#8: Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover)

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:00:00]:
I want to convince more employers to do the nature of this work and benefit their own businesses and their own communities and process. And so, you know, even if we could open 10 restaurants a year, we are creating jobs in 50 50 like, 40 to 50 person increments with each restaurant opening. And there are plenty of employers that already have tens of thousands of employees, both in our industry and other entry level environments. And so I'm really, really hoping that we can be a catalyst for that that work to scale well beyond how many hot chicken takeovers we can open.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:36]:
Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland, and we're coming to you live from Cleveland, as we always do. Today's guest is coming from the land adjacent, but with a growing presence here in Cleveland. Joe Delos' story is one of service, one of entrepreneurship, one of chicken, and of change for good. He's spent the last decade building businesses creating employment opportunities for people who have experienced significant adversity in their lives. From incarceration to addiction to homelessness, Joe deeply believes that everyone deserves a fair chance to build a new story for themselves. And I genuinely think anyone tuning in today will come to see through our conversation how how really committed he is to that cause.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:30]:
His most recent endeavor and success though is Hot Chicken Takeover, which is a fast casual restaurant chain that is has taken over the Midwest and for very good reason. I am very excited to share our conversation. I certainly came away from it feeling inspired, So please enjoy. So I would love to get started with the purple elephant in the room, as I see it. Right? Obviously, the last 9 months now have been pretty wild, to put it elegantly, and really, like, particularly challenging for the restaurant industry. And I remember I think the most astonishing of some of the COVID statistics I've I've seen was the data that was put out by OpenTable showing reservations going from, you know, near 100% down to 0 in the matter of like a week. Yeah, I've also noted kind of the proliferation of ghost kitchens and takeout and delivery. And but all this is from my outsider's perspective as someone who just eats food and consumes food.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:32]:
I would love from your perspective, as a restauranteur, you know, how is COVID impacting the industry? And then more specifically, how have you thought about the adaptability and resilience of Hot Chicken Takeover through this really hard time?

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:02:48]:
Entrepreneurs are, you know, in particular, restaurant tours are, I I think, all those I've met pretty adaptable and pretty nimble, but, of course, nobody nobody predicted this and nobody anticipated such huge disruption that changed consumer behavior, you know, functionally overnight. And so, from a from a broader landscape perspective, yeah, the statistics are staggering. I I think maybe it was the Wall Street Journal just said there's, or Goldman said, I think a 110,000 restaurants have already closed due to COVID. With that number, you know, being far from done, as we go into winter and even, even push towards the vaccine, I think the people that have been really, really devastated, there are a lot of small owner operators that were, many of whom that I know in our market, you know, throughout Ohio, a lot of owner operators that had just opened up, and were just building brand awareness that had this huge interruption and and didn't have a lot of customer loyalty before that, a really hard spot. Thankfully, you know, it's it's had dramatic impacts on our business. We chose to shut down the restaurants for almost 2 months as we pivoted and adapted to the new environment. And happy to talk about the reasons we made that choice and what it meant for our team and everything, but, you know, the short headline answer to what you've asked is, thankfully, the nature of our business, the nature of our product, and the nature of our service model was able to pivot into this kind of new level of customer preferences and carry out orientation, pretty well. And so, upon kind of reopening, we were able to to really thrive.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:04:34]:
And we we used our downtime really strategically, and I think that helped our cause. But, all in all, we're in a a small sliver of the broader hospitality or food and beverage industry that was really already carryout friendly and already kind of a fast, efficient, trusted restaurant brand. And so we we've been able to weather the storm and in some some instances actually thrive through this, which, I'm really, really thankful and grateful for.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:05]:
Yeah. I'd love to pull in a few of the threads there and double click on some of those. I guess we could start with you mentioned the change in consumer behavior and the whole their their adaptability as well. What are the things that have kinda surprised you from the consumer perspective that that have changed over the past few months?

