Customer Connection Matters

Ian Crumley: Today, we’re joined by Rory Knapp, from Bruegger’s Bagels. How are you doing Rory?

Rory Knapp: I’m doing fine, thank you.

Ian Crumley: Welcome to the podcast.

Rory Knapp: Thank you.

Ian Crumley: And we’re also with Trent Davis.

Trent Davis: Yep.

Ian Crumley: Who’s an employee here at Banowetz Marketing, and me, Ian Crumley.

Trent Davis: Perfect. Well, Rory, give us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your background, a little bit.

Rory Knapp: 59 year old employee of, Bruegger’s. I’m divorced. Been living here in Marion about 15 years now. Try to get with my family when I can, I enjoy family time. Lots of nieces and nephews that I love to see, and talk to them, and have good times with them. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t talk about myself much.

Trent Davis: So, you said you’ve lived in Marion for 15 years now?

Rory Knapp: About 15 years, yeah.

Trent Davis: Where did you live before that?

Rory Knapp: Around Cedar Rapids. I was originally born in Marengo, and then I moved to Walkerton when I was a small child, and I lived there up until mid ’90s, but I had moved around our area through different places.

Ian Crumley: All right. Yeah, that’s awesome. So, you spent a lot of time in the Cedar Rapids area-

Rory Knapp: Oh yeah.

Ian Crumley: -and the Marion area-

Rory Knapp: Oh yeah.

Ian Crumley: and connecting with Cedar Rapidians, and…

Rory Knapp: Oh yeah.

Ian Crumley: So you know the area pretty well?

Rory Knapp: Yeah. Pretty well, I guess.

Ian Crumley: Yeah. How long have you been at Bruegger’s Bagels now?

Rory Knapp: Oh, be three years this month.

Trent Davis: This month. Perfect. That’s awesome.

Rory Knapp: It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, it’s just flown.

Ian Crumley: Time flies when you’re having fun, right?

Rory Knapp: It is. Yes, and it is fun.

Ian Crumley: What is your position at Bruegger’s?

Rory Knapp: I am a shift supervisor.

Ian Crumley: Okay, and what kind of responsibilities come along with that?

Rory Knapp: My responsibilities are basically… mornings, if I go in, I go in and open about 4:30, quarter to 5:00 in the morning. I will go in, and I have to do some opening paperwork, check for online orders through catering, double check my safe, count my money, put my drawers out, and then proceed to make sure all my cream cheeses are up to date, and everything is fine and get my stuff ready for opening at 6:00. Make sure my coffee’s there, and follow different procedures, and make sure everything’s ready to go. Then, at 6:00 we open the doors, and serve customers.

Trent Davis: There you go.

Ian Crumley: So, you have a lot to do in-

Rory Knapp: A lot to do, but-

Ian Crumley: -a very little amount of time.

Rory Knapp: surprisingly, it goes quite quickly.

Ian Crumley: Yeah.

Rory Knapp: And then, if I’m a closing manager, it’s in reverse. You go through, and you start shutting down one side of the serving line, because you have double on both sides, so you can shut one side down, and get it ready for close, and start cleaning your equipment, and getting it shut down. Then, just everything reverse, and get it all done, ready for the next day.

Trent Davis: There you go.

Rory Knapp: It’s kind of redundant, but it works.

Ian Crumley: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, a couple of years ago, when I was working at Hy-Vee, one of my managers said to me, “One of the most important aspects of business,” well, and especially in retail and, in food, “a connection between the closing crew and the opening crew, is immensely important.”

Rory Knapp: And sometimes closing crew, and the opening crew can be the same person.

Ian Crumley: Yep.

Rory Knapp: Like today, I believe that Keaton was going to work 6:00 to close today, because McKayla needed next week off, one day next week, so they were going to switch shifts.

Trent Davis: Yeah. It sounds like you guys are a pretty cooperative team there.

Rory Knapp: Well, we’re a small team. There’s only… right now, we have like four managers. Well, Vanessa is our manager. She’s general manager, and then I am lead supervisor, and then we have Shannon, Tony, and Morgan, are now supervisors also. So, that just leaves McKayla, and Keaton, and Aaron as employees.

Ian Crumley: Oh wow.

Trent Davis: Wow.

Ian Crumley: So you have a really small staff.

Rory Knapp: Yes. Yes we do.

Ian Crumley: Wow.

