Give an Ovation: The Restaurant Guest Experience Podcast with Zack Oates
Give an Ovation: The Restaurant Guest Experience Podcast is your backstage pass to the minds of hospitality leaders, innovators, and operators who are redefining what it means to serve. Hosted by Zack Oates, founder of Ovation, each episode dives into real-world tactics and inspiring stories from restaurant pros who know how to create five-star guest experiences—both in-store and off-premise.
From fast casual to fine dining, catering to curbside, learn how to drive loyalty, empower your staff, and deliver hospitality that hits home. Whether you're a restaurant owner, operator, marketer, or tech partner, this podcast will leave you with practical insights and plenty of reasons to celebrate and Give an Ovation.
Give an Ovation: The Restaurant Guest Experience Podcast with Zack Oates
Dave's Playbook for a Hot Brand with Jim Bitticks
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Joining us today is Jim Bitticks, President and COO of Dave's Hot Chicken! Have you ever wondered how Dave's became the phenomenon that it is?
On this episode, we explore the brand's formula for success, starting with their rise from a humble pop-up to a thriving franchise. Jim shares how a single review ignited their growth, highlighting the importance of a standout product. He discusses strategic celebrity endorsements, like Drake's, which boosted the brand's visibility, and much more.
Also tune in for some great insights on getting the most out of store openings.
We hope you enjoy - thanks, Jim!
Dave's Hot Chicken Success Story
Speaker 1Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation , the restaurant guest experience podcast , where I talk to industry experts to get their strategies and tactics you can use to create a five-star guest experience . This podcast is sponsored by Ovation , an operations and guest recovery platform for multi-unit restaurants that gives all the answers without annoying guests with all the questions . Learn more at OvationUpcom . And today we have Jim Biddix , who is if you don't know Jim , you are in for a treat . He's the president and COO of Dave's Hot Chicken . He was the former chief restaurant officer and executive VP of ops and training at Blaze . He was VP of ops at CKE . He has been around this industry for a lot longer . Actually , his whole career looks about to be his age .
Speaker 1I mean like Jim you do look , you look so young , which is crazy that you've done so much . And you know , when I first met you , I thought you were , like you know , a new GM at a Dave's hot chicken . Turns out , you were like the guy .
Speaker 2I turned up the filter in Zoom . You know how you can turn up the filter . There's like a slider . How much do you want to touch up your opinion ? You went all the way up . Yeah , I turned 50 about two weeks ago , so that was my first . Thing I did for the first Zoom meeting after the birthday was I went and I went from like middle All the way up , all the way to the up . So this is very smoothed out . I'm usually like I usually look like the wicked witch of the West .
Speaker 1For those who are listening to this podcast , he is absolutely a liar . You will meet some what behind the ears guy and he's going to be the turns out the COO . But Jim , first of all , dave's Hot Chicken , fastest growing restaurant chain in America , fastest and fast casual number one brand . But how did this all happen ? Like , tell me about . How is Dave's Dave Like I understand that you have some good chicken , but I mean , there's a lot of places that have good chicken . How did you ?
Speaker 2become Dave's ? You know it's a great question . I joined the team about a little under four years ago It'll be four years here in late June , I think and it was already well on its way . There were four restaurants open . It was the middle of COVID or just after the beginning , you know , push for COVID and these restaurants were like averaging 5 million if you annualized it , and it was crazy to me because it was just so organic in the food . I mean , I had lots of thoughts when I first considered joining the team , including like is hot chicken a fad or is this like a real thing ? And you know all sorts of layers to it .
Speaker 2I went to the first location , the first Dave's location , to try it out before I really seriously considered joining the team and , like I said , it was during COVID . I ordered online and when I got there there was a line out the door waiting to pick up their online orders because they weren't doing inside service . They had a shelf in the dining room that was just covered with orders for people that were coming in to pick up . I opened up the plastic bag , I went down to the styrofoam clamshell container and inside are two deep fried giant chicken tenders sitting on white bread with French fries and sauce that's made from mayonnaise essentially , the base is mayonnaise and I was working at Blaze Pizza at the time that had this . We had done this journey to clean ingredients . All of the ingredients at Blaze didn't have preservatives and whatnot , and we had eco-friendly packaging and all the things . And the Blaze AUV was , like you know , a fourth or a fifth of the Dave's AUV . Of course that's with four locations versus like 370 locations .
