Family, Food & Growth: Ric Gruber’s Billy Bricks Story

Intro: Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes how they’ve overcome adversity and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Kodespode and today’s guest is Rick Gruber, CEO of Billy Brick’s Wood-Fired Pizza. Started in 2005 in Chicagoland when the area was nearly devoid of wood-fired pizza. Today they have seven corporate-owned locations, a few more coming, six mobile pizza trucks and one mobile ice cream truck as well as a brick and mortar franchise and two mobile franchise trucks. They have food trucks which can be booked for special events and wherever you go to get your Billy Brick’s pizza fix you can count on the same high-quality ingredients being used in their Neapolitan pizzas. The recipe took two years of R &D with design, recipes and different techniques to get just right. We’ll hear about how they are able to accommodate different allergies and why they don’t use seed oils in their restaurants.

Also, how the idea for Billy Brick’s actually came about from a family vacation. 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 proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today, the CEO of Billy Brick’s wood-fired pizza, Rick Brueger. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today. Yeah, thanks for having me on. So let’s hear the origin story. How did the idea come about for Billy Brick’s?

Ric Gruber: So yeah, it was, man, now this is going to be our 20th year. So I guess it would have had to been about 22 or 23 years ago. I was out in California and we went on a family vacation and we tried our very first wood-fired pizza that any of us had ever had. And Bill was just obsessed with it from then on. He just couldn’t get it out of his head. And after that trip started researching and developing to figure out how we could bring the style of pizza to Illinois by us. And at that time, it was nearly devoid of completely in Illinois of any sort of wood-fired brick ovens, anything of the sort.

Like you just couldn’t find that. Today it’s so easy to find an oven, but it takes for granted that 20 years ago that was one of the biggest challenges was actually finding someone to build or make or deliver an oven to us. So that certainly changed a lot. We talk about it as well. If you looked at the old magazines back then covering the industry, there’d be maybe one quarter of one page dedicated to wood-fired brick oven pizza. And now, for the last 10 years, that’s been predominantly what everybody has talked about.

There’s certainly other styles now that are coming into the mainstream, but wood-fired pizza has been dominating for probably about the last 10 years. And your connection to Bill? He’s my stepdad. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti: And you talked about the challenge of finding an oven. Why was that so hard? You would think there’s restaurant supply companies all over the place, right?

Ric Gruber: Yeah. So there wasn’t a lot of people making wood-fired pizza at that time, especially then the Neapolitan style that kind of got brought to the United States. That wasn’t very popular because it’s very different than what most people have become accustomed to in all different regions when they thought of pizza. It wasn’t that type of, it wasn’t the same type of flour, it wasn’t the same type of bake time, traditional ingredients.

So it really was a different flavor profile, bake, and you know, it just wasn’t what everyone had to become accustomed to in different regions because every region has their own kind of style that they’ve developed in the United States. So that type of oven wasn’t, there wasn’t a high demand for it. Then you saw some of the bigger names like California pizza and those types that were creating brick oven pizza, but it was still with gas oven. So the wood-fired brick ovens were not something that were in like a high demand here. And there were very few people that actually made and manufactured them. Again, this is 20 years ago.

So this is 2004, 2005. And this just wasn’t a thing, you know, that was all over the place. So now the size, scale, availability, and options is just a completely different world.

Anthony Codispoti: And so describe for us, what is Neapolitan pizza? How is that different from what maybe most Americans have been accustomed to in the past?

Ric Gruber: Yeah, so it’s really interesting. Neapolitan pizza has to be made in a brick oven with a, that’s wood-fired, but not all wood-fired pizza is Neapolitan and not all brick oven pizza is wood-fired or Neapolitan. So, you know, it’s where things get kind of confused and it’s mostly just marketing. You know, you can have a brick oven that’s run with gas and if you do that, then you can’t really have a traditional Neapolitan pizza. You can certainly crank it up to the heat, but, you know, to be a VPN certified or considered classical or traditional Neapolitan, you need a wood-fired brick oven that’s cooking at around 900 degrees. So, you know, that’s where you get into traditional Neapolitan. Now, I always say that Billy Bricks was the original Neon Neapolitan pizzeria in the United States because we took so many things from the Neapolitan tradition, but we slightly tweaked some things to try to just make it, you know, make it our own and how we liked it. So, we generally cook it about 750 to 800 degrees and we have a slightly longer bake time. Traditional Neapolitan is like 90 seconds, but to me that’s a little too soft, a little too floppy, and I don’t think that matches up with most Americans’ taste buds anyways.

It’s certainly not mine. So, we usually cook between two to two and a half minutes at about 750 to 800 degrees. Makes it a lot crispier and gives it that nice crunch and a little, you know, lots of flop. The only time we get that flop is when people do the build your own and they add so many toppings, it’s impossible. And that’s always a fun one to explain of why is my pizza like this? Well, you made it that way.

You know, you have all these veggies and all this other stuff. It’s releasing water. It’s impossible to make it not softer or flop. You know, no matter how long you cooked it because, you know, that’s just the nature of food. So, less is more for us and that’s always one of the the tendons of Neapolitan pizza as well.

Anthony Codispoti: And why do you think wood-fired pizza in particular has become so popular recently?

Ric Gruber: Because it’s the best. You know, I think now there’s a lot of things that bring people to it that maybe weren’t initially into it. The flavors are so much better. The taste is just one of a kind when you have that. You know, I always say like, I wouldn’t be in this business if it wasn’t my favorite.

I wouldn’t I’m not just doing it to make money, but our pizza is truly my favorite pizza. And I and when I find others that I like just as much or sometimes, you know, maybe just a little bit more or whatever, it just motivates me to elevate to that level too. But that’s rarely happened in the last, you know, 10 years or so. But then certainly early on, there was a lot that we learned and improved on. The original pizza that we researched and developed is nowhere close to what we produce today in quality, you know. But I guess back then, since there was no other competition, nobody knew any better.

So, you know, the competition helped us grow and expand and improve as we went along and make the best product that we could. And, you know, it starts with the flour. Most people in the United States are usually like American milled grain and flour for all their types of pizza, all purpose and all these. Now there’s a million kinds of flour. But if it’s made with American milled wheat or flour, you know, and flour and grain, it’s all the same as far as digestion, flavor, all that type of stuff.

So by using Italian imported flour and having the standards that the EU upholds all their people to and their millers, it’s always produced a much better tasting pizza, lighter, fluffier, easy on your stomach and digestion, not heavy in the east, no GMOs, all organic. And that’s always been what we’ve used. And that was a great thing even before it became popular. You know, we were doing that before it became a thing where people, again, were slapping labels to show off that they were those things. We always did that. And we probably picked a lot of those things before we even thought about it.

