[SpotOn Series] Mastering Franchise Success With Ken Rice, COO of Pickleman’s Franchising

Ken Rice is the Chief Operating Officer at Pickleman’s Franchising, a company specializing in upscale, fast-casual sandwich shops known for their fresh, high-quality food. Under his leadership, Pickleman’s has achieved 14.57% same-store year-over-year growth and expanded to 28 locations, with plans to add 20 to 25 additional units in the coming years. Ken is a US Army veteran honored with two Army Commendation Medals and is passionate about building strong franchisee-franchisor relationships through effective communication and strategic growth.

Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:

[01:49] How Ken Rice went from busboy to COO
[04:45] Why Pickman’s Franchising is experiencing a rapid growth trajectory
[08:15] The true value of business relationships
[09:41] Why franchising appealed to Ken’s business instincts
[10:53] The importance of listening to franchisee feedback
[14:12] What makes Pickman’s sandwiches uniquely irresistible?
[18:15] The key qualities sought in Pickman’s franchisees
[21:14] How Pickman’s fosters a culture of respect and love

In this episode…

The restaurant industry offers diverse opportunities for entrepreneurs, from fast-casual concepts to upscale dining experiences. What insights can a seasoned executive provide about the franchising landscape in this sector?

According to Ken Rice, successful franchising requires a strong focus on communication and relationship-building between franchisors and franchisees. He emphasizes the importance of listening to franchisees’ concerns, providing them with the necessary tools and training, and fostering a collaborative environment where both parties work together to improve the brand. Ken also highlights the value of having franchisees participate in decision-making processes, such as marketing strategies, to ensure their voices are heard and their experiences are leveraged.

On this episode of the Top Business Leaders Show, Rise25’s Chad Franzen welcomes Ken Rice, COO of Pickleman’s Franchising, to chat about his journey in the restaurant industry, the importance of franchisee-franchisor relationships, and the unique positioning of Pickleman’s in the market. Ken shares insights on effective franchise management, the role of technology in operations, and what makes a successful franchisee in today’s competitive landscape.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable moments:

“I like being my own business owner without being in business by myself.”
“We can give you, I’d say, the best gourmet.”
“It’s the hardest job. Easy to understand the concept of it, but it’s hard to execute.”
“If you give people respect, kindness, and love, you’ll get respect, kindness, and love back.”
“If you need to tell your people to ‘put a smile on your face,’ you’re doing something wrong.”

Action Steps:

Enhance communication with stakeholders: By establishing regular communication channels like monthly meetings, leaders can ensure that franchisees feel heard and valued, which fosters collaboration and growth.
Invest in technological upgrades: Implementing a robust tech stack, including a reliable POS system and learning management tools, facilitates smoother operations and enhances productivity.
Develop strong team culture: A positive culture resonates with customers, creating a welcoming atmosphere that enhances their experience and loyalty.
Focus on people development: Invest in hiring, orientating, training, and treating employees well to build a skilled and stable workforce.
Foster franchisee involvement: Encourage franchisees to actively participate in decision-making processes, such as serving on marketing boards or providing feedback on systems.

Sponsor for this episode

SpotOn:

Today’s episode is brought to you by SpotOn. SpotOn has transformed the merchant service industry by providing the tools and support your business deserves at a price that puts money back into your pocket!

SpotOn’s team wants to empower all of their merchants by merging payment processing with simple customer engagement tools, all in one easy-to-use platform. As a business owner, you are focused on managing your daily operations and engaging your customers. You don’t have the time, energy, or excess funds to devote to multiple complicated platforms! That’s why SpotOn is focused on helping you build long-lasting customer loyalty while saving you time and money through our all in one system.

Whether you are a merchant or a consumer, SpotOn wants to be more than an average payment processor. SpotOn aims to exceed your expectations by valuing simplicity, maintaining flexibility, and celebrating innovative collaboration. Let SpotOn help you do business the right way.

Partner with SpotOn today! Visit spoton.com today to schedule your free demo or to view SpotOn’s products. You can also call SpotOn at 877.814.4102 at any time. Let SpotOn help you make the difference with your business!