Speaker 2But it just was this thing to me that was like wow , what is it ? What is it that's driving the business ? Well then , I tasted the chicken and the chicken is extremely good . Like it's soft and tender and hot , like temperature heat , but also spicy and it's spiced to whatever level you want it spiced to , and it was so . The sauce on top of it was so good and I remember going like , wow , this is really good , but also feeling at the same time that I didn't want to eat any of it because I was like 50 pounds heavier than I am now and I felt like it was just going to add on additional weights . But I couldn't , I couldn't not eat . It was so good , it was just delicious , and I later . No-transcript .
Speaker 1I think you've had him on the podcast before yeah , him and Bill came on great episode .
Speaker 2Yeah , and Armand is sort of Dave's personified , or Dave's is Armand objectified I guess I don't know what the right word is In chicken form . In chicken form , yeah , or Dave's is Armand objectified I guess I don't know what the right word is In chicken form . In chicken form , yeah , and so the energy and everything around Dave's is sort of like it's Armand's essence and he launched the brand . As you may or may not know , the team together launched it in a parking lot in 2017 . And on the first three days of business , they were doing about $40 a day in sales . On the third day in business , they got strategically lucky , insanely strategically lucky when a Eater LA food blogger showed up at the parking lot , tried the food and posted the next day . And when they got to the parking lot that evening at like five o'clock they had like a line of 100 people waiting to try the food . He posted a blog article that said late night hot chicken stand might blow your mind . East Hollywood late night hot chicken stand might blow your mind . And that's sort of that's what launched it the idea of being insanely , strategically lucky .
Speaker 2The reason I say it that way is that the founders , armand , dave and Tommy , always talked about the idea that they wanted to franchise the business . They wanted to build it so they could build a bunch of them , and their plan the entire time was that they were going to open up in a parking lot . They were going to get a bunch of attention from food bloggers , so as soon as they opened , they started tagging food bloggers you should come try our food with pictures they were posting on Instagram and I , on the third day they got one and that literally led to where we are today . About a year later , after they opened that first location movie , producer John Davis stopped in , left a note , a post it note for the founders , for the guys , as we call them , and said hey , give me a call .
Speaker 2John Davis . And they called him and his longtime partner , bill Phelps , who's our CEO , and John took a meeting and the rest is history . They formed Dave's Hot Chicken Franchise Company and started selling franchises . We're up to roughly 875 to 900 franchises sold . I'd have to go check the sheet to 900 franchises sold . I'd have to go check the . I'd have to go check the .
Speaker 1Uh , the the sheet Because because from lunch to right now it's like gone up , so you get to keep track no-transcript .
Speaker 2I think we have 194 open as of today . We open on Thursdays , generally speaking , so I think we opened two today .
Speaker 1The fact that you even like have a day of the week just shows how big this is .
Speaker 2Well , the reason we have to do it that way is because it's an all franchise organization . As a company we own . What I say are five and one fourth restaurants , five actual restaurants , and then the fourth one is a ghost kitchen that's right across from our office in Pasadena at Kitchen United Mix , and I mean it does sales but it's like it's not like comparable to a , to a brick and mortar location , and because we have all these franchise groups , I think we have 77 active franchise groups , maybe 78 now , that are all working on opening restaurants . You might have as many as our record so far is seven in one week that we had to open , and so we send teams to do the openings , teams of five or six people to do the openings , and so I did this before at Blaze Pizza . I joined Blaze when there were two locations and we got up to about 372 before I left .
Speaker 2But the way you have to do it is that a team might come off of opening one restaurant , like when they all stack together , which is pretty frequently . A team might come off of opening one restaurant and then they got to go directly to the next restaurant . So it has to be in like scheduling blocks if that makes sense . So they finish on a Monday , they get a couple of days off and they go back out on a Thursday if that makes sense . So that's why we do it on , why we open up . They go back out on a Thursday and a week later they open that restaurant .
Speaker 2So they open on a Thursday and then we and that's a soft opening , and then we do the grand opening on the Friday where we post about it on Instagram and there's lines out the door and just what's funny about that is that most restaurants don't want to open on a weekend .
