The Outsider’s Advantage: How Dan Simpson Transformed Taziki’s Through Fresh Perspective

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
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 Codaspodi and today’s guest is Dan Simpson. Simpson, let’s start that one over. Can’t butcher your name in the first get go. Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences.

Anthony Codispoti (00:28)
so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Dan Simpson, CEO of Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe, a growing restaurant chain dedicated to offering fresh, healthy meals inspired by Mediterranean cuisine. They focus on quality ingredients, handcrafted dishes, and fostering community around a shared table.

Now under Dan’s leadership, Teziquis has expanded to numerous locations and continues to bring people together through great food in a casual setting. Dan has been with the company since 2016, guiding innovation and business development. He has a strong background in culture building, technology and market development. In addition, Dan earned his MBA from West Virginia University and has a BS in biology from Clearwater Christian College.

He has also worked in both for-profit and nonprofit organizations, bringing a unique perspective to leading teams and cultivating positive work environments. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Adback 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. Imagine being able to give your employees free access to doctors, therapists, and prescription medications.

And here’s the fun part. The program actually puts more money in your employees’ pockets and the company’s too. One recent client was able to increase net profits by $900 per employee per year. Now results vary for each company. Some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, CEO of Teziquis Mediterranean Cafe, Dan Simpson. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Dan Simpson (02:21)
Great to be here. So nice to meet you, Anthony, and great to be on the pod.

Anthony Codispoti (02:25)
Yeah. So let’s see, Dan, you’ve got a pretty interesting background before joining Taziki’s. ⁓ I see some work in healthcare. I see ⁓ technology stops. Maybe pick one of those that was the most formidable for you and tell us about.

Dan Simpson (02:44)
Yeah, our careers are often winding roads and rarely straight lines, right? They often make sense maybe when we look back on them, but not so much when you’re trying to get out of college and blaze your trail. yeah, think back actually to ⁓ some of the healthcare jobs. I did some startup companies and then I was invited by a friend to join this smaller organization at times called AIM Healthcare.

and they had a few hundred employees and the biggest thing there ended up growing up to a thousand nationwide, thousand employees nationwide presence and getting acquired by Optum or by UnitedHealthcare and now it’s called Optum. And so it’s a big player in the healthcare space, but I got to be there in the early days. And the cool thing then was, you know, they hired me, I took a step backwards.

⁓ with pay and with position at the chance that I have a chance to help scale this company. And they’re right. I showed ambition. I was curious. I learned very quickly. And before long I was managing a team of 80 people. ⁓ and the big thing that really is formed about that was I’ve got to work with directly with the, the investors and the, the, the C suite.

And what I learned there was basically though, you know, if I showed ambition and curiosity, as I, as I said, that they would give me opportunities and they, they, they put tremendous trust in me to be able to go start new divisions and broker multimillion dollar deals. And I was so wet behind the ears and they would do a great job with, with finding people that earned their trust and then put them in the deep end of the pool.

support them, but they were not risk adverse. And that has taught me a lot about how to hire people and how to think about people, to try to surround yourself with people that you trust, that have a huge upside and take some risks. Let them, it’s okay to swing and miss and fail as long as you can fix it quickly. And so it really helped me not to be afraid of risk or there’s a singer songwriter, David Wilcox, I like that has a saying about you want to live your life.

where you swim along the shoreline where you are close enough to the shore to stay alive, but far enough to feel alive. And I think that applies to business too, right? Which is gotta find that sweet spot between risk and reward.

Anthony Codispoti (05:03)
And so this is, it sounds like, influenced the way, not only that you carry yourself, but the way that you approach cultivating talent within your organization today.

Dan Simpson (05:15)
Yeah, absolutely. Like there is this idea of speed to trust, right? You want to ⁓ surround yourself with people that in this case, now that I’m in the restaurant business, coming as an outsider, like you said, from healthcare, from technology and some other industries, I found that it crosswalked very nicely into the restaurant space because the restaurant space has all of those things. Of course, there is a culinary chef driven component, ⁓ but it’s operations and now it’s very tech enabled and it’s HR and it’s

people building and it’s, it’s finance and it’s, it’s so many components like any business. ⁓ and so what I look for is just talented people that are kindred in values and then bestow upon them the deep end of the pool and then just coach them along the way.

Anthony Codispoti (06:02)
You mentioned that our careers, they’re winding paths. We’re just trying to figure out where do we land next right out of school. And then as you look back, you can connect the dots a little bit better. As you look back at your career, is there a common thread through these different opportunities that you’ve taken?

Dan Simpson (06:25)
Yeah, there’s a couple. mean, I think the first one is the core of my value set is empathy and humanity. Like it’s always been about people. ⁓

and projects that advance the common good and advance people getting opportunities. There’s always been a bent towards like a purpose driven opportunity that’s very people oriented, everything, whether in every venture that I’ve been a part And that’s why the for-profit and nonprofit, that tax status ⁓ is a, is a really ⁓ less important because the common thread between all of them was where we

a parasite ⁓ and extracting from humanity, or were we actually adding value and bringing something good to the world? And so every project I’ve been a part of, that was key. I think the other dynamic is I’ve never been a person that had a clear dream to launch of my own.

though I’ve very much an idea person, I’ve never had an idea that I said, okay, this is what I want to do. I want to take my dream and launch it. And so everything I’ve done has been really finding other people who have dreams that are worthy of joining and help, but maybe they on their own don’t know how to scale it and applying my energy and my strategic thinking and culture building to their dream to help it grow. And I’ve always been very comfortable. And in fact, just really enjoyed about finding

those people with big dreams that are worth joining and help them grow.

Anthony Codispoti (08:03)
And so how did you find Taziki’s and what was it about their idea, you know, 10 years ago that you got so excited to help grow?

Dan Simpson (08:15)
Yeah, it was, you know, in each of the businesses that I’ve been part of, like if there was another thread that brought me to Taziki’s, it was technology. I’m not a coder, not a technologist by trade, but as I got into every venture…

⁓ I realized to scale more affordably, had to learn how to leverage tech, right? Basic concept there. And so I ended up actually from those experiences, launching a technology company, which had, ⁓ various different applications. And one of them ended up being, ⁓ in the sort of grocery store, restaurant hospitality space. ⁓ didn’t ever imagine myself getting into the restaurant space. It was more of a.

