Matt Friedman Built Wing Zone in a Fraternity House...Here's What He Learned

Yeah, I want to go back to really the beginning, which I think is such a great story of, you know, we really focused on understanding our consumer.

Now, being 21 years old when we started this business, we were the end consumer, the college student, the lazy customer, the one that didn't have a vehicle that wanted to just call.

This is even before the advent of online ordering to just get great wings delivered.

And so I always encourage people two things.

Number one is really focus on your consumer first, really understand them and find your niche in the market.

And then the other thing is it's great to study competitors who have kind of paved the way.

You know, what is your differentiation? What are you going to be better than them at? My whole philosophy was studying a phenomenal brand, which was Domino's Pizza.

They owned pizza delivery in college markets.

And my whole philosophy was just creating a different menu group, but still going after that consumer.

And so, you know, my first business plan was a one-page business plan.

It wasn't this 17-page PowerPoint that had all these financials in it.

It was like, this is what we're going to do.

And I do think that that was something we always reflected back on when we made big decisions like, does this resonate with our end consumer?

Yeah, that's a great, well, I mean, a number of great points there, but yes, really understanding your consumer and, and, you know, what they want, uh, and then kind of using that to say, okay, how can we not only solve that, but use that to differentiate ourselves from competitors, but, um, you know, not overcomplicating it.

I think a lot of people get stuck and they just spin their wheels because they have this idea for a business, but they think they need the, you know, 17 slide presentation deck with, you know, all the financial project.

And it's not to say that, you know, that those things don't become relevant, but I think more often than not, if you just take those first couple of steps to get started, that's when things start to happen.

That's when you're going to start to learn and, you know, business like most other things in life is we've already kind of touched on so much of it is just about momentum.

Um, so I,

you're absolutely right.

I want to add one thing that, yeah, please, you know, Simplicity of business model is so important because it allows you to focus on fewer things and do them really well.

You know, when we first opened up, I would say, yeah, you know, I own Wing Zone.

We're a Buffalo Wing restaurant.

Oh, you guys have TVs and how many beers you have? I said, no, no, no, no.

We are in the takeout delivery business.

We're going to bring it to you.