How Pincho Went From Almost Shutting Down to Miami Staple | Otto Othman

Feels good that I'm back in a podcast talking about food because it's been a lot of politics.

It's been a lot of politics, business,

business, but um back to

kind of strayed away from the food side, man.

Yeah. But we're back now with my man over here.

But it's crazy because one of the most important things is eating with your friends like in a table better experience you can share with your buddies and stuff like

and it's fun to watch cuz it's not so serious and uh with the world we live in.

So this is a good one.

This is a good one. This is uh this is one of the the matriarchs of uh South Florida.

You know, you you you you have some people come by here sometimes that you have heard of them and how great they are, but you don't get to see it or hear about it until you meet him in person and you feel it. And I felt that with him, you know, I've heard a lot of good things about him from a lot of people, you know, and then just hearing things hear him the stories he was telling you earlier. This is going to be a good one.

This is this is going to be a good one, you know. He has a lot of [ __ ] skeletons, man.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. We have the founder of of uh Pincho. Auto. What's up? One of my boys. What's up, my boy? Welcome, bro. Thank you, guys.

A sharp dude. So, we had to uh ask questions properly here because

please, bro, I'm seen. I want to start from the beginning,

right? How is how is a Palestinian

in Miami doing Cuban food and outdoing everyone

from Halia

and out and and from and outdoing everyone. So tell us your story for those people who don't know you. Tell us your story

and introduce yourself.

Yeah. Well, anyway, hey, what's up everybody? Otto Oman here. I'm one of the founders of Pincho, currently leading the brand. Uh man, it's um Okay, it's you know, I moved to I was born and raised in Brazil. I'm Palestinian parents.

Oh, wow. Oh, born and raised in Brazil. And um

in what part? Like the favllas Brazil or like the area?

Right next to them. Okay. So, good part. I'm born uh I was born in a town called Fos Iguasu. Fuzzu is Iguasu Falls. This is the second biggest waterfalls in the world. I think it's the second most visited city in Brazil. Don't quote me on this. It's a beautiful city. Uh but you know, Brazil sort of the economy was kind of tough and then my dad you know being an entrepreneur, being an immigrant, he's Palestinian. He moved to Brazil when he was 17, 18 years old. Um he said, "I got to go find my life." And uh you know, we moved around a lot. So I lived in Brazil up until fourth grade. I lived in the West Bank uh fifth grade, sixth grade, back to Brazil, 7th grade, 8th grade, Chicago, 9th grade, Palestine 10th grade, 11th grade was an American school in Palestine, and then 12th grade, HML, Halia Miami Lakes. So

god damn, bro. From Palestine.

But you know what's crazy, man? You ended up in the perfect spot.

Yeah. My my dad called me one day. He called called us in in the Middle East. Said, "Hey, listen. We're going to move to Miami. I'm going to go open up a grocery store with uh with a family member and I'm like, "Oh [ __ ] how's Miami?" Like where? You know, I was like, he goes, "Well, we're going to move to a place called Halia." I like, "Oh man, that sounds amazing." I was like, "It sounds exotic. Sounds like Honolulu." I was like, "Oh my god, I can't wait to go there." And uh, bro, I jump on the plane and then I came I I was telling Kiko when I got down, I I got hit with this humidity. you know, we're desert people, so we're like, you know, the dry weather

to acclimate. He says, bro, like like

it took me about a week. It took me about a week to be able to breathe in Miami. It was very hard.

And uh I went to HML and I made a lot of friends and uh the rest is history, man. We opened a grocery store called Pronto. Some of you guys might know Pronto Cafe

with Alex going. The best pan,

the best panco that I haven't tried either,

but I did Alex. Shout out to Alex.

Shout out to Alex, a dear friend of mine. That's the original little supermarket that you're doing.

That's the supermarket. I worked there. I'm not kidding, guys. I worked there seven days a week for I think a year or two. And then I was

You learned Spanish?

I learned Cuban Spanish

very quickly. You know, Portuguese was my

your native

my native. You know, we say this with this story all the time. You know, when I first got there, uh somebody was like, "Oh, people don't like what is he talking about, bro?" Aha. And I'm like, "Bro," he's like, "Yeah, that's," you know, so I had to learn the lingo. Today, I speak fullon Cuban, bro. Like crazy.

So, so take me back to those days because my brother-in-law, his family has grocery stores in New York.

Yeah.

And they live on the above the grocery store, you know? So, I've been on vacation there and I see the day-to-day of people coming in, they're coming out, they're going upstairs, they're coming down and it's like, man, this is a lot of fun, you know? Like, you own the place downstairs. Give me like a dayto-day. Take me back to your childhood with your pops like how are you managing that and where are you seeing like okay this can lead to something.

Yeah. So when we first opened believe it or not it was so slow that my dad looked at me and he goes he goes he goes baba we need you to produce income. So I went and I worked at another grocery store for 6 months in Halia Gardens and it was incredible. It was amazing and and I quickly learned you know the the grocery store game with that gentleman. His name was Mustafa you know. May he rest in peace. actually passed. Dear incredible human and then when my dad's grocery store started building up, I moved and I started working with my dad. It was me, my dad, and my mom, working full-time there, bro. I'm talking about I I had no weekends off for 5 years.

Wow.

I worked seven days a week. Then my mom felt bad and she started giving me Tuesdays off. So, I used to take Tuesdays off. I went to high school and I went to college full-time while I worked at the grocery store.

And we built it, man. You know, we we're immigrants. I was telling Kiko, you know, um, immigrants that come to this country wanting to work, I salute them. You know, if you're an immigrant, you want to be here. This is a great country,

but we came here to work, man. We came here to build a life. We, you know, you leave a whole world like what people don't understand being an immigrant,

you leave a whole world behind. You know, your f your friends, your family, you leave everything for the for the betterment of your kids and your future. So, it's big leaps that immigrants take. So, you know, uh, my dad just passed away two months ago. So, I love my dad to death. You know, it's a tough loss for the family, but he's a great man.

Well, he was old already or

No, he was 75, you know, unfortunately. Unfortunately, he got sick. But, uh,

but he he was a a really smart man, you know. He he taught us English early on cuz he knew one day we're going to end up in America. My grandma's a American citizen

and he said, "Let's go." You know, he's a he was a gambler when it came to entrepreneurship. You know, entrepreneurship is a tough game.

It is. And you have to be risky.

Taking that leap.

Hell yeah, man.

To hia, Florida. What's crazy like I mean I know he passed now and everything but what was like

I mean obviously he was proud of you but what did he tell you about what you were able to amass you know and what you've done so far?

You know it's funny um so my mom is the one who runs the show today. So my mom's been the president of our group the offment group for for over 10 years now and my dad sort of had retired like seven eight years ago. So her and Alex run Pronto together. Okay.

So Alex ran out Pronto Cafe and Pronto Market together with my mom. Um, but my dad, I remember when I told him about Pincho, he goes, "What?"

He goes, "But I brought you to this country so you can go to school and get a corporate job." And I already and I'll talk I'll tell you a bit about my background. And he goes, "You want to go open a restaurant?" And I remember my dad and then I told him, I'm like, "Baba, I love you, bro. I I believe I can really do this. You taught me entrepreneurship. Like, I can't just work for somebody else." And he goes, "All right, you know, [ __ ] it." He goes, "If that's what you want to do, I'll back you. I'll support you." and we went and we built Pincho. I I mean everywhere my dad would go like you know the fact that we were able to build a Latin inspired brand being Palestinians in Miami and be part of the community

to the extent that we are um a lot of it comes back to values that my dad and my mom taught us when we were kids

and making that leap that we talked about which is huge.