Seriously, it was more of the, it was just obvious, the superiority of the taste, the flavor, and the digestion. So it became an easy, an easy choice for us. And now there’s all those added benefits and knowledge out there that people actually discuss and know these things. And who appreciate that. So sometimes you don’t know why you appreciate it, but you do. And then, you know, you figure it out later.

Anthony Codispoti: I’m curious if the type of water that you use plays a big part.

Ric Gruber: So everyone says that. That’s one of those things that are, that’s a really New York thing. You can’t make the bagels, you can’t make the pizza outside of New York unless you have the water from New York.

But I will tell you, I’ve lived in the East Coast, I lived in Connecticut, I spent a lot of time in New York. The pizza there is great. But there is no water to me, that’s better than Lake Michigan water here in the Chicagoland area. Anyone who knows, like, you can drink, we’ve always bragged that you can drink our water straight out of the tap. And you can’t say that about a lot of places. So we do have really good water here. That being said, I’ve made the same, our pizza down in Florida using water from Florida. And it performs and tastes exactly the same way. So I think some of that is, you know, lore and myth and legend, and people just like to brag about where they’re from.

And that’s all terrific. There definitely can be though, some effects on the dough’s performance, based on pH levels, fluoride levels, and all those types of things in your water. So if you’re using, if you’re some place where you suspect the water is not as high of quality, and it may affect the flavor slightly, you know, you just, you can put a filter on it, and make sure that you’re really standardizing it to wherever you are. And there, there are water filter systems that we’ve used in dough rooms before that help you where you can set those levels. So whatever your water comes through, you can, you know, if you’re making dough in different locations, different states and all that, you could set it to be exactly what it is back in your home, and make sure that that that taste is there, the consistency. But I don’t think it says as

Anthony Codispoti: big, but the flour, the flour makes a much bigger deal. 100%. And so they’re using a different strain or it’s non GMO or, you know, something about it is different than what’s commonly grown here in the States.

Intro: So you notice a difference on how you feel, like the digestion part of it, the flavor, the texture, everything.

Ric Gruber: Correct. It’s the milling process. You know, we have people who have said that they needed to be gluten free. And by the way, we make the best in-house homemade gluten free pizza, also using imported Italian gluten free flour. However, unless someone has severe or has like diagnosed celiacs, most people when they want to take that chance, try our regular pizza, they will find that they can digest it just fine and don’t have any issues like they have with normal pizza that they eat. And it’s because of the flour. It’s because of the high quality of the flour.

I was one of those people who had a lot of stomach issues and was eating gluten free everywhere and realized that I could eat my own pizza and I never had an issue after I would eat my pizza. Wow. That’s fascinating.

Yeah. So I tell people that, like, Hey, it’s on you. You know, like I’m not trying to convince anybody and make their stomachs upset or, you know, be, you know, feeling, you know, feeling ill or any of that.

But we’ve had multiple people who we’ve said, just try it. And if it’s hurt your stomach and all that, then go back to our gluten free. But, you know, I don’t think it’s necessary given the quality of our flour and they’ll try and go, you know, I have no digestive issues at all. If I eat your pizza, tremendous.

Anthony Codispoti: What other, if any, allergies or dietary restrictions can you guys accommodate?

Ric Gruber: Yeah. So especially on the catering side, we do, we meet a lot of different needs because we can do halal, we can do kosher, even like our ice cream is certified kosher. And we can do a lot of halal menus and things of that nature. But even more than that, we have so many vegetable options that we can accommodate vegetarians very well. And then we have a vegan cheese and a number of options that we have vegan. So our dough is also naturally vegan. So as long as you don’t add any meats or any proteins of that kind to like a pizza, you can have selfish cow vegan cheese added to our regular dough, our standard sauce, and then pick whatever vegetables you’d like. And most places do not offer all those accommodations to be able to do that.

Anthony Codispoti: There used to be a pizza place close to me here in Columbus, Ohio that I like going to because I don’t do dairy well. It’s not a vegan thing for me.

It’s just a digestive issue. And so I liked, they had an option where they would do like an oil and garlic topping and then, put my meats on top of that. It was great. And it was, well, you know what, it was oven fired.

I don’t know until you educated me here if it was gas or if it was wood fired, but it was a very tasty pizza that I enjoyed. Do you guys offer a similar option, something like that?

Ric Gruber: Yeah. So we have a garlic and oil base that we use. It’s on several of our standard specialty pizzas. And we do also offer that. Because of standalone. Yeah. And then our whole peeled, crushed, all kitchen tomato base, which we use for like the classic margarita, that also has no additives that would have any dairy in it. And our standard pizza sauce also doesn’t add cheese to it.

So, you know, in that sense, there would be no dairy in that either. So there’s a lot of options for people who have any sort of issue. And then the entire, we have build your own pizza, salad and sandwich options on our menu to allow people to go up there and basically say like, this is what I like, or what I can have and make it simple for our kitchen to be able to read the ticket.

Instead of seeing a standard option with a ton of modifications, they just will see it as protein, vegetables, cheese, sauce, you know, they see it all broken out. So whatever you want, they’re just reading down the list and making it in the order that we know for the build. And we’ll go, well, don’t even know, we’re just making it in how you want it. That’s what you want.

Anthony Codispoti: Do you ever coach the customer though? Hey, that’s a lot of toppings there. It’s not going to come out as crispy as maybe you’re hoping it will.

Ric Gruber: I’ll say that when you have a customer in front of you, that generally doesn’t happen. It’s more of the online ordering where people are just clicking buttons. And in that case, you really have no ability to tell them. I think that’s where most of the confusion with things comes. And so we’ve been working over the past few years to have adjusting like what’s available on online ordering versus what’s available in store. Because there’s some things that don’t deliver as well, they don’t carry out as well. There’s some things that we don’t want to allow them to do because we don’t have the opportunity to talk them out of it. And so you just got to kind of take that option away.

Anthony Codispoti: What would be an example of one of those options you want to talk them out of?

Ric Gruber: Like you said, like we would put a button to limit how many toppings they could add from each category. Because yeah, it’s great to have someone make a build your own individual pizza. That’s $30. That’s great for us. But it’s also, it’s not great in the sense that that person probably won’t order that again, because it’s not going to be a very good pizza. So we have our rules of how we design pizzas and the amount of toppings that we’ll use to make sure that it’s a great pizza.

And we kind of want to keep people to doing that no matter what they want, because we just want them to have the best experience with pizza and we know better than to have that.

Anthony Codispoti: Rick, why don’t you guys use seed oils?

