The Secret Ingredient in Hungry Howie’s Success: 

Jeff Walter (00:00)

Hi, and welcome back to the podcast. my guest today is Al Newman. Al is the director of training for hungry Howie’s. ⁓ Al has always been a pizza kid. His father purchased a mom and pop pizza area back in 1978 and he’s been in the business ever since.

 

After siding against a career in broadcasting, he left his parents’ business to make a name for himself. In 1994, he took a position with Hungry Howie’s Pizza as a store manager and worked his way up, holding multiple positions and learning the ins and outs of the Hungry Howie’s business and the pizza business. And he loved what he does, which is why he is the perfect fit for the job of training franchise owners and their teams. In case anybody’s unfamiliar with Hungry Howie’s, they invented the Flavor Cross Pizza.

 

been around for more than 50 years and they provide customers of all ages with high quality products at a great value. There are currently over 500 stores in 19 states across the United States and our customers are big fans of flavor. so Al, welcome to the podcast. I’m a native New Yorker. So I have a very ⁓ particular view on pizza. It’s right there with bagels for us New Yorkers. I’m a Michigander now for 25 years, but ⁓ I love pizza.

 

You

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(01:15)

Well,

 

there’s New York style pizza, there’s Chicago style pizza, but as you know, there’s also Detroit style pizza, which we just launched about a month ago, our authentic style Detroit style pizza with sauce on top. And it was modeled after the way it was developed back in 1946 here in Detroit.

 

Jeff Walter (01:20)

Love.

 

wow.

 

So it’s the cheese and then the sauce on top?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(01:40)

Yes,

 

yes, it’s baked in the blue steel pans with oil, so it gets that crispy edge, but it’s like a focaccia style center. So it’s got the crisp, it’s got the bread style, Detroit style is completely different than Chicago style and New York style. they’re all different.

 

Jeff Walter (01:49)

Uh-huh.

 

Yeah.

 

Now I gotta say that, uh, well, this is, this, this hurts me because I grew up in New York, but the best New York style pizza I ever had was at Sally’s Pizzeria in New Haven, Connecticut, which really just hurts. Never been a fan of Chicago style. Yeah. The pie, but having been here for 20 something years now, I prefer, I know there are a bunch of friends out there that are going to like disown me and drop me.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(02:07)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Right?

 

Jeff Walter (02:28)

You know, but I prefer the, it’s what you just said. It’s a, it’s a, ⁓ the Detroit style. prefer the Detroit style. It’s like, it’s got that nice crusty on the outside, the nice Pocaccia kind of inside that almost a Sicilian, but you got more of a crusty on the outside. I mean, it’s, it’s my fave. So, ⁓

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(02:46)

Yeah, it’s

 

very unique. you’re ever interested, you go back and look at the history of it and who developed it. I’m not going to name it because it’s another competitor.

 

Jeff Walter (02:54)

Yep. It’s Detroit style. And Hungry Howies is headquartered in Detroit. Yes.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(02:56)

Yes.

 

That’s right. Our first store opened

 

in Taylor, Michigan on Telegraph Road just south of 94 in 1973. So 52 years ago.

 

Jeff Walter (03:09)

Holy smokes. I’ll let us understand. mean, it’s, you know, you said you’re the pizza kid long time in the pizza business, but how did you end up where you’re at now? I’m always interested on the path folks took. You’ve been with hungry Howard’s for awhile. Well, well, why the pizza? Why, why get out of the family pizza business? Why go over to a chain? Why, why, yeah. Give us, give us the journey. How’d you end up where you’re at?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(03:34)

Yeah, no problem. mean, again, you kind of gave everybody an overview, but it really started back when I used to race motocross. So I raced motocross and supercross and we used to go down. My father and I used to go down to a motocross track in Milan, Michigan, next to Milan dragway. And we used to race there on Friday nights. And then we would come back and on the way back home, we would stop and get a pizza at a place called DeRozzo’s Pizza in South line where I grew up.

 

Jeff Walter (03:45)

Okay.

 

⁓ right by me. Yep.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(04:04)

And he had many conversations with the owners. wanted to, he liked to cook. He wanted to own his own business. He was an insurance adjuster and he didn’t like his boss. And the opportunity came up and he opened, he bought the business and opened it in February of 1978. And I’m giving away my, I will give away my age, but I was 13 years old. So I just started working at the pizzeria. I worked all through high school and through college as well.

 

And then I got to a point where I wanted to get into broadcasting. So I did an internship at WRIF here in Detroit. It was there for a couple of years and just kind of learned the business from the inside and realized it wasn’t the same as I thought it was from the outside as a listener and started to rethink what I wanted to do for a living. And then I went over to Eastern Michigan University, studied telecommunications and film, kind of found that a bit boring.

 

Jeff Walter (04:47)

Mm-hmm.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(04:57)

and fell back into the pizza business because it was something I really enjoyed and something I was frankly pretty good at and put a plan together to take over the family business. Well, that didn’t work out. Working with family is extremely difficult. If anyone out there has ever done that before, trust me, it’s not easy. I’ve worked with every relative you can think of, father, mother, sister, brother, aunts, uncles, you name it. And it’s really difficult.

 

and we just had different ideas on how the business should run. So that’s sort of how I ended up with Hungry Howies. They had a huge impact on the store they opened in South Lyon in February of 1993, and I paid attention. And when I saw an opportunity to go work for or interview with Hungry Howies, I jumped at the chance because I looked at it as a company that was really on the move and a company I was really interested in working for. So.

 

I was hired on the spot back in April of 1994 as a general manager of a store in Canton, Michigan. And it all just took off from there. It was a great opportunity because we trained franchisees there. So all the new franchisees that purchased a store came to Michigan for training. They trained in that store. So I saw an opportunity right away for me, myself to get noticed, my work in my store and the experience people had when they came and trained there.

