Eye On Franchising

Just as Profitable During the Pandemic at Toastique with Brianna Keefe

Episode Summary

Toastique founder Brianna Keefe was making juices and smoothies while on the go. Fast forward to college and various forms on gourmet toast was on the menu, everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. From a young age, Brianna has been passionate about food, nutrition and fitness in all its forms, which overtime transitioned into a passion and love for clean living. In high school she made smoothies & juice everyday, this sparking the dream of owning her own health cafe. In college, being a D1 athlete, she quickly learned how important it was to have wholesome meals throughout the day to keep her energy up while on the go. Day in day out, Brianna expanded her original avocado toast, to various toast creations to accommodate her busy schedule anytime of the day. Brianna appreciates beauty in a simple and honest form. She takes the color of the fresh, crisp produce, mixes it with her passion and love of healthy living to create the beautiful delicacies of Toastique. Brianna was featured already in Forbes magazine 30 under 30. How does somebody under 30 start a business, franchise that business and get featured on Forbes you ask? Great question, tune in to hear all the answers. Incredible accomplishments for any person at any age and truly amazing for someone to do under 30 years old. If your passionate about healthy living and your community always has busy people, seven days a week running around a franchise like Toastique might be for you. Have you heard the news? We are officially on YouTube. Come check out a few videos have have and give me a follow! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwoAdrkPZmveJt5AQRDk8WA --- Lance Graulich Franchise Consulting Services from ION Franchising Eye On Franchising

Episode Notes

Toastique founder Brianna Keefe was making juices and smoothies while on the go. Fast forward to college and various forms on gourmet toast was on the menu, everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. 

From a young age, Brianna has been passionate about food, nutrition and fitness in all its forms, which overtime transitioned into a passion and love for clean living. In high school she made smoothies & juice everyday, this sparking the dream of owning her own health cafe. In college, being a D1 athlete, she quickly learned how important it was to have wholesome meals throughout the day to keep her energy up while on the go. Day in day out, Brianna expanded her original avocado toast, to various toast creations to accommodate her busy schedule anytime of the day.

Brianna appreciates beauty in a simple and honest form.  She takes the color of the fresh, crisp produce, mixes it with her passion and love of healthy living to create the beautiful delicacies of Toastique.

 

Brianna was featured already in Forbes magazine 30 under 30. How does somebody under 30 start a business, franchise that business and get featured on Forbes you ask?

 

Great question, tune in to hear all the answers.

 

Incredible accomplishments for any person at any age and truly amazing for someone to do under 30 years old.

 

If your passionate about healthy living and your community always has busy people, seven days a week running around a franchise like Toastique might be for you.

 

Have you heard the news?  We are officially on YouTube.  Come check out a few videos have have and give me a follow!  

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwoAdrkPZmveJt5AQRDk8WA

---

Lance Graulich

Franchise Consulting Services from ION Franchising

Eye On Franchising

Episode Transcription

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

franchisees, people, franchising, toast, store, restaurant, avocado, english muffins, location, dc, open, brand, business, partners, super, brianna, love, pandemic, corporate, day

SPEAKERS

Brianna, Lance Graulich

 

Lance Graulich00:11

Hello everyone and welcome back to another great episode of Eye on Franchising. I'm your host Lance Graulich. And today, I'm getting a hungry already. So she and I were just having a little chat about avocado toast. Today's special guest, believe it or not was a D one athlete. She certainly has a passion for food and nutrition and fitness. And she was featured already in Forbes magazine 30 under 30. And she is the founder of a gourmet toast and juice bar concept called Toastique. Welcome to the show. Brianna Keefe,

 

Brianna  00:52

thank you. Thank you so much for having me. 

 

Lance Graulich00:55

Brianna. This is awesome. Thank you so much for making some time for me getting out of the kitchen and taking the apron off for a minute. Okay, so let's dive into it. How does somebody under 30 Start franchise and get into the restaurant business and all the things that you've accomplished? It's such at any age, it's amazing, but it's really amazing that you're under 30

 

Brianna  01:20

Yeah, thank you, like you mentioned, I've always been super passionate about healthy living and always lived the active lifestyle. I was a diver in high school and I did all star cheering outside of school. So I was always busy seven days a week. So always eating things on the go. And I wanted to be fueled and never felt like I was overstuffed. And then in college I cheered for James Madison, and between lifting and practicing games in school and I actually worked at a restaurant as well I was so so so busy. It's just something I always enjoyed in high school, I always made smoothies and juices and then in college is when I was really making toast like three times a day because to me it was the perfect amount of good carbs and protein and fat and it was always just easy and quick and really kept me fueled. So that's Toastique is really how I always just loved loved eating and even when I would travel places I would always trying to find a juice bar or health cafe and you know, eat that breakfast, lunch and dinner.

