06:09 – Todd Brooks [span_0](start_span)Okay, I see you.[span_0](end_span) 06:17 – Brad Stevens [span_1](start_span)Okay, you’ll have to click unmute and start video, and you should be good.[span_1](end_span) 06:26 – Todd Brooks [span_2](start_span)Yeah, say something.[span_2](end_span) 06:31 – Brad Stevens No, nothing yet. [span_3](start_span)It looks like it might be a different audio setting.[span_3](end_span) 06:37 – Todd Brooks [span_4](start_span)Hello,[span_4](end_span) 06:42 – Todd Brooks Hello. Totally good. [span_5](start_span)Okay.[span_5](end_span) 06:47 – Brad Stevens This good morning, Mr. Todd Brooks. Well, we just got over being sick, so that was fun. But it is what it is. Everyone’s doing better, so I’m grateful for that. [span_6](start_span)You were out dirt biking yesterday, right?[span_6](end_span) 07:05 – Todd Brooks [span_7](start_span)Yeah, yeah, doing motocross.[span_7](end_span) 07:08 – Brad Stevens That’s awesome. I always like… I don’t know, maybe I romanticized it as a kid. I skateboarded and I remember my dad being like, “No dirt bikes, you will break your arm. Look what already happened.” So, where do you go? [span_8](start_span)What do you do with it?[span_8](end_span) 07:20 – Todd Brooks There’s about three or four different tracks that are within about an hour of Naples, so we drive out there. We like this one because it’s lit up so you can do it at nighttime. [span_9](start_span)And you know, you’ve got all that gear on so it’s not as hot.[span_9](end_span) 07:40 – Brad Stevens Obviously, like a family pastime history. [span_10](start_span)We just took the boys go-karting, so I assume it becomes a family thing, right?[span_10](end_span) 07:47 – Todd Brooks Yeah, yeah, it’s an all-day event. You go out and you spend the day there, and you know, usually you grill out and have lunch or dinner, or whatever time it is. [span_11](start_span)But yeah, it’s a unique sport.[span_11](end_span) 08:02 – Brad Stevens Well, and I’ll say—how to pose this in the right way—it’s been very cool working with you, because I feel like you know how we’ve been doing this for a couple years now. You are very small-business oriented, you’re very family oriented, you’re a very local community-type business. [span_12](start_span)I feel like in the world we live in, that’s not really something that you see a lot of.[span_12](end_span) I remember, so Ryanne Kernow—ryanne.org originalmente connected us—and I remember her saying, “Todd is genuinely a good guy.” I heard her say it, and I understood the words that she meant, but it’s one of those things when you see it. [span_13](start_span)I have to say, it is an honor to work with you, man, and just thank you for what you do.[span_13](end_span) I remember going to Brooks Burgers as a kid, and I mean, this must have been maybe a year or two after you opened. Just got my license and going out in my independence at 16, I’m getting a burger. And, like, where did we go? We all went to Brooks Burgers. So I guess very briefly, and anyone can look it up, obviously the history of Brooks Burgers is out there. Number two burger joint in the United States. [span_14](start_span)Oh yeah.[span_14](end_span) 09:08 – Todd Brooks [span_15](start_span)That was our biggest accolade.[span_15](end_span) 09:10 – Brad Stevens Why? How did it start? [span_16](start_span)Why did it start?[span_16](end_span) 09:13 – Todd Brooks Brooks Burgers started because I had been—I’ve been in the industry since I was really 14, I guess, is when I started as a dishwasher, and then kind of moved up through the ranks over the years. [span_17](start_span)You know, through all the positions of serving and cooking, and ended up as vice president of a company in Kansas City.[span_17](end_span) And then, the reality of the restaurant business is you’re going to work to be successful 60, 70, 75 hours a week. So I did that for years, and then we had kids. I worked for a great company in Kansas City, but things kind of fell on bad times in the housing market back in 2007 or ’08. We had opened up a whole lot of restaurants really fast on borrowed money. I say “we,” it wasn’t my restaurant—I was the vice president—but we had opened up too many restaurants too fast. So we were sitting on millions and millions of dollars of borrowed money, and nobody was going out to eat anymore. [span_18](start_span)And if they were, they were eating burgers, not steaks, you know?[span_18](end_span) So a couple of the restaurants failed, and things got kind of ugly. We decided it was a good time to take a chance and do something ourselves. So we moved from Kansas City down to Naples, Florida, sold everything we owned, and then bought this little joint. [span_19](start_span)It kind of got a dive feel to it, but I will say that when I bought it originally, it was so bad and so dirty, my wife told me to get my money back.[span_19](end_span) 10:55 – Brad Stevens [span_20](start_span)Well, I mean, I…[span_20](end_span) 10:58 – Todd Brooks I was like, “You have to see the vision. You’ve gotta see through all that.” [span_21](start_span)So, you know, we redid the whole restaurant, cleaned it up, redid the menus and the food, and that’s kind of where we started.[span_21](end_span) 11:10 – Brad Stevens The impossible dream that succeeded. And I mean, just for people that haven’t been—and obviously I’ll do some screenshots in the video when this is done—but in that sense, I mean, you have like the planes and you have the superheroes, and I feel like it is Americana to the core. I mean, it is a… I hear you. I hear the dive thing. [span_22](start_span)It’s smaller, but the original location downtown is where you started too, right?[span_22](end_span) 11:32 – Todd Brooks Yeah, that’s the first location. I don’t say “dive” like it’s a bad thing; I think it’s a good thing, you know. [span_23](start_span)It’s very comfortable, like an old baseball glove that’s been worn in. It works and fits perfectly, you know.[span_23](end_span) 11:50 – Brad Stevens And it’s funny because you’re just north of Fifth Avenue. I know, obviously, Third Street, whatever, but for those that aren’t familiar with Naples, you’re just past where I feel like it’s the exact opposite of that. I feel like you are a beacon of normal, of like, “Everyone eats a burger, come on.” It’s not caviar, it’s not fancy—that’s it. This is just everyday food, obviously. You have a lot of other stuff too; you’ve got shakes, you’ve got stuff for those that may not dig on meat, and you use very good ingredients. [span_24](start_span)So tell us a little bit about the beef, and just give a little shout-out to them.[span_24](end_span) 12:22 – Todd Brooks Yeah, the beef is nice. One of the reasons we stay with it is it’s actually a very small ranch in North Carolina called Brass Town Beef. And the gentleman—the cowboy that runs the whole thing—he comes around about every three months and stops in to check. It’s very unique because it’s grass-fed, but they finish it on something called corn soilage. What they do is they take a bunch of unfermented corn stalks and a bunch of other stuff, and they ferment it and feed it to the cattle. [span_25](start_span)So it’s really healthy for the cattle.[span_25](end_span) But the benefit is because it’s ungerminated corn, it can still be classified as grass-fed, even though they’re getting the flavor from the corn. It’s not grain-fed beef, so it’s kind of right in between there, but the product’s awesome. He controls it from literally raising it antibiotic-free, all-natural, nothing extra. He controls all that on his fields, and then it goes to a processing plant that’s nearby. [span_26](start_span)He controls that all the way down to even the box that it goes in, because you don’t want the burgers to come in smashed or different sizes and all that.[span_26](end_span) So I made them switch boxes to a heavier box, but the beef is so consistent. I mean, you get the same exact burger every time. That’s the only time that we’ve ever had a product where we didn’t have problems with consistency. Cattle in itself—the nature of the business is every cow is different. You get a different product out of it, especially when you go to a feedlot where they’re taking cattle from 50 different ranches. [span_27](start_span)So this is nice because it’s the same place, and we even bought a little one-by-one-foot plot of his land so that we could say that we own part of the ranch that we got our beef from.[span_27](end_span) 14:28 – Brad Stevens That’s cool. Well, and I feel like, again, that’s like our grandparents’ era, you know? Like, everything used to be high quality. [span_28](start_span)It’s funny that I feel like we pay more now for what used to be normal, and it’s like…[span_28](end_span) 14:38 – Todd Brooks [span_29](start_span)Oh, yeah.