The mayor of the mile: How to dominate your local market

Justin Ulrich
Awesome. Super excited to have you on. I’ve known you for a while. Just interact a ton at all different events. Have a lot of fun together. It’s about time we get you in the lab. Maybe if we could start by, you can tell us a little bit about your journey and kind of how you got to where you are today at Big Chicken.

Sam Stanovich
You know, it’s been an interesting ride. It’s been one of non-traditional starting, you know, as an undergrad at Johnson Wales. Left to go to Marriott International, spent a decade there, never thought I’d ever leave Marriott. Took a pivot and went in the association land where I got to do destination tours and marketing for 33 communities in four counties in the great state of Illinois. 

Left there to go to the National Restaurant Association where I got to launch the ServSafe Alcohol program and work with that amazing team and then head up industry relations where I met Josh Halpern ten years ago. I was the person who coordinated the efforts and sponsorship between Anheuser Busch and the NRA. And we did some wonderful things to support the troops in the industry. 

Our paths kind of split and I left and became a restaurateur and an entrepreneur because I always had it in my blood. So went out and became an area developer for Firehouse Subs and franchisee and matter of fact, my better half and I won the 2023 Captain’s Award for Catering this year. She’s just killing it back at the ranch in Chicago, opened an independent restaurant, teach a little junior college. 

And for the last three years been senior vice president of franchise leadership and alliances for Big Chicken. I got brought back into the fold three years ago from Josh, called me up, was working on this project. We always said we wanted to work together and I said, great, let’s go do something that nobody’s ever done before. And, you know, we are in less than three years have over 40 restaurants, both non-traditional brick and mortars, open. 

We’re international. We have the only intergalactical franchise agreement signed to go into outer space because we are pioneers and visionaries. So we have that. So everybody chucks and chuckles and laughs now, but think about 100 years ago with airplanes. You know, you didn’t fly. You know, people weren’t flying like they are now. You know, now. You know, ten minutes later, you’d be on an airplane going somewhere. So things are changing. 

But what hasn’t changed in all of this is the lightning in a bottle that restaurants provide to their guests for whether it is the 10, 20, 30 hours and a half, or 2 hours that they walk in the door, that they want to do something different. They want to break from their day to day life, and they want to consume some calories to fire up their engines, and where better than do it, you know, I think the first choice anybody should go to is Big Chicken. But, you know, that’s a little self serving. 

But restaurants are the red thread of America, right? It is. We have the ups and downs. We’ve survived market crashes. We’ve survived Covid. People want to eat out. People want that experience. And I don’t care how much great AI is out there and how wonderful AI can make a chicken sandwich look, you cannot consume an AI chicken sandwich. You need to taste it, and you need somebody to serve it to you, and you need hospitality. 

So it doesn’t matter. All the other things, it matters. Serving a great product at a great price, you know, for whatever scale you are, you know, whether you’re QSR all the way to fine dining. Right?

Justin Ulrich
Yeah.

Sam Stanovich
Providing amazing service because you can serve great food and have horrible service.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah.

Sam Stanovich
And lose the customer. So you have to always create that balance.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, it’s one of those things that I think has been. And a lot of people talk about this, but it’s kind of been lost in Covid, and we’re getting back to it and kind of relearning, you know, the hospitality component of going out to eat. 

Because during COVID it was like, that was like your one thing. If you could do it, if you could get out and get something to eat, it was like a break away from the madness, from being stuck in your house, and you get to go enjoy the thing that you want to enjoy. Even when the economy’s down, it’s something that you could still afford to do for the most part, at least once in a while to get that, you know, that feeling, the nostalgia, you know, that comes with eating your favorite meal.

Sam Stanovich
Yeah, 100%. Because. Because food creates comfort. Food in time of need creates comfort. I mean, if you think about your best and worst times in your life are always have food engaged with it. Right. And I don’t want to talk about the bad times, but let’s talk about the good times. When you’re celebrating an event, what do you have? You’ve got food and beverage. Right. 

