Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue I, 2016 | Page 20

est vice president of development, helping
to take the chain public. When Spae was
tapped to resurrect Steak and Ale, his decision to seek advice from founder Norman
Brinker laid the foundation for the chain’s
successful turnaround blueprint.
Spae credits great mentors for teaching
him the art of listening and “speaking your
mind in a constructive way.” He says “pure
luck” has put him in the right place at the
right time, but his willingness to put himself
in a position to succeed is now paying off
for others as he focuses on inspiring and

“As leaders we
need to be the
people who
hire and train
and teach the
folks that fix the
problems.”

mentoring those around him.
With the “tremendous amount of fear
and difficulty right now in the world,” he
says, stepping up to lead has never been
more important. “I know in business there
is a lot of fear about what is going to happen in the future,” says Spae. “What we all
have to get our heads around is that you
are only as good as the people who work
for you. We as leaders, I think, aren’t the
people who fix the problems. As leaders we
need to be the people who hire and train
and teach the folks that fix the problems.”

BOTTOM LINE
Annual revenue: We don’t share numbers because we are a private company
with investors.
2016 goals: We have a five-tier strategy that starts with operations excellence.
We have to get really good at running great restaurants. Then we have the sustainable, profitable growth that is a big part of who we are and what we want to
do. It’s making sure we have the right people in the right places, trained well to
accomplish those objectives, and then being innovative so that we can create new
things the consumer might enjoy.
Growth meter: How do you measure your growth? I’m a data guy,
but I also don’t want to overwhelm people with the facts. If we are growing transactions, growing sales, have a lot of smiling folks in the restaurant, and our guest
satisfaction scores are high, we are doing a pretty good job.
Vision meter: Where do you want to be in 5 years? 10 years?
We do a three-year plan and try not to go much farther than that because things
can change so fast. We want to be well over 100 restaurants. We are interested
potentially in growing with another brand down the road as well. But for now we
are focused on improving our existing locations and continuing to grow.
How is the economy in your regions affecting you, your employees, your customers? It is sort of a tale of two worlds. While the economy is
growing (albeit slowly) and having a positive impact in some areas, when you get
out in West Texas there is tremendous economic downturn. We feel it. We look at
this from the perspective of the individual DMA, and right now West Texas is our
greatest challenge and probably will be our greatest challenge for some time, as
the oil business isn’t going to recover any time soon.
How do changes in the economy affect the way you do business?
The things you can plan for, the things that are announced, like the Affordable
Care Act, while they’re difficult, at least you’re aware. The greatest challenge for
the industry has been the commodity cost fluctuations, particularly the changes
where beef went up so high. There is a limit in price flexibility, especially in QSR.
The amount of regulation coming out of D.C. and causing us to have to spend
more dollars is troubling to me. We need to get our lawmakers to understand that
franchising in particular is the engine behind an awful lot of economic growth in
the United States. So when you limit franchisees, you’re starving the engine for
gasoline.
How do you forecast for your business? We use an awful lot of data.
We look at macro data from economists, state data, and local market data to help
us understand whether or not we have significant growth opportunity going for-

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ward. With individual competitors it’s not a function of growing share, it’s stealing
share, so you have to know if competitors are opening up around you and you are
going to lose some share. We also have to pay attention to commodity costs.
Experience with private equity, local banks, national banks, other
institutions? Why/why not? Our partner, Eagle Merchant Partners, is a
private equity group out of Atlanta who are a great group of people to work with.
Private equity takes a lot of criticism, but private equity has allowed a lot of businesses to be funded f