A weekly podcast that feeds food and beverage brands with insights, ideas, trends, and anecdotes discussed with restaurant, hospitality, and beverage industry leaders.
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Données mises à jour le 04/07/2026
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Kenny Morrison – Founder of VCC Brands and Pioneer in Cannabis-Infused Beverages
mercredi 4 juin 2025 • Durée 52:27
Kenny Morrison is a cannabis industry pioneer and the founder of VCC Brands and CQ Drinks. With a background in documentary filmmaking and early cannabis retail, Kenny has been instrumental in shaping the cannabis-infused beverage category since 2008.
VCC Brands, originally Venice Cookie Company, is a legacy cannabis company focused exclusively on beverages since 2020. Its flagship brand, CQ (Cannabis Quencher), creates micro- and macro-dose drinks designed to be approachable, flavorful and stigma-free.
Founded in Venice Beach, VCC Brands embodies the area’s countercultural spirit with a refined, modern twist. CQ was born partly in response to early San Francisco regulations requiring “cannabis” to appear prominently on product labels. Today, the brand operates in seven states (soon to be eight) through a mix of licensing partnerships and hemp distribution, aiming to normalize cannabis consumption with clean branding, fast-acting nanoemulsification technology, and a lifestyle-oriented appeal.
Kenny got into the cannabis industry by helping friends transition from underground cultivation to legal retail, ultimately co-founding one of LA’s first dispensaries.
VCC Brands began as a baked goods company but pivoted fully to beverages to focus on “the future of drinking.”
CQ Drinks emphasizes approachability by avoiding stereotypical stoner branding and designing products with women and first-time consumers in mind.
Kenny compares CQ’s brand positioning to “the Corona of cannabis” — a laid-back, beachy vibe grounded in authenticity.
Nanoemulsification helps cannabis beverages hit faster, making them more comparable to alcohol and easing consumer adoption.
Despite being a cannabis entrepreneur, Kenny uses the product less than most of his family and believes in freedom of choice across alcohol and cannabis.
He stresses honesty, reliability, and customer service as keys to building trust in the cannabis space, especially for new users.
Regional product tweaks — like adding seasonal flavors in Massachusetts — have helped CQ Drinks grow in both the dispensary and hemp markets.
QUOTES
“Visiting one of these early stores, it was almost like an anthropological experiment for me, which really just means that I’m a thrill seeker.” (Kenny)
“Ever since I was a little kid, my father never hid his cannabis use from me. Even when I was nine, he’d say, ‘Hey Kenny, I’m going to go get some grass, want to come with me?'” (Kenny)
“We’re basically, you know, the original prohibition cannabis beverage brand… the things we’ve been through to keep this thing alive, it’s a frickin’ novel.” (Kenny)
“The goal is to get to a place where we can really tell that story in sort of a deep, profound way.” (Kenny)
“My theory has just been, look, if girls like to drink it, guys are going to drink it.” (Kenny)
“We’re all trying to target the alcohol consumer looking to moderate their alcohol consumption… and when a cannabis drink affects you as quick as an alcoholic drink does, that’s going to increase consumership.” (Kenny)
“Cannabis should be perceived as a benefit to be promoted rather than a harm to be tolerated.” (Kenny)
“Something that makes cannabis very different than alcohol is because cannabis is non-toxic… tolerances vary far greater than people’s tolerance for alcohol.” (Kenny)
“You’ve got to have great customer service and you’ve got to be honest. Especially in cannabis.” (Kenny)
“We’re gathering a ton of information based on the success of those products in their territories… then we can release the greatest hits in our hemp lineup.” (Kenny)
“I just think we’re in this season where the general knowledge of cannabis is slowly, gradually building up.” (Kenny)
Laurel Orley – CEO of Daily Crunch and Innovator in Better-for-You Snacking
jeudi 22 mai 2025 • Durée 48:41
Laurel Orley is the founder and CEO of Daily Crunch Snacks and a mission-driven entrepreneur with a background in advertising. After more than a decade building major brands like Dove at Unilever, she transitioned to launch her own company focused on health, flavor, and impact.
Daily Crunch Snacks is a women-owned snack brand offering sprouted, air-dried almonds and other nut blends with bold, innovative flavors. Rooted in a family recipe and a mission to support mental health, the brand emphasizes clean ingredients, sustainability, and crave-worthy crunch.
Laurel launched Daily Crunch with her aunt Diane, who developed the unique sprouting process after studying brain health in India.
The brand debuted in March 2020—days before the COVID-19 shutdown—and adapted its launch strategy for a digital-first world.
Daily Crunch has since expanded into 6,000+ stores and was named the 13th fastest-growing food and beverage company by Inc.
Laurel is a board member of the Upcycled Food Association and a member of EY’s Entrepreneurial Winning Women Class of 2024.
The brand’s mental health mission is personal: Laurel’s cousin lost his life to bipolar disorder, inspiring her family to create The Support Network, which Daily Crunch supports financially and publicly.
Laurel’s experience on Dove’s Real Beauty campaign taught her the power of mission-driven marketing and authenticity.
The sprouting process transforms the texture of almonds, making them crisp and chip-like while improving digestibility.
Product innovation stems from a blend of trend reports, consumer feedback, and Laurel’s own flavor instincts—like turmeric & sea salt or Nashville Hot.
Collaborations, like their Fly By Jing partnership, are a strategic focus for driving awareness and reaching new audiences.
Upcycling ingredients—such as pickle ends from Cleveland Kitchen—helps reduce waste and differentiate flavor profiles.
Daily Crunch doesn’t lead with its mission, but invites consumers to discover its mental health advocacy as they dig deeper into the brand.
QUOTES
Judy Joo – Chef, entrepreneur and leading voice in modern Korean cuisine
vendredi 16 mai 2025 • Durée 43:34
Judy Joo is a classically trained chef, entrepreneur, and television personality whose unconventional journey spans engineering, Wall Street, and the world’s top kitchens. She is an Iron Chef, cookbook author, and dynamic force in the food world, celebrated for modernizing and globalizing Korean cuisine.
Judy is the founder of Seoul Bird, a Korean fast-casual fried chicken concept with locations in London, New York, Las Vegas, and beyond.Seoul Bird merges bold Korean street food flavors with the speed and scale of modern dining, combining Judy’s culinary heritage and operational expertise.
Before launching her restaurant empire, Judy trained at the French Culinary Institute, worked in Michelin-starred restaurants like The French Laundry and Gordon Ramsay’s empire, and became a recognizable face on Food Network.
Seoul Bird is expanding through a strategic mix of franchising and licensing, including high-traffic venues like Citi Field and Edinburgh Airport.
Judy left Wall Street to pursue her passion for food, trading finance for the kitchen with zero expectations—just love for cooking.
Her engineering and banking backgrounds continue to shape how she designs restaurants and runs operations at scale.
As a Korean-American woman in male-dominated fields—finance, engineering, and restaurants—Judy forged ahead with “fearlessness or I just don’t care” confidence.
She believes “today’s invention is tomorrow’s tradition,” especially in defining authenticity in global cuisines like Korean fried chicken.
Seoul Bird thrives in arenas and airports, offering high-volume, high-flavor experiences with a focus on simplicity, quality, and cultural storytelling.
She emphasizes the power of brand building—through books, TV, and food—as key to her business success.
Judy finds inspiration everywhere, from grocery store aisles to international travel, always absorbing and evolving her culinary creativity.
She’s proud to see Korean food embraced globally, transforming from a source of school-lunch embarrassment into a pop-culture phenomenon.
QUOTES
Denise Woodard – CPG entrepreneur and advocate for allergy-friendly snacking
jeudi 8 mai 2025 • Durée 34:32
Denise Woodard is the founder and CEO of Partake Foods. She launched the brand after her daughter was diagnosed with multiple food allergies. A former Coca-Cola executive, Denise became the first Black woman to publicly raise over $1 million for a CPG food startup.
Partake Foods creates delicious, allergy-friendly snacks that are free from the top nine allergens. With a mission rooted in inclusivity and accessibility, the brand is now available in over 18,000 stores nationwide and continues to grow through innovation and community impact.
The brand’s name, “Partake,” reflects Denise’s desire for her daughter and others with allergies to fully participate in the joy of food.
Denise’s journey began with a pitch competition and a nudge from her nanny, Martha—who now holds equity in the business.
Partake has collaborated with major partners like Marvel and Sesame Street, and has donated over one million boxes of cookies to support families in need.
The company is deeply involved in social impact initiatives, including work with No Kid Hungry and the Food Equality Initiative.
Denise founded Partake to create allergy-safe foods her daughter could enjoy, after struggling to find suitable options in the market.
Leaving Coca-Cola, she underestimated how challenging it would be to build a brand from scratch without the resources of a large company.
Getting allergy-friendly products manufactured required finding rare, specialized partners willing to work with a startup founder.
Her family—especially her daughter—has been central to the business journey, often pitching in during trade shows and events.
Denise emphasizes leading with great taste rather than a long list of dietary claims when introducing products to new consumers.
Building strong retail partnerships is about follow-through, not just shelf placement—it requires active investment and support.
She believes inclusivity should be embedded naturally into company culture, hiring, and investor relationships.
QUOTES
Stephanie Jaeger – President of Les Dames d’Escoffier International (LDEI)
jeudi 27 mars 2025 • Durée 35:46
Stephanie Jaeger is the President of Les Dames d’Escoffier International (LDEI) and a veteran of the restaurant industry with over 35 years of experience. She also serves as a Learning and Development Specialist for the Joey Restaurant Group, where she focuses on training and team culture.
LDEI is a global philanthropic organization of women leaders in food, beverage, and hospitality. With over 2,800 members across 42 chapters worldwide, LDEI supports women through scholarships, mentorship, and networking opportunities to elevate and advance their careers.
Founded in response to the exclusion of women from the all-male “Friends of Escoffier” society, LDEI has grown into a powerful network that champions leadership, education, and community. Under Stephanie’s leadership, the organization is expanding its reach, including new chapters in Mexico and Italy, and launching new initiatives like the M.F.K. Fisher Symposium for Women’s Food and Storytelling.
LDEI was born from a desire to give women a seat at the culinary table—where they had previously been excluded—and now supports thousands of members across the globe.
Stephanie initially joined LDEI over 20 years ago and, inspired by mentorship and a desire to represent a global voice, rose through the ranks to become its international president.
“You have to see it to be it”—Stephanie emphasized the importance of visibility and representation for women in leadership across hospitality and culinary fields.
Mentorship is central to LDEI’s mission; the organization provides not just scholarships, but ongoing personal support to help women succeed in their careers.
While representation at the top is critical, Stephanie believes respect and equality must also be reinforced in everyday kitchen culture and among mid-level staff.
LDEI’s upcoming M.F.K. Fisher Symposium will spotlight women in food media and storytelling, creating a space for inspiration, connection, and collaboration.
Stephanie’s work at Joey Restaurant Group complements her LDEI leadership, allowing her to show women within the organization that there’s always a next step in their careers.
QUOTES
Yanni Hufnagel – Founder of Lemon Perfect
vendredi 14 mars 2025 • Durée 47:50
Yanni Hufnagel, a former college basketball coach turned entrepreneur, is the founder and CEO of Lemon Perfect, a fast-growing enhanced water brand. With a background in coaching at top programs like Harvard and Vanderbilt, Hufnagel applied his competitive drive and leadership skills to disrupt the beverage industry with a health-focused, innovative brand.
Lemon Perfect is a fast-growing beverage brand redefining the enhanced water category with its refreshing, zero-sugar, lemon-infused drinks. Made from organic lemons and packed with antioxidants and electrolytes, Lemon Perfect delivers great taste and hydration without artificial ingredients, appealing to health-conscious consumers seeking a flavorful, better-for-you alternative.
Lemon Perfect offers a lineup of refreshing, zero-sugar, lemon-infused beverages made from organic, hand-picked lemons. Packed with antioxidants, electrolytes, and vitamin C, the brand’s flavors include classics like Original Lemon and fan-favorites like Dragon Fruit Mango, Peach Raspberry, and Blueberry Acai. The drinks are cold-pressed, keto-friendly, and designed for guilt-free hydration.
Lemon Perfect has rapidly expanded its distribution footprint, securing shelf space in major retailers like Whole Foods, Target, Kroger, Publix, and Costco, while also growing its presence in convenience stores, gyms, and online marketplaces nationwide.
Yanni was inspired to create the Lemon Perfect brand in 2017 after a chance encounter with a man who introduced him to drinking organic lemon water each morning as part of his daily routine.
Squeezing and juicing lemons each morning was a hassle and Yanni was determined to create a product that took the work out of drinking organic lemon water.
Seven years after launching the brand, Lemon Perfect has sold more than 100 million bottles.
In early 2020, Beyonce featured a bottle of Lemon Perfect in one of her Instagram posts. It gave the brand a boost. In April 2022, she became a key investor in the brand.
QUOTES
Jeff Broadhurst – CEO of Eat’n Park Hospitality Group
mercredi 26 février 2025 • Durée 41:03
Eat’n Park is a regional restaurant chain known for its family-friendly atmosphere, classic American comfort food, and iconic Smiley Cookies. Founded in 1949 in Pittsburgh, it offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with a focus on fresh, made-to-order meals. The brand emphasizes hospitality, community involvement, and sustainability initiatives.
Parkhurst Dining, a division of Eat’n Park Hospitality Group, provides customized dining solutions for universities, corporations, and cultural institutions. With a focus on fresh, locally sourced ingredients and scratch-made meals, Parkhurst emphasizes hospitality, sustainability, and culinary excellence, creating memorable dining experiences tailored to each client’s needs.
Jeff said the decision to create Parkhurst Dining was rooted in the desire to focus on an industry that they knew well – food.
Eat’n Park’s FarmSource program, launched in 2002, partners with local farms to source fresh, sustainable ingredients, supporting regional agriculture while delivering high-quality, farm-to-table meals.
In 2024, Eat’n Park celebrated its 75th anniversary and has nearly 60 locations in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.The restaurant has been a family business since the 1970s.
Jeff Broadhurst is the President and CEO of Eat’n Park Hospitality Group. He joined the company in 1996, became President in 2006, and CEO in 2008. Under his leadership, the company has expanded to include multiple dining concepts and emphasizes community engagement and sustainability.
Jeff works side-by-side with his brothers, Brooks (Senior Vice President of Food and Beverage) and Mark (Vice President of Corporate Dining & Retail Development).
In the midst of COVID, Eat’n Park turned heads by opening a new location in Butler, PA. Jeff called the decision a “leap of faith” but said the decision showed employees and customers that Eat’n Park was strong and focused on growth.
Eat’n Park’s Smiley Cookies debuted in the 1980s as a way to bring joy to guests, especially children. Originally hand-decorated with bright icing and a signature smile, these cookies quickly became a beloved brand symbol. Today, they are shared nationwide, spreading Eat’n Park’s message of kindness and hospitality.
QUOTES
Clara Paye – Founder & CEO of UNiTE Food
jeudi 13 février 2025 • Durée 44:19
UNiTE Food is a Yorba Linda, California-based company that produces globally inspired protein bars. The brand offers unique flavors such as Churro, Mexican Hot Chocolate, and PB & Jelly, aiming to bring diversity to the wellness industry. Each bar provides around 10 grams of protein and is gluten-free, catering to health-conscious consumers seeking both nutrition and nostalgic tastes.
Clara often relied on protein bars during her busy career but found the available flavors uninspiring. Drawing from her diverse culinary background, she recognized a gap in the market for culturally diverse flavors.
Clara’s father is an entrepreneur. Her family immigrated from Sudan when she was five years old. When they arrived in the United States, her father started a plumbing supply distribution business, which is the business Clara worked in earlier in her career.
The idea for UNiTE was something Clara started thinking about in 2018 or 2019 while she was still working in her family’s plumbing business. She began experimenting with different recipes and products in her kitchen in the early days of the pandemic in 2020.
Clara often visits ethnic markets to learn about new flavors for new products. She also studied flavors and what people were eating when she traveled abroad.
QUOTES
“If I’m anything, I’m a very curious person. I’m curious about how the world works and I’m curious about why segments of the population aren’t being served.” (Clara)
“If you focus on your customers, they will reward you with loyalty. And if they reward you with loyalty, your revenue will grow. If you create value, why would somebody leave you?” (Clara)
“For me, it was about making sure we were taking care of our customers. That was the winning strategy. It sounds really simple, but it’s way harder to execute.” (Clara)
“Business is a framework. Once you understand product liability, you understand how to insure against it. You learn about the certifying bodies in your industry. It’s hard and it’s not (hard).” (Clara)
TRANSCRIPT
Season 7 highlights
vendredi 20 décembre 2024 • Durée 20:23
EPISODE 92 – Stephen Baldi – President of Baldi Management Group
EPISODE 91 – Nick McMillan and Amanda Signorelli – Managing Partners of Golden Steer
EPISODE 90 – Anand Gala – Managing partner of Gala Capital Partners
EPISODE 89 – Andy Gellert – President of Gellert Global
EPISODE 88 – Shannon O’Shields – VP of Marketing for Rubix Foods
EPISODE 87 – Doug Renfro – President of Renfro Foods and Salsa Creator Extraordinaire
EPISODE 86 – Burney Jennings – Executive Chairman of Biscuitville
EPISODE 85 – Ben Jacobs – Chef, founder of Tocabe and Native local pioneer
Stephen Baldi – President of Baldi Management Group
lundi 2 décembre 2024 • Durée 50:36
Stephen oversees Baldi Management Group (BMG), an airport concessions and management consulting company that manages restaurants in Reagan National Airport, JFK International Airport and Dulles International Airport.
Established in 2008, BMG operates various food and beverage outlets, including franchises like Dunkin’ Donuts, Potbelly, and Smashburger.
Stephen is an alumnus of Georgetown University, where he was a Community Scholar and student-athlete. He attributes his success to mentorship and now mentors young people, aiming to provide growth opportunities within his company.
As founder-led company, Stephen has formed connections with other DC-based founder-led restaurants like Founding Famers and Timber Pizza as well as with larger national brands.
About 15-20% of BMG’s customers are employees from the airport itself.
Stephen is a strong advocate of mentorship and helping employees grow and advance within an organization, even if it means the employee leaving the organization for a better opportunity.
QUOTES
“My commitment to making meaningful connections with people comes from way back then when I was forced to do it, not only because of who I am but my circumstances and I’ve tried to carry that out through my career and my life.” (Stephen)
“There’s something different about a founder-led company, because you’ve built it.” (Stephen)
“Airports are a wonderful place to work. Once you end up in this ecosystem, it’s hard to walk away.” (Stephen)
“(In airports), the passengers are dynamic. We get to meet and connect with them all. We have the privilege of participating in whatever journey people are on every day and the following day, we get a whole new group of people.” (Stephen)
“The (airport concessions and restaurant industry) is about an $8 billion a year industry nationally but the industry is controlled by about 20 key companies. It’s a small ecosystem.” (Stephen)
TRANSCRIPT
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“I wanted to launch a brand with a mission that I believed in. Our mission is actually mental health awareness.” (Laurel)
“Soaking nuts removes phytic acid, an anti-nutrient, making them more bioavailable, easier to digest and more nutrient dense.” (Laurel)
“The crunch is what gets people in. It’s lighter, airier, crunchier. Honestly, it’s like a chip.” (Laurel)
“You’re always going to have setbacks. My motto is always two steps forward, one step back.” (Laurel)
“We had to throw out 20,000 pounds of almonds and I didn’t have the right insurance for it. I almost threw in the towel.” (Laurel)
“There’s a fine balance between mental and physical health. It all ladders back up to brain health.” (Laurel)
“When you see someone in the wild buying your product, it’s the best feeling. I was hiding behind a pillar at the airport.” (Laurel)
“The savory-sweet combo is really resonating right now. Our last two launches were savory, but you can definitely do both.” (Laurel)
“I love creating experiences. I love creating meals. I love food. I love the language of food. It is a language of love for me.” (Judy)
“I’m going to downgrade my life in every way possible and work weekends and evenings and much longer hours and get paid a fraction of what I was getting paid.” (Judy)
“I remember hesitating. Like, which one do I want to do? I was like, oh, math and science is easy for me. I’ll go to engineering school.” (Judy)
“If I want to be in these industries where I am the one and only minority, the one and only female, I don’t care. I’m going to do it.” (Judy)
“A restaurant is a business at the end of the day. You have to know cost control, maximize profits, and understand finance.” (Judy)
“I know so many chefs who can’t even get their way around an Excel spreadsheet.” (Judy)
“Koreans are obsessed with fried chicken. Obsessed. Obsessed.” (Judy)
“Today’s invention is tomorrow’s tradition. Korean fried chicken came from war and evolved. Is it authentic? I think so.” (Judy)
“I’ve gone from being embarrassed about my lunchbox to everybody spamming me, asking, ‘What are they eating? What are they drinking?'” (Judy)
“As long as the DNA is there—that makes it Korean.” (Judy)
“Television cheffing is much easier. You’re in a nice air-conditioned studio versus burning yourself and dealing with employees.” (Judy)
“Every single time I’m in a grocery store, whenever I travel, you’re constantly seeing new things. That’s a huge source of inspiration.” (Judy)
To stay energized, Denise now prioritizes time for reflection, creativity, and rest, recognizing the importance of long-term sustainability.
“I sought out products that she could eat and enjoy safely and that we could eat as a family together and couldn’t find the things that I was looking for and decided to do something about it.” (Denise)
“I knew enough to be dangerous. I could speak the lingo. I knew the acronyms. I did not realize what I was in for.” (Denise)
“There’s not very many allergy friendly contract manufacturers. So calling someone up and getting them to agree to work with a woman with an idea was definitely a challenge.” (Denise)
“Being an entrepreneur is a family sport. My daughter too, I think about all the sacrifice that she made. She can probably put together a trade show booth faster than most adults.” (Denise)
“It feels like a game of whack-a-mole. It’s like you think you got one thing covered and then, oh, tariffs or something. Every week there’s a new adventure.” (Denise)
“The name Partake originally came from this idea that I wanted my daughter and people with food allergies to be able to partake.” (Denise)
“You’re nothing if you have a story with no good product. And honestly, the same if you have a good product but nothing to talk about.” (Denise)
“I want my employees to feel like they have the freedom to be able to do the same thing because I think this whole idea of separating your personal life and work life isn’t healthy for anyone.” (Denise)
“I’ve just started this practice. Making time to think and be inspired—setting out time to journal, to go on walks, to visit grocery stores, to visit small markets.” (Denise)
“Food is something that’s supposed to evoke positive memories for everyone. And even if you have food allergies, like you should be able to have that same joy.” (Denise)
Despite growth, barriers like unconscious bias and lack of access to education persist in the industry, making LDEI’s mission more relevant than ever.
“I either needed to step up or step aside. So here I am stepping up and excited about it.” (Stephanie)
“You have to see it to be it. You have to see somebody in that position, and I would encourage anybody in the industry to put a woman in that leadership position so that somebody younger can see themselves there too.” (Stephanie)
“Every time I see a woman in the industry, she’s breaking a barrier. She’s showing that it’s possible. She’s showing me that I can do it too. And every time I see a woman on the Food Network or read about one taking on a leadership role, it’s one more reminder that we belong.” (Stephanie)
“We need to make sure that women are not only in the kitchen, but treated with respect and equals. It’s not just about being there—it’s about being seen, being supported, and being recognized as just as capable.” (Stephanie)
“Mentorship is the ability to talk about your experiences in a positive way—not in a ‘you’ll never get there’ way, but ‘look what I’ve done, and you can too.’ It’s not about gatekeeping—it’s about opening doors and saying, ‘Come on in, let me show you how I did it.’” (Stephanie)
“Asking for help really can come down to just saying, ‘Is this a crazy idea?’ And sometimes you just need someone—man or woman—to say, ‘You’re not crazy’ or ‘Maybe you should rethink that.’ It’s about having someone to bounce things off of, someone who listens and understands.” (Stephanie)
“I want to raise more money to support more women. I want to get the LDEI name out there more, increase our membership, and reach more women who could benefit from being part of this network. There are so many who just need the opportunity.” (Stephanie)
“The restaurant industry really should be fun. Maybe don’t take yourself too seriously. You have to be able to smile, to enjoy what you’re doing. And at Joey, we focus on working as a team. That’s what creates a cohesive, engaging environment.” (Stephanie)
“There is a place for you if you want to keep going up the ladder. And I think because of my own mentors and experiences with LDEI, I’m able to show that to the women I work with every day. Whether they’re servers or line cooks, I want them to see that there’s a next step.” (Stephanie)
“So many parallels between coaching and entrepreneurship and running a business. At the core, you’re telling a story. Being a great storyteller is probably the most important skill you can have as a recruiter and as a college baseball coach. [As an entrepreneur] being able to tell a story is also important, and it all starts with the product.” (Yanni)
“There’s a difference between selling and presenting. I’ve always felt like presenting was more important than selling. I’ve always tried to present our story and vision and not sell it.” (Yanni)
“I was having lunch with an angel investor and I said ‘John, what do you think about this idea?’ and he said ‘I love it. Anything you can build that captures a piece of someone’s daily routine is worth going for. You can build a business around it.’ “ (Yanni)
“We’ve sold 100 million bottles. How do you sell one billion? In America and beyond, they don’t read words, they read pictures on packaging. Putting fruit on the (packaging) was a big decision. Simplifying our message.” (Yanni)
“We had an incredible entrepreneurial culture for the first five years and then we lost our way a little bit. I’ve been focused in the last six months or so on refinding our entrepreneurial way. When you’re building a beverage and you have to scratch and claw and fight and bleed every day, you need that.” (Yanni)
“You have to have a relentless motor and I think we have a group that will do that.” (Yanni)
“There are challenges (with working with family). There are challenges in any business, but there are a lot more positives.” (Jeff)
“During COVID it was really nice having family there. Dealing with what we went through. That was the one thing that you really needed people that you trusted and respected and, in many cases, loved.” (Jeff)
“When new management comes in I always tell them one thing: You can never have too much fun in the role.” (Jeff)
“My mother was always talking about treating people the way you want them to treat you.” (Jeff)
“(The Smiley Cookies) are all about creating a smile. That’s what it’s led into.” (Jeff)
“Community involvement is a big part of our culture and a big part of who we are.” (Jeff)
“A lot of our focus right now is continuing to invest in the brand – a 75-year-old brand.” (Jeff)
“What we have to do in the restaurant industry is anticipating the guest needs. What are they going to want tomorrow, next week, next year?” (Jeff)
“A lot of our innovation is about helping our team members have a more rewarding job and career. You can never forget about the importance of our team members.” (Jeff)
“It’s really about building relationships. Mutually beneficial relationships.” (Clara)
“When you’re over 40 and you created a new business, you’re usually not doing it for money, you’re doing it to try to make the world a better place.” (Clara)
“I wanted to find common ground. Let’s find flavors that will resonate with lots of people.” (Clara)
“The essence of the UNiTE brand is to seek to understand and seek to find common ground instead of focusing on how we’re different.” (Clara)
“At the end of the day, consumers want authenticity and they want brands that create products that are meaningful to them. (Clara)
“I don’t really worry about copycat brands. I worry more when they stop copying me.” (Clara)
00:01.49
vigorbranding
All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Fork Tales. I’m Michael Pavone. Our guest today is Clara Paye. And I’ve known Clara for a long time. ah She is from Unite Foods. ah Unite’s line of nutritious bars are built around the concept of global flavors, but also comfort foods. Clara has started a brand that’s redefining what protein and nutrition bars can be, and I’m happy to have her as a guest. Clara, welcome.
00:25.55
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Thanks, Michael. Good to be here.
00:27.85
vigorbranding
So again, I know you, I think pretty well, and I’m excited to excited for this. This will be fun. So um I want to go back. I mean, you have a fascinating story. So before we get into Unite, I want to talk about you. How did you, you know, where where do you come from? Where do you, where did you work? You know, talk a little bit about what got you, got you here.
00:46.86
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Well, it’s definitely not been a linear path. It’s been really a path led by my own curiosity in the world. And so I think if I’m anything, I’m a very curious person. I’m curious how the world works. I’m curious why, you know, segments of the population aren’t being served. So my journey really started, you know, undergrad, I went to USC and I really went undeclared and thought I but wanted to be a lawyer and.
01:10.72
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
got into one political science class and I was like, no, I definitely don’t want to do this. And so kind of was looking around like what else is out there, found the business school at USC, and more importantly, found the entrepreneurship program, which was number one in the nation at the time. And, you know, and I knew I didn’t want to study accounting or finance, and that’s what business was to me in my mind back then. And finding this entrepreneurship route really like kind of opened up the world to me and was like a light bulb.
01:34.45
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
you know My dad is an entrepreneur. and We immigrated from Africa and the Sudan when I was five years old. And in Africa, he had an automotive parts distribution business. And when he immigrated to the U.S., he started a plumbing manufacturing and hardware distribution business. And so, you know, having a dad that had kind of modeled entrepreneurship, it was demystified for me. And so I was like, oh, that’s really interesting. You know, I’ve been an entrepreneur kind of since I was a little girl, whether, you know, the classic lemonade stand or side popsicles or, you know, drawing pictures and trying to sell them to my aunts. Like, you know, I always had that entrepreneurial
02:07.53
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
start and you know funny and but like at USC I remember them taking a poll of all the entrepreneurship kids and how many of them had like a lemonade stand or something similar as a kid and it was like 95% of the class raised their hand right like it’s something almost innate where you know that entrepreneurship bug grabs you was even a little kid and
02:15.32
vigorbranding
Mm
02:24.37
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And so, you know, going into the entrepreneurship program, it was kind of like and equated to like Ted Talks, where you just got to like hear and listen to these really successful entrepreneurs that had launched and they were normal people with good ideas that they just implemented.
02:36.22
vigorbranding
hmm.
02:38.93
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And I thought I would you know be an entrepreneur straight out of undergrad. I wrote a business plan um and for the apparel industry back then. this is I’ll date myself, but I graduated in 1999 and in 1998, 99. I wrote a business plan for plus size clothing for teenage girls. So I saw that there was this huge segment of the population where kids were kind of, you know, Americans were growing in size. and there weren’t really anything fashionable for young girls to wear if they were plus size. They had to shop, you know, especially in jeans, they had to start in the, you know, shop in the women’s Husky department, women’s department or the boy’s Husky department. And it really wasn’t anything fashionable. And I wrote this great business plan. All my professors told me to do it. And like the only person I knew that had any money was my dad.
03:21.66
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
you know, being 21 years old and or, you know, barely 21 and asking him to fund, you know, I needed like $30,000 back then to launch this business. And my I was going to do it with my best friend whose father had just invested in the jeans manufacturing plant.
03:34.66
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
She had done the entrepreneurship program the year before. It was like this home run idea. The internet was just coming online and we were going to do it all online. We didn’t need storefronts. You know, we’re kind of kind of revolutionize all of these things.
03:44.94
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And my dad’s like, what? Huh? Like watch yourself humming products. Yeah.
03:48.78
vigorbranding
Yeah.
03:50.42
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Like, this is a business that already exists. And he just didn’t see it, didn’t understand. But it’s it’s ironic that like that business would grow on to be like that segment specifically, um where I did all my research at this mall, like, went on to become a billion dollar business, like Torrid went into the same free mall with the same concept. And so that was kind of like always in the back of my mind, my entire career. So from age 20 to now, like, gosh, like, why I should have done that, like, I should have done something like that, you know, why didn’t I try and um I’m telling a really long part of the story so we can edit this, but it’s really like, you know, for me, it was really about that early experience in entrepreneurship that I held on to, but then I would go on.
04:22.93
vigorbranding
Oh, it’s great.
04:29.89
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
and work in cosmetics, worked for advertising agencies, you know, um and then eventually my dad lured me into the family business, which was like, you know, about five years after college, I wanted to get my MBA and he said, hey, I’ll make you a deal. You and your best friend want to come work for me, get your and MBAs and I’ll pay for them. And you just have to stay the time that you’re studying. And, you know, we did this executive MBA program where we worked our nine to five and then we went to school from like six to 10.