When you want to do something, you’ve got food and beverage. Right. There’s always that opportunity to serve it, and there’s value and there’s price points for everybody. You know, it’s a massive economy for the country. And when you look at the stats from the National Restaurant Association on the food share, the dollar percentage of food dollars spent away from home is not retracted. Right. 

All through these things, we’re still spending money and dollars out. And, I think, you know, everybody went into the whole Covid rage of going and cleaning out Costco. And what did they learn? Yeah, I don’t care how many food network shows you watch or how much you try to do it, you’re not making what we’re making in restaurants. 

One, you don’t have the equipment, heat or temperature, and the ingredients. And even if you have all the ingredients, you still don’t have the skill sets. So you could try your best. Yeah, you can try your best. It’s still going to taste better in a restaurant.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. And it’s just the experience of being there, too. You know, wherever you go, you know, you’re able to sit down, enjoy the thing that you love. You don’t have to do the work to get it. You can still, you’re going with others. You could enjoy the time and the company with others. It’s like people bond over food they’ve done since the beginning of time.

Sam Stanovich
100%. It is experiential. Right. That’s why every restaurant isn’t just a plain painted white box. It is about the completeness, experience of coming in. What are the visuals? What are the motivations? People eat with their senses. What do they look, feel, touch, even before you get that food into your mouth, what are all those other things that have wrapped and got you stimulated coming into it? 

Because if it didn’t count or it didn’t matter, then you’d have none of it and everybody would just paint everything white and it would just be robotic. Right. People want to talk to people. People want to engage with people. And if you don’t, then you order it online. 

But at the end of the day, you know, online ordering is its percentage. Right. There are still those folks who want to come out, they want to break bread, they want to sit at a table, you know.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. You guys are growing like crazy. I see. I mean, at every event I go to, you’re obviously like, front and center on stage, but also just the growth from location count. You said 40 within three years. How many was it?

Sam Stanovich
Yeah. Well, then also includes our non-traditional. You know, we’re building very differently. And we have unique opportunities because we have a unique boss. Right. So when we first started, we had the opportunities to go into stadiums, arena, cruise lines, and really get our flavors out there. The opportunity that it afforded us was the opportunity to sample our food and get good feedback. 

So as we started developing franchises, we were going into non-traditional. Cause they’re easier, faster, and cheaper to open because they’re not running 365 days a year. And now we’re starting to catch up and we’ll soon overtake the non-traditional count with true brick-and-mortar count. It just takes time. 

I mean, again, we’re, you know, as the entire brand, we’re only at this point in 2024, six years old. So we’re still. We’re still in our infancy when you look at it, right. And we’ve only been franchising for a little over three years at this point. So by the time you create an FDD start process at leases, you know, it’s not magic that you can get these things open, but with the non-traditional, we can definitely move it faster and take advantages of looking at different population segments.

Justin Ulrich
What do you guys attribute, you think here to your success and to your growth? You know, when it comes to, like, is it the experience, is the customer experience when they come in, is it the actual food that they’re experiencing? Like, what is it?

Sam Stanovich
That’s combination, right? We put smiles on people’s faces. That’s our job. Our job every day is to create smiles. So to give them a, whatever they order in a fun environment with fun music, with fun things going on, and create their journey and turn that frown upside down. Did you like that?

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, I did.

Sam Stanovich
I was expecting a little more reaction, but great smiles. Right? Because our founder. What is Shaquille known for? When you see Shaquille, he…

Justin Ulrich
Happiness.

Sam Stanovich
Yes. And that’s part of our values. It’s the Shaquille way. He brings happiness to people. So how do we bring Shaquille to the masses. Well, we funnel it down through food and we funnel it down through those months.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, I mean, from what I see, you guys have an incredible brand. You know, how are, what are you like coaching your franchisees, your operators to do at the local level to engage with their customer base, to drive foot traffic, get people in the doors, stuff like that?