Ric Gruber: So that’s one thing that with our traditional style of cooking, like in Europe, you would never have that anyways. So the types of foods that we order and import, the type of menu that we have, there’s really no need for a lot of oils. So we’ve stuck to just olive oil for years. That’s all we’ve ever used. And you know, me being Italian as well, that’s all I’ve ever cooked with in my house. I’ve never liked the use of the sprays and all those things because I just never trusted them. And you know, you know that olive oil, if it’s pure, it’s organic olive oil, you have no issues with you know, utilizing that to cook with and it adds more flavor, it’s cleaner, it’s better for you.

And we’ve always stuck to that. We also don’t have fryers in our restaurant. So a lot of restaurants have fryers and that’s where they get caught in with using a lot of seed oils. Now we’re learning that there is a way that we used to do things in the United States, which is using tallow. And people are going back to tallow.

It’s only slightly more expensive, but not to the degree you would think, especially not for the difference in the quality for your health, the flavor, and all that. A buddy of mine owns a fried chicken place. And so they do a lot of obviously they fry everything. And they also have fries on the menu, which we do not. And he switched to beef tallow. And that was one of the big reasons why was because of flavor and taste and health. And people really appreciate that and come to find out from him, like that’s McDonald’s. Everyone used to rave about their fries.

Well, McDonald’s, the 57 method, I think they called it, used beef tallow to fry their fries. And they stopped doing that. I don’t know how many years ago, but they still do it in Europe.

They still use tallow in Europe. So there’s a lot of things where, you know, I know that we in the United States get it right. And a lot of places don’t. But one of the things that I noticed from traveling abroad is that we get food really wrong here. We just do. And, you know, when you go to Europe, there’s not even a discussion. There’s no debate.

There’s no arguing over this thing. Everybody eats. So we should all be invested in eating the best food possible. So we stick to olive oil use. We don’t do any oil based cooking here. So we’re just using finishing oils. So our finishing oil is always extra virgin olive oil. And that’s basically it. We fry a few things for catering only. And when we do that, we also use either tallow or we use a very expensive process of using olive oil to fry.

Speaker 4: Oh, wow. You don’t hear that. But we don’t, we don’t. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, not a pure extra virgin olive oil, but we will use an olive oil.

Ric Gruber: And it’s not, it’s not the most cost effective way to do it. But it definitely gets the job done if we’re doing a small order, like a one off thing. But we don’t do it on a regular basis.

Anthony Codispoti: You know, Rick, to your point about the beef tallow, Malcolm Gladwell, who has a great podcast series, did an episode specifically on McDonald’s fries and sort of the trajectory of how good they were in beef tallow. Then perhaps misguided, it seems like they got away from it because they thought they were doing something that was better for people’s health. And they ran into all kinds of quality issues, how the oil would sort of hang in the air and it would like fall in people’s clothes.

And in some cases create fires. And yeah, what then they eventually came around, they did a blind taste test, okay, beef tallow with, you know, some of the against some of the other oil concoctions that they came up with. And it was, you know, hands down blind taste test, like beef tallow fries one out.

Ric Gruber: Yeah, the only thing that would create a cloud like that in the air would be chemicals. So when you’re frying in something like that, you have to ask yourself, you know, how could this possibly be good? And it’s one of those things where they said, we’ve made decisions before there was a lot of literature on these things. And I’m an analytical person, and I like to dig deep and read and do all that.

But I also have common sense. If something doesn’t pass the test for me, and I also look at this like we’re, you know, one of our taglines is we’re wood fired and family inspired. But we also say we make real food by real people real fast. And this is a family business. I don’t believe in serving anything to anyone that I wouldn’t want to serve myself or my family on a regular basis.

You know, I have young kids and my family and I, we eat at our own restaurant or I bring food home all the time. And I just don’t believe, and that’s a big part of our customer base. I just don’t believe in producing a product or spending my life on a brand and product that is not something that I would bring to my family on a daily basis. I believe you could eat at Billy Bricks seven days a week. And you could live a healthy lifestyle doing that. Now you’re eating pizza for three meals a day, seven days a week. There’s a lot of carbs involved in that. But there’s enough options and healthy, conscious choices.

Like you eat a classic margarita, it’s around 450 to 500 calories. You know, you can eat that. Like it’s not something that’s going to blow you or have all these other concerns. So it’s, you know, I, I truly believe in that. And I think that’s, you know, that’s where I want us to stay no matter what. Because I think that’s our biggest value proposition to our customers.

Anthony Codispoti: So for somebody who hasn’t been into a Billy Bricks before, kind of paint a picture, customers walking in for the first time, what’s the environment? What’s the vibe? What do they see? What are their options? Obviously lots of pizza options. You mentioned salads, kind of paint a picture for us. Yeah.

Ric Gruber: So the initial concept was to have a open kitchen, pre, look, what we now call premier casual, because we’re not like at Chipotle or Five Guys where you’re walking up ordering, you sit down and it’s like becomes fast food.

It’s not that. So it’s premier casual in the sense that once you place your order at the counter, it’s full service for you. But we don’t do order at the table.

We don’t have waiters, waitresses, you know, all that type of stuff. But the original name was Bricks Wood-Fired Pizza Cafe. And it’s now Billy Bricks only. But the cafe part of it used to confuse people because they thought we had coffee. The real reason that Bill included that in the name was that he wanted people to know that it was a cafe-like environment. It was going to be like a coffee shop vibe and the feel of like a cheers where everybody knows your name.

Anthony Codispoti: You could come in, you could hang out for a while. You don’t have to be in a rush.

Ric Gruber: Correct. Our food’s going to be fast, but you don’t have to be. And that was how we always wanted it to be that comfortable environment. Most of our stores have that vibe completely. A few of them that we tried different things where the commercial centers, it’s a little bit more of the casual of like, I don’t know, I would just say it’s a little more industrial of a feel than it is casual.

But our best performing locations are the ones that stick true to the original model, which are the downtown suburban locations that have that exact feel with the lights just right. You’re relaxed, you’re being taken care of, but you’re also not breaking the bank. And it’s a place where you feel comfortable with your kids there and your kids can spill on the floor.

And it’s not the end of the world. It’s not embarrassing the whole family in the middle of the dining room. So we wanted that happy medium of high quality at an affordable price at a place that you not only would go on a date, but you would also be wanting to take your kids.

And you can be in there as quick. Whenever we go to a restaurant, we’re starting the clock with our kids of how long we’ve got before we can get out of there. So you could take care of that customer just the same. But if you wanted to hang out and have a nice relaxing meal with somebody, you could do that also.

Anthony Codispoti: You mentioned that there’s a certification that exists. What is that? How does that work?