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:05:23]:
Yeah. You know, actually, our architecture partner framed this really well for us. We're in the process of designing restaurants when COVID happened, and so we had to go back to the drawing board in a in a few ways. But they talked about the 3 c's of COVID from a consumer preference and consumer behavior perspective as customers were demanding convenience, confidence, and comfort. And so, you know, in our world, convenience is really about how efficiently can you get people food with the fewest kind of physical touch points. Whether that's thinking about the way people interact with credit cards or the way they interact with your service staff at a restaurant. Continence is around sanitation and safety and feeling like this is a brand that's taking things seriously and thoughtfully. And and that idea of comfort being that in times of stress, people people want things that are reminiscent of, time that they might deem more acceptable or more tolerable, and food definitely plays a huge part about that.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:06:28]:
And so, we are actually in the category of comfort food, though the, you know, the names meant less. And so, for us, we were able to kind of adapt to that consumer environment really, really thoughtfully. And and we knew we knew that our brand wasn't ready for it overnight. And so when when COVID really struck, and this is kinda one of the other threads you you wanted to double click on, I think, you know, we were, of course, caught by surprise. We lost a significant amount of committed investment capital that was set to close last week in March. And so we kind of had this big blow financially, which is that we had money that we had counted on already earmarked for growth and some leases that we had signed. They just got pulled out. And I understand why it got pulled out, but it was a huge, a huge, huge, difficult, you know, push for us.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:07:20]:
The other was that as things were happening, we just didn't know if consumers were going to engage with us. I think we're really anxious that if we tried to fight and push through and stay open, that, we wouldn't have hours to give our team members. And so our our kind of our team footprint is is really the foundation for our business and why we built the company to begin with. And so we got really anxious about their income stability and just continuity and and and some kind of income consistency in their lives. And so when we made the call to close down, it was something we took seriously, but we had we had prepared for about a week and a half into the crisis to actually shut down to ensure that we we could create continuity for our staff to get them over onto unemployment and and emergency benefits. And so there was a a tremendous amount I mean, we basically built an employee intranet with data and information to navigate that, kind of migrate them on to these new systems, and and just really care for our team through that process. And and so, thankfully, we navigated that transition. When we did reopen, our team came back, like, full force and we were able to recall 90% of our team with with 0 issues at all, which was a huge, huge boost.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:08:43]:
And then during the downtime of COVID, there was a team of about 8 of us left from, from so we went from about a 110, a 120 people to 8. The 8 of us that were left pulled off. We called it Project Phoenix, and, because we intended to rise from the ashes. Fire. Yeah. And the 8 of us did about a year's worth of planned strategic initiatives to technology, menu, supply chain, back office support, and we spent 2 months strategically rebuilding our business, redesigning restaurants, and came back, you know, guns blazing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:22]:
That's fantastic. Yeah. Definitely would like to hear a bit more about the current state and and COVID, but I do wanna take a step back. I know Hachuk and Takeover has its roots down south of where we are in Cleveland. But I love to hear, you know, kind of painting the picture of how we got to where we are today from the, you know, the founding story, really the mission as well, an overview of the business and, you know, now with a growing presence here in Cleveland as well.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:09:49]:
Yeah. So maybe the best place to start is just share a little bit of my story is kind of it, it leads there. And so I've been just really, really entrepreneurial for most of my life and kind of realized pretty quickly that I wasn't gonna be good at working for other people. And so for as long as I can remember, I mean, probably since the 4th grade, I was building businesses to generate income, whether it was like reselling snacks to construction workers in your subdivision that I took from my parents' pantry or teaching guitar lessons, you know, whatever it was, I was always hustling. The other thread in my life was really tied to kind of volunteerism and, community impact. And and, generally, in a very, like, conventional, charitable way, like, serve soup at a soup kitchen, stock shelves in a food pantry. And so, fast forward through adolescence, I just had, when I got into school and kind of had the privilege of going to college and just assessing what the world might mean for me, I started getting really disenfranchised with a lot of the community service I had done and just felt like, you know, no ma matter how long I I served soup, the lines, like, never getting shorter, and it'll always be back the next day. And and so as I started to dive, maybe just with more kind of focus on cause to some of the really complicated social issues in our community, started to started to feel just a tremendous amount of empathy and reverence for people that were up against poverty and and, all the adversity that comes with that.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:11:27]:
And so, as I as I started to build relationships with people that had just very different life experience than me, and had adversity in a different way than I ever knew. I just started feeling compelled to find more sustainable ways to tackle this and had a mentor in my life that said, there's this field of study called social entrepreneurship. You know, it kind of merges the 2 things you're passionate about. So I spent the rest of my college kind of life just becoming a student of the discipline of social entrepreneurship and kind of came in my own to know that I have to be a really effective entrepreneur, and I really have to kind of visually understand the experience people are having in the world that was different than mine. So, that that set me on a crazy course. I I was an investment bank analyst for a few years out of college, to try to gain some competency. Lasted for about 20 months in that job before I knew a cubicle and a suit weren't for me. And then, started trying to build businesses.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:12:28]:
And so I I've been in as kind of an aspiring social entrepreneur for going on, like, 12, 13 years now and have stumbled a few times, had a few base hits. But, ultimately, Hot Chicken Takeover was was just kind of another vehicle for me to to pursue that path. This is the one that's been the most commercially successful, but our our kind of the the foundation of Hot Chicken take over. And and if you look at our logo, it's a a rooster with an asterisk next to it. Functionally is what makes up the logo, and that asterisk is really about our mission to just create extraordinary experiences for extraordinary people. And so, of course, you know, we that means we serve food to to guests, and we want that to be an above average experience that people talk about. But, our primary stakeholder is really our team. And so, we've built our business to provide employment opportunities to men and women that have just had really chronic adversity in their life, homelessness, incarceration, and addiction, domestic violence, and, use our business as a foundation for people to to to grow, and and we get to be alongside of people as they make huge, huge achievements in their life.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:13:41]:
And and in some ways, we get to be kind of an obstacle tackler with folks, and and to use our business and our brand and our resources to help people overcome things that they otherwise, might have difficulty doing without extra support.

