Irv's Burgers, Prince Street Pizza & Best Food Cities in America I Lawrence Longo DSH #427

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All right.

We're talking food today, guys.

I got Lawrence Longo in the building.

How's it going, my man?

Hey, man.

Thanks for having me.

I'm doing great.

Absolutely.

I'm pumped for this one.

I'm big into food, so I can't wait to hear your journey.

How old were you when you sort of got started in the food restaurant industry?

You know, the well, my whole life I've been eating.

I've eaten like 45,000 meals.

Damn, you count them?

My family was a very big food family.

Not in terms of my grandfather grandfather actually said, Do not get in entertainment, do not get in the restaurant business, both of the businesses that I've been in.

So, but my coming from an Italian family, at breakfast, we'd be like, What's for lunch?

For lunch, what's for dinner?

For dinner, what are we ordering after dinner?

Yeah, so it was like always food, food, food, but I never thought of it as a way to make money or have a living or, you know, or just like a career.

I, um,

and I guess about eight years ago, I was working in film and social media and kind of like just trying to find my way.

And I started an app called Off the Menu.

And it kind of dove me headfirst into the food business.

Yeah.

And Off the Menu was an app originally that curated secret menu items.

So I'd go around across the country and find secret menu items and I would.

add them to my app and but I didn't have a way of making money through the app so I turned that into a food club where i was telling you before it's twenty dollars a month right and you get one uh free secret menu item a day and it drives foot traffic into restaurants and that's really where i understood and learned about the food business yeah so but i've only been in the food business probably for like eight years wow yeah and that's cool because you were ahead of your time because now a lot of restaurants partner with influencers local influencers and i feel like that app was sort of the start of that era right 100 yeah i mean i came from so when i moved to uh i'm from toronto i moved to la in the early 2000s and i started working for the president of silver pictures so he was making like uh the matrix and swordfish and lethal weapon and like those types of movies and you realize like what you know content is king that's what they say in hollywood it's like all about the content and then from there i uh i produced space balls the animated series for mel brooks and um

Then I got into social media marketing.

There's an app called Vine that started and Twitter was around.

And we started promoting, getting influencers, which I had no idea what an influencer was at the time, but we called them influencers.

And we'd have them talk.

We'd go to like Warner Brothers and say, hey, we can make your movie, the most talked about movie on social media.

over this weekend.

And while we do it is we'll get like 20 of the biggest influencers to talk about it.

And what it does is it creates this organic word of mouth yeah

and that's kind of where i was like holy you actually can like

speed up word of mouth through social media

and then from there it led me to the app and but yeah i um definitely took everything i've learned from hollywood social media and then brought it to to food absolutely and you even see that with uh like netflix shows you say these days the squid game one blew up because of tick tock did you see that yo absolutely it was crazy i mean i couldn't couldn't not see it.

It was all over my feed.

And even with restaurants, like, I feel like these influencers are driving a substantial amount of traffic.

Like Keith Lee.

If he posts your restaurant, you're doing like five, six figures that week.

Yeah, we got lucky.

He came into the Durango.

Oh, he did?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And he went to a bunch of the spots.

He went to Prince Street Pizza.

He had gone there a couple weeks earlier in New York.

Oh, wow.

And he did us, Joe's Pizza, and I think

Sean's Bleaker, and he gave us the best score.

Nice.

They weren't great scorers, but they were good.

Like, he dogs some pizza places in New York that are like legendary spots.

And

it's like, you know, you never want to see anybody get dogged or anything like that.

And those restaurants will be fine.

But he gave us a great score.

And then he came to Vegas and gave us an even better score.

That's interesting.

So for me, like, if you say that pizza's better in Vegas than it's in New York, I was like, hold on.

That's a bit, yeah, that's, that's a bit weird to me.

You know, so, but.

Did you see his city rankings?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I did actually see

New Orleans was number one.

Something like that.

New York was like six.

Yeah.

Which is interesting to me.

I got New York in my top three.

I mean, it really depends on

where you go in New York and what your food tastes are.

Like, his palate is for a certain audience, right?

Like, your palate might be for another audience.

Mine might be for, you know, other people.

Like, so, like, food's so subjective.

Right.

You can't, like, nothing's the best.

Yeah.

