Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Barraitune Day Thurston, and this is how to
Speaker 1: citizen with Baritune Day in season two. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the money, because, to be real, it's hard to citizen
Speaker 1: when we can barely pay the bills. The year was
Speaker 1: nine and I was about to graduate from Harvard University
Speaker 1: with a load of debt because that place is expensive
Speaker 1: and fancy. And when I thought about my exit plan
Speaker 1: from Harvard, I was always conscious of what I owed
Speaker 1: the federal government, the university, my own mother. I learned
Speaker 1: about recruiters, these people from corporate America who would come
Speaker 1: to the university, set up shop in a local hotel,
Speaker 1: and try to woo us with promises of impacts, but
Speaker 1: mostly money. And I went to one of these events
Speaker 1: at uh local hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by the amount of food, free food in the middle
Speaker 1: of the day, and not just any food. Shrimp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: daytime shrimp was not a part of my regular diet,
Speaker 1: and I devoured it, and I was kind of sold
Speaker 1: on some of the promise. So I found myself after
Speaker 1: graduation in the corporate world working in strategy consulting, which
Speaker 1: is still a hard job to explain to anybody. I
Speaker 1: wore khakis and had close cropped hair and ate out
Speaker 1: way too much, and it helped me pay off those loans.
Speaker 1: My first year out of college, my salary was higher
Speaker 1: than my mother's peak lifetime annual earning across our whole life,
Speaker 1: and that was a big deal. It was a big
Speaker 1: deal for me to go to Harvard is a bigger
Speaker 1: deal to graduate, and it was the biggest deal to
Speaker 1: pay for it. I'm in this corporate life and I'm
Speaker 1: making a decent living, but there's limits. I realized this
Speaker 1: is not for me, it's not my full purpose. And
Speaker 1: I found my way out and found my way in
Speaker 1: many ways to you right here, right now today, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk to someone who's got a bit of a
Speaker 1: parallel story. Lived the most capitalist life one can in
Speaker 1: this economy by working on Wall Street, like for real
Speaker 1: Wall Street, and he didn't stay like me. For him,
Speaker 1: it wasn't enough, but he did keep building businesses, different
Speaker 1: businesses though, those that try to address the opportunity. Heather
Speaker 1: McGee laid out for us that we can deal with
Speaker 1: our economy's historic exclusion by significantly increasing those who are
Speaker 1: included in it. That we can all win and make
Speaker 1: money too. We live in a world where the zip
Speaker 1: code that you're born in and the color of your
Speaker 1: skin is very determinative of sort of where you're going
Speaker 1: to end up, at least economically, and so the idea
Speaker 1: of social equity is balancing the scales. In order to
Speaker 1: do that, you need to give a leg up and
Speaker 1: give support because we're not starting all from the same
Speaker 1: sort of level. After the break, we speak with Sam Pulk,
Speaker 1: founder and CEO of Every Table. Yeah, thank you, it's
Speaker 1: much better. Okay, so quiet on set. Sam Pulk, Save
Speaker 1: in the World, episode thirty seven. Growing up, Sam Pulk
Speaker 1: didn't know what he wanted to do with his life,
Speaker 1: but he was sure he wanted to make money. So
Speaker 1: he at his start in Wall Street. Then he pivoted
Speaker 1: hard to the far other side of the street and
Speaker 1: dove headfirst into the world of nonprofits, literally the opposite
Speaker 1: of Wall Street. One day, he realized he needed to
Speaker 1: create something that drew from both worlds, that wasn't completely
Speaker 1: extractive and dominated by profit seeking, but that also wasn't
Speaker 1: steeped in this top down world of charity. I know,
Speaker 1: capitalism and business get a bad rap. They're exploitative and
Speaker 1: extractive and maybe just bad for the planet. But I
Speaker 1: also know there are better ways to use these tools.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to Sam because I also believe
Speaker 1: that there were ways to do business that help people,
Speaker 1: that help us citizen, that help us show up, and
Speaker 1: that are good for our society. Hello, Sam, how you
Speaker 1: doing good? Thanks for having me. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for for being head. Is that that doesn't sound right?
