S3 Ep10: Greg Flynn – Meet America’s Multi-Billion Dollar Restaurant Franchisee
Greg Flynn didn’t follow in the footsteps of his Stanford classmates. But with approximately 2,400 Applebee’s, Taco Bells, Paneras, Arby’s, Pizza Huts, and Wendy’s he’s done okay.
The Wolf gets into a conversation with the largest franchisee operator in the world. Greg Flynn is Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Flynn Restaurant Group and Flynn Properties, generating $4 billion in sales and employing 73,000 people across 44 states.
In this very special episode, Greg shares why he’ll always be a restaurant operator first, how to run a truly collaborative business, and why the franchising business model allows you to focus on the things that really matter.
If you’ve enjoyed listening to Franchise Empires, I’d be so grateful if you could drop me a 5-star review on Rate My Podcast. Thank you so much!
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Episode Transcription
Greg Flynn:
If I had to identify any single secret sauce for our business, it’s culture and structure. Maybe those are two things, but they’re so intimately related. We are an amazingly flat company and it’s not very hierarchical. Your typical restaurant franchisee, franchise operating business is like a classic pyramid structure where you got a franchisee sitting on top and then there are layers below them and the whole structure exists to implement what disguises decides, and he tells ’em what to do and they go do it right? We have a totally different structure. It’s a fairly decentralized structure that pushes real authority down as close to the field as we can get it, and we share the wealth very generously down to that level. And think of it as a state and federal model where states are run by sort of state governors, we call them market presidents. They’re my partners. And we allow almost Amazon courage a pretty high level of autonomy because we think local owner operators run the best restaurants and we want them to act like and feel like, and in fact be local owner operators. But there are very real skill economies in the business, and you have all these above restaurant functions you need to do and you need to do ’em well.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Welcome to Franchise Empires where aspiring entrepreneurs learn exactly what it takes to become a successful franchise owner from one location to 10 and beyond. I’m the wolf of franchises.
Hey everyone, it’s The Wolf. Today on this show I have Greg Flynn. Greg Flynn acquired seven Applebee’s franchises in 1999. Fast forward to today, and he’s the largest franchise owner in the entire world. His company, Flynn Restaurant Group, owns roughly 2,500 locations including 941 Pizza Huts 441 Applebee’s 369, Arby’s 283, taco Bells 192 Wendy’s, and 130 Paneras. This makes Greg Flynn the largest owner in the world of Applebee’s, Arby’s, and Pizza Hut, the second largest of Panera, the third largest owner of Taco Bell and the fifth largest of Wendy’s. As you can imagine, he’s a very busy man, but he was able to give about a half hour of his time to talk franchises with me. This is a conversation I know you’ll enjoy, and thanks as always for listening to Franchise Empires.
Narrator:
The Wolf of Franchises is the CEO of Wolf Pack Franchising, as well as a creator at Workweek Media. All opinions expressed by the Wolf and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Pack franchising, or this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. The Wolf Workweek and Wolf Pack franchising may maintain positions in the franchises discussed on this podcast.
The Wolf of Franchises:
I think just as a starting point, I mean you’re based in San Francisco. You graduated from Stanford, right? You have an NBA from Stanford, I believe you’re kind of just in the epicenter of tech and this massive boom that started since the late nineties, yet in 1999, you bought an Applebee’s or seven, I believe. I mean, why franchises instead of a different career path?
Greg Flynn:
Well, it’s funny because well, I didn’t graduate from Sanford and set out to get into the restaurant industry. I started the real estate business and I got into a restaurant, it’s almost by accident, but it’s funny, in 99, there were so many of my classmates that were becoming millionaires on paper with nothing but a 10 page PowerPoint describing their next.com, and I was like, what am I doing? I’m totally missing the train here, but I stuck to my knitting and it turned out to be for the best. Lots of the quick money quickly went away, and very few of those ventures ended up really, I don’t know, getting anywhere and delivering value for my friends who are involved in them now, a few did, but it’s just all gold rushes. I think a few people make some money and most don’t.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Yeah, so I mean, today you obviously have thousands of franchise locations. You try to, and do you own a lot of the real estate on those locations?