 

Jeff Walter (06:07)

Okay.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(06:18)

and even potential franchisees that were brought up to the store to take a look at it, I realized right away that there was a great opportunity for me to move up. So I worked really hard and within a year and a half, I was an area supervisor. I oversaw five stores at a time. Then I was a franchise trainer and I trained franchisees in the store myself for about five years. Then I was an area director. I oversaw a group of 12 stores and

 

My current role as director of training, I’ve been in now for 21 years. So it’s been quite a journey, but I’ve loved every minute of it. It’s great.

 

Jeff Walter (06:49)

wow.

 

Wow, so that’s been a pretty long tenure on the training thing. When you started in 94, how many locations were there? Because there’s over 500 now.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(07:02)

Yeah, we

 

had about 200 stores back then. That’s really interesting too, because prior to Hungry Howie’s opening the store in South Lyon, I wasn’t that familiar with the brand, even though I was born and raised in Southeastern Michigan. I knew of the brand, but if you were to ask me before that how many stores they had, I would have said maybe 12 or 15. I had no idea that they had nearly 200 stores. So they were a lot bigger than I thought they were back then.

 

Yeah, so that’s about where they were about a couple hundred stores back when I first started.

 

Jeff Walter (07:31)

And so then you’ve seen the growth in more than doubling, almost tripling that since then. And you’ve been in the training or leading the training for the last 21 years, I think you said, right? So that’s very interesting. I generally don’t see people in that role for that length of time. So what has kept you engaged and interested? Why the training of the franchisees and their staff?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(07:37)

Yes.

 

Yes.

 

What I really liked

 

about it, when I was a trainer in the store spending every day with them, I have trainers that work ⁓ in my department now that do that day to day, working the shifts alongside with the franchisees. But when I did that, you develop a real bond with people where they come in for the first day during orientation and you’ve never met them before, but you’re with them every single day for three weeks straight and you’re working.

 

you know, opening shifts, closing shifts, you’re working hand in hand and you’re teaching them a lot of things. And I like that bond where back when I was training franchisees, I felt like I developed friendships with people. And there’s a distinction that was taught to me by one of my bosses many, many years ago that I never forgot. And he said, as a leader, you can be friendly with the people you work with, but you shouldn’t be friends.

 

And I’ve always remembered that. And it’s the same way that I feel like I have friends all like I’m friendly with, but I have friends all over the country because of the time that I’ve spent with them while they were here training. I, that really attracted me to, to what I do. You know, that’s what I, one of the things I really enjoy about it is you really get to know people well, but that you get to know different people all the time. You’re with them for.

 

you know, three weeks and then they go open their stores and then you get another group of people and you just develop all these relationships over the years and it’s really interesting to go to one of our conventions we have every summer and all the franchisees show up and it’s tough when you’ve been around forever, everybody wants to talk to you. And it’s hard because you know everybody, you know, there’s four or 500 people there and you know everyone. And it’s a bit of a challenge, but it’s kind of fun at the same time.

 

Jeff Walter (09:49)

I think that’s really cool because that type of tenure, I call them the cultural icons of an organization, right? Like every organization has a culture and you just, and you have these folks that just like, they turn into icons of the culture. And, certainly being in your, in your role for 20 years and seeing just, you know, scores and scores of folks go through the program and being one of the first people they meet, you know, after the, after they signed the papers, you know,

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(09:58)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (10:16)

It’s like, okay, now you’re a part of the family. Here we go. Right. It’s got to, that’s gotta be very exciting and, and, and almost like a homecoming every time you do the convention.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(10:26)

I’ve been offered a lot of jobs, let’s say that. As a matter of fact, one of the things during orientation that we tell our franchisees is that ⁓ you’re not allowed to offer any corporate people jobs. It’s in the franchise agreement actually, but they still do. They see, especially our trainer Nick, he’s so talented. He’s like the younger me. He has all that energy and enthusiasm.

 

Jeff Walter (10:40)

Right.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(10:50)

that you don’t always hang on to when you get later in life. And I see a lot of me and him and every time he finishes up with a class, he’s got someone else in his contact list and somebody else that’s calling him, asking him questions all the time, but he loves it.

 

Jeff Walter (11:06)

Yeah. Well, before this, I ran a couple of consulting practices and I would say to my folks like, look, if they’re not asking you to come on board, you’re not doing your job because like you got to, you want to be the type of person that they want on their team. so, so it’s, that’s awesome. So, so if we, if we take a look at the training program, but let’s, what do you, what is.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(11:16)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (11:34)

In your mind, goal of, you know, I guess there’s an onboarding and then there’s ongoing training, right? Like there’s, so like what is from a business perspective, what I love about extended enterprise training is it’s always, it’s always around the product. And there’s this business objective there as opposed to, you know, you know, um, career development, which is more employee. So what, what’s the goal would you say, or what are you trying to achieve when you do an onboarding?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(11:39)

Yes.

 

Yes.

 

Yes. So we look at a couple of different things. Like I said, we provide tools for our franchisees to train the people that they’ve hired. So the people that are out in the stores, we have five different positions in each store. There’s an hourly team member, there’s drivers, and then we have three levels of management, a shift leader, an assistant manager, and a general manager. So we provide tools for them to train their people, but ultimately,

 

Jeff Walter (12:11)

Mm-hmm.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(12:28)

It’s the franchisees responsibility to train their own people, but we provide support now with the franchisees themselves. When they do purchase a new franchise franchise, they come to Michigan and we train them ourselves. And it’s very important for them to, obviously stay focused and pay attention, but what we do is during orientation, we explained to them, it’s a three week training program.

