Harold Isaac Walters [00:00:00]:

Just last October, you know, after we had already had the other locations open, we slimmed down our menu. We figured. We looked at our product mix and figured out what was selling. We applied the 80 20 rule. This 20% is what's making the 80% and really doubled down on that. And so if I could give any advice when it comes to scaling, I would say it's like, figure out what's really working in your business, because you might be successful even now, but that might not be. There's probably some. Some small factors that are really creating all the success, and the rest of it is just creating more energy for you that are taking away more energy.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:00:40]:

Yeah. If you get rid of that focus on what works, you'll see even more success.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:48]:

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 that they do. Welcome to another episode of WISKing it all. We're here today with Harold Walters, the CEO and co founder of Shootz. Harold, thanks for joining us, man.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:01:16]:

Thanks for having me. Excited.

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:17]:

Of course, I've heard great things. I know we haven't officially met until today, but I'm excited to dive in. I see your stuff on LinkedIn. I think we have a ton of mutual connections, so really excited to hear about your backstory. Easy place to start. And then we'll probably backtrack a little. But, like, can you just tell people what is Shootz?

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:01:38]:

Yeah. So Shootz is a hawaiian asian fusion. We focus primarily on fried chicken katsu. So it's kind of like an asian hot chicken. The only difference is that, you know, compared to, like, Nashville hot chicken and whatnot, is that we have a egg battered panko fried chicken, and then we based it in a kimchi butter. So it's a hawaiian asian fusion out of southern California, started by me and three of my childhood friends met in a bar and just came up with an idea and just went with it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:02:15]:

That's awesome. And I love to always understand, like, why people do what they do, what got them into it. So can you share a bit about your background and kind of what led you to the. The food and beverage space?

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:02:28]:

Yeah. So my background before getting into the restaurant space was in tech primarily. So my first career job was customer success as an engineer at a few different tech companies, mostly in the web hosting space. So I worked with tech companies anywhere from hosting traditional shared hosting websites to eventually, like, enterprise, web hosting companies.

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Angelo Esposito [00:02:54]:

Got it.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:02:54]:

And then from there, in 2017, I ventured into entrepreneurship through e commerce. So I started my own drop shipping company. And then from there, I went ahead and, you know, buying product from China, selling it out here, really just dove into that whole world of just Internet marketing. Running a lot of Facebook ads, Instagram ads, dealing with influencers, things like that. I really loved it. I had a lot of success in it. And I, one day, one of my friends came over to me and said, hey, I think we're ready to finally start my own restaurant. And for myself, I had no experience in the restaurant industry whatsoever.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:03:33]:

I never worked a job at the restaurant before. I never been in a kitchen, any of that. So I was just like, all right, cool. This sounds like a cool idea to invest in. Let's see what happens. Yeah. Like I said, we met in that bar and came up with an idea and just went from there.

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Angelo Esposito [00:03:49]:

Wow. Yeah. It's definitely not. Not an easy industry. So to jump in, I wonder if it was almost a silver lining that you didn't work in it. You know, maybe. Maybe it would have swayed your decision if you did. I'm just kidding.

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Angelo Esposito [00:04:01]:

But probably. But it's super interesting. I'm curious, like, how would you say maybe your experience in e.com, you know, maybe shaped your approach when kind of, you know, number one founding but also running Shootz.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:04:15]:

In the beginning, I wasn't really, I wasn't really thinking I was going to be running the operation. Like, I was the only one that had any, I would say real business experience, but it wasn't. I was more like, hey, my two friends that are in culinary, you know, they went to school for this. They've worked in the restaurant industry. You know, they'll run it. And then me and one of my other friends, he had a little bit of experience running his own restaurant before, but it was more like, you know, with his family and things like that. So we were kind of, like, on the back end, like, hey, you guys got this. This is, like, what you really want to do.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:04:53]:

And, you know, we're just here to support on the business side of things and the marketing side of things and whatnot. And so the shift really happened, obviously. So we opened during COVID So we opened September of 2020, but we signed the lease on our location in March of 2019.

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Angelo Esposito [00:05:10]:

Oh, wow.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:05:11]:

So we're just waiting at this point for this thing to get, you know, built up, and we're just building up the brand. And once we, you know, finally open, we really opened with a lot of success. But I start after Covid happened, I, like, quickly started to see, you know, okay, there's a. There's a huge shift happening right now digitally in the restaurant space by necessity. And, you know, what used to be a. An industry that was well behind still is well behind. But all of the information and all of the technology, the tools, the strategies that I was using in e commerce became necessary in this industry, and I started to see that. And so I started to really craft a vision for what could happen with Shootz.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:05:57]:

And that was around the time. So, like, this is maybe early 2021 was around the time that I took the reins and I. And leading the organization.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:06]:

Wow. Yeah. I think it's interesting because, you know, we've seen the same thing is, like, during COVID you see, restaurants are typically the last to adopt tech. You know, like, tech is adopted in every other industry, and the restaurants are like, oh, cool, you can reserve online. I'll take that. You know, and then it's like, cloud based. Pos that sounds good. You know, and then all.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:26]:

It's kind of like last of the party. But I did see that shift as well where, like, Covid just kind of accelerated it, where, like, people were more open to digital solutions. The obvious one being, like, everyone had to do a lot of, like, you know, digital ordering. So online ordering and maybe, like, you know, third party ordering type stuff or curbside pickup stuff or whatever it was. So it was all related to that. You also saw the resurgence of, you know, QR codes. So that was like the biggest comeback of 2020. Like, you know, it was like, they're gone for ten years.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:56]:

I used to use them just for BBM, right, or BlackBerry phones, you know, BBM messenger. I think it was, you know, use those, those barcodes, and I kind of never used it since. So it was kind of cool to see come back, but. But yet, so to be able to apply everything you learned or some of those lessons to the restaurants, like, I'd love to know, like, what was maybe something practical or tactical that you were able to. To implement, let's say from your. From your experience on the ecommerce.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:07:21]:

Yeah. So when I first got in, I didn't really, you know, obviously I knew tech. I knew marketing or digital marketing and Internet marketing, but I didn't really know, like, all of the different platforms and whatnot in the restaurant space that were currently available to me. And so I really had to learn the restaurant industry. I literally knew nothing about it. So originally it was like, okay, well, what pos do we use. And first we just kind of went to Clover because I was like, okay, this is a cloud based pos and, but I didn't, I didn't know about toast, I didn't know about revel, I didn't know about any of these other platforms, but I knew that we needed to have a focus on data. Like, I just knew that at the end of the day, we need to collect as much data as possible.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:08:04]:

Names, email addresses, phone numbers, whatever other data we could get. So we focused on that. Like, and originally it was, I didn't know how we were going to get it. I just knew that we needed to get it. So it was like, all right, five stars loyalty program. We set that up and it was just like, all right, we're just going to make sure that we're collecting names, emails, and phone numbers. Another thing that we did was, so our locations are primarily in food halls, you know, so in a food hall you have, you know, multiple different units or multiple different restaurants. In our food hall, we had 15 different restaurants in there, okay? Plus retail and things like that.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:08:38]:

So everyone's kind of running around. They're going to the bar, they're going to the brewery there. And we were always packed. And so I wanted a text message solution because I didn't want to use buzzers, I didn't want to use other me calling out orders, things like that. Because it wanted. Doesn't work. When people are walking around and they go too far, the buzzer doesn't work, stuff gets stolen. So I actually went into the Clover app store and we found this, this platform that allows us to basically send out text messages, but it was super expensive.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:09:08]:

And then eventually, like, out of nowhere, I want to say maybe a month after using it, the app literally just disappeared. Like, off the Clover app market, it just like, disappeared. They weren't supporting it anymore. And so, um, me and a friend of mine actually created a software that allows us to basically intake text messages and whatnot. We tried to get in the Clover app market, but it was a terrible situation with that. But, um, in creating that, like, we, you know, 300, 400 customers a day, we're getting a phone number every, every order. And then we would just put them into a flow that, you know, opted them into a. To SMS marketing and things like that.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:09:50]:

So really it was just a focus on data and just being able to communicate with our guests, especially at a time when everyone's kind of inside of their house, no one's really coming outside, but when they do, we want to make sure that we're the ones that are continuously communicating with them makes sense.

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:06]:

It makes sense. And it's funny you say that because I think it's obvious now that you said it, but the fact that you came from that e comm background, you understood right away. Like, capturing data, capturing emails, capturing numbers, which is restaurants are finally starting to understand. Like, okay, cool. Like, I can offer Internet and capture emails and I should probably have some type of newsletter and I should probably be in, like, they're starting to get it more. So, like, it's really cool to see that. That's probably a competitive advantage you had is like, it's obvious in your world. Cause in ecommerce, like, no, Rainer, you have the abandoned cart, you have the auto emails, you have the promotions.

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:38]:

So I was like, of course, we gotta do this. So applying that to a restaurant, which was, you know, a little more old school in terms of, like, maybe the way they think about tech is super neat. And just out of curiosity, like, how many, and I should know this, I apologize, how many Shootz locations you have to date?

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:10:56]:

We have three right now, and we're opening up another one right now, too.

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Angelo Esposito [00:11:00]:

That's cool. Okay, great. That's why the reason I wanted to ask is because we have a lot of restaurant operators and owners that listen to this podcast. And I always try to ask questions that maybe, you know, they'll be able to be like, oh, this is helpful for me. And so one of, you know, talking about capturing emails, talking about sms, that's already useful. But, like, coming from someone who didn't have experience, I think it's an interesting angle. Cause it's like you're coming with a clean slate of how you see things and what you're looking for. And so I guess first question I have for you in regards to that is how did you know what you know now? Like, how do you think about, like, let's say the tech stack and, like, what did the order of importance look like for you?

