How Shapiro’s Deli Maintains a 120-Year Legacy in Indianapolis | Restaurants & Franchises Series

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 (05:53.418)
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 Codaspoti and today’s guest is Brian Shapiro, CEO of Shapiro’s Delicatessen. With two locations in Indianapolis, Indiana, they have a legacy that goes back farther than any guest I’ve ever had.

Their ancestors had a grocery business in Odessa, Ukraine in 1795. Fast forward to 1905 when Louis and Rebecca Shapiro fled anti -Semitism in Russia to arrive in Indianapolis, where they brought their family heritage of providing nourishing food to America. They began selling flour and sugar on the street from a push cart. A couple years later, they opened their first deli just south of downtown Indy.

where the family lived above the store and everyone pitched in. Over the years, the family has a history of standing up to oppression and anti -Semitism. Brian has a strong interest in and has been heavily involved in the local Indianapolis community, which we’ll hear more about. Shapiros have evolved their concept and product offering over the years and are proudly serving the community from both their downtown location at 808 South Meridian Street and at the Indianapolis Airport.

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. 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.

Anthony Codispoti (07:44.042)
To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency .com. Now, back to our guest today, the CEO of Shapiro Delicatessen, Brian. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Brian (07:58.314)
Well, thank you for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (08:00.01)
So, Brian, let’s start with the customer experience at Shapiro’s. Paint a picture for someone who has never been before and you want to entice them in.

Brian (08:11.818)
Well, we have the advantage that we’ve been in business for 120 years. So in some regards, we’re a legacy. And people come to Indianapolis and around the Midwest to eat, you know, Jewish style food. In fact, during the pandemic, we had quite a few people

from central Illinois, the journey to Indianapolis on the weekends to eat at our restaurant because the restaurants in Illinois were closed. So, you know, our journey is how we are. You know, we’re well known. I always tell people we’re a dinosaur because we, you know, actually make the food from the beginning. We don’t buy any…

Pre -cut pre -made pre -peeled potatoes or lettuce or anything and we hand cut every item and which drives my financial people cuckoo because you know, it’s expensive to do that and our labor costs are high, but it’s how we’ve been doing it and I’m not going to be the person that’s going to change what has made us successful, you know, we use craft

Philadelphia cream cheese, we buy them in 60 pound blocks for our cheesecake, which costs twice as much as some other brand, but it tastes different. And that’s what the recipe calls for. So we do everything we can to stick to original ingredients, original names, and try not to substitute. So when people come into the restaurant, everything that we give them or sell them,

is the finest that we can buy either locally, nationally, or even internationally.

Anthony Codispoti (10:13.832)
And so when somebody walks in, is it more of like a meat deli counter? Is it a restaurant style sit down? Is it a combination of the two?

Brian (10:25.162)
Well, we have two sides. We started out, as you pointed out, in the grocery store business. And then as the Jewish neighborhood changed, we added more food, meals that you could purchase. And, you know, eventually the Jewish neighborhood, in fact, the entire neighborhood disappeared. And we were strictly a restaurant. However, we did have a delicate test encounter where we

cut corned beef and peppered beef and salami and lox. And just recently, our area is becoming gentrified with modern apartments, old housing stock that has been remodeled and becoming more vibrant as it was 50 years ago.

But when you come in, the restaurant side is cafeteria style, old fashioned Jewish deli, cafeteria style where people pick out what they want. And I have experimented with trying to get away with that concept and it doesn’t work. When people think of Shapiro’s in our name,

they have a picture of what it looks like. And young people that come in and going, no, this looks like school. And then once they get used to it, it becomes part of the schtick that we have. It’s just how we do business. It’s how we deliver food. And you know, the customer actually talks to the person that’s cutting their meat for their sandwiches. So if they want it leaner or thinner or fattier, they can actually get that.

to happen. And I think that kind of adds to the flavor of the restaurant to why we are successful is that we can make that happen. My youngest daughter does artificial intelligence for NVIDIA and I always talk to her about becoming more automated and she goes, no, don’t do that. Make people think.

Brian (12:40.97)
make people have to decide what kind of mustard they want and what kind of cheese they want and they have to interact with somebody.

Anthony Codispoti (12:49.384)
Is that what you mean by it’s like school?

Brian (12:53.834)
Well, at school, you just pick up what you want. At a cafeteria in a school, that’s the first thing that people would see. The difference with us is that there’s actually interaction with the sandwich cutter or with people that make food. So it’s more than just a delivery method. It’s also an interaction with human beings that

create your product that you wanna eat.

Anthony Codispoti (13:27.528)
And your daughter is encouraging you not to lose that, not to go towards the side of automation, but encourage that customization and that interaction.

Brian (13:31.626)
That is correct.

