Pino Di Ioia

The full conversation with Pino Di Ioia, transcribed. Lightly formatted for reading.

Was there ever a time that you realized you made a big mistake only to find out at the end that was the best thing that ever happened to you? You can cut costs to success. You can save a disaster by cutting costs. But if you're going to build something, like one of the expressions I use is the only thing you can build by taking things away is a hole.

Like unless you're building a well or a tunnel, you've got to add things to make something. And that's about resilience. It's always coming back. What about somebody that just wants to invest?

Because there's a difference between investors and operators. Yes. So if somebody owns 14 stores, would that be considered investor slash a bit operator? Your happiness is inside.

And the more we look externally for happiness, the more we will never find it. We're really teaching the destination, not the journey. Truth, things keep changing. Well, Pino, it's a pleasure to have you here with us on the Montreal Entrepreneur Podcast (now The Vault MTL).

Thank you, it's my pleasure. We're going to discuss a lot of things and I'm excited. Okay. And as the CEO now of Beavertails, please give us a glimpse on how you ascended to this position.

Well, okay, the anticlimactic honest answer is I like to joke that it's amazing what happens when they don't fire you in a company. Because when I first started off, I actually didn't get the job I wanted. Crew from California at the time. And I really wanted to sell clothes in this store.

And I think the interview was like less than 5 minutes. They did not want me. I didn't get the job. How old were you?

17 years old. And so I ended up getting the job everybody could get, which is in fast food at La Ronde, at the amusement park. And that was my summer job. I never knew what a beavertail was.

It was the first year that they were in outside of Ottawa. First year in Quebec. And I stuck it out or they never fired me or both. And then after 4 or 5 years, I'm not great with numbers.

My twin brother is my partner and our CFO. He's the numbers guy. But after 4 or 5 years, I became the franchisee of that store. After a few more years, maybe another 2 or 3, opened a few other stores.

By 1997, we bought the rights to the Quebec province, Quebec territory. By early 2000, the founder asked me to take over the company in Ottawa. And by 2010, by then My wife and my twin brother were partners, and we bought the majority of the company. So we really did like every—we failed at every step of the way before we bought the company.

So you got the first job at 18, right? And you said five years after you became the first franchisee. Correct. Or maybe four.

But yeah, it was soon afterwards. But that's very impressive because you're very young still. Well, so again, in life, what's the expression? You find luck like you work for luck.

" And I literally, I must have been the most arrogant punk of a guy. I laughed and I said, no, I'm going to McGill. And like, I don't want to do this, right? And then after my undergrad at McGill, I didn't think I would get into— I applied for the MBA at McGill.

I'm not the most studious individual. I'm sure I have undiagnosed ADHD. And that's just the way entrepreneurs roll, I guess. Almost a joke or a desperation.

I didn't drive at the time. I got on a train, I went to Ottawa, and I said, listen, if you guys would ever consider it, you talked about it a few times, but I'm here. a few years ago, I'll buy the stores at La Ronde. And sure enough, their lawyer at the time said to them, you should be selling the first store to a kid, because if a kid could succeed, like, anybody could do this.

I didn't see this one coming. And I couldn't, but it came anyways. And literally, who knew? But I was walking right into the perfect opportunity.

Wow. The lawyer said that? Yeah. I'm surprised.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess he was an innovative lawyer. I guess so. And then you said 2 or 3 years after that, how many locations did you have in total?

We must have opened— for BeaverTails, it was 4 or 5. But we had La Crémière, the ice cream parlors. We had a few frites à l'or, the Belgian French fry places. All the same owner or like different?

It was my twin brother, my wife, and myself. We had just different all these stores, but in different places. But we weren't the franchisor for those brands; we were just franchisees. Okay, understand.

Okay, and then in 2007, you became the owner. You bought the whole 2010. 2010. Correct.

Yeah. Well, that's a nice parcours journey, I would say, and making all the mistakes in the books of course. That's right. So I'm guessing at that time there were no systems in place; they just handed it to you.

and then you had to figure things out? Funny, good question. We didn't prepare this, but right on. When I was first hired as a college kid, my job was what we call the Calgary Project.

This is actually weird timing because the Calgary Project was, they said, okay, Pino, you're in Montreal, we're in Ottawa, it's not far. If you need something, we can help you. And I remember Friday nights, we would be running out of dough at La Ronde and they'd send them by bus. And by the time they arrived in Montreal, they were thawed because it was frozen pastry.

And literally, like during fireworks, we'd go over the bridge, get the pastries from Barrie bus terminal, bring them back over the bridge and make it just in time for— it was crazy times. But the Calgary project was, they said, you have to help us write the systems and pretend you're far, pretend you're in Calgary. And I said the timing was weird because we're opening our first store. We're in Banff, Jasper, Canmore, and Waterton in the mountains.

But our first store in Calgary is opening in 3 weeks. Just now? Just now. So it's been this long that the Calgary project took to actually come to reality.

So then you had the capability to You helped them write the systems, processes, and— I had the willingness. I don't know if I had the capability. I was an 18-year-old at the time. But yeah, it worked.

And when did your brother join? He would have joined in early 1990s. I guess by then it started to look real. These are— they all start off as a bit of a, who knows, let's try.

And since you started, like you became the owner, when did you start franchising it? Like for real? For real, yes. Well, they started that in Ottawa in the early, late '90s because in the early 2000s we had to take over for the founder.

because this is common in franchising, you overgrow. Overgrow. Yeah. So you get excited and you think that everybody, oh wow, there's another person, they want to open there and here.

You're just handing them out. You're literally handing them out. And it's exciting, right? There's a thrill and there's the adrenaline and you're running on fumes at that point.

But most franchises end up overextended and it's rare. I guess I'm being— I'm defending the team that was there before me, but with, I think with reason. A lot of franchises start off and figure we've got this right. Nobody ever has it right.