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:11:39]:

Yeah. So this developed over time as well for me because like I said, I had no experience with the restaurant industry. So the first thing I did was I needed to get around people in the restaurant industry and at a high level. So I started going to the events and things like that. I went to a fast casual summit. That was the first event I went to. And we were on a tour and I was on the, we were on a tour bus to go do a little food tour and whatnot. And I methadore Tammy Billings.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:12:06]:

I don't know if you know, tammy is. I'm not sure. Yeah, so Tammy Billings, like, I think at the time, she was working with a wisely, and she just started talking to me about pos companies and whatnot. And she told me about, like, toast and rebel and things like that. And so I started to really research the different pos companies and see, like, okay, well, I already know, like, in my mind, what I need, in a sense, I know I need a database. I know I need some at least somewhat, like, decent data that I can use, and then I can then plug in everything into. For me, it's always been pos first. I'm always looking at that kind of, like, my brain where we're going to connect everything into.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:12:51]:

Now we probably have a bloated tech stack for a restaurant of our size. Cause I literally went into it, like, I want to be, like, I want to look as if we're not necessarily look as if we're big, but be prepared for if we were to go big to scale.

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:04]:

Yeah, makes sense, right?

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:13:05]:

Just built, built it to scale, you know? So, um, yeah, pos and then later on, I started to, you know, understand, like, like, I didn't understand cogs. Like, I understood, like, okay, this is the percentage of, you know, that we're going to spend on food and whatnot. But I didn't understand, you know, like, the actual formula for cost of goods. I didn't really see, like, how important inventory was and, like, waste and things like that. You know, we don't have waste, really in retail when it comes to e commerce, like, not like the restaurant does.

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:39]:

Right.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:13:39]:

So, you know, then it was like, okay, restaurant 365. So plugging in, like, platforms like that, I can have inventory management. I didn't understand how to really do accounting. So originally, our tech stack was kind of like, just different platforms that plugged in, but may have not necessarily gave us the best result for the operation side of things. So that might be a long winded answer, but basically, yeah, just looking at, I had to really start looking at the operation side of things. Cause I didn't understand operations. I knew tech, but I didn't understand operations. And so really starting to learn how to operate a restaurant successfully started to evolve.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:14:22]:

The way I looked at the tech stack.

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Angelo Esposito [00:14:24]:

That makes sense. Yeah. Typically what we see, like, in general when talking to restaurants is, like, POS is usually first, just because you're opening a new place, you're worried about collecting money and charging customers, which makes sense. If you can't do that, there's not much else in terms of tech stack, obviously, there's the build out and finding your employees and this and that and permits and whatever. But in terms of opening and tech stack, it's usually PoS first. What we've seen come up second, and you nailed it, is usually something cogs related. So you mentioned restaurant 365. They're great.

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Angelo Esposito [00:14:53]:

Some people like that are more bar heavy. Might look at a WISK if there's other people out there. And then the third one. And these can be interchangeable. People look at labor, which makes sense. They might look at scheduling. And if you think about it, it's logical because it's like, yeah, if you think about a restaurant, now that you've learned all these things, you probably realize, okay, there's something called the prime cost. And prime cost is your cogs and your labor.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:13]:

So it's like, probably makes sense to have a tool for cogs and have a tool for labor. And then what we end up seeing is after that, it could be a mix of things, but usually a close number four might be loyalty related or marketing. And then, then you can get fancy online ordering and chargeback solution if you get a lot, you know, so then you start getting in the weeds. And don't get me wrong, there could be a lot of valuable stuff, but that's kind of the general order we see is like, pos, labor, cogs, you know, maybe a solution each, and then anything and everything else kind of follows. But, yeah. So hearing your story, like, one thing I'd love to understand is it's one thing to just start, right, and then get one location, but it's another to then expand and you're in three and go into four. So someone with no experience, which I love because it's super humbling to hear, like, and I think sometimes it can be a competitive advantage because you're going in with a clean slate, fresh mind, willingness to learn, which sometimes the negative could be like, someone with that spin in the industry. They have a way of thinking, and it's hard to change their mind.

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Angelo Esposito [00:16:12]:

Right. Obviously, there's advantages to experience, but it also could sometimes work against you because you're not open minded. But having said that, talk to me a bit about, like, how. How you thought about growth and how you scaled. Cause I'm sure there's a lot of restaurant operators listing on this. They might have one location and they're like, I would love to when they have two or three or four or five. Right. And beyond.

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Angelo Esposito [00:16:32]:

How did you start. How did you start building more than one restaurant?

