The secret to building a successful business in the food industry with co-founder of Savory Fund Andrew Smith
Andrew Smith, co-founder of and managing director of Savory Fund, on the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, how he went from building a tech company to a restaurant empire, and what it takes to create a concept that resonates with customers and drives revenue growth.
Clint Betts
Andrew, thank you so much for coming on. The first question I have to ask you is, when did you know you were going to be an entrepreneur? At what point in your life did you come to that realization? Like, "I'm going to build companies, I'm going to create things, I'm going to be an entrepreneur?"
Andrew Smith
I think the first time I thought about that was ... My dad was a doctor. He was a dentist. He was a forensic dentist. He was on the crime scenes all the time and identifying people that had been killed or whatever. And I remember my father said—
Clint Betts
What? Your dad was a forensic dentist?
Andrew Smith
Yeah. He was a forensic dentist. And I had a very traumatic childhood because he would always have all of these case things all over his office, and going in there, it was like a Slayer video inside his office because there were pictures everywhere of people. And it was awful. I could not do it.
But I remember one time my father said, "You got to do something that you're going to be needed and relevant at all times. Doesn't matter what the market's doing, you'll be relevant." I'm like, "Okay." And he's like, "You should be a doctor, a dentist." And I'm like, "Okay."
And so I was thinking I would probably do that. "My dad's successful. I'll do the same thing." But as I kind of saw what he worked on, and people and looking in their mouths all day and stuff, I'm like, "I just can't do this. I'm going to go into business, dad." And he's just like, "Okay. You know, business is up and down, it fluctuates a lot. You really should do something that's pretty stable." And I'm just like, "Nah, I'm going to do business. I can't do the medical thing."
So I thought early on, "I'm going to be a businessman." Didn't know what I wanted to do in business, but I think early on, I knew I was going to go into business.
Clint Betts
And you started a tech company.
Andrew Smith
I started a tech company. And I don't think I was thinking, "I'm going to go do a tech company,” but I remember living in Provo, Utah, and it was with some of my roommates, and a couple of them were computer science engineers, and I was going into business finance. And one day, one of them came home from school and he said, as we were watching TV, he's like, "What do you think you could do with that Jaguar commercial if you could take that commercial and you could put it on the web?" And mind you, this is 1998, 1999. I mean, the web was still fairly new.
Clint Betts
Oh yeah.
Andrew Smith
That's kind of crazy too, Clint, because we can actually say, in our lifetime, the internet started, right? None of our kids would even understand that. They grew up with it.
And I'm like, "Yeah, that would be really super dope." And he's like, "I think I'm going to come up with a way of how to do that." So he built this codec and we had this technology, and sure enough, the first person I called just to see if we could sell the technology was Jaguar. And we showed them how we had created this commercial and put it on the web, and they were our first customer. And I said, "Of course we can send this out to the web and to your customers and everything else." And I called him and I said, "Dude, I just signed Jaguar. We've got to go ahead and build the tech."
So, we actually took the plane off the runway before we even had tech. And we started from there. We started building this cool streaming media technology. And that's what we did before, of course, the.com world blew up.
But that was my first venture, in streaming media within the tech world.
Clint Betts
Well, how did that go? Like you said, the .com bubble blew up, but how did that go for you?
Andrew Smith
Yeah, it was tough. It was tough because we had all the things in the makings that you would want in a business. We had this really cool technology, we were a super hot company here locally, where we were in the fabric of the community, we were known, we had people coming, wanting to work with us. We were making waves. We were working with clients from the east coast to the west coast. And it was super fun. It was exciting. There was a lot of momentum, and we had raised some private equity money.
And of course, the 2000, 2001 bubble hit. And we were really pre going out to market or doing a big round when the market of course crashed, and when it crashed it was a tough spot to be in. When you're a CEO and you have employees and responsibilities and shareholders, and a market shifts like that, that much, like it did then there were many nights I was looking at the ceiling going, "I'm 25 years old," 24, I think, at the time. "What the hell do I know how to deal with a market crash?" Right?
