Breaking Generational Patterns: How Dawn Nielsen Led Kolache Factory to 23% Growth During COVID

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 Codispoti and today’s guest is Dawn Nielsen. Dawn is the Chief Operating Officer at Kalachi Factory, a family-owned bakery cafe founded in 1982. They serve a variety of fresh kalachis and specialty baked goods with over 60 locations nationwide. Now, a kalachi, for the uninformed, is a soft pastry that you can fill with just about anything, sweet or savory.

And Kalachi Factory’s mission is to bring delicious, authentic flavors to local communities, honoring old world traditions while embracing new ideas. As the COO, Dawn has truly led the company through incredible growth and created innovative marketing strategies to expand their brand presence. Under her guidance, they’ve ranked multiple times an entrepreneur’s franchise 500 and was named the number one baked goods franchise for two years in a row. Dawn’s background is firmly rooted in the business since she started working at the bakery at just nine years old, learning the ropes as it grew and evolved.

Her passion for food innovation and strong leadership have driven record sales, especially during the pandemic recovery. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back 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 addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the COO of Kalachi Factory, Don Nielsen. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Dawn Nielsen : I’m thrilled to be here and chat with you, Anthony. Look forward to all the things we’re going to discuss today.

Anthony Codispoti : And let’s start with what is a Kalachi? A lot of people haven’t heard of this before. Educate us.

Dawn Nielsen : Yes, so the Kalachi is originally a Czech inspired pastry that was brought over in the early to late 1800s. And primarily they settled here, the Czechs settled here in Texas and in Nebraska. So you will hear a lot of people being very familiar with Kalachi’s in West Texas, et cetera. And so that is kind of what, how it came over here.

Sweet yeast spread traditionally filled with fruits such as prunes, apricots, peach, cream cheeses, poppy seed, those are your traditional flavors. And then, you know, Texas has been around a minute and we kind of a melting pot, we like to turn things and change them up. And so the Kalachi eventually evolved into what’s known as a Klobuniski now, but that’s so hard to spell and say, we just call them Kalachi’s. And so they’re filled with meats, eggs, cheese, pizza, the gamut, we have over 25 different kinds that have evolved over our 40 plus years running the business and their inspirations not only from our customers, but they are inspirations inspirations from our employees who work with the dough every day and say, hey, you know what, this would be great to go in our Kalachi dough. And so that’s how we have over 25 different varieties.

So it’s been a work in progress, not just by my father or my mother or just by me, it’s been a whole group of a community inside and out that have come up with these great flavors over the years.

Anthony Codispoti : So it started out more as fruit and sweets that were sort of embedded in there. And so as I’m hearing you describe that, I started thinking about like a jelly filled doughnut, but I think the experience and the consistency is much different.

Dawn Nielsen : Very much different. So when you think of what you’re describing, that’s a fried, very light dough and injected with a light jelly filling. Ours is a heavier dough, like I mentioned earlier, yeast bread.

And that’s allowed to rise. And then we put sort of a thicker pie filling or preserved filling inside. So it appears much more like a Danish as opposed to a doughnut, a jelly filled doughnut.

Anthony Codispoti : And then very similar for more of the savories, the meats and the proteins in terms of the bread consistency.

Dawn Nielsen : Bread, it doesn’t change from one variety to the next. It’s all the same bread and dough that’s made fresh every day on site. And then, but the meat and fields do appear different. So they’re rolled and the yummy goodness is on the inside. So it’s kind of like an enlarged dinner roll. When you think of our sausages, those are going to be oblong.

So think of sausage on a stick with the bread around it, but the bread is all enclosed. So traditional check, what came over was the Danish type. What has, you know, morphed into this Texas style is this, you know, hearty, savory, salty, meaty deliciousness that we have available.

Anthony Codispoti : Because it went from being maybe a little bit more like a side or a dessert or a treat to now it can be kind of the main course, right?

Dawn Nielsen : Absolutely. It’s 100%. It was created as a treat, a little dessert. And that is still available today, but not many really gravitate towards that as much as they do those eggs and ham and cheese and sausage varieties.

Anthony Codispoti : And I would imagine the way that you’re describing it is this is like a really great on the go kind of a thing. You know, like years ago, you know, sometimes when I’m traveling, I pull through like a McDonald’s drive-through to get like a, you know, sausage, egg, Mcmuffin or something. And like it’s hand-sized and what, but it’s like, I bite into it. I don’t know, stuff’s running everywhere. This is a little bit more self-contained.

Dawn Nielsen : Absolutely. And that is one of the things that we pride ourselves on. You know, the number one thing my father wanted when he opened this business was to get people in and out and on their way and be able to get them to their meetings looking just as fresh as they left their house. So you can’t really do that with a glazed donut. You can’t really do that with a cream cheese bagel, right?

I mean, you know, there’s, you know, you see a lot of ladies putting on their mascara. It’s not necessarily the safest thing to do in the car. Well, I’d probably argue the same thing with cream cheese and locks and bagels in a car. Not really convenient.

So that is the thing. Get people in and out on their way. Give them some nutritious, delicious, unique, fun things to eat that didn’t leave any sort of evidence behind. So it’s a crime-free food in the car.

Anthony Codispoti : I like that. So yeah, say more about, because what’s it been? 40 years? What was the inspiration behind your family starting this?