The world has other plans for you. So it's, you never get all the locations and the people absolutely right. In the early days, I believe, and I think you probably find lots of instances of this, in the early days of a brand, you get very entrepreneurial followers and people who look at a brand and say, this is hot and so cool and so different. But that entrepreneurial mentality is usually the wrong mentality because in a franchise you have to follow the systems.

You need a bit of entrepreneurialism, but a little bit of respect for the system. Yeah. So the people you attract in the beginning, while they help run the fuel or help supply the fuel for the growth, they're also probably not the people that you really need in the long term. Interesting.

And so that's why it's common for a lot of new brands. We watch American brands like all the time, and they explode like fireworks. They go up and then they come down. So they went through a little bit of that.

And when we took over in 2002, give or take— again, I'm terrible with dates, but give or take— then we went from— they were at about 110 or 120 stores. We had to take them down to 60 or— Wow, by half almost. 70 or— no, maybe 70 or 80. We had to close quite a few, but I remember, like, we had a hot dog cart selling BeaverTails in Niagara Falls in a parking lot.

Now Niagara Falls is perfect, but not in a hot dog cart. And we have this thing called winter. Even Niagara Falls is not as bad as Montreal, but it's still— you can't do that. So that was one of the, the casualties we had.

But now we have 2 phenomenal stores in Niagara Falls. Nice. And they do the brand justice. But, but that first guy was a real entrepreneur.

Okay, but how do you choose them? What are some of the criteria? Yes, number one criteria, which I don't mind saying publicly in a podcast because it's hard to lie on this one. So of course we're a business, for sure you have to know how to manage your business, you have to be financed, okay?

But that's what I call table stakes, like you have to have that to play the game. But the number one thing we look for is not that, okay? The number one thing is you have to love the brand, have to You have to know about the brand already and love it. Yeah, and funny you should say that too, because we've had people apply and we ask, where do you know the brand from?

I'll give you the good and the ugly. One person has written in the last 6 months— I remember the person, I won't mention any locations or names— but they literally wrote, I've never tried it, but I'm told this is a good business. And it's like, okay, that's a big X on that person. Like, that's just transactional.

Yes. I'm reading a great book by Danny Meyer. He started Shake Shack. Yes.

And he talks about the difference between service and hospitality. And he says service, if you look at a Shake Shack, the meat is cooked at the right temperature. It's packaged in the right paper, put in the right bag. We deliver it to you at the right temperature.

We don't put the lemonade next to the hot dog because— or the hamburger. One has to be cold, one has to be hot. We deliver it within a minute and a half and it's delivered with a smile. You know, you could build a whole.

Yeah. I mean, McDonald's has built a whole world on that. But hospitality, or they call it enlightened hospitality, says that is all about one thing: it's the emotion you feel at the end of the service. So you think about that.

McDonald's delivers service. I mean, it's you know anywhere in the world. It's the same everything. But the emotion you feel at the end of a McDonald's service is nowhere near.

It's not better or worse, but it's very different than the emotion you feel at the end of a shake. Shake Shack experience. And so we believe that at BeaverTails. We often say in the office, we prepare pastries, but we sell joy.

At the end of the day, if you're looking forward to a BeaverTail, what you really want is the happiness that is usually underlining an activity or a family adventure. I like the example you gave. You were on the podcast and you said that you opened a few BeaverTails in Montreal, like in the center of, you know, and a lot of people didn't like it. And then you had to close down those 4 shops that you opened?

Because— yeah, no, they weren't 4. There weren't that many. We try to learn simpler mistakes. But yeah, it's almost like somebody in our development team says, our stores give you permission to indulge.

So the number one complaint we get in our customer surveys— we do customer surveys every 2 years, big, like tens of thousands of interviews, focus groups. And they realign our marketing for the next 2 years. And the number one complaint we get, you don't have enough stores. I want to buy more of your product.

And in fact, so another interesting statistic, our number one client is actually mom. Okay. And mom brings her kids. But I can tell you more than once, I've seen kids in our line crying because mom is saying, come, you're going to try a beavertail.

And the kid thinks, the poor kid thinks it's a real beavertail and wants nothing to do with this. But mom actually wants the beavertail for herself. Mom has a sweet tooth. It's another treat.

Yes, exactly. But I don't want to admit to it. It's for the kids, so I feel less guilty. This is like in the early days of automotive.

General Motors had a problem because all the cars were navy blue. That was the standard car color. And everybody complained, we want different colors. When they do surveys, which colors do you want?

Everybody would say navy blue because nobody wanted to look like the bold car guy, you know? So then they started asking the neighbors. They would ask you, what color do you think your neighbors want the car to be? And then people felt more permitted.

My neighbor wants a yellow car. No, he doesn't. You want a yellow car. You just, you know, in the 1950s, nobody wants to say that.

And that's when we started having different colors. for cars. So in the same way for us, we use different techniques to try and figure out where we should be. But in fact, mom doesn't want the kid having this every day.

Yeah. Neither do we, because we're a special treat. We'd love to sell more, but within reason. And so where we open the stores is almost part of the formula, because where we open, we give you permission to have a beavertail.

So in none of our surveys do people say this is too fattening or it's too, too many calories. And in fact, the more we put on our beavertails, the more popular they are. Because when you're at Tremblant, you don't care how many brownies we put on top of it. You know, we have a pootail as well.

It's a poutine on a beavertail. But that's just part of the fun. The skateboarders love that one. It's part of the story.

But did you have any failed beavertail recipe that didn't take off? Yeah. A lot of them? No, really just one really bad one, which is— I hate to— I even tell my kids all the time, don't waste food.

There's, you know, I give the standard parent answer. There's people who would love to have that food. Don't throw it away. But for our 25th anniversary, which was 22 long years ago, I'm dating myself, but we released 3 new flavors.

One of them was our Avalanche. We were doing ski hills at the time. We called it an Avalanche, and it was cream cheese icing with score and caramel sauce. Very high calorie.