 

⁓ In the store and then there’s an additional week afterwards. That’s remote business training with other departments marketing accounting IT Etc where they get to know? What those departments provide to them in means of support as well? So it’s not just training But it’s three weeks of in-store training and we explained to them during orientation that the very first week is Just an introduction to basic operations. We don’t want them

 

to try and focus on speed or efficiency or anything like that. We want them to just learn how to do everything because what we found in the store is that once you’ve learned and committed everything to memory, meaning the specs and the procedures and so on, obviously your productivity goes up. And if they’re trying to focus on being fast before they learn everything, it doesn’t work out that way.

 

Jeff Walter (13:42)

Mm-hmm.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(13:50)

So all we tell them during the first week is just focus on basic operations. By the end of the first week, it’s unbelievable. People come in, they know nothing. And within six days, they’re comfortable in all areas of operation on the store. They might not be super fast, but you learn everything because you get quick when you don’t have to stop and think or look at a chart where you know where things are, where to go, how to do something, because you’ve gone through that repetition during that first week.

 

Jeff Walter (13:59)

Mm-hmm.

 

Right

 

So, so when they come in, are there any, any, you know, e-learning or videos or anything that they’re doing to prep before they show up at the store or, or are they coming straight in?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(14:31)

Yes.

 

Yeah, so about 2016, we developed our own in-house proprietary learning management system within our own application. So we built our own app that does a number of different things other than just LMS. We have, just to get off training just a little bit to kind of talk about what this app does, but this app does all the enterprise reporting. It’s completely integrated with our point of sale system. So franchisees have

 

all the sales and labor and all that data in the palm of their hand at any time for all their stores. It also is ⁓ integrated with our distributing company. So we’re a little bit unique for what our marketing department calls a super regional brand. We’re not a national brand, but we’re like a super regional. And we’re kind of unique. A lot of super regional brands utilize outside vendors.

 

for all their food, whether it’s Cisco or Gordon Food Service or somebody like that. We don’t, we have our own distributing company. We have our own employees that drive the trucks. We have our own warehouses. So we delivered ourselves. And because of that, we’ve done an integration with them as well. So a manager, when they’re getting ready to place their food order, literally can pull up their home app and place their food order right on their home app. So it’s awesome.

 

It does a lot of other things. All of our customer feedback, all the Google reviews, Yelp reviews come right to the franchisee. They can reach out and resolve those within the app itself. But recently, we’ve moved our learning management from our proprietary app to an outside vendor that we just started a pilot with. We have 78 stores that are testing four courses that we built out.

 

for them and we’re very happy with it. We just need to get to a point where we just feel we need the engagement better with the team members and the store. And the approach that we learned was, and we can talk about this. I think it’s one of your questions later, but more of that TikTok style video, bite size learning with the generations that are in the store now, Gen Z, millennials, they like that, know, quick hit kind of a little bit of training for four or five minutes.

 

and then go do something and come back. It’s not like the old days where you had a training module and you had to sit down and it took you an hour to get through it.

 

Jeff Walter (16:46)

Right.

 

So what, I mean, it’s interesting because when you talked about the embedded app or the learning embedded, one of the things that there’s been a big proponent of is embedded training, like having it right there at the point of need. So what drove you to say, we’re going to take this out and we’re going to put it on more of a commercially available platform?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(17:01)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah. So I think what happened was we got to the point where we didn’t have the resources to continue the development of this, to get it to where we wanted it to be. And we knew that if we went to an outside vendor, we could jumpstart that and not have to be behind the curve for a couple more years. So that was really the biggest decision is sometimes it’s better to just farm it out and go with a company that’s been doing this for a long time because they’ve already developed all those features.

 

that exist and you can take advantage of them right away as opposed to trying to develop them on your own.

 

Jeff Walter (17:54)

Okay. And so, okay. So you’re in the middle of that rollout. So, so go back to the onboarding. Um, I take it then the, the new franchise, if we’re onboarding a new franchisee, the owner comes in, or she’s been prepped or taken some prereq courses before they can come into, you know, so they’ve got some base level of knowledge and then they come and they do their three weeks of intense, uh, in, in office training, in store training, right?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(18:10)

Yes.

 

Yes.

 

Yes,

 

yes.

 

Jeff Walter (18:24)

And, ⁓ and then, and then there’s the one week after that, and then they go back and, and then, and then what happens.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(18:32)

Yeah. So there’s a timeline. Basically there, I call it like a running a relay race and track where I hand the baton off. So the batons handed to me, we train them. And then the baton is handed to what we call our franchise business consultants. So they’re part of the operations department as MI and my trainer, Nick. And basically they’re the, they’re the contact person, right? You buy a franchise, you’re assigned.

 

a franchise business consultant and that is your main point of contact. And after the training is over with, it’s all about getting the store ready, which involves many, many things. And there’s a timeline that is broken out. So let’s say 90 days before the store opens, 60, 30, know, three weeks, two weeks, one week, and then they do a daily countdown and all the things that need to be done. So they’re communicating with their franchise business consultant on a regular basis after training.

 

Jeff Walter (19:05)

Okay.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(19:26)

getting ready for the store.

 

Jeff Walter (19:29)

And now are those franchise business consultants, are they out in the field or are they back in headquarters?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(19:35)

Yeah, they’re almost exclusively out in the field. And actually something that’s relatively new with us, maybe in the last five years or so, is we have three, we call them FBCs that actually don’t even live in Michigan. One lives in Charlotte, one lives in Indianapolis, the other one lives in Mississippi. And so we have remote people, but they’re on the road all the time. So whether or not they’re,

 

traveling, sometimes the stores that they’re visiting are drivable, sometimes they have to jump on a flight, depends on what it is. we have a lot of stores in the Charlotte area, so it made sense to have a consultant there. And then Indianapolis is centrally located. And quite frankly, the other person that lives in Mississippi, she was just too good to pass up. So we just said, we need you on our team. She’s awesome. They’re all awesome, by the way.

