Spaghetti Shack Success: Joey Palomarez’s Recipe for Community and Growth

They had a wine bar and a sushi restaurant, my parents did. And I was very fortunate to learn from two great restaurateurs. So when I thought about what I wanted to do, I’m like, I know food.

So I took a little bit of a dive into that area. But yeah, it’s been a really fun ride.

Getting to do it with people that I love and people that make it fun every day is, is kind of what keeps me going.

Freddy D
00:02:02.084 – 00:02:04.444
So how did you come up with the Spaghetti Shack?

Joey Palomarez
00:02:04.572 – 00:02:36.872
Yeah, there was a couple other concepts doing similar things that we looked at. We really liked the idea of this to go style pasta concept. One of the reasons why I like pasta, it’s affordable, kids love it.

It can be like this family friendly meal.

So when we were kind of deciding what we wanted to do, we saw there were some things in the market, thought that we could do it our own way in something, and then I’m sure we’ll talk about the community aspect of it later. But we really just wanted to do something that was us. So instead of starting another brand, we decided to build our own. And that’s how we got going.

Freddy D
00:02:36.976 – 00:02:40.712
So what did it take to kind of put this together?

Joey Palomarez
00:02:40.816 – 00:03:39.354
Yeah, one, luckily to lean on my parents experience.

They’ve done it multiple times before, so to be able to lean on them, to kind of give us the idea and the blueprint of this is how you got to go get your llc, of course, and then you got to go into the county with food. The county’s a pretty big hurdle for a lot of people, and building permits were something that we struggled with the first time around.

But yeah, leaning on them, luckily we all of us had kind of gotten our first big boy jobs, quote, unquote, I guess you could say. But the stimulus checks actually were something that we used to invest into our business.

So of course, like everybody with their story, we probably went into it a little naive and a little underfunded just because we were trying to figure it out along the way. But yeah, it was definitely a lot of bootstrapping up front. Luckily had the four of us to put in capital to make it work.

But I mean, it’s been a long journey of just figuring things out as we go and building the business and doing it our way, which is something that I say a lot and I take a lot of pride in.

Freddy D
00:03:39.522 – 00:03:42.250
What do you mean by your way? So what is your we.

Joey Palomarez
00:03:42.290 – 00:04:56.386
We just try to do business in a different way. Like, the one thing that I say with food in particular is the big brands dominate the space.

I know it’s like that in a lot of industries, but if I was to ask you to name three restaurants on top of your head, they’re probably restaurants that are inundating you with marketing all the time. And so in food, it’s. How do you separate from that? As we’ve had to kind of work backwards in terms of what makes us unique. Is it our food product?

Is it our brand? Is it our story?

We’ve kind of settled, of course, in all three of those, but we’ve really been focused on not trying to spend all of our marketing dollars on the Google machine.

We’ve been trying to work with local nonprofits, other local businesses, to be able to gain entry points into their customer base and make them have good feelings about Our brand. Because through a brand, a brand introduction of a company that they already enjoy. And then that’s been a huge thing for us.

And as we get started on our franchising endeavor, we’re really focused on being an entry point for people into business. That’s a huge thing for us.

So focusing on an affordable restaurant opportunity, things like processes that make running the business easier with small teams. Because we really consider ourselves to be the entry point to someone getting started in a business.

Freddy D
00:04:56.458 – 00:06:17.142
Yeah. Because we just went on a honeymoon trip, been together for 12 years and finally decided to, you know, get married.

We went on a trip and we ended up in Australia. It’s my sixth time there.

One of the things that I really admired about the place is that there are a lot of shops like yourselves that are family run small businesses. And those places are always packed with people. And you didn’t see a lot of big box restaurants over there. It’s mostly the people that own it.

They’re making the food. And it was some of the best meals that we had was going through the botanical garden in Sydney.

And it was a little place, so we got some sandwiches and some stuff there and the food was outstanding. Them that were making it was their little store in a great location.

So I can appreciate where you’re coming from because having that uniqueness, I’ve spent a lot of time going to Europe and same concept as in Australia. A lot of people have their own little shops and that’s their business. Every day.