Maybe for you, it's the best.

Maybe for me, it's the best.

But what if you went to my burger joint and my burger cook was having a bad day?

And he wasn't putting the love into the food that the other cook was the previous day.

So there's a lot of like one little thing that goes wrong.

Somebody forgets to salt the burger.

Yeah.

Your burger's not the same.

One person forgets to do, you know, you know what I'm saying?

So like.

Food is also where you eat it, the experience you eat it.

Eating a slice of pizza in New York City on the block of like is like, there's nothing better than that.

Right.

You you know what I mean like and and um so I think it like food is really just subjective but God he's a great you know he's an animal he's so good for uh independent restaurants and mom and pop restaurants that he gives them that push and you see a line like out the block it's crazy yeah food is subjective honestly and it's also who you're with too sometimes Sometimes you're with like your boys having a great night.

You'll go back to the same restaurant with someone you never met and maybe you don't like them or the energy's off and and the food, it gets into the food sometimes.

You know what I mean?

100%.

Absolutely.

I mean, I'm sure if you've ever been on a bad date, you never remember that meal.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

That's funny, man.

Congrats on the new openings in the Durango.

Those places were both amazing.

I ate at them.

The line was like, I waited like 40 minutes.

I actually met Drake's producer in line for Prince Street Pizza.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Super small world.

So that might have helped my influence on it, but the pizza was was amazing in my opinion.

So congrats, man.

I appreciate that.

You'll never know who you meet in lines while waiting for food.

You know, people who wait in lines for food, it's a serious dedication because you don't have to.

There's so many options, right?

So when you choose to wait in line, you're making that choice to, you know, for that experience.

So I hope the pizza better be good.

It was bomb.

It was bomb.

And I saw all the photos of like the celebrities that have pulled up.

I saw a portnoy came.

Yeah.

Did he do a food review on it?

Yeah,

he's done our locations.

We love him.

He's a fan of Prince Street.

So we're indebted to him for obviously loving our pizza because that guy can drive foot traffic to your restaurant.

What did he give it?

In New York, he gave it an 8.6.

Damn, for him, that's really high.

Oh, we were like the third highest New York scorer for a long time.

Holy crap.

Yeah, for a long time.

And then in LA,

it wasn't as good.

And, you know,

it was like part of that experience.

Like my

front of house person didn't know who he was.

So he gave him a cold pizza.

It was like, you know what I mean?

And that's where, but he gave us a seven, I think a 7.6.

Okay.

That's still respectful for you.

It's a good score for him.

Yeah.

But it's not like an 8.6 where we would have loved to be.

So you don't know when he's coming.

He just pulls up.

You know what's so funny?

When he came to L.A., I told my team, too, this is what really made me upset.

I was like, guys, Portnoy is in town.

He's coming by.

I didn't know.

Yeah.

But I knew.

In my gut, I knew because I saw where he was going.

And they still, still, still give him a cold pizza vote.

Still sold it.

Is it true on the West Coast, the pizza spots fly out the water from New York?

So we don't fly it out.

That would be expensive.

We probably wouldn't, we'd probably be out of business if we were flying it out.

But what we do is we have a water filtration system.

And what it does is it takes the LA water and it makes it through chemical process

like New York water.

Wow.

Yeah, because all water is the same.

It's just the chemical makeup of the water in every city.

Interesting.

And why is the New York water so much better for making pizzas?

I'm not the guy to answer that question.

Okay.

Because some people believe it's not true.

Like, some people swear to the death that it is not true.

That's a myth that New Yorkers made in order to keep their pizza great.

and uh they say it's it's harder you know what i mean it keeps its shape better like so it's i think a lot goes into the making of the dough the the amount of yeast you put in the the way you ferment it like all those types of thing really like there's so many factors as i was saying that go into making a good quality food dough crust sauce you know so but i promised the family um when i'd opened up more stores that we had to have the new york water absolutely Because they believe that it is part of the magic.

Absolutely.

Now, growing up in an Italian household, were you experimenting with other cuisines or did you only eat Italian food?

No,

it was heavy Italian, very heavy Italian because you know that your parents and grandparents cook what they know.

And I honestly didn't eat sushi until I was 17 or 18 years old.

I didn't have Indian food until I was 21.

Wow.