Speaker 1: Thanks for being here. Let's just keep it normal. Thanks
Speaker 1: for being here. Do you remember the moment you decided
Speaker 1: you wanted to work on Wall Street? First of all,
Speaker 1: like you know, my agenda when I got out of
Speaker 1: college was to figure out a life skill that would
Speaker 1: allow me to make a hundred thousand dollars a year forever,
Speaker 1: and so Wall Street was a sort of place for that.
Speaker 1: That's a very specific post college agenda. How did you
Speaker 1: come up with a hundred thousand dollars as your threshold?
Speaker 1: Hundred thousand was the number that I thought sort of
Speaker 1: people that were, you know, wealthy or comfortable would sort
Speaker 1: of make. But I wanted like safety and comfort is
Speaker 1: what I wanted. Where does the Wall Street decision come
Speaker 1: into that? The real sort of moment for Wall Street.
Speaker 1: For me was when I walked onto a trading floor
Speaker 1: at Credit Squeets First, Boston on the first day of
Speaker 1: my summer internship, and it was have you ever been
Speaker 1: on a trading floor? But it's it's wild. People yelling
Speaker 1: and you know six means in front of traders and
Speaker 1: you know, people like you know, talking and shouting into
Speaker 1: their phones, and also like how they were dressed. You
Speaker 1: could see that this was like a level of sort
Speaker 1: of like elite sort of wealth and class in a
Speaker 1: way that that I had no experience with. Hundreds of
Speaker 1: billions of dollars are flowing through those people and their
Speaker 1: decisions just sitting there. And you saw that, and you said,
Speaker 1: I wanted I wanted in. It meets the hundred K
Speaker 1: threshold that you set for yourself. What is it like
Speaker 1: once you're in the life, what's it like for you?
Speaker 1: I just worked like a maniac. I was waking up
Speaker 1: at four thirty in the morning, and you know, getting
Speaker 1: to the office of the first one on the trading
Speaker 1: floor every day, last one to leave, you know, analysts
Speaker 1: and the trading program lived in these sort of like
Speaker 1: swanky apartments downtown. And I got this like six hundred
Speaker 1: square foot apartment twenty five minutes away that I could
Speaker 1: pay four hundred dollars a month for just so I
Speaker 1: could sort of like save enough money. Do you feel
Speaker 1: rich yet? Do you feel powerful? Yeah? I mean Wall
Speaker 1: Street in general? Did I mean like the expense accounts,
Speaker 1: you know, flying to see sort of traders in the Midwest?
Speaker 1: Wall Street was really a place like even my first year,
Speaker 1: where I would like get sick of these sort of
Speaker 1: like five star dinners because I would just go there
Speaker 1: every night and I'd be like, oh God, I need
Speaker 1: a night off from Nobu. You know. Did you just
Speaker 1: say that for those who may not know what is Nobu?
Speaker 1: Nobu is the fanciest, most sort of elite sushi restaurant
Speaker 1: in the world basically, and it was like your McDonald's.
Speaker 1: It was totally so you're over ordering sushi, you're working hard,
Speaker 1: you're making more money, you have some sense of power.
Speaker 1: When does this start to turn sour? You know? By
Speaker 1: the time I got to be thirty, I was then,
Speaker 1: you know, the senior distress trader at one of the
Speaker 1: largest hedge funds in the world. This was sort of
Speaker 1: during the crash about eight no nine. It was the
Speaker 1: worst day on Wall Street since the crash of seven.
Speaker 1: The Dow tumbled more than five hundred points after two
Speaker 1: pillars of the Street tumbled over the weekend. Lehman Brothers,
Speaker 1: a one and fifty eight year old firm, filed for bankrupts.
Speaker 1: It was a crazy time on Wall Street, you know,
Speaker 1: like Lehman went down, and you know, Countrywide went down.
Speaker 1: Came to the America Dream. No one was better at
Speaker 1: selling it than Angelo Mozilla as founder of the mortgage
Speaker 1: giant Countrywide Financial. And more and more people find themselves
Speaker 1: at or near underwater with their houses. The propensity to
Speaker 1: reach into their pocket, grab their house keys and leave
Speaker 1: them on the countertop and walk out goes up. We
Speaker 1: have to stop that problem. In the nobody knew what
Speaker 1: was going to happen. But but the interesting thing about
Speaker 1: it was that all of these sort of bankers, we're
Speaker 1: not going to get their bonus that year. And people
Speaker 1: were very very upset about that. And so I was
Speaker 1: looking at these guys and being like, huh, this doesn't
Speaker 1: seem right, Like, of course you're not gonna get your bonus.