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:16:36]:

Basically, like, when we opened, we were, like, really successful. So, like, our sales were through the roof, but at the same time, we didn't really understand, like, a lot of the stuff that we just talked about right now. So I didn't, I really didn't fully know, like, where my cogs should be or where my labor should be. And we also had, you know, two of my partners operating in the store. So that kind of, like, gives you this, like, virtual idea that, like, your labor is really good when it's really not because they're not even really paying themselves, things like that. So in the beginning, and, you know, I had a mentor who wasn't in the restaurant space, but had a ton of business experience and, you know, done a lot of, like, mergers and acquisitions and exited some companies. And so talking to him, you know, he was like, you know, scale fast. Like, if you can scale fast, scale fast.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:17:26]:

But he would like, be like, you got to make sure that the thing works. Like, make sure you have the model down. And so in my mind, we had the model down because, you know, I only knew what I knew, right. And so it was like, all right, guys, let's, like, this thing is working. It's killing it. It's operating. Let's start to look for the next location. And I.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:17:44]:

And let, as we do that, let's simultaneously, you know, work your guys way out of the, out of the restaurant so that someone else can take over that. That location.

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Angelo Esposito [00:17:54]:

Right.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:17:54]:

And so we were definitely overly ambitious. And we, we opened initially. My second location was actually like a very large build out, and I had, like, this idea that, where it was like, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna have this, this other location. So our first location, 600 sqft.

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Angelo Esposito [00:18:13]:

Okay.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:18:14]:

Really small. We did 1.9 million out of that location. So pretty good for a 600 square foot location.

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Angelo Esposito [00:18:19]:

Yeah. That's excellent. Wow.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:18:21]:

The second location I was looking at was like 2000, 803,000 sqft or something. It was gonna be a full build out, right? Like, so my mindset was like this hub and spoke model. We're gonna have this one location. We're gonna do like a, kind of like a, we're going to do all. It'll be also our prep kitchen, and we'll, like, store all of our packaging and stuff like that there. And, you know, that'll be what delivers. Will deliver everything to the stores out of there. So it's like this whole, like, let's cut out all the labor and everything out of the stores.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:18:52]:

So good idea in theory, but then it makes sense as far as, like, the capital expenditures. I didn't understand that I can have, like, a co manufacturer make some of this stuff for us, you know, instead of. Instead. So luckily, we were able to get out of that deal. Okay. I developed a partnership with. With the developer of our food hall, and that allowed us to then, you know, they had a lot of real estate experience and things like that, so they actually helped me get out of that deal. And then we made our second location, a second gen location.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:19:29]:

It was actually a second gen food hall location. So we went from about to spend 900 to a million, you know, 900,000 to a million dollars on this location to now opening a. Another 600 square foot location for. I want to say we open a location for about 80 grand. So. So now my. My mindset when it comes to, you know, scaling is it's like one, you know, make sure that you have your prime cost in order, make sure that you have a solid manager in place. Yeah, that.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:20:02]:

And then also your culture in place. We didn't really have any of that. So we opened up that second and third location really just, like, trying to figure things out still. So my thoughts on growth now versus then have obviously evolved. Evolved a lot.

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Angelo Esposito [00:20:21]:

It's amazing. I think there's a lot. A lot of good nuggets there and good takeaways for the listeners. Right? Like, thinking about, like you said, prime cost. Thinking about the cost of the build out. Right. And not just looking at, like, the cool factor. And this might be nice and this might be, but, like, at the end of the day, it's a business.

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Angelo Esposito [00:20:36]:

And it's like, you got to think about all these kind of, you know, underlying things because that the bottom line is ultimately what counts. Like, yes, you do all these things and the love for hospitality and the guest experience, but, like, they all lead to being profitable, because if you're not profitable, like, then nothing else matters because you can't serve guests. You can't continue your passion. You can't do all that, you know? So I love to hear from you. Go ahead. Go ahead, please. Yeah.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:21:00]:

When we opened our second location, third location, another thing that I had, like, that we didn't realize looking back now, we had a significantly different menu. Like, we had about five. We had, like, six different, like, plate options. Menu options on the menu. And then we were opening that big location. We were like, yeah, we could do a bar on there. We could add liquor and stuff like that. And so it was just like this idea of, like, unneeded vertical integration inside of the restaurant of like, yeah, let's add liquor and this and that.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:21:35]:

When it's like, have you really doubled down on what you currently have that works? Now, just last October, you know, after we had already had the other locations open, we slimmed down our menu. We were, we figured. We looked at our product mix and figured out what was selling. We applied the 80 20 rule. This 20% is what's making the 80% and really double down on that. And so if I. If I could give any advice when it comes to scaling, I would say it's. It's like, figure out what's really working in your business, because you might be successful even now, but that might not be.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:22:12]:

There's probably some small factors that are really creating all the success, and the rest of it is just creating more energy for you that are taking away more energy. Yeah. If you get rid of that focus on what works, you'll see even more success.