04:53.31
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And those are long days, but they were really fun because I got to take what I was learning in the MBA program and immediately apply it to my family business, which was, again, the plumbing and hardware distribution business. And so not that I was in love with plumbing and hardware, like, trust me, if I never see another supply line in my life, it’ll be too soon. But um it was really about this unique experience that I got to learn and apply, learn and apply. And it was just Really? um Really what set me up for like, you know in that curiosity to like really make an impact in my family business Where you know, sometimes when you join a family business you get told well, this is how we’ve always done it So this is why you have to do it this way and for me I got to kind of redefine everything Because of this MBA program that I was doing and my dad trusted, you know, he always had a high regard for education And so was like, okay. Well, yeah, let’s try it and really got you know got in and
05:45.11
vigorbranding
That’s fantastic. i mean You bring up a really interesting point, though. Being a so a sibling of an entrepreneur, you you kind of do realize, or you maybe you don’t realize that it’s it’s not easy, but you you know it’s it’s doable, right? If you watch your father do it, like my father had a couple small sporting goods stores. So I thought, well, if you want to start a business, you just go out and start it. You just do it. and You know, my story is I’ve never been smart enough to know what I can’t do. So I’m like, Oh yeah, I can do that. And just, you know, and sometimes you pass, sometimes you fail, but you know, it’s like, Oh, I can try that. Oh yeah, I’ll do that. So, but, but I think our parents really do make it easier for us if they’ve done that, you know, and you sort of, I don’t want to say you take it for granted, but it’s sort of like, it seems doable. It seems attainable, you know, and next thing you know, you you’ve got something special. And I’ll say this, it had to be interesting, difficult, and maybe very educational for you.
06:34.52
vigorbranding
ah being a young woman in and the and the plumbing supply distribution business. I mean, what was that like?
06:40.78
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
ah You know, it was it’s a very old industry. It’s you know very much like there’s very little product innovation. And so for me, being a curious person, I was always trying to learn. I always wanted to go to like plumbing school. So like I could like learn about the products a little bit more because they’re actually really complex. And if you ever go down a hardware store aisle and you go down the plumbing fittings or the plumbing section, I mean, there’s literally thousands and thousands of SKUs and so many different parts to like toilets and you know faucets and it’s it’s a very confusing um you know you have to have like a lot of deep knowledge in the industry to really make an impact so for me you know i knew i was never going to have that right what i could bring to the table was really an outside the box way of thinking about this industry like you know we created the company’s first website and started selling you know online and really trying to
07:28.80
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Um, quantify customer experience, right? Like it wasn’t just about like place, you know, filling orders. It was like, what was the experience of that order for your customer? And so I’ve always been a customer centric leader. So I think it’s because I came up through marketing and entrepreneurship. You know, I really care about the customer and I really care about like the person that’s opening the box, whatever that box is, you know, and so.
07:51.58
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
For me, it was all about aligning the business to be customer-focused, because my thesis was, if you focus on your customers, they will reward you with loyalty. And if they reward you with loyalty, your revenue will grow.
08:01.84
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
right It’s a win-win.
08:02.46
vigorbranding
mean
08:03.15
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
If you create value, why would somebody leave you? So it’s when you’re not creating value and you’re creating problems for the customer that you know you have that attrition.
08:13.25
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And so for me, it was really about um making sure that we were taking care of our customers. And and that was the winning strategy. I mean, it sounds really simple, but it’s way harder to execute when you get to scale.
08:26.05
vigorbranding
That’s great. I mean, it makes total sense. So basically, you do all your own plumbing now, is that what you’re saying?
08:31.81
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
not at all
08:32.01
vigorbranding
Yeah, I knew about it. Okay, so now let’s jump into something that I know you’re very proud of and should be. the that You founded Unite, okay? and And so let’s talk about that. You founded in March of 2020, right?
08:44.85
vigorbranding
In the middle of that thing called the pandemic with COVID. um but Obviously, that was a part of the story. That’s what sort of infused the story. Can you talk a little bit about that?
08:53.69
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Yeah. So, you know you know, I’d been ideating on it for like probably a year and a half before that and really trying, you know, it was working in the plumbing business at my, you know, and the family business that I was kind of like stuck behind my desk. And especially when I became a mom, like I was always just like looking for quick fuel to get me through my day. And that was like kind of when I had the epiphany for Unite and really our main point of differentiation is that we use global flavors.
09:15.38
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And so I had this unique experience, again, just just like the plus sized clothing where I was like, wait a minute, like there’s this whole population of people out there, like half the population are immigrants, people like me, or people that are just like really interested in other cultures and really interested in other foods.
09:31.28
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
You know, I live in LA, like there’s, you can eat Thai, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, whatever you want, any time of day you want, you know, it’s all, you know, and that’s what makes America unique is that we are this melting pot of cultures.
09:38.69
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yeah.
09:42.73
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And it very similarly, I saw this demographic shift where, you know, America was just going to continue to grow in, in multiculturalism. And so I was like, okay, if you’re in wellness and you are diagnosed with something like for me, it was a gluten intolerance. Like, and you go and try to find diet compliant food and you go to the shelf and like nothing resonates with you. Like that’s a huge miss. And so I think it was because
10:08.08
vigorbranding
but
10:08.18
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
You know, i I’m not, everybody that has created protein bars up to that point wasn’t diverse, didn’t have the life experience I had. So I just kind of used my own life experience it to develop it.
10:18.38
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And I developed them in my kitchen, like really, like, you know, as I got my cuisine on out and was like, what would I put in my protein bars? And for me, it was like almond butter and dates and, you know, let’s sweeten it with all natural things.
10:25.68
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
10:28.41
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And I i can’t use sugar, alcohols or Stevia. Like I i just, they’re not palatable to me. So I just use natural things. and literally googled what do nutritionists say should be in a protein bar and like made those my macros like it’s not that hard you know you don’t have to like spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to figure it out and um created my first recipes and found a co-packer to make them and I knew you know because I didn’t want any food liability I wanted a really strong co-packer to be the producer for them found one that ah you know where they saw the vision they understood what we were about and supported us and got our product launched and
11:05.31
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
You know, Expo West was this trade show, you know, it was a trade show in the food industry. It’s the largest natural products convention in the entire world. And if anybody hasn’t been to it, just imagine seven convention centers all smashed together in Anaheim, hundreds of thousands of people, like 3000 plus exhibitors. It’s literally and figuratively like Disneyland. Like it’s just, it’s a zoo. It’s, there’s so many people. And we got our little 10 by 10 booth and at the, you know, they have this like new products part of natural expo that opens a day before or used to.
11:35.43
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And we got our booth set up and we were ready to rock.
11:37.30
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
11:37.51
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
We were going to go show our bars. We had this whole warehouse full of new bars to show buyers.
11:39.71
vigorbranding
and
11:41.83
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And that’s how it’s going to get people excited. And then the pandemic. And that was the first thing to get canceled. And literally we got this call like shows not going to happen. So break down your booth.
11:51.86
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And you know, and it was like such a wild time.
11:52.43
vigorbranding
Yep.
11:55.64
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
um And people were really, you know, unsure of what was going to happen. And, you know, ah brands were not able to get into stores to pitch or any buyers, everything kind of went on hold because every grocery store was worried about safety for their employees and how to keep cleaning products on shelf and Lysol wipes.
12:13.52
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And like nobody was really thinking about like protein bars, right?
12:16.49
vigorbranding
Right, right.
12:16.43
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Like we’re all trying to, you know, that’s what like, I think we all were baking banana bread every day in this power now and like, you know, consoling ourselves with chips and margaritas at, you know, noon. so
12:26.31
vigorbranding
Yeah. Well, I remember like for us, I mean, you know, one of my companies is Quench, which is a CPG food and beverage. I said, you know, COVID was truly the greatest sampling program in the face of the earth, food and beverage. If you made a product at that time, if you had an established product, you people bought it, people ate it, they put in their pantry, they stacked in their shells. I mean, it was phenomenal time for food. I mean, unfortunately, it was you were too new, right? You couldn’t even take advantage of it. You didn’t even get a chance to get out of the starting gate. so That’s how to be extremely disappointing. But I think it’s amazing too. Like, okay, so you you come from one industry and and you learn a lot just in business and dealing with people from one industry. But then you you applied to this startup that you didn’t, you’ve never really, you were never in the food business. So you don’t learn how to be a manufacturer, you had to learn about safety, you had to learn about ingredients, legal and and everything and anything. I mean, it’s just, ah it’s an amazing undertaking. How did you how did you learn so much?
13:21.18
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
You know, like business is a framework. So once you understand product liability, you understand how to ensure against it, right? And you learn that, you know, you have to look, what are the certifying bodies in your industry, right?
13:35.40
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Like in, you know, for electrical companies, it’s like UL listing, you know, in food, it’s SQF.
13:35.85
vigorbranding
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
13:40.84
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And it’s not like the information isn’t that hard to find. So I think it’s like, you know, once you have a framework of, it’s, you know, the product is a widget almost, right? Like how you deal with Lowe’s is how you deal with Target.
13:49.40
vigorbranding
Mm
13:52.55
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Like it’s a big box.
13:52.83
vigorbranding
hmm.
13:53.59
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
They care about many of the same things, right? You have to understand what’s going to happen on the back end of your business. You have to understand how to get that product there on time and in full. And that’s what matters to them.
14:04.49
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And so I, you know, it’s hard and it’s not. And so for me, I’ve always really relied on my network, Michael, like, like if I don’t know the answer, I know somebody that I know must know the answer.
14:16.44
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
14:17.09
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
So I spent a lot of time. I don’t want to say networking, but I think it’s really about building relationships, like mutual like mutually beneficial relationships with people, trust.
14:26.75
vigorbranding
Sure, trust.
14:29.50
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And when I got into the food space, I was like, I just need to great advisors around me. I need people.
14:33.78
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
14:33.82
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And I didn’t want like consultants. I wanted people who were also running their businesses, who were going in the trenches, doing it with in in real time.
14:38.08
vigorbranding
Sure. Skin the game. Yep.
14:41.79
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
and so you know, having a ah YPO forum of YPO, you know, food CPG people was like one of the ways that I accomplished that and like really creating a forum of people around me that were doing the same things as I was.
14:50.42
vigorbranding
Mm
14:56.01
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And, you know, there’s a lot of symbiotic um experience there. And we all got to go through COVID together. So it was something I did early on, you know, it was like grabbing people who wanted to go on this journey with me.
15:02.72
vigorbranding
hmm. Mm hmm.
15:06.56
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And so, You know you’re I think networking is like kind of like a bad word sometimes like people think it’s like you’re using people when you say networking but you’re doing networking right you’re actually at creating value for other people first right and that out it works.
15:13.24
vigorbranding
who yeah
15:20.16
vigorbranding
That’s right. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. So now let’s talk. You created the, the you had a product, you you got shut down and covered. So let’s talk about the Unite name. You created a brand and I’m a big brand guy, you know that. I love brands and and I love what you did here. I love the name and I’m not just saying that because you’re here, but this is something I did not know. I read an article and I read about the I in Unite. I should have looked and realized that the lowercase I, but to talk about the brand and how you came up with the name.
15:45.47
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Yeah, I mean, so for me is all about that what I was trying to do. So this is like the mission part of like this journey when like you’re over 40 and you’re creating new business. Usually you’re not doing it just for money. You’re really doing it because you feel like something’s missing in the world and you want to make the world a better place. At least that’s my journey.
16:01.60
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And for me, it was like, how can I use food as this instrument of inclusion to improve the lives of people, see people who haven’t been seen, welcome them into wellness, right? And kind of create cultural bridges, right? Where like somebody who I think food is has this unique way of binding people, right? Like it’s the cultural equivalent of bringing your, you know,
16:23.95
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
your dish to a potluck and like you know kind of like do you like it you know kind of like yeah having that like you know there’s a moment where you’re like are you sure it’s kind of a little strange or like you know when when people used to come to my home and like be like you know my mom made this thing you don’t have to eat it it’s you know you might not like it and then people loving it and you’re like oh Okay, it’s good. Like it’s safe. Like everyone’s accepted now. And so I think for me, it was like how, you know, food can, can also divide people. But if people make fun of somebody’s food or make fun of flavors, you know, and I think it also can unite. And so I wanted to use it as like, you know, let’s, let’s find common ground. Let’s find flavors that like will resonate with lots of people. And so like the flavors we choose typically are not just like country specific. They’re like region specific.
17:04.98
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
So like, you know, churros are eaten in Spain, in Mexico, and like all over Latin America, right? Baklava is eaten in North Africa, in Greece, in Russia, in Croatia, right?
17:15.03
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Bubble tea, which sounds like just an Asian, Asian flavor. And yes, it was born in Taiwan, but you know, like but the British drink milk with tea. the in Indian people drink milk with tea, and the Middle East drink milk with tea.
17:25.54
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Like those flavors are, can resonate with lots of different people.
17:29.23
vigorbranding
Yeah.
17:29.53
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
So, and then there’s peanut butter and jelly, and that’s the one where people are like,
17:31.64
vigorbranding
Yeah.
17:32.95
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
huh like you know that’s like that’s not global but it’s like my american heritage is just as important and so i want all people to feel represented and the reason the eye is small and as i think because if you’re trying to connect two sides you yourself have to get smaller to understand the other side and so that you you know to understand the other you know and we live in such a time of division and so like really having a name like unites like it’s really the essence of the brand
17:37.39
vigorbranding
yeah
17:58.39
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
is to, you know, ah seek to understand and seek to find common ground and instead of like how we’re different.
18:05.96
vigorbranding
I love it. i mean You obviously have a propensity for for marketing. it’s it’s It’s very smart and very sound, the thinking behind it. and and I’ve had the products that are fantastic. and again I’m not just saying that they’re your your products are absolutely delicious, so you should be very, very proud of that.
18:21.31
vigorbranding
um you know and now So we talk about the flavors, so ah we do a food trends presentation every year and we always come up with all these funky flavors and and we we I shouldn’t say funky, we we we learn about things that are popping in different parts of the world and starting to you know bubble up and and and ah you know we we try to grab onto them, I mean all of us as manufacturers, as restaurants, as ah marketers And we try to understand these flavors and how to bring them forth and and introduce something fresh. how do How do you go about finding flavors? How do you go about deciding what the next flavor is going to be?
18:54.83
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
it’s really intuitive for me but like you know my my hero flavor is churro and like that one was really you know born out of you know I live near Disneyland I live like 15 minutes away and I have small kids and so we were always at Disneyland always the line at the churro cart was kind of like around the corner right and like churro was like definitely this very familiar flavor and like churros are you know they’re eaten they’re They’re not just different for different sake. Many people have had a churro, whether it’s at a fair or at Disneyland or at a carnival. Churro was like not that um outside the box for most people, and it was very approachable. and so like That Disneyland car, just like looking at the lines, I was like, yeah, that could be a really good flavor. How come nobody you know hasn’t really done that? and then
19:44.35
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
you know, I would visit ethnic markets a lot to look at the flavors.
19:47.44
vigorbranding
Sure.
19:47.62
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
So I go to Hispanic markets, I go to Korean markets, I go to Japanese markets, you know, I live in an area again, where I’m blessed by diversity. And so I study, you know, when I travel, what are people eating?
19:59.01
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
What, you know, what are people, you know, what do people enjoy? And I really, I mean I the first flavors are really like things that I loved so I just wanted to create things you know flavors and then I tested them on my friends and I probably Michael I probably made like 15 or 20 different flavors before I started right like and kind of like chose the heroes from um the ones that I made and in my kitchen.
20:17.81
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm. Now, is there one that you you loved and thought, oh, everyone’s gonna love this and didn’t make it? Is there a flavor that you kind of, what is it?
20:26.76
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Yeah it was a ah green tea matcha
20:30.55
vigorbranding
Uh-uh.
20:30.44
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
flavor and so but green tea powder sometimes can be fishy and it’s like sounds so weird but like it just didn’t work in in scale right and so and there are macho bars out there but I never think that they taste great and so you know I wanted it to have like good product integrity and so like that was like a
20:35.42
vigorbranding
Okay.
20:39.37
vigorbranding
Not it.
20:45.81
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm.
20:48.56
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
you know, one that like I thought would be, you know, cause if you, if you look at the Starbucks menu, like ah so many, you know, those, those are great flavor cues too. Like, you know, Starbucks spends a lot of time in flavor development. And so you can just, you can take cues from adjacent industries.
21:01.68
vigorbranding
Sure. We got to work with a lot over the years ah through Quench. We worked with the Hershey Company and we worked with the scientists. And I was always blown away because we’d go in the, and back, this would be like early 90s, we’d go in these rooms or they’d have to swipe a card for the door to open. It seemed very like,
21:17.81
vigorbranding
Uh, sign sci-fi, you know, and it would it be lab technicians and they’d put drops and they’d be like, here, taste that. What does it taste like? I’m like, well, I taste apple pie. They’re like, wait for it. I’m like, Oh, I taste whipped cream. Wait for it. Oh, I can not taste crust. Like they could do this. I mean, it was like better living through chemistry. They could do all this stuff.
21:36.54
vigorbranding
and what it came down to obviously was and this is what is so hard with what you do is now you have to source the ingredients now you have to make sure it’s not a chemical thing and then you have to understand can you can you afford that flavoring at a price point that will be palatable to the consumer so there’s so much involved in all of what you do yeah
21:56.81
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
There is so much like, look, all business is hard, but the food business is particularly hard, right? Because you’re, it’s a living, breathing thing, right? And for me, it came down to simplicity. Like I always wanted simple ingredients um because I wanted people to be able to understand what was going into the bar, right? Like I wanted it to be real food and natural. And um so when you have those kinds of like,
22:22.56
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Barriers, you know, it’s it helps you and it hurts you right? Like I can’t put in a bunch of processing You know like many large companies can because that’s not the brand value that I’m trying to create or the kind of product I’m trying to create.
22:30.08
vigorbranding
Right. Mhm.
22:34.50
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
So yeah, it’s very hard um You know, we do get a lot of those scientists taking pictures at our booth every year at all the Expos and so people and we have been copied, you know and that’s like just anytime you’re successful at something people are gonna copy you and so
22:45.84
vigorbranding
Sure. Mhm.
22:50.21
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
But I think at the end of the day, consumers want authenticity. They want you know brands that are creating products that are meaningful to them and will reward those brands. So I don’t really worry about like copycats. I worry more about when they stop copying me.
23:07.91
vigorbranding
but you know and But to your point, and you know weve we’ve been doing a food trends report for over 15 years, and what you are doing and and how you’re doing it is very on trend. It’s not easy. It’s not inexpensive. i mean it’s ah it’s ah you know you there’s you could You could have cut corners along the way on your product, but you don’t do that. I just think that that’s going to pay dividends in the long run. i think that’s such a It’s hard to stick to your ethos, but I think you do a fantastic job of that. so I think it’s something to be proud of. and so and My next thing is, I did not know this, but the I in Unite stands for invite. and I did not realize on the back of every bar there’s an email address that you can people can send directly to you for suggestions on new flavors. Have you have you learned anything from these? Have you gotten anything interesting in the emails?
23:52.30
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Yes, I love those emails, like those emails come to me. And so I get to interact with the people that write those emails. And, you know, the most meaningful ones are when people will give me a flavor suggestion, but then they’ll also say, thank you for making a bar for us.
24:07.73
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
You know, thank you. And it’s exactly what I wanted to do.
24:09.63
vigorbranding
That’s super cool.
24:10.64
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
when I, when I set out was like, make the invisible feel seen.
24:12.05
vigorbranding
Yeah.
24:14.77
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And you know, I know what it’s like to not feel seen. You know, I know what it’s like to like, kind of be in the shadows, like being a woman in the plumbing industry. Perfect example, right? Like you don’t really belong here or you don’t like, you know, somebody that looks like me typically doesn’t work in plumbing, right?
24:29.33
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
like It’s a very old, old, you know, antiquated kind of industry. And so like when I get those emails, I get really excited and people do have some great ideas and ideas of like things that we’ve actually developed, you know, and just haven’t launched. And, you know, so it’s fun to know that like, it is also on trend for people.
24:49.00
vigorbranding
That’s fantastic. So I mean, ah um I’m being italian Italian. My wife’s Greek. So yeah, yeah, her mother makes us baklava. So it’s phenomenal. So I love that. I’m really proud to see that you have a baklava in your in your flavors. So you have you have baklava, you have peanut butter and jelly, you have chiro, bubble tea, Mexican hot chocolate. What’s your what’s your favorite?
25:09.34
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
You know, it’s like asking me which my favorite kid is.
25:12.05
vigorbranding
ah We all have one.
25:11.94
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
um i and I mean, is our hero.
25:12.61
vigorbranding
Come on. We all have one. On any given day, we all have one. A favorite kid.
25:18.32
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And churro was like the first bar where I was like, okay, we really have something.
25:19.02
vigorbranding
Uh-huh. That’s the baby.
25:21.72
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Yeah. But I really also very much like baklava. And it’s similar to churro in that, you know, it’s got kind of like some of the the same kind of spices with the cinnamon.
25:28.18
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm.
25:29.41
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
But baklava has never been done outside of baklava.
25:31.48
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm.
25:32.33
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Like, think about it, Michael. Like, you’ve never seen a baklava ice cream. You’ve never seen a baklava cracker.
25:35.23
vigorbranding
Nope.
25:36.56
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Like, you’ve never seen a baklava popcorn. Right? Like it was very unique.
25:40.80
vigorbranding
Yeah.
25:41.16
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And, you know, when I, before I launched, you know, many of the, the manufacturing partners I met with in the beginning were like, these price flavors are too strange. Like nobody’s going to buy these and like to be, you know, have come full circle and and be like, no, they’re great.
25:54.00
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And like Baklava just won a good housekeeping award this year when they’re, you know, best snack award. Churro won the same award last year.
25:59.19
vigorbranding
Awesome.
26:00.98
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
So it’s like, it’s incredibly validating when, you know, people. like like the product and like, you know, um appreciate it. And it’s got organic honey in it. It’s just really tasty bar.
26:12.34
vigorbranding
That’s great. Well, like I said, you’re the products are amazing. And in a way, I like i look at these flavors and in a way they are they’re kind of all comfort foods, too, right? I mean, they’re, they’re, yeah, they’re all international flavors, but they’re almost like international comfort flavors, you know, it just it kind of feels that way.
26:28.40
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Well, they’re nostalgic flavors.
26:30.16
vigorbranding
Yeah.
26:30.11
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
So they’re foods that you ate in childhood.
26:32.21
vigorbranding
Right.
26:32.26
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And so that was also really important to me. That was also one of the barometers is like childhood flavors.
26:36.76
vigorbranding
Perfect.
26:38.45
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And ironically, I mean, I didn’t develop these for kids, but like kids love our bars and like, duh, they’re childhood flavors, right? Like they’re really for adults, but you know, so we’ve had this like wide range of like consumer interest in our, in our products. And so for me, it’s like about taking you back to kind of like a simpler time. I think, you know, health food specifically is sometimes punitive. Like, Oh, I don’t really like this mushroom powder, but I’m going to drink it because like, i my you know, my,
27:03.59
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
podcast said that I’m going to get muscles if I drink it. you know and I’m like more on the other side of wellness. We’re like, let’s make it fun and let’s make it like food you want to eat, not food you have to eat.
27:09.80
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. All right. Well, let’s have some fun here. So, you know, being the research guys that we are and the marketing guys where we came up with our own flavors. So we decided to go around the world. I want your opinion on if these are going to be winners or not. So we’ll start in India, a gulab jambu. It’s very popular dessert. It’s often served during celebrations. It’s fried dough soaked in a rosewater syrup, often garnished with almonds and cashews.
27:40.04
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
10 out of 10. I think that would like a home run flavor. I’ve actually, you know, my Indian friends have also suggested ah exact flavor and it’s always kind of been in my mind.
27:45.01
vigorbranding
Yeah.
27:48.94
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
The rosewater is the one that’s like, can be polarizing. So, you know, we try to have things that are like, you know, broad appeal, but yeah, I think 10 out of 10 would be a great flavor.
27:57.57
vigorbranding
Plus, I’ll say this, I hate to be the total American here, but pronunciation can also be a barrier to people buying something if they can’t if they can’t figure out how to say it.
28:04.52
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
For now, right?
28:06.08
vigorbranding
All right, now we’ll head to Spain, a creamy caramel flan.
28:09.66
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
I love flan and I think flan is another one of those foods that’s mistaken for like just Latin Americans because lots of people eat flan or you know it’s called sometimes creme caramel it’s called like different things in other regions of the world you know so yeah another great flavor you guys are good at this don um don’t start a bar company Michael.
28:15.09
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
28:26.72
vigorbranding
yeah Yeah, yeah. We would never if we, you know, they’re yours. These are all yours if you want to do them. So you have some friends, we have some employees in Brazil. So um Bolo de Rolo. It’s a light sponge cake. It’s rolled up with a layer of tangy guava jam.
28:43.47
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
This one I’ve never heard of, I’ve never had.
28:45.94
vigorbranding
right
28:46.23
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
I’ve not not been to Brazil, so it really piqued my interest. I love guavas. I think tropical fruits, you know, we see that in beverage now.
28:54.85
vigorbranding
Right.
28:55.48
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
You know, there’s all kinds of great beverages that have popped up with tropical fruit flavors.
28:56.09
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
29:00.70
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And definitely in terms of what global flavor trends, guava I think is still underrated because I love guavas.
29:04.97
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
29:07.99
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
So yeah, I think, you know, it’d be interesting to to get the um the sponge cake kind of consistency in a bar because bars tend to be a little bit drier and a little bit harder to to make soft because water stability issues.
29:20.76
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
But I think that’s super intrigued. I want to go to Brazil, so that’s on my list.
29:24.27
vigorbranding
Yeah, there you go. There’s an excuse for R and&D. It’s a write-off. um you know Yeah, it’s ah that that’s that’s that’s fun. OK, so we go to Italy ah for some almond biscotti.
29:37.61
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
I mean, I love biscotti, but I think if you’re craving biscotti, eat a biscotti.
29:41.08
vigorbranding
Yeah, I agree.
29:41.18
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
you know
29:42.08
vigorbranding
Yeah, I don’t think that works in a bar, right?
29:43.73
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Well, you know like people tell me, like oh, you should make a hummus flavored bar. I’m like, what? Why don’t you just eat hummus?
29:49.24
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.
29:50.94
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
you know For me, it’s about taking some things. Because biscotti is not unhealthy, like typically. like you know If you had one, it’s like it’s fine.
29:55.05
vigorbranding
No.
29:57.11
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
It’s like a treat. So I typically try to take like higher calorie, higher density things to make them healthy and approachable.
30:02.75
vigorbranding
oh
30:05.67
vigorbranding
Yeah, you’re you’re almost bringing a dessert together to a degree, right?
30:05.58
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
so i probably Exactly.
30:08.59
vigorbranding
Yeah.
30:08.51
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
a
30:09.42
vigorbranding
Yeah, that totally makes sense. And you know what’s funny? You you just said something that that really kind of stuck with me. though The beverage industry does do a lot of flavors. And it’s really kind of accelerated. I mean, as a company, we were early on with with flavored beverages in the tea category.
30:24.27
vigorbranding
And we were we had a brand that we worked with for like 15 years. We helped build what’s called Turkey Hill Iced Tea. Excuse me. And it was the first refrigerated tea. a lot of There was teas out there that were shelf-stable, but we were in the refrigerator. Well, the proliferation now of beverages in the refrigerator. You go to a convenience store with just walls of beverages. So there’s a lot of unique flavorings that you see popping up. And I guess that’s that would be a good place to see, I don’t know, what’s acceptable, right? like what are what are What are consumers interested in?
30:53.61
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Yeah, I think um it’s a good, again, like I got to take a lot of flavor cues from like a Starbucks or like, you know, what are people drinking?
31:01.08
vigorbranding
yeah
31:02.11
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And like, what are the flavor cues in beverage that we can borrow from, right? Or we that can inform some of us. I think in beverage, it’s a little bit easier because the flavoring is just like props added to something versus like you’re trying to really create something authentic in food.
31:13.60
vigorbranding
Yeah, yep, yep.
31:19.97
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
But gosh, I’m just happy I have a shelf stable product. Like I can’t imagine distributing a refrigerated or frozen product.
31:25.52
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
31:26.11
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Like knowing what I know now, it’s like just a whole nother level of of anxiety.
31:30.73
vigorbranding
Yeah, well in flavoring to own on that side is it’s amazing how if you had some foot, it’s not obvious as a flavor to like what happened to potato chips, right? So we have a snack food category of snack foods. I mean, adding just a new flavor a new fun. It’s it’s amazing how much velocity you get and how much traction we actually did it across the tuna category.
31:49.35
vigorbranding
And you would think, you know, tuna, we started adding sriracha or different types of hot or or or Thai chili or, I mean, just all these kind of unique flavors.
31:54.20
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Mm
31:57.94
vigorbranding
And it’s amazing how it can really ah get you more more ah shelf presence.
31:59.66
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
hmm.
32:03.65
vigorbranding
And it also then, ah it creates ah an atmosphere of trial. So it’s ah’s it’s an awful lot of fun for that too. So um so as an entrepreneur who who’s growing and developing a brand that’s still a relatively young brand, ah you just created it four years ago.
32:17.34
vigorbranding
What are some of your biggest challenges?
32:20.85
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
It’s sad to say, Michael, but like there’s a lot of predatory behavior for emerging brands in the food space, right?
32:26.57
vigorbranding
he
32:26.47
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Where I think this industry like depends on the turn to a certain degree of like brands to fail, to come in to shoot their shot. And like when they fail, it doesn’t matter because there’s like so many other brands behind them trying to get in that same shelf space.
32:39.58
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
So I think it’s just being the underdog. like If you look at the shelves that we’re on, we’re competing with behemoths, right? Like billion dollar brands, multi-billion dollar brands, like that control the entire food supply.
32:48.42
vigorbranding
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
32:51.38
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And we’re like on the same shelf and like, how can we actually compete to build brand awareness? Like, you know, so you just do it with a radical authenticity. You do it by creating value for the consumer, creating something different, creating a better product.
33:05.17
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
But it’s really like having come from a larger company where like, you know, you have some kind of street cred because you are a larger and you’re eight It’s easier to grow a larger company, but to grow from scratch has been like humbling.
33:17.69
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
like it’s There’s a lot of people who want to put their hand in your pocket, who want to you know take advantage of you, and you have to be astute.
33:18.13
vigorbranding
Yeah.
33:24.66
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And again, you have to surround yourself with people that are smart, that will help you avoid the landline, help you clear those paths. but You know, I, um, I also started, um, a nonprofit called included for, you know, people of color in food CPG just because I feel very passionately it’s called included included CPG, um, for people to kind of like not make the same mistakes that I made or kind of try to pull it forward somehow by clearing the path for, you know, I don’t want people to, you know, make the mistakes that we, we’ve made or could have potentially made.
33:49.99
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
33:56.73
vigorbranding
Mm hmm. That’s you’ve you’ve always been one to give back. And I think that’s very admirable. I mean, we were walking around. It was it was it this we were just talking about with the included CPG.
34:09.40
vigorbranding
We were walking around. He was exposed. You had a special section and they they they don’t you had them donate space. What was that for?
34:16.71
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
um Yes for emerging brands and no for included and so we do do that at the fancy food show and at Expo West every year and so we kind of run kind of a mini incubator accelerator For these brands and help them get that space and be ready to pitch and you know, you have to be market ready So it’s not like for a brand that’s like pre-launch it’s like, you know if you have some kind of like established brand presence and really hoping to elevate them to the next level because those trade shows are so expensive and it’s so primitive and so anything that we can do to
34:18.69
vigorbranding
Oh, OK.
34:43.19
vigorbranding
Yeah.
34:46.50
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Level the playing field to like help an emerging brand win is like I just it just lights me up I like it makes me so happy because These are the people improving the food systems.
34:57.16
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
These are the people that are bringing healthy Products to market.
