Transcript generated via AI - Not 100% accurate

ustin: 1:04

Welcome. Thanks for joining looking forward to our guests today, Stewart Roland. I just want to remind everybody, take a moment to of course, like follow subscribe, etcetera, to amplified whole health.com and all of the other sites that go along with it. Stuart, thanks for coming on. The show are with

Stu: 1:23

Clean

Justin: 1:24

clean cookin and you go by Stewart.

Stu: 1:26

Just do whatever. It doesn't really I guess technically our real name is stews clean cooking. We had to do it because clean cooking is too broad of a name, like clean and clean to get our trademarks. So we actually have it's trademarks dues, clean cooking.

Justin: 1:41

right. So Sue's clean cooking. You've been doing clean cook in for how long?

Stu: 1:45

I think we're in our fifth year now I started in November of 2016. I started probably three months before that, out of my house for just friends and it caught on, and then we bought a food trailer and yeah, it's been a little bit since then.

Justin: 2:00

What, what drove you or what was the purpose behind clean cooking?

Stu: 2:05

A lot of it, the company came about because I. Was tired changing oil to put it sniffly. Like feeling fulfilled. I really, I enjoyed my job. I enjoyed the people I worked with. But it, it being a mechanic is that was not what I was meant to do. And I knew that, you know it, but. Paid the bills, and all that. And but I was overweight because I just wasn't happy. And so when you're not happy you eat. And I, I, I was, I would flirt with 300 pounds a lot, my heaviest I'd ever been with 310 And I needed to lose weight. And so it all started by me, figuring out literally using YouTube, how to eat and nutrition, and then taking these people's words and videos and knowledge and experimenting with it and trying it on myself and running these fad diets for three months, running these whatever for, and and really what. What happened was I lost 94 pounds and I got down to two 18. I had all the abs I had with the butterfly pull-ups and it was all amazing. And my CrossFit coach, Nick Tucker who's now at four 13 is a, he. He's man, you, you should do this for people. And we started and doing it and I was just doing it on the side. And, but the clean cooking started because I had, I was having a really bad day and I was just, I was having a really bad day. I was feeling really frustrated at work. You know, and I just a series of things happened and I lost my cool and I quit. And I literally just, I, I, I got pissed off. I'm not necessarily proud of how it went. But it went away and I found myself unemployed. And my wife had a six week old babies. We had a girl and you kind go, what do I do now? And then we had this thing on the side. I was doing this meal prep. And it was catching on and, were it made money from day one? If you're willing to put the work in it's the money is there, it's just a lot of work and it's not a lot of money, but you just have to do it with volume. Like you want to make more money, sell more food. That's the, the essence of it. And why clean cook, it sells. Ridiculous amounts of food is because we have to, in order to make money, we sell $5 meals, and but we like, we enjoy the work and I've always enjoyed working. I find hard work to be satisfying. You go out and especially with cooking for me. And I didn't realize that, but Yeah, clean cooking came about because I had a really bad day and was pissed off and frustrated and didn't and through desperation, I, we created opportunities.

Justin: 5:39

Quit. You said I'm done doing the mechanic thing. Cause you had a really bad day

Stu: 5:45

pretty much.

Justin: 5:45

and you go home and you tell my wife, Hey, I no longer have a job, but we have this clean cooking thing on the side. Why don't we just start making more meals? And then you w what'd you do, at this point, you're just making stuff out of your

