A Street-Fighter Mentality Built New York Minute Into An Award-Winning Burger Franchise | 666

Speaker A: Today's guest is a street fighter who built a fast food brand with 30 locations. That's now down to six. And guess what? He could not be happier. Strap in for an inspiring story of business resilience, adaption, and reinvention. Oh, uh, and some very actionable tips along the way.

Speaker B: Successful small business owners share their souls

Speaker A: to take your money marketing straight to the lead.

Speaker B: Now, here's your host, Mr. Timbo.

Speaker A: Yeah, welcome back, you beautiful small business owner. You, Timbo, here with some marketing gold to help build that beautiful business of yours into the empire it absolutely deserves to be. Now, I met today's guest, Anthony Crowther, about a year ago around the Noosa Radio boardroom table. Interesting. At the time, I had a show on the station called the Banana Lounge, in case you were wondering. And I was also helping with the station's marketing. Anthony was new to town, having just opened up a new location for his fast food chain called New York Minute. And he'd come in to chat about investing in the radio station. Well, the station is no longer. That is absolutely a story for another time. But New York Minute is going from strength to strength as one of Noosa's leading burger joints. And that's no mean feat in such a crowded marketplace. However, it hasn't all been smooth sailing for young Ant. At one point, he had 30 locations around the country. But thanks to Uber Eats, Covid, and other business challenges, which I'm sure we've all had, he now has six. The crazy thing is, he couldn't be happier. He's living the life of his dreams in a place that he loves, running a business that he loves. Topics covered include how to build a culture that attracts and retains the right staff. Boy, he shares some great tips on how to do that. The power of persistence, knowing when to pivot, how to get the right mentor. He's got a couple of rippers, and they are, uh, absolutely fundamental to his success. The importance of branding. And, of course, course, we go deep into what marketing is working for him. I started off by telling Ant what interested me most about him. Ant, we don't know each other super well, but we've bumped into each other on various occasions. And you know what interests me about you?

Speaker B: Tell me.

Speaker A: Pregnant pause.

Speaker B: Uh, I think you interrupt.

Speaker A: I think you're a street fighter. I think you approach business in a sort of street fighting fashion. And, uh, I don't mean that aggressively, but every time I see you, ah, you're just having a real crack mate. And it's like, don't get in the way of Anthony. Am m I right?

Speaker B: Yeah. It's the first time anyone's used that type of metaphor, but I completely agree with it. It makes a lot of sense. It's sort of what you're in. You always seem like you're in the boxing ring and you're up against the ropes and you know, you're trying to protect yourself from what's coming, but you've got to keep coming forward. You know, you can display grit. That's what owning small businesses, you know, you need to have that if you're going to survive. You know the volatile nature of small business.

Speaker A: Do you.

Speaker B: Great analogy.

Speaker A: Do you go to a good. I thought you might have taken offense and I would have run a mile, mate.

Speaker B: No, not at all. It's a perfect analogy actually. I think everyone needs to, I think they, you could, if there was a jewel in some of these podcasts or listen to a lot of them, probably started with a really, really, really important one, I think there. Timmy.

Speaker A: Yeah, good, mate. Well, let's dig a bit deeper on it because, um, do you wake up each morning feeling like you're under attack or is it a feeling of fun and let's go and let's attack?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting. So I never, I never get the sense that I'm under attack. Um, I've always been more of a solution based outcome person, so cause and effect driven. So when I start my mornings, it's all always about, all right, uh, where what's a sense of achievement for today? Purpose is X, how do we get there, what do we need to do to achieve it before the universe starts attacking you? And then when the universe starts to attack you, usually you've got really good foundation blocks set in motion in your mind psychologically so that you can attack pretty much anything in front of you. So you know, you know when you need to be defensive and you know when you need to attack.

Speaker A: So ant, every morning you wake up and set your purpose for the day and that's where you're headed.

Speaker B: Yep. So look, you've got long term ones, of course, but you condense it to the daily because so much can happen in the day. You know this, you know you've got a lot of staff, there's some challenges with it, you know, weather conditions that can change. There's a whole range of bits and pieces that can happen throughout the course of any given day to significantly, excuse me, impact or affect your business. So look, all of your structured ones, your, you've set the wheels in Motion for those. So you juggle a lot of different hats at the time, but so you just get up in the morning. Your purpose is very simple. It's our sense of achievement today is for. What is it? You know, have we covered off on all of our marketing? Have we done our team profile for the day? We planned out all of our. Most of that gets done. Excuse me, the day before, but I, uh, want to execute today to know that when I close off tonight, I can turn around and go, well, there's a. There's a significant sense of achievement for today.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: And, and most importantly, I think I've always been good at this. Identifying where bottlenecking is occurring in the business so you can optimize it and find ways to increase your revenue, decrease your expense sheet, increase your revenue. Every minute that I'm awake to, every minute before I go to bed. It's pretty much my motto.

Speaker A: And what does that look like? Do you have someone following you with a big broom, cleaning up all your ideas and action points? Or are you one to just have an idea, get on the phone to the right person, tell them to execute? Do you do it all yourself?

Speaker B: It's a great question. So early on, it was a lot of myself, so I really didn't know what it was. I was sort of stepping on landmines left, right, and center. Um, but then over the years, you become, uh, a person that's always looking to be the quietest person in the room. And if you're the loudest person in the room, for me, I'm in the wrong room. Or if I think I'm the smartest person in the room, I'm definitely in the wrong room. So I'm always seeking out mentor or mentorship from people that have been largely successful and significantly more than myself, because they're the ones you bounce your ideas off. Because a lot of those guys have already stood on those same landmines that I haven't even overcome yet. Can show you ways in which you can avoid them. You know, take two steps to the left, then go forward. Don't go charging like a ball forward, because you're just going to run into a big landmine. It's going to set you back six months. I've had many of those moments that I've had to learn from myself.

Speaker A: I want to talk about them shortly. But do you actively seek out these rooms full of people smarter than you, where you can be quiet?

Speaker B: Yeah, I've done it for the last 10 years. It's the most important. Give Me an example. So mentoring. I've got some people that are very close to me. Um, uh, Vanessa Lontos, heads up. She's a. She was a pharmacist that then moved to the care group which is a package that got installed into every amcal in Australia. So it was her job to do that. She owned it, she developed it. So being with someone like her and Vanessa gave me two very, very important tools that I was able to implement in my business and that is understand women better. I think that was crucial.

Speaker A: Uh, understand women better?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Understand how they operate. Because it didn't. They're such a large part of my business and you know, I'm a man so it's. I don't know how to be a woman but I can certainly understand better how they operate and how to, you know, get the best out of themselves and get the best out of them. Um, make sure that there's harmony and make sure that there's a, there's a room in that there's a space in our relationship with all the different parts or every different woman in our business to make sure they're comfortable to express themselves in their best in with their best self. Vanessa helped me with that so much. Just soft, being able to be softer and engage with them better.

Speaker A: And did she identify that as a problem in you now?