The quality of the food is off the charts, the service is off the charts. And going back to Sydney, where there was a miscommunication issue, they took care of it, they fixed it, no big deal, no extra cost.

They just wanted to make sure we were happy. We’re super fans of that coffee shop.

Joey Palomarez
00:06:17.206 – 00:06:57.754
Yeah, great stories. I love that you share that. Because one of the things that I pride myself in is the reason I love food is because people connect over it.

And you’re talking about the stories of the people, the food that you ate on your vacation. While we’re not necessarily a tourist spot, we consider ourselves to be the community pasta place.

The pasta place in my neighborhood being takeout, not a destination per se, but our mission is to feed people affordably and quickly so they can spend more time with their loved ones and less time cooking and doing dishes. And it’s back to that piece of connection over food that we’ve built our whole model around.

So it’s cool to hear from your perspective the memories that you have on your Vacations and in the food and the people that were involved in that. So I appreciate you sharing.

Freddy D
00:06:57.802 – 00:07:42.904
Thank you. What you guys are doing is you’re creating super fans of your community and your patrons coming to your place. They’re your sales force.

You’re not spending a lot of money on the Google engine, but you’ve got a better engine because you’re investing in the word of mouth. And so now your customers are coming in. The food’s reasonable, the food is high quality.

They’re telling everybody and then you’ve got a great atmosphere. So that’s attractive. So that elevates your brand visibility.

So you’re doing all the things that you need to be doing to create what I call business super fans that are now promoting your business and are happy to do it. And they do it for free.

Joey Palomarez
00:07:42.992 – 00:08:36.632
Yeah. And obviously I would love to say that I do the community stuff, but it does come back to that point that we talked about.

It’s like, we know we can’t compete with McDonald’s Jack in the Box on price. We can’t compete on availability. But what we can’t compete in is how people feel about our brand and about us.

We’ve been very intentional about that since day one. But also I just believe in building long lasting relationships with our customers.

I think that’s a huge thing, is we don’t want them in the door once being that community spot back. I said not about being the destination place, about the neighborhood place is we’re looking for repeat customers.

Whether that’s once a month, twice a month, or twice a year, we still want that repeat relationship.

And so by doing things like supporting the sports teams in the area and the little leagues that we do our events at, it helps us kind of build that bond with that customer. And we get it all the time. In terms of people saying that they heard this from their friend, that’s just.

Freddy D
00:08:36.656 – 00:09:15.560
What I call super fans. Promoting. Promoting your. There’s a gentleman by the name of Joe Gerard. He’s passed away. He’s the number one Chevrolet sales guy.

What he did is he created super fans of all his customers. He acknowledged them on their birthdays, on life events and everything else.

People would be lined up to buy a car from Joe because of the way he treated his customers. They were lifetime customers. Their kids would come and buy cars. Their kids. Kids would come buy cars from him because that’s the guy you went to.

So you’re doing kind of the same thing. But the product is, in your case, the Spaghetti Shack.

Joey Palomarez
00:09:15.640 – 00:09:15.976
Right.

Freddy D
00:09:16.048 – 00:09:32.880
That’s a brilliant business model because it can only scale cost effectively. Let me add that in there because you’ve got a team that’s promoting you. Now you’ve opened up another branch.

I think you’re on your third location or you’re opening up your fourth. Which one is it?

Joey Palomarez
00:09:32.960 – 00:09:45.104
We have two locations and a food truck right now. But we’re in the middle of franchising our business, so we’re looking for people who want to own or operate. Love our model.

I always say people want to franchise because they want to own their own business, but they don’t want to do it alone.

Freddy D
00:09:45.232 – 00:09:45.568
Right.

Joey Palomarez
00:09:45.624 – 00:09:48.080
We’re trying to provide an outlet for those to do that.

Freddy D
00:09:48.200 – 00:09:55.456
So it’s a roadmap, basically. This is how you do it. This is what you need to do. This is the food, this is how you make it. The whole shebang.

Joey Palomarez
00:09:55.568 – 00:09:56.336
Yes.

Freddy D
00:09:56.528 – 00:09:58.448
And when did you guys start launching that?

