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Unlocking Restaurant Growth with Newk's Eatery CEO Frank Paci

• Erika Rivas

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In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guides podcast, Jeremy Julian, Chief Revenue Officer at CBS Northstar, interviews Frank Paci, CEO of Newk's Eatery. Frank shares insights from his extensive career in the restaurant industry, detailing Newk's history, menu innovations, operational strategies, and the brand's response to COVID-19. They discuss the importance of simplifying operations for consistency, leveraging technology like digital ordering and kiosks for customer convenience, and the significance of catering and delivery services. Frank also provides an overview of Newk's franchise opportunities and future growth plans.

00:00 Newks

01:17 Meet Frank Paci, CEO of Newk's Eatery

01:35 The Origin and Growth of Newk's Eatery

02:39 Dining Experience at Newk's

04:25 Menu Highlights and Innovations

06:39 Operational Simplifications and Quality Control

17:01 Adapting to COVID-19 and Evolving Business Strategies

20:21 Catering Business and Its Challenges

24:44 Technology and Future Growth

29:42 Conclusion and Final Thoughts



Speaker 2:

This is the Restaurant Technology Guides podcast, helping you run your restaurant better.

Are you ready to unlock the secrets behind restaurant growth and innovation? In this episode, we dive deep with the CEO of Newk's Eatery, Frank, and we uncover some practical tips, some real incredible insights that he has been able to acquire over his entire career that spans back to multiple brands and he's really doing some amazing things at Newts. Um, if you don't know me, my name is Jeremy. Julian, I'm the Chief Revenue Officer at CBS Northstar. Wrote The North Star Point of Sale solution for multi-units. Please check us out@cbsnorthstar.com and now onto the episode.

Jeremy Julian:

Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. As I say, each and every time, you guys have got lots of choices. So thanks for hanging out today. I got a chance to speak to Frank before I hit the record button. I'm gonna let him introduce himself, but, he is, leading a brand that, is near and dear to my heart. once I moved to Texas, it became one of the staples in our. and our going out to eat type of, environments. But Frank, why don't you introduce yourself before we jump into kind of the brand that you get to lead nowadays.

Frank Paci:

Great, thank you. yeah. I'm Frank Paci. I'm the CEO of Newk's Eatery. been in the restaurant business for a long time. I spent some time at, burger King, pizza Hut, McAllister's Deli and Corner Bakery. love the business and, happy to be here to talk about it.

Jeremy Julian:

Awesome. you, you shared a little bit of the history of where you're working. I'd love for you to walk, walk our audience through that, because it's a, I don't say it's a regional brand, but it hasn't necessarily gotten to a nationwide prominence quite yet as far as Newks. So where did it come from? What is it, talk me through a little bit of what the brand is for those that haven't had the, the privilege to experience it. Like my, my family and I

Frank Paci:

Right. Yeah. So Newk's was originally founded in, uh, Jackson, Mississippi was actually founded by the same folks that founded McAllister's Deli. and so. The Newcomb family founded McAllister's Deli, sold it off to private equity, uh, and then decided to create the Newk's brand after their non-compete expired. Um, and Chris Newcomb, who was the founder of the business, uh, used to say all the time that he fixed all the things that he didn't like with, uh, McAllister's. And so, one, as a brand, sandwiches, salad soups, pizza. Which helps our dinner day part, on the business. And, we're mainly in the southeast, have almost a hundred locations, strong in, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas. actually I have a great business in, Atlanta metro area. that's the story on Nuke.

Jeremy Julian:

Awesome. And again, for those that haven't experienced it, primarily when I'm a dine-in customer, it's, it's fast casual, go up to the counter order, call your number like a McAllister's or a, a Panera or a corner breaker. Um, again, for, for that consumer, that hasn't been there, that's kind of the experience, right.

