Hey there. Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for joining me. Today’s guest is Mike Bosch, and he is the CEO, the owner, chief visionary of Andolini’sWorldwide.Com What’s that? It’s a hospitality group with 12 concepts setting the world on fire in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Really powerful interview today because it’s all about SOPs are standard operating procedures and really putting systems in place and creating a company culture and getting the maximum performance out of your team and building brands and not just running restaurants, but really creating notoriety in the marketplace, giving back to the community and Guerrilla marketing, you know, and not wasting lots of money on traditional marketing, but really being creative and thinking outside the box.

We talk about key performance indicators, KPIs with finances, all the key operating details. Plus Mike’s. Best advice to operators. And there’s three nuggets of information you’re really going to want to hear. So thanks for tuning in. Thanks also to our sponsors of this week’s episode. And if you haven’t heard about it already, our Profit Maximizer course is literally ways to move the needle on your bottom line profit.

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welcome back. It’s the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. Mike, how are you today? Welcome to the show. I am very good. How are you? Excellent. Thanks for being here. I was looking at all your websites. They’re fantastic. You’ve got multiple concepts. You’re a true operators operator. So I’m really excited to dive in to your restaurant story.

So let’s begin there. What’s, tell us about your restaurant journey. Where did it all begin for you? I’m not someone who per se grew up in the industry. I worked a restaurant at 18 years old as an expediter at a nice steakhouse in California. My life journey is I come from a Marine Corps family.

My dad was Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps, lived in New York, New Jersey area, lived in the Bay area have some older siblings that I was planning on being A Marine, as well as going into Officer Candidate School, did that. Found out I had type one juvenile diabetes at this side gig, along with, I think I had five jobs simultaneously in college.

I, one of them being an expediter at Vic Stewart’s. I didn’t realize that was really where I was getting my true bachelor’s degree was in seeing how a restaurant operated. And then my brother, who’s older than me, vice president of Alamorenticar, got transferred out to Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I. Just went to law school for 90 minutes and said, no, not for me.

This is, I passed the LSATs, graduated college, and I’m like, I don’t see this being the thing. And. He was like, you want to start a family business? And I was like I don’t want to do this. So drove out and then we were thinking, okay, what can we do? That’s not really here in this suburb of Tulsa, not even Tulsa.

And at the time Verizon, Honeywell, Capital One National Rent a Car, Al Marenta Car had all descended upon this town because of the tax breaks in 2004. So a lot of New Yorkers, a lot of Floridians, and no family pizzeria. Pizza places, no pizzeria. So we just did that, and I had worked pizza, I had worked fine dining, and I was 22, which is not what a, you should be like, oh yeah, we should have a restaurant started with this 22 year old who’s casually worked two restaurants, but I say I did not drive halfway across America and give up law school to suck at making pizza.

So tried to get as good as possible, as fast as possible, not just at pizza, but without knowing it, how to be an operator was very important to me and systemizing it, learning it, marketing, HR, fixing stuff. Like I’d never done any of that. And my poli sci degree, I think actually did help a lot. Like just understanding the nature of humanity and human interest played a role.

So even though that was my degree and you would say, what does that have anything to do with business? I think it did help. I’m hearing one, you use the word systems and those who are listening understand that systems are really your exit strategy. It’s if you put systems in place, if you can create entrepreneurs in your business and help them to help you run your business, that frees your time.

And it sounds like that’s been the key to your growth strategy. So I love the fact of that, but you also mentioned business, you’re applying business skills to. I often say this to a business that is not traditionally run by MBAs, and that’s the key, it seems to some of your success. Would you say that’s true?

I, for sure, and having my brother at, coming from a corporate background, with his awareness of that, but also a passion for food, but not just a blind, I, everyone who opens a restaurant has a passion for food. That’s like the price of entry. It is. A passion for, hey, if this at all sucks, I am going to die before I let you leave here unhappy.

That type of passion. Not oh, you’re an idiot. You don’t understand. Which I think most restaurant owners take one of the two. I will, I’m going to make sure you would love this. Or they’re like, you don’t get it. I’m right, you’re wrong. And that level of ego, even a lack of systems, is an ego play.

No, no one else could do this. I have to be the one. It’s, And people think ego is like walking and I’m the best, but it’s also this, Oh no, no one else could do this, but me. And I think we’re also benefited not just from the corporate stuff, but from the Marine Corps background, just the limited time I was in, cause I was only in officer candidate school, but you’re trusting 17 and 18 year olds to do this high level stuff.

And how do you get them to do it? People would think it’s just yelling at them, but it’s not the, it’s here’s how you do it. Verifying they know it, seeing them do it multiple times, repetition, put into a stress test, and now you are trusted on this very high level to do this because lives are on the line and I’m just casing sausage.

So it’s pretty, seeing that and you’re like, okay, yeah, I can trust kids to do stuff. So leadership I’m hearing now, because Officer Candidate School is all about building you as a leader of men. And if you’re in wartime, it’s like you’ve got to make critical decisions where lives are on the line and all that kind of stuff.