Stu: 6:02

was making stuff out of my house, but catching on it wasn't, it w there was a frenzy. It wasn't like, it wasn't like I was having to chase people that I met. I did after a few weeks, you kind of reach out and you're like, Hey, your regular, she like, you just reach out to them and say, Hey, you want this week? And most of them But I never had to chase anybody down. It was always, I always got new people finding me, cause people were talking about it. Like no matter what I tried to do to keep it under wraps, my friends were like, this is so good. Yeah. Cause they eat it and it would smell amazing. And there'd be other people would ask questions. And so I was always getting messages like, so the group I had to start a private Facebook group that was like five people. And then it went to 10 and now our private Facebook group is almost 4,000. And it w but I knew there was something there, cause it worked for me. I was feeling good. I was excited. I knew the food is fantastic because that's what I ate all the time. And the, so I knew it was something and the numbers made sense. If you look at it on paper, Sure. It's all in the right direction. It's just, you don't make a lot, but it's there. And so if you're willing to do it, like that was my thing. And so it was scary. But we kept it going. And so by the third week we had, I was doing 27 people a week, five days of meals for them. Out of my kitchen and a 1200 square foot house with a baby and kid. And and I, it was wild. I was running like one of those, like 36 inch flat tops that you buy at, like Walmart to cook, like sweet potato pucks. I was building like a smoker in my backyard is cinder blocks. It was wild. Like I was NG. I was well, so that's the crazy thing is I've never smoked meat before clean cooking, i, I, it was out of need, like literally everything in this company happens because of we have to have it, and so the only way that I could think of is to smoke more or to cook more food than grilling is to smoke it. Otherwise you're running the oven all the time. You're doing this. You don't grill can only hold so many chicken breasts, blah, blah, but on a smoker, Just put it in there for eight and a lot of me for eight hours, and so you just put a little thought into it and that's how I started doing it. And then I figured out I had a knack for it, cause it's just science, cooking, the game of barbecue of making perfect barbecue is to cook it as hot as you can without drying it out. That's, you as hot and fast as you can, without creating too much of a temperature difference between the outside and inside. It's a game, so it, for me, it's how fast can I cook? Amazing barbecue. And, most people are like pork butts are a, 14 hour deal. Chris kids are 18 us. It's eight, it's like we got this. And so it's, that was the game of it for me. And. Yeah, we just, just go, but when you're doing 27 people out of your house, it's,

Justin: 9:24

what'd you do?

Stu: 9:27

Couldn't afford a kitchen. The banks wouldn't give me any money. Cause I didn't know what I was doing. Rightfully so nobody should have given me Nope. The credit cards shouldn't have sent me the offers that they did, but that's how I financed everything was through credit cards. And. I took our life savings and I bought a 24 foot barbecue trailer and a smoker. And I, I said, I gonna cook out of this and we're going to do this full time and we're going to see what happens.

Justin: 10:01

How did you and your wife. Come to agreement on that, or what was it for many people who are, who want to be entrepreneurs and they want to get started? Period, it takes sacrifice. Everything in life is a sacrifice somewhere. And so you had to have that conversation with your wife and you have to get her on board because if she's not on board, you're going to be miserable. What was your process?

Stu: 10:26

so she was one of the founders of sweet boutique. Her and her sister started it. Long time ago, 10 or 11 years ago now. Great, amazing company, the, the best pastries and all that. She's now full-time with clean cooking because we need her more and she really wanted her sister back. When you're working with somebody like family it's more business than play, and they worked together amazingly well. And there's never been any issues, along those lines, but. It's a lot more fun being family, like where we can just go and not, and have our own lives and just enjoy each other as opposed to, and it was just that time. And so they split this year where Steph now is with me running clean cooking, and Brooke is off doing, and we still, help each other out just all the time. A great thing. But her being one of the founders of another small business, she knows. What it takes and she was an owner of a company. So we weren't, it wasn't like we were, in either of us were in, minimum wage jobs we both have worked a long time. We were both, I was as a mechanic. I was being paid very well as a mechanic. It wasn't like it, so it was a big hit for us, but we also lived and still continue to live very frugally. And it's, that's also as part of your guys' questionnaire the financial aspect for us has always been interesting and we really enjoy. Saving money and being creative and lifestyle that, that, like in our world, the only thing that's cooler than buying a brand new Cadillac is being able to buy a brand new catalog, you know, yeah, I could, but why would I have this Toyota camera? It's perfect. It gets great gas mileage on these 6.2 liter, I drive a gazillion miles, 40 miles a gallon. Come on, w I'm we're practical. And so in that sense, she looked at me and knew I was miserable, and she said we're doing okay. As long as you, as long as this doesn't cost us anything, you're okay to do it for awhile. I believe in you. I know you can do it. You know, you're we've got enough for us to do this for a year, let's see where it goes and she did. And she was just incredible about it. Don't give her always stressful. It's still, there was still a number of times because I would come home just so excited. I was like, I sold 40 meals today. Party. 40 almost a hundred, like that's going to be like, Oh, a hundred meals this week. And like, that's the coolest thing when I've never worked in the food industry, people are buying my food. I'm a mechanic, like what is going on here? And I loved it. And so every growth has been has been exciting, it's none of it's ever expected and that's, I think that's the beautiful part of it is this was not unexpected. I think

