#8: How Hot Head Burritos Scaled with Smart Marketing and Tech | Peter Wiley, Hot Head Burritos

Daniel Tsentsiper (00:01.32) Peter, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Peter Wiley (00:03.938) Doing great, man. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Daniel Tsentsiper (00:06.589) I've seen you, okay, so this is, I've seen you probably at four or three or four different conferences. And I remember the first time I saw you, was in RFDC, sorry, was FS Tech. We were both standing at the general session. You were standing all the way in the back. I came up to you and I remember seeing you had like, I always tell this to you. You always have like a bright hat, always colorful clothing and you always stand out. And then I saw you again at, I believe, RFDC and then also the last time I saw you at MerTech. And then the last one was at MUFC, right? So you've been going on a tear going to all these different conferences. So wanna hear a little bit more about you, never really got a chance to kind of learn more about your story and what are you doing at all these different conferences with HotHead? Peter Wiley (00:36.064) Yep. Yep. Peter Wiley (00:51.47) Yeah, well, the backstory is we kind of grew up in restaurants to a certain degree. My dad was friends with some of the Pizza Hut founders. And so he helped them do some development early on. That was pretty much before I came along. All my brothers and sisters are 10 years older than I am. So by the time I was functional, we were out of that and up in the Seattle area. we did get back into restaurants eventually. So if you're in the Daniel Tsentsiper (01:01.053) Super cool. Peter Wiley (01:20.78) Dayton area or Cincinnati area. I'm in Dayton personally. Skyline Chili is a big thing out here. we actually, dad got back into restaurants and both my brothers and myself were involved. And we developed Skyline Chili from Dayton up to Toledo and Cleveland and Columbus as actually a fast casual brand, interestingly enough, because they're historically a full serve one. After that, ended up transitioning out of that, moving back to Seattle area. But my brother Ray stayed and he stayed here and became a subway franchisee. So he was a subway franchisee for like 26 years, pretty involved. And then that's kind of hothead just kind of evolved. You know, it was something he'd always wanted to be a franchise or and Chipotle wasn't franchising. I mean, they did for like that long. And then, yeah, then they didn't. And he's like, well. Daniel Tsentsiper (02:11.495) Every second, yeah. Peter Wiley (02:16.354) game on, let's try it. So at the time I was living back out in the Northwest and he's like, I'm going to do this brand man, need some help. we, I was working remotely basically on all his graphics and his marketing and his website and stuff like that. And he got a couple of stores running and that was in 2007. So we're approaching 20 years, believe it or not. And yeah, it's crazy to think about. Yeah. So we got two going and then started opening more than. Daniel Tsentsiper (02:37.949) Congrats. Peter Wiley (02:46.286) started again, the goal was to be a franchise and started franchising and blew up pretty fast. And now we're at 84 locations, I think in seven or eight states. So, and hoping to hit more. Daniel Tsentsiper (02:59.729) That's pretty cool. think that's, you know, that's kind of unique in that you, your brother and yourself, you guys came from the franchising world. So you guys know what it's like to run an efficient restaurant operation. you kind of, from what I'm hearing is you took that playbook, right? And said, okay, we can replicate it with our own brand, but you make it sound really easy. Starting your own brand is, is not as, as easy as it seems to kind of like walk me through. Like, you know, was it, you guys started off with, was it always, Peter Wiley (03:21.23) Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (03:29.981) Hothead in mind or was it you guys play around with different concepts, know, maybe burgers and hot dogs or do you guys know you wanted to go after this kind of like fast casual qsr? market that Chipotle was was dominating at the time in 2008. They were still a very small there was 2008. They were still very very very small. Peter Wiley (03:44.718) Yeah, it was really so pretty new. Yup. Yeah, it was totally my brother's idea. Totally my brother's driving force. Again, I was in the Northwest, just helping him out remotely in graphics. You see his boots on the ground. But yeah, he was passionate about doing the franchise, having seen Subway grow, been very successful in Subway. And he's like, this is where it's at. This is what I can do. I know how to do this well. some way you can say up or down or plus or minus about them, but they had a very systemized system and it produced a lot of franchisees. So yeah, that was his main thing was to get the franchise going. And so he did all the hard work, I'll be honest. Again, marketing IT guy, I'm making websites, I'm making graphics. We made some TV commercials. I've done a lot of the radio. So it is a lot of hard work. It's one thing to operate a restaurant. And because we personally operate 11, what we call corporate stores on the Dayton market. And I oversee another 11 stores kind of in Youngstown, Toledo and Cleveland. So we are operators. We're not just a franchisor. going from being, because I've talked to some people who are operators or owners of brands, and they're thinking about franchising, it is another ball. another