Have you ever dreamt of tossing your own dough and creating the perfect pizza in your very own pizzeria? Our landmark 10th episode is a celebratory feast of knowledge, where I walk you through every topping and trial of opening your own pizza joint. Wrapped in my own experience and spiced with tips from the new store opening checklist, this episode is a must-listen for those ready to take the plunge into the pizza world. We even pay homage to the classic cheese pizza, proving that sometimes, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Opening a pizzeria is not just about mastering the perfect crust; it's a complex endeavor that's peppered with potential pitfalls. In this episode, I serve up the real deal on what it takes to navigate these challenges, from budgeting blunders to the red tape of permits and inspections. I'll share why building local connections can be your secret sauce to success, and how patience and persistence are your indispensable kitchen hands. If you're considering stepping into the gastronomic arena of pizzeria ownership, consider this chapter your necessary prep work.
Finally, we slice into the world of project management with its heaping portions of surprises that can often leave new business owners feeling overstuffed. I'll dish out strategies for juggling the multitude of roles you'll take on, from administrative acrobatics to operational oversight. Plus, I sprinkle in some advice on team communication and achieving that delicate work-life balance. So, grab a slice, sit back, and savor every bite of wisdom in this episode that's sure to leave you hungry for more.
Have you ever dreamt of tossing your own dough and creating the perfect pizza in your very own pizzeria? Our landmark 10th episode is a celebratory feast of knowledge, where I walk you through every topping and trial of opening your own pizza joint. Wrapped in my own experience and spiced with tips from the new store opening checklist, this episode is a must-listen for those ready to take the plunge into the pizza world. We even pay homage to the classic cheese pizza, proving that sometimes, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Opening a pizzeria is not just about mastering the perfect crust; it's a complex endeavor that's peppered with potential pitfalls. In this episode, I serve up the real deal on what it takes to navigate these challenges, from budgeting blunders to the red tape of permits and inspections. I'll share why building local connections can be your secret sauce to success, and how patience and persistence are your indispensable kitchen hands. If you're considering stepping into the gastronomic arena of pizzeria ownership, consider this chapter your necessary prep work.
Finally, we slice into the world of project management with its heaping portions of surprises that can often leave new business owners feeling overstuffed. I'll dish out strategies for juggling the multitude of roles you'll take on, from administrative acrobatics to operational oversight. Plus, I sprinkle in some advice on team communication and achieving that delicate work-life balance. So, grab a slice, sit back, and savor every bite of wisdom in this episode that's sure to leave you hungry for more.
So, number one, it's gonna cost more money than what you expect. Number two, it's gonna take much longer than what you plan. And number three, it's gonna be much harder than what you're currently doing, but if you decide that that's worth it for you, it can be incredibly valuable for your future. You just gotta decide if it's worth it for you and that's it All. Right, there we go. Now we live.
Speaker 1:
Welcome back to the King Podcast. I'm your host, tyrell Reed. Back for another episode, super excited. Today. This is episode 10. That's a milestone for us 10 pieces of content out into the universe. We have continued to grow our downloads and we have continued to grow our downloads every single episode, meaning we got a new record at episode nine. Super excited about that. All of that happens because of you, the listeners, the folks that are tuning in, the folks that are sharing the podcast, the folks that are sending questions, the folks that are commenting on the content on social media. All of that happens because of you. We hit a milestone on downloads over 100 downloads. Man, I'm pumped, I'm pumped and I'm just I'm excited to continue to come back and bring you more.
Speaker 1:
This week. We're talking about all the things that you not all of the things, three things that you should expect when opening a new pizzeria. So I wanted to go back into that one. That was always. That's always good content and there's always a lot of questions around what it's like to be a first-timer in the business and I also have a nice, a nice piece of piece of value to give. You know, always, always, say I want to add value, I want to do this for the community, I want to provide any, any type of value that I can. So I've been working on on a new store opening checklist. I got that all ready to go. Anybody that wants to just email me or DM me or shoot me, shoot me a comment or something and say T look, send it to me. I want it because I'm about to go. I'm about to go down this journey.
