#22: How Crust Pizza Co. Found Growth by Backing Dreamers | Carl Comeaux, Crust Pizza Co.

Daniel Tsentsiper (00:01.317) Carl, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Carl Comeaux (00:03.5) Good, how about you Daniel? Daniel Tsentsiper (00:05.19) doing wonderful. I'm very excited for this conversation. Last time we talked, we went a little bit off on some of our background. We connect in that we're both in the past lives, we're both personal trainers. And we kind of went down this entrepreneurial path and started businesses of our own. And now you are here, you know, running this really cool concept. How many stores are you guys at at the moment? Carl Comeaux (00:17.921) Yes. Carl Comeaux (00:27.63) 33 at the moment and we're fixing to open up a couple more in June. So we yeah, we're we're on on the fast track to 40 We should hit that by the end of the year Yeah Daniel Tsentsiper (00:38.265) Let's go. Take us back. I always like to have my guests talk a little bit about how they got to their seat currently. And then maybe we can also talk about some of the challenges along the way and talk about the growth ahead for CRUST. So take us back to where you started. How did you get into the restaurant industry? What were some of your earliest positions there? And take it away. Carl Comeaux (00:46.177) Yeah. Carl Comeaux (00:53.495) Yeah. Carl Comeaux (01:00.244) Okay, let me go down memory lane here. Let's take it all the way back 20 years, 22 years. So I ended up joining a gym with my dad at 11 years old. He asked me, said, Carl, do you want to join a gym or play baseball? said, let's join a gym. I was overweight as a child. So we started working out and then, really, or you too? Daniel Tsentsiper (01:03.781) Yes, sir. Daniel Tsentsiper (01:21.273) Me too. Yeah. Carl Comeaux (01:24.65) Yeah. And fast forward to 14 years old, started working at the gym that I was working out at. And then I picked up an article about personal training and how you could help others with their fitness goals. So ended up saving a couple hundred dollars and found a certification where you didn't have to be 18. Saved up money and went to New Orleans, got certified and that was at 15. And then at 16 ended up, I was training. 15, 20 clients, all business professionals or moms. And then from there ended up going to college, thought I wanted to be a doctor, but then decided I want to focus on preventing disease, similar to the personal training space. And so I ended up getting a master's degree in exercise phys. Absolutely hated college. The only reason why I went is because my parents brainwashed me that you have to go. But the entire time I was in college, I was learning and applying what I was doing with clients, which was pretty cool. Daniel Tsentsiper (02:23.888) you Carl Comeaux (02:24.27) to have that opportunity. And then after college, was 20, I ended up getting two degrees in four years. So I did the fast track, I went to my advisor and I said, look, I said, I wanna max out my hours and I wanna finish as soon as possible. And we did, we did. Four years, I had two degrees. And then left there and went into owning my first personal training business. I was so busy, I was training 70 clients a week or 70 hours a week. I literally didn't have time to use the restroom or eat. It was that busy. And I was like, well, like what's the next level? Cause I'm a big, I'm big into growth. Like that's one of my main human needs. I need growth. And so I felt maxed out and I thought, okay, maybe I could train, I could hire someone underneath me and train them. Daniel Tsentsiper (02:54.32) yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (02:58.828) Yeah. Yeah, I know. Daniel Tsentsiper (03:06.48) Hmm. Carl Comeaux (03:21.098) what I do and then go from there. And so I did. I hired another personal trainer to help me. And I learned that I don't know anything about managing others and that I was a micromanager. And that was terrible. So I had to learn that whole process of how to manage people, which I'm big into. If you're weak into something, then go find someone that's strong in it and then learn everything they know and then apply it. And then you should... you should get better results. And so that's what I did. learned, cause again, I only had a degree in exercise, Fizz. I didn't have a degree in business, but the good news is as I had mentors that were business owners, and then also I read a lot of business books to get me up to speed to owning my own business. And then after a couple of years, I ended up having seven personal trainers underneath me and we were absolutely cranking