Brian (13:36.394)
Right. And we do have online ordering and the online people are always selling us a product. And then when we sign the contract, about a week into it, they go, this is far more complicated than anything we’ve ever done. So there’s all these add -ons that you can do to a sandwich. And it’s more than

a normal amount. I mean, it is a huge number. And sometimes it changes because of, you know, what the produce is. You know, I mean, we’ve about to finish up with asparagus, but, you know, we have fresh vegetables all year round. And, you know, this year, the produce is two weeks early everywhere.

You know, Michigan blueberries have started in the southern part of the state and that’s two weeks early. So everything is early.

Anthony Codispoti (14:43.848)
Why is it early this year?

Brian (14:50.029)
warm, you know, it’s been warmer. The northern states didn’t get a late frost, which usually kills stuff and we didn’t get that or shrinks it. So we’re going to have a very robust crop, which is good because, you know, produce cost is through the roof. I mean, you know, fortunately, you know, Wisconsin

Ohio, Michigan, broccoli is coming into play and because the California and Texas crop was kind of light. In fact, last couple of weeks bushels of broccoli was $72, which is double what it should be. So we should be seeing a dramatic decrease in the price of produce at least for the next three months.

Anthony Codispoti (15:45.288)
And so when you see those big fluctuations in produce prices, are those things that you’re able to build into an increased cost of the product? Or is that something that you just take on the chin?

Brian (15:58.89)
We try to look holistically for the entire year of what to price produce. When the broccoli got to $72 a

Brian (16:14.442)
a bushel, we, we, I just told him not to order any. We just didn’t have it. And as you know, when the price of produce goes up, the quality generally goes down.

You know, it’s one of those weird things when the price is inexpensive, there’s a bountiful supply and the quality is very good.

Anthony Codispoti (16:43.368)
Now looking at your site here, Brian, I see parties and catering. Are these significant sources of revenue for you guys?

Brian (16:54.218)
You know, it’s kind of interesting. Before the pandemic, maybe nine or 10 % of our business was catering. The pandemic made it go to zero.

We are recently seeing more catering, more parties, more use of that activity. A lot of the companies that have gone to remote work, at some point in time, they’re having people get together. And it’s usually in their old office, in their conference rooms.

And, you know, they want to bring people together. And, you know, they finally have figured out that food is kind of a great way of getting people to come to eat, you know, to come together, you know, in the old Jewish fashion of breaking bread. You know, I mean, you know, an old Friday night habit of, you know, breaking bread. So, you know, people got around and they talked and I’m seeing

an uptick in that occurring. Different than before where you’d cater an office party. Now we’re kind of catering sections of groups of people of offices. You know, that want people to come together and talk about what’s going on. So we’re seeing kind of a new version of catering.

I don’t know if I explained it well enough, but it…

Anthony Codispoti (18:38.312)
Sure, yeah, the pandemic kind of wiped things out and then now coming back from the pandemic, the catering looks a little bit different than it used to. Yeah.

Brian (18:46.41)
Right. I mean, you’re still selling the same products or maybe a slight different in the market share of what they want, but it is coming back in a slightly different form, but, you know, same dollars.

Anthony Codispoti (19:05.256)
I’m curious, Brian, was there for you any doubt growing up that you would become part of this family legacy, this family business?

Brian (19:15.242)
Well, I went to Indiana University as an undergrad accounting major at Kelly School of Business. And then I went on to law school in Bloomington and really kind of thought I was going to be a tax lawyer, tax treaty person working in LA. And

But I’d always kind of grown up in the family business, you know, my side of the family. My grandfather, Joe, who worked in the.

delicatessen in Indianapolis, married a gal and moved to East Central Indiana in a family that had nine grocery stores. So I had always kind of grown up in the grocery business. And then as I got older, my great uncle Max, who was running Shapiro’s delicatessen, decided that I needed to run the store.

because he was getting older and didn’t know what to do with it, didn’t have any kids. So they kind of appointed me to do it. And about…

Brian (20:37.45)
Five, six months after I came into work, he died.

Brian (20:43.69)
So here was this historical restaurant basically just dropped on me with.

I had employees that were, that had been with Uncle Max for 40 or 50 years. And here I am 24, 25 years of age, you know, dealing with people that had been there 40 or 50 years. And I also inherited three other great aunts and uncles to manage their affairs. So it was kind of a shock when you’re

24, 25 years of age goes, by the way, not only are you going to run this historical restaurant, you also have three other family members that are in their 80s that you’re going to take care of until they die.

Anthony Codispoti (21:37.826)
That’s a lot to put on the plate of a young man.

Brian (21:40.842)
So it was a very interesting experience. It was fine. I mean, it worked out. But it truly gives one a different perspective on life. Because again, I was dealing with people that were my father’s aunts and uncles.

Brian (22:09.194)
some have been some that were born in Russia.