 

Lance Graulich02:29

So I have to know when you said in high school you were always making toast. How did avocado toast come about for you because I come from you know, I've owned restaurant franchises myself in the past. Nothing terribly healthy, mostly built around a deep fryer. So I really appreciate and applaud what you're doing. So I don't even know when I first encountered avocado toast. So how did this come about for you in the in the first place?

 

Brianna  02:57

Yeah, so really high school was like smoothies and juices, but my parents also love English muffins. So before the toast kind of came to Yes, it's like English muffin open face sandwiches. So I would always put like little eggs or I'd make chicken asparagus. I love to saute things I still do too. So I do like mushrooms and onions and asparagus. So I was always making that in high school English muffins. And then when I went to college, I was like I could probably get like a little bit of a healthier carb option and kinda went to Whole wheat bread and things like that. Not nothing to hate on English muffins. They're still delicious and I still eat sometimes. But in college is when I started really making the toast aspect to it and I always loved avocado, so that was always breakfast lunch or dinner. It was always on my toast maybe it was the egg maybe I made some like chicken salad or a piece of grilled chicken breast but avocado was always on there. I of course when I opened Toastique I didn't want to have I didn't want avocado to be on every single thing because I understand that some people don't like avocado, avocado. I don't know. But there's some people that will confirm this doesn't have avocado on it right? I'm like no it doesn't

 

Lance Graulich04:16

no they probably don't like anything green. That's the issue.

 

Brianna  04:20

Yeah, that's probably the issue. But yeah, so Oh, I was just gonna say I've always That's always how I enjoy eating. And I've always been a people oriented person. So my jobs. I was a host and a server. And I have a degree in Hospitality Management and a minor in business and throughout college I was serving as something that I always really enjoyed doing. And I just love meeting new people talking new people, and always being on my feet. I've always had a busy life and that's how I feel like I I function best. I never could picture myself having a desk job or, you know, doing something over and over. That would get pretty boring and stale for me fast.

 

Lance Graulich05:19

Brianna, I think I'm tracking with you at this point. Now the next question really goes back to how did you turn this into a business? Where did the name toasty come from? You know, how did how did making stuff at home and eating healthy and English muffins and all this turned into your business?

 

Brianna  05:38

Yeah, it's, pretty crazy. But my after college, I went into events in DC, and, I really, truly loved it. But it didn't take me a while to get super burned out, I was on a college grad salary working up to 80 hours a week, and we had these amazing opportunities that I'm super grateful for, but I got burnt out so fast. And I was like, if I'm gonna be working this hard, I'd prefer it be for myself. And that was really what gave me the extra push to do something on my own. I'm young, I don't have pets, kids, whatever. I know, I can make it serving. If something goes bad, I can, you know, get a serving job. So I figured out the new adventure. So that's really what gave me an extra push. So are the first Toastique was really solely just for me to do something that I'm passionate about and enjoy going to work every day. And, you know, I never ever, ever dreamed that Toastique would be doing what it's doing. And so toast of course, I think is that that's our specialty that makes up depending on the location 40 to 60% of our sales. And that's what I wanted to put a focus on because I have never been to a place where solely they put a focus on toasts, you'll see it on the side side, the avocado side of peanut butter toast. But I love toast so much that I was like this, this needs to come to life, like toast maybe a trendy word, but open face sandwiches and tartines they people across the world have been doing this for years. And I was in DC at a time and I love DC and DC really lacked kinda anything like it, there's some juice bars, some smoothie places, but there, I felt like there was a really need for this type of cafe. So between that and the push from my my job before then just went all in. And it was just gonna be a passion project, creating myself a job. And as soon as we open the doors, the feedback was overwhelming. People are like, You need to go here, you need to go here. I want to open one, you need one here. So that's when myself and my team had to sit down and be like, Okay, what are we going to do? What's going to be our growth strategy here? And I'm sure you can see online that everything we do, there's so much attention to detail on it. It's not we're not just throwing it in a bowl or whatever the presentation is half of it. And we make Yes, thank you. And that's what I appreciate. Just beautiful food, food nature's so beautiful. And we make almost everything from scratch. So it tastes fresh. You know, we don't use prepackaged avocado or anything or breads, local coffees, local conversions, local, local produce. So, you know, I knew that I couldn't be 50 places at once. So my theory is, you know, and why we chose the franchising route is because people with their own time and money and reputation involved, they should care as much as me. 