game to play, right? It is very different. It's a lot of legal work, a lot of paperwork, a lot of attorneys just to get through, get it set up and go through all the hoops. But it can also be extremely profitable because you're expanding rapidly. So it's been an adventure and it's an adventure every day. We're just trying to get better and better at it. Daniel Tsentsiper (05:11.088) Yeah. Peter Wiley (05:34.21) back to the conferences, learn, there's a lot to be learned from very successful people in the conferences, both operators and franchisors. So my goal and hitting there was to learn as much as I could. And as you saw, make the brand well known. We're pretty much Midwest based. And we're trying to expand our footprint out of the Midwest even more. Daniel Tsentsiper (05:48.431) Yeah, you're doing a good job with that. Daniel Tsentsiper (05:56.015) That's amazing. I was talking to an operator and at the time he was, his brand was still corporate owned. I think he had ambitions to franchise, but he didn't really know what he didn't know. And then he attended the IFA conference and that's where like, it blew his mind. He's like, wow, I'm around all these people that are very like-minded, that have ambitions to grow their business, grow their brand to thousands of locations. And you know, something kind of flipped, a light was flipped. And he from there got on, you know, the franchising game, got his FTD in order, got all the legal stuff completed. And he's been growing ever since. So my question to you is, do you think that there is like a right time to begin the conversation of franchising your business? Is there like a sweet spot or I guess in your case, you knew, you know, your brother knew all along he wanted to be a franchise, but. Peter Wiley (06:27.139) Mm-hmm. Daniel Tsentsiper (06:52.515) For the operators that are considering, they see some traction, they see a playbook where they can replicate this and it's generating profit. Do you think there's a right time or do think you have to be ready as a person to franchise your business? What would you say about that? Peter Wiley (07:10.722) I think you said a keyword in there was having a playbook and that's the substantial difference between operating or being just a single store operator and a multi store operator being a franchise or as an operator and kind of make stuff up as you go along. You don't need to have everything perfectly documented and you know, manual and all this. You're like, I just do it kind of like X franchise, man. You gotta have a book and a playbook exactly. Like you said, everybody's got to be able to take that and run with it. Daniel Tsentsiper (07:39.962) Mm-hmm. Peter Wiley (07:40.334) Some of our most successful franchisees were not restaurant people. They were looking for an opportunity to do something and chose restaurants and they've been very successful following the playbook. As far as the person and the business and the timing, I think there's certainly some economic things you're going to look at. Interest rates affect things because a lot of people are building with other people's money, right? You're looking for a loan to not, know, our operating or startup costs are anywhere from 350 to 550 typically most people aren't sitting on that and if they are they don't want to write a check they'd rather Leverage it in some fashion. So that impacts it. But I think like you said, it's a lot of you. What are you? Are you ready for this? Are you ready to? You know let go because you are letting go you're saying I trust you to run this restaurant to run this Represent us be the brand You know, make everything right, provide good customer service and do all those different things. and that's just a very different game than just running a single restaurant. So, I would encourage anybody to look into it and talk to people, talk to other, most of us, we'll happily have a conversation. You know, you're thinking about franchising. We'll tell you all the pluses and all the minuses and all the ups and downs and things to look out for, like any community. Most people really do want to help other people. so I just. Daniel Tsentsiper (08:46.23) All of yeah. Mm-hmm. Peter Wiley (09:04.96) really encourage that. Go to the conferences, ask questions. You can shoot me an email, give me a call, happily. Yeah, give you anything I got. Daniel Tsentsiper (09:15.126) Awesome. Let's see here. So when did you guys bring on your first franchisee? So you guys started the business in 07. Like I said in our last call, it's a great time to start, right? There's a lot of opportunities in the downturns. When did you guys bring your first franchisee and what has been, how has the growth trajectory looked like over the last 20 years for you guys? Peter Wiley (09:28.824) Yeah. Peter Wiley (09:37.614) Yeah. Good question. I wish I could nail it exactly, but I'm not going to get it exactly right. So nobody called me out too bad. Uh, but we started in 07. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it was like 08 or 09. It was pretty quick. Um, Ray really wanted to get the first store open, run it for a few months. As I recall him saying, got it open, lined to the door. Super excited. Signed another lease before I even had, you know, knew what I was doing. Hardly got that going. It was kicking, you know, Daniel Tsentsiper (09:44.249) They'll caught him on it. Peter Wiley (10:07.672) kicking butt, doing good. then because of his franchise community with Subway, he had a lot of friends in the restaurant space. And some of them jumped on board to open it up. So our first franchisee was Pam, still is with us, Pam Summer. So she's been a long time friend, again, been franchisee for gosh, long time now. And she operates seven stores, I believe. Might get that right or wrong. So. Daniel Tsentsiper (10:15.479) Nice, that's helpful. Peter Wiley (10:35.982) From then, we basically got, if I recall, trajectory right, we brought on a couple of people early on, relationships we already had. And then we, it's going to sound crazy, but I remember correctly, we got picked up when AOL was still kind of a thing. We either came across as an email or a news headline, something, and then his inbox just got flooded. mean, thousands of emails saying, hey, I'm interested, right? And from that point on, we really shot up at one point, were opening one a week for, I think it was like eight weeks or something like that. And then, you know, was a couple of months and we got up to, I think, 50 pretty quick. And then it tapered off a little bit is common. You know, you got a whole bunch of news and buzz. And then we just kind of did steady growth for a little bit. And then obviously COVID kind of hit and slowed down a little bit for there. And now we're ramping back up. got, I think, Three open in the summer, we had one open in the spring, and this is 2025. And then we signed three or four more deals. Maybe it might not bake it by the end of the year, but it'll be close to early 26. Daniel Tsentsiper (11:46.989) I think this is a perfect segue. Last time we talked about how do you get in front of potential franchisees, right? We talked about the marketing strategies. I'm sure back in 08, it's a different strategy than what you're currently running today. For a lot of my audience, they don't know perhaps that you are the man behind the scenes doing the marketing. You're also the IT guy as well. you said you also operate. Peter Wiley (11:55.47) Mm-hmm. Daniel Tsentsiper (12:14.304) a couple of stores, right? So you do it pretty much all. How do you, first of all, before we kind of dive deeper into the marketing side of things, how do you manage all those different roles, know, marketing, IT and operations? I'm curious, like, how do you survive? And how did you get into that? Peter Wiley (12:30.158) Yeah, it's a lot of work and a lot of really good teams. I certainly don't do it all. Starting off, like any business and entrepreneur, often you wear all the hats. In my case, Ray was the, again, primary driver, operator, do it all. And certainly we tag teamed on marketing, but I was kind of niche and remote. I moved out here and I guess I've been out here about 13 years. Daniel Tsentsiper (12:44.567) For sure. Peter Wiley (12:59.768) So about 2010, I think we moved out here and went full time with him as things really started gaining traction. and at that point, we just kind of juggle them and it was a tag. It was a small team of people. he had an operator, from a subway to work with him for many years. Still with us today, same for Ryan. and we just made it work. Right. and again, a bunch of team in there, not even just us three. And then as we grew, you just bring out a few more people. I have Kelly Grazer, vice president now co-owner, and she does our real estate for us. So you try to get the people, you can't wear all the hats all the time because I don't have all that skill set. And so you quickly try to find the people with the skill set. Yeah. I mean, I was good at graphic design. I was good at, you know, web and social media. did Facebook for 10 years. And then Kelly came along and was doing real estate. Ryan did operations. Ray, you know, kind of had his hands in all of them because he Daniel Tsentsiper (13:37.536) Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. No, you got the experts, right? Peter Wiley (13:57.238) worked on Subways, board and done operations for years and multiple different restaurants. I think you may have to do it all initially, but you really want to quickly find, get the right people in the right place as fast as you can for some of your key positions. Daniel Tsentsiper (14:13.301) Love it. That's really good. think thinking about my team, right? I kind of have to do it all right now. I'm dabbling in, you know, outbound marketing and it's, you know, it's not the most fun, but I'm learning along the way. And I'm sure as we grow, that's where we can kind of specialize. I feel like my specialty is operations. I'm really good at like setting a blueprint and just executing. But right now I have to kind of do it all. So I respect that. I respect the hustle. Let's go back to the early days. What were some of the the marketing stuff you were you were working on and then maybe today how has that changed? Peter Wiley (14:51.906) Yeah, it, you know, the biggest difference from yesteryears as I'm 50 now, and that was a while ago. you just have so many more platforms, you know, back then we were doing, direct mail. We're doing broadcast TV with some cable, and radio, right? Those are your three primary things, occasional billboard and stuff like that. and that's what you did. You kind of repeated the same thing each month, came up with new radio commercials. We often did LTOs or featured a promo item a special item for a couple months at a time and nowadays You're just like we did a quarterly review with our ad agency and probably 20 or 30 different places. You're trying to reach people now You know, it's not just broadcast. It's broadcast cable Over-the-top TV they call it which could