Dawn Nielsen : Yeah, so interesting story. If you’ve got a minute. So originally, my father and mother were not in the Kalachi business and we are not check backgrounds. You know, for years, it was always like, oh, should we tell anybody that or not? But now, you know, it’s, you know, everybody we’re Heinz 57 American here, we can be whatever we want to be. But my mom had a gift shop in the same strip center and these two sisters at the time had a place called Kalachi factory that was around the corner. And one day, my dad went over there to get hamburgers.

They sold Kalachi’s and hamburgers at lunchtime and they were closed. And my dad did many years at Mrs. Barrett’s company and their finance and their delivery, their their day old products, the gamut, he run a huge portion over that Mrs. Barrett’s for many years and then went into the military. And so anyway, when he came back and told my mother, he said, you know, this is just such a great concept.

And I think I can do this with our experience in, you know, banking and finance and in retail. This just makes a lot of sense. So he reached out to the two ladies and they were willing to sell. And he bought the whole caboodle for about six grand and kept the name. This is one of his favorite stories, kept the name because the name was going to be $900 to replace on signage. I wish I could buy signage today for $900, folks. But it is like $9,000 to $19,000 depending on how big your sign is. So he didn’t want to spend $900 to change the name. And that is why we are here 40 plus years later as Kalachi factory.

Anthony Codispoti : I love it. I enjoy the name. I mean, it’s a great name anyways, but I love that the reason was less because of that, more because he didn’t want to buy a new sign.

You have to be super, you know, frugal and cost conscious when you’re first getting started with a new business. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. So you started working there. If I have my notes correct, when you were just nine years old.

Dawn Nielsen : Yeah, I mean, plus or minus a year or two somewhere, I’m sure. But I was going to the roller rink at the same time. So it’s pretty safe bet. But yeah, so family owned business. My mom still had her gift shop. My dad was spending a lot of time with all of the friends and connections that my mother had. She had a very well known and reputable and high end gift shop. So she had a lot of connections with chefs and China and, you know, just lots of connections. So they spent a lot of time doing their research on coming up with a kalachi that we could stand behind that stayed true to its roots. But that could be mass produced. So when you think of kalachis in the Czech community, it’s grandma and the family that’s making a small batch and then they’re gone by the end of the day. It’s a one day process. Our day is a three day process.

And so it goes through the making of the dough, the freezing, the thawing, and then the preparing. And so all of that was a little bit outside of where I was at eight or nine. But I was short and flexible. And so I was put on the floor to scrub baseboards and to change the toilet paper and to clean off tables. And so there’s, you know, there’s no one protecting you and it’s a family owned business. You are in there pulling your own weight, even if it is kind of lightweight doing tables and stuff.

Anthony Codispoti : So yeah, fair enough. So I want to hear a little bit more about the process of making the kalachi because it used to be like you’re saying kind of old school, it was like a one day process. Now you guys are you’re making the dough, you’re freezing it, why are you freezing and then thawing it? Like what’s the…

Dawn Nielsen : So the whole reason behind that was to have a tiered effect, to always be able to have dough that could come out at some point of that process and be available for sale. And the thing is, is if you make fresh bread, if you do make fresh bread at home, right, it’s only going to last you a day or two before it’s going to mold or what have you, right?

Or everybody eats it all and it’s gone, right? The ability that my father came up with was that if we can have these in a staged process, so you have some that are completely thawed ready to prepare, you have some in a semi thawed process, and then you have some in a frozen state, right? So your greenest dough is frozen. And then that day rotates, you’re allowed to pull it and put that into a fridge that begins to defrost. So if you have a really unexpected busy day, and anytime you can start pulling that stuff out of the freezer and allowing that stuff to thawed to come to room temperature to rise to be able to use that day. And subsequently, you also have enough inventory for the next day to continue to open. So you’re always preparing three days out, but you have the inventory available at any point in time, at any point in those those structures, to be able to utilize that dough.

Anthony Codispoti : Are you making more dough every day? Yes. Putting it into the freezer?

Dawn Nielsen : Yes, dough is made every single day, no exceptions.

Anthony Codispoti : The benefit of not using sort of that newly made dough is that you’ve got sort of the stock pile that you can pull from because I don’t know, Monday might be a little bit slower, but man, this Tuesday there was a convention in town and we didn’t even know about it.

Dawn Nielsen : Right, exactly. It’s to be able to prepare for the unknown.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay, so you started working there around the age of nine, you were scrubbing baseboards and whatnot. Did you think growing up as a kid, oh, I am going to be in this family business? Or did this idea kind of come about later?

Dawn Nielsen : Well, here’s the reality of it. I thought at that time I would become a veterinarian, and in all transparency, I probably should have. I tend to like animals a whole lot better than people, but I’m also an only child. And so the reality is that there comes a point when your parents look at you and say, and I was fortunate, they said, you need to basically get off the pot, you need to figure out what you’re going to do because we have to figure out what we’re going to do. There is no one after me, right?

I mean, there is now I have two children, but at that time when I was in my early 20s, there wasn’t. So it becomes a, are we going to sell it? Are we going to close it?

Or what are we going to do? And so I think it was at that moment that I realized having almost finished my college that I would have to go to a lot more college to become a veterinarian, or I could just start work with my mom and dad. And boy, that just, I took the easy route. And I will tell you, it hasn’t been easy. Okay, you think it’s easy.