Anthony Codispoti (08:55)
Which company was

this? this, ⁓ To Go Technologies, okay.

Dan Simpson (08:57)
Yeah, that was, that was to go technologies. Yeah.

And, and its first iteration actually was a little bit more healthcare leaning around nutrition and wellness and reward programs, working with Blue Cross Blue Shield plans. ⁓ we needed the other side of that network needed to be grocery stores and restaurants. And so that, that,

pushed me into that space from a nutritional angle. And I was then told by at the time, the head of the National Restaurant Association, David Gilbert, who happened to live in Nashville where I live and said, man, if you’re go down this space, there’s this guy named David, ⁓ named Michael Bodner, who is a whiz. He’s the guy that understands integrations technology wise from systems into restaurant point of sales. Great, so we had lunch.

We hit it off. He told me about his group called Fresh Hospitality, which was an incubator of aspiring restaurant brands. One of them was Taziki’s. And we hit it off where he said, look, I’ll make an investment in your company if you repurpose some of this tech and build a mobile ordering platform for my restaurant group, which included Taziki’s. eventually I ended up working, transitioning to go work with him at Fresh Hospitality to help him spin up new brands that again, somebody else’s dream.

who needed ⁓ help with scaling and building tech and building culture. And so I helped to do that for a few smaller brands. And then he eventually said, why don’t you come join the Taziki’s group, the founder, ⁓ not as a CEO, but as the chief innovation officer, which was just a fancy title for, come be a consultant and help us figure out what the next 20 years looks like. And that was my beginning.

Anthony Codispoti (10:41)
I was going to say it’s a little

unusual. Sorry, you were the CIO for a couple of years and then eventually, I think this is what you’re getting to, you transitioned into the CEO role, which ⁓ on the surface sounds like a rather unusual career arc. I don’t think I’ve come across a CIO or CTO that has made that transition internally to the CEO. But as I hear your story, think the details make a little bit more sense because you weren’t a coder.

You’re not a programmer. You kind of understood how to connect the dots on things. And I think that’s where the skill set really lent itself well to you transitioning to that CEO.

Dan Simpson (11:21)
Yeah, exactly right. think the Michael Boddering was the chairman of the board of Taziki’s as well at that time. Just he looked in and recognized that the founder, ⁓ Keith, the founding chef was still very much involved and the menu was excellent and the brand had an amazing reputation. But we’re moving into a world where more and more guests wanted to order not just dine in but off premise. And that requires systems that they didn’t have in place.

Likewise, when you can have less conversations with your guests face to face where you get to learn their names, where the kids go to school, and that leaves the catering opportunities. Well, now you have to figure out a way to leverage collecting data to listen carefully in these new ways to then interact with the guests in a way that is as close to face to face as you can. And so that was maybe the impetus, but when I got there, that was all true. When I got there, I recognized that

there was more to do that when the founder and I, when Keith and I sat down and talked, you know, we realized, you know, there was opportunities to refresh and reposition the brand. And so it became sort of a marketing business development component of what we started working on. And then there was also a part with talent. I assessed very quickly that we had a lot of nice people that were loyal, but maybe the people that got us here, going to get us there. And so we needed to start looking for the next level of talent.

that aren’t that, you know, you have to do this with any startup, right? But there was still, Tadiki was still very much in a startup, very small nuclear mode and needed to evolve the tech, the talent, the brand positioning ⁓ to be ready to scale.

Anthony Codispoti (12:58)
So in a moment, I want to hear about what the Taziki’s dining experience is like, because I’ve not had the opportunity to be at one. But there’s something you said that really caught my attention, how you don’t have as much of that customer interaction that can lead to sort of catering opportunities. So you have to learn to listen to the data. How are you guys back in 2016, 17, 18 listening to data? What does that mean?

Dan Simpson (13:22)
Yeah, back then, not so well and not so much. ⁓ I’d say over the years now, what that has evolved to looks like this. ⁓ We now have a centralized database where we’re taking all of our systems and integrated the data into one data lake, or they call this, and then a CDP layer, which is a customer data platform.

And all that does is takes all these fragmented pieces of data from your mobile app and from your point of sale and from social media and third party delivery and all of these different pieces. And it puts it all in one place. Almost imagine like a baseball card or a football card has got all your stats on the back and, it shows you’ve ordered, you know, all these different restaurants and what you’ve ordered every time and the sequence of what you’ve ordered and you’re ordering for one, you’re ordering for a family. And so it’s watching for patterns and it’s watching for

preferences. Even things like, you prefer to, you know, do you more likely respond to an email we send you or a text? And do you more likely respond at 8 p.m. or 8 a.m.? And so all of that data in one place with some of those technologies allow us to pay attention and then with that, then serve up a better interaction, say on the mobile app.

where instead of just everyone getting the same homepage, if we, if you’ve already disclosed to us that you love meat, we’re going to show you about our lamb burger and our beef piece and our new lamb kebabs or lamb meatballs. But if you signal to us through your ordering behaviors that you order a lot of kids menu items, but only salads and vegetarian, then I’m not going to show, I don’t, I want to honor that and not push the, the, the lamb meatballs on you. Right? So the same thing.

In my mind, goes back to good tech really just empowers good empathy, right? It’s good listening, good empathy of if I care about you as a guest, then I would want to offer the things that would delight you. And I would never, I’m not, really not in the business of pushing things. I really want to be in the service business where I find out what you care about, what you don’t care about. And I serve those preferences. And so the data just allows me to do that. Even if you’re not face to face with me.

Anthony Codispoti (15:31)
Yeah, if I’m a vegetarian and you’re pushing meat dishes on me, you feel it comes across as tone deaf. Yeah. ⁓ so I’m kind of curious where the state of that tech is today. You know, I would imagine when it first started out and correct me if I’m wrong, that it’s very, ⁓ sort of like if them sort of statements, if, know, they order meat, you know, show them this, if they order, you know, 75 % kids meals, show them that has it progressed to the point where it’s more.

Dan Simpson (15:36)
Exactly.

Anthony Codispoti (16:01)
I don’t know AI driven where there’s more like intuition where you don’t have to give it like explicit rules but it is sort of connecting the dots on its own.