But there’s a foundational training in there that I’m also hearing your apply, that you have and are applying to your business to get the most out of people. And that’s accountability. Is there a strategy that you use day to day? Or is it in your onboarding or your training? And the company culture, like all those things wrap up together, but clearly you’re getting the most out of your people.

So I won’t answer for you. Tell us how that works in your organization. So many there’s a little bit of iteration from the onboarding and verification of the system, not the person. That’s the real important thing. When people are like, Tom didn’t do this. It’s no, Tom didn’t fail. The system failed.

So what was the break? What allowed that to occur? Let’s go back to that, and as we, as, because I was starting pre real technology, like we, we said the internet existed, it’s 2004 2005, but we’re talking pre YouTube, pre Twitter, pre iPhone, pre apps A lot of it was like writing stuff down and getting from that red book culture and trans Back in the day there’s these things to the people that are uninitiated like a red book, like what happened today and writing it down and verifying that so we come from that old school approach of writing stuff down and then how, and then just things became easier and easier.

I though was finding that there wasn’t proprietary systems out there available, so one of the biggest ones, that I created was a whiteboard to see okay, here’s all the prep. Here’s everything of the day. So the whole crew could see what happened. And that came to me when I was at a hospital and saw a whiteboard on the wall that was like, how is this patient doing?

And I thought if this is trusted to protect lives in a hospital, I’m pretty sure I could do this in a restaurant. And of course, that’s been the mindset. It’s let’s not just be locked into, let’s see what other people do. But also have ingenuity to come up with it and really see the landscape of what’s being said.

It’s easier when it’s just one store and you’re living it because it’s no, I’ll just tell them. But then when you’re like, oh, I’m going to go out of town to do some food show and you’re like, there’s no way I could do that. The whole place is going to fall apart. Who’s going to put in the produce order?

And that getting, one thing you’re like, oh, wow, that worked. How do I do that? At scale, and over time, it became just like gravity. Gravity existed before Sir Isaac Newton said gravity existed. Apples weren’t just flying away, but he defined it. So I’ll, if I define, this is why it works. Okay. What do we do there?

How did that work? But that other thing didn’t. Oh yeah. Cause we wrote it down. And then as time went on, take a photo of the list. And text it to me. Take a photo of the list and group text it. What are we going to do to un Murphy’s Law this thing? To make sure that there’s no way it goes south, there’s no way we fail.

Because we’re checking that, and it was again, very basic level stuff where it just grew into text messages as verification. Then it became programs and apps and lists and then the manager is being responsible to it. Now, 20 years deep, we’re getting into Asana and using task apps like that.

But it’s the concept has never changed. Directly responsible individual, understanding their SOP, verification of said SOP, assess it, come back and reiterate if it did not go perfect. How do you set the bar in the beginning? Let’s say you got a new team member coming on board. Maybe they’ve worked in a restaurant before, and maybe they got bad habits, or maybe they’ve never worked in a restaurant.

Maybe they’re an A player right from the get go, but you set expectations in a certain way. Do you have job descriptions? Let’s talk about the accountability, the expectations, all that sort of thing. How does that work in your organization? For sure, today’s a much different place than it was ten, even five years ago, because when originally getting someone, I say, they’re, we’re not interviewing them anymore.

They’re interviewing us. They have an abundance of choice. It’s easier than ever to apply. So how are we going to get someone who’s great, And we have to be a warm blanket when they walk in. It’s so welcoming. The majority of people are not looking purely for cash, and it’s a crazy notion in the history of American existence that cash is not the main motivator.

It’s acceptance and growth potential. It’s self actualization. Does this place match my values and that do they have value? So having values just to get the base level, which I, if you would’ve said to me, Hey, you should have core values a decade ago, I’m like, that sounds like some corporate BS that I want nothing to do with, but once we did it, we’re like, oh, wow, we can immediately tell this person either, are they going to fit?

Or if nothing else, say, Hey, here’s what you need to do to fit in. Ours are passionate, ethical, can’t hire someone who’s trying to steal or hit on the hostess efficient. Because if they don’t know, hey, I need you to be efficient, that matters. Competitive, and then the last one for us is fun. If you’re all those things, but no one wants to work with or for you, it doesn’t work.

I’m not saying you need to be like, hey, let’s go have a great day, but you gotta not be a total Eeyore either. So that’s just the baseline okay, if they have that mindset, then we can, anything can work. It’s a taste mindset. If you’re a believer in empowerment, right? Like you’re up, you’re recognizing talent in others and up leveling them.

Like on one of your websites, I saw that there’s a young lady named Tara Hatton and she’s this international pizza champion. And now she literally Runs an operation like she owns, the creativity and the resourcefulness and the true passion for hospitality that really is coming clear. So that’s part of your company culture I’m seeing.

And people see that, that work for you and they’re inspired. Where can I go in this organization and what can I do to be recognized? Now, did you foster that? Are you finding people, just amazing people that there’s that entrepreneurship thing again. Tell us about. Your philosophy is on it. I believe that our greatness is not derived just purely by how great I’m perceived, but by how great our people are.