 

Jeff Walter (20:28)

So going back to onboarding the franchise owner. ⁓ So it’s interesting. I was talking to a gentleman that’s with a FSO and he said there’s three things the franchise has to be able to do and that’s help the franchisee find customers, sell customers, deliver on customers. And then there was a fourth thing that was, I’ve talked to other people of…

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(20:32)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (20:52)

You know, it’s the financial acumen. A lot of franchise owners have never managed a P and L before. so I understand that. then this gentleman said something really interesting. It was like, usually a new franchise owner is good at one of those things. Right? Like they’re good on the operations or they’re good on the sales or they’re good on the prospecting. But then the other three things are, you know, they need help.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(20:57)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (21:19)

When you’re bringing on new franchisees, what are the biggest challenges there? Where do you see the biggest gaps? It’s got to be different for different people, but where do you see the gaps there? What’s the general area where you really got to focus on because it’s not native to their experience?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(21:35)

See, a lot of the things that we do for them don’t necessarily require them to have all of those skills out of the box. But a lot of it goes back to our development department and who they’re vetting and the folks that they’re actually awarding franchises to. That’s how it works. It’s not just because your bank account qualifies, you can be a franchisee. There’s a lot of other qualifications that are required for you to be awarded.

 

a franchise. That’s basically how we look at it. So we obviously turn down many, many more than we sign. And they go through an extreme vetting process and they look at all those things and they look at their experience. The other thing is that not all franchisees are the ones operating their stores. They’re business people. And what we did many years ago is we switched away from allowing someone like that that had the money to open a franchise.

 

Jeff Walter (22:06)

huh.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(22:35)

never intended because they own their businesses or whatever reason to operate that store. We used to, many years ago, allow them to send a manager that they hired. Well, that manager may not be with them long-term. And we found that doesn’t work because you send a manager, they go back six months later, they leave and go work for somebody else. They’re back at square one again. So we require them to, in that situation, have an operating partner that’s on the franchise agreement so that

 

they’re not gonna leave because they’re a part owner and it works much better. So it really just depends on what kind of franchisee it is. So you may have a franchisee like that, that’s a very smart business person, that has an operating partner, that has experience operating restaurants. So that’s a nice kind of balance there. But partnerships are always difficult. They don’t always work and sometimes when they work, it’s great. When they don’t, it’s a little bit frustrating but.

 

Jeff Walter (23:12)

Mm-hmm.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(23:32)

Those are just some of the challenges that we deal with. we have our accounting vice president, used to work for a big accounting firm. We actually have an agreement, they’re an approved vendor and we require, as far as accounting goes, we require every new franchisee to use this particular vendor for their first year. They can switch and use a different accountant after that, but they can’t pick and choose what accountant they want to use.

 

for their first year. So we get them started off on the right track from an accounting standpoint.

 

Jeff Walter (24:02)

excellent. Excellent. That’s a true thing. So it sounds like the Hungry Harry’s model is the owner operator model as opposed to the investor model. And the owner operator can exist in two people, but it’s got to be an owner operator, right? I mean, ideally one person, right? The owner operator, but you’ll allow the two, but they’re both part of the franchise agreement. No, right.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(24:10)

Correct. Correct.

 

Yes. Or it can be one person. Yeah. Yeah.

 

It’s all about being involved, being involved

 

day to day and having a passion for the business. And those are the franchisees that are the most successful, the ones that are involved, the ones that don’t just buy it as an investment. They actually love the business. They want to learn. They want to succeed. They have people on their teams that are qualified and are motivated and are successful. And the franchisees that just

 

buy it, hire someone and never pay attention to it are the ones that aren’t aren’t successful.

 

Jeff Walter (25:01)

And so then, assuming proper vetting on the development side, what do you find is the biggest challenge when you’re trying to bring on a new franchisee?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(25:09)

Yeah, it’s kind of interesting from a training standpoint. found that the most difficult people to train are the people that already have experience, not just in the restaurant business. That’s not too bad, but the most difficult are the ones that have pizza experience, especially if they have experience with a, with a competitive brand. So if they come on and they’ve worked for a significant amount of time for another, you know,

 

Jeff Walter (25:33)

Okay.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(25:38)

well-known pizza company. They have a lot of those policies and procedures ingrained in their DNA. And then what you’re doing is you’re having to retrain everyone. And that is the most difficult. I prefer someone coming in day one with no experience whatsoever. Then they’re much easier to train. They’re listening more to what you say. They’re paying attention. And obviously they’ve invested a lot of money. So they want to learn as much as they possibly can to protect that investment.

 

Jeff Walter (25:40)

Right.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(26:07)

The hardest people to train are the ones that kind of already have preconceived notions on how to do things when they come in. And you have to tell them, forget about all of that, regardless of how great you think it is. You have to pretend, we tell them, like you know nothing. Just pretend like you’ve never made a pizza before in your life.

 

Jeff Walter (26:27)

Interesting. And then on the onboarding, how do you gauge the success of the onboarding or the training? How do you know you’ve done a good job and what Northern Star are you shooting for?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(26:41)

So onboarding, it’s more of an orientation with new franchisees. A lot of that onboarding takes place in the development process before training, but onboarding, I’ve always said with, you know, a store that’s hiring a team member, a driver, a shift leader or whatever, is that you have to make that first day memorable. Whatever that is, whatever you do to make that first day memorable,

 

That’s up to you. It could be simple as at the end of the orientation, you have them make a pizza for themselves to take home. They don’t even know how to make a pizza, but let them give it a shot, you know, and they take that home. It can be something that simple, but it’s really important because the other thing is separate that orientation from their first day. A lot of people say, come on in, they do a quick orientation and then they get to work. Well, I don’t believe in that.