[span_29](end_span) 14:39 – Brad Stevens It’s crazy, because I mean, I have friends up here, and they’ll be like, “Oh, I’m gonna stop by Wendy’s and grab a burger,” and it’s like, it’s 15 bucks for fast food that’s garbage. And again, that is solely my opinion—I am not putting that in your mouth, that is just my opinion on Wendy’s. But I’ll say, I cannot fathom it… it’s not even that good. Why wouldn’t you stop at a Coney Island, an American place, or whatever? [span_30](start_span)There are so many local businesses.[span_30](end_span) With you, obviously Naples is a very touristy place. [span_31](start_span)Would you say about half of the business is established, existing clients, so to say, and then the other ones are like the tourists that are coming down, right?[span_31](end_span) 15:13 – Todd Brooks Correct. We have a massive tourist business. We’re so visible on the internet as far as when you come down and start Googling “best restaurants,” “best burgers,” “best whatever.” We pop up and we have thousands of reviews, so it draws a lot of business in. We get people from all over the world—from Germany, France, you name it. [span_32](start_span)They come and they’re like, “Oh, we read your articles online,” or “We read your reviews online, we saw you online.”[span_32](end_span) The first thing that everybody says when they come in is, “We found you online.” And 99% of the people that leave are like, “That was the best we ever had.” [span_33](start_span)We make mistakes like everybody else, but it just depends on how you handle the mistake; that is usually the key to the success of it.[span_33](end_span) 16:11 – Brad Stevens And not to make a promise in that, but I’ll say, in working with you, I’ve seen that firsthand—that if there ever was an issue, the fact that you’re on top of it, paying attention, matters. I feel like there are so many businesses where the owners are absentee, and they’re not nose to the grindstone working 60 or 70 hours a week like you said. I feel like a lot of people don’t do that, and it’s reflected. You see it: the businesses aren’t as successful, the food’s not as good, the thousands of reviews aren’t there. That doesn’t happen by mistake; it’s not that you just hit the lotto on it. I feel like you have a good formula, and the results speak for themselves, right? [span_34](start_span)So, it is what it is.[span_34](end_span) How would you say being the number two burger joint affected things? Because let’s close our eyes—we’re going to a new city, it’s somewhere we’ve never visited before. How do you find somewhere? Again, like you said, you look it up online. This place has good reviews, they have the articles. Did the number two burger joint in the nation accolade switch things? [span_35](start_span)Is that the destination that all of a sudden made it way more successful, way busier than it was, or was that just the icing on top of what was already a cult thing locally?[span_35](end_span) 17:11 – Todd Brooks We were doing very well, but I will say that I can tell you the day that that article came out because we were actually in Kansas City visiting family. Somebody called us up and congratulated us, and we said, “For what?” And they were like, “You were named the number two burger joint.” I said, “Oh, that’s cool,” assuming that they were talking about Naples. [span_36](start_span)And they said, “No, it’s the number two burger joint in the country.”[span_36](end_span) I was like, “What are you talking about?” They’re like, “I’m serious, it’s on TripAdvisor.” So I looked it up, and I was like, “Holy shit”—excuse my language. I looked at my wife and I go, “We gotta go.” We got our airplane tickets changed and came back because I knew it was gonna be busy. After that article came out, for the first three or four or five months, we had probably 50 people waiting outside the door trying to get sat. So yeah, it was definitely icing on the cake, but it certainly drove a lot of business in our direction too. And quite honestly, I think it still does. [span_37](start_span)You know, it’s a clout thing.[span_37](end_span) 18:23 – Brad Stevens I feel like if I’m going somewhere I’ve never been before, it’s, “Well, where do I want to go?” There’s a Five Guys there, there’s this, there’s that. As you go down the list, it rises to the top on its own. What’s amazing to me, though, is how much when people do travel… I remember living in Naples and having friends come down, and I’m like, “Oh, let’s go try this place or that place.” [span_38](start_span)And of course, they’ve never heard of it because they’re tourists, right?[span_38](end_span) And I feel like many people psychologically default to like, “Oh well, I’ll just go to Red Lobster or whatever,” because that’s what’s in their brain. I never understood that. To me, I was always like, if I’m going somewhere, I want to experience what’s there. I will say, man, I miss the food in Naples. I definitely don’t miss the cost of living, but oh my god, I miss the food. I feel like the caliber of just what is the norm there is higher. [span_39](start_span)It absolutely is a great place—a wonderful place to visit, a wonderful place to eat.[span_39](end_span) How would you say the Naples community and the tourist thing… obviously, in the past four years, a lot of that’s changed post-COVID, a lot more people came down. Just give us a little reflection into the community and how that’s supported the business. Was this a good place to start? Would you have started it somewhere different? [span_40](start_span)Just some insight into that.[span_40](end_span) 19:38 – Todd Brooks Yeah, so when we first started here, there was not near as much competition as there is now. There wasn’t a burger restaurant on every corner; they are everywhere now. All the chains have made it down here because the population living here year-round has just grown exponentially. [span_41](start_span)I mean, it’s crazy busy now.[span_41](end_span) The nice part about Naples when we started was we spent most of our time doing on-the-ground, organic advertising. We shook hands with everybody that came through the door. We did direct mailers to the audience around us to let them know that we had redone the place, cleaned it up, and to please come meet us. We knew probably 60% of the people; we’d shake their hands and it was like, “Good to see you.” [span_42](start_span)That’s how we grew the business.[span_42](end_span) It’s a little bit harder to do that now because we’re getting so much tourism and Naples has built up. It is ridiculous now how we’re getting swallowed up by condos on every corner around us right now. So it’s changing rapidly, and it’s a lot of people from the Northeast coming down. It’s not as easy to advertise and get people in just because they’re everywhere, and you don’t get to them the same way that you used to. So we rely heavily on the internet and the clout that we picked up—from you helping us with our websites and stuff, but also the TripAdvisor accolades and different things like that. But yeah, Naples was a good place to start a business because there wasn’t that much competition. [span_43](start_span)Now, if I was coming down here, I’d probably be a little bit more scared.[span_43](end_span) 21:48 – Brad Stevens [span_44](start_span)Because of the risk with so much competition.[span_44](end_span) 21:49 – Todd Brooks There’s just so much competition now. There are burger places everywhere, but we’re holding our own. We’re still doing really good. [span_45](start_span)Going into a big city, I think you’re always going to have that problem of fighting competition, but originally, it was the perfect spot at the perfect time.[span_45](end_span) 22:08 – Brad Stevens Yeah. Well, and it’s funny because I feel like you nailed it. Naples has become no longer the small city that it was. I remember living off of Biscayne downtown Miami and kind of wondering how did this happen? This small, 10-story ’80s apartment condo building, and now there’s a 50-floor one that’s obviously $3 billion. It’s almost schizophrenic the way that the buildings were laid out, right? [span_46](start_span)And I almost feel like that was rapid growth—that was the ’80s happening there, and you see the growth and the difference in it.[span_46](end_span) I do kind of see the Miami-fication of Naples, you know? And it’s an expensive place to live. I’ll say the shrubbery and the greenery and the way that they’ve done everything around the city—there are not many places in the country that look like that. I feel like you have to go to almost like a Scottsdale or somewhere out in California in Orange County. [span_47](start_span)Naples is gorgeous.