Speaker 1:
I've been on YouTube. I've been in the Facebook, facebook groups. I've been, you know, consuming content on Instagram. I've been watching TikTok videos. I've been doing YouTube videos. I've been watching TikTok videos. I've been I've been on Google real hard.
Speaker 1:
I'm reading all the articles about how to how to open a pizzeria and there's so much information that is it's just overwhelming. Let me help you. I got a simple checklist that I like to use Just to just to make sure I'm not missing some of the important things. And look, every project is different. There's always going to be things that come up. There's always going to be, there's always going to be unexpected happenings in the process of building out a restaurant, any type of restaurant, even if, even if it's a food truck, there's always this, these unknown factors. But when you have a nice, solid plan, you got, you know, you got some something to help guide you. It makes it. It makes the role slightly less rough. It's still going to be hard, it's still going to be tough, but it makes the role slightly less rough. That's the best way I can put that. So if you want to, you want to get your hands on this, on the checklist. I don't know. It's literally just like a Google doc says new store opening checklist is not fancy, it's not anything. I'm working on that. It might get fancy on you, but for now anybody wants it. Man, I'll send you, I'll send you the link, you can print it, you can use it, and if it helps you and it helps your business, then I am. I am grateful and and certainly happy to do anything I can to to to assist you with that. So hit me up, hit me up. I got it.
Speaker 1:
Pizza of the week this week, really just an old to a classic. I posted on the store page yesterday about, just, you know, the classics never die and for me the classic is straight up the cheese pizza. You know dole sauce cheese, keep it simple dole sauce cheese. And I I only I made this. I chose this as pizza of the week because I had a comment and, for anyone that doesn't know, we always do we do a promo first pie on us. If you, if anyone that follows or lives in Tampa Bay area, want to get in, want to want to try our pizza, first pies on us, you sign up from our rewards program, or really it's just joining our email list. You sign that list, you sign up for the list, you join the program. You get a free 10 inch cheese pizza, a personal cheese pizza. And there was a comment on one of one of the videos that I posted that it was something to the.
Speaker 1:
It was something to the effect of how, how can I determine if the pizza is good? By simply by just getting a tennis cheese pizza, and that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, because in my world that is the only way to determine if somebody can do it, if somebody can really make some pizzas. Can you execute the simple, can you execute the basic, can you execute the core of what we do and what our business is dough, sauce and cheese and if you can knock that out of the park, then then chances are most of the things that go beyond that are gonna be pretty damn delicious in my opinion. So that to me, that's the ultimate test of a pizza shop. Like, is the cheese pizza good? So I just thought that was interesting from that person's perspective.
Speaker 1:
Maybe they want more, or maybe they like to have a more broad view or spectrum of the offerings in order to determine, you know, if something is good or not. But what do you think? I think cheese pizza. If the cheese pizza is good, then we can work with that. Cheese pizza sucks. Ain't no need for me to try the pepperoni. That's just how I look at it.
Speaker 1:
So, yeah, pizza the week, cheese pizza, classic. Oh to the classic, oh to the classic. And speaking of oh to the classic, we were having, like you know, just like some music night here at the house and we always like just scrolling YouTube and playing music for the kids and we always get into these old school, new school battles. And the wife and I took a turn down Crunk and I don't know if you remember the Crunk era from Atlanta with Lil John and Eastside Boys and Yin Yang Twins and Outcast and all these you know all these, not Outcast, but all of these cats from like the South. That was a good ass time of music in music. So it was like we heard a song and I'm like man, I'm gonna use that song on a video and the video I used was just the cheese pizza and it was in the caption. It said that classics never die, classes don't go away and the cheese pizza is a classic. Some of that music from that era is also classic and I hope it never goes away. And if I can do anything to bring it back, I'm bringing Crunk back. Let's bring Crunk back Shit. But that's my two cents on pizza. The week Also had a lady that complained about the size of the cheese the tennis cheese pizza but I'm not even gonna go there. I might have time another day on the internet but on Instagram, but for now, we'll just let that one go.
