown, who's coming in from Marvia
that'll be talking with us as well and really dive
into a cross model of how brands are doing it
and then maybe how some of the solutions are starting
to work. So Christopher, welcome into the show.

Speaker 4 (14:51):
Thank you, Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yeah, good to see you. So let's just go right
into it. We're going to talk a little bit about
Joey for you. When you you obviously are showing quite
a bit of a local uh involvement, but when you
look at the strategy that a brand is doing around
local store marketing. Do you actually have like a brand

(15:13):
strategy for local store marketing?

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Or you guys.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Ally franchise you get to do whatever they want, like you.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
Know, we we that's that's it's like the inside joke. No,
we have, Uh, we have an amazing c CMO. He's
he's just the guy's incredible and he's really outlining and
guiding you know what I mean. We're trying to steer
the cattle. Uh, you know kind of so we're all

(15:43):
in line with you know, strategies that work, strategies that
don't work, and you know, you get some push back.
You get some people that are you know kind of
you know, want to do their own thing or you know,
and we'll take into consideration, we'll listen, you know, with
some of their ideas. But you know, listen, when you
buy into a franchise system, you're buying our mistakes. And
a part of that is trial and error and some

(16:05):
of the stuff that's worked for us and hasn't worked
for us. And and you know, having REVS experience, you know,
like he knows and he's plugged into what's what works
and what doesn't work. So so we try and you know,
give them a playbook and give them guidelines and give
them a certain strategy. And brand wide, we we you know,
have certain initiatives like you know, we just you know,
we do a Caesar of the Month that has just

(16:26):
been great for us. You know, we identified Caesar salad
being you know, obviously a very popular menu item, and
we figured we'd mix it up a little bit and
every month have a different Casar of the month. And
now we're getting people that are asking, you know, what's
next month Caesar and uh, you know, fall in love
with him. We're actually figuring out different menu you know,
like it's really it's really been great. So just think.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
I like it, Christopher, I want to I want to
flip over to Marvia for a minute because obviously you
guys do a lot in terms of local store marketing. Uh,
how do you first all, how do you guys go
about your business and helping brands kind of connect the
dots here? Because exactly what Joey was just saying is
there's a whole process here that appears to be you know, important.

(17:13):
Do you guys help with that process? What is the
connection that you guys do.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah, sure.

Speaker 4 (17:18):
We're a SaaS platform that really focuses on solving the
distributed marketing problem. So as we see franchises start to scale,
things that things that may work for them from a
marketing operations technology standpoint. You know, up to twenty you know,
twenty brand twenty locations, that may work just fine. But

(17:39):
as they start to scale and they get to thirty
forty fifty, seventy one hundred locations, things start breaking. You know,
it doesn't scale for example, one off requests or things
like that. It just starts getting too cumbersome. And they're
really faced with two choices. One is they can add

(17:59):
to their corporate team, their central team to support this
with more more designers, et cetera. Or they can push out,
you know, the brand guidelines and the playbook to the
local franchisees. But neither is a good solution because if
you're pushing it out to the franchisees, one is the
franchisees generally aren't professional marketers. They don't have the time

(18:23):
to to to create the materials. So the whole concept
of a distributed marketing platform is solving that problem so
that you can scale, the central team can provide all
the marketing materials, initiative campaigns, toolkits that are necessary, but
they can provide the guidelines on those materials to ensure

(18:43):
everything that goes out from the organization is on brand
and on the side.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Yeah, I'm looking at your marketing shop here. So this
is like an e commerce platform for the brand itself
to kind of build within their own strategy around local store.

Speaker 4 (18:57):
So we have a number of modules that are availed,
but within the platform, the marketing shop is you know,
not everything is print or digital marketing, right you have
you have a T shirts, squeeze balls, you know, and
we are a pure play SaaS platform. We're a technology platform.
We're not We're not a printer. We're not a merch provider.

(19:19):
We plug into if you have one you like, that's great,
we'll plug into that provider.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
You know.