Speaker B: She identified it as a problem with everything she's ever bumped into in her life because she comes into high profile business where she bumps into a male dominated space very often. So I took that on board myself. I said even though we don't have a male dominated space, in fact it's the opposite. I need that in my business. How do I. I don't know how to approach this. I need to get better at it. So I spent years and years and years and she's helped develop it over the last probably 10 or 15 years with me. And I've kept her. But she does the same in reverse. I offer the opposite to her with the man's because she often finds herself in a place where she closed off. She's quiet, she feels she's sitting at a table at a conference room and there's nine men and her. But she doesn't want to express herself and I helped her overcome all of that. So we've been very good for each other. Another good one of mine was Mick McGuireness. I've seen him as the best man manager of people that I've ever been involved with. Team sport orientated. Everything we do is about team. If we're going to move our mountain. We need a team to do it. Um, Mick's the best man, manager, motivator, incredibly gifted at moving a team forward and making sure that all components of that team are aligned to the one goal. So Nick was incredibly important for me. I speak to Mick regularly and have done for a lot of years. Um, and then within the business world that I'm in, a lot of industry gurus, a lot of people in our same circle of industry, we bump into each other regularly, get into a lot of chats, and then I just educate myself personally. TED talks and AI world. Today is incredible. You can jump on a seven minute TED Talk and there's three or four jewels in it and so many different ways that you can improve yourself. Been on so many conferences. Yeah, just YouTube clips. There's so, so many ways.

Speaker A: You're relentless, mate. Do you sleep?

Speaker B: I don't really, man. That's a really good. It's really interesting. I don't, I don't really need to. I don't figure that I'm tired. I don't get tired. If I get what makes me tired, I would say nothing. I get tired.

Speaker A: And would you say you get four or five hours sleep a night?

Speaker B: If I get four or five hours, I'm fine. Uh, uh, I've never had eight hours.

Speaker A: You're a street fighting unicorn ant. Hey, we're getting to the bottom of this, mate. There's not many ants around.

Speaker B: I can't be. I just, um. Eight hours. I'm wasting my time.

Speaker A: Do you expect others around you to be like you?

Speaker B: No, I learned that in footy too. Mick taught me that. Uh, that's a really important thing till I learned. So when we're coaching footy and coaching footy for me went all the way from local way to the AFL system. I always do the opposition analysis for Rocket E down at the Bulldogs. So I took that as far as I could take that, but there was just no money in it. So I was like, yeah, this is not the future for me. So, um, what Mick taught me was there was times that we would be in the box together and I'd be like, why did he choose that option? Or like, you know, you'd be getting frustrated. He goes, a, it's not you. Doesn't see the game like you, mate. It's your job to teach, not critique. And I was like, that just made so much sense then. So then it just became take notes, do vision, get some edits for them, help them teach, nurture. And then they can go out and execute exactly what you're asking them to do. They'll see through your eyes. Then don't just expect them to know it.

Speaker A: So how many staff do you employ across New York Minute?

Speaker B: At our height, we're at 125. Uh, now I've got. Now I've m. Got about 30.

Speaker A: And management wise, uh, is that New York Minute, Noosa or New York Minute nationally.

Speaker B: So nationally, when it was at its height, when we had 30 stores, I had 13 greenfield sites, and 17 of my stores were in other people's restaurants. So that was more like a virtual brand. I had 125 staff. But then I quickly realized, and those

Speaker A: staff in a sort of management positions, when you employ them, you're not looking for another Anthony Crowther. You, uh, are. You've identified gaps in things that you don't have and that maybe the store needs. Is that. Do you do some kind of. I don't imagine you do some weird personality profiling analysis, but maybe you do in your head, but not sort of academically.

Speaker B: Yeah, so there were times that. That's a really good question too, Timmy, because there were times that I didn't.

Speaker A: I'm full of them, mate.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I can really see that. And I've had. Been on a lot of these podcasts, and a lot of the questions, I'm sort of just pro. I'm prompting the question. But, yeah, these are really. You can tell we haven't started, brother. Yeah, I know, I know. We said that the first time we met. So, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I saw the same things in you that you're seeing in me. So thank you. Good, um, good early days. I did no personality profiling at all. I didn't realize there was a need for it until I was at big company with more of a corporate arm. Um, and then I got taught that there's such an incredibly important tool to be used, and that is you do need to do some personality profiling to put people in certain parts of the industry where I'm weak. So to bring the strength to the whole company. We did that. Um, to answer your question about Noosa, we've got. Yeah, Up Noosa now. We've got 30 staff just in the Noosa store. Don't need anyone. M. From a, uh, corporate angle, they're more just soldiers on the ground, but they're just equally important in terms of their value, if that makes sense. That's one thing I've always been really. I wouldn't say good at but being conscious of is the guy that's standing out the front as the host or the girl that's standing out the front as the host is just as important as the guy. The girl that's on the chip fryer. It's just as important as the guy, the girl that's cleaning the tables. They provided, they provide us. They provide us, uh, some of the parts that are equal in value to the overall nature of the business. Businesses success. And that's one of the things I've been incredibly conscious of over the journey because some people feel like there's more value in one job than there is in the other. So educating the group, making them understand it's not. There's nothing more.

Speaker A: Explain that a bit more because I'll be the devil's advocate here at. And say, really, the bloke on the chip fire is fly. The chip fryer is as important as the girl out the front. Eyeballing, welcoming, upselling, making people feel comfortable. I understand that, but, uh, some wouldn't.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, most don't.

Speaker A: It seems a bit of a motherhood statement. Oh, yeah. The chip fries is important as the

Speaker B: maitre d. Yeah, it's true, isn't it? Everyone, Everyone gets a participation award. That's right.

Speaker A: Uh, someone's got to be invaluable.

Speaker B: Well, if they are, then they shouldn't be working for you. But the truth is, um, we shouldn't be creating those roles of no value. But the truth is this. There are inside people's heads. It's again, a really good question, because inside people's heads, they see a much higher or greater value in certain roles than others. They'll see, like the marketing department on our social media. Oh, look how glamorous that is. It's so much more important than the chip fryer they'll be like, or the guy on the grill or the girl that's toasting the buns. No, it's actually not. It's equally as important because I tell you what you can go to, you can do all the work that you want out the front. You can put a perfectly profiled, very experienced person out the front. But if we're serving, for the lack of a better word, dog out the kitchen, how long you reckon? What's the point of having an expert out the front?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Ah. So what we teach everyone is if we can't perform our role to a standard, and we are all held to a standard, and what we've got it in our store. Just while I'm. While I'm Talking about this in all my stores, I've always put this, maintain standards and have fun at work, but if you're not maintaining standards, you're not going to have fun. So that education to the group makes them understand that we've all got a standard. I don't care if you're washing the dishes, cleaning the toilets, making, pouring a beer, hosting, uh, out the front. It doesn't matter if without all of us equally connected and harmony within the group, which is such an important word in our, in our, um, industry, it breaks down very quickly and it only takes one of those chains to break all of it down. So that's where the importance of showing these guys you're just as important as Braden. Even though Bray's out the front, if we don't get the food right, there's no point Braden being out the front. And Brayden, you've got to be incredibly important. You're incredibly important to us because you're the first. You're the first touch, point of the business.