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Angelo Esposito [00:22:26]:

I love that. I love that. No, well said. It's funny because it's, it's something you kind of learn in business in general, but 100% applied to restaurants as well, which is sometimes less is more. And it's like, as human, sometimes we're like, oh, let's, let's add this, that, and you want to add things, but sometimes, like, subtraction makes things better. And I couldn't agree more because I've learned that lesson the hard way, too, is less is more and double down how it works. Because as humans, sometimes we think about what's not working and, oh, you know what? If we had a, like, you always think the grass is greener. Like, if we have this other thing, then if we did this, or if we open in this loc, it's always something else when it's like, wait, take a step back.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:00]:

What's working today? So for people listening, just to echo that, because that was a great takeaway, looking at that p mix, looking at your, your top sellers and looking at it from a profitability standpoint, too, and then doubling down on that because the 80 20 rule applies, applies there the same way it applies in many different places where it's like, usually 20%, your items are making 80% of your revenue. So understanding that and then optimizing. So that's a great, great takeaway. And then I'd love to understand. So now that, you know, as you're opening more locations, you're rethinking, you know, obviously, prime cost, you're looking at, you know, making sure your menu is profitable. So a bit of maybe, like, menu engineering and picking the top selling items. What other kind of challenges or lessons did you take away so our listeners can take these two in terms of, like, scaling things you didn't anticipate or lessons you learned, because that one was awesome. If you have a few other nuggets, then that'd be great.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:23:53]:

You know, there's so many conversations right now going on about tech. Tech, tech data, data, you know, Internet marketing, whatever it is. Like, yeah. And so, you know, in the beginning, it was, it's easy to think like, oh, if I apply this piece of tech, it's going to make us, you know, this is, this is going to work now. And so understanding that, like, each piece of tech that you add into your stack requires one. It requires financial capital. It requires, it requires human capital. It requires so much more just to, like, make that thing work successfully.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:24:31]:

And so I'd say the biggest lesson for me, and this, you know, I had to learn it because I came from the tech space, was that tech doesn't solve all of my problems. Like, at the end of the day, like, if your operations isn't dialed in and you don't focus on the thing that is really your business, you know, I had this idea coming in where it was like, okay, we're going to be really a tech media company. It's in the long run, but, like, at the end of the day, it's like, food is what we do. Food is what sells, food is why the customer comes. So, and experience is why they come. And so doubling down on that, but just understanding that, like, any piece of tech you add takes time. Any. Anything you add, whether it's tech, whether it's another solution, whether it's another payroll platform, whatever, it's gonna require some work, it's gonna require, you're going to run into some issues.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:25:24]:

There's going to be some integration that breaks down. There's going to be something that doesn't work how you thought it was going to be. I call it, like, bullet point bias, where it's like you're looking at the site and you see all these different bullet points, and you're like, oh, this is exactly what we need. But it's like, nope, there's some stuff in the details that you're missing there. So, yeah, I just say, being very mindful of what you're adding into your organization and looking at the. Looking at the hard cost, but also looking at the costs that you can't necessarily see.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:58]:

Yes. Yes. It's funny. I was just having a conversation with someone, it was exactly around. That concept of simplicity is harder than people think. And that's why Apple and Steve Jobs was so innovative, because it was like, making something simple or look simple is a really hard thing to do. It's easy to be like, oh, let's add this and this feature. And the parallel gives an example.

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:23]:

Tech company will help restaurants with, you know, cost of goods sold and really focus on the bar side, but we help the food side, too. And the parallel I'll give is, like, if we add a feature, let's say, like, oh, it'd be cool to allow people to scan invoices, which we do. But it's like, every time you add a feature, it's not just the cost of, like, oh, it'll take the dev team x amount and take. It's like, well, now support's got to be trained on this. Sales has to be trained on this. We got to update our documentation. We got to let the clients know, oh, we got to update our marketing efforts. So it's like, to your point, it's not just the cost of the thing, it's the costs.

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:53]:

You kind of don't see that now. It's complex, and now it's this thing you're supporting forever. Now, it's not just like, oh, we did this feature. Check. It's now, like, that feature has to be improved. And the same when we, like, add pos integrations, we integrate with toast and a bunch of pos partners. But sometimes when a client's like, oh, we use this pos unless it's like a big pos that makes sense. We think twice for that exact reason, because you add it, and it might not be hard to add because it's just an API integration.

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Angelo Esposito [00:27:16]:

But then it's like, now it's the cost of maintaining it, the cost of training the staff, the cost of supporting that, et cetera, et cetera. And so that's another great piece of wisdom you're sharing is, you know, again, for the restauranters, listening, is thinking about simplicity and some sometimes improving things by subtracting, you know.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:27:33]:

Right. And because those things that you add can actually be damaging to your business as well. Because, like you said, it's like if you add a feature or in the restaurant space, if we add a menu item, if that menu item isn't actually good.

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Angelo Esposito [00:27:44]:

Yeah.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:27:44]:

Now new guests are coming, and then they try this item, as opposed to your. Your one item that, you know, everyone loves.

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Angelo Esposito [00:27:50]:

Loves exactly.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:27:51]:

To never come back because they had the bad item you know, so true.

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Angelo Esposito [00:27:56]:

Yeah. And on the restaurant side, it trickles like, and it's one thing we help a lot with, but it's, to your point, it really trickles. And we work with a lot of full service restaurants, too. And full service, it's even worse because it's like, oh, we got another dish. Well, now you got another supplier. Another item you're buying. It's something that you have to worry. It's perishable.