Trent Davis: I was thinking four managers, there must’ve been a big branch of employees, but no.

Rory Knapp: Nope, Nope, Nope. But, Vanessa has now been… we’re having some power shifting. Her manager has been promoted, and moved out to the East coast. So, she’s stepping up, to help the manager, working with him to help the Iowa City and Cedar Rapids areas, as questions and things to do for that. So, she needs to be able to have enough staff, management staff, able to tap, to do what she needs to do, if needs to be on the phone with somebody, or she needs to jump in the car and run to Iowa City, she needs to know the store’s going to be taken care of, and things are taken care of properly, because we cannot leave, per Bruegger’s… I want to say… not manifest, but per Bruegger’s, no manager can be left alone in the store, and no employees can be left alone in the store. You have to have at least one employee, and then a manager at all times.

Ian Crumley: Okay.

Trent Davis: Okay.

Ian Crumley: Interesting.

Trent Davis: So there is the other branch on the other side of town, isn’t there?

Rory Knapp: There’s one on Mount Vernon road, yes.

Trent Davis: Yep. Have you ever considered maybe franchising your own, becoming a franchisee?

Rory Knapp: I don’t know if they do that, because far as I know we’re all corporate.

Trent Davis: Okay.

Rory Knapp: Everything’s corporate that I know of. And then-

Trent Davis: So it’s like, cause I know… or Culver’s is… those are franchises.

Rory Knapp: Yeah. Yeah.

Trent Davis: Okay.

Ian Crumley: Same with Chick-fil-A

Rory Knapp: Most of them. Most businesses will do that. But I have not heard of any Bruegger’s that have been franchised and I don’t know, since we were purchased a year ago September… we were purchased by a Coffee and Bagels Brand. Who owns us, Caribou and Einstein.

Trent Davis: Oh okay.

Ian Crumley: That’s right. Because I see a bunch of… I went up to Milwaukee the other day and there was Einstein Bagels and Caribou, which confused me a little bit because I thought I saw Bruegger’s and Caribou here. I was like wait. Hold it.

Rory Knapp: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. They tell us now that why we have Caribou Coffee because they the best coffee with the best bagels. And we have people tell us all the time that our bagels are better than anybody else’s in town that they’ve ever had.

Trent Davis: I would agree with that. Yeah. I love Caribou Coffee. I think Caribou Coffee is some of the best.

Rory Knapp: Caribou Coffee is good coffee. I always say it’s better than the S word down the block because I can drink Caribou Coffee cold. I can’t drink S word cold because it’s just too bitter.

Trent Davis: It’s bitter. It’s very bitter.

Ian Crumley: I’ll second that.

Rory Knapp: It’s too bitter.

Trent Davis: Oh man.

Rory Knapp: It’s just like…

Ian Crumley: Kind of destroys the back of my throat a little bit.

Rory Knapp: Yeah. Nope. Dump that stuff out and you’re paying five bucks for it.

Trent Davis: we’re not name-dropping, though.

Rory Knapp: Oh no, no, no, no, no, no.

Trent Davis: Code word.

Ian Crumley: what would you say… so in three years, what would you say your favorite part of working at Bruegger’s has been?

Rory Knapp: It’s been my customers. I have so many great customers. I have so many that I have-

Trent Davis: Like Ian.

Rory Knapp: Ian is one. He’s a great guy. I got a one gentleman, he has our app, the inner circle app for Bruegger’s and he walks in. If I see him coming in, his bagels ready for him when he gets there. I hand it to him. He walks up, pops up his app. I scan his barcode. He’s out the door because he has money loaded on his app. So all he’s got to do is just scan it and I just touched and it’s all sent and he’s done. He’s back in the car sometimes by the time it’s cashed out. And he’s on his way. It makes it really nice.

Ian Crumley: Yeah. Yeah. Well you were mentioning earlier that like a one… A big thing that Bruegger’s wants to push to its employees and managers is that you want to create conversations and have relationships with your customers.

Rory Knapp: We do. We do want to create conversations. That’s why people always say, don’t you have a slicer? You’re looking at him right here, buddy. Let me get going. And you get pretty good at slicing two or three dozen bagels really fast.

Ian Crumley: I was going to say, I ordered a dozen the other day and I was like, “Oh no, I’m so sorry. You have to hand slice all of them.”

Rory Knapp: Oh, no. No big deal.

Ian Crumley: But they were just doo doo doo, going through all of them.

