Scratch-Made Success: How Lauren Coulter Created a Biscuit Empire

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Kodespode and today’s guest is Lauren Coulter. She’s the owner, integrator, and chief biscuit eater at Biscuit Belly, a southern-inspired fast-casual dining concept that began in 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky. Biscuit Belly focuses on serving scratch-made biscuits and the unique brunch menu, bringing authentic southern flavors to communities near and far. The company’s mission is to deliver memorable meals that unite people over delicious food all while nurturing a strong community connection. Lauren’s journey from pharmacy to restaurant ownership is incredible, highlighting her passion for quality food and dedicated community involvement. Her achievements include owning previous establishments like Louvino, which quickly became a local favorite. She’s also celebrated for her hands-on leadership style. Lauren’s story of transitioning careers and thriving in the hospitality world is sure to inspire you. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, AdBac Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today, the chief biscuit eater at Biscuit Belly. Lauren, I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Lauren Nicole Coulter: Thanks, it’s a tough job, but sometimes I do.

Anthony Codispoti: It’s all about sacrifice, huh? Yep. All right, so Lauren, tell us in your own words, what is biscuit belly?

Lauren Nicole Coulter: Oh man, biscuit belly is an incredible breakfast option that really pulls together unique flavors, a really chef-driven menu with the fast casual concept. So we want it to be delicious and we want to be able to get you in timely, so sort of in and out quickly.

You don’t have to have this long experience for it to be a great fulfilling experience overall. So we focus down on big hearty biscuit sandwiches and we have a variety of other options for healthier, lighter eaters as well.

Anthony Codispoti: And so is this strictly breakfast? Does it go into lunch?

Lauren Nicole Coulter: We do have some lunch options. So we focus down on breakfast, brunch, lunch. We close around two, two to three depending on the day of the week. So lunch, we, people, but you know, people come to us because they love our house-made biscuits. So they’re coming in, they know that if they’re coming in for breakfast or lunch, they might not need to eat for the rest of the day, you know, maybe something light for dinner. So it is a full meal and it’s a delicious one.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay, I’m looking at the menu on your website here. You got to tell me what a boner is.

Lauren Nicole Coulter: A couple of things with the boner. So the boner are just small biscuits that we fry up kind of like donuts. But for us, you know, on the backside of the, you know, curtain, they’re also a good way for us to avoid having waste. So when we are cutting biscuits, you know, there’s only a certain amount of time that you can need dough before it gets overworked. And so we cut out biscuits, and then we do one refold and recut, but then there’s all this excess dough. So we use that to cut these tiny biscuits. And that’s what we use for our bonus.

Anthony Codispoti: Because something happens to the quality of the biscuit, if you were to take sort of those scrap pieces and try to put them back together to make more biscuits from it.

Lauren Nicole Coulter: Yes, it gets overworked. It’s not the same. It doesn’t rise. So this is just a way as an operator to mitigate waste. And to also offer something sweet at the end of your meal, if you, if you’re so inclined.

Anthony Codispoti: What would people find on the healthier side of things? Because I mean, I’m looking at your menu here. And I wasn’t hungry before we started this interview. But I mean, there’s there’s a lot of really good looking. And I love breakfast sandwiches. You guys have a lot of great ones here. But if somebody’s looking for something, maybe a little bit on the lighter side, what might that look like?

Lauren Nicole Coulter: Oh, yes, we’ve got three different omelettes, one’s a veggie omelette, and that is one of my go-tos. It’s not our kind of take on it is an inside out omelette.

So have you ever gotten an omelette like in a big line, like at a hotel? And it’s kind of has this weird look about it. Like to me, omelettes often, they can look a little odd. And so my big thing was, I just don’t want it to look like a weird hotel omelette. And so we do this play on like an inside out omelette, where a lot of the ingredients are on top. So you feel that freshness of those ingredients. We have one that’s got our, I believe some pork called the smoke show.

And then we have one more that is escaping me. My other go-to though is our bowls. So you can kind of build your own breakfast bowl. But they have a base of either grits or our fried, like our home fries. And so if you do grits, you can get vegetables all on it. I usually get an overeating, easy egg and so yeah, that’s my, those are my two faves.

Anthony Codispoti: And it looks like you’ve got some interesting coffee drinks here too.

Lauren Nicole Coulter: Oh man. So we, our coffee is so good. I will say, recently we did kind of a coffee and cocktail overhaul and really tried to tap into a little bit more of what the consumer is leaning into. So I’m sure you’ve seen them every corner, the brown sugar shaken type of drinks or we added in a espresso martini, which is super fun. We serve it in a rocks glass, you know, with a couple pieces of espresso beans on the top. And it’s delightful.

Anthony Codispoti: Now you say martini, is there alcohol in it?