 

Lance Graulich09:06

I love the way you put that. 

 

Brianna  09:08

Yes. And that's how we chose franchising.

 

Lance Graulich09:10

So let's back up, you're, dropping some great stuff here. And I, gotta back up on a couple of things that I'm fascinated about. What was that pivotal moment when, like, who helped you decide? Or maybe you did it all on your own? But who helped you decide? Hey, Brianna, you got something really good here. Let's start looking for locations like how did the first location even come about? You draw it on a cocktail napkin?

 

Brianna  09:42

Pretty much. No, it's just something I've always wanted to do something I knew I was passionate about. And my first initial thought is I wanted to do a food truck because I was like there's no breakfast food trucks in DC. And then I started to look into it and it sounded miserable, you'd have to like, wait for your parking spot every day. Like, there's so many rules and regulations. And I was like, this sounds very stressful. And my dad was actually the one that was like, why don't you look for a storefront? If you're gonna do this food truck doesn't seem like, that's like a very, I don't know, strategic way to go. Yeah, I was like, that's probably a good idea.

 

Lance Graulich10:24

so when you were how old you open the first location?

 

Brianna  10:28

I was 24.

 

Lance Graulich10:31

So how did you get funding as a 24 year old? I've never owned a restaurant before.

 

Brianna  10:36

that is great. I got loans from friends and family and banks. And I also do have three partners. So my boyfriend, Kyle, he is in construction. And we always say we make the perfect match when it comes to business because we're complete opposites, our strengths our opposites, our weaknesses, they're opposites. He's never worked in a restaurant never done at like he's not like a front of house guy. He's an engineer by trade construction. So he had all the connections of the architect and just having that expertise. And then, yes, and then we have my brother. He's also a hospitality major, and has tons of restaurant experience, all Front of House management. And then we have Kyle's best friend Kevin, who he used to be in construction, but as well, but his he came from a very, very passionate family where they love to eat, love to eat, love to cook. So he learned most of it from his mom, who's a chef in Philly. 

 

Lance Graulich11:48

All great food originates from mom.

 

Brianna  11:50

It always does. It always does. And he worked. He had the back of house and kitchen experience. So he worked in fine dining, catering to vegan restaurants. So all of us, that's how we got all of our capital. But we all bring such a diverse part to seek and I credit, like our success is because we have a very, very strong team. We don't have any outside capital, we're reporting to ourselves, we make decisions ourselves.

 

Lance Graulich12:23

all right. So you'll launch the franchise system. How long ago was that Now wasn't that long ago,

 

Brianna  12:29

it was not that long ago, we really got all of our documents and marketing together during COVID. During the pandemic, we realized, you know, we knew Toastique was crashing records, numbers, everything that we had, but really didn't realize how great of a concept Toastique was until we're in the middle of the pandemic. And we were still we are just as profitable in 2020, as we were in 2019. And that's because we were able to scale our labor down to the volume that we had. So when we are down 70% In March, the efficiencies of Toastique is so so small, you know, we don't have any cooking equipment, and venting, grease, anything like that. So if your sales are down to 70%, you can have one or two run it, we're at our busiest times we have 12 to 13 people in the store at the same time. And it's not like a full blown restaurant where you just need at least five people to operate the thing.

 

Lance Graulich13:35

A very Instagram ready concept food and decor. So you guys have done a fantastic job. So how many locations right now we're open.

 

Brianna  13:46

We have eight locations open five corporate, and three franchises.

 

Lance Graulich13:52

And incidentally, I don't know you probably have heard this before. I like when franchisors like yourself own corporate locations, because I feel like you understand especially in the restaurant business, you really understand the business more, you know what other franchisees are feeling. Because as you know, there's a lot to a restaurant even a simple concept like Toastique.

 

Brianna  14:17

So much. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I love owning corporate stores. I still work in the stores when I can because I do love it so much. I know that's not where my time is most valuable. But to me, it's super important to still to be in there working next employees. That's really where you get the good. You really get a good idea of truly what's going on and seeing those customers that you made relationships with, they're still coming in, they're happy to see you. So we plan on opening one corporate store year and this is where also we get the opportunity to kind of test things and have workshops and for example, our newest store actually has a liquor license. It's something that we Yeah, it's something that we wanted to do. But also our franchisees were asking, oh, have you considered adding like wine or beer? So we want to test it out, we want to do a nice fresh cocktail list. And, you know, we can experiment it with before we have someone else, we want to try it ourselves first. What works, what doesn't.

