Lauren Fernandez [00:00:00]:

First thing I will say is that we offer a wide range of education coaching services for everybody. That is just generally true. So if you need help, do not be afraid to reach out. And on our website, we have a number of free resources that you can access without even talking to somebody. So if you don't want to talk to us, that's okay. I won't take it personally.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:23]:

Welcome to WISKing It All with your host, Angelo Esposito, co founder of WISK.ai, a food and beverage intelligence platform, we're going to be interviewing hospitality professionals around the world to really understand how they do what they do. Welcome to another episode of WISKing It All. We're here today with Lauren Fernandez, CEO of full course. Lauren, thanks for joining us.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:00:51]:

It is absolutely my pleasure.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:53]:

Yeah, I'm excited to chat. I mean, I know you have a lot of experience in the industry, so we'll chat about all that, but full course and more. So maybe to just start off. I know your background, you know, two decades in kind of the transitioning from a general counsel to a restaurant operator. So maybe let's start there. What kind of inspired you to kind of go through that career shift?

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Lauren Fernandez [00:01:15]:

Yeah, so I'm going to blame my mom and dad for this one, actually. So, you know, and I think it's important to honor the roots of where your hustle comes from. So, I'm the daughter of a proud Cuban American. I was born in this country, but my father immigrated when he was ten. And a major part of our upbringing was this infusion and deep belief of the goal that your kids will do better than you were able to achieve. Right? So what I would call generational improvement. And I think that's a very common theme in a lot of immigrant families, and I don't think I often give credit enough to the amount of hustle that that has infused in me as a result. So, example, like, my mom and dad both had college degrees and postgraduate degrees in medicine and were very accomplished in their respective fields.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:02:08]:

And so it was expected of me and my siblings that we not only went to college, but we got at least one postgraduate degree, and I have two. So, you know, I have a law degree and an MBA, and not many people knew that about me when I was an attorney. And it wasn't something I trotted out. I mean, yeah, it was on the wall, but no one ever reads your diplomas on the wall, right? And I did that on purpose because I knew that someday would come that I would hit the sort of ceiling for me personally and professionally on what I could do with my law degree and would probably shift back into more of a business setting or in some kind of business role, leadership, what have you. So those seeds were planted very early. They were part of my strategy, actually, in picking Emory University for both my law degree and my business degree because I wanted to be in two top 20 programs. So it was not just an overnight whim for me to jump and make that shift from general counsel to entrepreneur. So I do want to preface it by saying so much of this is about the way I was raised and the hunger and the hustle.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:03:12]:

And the very simple theme I will summarize that with is my parents said to me, you will be blessed with education that we will provide to you opportunity because you live in this country and you have a natural amount of God given talent. And how you use that is how you honor what you've been given. How you use that in service to others is what's important, and that is what your job is. Your job is to use all of those things to the best of your ability in service to others. And if you can figure out what that looks like, you're golden. And at some point in my career, I realized that compass, that true north, wasn't pointing in the right direction anymore. And I felt the pull of the six figure salary and the stock options and laddering up my career in the way that I think everyone anticipated me to with the next, bigger, badder general counsel job after I left focus. But that was actually not what I was planning.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:04:09]:

To much people's shock, I went and bought some restaurants. And the story behind that, quite simply, is a very thoughtful, very humble, very dedicated restaurant. Like titan of industry, who was a mentor to me at the time, said, yes, you could go work your way up through the C suite to CEO, but the truth is, in this industry, you will never have the same level of credibility that you have in your legal seat with your law degree and your credentials if you don't get ops experience. And I was like, oh, okay, well, how do I get that? He's like, well, you need to go buy a restaurant, silly. And I was like, oh, no big deal. All right, I'll do that. Cool. And what do you do when you're a franchise attorney and you've seen many franchisees kind of walk in the door with no skills in that space and you see them do it, you go buy a restaurant franchise.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:05:02]:

And that is the true story of how I ended up embarking on my entrepreneurial journey. I knew that I needed to round myself out. I needed some more education, but I need the kind of education that you don't get in a school for our industry. You get it in the field. And that is what happened, my friend. Like, I went to go buy one. Through a series of random events or, you know, good fortune and opportunities, I ended up partnering with someone. We formed Origin development group.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:05:30]:

We bought the rights to chicken sale, chick development for Atlanta, Augusta, and Athens. And within a matter of months, I found myself a restaurant operator. I had to go buy a pair of non slip shoes. You know, it got really real, really fast because I had three restaurants. I had to turn around pretty quickly, and then we built eight more over the next 20 months. So that was such a baptism by fire. And I routinely refer to that experience as being one of my most important educational experiences, right up there with my law degree and my MBA. And now that you know how important those things are to me, you know, the gravity with which I'm saying, like, it was so transformational for me in such a moment.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:06:13]:

And that journey informed so much about what we do at full course now. So when we exited our restaurants in 2018, I had a moment to pause. At age 40, for the first time in my life. I've literally been working since I can't even remember, like 1314, maybe even earlier, if we're going to be real about it. And I committed to taking the time off to synthesize what those learnings were, to really let it transform me and to think about the problems I had seen that were bigger than me and my restaurant group, and they were around on three major pillars. One is that there's not a lot of fair and equitable capital flowing down to early stage restaurants in our industry. And yet they make up all the diversity and ownership. That's where our representation is, and it's 70% of the market is a single unit location, and those are overwhelmingly independently owned restaurants.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:07:08]:

Two is, let's suppose you get your hands on some capital. Friends, family, church, your community, whatever. A bank, you know, not these days, but an SBA loan, what have you. And even if you get that capital, understanding the appropriate and the correct way to scale that business and the right development strategies for you is not always immediately apparent and requires a certain level of expertise. So if you're a restaurant owner, I don't expect you to be a product development expert. I've been doing it for 20 years, and there are plenty of resources we have on our team to do that for you, just as one example. And so we really were clear that growth for restaurants needed to be more than just unit count, right? More than just like banging out actual physical brick and mortar. And that's always been part of my investment thesis.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:07:59]:

I think the third issue, let's just assume that you can put together a good development strategy. You can find the capital to back it. That learning curve is incredibly steep for a founder. It takes time and there is sometimes no room for failure. So where do you learn this information? Who's investing in you? Who's helping you figure out your next step in your growth professionally and personally? And I think this is true just not of founders but of their employees as well. It is so hard as an operator to carve the time out to reinvest in your own people. And I was one of the ones that wanted to do that and I couldn't figure it out. It was hard.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:08:39]:

Like I'm like, do we YouTube this? Do we record the education sessions? Like how do we do this when our employees are working 24 7365? Like what are we supposed to do? And I think we tried very elegantly and still are always perfecting how full course can solve for all those problems for your average restaurant owner. And this is true regardless of whether or not we make an investment. So We provide a lot of education, mentoring, coaching, consulting support, as well as investment in the space. We work primarily with emerging brands, but we also consult with brands that are like 2,000 units plus. A lot of that is focused around growth, whether that is leadership and developing the next generation of leadership through our nonprofit, the Full Course Foundation, reinvesting in the talent retention in our industry and rising up those leaders from within, and leveling the playing field for diversity. And that is true whether you think about it as people growth or the growth that we physically and tactically do when we're growing brands themselves with our investment and development support. And that is my friend, how we landed in this place through many different career jumps. And again, I'll blame it on my parents.

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Angelo Esposito [00:09:54]:

There's already a lot of good takeaways understanding those three pillars, understanding the pains of restaurants. And I love that you got just that real life education. I mean, obviously certain professions as you know, you need to go to school, but a restaurant does have great programs too, but you kind of need some of that real operational experience. I love. You know, I thought you were going to say like I opened one restaurant but you went all in, you went one to three to eight. So, you know, we're definitely going to chat more about full course, but I want to just take a step back, because I'm so curious, and I'm sure our listeners probably are too. Tell me a bit about that process, because, you know, here you are, you know, life's good, you're a lawyer, you're doing your thing. Like, you know, I'm generalizing here, but let's say generally life's good.

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:33]:

And you're like, all right, I'm going all in. How did it happen that you went from one to three to eight? And I'd love to hear a bit about that experience.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:10:40]:

Yeah. So I was shopping franchised brands. I had actually approached the brand directly, and they had already sold the table territory. Flash forward a number of months through a networking opportunity. I sat down next to the gentleman who became my business partner. And as we were vetting deals to do together to figure out which restaurant brand we were going to be a part of for their growth, we knew we wanted to be operators. I don't even think at that point, to be candid with you, we had decided franchisor or franchisee, to be honest. Got it.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:11:11]:

And it was just the most random thing. But his next door neighbor was the guy behind the deal who had bought the territory. And so somehow some conversation happened, and then we got involved, and then they were like, maybe we don't want this deal. You know, truthfully, like, it was just one of those fortuitous things. We were actively sourcing other deals while this one kind of landed in our lap. And I think sometimes the universe brings you exactly what you need. And this was one of those moments where I didn't know it then, but that experience with chicken salad chick, they're listening. And their training department, all of their ops team are par excellence.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:11:52]:

Like, I have seen so many franchise brands, and I've still to this day, seen very few that rise to that caliber, which is highly unusual for an early stage brand like that. I mean, they're probably close to 200 units now. When we bought in, they were still at like 30 something, right? Like, my first stores were like number six and number nine, I think, in the system. And the last store I built in that system was store number like 98 or 99, something like that. Sitting in that seat and being trained up from being, you know, a novice in the space to being a pretty sophisticated multi unit operator was a bit of a baptism by fire. But I'm glad that it happened in that brand because they had extraordinary resources, one of whom, this true story, was a former most selfless girl franchisee, who I knew from focus Brands, who had jumped over to that brand to run franchise business support and became my FBC in the field. And he is now the chief operating officer of full course. So it's funny how that kind of came around.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:12:58]:

Yeah, that became a humbling moment. And the true story is we closed the deal. And I walked in in my, you know, corporate Barbie attire, high heels and all, to the restaurant where we met the management team for the three restaurants we bought. And I said to them, I know I don't look like the person that you expect expected to buy this brand, but what I'm going to do is get in the trenches with you for the next three months, I'm going to ask you to teach me everything. I'm going to ask for your ideas, and I'm not asking you to believe me right now. I am asking you to just give me the chance, and I will prove to you that I want to be the kind of owner that you've always wanted next to you, the kind of manager that you've wanted above you. Like, I will figure this out with you, but we're going to do this as a team. And I did exactly what I said I was going to do.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:13:46]:

I said bye to my fancy office in Buckhead, and I told my partners I'd see them in three months. And it took me about that long to turn it around. But in that process, I gained their trust. I worked shifts. I opened, I closed. I figured out all the places we needed to work on the business. And I made a list, and I kept prioritizing the list, and we just kept checking off that list for the next year when the development started to pick up and we had more lease opportunities and more chances to grow. Every opening we did every single day.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:14:22]:

And then when we were done with the opening, we asked the question, how could we have done it better? And we wrote it down and we systematized it. We had this whole thing down to a playbook. I was at that point that we sold the company comfortable opening five units a year. It would have been hard to do prior to that moment because we didn't have as much staff. But at that point, we were properly staffed. And I was like, let's go. So that was, like, the hardest part, I think, truly, like, I loved my team. We built this amazing organization.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:14:50]:

We had almost 500 employees, but, man, I had just cracked the code. We were just, we knew. We knew exactly how to do the opening, how much money to spend, where to put the money, how to do the hiring, how to promote from within. We had it down to a science and that was a huge driver of our growth. And it's part of that experience that we now build out with brands in Full Course. Everything has a system, a process, and we're constantly refining whether it's for us as Full Course or it's within the brands themselves. And I think that's a major key to our success.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:28]:

I love the idea of, like every day saying what we could, we have done better. It's something we do here at WISK. Internally too. We call it, we call it like 1% better every damn day. I think B E d d bed, 1% bed. And we just say, like, it's a series of these incremental things. Because sometimes people are like, ah, that's just an incremental change. But, you know, when you do thousand incremental changes, all of a sudden it's like it makes a big difference.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:51]:

And so I'm a big fan of that mentality. One thing I just like to get, and then we're going full in on full course, but one thing I just got to know from your perspective is because someone coming that wasn't, you know, in the trenches and then getting into the trenches, I think there's obviously a lot of learning, but there's also things you probably see with a different eye in a positive way, because it's like, you didn't grow up doing this. So it's like, to you, it might be like, why are you guys doing this? You maybe you question things. So I'm curious, like, what are some things that maybe come to mind that you were like, hey, like, why are we doing this like this? Or why are we doing that like that? Because I think this will resonate with the audience.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:16:24]:

There was a lot of pencil and paper. Like, inventory was a nightmare. There was no sheet to shelf. So the way the inventory was laid out was not how we organized our kitchens. So that was kind of like mission critical. We got that really buttoned up. We started looking at ways we could implement even just the simplest of technology. Like, could we put this inventory on an iPad? So that when a manager's walking through, it's like defaulting to the last inventory that you put in, so it feels a little bit more reasonable? Like, did I enter it as a third of a leader last time? Or a half? You know, what are we going to call that this time? I know it's just like the silly, like, blocking and tackling of daily ops that you're like, how can I make this more efficient? Because it's all human powered, right? And that labor matters, as we all know, right? So I come from a tradition going way back in my career of, like, swiss level efficiency when I worked for Novartis, before I ever kind of, because, you know, my career was in product development.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:17:31]:

So part of that I spent in pharmaceuticals before I ever jumped to focus brands. So I loved about that company that if you innovated in a space and even if you were a lawyer, the mission was, how can you document this as a procedure so that this becomes best practice for the entire set of lawyers that work for Novartis was, like, 850 at that point around the world. And it can go into a repository where it becomes additive to our collective knowledge bank. And you may not be the forever author of that document. The next person might improve it better. But it was rare to find something that hadn't already been documented within that company. And it was a great place to be as a young lawyer because, man, everything had an sop, right? Everything. And you found something that didn't.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:18:23]:

You're like, ooh, ooh, I get to author something? Are you kidding me? And when I came into those kitchens, I'm like, oh, God, this is. I would go, where? Where's the process for that? Is there a chart? And I'm like, looking at the walls. And they're like, no, we just. We just know. And I'm like, okay, nope, that needs to be. And then the question I would, the team is, how often do you use this process? Well, we use it every day. Twice a day. Okay, well, does everyone on the team knows it? Who's cross trained on it? Who needs to use this? And then we would design all kinds of internal documentation.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:18:56]:

It was easy to access. We had a manager cheat bible. It was their cheat code with quick reference tabs. We generated that almost as a manager bible every time we went to a new opening and then we would update it periodically. One of the common issues was we just couldn't keep track of which manager was where, and texts, and phone numbers, and email addresses. We did the same thing for key vendors. We had all of their contact information.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:19:24]:

Was it always like that? No, but as I became more confident as an operator and I knew what good looked like, I'm like, we're going for best people. Buckle up. So what's it going to take for us to get there? And it was just, if you want the behavior to be repeated and codified in every location, you have to be clear on what is it going to take for it to work in every location in every situation? What's the training and the reinforcement for that? And then how are you going to incentivize that behavior? Right? So to me, it's not just as simple as slapping a sign on the wall. We hold those images accountable, right? So I'll give you, like, a really, really clean one. We really loved coaching and training. Our point of sales folks to upsell and cross sell, that was where we just really drove average ticket, and we crushed it. And we figured out finally, that that's a reward system. Like, we had a star chart, literally, like, where you would, like, clock in every day, like, how many of whatever you sold, pie, sodas, whatever.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:20:30]:

And there was always a favorite item on the menu that we were looking to push that lined up with our better margins. So, like, if we had a product that particular month that was on better margin for us, we'd be like, okay, everyone, this is your favorite food this week. Someone asks you what they recommend on the menu. It's this item. This is what you're upselling. This is what you're cross selling. And we would put those as laminated go buys, if you will, like cheat sheets right behind the point of sale counter. In every single one of our restaurants, the chart would be up there so everyone could track performance, and we rewarded that behavior with gift cards.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:21:06]:

To our staff who produced those results. And to me, I know this sounds so simple, but when human, when you think about human behavior, that's what it is. It's clearly defined expectations, repeatable actions to produce predictable results and results and then reward that behavior. It's a nice little feedback loop. So, man, when I see owners running around and they're doing like a million little things, my question to them is, can you delegate that? And they just go, well, yeah, I guess I go, we'll have you. No. Why not? Well, I'd have to train someone to do it. And I was like, no, no, you need to develop a process for that so you can train six people to do it.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:21:45]:

So there's always someone to do it, no matter how much churn or call outs you have or whatever. Right?

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Angelo Esposito [00:21:52]:

I love that. I love that. It's funny because even internally, right? Like, it's only been a couple years since I've been doing this religiously. But it was exactly that. It was like, number one, getting better at delegating. I think it's operators and just entrepreneurs in general when they first started, probably not great at that. And then being amazing at creating playbooks. And then I didn't like reading playbooks and then just delegating.

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Angelo Esposito [00:22:12]:

Then I had my assistant create a playbook on how to create playbooks. And then now we have a playbook creator. And so even that part is delegated. We make, like, a loom video. For us, it's a bit different because, you know, it's tech, but we make a loom video. We record a process, give it to this Playbook creator, and they create the playbook. And the playbook has a checklist. That's funny.

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Angelo Esposito [00:22:29]:

But it's. It's that switch when you first start from going to like, you know, I'm important and I'm doing everything to then slowly delegating, there's like that weird chasm in between where you're like, I don't know what I'm doing, but when you make it to the other side, you're like, man, how was I living before, trying to do everything? And so to people listening, I know sometimes it can be daunting if you haven't delegated well. But what Lauren's saying here is absolutely true. Those four steps on, you know, recording what you're doing and then teaching someone and rewarding, like, those four key things you said, which I can't remember my heart, but, like, those are key, key steps. I just want to emphasize, emphasize that.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:23:02]:

I couldn't agree more. We use it every day in this business, right? I mean, we're able to invest in at a fairly rapid pace, like multiple brands a year, and walk them through our proprietary process of how we stabilize, optimize, and grow brands. And every aspect of the business needs that kind of documentation, those templates, those strategies, those tools and those techniques. And so we've been doing this for five. We have hundreds of courses that we've developed, techniques, tools, and those are all proprietary to full course and its clients. And we are happy to share those many playbooks. And look, it's not a one size fits all thing. I can't stress that enough.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:23:48]:

I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that you put an sop together, that it locks people into a certain way of doing things. And I think that's actually a mistake. I think the right thing to do is say, what is the expected outcome that I want? What is the best way of doing this? And then we give people the authority, if not the dictate, that we expect them to improve upon it. And what I mean by that is, look, systems are going to change, the environment is going to change. One location might be a little different than the other. One manager might be different than the other. But if they have a better idea or a way to improve it, you should solicit that feedback. So a lot of our forms actually set on the bottom.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:24:29]:

Something to the effect of, do you have a way to improve this form? Do you think it could be better? Then you need to contact. And we had like a little email address there.