Joey Palomarez
00:09:58.504 – 00:10:30.022
We’ve been working on this since day one. This is our. We knew that this was going to be the end goal is to franchise our business and. And hopefully one day become a national brand.

But we started officially, I guess, soliciting, you would say, about 10 weeks ago. So simply a new project for us. We’ve just gotten started and one of our locations is for sale as a franchise opportunity, our Pinetop location.

But, yeah, things are going pretty well for being so early.

We’ve had a lot of great conversations and we continue to talk to people who are interested in it and look forward to getting our first one on the books here shortly.

Freddy D
00:10:30.156 – 00:10:39.150
Okay, so let’s go back to the community. Tell me a little bit about what you guys are doing for the community and how has that transformed your business?

Joey Palomarez
00:10:39.530 – 00:13:10.128
That’s a great question. And what I’m going to go at is how has it transformed in general? A lot of people ask is like, okay, well, what does community mean?

And one of the things that we’re excited as we build a system is community means a lot of different things for different people. And so, for example, me, my fiance is an educator. So education is probably the most important issue for me.

If you were to talk to me about what does community mean? It’s the education, it’s the school systems. So I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of connections in those areas.

But we partner with not only a bunch of school groups, et cetera, to do fundraisers, and we give them good deals on their catering because everybody’s got to have an end of the year meal. Right. But really we focused on doing collaboration. So I’ll talk about two.

One, we collaborate with Million Dollar Teacher Apologetics, an organization that fights for the teaching profession in general, not only down from the financing of it and them getting a better paycheck, but also to them being recognized, et cetera. So we’ve done plenty of things with them, such as sponsoring school meals. We’ve done in store campaigns to raise awareness for them.

But the one reason I talk about that one in particular, because not only have we done a lot of good work for them, they are one of our biggest advocates. In particular, they go out and talk about us to all the schools who are our potential customers, and they talk about us to their supporters.

And I’ll run into people every month or so that tell me that one of the reasons that they say that they ordered is because of our relationship with Million Dollar Teacher Projects.

I know you like the word superfans is our support to them, us being super fans of them, kind of flipping it back around and supporting their endeavors. They’ve been really reciprocal in that. And secondly, we work with the Donor Network of Arizona. So if you’re familiar, it’s organ donation.

They’ve been also a great supporter of ours. So we did a donation drive.

We kind of tested this avenue for them because they’ve never really worked with a restaurant on the level that we worked with. So we were signing people up to become organ donors at the restaurant.

And if they did or even showed that they were, we had a special cheesecake for them. We were sharing in on ours, and we were able to kind of put our brands together and help each other in that way.

I always say it’s a really, really soft introduction, a really soft landing and to getting their supporters involved. People would come in and tell us how cool it was that we were doing this kind of thing and that they had never been in before.

And that’s really the goal, is to get that first customer in. There’s no better way to make an introduction than through partnering with a brand that they already have respect for.

Freddy D
00:13:10.184 – 00:13:36.714
Yeah, absolutely. It’s collaborating. You’re both being able to market into each other’s databases is really what you’re doing in a clever way, breaking it down.

It’s collaborative marketing, and there is no better way because they’re agent entities endorsing your entity into their space and vice versa. So you’ve got credibility right off the bat. And that in turn just propels that growth.

Joey Palomarez
00:13:36.802 – 00:14:06.950
Yeah, then that’s definitely it. And of course, there is some altruistic things in there. This is Doing things our way, we look to find others who want to join.

Like, this is what being a spaghetti shack means, being able to engage on that level. And we’re choosing to be pretty loose on where, like where you need to engage and how you want to engage.

It can be anything down from fundraisers to helping schools raise money using your restaurant. And again, we get introduced to those customers on a soft landing or finding a cause that means well to you and trying to work them out there.

Freddy D
00:14:06.990 – 00:14:39.726
Yeah, no, that’s the win, win, win strategy. Everybody wins from that equation.

So that’s an important approach that a lot of businesses should really, the listeners, I should say, should take into consideration.