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Angelo Esposito [00:28:11]:

Like you said, it's not retail. That piece of chicken is going to go bad. So it's like there's this kind of trickle effect where every time you complicate the item, now the chef has a new item. The staff has to be trained on how to cook it, how to prep it, how to serve it. The waiters gotta be how to present this new dish. Like, we have this, right? So it's like that one extra item created this whole operational nightmare where it's training, it's waiters knowing what. What to sell, it's adding into the menu and printing it. It's blah, blah, blah, blah.

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Angelo Esposito [00:28:36]:

So it's like, what seems simple at first, which is like, ah, it's a few extra items, and it's more choice actions of being, like, crazy. But I love that because that's really, really good. Good feedback coming from someone, again, who wasn't in the industry, who is now, like, got a ton of knowledge. I can only imagine how much you learn. And that's why I find it so it's so pertinent. I'd love to know, kind of like, what's the vision with Shootz, right? So, like, I know what you're doing today. Three locations, opening a fourth. What's next for you guys? I know there's a mention of, like, how you want to scale to top nationwide.

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Angelo Esposito [00:29:09]:

Fast casual brands will tell me more about your vision and, like, how you're thinking again there.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:29:14]:

Yeah. So it's been very, very fluid, and I'm very, like, I'm very open to, like, whatever happens. I'm very loose when it comes to stuff like that. So in the beginning, you know, my mentor asked me, he was like, well, what do you want to do? Like, what's your plan with this thing? Like, where do you want to take it? And this was at the time I had just, you know, taken, taken the role of leading the company. I was like, well, I don't know. Like, I'm pretty sure I want to exit eventually. And he was like, okay, well, you know, how much do you want to exit? For. And so I was like, I don't know.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:29:51]:

I was like, I don't know. Maybe a hundred million. Yeah. And I'd seen, like, it was another company I just read in a magazine at the time that had just exited for, like, 114 million or. Well, so I was like, okay, well, guess. Guess it's possible in the restaurant industry. I had no idea.

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Angelo Esposito [00:30:08]:

Yeah.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:30:09]:

And so, um, I. The very next. The very next morning, I get a text message from a friend of mine. He sends me two books. One of them is a private equity book, and the other one is a book called the $100 million exit. I was like, oh, wow, this is like, okay, that's some confirmation right there. That's crazy. And so initially, like, that was my vision.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:30:30]:

Like, all right, we're going to exit for a hundred million. How do we get there? I have no idea, but that's the plan. We're going to exit for a hundred million.

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Angelo Esposito [00:30:35]:

Yeah.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:30:36]:

And so, like I said, I've been very, like, fluid with how it happens. And then eventually, this was maybe eight months ago, like, last October, so. And like I said, we had, we had seen a lot of success, but we also had scaled. And when we scaled, we started to see a lot of decline. Reviews went down. We went from having, like, 4.54.6 stars on Yelp and Google on average to now we're down to, like, 4.24.1 of our, one of our stores dipped under 4.9. Or I'm under three, 3.9. At one point, it was like, okay, something.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:31:08]:

Something's wrong here. Then now that I have all the right pieces of tech, I started to see, like, oh, our, our prime costs are not where we need them to be. You know, our store level EBITDA is way lower than it needs to be, things like that. And I'm like, you know, we're not really making money anymore. And I honestly had a crisis. I was. I went from being in love with this industry to now starting to feel like this isn't really worth it anymore. I can go back to e commerce and wait, make way more money than doing this for way less effort.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:31:39]:

But then I had another conversation with one of my other mentors who used to be at Panda Express for a while, and he talked to me about just, like, vision and, like, like, really having a real ultimate intention for your business. And we talked about Nike and Apple and Chick fil A and in n out and brands like that. And basically, I started to have a real. I was reinvigorated. I started to have another love again for the business, because I realized that setting that goal of $100 million exit was kind of like a, it was too material. And so, and it was also small. Like, I realized, like, oh, this is a really small, like, idea. And so because I was like, there's also, there's so many brands out there.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:32:23]:

There's billion dollar brands. Why can't we be a billion dollar brand? Why can't we really, like, build something that people are going to love and want to come work at and will actually have, you know, impact in the world? And so I shifted my mindset to just say, we're just gonna go big. How we get there, I don't know, but we're gonna go as big as we can. And I just set the goal of, hey, I want to open 100 locations in the next five years, by 2029. So whether that is owner operated, all of our locations owner operated currently. But I was like, whether that's owner operated, whether it's with the solid franchise partner, I don't know yet. But I'm just open to whatever we, whatever comes our way.

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Angelo Esposito [00:33:04]:

That's cool. And I think you touched on something super interesting, which is the idea of, like, having a clear vision, because it's something that also, you know, speaking on the front, personal level, took me time as well, because sometimes you just like, hey, I'm just building this product because I want to help these clients, and it's just, like, very solution oriented, and it's a great place to start. Here's a pain. I want to solve this pain. But then as time goes on, it's like, for the company to really grow, what I realized is, like, the vision has to be authentic, it has to be real, it has to be big. It has to be big enough that other people could fit in it. Because if it's a small vision, it might be good for you. But then it's like, you're not going to build a hundred location, place of the vision's small, right? So it's like having a vision that's big enough that other people could fit into as well.

