Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to another video of the restaurant guest experience podcast. I'm your host at Dakos, and each week I chat with industry experts to uncover their strategies and tactics to help you create a five-star guest experience. This podcast is powered by Ovation, the feedback and operations platform built for multi-unit restaurants. Learn what's actually happening in your restaurants and exactly how to improve while driving revenue. Learn more at ovationup.com. Really excited today because we have someone who is just an incredible operator, incredible entrepreneur, John Maggio. And John and I met in Vegas, I think, through some mutual friends, Rush Bowls, which is an amazing brand. But we met and I started talking to him about his career and was blown away. I mean, John, you have done it all and a bag of chips, pun intended, here. Yeah. You started Boulder Canyon chips, which was sold to Oots. Is that how you pronounce it? As part of the Uts portfolio now, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

It's actually just got the number one spot in uh potato chips in the US outside of Friedolai. So pretty cool. But that's how long a brand takes, right? 30 years later.

Boulder’s Origin And Boulder Culture

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yeah, just a couple years into your uh couple years into it. Yeah, but not only that, but actually, Hillan, let me let me just read some of these brands because I know that you probably won't brag about yourself as much, but uh just for some context here, that's where he started. And then he went to Big Mouth Snack, then he did some children's got involved in children's uh art supplies, then uh Jackson's, which was on Shark Tank, which is as uh potato chips and tortilla chips, uh Justin's, like the peanut butter brand, uh Duke Smoked Meats and Big Seeds, JJ Sweets, Good Day Chocolate, AF Ventures, which does a lot of uh CPG products, and only that, you were also in the midst of all this, you decided to uh go and be a part-time teacher in so because you had all that free time, uh Cocktail Squad, New Frontier Foods, uh JM Enterprise. I mean, like, you have just done so much in the CPG space. You're making me tired. Are you kidding me? You're making me hungry. John, I look at this stuff, and first of all, my first question is like, how are you so fit when you have been doing so much snack food your whole life?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Yeah, you know, part of it is I stopped to see a friend in Boulder 30 years ago, Zach. And it's like Boulder is one of those places where you get your license pulled if you don't go do something every day. So you know you're always climbing a mountain or you know, running or doing something, and everybody's on their own track, but it's all about fitness and and eating well. So I I ended up in a lucky place.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

And tell me about this journey. So you started uh Boulder, and uh, was this a dream of yours to get into food, or how did you get into this?

Whole Foods Tailwind And Early Natural Boom

Brand Moments And Slow-Build Lessons

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Tricky. You know, I was in school in South Florida, had a little small construction business for a year after that, and then ended up being a hey, well, that went pretty well, and went back to the Midwest where I'm from and did this little entrepreneur course and and thought, okay, well, we gotta try to buy this potato chip company that I grew up eating, that when my dad would send them to college and everything, everybody went crazy. But still in one, still today in one county in Illinois. So very small brand, but we had visions of bringing it into the Chicagoland and up into Milwaukee and so forth. And I spent a few months with the owner, and it was clear that he was real excited about it too, which wasn't as exciting for me because I didn't want him involved going on. So I said, you know, maybe this isn't gonna work. I'm gonna drive west. I had one friend in Boulder, you know, it snowed 17 inches the night I got here. We ate dinner outside the next day. I was like, well, this is pretty cool. Like I should stay here for a week. That turned into 30 years. So my gosh. I haven't really, you know, a lot of smart people like moving here now. But when so it started us our our own snack food company out here, my brother came out and we thought, hey, we'd be in Denver someday. Secret sauce really is that Whole Foods Market, which I'd never heard of, if you look back, went public within literally weeks of us incorporating older chips. So it was a really lucky time for the national organic industry, which I think at the time was going to be like, you know, they were thinking it could be up to three or four billion dollars a year, and I think it was like 400 last year. So you're at a little bit on a rising tide, ended up being a guy that kind of knew how to do it. And I have so many stories, but people reaching out to me to ask me about a UPC code for a bag because they were selling these little pita chips in a kiosk in Faniel Square, and I was like, listen, Stacy, I don't even think this is a good idea. But a couple hundred million dollars later, Free O'Le bought Stacy's pita chip. So there was a lot of cool people at the time just helping each other, and and Natural Products Expo West was today the largest, I think, natural and organic show in the world. But at the time, I mean, people would show up in flip-flops to go to the beach for half a day because there wasn't much to do. But we had a great run and ended up just kept going and still going. So it's a lot of fun. The startup side, you know, talked to hundreds of companies, helped them raise a lot of money over the years as well, been various parts of a lot of the ones you mentioned and more rush bowls today is kind of an intersection of all that. So, you know, it's in the intersection of health and wellness, no added sugars, no dyes, all the stuff that Maha is talking about. Yet here we are with this great opportunity. So bringing a little bit of some different core competencies. We're actually launching some CPG brands within Rush Bowls, which is really fun for me. But the gift that keeps on giving, I mean, biggest industry in the world, people keep eating, they always will, right? Yeah, you can't stop that. So do even the GLP ones won't stop us.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

