Key Strategies That Turned Hawaii Poké into a Swedish Restaurant Powerhouse

Welcome to yet another insightful episode of the Food Service Growth Show! In this exciting episode, we're thrilled to have Carl Jacobs, CEO of Apicbase, in conversation with Aaron Colman, CEO of Hawaii Poké. This episode delves deep into the key strategies that have propelled Hawaii Poké from its humble beginnings to becoming a powerhouse in the Swedish restaurant scene.

They will talk about...
✅ The Humble Beginning of Hawaii Poké
✅ How Innovative Thinking Grew a Single Restaurant into a Chain
✅ How Hawaii Poké Navigated the Challenges of the Early Days
✅ How Hawaii Poké Grew from a Single Restaurant to 22 Locations
✅ How to Strategise Growth Based on Diverse Restaurant Experiences
✅ How to Shift Focus from Operations to Business Strategy
✅ How Hawaii Poké Stands Out From the Competition
✅ How Technology Influences Operations in the F&B Industry
✅ How to Optimise Operations to Offset Rising Food Costs
✅ Top Learnings That Drive Success in the F&B Industry

The journey of Hawaii Poké began with a single, modest restaurant, and in this video, Aaron Colman shares the fascinating story of how innovative thinking and a commitment to quality helped transform that single location into a thriving chain. 

He will recount the early days of Hawaii Poké, shedding light on the challenges faced and the strategies employed to overcome them. From navigating the growing pains of a new venture to scaling up operations, Aaron offers a behind-the-scenes look at the evolution of Hawaii Poké.

We'll explore how Hawaii Poké expanded from its original location to an impressive network of 22 restaurants. Aaron provides valuable insights into the strategic decisions that fueled this remarkable growth. 

He emphasizes the importance of leveraging diverse restaurant experiences to inform and drive growth strategies. You'll find actionable takeaways on how to strategize growth effectively.

A key theme of the conversation is the shift in focus from day-to-day operations to broader business strategy. Aaron discusses how Hawaii Poké has managed this transition and the impact it has had on the brand's success. He highlights how a clear strategic vision can lead to sustained growth and competitive advantage in the restaurant industry.

Hawaii Poké stands out from the competition in several ways, and Aaron shares the unique elements that differentiate the brand. He also discusses how technology plays a crucial role in the food and beverage industry, influencing operations and customer experiences. From optimizing operations to offset rising food costs, technology has become an essential tool in Hawaii Poké's arsenal.

If you find this episode enlightening, don’t forget to like, follow, and subscribe to our channel. 

We have many more informative episodes lined up that delve into various aspects of the food service industry. 

Learn how our restaurant management solutions help your restaurant business keep costs under control.

