Table of contents
We met Mo Saad from Fricken back in Episode 1 where he was helping G’s Jaffles with tips on how he expanded his food truck operations. But he’s got expansion on his mind as well: Fricken wants to go national, and is thinking about franchising.
If there’s one Aussie founder who knows all about franchising, it’s Janine Allis who made Boost Juice a household name, now with over 500 stores across the world.
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Episode Transcript
Melissa Leong:
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Intro:
Yeah, I remember talking to the team that night. I cried. I cried in front of him.
The idea that what we increase our prices and then obviously all I think about is no one will come to Opus anymore.
We made so many mistakes that we’re always going to make.
Don’t let Lorenzo measure the store.
A lot of them were terrified that the business would fail within six months. They said that in those words, they were like, “You will not survive six months.”
And you have to try it. You have to just roll the dice. I think you have to take those risks.
Melissa Leong:
This is Coolroom Confessional. In this series, we’re offering hospo business owners a place to confess their problems. With some expert help, we’re going to try and solve them. I’m Melissa Leong. I’ve been a writer, culinary critic and TV judge. Today we’re speaking with an old friend, Mo Saad, who we met in episode one. Mo’s one of four founders who run Fricken Chicken and this ACT team wants to go national. Let’s see what’s up.
We first met Mo Saad in episode one of Coolroom Confessional when he was helping G’s Jaffles expand from a single food truck.
Georgie “G” Smith:
What a smart idea.
Mo Saad:
Was that the shipping container that was lifted in place.
Georgie “G” Smith:
Yeah. And I was like, that is just hectic.
Melissa Leong:
Now the tables have turned and our successful operator Mo needs some help with his own business. Mo and Marwin Saad grew up with a mum who knew how to cook and there was one recipe in particular they knew they could take all the way to the bank.
Mo Saad:
Original recipe, fried chicken, side of salad, side of chips, and this is something that we just had, but it wasn’t until 2018 that we decided to open up a food truck just to trial it out.
Melissa Leong:
That was Mo. He and his brother and their wives now run a business built on their mum’s fried chicken recipe.
Mo Saad:
We launched at a food festival in Canberra, known as the Forage. That was our first day. Reputation grew, the brand grew, we grew as a business as well. We decided two years into that journey that we’ve got something serious and we should open up a permanent store.
Social video:
Welcome to Fricken. We have got the best fried chicken around.
Melissa Leong:
Fricken Chicken is now across the a CT and it’s been fricking successful. Not bad for the team who started scoping their market from a single trailer in Canberra. Potential franchisees now started to knock on Fricken’s door.
Mo Saad:
Even six and a half years into that journey, there’s a fair bit of work that we need to do. Hopefully we can go nationally and open up in other states.
Melissa Leong:
Is Fricken Chicken ready to take that on? Maybe we can help Mo find out. Mo Saad, one of the co-owners of Fricken Chicken is here. Mo, you’ve been on the show before. Welcome back. This time you’re in the hot seat.
Mo Saad:
Thank you for having me again.
Melissa Leong:
Now let’s talk first about what Fricken Chicken does. Gluten-free fried chicken. What a dream.
Mo Saad:
Yep, yep. So yeah, humble beginnings. A family recipe developed by mom. Slowly started off as a food truck, so it was something worthy of expanding.
Melissa Leong:
Fantastic, Mo. Can you remind us about the scale of your business currently and why you’ve come on the show today?
Mo Saad:
So yeah, at the moment we’re at four locations, one main brick and mortar store in Canberra. CBD, two residencies, one as a food truck and one as a shipping container.
Melissa Leong:
Right now you’re considering franchising investment, possibly new partners. Can you tell me what’s on the table and what are you not considering in terms of expansion?
Mo Saad:
We’re really grateful for requests to open franchise outlets.
Melissa Leong:
Flattered by the interest.