Dan Simpson (16:09)
Yeah, I’m so glad you asked about that. It’s been so fun. It’s such a wild ride in just a short number of months to see how AI is starting to empower these types of interactions as UI UX.

And it’s really both, you know, I’ll start actually on our training side, right? Cause we have, we serve kind of two different groups of people. On one end, it’s the thousands of people that we hire and train and empower to be successful. ⁓ and training platforms used to be, you know, manuals and then they were online manuals essentially. And then they were just very static, roadmaps. Well, we’ve, we’ve now evolved to a training platform that, yeah, there’s a, there is a training path for every person.

But ⁓ now it is paying attention to both your, your knowledge and your confidence or lack thereof in every question. It’s using AI to pay attention to what you got right or wrong to feedback.

⁓ training down the road. ⁓ it’s looking at other factors in the business to inform, or maybe there were some knowledge gaps. There’s this idea of like, you have a learning curve. You also have a forgetting curve, which we all do, right? You don’t remember everything we’ve learned. And so the AI is helping us to create custom training paths for each individual. ⁓ that again pays attention not only to what they learn and what they forget, but also it measures things like, you know, if you get it right and you’re, and you’re confident in your score, if you show,

That’s great. if you need it, it’s actually in every question, it’s actually, one of the questions that it asks. It asks about what is the answer and what is your confidence level, like one through five. And so it’s monitoring things that are helpful. Ideally, you have people that get it right and they’re high in their confidence. What you watch out for is the people that are high in their confidence, but they’re getting it wrong. They’re dangerous.

Anthony Codispoti (17:32)
How does it measure confidence? Just like speed to answer?

Dan Simpson (17:58)
⁓ but likewise, you may not, there’s also a type of individual that gets it right, but their confidence is low, right? And so you can, you can mentor and coach that person up. It’s not a function of capability or aptitude. It’s literally a function of, of more, ⁓ personal confidence and, and, and encouraging them, giving them opportunities to, to lead and to build their confidence. Cause their knowledge is already solid. So, but AI is helping us make all of those interactions app based.

real time, personalized, dynamic with that person. Other things like it used to be, you could only ask the manager, you had to call someone at the corporate office to ask a question. Now you can go to an app into the discover function and ask it anything about anything. How do you make the hummus? And it will generate a video for you. So you don’t even have to go into a catalog of training. Now it’s ask it anything.

Anthony Codispoti (18:50)
It

generates the video on the fly? No. Here’s the video that you need.

Dan Simpson (18:53)
No, it will, will produce, it will basically yield. will share, share the video, but it’s just, it’s

taking many, many, what used to just be isolated curriculum. And now it’s, it’s making that now we can tap into any component of curriculum and serve up a specific answer to a, to a specific question. So those are some examples on the staff side, on the, on the customer side, we’re actually getting ready in just the next few months. in fact, at our, at our upcoming has gone our conference where we gather the whole company together.

which will be happening in middle of September, we’re going to be announcing a new mobile app and web ordering platform. And so stay tuned. But this does have personalization, customization, and some AI-driven components where it is paying attention to the guests’ behaviors.

Instead of us pushing generic, you know, they’d say like a spray and pray marketing approach, we’re just pushing out things. Instead now it’s going to be listening and watching what the guest does and then responding not just based on just their patterns, but also looking with AI to then recommend things through an engine that pays attention to what other, you know, other lookalike customers might enjoy. And so there’s, you know, there’s

not just that, but like I mentioned before, this idea of also communicating the message at the time and in the format they like. Do they prefer text, do they prefer email in morning or night? ⁓ So paying attention to what the guests want and trying to serve them as best we can.

Anthony Codispoti (20:27)
That’s really interesting. I’m going to guess that there’s some combination of using third party tools and then you guys kind of layering in your own customization. This isn’t, I mean, you’re not a tech company. It’s not, it doesn’t make sense for you guys to home grow all of this stuff.

Dan Simpson (20:43)
Yeah, that’s right. It’s a combination of figuring out the right tech partners that exist in the space. By and large, we’ve had a bias toward partnering with companies that are sort of where we are as a company. ⁓ And so for the most part, that means not

going with 800 pound gorilla in the industry, but going with ⁓ someone that’s also not just an upstart, but someone that’s emerging in their presence in the industry. And then we form a partnership with them where they’re really happy to have us, we’re really happy have them. And then we have a dialogue where we can help inform some of their tech development. So yeah, we’re not trying to code our own software, but we particularly want to work with companies that genuinely

⁓ want to listen and collaborate on something that is a win-win for both of us.

Anthony Codispoti (21:37)
That makes a lot of sense. If you guys are comparable sizes and similar trajectories, it’s gonna feel more like you’re equals. They’re gonna hear your voice. You’re gonna get some of the features that you’re asking for, which I think is really important, especially with cutting edge tech like we’re talking.

Dan Simpson (21:52)
Yeah, that’s, that’s right. So it’s been fun. Like there’s companies like square point of sale, which is a very well known company, but in the enterprise restaurant space, they’re a smaller player. ⁓ we’ve been lockstep with them for the last five years to help them develop some new software that meets our needs and being, we’re on their development kind of guidance board to be able to inform what they’re doing and make sure that it works for us and also helps them as they grow into the space. For example.

Anthony Codispoti (22:20)
So

we, and when I say we, it’s the royal we, I got really excited about talking about the tech. And so we got sidelined for a second. I want to come back to what the actual customer experience is. What is a Taziki’s restaurant? I’ve never been before. I walk in, what do I see, smell, taste here?

Dan Simpson (22:36)
Yeah. So, so love it. One thing in the general sense is that Tzatziki is really like an elevated fast casual experience, right? Which really differentiates us from, from, if you look at the spectrum of restaurant options today, have on one side, you know, fast food, which the whole, which is largely drive through driven, but it’s all optimized for speed. it’s low for lower price items that are often not, you know, not

high ingredients or made scratch. And there’s just about get it in, get it out as fast as possible. on the other trim, obviously you fine dining, which will be typically more of a farm to table and you know, white tablecloth and lots of attention in the middle is the fast casual space, which has been the darling of the industry for her more than a decade now. But even inside of that, there’s still a lot of people that are moving towards kiosks.