The road’s easy, you know, nepotism, whatever you want to call it, you know, you just swoop on in. No, no, no, you get burned and you fall down and you make a ton of mistakes. And, but I don’t regret any of it. You know, I wouldn’t be the person I am today without, without all of that.

Anthony Codispoti : Let’s back up a little bit. I’m kind of curious. So your family buys the one existing location. Obviously, a lot of things to figure out and you guys are tweaking the recipes and you know, how can we make it ours and you know, still kind of hold true to the roots. At what point did your family realize, Hey, this is really working. And we’re going to open up more locations.

Dawn Nielsen : Yeah, I think probably the day they opened it. And I’ll say this because my mom was brilliant. She was one of the first women in the early 70s to become head of the bank escapes me right now. Anyway, one of the major banks, and I’ll remember when we get off the call. So my apologies, savings and loan. Thank you. Here.

So hard. And so she was a real whipper snapper. My father, as I told you, had served in the military. It’s her, you know, did his time with Mrs. Baird. He had worked for other companies.

So he had a vast understanding of financials and what makes a successful company. And they knew the location was a bad location. It was sort of one of these giant spread out strip centers that has locations inside and outside and all around and and nothing functional for driving, you know, someone wanting to get in and out.

So the lease was left with, I think, a year on it. And my father’s immediate goal was to get across the street on morning side traffic. And if that’s what somebody wants to know out of your, you know, podcast today, how to become successful, be smart on where you put your location. And so he wanted to be able to get people heading into work, get them where they can get in and out easily and conveniently. And so that’s what he did. And as soon as he moved that location, Anthony, over a year later, business took off. And it was a matter of a few years later that he went from a second location to a third. And then I believe it was around 9495 don’t quote me on that. They expanded to seven very quickly. And so that’s when it started to, you know, really begin to grow.

Anthony Codispoti : Were there drive thru’s as a part of the new setup?

Dawn Nielsen : Not initially, no. No, are there today? There are today. When we’re gifted by the gods to be able to find a location that has easy access and a drive thru and the banks not in it or Starbucks isn’t in it, then great. Or isn’t, you know, 8,000 square feet. But those are hard to come by, but we do grab them and we can find them.

Anthony Codispoti : What’s a typical footprint, square footage?

Dawn Nielsen : Typical footprint for us generally is around 16 to 1800 square feet. We’re trying to push on the smaller end. It changes how we do business. So we’re still toying around with that. We have some smaller locations, deliveries have to change, etc. on how we, excuse me, manage those units. But yes, we are trying to find some smaller footprints because rent is so high.

Anthony Codispoti : Rent’s high. And from what I understand, like consumer behavior has changed since COVID. There’s fewer people coming in to sit down and eat there, even more takeaway, more third party delivery.

Exactly. So move locations across the street because it’s easier access for the direction that people are going in the morning and the location had, you know, easier kind of in out access. So as soon as customers realize that they’re like, Hey, this is great.

I’m just going to pop in there, grab my breakfast sandwich on the way and we’re ready to go. And at what point did you guys, you opened several locations then over the next several years, at what point did you decide, Hey, we’ve got something here. Let’s try the franchise model.

Dawn Nielsen : So we first started franchising in the year 2000. That was our very first one. And that individual franchisee is still with us today. He’s a multi-unit owner. He has five locations here in the Houston surrounding area. Yeah. So that’s, I think when my father and mother saw that it was able to explode very quickly, you know, I mentioned the early 90s, mid to late 90s, that quickly it immediately went into we want to franchise and we can make this happen.

Anthony Codispoti : And at what point did you become involved in more of the day to day? Because obviously, you know, you’re a kid, you’re going through school, you go to college and what was the year where you sort of stepped in?

Dawn Nielsen : Well, I kind of farted around a little bit, but probably, you know, my husband and I got married and had kids very young. I think I was 22 when we had our first child. And that’s really when you start getting serious. It’s like, okay, well, fun and games are over.

We have to, you know, settle down, start thinking about, you know, our family, daycare, etc, etc. And so he ended up going to work for my father and managing one of our locations for a couple of years. And I was in the office, you know, doing payables or payroll or receivables, whatever, whatever it was that, you know, that was my next thing I had to learn. So, yeah, it was in our early 20s when when we became, you know, sort of understood that this was going to be our life.

Anthony Codispoti : And so it was like, you kind of got into the ground and you were sort of learning like all the back office functions and kind of slowly worked your way up into, you know, increasingly like higher levels of responsibility. Correct. Yeah. And so how many locations are we at today?

Dawn Nielsen : 62 today. We have another location. Hopefully if they pass health inspection, it’ll be a franchise unit that will open the first week of April, excuse me, we’re in April, May. And that will be in McKinney, Texas. So we’re really looking forward to that location getting open. It’s been on the books for a long time.

Anthony Codispoti : So what where are the geographies that you’re serving now? Are they all Texas?

Dawn Nielsen : So we’re in nine different states. Most of the locations that corporate owns are within the Houston area. We have purchased locations back. So locations like that are in Austin and McAllen, Indianapolis, Kansas, those locations are ours.

Virginia Beach, South Carolina. But we’ve got great franchises that are in Indiana as well, California, Brentwood, Missouri. So and then we franchise most of the franchises that we do have are here in the state of Texas with the exclusion of the states I just mentioned.