So it, and again, it all worked out and you know, everybody was taken care of and happy.

Anthony Codispoti (22:25.41)
Where do you see the business going from here? Do you like the two locations that you have? Do you see some growth opportunities? Do you see trying new concepts?

Brian (22:41.258)
I, Shapiro’s was part of the screwball exhibit in Los Angeles on Jewish delicatessens. And it traveled to New York and Houston and ended at the Holocaust Museum in Skokie. The LA exhibition, we were a very large

part of the exhibition. In fact, when you walked in, my great uncle Abe was this gigantic billboard of Jewish delicatessence. So we went to, I was invited to the opening in Chicago and they had the morning drive hosted WGN spending an hour with

Levi of Levi Brothers, Melman of Let Us Entertain You, the owner of Manny’s Deli, and another Jewish successful person in a restaurant business in Chicago. They spent the first five minutes talking about the delicatessen business, about how it made no sense in today’s restaurant world because

We don’t serve alcohol. Our food costs are high. And it just doesn’t make the model of.

private equity or banks. The other 55 minutes was trying to figure out how to fix Michigan Avenue in Chicago. And the point that I’m making is that, you know, the Jewish deli is kind of a dinosaur. You know, unless you’ve already been in business, it’s hard to redo it. Now,

Brian (24:48.17)
Granted, there are people that are mom and pop operations that open up.

Jewish delicatessens in cities throughout the country, and they do quite well. There’s one in Atlanta, my oldest daughter went to Emory University, and there was one called Jenner Meir. And it’s kind of a modern Jewish deli concept. And I think they do a good job, but you know, the owner,

is the chef and he’s there. So I think that, you know, the future of the Jewish delicatessen is somewhat limited except for, you know, the neighborhood people that are going to do it themselves. And, you know, rather than being a manager or a chef someplace, you know, they’re going to put their passion into the little local stores.

But again, the biggest difficulty that we have is food cost. I mean, it’s ridiculous. I mean, you know, you take a pastrami, a real Jewish pastrami comes from the navel. 98 % of your people that listen to your podcast have no idea what a navel is.

And the type of pastrami that they’re eating is probably coming from a flat or a round or some other type of cut of meat. Because the navel is, if it was on a pig, it’d be bacon. And it’s a very rough cut of meat. I mean, it is a cut of meat that became a pastrami because it was a tough piece of meat, had lots of fat on it.

Brian (26:49.674)
had gristle in it, had all kinds of stuff in it. So, you know, they had to cure it, they had to smoke it to make it tender. And it’s just hard to do. And it’s hard to find labor that wants to trim it out and deal with it. And most of the navels, because of the shortage in the butcher industry,

They just grind it up for hamburger. I mean, they just throw it in for hamburger or they export it to Korea or Japan. So it’s a cut of beef that when they’re on the assembly line at a large production kill plant,

You know, it costs too much. There’s too many trims and cuts in it that have to occur as it’s going down the assembly line. So as I say, most of it just gets thrown into hamburger.

So back to the original point is, the future of the deli is somewhat limited because of our cost and the inability of our food to really go well with alcohol. Most wine, you need some cream -based product.

to have wine with or an oil -based product. I mean, when you think about when you are drinking wine and what pairs with what, a corned beef sandwich goes pretty good with a lager. Doesn’t go really well with much of any type of beer.

Brian (28:42.954)
and private equity who invest in restaurants and want returns, they want alcohol or non -alcoholic beverages. They want it now to be 50%.

And in the old days, you know, they were happy if it was 25%. But they now want menus around high profit items. And, you know, so you now have.

investment bankers making decisions for restaurants.

Anthony Codispoti (29:25.506)
Have you experimented with alcohol in your locations at all?

Brian (29:29.994)
We sell beer and wine, but it’s less than 1 % of sales. Beer and wine, the beer goes. And as I mentioned to you in a prior conversation, we originally had

10 kinds of different beers. We had Miller Lite, we had Budweiser, we had Heineken’s, we had Guinness. We had all these different types of beers and one of our local people comes to me and wanted me to put in their beer.

And I looked at my managers and I got, you know, having 10 or 12 different kinds of beer was a real pain because you had to take inventory of 10 or 12 kinds. You know, it was just took up a lot of space. So we switched and we put in three beers of Daredevil, which is a beer made by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

And beer sales doubled. Go figure. Here’s all this marketing and advertising of Budweiser and Miller, and everybody knows who they are. And then we put up these three beers from Daredevil and they sell. And a lot of times people will see the beer.

Anthony Codispoti (30:44.418)
Okay.

Brian (31:06.41)
And the customer will go, what is this? Because it’s a local beer that we sell. And we don’t have any other brands. And people try it. And we tell them, you know, if you don’t like it, bring it back. We’ll give you something else. We’ll give you back your money. You know, I mean, it’s like we want people to be happy. And, you know, they buy it. They like it. I mean, you know, it gets people outside their comfort zone.