Again, optimizing for speed and less human interaction ⁓ or even just cheaper building materials, right? They’re trying to crank out as many units as they can. And so there’s a lot of plastic and a lot of materials that don’t signal come and stay in a comfortable space. So with that as context, you walk into a Taziki’s, first of all, there many times there’ll be like,

as our Greek founding, a white building with our blue tzatziki sign, welcoming you in with some potted plants outside with olive trees or other plants as you herbs, as you enter and you walk in, you’re going to notice that the store is bright white. There is ⁓ accented by salty dog blue ⁓ and there’s basket, crafted basket lights hanging over a community table. And then there’s comfortable seating. There’s an assortment of banquets and two tops.

and four tops around the restaurant. There are beautiful photographs all around the restaurant. And these are actually taken by our founder in his multiple trips to Greece and Turkey and places around the Mediterranean. And they all tell a story. And they’re not just places, but they also tell a story of ingredients. Like we have direct partnerships.

⁓ in the Mediterranean where we get all of our lemon juice from and I visited these farmers and and it’s our lemon juice is one of the things that makes you know our cooking and our flavors really unique and and special. We also import you know our olive oil. Olive oil is a key ingredient in the Mediterranean diet and so we have we have an assortment of things that we import directly from Greece and the Mediterranean and you can see photographs of those farms and farmers and ingredients on the wall. Our salt, our Mediterranean sea salt is

from this beautiful place called Petrus. If you could see far enough, you’d be looking across to Italy, but it’s a beautiful area where all of the sea salt is harvested and we have that available in our restaurants, actually on the table as well. So we make it to be an immersive experience. When you walk in though as a guest, you’re going to be greeted by ⁓ a menu stand that walk you through our salads and our bowls and our gyros.

and our feast and you can level it up with a glass of red or white wine and some Bacchus or dessert. ⁓ like fast casual tradition, you’ll stand in line and then be greeted by a cashier who will walk you through the menu. And ⁓ then when you sit, we’ll bring out your meal. Throughout the meal, we will refill your drinks.

and you can add anything during the meal and then we’ll bust the table at the end. So once you stand in line to place your order after that point, it’s really full service and we want to make sure that our guests are busy, have places to go. We want to make sure that we make that be as a comfortable experience as possible.

Anthony Codispoti (25:58)
Well, well.

Okay, so I got to call something out here because I did a little bit of research, you know, a few weeks ago leading up to this interview. And I didn’t I didn’t remember there being bowls. Is this a mistake on my part? Did I miss that?

Dan Simpson (26:30)
Yeah,

Well, yeah, thanks so much. Bowls are new. They’re new a week and two days in that we’ve launched our first bowls program. It’s actually to have a little fun with bowls. We adopted the Greek word for bowls, is kipoulos and kipoulos. So kipoulos is the way to go. We started with three bowls. there. It’s both chef curated and also ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (26:47)
Keep alos, okay?

Dan Simpson (27:00)
collaborative with the guests. So you get to build your own bowl. So you either choose quinoa or rice or pasta as your base. ⁓ And then there is a ⁓ grilled vegetable medley. And then you choose whatever protein. There’s chicken kebabs or grilled chicken, salmon, grilled shrimp, beef, ⁓ et cetera. There’s a falafel. There’s a variety of proteins on top. then ⁓ it’s topped. And it’s a perfect blend. We look at the space of the bowls.

And there’s some that are, ⁓ you walk into a restaurant and a scoop and serve, and they present you with a hundred degrees and say, yes. Right. And I think that sort of, that sort of decision fatigue is, ⁓ though the flavors are amazing, it’s a little bit too much for a lot of people. ⁓ and the other side is restaurants that basically make a bowl where you don’t get to choose anything. So we’ve, we’ve tried to strike the middle path whereby it’s all chef design with these three basic options.

Anthony Codispoti (27:41)
Yeah.

Dan Simpson (27:56)
We know that these 24 different options are gonna taste amazing, ⁓ but the guest gets to collaborate on the base and on the protein.

Anthony Codispoti (28:06)
So we’re a week and two days into this as we record at the end of August 2025. Is it too early to tell how it’s been received? Do you have any data on that?

Dan Simpson (28:15)
Yeah, I was just looking at the data this morning. Actually, this is our, this is our most successful limited time offer we’ve ever done in 27 years.

Anthony Codispoti (28:22)
wow.

Dan Simpson (28:23)
⁓ It’s selling great, guests love it. Our staff are having fun with the name. The guests are having fun learning a new vocabulary word and they’re coming back for more. So yeah, we’re really thrilled. With any luck, ⁓ probably too soon to make a formal announcement, with any luck this will end up being a permanent menu item that we’ll feature starting next year.

Anthony Codispoti (28:45)
Okay, I was gonna give you my follow-up question, because you called it a limited time, but if consumers demand it, there’s a possibility this could stick around.

Dan Simpson (28:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, it’s been really fun. Our founder Keith is, know, I joke but I’m serious when I say it, like he has a certain kind of genius in the kitchen. our name in fact is the first clue. If you look at the word tzatzikis, if you know, you might be like, wait, that’s not how spell it. You spell it zatzikis. What happened to these two other letters?

Well, when they chose that name to launch the first restaurant, they said, you know, that’s, it’s a little bit of a fussy, complicated name. Let’s make the name.

be like the menu, which is more approachable. Let’s drop two letters and make it be more readable, roll off the tongue a little easier. And then Keith took the same approach with the menu. He kind of deconstructed all these ingredients that he found across Greece and the Mediterranean and said, let’s reconstruct them in a way that feels more familiar. ⁓ And it really works. Our guests say, man, they come in and they eat so well and yet as they leave ⁓ full but still feeling light.

and they were exposed to so many ingredients that were new, but also so many they’re comfortable. It’s in some ways it’s meat and rice and potatoes and salad, right, and just with some different ingredients in there.

Anthony Codispoti (30:05)
Yeah. And the other thing that I think is fun, and I don’t see this in a lot of ⁓ fast casual environments, is that you’ve got wine available, right? And so a couple of, you know, parents or, know, just grownups out for an evening and they want to have a drink with their meal. And, you know, they don’t want to, you know, fork out the cash for a, you know, a fine dining kind of environment. You sort of bring all those elements together here for.

