Ep 78- Behind The Grill with Patrick Terry

Transcript

Transcripts are generated by machine learning, so typos may be present.

BTB (00:00):

Welcome to the Building Texas Business Podcast, interviews with thought leaders and organizational visionaries from across industry. Join us as we talk about the latest trends, challenges, and growth opportunities to take your business to the next level. The Building Texas Business Podcast is brought to you by BoyarMiller, providing counsel beyond expectations. Find out how we can make a meaningful difference to your business at boyarmiller.com and by your podcast team where having your own podcast is as easy as being a guest on ours. Discover more at yourpodcast.team. Now. Here’s your host, Chris Hanslik.

Chris (00:42):

In this episode, you will meet Patrick Terry, founder and owner of p Terry’s Burger stand. Patrick attributes the success of p Terry’s to two fundamental strategies. First, work hard and listen to your customer. And second, take care of your people and they will take care of your customer. Patrick, I want to thank you for coming on building Texas business and just a pleasure to have you on as a guest.

Patrick (01:09):

Well, thanks. I’m honored to be here. I really am.

Chris (01:12):

So think the first place to start is for you just to tell us those that don’t know of Terry’s. What is Terry’s and kind of what are you known for?

Patrick (01:21):

Well, so my wife and I started p Terry’s 2005, so we’ll be celebrating our 20th anniversary next month, next year. And the idea behind it, we sell, we’re a quick service hamburger stand and the idea behind it was if we were going to compete with the giants in the industry, the McDonald’s and the Burger Kings and the Jack in the boxes and the Chick-fil-As everybody, we are going to have to find a way to be different. I talk about so often people want to get into a business and they find a retail store or a restaurant or a concept that they like and they go across the street and pretty much do the same thing as the guy that they liked. And when you do that, all you’ve done in a best case scenario is you take half his business. It’s pretty hard to take all of his business if you’re going to do the same thing, and then you’re going up against the fact that he’s established clearly he’s doing okay because you liked it and he’s there.

(02:35):

And so I think that’s the biggest mistake new business owners and entrepreneurs make is they like a yogurt stand and they go across the street and they do the same yogurt stand. And so all that said we were going to be different, and where we were going to be different was that we were going to offer the quality beef and the food that we serve is really that of an upscale restaurant to be honest. And we were going to do it through a drive-through and a Dine-in at a fast food restaurant, but we weren’t because of that, we weren’t of course able to charge any more than the fast food guy across the street. So what we were trying to do was make ourselves bulletproof. We were going to offer a quality product that you couldn’t get at a fast food restaurant, at a price that was the same as the guy across the street that wasn’t serving that quality food.

(03:36):

And obviously if you’re able to pull that off, it’s a huge advantage. And by doing so, what we did, we established right away that we were going to look for a fair profit and that was what it was going to be. And so if I could sell an order of french fries and I might be able to get $2 and 50 cents for that order of french fries, I looked at the cost and I’m thinking, well, actually my overall cost of goods, I only have to sell those french fries at $2 and 15 cents. We have very low overhead. We have a small office with a g and a under 6%, and we work hard and we work smart and we don’t spend money on marketing or advertising. We don’t have that luxury. We don’t pay of course, any franchise fees. We own the business, and so we were able to pull it off.

(04:30):

And so we serve a black Angus all natural beef. What that means is it’s antibiotic free. It’s hormone free, it’s a vegetarian fed, it’s a pure beef. It really is a great product. We serve the same thing with a hormone free chicken. Our buns don’t have high fructose corn syrup. Our potatoes come from Idaho and they’re fresh and they’re cooked in a canola oil, which doesn’t have any hydrogenated oils. I mean, we literally just went down the line and said, okay, this is what we’re going to do now. We’re going to have to make it work. And by keeping our costs down and frankly working really hard, really hard with a lot of smart people, we were able to pull it off. We opened up our 34th store two weeks ago in SLO outside of San Antonio. And as you know, we’re on our way to Houston.

