Building a Fast Casual Empire: How Dillas Quesadillas Grew from College Dream to 11-Unit Concept

(upbeat music) - We are back here on Fast Casual Nation, the podcast that started it all. And of course, we are recovering from the Fast Casual Executive Summit. Shera Kanzler joining me as my co-host, how are you? - I'm great, recovery is the right word. That was a whirlwind. (laughing) - It was a good one. There in Austin, beautiful, beautiful Austin, weather was good, everything was nice. Couldn't have had a better day. Joining us is Maggie and Kyle Gordon, which you guys actually know that town pretty well, right? - Yeah. - Very well. - Kyle was born and raised. - Born and raised, yep. - You guys went to college together. - We had a chance to do the summit there. (laughing) That's my hometown, yep. - Where we met? - Those years are a little more fuzzy than my earlier years. (laughing) - All right, well, these power couples, they're coming in with a brand called Dilla's quesadillas. You've probably seen this in the Dallas Metroplex area. One of the top brands growing in Texas out there. So again, thanks for coming in. You guys, what is the total store count right now? - We've got 11 units. - 11 units, okay. Is it all Dallas and North Texas? What's the further store away from you? - So we've got six company stores here in the DFW Metroplex and then we have one franchisee that has five stores. They are in Louisiana and East Texas. - So Rustin, I think will be the furthest away. - Yeah, Rustin's probably the furthest. - Yeah, 'cause I think when you look at growing a brand, especially at you guys' size, having that control, or I shouldn't say control, having that influence on trying to keep things locked in is very important. What made you go the route of a franchisee so early? 'Cause that's a big franchisee for your size of brand group. - Well, I mean, I'll tell this story 'cause I'm the closest to it. So my origin story was at Raising Kings. And so straight out of college, I started there as an hourly chip manager, worked my way up. And one of my earliest mentors there was a guy named Pete John. And he was my district manager. He was from Street Board. And he taught me everything I needed to know about the restaurant business and culture and everything else. And so fast forward, I left and started Dilla's. And I've been doing Dilla's. We've been doing Dilla's for about four years at this time. And Pete came to me and was like, "Hey dude, I left Keynes. "I've been doing something else for about six months. "I gotta get back in the business, man." And I was like, "Okay, we can try to figure this out maybe." And we ended up doing a joint venture 'cause we were not ready to franchise. We didn't have-- - We had no intention of franchising business at all at that point. And we really wanted to keep it a company on store. - Yeah, and so we figured it out. Long story short, we figured it out. He opened his first location in 2018. And then he's just been growing organically. And so he's got five locations now. But he started with one. It was his first ever franchise. But he was a, he's just a bad operator. And like in culturally, we spoke the same language. And he was that type of guy that was like, "Dude, I'm patient. "Like I'm gonna come in this with you. "And I understand you haven't got this thing fully baked yet. "But I wanna be part of the very beginning "of the foundation of this. "And I don't wanna wait until you've got it figured out. "You know, like I wanna go now." - And so now fast forward, and we've been in business with him for seven years. Now we're more ready to franchise now that we've got a lot of the pieces figured out. And we've made so many learnings from working with him. - Yeah, I saw that you guys brought in Michael Mobbery just recently from Muya to help you franchise. So that'll be key. So are you guys thinking you're often ready to go now? Like franchising is what you're focused on? - Yeah, I mean, we literally just got off a call with a main land who's gonna be our kind of lead generation partner. So we're super excited about what we're about to launch with that. We've got a lot of exciting data and just the storytelling. You know, I'm super excited for Nick to really tell the story of Dylan that we can tell, but he sees it from an outside perspective in a different way than we do, you know? And so he like can spin up some magic in the way we talk about Dylan and what it means to own a franchise. - Right, well, speaking of that story, you guys launched this in college, right? You came up with the idea back then? - Yep, yep, came up with the idea in college. And then, you know, Maggie and I were driving like Ikea, you know, which was like the coolest thing back in 2003. And like, it was like the newest thing. We drove like two hours to Houston just to go to work. - Yeah, we had to go to Houston. There wasn't one in Austin yet. - No, and on our way, we're like, oh, let's talk about like KCDI ideas and the Philly Dilla and like all these different, you know, you know, dreams that we had. - Like maybe the menu on the back of our seat. - Yeah. - Why KCDI is and not something else? What was it about them? - Oh, KCDIs are the best. - I mean, you never met someone that doesn't like KCDI. - Great hands up. - Yeah. - Nobody doesn't like it. - Well, the thing is, this is a