it. And so through that process, I ended up opening up a second studio. moved to Houston, Texas, opened up another studio. And then from there, I connected with one of my buddies from college that had just retired from another job. He started a company similar to Groupon. I don't know if you remember that, the deal of the day business. Well, he did the same thing in the smaller markets and he... Daniel Tsentsiper (04:41.261) I do. Yeah, yeah, Yes, yes, yes. Carl Comeaux (04:47.502) he started a cell phone repair concept called Fix My Phone. And he said, man, said, this is the future. I said, man, we don't have anything like that in Houston. So let's partner up and let's build this together. So we ended up opening up one in Houston. And then that was my first step into franchising was Fix My Phone. So through that process, we started learning about franchising a business. We ended up getting a couple of franchisees and then we ended up building it to I 12 locations. Through that time that we started building it, we were looking for a CEO to help us scale Fix My Phone. At that time, my business partner, Nick, that I was partners with for Fix My Phone, came to me and said, hey, my sister ended up getting kicked out of her yoga studio. She needs a new place. Let's do a yoga studio for her. The reason why he came to me, one, I'm his business partner, two, I have a background in fitness. I said, look, I have a background in fitness, but you don't understand like the yoga people are too much about the universe, not about making money. I'm not interested. And he's like, dude, he said, look, I'm telling you, we need to do it for her. I said, no, I'm not doing it. So a week later, he sends me a P and L for a juice business. It was ilovejuicebar.com and they put their full P and L, which like three months, Daniel Tsentsiper (05:53.972) Yeah, exactly. Daniel Tsentsiper (06:14.134) on the website. Carl Comeaux (06:15.434) Yeah on the website which like three months later they ended up taking it down and I went to them I said you know this actually looks like a really cool concept what we can do is we could do the juice business juice and smoothie business in the front there's nothing like this in Lake Charles similar to like fix my phone there was nobody doing that let's do it and then we're gonna it's it's gonna be a cross promotion with the yoga and the juice and smoothies and he said let's do it so we ended up rolling that out, we main squeeze juice company is what was the creation of that P and L. And then in the back we did yoga y'all and it was beautiful. We ended up opening up, I thought we would do like 30,000 a month. We ended up doing 120 grand the first month. But before that, right before it opened up, the guy that we interviewed to come be the CEO for Fix My Phone, we brought him by main squeeze and He tried and fell in love with it and said, want to run this, not that. And I'm like, look, we're just doing one. We're just doing one. We're not franchising this. He said, oh no, this is going to be franchisable. And then after we did 120 grand the first month, all our focus went to that. We ended up hiring that CEO for MainSqueeze instead of Fix My Phone. Daniel Tsentsiper (07:19.788) Yeah. Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (07:35.622) What were you looking for? Why were you looking for a professional CEO? Why can't you have, you know, looked at yourself or your partner to handle that role? Carl Comeaux (07:41.262) Yeah. Well, so his background, the guy we were vetting for Fix My Phone, he was leading, he led another cell phone repair business from like 20, 30 stores to 120 and then sold out. So when he sold out, we saw it as an opportunity. And then, course, that shifted to this other business that we didn't, we weren't even planning on franchising. Daniel Tsentsiper (07:54.647) Nice. Daniel Tsentsiper (07:58.669) You it. Carl Comeaux (08:09.23) It was just for his sister, right? It was just for Miranda. It wasn't for us. Of course, if we do anything, Nick and I, do it right. We do, I mean, we're not gonna just open up a mom and pop shop. Anything we open up, it's gonna feel like it's a good experience. So from there, we ended up selling 50 stores in 18 months for MainSqueeze and ended up going down that road. It was crazy, the growth that we had with... Daniel Tsentsiper (08:33.343) It is incredible. Carl Comeaux (08:37.794) with the first two years of Momentum. Then we ended up selling out of that business. But during that time that we were scaling Main Squeeze, I had moved to the Woodlands, which is where I discovered Crust Pizza as a customer, fell