Speaker 1: And we basically took the entire country down into financial
Speaker 1: catastrophe and at the same time, I picked up Taylor
Speaker 1: Branches three part series on Martin Luther King, and I
Speaker 1: was sort of like struck by this juxtaposition basically about
Speaker 1: sort of what I was dealing with on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: And then I'd be, you know, coming home and reading
Speaker 1: stories about the Freedom writers, and like, you know, these
Speaker 1: are some of the most gripping stories real life that
Speaker 1: you could ever imagine, right like activists on buses pulling
Speaker 1: into Montgomery, Alabama, amidst mob of people, you know, ready
Speaker 1: to beat them. And there was something that was so
Speaker 1: jaw dropping lee courageous about that. And it wasn't that
Speaker 1: I was, you know, pretending that I was about to
Speaker 1: do something like that, but I was aware that at
Speaker 1: that time in the sixties, there was plenty of guys
Speaker 1: trading bonds at Goldman Sachs, and so I just based sically,
Speaker 1: you know, took a hard look at my life and said,
Speaker 1: where do you want to be fifty years from now?
Speaker 1: What are you going to be proud of? What are
Speaker 1: your kids going to be proud of? What do you
Speaker 1: want your life to stand for? And at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, being a successful hedge fund manager, it
Speaker 1: was definitely a world where people that got a million
Speaker 1: dollar bonus were completely devastated because they should have got
Speaker 1: a three million dollar bonus. There was never enough. It's
Speaker 1: this crazy sort of like cloistered relative deprivation amidst absolute abundance,
Speaker 1: you know, um, and it just seemed so empty, basically,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to figure out something else. So after
Speaker 1: you leave Wall Street, what next? Sam My wife and I,
Speaker 1: you know, one weekend ended up sitting down and watching
Speaker 1: you know, all this food documentaries, you know, Forks over
Speaker 1: Knives and food inc. Etcetera. But there was one that
Speaker 1: was sort of like a lesser known one. It's called
Speaker 1: A Place at the Table by Laurie Silverbush. The recent
Speaker 1: people are going hungry is not because of a sualty
Speaker 1: of food. It is because of politic One out of
Speaker 1: every two kids in the United States at some point
Speaker 1: will be on food assistance. I was one of those kids.
Speaker 1: It was hungry. It messes with you. The average food
Speaker 1: stand benefits three dollars a day. It was the first
Speaker 1: one that really made this argument about this sort of
Speaker 1: intersection between food and poverty. And they even described the
Speaker 1: neighborhood South Los Angeles. I was five miles from where
Speaker 1: I was living at the time and said that a
Speaker 1: kid born in that neighborhood would live twelve years less
Speaker 1: than a kid born in the neighborhood that I live
Speaker 1: in right now. You know, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: reasons for that, but one of the core ones is food.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know it then that that was going
Speaker 1: to change my life and you know, become really you know,
Speaker 1: life's work in some level, but it did. And you know,
Speaker 1: this idea that healthy food should be a human right
Speaker 1: and not a luxury product was like self evident to
Speaker 1: me on some level. Yeah, So you watch this food
Speaker 1: documentary with your wife called A Place at the Table.
Speaker 1: Take us from that to starting Feast. So Feast is
Speaker 1: a it's a nonprofit that basically helps parents who are
Speaker 1: living in difficult food situations who want to give themselves
Speaker 1: and their families healthy And you know, I'll stop there
Speaker 1: to say that most times the following things you would
Speaker 1: hear from this would be we run nutrition education and
Speaker 1: diet cooking classes into that. I am proud that we
Speaker 1: did not structure it like that. There's plenty of sort
Speaker 1: of moralizing when it comes to healthy food, which is
Speaker 1: like if only these people knew what good food was
Speaker 1: and what you know, how to cook, then they would
Speaker 1: make the right choices. I knew that was not true
Speaker 1: sort of from the beginning. Food is a fraught and multifaceted, multilayered,
Speaker 1: complicated situation for most people, no matter where you live.
