Welcome to restaurant influencers. I am your host, Sean Wal Chef. This is a Cali BBQ media
production in life in the restaurant business and in the new creator economy, we learned
through lessons and stories. We are grateful to toast the primary technology partner at our
barbecue restaurants. But also the sponsor of this show for giving us a stage, a platform, uh
the ability to share stories of the greatest brands in the hospitality space. Today, we have
an awesome guest. We had a presh show conversation that I wish I could share, but
we're gonna dig into it because uh storytelling is at the heart of what we do on
this show. Uh If a barbecue business can become a media business, we believe any
business can be a media business. And today we have Ceo Michael Palmer mcconnell's
ice Cream celebrating 75 years of the iconic ice cream brand in southern California. Also
available nationwide, Michael. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks very much, Sean. Happy to be
here. Let's start with our favorite random question, which is where in the world is your
favorite stadium, stage or venue? Oh, that's really easy. Um
So my favorite stadium is absolutely sorry. I know you're a San Diego guy Dodger Stadium. Ok.
I'm a complete architecture fiend. And that stadium is like, you know, just a point in time.
It's like Googie architecture. It's sitting down in Chavez Ravine. It's iconic, there
aren't many iconic stadiums left, you know, she is still out there and, you know, uh you
know, out in Boston Fenway is still out there, there's the new Yankee Park, which is beautiful,
but there's nothing like and it's so well matched to its city, you know, as a piece of
architecture and as a focal point for the city and I'm a huge Dodger fan, I mean, there are
photos of me going back to when I was born in Dodger Stadium. So definitely their venue. Um
I'm, I'm a, I'm very partial to outdoor venues , outdoor sheds and Santa Barbara Bowl. Now I
happen to live in Santa Barbara. So I'm just a tight, a little bit uh bias there. But uh so
the Santa Barbara Bowl, if you've never been there, is this gorgeous 4500 plus seat bowl uh
car from Rock in a canyon in um in Mission Canyon in uh in Santa Barbara during the
originally during the thirties during WP A and then sort of revitalized maybe 15 years ago.
It's a gorgeous outdoor, it's still intimate because it's only 4500 seats. But you get acts
coming through there typically to begin or end their tours because, um, the stadium can
support a full touring rig and yet it's very intimate. So, for instance, I'm a big Radiohead
fan and Radiohead ended their last tour at the Santa Barbara Bowl. One of the best shows I've
ever seen, it was pouring rain and we're all sitting there as the Radiohead was just like
kicking it on stage. So that great venue uh, are great. And then you see there's third part.
Oh, great stage. So well, I mean, I'd say that's also a stage. I used to love the forum
when I was a kid. Um And I, you know what, I had one of the best shows I've ever seen. Uh
way, way back. I was really young and somehow I got my parents to let me go to um uh the
Pretenders opening for the Clash opening for the Who at uh at the L A Coliseum.
And that made any stage great. I also went to the original Joshua Tree show at that same
venue at that same stage. And that was just like this incredible moment in time for music.
So the Coliseum was pretty great. Maybe not the best acoustics, but what an amazing stage.
So we're gonna go to the Santa Barbara Bowl. I'm gonna talk to entrepreneur, I'm gonna talk
to toast, we'll talk to some other sponsors. And one of the things that we believe in is
that we're so grateful that this show, whether you're listening on Spotify, Apple Podcast,
youtube, wherever you're listening, wherever you're watching, however you're consuming this
content. Uh We believe that there's people that stay curious that get involved that ask
for help. Well, Santa Barbara Bowl, these are gonna be people that actually want to move
their business forward that are actually willing to do the work. But I'm gonna have you
do a TED X style talk, a keynote and I'm gonna give you the mic and I'm gonna say Michael, can
you please bring us into the 75 years of mcconnell's? Tell us the story.