Hell yeah. Oh my man.

Well, it goes to show you how important it is to have family close to you.

100% bro. 100%. somebody to I mean on on the early days of Pinchro if it wasn't for the fact that my dad and my mom were here. It's it's incredible.

You know he's he's similar to um our guy from Shaza kebab. I mean

I mean

it's another family business too.

Yeah. I I'm a big fan of their of their food.

He's Iraqi. I mean he's Iraqi.

He's Persian. Persian, right? They're Persian. Yeah. Amazing. I actually

the Persians in 300.

Yeah.

You know, you know what I'm saying? He's Xerxes side.

Yeah. I told him that [ __ ]

I'm a big fan of Shaw.

Yeah. He has the same story as you. His parents were everything. Same exact song.

Listening to you, it reminds me of Amazing. Yeah.

So, so, so you're in Halia.

Yeah.

What age?

I was 15, 16 years old. I went to HML.

HML. You're

I'm working the group. Yeah. Working the group.

You don't know you're even balancing. Everybody thinks you're Latin.

Yeah. A lot of people think I'm I'm Cuba or Puerto Rican. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

And uh Yeah, man. I was there. And then um just working doing my day-to-day. I got into um I was a software developer. I was I was

big nerd. Big nerd. Computer nerd. I was I got kicked out of school

for nine days, suspended in Chicago because I hacked into the school system. No way.

So that was I was that kid.

Yeah, that that was I was just

super nerd.

I was super nerd. I was I'll buy computer hacking books. I would spend all my money on books and read and do that. And that was my life. And then uh I was I was in college. I went for computer information system and then I got a job at uh I got an internship at a place called Tams. Uh Michael Tamo gave me an internship and then I worked my way up to be a partner there.

Oh, amazing.

And then uh I I used to work do a lot of work for nightlife. So at that time I had already sort of tried to leave the grocery store and then my dad and my mom and some employees they would run the grocery store and I started calling.

Yeah. Yeah. And then I I met Dave Gruntman early on uh and we worked together because he used to own Miami Marketing Group. We would do all the work for Dave. Um like

mention what what what type of work would you be doing? Like software work or

No. So he used to he used to run the marketing for um for Opium Group.

Yeah.

And Yeah. So we would do that. Roman Jones.

Yeah. Roman Jones and and the Milan brothers. We would do all the work, all the design work for them. That's what we would do.

Marketing work. It's marketing software. No, not software. Marketing work. Like we would build their websites. We do all of their invitations. We would do all their collateral, all their design back.

So you basically had a marketing company. Yeah. Yeah.

But you were doing that via Tams or Tams. I was Yeah, I was a partner at Tams.

Got you. Got you. Got you. I got a Tams. So I was doing that and I learned the trade. I got to meet a lot of that's how I made most of my friends because I started going out. I was new to the town.

I only went to high school one year. Like that's where you make a lot of your friends.

I started going out to these clubs and partying and because I was doing all of their work, I would walk right in, you I'll go uh I'll pull up a mansion. Everybody knew who I was. I'll walk right in with 10, 15 people.

We were there. We were there.

Yeah. I don't know if you guys remember how hard it was to deal with those bouncers back in the day. I just slide a little 20 on. That's it, bro. If I some money, that's it.

It was brutal. And man, and and that was life, man. You know, and the grocery store kept building up. I kept helping and supporting my dad and my mom from a strategy standpoint. Yeah.

Uh we rebranded from Los Latinos Market to Pronto primarily because of my background. And that's sort of where Prona took off when we rebranded the the business.

So you never meant to get into marketing. You just happenedly

just just I learned design via Tams. I would sit behind them cuz I was a software guy and I'll sit behind Tams behind Michael Tams and he would teach me everything about Photoshop and everything and I got obsessed with that.

So you're a designer yourself?

So I'm a designer. So yeah, I'm a designer now. That's my forte today more than software because I haven't

That explains a lot of your brand. Your brand is very carefully curated. You can see it. You can tell.

Lightning bolt. Now that's on the

P. And you've had a handful of like iterations of it too since it first started.

Yeah. Yeah. We started as Peach Factory and then we rebranded to Pincho. Yeah.

When was that? When was that Pincho? And

Westchester was the first store, right? Yeah. When when did you decide I'm going to make Pinchos and burgers?

Yeah. So my mom uh cooked uh pinchos one day at my house. We used to live in Miami Lakes. That's when we graduated from Hame to H. He came up, we're living in the lakes and then my friends were like, "Holy [ __ ] this thing is amazing." And I was like, "For real?" I was like, "Yeah, yeah." I was like, "Wow, this bro, this recipe is incredible." And my friends, 98% of my friends are Cuban, you know, Latinos. And I was like, "Man, you've never had these flavors." Like, it's like a Brazilian, you know, seasoning is like, "No, but my mom makes it like Middle Eastern, you know, we use olive oil, like which typically Brazilians won't use. They just do salt on it." Like, you know, if you ever gone to Texas, Brazil or Fogo, it's just salt on the meat and they just grill it.

And I was like, "Oh, man." And then two weeks later or 3 weeks later, my friends called my house and they were like,

"Hey, is it cool if we go to Publix and buy like three pounds of steak? Can you bring it to your house? Can your mom like chop it up and season it?" And I'm like, "And grill it?" And they're like, "No, no, no. We want to," it was like a tailgate for like a Dolphins game or something. We want to grill at the tailgate. I'm like, "What?" Called my mom and she goes, "Sure." Like, "I'll do it." And then it became a thing. And it became a thing. became like, "Okay, Otto's mom's recipe is incredible." And then it was always a thing. So, I told my mom,

this when I was 17, 18 years old, I said said, "One day

I'm going to open a restaurant selling your pincho recipe, right?" Uh, and in Brazil, we call them especi uh TAMs. I I became a creative director um at U Sapion Nitro. Actually I got hired as a manager of interactive. I used to manage the entire um interactive department for sprint and next all of the advertising online the banners the websites. That was my life. And then and I started working with Fiat and Chrysler. We did Coca-Cola. We did incredible brands. That was my life. I was very happy getting paid very good money. I loved Sapiant. But uh I was with Nadal my co-founder at Pincho at a barbecue fourth of July hanging out having some drinks. He was unhappy with his day-to-day with his dad. And then I said, "Bro, let's open a restaurant. Let's sell my mom's pincho restaurant." You know, seven shots of tequila in. You know, you're like liquid courage.

Yeah, that's the best idea.

You're like, "Fuck it. Let's

the best ideas. This guy has that, bro. Let's do this. Let's do this. You know what? I got an idea. Let's do this." I'll tell you I'll tell you this.

A lot of people, my wife included, say, "Do not tell your ideas to people."

Yeah. Because people will steal them or or there's bad

juach. No, if you have a confidant in somebody you trust, of course.

Like me and him will call each other. He'll call me waste. Yo, get I have an idea, bro. I'm like I'm like, bro. And I'm not the same. I'm at another place,

bro. You know what? [ __ ] it. Yeah, that's amazing. Let's do it. And it's confidence. Not everybody, but not everybody. No, no, that's 100%. But my other take on it is

when you put it out there in the world and you tell people around you, now you got to [ __ ] do it. And now you're like an [ __ ] So, it's like it puts the pressure on you to do it cuz you don't want to go back and be like, "Oh, that idea you talked about, it never happened." And I think you have to just share it with people

that are not going to hate on you and they're not going to put you down because because a lot of people will will their own they'll project their own insecurity about the business and then they'll they'll make you not feel like you can do it. So I think that's you got that and you got to be ballsy. You got to just like listen I don't care if there's a chance of failing. There's a chance of failing in anything you know. So but I want to do it anyways you know. Absolutely. So talking about ballsy but sorry finish. So then you're at that you're at that party eight tequilas deep and And we're like and then he goes, "Well, what do we do?" I'm like, "Man, we should do like a Latin street food concept." Like Five Guys was blowing up at the time.