Lauren Nicole Coulter: Oh yeah. Yes.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay. So your locations have a liquor license.

Lauren Nicole Coulter: Correct. So that’s one of the differentiators of biscuit belly. If you’ll notice some of the bigger brands have recently started adding mimosas. We go outside of that. So we are doing breakfast cocktails. We do Bloody Mary that people come in for and the espresso martini is a couple other just like tequila sunrise, only five or six alcohol or liquor skews. Obviously we’re based out of Kentucky. I don’t think I said that, but so we have to have some sort of bourbon-y drinks. So we definitely have our take of an old fashioned and just some of those elements. Alcohol overall only makes up about seven percent of our mix of food and Bev. But you know, it’s really important because it differentiates us. And then also the cost of goods on alcohol are typically a little better than others.

Anthony Codispoti: Better margins on that. Yeah. And it makes it a really fun weekend experience for folks. Yes. Or weekday, I don’t know, no judgments. What?

Lauren Nicole Coulter: No judgment. Yeah, we typically have like groups of nurses, for instance, that get off shift at 7am and they come in. So we’ll have for a while and here locally, I think we still do it. We do this kind of early morning happy hour just for kicks and that’s always fun.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s a great point, right? A lot of people coming off late shift like this is the equivalent of their happy hours. So being accommodating to those folks too. Okay, so Lauren, you and your husband originally went to school and worked as pharmacists. Correct. Now pharmacists, that’s a pretty good job. Like what drew you sort of away from that and into opportunities outside of pharmacies?

Lauren Nicole Coulter: Pharmacy is a good job. It is a it’s very tough and I think it’s probably one of the more undervalued elements of healthcare that people can be pretty nasty. Now I worked in retail and I feel like that my many years working there really set me up for success on focusing down on the customer and you know what what they want kind of creating that element of being a yes person that I think adds value to our team overall. My husband took a job teaching at a pharmacy school and so that was very different and he really enjoyed it actually but he just always had this itch to do something else and to do you know something where he’s running his own thing and so when we met, I mean the first night that he that we met he said to me someday I’m gonna own my business and I think at the time he thought it would be a pharmacy on his own pharmacy but you know as you grow and you learn a bit about pharmacy how how the sausage gets made it’s like maybe maybe we’ll stay away from that. So we kind of ventured into these paint and drink places it was called Updown Art and we opened two of those. Those were great as a new business owner there was a very low barrier to entry so the pricing everything was very low it didn’t cost a lot to build out the space and again I think the best thing about that is it really taught us the element of customer service and just creating a overall quality experience. So if you’ve never been to one of these you come in there’s a teacher at the front like teaching you how to paint something and on Friday and Saturday nights I mean we would pack in 70 people and they’re you know learning how to paint a flirtily like there’s there’s got everybody in this city of Louisville has to have a dang flirtily hanging in there.

Anthony Codispoti: My wife’s been to one of these she loved that got a glass of wine yep came back with a painting that she had no idea that she was even capable of yeah

Lauren Nicole Coulter: correct and the more people enjoy the wine the better the paintings get you know but really people were coming and they were drinking our wine and to be candid our wine was not good like it was just kind of cheap you know whatever wine and being in Louisville where bourbon is so big bourbonism you know bourbon tourism is so large we really saw this space and this need for a wine focused restaurant that wasn’t hoity so a very approachable place where you could get a just a glass of a $200 bottle if you wanted to so we opened Louvino and ultimately grew that to five locations and our differentiator there was we had you know in our heyday had 60 70 wines by the glass and they were just each one as we grew they just got so beautiful you know our first one was very simple and we kept it neat and clean and just a very simple layout but then as we grew adding in some real character and elements of you know fancy was really important so we had two of those here in Louisville two in Indianapolis area and one in Cincinnati through all of that my husband was like we should open a biscuit place and I was saying nobody in Louisville is going to want these biscuits like we’re from Georgia we you know people here in not that country and we started meeting with our chef from Louvino and just having kind of tastings like fun tastings and we started spending time like dealing with branding and creating a name and a logo and what would this look like and you know the colors and what are the things you want people to feel when they walk inside like biscuit belly was the first thing that we did where we took a real forward thinking approach instead of just like hey let’s do this today so it was really intentional and the thing that I love is even though you know our menus have changed over time some of those core pieces are are staying you know what what we want people to feel when they walk inside kind of our personality and all of that has been set from the get go and it really helps us as we’re even just hiring and and firing you know it’s kind of helped us around our core value piece how can we be this authentic thing of who and what we were and who and what we are in our core and still evolve so let

Anthony Codispoti: me ask a few follow-up questions on this Lauren so you you and your husband kind of had the hankering to start something you know when you first met him even from very early on he said I went on my own business one day thought it would be a pharmacy you made the comment that once you kind of see how the sausage is made like what was it about the pharmacy industry in particular that you were like thanks but no thanks