Mo Saad:
Flattered by the interest for sure. And so we can keep going on our trajectory. We could definitely be at more stores, but we needed to go back to our foundation and see things as a model. We’re not just a restaurant that has a menu, it’s now a particular model and that’s how we can see the future. We need to really cut down. We don’t need to expand the menu. If anything, we need to cut down on the menu to be able to scale. We really need to get our backyard clean.
Melissa Leong:
I think this is a luxury for some businesses to be able to have the time to stop, look at what’s going on, pair things back where required, and really make strategic choices going forward. We have a significant someone to help you on your way during this phase of your business. She’s the founder of a household name brand, which is technically fast food, but not as you’d imagine it. Boost Juice is everywhere thanks to the remarkable Janine Allis who has gone far beyond the blender these days. Janine, it is a privilege to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being here.
Janine Allis:
Oh look, it’s very humbling, but I think just listening to Mo, he’s gone, “I’m lucky.” There’s no luck involved. You’ve obviously created a product that really resonates with the consumer. I mean, I’m on your website now having a look at your burgers. They look delicious. The way you’re positioning it is just right, so obviously you’re really attacking the business as the customer would.
Mo Saad:
Yeah. Appreciate it.
Janine Allis:
Love the name. Have you trademarked the name?
Mo Saad:
Yeah, from day one. Yeah.
Janine Allis:
Yeah, great. Great news. So probably the question I need to ask you is what percentage of profit, what’s your bottom line percentage talking EBITDA, not NetPat or EBIT, what’s your profit percentage? Because that really dictates whether you can franchise at this point.
Melissa Leong:
Okay, EBITDA, what is that? Let me read a definition. EBITDA is an acronym for Earnings Before Interest Tax Depreciation and Amortization. Investors care about EBITDA because it’s a snapshot of the profitability of a business that many consider more useful than net profit.
Mo Saad:
Our business model is obviously it started off as seasonal, having the food trucks, so we dialed that down and now are running three stores that are seven days of trade. So we’re at much better position now, and so we’re around a 10 to 15% EBITDA.
Janine Allis:
Right, okay.
Mo Saad:
Not always the case.
Janine Allis:
Okay. No, that’s all right. 10, 15%. Okay, so you need to get that percentage up to about 25. That’s telling me your cost of goods is probably really expensive and your wages are pretty expensive because I wouldn’t expect your rent to be that expensive.
Mo Saad:
Wages for sure. Wages is definitely up there. We did have a rough patch with cost of goods, but now it’s dialed back. That’s below 30%. Yeah.
Janine Allis:
Right. Okay, so look below 30% is fantastic. What’s your wages?
Mo Saad:
It does vary by location to location. That’s one of the main tasks that we work on for the next six months. It’s basically having a production model to be able to invoice between, so our brick and mortar store, Braddon, that does the preps for the other trucks so the labor cost of that location is inflated because the preps happen there.
Janine Allis:
Is there another way? The reason I say that is that I’ve seen a more of businesses that have a prep kitchen or a kitchen that supplies the stores. And I find that they struggle because you really got to have a scale to be able to be effective in that area and so if you’re better off being able to cook everything from scratch in individual locations.
Melissa Leong:
Janine, you’re advocating for centralized kitchen being more essential at a certain stage of growth rather than right at the beginning.
Janine Allis:
Or never.
Melissa Leong:
Okay, there you go.
Janine Allis:
You look at some of the most successful burger places out there. You’ve got Grill’d, you’ve got Betty’s, you’ve got McDonald’s, you’ve got Burger King. They might bring in the lettuce cut, they might bring in the sauces done, but they cook everything on site.
Melissa Leong:
Mo told is in episode one that Fricken Chicken already uses a converted container as a prep kitchen for its trucks and store. Some components like the gluten-free and flour-based butters are made there. They have strict protocols for their gluten-free chicken and manage its production carefully.
Janine Allis:
What you find is you go, “Gee, my cost of goods are at 30%.” But oh by the way, then you add in the manufacturer, suddenly my cost of good’s at 36% because if you’re already at 10 to 15% bottom line, it’s telling me something’s not right in your number because you should be at about 25. You should be. Cost of goods, you can’t change but sales you can. So per month or per year, what would you do in your bricks and mortar store?