 

Jeff Walter (27:21)

Right.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(27:35)

I think you need to do your orientation, give them their uniform, give them a store tour, go over some basic policies and procedures, get them into the computer system, give them their schedule, introduce them to other team members, and then that’s it. That’s the orientation. And then my thing is that if that team member, after you’ve conducted that orientation and they’re walking out the door, if they’re excited,

 

for their first day of work, you’ve done your job. If they’re already looking for another job, you’ve got some work to do.

 

Jeff Walter (28:11)

what type of, how are you supporting the franchisee and training their folks? Do they have to get trained? Is it required? Is it not required? Is it?

 

You know, is it, is it self-paced e-learning? it, you know, do they mentor somewhere else? Like, let’s talk about the staff training for a while. People coming on and how do they, how do they get trained up so they can deliver that great product?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(28:33)

Yep. So the franchise business consultant helps them hire and train their initial employees for a new store. So that is very beneficial. Obviously they train as well because we’ve trained them how to train. It’s a train the trainer concept where we’ve always said the general manager is a trainer first and foremost before anything else. So all of that in-person training, but obviously

 

all of our online training modules are helpful as well. They never will replace in-person training. It’s just a supplement, but they get a little bit of a jumpstart on some of that learning before they practice it in a store. So it’s kind of learning how to do things, then practicing it and honing your craft after the fact. So that’s kind of the approach that we take with ⁓ helping franchisees train their people. But really that’s what it boils down to is,

 

is well ⁓ run businesses where you have a great experience as a customer. Behind all that is great training, always.

 

Jeff Walter (29:40)

Well, yeah, I tend to think so. Well, I think especially with the franchise model, because it’s somebody buying into a system, a way of doing business, right? It’s a set of processes to deliver a product or service to a certain segment of people.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(29:45)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (29:59)

And, and, and, and here’s how you do it. it’s a business model that’s being replicated in your guys case, hundreds and hundreds of times. Right. And so, you know, and so the, the new person and their team, it’s like, you got to understand that model and those processes, because that’s what you’re trying to replicate. like, it’s worked 500 times. You’re the 501st.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(30:08)

Mm-hmm. ⁓

 

Jeff Walter (30:27)

We’re always trying to, obviously we’re always trying to get better, right? Nothing’s perfect, but this is a successful model. And so that you have to, you have to learn it. And then, and then like, what I liked about what you were saying is, you know, I’m a big believer in like learn, do teach. You know, and I think as a, ⁓ as a profession, we do a really good job on the learning part, the knowledge acquisition. ⁓ and I think we’re, as a profession, we struggle on the doing part.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(30:51)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (30:56)

the skill development. we’re, good on the L and not so much on the D and L and D, right? And, ⁓

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(31:00)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we call

 

it E-door. Explain, demonstrate, observe, and reinforce. So it’s explaining to them how to do it, demonstrating, observing them doing it, and then reinforcing. It works well.

 

Jeff Walter (31:15)

So, is that all part of the formal training program or is that happening within the store? if I got hired at a Hungry Howie’s and all I know about pizza is I love eating it. ⁓ And so, ⁓ I would go through some of these online modules and let’s say I’m going to be making the pies.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(31:20)

Yes.

 

Right.

 

Jeff Walter (31:35)

I’d come in, I take these online modules that would kind of teach me the basics of how to do the things I need to do as a staff, as a franchise staff member. And so I’ve got the E if I’m E door. Okay. Okay. Okay. So now I’ve got the, I got a sense of the E, right? I’ve, I’ve got the explanation. How does the, and maybe a little bit of demonstration in terms of video, would imagine.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(31:45)

Mm-hmm.

 

Explain, demonstrate, observe, reinforce. Yep.

 

Mm-hmm. ⁓

 

but demonstrating

 

by actually doing it. So I’m explaining to you how to put sauce on a pizza. Now I’m watching you do it. You’re demonstrating that for me. I’m observing and I’m ⁓ reinforcing the behavior.

 

Jeff Walter (32:07)

Right. Right. Well, so I’ve got some.

 

Okay. So, so, so as it says a new, franchise employee, I come in, I take some of these modules. get some basic understanding of something. Then from a training program standpoint, what, what happens? The store manager or somebody or a mentor or like had who demonstrates the, this is how you actually make a pie. Let’s take a piece of dough, stretch it out. Hey, yo, that type of thing.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(32:30)

Mm-hmm.

 

So we have a program that’s called a station training certification within the store. So basically the way it works is there are different stations that have their own individual competencies that you need to learn. So we don’t throw it all at them at once. They learn one particular station at a time and then they develop those individual competencies that are verified by their trainer. It could be one of the… ⁓

 

Jeff Walter (32:52)

Okay.

 

Okay.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(33:14)

One of the management staff could be a senior team member that’s been there for a long time that might have some ⁓ training responsibilities, but they are checking and verifying that they’ve learned all those competencies, not just learned them, but became proficient at them. And then they’re certifying them at that one station. So we have different stations, whether it’s where the salads are made, whether the pizzas are made.

 

whether what we call sheet outs are made, preps, front counter, telephones, the cut and box station where the pizzas are coming out of the oven. There’s a number of different competencies that must be learned at each station. So what we do is we take them one station at a time and then they learn one piece at a time. And then when they become certified in all those stations, then they’re actually a certified employee.

 

They’re certified in all the stations and then they can train.