(05:25):

We have our first Houston location in Richmond, I believe it is in October, and we’re going to have five. We plan for five Houston locations. One of the other things that we do that makes this unique is that we have our own commissary. We do a lot of cooking and for our restaurants ourselves, so we bake our own banana bread, we bake our own cookies from scratch, we make our own veggie burgers from scratch. We take chicken breast, all chicken breasts, skinless breast, and we actually grind it into a patty for a chicken burger and for our chicken bites and all that’s done in the commissary by our own staff, we share the offices share space with the commissary and every morning, three or four trucks go out and deliver that product to the stands. And so we’re able to keep our costs down by doing that as well. We pretty much just take charge of everything we do, and that’s what separated us.

Chris (06:28):

Well, it sounds like what I’m hearing is a very focused thought focused into what you wanted this business to be, and I guess what you didn’t want it to be. So what I heard you talk about is obviously very cost conscious so that you could be profitable, but also singular focused on this premium quality food at a lower price point. And really it sounds like in the beginning, very focused on what profit margins would look like, what your cost of goods would be before you even opened a store, it seems like.

Patrick (07:05):

Yeah, and I don’t want to make it sound like we’re smarter than we are because a lot of that stuff just fortunately just worked itself out. Now where it got tricky is when Covid hit and the supply chain issues and the inflation that we’ve seen and where we’ve benefited from that is by having always done what we’ve done in the last 19 years and everyone’s read about the McDonald’s Big Mac combo meal. It’s for $16 in Idaho and McDonald’s are great operators. So I got nothing bad to say, but every time you take a price increase, if you’re not looking over your shoulder when you do that, if you’re not conscious of am I really doing everything I can before I go up on this price and is there any way I can make this a nickel instead of a diamond? And unless you’ve done that from the start, you find yourself taking price increases to cover up mistakes or issues of the day, and it becomes this bandaid that’s very hard to take off once

Chris (08:19):

We’ve seen that in your industry where the classic pass it on to the consumer and then in the fast food wars just over the recent months, the consumers rebelling.

Patrick (08:28):

Absolutely. Absolutely. And so when Starbucks and McDonald’s show negative com store sales last quarter for the first time since Covid hit, we were up 8% in our comp store sales. And because frankly, when you take our strategy and you stick with it and the hard part sticking with it, it’s really easy to look around and go, man, that guy over there, he’s getting six bucks for that burger and I’m only getting five. I could probably go up a quarter. And that’s the illusion, right? You get into that game and there’s a mind game. And if you’re able to keep pushing that off and trust me, it’s a hell of a lot easier going up a quarter.

(09:13):

When you’re able to pull that off, then you don’t go down that rabbit hole and find yourself in a situation where so many of our competitors have found themselves. I mean, I look around and see what similar pricing is. I mean, what similar menu items are and what the pricing of our competitors are. And I’m astounded. I mean, some of our competitors are 20% higher than we are on their menu, and we’re all serving food out of a drive-through. And so it’s a dangerous game. It really is. And so I think you’ve hit on it exactly the way it is. It’s a discipline and it’s every day.

Chris (09:56):

Yeah. Well, that’s what Jim Collins talks about in good to Great discipline, people with discipline, thought and discipline, action is how you get from good to great. Let me take you back. I love the thought that went into the concept from the beginning, but what inspired you to in 2005 open up a hamburger stand?

Patrick (10:17):

Well, thank you for asking. It’s almost embarrassing, apparently when I finally did it and I did it, I’m 66, so I did this in my mid forties. A score of my friends contacted me to remind me how much I had been boring them for so many years that I had always wanted to open up a hamburger stand and do not ask me where that came from. I have no idea other than to say that I love the idea of serving a hamburger, french fries and a milkshake. I just think that’s glorious. And I know that’s probably way over the top, but there’s something so satisfying, and it’s probably because it’s my favorite meal that I just can’t get past it. So I had always wanted to do it, and I had a particular location that I had in mind, and I lost it five years earlier, and it sat empty for five years, and finally it became available. And so that’s when we opened up at Lamar and Barton Springs in Austin.