in love with the concept, ended up meeting Mark and Clint as founders. And then we became friends. They wanted to scale, they didn't know how. So I helped them with that process. then, you know, fast forward a couple years when we were... Daniel Tsentsiper (08:50.7) Hmm. Carl Comeaux (09:04.878) when we're looking at selling main squeeze. So this is now 2018, because we started main squeeze I think in 2015 or 2016, I can't remember now, but somewhere in that timeframe. So we ended up selling on main squeeze and I told the guys, said, hey look, Mark and Clint, I said, I'm gonna be moving back to Louisiana. I would love to help you guys scale crust. And they turned me down because they saw the demographics of Lake Charles and said, it's terrible. would never go here and then, ended up nine months later, whenever I get a call from Clint and I'm fixing to sign a lease for rush pizza, Nick and I created another pizza concept that we were going to scale just like we did for main squeeze. We could create anything. So we, told Nick, I said, I'm going to miss crust pizza and we need to create something that's going to that's similar and less dominated. And so, yeah, Clint calls me three days before and. Daniel Tsentsiper (09:46.765) Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (09:51.264) Right. Daniel Tsentsiper (09:59.744) Right. Carl Comeaux (10:03.566) He asked me what I'm doing and tell him I'm fixing a sign of lease for a rush pizza and he tells me he changed his mind after I spent 150 grand on research and development and I'm like, oh, thank you for calling me and and then I ended up getting with Nick and Nick and I really thought hard about it and I said, you know what? The crust is special. I love the name the name You just can't beat the name kind of like on the founders with McDonald's say what's so special? You know is the name Daniel Tsentsiper (10:26.977) Yeah. It's the name. Yeah, absolutely. The final scene, It's so powerful. Carl Comeaux (10:33.262) It's the name, Yes, it's the name and CRUST is the name. And I'll be honest, we're paying for that name, Daniel. I mean, we spend so much money on cease and desist and people wanting to, and here's the thing with trademark. Trademark, I mean, we'll spend eight to 10 grand on a deal and then they don't have to pay us any of that money back after they lose. It's just trademark is, law is crazy. But anyway, getting back onto the story. Daniel Tsentsiper (10:40.62) Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (10:53.131) Hmm. Carl Comeaux (11:00.226) we ended up, getting the landlord to go try crust. fell in love with it. Gave us eight weeks and then we all became equal partners. I'm the CEO running the company. Nick is the technology officer and, and then Mark and Clint, the founders, Mark is over the finance and legal, then Clint is over construction. And then of course we have a team underneath us to help us do what we do on a day to day basis. And so, yeah, that's our story in a nutshell, man. Daniel Tsentsiper (11:28.096) That's amazing. That's amazing. There's a lot of similarities between your story, my story. I don't want to go off on on all the similarities, but I started working in a juice bar at a gym that was kind of my precursor to starting my own fitness business. And it's incredible. Like I see a lot of similarities in myself and you and that you are from from the story you just said, you're someone that's very good at kind of seeing the opportunities and just like you said, being able to execute well. Carl Comeaux (11:41.507) Wow. Daniel Tsentsiper (11:56.831) So when you saw a crust pizza, right, when you went in there, you found love with the name, you found love with the food, what did you see was missing in order to take this to scale? Carl Comeaux (11:57.325) Yeah. Carl Comeaux (12:06.926) It was too big. The menu was huge. It was 60 plus menu items. So I knew immediately we needed to change and condense that down. And the good news is, is after I analyze all four locations that were open at the time, I realized that all the stores had the same top sellers in every category. So then it was really easy to be able to condense the menu down to 35 items from 60 plus. And so that was probably the biggest thing we changed, even pizza sizes. You know, like they had Daniel Tsentsiper (12:24.735) Right. Daniel Tsentsiper (12:30.1) Mm-hmm. Carl Comeaux (12:36.034) They had eight, 10, 12, 14, 16, kid size. I mean, you talk about the pizza boxes you need for that. Cause 50 % of our businesses take out. And so we, we eliminated a lot of that, those boxes by going with the two most popular sizes, which is the 10 inch for our personal pizza. And then our 14 inch, which is considered our family pizza. So yeah, that was the biggest thing that, operationally that I tweaked. Daniel Tsentsiper (12:39.711) Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (12:59.55) Yeah. Carl Comeaux (13:05.55) And it paid off. Like Charles opened up and within the first year became the number one store in all categories. Daniel Tsentsiper (13:05.833) Hmm. Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (13:13.65) Was there any hesitation from the founder on making those changes? Carl Comeaux (13:18.222) Yeah, yeah, they, you know, they definitely were skeptical about it because when you have four stores that are all successful with what they're currently doing, they were very skeptical about it. But then the way I convinced them was, Hey, like Charles is three hours away from any of your stores. So it's going to, it's going to be fine. Let's try it out here. And it ended up working well. And guess what? Now their menus are, uh, 35 items. They might have, they have like three items on their menu steel that We don't have on the new menu because they just didn't want to take it off because some customers love it. But overall, their menu is real identical to ours now, the original stores. Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (13:56.798) That's a good, that's a, I think a good first step. What happened next? When did you guys decide to begin franchising and what are sort of the steps that you go through to analyze the types of franchisees you're looking to attract to the business and how do you get in front of these people? Carl Comeaux (14:06.467) you Carl Comeaux (14:14.102) Yeah. Yeah. So like Charles was the store that needed to open up and test the new model before we could franchise. So that was the step one. Step two is let's get a good franchise attorney and let's make sure we write a really solid franchise disclosure document, documents, and then let's build a team because at end of the day, as a franchisee, you're paying a royalty to us for what? You're paying a royalty for us to help support you in the development phase and then the ongoing support phase, which includes operations and marketing. And so it's your team that you have to invest in in the early days. And that's your asset. That's your main asset is your people. A strong group of people that could help support these franchisees because so many franchisers will go into this and they think, we'll just keep us four guys. Daniel Tsentsiper (14:49.673) Right. Right. Right. Carl Comeaux (15:13.934) And then we'll open up all these stores and we'll support them as needed that it doesn't work out that way at all As far as who we're looking for We we're looking we we've started with the dreamers the the burned out corporate Employees that are making the hurt to turn thousand a year that are sick and tired of clocking in and out They usually have a good size 401k. They usually have 200,000 a liquid Daniel Tsentsiper (15:18.518) No, right. Carl Comeaux (15:42.528) usually 500,000 net worth at least, and they want to sink those 60 hours a week into something that's gonna give them a return versus somebody else's return. And so that comes with no restaurant experience at all. We train them on A to Z, and we actually rather it that way, because they're green and they can learn our way, which is the best way, versus trying to reverse bad habits. Daniel Tsentsiper (15:51.72) Mm-hmm. Carl Comeaux (16:11.84) And so that's worked out really good. All those dreamers turn into owner operators. They are working, they are the manager. So that's the first person. And usually they open up one and then most of them are opening up their second, third location right now, which was the goal. But of course, as we get closer to 50 locations, we're definitely interested in the multi-unit franchisees. The ones we're interested in the most are the ones that Daniel Tsentsiper (16:11.976) Mm-hmm. soon. Mm-hmm. Carl Comeaux (16:41.102) For example, let's say we're targeting Atlanta, Georgia, and we find a franchisee that owns 10 coffee shops and he's maxed out. He can't open up any more coffee shops in the area. He's looking for, right, he's looking for another concept that he could do 10 more in his territories. And so that's what we're looking for. No. Daniel Tsentsiper (16:51.432) Right. He doesn't have the territory. Daniel Tsentsiper (17:00.902) Right. I see. Doesn't want to branch out. Doesn't want to branch out to another city or another state, but wants to stay, of dominate that territory, but add additional concepts