[span_47](end_span) Seeing it from the marketing side, so many businesses have opened there to the point now where for every business that I open or help with a website and marketing, Google is making every single business in Naples do a video verification. I don’t have that anywhere else in the world. Nowhere else in the world is Google so strict. It’s because there’s a flood to the market, and 50 people say they’re opening everything. [span_48](start_span)Is it legitimate?[span_48](end_span) I will say, yeah, it is a damn good burger. But because of your reputation, you are very easily seen as trustworthy, and I think that’s something that a lot of businesses have to strive for. You’re right, that is intimidating. But I think Naples is a good place to open a business, even with the competition, almost in a petri dish sense because there’s so much there. I am a burger guy, I’ll say I’ve always been a burger guy. I love my burgers. I remember going to places before I knew about Red Robin, and their cult following is what did it. [span_49](start_span)Would you say you still have those core regulars?[span_49](end_span) 24:03 – Todd Brooks [span_50](start_span)Yeah, absolutely.[span_50](end_span) 24:04 – Brad Stevens And I think that’s kind of what to me has always been interesting. [span_51](start_span)When you see these small businesses succeed, they’re much more likely to rely on that local base because those are the people that are there.[span_51](end_span) And again, you mentioned the website thing, so self-horn-tooting time: Todd’s site, brooksburgers.com, is a WordPress site. If you look up “Burgers Naples,” “Burgers Naples Florida,” “Naples FL burgers,” or every variation, the site is number one in the web results. But you being number one on the map isn’t all just SEO or just me; the reviews helped a huge part of that. If I’m looking at someone who’s in Omaha opening up a burger shop there, it’s going to be hard for them to get 2,000 reviews. That is crucial. It completely makes sense why you have it—because you built that relationship with people, shook their hands, and you were actually there. [span_52](start_span)Do you see other business owners really doing that?[span_52](end_span) 25:01 – Todd Brooks I don’t know. I mean, I literally answer every review myself. I don’t use a media company to do it for me. Sometimes they’re short, sometimes they’re longer, but I answer every review that comes through our place personally once a week. [span_53](start_span)If someone was unhappy, I do a direct contact with them and ask them to contact me back because obviously something went wrong and we want to fix it.[span_53](end_span) Even with the negative reviews, we try to turn them into a positive through self-reflection. We look at ourselves and say, “Okay, is this plausible? Did we really screw this meal up this bad, or was this person just in a bad mood, or what really happened?” So we dig to the bottom of the bad reviews, and I usually contact them back and say, “Hey, you know, what happened?” [span_54](start_span)Especially if it wasn’t a tourist who already left town, I’ll say, “Why don’t you come back? I don’t like to just buy people food; I like to fix the problem.”[span_54](end_span) Typically, if it’s that bad, I’ll say, “Come back in, I’d like to meet you, shake your hand, and show you what we’re really about.” They do come back in, and I tell them, “Listen, why don’t you come in a couple of times?” Once we’ve earned your business back, I’ll ask them, “Would you mind taking down that negative review, with the understanding that it was a one-time mistake?” A lot of times it works. It’s a time-consuming process, but it’s a good way to keep your reviews moving up: fix the problem first, earn their business back, and then go back and say, “Now that you’re a regular, do you mind taking down that review?” [span_55](start_span)A lot of times they will.[span_55](end_span) 27:00 – Brad Stevens Well, and to be real, doing marketing for over 10 years, I can’t tell you the chaos I’ve seen. People get bad reviews and then go and yell at the customer online. Like, what are you doing? [span_56](start_span)”Let’s yell at them, that’s a great idea.”[span_56](end_span) It’s funny, though, because I think a lot of people don’t realize that. Also, I think you have a very good pulse on the business. It’s almost like you have a co-pilot for your business where you’re staring at the dashboard to see if anything’s overheating, right? You’re intently focusing on that. If not, how do you know what’s going wrong? [span_57](start_span)How do you find the trends and correct the issues?[span_57](end_span) I did work in a restaurant when I was like 16, but I don’t have a ton of personal food experience. In marketing, restaurants are hard to run; there are a lot of variables to it. If you didn’t have a good supplier… and I think that is part of it too. You need a successful formula to run a restaurant. I don’t envy your set of issues, and you’ve done some really… I don’t want to say innovative, I don’t even know if that’s the right word, but you have a robot! I mean, that’s freaking awesome. That’s the future. Tell us, for one, what does the robot do? How did you get it? Why are you so open to these things? Because I feel like other people wouldn’t be, and I love that you are. [span_58](start_span)A robot, man, come on.[span_58](end_span) 28:19 – Todd Brooks Well, you have to do new stuff that sets you apart. The robot was kind of born out of the COVID virus when we were having staffing issues and nobody wanted to work. You can deliver 12 entrees at a time with a robot, as opposed to a human carrying out two or three. [span_59](start_span)So it didn’t really replace the server, but it made the server more efficient.[span_59](end_span) It would talk to you, and the kids loved it. The face is in the form of a cat, so you could pet it on its head and it would say stuff like, “Oh, that feels good, scratch my ears.” Instantly, when people see something like that, they take pictures and post it. It’s a great way to offer something different. You’re not just another burger joint, and they didn’t just have an average meal. [span_60](start_span)We benefit the most out of the uniqueness of it.[span_60](end_span) Sometimes if the restaurant’s too busy, we don’t bring the robot out, but 85% of the time we’ll use it. Like I said, it’s more of an eye-catcher. It does make things a little more efficient, but it’s mostly an eye-catcher that gets people to post. [span_61](start_span)They’re like, “Look at this, can you believe they got…”[span_61](end_span) 29:44 – Brad Stevens [span_62](start_span)Can you believe they actually…[span_62](end_span) 29:45 – Todd Brooks Now we have people that come in and actually request it. [span_63](start_span)They say, “Will you please bring the food out on a robot?” because they saw it online.[span_63](end_span) 29:53 – Brad Stevens I mean, the kids… when we come to Naples, I guarantee my three-year-old is just gonna flip. There is a very big fork right now in the world—let’s talk about the elephant in the room—AI and automation. A lot of my artist friends hate it because if you’re a writer, someone can use ChatGPT to come up with text. I think the biggest thing is that technology to me is a tool, and you’re not going to make this stuff go away. If you hate fuel injection and you’re a carburetor mechanic, well, you can hate it all you want, it’s still here. The technology has evolved. It feels like saying, “If you can’t beat them, join them,” but to me, it’s a tool, like with anything. [span_64](start_span)If you rely on it too heavily—let’s say you had only robots and no servers—that could create some issues too.[span_64](end_span) But you found a way to evolve. You’re doing something completely different, and it is cool. Like you said with the picture thing, how many businesses get murals painted for people to take a picture with? How many businesses have a face cutout sign? [span_65](start_span)Everyone is looking for something that becomes an attraction, so maybe I’m just a nerd, but robots are cool.[span_65](end_span) 31:00 – Todd Brooks Yeah, well, that’s part of the whole restaurant experience too. People are going out now expecting an experience, not just feeding themselves. Whatever your niche is, whether you’re high-end or casual, people are looking for food, but they’re also looking for something to pique their interest. [span_66](start_span)They’re not just going in there like you fill up a car with gas; they’re literally going in to eat, but they’re wondering, “Okay, why is this guy getting so many reviews? What’s so great about it?”