The New King of Fried Chicken?! ($1,000 Startup)

Introducing Vincent Williams. He spent almost half a century perfecting fried chicken. I probably cook more chicken than any man on the planet, ever. And that perfection is bringing in a cool $3 million a year. I started with only $1,000. Be careful of instant success. Instant success can lead to failure. Four months in, fire takes place. It was the challenges were just enormous. But that's the greatness of the business world, is that if you can meet the challenges, one day you really have something. Something can go viral, and suddenly, you know, 1,000 people show up. It's like my first kiss. Ha, ha, ha. Do you ever get tired of eating fried chicken? Oh, no. I would get tired if it wasn't so delicious. Whoa, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. Did you hear that sound? Hi. Hey, Paul. Chef Vinny. How are you? Good to meet you, man. Good to see you this morning. Absolutely my pleasure. Well, the first question I have, I mean, you're the man known to probably have cooked the most fried chicken in the whole world. Yeah. I want to know, and our audience wants to know, where did all that start, though? What is the story? Give us an inside look. Got out of high school, needed a job. Friend called me, said his brother was in charge of a plant in Los Angeles, and they processed chicken. Well, that sound like an OK job. I can work at night, go to school in the day. Within about two years of doing that, I became a warehouse manager. And at that time, I began to take travels to Texas and survey chicken plants and learn the process from when they were hatched to the whole process of delivery. Gotcha. That's how it all started. And I had a great mentor. I mean, I've got to give this guy tremendous respect. He was a contemporary of Colonel Harlan Sanders. And he told me one time, he said, you can either do a job and just do it, or you try to be the best at it. He said he had built a reputation of being the best in the entire region. That taught me a lot about whatever you do, you've got to do it to your heart's content. So tell us about your first job. Where was it? How did you get it? And how did having that job help you set up for success with where you are today? Well, I started in that processing room at 12 AM in the morning. Eventually, I made it to the stores. One night, I went into a store of the Golden Bird, and it was packed with people. And one of the sons and I came in, and they were so far behind that he said, hey, grab that bowl. And we just started hauling all the chicken into the fryers. That was my very first experience with it. And what else did you learn? Because you've been there for many, many years, right? You know, you learn by observation. You're constantly taking mental notes of things that you're seeing around you. And so I was just walking around, doing what I do, and absorbing all this information. And then you look at it 50 years later, it's like I have more than 10,000 hours of knowledge. You guys, we're going to also dive into the numbers with Chef Vinnie, right, as much as you're able to share. If you love the numbers, stick around for more intel on that. Well, we're in Culver City. What do you like about this location? What's the significance of it that you want to highlight? Oh, my god. I mean, I know this city. So it became this feeling like all that hard work I had done in Compton, the reward wasn't in money. It was this location. That's awesome. Now I had been in the vineyard, learned the craft, and now I'm ready to take it to the big city. That's awesome. That's what it was. What's the cost on your lease here? I know the markets are wild and different. I'm from Pacific Northwest. Well, it's like Beverly Hills now. And the numbers are climbing every year. When we started, it was $3,500, if you can believe that. $3,500 for the whole? Wow, you probably want to double that. It's triples, triples that. So, you know, the property values are really skyrocketing in this area now. How did you finance this location? Well, you know, it started with a few bucks we had. Then it built to working on a loan. Just a conventional loan. A conventional loan, business loan. So we got that rolling. We refinanced our house because you have to have skin in the game. And then it became gaps that occurred where you go to family and friends. So we started having problems where it was stretched past the startup of the business. And it started going into where we needed more money and more money because it's amazing how much, you know, if a piece of equipment goes down, it costs $10,000, where are you going to get the $10,000? It was the challenges were just enormous. But that's the greatness of the business world. Is that if you can meet the challenges and exceed the challenges, one day you really have something. I know that there's people watching that don't have any money. They want to start a business. They believe a brick and mortar like this is the start. But they don't start because there's no money. And that's smart. Right, but then you're never going to get to this point. So you've got to work. It's better to be very cautious about what