Speaker A: This is, um, culture, really. If we're going to sum it up, you're building a culture and many don't. Many businesses don't. Many businesses. I mean, it sounds like a bit of a buzzword and it sounds like, well, how do you do it? Um, but what you are doing is making people feel as though they belong to something greater. And it reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with. I think his name was Brett Godwin, who brought Virgin Blue to Australia on behalf of Branson. Great brand. And one point he made was in building a great culture, he never had to advertise for staff because people wanted to work for Virgin Blue. And I'm. I'm guessing New York minutes a little bit like that. You're building this brand, this culture, this buzz that not only customers want to be a part of and have a burger, but people want to work for because it's kind of cool.

Speaker B: You know what's interesting too, about that? You know the key driving message to. If you want, if you need an indicator to say whether or not that's working for you, because I agree with you 100%, your retention rate. And we've got an incredible retention rate for the industry because we're at the highest turnover industry in the world. But our retention rate in our, uh, business is incredible because of exactly what you just said. Everybody feels equally important. And I'm very much about educating. I want people to grow. I love it when people leave me. I don't hold them back. I'm More this guy. That's m. I'll teach you everything that I know. So if you're willing to listen and learn, this all becomes your ip. Who knows where you're going to be. I've got a, I had a kid that worked with me. His name's John. Now he's got our biggest store in Melbourne opposite the MCG and um, Fed Square in flinders street. He's 24 years old now, but he started with us when he was 15 years old and he's a franchise partner, has been for four or five years now. He started his first franchise before he was 20 years old, mate.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And he started. We were his first job when he started with us.

Speaker A: Where'd he get his dough? I saw your franchise price.

Speaker B: Now we've always been cheap. I'm always entry of, you know, I'm probably one of those provocateurs, you know the disruptors when it comes to the franchise. When we were really growing and so I even at one point was on the front page of the franchise magazine. Um, and that was just about my disdain for the way that franchises operate. I just think that they service themselves and there's a lack of service to the franchise partners. I think the system didn't work. I worked for a long time when the, when the industry was thriving but when industry got really challenged I just think they dropped the ball there. A lot of franchisors they didn't think about all uh, right, well how are we going to make sure that we protect our franchise partners when really all they were worried about was lying in their own pockets. And I was a provocateur for that. I used to speak at many, many luncheons. Coca Cola spoke at the franchise Expo. A whole range of different ones.

Speaker A: Stir the pot.

Speaker B: Oh uh, well it just wasn't happy, you know, like I think there's a better way to service people. We're not perfect and we're all going to make a buck but if we're all making a buck together, it's a again harmony. Everyone's winning. You know it's Australian way for me. I've always been, I've come from nothing. I'm a flat, a high rise flats boy in Collingwood, you know, there you go, the Sprite coming back mate. That's where we come from. You know, you always haven't yet you're taught to say you know from an early age it's you know, what do you want to get out of this world? You know, so I've, I've always been

Speaker A: what did you have to prove you grew up in the housing commission in Melbourne? What, what, what in you felt a need to be successful?

Speaker B: I think sport had a lot to do with when I was young. I wasn't thinking about it until I got older, but sport was a driver for me. I wanted to play for footy. I didn't quite reach the top echelon of vfl, which was AFL back then. I played VFA footy, um, played local footy obviously growing up and then went down to North Melbourne under 1910, moved into the VAFA. Very, very short lived. Ah, had two kids very young and I injured myself one year and nearly knocked me out for the whole year and put us in a really difficult position for me and the missus and with our kids at that time. So I stopped playing footy straight away. Responsibility driven from a young age, 22 probably, I would say. But uh, when I got older, around that age, I just looked at it and said, I just, I just don't want this same life for me children. I don't care if I have to work 100 hours a week. I don't care if I have to work 24 hours a day. I don't get a wink of sleep. My kids are going to have an easier life. Probably push that barrel a little bit too far because my boy does it pretty easy now. Doesn't make a grit and grind in him anymore.

Speaker A: I don't want to work.

Speaker B: Dad thinks his old man's a pain in the ass, but truth is, mate, give me problem joy and he's got a tough love sometimes you're going to push you forward because you know one day I'm not going to be and you've got to do it yourself. And you know that the word the world's relentless. You know, it'll knock you over and it'll keep knocking. It'll put its, it'll put its, you know, its hand on your throat unless you've got the resilience and grit that's required to push yourself forward. And my daughter's the opposite. She's like. My older daughter's the opposite. She's uh, she's a, she's incredible, ready to go, Works full time, studies full time. She's in the business? No, no, by herself. She's off in the medical industry as a study and doing psychology major and then she's working in um. She works full time during the day, supports herself, doesn't and won't take anything from me that's incredibly gifted. Like everything he touches he's good at. You know, I think it's just.

Speaker A: Come on, mate, this is not. Hey, this is not a podcast. You know, Just, you know, write your family. Maybe it's another idea for a podcast.

Speaker B: Well, maybe it is, but it's just more along the lines of, I guess getting back to. I went too far parenting, you know, parenting it. Thinking that I want to change the cycle and I want to make sure that they've got more of an opportunity. But that is another podcast in itself. I think that's a drill.

Speaker A: Hey, listen, Ant, let's go back to 1999. Um, you opened Danny's Burgers in Melbourne. It became, in your own words, an institution. I don't know Danny's. Cause it was on the wrong side of town for me, mate. I'm from the other fancy side of the river.

Speaker B: But.

Speaker A: But. But I am fascinated, A. I love burgers, and I'm fascinated when places become institutions. So I'm not questioning that. I used to go to Andrews Burgers in Albert park, which was a bit of a institution.

Speaker B: Uh, an Embassy M Cafe. Embassy Cafe. The Taxi Rank. Do you remember that one?

Speaker A: I never went there. Was very aware of it. Always meant to go there at the end of a big night at the clubs, but I think I just forgot my. I wanted to get home to bed. Um, what made. What made Danny's an institution? What did you do? Right.

Speaker B: Believe it or not, Denny's had been around since 1945. Uh, it was a burger shop from 1945. So I. I became one of the owners of 50. Shareholder in. Owner, um, director in that business. In 1999, I bought it with the same family that had been running it since then. Vasiliatis. Danny Vasiliatis. And the Moriavides. Nick and George Moravita said they'd been running it for 50 years.

Speaker A: What did they see in you to bring in an outsider?