But the nice thing is, we had some really good customers who didn't fire us. And so we kept on having those revenues through the .com bubble burst. And we ended up selling our company to one of our biggest competitors out of Huntington Beach on the backside of the .com bubble. So it actually turned out better than it could have. And I think a lot of that was just resiliency and the tenacity we had as a team. But it was a painful journey, and one that I'll never forget. I mean, I still feel the pains you feel when you go through a market shift like that. It was tough.
Clint Betts
Well, what leadership lessons did you learn during all of that? How did that transform how you led the company?
Andrew Smith
Yeah. I think I led that company and then led every company since then the same way. And that is, you know how you look at that circus guy that's spinning the plates and they're all perfectly spinning, and then they got their toes up and stuff? Like how the hell is that working? But you know, the plates start doing this sooner or later, and then they start dropping. And I always have thought, with my executive teams doing business, I'm like, "Listen, the plates are all just spinning. They're killer. We're doing so good."
And that's when I actually get the most nervous, because things don't just keep going that way forever. They just don't. And businesses that are growing like this right now, every single day, it doesn't mean that they're going to do that forever. Some companies do. I mean, Apple has, you know, for the longest time, but for the most part, I learned that you just have to be ready for the unknown because the unknown most likely is going to happen. Sooner or later in your journey, you're going to hit a wall and you're going to have to reinvent yourself or pivot or come up with a new strategy to get around, to work around those issues.
And I think that that's what I learned. And that, boy, it really matters to have a loyal team, people that are dedicated to the cause, dedicated to the company, because that's when you need them the most. And I feel like that's when I've galvanized the most with my teams, is when we've gone through the hardest times.
Clint Betts
So, when I was a young whipper snapper, an entrepreneur, a young kid, I
owned a deli on Center Street in Provo, where—
Andrew Smith
We've talked about this. You were a restaurant guy.
Clint Betts
I was a restaurant guy, and I was terrible at it, by the way. Your fund, which we'll talk about in a second, would have never invested in this deli. It was crazy. I was like naming sandwiches after-
Andrew Smith
I would have invested into you though.
Clint Betts
I was naming sandwiches after Bob Dylan and The Beatles and stuff. I couldn't have cared less about it. I was just like, "How do I not work at a call center while I'm going to school?" Right?
Andrew Smith
Yeah.
Clint Betts
So I was doing this. And then as soon as I could, I sold the thing and I got out. Most people get out of the restaurant business and go to tech. That's what I did. As soon as I could, I got out of it.
You did the reverse. You started in tech and then went into the restaurant business. How did that happen?
Andrew Smith
Yeah, it's because I went from tech, to tech, to tech. So I sold my first company, didn't really enjoy being a public company. We were public. We of course were reporting to the street every quarter. And it was an experience for a young 25 year old entrepreneur. It was a great experience. But after three reporting quarters, I decided to leave, started another company that was a financial software company and sold it to one of my clients, and then started my next one, which was a construction software in the tech industry, but within the construction and finance industries.
And it was fantastic. I loved it. Again, raised a nice large round from a San Francisco Bay private equity firm, had an unbelievable board of directors, had an unbelievable team, signing construction companies and developers across the nation, and actually in North America, up north in Canada. And again, it was like, everything was this, Clint. It was just incredible. I was like, "Nothing can go wrong. All the plates are spinning again perfectly."
And that damn 2007, 2008 cycle hit. Right? And so I'm like, "I time things perfectly wrong." Everybody thinks, "Oh, Andrew is so successful." I'm like, "No, I actually time things perfectly wrong. So beware."
But no. Before the 2007-08 crash, we went through that, did the same thing as I did in 2000 and 2001. You have to fire some people, you got to get down to the basics. And we survived through that, and then ultimately that business sold as well.
But when I looked back over my 10-11 year career in tech, the things that I loved about tech still remain to this day. And that's why I personally have invested into tech and I'm in funds that are in tech, because I still have to scratch that itch. I mean, it doesn't go away.
But the one thing that I was really intrigued with is, I looked at different segments of the market that I was intrigued with and there were the ones that were less affected by the cyclicality of the markets. The ones that are more shock absorbent are the ones where, whether the market is up or down, you still need and you still spend in that segment. And that was food and beverage.
And I don't know if it was because I was from Chicago and it's more of an eat out town and I was kind of, I guess, a foodie. People say, "Well, I'm a foodie, so I should go into food." Not necessarily. But I just thought, you know, it's a segment that, as you look at it, it's just always growing and it doesn't have these big shocks up and down, you know? And I'm like, "Boy, that would sure be nice if I didn't have to prepare for another gigantic shock."
