Noodles & Co.: Enjoy the Noodles, but Savor the Company!

(upbeat music) - This is Franchise Today, brought to you by FRM Solutions, providers of the best in class software solutions for Franchise relationship management. Franchise Today is your destination for weekly information, conversations, and interviews with accomplished industry leaders, all of whom share best practices for sustainable growth and sensible franchising. Here now, your host, Stan Friedman, to kick off this week's podcast. - Today is Wednesday, October 12th. I'm Stan Friedman, and this is Franchise Today. Well, this week, I feature a reprise of one of the most popular interviews I've ever presented right here on Franchise Today. Today, I'll be talking with John Ramsey, Vice President of Franchising, for the iconic noodles and company. John's background spans over 28 years of experience in restaurant and franchise development with such icons as TGI Fridays, Jack in the Box, Marcos Pizza, and Bruxy International. John joined Noodles and Company in November as Vice President of Franchise Development. While many restaurant concepts in this COVID post-COVID era have been hitting the brakes, Noodles and Company has doubled down as the Colorado chain, with John leading the franchise development charge, hits the gas, driving Noodles Restaurant Growth initiatives. John's history includes positions in both franchise and restaurant development, and he's extremely excited to have the opportunity to grow and further develop a proven concept like Noodles and Company. As we'll discuss today, Noodles has innovated and adapted quickly to the off-premise experience and offers attractive unit level economics for franchisees. I'll be back in two minutes or less with John Ramsey. Franchise Today will be right back, but first, a word from our sponsors. We are all familiar with Vistage, YPO, and EO. Well, now comes Zor Forum, a somewhat similar type of executive group, but this one comes with a twist. 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Noodles & Company offers the world's favorite noodle dishes, salads, and soups all in one restaurant. Each dish is carefully handmade to the guests' specifications, using only the freshest ingredients. Noodles proudly uses real food and real cooking for real flavors. Their dishes are inspired by the individuality, creativity, and cultural heritage of cuisine from around the globe. From penny rosa to Japanese pan noodles, the med salad, and of course, their famous Wisconsin mac and cheese. Only the most authentic ingredients make the cut. While they don't like to brag, Noodles & Company is honored to be the recipient of several business and industry awards. These include Forbes Magazine, Top 100 Most Trustworthy Companies in America. Eat this, not that 35 hottest healthy restaurants in America. Nation Restaurant News, Menu Masters Award winner. NBCNews.com, Top 10. Best Love Brands, Parent Magazine, Top Family Friendly Restaurants, Health Magazine, America's Healthiest Fast Food Restaurants, and Ink Magazine's 5,000 Recognizing America's fastest growing private companies for some 10 of the last 20 years. There's a story here, and here to tell it is John Ramsey. - John Ramsey, welcome to Franchise Today. - Thank you, glad to be here. - Happy to have you. You know, I went and did a little homework on who I'd be talking with today, and I found a unique fact. I don't see this often when I search for someone on LinkedIn, but I found John Ramsey and Stan Friedman share 1,015 LinkedIn connections. - That's a big number. How do we not know each other before this? - Well, that's a good question. I think we do know each other, and I think we hug and embrace once we saw each other. (John laughs) - Fair and equitable. Hey John, let's do what I always do. Let me ask you to help the audience understand how franchising found you. What were you doing, when was it, and what was the intersection? What did that look like for you? - I sort of came into this a little bit different way. I'm actually an architect by training. After graduating from Virginia Tech with my architecture degree, I moved to New York City with Plan A being to be designing skyscrapers, living in a loft surrounded by like-minded Renaissance people, but Plan A did not work out. So like many people, I worked in restaurants and retail all through high school and college. So Plan B was to work retail for the holiday selling season, then back to Plan A. So I started working up Bloomingdale's in New York City. I wound up staying there for seven years. What I discovered was that every large company has an in-house development department. So I used my architecture background from my retail experience, and I became a store designer and then store construction. To me, this is really critical to who I am since I understand that the money's made on the sales floor or at the restaurant, or as we like to say at Noodle's, one bowl, one guest at a time. I also believe there's a good reason that a good restaurant company calls their office the support center and not the corporate office, 'cause our mission is to support the restaurants. So that's how I got started, and I think that's really important as to who I am and how I conduct