be YouTube and all the streaming different streaming platforms Spotify You know, YouTube, Instagram, you just, it's not, doesn't fit on one page anymore. You have to figure out, and then you have to kind of budget and what works and what areas. And that's similar with the franchise is even almost more challenging nowadays. Cause consumers, you have a whole bunch of avenues, franchises. You're going for a more niche market, right? I'm not looking for everybody who's out to buy a burrito. I'm looking for someone who wants to invest in, you know, Daniel Tsentsiper (15:55.222) For sure. Daniel Tsentsiper (16:16.522) Bye. Peter Wiley (16:19.266) put some work in and generally it knows what they're doing and stuff. So that becomes almost more challenging. I think that was part of our switch for 2025 is really the conferences as you brought up. We never really participated heavily in conferences. So this year let's get the name out there and get people to recognize us, know who we are. And our PR company champions has done a nice job with that. We've been working with them for just three months, but the... The idea that you recognize the name hothead when you see an ad go by. So when we run an ad, now it carries that much more weight. We're not just, it's not just something flashing in front of you as you scroll through Instagram or LinkedIn or wherever you happen to see it. Like, I remember that because I remember the dude with the blue Flordora, you know, the conference who happened to talk about third party ordering or marketing or something like that. So, it is certainly a marketing play. but there's also, we also come back with a lot. Daniel Tsentsiper (17:06.198) You Nice. Daniel Tsentsiper (17:15.348) Yeah, it is. Yeah, that's a good point. where have you seen a... Let's kind of break it down, right? Because we have attracting franchisees, right? Getting more franchisees to invest and also getting more consumers aware of the brand. Out of those two different buckets of marketing, very broad, but where have you seen the highest ROI in those two categories? Peter Wiley (17:17.378) from the conferences. Peter Wiley (17:40.75) Man, that's a ROI is even more challenging now than it was before, right? Because again, you were before you're tracking, you know, four things, and now you're tracking 20 or 30. I had a call just before this and we're again with our agency, Paul Nagel, and we're talking about YouTube, right? And it had, we'd switched from doing required watch. anybody watches YouTube out there, some of the ads you have to watch and you can't click or skip or nothing. Daniel Tsentsiper (17:43.721) It's hard to track. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Daniel Tsentsiper (18:09.334) That's right. That's right. That's right. Peter Wiley (18:10.676) versus some of the other ones after five, you know, you're, waiting. Okay. Skip, right? Yeah. Yep. And so, but we took that in mind, when we make our ads, we're working on doing that better and better. And so we switched from doing required watch, which costs significantly more to not required. And our numbers didn't drop. And because we'd like to think we're smart, maybe we got lucky, but Daniel Tsentsiper (18:13.395) Yeah, you're just like, as quickly as possible. Yeah. Peter Wiley (18:38.702) recent ads have been captivating enough for engaging enough or creative enough or quirky enough or funny enough. I don't know that people will watch them almost the same number as they were watching them when they were required to watch, you know, a time span. So they're not clicking after five seconds. So I think those types of things you're looking for that are that is ROI. We spent the same money. It is a little difficult to track it through a sale necessarily. But I just got Daniel Tsentsiper (18:39.145) Yes. Peter Wiley (19:07.314) way more bang for my buck by adjusting our creative aspect of the marketing to take advantage of how people watch stuff on YouTube. That's a little more challenging on the franchise side. again, think podcasts and things like this that we're doing help our business helps your business, helps my business. And that the more people see us, the more people get a chance to relate to us because most businesses really relationship. I'm not I'm not selling you a car. Daniel Tsentsiper (19:33.812) That's all it is. Peter Wiley (19:36.578) You're investing in us. I'm investing in you if I'm working with your platform. So really creating an atmosphere where people can see you, get to know you. I think that is the best. And unfortunately, it is difficult to nail down to an ROI. if I start, you know, as our franchise sales pick up, as our guest check average picks up or guest checks, you know, frequency pick up, we've seen a nice uptick in our rewards over the last couple of years as we, you know, really dialed into that. you can see it. Sometimes it's just hard to quantify. Daniel Tsentsiper (20:10.045) Mm hmm. Yeah, that's a good point. It is a very good point. You have so many different strategies that you're running and, you know, what's the how can you quantify the value of meeting me? Right. You've been to four. I've seen you have four different conferences and only now we're speaking. So, you know, it's it's difficult. But if you are putting yourself out there, right, and you are putting yourself out there, creating a good experience for your guests and, you know, being creative. I seen like even the tech companies that I'm around 24 seven, I'm in San Francisco. They're getting so creative