Anthony Codispoti : Where are the new franchise opportunities? Where are you guys looking to grow currently? Everywhere.

Dawn Nielsen : Okay. Is there and that’s a fair answer. Sometimes when I talk with franchises, there’s like a like a logistics supply chain issue, like how do we get the right ingredients?

Dawn Nielsen : There are those logistic issues and we’ve had those for years and we will, everyone will continue to have them. I mean, if you’re going to get in an area, you’re going to have the logistic issues until you get in. That’s just the reality of it. So we don’t stop a potential location from opening just because we have drama and the distribution line.

So yeah, we just won’t do that. But we are looking to open up more locations in Dallas proper. We are on the outside of Dallas. I’d love another location in San Antonio. There’s so many areas in the Houston metro outside the Houston metro area for us to expand to. Indianapolis, Castleton, we’d love more locations on the East Coast and California is doing fantastic. So really, we’re just waiting for the right franchisee who’s ready to look at taking a different path and really enjoys eating bread to come on board and become part of our expansion.

Anthony Codispoti : So what is it that you’re specifically looking for in a franchisee? Is there, I don’t know, particular experiences or particular type of personality?

Dawn Nielsen : Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think the first thing is we’re looking with people who have the capital. I think a lot of times people think that they can get into franchising fairly inexpensively. And the reality is if you didn’t renovate your house during COVID, you now know what things cost. So construction is so expensive. Equipment now is so expensive.

We now have the tariffs to worry about when we talk about steel and aluminum and things of that nature. So I think what we’re looking for for our franchisee is someone who’s a realist, someone that understands the nature of what it takes that has the stomach and the backbone and the thick skin to get through it because it takes a lot to get through building out a location, getting to know your community. We’re looking for a person that wants to be in their store and wants to serve their community and wants to not reinvent the wheel.

So I think those are the things that we’re really looking for. Someone that is really looking to change, have a change of pace in their current work life that appreciates what the relationship is between franchisee and franchisor and that the franchisor has gone through these major hurdles in life for a reason and to abide by what those rules, guidelines, training and support provide them. And so they can go in there, be trained, run their business, the Kalachi factory away and hopefully everything lines out in that area, in that community where they are well received. And so I think that’s a very long-winded answer is someone that’s a realist, someone that’s got a little bit of deep pockets, someone that’s got an appreciation and love for wanting to be in the food industry and someone that doesn’t want to set their own rules.

Anthony Codispoti : They want to follow the cookie cutter procedure. You guys have gone through the hard steps to get your diploma from the School of Hard Knocks. They don’t need to go through in that same road. Correct. So I’m going to guess that as you’re talking with new candidates for opening up a franchise location, they’re also considering other franchise opportunities. People who choose Kalachi factory, what is it that they see there that they’re not seeing in the other opportunities?

Dawn Nielsen : Yeah, that’s a great question. Thank you for asking. Excuse me. The bulk of them have told us before that they have come to Houston for whatever reason, for work, been here for a couple years, fell in love with us and wanted to take it home to Indiana, wanted to take it home with them to California. They relocated or their families from another state. And that is the story we repeat repeatedly here every time is that I came there because I was coming down to meet family. They introduced me to you. I came down here for a job. I had to pick up Kalachi’s every day for the office, you know, and we realized that there was nothing like it anywhere else.

And there was nothing like y’all’s Kalachi’s. And so that’s how we have gotten the folks that we have gotten. We have done the mainstream advertising for looking for new franchise prospects. We’ve done the franchise gator.

We’ve done, you know, the trade shows and none of those work out for us. And I think we’re a niche. And I think we used to look at that as a if someone wants to invest in this brand and this company because they believe in the product, and they will do that, they will come in their own time. Our obligation is to our employees, to our current franchises, and most importantly, to our customer to continue to do what we do every day and at the scale that we do it at. So that’s the reality. My husband works very hard. He’s but we’re just not going to be out there paying these big exorbitant fees to try to find someone who isn’t in love with us already.

Anthony Codispoti : I would guess that, you know, a big part of the sale is somebody tries a Kalachi, right, which in a trade show kind of environment or running, you know, ads online, people don’t get that chance and they see this funny looking word that they don’t know how to pronounce and they don’t know what it means. And so there’s no connection when you get them in.

They put this in their mouth, you know, they have the experience, they’re like, oh, now I get it. Yeah. Yeah. And so is it mostly a breakfast experience? Is there a lunch dinner? Like what’s how’s this work?

Dawn Nielsen : So no dinner. But what is interesting is here in Texas, it is primarily breakfast and our hours have been 530 to 2pm for years. But you find when you move up to the Midwest, those hours shift a little bit.

So they’ll have their morning rush, but they’ll also have a lunch rush because up there, they weren’t, you know, they didn’t grow up with Kalachis. It’s fairly new to them. Of course, we’ve been in Indian Indian Indianapolis well over 10 years now. So now some people have grown up with it up there. But excuse me. Yeah, most everybody down here knew us as breakfast food. And when you open up in a new market, you really get to, you know, sort of

Anthony Codispoti : reinvent what you are or let let your customers tell you what you are, right? And so that’s that’s exciting for us to see that. So if I have my notes correct here, Don, you guys, at a time when most restaurants were really suffering and contracting 2021 during COVID, you guys actually saw your biggest growth. Do I have that right?