myself. Now franchising, after Bloomingdale's, I had the opportunity, I followed a coworker to Sabaro. Sabaro had just gone public, growing at 100 plus restaurants a year. They were all company operated. A few years then, we got approached by the Marriott Corporation. They wanted to put Sabaro-style food court-style locations in airports and travel plazas, which by the way, now we call that non-traditional, but at the time, that was a pretty radical idea, putting branded food in these type of locations. So a franchising agreement was drafted and sorted by default, by the way, it was drafted by another long-time IFA member. We didn't even have in-house franchise department or in-house franchise counsel. But by default, I became the primary contact because I was the development guy. And I quickly learned the difference between answering to a boss of company operations versus working with the support team. So I quickly learned, my skills said I needed to add diplomacy, negotiation, flexibility. This all became part of who I am and how I behave. So that's how I got into it. - Why don't you walk us from there to what came next and how your career in and around franchising unfolded? - Yes, so after Sabaro, and by the way, they went through a phase where not unusual that they were growing very quickly. It was the family who all over public control, the business decided to take it private again, wanted to contract and guess what got cut franchising. And so I got approached by Long John Silver's. I had never done franchise sales before and they actually approached me for a franchise sales position. And I go and I meet with the team, I start talking with them. And I sort of ask the question, well, gee, why do you want me to do this? The response was that number one, we believe in people. We believe in cross training. We believe that with your background of supporting a franchisee and being involved with the development, that you offer a critical role that we need. And it wasn't about selling per se 'cause I'm not a salesperson by nature, but it was really about supporting the franchise community and leading the growth charge. So that was really the beginning for me of sort of taking the knowledge that I gained, adding franchise sales to my experience level. And from there, just took off. So over the years, I have worked for many different companies, both large and small. I've worked for startups where company operation brand wanted to start franchising from scratch, which was very exciting. So I literally got to write the agreement, got to establish an apartment, establish policy, procedure, process, all that type of thing. But I think for me all along, it was never forgetting again where the money's made, the money's made in the restaurant. And it wasn't about just selling deals. It was about getting the right partners. It was about having growth that was sustainable. And that for me is really important. - Well, that's part of why you're here today because sustainable is one of the buzzwords that this podcast is all about. Sustainable growth and sensible franchising. And it sounds like with some of your early career moves, you've been much in that mindset. So take us up from there closer to the current day and bring us up to the present 'cause we've got a lot to focus on today in our discussion about noodle. - Sure. So I sort of go back to, I think when I think of the present day, I really have to go back to the recession, 2008, 2009. Again, like a lot of people went through a career change rather unexpectedly and really saw firsthand the impact. It was one thing the impact to me personally, but within the franchise community, what the recession did is it really to me brought out or highlighted the fact that so many individuals had leveraged their 401(k), they had leveraged equity in their home to sort of start their dream of becoming a franchisee. And I saw so many people get hurt, so many people not recover. And it really left a mark on me that from that point on, I've been very focused on number one, making sure that I'm aligned with a brand that recognizes the value of people and that this is not just a financial transaction in a usual sustainability, right? That this is a long-term relationship. It's most likely gonna outlive me and my tenure, but for the franchisees, folks that are signing up to be part of the brand, you know, they're looking at a 20-year timeframe and they're putting a lot on the line personally. And so I take that very seriously and I think that's really what has brought me to today. - Well, I'm curious about noodles and as a concept, it has some unique aspects about it that I see from a business point of view, but before we get to those, I would certainly ask you to give the audience that may not be familiar with the brand, a little history about noodles and the value proposition that it provides to its consumer base. - Sure, absolutely. So first of all, noodles started in 1995 in the Denver area and it was really a pioneer or sort of one of the leaders of the fast casual movement. If you think back to the late '90s, early 2000s, brands like Pinero Bread were coming on stream. Chipotle was a small up-and-coming brand, Qdova. I had the fortune