Bela Musits 11:41
Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. So you have multiple locations? How do you sort of ensure consistency, both on the front end of the house and the back end of the house? So that you have a consistent experience for your customers?
Scott Slaymaker 11:56
Well, that’s you know, that’s the age old question. And some people do it a lot better than others. We worked very hard at that. I would love to say we’re perfect. We’re not. I was just in one of our franchise locations in northern Utah yesterday and noted a couple things that that, you know, this isn’t exactly the way the plates supposed to be set up or some things like that. That’s, that’s the biggest challenge. But one of the things that we do is we we’ve invested a lot of time and energy into communication, we have an entire training program we have, we call them build cards. So anytime a new menu comes out, we have a build card that has basically a sensitivity guide that says, These are the things that go on it, this is what it looks like there are photos of it right there. So from a back of the house standpoint, that that is what’s expected. And in fact, when we do reviews, I know I do reviews in restaurants, I actually we have a make a quite a bit of the food. And I have the bill card sitting right there when they bring that off the table and say Okay, now let’s look at this, and see how this compares to what it’s supposed to. And it’s it’s uh it’s interesting how creative some of our team members like to be sometimes. So I’ll just leave it as you know, that hasn’t been said the same thing goes to the overall experience. I mean, you know, one of the our mission statement of Wingers is creating amazing experiences. And, you know, the, the experience is not just food clarity, it’s food driven. But is what does that experience from the service standpoint? What does it look like the first time you drive up to the restaurant, you walk in? What is your greeting? So we actually have what we call a QA. And it has all of those things listed. We have an entire training program, Steve Rashard, who was our director of guest experience. He’s got a training program all against those things, that works toward that, actually, with hands-on activities, and we invest a lot and we commit a lot to training and making sure that we’re just doing it over and over again, understanding that, at least from our, we’ve never hit perfect. But, you know, that is the goal with the understanding that we probably never will be absolutely perfect. There’s, there’s the human element, and that’s what we try to work with.
Bela Musits 14:17
Yeah, excellent. So let me ask you another question. You mentioned that sometimes you have creative people, you know, who like to put their own touches on on various different things. Do you have a system for sort of capturing some of those because some of those may be great suggestions and improvements?
Scott Slaymaker 14:33
That’s that’s a tremendous question. And and I say that because if you look back in history, some of the the greatest the biggest selling items now for example, the McDonald’s for a fish was divided come up by a franchisee you know, with so and you know, that may be I don’t mean to blatantly advertise for McDonald’s, but you know, God gonna when you talk about consistency, that’s one thing too. They get right for it. Yes. So we actually do that as part of our QA. And again, I can go into a restaurant and I’ve got the whole thing on an app right on my phone here. Part of that is we actually will take photos of these things. It’s all stored in the cloud, our director of guest experience, deep Rashard will go through, we’ll look at discrepancies. And you know, some of those discrepancies may be a prey presentation, or, you know, we’ve had other franchise partners as well as managers in our own restaurant that say, Hey, this would be a great way either to do this, or you know, some brand new thing. And then again, we have a form, if you will, that, okay, what is the recipe? What are the portions? Does it? What does it cost out? Can you sell it for a price where you’re going to get a suitable return to net, but still provide a value for your guests, and then it we’re kind of going backwards. But then if we decide that we can make all those things happen, then it goes to the test that we were just talking about? So let’s test that in a restaurant and just see what the guest results. You know, it’s interesting, and I’m guilty of this as well. We have so many managers might go back 44 years now that say, we have got to do this, because my guests are just screaming for it. And then you say okay, so what exactly and who is it? Well, it’s this guy that comes in once a month that wants to do that. But, you know, that’s, that’s the human condition. Somebody tells us, we need to do something, we’re so conditioned in the hospitality industry to want to please, that all of a sudden, there is this great demand for something that may or may not actually be there. And that’s why again, we really try to be as data driven as we possibly can be.
Bela Musits 16:49
Yeah, yeah. So your some of your stores are franchise franchise and other ones are company owned? That’s correct.
