Welcome And Guest Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to another edition of Give and Ovation, the restaurant guest experience podcast. I'm your host, Zach Oates, and each week I chat with industry experts to uncover their strategies and tactics you can use to create a five-star guest experience. This podcast is powered by Ovation, the AI 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. And today I'm going to give an introduction, even though our guest today needs no introduction. She is the Pinky Cole, founder of Sleddy Vegan. She is a TV personality, casting director, producer. She's done so many different things and really an icon in this industry and someone that is an inspiration for entrepreneurs, not just in food, but in life. And so, Pinky, so grateful to have you on the podcast. I know this is a long time coming.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

I know. I'm excited to be here, and um, I'm sure that it'll be different from what you usually used to.

Why A Provocative Brand Name Works

SPEAKER_01 1:05

I know because you have such an interesting background and you've been doing so many things. So talk to me about Slutty Vegan. Like, I mean, such an incredible name. Do you think that Sluty Vegan would be as successful as it was if it had a name that was like Vegan Fair? Or like, how much of the name and the brand do you think was important in building this empire?

SPEAKER_00 1:30

There is power in a name. And, you know, I always tell my friends, if I would have named this concept Pinky's Vegan, I would not have had the lines down the blog. I don't think that people would come. But when you think about the name Slutty Vegan, I'm calling people sluts, right? And it's such an uncomfortable word when you think about it. But I really have been able to redesign the word and the definition of that word that actually makes people question it and want to talk about like why on earth would somebody name this thing slutty vegan? And because I'm a television producer by trade, I know that there's a couple of things that sell sex sales, raunchiness in your face sales. And because I'm selling something that to society is holistic, right? When we think about vegan food, I needed something that was just going to be a little ratchet that would spark conversation. And the word slutty was just, it just hit me like a light bulb. So I wouldn't change a thing. And I'm so glad that I created Slutty Vegan when I did, because that name alone has really been in a lot of rooms that you would never hear the word slutty in. So we got old people, young people, women, men, white people, black people. It doesn't matter. People have embraced this brand and it started all with a name.

Staying Authentic While Scaling Fast

SPEAKER_01 2:41

And I think it's so interesting because I look at what you've done with Slutty Vegan and I look at brands that have successfully done this, like you know, Liquid Death. I think Liquid Death is another example of someone who built a incredible brand on the back of something that seems very tame and safe, right? Like vegan food and water, but you did it scrappy in the beginning, you know, like you obviously got a lot of funding later on. But in the beginning, how did you make yourself seem bigger than you actually were? Me and myself.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Right. And I think that that is the secret to success when you're growing these brands. Like there needs to be a level of authenticity, even when you're corporate, right? Like even when you're building this big chain, you're a startup founder, you get all this funding. Something has to connect with the human being. Okay. They have to feel connected to the realness of what it is that you're offering. And the minute that it doesn't feel real, you will lose your customers. I'm a witness. Okay. I brought in this whole C-suite and all of the things. And it started becoming more about the bottom line and the money. And we walked away from that experience, that experience that felt like this restaurant that was from around the way and this mom and pop shop. And what people don't know is you can still give a mom and pop experience and still grow and be corporate. And I think, because I've been through it, you know, I was yesterday I was saying how like I've been through every stage of business. I know what it feels like to raise a lot of money. I know what it feels like to lose money. I know what it feels like to file bankruptcy. I know what it feels like to do a restructure. I also know what it feels like to be at the top of my game. And I know what it feels like to fall from grace. So when I'm speaking, Zach, I'm speaking from experience because that human connection that you create with your customer is so integral to the success of your business. And you cannot ever lose it, especially when you're a startup founder with a cult following.

Big Wins Funding And Valuation

SPEAKER_01 4:35

I think that's so amazing that that idea of authenticity, that idea of remaining the at your heart, mom and pop, while you're building something literally an empire. And so as you look at what you're doing, and I'd love to hear some lessons that you learned from some really big wins and what that moment was like when that win happened. And what are it's a challenge or two that you learned some really critical lessons from?