Speaker B: Oh, that's a really good question, mate. Because I used to be the guy that used to go there with all my mates. We used to eat there all the time. So we were eating all the time. And I used to go in there and go, yeah, if you ever sell this place, let me know. I'll buy it. I might have a dollar in my pocket. I was just talking shit, you know, I had no idea. But anyway, one day I went there. Nick goes to me, goes, mate, if you was. You know, you're always banging on about how you want to buy this. Dad wants to retire. I'm looking for a partner, and I'm like, are you serious? And he said, yeah. And, mate, back in those days, I had nothing. I was a kid. I was 25 years old, just battling away, you know. So I went to me old man and I went to my uncle and I said, mate, I need some help with this business. Um, it cost me $50,000 to buy 50% of it. Um, the rest is history, mate. After that, I got the money from.

Speaker A: Did you have influence in the business once you had 50%, or did you just have to tow the family line?

Speaker B: No, very much tow the family line at the start. So I had to prove myself, which was really important. So I. And what they made me do for the first three months, they said for the first three to six months, actually, my dad's going to stay in this business. You need to pay his wage until we're satisfied you can run this business the way that he ran it before he steps out. So you're going to be taking less money. So imagine me. You can imagine me 100% agree. You can imagine me. I'm in a grind, kids. I've got a mortgage, I'm only getting 50 of my wage. I'm thinking, have I made the right decision here? That was the. That's what some would say, but I was the opposite. I was hungry. I'd get there early, I'd leave late, I would. I was just in the. I was a sponge. Like, there's enough. I'm going to make sure you're out of this business in six weeks. Because, mate, I was. I was a trained chef anyway, so it wasn't hard for me to understand the industry. I loved it.

Speaker A: So at some point, what must have happened, I'm guessing, with Danny's Burgers and then New York Minute coming along is that you've gone. I love the burger takeaway industry. Uh, I've learned a lot from this family that I'm now a part of. I own 50%. I want the challenge of starting from scratch. Is that the idea that came along at some point?

Speaker B: No, it wasn't. It wasn't quite like that. It was more, um. We built a second store because I always had the ambitions to grow because back in those days there was three hamburger shops that there was us, Andrews and Embassy Cafe. Otherwise, you're going to a fish and chip shop for a burger. It didn't exist. Or Hungry Jackson Maccas. Of course, that's fast food. But in the QSR space, there was only those three. Way before Grilled Nando Snits, JYG or any of Those existed. So when I, we grew, we opened up a second store in St Kilda on the corner of Carlisle and Barclay street in St Kilda. And that was thriving, but it was just a lack of. I had partners in there that were comfortable and I was hungry and they were coming from, you know, work being a chef at um, La Paquetta in Colac. And all of a sudden now he's got a business in here and we're thriving. Well, like we tripled the revenue of Danny's when we were in there. So we got Danny's flying. It was an incredible business, um, service three families. So we're, we were just. We're at locker heads with growth now. I want to sit still and I'm like, hang on a second mate. I'm taking less money than what I was making before you got here. Even though we've got two stores and I'm working harder. So I want to grow, I want to expand. I'm happy to put those, I want to, happy to put the time in, but I want to expand. So that didn't work out. So I moved away from that. And then, uh, some financial struggles happened and then the relationship, you know, I'd been with my partner, my wife for 19 years, whatever, that sort of broke down and I was at a crossroads in my life. I had no idea what to do. I mean, I knew what I was good at. So I was sort of, I wasn't doing anything. I was just working for a couple of mates. And then this is 2000 and uh, 2010. And then after a lot of soul searching in 2011, I, um, I rented a place in Moonee Ponds. Little eight seat. Again almost identical to Danny's. Eight seats inside, eight seats outside. Little tiny residents out the back. And when I say tiny, I mean single bed, mattress on the, on the floor out the back is what I was sleeping on. I, um, I bumped into another incredible resource. Jody Haslam. She had a creative and creative company, she of um, uh, logos and um, creating. Actually she pitched the entire. She. Yeah, she built the entire branding decks for a lot of different franchises. So I just happened to fluke know her. So we were building a company. We're building a brand called Scoops in the shape of a spoon. And it was going to be pastries and you know, coffees and that. And we're just going to be a morning place. Well, uh, it sort of didn't work. It was taking us six weeks to build it and it just didn't work. And then I was sitting, I was Playing a guitar on this.

Speaker A: What, what wasn't working and just the idea wasn't sitting comfortably with you or.

Speaker B: Yeah, so the elements were coming together in terms of the branding work that was, that was the easy part. But just getting the menus and then understanding the, the demographic and then building the, the key corner Stone points to a business, to success is making sure you've got a product that's priced well, it's relevant in the market and there's demand for it. And obviously now that you want to make sure there's no cannibalism so you're not trying to compete with a thousand other retailers for the same product. So scoops for me just. I couldn't get all those brand elements to work together. It just wasn't sinking. And it was taking two months now. I still hadn't even put the menu together. So I'm like, what about this is not working Anyway, I was playing a guitar on the couch at some, you know, one of your mates houses and they popped their head around the corner, they go, what about the name New York Minute? I don't know why they said it, but my head just went. I jumped off the couch, I said, I've got to go. I went home. Two hours later I rang Jody. I had a menu, I had the brand that I wanted to, I wanted to pitch to her. Within a week we had the brand, we had the menu, we had the shop. A week later, the shop was open. And then someone asked me, what's New York Minute? What does it even mean? Is that like an, uh, the girls movie? I'm like, no, mate, it's an old Eagles song. Listen, it's actually an old Eagles song. That's where it comes from. And then everything made sense. Yes. And everything. And I wanted to make sure that everything that we did then was about again, exactly what you just said. You want to get something really, really quick staple that's in demand. We've got burgers, but we're going to put an American take on it. Philly cheese, brisket on a roll, all those types of things are going to give us some uniqueness and just that.

Speaker A: I just want to dig a bit deeper on that notion of, you hear and um, I'm big on this. I love naming businesses and products and services and when you land on a name that for whatever reason sits really comfortably with you, immediately the story start to bounce off it. You can see the product, you can see the interior design, you can see the branding. Everything becomes incredibly clear. It clearly didn't with scoops, you were trying. It was sounding maybe a square brick in a round hole. Whereas this New York minute, the minute you hear it, you go.

Speaker B: It just comes alive 100% right. It was crystal.

Speaker A: We've got to listen to that more that. That feeling. Uh, you know, it takes courage because, you know, if you're, if you're an academic business owner or an accounting type business owner, you, you know, you're not going to honor that feeling. But that feeling can be so strong when you just know that it's the right direction to go.