you're doing. You need to know something about what you're doing, have experience, work for someone else, learn something about what you're doing because you're going to make mistakes anyway, even if you know everything. You know, entrepreneurs are risk takers. They're the ones that throw themselves in the middle of the ocean on a night off a luxury liner and throw themselves in the middle of the ocean and say, I'll find land. We live in a society of instant gratification. People want gratification instantly. It doesn't come instantly. Sometimes it could take 40 years. Are you willing to wait 40 years for your gratification to come? That's my story. We do the crazy things, and like you said, we figure it out later. There's a lot of truth to that. All right, Chef Vinnie, we always enjoy doing Blitz. Think of it as a game. You got 10, 15 seconds to answer these quick questions. Thank you guys for submitting them. We'll start with Woman of Truth wants to know, what seasoning do you use for the chicken? This smells incredible. Well, we use our own seasoning. We actually create our seasoning. It's got herbs and spices and salt and peppers and sugar and spice and everything nice. So I hand the sugar in there. Yorgie's asking, what are the unwritten rules of your workplace? Everyone has to come here with a positive attitude or else please don't come because happy workers make happy customers. Well said. Marco Alejandro's asking, now at this stage of success, what advice would you give to your teenage self? Oh, my teenage self. I'd say, well, first of all, you should have done better in school. Get those grades up. That's still the old cliche. The old cliche. You weren't working hard enough. You didn't have the right work ethic. You need to get on the ball. There's a life coming in front of you that's gonna be real tough. Biggest purchase you regret? I bought one time a piece of equipment that I didn't have any use for and it cost me like $3,000 and it's still sitting in storage. Pantera's asking, if there was a movie made about your journey, what would the title of the movie be? Jimmy. That's it? I like that. Keeping it simple, chef. Blue Panther's asking, do you ever get tired of eating fried chicken? Oh, no. I would get tired if it wasn't so delicious. That means that my taste is the first taste. In fact, I tell my staff, when you give me something, you're giving it to Honey's Kettle to evaluate how good it is. So my taste buds are the ones that are the main thing and they still are enjoying the food all these years later. It's hard to sit here and smell this and not have to bite into it, but let's try this chicken. Yeah. What do you like, drumsticks? Well, all of these pieces are good, but now I'm gonna teach you a little technique about eating the chicken. So what? First of all, don't use a fork and a knife, okay? You know, find a spot on that chicken breast where you... That's the expert. Oh man, I got it. There's no bone in there. I got a combination of batter and the clean tasting white flesh. And then I'll go to this part. If you catch me closing my eyes... That's cause you go somewhere else for a few minutes or a few seconds? It's like my first kiss. Take us back to Vincent at 15. Who were you? What was your life like? What were you learning? What were you in the middle of and so on? One of the biggest lessons I learned in life was from baseball. And that was not to be a quitter. After one game, I got shell shocked by this one team in La Puente. I mean, the first three guys must've hit the ball either off the fence or over the fence. Devastated me. I said, coach, come get me. I can't do this. Went on to cry my heart out, you know. I was just so embarrassed. Went home, father, no one ever said anything in the car until I got home. He said, son, you can win. You can lose. You can even get beat. Yeah. But in life, one thing you can't do is quit. That's awesome. And that has sustained me through all these years. That one lesson at that age. That's pretty cool. Keep watching you guys because every business does have these crippling sins that hinder your success. So our chef here is gonna continue to share more about that and how you can learn from that. So you've got a pretty tight quarters here, right? How many square feet in this space? 1,800. 1,800, that's not a lot. No, it's not. Tell me about what we see here. You bake everything here? Yeah, like right here, for example, this is one of the newest products we came up with. It's skillet cornbread. This is a product that took two years to develop. Two years? That means that what I do as a product developer is I start with a rough, like, you know, eh, it's okay, it needs a little more of this, a little less, and I keep whittling it down till it reaches that point of perfection. So when you say two years, are you telling me you baked it here, served it to the customers, received feedback, or where was the testing and trying and so on? Well, first it started back here in the kitchen. This is a test kitchen. This is a kitchen where you do all your development of products. So we have what we call here a recipe ball. I like that, right. And we have tons of recipes