Dawn Nielsen : Yeah. So I call it, so my birthday is March 14th. And when COVID hit, it was March 15th for us. And so it was just like the 1929 depression. We literally went down just like everybody else. And it was scary and it was sad.

And we went in, I immediately called a war room meeting on March, I think it was fourth because I knew it was coming. I’m a bit of a post-apocalyptic person. So I was into those books and into those shows.

And so we were really on it. We, nobody knew the answers back then. Absolutely zero. Nobody knew anything.

I followed the CDC, they didn’t know what they was, nobody knew. But you had to do something. And so we did what, everything was asked of the protocols, the six feet, the, you know, put up the plexiglass windows, everybody wear gloves, you know. But ultimately, I think the restaurant, the National Restaurant Association really came out for restaurant tours and really put that out into the media that we needed help. You know, that we support so many people in our communities all across the country. And you really saw, start to see the community give back to you, you know. They were coming in and tipping or they were coming in and placing orders to go.

And we really did like to say that we were the pandemic-proof food. You know, you place your order online or you call us, we put it in a box. It’s in a plastic bag and out the door you go, right? You don’t have to stand there and look at the shelves anymore.

You don’t have to do any of that when you’re in fear. And we implemented curbside service. That didn’t do as well as we expected, but everybody else was doing it. And, you know, after a few short months, we started starting to see things shift. And we were up in 2021. I believe it was 23%.

Don’t quote me on that. We are in between a software change out with new POS. So I cannot pull my data that I would like to since some of these stores have been converted. But yes, we were up about 23%, 24% system-wide for the year 2021. It was fantastic. But we all did suffer that first in 2020.

Anthony Codispoti : It was such a hard time for so many businesses. And you said something interesting there about the community giving back. And tell me if I’m right or wrong here, but I suspect you saw a lot of that because of the way that you had been giving to your communities all along, you know, the local partnerships, the charity work. It seems like it’s kind of part of the brand identity.

Dawn Nielsen : Yeah, we’ve been giving to our community. That was really one of my mom’s initiatives. I can’t really take credit for it. She’s not been with us since 2008. But when they first opened the store, her biggest thing to do was to give it away. You know, nobody can sit down and eat a dozen donuts. I mean, I’m sure somebody can.

So don’t quote me on that, but they really shouldn’t. And the same goes for a dozen kalaaches. So her big thing was buy six, get six. And she knew they would take that back to the office and they would share.

Or they would take it home and the kids would gobble it up. And it really did work for many years until I came along and said, no more of this buy six, get six for doing buy three, get three. And now customers actually love the buy three, get three, because maybe they don’t want a dozen.

They just want enough for the kids in the car, you know. And since COVID, things have shifted. We still do not have the business to business, you know, money that we were bringing in at all. Prior to COVID, our average sale online on our website was running $65 to $67.

Today it’s at $35.99. Now, with that said, we’ve on boarded many third parties. And so that drops your average ticket down. But I would still have expected that to see that number come back up a little bit. Somewhere around 45.

50, but it hasn’t happened. So I am hoping that more and more businesses will come back and be looking to feed the boardrooms. Because we miss those orders. And what you’re seeing is a lot of orders that are great. We have more volume, but we’re not seeing those 400, 500, 800, $700 standing orders that we’re coming in.

Anthony Codispoti : You know, we’re recording this April 28, 2025. And we’re seeing more return to office kinds of things happening. Big companies, you know, different government agencies talking about it. Even locally here in Columbus, Ohio, like I hear, you know, some of the regional businesses are doing more of it. So it’d be interesting to see over the next several months, Don, if you start to see that kind of tick back up a little bit.

Dawn Nielsen : I’m anxious. I did see one in there just before I got on the phone with you today for 1500. And I was like, hallelujah, but I need to see more of those comments.

Anthony Codispoti : All right. Well, local businesses are listening. You guys, you need food, right? You’ve got conferences going on. You’re, you know, trying to do the free lunch Friday kind of a thing. This is a great option, especially for folks who haven’t tried them before. It’ll be a fun treat. Awesome. Yes. So tell me a little bit about the implementation of your rewards program, Don.

Dawn Nielsen : So we started our app. I believe it was three years ago. At least when we start, we began working on it. And so it is our true rewards program where customers come in so many times, spend $50 and they get $5 back towards their next meal or purchase. And so it has been well received. It’s easy to use. We hear a few complaints on it, which is great.

So I’m really excited about it. We’ve had different versions of apps over the years where you try to do something cheap and you get what you pay for. So I highly advise not doing that.

If you can’t do it right, then just wait till you can. But I love our rewards program because you can kind of see what your customers are doing, what they’re purchasing, you know, how often they’re redeeming these offers, how often they’re opening, you know, special offers that are sent to them. So it’s still a big learning curve for us. But it’s all really great for everyone. You know, I know our customers love it. Our franchisees love that we have an app. And it makes me proud that we have a branded one that functions so well.

Anthony Codispoti : Is it possible to sort of tease out any metrics to show kind of the overall impact that it’s having? I mean, obviously, you hear a lot of customers happy, your franchisees are happy.

Those are both, you know, right there, great boxes to check. But I don’t know if there’s any like actual data that says, oh, we see this kind of an uptick in sales.