Frank Paci:

Yeah. So you order the counter, then we deliver the food to you. it's a self-serve drinks. One of the hallmarks of the business is we have a basically a 32 ounce, effectively, like a stadium cup, that we'll rotate in seasonally. and so we have, self-serve drinks. So the whole thought being that. Uh, you know, you order your food, you get your drinks, you sit at the table. Hopefully the food is out there in a short period of time. obviously, you know, we, we pride ourselves on having. Uh, great quality food, um, and great service on, on the business. Uh, we have in store free breadsticks if you come in and, and get that. We have a condiment bar typically where, um, you can get Parmesan and, uh, different sauces and, and spices and things like that. So, uh, uh, but that's, you know, that's the, the brand. It's, um, about 45% of our business is dine in. Uh, 55 is off premise, including about. 12% in catering. Uh, we do a nice, nice sized catering business as well, in the area. Um, do great catering during the home games at, at SEC. you know, especially for, you know, founded in Oxford, Mississippi. The old misses, uh, is a great, uh, guest for us. So.

Jeremy Julian:

That's funny. I was, I was, one of my son's friends is an ole Ms. Guy. And he was actually over at the house last night, on summer break. And we were actually talking about your guys' brand. I said, oh, I got this interview with the CEO. And so he is oh, we love going over there. sounds like they, they've partaken during those SEC football game weekend. you mentioned menu selection. Frank, I'd love to walk, our listeners through. has pizza always been on the menu? You talked about it part of the dilemma that I find with brands that, that are primarily salads and, and sandwiches is that they only really hit it outta the park during, the lunch period. And then they struggle to even staff and bring people in during the dinner period. You mentioned that pizza helps with that, that dinner period. I guess first and foremost, has pizza always been on the menu? I actually enjoy the pizza personally, and so for me, it's one of my go-tos when I'm there. So I'd love to understand, has it been there, what does it contribute to, just overall and why is it something that, that you think differentiate you guys?

Frank Paci:

Yeah, it, it's always been on the menu. Um. Um, and I, to your point, if you look at most fast casuals, they do struggle at dinnertime. and as you know, pizza tends to skew more dinner than lunch, right? And so, uh, now we do sell a lot of pizza at lunch. Pizza's about 15% of our sales. and one of the things that we do. Uh, from a value standpoint is we do a pairings. Um, so it's, you know, we do a half pairings where you can do half sandwich and cup of soup or half salad. Um, but we also do a large pairings where we, you know, one of, we do a large sandwich where you can get a large sandwich and a half salad and a cup of soup, but we also do a pizza. Where you can get a pizza and a salad, for example, as a, and they're all kind of one price. Now, when you get the premium items, there's a premium upcharge. So if you get our spicy shrimp pizza as an example, there's an an upcharge for that. Uh, but, and we'll run, campaigns obviously to try to drive. So the great news about. A pizza dinner. Uh, one of the things we do as a family meal deal is two pizzas and a Caesar salad, which we'll run for, between 20 and$24, uh, depending on the market that we're in. which when we run those promotions, we'll see Additi incremental sales in the dinner time, which is great'cause we've got, you know, the staff there. And if we can drive those sales, uh, that's a great thing for us to do. So, uh, you know, and it's also. You know, we have a kids' pizza, which is great for kids, right? So there's some, there's a lot of different functions that the pizza actually performs for our business. So.

Jeremy Julian:

No, and I think it's great because it does, give you the ability to have that differentiation. If I'm not feeling like a sandwich or I'm not feeling like a salad. And even for me, it's like I, and the other thing I guess I'd love to understand is how do you guys keep the quality as high as you do? Because it's the product itself, both on the pizza side and really even in just the sandwiches and salads you guys have some of the best quality fast casual food. I'm saying this as a fan of the brand, but it really is one of those things where. At the price point, you guys have done a really good job of ensuring that it's fresh, it's clean, the brand is always really clean. every time I've ever been high level of service, you've got this condiment bar. Is it, how do you guys ma manage to keep the quality as high as you do, Frank?