Lauren Nicole Coulter: well I worked for a large insurance provider and like I transitioned from retail to a large insurance provider and when you just see the reimbursement for instance on medications you know you have to really just pump them out to make any money there isn’t any sort of dollar value attached for that like the service yeah like the experience piece or the engagement piece between you and your your customer and that’s probably what troubles most people in pharmacy and to be candid I hope that nobody who’s listening is in pharmacy school but I can’t tell you how many DMs I get from people that were in my pharmacy class or other pharmacists that are like how did you do this how did you get out I went out and so I’m I don’t miss that element of it at all you know I think and I think most pharmacists get into it because they want to help people and really you’re just kind of like a machine you know to to get the meds out as quick as possible so it wasn’t for me it’s for some it’s for a lot of people but

Anthony Codispoti: it’s just for me I understood you had you had other things that you wanted to try and so you and your husband you started one of those uh the uptown art one of the you know paint and have a glass of wine that kind of led to the idea of opening up Lovino is Lovino still around is this still

Lauren Nicole Coulter: he sold it in 2020 but it is still around some of the locations they chose to open other things and some of the locations and

Anthony Codispoti: so you’ve got Lovino you’ve got what it’s five or six locations and then you’re like oh this is going well um rather than opening more locations of this concept that we’ve kind of figured out well let’s shift gears entirely and get into biscuits well

Lauren Nicole Coulter: I think the thing there was so we opened two here in Louisville and then we opened a couple in like two hours away and we really struggled with having the right people to be able to have oversight and engagement so that it didn’t feel like we were two hours away you know opening a brick and mortar place hours from where you live is so much more challenging than you think it’s going to be and I think we knew we can’t grow this anymore let’s try something new and then ultimately this was kind of like the newer thing my husband is always like thinking about what what can we do next what can we do next and I have to reel now I reel that in like I no no but at the time you know he was thinking about what could be next and we truly opened biscuit belly thinking it could be something we would grow in those same cities but then once we kind of saw the the what’s it called um just the unit economics of it yeah

Anthony Codispoti: the financials it looked better for for biscuits than it did for Louvino

Lauren Nicole Coulter: and I mean Louvino well biscuit belly became something where we realized hey this is franchisable like the unit economics made it so it has a lower barrier to entry we could grow you know essentially with other people’s money we could bring in experts and then not be on our payroll they could be franchise partners and so all of that looked appealing and then the the concept itself was appealing you know from a franchise lens so additionally Louvino was very expensive to open with 60 70 wines by the glass you have pretty intense training and so we knew the value and having something that you know essentially you could have somebody start working in on day one whereas Louvino you really couldn’t do that so just little things like that really matter like they all add up you know when you’re making these bigger decisions

Anthony Codispoti: so when did the first biscuit belly open

Lauren Nicole Coulter: in 2019 and also right before coven right before gov yes

Anthony Codispoti: may 2019 may of 2019 how were those first six eight months before coven hit

Lauren Nicole Coulter: oh I mean they were awesome we so we opened one in May and I mean two months in my husband’s like scouring you know trying to find a place for another location we found one and opened it in December of 2019 so we had two yeah that’s fast it was very fast that was a second gen space so it didn’t need you know all the build out work that often comes with opening restaurants it was previously as zoes so had kind of a similar setup as we were looking for with a queue line and everything so it was just kind of a nice great opportunity to step into that space and we could do it for cheap

Anthony Codispoti: you know a lot of restaurants where is that I talked to they open one location and it’s a grind for many years before they kind of finally start to get things figured out things are clicking for them and they’re like okay now we can think about opening a second location you guys went through that in a span of about six or seven months of like not only is this working well enough that we would like to open a new one but you actually got it opened

Lauren Nicole Coulter: well I think that that speaks to all the work that was done prior to opening the first store like I think that a lot of times people open a restaurant without really figuring out who they are what they want to be in that space and then you know I think if you know those things going into it it it makes a lot of the question marks very easy to answer so you know I’m not going to say it was all perfect you know I’m sure like we had you know our cost of goods was high and it it wasn’t ideal but it was still making great money and I mean we were having our issue was we would have a line around the door we would have people driving by and they would see the line and be like oh never mind we’ll go somewhere else so we’re like okay we’re gonna do this again so that they can just you know divide and conquer here

Anthony Codispoti: how were those first days like how did you get people in the door the first time I mean it’s it’s one thing when you’ve got that line going around the door yes you do have some people who are gonna keep going say I don’t have time for that but it’s also like very eye catching great word of mouth like that place must be good we’re gonna have to put that on our to-do list but how did you kind of get the hype going in the early days

