#19: How Rusty Taco's New CEO is Shaking Things Up | Daniel Smith, Rusty Taco

Daniel Tsentsiper (00:01.771) Dan, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Daniel Smith (00:04.065) I'm good man, great to be here. From the great state of Texas. Daniel Tsentsiper (00:06.069) Likewise, I'm, let's do it. Let's do it. I haven't been to Texas since FS Tech. So I'm always looking forward to coming back. There's so many amazing brands, so many restaurants. It feels like in our business, we work a lot with brands with drive-throughs and it feels like in Texas, everything has a drive-through. have your pharmacies, you have your QSRs, you have your banks, everything is, you get around by car. So it's amazing state to be. Awesome. Daniel Smith (00:12.727) Okay. Daniel Smith (00:33.57) Very truth. Very truth. Daniel Tsentsiper (00:36.331) Well, hey, I'm really excited to talk to you a little bit more about your current role with Russy Taco. I think that you got into a really exciting opportunity, but before we kind of dig deeper into your agenda there and all the cool things you're working on, let's take a step back. You've been in the restaurant industry for a long time. How the heck did you get into the restaurant industry and what has been your journey up until this point within restaurants? Daniel Smith (00:56.524) Yes. Daniel Smith (01:04.716) Yeah, that's a, it's, it's, it's a scary story, but first day of college, rolled, my dad reminded me as I walked out the door, Hey, you're going to need a job. And he thought, my God, I'd been a paper boy up to this point. And, I walked into a restaurant. knew a guy was working there and I grabbed a job as a dishwasher. And so, yeah, that's, that's how it all started. I only watched dishes one day and, and, and from there it was history. And I ended up working with that company for 26 years, if you can believe it. So, Yeah, but it started in a dish pit. Daniel Tsentsiper (01:36.714) And that was with Claim Japper, right? Daniel Smith (01:38.946) That was claimed jumper on the West Coast. Yeah, for sure. Daniel Tsentsiper (01:41.974) How did the brand over your tenure there, over 26 years, how did the brand evolve and what are the types of roles that you held as you kind of up the ranks there? Daniel Smith (01:51.086) Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's an amazing story. Besides a lot of, you know, all the good that happened and, and, you know, the well thought out things that happened, it was very much a right place, right time as well. You know, when I jumped in, I jumped in when there was just like one or two restaurants, and then we ended up growing it to 50. And they were all big, big Daniel Tsentsiper (02:15.478) Wow. Daniel Smith (02:17.23) You know, we had restaurants as big as 16,000 square feet and we were in, I want to say nine different states. My memory leaves me, but super high volume, um, you know, cheesecake factory style menus, you know, a lot of items, you know, most of the stuff scratch made, but, um, you know, the, the, restaurant was, uh, that company was really based off, uh, a vision of a founder of just offering, you know, large portions of quality food. And, um, it just during the, you know, late 70s, early 80s and 90s, it was just off the charts. It was really resonated with people and we'd have, you know, we'd have waits a couple hours long, but it started, you know, with a smaller menu. And it just, it just slowly grew. It just, it just grew and it grew to, you know, offering, you know, wood fired pizzas. It grew to a massive amount of desserts, you know, having a bakery inside the restaurant and the restaurant it really got dialed in the owner was very he was very specific about wanting to be great at what we did he didn't cut corners he didn't look for the easy way out he put he didn't market the marketing and those are you know for the first 20 years was You know he would say to us like let's just put it on the plate. Let's give it to the guests That's our marketing dollars word of mouth is the best thing we have and and I've carried a lot of that with me You know really you know recognizing the power of people to people marketing where people just fall in love in something and they talk about it. Daniel Tsentsiper (03:47.175) Absolutely. Yeah. And that kind of, in that generation, right? We, I think of hometown buffet. think of these large restaurants that people come in and they get a bit of everything. You get a pizza, you can get dessert, you can get steak, you can get wings, you get everything. And I think over the years, you know, things have started to become more niche where, you know, the restaurants that operate today that are successful, they kind of know their place. and they try to simplify the menu as much as possible, Would you say that has kind of been the trend is like, we started off with these restaurants that have everything under one roof and then it's sort of become more niche and more focused on one specific area, one specific cuisine. Daniel Smith (04:18.755) Yeah. Daniel Smith (04:31.338) Well, I would say it's easier to do it that way. Absolutely, when you get people that stick around in your company for years and years and decades, they master their skills, so it's easier to do