14 QSR units w/ $55m in annual rev/Multi-unit CT therapy biz/ @Tour_Junkies CBO/ Futures trader /Lazy River Connoisseur
GA/NC
Joined October 2009
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If you need a feel good story today, grab your Kleenex box.
This was such a cool project to work on with @sodacitysimpson
As entrepreneurs, it is the highest honor to be able to give back to the communities that support you.
youtu.be/68VI9EybVCE?is=ir01…
Argentina has not disappointed.
I had heard stories about the dove hunting, but mostly thought it was folk lore.
It is very real. Like ants in the sky.
Got 3 birds in 2 shots at one point
This is…chefs kiss 😘
‘I voted against handouts my whole life, but now that it’s my handout under attack, you can ‘eat shit.’’
Perfectly reflects the entire boomer ethos
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Red fishing off the coast of NC.
My youngest got his first citation red (>40 inches) today.
Perfect weather & lots of baitfish around (obvi)
Every year on 9/11, I feel an unbelievable mix of emotions.
It usually starts with anger.
Anger at the people who caused it, anger that we lost so many heroes on that day & the following days/weeks/years. Anger that the world changed, irrevocably, overnight.
I still can't watch the Flight 93 movie w/o my blood pressure going to the moon.
But then that anger slowly shifts to optimism, optimism to joy, joy to pride.
Its the stories like these that you hear, sometimes for the first time, 25 years later, that makes me so proud to be an American.
I believe that 9/12/01 was one of the greatest days in the history of our nation. The nation, still weeping from the day before, came together as one.
We showed the entire world that this country is full of everyday heroes. We showed the world that evil will never defeat good. We showed the world that a common cause can still unite all Americans.
Each year I do the 9/11 challenge. Throwing on a weighted vest & doing 110 stories on the stair machine. It's my small way of remembering the heroes of that day, like Frank Demartini & Pablo Ortiz.
Frank DeMartini and Pablo Ortiz.
Construction manager and former Navy SEAL. Port Authority. 88th floor of the North Tower.
They were having coffee with Frank’s wife Nicole when the first plane hit a few floors above them.
He told her he’d be right behind her.
Then they grabbed a crowbar, a flashlight, and walkie-talkies and went the other way.
Doors were jammed. Walls had buckled. People were pounding from the inside, trapped on 88 and 89.
Frank and Pablo smashed through drywall. They pried open frames. They held doors so groups could pour into the one working stairwell.
Survivors later described a man in a yellow hard hat bursting through a blocked door and saying, “We have to go. Now.”
They sent people down.
Then they went back up.
They did it again.
Estimates say 50 to 77 people walked out because two men with tools decided the people above them were their responsibility.
They could have left with Nicole.
They didn’t.
The North Tower came down at 10:28. Only one member of their small crew made it out. He had been helping an elderly man down the stairs.
Frank’s remains were never identified.
Think about the ordinary life that happened because of them. Parents who came home. Kids who grew up with both of them. Birthdays. Weddings. Grandchildren.
And a wife who heard “I’ll be right behind you” and never got another sentence.
Frank DeMartini. Pablo Ortiz. American heros.
I think the thing that kills me the most about towns/cities permitting departments…is they make ‘doing it the right way’ so unbelievably difficult sometimes.
Example: I am trying to install new digital menu boards. Simply replacing the old static ones for new digital ones.
Town:
-oh we need to run all new light pollution studies then
-oh we’re gonna check all your parking lot lights while we’re at it
-oh we need to double check this doesn’t hinder a ladder truck from driving over your building
-oh we need to inspect the footers before you pour any concrete
-no you absolutely can not assign the permit to a new certified vendor doing the identical work
-how many seats did you say were in the dining room? Might need to add a sprinkler system
-we need to bring in the signage department now too because digital menu boards are now considered signage
-are you bricking up the base of the footers? It’s not required by code, but we’re requiring it 🤗
Could have just done the whole thing in an afternoon & never heard a peep.
Now this project is on month 13, with 4 different permit offices involved, 3 engineers, and no end in sight
I guess all the Crumbl perma-bears were right.
This is the 4th one of these I’ve gotten in just the last 30 days.
I think there’s probably some great opportunities here for a 2nd gen concept to get in cheap
Did you know that Nerds is now the top sugar confection in the country? I did not!
Annual sales rose from about $50m a year to $1b when the Nerds Clusters launched.
More than a 1700% increase.
It's a cool story too...the initial consumer testing went really poorly, & they almost killed the project.
Excited about this one that went live yday!
Couldn't agree more.
I've been on a George Washington/Revolutionary War blitz...what we 'learn' in school isn't even close to what really happened.
A couple examples:
-Washington was a fairly poor battlefield tactician. He dang near lost us the war multiple times. The entire battle for New York was a complete disaster.
-The cherry tree thing never happened
-He got almost impossibly lucky several times. If that luck doesn't happen, I'm not sure we aren't still British subjects
-He was almost replaced several times during the 1st 2 years of the war
-Many historians argue that the fighting in the South (Georgia/SC/NC) was arguably more decisive to the war's outcome than anything Washington's army did directly.
-France (at least here in the states) doesn't get enough credit. Without the French money, weapons, navy, & troops, we likely don't win
-The war was not a unified, popular colonial rebellion. Somewhere between 1/4-1/3 of all colonists remained loyal to the Crown. And another 1/4 were just trying to survive. It was truly a civil war.