with their billboards and their TikToks. It's amazing. I don't know if you've ever driven down San Francisco like on the freeway, you see some of these like tech startup billboards, they're just so goofy, but they work. mean, they do a good job because they're different. So I love that. Let's see. On the market side of things, I got that. think there's a lot of good gold nuggets there, but what about the technology? you invested in any tech that you've seen a substantial improvement in your business in recent years? Peter Wiley (21:23.21) Really? This is going to sound like a total sales pitch. So you can pay me later, Q. But really our best technology move in the last few years was switching to Q, point of sale. We've been on several different ones and having something that's stable, a really big play for it, which helps everything work better is the third party integrations. You have so much restaurants right now rely on third party. Daniel Tsentsiper (21:35.229) Nice. Peter Wiley (21:53.868) DoorDash, UberEats, GrubHub, whatever it may be, EasyCater. And so that decision to go with that technology that allows it to come right into the point of sale, make it very seamless experience for our guests. And it also makes it, in a perfect world, almost seamless for our customer. So if they go to DoorDash and order, if they go to GrubHub and order, they go to UberEats and order, they order from our website, they're going have a very similar experience because our menu is the same, our items are the same, our options are the same. which again, build some brand loyalty in that, I don't go to DoorDash and they're missing these three things because something didn't happen to match up right. But that's been a huge play for us. they certainly have done lots of things over the last couple of years to keep improving their product. again, sorry to throw a sales pitch on your show, but they have been a great partner. Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (22:49.37) No, that's awesome. No, I love Q. I love Q. Peter Wiley (22:52.972) And that tech has just been great. And we've also, interestingly enough, I've had multiple conversations on what tech, how much tech do you need? I'm a tech guy and I've used a lot I've used like Jolt, we use 7shifts , I've looked at, we're looking at some different digital signage companies we've used. I love looking at all the tech. In fact, when I came back from FS Tech, I was I was like, man, this is so cool. I came back with so many things and I just got hammered. I was just overwhelmed with how many things I was trying to evaluate. And my team was like, stop dude, like you got too many things going on. So we're actually evaluating. What are we going to, what actually gets used and generates some ROI or at least improves your team's life versus what's just a cool thing that sits on the shelf and doesn't actually get used. And we're still learning that. Daniel Tsentsiper (23:24.944) Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (23:32.966) Yep. Yeah, you're like... Daniel Tsentsiper (23:42.898) Mm-hmm. Daniel Tsentsiper (23:50.066) I love that. I love that. It's almost like a tech audit. I do something similar where every quarter I look to see what software subscriptions I'm signed up for. And then if something is not adding value to my life, I think in the moment it sounded interesting, right? For a couple of days I probably got value, but it's not like a repeating, you know, it's not a repeating part of your business or your life. So you don't really need it. I like that a lot. Without getting too, go ahead. Go ahead. Peter Wiley (23:59.704) Right. Peter Wiley (24:16.43) And restaurants, sorry, not gonna, with restaurants, it's so easy to add those things on. I joked and called it getting sassed to death, right? You're just software subscription. You know, I got this and that and pretty soon you got $500 in subscriptions per store. And again, I operate 11 stores. You do the math that adds up really quick and how much of it's getting used and how much is getting the ROI. So just like, it was a great example. Daniel Tsentsiper (24:23.12) Really? Daniel Tsentsiper (24:26.852) us. Daniel Tsentsiper (24:33.572) Right. Daniel Tsentsiper (24:38.075) Right. Daniel Tsentsiper (24:41.649) Hmm. Peter Wiley (24:43.896) I should look at my subscriptions each month and see if I'm actually getting use out of them. Daniel Tsentsiper (24:46.138) Yeah. You said something that's interesting because I didn't expect this to be the case, but you said in the restaurant industry, it's a lot. It's easy to kind of fall into the trap of getting software, getting tools that aren't really helpful for you. I would think it's probably the opposite because a lot of the things to truly, a lot of the tech to truly add value, there needs to be a level of customization. It needs to be a level of work that goes in on implementing it. Peter Wiley (25:03.523) Mm-hmm. Daniel Tsentsiper (25:19.375) with the exception of maybe a couple of smaller tools that you use. I think that, correct me if I'm wrong here, when you're working with a lot of these tools, they're not usually all off the shelf. Is that right? Or am I missing something here? Peter Wiley (25:35.726) It depends on some of the, it depends on the tool and some of what you're, what you're trying to accomplish with it. Right. So there's a lot of, um, like we've been exploring inventory platforms, you know, what's going to be the good fit. What's the right to spend or fast casual. Um, so you don't ring most things in, I mean, you're ringing the, you got a burrito, but in the restaurant, all I know is you've got a chicken burrito. I don't know what your other 12 toppings were on the burrito. Um, Daniel Tsentsiper (25:42.67) Right. Peter Wiley (26:02.894) So then is it really worth having the ideal food cost? Because I don't know what you ordered. 