Uh, you know, this is 15 years ago. And I'm like, "We'll sell my mom's pinch. We'll sell the foods that you find in the streets of South America." So, we did pinchos, burgers, and hot dogs, and we'll do like this Latin, you know, South American street food concept

kind of food.

And, bro, two days later, he goes, "Hey, were you serious?" I'm like, "Yeah, I mean, you know, we were drinking and hanging out, but yeah." And he I'm like, "Why? What's up?" He goes, "I'm already looking for real estate. I really want to do this thing." So, we went for it. So, we we we forced his little brother Nisar in and then Nidal was married to Crystal at the time. And then she became part of the team as well. And then basically, we went and we couldn't afford any spots in Hal Leo. So, imagine we're like, we want to open a spot. We had

we had 77 grand, you know, like that was our money. We're like, we got to go find a place that's already a restaurant. A lot of our friends lived in Kendall. Like a big chunk of our friends lived in Kendall, some of them in the Gables, and then we found a spot on Bird Road.

Bird and 98th, where the first Petrol factory was open. It wasn't popping like it is today. Back then it was like it was on an older It was like older community, a youngster.

Flanigans wasn't across the street from us, you know. It was just

Yeah. And I It was um

Yeah. And then um there was a

Rio still there. It goes down like six months when it open.

That was the only thing that was next to us and we rented that spot. We built it with our own hands 4 months in, you know. Um

I was there when it opened, bro.

Yeah, I was there. You were at the grand opening.

I was there when I've been there since the beginning. I've known him from the beginning.

But it was over there and then that burger exploded. It was the original like I didn't want to say smash burger but the original like different

quality burger that's not fast food [ __ ] fast food but that you can eat smell smoky as [ __ ] because it was so small

and uh it was it was a fast food done right

yeah it was the the rule was simple right it was let's serve only food that we would serve our children like that we would eat at home we're not going to cut corners we're going to do things but Palestinian from what I've from the food that I've eaten recipes are usually very clean.

Yeah. Yeah. It's very It's Mediterranean food, right?

You know, there's not a lot of things that are fried,

nothing, bro. You know, and then

when you eat that, man, you feel good after

you eat Shaw, you feel great after.

That's why when when you go eat pincho, you'll notice that you feel like [ __ ] after cuz it's really high quality food. So, we opened with a very simple menu and it was, you know, the pinchos, it was one burger and one hot dog and it was like eight items on the menu. And then one year in um well first of all I have to say this story. Nadal calls me and he goes you know three months in after we got the spot. We haven't opened yet. He goes hey bro we got to open uh this Saturday. I'm like dude we're not going to open Saturday. He's like we don't have employees. We don't have anybody. This was like November 2nd he calls me. He goes we don't have anybody. He goes we got to open Saturday. And I'm like I'm like look I'm like why? He goes bro there's $627 left in the bank account. And I'm like oh [ __ ] He goes, he goes, "We got to open Saturday." That's why our beer's called the 627.

I know the story.

627 the 627 L is because of that moment.

And then I told him, "Look, here's my credit card as an as an American Express card." So, it's a charge card. Like, you have to pay this thing, but you got to pay it again.

And I'm like, "My birthday's on Thursday." This, he called me November 2nd. My birthday is November 4th. And I told him, um, find yourself some employees. I'll invite all my friends. We'll throw my birthday party at the restaurant. We'll invite people

to come and hang out, but we would use that as our training. So, we will train our employees at my birthday party and then use that as like feedback. I told everybody walking in, hey guys, it's my birthday party, but we're training the team. So, let me know what you think, please. Patience. And we did that. So, we were able to train everybody during that day. And we opened Saturday. Smart. Yeah. Bro, so we had 400 people show up to our grand opening because of, you know, we said the first

club now.

Yeah. Yeah. all my friends from the from the nightlife scene. Everybody from Miami Beach, everybody came to show show some love.

So, we did an phenomenal grand opening, but then Monday, everybody went back and then Monday, we did like $100 in sales. It was like, oh [ __ ] what did what did we get ourselves into? And it was a slow build and but uh Adrien Sanchez joined us after one year. That's why Pincho, to answer your question, that's why Pincho got the Latin inspired more and more. Adrian's Cuban. He's from Miami, been here for for for for his whole life. Incredible human being. And that's when we started winning awards when Adrian joined the team. Adrian had culinary chops. We didn't.

We knew retail. We knew customer service. We're Middle Eastern. We worked with our parents since we were 12.

But that's really Yeah. That's what really made

time burger winning champions.

So Adrian comes in and then what? He revamps your menu or something or

Adrian comes in. We starts tweaking our menu. Uh we started doubling down on the burgers. So we started winning competitions. So our burger initially was very Middle Eastern uh flavors. Like we would get the Middle Eastern seasoning sort of like a kafta. You know how in Shaw's there's the I don't know what they call the the the the ground beef. The beef kafta. Right. Kuba. So kuba. There you go. And so we had that's how pincho was. So our burger patty was very seasoned. And then um and then Adrian moved us away from that. He goes, "No, no, guys. We're not going to season the patty. We're going to get the patties. We're going to put them on the grill. we're going to put seasoning on top of it and then the crust, you know, and and we started building the brand that way.

And then out of necessity,

uh we started doing this thing called Try Me Tuesdays. Try Me Tuesdays was so we couldn't drive people there and it was the end of the world compared to where everybody was

and we said let's every Tuesday come up with something really creative

and and that's an idea that Nadal and Adrian had, right? And they said we're going to start doing crazy creative burgers every Tuesday. And that's where the stone burger was born. That's how the Fitanga burger with the fried cheese was born. All the burgers that became in like Miami icons were burned were born out of necessity. And we started getting press and we started getting people. Now

it's like, "Oh [ __ ] there's a little burger joint, a kebab joint or picho a picho factory right in West in Westchester that one of the best burgers in Miami. You should get you should check it out." And then we blew up year three. Year three is when

Year three is when you said, "Hey, there's something here."

Yeah. We quadrupled in sales.

Wow.

First year we did like 200 grand in sales. Like anybody in their right mind would have shut down. That's nothing, guys. In our business,

it's nothing. And then the second year was like 350. We almost shut down the second year.

Really?

Nidal came to my apartment. I had just gotten married to my wife. I was living in Bickl. I was working at Sapin. And he goes, "I'm done. I'm closing down." Um,

whose was it?

Nadal. Nad.

Yeah. And I was like I was like, "Okay." I'm like, "We're not going to do that." I I got you. I'm like I'm like listen I know it's hard. I'm like pay yourself whatever you need to pay yourself so you comfortable at home so you're not fighting that battle. I'll keep pumping money into the business. Uh I wrote him a check right then and then and I'm like let's just go and and we doubled down and then the third year was a break. Third year we did almost a million dollars. from 300 to a million bucks and then they kept and then Bird Road kept growing

and then I quit my career uh and said we said like let's open up Coral Gables cuz we knew we had a real estate problem. Yeah, we knew we had a real estate problem. We opened Coral Gables and then that's

That was your second one.