Now let's fast forward 12 years and think about a pandemic, but no one would have ever been able to tell me that it was going to have a shock like that. But for the most part, I was happy about it being more stable.
Clint Betts
So, what was the first restaurant you bought and what was that process like? What was the decision making process with that? How did you come about it?
Andrew Smith
Yeah. There's really three ways you enter the industry. You come up with an idea, you get your grandma's recipes, you get someone who knows anything about cooking, or maybe you come up with it, and then you set up shop. You go find a piece of real estate and you open it up and you hope that your neighbors and their friends and their friends and their friends come. That's pretty risky, right? I mean, that's super risky, but that's the way the whole fabric of the restaurant industry begins.
The other way is to find someone who has done that and has done that multiple times and then started to franchise, and you're like, "Well, I really like your restaurant or your concept or your cookie shop or whatever, and I want to franchise it." So then you can become a franchise. They provide you with the menu and the recipes and the know-how and the training. And so then you're kind of a presto food and beverage person because of the franchise segment.
The other one is that you can find a brand that has done the same thing, that hasn't franchised, get involved with them, and then just be a corporate owned enterprise. Partner with them, buy in, buy them out.
So that's really the three ways you can get into the industry. When I was getting into the industry, I thought, "I am good at finance and building businesses and raising capital and leading the team, but I don't know the damn first thing about restaurants," right?
Clint Betts
Did you call your parents and you're like, "Hey, does grandma have any cool recipes that I could ... ?"
Andrew Smith
"Do you have any secret recipes that would be amazing?" And they said no. They said, "No, we have none."
Clint Betts
We didn't eat well as kids. You don't want to do that.
Andrew Smith
Yeah.
So the one thing that we looked at, my wife and I, is we thought, "Well, where do we like to go to eat?" And before this, we were talking about one of your favorite restaurants in Provo. It was similar for us. We used to eat all the time at Kneaders Bakery & Café. It was a local bakery and cafe shop, had four units, they were building their fifth and they'd been around for like a decade. And I approached the founders and said, "I'd love to be involved in Kneaders and build one right next to my house in Highland, Utah."
And so they gave me the rights to do that, and we opened it up, and we were presto restaurant people like overnight. I mean, it took a while to build a building and it took a while to be taught, but we opened the business and we really learned the business by being in the business and doing it every day and being busy. I mean, it was busy.
And it was right in the middle of a recession too. Clint, if you remember 2008, we were in a pretty horrific recession. And it was a real testament to the industry. When the market was down, businesses were going out of business, the unemployment rate was crazy, if you can remember that, but the restaurant was absolutely packed, bustling.
And I thought, "I made the right choice this time because we're crushing it while everybody else is looking at figuring out how to lick their wounds and rebuild."
Clint Betts
Yeah. Can I tell you something?
Andrew Smith
Yeah.
Clint Betts
The timeframe you're talking about is when I owned my deli, and as Kneaders was packed and super busy, the exact opposite is happening to me. I'm blasting like, “Don't Think Twice, It's All Right” by Bob Dylan and just sitting at the cash register waiting for someone to come in. I'm like, "I don't even know if I want people to come in here. This would be crazy. I’ve got to make a sandwich. What's going on here?"
So I remember looking at Kneaders, I was like, "So this is everything that I could never do. I can't even make like one of the sandwiches at Kneaders, let alone everything that they do,” because they do all the cool desserts, all that type of stuff.
Yeah, Kneaders is unbelievable. I don't even know how I made it through that time period. Luckily, everything was super cheap back then. I could never do that again.
Andrew Smith
Yeah. Yeah.
No, Kneaders was one of those concepts that in our minds was the right place, right time. It was the right type of food too. People liked the comfort aspect of it. They were a freestanding building with a drive-thru. It was before fast casual restaurants really had come into the scene. That was a new terminology being thrown our way. It actually was the new term; fast casual. Not as unhealthy as QSR fast food, but not a sit down tableside experience with a waitress. Better quality ingredients, whatever. I'm like, "This is going to go somewhere."