more. there's more turnover, people are kind of transitory, they kind of come and go, and that's how the restaurant's been for a long time. Daniel Tsentsiper (04:35.174) Right, from a cost perspective, sure. Daniel Smith (05:00.674) But I think there's restaurant companies that very much specialize in very specific things. And then there's, you know, then it goes out from there. you know, the, you know, referring back to claim jumper and not that I, you know, thought we'd spent too much time talking about claim jumper. But one of the things that we talked about back then, and we still talk about today, and it's something I've carried with me forever is, is quality, variety and uniqueness. You know, whatever we do, it's got to be high quality. Okay. We can't back up on quality. Three years from now, we can't say, we're giving less quality. The variety is, we would like to avoid the veto vote. We'd like people to be able to enjoy us. You know what you want, you go get what you want, but there's this theory that you can attract a wider variety of people if you offer a little bit of variety. And then uniqueness. One thing that the owner used to say to me when I worked at Claimjumper is he used to just say, If they can make it at home, if they can duplicate what you're doing at home, why are you here? You're going to lose it. One cool thing he would do, it's funny, I'm flooding with memories, but one time he walked in and he grabbed me and I was a multi-unit, a regional guy overseeing 10 restaurants in a couple of different states. We met at a restaurant, I think it was in Vegas, and he said, hey, look, tonight, I want to work with you. I said, great. He goes, let's work at the dish station. I said, oh, okay, great. I'm going to destroy my shirt. Let's do it. He's like, no, no, no. we're going to see what people bring back to the dish station. We're going see what people don't eat. And it was very, you know, it just taught me to think differently about the restaurant business because, you start watching what people don't eat and you start realizing, okay, well, like, okay, there's an opportunity there. You know, we can still be the same restaurant we are, but we can start eliminating some waste. And that really, you know, kind of set me down a path of how I approach restaurants. So. Daniel Tsentsiper (06:27.604) Right. Right. Daniel Tsentsiper (06:41.776) Right. Daniel Tsentsiper (06:50.172) Yeah, that's a very unique insight. And I've heard that from Myjo Alanis, who is the founder of Beyond Juicery, is that you have to pay attention to the bus stop and see where, see the types of food people aren't eating. And that helped inform him on the direction to take his brand. He started moving more into healthy alternatives. And I think that's a non-traditional way to look at restaurants, because you're seeing what people don't like. Usually you want to see what people like and kind of build on top of that. But that is, I think that's a really cool insight there. Let's fast forward. I know there's been tons of brands that you worked on from Claim Jumper till now. Curious, how did you run into Rusty Taco? What was that spark that convinced you to take on this role? Daniel Smith (07:35.566) Yeah, you know, I was with a brand called Hop Dottie Burger Bar prior to that. And I was there just, just right at just a little less than seven years. And I'll tell you something. They kind of will key off or kind of close out what we were just talking about. The guys who founded Hop Dottie Burger Bar also founded Bravo Brio and any of these steakhouse. And, and, and I think they currently own probably seven or eight brands in the Austin market and Dallas and whatnot. Brilliant guys been around forever. And when you ask them about the menu, I sat with one of them, a gentleman, and I won't use his name, but I think he's brilliant. you know, someone was mentioning it to him, hey, we should do some focus groups and understand what people like. And he said, hey, I'll make great food. I'll tell people what they're going to like. You know, I don't need to listen to him. And so there's a variety, right? There's a span of how you approach it. You know, if you can make great food. He told me, he had that famous saying that if people would have asked Henry Ford, or Henry Ford said, I asked people what they want, they'd said faster horse. And he said, look, I'm going to create stuff that they're going to love. what inspired me to go to Rusty Taco? Well, you know what? I grew up on the West Coast. I was a surfer. surfed all over the place, all up and down Mexico, South America, California, Hawaii, a lot. Daniel Tsentsiper (08:42.416) Yeah. Daniel Smith (09:00.834) you know, stood in front of a lot of tacos fans, enjoy tacos everywhere I went. you know, Rusty Taco, there's a great saying that Rusty himself, I think him or his daughter coined, it was, know, tacos are the most important meal of the day. So always love tacos, make them at home all the time. And so when this opportunity came along, it was like, wow, I've, you know, I've been in the pizza, I've been in, you know, steaks, I've been in seafood, I've been in all these, you know, Italian, all these different industries. And tacos just sound like really fun. They're very