34:57.35
vigorbranding
Right.
35:01.02
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
These are the people who are you know, taking their family recipes and trying to share them with the world
35:06.90
vigorbranding
Well, I mean, I admire you because you’re able to, I could see you walking into those shows and asking for them to give you all this space. And I know how you are. You do with a smile, but you’re pretty emphatic and I’m sure you always get your way.
35:19.64
vigorbranding
Cause I know I sit in meetings with you and when I’m, and when I miss a meeting, I have to answer to you, but you do with a smile, but you always hold people accountable and you get what you want. And I do respect that. So sure.
35:29.41
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Well, I mean, it’s been a great partnership with New Hope and the Specialty Food Association. And it just, it aligns with their value. So they actually are great partners. And so it’s a, you know, and it’s a team. It’s not just me. There’s like five other founders on the leadership team have included. So, you know, we, we are really working hard to improve um the food systems.
35:51.19
vigorbranding
what So what ah what do a lot of these folks, i mean thankfully they have you ah to sort of open up the door for them, literally to bring them into the into these shows. so like What do you see a mistake made by ah want to be entrepreneurs? what What do they do wrong? Or what do what do you think and in the brand creation process? What do you what do what do you think that they they do wrong a lot?
36:11.05
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
I mean, it’s probably something we did wrong too, but it’s like trying to pretend you’re a big brand when you’re not, right? Like, yes, you can get on that shelf, but are you ready? Can you support it the same way a big brand does?
36:20.43
vigorbranding
Mmhmm.
36:22.89
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Do you know all the levers to pull, right?
36:24.66
vigorbranding
Mmhmm.
36:25.09
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
like And it’s hard to say, like, it’s hard when the opportunity knocks not to take it, right?
36:30.71
vigorbranding
Sure.
36:31.30
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
So it’s like that discipline of knowing, you know, What is the actual contribution margin of this account? And, you know, is it just like, or does it accomplish something else? So I think it’s like biting off a little bit more than you can chew.
36:44.02
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
um And then the one that I pay attention very closely to is quality. I think quality can sink your company so fast. You know, one quality issue, one copacker issue, one whatever issue.
36:53.05
vigorbranding
yeah
36:54.04
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
So if you’re not paying attention to your product, you know, so closely, um that can really be a landmine because you can always create more brands. But you know, if your brand name is like tainted, it’s hard for you.
37:07.44
vigorbranding
Right. I mean, some people might not even know like that. I think people assume because you have a brand, that you actually make it yourself. And you know, there are co-packers out there and a lot of brands use co-packers and you’re handing off your basically your baby and your promise, you know, a brand is a promise, your promise to the consumer to someone else to make. Obviously, there’s there’s checks and balances there. But it it is a, you know, there’s there’s places along the way that you have to count on a lot of partners. And it’s a, I’m sure it’s a difficult business, you know,
37:36.97
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
I think you have to think of your co-man relationships as kind of like your investors because they’re investing their line time, their energy you know to develop your brand as well.
37:40.66
vigorbranding
here Yep.
37:44.95
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
So it is a partnership. You’re not just like, you know. Um, taking and giving, right? is It’s truly a partnership but if done right. And like, yeah, I like to, I like to actually preface a lot of my buyer meetings by saying, Hey, by the way, I don’t make this in my garage.
37:56.50
vigorbranding
Mm
37:57.57
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
I, you know, because like the, the bias is if you’re like an emerging, I have a dream person and you’re like, make as far as in your garage and like packaging them up and sending them out.
38:01.10
vigorbranding
-hmm.
38:07.22
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
I thought there’s anything wrong with that. But like, when you’re trying to pitch a fortune, you know, 100 company, they got to make sure that, you know, you have your ducks in a row.
38:09.52
vigorbranding
Right. eat Yeah. Yeah.
38:14.95
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And so that’s a good qualifier.
38:17.32
vigorbranding
Yeah, Target doesn’t want you like ah to think you’re baking the night before. That’s funny. But I mean, yeah, it’s ah yeah’s it’s true. And it’s amazing all of the the hurdles, I’ll say, that you have to go through. So you have a great, yeah there’s a quote that you like to talk about. lot Winston Churchill, success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. And you’re always enthusiastic. You want to talk a little bit about some of those things that you had to bump up against, some of your failures, some of the things that you had to pivot.
38:44.24
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Oh, there’s so many, Michael. I mean, every, if it’s, if it was easy, everyone would do it, you know, like I say that, but it’s like, it’s so true.
38:49.31
vigorbranding
Sure.
38:51.46
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And like, you know, and every entrepreneur I talk to in the food space or any space, it’s like, you gotta be able to take those hits and get back up.
38:57.56
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah.
38:59.18
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
But the getting back up is really hard, right?
39:02.31
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
39:02.73
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Especially when there’s like, you could do something else with your time. You could do something else with your energy.
39:06.20
vigorbranding
Great.
39:07.24
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And that’s where like a mission becomes really important. And it’s like, what’s actually driving you?
39:11.03
vigorbranding
Mm
39:11.36
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Cause if it’s money, you’ll give up. There’s way easier ways to make money.
39:15.17
vigorbranding
hmm.
39:15.47
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Like if I wanted to go make money, I’d just take my money and invest it in real estate or whatever. I’m like, yes, we do that too. but It’s really about mission for me. And so what drives you to like make the world a better place, have a lasting impact, create products that resonate with people.
39:31.82
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And so success is just a barometer. It’s just an outcome of you living that up. But like, you know, there are times, I mean, I think if you’re not ready to throw in the towel every month in your business, are you even an entrepreneur?
39:42.90
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Like, you know, like it’s just, it’s the getting back up.
39:43.50
vigorbranding
Right.
39:46.20
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
And it’s like that loss of enthusiasm is what gets you. And like another way to send that is like burnout. If you’ve burned out, it’s too late. So I make sure that I don’t burn out.
39:52.89
vigorbranding
Yep. Yeah, that’s very smart. That’s actually very sage advice right there. Because look, these businesses, no matter how ah exciting they are, or how long you’ve been doing them, you do hit those those troughs, you do hit the burnout phase. I mean, personally, I started my first agency 33 years ago. And it’s, you know, ah yeah well and during this whole time with COVID, there’s so much change. And and and you know You think, well, you’ve been doing this for a long time. Everything think just should be on autopilot. No. I mean, I probably worked harder in the last couple of years. I did maybe in some of the middle years. I don’t know. It’s just just a different time. So yeah, the entrepreneur thing, I think everyone takes it for granted or everyone looks over and says, oh, you’ve done that. Or you have money because of this. And ah most people don’t realize those days and those sleepless nights and those weekends and the you know the the fears of everything from bankruptcy to lawsuits to everything else. We all go through it. right i mean every
40:45.92
vigorbranding
i get to I’m very fortunate i get to talk to a lot of founders, I get to talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, and a lot of successful people, and they all have the same they all have those same stories. Every one of them has that nightmare, like, yeah, there was this time when, and you know you didn’t think there was a tomorrow. so it’s ah ah you know it’s ah It’s good to hear, it because your story, you’ve seen it all all the way around from your father to to starting up now and what you’re doing. and I love that you stick to your guns. because ah Again, you can cut corners. You could do things faster, cheaper, but not better. And I think that what you do is ah is really remarkable. And i again, I know it’s going to pay off in the long run. So so what’s what’s next for you tonight? I mean, are there any new flavors? If you can’t talk about it, I understand. But if theres is there anything new products or flavors or anything exciting on the horizon?
41:29.86
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Yeah, there is a new flavor. It’s called Hot Fudge Sunday. We’ll be launching soon. And so we’re really excited about that flavor, another nostalgic childhood treat.
41:35.70
vigorbranding
Awesome. Yep.
41:38.67
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Also some different, you know, we’re looking at different formats, kind of some adjacent things. So definitely an innovation pipeline out there.
41:43.72
vigorbranding
that
41:44.39
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
So hoping to launch some other products. But really, I want to win at bars first and, um you know, really own our category and really, you know, make sure that our velocities stay up and and everything is is good with bars.
41:59.13
vigorbranding
Fantastic. All right, so one last question. And you can’t be one of your bars. But if you had one last final meal, what would you eat? Where? Why?
42:09.00
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Such a good question. I mean, I’m a California girl, so it’d probably be an In-N-Out cheeseburger, ah you know, and and yeah some french fries and egg steak, animals for sure, animal style.
42:15.08
vigorbranding
There you go. All right. I respect that answer. That’s a great answer. Animal animal style, I hope.
42:25.41
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
um You know, it’s kind of like, that’s the meal when we travel abroad or something and you get back, you’re like, oh, I just want an In-N-Out burger.
42:26.67
vigorbranding
ah
42:30.92
vigorbranding
Yeah.
42:31.05
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
You know, it just, it feels like home. And I think that goes back to nostalgia and childhood too.
42:35.15
vigorbranding
Anybody that with work or or or whatever, friends or family that travel with me, they know when I land in California, that’s one of the first things I do and I will not leave until I do it. It might not be the very first thing I get to do if I have a meeting, but I will have in and out before I get on that plane to fly back east.
42:51.43
vigorbranding
so That’s a great answer.
42:51.95
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
That’s right.
42:52.84
vigorbranding
great answer so Anyway, Claire, thank you. This was awesome. I you know i appreciate you. ah you know I’ve known you a long time and it’s just so cool to hear your story and see what you’re up to and congratulations.
43:03.82
Clara Paye _ UNiTE
Thanks, Michaels. Fun to be on.
43:06.07
vigorbranding
Awesome. Thanks.
“Operating a streetside restaurant versus a restaurant in an airport is a completely different sport. The speed, the requirements, the logistical challenges (of being an in airport), all of our crewmembers have to go through background checks. Unless you’re a serious player, you’re not trying to participate in airports.” (Stephen)
“We encourage our crewmembers just to meet people where they are. It may be the 50th time you’ve welcomed someone to our restaurant but it’s the first time you’ve spoken to the person in front of you. You should be additive to their experience and not add additional stress or complications.” (Stephen)
“We welcome the chaos. When it’s raining and snowing outside and your flights are delayed, we kind of welcome that because that means we get to hang out with you a little bit longer.” (Stephen)
“If I bring in someone as a front line worker who’s pouring coffee, if they’re still pouring coffee in three years, both them and the organization has done something wrong. We want to scale people up.” (Stephen)
00:01.9900:01.99
vigorbranding
Hey folks, welcome to Fork Tales, and I’m excited. Today’s guest is Stephen Baldi He’s the founder and president of Baldi Management Group. Baldy Management Group is an airport concessions and management consulting company. It’s a mouthful there. ah Manages concessions in Reagan National Airport, JFK International Airport, and Dulles International Airport. Stephen, welcome to Fork Tales, and thank you so much for joining us.
00:25.82
Stephen Baldi
Michael, thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to the conversation.
00:29.01
vigorbranding
So for those that don’t know, all of these are located in the sort of DC Metro, Baltimore or down at DC Metro area, right?
00:36.21
Stephen Baldi
Correct.
00:37.04
vigorbranding
Yeah.
00:37.19
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, even though Philadelphia is my hometown, I’ve been in Washington DC for almost 30 years. um So this is home base for us.
00:46.37
vigorbranding
yeah Well, you you you know, I have a little trick question because that was going to be my first question. Are you still a Philly sports fan? I mean, do you bleed Eagle Green?
00:53.03
Stephen Baldi
if If you cut me, it would be nothing but green. I live in Washington, DC.
00:56.48
vigorbranding
OK, beautiful.
00:57.88
Stephen Baldi
My heart is in Philadelphia.
00:59.81
vigorbranding
Beautiful, beautiful. Wow. There’s, there’s guys, I don’t even know what they call themselves these days. these’s The commanders, the Washington football club.
Yeah, Michael, my family would disown me if anything other than my ah zip code changed as far as my hometown affiliation.
01:10.06
vigorbranding
So that’s fantastic. Hey, it’s awesome. You got to bring, I had a gentleman come in, uh, from, uh, Oregon last week to speak to a bunch of advertising agencies from North America. We hosted them in Philadelphia and this guy was so excited. He was, he, he, he came from there, but he was Philly through and through. So everything in his presentation tied back to a Philly icon, something about Philadelphia that was iconic. And, you know, ah in our company, we’re,
01:44.34
vigorbranding
We’re very proud that we’re an independent advertising agencies. We have an agency called Vigor and an agency called Quench. Vigor’s restaurant branding. Quench is food and beverage marketing. And the whole thing was around independence and how it’s how important it is.
01:57.06
vigorbranding
And he had all these great icons from like Nick Foles to, ah you know, ah Mike Schmidt to the Fanatic to, I mean, Will Smith.
02:07.11
vigorbranding
I mean, he just went through all the Philadelphia stuff, you know, the Liberty Bell and everything else. and So it was cool. It was cool.
02:11.77
Stephen Baldi
um I love it. I’ll tell you an interesting story about Nick Foles. So I had a really good feeling about our Super Bowl run, even though you know Carson Wentz, who was leading as the MVP that year, went down. And the Friday before the Super Bowl, something told me to go online and buy a Nick Foles autograph helmet.
02:33.57
vigorbranding
Wow.
02:34.10
Stephen Baldi
And I did. Now, I did not expedite the shipping, Michael. So it was not in my possession on Monday after we had won the Super Bowl. And many of my friends said that helmet’s never going to show up, but it did.
02:47.65
Stephen Baldi
So I bought it for $99.
02:47.77
vigorbranding
That’s awesome.
02:49.77
Stephen Baldi
And I can tell you, it’s it’s worth a lot more than that.
02:51.92
vigorbranding
That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s worth a lot to people in Philadelphia. So it’s fantastic. And the pride of that city runs deep. So alright, so tell us about Baldy enter Management Group and what it does what inspired you to get into the airport concession games. I mean, you started I think in residential property, right?
03:06.90
Stephen Baldi
I did. I started in residential property management in 2002. And I started in airports in 2005. And it was all kind of serendipitous. I had a really ah prickly history before starting in 2002.
03:23.22
Stephen Baldi
at Kettler Management, which managed tax credit properties, but also Class A luxury communities.
03:29.04
vigorbranding
Okay.
03:29.23
Stephen Baldi
And I had a tenant coming to my office. And she said, Steven, I see you engaging with the residents and how you handle issues. And I think you should be doing more. And I thought to myself, like this woman doesn’t know me.
03:39.92
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, I just fixed her fireplace. But who are you to come in my office and tell me what I should be doing? And at the time, I was making $22,000 a year with a Georgetown degree. And the job that they wanted me to interview for paid $85,000 a year.
03:54.21
vigorbranding
wow
03:54.39
Stephen Baldi
So as you can assume, Michael, goal I took the interview, I got the job. And so for three years, I worked in development for Westfield, which most people know as shopping mall developers, they have an airport division.
04:05.82
vigorbranding
Hmm. Ah.
04:07.99
Stephen Baldi
And so I was responsible for the redevelopment of national airport here in Washington, DC from 2005. to 2008. And then I leveraged a relationship with OTG Management, which has a very large presence at Philadelphia International, um into a joint venture relationship and actually launched the company, BMG, in 2008. And two thousand and eight and it’s we’ve not looked back since.
04:31.36
vigorbranding
That’s fantastic. you know It’s funny. I really i don’t know you. we’re We’re really talking for the first time. I can tell right away, like youre you have a positive attitude, and I can tell you’re engaging. And so I could see how someone would see you in action and be like, hey, you know you you could do more. like You can be a part of something bigger. And it’s obviously what’s happened, which is it’s awesome. I’m a big proponent of attitude. I mean, i I love to know where people went to school. I mean, if you if I interview you, I want to see your brains on the table.
04:58.39
vigorbranding
But I really want to know what your personality is like. I want to know about your attitude. I want to know ah how ah how much of a ah person you are that wants to win and be engaging and help people. And it’s ah like it comes through with you right away.
05:09.91
vigorbranding
And that’s ah it’s cool.
05:10.18
Stephen Baldi
I appreciate that.
05:11.03
vigorbranding
now it’s it’s
05:11.32
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, i’ll I’ll take it back if you if you want me to. So ah back in 1988, I was turning 13 and I begged my mom for a pair of Air Jordan sneakers.
05:24.58
Stephen Baldi
And you’ll remember when Gordon’s first came out, ah they were the first shoe over a hundred dollars.
05:25.72
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah.
05:29.85
vigorbranding
Oh, yes, they were.
05:30.36
Stephen Baldi
yeah I grew up in a upper lower class household and it was a stretch for my mom to purchase these shoes.
05:31.49
vigorbranding
Yep.
05:37.09
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
05:38.21
Stephen Baldi
But I begged her and I begged her and I begged her and and she ended up buying them for me. And she said, you know, I just want you to be safe. Well, you probably can assume where the story goes. Within like a month of getting these sneakers, I was an attempted robbery, and I acted very violently to defend myself, and it resulted in me getting expelled from the school that I was at.
05:59.94
Stephen Baldi
And as a punishment, ah rather than letting me play basketball for the entire summer, my mom forced me to go to the reading math and basketball clinic at Friend Central, which is a very prominent independent school on the main line of Philadelphia.
06:14.39
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
06:14.96
Stephen Baldi
And that decision changed my life. um I went from living in a predominantly all-Black neighborhood to a private school that I was the only Black male in my class.
06:25.11
vigorbranding
Wow.
06:25.74
Stephen Baldi
And what it did was it changed my perspective of what was accessible. like I had never seen a computer before.
06:31.75
vigorbranding
Right.
06:32.14
Stephen Baldi
And at this school, there was in a computer lab where we could sit down and navigate things.
06:34.40
vigorbranding
Yeah.
06:36.15
Stephen Baldi
And so going to Friends Central, having my mom make that leap of faith changed my trajectory in many ways. I matriculated from there to Georgetown University here in Washington, DC, which is how I got.
06:48.20
Stephen Baldi
to Washington DC. So I am a super Philadelphia sports fan, because not only am I from Philly, but Allen Iverson was my classmate at Georgetown University.
06:51.93
vigorbranding
That’s awesome.
06:55.50
vigorbranding
Is that right?
06:56.61
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, we were the same class.
06:56.89
vigorbranding
Wow.
06:57.61
Stephen Baldi
And so, yeah, very cool.
06:58.33
vigorbranding
That’s so cool. Yeah.
07:00.38
Stephen Baldi
And so maya my commitment to making meaningful connections with people comes from way back then when I was forced to do it, not only because of who I am, but my circumstances.
07:00.74
vigorbranding
AI. It’s legendary.
07:12.75
Stephen Baldi
And I’ve tried to carry that out through my career and my life.
07:15.84
vigorbranding
That’s fantastic. what a great That’s great. That’s a great story. you know it’s like It’s funny that on the Air Jordans, at that time, when they came out, and I can follow you on that. i know you You nailed it. You said the first sneaker that was over $100. My dad had ah this like mom and pop retail sporting store. We sold mostly like hockey stuff. We were from Hershey, Pennsylvania.
07:35.39
vigorbranding
And I was working in a store in in Camp Hill and outside of Hershey. It’s up in the West Shore, they call it. Anyway, long story short, I was in the mall and we sold some sneakers and the Air Jordans came out and we had them on the wall.
07:48.37
vigorbranding
And it was like, it was insane. $100 for a pair of sneakers.
07:52.08
Stephen Baldi
Yeah.
07:52.28
vigorbranding
And I mean, like, whereas I’ll say the average then was probably like on the high end was probably like 50, 55.
07:57.40
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, for sure.
07:58.58
vigorbranding
And this went right to 100. And it was funny, my dad, maybe that’s where I started learning about, and I really did learn a lot about marketing, working in retail, because you have to talk to people, you have to sell. And I think that’s the most important skill a person can learn. Communicating with people and learning how to sell, like, you know, at least present yourself, right? So I put these sneakers at the very top. I said, dad, you know what? ah I said, everybody wants the Air Jordans. Most people can’t afford them.
08:21.42
vigorbranding
but everyone wants to come and look at it. So I always sell them the white, the white, men’s the body they’re like but you know, so for every one Air Jordan, I saw, I used to sell like 30 other pairs of shoes.
08:25.49
Stephen Baldi
ah yeah
08:30.65
vigorbranding
You know what I mean?
08:31.05
Stephen Baldi
It’s been up in the store. It’s like a newspaper. People don’t necessarily want just the newspaper, at least the retailer does it, but they come in to buy the newspaper and then they buy the water, the soda, the candy.
08:33.13
vigorbranding
That’s right.
08:39.73
vigorbranding
That’s right. yeah I lured them in with the Air Jordans. I think we had like five parrot the most. I mean, we couldn’t afford, you know, it’s a little mom pop store.
08:46.41
Stephen Baldi
Probably two sizes.
08:47.56
vigorbranding
Yeah, right. That’s exactly right. So that’s funny. So okay, you talked about sports and and and you know, Philly and all that you you pride yourself on um being a local company and playing in front of the home crowd.
08:58.99
vigorbranding
Talk a little bit about the the local connection in DC that you have.
09:02.34
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, so I’ll tell you, when you fly into most airports, what people don’t automatically see, but being a former developer, I understand that any airport authority, when you land in their airport, they want you to know what city you are in.
09:18.24
Stephen Baldi
So national brands are extremely important. So you’ll have your Dunkin’ Donuts. You’ll have your Pop-Belly’s, which are ah franchises that we operate.
09:22.12
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
09:25.89
Stephen Baldi
But every airport wants you to have a sense of place. So when you fly into Philadelphia Airport, you’ll have a Jim Stakes, because that’s you know historical to that region.
09:34.38
vigorbranding
Yeah.
09:34.93
Stephen Baldi
When you fly into National Airport here, or Dallas International, you’ll have your South Blocks, which is an ASE base. com concept here in the DC.
09:45.49
Stephen Baldi
You’ll have Ben’s Chili Bowl, which has been around since the 60s.
09:45.90
vigorbranding
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
09:49.41
Stephen Baldi
And so we’ve prided ourselves from identifying and connecting with other founder-led brands, because I’m a founder. And nothing against a hired gun.
09:56.93
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
09:58.81
Stephen Baldi
I know they are often effective at their job. But there’s something different about a founder-led company because you’ve built it.
10:06.95
vigorbranding
Yeah.
10:07.27
Stephen Baldi
it probably has more ah meaning to you behind just the bottom line um results that you drive. It’s personal.
10:15.52
vigorbranding
Yeah.
10:15.69
Stephen Baldi
And so we’ve developed very deep relationships with companies like founding farmers, with timber pizza, who are all local based companies here. And we expect to continue to grow it, not just in this region that we’re in, but as we grow into other markets to do the same.
10:30.68
vigorbranding
Yeah, that’s that’s fantastic. And you nailed it. I mean, like, I’m a founder, I’m an entrepreneur. And you know, and ah again, wonderful folks that that work with me, I’m very, very, very lucky. But you know, for for most people, it’s their job, you know, their career, and and hopefully there’s a sense of of a family and a real relationship.
10:49.53
vigorbranding
But for me, it’s my life. I mean, i am I am defined personally by this, which is probably pretty shallow.
10:51.05
Stephen Baldi
right
10:54.86
vigorbranding
I mean, i mean look, um I love my daughters. I’m a dad. I’m ah a husband. I love my family with all my heart, but I feel like I’m defined by my company and the what I’ve built. and and all of that And I just, you know, so again, I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing or whatever, but it’s just, it’s ah it’s a lot deeper, right?
11:11.93
vigorbranding
When you found something and ah it’s it’s a lot deeper, everyone thinks it has to do with like money and stuff, and it really doesn’t.
11:12.49
Stephen Baldi
Right. For sure.
11:17.73
vigorbranding
It’s a it’s really about, you know, sort of like your life’s life’s work. and You know, you know, I get I get the most excitement out of seeing the growth of the folks in the company. ah It’s great to see the brands grow and the companies grow.
11:30.42
vigorbranding
But I really get a kick out of of seeing the folks that have been here a long time and and all that. So anyway, that’s just that’s me.
11:35.91
Stephen Baldi
right
11:36.26
vigorbranding
But I just I totally I totally concur with what you’re saying as far as the founder led. I mean, that’s that’s fantastic.
11:41.40
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, at some point as a founder, you most likely had to put something at risk that meant something to you.
11:47.14
vigorbranding
Yeah.
11:47.50
Stephen Baldi
Whether it’s personal guaranteeing, first leverage to build the company or, you know, having to bail it out because you run into a pandemic, which we all face back in 2020.
11:47.75
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
11:55.18
vigorbranding
All right.
11:57.80
Stephen Baldi
um Oftentimes you can’t just walk from that business and matriculate to another W2 position because this is yours. And so I love when I can connect with founders.
12:04.69
vigorbranding
Yeah.
12:07.41
Stephen Baldi
I’ll work with non-founders also, but there’s something unique about the journey we’ve all been on.
12:09.54
vigorbranding
Sure.
12:11.88
vigorbranding
Yeah, absolutely. So let’s let’s talk a little bit. I just so folks know, I mean, what’s really cool about this conversation is I, ah you know, with vigor, we work with restaurant brands, right?
12:22.32
vigorbranding
So we’re very familiar with restaurant brands. And you you have brands like Potbelly, Smashburger. You said founding farmers soon to come. ah Timber Pizza, Dunkin, I mean, some some household names.
12:33.94
vigorbranding
I don’t know if I’m um yeah any ants.
12:34.26
Stephen Baldi
On the end, don’t forget on the end, this is what else we have.
12:35.99
vigorbranding
No, I can’t actually. Yeah, we actually worked on any answers. We have an agency called quench that a branding agency, Food and Beverage, that that actually worked with Auntie Anne’s because they started here in Lancaster.
12:40.96
Stephen Baldi
Okay.
12:45.88
vigorbranding
hu Yeah, and I got to meet Anne Byler in the beginning.
12:45.98
Stephen Baldi
They did.
12:48.81
vigorbranding
So, Auntie Anne is actually a person and she’s a wonderful lady and It was a really really awesome to meet her and and and what a she was so she’s a very philanthropic lady very very ah ah Generous and very successful very so she’s got a phenomenal story as well. But so yeah, I certainly won’t leave the auntie hands out But you so you have all these great brands um Talk a little bit about I mean, you know, you said somewhere founded by they you know the founders and all that what’s it like to to manage all these different brands and
13:18.00
Stephen Baldi
I’ll tell you, it’s a dynamic environment. Airports are a wonderful place to do business. Again, I share with you briefly how I matriculated into them, but once you end up in this kind of ecosystem, it’s hard to walk away.
13:33.35
Stephen Baldi
We get the privilege of serving the traveling public every day. And what’s special about that are the passengers are dynamic. There are people who are going on business trips. There are people who are going on vacations. There are people who are going to be celebrated and there are people who are going to, you know,
13:51.28
Stephen Baldi
usher people off into a transition of life. And we get to meet and connect with them all. And so I tell our crew members that we have the privilege of participating in whatever journey people are on every day.
14:03.68
Stephen Baldi
And then the following day, we get a whole new group of people coming through.
14:06.48
vigorbranding
yeah yeah
14:07.36
Stephen Baldi
So that’s dynamic in the industries are small. I will tell you it’s about a $8 billion industry nationally in the United States, food and beverage and airports.
14:14.57
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yeah.
14:19.40
Stephen Baldi
But the industry is really controlled by about 20 key companies. And within those 20 companies, you probably have 50 total key players.
14:23.32
vigorbranding
yeah
14:27.50
Stephen Baldi
And so we know each other. you know You typically don’t leave the industry. Your business card may change. So you may go from company to company, but it’s a small ecosystem. And so I’ve enjoyed being in the industry now.
14:40.58
Stephen Baldi
18 years. I started when I was two. ah But it’s a buy it’s been an extraordinary 18 years, except for some of the challenges like COVID. But you know for the people who were able and blessed to push through it, I think we have a different perspective on what we can be and what we should be in the businesses that we lead. To your point,
15:00.50
Stephen Baldi
um being defined by your business is not necessarily shallow, but there’s levels, there’s there’s depth to what we do.
15:08.62
vigorbranding
Yeah.
15:08.91
Stephen Baldi
And I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to swim in those depths ah for many years.
15:14.41
vigorbranding
That’s awesome. We’ll get to COVID in a second, but I want to go back to airports. ah I’ll say, fortunately or unfortunately, I’m a customer. I’m in an airport every single week. So when you’re describing the people you see there, it’s like, yeah.
15:21.70
Stephen Baldi
Awesome.
15:24.71
vigorbranding
I mean, you know there’s it’s every single walk of life. Everyone seems to have a higher level of stress.
15:30.65
Stephen Baldi
yeah
15:30.77
vigorbranding
Everyone’s in a hurry, even when they’re not, or even worse, if someone’s really not in a hurry and they’re walking slow in the airport, that can actually be more frustrating and stressful. but ah So how do you how do you deal with that chaos? I mean, you got all these people that are amped up and nervous and they have anxiety or whatever, and then all of a sudden you’ve got to serve them and take them, you know, and represent these great brands and and and actually make the stuff and and in a and a fast time because they’re always running late, even if they’re not, they just think they’re always stressed.
15:56.04
Stephen Baldi
Right.
15:59.20
vigorbranding
Talk about airport concessions. Talk about that chaos.
16:02.08
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, so you meet people where they are. And I will tell you, operating a street-side restaurant versus an airport, it’s a completely different sport.
16:09.79
vigorbranding
I cannot imagine.
16:10.73
Stephen Baldi
I tell ah these founder-led companies when they’re thinking about matriculating in the airports, I tell them you know it’s like playing high school varsity basketball.
16:10.80
vigorbranding
yeah
16:19.70
Stephen Baldi
And then you get drafted to the and NBA, like the speed, the requirements, you know, we have to go through the logistical um challenges of having every box that comes into your restaurant scan.
16:20.40
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
16:31.21
Stephen Baldi
Like Cisco’s not pulling up to our back door and delivering our ground beef for Smashburger.
16:31.53
vigorbranding
Yeah.
16:34.05
vigorbranding
Right.
16:35.85
Stephen Baldi
Like it’s going through an X-ray, just like your luggage is.
16:38.86
vigorbranding
Yeah.
16:39.39
Stephen Baldi
um All of our crew members have to go through a 10 year federal background check.
16:44.03
vigorbranding
Sure.
16:44.19
Stephen Baldi
um There’s complexities to the business, which are to our challenge. But to me, it’s also kind of to our benefit, Michael, because it reduces my competition. Because unless you’re a serious player, you’re not trying to participate in airports.
16:54.14
vigorbranding
Mhm.
16:56.81
Stephen Baldi
And so for me, understanding those barriers and be able to navigate them are great. But from a day to day operation standpoint, We encourage our crew members just to meet people where they are.
17:07.93
Stephen Baldi
um It may be the 50th time you’ve welcomed someone to our restaurant, but it’s the first time you’ve spoken to the person that’s in front of you. And again, you don’t know if they’re going on vacation or they’re going to a celebration of life to send a family member home.
17:16.31
vigorbranding
right
17:22.96
Stephen Baldi
Regardless, you should be additive to their experience and not adding additional stress or complications. Just try to deliver them fast, friendly, exceptional,
17:34.09
Stephen Baldi
service because that’s our standard. That is our vision for the company, which is being exceptional is our standard. It’s not something that happens intermittently.
17:42.84
vigorbranding
All right.
17:44.59
Stephen Baldi
It happens all the time. And so we welcome the chaos.
17:45.78
vigorbranding
Yeah.
17:48.05
Stephen Baldi
You know, when it’s raining and snowing outside, even though your flights are delayed, we kind of welcome that because that means you get to hang out with you a little bit longer.
17:54.78
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yeah.
17:55.63
Stephen Baldi
So as long as we’re not canceling flights, if they’re just delayed, that’s kind of our sweet spot.
18:00.01
vigorbranding
There you go.
18:00.65
Stephen Baldi
So we welcome it all.