Speaker B: Well, the beauty about it, if you trust the universe, the universe is doing the work for you. Because you're not trying to, like you said, put square pegs in round holes all the time and figuring, oh, uh, this will still work, because it's in my mind, it's what I want to do. All right, it's what you want to do. But that's great. There's ways in which you can skin that a little bit differently to make it a little bit easier. And you want this path to be easy. You want the seas to open for you. Because if you're getting waves crashing into you, the industry is hard enough. 80% of small business will fail in the first two years. You don't want to make it harder for yourself. At the start, I sort of did that because New York Minute was. What is New York Minute? As much as that was easy for me and clear, the messaging wasn't clear to the customer. They didn't know we did burgers when m. I'm making pastas, lasagnas, doing ice cream, coffee, all sorts of stuff when we first opened. And then I was like, what are you doing? What, what's the brand's identity? You don't have one. I know what I'll do. We need to be burgers. Why? That's who I am. People have known me for the last 10 years. They know I'm a burger man. Let's just do burgers. Let's just do them. Well, let's do an American style take. Give them something that's unique to us, but we'll still have the Australian staples. And mate, honestly, the. The change in the business from doing 100 hour weeks for not even a dollar an hour, sleeping on a single bed mattress out the back of the shop. Was Matt Preston coming in or probably owe him so much for this. He came in one day, got a burger, and I don't fanboy people.

Speaker A: Matt Preston being a celebrity chef in Australia on, um, MasterChef. Yep.

Speaker B: And that was back in 2004, 13 or 14. So it was only a couple of years after it opened.

Speaker A: So he just. Sorry I interrupted. He came in as a customer.

Speaker B: Yeah, just random and randomly appeared. Just walked in. G' day mate. I said, how are you buddy? I didn't fanboy no one. It's just not. Wasn't me. I give. I don't care who you are, if you spending your hard earned it, you're going to get the same energy from me. So um, you're good mate. And what do you think? What should I get? I'm here for a burger. I'll hear you do good burgers. I'm like, all right, great. How about this? Try this. And back in those days we had a, um, we had ah, what do we call it? We had it the Mac. And the Mac was basically a take on the Big Mac. All right. So I hope you're a bigger version. Yeah, of course. Well, it's easy too. Like just quickly on that psychology people are already relatable to the. This is, this is where the menu came from. Um, as well they relate to the Big Mac. So I had a cheeseburger and a Big Mac. Then I went to Hungry Jacks. You like the Whopper? I'll give you a Manhattan burger. It's identical. Then I went to kfc. Oh, what's your number one seller? Oh, it's their. The Colonel burger. All right, great. Guess what, you're gonna get a chick fried chicken burgers and taste exactly the same. So all of a sudden the relatability came into the menu as well. So again, I'm not fighting too many forces. So he come in. I gave him our New York, our New York Mac. He went away about three weeks later, mate. Opened up the good food guide in the uh, in the age or Herald, son, whatever. It was back in those days that he was doing New York minute M Top 10 Burger in Melbourne. We became number eight. I didn't even know he was doing that. I went from, I went from a dollar an hour venue to having 100 meter lines down the street. So that's really. I owe him so much, mate.

Speaker A: Oh, you better call him, mate. Get him.

Speaker B: We'll get him on the blood. Yeah, I've bumped into a few times and he remembers. I say to him, mate, I'm um, forever in your debt, mate. He goes, mate, I'm happy that you did incredibly well out of it. You know there's plenty of other hard luck stories in business.

Speaker A: Great story. And we all need something like that. You know, I imagine most business owners have got a story like that where you get a bit of hockey stick inflection because of something small, unexpected happening and you scale to 30 locations over the course of the next few years before COVID hits 13 greenfield stores and 17 partner kitchen sites. Can you just explain what a partner kitchen site is before I, um, understand this how you scale?

Speaker B: Yeah. So we were, we were, we were going really, really well just up to 2017. So from Matt Preston to 2017, the business was expanding. It's incredibly good. I even had to bring in Rory McDonald from, from Snitz, who took them from store three to store 50. She headlined our approach to franchising.

Speaker A: You know, you're not scared to spend money. She wouldn't have been cheap.

Speaker B: I spent a lot of money, man. I'm spending hundreds of thousands of dollars then to obviously proof of concept and then build out the manuals that are required and make sure that you bring in the very best people across our corporate arm. And we did that. Um, so the 2017 phenom I call it was Uber. It's something we didn't see in the industry. Uber eats in 2017. They. There was already previous online services. I think Fedora was around back in those days. But it really wasn't a huge uptake from the people. What Uber did in 2017 is they introduced a product that could be brought from our shop, purchased on their platform at our store at the same price and delivered. So if you were buying a $3.50. If you were buying a can of Coke that was $3.50, you're purchasing it through the Uber app from our store at $3.50 on their app, delivered to your office or home place or wherever it was you were getting it from. So they naturally groundswell of people, they, they literally took up 60% I think it was of, of the industries, uh, customer base onto their platform within 18 months. So what we found was more than 60% of our customer base had moved from an over the counter service to an online service. But the challenge we had was we couldn't have an increased price in the store at that time as what we had on our menu online. So we had to have them both the same and that you were losing

Speaker A: how much each sale.

Speaker B: Yeah. Great. So they started at 20%. So it only made sense when they were originally doing it because it was expanding our opportunity for customer base. Then it went to 22, 25, 28, 30 and it went there rapidly. And then Uber, once they got the ground, once they got the market share they introduced, not only 30% up, you know, increasing commissions, then they increased, then they introduced the delivery fee. So all of a sudden now you're already programmed to use a pro, their product. The industry now is we've already gone from the phase where retail moved online, now food retails moved online. So now we're in our businesses, we're in a really, really difficult phase. And that was all of my bigger, larger scale stores that had such huge volumes going in over the counter. We'd have two hosts in some of our stores that were that busy all of a sudden. Now 60% of those customers within eight months are ordering online on someone else's platform. So I've got a shareholder in my company who paid nothing for it. Took all me customers. So we had to adapt quick. And for me the adaption was to work out all, uh, right, what are we going to do? We need to scale back. And good thing not being too big at the time, I'm a bit uh, more nimble, like a speedboat. I was able to with that quickly and what that meant was scale back the size footprints, open up small kitchens and mate, if you want Uber online, I'll give you Uber online. But I'll, I won't have overheads, I won't have, I won't have rent overheads, commercial overheads, I won't have staffing overheads, and I won't have capital injection overheads because my stores are now 5060 square meters instead of 350, 450 square meters. So that change in dynamic from the customer's behavior more so needed. You needed to change your footprints really, really quickly in some of them. What I did was in some of uh, the stores that I had the largest scale ones, I introduced different retailers into the store to operate out of my kitchen, which then set the wheels in motion in my mind. Why don't I start operating out of someone else's kitchen?

Speaker A: Give me, sorry, give me an example of that. You introduced different results.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I had some big stores, right. Brunswick and I had, where else?

Speaker A: Carlton.

Speaker B: Um, we had uh, some big ones in Richmond, was a big store. So what I did was I'd say you've got a brand as well that's in the food industry, might be a dessert brand. I'm like, all right, great. Why don't you come in here instead of having your own site. I'll sublease a section, you build it out. We'll operate a bit like a food court within the space that we've got. So we'd have four or five different operators operating out of that site. Instead of me paying 125 grand rent plus GST and outgoings, now we've got shared rent. There's five of us. We're only paying 25 grand each. All of a sudden, the numbers start to work again. When you calculate the numbers, I've reduced me commercials. My occupancy cost has come right back. I've scaled back my need for staff. We've got common areas that we share. If the air conditioning breaks down, it gets divided by five. So all of it meant that we're able to survive the phenom, um, of the delivery service. So then the extension of that was.