of in 2000 working for a brand called Rubio's Baja Grill out here in San Diego, who also was a pioneer in the fast casual segment. And I discovered noodles for the first time and we, like a lot of folks at that time, we would take these trips, different parts of the country to visit these fast casual brands to see what they were doing, how they were doing it, what was different, what we could use for ourselves. And so my first experience with the noodles was in 2001 in Denver. And really with noodles, the way I would describe noodles, first of all, celebrating 25 year anniversary this year, found in 1995, the concept was really based on the premise where you could go to one restaurant to get great meal options, but it was not tied to a specific region, and when I say region, meaning it was not Italian, it was not Asian, not barbecue, nor was it a protein, it's not a chicken restaurant or a hamburger restaurant or a pizza restaurant, but really using noodles and pasta as a unifier. So if you think of that, being able to go to one place, so whether you're craving sort of a comfort bowl of mac and cheese or something more complex like Pad Thai or sort of classic Italian like spaghetti meatballs, noodles is the place for you. So noodles is a restaurant where you could go and get this variety of meal options that sort of span across different regions, different proteins, very customizable. And so that was really the premise of what started the brand and it's sustained it for these 25 years. - And how has the footprint changed over the course of that 25 years and has the focus of food on-premise versus food consumed elsewhere played a big role in the changes that have occurred across the years? - Yeah, great question, right? So with respect to the footprint, as I mentioned, the brand started in Denver, we're now nationwide. However, if you look on a map, approximately 450 locations across the US, if you look on the map, we call it, I call it the rainbow distribution. We kind of go from California, then if you sort of go up very heavy in the mountain states, Colorado, Utah, up into the upper Midwest. And we're very strong in places like Milwaukee and Minneapolis, Green Bay, Chicago, down into Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, all the way down into Florida. So sort of this rainbow effect of where the locations were spread out over time. One of the things they did really well from a development standpoint is they didn't take a shotgun approach. So they didn't put one or two in every city. Once they went into a market, they really focused on developing out those markets to be fully penetrated. So not surprisingly today, our best performing markets or those markets were A, we've been the longest, but more importantly, that we have a high concentration of restaurants. So it really drives that brand awareness and drives that convenience factor. But you ask about the off-premise and that's one of the other, I think, benefits of what attracted me to noodles. If you take the premise that we defined the brand sort of pre-COVID and post-COVID, pre-COVID, noodles was already very heavily into off-premise dining. Over 50% of the occasions were off-premise already, which was great, right? That's what really positioned us to grow sort of post-COVID. And one of the, I believe one of the reasons for that is that if you think of pasta's, you think of noodle dishes, they travel very well. They stay hot, they stay fresh. It's easy to transport. And so from off-premise, other types of food, obviously that you'd want to eat in a restaurant or have and get that dining experience don't necessarily travel well. Noodles product always travel well. And again, we already had that sort of built-in off-premise model. When COVID hit, we were in a good place to start, but we recognized very clearly that we needed to do some innovation and adaptations to the concept. The first was really enhancing the digital experience. So we have a very robust, easy to use online ordering system. We have a very easy to use and customizable made-up app, which I think is one of the best in the industry. Very easy to use, very easy to customize your meal. Obviously, you build in your payment system. We've recently even done things, for example, where when you pull it to the restaurant, it'll tell you that your food's ready. You can click on a button that says, "Hey, I'm here." And notify somebody in restaurant, and they'll bring it out to your curbside. So it could truly be a touchless experience, cashless experience. And again, the meal's gonna come to you in a high quality container. Easy to take with you back to where you could eat. I think the other piece of really driving our success post-COVID was we all saw in the restaurant industry the shift in day part, right? If you think of people no longer work in the office, therefore you're sort of traditional, take a break from the office and have lunch changed. So those lunch occasions, I would say, I think really across the industry have really shrunk and become much more difficult to achieve sort of that lunchtime business as we knew it. The flip side of that is that the dinner occasion, I think really increased. A lot of us were stuck at home. At