Speaker 4 (19:25):
We obviously have you know, over one hundred suppliers we're
working with with other franchise brands. We're happy to introduce
you to some if you're looking for additional suppliers as
you scale. But the advantage to this is things like
toolkits at which I mentioned, So you know, if you
want to achieve a business objective, like for example, new

(19:46):
store opening kit or an event toolkit. And you want
to put all the marketing feos, the social posts and
the merch You may need some pens to give away,
some giveaways thing you can put that all in one
one kit for your franchisese uh to be able to
just get in get out. The key is simplicity. You

(20:07):
know you want the you do not It may sound strange,
We don't want your franchisee spending a lot of time
in our platform. We want them to get in, get
done what they need to get done, and get out.
And by providing a simple way for them to execute
on marketing objectives, what happens and all of our data
and research shows this is they do a great deal

(20:30):
more marketing, which which uh you know, more localized context
to their marketing, which increases per unit revenue. So that's
really where we come in.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
So Christopher, as you're working with your restaurant clients who
are trying to help their franchises become better marketers, what
are some of the biggest pain points that you're helping
with them? And then Joey will have you kind of
weigh into what you're seeing in your.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
Own what hurts.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
What hurts?

Speaker 4 (20:59):
Yeah, I think that there are a few things when
we talk about social For example, right, we see a
lot of emerging uh your restaurant brands, franchise brands that
that in some ways they're scared to jump into that
with the franchisees, right, They think it's going to be

(21:19):
too heavy of a lift. And what we say is,
don't be afraid. Right, you can execute a localized social
strategy without drowning your central team in busy work, without
diluting your brand. It's really about just setting up effective
ways to do that. And that can be one enabling

(21:43):
your franchisees with all of the social content and customizable
that they that they need, making it simple for them
to do that, being able to post schedule, post run
ad units themselves right out of our platform. Or you
may in some cases you might be running a national
campaign or a regional campaign where the central team might

(22:03):
want to post to you know, twenty one hundred five
hundred Facebook pages at the same time because they want
to time their rollout of a national to local and
when they do that, currently, what a lot of them
have to do is either spend a huge amount of
time customizing all the creative for each individual, or they

(22:24):
just do they just give up and say, well, we're
just going to do static creative.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
What that?

Speaker 4 (22:28):
What happens then is you have all those Facebook pages
look exactly alike. There's really no localization, there's no differentiation
between them, and you know, customers pick up on that.
It feels corporately, It feels kind of it doesn't feel personalized,
and if you want to go.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
To rogue, then you never know what you're going to get, right.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
Exactly does that happen with you? Do you have rogue franchises?
You keep doing those deep sides. It sounds to me
like you do.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
These are awesome. Actually we're giving these away.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
We've done fueled like it go back to the question, yeah, question.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
And you know it's constantly brought up. You know, we
have franchises and there's just there's not that many that
but there are a few that are pushing back. We
we have a centralized Instagram where we only have one
one Instagram that we control, and then we allow them
to you know, have their own Facebook pages. We encourage
them to sad of, like you said, to be a

(23:31):
little bit more community oriented and be able to you know,
jump into community forums and and I felt, I feel
that that's you know, Facebook as much as people I
I disagree with a lot of people like Facebook is
that Instagram and to talk about I still believe there is.
Facebook is very important and very as a lot of

(23:52):
there's a lot of benefits, especially when you're trying to
connect with the community. But we do have we do
have franchises that really want their own Instagram account, and
I understand you know that they do. But at the
same time, you know, it's sure to your point, going
road is something that it's you know, at twenty locations,
you know, I know we're still you know, somewhat small,

(24:13):
but it's you know, it's hard to really monitor, you
know what I mean and be able to see everybody. Sure, yeah,
I mean it's hard enough when we're we're posting here,
you know, having you know that we're in control of
our own social but you know, and it's so it's
it's tricky, but we want to kind of control, you know,
the way our messaging is getting out there, especially on