Sam Stanovich
look, at the end of the day, restaurants are local. I don’t care if you have Shaquille, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, you name the celebrity athlete. That helps trial. Right? That helps that first-time customer. That’s the brand affinity brings them in. 

At the end of the day, our restaurants and our partners and teammates have to serve great food with friendly people. That’s it. And all restaurants are local. No matter how you look at it. I don’t care what brand you are. The best brands have the best operators who embrace that local mentality. And I always like to talk about the mayor of the mile, right? 

Not that you’re sitting in every coffee shop every morning shaking hands, but you are shaking hands. You’re working with your chamber, you’re participating in the things that matter to the people in your community. And it’s very easy. But here’s the deal. It’s very tedious. The grind is hard. It’s not when people are looking, it’s when people aren’t looking. Right? That’s the challenge. 

When I was building my restaurants and my independent businesses, we would do things late at night. We would communicate, send emails. It’s a 24/7 business. Anybody different, they’ve never put their name on a paycheck before, right? But once your name goes on that paycheck and you become responsible for those employees, you have to go grind it out. 

And if anybody has figured out the silver bullet of restaurants, because there’s a lot more smarter people listening to this and that are in our room in all of these conferences that we go to, it would have been figured out. 

But at the end of the day, it just boils down to providing a great product, great service, and yelling from the mountaintops in your local area that you’re open. Right. And your reputation that you’re a partner with the community. And if you do that, you’re going to win nine times out of ten.

Justin Ulrich
100%. Do you have examples of, you talked a little bit about like going to chamber events and stuff like that? What are some other examples that you can give where folks can engage with their community? 

Like, you know, we hear about find others that are nearby to do, you know, co-promotions with and try to get stuff in their locations and help them bring their materials into your locations. Try to co-promote other people’s businesses. What are some other things that folks could do today or this week?

Sam Stanovich
You know, that’s a great point. Right? So collaboration is key, right? It helps divide the marketing dollars because, you know, you have to look at your footprint both in a digital world, in a nondigital world, and you want to look for brains that you, you know, maybe they’re your neighbors or they’re the dentist’s office, you know, where can you co-collaborate to reduce your cost but get higher access and get new mailing lists. Right? 

But let’s start with the chamber, because a lot of people talk about the chamber and I always say, are you really a member or do you just stroke the check? Right? Are you really engaged? Because most chambers, the restaurant people will always find an excuse of why not to go. But the doctor, the lawyer, the real estate person, all the services businesses are all actively engaged. 

And if you as the restaurateur, provide that same level of activation, you will get the reward because you’ve built the relationship, you know? And people buy from people they like. People buy from those who are our partners. Can you host a chamber event and then dial it down? Can you work with a real estate agent and help support them at their open houses? 

Again, you have to look outside in collaboration with other service providers to give you access to names and lists, but you need to be present. If you don’t go to the chamber event, if you don’t send in content for the newsletter, if you’re not willing to host an event, you will, again, your name’s going to go on the website and somebody may or may click through. 

And so many people are like, oh, I wrote my check for $X hundred dollars and I didn’t get any business, but what do you want them to do? They didn’t get to know you. You’re not selling yourself or your services, right? And if you’re local, right? And generally, when you look at chambers, the stronger ones are very tied in with the government, right, and the politicians and the, all the stuff that goes on in local city hall. 

There was a former big fortune ten restaurant group CEO once told me, he goes, Sam, he goes, you’re getting into the sandwich business. Think of yourself as the father of the bride. Where’s the father of the bride in your restaurant? Is it behind the cash register or in front of the cash register. I said, probably in front. He goes, exactly. You need to be shaking and greeting your customers hands. 

And that’s not saying you won’t do this, but if you’re behind, you’re making the sandwich, you’re doing something wrong. Right now, you need to be there when you’re busy, right. But you need to be cultivating those opportunities that are walking in your door. So every day you need to take at least an hour to figure out how to be the mayor of the mile in your community. 