18:02.58
vigorbranding
That’s awesome. You know, you you said something really interesting. So as I mentioned, Vigor is our agency that that does branding and marketing for restaurants. I know, and it’s not, you know, it’s common knowledge that turnover and and employees in the restaurant industry is like the biggest hassle, right? and Everyone’s dealing with that that turnover. But you just said something. they They have to go through this long, arduous process to get through. So do you find that you have, I’ll say, maybe better better qualified, better quality,
18:32.38
vigorbranding
ah team members in your restaurants?
18:34.64
Stephen Baldi
I would tell you that our hourly and even our salary leadership ah on some levels, they’re more committed because it is a personal investment to get through the process.
18:39.98
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm.
18:45.54
Stephen Baldi
And so, you know, typical food and beverage turnover is anywhere from 100 to 150%. And only ours is closer to like 30.
18:51.64
vigorbranding
Right.
18:54.91
vigorbranding
that’s hey That’s fantastic. I never thought that that would have never dawned on me that that would be ah an unfair advantage. you know It’s funny, like yeah I was telling someone the other day, you know the higher the barrier to entry in business, actually the better the business is because you don’t have just everybody and anybody competing.
19:12.66
vigorbranding
So you you have a higher barrier of entry.
19:13.25
Stephen Baldi
Correct.
19:15.58
vigorbranding
um And with that, you have you sort of have ah have a capture to a degree ah group of people, right? ah But the one thing that is interesting, I think if I remember correctly, I think there’s like 30%, I’ll say of ah if it’s a Dunkin Donuts on the street corner, 30% of their their ah customers will probably repeat, right?
19:35.43
vigorbranding
ah you You are not, I mean, you know you might have the same business guy that flies every Thursday out to you know wherever,
19:37.58
Stephen Baldi
No?
19:40.80
Stephen Baldi
we have We’ll have our Michaels.
19:41.81
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:42.16
Stephen Baldi
We have our Michaels.
19:43.59
vigorbranding
I’ll hit your place and at the airport get a coffee on the way out, but that’s it. Yeah, that’s it. So that’s.
19:48.43
Stephen Baldi
I will tell you, though, we do have outside of the the traveling public, we do have recurring customers who are the people who work at the airport. I mean, at National and Dulles Airport, you get anywhere from five thousand to ten thousand employees that are there every day.
19:56.97
vigorbranding
No, that makes sense. Sure.
20:03.65
Stephen Baldi
And so ah they are also extremely important to us.
20:03.75
vigorbranding
Mm hmm. Hey, they got to eat and drink, right?
20:07.86
Stephen Baldi
They got to eat and drink and they have to do it fast.
20:09.70
vigorbranding
Right. That’s right.
20:10.84
Stephen Baldi
Well, we have different incentives to get them in and out, but they are our recurring customers and they’re about 15 to 20 percent of our business.
20:15.10
vigorbranding
Yeah, that makes sense. Hey, going back to the old mall days that I was talking about the sneakers, I sold a lot of sneakers to people that worked in the mall, not many Air Jordans, but a lot of the, you know, a lot of the lower end sneakers.
20:22.26
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, for sure.
20:27.36
vigorbranding
So, we talked to you hit on earlier and I know we, we inevitably, hopefully one day we, we don’t, and we don’t have to talk about, we always go back and talking about COVID and, uh, you know,
20:35.54
Stephen Baldi
Oh, yeah.
20:37.21
vigorbranding
One of our companies and our holding company is a company called Varsity. And Varsity does retirement communities around the country, we market retirement companies. Well, that that industry shut down. I mean, no one was going, no one was visiting, and people were sick. It was bad. Restaurants, another one of our our agencies, right? We marketed restaurants. No one was going. It was basically shut down. you know Your hospitality Uh, and your restaurants, I mean, and your travel, I mean, you’re, you’re combining it all and how, talk about that a little bit.
21:06.75
vigorbranding
I mean, you were hit from both ends.
21:07.11
Stephen Baldi
Oh, I had the privilege of double dipping.
21:11.81
vigorbranding
Yeah.
21:11.93
Stephen Baldi
So we were in hospitality beverage, but we were also in travel.
21:12.41
vigorbranding
In turmoil.
21:15.47
vigorbranding
Yeah.
21:16.03
Stephen Baldi
And so I remember very specifically on March 11th, 2020, President Trump came on television and he announced a 30-day travel ban to Europe.
21:27.16
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm.
21:28.65
Stephen Baldi
And at the time, ah most people only thought about the impact of air traffic travel to Europe, places like London, Paris.
21:37.58
vigorbranding
right
21:38.31
Stephen Baldi
But I anticipated that this was really the big moment for our industry.
21:43.00
vigorbranding
Right.
21:43.21
Stephen Baldi
I know a lot of people associate kind of their aha moment with COVID becoming a significant thing when the NBA shut down and more importantly, when the NCAA tournament shut down.
21:53.85
Stephen Baldi
But that announcement on March 11th signified for me that things were about to change for my business.
21:58.60
vigorbranding
Yeah.
21:58.72
Stephen Baldi
Now, I didn’t know it was going to be 18 months.
22:02.21
vigorbranding
Right.
22:02.55
Stephen Baldi
um But within about two weeks, we lost 85% of our top line revenue. And so on March 18, we shut the company down for 18 months. um And it was a challenge to what we talked about earlier, where a lot of my identity was tied up in this company that I built.
22:20.39
Stephen Baldi
Well, there was no company to have an identity he tied to. And so for me as a leader, It really pushed me during that time to redefine who I was in that moment and who I was going to aspire to be if we were privileged enough to come out of it. And we did. We’ve come out very strong, stronger than actually we went in. um We actually sold 35% of the business last year to some strategic, but then also some individual investors. And so I’ve had the privilege of surrounding myself where before I was the only voice in the room and now there are many.
22:55.69
vigorbranding
Right.
22:55.77
Stephen Baldi
And it presents some unique challenges, but also some extraordinary opportunities for me to low to learn and grow from other individuals and institutions that have built companies to scale, not all in food and beverage, many not.
23:10.17
Stephen Baldi
um But it’s really given me the opportunity to become a better leader um and to take our company into the next five to 10 years of what we will be.
23:20.35
vigorbranding
That’s fantastic. you know i the the The COVID obviously affected everybody. It affected everybody in different ways. and like For us for a business, it was and it was really interesting in that you know because we have several different agencies in our holding company, it was sort of a little bit of a like a mutual fund where one or two stocks could be really down, but then others can be up. Our CPG agency, Quench,
23:40.72
vigorbranding
you know we’ We’re doing we’re doing brands national brands like you know Sunmade Raise and Stark Institute. To me, COVID, to to that to that company and those brands, COVID was like the greatest sampling program in the history of Earth. i mean If you put it in a package back then, it was on a shelf. People bought it. They stuck it in their pantries. They ate it. They bought more of it. i mean They couldn’t get enough of it. i mean It was just ah an insane time.
24:01.94
vigorbranding
for those companies. and then the other the The negative side obviously was the restaurants and everything else. i mean It’s a really interesting time. and and you know You said about how you it can define things. the other thing One of the other things we did was we took adversity. We had all these CEOs that were like, what is everyone doing? i mean like you you know This just happened. It was unprecedented. What is everybody else doing? so We thought, well,
24:23.89
vigorbranding
All right, we’re not making i mean and and again it’s not we’re not making revenue businesses down, but we still have these relationships. They’re our clients. So what can we do? So it wasn’t my idea, but one of our guys said, hey, let’s create sort of a round table. of that And our agency is called Varsity. So we called it the Varsity Round Table. So we got all these CEOs that were just like,
24:41.34
vigorbranding
What’s everyone doing? And they were able to talk and it was so successful that we did it the next week. And then they talked more and then more and more CEOs jumped in. They weren’t even our clients and became this open source sharing that has now been, we are on about, I think it’s like 250th.
24:58.49
vigorbranding
roundt We’ve been doing them every week since the first month of COVID.
25:04.38
Stephen Baldi
Wow, impressive.
25:05.19
vigorbranding
And what’s done for a company, for us, i mean again we don’t make any money from it. And it wasn’t about that. It was just a place for people to really vent and help. And now we have speakers come in and talk, and everyone’s obviously well beyond COVID.
25:16.71
vigorbranding
But it’s really allowed us to be a thought leader and assist these folks. And you know at the end of the day, it’s what it’s all about. And I know a big thing for you is is mentorship, right? I mean, you know talk about giving back. you want you Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
25:27.81
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, I’ll talk about that but I’ll also talk similarly to your roundtable so in February of 2020 I had the privilege of joining the organization YPO, which is Young President Organization, which is very similar to what you define there’s 35.
25:42.82
Stephen Baldi
1,000 YPO members globally. And it’s really for business leaders who have decided that they want to walk towards betterment as a person, as a leader, as a family member, as someone contributing to their community in partnership with other leaders.
25:58.55
Stephen Baldi
And so I am in the Washington DC Baltimore chapter here ah in the region.
25:58.93
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
26:04.18
Stephen Baldi
And I’m in leadership. And I can tell you that organization was really critical in me navigating everything that I had to go through ah during COVID.
26:14.98
Stephen Baldi
Now, we didn’t we didn’t meet weekly, um but we do meet monthly in a small group of seven to 10 people, and we have forum.
26:15.26
vigorbranding
Sure.
26:19.82
vigorbranding
Monthly forum.
26:22.81
Stephen Baldi
And, oh, there you go.
26:22.85
vigorbranding
I didn’t know I’m i’m YPO, too. I didn’t know your IPO. Yeah, I’ve been.
26:25.92
Stephen Baldi
Yeah!
26:26.21
vigorbranding
Yeah.
26:27.01
Stephen Baldi
So YDO is really what sustained me during COVID.
26:27.03
vigorbranding
So Oh.
26:29.86
Stephen Baldi
um And I’m privileged to be on the ladder now in leadership.
26:32.72
vigorbranding
Do for you.
26:35.01
Stephen Baldi
And so, yeah, as far as mentorship, when I started the company, you know it was a priority for me to give opportunity to underrepresented populations. um Now, as I started to grow the company, my focus started to turn inward, Michael, if I’m being honest. And you know the beginning of 2020, it was difficult for anybody to tell me that I wasn’t the shit. I built this company from zero to something much larger than I had ever aspired to as a young person.
27:04.34
vigorbranding
Right.
27:06.68
Stephen Baldi
um But COVID took all of that away.
27:08.81
vigorbranding
Yeah.
27:09.14
Stephen Baldi
And so what it reminded me of is that there was a mission that I started this company with. And it was something that I needed to recommit to when we reopened.
27:19.90
Stephen Baldi
And so now um we’re really pouring into our crew members um When I hire someone, specifically, let’s take Dunkin Donuts.
27:30.76
Stephen Baldi
If I bring in someone as a frontline worker that’s pouring coffee, if they’re still pouring coffee for us in three years, both them and the organization has done something wrong.
27:34.59
vigorbranding
Mmhmm.
27:41.17
Stephen Baldi
um We want to scale people up. It is not cost effective for us to have people in the same position for multiple years. So if we’re not scaling someone up to take on additional responsibility inside our company and sometimes even outside of our company, then we’ve done something wrong. you know My mentor told me a good leader ah expects or wants people to leave. A great leader expects them to.
28:08.64
vigorbranding
Yeah.
28:09.01
Stephen Baldi
And so either they’re leaving the position that we’re hiring them for or they’re leaving to go to another organization. But either way, we have to invest in our hourly crew members because we can’t afford not to.
28:20.86
vigorbranding
Yeah.
28:21.76
Stephen Baldi
And so that’s something that we really communicate out and share out. to our community and our organization and people know that we’re gonna invest in them in ways that other companies might not to and we feel like that gives us a competitive advantage and as a leader it makes me feel a good about not only our bottom line results but also the success that we can feel. I have a manager who’s been with us for eight years.
28:46.57
Stephen Baldi
Her name is Marta. And she started as a single unit manager. And now she’s a multi-airport director.
28:53.24
vigorbranding
awesome.
28:53.39
Stephen Baldi
And to see her growth and to understand the impact that that has has had on her family is tremendous. And I want to do that a hundred times over.
29:00.50
vigorbranding
Sure.
29:00.79
Stephen Baldi
And I have the privilege of being able to do that as a leader of our company.
29:01.01
vigorbranding
Yeah.
29:04.70
vigorbranding
and And think of it this way, I mean, and that’s what’s so great about this country, I’ll say is like, you were making whatever $22,000 a year, I think you had free room or board or whatever you were managing, right?
29:12.60
Stephen Baldi
I did.
29:13.65
vigorbranding
So you you’re probably like, I’m getting by, this is okay. And look, you and you know, obviously, you’re you’re very well educated, you have a great drive and personality, but you you created a a huge company. And that’s, that’s, that’s really super cool, really super cool.
29:25.90
Stephen Baldi
Well, Michael, I can tell you specifically in that first year, 2002, I made $19,117 and 43 cents. I can tell you that specifically because that W2 still sits on my desk.
29:36.80
Stephen Baldi
I have it framed.
29:36.84
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah.
29:37.68
Stephen Baldi
I look at it every day just to remind me of where all of this started and where now we’ve grown the company to I’m, I’m extremely proud.
29:45.15
vigorbranding
Yeah. And you know, you mentioned YPO and I’ve been very privileged to be in that organization for, gosh, I think at least 20 some years.
29:53.06
Stephen Baldi
So you joined when you were 17.
29:54.45
vigorbranding
Yeah, no, but yeah, it’s one of those things, is we you know, it used to kick you out when you’re 50. In fact, I did, I got the rocking chair and showed up at the front door.
30:02.59
Stephen Baldi
Oh, there you go.
30:03.68
vigorbranding
Yeah, that was the thing. And then they decided to have YPO Gold, WPO and all that. stuff So I stayed in and now we’re like a forum for life. So my guys, we meet once a month and we are together. ah we A lot of it’s virtual because these guys, a lot of it, we’re retired and stuff.
30:15.91
vigorbranding
So um I’m old. I mean, the it’s YPO o Gold, but I always say it’s Silent G, you know, YPO old. So, but it’s a, it was the greatest thing I’ve ever done for me.
30:26.29
vigorbranding
Maybe a better husband, better father, better businessman, a better employer, better ah a friend. I mean, and I i mean that.
30:32.27
Stephen Baldi
and human
30:33.29
vigorbranding
Yeah. It’s just a better human. And I think a lot of people see it from the outside and think it’s all, it’s a bunch of guys didn’t talk about how many cars they have and where they want vacation. It’s not that at all.
30:40.24
Stephen Baldi
It’s not that it’s a transformational community, you know, having a high trust network is invaluable.
30:40.92
vigorbranding
You know, it’s, you know, it’s a, it is, it is.
30:47.41
vigorbranding
Yep. Yeah. Someone’s got your back, right? You can always pick up that phone and call your, one of your folks and just, they got your back. No, that’s yeah.
30:54.39
Stephen Baldi
And it’s nobody, and it’s nobody, nothing, never. And to have that level of confidentiality is special.
30:57.03
vigorbranding
That’s right. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that’s that’s awesome. That’s all good for you. I had no idea. That’s fantastic. um So, but now I’m going to do a little ploy here. You got to go and you should go to Austin this year to the food and beverage round table.
31:10.60
vigorbranding
I mean, if you can check it out, it’ll be, I think it’s in in January, you know, I’ll probably be speaking there, but you should go.
31:14.55
Stephen Baldi
OK.
31:16.84
vigorbranding
I mean, you know, I’d love to meet you in person. It’d be fantastic.
31:18.67
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, I’d love that.
31:18.88
vigorbranding
Anyway, so could we do,
31:20.42
Stephen Baldi
Maybe we’ll be celebrating a Phillies World Series by then.
31:22.74
vigorbranding
Oh man, you’re making me nervous. um I hope so. I hope you’re right. I hope you’re right. But our company, we do it we do an annual food and beverage trends report every year. We’ve been doing them for like, jeez, 15, 16 years. And so a lot of times we launched it at the food and beverage round table. So it’s always really cool stuff.
31:40.96
Stephen Baldi
Awesome, send me an invite and I’ll be there.
31:41.00
vigorbranding
um Yeah. All right. Well, definitely. I’ll make sure you get it after this, after our conversation here. So, okay. When you go to a restaurant, you you have a choice between human interaction or self ordering kiosks. I know that, you know, you guys need to be really ah high speed, efficient and all that. What what do you, what do you prefer?
31:58.57
Stephen Baldi
Well, it depends, right? Deploying technology is a strategy that ah should be done with intention and asking the question, and then what, right?
32:12.55
Stephen Baldi
um I will tell you a story. So the first time we experimented with self ordering technology was in 2008 at JFK airport terminal five.
32:24.65
Stephen Baldi
And we deployed at the time iPads um at our Dunkin Donuts because we thought, you know, technology is moving in this way and it’s fun and it’s cool, but nobody wants to walk up to a counter and order a coffee by pressing buttons.
32:29.75
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm. Yep.
32:39.85
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm.
32:44.46
Stephen Baldi
You know, communicating to a cashier, ah medium cream and sugar takes about 15 seconds. When you are forcing someone to press hot coffee, then medium, then sugar, then extra sugar, like that’s just, we found that that was a ah strategy that wasn’t ah successfully deployed at that time.
32:58.57
vigorbranding
who
33:05.34
Stephen Baldi
now That was back in 2008. I will say trends have matured since then and so there is an opportunity to have self ordering technology at a place like Dunkin Donuts and people have learned to navigate it quickly. um You have hot buttons for certain high usage items and so I say to people all the time because my friends question me, whenever they see an iPad, they assume that that means that that technology has taken someone’s job. And what I try to educate people on is that you know if you deploy technology in a intentional way, in a smart way, it allows you to redirect
33:45.29
Stephen Baldi
what you would have otherwise spent on front of house and the back of house.
33:46.57
vigorbranding
Mm
33:49.72
Stephen Baldi
Or maybe you’re deploying it at a ah leadership level that’s multi-unit capable.
33:49.78
vigorbranding
hmm.
33:55.24
Stephen Baldi
And so it’s not necessarily ah replacing jobs, but allowing savvy business leaders to take that investment and redeploy it in other ways. I will tell you that the benefit is you know technology doesn’t call out. Sometimes you have to reboot the system, but it always upsells. It always asks you if you want a dessert and always ask you if you want to package your burger with fries. And so to be able to grow your top line ticket, ah that’s only going to drive bottom line outcomes, which allows a business owner like me to look at expansion, to go into other cities, to be able to bring other people along with us because the business is growing. And so there’s opportunity beyond just taking someone’s order. And so
34:40.31
Stephen Baldi
Technology is something you have to look at in parallel kind of decision making. But I enjoy it. There’s some concepts that it resonates more significantly than others. But I think there’s a balance and there needs to be a balance of both going forward. I don’t think we’re ever going to have an industry that is exclusively technology or self ordering driven. um And I think you go in with a bunch of assumptions, you understand how your customers respond to it, and then you be agile enough to adjust appropriately.
35:08.96
vigorbranding
Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. And i I concur. I mean, you know, I don’t want to wait in a massive line, especially from an airport. But, you know, just ordering, pre-ordering and all that kind of stuff isn’t all that funny either.
35:19.32
vigorbranding
So it’s just you with that happy balance. You know, I do like talking to somebody and, you know, because I talk a lot, I guess. But plus, I always ask for some ice in my coffee just a little bit. I don’t want nice coffee.
35:27.30
Stephen Baldi
There you go.
35:27.67
vigorbranding
So it’s a little tough to explain to an iPad, you know, so very soft.
35:31.57
Stephen Baldi
To drop it into a couple of cubes, yeah.
35:32.20
vigorbranding
Whoops. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t want to burn my, burn my mouth. So now I know you have at least one daughter, correct?
35:38.70
Stephen Baldi
I’d have two daughters and a son.
35:39.87
vigorbranding
Two daughters. right All right. Sorry. There we go.
35:41.61
Stephen Baldi
26, 25, and eight.
35:41.75
vigorbranding
This will be great then. Wow. Wow.
35:45.67
Stephen Baldi
I started over, Michael.
35:45.74
vigorbranding
A little gap here.
35:46.59
Stephen Baldi
I started over.
35:47.16
vigorbranding
You had a little gap here.
35:48.55
Stephen Baldi
had I had a couple of gap years.
35:48.93
vigorbranding
A couple of gap years. i well so I have two daughters, 26 as of last week and coming coming up on 29. The reason I bring up these families is you know we all know we love all our kids the same.
36:01.78
Stephen Baldi
No, we don’t.
36:01.79
vigorbranding
But on any but okay but on any given day on any given day, depending on the phone call, depending on the visit, there’s certainly ones that we like other better than others.
36:02.97
Stephen Baldi
No, we don’t.
36:09.94
vigorbranding
Michael Alex, it happens it back and forth all the time, just in case you’re listening. Those are my daughters. um
36:14.34
Stephen Baldi
Love it.
36:15.04
vigorbranding
so you know, we talked about pot belly, we talked about smash burger, we talked about dunking, we talked about timber, we talked about founding farmers, am I missing any any ends?
36:25.21
Stephen Baldi
There you go.
36:27.03
vigorbranding
Which one?
36:27.28
Stephen Baldi
It’s the end. Yeah.
36:27.84
vigorbranding
Which one’s your favorite? What’s your favorite kid there?
36:29.64
Stephen Baldi
My favorite. Wow. You’re going to force me to say that.
36:33.77
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah.
36:34.15
Stephen Baldi
Well, I will tell you, because I don’t know if any of our franchisors are going to listen to this part. I love them all equally, and I am privileged to be able to operate them. I will tell you the one that probably um sits deeply in my soul as a person ah is probably Dunkin’ Donuts.
36:55.45
vigorbranding
Nice.
36:55.85
Stephen Baldi
and And I’ll tell you Dunkin’ Donuts because when I was growing up ah in Southwest Philadelphia off of Cobbs Creek Parkway, I had family that lived out by the airport. And in order to get into that area of the city, you have to travel on Cobbs Creek Parkway.
37:11.63
Stephen Baldi
And there’s a Dunkin Donuts on the corner of Cobbs Creek Parkway and I can’t remember the cross street, but it’s been there for close to probably 30 or 40 years. I’m 48 and I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t there. And I remember seeing that Dunkin Donuts and thinking how rich that franchisee must be to have that score.
37:30.65
Stephen Baldi
Now I know that owning a single franchise is not necessarily a path to generational wealth, but it did, that Dunkin Donuts did put in my mind like what was possible.
37:40.22
vigorbranding
Yeah, that’s cool.
37:40.70
Stephen Baldi
um And so to be able to be now a 14 year franchisee of that brand, um which is our longest franchise relationship, it’s pretty special.
37:46.48
vigorbranding
Super.
37:50.20
vigorbranding
That’s cool. And you know, I’ll say this from the, from the branding side of the world. Uh, what a phenomenal job. I mean, Duncan’s been around forever. I mean, at one point time it was getting a little tired. It was sort of just fading in the woodwork.
38:01.35
vigorbranding
And we know, I mean, all these brands, I mean, they come on strong. They’re, they’re always started somewhere. There’s this regional thing. And then they become these big brands and is they, they struggle to stay relevant.
38:10.04
Stephen Baldi
Right?
38:12.62
vigorbranding
Right. And I think Duncan has just done a remarkable job.
38:16.08
Stephen Baldi
We have, yeah.
38:16.24
vigorbranding
of staying relevant i mean from their graphic design from their marketing their branding to their advertising and all the cool stuff they’ve done that you did you did they blew it away they they absolutely did and yep
38:22.42
Stephen Baldi
I mean, we had the best Super Bowl commercial in my opinion. I mean, Ben Affleck and J.Lo, they did their thing. And Mark Wahlberg, it like it was it was a beautiful commercial.
38:33.65
vigorbranding
Yeah, and you know, it just shows like when you have passion for something, and those guys certainly have passion for for for that part of the world and ah from the Boston area. I just think it’s it was exceptional. In fact, ironically, we have at at our holding company level, Pavone Group, we have the longest running, okay, this is no kidding, the longest running Super Bowl commercial voting mechanism called spotbowl.com.
38:56.66
vigorbranding
So every year we get
38:57.28
Stephen Baldi
OK.
38:59.26
vigorbranding
you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of votes from around the world, and people vote for their favorite Super Bowl commercial as it’s being played, as the game is being played. And then the the national media outlets reach out to us, and then we tell them the results.
39:13.08
vigorbranding
And Dunkin Donuts was was certainly a stellar winner.
39:13.26
Stephen Baldi
OK.
39:16.02
Stephen Baldi
It was and had to be at the top.
39:17.26
vigorbranding
Yeah, it was awesome.
39:17.88
Stephen Baldi
Come on out. Tell me Michael it was at the top.
39:19.04
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah. It was, well, I’m looking over here at my guy that runs it. it was It was the top one. Yeah, it was, it definitely was.
39:24.42
Stephen Baldi
It was, it I thought it was.
39:25.10
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
39:25.89
Stephen Baldi
There you go. Thank you for, thank you for phoning your friend and getting confirmation.
39:26.59
vigorbranding
It was it was awesome.
39:29.55
Stephen Baldi
It was a pretty special advertising.
39:31.41
vigorbranding
Yeah.
39:31.85
Stephen Baldi
And yeah, I didn’t get a chance to order my Duncan jumpsuit, but I’m sure it’s in the mail somewhere.
39:36.72
vigorbranding
Yeah, there you go. there That’s that that everything.
39:38.41
Stephen Baldi
Maybe Duncan corporate will see this and they’ll send me one.
39:38.96
vigorbranding
Although. yeah Yeah, all the merch, everything they did around that was super cool. and the take the outtakes from the
39:43.99
Stephen Baldi
Super cool.
39:46.35
vigorbranding
you know It’s funny too because when it comes to this marketing stuff, like it used to be just a TV spot. and The reason I looked over to ask Dave, Dave’s the guy you spoke to. He’s the one that that kind of heads up this podcast. He’s also the one that really runs Spopple. We’ve been doing this so long that In the beginning, we didn’t know anything.
40:03.48
vigorbranding
In other words, they would the game it was all about the game. The game was played. And then people realized, well, people love the commercials. So we never knew, like like you and everybody else, we just sit there and watch the game, cut the commercial. Oh, it’s a commercial for fill in the blank.
40:15.61
vigorbranding
Now, they release the commercials to us ahead of time.
40:15.73
Stephen Baldi
Yeah.
40:18.45
vigorbranding
They tell us what it’s about. They send us outtakes. They give us information. Because they realize it, because it’s a couple million dollars for 30 seconds, that they need to get as much juice out of the you know squeeze as much juice out of this as possible so they want to know they put stuff online they do teasers and it’s it’s turned into a an event unto itself and uh we’re really proud to have been a part of it so it’s kind of funny that you brought that up that’s cool stuff all
40:39.58
Stephen Baldi
Yeah. Now I will tell you my all time favorite Super Bowl commercial.
40:44.35
vigorbranding
right uh
40:45.67
Stephen Baldi
Now I remember the star, but I don’t even remember the brand.
40:49.95
vigorbranding
-oh
40:50.06
Stephen Baldi
Remember the the commercial with the kid and the Star Wars mask and he was going around zapping things and he went and he zapped the car and the car started.
40:55.24
vigorbranding
Volkswagen. Yeah. Yeah.
40:58.28
Stephen Baldi
That was my all-time favorite more commercial.
40:58.46
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. That was ah that was a Volkswagen spot. That was a fantastic spot.
41:03.91
Stephen Baldi
Fantastic commercial.
41:03.93
vigorbranding
It was a fantastic. You know, I’ll i’ll tell you mine next. i’m I’m a simp and I, you know, ah the Budweiser commercials and
41:11.83
Stephen Baldi
Oh yeah.
41:13.17
vigorbranding
There was one though in particular where the guy, you know, he raises these horses and it goes on to be a Clydesdale and it it takes off and the horse leaves and there’s a parade. And I almost get choked up thinking about it.
41:24.28
vigorbranding
It was so well done. There’s a parade, the guy standing there to parade and the horse sees him, breaks away, chases him down on the road. Oh my gosh. It was, it was, I had to do a live TV commercial. I had to do a live segment on the news about the the best TV spot and and they they, you know, they played it and I wasn’t expecting them to play it.
41:40.60
vigorbranding
I’m like, I had tears going down my face.
41:42.56
Stephen Baldi
Oh, you got emotional.
41:42.51
vigorbranding
I’m like, That’s my favorite.
41:43.64
Stephen Baldi
Oh, look at you.
41:45.41
vigorbranding
I still get emotional. i think but i think it I think it was the best all-time i mean story. It was just cute. so anyway That’s right, man.
41:50.70
Stephen Baldi
And the best story always wins, Michael. Best story always wins.
41:53.25
vigorbranding
That’s right. right yeah Yeah, you know, we always tell people a brand is a promise, ah but you have to tell a story. You have to draw a motion, make them laugh, make them cry, make them feel something about your brand. And that’s how you break through. And it’s always important, you know, a lot of times clients will say stuff, um you know, hey we just want to sell more, we got to do this, we got to do that. And and really it comes down to ah the fact that you’ve you got to do great creative to break through to get people’s attention.
42:19.09
vigorbranding
So, well, I have a couple more questions for you and I want to hit them for sure.
42:21.03
Stephen Baldi
Okay.
42:22.25
vigorbranding
So now look, ah we talked about the airports you’re in, in the in the in the greater DC area, some of the most, I mean, they’re they’re busy, they’re they’re important, they’re huge. Other airports, I mean, you have great concessions in those airports.
42:34.37
vigorbranding
Other airports that you think have great concessions in the country?
42:37.16
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, I will tell you, Atlanta, one of the busiest airports in the world, definitely in this country.
42:42.95
vigorbranding
Oh yeah, oh yeah. yeah
42:45.86
Stephen Baldi
um And then Houston, Orlando, Chicago, Charlotte, these are all markets that we kind of look at.
42:49.80
vigorbranding
Mm hmm. Oh yeah.
42:54.54
vigorbranding
Massive hubs.
42:56.51
Stephen Baldi
um It’s important for us to be in high demand airport systems, because you never know how the world’s going to,
43:02.80
vigorbranding
Yeah.
43:05.21
Stephen Baldi
respond. And Morgan Hausl is one of the people who I look to for kind of strategic direction.
43:12.04
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
43:13.49
Stephen Baldi
I’m thinking about my business. And one thing he always says is that as a business leader, if you’re only planning for the risk and threats that you can predict, you’re probably missing the biggest one.
43:24.90
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah.
43:25.41
Stephen Baldi
um And so how we kind of shelter ourselves from that is we go into high demand markets. So even if an airline, a legacy airline like an American or United or a Delta or a Southwest ah decides that they no longer want to operate in that market, there’ll be another legacy carrier chomping at the bit together.
43:44.09
vigorbranding
Sure.
43:44.40
Stephen Baldi
And so that’s one of our strategy when we’re looking to grow nationally is to look at high demand airport markets.
43:44.77
vigorbranding
Sure. Mm hmm.
43:51.29
Stephen Baldi
And those are just a few that I named.
43:53.58
vigorbranding
I’m a big fan of Morgan has effect. We have him speaking at our, at our YPO. He’s, he’s one of, I think he might even be next month’s speaker. So I’m really, really, are you really, that’s all his book.
44:00.64
Stephen Baldi
ah We’re bringing them in on the 13th of November. Yeah.
44:04.00
vigorbranding
His book’s incredible. Incredible. I made my daughter’s read it. So, um, what’s next for balding management group. And mean we talked about in other airports. What’s, what’s next for you? What’s what’s your vision? Where are you were are you hoping to go?
44:13.26
Stephen Baldi
my My vision is to grow the tent and plant trees that I may never even know their shade, um because that’s when I think a community and when a business is thriving is when you’re willing to do things that you might not be able to see to fruition. And so we’re trying to build a company, not trying, we are building a company that will rise the tide for all the boats. I want to create another 20, 25 stories just like mine.
44:41.46
vigorbranding
Yeah.
44:41.62
Stephen Baldi
um I can invest and grow my company so that it’s beneficial and creates generational wealth for me, but I also have the opportunity to listen to the individuals whose stories might not necessarily be taken to the top because they’re not fully formed or well articulated.