Hiring Operators Who Speak P&L

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Um, some really big wins. I got the opportunity to partner with Danny Meyer, his team, and Richie Lou Dennis. So I really got some sophisticated investors on my team early on, even though they're no longer my investors. I was able to work with them early on, and it really made me see private equity differently. I got to learn a lot from them. And now with that level of knowledge, I do things differently. In 2.0, I got to raise a total of$33 million. Um, as a small business, it's rare that you see that in the restaurant industry. My company got valued at$100 million. So I literally have made history. If I don't do nothing else, my company has made history, um, especially in the vegan space and in a market where you see vegan restaurants closing every single day. And we've been able to stand this test of time. Yeah, we had some bruises, yeah, we had some hiccups, but we're still thriving, we're still standing, and we're opening up franchises. So I'm really proud of that and learning along the way and just getting better with time. Some of the things that I learned that are critical in the process of success when you are scaling a company is you have to have the right team. Okay. Like you can have a team all day long, but there's a difference between having a team and the right team. What a right team looks like is the operational wherewithal, okay? People who know operations, also people who have the relationships within the operational world when it comes to hospitality. Because I've been through a lot of froggies, okay? And what I've learned in those froggies is the resume could be really good. But if you really don't know the heart and soul of operations and getting in the trenches and putting your feet on the ground, you're not the right person to help take my business to the next level. Also, there is power in relationships, making sure that you align with people on your team who also have industry relationships. Okay, because these days it's not always what you know, it's who you know. You know the right people, you can get in the right rooms, you get the right deals. I see it every single day, right? Just knowing the right people can get you deals that other people otherwise wouldn't get. So I've learned that along the way. And I think having a right team has been the theme of my whole entire restructure in Slutty Vegan and just putting the right people in place. You know, there's a saying you can go far alone, but you can go further together. And if you can go together with the right people, it is a trickle-down effect. Your customers will feel it, your employees will feel it, the infrastructure will feel it, and it's just a recipe for success.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

How do you know if you have the wrong person? Don't tell me you just know, because I know that people like you, you have this intuition. Like you're someone who you could feel it, and I get that. But if you were to put that into like Claude and say, here's how Pinky knows if it's the right per if it's the wrong person or not, what would you say would be the formula there?

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Well, well, the first thing, especially if I'm looking for an operation, saying if you can't do a PL and you run from that, I'm gonna run from you. Okay, a PL is the biggest indicator. You know, somebody taught me a long time ago, and now I do this when I'm interviewing people, I want them to give me a sample of a PL. And the reason why I do that is because that really is the report card of your business. And if it's not done properly and correctly, you can have misinformation on the decisions that you make in your business. If it's wrong. If it's wrong, you could be cutting labor when labor ain't what you need to cut. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 8:24

If it's wrong, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

If it's wrong, you could be taking stuff off the menu that you don't need to take off if it's wrong, right? If it's wrong, you could be making poor decisions in your business that will affect the bottom line and the consumer experience, no pun intended, if you don't have the right PLs. So that's kind of the first red flag. If the if if they're not intentional about thinking about PLs in their conversation, then it's a big red flag for me.

Best In Class Choices Like Fries

SPEAKER_01 8:48

I think that's so amazing because one of the things that we always talk about is there are two buckets that every single thing that you do in the restaurant is either going to drip into one of two buckets, either increase profit or improve the guest experience. Now, you can do things that improve both and that hurt both, but usually it's an inverse thing, right? You want to make better, you want to have better ingredients. It's going to hurt your profits in the short term, but improve the guest experience. So hopefully improve your profits in the long term. If you want to cut staff to improve your profits, that's probably going to hurt your guest experience, right? And so you need to really balance both.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