Lauren Nicole Coulter: I mean Wolfville is such a foodie town people don’t I don’t think appreciate that until they come and visit we have Sullivan University is a big like chef maker here and a lot of great chefs you Michelin star they’ve been on TV or you know been on top chef they are here in Louisville and so the restaurant community is also oddly tight so at our soft openings I mean other chefs are coming in you know they’re all friends they they all like help each other instead of it being like a a combative space it’s kind of this everyone if we help everyone will do better and I really just am thankful that we have that sort of environment it almost hurts you because if you were not on your peas and queues like on day one then you get you know knocked around a little bit so we learned that with Louvino opening we thought you know oh gosh it’s gonna take forever to get people in here and that was not the case so just a different the more biscuit belly locations we open outside of Louisville the more I’ve learned like that’s a little bit unique here

Anthony Codispoti: in terms of people give you a little bit more grace when you’re first opening or well they’re a little bit slower for people to discover you

Lauren Nicole Coulter: know that they are ready to come like they are looking for the new thing they want to be at you know the new spot and they aren’t sitting back and waiting for some sort of marketing to come to them people are actively searching it out here and so I think a learning curve for us has been in a market you know in a new market like we just opened in Charlotte where we had no presence in North Carolina you know we’re in Raleigh but that’s far enough that it was tough but they they’ve opened two stores within two months of each other and really had to like okay how do we get people in the door and then once we got that happening you know but we really had to amp up our PR marketing efforts for those locations just because we were the new kid on the block and people were not searching out

Anthony Codispoti: where do you feel like that has anything to do with maybe biscuit places are a bit more common in the south and so people are like oh another biscuit place whereas you know where you guys were in Louisville this was a little bit new a little bit novel like oh yeah this is something cool let’s try it

Lauren Nicole Coulter: 100% I do think that’s part of it um there’s other concepts that have opened that maybe the experience is lacking and so people will think oh if this is the same sort of fast casual experience you know I don’t want to go blow my money there but then we are often called out in reviews like don’t go to X go to biscuit belly the experience is better and so that really shows you that’s powerful the difference yeah in what what people what people are saying and and just the value of the experience like we can’t put a dollar value on that but how important we can put a dollar value on how you know that Yelp review or that google review you know so um I just think that piece us focusing hard on that is has been the the thing that sets us apart and made us

Anthony Codispoti: so very easy to get people into the door in your original Louisville locations the two locations you’re talking about north Carolina was a little bit slower early on uh it sounds like you guys tried some marketing what did you do that worked to kind of help flip the switch there

Lauren Nicole Coulter: a couple of things um we’ve I think one thing that worked for them was that they did open two really close together not in terms of location but from a time span perspective and so we were able to to kind of attack a bigger market and leverage those dollars probably a little bit better but really it is we do a lot at biscuit belly leaning into the influencer piece I mean that has been really key I think in the success of a lot of our stores um and then gosh I mean I think having and working with some PR folks that are unique to an area is really important um we’ve in the past used like national PR brands and and that’s great and they do a great great job but when you’re opening localized stores like there is something about you know the the anchor at the local CBS affiliate who knows this person and works with them all the time and I think that really helped us we shifted gears on that front a little bit yeah

Anthony Codispoti: okay um tell me more about the franchise opportunity sounds like very quickly you guys had some traction of your own you’re like oh we’re on to something here people love the food they love the menu they love the the overall ambiance and the experience we’re going to open up some of our own locations additionally but like we really are on to something here like the way to really grow this quickly or is through the franchising model and so what does that look like what why is that something people should consider

Lauren Nicole Coulter: well for us how do I even start this I mean I think that when I think of challenges and yet great outcomes I mean franchising is such a beast and people at how many times I’ve heard now people be like I’m just going to start franchising my law and I am like oh my gosh like there’s so much

Anthony Codispoti: there’s a lot of work that goes into it huge legal expense lots of processes to build out oh yeah got to document anything yes and I mean

Lauren Nicole Coulter: on one hand it is incredible you know when you look at some of our operators like we have been lucky enough to partner with a number of franchise partners who love working with early brands early stage brands and who are great at helping us like they know okay this isn’t working what can we do and they know they can come to us and like we can figure stuff out together that’s the beauty of working with a small brand but then there’s also that challenge of like we’re trying to attract these really high level franchisees and we got to make sure then that our systems would support would be something that they would want to come to right so it’s it’s definitely been a challenging space to be in the best sales tool the best franchise sales tool you can have as your current franchisees and so ensuring that they have a good experience is paramount and you know I think for Chad and I like Chad he loves working he wants to work every second of the day like that is his he loves working and so he has always been great to you know respond quickly to to be a sounding board when needing when needed like he takes you know anytime a franchise partner calls he is answering that phone and talking to them and I think that has benefited us and then sometimes it kind of hurts us like we want to grow bigger and faster and be able to have all these team members to do all the things but we have to be fiscally responsible so our team is pretty small I mean it’s me and Chad and then we have a VP of training a VP of operations and a marketing director and that is the core for all the functions of the work that we do so you know time is our limited resource so