Anthony Codispoti (31:32.446)
And so do you think the beer sales doubled because this was just a novel product or it was better or maybe there were fewer options now and that made it easier for people to choose something?

Brian (31:43.306)
I think it could be, I think you could write an essay on all three of those. I think it’s a combination thereof. I think that, again, I think that it steps outside of people’s normal comfort zone. You know, it’s like the craft beers. You know, very successful model.

You know, obviously some of them are more successful than others, but you know, people go, well, these are kind of cool. And it’s different. It’s not been mass produced. You know, they’re all small batches. So somebody is actually tasting them. It’s not a computer. You know, it’s not like, it’s not like wine, you know, where, you know, you’ll have a great bottle of wine and then you start.

Anthony Codispoti (32:35.933)
Brent.

Brian (32:43.37)
The next year you go, well, you know, this is not as good. And then you find out it’s owned by, you know, some monster publicly traded company. And they’re just spiking it with previous years blends and different amounts of sugar to make sure that it all tastes alike. So a true connoisseur of wine goes, you know what, you’re selling this to the masses. And, you know, they want, and.

You know, there are MBAs that are running the company are going, hey, we want it to be the same. We want standardization. Let me assure you, if you get a corned beef sandwich at Shapiro’s, the one that you get versus the next person in line, it’s going to be a little bit different because it came from a little bit different piece of the brisket.

Brian (33:37.802)
10 customers later, it’d be a whole different brisket. So there is, so in my business, it’s not perfect. You know, it’s not standardized. In fact, I think we make it a big deal that it’s not standardized. And again, you know, and again, and if you get a sandwich and you take it to the table and you think it’s too fatty or bring it back, we’ll trade it in. I mean,

Anthony Codispoti (33:53.468)
there’s beauty in that imperfection.

Brian (34:05.29)
You never know. I mean, you know, we make hundreds and hundreds of sandwiches a day and we try to be as good as we can. And sometimes we’re just not perfectly perfect.

Anthony Codispoti (34:15.996)
Well, and what you’re describing, though, is a tremendous level of customer service that you don’t get in a lot of places.

Brian (34:23.242)
well, you know, the other unfortunately.

My wife and I about three weeks ago went to France. And the week before my business manager controller passed away suddenly. And so I hired a contract CFO group that only does financial and cost accounting, no tax work. And, you know, they have this long questionnaire and they interview

my managers and Christy looks at me, she goes, you know, we do a lot of restaurants. The last person that you’ve hired new in this restaurant was in October. You know, which was what? Nine months ago, I go, yeah, we don’t have a lot of turnover. People come to us and you know, they don’t leave.

Anthony Codispoti (35:24.334)
What do you attribute that to? You know, that’s not something I hear very often from people that I talk to. It’s a tight labor market. It’s hard to find good people. It’s hard to keep good people.

Brian (35:31.946)
We,

Brian (35:36.714)
We invest a lot of effort in keeping people, trying to make them better, trying to help them.

Brian (35:51.914)
It’s important that the employee understands that it’s a family business and they get a lot of flexibility with a family business. Before the pandemic, you know, people working five, six days a week. I would estimate that 80 % of my employees now want to work four days a week and they just as soon work 10 or 11 hour days.

as five, eight or nine hour days. So we adjusted that, which, excuse me, obviously increased the number of employees and how we manage it, but it works. And we have some employees that, you know, they just assume work five or six days a week and they’re done. But I would gander that 80 % of my people want to work only four days a week.

Anthony Codispoti (36:51.098)
and longer days so they can get their hours. Yeah. And how many days a week are you open? Okay. Even on the Sabbath.

Brian (36:53.002)
longer days.

Brian (36:57.322)
7.

Yeah, even on the set. We used to, before the pandemic, we were open for breakfast. Now we just do breakfast on the weekends. I, post pandemic seems not, I mean, the breakfast crowd doesn’t seem as big as it was. And, you know, I think that because people are working at home,

You know, they’re just eating at home.

You know, and I think they figured out that they can make just as good a cappuccino at home than Starbucks.

Anthony Codispoti (37:47.354)
and for a lot less. Right.

Brian (37:47.85)
and not pay and not pay nine dollars for for brown water.

Anthony Codispoti (37:53.722)
I want to go back to what you’re doing for the employees aside from having more flexible schedules for them, you know, and allowing them if they want to work, you know, longer days, but four days a week instead of shorter days and five or six days a week. What are some of the other things that you’re doing to help retain and recruit good people?

Brian (38:13.29)
Well, you know, first of all, I think every employee that I have, except for one, which is a very unusual situation, somewhat dictated by this employee’s father, who is his guardian. I think that every employee of mine makes at least $15 an hour as a base.

and the average wage

is probably around $23 to $26 an hour.