I didn't have like Korean barbecue until I moved to LA.

Yeah, like now that I think about it, I ate pizza, burgers,

Chinese food.

Chinese in New York is a classic in those little white boxes.

So, you know, I didn't, it was a heavy, heavy Italian food growing up.

Yeah.

Yeah, I didn't eat outgrown much growing up.

We always cooked also Asian households.

So when I got to get out there and start experimenting, I was like, damn, I feel like I missed out on the world.

Absolutely.

I mean, I eat Indian food now like once a week.

Same.

I love it.

I love Indian dude.

I get just spicy too.

Yeah.

I can't handle spicy.

I sweat on mild chicken wings.

Damn, no, they're like one to 10.

I always get like seven to eight at least.

Yeah, yeah.

Because it clears your system up.

Like food is actually healing.

When I'm a little sick, like I'll get some curry and I'll feel amazing after.

No, you're right because you can sweat it out.

Yeah.

So I don't mind spicy food if I'm eating it by myself and I can have a towel.

You know what I mean?

But when I go to a restaurant, people seeing a fat guy sweat, it's not cool.

Yeah, I feel that.

In 2018, you ate a burger every single day for the whole year, right?

Yeah.

And what were some takeaways there?

Which cities and states stood out to you for burgers?

So

California is the burger capital of America.

Okay.

I mean,

one of the things that I learned of eating a burger every day for a year was that there's...

so many different types of burgers.

And that goes for pizza too.

There's so many different types.

Like, so the hot craze right now and um i'm an investor actually the this uh was a smash burger oh yeah and

it was like the the biggest craze that i think that hit the burgers in the in the law in probably the last 10 years they grew quick yeah so well no i'm talking about like the actual not the company smash burger that's the the smash burger craze oh like the style of the burger there's a burger company called burgers never say die this guy was making these smash burgers in his backyard, and he'd have two-hour lines.

And I ate that burger, and I was like, holy

burger, there's something special.

You got a little bit of a crunch.

It made you feel like that's what McDonald's is supposed to taste like.

And, but what I learned from that is that you have smashed burgers, you have restaurant burgers, you have thick burgers.

There's all different types.

You have a juicy loosey, which the cheese is inside.

It came out of Minnesota.

And you have all these different style of burgers.

So you might like a thick burger.

I might like a smashed burger.

Well, then

they're completely different.

Like, it's like saying

a Chicago-style deep dish pizza is like

a New York slice.

Well,

they're almost like two different types of foods.

Definitely.

But they're called pizzas.

Right.

You know what I mean?

So that's one thing I learned is that it's the experience.

Like the best place to eat a burger isn't necessarily the best burger in the city.

And, and like Apple Pan, for instance, in LA,

best place to eat a burger.

You sit at the burger.

It's like a burger.

Have you been there?

Apple Pan?

Yeah.

No.

It's one of those old school.

You sit at the counter.

They serve you the burger.

You feel like you're in 1950 or 1960 eating a burger.

You and that experience is there's like nothing else.

It's like kind of like I'm going to throw this out there in and out burger.

In-n-Out is the best in consistency, the best in service,

maybe even cleanliness.

Yeah.

Is it the best burger?

If you had that side by side to many other burgers, it wouldn't be the best burger.

I'd say for fast food, it's pretty high.

Oh, no, for yeah, for fast food, in terms of quality, in terms of price, in terms of all that stuff.

Yeah.

But you're comparing it to Burger King, McDonald's, you know, like these types of burgers that, yeah, In-N-Out blows those out of the water.

Yeah.

But you take like, I can't say it because I own Irves Burgers, but like the quality of an IRV's burger is just from the bun, the meat, the, like everything,

is a better burger than In-N-Out burger.

You're probably using higher quality bread, meat.

Everything.

Yeah.

But my goal with Herves is to get it to the level of operation as In-N-Out.

That's everybody's goal.

Yeah.

Is to get to that In-N-Out level of service.

Yeah, they probably have the best fast food service I've ever seen, actually.

For sure.

Because most places are so dirty when you walk inside.

Yeah.

But and Chick-fil-A, those two are super clean.

Absolutely.

And raising Keynes.

Yeah, Keynes does well, too, for sure.

Yeah.