And we were right. We struck it at the right time. We negotiated an agreement with the founders to grow out Kneaders everywhere west of the Mississippi and the rest was history. You know, in about an eight year period of time, we built 50 of those. So 50 Kneaders, 4,000 employees, you know, a hundred million dollar business. It was an unbelievable run.
And we learned a ton in the industry. One thing we learned is that franchising is great, but what we thought would be really unique is to actually buy into a brand, own the intellectual property with the founders, keep the founders with us and then grow their concept to the point where it could be maybe franchise ready.
And so we pivoted a little bit towards the end of that history.
Oh, and as a side note, we owned 72 Little Caesars too. So we did the Kneaders and then we bought some Little Caesars and kept buying them. And so we had 122 restaurants across the country at the same time.
But when we started deciding to get into brands where we could own the IP with the founders and grow them more the way we thought would be the right way to grow those brands, we sold the Kneaders, sold the Caesars and then really have been, since then, focused on being part owners with the founders of the intellectual property and building them to be scale-ready so that they're national brands.
So that's really what our focus is now.
Clint Betts
And you've done that with a number of brands like R&R BBQ, Mo' Bettahs is there.
Andrew Smith
Mo' Bettahs.
Clint Betts
And by the way, the Little Caesar's thing is sweet because as I was owning that deli, I would never eat at my own deli, I would eat at Little Caesars. That's where I would eat. It's like five bucks, and it's the whole day. One pizza, that's your whole day.
Andrew Smith
Yeah. If you haven't eaten Little Caesars pizza in your lifetime, you're not American in my mind. You only eat Little Caesar's if you're American, especially if you have a bunch of boys at home. You bring them home, there are 30 pizzas and you haven't broke the bank to get it.
But yeah, it was a great brand. We learned a lot too with big, large franchise systems; what to do, what not to do. It was a great testing ground for us to understand that world.
Clint Betts
Yeah. I love Little Caesars.
And the company you're talking about that you did all this was called Four Foods Group and you've since pivoted again into launching a fund where you invest in a restaurant.
I mean, explain what the fund does and what made you decide this is the way you're going to go.
Andrew Smith
Yeah. The history of Four Foods Group really was, Shauna, my wife, she started it. In fact, I was just getting out of the tech arena when Shauna had started the business. She was running the business with some of her sisters-in-law and sister. About six, seven months after we had started, I joined her. So I was not the first employee of Four Foods Group. I was actually later. She hired me later.
And so Four Foods Group was really the basis and the foundation for Kneaders and for Little Caesar's assets. And as we got into businesses like R&R BBQ and Mo' Bettahs, and even Swig, we own Swig as well, we decided with the brands that we owned the intellectual property and we were building them to be scale ready and to be franchise ready in the future for maybe another owner, to dispose of the assets that we had in Four Foods Group, to call it a day.
It was an amazing tenure that we had with Four Goods Group, unbelievable success story. And we just really had an enjoyable time with a lot of partners in that business as well.
So I pivoted by partnering with Mercato Partners. It's a local firm. Greg Warnock is the founder. He's kind of the oracle, original godfather of private equity VC here in Utah. He just is. And we've been friends for a long time. In fact, we raced semi-pro Porsche together, and we just became really good friends. And we discussed him wanting to venture out and start new practices within Mercato, under their umbrella. They were doing early stage investing into tech and to consumer products. So we have a lot of experience with that. And then they were doing growth investing in it as well.
And the thing that was staggering to Greg is just to see the history that we had with Four Foods and thought, "Oh, you can actually make money in food and beverage." I'm like, "You can make a lot of money in food and beverage." And the other thing is that there's actually profit in food and beverage from day one. Like you can open up stores and businesses and they have cash flow every day.
So he was mesmerized by that. And a pretty short conversation together at one of the tracks at one of our races, we shook hands and I became Mercato Partner's managing director. And we decided to partner up and start a practice for food and beverage called Savory.
Clint Betts
Yeah, I want to dig in on Savory Fund and what you're doing there. Right now you're investing in restaurant concepts and investing in, as I understand it, mostly fast casual currently? What's the focus?