relevant. So it was a natural draw for me. Daniel Tsentsiper (09:30.107) Right. Daniel Tsentsiper (09:36.868) Nice. And I heard that you kind of went secretly and visited a couple of the locations to try the food yourself, right? You went around, talked to the operators, talked to the employees from doing that experiment. First of all, I love doing that. What did you learn? What did you learn about the brand? And other than, you know, wanting to get into tacos and having great food, what kind of sparked you to see some opportunities in this brand that you could probably Daniel Smith (09:47.97) Damn. Daniel Tsentsiper (10:05.402) improve on or even just like have an impact. Daniel Smith (10:07.212) Yeah. You know, before I, I've done that with every brand I go to before I go there, I call it looking under the hood and, and I did it at Hopdottie. I did it with a lot of other brands. And, and so, you know, what I did is, you know, there was, there was a several month period that I knew I was going to come on board rusty taco, but, I hadn't started yet. I was wrapping up some other things and just, you know, taking a little time. And so I was, I just traveled around. Daniel Tsentsiper (10:14.884) Yes. Daniel Smith (10:33.23) You know, I jumped on a plane and went to some different locations and I just want to see what it looked like. I really mainly was interested in the culture. I wanted to understand what is the culture because when I look at restaurants, you know, food is important food, food's it, but you know, the, culture is really what drives the brand. And so wanting to understand what the culture was going to look like, what, you know, if there were challenges, what was I going to be up against? Daniel Tsentsiper (10:41.051) Mm-hmm. Daniel Smith (11:00.654) What were the strengths and the weaknesses? And then I also would go in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, and see how the people behaved, not behaved, but how they interacted, as well as how the buildings looked, as well as what the food was like at those different times of the day. And so, yeah, it's a sneak peek. It's a look under the hood, because once people know me, then every time I walk in a restaurant, like most restaurant leaders, they know who you are and things change. You know, people tighten up when you walk in and if you order, you order a meal, they'll go back and make sure it's perfect when in reality, I just want reality. I just want what the guests get. Show me what the guests get. And then, cause that's the reality. And so I knew I had a limited amount of time to really understand that. So. Daniel Tsentsiper (11:29.069) Absolutely. Right. Daniel Tsentsiper (11:41.296) Mm-hmm. Daniel Tsentsiper (11:46.263) I see. And what did you find? were some of the strengths within the brand and what were some of the opportunities that you wanted to work on right away? Daniel Smith (11:55.982) Yeah, I think the two biggest, the two biggest things that jumped out to me is, is how fast the food can come out at rusty taco. It's, you know, being in the restaurant business forever, you're talking check times, right? You're what's your check time, what's your average check time. And, and, you know, when I mean, we were at hop dotty, we, always strive for eight minutes, eight minutes, you know, you're cooking a burger from scratch, you know, never precooked, you know, and, and eight minutes. And so you get to Russie taco and you've got check times that are running in like three minutes. so that was like, yeah, they were blowing them out. I mean, there's times when they get, you know, a line out the door and a lot of to go, you know, you know, off premise stuff going on and it, you know, it screws it up like, you know, with every restaurant. But food is fast and food is fresh. And, you know, we weren't cutting open bags. We weren't or they weren't cutting open bags. They weren't, you know, the food was being cooked while I was, you know, ordering food. was Daniel Tsentsiper (12:27.408) It's impressive. Daniel Smith (12:52.59) You know, they might've been cooking maybe two orders at a time or three orders at a time and hold it for just a few minutes and then, you know, make, you know, shrimp tacos and out they go. So I was really blown away with, with fast and fresh and, and I can buy into that as, as a, as a consumer, I can buy into it as a leader, I can buy into it. And, you know, it was a wonderful platform. Um, you know, it would stress me out if they were going to, you know, out of bags and, and, you know, it's like, where was that made? What's in it? What, what kind of preservatives? So I felt great about that. Um, Daniel Tsentsiper (13:14.138) Right. Daniel Smith (13:21.614) You know, the things that I saw is, you know, I saw a brand that's been around a long time and I thought we could introduce some new flavors. We could introduce some new excitement. know, flavors change. People's palates change. You know, people get exposed to new things. You know, we're constantly experimenting and restaurants are innovating and people start to crave new and exciting things. So why not interject some new things in there? Daniel Tsentsiper (13:29.507) Yes. Daniel Smith (13:51.574) I also thought that there's the franchisees and then