Jeffrey Stern [00:13:56]:
Nice. One of the the ideas that I know comes with the umbrella of social entrepreneurship is the distinction between doing well by doing good and like charity. And at the end of the day, you're running a business. So could you expand a little bit on that idea and like how you think about the social impact that you were having while building a commercially viable and not just viable, but like successful company?

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:14:23]:
Yeah. This is a great question. I I think, you know, the reality is there's a lot of gray area in this kind of, like, broader name of social entrepreneurship and you've got, you know, more traditional conventional social service agencies and nonprofits that are dipping their toes into, social entrepreneurship, or have started selling something and they call that social entrepreneurship. And and then you've got, you know, folks on our end who are are really vying to be a commercially scalable enterprise. And and so I'm sensitive that just as I answer this, I'm definitely on one far end of the spectrum. And, and in fact, feel like a charitable any charitable inclination of doing this work really does a disservice to the people that we intend to employ and serve and, and in some instances, strips them of, of dignity. And so, our orientation is, is pretty far from charitable. It's very difficult place to work.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:15:24]:
It's a difficult place to be employed. You know, we're a competitive employer. We think one part of being a competitive employer is to be a fair chance employer and give opportunities to men and women that have alternative resumes, you know, or or criminal records. And by extending that opportunity, we find that we get a really compelling group of hires that are really motivated to work and and really grateful for the opportunity they've been given. But, also, men and women that have a tremendous amount of resources and competency when it comes to operating and and playing in this space. And so, you know, for us, the way that shows up is we don't market our company as anything charitable. You know, I think about those, like, late night Sarah McLaughlin SPCA commercials with the sick puppies and and that kind of call to action that if you don't give us money right now, we're gonna murder all these puppies. And that, unfortunately, is how many social enterprises talk about the people they employ if they are an employment based social enterprise.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:16:30]:
And so, we know that our business is strong because our people are strong, and so we don't, we don't tell the story of our staff, we allow them to tell the story themselves if they so choose. And, accordingly, we kind of treat our mission as, like, a second or third date conversation for our customers. It generally we wanna build customer relationships because people love our food and our hospitality experience and our consistency. Or if we make a mistake, we love how we recover and and and own up to that mistake. But, often, our customers are finding out about our our employment approach well after they've decided to become our customer and have have fostered some loyalty. And so it it works out to be probably, the majority of our team members, you know, it's well over 50% have are specifically fair chance candidates that have been affected by a criminal record in the past. But the vast majority of our team have been up against some other level of adversity in their life. That probably pulls us to 80 plus percent.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:17:35]:
And I I generally think that's representative of of who's working in our industry anyways. We just choose to approach it and support people differently.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:44]:
Yeah. I'd love to on the on the team building front, you mentioned, you know, the business is strong because the people are strong. I'm curious your perspective on into the future. Is the intent and goal for people to on the team to, you know, leave Hot Chicken Takeover and, you know, pursue their own ventures or to kind of retain them on the team and because, you know, it's very clear you love these people as part of the