Andrew Smith
Yeah. The focus is the one that's the most probably safe within the market, which is fast casual. More money has been dumped into fast casual than fine dining or casual dining. But there is a resurgence of casual diners. If you think about even from COVID, coming out of COVID, going into a restaurant, we want experiences again. We want to sit down and have the sights and the sounds and the smells of a restaurant and not just order it through digital formats.
So we actually see a resurgence of casual dining. So we are buying a couple tableside service, sit-down, casual dining establishments, but it's mostly fast casual. And then the premium QSR quick service restaurants as well.
Clint Betts
Okay. This is great news because I'm going to pitch you an idea right now.
Andrew Smith
Pitch it to me. I want to hear it.
Clint Betts
I call it slow casual. As slow as possible, is my restaurant.
I'm not kidding. It could be a three hour experience.
Here's my idea for you. So I love Dutch oven cooking, you know, like the cast iron cooking?
Andrew Smith
Oh, who doesn't like that?
Clint Betts
Unbelievable. But it takes forever, right? And so here's my idea:
It's like an outdoor restaurant where you go, you bring your family, you bring your date, whoever, and we make you Dutch oven food, like Dutch oven chicken or potatoes, whatever. It doesn't matter what it is. Right? Because anything that's cooked in a Dutch oven is amazing. Maybe during the summer, you've got like the fireplace and you roast the marshmallows in summer. Maybe in the winter, you're in like a trailer or something. I have no idea, but this is slow casual stuff, but high end. What do you think?
Andrew Smith
Okay. What do you charge for it? Because you wouldn't make money, You're turning people out, Clint. So you're going to have to charge like 50 bucks for each of those cookies.
Although we should try it. It's a moonshot. Let's give it a shot. It's a total moonshot.
Clint Betts
Basically, I'm just asking if you want to go camping this weekend. That's all.
Andrew Smith
I'll go camping. That's easier than that. You can just say, "If you want to go camping, well, try this out."
Clint Betts
I don't think it will ever work, but—
Andrew Smith
No, I don't think that would work. You won't make money. And maybe you haven't learned that in your deli days, but you need to make money to keep going, just so you know.
Clint Betts
Listen, I haven't learned that in my post-deli days, let alone my deli days. I don't know. I have no idea how all you guys make money.
All right. Let me ask you a few more things just generally about the restaurant and food business.
Andrew Smith
Yeah.
Clint Betts
What do you see as the future of restaurants? Obviously COVID-19 affected the industry in a major way. I can think of almost no industry that was affected as much as the restaurant industry. And you've got these big players, these tech players, like DoorDash or Grubhub, and these types of folks who are on the delivery side of things, the actual logistics of it. I wonder if they're good. They probably were great during COVID because they saved a lot of restaurants. Are they good long-term? How are you thinking about the future of restaurants?
Andrew Smith
Yeah. Yes and no. I think that it's an amazing question.
I have to reverse for just a second and say this though, Clint. When I came from the tech arena and then I came into the food and beverage industry, I remember getting the first orders for a restaurant on a fax machine. And if you think about a fax machine—I mean, that was 2008. And tech was pretty advanced even in 2008. I mean, things were coming along pretty well and they were clicking at a fast pace in the tech arena. But we literally did not have any tech in the food and beverage industry. It was always lagging about five years behind every other industry. It was just an archaic business, and it was driving me nuts.
But the nice thing is, things started coming into the industry to make our lives a little easier. Logistically, delivery, online apps that you could order food online and then get it delivered for catering and other things. So it made it better and better.
The thing that COVID did in the industry for food and beverage, was it accelerated everything from maybe a three- or four-year additional timeline to get it really implemented into restaurants to 90 days. Like if you did not have it implemented, up and running in 90 days— which is why a lot of restaurants failed because they just could not pivot that fast. But those that did, it was an exceptional thing for this industry.
Now your question is, well, what is the future of that? It's saved a lot of the restaurants. It's saved us. 50% of our sales were literally through those different platforms. But I think that the future of the industry now is around, how do you get some of those sales back into your restaurant or under your control? It's so expensive. And it hurts the restaurant and the restaurateur and their staff to do the sales to make such a small margin.
And I think there's a lot of disruption because of those third-party apps, but really it has not been figured out long-term. There's no longevity to that business model. So I think that all of those brands, the Postmates, the Grubhubs, the Uber Eats, all of those are probably in jeopardy long-term because someone is going to come in and disrupt that.