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Transcript

0:00

Hello, I'm Karl Jacobs and I'm co founder and CEO of Apicbase. At Apicbase, we are building the world's best food and beverage management platform. But in this podcast series, it's all about finding answers on how to grow and scale your food service business. I'm talking numerous experts and industry professionals who are passionate about building a healthy food service industry. Join me on this fascinating journey of entrepreneurship in food. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Food Service Growth Show. Another episode with another very interesting guest. This time I'm talking to Aaron Colman, the CEO from Hawaii Poke. Hello, Aaron. Hi, Karl. How are you? I'm good, I'm good. It's good to be here. I've been following the shows on LinkedIn, so it's nice to be sat here with you. Thank you very much for following us. That's always nice. Also for our listeners, if they want to follow us, just go to the foodservicegrowth.show and they can tune into all of the different episodes. But for now, Aaron, all eyes are on you. As always, my first question is always the same. Who is Aaron Colman and what have you been doing? Yes, so I'm Aaron, I'm the co founder and CEO of Hawaii Poke, which is a fast, casual, healthy bowl concept in Sweden. We have 22 locations today. At those locations, we have 21 at corporate run and one is franchise at the main airport here in Stockholm. Arlanda. All right. And so 21 owned ones, one franchised. Interesting to have that conversation later on, but I believe you only found it in 2016. So I believe you are not a thorough blood restaurant guy, trained in the kitchen. So what have you been doing before 2016? Yeah, absolutely. No, this was my first venture into food and beverage. So before that I mostly worked with startups, mostly tech startups in the UK, where I'm from, and then also in the US. We lived in the UK and then we lived in the US before making the move to Sweden. And tech startups, Does that mean you have a tech background? No, I'd say I'm sort of literate in it, but I'm always from the business development sales side, normally founder side. So that's definitely something that I've sort of kept going over the years, always eager to find or move on to new challenges. But no, I've always positioned myself well with, I think with the right people, right talents and gone from there. All right, and are there any, let's say, stories you have for us from these tech days? Let's say. And that are worth mentioning and give us a little bit of the, let's say, the feel at pre 2016. Let's have a think. Well, all the companies I was working in before were wildly different. We had one which was in sports technology, worked in personal finance tech, and another one with onboarding tech, which was quite interesting, particularly, I'd say, really, that was the antithesis of food and beverage. With that product, you're dealing with legacy agreements with large corporates. So the lead time from sort of contact the customer to contracting the customer is incredibly long, 12-18 months. And it was a couple of projects like that that I was involved in over about a five, six year period before moving to Sweden, which is when I decided that my next venture had to be a bit more tangible than that. So I chose food and beverage. Now, choosing poke in particular, with predominantly sushi grade fish, is perhaps the most tangible product you can have. So I went from sort of an 18 month period to a sort of three day period, which is perhaps a little too extreme, but learned a huge amount from that as well. And perhaps where I'm most comfortable at is somewhere in between. All right, so that brings us, actually to the next question. Hawaii Poke So how did you decide to go for that? Of course, you mentioned a little bit more tangible, but then, yeah, food. How do you come to that conclusion? Yeah, so when I was living in the US, I came across Poke. We were living in New York and there was a couple Hawaiian restaurants in the area where we were. Poke wasn't on the menu there as we have it today, or as it's grown around the world over the last sort of seven, eight years there. It was typically a starter and it was just local fish of the day, marinated and served on some rice, perhaps sort of family style on the table. And then we started to see, particularly in LA, the shift from Poke sort of transitioning to more of a gourmet salad. So we were looking, me and my partners at the time, we were looking at what would be the right fit for Sweden at that time. And our focus, even before thinking specifically Poke the focus for us was really more on being takeaway first. That was where we saw the opportunity and that's what was missing from the market. So once we realized that, then we thought, what's the best product for this? And Poke sort of ticked all the right boxes that had all the flavors that Swedes loved. It sort of touched on the sort of Pacific flavour base as well, which has been incredibly popular in Sweden for the last 20 plus years. Plus it's healthy, and it's a substantial salad, so it's filling, which is important. And it was growing also around the world. It was picking up a lot of press, so they had a trend factor to it as well, which is, you know, really important. There's only There's only so much buzz you can create yourself around the quality of the product. You have to also get people to understand it, particularly when it's a new concept and it's a new dish that not many people know about. If you have people from other areas or media talking about it, then we're doing some of that education for us alongside that journey, of course. Yeah, yeah. Of course you're mentioning Sweden. Hawaii Poke is in Sweden. Why Sweden? Yeah. Well, that's quite boring. But my wife is Swedish, so that's what brought me to Sweden, and this is where I wanted to start my next venture. So that's what brought us here, really. It was nothing to do with, can I go to Sweden and sell more salmon to the Swedes? It wasn't that. No, no. So it was a love story there. But when you were, let's say, conceptualizing the chain or the restaurant, you were still