Speaker 1: That is then exacerbated, you know, when you've got you know,
Speaker 1: no options for healthy food and underserved neighborhoods and a
Speaker 1: massive amount of stress. Sort of overlying that, we structured
Speaker 1: Feast basically as almost like a support group. We're running dozens,
Speaker 1: if not not yet hundreds, but getting up there of
Speaker 1: groups across now five states. And these are basically, you know,
Speaker 1: a group of ten moms that meets once a week
Speaker 1: for two hours, led by somebody who has taken the
Speaker 1: program before. Somebody that was in the group will then
Speaker 1: go on to lead another group and then you know,
Speaker 1: at the same sort of school or at the same
Speaker 1: you know, community center, or at the same house and
Speaker 1: will just sort of keep perpetuating itself over time. You
Speaker 1: are a white man, Sam, and you are working in
Speaker 1: a lot of communities that are not white, and people
Speaker 1: who never worked on Wall Street. Uh a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year will be like an extraordinary situation. How
Speaker 1: do you manage your own presence as a white man
Speaker 1: going into many communities of color, working with a lot
Speaker 1: of moms in particular, um and and avoid any kind
Speaker 1: of savior complex you think about that? Has it come
Speaker 1: up for you in some way all the time? You know?
Speaker 1: I think from my experience with Feast and sort of
Speaker 1: running these groups, we're just all sort of people basically.
Speaker 1: And then how I sort of work with my you know,
Speaker 1: privilege in some sense and what I look like to
Speaker 1: other people and is to just acknowledge it. And I
Speaker 1: do this with my team all the time, but like
Speaker 1: speak to it and own it and try to create
Speaker 1: a situation where I'm standing next to people as opposed
Speaker 1: to reaching down to lift them up. Mm hmm. It's
Speaker 1: a powerful image. What does social equity mean to you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've become on some sense like a reborn capitalist sort
Speaker 1: of this journey for each person to figure out where
Speaker 1: they sort of need to exist in the world and
Speaker 1: what is right for them and how they can be
Speaker 1: of service and contribute. That is a system and an
Speaker 1: idea that works only on on the on the fundamental
Speaker 1: foundation of you know, equality of opportunity, and yet we
Speaker 1: live in a world where where you you know, the
Speaker 1: zip code that you're born in and the color of
Speaker 1: your skin is very determinative of sort of where you're
Speaker 1: to end up, at least economically. And so the idea
Speaker 1: of social equity is balancing the scales in order to
Speaker 1: sort of like make you know, equality of opportunity for everybody.
Speaker 1: But in order to do that, you need to rebalance
Speaker 1: the scales and sort of give a leg up and
Speaker 1: give support um, because we're not starting all from the
Speaker 1: same sort of level. After the break fast food franchises,
Speaker 1: and how ownership may be the key to building wealth
Speaker 1: that lasts. Ye, all right, Sam, you told us about
Speaker 1: your wild West days on Wall Street. You broke down
Speaker 1: what you're doing with feasts and this community support group.
Speaker 1: Now I want to move on to your newest endeavor.
Speaker 1: Tell me how you came up with the idea for
Speaker 1: every table. So I was running feasts and kept hearing
Speaker 1: from these moms basically that the reason we go to
Speaker 1: McDonald's is because it's you know, it's the only thing
Speaker 1: available that and so I quickly came to realize that,
Speaker 1: like what people in underserver communities. It's not they necessarily
Speaker 1: love fast food. There's just no other options basically, and
Speaker 1: so every table is a lot of things. At its base,
Speaker 1: it is a food preparation, production, distribution, and retail system
Speaker 1: that includes restaurants, smart fridges, which are basically healthy vending machines,
Speaker 1: home delivery. That is building a company that that is
Speaker 1: making healthy, made from scratch, delicious prepared food for cheaper
Speaker 1: than fast food, and in the in the process is
Speaker 1: literally like building a new food system. I know that
Speaker 1: sounds big, but it really is like in some sense,
Speaker 1: I think we're building the food system that should have
Speaker 1: been built fifty years ago. Basically, what should have been
Speaker 1: done fifty years ago that wasn't And how does our
Speaker 1: current food system look in ways that aren't serving us.