Yeah. And that one opened up massive open up really great customer service.

That was amazing, man. Yeah. We've had our ups and downs with operations but now we're we're doing phenomenal. Yeah.

When did Haley open? Because I remember doing a segment for my show on Telmundo at the Halo one a decade ago. So they sold too, right?

2016 I think it was. 2016 that go when you guys opened there.

Massive. That was our biggest opening. Haley and Kendall were our biggest opening. Record record sales. Yeah. Hilia and Kendall are our strongest locations right now.

Really? Kendall's right there on ID. I've been to that one too.

Halia has a great community. Um no matter what people say, Hilia is amazing, dude. Halia Halia Haley is not understood by national chains. They didn't know how to operate there. But once they open, you Olive Garden down the street, bro. There's the line. There's like a two-hour wait.

The Chick-fil-A 2-hour wait is insane. But like once you open there and you know how to you know the you know the culture and you're part of the city, you'll make great money. Yeah. It really is incredible city.

What's one of the the the burgers or ideas that didn't hit that were like ah didn't work.

Oh man, we did them.

There's a lot of second part to the question is how do you feel also about people copying all your recipes?

Oh my god. go to the first one and then the second one.

Well, let yeah, let's back up. So, so we started growing the brand and then we we we started franchising. We we opened a few franchise stores and um and then quickly I realized the franchising was not the right move for us.

But you know what's crazy? Everyone that franchises, my buddies at Dr. Lemon, everybody,

they always regret it,

bro. Because there's this I don't know if I can say this, but there's this pahmental

that everybody is like McDonald's and you're like, "Oh, you want to be McDonald's?" And then when you open you realize that you have to deal with all these people and the different the different personalities of owners

that it's hard, man, because I can't walk into any pinch location be like, "Hey man, you got to change this." No, you got to go to the owner. The owner has like to his team and blah blah blah blah. So I decided that was not for us. So four years ago, I bought all the restaurants back. Yeah.

So, four years ago, now every pinch location is owned by us. Uh we operate everything. No one like and we've been rebuilding and uh now we operate everything 10 times better than before because I control everything.

Consistency.

Yeah. But going back to your to your to your question along the way when we started growing, we needed to now do instead of weekly specials, we moved to monthly

because it was really hard to do weekly specials. Yeah. And the ones that didn't hit, I think we did one was called the parm burger. I don't know why we did. It's not even Latin inspired. It was like a a fried fried mozzarella with like marinara sauce. Oh, that was that was like really filling.

What were we thinking? That should have basically been a chicken sandwich versus like a a burger. Um, so that was it. And then we did a we did a Mediterranean burger and that was really on me. I thought it was going to be amazing, but people didn't care. you know, I had all this freshness, this pickled um pickled onions, you know, say like, "No, bro. Give me that fried cheese, bro. I don't give a [ __ ] about this.

I want the fat boy stuff. I don't want like this healthy looking burger." So, those two, I think, were were probably the two that stand out the most.

Yeah.

And and and you guys always started the trends with the maloodles. You the first, you guys fried cheese were the first

like the Bro, listen.

How many people have copied them? Which one has

a lot of people copy?

Which one has said? You don't have to call him out, but which really pissed you off. Like, oh,

man, don't put me on the spot.

No, it's a good question.

There's there's, you know,

they say that's the biggest form of flattery.

Yeah. Look, you know, don't know them personally. Pine Crisp Bakery, they have a a Pelito burger. Like, I know for a fact that they went around us and say, "Hey, we want to copy Pincho." Like, they even say it bluntly to other people. So, they try to launch our burgers and bowls in one of the Pine Cris bakery.

We You know what? More power to them. I'm actually I'm actually a fan of the bakery. I get my coffees there. I don't hate on them. But that's one for sure that I remember to me.

But what do you feel? You're like I mean

to me the worst is when you copy and then you call it exactly what we call it. I'm like my dude, you you already [ __ ] copied just change the name. Have some creativity. Somebody launches at to Stoneburg and they call it to Stoneburg.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So

that was copied so much. My brother listen

that's the one I was talking about. I wanted you to say it, but

I Who's copied that? I know everybody, but give me a couple. Give me a couple.

I'm not I'm not saying it.

No, give me three people that have it. I don't know.

Who else has it?

I'm I'm not I'm not I I already sent them cease and desist letters.

You see?

Oh, is that serious?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

The Maduro. I don't mean to interrupt, but listen. The one I had a

The to one.

Yeah. The pitanga fried cheese is in every burger now. You know, like these are things that we started.

But wait, wait. Can you really send a can you really send a season to assist or something that's creative like that? Like

so I don't care that you have a toone burger. I more power to everybody. Look, everybody has to eat, bro. If you want to create a a concept,

but we own the trademark on to stone burger. We actually we we register the trademark. So we actually own it. Call it Patakonburg. Call it Hawaiian plantain platanito. Just don't call it a stone burger, you know. Don't call a burger a pincho burger. Don't call it a fitanga burger. Don't call it a pastel burger. Dude, figure out how to call it something else. More power to everybody, man. You know, I'm I'm a big I like, if you know me,

I have multiple friends that own burger joints in Miami. I help I help them all the time. I I even share stuff that we done. I'm like, let me show you how to do this cuz I want I have like this soft spot

for entrepreneurs are growing cuz I know you know how it goes. Yeah. You know what it

[ __ ] sucks, dude. Every day you're just getting punched in the face. So, so I like to help other people, but just don't copy the name, bro. Just be be creative. Come up with something else.

Tell me about this new one you got now with the fra inside.

I saw it like two days ago or something. This [ __ ] was crazy with Adrian. Which one?

That it's got a fra and uh you guys are they're collabing with somebody and it's like a a pastry and it has the fra inside. He doesn't even know.

Which which one? The

confused. I doubt you're confused.

Oh, I'm telling you right now. What do you mean?

Unless somebody else

continue to talk. Listen, I want your thoughts on the Smashburger craze.

Yeah.

Okay. And you have people like Skinny Louise that just blew up out of nowhere. Their franchise.

Shout out to Gonzalo,

right? And uh and then everyone now has Smashburgers, you know. Um just wanted to get your personal feedback on that.

So um

I don't mean to interrupt. Right here. Look at this star. Look at agent.

Oh yeah. So that's that's not here in Miami.

That's that's a Kalachi. Uh it's in Houston. We

talk about that.

Yeah. That's a collab with a Houston brand. It's B basically is a Czech Czechoslovakian uh empanada. So we coll we collaborated with them and we gave them the Cuban frittita but that's there that's not in Miami. That's in Houston at their shop not to add you confused me there for um all right going back um

Smashburg.

So listen man um

I'm a big believer that the world doesn't need another burger joint. That's period. Forget about a smash burger or not. Right? I've always said that. That's why we try to be different.

Yeah.

Um the Smashburger is it's it's getting a little bit played out because everyone's popping up in every corner.

Uh Gonzalo, Skinny Lou, uh really great guy, you know. I met him. Um Skinny Lou did a good job in terms of their branding. More power.

Our toy drive, too.

Yeah. Huh.

Oh, they Okay. Amazing. Yeah. They they're good humans. We've known him from before.

