Culver's

“We, I think we did like six, 700,000 dollars the prior year. He said, if you put a drive through in, you'll take this place over a million dollars in sales. And at that time, that was a milestone to have a million dollar restaurant. And so we made that decisio…”

“So early on, yeah, we did grow by about 14 restaurants in a year's time in the early nineties, and we couldn't handle that growth. It was too much for us. We didn't have the infrastructure in place, meaning we didn't have the people in place to open those rest…”

“We've got suppliers that probably do a better job at what we were doing back then than what we did.”

“Back then, I mean, our drive-thru was maybe 20% of our sales. Today, it's in excess of 60% of our business, so.”

“One day while I was at the Ritz in the afternoon, not much going on, sitting down with a friend of mine, and he was from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and he was telling me about when he was a kid, there was a little custard stand called the Milky Way, and they served…”

“In order for us to grow that way, it would have been very slow, and eventually we would have probably had to go public to get more funds.”

“For one day only at Culver's, you could get a burger topped with a massive fried cheese curd, and they sold a 136,000 A thousand of them, and most Culver's sold out of Kurterburgers before lunch.”

“Innovation is, is very, very important, but just because you bring in a new product doesn't make Your business necessarily stronger. New things. I mean, it's great if you hit a home run and it's on your menu board forever or whatever, but usually give it six t…”

“Today it's a 17 week program at Culver's.”

“During the pandemic, we opened a 101 restaurants and we were up a combined like, 26% in comp sales.”

“We continue to grow in concentric circles, so we take our brand along with us, and that's very important because that takes a lot of the risk out of it for the, that operator opening just outside the last restaurant.”

“Well, in a small town, you've got to attract Everybody. Young people, the middle-aged people, the seniors, and coming from the supper club business, we were used to big menus and things like that, but thinking back, I mean, I would have loved to had a simple m…”

“And just to hire bodies, it's not the right answer. I'd rather go without than hire, you know, people that Just don't have a heart.”

“Eight 83.”

“When you tell somebody that's interested in a franchise that they can't have one, They want it even more.”

“And so our business started, people were coming from 50 miles around to have frozen custard or a butter burger, and it was the third year when we made money.”

“We did it well before any of those people did it.”

“Today, and I visit a great deal of restaurants, and I'm not going in there to be an inspector. I'm a cheerleader. But obviously, if I see something that's definitely wrong, I'll change it on the spot. But that's not why I visit the restaurants.”

“Where you're going is we sold 30% of the business to work capital. Minority share. Family still has 70%, so we truly own the company.”

“When it comes to quality, we may have to charge more, and we do at Culver's but we're not gonna cheapen something to get to a bottom line easier.”

“The little shack of a building had the bathroom on the outside of the building gravel parking lot, five and 10 cent root beer, 15 cent hot dogs, hamburgers, and french fries. We sold cigarettes of all things, and car hop service. There was no inside seating.”