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Episode Transcript

Intro 00:03

Welcome to the Top Business Leaders Show, powered by Rise25 Media. We feature top founders, executives and business leaders from all over the world.

Chad Franzen 00:20

Hi Chad Franzen here, co-host for this show where we feature top restaurateurs, investors and business leaders. This episode is brought to you by SpotOn. SpotOn has the best-in-class payment platform for retail, and they have a flagship solution called SpotOn Restaurant, where they combine marketing software and payments all in one. They served everyone from larger chains like Dairy Queen and Subway to small mom and pop restaurants. To learn more, go to spoton.com.

It’s also brought to you by Rise25. We help B2B businesses to get ROI, clients, referrals and strategic partnerships through done-for-you podcast. If you have a B2B business and want to build great relationships with clients, referral partners, and thought leaders in your space, there’s no better way to do it than through podcasts and content marketing. To learn more, go to rise25.com or email us at. Support@rise25.com.

My guest today is Ken Rice, chief operating officer at Pickleman’s Franchising. Pickleman’s is an upscale, fast-casual sandwich shop franchise committed to serving fresh, high quality food. Ken leads a team that is spearheading the expansion of the franchise, with nearly two thirds of its franchisees developing more stores. They expect 20 to 25 additional units over the next five years from internal growth. Pickleman’s has seen a 14.57% same store year over year growth.

Ken is also a US Army veteran who has served who has earned two Army Commendation Medals, the Army Achievement Medal, Presidential Unit Citation and the Good Conduct Medal for his service, which we definitely appreciate. Ken, I appreciate your service and your joining me today on the podcast. Thanks so much.

Ken Rice 01:55

It’s a pleasure, Chad. I’m glad to be here. Glad to be here.

Chad Franzen 01:58

Hey, tell me, how did you kind of get into this kind of franchising scene?

Ken Rice 02:06

So I guess I’d have to take a step back. How did I get into restaurants as a whole? I, I began when I was about 13 years old as a busboy at a restaurant in Long Island, New York, and sort of work my way up through the ranks, never thinking that I was going to be in restaurants by any means. But, you know, sort of through college and different things. I ended up in the restaurant industry.

I not too long ago, I was, you know, how I, how I ended up meeting Doug. Doug Stritzel who’s the founder and CEO, current CEO of Pickleman’s. I was hired at Wendy’s and started off as a general manager. Doug, Doug and I worked together. I became a district manager, became a director of operations.

Doug left about a year after I was there and opened up a little shop called Pickleman’s in Columbia, Missouri in 2005, and I took over his spot as the operating partner, and I became a franchisee with my partner there. And we had at the time, 12 Wendy’s and two Tim Hortons. I stayed with him for 15 years as a partner, built it up to ending up with 29 restaurants. We ended up with 14 Wendy’s and five Tim Hortons restaurants and and that’s what I did the franchising thing for a while. Then like, like sometimes some marriages just don’t work out.

Well, my partnership and his didn’t end up working out, so we broke up a little bit. At that point, after 15 years, I went over and became a regional director for a Hardee’s chains in South Carolina. And then I was left there and became a vice president of operations for a 45 unit Burger King chain. And one night. You know, this is about 20 years after Doug and I first met.

I get a call at about 11:00 at night that said, hey. And I’m like, is this Doug Stritzel? And he’s like, yeah. And I said, Doug, are you all right? It’s 11:00 at night.

He goes, yeah, yeah, I’m fine. He goes, I was just thinking about you and I really want to expand this brand and would love to have you come on board and be our chief operating officer for us. So about three years ago, it’ll be three years in January. I came on board with Pickmans. And, you know, so I spend a lot of time on the franchising franchisee and understand the needs of the franchisees, because I was one.

And, you know, if, you know, I’ve been working hard to, you know, meet the needs here for the franchisees. We have.

Chad Franzen 05:02

So you’re in charge of franchising now. But you’re a founder. You’re a founder of Pickleman’s?

Ken Rice 05:07

No I’m not the founder, I am not the founder. Doug. Doug Stritzel was the founder, okay? He founded Pickleman’s Clemens back in 2005. I’m the chief operating officer for him, so he and I got together after he founded this in 2005, in Columbia.