Chris (11:27):

I love that. Any good entrepreneur in my view, you followed your passion, your favorite meal, and something that you have a passion about doing.

Patrick (11:36):

Let me tell you, if you don’t love this business, you better not get in it because it is consuming. It’s all consuming. And so I look around when I would hire somebody, I would remind them that if they didn’t really love the restaurant business or what we do every day, you are not going to be happy. And if you do love it, you’re going to be very happy because we’re drinking out of a fire hose here pretty much every day.

Chris (12:07):

Let’s talk a little bit about hiring. I think that’s really, regardless of the industry, I mean companies are made of people and you’ve got to get the right people to help maybe bring your vision to life, your strategies to life. What have you done over the years to make sure that you are making that right hire decision? I assume it’s evolved over time, and I think there’s at least a couple pieces. I’d love to maybe hear how it was starting out, but

Patrick (12:36):

Oh yeah, it was

Chris (12:38):

Terrible. But I know that coming out of Covid, it had to be even more challenging. People wouldn’t even come to work,

Patrick (12:43):

Right? Well, when we first opened, the first day we opened, my wife Kathy was there and she had no restaurant experience. I had some, and I put her through it. It was very difficult. And she likes to tell the story that she looked around the very first day and realized that there was no way we were going to do this by ourselves. And so the first three years we were in the stands every day. I mean, I worked every day morning to night. And by doing that, I got to know obviously everything that it took to run the stand, every position, but I also got to see the people that were there and I was able to separate the ones that were working out and the ones that weren’t. And I was not a good hire at first. There is this boy, it’s easy to take what you think is the simple route and just put a body in place, and man, if it’s the wrong body, everyone’s miserable.

(13:40):

And so it took me a while. I just had a certain, but I was not going to give in. I had a certain level of employee or stand or team member that I had envisioned, and so I wasn’t going to lower the bar. And so the first three years were really difficult because a lot of people you bring in unfortunately had other fast food experience and they brought a lot of bad habits with them. And so it’s one of those deals when you hire somebody, frankly, they either have to be scared of you or they have to like you, and I’m not the guy that they’re going to be scared of. That’s just not the role I want to play. It’s not the business I want to run. We’re not always going to agree, but my hope is that we like and respect each other.

(14:31):

The other thing is what we learned being there every day is we learned so many of our employees lives are completely different than mine. I’ve been around for a long time. I had some money in the bank, I had a college education, I had a career before this. So it’s really easy to live in your bubble and not recognize it. And so I tell this story a lot. We had an employee, Vinny, and this was 18 years ago. And by the way, I’m proud to say Vinny still works for us, as do a lot of those people in those first few years, they’re still with us. And Vinny’s truck broke down and I had worked all day and I didn’t want to do his job that night, so I convinced him just to get in the cab and I would pay for the cab Vinny.

(15:20):

And then when Vinny got there, I said, what’s going on with the truck? And he said, well, it’s going to cost $150 to get fixed. I don’t have 150. So I handed him $150 and I said, pay me when you can because I need you here and I need your truck fixed. Now, if I’m in a corporate office, Vinny probably loses his job because he didn’t show up, right? If I don’t answer the phone, we don’t have that conversation. So then I’ve lost an employee that I’ve had for 18 years, but more importantly, I understand the position they’re in. And so the very first thing we did from that is we created a non-interest loan program for all of our employees. So if you walk into my office right now, or you don’t even have to do that, you just tell your manager and the manager’s going to make a phone call and you say, I’m behind in my rent, or I have a whatever, it’s you’re going to get a loan.