a certain point, you get tired of cooking every meal. You want to sort of get back to some level of normalcy, so you can't eat out, per se. So you want to bring dinner in. And by the way, now you're bringing dinner in for the whole family. So again, it's a little bit different at lunchtime when you're typically just buying it for yourself or maybe a coworker. The noodles brand and the menu really adapted itself very well to satisfying a family. So if you think of family of four or five, six people, everybody gets to order their own meal. So if you have dietary restrictions, we have gluten-free options. We have low-carb options. You know, one of my favorites is the zoodles, which is zucchini noodles, which by the way, all of this can be substituted in any dish, substituted with a zoodle noodle, which is a healthier option. But for kids, the mac and cheese spaghetti and meatballs is sort of a sure thing. Butter noodle, things like this. So it really has that breadth of menu that really adapts itself well to customizing to having a majority of entrees for a large group who everybody wants something different. - Do you guys do salads? - We do salads. And in fact, we're testing right now and continue to innovate on the salads. And this gets to some other pieces when you start talking about sort of operations and innovation within operations, is that we recognize we can't, number one, it can't be everything to everybody. But number two is you can't have too broad of a menu, because especially in this world of all premise, the ability to be able to quickly execute a high-quality product, there is a limitation as to what you could have on your menu, how many SKUs you could have in the restaurant, all those type of things. So we're constantly looking for, what are the right two, three, four salads to have on the menu that give a broad enough appeal, something unique and different that people can choose from. - You bring back some really old memories for me of my days at Wingzone. We had, I think, 84 items in inventory, which made us a really easy operation. We had salads, but we had salads because we wanted them to be the pushback against menu veto. So the guys that are in front of a ball game watching the TV all want their wings, but they don't control the phone. So the female in the household would be the one placed in the order, and if we didn't have an accommodation with salads, we'd have lost many, many, many orders. They otherwise wouldn't have found us. So I asked about salads because I remember good old menu veto. I also think that your average ticket must have really jumped dramatically with that shift in day part. And even if there was an offset to that lunch business not being as frequent, the average ticket should certainly have more than compensated for that on a business perspective. We're gonna come back from a quick break, continue our conversation with John Ramsey, who is the VP of franchise sales for noodles and company. I'm gonna talk more about this growing enterprise that was literally built for the economy that we've found ourselves in in this post-COVID era. But first, this word from our sponsors. - Franchise today will be right back, but first, a word from our sponsors. - Hey, franchise ores of restaurants, bars, grills and taverns, and multi-unit franchisees. Listen up, this message is for you. Atmosphere TV wants to help you cut costs on overpriced cable TV for your business and either replace it completely or partially if sports programming is essential at your locations. 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I think we've been public, I wanna say since around 2004, but don't quote me on that, I don't know the exact date. And has there been a change in the leadership in terms of public, private days? Or has there been any leadership changes or the original founders still in the business? - So there's been changes, although I would point out two sort of interesting facts with us, first of all, our current CEO, Dave Boneyhouse, and has been with us for over 15 years. So he's only been the CEO for the last, I think five years or so, but he's been with the brands for 15 plus years. So an incredibly deep knowledge of the brand, of the people, of the franchise community. And I think that's been a really wonderful thing for us, our company, to have that level of continuity. And he's done a really wonderful job of being able to take a lot of the innovation that's been created over the years and mold that into where we are today, especially in this post COVID scenario. - So let's talk about the franchise side of the business because it's a very unique thing for me to see a company that has the large number of units that you guys do have a franchise division that represents probably what, fewer than a hundred of the 450 locations. Is that about right? - That's correct. So we have approximately 11 franchise groups that control about 80 restaurants. - And so these aren't large, multi-unit, multi-flag type operators that you're seeking is what I gained from that. - We are, and you ask about the founders. So another interesting fact is that one of our largest franchisees was the roommate of our founder. And so we have several franchisees like