Velvet Taco’s Dover on Culinary Roots, Culture

Well, it's a good place to play because, you know, eaters, consumers are becoming more adventurous in the United States big time.

And also being able to play in indulgent as well as healthier is a nice place to play because those two things tend to outperform than the chains in the middle.

They totally

do.

Look, our consumers are getting more wise.

They're getting more adventurous.

They're going to have more disposable dollars.

I mean, look, the beauty of our, the beauty of our, the beauty of our industry is that consumers will continue to go out to eat.

They're just going to decide where to go.

It's dependent on external factors, unemployment, you know, unemployment's what 4.1% right now.

So we've got a somewhat stable economy.

It all depends on, you know, tax refunds are coming up.

So I'm expecting, you know, a nice little push.

It all just depends on external factors and where they're going to go out to.

Are they going to go, you know, casual dining right now is getting a surge because, as you mentioned, I think in earlier pods, there haven't been a lot of build outs of casual dining yet.

There's been an overbuild of QSR, fast casual somewhere in the middle.

There's all these factors.

People aren't suddenly just going to say, you know what, I'm just going to start cooking.

They just decide where they're going to spend their dollars.

And it's up to us in the industry to go, okay, how do we meet those demands, whether it's a value play, whether it's a lifestyle and the way in which we meet the guests.

Coming out of COVID-19, We, Velvet Taco, or our team, looked and saw there's going to be a demand for takeout.

And so we leaned into it.

We put in KDS.

I changed out the POS.

I went from a legacy system and put in Toast.