in the United States, I guess? No, I was here. You were already moved? Yeah. So I was already in Stockholm. I think I'd been here for I was already here for around close to a year. All right. All right. So I was already trying out a few other things, but I was mostly just focused on getting into the industry, working a little, trying to meet as many people as possible. Once I've made the decision to work in food and beverage, then as I've done in the past in other industries, it's really important. You've got to immerse yourself a lot, and you've got to see, you know, how quickly you can maybe find a niche and become a domain expert, really, and try and build that network and really understand it. What are the drivers, what are the levers for this business? Which are different to where I was coming from before. Obviously and then I guess you were the first Poke restaurant chain or restaurant in Sweden? Yes. And actually, we were two different concepts that opened up on the same week and amazingly on the same street, not right next to each other, but maybe only 100 meters apart. So it was. That was, that was quite funny. And that just sort of showed how much sort of it was about to start growing. Yeah. Yeah. But we were definitely the. We kept really pure to Poke at the beginning. Some of the other concepts had. There were a mix of different things, different bowls or different different food options. So we were really pure that we're just going to do this thing and we're going to do it really well. And we focused a lot on the brand as well. That was really important for us, that the quality was there, not just in the product, but also in the environment and the customer experience. And the first restaurant that you opened, did you already have the idea of having a chain, or was this kind of a let's try and see where it goes idea? No, the idea was definitely to grow into a chain. All right. And then if you have that idea, can you tell us a little bit about the first restaurant? Was this dine in or only takeaway? Yeah. So the first one was, we got a lot of press at the time, and it was always referred to as a hole in the wall. And it's definitely a hole in the wall. We still have it. It's our first store. It's our baby still. It's 22m², which is incredibly small for the output that we've had there and that we do there still. It's takeaway only now. Back then, at the beginning, I think we squeezed in about eight seats, I think, and we had one small fridge in the back, and there were sort of one person stood at the POS and there were two at the back, me and someone else, and just sort of stood in a very tight space, just banging out these bowls. And then slowly, as the concept started to grow, then we had to start using, finding more space in there to increase production. So over the years and months at the beginning, but over the years, we've slowly lost those seats. Yeah. And now there's sort of. There's two seats in there now by the window, but they're more. You can't really fit in to sit there. And I know that the manager who's there today would love it if we took those away as well, but it's important to have a couple there. And if you then talk about these first months and years in the first shop, can I say that you maybe even did two innovations? The first one was the Poke, of course, but the second one was focusing almost entirely on takeaway. Yeah, absolutely. So we were definitely the first to really be just takeaway focused and not just obviously, there's been sort of roadside like concepts of burgers, hot dogs. That's always been really popular in Sweden, which are traditional street food takeaway only. But I think doing it with sort of chef driven, restaurant quality food and doing it with an experience of how it's packaged, presented and trying to think of that whole value chain of once you order, to when you're unpacking at the desk or in the park. I think we're definitely the first to do that in Stockholm. Having myself, having spent just over ten years prior to that in London and New York, I think, where you're surrounded by so many takeaway driven concepts and they're all competing for space and they're all competing on customer quality as well, on the experience. I think it's been interesting having that experience, to take a lot from that and then trying to see what works for the Swedish consumer. What is it they're looking for? And for sure, it was very different. It wasn't at all really what you're expecting, because there's a lot of education that went along with it being new. And there was almost some, not uncertainty, but definitely worry from the first customers. Quite often they'd be, you know, they would order, they would pay, and then you'd hand them a bag and they'd sort of hold the bag and be like, is this. So I just leave now? And is this enough food for me? Because before that, really, at lunch, it was sit down, it was buffet, it was, have you normally a hot meal, quite heavy. And then there was sort of unlimited bread and salad and everything on the side. So everyone was sort of suddenly quite fearful that, is this going to be enough? And once they ate it once they came straight back and realized, not only is it enough, but they feel great. And that was something that we really wanted to focus on, that this is healthy, clean food. You should feel good, positive, inside and out. Are you the sole founder or did you have partners? I had partners. All right. And we're still my main co-founder from the beginning, she left the company, and then another one is in the company still. And since then, we have brought in a number of new owners and investors into the business. All right. All right, take us through a day of these first days. When you were just opening up your first shop, what were you doing? Were you running everything? Were you specific? Yeah, we were doing it all. So it was really particularly, I'd say maybe after, I'll take you sort of, maybe onto, like, week six. So at the beginning, the first few weeks are really sort of we're still kind of A/B testing. We're still tweaking the menu, tweaking that how we present the food, certain weights, flavor combinations. And then once we sort