Mo Saad:
Across all, that’s just shy of five mil at the moment.
Janine Allis:
Right. Awesome. So you’ve got your sales, you’ve got obviously people like it. The sales are great. As you said, you’ve obviously had some challenges with your chicken and raw ingredients, which to be honest, there’s always a challenge. So sometimes when things get thrown at you, which is either lettuce or obviously chicken is a problem for you, you’ve got to always have chicken.
Mo Saad:
For sure.
Melissa Leong:
That’s right there in the name.
Janine Allis:
You can kind of pivot and go, “All right, well lettuce is a problem. I’m going to actually do a special and have rocket or I’m going to have a special and have spinach.”
Melissa Leong:
And Mo, you did do that, didn’t you? At a time where there was a lettuce shortage, you went to slaw for a bit?
Mo Saad:
Yeah, so obviously all of our marketing efforts was around the items that contain slaw or not burgers, so the fried chicken boxes and things like that. And we tried to have a lighthearted twist within the-
Melissa Leong:
Storytelling.
Mo Saad:
Short form content and one of the reels was me walking in with a chicken box and the staff are lined up in the corridor or clapping that I’ve come to work with a box of chicken and we’ve done similar for lettuce and so we tried to bring the customer to it in a lighthearted way to say, “Look, we’re struggling in this area trying to get supply, but what can we do? This is a international problem, so bear with us.” Yeah.
Melissa Leong:
Ingredient shortages and the rising cost of goods are big challenges for any hospo business. Nick Palumbo has found a way to overcome them in his own business, Gelato Messina with an interesting investment.
Nick Palumbo:
We really became quite obsessive in terms of controlling from milking our own cows and owning the dairy farm all the way to, it’s our staff that are serving it to the customer. From milk to finished scoop.
Janine Allis:
Look, I think the good news is that you’ve got such a great foundation and such a great brand and clearly with those sales customers want it. It is going, what do I scale at? But before you actually decide what your business should do, you have to ask yourself, what does Mo want? Because sometimes we get caught up in the business, but you’ve also got to ask yourself, what do you want? Do you want to scale this all over the place? Do you want to just get four or five stores in Canberra that is just humming beautifully? What do you want?
Mo Saad:
Right now, if we look at basically Mo personally, I think at our current growth rate, we’re financially okay, we’re happy with where we are. We grew up poor, so what we have we are extremely grateful for. And so growing the business is not a monetary motivation. It’s not an ego thing.
Janine Allis:
Go back to my question. So yep, what do you want?
Mo Saad:
I would love to see Fricken going national.
Janine Allis:
You and your partners would like to see this as an Australian brand. Is that right?
Mo Saad:
100%.
Janine Allis:
It’s really important because some people, what you’ll find is potentially the profit you’re making now as you expand, you may make less money with double the stores.
Melissa Leong:
Yes, you heard that right. Opening more venues may generate more revenue but less profit. Here’s restaurateur, Joe Vargetto.
Joe Vargetto:
And you can make whole heck of money doing one place really well rather than opening three or four because maybe first, second, third and fourth, number one and two have to pay for three and four.
Melissa Leong:
Franchising is a major undertaking. Are there any pros and cons for this growth model?
Janine Allis:
You’ve got to go, all right, so the systems you put in place have to be airtight.
Mo Saad:
Absolutely.
Janine Allis:
The thing with some franchising, if your individual stores are making between 20 and 25%, maybe 30%, which would be great, you are now in the ability to be able to go, okay, there’s enough in it for me and there’s enough in it for the franchisee.
The other thing is do you want to be corporate? There is something to be said for it’s tough franchising emotionally because if it’s going well, it’s them. If it’s going badly, it’s your fault.
Mo Saad:
For sure.