(16:10):

And if it’s $500 or under, we don’t even ask you get it if it’s more than that, we want to know what’s going on. And so what we did is we made hiring easier. This is a really hard thing to do every day. The last thing I need to do is make it more difficult. So we started by taking care of our people better than most, and they told their friends or they told their relatives, and so they understood that this is a two-way street and I’m going to take care of you, but you have to take care of me. And of course the way you take care of me is you take care of the customer.

Chris (16:47):

Hello, friends, this is Chris Hansley, your building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations, and business leaders. Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm@boyermiller.com and thanks for listening to the show.

(17:17):

Right. That’s great. The idea, and I think it’s true in any organization, if the people that work for you think that you genuinely care about them as a person, not just that they get the job done, you’re going to create loyalty and engagement with that employee that naturally hearing your story. Leads me to the question about culture. Let’s talk about that. I mean, how would you describe the culture at p Terry’s? Obviously the fundamental philosophy you just described, I would assume is some of the foundational elements of the culture that you’re trying to build or have built. So what can you share about that?

Patrick (17:58):

Well, I’ll tell you the obvious. You and your listeners already know, this culture’s the most important thing. There’s nothing even close to second when it comes to running your business. The culture that you established speaks for who you are, not only to your employees, but to your customers. There’s nothing more important hands. Interesting. Yeah, I can’t even think of number two. I’ll tell you an interesting story very quickly, I hope. I had a friend, a person called me and want to visit with me about the business, and they had a very successful online clothing company and they were about to open up stores for the first time. Everything they had always sold was online. And he asked me what it took to open the store and take care of the employees for the very first time. This is all of a sudden, it’s not a click, it’s a conversation.

(18:52):

And I probably talked for 15 or 20 minutes about everything we do every day for our employees. I thought, I really thought his head was going to explode. I mean, it was so beyond the realm for him, and I get it right. And what I was trying to explain to him was, you may be selling the same item, but you’ve got an entirely different business model now. I mean, now you have for the very first time, you have a person representing you selling that product to someone, and boy, you better get that right. And so that’s really what it boils down to is understanding what we do every day and what our people do. And the culture has to be led by me. I read a great line a couple of weeks ago. Somebody said to the person running the company, what’s your job? And he said, my job is to be right.

(19:48):

And so when you accept that as your job, and by the way, I don’t do it by myself, oh my lord, not even close. I mean, I got these people around me that are just terrific, but I certainly go to them and we certainly talk about everything, but the first thing that has to be established is I’m here and I answer my phone. And if you’re in the hospital, I need to be there and make sure everything’s okay. If you have a family member that has an issue, if there’s something I can do, I got to do it. And then everyone has to understand that there’s a bar set and no one goes below the bar and I can never go below the bar, obviously. And so it’s really for me and for p Terry’s, it’s really by example. And if dogs and kids can spot a phony a mile away.

(20:42):

And so if you’re not sincere in what you’re trying to do and what you believe in, and I’ve had some people that work for me that I could tell immediately, you’re faking it and you just don’t feel the same way the rest of us do. And nobody wants to be in that position. So you’re not happy here and I’m not happy with you here, so let’s just shake hands and walk away from each other. So there’s a lot of that going on. But the culture and what we do every day, the first thing we do is we just take care of our people and then we count on them to take care of the customer.

Chris (21:20):

Some of what you’re saying there, I’ve heard others speak to, we certainly have that philosophy here in the business we run in this firm, and that is we say we hire and fire from culture. You have to know what the culture is. You have to look for the people the best you can through interview processes and hire from culture. More importantly, when you figure out someone’s, you set the standard and you can’t go below it, but if you see someone that’s consistently going below it or faking it, then you’ve got to move fast and they need to be out of the organization. And it doesn’t have to be harsh. To your point, they’re not happy. No one’s happy. They’re going to be happy somewhere else that has a different set of standards that connect with them. But you’ve established your standards, you’ve tied behavior that you can demonstrate as consistent with that comes from the top down, and then everyone can be on the same page.