I'm going to name a cuisine and you tell me which city or state has the best cuisine for that dish.

Is that cool?

Yeah.

Pizza.

New York.

Okay.

That was easy, right?

Well, I mean, that's like, I'd get crucified if I didn't say that.

Some people say Connecticut, though, right?

Well,

so the truth is, I've actually never had pizza in Connecticut.

I need to go and do it.

Okay.

I've had this style of pizza, but I haven't had it.

Like, I had it through Gold Belly delivered, but I haven't actually sat at Colony Grill and eaten it.

So, same.

Or Sally's.

So, but I so I have to say New York.

Okay, fair enough.

Sushi.

You're saying America?

Yeah, in America.

California.

Cali.

Okay.

Mexican food.

San Diego.

Ooh.

Probably San Diego.

Okay.

Italian.

New York.

New York, okay.

What would you think?

Say Italian?

Yeah, I'd say New York or Jersey.

I grew up in Jersey.

Yeah.

Probably New York.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anywhere where there's a hot, like Toronto's got it, and I know that's not America, but Toronto's got unbelievable Italian.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

I've never been to it.

It's like where the Italian immigrants settled, right?

Like New York, Toronto, those places.

Montreal's cuisine is insane.

They have a lot of French food there, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, I've been there when I was.

There's a place called Joe Beef, and the guys that own Joe Beef in like one of the best meals I've ever had.

But it's like the experience.

I sat there with a group of buddies for a bachelor party.

Yeah.

You have like moose heads on the wall, and it's like you feel that very like heavy French-Canadian like experience.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Steakhouses.

I've had some pretty good steaks in Dallas.

Okay.

So not New York, Peter Luger.

I love Peter Luger.

Love it.

Great thick burger, great bacon.

I went to Dallas, a couple of steakhouses in Dallas, and they just blew me away.

Wow.

You remember the names?

Yeah,

Nick and Sam's.

And

oh, I'm blanking on the other one I went to.

That was unbelievable.

I got to check that out.

I'm going there next month.

Yeah.

Nick and Sam's.

I'll find out.

I'll give you a list of them.

I went to three that were just, this is now, I guess, two and a half years ago.

Wow.

Yeah.

That is exciting.

Okay.

So Cali, New York, and Dallas are your favorite kind of cities for food?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'd say, well, here's, here's I'm going to give the ultimate city for food is right here in Las Vegas.

I agree.

Because Las Vegas has everything.

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And it just keeps getting better and better and better.

And you got, we, or I always say we, we,

the Las Vegas hand picks the best of every market and brings it here.

So like some of the best Italian restaurants are here, some of the best steakhouses are here, the best pizza, you know.

So,

overall, I would say, like, Las Vegas is one of the best food cities.

I agree.

Even just getting in the Durango, there must have been hundreds of people that applied, right?

They probably just picked the best of the best.

I think they hand-picked people.

I don't know if it was like an apply type of thing.

I think they like approach you.

Yeah, there's a guy there named Tall Cooperman who

has his hands in the

food there for sure.

Got it.

That guy, I was just on a food tour with him in L.A.

where he's looking for like the best things.

That is a fun job, man.

Signed me up for that.

I don't know how often you eat here.

Do you eat in Vegas a lot?

I've been eating in here a lot, yeah.

Okay, so when it comes to favorite resort to eat at, do you have a favorite?

Oh, hands down, Durango.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, the way that they've picked the food.

Nico Steakhouse, unbelievable.

Mijo's Mexican was like awesome.

And I'm eating here the first like months that these places open, so they're only going to get better.

Then you got Aipono, the Hawaiian food, street food.

And then the best custard I've ever tried, ice cream, maybe in my life, Nielsen's.

Yeah, that was fire.

There's one by my house.

There's a few of them in Vegas.

That stuff is good.

So, and then I haven't been to Fountain Blue yet.

I hear their food's pretty.

Komodo was good.

That's the only spot I've eaten at there.

Yeah.

Durango is a newer one.

That's probably why it's not on people's radar yet, but that's interesting.

Yeah, but but I mean, um,

I had Peter Lugers at Caesars.

How was it in Vegas compared to New York?

So, a lot of people on it, really, yeah, and I did, I can't say that, I thought it was amazing.

Okay,

it was just as good as New York when I had it.