(24:34):
those So it's difficult because you know, we do have
these constant debates with with a few franchises on their.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Own is social. The one area that you find is
the difficult one to breach with the franchisees because it
seems like, you know, if you think about in store
pop and all the other marketing materials that I think
people kind of like our hands off with that kind
of stuff. But it's this organic stuff that I have
found the lot of franchisees love to do. You know,

(25:03):
they want to do it.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
I don't know. I mean, it's hard to say because
you know, you know, I got a whole myriad of
franchises and they're all, you know, somewhat different.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
A lot of some are different someone some love it,
some hate it.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
Yeah, yeah, So it's it's it's hard to say. But
I do a very good job. I really do. I
think we have a great strategy and you know, and
you know we're doing we're doing well in a tough
economy right now. We're doing well. And I really attributed
to our whole marketing strategy and and you know, the
way we're presenting our product and presenting you know, the

(25:40):
way we you know, our yea lifestyle, you know, solid
house lifestyle pretty.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
Much you're presenting a scale problem, which Christopher, that's what
you guys, do is you help scale brands like that?
When you if you're listening to Joey right now and
you're thinking, here's a growing brand, They've got a lot
of franchise you there's a lot of differentiation in it.
How would you guys solve that problem?

Speaker 4 (26:05):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's perfect stage fit.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
You know, the the.

Speaker 4 (26:11):
Things I'm hearing from Joey are exactly what we hear
from growing scaling brands that are that are in that
in that you know, twenty to thirty locations. And I
think that as I mentioned earlier, you know, as you
add additional franchises and it starts to accelerate. Because it

(26:33):
tends to start to accelerate, I think that these questions
become more pressing and you have to have a solve.
And what we've found is, you know, technology can solve
these You can't solve them by just throwing bodies at
the problem. You can't just hire more designers or or
hire people to survey you know, your your franchise as

(26:58):
these Instagram pages is you know, so it's really a question,
you know what platforms like ours do is really enable
you to scale, uh while ensuring you keep that brand consistently.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
That AI is is a big component.

Speaker 4 (27:13):
Christopher, AI is is a component. I think that it's
it remains to be seen as it accelerates where AI
is currently at in keeping uh. You know, a brand
is more than just uh sticking a logo on things

(27:33):
and so uh the brand voice, the contextual feel of
what the brand is. The culture of the brand is
super important to be consistent and the the localization of
that culture. I don't think AI is there yet to
be able to read that that nuance as well as

(27:56):
as as brands would like to keep it. So I
think AI is is moving in that direction. But I
think right now it's really about letting your franchisees customize
as they understand their markets and they're their their communities.
But it's incumbent upon the franchise or to put guardrails

(28:19):
around all of the materials so that those materials can't
be off brand and.

Speaker 5 (28:25):
In some cases if you have a very where they
can get really created. We want to put an approval
workflow so your central team has a last check on
marketing materials to make sure that they are consistent.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
With Hey, Joey, he's just he said Christopher said something
I think is very important, and that is, you know,
being able to design local store marketing down to the
local market level. And that is something that I've found.
You know, we work a lot with investing in small
brands and emerging brands, and that seems to be like

(28:58):
a really big problem right now, is that when they
go outside of their safe zone, like the market they
built in. You're mostly in New Jersey and Upper Northeast, right.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
Uh, you know, all of New Jersey, Brooklyn, book and expanding.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
So how do you how do you migrate? What Christopher
was talking about? You have a brand that it's easy
maybe that within you know, when you're talking about Burrows
and you know, cities next door that maybe that's somewhat unique.
But once you're one hundred miles away, now you have
a completely different local market. How do you guys adapt

(29:33):
to that? And what are some of the things you
look for?