Dan Simpson (30:27)
Yeah, that that’s exactly right. We want to, that’s part of that elevated experience. We want it to be perfect for a date night. We know that a lot of, a lot of times, again, if you’re, if you’re not just eating at home, which I still love to cook at home, or you’re not just eating as a pure utility, you’re stuck at work and you need to order door dash drive, which by the way, you can do through our app that we partner with them and they deliver for us through our own app. Um,

then you wanna go for an experience of some kind, right? You want it to be comfortable. Like we don’t have any TVs, excuse me. We don’t have TVs, don’t have distractions. We want it to be a place where you can gather, you can enjoy the meal. But we recognize that usually when people break bread and enjoy meals, you’re either celebrating something or commiserating something. It’s either been a hard day, a hard week, a hard season, and food is comfort. And we gather together to do that with people. Or best case is…

Someone got engaged, someone got a promotion, someone’s kid got into college. Like these are these happy moments. And so in either case, you know, having a glass of wine at the table and the best moments are the hardest moments. ⁓ It is such a key part of breaking bread around the table together.

Anthony Codispoti (31:33)
That’s great. I want to talk a little bit about well, first of all, how many locations do you guys have?

Dan Simpson (31:39)
We just opened our hundredth and ninth location this week. So we’ve got, think, five more that are scheduled to open in 2025.

Anthony Codispoti (31:49)
And is this all franchises? we at corporate owned locations? What’s the balance here?

Dan Simpson (31:55)
Yeah, the first thing I’ll say is like in all cases, they’re partners, right? And so we’re always looking for good people and partners. But that said, are two different kinds of partners. We have about 60 % are franchise partners where they are 100 % owners and they bring the Mediterranean through Tzatziki to their community.

Anthony Codispoti (31:59)
Mm.

Dan Simpson (32:15)
and we partner with them with that. The other ones are company joint ventures where we have a local operating partner that we sponsor essentially and work with. And we have eight of those markets. So, and that represents about 40 % of our units. So it’s 60 to 40.

Anthony Codispoti (32:29)
And what does

that mean? A company joint venture where you’ve got a local partner.

Dan Simpson (32:34)
Yeah. so it’s, you know, in some, some restaurant models, um, they set up a traditional org chart where you, know, you’ve got your CEO and your vice presidents that, that, and every, everything is a top down organization where everyone in the organization below is an employee. End of story.

Right. And they make it a good paycheck and it might get benefits, but that’s it. They’re not partners. They’re employees. We really want to have partners, not employees. And so when we find, we launched, like we just launched a new market a year ago in St. Louis and we found a gentleman that’s from there, lived there, had been successful in launching other brands. He was ready for his next adventure. And so instead of just hiring him as the local manager or market leader, we partner with him. So he is a, ⁓ a part owner and has equity in that market.

along with us and so we fund most of it, he funds part of it and so that means we’re joined at the hip and when there is profitability in distributions then he gets his portion pro rata.

Anthony Codispoti (33:24)
Okay.

that’s really interesting. I don’t think I’ve come across that model in the franchise world. This probably isn’t entirely unique, but unusual.

Dan Simpson (33:41)
Yeah, it’s kind of like our fast casual format. It also is a hybrid and elevated in a sense. ⁓ It goes back to like our belief in this is not just about units and unit economics and profitability, but about people and partnerships. we, for example, let me give you an example. There’s in the national market where I live, ⁓ we hired at an entry level position, a gentleman by the name of Armando Perez, and he worked his way up to become a manager of one store.

Anthony Codispoti (33:46)
Yeah

Dan Simpson (34:11)
And

now he has, now he manages all 13 locations here and has also along the way become an equity holder and an owner. And so this is a, you know, he’s an immigrant from Venezuela. He’s a huge success story. He’s now a leader of leaders.

And those kinds of stories to me are super encouraging. A big reason why I stay invigorated about this brand is we could make that true for another hundred franchise partners and another hundred local operating partners, where it’s not just a hired gun, but it could change his life and his family’s life. And so that’s a wonderful gift. He works really hard and has earned it. So don’t misunderstand.

But we also like to make sure it’s a win-win rewarding for him and his family as well.

Anthony Codispoti (35:00)
I love that. That’s so cool. ⁓ That kind of leads me into a question that I almost hesitate to ask because I don’t like to get political on this on the show. But, ⁓ you know, I hear a lot in the media about ⁓ the impact of tariffs on small business, ⁓ impact of ⁓ immigration enforcement in certain industries. And I’m always curious, how much does the media hype meet what’s really going on for

businesses, small businesses. And so I’m kind of curious to hear Dan from your point of view, the stuff that I’m hearing on the news, is it really impacting you guys?

Dan Simpson (35:40)
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for asking that. Um, one thing I think I’ll start by saying, like, I think when there’s a leader, an important thing is to not just be a hype man. Um, and so I, I tried to be pretty true to the idea of a SWOT analysis, which means, you do celebrate the strengths and the successes, but you’re equally quick to be courageous about the weaknesses, the opportunities that you maybe yet to achieve and the threats. And I think to be a good leader, you got to be balanced.

and unafraid of addressing all four parts of that. so, therefore talking about, if you ask our team, I’m pretty shrewd about where we suck and really trying to confront our weaknesses. And we don’t like to make a lot of excuses, but you have to look at the threat and you’re asking about something, what are the external threats and impact to business? yeah, mean, ⁓ I’ll say, you

First of all, the news is certainly more hyped than the reality, number one. Number two is ⁓ people and local economies and team members are way more resilient than I say temporary crisis.

And so one thing I’ve learned, whether through the pandemic or through some of the Black Lives Matter protests, which impacted a lot of the markets where we have restaurants ⁓ or the great resignation and now some external threats. I’ve been so thrilled with how resilient people are, both our customers and our staff. Now that said, right now, this year, year to date, I just had a board meeting where we talked about some of these things. And yes, inflationary pressures are real.

the cost of goods for us to buy our ingredients, ⁓ whether from local farmers, we get our lamb from Michigan, all of our produce is local, ⁓ our chicken is all domestic, American farmers, right? All of those costs for us are all up. At the same time,

We, when you say you normally would look at that, those costs, and you would do a minor price increase to offset that. But right now you’re watching, you’re watching those inflation, your pressures hit consumers to where their spend away from home is down.