Speaker 1:
But what to expect when you're opening your first pizzeria Outside of the normal and I did the Google search you know how to open a pizzeria and I think there's some. I think there's some good information out there, but on the surface it's all very general and none of it, and none of it gives you the real what to expect. It's kind of like a where did I? You know, it's very generic Choose your style, create a business plan, decide on a location, start a bank account with a DBA and an EIN number, design your brand and it's you know, it's got everything you know just listed out or, excuse me, you know, segmented out, as if you know all these things just happened in perfect order and on time and or whatever. And I'm just here to tell you that Some of these things happen throughout the entire process. Some of these things happen step by step, as in normal projects, and some of these things never happen, depending on what they are.
Speaker 1:
So when it, when it comes to what to expect and I had and I got three things on the list I wanted to just paint this picture like when you're doing this for the first time, it's a lesson. You know it's like, it's like college, it's like an experience and a learning experience, because a lot of the things in the process are gonna happen to you for the first time as well, unless you've been open in other restaurants. But if this is your first restaurant, your first restaurant, your first pizzeria, a lot of what's about to happen to you is gonna be new, and it's gonna be. It has the potential to be to become a major hindrance or a setback if you're not prepared for it. The first one is that it's gonna cost you more than you think. That's the reality. If you had a plan and you thought you were, you were gonna do this for 150,000, I'm here to tell you it's gonna cost you more than that. If your plan was to build it for 250,000, it's probably gonna cost you more than that. And not saying that you that you can't build a pizzeria for under 250 or under 150. You most certainly can, you must certainly can, you can. You can build a pizzeria for 40,000, 50,000. But what I'm telling you is that, whatever you expect it to cost, it is going to cost you more Because of the things that you don't know, because of because of the things behind the walls, the things behind the pipes under the building. Because of all of the, all the things that you, you haven't experienced and that you don't know, it's gonna cost you more.
Speaker 1:
Example you, you, you lease a space, beautiful space, in a historic district. You got a this great Building that's a hundred years old and everybody walks past it and it's gonna be fine, but it's never been a restaurant. So now you got to put a hood in and you got to update the electrical and all these things and what looked like it was gonna be this simple turnaround job became something much more, much more bigger in scope. Or you had. You failed an inspection, a plumbing inspection, and Because of that fail, you had to change the way some of some of the drains were pipe. Now that changed the scope of your work and you have to get your plans redrawn and it's gonna cost you time in. It's gonna cost you money. Like no one tells you that. You know, having seal plans is gonna cost you an extra couple of thousand dollars. No one, no one's telling you that If you take that beautiful space at the bottom of that apartment building, that you're gonna have an extra long hood run and that's gonna run you 20 to 40 percent more.
Speaker 1:
Those are some of the things that that just seem to get, seem to get left out of. You know the generalized advice and and I get it. The reason why is because every situation is unique and you know the best advice that I can give you is to work with reputable people who are, who are, experienced locally, because a lot of what happens in the process and especially in the construction process right, a lot of what happens in the construction process is control heavily by Local guidelines. So it's to your benefit to work with people who have done things locally and Understand how things work. Like a relationship with a front desk person in a permitting office Can mean, could be the difference between a one-week wait or a five-week wait on Having changes approved. And weeks cost time, weeks cost thousands in the construction process, because sometimes things can't start until something else finish, finishes. You can't do, you can't hang your dry wall until you flint, until the rough end has been approved. You know what I mean. So, like you need to understand that these things are gonna there's there's so much unknown, there's so much unexpected and there's so much local nuance, that is, it's generally gonna cost you more Than what you were then what you were expecting.