Frank Paci:

Part of it is. Is, uh, is simplifying the operation, right? I mean, the, the big challenge you've got in the restaurant business, right, is everybody knows the hourly folks turn over a lot, right? And so if you're not, um, making the operations, uh, simple, uh, it's really difficult to execute. So our cooking platform, you know, so. It's interesting. We don't have any microwaves in store. Okay. Our cooking platform is primarily a conveyor ovens, right? So we'll have a conveyor stack ovens, the pizzas go on one level, the sandwiches go on another level. Um, and it's, you know, you make the, you make up the sandwich on the right side, run it through, and then you top it when it gets out with the lettuce and tomato and whatever it gets topped with, right? And so I think, you know, part of that, and then, you know, we use top premium quality ingredients, right? I mean, if you look at. The Turkey that we're buying the chicken, you know, we're buying fresh chicken and, and cooking it up, right? We're, we have shrimp, we have, uh, salmon, uh, on the menu, which, if you look at most of the fast casual guys out there, they're not running those kind of proteins like we are. And but like I said, we've tried to make it as simple as possible so that you can get the consistency, of the product and design, design it in a way that it's hard to screw it up, let's put it that way.

Jeremy Julian:

Well, and that's the thing that I, I think as you grow outside of your core market, it, you do have to simplify. So you talked a lot about kind of your guys' cooking corporation and kind of what other areas did you simplify? You've been at the brand, I think a little over four years now. What are the things, did you find Frank that. You've seen at Newts that you've been able to simplify to help operators to, to be more effective.'cause even before we hit the record button, you and I were talking about just some of these things that you're like, well, if we make it hard for these hourly employees, they turn over more often because it's hard, it's a hard job and they don't necessarily want to be there. Um, so figuring out how to simplify. So primarily in food prep or where, where are the other areas that you guys said, Hey, let's go make this simpler for our team members?

Frank Paci:

Yeah, I mean it's both food prep and recipe, right? So we used to do a lot of. Of prep, like we'd get a 40 pound block of cheese in and slice that down, and then, everything would then run through the oven. So to me it's really about. What's the final product that the guest gives? How do we differentiate ourselves with that product? Right? So when we talk about having better quality proteins and whatever, that's part of the experience. Having the, our, you know, our bread is going through the oven and, and, and getting kind of cooked as part of that. So when you're getting a sandwich from Newk's on our Parisian roll, it is a, the warm, the bread's warm, the proteins are warm. All those things give you, I think those. Signals of quality and freshness, uh, that it's made just for you. You know, our salads are abundant and, you know, we use, you know, fresh on, on all those things. So, but as an example, um, that I show of, of ways to do that is, uh, when I, you know, I get there, I always look at, one of the things we always look at is actual versus theoretical cost, right? And, and that's something where you're training the kitchen employees to say, Hey, here's the spec. Make the product to the spec. Right? The reason we've made it to a spec is because we feel like that spec is what the guest is, is expecting from us. So, as an example, I noticed that we were wasting pepperoni and I'm saying, okay, great. How are we wasting pepperoni? and then, uh, then I had a, a theory that says, okay, great, well, on our pepperoni pizza, we use 12 slices of pepperoni. On our sausage and pepperoni, we only put spec six. And so I ordered from. Four different restaurants and three of the four, when the pizza came, it had 12 slices of pepperoni on the sausage and pepperoni. And we said, okay, so what's going on here? It's hard to train these guys to put 12 on one, on six on another. Let's just put 12. Okay? The guest is gonna get more. Let protein, I can price it accordingly. And it makes it easier for us to train if I'm not say, Hey, do this one, this one and that,'cause then that person's gotta remember that, right? When we've got job aids and all those other kinds of things like everybody does. But I think there's ways where you can design the processes to make it simpler for consistent execution at the store and know what your cost of goods is gonna be on those things.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah. And I think it's amazing, and again, you, you and I shared prior to hit and record, just the fact that you evaluate those things. And I think all too often I see brands that kind of set it and forget it and hope that, you know, they don't go back and look at the data to be able to make decisions and then go figure out what is it and is it something, because quite honestly, and I'm, I'm gonna say this, not to be rude, there's a lot of people that would just say, just train them better. Just tell them to go put six pepperonis on the half, versus your idea that says, no, let's make it simpler for that end user to make it better product for the end consumer. We're gonna raise the price a little bit to, to cover that extra cost. But, all too often I've seen operators, it's like, well, people are just dumb out there. We just need to make them do it better. Um, and I love the fact that you've said no. Let's figure out how to make it simpler for that, that team member that is turning over as often. Is that kind of just your philosophy in general is how do I make it as simple for the end user as possible?

