Community first: Drive success with local relationships

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, man, thanks for having me.

Justin Ulrich
Did I pronounce your name right? I should have asked that beforehand. Is it Comeaux?

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, yeah, Comeaux. So it’s like C-O-M-O, except the E-A-U-X is French. So that’s where that comes from.

Justin Ulrich
Very cool, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. You’re down in Louisiana?

Carl Comeaux
Yep, yep, South Louisiana. I live in Lake Charles, about two and a half hours from our headquarters in Houston.

Justin Ulrich
Very cool, very cool. I haven’t made it out that way, but I do a lot of South travel. We’re up in Charlotte, so we try to get down there for spring break and stuff.

Carl Comeaux
I hear you. 

Justin Ulrich
Used to manage the brand marketing team at Polaris Razor for a little bit and did some riding down in Louisiana though in the mud. Like bayous, it was wild.

When you’re riding in a Razor and you’re like chest deep in mud and you think at any time you could get bit by whatever animal down there wants to kill you at any given time, it’s pretty insane.

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, it’s sportsman’s paradise. But it’s funny, we get in that water to ski during the summertime and we can’t see our toes, man. You don’t know what’s underneath that water.

Justin Ulrich
Nope, that is a hard pass. Yeah. Well, cool, let’s jump into it. I guess we’ll get started with you telling us a little bit about your background. I know you’ve been in multiple industries, so if you can get us some visibility into your background and what led you to being the CEO over at Crust Pizza.

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, so I’m a senior entrepreneur from day one. I’ve been self-employed since I was 16 years old, and so I’ve always had the entrepreneur spirit. The first half of my career was in fitness, so I owned fitness studios.

I started off as a personal trainer, and then I was so busy I had to hire a trainer to help me. And then before I knew it, I had seven trainers and we were all full and had to learn how to become a manager and run a business that no one wants, right? No one wants to exercise.

And so that was the first half of my career, and the second half has been in restaurants. I started off co-founding a juice and smoothie concept, and then from there I went to pizza. Again, you know, smoothies and juices, not as many people love that as they love pizza, so pizza’s been a great space.

It’s been great. Everybody loves it from the kids to the grandparents, so it’s a great cuisine that a lot of people enjoy at least two or three times a month. And so how I got here, I was a customer at first for Crust, and then fell in love with the brand at the time I was scaling the juice and smoothie concept, and then met the founders. 

And then at the time they only had a few locations, and they wanted to scale but they weren’t sure how, so I helped them with that process, and then, make a long story short, we became business partners for me to scale it, and we went from a few stores to now 30, and we have 15 in the pipeline that are opening this year, so we’re definitely seeing some great growth.

Justin Ulrich
Very cool. No, that’s awesome to hear. I love bringing on guests that have experience in different industries, because not everybody who listens to our podcast belongs to any given industry, right?

We have like, we’ve got mortgage, real estate, restaurant, fitness is excellent, we’ve had a few folks from fitness on. So insights, having insights across multiple industries is great, you’ve tried and tested a lot of different things from a marketing aspect, so what do you think, given all your different experience in different spaces, what do you think is the most important aspect of local marketing, like what really moves the needle?

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, so for Crust, our number one value for local marketing is one of our values, which is commitment to give back to the local communities we live in. We quickly become the restaurant to host spirit nights, do holiday events, and give back through athletic sponsorships. 

And so when a franchisee signs up with us, we give them our local marketing playbook, which is a comprehensive roadmap designed to help them maximize local awareness and build those relationships they need in their community.

And this is completed during onboarding when franchisees can dedicate the time to do it. And this playbook guides them through the proven strategies, such as organizing the school spirit nights, engaging with local social media pages, supporting the community sports teams, and so on. 

So we want our franchisees to become the local celebrities in their community, where people know who they are and what they do in terms of community involvement. And so that’s really, that’s big for us, that local marketing playbook.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. They, a lot of my guests talk about this, about the idea of like becoming the mayor and like being as plugged into your community as possible, because your community is what, it’s like the lifeblood of your business. And if you think of like times like when COVID happened, any time when something is just terrible, your community is there to help support you and help keep you alive through those tough times.

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, so I’ll give you an example. We, in 2020, when we opened up Creston Lake Charles, Louisiana, Lake Charles was named the most battered city in America that year. We had a winter storm that froze all the pipes.

We had two hurricanes, a category five and a category three hurricane. We had a flood. I mean, it was just, it was a terrible year.

And after the first hurricane, everyone was shut down, but our landlord ended up having a company that installed generators for the shopping center. So we were able to go live within a few days after. And we ended up giving, we ended up doing pizzas at a super big discount.