in that ball. Not all of them are finished. Most of them have just been tested one or two times. In the case of the cornbread, you keep testing and testing until you reach a point where it meets my satisfaction that we can now put it on the menu. What is the total revenue for Honey's Kettle so far? What do you project for 23? Well, it looks like we're on track to be in the range of three million. Is your mindset to get to past 10 and 20 with multiple locations at some point? I just want to get an insight in your vision for the next 10 years. So once I've mastered everything, there's not a lot left for me to do. Now I'm beginning to see opportunities to put the same model into other locations. Are you thinking franchising at some point? Initially, it'll be company-owned stores. To me, you have to get to a certain point where you have proven company stores, and then you might introduce franchising, which is a much more complex. Yeah, it's a whole different concept. Yeah, it's a complex, very complex. It's not something to be taken lightly. Is there an opportunity in this particular niche to have higher margins than the industry average? Yeah, if you figure you're only making 7%, 5%, 7%, you're teetering on not making any money at all. Is that 5% and 7% with depreciation, things falling apart, you're not really doing too well. Yeah, I don't know what you're doing. You know, all you need is a cold wind to come in, and that 7% won't be there. Knock you down, okay. What was the biggest struggle for you as a small business owner? When you got going, and how did you overcome that? Well, bill paying and invoicing certainly was one of them. And one of the things is I needed to streamline that process by getting the proper tools. And the proper tools have made it much better than we had before. Did you guys hear that? Bill pay and invoicing can be a big pain without the right tools. And you're in luck today, because our sponsor does just that. Melio is an online payment platform for small businesses that help solve problems just like the one Chef Vinny experienced. Say they needed to pay their food supplier with a check, but they wanted the protection and favorable terms from using a credit card. With Melio, they'd be able to use a card to pay for their ingredients while their supplier received a paper check. This is a great opportunity to maximize the business cashflow and start gaining points on your business expenses. Melio lets you use the payment method convenient for you while the vendor gets paid as they like, a paper check or a bank transfer. Melio integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks and Xero and imports all your info so you get an easier, quicker payment flow. Use the link in the description below and try Melio for free by simply scheduling your first payment. Simplify your bill pay and keep your business on track with Melio. So who's the man in charge right behind you? This is my son. What's going on, Trent? Hey, what's up, how you guys doing? Mr. Trent Williams. Trent Williams, all right. How long you been working with dad? I mean, I started when I was six, so I've been working with him since I was this tall. Dude, you're starting early. That's cool, dude. What were the biggest challenges that you faced initially with opening up this location for Honey's Kettle? I started with only $1,000. I really didn't know how we were gonna raise the money to get it done. $1,000 deposit to get the key. From there, we refinanced our house, borrowed money from family and friends, et cetera, et cetera. Got it open, took 18 months. We were paying a whole bunch of bills and that about 18 months. 18 months, not running a business yet. Not running a business. Just prepping, building. Yeah, and then, of all things, four months in, fire takes place. What? A contrary kettle caught on fire. But you know the- No fault of anybody, it's just a faulty- Faulty piece of equipment. Fire department put it out. Smoke killed the place, had to rebuild it. I'm thinking the insurance company not gonna pay it. I was on the floor for about three hours on the floor saying, how could this happen to me? And so, you know what we think is the worst thing that could happen to us? Might actually be the best thing that could happen to us. Boom, nothing else. That's the moral of the story is that it could be the best thing that happened to us. Well said. What was the initial cost of setting up Honey's Kettle here? Just give us a 30,000 feet overlook. Well, we started thinking we were gonna come in at a budget of about 400,000. It was over a million because what happened was- What happened? If you don't have all the money in your hand at first, there's delays, delays are costly. Construction shut down, time went by, rent had to be paid. The loan I got, one loan got ate up by keeping servicing the other loan. So it just kept creeping up and up and up. But what I thought would come in at 400,000 was closer to a million dollars. What's the lesson learned? How would you do it different today? The best way to do it is to have the budget in your hands before you start with contingency money. That's the ideal situation. It's not