Frank Paci:

Yes. it's always been, I had this epiphany when I was working at a previous brand that if you think of everything on a, like a two by two, right? There's differentiation and then there's operational complexity, right? I wanna live in the differentiation, high differentiation and low operational complexity, right? So even when we look at LTO products, we're evaluating those LTO products is gonna be, Hey, is this gonna be, is this gonna be a differentiated product that's gonna be easy to execute versus a differentiated product that's gonna be difficult to execute, right? I can. I can make great products in the test kitchen with the chef, right? But can I replicate that in a hundred stores across with, 17 year olds, 18 year olds, running the business, right?

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah, who started, who started 48 hours

Frank Paci:

absolutely. So there's a lot of things like that. And then, there, and so to your point, it's always kinda looking and saying, what can we do? one of my other, one of my others is, we have a great Italian sandwich. I mean, tons of flavor on that. When I got there, um. One of the things that I look for on actual versus theoretical, I can tell you right, the stuff you use the most is gonna have the most dollar amount, right? I'd flip that around, say, okay, where do I have the most percentage waste? Right? If I'm wasting 50% of something, it may not be a lot of dollars, but obviously there's something wrong in the process where I'm wasting something there. I'm wasting 50% and one of the things that popped out was on this Italian sandwich, there was a Mortadella CAPA Cola. salami and ham, right? And you know, we're using one ounce of Mortadella, one ounce of capital. Well guess what? We were wasting 50%'cause we're not using it fast enough because it's not being used anywhere else. so I went to our founder, Chris, and said, Hey. You know, we're wasting all this stuff. I think, you know, we got tons of flavor on this with the sauces. I think we had a, you know, double doubled the salami, remove the, the capa cola and the pepperoni and put some more ham on that. Right. And I think, you know, with all the sauces, I think you're still gonna have a great product. and he was like, oh my God, you can't, you know, it's one of my favorite sandwiches. We can't do this. Right. And so, uh, we, we made the changes'cause we were, like I said, we're just costing us a lot of money on that. Right. Three months later, I get an email from it. It looks like the Italian sandwich sales are going up. I said, well, part of that, part of that, Chris is, is that not all the guests know what Mortadella is, right? I know from a culinary standpoint, that's an elevated product, but if I'm a guest and I don't know what is, I'm probably not gonna order that sandwich. You've made it a much more accessible sandwich and it's still a great sandwich. Right, and so, I mean, just kind of different things that you can look at from a culinary, I've always kinda looked at. What I'll call a culinary ops to say, okay, great. Here's what we're doing culinarily. Here's what's happening operations wise. How do we close that gap so that we can make sure we can execute it on a regular

Jeremy Julian:

and I think it's a great example, Frank, where you killed a darling that might have, in some places, not they, they might not have had the confidence that says, Hey, this Italian is great, and if we were to just tweak it, you know, by this 10% or 20%, you're gonna end up having a more consistent product that you're selling more of. I love the fact that you were bold enough to go to the founder and say that, because I find. All too often people go, my grandmother always eats the grilled cheese, bacon, grilled cheese, and I can't take the bacon grilled cheese off. I don't care how hard it is to execute. We're never gonna, or we're gonna always slice the cheese.'cause that's the way we started with the fact that you're able and willing to, evaluate those standards that they had because it really didn't change the brand that much. It, you know, it, it actually made it harder to execute and harder to keep it consistent. And so, um,