Uh he's grown very fast, which is incredible. Good for them. But the problem with the with here's my take on it. The problem with smashburg is anyone can do smash burgers. It's not that hard to do a smash burger because you're essentially getting a patty, you get a nice cut, you're smashing it, you're putting salt and pepper on it, a Martin potato roll, and your sauce. If you know how to do that, generally speaking, you can do a good smash burger. The hard part is operating the business. is making it making sure it's consistent, making sure it has a good vibe, making sure it has everything put together. So, you're gonna you're gonna see a lot of Smashburger joints, they're going to open, but they're gonna end up closing because just because you can build a good smash burger in your backyard doesn't mean you can be a good entrepreneur and you can build a business and you know how to treat people the right way. Like that's the thing. So, Skinny Lou is successful because they know how to do that. They've been in the restaurant game for a minute.

Yeah. From the sushi.

Yeah. From crazy pokey, right?

So, they know that. though they're successful in doing so. So, I just worry about a lot of people just thinking it's easy and then opening a bunch of spots and and then shutting down.

Bro, that literally sounds like us. We were going to do our own little like, you know, thing like a little popup and we thought about everything doing Smashburg and stuff and then we're like,

"Oh, it wasn't a burger. It was

But we were going to it was Yeah.

Because he opened up a franchise."

We're going to do smashed chicken. Smash burger.

But this guy JP has that already between two months. He has a smash chicken.

Yeah. I don't know how you're going to smash chicken, but

we were

like ground chicken.

We had testing and everything, bro. He tested and everything.

Chicken die and smack. What do you think, bro? What do you think?

I don't know, bro. I I I plead the fifth on that one. I I

But then you the less competition for me, the better, bro. So, I don't think you should do it, bro. I think your idea sucks.

I said I said if he wants I said, "If you could operate it and be there, bro, then sure. If not, forget about it."

And the pincho and the pincho burger is not a smash burger. It's a kind of burger, but it's not a smash burger.

So, no, it's not a smash burger. you know, we we made a mistake. We made it thinner and dropped the price and people didn't give a [ __ ] So, we we went back to the thicker patties.

Uh because we need to cook them faster. That's the only thing about when you do regular burgers. People expect to get their food in 10 minutes. But, dude, I'm cooking a a nice thick juicy burger and I have 50 orders on the screen. It's very hard.

That's the good thing about smash burgers. You cook them very fast. Uh but we did launch a smash burger on our menu. Um, and we did it with George Mr. East 305. And man, it's one of our bests sellers, right? Because because people, it it's the trend. I don't know if it's gonna stay on forever, but then I look at I look at Shake Shack. Shake Shack's been smashing burgers for 15 years. What they just never call them smash burgers, but they are smash burgers. So, I think I think there's there's definitely a fad component to it, but uh the best people are the ones who are going to be differentiated, but also going to be consistent. Consistency is consistency. Let's keep talking about consistency. What's your favorite burger, Five Guys or Shake Shack?

A [ __ ]

Those are they're different types,

you know? I I love them both equally for different reasons. To me, a Five Guys burger is more like a backyard homie vibe. Like, I like to go to Five Guys. Mai mai hard. Yeah. And both of them do. And I'm a big fan of Shake Shacks as well.

Because it's more beef. You get more bang.

Yeah. I I like them both, man. You know, I really do. Those are the two burgers that we always while Pinch was growing. Those are the two brands that were growing at the same time.

So, I I take my kids to Shake Shack. Um I'm never taking them to Five Guys. I don't know why.

Are you the Danny Meyer of Latin Burgers?

I would love to be that. You know, I mean, I'm a big fan of his. is I think he's an incredible incredible restaurant tour and he knows what the hell he's doing.

So, question. You've been and you've won every competition.

The most time the most winning all time.

I've been to all of them.

Said it here. Okay.

Y

out of all of them, the Miami Dates best, best of Miami, Burgalicious, whatever, which one would you say had the stiffest competition and that you hold? Like that's my favorite one. That's the one that I

I mean, hands down. I mean, look, there's incredible competitions.

Yeah. But the Oscars of the burger world is Burger Bash.

Burger Bash

is the South Beach and Food Food Network Pinekin Burger Bash. You know, you have to say the whole thing. Um,

we were the first Miami brand um, local Miami brand to ever win it in 2015. Uh, because it was always uh, celebrity chefs. It was Michael Simon, Bobby Fle, Michael Simon, Bobby Fle. And then in 2015, we won that. We broke the cycle.

That guys put Pinch on the map. Like next day the lines were out the door. Our website almost crashed. It was a It was a big deal back then to win Burger Bash. Today I thought a very big deal.

What year was this? 2015.

2015. 2015.

Yeah. We had two locations.

It was an unbelievable win though.

Yeah. Yeah.

Unbelie I wasn't shocked because I'm good friends.

Yeah.

But that just like cemented.

And how do they judge that?

They have uh it's like it's chips. You want you want judges and you won people's.

No. No. We've never won. We've never won judges. We've won people's choice, which is the more important because they give everybody a chip and you have to vote and you have these boxes

and the best the best wins and we have to we have to get the votes and talk to people, get them to and it's very hard to get people to vote for you because what ends up happening is, "Hey man, if you love it, vote for us." Everybody tells you,

"Let me taste everything and then I'll come back." That's what I say.

And and that's what ends up happening. But a lot of times by the time they get to the 10th place, they're already full and they're already drunk. So they they they don't want to make their way back. So it's a very hard competition to win. It's not easy to win Burger Bash because it's massive

and you have some of the best brands out there. You got you got

and purveyors too,

local brands. You have celebrity chefs. So anyway, long story short, that was put us on the map. I'm talking about guys,

we got so many franchise requests from around the country. Wow.

Because of Burger Bash because Food Network talked about it. It put us on the map

and and it was a real big win. Listen, so I was going to ask you um do you have any going back to the franchising because I think that's important, you know? Um do you have any horror stories of franchise situations that you're like, you know what,

like what what what what broke the lid? Like what was like, you know what, we're done with this. You know, I'm not going to deal with this.

I can't I don't know if I can share because we've we've um

you've parted ways.

We've parted ways and we've signed agreements. But um

let me think. All right, let me

someone going into franchising. What would you advise them to be careful about? You know, if you're going into

franchising,

the thing about franchising, like if you're small, don't franchise. If you have a business that's making good money, you want to grow it, try to raise money via friends and family, try growing and try operating it yourself because you can protect the brand a lot more. I think there's a right right time for you to franchise and I believe that's above 10 stores.

Is it to like 15 units like right on our size right now would be the ideal time to franchise, although we're not franchising. Um, but man, that's the time because when you're early, bro, the the personalities that you get, they're like, "Here's what we should do. Here's what we should change." And like, my dude, you just walked in. Like, you bought a perfect scenario to a perfect, what do you mean? It's like, "Oh, we should do karaoke on Tuesdays." I'm like, "What?"

Like, what are you talking about?

You're a marketing guy, bro, you know. So, it kills it.

Let's get on the wall. We'll be like,

"Yeah,

well, okay.

Yeah, let's do it." And then and then the quality goes down. Not because we changed the quality of the food. The quality goes on because of inconsistency and inconsistency. Look, we've had our shares with Pinch, you know, 2016, 17, 18 when when we started growing in it got super inconsistent

some stuff

and and then you go up to PRO one day and then the burger was good and another day it wasn't. It's not because we chose to do that. It's because you have franchise partners that are not operating the stores to the level that they should. So I franchised to four people, five people. Two of them

are these were these like random people that reached out?

Yeah. Two of them were great friends of mine and the three the other three people that we didn't know, the two that were great friends of mine were the best franchises cuz they gave a [ __ ]

They're like, "Oh no, that's Auto and the doll and the Zars brand. We got we care about them. They protected it and they did a good job." And the other ones that it's not that they didn't care because they they put money in the business, but they won't care as much because they don't have a friendship on the line.