to his portfolio, his or hers portfolio. Yeah. Yeah. Carl Comeaux (17:13.762) That's it. That's exactly what we, that's the exact person we're looking for. And we found a couple multi-unit franchisees already and it's been fantastic. I will say the good, the, the pro with a multi-unit franchisee that has been there done that is, they usually have their own business systems. They usually, they follow your playbook pretty closely. They trust the process a little bit more because they've been there, done that with another concept. Daniel Tsentsiper (17:38.46) Right. Daniel Tsentsiper (17:43.89) Right. Carl Comeaux (17:43.936) And so it's a lot less training and coaching to be honest with you whenever you deal with those multi-unit franchisees. And then they'll take it and run with it. I mean, they'll go from one to five quickly without near the support that a dream or somebody that's coming in this from corporate America will need. That requires a lot more time and effort on our side going that route. Daniel Tsentsiper (17:53.254) Right. Right. Daniel Tsentsiper (18:08.229) Yeah, I'm sure. Right. I just had someone on recently who, when I asked that same question, they're in a little bit larger than you guys in terms of store count, but he said, we don't want people that don't come from restaurant experience because it's too risky. Usually they'll come in and bring an operator to run the thing and they're still working their full-time job. From what it seems like you, you want that person to pour their entire heart into it and, and have that be their main, you know, main job. their main, whatever, nine to five. Do you see though, like, it reminds me a lot of when I watched, you know, the movie, The Founder, right? And how he convinced all these dreamers to, join them on, the battleship and all those people turned into, you know, millionaires and got in at the early stage. Do you kind of see like those, like there's two, two different strategies about who do you attract early on? The dreamer versus someone that has some experience. Carl Comeaux (18:42.829) Yeah. Carl Comeaux (18:50.094) Mm-hmm. Carl Comeaux (19:07.107) Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (19:10.181) And how do you kind of weigh the pros and the cons there? And ultimately, do you think that decision of going after the dreamer aligned closely to like who you are as a person? Carl Comeaux (19:19.854) Yeah, think so. The dreamer avatar, let's say, they're usually really passionate. They usually have the skills needed and they're hungry to do their own thing. And I love the opportunity that it gives them because I've been self-employed since I was 16 years old. I was only employed, only employer was the gym that I started training at and I worked there for like maybe a year and that was it. So from 16 to now I'm 38 fixing to be 39 in a few days. Like I've only been self-employed and I love what self-employment brings to the table. And for so many people, they get stuck into that. that being an employee and then they want to make the shift to entrepreneurship, but it's hard to do so. So for me to be able to help them make that transition and for them to have the same freedom down the road. Now, at first it's a grind. It's a lot of hard work, right? The first year, it's not pretty. I mean, you got to put in some, you got some limited beliefs to break through mentally. have to learn the processes. You have to gain some traction. which takes a little while for the dreamer. But once they do, bro, they go from crawling to running and you see that light bulb go off and then to be able to make more entrepreneurs through the process is very, very rewarding. Daniel Tsentsiper (20:46.756) Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (20:59.046) It's the same feeling with a personal trainer client, right? The first couple of weeks, I tell them when I was a trainer, I was like, hey, you're going to hate me for the first month or so because I'm going to force you out of your limiting beliefs and I'm going to push you like hell. And then you're going to come to me and you're going to be extremely grateful. And my goal is for you to run on your own, right? For you to be able to just take in a run with it and fire me one day. So I love that. I can see that. Carl Comeaux (21:02.198) Yep, same thing, same thing. Carl Comeaux (21:15.299) Yeah. Carl Comeaux (21:21.486) Yeah. Carl Comeaux (21:27.073) Yes. Daniel Tsentsiper (21:29.145) for you, training these people is very similar to kind of training a personal client and helping them kind of coach them along the way and give them the legs to be able