of feel that we found the right match, then we'll get started. A lot of communicating with customers. Trying to explain what we're doing. And then they started returning and bringing people with them, which is always the aim, right? Give them a great product, great service, and, you know, 30 days later they'll come back with a friend. So we started seeing that and then we started getting quite a lot of press. And probably around about six weeks after we opened, there was then just a queue outside the door every day over lunch, going up sort of 50 meters around the corner. So that was, you know, that was amazing for us, really. And it happened so quickly and we were still very much learning. The other people in the business at the time were very much from the industry, but again, this was a new product, new suppliers, new routines. It wasn't at all what anyone else had done. So we're still learning the ins and outs as we were going, and still sort of tweaking the routines every single day. So back then, the day would have been kind of get up, get up early and just get there as quickly as possible and just start prep. I think at that time we started going up to maybe we'd gone from very quickly from maybe serving 100 people in the day to serving 300 plus over lunch. And because the store was so small, you couldn't fit more people in there to do the work. So it was still, I think at that stage, we managed to squeeze four of us in the kitchen, so that by kitchen, that's including the POS. So we had two at the front of house and two back of house, all sort of back to back. And we would get there as early as possible, start prep, just start setting up, and then we'd work, get through lunch somehow, start prep again, get through the next service, and then just start trying to focus on what can we do now to get ready for the next day. And at the same time, obviously, we're trying to push the marketing, try and get the brand out there even further. And at that stage, we already then started to get visits from landlords, not just in Sweden, really, from all over Europe, other people that were interested in the concept. So we also took the time to have those conversations, to try and learn as much as possible about what they're looking for from concepts and taking the time to try and set up the organization properly as well, so that we could scale. And then, of course, I hear that you did basically everything. I believe it was a 24/7 job in the beginning. Looking back, what was, let's say, the breakthrough success, why did Hawaii Poke became, why did it become possible to open up 22 stores by now? What was the defining factor of this success? Yeah, it's a good question. And obviously, it's quite hard to put it down to one thing. I mean, I think there's sort of internal and external. I think internally, it's always going to be about the people that's making sure that we're surrounding ourselves with the best possible team inside all of our restaurants, in the head office. And then the number one thing for us, where we didn't want to have sort of cut any corners or make any accommodations, was always going to be with the product. For us, it's super important that the product is 100% what we say it is. What we're charging the customer for. We set the quality really high, not just on how we create the food, but also from our suppliers as well. And I think just sticking to that and making sure that when customers come, they know they're going to get a consistent experience. That's a huge value add for customers. It creates a lot of trust, and landlords see that as well. So at that stage, once they realize that you have the capacity, because that comes down to routines, I think that quality, and it's the culture of the company. So that's not just on one chef. Quite often when you see single concept locations, you take away the owner, you take away the chef, and the whole thing just disappears. Obviously, the main difference with the chain is if you can get that in the culture, in the routines, focus on the people, then you can see that this can scale. So if you take away some of the key people who then need to focus more on growth strategy operations, then the product will stay the same. So we really focused on that. And that's sort of, you know, each one then builds on to the next one. So once we opened two, they saw the product was the same, and then we opened three. And it was at that stage, they were all quite different stores. And it was at that stage where we thought, okay, that's that's quite a good pace. About three a year right now. It was still developing in in Sweden, the market overall and the opportunities that were available to us. And then the plan was to start slowly increasing that growth. And it was just before, about a year before Covid-19 came, when we wanted to double that growth. So we decided, all right, now we're going to do sort of six openings in the calendar year. So we'd signed all of those. I think we signed a couple more even. And then we started opening, and then Covid-19 came. And obviously that just. Yeah, that shook our world as it did for everyone. And we had to sort of readdress that plan a little bit. And that strategy for growth. The restaurants that you opened, let's say 2267 that you had before Covid-19 were they all takeaway focused or was there also in seat? No, they were all wildly different. So we had. The first one was takeaway focused. The second one was in a shopping center in the middle walkway. And it had seats. So that was a completely different setup for us. We changed the operations in that restaurant as well to really put all the food right in front of the customer. It was a slightly different customer crowd. So we wanted to go further to explain what we were doing here. Fresh ingredients. And then the third location was was high street. It was It was maybe four times the amount of seats of what we'd had before. So again, that was. That was quite different. And then I'd say the next sort of three after that were also all quite different, ranging from another really small location on a sort of public square to another large high street based location. So at that stage, all our locations