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Angelo Esposito [00:24:37]:

Awesome.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:24:38]:

So it was like a new manager, and they looked at like, the deposit form for every night and were like, why do I have to fill this in? They would ask the question, and this is so powerful. I probably should have said this earlier, is Sometimes explaining to somebody the 'why' behind a form looks a certain way or 'why' a procedure is a certain way is actually a teaching and coaching moment, which gives them more authority and ownership over the process. So they can either, A. execute it better, B. improve it for you, or C. some combination of the above. Right? And I think that's so important because once you build a procedure, like, I don't, look, I wrote the procedure on how to change a water filter in a coke machine, like twice. And then I was like, I made that note on the bottom and was like, whoever can come up with a better way, knock yourself out. Right? Let's do it. And we did. We actually had a manager come in one time and she was like, that's not how we do it.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:25:31]:

I worked at this other restaurant chain, and there's actually a better way. I'm like, show me, show me. And look. That's like a humbling moment, too. Like, I don't know that a lot of owners and founders humble themselves in that way. I'm serious. To be able to say to your staff, like, teach me. Teach me the better way to do this, you know?

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:49]:

No, I think that's amazing. There's nothing better than you're empowering your staff. And I think that's when their creativity can flow and they're kind of more bought in because they can actually, you know, contribute to the actual process, which is massive. Right? I'd love to also maybe just now jump in. And we alluded to it and we spoke with all these playbooks that full course has and the investment side and the consulting side, but let's go all in. So full course. It sounds like you're helping restaurants. We have a lot of restaurant listeners, so I know you briefly explained it, but just to get everyone back on the same page, what does full course do? And then I want to dive into what got you started in full course.

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:26]:

Why do you decide? Say, all right, I'm done with these restaurants. That fun. I got my degree in operations, now I want to do full course.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:26:34]:

Yeah. So Full course is the industry's first and only incubator, accelerator, and investor in early stage food and restaurant brands. We work with founders to help them grow by providing fair and equitable growth capital. We write checks, generally between two and a half to four million dollars per deal. We sit as a minority participant on your cap table. We're not taking over your business. We leave founders in control of the business. As a very important piece of our equation is that we allow and want founders to continue running their business and their teams, and we invest in them.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:27:09]:

We invest in growing their teams and we use our development team to accelerate the growth of the business, usually through an omnichannel growth strategy. So what that means, in layman's terms, if you will, is we build a certain core group of company stores, somewhere between three and five, let's call it. We'll turn on franchising and create opportunities, opportunities for people to help us grow the brand. We do a lot of product development and commercialization. So we look for things on the menu that are causing issues with consistency, standardization, recipe protection, quality control, labor issues, etcetera. And we will commercialize those and manufacture them for use in the restaurants, as well as sometimes for wholesale in the market. And last but not least is we do a tremendous amount of non traditional and licensing deals. And so what that is in our industry are deals that you would see in stadiums, arenas, airports, colleges, universities, hospitals, anywhere where there's a master concessionaire.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:28:08]:

And we are licensing the brand in and supporting it operationally. But it's good visibility and good profit for the brand. So we take a very different approach to development. We're not a one trick pony. I think that's very important when you're growing early stage brands. We are able to leverage techniques that we know work because they've worked for many major brands that we've worked with in the past. But we execute these strategies at a smaller level with the brands that we work with because we can leverage that expertise more effectively for them, because basically our development team expense is spread out across all of our clients and our investments. So you get the benefit of that team helping run point on your growth.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:28:49]:

We also provide operational support, and that is certainly more strategic in nature because we're backstopping a lot of the elements of the business, subject matter, expertise in everything from supply chain finance, accounting, marketing, pr, social media people and all the things that means. So talent, recruitment, retention, etcetera. So we really try to be a complete solution for that founder. We really truly are a value add investor. We, a lot of us are former owners and operators ourselves. So we took a lot of caring concern in the way we developed full course in its solution. So you get it all in one place, right? And I would be remiss if I didn't say this, you know, the full course foundation, all of its education platform, the learning center that we have in that foundation, all of that is available to our investments at no additional cost to them. So there's a five year leadership course that we design and we put all of our founders through while they're under investment.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:29:50]:

But all of those tools and resources for personal and professional development are available to our investment partners, their employees in our company stores, their corporate employees, their franchisees, and their franchisees employees. We do not distinguish. We want it available to everybody.