Chad Franzen 05:22

Oh, gotcha. Okay. Gotcha. So what’s your role, then as chief operating officer? What goes into that?

Ken Rice 05:30

My thing is, I’m sort of the conduit between the franchisees and the franchisor. I make sure that there’s good communication happening, that they have the tools and training, and we have the systems in place for them to be very successful, to run great Pickleman’s restaurants, and also to make a lot of money on their end. I also, you know, my, my team and me, we touch all parts of the whole thing from marketing to the, the, the construction, all the parts of it. And and again, we also foster the communication back and forth between the franchisees and the franchisor. When I first came on board three years ago.

We had two marching orders. I went and visited with each of the franchisees and visited all of our current locations, which was 24 at the time. And, you know, I just sat down and said, what are your pain points? What do you need help with? Number one, they didn’t like our they didn’t like our current POS system.

And they thought it was failing. And number two, they thought that we didn’t have a lot of say in how the Pickman’s was happening. So number one, the two things I said I needed to do is we need to fix the communication problem. And number two, we need a much better tech stack. So you had mentioned spot on, spot on.

I brought on SpotOn to be our POS provider, and as of the 12th of this month, we’ve been for anyone who’s turned over a POS system. It’s quite a heavy lift on everybody from the far end to our franchisees. But, you know, you know, about a year and a half later, we were able to move all of our franchisees from their current POS over the spot on system as of the 12th of this month. So pretty proud of that. And then the other thing we did is about a year ago, I started a thing called Pickle Time, which every month myself and the other C-suite team get together and all of us report on what’s going on in the brand, and then we allow them to have interaction once a month for an hour to talk about what’s going on, what’s coming up, and what are their concerns.

So that’s been a big help in trying to get the relationship. And then lastly on that, you know, I was instrumental in helping to get a couple of franchisees to sit on a marketing board where they help to have input into marketing decisions that we do so that. So every year we have a we’ll pick two franchisees that come in and give their, you know, their thoughts, and they represent the rest of the franchisees on our thing to let us know what we can do. You know, how they’re doing and some of their thoughts.

Chad Franzen 08:27

Okay, great. And we’re certainly hoping your experience with SpotOn has been good so far.

Ken Rice 08:32

It’s been great. You know, the interesting thing is it’s not been perfect. They’ve made mistakes and I but you know, it’s great because as I told them, I look for relationships and not partnerships. I’m looking for people that can that understand our business and want to grow with us. So when a mistake is made, though, I always see that’s the true test of a relationship, whether it’s a, you know, a business relationship or even a personal one, how do people respond in times of problems?

And I’ll tell you every time that there’s been a problem, which there hasn’t been a lot, but there was a couple of, you know, there was an outage at one point. And I’ll tell you one thing. SpotOn goes above and beyond in fixing the problem that they did, and then making sure that they really do a good diagnosis of what happened, why did it happen, and what they need to do to fix it going forward. And that’s all I can ever ask of anyone who’s, you know, that we’re in in a relationship with. So we look for people that we can partner with on the long term.

So nobody’s going to be perfect. We’re not perfect, but we want people that, you know, are transparent, that own their mistakes, make it right, and then learn from them.

Chad Franzen 09:45

You have a vast amount of franchising experience. You know, as a franchisee. You talked about it earlier. What is it about being a franchisee that was particularly appealing to you?

Ken Rice 09:58

I like being my own business owner without being in business by myself. You know, like Doug, you know, Doug had to come up with the concept. I mean, yes, he borrowed from some of his experiences in the past to create Pickleman’s. However, you know he had to create everything. Being a franchisee, there’s already a brand that is successful and they already have systems.

And you know, one of the things I’m very good at is learning how a system works, refining systems, and then most importantly, getting a good team that can execute. I think, you know, really when you have a good franchise brand that you get with, if the test at that point is can you execute it? And franchisees that do well know how to execute the brand and know the people’s piece. Franchisees that struggle tend to struggle with that.