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Angelo Esposito [00:33:43]:

And it takes time, but it takes time. But then what's really neat, and I'm sure you're probably starting to see this too, is once you're clear on the vision, all the other parts start falling into place more easily. Because it's, like, easier to hire the right people, it's easier to see, it's easier to say yes and no to certain things because it's like, you have that vision, and so the people listening, it's a obvious but good hack, is like, reverse engineer. Like, think about what the goal is and then work backwards. So to your point, if you're like, okay, I got this, you know, big, hairy, audacious goal. I got this big goal, and it's. It's 100 locations in five years. Well, at least now you can start reverse engineering and say, okay, that means on average, x amount of stores per year.

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Angelo Esposito [00:34:20]:

But obviously, we'll probably start slower at scale fat solo x. Okay, this is what it looks like. If it looks like that, okay, what. What do I got to do? And you start working backwards, and it's a really obvious thing, you know, saying it, but, like, for people that might not see it, it becomes obvious once you see, like, okay, great, if I can do this with my life, with my restaurant, with whatever, it becomes a lot easier to hit your goals. And it's something that I've done in my personal life. So just to give you maybe a quick, like, anecdote is, like, I started doing that with my calendar, and who was it? But basically, like, I bought this big calendar. It's in my closet. I keep it on the wall, and I just work backwards, and I say, okay, what are the things I absolutely need to do this year? And say, okay, I want to do XYZ.

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Angelo Esposito [00:35:03]:

So maybe start off with the big goals. Cool. Then I go a bit smaller. It's like, okay, what are the things that are obviously very important? It's like, okay, going to visit family for Christmas in Montreal and going to this, and my brother's getting married. So, like, cool. Put it on the calendar. And it was like this exercise where, you know, you put, I don't know if you ever heard that analogy with the vase, and you fill it up with water. Exactly.

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Angelo Esposito [00:35:22]:

But start with the rocks first. Send the pebbles. But that's what I realized is applying that concept of rocks first, then the pebbles, then the sand, then the water. But your calendar is, like, an amazing way. Whereas before I had this misconception that, like, ah, it's kind of lame if you plan, I'm not more of a spontaneous guy. But then I realized those two things don't have to be exclusive, is that you be a spontaneous guy and live in the moment, but also just, like, plan your year to a certain extent. And what I realize is, in a weird way, even though it sounds like, oh, man, you plan ahead, it's like you end up being more spontaneous because you don't feel guilty. Because, like, when someone's like, yo, let's hit up the boat on Saturday.

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Angelo Esposito [00:35:57]:

You're like, cool. Yeah. I got nothing on there that's going towards my goals. Let's do it. So anyways, little, little I wanted to share because it changed my life. And I was like, super simple concept, but it changed my life.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:36:08]:

I'm glad you shared that because that was actually one of the revelations I had in that time as well, where it was like, okay, we need to create a real vision. And in that time, you know, I tend to, like, do way too much. And also getting in the restaurant industry, I still had shiny object syndrome as an entrepreneur.

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:28]:

Right.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:36:29]:

So, like, you know, shoes wasn't the only brand we opened. I opened a cookie shop. I opened a brunch spot. I opened another restaurant that we ended up closing. It was just ridiculous. Like, I wasn't focused because I didn't really, like, line align up with the vision. But one of the things you just mentioned right now, Washington, have you read ten x equals two X or ten X is better than two x?

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:49]:

No, no.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:36:50]:

But gap in the game. Who. Not how you would love those. I can already tell you I love those books. Basically, a psychologist and then an entrepreneur who's been in the game for a long time now, came together to write these trilogy of books. But one of the books is called ten X. Their latest one is. Ten X is better than two X.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:37:10]:

Yeah. And the whole concept is basically, like, it's better to have a ten X goal than it is a two X goal. It's better to go for 100 million than it is to go for a $10 million business or whatever. Right. Or, you know, whatever it is.

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Angelo Esposito [00:37:24]:

Yeah.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:37:24]:

And so one of the concepts in the book he talks about is setting, like, off days, like, on your calendar. So literally, he does. It's like the first thing he schedules in his calendar is 100 and, like, 80 free days. So, like, he has nothing but free days. Like, he does no work whatsoever.