Dawn Nielsen : I can’t give you any offhand right now other than that we have about 300,000 people that have downloaded our app. About half of that are very active users. So I would call that successful. We are working right now on a win-back campaign.

So those, you know, customers of ours who don’t come in as frequently or lapse out of 90 days, how can we find ways to drive them back in? And that’s part of one of my many agencies’ responsibilities to do on my behalf. And I have about five agencies that I work with. And they’ve done wonderful things for our brand. And I couldn’t be happier to be working with them. Not many companies, as they remind me, frequently say they can get this many different types of similar businesses on the phone and work together, but you somehow did it. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : When you said five agencies, these are five like marketing type agencies, all sort of working together. Correct. Wow.

Dawn Nielsen : Yeah. So I don’t have one agency that does it all. I could and they all probably could, but they don’t. They won’t, not for me.

Anthony Codispoti : So I have a digit. You feel like they’re each strong and kind of their own specific thing. I do. Yeah. Let the experts do the expert thing.

Dawn Nielsen : Yeah. And we have weekly calls and it’s great. We brainstorm and our brand wouldn’t be where it is today without all of us doing that together.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s great when you can find those partners like that. Um, Don, you know, every time I talk with a successful company, they give a lot of credit to the team that is with them making it happen every day. Curious to hear what you’ve tried and found success with when it comes to recruiting good folks. And then once you find somebody good, how do you hold on to them?

Dawn Nielsen : Prayers. I love the honesty. The industry average is, as you know, is, you know, you’re going to lose them within two to three years because, you know, pay is the great motivator. There’s other things that people, you know, want in job security, etc., etc.

But it’s pay and benefits is what it comes down to. We have many people who have worked for us 20 plus years. Anthony, um, intercooled people that I, without to sound corny or insensitive or, or whatever you want to call it, we deeply consider them family. They have been with us from almost the beginning and have built us, whether here in this office that I sit at or they’re out there running my stores for us. They are responsible for the day in and day out, intricacies of running a multi-million dollar business.

I would not be here where I am without each one of those people. We have had, we’ve been fortunate to have people retire on us. And that is one of the happiest things that I get to celebrate. It’s always sad. Um, but I’m glad they chose to stay with us, you know, and in an age where that just doesn’t exist anymore. We recently lost an employee who had been with us for 23 years, extremely hard worker, loved her to death, um, go get her, but she’s off to go move to Spain. And I couldn’t have been happier, but that was a punch to the gut, you know, and the kidney.

I mean, at the same time, but I wasn’t upset. You know, I said, well, we just fill it, you know, we have to fill the, we have to fill the vacancy. We have to make some changes. But how exciting for you to go and adventure. And I’m going to be happy for you and you spent, you know, 20 years with us. Thank you for your service. How do you keep them?

That’s a hard question. I talked to my supervisors about it. It’s setting expectations.

We have a program called honor roll, which is kind of a gamification where, you know, questions are asked. Usually silly. Do you like pancakes? Do you like waffles? Then I went back to honor roll and I said, I like training.

Can you make these questions training? So they’ve done that for us. And then they earn points and they can redeem them for gift cards and things like that. So there’s just different ways that we attempt to provide incentives for them. You know, whether that’s, you know, healthiest you, whether that’s honor roll or their, you know, kind of earning points, whether that’s giving time off when they need time off.

We don’t really have that luxury in the restaurant industry very much like you would in an office setting. But we try to be more flexible because you have to be in this age. But ultimately, it’s about picking and choosing the people that follow the behavioral competencies that we expect, which is trust, integrity, ownership, pride in the brand, and making sure that we uphold them to that culture that we want to set. That’s the best answer I can give you is that we just try to do better every day. And hope that a few of them, whether they’re here for a moment or they’re here for a lifetime, enjoy their stay and eventually share that with other people and we’ll send other people our way.

Anthony Codispoti : You know, I appreciate you sharing all that is especially the parts about, you know, you’ve had employees that have been with you for years and years. And I don’t know, kind of feels a little bit like a parent, like sending a kid off to college, like you’re, you know, out into the work world. And it’s like, you know, I love you. You’re like, I want you here. I want you to stay. I want you to, you know, continue. But I know that you’ve got to spread your wings. And I’m glad that we’ve been able to share this time together and we could be part of each other’s sort of forward development.

Dawn Nielsen : Absolutely.

Anthony Codispoti : 100%. Don, I want to shift gears now and maybe talk about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome, whether it’s personal or professional. How did you get through it? What did you learn?

Dawn Nielsen : Well, I’ve had two serious ones. And I’ll be real honest with you, one led to the other. I lost my mother from lung cancer and brain cancer in January of 2008. And if anyone’s experienced, you know, losing their mother, their mentor, their best friend, and being an only child, it took me about six months before I think I knew that I had fallen into a black hole. Like I just, like, I just been sucked out of my existence.

Excuse me. And so that led to a drinking problem. And so I struggled with that for many, many years. When you lose someone that is so big and so vibrant and like every, you just don’t make a move without some sort of guidance from them, you know, they’re sort of your guardian angel and they’re everything to you.