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:18:10]:
team. Yeah. Kind of not our decision to make. You know, we we want to we want to attract people and and as our business grows, we have growth opportunities for people, you know? And so, the more restaurants we open, the more managers we necessitate, the larger our office staff grows that creates other positions. We have a very, like, firm commitment that the vast majority of our promotions happen from within. And, and it means that we're doing our work to develop people and and support people organizationally. But plenty of people enter kind of our doors and join our teams with a different vision for their lives. And so whether that's somebody wants to become a chemical dependency counselor or a commercial truck driver, you know, wants to go back to school and and pursue a different vocation.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:19:00]:
So long as somebody is kind of raising their hand and say, I have a vision for my life and the future, that's kind of that's what gains you entry to Hot Chicken Takeover, regardless of what that vision is. We just try to leverage our resources to support that end and have generally found that if somebody's on our team for 6 months and they've been able to achieve what they wanted to in their life, and they used us as a stepping stone to that next job, it really actually works in our favor because they become huge advocates for our business, huge advocates and cheerleaders, kind of, internally to the team. And so that's a it's a really positive outcome. And so we we do think of our turnover in 2 camps. 1 is just really kind of positive turnover and attrition because somebody's it's a positive work outcome that we've supported. Or the traditional regrettable turnover tied to you weren't meeting an expectation of ours, we weren't meeting an expectation of yours, and we weren't able to salvage this relationship. And it's important to note, our turnover, that regrettable turnover for Hot Chicken Takeover is about a third of what it is on average in our industry. And so we're retaining people 3 to 4 times better than our peers.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:20:13]:
And so it kind of goes to show that this work isn't just warm and fuzzy and charitable. It's actually, you know, really, really creates positive outcomes for our business. And we, Harvard Business School wrote a case study on us to that outcome, which was really an exciting experience for our staff. But to really validate that this is actually a better way to do employment and work culture, which we're we're really proud of.

Jeffrey Stern [00:20:40]:
To the degree that the mission and what you're focused on there is a second or third date topic with the consumer from the perspective of private capital and investment. I know you mentioned some of it had maybe just fallen through at the beginning of COVID, but as a backed business, how does that play into the conversations with investors and, funding?

