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ely heavily on the opinion of his cooks.
“After the candidates come out to L.A.
and spend some time in the truck, I’ll ask
the cooks how they’re doing,” Tselikis
explains. “They’ll tell me, ‘This guy’s
ready,’ or ‘They’re clueless.’ The guys in
the kitchen are usually right.”
For Lomac, the most difficult part of
the process has been making the transition
from an independent business owner
to a franchisor, putting his concept into
other people’s hands. “I went to Phoenix
for our first grand opening, and I was
looking at this truck in the street,” he
remembers. “It was mine, but it was not
mine. It’s a crazy feeling. You feel proud
and uncomfortable and excited.”
He also felt a duty to enforce the standards
he and his cousin had worked hard
to develop. “I was more tough with their
cooks,” he says. “If I didn’t like the way
the food looked, I was fierce. You have to
set the tone for the quality you expect.”
Leaving that quality control in the
hands of a franchisee for the first time
was nervewracking. “Getting on the
plane I was very nervous. It’s like having
children going off to college,” Lomac says.
“We want the best for them, but, boy, it’s
scary. We have to do check-ins and secret
shoppers. Still, I had to pinch myself and
ask if this was really happening. I mean,
this is an idea we came up with over
drinks. It’s a very powerful feeling.”
While developing their franchise,
the cousins are glad they haven’t made
any drastic errors in judgment. They do,
however, wish they had made their initial
operations manual more detailed.
“Some things seem so obvious that
we didn’t even think to put them in the
manual—like the exact amount of ketchup
or mayo to give a customer,” Tselikis
explains. “There are things we missed
that would have made our franchisees’
lives a lot easier. Including pictures in our
manual for how to lay out the truck and
exactly where things like plates and pans
go would have been helpful.”
Such realizations will help them as
they continue to expand. But they have
not set any quotas. “We’re not in the
business of having 100 mediocre trucks.
We want 10 that are phenomenal and
want to make whoever signs on with us
extremely successful,” Lomac says.
Looking back on the past two and half
years, he has no regrets: “In hindsight,
I know we wouldn’t have done anything
differently. It was stressful, and at times
we did go a million miles an hour. But
we wouldn’t change it at all.”
MADISON, WIS.-BASED JASON DALEY IS A
FREQUENT CONTRIBUTOR TO ENTREPRENEUR.