Speaker 1:
The second one is that is gonna take you longer than you plan. What's gonna take longer? All of it's gonna take longer than what you plan. It's gonna take you longer to find the right space. It's gonna take you longer to find the right people. It's gonna take you longer to make money. It's gonna take you longer to build it. It's gonna take longer than what it costs were on paper. Because of the same reasons that I just told you, because so much happens.
Speaker 1:
So much happens that that requires changes and pivot and restructuring and reworking and you know, reestimating the timeline or, for example, like the building permit, if something that's gonna take you, if a change happens you fail say you fail an inspection on and I've seen this happen say you fail an inspection on the grade of your patio, meaning how steep is the runoff of your patio, how fast is that water gonna runoff and at what degree. If you fail that, that means you gotta bust up the concrete, repave it, make sure it's at the right grade and then have it reinspected. That's gonna cost you a lot of time and sometimes you can speed that up, but what's that gonna cost you? That's gonna cost you more money. So money and time you want faster cost more money. You wanna save money.
Speaker 1:
Sometimes it's gonna slow the process or reduce the quality of the project and that can't be a noxious either. Like you can't sacrifice the quality. I know what happens. I know that sometimes that piece of equipment changes in the middle of the process because look, now that we're halfway down the road, I don't need that Mac Daddy hood, just give me something that's gonna suit my needs. Oh, I didn't know it was gonna cost me an extra 30. Can you? You got another one, because your project can't just take on change after change after change after change when it comes to scope, because every change in scope costs money, every change in scope costs money. So be prepared for the process to take and it doesn't mean it's gonna take much longer, but just the understanding is gonna take longer than you expect.
Speaker 1:
Permitting does not happen fast anymore, especially in Florida, where I'm at. I think permitting offices take pride and slow somebody's project down, even though they wanna see growth and development. In some of these cities, especially the smaller cities, they're still so many layers that slow the processes down. It could be waiting for someone in the same office but because of the nuance they're not even allowed to communicate until something else happens, somebody that's literally feet away from them. That's how it and it becomes to. You know that simple sometimes. So first one is gonna cost you more than you think. Second one is gonna take you much longer than you plan. And the last one, as I flip my notepad, is that is gonna be a whole lot more work than the job that you left to come do this. And that's also, you know. The hard part to swallow is that you left one job so that you can come do 10 job when you're starting out. And that's okay because the reward at the end of it is should far exceed what you were working on or doing before. That right Meaning you get if you do it the right way.
Speaker 1:
You have put in whatever work and time required to buy yourself the freedom whether it's, like my boy Jay says, time freedom, financial freedom you know peace of mind, legacy. You know all the things that drive us to get into business or to go into business for ourselves or to become entrepreneurs. You've seen my children. You know here, I love my kids. They love what we do. It makes me ecstatic to know that my kids love this and could see themselves walking in mind-foot steps and doing the same thing.
Speaker 1:
However, it doesn't take away from the work that it took to get to this point. You're gonna leave a lot of folks are gonna leave jobs where they're making a lot more money and doing a lot less work than they're about to do for the next couple of years in this pizzeria and I'm serious about a couple of years. But that's okay because if you've already decided that that's worth it for you and the fruit that's at the end of it is much sweeter, man, roll your sleeves up and go get it and go get it. But understand that it's gonna be tougher because there's just so many things to it. I mean you're gonna have I'm looking at the checklist the admin list is longer than all of them and if you're a pizza guy, like I'm a pizza guy I love making pies, I love being in the kitchen, I love working with my hands. I do not love the admin work. That's the longest list of items on the checklist of the admin.