Frank Paci:

you could re, I could re, I could reinvest those dollars somewhere else, right? Because that, part of this right, is, we all know the challenges in this business of labor costs and product costs and whatever, right? You there, there's, if you're got inefficiencies on there, if you can figure out how to limit those. Inefficiencies, you could actually invest that money somewhere else, right? And so, yeah, no, do I wanna spend more money on, on training this stuff? training's an important part of the business, right? but if I'm gonna train somebody that to, to do something that's gonna be difficult for them to do, it'd much, much rather make it be simpler for them to do

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah, I love

Frank Paci:

with well without, and also without degrading the quality, right? that's

Jeremy Julian:

with, without, you've gotta take the guess into effect and the fact that you guys are willing to test those things. But again, I find all too often if you're like, well, this is who we are. We're not changing it. It's like, well, is that really who you need to be to compete in today's day and age? And I think we have found other brands that never were able to get off that mark and evaluate. The, kind of the standards and they go, you know, they go the way of the Doda bird because nobody's willing to challenge who, who they are and what they did in the past.

Frank Paci:

I think, talking about COVID and whatever, right? COVID forced some of this stuff, right? There were certain things that you had to do to survive through COVID and, it transformed our business from being more dine into more off premise, but also. You know, it made you look at the menu and say things like, you know, things like that. Probably if it wasn't for COVID, would we have changed the account? I don't know. Right. But I think there were things like that, which is to say, hey, you know, it's a great lesson to say, Hey, always question what it is that you're doing, and. And how do you, how do you evolve, right? Because the brands are continually evolving. I mean, I, you know, I look at, look back and say, Hey, the menu used to have this on it. Now it has this, the consumer tastes evolve, right? And, and how do you access the brand? what's the definition of convenience, right? As you continue to, to look at, uh, the, the guest's Right? I mean, I laugh because, I always tell people, Hey, I got a newspaper delivered every day until I didn't. and so you, it's things like that where, things are always changing. If your brand is not evolving with that, I think you could get left behind.

Jeremy Julian:

Well, and you, you told me a story that I'd love for you to share with our audience, Frank, about pre COVID, where, you know, sales fell off the cliff once COVID hit and as they were picking back up, you guys maintained your off-premise business, but picked back up and, on, on the dine-in, you know, when prior to COVID, I think you'd shared with me you guys were more than 50% in Dine-in, and now you're more than 50% off-prem. And I'd love to have you both tell that story and then talk about the lessons that you learned. Both from a menu selection perspective and even from a staffing perspective for our listeners.

Frank Paci:

so two things happened, right? Uh, so, so I wasn't there during COVID, so I can just tell you anecdotally what happened, right? From looking at the historical. Trends. But basically if you, I used to do a sta, I did a stack chart, and I still do a stack chart which says, here's how much is to go, here's how much is on premise. Here's how much is digital, here's how much is delivery. Right? Well, obviously, you know, we are 60% dine in, well the day COD hits, that's 60% goes to zero. Right. And what you see is you see the immediately jump in digital ordering and, and to go and delivery right. Jumps up. And then as. as COVID starts to unwind, you start to see the dine-in business start to slowly pick up. But what you don't see is you don't see any change in the off-premise business basically. So, you know, it's one of these things where maybe the guest had never tried to do digital ordering, had never tried to do these kind of things, and they had no choice but. To make those. And once they did it, they said, Hey, you know what, this is much more convenient. And you know, I, I, I like this experience. And so that stayed, but the dine-in kind of built back. And so when you look at kind of historically what's happened to our sales, you know, we've recovered the dine-in, but kept the delivery and I think until kind of almost, the middle of last year, then you started to see. The delivery and kind of maybe dine-in leveled up.'cause there was still some of that is what I would call normalization to, to pre COVID times. and obviously it's different by location. certain locations do a lot more catering than other locations do. But that's just an average when you look at it.