there's the corporate entity. And I learned quickly as I went to the restaurants that there could be a better relationship, that there needs to be a better relationship. And so I was excited about that and being able to do more for them. Being an ex-branchisee, I understand what it's like. I know what it's like to be a franchisee. I know what it's like to wake up every morning, check your bank account and say, Daniel Tsentsiper (14:03.951) Mmm. Daniel Smith (14:18.874) How we doing? Is payroll going to be good this week? so, but I saw that, better interaction with the franchisees. I also saw better improving some of the flavors. I also really scoured all the guest comments, scoured all the social media, scoured all the marketing. And I really thought, hey, this brand could really enjoy an improvement with brand tone, different marketing, more excitement, things that... Not where people's eyes pass over, but where they pass and they come back and go, wait, what are you saying? Maybe getting out there and picking a fight with somebody or being a little more controversial just so people get a better look at us. But I certainly felt like something needed to change. But the bones of the brand really fell in love with and was very excited about it. Daniel Tsentsiper (14:50.958) Mm. Daniel Tsentsiper (15:06.896) I love that. It's almost like you did an internal audit of everything. You saw the way that the brand was positioning. And I want to ask you about the positioning and how you compete in the next segment. But you looked at all these different elements and you brought in your experience on the franchisee side when you used to run your own franchises. And you also took the operational experience. You acquired a claim job at other brands and brought that in. I think the key there is Daniel Smith (15:11.182) Yes. Daniel Smith (15:31.66) Yeah. Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (15:37.035) One thing that I was very curious about is Rusty Taco has a very long history, as you said, over 40 years with an amazing founder who, you know, was, took really good care of the brand. And then as brands evolve, you know, you have to pass, pass the torch. You have to, find other people to, operate the brand for, I believe, Rusty Taco was owned by Inspire for a period of time, right? And then recently got, acquired by, by the Gala. Daniel Smith (15:52.174) Mm-hmm. Daniel Smith (16:01.428) Yes. Daniel Tsentsiper (16:05.519) Gala Capital Partners. So curious if like you can you can shed some light for operators that are, you know, considering, you know, looking for outside capital, right, whether it's private equity or strategic partner, how does that kind of affect the brand on a positive and also maybe on a negative? And then also, what would if you if you were in their shoes, like, what would you be looking for when picking the right partner to take money from to make sure that your brand stays intact? Daniel Smith (16:33.591) Yeah, you know, great question. Complicated question for sure. know, that's right. know, brands go through a life cycle, right? And, you know, I remember a good buddy of mine, Mesh Whites, we were in a restaurant in Nashville and we were talking about changes that needed to be made to a brand that we were working at. you know, and I was, you know, I was telling him my insight. I was saying that, look, every time a company changes hands, Daniel Tsentsiper (16:36.33) It is, it is totally. can go, we can spend 20 minutes talking about it. Daniel Smith (16:59.34) there there's new expectations. The new owner has new expectations. They want to grow it. They want to be more profitable. They want something out of the brand because they're the new owner and they have, they have, they have a vision for it. It, and we're all in the business of business, right? Food is the medium, but business is what it is we do. And we were talking and exploring that, that it's just, it's just weird how through the life cycles of the restaurants, you know, a young brand might be acquired. Daniel Tsentsiper (17:08.866) Right. And it's a business. Daniel Smith (17:29.292) and very little changes other than we want to step up the growth. We want to capture lightning in a bottle and go. That was a lot of the hop dotty. Then there might be older brands that get acquired and you need to change quite a few more things to be competitive as you head into new markets and whatnot. And so, I don't have any very specific answers other than it's this calculation, right? It's this formula, it's this combination. Daniel Tsentsiper (17:32.769) Right. Right. Daniel Smith (17:57.994) of where's the brand in its life cycle? What does the new owners want, know, the new owners want and expect and what are you capable of doing? What is the capability? And a lot of that really, it talks about who the brand is and the strength of the brand and the team that's there. Often when I've entered into a brand, we have to make some changes. We have to decide, okay, where are we going? Like what's the goal? What is the, what is the current owner or new owner want? And are the people that are a part of the brand right now, the key people, the leaders, are they able to get us there? And sometimes it's just, you can try to turn the people