44:59.34
Stephen Baldi
I try to look for those people, because I was once that person.
45:00.66
vigorbranding
yeah
45:02.15
Stephen Baldi
I was the property manager in the office, and Cynthia Garber came and tapped me on the shoulder, which she did not have to do.
45:02.50
vigorbranding
yep
45:08.96
Stephen Baldi
And so I’m trying to identify those voices in our companies, the people in leadership, but also the people who we don’t necessarily identify with immediately, because a lot of our workforce our ESL where English is a second language.
45:24.24
Stephen Baldi
And so verbal communication is a challenge, but I don’t want that to get in the way of us knowing or identifying the next star in our organization.
45:24.69
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yep.
45:33.22
Stephen Baldi
So we’re doing things to kind of bridge the gap between ah those verbal communication kind of challenges so that every voice that’s in our organization can be heard because listen.
45:44.32
Stephen Baldi
I won’t pour a cup of coffee or flip a burger or roll a pretzel today, but that’s how our business runs. And so I want to give opportunity and visibility to those individuals in a very intentional way.
45:53.22
vigorbranding
Sure.
45:59.67
Stephen Baldi
So that’s what’s next ah for the company. And I think if you know you pay attention to the pennies and the nickels, the dollars make sense. And I believe if you focus on organizationally, the people who may be at the bottom of the ladder, you’ll grow the tent and the business in a way where there’s more opportunity created for everyone who’s valuable.
46:20.08
Stephen Baldi
And so that’s what I’m committed to, Michael.
46:21.72
vigorbranding
Fantastic. a Question. Have you ever, have you ever spoke to the woman who tapped you on the shoulder? Have you ever told her?
46:27.38
Stephen Baldi
i I mention Cynthia Garber every time I get the yeah opportunity to share how she interceded in my life.
46:30.01
vigorbranding
Yeah.
46:33.70
Stephen Baldi
And we text probably once or twice a year, but she knows how important she is to me.
46:36.60
vigorbranding
Oh, good. That’s awesome.
46:39.09
Stephen Baldi
um We haven’t seen each other in person probably 10 years, but I tell her story every time I speak about my journey because it was instrumental.
46:44.19
vigorbranding
That’s awesome.
46:47.22
Stephen Baldi
So she’s aware.
46:47.33
vigorbranding
Hey, that’s got to get you to pay yeah pay it forward, pay it back. And you got to make sure that you yeah you acknowledge the folks that helped you get there.
46:51.02
Stephen Baldi
and of pay for
46:54.07
vigorbranding
That’s, that’s huge.
46:54.84
Stephen Baldi
And you know what’s remarkable, Michael, over the 18 years that I’ve been in the business, 16 years leading this company, every now and then I’ll get a text message or I’ll get a direct ah message on LinkedIn of someone who worked for our organization and matriculated somewhere else.
47:11.24
Stephen Baldi
And I’ve lost contact with, and they’ve done the same for me.
47:12.80
vigorbranding
here
47:14.06
Stephen Baldi
So I know how special it is.
47:15.49
vigorbranding
That’s cool.
47:15.94
Stephen Baldi
And so whenever I get the opportunity, I try to tell people how they’ve impacted my life.
47:16.98
vigorbranding
Yeah.
47:19.90
vigorbranding
Very cool. well Stephen, I have one one last question. You’ve been phenomenal by the way. I can talk for you for hours. You’re you’re awesome. ah One last question. All right. And can’t you can’t pick pot belly or one of your, you can’t pick one of your brands, but if you had one final meal, what would you eat and why?
47:35.33
Stephen Baldi
Oh, this is the easy, this is the easy.
47:36.24
vigorbranding
Oh, good. All right. Sometimes people struggle with this. so
47:38.51
Stephen Baldi
No, it’s not a struggle. Michael, I’m from Philadelphia. If I gave any answer other than a gym steak with whizzing American, with fried onions, hot peppers, pickles, and ketchup, I would be doing my city a disservice.
47:42.03
vigorbranding
Yeah. Okay. Oh, nice.
47:52.46
vigorbranding
There you go. That’s good.
47:53.31
Stephen Baldi
So that’s what it would be.
47:53.56
vigorbranding
Good. Great. ah Great answer. Great answer. It’s funny, you know, I, yeah, come on, man.
47:56.67
Stephen Baldi
North and South, if you haven’t been, you should go the next time you’re in Philadelphia.
48:00.24
vigorbranding
I’ve been, I had a gym.
48:01.51
Stephen Baldi
I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to your audience.
48:02.84
vigorbranding
and Okay. I was going to say, I had a gym stick last week and I’m not making that up. We had, I don’t know if I mentioned, but we had, uh, brought in agencies, independent agencies, all from all around North America, i guys from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada, all over the continental U S come to Philadelphia.
48:19.70
vigorbranding
and during happy. We took them to dinners. We took them. We treated them right. We showed them the city independence and all that stuff. But when we had the happy hour at my offices, I had pats and I had gyms and we had little little forks and we did a cheesesteak sampling program.
48:32.46
vigorbranding
You know, yeah, they you you do know who won.
48:32.82
Stephen Baldi
Oh, and I know who won.
48:35.35
vigorbranding
So I know, you know, I know, you know, hey, I’ll throw another one out there.
48:36.36
Stephen Baldi
I won’t make you name it, but I know, I know who won.
48:41.02
vigorbranding
Pat or Tony Luke’s down on Oregon Avenue.
48:42.86
Stephen Baldi
Oh, he looks great.
48:43.85
vigorbranding
The original.
48:44.04
Stephen Baldi
De La Sandro’s Mama’s Pizzeria on Belmont Avenue.
48:44.87
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. tell sound good You know, you you know.
48:48.67
Stephen Baldi
I haven’t lived in the city before the years, but it’s still, I know where to go.
48:48.76
vigorbranding
Yeah, man. Yeah, you know, those, those, those are legacy places, you know, and and yeah, it’s all good, all good.
48:54.82
Stephen Baldi
For sure.
48:56.68
vigorbranding
In fact, you know what, that’ll be my happy meal. The Phillies will be in the playoffs and I do, I slide down into and get a cheesesteak before the game. It’s a, it’s a part of the whole shtick. So I’m excited about it.
49:04.48
Stephen Baldi
And you also have to get a wild, wild fruit punch. Come on now.
49:06.31
vigorbranding
Oh, there you go.
49:07.00
Stephen Baldi
You gotta round it out.
49:07.01
vigorbranding
There you go. Yeah, that’s, that’s that’s funny. Well, Steven, it was fantastic. I really appreciate your time. Uh, and it was wonderful talking to you.
49:14.87
Stephen Baldi
I appreciate the invitation. And listen, good luck with the rest of your forktails going forward. It seems like you’ve had an incredible run with the amount of episodes that you’ve already had. And I hope you you know multiply that by 10, if that is your intention and desire.
49:27.00
vigorbranding
Thanks. That’s awesome. Appreciate you.
vigorbrandin00:01.99
vigorbranding
Hey folks, welcome to Fork Tales, and I’m excited. Today’s guest is Stephen Baldy. He’s the founder and president of Baldy Management Group. Baldy Management Group is an airport concessions and management consulting company. It’s a mouthful there. ah Manages concessions in Reagan National Airport, JFK International Airport, and Dulles International Airport. ah Stephen, welcome to Fork Tales, and thank you so much for joining us.
00:25.82
Stephen Baldi
Michael, thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to the conversation.
00:29.01
vigorbranding
So for those that don’t know, all of these are located in the sort of DC Metro, Baltimore or down at DC Metro area, right?
00:36.21
Stephen Baldi
Correct.
00:37.04
vigorbranding
Yeah.
00:37.19
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, even though Philadelphia is my hometown, I’ve been in Washington DC for almost 30 years. um So this is home base for us.
00:46.37
vigorbranding
yeah Well, you you you know, I have a little trick question because that was going to be my first question. Are you still a Philly sports fan? I mean, do you bleed Eagle Green?
00:53.03
Stephen Baldi
if If you cut me, it would be nothing but green. I live in Washington, DC.
00:56.48
vigorbranding
OK, beautiful.
00:57.88
Stephen Baldi
My heart is in Philadelphia.
00:59.81
vigorbranding
Beautiful, beautiful. Wow. There’s, there’s guys, I don’t even know what they call themselves these days. these’s The commanders, the Washington football club.
Yeah, Michael, my family would disown me if anything other than my ah zip code changed as far as my hometown affiliation.
01:10.06
vigorbranding
So that’s fantastic. Hey, it’s awesome. You got to bring, I had a gentleman come in, uh, from, uh, Oregon last week to speak to a bunch of advertising agencies from North America. We hosted them in Philadelphia and this guy was so excited. He was, he, he, he came from there, but he was Philly through and through. So everything in his presentation tied back to a Philly icon, something about Philadelphia that was iconic. And, you know, ah in our company, we’re,
01:44.34
vigorbranding
We’re very proud that we’re an independent advertising agencies. We have an agency called Vigor and an agency called Quench. Vigor’s restaurant branding. Quench is food and beverage marketing. And the whole thing was around independence and how it’s how important it is.
01:57.06
vigorbranding
And he had all these great icons from like Nick Foles to, ah you know, ah Mike Schmidt to the Fanatic to, I mean, Will Smith.
02:07.11
vigorbranding
I mean, he just went through all the Philadelphia stuff, you know, the Liberty Bell and everything else. and So it was cool. It was cool.
02:11.77
Stephen Baldi
um I love it. I’ll tell you an interesting story about Nick Foles. So I had a really good feeling about our Super Bowl run, even though you know Carson Wentz, who was leading as the MVP that year, went down. And the Friday before the Super Bowl, something told me to go online and buy a Nick Foles autograph helmet.
02:33.57
vigorbranding
Wow.
02:34.10
Stephen Baldi
And I did. Now, I did not expedite the shipping, Michael. So it was not in my possession on Monday after we had won the Super Bowl. And many of my friends said that helmet’s never going to show up, but it did.
02:47.65
Stephen Baldi
So I bought it for $99.
02:47.77
vigorbranding
That’s awesome.
02:49.77
Stephen Baldi
And I can tell you, it’s it’s worth a lot more than that.
02:51.92
vigorbranding
That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s worth a lot to people in Philadelphia. So it’s fantastic. And the pride of that city runs deep. So alright, so tell us about Baldy enter Management Group and what it does what inspired you to get into the airport concession games. I mean, you started I think in residential property, right?
03:06.90
Stephen Baldi
I did. I started in residential property management in 2002. And I started in airports in 2005. And it was all kind of serendipitous. I had a really ah prickly history before starting in 2002.
03:23.22
Stephen Baldi
at Kettler Management, which managed tax credit properties, but also Class A luxury communities.
03:29.04
vigorbranding
Okay.
03:29.23
Stephen Baldi
And I had a tenant coming to my office. And she said, Steven, I see you engaging with the residents and how you handle issues. And I think you should be doing more. And I thought to myself, like this woman doesn’t know me.
03:39.92
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, I just fixed her fireplace. But who are you to come in my office and tell me what I should be doing? And at the time, I was making $22,000 a year with a Georgetown degree. And the job that they wanted me to interview for paid $85,000 a year.
03:54.21
vigorbranding
wow
03:54.39
Stephen Baldi
So as you can assume, Michael, goal I took the interview, I got the job. And so for three years, I worked in development for Westfield, which most people know as shopping mall developers, they have an airport division.
04:05.82
vigorbranding
Hmm. Ah.
04:07.99
Stephen Baldi
And so I was responsible for the redevelopment of national airport here in Washington, DC from 2005. to 2008. And then I leveraged a relationship with OTG Management, which has a very large presence at Philadelphia International, um into a joint venture relationship and actually launched the company, BMG, in 2008. And two thousand and eight and it’s we’ve not looked back since.
04:31.36
vigorbranding
That’s fantastic. you know It’s funny. I really i don’t know you. we’re We’re really talking for the first time. I can tell right away, like youre you have a positive attitude, and I can tell you’re engaging. And so I could see how someone would see you in action and be like, hey, you know you you could do more. like You can be a part of something bigger. And it’s obviously what’s happened, which is it’s awesome. I’m a big proponent of attitude. I mean, i I love to know where people went to school. I mean, if you if I interview you, I want to see your brains on the table.
04:58.39
vigorbranding
But I really want to know what your personality is like. I want to know about your attitude. I want to know ah how ah how much of a ah person you are that wants to win and be engaging and help people. And it’s ah like it comes through with you right away.
05:09.91
vigorbranding
And that’s ah it’s cool.
05:10.18
Stephen Baldi
I appreciate that.
05:11.03
vigorbranding
now it’s it’s
05:11.32
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, i’ll I’ll take it back if you if you want me to. So ah back in 1988, I was turning 13 and I begged my mom for a pair of Air Jordan sneakers.
05:24.58
Stephen Baldi
And you’ll remember when Gordon’s first came out, ah they were the first shoe over a hundred dollars.
05:25.72
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah.
05:29.85
vigorbranding
Oh, yes, they were.
05:30.36
Stephen Baldi
yeah I grew up in a upper lower class household and it was a stretch for my mom to purchase these shoes.
05:31.49
vigorbranding
Yep.
05:37.09
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
05:38.21
Stephen Baldi
But I begged her and I begged her and I begged her and and she ended up buying them for me. And she said, you know, I just want you to be safe. Well, you probably can assume where the story goes. Within like a month of getting these sneakers, I was an attempted robbery, and I acted very violently to defend myself, and it resulted in me getting expelled from the school that I was at.
05:59.94
Stephen Baldi
And as a punishment, ah rather than letting me play basketball for the entire summer, my mom forced me to go to the reading math and basketball clinic at Friend Central, which is a very prominent independent school on the main line of Philadelphia.
06:14.39
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
06:14.96
Stephen Baldi
And that decision changed my life. um I went from living in a predominantly all-Black neighborhood to a private school that I was the only Black male in my class.
06:25.11
vigorbranding
Wow.
06:25.74
Stephen Baldi
And what it did was it changed my perspective of what was accessible. like I had never seen a computer before.
06:31.75
vigorbranding
Right.
06:32.14
Stephen Baldi
And at this school, there was in a computer lab where we could sit down and navigate things.
06:34.40
vigorbranding
Yeah.
06:36.15
Stephen Baldi
And so going to Friends Central, having my mom make that leap of faith changed my trajectory in many ways. I matriculated from there to Georgetown University here in Washington, DC, which is how I got.
06:48.20
Stephen Baldi
to Washington DC. So I am a super Philadelphia sports fan, because not only am I from Philly, but Allen Iverson was my classmate at Georgetown University.
06:51.93
vigorbranding
That’s awesome.
06:55.50
vigorbranding
Is that right?
06:56.61
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, we were the same class.
06:56.89
vigorbranding
Wow.
06:57.61
Stephen Baldi
And so, yeah, very cool.
06:58.33
vigorbranding
That’s so cool. Yeah.
07:00.38
Stephen Baldi
And so maya my commitment to making meaningful connections with people comes from way back then when I was forced to do it, not only because of who I am, but my circumstances.
07:00.74
vigorbranding
AI. It’s legendary.
07:12.75
Stephen Baldi
And I’ve tried to carry that out through my career and my life.
07:15.84
vigorbranding
That’s fantastic. what a great That’s great. That’s a great story. you know it’s like It’s funny that on the Air Jordans, at that time, when they came out, and I can follow you on that. i know you You nailed it. You said the first sneaker that was over $100. My dad had ah this like mom and pop retail sporting store. We sold mostly like hockey stuff. We were from Hershey, Pennsylvania.
07:35.39
vigorbranding
And I was working in a store in in Camp Hill and outside of Hershey. It’s up in the West Shore, they call it. Anyway, long story short, I was in the mall and we sold some sneakers and the Air Jordans came out and we had them on the wall.
07:48.37
vigorbranding
And it was like, it was insane. $100 for a pair of sneakers.
07:52.08
Stephen Baldi
Yeah.
07:52.28
vigorbranding
And I mean, like, whereas I’ll say the average then was probably like on the high end was probably like 50, 55.
07:57.40
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, for sure.
07:58.58
vigorbranding
And this went right to 100. And it was funny, my dad, maybe that’s where I started learning about, and I really did learn a lot about marketing, working in retail, because you have to talk to people, you have to sell. And I think that’s the most important skill a person can learn. Communicating with people and learning how to sell, like, you know, at least present yourself, right? So I put these sneakers at the very top. I said, dad, you know what? ah I said, everybody wants the Air Jordans. Most people can’t afford them.
08:21.42
vigorbranding
but everyone wants to come and look at it. So I always sell them the white, the white, men’s the body they’re like but you know, so for every one Air Jordan, I saw, I used to sell like 30 other pairs of shoes.
08:25.49
Stephen Baldi
ah yeah
08:30.65
vigorbranding
You know what I mean?
08:31.05
Stephen Baldi
It’s been up in the store. It’s like a newspaper. People don’t necessarily want just the newspaper, at least the retailer does it, but they come in to buy the newspaper and then they buy the water, the soda, the candy.
08:33.13
vigorbranding
That’s right.
08:39.73
vigorbranding
That’s right. yeah I lured them in with the Air Jordans. I think we had like five parrot the most. I mean, we couldn’t afford, you know, it’s a little mom pop store.
08:46.41
Stephen Baldi
Probably two sizes.
08:47.56
vigorbranding
Yeah, right. That’s exactly right. So that’s funny. So okay, you talked about sports and and and you know, Philly and all that you you pride yourself on um being a local company and playing in front of the home crowd.
08:58.99
vigorbranding
Talk a little bit about the the local connection in DC that you have.
09:02.34
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, so I’ll tell you, when you fly into most airports, what people don’t automatically see, but being a former developer, I understand that any airport authority, when you land in their airport, they want you to know what city you are in.
09:18.24
Stephen Baldi
So national brands are extremely important. So you’ll have your Dunkin’ Donuts. You’ll have your Pop-Belly’s, which are ah franchises that we operate.
09:22.12
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
09:25.89
Stephen Baldi
But every airport wants you to have a sense of place. So when you fly into Philadelphia Airport, you’ll have a Jim Stakes, because that’s you know historical to that region.
09:34.38
vigorbranding
Yeah.
09:34.93
Stephen Baldi
When you fly into National Airport here, or Dallas International, you’ll have your South Blocks, which is an ASE base. com concept here in the DC.
09:45.49
Stephen Baldi
You’ll have Ben’s Chili Bowl, which has been around since the 60s.
09:45.90
vigorbranding
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
09:49.41
Stephen Baldi
And so we’ve prided ourselves from identifying and connecting with other founder-led brands, because I’m a founder. And nothing against a hired gun.
09:56.93
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
09:58.81
Stephen Baldi
I know they are often effective at their job. But there’s something different about a founder-led company because you’ve built it.
10:06.95
vigorbranding
Yeah.
10:07.27
Stephen Baldi
it probably has more ah meaning to you behind just the bottom line um results that you drive. It’s personal.
10:15.52
vigorbranding
Yeah.
10:15.69
Stephen Baldi
And so we’ve developed very deep relationships with companies like founding farmers, with timber pizza, who are all local based companies here. And we expect to continue to grow it, not just in this region that we’re in, but as we grow into other markets to do the same.
10:30.68
vigorbranding
Yeah, that’s that’s fantastic. And you nailed it. I mean, like, I’m a founder, I’m an entrepreneur. And you know, and ah again, wonderful folks that that work with me, I’m very, very, very lucky. But you know, for for most people, it’s their job, you know, their career, and and hopefully there’s a sense of of a family and a real relationship.
10:49.53
vigorbranding
But for me, it’s my life. I mean, i am I am defined personally by this, which is probably pretty shallow.
10:51.05
Stephen Baldi
right
10:54.86
vigorbranding
I mean, i mean look, um I love my daughters. I’m a dad. I’m ah a husband. I love my family with all my heart, but I feel like I’m defined by my company and the what I’ve built. and and all of that And I just, you know, so again, I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing or whatever, but it’s just, it’s ah it’s a lot deeper, right?
11:11.93
vigorbranding
When you found something and ah it’s it’s a lot deeper, everyone thinks it has to do with like money and stuff, and it really doesn’t.
11:12.49
Stephen Baldi
Right. For sure.
11:17.73
vigorbranding
It’s a it’s really about, you know, sort of like your life’s life’s work. and You know, you know, I get I get the most excitement out of seeing the growth of the folks in the company. ah It’s great to see the brands grow and the companies grow.
11:30.42
vigorbranding
But I really get a kick out of of seeing the folks that have been here a long time and and all that. So anyway, that’s just that’s me.
11:35.91
Stephen Baldi
right
11:36.26
vigorbranding
But I just I totally I totally concur with what you’re saying as far as the founder led. I mean, that’s that’s fantastic.
11:41.40
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, at some point as a founder, you most likely had to put something at risk that meant something to you.
11:47.14
vigorbranding
Yeah.
11:47.50
Stephen Baldi
Whether it’s personal guaranteeing, first leverage to build the company or, you know, having to bail it out because you run into a pandemic, which we all face back in 2020.
11:47.75
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
11:55.18
vigorbranding
All right.
11:57.80
Stephen Baldi
um Oftentimes you can’t just walk from that business and matriculate to another W2 position because this is yours. And so I love when I can connect with founders.
12:04.69
vigorbranding
Yeah.
12:07.41
Stephen Baldi
I’ll work with non-founders also, but there’s something unique about the journey we’ve all been on.
12:09.54
vigorbranding
Sure.
12:11.88
vigorbranding
Yeah, absolutely. So let’s let’s talk a little bit. I just so folks know, I mean, what’s really cool about this conversation is I, ah you know, with vigor, we work with restaurant brands, right?
12:22.32
vigorbranding
So we’re very familiar with restaurant brands. And you you have brands like Potbelly, Smashburger. You said founding farmers soon to come. ah Timber Pizza, Dunkin, I mean, some some household names.
12:33.94
vigorbranding
I don’t know if I’m um yeah any ants.
12:34.26
Stephen Baldi
On the end, don’t forget on the end, this is what else we have.
12:35.99
vigorbranding
No, I can’t actually. Yeah, we actually worked on any answers. We have an agency called quench that a branding agency, Food and Beverage, that that actually worked with Auntie Anne’s because they started here in Lancaster.
12:40.96
Stephen Baldi
Okay.
12:45.88
vigorbranding
hu Yeah, and I got to meet Anne Byler in the beginning.
12:45.98
Stephen Baldi
They did.
12:48.81
vigorbranding
So, Auntie Anne is actually a person and she’s a wonderful lady and It was a really really awesome to meet her and and and what a she was so she’s a very philanthropic lady very very ah ah Generous and very successful very so she’s got a phenomenal story as well. But so yeah, I certainly won’t leave the auntie hands out But you so you have all these great brands um Talk a little bit about I mean, you know, you said somewhere founded by they you know the founders and all that what’s it like to to manage all these different brands and
13:18.00
Stephen Baldi
I’ll tell you, it’s a dynamic environment. Airports are a wonderful place to do business. Again, I share with you briefly how I matriculated into them, but once you end up in this kind of ecosystem, it’s hard to walk away.
13:33.35
Stephen Baldi
We get the privilege of serving the traveling public every day. And what’s special about that are the passengers are dynamic. There are people who are going on business trips. There are people who are going on vacations. There are people who are going to be celebrated and there are people who are going to, you know,
13:51.28
Stephen Baldi
usher people off into a transition of life. And we get to meet and connect with them all. And so I tell our crew members that we have the privilege of participating in whatever journey people are on every day.
14:03.68
Stephen Baldi
And then the following day, we get a whole new group of people coming through.
14:06.48
vigorbranding
yeah yeah
14:07.36
Stephen Baldi
So that’s dynamic in the industries are small. I will tell you it’s about a $8 billion industry nationally in the United States, food and beverage and airports.
14:14.57
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yeah.
14:19.40
Stephen Baldi
But the industry is really controlled by about 20 key companies. And within those 20 companies, you probably have 50 total key players.
14:23.32
vigorbranding
yeah
14:27.50
Stephen Baldi
And so we know each other. you know You typically don’t leave the industry. Your business card may change. So you may go from company to company, but it’s a small ecosystem. And so I’ve enjoyed being in the industry now.
14:40.58
Stephen Baldi
18 years. I started when I was two. ah But it’s a buy it’s been an extraordinary 18 years, except for some of the challenges like COVID. But you know for the people who were able and blessed to push through it, I think we have a different perspective on what we can be and what we should be in the businesses that we lead. To your point,
15:00.50
Stephen Baldi
um being defined by your business is not necessarily shallow, but there’s levels, there’s there’s depth to what we do.
15:08.62
vigorbranding
Yeah.
15:08.91
Stephen Baldi
And I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to swim in those depths ah for many years.
15:14.41
vigorbranding
That’s awesome. We’ll get to COVID in a second, but I want to go back to airports. ah I’ll say, fortunately or unfortunately, I’m a customer. I’m in an airport every single week. So when you’re describing the people you see there, it’s like, yeah.
15:21.70
Stephen Baldi
Awesome.
15:24.71
vigorbranding
I mean, you know there’s it’s every single walk of life. Everyone seems to have a higher level of stress.
15:30.65
Stephen Baldi
yeah
15:30.77
vigorbranding
Everyone’s in a hurry, even when they’re not, or even worse, if someone’s really not in a hurry and they’re walking slow in the airport, that can actually be more frustrating and stressful. but ah So how do you how do you deal with that chaos? I mean, you got all these people that are amped up and nervous and they have anxiety or whatever, and then all of a sudden you’ve got to serve them and take them, you know, and represent these great brands and and and actually make the stuff and and in a and a fast time because they’re always running late, even if they’re not, they just think they’re always stressed.
15:56.04
Stephen Baldi
Right.
15:59.20
vigorbranding
Talk about airport concessions. Talk about that chaos.
16:02.08
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, so you meet people where they are. And I will tell you, operating a street-side restaurant versus an airport, it’s a completely different sport.
16:09.79
vigorbranding
I cannot imagine.
16:10.73
Stephen Baldi
I tell ah these founder-led companies when they’re thinking about matriculating in the airports, I tell them you know it’s like playing high school varsity basketball.
16:10.80
vigorbranding
yeah
16:19.70
Stephen Baldi
And then you get drafted to the and NBA, like the speed, the requirements, you know, we have to go through the logistical um challenges of having every box that comes into your restaurant scan.
16:20.40
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
16:31.21
Stephen Baldi
Like Cisco’s not pulling up to our back door and delivering our ground beef for Smashburger.
16:31.53
vigorbranding
Yeah.
16:34.05
vigorbranding
Right.
16:35.85
Stephen Baldi
Like it’s going through an X-ray, just like your luggage is.
16:38.86
vigorbranding
Yeah.
16:39.39
Stephen Baldi
um All of our crew members have to go through a 10 year federal background check.
16:44.03
vigorbranding
Sure.
16:44.19
Stephen Baldi
um There’s complexities to the business, which are to our challenge. But to me, it’s also kind of to our benefit, Michael, because it reduces my competition. Because unless you’re a serious player, you’re not trying to participate in airports.
16:54.14
vigorbranding
Mhm.
16:56.81
Stephen Baldi
And so for me, understanding those barriers and be able to navigate them are great. But from a day to day operation standpoint, We encourage our crew members just to meet people where they are.
17:07.93
Stephen Baldi
um It may be the 50th time you’ve welcomed someone to our restaurant, but it’s the first time you’ve spoken to the person that’s in front of you. And again, you don’t know if they’re going on vacation or they’re going to a celebration of life to send a family member home.
17:16.31
vigorbranding
right
17:22.96
Stephen Baldi
Regardless, you should be additive to their experience and not adding additional stress or complications. Just try to deliver them fast, friendly, exceptional,
17:34.09
Stephen Baldi
service because that’s our standard. That is our vision for the company, which is being exceptional is our standard. It’s not something that happens intermittently.
17:42.84
vigorbranding
All right.
17:44.59
Stephen Baldi
It happens all the time. And so we welcome the chaos.
17:45.78
vigorbranding
Yeah.
17:48.05
Stephen Baldi
You know, when it’s raining and snowing outside, even though your flights are delayed, we kind of welcome that because that means you get to hang out with you a little bit longer.
17:54.78
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yeah.
17:55.63
Stephen Baldi
So as long as we’re not canceling flights, if they’re just delayed, that’s kind of our sweet spot.
18:00.01
vigorbranding
There you go.
18:00.65
Stephen Baldi
So we welcome it all.
18:02.58
vigorbranding
That’s awesome. You know, you you said something really interesting. So as I mentioned, Vigor is our agency that that does branding and marketing for restaurants. I know, and it’s not, you know, it’s common knowledge that turnover and and employees in the restaurant industry is like the biggest hassle, right? and Everyone’s dealing with that that turnover. But you just said something. they They have to go through this long, arduous process to get through. So do you find that you have, I’ll say, maybe better better qualified, better quality,
18:32.38
vigorbranding
ah team members in your restaurants?
18:34.64
Stephen Baldi
I would tell you that our hourly and even our salary leadership ah on some levels, they’re more committed because it is a personal investment to get through the process.
18:39.98
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm.
18:45.54
Stephen Baldi
And so, you know, typical food and beverage turnover is anywhere from 100 to 150%. And only ours is closer to like 30.
18:51.64
vigorbranding
Right.
18:54.91
vigorbranding
that’s hey That’s fantastic. I never thought that that would have never dawned on me that that would be ah an unfair advantage. you know It’s funny, like yeah I was telling someone the other day, you know the higher the barrier to entry in business, actually the better the business is because you don’t have just everybody and anybody competing.
19:12.66
vigorbranding
So you you have a higher barrier of entry.
19:13.25
Stephen Baldi
Correct.
19:15.58
vigorbranding
um And with that, you have you sort of have ah have a capture to a degree ah group of people, right? ah But the one thing that is interesting, I think if I remember correctly, I think there’s like 30%, I’ll say of ah if it’s a Dunkin Donuts on the street corner, 30% of their their ah customers will probably repeat, right?
19:35.43
vigorbranding
ah you You are not, I mean, you know you might have the same business guy that flies every Thursday out to you know wherever,
19:37.58
Stephen Baldi
No?
19:40.80
Stephen Baldi
we have We’ll have our Michaels.
19:41.81
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:42.16
Stephen Baldi
We have our Michaels.
19:43.59
vigorbranding
I’ll hit your place and at the airport get a coffee on the way out, but that’s it. Yeah, that’s it. So that’s.
19:48.43
Stephen Baldi
I will tell you, though, we do have outside of the the traveling public, we do have recurring customers who are the people who work at the airport. I mean, at National and Dulles Airport, you get anywhere from five thousand to ten thousand employees that are there every day.
19:56.97
vigorbranding
No, that makes sense. Sure.
20:03.65
Stephen Baldi
And so ah they are also extremely important to us.
20:03.75
vigorbranding
Mm hmm. Hey, they got to eat and drink, right?
20:07.86
Stephen Baldi
They got to eat and drink and they have to do it fast.
20:09.70
vigorbranding
Right. That’s right.
20:10.84
Stephen Baldi
Well, we have different incentives to get them in and out, but they are our recurring customers and they’re about 15 to 20 percent of our business.
20:15.10
vigorbranding
Yeah, that makes sense. Hey, going back to the old mall days that I was talking about the sneakers, I sold a lot of sneakers to people that worked in the mall, not many Air Jordans, but a lot of the, you know, a lot of the lower end sneakers.
20:22.26
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, for sure.
20:27.36
vigorbranding
So, we talked to you hit on earlier and I know we, we inevitably, hopefully one day we, we don’t, and we don’t have to talk about, we always go back and talking about COVID and, uh, you know,
20:35.54
Stephen Baldi
Oh, yeah.
20:37.21
vigorbranding
One of our companies and our holding company is a company called Varsity. And Varsity does retirement communities around the country, we market retirement companies. Well, that that industry shut down. I mean, no one was going, no one was visiting, and people were sick. It was bad. Restaurants, another one of our our agencies, right? We marketed restaurants. No one was going. It was basically shut down. you know Your hospitality Uh, and your restaurants, I mean, and your travel, I mean, you’re, you’re combining it all and how, talk about that a little bit.