Speaker A: Hold that thought about the extension. I'm interested in your nimbleness because there are many business owners listening, including myself. I've referred to myself previously on air as the Titanic. Takes a long time to turn me around towards an idea. You are the complete opposite. You are the speedboat. You're something even smaller. You're one of those little remote control boats that flip on a dime.

Speaker B: But, um, we had to be, mate. I would have been dead in the water. We would have been dead in the water.

Speaker A: Well, I guess many end up that way because they're not nimble. You have an innate in an innate ability. You go back to the street fighter, mate. You're ready for the punch, you're ready to swing, you're ready for action. What if you're not? What do you say to those people?

Speaker B: Well, it's hard because unless you have a, uh, mindset that is control what you can, don't ignore what you can't, but adapt. To what? Adapt to the conditions. Uh, you know, the old adapt the die philosophy. But this takes me back to what I was saying before. Remember when I was saying that I've always been a cause and effect driven person. So, uh, the cause I can control, I can identify what the cause for those outcomes are. I've never been an outcome based person. I'm a process driven person. I can't control what the customer wants. What I can do is adapt my business to give them what they want. I've never been the guy, and this is what Mick taught me a lot of as well. Don't be the guy that's rigid. You need to have a flexible mindset because the game's changing all the time. So with that in mind, I've always taken that into my business. So I've never been rigid. I've never been the Titanic. I've always been very nimble and very open to ideas. They don't even have to be mine. I don't need to be the guy that's beating his chest and grandstanding. I don't care. I'll give the praise to everybody else. There's so many different people that help New York Minute along the way.

Speaker A: So what would your staff say about you if I got the chip fryer and the maitre d of one of your stores on the phone right now, which I won't, by the way. I'm not going to surprise you. I don't have their numbers.

Speaker B: I wouldn't mind if you did, mate. Feedback for me. What do I honestly think they'd say? All right. The cynical part of me would say, depends. If I've just. They've just got in trouble for something that they shouldn't have been doing once out of 100 times. So 90 to 99 praises one time. It gets negative.

Speaker A: They'll call you on that.

Speaker B: Well, uh, he's a prick, whatever, you know, but, uh, that's. That's me kidding. Bit of tongue in cheek. I. I think it goes back to the fact that our. Our staff are, uh, not people that leave the. Leave our shop, our culture. We've got an. We've got an incredible. Someone's knocking at my door. Go away. We've got an incredible. Yeah, bad. Um.

Speaker A: You want to get it?

Speaker B: No, no, no, I don't. We've had an incredible ability to. To sustain our staff and that goes with what we were speaking about earlier. So I think, honestly, they'd probably turn around and say he's incredibly. He can be incredibly hard at times, but he's incredibly fair and nice. He gives. He gives us so much of his time, like, beyond just work. He's always explaining to us that he will never critique the person, he will only critique the action. And he explains that, and that's what Vanessa T. And soften and explain it. Mick was exactly the same. And if they're not getting it, I don't care. There's people that learn differently. You need to understand. There's the person that can just get a vocal understanding of something, then you might need to use the WiFi because they're visual. Other times, their kinesthetics mate. We're going to take them out onto the park and literally walk them through what we're trying to explain so they get it then. So I've always been good at that with the team, but at the same time, we're driving standards. But What I teach the team is this. I don't. All I do is relay the standard and the expectation of the customer that walks in the door. That's my job. Our job then is to make sure that we meet their expectations. So please understand that when I critique an action, it's not you. I love you. You're great, you're awesome. In fact, whenever you need me, if it's three o' clock in the morning, I'm there for you. But when you're at work, there is a standard that needs to be met. And I think that if they ask, they'd say, ant hard. But he's incredibly fair and he treats me, treats me like family.

Speaker A: Uber eats knocked you around, Ant. Covid came along. 2020 reduced to five core stores. We've all been through it in some way, shape or form. That's a significant drop. What did you learn?

Speaker B: Oh, that was a tough time. You'd even hear that in the expression then. Because I felt that I was not felt. I'm not a feelings person. The sense that we got from our company is that we're in a really, really good position and we were ahead, always ahead of the curve with our ability to adapt on the run because we weren't too big. So if you could say the phenom of Uber was. The phenom of Uber was a. A kneecap for the industry, Covid just come along and chop their heads off. So the, the COVID scenario was incredibly difficult in Melbourne. I mean, they should lock this down for two years. You've got Melbourne, it's a tiny little city. You've got the rest of the world. That's massive in scale. How is Melbourne the most locked down city in the world? But again, to me, I had to turn around and ask myself one of two things. I can either, uh, you know, I can hit the iceberg and sink, or I can find a way around it. And I did. So what I did was I tried to. I tried a couple of different things during COVID and that was I merged my company with another company, very identical to me. Sorry, mate. Hello? Who is it? Oh, come in. Sorry, buddy. Sorry, mate.

Speaker A: Live on it.

Speaker B: I'm just in a podcast. Can I have 5 minutes, 10 minutes and then I'm done, But you can come to us.

Speaker A: Sorry, buddy, we're back.

Speaker B: Sorry. Sorry, mate. Oh, thank you. So what I did was I asked myself, now, uh, we're going to continue this fight, and if we're going to continue the fight, how do we push forward now? I need to think Outside the box. Think about all. Uh, right. Which of the ways do you think is going to be the most sustainable next two years? Coming out of Uber, coming out of COVID Sorry. And for me it was about merging. As long as we, the more merging that we could do, that means New York Minute ends up in someone else's kitchen. I'm happy to close down greenfield sites. New York Minute then is still in active in about 30 different kitchens. So we've just transformed the way our business behaves. When we don't have Greenfield sites, we don't have commercials, we don't have Risk. All of that's gone now. Our brand now moved into someone else's kitchen. So all we need to do is be really stringent in making sure that the audit process that we have installed gets around to those stores regularly. Because the best way to describe it is there was a. Mr. Beast was probably the best example that I could use. Incredible. In the US a YouTube, YouTube phenom, um, turned into Mr. Beast, rolled his. Scaled out massively through the US in virtual brand kitchens. So we wanted to do that. The challenge we had here is we don't have the people, the vast land is so big. We don't have the scale of business that is so tight inside. Like, uh, you could say, you know, when you go into metropolitan Melbourne, city based Melbourne, we don't have the scale of business for that product to be consumed by so many people because we shut our borders for two years. So we've only got what's here and there's already enough businesses here to support that. We're not the U.S. we're not Mr. Beast. So then I thought to myself, all, uh, right, what do we do now? Because we removed a lot of our risk, increased the revenue of all these other businesses. But I've lost control of my business and I've handed it to someone else because I'm not the CEO of the company anymore. And they control the kitchen, they control the business. I'm just there to support it. So that didn't work. And I left that company after about maybe 18 months after bashing me out against the wall. Because I could read the play a mile away. And they were in the same phase we were when we had got to a point of growth, growth of about 15 stores. So I knew what landmines were in front of them, but they just weren't prepared to listen. So then they just started dropping like flies all their stores and um, the exact same landmines I stood on. So that goes to say what you said before, if you're not prepared to have a flexible mindset, you're very rigid in what you want and you don't want to list anyone else, mate, you're going to make the exact same mistakes that I made. What's the point of me being here? So I left. I tried it again in Melbourne to start opening a few stores. The market was incredible. Incredibly saturated. Too tough. So then I started. I, uh, come. I thought to myself, what am I going to do? I don't really know. I've got so many things that I'm skilled at. I come to visit Braden, one of my best mates up in Coolum, and looked at my Mrs. When we drove along. We drove from Coolum to Noosa along David Low way, along that east coast line. 15 minute, 20 minute drive. We looked at each other and we go, how do we leave? Uh, it was middle of winter, it was 22 degrees, it was blue skies. We'd left Melbourne, it was 7 degrees, it was rain.