Speaker 2They want to , like , give the team sort of time to ease into it . You want to open on a Monday or Tuesday so that you slowly build up to the weekend . What we've done and we did it at Blaze also is we want to compress that opening period so that our team is there to support the franchisee as they get up and off the ground . Also , when you get all the buzz and the news , we sort of are like riding the wave of the news , of the PR that we get off of an opening . So we launch officially on a Thursday that's the practice day , if you want to call it that , and then Friday is when you start getting headlines and news vans that come and check it out or whatever , and so the moment someone tries the food , it's really good and they're much more likely to come back with their family or significant other on Saturday and Sunday , when you do it like on a Tuesday or Wednesday .
Speaker 2You know like it's . It's just , you just got At Blaze . We used to do a free pizza day on that opening Friday , where anyone that showed up got free pizza , which was always the idea was like if they try it for free , they're going to come back and pay for it on like Saturday or Sunday because it's so good . Here we don't do anything free , but we still get those lines and then you get a pretty . Do you have press , do you ?
Speaker 1like with the news vans and stuff like that . Like with the news vans and stuff like that , are you sending people press releases and like are you getting the news there ?
Speaker 2So you're not , you're getting again getting strategically lucky , right ? Yeah , we have a well , I mean , it's all sort of a plan that's been proven to be successful that we've used before at Blaze and then Wetzel's , pretzel's Bill's former company they use something similar too . So we have a great PR guy . His name is Josh Levitt , with Fika Collective . He's able to fire it up and get the PR to move on an opening weekend . We get a lot of interest from food bloggers and all of those things . But we're working on that in the background , like we're , you know . We're sending out the message that we're opening .
Speaker 1That's awesome , because I think that a lot of times they people will see that and they think , oh well , you , just you open and then , like people come , there's a lot of work that goes into it and if Dave's has to do a lot of work , you've got to do a lot of work , right ?
Speaker 2Yeah , for sure , and you know the thing is is , though , on Instagram . Instagram drives a lot of it , a lot of the interest and a lot of the traffic at the beginning , which is so weird . We opened the first location . First drive-thru location for us was open in Dallas of what was that ? 2021 .
Speaker 2And I got to Dallas , I checked into my hotel and I had it was still . We were still wearing masks , and I had my Dave's Hot Chicken mask on and the girl who's checking me in said Dave's Hot Chicken . She's like oh , I love Dave's Hot Chicken . I was like really , where have you tried it ? Because obviously this is the first one in the state at that point . And she goes I've never tried it . And I go how do you know about us , how can you love us instagram if you never tried the food ? But I sort of appreciated her , her uh fanhood , and I wasn't going to question it . So there's something very special about the brand that has been driven a lot by the instagram side of it . Instagram is what launched us , really honestly , with uh armand getting the food blogger farley elliott to come out interesting .
Speaker 1So I mean I mean this is this podcast has kind of taken an interesting turn as we're getting into , like how do you open a restaurant and build a brand any other ? Like let's keep going on this vein , though , because it's like really interesting , because what you your secret sauce isn't mayonnaise , it's like lightning . And you caught it in this bottle and like can someone else do this ? I mean I I don't , because , like you guys are , obviously you speak , you share yourbook and yet here we are since 2017 . No one's been able to replicate your playbook . Why ?
Speaker 2Yeah , so in what year was it ?
Blaze Pizza's Celebrity Investor Partnerships
Speaker 2In 2013, . I signed on with Blaze Pizza . I was working for CKE Restaurants , which is Carl's Jr and someone I used to work with and Hardee's and Hardee's hey , now , yes , cke has Hardee's too , and someone I used to work with kept calling me and trying to get me to go to Blaze . And she kept saying , jim , you got to come and be in charge of operations . We need someone in charge of operations . Her name's Carolyn Kennedy . I've worked with her now for like 31 or 32 years , since I was whatever , 19 , 31 years and I was like , well , how many restaurants you know ? And she's like , well , we have one open right now , but we're going to open another one next month . And I , you know , I'm like I have three kids Like I can't leave this job . It's like , you know , sort of like a done deal and a sure thing to go for this startup .
Speaker 2Long story short , I went for an interview . I loved it . I was convinced . What got you to go to that interview ? By the way , you know there have been a lot of changes on the Carl side of things . They've gone private equity and you know it's just stuff changes and it was . It was sort of just felt like this new and interesting thing to do , and so I mean , I went to explore it and when I left I said I called her at the airport and I said , find a way to get me there . I want to be there . And literally I want to say four months later I was there .