I mean, like $7/$8 for a large pizza. And we had a line that we formed outside, like a drive-through line. And we were serving a thousand pizzas a day.

And let me tell you what, through that, the community really was like, man, Crust’s here for us. They could be charging us double what they normally charge, but they’re charging us half of what they normally charge. And it was just big. From that, we saw our sales skyrocket. And with a store that was fairly new, less than a year old.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, it’s incredible how those efforts can drive like loyalty that’s, it’s incomparable. We had a, I live in a small town North of Charlotte, and we have a single location, independent pizza place. And there was a family in the area that had fallen on hard times.

And I remember the owner went on the community Facebook page where this family was basically reaching out for help. And they said, you could bring your family in every meal of the day, and we got you covered. And so that type of thing, like where, whereas I’m not the person that was receiving the help, I see that and I see the effort.

And like, that was such a standup move. I go there every, we go there at least once a week. Probably more often than I want to admit we get pizza. We got four kiddos. We get a lot of pizza.

Carl Comeaux
No, I’ll bet you do.

Justin Ulrich
We go there so often. Just because of that one singular example of showing kindness and love to someone in the community, that’s got me, and not only do I, I’m a patron there quite often, but I tell my friends locally about it. And they’re like, man, that’s really cool.

And they go there as a result as well. So it really is, when you can support your community, the community is there to help support and give it back tenfold.

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, it’s so true. The more you give, the more you receive. And that’s true, man.

Justin Ulrich
That’s right. So again, you’ve got all this experience with different types of businesses. If someone’s struggling to drive business at the local level, what are some examples that you might give them to do maybe today or sometime this week to try to turn that around?

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, so number one thing you need to be doing is you need to create a blueprint of all the schools, athletic programs, churches, dealership, car dealerships, hotels. And then you need to build relationships with these companies and spend, I would say two to four hours per week. 

For us, it’s between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. because that’s the downtime between lunch and dinner. That’s the times our managers and franchisees go out to the community. And we give away free cheese breads. And we shake their hand, we get to know them.

And then through that, before we know it, we’re getting catering deals. And not only catering deals, but they’re bringing their families to come experience Crust. And so if not anything else, it doesn’t take, a lot of people think it’s a marathon to build these relationships.

It really isn’t. Like it’s a 5K or it’s a one-mile walk to be, it’s really simple. But then once you do it, then it’s long-term fruit because that relationship will just continue over time.

And each company has its own group of customers that they could tell about Crust and what they’re doing and what you’re doing. It’s just, that’s the way that we’ve grown organically. 

And I’ll tell you this, Texas Roadhouse is a perfect example. They don’t spend $1 on outside advertising. It’s all community driven. And that’s what we’re doing too.

Justin Ulrich
No, that’s very, very good example that, yeah. Not only is it key to engage with local events, but if you can somehow take the stories that are being told in that moment and capture it and share it on social and highlight the individuals within your community that you’re attending their events, or if you’re going to a game, maybe you give a quick highlight of the game or highlight some of the key players or some of the students that are there, whatever it might be, where you can start generating.

Because if you highlight folks and actually call them out on social, it makes them feel like, oh, I’m seen as important.

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, I’m a VIP.

Justin Ulrich
Exactly.

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, absolutely. You know, as a franchise, our marketing and operations team provides hands-on support from day one, working closely with these franchisees to establish clear marketing and sales goals and offering the ongoing collaboration to help them achieve them. 

So definitely, if they’re struggling and they’re part of a franchise program, they need to really lean in on operations and marketing to help them with that blueprint. And that’s one of the great reasons of joining a franchise versus doing it yourself is you have that support to help you whenever you’re struggling.

Justin Ulrich
Do you guys have, at Crust, are there folks that your franchisees can reach out to as well to help them kind of noodle on different marketing ideas?

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, so we have a marketing rep, but that’s all they do is support franchisee requests. They help set up programs for them, local store marketing. Of course, the franchisees and managers have to do it, but as far as the strategy and to walk them through what’s the best practices, that’s what they do.

And it’s helpful because some of these franchisees, they don’t know, you know, they’re brand new to marketing and they need help. And so we’re there to help support them. And it’s funny, like it’s doing their first catering order or doing their first marketing event.

And then after that, then they’re like, okay, I see what I need to do. And then from there, then now they set up five more and you’re like, oh, look, they’re good to go. And at first they were scared and now they’re pros at it.

So that’s what the marketing rep is there for is to help them through that initial phase of feeling overwhelmed, feeling scared, because it’s the sense of the unknown, right?

Justin Ulrich
Exactly, yeah, I think great is the enemy of good in many instances. And many times folks have these incredible ideas that they just kind of get bogged down in the planning and kind of strategy mapping and all this stuff. And they just get overwhelmed and they just, they never get started.