And whether it’s dropping flyers off on the way home, it’s attending a chamber event, it’s going to the school district because they’re having back-to-school celebrations and coupons or coloring sheets. It’s not hard. You think about all the activities, and hopefully most of the folks listening live in their markets. 

What are you doing with your kids or your family? What are those community things that are going on in your neighborhood? Attach yourself in there, wear your branded shirt, you know, from your restaurant brand, and go walk around, right. 

And celebrate that you’re an American entrepreneur, or if you’re a franchisee, an American franpreneur, right. But you are making this country great because you are creating jobs, you are creating taxes, you are creating community. So celebrate it. You need to talk about the things that you do.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, 100%. You know, all these things we talk about, if you think of, if I’m trying to build a business from the ground up, building your audience and getting awareness is like the hardest thing to do on your own. So the easiest, the fastest way to scale the growth of your audience is to do it through others who already have audiences created. 

And so if you’re going to chamber events, there’s a whole slew of folks that are going to be there. If you’re doing collabs with other folks, there’s a whole slew of followers that they have. So if you could try to figure out ways to not only attend those events or do those collabs, but also highlight as many folks in your community as possible and leverage social media, which is, like, completely free for the most part. 

Share their stories and gain access to their audiences through tagging and engagement with folks. And not only will you help build your own audience much more quickly, but you’ll also build rapport and trust in a relationship with the folks that you’re highlighting. And they will, ten times out of ten, they’ll recommend going to your location before anywhere else’s. Because guess what? Nobody else is out there giving them free marketing.

Sam Stanovich
And be authentic to it, right. It doesn’t mean you got to sell in your tag in your post, right? You know, us who are generation x and older have a lot of issue with video. Use your teammates who are younger to create the clip and post it. Again, to your point. Shout from the rooftops and it’s free to do it on your social channels, right. And cross collaborate and tag and be happy to stand in the picture, right. And then share it. 

You know, I just, I’ve talked to many folks about their community day programs. Supporting the community with the percentage give back is great, but you also need the return on it, right. Because you can’t just give away all your money. So in my world, I look at it as a very simple three step program, right? 

One to two weeks before, they need to promote it on their social channels, right. All of their folks and you in it. The day of, they need to tag and post the activity going on in there, right, to all their channels and yourself. And then a week to two weeks later is when you give them the check. You celebrate what they were able to raise in your restaurant. 

So just on simplicity, you have three posts on somebody else’s site right there. And you encourage them to repost it because those schools want to raise money. Well, if everybody reshares and say, hey, bring this flyer in, now you’re getting maximum effort for the give back that you’re giving. 

Because again, as an operator, I am happy to write the check, bring more people, blow my doors away, have the line 100 deep because they’re all there to support the school and give back, but also share it and come back and visit us often. And let’s continue to work together. 

And if you go to somebody else’s fundraiser, support them. You go to the baseball game for Little League and you’re supporting. Take a video again in your branded shirt, hey, support Sam’s Town Little League. We’re out here cheering the kids on today. You know, let’s go and teach them how to do it the right way.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Let me ask you this. From your perspective, thinking about local marketing, what is a brand that really stands out to you or resonates with the way that they’re doing things?

Sam Stanovich
You know, I guess I could talk a couple things on that. You know, I do have a franchisee out in Arizona who supports AAU basketball, actually. Yeah, we actually have a Big Chicken basketball team.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, yeah.

Sam Stanovich
Yeah. For teenagers. And…

Justin Ulrich
Is Shaq on it? 

Sam Stanovich
No, he’s a little aged out at this point, but it is Big Chicken. We put them in our, we put them in the Big Chicken logo and uniforms, and you can check it out on Instagram. And they’re doing a great job in Gilbert, Arizona, you know, promoting it. 