Speaker 3 (29:36):
Well, you know, we have a we have a PR.
You know, we have a great PR person that I've
you know, I've told her like for instance, Maryland is
a prime example. We're going into Maryland, you know, outside
are you know, so to speak of our region? You know,
New Jersey, so what she's doing is she's you know,
contacting different you know, figuring out different publications and and

(29:59):
you know we were or just on different you know,
whether it's local patches and stuff in that regard. When
it comes to social again, I really I'm so bullish
on Facebook, you know, Facebook forums, and I just recently
got it was on a Facebook form one of those
patch articles that she was able to get. You know,
they kind of told my story and also introduced a

(30:21):
franchisee who she has a wonderful story. Uh and that
and that article came up because it was like exciting
news and it was posted reposted on Facebook, and I
got in a friend that was a customer here in
New Jersey who moved down there was so excited shared it.
You know. It was was basically you know, you know,
a testament, you know, given testimonial like on her on

(30:44):
her page and sending it on the mom's pages and
so that I mean, I you know, is it a strategy.
I think it is. I think it's it's a way
for us to you know, to dive into a market
that we don't you know, that we're not in.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
And you know, is this Christmas in July what is that.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Christmas in July. We were trying to, you know, get
people to redeem their points, and you know, we saw
it as an opportunity to.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Help because I know the Hallmark channel that my mother
in law loves Christmas in July. That's branding, man. That's
how brands start to connect to local communities if you
get something that works like that. Christopher, when you're when
you're looking and trying to analyze, you know, growing brands
like Joey's, and you look at you know, whether it's

(31:31):
franchise systems, brands that are trying to grow on their own,
what would you say is the number one common franchise
challenge out there today?

Speaker 4 (31:42):
Well, first of all, I completely understand Joey. My family's
from New Jersey. I live on the West Coast, which
are two very very different cultures from dialect and what
you know, just just how sense of humor everything is
is definitely different. So it just it just highlights of
sort of that local flavor that your franchise is. Really

(32:03):
that's a value they bring to the table. I think
I think as a as a as a franchise scales
and as it starts to really scale, you're you're bringing
in a much more diverse group of franchise partners, You're
bringing in a lot of uh needs, people are asking

(32:25):
different things. You start to get bogged down with one
off requests. You start to get bogged down, and it's
it's very difficult for the franchise say hey, look, we're
just kind of getting swamped, right like, our growth is
swamping our central team. And it's really, I think hard

(32:46):
when you're in the thick of it, right because you're
you're you want to grow, you want to bring in
new franchise partners. But for a marketing team, it's hard
to say, hey, you know how we're currently doing things.
We need we need we need to we need to
solve this. We need to solve the root problem and
not just the individual request, right Like, so if we're

(33:09):
getting too many one off requests, so we're just not
going to take any more one off requests or you know,
they're solving for the symptoms but not the core root problem,
which is again going back to our thesis, which it's
a distributed marketing problem. So let's look at the root
causes of the distributed market How how do you scale
without having to you know, bring on a whole bunch
of additional designers or or or or get brand aggreant

(33:32):
like it. So everything we've done and our work with
all the different brands and our platform has been built
on these problems. You know, we we were very customer
cent centric and over time over the years as we
work with these large franchises and small and emergency franchises,
you know, there are best source of information. You know, Hey,

(33:53):
you know we've got this new problem, or we have
this problem that we'd like to solve for great, can
we solve it in a holistic portal that addresses all
all of these different problems at once, so that and
again make it user friendly so a non marketing person
can jump in, get done what they need to get done,
and jump out. So I think that I think that

(34:14):
the one problem I see is when you're the thick
of scaling, it's very hard to to not solve for
the symptoms and and and step back and address the problem.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
Yeah, that's a big one. Hey, Joey, last question to you.
You are in the middle of brand growth right now.
You are in the what I call the Goldilock zone
of fast casual. It's you're not too big and you're
not too small, You're in the right zone. This is
usually where brands either do this or do this the pressure.

(34:50):
So what for you, what do you think is the
thing that is going to help you do this?