So there’s no one to fill that void. And so for me, that would have been, well, we’ll just have fun. We’ll just have more drinks. We’ll just, I’ll just drown it in that instead of looking at it and saying, you know, my husband can’t fill this, my father can’t fill this, my best friend can’t fill this. Nope, there’s nobody that can fill this. She was one of a kind. She was not perfect. Okay.

I’m not sitting here. You know, monopolizing everyone’s time and saying that she was some perfect entity, but she was my mom, my only mom, and she was all of those things to me. So when you talk about being in business and what you would recommend to people and go out and get a mentor, well, she was my mentor. She was my best friend. She was my mom. She was all of these. She was my caregiver, you know, when you’re sick, you know, she was just all of those things. And that rocked me to my core. And it rocked me to my core for a very long time. And I had a lot of shame and a lot of guilt over my behavior and some of those things.

And I didn’t end up arrested and I didn’t go hang out on the corner somewhere trying to pick up my next gig. But you just end up in this kind of circle of shame and loss and misery. And finally, interestingly enough, along comes 2020. I get some therapy. COVID comes around, shows me that all of a sudden I don’t have to be insecure and I do know what I’m doing. And COVID showed me so many things about myself that I had no clue, no clue I was capable of doing. But it did teach me my own self-respect. And so anyway, that probably really got dark. So sorry, not really.

Anthony Codispoti : No, this whatever comes to mind, I tell my guests, is always the right topic. I really appreciate you sharing that. So I’m curious, Don, were you getting therapy before COVID hit?

Dawn Nielsen : Got started therapy in January of 2020. So before it hit. So it was all very cataclysmic and all very, the pieces just shifted at the right time. And yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : And then something about COVID that sort of, I don’t know, snapped you to attention.

Dawn Nielsen : Yeah. My therapist tells me all the time, she’s like, Don, it was you and she goes, everybody else, it all went to hell. And but you and my one other client, y’all shown during that time. And in the best compliment I ever did get is a franchisee reached out to me and he said, I have to tell you, my brother works for Boeing or some giant airline.

I’m not saying it’s Boeing. And he said, they’re not as well put together with a plan as you are. And I think that was one of the most self-defining moments where you go why have I beat myself up for so long thinking I couldn’t do the job when I could and I can and I have.

Anthony Codispoti : So was that a big part of the shame spiral is perhaps you thought without your mother, your mentor, your coach, your confidant, your best friend that you were unsuited for this? Yeah. Okay. Yep.

Dawn Nielsen : With no direction, no beacon, no figure, you know, gotta figure it out on your own. But yeah, for sure.

Anthony Codispoti : And then COVID hits and you’re thrown into the fire and you have no choice it is.

Dawn Nielsen : No choice. And it was all very seamless and matter of fact. And I, you know, I just went in with my people and I said, this is what we’re doing. This is what you can expect. This is what I don’t know. This is what we won’t know. And this is what we’re going to do. And they all went, okay, it wouldn’t did it.

Anthony Codispoti : Wow. I’m sure that you’ve had a chance to, you know, whether it’s friends or other family members, sort of speak from a place of experience of what you went through. What kind of advice do you offer to people or could you offer to people that, you know, are going through their own dark hole where there’s no light, where there seems like there’s no out?

Dawn Nielsen : Yeah. There is only one person that can get you out and that is you. And you have to decide if you’re going to save yourself or not. That’s, that’s it. You are the life preserver.

Should you choose to blow it up and use it? Friends and family are there, but they don’t know. No one knew the level of pain and sorrow and all of the things that I had because no one understood. No one else had that experience where they had a mom that was all of these things and that was running this company. I had a mom.

I had friends that had moms. They were still alive, but they didn’t own their own company. You know, they didn’t do this.

They didn’t do that. So you’re really left with this trying, trying to find a, some way to fill this thing that is unfillable. You know, it’s not like you wrecked your car and just go get another car. You know, it’s not the same. The car is not the same.

Anthony Codispoti : As we’re talking a few years later now, do you feel like Don Nielsen, you’ve kind of hit your groove? Yeah. You figured out who you are. You’re comfortable in this space?

Dawn Nielsen : 100% different person. I’m happy. I’m grateful for the small things. I have learned to listen. That’s a big one you need to figure out when you’re a lot younger, but you never do. But who do you listen to? Employees. And we may disagree, but there’s been a few that have made me change my mind on some things.

Having a different perspective where I, you know, couldn’t see it. My daughter’s now coming into the business. She’s been with us for three years and she is 26. So she has a completely different perspective where polarly opposites when it comes to political ideals. But when it comes to, I don’t know, how to look at things, it’s refreshing.

It’s different. It kind of takes you back to when you were a lot younger and you might have thought the same thing, but then somehow things changed. So I’m looking forward to the new generation. I’m looking forward to doing more bird watching and some more traveling. And being thankful and grateful for the obstacles and the journeys that I had to go through on my own.

My mom was supposed to leave when she did and I was supposed to struggle the way I did to get where I am. And I don’t think I’d take any of it back. I wish I would have been kinder on myself. That I will tell you.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s a big lesson I think a lot of people can take from this. It’s pretty rare that we’re too easy on ourselves. It’s quite the opposite. Most of us are too hard on ourselves. And hearing your story just a couple of minutes that you shared sounds like you really beat yourself up. You really put yourself through the wringer for a number of years.

Dawn Nielsen : Oh yeah, for sure. You probably have some wrinkles for it somewhere too.