Anthony Codispoti: So for those folks out there who maybe they’re looking for an opportunity, they’re considering some different franchises, what do you think sets Biscuit Belly apart from some other things they might be looking at? I mean I think that

Lauren Nicole Coulter: first of all our just our time, our time, like our breakfast and lunch day parts, we can attract a team member or an employee base that I would say is a bit higher, like kind of a higher quality team member because the people who were saying yes, sign me up for a job where I come in and bake biscuits at 6.30, like they’re not going out and you know getting crazy than that before. So we often have team members who are moms who they love this because they can come into work and then pick up their kid from school every day and be a part of the evening activities. So I think that that piece has really, it’s really important especially now post COVID where you know work at home is such a thing that people want. I think focusing on the team member experience, like the people, the companies that are doing that are the ones that are thriving. So that’s one kind of value add or value prop that we would have. The other is that there just isn’t a whole lot, like there’s a lot of opportunity in this space. I mean we’re not talking about pizza or hamburgers like.

Anthony Codispoti: It’s just not a lot of competition. People doing something similar to you. Yes. You guys are different from a lot of the other opportunities that are out there.

Lauren Nicole Coulter: Yes. And the ones that are there, you know you’ve got some awesome full service options but they’re you know maybe a little higher price point. Sometimes people don’t want to do the full-on you know sit service sort of feel. So I just feel like we’ve got a really good thing going with what we do. Even just the people to run our locations. I mean the fact that we aren’t full service means that we don’t have to have as many bodies in the stores.

Anthony Codispoti: So And it sounds like maybe as compared to other fast casual environments, maybe you don’t have quite the same level of employee turnover. We don’t.

Lauren Nicole Coulter: It is I mean fascinating to me. I love that we have you know team members. I was putting up a couple of our team members anniversaries like I just have like a big year calendar for everyone to kind of see and here’s everything happening and I always put in anniversaries and birthdays on it and we’ve got four year and five year team members. I’m like good grief like it really hits you hard that this is their you know this is kind of a lifer brand because it’s it does help with that work-life balance you know when our friend a house I mean when they close it too they’re often out by 2 30.

So I think and on weekends we close at three if they’re out like they that means they can still go to a friend’s birthday party you know they can still do all these things. So all of that kind of helps us I think level up as compared to some of the competitors out there.

Anthony Codispoti: You know I know one of the ways that you kind of frame the experience there biscuit belly is kind of about southern flavor southern hospitality. Can you talk about what that means to you personally Lauren and how you kind of have that shine through the the brand experience for the customer.

Lauren Nicole Coulter: Oh yeah that has been the most important thing so biscuits is in our name we want people to know we make our biscuits from scratch every single day and so we’re talking about in the mornings you know they are making a small thing of dough to get through a morning rush to give them time to make a full thing of dough. I mean like in a house like so much of what we do is literally made with love and so in the last the last two to three openings that we’ve had we decided to bring the guest kind of into that experience by way of having a window that they can actually see into our kitchen they can see and it’s right in front of the biscuit makers station and so you know when we were going down this path we’re like uh oh what if somebody you know a piece of hair falls and somebody picks it and you know you’re like ah but it has been nothing but great um it people like

Anthony Codispoti: sorry sorry Lauren this is a window that’s inside of the restaurant where they can see into the back kitchen or this is on like an out an exterior wall.

Lauren Nicole Coulter: No it’s inside the restaurant okay got it so when guests are coming through the queue line they see that team member you know rolling out the dough and punching the biscuits I mean they they get to be a piece of it and on on weekends especially when maybe the line’s a little longer our our biscuit makers will often like take dough and kind of throw it at the window with kids or just try to bring in that element of experience so that people know like this this is not just popped in an oven you know this is like made fresh and we have to let them rise and then they go in the oven and I mean it’s a whole thing and if you’re not you’ve got to time it if you let it overcook it’s no bueno so um just focusing in on that piece I think has been key because you’re growing up like my mom wasn’t a big cooker but one of my best friends her grandma did. did. she made fresh biscuits every morning every single morning and so for me you know waking up in this country house and getting up and running in there to to get some biscuit like that was joy to me and um oddly enough my friend’s mom was named joy that’s funny but bringing kind of a piece of that even though you know maybe you’re not running out let’s be honest very few people know how to make like homemade delicious biscuits and so if we could bring that element you know that’s the key that’s the food side I think the experience side again is just as important I mean it’s so important actually when we met we met in December to kind of look at 2025 and you know we run on EOS so we’re we’re doing our annual off site and my husband is just like whatever he’s into I call it gate like we had bacon gate for a while we have yogurt parfait gate now it’s like experience gate and and it’s almost to the point where I’m like oh my dear god what do we need to do so that you feel heard and you feel like you know we are acting on these things um but I mean his he rolled it out to our whole system you know on uh in the first week of January like having somebody as a designated guest ambassador is where he wants like he wants it to say Lauren guest ambassador and that’d be my only job and