really long story. I know we don't have time. We'll have to go get a beer when you guys are in Dallas. But the, at the very, very beginning, you know, Maggie and I, or not Maggie, but myself, our family went to a place called Matzel Rancho growing up. And, you know, they got to know me so well that the waiter, his name was Mo, he'd make me whatever I wanted, but all I ever wanted was KCDIs. And so he would make all sorts of different kinds for me and said, dude, like, this isn't chicken and cheese. I'll put portobello mushrooms and peppers and onions in it. And so my love affair with the KCDI started at an early, early age. - That is not a KCDI. - Yeah. - Look at that, that is not a KCDI. - They are deliciously over the top. You know, I think that the other thing is, is like, we really brought a lot of like fusion flavors, you know, like into it. And so like, we have all sorts of delicious, like smoked brisket and, you know, french fries in it. - Southern comfort food, honestly. Like cheeseburger and french fries, brisket. Like, we've pretty much made it more of an American take on it. And the reason is, I mean, the KCDI is just a great vessel, right? It's so... - It's portable, it's all together, you know, like, you can do whatever you want. - Yeah, you can, you can build on this from a culinary aspect, for sure. - It's a vessel for cheese, so I'll make it. - Yeah, they're all together, you know? I mean, tacos obviously are super crazy, but tacos can fall apart. And the cheese is the glue that binds it all together. - Yep, for sure. - So when, okay, so when you're building this crazy menu that we're looking at that we just showed there, you've started to deviate a little bit into some other things. Is there a plan to try to take this beyond the quesadilla and into some other elements that would kind of support the menu? - I think that we've, if anything, we've gone the opposite. So we've tried to simplify, really, you know? And there's some things in there at the very beginning, and what you find, we've been building this for 12 years plus, right? And so early on, we were too simple. And people were like, you don't have chips in queso? And we're like, oh, do we need to have that? And they're like, yes. And so we're like, okay, let's add that on, you know? And then so we did, and we, you know, we increased the size of the tortilla, and like we started doing these alterations and these modifications to be able to be more supportive of kind of like, what our customer-- - Just listening to the customer. - Yeah. And really, our product mix is around 50% drive through, and then, you know, only 15% dine in. And then all that other percentage is out the door. Third party, online order, you know, take out all that catering, all that other stuff. And so what we realize is that people wanna leverage us, leverage dillos for convenience. We're a QSR+ brand, you know? Like we don't have any preconceived notions that we're this like $25 really high in fast casual experience. That's not who we are for the, for our customers. Like we're the family on the go. We don't have TVs, we don't have alcohol. - No high-five, like-- - Like it's like, we're very specific-- - The fashion grab. - Yeah. For real. - But you're getting really high quality. That's a differentiator, really, is everything's made from scratch and super fresh. - I wanna know how many gorilla fries you actually sell on a weekly basis. What's the total count? - Oh, on a weekly basis? - Thousands. - Yeah, I was like, we pulled the numbers recently. We're actually about to launch kind of an elevated version of the gorilla fries because right now in the value space, it's a approachable budget that's really filling. Is that just like a loaded fry? Like a loaded fry? - Yeah, okay. - You can customize it with any of the ingredients we have in-house. - The magic is really like on those fries, like it's got our proprietary fried spice, which is delicious if you guys haven't had it. And then the queso is really like, when you put that level of deliciousness on top of french fries, it turns into magic. - There's something magic about the fry spice and the queso together that is just so good. And then you can also put everyone on top of it. - Coutine is one of the best menu elements out there when you think about just that savory component. So I think you guys have kind of hit that on the side of creating that. - Instead of gravy, we got queso, it's even better. - That's right. - Yeah, there you go. - It's queso amazing. - The DoorDash 2023 figures on like their top 10. Number one was french fries, number two was chicken quesadillas, and number eight was queso in the nation. - Oh, and you put it all in one item. - I was like, oh my God, what do you want? - I like it. We're just going to make all three of those, just one item though. - Yeah, I like that. - You can get it all together. - I love it. So Maggie, you kind of came from a little different background, not in the business, but kind of in the business. You were in media, and big media, not necessarily just a regular agency. You came up for some pretty big-- - Yeah, I was in a big agency, pretty big players. - I had no intention of ever being in the restaurant industry, that's for sure. And when he had the idea, I mean, I love the idea, but I didn't ever think I would be a part of it. And when