Greg Flynn:
Well, we’ve owned hundreds of real estate over the years, but it’s not our objective to make money through the real estate, and so we sell off almost all of it and lease it back. We’ve done hundreds and hundreds of sale. We try not to overburden the business with rent, but I’d rather monetize that way and not way down our balance sheet on duly. I am in the real estate business also as a separate business, so it’s not like I don’t investing in real estate, I do investing in real estate, just not that kind of real estate. I can’t add in value to that real estate beyond what I’ve already done by leasing it. Right.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Yeah. So if someone’s thinking of buying franchises today, like a common data point and even just narrative that gets thrown out there is how McDonald’s is just big into the real estate game, but obviously they started back in the 1960s. So for the new franchise owner, is it really realistic, do you think, based on what you’ve seen with all your locations across the country to find good locations that where you can actually acquire the real estate as well? Or are you seeing mostly just you’re going to be leasing as a tenant?
Greg Flynn:
Well, it was much easier until the early two thousands. It was common to be able to just go out and buy an acre, acre and a half or three quarter of an acre, whatever you need, and it would cost you as little as $200,000 and as much as a million dollars, but you know, could then build a restaurant and then sell it and make a profit up upfront on the real estate. The developers all figured that out, and now they want to be the ones to make that profit not allowing the restaurant to do it. But not always I, so I think this year we’re, we’re going to build in the order of 90 restaurants this year, and I would say, I don’t know, probably 25% of them are purchases. So you can do it. It varies regionally, so it’s much easier to buy land in the Midwest and the South, and even some of the mountain states very difficult on the coast. If you can combine them at all, the prices are very high and don’t really pencil.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Gotcha. Okay. Looking back to when you got your start with acquiring those first Applebee’s, I think I know your answer because I’m a nerd who reads about the history of all these different franchises, but maybe for the audience who isn’t aware, why did you start with Applebee’s, and if you can set the stage on what kind of brand and business was Applebee’s in the late 1990s?
Greg Flynn:
Well, in the nineties, casual Dining was the hot segment. It was what fast casual is today, and it was growing and was the very first casual dining chain was Steak and Ale, and a lot of the chains that followed were alumni of Steak and Ale that sort of spun off and started these things, or had been franchisees or became franchisees and casual dining. But Applebee’s was one of the earlier ones that was founded in 1980, and from the time of its founding through the two thousands, it never opened less than a hundred restaurants a year. I mean, it’s super fast growing and the places were packed. They have bars in the middle of the restaurant, like it was super fun. So when I looked at pivoting away from world wraps, which is where I started toward sort of major chains that qualified for the sort of a hundred percent non-recourse debt, that was my main reason for getting into major franchises.
I looked at what brands qualified and most all of the big quick service brands did, but in casual Dining Door only a couple, and Applebee’s was the best of that. And so I said, let’s get into Applebee’s. It’s doing really well right now, and it seems to have a good future. It’s interesting. I’m very glad we chose it served us very well over the years, but the segment itself has had a lot more challenges than I expected. Applebee’s has come out the absolute clear winner in all that. I’m just that glad I didn’t pick one of the other ones. Yeah.
The Wolf of Franchises:
What are we talking like Chili’s or something like that?
Greg Flynn:
Chili’s Red Robin.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Okay.
Greg Flynn:
Fridays Ruby Tuesdays,
The Wolf of Franchises:
Yeah, Ruby Tuesdays. That was, it’s
Greg Flynn:
Like a murders rove challenge branch, right?
The Wolf of Franchises:
Yeah, right. All right. So you were effectively able to secure a loan for those initial Applebee’s, and maybe correct me if I’m wrong, non-recourse, meaning you probably had collateral in the form of property, but they couldn’t come after Greg Flynn as an individual and any of your personal assets if God forbid, things went bust.
Greg Flynn:
So to clarify, I didn’t have any personal assets to speak of back then, so I wouldn’t have done ’em a lot of good, but no, it was a crazy moment in time and it was very mortgage lending in the two thousands, but where you could borrow all of the price of a major chain restaurant, a hundred percent, where they would even loan you the closing cost, so they’d loan you 102% and you were buying on an asset basis, meaning I bought the assets and you kept all the liabilities. And the restaurant industry has negative working capital, meaning you get the cash upfront and you pay a lot of the expenses after the fact. So you actually have a cash balance that grows from the second you buy or open a restaurant. So it was an amazing opportunity to buy a restaurant, borrow all the money, and you didn’t even need working capital because it filled itself up with working capital right away. Now, that’s not true any longer. Now you need to have serious equity in a business, and people have also figured out that, well, I mean you need serious equity and if a restaurant is going to trade it six or seven times, you’ll be able to borrow anywhere between half and two thirds of that, but you got to come up with cash for the rest.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Yeah, that’s wild to hear that that was possible back then. And a common question I got leading up to this conversation was just, Hey, if you’re starting from scratch today, how would you do it? And it sounds like, I mean, there’s not, don’t, there’s a cookie cutter answer, right? It’s you kind of got to find a way to have some equity to be able to put up for the business.