Chad Franzen 10:56

You mentioned, you know, you talked to some franchisees and they voiced some concerns to you, and you listened to them and acted on what they had to say. How important is that when it comes to a company that deals with franchisees, I think.

Ken Rice 11:10

I think it’s the number one thing. If you don’t listen to the people who, you know, they’re, you know, they’re your investors, they’re your customers. So at the end of the day, but they’re also, you know, it’s a it’s a, it’s a unique relationship, the franchisee one, because you’re so embedded with each other because and one of the things, you know, sometimes there is a thought, hey, you know, hey why are you guys doing this? You know, you’re making it harder on us. Well, at no point did I have to make sure that I educated people, that it would not be in our interest to do things that are contrary to the franchisees, because at the end of the day, if they’re not successful, then they don’t want to build more restaurants.

And if they don’t build more restaurants, that doesn’t help us or doesn’t attract other people to want to build and join us. So we always want to. Now, do we always hit it on the mark? No we don’t. But, you know, I think one of the things I do, I truly believe, is we’re better together than we are apart.

And if you look at some even big franchise brands, you know, I won’t mention, but just lately you see the, you know, there’s an anti-antagonistic work between the two. They’re always fighting against each other and the brand always struggles because of that. Where brands really go well is when the franchisees and the franchisors really work together to make the brand great. And now are we always going to agree? No we’re not.

It’s just like a family. I mean, you know, I love my wife, but I don’t always agree with her. But I still love her and I still need her input. And I want, you know, we work together to make a great family. It’s the same thing in the business world.

When I was a franchisee, I had a number of people who worked with me, you know, and, you know, I always prided myself. And one of the things I like to do is I’d go in and talk to the guy who’s making the sandwiches at Wendy’s and say, you know, well, how do you think about this new product? How can you know? What could we do to make your job easier? What would be better for you?

You know, and so many times you find out the guys who are doing it can tell you a lot of stuff if you just want to listen. And it’s the same thing, it’s even more important or is just as important to go to your franchisees and listen to what they’re saying, because they’re the guys that, especially in our system where we only have that. When I first came here, we had no corporate restaurants. So all the operations were run by the franchisees. Now we have one corporate restaurant, and I think it’s good to have some corporate restaurants so we can get the same feel that they have.

But, you know, whether we have corporate restaurants or not, it’s important to get their opinions, listen to them. We don’t always have to agree, and we may not even act. But I think most people want to know that they’re being listened to and they’re being taken seriously. And when you do that, you know, they can be understanding that not everything that they suggest is going to happen, but they do want to know that you actually care about them and you care about what they have to say.

Chad Franzen 14:15

So beyond that, that personal type relationship where you’re definitely interested in working together with the franchisee, what makes a good, you know, choice among all the opportunities out there for franchising?

Ken Rice 14:29

Well, I’ll tell you, you know, you make a great point. People are, you know, there’s a million burger brands out there. There’s a million sandwich brands out there. There is. But you know, what Doug has created with Pickleman’s is a unique niche because, you know, and Doug has, you know, Doug’s background.

He started with Jimmy John’s and, you know, he was their first chief operating officer. So one of the things we have is and I like to say this, we have the speed and efficiency of a Jimmy John’s with the quality. And I would say, you know, I probably I’m biased, but I’d say some other people, you know, with the quality up there with the Panera Bread and nobody else really hits that sweet spot perfectly. They can be fast or they can be good, but we can do both. We can give you a great, you know, you know, I’d say the best gourmet.

And there’s a reason we call ourselves gourmet sandwiches. You know, if you’ve had the opportunity, have you ever have you ever tried one, Chad?

Chad Franzen 15:34

No I have not.

Ken Rice 15:35

You’re going to have to because you know, once you once you try one of our sandwiches, you’ll never want to turn back. When, when I used to work for Tim Hortons, they said, do they put something special in that coffee? Because, you know, people keep wanting to come back for that cup of Tim Hortons coffee. Well, that’s the same thing at Pickleman’s. When you eat a Pickleman sandwich, you want to come back because the quality’s so darn good.