21:06.75
vigorbranding
I mean, you were hit from both ends.
21:07.11
Stephen Baldi
Oh, I had the privilege of double dipping.
21:11.81
vigorbranding
Yeah.
21:11.93
Stephen Baldi
So we were in hospitality beverage, but we were also in travel.
21:12.41
vigorbranding
In turmoil.
21:15.47
vigorbranding
Yeah.
21:16.03
Stephen Baldi
And so I remember very specifically on March 11th, 2020, President Trump came on television and he announced a 30-day travel ban to Europe.
21:27.16
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm.
21:28.65
Stephen Baldi
And at the time, ah most people only thought about the impact of air traffic travel to Europe, places like London, Paris.
21:37.58
vigorbranding
right
21:38.31
Stephen Baldi
But I anticipated that this was really the big moment for our industry.
21:43.00
vigorbranding
Right.
21:43.21
Stephen Baldi
I know a lot of people associate kind of their aha moment with COVID becoming a significant thing when the NBA shut down and more importantly, when the NCAA tournament shut down.
21:53.85
Stephen Baldi
But that announcement on March 11th signified for me that things were about to change for my business.
21:58.60
vigorbranding
Yeah.
21:58.72
Stephen Baldi
Now, I didn’t know it was going to be 18 months.
22:02.21
vigorbranding
Right.
22:02.55
Stephen Baldi
um But within about two weeks, we lost 85% of our top line revenue. And so on March 18, we shut the company down for 18 months. um And it was a challenge to what we talked about earlier, where a lot of my identity was tied up in this company that I built.
22:20.39
Stephen Baldi
Well, there was no company to have an identity he tied to. And so for me as a leader, It really pushed me during that time to redefine who I was in that moment and who I was going to aspire to be if we were privileged enough to come out of it. And we did. We’ve come out very strong, stronger than actually we went in. um We actually sold 35% of the business last year to some strategic, but then also some individual investors. And so I’ve had the privilege of surrounding myself where before I was the only voice in the room and now there are many.
22:55.69
vigorbranding
Right.
22:55.77
Stephen Baldi
And it presents some unique challenges, but also some extraordinary opportunities for me to low to learn and grow from other individuals and institutions that have built companies to scale, not all in food and beverage, many not.
23:10.17
Stephen Baldi
um But it’s really given me the opportunity to become a better leader um and to take our company into the next five to 10 years of what we will be.
23:20.35
vigorbranding
That’s fantastic. you know i the the The COVID obviously affected everybody. It affected everybody in different ways. and like For us for a business, it was and it was really interesting in that you know because we have several different agencies in our holding company, it was sort of a little bit of a like a mutual fund where one or two stocks could be really down, but then others can be up. Our CPG agency, Quench,
23:40.72
vigorbranding
you know we’ We’re doing we’re doing brands national brands like you know Sunmade Raise and Stark Institute. To me, COVID, to to that to that company and those brands, COVID was like the greatest sampling program in the history of Earth. i mean If you put it in a package back then, it was on a shelf. People bought it. They stuck it in their pantries. They ate it. They bought more of it. i mean They couldn’t get enough of it. i mean It was just ah an insane time.
24:01.94
vigorbranding
for those companies. and then the other the The negative side obviously was the restaurants and everything else. i mean It’s a really interesting time. and and you know You said about how you it can define things. the other thing One of the other things we did was we took adversity. We had all these CEOs that were like, what is everyone doing? i mean like you you know This just happened. It was unprecedented. What is everybody else doing? so We thought, well,
24:23.89
vigorbranding
All right, we’re not making i mean and and again it’s not we’re not making revenue businesses down, but we still have these relationships. They’re our clients. So what can we do? So it wasn’t my idea, but one of our guys said, hey, let’s create sort of a round table. of that And our agency is called Varsity. So we called it the Varsity Round Table. So we got all these CEOs that were just like,
24:41.34
vigorbranding
What’s everyone doing? And they were able to talk and it was so successful that we did it the next week. And then they talked more and then more and more CEOs jumped in. They weren’t even our clients and became this open source sharing that has now been, we are on about, I think it’s like 250th.
24:58.49
vigorbranding
roundt We’ve been doing them every week since the first month of COVID.
25:04.38
Stephen Baldi
Wow, impressive.
25:05.19
vigorbranding
And what’s done for a company, for us, i mean again we don’t make any money from it. And it wasn’t about that. It was just a place for people to really vent and help. And now we have speakers come in and talk, and everyone’s obviously well beyond COVID.
25:16.71
vigorbranding
But it’s really allowed us to be a thought leader and assist these folks. And you know at the end of the day, it’s what it’s all about. And I know a big thing for you is is mentorship, right? I mean, you know talk about giving back. you want you Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
25:27.81
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, I’ll talk about that but I’ll also talk similarly to your roundtable so in February of 2020 I had the privilege of joining the organization YPO, which is Young President Organization, which is very similar to what you define there’s 35.
25:42.82
Stephen Baldi
1,000 YPO members globally. And it’s really for business leaders who have decided that they want to walk towards betterment as a person, as a leader, as a family member, as someone contributing to their community in partnership with other leaders.
25:58.55
Stephen Baldi
And so I am in the Washington DC Baltimore chapter here ah in the region.
25:58.93
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
26:04.18
Stephen Baldi
And I’m in leadership. And I can tell you that organization was really critical in me navigating everything that I had to go through ah during COVID.
26:14.98
Stephen Baldi
Now, we didn’t we didn’t meet weekly, um but we do meet monthly in a small group of seven to 10 people, and we have forum.
26:15.26
vigorbranding
Sure.
26:19.82
vigorbranding
Monthly forum.
26:22.81
Stephen Baldi
And, oh, there you go.
26:22.85
vigorbranding
I didn’t know I’m i’m YPO, too. I didn’t know your IPO. Yeah, I’ve been.
26:25.92
Stephen Baldi
Yeah!
26:26.21
vigorbranding
Yeah.
26:27.01
Stephen Baldi
So YDO is really what sustained me during COVID.
26:27.03
vigorbranding
So Oh.
26:29.86
Stephen Baldi
um And I’m privileged to be on the ladder now in leadership.
26:32.72
vigorbranding
Do for you.
26:35.01
Stephen Baldi
And so, yeah, as far as mentorship, when I started the company, you know it was a priority for me to give opportunity to underrepresented populations. um Now, as I started to grow the company, my focus started to turn inward, Michael, if I’m being honest. And you know the beginning of 2020, it was difficult for anybody to tell me that I wasn’t the shit. I built this company from zero to something much larger than I had ever aspired to as a young person.
27:04.34
vigorbranding
Right.
27:06.68
Stephen Baldi
um But COVID took all of that away.
27:08.81
vigorbranding
Yeah.
27:09.14
Stephen Baldi
And so what it reminded me of is that there was a mission that I started this company with. And it was something that I needed to recommit to when we reopened.
27:19.90
Stephen Baldi
And so now um we’re really pouring into our crew members um When I hire someone, specifically, let’s take Dunkin Donuts.
27:30.76
Stephen Baldi
If I bring in someone as a frontline worker that’s pouring coffee, if they’re still pouring coffee for us in three years, both them and the organization has done something wrong.
27:34.59
vigorbranding
Mmhmm.
27:41.17
Stephen Baldi
um We want to scale people up. It is not cost effective for us to have people in the same position for multiple years. So if we’re not scaling someone up to take on additional responsibility inside our company and sometimes even outside of our company, then we’ve done something wrong. you know My mentor told me a good leader ah expects or wants people to leave. A great leader expects them to.
28:08.64
vigorbranding
Yeah.
28:09.01
Stephen Baldi
And so either they’re leaving the position that we’re hiring them for or they’re leaving to go to another organization. But either way, we have to invest in our hourly crew members because we can’t afford not to.
28:20.86
vigorbranding
Yeah.
28:21.76
Stephen Baldi
And so that’s something that we really communicate out and share out. to our community and our organization and people know that we’re gonna invest in them in ways that other companies might not to and we feel like that gives us a competitive advantage and as a leader it makes me feel a good about not only our bottom line results but also the success that we can feel. I have a manager who’s been with us for eight years.
28:46.57
Stephen Baldi
Her name is Marta. And she started as a single unit manager. And now she’s a multi-airport director.
28:53.24
vigorbranding
awesome.
28:53.39
Stephen Baldi
And to see her growth and to understand the impact that that has has had on her family is tremendous. And I want to do that a hundred times over.
29:00.50
vigorbranding
Sure.
29:00.79
Stephen Baldi
And I have the privilege of being able to do that as a leader of our company.
29:01.01
vigorbranding
Yeah.
29:04.70
vigorbranding
and And think of it this way, I mean, and that’s what’s so great about this country, I’ll say is like, you were making whatever $22,000 a year, I think you had free room or board or whatever you were managing, right?
29:12.60
Stephen Baldi
I did.
29:13.65
vigorbranding
So you you’re probably like, I’m getting by, this is okay. And look, you and you know, obviously, you’re you’re very well educated, you have a great drive and personality, but you you created a a huge company. And that’s, that’s, that’s really super cool, really super cool.
29:25.90
Stephen Baldi
Well, Michael, I can tell you specifically in that first year, 2002, I made $19,117 and 43 cents. I can tell you that specifically because that W2 still sits on my desk.
29:36.80
Stephen Baldi
I have it framed.
29:36.84
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah.
29:37.68
Stephen Baldi
I look at it every day just to remind me of where all of this started and where now we’ve grown the company to I’m, I’m extremely proud.
29:45.15
vigorbranding
Yeah. And you know, you mentioned YPO and I’ve been very privileged to be in that organization for, gosh, I think at least 20 some years.
29:53.06
Stephen Baldi
So you joined when you were 17.
29:54.45
vigorbranding
Yeah, no, but yeah, it’s one of those things, is we you know, it used to kick you out when you’re 50. In fact, I did, I got the rocking chair and showed up at the front door.
30:02.59
Stephen Baldi
Oh, there you go.
30:03.68
vigorbranding
Yeah, that was the thing. And then they decided to have YPO Gold, WPO and all that. stuff So I stayed in and now we’re like a forum for life. So my guys, we meet once a month and we are together. ah we A lot of it’s virtual because these guys, a lot of it, we’re retired and stuff.
30:15.91
vigorbranding
So um I’m old. I mean, the it’s YPO o Gold, but I always say it’s Silent G, you know, YPO old. So, but it’s a, it was the greatest thing I’ve ever done for me.
30:26.29
vigorbranding
Maybe a better husband, better father, better businessman, a better employer, better ah a friend. I mean, and I i mean that.
30:32.27
Stephen Baldi
and human
30:33.29
vigorbranding
Yeah. It’s just a better human. And I think a lot of people see it from the outside and think it’s all, it’s a bunch of guys didn’t talk about how many cars they have and where they want vacation. It’s not that at all.
30:40.24
Stephen Baldi
It’s not that it’s a transformational community, you know, having a high trust network is invaluable.
30:40.92
vigorbranding
You know, it’s, you know, it’s a, it is, it is.
30:47.41
vigorbranding
Yep. Yeah. Someone’s got your back, right? You can always pick up that phone and call your, one of your folks and just, they got your back. No, that’s yeah.
30:54.39
Stephen Baldi
And it’s nobody, and it’s nobody, nothing, never. And to have that level of confidentiality is special.
30:57.03
vigorbranding
That’s right. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that’s that’s awesome. That’s all good for you. I had no idea. That’s fantastic. um So, but now I’m going to do a little ploy here. You got to go and you should go to Austin this year to the food and beverage round table.
31:10.60
vigorbranding
I mean, if you can check it out, it’ll be, I think it’s in in January, you know, I’ll probably be speaking there, but you should go.
31:14.55
Stephen Baldi
OK.
31:16.84
vigorbranding
I mean, you know, I’d love to meet you in person. It’d be fantastic.
31:18.67
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, I’d love that.
31:18.88
vigorbranding
Anyway, so could we do,
31:20.42
Stephen Baldi
Maybe we’ll be celebrating a Phillies World Series by then.
31:22.74
vigorbranding
Oh man, you’re making me nervous. um I hope so. I hope you’re right. I hope you’re right. But our company, we do it we do an annual food and beverage trends report every year. We’ve been doing them for like, jeez, 15, 16 years. And so a lot of times we launched it at the food and beverage round table. So it’s always really cool stuff.
31:40.96
Stephen Baldi
Awesome, send me an invite and I’ll be there.
31:41.00
vigorbranding
um Yeah. All right. Well, definitely. I’ll make sure you get it after this, after our conversation here. So, okay. When you go to a restaurant, you you have a choice between human interaction or self ordering kiosks. I know that, you know, you guys need to be really ah high speed, efficient and all that. What what do you, what do you prefer?
31:58.57
Stephen Baldi
Well, it depends, right? Deploying technology is a strategy that ah should be done with intention and asking the question, and then what, right?
32:12.55
Stephen Baldi
um I will tell you a story. So the first time we experimented with self ordering technology was in 2008 at JFK airport terminal five.
32:24.65
Stephen Baldi
And we deployed at the time iPads um at our Dunkin Donuts because we thought, you know, technology is moving in this way and it’s fun and it’s cool, but nobody wants to walk up to a counter and order a coffee by pressing buttons.
32:29.75
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm. Yep.
32:39.85
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm.
32:44.46
Stephen Baldi
You know, communicating to a cashier, ah medium cream and sugar takes about 15 seconds. When you are forcing someone to press hot coffee, then medium, then sugar, then extra sugar, like that’s just, we found that that was a ah strategy that wasn’t ah successfully deployed at that time.
32:58.57
vigorbranding
who
33:05.34
Stephen Baldi
now That was back in 2008. I will say trends have matured since then and so there is an opportunity to have self ordering technology at a place like Dunkin Donuts and people have learned to navigate it quickly. um You have hot buttons for certain high usage items and so I say to people all the time because my friends question me, whenever they see an iPad, they assume that that means that that technology has taken someone’s job. And what I try to educate people on is that you know if you deploy technology in a intentional way, in a smart way, it allows you to redirect
33:45.29
Stephen Baldi
what you would have otherwise spent on front of house and the back of house.
33:46.57
vigorbranding
Mm
33:49.72
Stephen Baldi
Or maybe you’re deploying it at a ah leadership level that’s multi-unit capable.
33:49.78
vigorbranding
hmm.
33:55.24
Stephen Baldi
And so it’s not necessarily ah replacing jobs, but allowing savvy business leaders to take that investment and redeploy it in other ways. I will tell you that the benefit is you know technology doesn’t call out. Sometimes you have to reboot the system, but it always upsells. It always asks you if you want a dessert and always ask you if you want to package your burger with fries. And so to be able to grow your top line ticket, ah that’s only going to drive bottom line outcomes, which allows a business owner like me to look at expansion, to go into other cities, to be able to bring other people along with us because the business is growing. And so there’s opportunity beyond just taking someone’s order. And so
34:40.31
Stephen Baldi
Technology is something you have to look at in parallel kind of decision making. But I enjoy it. There’s some concepts that it resonates more significantly than others. But I think there’s a balance and there needs to be a balance of both going forward. I don’t think we’re ever going to have an industry that is exclusively technology or self ordering driven. um And I think you go in with a bunch of assumptions, you understand how your customers respond to it, and then you be agile enough to adjust appropriately.
35:08.96
vigorbranding
Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. And i I concur. I mean, you know, I don’t want to wait in a massive line, especially from an airport. But, you know, just ordering, pre-ordering and all that kind of stuff isn’t all that funny either.
35:19.32
vigorbranding
So it’s just you with that happy balance. You know, I do like talking to somebody and, you know, because I talk a lot, I guess. But plus, I always ask for some ice in my coffee just a little bit. I don’t want nice coffee.
35:27.30
Stephen Baldi
There you go.
35:27.67
vigorbranding
So it’s a little tough to explain to an iPad, you know, so very soft.
35:31.57
Stephen Baldi
To drop it into a couple of cubes, yeah.
35:32.20
vigorbranding
Whoops. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t want to burn my, burn my mouth. So now I know you have at least one daughter, correct?
35:38.70
Stephen Baldi
I’d have two daughters and a son.
35:39.87
vigorbranding
Two daughters. right All right. Sorry. There we go.
35:41.61
Stephen Baldi
26, 25, and eight.
35:41.75
vigorbranding
This will be great then. Wow. Wow.
35:45.67
Stephen Baldi
I started over, Michael.
35:45.74
vigorbranding
A little gap here.
35:46.59
Stephen Baldi
I started over.
35:47.16
vigorbranding
You had a little gap here.
35:48.55
Stephen Baldi
had I had a couple of gap years.
35:48.93
vigorbranding
A couple of gap years. i well so I have two daughters, 26 as of last week and coming coming up on 29. The reason I bring up these families is you know we all know we love all our kids the same.
36:01.78
Stephen Baldi
No, we don’t.
36:01.79
vigorbranding
But on any but okay but on any given day on any given day, depending on the phone call, depending on the visit, there’s certainly ones that we like other better than others.
36:02.97
Stephen Baldi
No, we don’t.
36:09.94
vigorbranding
Michael Alex, it happens it back and forth all the time, just in case you’re listening. Those are my daughters. um
36:14.34
Stephen Baldi
Love it.
36:15.04
vigorbranding
so you know, we talked about pot belly, we talked about smash burger, we talked about dunking, we talked about timber, we talked about founding farmers, am I missing any any ends?
36:25.21
Stephen Baldi
There you go.
36:27.03
vigorbranding
Which one?
36:27.28
Stephen Baldi
It’s the end. Yeah.
36:27.84
vigorbranding
Which one’s your favorite? What’s your favorite kid there?
36:29.64
Stephen Baldi
My favorite. Wow. You’re going to force me to say that.
36:33.77
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah.
36:34.15
Stephen Baldi
Well, I will tell you, because I don’t know if any of our franchisors are going to listen to this part. I love them all equally, and I am privileged to be able to operate them. I will tell you the one that probably um sits deeply in my soul as a person ah is probably Dunkin’ Donuts.
36:55.45
vigorbranding
Nice.
36:55.85
Stephen Baldi
and And I’ll tell you Dunkin’ Donuts because when I was growing up ah in Southwest Philadelphia off of Cobbs Creek Parkway, I had family that lived out by the airport. And in order to get into that area of the city, you have to travel on Cobbs Creek Parkway.
37:11.63
Stephen Baldi
And there’s a Dunkin Donuts on the corner of Cobbs Creek Parkway and I can’t remember the cross street, but it’s been there for close to probably 30 or 40 years. I’m 48 and I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t there. And I remember seeing that Dunkin Donuts and thinking how rich that franchisee must be to have that score.
37:30.65
Stephen Baldi
Now I know that owning a single franchise is not necessarily a path to generational wealth, but it did, that Dunkin Donuts did put in my mind like what was possible.
37:40.22
vigorbranding
Yeah, that’s cool.
37:40.70
Stephen Baldi
um And so to be able to be now a 14 year franchisee of that brand, um which is our longest franchise relationship, it’s pretty special.
37:46.48
vigorbranding
Super.
37:50.20
vigorbranding
That’s cool. And you know, I’ll say this from the, from the branding side of the world. Uh, what a phenomenal job. I mean, Duncan’s been around forever. I mean, at one point time it was getting a little tired. It was sort of just fading in the woodwork.
38:01.35
vigorbranding
And we know, I mean, all these brands, I mean, they come on strong. They’re, they’re always started somewhere. There’s this regional thing. And then they become these big brands and is they, they struggle to stay relevant.
38:10.04
Stephen Baldi
Right?
38:12.62
vigorbranding
Right. And I think Duncan has just done a remarkable job.
38:16.08
Stephen Baldi
We have, yeah.
38:16.24
vigorbranding
of staying relevant i mean from their graphic design from their marketing their branding to their advertising and all the cool stuff they’ve done that you did you did they blew it away they they absolutely did and yep
38:22.42
Stephen Baldi
I mean, we had the best Super Bowl commercial in my opinion. I mean, Ben Affleck and J.Lo, they did their thing. And Mark Wahlberg, it like it was it was a beautiful commercial.
38:33.65
vigorbranding
Yeah, and you know, it just shows like when you have passion for something, and those guys certainly have passion for for for that part of the world and ah from the Boston area. I just think it’s it was exceptional. In fact, ironically, we have at at our holding company level, Pavone Group, we have the longest running, okay, this is no kidding, the longest running Super Bowl commercial voting mechanism called spotbowl.com.
38:56.66
vigorbranding
So every year we get
38:57.28
Stephen Baldi
OK.
38:59.26
vigorbranding
you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of votes from around the world, and people vote for their favorite Super Bowl commercial as it’s being played, as the game is being played. And then the the national media outlets reach out to us, and then we tell them the results.
39:13.08
vigorbranding
And Dunkin Donuts was was certainly a stellar winner.
39:13.26
Stephen Baldi
OK.
39:16.02
Stephen Baldi
It was and had to be at the top.
39:17.26
vigorbranding
Yeah, it was awesome.
39:17.88
Stephen Baldi
Come on out. Tell me Michael it was at the top.
39:19.04
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah. It was, well, I’m looking over here at my guy that runs it. it was It was the top one. Yeah, it was, it definitely was.
39:24.42
Stephen Baldi
It was, it I thought it was.
39:25.10
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
39:25.89
Stephen Baldi
There you go. Thank you for, thank you for phoning your friend and getting confirmation.
39:26.59
vigorbranding
It was it was awesome.
39:29.55
Stephen Baldi
It was a pretty special advertising.
39:31.41
vigorbranding
Yeah.
39:31.85
Stephen Baldi
And yeah, I didn’t get a chance to order my Duncan jumpsuit, but I’m sure it’s in the mail somewhere.
39:36.72
vigorbranding
Yeah, there you go. there That’s that that everything.
39:38.41
Stephen Baldi
Maybe Duncan corporate will see this and they’ll send me one.
39:38.96
vigorbranding
Although. yeah Yeah, all the merch, everything they did around that was super cool. and the take the outtakes from the
39:43.99
Stephen Baldi
Super cool.
39:46.35
vigorbranding
you know It’s funny too because when it comes to this marketing stuff, like it used to be just a TV spot. and The reason I looked over to ask Dave, Dave’s the guy you spoke to. He’s the one that that kind of heads up this podcast. He’s also the one that really runs Spopple. We’ve been doing this so long that In the beginning, we didn’t know anything.
40:03.48
vigorbranding
In other words, they would the game it was all about the game. The game was played. And then people realized, well, people love the commercials. So we never knew, like like you and everybody else, we just sit there and watch the game, cut the commercial. Oh, it’s a commercial for fill in the blank.
40:15.61
vigorbranding
Now, they release the commercials to us ahead of time.
40:15.73
Stephen Baldi
Yeah.
40:18.45
vigorbranding
They tell us what it’s about. They send us outtakes. They give us information. Because they realize it, because it’s a couple million dollars for 30 seconds, that they need to get as much juice out of the you know squeeze as much juice out of this as possible so they want to know they put stuff online they do teasers and it’s it’s turned into a an event unto itself and uh we’re really proud to have been a part of it so it’s kind of funny that you brought that up that’s cool stuff all
40:39.58
Stephen Baldi
Yeah. Now I will tell you my all time favorite Super Bowl commercial.
40:44.35
vigorbranding
right uh
40:45.67
Stephen Baldi
Now I remember the star, but I don’t even remember the brand.
40:49.95
vigorbranding
-oh
40:50.06
Stephen Baldi
Remember the the commercial with the kid and the Star Wars mask and he was going around zapping things and he went and he zapped the car and the car started.
40:55.24
vigorbranding
Volkswagen. Yeah. Yeah.
40:58.28
Stephen Baldi
That was my all-time favorite more commercial.
40:58.46
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. That was ah that was a Volkswagen spot. That was a fantastic spot.
41:03.91
Stephen Baldi
Fantastic commercial.
41:03.93
vigorbranding
It was a fantastic. You know, I’ll i’ll tell you mine next. i’m I’m a simp and I, you know, ah the Budweiser commercials and
41:11.83
Stephen Baldi
Oh yeah.
41:13.17
vigorbranding
There was one though in particular where the guy, you know, he raises these horses and it goes on to be a Clydesdale and it it takes off and the horse leaves and there’s a parade. And I almost get choked up thinking about it.
41:24.28
vigorbranding
It was so well done. There’s a parade, the guy standing there to parade and the horse sees him, breaks away, chases him down on the road. Oh my gosh. It was, it was, I had to do a live TV commercial. I had to do a live segment on the news about the the best TV spot and and they they, you know, they played it and I wasn’t expecting them to play it.
41:40.60
vigorbranding
I’m like, I had tears going down my face.
41:42.56
Stephen Baldi
Oh, you got emotional.
41:42.51
vigorbranding
I’m like, That’s my favorite.
41:43.64
Stephen Baldi
Oh, look at you.
41:45.41
vigorbranding
I still get emotional. i think but i think it I think it was the best all-time i mean story. It was just cute. so anyway That’s right, man.
41:50.70
Stephen Baldi
And the best story always wins, Michael. Best story always wins.
41:53.25
vigorbranding
That’s right. right yeah Yeah, you know, we always tell people a brand is a promise, ah but you have to tell a story. You have to draw a motion, make them laugh, make them cry, make them feel something about your brand. And that’s how you break through. And it’s always important, you know, a lot of times clients will say stuff, um you know, hey we just want to sell more, we got to do this, we got to do that. And and really it comes down to ah the fact that you’ve you got to do great creative to break through to get people’s attention.
42:19.09
vigorbranding
So, well, I have a couple more questions for you and I want to hit them for sure.
42:21.03
Stephen Baldi
Okay.
42:22.25
vigorbranding
So now look, ah we talked about the airports you’re in, in the in the in the greater DC area, some of the most, I mean, they’re they’re busy, they’re they’re important, they’re huge. Other airports, I mean, you have great concessions in those airports.
42:34.37
vigorbranding
Other airports that you think have great concessions in the country?
42:37.16
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, I will tell you, Atlanta, one of the busiest airports in the world, definitely in this country.
42:42.95
vigorbranding
Oh yeah, oh yeah. yeah
42:45.86
Stephen Baldi
um And then Houston, Orlando, Chicago, Charlotte, these are all markets that we kind of look at.
42:49.80
vigorbranding
Mm hmm. Oh yeah.
42:54.54
vigorbranding
Massive hubs.
42:56.51
Stephen Baldi
um It’s important for us to be in high demand airport systems, because you never know how the world’s going to,
43:02.80
vigorbranding
Yeah.
43:05.21
Stephen Baldi
respond. And Morgan Hausl is one of the people who I look to for kind of strategic direction.
43:12.04
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
43:13.49
Stephen Baldi
I’m thinking about my business. And one thing he always says is that as a business leader, if you’re only planning for the risk and threats that you can predict, you’re probably missing the biggest one.
43:24.90
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah.
43:25.41
Stephen Baldi
um And so how we kind of shelter ourselves from that is we go into high demand markets. So even if an airline, a legacy airline like an American or United or a Delta or a Southwest ah decides that they no longer want to operate in that market, there’ll be another legacy carrier chomping at the bit together.
43:44.09
vigorbranding
Sure.
43:44.40
Stephen Baldi
And so that’s one of our strategy when we’re looking to grow nationally is to look at high demand airport markets.
43:44.77
vigorbranding
Sure. Mm hmm.
43:51.29
Stephen Baldi
And those are just a few that I named.
43:53.58
vigorbranding
I’m a big fan of Morgan has effect. We have him speaking at our, at our YPO. He’s, he’s one of, I think he might even be next month’s speaker. So I’m really, really, are you really, that’s all his book.
44:00.64
Stephen Baldi
ah We’re bringing them in on the 13th of November. Yeah.
44:04.00
vigorbranding
His book’s incredible. Incredible. I made my daughter’s read it. So, um, what’s next for balding management group. And mean we talked about in other airports. What’s, what’s next for you? What’s what’s your vision? Where are you were are you hoping to go?
44:13.26
Stephen Baldi
my My vision is to grow the tent and plant trees that I may never even know their shade, um because that’s when I think a community and when a business is thriving is when you’re willing to do things that you might not be able to see to fruition. And so we’re trying to build a company, not trying, we are building a company that will rise the tide for all the boats. I want to create another 20, 25 stories just like mine.
44:41.46
vigorbranding
Yeah.
44:41.62
Stephen Baldi
um I can invest and grow my company so that it’s beneficial and creates generational wealth for me, but I also have the opportunity to listen to the individuals whose stories might not necessarily be taken to the top because they’re not fully formed or well articulated.
44:59.34
Stephen Baldi
I try to look for those people, because I was once that person.
45:00.66
vigorbranding
yeah
45:02.15
Stephen Baldi
I was the property manager in the office, and Cynthia Garber came and tapped me on the shoulder, which she did not have to do.
45:02.50
vigorbranding
yep
45:08.96
Stephen Baldi
And so I’m trying to identify those voices in our companies, the people in leadership, but also the people who we don’t necessarily identify with immediately, because a lot of our workforce our ESL where English is a second language.
45:24.24
Stephen Baldi
And so verbal communication is a challenge, but I don’t want that to get in the way of us knowing or identifying the next star in our organization.
45:24.69
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yep.
45:33.22
Stephen Baldi
So we’re doing things to kind of bridge the gap between ah those verbal communication kind of challenges so that every voice that’s in our organization can be heard because listen.
45:44.32
Stephen Baldi
I won’t pour a cup of coffee or flip a burger or roll a pretzel today, but that’s how our business runs. And so I want to give opportunity and visibility to those individuals in a very intentional way.
45:53.22
vigorbranding
Sure.
45:59.67
Stephen Baldi
So that’s what’s next ah for the company. And I think if you know you pay attention to the pennies and the nickels, the dollars make sense. And I believe if you focus on organizationally, the people who may be at the bottom of the ladder, you’ll grow the tent and the business in a way where there’s more opportunity created for everyone who’s valuable.
46:20.08
Stephen Baldi
And so that’s what I’m committed to, Michael.
46:21.72
vigorbranding
Fantastic. a Question. Have you ever, have you ever spoke to the woman who tapped you on the shoulder? Have you ever told her?
46:27.38
Stephen Baldi
i I mention Cynthia Garber every time I get the yeah opportunity to share how she interceded in my life.
46:30.01
vigorbranding
Yeah.
46:33.70
Stephen Baldi
And we text probably once or twice a year, but she knows how important she is to me.
46:36.60
vigorbranding
Oh, good. That’s awesome.
46:39.09
Stephen Baldi
um We haven’t seen each other in person probably 10 years, but I tell her story every time I speak about my journey because it was instrumental.
46:44.19
vigorbranding
That’s awesome.
46:47.22
Stephen Baldi
So she’s aware.
46:47.33
vigorbranding
Hey, that’s got to get you to pay yeah pay it forward, pay it back. And you got to make sure that you yeah you acknowledge the folks that helped you get there.
46:51.02
Stephen Baldi
and of pay for
46:54.07
vigorbranding
That’s, that’s huge.
46:54.84
Stephen Baldi
And you know what’s remarkable, Michael, over the 18 years that I’ve been in the business, 16 years leading this company, every now and then I’ll get a text message or I’ll get a direct ah message on LinkedIn of someone who worked for our organization and matriculated somewhere else.
47:11.24
Stephen Baldi
And I’ve lost contact with, and they’ve done the same for me.
47:12.80
vigorbranding
here
47:14.06
Stephen Baldi
So I know how special it is.
47:15.49
vigorbranding
That’s cool.
47:15.94
Stephen Baldi
And so whenever I get the opportunity, I try to tell people how they’ve impacted my life.
47:16.98
vigorbranding
Yeah.
47:19.90
vigorbranding
Very cool. well Stephen, I have one one last question. You’ve been phenomenal by the way. I can talk for you for hours. You’re you’re awesome. ah One last question. All right. And can’t you can’t pick pot belly or one of your, you can’t pick one of your brands, but if you had one final meal, what would you eat and why?