So that's that's my thing. When you go, it's more about personality than anything else. Like you have to ask people questions of that you really want to make sure you're going to be business partners with that person for 20 years. So you don't say how much money you have in the bank. You say you ask question like here's one thing that we started doing at the end. We're like hey listen do me a favor. Read the contract and by Monday by 10 10:00 a.m. next next Monday send me five questions about it. And you just send that send it out. And then if by Monday 10 they haven't, then you already know that person is not punctual. That person is not going to be a good business partner. And if they say if they send you three questions, they then they don't know how to take directions. You ask for five. Like there's all these things that you should do from a personality test before partnering up with somebody to become your partner.

We have that issue, bro.

And that's why that's why I decided not to do anymore and I bought all the restaurants back. Uh, so four years ago, a lot of people don't know this, but four years ago, I partner up with a group out of Salt Lake City, Saver, Refund, incredible human beings. And I told them, here's what I want to do. I want to buy everybody out. All the franchises, all the joint venture partners, I want all of them gone. Some of them are amazing humans. Some of them, none of them were bad people. It's just that if you want to control the experience, you need to own everything.

And I bought all the restaurants back and we've rebuilt and we fixed whatever needed to be fixed. some of the franchise stores that weren't operated the right way. I had to let go I had to let go of the entire team and rebuild. I had stores that walked in, bro, I fired 15 people and there's 17 people and then rehire people and retrain them. And now I can tell you that

we are operating at 100% compared to where we were.

Did Did you get any push back from the franchises like no I don't want to sell?

Um nobody knew that I was doing that. Got you.

I negotiated it. I negotiated it and I said

well actually no that's that's not true. I went I went back to them and I said, "Look guys, you know, we're midco. Um, I have a chance to buy you guys out and make you guys whole and and make you some money."

And I had conver some people didn't want to sell cuz they were making good money. Uh, but I told them, "Look, this is this is going to be what's best for the brand and what's best for you." And thankfully, everybody was very understanding and I was able to lock every Yeah. I had we bought

I had to get 27 signatures

from joint venture partners with everybody and now it's just us, me, Adrian, some of my early on investors and my partners in Salt Lake City and we own everything.

But you're not looking for any more investors. You don't need

No, no. My investors are amazing humans and and yeah, they let us run the brand however we feel is best for

Sorry. So just finish closes out the question. So then you expanded from Florida to

Texas. Houston.

You're in Texas. You're in Houston now, right? What are the plans for the future?

So look, um, we we want to I sat down with my team and I said, "Okay, why do we do this?" Like why do we like what what gets you excited about Pink Show every day and that was like an exercise that I did about our mission, our our our values, our mission and so on. And everybody like common denominator was we want to rep Miami. Like we are very proud of being this Latin inspired brand. We want to we want everybody to know that Miami has amazing food. So we like what our mission is to build an iconic Latin inspired brand and show the rest of the world what Latin cuisine can be. It's not just tacos, bro. Like there's a lot of incredible food. So that's one of our our missions. So it's not just tacos.

Yeah. Cuz if people think Latin, they think automatically think you're Mexican. Like no, man. Like have you ever had Peruvian food? She's amazing. Like it's the best flavors in the world. So, so we're trying to incorporate that now with, you know, our our bowls and our sauces and our, if you look at like our the pinchro burgers like Columbia, Venezuela that the stone burger is like a its own creation, pitangas, Nicaragua. And so, we try to pull like flavors from Latin America.

Um, and man, you know, um, I want to start growing this brand the right way. Um, making sure that we make Miami proud, but more importantly because of my immigrant story. It sounds cheesy, but I love building jobs for other people, bro. I love getting a kid that's like a dishwasher, and he becomes a general manager. Like, in our game, in the restaurant game,

I don't give a [ __ ] if you went to college or not. Like, show up every day, hustle every day, be respectful, have integrity, treat people with respect,

and you will grow. You can become a VP of us making 200 grand a year. And and that's one of the beauties of the restaurant industry that a lot of people don't talk about. So we are very me and Adrian are super passionate about that.

So we want to build opportunity. That's part of our mission, right? It's to build an iconic Latin inspired brand while building opportunities for our team.

That's good.

That's that's what we want to do. So we're growing, man. You know, we we partner up with these guys. We're we're possibly going to start licensing the brand for universities. We have one in FIU that's crushing it. looking at different universities, different campuses, and just, you know, maybe Tampa, maybe Orlando, and start growing more in Florida. The jump to Houston, it's incredibly difficult jump, by the way. It's like I don't I don't advise anybody to go to another state early on in this game.

Kind of started from zero.

I just I'm there every week basically. But I did it because my investors had other restaurants there and it just made sense for us to sort of, you know, have a vibe there. But, you know, grow grow like a regular tree would grow, right? Just grow up and grow sideways and leverage your team. I think that's the best way to do it.

But how long has the Houston one been open for?

A year and a half. Like it's fairly new.

Yeah. People love it, dude. It's like we have better scores. We just made uh Houston's tops uh finally. You know, Houston magazine said one of the best burgers in Houston made the list, which has been very good. But man, it's building the brand from the ground up, right? We have great reviews. I mean,

grand opening was big.

Yeah. Yeah. Grand opening was massive. But man, it's you gotta be there. You gotta be there every week because

you're using influencers over there. Houston influencers.

We've tried. We started, you know, we started it. Houston is so big that you use an influencer. It's like a drop in the bucket.

Yeah.

It's not like Miami. Houston's like one hour. I have a store that's an hour and 20 minutes away from another store and that's still Houston.

Wow.

I drove I was there yesterday. I drove me and Adrian were on a call. I was on the call for an hour. While Adrian's driving, he thought, "Yeah, we didn't get to the to the restaurant."

Damn. You know, I've never been I would have been to the airport, but I never really got

Houston's amazing city. It's a great city. It's hot. That's hot as

But it's big, bro. It's big. Houston, you got to get on the Houston. When you look at the at Google Maps, it says um oh, restaurant is 8 minutes that way.

It's 8 minutes of highway that way. So, it's like Mahina driving for 8 minutes with no lights. And you're like, dude, it's like [ __ ] 10 miles

and you're still not there. That's how it is in California, too.

Broward County, you probably find you got to get

I was in Cali this last week.

Miami is a special place, bro. Like, it's it's an hour, but it's three blocks away.

Exactly.

But at least feel like it's right there. It's right there. It doesn't feel like it's far.

What are your uh like some of some of the trends you're liking now when it comes to fast casual food stuff that you see influencers? Like what do you think like content wise you're liking more that you use?

Yeah. So, what a lot of people

You guys have been pretty good on social media.

Yeah. What a lot of people don't tell you is that if you're a business owner, independent if you're a restaurant or not, you got to be a media company at this point, bro.

Bro, like the days of posting a picture and getting a thousand likes are way gone, dude. You got to be good at creating content, bro. You got to hire entire team like what you guys are doing. You know the game. It's not easy. You got to, you know, there's top offunnel campaigns. It's brand awareness, telling the story, letting people know what we're all about, what we do, da da da da, and then there's conversion campaigns. there's all this stuff that you have to do. So, what I like but is incredibly time consuming, it's these docu series um that what people are doing like brands that are using Tik Tok and Instagram to show behind the scenes to show what we're doing, what we're up to. Like, I love that because if you think about it, man, I sit at home, I don't even turn on TV anymore.

Just [ __ ] sit on on the phone cuz there's so much content and that dopamine just hits that now when you want to watch a movie, you're like, "Bro, two hours to watch a movie. No, but I'll rather scroll for one hour and then so when you're scrolling for one hour,

the contents that are winning are the contents that are telling great stories.