 

Jeff Walter (34:08)

and so once you’re, a, a, a, a person, okay. I think you answered the question I was going to ask. So, so you’ve got a dozen or half dozen dozen competencies based on the station. know, the, the, the, the pizza prep, the pizza box, slice and box, the front, the phone. So I’m doing the, you know, and the salad. I’m, so let’s say I’m getting trained on the pizza prep or making the pizza. ⁓ I do that.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(34:15)

with his

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (34:35)

You know, somebody, you know, a certified person shows me how to do that. I do it. I do it again. I get coaching from them. And then they say, yes, Jeff is now a skilled practitioner at making the pizza. Jeff is now a skilled practitioner of boxing the pizza. He’s a skilled practitioner on the, on the, ⁓ cash register, the phones, the salad bar and all the other competencies that have to be.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(34:40)

Right.

 

Yes.

 

Yes.

 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (35:02)

And then once I complete all of those competency certifications, that’s the thing that allows me now to certify other people. Is that the way we’re looking at it? Because my other question is who can do the verification, right? Like I get the verification, but so once I become completely certified, right, because now I’ve gotten my skilled…

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(35:09)

Correct. Correct. Yeah, and it takes time.

 

Yes.

 

in all those stations. Yes.

 

Jeff Walter (35:28)

The way I, I’m sorry, the I think of it, like, it’s a skilled practitioner, right? am proficient to the point that I am a skilled professional. I’m a skilled practitioner, right? I can, I can do it all. And so once I’m a certified skilled practitioner on all the different elements of my job, whether I’m a driver or, you you said there were five jobs, right? The driver, the associates, and then the three managers. You know, once I, you know, cause I would imagine it’s my job where

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(35:38)

Yes, that’s

 

Correct.

 

Jeff Walter (35:56)

probably talk about the associate job here predominantly. ⁓

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(35:59)

Yes, they’re

 

more just basic operational competencies. They’re not management level competencies.

 

Jeff Walter (36:05)

Right, right. It’s the things we talked about. then, once

 

I’m certified, that gives me the ability to verify other people. And so then when that, you know, next week, you know, so once I get all that, then, you know, two weeks later, we hire a new person, doesn’t know anything about pizza, uh, as an associate. And now I, and that’s all being tracked by you guys. So, you know, how many certified associates, certified drivers, and does that work its way up to the management? There’s different.

 

Obviously, are the different competencies, like how does that work as you go up the chain?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(36:38)

Yeah, yeah, so there’s obviously different levels. We call them categories. So we have categories, subjects, and modules. So a category might be basic operations. A subject might be pizza making, and a module might be cheese application, right? So it’s broken down that way. But we have different categories for different positions. So we have basic operations, which would be for everybody.

 

Jeff Walter (36:53)

Okay.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(37:06)

We have some entry level, you know, orientation and welcome to hungry Howie’s safety and security things like that that everybody has to take but then we start getting into more advanced so we have advanced Operations then we have Or we have so a basic operations advanced operations introduction to management and then advanced management and then actually we move on from there to what we call

 

Multi-unit supervision is when you’re responsible for multiple stores.

 

Jeff Walter (37:36)

And do you use that same ORID methodology as you go up there? like, yeah, we teach one of those categories, I think you said, right? Like as you go to introduction to supervision or instruction to management, is it the same type of thing? It’s like, well, first I got to learn a bunch of things. And then there’s a certified person who is…

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(37:45)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yes.

 

Jeff Walter (38:00)

you know, looking over my shoulder and demonstrating things to me and then I’m doing it. And then they’re coming back and saying, yep, you’ve hit that skilled practitioner level on this, element, this subject. Right. And then once I rack up all the subjects within that category, I’m now certified on that category and I can certify other people in that category. Is that, it’s a, right.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(38:21)

Right. It’s like a career path. Yeah. So

 

if you’re talking about multi-unit supervision, it would either be say the franchisee or like an area director or district manager or somebody like that, that oversees maybe, you know, these are kind of rare. have a few large franchisees that have 50 plus stores and that’s generally how it’s structured there. But for smaller

 

Jeff Walter (38:31)

Right.

 

huh.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(38:46)

groups, maybe four or five stores, the franchisee might be the director as well. And they have one supervisor, so they’re giving them direction and going out and visiting stores with them and showing them how to conduct store visits and what they need to pay attention to on a daily basis.

 

Jeff Walter (39:04)

So, I mean, that’s really cool because it’s a force multiplier, right? By having the people observe and certify people, know, staff or anybody that, okay, you are now competent in this subject, whatever it is, whether it’s an operational or a managerial subject or any of the other categories you talked about, it’s like a force multiplier. You don’t have to have an army of people back.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(39:10)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (39:32)

home back in the corporate office that are verifying and certifying. You’ve had it delegated that out to the franchisees, which is very cool.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(39:43)

Yeah, with that program,

 

it’s really the franchisee’s responsibility to keep track of all those certifications. It’s not ours. We don’t have corporately owned stores. We’re 100 % franchise. So it’s their responsibility to do that. Again, we provide the tools for them to do that, but responsibility ultimately is on them.

 

Jeff Walter (40:03)

Okay, but are you tracking that certification or is that?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(40:05)

We are

 

not, but we are because this is currently an actual manual, but this is another feature that our new LMS has where we can take these checklists and these manuals and flip them to an electronic form and then we can report on those. So that is another thing that’s in our near future.

 

Jeff Walter (40:27)

Yeah, I just love that idea because then in my brain, think I’ve learned to teach that certifying others is the teach part and you master something when you teach it to others. so in the, O’Dar, no, dear, no, O’Dar. E-Dor, that’s it, E-Dor. Thank you. So how does the reinforcement come in?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(40:39)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (40:52)

Is it that certifying others and teaching them and demonstrating, what else helps with the reinforcement?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(41:00)

It’s more like correction. they’re observing and then reinforcing what they’re doing right. Instead of correcting what they’re doing wrong. We really believe in that approach of trying really trying hard every day to catch people doing something right. We call them CDRs instead of yes, you do sometimes have to have those conversations with people when they’re not doing something right. But

 

Jeff Walter (41:08)

Okay.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(41:29)

We want the focus to always be on catch them doing something right, but recognize them for it. And we say, praise publicly, but critique privately. If you have some kind of critique or conversation that you have to have regarding correcting behavior or whatever, that’s a one-on-one away from everybody else. When you’re praising someone, be as loud in front of as many people as you can.