Rory Knapp: Zoom, zoom, zoom, you’re done. And you talk to the customers as you’re slicing or as you’re making that sandwich and you’re talking to them and creating rapport. So like I said, I have so many customers that I know by name that I always say hi to or whatever.

Ian Crumley: And you’re building a client base.

Rory Knapp: Client base.

Ian Crumley: Through doing it all.

Rory Knapp: And a lot of them, we have a lot of people come in and friends, friends will stop in from or ex-coworkers from other businesses have stopped in and seen me and I’ve had quite a few people from when I used to work at Target will stop in and see me and talk to them for awhile and it’s kind of nice.

Ian Crumley: Well, it’s effective.

Trent Davis: It helps that the bagels are amazing.

Ian Crumley: Yeah, it does. But I was going to say it’s effective too, because right now, I think Bruegger’s is my… I feel like I owe my customer. You know what I mean? I feel like I need to be there. I feel like I need to be purchasing bagels from there just because I love it so much and it’s just, I feel like I’m home there.

Rory Knapp: Well, yeah. And like I said I always try to be polite to people and I like to to give them give him a little guff when I can and make them laugh or smile. I’ve had a couple of people come in in the morning, and I was always told that I’m too cheery at 6:00 a.m. And I used to work in a factory for years and everybody’s [inaudible 00:09:03]. So I always was, “Hey, how’s it going? Good morning. What you up to?” And they look at you like, and they smile. We have a senior group that comes in Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays and a lot of the ladies will ask for a senior discount. And I said, “I want to see some ID. I’m going to card you. I think you’re lying to me.” And they look at me and they laugh. They think it’s funny. I’m like, “No kiddo. Let me see some ID. You’re not getting this discount unless I see some ID.” And they just, you know.

Ian Crumley: It’s just the little things like that though, building those one to one connections.

Rory Knapp: Well, yeah. Little things. And building the… well, yeah. And we have our customer surveys. When you get a customer survey a lot of times, give me three… so what do you want for three bagels? And you hand them the sack, you hand me the slip and they’re out the door. It’s done. Because it’s a wipe situation. It’s like every Tuesday we do… we pick a business card, three business cards out of a fishbowl on our registers and I call these people and tell them that they have won a free big, bagel and bundle. Ian was a recipient of that one time.

Ian Crumley: I think that was rigged.

Rory Knapp: No, it actually wasn’t.

Trent Davis: It’s so funny.

Rory Knapp: And they come in and get their bagels and they’re so stoked because they dropped a business card in and they got free food.

Ian Crumley: Exactly. And then that’s going to keep them coming back. Yep.

Rory Knapp: And it keeps us on there mind sight.

Ian Crumley: Exactly.

Rory Knapp: Because hey, those bagels were really good. I should do that again.

Ian Crumley: Yeah, exactly.

Rory Knapp: So that’s always nice that way.

Ian Crumley: And that’s kind of one of the, I think, most overlooked marketing tools, especially today when a lot of people are moving to technology and all this other stuff and social media is like, it’s becoming undervalued. The whole building one-to-one connections.

Rory Knapp: Building one to one connections, and then you have the personal connection, the one on one.

Ian Crumley: Yes. Right. Which is far superior to any social media outreach or anything like that.

Rory Knapp: You know, they always say that a picture’s worth a thousand words, but a kind word is worth a millennium.

Ian Crumley: Exactly.

Rory Knapp: If it’s done correctly.

Trent Davis: Right. I think that’s very well said. Yeah. So we talked a little bit about sort of creating that environment and building one on one connections and how that’s a great marketing tool. We can talk now a little bit about what Bruegger’s is doing social media wise, with the app. So you touched on the app a little bit earlier. You want to explain that to us?

Rory Knapp: We… when Bruegger’s was with our last parent company, we had our 13 or whatever it was, bagels. You bought 12 bundles and you get the 13th one free. Those were a punch card. They’ve gone away from that now and we have an app. You go to Brueggers.com or the app store and you download the app and then it brings you in and once you load the app you get a free bagel with cream cheese and then you’re in the inner circle. You’ll always updates on specials that are coming up. Like April fool’s day I got stuck with one in person… like two people. I had a baker and one other person and me and I had $6 bakers dozens. I got my butt kicked.

Ian Crumley: Oh my gosh. Now I have to take advantage of that.

Trent Davis: Sorry.