were really quite mixed. And we were seeing a lot of different things coming out of all of them. And we then took that information and decided to make our strategy for growth from that. And at that time, the idea was, well, we didn't necessarily see, say, the revenue per square meter correlate. We saw a potential target for our revenue. But it wasn't that different whether we were 40m² or 80m². Only time it was really different when larger was if we were in a shopping center. That's when you have sort of people who want to sit all day. So at that stage, our strategy was very much sort of, let's look for these small locations and then take slightly larger spots in shopping centers. And then obviously Covid-19 threw that all up in the air. And just to quickly jump forward a few years, what we actually see now is shopping centres have stayed the same with regards to the more seats you have, the better. Normally up to a limit of the concept, of course. But actually our The stores that have been sort of I wouldn't say struggling, but have noticed maybe some of the biggest differences in customer response at least is the smaller stores that we had. That now, when people go to the office, if they're at the office for two to three days a week, when they go there, they want to go out with their colleagues, they want to catch up with people in town, go out for lunch, so they want to sit down. So that's been the number one feedback when our regulars are still coming to us, but they for sure let us know that it's, you know, they wish we had more seats. They would like to sit down, and they want to sit for longer as well. So that's been probably the biggest learning from that early strategy to where we are today. And are you now converting older stores to stores with seats, or is this impossible? Yeah, where it's possible. We've done that a little bit, but it's quite a challenge because a lot of those are quite small. So instead, what we're doing is we've had two areas of our business really growing quite a lot recently. One has been more dine in, as mentioned, and we've created a bit more experience around that and also expanded the selection around that. And then the other one has been grab and go. So the smaller ones are smallly be, sorry The smaller stores are being more slowly transitioned into express units, and then, which is takeaway driven, but it's also grab and go, refrigerated shelving. And then the other stores are more of a focus on dining. I hear you mentioning Covid-19 as being, can I say, devastating for the business. How many stores did you operate before Covid? We had 26 stores before Covid. All right, so you had to close a few and they didn't reopen again? Yeah, that's correct. We chose not to reopen. Was this related to, let's say, Covid-19, or were they already struggling before Covid-19 and you said, well, now we can clean it up. Yeah, that's a good point. Most were related to Covid-19. Most of those ones closed were office based locations that just didn't pick up again in the same way. And then there were a couple that were we didn't really see them growing in any way other. And the areas in general were struggling, so we chose to close those. Of those two, I'd say maybe one would look at reopening again in the near future. So we have good relationships with the landlord and properties still. So it's. Yeah, it's, you know, the impact wasn't just on Hawaii Poke's business, but obviously, whole areas have sort of changed the way they sort of plan themselves. One more question about about the early days. You did a lot of operational work, and of course, I mean, as a co-founder myself, I recognize what you're saying, but one day you decide, okay, now we need to grow. How do you make the change from being a founder, operational, deep into the daily operations of your business, into someone who can step back, look into the strategy, and say, okay, so now I'm going to focus on contracts, on sales of my business, not so much in the business, but of the business. So how did that transition go? It was a hard transition. It was definitely hard. I think when it takes time, it doesn't happen overnight. You're going to make mistakes, and it can feel really uncomfortable. And a part of that is because you're not letting go or perhaps you're not delegating enough. But another part of that is you've got to really build the organization. And it's easy for a lot of people to say, just delegate more or hand this off, take more of a helicopter view. But at the end of the day, the company has to get to a certain size. So you have the luxury of having people in an organization who can take responsibility. At that stage we were still, everyone else in the organization was still very operational, operationally involved. So we were growing so fast that no one had the time to take additional workload on. So at the beginning, you do a mixture, and it's just about trying to find what the priorities are. And when you're setting a strategy for the business, I think that's where you need to really be quite honest with yourself as to, okay, what can we realistically focus on, not just you as a leader, but also as a company? Because the company will inevitably go in the direction in which you're sort of, you're going in. So I think for myself, it was really trying to do that transition quite slowly and make sure that we weren't trying to do too many things at once. And I wasn't trying to do too many things at once and still remembering every day that quality is number one, regardless of whether it's we're in operations or not, and then from there, sort of building off of that. So it was a journey. It's something I think I'm still learning and you know trying to get better at. But I think it all comes down to priorities at the end of the day. All right, fast forward back to today. You're not the only Poke restaurant anymore. I think the concept is known worldwide, and even in Belgium, we have a Hawaii Poke. They put bowl behind it, but it's the same name. How do you differentiate with all of these concepts that are keeping popping up? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. Obviously, we put a lot of focus into our brand. And I think not just being the name Hawaii Poke, but also fresh, healthy, tasty. Everything that we do, the quality that we put into the product, the quality that we put into the stores, the people. We believe that our food tastes the best. We believe that you feel great when you have it. And I think that is a lot of it comes not necessarily from what you're putting on the front, but it's also from once the customer experiences it to see. And for us, that's where our focus is. It's on. We focus on people, on product and on the environment. And by environment, internally that's the store and the customer experience, and then externally that's sustainability and our own goals for what we want to achieve there. And then on product. It's all about just consistency, quality, working with the best produce and giving the freshest food. We always make everything from scratch every day. We make every order from scratch for our customers. And then I think it's. Then you've got different sort of values, different chains of whether one wants to lean into more ordering channels, perhaps, than another or another wants to lean more into the customer experience in the restaurant. And that's where we all differ a little bit. But I'd say for us really just having, always keeping that product quality front focus, I think, is what stands us out from a lot of the competition. All right, being a guy working in technology, how is technology influencing your current business? I mean, technology is a huge part of what we do. Our head office, I think, is relatively lean, not partly from choice, because of the utilization of technology and the fact that we're quite tech literate as a company, but also just the industry itself. Margins are incredibly tight, as you'll know, and from talking to lots of others in the industry. So you don't necessarily have the luxury of having that many positions at a chain our size that can be outside of operations. So we utilize technology to quite a large extent. I'd say specifically the sort of the main driver for us is going to be our business intelligence dashboards. So we use PowerBi, our CFO, Raquel, she oversees all of that and builds all of that out. And that's really how we can view the business in the best possible way and manage what's most important for us, because there's only a couple things here that we can control. So you've really got to focus on getting as close to full control over those as you can, and then you can try and affect the others if possible. Yeah. And what are these things you can control? Well, it's going to be the cost of goods and it's going to be cost of labor. Yeah. And if you look into this, can you talk a little bit about, let's say, cost of goods. What is your GP? Do you want to share this with us? What is the ideal food cost that you're working towards? And do you get there? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of the industry traditionally on our side, has always been around the sort of 70 30 as a name. We're around there where I'd say give or take 2%. It depends. A lot of it for us depends on specifically the cost of salmon. A huge proportion of our customer base eat salmon, the same as Poke all around the world. It started off with tuna and then incredibly quickly it shifted to salmon, not just in the Nordics, but all over the world. And that's a really high cost. That cost is almost, it's been almost 300% increase since we opened the business. And obviously that's not something that we can push onto the consumer completely. No. So that's where when you have those costs, that's where you also. It's not as easy as, okay, can we change the price? You don't want to change the quality, you don't want to change the customer experience by giving them less. So you really try and look inside your operations to see where are other gains. What can we do here? So I think for cost of goods, that's always been our sort of main, one of our main focuses, obviously, on what can we control. And all of that definitely comes down to people. At the end of the day, it's no matter how many locations you have, it's the people inside that are controlling the orders, they're controlling the consumption of the food. And that comes down to training and making sure that the teams are operating really well. And then you've got good oversight as well. Yeah. You have 22 outlets today. What's the ambition? Yeah, I wouldn't say the ambition has a specific number. I'd say, well, I'd say it's at least 10X where we are today, but we're looking into the Nordics, we're really interested in moving south into Europe. Obviously, I'm from the UK, so it's quite interesting to potentially go and grow there. But there's a lot of opportunity that we see, and I think specifically as obviously Hawaii Poke as a sort of fast casual bowl concept. We all know what Poke is today, but the growth in bowls and healthy, sustainable, feel good food is really just starting to grow. And I think what we're really going to see now is when you've got the rise of Gen Z who are starting to head more into professions, have more disposable income and have a much louder voice as to exactly what they're looking for and how they want it. I think there where there's an understanding and expectation that it's not just about straightforward about the food or just about the experience, but it's also about what comes alongside that, what's the ethical setup of the company, sustainability angle and also mental health like, how is it? Is this good food for us? Is this a good environment? So I think there's so much growth for us as we go forward. So geographically speaking, we're super interested, obviously, in expanding our footprint, continuing to in Sweden, and we've got quite a bit of growth planned in Sweden in the next two years and then also into the Nordics. And as soon as we can, as soon as it's viable, then we'll continue to look into other markets as well. And how do you typically go about with expansion? Is this landlord driven or are you private investing or how is this going? It's a mixture, I'd say we're definitely landlord driven with regards to relationships, so. And I think that just comes from we're the largest Poke