And looking at partnering up with other complementary businesses, or like you said, the people that you guys partner up with, not exactly those companies, but similar causes that are important to them, is a great way to create a trifecta win for everybody. The customer wins, the partner wins, and you win.

Joey Palomarez
00:14:39.878 – 00:14:40.686
Exactly.

Freddy D
00:14:40.798 – 00:14:55.198
That’s really a brilliant way to grow a business because you’re not spending a lot of resources doing it because everybody’s collectively and collaboratively promoting each other. Maximizing resources at the end of the day, really.

Joey Palomarez
00:14:55.334 – 00:15:07.086
Exactly. And just being reciprocal, finding people that you like to work with, finding people that share your mission and your values.

And again, your customers probably overlap anyway. So be able to make that soft landing.

Freddy D
00:15:07.198 – 00:15:14.030
Can you share a story of something that you guys did for one of these charities? And how did that come up?

Joey Palomarez
00:15:14.070 – 00:15:54.146
I guess an initiative that we feel very strongly about is our shacktacular initiative. So what we try to do is we throw a party for our anniversaries and basically we raise money for our nonprofit partners.

So of course we are donating our food in our time and we sell tickets to raise money for our nonprofit partners. But it allowed us to get all of our stakeholders, all of our catering partners, everybody in one room at one time to remind ourselves of them.

So it’s kind of like this double edged thing where they’re coming to support us, they’re coming to support our nonprofit partners. But the first one was a really special night. And if you want to check out anything from it, we have a brand video on our website that.

That shows some clips and footage from that first night that we had.

Freddy D
00:15:54.298 – 00:15:58.402
Yeah, I watched that earlier. Yes, that’s why I was asking the question.

Joey Palomarez
00:15:58.586 – 00:16:23.940
Yeah, so it’s a great opportunity for us to connect with our community and connect with our friends and family of our business and do something good. But that’s probably where our relationship was solidified with Million dollar teacher project.

We’ve been able to make donations to a couple other nonprofits through the program as well, such as Tempe Community Action Agency here in the Valley. We’re looking forward to our future owners being able to run that. That program as well.

Freddy D
00:16:24.060 – 00:17:26.992
Yeah, that’s very important. I had a customer in Michigan who’s a diabetes doctor. He’s world renowned and speaks all over the world. He was my customer for 10 years.

What he would do every year is hold a customer appreciation event in the summer, rain or shine, and it was outside, have food catered in, invite the customers, invite all his suppliers, the people to provide the shots for the insulin and everything else. It’d be a three hour lunch fest, but it gave all his patients the ability to go and talk to all these people. Not on the clock, but on a Saturday.

I would go there and videotape some of his patients. And that’s how we got a bunch of video testimonials for his practice.

It just exploded his business because it was all goodwill, just like you’re talking about here.

He just did it as a customer appreciation event, but at the same time, he recognized all his partners and medical suppliers and guys are doing it in a little bit of a different way. Similar concept.

Joey Palomarez
00:17:27.186 – 00:17:37.444
Absolutely. Yeah. And I love that idea. I used to work in sports, and that’s a big thing in sports is that fan appreciation day.

So it’s cool to see other people taking that concept and bringing it to their business.

Freddy D
00:17:37.612 – 00:18:35.100
One of the things I wrote in my book Creating Business Superfans, that I’ll give you a play that you could, is you could turn around and announce that, hey, don’t tell my cfo, but it’s my birthday and I’m giving stuff away and advertise it that you’re throwing a birthday party for yourself and you’re giving away something. People that stop by to get it are most likely going to buy something. Another customer of mine, they do pot pies.

And what they did is anybody who would spend over a hundred dollars, they would do a chicken dance.

Because chicken pot pies was what they started out selling with a videotape and this gal doing a chicken dance running around because someone spent $100 and that went viral for them. And they ended up getting on the news and everything else.

She started it from her kitchen and I worked with her on some of the development ideas, some of the digital marketing ideas for about 10 years. Now she’s into major grocery stores and beyond. So you’re on the same trajectory.

Joey Palomarez
00:18:35.180 – 00:19:14.266
Yeah. I sure hope so. And things are looking good for us right now. We’re, we’re excited about where we’re going.