Speaker 1: The way to understand sort of how and why the
Speaker 1: food system was built as it was. The fundamental thing
Speaker 1: to understand is that people didn't understand that processed food
Speaker 1: was going to be bad for you. Yes, thank goodness
Speaker 1: for Jello instant putting the terrific busy day dessert you
Speaker 1: can make at the very last minute. See how quick
Speaker 1: They just didn't know it. And so if you think
Speaker 1: about the decisions that were made with that sort of
Speaker 1: misassumption within sort of spurred the creation of the food
Speaker 1: system was exactly what you might guess, which is like,
Speaker 1: how do you make food really delicious and really cheap?
Speaker 1: And so when I think about the food system, I
Speaker 1: think that, you know, the largest food companies in the
Speaker 1: country are what are called CpG with consumer packaged goods,
Speaker 1: so that's your cereal and chips, derritos, etcetera. CpG companies
Speaker 1: and fast food companies. And the reason that they're the
Speaker 1: largest is because they figured out how to sell food
Speaker 1: the cheapest. So, so how is every table dismantling or
Speaker 1: reimagining this system? Well, when people talk about food deserts,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times people call me
Speaker 1: and say, hey, Sam, you know I I'm I too,
Speaker 1: am passionate about this issue of food deserts. Let's get
Speaker 1: a bus and put a bunch of produce in it
Speaker 1: and then drive around sort of you know, streets and
Speaker 1: underserved communities and what is the food So a food
Speaker 1: desert is a community that doesn't have access to fresh,
Speaker 1: healthy food. If you go to South Los Angeles, for example,
Speaker 1: there is fewer grocery stores per capita than there is
Speaker 1: on the West Side. But there's grocery stores for sure,
Speaker 1: food for less Superior Ralph's isn't underserved neighborhoods. Like, it's
Speaker 1: not that there's no grocery stores. What it is is
Speaker 1: that there's no prepared food. There's no press juicery or
Speaker 1: Tender Greens or Sweet Green or Lemonade or Creation or
Speaker 1: flower Child. I mean, I could go on like there
Speaker 1: the amount of sort of fresh, healthy, prepared food that
Speaker 1: there isn't and more affluent communities is massive, and I
Speaker 1: think that's the things that people miss. People in underserved
Speaker 1: communities are both short on money and they're also short
Speaker 1: on time, sort of like we all are. And so
Speaker 1: what every Table does as we say, look, we like
Speaker 1: where Sweet Green is going in terms of quality and
Speaker 1: freshness of food, but can we do it in a
Speaker 1: way that makes it accessible and affordable to everybody? And
Speaker 1: all we do is we apply the principles of CpG
Speaker 1: and fast food, namely centralized production and massive distribution, but
Speaker 1: to fresh food. And so what every table is is
Speaker 1: preparing incredibly fresh, healthy, delicious meals from scratch every day
Speaker 1: and then packaging them and grab and go contain meiners.
Speaker 1: And then as far as pricing goes, every table sort
Speaker 1: of got known in the press for this variable pricing
Speaker 1: model where you know, same food, same concept, but if
Speaker 1: it's in Brentwood will charge seven or eight bucks, which
Speaker 1: is basically half the price of sweet Green, so an
Speaker 1: incredibly good deal. But then we open in Compton or
Speaker 1: South l A or East l A will charge five
Speaker 1: or six dollars for the same meal. And it's not
Speaker 1: charity like our stores and underserved communities are amongst our
Speaker 1: most profitable. But it is about, you know, creating a
Speaker 1: system that works for everyone, that includes everyone, um, and
Speaker 1: that respects everyone. I've heard a lot of tension in
Speaker 1: the goals of running for profit business and creating something
Speaker 1: that's sustainable or achieve some sort of equity goals, and
Speaker 1: this choice that we are forced to make. It seems
Speaker 1: you can either be a real capitalist and lower your
Speaker 1: costs and jack up your prices to whatever the market
Speaker 1: will bear, or where you can go do your do
Speaker 1: gooder business and have your social equity and your social justice.