 

The key here is to make sure it’s sincere because a lot of people will try to heap praise on folks, but you can tell it’s not from the heart and people can see through that.

 

Jeff Walter (42:05)

So, so once a person is certified in a category, then, then, then they’re going there for, for a career progression. Then it’s just the next category, the next set of subjects. You know, I’m an associate and now I want to be a shift supervisor. I want to be an assistant manager. And, and that is, and, and so I got, so I got that right. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. Right.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(42:29)

Yeah, so you’re constantly strengthening your bench. So

 

one of the procedures that we developed many years ago is we really believe that because being a general manager in a store is a very difficult job, you’re on your feet all the time. You take a break when it slows down. There’s no such thing as punching out for 30 minutes for a break to grab something to eat. It’s you just.

 

Jeff Walter (42:48)

If it slows down.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(42:55)

the rush is over. Let me hurry up and get something to eat. So I have some energy to make it through the rest of the day. And I think it helps that I’ve been there and done that. So I can try to cater some of these programs around helping the GMs that are out there now to enjoy their jobs more and lower their stress level. I feel that’s a responsibility of mine actually, to try to pass along what I’ve learned when I did that job and make it easier than it was when I was there.

 

So it’s very important to me to do that and always focus on every day trying to make their job easier and helping them to enjoy themselves.

 

Jeff Walter (43:34)

And, you know, shifting gears, looking, you know, into the future, you’ve got this new platform that you’re in the middle of implementing. I would imagine it’s giving you, you and you had mentioned, well, it gives us a bunch of capabilities that we would have to have way to build into our homegrown platform. So as this gets rolled out and now it’s completely deployed, what do you see as the future of the training?

 

You know, now you’ve got a tool that you can springboard off of, I’d imagine. How do you see the future of the program developing?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(44:08)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, I mean, at least right now and what I see for the near future is we’re focusing a lot on developing training videos. This whole TikTok generation, that’s what communicates to them. Instead of just reading script on a screen and, you know, taking some quizzes and seeing some pictures, they’d like to see videos. And the other thing that I learned is we used to do, we used to have a company that we used and they would come out with.

 

Jeff Walter (44:23)

Uh-huh.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(44:39)

a of professional equipment and a lot of editing afterwards and make these really nice polished videos. But what we found, number one, they were expensive. And number two, that after a year, some of the content wasn’t relevant anymore because maybe a procedure changed or maybe the way we make a particular product changed or we don’t have that product anymore. it wasn’t, it isn’t timely.

 

You have to be able to on the fly, make new videos and put other ones on the shelf. And so I actually belong to an organization called chart. It’s called, it stands for the council of hotel and restaurant trainers. And it’s a completely a volunteer, a nonprofit program, but they do, they do a couple of conferences a year. And I I’ve been to about 10 of them, but the last one I was at.

 

Jeff Walter (45:06)

Over.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(45:35)

was out in Redondo beach back in August. And there was a gentleman there that I know pretty well. His name’s, I’ll give him a shout out because his name is Corbin Nichols and he works for a Piazza Italian street food. And he put on a seminar and it was titled training on a budget. And all it was is, Hey, these iPhones do really good videos nowadays. Buy a tripod, focus on, get a, get a mic. can put on someone, focus on the audio, focus on the lighting.

 

focus on the angles. And after that, audience that we have, you know, these folks in the stores, that’s what they want. They want it to be real. They want it to be practical. They don’t want it to be polished. They don’t want it to look special because if it’s not realistic, it’s not going to stick. So that’s really where we’re going right now. And then we also are very excited with our new platform that it has AI built into it. So anyone that logs into the program can type in whatever they’re looking for.

 

So they could say, please tell me how to make a steak, cheese and mushroom sub. Type it in, just spits it all out, just like you went to chat GPT. So it’s pretty awesome.

 

Jeff Walter (46:40)

Perfect. Yeah. Is that through an AI, like an AI chat bot built into the platform? Yeah. Very cool. We just launched that a couple of months ago and it’s so cool. It’s so cool. But on the videos, are you looking at producing them all in house? Are you thinking of having the ⁓ franchisees do it or is there all in-house production?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(46:45)

Yes. ⁓

 

Yes.

 

Yeah,

 

we’re doing those ourselves. So like we’ve done a couple of them already and they turn out really well and they’ve been a big hit. So I’m just bringing my broadcasting skills back out and trying to do the best I can with that. And I’m voicing over most of them. And yeah, I’ve got a couple of people that helped me in the store and they’re all done in a store. So people are like, that’s just done in a store. That’s where I’m at. Like not in some…

 

fancy studio somewhere.

 

Jeff Walter (47:30)

very. That’s very cool. And, and, and do you give a shout out to the store that you’re doing it in?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(47:36)

⁓ Well, it’s one of the training stores that we use. We don’t necessarily tell them which store it is, but a lot of people know.

 

Jeff Walter (47:40)

Okay, yeah.

 

That’s cool. That’s cool. On an note, I was talking with the gentleman the other day and they’re a creative company, but they’ve got this SaaS tool that they built to help with social media with large distributed networks like franchises.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(47:57)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (48:07)

where, ⁓ you know, the, the franchise employee can submit capture, you know, social media posts or social media, you know, create a content and then send it up to headquarters for, approval. then depending on whether it’s a corporate social media store, social media, or individual social media type of program, you know, approve it and then send it to the right channel. And we’re having an interesting conversation about that.