[span_66](end_span) We’re constantly trying to develop different ways to engage with the customer so that they feel like they didn’t just come have a burger. It’s the same thing with the self-pour tap wall we added. We’ve got 38 beers on tap, and the guests can put a wristband on, go by, and taste them by the ounce. They don’t have to buy a whole beer and feel stuck with it if they don’t like it. They can buy an ounce, and if they don’t like it, they just pour it out and try another one. [span_67](start_span)Giving the guests different experiences and different reasons to come to you, besides just food, is pretty imperative too.[span_67](end_span) And speaking of AI, I thought it was pretty funny. [span_68](start_span)I don’t know if you’ve done this or not, but I used the AI on Google Gemini, I think it is.[span_68](end_span) 31:59 – Brad Stevens [span_69](start_span)Yeah.[span_69](end_span) 32:00 – Todd Brooks I just hit the button and I said, “Hey Google, can you please find the best burger restaurant in the entire state of Florida?” [span_70](start_span)And the first thing that popped up was Brooks Burgers.[span_70](end_span) 32:31 – Brad Stevens [span_71](start_span)Oh my god.[span_71](end_span) 32:33 – Todd Brooks So it fell into the AI. [span_72](start_span)The AI answered it with our place, which made me go, “Holy crap, that just happened.”[span_72](end_span) 32:43 – Brad Stevens Well, and to be real, if you think about it, 20 years ago a search engine was basically like the most infant version of AI, because what’s it doing? It’s searching and indexing things—even when vocal stumbles like “cacao, that can’t, that can occur” happen. [span_73](start_span)It’s finding a way to organize it in a library: what does this mean, and how can I interrelate these things?[span_73](end_span) A very big part of that is the reviews, because the reviews are backing up everything that we did. You can make a website and optimize for whatever your keyword is—like “Burgers Naples”—and it is brooksburgers.com with 2,000 reviews that say “burgers” in it. There’s a lot of parts pushing that. But also, you have a budget for marketing, you’re posting on social media, and you did the phone jail thing. [span_74](start_span)For anyone listening, go to Brooks Burgers and go experience it for yourself.[span_74](end_span) Even with the live music, down to Ben Allen, the private event you did, and the hurricane relief fund… I respect you for this. I see a lot of business owners maybe come up with one thing, not 50 things they keep doing. [span_75](start_span)I feel like you are relentless, sir.[span_75](end_span) 34:00 – Todd Brooks It’s because we’re fighting for the business. [span_76](start_span)There are too many people that we are splitting business with now, so yeah, we’re always trying to keep business and grow the business.[span_76](end_span) 34:10 – Brad Stevens That’s a very smart way to move, and it doesn’t feel random. It doesn’t feel like you’re just randomly spraying these ideas; it feels like a very calculated attack, and it’s impressive. The Tavern and Grill—so that now is the third Brooks location, right? [span_77](start_span)There’s downtown, there’s Vanderbilt, and then the Tavern and Grill.[span_77](end_span) The Tavern and Grill has a slightly different feel; it borders more on the sports tavern category. Obviously, they also have live music. How would you say the original Brooks items that are there… is that what people are coming for still? Even like the donut burger and stuff, I feel like you have a very cult following around that. [span_78](start_span)Is that why they’re going there?[span_78](end_span) 34:56 – Todd Brooks About 80% of the people that are going in there are getting burgers. So yeah, they’re still following the burger business. We pretty much have Naples cornered with the three restaurants; you go seven miles in any direction and hit a Brooks Burgers now. [span_79](start_span)So even though it’s a tavern and grill and we have added entrees, and it’s a little bit bigger and has the ice cream bar stuff, still over 80% of the business is the burgers.[span_79](end_span) Naturally, our next step is going to be trying to go north—maybe 15 or 20 miles up, maybe Estero or Fort Myers. Just far enough out of reach so that we can start gathering new clients. [span_80](start_span)We’ll still get the benefit of people who have heard of us and know about us, but we’ll be far enough away that we’re starting to gather new people, new clients.[span_80](end_span) 36:07 – Brad Stevens As Naples has grown… I remember when I lived way out at Wilson and Immokalee years ago, and I remember it literally being like, “Man, it takes 30 minutes to get to town.” I feel like that’s where a Grill and Tavern is feasible. I will drive from out in the Estates to the Grill and Tavern. Do I really want to go all the way downtown if I’m not already going there? [span_81](start_span)I get that.[span_81](end_span) And it’s funny because I feel like Fort Myers, too, obviously has a completely different feel. One of my best buds is my old bass player, and he has a screen printing shop in Fort Myers. I remember talking to him about the business there and how big it actually is. Living in Naples, you almost think like, “Well, Naples is the wealthy city, so that’s the biggest one.” There’s a lot more to Southwest Florida than just Naples—it’s all of it. Do you see people coming to Naples then going to you, or is it more that they’re tourists in Naples? [span_82](start_span)Are the Fort Myers folks coming into Naples, or is it mostly out-of-towners?[span_82](end_span) 36:58 – Todd Brooks It is more out-of-towners as a general rule, but we do have people driving from Miami who say they just came here for that. They literally make the two-hour trip from Miami over here just to eat there. I’ll ask, “Well, are you staying here?” and they’re like, “No, we just drove over, we’re having lunch and going back.” [span_83](start_span)Driving 200 miles for a burger.[span_83](end_span) 37:24 – Brad Stevens I mean, that is an accolade in itself. I have this one Thai place I love over in Fort Lauderdale, and if we go to Fort Lauderdale… but I went for Butterfly World, I didn’t go just for the Thai food. That is an accolade, man. I could also see that working in spreading out to the people that are traveling. [span_84](start_span)If I work in Fort Myers but I already know you from Naples, I’m going to bring you to the office or whatever else.[span_84](end_span) Florida is an interesting place because of the seasonal aspect. Not living in Florida originally, I never really realized this as much as I saw it living there for 10 years and actually seeing the day-to-day of it. It really does have a very big seasonal ebb and flow, and like in prime season, it is Miami-busy. [span_85](start_span)In the summer, it used to slow down—obviously, that’s changed a lot now with COVID—but it’s amazing how many people actually do come there now.[span_85](end_span) You do a bunch of rewards, and I feel like that again is a very smart business move. You’re using Toast for the system. Rewards are another thing that a lot of businesses skip out on because that makes me want to come back. It’s a psychological game. Every pizza place, everything—it almost amazes me when a business doesn’t have one. It’s like, “You don’t want my phone number? How am I gonna get my rewards then?” Would you say that’s something the regulars are the ones using? If they come once a year, that almost doesn’t really affect them, right? [span_86](start_span)I assume.[span_86](end_span) 38:47 – Todd Brooks Right, correct. But the loyalty is huge. [span_87](start_span)We have thousands of people in our loyalty program now, and on average, we probably have 20 people a day that are either collecting or redeeming rewards off the loyalty.[span_87](end_span) 39:04 – Brad Stevens Oh, okay. [span_88](start_span)Well, man, I remember when we were setting that up to figure out the points for the burgers.[span_88](end_span) 39:11 – Todd Brooks It’s cool, and the guests like it, you know. And we had a glitch in it last week where it was disbursing points incorrectly—it was giving basically a 100% redemption, like if you spent 100 bucks, you got 100 points. So we had to turn it off to get it fixed, and man, it was only down for two days and I can’t tell you how many people were upset about it. [span_89](start_span)The fact that it wasn’t turned on made me go, “We’re working on it.”[span_89](end_span) 39:44 – Brad Stevens [span_90](start_span)It’s obviously worth its weight in gold.