Justin: 13:45

just been hard work,

Stu: 13:46

yeah,

Justin: 13:47

working hard,

Stu: 13:47

work the right thing, taking care of people, trying to there's definitely people out there that, we've. We don't see eye to eye anymore. And, they have a much different take on situations that happened than I do. And you know, but it being like literally. Basing every decision on right or wrong, not basing it on whether what you want or need, and it's funny how, what happens when you do that? It's really amazing what happens when you are not part of the equation and you just let it happen, and you're just trying to guide, good, you just create an, to lift it. Clean cooking happens. That's what happens is

Justin: 14:40

And now clean cooking is no longer in a trailer. It's no longer just here. So how big is this thing now?

Stu: 14:49

Again, big it's it's we're. We now have a 3,600 square foot production kitchen with three industrial smokers and over a thousand square feet of a freezer space just at the kitchen.

Justin: 15:05

So you're now your kitchen is three times the size of your house. You used to cook out at your house and now

Stu: 15:11

Yeah. It's, it's, it's like that. And there's about 14 people that are there all the time. Is that. And then we have six locations. Yeah. That are just, we, at first we were delivering and now it just got too complicated and it was just too high. So we just let people come to us. And so basically it's, we have six pickup points. That's, you the easiest way to describe the store is just go and pick up your food.

Justin: 15:40

So how many employees do you have now?

Stu: 15:45

Like 27 full-time I think.

Justin: 15:48

So 27 full-time employees, how do you build relationship with these 27 people that are now in different cities? All

Stu: 16:01

it's difficult. It is. There's there's times where it's like, they've worked for me for weeks and they'll just meet me. I just met. Some people in Bentonville today, is there, it's great. I love it. But it also is I wish I could do more because it is,

Justin: 16:26

is,

Stu: 16:27

it's hard having people in your company that you and trust and believe in, but you don't have necessarily a personal relationship with And so it's something that I'm only recently been able to start growing. I I've, I don't know how to put it, but by giving up power, you're gaining power. I I've basically broken off most of a lot of my job and handed it off to. Somebody to basically be the business side of me that does the numbers and runs the, the things that slow me down, anything that doesn't yeah. Allow me to do B Stu is what Brian shot. but the thing is he's exceptionally good at, and he's intuitive. And so he's been with us for a few months now, and it feels like he's been there forever and, But that's the that's, what's allowing me now to where I don't necessarily have a job in the company. My job is to drive the company which is fantastic, which is where I literally, I believe every single small business owners trying to get to where it's, the business is healthy and thriving, but you're not needed, That's really where it is, where my job is now to do nice stuff and to create new delicious food. And that's what I wanna do.

Justin: 18:12

I think. I have, I've had a manager and he used to say are you working on the business or working in the business? And in my role, I need to be working on the business and just like for your situation, in order to grow effectively and to do the next thing you can't be in the weeds. And then every detail

Stu: 18:33

That's a great I, there's a, I have another way of saying exactly that it's you can't see the big picture when you're standing in it, so that's that's, that's been the theme of everything that is business is get out of the way.

Justin: 18:50

and get out of the way, be business. How do you communicate with your employees when you've got 27 folks and you've got these six different locations and. And it's grown very rapidly. So how do you effectively communicate with folks?

Stu: 19:10

So that's also, it's always a struggle cause that's honestly always evolving. And. It is not my strength. Communication is, has never been my strength. But is to have my trick is to have people around me that do communicate very well and care and pay attention to details that are just lost on me. And I have Stephanie that does that. And she's been she's my people whisper and we have zoom meetings is how we've done it through COVID you know, is virtually trying to limit. Limit contact, even with us, when we're at the stores, we try not to have kitchen people around store people just wild. But I try to make it a point to, to find out something about them and talk to them about it. Just like literally everybody I'm much better at the kitchen cause that's where I'm around more. But. I think whatever we're doing seems to be working because we're getting a lot of long-term employees. We, we do have a lot of turnover, the ones that generally they'll, a lot of them will stick around for years. I have employees that are getting close to three years out of a five-year business. That's a. It feels good to be able to rely on people. And that's how I effectively is. I rely on people to do their job, and when I've, when you trust somebody, essentially, that's what you have to do. Otherwise you're going to micromanage is let people do their job. And my job is to create a good company, do really nice things, but don't put me in charge of anything. Yeah. Don't leave me to be anything organized. I understand my role in the company and it is not in the day to day.