There's even some restaurants that are binding together right now, Clint, which is kind of cool. They're binding together to create their own co-op with their own software, with their own driver network at a much reduced price, and they're funding it, in some major cities, to say, "We're done with these guys. They're taking all of our profits." And I just think that that's such the human entrepreneurial spirit of people saying, "This doesn't work. So I'm going to make it better." And I think that's what we're going to see in the industry.
The food and beverage industry though. You say, "What is the future of food and beverage?" It's resilient. It's a $1 trillion TAM. It's the second largest next to medical. And so, in my mind, it's not going anywhere and it's only growing. We're not becoming Betty Crocker overnight. I don't think you have, I know I haven't.
And as we move faster and our kids are getting busier, it's harder to make a meal at home with your family. I like to do it occasionally, but it's hard, right? So I think more eating out, more ordering food. It's going to be a way of life forever.
And you know, Clint, the other day when I saw you at that restaurant, I'm just going to point it out, and I saw you sitting there with your wife, I was so happy to see you in a restaurant sitting down with your wife, I almost walked in and just pulled the chair out and just sat next to you because I wanted to see you in person and not digitally, because we're human creatures, we're social creatures. We want to have a conversation and break bread over a table.
And how are you going to replace that, Clint? No tech is going to replace human interaction, right? And where we get most human interaction is entertainment: going to a sports event, in a restaurant. It's not going to leave.
And so people say, "What are you going to do after this?" And I'm like, "This is what I'm going to do for the next 15 years of my career." There's always going to be a need for Savory. There's always going to be the new cool kid on the block. There's always going to be the new restaurant that people want to see scale. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to give a lot of those different brands life.
Clint Betts
Yeah. It seems to me like the problem or kind of the fatal flaws, as you just pointed out, with the DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates model is it's about those companies. It's about Door Dash, Grubhub, Postmates, and how did they increase their revenue? How do they pay the drivers? All of that type of stuff, which, you know, there's tons of horror stories even on that front, right?
Andrew Smith
Yeah. There really is.
Clint Betts
Whereas they didn't start with, "How do we help the restaurants?"
Andrew Smith
That's right.
Clint Betts
You would start with that and have a marketplace, because you're not going to, as a consumer, download every restaurant's individual app. That's not going to happen. So having a market makes a lot of sense.
Andrew Smith
Yeah.
Clint Betts
You're not going to do that, but the marketplace makes a lot of sense. But starting with, "How do we make this great for the restaurant and building out from there,” a company that does that, I think, would just do unbelievably well.
Andrew Smith
Yeah. And the thing that they don't realize is that the restaurants are their source of revenue, right? I mean, if all of your revenue was the company that you're charging, you'd almost think, "How do I actually become a partner with these guys?"
Instead, the pitch is, "Well, for your deli, Clint, we're going to bring you incremental sales." And we say, "Okay, incremental? Or are you just taking those sales, putting them through your app? They don't come into my restaurant now. So you're actually just taking my clients, giving them back to me, but stripping the revenue or the profits." That's not a win-win scenario. That's why I believe it will be disrupted long-term.
And listen, I have good friends at DoorDash and I've got friends at Grubhub.
Clint Betts
Yeah. For sure.
Andrew Smith
But you have to have them in your business. And it's a large portion of everybody's business model still. It's 20% or more. It's not as much as it was during COVID, but it's going to be a meaningful part of this industry for probably the foreseeable future. But someone needs to disrupt it, and I think we're starting to see the first parts of that.
Clint Betts
Yeah. It's not going to be like how Google or Facebook disrupted the media industry or the news industry.
Andrew Smith
No.
Clint Betts
Who cares about that? And they had their own problems.
But the restaurant stuff and actually making sure that these restaurants are successful, if you're not starting there, then this is only a stop gap solution that maybe—
Andrew Smith
And listen, it's working, right?
Clint Betts
No, yeah. For sure.
Andrew Smith
We're all ordering from them, we're all busy. But something else will come along.
But the industry is more stable than it's ever been. The industry restaurants that are winning are making more money than they've ever made. So people thinking, "Oh, I feel so bad for the restaurants,” it's actually probably one of the most profitable times for restaurants.