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:21:02]:
Thankfully, because that story of our business is is really compelling, it has really built awareness of our brand in a larger way than what otherwise a 5 unit restaurant chain could garner from the Midwest. And so it has opened a lot of doors for us to larger hospitality groups or private equity groups. Though those conversations may or may not be aligned with our growth intention, it gives us an opportunity to kind of raise the bar and the visibility of that labor strategy to people that are really impactful in the field. And so we're always appreciative to have that conversation. We haven't had anybody kind of shy away from it. In a few instances, we've had some private investors really treat it charitably and and and think like, oh, it's kinda nice what you do for those people, and, you know, you probably won't continue that as you grow. And so we've used that as a great indicator to just walk away from those conversations because there's not value alignment. But for the most part, you know, we've had only positive outcomes from kind of an investor dialogue of it's an opportunity for an a prospect to you know, prospect investor to say, oh, like, you're able to generate these kind of unit economics and these kind of sales volumes with your brand, and you're you're accomplishing this work with this team.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:22:21]:
And and so they're almost evaluated more objectively than, sympathetically, which again, I think bodes well for the dignity and the nature of the work we're doing, that we don't have a less than team. In many cases, we have a better than team, which I'm I'm thankful to kind of be able to share be the primary storyteller for that from an investment front.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:44]:
That's awesome. Just before we started recording, you know, you mentioned just open a restaurant and, in the present moment, and I I'm curious how that has gone. What is that what does that look like today?

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:22:57]:
So we just opened a restaurant. The, you know, the environment and circumstance for opening that restaurant are really different than we normally do. Usually, we'll line up a few 100 people and and make a huge celebration out of the nature of an opening, that doesn't necessarily feel responsible under the current climate. And so what's more exciting about this opening is, our team has been pretty patient. We've been allowing sales to roll in. They keep growing day by day, which has been great for us. But it's also given us an opportunity to really test out a new prototype hot chicken takeover that was really instigated by the COVID crisis. And so, this particular restaurant that we just opened has a proper drive thru integrated into it, as well as a lot of new technology and a new layout for the kitchen, a new layout for the restaurant, all kind of inspired by the experience we've had through COVID and wanting to build how our prototype evolves for new openings and has, in fact, already informed our next opening, which will be up in in, Northeast Ohio again that we're excited to announce here shortly.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:10]:
Yeah. Realizing it's probably hard to look too far into the future at the moment as all these restaurants are hyper focused on the existential crisis of surviving right now. But clearly, Project Phoenix and thinking about the future, When you think about Hot Chicken Takeover 10 years from now, 20 years from now, what is the kind of impact and and scale that that you hope to have looking back from that hypothetical?

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:24:41]:
Well, I I got into this business to really prove a point that labor labor and HR could be done differently and empower a group of people that often aren't empowered in the community and and achieve more success because of it. And so I'm interested in scale because I'm interested in in proving kind of that hypothesis at scale. And so for us, what that looks like is is growing our restaurant brand. And in 5, 10 years from now, I'd like to, you know, really in the next 5 years, I'd like to see how Chikin take over at a point to really accelerate its growth and scale. And so a prototype fully fleshed out, having a team that's capable of opening, you know, 6 plus restaurants a year and really positioning ourselves for the type of capital that could throw some rocket fuel at what we do. And so the the flip side of that is that I want to convince more employers to do the nature of this work and benefit their own businesses and their own communities and process. And so, you know, even if we could open 10 restaurants a year, we are creating jobs in 50 50 like 40 to 50 person increments with each restaurant opening. And there are plenty of employers that already have tens of thousands of employees, both in our industry and other entry level environments.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:26:03]:
And so I'm really, really hoping that we can be a catalyst for that that work to scale well beyond how many hot chicken takeovers we can open.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:12]:
Yeah. Honestly, it seems like the the proof is in the the pudding or the chicken, if you will. Is there pushback you get from trying to, you know, spread this model? Like, where, if any, is the pushback? Because it obviously it seems to be

