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Small-town restaurants must offer broad menus to survive, says Craig Culver
“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…”
Culver's ButterBurger and custard concept was inspired by a Milwaukee custard stand
“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…”
Culver's pioneered the smashburger technique long before modern chains popularized it
“We did it well before any of those people did it.”
Culver's refuses to compromise ingredient quality to increase profit margins
“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.”
Restaurants should operate short-staffed rather than hire workers who lack heart
“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.”
Craig Culver admits modern food suppliers outperform Culver's original in-house prep
“We've got suppliers that probably do a better job at what we were doing back then than what we did.”
Culver: Denying prospective franchisees makes them want franchises even more
“When you tell somebody that's interested in a franchise that they can't have one, They want it even more.”
Growing through corporate-owned stores would have forced Culver's to go public
“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.”
Employees, not customers, are the most important people in a business
“The most important person in your business, it's the customer. Stupid. It's the customer. No, it's your team members. And if they know that they're that highly regarded, they're going to take care of our customers or our guests, as we like to say, as if my mot…”
Expanding franchises in concentric geographic circles reduces operational risk
“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.”
Culver's opened 101 restaurants and grew comp sales 26% during COVID-19
“During the pandemic, we opened a 101 restaurants and we were up a combined
like, 26% in comp sales.”
New fast-food menu items typically lose consumer interest after eight weeks
“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…”
Buyers of the Culver family's A&W defaulted after two years
“We only had it two years because the people that bought the A&W from us were failing. And remember, this was bought in a land contract. It's our money in there. And eventually one day we got a phone call. Saying, please take this thing back.”
Adding a drive-thru pushed the original Culver's past $1 million in sales
“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…”
Drive-thru sales at Culver's grew from 20% to over 60% of revenue
“Back then, I mean, our drive-thru was maybe 20% of our sales. Today, it's in excess of 60% of our business, so.”
Culver's halted franchise expansion for a year when growth outpaced training capacity
“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…”
The Culver family sold a 30% minority stake to Roark Capital
“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.”
The Culver family's original A&W drive-in sold 15-cent burgers without indoor seating
“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.”
Craig Culver's family sold their A&W drive-in franchise for $350,000
“When we sold it to these two gentlemen, I believe the number was 350,000 we sold it at.”
Culver: Culver's Did Not Make a Profit Until Its Third Year
“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.”
Culver: Culver's franchisee training program lasts 17 weeks
“Today it's a 17 week program at Culver's.”
Craig Culver views his restaurant visits as cheerleading rather than inspecting
“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.”