Justin: 21:23

Yeah. So

Stu: 21:24

yeah, it is hard having him. It's a different structure to put it that way. Like it's, I have a tendency to ramble on a little bit because it is. I have there's two competing paradigms. There's the one where it's very regimented and strict, and this is your boss and this is your boss. Hey, communicate. And with me, it's, I'm everywhere. Like I'll one day I'm like this morning, I was already delivering food and Bentonville and Fayetteville. If I stopped and worked in the Bentonville store, because they had a line out the door. It's great problems to have, but you know, . That's how you go and work side by side with them and you get to know them and you do nice stuff. And it's hard. Why am I going to know the people in Bentonville as well as I know the ones in river Valley? Probably not, but over time, not well. But yeah, it's the, you have to just not worry about I don't want to put it like, that sounds a little awful. When you say it, but like the people come, the people that work for us want to work for us. It's not, while they, they know who I am and they'll tell me that is that I came to work for you because of what you do. And I, that kind of works for me because I have, I don't understand people. It, I don't want to put it as say I'm like on the spectrum or anything, but people are not my strength whatsoever. So when people give me that pass, it makes things a lot easier where I can just be normal and not worrying about, trying to tip toe around and be like, Oh, Hey, how's your dog that you don't have, or stuff like that. Yeah. I don't do those.

Justin: 23:22

So you've got. These relationships that, you're building, this structure by just spending time, because it sounds like you're really involved in the business kind of doing different roles and responsibilities as the need arises. How do you help to encourage employee development or they grow within their responsibilities?

Stu: 23:48

So that is hard. Because of our business model, it's really hard. Like our store employees. Are fantastic. And when they, their position generally, will I encourage them outside of the company, like to put it simply cause there's only so far, you can really go, obviously yes, people. Stephanie started as a part-time store assistant. And now she's a general manager, and all of this, but there's only so many open positions. And as we open stores, the positions become more available and as we get bigger, there's more, but at any given time, almost all of the positions are filled. And so they're having to wait for the people above them. To get out of the way. And so I encourage them to do the outside things and honestly it works great. Nathan who's, our Fayetteville store manager is in a band and he doesn't necessarily want a lot of responsibility, but. He enjoys working for the company and it provides him what he needs. And we have a lot of that where we are I'm okay with being a stepping stone. And so. As long as we're a good, solid stepping stone and there's mutual respect. I have zero problem people using us because I'm going to use them. It that's the business transaction of it. It's, it's not Now their gems obviously do show through and do create more work in five positions and stuff like that. But in general, it's not, there's not an endless thing inside of our companies, four layers and we have five stores and, it's it. But I do listen to them. Like I haven't had a real idea in a couple of years and but I do listen to my people and I do talk to them and I do treat them like human beings because they're human beings, as opposed to just being a a mechanical piece in a puzzle, it's, you have. I think by creating a good work environment, it makes up for the financial opportunity of a company that sells $5 meals. People like that were doing good things for the community. And they like that. We're easy to work for. And it's really good company. We have retirement and healthcare and a lot of stuff, that's just not. Around here. And we worked 10 to six. We don't get up early.

Justin: 26:57

don't get up early. You're not around too Yeah. Whatever's

Stu: 27:01

convenient for us, and that's, that's really how it's played out. Is it whatever works for us,

Justin: 27:10

It seems to be working You, if you

Stu: 27:13

play everything by the numbers and you just go 80% of the people want this and 20% of the people want this, but these people are going to be noisy. Let's just deal with these people, and that's kinda how. It works is I? Yeah, I get questions every day. I can take the cheese off. No, the meals are pre-made. This is our meal. It's pre set up macros. That's how we pass the savings on to you. If I can do it, but it's gonna cost you $11 a meal, right?