and change their behavior and get them there. Sometimes you just have to make a change. You just have to say, I've got to bring in somebody new and make the change. I think if somebody was, like when I had my little, I had a franchise group and we were selling it, I wanted to understand who the new owner was because these were my people, even though the brand wasn't mine. I was a franchise, a franchisee. These were my people. The leadership team were my people that I had brought in, recruited. We got on the same page. They were reading my reports, doing the things the way I asked. And I know that the new owner would come in. And if I thought for a second, the owner would blow them all out for not good reasons. Yeah, you you got to think about that. this, you know, who am I aligning with and how long am I going to be around? And, you know, if I was going to be around, man, like who I align with is absolutely critical. Anytime I look for a position, who I'm working with is so important. We have to align values. Our values need to be in alignment. You know, we all view people differently and I tend to view people, put them in a very high place. Meaning that Daniel Tsentsiper (19:42.87) Absolutely. Daniel Smith (19:53.068) I think the value of the company is within the people. if somebody was, you if I went to work for an organization and they didn't value people the same way I would, then I think there'd be a mismatch. And so I think there's a lot of answers to your question, but a lot of it has to do with life cycle, expectations, strength of team, size of company, et cetera. Daniel Tsentsiper (20:15.468) What stage do you think Rusty Talk goes in right now? Daniel Smith (20:19.95) Wow, what a great question. I think that Rusty's been around a while. think, you know, Rusty was founded by Rusty and his wife, Denise, in Dallas. bought an old gas station and they opened it up. We still have it. I run it and it's really cool. It's really cool. And what's even cooler is just the clientele that's been going there for a long time. Daniel Tsentsiper (20:38.092) It's like a museum. Daniel Smith (20:47.586) You know, people, the same guys and girls show up in the morning to get a breakfast taco in seven days a week, it seems like, and it's wild. so, but, I'm drawing a blank, what stage are we at? And, and, I think, you know, Rusty and his wife started the business, Rusty got cancer and passed away. And so they had only had a few restaurants and, right before Rusty passed away, they sold the Buffalo Wild Wings. And so, Daniel Tsentsiper (21:14.507) Hmm. Daniel Smith (21:16.12) You know, Buffalo Wild Wings got them going and, and, you know, it's, it's another one of those things. They had different expectations. They had different procedures, different plans. I think they might've changed. It was either them or, well, then they sold to inspire. Okay. Buffalo Wild Wings, you know, sold to inspire. Then they changed the name of Rusty to RR Taco. And cause they didn't think Rusty sounded good. And then it was changed back. And so Rusty's gone through a lot of iterations. There's been several, you know, a lot of confusion. Daniel Tsentsiper (21:29.545) Yes. Yes. Daniel Smith (21:44.46) I think that's happened over time. And I think that they were focused on and then left alone and then focused on and left alone. And so where I think Rusty is at right now is we're focusing on it. There's a lot of focus on Rusty and we're focusing on people. We're focusing on quality, know, all the big things. What does the business model look like? Is it a good business model? Is the marketing, you know, is it resonating with the people out there? Are we using the current platforms? You know, are we using influencers? Are we using all the social media? we? Daniel Tsentsiper (21:53.868) Hmm. Daniel Smith (22:12.078) Are we doing things in a really current way? Is the menu relevant and current right now? And then there's the culture. And that's the hardest part is really, who are we? What's our North star? I was talking to somebody yesterday about Chick-fil-A and we were talking about, it doesn't matter where you go in the US, you can go to Chick-fil-A, the people you interact with, can be white, black, brown, yellow. It doesn't matter. They can be young, middle-aged, they can be old. Doesn't matter. They all have the same qualities. The culture's the same. It's super consistent. People appreciate what they get. And that's moving a battleship. That's moving an aircraft carrier trying to change it. So we're in the process of hopefully instilling great culture. Some of our franchisees do an amazing job. They have great teams, but also we have some that need some work. And when we came on board, we had to close some down. Daniel Tsentsiper (22:43.783) It's consistent. Daniel Smith (23:11.138) you know, do what's best for the brand. Daniel Tsentsiper (23:13.053) Yeah. And how has the relationship between corporate and the franchisees changed since you've taken the helm? This is a very touchy subject because even last night there was an article that came out about Hardee's and one of their franchisees are getting sued by the brand because they're not keeping their hours open past two o'clock to try to stay alive. And there are some