 

Lance Graulich15:25

So what's the square footage of a typical store? What is the latest prototype there?

 

Brianna  15:30

Yeah, so our operating stores are from 1000 square feet, which is super small, up to our biggest one is 2200 square feet. So our sweet spot right now is it's, I would say around 1200 to 1500 square feet. But you know, it depends, it depends on the location, you know, we're going on a boardwalk or somewhere where we won't need as much seating we could definitely size down. But we do like to have a nice a nice area warm, inviting place to sit as well.

 

Lance Graulich16:10

Love it. So what is the investment? I know in restaurants, it depends what type of space you find whether it's been a restaurant or not, or anything for that matter. It could be real estate, they call it a vanilla shell or a second generation space. So what's the investment range for something like a toasty week?

 

Brianna  16:29

Yeah, like you said, it varies tremendously. Our third corporate store we took over during the pandemic and it was a juice bar. So we got open for like 60 grand, which will probably never happen ever again. Wow. But you know, we also have our finishes on our first store to our newest store, we kind of have tier a tier b. So at depending if it's a cold, dark shell, it can go all the way up to a couple 100,700 800,000 It's really just depending on the space, and how, what kind of finishes you're going to put in them as well.

 

Lance Graulich17:04

got it. I liked how you say cold dark shell. Yeah, so for those of you listening sounds like for those of you listening at home, that's real estate terminology that brianna is dropping here, you know, for commercial real estate. So who are you looking for in a franchisee? And better yet, who are you not looking for a franchisee? It's always some, you know, my favorite questions for especially newer franchisors because, you know, you get a lot of people interested in you when you got a hot concept like yours, and I'm sure you'll, there are plenty of people you're like, I don't think they're going to be a good franchisee. And yeah, so tell me some stories. I'm sure you have them.

 

Brianna  17:47

Yeah, I mean, so far, so good. For the most part, I think it's gonna come when we have a few. And we're gonna be like, Oh, I don't want that characteristic, and then partner again, or be like, Oh, I do want that. But no, really, what I'm looking for is someone that wants to put the apron on in the kitchen, be the face of the brand, people have already came to us with a lot of money wanting to open a bunch of them. But that's not what we want my job. And my biggest focus is to protect the brand as we grow. Being such a young brand, there's, there's no room for error, we want people that are going to be in the store that can build a team that can lead a team. So of course, the goal for most people is not to create yourself a job, but to be an extension of the brand and have multiple stores. So that's what we're looking for people with a lot of work ethic, knowing it's going to be difficult, but it's going to pay off. We're giving you everything to succeed. And really just having a great personality, that sounds so lame, but you know, we're giving you everything, but if you're a people person, you can touch tables, you know, people enjoy being around you, that's, that's part of it. And we really want someone that aligns with us and Toastique and you know, it's not this is not semi passive income or anything like that. I know how much time and attention goes into the brand, and it just will not work unless you have a lot of restaurants, variants and you know, people that you can pull from already, but Toastique is definitely not a business you can just throw money into and think it's gonna run, just just not so that also answers what type of partners we don't want. We don't want people to think of this as passive income or just adding something to their portfolio. Because I think also too, we don't we aren't a full blown restaurant, but we have the full prep of a restaurant and we do the volume of like a restaurant most of the time. So we try I'd have to be very transparent with that from the beginning, because we're way more than just just a juice bar. So just knowing it's gonna be a lot of work, nothing's difficult, but there's a lot of stuff you got to stay on top of, and inventory and customer service. And everything about Toastique is all in the details. And they experienced.

 

Lance Graulich20:19

So talk a little bit, by the way, I love the way you call your franchisees partners. Because really, that's what they are. They're, investing in your brand, they're believing in you. And that's awesome, which really tells me a lot about your, your culture. So, tell me about training? How does training work? That's a big component of these things.

 

Brianna  20:42

Yes, training is the most important thing. And, you know, we want someone to have the same experience, whether they're in DC or California or Texas, wherever they are, it needs to look the same tastes the same, the music needs to be the same everything about it, they need to receive the same experience, they need to be feel welcomed by everyone and customer service. And the people aspect of it, if you can't tell is a huge part of it. It's an open kitchen. So everyone just has to know everything and be friendly and multitask, and

 

Lance Graulich21:30

So Brianna, with the franchisees and training, they have to come to you or come to a Toastique corporate store to train first before their store opens. Right?