Speaker A: Melbourne. And come up here.

Speaker B: No, how do we leave here after a 15 minute drive?

Speaker A: Oh, hey, gotcha.

Speaker B: We looked at each other in 15 minutes. I'm like, babe, do you want to leave? She goes, no, I'm all joking. It was Jess comment. But then I got up to Noosa and then I. My mind had already made. I'd already made my mind up. Very similar to New York minutes. Fifteen, you know, within 15 minutes, I'm like, there's a market here for us. So I started looking all the way from the Gold coast, all the way to.

Speaker A: I wanted just to paint a picture for the listener here. First of all, Noosa is probably Australia's leading beach holiday destination and one of the more fancy suburbs, towns, whatever you want to call it in Australia. Um, it has an incredibly. This is, I think this is an important picture to paint for what you're about to share. Anthony. And a couple of questions that I have around starting in Noosa, Um, highly, highly transient community, because in terms of, particularly people you're employing a lot of backpackers, a lot of people coming through short term. A, um, wealthy community, um, and not necessarily open to, you know, a down and dirty burger joint. I say that with immense, uh, love m. And it's busy, mate. It's. There is no shortage of. It's a tourist resort, so there's no shortage of cafes and all sorts of things. You saw something that I actually saw too. I wouldn't have the guts or wouldn't even know how to start a burger shop. But you identified Something and you went for it. And next minute you've got this double triple frontage store on the main, it's the second main drag in Noosa being the junction, Sunshine Beach Road. And you just came out of nowhere. And it looked like you're swinging from the start, mate. Street fighter.

Speaker B: Yeah, I was, it's a really good way of describing exactly what happened. So we, we looked all the way from the Gold coast all the way to Noosa about different sites and I looked at all the demographic analysis, did all the analysis you can possibly do. How much competition is there, what's the age demographic, disposable incomes, etc. Etc. Throughout all of the different places from, from Gold coast through Brisbane, Mooloolaba up to Noosa. I bumped into the Noosa site originally at the start, didn't like it. It was a previous Z Pickle site. So all the bones in the structure were there. I didn't like it because the age demographic was 51 in Noosa at the time, 60,000 odd residents. I was like, I'm not gonna, this is not gonna work for us.

Speaker A: There's also two other reasons for not liking that site. It would have been expensive and B, feng shui says if you're into feng shui.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: That it's off the street, mate. It's, you know, like, and parking's a problem in Noosa Junction. So uh, there was a whole lot of reasons not to like it.

Speaker B: Yeah, you're so right. So I, I, I avoided it at the start. Like literally boycotted it. And that's why we went all the way down to Gold coast and then made our way through. But everywhere I was bumping into Gold coast saturation. Same problems as Melbourne. Brisbane, same as Melbourne. I was just finding the same problems. Mooloolabas, like very m weather dependent. Then I started, then I bumped in some really good analysis. And that was the tourist analysis that you spoke of a moment ago. Once I bumped into that and seen 2.5 million people come through Noosa, I was like, let's, let's concentrate on that, that demographic locals 100 crucial to the business. But we're going to talk. We, we literally need to bring both of those elements together. So a hybrid of locals and, and travelers in that pocket in the junction right on the corner that to go past me to go to Hastings Street. So I was like, this is a great position for us. The bones are already here. So we opened up Thursday. We did $640 of revenue after a 12 hour shift. You can imagine with like, what decision have I just made? Yeah. But, uh, again, process, trust. I'd already done all the analysis that there could possibly be. There was nothing. There was nothing like us. We had uniqueness about us with our product offer. There was a uniqueness about us with our brand. Everyone shut at 8 o'. Clock. We serve food till midnight. I said there was an opportunity there. We turn, uh, into a bar after dinner every night. When every other restaurant in the Junction just about closes. We're going to be a bar, so we're going to have entertainment. So that process then took effect. It took a long time, a lot of investment. I didn't take any money for the first two months. So you're just constantly reinvesting into those three killer components, those three core components.

Speaker A: Did you have a time frame ant for Noosa working in terms of, like, you got to six months and you're still doing six, 40 a week or a night or whatever it was?

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, that's a good question, too. I've never really been someone that's. Because that's outcome. And I think if you get to an outcome in your mind, it can literally destabilize you. So I'm like, always trust process. I don't care what the tool says. Process. Everything is process. What experience do people get when they walk past our restaurant, come into our restaurant? What are we giving them that's unique? And we're going to make sure that the experience that they leave, they leave with they remember. If we do that, the process will take care of itself. I'm less concerned about timeframes or what goes through the till. Just get the process right. And if I do, it's going to have the same effect that every other business I've ever owned in the last 25 had. That's what I trust. I trust the process.

Speaker A: I just want to finish up drilling down into marketing. Uh, we've talked a lot about marketing. I mean, from my point of view, marketing is everything and everything is marketing. So we've sort of been there, but specifically marketing, communications. Your customer service is red hot. Your socials are pretty good as far as I can tell. You've got events going on. You're not scared to, uh, morph into something beyond a burger shop, whether it be an event that, you know, you've got a. Right now, you've got a partnership with the Australian cricket captain in Tim Payne and Movember and a, uh, beer brand. I mean, I love that, mate. I mean, this should be the. That's the realm of maccas. Mate, you can't be doing big things like that.