90 % of the time, are about 27%, 30 % to online ordering right now. So that means we only know exactly what you ordered in 30 % of the case. So you have to those things. Is it worth paying for the platform that does the ideal food cost? Or am I good enough just evaluating my cash on cash sales with a labor thing? Daniel Tsentsiper (26:06.32) Hmm. Daniel Tsentsiper (26:20.847) wow. Peter Wiley (26:32.11) like again with seven shifts who we've been happy with But it's not it's pretty simple to set up. They have a nice integration with Q, but it still takes some time Everything you almost all of the platforms you do take some time and even if they're this is this is what I've realized even if they're easy for me to Set up and I go through the dashboard good. Okay, it's great download the app you go Somebody has to explain to the supervisors and then somebody has to explain the store manager Daniel Tsentsiper (26:46.064) It does, yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (26:58.16) All right. Peter Wiley (27:00.302) And then somebody has to explain to the team member how this all works because I'm like, it's easy. Just grab this. But you know what I'm not doing? I'm not staying on the rolling burritos, cooking chicken, and, you know, managing shifts in a restaurant. I'm standing at a desk and doing podcasts. So the tech looks super cool and super easy. And they're like, hold on Pete, we got to implement this better. And so, I've slowed down some of my. Daniel Tsentsiper (27:12.217) Exactly. Daniel Tsentsiper (27:18.926) Yeah. Yeah. Peter Wiley (27:27.894) the rollouts, so I'm working on getting some of the things rolled out to my store and some new platforms, but I'm realizing I'm much more cognizant that to really make it impact my team members life and make their life better or more efficient or easy, I have to be more conscious of what it takes for them to adopt it and allow them the time and energy and make it as simple as possible so that they can integrate it quickly. Daniel Tsentsiper (27:54.01) I love that. And how do you do, how have you changed your approach to new rollouts? Do you start with one store to kind of get, get a feel for it and then A B test it with another store? Do you go and have a partner? But usually I've seen a lot of the cases, there's like one, one or two franchisees that are Mavericks that you work very close with that are going to tell you the honest truth about a technology. How do you kind of do that initial rollout and testing of a new, of a new technology at your stores? Peter Wiley (28:17.016) Right. Peter Wiley (28:24.3) Because we operate stores personally, those are our guinea pigs, right? The corporate stores, like Seven Shifts, for example, again, we brought them on board, you're welcome for the sales pitch and not at all locations. And as a franchisor, we don't often require our franchisees to use. We do require Q, but Seven Shifts we leave as optional. If you don't get value out of it, we don't want you paying for it because if the roles were reversed, we wouldn't be happy about something. Maybe we have something else we like. But we did that in a couple of stores. Then we have it all the corporate stores. I was using another product, I'm slowly, you know, I got one, I got two stores on it now out of my 11, and hopefully in the next couple months I'll transition off the other platform and get them all onto their platform. But yeah, so to your answer, we generally try to find somebody to test it, and we do this with products often too. We're testing some different products. We'll test it in store. Does it go well? Do the customers receive it well? And then we try to roll it out more and more. At some point you're like, okay, let's go. This this works and is productive. Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (29:26.649) This is good. I love it. love it. Hot take. What are some tech that you've seen at some of these conferences or on the internet that you think just isn't ready yet? Peter Wiley (29:40.238) The biggest one to me is the camera systems monitoring food levels. They look super cool. We've looked at a couple of different ones. I'm like, man, that's really cool. it'll tell you, for us, chickens are primary products. So when your pan gets so low because they're measuring the height, it can throw an alert and tell you to cook chicken or check your hotbox. And again, super cool tech. Daniel Tsentsiper (29:47.811) Yeah. They are. Daniel Tsentsiper (30:07.311) Right. In theory, Peter Wiley (30:09.374) And I know some restaurants are executing it and using it. Some of the bigger brands are testing it. And we just found it, just wasn't quite, it wasn't turnkey, right? But a lot of things aren't. It's pretty advanced. You got to set up cameras. You got to calibrate. You got to do a whole bunch of things. So I'm not putting the companies down. I'm just saying it is challenging, right? Daniel Tsentsiper (30:28.611) A lot of training. Peter Wiley (30:37.074) I would say on a little bit of the flip side there, I've seen a lot of success with brands with the voice, AI stuff, right? Drive through all of those, that technology is to me has just far surpassed the video side of