I think, you know, other authentic brands that do a terrific job at community is Firehouse Subs. I mean, they raise the money through the roundup program and give back locally all over the country. I know in the Chicago market, millions of dollars have been given back to needy departments who could not get the equipment they need to do their job without the foundation and the collaboration between the store, the foundation and the parent franchisor to make it happen. 

You know, I give you a great example. Stone Park, Illinois. Their police officers, very small community in the state of Illinois, maybe 1.3 sq. Mi in total. Their officers’ bulletproof vests were outdated, and because of the size and economics, they needed to replace them. We went and applied and got all the new officers, part-time and auxiliary officers, new plates and carriers. Right. That they couldn’t afford and didn’t have to come out of their pocket. 

And that’s true to the mission of Firehouse Subs and their public safety foundation. But I think there’s so many great things that are out there in the community that work with Boys and Girls clubs, that work with the Red Cross, that have different charities, cancer organizations. There are so many things. You just, you got to pick what’s important to you and true to who you are and go support it, right. And bring those people in and do it for the right reasons. 

And, you know, when you’re a true participant in the community, the returns will come back to you. You can’t just simply say, oh, I donated a $100 today. Did I get $500 back in sales? Because it never works. It never works. You have to go for the true spirit of what you’re there for. And if you’re the true mayor of the mile and you’re the true community partner, it’s not about the check. It’s about all the other pieces, and it’s about the grind, and it’s about being present.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, I had a guest on one time that he was talking about charities that he supported, and one of them was called RIP Medical Debt. And it’s a foundation where they buy up medical debt and allow you to pay for it, like, for a penny on the dollar. So if you raise money, you raise like $10,000, you can go pay off, what is it, a million dollars in medical debt or whatever it might be. 

And then you can reach out to the folks with a kind note saying, hey, just want to let you know that you’re free and clear of your medical debt, thanks to your friends at XYZ, you know, Big Chicken or whatever. It’s a really cool. There’s tons of cool associations or foundations like that that you can support. Just a matter of finding out, like, what’s out there. You know, there’s so many different things. I’d never heard of that one before.

Sam Stanovich
Well, in the first step is just getting outside your four walls, right? Putting it on your calendar, making the effort, participating. Every community in America has got groups. Every community in America has nonprofits. What is going to motivate you and your team members to go be successful at it, right. 

And then you cross collaborate and you use it and you talk it. And again, you have to share your story. Just like everybody knows everything in what’s going on in the restaurant, right. If you look back traditionally at your local greek diner, right. You know their families, you know their birthdays, you know the cars they drive, the clothes they wear. 

Restaurants are community centers. How are you engaging your community? Making it a community center. Right. So you’re either inviting people in or you’re going out. But it’s a two-way street nowadays, and the street just became supercharged with the thing called social media. Free, right?

Justin Ulrich
Yeah.

Sam Stanovich
I mean, you can do all these things on social media that are free to talk about your brand and your activity.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Literally never before have people had access to do marketing at the level that they can today with social media.

Sam Stanovich
And don’t be scared. Like, the best, most viral videos are those true and authentic videos that go live. You know, a friend of mine, Jeff Mauro, the Sandwich King, he’s on food network. You know, he tells his legacy story. I got to interview him one time, and he wanted to be, you know, compete on these shows. And he created his tapes. 

And the first three, I think it was three. Don’t quote me, Jeff. I’m trying to remember the story real quick. I wasn’t planning on telling it today, but the first three tapes he edited and thought he was creating the content that they wanted to see, and he failed three times in a row, and he put a lot of money and invested into it. 

He chose to go back for the fourth time, and he said, if the fourth time doesn’t work, then I’m done. I’m throwing it in this, that, and the other. And on the fourth time, he was inspired, I believe, by his wife to just make an authentic tape of who he was.

Skip all the professional not trying to what they want. Just who are you? Right. And what happened changed his life. He got. He went on, he participated, and now he’s got the media career that he wanted in the food space. So don’t worry when you’re doing social media. 