Rory Knapp: But I think they have stuff that… like next week is going to be our appiversary. The apps been in play for one year and it’s been very popular to my knowledge. A lot of people that love it and use it. We had one gentleman that got over a thousand points before he started using his points and he ate for free for a week and a half.

Trent Davis: I wouldn’t mind that.

Rory Knapp: Because he had all these points. But yeah, you get two points for every dollar you spend and once you get, I think it’s to 35 points you can upgrade on a drink for like a small to a medium coffee or small to a medium drink. And then once you hit a hundred you can get a free cream cheese bagel. And I’m thinking 125 is a free medium beverage, I’m not quite sure, but I know 185 is a free egg and cheese, if I’m not mistaken, too. And then like I said, you’ll get the deals where they have free cookies you can get. Right now we’re running a deal, if you get a… off the inner circle, you can get a free Nantucket, a juice we carry or a Snapple. And then we have… right now they’re doing a $3… cream cheese bagel and a beverage for $3. So you could walk in and get a large iced tea and a cream cheese bagel and you pay $3.21 cents.

Trent Davis: Wow. Oh my gosh.

Ian Crumley: I might head over there after this.

Trent Davis: Oh my gosh, yeah. For real.

Rory Knapp: And next week we’re going to have some free deals. Last weekend we had a free cookies I think again, was the last weekend was free cookies, for cookie day for one day.

Ian Crumley: But obviously, so we talked a little bit about the personal connections, so Bruegger’s is doing a lot of that, but then they’re also doing this new age, like with the app and I think that’s sort of a great idea is like… like I just said, I’m probably going to go in after that just because of these… like an iced tea and a bagel sounds really good for lunch. You know what I mean?

Rory Knapp: Well, yeah.

Ian Crumley: You’re just going to get people to come in and then once you get them in the door, that’s how you get them to keep coming back.

Rory Knapp: You get them in the door, you get them to keep coming back. I always tell them when they come in and somebody says, this is a new person. I’ve never been here. I says, “If you want to taste anything, please let me know.” And that’s a policy we have at Bruegger’s also. If there’s anything you ever want to taste, let us know. We’ll gladly let you have a sample of something and I tell people I can’t get you hooked if you don’t taste it.

Trent Davis: That’s right.

Rory Knapp: Case in point Ian and his Sriracha honey cream cheese.

Ian Crumley: Oh, For real. Sriracha honey cream cheese. Let me go off for a second. This is the most underrated cream cheese on the face of the earth. There is not a cream cheese that is tastier than Sriracha honey.

Trent Davis: It’s tasty. You and I had it one time before we came into work.

Ian Crumley: Yep. Sriracha honey paired with the Asiago Parmesan or Rosemary olive oil bagel.

Rory Knapp: Yes. Yes. Yes. It’s quite… I got him hooked.

Ian Crumley: But it’s all about getting people in the door.

Rory Knapp: It is.

Ian Crumley: And I think the app is a really great way and doing all the deals.

Rory Knapp: The app is… the app-

Ian Crumley: It’s like a modern punch card.

Rory Knapp: It goes across the spectrum because you have young people as yourselves who are into apps and have everything on their phone and do everything with their phone. But yet it has people in my age group who are embracing technology and use it because it’s something for them to have and it makes them have… they’re able to do this and-

Ian Crumley: It makes you feel savvy, too.

Rory Knapp: It’s make you feel savvy. Because I’m not very tech savvy. I can do things on my computer but I’m not… and my phone, it’s just there sometimes.

Trent Davis: So then you did mention earlier too that there’s catering.

Rory Knapp: Yes. We do always offer… I’m not exactly sure on all of it, but we have a large box and a small box, catering box, and we do offer fruit bowls. They do offer… we’ve done sandwiches, boxes, we’ll do muffins and cookies.

Trent Davis: Do you do any coffee.

Rory Knapp: They will do coffee. We have a 96 ounce canteen that we put together and it’ll serve 10 people. Sometimes we have to make those on the fly because people come in and say, “I need two dozen bagels and I want a canteen of coffee.” Okay, boom. You’re flying through and getting things done, cutting bagels and getting stuff done. But also when you call our phone, you get a prompt that says, if you want to do a catering order, push one and push two to talk to the store. So by pushing one, it’ll take you to a catering operator who will take your order or offer you all the suggestions. They have everything in front of them, the media, you need to know what would be best for your group and how to use it. And then they’ll take… you’re all paid for on the phone. Everything’s done. Then that gets sent back to our store.