Yes. And how great, and how much reach they can go to. And it’s, terror success, I have nurtured my brother, we’ve nurtured, also she’s an all star. That’s, I’m not going to take that away from her, but we saw, I mean she had worked other restaurants before, but she had a drive, and it’s just okay, this person wants it, are we giving it to her?

That’s where it falls apart for, I think, a lot of businesses is someone’s hey, let’s go. And they’re like, all right, slow down, buddy. I don’t have time for that. We were like, game on, come on, let’s take you to Vegas. Let’s have you compete in this. What else do you want to do? Hey, I know, I could throw pretty good at pizza throwing, but I had the best pizza throwers I knew come out.

I’m like, hey, come on, we’ll do some other stuff and show her what you know, and just invigorate that passion. At the core of a restaurant or business, there’s two things that are deeply contagious. One is passion and the other is apathy. They’re both deeply contagious. And if you don’t allow passion to be the one, it’s de facto going to be the other.

So even back to that onboarding thing, I could have the most pristine onboarding in the history of the game. But if I have the too cool for school trainer, it’s screwed. It’s done. It’s not going to work. If you have the guy Alright guys we’re gonna do training, my name’s, Hal, and so watch this video, I’ll be back in 20 minutes.

Like it’s dead, they’re dead in the water, nothing matters, it’s gonna suck because this person is more in love with being cool than getting this, I’m like, you guys gotta be dorks for this when we onboard people or else it’s just screw it to begin with. How do you recognize and reward your top performers?

They have, there has to be a paired incentive plan. Paired incentive, i. e. we’re hitting food costs, we’re hitting labor, you’re getting a kick on that. If your staff is all on board with you, you’re getting something there. And then beyond cash, noting it to the outward world, like giving, hey, look at this person who’s killing it, all of Andolini’s.

And now, we have 300 plus employees, so we can say that. There’s things you could do on the daily level. Again, just little micro wins of, hey, who made this? This is perfect. Everyone, look at this. Perfect. Way to go to that one person. And then there’s the larger wins and then we do stupid stuff.

But it’s not stupid. We have Andomania that I’m planning right now, which is our all staff competition. And then whoever wins gets the title belt. I have one of them right here. Like I made a second one for me. We have an Andomania title belt. And it’s just dorky fun, but it’s also a point of personal pride.

It’s also competition. It’s also morale building. What is, going back to the military, what is the value of a stripe? It’s a stripe. You could buy it at the BX for, Five bucks, but on their arm, it means something. And that’s what we want. We want rank to matter. We want growth to matter. We want the belief that, Hey, I am the best in this circle to matter.

Speed tests, like who’s the fastest to make a, an X and it’s on the board. Whoever won that, Hey, you did that. You’re the best at this right now. And competition in a healthy manner. That’s trying to iterate better than you were yesterday is significant, not just to monetize, to monetizing, but to your own self worth, to the morale of the restaurant and to building up because otherwise.

It’s just, hey, what did I do wrong? And all you’re doing is avoiding getting in trouble. When a staff is just avoiding the stick, but has no carrot to go after, life just starts to suck. Healthy competition and achievement rings loud and clear in what you just said. And I think that Levels, morale, and it’s all foundational to your company culture.

And when somebody new comes in and if those are the best practices and that is what is modeled, whether you do mentoring or shadowing or not, I think it just, people know instantly, do I fit this culture? Do I want to be competitive? Do I want to be my best? Do I want to be recognized for achievement?

And if they feel like there’s team spirit here and camaraderie, and. You don’t really have to manage these people. It’s like they know what’s expected. They know they want to deliver their best every day. And they have that passion because it comes from the whole operation, running on numbers, not six.

So I think that’s tremendous. It’s great. You mentioned Finances briefly are there key performance indicators that you watch on a weekly basis and do you take a personal part in that or do you have a finance guy that just reports the numbers to you and what are those key KPIs? We are very close to it.

I run one, a few aspects of the business and my brother does the financials, but we all obviously overlook that closely. We do a 13 month P& L process. We are, which to someone who doesn’t know, If you try and compare February to March, it’s a little asinine because there’s different amounts of Fridays, different total days, so we go off 13 four week periods.

The staff is incentivized off the 13 four week periods. Our KPIs obviously are the things that they can control, food cost or labor cost COGS, and then even certain other things like a manager, GM, can control How much towels are being, so they’re not being wasteful with certain other items, but obviously they’re not in the mix for the utilities.

But we are pragmatic in a manner where we don’t do a theoretical P& L, we do a cash P& L. So if we spent a bunch on marketing that related to that store, I’m going to talk to that GM and say, Hey, I’m going to do this. Are you opposed to it? I don’t know. It’s a lot because it’s going to affect that GM’s P& L, but the front of house is incentivized by incremental value of the average ticket and where they are above the average ticket and the kitchen managers are incentivized based upon food cost hitting its targets.

Great. So I am hearing that you’re incentivizing people to stay within that sweet spot. And you understand what those critical numbers are. How about menu costing? How often do you keep up with that? Because inflation and volatility of the markets and all that kind of stuff. And I can’t imagine how much pizza cheese that you buy and certain other things, pepperoni and all that.