Speaker 4: Yeah, so the the Scuolo

Ric Gruber: Italiano Pizzaiolo out of Naples, Italy has a VPN certification that they do, which means you have the right flower, the right process, the right room temperatures, the right mixer, the right oven, you know, they come in and they certify your place. We started thinking about going down that path a long time ago and then got away from it because it seemed to me it was a lot of the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze, so to speak. And there was just things that we weren’t going to be willing to do on our scale, which, you know, creating a dough temperature controlled room in every store to make sure, you know, that it’s held in the exact conditions that they make dough in Naples, Italy, and all those things. It’s a little bit of overkill, but that is the that’s the certification that’s out there. Now I think more of their certification has switched to focusing on training pizzaiolos to make pizza, you know, and make things the way so there’s a lot more focus on the certifications of the pizza makers than it is on the facilities all having that because they probably realized pretty quickly that people were not going to invest in all that stuff.

Anthony Codispoti: Yes, sometimes these, I’m not familiar with this particular one, but sometimes these certifications, they’re a good thing. And sometimes they exist as more of a revenue stream for the people providing that certificate.

Ric Gruber: So yeah, they seem to do that for them and not so much to us. I don’t know that there is a, you know, like you just said, what is that? Most people don’t know it here. So it’s really not the thing that’s going to be driving anyone, you know, running into your business. So for us, it didn’t seem really worth the investment of doing that.

Anthony Codispoti: You mentioned that in recent years, there’s some other styles of pizza that have started to pop up. What are those?

Ric Gruber: Yeah, so interestingly enough, like the one that’s caught fire recently has been like the New Haven style pizza, which is really funny because I went to college in Connecticut. I, you know, my late night college pizza was like the New Haven style pizza, the Connecticut style. So I guess I was really spoiled in that sense because I was eating terrific pizza, you know, in my dorm at that age, and most people are ordering Domino’s. So I was really spoiled with that. And it’s very similar in the sense of like, it’s traditionally coal fire, but you can make it in these electric ovens now, you can make it in a wood fired oven, you can, you can do it in that tradition.

But that’s really caught on. Funny enough, because I loved that style of pizza, and I realized how it could be made very easily, you know, and mimicked with our dough and in our oven. Just before COVID, when we started playing around with larger sizes, I said, you know, why don’t it’s a traditional Neapolitan or pizza, you know, Neapolitan, like we make should be 12 inches, 11 to 13 inches. It’s not, I don’t want to make a big Neapolitan pizza because that’s just not what it is.

Anthony Codispoti: So why because the crust doesn’t cook correctly or what?

Ric Gruber: Yeah, and it’s just, you know, to me, I’m all for bucking tradition, but also to call a 16 inch pizza a Neapolitan pizza just isn’t, it’s just not what it can’t be.

It can’t be in any way. So to me, I thought, why not offer something that I think is going to be really cool. We’ll add another style of pizza without having to upend our operations. It just requires a different stretching technique and a different baking technique inside of the same oven.

So this is a pretty easy change to make or to addition to add. And it’s something that I love. I love the New Haven style pizza. So it was probably four or five years ago that when we added the larger size pizzas, we describe them as a New Haven style. So our larger pizzas, we bake a little bit longer.

We emphasize the crust cornichoni a little bit, you know, a little bit less and bake them like the New Haven style pizzas. And that has been one of the biggest increases in our revenue was adding the bigger sizes. Because that was always something that people asked us, we don’t cater from you because, you know, when I got a big party, I don’t want to order 30 pizzas for 30 people.

I just want to order like five large pizzas. And so that was a big thing that I heard from friends and family. So friends and family are telling me that imagine that has to be in the minds of most of my customers who don’t care nearly as much for about us and our success as our family does.

So I was like, okay, this is something we have to figure out how and that was my answer to how or why. And then, you know, these pizza reviews started with Dave Portnoy. And then he said declared Connecticut was the pizza capital of the world. And now everyone’s like, I got to try New Haven style pizza. So it drew like drove a lot of people to us to where we are one of maybe two pizzerias in all of Illinois that actually offers New Haven style pizza.

Now I know there’s gonna be more coming. But there was nobody doing that. And when you search New Haven style pizza in Chicago, like we were the first result, and we were like basically doing it like brand new doing it, because nobody else was in that space. So that was what we did. And most people that are set up to do our style of pizza don’t have the size ovens or facilities to facilitate offering another style or a larger size pizza. So we could.

And so we did. And it’s one of my favorite styles of pizza. In fact, like no matter what I make, I usually make it thinner and crispier, because that’s just what I prefer.

And so I think it’s our best option. Like when you get our 14 or 16 inch pizza, and the 14 is our thinnest crust, and we call it the ultra thin, but really it’s more of a Bahrae, Italy style. It’s no emphasis on crust rolled all the way out, toppings all the way out. And we cook it for about three and a half minutes instead of two and a half. It’s awesome.

Anthony Codispoti: And so that’s one of the big differences then from New Haven to Neapolitan is that the crust is even thinner.

Ric Gruber: The crust is thinner. And they’ll cook at a lower temperature. So about 550. So that will 550, but they’ll do about six, seven minutes on their bake. We don’t drop our temperature as much, but we’ll cook the pizza off to the side.

So we’re only going to do about three and a half, maybe four minutes, because our temperature is hotter. So like I said, it’s a New Haven inspired pizza. It’s not the exact way that you would set it up if you did it, but it mimics it pretty, pretty damn close.

And again, I would know, because I ate a lot of them before just trying to do it. And so I’m a fan and a lover of that style of pizza. And so I think it’s terrific. And I love that it’s a New Haven inspired pizza, meaning just like we did with Neapolitan, we stayed as true as we could, but we kind of doing it our way.

So it makes it worse. You’re not going to get this anywhere else. In fact, you know, Frank Pepe’s, which was the original New Haven style pizza, Frank Pepe’s sign at his original stores as Frank Pepe’s pizzeria, Napolitan. So what he was doing as a native of Naples before he came to New York and then to Connecticut was making what he knew how to make in Naples, Italy, which was a Neapolitan style pizza.

But when he set up the shop, he had a bread oven that was using coal, which is not what you would use in Italy. And so the product was coming out very differently than that. But so it was a very unique new style of pizza. And so he was his dough and the process is very similar to the Neapolitan style.

But again, he just added his own twist because of what he had available to him. And I say like, that’s exactly what we want to do in our pizzeria. We’re not trying to copy or mimic anything, but we certainly take inspiration and use what we have available to us to make our pizza.

Anthony Codispoti: So what would a consumer notice in difference from coal fire, the wood fire, the gas fire pizza?

Ric Gruber: Well, I think coal fire, they, you know, the, it’s going to be a lower time. And the way that the top heat versus bottom heat is different than a wood fire oven, which is predominantly top heat. And where the coal fire is going to be predominantly bottom heat. So the bake it longer, the bottoms on a coal fire pizza are going to be a lot more charred and crispy. The top is going to have more of that charcoal charring.