-Native American nations (mostly) sided with the British
-British Parliament had many voices against the war, it was far from unanimous
-The war continued for 2 more years after Yorktown
-Washington's story as a whole has become, perhaps, my favorite. He is so flawed, both as a human & commander. Yet, his story is quintessential of what we take pride in as Americans. His real story is SO much better than what you learn about in school.
I read a lot of history books.
And I've noticed that many of the things that people will say on a day-to-day basis regarding the past and comparing it to today...they're just not true.
Example:
"Kids nowadays...crime's so high, no morals, etc etc etc."
I recently read about "The greatest generation". Aka people born ~1900-1930. The guys who fought in WW2. The Boomer's parents.
They're called The Greatest Generation because WW2 was obviously horrific and negatively impacted the entire world and good beat evil.
And they're held up to this amazing standard of like "see, look how we used to be! So much better than the animals today!"
Americans during that time did so many amazing things.
But...
- 1946 set the all-time US record for marriages AND the all-time record for divorces.
- Juvenile delinquency rose 72% during the war.
- As much as half of Cleveland's meat supply in 1943 may have come off the black market.
- 20,000 white workers walked out of Packard because three Black workers got promoted.
- Over 60% of Army combat veterans said yes when asked if they ever felt the war wasn't worth fighting.
I think it's so easy and lazy to disrespect a current generation and put previous generations above it.
Patriotism and perfection are more often than not labeled retroactively. "Things used to be so great but man these guys today are idiots!"
But...today's murder rate is lower than every year of the 1940s.
In terms of racism + related incidents...obviously not even in the same ballpark. People today are far less hateful.
So, here's what history has taught me:
Question everything. Go to primary sources and get the answers.
Because often, things that you think are true because they sound good when they're said and they're said over and over and over again, oftentimes it's just not the reality. So many examples of this.
Other favorites:
-Washington had been retired from military service for 16 years before accepting command of 'the army of Boston' as it was known at the time
-And had never led more than a regiment until that point
-He sought a commission as a British officer after the French & Indian War. Lucky for us, they never gave it to him
A couple of my favorites:
-Washington: A Life/Chernow
-The British Are Coming/Atkinson
-Almost a Miracle/Ferling
-The Road to Guilford Courthouse/Buchanan
-1776 & John Adams/McCullough
-American Revolutions/Taylor
-Washington's Crossing/Fischer
This is why discounting is so hard to get right.
When you give up COGS, you have to drive such a meaningful amount of traffic gain to offset it, the bar is (usually) impossibly high.
And it’s not just the actual item discount that hurts, it’s all the net trade downs from a higher priced menu item at full margin to a cheaper menu item at discounted margin.
Cuts you both ways.
This, on top of the beef supply chain life cycle being 2+ years & getting squeezed, makes for no fun.
Food cost is a killer right now
My base food % (price you charge - cost) has risen to an alarming rate. It peaked in March 2026 & went down but now on a sharp ascension back up this month.
To put in perspective, food cost was 200 bps lower just two years ago and we were worried it was getting out of hand then.
I would still say that food cost is still the #1 concern in the restaurant industry.
How do we fix the root cause of the problem, though??
I bet I get 500k in chargebacks a year across all my businesses. We have virtually no recourse besides blocking repeat offenders.
Doesn't even matter if you have camera footage of someone consuming your product. Doesn't matter if you can show a signed contract. Denied.
IMO the credit card companies have just made it far too easy. And any attempt to change that will be viewed as 'anti-consumer'
*And
Ai is going to help restaurant margins.
Back of house automation is still a ways off, but still lots of use cases
Front of house automation is here.
In 3 years it will be the exception if a human takes your order.
Now pair that w/ the real estate the restaurant sits on, you have 2 fully Ai proof assets
Who could have guessed that Salad & Go wouldn’t make it. 🧐
As someone who sells a ton of drivethru salads I could have told you this concept never had a chance.
-Americans want fake healthy. Not real healthy.
-80% of the salads I sell are fried chicken with extra ranch dressing. (So like 80g of fat)
-WAY too much customization. Simple = fast. Fast = thruput
-Had no business doing breakfast, no brand fit
-COGS way to high
-Branding in general is bad. Very clip arty & cartoonish
-If you want prime DT locations, you better have the AUV to justify the development cost (they didn’t)
My father currently has stage 4 prostate cancer. Earlier testing would have caught it in stage 1.
BUT, I would start w/ DNA testing first, to see if you’re predisposed for colon/prostate cancer.
Then get your PSA checked every year via blood draws.
While rare (5ish out of 1000), there can be serious complications w/ colonoscopy, so risk isn’t zero.
Point being, some need to start getting checked at 20, some can wait til 65
It’s an absolute travesty that Trump Turnberry is not currently in The Open rota.
The stretch from 4-16 is just haymaker after haymaker.
And 5-11 is the best 7 hole stretch I’ve ever personally played. Stunning beauty w/ incredible design.
The 2009 Open at Turnberry where Cink held off a 60 year old Tom Watson in a playoff is still my favorite of the last 20 years.
+ Turnberry has the stone cold best spot in all of Scotland to enjoy a pint of Guinness
Bring it back!