That’s a key KPI unto itself. Just making sure that you’re continually maintaining margins. Oh, for sure. And. At this level, it matters at scale significantly more. But even on an individual level, back in the day we were looking at cheesereporter. com, which is what a lot of pizza people in the know to look for, to see the fluctuating market, to understand, hey, the price went up.

My price went up, the price went down. Did my price go down in correlation? So that you’re keenly aware. And we got smart at that, a decade ago. And now our pricing is paced upon two weeks after the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on pizza reported. Now with all that said, yes, we are keenly aware of the price of cheese, the price of our meats.

And we. Have a relationship with our vendor who we use PFG, Performance Food Group in Roma, where it’s what I call a partnership. Most vendor relationships start at the pariah level. A pariah is hey, we’re going to buy this paper product. It’s they don’t really need it. They’re just trying to leech off and monetize.

I’m not saying all vendors, but I think a lot do, especially with the single unit operator and a surly vendor. Whatever the vendor relationship is, we are massive on turning it into a partnership, making sure they know our goals, we’re helping them to their goals, and that there’s no BS, there’s no hey that guy didn’t give me a good price, I’m gonna go to this other guy this week.

A lot of ethical conversation involved to build that relationship that says, Hey, here’s where we need to be to have this relationship, not in question. We need this to go in flux with the market. We understand the market’s going to fluctuate. We understand you need to make a profit, but let’s not be dummies here.

And let’s not cut our nose to spite our face over a box of napkins. And that’s where we’re at now. And I also, all the stuff I’m talking about. I wish I had known day one, because I could have done it day one. It’s not just because we’re this big now that I could do this. A lot of it we could have done much earlier, it was just not knowing any better.

And that’s what I believe the industry does not need to be this hard, but it’s put at this high failure rate because people are leaning into, I just need to make better food and that’s how I win. And there’s so much more to it than that. It’s really relationships and systems and leadership, true leadership.

And leadership is not I made hey, do this for me and I’m out. It’s caring more about everything and caring about the vendor. We get a good price because I genuinely give a crap about the guy that is our vendor. And by doing that, I never have to have this hey, he’s screwing me over thought in my head.

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I’ve had great relationships with Performance Foods as well. And I do quite a bit of speaking for them across the country. So I think I totally, what you just said makes a lot of sense to me. How about labor cost? Now, that’s something that’s been a huge pain point across the country. Many parts of the country, have been severely affected by paying the highest wages ever, primarily to the kitchen people.

Is that, has that been a factor to you and has that led you to have to increase prices or make efficient and how are you dealing with it? And to your previous question, yeah, we raised prices five times. Last year so we, and it was right in with the market. Like we had to change pricing. Now with that certain things we came down on and we played the pricing game because we could look at, Hey, the food cost on this is running at it’s 2 for this.

It used to be 1. 50. So let’s take the price up. But then you’re like, not going to make it 8. 73. Do we go up to 10 or do we take the drink price up? To offset this other thing, because we’re looking at it as a holistic thing and what’s going to overtly hit the customer in a way where they’re like, that’s too much.

So that’s the pricing game. In the labor market, obviously labor has gone up in price. So what do you do? Two things, get better labor or train your existing people to be more multifaceted. I don’t want my people to lose hours, but I want them to compete for those hours. And that’s, and the second of the store is run hostage.

by the staff because, hey, could you work this week? Could you work extra? And they’re like, they’re burnt out. They don’t want to work. And then they know they got you in a situation where they can half ass because you’re not going to fire them. You need them more than they need you. That’s when it gets really bad.

So it’s the fine line of keeping it competitive and then cross training. True cross training where they don’t get into no, this is what I do. Yeah, you do that. Awesome. Do everything else. Because. I need to be able to have not six guys here at two o’clock on a Tuesday. That’s where the labor cost is saved. And then on a very functional level, it would be taking the scheduler, marrying it to the POS, having projections, real projections based upon What you believe you’re going to make that week. Making moves when they go sideways. So hey, not having a great day, we gotta cut someone.

And even if everything went according to plan, you scheduled for Tom to come from 9 to 3. Do you have a system in place to know that Tom came in at 8. 30 and he’s supposed to leave at 3, but now it’s 5? And if that didn’t go according to plan, and the manager did keep him, that you have something that says in a report, wait, hold up, why was he there two hours late?

Otherwise, it’s going to happen all the time. And you’re going to be at the end of the week and look at your managers. Hey, how come we’re over by 20 hours? I don’t know. It’s crazy week boss. Crazy week, man. And you’re gonna be like, I guess so. And there you, there went 20 hours, 40 hours, six, a few hundred hours, 5, 000 bucks gone.

And that’s where it comes just back down to basic ass math. That’s another system also, Mike, and it’s funny you bring that up because that happened in my restaurants a long time ago, my flagship, my biggest restaurant had about 55 employees in it and I would prepare the. The payroll information, I had a payroll company that processed it, but I would look at the schedules and I would, punch it, do all the hours and all that kind of stuff.