And we did a Maple Beavertail because it was Canadian. We even gave all our employees karate, lumberjack plaid shirt. We're Canadian. And then because there was the beginnings of the health craze there, that was when McDonald's introduced the salad.

There's no more salad at McDonald's, right? We're all getting healthier, but no, we're not. Like, realistically, reality check, we're actually eating more red meat than ever before. Yeah.

Premium dairy like Häagen-Dazs is more popular than ever before. And in fact, there's an interesting survey that just came out in the States, Nation's Restaurant News, which is the Bible of our industry, the official newspaper. And they asked, what are your top preferred restaurants to millennials? And they compared it to boomers.

One poke bowl place made the list. All the other ones were either burgers or fried chicken. So Chick-fil-A, Popeyes, like these are— I think it's Chick-fil-A released their numbers a few weeks ago, $9 million average per store. They're very popular.

There's thousands of them, $9 million per store. So nobody's going there for the vegetarian. I don't think they have a vegetarian option. We like to think is I want the blue car, but we know better, right?

If when really probed, we know we want the healthy or the unhealthy one. So the flavor we released, which was not as good, tasted delicious, but it was organic peaches from Ontario. So very buy local, or at least local Canadian, with real whipped cream. That flavor, 22 years ago, never before or after have we had to throw away product at warehouse because nobody reordered it.

But you have to like people tasting them before you launch them. Yeah, the taste was amazing. There's an expression in the ice cream industry. You have to have variety, right?

We're used to going to Baskin-Robbins, 31 flavors. La-di-da. But everybody goes to an ice cream store and says, wow, triple brownie with caramel, that's amazing. Okay, I'll have 2 scoops of vanilla.

The majority of sales in ice cream, but like 80% of ice cream sales, vanilla, chocolate, and strawberries. And strawberry, very distant third. I always order vanilla. It literally, like, we all do.

If you look at the numbers, we all do. But you have to have the 20 flavors. Yeah. To be able to say, that's the one I want.

So it's just a weird, That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so you have to play with the recipe, with human psychology.

Yes. That's interesting. And how many stores do you have internationally now? Our total in North America is— we don't count US as international.

Canada and US is about 194. 194. And we have active licenses available or distribution licensing available in Mexico, France, and Qatar is about to open. We just saw the video for Qatar yesterday.

The store is almost finished. The international is not treated the same way. They're wholesale agreements. Okay.

So North America is really what we're focusing on. So for 2024, do you have any projected numbers? Yeah, there's 5 or 10 a year. During one of the COVID years, 5 or 10 has been— I mean, we've really done maybe 10 or 12 in the 5 years before COVID per year.

So we've been on a real development tick. One of the COVID years we did 24, I think it was. Not all opened. That's a lot.

It was too much. It was— I think COVID was crazy for everybody. I think people rediscovering themselves and everybody wanted to do something new, including open a franchise, that was not healthy for our team or for our brand, frankly. We're happy to scale back and go to more realistic.

So there are times that you give out the rights to a franchisee and then you can also take it back to see if it's not working out? Definitely. But the more common route is we give— so for instance, we're looking for a location in Red Deer, Alberta. Okay.

Red Deer is small. I don't know that there's a right location for us, but somebody bought a franchise They have the absolute right to open in Red Deer. If after so many years— I think contractually it's 3, but we're flexible— if they can't find a location or we can't find a location, or together we agree, look, like, there's nowhere to go in Red Deer, then we can cancel the franchise and refund some of the fee. So usually we do that to give you peace of mind so you're not racing again, like, who else is going to open where I want to open?

Don't worry, you can look, take all the time you want. We give them 3 years or so. I think it's It's 2 or 3, but we can be flexible on that. We're not— we have 2 wonderful lawyers who work full-time for us in the office, and they're humans, not lawyers.

They know what they're doing. Yeah, but apologies to all the lawyers. I didn't mean to insult all lawyers, but, you know, we don't take a legalistic approach to that. And franchising, it is a popular business model, obviously, especially in the food industry.

What are some of the pros and cons, and why do you think it's so popular? So that's actually a great question. There's, there's kind of a boring management answer for this. So the reality is that franchising has 2 key advantages.

One is the head office, us, doesn't have to have the capital to grow. And 2 is that there's someone at the front lines who cares as much as we do. And that's not to say that employees don't care, but you always care more if it's your business. That's normal.

Yeah. So example, if you were Zara clothing and I give you a new store in Red Deer, why not? We'll pick on Red Deer today. If I say you have the Zara for Red Deer and you're an employee, you're not a franchise, you're just an employee.

So you go in on a Saturday and you're tired. Somebody comes in and says, I want, I want a red sweater that's cotton. You're not feeling it that day. So you present a half polyester sweater that's kind of more peach than red, but close.

Who cares? The person buying it sees it, right? They touch it. Whether they believe it or not, they know what they're touching.

Polyester, cotton, cashmere. It feels nice. And the red is close enough to what I wanted. So the variables don't matter.

Number 2, when you built that store, the biggest cost for your Zara store in wonderful downtown scenic Red Deer— I don't even know if there is a downtown, whatever— the biggest cost is all the sweaters that are in the store. There's a little bit of decor, but it's not that much considering such a big surface. Yeah. Now you go to food.

Number 1, it's expensive. Like, we have tiny stores and they all— restaurants cost a lot. Like, it costs you $500,000, $600,000 to build a cafe these days. Number 2, to have that humble hamburger or that iced Frappuccino involves 10 or 12 ingredients that need to be ordered so that they don't expire.

They need to be stocked properly in rotation. They need to be assembled in the right order. It is a small miracle of God that all of these recipes happen properly. And so that is why food Expensive to build, lots of variables, lends itself so well to franchising.

Yeah. Otherwise, the failure rate would have been a lot higher for a lot of businesses. Sure. I mean, you look at Starbucks.