You just think about it like if you put a burger and you left it on a charcoal oven too long, like the, the, the charring on the outside of that and the flavor of those charcoals, you will have that. So that’s what you like. You’re going to really enjoy that. And I love charring. So I always like the coal fire and yet like New Haven style pizza now. fact that we bake in wood-fired oven, my preference now is for the wood-fired oak flavoring, you know, in our crust and not having it nearly as charred on the bottom. But if I was gonna choose pizzas, like I would choose between one of those wood-fired or coal-fired.

I don’t particularly like gas ovens. They make a pretty decent pizza, but I don’t think it adds anything to it. You don’t get any smokiness. You don’t get all that extra flavor that really separates it from, you know, a pizza that you could make at home or get from any of your chains around the country.

Anthony Codispoti: Rick, let’s talk about the food trucks. Tell me about them.

Ric Gruber: Yeah, so in in 2012, I think it was, I was living in the Bay Area and there was a guy who was also a lawyer that I knew and he had this truck that I saw. So I was working in North Beach in California in San Francisco. And I saw this truck and I couldn’t believe it because my family had started this business back in Illinois and making wood-fired pizzas. And so now this guy has a wood-fired oven inside of this gigantic truck with a shipping container and it’s all fabricated out of this thing. Now, the guy was a patent attorney, so he’s an engineer. So it was very, it was all function, no form. And so for me, I was like, man, this thing’s really cool.

This would be awesome to make one of these, but make it sexier. So I sent a picture to Bill at the time and, you know, he didn’t have nothing to do with pizza trucks or mobile and nobody, a lot of people didn’t want to get into food trucks. In fact, then, you know, there was the old food trucks or roach coaches. Yeah. And that’s all it was. You know, the whole scene.

Anthony Codispoti: It was gross for a long time. Not a super chic. Yeah. Yeah. So it was not the thing. That was not the move. And then they had that stigma attached to it. So I ended up moving back and then I got back into the family business and started,

Ric Gruber: you know, working my way up here and sort of taking over a little pieces at a time. And I’d really want to do this. And so I don’t want this box truck roach coaches. I don’t think that’s, we’re not on the same page. Let me show you what I’m thinking. So I started showing him more of these and my ideas of how to design it and what we could do. And he was sold. He was like, this, that was awesome.

I never seen anything like that. So then it was who can build it? Well, my we were trying to figure that part out. And then we thought, you know, let’s ask my cousin Austin, he designs and builds custom vehicles. Maybe he could design this.

It’s just a vehicle with a fabricated box dropped on it. Let’s see if he’s interested. So we talked to him and man, that’s such a cool idea.

I’d love, I’d love to take it out. You know, and so that’s basically how the first one happened was I had a rough drawing and sketch and idea of what we wanted and what we needed in it. Sent it off to him and we worked through a lot of stuff. We built a second one where we changed some things up from the first one thinking we had learned a lot.

Some things we learned some things now when we built another one, we were like, we’re going to go back to the lot of the stuff we did on the first one because I think we started overthinking it. But it is nice to have some that are set up differently because they serve different types of events better. And then we kind of do that logistically assigning them where we want based on the type of event, the size of the oven that we have in each one, the way the line works, how many people we have staffed and then that night. And so it’s nice having the variety and the options. But yeah, so he’s built all those for us and our ice cream truck.

So yeah, that’s how it came about. And then from I want to say that we got the first truck built and delivered to us mid season. So around June, July, the year before COVID. Okay, so we were in the midst of our first full season and wrapping that up as Coven started hitting.

So we were a year and a half in and then COVID hit. And man, was that a blessing to have that available to us. And it just went went crazy because that’s what we were able to do at the time, you know, in a lot of places, everything was shut down. But we could bring a truck and make food outside. And then so we built another one. And we built another one. We got a trailer and we started doing that.

Bring that and now that hasn’t really slowed down. And that’s still something that people now have found that they really enjoy and is a great way to do catering and really just took off and it’s become a whole separate thing where a lot of our growth, people say, Oh, you’re going to open up more stores. We are. But we’ve opened as many trucks as we have stores. And so, you know, that growth is like we’ve focused and spent a lot of time there not on the brick and mortar, because these are servicing the areas all around the stores that we have. And so now that we’re kind of catching up stores to trucks. Now it’s been, it makes sense to add another store in another like an area, start opening up that zone and then adding more trucks to service those areas. So yeah, you know, we focus a lot on that for a while.

Anthony Codispoti: So people can hire a truck to maybe come to a party or an event that they’re having. Do you guys park it in a place on a regular basis for lunch or for dinner?

Ric Gruber: No, we’ve never done that. There may be something, especially if we open up in a new market that we do, but we’ve never done that here. 90% of the stuff that we do is prepaid, privately booked weddings, corporate events, graduation parties, birthday parties, engagement parties, all the stuff you think we do a little over, probably do over 100 weddings a year now. Wow. Yeah. So there’s a lot of that that was not something that we thought about at the beginning.

I mean, it’s just something that developed in those types of events. And then of course we do some of the festivals and that type of thing. But those are generally focused specifically on the areas where we have a store. So if we’re going to do a festival, because it’s hit or miss based on weather, all that type of stuff, variables, we do it in the neighborhoods that we have a brick and mortar because there’s the added benefit of being able to pass a literature, get in front of people who can be customers and drive them back to traffic. So we don’t do a lot of festivals outside of our core areas where we have a brick and mortar location.

Anthony Codispoti: So say more about the growth. I mean, you talk about, you know, the trucks catching up with the physical locations and now maybe it makes sense to open some new physical locations. Like what are the plans there?

Ric Gruber: Yeah, so we kind of look at things in pods. The western suburb, we have pretty much locked down now. You know, we have a lot of locations in a small area. And so with all within five to 10 miles of each other, so I can see that little area where we’re really saturated and we get a ton of events. And so we need X, Y, Z amount of units to be able to service that plus those stores.

And then that’s like a pod. And then we’ve opened one further east. That’s our location closest to the city in the first suburb of the city, no park, and then the range and those kind of serve a similar area.

They’re closer to each other. So if we opened up one more within a geographic region of there, it allows us to set up operational infrastructure just for those three. And you could conceivably leave one truck of each kind in that area to just serve that area. And then we have one about an hour up north here. And we’re looking at two to three other areas up there to open up one to two more stores. And then that would justify having a truck and a nice piece of truck and a nice truck of its own up there to stay up there because we get a lot of work up there right now, but we’re driving, you know, 45 minutes each way from our commissary to get up there. And that’s a lot of wear and tear on the trucks, a lot of extra labor for the time of the guys driving back and forth.