Patrick (22:14):

And it has to be, it’s almost like being in the middle of a orchestra. We’re all playing the song and we’ve all got a part to play. And if one of us drops the violin, it’s not going to sound the same.

Chris (22:28):

Yeah, so true. So reading up on the goings on at p Terry’s, I want to kind of turn the conversation a little bit to the last maybe, I guess it’s been four or five years, you did something that is not easy for a founder to do in 2019, you decided to step down as CEO of your proverbial baby. Let’s talk about that. Obviously not the first time an entrepreneur has done that and kind of handed reins over what led to that decision and how was it for you to kind of transition out of the CEO role?

Patrick (23:07):

Well, if it’s okay, I want to step back a couple more years before that and talk about something that it really doesn’t make the papers very often. We had at one point, I had just kind of hit a wall. I was exhausted. I was working with a person that I had next to me, that was my right hand man. We had been going at such a pace for so long. My wife and I have funded, had funded this business all by ourselves the entire time. We borrowed money, but we didn’t have any other investors. So everything kind of fell on us every day. And the idea came up that maybe we should sell because this is just exhausting. And we did a dog and pony show and had a half a dozen legitimate buyers, and we got a wonderful offer. As I said to the person when I turned them down, you offered me enough money to go live on an island and I’ve got two little girls.

(24:06):

I don’t get to live on an island even if I wanted to. So I appreciate the offer very much. And I think what I was doing when I did it, and it was sincere, I wasn’t trying to waste anybody’s time, but I think after the offer came in and my wife and I both agreed that we didn’t want to do that, this is not how we wanted our legacy to end. I think I was looking for validation. I had never been validated for the work I had done other than we were allowed to expand. Our business was good, our customers were very appreciative. But from an industry standpoint, I didn’t know what we had created. I really didn’t. I’m not the guy that I’m terrible at networking. I don’t go to meetings, I don’t go to conventions. It really, it’s just not my deal. I really just work.

(24:53):

And so I got that validation and then I made a decision that the next decision we made was do we want to leave central Texas, the Austin area? And I had never done that. And so I thought, well, I got some great advice one time that I don’t want to learn something that somebody else has already learned. And so I chose to bring somebody in with the experience of having done that. And Todd came in, Todd Corver came in, he had a great resume, same moral compass that we have here, a really good guy. And what I was finding was that no matter what, I’m still here and there are certain things that I’m just comfortable with that if I’m going to be alive and is still owning the business that it’s important to me that we do every day. And so it wasn’t that Todd did a bad job, it’s just that I looked around and said, there’s stuff going on that I think we can do a little differently.

(26:00):

Maybe we can do it better. I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers, but I think I’m more comfortable in the front seat than I am in the back. The departure was analytical. He’s a good guy. He’s got a great job here in Austin. He’s going to do very well there. But I just found that if I’m going to be in the office every day, I might as well do what I really want to do. And so that led to me coming back. And I think it also gave me a new energy that I hadn’t had because Todd did some heavy lifting for four years. And so we kind of have come back with the vengeance. We got the idea four days after Christmas that maybe we should really take a serious look at serving chicken bites. We compete against everybody in the business.

(26:57):

And Chick-fil-A is the leader. And so a lot of our customers had told us, Hey, the only fight in our family, my kid wants a chicken bite at Chick-fil-A and I want a hamburger or a chicken burger from p Terry’s. And so the 29th of December we had this conversation and the 16th of March, they were for sale in our stores. We made ’em out of our own kitchen and we created them and worked on sauces and stuff. And so we’ve really been going very fast at that, and I found that I’m just much more happier if I’m going to be around, if it’s going to still be my company, I’m just happier being the guy that’s running it.