Speaker 1: How do you approach those tensions? How do you see it?
Speaker 1: You know, fifty years ago it was the norm for
Speaker 1: companies to be focused on the good of the community
Speaker 1: and all the different stakeholders. And now this was obviously
Speaker 1: helped by the fact that we had like a real
Speaker 1: labor movement, so there was collective bargaining, etcetera. But we've
Speaker 1: sort of like developed this sort of like rapacious sort
Speaker 1: of lobbyists supported idea of capitalism. But I don't think
Speaker 1: that's what it has to be. And then the other
Speaker 1: point I'll make is that actually so many sort of
Speaker 1: quote unquote social enterprises are frankly stupid and and what
Speaker 1: I mean is, you know, you know, think about like
Speaker 1: Tom's Shoes, and Tom's invested in us, so I want
Speaker 1: to be don't bite the hand that feeds you, so
Speaker 1: to speak. I love where this is going, go for it.
Speaker 1: But like so, so Tom's is a company that was
Speaker 1: probably like the O G sort of social enterprise really
Speaker 1: that basically created this model where for every pair of
Speaker 1: shoes that they sold, they would donate one to somebody
Speaker 1: in need. But it's basically like they were part of
Speaker 1: this idea that that there's one group of customers that
Speaker 1: you sell to and there's another group of customers that
Speaker 1: you do charity for. And I don't like that Tom's
Speaker 1: was about making the affluent customers feel good about their purchase. Now,
Speaker 1: why is every table different. The more stores we can
Speaker 1: have underserved high income, the better, and every table gets
Speaker 1: the same benefit that we do with sort of that
Speaker 1: any sort of franchising business gets. We get these royalties
Speaker 1: off the top. We also get brand benefit from this.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to design a system that works across the board,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure there will be tensions along the way
Speaker 1: and often make some decisions. But it also you know,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of arguments for example, like Costco pays its
Speaker 1: employees incredibly well, and they they've done that from the beginning,
Speaker 1: and they have lower turnover and you know, lower labor
Speaker 1: costs because of at etcetera. So some of these assumptions
Speaker 1: that we made, which are sort of like spurred by
Speaker 1: the whole private equity cost cutting, you know, things are
Speaker 1: are just wrong. Like if you treat your customers well,
Speaker 1: if you treat your people work for you well, if
Speaker 1: you share the wealth a little bit, the company is
Speaker 1: probably more sustainable over time. I want you to paint
Speaker 1: a picture for our palates what some of the food
Speaker 1: people can get from every table. We we have this crazy,
Speaker 1: you know, very actually white sort of idea of what
Speaker 1: healthy food is. But actually all cuisines and all cultures
Speaker 1: have basically two things in common, which is that their
Speaker 1: food is delicious and it's healthy because it's made by
Speaker 1: whole food, you know, over time, you know, by scratch basically,
Speaker 1: and so for us, it's really just going back to that.
Speaker 1: And so for example, you know, our menu is really
Speaker 1: about celebrating the cultures and cuisines of Los Angeles, and
Speaker 1: some of our best sellers include, you know, Jamaican jerk
Speaker 1: chicken with coconut beans and rice and plantains and uh
Speaker 1: carnitas bowl that does incredibly well in a black chicken
Speaker 1: tinga that's an amazing seller. Actually, our best selling dish
Speaker 1: of all time is called Trap Kitchen. Chicken curry and
Speaker 1: Trap Kitchen are these two Compton chefs who started a
Speaker 1: soul food Instagram delivery business out of their grandmother's kitchen
Speaker 1: that got so wildly popular that they got you know,
Speaker 1: three thousand Instagram followers and then got shut down by
Speaker 1: the government because you can't really do that. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's sort of Compton celebrities, and so we partnered with
Speaker 1: them to make a version of their chicken curry and
Speaker 1: it's been the best seller since we launched it, not
Speaker 1: only in Compton, but in Brentwood as well. So how
Speaker 1: does every table work? I know you have multiple locations
Speaker 1: you're running under a franchise model, but what does that
Speaker 1: look like for y'all? So franchising is a sort of
Speaker 1: tried and true and great way for restaurants to grow.
