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

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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