we got started, it really was just kind of a, more of a means to an end in the beginning of like he needed support in marketing and logo design and website, I'm kind of a techie. So I was able to help with a lot of those things, and it started kind of just part-time. But ultimately, for us, it's about the legacy in our family. And so I went all in and started working for Dilla's whole time. - She was actually Pepsi person of the year. Yeah, so we got a free trip to New York City because of that. So Tracy Locke picked her up with that. Yeah, Tracy Locke was an awesome experience and gave me so much insight that I think, otherwise we would have probably been a little bit more struggling on the marketing side of things. And I just, I had the experience and the knowledge from that job to bring over to Dilla's and helped us, I think, get off the ground a little bit easier. - Sure. - Well, and it looks very polished. Even though it does look kind of homegrown as a startup, but it also has the elements of big brand. So that's a hard line to walk too of feel local and feel original, but not look like you're a mom-and-pop and be able to translate, but not look too polished, like a Chipotle, which is just, you can tell is brand box. - It was very intentional in the beginning for us with that particular mindset of we didn't want any excuses. We wanted to look like we played with the big boys, but that also, to your point, brought its challenge of people assumed we were a chain from out of state or something that came in and they didn't understand that we were just locally owned. - Yeah, yeah. But we, again, it was about having no excuses more, not for us per se or for the customer, but for our team members, right? Like we always wanted to set them up for success and compete for the right people, right? Because if you can compete for the best people in the industry, then you're gonna set yourself up for success and we were like, well, how do we get the team members from Chipotle to come over here? Well, you got to have digital scheduling and back in 2013, that cost extra money. And you got to have this and this and, you know, like you've got to have this polished look and you've got to have culture and you've got to have core values. I mean, we've blessed our butt and invested and, you know, sacrificed our income to be able to provide that for the team and worked really hard to build those systems out instead of just grinding it out in the restaurant. Like we would go home and like build a system to get better the next day and help our teams do it without us, you know, and in a better fashion. - We opened day one with an SOP, which is kind of like in the restaurant industry, that's throw it out the second day, but, you know, we opened it and we did it the second day. - That's cool. Hey, what was the scrappiest thing? You talk about that, you know, trying to win the best of the best. What would be the scrappiest thing that you had to do when you were starting up to get your doors open? Some crazy storm. - We survived ice and the get-in. There was this ice storm in Dallas that hindered our opening. - You know, you guys were opening at the time when the grid was shutting down? - Yeah. - Yeah. - It was bad. - We opened on December 27th. Like probably the worst day ever to open, but we were late. - And then I asked me to get in here like two weeks later in 2013, it was a disaster. But I would say from a scrappy perspective in like the non-sexy side of this business, we took over a second generation location brand, I would not say, but. - Obviously if you look at it. - Yeah, but when we went in there, I mean, we were like, I mean, Maggie and I were there for 20 hours a day, probably, just cleaning it, right? Like just like trying to get to a, like a baseline level of like. - Will you ever do that again? - No. No. - Okay. - No rerun locations. - Yeah. - Okay, I like it. - It had been sitting empty for a while. - Again, it's the bootstrap mentality that you have to have for that first one because you don't have the resources. And so would I do it again in terms of the second or third generation? Of course, I love it. But, you know, what I didn't realize then is like, I didn't need to go in and like clean all the ceiling tiles and get it kind of prepped for construction, the way that we did. But like, you know, that saved us $1,500. And like, otherwise. - We can get on with it, man. - Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, so like it's one of those things where that was super scrappy. The other thing that was I think super scrappy that you've got to do is you've got to go out into your community and show up for one person, right? We would show up to these events at a really small high school or something. And they're like seven-man football teams. There'd be 35 parents there, you know, something like that. - That's awesome. - We showed up with a tent. We fed them like, those were gonna be our names. - Most people will remember that. - Yeah. - And that's what makes legends. Those kinds of things make legends in communities. The people remember those things. That's for sure. - You guys were talking about it. - What about, okay, so let's get into the partnership. Let's get into the partnership dynamic around this. So husband, is this the first husband/wife team we've done, Shera? - Oh, it might be. - I think it is. - No, we had one more. - We had one other one. - We had one more. - Another one, yeah. - There's not this kidding actually. - Most people ask him, yeah, how do you do it? - Yeah, how do you do it? How do you keep it going? 