 

Brianna  21:40

Yes, absolutely. The training is the most important part, even, you know, the people we train in our corporate stores, the hourly people up to our franchisees and training, onboarding is the most important part. So this past year, we actually took the time to make an online learning system, the learning portal, so it has every Toast smoothie bowl that we make and all of our prep on video from two different angles so that you can see the height of everything. And then after every video, there's a quiz and a test. To put everything in order how much of this the measurements, it's a lot to learn nothing is difficult, but is just so much to learn. So all the franchisees have access to that they need to study it pass everything. And then we also have a 50 question. Pos quiz, which is just like frequently asked questions, everything about our menu, what's Vegan? What's celiacs disease? How do we handle it? Every everything you need to know that we just collected over the years. And so once they come to DC, they need to go in and retake all of the the quizzes on the portal and how fast they finish. It shows you how how well and how much

 

Lance Graulich23:04

they have to prove their proficiency, right?

 

Brianna  23:07

They do because, you know, time is money and where we are giving them the homework. And essentially, when they come to DC it's just hands on, they have everything memorized. They're just getting that muscle memory going. And two weeks, 14 days, they're able to break it up into a week. And another week was also what I'm excited about is the stores that are operating, you know, once they are open for a couple of months, if that's closer to their location, they can do a week there, we're always going to mandate them to come to corporate location, at least for a week. But we have a lot of we're going to have a lot of brand awareness in Colorado, we have one in Colorado Springs, one in Colorado. We have three more in Colorado by the end of the year, which is super cool. So you know, we can send them actually the we have a store opening in next week. And the girl who's running that has been working in the other Denver store to get all the practice and experience she can which is super cool. She still came this week. But we're really promoting this just the more experience, the better and going into the other stores. And so far the franchisees love that they're like, Yeah, you come in because you have an employee that's training, but they want to absorb everything, and they're going to be reliable, because it's only going to benefit them when they open their store too.

 

Lance Graulich24:35

So do you have a lot of female franchisees? 

 

Brianna  24:44

Yes, I don't know the percentage, but I would probably say I have a few more female franchisees

 

Lance Graulich24:53

and are they signing on for a single unit or have you gotten quite a few multi unit deals?

 

Brianna  25:01

Yeah, most of them are multi unit besides three or single. And that's you know, we're of course happy with either way we've learned from firsthand when you have multiple, you are so much more efficient in every aspect of it. And we have two different size juicers. So like for one of our stores, we have the big juicer that can use for multiple stores. So there's a lot of efficiencies that come with it, but I do understand and totally respect the ones that want a single unit, really get the learning curve out of the way. And then their goal is to buy another three packs, so they have a total for

 

Lance Graulich25:42

Well, I'll tell you being in franchising a long timeand owning some of my own brands over the years. I am I am rather impressed because at this young stage of your, you know, Toastique life are the brand they should say not just you in particular. It's amazing to get all these multi unit franchisees that's obviously a big sign of success that you're doing the right thing. So what's the future? You said? Denver? How many states are Have you set up in already?

 

Brianna  26:14

Oh, gosh, I don't know the number off the top of my head to keep up with no but the ones that are opening this year Colorado is going to be we're about to have more stores in Colorado than in DC which is kind of cool. But Colorado we have two in Utah opening up at the end of the year one in Hoboken, New Jersey one in Bethlehem Pennsylvania, which is actually my hometown, which I'm super excited about. And then we have Florida, Tampa, Orlando Sarasota, we have three in California Bakersfield Newport Beach. Yeah. But yeah, we're we're super excited to go into these new markets also excited to go into more warmer clients or climates because our DC sales summer probably does double the amount as winter. So we're excited to go to California, Florida, get those year round sales.

 

Lance Graulich27:16

So let me ask you about the process. So obviously, you're getting people going to your website that are interested in becoming Toastique franchisees. And then you have quite a few people coming through people like myself, brokers or franchise consultants. Describe your process a little bit. Is there a discovery day validation? At the end? Why don't you just walk us through what the process looks like?