Greg Flynn:
Yeah, I think that’s right. And I think a good way to do that if you’re really just starting out from scratch is to find a franchise that you like and vet it. And by that I mean the best thing you is talk to other franchisees who are in it, have been in it for a while. Franchisees are very collaborative. They’ll help you out. They’ll tell you the truth. I mean, unless you’re somehow going to compete with them and open a store right next door, and then they may try to scare you off. But normally they’re super collaborative and we’ll tell you what’s good and what’s bad about it, what surprises they had, what are the biggest challenges, building the first one, operating it, and then growing from there. And if you still interested, then go find a loan. There are lots and lots of banks that lend in the franchise space, and for whatever is the gap between the price and your loan, go raise the money from friends and family and just do it in chunks of $25,000. And what I you do is say, okay, I’m going to take your money and I’m going to pay you back when I can with a good return, but at the end of the day, I want to own this business. I don’t want to give you ownership of what is going to become the rest of my career, and I’ll give you a good return, but after you get that return, it’s mine. That would be my suggestion to people
The Wolf of Franchises:
Now. Definitely. I love that advice. And notwithstanding maybe how istic you were, right with the lending standard back then, I mean, you’ve still had a just ridiculous rise, I don’t know, of a single other franchise owner who’s doing 4 billion in revenue with the breadth and depth of a portfolio. So what has enabled you to, I guess, just keep growing and keep scaling and really just build out this massive holding company of all these different franchises?
Greg Flynn:
So first of all, it’s not a holding company, it’s an operating company. And we have different divisions aligned with our brands, but this is not a passive investment for us. I view myself as a restaurant operator and everyone our team does, that’s what we do all day every day. So the starting point and the necessary, if not sufficient condition for succeeding the franchise restaurant business, and I’m sure this is true in all businesses, is running your operations well each and every day. So everything we do prioritizes that and nothing comes ahead of it. And if anything interferes with it, we need to stop doing that thing so we can focus on running our restaurants well day in and day out. And if you do that, that will greatly enable your growth because you’ll have profits and you can reinvest those profits and do it in the growth.
And basically our business, I’ve got into it, as I told you, by borrowing pretty much all of the money to do it. But then ever since then, with just a little bit of exceptions, we’ve grown the entire business from additional debt and cash flow, reinvested cash flow. So we’ve taken basically no money out of the business over the years. We’ve reinvested it all, but as the business has grown and become more profitable, and we’ve built new units and we’ve bought other businesses, accretively thrown off, awful lot of profits that you can borrow against. So you reinvest the cash flow that you have, but also you continue to borrow more and more against your own business. And that provides sort of the equity for the acquisitions where you can borrow against the thing you’re buying, but you’re also borrowing your equity against your existing business. That’s how the flywheel spins and the whole thing becomes self-financing.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Incredible.
Greg Flynn:
But you need to get in it that first time.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Yeah. Has there ever been a moment where maybe you thought you were a little over levered or in an unpredictable event, maybe hit the dining segment? Was there ever a moment where you felt like it could all come crashing down or has it been, I don’t want to say smooth sailing? Cause I’m sure there’s always things that happen. It’s never a smooth ride, but yeah. Is there anything in your head that sticks out?
Greg Flynn:
Yeah, so there have been lots of moments like that. And let’s just first go back to how I got in the restaurant business, a concept called World Wraps. I didn’t start it, but a friend of mine, Keith Cox did. And
The Wolf of Franchises:
Was that a franchise?
Greg Flynn:
Well, they started it coming out of Stanford. He was my classmate and I made a little limited partner investment in it, and the first one opened and there were lines around the block and we’re jumping up and down. Sure, we’ve got Starbucks on our hand. And so the thing that we became totally focused on was how do we build as many as we can as fast as we can before someone steals our idea? Very stupid looking back at it, but that’s what we did. And so we shook hands. I just, in my real estate business, bought three buildings up in Seattle. And so we just shook hands, said, I’ll develop Seattle while he developed San Francisco, and I did it as a licensee, so sort of a franchisee. He kept the ip, but there were no franchise services, no, here’s how you do it. We were figuring out this together at the same time he had opened one restaurant.