'Cause I know you guys have young kids or middle-aged, I guess. Are they teens? - Teenagers, yeah. - Yeah. - When we opened, it was our daughter's second birthday. - To keep track of everything. - Yeah. - How do you pull it off? What's the magic? - I mean, honestly, we're, I think, complete counterparts to each other, you know? So we're very yin and yang. I'm the integrator in our relationship. He's the visionary. Like, he's big ideas. I'm an executor. And I think we just really understand each other's lane, you know, and respect it and give the space for doing what we do in each of our roles. - Yeah, yeah, again, like, I think that the great thing about the restaurant business and the great thing about kind of having your own business and doing it with your wife, I will say some of the sacrifices is we both have to extract a, you know, a livable wage from the business. There's not one of us that's kind of like, out here in an executive level that's, you know, bringing in health benefits and all this, like, we're both all in together on this, which, you know, makes it difficult because we're both living off of it and have to create our own value in the enterprise. And then, but the amazing thing that it offers us is that freedom of movement, right? We don't have full financial freedom at this point in our lives, but we have freedom of movement, which is really big, you know? And like that time, freedom is huge, like being able to have kids go from two years old to 15 years old. And all, everything that happens in those years, being able to be there for those events, pick them up after school, like the things that having a business offers you has just been really the incredible piece of it beyond, you know, some of the financial stuff. - Do you find that when operators come to you guys and are, you know, and maybe even employees, they say, oh, this is a husband and wife, it's a family-oriented, is that a plus? Or do you think they look at it in a negative way? What has been the... - I think a plus, you know, like we bring the family, again, like it's family with accountability, you know? And I think that that's a really important piece of our culture. I don't know if Maggie would ever want to fire me or if I would ever want to fire Maggie. But the great thing, we run on EOS, which is the Entrepreneur's Operating System. And if you're kind of not delivering on your roles, I think Maggie and I would have the maturity to kind of say, you know what, I'm not delivering on this seat, so let's just find somebody who can, right? Like, my goal is to not be the CEO, eventually, right? I want to have a CEO in my position so I can be full founder and just wearing a mascot suit every day, you know, as the little girl. But for Maggie, she probably doesn't want to be in a couple of the seats that she needs to occupy right now as we scale up the business. And so the goal is to build those seats, you know? But we do want to continue to be a part of Dillas as a brand and create a legacy for our kids, give them the option to be in the business. And if they choose not to, like it's something that we created and want to be part of ourselves. - Are the kids involved now? - Yeah, Parker, it's his first job. - Yeah, Parker, our son, he- - Terrible employee. - He literally turned this summer in with not super valuable, so he's got some work to do. He'll probably watch this back later and be like, "Hey, man, I can't believe they called me out like that." - There's definitely, I think the other thing about the dynamic of the husband and wife thing is that like, from the unit level, they don't experience us as much, but like, you know, in our home office here, we're kind of the mom and dad of the office, you know? Just by nature. - No one's seen mom and dad fight, that's for sure. But the other thing like with Parker that I thought was so interesting when he started here is what I identified is, is that he's an operator, right? So like, he's not a great fit at doing data. Like, he was doing some things on the computer and helping organize files and stuff like that. That kid, he needs to be in the restaurant. And he's only 15 and he can't work there yet. And so, but he's got that energy. He's got that, I want to talk to customers, I want to be busy. Like, when you put them in front of the computer, he shut down. And that's a great thing about like kind of getting a first job is like figuring out like, what am I good at? - That works, yeah. - What do I want to do? Like, what am I passionate about using my time on? And so I thought that was a good lesson for us. - When you look at sales right now, you guys 11 units, what is AUV for a, for one of your high performers? - Over two and a half million. So the, most of them with about a $2 million AUV across the brand. You know, obviously we do have one location that's in Shreveport that's not a drive-through. So they've got a different kind of level that was Pete's first location, but fantastic rent factor. So it enabled him to continue to grow. So yeah, that's where the sales are. And again, we're really trying to grow