Anthony Codispoti (38:55.194)
and compare that to what is the minimum wage in indiana right now

Brian (38:55.754)
And.

Brian (39:01.61)
seven dollars and seventy five cents. Indiana has a legislature that is they just want to let the free market dictate the wage. So the wage in Indianapolis is somewhere between twelve fifty and twenty bucks an hour to start a job.

in small towns in Indiana, you know, it might be eight. So it’s just different. And in some of the suburbs of Indianapolis, it may even be higher.

Anthony Codispoti (39:47.065)
So you guys are able to offer a much better wage to your folks than other positions nearby.

Brian (39:51.594)
Right, and that is important. And then, you know, we have kind of with the tipping that we do and then customers do, that helps a lot in motivating employees to be nice, to upsell. Now, I’ll make the footnote that.

doesn’t always happen. We sometimes get an employee and a customer that get into it and argue and we resolve that and sometimes employees lose their jobs because of things that they have done. So we try to make it very customer oriented. The employees completely understand that they want to make more money. We got to sell more product.

You know, it’s a very clear thing. You know, it’s not like, you know, the cooks know that they want to make more money, they got to cook more. You know, it’s not one of these programs of, well, don’t sell that or, you know, I don’t, you know, this is hard to make or whatever. You know, we are a very fast pace, you know, capitalistic organization that

is focused on customer service and good food and rewarding employees. And again, we have not hired a new person since October, although my general manager the other day said that she may want to hire another person. But you know, you’ve talked to a lot of restaurants, been to a lot of restaurants. We don’t lose any busboys.

Anthony Codispoti (41:45.176)
That’s impressive. Yeah, that’s

Brian (41:46.314)
I mean, we don’t lose any busboy. And if we do lose a busboy, I can assure you that within six months, they’re begging to come back.

Anthony Codispoti (41:56.632)
It’s a desirable place to work the way you’re describing it.

Brian (41:59.53)
Right, I mean, yeah, they do well. But again, how do we stay in business as 120 years through generations? So your original question is the future. I think the future of our business is just kind of complicated. We’re going to build a hotel across the street from the restaurant in some

heritage property that we own and myself and a good friend of mine, Steve Oakley, that’s a James Beard chef and worked at Trotters as, and his young youth have been designing a rooftop bar menu with the

show called The Direction of Private Equity. So, and Steve’s kind of funny. He goes, you know, some of these guys are kind of scary. But he goes, I understand. You know, once you start listening to them and you start seeing and you go, okay, we get it. So we, you know, and it was very interesting with these rooftop bars that private equity goes.

Here are three items that you must have on the menu. A hamburger?

French fries and a chicken sandwich.

Brian (43:33.642)
and

Anthony Codispoti (43:34.295)
And how do you feel about accommodating that?

Brian (43:37.642)
It’s fine. You know, I mean, you know, I look at, we sell hamburger, you know, we get the vast majority of our hamburger from Southern Indiana by one of the few live kill plants that USDA inspected in the country. Cause we were buying the stuff already ground in the chubs and from

You know, Iowa beef or, you know, I mean, they’re just mass produced and, you know, I kept seeing these recalls and I went, this is just crazy. So, you know, we, we started up with them maybe 15 years ago and, you know, they, they make it and it’s fine. It’s, it’s locally, relatively locally sourced, you know, maybe a hundred miles from Indianapolis. And so.

You know, I know a little bit about hamburger and You know, we’ll end up doing a smash burger style Hey, it’s quicker We won’t probably make it Super duper flat, you know, it’ll be flat but not to the point that it’s just hard cooked

And, you know, but we will also add other items on the rooftop bar menu that will encourage consumption of liquid. You know, the, you know, the. No, no, but we probably will have a pastrami sandwich or something. You know, that they can have because we close at 730 at night.

Anthony Codispoti (45:14.518)
Will it carry the Shapiro’s name? Okay.

Brian (45:29.706)
and this will close at 11.

Anthony Codispoti (45:32.662)
What’s the timeline for this opening, do you think?

Brian (45:36.842)
16 months. We started right before the pandemic and then we had the pandemic. So then that stopped things. And then we’ve been trying to figure, try to catch material costs going down and kind of this somewhat, I guess you would call it a retail commercial recession.

You know, the…

Anthony Codispoti (46:07.734)
Brian, you mentioned COVID and I came across an article that made reference to a previous crisis that you endured that kind of puts you in a better position to face the unexpected COVID pandemic. I’m curious to hear more about that.

Anthony Codispoti (46:31.798)
Is that not ringing a bell?

Brian (46:36.266)
Well, you know, I mean, we had a fire.

in

2001 I think.

It was winter. We had an ice dam on the roof. And the roofing contractor that we’ve known and used forever sent somebody up there in the, you know, I mean, it was 20 degrees outside and they took a torch to, melt the ice dam. Problem was the torch got a little bit too hot underneath.