Starbucks very proudly bucked the franchise trend and hired and paid more. I mean, we all pay $7 for a latte because they're paying their employees more. And they really worked on the recipes. And you would think that they would be a case study for why we don't have to franchise.

But if you look at challenges they're having now from a clientele perspective and from a unionization perspective, I don't know. The story is not fully written yet. It's not easy. So then the systems are very important, crucial to the success of those businesses.

Kathy, you have no idea the technology that we are being pitched. So Lonely Little Beaver Tails has an AI chatbot that we call Beaver AI, which is Beaver A. It's very Canadian. But we have this chatbot on our intranet that literally our franchisees can email or text the chatbot.

thought, okay, night or day. And it goes and compares all of our manuals, our videos. I need to know what temperature to cook the poutine at. Watch this video at this, you know, minute 28, it'll tell you.

Nice. So we even use it. But if I tell you Domino's is experimenting with an AI camera over their oven, as the pizza comes out, it automatically registered whether you put too much cheese or too much pepperoni because the camera could figure it out. Like, It's next level, the technology that's attacking the systems question.

I wonder if they put too much cheese, then what? What do you do? No, I think, you know, take away your franchise. It's a cumulative play, right?

So they just know that store 37 is putting way too much cheese on everything. But for anybody who's listening and they have a business, it doesn't necessarily have to be in the food industry, but they're contemplating franchising seems appealing. What are some of the things they have to consider before they? It's it's like we're reading each other's minds.

We really, for everybody out there, we did not practice any of this. But first thing you have to do is read like the worst named book ever. It's called The E Myth Revisited. I forget the author, right?

But I mean, everybody thinks it's yes, that's right. Yeah, that's right. But everybody thinks it's like electronic or e-commerce or no, it's just entrepreneurship. E for entrepreneurship.

But that book has a really um, human kind of perspective on systems. Yeah, you have to think systems. Like, before you can franchise and say, we'll figure out the systems, you have to have the systems. Have a proof of concept.

Yes, and the systems to execute the concept. Yeah, so I think that would be my, uh, engineering accounting side that will say that. And I don't have much of an engineering accounting side, but then the other side is another great book. I love to read, so maybe the books are just to mind, but it's, um, Denise Lee Yohn, Y-O-H-N, I believe.

I'm sure it's close. Google will save me. Called What Big Brands Do. And she talks about, which I think is very apropos for today's— so if you have a small business today, you're, whether you realize it or not, you're thinking this.

She talks about the brand as business, which means Nike talks about winning. So as a sports person, you buy their shoes and you believe in winning the game. But as a VIP or VP at head office, you believe in the brand so much you tattoo— you know, they famously all tattoo the swoosh— but you also believe in winning as a business. And so when Nike talked about beating Adidas, like, I'm sure there are world armies that were not as fixated on winning a war as these guys were in beating poor Adidas.

So the brand as business is is we're going to celebrate what we stand for. The values are— Values, big time. Key 2 or 3 values. What will we celebrate and embrace and enhance?

That is— that's the hill we're gonna die on. And that book helps you figure out how important that is and how to celebrate it at multiple levels. And how do you do that at Beavertail? Well, it's very weird, man.

Very weird. It's like we're in each other's minds here. So we don't do any more natural peaches and cream cheese or real whipped cream. You know, there was another time— these are all embarrassing stories.

I'm glad I'm not facing anyone other than you because I'd be too embarrassed to tell them. But we, we had this product, uh, In-N-Out Burger in the US, big burger chain. Their most popular item— I think they have 9 items on their menu. It's like a hamburger, hamburger with cheese, hamburger with cheese and onions, a shake, and onion rings or French fries.

Very few. And guess what? You're in and out. Like, it's fast.

That's their, that's their thing. But their most popular item, I guess when you have that little on your menu, is what they call animal style. And it's basically everything. I think they put the onion rings and the cheese and the onions and everything.

Like it's basically give me everything on the menu. It is not on their menu. Their CEO had, I think, an hour interview with, I think, Fast Company where he denied with a straight face because it's part of the— no, no, this is not a real menu item. But it is.

You have to just be in the know. And sure enough, I've been to one in and out It's jammed. There's lines all the time. And I finally get to the line, and I must have looked like some kid trying to get into a club when you know you're underage, you know?

I looked at the cashier, and I say, could I have an animal style? And she literally looked at me and, like, looked me up and down, and she didn't say yes. She just— it's almost like she's trying to make sure you're part of the club, which everybody's part of the club. Just pay for it, and they'll give it to you.

But she went, she gave me my bag, charged it. It was not on the receipt under that name, but it exists. We had this idea to do a show do a poutine on a beavertail, because what could be more Canadian? This is how we live our values.

I didn't forget the question. I'm waiting for it. So we, we introduced this concept in our minds, and in the office we chickened out. We literally said the mom brigade is going to be outside picketing.

Like, this is too over the top. It's too much. So we didn't do it. April Fools', I don't know, 7 years ago.

Not us. We're still too chicken. And then Huffington Post does a story on a fictitious Canadian company called BeaverTails that cornered the market on Canadian food, period. And their version was a BeaverTail with a poutine and maple syrup.

And I literally went to the office and I said, this is an embarrassment. Like, why are they having fun with our brand? This is us. And so we still chickened out, believe it or not, and we said, okay, it's still too much, but we're going to put it off-menu, like animal style.

And we thought that was our out. And the next year at our franchise conference, I got up in front of the franchisees and I said, so we've been developing this persona or this DNA, this brand DNA over about 5 or 6 years. Yeah, we bought in early, just after 2010, 2011. And it took us about 5, 6 years to really perfect all the systems we couldn't do before we were owners and to really say, okay, this is where we want to go.

And so I got up in front of the conference and I said, I said, you know, everybody, we keep doing the surveys, and we know what our clients come to indulge. That's what we are. That's our authentic self. And so this poutine, for example, that we only do off menu, this is a tragedy.