those top line sales. Our next kind of horizon is to get $3 million locations. Like we see that as like- - What would it take, do you think, to get to three? - Well, it's been what we're working on, right? Like, so the last 18 months we've been working on refining a lot of back-on-house process. We've been working on kind of simplifying the menu to be less kind of like psychological overload when you approach it from a drive-through perspective. So we can get our throughput, right? - Efficiency is number one. I mean, the efficiency piece, I think speed of service has been a huge focus with the menu change that we made to be able to increase the throughput. - Yeah, a seven second reduction in drive-through times, over time is a one-page grow in same restaurant sales. And so we've, just in the sense we've introduced the new menu, which is about a month and a half, two months old, middle of July is the last location to open with it, we've reduced drive-through times 20 seconds. So like for us, we're like, okay, that can draw that line out to, you know, hopefully a 3% same restaurant sales increase just through throughput advantage, right? And we think we're just on the tip of the iceberg of being able to get that kind of. - And the consistency piece, right? Like it's not just through-- - Look how fast Maggie is. She got on the-- - Okay, what are you guys doing here? Explain this, eat and run. What is this? - I have some TikTok trend, you know? And so it's about like whoever gets the rock, paper, scissors has to eat. And I guess-- - You're getting-- (laughing) - But I was getting really full. - Yeah, so she kept winning. And then unfortunately I didn't get to eat almost anything. So by the end I was definitely ready to chow down. - You're ready to huh? Gets the best. - It was almost 98 that day. - Yeah, it was, we were sweating. - I love it. 3 million is a possibility. Walk us through a process, because I'm thinking, you know, operationally, how do you run a drive-through at those kinds of speeds? What are the kinds of equipments that you have to have? How do you guys do that? Is there, you're not like Chick-fil-A where you put people in line on the orders or is it mostly app-based? - The whole time in India before this, 'cause it sounds like he wants to start a case of a business, I'm not sure. - Yeah, I wanna know about that. Well, you know, Saver, we invest in a lot of, you know, concepts, so we're always asking these questions. - Yeah, I'll give you the kind of like, I guess you can call it the secret softs, the secret holding, the ranch of it all. So really quickly what I learned at Raising Canes is, if you wanna be fast, you gotta flow cook, right, which means there has to be predictability in your quality and in kind of what your assumptions are on your customer. This is kind of a math problem, right? And so in the back of house, what it looks like essentially is, you know, a grill and then Chipotle. So Chipotle has that press, right there, we have a big grill, right? They can handle a lot of tortillas. And so our tortillas are getting the right toast point and melt point. And that is a critical piece of it because you put the cheese on it and you start to get the color on the bottom of the tortilla and then you get the cheese melt. That has to be at the right time, you know, pull it off. And we only have one size tortilla. So when all of us show up at the restaurant and walk in the door, they're gonna say, "Four walking in!" And so somebody in our house is gonna put four tortillas on the cheese. - Yeah, so you know I'm gonna get the tortillas. - That's a message. That's how you do it with speed is in consistency and quality, but you have to be simple to do it. That's the real secret. And a lot of people, and by people, I mean restaurants, aren't willing to be simple. They want to trick it up, be something for everyone. Have five different sized tortillas. - Or different flavored tortillas, you know, different cheese blends, use one tortilla, one tube blend. - Yeah, and so that is what leads to the speed. - Okay, well, I have a question, the tortilla. Because is this a standard, you know, like supply chain tortilla? Is it something you guys have grabbed off and done something around? What is the mix there? - So it is kind of a standard supply chain tortilla. So early on, you know, when we were designing the menu, there were gonna be certain things that we were going to, I guess you would say concede in the sake of, you know, being able to even have multiple units, right? Like, so some of those things, like we don't cut our own fries, right? Like we have a flash frozen, you know, french fry that's delicious and great, and they can do better than us. Same thing with the tortillas, right? And early on, we were actually bringing in like a really locally done or whatever. And they were like, well, it's, you know, we can do that, but it's gonna come in frozen. And we're like, that sucks. Like, let's look for something else. So we found one, and really when you're looking for a tortilla for a quesadilla, it's gotta be a hearty and buttery, right? Because it has to withstand that heat on the bottom and be strong enough to take that heat and allow time for the melt on top because you can't have it burn, right? - Yeah, it'd be too crispy, man. - It'd be too crispy, so you gotta find that