Trent Davis: The catering people aren’t at the store?

Rory Knapp: No. I’m assuming they’re up in Minneapolis, but I’m not sure. I’m not sure where it sends them. We talk to them. They’ll call us every once in a while and say, “Hey, this order was done. We need to do something different about it.”

Ian Crumley: Okay. But then they electronically send you the catering order?

Rory Knapp: They give us an email. They send us an email. Then we get a paper that prints out and tells who the person is, what time the orders for, what they need and what they want. Because they specifically would go through and say, “Hey, what would you like?” And they tell you every bagel we have. We did… when Collins Credit Union did their transition to their new computer system, we catered that. They called us. We catered that. It was a very large catering order. I think we did… oh my God, it was like 14 boxes and we had to go to Marion office. We had to go to-

Trent Davis: All the branches in town.

Rory Knapp: No, just the three here. We did the three on this side and I think there was two places at main we had to go to.

Trent Davis: How big do you think catering is in relative terms to how much business you do?

Rory Knapp: We have our good days and bad days. We always try to bring our catering up so people know. And our boxes now have… they’ve changed our boxes so they don’t just have a flap. They pop up like a display box. So when you get in there your bagels are all sliced for you. They’re all displayed properly up and down. So nobody’s picking through them and stuff. You can grab one he want, you have plates, napkins, your cream cheeses are right there. They pop up, it slides back in and it has our logo in front of him so they know where they’re at and who’s got their bagels.

Ian Crumley: And you just building that name.

Rory Knapp: Recognition, yeah. And we do a lot. I mean we’ll do a lot. Wednesdays are our $2 off big bagel bundles or baker’s dozens. My brain is just not working today. So they will… we get a lot of catering. Not a lot of catering, but a lot of orders on those days because people will take them to the office. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are our busy days for those three things because Monday is the beginning of the week. Maybe somebody’s leaving, maybe there’s a meeting. We have a lady who comes in every Wednesday at eight o’clock for the last seven years and gets three dozen sliced bagels.

Ian Crumley: Wow.

Rory Knapp: And it’s a specific order. We just pull that and slice those every week for, for their weekly production meeting of some sort.

Trent Davis: Interesting.

Rory Knapp: But yeah, we get a lot of people for catering orders or have people say like that lady said that one of their coworkers was leaving, she was moving on to something different. so they’re going to take bagels into the office for celebration. It’s kind of nice because it’s… and I realize bagels are not something you can always eat. I mean people have to have variety in your life. But it’s nice that they think of us and we get the business we do get because we’ve worked really hard to bring our business up and it’s doing a lot better.

Trent Davis: Yeah.

Ian Crumley: Well, and that’s a huge thing. I know Sarah has touched on it a couple of times, like when we’ve ordered from… what’s the place right behind us?

Trent Davis: [crosstalk 00:20:02].

Ian Crumley: [Emails 00:20:04], Yeah.

Trent Davis: I’m not sure how to pronounce it.

Ian Crumley: It’s sort of like… it’s a nice way, like bringing bagels into the office on a Monday morning, especially as a boss, is a nice way of building team morale.

Rory Knapp: Oh yeah.

Ian Crumley: Bringing people together and… and it could just be something as simple as bringing in two dozen bagels every Wednesday.

Rory Knapp: Oh yeah. I had one of my friends, she works over here by the one next to the hotel, the big hotel.

Ian Crumley: Oh, Chili’s.

Rory Knapp: Yeah, Chili’s.

Ian Crumley: Right behind Tamara.

Rory Knapp: She lives behind Chili’s. She works over there in one of those… she’s an… what do you call it? A stenographer of some sort.

Ian Crumley: Oh, interesting. All right.

Trent Davis: That’s pretty cool.

Rory Knapp: They do that medical building or stenography for medical stuff and they… she stops in and gets bagels her and the girls, there’s like seven of them in the office.

Trent Davis: Right. Yeah. It’s a nice thing to do.

Rory Knapp: I think of one thing that makes me… I had a gentleman, his mother had gone to the dentist’s office and they had done an exceptional job with her. She was in very much pain, so he called us ordered bagels, cream cheese, the whole nine yards, I think, and coffee and I delivered it to them. They didn’t know it was coming. And I went up and I took it up to and they looked at me like I was crazy and I said, “No. This is from such and such.” “Well, who’s that? He’s not a patient here.” I said, “but his mother is.” Oh, then I gave them the paperwork and showed them what they said and it was a thank you. They were all excited and they were just giddy.