And I suddenly noticed that out of 55 people, I had 28 or 30 people that would clock in anywhere from 8 to 10 to 15 minutes early. And I’m like, the schedule says they’re supposed to be here yet they’re putting in, and I watched, and they walk in the door and the first thing they do is they clock in on the POS and then they go pour themselves a soda and then they hang up their coat and then the ladies go in the bathroom, they put on their makeup, they chat with their friends.

And it’s like they were all doing this and I’m like, this is costing hundreds of dollars a week in lost productivity. So we put a system in place. We were very good to our people. We recognized and rewarded them. We gave them opportunities, but I made it clear, listen, we will not pay you for this time. You be here when the schedule says you’re supposed to be here, clock in then.

And yes, there are legitimate times that, we call you in early, but then here’s a system where your manager needs to sign off why you came in early. And that saved us hundreds of dollars in lost payroll and thousands over the course of months. And I’m really glad you brought that up because that’s just another thing that you have to monitor in your restaurant, in the business of a thousand details.

And clearly you’ve seen that as well. Yeah, and it’s right. It is a thousand details. There is no silver bullet. It’s a thousand golden BBs and it’s just sucks that’s what it is. But when you understand that’s what it is, now you can do something about it. That’s tremendous. Now I’m getting the sense that you travel quite a bit to get inspiration outside of your concepts and maybe even traveled quite a bit that inspired your concepts.

You’ve got so many different, You’ve got different locations, you’ve got different concepts, you’re really into pizza, but you also have real Italian gelato, and you’ve got Philly cheesesteaks, and you’ve got pasta, and you’ve got a food truck, you’ve got a lot going on. Tell us about some of those things and what makes them really successful.

The, thank you the brand promise of Andolini’s is to under promise and over deliver, and that’s what we started with. And they were like, that worked. Andolini. Let’s always do it that way. So there’s been times where we’re like, okay, we could do this concept. And we’ll, even when we were starting the Philly cheesesteak place, both my brother and I have been to Philadelphia, know what we know beyond just patent genos, like we have been, but okay, let’s really dive deep.

Let’s really know. So then We will do an R& D trip and destroy an insane amount, go to 12 places in a day, document everything, contact vendors, look at all of it. Then it’s, an iteration, 50 different things, 50 different ways, till we are not just saying, hey, we, someone told us this is good, or this guy does it this way, so that’s it.

But that we could blind, On a blind taste test, say, that’s incredible. And then have a bunch of staff members say, that’s awesome. That’s way, that’s the best version of it. Have people that are customers who don’t care about our opinion, genuinely say it. And then, it’s not. It’s just pure work. It’s iteration and a lack of ego with a ton of humility is the way to, to get to where we want to go and we look at it now in Tulsa especially, we’re like a Tarantino film.

Tarantino can make a film about basket weaving and everyone’s going to go see it because there’s a trust to that director. We, if we come up with something, people trust that we’re going to be nerds and dork out about the quality of what we’re going to do. We’re And that we will have a trust that people will go to it.

And that’s what we’ve done with everything we’ve created and to create something that’s okay, there’s an aspect of it. That’s here. There’s an aspect that’s there, but this is what’s genuinely us involved in it. And then how are we taking it above that to be an experience that’s not just. Over the top service, but also hospitality cut in there.

So even with our fine dining restaurant, it wasn’t just oh, let’s, serve from the right and the best wine and all that. But it was, what can we do that makes this an experience and never talks down to the customer? It’s we’re going to enjoy it with you. We’re going to take the food hyper serious, but we’re going to not take ourselves serious and have fun with you.

And that mindset has translated very well across all brands. So it’s, Hey, this is something incredible that we’re extremely stoked about. Let’s have fun and a great environment eating it. And not have that be corporate BS. Yeah, you’re approaching things with a fine dining mindset. You’re quality minded, you’re detail oriented, but yet you don’t take yourself too seriously and it is about fun.

And again, I’m on your website and I see the fresh grated parmesan, with the server bringing the wheel and they’re grating it on your pasta, and that is one of those hospitable details that is memorable. And it’s a seemingly small thing that enhances the enjoyment of the meal, yet it’s real service.

And you don’t see that a lot today. And that’s just one example. And I’m guessing that there’s lots of examples like that in all your concepts. And I think of that as a hook because I’m a huge believer in hooks, those things that set you apart from the competition that are memorable, that might even be social media opportunities when someone just takes their phone out and then shares something virally.

And it could be a little detail like that, that suddenly drives business. And that’s a business minded approach. You’re not just serving food. You’re serving experiences here. Yeah. And. It sounds novel hey, we should do this, but now it’s oh, that’s the gig. That’s the script. What’s the signature item?

What’s the call to action, or the elevator pitch, or the hook as you put it? What’s the elevator pitch? So that someone who goes, because the biggest epiphany I had, I was like three years deep into the restaurant, and we were selling a frozen ravioli that was arguably A great frozen ravioli. No one had this frozen ravioli.