necessarily entrepreneurial way. Entrepreneurs, they just do crazy stuff and figure it out later on. But when you start to get the experience, you wind up saying, if I had all the money in hand or I had access to the money that I didn't have, that's the best way. That way keeps your heart beating good. But like I said, I started with $1,000 down. That's all you had. And I have to tell you a little secret. Yeah, yeah. The check bounced three times. Microphone. So with this location, you were kind of empty pocket guy. Yeah, the Comden wasn't working. What were you thinking? But where were you thinking you were gonna get $400,000? Let alone a million, which is what it cost. I don't even know where that came from, actually. It just was little by little. It kept creeping up. You know, I need another 25,000, another 50,000. And it just kept creeping. But the Comden store never was doing anything. But we were able to, just on the strength of our story, get a small loan. We refinanced our house. And then from there, it just kept a little bit more, a little bit more. Actually, in the end, my wife got a severance from her job that got us over the hump, else we may not have ever opened it. So tell us about what it's like working with family. You know, you've got your son Trenton back there, I think doing one of the most crucial parts of the business. That's right. And what's it like to handle the family aspect versus the professional demands, right, in any other business? Right. How do you guys make that work? Well, all three of my kids are professionals, right? Trenton is actually a product designer. He does design work. And one of the big moments I had with him, we used to clash about this. I had this original design for the biscuit mix that we sold over the counter. And he kept telling me, dad, I'm a professional designer. This is not looking too good. It's got some good parts to it, but let me take a stab at it. I said, Trenton, no way. You don't need to do that. You know, it's fine. I like the original. Let's keep the original. Look at what he came up with. When he showed me this design, I had to let the other one go. That'll be our venture's design. I told him we'll do that later on. But this one, he captured everything that we needed. From our kitchen to yours. And you see the design. It's the same product we use in the restaurant. It's a three-in-one mix. You can make biscuit, hotcakes, and waffles. When he came up with this design, I said, son, we gonna go with that one. So what's the lesson? I want to go back to the heart of that. You bring up a very good point. You have to step back and let him run the show. That's right. Let's elaborate on that and how important it is. Because a lot of people watching do work with their family members, but it's tough. Right, absolutely. What's your tip and piece of advice on how to make it work? Well, first you have to back off of that. I'm the author and finisher of this company. Everything I say is ghost, right? You have to allow room for the second generation to come in. But they gotta prove that what they're telling you is gonna work. You don't just go around changing things for change's sake. So in the case he insisted that I give him a stab at making this new design. I said, you're wasting your time. We're gonna stay with the same one. And it wasn't until he started showing me sketches of this product. And then he finally made the package that I said, oh my God, make more room for him. What kind of oil are we using? I mean, it smells incredible. 100% peanut oil. Peanut oil, that's expensive stuff. Oh my God. People will say, well, why are you spending that much money on oil? It's because I'm gonna get the best result. Absolutely. And if I want, the oil is part of my recipe. So if I'm gonna get the final product that I want, it's all stages of that development. What's the price difference between peanut oil and then everything else that everybody else uses? 30 to 40% more. Wow. Yeah. Let's talk about paid advertising. What role does it play in your business today? How much are you spending every month and break it down in terms of platforms that you use and the platforms that give you the best return? Well, we have a very smart hotshot team of people who do the social media. You know, the print days are kind of over with in a lot of ways. So we turned to the social media team, headed by my daughter, and that's where we market. That's where we introduce new products on TikTok, Instagram. We always have fresh and exciting new content coming up and they basically can work without it. So it costs us a couple thousand dollars a month. A couple thousand bucks. Okay. The way I look at Instagram and TikTok is that they're like the old word of mouth on steroids. I mean, something can go viral and suddenly, you know, a thousand people show up. These pop-ups. All this stuff is a revolution in marketing. So I really believe in it. And it leads to more stuff because if word of mouth is telling everybody and then TikTok's telling everybody, then it's those individuals that are filming, they're influencers that are coming in and filming. Hey, look at where I'm at. Look at the