Trent Davis: That’s awesome.

Rory Knapp: It was so cool. So cool.

Trent Davis: That’s awesome.

Ian Crumley: That is really cool. I’m sure there are plenty of happy moments.

Rory Knapp: Oh yeah. Well, I always tell people free food. You got to love free food no matter what it is.

Ian Crumley: Exactly.

Rory Knapp: And if it’s going to be bagels, it’s even better yet.

Trent Davis: Got any other stories? You have any good stories?

Rory Knapp: Yeah. Well, like I said, we’ve had huge orders, a lot of huge orders. Collins plant uses us. I took 17 boxes there at one time, over to the tunnel on 08 across from Cedar [Brewing 00:00:22:13]. I took 17 boxes they had for a meeting.

Trent Davis: How many comes in a box, a dozen?

Rory Knapp: 13, Baker’s dozen.

Trent Davis: Oh, baker’s dozen.

Rory Knapp: 13 so that’s a lot of bagels.

Trent Davis: 17 times 13.

Ian Crumley: How come a Baker’s dozen is 13? Do you know why?

Trent Davis: I do. Wait, I’ll let Rory tell it, though.

Rory Knapp: What I was always told was when, back in the day, when all the immigrants were New York and everything, the baker always gave the complimentary extra piece to whatever the dozen was as good faith to the customer, as a sign of thank you for your business. Here’s an extra one for you.

Ian Crumley: Oh, mine was, I’ve heard that they would make an extra one as a flop, just in case they messed up or as a test one. So they would make one first to make sure that one was okay and then make 12 more and then just include that first one in. That’s what I’ve heard.

Trent Davis: Interesting. That’s what I assumed.

Rory Knapp: Yeah. But of course I learned that 50 years ago.

Trent Davis: I like that way better.

Ian Crumley: Yeah. The same. That sounds so nice.

Rory Knapp: And that’s what I was always told that that’s what they did it for was to… it’s that little incentive. Here’s one more. Thank you for your business. Here’s an extra for that.

Ian Crumley: Exactly.

Rory Knapp: So again, that would be building your customer base.

Ian Crumley: Right. That’s how I feel the times when I get the survey on my receipt.

Rory Knapp: You guys love those surveys.

Ian Crumley: Oh my gosh. I always hit the jackpot with the surveys.

Trent Davis: What is the deal with the survey?

Ian Crumley: So, I’ll let you say.

Rory Knapp: The surveys pop up about every five or six on the register. And it is… it tells you where to go on the website. You go in and it asks you, is it 10 questions?

Ian Crumley: It’s quite a lot. It’s like 10 questions-

Rory Knapp: and it asks you basically when you walked in the door, what was your first impression of the store? Did it look clean?

Ian Crumley: was the manager visible? Were they smiling?

Rory Knapp: Was the manager visible? Was there employees visible? Were you greeted within walking through the front door? Was was the employee polite? Did they make your order correctly? Did you have any problems? Did you have a beverage? Did you do this? What time of day were you there?

Trent Davis: Do you guys get any of the data or does your general manager get any of the data from the surveys?

Rory Knapp: We don’t get-

Trent Davis: I’m assuming it probably goes to corporate.

Rory Knapp: It goes to corporate and I’m not sure if we have access to that. All I know is if you come in and you say, “Rory made my bagel. He was really polite. We joked around, had a great time. I really appreciate his service.” That’s what we… I call those attaboys.

Ian Crumley: Attaboys.

Rory Knapp: We get an email that goes through district manager then comes down to Vanessa and then she prints them off and we hang them on the wall there. We have good and bad and I know we have had a few that we have to address. I had one the other day, a gentleman had tried calling and calling, calling for some reasoning and our phone wasn’t ringing and so I don’t know who he was calling. But I called him and he said he wanted this, he wanted that. He was very happy when I got done talking to him and then he came in a half an hour early, 45 minutes early.

Trent Davis: So you weren’t ready.

Rory Knapp: And I wasn’t ready because I had to bake him a dozen bagels. We didn’t have enough time to bake him some, so I had to hurry up and throw those in the oven and get them baked for him. He got another bagel, he sat down and waited. He was really happy and it was all good.

Anyway, back to the surveys and then it gives you a special code at the end that you put on your receipt and bring that in and it gives you three free bagels.