to take the business and grow and become financially successful. So I really, I really like that. Tell me on the last point here before we wrap up. When I was doing some research on your team, you talked about how the team is super important. And I'm sure that every single person you brought onto your, on the franchisor side of things, you were very meticulous with. Carl Comeaux (21:42.208) Yeah. Yeah. Carl Comeaux (21:52.242) yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (21:59.136) What do you think is your team's unfair advantage? What makes your side of the house like the best, the best of the best in the business? Carl Comeaux (22:08.502) Well, we are tech. mean, we have tech in house. Nick is brilliant. He's a genius. And when it comes to tech, we've built a couple of point of sales already. We've built the franchise development portal and we did the same thing with CRUST. We started with the development portal and then now we're fixing the release, the point of sale, which we went third party on the last few years with that. But we knew that Eventually we would take that in house and we did and and we are and we're so excited that we're we're making that that step because the flexibility it gives to our operators and the optics it's gonna give them on a day-to-day basis to make better decisions to make more money is just priceless man. And so the tech side is is definitely an unfair. It's it's an unfair advantage. that we have. A lot of people are scared. Daniel Tsentsiper (23:06.851) I've never heard, I've never heard, I've never heard someone at your size build it in house, which is takes a lot of balls. Carl Comeaux (23:12.332) Well, that's, yeah, and that's just it, right? Like a lot of people were scared to do it. And then a lot of people that attempted end up getting screwed by the programmers or it's a terrible launch and the horror stories I've heard. they all tell me, Carl, you're have the same story. I'm like, no, we've been there, done that to multiple times, fixed my phone, squeeze. Main squeeze is still running on all the softwares that Nick created. So it's, you know what I'm saying? Daniel Tsentsiper (23:40.047) That's pretty cool. How much does that save you? How much does that save you in, it's maybe hard to put a number on it, but how much does it save you in terms of the bottom line? Carl Comeaux (23:41.291) Yeah, it's cool, so no. Carl Comeaux (23:50.126) The bottom line, oh, I mean, well, we haven't implemented that system yet, but once we do, it should be a few point, three to five points easy. Yeah, which is a big deal in the restaurant space, right? Because I mean, the standard is 15 % is where you wanna be in operating income. And so if you're at closer to 18 to 20%, or if you're average 20 and you're closer to 25%, that's a, everybody's gonna sign up. Daniel Tsentsiper (23:57.773) Yeah, yeah, it is a big deal, right? Carl Comeaux (24:19.916) So yeah, no, it's real good. Daniel Tsentsiper (24:19.918) Amazing. Well, awesome. Well, let's wrap it up here. What is in store for, for crusts in the next year? If I talk to you in a year from now, what would you want to accomplish? Carl Comeaux (24:27.626) yeah. In a year from now, we are doing our first annual retreat in March where we're bringing all the franchisees and managers in the same room. And it's going to be a time to entertain them, educate them and empower them on the vision that we have and where we're going. We are implementing a new catering program that's going to be rolling out in the next couple of months, which we're really excited about. In a year from now, we should have 42, 43 locations. So we'll be in the 40s, getting closer to that 5-0 number, which is where I'm excited to get us. Yeah, I want to beat it sooner than later. And yeah, man, and then by then all our tech will be 100 % implemented and working and stores are to be even more profitable than they are now. And then at that time, hopefully we have more multi-unit franchisees and more dreamers signing up and then, yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (25:04.301) You wanna beat it. Daniel Tsentsiper (25:26.5) Amazing. Carl Comeaux (25:26.658) From there, we'll see what happens. Daniel Tsentsiper (25:29.06) Carl, wishing you all the best of luck. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing with us your wisdom. for me personally, just seeing a different side of what it takes to run a franchise or business. So this has been really, really cool. Thank you so much. Carl Comeaux (25:43.682) Thanks Daniel for having me. Okay, you too. Bye. Daniel Tsentsiper (25:45.122) You take care.