And so they’re a little bit more cautious of spending. So it really is a time where we can’t right now pass on price increases and we’ve not taken any prices this year, no price increases. So we’re absorbing this, which is putting a lot of strain and limiting our ability to keep investing, reinvesting into the business as much as we would like. yeah.

So inflation is real, the tariff pressures are absolutely real. And you could think like, well, you how much 10%, 20 %? single digit percentages really impact the restaurant business. But I’d say the other dynamic is on the labor side or the workforce front. And it’s no secret at all that farm to table, whether we’re talking about agricultural,

picking in the picking seasons or all the way to the restaurant business that there are a lot of individuals, this is their first job, or if they’re immigrants, this might be one of their early jobs. ⁓ And the restaurant business has a lot of individuals that are some of our best workers been with us a long time.

And certainly this year there’s been new pressures that we’ve not experienced in the past as far as people that have citizenship or had a work visa or a student visa or they had temporary protective status. They have a legal status, but where we’ve lost a lot of those individuals or they’re experiencing a lot of pressure because their statuses have been changed or threatened to be changed. And so there is a new dynamic that there’s a lot of fear and that is that’s led to people leaving. ⁓ And, ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (39:35)
So not just people who are ⁓ illegal immigrants, but people who are here legally, they’ve got the documentation and those folks are having their status changed, feeling pressure to leave. Okay.

Dan Simpson (39:40)
Absolutely.

Yeah, that’s right.

Well, in those moments, my first response was I hit the road and went to go visit some of our key markets and heard people’s stories. And they got to tell me where they walked from, countries they walked from because they were being oppressed because of their faith or being oppressed because of…

local gangs or they were pursuing the American dream. you know, most, maybe people don’t recognize, but most states and most businesses have to run all their employees through a program called E-Verify to confirm that they have legal status. And so…

⁓ Yeah, my first instinct is to hear people’s stories, to empathize and try to do what we can to educate them about these changing dynamics, to let them know that we’re family and you’ve been with us for a long time, so we’re gonna do what we can to support you through this. ⁓ And then do what we can to try to advocate for the people making decisions that they may not realize that the impact this is having on local businesses.

Anthony Codispoti (40:44)
What does that last part mean?

Dan Simpson (40:47)
Well, for instance, in the next couple of weeks, I’m really thrilled to be able to go to DC, going to have an opportunity with an advocacy group to go meet with some congressional delegates. And the plan is some folks from the White House as well, and to share some facts and data, some stories. ⁓

The gentleman I mentioned before, Armando Perez, who now runs the national market, he literally just in the first quarter of this year just became a U.S. citizen, a naturalized U.S. citizen. And it was one of my most proud moments of this year was to see his story.

He was here, he had legal status, but it was a student visa and a work visa and asylum visa. ⁓ And he became a full US citizen. And so my goal in going to DC is to tell these stories. These are success stories of people that, you know, they’re, go to church, they’re plugged in their kids’ they’re our hardest working ⁓ leaders.

that I would follow into battle. And these are my neighbors and fellow citizens. And so my goal would be to tell those stories and to create a path where maybe companies like ours can have skin in the game and have like a company sponsored work visas and say, look, we will take some ownership of these individuals. They worked with us for a long time. If there is concern about their status being continued, let us take some responsibility. This is very common in the agricultural space.

I’d love to see it to be true in the restaurant and hospitality space.

Anthony Codispoti (42:18)
So ⁓ educate me on that a little bit. So there are special work visas that exist for ⁓ international workers who have come here to help work on farms. How does that process work? How would the translation work in the restaurant environment?

Dan Simpson (42:32)
Yeah,

it’s essentially businesses determine what their demand is for labor. They say, I’ve got, know, in the agricultural space might be ⁓ more out west where they determine we have, you know, this many crops need to be picked. They go through a process of ⁓ putting out

applications for people, local people to accept those jobs. They fill say 50 % of them. They can illustrate that there in fact is a gap, a need for labor. So there is not an elimination of an American job ⁓ or domestic job that is going to be impacted. And then with that remaining need, they can offer company sponsored ⁓ visas.

Those are seasonal visas that are again for agricultural picking, but there’s many other visas. There’s student visas, there’s visas for rock stars that are from other countries that come to America and to play here, they have to have a visa. There’s many kinds of visa that are many for temporary aligned with education or aligned with a job. ⁓ And in this case, I think we can clearly illustrate that we have more jobs than we have applicants.

And we can also illustrate that we have many people that have worked with us that have had, that are here illegally and they’re contributing to society, paying their taxes and are key leadership members in our team. And that we would be willing to have skin in the game as far as a company sponsored ⁓ program, just like they have in the ag world.

Anthony Codispoti (44:04)
So if I’m hearing you correctly, Dan, you’re not going there in a protest capacity. You haven’t made up your signs. You’re not marching on Capitol Hill or one of the monuments or something. You’re meeting with key decision makers to say, hey, here’s what’s going on. Here’s how it’s affecting us. Here’s how it’s affecting small businesses on Main Street, in real town USA. And can we come up with some solutions together?

Dan Simpson (44:11)
for science.

Yeah, and that’s right. This is one of the topics that I think most people, if you’ve got most Americans and even most legislators in the room,

There we would have agreement on 95 % of this whole topic. And so let’s start there. Let’s start. Of course we need strong borders. Of course we need to deal with anyone who has committed any crimes, but that would be true of anybody in the country, but including anyone who came from another country. And then we need to determine what America has always been, which is a land where people pursue their dreams.

legally in partnership with schools or with companies. And that’s the type of common sense solution that we’d love to see. And rather than waiting around for someone else to go, I’m really thrilled at the opportunity to go in a few weeks and see if we can win any hearts and minds and provide a solution that feels like not a compromise, but truly a win-win.

Anthony Codispoti (45:26)
Yeah. Well, I wish you well and we’ll have to check back in with you to get some updates. I to shift gears, Dan, and maybe talk about a serious challenge that you have overcome, something personal or professional. How did you get through that? What did you learn?