Chris (27:39):

Understood. Well, it had to be difficult especially, so it sounds like you stepped out of the CEO seat, but stayed, I guess, involved in the company that had to be challenging. It is one thing if you kind of like you said, go to some island or just completely step out of the business, and

Patrick (27:57):

I did my best. I didn’t think it was fair to be in Todd’s office every day pounding the desk going, why aren’t we doing this? Why can’t you do this? I let him run the company because that was the only fair thing to do. But I was in the office next door, and so you’re right, I’m not on an island. And so yeah, at some point it just was easier for me just to do it.

Chris (28:22):

So let’s talk a little bit about the expansion. Now. You mentioned that you had expanded beyond the Austin area, I know into San Antonio, you just mentioned Forest Store in that area, your plans to come to Houston, you mentioned just a minute ago, and ultimately five stores. What I want to talk about maybe have you share is what goes into that thinking of the strategy of when it’s right to take those steps, which I would assume are somewhat trepidatious,

Patrick (28:52):

Yo. Absolutely. And what we found is that we were interested to see in the challenge, and we really had established ourselves in central Texas. We have a lot of stores here. I mean, there’s Lamar Boulevard in Austin. I have three stores on Lamar Boulevard about three miles apart. So we’re pretty inundated. And I just wanted to see, I believe that our concept traveled outside of Austin. I believe that our concept really works most places. And I wanted to see what we could do. And so San Antonio made the most sense because of our commissary and our delivery. So we can be in San Antonio in just over an hour. And that made it, and by the way, we just went down I 35 and we opened a store in Kyle and one in San Marco and one in New Braunfels and then into San Antonio.

(29:49):

And so from a logistics standpoint, it made sense, but it was really kind of a challenge. Now, there is something I truly believe in, and I have to tell you real quickly, I spoke at a UT at the MBA program one time. It was a wonderful class, and the professor called me after the class and he said, I got to tell you, the students loved it, and I thank you for coming. And I said, well, I appreciate that. And he said, but I got to tell you I’m probably not going to be inviting you back. And I said, totally fine. Can yes, can you tell me why? And he said, well, there’s nowhere on the syllabus that just says work hard and listen to your customers. And I said, okay, well, I get it. Frankly, all I know to do the God’s honest truth is that’s all I know what to do. And so we take, what I was getting to is at some point you take a leap of faith and you’ve listened to the people around you, and at some point, obviously you’re the one that has to make the final decision, and then you trust your experience over all these years and you make the jump. You just make the jump.

Chris (31:02):

So I guess just since I live in Houston, what was it about Houston that makes you think that, again, the concept travels. Why the first location in Richmond? What are some of the things there that you and your team see and are excited about?

Patrick (31:17):

So we picked that part of Houston because we could drive from Austin again for our commissary until at some point we will hopefully have a satellite commissary in Houston. But a lot of it is the loops are of interest. There’s a lot of growth there. There’s a lot of room for expansion. And frankly, when you get in the middle of all of your fair city, it gets very expensive. So you kind of go to the loops because the land is cheaper and the leases are cheaper. So there’s definitely some to that. I’m just being very honest about it. There’s some great locations, but I can’t spend $300,000 a year on a ground lease.

Chris (32:01):

I think it’s, well, the transparency is what we’re after here. And I think, again, for a listener to go, look, you may have some great ideas, but be smart about that expansion. It goes back to the first thing you said. You’ve been mindful in this business and controlling cost, and obviously I can speak to it, you’re picking locations where the population’s growing, so that’s not a bad thing either. Your demographics must line up with the things that makes a store successful

Patrick (32:28):

At the same time. And I’ve got a competitor across the street from me across the highway from me in San Marco, and he picked a really bad location, and my assumption is he picked it. It was cheap. So there’s a balance here. You got the land for 60,000 a year, and the reason is because nobody can get to it. So you got to be careful about that. I had a friend of mine come to me, he and his wife came to me years ago and said, I think we’re going to get into the restaurant business. And I said, why? And he said, well, I think we’re going to sell sandwiches. And I said, what are you going to do that? And he said, well, people have to eat. And I said, yeah, but they don’t have to eat at your restaurant. And unfortunately it was the first time he’d ever thought of that. So I’m glad he came to me before he did it, but you just have to look at this stuff. So realistically and that balance of, yeah, I’d love to be in that location, but it’s a wonderful location, but it costs me so much. All I’m going to do is sell burgers and not make any money.