And if I can be the example of it, I speak Chicago. I sometimes stumble over my words. I make a cut. I post it on LinkedIn. And I am who I am, and I’m the same guy that we’re here today talking, that I’ll be, you know, next week at QSR. I’m just passionate about the business and just keep trying because I listen to my old podcasts and how bad they were, and they’re just getting. So just practice.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, no, that’s perfect. I think it’s a great note to end on. Yeah, get out there. Just go try it. The more you do it, the better you’re going to get. The better your quality is going to get, and the algorithms will serve you up even more. 

One thing I wanted to just tee up real quick, so can you give a quick two second primer on the feud between dog and chicken?

Sam Stanovich
So this started several years ago with shared cancer with fastcasual.com. thanks to Zack at Ovation for sponsoring the dog versus chicken showdown. The feud isn’t about dog versus chicken and Dog Haus versus Big Chicken. It’s really about the feud of us all competing in the industry and striving to win.

 And every year at the Restaurant Franchising and Innovation Summit, Sharon is kind enough to give us an hour on stage to talk about the topics of the day and then how we can provide hard hitting punches for you to go out and make more money in your restaurants and knock them down. And of course, we always have a vote on one way or the other who did the best that day. 

I’m still the disputed king of the ring, but we have a lot of fun. CJ Ramirez over at Dog Haus and I are always available. Again, we’re serving up smiles in the restaurant industry. You can see by the poster behind me. You know, we have some fun realm at it. You see, you’ve seen it in action. Hopefully, Sharon invites us back for 2025 for year four. We’ll see. 

But it’s a great time, and we just want to give back. We try a lot of stuff. I try a lot of things. I have failed at more campaigns and more marketing and more posts than I could ever shake a stick at. And the ones where I thought I was going to fail end up being the winners. You just got to keep trying. You got to refine your craft. No different, you know, as a restaurateur that you continue to refine your food. You have to refine your social media craft. 

And, you know, Shawn Walchef, you know, sends me a daily note. When am I going to put up a daily Instagram video post? I’m like, not confident. Once a week right now. I’m, like, working on it. But, you know, it takes a, you know, freshling at Branded Hospitality says, it takes a village. We’ve got our tribe and we’re all, we’re all just trying to inspire each other to share. And I hope some of you listen to this. 

Got one nugget or one motivation to go out and be the mayor of their mile today, tomorrow, and in the future. And hopefully they post a little social media wrapped around it.

Justin Ulrich
I’m sure I’ve got a little nugget for you to share on social. Little nugget, pun intended. And we talk about competing with each other. This is one man that I would not want to compete with. Chicken suit.

Sam Stanovich
That is impressive. That is no doubt that is going to go viral. And the fact that you were able to make that while we were recording this here today is going to be fun. That’s going viral.

Justin Ulrich
I’ll go ahead now. I’ll share it. We’ll make sure it goes viruses, I like to say, and I’ll get it over to you. Although it doesn’t have the value of an NFT, it’s still pretty fun to have.

Sam Stanovich
I don’t know. Josh Halperin may try to inspire somebody to get that as a tattoo.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, I’m sending it to him. I’m sending it to him. Awesome. Well, hey, this is a ton of fun having you on. Before I let you go, though, how do people follow you, Sam, and follow Big Chicken?

Sam Stanovich
So I’m easy to follow on Instagram at @chicago_sam. LinkedIn, Sam Stanovich and then bigchicken.com. And we’re on Instagram. We are @bigchickenshaq and on Facebook, Big Chicken.

Justin Ulrich
So very cool. Yeah, check them out on social. Lots of great content, inspiring stuff. Like Sam said, he’s getting into doing more of the posts, building in public, sharing his story, showing you exactly what you should be doing as an organization so you could follow that template. 

Sam, it was a ton of fun having you in the lab. Thanks again for joining us.

Sam Stanovich
Hey, thanks for letting me be in the lab today. You have a great day, great weekend, and we’ll see you soon.

Justin Ulrich
We’ll see ya.

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.