chicken. Exactly. It continues to spread the word. How else do you stand out from competitors? Because obviously it's not just against other chicken restaurants, for example, right? It's the restaurants here in Culver City. Right. There's a ton of them. Yeah, you're competing for food dollars. So you're competing against whoever's selling food. And we don't want to worry about them. We don't even want to look over their way. It's almost like you put blinders on. You don't focus on left or the right. You focus on what you need to do for your business. And also when this whole advent of delivery services came about, Uber Eats, DoorDash, it was one of those things that right away, we want to compete on that platform. Right. How are we going to be the best at it? One way is to deliver the food extremely fresh to everyone's door consistently on time. And what it's allowed us to do is to constantly be cooking all day. So they're snatching fresh product all the time. Because if you send your stuff to someone's house and they got to put it in the microwave, you're at the bottom of the food chain. When did the idea of Honey's Kettle come about? How did that happen? Well, I wanted to get a name that would be the greatest name for chicken. So I say, I came up with the name Honey's Kettle and my wife thought it was a great name when I came home. Excuse me. And then all the other things was like fitting it into one piece in a puzzle and you get one little bit of design, another piece goes in. Next thing you know, you got a full picture of what you're trying to do. So from idea to actual realization of it, how big is the timeframe? It took us 10 months because we had lost our franchise. The franchise, we had to take the sign down. All images of the golden bird were taken down. So I needed to convert it. But I said, don't rush and do it. Take your time and get it right. Let's say I want to open up a restaurant in this industry. Would you be in a position then to say, Paul, you need to go work there first before you do that? Because the flip side of that is I have a lot of resources. I can go and look at, read without having to work. So how do you see that with what you know now? Well, you almost think that every industry has people that are apprentices and those that are the mentors. So in the case of a restaurant, I mean, what better place to be than to work in a restaurant? You need to learn about the restaurant. It can't be something you just do well at home with a passion, you bake cakes. You got to go out there and do some cakes and have people sampling it. So it's more than just a notion when you think about getting a restaurant. More than just textbook knowledge, obviously. It's just an amazing life experience, restaurant business. It's so many moving parts. And now you can't learn from just reading a few chapters of how to run a business. And you got to get enough volume. You can't have one or two people coming in. You got to be able to count on people coming in every day throughout the whole day in order to make it all work. Right, okay. Yeah. Wow, so how many years total from when you got this location and when you first started working? What's the timeframe? It was from 73 to 2023 is the total amount of time involved from one being an employee for 10 years. And I've been an owner now for 40 years. Yeah, wow. No wonder he is known as the man who's probably fried the most chicken ever, right? You come close to that title pretty well. Would you agree? I remember Mike Tyson saying, I'm the baddest man on the planet. Well, I probably cook more chicken than any man on the planet ever. That's awesome. And the question I have is about franchises, right? You started your own thing. Yeah. What about franchises? What do you want to tell our viewers as opposed to that option? I would say the franchising is more proven. It tends to work better. That concept on the surface works really nicely. But when you get into it, there's a lot of problems. One is it could be heavily leaning towards a franchisor who started the company. Usually does. And to the franchisee, kind of feeling like an indentured servant. So there's some aspects to it that are problematic. You're speaking from personal experience or obviously just being in the business and... Well, I was a guinea pig. I was the first one, so we hadn't proven anything. So it was like, I just jumped in the middle of the ocean and started swimming. I didn't know where I was going. It was dark. The swells were high. I almost lost my life several times. And then I got beached eventually. And then I started this new thing called Honey's Kettle. But franchising is not a bad thing. It's a great way to grow your company. It's a great way for individuals to be owners. But if you don't have knowledge in that industry, you got to go through the learning curve. The problem with mistakes is they're too costly. That's what I went through. Originating something's got its own problem. It's kind of like... You've been at it for 50 years almost. 