Uh You know, mcconnell's has a really interesting history uh in that it is to my
knowledge, one of the only still family owned and operated uh dairy and ice cream operations
in the country. You know, most of our core competitors uh in this very small tier at the
very top of the ice cream business have been gobbled up by private equity. And uh there's a
few, there's one in the midwest, I can think about maybe a handful of others, but
mcconnell's background, um and history is really unique in that a couple. Uh She was
originally from New Jersey. He was from, uh he was from Arizona. They, um after the war, World
War Two, they, they moved out to the central coast really just on, on a lark
and uh Gordon mcconnell. Um he was a pilot in World War Two and owned some of the
country's first health food bars prior to the war. So they were looking for something to do
and sort of looking for their slice of the American dream and they move out to the central
coast and they're trying to figure out, you know, what to make of their lives. This young
couple and they look around and, and the central coast is at that point and still is an
area where you can find amazing year round, dairy, year round, you know, fruit nuts, et
cetera, et cetera. And on a, on a random vacation, they were in Mexico eating ice cream
after dinner. He's like, you know, let's start the greatest ice cream on earth. Now. What was,
what was interesting about this was that this was right after World War two again. So that
was the very beginning of what's called the industrial food complex. Uh when everything was
about bigger and faster and cheaper. And so, so things like stabilizers and
preservatives and fillers. That was the norm. That was the way the food business is going. I
mean, fast food was started in response to all of these, the baby boom and all of these
soldiers coming back from the war, everything needs to be bigger, faster, cheaper. Right. And,
and the mcconnell's ethos was exactly diametrically opposed to that. They wanted to,
they wanted to go exactly the opposite direction. They wanted something that was
pristine and authentic and something like you would make on your porch. But something that
they could then turn and serve to the public. Right. They did not want to do any of that and,
and they thought they could do it and they spent a year, you know, working on recipes and
working on something that would, that they thought they could scale and they opened up a
store in Santa Monica. Excuse me? In Santa Barbara. I was thinking about another one of
our stores um shows how tired I am today, Sean , they opened up this store and uh and it
really was very successful from the get go. And over the years, um it just started getting
out the word that this little tiny, you know, ice cream company from Santa Barbara was doing
something really different from any other company around. Um And um the product was
hailed, you know, in, in the press and people would stop by the store on their way to from uh
Santa Barbara. Um And along the coast and gradually it got bigger and bigger and it's by
no means a large company. Um But, you know, still quite small, particularly in comparison
to our comp competition, but it is the finest and that was the ethos that drove the product
when Gordon and Ernestine started the company and that was the ethos that we share as the
third family to run the company. So uh that was the origin. When did you become
CEO? So I became CEO in 2012. And our mind and Eva's involvement uh
was, was came about very crazily. Um So our house burned down in a massive wildfire here in
Santa Barbara. And at the time I was running the west Coast for a pretty highly regarded
branding agency based in the Midwest. And I was on the road three weeks a month often
and um working with primarily fortune 50 companies and it was quite a bit of a grind.
And, um, and I was sort of segueing out of that. And at the same
time, um 2011, 12 time frame, uh Jim mccoy who at the time was running mcconnell's. He was, he
was in ill health and the company wasn't doing all that great to be fair and honest and, and
um what typically happens with the company in that, in that condition? Um And in that
situation is the Vultures start to circle and the company gets picked up for book value if
there is any value and the product gets watered down and they try to expand and more
often than not everything, just crashes. And you never hear about it again, but it was
really important to Jim as it was to the uh mcconnell's prior to his ownership that, that
this thing continue. And sure enough, you know , the company was going bankrupt and the
Vultures were circling and he called me just randomly, he knew I was in brandy. He knew my
wife was a chef. He also knew that I was a winemaker and he, and he thought, I don't know
what caused him to do this, but he calls me on a Thursday. He says you wanna talk about this
because we're probably gonna sell it this weekend. And it's a very long story. But, um, I
went over and talked to him and there he is in bed not doing so well. And um it's sort of very
moviesque and in about three short days, uh we made a deal for E and I to become the third
family to run mcconnell's. And I took up CEO and I eventually segued over the next year or
so out of my job and became the full time CEO of this business. Do not skip this ad. This is
important information. I unboxed toast, our point of sale at our barbecue restaurants. And
now here I am interviewing Shaquille o'neal on the biggest stages. We want to hear your toast
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us a message so that we can share your toast story today. Bring me back
to what did you like about branding? This is a brand. We, we talk about brand all the time.