Labor is tough. Commodities are tough right now. There are issues we're dealing with in the industry that we've never dealt with before. And I would say that most people would say, "I'd go back and deal with just the COVID effects than all of these effects today,” because of the tail of the COVID effects. But at the end of the day, this industry is here to stay. And the thing that people want more of is less of the same guys growing more, and more of the new cool kids on the block growing into their neighborhoods, bringing new flavors, new experiences. And that's exactly what Savory's for.
Clint Betts
My final question for you is this. You mentioned Shauna, your wife, who actually started Four Foods Group. By the way, she's far more impressive than you are, as you know.
Andrew Smith
Way more impressive. In many ways.
Clint Betts
And we'll have Shauna on. We'll have Shauna on to talk and get the real story.
Andrew Smith
Please do.
Clint Betts
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andrew Smith
Yeah.
Clint Betts
And she lets you grow your hair out. There's a whole bunch of—
Andrew Smith
She still hasn't cut it off. It's amazing.
Clint Betts
Unbelievable.
But I want to ask you this. In all seriousness, you have one of, at least from the outside looking in and me knowing you pretty well, you have one of the most successful marriages I've ever seen. How do you do that? Unbelievable.
Andrew Smith
You know, we talk about it all the time because we just enjoy the hell out of working together. And I think it can work.
There's a lot of marriages that start businesses, and then sadly, they end the marriage and the business, or the marriage ends and the business goes and you have to split it up. And I just look at that and thought, you know, they probably were probably swimming in each other's swim lanes, like this down the lane in the swimming pool. And for me and Shauna, this is my swim lane and her swim lane's right here. And a lot of times, there's other people in between our swim lanes. So it's even further apart.
But the amazing thing is, is that I respect her in her swim lane and she respects me in my swim lane. And we communicate a lot about our own respective swim lanes. Meaning, I would say, "Shauna, what do you think about this? This is what I'm dealing with. What are your thoughts?" And she gives me her opinion. And then I take it along with everybody else's and I make the decisions in my swim lane. And then vice versa.
When we both make mistakes, we don't say, "Well, I told you, you should have done this." Whatever. It's always just very much so supportive. We're learning as we go.
And you know, I always say this, Clint, and I would say this to any couple out there, whether they're in business or not, but in business for sure; it's really, really, really good to like each other. To stay in love and like each other makes business really easy. And I actually genuinely love and like my wife. She's the coolest chick I know. I want to be with her all the time. And so it makes it easier to not have the friction.
But I always just say, if it doesn't work out after a day and it's really frustrating, go make out because it's always going to be better the next day, I promise.
But the last thing I was going to say is too, is that you have the kids too, and kids put pressure on all of us, right? We're all busy. We're trying to conquer the world. You're trying to conquer the world. We're all pulled into this competition of trying to become great and build great businesses.
And then you're like, "Well, how do you have work-life balance? And how do you make it so that the kids are taken care of and they feel like they're cared for, and that you love them?" And Shauna and I early on just said, "You know what? We're just going to have life. And we're going to make sure that life works out." And when I say we just make it so that life works out, our kids' lives and our lives, we just make them work together by including them in everything we do.
We let them know what we're working on, what our challenges are, how we're overcoming them. They tell us about theirs. We work together on overcoming theirs. It's a very open relationship with our family to make sure that, if I take a call in the middle of the vacation, my boys are not like, "Ugh. You got to take a phone call again? I mean, you don't even care about me." No, they understand I have to take that call. And then after, they're like, "How did it go? What happened? What was the decision made?"
Include your kids. They're more curious than you think. And that helps a lot to make the marriage work too.
Clint Betts
That's beautiful, my friend. And you've raised some incredible kids, so congratulations on them.
Andrew Smith
Yeah. Thank you very much.
Clint Betts
Andrew, come back on. We are going to have Shauna on as well, as I mentioned. I really appreciate talking to you as always. Congrats on everything. And I'm excited to see how the fund continues to be successful.
Andrew Smith
Yeah. It's going to be a good run. We've got five brands now, two more coming in a couple of weeks that will be announced. Then we have more on the horizon. So it's going to be really, really fun.
Clint Betts
It's amazing. Thanks, my friend.
Andrew Smith
Take care, brother.