Also, it’s a very easy system to implement. We have good tools, we show you how to do it. It’s very simple to do. We have some of the best AUVs in the business. You know, we beat out most of our competition when it comes to average unit volume.

And we have a good, solid flow, flow flow through when you’re executing at a, at a good, you know, when you’re executing the restaurants.

Chad Franzen 16:28

What do you look for in a franchisee?

Ken Rice 16:32

So a franchisee is somebody that wants, you know, has an understanding of business that they want to, you know, they have a passion for, you know, creating something that they can run, but they’re they’re looking, you know, for maybe some help while doing it. You know, and we want to come alongside those guys that understand, you know, how to, you know, basically how to run a business will will help them with some of the basics of how to run a they also have to have a passion for people and, and, you know, a love for you know, because and they’re going to have to work. You know, you know, they have to be willing to put in the time or find the right people if they want to. You know, we do have an investment model if you want to come in and, you know, hire some people to come in, we’ll train your people and we’ll teach them how to do it. But it’s really got to be a passion for it.

You also want people that are willing to invest in their business, invest in their people that want to be part of a great brand. We’re certainly not you know, we’re not a place if you want to try to scrimp and just do the basic minimums, you’ve got to be whether it’s your service. You want to be top of the top notch and service taking care of the guests when they come through, each and every one of them, loving on them. You know, our tagline is “A whole lot of love, one big pickle.”

So we want to love on our guests. We want to love each other, have a great time together. We want to have people that are, you know, that want to be helped with the brand, that you know, that want to have input and have a say and you know, and challenge us, you know, challenge us to do better. And we’re and that are not afraid to be challenged to do better themselves so that you know, that that’s the you know, the fit. There’s no no one particular — it’s a case-by-case person, you know, profile.

But those are some of the basics that we look for.

Chad Franzen 18:41

So let’s say I’ve got I’ve got, you know, good business savvy, maybe some business experience. I want to have that entrepreneurial, I want to get into the entrepreneurial side of franchising. What. But I’ve never done it before. What’s one thing that I would learn that I would only learn from?

From doing it, maybe that I wouldn’t know, other than, you know, from just going to restaurants or being business savvy.

Ken Rice 19:05

So, you know, I think you’ll learn that, you know, in the restaurant industry, you’ve got to realize that the margins are tight. And you’ve got to have a real good handle on where you know, where your money is. And you’ve really got to be a good people developer if you’re not somebody because the killer in this business is the people you’ve got to learn to identify train. I use an Ackerman acronym to help my people and understand it’s called hot, hot. You’ve got to hire the best people that are available.

You’ve got to do a great orientation with them. You’ve got to train them very well, and then you’ve got to treat them like they’re a part of your family. You’ve got to treat them really well. And if you do that, then you tend to maintain, because when you get a group of people that have been a year or more of seniority with you, your things start to click. The efficiencies are really there.

If you’re constantly turning over a staff, you’re going to have a much harder time and you’re going to suffer in quality. You’re going to suffer in food costs because your big bills in the restaurant industry is your food and labor cost. You know, there’s a lot of other things, but if you food and labor are the big ones to control and that starts, you know, it starts with your people. If you get people, you get to keep them. They become very efficient.

So your labor cost gets better. And then they understand how to manage the food costs by making sure portion control, making sure that they’re very aware of what it is. And then, you know, and then they’re they’re the ones who build up your sales because people want to come in not only for our great sandwiches and our pizzas and our, you know, we have because, you know, we are mainly a sandwich shop, but we have some of the best pizzas out there. We win awards for our pizza, some great salads, some great mac and cheese bowls that we just rolled out, you know, so we have a little bit of something for everyone that may, may want to go in there. But you know, it all starts with having great people.

And then, you know, one of the things that, you know, getting in, getting into franchising, you’ll see that it’s easy and it’s hard. It’s the hardest job. It’s easy to understand the concept of it. But it’s hard to execute. The execution part of any restaurant business is the toughest part.

Chad Franzen 21:31

So when you have a, you know, a motto or whatever you want to call it, a whole lot of love, how do you kind of ensure that that I may walk into one and be like, oh, wow, this place is incredible. How do you ensure that the next one I go to, I would feel kind of that same vibe.