Anthony Codispoti: so for the entire company or at each location

Lauren Nicole Coulter: at each location so as they are deploying you know team members who are picking up food who are delivering your coffee delivering your food they want to have a he wants there to be a designated person and he’s willing to put the money you know pay for that person to be the guest ambassador so he wants them to come up and say hey Anthony you know not just how was your experience but are you guys visiting are you around here like have that kind of special touch um and and so that’s why I mean he is just focused hard and there is I will say there is all sorts of data to show that if there’s some like stat that he digs into with us like if people have one bad experience they are 47% less likely to go back or something like that to a restaurant that says something I mean that is dollars like we’ve spent so much money acquiring this new customer and then for them to not come back for something that’s avoidable is just nuts so really leveling up that and then um you know for the last I guess 18 months now we in 23 we made this thing like no more systems no new systems we’re gonna try to because like when you start a business you have 100,000 sales people coming at you like look you could buy this and do this you could buy this you could do this and ultimately you have to decide like that data or that system is awesome but I don’t even have a person that can manage it right now you know and so in 23 we really were like no new systems and also what can we scale back and so we kind of systematically scaled back and we added one system and it’s called ovation and it helps us speak to our guest so after you come in you get a text that just says hey two questions or two questions how was your experience and you rate it according to emojis like from a smiley face down to a mad face and if it’s a four or five like a extra smiley or a happy it pushes them to leave a review if it’s a three or less then we say what happened and it communicates that right to the store operator and allows the operator to speak immediately to that guest and to fix the issue so that then they aren’t taking to the you know google airways and blasting us right um the guest recovery piece is so important and so that has been one of the best elements that we’ve added over the last three years just so that we can talk more to the guests and it allows you to look at like root things like what are we consistently seeing where do we need to input in inject some training it’s really helped with all of that

Anthony Codispoti: you know i’ve never met your husband but i feel like i know him because uh i have many of the same elements in me very common traits and lots of entrepreneurs that i talked to you know you’re you’re always coming up with new ideas you’re always looking for ways to turn the dials and tweak things on ideas that are already working um i’m curious does that uh kind of parlay into the food experience like are you guys always like experimenting with new foods or since you’ve been open for you know a few years now and you feel like the menu is kind of set where it is

Lauren Nicole Coulter: i feel like our menu is pretty set but i think we have to always have an element of seeing and noticing what’s around and leaning into it so that you can stay relevant obviously a good way to do this is through limited time offerings and we’ve had a variety of those over the last three to four years and this is the first year where we’re just like rinsing repeating the ones that work so we we took a pretty data driven approach to the last two years of LTOs and we’re like okay what’s skinny this down what what were the things that were absolutely loved and we really are trying to just make that better now i love what you said just now about taking something that works and and turning the dial a little bit because that’s a really nice way of saying it um i mean yes my husband is a classic visionary and i am a classic like no it’s fine it’s fine i don’t want to change it like i want it to be the same so it’s a really good you know this visionary guy with this like what can we actually roll out push out what do we have the bandwidth or even the you know skill set to do right now like we’re really i think that’s what makes us a good team

Anthony Codispoti: you know and it’s so important and it can be very difficult to sort of find that balance between the integrator and the visionary and especially when you you know it’s a married couple you know who you know you’re sharing your entire lives together um and you know i i’ve seen this sort of play out in different instances and sometimes it can be helpful for that visionary to have a hobby outside of work where they can kind of turn the dials and tinker and you know kind of scratch that part of their brain that needs scratched on a regular basis just to kind of keep them for maybe fiddling with something that doesn’t need fiddled with

Lauren Nicole Coulter: i literally i have come to appreciate this more and more like in the last year i’ll write my mother-in-law like notes and i’ll say well jad wants to go by this old car and you know tinker around with it for two years and then sell it and i’m like at least it’s not a restaurant and then and then like you know we’ll get an email from his dad it’s like look at this old woody i bought like this old car and i’m just like oh he gets this honest but to your point it does shift the gears a little bit in ways that don’t impact our team like it impacts me but it keeps them safe and

Anthony Codispoti: that’s important yeah you don’t want to give them whiplash or changing directions too