Brian (47:22.026)
and did a million dollars of damage in the building. So we were closed for about 90 days.

Brian (47:36.842)
So that kind of helped.

Brian (47:44.27)
deal with with what do you hang on one second it’s my two -year -old dog Millie

Brian (47:56.842)
As I say, we’re up here in Northern Michigan and she’s in my, in a room up here and can look at the woods and there’s probably a chipmunk or something that she’s not happy with. And I got the door shut. So back to your question, we have, you know, we, we had this fire that tore the thing apart and we, you know, had to re -examine putting it back together. But.

You know, we’ve had, you know, just, you know, when you’ve been running a business for

40 years or so, and you have spent your whole life growing up in the food business, you have all kinds of issues that you deal with. I think that one time I, unfortunate, we had a second location on the north side of Indianapolis, and one of my managers got shot and killed.

Brian (49:03.69)
I had just recently gotten married and it was completely tough, difficult. So, you know, you start second guessing yourself, you know, what could we have done? Why did this happen? You know, was it random? Did we, you know, were our procedures of closing too laxed?

Because you never think of anything like that was going to happen until it happens.

Anthony Codispoti (49:41.78)
What were some of the things that you did to not only for yourself to get through that, but to support staff through that difficult time?

Brian (49:49.866)
Well, you know, we had meetings with the staff on the loss and, and, you know, anger, but eventually we, you know, added night security off duty Indianapolis police officers. And, you know, we spent quite a bit of money on that, but it makes a safer place. Hopefully we have.

Internally less theft. Externally we have less theft. You know, keeps the parking lot safer. And, you know, crime is everywhere.

You know, you can talk about it being in major cities, but it’s in the suburbs as bad. A lot of it is not talked about as much.

a lot of drug issues in rich affluent areas. So, you know, all of these things are stuff that, you know, we just deal with in the restaurant business. You know, we have everything. So, you know, when you come to Chappell’s and you get a meal, I’m not gonna tell anybody that it’s inexpensive because the food is just expensive and…

It’s going up. I mean, because, you know, the labor cost is going up and the entire supply side is just not doing well. You know, there’s a trucker shortage, there’s refrigeration trucking shortage. Private equity has gobbled up these small trucking companies.

Brian (51:44.33)
that would do less than a full load of freight. And, you know, they’ll ship products from the East Coast to say Toledo and then send it from there. And every time food frozen or fresh is touched and moved, there’s a big opportunity for it to get mishandled and bad things to happen to it. And, you know, unfortunately, private equity people have no idea.

You know, they just go, well, this is the most efficient thing to do. Toledo is an inexpensive place. It’s near Detroit and Chicago, and we can redirect stuff from there. And that’s fine and well, but highly perishable products that have a short shelf life, it’s not good because you’re adding a day or two of transportation to it.

Anthony Codispoti (52:40.051)
I’d like to take a step back and talk a little bit more about the, your family legacy. Cause reading on your website and some of the articles that I found, I’ll just quite a legacy of what I’ll call adaptation. You know, whether your family in the past has had to be bold and decisive in the face of, you know, oppression or just the changing local food environment.

I’m curious to hear you share maybe one of your favorite stories of what I’ll call family adaptation over the years.

Brian (53:16.49)
Well, you know, my great uncle Max, you know, who died in 84 at 80.

Brian (53:27.85)
You know, maybe the origin of food story was herring. And the herring would come in these gigantic wooden barrels and they’d be in the cooler. And my great uncle Max would, you know, would complain about, you know, sticking his hand in these, you know, these barrels of salt brine with pickled herring in it.

So he always tells the sir about one day he didn’t want to wait on this customer. And his mother, Rebecca said, Maxie, go wait on it. He goes, I don’t want to wait on her because she’s a bad customer. And Rebecca looks, you know, broken English, looks at him and goes, what are you talking about? Well, whatever fish I pick her, she doesn’t like. So I got to go back.

and go pick a different fish up. It could be the same fish, but she wants me to go back. And, you know, herring, which very few people even know about anymore, you know, once you get herring on your skin, it’s very difficult to get off. I mean, you know, if you cut a fresh onion, you know, you get that onion oil in you. Well, this is triple that.

So Rebecca looks at her son and goes, Maxi, the only bad customer is the one that doesn’t come in.

Brian (55:04.426)
So yeah, talk about family heritage and learning. You know, that’s kind of a pretty big item. I mean, that kind of speaks for it all. Unfortunately for me, and I try to do better, but you know, sometimes it’s best for me not to talk to an angry customer, which is why.