That’s why, for example, the put it into Google. See, your return on ad spend, that stuff is, is obviously very important because you need to be able to get back.

But sometimes that goodwill is a little bit harder to measure. But I, I think that they are to be used in concert with one another.

I don’t think it’s all in on one or the other, but yeah, I credit a lot of our growth and our consistent growth over time to be towards that mindset.

Like I said, it’s changed over time and as we continue to grow, it’s not the same stuff, it’s not the same partners, but we’re just constantly looking for the outlet, I guess is what I’ll say.

Freddy D
00:19:14.418 – 00:19:18.950
Right. So how did you guys come up with the, the menu? What’s the uniqueness of.

Joey Palomarez
00:19:19.340 – 00:21:28.406
Started as spaghetti and meatballs only, which is really weird to say. But again, we looked at a couple other concepts. There was some other things that we’re doing.

So we’re like, okay, let’s build this and we’ll grow from there. One of the things that I really like is that people are eating build your own style food now a lot.

I mean, of course Chipotle was the one that kind of took that off, but there’s other like Cava that are doing it on the Mediterranean level. And even there’s some competitors in our space that do a similar type thing. But we really like to build your own.

So we kind of decided let’s slowly introduce items to see how people can create their own meals. So now we have a couple different noodles, we have a couple different sauces and a couple different proteins. You’re able to build how you want.

And being a family style concept, we actually ask you how many people you’re going to feed. That’s the first thing. So we have our small mid and full.

It’s great because for example, being family style and family focused, we’re really focused on those large ticket orders so your families and groups. A lot of times it’s hard for the mother or the caretaker to ask every individual kid what they want to eat.

So what makes it great for us is I know that we want pasta today. I’m going to get one large bowl for the whole family.

We’re going to build it, add some proteins, add some chicken, some sausage, some meatballs, and we’ll call it a day and everybody’s happy. So that’s what really separates us there. But we have our menu split for two things. One is to build your own.

But two, we have our Shack Favorites menu, which is very geared towards being searchable. What I mean by that is anything about doordash and how people are eating food these days.

Doordash is a marketplace, meaning that when they go on there, they don’t necessarily know what they want to eat.

So if they’ve never been introduced to your brand, but they’re really hungry for chicken Alfredo, and all you do is a build your own pasta concept, you’re probably not going to come up. So we have our Shack Favorites menu that has your traditional chicken Alfredo, chicken parmesan, meatball subs, things like that.

So we can still capture that market that’s searching for us. And being takeout only, we have to be very digitally focused in the way that we present. So we kind of have this menu that allows us to do both.

And I think that that’s very, very cool.

Freddy D
00:21:28.518 – 00:21:42.900
It is cool. I like that idea because you’re basically covering all bases from a sports term. You’ve got all aspects of it.

You get the family, you got, the person just wants a sandwich. And you’re radar for all the above.

Joey Palomarez
00:21:43.320 – 00:21:54.256
Exactly. And I just. While we’re focused on the larger groups, we don’t want to ignore the people that were feeding themselves.

Because if you’re eating alone, you’re not necessarily thinking, oh, I’m gonna go to a family style restaurant.

Freddy D
00:21:54.288 – 00:21:54.720
Right.

Joey Palomarez
00:21:54.840 – 00:22:03.952
But by having the two menus that are essentially the same thing just split in two different ways, we’re able to have the right menu for both types of customers.

Freddy D
00:22:04.016 – 00:22:17.200
Because there’s a lot of people that are not a family. They’ single and they don’t want to cook order from us, so they don’t have to do the dishes.

When I was single, I would order or I would go and pick it up, but I don’t want to have to do the dishes.

Joey Palomarez
00:22:18.180 – 00:22:57.008
Yeah, exactly. And nobody does. And that’s kind of what we’ve built our whole concept around is not having to do that. Save time. It’s a big thing.

And trying to be affordable so they can save money as well. I mean, a lot of people especially we have customers that come in and we’ll get the largest meal and they’ll just split it up over days.