The show you, you took over an iconic brand. Tell me about your background in branding. Well,
it's funny, let me first say that, you know, in these days everyone's in branding, you know,
everyone thinks they know what branding is. A lot of people think it's a logo or a color
scheme. That's, that was not my training at all. That's not the way I think about branding.
Um To me about a brand ultimately is everything that tries to erase the
space between the consumer and the checkout counter. That's what, you know, um you're
trying to, you're trying to differentiate yourself, certainly in the market. But also if
you're trying to adhere to whether it's the values or the ethos or whatever that, that
product brand company, etcetera stands for, right? So, so, um you know what I loved about
mcconnell's was also the most difficult thing about mcconnell's, which is that in many ways,
it's easier to originate a brand like, oh, I wanna start a new, let's, you know, we're both
out of food. So I wanna start a new barbecue company. So I'm gonna like start it in Santa
Barbara and I'm gonna bring in the things about Santa Barbara that I think are, you know,
relevant to this, whatever, you know, I it is I'm doing and then I'm gonna try to broaden
that to bring in my consumer base. I'm gonna do all the things right that we both understand
that your listenership understands um it's harder I think to, much harder to
take an existing brand. The one that's been chugging along, you know, for years and years
and at that time it was like, you know, 60 something years, 62 years or 63 years and
pivoted because you, among other things, you're dealing with a built in consumer base
and people don't like change. We all know that people get rude into what they like and they
think it's the best or it's their best. And so , but generally people don't like change. And so
it's very hard to take a brand, whether it's beaten down or in very good shape and just
pivot. And so it's funny, II I sometimes in conversations with people, I say that the most
successful thing we've done in the Connells because we've, we've made a lot of mistakes,
you know, um and we made some good decisions also. But one of the most successful things we
did over the first, let's call it three years, four or five years is, is make the current
consumer base, which was not huge, right? But very dedicated, right? I mean, this brand
inspires insanity, right? Um Make those people think we did nothing at all.
That was the key is how do we bring along gently bring along this consumer base as we
broaden the consumer base? And I think we relatively uh successfully accomplished that.
Um And yet what we did uh myself, but also this whole team at mcconnell's very small
team at mcconnell's is we changed everything. So mcconnell's was a great product but, you
know, it was older, it was highly inconsistent . There hadn't been much Capex put into the
business. The, the freezers needed updating, the equipment needed, updating some of the
recipes is needed, updating, it needed to be the product that sort of mcconnell's always
said it was and wanted to be, but maybe they just didn't have the resources. So what we did
is what people generally don't do is we capitalize the business which you had to do,
right. And we, and we completely overhauled the manufacturing operation because one of the
other things as a sidebar is, you know, this because you're in, you know, you're in what you
do is being in the manufacturing business, especially in food and especially in dairy is
scary. That's why most companies no longer manufacture because they get code packers to
build their products. Right. But mcconnell's history was as a manufacturer. So that was
something important to us to continue. But being a manufacturer is scary because you're
really not in the food business, you're in the food safety business. And in dairy, you know,
if you're, if you have a compromised immune system or you're pregnant or you're among the
elderly, there's stuff in dairy that things go sideways, it'll kill you or make you very sick.
So we were, we were very conscious about that. But you have to remember, I came from branding
and wine making. Eva came from food like restaurants. We didn't know anything about
dairy. So we tried to reach out to people who could really help us. We brought someone in
early, who was a dairy expert who really helped us along in that in those early stages.
And we just looked at the product very hard. And we said, you know, who does this wanna be?
Who is this brand? And I would also tell you that in those terms that mcconnell's at the
time, which was only in about on the CPG side, only in about six doors, six. Yeah, like
literally six doors locally for the most part and a little bit in Los Angeles. Um It was the
ugliest CPG product on earth. I mean, I mean, I mean, kudos to whoever designed it, but it
was a purple pint with a gold lid and skirt with this very sort of antiquated but not
cute uh font and, and just a weird gesture drawing of the Santa Barbara mission. It was
bizarre. Like it was very strange for me. It didn't really, it didn't really smell like the
brand, so to speak. So part of this was getting together with my uh my other partner,
uh Tom Stanley. Tom and I would go away and we did what we always do with any product, which
is we, we knew where we wanted to be relative to the platform
and the brand's attributes and messaging
to get back to a because you kind of have to look at what you are and you kind of have to
like, really feel it and it, it's a huge process to actually really build a brand, even
a brand that's been around at the time again for 63 years and make sure you, you're doing it
justice and not take away from those things that make it powerful or potentially powerful.