47:35.33
Stephen Baldi
Oh, this is the easy, this is the easy.
47:36.24
vigorbranding
Oh, good. All right. Sometimes people struggle with this. so
47:38.51
Stephen Baldi
No, it’s not a struggle. Michael, I’m from Philadelphia. If I gave any answer other than a gym steak with whizzing American, with fried onions, hot peppers, pickles, and ketchup, I would be doing my city a disservice.
47:42.03
vigorbranding
Yeah. Okay. Oh, nice.
47:52.46
vigorbranding
There you go. That’s good.
47:53.31
Stephen Baldi
So that’s what it would be.
47:53.56
vigorbranding
Good. Great. ah Great answer. Great answer. It’s funny, you know, I, yeah, come on, man.
47:56.67
Stephen Baldi
North and South, if you haven’t been, you should go the next time you’re in Philadelphia.
48:00.24
vigorbranding
I’ve been, I had a gym.
48:01.51
Stephen Baldi
I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to your audience.
48:02.84
vigorbranding
and Okay. I was going to say, I had a gym stick last week and I’m not making that up. We had, I don’t know if I mentioned, but we had, uh, brought in agencies, independent agencies, all from all around North America, i guys from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada, all over the continental U S come to Philadelphia.
48:19.70
vigorbranding
and during happy. We took them to dinners. We took them. We treated them right. We showed them the city independence and all that stuff. But when we had the happy hour at my offices, I had pats and I had gyms and we had little little forks and we did a cheesesteak sampling program.
48:32.46
vigorbranding
You know, yeah, they you you do know who won.
48:32.82
Stephen Baldi
Oh, and I know who won.
48:35.35
vigorbranding
So I know, you know, I know, you know, hey, I’ll throw another one out there.
48:36.36
Stephen Baldi
I won’t make you name it, but I know, I know who won.
48:41.02
vigorbranding
Pat or Tony Luke’s down on Oregon Avenue.
48:42.86
Stephen Baldi
Oh, he looks great.
48:43.85
vigorbranding
The original.
48:44.04
Stephen Baldi
De La Sandro’s Mama’s Pizzeria on Belmont Avenue.
48:44.87
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. tell sound good You know, you you know.
48:48.67
Stephen Baldi
I haven’t lived in the city before the years, but it’s still, I know where to go.
48:48.76
vigorbranding
Yeah, man. Yeah, you know, those, those, those are legacy places, you know, and and yeah, it’s all good, all good.
48:54.82
Stephen Baldi
For sure.
48:56.68
vigorbranding
In fact, you know what, that’ll be my happy meal. The Phillies will be in the playoffs and I do, I slide down into and get a cheesesteak before the game. It’s a, it’s a part of the whole shtick. So I’m excited about it.
49:04.48
Stephen Baldi
And you also have to get a wild, wild fruit punch. Come on now.
49:06.31
vigorbranding
Oh, there you go.
49:07.00
Stephen Baldi
You gotta round it out.
49:07.01
vigorbranding
There you go. Yeah, that’s, that’s that’s funny. Well, Steven, it was fantastic. I really appreciate your time. Uh, and it was wonderful talking to you.
49:14.87
Stephen Baldi
I appreciate the invitation. And listen, good luck with the rest of your forktails going forward. It seems like you’ve had an incredible run with the amount of episodes that you’ve already had. And I hope you you know multiply that by 10, if that is your intention and desire.
49:27.00
vigorbranding
Thanks. That’s awesome. Appreciate you.
g
Hey folks, welcome to Fork Tales, and I’m excited. Today’s guest is Stephen Baldy. He’s the founder and president of Baldy Management Group. Baldy Management Group is an airport concessions and management consulting company. It’s a mouthful there. ah Manages concessions in Reagan National Airport, JFK International Airport, and Dulles International Airport. ah Stephen, welcome to Fork Tales, and thank you so much for joining us.
00:25.82
Stephen Baldi
Michael, thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to the conversation.
00:29.01
vigorbranding
So for those that don’t know, all of these are located in the sort of DC Metro, Baltimore or down at DC Metro area, right?
00:36.21
Stephen Baldi
Correct.
00:37.04
vigorbranding
Yeah.
00:37.19
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, even though Philadelphia is my hometown, I’ve been in Washington DC for almost 30 years. um So this is home base for us.
00:46.37
vigorbranding
yeah Well, you you you know, I have a little trick question because that was going to be my first question. Are you still a Philly sports fan? I mean, do you bleed Eagle Green?
00:53.03
Stephen Baldi
if If you cut me, it would be nothing but green. I live in Washington, DC.
00:56.48
vigorbranding
OK, beautiful.
00:57.88
Stephen Baldi
My heart is in Philadelphia.
00:59.81
vigorbranding
Beautiful, beautiful. Wow. There’s, there’s guys, I don’t even know what they call themselves these days. these’s The commanders, the Washington football club.
Yeah, Michael, my family would disown me if anything other than my ah zip code changed as far as my hometown affiliation.
01:10.06
vigorbranding
So that’s fantastic. Hey, it’s awesome. You got to bring, I had a gentleman come in, uh, from, uh, Oregon last week to speak to a bunch of advertising agencies from North America. We hosted them in Philadelphia and this guy was so excited. He was, he, he, he came from there, but he was Philly through and through. So everything in his presentation tied back to a Philly icon, something about Philadelphia that was iconic. And, you know, ah in our company, we’re,
01:44.34
vigorbranding
We’re very proud that we’re an independent advertising agencies. We have an agency called Vigor and an agency called Quench. Vigor’s restaurant branding. Quench is food and beverage marketing. And the whole thing was around independence and how it’s how important it is.
01:57.06
vigorbranding
And he had all these great icons from like Nick Foles to, ah you know, ah Mike Schmidt to the Fanatic to, I mean, Will Smith.
02:07.11
vigorbranding
I mean, he just went through all the Philadelphia stuff, you know, the Liberty Bell and everything else. and So it was cool. It was cool.
02:11.77
Stephen Baldi
um I love it. I’ll tell you an interesting story about Nick Foles. So I had a really good feeling about our Super Bowl run, even though you know Carson Wentz, who was leading as the MVP that year, went down. And the Friday before the Super Bowl, something told me to go online and buy a Nick Foles autograph helmet.
02:33.57
vigorbranding
Wow.
02:34.10
Stephen Baldi
And I did. Now, I did not expedite the shipping, Michael. So it was not in my possession on Monday after we had won the Super Bowl. And many of my friends said that helmet’s never going to show up, but it did.
02:47.65
Stephen Baldi
So I bought it for $99.
02:47.77
vigorbranding
That’s awesome.
02:49.77
Stephen Baldi
And I can tell you, it’s it’s worth a lot more than that.
02:51.92
vigorbranding
That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s worth a lot to people in Philadelphia. So it’s fantastic. And the pride of that city runs deep. So alright, so tell us about Baldy enter Management Group and what it does what inspired you to get into the airport concession games. I mean, you started I think in residential property, right?
03:06.90
Stephen Baldi
I did. I started in residential property management in 2002. And I started in airports in 2005. And it was all kind of serendipitous. I had a really ah prickly history before starting in 2002.
03:23.22
Stephen Baldi
at Kettler Management, which managed tax credit properties, but also Class A luxury communities.
03:29.04
vigorbranding
Okay.
03:29.23
Stephen Baldi
And I had a tenant coming to my office. And she said, Steven, I see you engaging with the residents and how you handle issues. And I think you should be doing more. And I thought to myself, like this woman doesn’t know me.
03:39.92
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, I just fixed her fireplace. But who are you to come in my office and tell me what I should be doing? And at the time, I was making $22,000 a year with a Georgetown degree. And the job that they wanted me to interview for paid $85,000 a year.
03:54.21
vigorbranding
wow
03:54.39
Stephen Baldi
So as you can assume, Michael, goal I took the interview, I got the job. And so for three years, I worked in development for Westfield, which most people know as shopping mall developers, they have an airport division.
04:05.82
vigorbranding
Hmm. Ah.
04:07.99
Stephen Baldi
And so I was responsible for the redevelopment of national airport here in Washington, DC from 2005. to 2008. And then I leveraged a relationship with OTG Management, which has a very large presence at Philadelphia International, um into a joint venture relationship and actually launched the company, BMG, in 2008. And two thousand and eight and it’s we’ve not looked back since.
04:31.36
vigorbranding
That’s fantastic. you know It’s funny. I really i don’t know you. we’re We’re really talking for the first time. I can tell right away, like youre you have a positive attitude, and I can tell you’re engaging. And so I could see how someone would see you in action and be like, hey, you know you you could do more. like You can be a part of something bigger. And it’s obviously what’s happened, which is it’s awesome. I’m a big proponent of attitude. I mean, i I love to know where people went to school. I mean, if you if I interview you, I want to see your brains on the table.
04:58.39
vigorbranding
But I really want to know what your personality is like. I want to know about your attitude. I want to know ah how ah how much of a ah person you are that wants to win and be engaging and help people. And it’s ah like it comes through with you right away.
05:09.91
vigorbranding
And that’s ah it’s cool.
05:10.18
Stephen Baldi
I appreciate that.
05:11.03
vigorbranding
now it’s it’s
05:11.32
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, i’ll I’ll take it back if you if you want me to. So ah back in 1988, I was turning 13 and I begged my mom for a pair of Air Jordan sneakers.
05:24.58
Stephen Baldi
And you’ll remember when Gordon’s first came out, ah they were the first shoe over a hundred dollars.
05:25.72
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah.
05:29.85
vigorbranding
Oh, yes, they were.
05:30.36
Stephen Baldi
yeah I grew up in a upper lower class household and it was a stretch for my mom to purchase these shoes.
05:31.49
vigorbranding
Yep.
05:37.09
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
05:38.21
Stephen Baldi
But I begged her and I begged her and I begged her and and she ended up buying them for me. And she said, you know, I just want you to be safe. Well, you probably can assume where the story goes. Within like a month of getting these sneakers, I was an attempted robbery, and I acted very violently to defend myself, and it resulted in me getting expelled from the school that I was at.
05:59.94
Stephen Baldi
And as a punishment, ah rather than letting me play basketball for the entire summer, my mom forced me to go to the reading math and basketball clinic at Friend Central, which is a very prominent independent school on the main line of Philadelphia.
06:14.39
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
06:14.96
Stephen Baldi
And that decision changed my life. um I went from living in a predominantly all-Black neighborhood to a private school that I was the only Black male in my class.
06:25.11
vigorbranding
Wow.
06:25.74
Stephen Baldi
And what it did was it changed my perspective of what was accessible. like I had never seen a computer before.
06:31.75
vigorbranding
Right.
06:32.14
Stephen Baldi
And at this school, there was in a computer lab where we could sit down and navigate things.
06:34.40
vigorbranding
Yeah.
06:36.15
Stephen Baldi
And so going to Friends Central, having my mom make that leap of faith changed my trajectory in many ways. I matriculated from there to Georgetown University here in Washington, DC, which is how I got.
06:48.20
Stephen Baldi
to Washington DC. So I am a super Philadelphia sports fan, because not only am I from Philly, but Allen Iverson was my classmate at Georgetown University.
06:51.93
vigorbranding
That’s awesome.
06:55.50
vigorbranding
Is that right?
06:56.61
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, we were the same class.
06:56.89
vigorbranding
Wow.
06:57.61
Stephen Baldi
And so, yeah, very cool.
06:58.33
vigorbranding
That’s so cool. Yeah.
07:00.38
Stephen Baldi
And so maya my commitment to making meaningful connections with people comes from way back then when I was forced to do it, not only because of who I am, but my circumstances.
07:00.74
vigorbranding
AI. It’s legendary.
07:12.75
Stephen Baldi
And I’ve tried to carry that out through my career and my life.
07:15.84
vigorbranding
That’s fantastic. what a great That’s great. That’s a great story. you know it’s like It’s funny that on the Air Jordans, at that time, when they came out, and I can follow you on that. i know you You nailed it. You said the first sneaker that was over $100. My dad had ah this like mom and pop retail sporting store. We sold mostly like hockey stuff. We were from Hershey, Pennsylvania.
07:35.39
vigorbranding
And I was working in a store in in Camp Hill and outside of Hershey. It’s up in the West Shore, they call it. Anyway, long story short, I was in the mall and we sold some sneakers and the Air Jordans came out and we had them on the wall.
07:48.37
vigorbranding
And it was like, it was insane. $100 for a pair of sneakers.
07:52.08
Stephen Baldi
Yeah.
07:52.28
vigorbranding
And I mean, like, whereas I’ll say the average then was probably like on the high end was probably like 50, 55.
07:57.40
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, for sure.
07:58.58
vigorbranding
And this went right to 100. And it was funny, my dad, maybe that’s where I started learning about, and I really did learn a lot about marketing, working in retail, because you have to talk to people, you have to sell. And I think that’s the most important skill a person can learn. Communicating with people and learning how to sell, like, you know, at least present yourself, right? So I put these sneakers at the very top. I said, dad, you know what? ah I said, everybody wants the Air Jordans. Most people can’t afford them.
08:21.42
vigorbranding
but everyone wants to come and look at it. So I always sell them the white, the white, men’s the body they’re like but you know, so for every one Air Jordan, I saw, I used to sell like 30 other pairs of shoes.
08:25.49
Stephen Baldi
ah yeah
08:30.65
vigorbranding
You know what I mean?
08:31.05
Stephen Baldi
It’s been up in the store. It’s like a newspaper. People don’t necessarily want just the newspaper, at least the retailer does it, but they come in to buy the newspaper and then they buy the water, the soda, the candy.
08:33.13
vigorbranding
That’s right.
08:39.73
vigorbranding
That’s right. yeah I lured them in with the Air Jordans. I think we had like five parrot the most. I mean, we couldn’t afford, you know, it’s a little mom pop store.
08:46.41
Stephen Baldi
Probably two sizes.
08:47.56
vigorbranding
Yeah, right. That’s exactly right. So that’s funny. So okay, you talked about sports and and and you know, Philly and all that you you pride yourself on um being a local company and playing in front of the home crowd.
08:58.99
vigorbranding
Talk a little bit about the the local connection in DC that you have.
09:02.34
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, so I’ll tell you, when you fly into most airports, what people don’t automatically see, but being a former developer, I understand that any airport authority, when you land in their airport, they want you to know what city you are in.
09:18.24
Stephen Baldi
So national brands are extremely important. So you’ll have your Dunkin’ Donuts. You’ll have your Pop-Belly’s, which are ah franchises that we operate.
09:22.12
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
09:25.89
Stephen Baldi
But every airport wants you to have a sense of place. So when you fly into Philadelphia Airport, you’ll have a Jim Stakes, because that’s you know historical to that region.
09:34.38
vigorbranding
Yeah.
09:34.93
Stephen Baldi
When you fly into National Airport here, or Dallas International, you’ll have your South Blocks, which is an ASE base. com concept here in the DC.
09:45.49
Stephen Baldi
You’ll have Ben’s Chili Bowl, which has been around since the 60s.
09:45.90
vigorbranding
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
09:49.41
Stephen Baldi
And so we’ve prided ourselves from identifying and connecting with other founder-led brands, because I’m a founder. And nothing against a hired gun.
09:56.93
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
09:58.81
Stephen Baldi
I know they are often effective at their job. But there’s something different about a founder-led company because you’ve built it.
10:06.95
vigorbranding
Yeah.
10:07.27
Stephen Baldi
it probably has more ah meaning to you behind just the bottom line um results that you drive. It’s personal.
10:15.52
vigorbranding
Yeah.
10:15.69
Stephen Baldi
And so we’ve developed very deep relationships with companies like founding farmers, with timber pizza, who are all local based companies here. And we expect to continue to grow it, not just in this region that we’re in, but as we grow into other markets to do the same.
10:30.68
vigorbranding
Yeah, that’s that’s fantastic. And you nailed it. I mean, like, I’m a founder, I’m an entrepreneur. And you know, and ah again, wonderful folks that that work with me, I’m very, very, very lucky. But you know, for for most people, it’s their job, you know, their career, and and hopefully there’s a sense of of a family and a real relationship.
10:49.53
vigorbranding
But for me, it’s my life. I mean, i am I am defined personally by this, which is probably pretty shallow.
10:51.05
Stephen Baldi
right
10:54.86
vigorbranding
I mean, i mean look, um I love my daughters. I’m a dad. I’m ah a husband. I love my family with all my heart, but I feel like I’m defined by my company and the what I’ve built. and and all of that And I just, you know, so again, I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing or whatever, but it’s just, it’s ah it’s a lot deeper, right?
11:11.93
vigorbranding
When you found something and ah it’s it’s a lot deeper, everyone thinks it has to do with like money and stuff, and it really doesn’t.
11:12.49
Stephen Baldi
Right. For sure.
11:17.73
vigorbranding
It’s a it’s really about, you know, sort of like your life’s life’s work. and You know, you know, I get I get the most excitement out of seeing the growth of the folks in the company. ah It’s great to see the brands grow and the companies grow.
11:30.42
vigorbranding
But I really get a kick out of of seeing the folks that have been here a long time and and all that. So anyway, that’s just that’s me.
11:35.91
Stephen Baldi
right
11:36.26
vigorbranding
But I just I totally I totally concur with what you’re saying as far as the founder led. I mean, that’s that’s fantastic.
11:41.40
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, at some point as a founder, you most likely had to put something at risk that meant something to you.
11:47.14
vigorbranding
Yeah.
11:47.50
Stephen Baldi
Whether it’s personal guaranteeing, first leverage to build the company or, you know, having to bail it out because you run into a pandemic, which we all face back in 2020.
11:47.75
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
11:55.18
vigorbranding
All right.
11:57.80
Stephen Baldi
um Oftentimes you can’t just walk from that business and matriculate to another W2 position because this is yours. And so I love when I can connect with founders.
12:04.69
vigorbranding
Yeah.
12:07.41
Stephen Baldi
I’ll work with non-founders also, but there’s something unique about the journey we’ve all been on.
12:09.54
vigorbranding
Sure.
12:11.88
vigorbranding
Yeah, absolutely. So let’s let’s talk a little bit. I just so folks know, I mean, what’s really cool about this conversation is I, ah you know, with vigor, we work with restaurant brands, right?
12:22.32
vigorbranding
So we’re very familiar with restaurant brands. And you you have brands like Potbelly, Smashburger. You said founding farmers soon to come. ah Timber Pizza, Dunkin, I mean, some some household names.
12:33.94
vigorbranding
I don’t know if I’m um yeah any ants.
12:34.26
Stephen Baldi
On the end, don’t forget on the end, this is what else we have.
12:35.99
vigorbranding
No, I can’t actually. Yeah, we actually worked on any answers. We have an agency called quench that a branding agency, Food and Beverage, that that actually worked with Auntie Anne’s because they started here in Lancaster.
12:40.96
Stephen Baldi
Okay.
12:45.88
vigorbranding
hu Yeah, and I got to meet Anne Byler in the beginning.
12:45.98
Stephen Baldi
They did.
12:48.81
vigorbranding
So, Auntie Anne is actually a person and she’s a wonderful lady and It was a really really awesome to meet her and and and what a she was so she’s a very philanthropic lady very very ah ah Generous and very successful very so she’s got a phenomenal story as well. But so yeah, I certainly won’t leave the auntie hands out But you so you have all these great brands um Talk a little bit about I mean, you know, you said somewhere founded by they you know the founders and all that what’s it like to to manage all these different brands and
13:18.00
Stephen Baldi
I’ll tell you, it’s a dynamic environment. Airports are a wonderful place to do business. Again, I share with you briefly how I matriculated into them, but once you end up in this kind of ecosystem, it’s hard to walk away.
13:33.35
Stephen Baldi
We get the privilege of serving the traveling public every day. And what’s special about that are the passengers are dynamic. There are people who are going on business trips. There are people who are going on vacations. There are people who are going to be celebrated and there are people who are going to, you know,
13:51.28
Stephen Baldi
usher people off into a transition of life. And we get to meet and connect with them all. And so I tell our crew members that we have the privilege of participating in whatever journey people are on every day.
14:03.68
Stephen Baldi
And then the following day, we get a whole new group of people coming through.
14:06.48
vigorbranding
yeah yeah
14:07.36
Stephen Baldi
So that’s dynamic in the industries are small. I will tell you it’s about a $8 billion industry nationally in the United States, food and beverage and airports.
14:14.57
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yeah.
14:19.40
Stephen Baldi
But the industry is really controlled by about 20 key companies. And within those 20 companies, you probably have 50 total key players.
14:23.32
vigorbranding
yeah
14:27.50
Stephen Baldi
And so we know each other. you know You typically don’t leave the industry. Your business card may change. So you may go from company to company, but it’s a small ecosystem. And so I’ve enjoyed being in the industry now.
14:40.58
Stephen Baldi
18 years. I started when I was two. ah But it’s a buy it’s been an extraordinary 18 years, except for some of the challenges like COVID. But you know for the people who were able and blessed to push through it, I think we have a different perspective on what we can be and what we should be in the businesses that we lead. To your point,
15:00.50
Stephen Baldi
um being defined by your business is not necessarily shallow, but there’s levels, there’s there’s depth to what we do.
15:08.62
vigorbranding
Yeah.
15:08.91
Stephen Baldi
And I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to swim in those depths ah for many years.
15:14.41
vigorbranding
That’s awesome. We’ll get to COVID in a second, but I want to go back to airports. ah I’ll say, fortunately or unfortunately, I’m a customer. I’m in an airport every single week. So when you’re describing the people you see there, it’s like, yeah.
15:21.70
Stephen Baldi
Awesome.
15:24.71
vigorbranding
I mean, you know there’s it’s every single walk of life. Everyone seems to have a higher level of stress.
15:30.65
Stephen Baldi
yeah
15:30.77
vigorbranding
Everyone’s in a hurry, even when they’re not, or even worse, if someone’s really not in a hurry and they’re walking slow in the airport, that can actually be more frustrating and stressful. but ah So how do you how do you deal with that chaos? I mean, you got all these people that are amped up and nervous and they have anxiety or whatever, and then all of a sudden you’ve got to serve them and take them, you know, and represent these great brands and and and actually make the stuff and and in a and a fast time because they’re always running late, even if they’re not, they just think they’re always stressed.
15:56.04
Stephen Baldi
Right.
15:59.20
vigorbranding
Talk about airport concessions. Talk about that chaos.
16:02.08
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, so you meet people where they are. And I will tell you, operating a street-side restaurant versus an airport, it’s a completely different sport.
16:09.79
vigorbranding
I cannot imagine.
16:10.73
Stephen Baldi
I tell ah these founder-led companies when they’re thinking about matriculating in the airports, I tell them you know it’s like playing high school varsity basketball.
16:10.80
vigorbranding
yeah
16:19.70
Stephen Baldi
And then you get drafted to the and NBA, like the speed, the requirements, you know, we have to go through the logistical um challenges of having every box that comes into your restaurant scan.
16:20.40
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
16:31.21
Stephen Baldi
Like Cisco’s not pulling up to our back door and delivering our ground beef for Smashburger.
16:31.53
vigorbranding
Yeah.
16:34.05
vigorbranding
Right.
16:35.85
Stephen Baldi
Like it’s going through an X-ray, just like your luggage is.
16:38.86
vigorbranding
Yeah.
16:39.39
Stephen Baldi
um All of our crew members have to go through a 10 year federal background check.
16:44.03
vigorbranding
Sure.
16:44.19
Stephen Baldi
um There’s complexities to the business, which are to our challenge. But to me, it’s also kind of to our benefit, Michael, because it reduces my competition. Because unless you’re a serious player, you’re not trying to participate in airports.
16:54.14
vigorbranding
Mhm.
16:56.81
Stephen Baldi
And so for me, understanding those barriers and be able to navigate them are great. But from a day to day operation standpoint, We encourage our crew members just to meet people where they are.
17:07.93
Stephen Baldi
um It may be the 50th time you’ve welcomed someone to our restaurant, but it’s the first time you’ve spoken to the person that’s in front of you. And again, you don’t know if they’re going on vacation or they’re going to a celebration of life to send a family member home.
17:16.31
vigorbranding
right
17:22.96
Stephen Baldi
Regardless, you should be additive to their experience and not adding additional stress or complications. Just try to deliver them fast, friendly, exceptional,
17:34.09
Stephen Baldi
service because that’s our standard. That is our vision for the company, which is being exceptional is our standard. It’s not something that happens intermittently.
17:42.84
vigorbranding
All right.
17:44.59
Stephen Baldi
It happens all the time. And so we welcome the chaos.
17:45.78
vigorbranding
Yeah.
17:48.05
Stephen Baldi
You know, when it’s raining and snowing outside, even though your flights are delayed, we kind of welcome that because that means you get to hang out with you a little bit longer.
17:54.78
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yeah.
17:55.63
Stephen Baldi
So as long as we’re not canceling flights, if they’re just delayed, that’s kind of our sweet spot.
18:00.01
vigorbranding
There you go.
18:00.65
Stephen Baldi
So we welcome it all.
18:02.58
vigorbranding
That’s awesome. You know, you you said something really interesting. So as I mentioned, Vigor is our agency that that does branding and marketing for restaurants. I know, and it’s not, you know, it’s common knowledge that turnover and and employees in the restaurant industry is like the biggest hassle, right? and Everyone’s dealing with that that turnover. But you just said something. they They have to go through this long, arduous process to get through. So do you find that you have, I’ll say, maybe better better qualified, better quality,
18:32.38
vigorbranding
ah team members in your restaurants?
18:34.64
Stephen Baldi
I would tell you that our hourly and even our salary leadership ah on some levels, they’re more committed because it is a personal investment to get through the process.
18:39.98
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm.
18:45.54
Stephen Baldi
And so, you know, typical food and beverage turnover is anywhere from 100 to 150%. And only ours is closer to like 30.
18:51.64
vigorbranding
Right.
18:54.91
vigorbranding
that’s hey That’s fantastic. I never thought that that would have never dawned on me that that would be ah an unfair advantage. you know It’s funny, like yeah I was telling someone the other day, you know the higher the barrier to entry in business, actually the better the business is because you don’t have just everybody and anybody competing.
19:12.66
vigorbranding
So you you have a higher barrier of entry.
19:13.25
Stephen Baldi
Correct.
19:15.58
vigorbranding
um And with that, you have you sort of have ah have a capture to a degree ah group of people, right? ah But the one thing that is interesting, I think if I remember correctly, I think there’s like 30%, I’ll say of ah if it’s a Dunkin Donuts on the street corner, 30% of their their ah customers will probably repeat, right?
19:35.43
vigorbranding
ah you You are not, I mean, you know you might have the same business guy that flies every Thursday out to you know wherever,
19:37.58
Stephen Baldi
No?
19:40.80
Stephen Baldi
we have We’ll have our Michaels.
19:41.81
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:42.16
Stephen Baldi
We have our Michaels.
19:43.59
vigorbranding
I’ll hit your place and at the airport get a coffee on the way out, but that’s it. Yeah, that’s it. So that’s.
19:48.43
Stephen Baldi
I will tell you, though, we do have outside of the the traveling public, we do have recurring customers who are the people who work at the airport. I mean, at National and Dulles Airport, you get anywhere from five thousand to ten thousand employees that are there every day.
19:56.97
vigorbranding
No, that makes sense. Sure.
20:03.65
Stephen Baldi
And so ah they are also extremely important to us.
20:03.75
vigorbranding
Mm hmm. Hey, they got to eat and drink, right?
20:07.86
Stephen Baldi
They got to eat and drink and they have to do it fast.
20:09.70
vigorbranding
Right. That’s right.
20:10.84
Stephen Baldi
Well, we have different incentives to get them in and out, but they are our recurring customers and they’re about 15 to 20 percent of our business.
20:15.10
vigorbranding
Yeah, that makes sense. Hey, going back to the old mall days that I was talking about the sneakers, I sold a lot of sneakers to people that worked in the mall, not many Air Jordans, but a lot of the, you know, a lot of the lower end sneakers.
20:22.26
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, for sure.
20:27.36
vigorbranding
So, we talked to you hit on earlier and I know we, we inevitably, hopefully one day we, we don’t, and we don’t have to talk about, we always go back and talking about COVID and, uh, you know,
20:35.54
Stephen Baldi
Oh, yeah.
20:37.21
vigorbranding
One of our companies and our holding company is a company called Varsity. And Varsity does retirement communities around the country, we market retirement companies. Well, that that industry shut down. I mean, no one was going, no one was visiting, and people were sick. It was bad. Restaurants, another one of our our agencies, right? We marketed restaurants. No one was going. It was basically shut down. you know Your hospitality Uh, and your restaurants, I mean, and your travel, I mean, you’re, you’re combining it all and how, talk about that a little bit.
21:06.75
vigorbranding
I mean, you were hit from both ends.
21:07.11
Stephen Baldi
Oh, I had the privilege of double dipping.
21:11.81
vigorbranding
Yeah.
21:11.93
Stephen Baldi
So we were in hospitality beverage, but we were also in travel.
21:12.41
vigorbranding
In turmoil.
21:15.47
vigorbranding
Yeah.
21:16.03
Stephen Baldi
And so I remember very specifically on March 11th, 2020, President Trump came on television and he announced a 30-day travel ban to Europe.
21:27.16
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm.
21:28.65
Stephen Baldi
And at the time, ah most people only thought about the impact of air traffic travel to Europe, places like London, Paris.
21:37.58
vigorbranding
right
21:38.31
Stephen Baldi
But I anticipated that this was really the big moment for our industry.
21:43.00
vigorbranding
Right.
21:43.21
Stephen Baldi
I know a lot of people associate kind of their aha moment with COVID becoming a significant thing when the NBA shut down and more importantly, when the NCAA tournament shut down.
21:53.85
Stephen Baldi
But that announcement on March 11th signified for me that things were about to change for my business.
21:58.60
vigorbranding
Yeah.
21:58.72
Stephen Baldi
Now, I didn’t know it was going to be 18 months.
22:02.21
vigorbranding
Right.
22:02.55
Stephen Baldi
um But within about two weeks, we lost 85% of our top line revenue. And so on March 18, we shut the company down for 18 months. um And it was a challenge to what we talked about earlier, where a lot of my identity was tied up in this company that I built.
22:20.39
Stephen Baldi
Well, there was no company to have an identity he tied to. And so for me as a leader, It really pushed me during that time to redefine who I was in that moment and who I was going to aspire to be if we were privileged enough to come out of it. And we did. We’ve come out very strong, stronger than actually we went in. um We actually sold 35% of the business last year to some strategic, but then also some individual investors. And so I’ve had the privilege of surrounding myself where before I was the only voice in the room and now there are many.
22:55.69
vigorbranding
Right.
22:55.77
Stephen Baldi
And it presents some unique challenges, but also some extraordinary opportunities for me to low to learn and grow from other individuals and institutions that have built companies to scale, not all in food and beverage, many not.
23:10.17
Stephen Baldi
um But it’s really given me the opportunity to become a better leader um and to take our company into the next five to 10 years of what we will be.
23:20.35
vigorbranding
That’s fantastic. you know i the the The COVID obviously affected everybody. It affected everybody in different ways. and like For us for a business, it was and it was really interesting in that you know because we have several different agencies in our holding company, it was sort of a little bit of a like a mutual fund where one or two stocks could be really down, but then others can be up. Our CPG agency, Quench,
23:40.72
vigorbranding
you know we’ We’re doing we’re doing brands national brands like you know Sunmade Raise and Stark Institute. To me, COVID, to to that to that company and those brands, COVID was like the greatest sampling program in the history of Earth. i mean If you put it in a package back then, it was on a shelf. People bought it. They stuck it in their pantries. They ate it. They bought more of it. i mean They couldn’t get enough of it. i mean It was just ah an insane time.