Because again, if you’re by yourself, sometimes it can be more expensive to go to the grocery store at times and not be able to use it. So that’s one thing that we really focus on is just being able to be that affordable option. It’s hard these days, I’m not gonna lie.

With labor and food and everything else that’s increasing. I know there’s a bunch of industries that can say that, but we try our very best to keep our prices as low as we can.

Freddy D
00:22:57.064 – 00:23:00.832
I looked at the site and they are very reasonable. That’s one thing I gotta say, it.

Joey Palomarez
00:23:00.856 – 00:23:07.010
Wouldn’T get there very good. So the, the virtual medium we got going on here doesn’t really work for the eating portion.

Freddy D
00:23:07.170 – 00:23:21.650
No. And I’m up in Cave Creek, you’re down in Tempe. So it’d get cold by the time we got here, flooding.

So you guys are really hitting a sweet spot because some of the bigger food joints, their prices are going up, but the quality of food is still the same.

Joey Palomarez
00:23:21.770 – 00:24:11.970
Yeah. One thing I, I do say with food, and I really strongly believe this is we are a competitor with anybody that sells food.

What I mean by that is we are competing with the grocery store, we’re competing with other restaurants. But it’s back to that value proposition. It’s like, what is your value proposition that’s different than the grocery store?

And it’s obviously there are two very distinct, different people, two different occasions essentially. But that’s the one thing about food is you have to spend money on it every day.

How do we get people who would be eating at the grocery store to eat with us? Same thing. How do we pull down from some of the people who are ordering from the more traditional Italian sit down meal?

How do we get them to come to us instead? That’s usually the price factor. I mean, can we beat the traditional Olive Garden on price? Yes, we can.

And that’s how we used to kind of pull away from our competitor there.

Freddy D
00:24:12.010 – 00:24:17.602
You’re delivering a better product too, because it’s not mass product, it’s a unique product.

Joey Palomarez
00:24:17.786 – 00:24:36.168
Yeah, I would believe so. I think our reviews say so, but I know that’s a very individualistic thing. Their experience is much different than ours. Word takeaway.

You’re only interacting with us for a minute or so and then you’re going back to your own home. Whereas in Olive Garden you’re getting that experience of being out with the family. And it’s two very distinct things.

Freddy D
00:24:36.224 – 00:24:49.240
Yeah, I mean, that’s Europe does a lot of takeaways. And the same thing when I was Australia, New Zealand, we had a couple sit downs, but we also did several takeaways.

And those were some of the best meals.

Joey Palomarez
00:24:49.320 – 00:26:13.958
Yeah, the way that the Industry is going. I mean, if you look at some of the bigger box restaurants that are struggling right now, it’s Red Lobster Fuddruckers just close.

It’s just not the way people are eating food these days. Takeaway is a big thing. I know ghost kitchens were really big, and during COVID not so much anymore, but they’re still there.

But you’re seeing this transformation into quick service. The brands that have taken over are the Chipotle’s of the world. I can come in, I can get my food because I’ve got a busy schedule.

We don’t live the same lives that we used to. And also, it helps you keep costs down. That’s the one thing that people don’t realize.

If you’re sitting down, you have more cooks, you have more people in the kitchen. You have more people washing dishes. You have people to serve.

And within the day and age that we live right now, with labor being what it is, almost a premium product, which I totally understand the direction we’re moving, but the business models have to change with it. It’s no longer as viable. Obviously, there’s a lot of brands making it work. To run a large restaurant with the staff, that has to be there.

That’s why you’re seeing some of the other brands cut down on menus, because that helps the staff come down. But also the focus on takeout and delivery because you don’t need as many people. And that’s just speaking for here in the Valley.

That conversation is accelerating even faster in California with some of the stuff that they’ve got going on with their $20 minimum. But, yeah, we believe that we have a product and a model that’s not only built for now, but built for the future.

Freddy D
00:26:14.094 – 00:26:32.754
Hitting out the point there, because we’d like to get eclairs for dessert. You used to go to the grocery store and you get five in a pack. Now, I just.

The other day, just before Christmas, I went to pick some up, and I’m going, where’s the five pack? It’s only a three pack, and the price is the same.