50 in one hand, half a dozen in the other. That's pretty much what it comes down to. Okay. What are the three horrible sins of every business that our viewers need to avoid? Whatever business they're in, what do you think? Well, the number one sin that I've experienced is wishful thinking. You know, it's one thing to dream and to hope and have all this optimism. But a lot of times, it's just wishful thinking. Sounds simple, but... The real core of business is what you're doing every day to make that business better. You know, you don't wish you're going to get to a certain point in sales. You do what it takes to get to that. So the other one is to think that just because you're in business, you're a success. You're always striving towards success. Success comes with a lot of labor, a lot of hard nights. So I would say that that's another important thing is to recognize the sin of thinking that just because you own a business that you're automatically a success. You can be broke as a joke running businesses. And in my case, I started with virtually nothing but guts and determination and love for what I was doing. My toolkit was empty of capital, know-how, good record keeping. And those are the sins of business. If you don't have those three things together, you're not going to do too well. But the entrepreneurial experience is that you start out this way, but you got to fix all those things. You got to fix the capital, fix the credit, you know, all those kinds of things. So if you start out with not enough capital, you're doomed for failure. So that's how I see it. Let's talk about customer input. How do you take advantage of that? And how does it help your business grow and succeed the way it is today? Customer feedback is everything because we were getting feedback for the first, let's say first more than half, maybe three quarters of the time we were here, that we got great food and terrible service. That's all we would hear, great food, terrible service. Place to start. The way we turned that around is each and every person that works here is enthusiastic about working here. We treat them well. Every day we have a robust good morning to everybody. If someone comes here with their head down and doesn't say it, it's like, what's going on with you? So we started with an uplifting good morning and we finish it with a, you know, see you tomorrow. And so we build the team on loyalty, on them believing in what we're trying to achieve here and how it can benefit their lives. And as a result, we have happy customers. That's it. All right. What was the proudest moment in your business adventure so far? What can you think of? Proudest, sweetest, I don't know. It's the reaction. It's the reaction of the audience. The audience? The way people treat me, some of the kindest things people have said to me about their little girl who they couldn't get her to eat. And they came to Honey's Kettle and fed her some hotcakes one day. And the girl always is asking, can I go to Honey's Kettle? That is cool. I mean, stories about my father who had gotten to the end of his life and I took the food to him and it made him so happy. One woman came to me and said, you know, I used to see you back there under all that stress and I was praying for you. And now I see you in a much more relaxed position. It's a better place. And probably the biggest tribute I have to give is to my children. I was in a moment of crisis with my older son. Do you know that that kid called five of his friends because dad needed, you know, to fill a gap. And I was out of my own, like I couldn't call anybody else. I had already, they weren't answering the phone anymore. He called five of his friends, raised some money to get me over one more crisis. Wow. And then my kids grew up and made me so proud. And then now my grandkids are really sold on it. So all of those things combined, I'm a happy man. Let's put it like that. That's a beautiful story. In conclusion, what do you want to tell our audience? Just anything from your heart, pieces of advice, thoughts to encourage, inspire. Don't be terrified of small beginnings. You know, everything starts with a seed. And if you can get that seed in the ground, you water it, you nurture it, you love it. One day you may come back and find that seed has come up out of the ground. Be careful of instant success. Instant success can lead to failure because you don't learn the hard lesson. You know, you don't have to get down on your knees and pray and you never cry about anything. You're not humble by anything. All those things are important. A lot of good that comes from that. Don't get weary in suffering. Yeah. Be willing to take it all, you know, suffer the pain through it all. Because boy, when you emerge from that stuff, it's like pure gold. It's like you've been through the fire, tested by fire, and out comes the gold. Purified. Purified, ready to go. This has been good. Thank you so much. Nice to meet you. We all enjoyed it. Well, that's a wrap with Honey's Kettle Fried Chicken. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Make sure you also check out episode 160 with Moto Pizza, a pizza joint that sells out their pies three months in advance. I mean, come on, why wouldn't you wanna check it out? So thanks again for watching. We appreciate your support. Take care.