No. Oh my gosh. I mean, look, I still buy my bags of chips. I just uh they just last a little bit longer now that I'm on my uh GLP ones. Um so by the way, are you still involved with Boulder or are we totally no no no?

SPEAKER_01 5:48

We're well, not as an ownership side. I mean, they had us uh they were nice enough to have my brother and I for some anniversary stuff lately. I think they post things periodically. They've got you know the right to do all that, and we're proud to see them succeed. They're they're really nice people and they're doing a great job with what started.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

So what's it like as a founder to see your brand? Like you go to the gas station and you're like, oh look, that's a company that I started. How does that feel?

Restaurants Crossing Into Retail

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Yeah, there's um that god, I mean, I could there's a million stories, but I'm on the University of Miami. I went to the University of Miami in Florida. My daughter, our daughter's a senior there, and I'm on the alumni board at the university, so I get down to Miami frequently, and to be a kid on campus and back in the day, and then walking through as an adult the little convenience store on campus and seeing Boulder Chips there and seeing it at all vending machines is pretty cool. You know, sort of like I didn't know what I was gonna do in college, right? So here I am with Broad. That was that's one of the cooler ones. I think some friends and I and my wife did the rim to rim in Grand Canyon uh a few years ago, which is I think illegal, so don't say that out loud. Oh, is it really? So you cross the Grand Canyon, you try to cross in one day instead of three, which was like 12 hours for us, you know, train for months and months. Again, one of those crazy boulder things, but it's like 6,000 feet down, you go across 4,000 feet to climb out, it's a hundred degrees, and everyone's you know, snacking and got all their stuff with them, and I've got all mine with me, and we're ready to go. And there's this place, Phantom Ranch, that the government owns at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and they've got like a little convenience store, they've got lemonade, cliff bars, and boulder chips. I was like, well, that's pretty cool. So so yeah, that was fun. I was like, if you're in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, like it's now you have a brand. So that side of it again is there's that there's a lot of messages in there, but brand buildings, it's hard and slow, and we've got some shortcuts now with social media and with influencers and with some viral things that happen on uh especially for various age groups, it's Snapchat and TikTok and all those things. So pretty cool to still be involved at new levels where I mean AI is kind of gosh, taking over marketing in a lot of ways, you know? Just crazy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

And as you're building these brands, uh thinking about it back, I mean, again, some some incredible brands that you're talking about here, like I mean, everyone knows Stacey's, everyone knows Justin's peanut butter, everyone knows Boulder. Like, these are not brands that are like, oh yeah, I think I heard about them. Like these are giant brands. What would you say as someone who I would put you as the foremost CPG expert I have ever met, and probably ever even read about what would you say if there's a restaurant brand who's looking to get into the CPG space? Yeah, what advice would you give to them?