It's an embarrassment. We should wear it on our sleeves and offer it on the menu. There were blank faces in the audience. And literally, I looked at them, and I thought to myself, oh my God, we told them to do it off menu, but— You're not even— They're not even doing it off menu.

They either didn't know or didn't care, or they thought it was too much, or whatever. Back to the office, and then finally after conference, we said it goes on and we embraced it. So we embrace it in every decision we could make. But how would you define that?

I know you sell joy. That's part of it. But how would you— like the integration of different type of food on top of the BeaverTails? So our core values, we believe in quirkiness.

It's a weird word. It weirdly comes up even in our surveys. Canadians say you guys are quirky. Sometimes it shows up as funny.

That's one of our subwords. We're bold. We're Canadian. And so one of the things we want to do next year is we actually want to poll new Canadians because we have a million new Canadians coming every year to our country and becoming citizens of our country.

So something marvelous that happens, which we didn't engineer, and I would have been super proud to engineer, but I'm even more proud that it happened naturally. New Canadians are telling us, when my family comes, I bring them for a beaver tail, and after they eat it, I tell them, now you're Canadian. And that is like— I almost get tears when I tell that story. Yeah, it is But now we want to, we want to go back the other way and we want to say, okay, tell us what you would put on a beaver tail.

Did this before COVID We did a contest. We thought or we hoped we would get 30 applications. I think it was over 1,000 in the end. A young woman named Shelby, I still remember her name, from Southern Ontario proposed the winning flavor.

And by the way, the prize was we got to name the tail as you would name it. Yeah. And she named it the Nanaimo Tail. It was a Nanaimo bar, but we call it the Shelby Tail in honor of Shelby.

I don't even know if she knows this, the poor woman. She was a young— she just finished high school. And when we said, okay, you won, we're going to come and take your picture, she got her prom dress dry cleaned. She got her hair done.

She got her makeup done. This was like— Special. Special. And she has no idea how much more special it was for us.

So we want to go back and do that, but with new Canadians. And tell us, what would you put if you were from Syria or if you were from Paris? What would you put on a beaver tail? That's interesting.

I like that. Make them feel like they're participating in the development. And they are. Yes.

And that's part of the joy. It's we are part of your memories. So you know what? Early in this conversation, we said, how do we pick our franchisees?

I told you the wrong answer. Yeah. It's a good business. The right answer— we still laugh about this one, but someone very serious said— we asked, where do you remember BeaverTails from?

She said, oh, I still remember the first time I had it, which is kind of common, humbly, for our product. People have a memory of their first BeaverTail. But this woman wrote, I still remember it It was— the sun was just setting upon beautiful grouse Vancouver, and in the distance I saw your store beaconing like a welcoming dessert stander. It was a total poem.

She must be an author or something. Well, she should have been a franchisee. We certainly right away, like, you, you go to the top of the stack and let's go, we're talking to you. But that doesn't mean you necessarily— it works out.

But this to us was like, oh my gosh, you love— so our, our current franchisee in, um, White Rock British Columbia, is a new Canadian from Turkey. And she visited Canada, fell in love. They decided to emigrate here, her and her husband and their 2 kids. And she traveled the West Coast trying to figure out— she wanted to live on the West Coast, so she traveled to different cities.

And every city— Banff, Canmore— everybody had a Beavertail. And then she reached out and said, well, this is weird, but I'm settled in Canada now and I don't know which job I'm gonna have. I want to do a business. And you guys showed up at every town that I visited.

When I was deciding to stay here, so wonderful, wonderful stories like that. Question for you though: So can one franchisee own many? Yes. Locations?

Yes. Oh, that's okay. You kind of anticipated what the questions are. We have a number of franchisees who have a few franchises.

Our chief franchisee, who's actually a VP at our head office, has 14 stores with us. 14 stores. The challenge is, so that individual owns the six La Ronde. He bought them from me, and that's the challenge.

He's got two. 2 at Tremblant. It's hard to get even 5 single stores because we go for these specialty places. There are not that many.

I wish we had 100 Banffs in Canada. We don't. So what about somebody that just wants to invest? Because there's a difference with investors and operators.

Yes. So if somebody owns 14 stores, would that be considered investor slash a bit operator? We have such a simple view on that. If they work at a bank full-time and they have 14 restaurants, that's not us.

But if you work on the 14 restaurants as your job, that's us. Because we don't need you to be behind the counter, but we need you to be thinking about BeaverTails. It's not a problem to own that many. Correct.

And then you're encouraging them to have more, maybe, right? Sure. We have some franchisees that are really happy with one. Yeah.

And we're really happy with that. We always would love— we have truck territories where they have 4 trucks in one But then we have other territories where it's just one trailer, not even a truck. And what is your big vision for, I don't know, the years to come? The big, hairy, audacious goal?

Yes. It sounds cliché, so I hesitate to say it, but my wife and my twin brother and I have been business partners for like 30 years. We not only enjoy working together, we even vacation together. We would love for my brother's wife to work with us too.

She doesn't want to. I don't know why. I take it personally. She's like, I'm not doing this.

Exactly. But literally, we have fun doing this. And our big vision is to leave the brand stronger when we retire or die than it is today. That does not mean many openings.

It doesn't mean few openings. It means the right openings. It doesn't mean many products in grocery stores. It doesn't mean few products in grocery stores.

It means the right products in grocery stores. We just did— we call it CPG, consumer packaged goods. We just did a deal with a company that makes candles, and they have candles that smell like BeaverTails. That's brand new, not announced, but there you go.

We announced it here. We do not think we're going to make millions on that product, but it's a fun product. It's a memory. Yeah, it could create memory as well.

Exactly. So we'll, we'll do fun products like that, but we also have an ice cream sandwich where the cookie tastes like— I saw that on LinkedIn. Yeah, they are really delicious. We really worked hard with the, the company that did that product, and they're selling very well at Walmart, which is no small deal.