right balance. - The butter gives it that extra crisp and flavor. - Yeah, and the hardiness, you know, to last on the grill without getting, what we call it, it's like kind of saltine edge, which like you get like almost a cracker effect on the edge, which is basically a wasted tortilla for us. - A broken record? - A broken record. And so like that, those are the types of things you've gotta look out for, and these tortillas are fantastic. - Well, I know you guys are using, when you were talking about out this summit, you guys were talking about how you were using AI to kind of help with that. You were talking about your AI prep assistant. I was hoping Maggie, you guys could share that. I thought that was really interesting. - Yeah. - Yeah, quick and taste. We've been working with them, I guess, probably over a year now to get it fully launched. There's certainly some nuance to it. It takes a lot of precision and recipe and menu, but the beauty of it is that it can give you the predictability of sales and prep based on each unit units. I mean, because it slide into toast and sees all of our sales data, it's taking over a hundred points of data to do their sales prediction and then layering on top of that the product mix so that our team knows exactly what they need to make. And it was a hard adjustment for them because they were way over prepping. They thought they needed just to feel safe. So they had to really learn to trust the tool. And I spoke on the panel about it too, that we see the data that 85% accuracy, 85 to 90% accuracy with the tool doing the prediction. And when our team overrides it, they're at like 60% accuracy. - Or worse. - Yeah. - And those are also our certified prep people. It's like not that we don't really have, we don't have any random people that's doing prep data today. It's usually two to three people per location that are doing that prep. And those people are messing it up that frequently because again, they don't know what the sales are gonna be that day. They're just kind of doing the copy and paste from the Primo Prep Board. And that is just a legacy system that is, I don't think you're gonna see those moving forward in the next couple of years. - Yeah, excited to be able to offer that to Franchisee as well. You've got a sophisticated system that closes the time on training for your shift lead to be able, like they don't know how to predict sales or how much prep they should do based on predictive sales, right? So this just gets them up to speed, way faster and more predictable. - I do wanna add something though for like, I'm trying to recognize this as something, if somebody out there is an emerging fast casual or for QSR+ crane, you gotta really be buttoned up if you wanna take advantage of this new wave of AI. Because what PrecyTaste exposed in some of our recipes is, I mean, and we're buttoned up in like our Restaurant 365 prep recipes, like some of them pulled over, not quite right or weren't quite accurate to what we were saying they were versus the prep book or the recipe book in location. And so like some of that onboarding process even exposed our systems. And we were at the time, we had 10 locations open or something like that, right? And so I can only imagine an emerging brand that's already pulling their hair out just trying to open the doors and do everything else, wanting to take advantage of some of these new tools. But they're gonna be surprised when they're like, oh wait, I need to have all that data for you. I need to have this for you or that for you. Again, PrecyTaste, they helped us very much so in the onboarding process. But if you don't have a lot of your stuff already ready, it's gonna be more difficult to onboard to start now. So maybe you can in a year, when all of this starts to become more available and more accurate, you're ready to jump on. - In PrecyTaste is continuing to develop. We're super excited. They're about to roll out actual versus usage. So like knowing what you're selling and how much their on hand counts are. So you can see if there's waste or you can identify ship to ship. - Essentially live theoretical. So I can look last night and it would say, you should have sold this much chicken, you sold this much chicken. You should call that team member today and say, hey, let's bring you in and do some retraining. The portioning was off a little bit on chicken last night. Just wanna get you realigned. That's incredible for our colleagues. Like that's how we're gonna win in this kind of like go forward. If we're gonna give three points a win on labor because of wage growth and everything else, we've gotta catch it in terms of the waste that are on the cogs. 