him who grew up in the Denver area, became fans of the brand, and then became some of the first franchisees and moved to new markets to sort of seed the brand, if you will, in these new markets and have stayed there, which is pretty nice. - So help me understand how and why this company has an interest in franchising when it has such a large company-owned division. Where are the lines drawn between whether an area becomes franchised or whether the growth is going to stay organic and internal? - Yeah, so I sort of alluded to this before with our footprint. A couple of things I would say about that. First is we've been franchising since 2004, so this is not a new venture to us. We have great franchisees. They're very loyal to the brand. They're very happy with the brand. Very good relationship with the franchise community, which is obviously a good thing. So we're sort of starting off from a place of strength with our existing franchisees and community. And by the way, they're poised to grow as well. So you'll continue to see growth from those existing franchise groups. From a company operation standpoint, probably some of this history goes back to your other question about was it public, was it private? Like a lot of companies, you go through these stages where at certain points you get, especially if you're privately held or publicly held, you have access to a large amount of capital. A lot of capital gets deployed to build out the company restaurants. One of the smart things that Noodles has done is, again, they've concentrated their company growth in some very specific markets. And so we continue to see our company division growing, which is good. However, there's so much room for them to grow in markets where we already have a footprint, that they're easily going to be able to spend the next three, four, five years in those markets without having to venture outside. So that then begs the question, okay, well, if you want to continue to grow, you're going to need to add new markets. What's the best way to add a new market? Because we have this track record of success with franchising, franchising was a natural way to go about developing the brand in these new markets. So that's the goal and that's really important. - How does that look operationally? Are there separate support teams and separate resources deployed for the franchise division versus company-owned? Because you know how that can look sometimes in companies that have company-owned operations as well as franchise, there can be a little fuzzing of lines sometimes as to which resources get deployed to who and when and how, based on corporate need. How do you balance that at Noodles? - Yeah, so I think it's a great question and you're right. I mean, I think for a lot of companies that does become a challenge, and I've certainly seen it firsthand and I've lived through it. One of the things about Noodles that's really unique in a strength of the brand is a value system. We have very strong value system in place and the value system is really based around people, how we treat each other and specifically how we treat our team members. And so we place our team members at the top of the pyramid. We recognize that all of our success and sales come at the restaurant level. And it's the folks, our team members at the restaurant level, and by the way, whether they're company or franchise, we really recognize that they're the ones that we need to support and that's where we need to put our energy. So you then translate that to the support system you ask about. I know when you talk to folks within our team, first of all, they don't differentiate between company and franchise. So when they talk about supporting a restaurant, it's just that, supporting a restaurant. And they're supporting the restaurant because they believe it's important and they believe in the values of the brand. So it's all rooted back in this value system, making sure or recognizing that you're supporting people and you're supporting the people in the restaurants first and foremost. So there's not a distinction there. The other positive aspect of that support network is because we have such a large base of corporate restaurants, a couple of things happens. Number one is that virtually every critical position at the support level is filled, right? So we're not sort of starting from scratch. So when you talk about training teams, real estate, design, development, all these different areas, there's highly qualified individuals in those spots already. So it's not like we have to wait for a certain time before we can start adding people. I think that's a really important part of being able to build on the infrastructure that we have in place. So as we add new franchisees, it's not burdening the system if anything is providing growth opportunities for the folks who are already with us. - Great, great to hear. And I'm very impressed by companies that employ high value systems in their internal operations and out to the franchisees as well as the employees on the front line. You can have a great corporate culture corporately, but you're breathing your own ether sometimes inside an insular environment if that's not bleeding down to franchisees and