Lauren Nicole Coulter: oh yeah and that’s yes

Anthony Codispoti: you know uh lauren i i understand the community involvement plays a pretty big role in your business model i’m curious to hear how local partnerships have kind of helped to shape the the growth and the culture there at biscuit belly you know that’s

Lauren Nicole Coulter: a great question i think that is something that we’ve spent you know three years so we opened in 2019 2020 was covid and i mean just the chaos that ensued there uh was we were just treading water little ducks you notice and it wasn’t until about a year and a half ago year year over a year ago we were actually at our annual meeting last december and it really became clear that we were disjointed from a community involvement perspective and you know we would ask some we’d give out gift cards and we you know we’ll do those things but we were not being intentional around any of our like who do we want to align with and what do we want to do so we’ve spent some time overall when you talk to our team members they like for us to focus down on organizations that help with food and security so we’ve gotten a bit more involved with an organization feed Louisville here and they they have like a waste aspect they’ll come pick up your leftover food but then you know some other kind of community giving aspects i think that has been really key in just the awareness of like hey we’re lucky we get to serve all these people but they can also afford to come in here and you know spend you know $25 on them and in their partner for breakfast so let’s figure out ways that we can help people that maybe can’t do that and it’s not always it’s not always directly through food but it’s ultimately like food pantry food you know dividing things up and making bags and like just things like that getting involved with the community on that front has been important personally especially after COVID i mean i was always the type of person to say yes to things and always you know hey can you be on this committee or can you help put on this event or can you help and i would always say yes yes yes and then COVID kind of forced us all to like shut it down and then i just became very particular about what i added back does that make sense so now i feel like i do a whole lot less but i’m able to give more

Anthony Codispoti: to the more focused yeah your efforts are more focused in that community involvement now you know lauren we we’ve sort of touched on this i’ve heard you mentioned COVID several times but we haven’t really talked about what that was like for you guys going through it you know march 17th hits everybody’s got to close their doors figure out a different way what what did you guys do were you able to do curbside were you able to to pivot at all

Lauren Nicole Coulter: yeah we were um it was not pretty you know we my poor husband you know when you tell a visionary like turn your brain off i think that that like it was definitely some of the darkest times in our lives you know and um oddly enough i had worked at this insurance company for nine years i think and i had scaled back to part time years ago to just help chat but in december of 2019 when we really were like okay we’re going to grow biscuit belly i put in my notice for march like march 15th or whatever like i gave them plenty of notice to transition and my last day they had a lunch brought in and that was the day that everyone at that company got an email saying we’ve had our first employee with COVID everyone go home and so they were literally like waiting on this lunch to come in for me and then everyone left and i mean they have not been back like in the same you know since so i left this thing you know great job to basically just make sure my husband was okay like i mean i could have probably stayed at that point but i was like i need to make sure he’s okay you know it was like everything coming down one day you know you can apply for this one day you can do that and then oh the next day actually no and oh you have to have a million employees and it was just like the the communication was so challenging and then on top of that again what i said like that visionary mind just being told like sit down and shut up you know you can’t do anything right now that was wild and so those were challenging times now the one there was two good things that came out of it number one i mean prior to that we did not do any take out like we didn’t need to we didn’t want to take out costs so much more because of all the paper plastic and you know it requires even more time to put things in a box and put that box in a bag and then get that to where it’s going as compared to just an order in a restaurant additionally when you’re thinking about third party delivery services i mean these people you know they take 30 percent of your of your top line revenue i mean it’s just a racket and so that was definitely a struggle but we learned how to then do this take out we learned how to do it well as we started growing we were able to negotiate a little bit with some of these companies we were able to figure out prior to franchising like how do we how do we make this easy because at you know at the time doordash would send you a tablet and uber eats would send you a tablet and you’d have all these this hardware and it was such a pain to deal with and so we figured out okay we need to we need to invest in this space we need to make it so the team doesn’t have to have tablets it needs to be a seamless experience for our team members and so we learned a lot in that time we also learned hey throwing gravy on that biscuit and sending it with a doordash driver for 25 minutes by the time the the guest gets it it’s like but so we learned the things that we needed to change to be you know to function well in that space and then the other thing was that is really the time we spent developing the franchise stuff so we launched franchising in october of 2020 and that was because we were pretty much able to to designate you know six months to like that was the focus that became the the things that we were going to work on and so it allowed my husband that like that sense of purpose you know kind of reinvigorated that visionary piece and so that was the only other good thing that came out of it I mean even now take out still 25 27 percent of our business like it’s it’s not going away

Anthony Codispoti: right things have shifted it’s a it’s a much bigger percentage of most fast casual dining environments now yep for sure so we talked about sort of this the particular challenge of COVID but maybe aside from that Lauren I’m kind of curious to hear from you do you think back over your life your career maybe a serious challenge a different one that you have experienced overcome and what that was like and some lessons learned going through it I would say