Ken Rice 21:45

Well, it really begins with you, you know, creating that culture with your people, the franchisee, you know, the franchisees, the main, main person that creates that culture, The franchisee either is going to exude that, and when they come in, I say you have a choice. You can either build people up or you can tear them down. You have that choice when you walk in. I tell that to all my leaders and any franchisee. So what do you do if you go in there and you show a whole lot of love and you, you build up people, then you’re going to have that.

You’re going to create that culture. If you go in there and you find fault and you know, when I first started in this industry, I still remember one of my old district managers. They said, you know, the expectation is people know what to do, so don’t bother telling them what they’re doing right. Make sure you go in there and your job is to find everything that they do wrong and let them know about it. This is about, oh, 40 something years ago, but it was interesting how it’s changed.

And of course, that’s a Non-workable model. But that was the model, you know, many years ago of an authoritarian, you know, different type of thought process. You know, one of the things I talked to my people about is creating a culture. And I say every time you go in there, we’re looking to go in there with respect, kindness and love. That’s how we need to treat people.

And, you know, you’ll find if you give people respect, kindness and love, you’ll get respect, kindness and love back. Whether that’s your team members, your managers or your guests that are coming through when you do that, you create a positive culture and that positive culture keeps people. And then again, it gets all the different things that you have to have.

Chad Franzen 23:31

Do you think that that can have an effect? Do you think the way a leader treats you know, his, his, his or her staff can be felt by the customer?

Ken Rice 23:39

Absolutely. You know, I can, to be honest, I’ve been doing this long enough. I can walk into a restaurant and within five minutes I can tell if there’s a good culture. And I think most of us can, you know, just as a consumer, you can walk in and you can feel like, are they having fun? Are they smiling?

Are they real smiles? I used to say, if you need to tell your people I. There is a franchisee that I was working with when I was with Wendy’s and you know, they wanted their people to smile. So they had a thing: smile. They had to put a, you know, put a smile on your face.

You know, they and I said, you know, I told the franchisee that that was a friend of mine. She was learning how to become. She was a new franchisee and she was asking for my help. So I said, well, if you got to tell, if you got to put a card that says smile, you’re doing something wrong, you need to create the atmosphere where the smile is just automatic. So, you know, you can tell you go in and if you feel tension and there’s, you know, there’s a lot of things going on because I’ve been in situations, you know, because this is normal for the industry, especially nowadays, you can be two, three people short, which can be tense a little bit.

But how the manager, the leader on the shift and how it’s handled can make all the difference in the world, because you can be 2 or 3 people short, but if everyone’s positive about it, then you know it still runs. Now it may be slower, but if you’re honest with the guests and you say, hey, I’m really sorry, we’re a couple of people short, but you know, we’re going to get you as fast as possible. Then people know about it. They can decide to stay or go, but then your staff isn’t stressed. And people, if they don’t have the time, they’ll leave, but they’re not unhappy with it.

Now that you don’t want to do that all the time. But again, it can be a positive experience even in a negative. But you have to be intentional to create that atmosphere in your restaurants.

Chad Franzen 25:18

What are some of your long term goals then for Pickleman’s?

Ken Rice 25:38

So long term goals? I mean long term goals. We need to get to 1,000 restaurants where, you know, you know, within the next decade we’d love to be bordering on 1,000. We’re we’re praying, you know, we’re we’re shooting. I think we have a good shot to, you know, get up to upwards to 50 plus restaurants in the next two years with, you know, in the next five years breaking and well exceeding the 100, you know, the century mark in, in the, in the restaurant.

So that’s one of the things we and my team are working to build a best in class tech stack for our restaurants. We like I said, it started with the core POS system, but we’re constantly looking. Right now, we’re refining our inventory program to make sure that we have a strong inventory program so they can get great food costs and be able to diagnose that, follow that up with a we’re taking our training program from, you know, basically a checklist training program into we’re bringing on a group called opus to, which is a very good learning management system to really help train our crew members all the way up through district managers? And that’s going to be followed up with, you know, we’re going to vet some very good scheduling programs that we can roll out. And then we’re constantly looking at what, you know, because in today’s world, having a great tech stack is just one of those table stakes that you have to have.