Justin: 27:45

So for you, it's about volume and having a very kind of, I'm gonna call it cookie cutter defined process where, this is what we're making and people can join you and eat your meals, or they can find another opportunity and you seem to be okay with that. You're not trying to serve. Yeah. And I we are,

Stu: 28:04

and we're going to, when they try it they, they do it. That's the thing like it's, it's almos, I don't want to sound cocky or arrogant or anything, but like when you try the food, you're going to like it. And if you don't like it, it's because you don't like a certain ingredient that's in the food. It's not that you don't like the food, you might not like smoked meats. And that's the only thing that will really turn people off is that we do a lot of barbecue, and we use real wood in real smokers because we have to be able to cook a lot of meat. But. It's I'm confident. We have so many new people and just so many people love it and people are like, man, I don't even want to try it for, I was $5 frozen. I'm an idiot. I'm sorry. Like they'll, they'll like, I don't know what took me so long. This is the greatest thing ever. And after that, or honestly, the it's not designed to, it's designed to help. That that's it. It's a product that's designed to help. It's not meant for anything like it's, whatever it is to you. Do you want convenience food? Perfect. Do you want healthy food? Perfect. Do you want, I don't know how to cook, but I want to eat healthy. Here you go. You need a budget, your diet. I got you, whatever, it's whatever you want. And then if you want to take it and cover it in barbecue sauce or whatever. Totally. It's your food, like it it's, it's just what it is and it's just meant to be simple and be good.

Justin: 29:44

Simple and good and clean cooking.

Stu: 29:47

And clean Cogan.

Justin: 29:48

Yeah. So you get started off in your house. You've built this thing up now to six stores. What's the strategy for choosing locations?

Stu: 30:02

That's been a, that's a learning curve. Basically. For us find the most run down shopping Plaza in the highest volume area we can get in cheap and put it in front of a lot of people. And that's how we do it. It's it's worked out. In Bentonville, we went after the, nobody wants to go after 14th street or bud Wallen, or, like any of the major, you can't do anything on them. So we had to find the ones that the locals use, which is for us as East 20 20th street. Cause it splits them right down the middle. And it's a two lane with that. You can make it across town in 15 minutes. And so we picked that one. We did the same thing in Fayetteville. By using, Joyce and crossover, as opposed to using college and Joyce, instead of going after 71 where all the business and traffic is use the one where people are using, going home, and so, cause that's, we will, we're going to be the last stop. You were selling frozen food. You're going to go home after us. So let's put them on the way home, and so that's really how we do it is, Greenwood that's on the way home, out on 10, but then we have Fort Smith, which is just. Smack dab in the middle. And that for the most part, as long as people can get in and out of the parking lot easily, it doesn't matter where you put it. They're going to find you it's wild. Even van Buren, which is about the most horrible spot you could possibly think of. Like the only visibility you have is going 80 miles an hour on the highway. When you look over. Off of the bridge, as the only way you're going to see us, unless you're on Rudy road.

Justin: 32:03

Got it. So you have to be intentional.

Stu: 32:06

They're they're, they're looking for

Justin: 32:08

So your strategy though is really been, find locations that are easy for people to get in and out of that aren't in the busiest parts of town. And like you're saying, you said, get into a place that's affordable and into an area. That's got a lot of folks and they'll find you.

Stu: 32:26

Yeah. That's really it for Real estate people will always push you into the highest tier brackets, their sales. No, they should be. If they aren't trying to put you in the most expensive unit, they're not doing their job. So don't get mad at salespeople for trying to get you into the biggest, most expensive thing. That's how they make their living, but they should be doing it with a conscience you know, in reality like the, and not trying to kill you. But I've always been pushed into these top tier spots and. But they always want 22 to $27 a foot, and they're always too big and they're always to this but it's such a great location. You have 50,000 people a day in front of you, but then you're not thinking about how many of those you have to, how much work you have to do to get those in there, to pay. You have to, you're paying that bill right off the beginning, whether you're going gangbusters or not. And so for us, it's always been well, is there a little suite on the backside of the building that I can get a, I get a sign on the front, because it's not a flashy company, if the only reason you'll know about us is you're looking for us, you're looking for healthy, cheap food. That's good. And so-and-so, that helps you lose weight. It's not, we advertise, but it's not something that's Let me show you a picture of broccoli. Yeah, come on. no, and we do, we have the eye candy of the barbecue and stuff like that, but it's healthy is hard to sell. Man. Healthy is hard to sell

Justin: 34:11

Let's talk about products and services for just a moment. Obviously this food you've got, how many different meals have you come up with

Stu: 34:20

over the years, or right

Justin: 34:21

for right now? What do you have in your store? How many meals do you have in your store?

Stu: 34:25

Like 20.