player in the Nordics and we're, you know, we're very well trusted. We've always been a very good partner to landlords, so we've got a well known brand, so I think we're a good bet for landlords. So we've got a lot of interest incoming and then you've got to be quite opportunistic as well. And I think that's where it's the private side comes in of. Can you find a better location? Always. Where do you see footfall changing as cities change, as new offices pop up, as new residential areas are built, new catchment areas. How can you move into these? When's the right timing for that? Is it good? Normally when it's landlord linked, often it's quite early and sometimes you want to wait a little bit and then you're willing to wait, create that delay and perhaps go in from the private side either. So for us it's about you want a balance of the two, I'd say, and you don't want to ever say no to either. I think it's important to be completely open. Yeah. And if you look into the locations that the landlords offer or that you are looking into yourself, does it always need to be a AAA location? or do you say no no, we also function in, let's say, less busy areas or office areas. Yeah. So that's really interesting because we've talked about this a lot on our board meetings and we don't think we have today. We wouldn't say we have any AAA locations. Maybe some of our landlords would disagree, but I think today as you look at a city you tend to have quite a typical expectation of what a AAA is and we don't think we have any of those today. So we're really interested to see what the brand can do performance wise in a AAA. I would say probably our franchise location at the airport, that's about as close to AAA we have today. We have a couple AA, we have a couple just off AA and they perform really well also. So we definitely, we love those, that's for sure. We need a mix, we need a good sort of density of office seats, we need a certain level of disposable income because the product isn't cheap. And then we also need a good catchment area that we have. On average, maybe 15% of our sales are going to be through third party off premise aggregator sales. So delivery. So you've got to have a good catchment area for that as well because particularly in a lot of the colder months, which is the majority of the year here, the afternoon to evening sales are normally going to fall to online delivery. Not so many people head out sort of for takeaway at those times. So we need a real mix from these locations. And so in one year time you will have the choice whether to go to London and open in the West End or in the city. Where do you go? If we can go to London, actually right now I would open in the West End and actually that is also the same because we've done, we're constantly doing quite a lot of research and we get contacted by landlords from London as well, quite frequently, especially now that we're open at the airport, because they've tried the food and they do see why we're different to the others. And they've seen the same patterns as you've seen that we're talking about here, where office workers that used to be sort of five solid days a week and then maybe you'd close on the weekend or very slow, but now they're only getting three good days a week, whereas the West End is seven days a week. So I think in terms of brand generation and also being able to get that footfall seven days a week when moving into a new city and building the awareness, if I had the luxury of choosing, I'd go for the West End. All right, I'm looking at the time we have to round up. But I have one more question for you. Normally, I ask what the future will bring for hospitality? Of course, you can answer that. But my specific question for you would be, what are the lessons learned from running Hawaii Poke that might be valuable for other entrepreneurs that want to get into this business? So it's the same thing I've learned from other industries, and it's always been the same. And it's an easy one to just repeat and not necessarily always follow. But I think it's more true than ever when it comes to food and beverage and hospitality, which is people. There is no technology, no routine, no operations, nothing that can beat good people. You've got to train people properly. You have to give people a chance, and you've got to find people who want to work with customers. The way we're created, the Hawaii Poke, is you come in and you see the kitchen. It's an open space. So essentially, these are everyone there you're called a surfer when you're working there, but you're on display. It's a stage, and the customers are coming just as much for the experience as they are to grab something and go away. So it's incredibly important that you have the right people in the business. And then from there, I'd say my number one learning when dealing with people has been having a vision that you can share with people. Yeah. I think it's incredibly important to the same in any business is to once. And it can change, obviously, with strategy changes and times and products and whatnot. But everyone should know what you're trying to do. You know, what are we doing today? It's hard to just come in every day and think, okay, I'll just sell this bowl, or I'll just sell this product. You need a shared vision. You need something to look forward to. You need an opportunity to want to grow in the organization. So I think for me, it's going to be people first and foremost, and then it's. And then it's having a shared vision that's incredibly important. And that's probably the number one thing I constantly work on self development in my role as well on is how to constantly tweak the vision, get it out there, get feedback internally on it from all levels. Aaron, thank you very much for these words. I think they resonate a lot. I think a great vision and great people make a great business. Thank you very much for your time and to our listeners, thank you very much for tuning in once again, if you want to get more of these stories and more insights into the food and beverage industry, visit our website, foodservicegrowth.show and happy to see you on the next podcast. See you soon. Bye bye. Thanks, Karl.