Jeremy Julian:

Well, and I, that was really where my next line of questioning was going, Frank. Is, is, is I've talked with other CEOs both on the show and just kind of in life about their catering business. Catering has been hard to get back for a lot of brands. Help me understand how you guys were able to not only maintain some of the catering business because. Not all offices are back to the office. Not everybody's kind. You know, so much of catering was during meal periods, during the lunch period. It was catering this business meeting and those kind of things. You guys obviously have been able to figure out, at least in some stores how to do that. How has that been effective? Product selection. Selection is always easy, you know, am I gonna have, you got soup, you got salads, you got sandwiches. Those typically travel really well. Pizza travels really well, you know, so that that put you guys in the top percent there. And even going back out and selling catering has not been easy for a lot of brands and they've struggled to make back to those pre COVID numbers or even, many of'em are just like, you know what, we're not even doing catering. And it's very productive. It ends up, leveling out some of your sales volume. So how have you guys been so effective at doing that?

Frank Paci:

It's really, been a combined focus. we have a director of catering sales. He does a fantastic job, has great relationships, but we've also. So leaned heavily on ezCater, and the ezCater business and really looking at stores on a. semi-monthly basis to say, okay, where are we in the queue and do we wanna spend some additional money to promote, uh, where we get on the ECA business? So that's really, been one of the ways that we've picked it up. And I, and, and as you said, I mean, I think our product lends itself to catering, right? So, um, and we've also done product development. We added wraps as a, uh, as an additional product because we know that that travels well for catering, which we didn't have wraps until. A fourth quarter of last year. Right. So that was, part of that was, you know, when we look at, think of menu innovation. The menu innovation is what do we do? And we're actually looking at, at different packaging for catering. Right? So we can do some, we actually do some hot catering where we do. Uh, sliders where, you know, we will, we'll provide the protein hot, so like for the Newk's q with the chicken and the Q sauce comes in there. And then we'll give you small buns where you can make your own sliders as part of it. So, so part of that is part of it's packaging, part of it is menu innovation, and part of it is, um, using the resources like ezCater. uh, to grow that business and, and just, you know, building the relationships. Uh, we have some franchisees do a phenomenal job on catering, so.

Jeremy Julian:

and for those that have not made that investment, what, I mean it, I'm certain it contributes both to the top line and to the bottom line of those stores that, with the franchise groups that are doing that is that, I guess for those that are sitting out here, they're like, Hey, we don't have a catering business on. I haven't made that investment. that might be running a different brand. Why would you encourage them to consider making that investment?

Frank Paci:

one of the challenges is obviously ezCater charges you commission, right? and so there are some challenge with that. But the other part of that, then we've also leaned on deliver that to actually deliver.'cause one of the challenges with catering is if is that la the last mile of catering to say, how do I get that to the guest without taking my manager outta the store during my key lunch? Time period. And

Jeremy Julian:

because nobody wants catering at 9:00

Frank Paci:

Yeah.

Jeremy Julian:

a lunch meeting.

Frank Paci:

yeah, we've actually done where we've got, we've leveraged kind of outsized outsource resources on both ezCater and deliver that to, to leverage that. We've had franchisees who use, DoorDash to drivers to, to deliver catering, ahead of the peak lunchtime. And, typically the catering order is a significantly larger order. So when we look at that, where you also. Kinda leveraging labor, right? So when you look at it and say, okay, great, yeah, I'm paying a commission and I'm paying some of these other things. But if you look at that as incremental sales, it's, we think it's profitable. It, it might make less as a percentage, but from a dollar margins, I learned a long time ago, you take dollars to the bank, not percentages to the bank, right?

Jeremy Julian:

try and remind my team that all the time, it's you know what, if I'm gonna make this amount on the same device, I don't care if it's, 10% less. we're just working from a different cost basis than we are. to your point, I don't deliver, I don't deposit percentages, I deposit dollars.