frontline employees. And it sounds like you've got that covered from top down and bottom back up. - That's right, I agree. - So the only other stress point I wanted to ask about with a company that's structured like yours is the public versus private organizations and franchising. And do there come times where the value to a stakeholder is different stakeholder being a franchisee than what might be a fiduciary responsibility to a shareholder? And how do you go about that balancing act that noodles some company? - Yeah, I think it's a very valid question and very important that does get discussed and talked about internally, right? So as you know, we've talked about I've been a franchising for a long time. I've had the benefit of working for both public companies and private companies, large and small. So I've seen things happen, good and bad. And from my perspective and my experience there's really two pain points with franchisees. Number one is the relationship and number two is profitability. So when you talk about the relationship I really define that as trust and integrity which really requires listening, inclusion. It's our actions, it's our behaviors. So if you don't have trust and if you're not operating from integrity to me it doesn't matter whether you're publicly held or privately held you're not gonna have a good relationship with your franchisees therefore it's gonna be broken. I've talked about our value system that we live with and it's such a part of who we are. That is so critical and so important to have that in place in having that really a foundation to make sure that your relationship stays operating from a level integrity. So I'd say that's really number one again regardless of our corporate structure that's important. The second is profitability. Now this one to me is an interesting one because I certainly have seen and I'm sure you have too where decisions get made often at a support center level whether they be around food or equipment that changes the dynamics of your restaurant profitability whether it's food cost, labor cost or equipment cost. A decision gets made that impacts that. Well you think about a company like ours and I can tell you that since we own an operating over 350 locations every little thing we do is amplified. So we're very aware of when we test a product or test a piece of equipment or test an operational change whatever it may be what the impact is to that unit level profitability sales and profitability. Whereas I would argue that if you had a less company restaurants and you needed to boost and now this gets to your question around public company if you need to boost your earnings what are you gonna do? Well you're more concerned about driving sales. So you might make a decision to drive sales at the restaurant level that may help your royalty stream however it's detrimental to your franchisees 'cause it's impacting again their food costs or labor cost or cost of a piece of equipment. So I think having that level of awareness level of sensitivity to anything that we do at the restaurant level of making sure that yes you wanna drive traffic yes you wanna drive sales and you have to constantly be innovating and looking for ways to do that. But you also we're very aware of and very conscious of what the impact is to those unit level economics. I would say asked and answered and I think quite well in that so much obliged. Tell us who you're looking for in this franchise quest. We talked about the multi unit multi flag larger type operators are those your exclusive targets or can someone with a lower profile financially still take advantage of opportunity with noodles? Yeah you know I love that question because having done this for quite a while some of the best franchisees that are now on that top 200 list I knew them when they had a single restaurant. And so it sort of begs the question okay do I just then want to bring in folks who have already proven that they could own and operate 20 restaurants. I like to think where is that next person gonna come from? Right this 'cause everybody starts with one or starts with a small group of restaurants. Where are they? Where are they gonna come from? So I really look at our vetting process or selection process. I don't want to use sort of a singular approach to say you must meet these minimum criteria such as a financial criteria or an operational ownership criteria. However I look at a broader perspective to say okay well what are the attributes that we're looking for for a strong franchisee? Restaurant experience is one of them. Financial ability is one of them. I would also include development experience. Have you built a restaurant before? Have you hired a contractor before? Have you pulled a building permit? That's sort of an important part of this journey and experience of becoming a franchisee. Business acumen, have you owned a business before? Have you owned a franchise business before? Do you understand the distinction between a franchise business versus an independent business? And then lastly one of my favorites is personal character. How do you show up in your community? Are you involved in your community? Who do you know within your community? What have you done