Janine Allis:
And they give you a royalty because of the brand, but they give you the royalty and go, “What do I get for that?” And they forget it’s a branded system. However, saying that I have got over probably 200 franchisees and most of them are incredible. Not only are they incredible, they contribute to the better of the business. So we look at them as genuine partners and look, there are some of those partners that shouldn’t be in the network and they take a lot of time. And when you get involved with franchising, you get involved with births, deaths, mental health, sexual harassment, bullying, you get the whole gamut because that is the population that you deal with.
Sure, you can open 10 of those and the franchisee pays for the capital and then you get a nice little $50,000 check per store and you get the royalties. All great, but you’ve got to be prepared for the emotional side of it. You’re better off doing company stores. Company means that if you’re making 20, 30% per store, you’re better off running it. Now that has its own challenge trying to find great managers to be able to do it.
Melissa Leong:
It’s the advice all our experts keep on giving throughout the series and Janine agrees with them. Good managers are like gold and they are worth the investment in time, energy, and money. It’s something the young founders at Pasta Prego have already discovered.
Lorenzo Fantarella:
Our manager currently Grace, sometimes I feel like she cares more than both of us.
Isaac Varano:
One of our other potential managers as well, on his ninth day, he got a Pasta Prego tattoo on his arm. He loves it that much.
Melissa Leong:
No way. If you’re hanging on Janine’s every word, same, but I’m even more curious to hear the number one thing she wants Mo never to do. Stay with us. This podcast is thanks to Square. Hospitality has enough on their plate. Square builds business tools that help hospo businesses like yours run smoothly. It’s more than just payments from table layouts to a digital ticket system for your kitchen. It’s all integrated and it all talks to each other because service still matters. Find out more at square.com/my/service.
Janine Allis:
What I would not do and write this down, put it in highlight, do not sell areas. Do not sell someone the rights for Melbourne or Perth. Don’t do it. You only sell individuals, individual franchises ever. Don’t do more than one. Only one to one person. And then if they do a certain amount of things like pay bills properly, run a profitable business, all of these long list of things, then they get the right to do a second one. That is one of the people’s worst mistakes is they give away a territory. Say they might give away Perth because it’s a long way away or they give someone the rights for five stores and they haven’t proven themselves. So what I’m saying is be a protector of your brand and protector of this because the way to be successful is to get the right people into your business to do it. And I’m talking franchisees, managers, area leaders. So you need to fire really fast and hire really slowly.
Melissa Leong:
Mo, that’s a huge amount of very, very detailed and crucial information.
Mo Saad:
Massive, massive, a wealth of knowledge and obviously a lot to take in and I’m glad this is recorded. We’re treading very carefully, so many offers to open up new locations and just to buy equity in the brand.
Melissa Leong:
Have you thought about some of these elements?
Mo Saad:
A year or two ago we actually went and looked at a couple of sites and there was no consideration for a franchise. It would be one of the founders relocating and just making it work for at least 12 to 24 months and then consider any other option. One thing that kind of caught my eye overseas in America is the Chick-fil-A model. So all their stores are corporate owned with an operator basically running the outlets so they have a really high salary, something that they obviously have a base income that’s solid, but it’s something like 50-50 and equal share.
Janine Allis:
Yeah, nice model. The answer is you’ve got to find a model that works for you. I think that what you did say, having one of the founders relocating is a must. It’s a not negotiable, should happen. Do it for one to two years and then for them to really grow because it’s that passion that actually grows this brand. You’re right with company stores, you’ve got to find a way of incentivizing and getting people in to have that ownership and when you’ve got the right person to really love them and you are paying them well. Flight Center have a system where people can buy in and get a portion of the profit. You can do what you said, which is they get a percentage of the profit. There’s things like MEPs, which is a system where you can give people options in the business if they’re still in the business. And then there’s so many ways of getting people to get involved in the business, feel like they’ve got an ownership of the business and also most importantly, get rewarded for if it works for you, it works for them.