It’d be really great to have those planted up there. But I think you need to have about two or three in each location to then have one truck of each kind there. And so that’s why I say like, we’re catching up with that growth and opening up new areas starting to expand where you get the one store. Now we should add a truck up there, help build that area, build the brand, build the, you know, the knowledge based within the area of people knowing, you know, the brand and knowing us, then there being a demand for us to be in more places. And so that I think that’s where we’re going to be focusing. And that’s why out of market opportunities, it might be something that we’re interested in, because for instance, if you’re in Ohio, you know, like in the Dayton area, that’s the place we’ve looked at, you set up in several suburbs around the Dayton area, plus you have those trucks and you’re able to serve a place like UD and then you have those other areas around there.

That could be a really great opportunity to capitalize on a region and to have these trucks that are incredibly unique and can also serve a very cool community like a college town atmosphere. So, you know, we’re working through all this stuff right now, but to make that possible, it’s really important that we’re on solid financial ground, solid organizational ground, operational and all that stuff first before we go back out there. But every time we’ve tried to expand or try something different, whether it’s worked or not has been a great learning opportunity to see what we should be doing. So hopefully we’re through a lot of those growing pains and learn expensive learning experiences and can take that knowledge to open things up the right way in other places.

Anthony Codispoti: As you think about going into other geographical markets, do you think those would be corporate owned locations, franchises? How do you think about that?

Ric Gruber: There are certain ones that if the right partner presented itself, we would consider going in corporate because there might be an operational partner that we had on the ground. But more so, if we can prove our model and numbers here, it may be something that is very attractive as an investable opportunity for a franchisee in their own region where they have a lot of knowledge and experience because they’ve grown up there or they already operate something there or live there. You know, that’s important because we understand this area really well because this is where I grew up. This is where my family is. This is where a lot of our workers are. We know this area very well, so know how to navigate it.

Anthony Codispoti: We haven’t talked about the fact that you’re a lawyer. How does that come into play?

Ric Gruber: Well, it hopefully doesn’t come into play that often. It definitely helps. I don’t know that practicing as an attorney helps in the sense that like, I’m not doing things like bringing cases all the time or filing things all the time. However, the training that you get as an attorney, the highly research-based, analytical basis and problem solving training that you get is hugely important because that’s all businesses at the end of the day is identifying issues, researching potential solutions and then coming like choosing them and implementing them. That is pretty much all lawyers do.

We read and study and we have all this stuff, but we’ll never remember all those books in every line that’s in every one of them. But when someone, you’re trained in something called issue spotting, that’s what all of operation and oversight of any sort of business comes down to, right? Is spotting issues as they come up and identifying potential solutions. And so that and I think conflict resolution is another big piece of being a lawyer. And so that’s one of the biggest things in probably any business, but this one I can just speak to. I think more than anything, the biggest challenges and the biggest learning curves and the day-to-day stuff that comes up is not what topping on this and should we pick this cone or that cone or this box or that box, those things are pretty cut and dry of, hey, this one costs this and this is this.

That’s all fine. I think it’s the management of the people day to day in your mentality towards that and patience and what you see your role as those are the harder soft, those are the softer skills that are harder to develop or have and continually have the patience for. And I think being a lawyer does, it makes you comfortable with confrontation, but it also where you may be more head-on about it, which is my approach. If I have a weird feeling, I just bring it right up because I don’t like that looming over. But it also makes you a little bit more reserved. It makes you hold your tongue a lot more and listen first.

The best lawyers listen more than they talk. And so they may be confusing to some people, but I think that helps as well. And then just getting more mature, getting older, you know, you have kids, nothing tests your patience and your ability to slow down than your kids. And so I think that’s helped a lot as well. But yeah, being a lawyer definitely helps in understanding all those things and then putting some of those more practical skills that you learn, not necessarily the knowledge of the law. But that definitely helps in some instances that I probably don’t even realize and I take for granted because they’re just things that I know. They don’t come up as question marks in my head when something comes up because I just instinctively know that answer. So I probably overlook some of those more technical things that come up.

Anthony Codispoti: Let’s talk a little bit more about the people’s side of the business, right? Because most folks I talk to, it’s still, the labor market’s still tight, you know, hard to find good folks, hard to hold on to good folks. What are some things that you guys have tried and found are working for you?

Ric Gruber: Well, pay usually helps, but it doesn’t guarantee that you have the best. So as far as finding and retaining people, pay definitely helps. Being competitive or overpricing the market because of what you’re able to do in efficiency or scheduling and being smart about that and all those things are, that helps. But I think it’s, it depends on the age group you’re looking at.

Having flexibility is a huge thing now. You know, a lot of people want to do the work from home. Obviously you can’t do that in a restaurant business. So how can we create a flexible enough scheduling and work environment where we aren’t as rigid with people?

So, you know, when we’re interviewing them and we know the demands that they have on themselves with families, potentially other jobs, you know, is this a part-time thing for them to make extra money or is this a full-time gig? But you have kids that need to be picked up from school. So that it’s like normally a shift ends at four, but your kids need to be picked up at three. Those are things we like to work out, like treat it on a human level and don’t have a very rigid like, okay, well, we never allow people to work this shift unless they can leave at this time.

No, it actually benefits us, right? If we have the person who’s not wanting to be cut because they want the hours and another person who absolutely needs to be cut because they need to pick someone up, that’s something very easy to work through when you have managers who are taught that that is an important thing and not to be, hey, this is not a rigid system. These are guidelines and planning but take it from a human perspective of, you know, yourself and what you would expect. So I think that’s a big thing is flexibility, pay, competitive pay. And then I think also not micromanaging people. So I think the clearer we’ve become with our expectations and training and outlining those things of like, this is what your job entails, this is what we expect of you.

You know, there are ways to go above and beyond, but there are things that are, these are the basics. And if you meet those, like you’re not going to be met with a lot of like resistance or, you know, we’re not going to be all over you while you are handling the mundane tasks of the job. And so we give people a lot of, I like to give them a long leash, I guess I should say, because if they’re there and they’re in that role, they should only be there if we’re trusting them to do that job in the first place.

If we’ve lost that, and then become someone that we feel we have to micromanage, there’s only a few times where you can have that conversation where then I would say, I think it’s time to make a change here, because this person’s taking up a lot of our energy and brain power just to make sure they’re doing the basics. So that means that there’s something going on there. So let’s check in, see what’s going on. And if it doesn’t get any better, then it’s time to move on and let’s replace that person with an A player. And we take that and approach that from a perspective of, it’s not going to be impossible to find someone better. And I think that’s usually the issue that most people have is there’s a fear that if I let this person go, I have no one to fill that spot, and I’m not going to find anybody.

And I haven’t found that to be true. And I find that it’s usually that person, your low performer or your negative energy or your bad attitude player is actually costing you the people that you’re wondering why you’re losing or can’t get, that person’s costing you those people. So you can’t have A players if you have a bad team.

Anthony Codispoti: Do you feel like you can communicate this kind of scheduling flexibility and overall flexibility with employees in a franchise model? With a franchise model, you want to lay things out as clearly as possible so that there’s not room for interpretation. Do you think there’s a way to sort of coach and train that to future franchises?