It was a spinach artichoke, little frozen ravioli. And then we got this thing to be big. We got it over in the mindset of our customer. And I was like, yeah, great. This is making money. Easy to sell. Customers dig it. We win restauranting, right? And then a turn and burn Italian restaurant opened down the street and just found it.

They just found it in the catalog. I’m like, they got it too. There’s nothing proprietary about it. So now, we’re selling McNuggets and they’re selling McNuggets, but we’re both calling ourselves, not McDonald’s. And here they are, and I’m like, oh, crap. There was nothing to that. We didn’t create it.

Anyone could rip it. We’re screwed. This, we can never do that again, because now if we’re not impressive by default. We’re unimpressive. If we ever become the box that people check have you been to Andolini’s? Yeah, I’ve been there. You want to go back? No, I’ve been there. We checked the box. We’re done.

We’re dead in the water. We are not in the middle of Times Square where we can just live off the transient people coming through. We have to have people coming again. So if you ever become a check the box restaurant, you’re like, we’re doing everything right. We fill the waters. We give them food.

People leave, we get the checkout on time. I’m like, yeah, you also did your hair today. You tied your shoes. You don’t win. You don’t win life because you did the basics. You have to give some impressive thing that’s oh my god, we, that’s our, we gotta go back. Or you’re in town, we got, okay, if you’re in town, this is the place we have to take you to.

If you’re not in that realm, you’re fighting hundreds of restaurants. You can fight five experience driven restaurants in your town, or a hundred convenience driven restaurants. And it’s a really hard fight to fight convenience. It’s actually easier to be the best than it is to be mid, and fight gas stations who could put out a halfway decent food item, be it sandwich or pizza or whatever at this point.

You’re, they’re gonna win convenience, so I’m, I gotta be over here on the experience side. You got a lot of balls in the air, Mike, meaning multiple things going on. Can you define what exactly is your role? And obviously you’re a visionary, but is there any typical day for you or what do you spend most of your time doing day to day?

So every day, like a Thursday is a much different than a Monday. So I head up ops, marketing, the tech side, then looking at, development, and then where are we at? My brother heads up the R& D and the finance, and then, we’ll do a meeting. We’ll do a meeting with all our GMs, go and bounce from the stores, do different news stuff.

I’ll be the direct liaison for all things that happen for PR, and then emails and whatnot, and it’s a very white collar job with a very blue collar base, and it started with me working over every day. For two years. I’m not saying that with hyperbole like truly every day from 5 a. m. Till 1130 and making the dough and doing all that and that was when we were a pizzeria And as it grew on, I was like, okay, just again, the Marine Corps, you gotta, an officer mindset is, can I be a, in the grunt work, or can I be getting stuff done, and to do both is, it’s a talent that we’ve cultivated, but truly, Running Andolini’s Worldwide, which is what we call our restaurant group because it’s just stupid and fun, because I don’t want to call it hospitality, I don’t want to call it group, so we call it Andolini’s Worldwide even though all of our stuff is in Tulsa.

It’s just fun and leading it from that way and seeing what’s going wrong, there’s different seasons of what we’re doing. Like this last month on, I did a manager training for all our new managers where it’s a personal, like multi hour development. I did a white jacket training, which is a pizzaiolo based in depth knowledge of all things fermentation with our people that have been there for a while.

I did train the trainer. The other day where I brought all the people that want to be trainers and did a long form development there. So just developing and now building out Andomania is our next big push. So we’re doing seasonal pushes. We’re doing marketing pushes. We’re doing evaluative things. And then it’s Oh, Hey, Are we changing phone systems?

Are we upgrading the tech? What is this looking like? And then come up with the problem that we devalue, decide in our meeting, and then a full SOP of what we’re going to do to work with it, which used to be so much harder than it is today with things like Asana and ChatGPT and Loom. Like I could move so much faster than I could have just three years ago with the new approaches to systemizing things that now we’re moving faster and faster.

And that’s what a day is. Bye. Instead of writing or driving myself into the ground, which is what it used to be, it’s now, okay, I trust that person to do it. Here is the KPI that is the directly responsible individual. They will report. And I’m picking up my son, having family time, and not, again, which is so typical, driving myself into the ground.

Thinking that because I did that, I’m keeping it straight. And therefore I went, cause I’ve learned enough to know that’s just a BS narrative. You’re definitely a high energy guy. And it sounds like you’ve been able to strike that balance. Cause you mentioned picking up your sons. You do have family time, but business is very important to you and not every operator can find that balance.

And I think you’re inspired based on how much really you have on your plate, but yet you’ve systemized things that lets you. Obviously, and I don’t use the word delegate, I use the word empower and you’re doing that. That’s tremendous. The word marketing came up a minute ago. Let’s talk about marketing in the beginning versus marketing now, because you’re a high profile operator now in Tulsa.

It’s like the community at large must obviously know you. You’re, Entrepreneur of the year, restaurateur of the year, all those accolades lead to positive press, lead to new visits and all that kind of stuff. Does that mean that your marketing budget has gone down because word of mouth and positive press and online reviews and all those things kick in?