Melissa Leong:
What Janine is describing is called golden handcuffs. It’s a nice package that keeps valuable managers and staff in your business in an industry which typically has a high turnover.
Janine Allis:
And so there is many different models and you’ve got to find one that works for you. But what I would suggest is whatever model you put in place, make sure you have a cap, make sure you have the ability to adjust and change it at any time and do not ever give equity. So always do it on option because it’s also tax-effective. While you’re small, speak to your accountant. There’s a great way of actually doing an options program, which is very good for the staff tax-wise. If your business is under 50 million in sales, there’s lots of things you can do to incentivize your staff. So now’s the time to think about your key people ensuring that you try and keep them because they’re gold. They are gold.
Mo Saad:
100%.
Melissa Leong:
What I’m hearing here, there’s a huge amount of maintaining a level of control that can never get away from you as the originator because once you let that go, then it’s very hard to kind of rein it back in. Can you for a moment, just take us back to your initial few stores and that watershed moment of, okay, I want to take this nationally, I can see this being so much bigger than what it is currently?
Janine Allis:
Taking you back to that girl who’s 33 years old, had 3 little children, the youngest is 7 months old and having no idea about business, didn’t know the different between debit and credits, never hired anyone before, GST came in the same year that we started the business, had to learn about how GST worked. So it was a massive learning curve and I think the superpower I had was making complicated things simple and never feeling stupid to ask a question. And also making sure that every dollar I spent I got value from and I’m talking every dollar. So I’m going, if I had to get a lawyer, which we do because of leases and trademarks and that sort of stuff, I wouldn’t just sit there and go, “Tell me what the answer is.” I would go, “Teach me.”
Melissa Leong:
The takeaway here is when you bring in professionals like legal, marketing, HR, or trademark advisors, don’t just pay them to do their thing. Watch and learn from them. You may be able to save time and money next time the same issues crop up.
Janine Allis:
I’m a student and I still believe I’m a student today. Sorry Mo, but I’m not an expert. I’m still a student.
Mo Saad:
Very humble, very humble.
Melissa Leong:
But I think it’s also a wise way to be. If you are constantly putting yourself in the position of I’m here to learn, then you are here to learn no matter how accomplished you are, and you are obviously significantly accomplished.
Janine Allis:
Mo might’ve created a system that he did just intuitively because his brain works’ a certain way that I go, “Oh my God, that is incredible. That’s something. can I put that in my pocket Mo?” So the day that people think that they know all the answers is the day they should just give up.
So look, going back to your question, I was just the student as I still am today, and I opened the first store in Adelaide. I didn’t really understand what a business model was. I didn’t know what cost of goods and wages and I just had to learn it as I went. And I always approached a bit like what Mo said, I never did it for the money. Clearly I didn’t get any money out for 5 years and I didn’t get a salary for about 3, and I think my first salary was I think $25,000. But I did do it for as a customer. I always went as a customer, what do I want from Boost?
For example, Jeff Harris has this saying, Jeff Harris, the co-founder of Flight Center and is a friend of mine. He said, “Never let the tail wag the dog.” What that means is don’t let the fact that the systems that you put in place, sorry, we’d like to be better with our customers, but our system doesn’t allow it. Change the system. Always make sure that the customers, everything you do is for the customer because what will happen is your sales will be fine. You can sort out your cost of goods later, you can sort out your labor, you can sort out your wages, you can sort out the other costs. But you can’t sort out sales.
Mo Saad:
100%. 100%.
Melissa Leong:
For listeners out there who may be in different stages of considering expansion, there are so many different models that you look at in terms of investment. What are some key caveats universally across the board for you?
Janine Allis:
I think for most people, they look on return on investment. Say if I put $100,000 into a store, how quickly do I get that $100 back? So if you say that it costs about $350,000, so what is it to open a store? About 700?
Mo Saad:
To be honest, we’ve never opened a store from scratch. So the first store that we had, we actually took over an existing fit out. We had a lot of the core fit out there. A high production food truck, for example, that’s north of 100K.