[span_90](end_span) 39:46 – Todd Brooks [span_91](start_span)Yeah, people asked for it, and they were like, “What’s going on? Why can’t I get my points?”[span_91](end_span) 39:52 – Brad Stevens Well, and I’ll say Toast is a very complicated point of sale compared to a lot of the others. I’ve seen restaurants that are set up with even Square, but Toast is definitely a much bigger toolset with more to learn, a lot more functionality, and a lot more to do. I will say, though, as much as sometimes that creates fun technical issues, it can be a long time to deal with them and their customer service. Sorry Toast, love you, but my god, let’s…get a little bit more efficient, guys. Can we? I’ll say, though, the functionality is awesome—the fact that they have the birthdays and the point system. They have all these add-ons, it’s very a la carte. How many businesses don’t do rewards? There you go, you’re not paying for it then. [span_92](start_span)But I feel like you’ve streamlined that very well.[span_92](end_span) If someone’s trying to start a restaurant, especially with multiple locations… how hard would it be to start one restaurant, and now you’re trying to start two or three? I feel like you did a great job at formulating and systemizing. But then it goes almost back into another thing, and I’ll say this even in my own business: managing a business and running the business are two completely separate things. I am great at building websites; I don’t like managing a team. It is a lot harder to tell 10 people what to do and still get it done. You obviously have good management skills and good managers in place. How would you say that shifted? Because in a way, you are still an owner-operator, you’re still very involved, but I feel like you are doing the business owner thing too. [span_93](start_span)You’re making this scalable.[span_93](end_span) 41:26 – Todd Brooks Yeah. And the one thing about managing and running a business, though, is it doesn’t matter how many robots you have or how much technology you have—if you don’t talk and communicate with your staff daily, you’re missing the boat. That’s 90% of it to me: communication. You have to know if your staff is in a good mood or a bad mood when someone comes in because something happened. [span_94](start_span)Maybe something personal happened, and they’re just not in a good mood for that day.[span_94](end_span) Sometimes I’ve had people come in who had somebody close to them die, and they still came to work the next day. I’m like, “You should probably go home.” Not in a bad way, just take care of yourself. You’re going to be in a bad mood today, and you don’t want to be here. You have to read your staff, and you have to be willing to be flexible and help them out through the good times and the bad times. A lot of our staff has been with us for over 10 years, which is amazing. [span_95](start_span)So they become like family.[span_95](end_span) 42:35 – Speaker 3 [span_96](start_span)Yeah.[span_96](end_span) 42:36 – Todd Brooks [span_97](start_span)You’re managing people that you’re really close with and that you care about.[span_97](end_span) 42:44 – Brad Stevens [span_98](start_span)Yeah.[span_98](end_span) 42:45 – Todd Brooks It makes it different, you know. You’ve got to do a lot of listening and a lot of understanding. So I really think that’s probably what makes us tick: the fact that we embrace the employees. [span_99](start_span)We don’t offer them pensions and all kinds of benefits and stuff like that, but we do offer them the assurance that if something’s wrong, we’ve got your back.[span_99](end_span) 43:12 – Brad Stevens [span_100](start_span)They actually feel like they’re appreciated versus just another number.[span_100](end_span) 43:15 – Todd Brooks Yeah, absolutely. And they know that they can come to me and tell me something personal, and it’s not going to go anywhere, and we’ll help them through it. Usually, most of my employees get 10 chances, not three chances, if they mess something up. It just is what it is. [span_101](start_span)I’ve been doing it for years and years.[span_101](end_span) And again, I go back to the unhappy guests: it’s how you handle it that gives you a good outcome at the end of the meal. [span_102](start_span)Even if they had a bad burger or a bad experience, if I know about it, nine times out of 10 I can turn it around before they leave out the front door.[span_102](end_span) 43:57 – Brad Stevens Well, and again, I think that goes back to the fact that you obviously care. You’re not in business to tank the business, there’s an obvious part to that. But it keeps going back to that. [span_103](start_span)To me, that is true mom-and-pop—that is “go local,” that is, “This is my business. This is how I’m feeding my family and helping you feed your family.”[span_103](end_span) 44:16 – Todd Brooks [span_104](start_span)Exactly.[span_104](end_span) 44:17 – Brad Stevens And I don’t know, I will say, I feel like I see two things in 10 years of doing this, I either see clients that have staff that have been with them for almost, again, years, decade, whatever, or people are in and out constantly, and they’re not appreciated, they leave, there’s no, there’s no loyalty, and it’s just a high turnover, it’s reflective of itself, and I think that is, that speaks for itself, the fact that you’ve had people that long now, this season affect that. Do they are some of those people like, did they leave? Like, they only, they’re only in Naples in season. I mean, are these full-time for 10 years? [span_105](start_span)They’ve been in Naples[span_105](end_span) 44:49 – Todd Brooks no, they’re full-time employees. Yeah, and a lot of times, I mean, we struggle with it, because a lot of times we’re, you know, during the slow season when you’re not really. [span_106](start_span)Making money, you, we let the employees continue to work, even though we don’t necessarily need them, because we know that they still need, they still have bills, they didn’t go away.[span_106](end_span) 45:12 – Speaker 3 [span_107](start_span)Yeah,[span_107](end_span) 45:12 – Todd Brooks you know, so we, we let them kind of ride the clock, and we let them work as much as, you know, as they can. [span_108](start_span)We don’t, we don’t cut down to bare bones and say, okay, we’ll see you in four months when it gets busy again.[span_108](end_span) 45:24 – Speaker 3 [span_109](start_span)Yeah,[span_109](end_span) 45:24 – Todd Brooks [span_110](start_span)so we kind of take the hit or the loss for that time period, but it pays you back when season comes, you know, especially you have strong, experienced staff and the season comes back around, you know, you’re not retraining people, you’re not rehiring people, and you’d be surprised at the people that come in, they, they know all the servers by first name, you know, they’re like, “Hey Chris, you know, hey Leah, how are you? you know, everybody knows everybody, you know, it’s like they walk in the front door and it’s kind of cool, it’s like, you know, when, when we do occasionally have an employee leave, I mean, I, I’ll have 20 people over a week, be like, hey, Where did, where did Kim go? Where did so and so go? And I’m like, oh, you know, she’s retired, or you know, she moved on to something different, but they literally know all the names of the employees[span_110](end_span) 46:12 – Brad Stevens well. And I feel like, you know, thinking of like a server and all the friends that I’ve had that were in, and again, a lot of that stuff having like tips and all. I feel like the more relationship- based they are too. You’ve set a good business model in front of them, so I’m sure, like, you being about the relationship, they’re about the relationship, they’re emulating your relationship-building skills, you know what I mean, right? I’m sure, even from the start, I’m sure people seeing you, how they’re shaking the hand and all that. I mean, I don’t know, this is like a long Naples, long gone memory. Do you remember Brown Bag? Everyone remembers brown bag. Yeah, I love that place. Oh my god, that’s a hole of the wall. That was like his hole, the wall that gets.. and every time I go, the dad would complain to me about, you know, whatever. And I remember I was moving to Miami, and he was telling me that, like, how he didn’t like Miami, and just whatever. But, like, he.. that was it. I mean, honestly, I think I almost went there for the fatherly advice almost as much as this is, most of them, right? But it’s funny, because I feel like it is a relationship, it is, but I feel like that it’s a lot harder to scale a business like that, because it doesn’t, it doesn’t create a system, it doesn’t create soldiers, so to say, and like, by you