Anthony Codispoti : You mentioned the small things. Are there daily habits, practices, rituals that help get you started, keep you centered, moving forward?

Dawn Nielsen : I’d like to say it’s like some of these other famous people out there. Warren Buffett or Elon Musk. You got to read all this stuff. I just pop on my Merlin bird app. And I go outside and I listen to a few birds and I get excited when I identify one. I try to not take things so seriously and really appreciate the things that you’re not going to be able to appreciate when you’re sitting at a desk doing a podcast or looking at numbers or having to deal with interpersonal conflict. So for me, it’s getting away on the weekends and spending time in nature and picking up maybe a fun book, but something I don’t have to think too hard on.

Anthony Codispoti : You mentioned more travel and future bird watching, new generation. Is this close to this sort of transition?

Dawn Nielsen : I don’t think I’m going anywhere. I know my father’s not going. Well, he better not be going anywhere. He hasn’t put it on my agenda. So I’ll be making sure that that’s not acceptable since he’s 83. I think we’ll always be around and I am here. The greatest thing we have right now in our lives is technology.

So whether I’m sitting at my desk where you see me right now or I’m at home in my garden or on my front porch, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got my text. I’ve got my Gmail. I’ve got my phone. I’m just as available as if I were right here.

So I think that’s a great gift that we’ve been given to allow us, you know, executive folks to have a little more life, family balance. Because I know my mom and her father and my father, they work themselves to the bone. And there wasn’t any free time and there wasn’t any vacations and there wasn’t any turn on the Merlin app. You know, there wasn’t any of that. It was how are we going to pay for this? How are we going to do that? Where are we going to go from here? And all of those questions still reside. They’re still there.

But I think the urgency and the angst to try to get somewhere so fast isn’t anymore. But I will just say this as well. We’re very fortunate because we’ve been here 43 years and they did all that hard work for us to be where we are now. And I like to compare our units as a fine, well-oiled train. We have fabulous people all over the place that are taking care of our customers. We have policies and procedures in place to tell them what they need to do when things happen. We have an HR department. We’ve got an executive department. We’ve got a tech department.

We’ve got supervisors that are out in the field. And so that train keeps on going. And it’s just a matter when we can slow down long enough to pick up another one to add to the caboose and add to those locations as we go. Slow and steady. Slow and steady.

Anthony Codispoti : You said something interesting there, Don. I want to explore for just a second. Sort of this sense of like this burning urgency. Got to get somewhere very quickly. And the sense that that has sort of subsided. Yeah. Isn’t that, got to be now, got to be now. What happened along the way for that sort of burning urgency to not be on your shoulders anymore?

Dawn Nielsen : Therapy. There we go. Another vote for therapy. And then finally therapy. No. I think you want for so long to get somewhere so fast. And it doesn’t happen. And it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen.

Dawn Nielsen : And I have learned over my years that just because you want something to happen doesn’t mean you’re going to get what you want when you want it and when you think you deserve it. Life’s too short. I’m 51 years old now. I’ve got a few more years on this planet.

Whether that’s 25 or 45, right? Do I want to spend that with my cortisol levels through the roof? You know, or do I want to say we’re doing great. We’re doing good. We have happy people. And if the right moment and the right spot and the right people come to pass, it will be. And I 100% believe in that. You do have to have go-getters out there. I’m certainly not saying that at all. But I’m also saying you can really enjoy life and be an entrepreneur too.

Anthony Codispoti : Well, that’s a great message. Don, let’s say you and I reconnect a year from now and you’re celebrating one thing. What would that be?

Dawn Nielsen : Well, maybe my daughter’s getting married in October. So maybe we’ll be celebrating another marriage or a grandchild. I don’t know. But for me, I think the most important thing is to feel good. I deal with a lot of chronic pain and I’ve been doing very, very well these last few weeks. So I would love to talk to you next year and say I am the same person you saw last year. And I’m out and doing even more things. So for me, it would be living my best life while I can.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s tremendous. Don, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. First of all, I’m going to invite all listeners to go ahead and hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app so you can continue to get more great interviews like we’ve had today with Don Nielsen of Kalachi Factory. Don, I also want to let people know the best way either to get in touch with you directly, that of the company, or to follow your story or Kalachi Factory story. What would that be? Yeah.

Dawn Nielsen : So you can email me anytime at info at kalachifactory.com or follow any of our Kalachi Factory Facebook, Instagram pages. I do get all of those messages as well. So I’m very easy to reach if you know my name.

Anthony Codispoti : All right, Don, last question for you then. As you look to call it the next two to three years, what are the changes coming to Kalachi Factory that you’re most excited about?

Dawn Nielsen : Well, one, our inventory. Our inventory management system has always been a bit of a bear. And so that is something that is on the works right now on finding a better solution. We’re moving over, I mentioned earlier, way earlier in the inception of our conversation, that we’re moving POS companies. And we’re about, I think, 40% transitioned over to parbrinks.

So I think once that’s done, then we’re going to move right into new inventory management system that’s going to be a lot easier and functional for our field representatives, and as well as our franchisees who really just don’t like food track.

Anthony Codispoti : Fair enough. Well, Don, 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.

Dawn Nielsen : Well, thank you so much for the invitation. I’ve enjoyed it myself.

Anthony Codispoti : Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.