brands like Chick-fil-A where the relationship with the franchisor and the franchisees is really strong. Daniel Smith (23:20.418) Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (23:42.11) So since you got into the role, how have you been able to bring the franchisee, the community closer? And let's segue afterwards on what type of franchisee are you looking forward to bring to the brand? Who are you selling to? And when you think of the long-term vision of Rossy Taco, what is the type of operator you want to bring to your brand? Daniel Smith (23:56.27) Yeah. Daniel Smith (24:04.142) I think this is the number two most complicated question because it is all about trust, right? The franchisee, they bought something. You know, I tell my team, hey, look, all of us, we can quit our jobs. We can go find another job. can, you know, we'll probably all land on our feet, but franchisee sign personal guarantees. They take their life savings. They take their family money. They make investments and we need to be really mindful of that. And so it's creating a spirit of trust. Okay. Trust and support is what we talk about all the time. You know, Dan Cathy at Chick-fil-A, not to overuse Chick-fil-A, but you know, legend has it that he stands in front of his home office team and he says, if you ain't serving chicken, you better be serving somebody that's serving chicken. And I don't know how true that is, but I've repeated it. And I say it in my office that if you ain't serving tacos, you better be serving somebody that's serving tacos. And so, I think that when I came on board, most of the franchisees said, hey man, yeah, nice to meet you. How long are you going to be here? You're going be leaving soon, right? Because we've had, I don't know how, you know, we've had with all the different, you know, companies that have bought us, they've made changes, they shift their procedures, they have different, you know, different expectations, they offer us different things. And so it was a poor experience for me in the beginning because I'm fairly genuine. I've got truth serum running through my veins and I'm honest with people. there you go. And so it's just like with customers, that claim jumper founder used to tell me, you win a guest one at a time. Okay. You don't blanket and go, won 100 guests. You win them one at a time through consistency, through quality, through great experience, memorable. Daniel Tsentsiper (25:40.05) You're Texan, you're Texan, everyone loves a Texan. Daniel Smith (26:03.702) experience, et cetera. And so I've tried, you know, I'm trying to interact with the franchisees, you know, some are, some are easy, some are harder. Some have, some have less trust. Some have more trust. When we bring a new one on there, they're ones that I've met. I've, I've nurtured the relationship long. Some of the older ones, you know, they're still skeptical. Several of them have, have jumped on board and said, Hey, I like your style. I like where you're going. I want to be involved. And, and, and, you know, They've committed and so love that. But it's not about me. Okay, it's about them, their profitability, their same store sales. That's what matters. That's the health of the brand. And that's where our team continually tries to focus. And so I remind our team all the time, this is not about us. I don't have a drive through at my home office. There's not people picking up food out of my home office, right? We don't sell anything. And so it's all about what happens at the franchise locations. But as far as what we're looking for, you know, we're looking for people that are passionate about restaurants. You know, if a dentist comes to me and says, hey, I made a lot of money, I'm a dentist and I want to open one. Hey, I get some red flags, no offense to dentists. But if you haven't been in the business, because they'll find an operator, and this has been my experience. in my, you know, in my life, you know, prior to coming to Rusty is, you know, the guy with the money will find an operator and then the something will happen in 12 months and the operator leaves. And then they can never find the right operator again, or they make the grave error of saying, I'm going to do it myself. And then I'm going to bring, you know, all my years of dentistry or whatever engineering to the restaurant industry. And it just never, it's never the same. You know, the restaurant industry is hard. Most of us are strange. And, you know, we're, we're, it's, it's complicated and, you know, we have an understanding of it and, and we're, we're, we're tough. We, handle it. so, so anyways, looking for people that have been in the restaurant industry, people that are serious about it, less interested in, I'd like to open one restaurant. Very interested in people that want to open three to five or more. They want to buy a territory and just make it happen. Daniel Smith (28:24.786) you know, there's this economy scales. can open up one and make good money. Then you open up two, but you got to have some support and you know, your cashflow is a little less than you open up three and, know, and then you'll hit this stride down the road when you get four or five or six, where all of a sudden now you're making good money again. And I don't think