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Angelo Esposito [00:30:10]:

Really cool. And just, I know you alluded to a few examples, but can you highlight maybe what type of resources they can expect?

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Lauren Fernandez [00:30:18]:

Yeah, so we do, like, I'll just give you kind of like the play by play. Like, we do pretty regular management meetings with our team. So we're, we're meeting fairly regularly in the first couple years of the brand's existence and under management with us to help the founders kind of put one thing in front of the other. Like, there's a lot of work to do when we're scaling these brands. So we try to make it actionable and we're very tactical in the way that we roll those things out. So it's very thoughtful and measured in the way we approach that. You know, you could easily overwhelm someone if you showed them like a three year roadmap. So we really try to take it in bite sized chunks.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:30:56]:

We work a lot and very closely with preferred vendor partners, so we always have preferred pricing and relationships with a number of different vendors in this space. So one of the things that we're doing immediately when we come in is we're stabilizing these businesses and optimizing them for growth. So we're looking at, you know, are the books closed regularly? Do they have good accounting practices? Are we able to get our hands on the data that's validating the instincts of what we're seeing in the field? Does the marketing strategy make sense? Could we make some tweaks to the positioning? Are there some strategies and tactics we have tried yet? Where's the money best spent right so there's a lot of work that goes on in the very beginning. And the first touch that we have with these brands, we do an initial assessment where we come in and we review the brand. Our whole team writes up a report and we do that for anyone who's interested in investment. If you call and book a call with our team, we'll recommend an initial assessment. We do that as a service to the industry. We don't just hang up the phone if we don't think it's suitable for investment.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:31:55]:

We actually tell you as a restaurant owner what we think you could do to make the restaurant better and let you know whether or not we think it's worthy of investment now or later. We're very transparent about that. But even before investment comes, we spend about six months with founders really working next to them in the field. We've reduced our consulting rates dramatically so they can work with us and we can see what the brand's about, so we can get in there and make some of those stabilizing changes and optimizing the restaurant. I think the last thing I'll say is what a founder can expect in working with us is a lot of high degree of collaboration, and that's not for everybody, but it certainly is the way our model works. And one thing that we're insistent on is that that growth strategy for the brand, it has to meet certain investment return criteria. And we roughly know what our playbook looks like. We're very clear on omnichannel.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:32:45]:

We do not back off of that, but we give founders a chance to say, you know what else is really important to me? Like, I really want to do a cookbook. You know what is really important to me? That we find a space for veterans to have a chance to be a franchisee. Can we work on a program for that? So we can come alongside what we know to be the functional deployment of the capital, but also check some of their boxes too, in a way that's meaningful for them. And then we walk the investment opportunity over to our fund and say, this is how we want to grow this. This is how much money it's going to take. And the fund deploys the capital. So it's, it's, um, it's a journey. It certainly is.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:33:27]:

And that is true from day one. It is designed to be a partnership.

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Angelo Esposito [00:33:31]:

That'S amazing and just to maybe like paint a picture. So for our listeners, if they're like, this sounds amazing, but I don't know if I'm a fit or not. Like, can you maybe give some examples of who would be a good fit. I know you spoke about like, one size doesn't fit all and it could be one location, it could be multiple. But maybe just to paint the picture a little more for the people listening, should they, you know, maybe some minimum. Should they at least have one store a certain amount of revenue? Is it mainly fast cash? Like anything you can kind of paint so they can be like, all right, this sounds like me. Let me check out the website. Let me reach out to Lauren, you know, or their team for sure.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:34:07]:

So first thing I will say is that we offer a wide range of education coaching services for everybody, right? That is just generally true. So if you need help, do not be free to reach out. And on our website we have a number of free resources that you can access without even talking to somebody. So if you don't want to talk to us, that's okay. I won't take it personally, but our.

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Angelo Esposito [00:34:30]:

Website, just to plug it right there. Website URL is fullcourse.com perfect? So I make sure I don't want to butcher it in case it wasn't so fullcourse.com perfect.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:34:40]:

You're like, don't want to forget that. Yeah, bookmark that sucker. So that's the first thing I will say. However, as it comes to investment specifically, we are talking about our accelerator program. Within full course, we are generally looking for restaurant brands that are in the hands of the owner. Sometimes that's also the founder. But it's okay if it's not. It's okay if you've already started franchising.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:35:03]:

That usually does not scare us off either. We know we're going there anyway, right? We love brands that are usually differentiated in their point of view. It's not a requirement, but it's nice, right? So they represent a different culinary point of view. They have something new to offer to the space. And that is just generally true of how we look at investments. We know the space very well. We know what's crowded and what's not. I am very adamant about supporting underrepresented founders.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:35:30]:

So while that is not a requirement for our investment, we are out there actively searching for brands that are culturally, ethnically, or racially differentiated, that have a female founder, for example, that maybe have a working parent as the founder. You know, I just think really kind of trying to cast a light on the foods and the stories that we want to hear as consumers. And it's just a fact, right? Female and minority owned businesses receive less than 3% of venture capital in the United States. And the way that you change that scorecard is by being thoughtful about where you are sourcing brands from. It also doesn't hurt to put the capital in the hands of a female and minority founder who cares about those kinds of things, because that is one of the other ways that you change the game. Right. But generally speaking, what we say is at least one unit open for one year with a million AUV. Those are not a hard line.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:36:29]:

That is a general rule of thumb. We cannot invest in brands that do not have a cash flowing business. But, you know, in a post Covid environment, is it a hard line on a million AuV? No. But can it, does it need to be able to get there? Yeah. Right. So, you know, we're looking for franchisability in these brands, too. Like, if you can't get the AUV up that high, it's going to be really hard for a franchisee to take home profit after they pay you 7%. It's always something that we're thinking about now, for brands that don't meet that criteria, what I will say is we have an incubator program that's actually through our nonprofit.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:37:05]:

So if you have an idea, maybe a food brand, you've been doing it as a cottage industry, a pop up, a food truck, a catering business, but don't have a physical brick and mortar. You can still go through the book, a call on our website@fullcourse.com. and the prompts will get that information out of you, and we will, will put you in the considerations side of the business for the nonprofit incubator that we use federal and state and sponsorship funding for to help offset the cost of that. And that is designed to help you get your first restaurant unit open, including putting you in touch with capital sources that can help you pay for that. So that's a very interesting service that we offer. It's called our launch program.

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Angelo Esposito [00:37:48]:

Launch. I'm glad I asked that question because I think people listening now really understand, hey, they can get free resources, they can go down the investment kind of accelerate route, and then there's also this kind of incubation route. So it's like super, super clear. So I'm glad we went through that. And, you know, one thing I always like to do, and it might be hard to think about it, because I know when people ask me, it's hard to pinpoint one, but any kind of case studies that come to mind, and I know it's hard sometimes when someone asks you, it's like, tell me a funny story, and then you can't think of anything on the spot. But obviously, you have funny stories. But if you have any recent, I guess, case studies that come to mind, it'd be cool to just share it and be like, hey, we had this. And if you can't name names, you don't have to name names.

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Angelo Esposito [00:38:27]:

We're just like, hey, we had this three unit that came in. We did XYZ. I think it's always nice to hear some real life stories.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:38:33]:

Well, you know, I think you can certainly go to our website and see some of the information about the public investments that we've made. But one thing to understand is that when brands are in our accelerator, we deeply respect a founder's right to. There are several moments where they are in the process, and they have a choice to back out without major consequences to them before equity really starts changing hands. And we do that as a service, not just to them, but to us, to make sure that the fit is right. Now, we work with founders very closely, and I think that if you look at our website, you can see some examples of what those look like. But for us, I think that one of the things that we look for that's so important, and this is true, whether it's in the incubator, in the nonprofit side of our business, or in our accelerator, because we're teeing them up for investment, is that founders purpose and mission, and their story needs to be something that you infuse into the brand. And one of the coolest things that just happened, it actually gives me goosebumps, is when we met Neil and Samir and Nani, the founders of Nonstop. I've known them for years.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:39:37]:

And when we finally made an investment and we started shaking out the nuances of the brand story, we hear them talk about their mom's recipes a lot, and it is incredibly important to them to tell their cultural point of view through food. And they use her recipes to do it and give her all the credit. But there's not a lot of her on tv, on press, and whatever, and that's her choice. But one of the things that our team just put together was this adorable avatar of their mom. And when there's customer feedback, there's like a moment, because it's like, if you want to complain, like, you know, our mom needs to hear, too. And it's sort of, like, part of the schtick. But, like, what's so important about that, as an example, is that we leaned into the fact that it is. They love talking about their mom.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:40:32]:

They love telling stories about how their mom fed their friends and how that became a leveling ground for them to be the cool kids with good food instead of the weird kids eating indian food at lunch. And I just love so much about that because it's true. If you think about it, nearly every culture around the world at this point has some sort of starch and usually a rice with some kind of vegetable on it and. Or a protein. And that can be a universal truth that connects cultures. And so, hey, my rice and beans looks like this. And my cuban family, what does it look like for you growing up in an indian american family? Tell me more about that. Did you put hot sauce on it? Because I always wanted to buy.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:41:13]:

We just, like, can relate in different ways, even though we came from very different backgrounds. And the way that you can honor that and make it part of the brand, I think, is at the soul of what the whole course does. Right. Like, we deeply respect that founder story, their purpose, their mission, the reason they get up and do this every day. And we want to make it part of the brand so that it's bigger than just them. There's more ways to tell the story than just a founder saying it or their mom showing up on tv. Right. So I think that's a good example of kind of how we do this, and we do it in a way that I think is super differentiated from any other investor you might talk to.