Like, we're running out of product in a number of Walmarts. Could be that there's a big future for that, but we will never ever make the beavertail. I mean, they say never say never, but the beavertail is special. That's got to be at our stores.

We don't need 40 grocery products. We don't need 2 grocery products. We need the right grocery products. So our future is really to Denise Leon, who wrote that book, charges like $30,000 US to speak at conferences.

We I can't afford her yet, but— At your conference? Yeah, I would love to have her because that's our vision of the future is we want to be real. What big brands do. That's right.

You'll read it and you'll call me next week and say, wasn't that good? Well, I don't know. It spoke to me. Because I do have a question at the end.

You know, what are some of the books that you would suggest for entrepreneurs? But so far you gave us 2. 2. Yeah.

I'll give you another one now just because you asked, but The Blue Ocean Strategy. Yes, that one is a big one. Yeah. And is it part of your duty as a CEO to be thinking about the brand where we're heading?

And for example, who decided that we're trying CPG now? Like, is that you? Is that— We have a small team of 20 people. We want to be participatory as much as possible.

So our lawyers bring great ideas to the table. We don't want them to just do law. Our operations team visits the stores, visits the field, and comes back with great menu ideas all the time. So it is generally participatory, but another book since you mentioned it.

We follow Gino Wickman's book EOS Traction, which is basically a model to run your company. We actually humbly have like quite a bit of tech in our little company, lots of dashboards. We compare velocities, which is the wholesale ingredients we sell to the stores. We compare that to the cash register data to see, are we using too much chocolate?

Are we, are we using chocolate in the wrong place? Are we putting beavertail? Are we putting ice cream on cones or on beavertail? Beavertails.

So interesting story there. We sell a lot of ice cream. 65 stores of ours sell ice cream. We're actually perhaps the, the biggest Canadian-owned ice cream chain in Canada.

Not Dairy Queen or Baskin-Robbins, but Canadian-owned. Wow. But the number one target for the ice cream is our clients put it à la mode on a Beavertail. And that's our magic.

We actually think that's great. I don't want to compete with Dairy Queen. Dairy Queen makes great fun ice cream. But if you want Beavertails, we're the only And if you want a special— like, if you want to double down on your BeaverTail, that's our ice cream.

Well, that's your blue ocean strategy right here. There you go. There you go. So the EOS Traction book will talk about having your key values, but also your dashboards and what matters to— what matters— what will budge the needle most.

Dashboards are important. I'm curious to know if you've heard of Napoleon Hill. Yes. The book Think and Grow Rich.

Yeah. So was there any moment in your life where you said, OK, Okay, this is like without even knowing what the book is about, which is about whatever you think you know you can visualize can turn into reality. Project. Yes, exactly.

Did you do? Did you experience anything like that in your? I think my wife and I are very synergistic. " Oh my God!

We would kill each other. We we like really have a good time working together, and my twin is our CFO. So that's a very different part of that. We do.

We stay the hell away from that. Like, please take care of the finances. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But Tina is our creative director and I'm CEO.

So I, in the Traction book, it's called the visionary. It sounds arrogant, so I don't like to say it, but I'm the vision guy. Like, I come up with the ideas. And, and the book says, like, the visionary is supposed to come up with 20 crazy ideas a week and only one is good.

And somebody has to stop you to say those ones are no good. And that's not my wife. Maybe that's why we're still— no, it's not my wife. That's why we're still married, but it's, it's my twin brother.

So he's the integrator. Yes. That's the, the manager, if you will. Good fuel.

That's that. Yes. All the, all related to that. Exactly.

So I deliver too much rocket fuel and they, they calm me down. And many a day they're like, you need less coffee and you should get outta the office and stop thinking for today, please. So I generally, as the vision guy, I give the big picture strategy. Yeah.

I don't know if any of, I can't think of any of his books, of his books, but Roger Martin was a great management thinker. I really can't think of any of his books, but he was Dean of the Rotman School of Business in Toronto. Great Canadian business thinker who now retired in Florida. Classic Canadian.

But he says that there's a great video online, Planning Versus Strategy, that he did the video. It's like a 3-minute video. Planning is about spending money. Okay.

So we're going to hire people. We're going to assign a campaign to an ad agency. We're going to invest in a new corporate store, et cetera. And he says planning is easy because you're just spending money.

Everybody likes to spend money. And he says planning is really easy because at the end of the day, you can check it off and feel like you were productive today. We all, we all do that. Yeah.

We're all fooling ourselves. Whereas strategy, he says, is about revenue. And he says that the uncomfortable part about revenue is today I can say I am planning this campaign. A million dollars, and you didn't do five other campaigns, but you did that one.

It might be a failure, but you did it. So you check the box, and you feel good, and you ask for a raise. Revenue strategy. There's only one way you're going to know if it worked is if the sales are there.

So you can't hide. He says for that reason, people get really uncomfortable about strategy. He actually says very interesting. This is more philosophy, I guess.

But he says we call it strategic planning. so that we could put checkmarks to the strategy. He says, but there's no checkmarks. Like, at the end of the day, it worked or it didn't work.

You got the sales. Yeah. And nobody can hide behind that one. That's good.

And you mentioned that, of course, you're working with your wife, right? Yes, a lot of people say, no, no, no, we don't work with family. And you love that. Yeah.

Would you encourage that for other business? I get asked that a lot. And I don't want to be responsible for failed marriages or, I don't know, like divorce rate or— To me, this is Brand Is Business, maybe Denise's book. If you really enjoy what you do, you, I would think, would want to share that with someone you love.

So for us, it's not that we're trying to build a billion-dollar company. We're trying to build a happy brand. And this is not husband-wife, but parent-kid. We have a lot of young people who work for us and are so energetic and dynamic.

And they keep me pretending to be young. And I love it. But one of the sad things I see with our young staff— and I often try to talk to them about it. And I think it's a good thing.