Joey Palomarez
00:26:32.922 – 00:26:34.050
Shrinkflation.

Freddy D
00:26:34.210 – 00:26:48.338
It was like, wait a minute. This doesn’t work. It was like, why five in the first place? But okay. The two of us would flip for the last one.

But it just didn’t make sense, the weird number they put together either. But the price was exactly the same.

Joey Palomarez
00:26:48.394 – 00:27:46.600
Yeah. And one thing that a lot of people don’t think about is, yes, it is food cost. The price of everything that we bring in has gotten more expensive.

But Also, it’s the people that are actually creating that value. And at some point we have to decide as, as a society, are we willing to do that or not?

But not to get into that question, but that’s what a lot of the price increases come down to in restaurants is that we still have to have the same amount of people. Those people are making more money now. But in order to keep the margins that we’re all looking for, we have to increase prices.

And believe me, we don’t like it either.

I get chills every time I think about raising my prices because I know that our customers were expecting one thing and it’s a really hot button market. You talked about shrinkflation earlier and shrinking portion sizes.

Yeah, that’s been an industry standard over the last couple years too, because the market has shown that people do not want that price increase. So how can we slip that margin in somewhere else? Shrinking portion sizes is kind of the way that some of the larger brands have gone.

Freddy D
00:27:47.020 – 00:28:04.034
My wife just bought something about a week ago and she goes, does this look smaller? And we had a piece of the old one and yeah, it was a half inch all the way around. It was a little bit less in size. So yeah, they shrunk it.

Price is the same, but the product was less.

Joey Palomarez
00:28:04.202 – 00:28:27.088
Yeah, no, it’s everywhere food, non food items are even doing it. We’ve had to do things ourselves in terms of raising prices as we opened. But just know that with us in particular, we take it very seriously.

We’re trying to be affordable and we’re also trying to pay our employees what we believe that they deserve to make. So it’s a little bit of a cat and mouse walk. The tightrope type game that we’re all playing in our space right now.

Freddy D
00:28:27.144 – 00:28:38.512
Let’s get out of the pricing conversation and go back to what you guys are doing to grow and doing some great things with the community. You’ve opened up two places plus a food truck. How’s the food truck doing?

Joey Palomarez
00:28:38.616 – 00:29:28.288
Food truck is good. I mean, it’s like a three month now project. The one thing I think I’m learning is it’s not so similar to a restaurant as you would think.

Because if we’re doing events, I could tell you down to the hundred or two hundred dollars what my sales are going to be on a given day at the restaurant. We have the data, we know it’s going to be within this range. We can staff appropriately. When you go to these events, there’s so many variables.

It’s like, how’s the weather, how many people are there, how many other trucks are there? So we’re learning those on how to operate a food truck because most people actually go the other way.

They go get the food truck and then the restaurant. We went the other way around.

We’re using the food truck as more of a marketing thing to get our brand out there in front of people instead of waiting for them to come to us. We’re going to go to you. But food truck’s great. It’s.

It’s definitely been a learning process, but we’ve had some huge wins and we’re looking to get it booked right now.

Freddy D
00:29:28.344 – 00:29:36.768
There’s a couple places I know that host networking events and they’ve had some food trucks. So I’ll, I’ll share you guys information with them.

Joey Palomarez
00:29:36.904 – 00:29:38.176
Would appreciate that.

Freddy D
00:29:38.328 – 00:29:49.360
Yeah, because I think that’d be a great addition to what they’re doing because they’re business networking groups and stuff like that. What guys are doing will be a great asset for them and it’d be create a win win for everybody.

Joey Palomarez
00:29:49.520 – 00:29:51.088
Looking forward to hearing from you.

Freddy D
00:29:51.144 – 00:30:14.726
So, Joel, as we come to the close here, any other stories that you want to share with our audience from a business perspective? We talked a little bit about food, we talked about your community efforts.

Let’s talk real briefly on just what it takes to be a leader, to grow the business as quickly as you guys have and expanding as quickly as you guys are expanding.