creating good staff that are happy, that feel taken care of, that feel appreciated, now they take better care of your customers, and some of that, obviously, that feels like common sense. Again, the reviews going back to, how do you get 3000 reviews, 2000 reviews? I think that is a very big part of how you’ve made this successful, and I’ll say it, like even personally, even I do a chemotherapy treatment for autoimmune stuff, and you, you made a point to, like, I don’t understand what that’s like, Brad, and just, you know, are you, are you like, I don’t know, I’ll tell you, not everyone does that, mr. Todd Brooks, for what it’s worth. Thank you for having a good heart, I see it, and I appreciate it. [span_111](start_span)You also, and again, one time, you, I forget how it worked, but you got some kid from high school called me for like a career day thing,[span_111](end_span) 48:00 – Todd Brooks yeah, they were developed. The high school kids are in a program, or an entrepreneurship program. [span_112](start_span)Yeah,[span_112](end_span) 48:07 – Brad Stevens and I love that you’re involved with the community in that sense, and I feel like that’s something again that a lot of businesses, I feel like they almost do it for the wrong reason. You’re doing it because you genuinely care. You’re doing it again because you want to help the community, you want to see it strive. I feel like so many businesses, they almost just dip out, or they get to a point where they’re successful, and then they become the absentee business owner that’s gone all the time. I remember a job I had where the boss came in, you know, for five minutes a week. [span_113](start_span)How can you run a business if you’re never there, running like,[span_113](end_span) 48:33 – Todd Brooks [span_114](start_span)right,[span_114](end_span) 48:34 – Brad Stevens you’re not running it, that’s how. [span_115](start_span)How would you say, and again the community still could you ever see leaving April, and I know that’s a, you know, let me ask the question, could you ever see moving out of Naples, or is it, is this home for life, you love it, you’ll never, you’ll never leave,[span_115](end_span) 48:51 – Todd Brooks we love Naples, but we probably will not retire here, I, my wife doesn’t like it, but I like cold weather, okay, so you know, we’ll probably compromise and move north, you know, if some years down the road from now, you know, both our kids are going to be out of high school and on one’s out of college, the other one’s heading to college, so you know, we’ll be empty nester soon, and you know, I, I don’t know what the plan is. I would, I think we probably have about another five years, you know. And we’ll still, if the businesses are still running and we have the right people, then maybe we’ll do that, or you know, or you find the right person to sell to and have an exit plan, you know, somebody that cares about the place, and they want to do the same thing. So I’m not leaving Naples anytime soon. We’re actually, we actually just bought another restaurant off Rattlesnake. It’s going to be up. [span_116](start_span)It’s on a golf course, I. And so it’s we just did it because it was a good deal and and and it’s all local people, it’s not, it’s not much tourism, it’s more locals around, so we’re going to be taking over that restaurant, I think, in about two months,[span_116](end_span) 50:14 – Speaker 3 [span_117](start_span)that’s cool,[span_117](end_span) 50:15 – Todd Brooks [span_118](start_span)which will be a new addition, so[span_118](end_span) 50:17 – Brad Stevens [span_119](start_span)will that be a Brooks?[span_119](end_span) 50:19 – Todd Brooks It’s good, no, it’s good. Well, it’s going to be called Mulligans, because it’s, of course, that’s the current name of it. Okay, we’re going to call it Mulligans by Brooks, and then you know we’ll have a big chunk of a Brooks menu in there, but we’re also going to keep the things that are already there that kind of make it what it is working. [span_120](start_span)We’re going to keep those and then just add the Brooks element to it.[span_120](end_span) 50:42 – Brad Stevens Well, and I feel like, and I’m thinking of all my friends growing up in Naples, I feel like there was, you know, and again, I don’t know, like the captain’s cabin, you know, like these old.. and again, it’s like, but that was the cult things, Harold’s place, and I mean, there’s just.. there’s certain places that we all just gravitated to, and it was because we were the locals, we were gonna go to Fifth Avenue. After we got off work, where are we gonna go? We were gonna go to South Street, or whatever. So, it is.. I don’t know. I think it’s hard living in a tourist place like that. I think a lot of people underestimate, they’re like, “Oh, well, you just live with palm trees in paradise, right? Like, how hard can it be? But it’s like, “Oh, there’s actually.. you got to be a survivor to live in a place like that. Now, is it New York? Is it Miami? I mean, no, it’s different than that, but I feel like there’s definitely a the cost of living. I feel like that is obviously you can’t be ignorant to ignore that part, right? But even beyond that, I feel like because of the tourist base of it, like I have met some of my favorite people in the world in Naples, Florida. [span_121](start_span)I feel like they’re really there’s just a genuine good community to everybody.[span_121](end_span) 51:38 – Todd Brooks Yeah, it’s crazy, it’s people, it’s definitely a destination place, because it’s not the people that live here are coming from all over the place. [span_122](start_span)Yeah, I meet people from my hometown in Kansas City, I mean, you know, Ohio, wherever, but I mean it’s, it is a huge melting pot of people down here.[span_122](end_span) 51:59 – Brad Stevens Well, and I almost picture that, and again, the Miami vacation thing. How Naples is blowing up into the new big city that it slowly is becoming. I almost feel like if you could have gone to Miami, like in the 70s, you know, or something, or even picturing like when Miami Beach was first made. I feel like you can see the parallels in it, you know. You can see, and I don’t know, I don’t ever think Naples will truly become Miami, but I think as it’s becoming bigger. I mean, again, like Fort Myers Beach, being.. I remember all of my friends up here in Michigan. So many people went to Fort Myers, that was just a thing. I mean, how many people do you meet over a year that are from Michigan? I guarantee you at least a fifth. I don’t know, there’s a certain number, a lot of them. It’s funny, because.. but again, that cult following.. I’ve met friends here that come to Naples, and like, oh man, we love organically twisted. We go there all the time. It’s like it’s funny because I think they’re marketing for you in their hometown demographic, so that when people are coming, they’re also looking for you. [span_123](start_span)You know what I mean?[span_123](end_span) 52:50 – Todd Brooks Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we get people all the time that come in and they’re like, oh, our friends came in or said that we had to come here if we went through Naples, you know. [span_124](start_span)I’m like, oh great, you know, stay and talk to him for a few minutes, and sometimes they’ll even take a picture with you and be like, I want to send it back to my friends, so they know we ate here,[span_124](end_span) 53:09 – Brad Stevens right. Well, and I mean, I’ll say seeing in other areas of the country that aren’t so touristy in that sense, like it’s there’s people that pass through, that’s a portion of the business, you know, that, and I wouldn’t call them tourists, I’d call them travelers. Let’s say they’re going an hour away for work, or whatever, they’re going to the hospital, whatever. But I feel like you’ve done a good job at managing that, because that’s like that’s like riding a tiger that’s on fire, like to try to manage that. That’s a hard business to run. It’s almost less predictable than, say, opening up a burger shop across from a factory downtown Detroit, where there’s workers that every single day they eat that lunch, there’s not really.. I mean, there are some businesses, but would you say there’s a big corporate base downtown? [span_125](start_span)I mean, there’s some, but not.. I would think not nearly.