Frank Paci:

Yeah. When we, yeah, when we look at, when we look at sales, I mean managing, uh, labor on a sales per labor hour basis, right. when, when we manage that, we do a different factor on the catering orders'cause you're kind of doing that bulk assembly as opposed to, you know, in the line of fire, at the heat of lunch kind. You know, making sandwiches and salads, right? A little bit, a little bit different in terms of the effort that goes into that. So.

Jeremy Julian:

Awesome. One last, thread, Frank. You guys have recently reinvested, in the system in kind of tech to make tech enabled. I know, you and I talked a little bit about putting kiosks out. Talk to me a little bit about the thought process to going there, because again, as a consumer. It's a, you know, it is something convenient. You know, you talked about that being one of the pillars that you always think about. Why was both, you know, having an app and having, you know, the ability to order on ezCater so many different ways to make the brand accessible, including in-store kiosk. Why was that something you guys considered going after in your, in your concept?

Frank Paci:

again, to me it's one of the keys has always been about convenience, right? And so to me, I wanna be able to meet the guests on how they want to do it. They want to get delivery, that's great if they want to get, pick it up in store, if they want to order at the kiosk. obviously at lunchtime we, we will get, we'll tend to get lines right. having an extra. Place to order. And it's interesting, I, I was actually in the store once and their, the cashier was available and the person said, Hey, they wanted, they wanted to use the kiosk, right? And so, you know, I look at, you know, and this kind of gets into, you know, different age groups, right? I mean, I look at. Uh, some of the, the younger folks today, and they'd much rather text than talk on the phone, right? When I was, when I was coming up, you talked on the phone, right? They want to text, so they want to have that, they don't want to have that interaction, or they don't wanna feel that pressure of, Hey, I have to I'm holding up the line here. I have to make this tough decision of whether I want a pizza or a sandwich, or a soup at Newk's. I can go over the kiosk and take my time and not feel that pressure right. behind me. And, and so, you know, just, I think, I think it's one of those things is that we do, we, we also have, you can order from the table, right? Because I mean, I, I always think about the fact that my phone is a kiosk, right? And so I can order it from anywhere. and we still take phone orders too. I mean, so if you think about, I mean, it's funny'cause we'll look at these daily reports. It's okay, great. I had a phone order, I had a grab and go order. I had a digital pickup order. I had a order to go in the store. I had a dine-in order. I had a, I had a. Newk's.com delivery. I had a third party delivery order. It's oh my God, how many different ways do you want to access that? but the reality is that, the guest wants to access it in different ways. And we're trying to make that as convenient as possible for them.

Jeremy Julian:

Well, and I think, like you said earlier, you made it easy for the, for the staff members too.'cause you guys have integrated the stack so that it, it comes through as if it was a cashier order. It's not this disconnected systems where they're having to manage 12 different systems. I know that was part of your guys' reinvestment. So not only are you making it easier, easier for the staff members, but you guys are also spending the time to make it easier for the consumer. so what's the future? Hold Frank for Newts. Like, where are you guys at? Where are you guys growing? talk to me a little bit about what does the growth trajectory look like and what are you guys looking for in potential business partners to help, help make the brand more accessible?

Frank Paci:

Yeah, I mean, obviously one of the key, the keys for us is to get the right, uh, franchise. Partners in this business, right? And so I think there's a, a lot of opportunity, you know, fast casual continues to grow as a business. I think there's a lot of opportunity for, folks out there who are in the restaurant business who want to grow with a, with a great brand to grow with the Newk's brand. I mean, we're obviously strong in the southeast, but we're looking to expand, up from our core base. So lots of opportunities in the Carolinas for us. in, we're already in Tennessee, but Tennessee, Kentucky, uh, from Texas up into, we've got one store in Oklahoma. We've actually just signed a franchisee in, in Kansas. Uh, and we've got a new store that opening in, uh, north Georgia as well, that kind of going into South Carolina. So, uh, and we have, we have a strong presence in North Florida. So I think there's a, you know, for me it's always easier to, to grow from your contiguous, especially with distribution and. All those kind of things where people already know the brand. So it's, I, I love when we post on social media and we'll get all these, bring, bring the Newk's to this town and that town. Right? So it's great. You, you, you feel, feel great that they've got kind of this pent up demand to, to go to places. And, uh, you know, one of the things we've done is we've also modified the concept because now that we don't do as much. Uh, on premise, we can do it in a smaller facility. So we've actually got some smaller locations that we've opened, uh, that are, are, you know, great'cause obviously it's lower construction costs, lower occupied occupancy costs on those things which kind of make the store, uh, unit level economics be better. So.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah, I love that. and where would people learn more? How do people engage to figure out how to learn more about kinda what the franchise system might look like? if, if they're at that place where they're like, I love that concept. I've been, I was at it, an old miss game, and I had it, now I gotta go. I went there and now I want one local. What does that look like? Is it just jumping on the

Frank Paci:

Yeah, if you, yeah, if you go to Newks.com, at the top there's a franchise you can pull up. We actually have a walkthrough that you can walk through a restaurant and see that. and, yeah, that's the best way to do that. And we'll have someone get in contact with you if that's where, if you're interested in that.

Jeremy Julian:

Wonderful. for my restaurant people, I always ask this question, what's your go-to menu item? And for those that, what's your personal and then what's your, Hey, somebody's never been to no's. What should they, what should they experience?

Frank Paci:

Well, it's interesting. My personal is the Newk's Q pizza, which was actually, we had the nu the, our top selling sandwich is the Newk's Q. So if you don't know anything about Newk's, you need to do the Newk's Q or the Newk's favorite salad, which is the bestselling salad. Um, but one of our employees, long-term employees said, you know that the Newk's cube is a white barbecue sauce. That would be great on a pizza. And so we actually, as at that employee suggestion, we made a pizza and it's like our third bestselling pizza, the Newk's cube, because it, it's a, it's a unique pizza product. It's a. You know, white barbecue sauce, chicken, bacon and, and jalapenos. So, uh, when I'm going to Newk's, that's my favorite. So, uh, I know that I can eat a whole one at a setting, but it's great'cause then I get to have it twice. So,

Jeremy Julian:

I love it. I love it. thank you for sharing. every time I talk to restaurant people, they're like, oh, I can tell you my favorite. And then, half the time they wanna modify it, they take that next cube, but they're like, oh, you gotta put extra jalapenos on it. or tell'em to mix in some regular barbecue sauce to it. Or, my wife used to work at In-N-Out, growing up and so I always tease her'cause she's always got, she doesn't eat cheeseburgers. This. Anywhere else the same way she does at Inn Out, same thing with her fries. She doesn't have'em the same way that she hasn't, but she worked at Inn Out and so she squeezes Lemon on'em and it's like this weird thing. I'm like, babe, you never put Lemon on anything else but at In-N-Out because you spend so many hours there, you end up coming up with some crazy creations.

Frank Paci:

It is amazing the number of modifications that we get on products, right? which is great. that's. that's part of it. Make it your own. And yeah, it's funny'cause you'll see this and say, oh, I want this, add this, take this off of it. It's oh my God. Yeah, absolutely. So you, then you wonder why every once in a while the order's not accurate because you're like standing on your head to do the thing. But, you gotta work on it. all the time.

Jeremy Julian:

I love it. Frank, thank you so much for sharing the story. I love, uh, I, again, I I, I'm a huge fanboy myself. I have some of those stadium cups in my, uh, in my pantry are just in the other side of that wall, and I wish I would've grabbed one to show it to you. on the show to our listeners, guys, we know that you guys got lots of choices, so thanks for hanging out. Um, if you haven't already checked out newts.com, check out their franchising webpage. great concept. I would highly encourage you guys if you guys are in the franchising space to check it out. Again, if you haven't already subscribed, please do so and make it a great day.

Speaker:

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