Dan Simpson (45:45)
Yeah, so I actually want to go back. There’s so many, honestly. It could be a whole podcast just about the missteps. I like to say, know, bad choices make good stories. But sometimes it’s not a function of bad choices. It’s a function of your own personal development. And ⁓ one that comes to mind is actually I’ll go back to the questions you were asking before about how did I get into this job?

And when I was asked to come join Keith, the founder of Taziki’s, ⁓ to help him put together a plan for the future, that was it. Up until that time, I had done a series of two to six year projects. And again, I’d find someone who had a dream and help them scale it. And then I would hand it off to someone else to kind of manage it and move on to the next thing. And I really thought that’s what I would do for forever.

Part of that is I also really thought, boy, I’m a really good wingman and ⁓ my ego’s not in the way and I can put all my energy into people and scaling. And so sometimes we typecast ourselves into these buckets. so when the day came along where I thought I was at the end of my project with Taziki’s, really thrilled with the progress we were making and the plan, the vision we had set out. And when I sat down with the board at that time and

You know, they essentially said, we love what you’ve done, but it’s time for us to transition to the next CEO. And I said, great, who is it? Let me start the transition process. And they’re like, it’s you. You’re already making progress. You’re already harmonizing with the founder. You’re already doing the things we would want somebody to do. And ⁓ yes, you’ve led other…

Anthony Codispoti (47:22)
You

Dan Simpson (47:34)
companies and other ventures and not quite like this and know you’re not a restaurant guy by decades of trade, but we need leadership of a different kind right now. ⁓ And so on one hand, of course, that’s a very flattering moment, right? But I’ll be honest.

Anthony Codispoti (47:50)
This

doesn’t sound like a hardship. This doesn’t sound like a struggle.

Dan Simpson (47:53)
Well, but I’ll be honest and say like, I was thrilled at the opportunity, but I also knew that when you’re coming from the outside of an industry, you know, it is a, there’s a lot of stripes to earn and there’s a lot of a sense of credibility that you typically only earn one way. And that is you start at the bottom and you work for decades to get up to this place. And it’s the only way apparently to get there. And so I knew that I was pragmatic about that.

⁓ What I would say is I went home, I probably had two weeks where I barely slept. I felt incredibly anxious. I think that the right term is imposter syndrome, right? Where when I evaluated, I knew my skills, but I also knew that I didn’t come from this industry. And while it was one thing to join alongside of the founder and be an advisor and a consultant and that far was easy, but the moment they said, great, you’re going to be in charge of executing this. I knew that I had gaps.

I knew that I would have to ⁓ earn credibility from some people that only saw it to be earned one way, and that would only come through time. I knew it had naysayers. I also knew that the restaurant leaders, for the most part, they were into sales and food and profits.

and the building being clean and that was it. But they weren’t necessarily into all the things that I really found to be very important. Like we needed good tech and good data. We needed to be equally passionate about our staff and empowering them with great training and we needed to listen to them. So I brought the kind of other side of the business to the table and I knew that I would have to win hearts and minds. I knew this was a big challenge. ⁓ And it took me probably about two weeks and I talked to some mentors.

And they’re like, Dan, you want to do startup projects and consulting for your whole life? What if this is an opportunity to deepen yourself and deepen your work and really get to know these people and really invest in them? What if you actually could see this through? Yeah, there’s risk. Because what if you’re a fraud? What if you can’t do it? What if you’re actually just a guy that comes up with ideas and can’t execute them? So you have to face all those hard facts if you’re a person that’s reflective. And so it was a hard couple of weeks because I wanted to be

I didn’t want to skip over it or just grab ahold of it. I wanted to reflect. And when I got through that on the other side, still, you know, fear is not something that you, you know, have or don’t have. As a friend of mine used to say, fear is, is really tall and really wide. But when you press into it, you find it’s really thin. And so it’s the exercise of pushing up against the thing that you’re a voice in your head says, I don’t know, I can do this. And maybe I can’t do this. And it’s the exercise of pushing through it.

that you actually find the antidote to fear. And it’s not fear less, it’s just pushing through the fear that you find that’s where action is and that’s where empowerment is. then you have to earn your successes and earn your reputation. So I’m so glad I said yes, ⁓ it’s been a challenge, right? Because a few years in COVID hit us and I had to navigate through deconstructing the business.

and putting it back together through some challenge time, but it’s actually been a fun ride. So yeah, I’d say that was a huge, double whammy challenges. One is more personal crisis. The other one was more of a, the crisis of the pandemic.

Anthony Codispoti (51:04)
Let’s kind of deconstruct this a little bit because you said quite a few interesting things. Originally you had yourself sort of tight cast as this wingman, right? So somebody else’s idea, I come in and I’ve got the tools and the ideas to kind of help, you know, elevate it and grow it. ⁓ And, and that that’s all good. And I feel comfortable there. ⁓ And even with those successes that you’ve had, there’s a lot of this imposter syndrome that’s sort of

like running in the background there, like, maybe I’m not the guy for this, maybe I can’t do that. And I hear this so much and I’m affected by it myself on a regular basis. ⁓ So it’s interesting to me that you took all this time to reflect and it wasn’t that you got to a place of no more fear. It was the fear is there and I’m gonna do it anyways. I’m gonna do it scared.

And I just had a conversation earlier this week with one of my guests and I’m going to sort of butcher what she said, but it was, you know, fear can either paralyze you or it can motivate you. And it’s not, know, you went through that period of a couple of weeks where you’re thinking about it. Paralyzing is probably a strong word. You weren’t paralyzing. You were contemplating, right? But you eventually got to the point where this was, I’m going to do this. I got to find out, is this a chance for me to grow?

and growth is uncomfortable and I acknowledge that or am I going to fall on my face? And so then you get to the so you get there and things are going well for a few years and then you hit COVID. And so tell us about that experience.

Dan Simpson (52:33)
That’s right.