That's good to know, try it out, absolutely.

Yeah, I've heard some bad some bad things, yeah.

You know, people like to

on good stuff because they get more clicks or they get more like attention like on social you know it's like you know we get it a lot with print street you wait in live for 30 minutes and like it's a long time to wait for food and

if it's not the best pizza you've ever had then all of a sudden it's the worst but it's not never the worst like yeah i've had bad pizza go to 7-eleven you'll try the worst pizza same with burgers like go have a burger at like arco and you'll you'll have a bad burger and i feel yeah for real and i feel like vegas has some of the most strict reviewers, honestly.

Yeah.

And when I see reviews, and because there's some really bad reviews here, and they talk about the price, I feel like those aren't as authentic because you know what you signed up for when you're going.

The price is obviously going to be higher when you're eating on the strip.

So I think when people factor that into the review too much, I don't really read those.

Yeah, well, that's not fair because they don't know what, like,

generally as a restaurateur,

you want value.

You want to give your customers value.

value.

And sometimes restaurateurs sign bad rent deals.

Yeah.

And on the strip, I mean, the strip for the most part, that's the casinos that are running those places.

But yeah, listen, the rent is high.

You know, so it has to go into the food, the food cost.

But it's not cool when restaurants just jack it up.

Because they know that they can.

Like we have places in Malibu.

And the one thing I said, I'm not jacking the prices up because we're in Malibu.

Wow.

I probably should have because it's high rent and there's things but I was like no like we need to be a value proposition to the customers and you know and that and so I kept the prices the same as they are in LA Wow where everybody else raises their prices when they get to Malibu but the locals actually made comments on that.

They said, oh, we noticed that you didn't we noticed like they actually went and looked at my menus at other places and they noticed that we didn't raise the price.

That's cool, man.

Which is very cool because if we had, obviously, all of a sudden they're like,

you know?

Yeah.

And I noticed you really value the local community wherever you open up your spots.

That's what it's about.

I mean, at the end of the day, yeah,

I've got some hype brands and they're,

but when you go into a community, you need to be a part of that community because the hype goes away.

The hype is there.

If it can last, it lasts a week, if it lasts three months.

At some point, you're not hype forever.

You're not the new shiny thing forever.

So it's important to really

reach out to the communities and be a part of that community and serve that community.

So many restaurants fail and you're seeing success just eight years in the business.

Do you think you're doing anything differently from other restaurant owners?

I guess I am.

But

I think the, like I said, I took the things I I brought from Hollywood, the Hollywood business, content.

So the content is the one thing like I tell everybody, it's like, oh, the lines are long, but was the food good?

Was the food good?

Because that's the most important, right?

You'll wait in line.

People waited in line to see Star Wars.

They waited three hours in line to see Star Wars.

It was a good movie.

You know what I mean?

So if the product's good, people will wait.

And that's the one thing is content is king.

So I tell other like young restaurateurs, if they ask me, like, what's one thing,

have one thing on your item that is craveable and irresistible that people leave wanting more.

You know, and that spicy spring pizza for us was, was hands down for sure, the thing that made Prince Street what it was.

And the

burger at Herves was

so, so it's, I think that's the one thing.

And then it's like leaning into social media, people are on their phones.

So if you're you're thinking about marketing your business, I mean, if you're not marketing on your phone,

where are you?

But you know, these days you got to adopt, yeah.

Does the 80-20 rule apply in restaurants?

Are there 20% of your dishes driving 80% of the revenues?

Absolutely.

Wow.

It's crazy.

That's what I said.

It's like, have one dish.

It's like

70% of my sales is one pizza.

Nice.

You know, but you want to like, but we like created this other pizza a couple of years ago called the Naughty Pie with an influencer from Miami, the Naughty Fork.

And she was like, I want, and we donated proceeds to the Humane Society for that.

And she created this pizza with us.

And it was like, and now it's like one of our best-selling pizzas.

Nice.

So it's, you know,

but yeah, it definitely, people go to a restaurant for one thing.

And every restaurant you can think of, there's one thing on that menu that everybody like loves.

Yeah, I love that.

When I go out and eat, I like to see simple menus, honestly.

One, two, three pages max.

When it's too many pages, it's overwhelming.

Pages?

It should be one page.