Speaker 1: And the reason is because it's a very mutually beneficial
Speaker 1: sort of relationship up between the franchise or which is
Speaker 1: usually the restaurant and the franchise. And the mutual benefit
Speaker 1: is if you're a franchise e about to start a franchise,
Speaker 1: you're basically about to start your own business. But starting
Speaker 1: your own business is risky. So isn't it great to
Speaker 1: be able to start a business with a proven concept
Speaker 1: that you you basically know is going to work from
Speaker 1: the point of the franchise or I can start a
Speaker 1: bunch of stores, not have to spend money to build them,
Speaker 1: and still make you know, between five and ten percent
Speaker 1: of their revenue. But as we looked at franchising, we
Speaker 1: realized that there was a big problem with franchising. You know,
Speaker 1: like so many other industries, there's a lot of privilege
Speaker 1: baked into it. You have to have a significant net
Speaker 1: worth and capital available in order to start a franchise. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, given the sort of racial wealth gap, people
Speaker 1: are more likely to look like me that have sort
Speaker 1: of accumulated capital, right, And so we said, can we
Speaker 1: create a system that promotes ownership for entrepreneurs who have
Speaker 1: been sort of marginalized historically? And so what that looks
Speaker 1: like is we've gone to, you know, some of the
Speaker 1: biggest foundations in the country, Kellogg Foundation, Annenberg Foundation. We
Speaker 1: basically built these partnerships where these foundations either lent us
Speaker 1: money at incredibly low rates or even in some cases
Speaker 1: just donated to us with grants, so that we now
Speaker 1: have this big pool of capital that when we find
Speaker 1: talented entrepreneurs from underserved communities who want to start their
Speaker 1: own business, we can train them in our stores and
Speaker 1: lend them the money to build and own their own
Speaker 1: Every table franchise. What was your first franchise was the
Speaker 1: history of that relationship. We've actually only got one operating
Speaker 1: right now, and it's and it's Dorcas and it's Every
Speaker 1: Table Hollywood. You should go see it and so Dorcia,
Speaker 1: you know, over the year's head. You know, she was
Speaker 1: in the second ever Feast group. Then she had gone
Speaker 1: on to lead many more groups and Feast and become
Speaker 1: such a leader in that organization that she eventually joined
Speaker 1: the board. And then you know, after a while she
Speaker 1: came and started working for Every Table as a store
Speaker 1: manager and was the manager of our Watt store. And
Speaker 1: so when it came time, like you know, I was,
Speaker 1: I was both sort of like creating this franchise program
Speaker 1: with Dorcia in mind, and then when it came sort
Speaker 1: of time to choose the first person, she was sort
Speaker 1: of the natural, you know selection. And I've known her
Speaker 1: for eight years now, and during all of that time,
Speaker 1: she's been a single mom, working two or three jobs,
Speaker 1: supporting her three kids. And like the the the amount
Speaker 1: of work and stress that she has had to carry
Speaker 1: her whole life is like, you know, all of these
Speaker 1: Wall Street guys would crumble in the face of that,
Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned, you know, So, so what
Speaker 1: changes for people when they have access to capital, to
Speaker 1: financial resources, especially in the consideration of historic restriction from
Speaker 1: access to those resources, I mean, everything changes, Like I
Speaker 1: think that's I think that's the fundamental thing understand is
Speaker 1: that capitalism is ownership. Like it it is about ownership,
Speaker 1: and the real issue for me and I think the
Speaker 1: change that needs to happen is the focus on ownership.
Speaker 1: And what I mean is like I'm I'm all for
Speaker 1: fifteen dollar minimum wage for sure, but I also think
Speaker 1: that that still ends up to be like thirty dollars
Speaker 1: a year. And for the real change is you've got
Speaker 1: to spur ownership in whatever form that needs to be.