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Angelo Esposito [00:37:45]:

It's awesome. I'm in. Keep going.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:37:51]:

And at first, I was like, okay, I don't. How am I gonna make this work? Right? So he does that, and then after that, he sets focus days. Third of the days is focus days, and then the. The other half is gonna be or so it's the 180, and then it's like, however many other days, you split it in half into focus days and buffer days. Buffer days or meetings, your meeting days, your whatever other small, non priority tasks that you need to do. And then the focus days are like, the. Hey, these are the things that have to get done. Quadrant two type stuff, whatever.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:38:22]:

Right, right. I started applying that. I literally looked at my calendar, and I said, okay, Wednesday's free. Saturday and Sunday are free days. I'm hanging out with my family. I'm not gonna work. And if I do do have to absolutely work on any of those days, I'm gonna split it up where it's, like, the morning I'm doing it, and after that, it's free. And so what I learned in doing that was that just like you said is I learned, like, okay, well, look, I only have Tuesday and Thursday to focus Monday and Friday for these buffer days and meetings and whatnot.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:38:53]:

And so what ends up happening is I automatically only do the things that I actually have the time to do. If I don't have the time to do them, it must not be that important. And so, like, the stuff that just was getting in the way, taking all of my energy, just started to fall away. I had way more peace. I didn't feel guilty if I felt like watching tv or watching my show or whatever, because it was like, this time is dedicated for this. I don't have to feel guilty anymore for it, and I can focus on the days. It's time to focus.

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Angelo Esposito [00:39:25]:

That's awesome. No, I love it. And another, like, little point in there that took me a while to learn was the idea, and it sounds like you're already doing with the focus and other tasks days, but it was the idea of theming your days. And so it's like, I actually only do my podcast on Wednesdays because Wednesday's my podcast day. So it's like, I'm in that flow. And, like, Monday is my creative day where I do content, and, like, Tuesday, Thursdays, I do my meetings. And what I realized is just the idea of context switching is, like, it's hard, and it takes brain power to go from this. And then right after I got a sales meeting, and then I got an investor meeting, and it's like, so by kind of theming your days, you're actually just more productive, which is super cool.

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Angelo Esposito [00:40:02]:

So love this. And I think that there's a lot of good nuggets to take out of that. So thank you for sharing that. And then maybe just to kind of wrap up, I always like to hear kind of, like, what's. What's next for you guys? So, obviously, now we know the vision. Hundred locations by 2029. Opening number four. So, like, what's next? Anything you want to share with our listeners of what's next for Shootz?

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:40:25]:

Yeah. So really just dialing in our operations. I would say, like, we're in this place where we're really discovering what reverse engineering what Shootz is, who we are, and really defining what the vision is that we want everyone to rally around. You know, we have almost 53 employees right now, and it's like, as we know, we're going to start bringing in more people. We want to know. We want, we want to know, we want them to know what they're coming into and what they're going to be joining forces with. So it's really just been dialing in the operations, dialing in our tech stack, like, the different tech that we brought in, making sure that we're utilizing it to its fullest and putting the right resources in place to make sure that everything is being used to its benefit, getting rid of what isn't working. And, you know, we have, like I said, we have number four opening right now.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:41:19]:

We have, number five is also in the works as well. So that's probably going to open. They've been getting really delayed, so that's probably going to open early January next year, and then number four should be opening probably in the next three months. So from there, I really want to spend next year of just, hey, we're going to focus on making sure that our numbers are where they need to be, making sure that we're growing the company, developing our people, you know, growing this, sort of creating this, this ecosystem that is creating growth and development for everyone on our team, because we know we want to grow. We want our team to grow within. So, you know, our mat, right now, one of our store managers is our. Is employee number one. You know, one of our assistant managers is, like, employee number three or something like that.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:42:04]:

So our goal is just continue to, like, build up our team. The people that want to continue to expand and create a platform where they can step into the next locations and whatnot. So really wanted to spend next year just focused on, you know, making sure what we have is an environment for growth.

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Angelo Esposito [00:42:21]:

Yeah.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:42:22]:

And then from there, just go, sky's the limit, you know, start. All of our locations are in food halls, so I really want to open up our first brick and mortar location, probably early 2026, I'd say, or late 20, late next year, we'll start working on that, test out a drive through, and then just see what else comes from there, you know, if there's other opportunities, we're open to it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:42:44]:

That's awesome. And last but not least, I was like that off the show just with, like, any, any plugs. So where people can reach you, find you. So if you wouldn't mind, where can they find you? Where can they find Shootz? You can drop, like your website, all that good stuff.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:42:58]:

Yeah, for sure. You can follow Shootz at, on Instagram, at Shootz official shootz dot official, our website Shootz a wine.com. you can find me on LinkedIn. Harold I Walters Instagram. Harold iWalters. I'm even open. If anyone ever wants to email me to ask questions, it's me or it's a. Harold@Shootzawaiian.com but, yeah, I mean, that's, that's pretty much the gist of it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:43:27]:

I love that. I love that. Thank you so much, Harold. It was awesome having you on the show, especially coming from a really unique perspective, because someone with that ecommerce jumping in the restaurant world for the first time, I think you shared some really valuable knowledge. So thank you for being on the show once again, Harold Walters, CEO and co-founder of Shootz thanks for having me.

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Harold Isaac Walters [00:43:46]:

Appreciate it, man.

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Angelo Esposito [00:43:47]:

Feel free to check out wisdom 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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