Janine Allis:
Let’s assume that it costs half a million dollars, $500,000 to do a proper fit out in a store that is 150 square meters. So just assume that the 50, 500,000. So you have to work out, would you make half a million dollars in a year? If that’s the case, great. That means that your ROI is fantastic. Does it take two years to make that money back? So that’s the first indicator.
The second thing is your EBITDA, your bottom line, your profit, what percentage of that profit is, and then if that first percentage is big enough, how can I do more of it? People look at, they love the concept, they love the brand, they want to know the story of growth. And you can point to things like Grill’d, you can point to Betty’s Burgers about growth. You’ve got all the bits going and then you’ve got the story behind the secret recipe, name’s great, it’s easy to remember. So you’ve got all the bits.
Melissa Leong:
Janine, I want to ask you, looking back on you what you’ve achieved, would you have done anything differently with the benefit of hindsight?
Janine Allis:
Yeah, look, absolutely. Have I made mistakes? Yes. Has my children gone, “You look familiar. Who are you?” Sure. Do parents hang out with me to feel good about their parenting? Absolutely. Honestly, there is nothing I would change. Do things go wrong? Every day. But without those things going wrong, the business wouldn’t be where it’s today.
Mo Saad:
At what point did you look at a C level higher to help you at that next level of growth?
Janine Allis:
You don’t need it. You don’t need it at the moment. You need people with hands-on. The C suite tends to be hands-off. So if you get a CFO, a true CFO is someone who manages a team. What you need is a financial manager. You need someone who’s in the numbers, who gives you accurate information, who’s senior enough, a good accountant to speak to the banks, but your C suite or your CFO is your accountant. So don’t go to that cost in getting that. I’m saying that with everything. Maybe probably the only C suite you’d consider is a COO, which is chief operating officer. So someone who is really into the minutia, but again, hands-on. You don’t need anyone hands off right now. A lot of things can be externalized. I mean, you don’t need IT support clearly, but there are some great businesses that you can use that go, “Okay, I’m going to externalize that. I’m going to externalize my … Which we have another business, we have an external IT team, we use external lawyers.”
But then there’s a point where you go, I’m actually spending $180,000 a year or $200,000 a year on legal. So there’s always a point where you go, when is it internal? Where is it external? But you’ve got to remember when you’re a staff member, you’re paying 11% super, you’re paying work cover, you’re paying insurance, you’re paying a computer. There’s a lot of costs that come from it. So externalize as much as you can while you have shares in the business. Do not hand over the title of CEO. I’ve never been into titles, I’m just Janine who? Just Janine. That’s my title. But then what I found was then we put someone in with the title of CEO, the dynamics change. So we have a rule that while we have a majority share in a business, we do not give the CEO title to anyone.
Melissa Leong:
So there is a danger in structuring too early, if at all?
Janine Allis:
So I would be saying that where you need to put your money at the moment is in store, really invest in those managers. Once you actually start to get four or five stores, you need an area leader to go over those stores. I have never been the highest paid person in my business ever. And I also believe that the store managers should be one of your highest paid employees because they’re the ones that make the difference.
Mo Saad:
I can confirm that’s true for us.
Melissa Leong:
And you have such a great provenance story as well. I mean sitting around your mother’s kitchen table going, it’s the dream to say, my mother’s fried chicken is the best fried chicken that’s good enough to sell to the rest of Australia. Yours literally is. You believe in it so much that you’re building this business around that product. It’s a beautiful story.
Janine Allis:
Where’s your website. Your website is a very practical website. You’ve got bookings, order, order now, catering, gift cards. There’s no storytelling. It’s a nice looking website. But then create a storyteller. There’s a family of four who we’ve got together and we’re passionate about this and every day we are thinking about how do we make this delicious product for you to actually just celebrate over.
Mo Saad:
Definitely something for us to work on and just to tell the story a bit more.
Janine Allis:
To Melissa’s point, how do you get the consumer to understand what’s behind Fricken Chicken? And also what’s your positioning line?