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:26:28]:
working. You know, a lot of a lot of outside businesses look at what we do, and they really think it's in the novelty of who we hire. And that's really a mistake. It's really not the novelty of who we hire, but how we hire and how we support people. And and really the common sense about what we do is just that we try to be a really good employer, and we try not to be assholes to people. And, and most, most of our employees that have come to us through working a series of entry level jobs, working in a series of industry jobs, have no positive work experiences to report. You know, we work in an industry that the bar is set so categorically low for quality of employment that really what we do well is we just raise the bar that that we meet people where they're at. We understand that if somebody has personal instability, they will have professional instability and we don't ask them to check check that baggage at the door.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:27:27]:
You know, we actively ask them to talk to us about it so we can support them through it. And so, the pushback we get often is that most employers that are really failing at this work that are seeing a 150, 200% turnover a year, which is is really kind of average in our industry, is just behaving really poorly. And they don't value their team as an actual resource. They just think it's a cattle call that they can burn and churn through people. And so the pushback we get is from employers that are really stuck in a bad way. And it shows from all HR indicator, you know, most most employers in our industry actually have to report shrinkage on their profit and loss statement, which is just a way of saying that they have employees stealing from them. You know, if you're a warehouse operator or a large food operator, you actually are accounting for. You're expensing the food and the product that walks out your door because your team is actively stealing from you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:28]:
Shrinkage. That is a financial euphemism I have never seen.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:28:32]:
Also, also, what's crazy to think about is many employers that are accounting for shrinkage are not Fair Chance Employers. So, they I have to often remind people that you're actively hiring the best of criminals because they haven't been caught and they haven't established a record, and you're accounting for them stealing from you. So why not hire the people that aren't as effective at it and have been caught, and have a lot more to gain from positive employment. But it's a it's a bad state of affairs in our industry for for quality of life of employees. And regardless of who somebody hires, I I think we're trying to do our part to just collectively raise the conversation for quality of life and investment in people in the hospitality industry. And it makes a difference. You know, we're proving that it makes a difference. And we do serve banana pudding, so we can say the proof is independent.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:26]:
Nice. One of the things you mentioned earlier, and it just came back to me was the income continuity issue, especially as having actually gone through the shutdown and and I assume now thinking about the possibility of the future, How did you actually navigate the bridging that financial strain?

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:29:50]:
Yeah. So if you recall back to kind of April when businesses were starting to close, there was so much uncertainty and and our public assistance system was pressured in a way that it's never been pressured before. And so we knew going into it that, you know, we were gonna be one of many employers putting added pressure onto that system. And in many instances, it would mean that our team members would be looking at a 2 to 4 week gap in income. And so we leveraged our accrued all of the accrued paid time off our team members would have, which we give our team members paid time off. And so we had kind of an accrual bank of PTO. We also have a program internally that we call a matched milestone program, where we're we're actively supporting team members through investments in cars, housing, etcetera, where we'll match up to $600 of their investment on an annual basis in those things. And so, we leverage that whole accrual bank to just give people emergency financial relief and to do it in a way that wouldn't affect their ability to get public assistance.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:31:04]:
And so, you know, we didn't do anything remarkable in that capacity other than ensure that our we were with our team members every step of the way to make sure that they had that and that they had somebody to call along the way. And so it was really an exercise about communication and education and that even though functionally people weren't on our team anymore, they had full access to our HR leader who is kind of on the front front line of ensuring public assistance and everything like that. And that we have the wisdom to to share meaningfully with people. The only thing we did is we emptied our refrigerators and the restaurants to our team. And so all of the products that we stocked became groceries for our staff in the short term and became kind of a meaningful way that we we could support people and fill their freezers with chicken and try to take just some of the edge off off of the hardship that they were encountering. And so a lot of communication, some hand holding, some generosity in in financial and and other resources, and it it made a big difference.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:12]:
Yeah. I can imagine it did. I would be remiss to not ask about the prospect for more, hot chicken takeover restaurants in the immediate proximity to where I live. I'm curious to the degree you're able to speak to expansion plans in northeast Ohio. What does that look like in the more immediate future?