it and how fast it's being adopted and how fast it's being used and how smooth it is and how quick you can do stuff with it. So kind of two contrasting things. We don't have lots of drive-throughs. Kind of pondering, maybe we can do more drive-throughs because they seem really popular. So I don't have a lot of experience in the voice AI stuff. But I guess that's my take. The video looks really cool. Love it to work. But again, you come back to the ROI. They're not cheap systems. And how am I going to get that money back? Daniel Tsentsiper (31:19.49) You're not, Absolutely. And I would say that for the video systems, I think the tech will definitely get there soon. It does require a lot of training in order to, just get the, you need a lot of data in order to create those machine learning models to understand what's being shown and being able to classify that correctly. Peter Wiley (31:29.518) Mm-hmm. Peter Wiley (31:40.056) Yeah. Daniel Tsentsiper (31:47.074) But then, like you said, you do need a lot of tech. not only is there a huge implementation cost associated with it, and then there's a huge training period, and there's a risk that it doesn't even work. it's still, I think that we're gonna get to a point where it's gonna be a lot easier to do those types of use cases, but it's not there yet. On the voice, the eye side of things, it's amazing to see how quickly the tech has gotten better. And there's still, an element of training that is involved in making sure that the agent that you're building understands all the different nuances of your brand. It's not a plug and play feature just yet, but the tech is definitely getting there. And what I love going... Peter Wiley (32:33.206) I mean, this whole voice I'm using is AI. I'm just kidding, but it could have been though, right? Daniel Tsentsiper (32:36.526) Yep. No, for sure. And, and, and, know, but you, you, you, like I told you on Riverside after this episode, what I can do is I can go in and I'll take our, you know, our crappy microphones and then click a button and all of a sudden we sound like we're in a professional studio. It's, it's amazing. And, uh, yeah, I can definitely, you gave me a good idea. Maybe on the next podcast, I can clone a different voice and, and pop up and, you know, sound, sound like Darth Vader or something, but awesome. Um, I guess to wrap it up, um, Peter Wiley (32:51.982) studio. It is super cool. Peter Wiley (33:00.002) Put it over. Daniel Tsentsiper (33:06.581) What is Hothead's vision? Where are you guys going in the next five years? What's on the horizon for you? Peter Wiley (33:13.474) Yeah, our goal is really to grow the brand significantly. mean, we're at 84. Statistically, a lot of brands don't get past five. Then the next plateau is somewhere in the 20s and 50s. There's kind of chunks as you see brands reach. So we're gunning for 100 right now. goal is to be over 100 by next year and then continue to grow exponentially. So my vision is to get to 1,000 locations in the next 10 years or so. which is a lot, know, that's 900 more locations. I get it. But you don't aim high. You can't possibly hit it. So let's go for it. And we happen to hit 500 along the way that came on. So, but that's where we're kind of tailoring and everything. Like I said, we're revisiting our tech stack, revisiting training, revisiting our menu. You know, can we pare it down, simplify it, make it more efficient, make it more profitable for our franchisees and for ourselves. So. Daniel Tsentsiper (33:48.129) Exactly. Peter Wiley (34:10.838) That's kind of our focus is how can we get better and how can we make the lives for the people that work with us and for us better too. Daniel Tsentsiper (34:19.021) I love it. And what do your franchisees love most about the brand? What do they admire about Hothead? What makes them choose to go with Hothead over, you know, nth number of burrito chains out there? Peter Wiley (34:32.718) Yeah, lots of competition. think we're very transparent. We're very relatable. You can call me on my cell phone, call Kelly on hers, get a hold of Ryan, get a hold of Conway. We're there, right? And we're operators. So we're not sitting in a high rise. Yeah, a cubicle. We might be standing in an office, but we know when we make a decision, Daniel Tsentsiper (34:51.564) cubicle. Peter Wiley (35:00.406) Like I said, if we're rolling out digital menus, so that means we are rolling out digital menus, right? If it's X amount of investment, it affects us 10 times more than most of our franchisees, right? They're coming, most of our franchisees, two, three or four. So we might be double, but I think that gives people a sense of confidence. Like they're not just doing things to do them. They're thoughtful. Daniel Tsentsiper (35:21.952) Right. Right. Peter Wiley (35:25.55) They're trying to test things. They look at it from an operator standpoint. How does this impact us? How can we, if we roll out an operation, know it's been done in several stores before we roll it out that far. So I think that is a key thing from a differentiating factor in the burrito world. We really specialize in sauces. We have 12 is our kind of standard and we're up to probably 15 or 16 variations. Daniel Tsentsiper (35:51.764) I saw that. Peter Wiley (35:53.946) stuff, you know, we brought in ghost pepper last year. brought in a, avocado, lime trying to remember them all. but that's really what sets us apart. So you can have whatever flavor you want. You know, some people, if you go to Chipotle and some of the other