Justin: 34:26

Okay, so you have 20 different meals and. How do you come up with it? Is this now you coming up with this stuff, or now that you've got this new facility and you've got a kitchen staff and like how,

Stu: 34:38

It's a little bit so this recent one, this new, the new breakfast bowls are all Brian, but he comes from the egg and I, and he comes from, a breakfast. So it, this is his wheelhouse. And so the breakfast stuff is a hundred percent. My team, all this Besides that a lot of it has mostly been me, but it doesn't mean that all there's I call it taco bell in it. And so this is just so everybody knows, this is how we make our menus. It's called taco belly. We have about 17 items that we absolutely a hundred percent, no hands down will work in our product. So we know that our Brown rice or broccoli bubble, all the different components will work. And so we basically throw it into a grab bag. Shake it up and start pulling out, and we start trying stuff to see what works and what tastes good. And what combinations are weird and crazy that nobody would think of. And then maybe we throw a sauce in there, or we do some or we look for a deal, a new product, but in, in general, pretty much everything on our menu. Shares a component with at least two other products on the menu. That way we are able to make it go longer, in that. All right. So we're full up on this. We can shift the extra corn to this so that we're not it. We always have an outlet for product. But yeah, we watch TV or I'll come up with an idea. A lot of it is, we. We have several people that come to me with ideas, or they're like, Hey, we need to bring in Hawaii, Hawaiian pork. And then we'll go into discussion and it will be a round table. And we'll be like, yeah, that'll be good. I'm gonna go try it. And we'll go. That didn't work. Or we need to do this to the pork. It's literally every day, we're just sitting there just talking about food in the mornings. It's what are we going to do? Oh, let's make some ribs. Hey, let's do this. It's wild that this is a job.

Justin: 36:50

but you're having more fun than you were before.

Stu: 36:52

God, I haven't worked in five years now. Like I there's no other way. You can get up at midnight on when it's 16 degrees outside and go load 30 degree meat into there's you just have to love that.

Justin: 37:10

And you didn't know because you were, you were doing the mechanic thing, you really didn't know that you enjoyed cooking. You were doing it out of necessity for yourself

Stu: 37:18

I, I did, I've always liked cooking and I've always been good at cooking, but I've never had any formal training. I, but to be fair, I am the guy that can watch the food network and then go to your cupboard and cook it. Like I it's. I have no. Oh yeah, definitely. It's, it's, it's wild. What. I don't know how I do it, but it works. And just, I like to cook and make crazy stuff

Justin: 37:49

And now you've got this business.

Stu: 37:51

that lets me do it all the

Justin: 37:53

lets you do it all the time and it's growing and it's been

Stu: 37:55

what's really funny is that I get samples of stuff. Like I don't just like. Makes up. I just get random stuff sent to me and like huge amounts, like here try 70 pounds of our chicken.

Justin: 38:10

Yeah. So now you've got to figure out what are you going to cook? What are you

Stu: 38:13

Cook with it. And then I generally will turn it around and then donate those meals out to, the, the unsheltered of Fort Smith or doing stuff, it's, I'll try it. But. I will not throw away food ever. It's obviously, unless we have to, it's not safe for consumption, but if there is a chance that we could save it and nourish somebody with something that will be thrown away, we are definitely going to do it. And I've got probably three different charities that I can call at any time to get rid of stuff, just, Hey, within 30 minutes picking it up.

Justin: 38:53

Which is great. You've got this opportunity to give back to the communities that you're serving and you've got these six different locations. That's plenty of opportunity to help folks out. Maybe come back to. Your strategy for the business and where do you go from here? I mean, is it more stores, more locations is

Stu: 39:20

yes. And more States.

Justin: 39:21

and more States. We have the

Stu: 39:23

blueprint

Justin: 39:24

so you have a, you have an idea, you've got this thought and now you're,

Stu: 39:26

We had gone down a whole road. We franchised Greenwood started out as a franchise, and it's no longer a franchise. It is a corporate store. But that's because we no longer have a USDA facility. We had to reabsorb our, our stuff and the but it's still a great. A great store and it's still an amazing, great thing. But when you go to franchise, you literally have your entire business in a book. And we have that, like we franchise, we have the ability, I have the FDD and I am and have area rep agreements for it. It's the, so w w. Having that means that we can then take this and train people and say, this is how you do it. Go do this. And if we show up and you're not doing that, why are you not doing it?

Justin: 40:20

So that's how you keep your stores uniform though. You've built kind of a playbook for folks and now it's, it's easy to keep things in line.