And so we did that and it took us, you know, months and months and, and what you see today
on the, on the shelves at your local market or any of our mcconnell stores, which are really
the architectural sort of example or architectural representation of what the
package is. You'll notice our color palette and our surfaces and finishes are all very
consistent. What you see today is largely exactly what Tom and I came up with in 2012, 13.
So your team sent us the celebratory 75 year four flavors. Um I
got that sent. We have an unboxing video that we'll put a link in the show notes for. Um my
kids absolutely loved it. My wife loved it. I loved it. Can you talk about bringing back
these retro flavors, these four flavors? I mean, I think from a branding perspective and a
storytelling perspective, I've been to Santa Barbara, I wanna say twice and for some reason
when this potential interview came across. You know, my email, I
seem to remember the ice cream shop, like I seem to remember, I don't remember much about
visiting Santa Barbara. But then when it came to my home, you've done such a good job on the
branding side of evoking that feeling of evoking Santa Barbara in a box. And then
we actually got to try it. Can you talk about these, you know, this decision to, to go back
to these four retro flavors and which one of the 44 retro flavors? So the four retro flavors
are Sweet Cream, which essentially is the best representation for the mcconnell's brand. There
is on the product side, right? It's our base, it's the ice cream that we make every other
flavor from, right? And it's basically three ingredients, you know, it's milk, it's dairy,
so milk and cream, it's organic sugar and it's egg yolks, right? That's what it is the
cleanest product in the business, right? And, and because it's sort of the genesis for
everything else that we do and because we used to find it years ago, but no longer do uh
mostly because retailers really, they wanna market vanilla sweet cream is hard to
understand, right? So we market our vanilla, they're not gonna stock both, right? They're
not gonna stock three coffees even though we make three coffees, right? Or three chocolates,
et cetera anyways because if we used to pin it , we thought ok, we gotta first and foremost,
you know, represent who we are. And that is this exquisite, authentic sort of pure for lack
of a better term virginal version of mcconnell's. It just, it's the essence of who
we are, right? The next one is our Dutch chocolate or Dutchman's chocolate, which is our
medium chocolate. We used to pint it, but, you know, we've gone in different directions, you
know, a brand is not static, it evolves. And while we love that flavor, you know, we've
gotten into other areas and realized that chocoholics like me, for instance, they like
certain things, they tend to run in packs and they like certain things so that we stopped
pining that chocolate, but that's come back, you know. Um A third one is our uh black coffee
chip. So we're kind of known for our coffee ice creams. In fact, in fact, my Desert Island
mcconnell's flavor is our coffee ice cream. It used to be, it used to be called Turkish coffee.
Um it's now just called coffee, but on one Friday, maybe two years after we came in at
mcdonald's, I was in the dairy with um with the head of the plant, the head, the head ice
cream maker, Mike. And uh I said, you know, what would it be if we took that special chip?
We do because all of our chip flavors, we don't just pour in chips. We take this
incredible chocolate from guitar chocolate up in, uh, San Francisco and we melt it down and
we add it melted to the almost frozen ice cream. So it shatters. So you don't get this
feeling of chips in your mouth. It's more inconsistent, like big, small. And that's also
where ice cream company is really cheap is. They'll buy like waxy crappy chocolate and this
chocolate is amazing. Right. So I said, what if we combine that chocolate chip in our best
coffee, in my opinion, best coffee ice cream. And he's like, we can do that in half an hour
because we're running that flavor. So that's how long that one took to uh to bring out. And,
you know, we pined it for a bit as a special and then it kind of went away because, you know,
again, you can only stock so many if you're a grocery store and then the last one, um what
was the last one? Santa Barbara, strawberry, Santa Barbara. Yeah. So mcconnell's, you know,
at the end of the day is all about the central coast and a lot of companies talk about local,
local ingredients have become like a, you know , marketing term like, you know, with Whole
Foods 15 years ago, a local, this local foragers and it's great and we all know why and
I don't need to digress. But, but one of the things about mcconnell is our dairy, which is
in, which is about a half an hour southeast of Santa Barbara and Oxnard literally is three or
four blocks away from strawberry fields and that between here and there, that's strawberry
country for California. So, and our strawberry ice cream because of that is just insane. Right.