But in reality, if they just start, it doesn’t matter what the initiative is. If you’re doing an event, just plan the event. It doesn’t have to go over the top, just start with something.

Carl Comeaux
Yep, baby steps.

Justin Ulrich
Get started with a certain, exactly, a certain type of video or a customer highlight or whatever it might be, just put something out there. If you put something out there, at least you can gain learnings.

And the faster that you can gain learning, so if you could put multiple content pieces out there, you’re gonna accelerate those learnings as well as you’ll be able to see, hey, this is what’s working, this is what’s not. And you generate, you end up getting a level of comfort and your quality will increase.

Carl Comeaux
That’s right. The more you do it, the better you get, right? Repetition is the mother of skill. You just gotta rep. You gotta rep it out.

Justin Ulrich
That’s right. Speaking of repping it out, I know working out is one of your favorite things to do.

Carl Comeaux
You better believe it. Every morning for two hours, man, I’m a fiend. I’m addicted. I love it, man. Sometimes it’s three hours. It’s like my, I don’t drink coffee.

There’s no caffeine in this blood, brother, but let me tell you what, there’s endorphins in this blood. And every morning, if it’s not a run or a bike ride, it’s playing a singles match in tennis. And then always followed with a cold plunge for three minutes in 50 degree water.

And then a 20 minute sauna with some deep breathing. And then I’m ready to roll, man. It’s good.

Justin Ulrich
So now I know that your playbook, the playbook that you provide has gotta be pretty detailed because you just ran through a playbook off the cuff of what I need to be doing every morning. So speaking of tennis, I thought it might be funny to drop you into AI and see what you might look like with a 90s Audrey Agassi cut.

Carl Comeaux
Right? Yeah, man. No, I still got hair on top of my head. Thank God. Yeah, I’m not bald yet. Hey, at one time I thought I was going bald, but come to find out it was my hairstylist, she was thinning my hair too much.

And then when I left to come back to Lake Charles from Houston, my new hairstylist, I started using, I was like, man, my hair’s getting thicker. She said, well, cause your previous stylist was thinning your hair too much. She made me think it was stress.

And I’m like, no, it’s not stress. It’s your clippers, man. It’s a wild man. I know I was fixing to sell every business. I was like, you know what? I’m not stressed out. I just obviously can’t handle the stress of being a business owner. I’m just gonna go ahead and sell everything. But I’m happy that didn’t happen.

I just had to move to a new stylist. 

Justin Ulrich
Because of the clippers. 

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, all because of the clippers, man.

Justin Ulrich
Oh man. Well, before we jump off, I like to give our guests an opportunity to give somebody a shout out who they think is doing local marketing really well. Do you have anybody that comes to mind?

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, I mean, Chick-fil-A for sure. I mean, I’m sure you hear that a lot. Texas Roadhouse is another one. They’re incredible. I mean, they’re year over year sales or just continue to go up with no external advertising. So they’re absolutely, they’re both of them.

They’re crushing it. They’re both community-driven. And that’s what we’re doing. And so it’s, yeah, I would say both of them are doing it right.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, you definitely, you can’t fail with community. You can run into challenges with scale. But that’s about it. I mean, in terms of the value and the type of engagement that you get is incomparable. You build those bonds within the community that are incredible.

Carl Comeaux
It’s true, it’s true. I mean, if we’re just opening up new Crust Pizzas all over the Southeast and we’re not developing community, we’re not gonna be successful. At the end of the day, we have a great quality product, but with a great experience, but that’s not enough. We have to be ingrained in the community.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, couldn’t have said it better. So how do folks follow you, follow Crust Pizza? 

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, so you could follow us on crustfranchise.com or I’m also on LinkedIn. You can follow me there on the latest and greatest of what we’re doing at Crust. And yeah, man, we’re only a 30 store. So we’re small, but we’re mighty. And we’re focused on the Southeast. And so hopefully we’ll hit 250 stores in the next nine years.

Our main focus is Texas-Louisiana, but we’re making our way to Florida and up to Carolina is where you’re at.

Justin Ulrich
Awesome, can’t wait to see it up here. 

Carl Comeaux
Yeah, man, same here. 

Justin Ulrich
You bet, so Carl, it was a ton of fun having you in the lab. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your time with us today.

Carl Comeaux
Same here, brother, thank you.

Justin Ulrich
You bet.

As always, thanks for joining us in the Local Marketing Lab. This podcast was sponsored by Evocalize. To learn more about how Evocalize can help you grow your business, visit evocalize.com. 

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And remember, keep innovating and testing new things. You’ll never know what connects with your customers best unless you try. Until next time. Thanks for listening.