Yeah, it was a really invigorating experience, right? On a personal level, I had been traveling, you know, nonstop and it was the first time in decades that I slept in my own bed and got to watch my grass grow. I mean, it was just a bizarre life experience. I actually got COVID very early and had 104 fever. And so I was personally hit by it like in March of that year early. And so I felt it personally.

felt the downside of it, that it was real and it was impacting me. I felt the upside that I could be in my own bed and that the world might look different moving forward. And maybe there’s new ways we could work and not have to travel all the time. And then confronting the business side of it, was, learned, this is where the entrepreneurial spirit is amazing, right? I sent out an email pretty early on that basically that was entitled something like, break all the rules, right? We’re a franchise company. We have agreements with our franchise partners and with our operating partners. We have a ⁓ lot of guidance.

and standards and basically said, screw it. In a time like this, we don’t know what’s happening, what’s gonna happen next. Let’s trust each other and then lean on our ingenuity to serve our staff, keep them employed and serve our guests in creative ways. And by breaking away the pressure of all these rules, we found people did amazing things. Like they created a whole new programs without any guidance from us, from the corporate office about creating.

delivery programs that would go feed entire ⁓ communities and do ⁓ community ⁓ deliveries for family meals. We had groups that basically kind of turned into a butcher shop. had butcher skills and they had community that did not, had shortages, but we had access to all this beef and chicken and lamb and steak and whatever. And so we were able to come up with new programs, provide even whole muscle products out to people. We partnered with

with other businesses that were deeply affected, whether they were cupcake companies or other local businesses that had lost their ability to reach their, their guests. And so it was so fun. mean, this is the thing is people look back and say, wasn’t it terrible? Honestly, it was invigorating because we all, we got to a place where we broke all the rules. We took what was a growing bloating, maybe set of rules and menu, and we shrunk it down to an express menu, the smallest menu we’ve ever had and say, and our, and our sales.

didn’t barely go down. We realized that all this belief that we have to have this huge menu to survive was actually not true. So it freed us up from some limited beliefs. It opened up our ingenuity. It built pathways of trust with our partners. And it let us focus on the most important thing, which was how do we keep our staff employed and be a secure employer for them? And then how do we go to great lengths? Each community might be slightly different. Go to great lengths to listen and serve.

Anthony Codispoti (55:10)
Wow.

Dan Simpson (55:37)
because this is what hospitality is all about.

Anthony Codispoti (55:40)
So as you guys kind of got through the COVID tunnel and things returned to some sense of normalcy, did you keep any of the sort of experimental things that you guys have been trying?

Dan Simpson (55:52)
Yeah, we did. mean, it definitely informed ⁓ us coming around a much smaller nucleus of core menu items. And we didn’t return back to this large ballooned menu. We said from now on, we’re going to be really, really careful about adding things that fill a need for our guests ⁓ or that ⁓ are real value to our guests. But let’s beware of that scope creep, very common challenge for many businesses. ⁓

We also ⁓ embrace this idea of optimizing all of our kitchen procedures to make it easier for our staff to run the restaurants, right? We learned, if you’re sometimes ⁓ not by making people unemployed, but by people becoming sick, you your staff would get cut in half and you now only have four people to run the ships out of eight. So we learned, well, we need to cross train everybody so they can have, you know, more agile choreography. So it changed the way we think about

you know, hiring a team of A players who are cross-training kind of ninjas rather than having, ⁓ you know, such broad teams are just maybe so isolated in their particular roles and then make it easier. We started to ask them different questions about how do we make it easier for them to, execute the restaurant restaurant, the hard business, matter what, it’s a real hard business to execute. So we started to have more empathy around how do we make it easier in our tech, in our processes and our equipment, et cetera. And we made changes around that. So it freed up lots of changes.

⁓ and thinking in new ways that, you know, again, got us right back to the core, which is why are we in this business? Right. If it’s just making food, that’s just the manufacturing of business where you’re just taking any ingredients, you’re adding a recipe and you’re having some output. ⁓ there’s no necessarily not any romance or any heart in that. So really for us, it’s about, it’s that, but it’s about the staff, giving them opportunities and careers come for a job, stay for career, but also for our communities. And we, we really do, you know,

We want to serve them, which means we have to listen to what they want and need. ⁓ And so it’s been fun to kind of find that North Star again.

Anthony Codispoti (57:57)
That’s pretty cool. Dan, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. First, I’m going to invite everybody listening to pause just for a second. Go ahead and open up your podcast app. Follow us, like us, leave a comment, leave a review, a rating. That helps a lot of other people find the show. And it’s really the kindest thing that you could do for this this program. I just want to let Dan people know how to get in touch with you or the brand. They want more information. They want to just reach out to you and have a conversation. How do folks do that?

Dan Simpson (58:26)
Yeah, probably the best way is if you go to just zkeys.com.

to our core website. You can learn about the brand if you’re interested in bringing the Mediterranean tzatziki to your community. You can do that right through there’s a web page there that you can get access to that or if there’s location near you or one coming near you. And then down below you can see there’s a section about our team. can also find me on LinkedIn and reach out that way. But we’d love to hear from you whether you’re in a community that already knows and loves the brand or you’re interested in maybe being part of our future together.

Anthony Codispoti (59:01)
Great. We’ll make sure we include links to that in the show notes for everybody. Dan, last question for you. A year from now, you and I reconnect and you are really excited. You’re fist pumping in the air. You’re celebrating something big. What’s that big thing you’re celebrating one year from

Dan Simpson (59:20)
First of all, I gotta say two things. One is just ⁓ really basic. And that is, like with any brand, any brand with multiple partners and multiple locations, winning is disproportionate. Everyone doesn’t win at the same levels. ⁓

And so I’d say in a year from now, the thing I would be most excited about is like all of our partners are, are, are winning at the highest level, where we’ve gone from a, ⁓ where we are all, you know, playoff to super bowl, good to great. And it’s impacting all of our partners and all of our locations. ⁓ and so you always have in any business, you always have your bottom core tile that for whatever reason struggles to win at the next level. And so we spend a lot of time with like, you know, leave no store behind and make sure that all of our team members are winning at the highest levels. That’d be.

very basic but very very wholesome for all of us. And then the last piece I’ll hearken back to this advocacy work around around immigration and I would love to see in a year from now that there’s you know a successful new partnership that both the government stakeholders

and business community have come together and found a win-win solution to put some of this rhetoric behind us and ⁓ make sure that the American dream is live and well all across America.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:38)
Good luck to you on that. And we’ll check back in to see how that’s going. Dan Simpson from Taziki’s. Want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Dan Simpson (1:00:48)
Thank you so much, it’s been great.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:50)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.