It's, it's just, it's top of the heat. So we again, not a flavor. We pint
currently, we do make it in bulk so far our stores, but it's a really beloved flavor. So we
thought, ok, that's obviously one that's about our place and this and like you said, you know,
when you remember the ice cream store from your two times in Santa Barbara and we are as
much as we are a national brand, we are of this place and that's, that's a key thing about
mcconnell's that I don't think other, most other ice cream share ice cream companies share.
So can you share your philosophy with social media, the brand, how it shows up on social?
What are you, what are you guys trying to evoke? How, how are you going about it? Yeah, I
mean, so we were talking a little bit before we came on today about how it it it didn't just
happen, right? This has been going for a while but the it seems to me and I'm no expert on
social media, right? I wish I was. Um but social media has gotten to be about how loud
you are. Um whether it's, you know, Instagram or snap or any of the other platforms out there
or t certainly Tik Tok. It's, you know, how much of it, how much can we beat the audience
over the head? How loud can we be? Because that in being louder, theoretically we can
stand out. But I think at some point you have to consider the fact that maybe that's not the
answer and, you know, we're a small company, we're much smaller than our competitors. And so
maybe, and I'm not sure this is true and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Maybe the key
is not to be louder. Maybe the key is to be quieter and then just tell the story or your
story better than they're telling it or, or, or at least tell what makes your story unique
and different and then tell it again and again and again and again and again and then try to
tell it in, in, under, in platforms and in and in ways that other people aren't telling that
story. And so that's why I guess philosophy, you know, I'm not sure I'd call it a philosophy,
but um I'd love to hear what you think about it at some point. No, I think, you know, part
of the reason that we do this show is we want to talk to the best storytellers, the best
brands on earth that are doing things that are different and unique and to your point, I don't
think that louder is better. Um We do believe that the fear that most people have as a brand,
no matter the size of the brand, whether it's a small start up, um, single unit, you know,
catering company or food truck all the way up to, you know, the biggest, the biggest
companies, restaurant groups that we have. And I, you know, I'm, I have to pinch myself for
the, the people that we get to talk to on this show that we get to have a seat at the table.
But we, we're living through this incredible age where you can write a love letter, you know,
and by write a love letter, I mean, you can use audio video words and images on social
media and we remove the logo because when you start to think of a logo, all of a sudden you
have these subjective feelings towards tiktok or Facebook or Instagram. Once I say those
words, each person that's listening to this or watching this feels a certain way about each
platform. We remove the logo and all that we care about is the truth and the story. And to
your point, we believe that every single business has stories
that they've overlooked. They're why, why did they open up the business? Why did they name
the business? What they named it? Why is there an orange tree at the front of the restaurant?