everybody understands how that works because it takes some, some, some internal corporate support to run multiple locations. It's hard to do it by themselves. And I know that from experience. but. Daniel Tsentsiper (28:42.906) Right. Daniel Smith (28:53.742) We would love people that are passionate about tacos. Sounds goofy, but sure. And also people that are passionate about people. I've learned something in my career in that people that win get used to winning. They get addicted to winning. And people that lose are kind of okay losing. And that sounds really cold, but I don't wanna lose. And losing is accepting. Daniel Tsentsiper (29:01.992) Mm-hmm. Daniel Tsentsiper (29:15.879) Right. Daniel Smith (29:22.124) mediocrity because I think mediocrity runs rampant in the restaurant industry. It's out there everywhere. And, and, the difference between us and the next guy is just the details, how we interact with people, how we treat our guests, what our building looks like, what our food tastes like, the consistency of it. And so, yeah, those are things that when you, when you interview them, you, you try to understand where's your head at as an operator, is this something that I'm going to do off to the side or is this something I'm going to pour myself into and in about Daniel Tsentsiper (29:23.368) Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (29:27.88) Right. Daniel Smith (29:52.014) 15 minutes of meeting somebody, I typically can tell, you're a real operator. just met a guy out of Florida and, and, you know, I hope he sees this podcast. Cause I sat and talked to him on a zoom and I'm like, you get it. Yeah. You're, you're, you're, you're that guy, man. You're the guy that you're the operator. You're the one that we're looking for, man. You, you, know, you eat and breathe this stuff. And those are the ones we're looking for because the restaurant industry, it, it, it, Daniel Tsentsiper (30:05.307) Yeah, absolutely. Daniel Smith (30:19.69) ebbs and flows, right? Winston Churchill said, you know, peace time is the brief interlude between war. And in the restaurant business, we're always at war. It's always whether you're fighting regulation and you know, the whatever, the municipality, yeah, all of it. all of it. Yeah, people calling out, you know, and, and so the victories, the victories are, you know, they're short runs and then and then you're in war. Daniel Tsentsiper (30:26.695) You Yep. Daniel Tsentsiper (30:34.862) labor laws and inflation, everything. Daniel Smith (30:48.01) And you got to the right mindset for that. Daniel Tsentsiper (30:50.501) Yeah, you know, I want my audience to hear this. The last time we spoke, you brought something up that is still in the back of my mind. I've been thinking about it. You brought up a book. was, believe, the secret number, right? Was that the name of the book or was it the magic number? Daniel Smith (31:04.705) It's most important number. Daniel Tsentsiper (31:06.183) The most important number. us about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Daniel Smith (31:08.128) Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's sitting right here. Let me let me grab it. It's sitting right here. Yeah, it's you know, this is, you know, it's you know, Lee Benson. So Lee Benson book, it's it's you know, it's it's not new. You know, but you know, the thing the thing is somebody turned me on to this and I'm an avid reader and I've got a library of books. But the interesting thing about this one book is that here's the essence. Everybody has a number. Doesn't matter what Daniel Tsentsiper (31:22.087) Yeah. Daniel Smith (31:38.018) company you're in, can be selling real estate, you can be an engineer, you can be making potato chips or being in the restaurant business or owning a podcast. There's a number, right? Every person on your team has a number and you just have to spend some time about it. Sure, for a guy like me, it's enterprise value, right? I'm kind of, I'm up here. need to make sure that the, yeah, the business has got to be worth something and I need to drive that. That's my number. But you can take this concept all the way down to like a hostess. Daniel Tsentsiper (31:53.914) Right. That's where you're graded on. Daniel Smith (32:07.35) in a restaurant and it can be the number of smiles that they do in one day and how many guests they interact with. And so I love the concept. We talk about it on our team. Everybody has a number. because in the restaurant business, there's a ton of noise. There's, there's just always people calling and, know, things need to get done. And it's just go, go, go, go, go. And you can get to the end of the week and say, man, I was busy all week, but I never worked on the most important thing. And so. We as a team, I try to run my teams leaner with less bodies and staying highly focused on the most important things and then measuring them in short, know, shortest, you know, intervals that you can, because that'll tell you if we're making progress or not. And all those numbers have to point towards enterprise value, right? They have to point towards the top goal at the top. And enterprise value might be on top of, I want to have 150 restaurants and I want to have, you know, a, you know, you evaluation of X