You know, that's Zach, that's a it's funny that you said it. I want to add this here. We literally just dealt with that most recently. We had a fry that was a good fry. It wasn't a great fry, it did what it needed to do. But then we had an elite fry. And this is a fry that we originally used in the business, and it really was like a$10 difference, okay, in the fry, in the box of fry. So we had to make a tough decision. Okay, do you go with the higher premium fry that's gonna make people come back again and give a better experience? And in the long run, you win, or do we go with this cheaper fry? Now we may get somebody that comes and buys the food, but we can't guarantee that they're gonna come back again because the fry is not the best in class product. And when we talk about hospitality, everything that you do needs to be best in class. The consumer experience needs to be best in class, the food needs to be best in class, how they consume it needs to be best in class because that is what makes people come back. Okay. And what's better than a new customer? A returning customer. So, to your point, it's it's very critical the decisions that you make, but you have to have the right people around you to help you make those decisions.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Because it's gonna cost you upwards of two to 10x, depending on how, depending on what your customer acquisition cost is, to get that new person to try you out, as opposed to getting someone to you know to return. And what we're finding right now is that people are eating out less often. When they eat out, they're spending less to do it in terms of like they're not buying as many food items, and they're doing a lot less exploration. And so if you mess up and you lose your spot in one of their, you know, fave five. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you do, it could be years down the road. I think of this. There was a pizza joint. I used to go there every single month. I went there one time and they had this dressing that I really like to dip my pizza in, and it was so runny, it was like liquid, just like pure, just water. I didn't go back for two years, and not because I was spiteful, but because I was like, I stopped every time I thought about that pizza place, I was like, oh, that dressing was.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

It was gonna be runny, right?

Reframing Failure With I Hope You Fail

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Yeah, and I went back two years later and the dressing was like it used to be. It may have just been a bad day, but like you can't serve that kind of product because every single person in that restaurant is having that experience, and if it's not consistent, they're not gonna do it. Exactly. But failure isn't fatal, and this is why I love the title of your book, I hope you fail by Pinky Cole, right? This is an incredible title, and I think that you are just like a masternamer because slutty vegan, I hope you fail. And I love the subtitle too: 10 Hater Statements Holding You Back from Getting Everything You Want. Talk to us about that title. I hope you fail.

Ask For Help When It Hurts

SPEAKER_00 12:18

I think that was the preface to what was about to happen in my life of the next couple of years. But, you know, I've had some considerable amount of wins, but I've also had some failures along the way. And I feel like every great success story has a healthy balance of both. Because how else will you get better if you don't fall on your face a time or two, right? So this book is really the Bible for entrepreneurs and for people who are in a corporate space and just trying to be the best version of themselves, to just really think about how to reframe your mindset and your thinking. Everything we do starts in the mind. Okay. You want to wake up and you brush your teeth, you got to think about it. You want to wake up and start working out, it starts in your mind. If you want to do a fast, like I just told you that I'm doing, it all starts in your mind. So what you think about, you become. So if something around you is happening negative in your life, all you got to do is change your mindset. Okay. You think about the positive within the negative, and you understand that everything is happening for you and it's not happening to you. If I didn't lose my restaurant in Harlem, New York before I started Sluty Vegan, there was no way that I was going to get an opportunity to move to Los Angeles, California to work on a show and then get relocated to create slutty vegan. So I'm so grateful for the losses that have happened in my past because it only propelled me to be better. Same like Slutty Vegan. I opened up Sluty Vegan in 2018, had the biggest run of my life, and I lost everything. I had$20 million in debt. I almost lost my mind. Well, I tell you that because that happened to me, it opened the door for me to now be on a television show, which is the largest franchise in America called Real House Oz of Atlanta, where I can inspire entrepreneurs around the world. So failure is not failure at all. It is finding the aspiration in the losses, okay? Finding the positive and the negative, so that when you look bad, you can say, all right, this happened for a reason and I'm so much better for it.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

There's so much that is clear in hindsight. What do you say to someone who's currently getting kicked in the face? Right? Like, I mean, there's so many restaurants right now that they're scared because I was just out to lunch with a couple of customers and they're like, look, these gas prices are gonna start to trickle down into my food costs, and I'm already at 40% food costs. Like, what am I gonna do? And when you think about that, when you think about like the fear, the worry, the, hey, I'm gonna have to close this down, what do you say to people who are in the middle of getting kicked?