Speaker B: I must admit I'm blessed and fortunate in this space. A kid, a bloke named Jesse Martin was a blessing for me back in Mooney Pond's days. Days I'm sitting there doing 15 coffees a day in 12 hour days. Jesse Martin used to be, um, the head of marketing and advertising for the staff of the Brax government. He lived two doors from my shop. He used to get a coffee. I think he felt sorry for me. Man said, come in every day, grab a coffee, would have a chin wag because it's who I am. I love this. I love people, love food, easy gig. I don't feel like I'm ever at work. I don't. There's no sense of working the hours. I don't count the minutes or the hours. So Jesse used to come in and then one day he goes, and I love coming here, but you don't do any marketing. I said, brother, I've got no money for marketing. But when you get divorced, you got nothing. I left with me clothes in the car. And he goes, well, I want to do you a favor. He did the most. I don't want to give everyone a little cheat here. He did the most incredible campaign for me. He goes, what we're going to do is we're going to design an American $10 note. It's going to look like a $10 note, but it's going to be a New York minute $10 note. Going to put that in an envelope along with your menu. But there's a way that we're going to do it. We're going to put the menu as the first thing that they see when they rip the envelope open. We're going to go back to old school marketing. That works. He goes, we'll do 5,000 of them, find the money. I will help you. We'll hand deliver them ourselves. We'll do a geographical 1km radius to the store. We'll go put into every letterbox ourselves. And I'm guaranteeing you ant forget about tv, radio and all this other marketing. It's all Furphy's mate. It doesn't equal dollars and cents. It will not go through your till unless you come up with the odd, occasional, you know, inspirational thing that people all respond to. He goes, and that's rare. As rare as Henstein. He goes, this works, works better than any other marketing. This is what we do at ah, our level. We knock on doors because it works. So anyway, I, uh, trusted him. We did exactly that it, we got two and a half thousand of those vouchers back. So it changed the dynamic of my business like overnight. So marketing, I've always been fortunate to be around innovative thinkers, really, really smart people. When we got to corporate size, when I brought Rory on, we use some higher tier companies, they just, they're all about impressions and no dollars. They don't want to be accountable to anything. I'm just not interested. So I have been through a uh, marketing like degree, I would say over the last 10 years with marketing firms. Entry level, mid tier, high mate, so many of them. I'll only stay with the ones that want to be accountable to the amount of money they want us to pay on a monthly basis as a retainer needs to be able to be measured against something because if I can't measure it, I can't manage it. So if I talk to any marketing person, I don't care where you come from or where you've learned your expertise, if you don't want to be measured, you're not coming in here. The ones that are going to be measured, I ah, learned from incredibly well because they're incredible people, Timmy. They uh, are the ones that are going to date. We do what works. So

Speaker A: you're triggering me a bit. And back in the day I used to work at a very large advertising agency, Clemens. I had clients like Yellow Pages, Mercedes Benz, Duals, uh, Uncle Toby's and heavy hitting marketing directors that I was dealing with who are my clients? And they were off. And I'm just this young kid out of uni. And I was there, ended up been there for 12 years but they wanted accountability. Oh, you want to run, you want to make that ad for us, Timmy? Well, how many, how many more widgets is that going to sell for us? Back then that was a really hard thing to say because advertising, radio, tv, press, outdoor, very hard to measure, Very hard to measure these days, totally different. You measure everything to within an inch of its life thanks to online, you know, pay per click, SEO, whatever it may be. So I wouldn't like to be in that position anymore. But I think it's an absolutely valid question to ask and I want to wrap up. I know you've got people knocking on your door. You're a busy man. Um, I love your branding. I think your branding approach is really interesting. I think a lot of business owners can learn a lot from New York minute because you are consistent. You are completely consistent. I've only been to New York, I've only been to the Noosa store, but I have no. I've looked at your other stores online and there's just this beautiful consistency. And so many businesses get that wrong. And I know you're a franchise and it's forced upon you, but so many business. And, you know, consistency breeds familiarity and familiarity breeds loyalty. Right. So. And I love what you're doing there. I think it's incredibly brave that you're a fast food brand with a black logo because yellow and red are meant to be the colors of your industry. I love the fact that you've broken that rule and I love the fact. Sorry, mate, I talked. Dave, uh, what did you say?

Speaker B: No, no, keep going, Keep going. Sorry.

Speaker A: And. And I love the fact that you've got New York Minute. This is branding model. You can have the brand of branded house or a house of brands, and you've got the branded house because you've got New York Minute. I note in your bio, Yorkers, uh, bar and lounge, you're looking at other things all under this sort of New York banner. So you're sort of always trading off the mother brand, and I think that's incredibly smart as well, mate. And I've got to ask, is your dream to open up in New York City?

Speaker B: It was a long time ago, but I think the challenges that I've faced over, uh, the journey, you know, I've been around for it all. You know, introduction of GST in 2000, then FPOs was one of those big. Not a disruptor, but one of those cornerstone moments in the industry. Then you move to the phenomenon of Uber and then covered. I've sort of lost the appetite now. When I was. When I was a company that was quite large.

Speaker A: You've been punch drunk, mate.

Speaker B: I, uh, I just. I don't have the appetite for it anymore, mate. I'm 51, you know, I've got a beautiful. Mrs. I, uh, I live in Noosa. I don't. I don't have the appetite to do it anymore. He's been seduced.

Speaker A: He's been seduced by the lifestyle.

Speaker B: You got me. But I want to now what I want to do, I just want to have this business and I want to scale this business, so I don't want to scale outside of this business. So, you know, at some point, this will be up for sale. Like probably not in the near too distant future. I'll put it up for someone to come on. It's an incredible business, runs itself now. Uh, I want to.

Speaker A: Talking Noosa or the whole. The whole brand.

Speaker B: All of It. Yep. All of it. I want to move into. I've got something else up my sleeve that we can talk about on another day. It's more in the health and wellness scale. I love it too, mate. I'm. Look, I want to stay Noosa. Uh, Melbourne gave me everything. I'll. It's the greatest city in the world. I think the government took a big dump on it the last few years, but I think it'll bounce back. It always does. Awesome. Same sort of resilienceness about it. So, look, mate, I'm. I'm trying to be a Noosa local. I'm not a surfer, but I'm trying to be, you know. You know, I love. Love meeting people.

Speaker A: I'll be completely judgmental here. You do not look like a Noosa local.

Speaker B: And welcome aboard. But I got called a wog the other day by a delivery driver. I love buying the beer.

Speaker A: I'll buy you a Rolf. I'll buy you a roll. Uh, I love it. I'll buy you a Ralph Lauren polo and some linen shorts, and then you're starting to make waves. Well, but I can't see you with that. All right.

Speaker B: No, I can wear, like. I'll get. I'll get around. I'll get around. And flip flops.

Speaker A: I love it. Hey, Ed. Great story, mate. I knew. I knew the minute I met you I wanted to interview you. I knew you're a street fighter. Thank you for not having a swing at me and agreeing and, um, everyone go and get a burger at New York Minute, wherever they're in Melbourne, they're in Noosa. Newyorkminute.com au is where you can find out all about it. And, uh, thank you, mate, for, um, shining a lot of different lights on a lot of different aspects of small business that we're all struggling with. So well done, buddy. And keep on punching, mate.

Speaker B: It's a pleasure and one of my favorite people I've met up here. I love this sort of stuff. It's in my wheelhouse. It's part of me DNA. If anyone wants to reach out, they can. I'm easy to find on the website, happy to share anything that I can, Insights into anything. The more of us that survive in this space makes me happy, mate.