Food & Beverage
Martin Sprock
Founder and CEO, Raving Brands Inc.
By Kristy J. O’Hara
Smart Business Atlanta | April 2007
While some may debate which tastes better — a burrito from Moe’s Southwest Grill or success — one thing Raving Brands Inc.
Founder and CEO Martin Sprock won’t debate is how to do business in his restaurant chains, which include Moe’s, Boneheads
and the Flying Biscuit Cafe. After unofficially being named “least likely to succeed” in high school, Sprock says he has far
exceeded even his own mother’s expectations, so he feels obligated to make his 125 employees taste success as well. Smart
Business spoke with this spicy CEO about how he gets his employee buy-in and drives his company’s success.
Be lean to grow. We run a very lean company.
There’s enough gravy in the casserole to
please everybody, so we don’t have to
break it off and have somebody get the
short end of the stick.
We have to make a living. We have to
make a profit. If we don’t run it lean ourselves, every franchisor in the country
scratches their head and says, ‘OK, well,
how do we get more money? We’ve either
got to grow more quickly, and that’s not
always workable, or I’ve got to work my
franchisees out of more money.’
It makes sense to live a little leaner — fly
coach on airplanes. Split hotel rooms. Not
make more than $50,000 on your salary —
that’s including myself and haven’t since
Day 1. Everything we do is frugal and
works.
A lot of CEOs out there like to high-step,
and they probably got a corner office with
a lot of glass and oriental rugs and think
they’re hot junk. I don’t play that game.
We’re not too hung up on titles around
here. We’re more like a law firm — a lot of
partners that work together every day.
At the end of the day, we want our customers to be raving fans of ours. The bottom line is, if we’re not fair and we’re not
lean and we’re not looking at the business
the right way, we probably could make
more money, but it wouldn’t be as long of a
term project and long-lived. It’d be more
short-lived, and more people would be
unhappy with us.
Buy your buy-in from employees. I didn’t have
to give too damn much advice — I gave
them stock. They have to earn it over a five-year period of time, and once they’re vested, they’re full partners and they’ve got full
benefits, but until then, they’ve got profit-sharing and the same percentage.
So many companies these days just pay
people pretty well, but I think they’re using
them. Unless you make somebody a partner, they’re not truly going to have job
security or a future with that company
long-term if they ever want to have a beach
cottage or do other things or retire at a reasonably early age. I don’t have to say that
much. Yes, I’ve strewn out my vision and
told them all what I think about fairness and treating people well and running the
best company and working your tail off
and all the things I talk about, but it gets
translated pretty easily, and you don’t have
to say it too many times if you own a piece
of that company. You just automatically
think smartly like that.
If I was just trying to hire a bunch of people, I’d be explaining that every day till I
was blue in the face. I just bought my buyin. I bought my people. It works.
Some of them are up at 6:30 and don’t go
home till 11 at night. They’re warriors.
They get it, and they’re the ones that get the
increased amount of stock.
We’ve had to run a few off along the way
that are bringing the other guys down. If
you’re going to be lazy, and you’re not
working your tail off, and you’re not going
to work smarter and deliver, then the bottom line is you’re not meant for this company.
You have to pay the piper if it goes down.
If this company goes down, I’ve got everything I got tied up into it. It’s a different ballgame, but I’m still willing to share because
I want those guys to have the upside.
Everybody’s worked hard, and they
deserve to share in the profitability and the
ultimate stock of the company one day. I
can’t count how many times people e-mail
me and thank me, and I say, ‘No, thank
you.’ It’s just a great feeling to have everybody in the deal with you, and it wouldn’t
feel any better if I made twice as much
money and didn’t share it with anybody.
Be blunt. I’m not all that political, and sometimes I may hurt your feelings, but I’ll certainly allow you to hurt my feelings. I’ll fly
off the handle and call some idea a moron
idea, but I fully expect you to say that to
me, and if you don’t, you’re a yes person,
and we don’t have yes people around.
We don’t want and encourage those people. We hire honest, hardworking people,
but we don’t want yes folks because they’re
just brown-nosing fools that aren’t going to
get anywhere in life, especially in our company. They work well in another company
because the CEO has some big ego.
Sit there and brainstorm, and you get to
the damn crust of the problem, and find out
exactly all the best ideas. I’ll throw out 10
ideas in a meeting, and eight may be the
dumbest ideas ever, but then there’s that
one nugget, and you wouldn’t have gotten
the one nugget if I had been embarrassed,
or we didn’t have some fun with it, or if the
CEO yells at somebody and all of a sudden
he’s uncomfortable because he can’t go
back to me and call me bonehead.
I call people, and they call me, bonehead
to my face and behind my back. We’re not
full of ourselves. We just know we’re smart
enough that people will bet on us, and the
rest of it is up to us to work our tail off and
hopefully make wise and fair decisions that
will benefit everyone. Business is no more
complicated than that.
I’ve just gotten to where I am because I
work my tail off and was honest with people. If you just absolutely give your word to
anybody and never break it, and you do
more than you need to do per the contract,
you’re going to win.
HOW TO REACH: Raving Brands Inc., www.ravingbrands.com