Lauren Nicole Coulter: one of the toughest lessons for me um was more around the people aspect I think so when we opened Biscabale we hired a couple people that were from Luvino you know had been with us for years that we loved and they’re like this is a good cool opportunity for you to do something new and as a way to elevate them and I remember early on when when I went to a conference of sorts for like emerging franchisors this guy did a talk and he was saying look the people that get you to store four and five they’re not the same as the people that can get you to store 30 or 40 and I remember being like whatever like these people will be with us forever and you know as you grow and you realize man we don’t have the A plus players the A plus talent to get us where we need to go that is hard

Anthony Codispoti: that’s a hard reckoning these are people that you care a great deal about they’ve given you everything that they’ve got yeah

Lauren Nicole Coulter: yes and you do a lot of self searching because you like here I’m almost setting this person up for failure because I’m angry that they cannot accomplish x y and z but they’ve never done that before so you know there is internal struggles with that um being an early brand early stage brand how in the heck am I supposed to get an A plus person who’s done this before when they make you know 250 grand at these other brands like how how do we do this and so there’s a lot of that like okay well what can we not have to afford something like that and um I think all of that was really challenging I don’t like like I hate I do not like for somebody to not like me like I’m one of those people I want everyone to like me and I don’t have to be your favorite person but like I would hope Anthony would leave and be like man that’s a nice human you know she’s a good kind person and I really I was decent at holding people accountable not great but once I was having to really hold people accountable to things that they didn’t know how like how or what to do I mean that’s on me like I never gave them the tools to be able to accomplish those things so we had to go back to the drawing board and really evaluate like what what can we do what do we want to do and what can we afford to do that then diagram is really corky so uh you know we had to let go of some people ultimately it was the best decision of both of our times you know when you look back you’re like we should have done that a long time before

Anthony Codispoti: but it’s so hard and painful in the moment

Lauren Nicole Coulter: it is so

Anthony Codispoti: hard you’ve got a personal bond with those people

Lauren Nicole Coulter: yeah the people aspect is definitely the toughest

Anthony Codispoti: yeah Lauren I’ve just got one more question for you but before I ask it I want to do two things uh first of all everyone listening today I know that you love today’s content because Lauren has been a A plus guest so please hit the share like or subscribe button on your favorite podcast app Lauren I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you what would that be

Lauren Nicole Coulter: yeah I mean my email uh I answer my email you know lauren.culturebiscabally .com I’m on LinkedIn I’ll be candid I get hit up by probably 50 sales people a week so it’s hard for me to differentiate the outreach if people write not a sales person or hey you know heard you hear like I’ll be like okay but usually if I don’t you know if it’s it’s past the first couple of lines and I feel like it’s a sales pitch I’m like

Anthony Codispoti: next time’s limited yeah yeah you gotta find some efficiencies there yes so we’ll include a link to your LinkedIn profile as well as your email address uh Lauren uh is spelled lauren.com so last question for you Lauren I’m kind of curious to hear what do you see are the big changes coming in your industry in the next couple of years?

Lauren Nicole Coulter: I think the focus down on experience is going to continue like I don’t think that’s gonna go away um this is hard

Anthony Codispoti: is there more of a movement to tech I hear some people talking about AI are you guys thinking about or leaning into that yet

Lauren Nicole Coulter: you know we get we are not because we are so focused on experience we are not leaning all the way in to tech from a guest perspective we are leaning into it in ways that it’ll help our team members but you know how many times have the people selling like the the things where people could just walk up in order I mean that is key that that they we are not that brand like that is not us I think anything that can decrease friction between us and the guest is going to thrive um anything kind of like ovation anything where we can hear from the guests before like hear their anger or their sentiment prior to them going in putting it on review sites I think those pieces will thrive um I think that we’re gonna see more like consolidation but more from a like brands kind of closing and shifting into fewer locations only because I think the consumer is willing to pay a premium for quality I think the days of like I think the days of like two for two dollar stuff is dwindling I think people are like what is that that I’m eating you know and you know I I think that’s where biscuit belly can level up bit I mean we’re we are putting in we’re we’re purchasing high quality product and yeah it’s a higher price point but you know like what you’re putting in your body

Anthony Codispoti: I mean people can literally see you you know not making the sausage but making the biscuits right you’ve got that window now where people can see what that process is like like oh that’s handmade from scratch right right now just right before I put it in my belly

Lauren Nicole Coulter: they can see us opening you know getting bags of berries and putting it on the skillet and you know cooking it down and I mean they can see so much of that and I think that piece is more and more important to the consumer just knowing what you’re putting in your body

Anthony Codispoti: yeah for sure well Lauren I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today I really appreciate it thank you for having me folks that’s a wrap on another episode of the inspired stories podcast thanks for learning with us today