Mo Saad:
We actually don’t have an official tagline and one of the ones that popped up, we thought maybe underneath could be something like the F word for flavor. We’re trying to obviously have the best product that we can put out, but also in a fun and unique brand.
Melissa Leong:
Yeah, it’s almost how do we speak in the voice of the brand as you grow. Janine, do you have any last pieces of advice? I mean, you’ve given us so many nuggets of gold today already. Any last pieces of advice for Mo or for anybody out there listening to you in admiration of your story and what you’ve achieved?
Janine Allis:
I think probably the only thing is that yes, you’re creating an entity that will have a life of its own. Like children, when they’re really little, they need everything from you. And as you get bigger, you’re right, you can start to put C suites in and people to manage the business. But at the start, they need everything of you, which means that your bucket gets empty pretty quick. So what I would say is that find your coping mechanisms. So don’t give up. If you love to do gaming, don’t give that up. If you like to go for a surf, don’t give that up. If you like to hang out with friends, don’t give that up. It’s actually good for you and the business. So I think probably that’s your main thing because you get caught in the weeds. I can give you all sorts of advice of business, but on this personal journey, because you’re sort of at this early stage, just look after yourself.
Melissa Leong:
Amazing. That’s advice you can take to the bank no matter who you are. So thank you so much Janine.
Mo Saad:
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. It’s amazing.
Janine Allis:
My pleasure. Hey, good luck. Well done. Congratulations on getting where you got to. It’s an incredible mountain you’ve climbed.
Mo Saad:
Definitely have a lot to work on. And if I may, would it be okay to touch base in about six months just to update you on our journey?
Janine Allis:
Would love to hear it.
Mo Saad:
That’d be amazing.
Janine Allis:
No worries Mo. Good luck.
Melissa Leong:
Janine, I want to thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. I think one thing that I’ll take away from this is being good at taking complex situations and making them simple is something we should all strive for, and I think that Mo has a lot to think about now. So Mo Saad and Janine Allie, thank you so much.
Mo Saad:
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Melissa Leong:
Mo, you are legitimately fangirling right now.
Mo Saad:
A little bit. A little bit, yeah. Basically after the last podcast-
Melissa Leong:
Go on.
Mo Saad:
We were just thinking about having an item that’s named after you or related to something that you. Yeah, so we’re looking at a food and a product and we thought something obviously very relevant to yourself for Dessert Masters, what if we do a Mel shake? Not a milkshake, but a Mel shake?
Melissa Leong:
A Mel shake.
Mo Saad:
Which is a honeycomb because a honeycomb is the closest shape to the octagon, having relevancy to your current interests.
Melissa Leong:
Melissa also means honey in Greek. That’s great.
Mo Saad:
There you go. That’s another one. And with lime and sea salt just to contrast.
Melissa Leong:
Love that.
Mo Saad:
Yeah.
Melissa Leong:
I mean, I’d be honored. That’s tremendous.
Mo Saad:
Yeah.
Melissa Leong:
Thank you. This has been Coolroom Confessional. Thank you for supporting the hospo business owners that have bared their souls and opened their books to give an insight into this industry we love so much. We hope you’ve learned a lot throughout the season. That’s all from us now. Take care and tip you later.
If you’d like to see some more examples of businesses overcoming these and other issues, head to Square’s publication, The Bottom Line at square.com/get/thebottomline. This podcast is thanks to Square. Hospitality has enough on their plate. Square builds business tools that help hospo businesses like yours run smoothly. It’s more than just payments from table layouts to a digital ticket system for your kitchen. It’s all integrated and it all talks to each other because service still matters. Find out more at square.com/my/service. We are proudly supported by American Express. Whether you are baking bread at sunrise or serving drinks into the night, American Express has your back. As a Square seller, you pay one low rate, accept all major cards, including American Express, and you can order complimentary signage to attract more customers directly to your door at amexpop.com/square.