Four Pillars For CPG Success

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yeah, well, that's nice of you to say. I mean, there's a there's sort of the old guard, which is really literally like guys who were hippies that were like, we gotta eat better, when Steve Demos, who started Tilk and White Wave and all those things, and Mark Retsoff and Barney Feinblum, guys who started Celestial Seasons and really were like the there were trailblazers for sure. But yeah, I'm kind of the second wave of that, which has been fun, and all of a sudden, like here I am years later. It's happening, Zach. And it's interesting to see at retail when you go in, you know, and you talk to a retail buyer and he's like, What are you gonna do to grow this brand? How are you gonna can't do enough demos, can't spend enough money? Well, what's happening is some of the restaurant brands are coming in with their own brand, which the buyers then are like, Well, that makes perfect sense. Everyone will get it without too much education. So we actually licensed 26 years ago, we licensed TGI Fridays for snack. So anything that was in a red and white bag, TJ Fridays invented the potato skin in 1965. We had a product that was kind of a light sheet of dough and a dark sheet of dough. So think of like a Pringles with two pieces, and it looked like a potato skin. So we launched TJ Friday's potato skins and still out there as a as a co-brand. Yeah, so it was part of our company, but we had so it's been going on for a while. TGI Fridays was really a leader in that years ago because then they'd have their bloody merry mix and alcohol and and so forth. For us, you know, today you go down the aisle and start to look. I mean, you're gonna see Chick-fil-A mustard makes perfect sense. I mean, those are some of the biggies, right? But those guys that are starting to leverage their name and bring it into retail, I think it makes a lot of sense. I'd be hard-pressed not to think In N Out would have something soon. I mean, McDonald's, when we were in the toy business, McDonald's is the number one toy seller in the world, which is up, think of that. These are hamburgers, but a lot of people go through that environment. So there's a lot of co-brand things happening, and I think you'll see more of them. I think Sweet Lawrence is doing a great job with Barbie right now, so bringing kind of this Barbie mentality, especially after the movie that came out into the gluten-free space and just doing great. So lots of examples of those kind of things. But for me, I've got my sort of four pillars, which is brand, market opportunity, team, and capital. And I asked brands, hey, schedule, you know, score yourself on these. How are you doing? One to ten. And people love brand, they love the way their food tastes, but is there really an opportunity? Do you have the team that can take the capital or is it investable so you can actually grow that business the right way? So we found over the years at Excel and some other places that growing the brands with entrepreneurs that were super passionate and super driven was part of the equation, not all of it. So we need to kind of bring those other pillars to bear the way the market works today. But uh hope that makes sense.

Can Smaller Chains Launch CPG

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Does a local brand, like if I've got 10 to 50 locations, is it worth it for me to get into CPG, or is that too big of a task? Is it more of like the Chick-fil-A's of the world that we'll see it?

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Yeah, well, I think Rush Bowls is a good example. You know, we have 55 stores, we're opening 20 this year, and we've already got rush bites in our stores that are peanut butter protein balls, three SKUs. Uh, we've got some more products coming out this summer. So with that, you say, okay, well, we can sell those just in our own environment and have kind of this great opportunity for our consumers to take home something that they like in the store, take it with them, order it online in some cases, and that kind of thing. If that transitions into broader retailer, into broader retail, you'd probably have to have a little more saturation. I mentioned Chick-fil-A and TGR Fridays. I mean, obviously at the time, those are really big brands, right? So people get it when they walk into the store. So yeah, there's always an opportunity. I think what happens is the people involved in the business don't know how to do it. They like we they do one thing really well, and then they're like, gosh, where do I make a fizzy beverage? How do I do that? What am I we you know? And then pretty soon it's we're like, that's a distraction from your core business. So what Andrew and I are working at at Rush Bowls is kind of bringing a couple of backgrounds together to enhance that.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

That's amazing. And when you look at the things of what makes a good CPG product, what are some things that you see in terms of why some go and some don't? And I know we've talked a lot about your successes. Have you had any that haven't worked out? Any CPG products that haven't or yeah, there's a whole there's a lot on the cutting room floor.