Do you still do social media? What’s your strategy today versus in the very beginning? In the beginning, it was non existent and I, we never really had a budget and we didn’t spend much on marketing at all. And then it was, we have zero money. So figure out stuff that we could do for next to nothing.

Was the original plan. And then I got really good at that stuff that costs next to nothing. And then when I started trying to do stuff that costs money and I wasn’t really getting great results, I’m like, why am I doing this? That over there made sense. It’s getting an ROI off connection is easier.

Getting an ROI off a ValPak coupon is pretty damn hard. So it became, what are we doing? That’s going to relate to people. Case in point, I will get significantly further bringing pizzas to a radio station, connecting with them, having them talk about it just because they dig me as a person and because I’m cool to them when they need to do a charity.

Yes. Then I am when they’re like this hour brought to you by Andolini’s go to Andolini’s they’re the best. It’s no, that says who this non genuine garbage tagline. It just. Out of their brain, but if you’re like, Hey guys, we got Mike from Mandolini stopped by, brought us pizza. Oh, have you been? Oh yeah.

I go to BA one. Oh, where’d you go? And they’re talking about it. That’s what I, and that cost near nothing. So that’s what I started to learn. And I was like, hold on. I can’t pay for a person to be the spokesperson. So I got to do it. How can I be good on camera? Cause I wasn’t. Learn what to say, learn how to move my hands.

And that’s cheaper. It’s easier. I’m available all the time. So the news needs to do a story about the local fair coming to town. I’ll do it. Hey, here’s my number. Next time you guys need a story about anything to do with small business or restaurants. Now I’m on this show and not the commercial for zero cost. That’s been my strategy this whole time, was to be the face of the brand, be available, endear ourselves to the community, not just with communal events and, hey, United Way wants you to donate something, alright, here you go, but truly hey, what do you guys need it’s election night, let’s bring each of the news station’s pizzas, just, maybe they talk about us, maybe they don’t, but now they saw what they are stuck in that rest, in that place all night, We had their back and that’s going to matter in the future.

That’s interesting because we started, we’ve talked a little bit about your experiences with the Marine Corps and some would call this guerrilla marketing because it’s really resourceful when you don’t have the resources in the beginning and the creativity kicks in and you think outside the box.

And do something different that the competition isn’t doing. It’s more credible. It’s more believable. It catches the attention of the public. So it’s street fighting, it’s guerrilla marketing, whatever you want to call it. I’ve always been a fan of that. So I’m really glad you brought that up because very few operators, will do something that too many operators spend too much money on things that just aren’t trackable.

And they don’t know if there’s any ROI to it. And they get caught in a moment because the phone rings. Hey, if I put you on the radio, everybody driving in the, to work in the morning is going to hear about X and such. Yeah, I’ll try that. And it’s waste of money. No, do something different, creative, and just, Blow them away with creativity and like you said, resourcefulness.

So thanks for sharing that. How about technology? What’s necessary to run your business these days? Cause there’s so much restaurant tech out there now. Oh, this is so much. So our tech stack. As we would call it we’re heavy on toast. We hired a former toast, our toast installer back when toast was still using third parties they stopped using third parties and then he was not able to do it anymore.

Like you want to work just for us. And so he does all our it and. So if you go to andopizza. com and check out our toast, you’ll see it’s pretty clean. It looks very clean. Cause I’ll hear people complaining about toast and I’m not like in bed with them, but it’s a great product. And so we’re using all of their stuff.

We use seven shifts though for scheduler ADP. And then let’s talk about like in, in a restaurant tech. Yeah, has switched from just regular ass text messages to iMessage. We, for a while there, mandated all our staff be on iPhone and got them iPhones until that became a little bit more cost preventative.

And now it’s on a WhatsApp channel. But for all of the staff, we use 7Shifts for notifications. For training, I use a mix of YouTube Unlisted, Which is the greatest server for video in the world, and it’s also free. It’s, again, that’s just another hack or tip or whatever. There you go. There’s another company that I will give a lot of credit to, a very interesting, cool company, I don’t think a lot of people know about, called MyBytes. MyBytes is a, it basically creates you can create TikTok level videos for your staff to watch for training. I am an incredible, massive fan of Ovation. I am not benefited by saying it. People think I, I let, I said, your product is so damn good. Use my likeness at Pizza Expo. I don’t even want, you guys have done so much for our business.

Just go with it. And that’s I’ve never heard anyone, everyone’s oh yeah, I don’t know, maybe I’ll try it. And then I get an email or call that’s awesome. I am at a loss. That is so cool. So it gets you, it just puts your reviews out there more. And if they like you, it sends it to review. If they don’t like you, you have a loss prevention plan.

Easy peasy makes all the sense of the world. Great app. That’s about, there’s probably a bunch of other fringe ones, but I’ve also limited it. I take stuff and I try it I’ve done loyalty programs and they didn’t work out and I was like, gotta cut it. You guys, it’s gorgeous. It’s not working right It’s not connecting right.