Speaker 1:
You're gonna have to deal with that. There's operational things to deal with. There's marketing, there's HR, there's vendor relationships to manage, there's technology that you have to understand. We spent an extra hour in the store the other night trying to re-work our network because we needed to find a spot on the switch so that we can plug in the new Apple Pay terminal. Now let's either learn and understand how to do some of these things or pay somebody to do it, depending on what position you're in. I like, we like doing things, we figure stuff out, but that means that you're doing more than what you were expecting, and that happens a lot. That happens a lot, especially if you don't have people. So that's the third one. This is gonna this is going to be much harder than what you were, than what you're probably currently doing, and that's okay, that's all right. You just gotta decide if that's worth it for you. So, number one it's gonna cost more money than what you expect. Number two, it's gonna take much longer than what you plan. And number three, it's gonna be much harder than what you're currently doing. But if you decide that that's worth it for you, it can be incredibly valuable for your future. You just gotta decide if it's worth it for you.
Speaker 1:
I'll finish with my team building tip. And you know, for my leaders out there who are currently running stores and have a team. You got staff in place. The ultimate cheat code in leadership is the calendar, planning your calendar. If you want to do what it takes to buy more time for yourself, more free time, more family time, you wanna take some vacations, you wanna really enjoy the fruits of all this labor that you've been putting in for a couple of days, the calendar is your best friend. You need to get yourself into the habit of planning the events of your life through your calendar and communicating that with the people who need to understand and know what you're doing and what you got going on. Right. Calendar means nothing if your leadership team doesn't know anything about your calendar. But some of my tips and what I would tell you to start doing first is hey, plan out the big items. If you look at a year and you look, look, we know that we like to take vacation around the 4th of July let's block those dates out. Or you got dentist appointments and things like that that need to be scheduled. Kids, kid functions, things like that, get all that stuff on a calendar so that you can start to have the necessary conversations, because one of the challenges in what we do and in the restaurant business is that there's constant change, especially when it comes to people and schedules and things like that.
Speaker 1:
Right, people quit, new people come on, things happen, life happens outside of work, that we sometimes just things that happen that aren't planned. And when people aren't there, it doesn't mean that those jobs just stop existing. Someone's got to cover, someone's got to help out. The slack has to be picked up. And the same thing happens in your absence right? If you're not there, then the processes that you're in charge of need to be handled. So the best way to handle that is to plan for it's to plan for these things. If you know that you need to be off on Mondays, let's plan on what our Sundays and Tuesdays look like Like work through really getting your calendar together, because that'll help you organize all of the tasks and the to-dos that are going on in your head and it'll help you start to delegate some of the things that are just not as critical and as important.
Speaker 1:
If you really start to task out your day and list out all the things that you're handling, you'll start to realize some of these things don't need to happen and you start eating the big fraud. You start eating the nasty ugly frauds. Check that from the book Next Level Leadership. Hold on, let me drop a shameless plug up in here. Shameless plug Look, get organized.
Speaker 1:
Look. If you need help understanding, you know how to improve your productivity. Get more organized, you know. Set better goals, morning routines, night routines, things like that. Jump on next level leadership. Come on now. You can get it on Amazon, you can get it everywhere.
Speaker 1:
But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about calendar planning. So what I was saying was, if you can start to really organize your thoughts and your tasks and your to-dos, you start to naturally place priority on things, and lower priority things even though they're not as important for you can be a very critical part in somebody else's development. Pass some of that stuff off. Use your calendar. Use your calendar. Use your calendar to help plan your tasks and your days and your weeks and months, but to also help your junior leaders start to understand and organize their own processes and tasks and to-dos and everybody gets better because of it. So get yourself in your calendar, get that calendar together and get yourself next level.
Speaker 1:
Don't forget to go get that book. You can get it on TyrellReadcom and that's all we got today. It's been a pleasure. Look, I love doing this. I always appreciate all of the downloads, all of the love, all the shares. Go leave us a review, go leave us some feedback. Five-star ratings all over the place. Do all that good stuff. It's your boy. Tyrellread Can't wait to get back next week. Pizza King podcast we are