That's what I mean.

It's one page.

People do not want, you got to limit your options and lead with what you're awesome at.

Because nobody, the cheese, or what is it, cheesecake factory model, like...

That's too hard for operations.

It's like 10 pages on the menu.

Yeah, and like when you get hungry, you get hungry for a burger.

You get hungry for Indian food.

And you go to the spot where you know it has great Indian food, right?

Or the spot that has a great burger.

If you go to, where are you going if you're going to Cheesecake Factory?

You can't be something for everybody, you know?

Yeah.

And the, yeah, imagine the supply chain on that with all the different food items.

Must be a nightmare.

It's insane.

I mean, obviously they're one of the most successful restaurants in America, but I think it was at a different time.

Yeah.

But so I can't like, I wish, I only wish I could be as successful as the Cheesecake Factory.

Oh, man, I love Cheesecakes, but but those ones are a little too sweet for me, actually.

The Cheesecake Factory ones?

Yeah, yeah.

When I was younger, I used to go hard at those.

We have an unbelievable that we do import from New Jersey.

Oh, yeah.

Unbelievable Cheesecake at Prince Street.

No way.

I didn't even see those.

Do you have to order it?

No, it's right there.

It's

right at the front.

Really?

Oh, I'm going to get that next time, dude.

Yeah.

I love cheesecake, man.

You probably don't even have to wait in line.

You can just go to the front and say, hey, I just want to order the cheesecake.

I'm excited now.

Have you tried anything with food trucks or ghost kitchens?

I see those kind of emerging.

Yeah.

So I guess breaking news, we're going to be opening up a ghost kitchen here in Las Vegas

in order to serve the delivery market.

Nice.

Yeah, I forget exactly where it is, but it's Rainbow.

It's in like Summerland.

So it'll be on Postmates and

Postmates and New Breeds.

Nice.

That is clutch, dude.

Because yeah, right now you can only order in person, right?

Yeah.

We just don't have enough space or enough oven space to like

to do delivery out of the Durango right now.

Now, what percentage of revenues come from online ordering versus in-person right now for you?

Every store is different.

Okay.

So,

like

in

high foot traffic areas, it's less delivery, but like in like LA, you'll be some places would be 50-50.

Damn.

So, that's a big chunk of

not a lot of foot traffic.

And people in LA like things to come to them.

Right, because they're up in the hills.

They don't want to drive there.

Exactly.

Wow.

I didn't realize it was so high.

50%.

Yeah.

I mean, that's like a couple stores, but you know,

how are you approaching these influencers?

Because there's probably restaurant owners that will watch this and they have no idea how to go about social media marketing.

So I think the

there's like it what I and this is I don't want to say my secret sauce, but like

influencers aren't just foodies, like food influencers.

I actually think that you don't want to get food influencers.

You do, but you not necessarily because they're just trying all foods all the time.

And it's almost like they're doing every restaurant and they're, you know, and it's like the person who has a thousand followers who

goes to your restaurant and then posts about it is more important because that person

probably has 50% of their followers live in that community where you are.

And actually,

if they don't talk about food every day and they start talking about food, there's a reason why they're doing that.

Wow.

And their engagement is higher.

So the way I look at it is like, don't just go after food influencers to promote your stuff.

Go after a ballerina that lives in your city, a hockey player,

a mechanic, or, you know what I mean?

Like, everybody eats.

Everybody has an opinion on food.

that's valid because everybody eats every day.

You know what I'm saying?

So like, why just go after food influencers?

They're important.

Don't get me wrong.

I like, I'll make sure, I'll try to make sure that they all come and try the food because they do have the widest like voice.

But I think like if you're a smaller mom and pop shop, focus on local.

Focus on the people that have an audience that actually live around your restaurant.

Yeah.

I love that, man.

It's, yeah, people overthink it, but it's really the locals just hitting them up.

Are you messaging them or are they just posting and you're reposting?

Yeah, we sometimes try and do like an event to really like show that we're there.

Right.

And yeah, it's not like I don't, we don't ever pay anyone to really.

Oh, yeah, no, no.

Oh, wow.

That's one thing I like I'll draw the line on and is like we don't I 100% believe in it like for like events and like

if you have a product or if like that's just part of like that's a marketing spend you need to do.