Scott Slaymaker 16:57
That is correct. We, as a company operate nine company restaurants, there are 23 Total restaurants in five states. We’re in Utah, Idaho, Nevada. What did I miss? Oregon, pardon me? With that? And we actually are moving into the Midwest. Right now. We just signed a multi-store development agreement for Oklahoma City, and we’re working with some other potential franchise partners in the best Midwest. That’s kind of our focus moving there, as well as some of our current franchise partners are looking at developing their second, third and fourth restaurants as well.
Bela Musits 17:37
Sure. So what do you look for in a franchisee candidate?
Scott Slaymaker 17:41
Boy, Bela? How much time have you got for heaven’s sakes, because I can tell you this, one of the biggest mistakes, and I’ll admit, you know, anybody that’s been in this business and said they’ve never made mistakes, it’s just flat out lying to you. But you know, one of the challenges that we had in Winger’s, we were much bigger at one time, we had over 30 restaurants. But one of the things that we found was, we were so eager to franchise that we would award a franchise, hey, if somebody’s got $40,000, and we think they can build a restaurant, hey, let’s do it being we got another franchisee we actually over the past five or six years have realized that we actually had to get a little bit smaller before we can position ourselves for growth again, because some of our franchise partners as much as they were great people just weren’t cut out to be a great operator. And so that’s one of the first things is we’ve had a number of people that have come to us that say, Listen, I’ve got the money to do this I want to do and the first question is, tell me what your operations team is going to look like. Because if you cannot deliver on the promise we’re making to the guests, we’re all wasting our time here. Secondly, the other thing that is very important to us, we happen to use Cisco as our primary supplier, other people use FSA or you know, whatever that may be. But one of the things we have found is we have certain proprietary items that if we can’t be within the footprint of a Cisco, it makes it very difficult to get those proprietary items to, for example, our original amazing sauce, which, you know, we ship that stuff all over the world, we ship that to Saudi Arabia. It’s it is addictive. I can’t I can’t lie to you and that it works on just about everything with the exception of pancakes, French toast and waffles. That’s probably not a good idea there. But so we look for we look for an operations team or operational ability. We look for the ability for product distribution, and then something that really has just really gained our attention over the past eight to 10 years is what is the human capital like in the markets with that because if you cannot hire and retain great people, you’re going to really struggle as far as operating. I don’t care what restaurant it is. And you know, we’re all being challenged by that right now.
Bela Musits 20:11
Right, right. So as you guys have evolved, earlier, we talked about, you know, you looked at sort of second tier market, so you’re not competing against other sort of bigger chains. Has your location criteria evolved over time?
Scott Slaymaker 20:26
It really has Bela. And the simple reason is, you know, we thought that, for example, we could go into a Laramie, Wyoming and we’d never be touched by anybody else. Well, five years later, here’s Applebee’s building one right down the street. And then Chili’s is there now and and all of the other things. So, you know, one of the things that became clear to us pretty quickly is we have got to take care of what we do with on our own four walls, the competition is going to be there, regardless of who it is. And frankly, in most cases, regardless of where it is, for that. So yes, we have we’ve gone into some larger markets now. Still probably aren’t going to take the, the corner pad side out on a major mall or something like that. But we are competing in those major markets, but just more neighborhood locations.
Bela Musits 21:15
Yeah, excellent, excellent. So you know, when you walk into a restaurant, immediately, immediately as a customer, you get a feel, you get a feel for how you’re greeted, the way people treat you the way they react to you sort of the culture of the place. How do you sort of think about culture? And how do you sort of instill that into both the company owned restaurants, and the franchisees,
Scott Slaymaker 21:39
you know, you boy, you read my mind on that. We, we stress culture and leadership. Every single day, I was just in Pocatello, sitting down with our general manager there, who’s a wonderful young lady. He’s been with us for quite some time now. And that’s what we talk about is how do we continue to develop our leadership? How do we continue to develop our culture because there’s something very interesting in that I’ve got a dear dear friend, he’s a college fraternity brother. And he’s he’s a brilliant consultant and leadership development. He he’s, I rarely see him he travels the world working with large companies. He’s worked with Disney Toyota, you know, things like that. But I remember on a fishing trip in Canada, once we’re sitting on the side of the river, because we were about five days after the steelhead had moved out. So we had nothing to do other than talk. And he made a profound comment to me once and it said, if you are not actively involved in developing your culture, a culture will still develop, it just may not be the one that you want. And so and it’s hard to change, oh, it once you get that it is hard to change. So that’s something that we and we see the same thing, even with our relatively small brand, is one store outperforms another one that we keep saying, why is that? Why is it as you say, you can walk in, and there’s just a vibe that, yeah, this is going to be a good experience where you go on the other one, and it’s like, something’s not quite feeling right. It all comes down to leadership and culture, for it. So we focus a great deal on that. We’re even focusing more that’s really where I in the past couple of years have spent almost all of my time is in leadership development. Because we have, we can show you data where a restaurant that has had a longer term consistent leader continually outperforms the other restaurants from a unit economic standpoint, whether it’s sales, food cost anything else, it’s all about leadership and culture.