Speaker 2I was at Blaze and doing things that I had never done before , stuff he had so many degrees , he was very , very qualified , very like talented chef . But you know the way he did . It was off of a recipe page and so we started creating materials and things that I had never done before and learned , you know , learned our way through building that brand . But the formula , the formula they had at Blaze , which was the Wetzel's Pretzels founders , rick Wetzel , his wife , elise Wetzel they're the co-founders of Blaze Pizza , but Bill Phelps , who's the CEO of Dave's , was like a founding investor with them , because Rick and Bill started Wetzel's Pretzels together , and so they had this sort of playbook where they brought in a couple of celebrity investors . One of them happened to be LeBron James . Lebron James was actually at the very first Blaze Pizza opening , which was in Irvine , california , right off the campus of UC Irvine and they did this like secret opening , where a bunch of people showed up because LeBron was there .
Speaker 2Later , a couple of years later , lebron became our official spokesperson . He left McDonald's actually to be the spokesperson for Blaze , like our official spokesperson . He left McDonald's actually to be the spokesperson for Blaze , like our celebrity spokesperson and our icon , you know , and we got to really piggyback off of his fame and celebrity . So what they did here at Dave's pretty much the same investor group overall John Davis , bill Phelps and many of their friends and families and Rick Wetzel all invested , put this thing together and then they were able to bring in when we just had one location open .
Speaker 2They were able to bring in Drake . I think he's got like 160 million followers on Instagram or some crazy number and actually has more reach than LeBron did , and he's been involved with the brand since the very beginning , since they created the franchise company , which is like I want to say 2019 , I
Success in Food Industry Expansion
Speaker 2guess . So there's a bit of a formula there . You know , you get something that's got really , really good food , you get a group of investors together and then you pull in some type of a celebrity icon to help you with it potentially down the road . We announced Drake as our celebrity investor celebrity spokesperson about two and a half years ago or so , even though he'd been uninvolved for a couple of years before that and as much as he's helped us sell a lot of franchises and there's been a lot that he's done in terms of we've utilized him with different giveaways and for his birthday .
Speaker 1Birthday yeah .
Speaker 2But the brand sort of had its own momentum and its own inertia .
Speaker 1You know , aside from from the additional like plus up or power up that Drake gives us , and that came from the energy behind Armand and his use of Instagram and the photos of the food that were so inviting and so good to look at , it's just such a cool story and while that formula and I think maybe that's part of the reason why you can share that formula is because it's hard to replicate , but you know , I got a feeling that if there is a next thing for Jim , or if you just , you know , take Dave's into the sunset with your hundred million and you get your island and everything . But if there is a next thing , I got a feeling that you could . You've done in pizza , you've done in chicken , I I got a feeling that you could . You've done in pizza , you've done in chicken . I feel like you could do it in another industry as well , and another , another vertical food , yeah , like a genre , another food genre .
Speaker 2Yeah , you know , it's interesting Like I didn't even realize on this side of it , like I said , when I joined the Blaze pizza team I had only done company ops up to that point , like you know , for the district manager , regional director , rvp , vp of ops , and that was sort of the career path and that was fine . Landing at Blaze where you had to create everything , all the materials , all the systems , the procedures , all of that stuff , was a completely new but very invigorating experience . I sort of love it and I didn't realize I did . And then we came to Dave's . Many of the members of my team came with me . In fact , the first week that I started I hired several of them . They were still working at Blaze , but I hired several of them off to the side as hourly employees to help me do .
Speaker 2But we were a little behind at Dave's , when I got here , there were four restaurants . They did have some stuff built , but it wasn't . It wasn't ready for prime time , yeah . And so we had to , like you know , play some catch up because we were getting ready to start opening franchise restaurants about five months later , five or six months later .
Speaker 2So I was able to leverage the whole team that we built for eight years at blaze and literally , you know , had a fully functioning team of like sort of like fractional employees that were , you know , just working a few hours a day because we didn't have that many restaurants yet , and doing everything from guest response to building training materials , to you name it . I mean there are a lot of layers to it and it was sort of a great experience . I mean I want to say it was easy and I don't mean to you know sort of minimize how hard . It was sort of a great experience . I mean I want to say it was easy and I don't mean to you know sort of minimize how hard it was , but I had this great team of people that we had built and developed for literally eight years at Blaze , and so it was actually really fairly easy to come in and , you know , assimilate and become part of the brand right
Unsung Hero in Restaurant Industry
Speaker 2away .
Speaker 1Yeah , Well , and you know , you know so many people in this industry . Who's someone that you think we should be following ? Who's someone that deserves an ovation in the restaurant industry ? Like a person .