24:01.94
vigorbranding
for those companies. and then the other the The negative side obviously was the restaurants and everything else. i mean It’s a really interesting time. and and you know You said about how you it can define things. the other thing One of the other things we did was we took adversity. We had all these CEOs that were like, what is everyone doing? i mean like you you know This just happened. It was unprecedented. What is everybody else doing? so We thought, well,
24:23.89
vigorbranding
All right, we’re not making i mean and and again it’s not we’re not making revenue businesses down, but we still have these relationships. They’re our clients. So what can we do? So it wasn’t my idea, but one of our guys said, hey, let’s create sort of a round table. of that And our agency is called Varsity. So we called it the Varsity Round Table. So we got all these CEOs that were just like,
24:41.34
vigorbranding
What’s everyone doing? And they were able to talk and it was so successful that we did it the next week. And then they talked more and then more and more CEOs jumped in. They weren’t even our clients and became this open source sharing that has now been, we are on about, I think it’s like 250th.
24:58.49
vigorbranding
roundt We’ve been doing them every week since the first month of COVID.
25:04.38
Stephen Baldi
Wow, impressive.
25:05.19
vigorbranding
And what’s done for a company, for us, i mean again we don’t make any money from it. And it wasn’t about that. It was just a place for people to really vent and help. And now we have speakers come in and talk, and everyone’s obviously well beyond COVID.
25:16.71
vigorbranding
But it’s really allowed us to be a thought leader and assist these folks. And you know at the end of the day, it’s what it’s all about. And I know a big thing for you is is mentorship, right? I mean, you know talk about giving back. you want you Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
25:27.81
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, I’ll talk about that but I’ll also talk similarly to your roundtable so in February of 2020 I had the privilege of joining the organization YPO, which is Young President Organization, which is very similar to what you define there’s 35.
25:42.82
Stephen Baldi
1,000 YPO members globally. And it’s really for business leaders who have decided that they want to walk towards betterment as a person, as a leader, as a family member, as someone contributing to their community in partnership with other leaders.
25:58.55
Stephen Baldi
And so I am in the Washington DC Baltimore chapter here ah in the region.
25:58.93
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
26:04.18
Stephen Baldi
And I’m in leadership. And I can tell you that organization was really critical in me navigating everything that I had to go through ah during COVID.
26:14.98
Stephen Baldi
Now, we didn’t we didn’t meet weekly, um but we do meet monthly in a small group of seven to 10 people, and we have forum.
26:15.26
vigorbranding
Sure.
26:19.82
vigorbranding
Monthly forum.
26:22.81
Stephen Baldi
And, oh, there you go.
26:22.85
vigorbranding
I didn’t know I’m i’m YPO, too. I didn’t know your IPO. Yeah, I’ve been.
26:25.92
Stephen Baldi
Yeah!
26:26.21
vigorbranding
Yeah.
26:27.01
Stephen Baldi
So YDO is really what sustained me during COVID.
26:27.03
vigorbranding
So Oh.
26:29.86
Stephen Baldi
um And I’m privileged to be on the ladder now in leadership.
26:32.72
vigorbranding
Do for you.
26:35.01
Stephen Baldi
And so, yeah, as far as mentorship, when I started the company, you know it was a priority for me to give opportunity to underrepresented populations. um Now, as I started to grow the company, my focus started to turn inward, Michael, if I’m being honest. And you know the beginning of 2020, it was difficult for anybody to tell me that I wasn’t the shit. I built this company from zero to something much larger than I had ever aspired to as a young person.
27:04.34
vigorbranding
Right.
27:06.68
Stephen Baldi
um But COVID took all of that away.
27:08.81
vigorbranding
Yeah.
27:09.14
Stephen Baldi
And so what it reminded me of is that there was a mission that I started this company with. And it was something that I needed to recommit to when we reopened.
27:19.90
Stephen Baldi
And so now um we’re really pouring into our crew members um When I hire someone, specifically, let’s take Dunkin Donuts.
27:30.76
Stephen Baldi
If I bring in someone as a frontline worker that’s pouring coffee, if they’re still pouring coffee for us in three years, both them and the organization has done something wrong.
27:34.59
vigorbranding
Mmhmm.
27:41.17
Stephen Baldi
um We want to scale people up. It is not cost effective for us to have people in the same position for multiple years. So if we’re not scaling someone up to take on additional responsibility inside our company and sometimes even outside of our company, then we’ve done something wrong. you know My mentor told me a good leader ah expects or wants people to leave. A great leader expects them to.
28:08.64
vigorbranding
Yeah.
28:09.01
Stephen Baldi
And so either they’re leaving the position that we’re hiring them for or they’re leaving to go to another organization. But either way, we have to invest in our hourly crew members because we can’t afford not to.
28:20.86
vigorbranding
Yeah.
28:21.76
Stephen Baldi
And so that’s something that we really communicate out and share out. to our community and our organization and people know that we’re gonna invest in them in ways that other companies might not to and we feel like that gives us a competitive advantage and as a leader it makes me feel a good about not only our bottom line results but also the success that we can feel. I have a manager who’s been with us for eight years.
28:46.57
Stephen Baldi
Her name is Marta. And she started as a single unit manager. And now she’s a multi-airport director.
28:53.24
vigorbranding
awesome.
28:53.39
Stephen Baldi
And to see her growth and to understand the impact that that has has had on her family is tremendous. And I want to do that a hundred times over.
29:00.50
vigorbranding
Sure.
29:00.79
Stephen Baldi
And I have the privilege of being able to do that as a leader of our company.
29:01.01
vigorbranding
Yeah.
29:04.70
vigorbranding
and And think of it this way, I mean, and that’s what’s so great about this country, I’ll say is like, you were making whatever $22,000 a year, I think you had free room or board or whatever you were managing, right?
29:12.60
Stephen Baldi
I did.
29:13.65
vigorbranding
So you you’re probably like, I’m getting by, this is okay. And look, you and you know, obviously, you’re you’re very well educated, you have a great drive and personality, but you you created a a huge company. And that’s, that’s, that’s really super cool, really super cool.
29:25.90
Stephen Baldi
Well, Michael, I can tell you specifically in that first year, 2002, I made $19,117 and 43 cents. I can tell you that specifically because that W2 still sits on my desk.
29:36.80
Stephen Baldi
I have it framed.
29:36.84
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah.
29:37.68
Stephen Baldi
I look at it every day just to remind me of where all of this started and where now we’ve grown the company to I’m, I’m extremely proud.
29:45.15
vigorbranding
Yeah. And you know, you mentioned YPO and I’ve been very privileged to be in that organization for, gosh, I think at least 20 some years.
29:53.06
Stephen Baldi
So you joined when you were 17.
29:54.45
vigorbranding
Yeah, no, but yeah, it’s one of those things, is we you know, it used to kick you out when you’re 50. In fact, I did, I got the rocking chair and showed up at the front door.
30:02.59
Stephen Baldi
Oh, there you go.
30:03.68
vigorbranding
Yeah, that was the thing. And then they decided to have YPO Gold, WPO and all that. stuff So I stayed in and now we’re like a forum for life. So my guys, we meet once a month and we are together. ah we A lot of it’s virtual because these guys, a lot of it, we’re retired and stuff.
30:15.91
vigorbranding
So um I’m old. I mean, the it’s YPO o Gold, but I always say it’s Silent G, you know, YPO old. So, but it’s a, it was the greatest thing I’ve ever done for me.
30:26.29
vigorbranding
Maybe a better husband, better father, better businessman, a better employer, better ah a friend. I mean, and I i mean that.
30:32.27
Stephen Baldi
and human
30:33.29
vigorbranding
Yeah. It’s just a better human. And I think a lot of people see it from the outside and think it’s all, it’s a bunch of guys didn’t talk about how many cars they have and where they want vacation. It’s not that at all.
30:40.24
Stephen Baldi
It’s not that it’s a transformational community, you know, having a high trust network is invaluable.
30:40.92
vigorbranding
You know, it’s, you know, it’s a, it is, it is.
30:47.41
vigorbranding
Yep. Yeah. Someone’s got your back, right? You can always pick up that phone and call your, one of your folks and just, they got your back. No, that’s yeah.
30:54.39
Stephen Baldi
And it’s nobody, and it’s nobody, nothing, never. And to have that level of confidentiality is special.
30:57.03
vigorbranding
That’s right. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that’s that’s awesome. That’s all good for you. I had no idea. That’s fantastic. um So, but now I’m going to do a little ploy here. You got to go and you should go to Austin this year to the food and beverage round table.
31:10.60
vigorbranding
I mean, if you can check it out, it’ll be, I think it’s in in January, you know, I’ll probably be speaking there, but you should go.
31:14.55
Stephen Baldi
OK.
31:16.84
vigorbranding
I mean, you know, I’d love to meet you in person. It’d be fantastic.
31:18.67
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, I’d love that.
31:18.88
vigorbranding
Anyway, so could we do,
31:20.42
Stephen Baldi
Maybe we’ll be celebrating a Phillies World Series by then.
31:22.74
vigorbranding
Oh man, you’re making me nervous. um I hope so. I hope you’re right. I hope you’re right. But our company, we do it we do an annual food and beverage trends report every year. We’ve been doing them for like, jeez, 15, 16 years. And so a lot of times we launched it at the food and beverage round table. So it’s always really cool stuff.
31:40.96
Stephen Baldi
Awesome, send me an invite and I’ll be there.
31:41.00
vigorbranding
um Yeah. All right. Well, definitely. I’ll make sure you get it after this, after our conversation here. So, okay. When you go to a restaurant, you you have a choice between human interaction or self ordering kiosks. I know that, you know, you guys need to be really ah high speed, efficient and all that. What what do you, what do you prefer?
31:58.57
Stephen Baldi
Well, it depends, right? Deploying technology is a strategy that ah should be done with intention and asking the question, and then what, right?
32:12.55
Stephen Baldi
um I will tell you a story. So the first time we experimented with self ordering technology was in 2008 at JFK airport terminal five.
32:24.65
Stephen Baldi
And we deployed at the time iPads um at our Dunkin Donuts because we thought, you know, technology is moving in this way and it’s fun and it’s cool, but nobody wants to walk up to a counter and order a coffee by pressing buttons.
32:29.75
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm. Yep.
32:39.85
vigorbranding
Mm-hmm.
32:44.46
Stephen Baldi
You know, communicating to a cashier, ah medium cream and sugar takes about 15 seconds. When you are forcing someone to press hot coffee, then medium, then sugar, then extra sugar, like that’s just, we found that that was a ah strategy that wasn’t ah successfully deployed at that time.
32:58.57
vigorbranding
who
33:05.34
Stephen Baldi
now That was back in 2008. I will say trends have matured since then and so there is an opportunity to have self ordering technology at a place like Dunkin Donuts and people have learned to navigate it quickly. um You have hot buttons for certain high usage items and so I say to people all the time because my friends question me, whenever they see an iPad, they assume that that means that that technology has taken someone’s job. And what I try to educate people on is that you know if you deploy technology in a intentional way, in a smart way, it allows you to redirect
33:45.29
Stephen Baldi
what you would have otherwise spent on front of house and the back of house.
33:46.57
vigorbranding
Mm
33:49.72
Stephen Baldi
Or maybe you’re deploying it at a ah leadership level that’s multi-unit capable.
33:49.78
vigorbranding
hmm.
33:55.24
Stephen Baldi
And so it’s not necessarily ah replacing jobs, but allowing savvy business leaders to take that investment and redeploy it in other ways. I will tell you that the benefit is you know technology doesn’t call out. Sometimes you have to reboot the system, but it always upsells. It always asks you if you want a dessert and always ask you if you want to package your burger with fries. And so to be able to grow your top line ticket, ah that’s only going to drive bottom line outcomes, which allows a business owner like me to look at expansion, to go into other cities, to be able to bring other people along with us because the business is growing. And so there’s opportunity beyond just taking someone’s order. And so
34:40.31
Stephen Baldi
Technology is something you have to look at in parallel kind of decision making. But I enjoy it. There’s some concepts that it resonates more significantly than others. But I think there’s a balance and there needs to be a balance of both going forward. I don’t think we’re ever going to have an industry that is exclusively technology or self ordering driven. um And I think you go in with a bunch of assumptions, you understand how your customers respond to it, and then you be agile enough to adjust appropriately.
35:08.96
vigorbranding
Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. And i I concur. I mean, you know, I don’t want to wait in a massive line, especially from an airport. But, you know, just ordering, pre-ordering and all that kind of stuff isn’t all that funny either.
35:19.32
vigorbranding
So it’s just you with that happy balance. You know, I do like talking to somebody and, you know, because I talk a lot, I guess. But plus, I always ask for some ice in my coffee just a little bit. I don’t want nice coffee.
35:27.30
Stephen Baldi
There you go.
35:27.67
vigorbranding
So it’s a little tough to explain to an iPad, you know, so very soft.
35:31.57
Stephen Baldi
To drop it into a couple of cubes, yeah.
35:32.20
vigorbranding
Whoops. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t want to burn my, burn my mouth. So now I know you have at least one daughter, correct?
35:38.70
Stephen Baldi
I’d have two daughters and a son.
35:39.87
vigorbranding
Two daughters. right All right. Sorry. There we go.
35:41.61
Stephen Baldi
26, 25, and eight.
35:41.75
vigorbranding
This will be great then. Wow. Wow.
35:45.67
Stephen Baldi
I started over, Michael.
35:45.74
vigorbranding
A little gap here.
35:46.59
Stephen Baldi
I started over.
35:47.16
vigorbranding
You had a little gap here.
35:48.55
Stephen Baldi
had I had a couple of gap years.
35:48.93
vigorbranding
A couple of gap years. i well so I have two daughters, 26 as of last week and coming coming up on 29. The reason I bring up these families is you know we all know we love all our kids the same.
36:01.78
Stephen Baldi
No, we don’t.
36:01.79
vigorbranding
But on any but okay but on any given day on any given day, depending on the phone call, depending on the visit, there’s certainly ones that we like other better than others.
36:02.97
Stephen Baldi
No, we don’t.
36:09.94
vigorbranding
Michael Alex, it happens it back and forth all the time, just in case you’re listening. Those are my daughters. um
36:14.34
Stephen Baldi
Love it.
36:15.04
vigorbranding
so you know, we talked about pot belly, we talked about smash burger, we talked about dunking, we talked about timber, we talked about founding farmers, am I missing any any ends?
36:25.21
Stephen Baldi
There you go.
36:27.03
vigorbranding
Which one?
36:27.28
Stephen Baldi
It’s the end. Yeah.
36:27.84
vigorbranding
Which one’s your favorite? What’s your favorite kid there?
36:29.64
Stephen Baldi
My favorite. Wow. You’re going to force me to say that.
36:33.77
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah.
36:34.15
Stephen Baldi
Well, I will tell you, because I don’t know if any of our franchisors are going to listen to this part. I love them all equally, and I am privileged to be able to operate them. I will tell you the one that probably um sits deeply in my soul as a person ah is probably Dunkin’ Donuts.
36:55.45
vigorbranding
Nice.
36:55.85
Stephen Baldi
and And I’ll tell you Dunkin’ Donuts because when I was growing up ah in Southwest Philadelphia off of Cobbs Creek Parkway, I had family that lived out by the airport. And in order to get into that area of the city, you have to travel on Cobbs Creek Parkway.
37:11.63
Stephen Baldi
And there’s a Dunkin Donuts on the corner of Cobbs Creek Parkway and I can’t remember the cross street, but it’s been there for close to probably 30 or 40 years. I’m 48 and I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t there. And I remember seeing that Dunkin Donuts and thinking how rich that franchisee must be to have that score.
37:30.65
Stephen Baldi
Now I know that owning a single franchise is not necessarily a path to generational wealth, but it did, that Dunkin Donuts did put in my mind like what was possible.
37:40.22
vigorbranding
Yeah, that’s cool.
37:40.70
Stephen Baldi
um And so to be able to be now a 14 year franchisee of that brand, um which is our longest franchise relationship, it’s pretty special.
37:46.48
vigorbranding
Super.
37:50.20
vigorbranding
That’s cool. And you know, I’ll say this from the, from the branding side of the world. Uh, what a phenomenal job. I mean, Duncan’s been around forever. I mean, at one point time it was getting a little tired. It was sort of just fading in the woodwork.
38:01.35
vigorbranding
And we know, I mean, all these brands, I mean, they come on strong. They’re, they’re always started somewhere. There’s this regional thing. And then they become these big brands and is they, they struggle to stay relevant.
38:10.04
Stephen Baldi
Right?
38:12.62
vigorbranding
Right. And I think Duncan has just done a remarkable job.
38:16.08
Stephen Baldi
We have, yeah.
38:16.24
vigorbranding
of staying relevant i mean from their graphic design from their marketing their branding to their advertising and all the cool stuff they’ve done that you did you did they blew it away they they absolutely did and yep
38:22.42
Stephen Baldi
I mean, we had the best Super Bowl commercial in my opinion. I mean, Ben Affleck and J.Lo, they did their thing. And Mark Wahlberg, it like it was it was a beautiful commercial.
38:33.65
vigorbranding
Yeah, and you know, it just shows like when you have passion for something, and those guys certainly have passion for for for that part of the world and ah from the Boston area. I just think it’s it was exceptional. In fact, ironically, we have at at our holding company level, Pavone Group, we have the longest running, okay, this is no kidding, the longest running Super Bowl commercial voting mechanism called spotbowl.com.
38:56.66
vigorbranding
So every year we get
38:57.28
Stephen Baldi
OK.
38:59.26
vigorbranding
you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of votes from around the world, and people vote for their favorite Super Bowl commercial as it’s being played, as the game is being played. And then the the national media outlets reach out to us, and then we tell them the results.
39:13.08
vigorbranding
And Dunkin Donuts was was certainly a stellar winner.
39:13.26
Stephen Baldi
OK.
39:16.02
Stephen Baldi
It was and had to be at the top.
39:17.26
vigorbranding
Yeah, it was awesome.
39:17.88
Stephen Baldi
Come on out. Tell me Michael it was at the top.
39:19.04
vigorbranding
Yeah, yeah. It was, well, I’m looking over here at my guy that runs it. it was It was the top one. Yeah, it was, it definitely was.
39:24.42
Stephen Baldi
It was, it I thought it was.
39:25.10
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
39:25.89
Stephen Baldi
There you go. Thank you for, thank you for phoning your friend and getting confirmation.
39:26.59
vigorbranding
It was it was awesome.
39:29.55
Stephen Baldi
It was a pretty special advertising.
39:31.41
vigorbranding
Yeah.
39:31.85
Stephen Baldi
And yeah, I didn’t get a chance to order my Duncan jumpsuit, but I’m sure it’s in the mail somewhere.
39:36.72
vigorbranding
Yeah, there you go. there That’s that that everything.
39:38.41
Stephen Baldi
Maybe Duncan corporate will see this and they’ll send me one.
39:38.96
vigorbranding
Although. yeah Yeah, all the merch, everything they did around that was super cool. and the take the outtakes from the
39:43.99
Stephen Baldi
Super cool.
39:46.35
vigorbranding
you know It’s funny too because when it comes to this marketing stuff, like it used to be just a TV spot. and The reason I looked over to ask Dave, Dave’s the guy you spoke to. He’s the one that that kind of heads up this podcast. He’s also the one that really runs Spopple. We’ve been doing this so long that In the beginning, we didn’t know anything.
40:03.48
vigorbranding
In other words, they would the game it was all about the game. The game was played. And then people realized, well, people love the commercials. So we never knew, like like you and everybody else, we just sit there and watch the game, cut the commercial. Oh, it’s a commercial for fill in the blank.
40:15.61
vigorbranding
Now, they release the commercials to us ahead of time.
40:15.73
Stephen Baldi
Yeah.
40:18.45
vigorbranding
They tell us what it’s about. They send us outtakes. They give us information. Because they realize it, because it’s a couple million dollars for 30 seconds, that they need to get as much juice out of the you know squeeze as much juice out of this as possible so they want to know they put stuff online they do teasers and it’s it’s turned into a an event unto itself and uh we’re really proud to have been a part of it so it’s kind of funny that you brought that up that’s cool stuff all
40:39.58
Stephen Baldi
Yeah. Now I will tell you my all time favorite Super Bowl commercial.
40:44.35
vigorbranding
right uh
40:45.67
Stephen Baldi
Now I remember the star, but I don’t even remember the brand.
40:49.95
vigorbranding
-oh
40:50.06
Stephen Baldi
Remember the the commercial with the kid and the Star Wars mask and he was going around zapping things and he went and he zapped the car and the car started.
40:55.24
vigorbranding
Volkswagen. Yeah. Yeah.
40:58.28
Stephen Baldi
That was my all-time favorite more commercial.
40:58.46
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. That was ah that was a Volkswagen spot. That was a fantastic spot.
41:03.91
Stephen Baldi
Fantastic commercial.
41:03.93
vigorbranding
It was a fantastic. You know, I’ll i’ll tell you mine next. i’m I’m a simp and I, you know, ah the Budweiser commercials and
41:11.83
Stephen Baldi
Oh yeah.
41:13.17
vigorbranding
There was one though in particular where the guy, you know, he raises these horses and it goes on to be a Clydesdale and it it takes off and the horse leaves and there’s a parade. And I almost get choked up thinking about it.
41:24.28
vigorbranding
It was so well done. There’s a parade, the guy standing there to parade and the horse sees him, breaks away, chases him down on the road. Oh my gosh. It was, it was, I had to do a live TV commercial. I had to do a live segment on the news about the the best TV spot and and they they, you know, they played it and I wasn’t expecting them to play it.
41:40.60
vigorbranding
I’m like, I had tears going down my face.
41:42.56
Stephen Baldi
Oh, you got emotional.
41:42.51
vigorbranding
I’m like, That’s my favorite.
41:43.64
Stephen Baldi
Oh, look at you.
41:45.41
vigorbranding
I still get emotional. i think but i think it I think it was the best all-time i mean story. It was just cute. so anyway That’s right, man.
41:50.70
Stephen Baldi
And the best story always wins, Michael. Best story always wins.
41:53.25
vigorbranding
That’s right. right yeah Yeah, you know, we always tell people a brand is a promise, ah but you have to tell a story. You have to draw a motion, make them laugh, make them cry, make them feel something about your brand. And that’s how you break through. And it’s always important, you know, a lot of times clients will say stuff, um you know, hey we just want to sell more, we got to do this, we got to do that. And and really it comes down to ah the fact that you’ve you got to do great creative to break through to get people’s attention.
42:19.09
vigorbranding
So, well, I have a couple more questions for you and I want to hit them for sure.
42:21.03
Stephen Baldi
Okay.
42:22.25
vigorbranding
So now look, ah we talked about the airports you’re in, in the in the in the greater DC area, some of the most, I mean, they’re they’re busy, they’re they’re important, they’re huge. Other airports, I mean, you have great concessions in those airports.
42:34.37
vigorbranding
Other airports that you think have great concessions in the country?
42:37.16
Stephen Baldi
Yeah, I will tell you, Atlanta, one of the busiest airports in the world, definitely in this country.
42:42.95
vigorbranding
Oh yeah, oh yeah. yeah
42:45.86
Stephen Baldi
um And then Houston, Orlando, Chicago, Charlotte, these are all markets that we kind of look at.
42:49.80
vigorbranding
Mm hmm. Oh yeah.
42:54.54
vigorbranding
Massive hubs.
42:56.51
Stephen Baldi
um It’s important for us to be in high demand airport systems, because you never know how the world’s going to,
43:02.80
vigorbranding
Yeah.
43:05.21
Stephen Baldi
respond. And Morgan Hausl is one of the people who I look to for kind of strategic direction.
43:12.04
vigorbranding
Mm hmm.
43:13.49
Stephen Baldi
I’m thinking about my business. And one thing he always says is that as a business leader, if you’re only planning for the risk and threats that you can predict, you’re probably missing the biggest one.
43:24.90
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah.
43:25.41
Stephen Baldi
um And so how we kind of shelter ourselves from that is we go into high demand markets. So even if an airline, a legacy airline like an American or United or a Delta or a Southwest ah decides that they no longer want to operate in that market, there’ll be another legacy carrier chomping at the bit together.
43:44.09
vigorbranding
Sure.
43:44.40
Stephen Baldi
And so that’s one of our strategy when we’re looking to grow nationally is to look at high demand airport markets.
43:44.77
vigorbranding
Sure. Mm hmm.
43:51.29
Stephen Baldi
And those are just a few that I named.
43:53.58
vigorbranding
I’m a big fan of Morgan has effect. We have him speaking at our, at our YPO. He’s, he’s one of, I think he might even be next month’s speaker. So I’m really, really, are you really, that’s all his book.
44:00.64
Stephen Baldi
ah We’re bringing them in on the 13th of November. Yeah.
44:04.00
vigorbranding
His book’s incredible. Incredible. I made my daughter’s read it. So, um, what’s next for balding management group. And mean we talked about in other airports. What’s, what’s next for you? What’s what’s your vision? Where are you were are you hoping to go?
44:13.26
Stephen Baldi
my My vision is to grow the tent and plant trees that I may never even know their shade, um because that’s when I think a community and when a business is thriving is when you’re willing to do things that you might not be able to see to fruition. And so we’re trying to build a company, not trying, we are building a company that will rise the tide for all the boats. I want to create another 20, 25 stories just like mine.
44:41.46
vigorbranding
Yeah.
44:41.62
Stephen Baldi
um I can invest and grow my company so that it’s beneficial and creates generational wealth for me, but I also have the opportunity to listen to the individuals whose stories might not necessarily be taken to the top because they’re not fully formed or well articulated.
44:59.34
Stephen Baldi
I try to look for those people, because I was once that person.
45:00.66
vigorbranding
yeah
45:02.15
Stephen Baldi
I was the property manager in the office, and Cynthia Garber came and tapped me on the shoulder, which she did not have to do.
45:02.50
vigorbranding
yep
45:08.96
Stephen Baldi
And so I’m trying to identify those voices in our companies, the people in leadership, but also the people who we don’t necessarily identify with immediately, because a lot of our workforce our ESL where English is a second language.
45:24.24
Stephen Baldi
And so verbal communication is a challenge, but I don’t want that to get in the way of us knowing or identifying the next star in our organization.
45:24.69
vigorbranding
Yeah. Yep.
45:33.22
Stephen Baldi
So we’re doing things to kind of bridge the gap between ah those verbal communication kind of challenges so that every voice that’s in our organization can be heard because listen.
45:44.32
Stephen Baldi
I won’t pour a cup of coffee or flip a burger or roll a pretzel today, but that’s how our business runs. And so I want to give opportunity and visibility to those individuals in a very intentional way.
45:53.22
vigorbranding
Sure.
45:59.67
Stephen Baldi
So that’s what’s next ah for the company. And I think if you know you pay attention to the pennies and the nickels, the dollars make sense. And I believe if you focus on organizationally, the people who may be at the bottom of the ladder, you’ll grow the tent and the business in a way where there’s more opportunity created for everyone who’s valuable.
46:20.08
Stephen Baldi
And so that’s what I’m committed to, Michael.
46:21.72
vigorbranding
Fantastic. a Question. Have you ever, have you ever spoke to the woman who tapped you on the shoulder? Have you ever told her?
46:27.38
Stephen Baldi
i I mention Cynthia Garber every time I get the yeah opportunity to share how she interceded in my life.
46:30.01
vigorbranding
Yeah.
46:33.70
Stephen Baldi
And we text probably once or twice a year, but she knows how important she is to me.
46:36.60
vigorbranding
Oh, good. That’s awesome.
46:39.09
Stephen Baldi
um We haven’t seen each other in person probably 10 years, but I tell her story every time I speak about my journey because it was instrumental.
46:44.19
vigorbranding
That’s awesome.
46:47.22
Stephen Baldi
So she’s aware.
46:47.33
vigorbranding
Hey, that’s got to get you to pay yeah pay it forward, pay it back. And you got to make sure that you yeah you acknowledge the folks that helped you get there.
46:51.02
Stephen Baldi
and of pay for
46:54.07
vigorbranding
That’s, that’s huge.
46:54.84
Stephen Baldi
And you know what’s remarkable, Michael, over the 18 years that I’ve been in the business, 16 years leading this company, every now and then I’ll get a text message or I’ll get a direct ah message on LinkedIn of someone who worked for our organization and matriculated somewhere else.
47:11.24
Stephen Baldi
And I’ve lost contact with, and they’ve done the same for me.
47:12.80
vigorbranding
here
47:14.06
Stephen Baldi
So I know how special it is.
47:15.49
vigorbranding
That’s cool.
47:15.94
Stephen Baldi
And so whenever I get the opportunity, I try to tell people how they’ve impacted my life.
47:16.98
vigorbranding
Yeah.
47:19.90
vigorbranding
Very cool. well Stephen, I have one one last question. You’ve been phenomenal by the way. I can talk for you for hours. You’re you’re awesome. ah One last question. All right. And can’t you can’t pick pot belly or one of your, you can’t pick one of your brands, but if you had one final meal, what would you eat and why?
47:35.33
Stephen Baldi
Oh, this is the easy, this is the easy.
47:36.24
vigorbranding
Oh, good. All right. Sometimes people struggle with this. so
47:38.51
Stephen Baldi
No, it’s not a struggle. Michael, I’m from Philadelphia. If I gave any answer other than a gym steak with whizzing American, with fried onions, hot peppers, pickles, and ketchup, I would be doing my city a disservice.
47:42.03
vigorbranding
Yeah. Okay. Oh, nice.
47:52.46
vigorbranding
There you go. That’s good.
47:53.31
Stephen Baldi
So that’s what it would be.
47:53.56
vigorbranding
Good. Great. ah Great answer. Great answer. It’s funny, you know, I, yeah, come on, man.
47:56.67
Stephen Baldi
North and South, if you haven’t been, you should go the next time you’re in Philadelphia.
48:00.24
vigorbranding
I’ve been, I had a gym.
48:01.51
Stephen Baldi
I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to your audience.
48:02.84
vigorbranding
and Okay. I was going to say, I had a gym stick last week and I’m not making that up. We had, I don’t know if I mentioned, but we had, uh, brought in agencies, independent agencies, all from all around North America, i guys from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada, all over the continental U S come to Philadelphia.
48:19.70
vigorbranding
and during happy. We took them to dinners. We took them. We treated them right. We showed them the city independence and all that stuff. But when we had the happy hour at my offices, I had pats and I had gyms and we had little little forks and we did a cheesesteak sampling program.
48:32.46
vigorbranding
You know, yeah, they you you do know who won.
48:32.82
Stephen Baldi
Oh, and I know who won.
48:35.35
vigorbranding
So I know, you know, I know, you know, hey, I’ll throw another one out there.
48:36.36
Stephen Baldi
I won’t make you name it, but I know, I know who won.
48:41.02
vigorbranding
Pat or Tony Luke’s down on Oregon Avenue.
48:42.86
Stephen Baldi
Oh, he looks great.
48:43.85
vigorbranding
The original.
48:44.04
Stephen Baldi
De La Sandro’s Mama’s Pizzeria on Belmont Avenue.
48:44.87
vigorbranding
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. tell sound good You know, you you know.
48:48.67
Stephen Baldi
I haven’t lived in the city before the years, but it’s still, I know where to go.
48:48.76
vigorbranding
Yeah, man. Yeah, you know, those, those, those are legacy places, you know, and and yeah, it’s all good, all good.
48:54.82
Stephen Baldi
For sure.
48:56.68
vigorbranding
In fact, you know what, that’ll be my happy meal. The Phillies will be in the playoffs and I do, I slide down into and get a cheesesteak before the game. It’s a, it’s a part of the whole shtick. So I’m excited about it.
49:04.48
Stephen Baldi
And you also have to get a wild, wild fruit punch. Come on now.
49:06.31
vigorbranding
Oh, there you go.
49:07.00
Stephen Baldi
You gotta round it out.
49:07.01
vigorbranding
There you go. Yeah, that’s, that’s that’s funny. Well, Steven, it was fantastic. I really appreciate your time. Uh, and it was wonderful talking to you.
49:14.87
Stephen Baldi
I appreciate the invitation. And listen, good luck with the rest of your forktails going forward. It seems like you’ve had an incredible run with the amount of episodes that you’ve already had. And I hope you you know multiply that by 10, if that is your intention and desire.