And I rarely turn down an opportunity to speak. I get invited to speak at McGill, where I'm a graduate, or the high school I went to, Loyola. I have the privilege of going back often to speak. And I try to always say, invariably it comes down to one message, and that is your happiness is inside.

And the more we look externally for happiness, the more we will never find it. We'll always be relying on the next TikTok video, if I wanna be really whatever. But it's inside. You have to know what's inside that makes you happy.

And that's true of a brand too. So Beavertails should not pretend to be organic peaches and whipped cream. I'm sorry for all the people who love peaches, but that's not us. But you seem like a very happy person, always smiling and jovial.

What do you do after— like, apart from business, what else do you do to keep that fire inside of you, that vitality? I thank God I was born that way. Like, that's just my natural Like, I have espresso before going to bed. It calms me down, believe it or not.

I love to cook. I love to read. I love to learn. I was a really not good student, but I was always curious.

And I think schools would be better for everybody if we taught curiosity as opposed to— we're really teaching the destination, not the journey. Know these 68 things because that's the course outline and that's what the government protocol requires. And congratulations, you passed history. Now we go to sec 5.

Now you have to pass science, know these 28 things, but we don't teach the curiosity. I think we actually lose it. Yep. You're so— I, I don't know if you're right, but I agree.

If, if you're wrong, we're both wrong. I, I agree 100%. I think there's a part of us that, like, the creativity side, like you say, curiosity, like building something new, that joy that you feel by building something. We lose that eventually.

And yeah, I don't know if it's high school. I don't, I don't No, I guess it depends where you're going. It depends who you are. I think different people lose it at different times for different reasons, and it's just one more degree.

And we have way too many degrees in North America, right? I mean, it's— but we just— it's the hurdles. It's— we gotta go to the next level. And what does entrepreneurship mean to you?

Hmm. So franchising, I believe— what I should check this up because I've said this many times, and if I'm lying, I've spread this rumor way too much— but franchising, I think, was born in France. And entrepreneur— this is, uh, I'm taking a dig at the Republican Party, so I apologize. apologize to, but President Obama had a beaver tail, so I'm pro-Democrat.

But George Bush Jr. was meeting with the French president or prime minister, I forget, and said, you know, entrepreneurship is what made America great. And I don't know if you have a word for entrepreneurship in French, but, you know, that's a special part of America. And entreprendre is a French word anyway.

Entrepreneur. Exactly right. But it comes from entreprendre. So for me, entrepreneurship is, again, back to the journey.

It's the keep— it's the adventure It's a matter of keeping on trying. It's— I have a neon sign in my office, which in our old office was a 30-foot banner that greeted you as you came in. We have loft offices, so it's not that big, 30 feet, but it was a quote that often we say it's because of— it's a Darwin quote. It's not a Darwin quote.

It would be more romantic if it was Darwin, but it's a professor from Louisiana State Marketing University or Louisiana State University Department of Marketing. Less romantic when you say it like that. But the quote is, not the strongest or the fastest of a species that survives, but the one that is most adaptable to change. And so in our Western Hemisphere, with competitive realities being what they are, truth, things keep changing.

Truth is, even when Starbucks teaches us all to love a $7 coffee, and that was not a business, that was a whole segment. And now we all go to third wave shops, boutique roasters, where we're paying $9 for a coffee, right? Even when you think you've got it, you're at the next level. Yeah.

And so entrepreneurship for me very much is about that. journey and about being curious and always wondering how can we do it better, which also by definition means that there's a life and an end to everything. Would you say it's for everybody? Definitely not.

I think that level of change— people love change. No, they don't. Like, it's again, it's— we think we want that. What are some of the key characteristics you would say?

Like, you've spoken with a lot of entrepreneurs. What have you noticed that they all have in common? 2 things: curiosity and resilience. It's not what happens when you get the lemons, it's what happens, what you do with And entrepreneurs, that resilience, that perseverance— I will not take no.

I will find a way to make sure this works. And oftentimes when things stabilize, entrepreneurs get bored out of their minds. And maybe that's where they lose the company too, right? That's where they need a new challenge.

Are we born this way? I think so. It's a curse. That's why we always need an operator to say no.

That's right. Don't do this one. I wish everyone would have a twin brother like mine. Because then otherwise you can't find the balance.

Focus, right? You're all you're like, oh, this this new thing. Let's try it because I'm sure all of all these ideas to have dashboards. Okay, let's calculate this.

I don't know. Is is that? I don't know. I think it's from you.

People roll their eyes a lot at me in my office and yeah, stop. I don't want to hear it. But resilience is it is key for sure because otherwise you can't you can't cut costs to success. You can save a disaster by cutting costs, but if going to build something, one of the expressions I use is the only thing you can build by taking things away is a hole.

Like, unless you're building a well or a tunnel, you've got to add things to make something. And that's, that's about resilience. It's about always coming back and what more could we do and how could we do it better. And what about limiting beliefs?

Were there any that you had to unlearn or you had to upgrade, let's say, your operating system as a person in order to grow into the person that you've become today? today? Well, maybe one is I was definitely the least studious of the 3 kids, the least academic of the 3 kids in our family. My dad, God bless him, came— my parents are both from Italy but met and married in Montreal.

And my dad came from Italy barely knowing English or French but worked hard, was studious, went to McGill, got— eventually got into McGill in accounting and finished first in Quebec and third in Canada in accounting for someone who barely— or who didn't speak the language when it all started. I was not that. And so the limiting belief was always it was harder for me to get my homework done, it was harder for me to do well in school. And I started excelling when I started getting involved in extracurricular at school and being curious.

It wasn't just about the exam at the end. Yeah, things that you enjoyed. That's right. And the high school I'm still very involved with, Loyola, the Jesuits are very much about be the best person you can be.

and allow yourself to be curious and learn new things. And I think that— But they're afraid. A lot of them are afraid to try new, like try many things. I think as humans, we're afraid.

I think it's an overwhelming world. It's a risky world. It's— And how do they overcome that? What would you say?