And then because it becomes like a mini TV show that phone is TV for us, you know, which sucks. It's good and it sucks and strong. That's a whole other conversation.

It's a balance. You got to leverage it,

especially local.

Yeah. So, you got to you got to I think those are some of the trends that I'm really digging. Um I'm I'm a just like you guys. We grew up in an era where drinking was was a big thing. We would go out and drink and party. Now it's all about wellness. So now you have to talk to a whole new consumer. The

beer sales at Pinch are nothing. Non-existent, bro. Non-existent. We used to like 10% of our sales. Now it's like less than 1%. Cuz people come in, you know, they're not drinking anymore. So you look at some of the trends are going with health. I'm getting into that a lot. So I want to push Beo. The good thing about Pinch is that everything that we do is from scratch. It's really high quality foods are delicious.

Yeah. We want to keep doubling down on that. You know, we're talking about beef tallow if we use it not. You know, seed oils if we use it or not. So, those are all good things for the community whether you think they're fat or not. Like, we're looking into a lot of the things are hard. So, those are trends that I'm really liking it. But fast casual, that line is disappearing. So fast casual used to be the brands that stood out from fast food

and they were above fast food but now fast food has is trying to be fast casual. So now fast casual there's a an enormous amount of pressure for us to innovate. Like if you look at pinchro after the pandemic

70% of our foods to go. Like you walk into a Pincho location, it might not have a full dining room, but the kitchen's cranking, right? And it's all to go to go to go because we are now uh Netflix and chill. Everybody's home. Everybody wants to chill at the house and get to go. You know, the only places that we're going to, at least me, and I don't want to speak for everybody, is full service restaurants. I still want to go to a Hillstone. I still want to go

to to a uh pick a a great restaurant in in the Gables. Those are the restaurants that me and my wife will get up and go to, but I'm not taking my family to go eat at Chipotle anymore. Although 10 years ago, we were like, "Oh, you want just go to Chipotle and grab lunch real quick?" We would do that.

But now you don't do that anymore. So the the trends are shifting, the consumer behavior has changed.

And does that has your demographic changed or evolved over time, you think?

I mean,

it hasn't really been that long.

Yeah. I mean, we've seen we were millennials, so we we we've marketed to our

to ourselves, which was very easy. Now, it's getting exponentially harder because we have to market to a younger demo that we sort of don't speak to a lot.

But the demo has been has been the strongest for Pinro is that 30 to 45. That's like the demographics of Pincho like young families. Young families are and now we're starting to talk to that younger generation and they love the brand. They love the food. They've never been introduced to Pincho because we're we're very heavy on Instagram. They're not. They're on Tik Tok. We suck at Tik Tok. We're like not on TikTok the right way yet. So, we're trying to figure that out.

Yeah.

Um, talking about Takeout, how does Uber Eats or any other of those apps help you? What's your opinion?

They're they're I don't think they help us at all. Uh, but they are essentially my business partner. Uber Eats and Door Dash is 35% of our sales.

Wow. you know, um it's a big portion of our business. And some locations I pay more to those guys than I pay rent.

You know, I have some locations I'm dropping 15 16 grand a month just for Uber Eats uh and Door Dash and my rent's 10 grand, you know. So, it's it's insane, bro.

What What do you think about those little robots that we see on the street delivering the food?

I hate them.

Have you

I hate them.

But have you have you like inquired on them at all? I heard they're like 30 grand. No, I mean look, uh, the thing is that Uber Eats started using them, I think.

Oh, so that's an Uber Eat.

So like, yeah, they there some other brands started using them. So a little a little freaking robot just pulls up in front of your restaurant and you have to figure out that you have to drop a bag inside of that. I swear it's

So it's just like they didn't know, bro.

Yeah. It's like, hey, it's like what is that thing doing there?

That's incredible.

Yeah, man. I don't know, man. It's It's weird. You know, I was in the Gables. I was I was I went to Tala Vera, you know. Shout out to Tala Vera, guys. You're in the Gables. Fire fire food. I went with my kids and there was that little freaking robot right there and my kids are like chasing it around and I'm like, "Yo, stop chasing the [ __ ] thing. The guy's not going to get his food on time."

I'm like,

I'm worried about the customer. Like, this guy's not even on.

Listen, I don't think that that system is scalable because the there's no there's no space. It would have to be too many of them. And it's really slow. The technology is not there yet.

I mean, look, we have this obsession as human beings to to bypass labor and bypass humans. Dude, just [ __ ] treat your people the right way. Pay people the right the right wage. Like human beings, man. Like, let people, you know, train them the right way, obviously. But like, I think what we're trying to do is just

say, "Yeah, we don't need drivers." Like, but dude, those people need a job. Those people need to do I mean, granted, some of these drivers are just straight up [ __ ] you know? Like there there's some bad people out there, but the majority of people that want to work hard. So, I think it's just

use technology to further extend hospitality of your restaurant. That's my big belief. If I'm going to put a kiosk in my restaurant, it's not so I can replace my cashier. It's just so that way I have a kiosk. It's easier for you to place an order. But now my cashier, I'm going to bring him to the front so that way he can assist you and I'm going use that cashier to maybe touch tables more often and make sure that the hospitality of the restaurant goes up versus just replacing people for the sake of replacing people.

I went to a place in California and it was a situation. They had a little kiosk and they're waiting waiting. Nobody comes to me. Nobody comes in and they're like, it was a bowling alley that we were playing, like an entertainment spot, and they're like, "Oh, just go sign your over there." I'm like, "Yeah, there's no signage. There's nothing." I was there for like 10 minutes. I was a little heated talking about this. I remembered about that. Yeah. I I think what a lot of people fail to recognize is that,

man, companies are built on the shoulders of your team, of your employees, of other humans, right? So, pay them right, treat them with respect. One thing that we did early on when we had two stores, we're like, "Man, why isn't this working? Why is this working? It's like the customer is always right. The customer is always right. And then we're like

like no man. Let's treat our team. Let's put our team first.

Put your employees first cuz if they're not happy, how are they going to take care of the guest? So you have to have like an incredibly happy team. And look, and we're not perfect, you know, because it's hard, you know. I have over 200 employees right now. Like every day is Kango. I get a phone call this store, a phone call that store. But the the mission is always the same is build a badass team that you treat with respect. You pay a decent living wage. you know, my managers get bonuses, you know, they get like we we do so much for our team to make sure that they're taking care of the gas. And it's a hard game to play.

The moment you start removing people

because you want to save, but then you replacing them with technology, I mean, it goes away from the what you're supposed to be doing, hospitality company,

you're going to lose them. Talking about technology, you guys been growing pretty quickly. What speed you like in five years? Where do you want to be? You know, I'm a big believer now that quality over quantity is everything. Everything is quality over quantity. So, the good thing about partnering up with my investors is now that I'm not in the rush to open massive stores like before. So, now we're just as we grow, as as it makes as it makes sense, as we build people from within to take over locations, that's what we're doing. But if I'm just having to say a goal, where can we be? I mean, I'd like to keep growing more in Florida. I want to get to maybe 25 30 restaurants. Um, one thing that we are doing that that a lot of people don't know is that every one of my general managers now, not only we give them a bonus that's cash, but we also give them restricted stock in the company. So for every dollar that you get in Pincho, you know, you get up to $1,000 a month, we give you up to $2,000 in stock within Pinchro. Oh wow. And so a manager that can be working with us for five years, you're gonna accumulate a hundred grand. And then once we get to 30 stores and we raise the next round, then everybody cashes out. So that's what I'm doing, man. I'm I'm making sure I'm aligning everybody and making sure that all my managers, if you're an assistant manager or a general manager, you're participating in what we call this loyalty bonus. While you stick with us, you work hard, and you do what you got to do in five years. Imagine being a 35year-old guy or a girl, and then you receive a $100,000 check from us.