Ric Gruber: You hope so. I mean, it’s one of those things where you can tell them like, hey, this, you don’t have control over that aspect of the business. You can tell them like, hey, this is what we’ve done and how we handle employees and to make sure that our issues are lessened than what other people are experiencing.

And we have those hiring guidelines and sort of training for them that we’ve provided. But at the end of the day, if a person doesn’t fundamentally subscribe to that same worldview or perspective, they are going to treat it very differently. And so it’s on, it isn’t coming upon me that if we’re going to reopen the franchise window that we do it by picking people who we think or believe have a history or track record of behaving more like we do and treating their staff more like we do than having some alternative outlook on it. Because I also don’t understand the people who want to have a franchise and then don’t want to listen to the franchise or if you’re here and you’re wanting to do this for a reason, because we’ve had some success and basically know what we’re doing to a certain degree. So why you’d want to reinvent the wheel on something that you’ve paid so much for doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

Anthony Codispoti: You know, Rick, as business owners, one of the things that gets us most excited is coming up with new ways to drive growth, drive sales revenue, maybe outside of opening up new locations, what’s some fun things that you’ve tried to grow the top line?

Ric Gruber: Yeah, so COVID was great in a sense for us in that every traditional avenue of sales and revenue was taken away. So we had to come up with all these things to try to make it or survive or whatever. And so we did those things. And then when the traditional avenues of revenue came back, we didn’t just get rid of all those other things.

So we actually saw a nice curve in our growth in most places because of that. Now some of them dwindled, they’re not as producing as much as they did during COVID, but there’s things that we kept and you know, we’re doing things like we do pizza classes, we do pizza making on site. For instance, I think next week, next Saturday, we are doing one at a brewery that’s very popular around here because they have a very large event room. And we said, how could we do these with more people because there’s a huge demand in our stores for it, but we don’t want to basically shut down the restaurant for those two hours when this happens and not be able to give as many people as we’d want anyways to make it worth it. So what we started doing was coordinating them with the brewery and we give them a percentage of what we sell because people are buying their beer as a part of the ticket. And we have the facility and we’re able to do 40 to 80 person classes inside of there, but we bring our pizza trucks outside.

Anthony Codispoti: I was gonna say, how are you cooking all those?

Ric Gruber: Oh yeah, so we bring the pizza truck outside, one or two of them sometimes depending on the size of the class. And we teach the class inside, and then we bring them out in groups of like five to 10 to the truck at a time.

They build their pizzas and we put them in the oven. And so we were able to bring our kitchen to them in a facility that’s arguably more fun and they can just do whatever they want inside of there and drink. So that was the way that we got creative and took two ideas and turned them into one to make that continue.

So that’s really fun. We focused a lot on arcatering, which has developed more so, it developed a ton out of COVID when everybody was buying meals for their staff. And we started doing more of the bag lunches, box lunches. So we really solidified those catering options and that’s been very successful. And then the things that we’ve learned from the mobile side of catering has really helped us come up with more creative ideas. So there’s things that we needed for catering that we did that ended up now on our standard menu.

And then there’s things that were on our standard menu that we developed into how we would cater them. And then the last thing was, you know, I saw, I’ve seen and watched our alcohol like beer and wine sales over the years and they’ve never made a huge impact on any of our top lines because we’re just not that type of place, but we’d like to offer it as something that people can have. But we’re not a destination for drinking.

And that’s really not who we want to be. So when I look around the room and see the people we had all the time, it just made a lot of sense that and we would have our pizza trucks and ice cream trucks would pull up behind us at every event. And I was like, you know, people always tell us how professional we are, how easy it was to work with us and book us and have us at their events. I bet if we got that call for the pizza truck and said, Hey, by the way, we also have an ice cream truck, would you be interested? It would take a lot of work and effort off of them. And we would have this truck behind us instead of these other people’s trucks at all.

That’s definitely what happened. So we started it from there and then figured out, Okay, how do we reverse this and take now the ice cream and put it into all the stores so that the ice cream that people know is with us that we have from this level of our operation is now available everywhere. And we do our tastings for weddings and events at the stores. I was like, man, it’s gonna be hard to sell people on the ice cream truck if we don’t have the ice cream available for them to do at the tasting as well.

So now that was this last year we spent integrating the ice cream into the shops as well. And that’s where we see we want to see the highest amount of growth. I want to grow our pizza sales and sort of get off of a lot of the other types of sales. I want to push more pizza and push more ice cream. And that’s why, you know, that’s where I see the most focus coming from an opportunity.

Anthony Codispoti: It feels like adding ice cream into your existing stores would be a bit of a heavy lift. Don’t you need special coolers, special freezers for that? Yeah, something that you didn’t have in place before?

Ric Gruber: Well, fortunately, a few of our shops when they opened, we actually did have ice cream a long time ago. And then we took it out. And I basically, I laughed because, you know, I would always or not always, but I would frequently butt heads with Bill about one thing or another.

And I just wouldn’t, you know, he would want it, I wouldn’t want it, or I would want it, and he wouldn’t want it. And one of the things that I won on during COVID was I got ice cream out of all the stores. Because I just, you know, that in the taps on our beers, we went to just all bottles and cans. And I was like, you know, servicing these things, we don’t have the money for it. We’re not pushing inventory because nobody’s taking our ice cream out of here.

And there’s nobody in here. So for two and a half years, I was like, this doesn’t make a lot of sense. So we re-purpose some of that space in a few of the locations. Then I was like, Hey, you know, I would look after we had the truck, I said, and he laughed because he knew where I was going. I was like, you know, we look really good right here be an ice cream cabinet. And he just shook his head, like, you know, because it was already had been there. So then we put them back in a few spots. And now, trust me, we do a much different and better job now than we did before.

Because there’s more of an emphasis and we have more experience and expertise serving it, and all these options. And then our newest location that we opened, we actually purchased a existing ice cream shop and converted the back end into a full kitchen. So we took an ice cream shop and made a pizzeria and ice cream. And that was really great for us to see the numbers there where people knew it as an ice cream destination.

Because we kept probably about 70% of those numbers going there, but then added our full restaurant around it. And so that’s a model that really looks nice for us. And, you know, it shows that we can absolutely run a full service ice cream barlar inside of one of our other restaurants. So the other ones don’t have as much of a full scale as that one does, but that’s going to be definitely the focus and model going forward for us.

Anthony Codispoti: And so the three new locations that you’re working on presently, we’ll have more of that kind of setup 100%.