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:32:35]:
Well, specific to you to to the Northeast Ohio kind of market, generally speaking, we definitely have one more restaurant that's happening that, in 2021. That restaurant was also one that was intended to already be open. We intended to get it open in, October, November of this year, but COVID had about a 6 month delay. And so that restaurant will come online in in the spring. We're working on, we're cooking up a whole bunch of other things as well, not at a point where they're shareable. But kind of broadly speaking about expansion, we're kind of holding for a moment, you know, where the both restaurants, the one that we just opened, the one that we just mentioned would open, were already in process when COVID hit. And so we have no we have really nothing new on the horizon, that we've committed to during COVID and are at a point where we're we're trying to get stable and really test out some of the new assumptions we made about real estate and restaurants, so that they can inform our future expansion ideas and and what real estate we'd look for. And so, I I anticipate, if anything if we do anything additional in 2021, it'll be pretty opportunistic.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:33:51]:
But really think we'll hit the ground running again in 2022 with some more opportunities. And and unfortunate for our industry and some of my peers, COVID 19 is probably dealing some devastating blows to brands. And and fortunate for how you can take over. We have a brand that was well positioned, just in the nature of our food and our our message during this crisis that that we see a bright future ahead, but ultimately believe too that that there'll probably be some real estate that we can be opportunistic about as casual dining industries. You know, the casual dining segment has been really devastated. These, like, full service sit down restaurants, many of which were already having trouble pre COVID. So, you know, a lot of that real estate is gonna come online, and I I think developers are gonna get creative about how how to split it. And so I think we're gonna see a lot of casual dining restaurants that were 5,000 square feet that are now a cell phone store and a fast casual restaurant at the drive through.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:34:52]:
And so, you know, we wanna be well positioned for that and positioned to kind of grow pretty opportunistically.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:59]:
That's very exciting. Selfishly, still brewing for something in there.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:35:04]:
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely more definitely more in Northeast Ohio. I think I think we're doubling down on expansion in Ohio and, you know, building building brand strength, you know, similar to what we have in Columbus up in Northeast Ohio. And you can only do that with more restaurants and more chicken and more restaurants and more chicken mean more jobs. And so that's what, you know, that's what drives us.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:29]:
Yeah. Absolutely. If I could ask you many more questions, I'm curious about other things. But I know we are coming up on time here. If people have other questions or things that they would wanna follow-up with you about, where's the best place for for people to find you?

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:35:44]:
Yeah. Well, we are up on every kind of social channel, slinging chicken and trying to engage with our community. And so that's a great place. But our website as well has kind of direct inquiry boxes that that come right to me. And and so if there's any opportunity for somebody to follow-up, particular in Northeast Ohio, we're looking for more partnerships from everything from the creative collaborations we do on food. You know, we do, like, a hot chicken pizza in Central Ohio, something that that we anticipate bringing Northeast Ohio this upcoming year and and ways that we engage the community. So eager about those kind of partnerships. Also eager for partnerships around staffing and community resources that can benefit our team.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:36:34]:
And so, those are the 2 really critical points that we feel like allow us to build brand in a market, which is just how do we engage with people and how do we support our team in a meaningful way? So we'd love to we'd love to hear from your audience and, you know, we'd love to engage with people as as best we can.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:53]:
Awesome. Yeah. I hope we can have some of those collaborations happen. That would be excellent.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:36:58]:
Yeah. Super delicious.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:01]:
Yeah. Well, Joe, I really appreciate, you coming on the show today, and sharing your story and background. And I am glad to hear that through these tough times, you you're doing alright.

Joe DeLoss (Hot Chicken Takeover) [00:37:13]:
Yeah. Thanks so much for having us and excited to excited to serve you up there soon.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:19]:
That's all for this week. Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so shoot us an email at lay of the land at upside dot f m or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland, at the tagen, or at sternhefe, jefe. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land. If you or someone you know would make a good guess for our show, please email us or find us on Twitter and let us know. And if you love our show, please leave a review on iTunes. That goes a long way in helping us spread the word and continue to help bring high quality guests to the show. Taegan and I decided there were a couple things we wanted to share with you at the end of the podcast, and so here we go.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:57]:
Taegan Horden and Jeffrey Stern developed The Lay of the Land podcast in collaboration with The UP Company, LLC. At the time of this recording, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the companies which appear on the show unless otherwise indicated. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Founders Get Funds and its affiliates, or actual and its affiliates, or any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. We have not considered your specific financial situation, nor provided any investment advice on this show. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.