Speaker 2Yeah , well , I mean I would tell you that I think I mean this sounds like I'm kissing butt , but I'm not . Bill , bill Phelps is one of these people who sort of you know he's fairly older , I say that in a nice way but the reason I say that is because his demeanor is one of like not looking for a lot of . It's not that he's not looking for a lot of credit , but sort of like he just he lays low to a certain extent . You know , I mean internally he's very attention seeking , but externally , you know , he's humble and calm and and very polite and not at all a braggart , you know he is . He's somebody that sort of just like you know , the results will will show the work and what I learned about him actually in the last four years , what I've learned about him is that he's a really generous person , Like he's got this generous spirit and he can also be really mean and he's he's somewhat scary . Everyone will tell you he's sort of scary , like when he , when he starts talking to you , he's got this deep voice and he's kind of mean and he's walking . He's walking in my office right now but he's a mean , mean man . Actually I'm on a podcast with Zach from Ovation . Tell him that I'm more important than Zach . Yes , he knows he was talking about how important you were . Anyway , he's super generous and he's locked on in his young old age to this idea of he wants to help transform people's lives . And it's not BS . And I'll tell you one really good example of that .
Speaker 2I've been in this business since I was 15 years old . I said a minute ago I turned 50 . A couple of weeks ago I started the very first . My very first job was like my very first real job was at a franchised Jack in the Box restaurant when I was 15 . I had no idea what that even meant , that they were a franchise . And about two and a half years ago I became a franchisee of Dave's as well as the CEO or COO sorry , sorry , bill and president of the company . And I was able to do that through Bill essentially agreeing . Like when I went through the process of getting the job , I said I want to be a franchisee some days . Can I do that ? And he said we can make that happen . We did it at Wetzel's . All my executives had franchises and I was like sign me up , I'm ready . And literally I want to say six months in , maybe nine months in , to me being here .
Speaker 2He brought it up . He's like are you ready to be a franchisee ? And I said yeah . And I said how much money do I need ? Said to me , don't worry about it , I'll help you . And so we worked out a deal .
Speaker 2It turned out I didn't actually need additional money , I like I had enough . But I still took the loan , just so . You know , I thought I wasn't going to have it and he offered it . You know , I even told him . I said , listen , I have this much money , but it's literally all of my kids college money . I have four kids and I had enough for three kids to go to college and the fourth one we would wait and see .
Speaker 2You know , maybe he won't even want to go , you know . But I said I said I have that much , I can use it . My wife's going to kill me . And he goes don't worry about it , I'll help you , I'll help you take care of it . And so here we are , two years later . I've got two locations I have I . One of them is our CFO of the company , who he also helped create that opportunity for him . We've got two locations open and we're working on our next two , and he's always looking for ways to help people transform their lives , if that makes sense , and so I know you've already talked to him . You probably don't know that layer of him , but there's a , that's cool .
Speaker 2I used to hear stories all the time of him coming in to Blaze and leaving like $200 in the tip jar or whatever , and then I heard someone tell me that he offered to pay for them to go to school because they said they didn't have enough money to go to college . I've seen him talk to our employees sometimes and I heard just recently one of our employees was saying that she had a bunch of money and he's like telling me I got to hurry , I'm on a call , bro . Okay . He said this person was saying how they owed this much money . They were about to finish school and he goes call me tomorrow . Anyway , long story short , he covered her bills .
Speaker 1That is so cool .
Speaker 2It's stuff like that and it's one of those things that you don't run into . You don't see people keep it like under the radar . He's definitely one that doesn't talk about it , but he does stuff like that will keep it like under the radar .
Speaker 1He's definitely one that doesn't talk about it but he does stuff like that , so that's super . Yeah , bill , you're a rock star man , appreciate you .
Secrets to Success With Jim
Speaker 1And Jim , thanks for taking some time today . Man , it was a great pod . I know that we didn't get to the questions we wanted to , but this was uh , this was like so fun to to learn about that secret sauce . So for giving us all hope that the fountain of youth is real and for teaching us how to manufacture luck . Today's ovation goes to you . Thanks for joining us on Giving Ovation , jim . Thank you Thanks for joining us today . If you liked this episode , leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen . We're all about feedback here . Again , this episode was sponsored by Ovation , a two-question SMS-based actionable guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants . If you'd like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience , visit us at OvationUpcom .