The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 25 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Graves: Incremental Cost Cuts Destroy Fast-Food Craveability
“If you start cutting a little bit here to save a penny, and you start cutting a little bit here and a little bit here, it's death by a thousand cuts. Then your food one day is not craveable. That's what's happened to so many quick service chains over the years…”
Graves: Private Equity Ruins Fast Food by Cutting Wages and Quality
“When you lose that founder personal, that this is their baby, you start making the wrong decisions right now. You really do. And so, so profit equity, they have their shareholders and they have to make a certain amount of money. They're not getting the returns…”
Graves: Leaders must stay in details and supplement before delegating
“So, I say you don't delegate, you hire great people, you help them and do it, and if they do it better than you, then you can back off, and you make sure all those components of the business, look, I'm not great at IT, I have an exceptional IT team. They do it…”
Graves: Founders should retain 100% equity to protect company vision
“If it's special to you, hold on to your equity. Take the risk, get more financing, but keep it yours because you'll always be able to protect your baby. You know what makes it work better than anybody else.”
Graves: Raising Cane's Is Valued at Over $20 Billion on 20x EBITDA
“We're trading on, not trading, we don't trade, but we're valued on over 20 times EBITDA, those company restaurants. Go into that. So the profitability that comes into all of it gets on that, that higher multiple. That's why we have the twenty billion plus valu…”
Graves: Prioritizing High Sales Volume Generates More Profit Than Cutting Costs
“If you're sales driven, you're going to do exceptional customer service. You're gonna have more people on shift, right? And then cutting it shorter to try to save labor. You're going to, ah, you need highest quality products to do craveable, all those things t…”
Graves: Performance reviews should happen daily through coaching, not every six months
“This is how you get weeded out of Keynes corporate is the people that Can't take constant, constant coaching, and it's coaching, right? You know, it's like, well, no, we should meet every six months on a eval, and how we're doing, and blah, blah, blah, and all…”
Graves: Shaving two seconds off drive-through time yields $60M in sales
“Every two seconds that I can get faster is a point on sales. So let's just say just roughly one percent. If we do six billion in sales this year, what's one percent, six billion, that's six, sixty million dollars in sales you can do if you can tweak that, that…”
Graves: Raising Cane's customer frequency matches multi-item QSR competitors
“Our frequency is just as high. Is any other quick service restaurant, meaning how many times somebody comes back in a month period of time.”
Graves: Buying back Raising Cane's franchises increased sales and wages
“So we got way more efficient. We bought them out. We actually operated at 95. Sales went up in all the franchise markets. So literally sales went up, wages went up, everything went up, and it actually improved out better.”
Graves: Scaling From One to Two Locations Is the Hardest Growth Step
“Going from one to two is, is your hardest step you'll ever have, then two to six, and six to 12, and all those growth stages are there”
Graves: Raising Cane's carries approximately $3 billion in debt
“Someday when I clear debt, I'm like a three billion dollars in debt now, eventually with our growth, you know, as we go, God willing, we'll go, and then we'll be able to pay down debt, and we'll have, when I have this free cash flow coming out, and doing, we'r…”
Graves: Raising Cane's Ranks #2 in Quick Service Average Unit Volumes
“We're number two on average unit volumes in quick service restaurants, Chick-fil-A than us. And I think McDonald's might be a million behind us or per unit per restaurant, all the way down to our, a lot of our competitors are like a third of what we do sales w…”
Graves: Menu Variety Slows Restaurant Operations Without Changing Customer Preferences
“People go back and get their same sauce. They might come try it one time, and then it's also slowing down their order process and slowing down turnover time and all that stuff, and then they go back to the same sauce.”
Graves: Raising Cane's Spent Two Years Setting Up Middle East Supply Chain
“Same thing we opened in the Middle East. It took two years to get the supply chain just right to make sure it tastes just the same. Two years to do that. Took two years to procure the chicken. Two years to get all the ingredients right.”
Graves: Raising Cane's Operates on a Roughly 10% Profit Margin
“We're doing well if we make 10 cents on a dollar.”
Graves: Started Raising Cane's with $90k SBA loan and $60k equity
“I got a small SBA loan for 90,000, for 90,000 dollars. I'd raised equity in a sense of, like, 60,000 dollars with original shareholders”
Graves: Raising Cane's college business plan received lowest grade in class
“That professor gave you the worst grade in the class, which is classic but it was only a B minus. The rumor went out that it was a failing grade and all this stuff is, but he was, he actually said a little greater, but he said, no, the plan was great. Like lit…”
Graves: Raising Cane's buys the underlying real estate wherever possible
“Wherever I can. Absolutely wherever I can, I do. Just good real estate, a quality real estate. It's just, there's so many people that own it. It's part of larger shopping centers, larger developments. A lot of it's in trust, you know, family trust and things l…”
Graves: Raising Cane's made $30 in profit during its first month
“And then we made 30 dollars the first month. That's what we made.”
Graves: Raising Cane's has 75,000 crew members system-wide
“We got 75,000 crew members across the system.”
Graves: Raising Cane's Drive-Through and Counter Service Average 2:35
“We're two minutes, 35 seconds, drive-through and counter service, right?”