So I opened 14 of those, and it was the most bootstrapped thing you’ve ever seen in your life. Leasing mostly former restaurant spaces, trying to convert them and slap a little lipstick on them and make them look like a world wraps. And so you say, were there ever any moments of crisis? And I’d say every two weeks was a crisis, like making payroll <laugh> every two weeks. It was like, where’s the money coming from? And we were constantly just robbing from Peter to pay Paul, but we sort of got it done and it was a sort of meaningfully profitable business by the time 1999 came around and I decided to pivot toward Applebee’s. Not that it was making a lot of money, but it wasn’t to the point where I was like, oh my God, we’re going to this whole thing’s falling apart. And so that was the regular crisis.
I got into Applebee’s and things became less crisis built because it’s such a great business. And that’s the great learning here, is that if you join an established proven brand, generally that means a mature brand with thousands of units that have been successful everywhere, every geography, every demographic, through multiple economic cycles, your life is much easier. Everything about it is easier. And so the frequency of crises was greatly reduced from 1990 and onward. But there were moments, I mean the most recent one is obvious since when the week of March 13th came around and we went from doing a hundred in revenue down to 12 in revenue in three days. And I went from having 40,000 employees down to having, I don’t know, 8,000 employees. I mean, we didn’t lay anyone off, but we did furlough, 27,000 people, something like that in five days. That felt like I was a dinosaur looking at the comet.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Yeah, holy crap.
Greg Flynn:
And the restaurant industry utterly depends on daily revenues to stay alive. It’s a very high volume, but low margin business. So if those revenues try up, the expenses keep ticking away and you are out of cash really, really fast. So we had to make some tough decision very, very quickly, sort of prioritize who we were paying and what we were going to support. Now we made the right decision to keep all our restaurants open and to not lay off anyone, but to furlough those for whom we just had literally no need for that moment all making the bet that we were going to come back, that this was going to pass, we were going to survive, and we’d want those people back. And we didn’t want our customers to think we were closed and those were the right decisions. Something like 10% of all restaurants never reopened from the pandemic. Mostly those were full service restaurants and mostly those were restaurants who made the wrong two big decisions to stay open and to furlough versus lay off if you closed for almost any amount of time and you laid off. So you know, had to hire people back to real. That was expensive and hard,
And that’s why so many didn’t make it. Right.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Wow, I can’t even imagine what that must have felt like. You own some, I mean, Applebee’s, pizza Hut, some massive brands. Have there been any that you want to get into Pan?
Greg Flynn:
Don’t forget, Panera and Taco
The Wolf of Franchises:
Bell. Panera and Taco Bell. Yeah, exactly.
Greg Flynn:
Six favorites.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Have there been any that over the years you were close to buying, but do you even at your scale, I mean it’s a big decision for a franchisor for someone to let someone with just the capitalization you have and I mean, you can really influence a system almost with how big of a company you have. So yeah, there have been close calls with brands. No,
Greg Flynn:
I think that’s correct. You said you can influence the system, right? I think that’s correct, and I know franchise owners worry about franchisees are really any size, but especially big ones being a negative influence. We’re very aware of that and we are dedicated to being a positive influence and a force for good at a scale. We can be a force, but let’s be a force for good. And I’d like to think that over time we have proved that that’s what we are. Anyone getting into the business and especially as they gut scale, everyone in this industry talks a big game. I mean, it’s easy to say we’re collaborative, we invest in our people, we invest in our assets, ultimately we all should be, and we are judged by what we do versus what we say. And we now for nearly 25 years have been doing this business a certain way.
And that certain way is I think the way that franchisors would like us to do it. I mean, we invest in our people and our assets and we run our restaurants well. We’re also very, very collaborative and totally dedicated to never fighting with any of our franchisors and not undermining them publicly or privately and just being symbiotic support partners because that’s what we ultimately all are at the end of the day. So I think that has gone a long way over time. There are just enough references I can give now of franchisors who would say, listen, you should not worry about them entering your system. You should be glad they’re entering because they will be a force for good in your system.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Given how closely you work with franchisors, and obviously you’ve just operated multiple different concepts from casual dining to fast food, right? Have you ever thought, let’s start our own franchise and be the franchisor or just why is the being a franchisee, I guess so appealing versus starting something of your own?