And if it’s not going well, we are not opposed to pivoting and we’ll give something a hypothesis Give it a solid shot. But like any hypothesis, you got to be willing to iterate or Toss it out. And we have done that more than once. I love it. Fantastic. What about the food truck? Like how long have you had the food truck and that in and of itself is marketing your restaurants, right?

You’re taking things on the road, you’re doing catering, but you’re also doing, how do you how do you create the pizzas so fast and be able to serve people quickly at big events when you’re just, taking the money in, you’re making the pizzas, you’re You know, sending the slices out the door. Is it efficient to do that?

It’s clearly working, but we destroyed it with the food truck. The food truck’s great. So we started at 20. 13, 2014. So early adapter. People would be like, Hey, you need to come out. You need to open up here. You need to, I’m like, no, that’s a horrible idea. But we have this one festival. You can kill it.

I’m like, we should go to your one festival, but not the other 364 days in a year. So the food truck seemed like a good fit for that. We did it in reverse. A lot of people start with food truck, build up to a restaurant. We had a full blown restaurant, went to a food truck, which meant that we could produce the dough and bring the dough on.

So the pizzas are made on the truck. But all the prep is done off truck. A lot of people, especially with a pizza truck, when they’re starting where am I going to mix at? Cause it’s hard to have a big ass Hobart on a food truck. So that’s why I think there’s less pizza food trucks because of that going backwards on it.

And then, so they push out the doughs, they’ll make pizzas and then it’s just reheating the slices on a straight up New York style deck oven, but it’s built into the former UPS box van. That’s what it is. It’s a straight up UPS box van turned into a truck. And whether it’s a wedding that wants to have a kitschy, non classic wedding with pizza, or we’re at Rock La Home, or Oktoberfest, or whatever festival, or we’re just at the bars that don’t have food, that want to have something outside to feed their people, having a good operator who’s, Got a little edge to him, likes being out late at the nightlife scene, enjoys that, has always worked well for us.

We’ve also leaned into the tech. Day one, we had cameras and a POS and credit cards. That was not typical in 2013, 2014. Now everything’s tap to pay. And then to that point about efficiency, it’s having the awareness When there is a big festival and there’s a 20 person line to go into the line and get everyone’s order and then produce that for the people in the kitchen per se so that they have an awareness of what’s coming down and also now we’ve captured that order for the next 20 people and to move at that level of speed and efficiency so because a lot of people go to these events and they’re they walk up hey I want to get this and this the menu’s too big it’s all right that’ll be 15 minutes if they’re sitting there and then they’re like this you I’m at this festival, I don’t want to sit here for 15 minutes.

So having slices and pounding it makes us, when we’re at those events, like the, Oh, Andolini’s? Oh, we can get it quick? Oh, that’s great. Or our kid is here? We kill, I would have never thought that. It would be like the kid, We’re not selling kids pizzas, but let’s just get a pizza. I know there’ll be quick, just get pizza.

And we, then we become the de facto trusted solution at that point. Last question, Mike, let’s talk about your best advice to operators, whether they have a single location or they want to grow an operation like yours. We talked about passion. We talked about systems, but what can you tell people to get to the level they want to get to, whatever that is?

The straight up down and dirty advice, the first one is get over yourself about everything. If you’re, I should make more money, get over yourself. I should have to do it all? No, you don’t. Get over yourself. We’re the best. Get over yourself. You’re not. Like everything it is, if you have, destroy your ego because it will produce no profit for you.

And part of that ego is when you do other, your staff’s work, instead of being like, I’m so hardcore, I can do it all. No, you’re a 55 year old mom making your 32 year old son’s bed. That’s what you are at this moment. First is destroy the ego. And truly like you have to emasculate the ego. Cause people think people don’t realize what ego is a lot of the time.

And I’m like, it’s that. The next is whatever you decide, you’re right. If you decide there’s no way we’re going to fail, come hell or high water, I will die before I let this fail. You’re absolutely right. If you’re like, I’m doing this right now. And if it works out great, if it doesn’t, that’s fine too.

You’re right. And it won’t. And then the last one is, If you are not impressive, by default, you’re unimpressive and they’re going somewhere else. And that’s not just the food. That’s not just the ambiance. It’s not just the service. That’s you as a leader for the business. It’s you and the zeitgeist. It’s how you conduct yourself with the vendors and all that isn’t overtly different than the norm.

Then it’s basic, it’s milktoast, and you’re going to get passed over. And life is going to be harder because you have not put attention and effort into these things to be impressive. And then the, I guess when you pull it all together, it’s but it’s all doable, so be, do not be cocky, but it is smart to be confident that, Hey, all these other dummies figured it out.

So why not me? And there’s a way to figure it out if you want to figure it out. And that’s where I, that’s what I’m a big proponent of. I don’t want this industry to be so hard. It was, I’ve taken years off my life, letting it be hard. And I don’t think it needs to be that way for others. I genuinely don’t.

That’s a beautiful message. What a great way to wrap up an episode. Thank you so much, Mike, for being on the show. For sure. Thank you for having me. That was the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. Thanks so much to our audience for tuning in. Thank you to the sponsors of this week’s episode. Can’t wait to see you next time.

So stay tuned and stay well.

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