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Angelo Esposito [00:41:52]:

No, that's amazing. I'm really happy you shared that. And, you know, I always like to wrap up with kind of what's next for you, and then I just also want to give you a chance to plug everything. So I know we'll definitely plug the website again. But any other podcasts, any other links? Any other. But first off, I left them. What's next for Lauren? What's next for. For full course? Anything you can share that, that's coming up or on the horizon.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:42:16]:

Yeah, sure. So our first fund was dedicated to investing in about four to six restaurant brands. So this year, you will be hearing from us what those other investments are. We will fully allocate that first fund, close it out, and have it ready to disperse for those investments. What will be right behind it is our second fund, which I'm super excited about. And there will be more news coming on that later this year. Yeah, so we got a lot of things coming. We are working on some new and very exciting programs that are designed to help franchisors mentor and cultivate franchisees from within, including a focus on underrepresented franchisees that they want to have more of in their system, and also growing from single unit franchisees, multi unit leaders, where you can really influence growth with existing franchisees.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:43:13]:

We've done a lot of work in developing those into more customizable workshops and ongoing consulting, and had a tremendous amount of success. And I am so proud of the brands that we work with who are making concerted efforts to make entrepreneurship through franchising available to underrepresented founders. So that is a huge part of what we're working on right now. Very soon hoping to have our entire learning management center translated into at least a second language, which I think is so important. Hispanics are 19% of the us population, but we are overrepresented in the restaurant employment pool to the tune of 28%. So we really have an enormous talent pool that we haven't even begun to tap in the hispanic community that works in restaurants. I'm just excited. I get upped every morning, grateful that I get to do what I get to do to help our community be better.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:44:10]:

And I think there's a million other things that we're working on to that end. But I will say that we remain committed to as much capital as we raise to put back into the industry and these methods that we think are fair and equitable and honor a founder's journey, that we are also committed to the education that it's going to take to elevate the next generation of leadership up in our industry. And we hope that that's going to be tremendously more diverse in every way possible. And that is what we're here to do.

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Angelo Esposito [00:44:39]:

Awesome. Well said. And so, to wrap up any plugs you want to make so people listening can follow. So obviously, full course, I assume pretty much everything's there. But if there's anything else you want to link, your socials, your LinkedIn, anything, your podcast, whatever you want to want to do, now's your chance.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:44:55]:

Yeah. Thank you so much. So we're on most forms of social media as a course official, and I am on LinkedIn, full courses on LinkedIn. I am very active on that platform. I would encourage you, if you are not yet on that platform and representing you and your brand that you get on there, it is a very influential form of social media, and every vendor you could ever need is on there. Every capital source you could ever need is on there. And I think sometimes our restaurant tribe of folks like don't realize that. And while social media and other formats is very important professionally, I think having that profile and some activity on LinkedIn is also important.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:45:33]:

So you can find me on LinkedIn. As Lauren E. Fernandez, you hopefully can follow me and get some good restaurant tips. I am on there as a thought leader at least once a day and commenting. And that is so important because so much of the education that we provide is sometimes just in our know how. And I answer questions all the time on LinkedIn. You know, the other thing I will say is on fullcourse.com, there are a number of resources that are available to you, and if you are concerned about how much a coach or consultant could cost to you, we have a group coaching process called Navigator. It's dollar 29 a month.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:46:12]:

It's extremely affordable. Phone a friend plus 301 like higher level thought leadership on restaurant management. So we do custom education just for that navigator group. And you can ask any question you want of our team and have it answered either anonymously or live in person. And it is such an amazing resource for that founder, that owner operator, that employee who needs help, who needs some development support, personally, professionally, or even for the brand. And you can get it affordably right in that kind of group coaching setting. And we have founders and owners who buy it for themselves and immediately buy it for their managers. We get a lot of that and we welcome it.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:46:57]:

We welcome it because what it does is it unlocks our entire learning center for you. So all of our classes are unlocked once you become a navigator member.

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Angelo Esposito [00:47:06]:

Wow. Well, I'm glad you shared that. Well, Lauren, thank you for joining us. Once again, we're on the WISKing It All episode here with Lauren Fernet Nandez from fullcourse.com. thank you for joining us. So much wisdom share today. I appreciate you taking the time.

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Lauren Fernandez [00:47:22]:

Thank you. Thanks for having us on.

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Angelo Esposito [00:47:24]:

Feel free to check out WISK.ai for more resources and schedule a demo with one of our product specialists to see if it's a fit for.

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