Chris (33:30):

That’s right. I get to pay the landlord to sell burgers. Right?

Patrick (33:33):

Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. Boy, that’s a tough way to spend your day.

Chris (33:39):

Yeah. Well, Patrick, thank you so much for sharing the story and the ups and downs, but I’m looking forward to having a burger once you get here. And you sound headed in Austin, obviously, and it is as good as you described. I want to turn a little bit to just a little personal side of things. Obviously you’ve said a couple of times you just know how to work hard. What was your first job even as a kid?

Patrick (34:02):

So I had lemonade, a Kool-Aid stand in front of our house. I was probably five or six and my dad was, and my parents were always there and always had suggestions. And my dad came up to me and he said, you need to put, because we lived in West Texas, I grew up in Abilene, and you think your summers are hot. So my dad said, you need to put the temperature on your poster. And I said, so I wrote, it’s 102 Kool-Aid 5 cents, and the car stopped and it was such a great idea. And so I always had that influence. So that was probably my first inroad. I remember in seventh grade I started selling candy bars. There was no Costco or Walmart or anything back then or Sam’s. So I’d go to the grocery store and buy a six pack of little six pack of Hershey’s. My mom would go take me, and I started selling so many candy bars at the 10 30 break that I was messing up the senior store at noon and the superintendent called me in and told me to stop.

Chris (35:10):

Oh, that’s funny. Oh my God. Alright, so this is a question I ask everyone, and I’m incredibly intrigued to get your answer because you’re the self-described hamburger guy, but I got to know, do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue?

Patrick (35:25):

Oh, I’ll go to Tex-Mex all day.

Chris (35:27):

Okay.

Patrick (35:27):

I’ll go to Tex-Mex all day. And I love Barb, don’t get me wrong, but I got to tell you, if I can have chicken enchiladas with the verde sauce and a side of rice and beans, I’m doing just fine.

Chris (35:39):

Okay, so it’s second favorite meal, sounds like.

Patrick (35:42):

Yeah, absolutely. My poor children, I tell you this real quick and I know you want to wind it down. My daughter is 16 now, and when she was 10, she went on a water ski camp and she spent the day and she got in the car and I said, what’d you have for lunch? And she said, they serve these submarine sandwiches. And I said, oh, what’d you get? And she said, A meatball sub. And I said, oh, that’s great. And I said, you don’t seem like you’re in a good mood. And she said, I didn’t know those existed because my poor children eat p Terry’s every day. So it’s a family deal.

Chris (36:27):

I love it. It reminds me of the story of, it was in a movie a while back, right? Where the parents try to convince the kids that yogurt was vanilla ice cream.

Patrick (36:35):

Exactly. Exactly.

Chris (36:36):

Patrick, thanks again. Really enjoyed meeting you and hearing your story. And congratulations on the success and best of luck as you expand and move into the Houston market.

Patrick (36:46):

I appreciate it. Well, I’d love to meet you one day and grab a burger.

Chris (36:49):

Let’s do it. In fact, let’s stay in touch on when that Richmond store is open and I’ll be there.

Patrick (36:53):

Absolutely, absolutely. And I’ll even buy, what do you think?

Chris (36:56):

That’s a heck of a deal. Alright, very good. Well, thanks again.

Patrick (37:00):

Thank you. I enjoyed it very much.

Chris (37:04):

And there we have it. Another great episode. Don’t forget to check out the show notes at boyarmiller.com/podcast and you can find out more about all the ways our firm can help you at boyarmiller.com. That’s it for this episode. Have a great week and we’ll talk to you next time.