Speaker 1: Are there other companies doing this social equity franchising thing
Speaker 1: making it easier for people to to get in? Well,
Speaker 1: you know what's funny is, like you don't. We actually
Speaker 1: studied Domino's Pizza a lot, and they they didn't sort
Speaker 1: of think about it like this. They would never have
Speaker 1: called it that, but they actually did some version of this,
Speaker 1: which is that most of Domino's pizzas franchise ease came
Speaker 1: up through the restaurant business, so we're drivers or cooks
Speaker 1: in the kitchen, etcetera. So you know Domino's, you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't call it that, didn't do it specifically, but
Speaker 1: they should get some credit for that. What do you
Speaker 1: think it would do for our democracy to have people
Speaker 1: who have been historically excluded from this ownership to be included.
Speaker 1: How it would impact democracy, I think is clear for
Speaker 1: me on sort of two levels. The first and probably
Speaker 1: most important is that it would bring back, or at
Speaker 1: least democratize access to the American dream, which I think
Speaker 1: is so sort of fundamental to our culture and our
Speaker 1: identity as a country. And so it just brings back
Speaker 1: and spreads out the access to power in the voices
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, democracy the vote that is so
Speaker 1: important to this country. Sam Paul, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for spending time with us. This has been quite the education.
Speaker 1: Great talking to you. Next week we'll be talking to
Speaker 1: Knowny Session, the executive director of the East Bay Permanent
Speaker 1: Real Estate Cooperative. She's working on a way to help
Speaker 1: people claim ownership of their own communities literally. You know,
Speaker 1: we call this show how to Citizen. So here's some
Speaker 1: of the how to parts from our producer Ali Okay.
Speaker 1: I want you to turn inward and think about the
Speaker 1: businesses in your neighborhood. Are they mostly local small businesses
Speaker 1: or national chains? If more of one than the other,
Speaker 1: why do you think that is? Who works there and
Speaker 1: who owns them? When you hear the word entrepreneur or
Speaker 1: business owner, what do you see in your mind? Who
Speaker 1: is that person? What do they look like? Now it's
Speaker 1: time to inform yourself. Success for entrepreneurs often means selling
Speaker 1: their business to a bigger company or going public on
Speaker 1: the stock market. These successful exits can generate a lot
Speaker 1: of wealth for the few people at the top a
Speaker 1: k a. Owners and investors. What if there was another
Speaker 1: path for those entrepreneurs to take, one that rewarded those
Speaker 1: most connected and impacted by the business, including employees, customers, founders,
Speaker 1: and investors. There's a movement called Exit to Community which
Speaker 1: is doing just that. Learn more about it by searching
Speaker 1: online for Exit to Community or visiting E t C
Speaker 1: dot how fund domain name, the letter E and the
Speaker 1: number two and the letters ce, dot ho W And lastly,
Speaker 1: we want you to publicly participate in a safe way.
Speaker 1: Of course, consider joining or giving to a few of
Speaker 1: the community movements working to build a more inclusive economy.
Speaker 1: Here are two we are especially fond of. Zebras Unit
Speaker 1: Cooperative believes the most urgent human rights project of our
Speaker 1: time is to reimagine business. Then there's the effort to
Speaker 1: make the donut economy real and communities and countries around
Speaker 1: the world. Search the donut Economics action lab to learn more. Hint,
Speaker 1: it's not about pastries. If you're take any of these actions,
Speaker 1: please brag about yourself online using the hashtag how to
Speaker 1: Citizen and send us general feedback or ideas for the
Speaker 1: show to comments at how to citizen dot com. Speaking
Speaker 1: of that domain name, we have one and we're using it.
Speaker 1: Visit how to citizen dot com to sign up for
Speaker 1: our newsletter. Will learn about upcoming events or even more
Speaker 1: stuff than that. And if you like the show, spread
Speaker 1: the word tell somebody. If you don't, definitely just keep
Speaker 1: it to yourself. Appreciate you. How does Citizen with baritune
Speaker 1: Day is a production of I Heart Radio Podcasts and
Speaker 1: Dust Like Productions. Our executive producers are Me Barrett tun Day, Thurston,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusuf. Our producers are Stephanie Cone
Speaker 1: and Ali Kilts. Kelly Prime is our editor, Valentino Rivera
Speaker 1: is our engineer, and Sam Paulson is our apprentice. Original
Speaker 1: music by Andrew Eapen. This episode was produced and sound
Speaker 1: designed by Ali Kilts. Special thanks to Joel Smith from
Speaker 1: i Heart Radio,