there that's gonna be attracted to us as a franchisee? Or that's ultimately gonna help your business because I can't teach you or show you how to show up in your own community. So I sort of skirted your question of is it only a multi-unit operator? And again I would say if I'm speaking to an individual with maybe they don't have a restaurant background I would certainly encourage them or I would hope they would encourage themselves to recognize that they need that capability as part of their team. And by the way this is a team effort. I think the days of having sort of a single person running an operation I think those days are changing and today the opportunity to bring in a group of people who are bringing these sort of different levels of expertise to build out an infrastructure is a great way to go. So I hope I'm casting a larger net but also being very transparent and open with folks that I'm talking to as what we believe success looks like. - I'm gonna give you a minute at the end to tell the audience how they can find you but before I do that I ask my guests each week if there is anything at all that I should have asked or that you wished I'd have asked and didn't. - Well thanks, I appreciate that from a, if I may, maybe it's not a question you would ask but I would like to just share a personal anecdote if that's okay. - If you think it's important enough that you wanna share it, let her rip. - I just wanted to share with you in the group that I'm very proud to say that I just became a grandfather in October. - Now that's worth sharing. - I have not met my granddaughter 'cause she lives in New York City. However, I'm heading out in two weeks. Obviously we've all been impacted by this pandemic but I'm looking forward to being my granddaughter. - Well congratulations to you for that and I'm certainly happy you chose to share that with us as well. How about some contact information and let the audience be able to catch up with you on the other side of this discussion? - Absolutely, so a few different ways to track me down. One is the easiest ways for our website, noodles.com. I have a franchising section so just go to noodles.com/franchising. You'll find an email, you can email me directly. You'll find a short form, enquiry form, if you wanna complete that information, that's fine as well. Or if you just like to reach out to me through LinkedIn, I'm always happy to make connections to my peers, to franchise the industry providers and suppliers. And even if you're a franchisee and maybe you're not looking to add a brand today but just wanna have a connection and start talking, I'm open to that as well. - Fabulous. John, I can't thank you enough for sharing so much with us in the short span of time that was allowed to us to get this done today. But I'm looking forward to learning more about both you and noodles as time goes on. There is that 1,015 joint connections but there's another 6,000 in my LinkedIn family for you to get acquainted with as well. So let's make sure we don't make this a static conversation. I'd like to keep the dynamics of this conversation moving forward and keep checking in with you from time to time. - I would love that, Stan. I really appreciate you reaching out to us. - As a post script, I might add that following my interview with John, I learned that Noodles and Company recently announced the appointment of Sean Taylor as an independent member of its board of directors. So who was Sean Taylor and why is this momentous? Sean Taylor is a franchisee. Not just any franchisee but a proven leader in the restaurant industry who most recently was the president and operating partner of the various successful Zach Spies Houston LLC which he sold in 2019. Sean Taylor has opened, developed and operated as many as 35 Taco Bell locations and served on Taco Bell's franchise management advisory board. He was even a part of a group of business leaders that acquired the Houston Astros which they sold again in 2017. My point in all this is that you don't put a franchisee of this caliber on your board and add talent like John Ramsey to your executive team unless you're dead serious about franchising. I'm sure you'd agree. Well, that's it for today. Next week we'll do it all again but until then I'm Stan Friedman and as always I'm wishing you the best, the very best of all things franchising and Franchise Today is out. Franchise Today is a production of FRM Solutions providing best in class CRM tools to empower relationships with perspective and existing franchisees. No excuses, just solutions, find them online at frmsolutions.com. Join Stan every Wednesday at noon Eastern for another live episode of Franchise Today or as always, download episodes on demand at blogtalkradio.com or iTunes. When you're part of a military family, you understand sacrifice and support. So at American Public University we honor your dedication by extending our military tuition savings to your extended family. Parents, spouses, legal partners, siblings and dependents all qualify for APU's preferred military rate of just $250 per credit hour for undergraduate and master's level programs. American Public University, value for the whole family. Learn more at apu.apus.edu/military.