So we’re constantly looking. We’re constantly innovating and making sure about that. And then the other goal is to, you know, create a place that, you know, everyone is proud of, that Pickleman’s is a name that people, you know, customers feel great about, that they come to eat at us, they can feel good about it. And then franchisees and all anyone that’s available is they’re, you know, they just feel proud about being part of this brand. I, you know, I want everyone that, you know, whether they’re a franchisee, a corporate employee or anyone to feel very good about being part of this brand.

So that’s some of my goals.

Chad Franzen 27:54

Yeah. Sounds great. How can people find out more if they’re interested in maybe talking about becoming a franchisee, how can they find out more information?

Ken Rice 28:02

So if they go to our website and then push the franchising button, there’s an opportunity to fill out a very short questionnaire that will take you into our development team, and somebody will quickly get back with you within probably, you know, certainly within 72 hours, I’d say.

Chad Franzen 28:24

And is that where you can also go? If you want to find out more about whether you’d like to have lunch there or not.

Ken Rice 28:29

Yeah. Picklemans.com is a — it’ll tell you all of our locations. It’ll tell you our menu. It also has our, you know, our nutritional data, which again, one of the things we’re really proud of and I’d be negligent in not saying it is that we have some of the healthiest foods.

One of one of the goals of our founder is, you know, you see videos like Super Size Me where the guy ate McDonald’s for, I think, you know, a month and you know how horrible it was. Well, his goal is that if you eat pickle men’s every day for the rest of your life, you’re going to be in a good shape, you know? And we go so far as we have our, our chicken and our pork, our nae, no antibiotics ever stuff. We just changed out our potato chips to be non-GMO because our old ones were non-GMO. Then they, they became, you know, had it, had it.

We added that we’re working on getting all the seed oils out of our dressings. We make our dressings in-house. We make our cookies every day fresh, in-house. Our bread only has five ingredients. We, you know, so we don’t put fillers.

We don’t. We have an artesian mix. So like our bread, people will say, well, there’s a little bit of difference in size of that. Well, that’s what happens when you have artesian bread that is made daily and it’s fresh. You know, it’s you know, we really go above and beyond to make sure that the guests get quality food and in all cases, and then quality service when we’re there.

Chad Franzen 30:13

Very nice. Sounds amazing. So last question for you. So yeah, it sounds like there’s an abundance of great choices there at Pickleman’s. When you go there as a customer, what’s kind of your go-to selection of items?

Ken Rice 30:25

So my favorite is the Italian club. It’s also the number one favorite of everyone. And I add Giardino peppers to it because I like a little spice to it. So the number 11 on wheat, I, you know, I, I am a little bit different. I like the wheat and it’s — oh wow it’s wonderful.

So yeah it’s great and. Yeah. No, it’s. And if you get a chance. Chad, I don’t know.

Where are you out of.

Chad Franzen 30:55

I’m in Colorado.

Ken Rice 30:56

Colorado? Well, it’s funny, our vice president of development lives in Denver. But yeah, so I think, oh, boy, I guess Colorado, maybe Texas perhaps might be the closest we have.

Chad Franzen 31:13

Over the holidays. I’ll look for one in San Antonio. Are you In San Antonio?

Ken Rice 31:19

No, not yet, but that’s an area we’re looking at, so we’d love to know. McKinney, Texas outside of Dallas. Okay. We have in Texas. We just built that and we just finished up our 32nd restaurant in Yukon, Oklahoma, so.

Chad Franzen 31:35

Oh, nice. Awesome.

Ken Rice 31:36

So we’re we’re we’re really excited. And we’ve got a bunch on for next year.

Chad Franzen 31:24

Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like it sounds great. Hey, Ken, it’s been great to talk to you. Thank you so much for all of your time and your insights. Really appreciate it.

Ken Rice 31:30

Thanks, Chad. Have a great day.

Chad Franzen 31:32

You as well. So long everybody.

Outro 31:34

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