Why Some Products Fail

Capital Shifts And Investor Reality

SPEAKER_01 12:50

And some of them are still a good idea, actually. Clementine should still be going. It's a you know, we had uh no petroleum crayons and we had paint that you literally eat. Um what it wasn't is it wasn't fire engine red and it wasn't 99 cents. So we didn't want to make it in China, we wanted to make it the US and all those kind of things. And you know, we also ran into kind of 2008-2009, where even though we were in target in some big places with that product, you know, people just wouldn't pay that kind of a premium. So you do look at some of the things that cocktail squad, we were maybe first or second to market with cut water at the time and in canned cocktails, and we were really in the space of a high alcohol can regular alcohol. So like a real tequila margarita that was in a uh gonna give you an experience like drinking a real margarita. What the market really said they wanted is a bunch of watered down drinks for$1.99, and we just didn't make those products. So, you know, as the market kind of changes and shifts, that might come back or something. But for now, you have products out there that are just made of kind of grain and neutral spirits with a little flavored lemon or something in them. But there's things that didn't work. You can say that today, you know, capital's a really big deal. Um again, kind of those four pillars that dovetails with team, are you investable for me to put three to five million dollars in over time? Capital's changed since right before COVID when we had the the economy was sort of like, hey, are these big companies, the Hormels and the General Mills, are they still gonna buy brands? Or that started to sort of wane a little bit? Kellogg starting to separate and that those kind of things. And then right after COVID, you get the Silicon Valley Bank really changed things for financing in our industry and then onward to like, wait a minute, like maybe we need to make bigger bets. So venture capital has come started to matriculate towards private equity. It's kind of like, okay, well, you know, we can't throw as much at the wall to see if it sticks. Now we need to make sure basically it's it's a little bit of a shame because that's not really what venture is. Um, I think at at XL we had over 40 investments over time, which was really fun. Uh, and some of those did great, you know, siete snacks, har harmless harvest, coconut water, some really good ones in there still for Sigmatic, really cutting edge. You know, the guys kind of invented mushroom coffee. I think they were$300,000 when we invested in them. So they're a pretty massive brand at this point. But anyway, I mean things ab and flow and changed along the way. Today it's do you know how to do it? Do you have a great product? Is it in a great market? Flavor, flavor, flavor, flavor, right? So it doesn't really matter if it doesn't taste good.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

And as you're talking about, it doesn't really matter if the consumers aren't going to buy it, right? It's like timing is a big part of it. And I think with every entrepreneur I've talked to, with every, I would say, realistic entrepreneur I've talked to, everyone attributes a little bit of the success to luck. Because, like I mean, just like you said, you happen to be starting a boulder at the right time, and there was a movement of that. I think a lot of it is about that timing and luck. But again, it's like you got to get up there to the plate and take the swings and see what you're gonna hit. And anyway, and so it's just it's amazing to see that.

Flavor, Timing, And Return On Luck

SPEAKER_01 15:57

I call it my ROL living here and all this time and being part of it. It's my return on luck um instead of ROI. Because it really was like, what if Whole Foods hadn't gone public? Wild Oats was here with alfalfa's, they had seven, eight, ten stores a piece. They got together, got to 120 or 30 stores, and then Whole Foods bought them. So that's really where Whole Foods got a lot larger. Maybe it was even more than that, by the way. But say those same people went, it's this very, very small world, right, Zach. So these same people from the Wild Oats days ended up sunflower and sprouts, which is a major winner today as well. And just a lot of people, I think also doing the right thing. So return on luck of like, hey, this actually went where everyone thought it could go. If we were all like, let's just keep eating fried food and bad cola, like that's that wasn't gonna work. So there is a lot of luck attributed to it. And but again, it's changed over the years. It's not as I meet with entrepreneurs all the time. I love people that have ideas. That's sort of cute, but I love the people that actually put pen to paper and go out and put something in a package and stand in a farmer's market and say, hey, we're we're gonna try this. That's a way different thing than just saying, I got an idea. I mean, I had four ideas this morning. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Yeah. Put a little bit of the elbow grease to it. Go do it. Go do it. You know how that is. This was such a fun conversation. I feel like we've chatted for much longer, and I know that we could have this podcast for hours. Just I've loved hearing the stories that that you've shared. John, where can people go to find and follow you if they want to keep up on your adventures? Oh man, maybe I should do something about that.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

I'm pretty private outside of LinkedIn, but I let most people in that that have sort of a instead of hey, I just want to connect, it's like, hey, let's talk about this or that. Like, let's do that. I'm I'm open to it. So usually at uh at LinkedIn. And it's John F. Maggio at LinkedIn, which uh I think keeps some people out. But um come on in. Yeah, I'm happy to happy to talk to you. I'm an open book.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

So awesome. Well, John, for letting us take a dip into your chip experience. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Given Ovation.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Thanks, brother. Good to see you, Zach.

Action Over Ideas And Closing

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Thanks for joining us today. If you like this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcast or your favorite place to listen. We're all about feedback here. Again, this episode was sponsored by Ovation, a two question estimate based actionable get feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants. If you'd like to learn how we can help you measure and create better get experience, visit us at ovation.