'Cause our prime, we gotta be in the 55 to 58 range. And so as restaurateurs and entrepreneurs, if we all wanna continue to grow this industry, we have to make money, right? And it's our job to find a way. And I think it's in those little margins with some of this tech that can help us close those gaps that traditionally have just been, oh yeah, bucket of chicken weighs fine, throw it out. They ain't that way anymore. Like we gotta be really tight. It's already raised within. - So you guys think that these AI tools are gonna make major strides in helping the operations side of the restaurant industry? - They already have. I mean, we're, again, like another one, GM Pile, this thing that we're kind of looking at right now, like you're looking at like never having, not having a GM ever write a schedule weekend. I mean, you were talking soon, you know? And that's huge. And, you know, on the panel I was talking about, most of the time the GM's not even doing it, they've delegated it because they just created a template. And that's like for us-- - Coffee cake, coffee cake. - Yeah, for us that's almost $700,000 of delegated P&L responsibility for somebody who's making $15 an hour. - Yeah, for sure. All right, we're gonna get into the future and the lightning round. So, Cher, we're gonna like get two or three questions into them before we let 'em go here. Cher, you wanna start? - Yeah, sure, Maggie, if you could go back to the beginning and tell yourself one thing, what would it be? - Be patient, just be patient. You know, there's a lot of roadblocks along the way, but it all worked out for me. - I thought she was gonna say get out now. (all laughing) - Get out now. - Yeah, you're still 12 years of misery. - All right, so for couples thinking about going into business together, first of all, now that you've done it, would you tell two people, a new Maggie and Kyle, do it or not? - I'll start. I would say do it, but do it how we did it, right? Like wait till the business is successful enough to sustain your life, you know? We, you know-- - Takes a lot of pressure off for sure. - Yes, like we waited, I think, two years before. - Yeah, I had a couple part-time jobs. I was, you know, doing other things just so that we could have an up-income because we were putting so much into the company. - Yeah, but again, and know each other's strengths, right? If you're both visionary, it's not gonna work out because nobody's gonna do anything. - Yeah. (all laughing) - Yeah, and it's not going home every night. That's the hardest part is that you're always on. - Day nights, day nights often, the lead topic is dillas and we gotta get past that quick. And so like it, you know, it does permeate your life and make it your life. - Yeah, for sure. All right, listen, we've had Maggie and Kyle Gordon coming in from a rising star brand out there and that is dillas. Okay, so Diaz, you guys can find them over in Dallas and of course visit their website, which is dillas.com. Thanks you guys for coming in today, we appreciate it. - Oh, it's a pleasure, thank you. - Yeah, great having you. All right, here we go. Let's get into a couple of other things right now, Sharra. Big stuff happening out there on the summit. What was your big takeaway from the summit? Would you say number one thing that just hit it? - Oh man, AI baby, the size of the Gordon's just said, yeah, it's coming and if you're not ready for it, get ready for it. - I like it. Well, we have had that topic quite a bit, in reference to here on the show. In fact, I think it's our number one viewed video as well, but of course we have to announce the winners of the perfect pitch coming to you from the Brazilian concept TAP, who wins the perfect pitch contest at the summit. - You're amazing, TAP brothers, they were amazing, didn't you? I mean, I love them, I'm happy they won, they did a great job, their menu, amazing. - Yeah, fortunately I got a chance to see this group. Well, I saw them all, I just didn't know who won 'cause I had to leave early. But this is gonna be one of our fast casual front runners for 2026, so we're gonna connect with the TAP team and get them into the front runners program, which starts in January next year for another big chance to win big prizes and investment from Sabre Capital. So what was it that you think got them over? 'Cause Cart was pretty tough. - Absolutely, Traveller's Cart was awesome too. I actually think it was on the last day when we had them come up head to head, they, we had both duos up there kind of answering questions. And the brothers are just so, you can just feel their passion and they're gonna do anything to make it work. And they were just, they just won the crowd over easily. They're very, they're very enduring and smart and they're hustlers, they're ready to work, so. - Exactly, yeah. - The American dream, they led with the old school American dream, it really is. - Yeah, which is, if you're in the restaurant industry, especially if you're in fast casual, these are the kind of concepts that end up usually doing really well down there on the outside. - The younger brother, the younger brother came up with it, the idea, and then a few years later went back to Brazil and said, come on older brother, come over here and help me make this happen. And you know, it was just a really cool story. - I love it, I love it, great story. And it's gonna be fun to see this one inside, inside the trenches as they grow for sure. Lots happening, of course, you guys, if you're not subscribed to the show right now, make sure and step up and do that. If you're listening on the audio side, you can do it on Apple podcast or over on Spotify, give us a couple of stars over there, preferably five. And if you're here on YouTube, make sure and just hit subscribe right now on the channel Saver FM, you'll find us over there. And more of these podcasts, all available to you, we'll catch you next time right here on Fast Casual Nation. Take care. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)