We have an orange tree that I just recently started speaking about. And I'm somebody that
talks about social media all the time. But we have an orange tree that literally my
grandfather and my uncle planted at our that's survived so many different things. There was a
point where my, we were literally going to remove the orange tree because we were adding
more smokers for our barbecue restaurant. And my wife said, no, your grandfather planted it
and she saved that orange tree. Like is it weird where it's located? Yeah, it's weird but
it's also a story and I believe that every business has an orange tree story that they
need to do a better job of using social media not to get hundreds of thou because 100,000
people probably won't care. But the people that do care are the people that you talked
about in the beginning, in the beginning, you talked about those core people that believe in
mcconnell's and how do you not change? Well, you don't change by continuing to tell that
story, that truth. Yeah, I mean, look, I wrestle with this all the time because relative
to our competitive set, you know, we, we don't have the capital, right? And there's no one I
know who does what we do or what you do. That doesn't want to be the viral sensation. You
know, like we all want, we all want for whatever reason the world to pick up on our
story and vault us into the stratosphere of success, right? Um But, but that's why it's
called viral because it's alchemy, we can't control it. You know, we have no control over
some random piece of press or something. I mean, most press ends up on the bottom of a
parakeets cage a couple of days. Hence, you know, so it's the press has this gaping maw or
content, you know, the person you need to constantly fill that mouth full of content. So,
so, so trying to do something quote unquote viral, you're not gonna do it. I mean, you may
do it, but it's highly unlikely you can, like, make that happen. I think, I think it's really
what you said. I think it's that you have to find the things about your company business
brand, et cetera that you can own that nobody else owns whether it's an orange tree, you know,
next to your smokers or the fact that you are a legitimate best in class California heritage
brand like mcconnell's is and, and, you know, and, and then you have to lean into those
things and then hope and hope and hope that they make a difference to people. I mean, the
hardest thing for both of us and for small companies is that, that's sort of where our
control ends, you know, like, and the truth is we're both and maybe me to a slightly higher
degree than you. Like, I'm in a business where I have to gain mass acceptance because, you
know, look, I'm selling ice cream for a living , you got to sell a lot of it. I'm not selling
Ferrari. I, yeah, you know, this is not Ferraris, right? If it was Ferraris, I could
sell like 30 a year and like we're doing really well, but I'm not selling Ferraris. Um
So, so, so I have to fight for every sale because their sale is critical to the life of
my company. You know, and so, but, but at the same time, I have to kind of, I have no other
choice but to lean into the things that we can know. So that's what we do. What have you
learned about consumer packaged goods that you can pass off to? We have a big large restaurant
audience. People that are very interested in. How do you get alternative revenue streams?
Obviously, we're a restaurant business that created a media business. It's an alternative
revenue stream for us. That's why we do this show. But consumer Packaged goods is also
something that is top of mind, any lessons learned or stories that you can share. So, I
mean, so one of the thing that's changed and this may only be L A county and it may be
California. I'm not sure is that the rules around what you can and can't sell at farmers
markets and what not has changed. You can now do things in a, in a family kitchen or a home
kitchen or a, or a commercial kitchen and then market them sell them in, in, at, at farmers
markets. And that's a great platform to at least gain some understanding of what your, of
what your sales proposition is and, and, and who your audience is and try to lean into those
things that's at the base level, right? But there's no, it's no secret. The, the
CPG world is a labyrinth. OK? Of, of difficult to navigate
channels and financially and, and in terms of promotion and in terms
of, you know, packaging and you name it, it is a labyrinth and, and
the, the teachings that come out of, you know, you know, a few decades of this are
not easily won, you know, or the, or the, or the, you know, they're, they're not easily
learned, let's put it that way. Um And I continue, I continue to be on that sort of
pathway of learning. I mean, I think that it's very similar to the last subject we talk about,
which is that you have to really embrace your brand and what makes it different and tell that
unique story and it has to. And so your packaging has to evoke that story. I mean, our,
I can speak to our space specifically. So when we repackaged mcconnell's, uh I
would go all over the place and look in these doors and you automatically have a barrier and
ice cream look in these doors and you automatically have a barrier and ice cream
because you have this glass door in front of you. Right. Or worse, you have a coffin freezer,
you know, that you, that you're looking down on and that's the worst. Right. And that glass
door, you know, the consumer doesn't really want to open it, you know, it's cold. So they
open it for a couple of minutes. They grab what they grab the heck out of there. Right. So
with, let's call it two seconds of opportunity , you have to find a way to differentiate
yourself on the on, you know, on the shelf. And so I remember distinctly early on in the
process looking at this, you know, in some cases, you know, door after door, after door of
products and most of it was populated with just all manner of brands, lurid colors.