Speaker 3 (34:56):
So we we plan on, you know, uh, opening up
some corporate stores and really controlling some some territories that
we identify as salad house territories that that we could
potentially put a cluster and open up. We're also being
a little bit more like I have I have the
like I have the the avatar of the type of

(35:18):
franchise e, just like you know, Chris Christopher saying, how
you know, I've seen certain franchisees and and you know,
identified you know, maybe it wasn't the right fit, but
we were early and now I kind of we see
who is the you know, the better franchise e, and
and we're kind of being a little bit more selective
on who we bring on as a franchise partner because

(35:40):
early on, you know, I'll be honest with you, you know,
and I still do I have I have I have
immense gratitude for anybody that even even inquires for a
franchise because it's just still to this you know, it's
it's it's a you know, this.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Is not an easy business. Yeah, it's you got to
have you have to have a connection to it, I think.
But but if you do, is a very rewarding business,
Yeah for sure.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
And it's really you know, and some of these some
people they just they see the shiny new like oh
my god, get yeah in the restaurant business. But like
you do realize the restaurant business is.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
You know, it's it's hard work.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yeah, it's hard work, man, But man, if you get.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
It right, baby, it's like you're in the groove. You've
you've seen it, your football player. When you're in that groove,
it's like everything just comes down and there's no noise.
It's you just know, you just know.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
I don't see what the success. I'm sorry, I know.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
I was just gonna say, it's like Patrick Mahomes connecting.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
I knew we were going to bring in the Kansas
City Chiefs. I knew it.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
But but but you know the beauty of this and
and I and I have and I have the unique
perspective of like you know, seven Italian you know where
it was like soul operated and my brother and I
I was you know, really running the store and then
surrounding yourself with the team, you know what I mean,
having a team, and that's what the beauty of the
franchise is like you know, and really you know just

(37:04):
just you know, being having a cohesive team you know
again football, like you know, it's like everybody needs to
work in unison and they have a role. Yeah, we
have such a great team and that's that's also part
of our success. I mean, we really have such a
noy egos in the room and and we just you know,
we just we just want everyone to be successful. So
we're every this Wednesday, you know, I stepped away from

(37:27):
our meeting. Every Wednesday we haven't around table no matter what.
We round table and we have a structured round table
that we're just trying to get better every single day.
And it's for our franchise. It is because they've invested
you know, harder money, you know, and we feel it's
our responsibility to do everything we can to make solid
outs the greatest version of itself every you know, every day.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
There you go, guys, if you want to uh, you know,
hit Joey up for a franchise there it is the
Salad House Dot com, you'll be able to learn a
little bit more about what's going on over there, and uh,
you know, not an ad from Joey, but just you know,
giving him a little love out there in terms of
the salad outs. So and of course, if you want
to learn a little bit more about Marvia, you can
actually visit their website on Getmarvia dot com. Over there, Christopher,

(38:13):
thanks so much for coming in today. We appreciate all
your work, and Joey, it's been great having you on
the show Man. We're going to have to bring you
back in as like a what do they call the
guy who comes in? Uh? What is it not? Special teams? Yeah,
it is special teams, right, special teams. You're special teams
now you are special teams for the Fast Casual Nation podcast.

(38:34):
But we appreciate you guys coming on today.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Thanks so much, thank you, Thanks for having met you.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Bet all right, Shara, another banger of course, coming out
of the of Craziness this morning as we were recording.
So I love it, and I think, you know, I
think we should do something, Shara. I think that you
should possibly do something very special. Since you're wearing orange
today and you're you're looking all Tailor's Swift over there.

(39:02):
I think I think that you should give away some tickets.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
I can totally do that.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
You got you can pre order This Life the Showgirl.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Tickets to Taylor Swift or her new album.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
But I, oh, what kind of tickets are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (39:18):
You give away a ticket to the Fast Casual Executive
Summit on Oh the Summits and you can get with
me there, So hit me.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
Up first One Casual Executive Summit.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
The first one to send me a message gets a
free ticket.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Free tickets. All right, you guys, We are going to
have many more podcasts of course, great founders, great innovators
and amazing brands. So if you're not subscribed to the show,
make sure and do that right now. You can catch
this show over on Savor dot Fm. You can catch
it on Fastcasual dot com, Apple podcast, also over on iHeartRadio.

(39:53):
You'll catch this on Spotify, all the places where you
listen to your podcasts. We'll catch you next time right here,
Fast Casual Nation