[span_125](end_span) 53:50 – Todd Brooks There’s.. there’s a lot of restaurants downtown, is what there is. Yeah, but it’s not.. yeah, there’s not a.. I can’t think of any corporate giant that’s anywhere near us. You know, it’s, it’s definitely, it’s definitely, you have to be destination, and you have to be people are coming there to see you, they’ll come to your restaurant because they want to come to your restaurant. It’s not, yeah, we’re not set up across the street from any, any big business that has, you know, three or 300 400 people working for them. [span_126](start_span)I mean, it’s the closest one that’s nearby is, is the, is probably the hospital, and we get a lot of business from the hospital, but there’s, they’re on such a short lunch break, it’s like a lot of times, you know, they don’t, they eat something that’s within walking, walking distance of the hospital, because they don’t have the time to do it,[span_126](end_span) 54:41 – Brad Stevens yeah. Well, I mean, I know there’s some interior designers down there, but again, like, how many people do they realistically, well, they have five employees, 10, like, they don’t have 300 like I said, and I mean it’s crazy, though, too, because I feel like Naples does have such a solid base, and going back to, again, like, I mean, a lot of people eat out there, that’s a very the. Like, if you’re going to open a restaurant, it would be wise to do it in a place where people eat out, right? I’ll say in Detroit, a lot of people eat out here, and I.. it’s almost shocking to me, like, and again, a lot of the times it’s the chains I’m driving by chains, and I’m seeing them packed, and then I see the local business, like, what you’re paying more money for, frozen dye packs, like I don’t get it, but I think it just goes back to what’s familiar, but again, How do you become something familiar in a community? You have to be there. [span_127](start_span)I mean, you open it’s almost 20 years now, right?[span_127](end_span) 55:28 – Todd Brooks [span_128](start_span)15,[span_128](end_span) 55:30 – Brad Stevens the restauranteers for the strong ones, and if you were not one of the strong smart ones, like it put a lot of people out. Would you say that the online ordering thing is just give us a little intro into online ordering? Obviously, there’s issues with DoorDash and things like that. [span_129](start_span)I’m not saying that, I’m more saying just from a solely pickup, not external sources, just your business and online ordering as far as pickup.[span_129](end_span) 56:16 – Todd Brooks Yeah, so online ordering is is is a pretty big chunk of the business, and people are coat, you’re right, COVID trained everybody to go out and do this, you know. Nobody, especially the elder clientele, nobody knew how to do that, you know, five years ago. Yeah, you know, before COVID hit, and then they were forced into it. If they wanted food, they wanted to go out, they were going to have to learn how to do it one way or another. So it definitely, it probably double or tripled your online ordering, you know. And people are used to it now, and they’ve.. it’s just become habit, you know. [span_130](start_span)Uber and DoorDash is a whole nother animal, and the problem with Uber and DoorDash is, is that you don’t have that much control over it, you can’t control if the guy is going to come pick it up in five minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes, sometimes you know, and so, so you’re taking your product that you’re proud of and putting it out there and and hoping this guy’s going to show up on time and get it delivered, you know, still warm, you know, at best, you’d like it hot, but you know, in reality, I mean, I use Uber and DoorDash all the time at my house, and most of the time the food does not come hot, you know, it’s.. I’m hoping that it shows up warm, so you know, the Uber DoorDash thing, and it’s an unfortunate.. I don’t want to use the word parasite, but I mean it’s, it, you know, you, you have to participate even though you don’t want to.[span_130](end_span) 57:48 – Brad Stevens Yeah, I mean, I, that’s the way Spotify is in the music industry. Everyone hates it, they’re paying the artists nothing, but it’s the biggest streaming platform. So, like, well, what are you going to do? You want to make music or not? [span_131](start_span)So,[span_131](end_span) 57:57 – Todd Brooks [span_132](start_span)right, you’re forced into using it, and like, and you get a lot of business off of it, but it’s somebody else’s business, you know, it’s not my business, so you can’t control it, and you can call and talk to them while you want, you can complain to them all they want, but they’re so big and they’re so just numbers oriented that you know they’ll tell you what you want to hear and you hang up and nothing changes, I mean, it is what it is.[span_132](end_span) 58:22 – Brad Stevens Well, and I’ll say I’ve had a lot of bad experiences with Uber, Lyft, all of these, and again, to me, those are companies that don’t have to really invest in themselves. They don’t – they’re not buying cars, there’s no fleet, they’re not even staff, they’re subcontractors. So it’s like it’s kind of funny that you see it like that. I mean, I remember ordering sushi, and everything that was supposed to be hot was cold, and everything that was supposed to be cold was warm. It’s like that, not food you want to eat like that. So, but like you said, it’s not the restaurant’s fault. The food was ready 40 minutes ago. Where was the guy? [span_133](start_span)You know what happened,[span_133](end_span) 58:51 – Todd Brooks [span_134](start_span)but they blame the restaurant[span_134](end_span) 58:55 – Brad Stevens 100% Oh yeah, the driver blamed the restaurant 100% He was waiting for 40 minutes for the food, he was sitting there, of course, of course. But I mean, I’ll even say we had an Uber accident where a guy was literally falling.. well, I don’t know, accident, incident, let’s use that. He was falling asleep at the wheel, like the guy was either like, maybe he didn’t sleep for a couple days, maybe he’s on drugs, I don’t know, but I mean it’s one of those things that, like, but they don’t do anything, they don’t do anything to, like, like you said, I think they gave us a \$5 credit, oh wow, what if he crashed and killed us, you know? But it’s one of those things that I think it sucks. It’s like Amazon and selling online. If you have a product and you’re selling it, yeah, you can sell it on Etsy. Yeah, you can go on Facebook Marketplace. Okay, you can even throw it on eBay and on your website. But it’s getting to the point where if you really make something, even like I do a lot of Kickstarter things, every one of these little projects for a little keyboard or something, they end up having to sell on Amazon, because that exactly like you said, how many people are ordering DoorDash? It is what it is. I hope that those DoorDash people get the food, it’s good, and then they would want to go experience it, like it was a convenience thing. I would hope that some of those turn in, but again, I, as much as I hate this, I know people that that’s what they do. [span_135](start_span)Do they’re busy, they’ve got kids, they just got off work, they do DoorDash five nights a week, because that’s it’s just easy, it’s just a convenience thing, but I don’t, I don’t think you and I are going to change that, I don’t think we’re going to make that go away.[span_135](end_span) 1:00:12 – Todd Brooks [span_136](start_span)No, it’s part of it, whether, whether we like it or not, it’s part of[span_136](end_span) 1:00:16 – Brad Stevens it. Well, you know, I will say, what about Ma Bell, the phone system that they broke up as a monopoly. Some of these things are starting to look a lot, a lot mavel-like, aren’t they? [span_137](start_span)So[span_137](end_span) 1:00:26 – Todd Brooks [span_138](start_span)one[span_138](end_span) 1:00:27 – Brad Stevens can hope, right? But, and I mean, I think it’s one of those things that, and I even feel bad about it. I’ve done a lot of stuff with Amazon affiliate, and it’s not hard to go on Amazon, sign up for the affiliate program, enter your payout details, all the information they asked for, and literally, oh, Todd, you want a router. Well, here’s a router. Let me tag my affiliate code, and now I get whatever, 5% of the \$200 router you buy. That’s 10 bucks, not bad. It’s something. It is good, but again, I mean, we are directly.. I’m telling you to buy this router on Amazon and not go to a local store, but in the same, I’ll say there’s so many industries where, like, something like a Best Buy, the money’s getting taken out of the community anyways. I’ve always kind of been, again, I’m being a snob here, I’m being a local purist, but there’s a city up here, and the mayor brought in a ton of big chains, everything’s a chain, every, and all all the good chains that you want to go to, you want to go to Buffalo Wild Wings, this is where it’s at, but I feel like that’s it. Every one of those