And then there was a trend where in the ice cream space brands would, would have a certain
color package for each flavor thinking that the consumer would notice. Oh brown, that's
my flavor. That's chocolate, that's my flavor and take it home and maybe they had some
success, maybe not. But I thought what it created was just a storm and there there's
something on the front of storm. I was gonna say another word, a blank storm of, of a mess
in the, you know, behind those doors, just all this lurid color and over design and too much
text and too much of everything, too much of everything. So knowing who mcconnell's was, if
you could personify that brand. A big part of what we were doing is like, lean into who we
are as a brand and then put that on the shelf and look who we are as a brand. We're lucky, I
think in that regard because we're mid century , we are, you know, very simple relative to
ingredients. We're very sort of pure in that regard. We're very direct. You know, we're very
clear and simple. You know, we used to have, we used to say that simple is the hardest thing
we do because it's much harder to make products like ours with three ingredients than
it is to fill, it will stabilize or what. But that's also, you know, our wheelhouse, that's
what we do. So, so that, that resulted in a pint that was utterly distinct from anything on
the shelf at the time, right? Which is that white pint with notes of sort of charcoal and
red. And those are the brand colors you see again in our stores and in everything else we
do. So, so that's what dictated our packaging. I mean, it's, it's that simple, but the process
of getting there was far from simple. So every single week on Wednesday and Friday, if you're
listening to this podcast, if you're watching this, we want you to join us on linkedin. Uh
We're building a community, a digital hospitality community. Uh It's a chance for you
to share your story. Um So please join us. It's 10 a.m. and one P 10 AM. Pacific time. 1
p.m. eastern time Wednesday, Friday. You can follow at Cali BBQ media for links to the room.
Uh mcconnell's Ice Cream. What's the best place for people to buy ice cream? How many,
how many, how many locations are you available ? How many stores you scoop shops or, or both?
Both? So, I have so back to front. I have no idea how many we're in a, we're in a lot of
doors. I mean, it's, I wish we were in four times as many doors, you know. Um, but you can
find us from New York to, I mean, look, you know, we don't make cheap ice cream. So there
are places in the country that aren't going to market our products, but, you know, safe, safe
to say that, you know, California is what mcdonald's is all about California's, our core
market. So you can find us, you know, you know , in a lot of places, whether it is your whole
foods or Gelson's down south where you are or New Seasons or New Leaf or, you know, most
of the, most of the better markets. Also some of the Kroger labels, you know, things like
that. Lazy Acres is a personal favorite. They started in Santa um on the scoop shot side, you
know, our goal was never to be everywhere. Our goal is to really lean into
what we are, which is a California heritage brand. And um, so to that end, we don't really,
at this point have too many plans to open stores in Houston and on, you know, and like
Orlando and Boston and the, like, we're gonna leave that up to our competition, you know, all
of whom are private equity owned. So we are not. So they have all the capital in the world
to open scoop shops everywhere and manage those so that they can sell their companies as
soon as possible. We're, our model is a little different. We're sort of the way I see it. You
know, those say three or four companies are all in the sandbox, punching each other in the
face for an exit. And we're sort of way over here on the side as the only manufacturer among
them going, hey, our business is a lot more complicated, but we are a California heritage
brand and we're really gonna concentrate mostly on California when it comes to scoop
shop. So that's what we're really working on from, you know, the San Diego area all the way
up to San Francisco. That's awesome. Well, if you guys want to keep in touch with me, it's at
Shawn P. Walch, Shawnpwalchef, that's on Instagram, that's on linkedin,
all the platforms. Uh Please try some mcconnell's ice cream. Tag me in the uh in, in
you enjoying some of the uh mcconnell's ice cream. We would love to see it. We'd love to
reshare that Uh, Michael. Is there any parting words of wisdom you'd like to share with our
audience? Yeah, I mean, go visit Sean's barbecue places are awesome. We, we can't wait
to host you at our barbecue places. I mean, I'm a huge barbecue fan. Everybody who knows me
knows that. So, uh, yeah, I think we need to get together and eat some barbecue and drink
some beer probably. And then have some mcdonald's afterward. Bring me some coffee ice
cream and you got to deal with. I mean, of course. How about? Absolutely, you got a deal.
All right. Thank you guys. We, we appreciate it. We will catch you next week. As always,
stay curious, get involved and don't be afraid to ask for help. We'll catch you all next week.
Thank you for listening to restaurant influencers. If you want to get in touch with
me, I am weirdly available at Shan P. Walch of
Shawnpwalchef. Cali Barbecue Media has other
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