Big time. can change your life your house. So, dude, it's all about that. So, I want to keep growing and just making Miami proud and making sure that my mom's never upset at me cuz we're not butchering her recipe

and we're honoring, you know, the our Halia roots.

True local story. Amazing. Amazing.

Yeah, man.

You think it's going to answer that question? Honestly,

it will. I think it will.

Are we still doing that thing?

No. We're going to start go fresh straight to it.

I need to know your top three restaurants that Otto likes to go to. And you got to start with number three first.

Number.

And it cannot be any of your locations.

Yes. Are we are we ranking them from the

Yes.

Yes. Number one will be your last one.

Number three first.

Oh my god.

And it could be your go-to so people don't get upset with you.

Before we do, Before we do, um, does anybody know how to silence these new iPhones?

No.

Like like Can I say something before? We're celebrating 15 years of Pincho, bro. So, it's a big deal. 15 years of Pincho. We have this uh block party December 7th. I don't know when this I don't know when this is going to air.

I when is this? Let me see.

I don't know when

December 7th. No way.

Yeah, there's no way. All right. So,

tell us about 15 years.

Get that one clip. I can probably get that.

Tell us about or you can just say it now when you

Oh, yeah. We say it here when we stand up.

Tell us about 15 years.

Yeah. So, it's 15 years of pincho um is a big is our kinera as we say it, right? As we call it here. So, we we've decided, you know, we've won all of these awards. We've been part of the community. We say this all the time that Pinchro is not ours. Pinchro is Miami's because Miami basically built Pinchro and the love and the support that we got from people. So this year we decided to celebrate Miami instead of celebrating us. So we're celebrating uh 15 individuals that have been part of the uh culinary scene in the last 15 years and they've been part of our story. You know, I love you. We we had 30 people on the list and but we had to, you know, it's 15 years. We couldn't do 30 and we brought it down to 15. So, out of those 15, you got to give me your top three guys who who really pushed you over the edge.

Oh my god. Um,

who really like game changers? I know you got 15, but give me three.

Three top three. So, for sure,

Lee Shreger from from Southwine and Foods winning winning Burger Bash was iconic for us.

Yes.

Um, shout out to Lee.

Yeah. Dave Gruntman's a dear friend of mine. He's giving me so much advice about Big

just Yeah. He told me a story. He told me he walked into Flaggler once. I swear to God. And he he looked loved everything. He goes, "Autumn, you want me to be honest?" I'm like, "What's up?" He goes, "There's there's two light bulbs on that PO sign that are off." And I'm like, "Oh shit." You know, cuz it's like a PO sign has all these light bulbs.

And he goes, "Let me tell you a story that one of my mentors taught me." He goes, "We used to drive by this restaurant and this guy's sign was off at night. And then my mentor told me, you see that restaurant? That restaurant's going to close down within 6 months." And Dave told his mentor, he goes, "What do you mean? Why?" He goes, he goes, "If you're not paying attention to the details," you're not going to make it in this game. And he goes, "Six months later, they shut down." He goes, "Out, if you're walking into the restaurants and you're not calling out those light bulbs, it's a slippery slope. You got to be a maniac about the details." He goes, "I walk into Komodo. I walk into anywhere. I'm looking at every single light bulb."

I've seen it.

And then it's like, ever since that day, bro, if I walk into any location, it's the details. It's the corners. Is this is this? He's made me a better entrepreneur and better hospitality guy and I've learned a lot from him from a branding and marketing standpoint.

Yeah, for sure. And then the last one, the not the last one, but you know, your top three.

The the top three

the third one, the third one.

The the third Oh my god. Is the thing uh

of of that 15 of those 15

of those 15 um I think somebody that that I that I that I look up to that that that I'm always in awe what they've been able to accomplish, although he's a competitor of mine,

is Matt Kush. Matt Kush from Local.

Wow. Man, I you know, we've become friends and I look at what he's done in his restaurants and I always try to get ideas. He's very creative in his interior, bro.

I'm like, "Fuck, bro. I wish I was more like him and we became friends with

brother." I went to a Hay Aliyah spot and in the bathroom he has like Fidel Castro's face like in the toilet.

Shout out to Kush. Yeah, he's a great human, man. It's a really

also local legend too in the game.

Yeah, man. I look up to them. Yeah, those are our top three. Those are heavy hitters.

Yeah. Yeah.

Now, for your top three restaurants that you like to dine at, starting with number three.

Number three, um

I think it has to go Hillstone, man. Hillstone.

Hillstone.

Hillstone. The Gables is is

What do you like there? What do you like to eat at Hillstone?

Bro, you know, I actually had their burgers a few day a few days ago, but

solid.

I I I love the burger, man.

Which one? The chicken one or the regular

No, the regular burger is a solid burger. I I know it's weird, but like their freaking sushi's fire.

It is love going there. I have sushi at Hill.

So basic, you're so basic.

I get the tartar. We go like what, like once a week or something. Amazing.

You got to always get a reservation though.

They took me the other day to Doc Bees. I had never been. Solid.

Doc Bees is solid. You know, he's I think he's a former Hillstone guy.

Really got to be number two.

Number two. Um, bro, TROPICAL CHINESE. OH my god. I go there every week with my kids. Bro,

you know what? I've been going there

since I was 15.

Yeah. Tropical Chinese buffet or something?

Tropical Chinese. What do you love there?

It's honestly it's one of the best Chinese spots in Miami. I mean, obviously the dim sum, Eddie.

Incredible Chinese, you know, everywhere. But man, Tropical Chinese is an institution. They've been there for 40 years. 1984. It's my birthday, actually. It says it on the wall.

I don't know how to know this. And they have a carrot martini. Nobody knows about them.

Damn, bro.

The keratini, bro. You hold it, huh?

One of the strongest drinks in all of Miami.

Fire. Fire.

Damn. All right.

Number one. Number one fra.

Number one. Oh man. Is that I have so many. So,

but number one that

we dine at all the time.

Texas. Brazil.

Texas. Brazil. I'm Brazilian. It's just

you do or Dayland Mall. I go to Dayland Mall. I like Fogo. I like Fogo a lot. I'm actually really good friends with the CEO of Fogo. Barry. Shout out to Barry. He's uh he's an adviser for Pinchro as well.

I need to talk to Barry.

But uh man, it's something, you know, my dad, you know, he passed. So, it's just a place that we we go there every month. The people know us by name by now. We go there.

But definitely Texas Brazil is up.

Just the meats and the way they do things.

So, again, I'm not ranking them by the best. No, no, no. There's incredible restaurants in Miami, but those are the ones that we go to. It's part of our rotation, you know, as a family.

And if someone sees you there and goes up to you, hey, uh, can I open a franchise with you? What are you saying?

You know, it's it's that's how Yeah. I can't tell you the story about Keel Bers in the future, maybe for like a month.

Let's do it. Done. Lock it. You

heard it here first.

Lock it in. Lock it in.

Pleasure. And pleasure.

You've been my boy forever and I'm so happy when you're winning.

Look out for Pincho on a global scale, right?

Yes, sir. Lo, local first and then glo first. Thank you.