Greg Flynn:
So I’m not sure I would ever start something of my own because I think that’s super risky. That’s what we were doing effectively with world wraps and technically started, but from store number two onward, I was there. And that’s a risk adjusted return that I don’t find attractive. So I’m not going to do that. That’s why we belong only to we’re franchisees of only mature proven brands. I think that’s the better risk adjusted return that I’m seeking. We have occasionally looked at proprietary brands to buy and growth from there and never say never. That may be something that we do, but we’ll be very slow to do it because it’s not what we’ve done before and we’ve enjoyed success doing what we’ve been doing. And so the safest thing we can do as long as it continues to have ample opportunity for us is to keep doing what we’ve been doing. So that’s, there is so much opportunity we’ve always had just being franchise operators that I haven’t yet felt a need to sort of go beyond that too. Proprietary. Yeah,
The Wolf of Franchises:
That makes sense.
Greg Flynn:
Oh, there’s one other thing. Yeah, I like being a franchise operator. I really do. If I had to choose that and I have chosen, right? Yeah. I have chosen to be a franchisee versus a franchisor. Even now that we’re in a position to maybe become a franchisor if we wanted to, we each play a role. The whole franchise model divides and conquers. What they do really matters a lot. It’s marketing and menu and prototype development, and usually they have some role in supply chain. And these things all matter training materials, these things all matter a lot and they help us. But the thing that matters most, as I was saying earlier, it’s just running your restaurants well. And that’s under my control in this arrangement. I control the thing that matters the most to my success, and this allows me to focus entirely on that. And I think that’s really a big part of our success is someone else has been taking care of the distractions of marketing and menu, all these things that matter just so I could be totally focused on what we are charged with doing and focus makes it better.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Yeah, for sure. You’re right. I mean, you do have, it is up. The franchisee has the control of their store and to do what they can with it. So I definitely agree with that. And it sounds like just that your experience with World Raps has certainly played a role in how you’ve grown since then. Did you choose though restaurant to operate restaurants and do you enjoy that versus there’s franchises in dozens of industries, there’s big fitness, planet Fitness is a franchise. Have you ever considered going outside of the restaurant world or is it just mean at this point? I’m sure you’re kind of laser focused, but at any point did you think of adding a different type of brand there?
Greg Flynn:
No. So focus makes you better. We very deliberately decided, well, we got an Applebee’s to do nothing but Applebee’s until we were really good at it. We wanted to be kind of the category killer in Applebee’s. And so we did nothing but that for 12 years and we got bigger, but we also got very good, and I can’t even take the credit for it, but our long time president of that brand for us, Dan Kreb and I, by the way, still, we’re still together 23 years later. And in fact, he’s right in my office at the moment. But we got really freaking good at that. And it was only in 2011 that we said, okay, let’s take the experience we have. Let’s take the platform, the capital now capital the team, and do more with it. And that’s when we decided to diversify into other brands.
We made a decision to let the market tell us what it wanted, right? By mirroring the composition of the industry, we made a decision to get into quick service because that’s 60, 70% of all restaurants. Who are we to say what people want? That’s what people want. And then a small but meaningful, fast casual segment in between. And so that set off a 10 year journey to diversify in the restaurant industry as a franchise operator. So we’ve now done that. It is logical for us to now think about the next 10 years, what does that hold for us? And we’ve got some growth channels that are obvious just growing in our existing brands, becoming a franchisee in new restaurant brands. International is another one. It’s interesting. There are restaurant franchisees around the world that are pretty large. All of them operate in multiple countries, and we’re the only one that operates in only one country.
Now. It’s a great country that’s had ample opportunity, so why go elsewhere? But people make a lot of money in a lot of other countries, and I think we can too. So we’ll look at that. But then there’s, well, the adjacent industries that are franchised also right outside of restaurants, but fitness is one of them. They’re home services. There’s health and beauty, there’s hospitality, and we should be and are looking at all of those right now. Again, it’ll be a little bit slow because it’s not what we’ve been doing, but I think it is something we could do. In fact, most of those are probably easier to operate in well than the restaurant industry. And I think just like that 2011 moment, 11 years ago, we can say we can take our team and our capital and our platform and our experience and do it in some other industry. So we are actively looking at all of that right now.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Very cool. I’ll be looking for some press releases there.
Greg Flynn:
Well, you’re going to get a big press release on Monday.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Really? Okay.
Greg Flynn:
Yep, yep. So look for that. I will. It’s in an adjacent industry and it’s one of the biggest deals of the year in it, so
The Wolf of Franchises:
All right, sweet. Yeah, I’ll have my Google alert set there then. That’s good to hear. I’m sure you’re going to ask this a lot. It’s just the size of your company and you’re still privately held. I know obviously there’s benefits to being privately held. Have you ever thought about going public or is that just not in the roadmap for you?
