Dave's Hot Chicken, Biscuit Belly leaders share operations advice

The best advice a franchisee and the franchisor can get when it comes to successful operations and profit is learning from those who've succeeded and excelled.

That's exactly what brand leaders and a foodservice expert shared during the recent Fast Casual Executive Summit held in Louisville, Kentucky. The summit, run by Networld Media Group, draws executives from leading brands to share successful ways to build and manage restaurants.

Networld Media Group is the parent company of Fastcasual, Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb. Its next event is the Restaurant Franchising & Innovation Summit being held March 24-26, 2024 in Kansas City, Missouri. Next year's Fast Casual Executive Summit will take place October 13-15 in Denver.

The expert advice was shared in a session called "Executive Perspectives: Inspiration for Today's Restaurant Leaders," a panel sponsored by Workstream and moderated by Desmond Lim, co-founder and CEO. The topics ranged from driving growth, to tracking trends and hiring the right staff and management.

Navigating unexpected consumer patterns

The first topic — understanding and tracking consumer trends — was led by Suzy Badaracco, president of Culinary Tides, Inc. She has been practicing trends intelligence and predictive forecasting for more than 18 years. Culinary Tides helps food industry partners navigate trends by revealing relevant patterns so they can create products that connect with customers.

"We're a trends forecasting company for the food industry. We act as a private forecasting think tank, so what we're doing for the industry and our clients is, we work with them throughout the year. We're literally looking for patterns in their chaos to aid their strategy," she said. "What we specialize in is in the trends, birth pattern and then the trajectory, personality and longevity. So, for our clients, our forecasts are used throughout the year to create entrance, navigation and exit strategies."

Badaracco shared that one can't survey a trend until it's already "full-blown born and running on the playground." She used the time frame of the Covid-19 pandemic as an example and how consumer fear became a dominant behavior impacting the foodservice industry and how it drove consumer behavior regarding drinking, using smoke in menu items and bartending trends.

The big trend now is that spending per ticket in foodservice is on the decline while food service visits are holding steady and inflation impacting how consumers are spending when it comes to snacking and eating out. Her data delved even deeper into the consumer want when it comes to salt and sweet snacking and the state of the plant-based menu in restaurants today.

"Plant-based meat sales are going through the floor. Volume is dropping. That was a fun curiosity. Vegetarian is still up. Plant-based meat sales are not going to be coming back. Volume is still down. So an effect is right now we're in a stall. We are not in a recession. We are in a stall," she said.

A top consumer want is what's "interesting and global," she noted. "They want new styles of snacks with unfamiliar flavors. They want intense flavors. They want citrus. They want chilies. They want spicy. Do not put comfort on your menu."

And lastly, she advised restaurant operators to not get too obsessed with food trends.

"Don't watch the food industry all the time. You will never see what's coming. Try watching the diet industry. Try watching retail, frozen deli, bakery, what's going on there? And again, that travel industry," she said, adding, it's important to understand the birth and life cycle of a trend to know how to navigate it.

"Also, neither love nor hate a trend. Emotions will fog a trends-true pattern, and you may be blindsided when it shifts. And I promise they always shift. Also, spend more time researching a trend's personality, trajectory and longevity, than in worrying about what your competitors are doing."

Spurring restaurant growth

Jim Bitticks, president and COO for Dave's Hot Chicken, knows how to grow a business.

In his role he oversees the day-to-day operation of the company with direct oversight over operations, training, procurement, construction, and technology. He joined the company when there were just four restaurants and has helped grow the brand to 150 locations across the U.S., Canada, and the Middle East. Prior to his current role, he was chief restaurant officer and EVP of operations, training, and construction for Blaze Pizza. During his tenure he oversaw the growth of that brand from two restaurants to 372.

During his time at Blaze Pizza he jumped over to the franchisor side.

"My best and most impressive, you know, accomplishment of the last 10 years is that I'm also now a franchisee of Dave's Hot Chicken. I have had the opportunity to open two locations, and we're working on our next two," he told the audience.

The brand currently has 832 sold restaurant commitments, and the goal is, in five years, to have 800 locations open.

That growth, said Bitticks, is all due to several strategies. The first is building a solid foundation.

"That was the first big thing to do when we started. We built our team and designed and created our systems. This is by far the heaviest lift," he said, and it was done with 'fractional' staff and leaders. He was the only full-time c-level leader for the first year and a half.

The foundation effort involves market planning and site selection ideas, and the prototype layout — what the restaurant will build like and how it will flow.

The second strategy step is selecting great partners.

"You want to pick ones that are going to grow with you. You want to pick ones that have the money and the ones that kind of espouse the same value system that you have as a brand. Our franchise criteria for choosing the right franchisee for a Dave's Hot Chicken is that they have to be a multi-unit restaurant franchisee already. They have to be a multi-brand restaurant franchisee. We want people that have done it in more than one place," he said.

The third step is to "train and deputize franchisees," as well as serving, supporting and guiding franchisees.

You've got to get franchisees up and running so that they're able to now train and certify their own teams," he said. "We have taken a pretty hard line on franchisees insisting that they perform well

Smart hiring practices

Chad Coulter and Lauren Coulter, co-founders of Biscuit Belly, shared key lessons they learned from developing their company from a startup concept.

The duo had restaurant experience with the founding of their first concept, LouVino, a small plates restaurant and wine bar and it was after opening the brand's fifth location they developed the biscuit concept in 2019. Biscuit Belly now has four corporate locations and over 20 franchised units in development in Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. Two locations are slated to open by the end of the year.

The founders shared strategies they've learned in growing Biscuit Belly. One of the most critical is hiring the right people.

"Our first tip is hiring the right people and specifically hiring a certain subset of people. This group of individuals don't always need all the notoriety that they may deserve. They're not worried about titles. They're not worried about, you know, where they may sit in the office. They're worried about relationships, building relationships, getting the job done, figuring out problems," said Chad Coulter, who serves as CEO.

That includes hiring those who have startup experience, according to Lauren Coulter, who serves as director of franchise sales and development.

"Specifically people who have helped build things in their previous organizations. So some questions that we are asking now as we are hiring is, did you actually help build the systems? Did you help build the growth or were you just there during the growth? These are good questions to help differentiate people who, you know, may have just been a side, you know, bystander and an implementer versus somebody who helped create."

Technology investment is also a key aspect in success and growth, according to Chad Coulter.

"We wasted a lot of time, money and resources when we were first bringing things, these pieces of technology on for our our tech stack. When you buy that budget piece of technology because it's affordable today, doesn't mean they're going to be able to grow with you or provide what you need in the future."

The founders recommend going for the middle to higher tier of technology.

"If you can afford it, get that middle-to-high-tier piece of technology that is going to already have the features that you need right then and there, or that you're going to need in the near future," Chad Coulter said.