Ric Gruber: And that’s also why we created a separate brand for the ice cream is so, you know, what’s it called? Mujos. How do you spell it? M-O-O-J-O-E-S. Okay. I like it. You know, so we have Mujos ice cream served inside of Billy Bricks. And the great thing about that is it gives us the flexibility of, there’s a future location that I see that I’m like, you know, this would be a great place for Mujos on its own. You could do that.

Anthony Codispoti: Rick, I want to shift gears for a moment. I invite you to share maybe a particular challenge that you have worked through in the past, personal, professional and some lessons that you learned coming out the other side.

Ric Gruber: Well, professionally, you know, I think personal and professional kind of overlap, right? When you’re a business owner, everything kind of becomes one. So time management is always one of them and being able to give the amount of time that you need to not only your business, but your staff and your team, as well as juggling family and trying to be there for everybody all the time. So that’s definitely a challenge. But I would say the hardest thing to work on is all the relationships and really spending that time with people, developing that, developing trust and getting people all on the same page.

Communication, you know, that’s probably it. That’s probably the number one is communication, whether that’s communicating to your guests, what you’re trying to do for them and the purpose of your brand and what your brand means. Communicating to your family, what your goals and dreams and visions are for your business and how that plays into everybody’s success because they’re all sacrificing one thing or another to make that happen with you or for you, for everybody. And then, you know, with the staff, understanding what it is we’re here to do, how you feel about them, how you want them to feel about the guests and making sure that everybody’s on the same page.

That’s the biggest challenge. The other stuff is, I don’t think it’s unique to us or any particular business. Every business has the same administrative challenges, the getting off the ground challenges. Anyone can say, oh, it’s a challenge growing my sales. Well, that is true of every business. But I think the ones that probably resonate that are the most that keep people up at night is not how do I grow my sales because there’s a million books written on that.

There’s a lot of ideas. Some of it just comes down to you doing it. You know, just you got to do it. You got to execute.

You could listen to that all day long. But I think the it’s the communication side of it and realizing that no business is really with without those without the soft skill issues. You have to develop those. And that’s the hardest, most difficult part is managing the people and that mission.

Anthony Codispoti: Rick, I’ve got just one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. Everyone listening today, if you like today’s content, please hit the like, share, or subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. Rick, I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. Your website is billybrickshq.com. If somebody wants to connect with you personally, how would they do that?

Ric Gruber: Yeah, so any of those general ones somehow make a way to me. But if you wanted to find me personally, you just look up my name and I’m available on every platform at Rick Rubber, or you type in pizza rick and you’ll find me but just don’t use a k because I don’t use a k it’s spelling my name it’s RIC. And then I have a website pizza rick.com, which I basically neglect all summer season when we’re really busy and don’t put anything on it. But as the fall and winter months come, I start putting out a little more content in some web series now. So my personal contact information and the links to all of my personal accounts are on pizza rick.com if you want to get all of me. Terrific.

Anthony Codispoti: Last question for you, Rick. What do you see being perhaps the biggest change that’s coming to your industry in the next couple of years?

Ric Gruber: You know, I see a lot of people moving more and more with technology and trying to do a lot more automation. I think in some instances, it’s going to do great things in the business, you know, machines that help produce things faster or make it easier on staff to operate.

But I don’t believe that it ever places people, you know, so we have dough machines like with the dough roller, you know, you’re selling the person that puts the ball into the roller. So I don’t think it’s like it’s going to replace things. But that right there is going to make it so much easier for people to produce high volumes of dough consistent. So I think there’s changes like that that are going to be incremental and those pieces of technology are going to help us all produce more, more product, more consistently, faster and make the job easier on staff physically, mentally, all that kind of stuff, which will help us in retaining people because they’re not having that high fiscal, you know, wear and tear and abuse that we’ve had for so long. I think where people are going to fall short, it’s getting more and more difficult to justify spending the amount of money that it costs these days to buy anything when you have absolutely no level of service whatsoever. I think that is where people are going to see the challenge is that, you know, where McDonald’s burger costs the same as it does to go to your local tavern or pub that has a great bar burger, you know, all these gourmet burgers that are out there, it’s going to be hard to justify spending the exact same amount when you have that atmosphere, I’m going to have a beer and I have someone serving me taking care of me versus going there tapping a screen that hasn’t been wiped down that is dirty, you know, and you’re touching that screen and then all of a sudden someone just slides this thing to you. You’re not going to be tipping those people. There’s no experience there. That’s just to me, that is purely transactional.

It’s a little cold and transactional. Now, I know that people like to say the younger generations prefer that because they’re used to being behind the phone and doing all that. I think to a certain degree, that’s probably been true, especially for people who have kind of survived through COVID or were those ages through COVID. But I mean, you know, you’re a little older like I am, like we’ve gone through enough cycles of life to see things come and go and come back around.

And I think that’s what we’re going to start seeing is that more and more people, when times are tough, and hopefully those things are going to be turning around here, but when times have been tough, look to what is the, what’s the value add, you know, I want to go out, I want to not have to cook, I’m exhausted, we’re stressed, I want to go and have a stress-free thing. I don’t want to be doing the work. And I want to be taken care of for my money because I’m spending good money. Otherwise, it’s going to go right back to the grocery store.

I’m just going to cook something at home, a simple meal, because you have to make it worth it for people to spend that money right now. And I think that’s where we’re going to see a lot of those changes and emphasis that people have been making in the industry. We’re going to see them sort of be failed experiments. At least that’s what I think.

All right, hope. Now, that being said, we’re working on testing out some kiosks in our stores to grow sales, to see what that option is, but we will not take away or replace anything that we’ve normally had. So one of the challenges of having a order at the counter restaurant is like a dessert thing is an afterthought and now we have the ice cream. So you’ve already paid, you said Don, you had your dinner. Where do I go back up to get my dessert? And I don’t want to get in line with all these people that are waiting to order their food or coming for their pickups. So that’s where I think we’re going to be implementing the kiosk just at the dessert counter. So people don’t feel the need to have to get back up into the main line of ordering or not know where to go get dessert or wait for someone to come to them. So when you walk up and you can see all that beautiful ice cream just waiting for you, you can tap looking at a picture of what it’s going to look like to do that ticket will print and then that person is going to walk right over and go, Hey, just give me one second, I’ll have that cone ready for you. And there’s still going to be that person physically doing that. But no, but less confusion of like, how do I order that?

And I only believe in that because where that type of your check is already closed. Once you’re once you’ve ordered your food. So how do you get add more drinks?

How do you add more for dessert and do that if you decide, Hey, I think I still have some room for ice cream. And so that’s one place where we are going to utilize it. So I see it as something that can potentially help us drive revenue and make a more streamlined visit for our guests. But I don’t see it as replacing anything. And I think long term, a lot of people are going to try those things and they’re going to ditch them.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah, I don’t think human connection will ever go out of style. But Rick, Hey, I want to be the first one. Excuse me to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.