 

Brianna  27:39

Yeah, absolutely. So we work with Raintree, which is a consulting firm. And I always like to say they they do all the dirty work for us and really filtering

 

Lance Graulich27:52

through the candidates, which they are the warm up in

 

Brianna  27:54

to, they are the warm up band. And we love them so much. They're amazing team, they're the whole package deal. So they filter through all of our applications. And and make sure they qualify, they have to initial calls, with two different people before it gets to me and making sure the culture fit personality financials. And then if they think that they could be a great Toastique fit, then they'll get a call with me for the founders call. And we have a video call like this. And really just it normally lasts an hour, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more. But just any questions, they have any questions? For me, my biggest thing is what your what your operational roles look like who's gonna run it? Question to me. So that's the question I

 

Lance Graulich28:47

run this thing. Yeah,

 

Brianna  28:50

the most important thing, so I make sure it's very clear. And I feel like I can read people very well, even though it's through video, chat, but just their mannerisms and stuff and the way they answer and then if I like them, then we'll invite them to discovery day. And it's always so fun. We visit all of our stores. And we always started our first one 1000 square feet of interior news one, so they can kind of see how it evolves, they get to see everything in action, which is cool. And it gives them a deeper look into what that looks like what our kitchen looks like how many people we have on and then after that, it has to be a mutual agreement. We like them, they like us, then they'll sign and we'll get the ball rolling.

 

Lance Graulich29:37

Perfect. So is is there any kind of official validation? I know now you have a few franchisees? So because sometimes people ask me is like, well, what kind of validation? Do they do with existing franchisees? Is that something that's part of the process?

 

Brianna  29:55

A little bit right now one more for the future. Now As you grow more for the future, I'm Hayley from rain to she's amazing extension of her brand, she'll set up calls, because a lot of before before potential franchisees sign they're like, I want to talk to all the ones open, I want to ask them everything. So we're in the process of kind of creating that logbook. So it can all be recorded conversation too, but they do still have the freedom to set up a call live with any of the owners to

 

Lance Graulich30:30

That's awesome. Yeah, that's always seems to be a valuable part. Obviously, if you didn't have franchisees, it's hard to have a validation call, but you're killing it. At this point, you have so many new stores opening and just, I'm just so happy for all of your success. So what's next on the horizon? What what's the next state you're dying to get to? And getting a toast and juice to?

 

Brianna  30:53

Yeah, well, that

 

Lance Graulich30:54

Florida sounds like,

 

Brianna  30:56

yeah, Florida, we're really excited about Florida but honestly, we're, I'm most excited about finding partners that want to be an extension of our brand and help us grow. That's the biggest thing. And then after that, we'll find a perfect location in the area that they're living, that is the best spot for Toastique, because yes, I want to go to Florida, yes, I want to go to warmer weather, but it doesn't really matter. If you don't have good partners operating it, it could be the perfect location. But if it's just not the standards, not there, it's not consistent, it's not the right vibe, it's not going to work. So you just just continuing to find those partners and people that are excited about the brand and want to be a part of it, and just growing with them. Because in my perfect vision, or what I would like is less partners. And more, I would like to have 10 partners that want to open 100 Each, you know, and I know there's not going to work that way. But that would be something that I would love is not having on these one little off. So I want to find the partners who are driven and committed and passionate about to seek and, and help us grow nationwide. I love it. That is awesome. So any final thoughts of words of wisdom for people that are interested in franchise opportunities? Possibly Toastique? You know, you're you're a founder of a great brand. You've made Forbes list already of the 30 under 30. Yeah, you know, what are your final thoughts for the day? Yeah, I think franchising is a great option for people that want to own their own business, but don't maybe don't know what to do or don't want to create something on their own. I think the biggest thing is no, you're still running your own business. I think we're giving you the playbook, we're giving you everything that you need to be successful. But if you don't follow that if you don't manage your time and manage people and manage the numbers, it's not going to work, you're still running a business. It's not easy. At all. It's a lot of work, but it's very, very rewarding. Creating the team creating the community that hat will come every day multiple times in one day, I think is the best feeling ever when you have the regulars that are there day after day after week after work because they're spreading how much they love to see by word of mouth. And I think there's no better marketing word by mouth because no one's gonna lie about that.

 

Lance Graulich33:30

Word of mouth is so important. It's so

 

Brianna  33:32

important in our first year actually, we spent $0 on marketing. And we brought in over a million dollars and it was just by staying consistent. Giving the people what they want so that they come back. They tell their friends, they bring their friends. That's the most important thing.

 

Lance Graulich33:51

I love it. Well, this has been awesome. Brianna Keefe, founder of Toastique gourmet toast and juice bar. Thank you so much for being here. Yes, thank

 

Brianna  34:02

you so much for having me. This is so fun. A pleasure.

 

Lance Graulich34:04

See you soon. Bye