But as as like a mom and pop restaurant I will give you free food I don't say you have to post you don't have to do what you do whatever you want but you know that's the exchange that people just generally know you know yeah um but I truly think that if you have food that photographs well people want to take photos of it.

Right.

If you give people a good service, people want to tell other people that they had that good experience.

The same way if they have a bad experience, they also want to go and help and tell you they had a bad experience.

Yeah.

Right.

But yeah, no, like for my, like for when I do events like the burger showdown or things like that, yeah, there gets times where you have to, you pay influencers or people to like, to do something because that's part of how they make money.

But local, my local restaurants, I won't go to like influencers and say, hey, come and like, let, I'll pay you to post about it.

You know, so that makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You've hosted burger showdowns.

You've done a wing showdown with celebrities.

What's next for you in terms of fun marketing stuff?

um yeah so we i've got a couple cool things coming coming up in the uh in the new year but we're we're doing so i do this thing called tender fest which is a chicken tender festival and we've it's been going on for the last four years now

we do it at the wallace annerberg center for performing arts and what i do is i have celebrity chefs make chicken tenders and then i bring in all the best chicken tender vendors in the city so we have like raising canes and willie maze and all like the best chicken tenders but then i also have like wolf gang puck and nancy silverton and these people that make uh chicken tenders and we have a competition called the contender

and um they the celebrity chefs compete so last the last one we did you know the rapper bun b yeah with trail burgers yeah yeah he won wow and now from winning that from winning tender fest he now has trill tenders oh wow legit business that's cool and uh you know chain festival chain Festival.

So you'll hear of it.

BJ Novak's like marketing kind of like

concept.

They,

Tim Hollingsworth won the first ever chicken tender festival.

And they have like at their chain events, they have his chicken tenders.

Dude, that's cool to see you bring competitors together because you can like hate on your competitors, but you're just being inclusive of everyone.

Absolutely.

I mean, I do Tenderfest because it's, it's, you know, the first two years were like, we didn't make money.

and it was like a big loss, but it was so fun and people loved it.

So, where we do the Tenderfest at the same place they do the

Vanity Fair party for the Oscars.

So, you have these very high, low, you have this very expensive high-end venue with this kind of low-end food, and it just makes for like tons of celebrities go to it.

It's like tons of influencers go to it.

Yeah, and like, so Heinz sponsored last year, nice uh, Stella, and next year or this year coming up, we're doing it in Pittsburgh and Chicago.

Wow, I'll try to make it out, man!

Yeah, that's cool, yeah, it's really cool.

People love chicken tenders, love me some Chick-fil-A, some chicken tenders, man.

Yeah, that's a childhood staple, right there.

Yeah, so um, well, what's next for you?

Where can people find you, and what's your social media and everything?

So, on social media, I'm at Big Shot, B-I-G-S-H-O-T.

And then we have at Prince Street Pizza and at Irves Burgers

at Tenderfest.

Cool.

Yeah, we'll link it all below.

How many locations are you trying to scale to with the burgers and the pizza?

I'm trying to, I truly think that Irves Burgers can fit in every, be the local neighborhood, burger stand slash diner stand everywhere in America.

Nice.

So, you know, that I think I have high hopes for.

Prince Street, I believe, you know, it's a little bit more of a premium product.

And I feel like we could be in a lot of premium kind of cities, neighborhoods, you know, as well.

There's, there's, my goal is to be the best that we can be.

And, you know, it's not about opening a thousand restaurants.

It's, it's about having quality.

Like I said, I'd like to be more like in and out than Burger King.

Yeah, they've been selective.

They're not on the East Coast yet, right?

No.

And they don't want to be.

Yeah, they're slowly, now they're going, but they're going to be opening up in Tennessee in the next couple of years, 2025.

They, the way they do it is that they make sure that they like they open up six in an area at a time.

Sorry, and so it's like they

have like a commissary kitchen, and the way they expand, I mean, they're so smart.

They have the Hamburger University where everybody goes to train.

Wow, I didn't know that.

Yeah, that's interesting.

It's intense.

Yeah, that's why they're so good.

Yeah, thanks for coming on, man.

That was a super fun episode.

Awesome.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah.

Thanks for watching, guys, and I'll see you tomorrow.