Stu: 40:29

It's it is it's. We have standards, we have brand and we have, there, it needs to be done this way. This is our colors. This is the shades. If this is not the shade, it needs to be repainted, like all of the, the components of that are there, but we'll continue to grow inside of Arkansas, expanding towards the little rock, knowing what we know filling out in the larger cities, looking at, con may Russellville, little rock, North little rock, probably my Mel, cause well, The net income there, but the, there it really does more wealthy the area it is it's. It seems to show that's where the desire is. It, it, it goes hand in hand, but the a will then probably. Start replicating. And because the company will have gotten to a certain size where it will start dropping, a kitchen and 10 stores in a state at once. And, go ahead and pull the trigger on you know, walking on a 70 person company from scratch, but we'll obviously be taking on investors going on in that way of Almost like a Chick-fil-A business model there they're brilliant the way they do it. It's they have franchisees, but they don't have franchisees. It's like they're, the franchisees are selected on who they are and what they believe more than their net worth or ability to build the restaurant, and that's what we're looking at is Hey, if we find the right person. Yeah, that's really what it comes down to.

Justin: 42:24

So your stores today, the way you're cooking all of this in the big facility you talked about with this, I think what'd you say it was like 3030 500 square feet, so you're cooking everything there and then you package it all up and then you ship it out to these individual stores where then selling product.

Stu: 42:39

Yeah. I hate to put it like bluntly, but it's yeah we have our manufacturing facility, which is basically a factory, but it's an old gas station that we've converted it. It's wow. We call it the meat station. So if you ever see us on social media and you see the meat station, that's our kitchen. It was a barbecue restaurant that I ran it. It was like, Good food, bad service kind of style. I don't do people. But it was insanely good barbecue. But then we clean cooking got going too much and we had to use the facility for clean cooking and so will we make it all there? We have. How many, what one giant water can cooler for all the pre package. And then we have two, we have a 10 by 20 blast freezer and then a 20 by 20 storage freezer with higher ceilings for pallets and stuff like that. And then we store it all there. And then we have a reefer that we back up and we palletize everything and we'd load it up on the reefer and we go deliver to the stores on the pallets and the refrigerator truck. And then we unload the pallets and pack it all into the freezers there. Yeah. So it's, and then the stores take the frozen food out of the freezer. Put it in a bag for you and send you home. Nice.

Justin: 44:00

As we wrap up, maybe I'd like to ask you a final question, which is what's your favorite meal that you've created, whether it's on your menu or not? What's your favorite

Stu: 44:11

Oh, there's a couple, there's a couple that I miss. So I mean, the Noah's arc right now is probably one of my all time favorites. Is that? It's the first bowl I've ever put chicken, pork and brisket in all at once. And then it's just like over fajita veggies, and, and you can do anything from there, with that one. Like you can take that one to scoop it out and make three, like street tacos like right there. He's just okay, all I need to start tears. Or you can add cheese to it. And you got like this crazy cheesy, or you just got fajitas or you know, and it's huge. It's six ounces of meat. Like it is a. Big meal. But there are ones out there that I love chicken thighs. I love smoked chicken thighs and like to the point where like where their fault, there's no fat in them. Cause you just over cook the snot out of them and they're just falling apart

Justin: 45:13

Which is hard to do with it. You can't really over cook a

Stu: 45:15

no, you can't, but you have to get it to we're not just pre jerky, but I don't do, I don't like chicken fat, so whatever, but. Because the dark meat is so juicy that you do that and you pair it with carrots and you put it with Brown rice. And there's something about that fat melting out of the chicken onto the sweetness of roasted carrots. And then it all just getting soaked up by the rice and the rice getting sticky because of it. Oh, that is or a spicy number five also another on, cause we did. Then number five was, has our overall been most popular role ever. But we did two versions of a sweet and a spicy, but we ran our freezer space. So we had to pick the more popular one because we always base things off of numbers, not feelings. And and then we will go. And it was just, it was closed, but we had to pick the sweet and it was a good choice. And then I missed the spicy number five though. It's fantastic. It is. But those are the two.

Justin: 46:22

Nice. Thanks for sharing that. And thanks for coming on and telling me all about clean cooking and just the success that you're having. So congratulations on that and just really enjoyed our opportunity to learn more about your business. So thanks for him.