My wife is great at dealing with customers because, you know, sometimes I look at them and go, what do you want me to do? What would make you happy? And, and you’d think, well, that that’s a pretty black and white answer. A lot of customers are pissed off over that answer because they’re going, well, you’re not making me happy. You’re, you’re just, you’re, you’re just being smart with me. You screwed up.

I go, well, you know, and so, you know, those are, my answer is not sometimes a good answer, whereas my wife and some other people are just much better at going, you know, yeah, that didn’t turn out real well or something, and, you know, more loving in their answer. Where I’m like, no, I just want to fix it.

Anthony Codispoti (56:25.201)
Now, is there a succession plan in place? Is there any family that would like to take over the leadership role?

Brian (56:32.778)
Well, that is a great question on the fifth generation. My oldest child, Ellen, went to Emory, worked in a Fortune Hunter company and now does private equity. And the youngest one works for Nvidia and does artificial intelligence. And I really don’t know whether or not any of them want to be on call 24 -7.

So that’s a very good question. And that question will be answered when my demise occurs or I’m not capable of making decisions.

So to be determined and people can say, well, you’re chicken. Well, I’m realistic.

Anthony Codispoti (57:16.049)
to be determined.

Anthony Codispoti (57:25.969)
Brian, tell me about the ways in which you’ve been involved in the local community and why that’s so important to you.

Brian (57:37.866)
There are not many business people that have historical knowledge of the city, of a community, or even a business.

And sometimes I’ll look at things.

that leadership wants to do. And I go, wait a minute, guys. Where did you come with this idea? Explain to me the logic of this idea.

And you know sometimes I help them, sometimes they ignore me.

But I think that it’s important for people, especially elected leaders, who are just cast with a whole bunch of duties and responsibilities to sometimes get a different perspective. Sometimes I’m called or referred to by the younger groups of the angry old elder. And when they do that to me, I go, OK, fine.

Brian (58:53.066)
Let’s walk through the issues and how do we get this done? And my team is very good at that, you know, because, you know, sometimes you’ll get engineers for the city that want to build sidewalks or roads and you’re going, okay, it’s a pretty picture. Now, how do you make it, how do you keep people open? How do you make this function?

at the same time as you make this pretty road. Because if you get rid of all the businesses, and maybe that’s your goal, because you want to get rid of these businesses, how do you make it work?

And, you know, I just think that it’s important that.

people communicate about ideas.

Brian (59:52.234)
You know, a lot of people run for office because they’re single issue people. I’m going to fix the homeless. I don’t like the trash that’s going on. And then all of a sudden they get this position and they figure out that they now got to deal with sewers and they got to deal with buses and they got to deal with a whole bunch of other things that they didn’t sign up for.

And you got your constituents going, well, we want X, Y, and Z. And they’re going, where am I going to get the funding from? You know, who am I going to take it from? Am I going to take it from the fire department, the police department? And, you know, so they have to make choices. So I think that it’s very important that the business community and historical knowledge is reminded of people.

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:50.319)
And I read how there’s an overpass that had become very cluttered with human waste and trash and nobody was really doing anything about it and you took it upon yourself, pulled out of your own pockets to clean that area up.

Brian (01:01:10.858)
Yeah, and you know, it’s an ongoing process, you know, I mean, they caught me doing it. But, you know, we just continue to do it. And now

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:22.286)
They caught you doing it. They didn’t want you to do it.

Brian (01:01:25.834)
Well, the TV people caught me. I have no idea whether, you know, it’s a very interesting avenue when you’re dealing with federal interstates because the property is actually owned by the federal government, the state, federal state. So that’s technically under Homeland Security. And Homeland Security goes, wait, wait, I don’t want to deal with the homeless people.

So, and then, you know, the state and the city homeless department goes, well, we don’t have jurisdiction to go on their land. So it’s kind of one of these great things that don’t fit and they don’t want to talk. And, you know, everybody just kind of wants, wants to look the other way. So, you know, we, we, we kind of keep it clean. since that article, the city has spent $5 million.

remodeling our street, going from a four lane road to a two lane gentrified lane with cute sidewalks and bicycle paths and all kinds of things. So we’ll see how, we’ll see how this, you know, we’ll see how the next chapter works. One of the problems that they didn’t do was fence in

the area underneath the interstate where people would sleep.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:04.173)
Got it. Brian, I just have one more question for you, but before I ask it, I want to do two things. If you liked today’s content, please hit the subscribe, like or share button on your favorite podcast app. Brian, I also want to tell people the best way to get in touch with you. What would that be?

Brian (01:03:22.506)
brian at chaperones dot com

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:25.197)
Easy enough. Last question for you, Brian. I’m kind of curious. You’ve got obviously great historical vision, great historical context to pull from. I’m curious how you see your industry and in particular Shapiro’s evolving in the next five years.