businesses is funneling that money out of that town. They’re literally just sucking it out, the Home Depots versus the Todd’s hardware. Right? I think Naples also creates a very interesting place because of that. There’s a.. there is a very go local community there, a lot more than a lot of other places, you know? If you’re maybe in, in lowa or Kansas, or in the Appalachian, yeah, there’s small communities there, but in most big places it seems like the chains are really taking it over. [span_139](start_span)But I mean,[span_139](end_span) 1:01:49 – Todd Brooks [span_140](start_span)Naples, Naples[span_140](end_span) 1:01:51 – Brad Stevens [span_141](start_span)is is[span_141](end_span) 1:01:52 – Todd Brooks turning in that direction a little bit. [span_142](start_span)I mean, there is[span_142](end_span) 1:01:54 – Brad Stevens [span_143](start_span)no,[span_143](end_span) 1:01:56 – Todd Brooks I can’t tell you how many chain restaurants have opened up in the last two years. [span_144](start_span)I mean, they’re just popping up, like I think once you hit a magic number, they, you know, they have all the, the algorithms, and and they look at all the, you know, the demographics, and once you hit a certain number, it’s like it seems like every chain in the country knows, oh, ding, ding, they hit the number, we’re going, and then they just start popping up, you know, and[span_144](end_span) 1:02:22 – Brad Stevens well, and drug stores, I feel like, is a classic example that you see the CDs, the Walgreens has to pop up across the street, it used to be Rite Aid to, and it used, and it’s like, and the grocery store has to have one, but, and I don’t know, I see that up here a lot, there’s always like a grocery store, it’s the Ford and the Chevy, always opposing each other, it kind of, it’s baffling to me, and I mean, in some ways, like all the restaurants being downtown, that does make sense. It’s pretty. They’re all there. It’s where people want to go to eat, but I don’t know. To me, that’s not like a hey, there’s five businesses there. I’m gonna go open a sixth one right next to it. I know what I’ll do, but I think the chains also, too, because of that, the people that come there that don’t want to explore, that don’t want to try something new. Well, hey, I know Red Robin, hey, I know Red Lobster, all these reds, but I don’t know, it’s man. If anyone listening, if you’re a tourist and you’re somewhere you haven’t been before, go somewhere local. Come on, stop, stop this franchise thing, right? But, man, I have to say again, like I am seriously, I am impressed with what you’ve done, and I feel like you’ve built, you’ve built a classic business in a town, you’ve built the Burger Place of Naples, and then it rose to what it was, and granted, like Trip Advisor, and that, not to undermine that, but I feel like, while all that is what it is, I don’t think you would have done that if you didn’t have that go local first, you didn’t make this even talking about scalability, there is a scalability that I would say respectfully that you didn’t do, because you kept yourself in it, and I think that is just.. I don’t know, I see that in my own business. Anytime, if I try to hand everything off, they’re not going to do it the way that I did. [span_145](start_span)And I think that[span_145](end_span) 1:03:51 – Todd Brooks [span_146](start_span)is.. I totally agree,[span_146](end_span) 1:03:52 – Brad Stevens you’ve kept the quality where it needs to be, and you’ve made it in a fourth restaurant. I mean, you are scaling, you absolutely are. But I’m just saying, I think you found a way to manage that, and I think that to me is the biggest takeaway. This is a question I’ve asked to everyone, and I’ll say this is like my little typical solution sessions question. If you could do anything different, if you could, and I almost.. this almost feels not.. again, I’ve said this like you go back in time, 15 years ago, doesn’t matter now, COVID wasn’t a thing then, online ordering wasn’t a thing then, all these things have changed. [span_147](start_span)If Todd, from 10 years ago, had a time machine to today, what would you tell him to do differently with what you’ve seen?[span_147](end_span) 1:04:28 – Todd Brooks I can tell you the most important thing that I could redo, if anything, is it, and it’s a little unreachable starting out, especially I would say, if you ever have the chance, is to, is to buy the building or the land that you’re in, you know, instead of leasing, you control your own destiny. It gives you the opportunity to have an exit plan, if you want an exit plan, when you’re, when you’re leasing, you’re. The mercy of the landlord, and it’s not entirely a bad thing, and, and really buying the land and buying a building for most people is unreachable. It was for us, I mean, that’s why we leased, but I can tell you in hindsight, I had several, several times where I could have bought the property that I was in, and I turned it down, and in hindsight, that is one thing I wish I would have done, even if I had to sell my cars and scrape, scrape together pennies and nickels, and you know, do whatever I had to do, get an SBA loan or something like that. [span_148](start_span)I should have, I should have purchased the land.[span_148](end_span) 1:05:37 – Brad Stevens Well, and I’ll say I’m a renter, and I mean it’s always one of those things are like, well, but the house values are inflated, okay? So, if a house was 80,000 and now it’s 150 and obviously Michigan’s cheaper than Naples, enables it’ll be 500 right? [span_149](start_span)So, but I feel like, in that, it’s like, okay, well, I’m throwing 20 grand away, in a way, if you will, for rent, but if the values inflated 100 grand, but guess what, after five years you paid for that, so you’re saying, also, obviously, because you can actually sell the business, the location, all of it, versus, yeah,[span_149](end_span) 1:06:04 – Todd Brooks [span_150](start_span)just to control, you control everything that you have your hands on, you’re not, I mean, anytime it should be no different than Uber and stuff, if anybody else has a part of your business and you don’t control it, you know, you don’t know, so you know, we were going to have to probably relocate one of our restaurants, you know, and it’s a pain in the butt, so we’re spending a lot of money that we made just to relocate, and I don’t want to use the word start over, but you’ve got to, you know, financially it’s going to take two or three years to make all that money back that you just had to spend, instead of if we had owned the land, you would just be putting the money in your pocket.[span_150](end_span) 1:06:46 – Brad Stevens Yeah. Well, and I mean, and I’ll say, like, you know, you can change addresses on Google My Business, you can update a lot of things, but even inspections and all the other things that just come with even just getting turnkey to turn key from A to B. How do we get there? Like, I get that moving is a pain in the butt, done a couple cross-country moves myself, a little bit, just a little bit, just dropping 10 grand like it’s nothing. So, well, in that man again, I have to say, like, I am, I’m honored to work with you. Thank you for your business. It is, I love that you have ranked so well, and again, I love how local you are. Thank you for, thank you for being a lighthouse of your community, sir. [span_151](start_span)I will[span_151](end_span) 1:07:22 – Todd Brooks be here for a while. [span_152](start_span)We’re not going anywhere, hopefully.[span_152](end_span) 1:07:24 – Brad Stevens If we’re down in Naples, everyone, you gotta go check out Brooks Burgers. You can actually look them up on their little on the Google listing and call the 800 number, and you will hear me say press one for downtown, my first telecom appearance. But seriously, again, thank you for I feel like, again, for innovating, for just for being a good guy, man. You’ve been, you’ve been an awesome client to work with. And again, proud to have you in my portfolio, sir. Thank you for your time. And then, yeah, everyone, go check out Brooks Burgers, go get a burger, leave him a five-star review, guys. [span_153](start_span)Will you?[span_153](end_span) 1:07:57 – Todd Brooks [span_154](start_span)Absolutely, five stars only.[span_154](end_span) 1:07:59 – Brad Stevens Only they’re gonna leave one star. I want to meet you, Todd. I just want to meet you. I’m just leaving a one star because I want to shake your hand. You didn’t have to leave a review, man. [span_155](start_span)Just go in. I’ll talk to you soon, man.[span_155](end_span) 1:08:11 – Todd Brooks [span_156](start_span)Thanks, Brad.[span_156](end_span)