Or based on your experience? I'm sorry? Based on your experience, maybe? I don't know if they do.

I think this is maybe the only pessimistic thing I'm gonna say in this podcast, but I think people who are born with that optimism have it. And I think sadly a lot of people are, you know, 60, 65, retiring and say, I wish I would have tried that career change. I wish I would have tried doing that business. But they might have been very unhappy.

Maybe it's good that they didn't, because if they waited that long, I don't know. I could never be like that. I would rather die than be, you know, this is what you're going to do for the rest of your life. But I don't know.

I agree with you. Which again means we both might be wrong. But who knows, right? We're wrong together.

But I think as entrepreneurs, sometimes we're in a little bit la-la land because we're like, you know, we have that, like you said, curiosity is good. And we think we can— we're so optimistic about this new thing that we're starting, right? And we have to be a little bit naive about it. That was just going to say.

I have an MBA and I joke that the best way to kill a project is give it to 2 MBAs. Like, they'll kill anything, right? You'll analyze it until you find all the problems with it. But we have to have our blinders on to know Of course this is gonna work.

And then you, you, that's your own fuel. Make the impossible happen. Yeah, if you get, if you take the brakes out, like you'll probably do a better race if you were a race car driver. Was there ever a time that you realized you made a big mistake only to find out at the end that was the best thing that ever happened to you?

I'm a big believer in, you know, it's not the mistake, it's what you pivot with it. I think when we opened all these other concepts, Fritalar, And at the time, we thought we were a restaurant company, which was very transactional. And it was very systems-oriented and very process-oriented. And at the end of that, we realized, wait, we're actually storytellers, which is a lot more fun.

That's subjective. Some people, I'm sure, just enjoy running systems. Engineers do that with pleasure all day long. But for us, it was more the storytelling, the branding is what we're really about.

And that's the point at which we started to sell those restaurants and become those other ones and become more involved in Beavertales and develop the story of Beavertales more fully and build that story more fully. I like that. If we were to summarize this conversation, or maybe there's something that you wanted to say you didn't get to say, what would you say? Like, what, what is one sentence that you want to summarize this conversation with?

I would share our key brand value for Beavertales is about we deliver joy. But I would turn that around and I would challenge anybody listening listening, especially if they're thinking about growing their business or, or franchising their business, is to really introspectively reflect on what makes you happy and what about your brand makes people happy. As a bit of a joke, we have a company next to us at the office that makes heart stents, which is very serious, and their branding is red like our branding. And when they first moved in— they're engineers, God bless them, God love them— Yeah.

But when they first moved in, I said, we should have a neon sign between our offices that says, we clog them and you fix them. And that would be fun. They didn't think it was as fun. But different— they still make a lot of people happy.

They save people's lives, right? Mm-hmm. So there's different levels of how we deliver. Like, we can't take ourselves too seriously.

We deliver joy. But for Jennifer, the 9-year-old out there that's looking forward to going to Old Montreal this weekend to have her brownie beavertail, we are a big deal. And we shouldn't take that big deal deal more seriously than necessary, but we shouldn't take it more lightly either. So whatever business you're doing, think about what, what happiness do you bring to someone, and then find a way to say it, like storytelling, to share it with the world.

Yeah, because it— I'm sure everyone listening has something that makes someone happy. If you don't keep looking, it's, it's there. It's hiding somewhere, but it's there. I'm an optimist.

I'm sure it's there. But until you find that, I don't know if anything is as fun to share or as special to share. Great perspective. I'm an optimist.

I'm a Cancer. Are Cancers optimistic? I would say so. I don't know.

I have no idea. But then we could be both wrong. There you go. There's— that's the real answer here.

We could all be wrong. If you could go back to your younger self and give some advice, I know it's a cliché question, But yeah, and it— this is, uh, maybe a reckless answer that I don't know, maybe, yeah, maybe I'm— but I've answered this before and I stick with my answer. What is it? Be more reckless is one word.

Bold is another word, depending how you're feeling. But it's, you know, when I started, I was, uh, I was a kid. I was living at home. And I remember my mom cried when I told her I bought the franchise.

To her, it was like, but you're going to McGill and you bought a franchise at Lerone? And she literally cried. cried. And my dad, you know, the conservative accountant, he's like, I don't think you're making the right decision.

But, but afterwards, they, you know, it worked out. They were very happy for all of us. But I still held back because even before she cried, I knew my mom is not going to be happy with this. My dad doesn't think this is serious.

So you bought it before, then you told them? Yep. Wow. I do encourage that.

Otherwise they would have talked me out of it. But I would have done more love that because at that age, what's failure? You're living at home, you don't have kids, you don't have a wife, nobody's relying on you. Now's the time to take risks.

So I also think I'm more— I have more fun when I take risks, when I come up with my crazy ideas. Again, I don't want to encourage anybody to be reckless. Don't everybody out there join their wife and start a business tomorrow. Let's think it through.

But yeah. We'll blame Pino. He told us. Yeah, exactly.

You can have weird people waiting behind the office door tomorrow. tomorrow. What do you like about the city of Montreal? I love our multiculturalism.

I love our joie de vivre. I love that I could take Ontario clients for lunch and they look around and it's like, but everybody's having like wine at their table there. You know, we all work hard, but there's so much more to it. Um, Montreal could teach North America the beauty of life.

It's not just the joie de achieved in the way we live, it's in our design. Design is so important in Montreal. It has to be beautiful. It has to be— has to speak to the heart.

And those are very much, I think, European values and French values. And I think North America needs more of those values more than ever. So yeah, that's, that's what I love. I could never leave this city.

Nice. Well, Pinault, it was a pleasure to have you on the show. I really enjoyed the conversation. It was my pleasure.

You made me laugh a lot. Oh good, I'm I hope I wasn't wrong on that. No, no, no, that one, no, you were not wrong on that one. Awesome.

Thanks so much for having invited me. Until next time. Yes.