Bela Musits 23:42
Yeah. So when you had that situation where one restaurant, you know, has great leadership, and it is outperforming, how do you sort of peel back that onion and figure out what those secret ingredients are? So you can replicate that in your other locations?
Scott Slaymaker 23:56
That’s that is such a great question. And I think it’s gotta go back. This is this is actually a conversation we were just having in our leadership team meeting here a couple of weeks ago. And you know, one of the things that it comes back to is you’ve got to hire the right people, and particularly in today’s world, where staffing is such a challenge. And it’s not just hourly staff, it’s it’s management and, and quite candidly, the hospitality industry has kind of gotten a little bit of a bad rap by a lot of people saying, well, they don’t pay anything. There’s no opportunities that slave labor. I would argue that because I’ll tell you, we’ve had some people that have been very successful, you know, working with us as operating partners and whatnot, but that but that being nevertheless, it really comes back to to getting the right people in the right place. And we call it putting aces in their places for and you’ve got to hire the right person. We have made the mistake time and time and time again. Where out of a sense of urgency to fill position. Yeah. It’s like, Are they walking? Are they upright? Yeah. Okay, great. And, and there’s a funny thing. And it’s not just in the restaurant business it’s in, I just think it’s in life. All of a sudden, we bring somebody in, we give them a couple of weeks training, we give them the title of manager, a general manager. And by some great process of osmosis or something. Now, we think that they know everything, and we can just leave them there, and they’re going to do their thing. And we are learning, we continue to learn that every time we make that mistake, we’re going to be back reworking and we’re addressing the same mistake again. And I’m not blaming the people all the time. I’m blaming the leadership team from assuming it starts starts right here. And yet after 40 years, I find myself occasionally still making the same mistake.
Bela Musits 25:55
Yeah. Hey, Scott, I want to start wrapping this up. We’ve been we’ve been at it for 25 plus minutes. Is there something that I’ve not asked you that you would like to share with the audience?
Scott Slaymaker 26:04
You know, I think more than anything else. My father, who, who’s who’s been gone for 27 years, and I told you about it was an incredible entrepreneur. Never could manage a restaurant never understood it, never wanted to understand it. He was a little bit, a little bit ADHD in that in that respect, but he always had a statement and it comes back to people and I remember he used to always tell me, all the brick and mortar in the world does you no good, unless you have the right people that are operating that. And I have found that in what have I worked with five or six different concepts. Now whether it be Tony Roma’s, TGI Fridays, Chi-Chi’s, Sizzler, it’s about the people, the hospitality industry is about the people. And there are some tremendous opportunities in the hospitality industry, whether it be a career or whether it be a stepping stone, and the the organizations that recognize that and foster and work with those people are the ones that are going to be the most successful in my humble opinion.
Bela Musits 27:09
Now, well said well said. Well said Scott. So if listeners want to find out more about Wingers or get in contact with you, where’s the best place for them to do that?
Scott Slaymaker 27:20
Best place? We have a website www.wingerbros.com. My brother Eric and I have somehow become the winger bros over the years. I’m not sure how that is, but we’re bros.com or you can email me directly at Scott@WingerBros.com.
Bela Musits 27:42
Excellent. Excellent. Hey, Scott, thank you for being a wonderful guest on the podcast. You were really good. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Scott Slaymaker 27:49
Pleasure is all mine, Bela. Thank you.
Outro 27:52
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