Brian (01:03:43.69)
Well, Shapiro evolving in the next five years is somewhat of the growth plan of the city of Indianapolis, where they have taken downtown Indianapolis and put all the sports stadiums, convention centers, you know, within a three or four block walking district, walking area. And

I always tell people from, from out of town, I go, just think of a big 10 fraternity and sorority party. That’s what Indianapolis has done with sports. That people come to the city and they’ve just made it into one big fun, exciting area to be. And they’ve also done this with conventions. I’m sure you just watched the.

US Olympic swimming trials in Indianapolis, of which my wife and I went to one of these sessions. And it was absolutely spectacular. They took swimming and made it like an NFL game in announcing the swimmers and also with laser lights, the Academy Awards, all combined into one. And

just, you know, for instance, row one of a Colts game for the swimming would be row 11. So row 11 during a Colts game was row one for swimming because they made the platform and it was just absolutely spectacular. And frankly, our business for the 10 days of swimming trials were better than when the Super Bowl was in Indianapolis. I mean, it was

unbelievable what what they did. Just just you know.

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:49.516)
And was it so much better because it was a longer period of time that it was going on? Or does it just draw a bigger crowd?

Brian (01:05:57.034)
The way that the city did it, the way that the people that run Visit Indy, the sports corporation for the city, and their vision, basically to grow a sport. I mean, they basically took swimming and grew it into a national recognition.

Brian (01:06:27.786)
they were bringing people from all over the country in. And at the end of the day, I mean, the people that spend the most money in a city are tourists. We have our regular customers, our regular business, but you know, the growth is going to be with the tourist and as the city keeps growing, downtown Indianapolis. And…

Indianapolis is kind of the.

blueberry as a democrat city in the raspberry jello of the state.

And because of that conflict, shall we call it, but their Hoosiers at heart, they figure out how to get it done. Sometimes they wrestle and fight and scream at each other. And at the 11th hour, they come up with a pretty good plan.

But getting to that 11th hour can be just turmoil. And you never know what’s going to happen. Even from the potential of dissolving the city of Indianapolis by the state. I mean, it gets pretty crazy. So the future of us is a lot of growth from

Brian (01:08:01.834)
just the city expanding their footprint. As for my industry,

Unfortunately…

You know, we’re going to see the little local pockets of the entrepreneur or restaurant person, but it’s probably going to be in a second site of the original. You know, they’re going to take over somebody else’s restaurant site that put too much money into it and couldn’t afford the bill because

restaurant equipment and everything is just so expensive today. You know, a hood system, you know, if you want to put a hood system into a restaurant, it’s anywhere from 70 ,000 to 150 ,000, especially when you add 10 tons of air conditioning to that system. And they can’t make enough money to pay for the cost to get into the restaurant business.

So the chains, you know, they can buy stuff cheaper and they’ll put it in, but you know, because there’s so many other restaurants, they don’t do a good job managing them. So you’re going to have this turnover, but you know, you’re going to have the big chain restaurants, the heritage restaurants.

Brian (01:09:34.858)
And then you have, you know, little bits and pieces of mom and pop.

Brian (01:09:42.186)
So, you know, you’re not going to see very many brand new mom and pop restaurants. They’re going to end up, you know, taking over a place that was somebody else’s restaurant. It’s kind of like a used car. You know, you can buy a hundred thousand dollar Porsche and in three years you can buy it for 60 ,000.

And you know, it’s still fine. You know, and maybe the $60 ,000 Porsche, you got to spend five grand on it to fix something on it, but you’re not going to spend the bigger number. And I think that’s what’s going to happen as we evolve. Because the mom and pop people, you know, first of all, to put in a minimal kitchen is $350 ,000.

maybe 500 ,000 realistically. Well, you know, they’re going to have a 75 seat restaurant. They’re not going to be able to, and that doesn’t include buying the tables, the chairs, you know, doing the tenant improvements, you know, putting in floors and all that stuff. So, you know, you’re looking at a million, million and a half bucks just to start.

Anthony Codispoti (01:11:10.218)
Yeah. So we’re, we’re less likely to see mom and pops, because the big guys can buy things at scale. They can operate at scale, which is more efficient, better pricing. And we’ll probably see more of the, the used car thing where somebody comes in and takes over, an outfit that, you know, had paid the expensive price to equip a facility and they can step in and they can operate it more efficiently now because they don’t have that cost structure.

Brian (01:11:37.514)
Right, and all they may need to do is buy a $10 ,000 new stove and a $10 ,000 new oven. And for $20 ,000, they got a half a million dollars of cooking equipment.

Anthony Codispoti (01:11:54.537)
There you have it, folks. Brian, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Brian (01:12:03.498)
Well, thank you very much. You’ve asked very enlightened questions and hopefully your audience enjoys what they heard.

Anthony Codispoti (01:12:11.593)
I’m sure that they will. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.