SPEAKER_00 14:47

This is the most unconventional advice that I will share with you, Zach, for everybody who's watching this. You need to be vocal about what is happening in your business. We have so much shame when it comes to entrepreneurship and pride and ego that we don't want people to see us vulnerable and weak. I suffered from it for years until I opened up my mouth and I started talking about it. And I will have you know that I've gotten more opportunities and more support when I started to open up about the struggles of entrepreneurship than keeping my mouth closed and not asking for help. So it hurts now. I've been there. You're gonna cry, you're gonna have some sleepless nights. Okay, you're gonna be looking at your payroll like, how am I gonna figure this out? You're gonna have to make some significant cuts that's gonna put more workload on you. But at the end of the day, if you can confidently open your mouth and be vulnerable about what's happening in your business, you'd be surprised that there's somebody out there that either wants to help you, that can give you a resource or some knowledge and some information to help you get out of the situation that you're in. That is the best advice that I can give you. And this ain't fluff. This is something that I literally just gotten out of. Asking for help is okay when you're an entrepreneur. There are people out there that are willing to help, but you gotta open up your mouth and ask for it.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

I think that goes both ways because while you have been helped by so many people, I know that you have also helped so many people. And it's about knowing that while you are struggling with where you're at, you're living someone's dream, right? I heard Will Gadera talk about this, about how beautiful it is to struggle with the things that like achieving our dreams, right? That we struggle with the things that we once dreamed would be a possibility. And now it's like sometimes we forget to take that step back and to be like, wow, it's amazing that I'm even here to have this struggle.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Yeah. Right? Like some people pray for these kinds of struggles. Here I am complaining. And you know how many people standing in line wishing they were in my position? You know how many people that wish they could say that they had$20 million in debt? Some people ain't even touch one of those digits. You understand what I'm saying? Like, so sometimes I have to check myself and remember that I've done so many incredible things as an entrepreneur and to be proud no matter what, because I've made some major milestones that so many people are still wishing that they could have made. And I promise you, I don't do drugs.

Where To Follow Pinky And Closing

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Well, uh Ozempic's my drug of choice. But I will tell you, Pinky, this has been such an inspiring conversation. I love your story. I've loved hearing you speak from the first time that I met you years ago. You and Danny Meyer were sharing a stage at NRA, and Kelly McPherson, who's one of my longtime advisors, brought me back there. And I got to meet you and Danny, and I was just, I've been so impressed with you and uh your story and your vulnerability. So thank you for coming on the podcast. How can people find and follow you in addition to where can they buy your book? I hope you fail.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Um, you might see me on TMZ every other day, but uh ha ha, you can Google me. I'm on uh Pinky Cole on all handles, uh Sledy Vegan ATL on all handles. And my book is everywhere where books available. And I also have a cookbook called E Plants Bitch. Oh.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Of course you do. I love that. Yes. Oh man. Well, Pinky, uh, oh, last question. Who is someone that we should be following? Who's someone that you follow for inspiration or uh different ideas?

SPEAKER_00 18:33

My husband, Big Dad's Cheesnakes, duh.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Oh man. Derek is so cool. I'm I'm so excited to have him on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Oh, he's incredible. And you know, I said, out of two businesses, one of them gonna pop in a major way. So I get to be butt-necked on a beach one day, okay, whether it's mine or his.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

I love that. Well, Pinky for teaching us how to be authentic on the journey from mom and pop to corporate, from wins to losses. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Give an Ovation. Thank you. Thanks for joining us today. If you like 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 ovationup.com.