brands, they kind of have their set flavor profile and our flavor profile is really unlimited. So that's, think what sets us apart for most places. Daniel Tsentsiper (36:15.916) I love it. I love that. Have you seen KFC just came out with a new concept called saucy? It's a, and they have 11, 11 sauces. You guys got them beat with 12. And I'm, I'm a big, I'm a big sauce guy. Whenever I go out and I know a restaurant has a tons, tons of sauce, I get one of each. When I go to Chick-fil-A, I get one of every single sauce and I just dip my fries into every single sauce. So I love that. Peter Wiley (36:23.648) I did, yeah. Peter Wiley (36:30.424) Yes. Peter Wiley (36:38.862) Let's them. Right. Peter Wiley (36:44.568) Yeah. It was going say it is super trendy right now. Right. I mean, you see KFC is doing it. of course, B-dub has been around there for a long time with all the different sauces, but you see it even more, and other places coming out with dipping sauces, Wendy's with their nuggets. So sauce and flavor and, options and, know, unique profiles is on topic right now. Daniel Tsentsiper (36:44.744) And what do you look for? Go ahead. Daniel Tsentsiper (36:51.798) It is. Peter Wiley (37:11.278) So that's cool to see for us. We've been that way since we started. That was one of our primary goals. And we just keep evolving. Daniel Tsentsiper (37:18.763) Amazing. I got two more questions for you. Who in the restaurant world inspires you the most? Peter Wiley (37:20.963) Yeah. Peter Wiley (37:25.216) man, I'm not super great at names. I tell you the recent, I'm not even going to get their names right, so I apologize in advance. I think it was at. RFDC, there's a couple guys who came out of Harvard Business School. I should know it, but. Daniel Tsentsiper (37:45.631) Yes, these are that's the Garnet station partners, right? Yes, the guys that bought out the they bought out 10 or so Burger Kings while they were in Harvard and then yeah, and then sold it Garnet station Garnet Street station. Yeah. Peter Wiley (37:50.348) The Burger King guys, they did Burger King. Yeah. Yeah. Something. So that was pretty, that was impactful for me here in their story. Just cause you don't, we all live in our own little bubbles, right? And when you see something that's like kind of breaks your paradigm, like, wow, that was really cool. But there's, there's a ton of very successful people and in the restaurant world. Again, that's kind of what I've really enjoyed going to the conferences is hearing people's stories, hearing how they, nothing's overnight. Daniel Tsentsiper (38:11.616) through. Peter Wiley (38:29.504) Everybody's like, man, that brand blew up. They've been around for 30 years, right? they now they're blowing up. So a lot of hard work, a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But yeah, I would say that story jumps to top of mind is they just did something outside my paradigm. I inspired me to aim for that thousand stores. Daniel Tsentsiper (38:51.594) I love them. And I felt the same way. I went to that general session and my partner and I, we took a ton of notes. We listened to their podcasts and we were like, wow, like if we, I'm definitely not in the, in the restaurant game just yet, but if I was, that's how I want to operate. It was awesome. Peter Wiley (39:07.03) Yeah. Yeah. It was a good business concept, whether your restaurants or not, just to, yeah, great business case. Daniel Tsentsiper (39:10.921) Business Case. Daniel Tsentsiper (39:15.228) Last question for you. For my audience that's listening, that's considering franchisees, franchising, wants to become a franchisee, what is the type of person that you're looking for? Who would you like to work for, work with, other than people that have tons of cash and are willing to spend it? What do you look for in a franchisee for Hot Head? Peter Wiley (39:33.791) Yeah, yeah. Peter Wiley (39:39.756) Really looking for someone who's going to, I would say, sell out for the brand, be passionate about the brand. You represent the brand. And if you're not passionate about the concept and you're not in love with the concept, then you might want to find another concept. I mean, there are tons of concepts out there. And if you're not passionate about it, then you're not going to sell out. When your employee calls off, what are you going to do? I don't know. You're going to show up and You know work, right? You're gonna cover the shifts. You're do whatever it takes. You're gonna get out there in the community and represent You know, we have the Leroy mask. You've seen me wear around some of the conferences, you know We make those available to our franchisees. So they're great for events. Sorry. I should have brought one to throw on for you But yeah, that's our main thing is you know heart passion integrity again Nothing unique. I would say that a lot of everybody wants to work with people like that Daniel Tsentsiper (40:23.219) Yeah. Peter Wiley (40:37.368) And we just want to find somebody who's really excited about burritos and wants to make a difference in their lives and the lives of the people they work with. Daniel Tsentsiper (40:45.833) Peter, thank you so much for your time. This was extremely inspiring. I learned a ton and I will see you probably at the next conference, all right? Peter Wiley (40:54.882) Yeah, I got several several slated for 2025. So thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. And enjoy the rest of your day, Daniel Tsentsiper (40:59.849) Absolutely. Daniel Tsentsiper (41:03.315) Take care.