Greg Flynn:
Well, sure. I mean, I’ve thought about it and we are very unlikely to go public now or ever for two reasons. One, I’ve got a bunch of franchise agreements that say I won’t go public. And I’d have to convince our franchisors that it was actually an our just and theirs, that we go public that probably would just have to do with access to capital. For some reason, the private markets weren’t providing enough access and for us to continue to build restaurants and things, we needed it. But the other reason people go public are settled. One is access to capital. And we have no shortage of access to capital being private, both debt, mainly debt, but also equity. Those are very, very deep markets for good companies. Two people wish to have sort of stock-based compensation and share equity ownership with their employees in a way that provides them some liquidity and a value benchmark that’s very legitimate.
That’s the most legitimate reason I think, to go public. And that’s something that would be attractive to us, but we’re going to have to forego unless until we did. But probably the main reason people take their companies public other than access to capital they don’t other have otherwise have is because they have a CEO that wants to have taken a company public and wants to run a public company. And that’s not what I want to do. Okay. You know what? I really like being private and public companies throw up all sorts of perverse incentives to have a very short term focus. And we have always had a very, very long term focus and it’s really benefited us. And while I would love quarterly results to be good, I’d sacrifice them all day long for the five year or 10 year outcome. And so that’s the main reason we’re very unlikely to go public ever.
The Wolf of Franchises:
That makes sense. And I feel like some of the bigger names in public companies, whether is Warren Buffet or Jamie Diamond, there was someone recently, there’s almost like a growing petition to stop with the quarterly earnings reports because it’s just it, like you said, it just causes this mindset that is too short term and ultimately it’s actually not in the best interest of the companies or the stakeholders to be thinking that way. Well one more question that I’m curious about before we wrap up here is just with how big your organization is, and I’m not asking for the secret sauce here, but do you have guys done anything in-house, whether it’s technology or something that’s proprietary to Flynn Restaurant Group that has maybe been a part of the success?
Greg Flynn:
If I had to identify any single secret sauce for our business, it’s culture and structure. Maybe those are two things, but they’re so intimately related. We are an amazingly flat company.
The Wolf of Franchises:
What do you mean by that? Right.
Greg Flynn:
And it’s not very hierarchical. Your typical restaurant franchisee, franchise operating business is like a classic pyramid structure where you got a franchisee sitting on top and then there are layers below them and the whole structure exists to implement what this guy decides and he tells ’em what to do and they go do it. Right. We have a totally different structure. It’s a fairly decentralized structure that pushes real authority down as close to the field as we can get it. And we share the wealth very generously down to that level. And think of it as a state and federal model where states are run by sort of state governors, we call them market presidents. They’re my partners. And we allow all, almost encourage a pretty high level of autonomy because we think local owner operators run the best restaurants and we want them to act like and feel like, and in fact be local owner operators.
But there are very real scale economies in the business. And you have all these above restaurant functions you need to do and you need to do ’em well. And that’s hr, it, purchasing, finance, real estate training. I mean, there’s just a bunch of stuff you need to do and think of that as the federal level in our state and federal model. We do that for our restaurants and we do it probably better at a lower cost because of the scale and the people we can attract as a result of the scale to provide just world-class services. And this all sounds like pretty simple, but it’s pretty complicated to do and you need to be really devoted to it. And in our case, it really wouldn’t work if we hadn’t grown up organically like that over 25 years.
The Wolf of Franchises:
I hear you. I’m sure like the act. Yeah. If I saw an org chart, the structure would obviously be it wouldn’t be super simple just to think up, but just a theme I’ve noticed, I think the biggest franchise owner I’ve had on before, you owned about 140 orange theories, and then these building a dog daycare brand as well, but just the themes of the most successful owners seem to be that the people underneath them have skin in the game, whatever their management structure is, there’s always just a way to really incentivize the people and empower them to want to take ownership of their role and whatever locations are under their jurisdiction, so to speak.
Greg Flynn:
Yeah, this is exactly right. Yeah.
The Wolf of Franchises:
Well, look, Greg, this was awesome to have you on. I’m glad you got forwarded at that Twitter thread a while ago. But yeah, I know folks, normally we plug the website or social media profile. Greg’s made the very smart decision to not have any of those. But if you do want to check out his website of his company and all the brand, the own flynn restaurant group.com. Well yeah. So thanks again, Greg, and hopefully we can talk soon.
Greg Flynn:
Thank you, Wolf. Take care. Bye.
The Wolf of Franchises:
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