amount and whatnot. And so, but yeah, this is, this has been a good book. I've turned a lot of people onto it. maybe someday I should meet Lee Benson and, and, you know, cause I, probably sold a hundred, I've probably given away a hundred books actually, but, yeah. Okay. Daniel Tsentsiper (33:07.483) Hmm. Daniel Tsentsiper (33:21.314) Yeah, we'll clip this. We'll clip this and send this to him. It's the inputs that drive the output. You can't get lost in the details, but the details, like you said, are important. It's the number of smiles. It's the amount of... It's your food costs. It's all these little details that are extremely important. And everyone on the team should have accountability and should have ownership of one of those areas. Daniel Smith (33:31.97) it Daniel Smith (33:35.64) Yeah. Daniel Smith (33:46.915) Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (33:48.486) And if done right, it's like an orchestra. If done right, you know, beautiful music plays. So I love that. And I hope that that inspires someone to either pick up a book or apply that same principle in their business, whether it's a restaurant or a factory, it's applicable to life as a whole. Daniel Smith (34:00.717) Yeah. Daniel Smith (34:06.072) Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yesterday I was, I was with a guy that I consider a mentor. I got a Jeff Chandler, great guy out of Austin, CEO of a company. And, one of the phrases that he used to say to me all the time, and we'd set it back and forth to each other is look at everything's the priority, nothing's a priority. So we better sure figure out what the priority is, but it seems like in this crazy life we live, everything's a priority. Do this, do this, do this. And, and we just need to kind of cut through that and go, what is the priority? Let's stay on it. And that's the hard part, especially in technology, when anybody can reach me in a moment notice on my phone and text me and get me jumping, know, 150 emails a day. Yeah, it's hard to stay on task, but this has been a good book. It's good guidelines for my life. Daniel Tsentsiper (34:56.229) Let me ask you one last question to wrap it up. If I, if I talk to you in a year from now, I bring you back on the podcast. What would you want to accomplish in a year from now to, to say that you did a good job with Russie Taka? What would you be proud of if you get accomplished in one year? And I'm going to hold you to it. I'm going to have another podcast that you in a year from now. And I want to see if you, if you, if you accomplish that. Daniel Smith (35:18.317) check. Okay. So, so you've never asked me this question before. So I'm, you know, it's not like something I had a canned answer for like the, the, the re yeah, the reality. you know, I mean, rusty taco just hit the movers and shakers 100 list, you know, came out last week. Yeah. Super exciting. Yeah. Super exciting. You know, all, all that's good, but like deep down inside, man, this is like a very, you know, Daniel Tsentsiper (35:29.005) No, it's a curve ball. Daniel Tsentsiper (35:38.36) Yep. Congratulations to you and NRA. Daniel Smith (35:52.106) you know, from the heart type answer is I'd love our franchisees to be making, you know, showing positive comp, making great money in love with the brand more than they are today. feeling like they're part of something special and I got to figure out how to measure that. but like, you know, that is, you know, that's my visceral feeling is, is I need the franchisees. Daniel Tsentsiper (36:13.358) Mm-hmm. Daniel Smith (36:21.602) to love it. It's not about what I do. It's about what we do together that'll bring success to them because that's kind of the essence of the whole franchise, you know, community is, is they win, we win. So I got to find ways to make them win. And I got to find ways to make them happy. When franchisees start stepping up going, I need to open another location. This is going too good. That's where I got to be. Right. And so that, that is, yeah, that is the true honest, I feel like that's my mission. Daniel Tsentsiper (36:44.716) Yeah, it's a good feeling. Daniel Smith (36:51.45) I mean, I do, I'm owned by a parent company. They have expectations. I do have to do the things. I've got a five-year plan, but I'll never hit the five-year plan if I don't do exactly what I told you. It's got to be a win-win for the franchisees. And that's going to be measured in profit, their store profit, their store sales, and their desire to open more restaurants. Daniel Tsentsiper (37:14.052) All right. That's their that's their number. Dan, thank you so much for thank you so much for joining the show. I am super excited to see where you guys go. I'm super excited about the brand. I'm excited about you. I think you have a leadership style that I have grew up with, whether it's Arnold or David Goggins, you have that energy and I freaking love it. So thank you so much for for, sharing our sharing your wisdom with us. Daniel Smith (37:16.62) Yeah, there you go. Daniel Smith (37:26.456) So. Daniel Smith (37:33.646) Yeah. Daniel Smith (37:39.672) Well, DT, always a pleasure, man. I hope we catch up soon. All right. All right. See you. Bye. Daniel Tsentsiper (37:42.562) All right, take care. Bye. Bye.