Joey Palomarez
00:30:14.838 – 00:31:23.336
It’s a great question. Me and my partners every day. One day we’re like, oh my gosh, we’re have to close the door tomorrow. And the next day we’re like, this is McDonald’s.

It’s a roller coaster in terms of getting started and really trying to grow a brand. We’re very fortunate that we’ve kind of stuck it out and are starting to see some fruits of our labor.

But I think people don’t really truly acknowledge the highs and the lows of it. There are lows and not only just slow weeks, but equipment breaks and person quits and all these things that make it hard.

And that’s not, that’s why everybody doesn’t do it.

But there’s been some great highs, whether it’s the financial pieces of it or the relationships that we’ve built and the stories that we continue to tell. So my, my thing is always keep showing up, keep showing up, keep showing up. Because showing up is what Everybody says, like 75% of the battle.

And yeah, I think that’s a big thing is just I continue to write the book as we go, continue to figure it out as we go. We are definitely building planes as we fly them. This is what we like to say.

But I think that’s the beauty of entrepreneurship is it’s just figure it out as you go. In order to be an entrepreneur, you gotta be a problem solver.

And I think that that’s the one thing that I pride myself in is like, yes, we’re going to put an obstacle in front of me, but we’re going to figure out how to get around it.

Freddy D
00:31:23.408 – 00:31:54.192
Persistence, perseverance are two things that an entrepreneur needs because it’s going to get ugly, like you just said. And you can either quit and turn around and go home, or you persevere, suit up, punch through it as Stallone says, and then keep going.

Okay, we won this one. And look, we’re three feet forward.

You got to have the target that you’re shooting for and you guys are shooting for franchising, which you guys are starting to do. So your vision is what’s carrying you through.

Joey Palomarez
00:31:54.296 – 00:32:11.214
Yes, absolutely. We know that as we continue to grow our brand, it’s going to benefit everybody involved.

Food costs go down when you have more buying power and you’re able to negotiate better pricing with third party vendors and everything like that. We’re definitely just keeping our eyes on the prize and looking forward to seeing where this takes us.

Freddy D
00:32:11.302 – 00:32:35.484
Great stories. I’m sure our listeners got a lot of great takeaways of what it takes to get a carry out restaurant to launch and grow.

More importantly, the great things you guys are doing with the communities and the schools, I mean, that’s where you get creating your super fans, which is propelling your business. So thank you very much for sharing all those stories. And how can our listeners find you guys?

Joey Palomarez
00:32:35.612 – 00:33:19.910
Yeah, I mean, a couple things. If you’re looking for the Spaghetti Shack, you can either find us in Tempe Pinetop or an event near you here in Arizona.

We do catering as well, so if anybody ever has any large events, give me a call. But thespaghetti shack.com@thespaghetti shack on social media, you could check us out there. As far as me, you can find me on LinkedIn.

Just Joey Palomatis if you want to search that P A L O M A R E Z I know you’ll see that in the podcast thing that you’re listening to here, but I’m always open for a connection. So we’d love to talk about what you do, maybe how we’re able to collaborate yeah. Consider myself to be a connector.

So would love to to get connected with your listeners. So if there’s anybody out there that is interested, please reach out.

But of course, of anybody trying to open a restaurant before you had that dream their whole life.

Freddy D
00:33:19.950 – 00:33:23.990
Gimme a call, you got an opportunity for them. Do you have a free offering for our listeners?

Joey Palomarez
00:33:24.070 – 00:33:46.450
If anybody wants to come check us out, it is going to be at either the Tempe or the Pinetop location. We’re offering a free small shack, which is our pasta bowl for one that’ll be available for the two weeks after this drops.

So whatever date it drops, we’ll put it out there for two weeks. Come on in, try us out. Just mention the podcast. Literally just say podcasts when you’re ordering and then they will take care of that for you.

Freddy D
00:33:46.490 – 00:33:58.778
Thank you very much for being a guest on a business superfans podcast. It was a pleasure chatting with you and I wish you all the success and I look forward to continuing the conversation down the road.

Joey Palomarez
00:33:58.874 – 00:34:00.210
Yeah. Appreciate you having us.