 

I was like, Oh, that’s interesting. And it was all, and the whole thing was both there, there, there, uh, content creators, uh, for, you know, marketing and it was all that. But I, in my head, I was like, that’s really interesting because one of the biggest challenges with franchises or anybody doing external training is it’s all product training. There is no, there is no publisher that’s selling product, your products training for your products.

 

So content creation is always a challenge. And I was like, I was talking to him about the idea of setting up projects that instead of like a social media project, you want to promote the, you know, this thing for Christmas or whatever, you know, is, you know, I was like, could you use that for capturing like how to videos? ⁓ and then, and then you have the approval process to collect it from a large group. he’s like, huh, that’s interesting. That would be an interesting thing. So.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(49:20)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (49:30)

As you’re doing this, one thought that came to my mind is like, huh, I wonder if that would be an interesting experiment as you’re cranking these out.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(49:39)

Yeah, so our LMS that we’re testing right now does have a messaging slash social aspect to it where we post messages, people can like them, they can forward them off to other people, they can reply, we can upload pictures, we can upload video. So we’re looking to take a lot of that communication that was in the past done over email or text or WhatsApp or whatever.

 

and just drive all that communication and keep it within the platform because the ultimate goal is engagement. We want people engaged with the platform so that when ⁓ new material is posted, they’re excited about it and they’re telling others about it and that material is getting where it needs to go.

 

Jeff Walter (50:23)

Very cool. And, and, and, and how are they, how are you able to break up the audience? Right? Cause if you got, you know, say 500 stores and what 10 or so people per store or something like that, know, so 5,000 people, right. ⁓ you know, how, how do they, how do they break it up so that it’s not 5,000 people talking to 5,000 people, but you’re, you’ve got this channel versus that chat, like, know, so, you know, is it.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(50:36)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (50:49)

Like how, you know, are any channels private or how does that happen?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(50:53)

Yeah, so regular like comments or if someone wants to like something that you’ve posted, know, sky’s the limit. But if it’s ⁓ content like video or pictures or things like that, that has to go, like you said, through an approval process to make sure that it’s appropriate before it’s shared. But yeah, mean, sky’s the limit. could get viral within the platform itself. That’d be great.

 

Jeff Walter (51:17)

very cool.

 

Very cool. Very cool. And, ⁓ and, and then what, one other question, and this goes back to me being a New Yorker where we pride ourselves on our pizza. ⁓ why do you think Southeast Michigan is the headquarters of Hungry Howare’s and a number of other large pizza change? What is it about this area?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(51:28)

Mm-hmm. Sure.

 

Yes. Yes.

 

You know, I don’t, I don’t really know. It’s not that we have a ton of Italian immigrants or anything like that. I don’t really know the answer to that, but yeah, there’s a number of large chains that are based here and started here. And it’s kind of neat actually. I don’t really know why. don’t know.

 

Jeff Walter (52:01)

I know it’s

 

wild. And then there’s even one just over the border in Toledo. And so it’s like, yeah, it’s close enough to Southeast Michigan. I don’t know, is there something in the water here or something? I don’t know. just, I’m just, yeah.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(52:07)

That’s right. That’s right.

 

There’s only a couple that aren’t here. Like there’s one in Louisville

 

and there’s one in Kansas City or whatever. But, ⁓ you know, other than that, well, there’s another one out in the Northwest, but I don’t know where they’re at just yet, but they probably have a thousand stores.

 

Jeff Walter (52:22)

Yeah.

 

But,

 

but I, it just, it just blows me away over the years. was like, they’re here, they’re here, they’re here, they’re here. And these other guys are over the border in Ohio. like, I, to your point, it’s like, there’s not a lot of other pizza chains I can think of. Yeah. That’s just really interesting. Really interesting. Yeah. Well, Al, anything else you want to share with everybody before you go any?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(52:37)

Right.

 

Right. Yeah, I honestly don’t know the answer to that, but yeah, it’s definitely a hotbed. That’s for sure.

 

Jeff Walter (52:57)

Anything before we wrap up?

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(52:57)

⁓

 

yeah, not really. Just like I said, ⁓ it’s just been, it’s just been an enjoyable ride. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be doing this. I originally had a plan to retire in a couple of years, but I’m having so much fun and, I’ll just might as well just keep doing, doing it as long as I’m having fun. You know, that’s, think that’s really what it boils down to is that if you can be blessed enough to have

 

a really nice quality of life away from work but still have a job that you really enjoy, then why not just hang on to that as long as you can?

 

Jeff Walter (53:31)

Well, in the immortal words of my late father-in-law, Sylvio Malinari, find the job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. You know, and I, you know, he said that to me, I don’t know, 35, 40 years ago. It stuck in me, stuck in me.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(53:37)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yes, yes.

 

I

 

think it’s also not just the job that you like in the company you work for, but it’s also the people that you work with. That’s a big part of it in my opinion. And I’m blessed to work with a lot of great people and I I couldn’t ask for more. It’s awesome.

 

Jeff Walter (54:07)

Well, Al, again, thank you so much for attending. I love these. I always learned something. I’ve learned. Thank you for letting us dive deep into the program. I really like the certification, turning people into masters once they get certified and they can verify others. think that’s, it hits one of those areas where we struggle as an industry on getting those skilled practitioners, but then also by having somebody do it to somebody else, they’re teaching and that creates the mastery. So I think that’s really awesome.

 

a really awesome part of program. Thank you for taking some time to chat with me today.

 

Al Newman of Hungry Howie’s(54:40)

Thank you, my pleasure.

 

Jeff Walter (54:41)

And to everybody out there, thanks for listening. We greatly appreciate your views and your support. Have a great day.