Ian Crumley: Yep. But not cream cheese.

Rory Knapp: No. No Cream cheese.

Ian Crumley: You got to buy the cream cheese.

Rory Knapp: But it’s 54 cents.

Ian Crumley: Exactly.

Rory Knapp: It’s 54 cents.

Ian Crumley: It’s not going to hurt you.

Trent Davis: So I could get three bagels with Sriracha honey for a dollar fifty. Is that what you mean?

Rory Knapp: Yeah. Yeah. You know.

Trent Davis: It’s worth it.

Rory Knapp: It is.

Ian Crumley: There’s a streak, there’s a streak where I got I think four surveys in a row, every consecutive time when I went.

Trent Davis: And that’s when you and I before work one time went and picked some up and got sriracha honey.

Ian Crumley: And we got one there.

Rory Knapp: You don’t buy it by the tub? You should buy it by the tub.

Trent Davis: Yeah. We do buy it by the tub.

Ian Crumley: I really should.

Trent Davis: No. You do. You bought it by the tub that one time.

Ian Crumley: Well, the first time I actually bought it by the tub was when I won the-

Trent Davis: business card.

Ian Crumley: business card thing.

Rory Knapp: Oh, okay.

Ian Crumley: It might have also been when my mom wanted a dozen bagels or something.

Rory Knapp: Could have been.

Ian Crumley: But that is definitely the move because those last a while, too. I didn’t realize I thought I was going to have to scoop through it and keep eating it in like a week, but no. It lasts a few months.

Rory Knapp: No. No. but that’s like when we first got that, everybody loved it because it was so good. When we first got it… they give us a sample case, which was 12 containers.

Trent Davis: And it was gone?

Rory Knapp: We literally, the employees literally ate all 12 of those suckers in a week and a half.

Ian Crumley: Oh no.

Rory Knapp: It was like, Oh my God, this stuff is so good.

Trent Davis: Yeah. It really is.

Rory Knapp: We literally ate it all. We bought it, took it home, ate at all. It was like man.

Ian Crumley: After working in restaurants for a while sometimes it’s hard to not eat.

Rory Knapp: Oh yeah. And as you can see I’m a little robust. I like to cook. I like to eat. I always tell people that I always feel I’m exonerated. My 12 year old grand niece, my nephew’s daughter, I took and thought one day and I thought, well, I took blueberry bagels home and I made bread pudding out of them and I took it to a a family function. And I’m there and I’m walking, coming in my nephew’s shop, he has a big shop for his business and we went in there and we had the party in there and she’s standing there and my nephew is across the room. She’s screaming, dad, dad, get over here. This stuff is amazing. I’m on my third piece. Dad. And I’m like… and I just stood there and I looked at her and my nephew comes over and she’s cuts a piece and hands it to him, and he’s like, damn mom, that’s pretty good stuff.

So we just recently had a party and I took everything down there and made it at their house and ended up making two pans. Christie took one pan. I said this one’s yours. This one’s for the party. Literally took that pan hot out of the oven and she’s already picking chunks of crispy bagel off the top of that bread pudding and eating it right out of the oven.

Ian Crumley: Wow.

Rory Knapp: I looked at her, I said, “You’re such a nap.” And she just looked at me and she said, “This is mine.”

Ian Crumley: I might have to figure out the recipe or something.

Rory Knapp: Instead of using bread, you just use bagels. I just cut them up. Let them soak a little longer. And it’s all good. I used Brown sugar instead of white sugar because I think it makes it taste a little sweeter. But it’s just it’s chewy, delicious.

I always tell people… I’ll give people recipes like that. I’ll do that. And I told them… told a couple people, take your Sriracha honey cream cheese, make yourself some taco meat. Fold that cream cheese into that and make that all nice and gooey. Fill tortillas and roll them up and put them in a pan cover them with salsa and cheese and bake them in the oven.

Trent Davis: Wow.

Ian Crumley: Oh. Might have just made my day.

Trent Davis: Oh my God.

Rory Knapp: Hey, that was off the top of my head one day. Aaron was asking the question. I’m just, yeah do this. This will work.

Ian Crumley: So like seasoned taco meat.

Rory Knapp: Just seasoned taco meat.

Trent Davis: Spread the tortillas with the-

Rory Knapp: No. yeah, just take the cream cheese and just dump it into hot taco meat and mix it up so it’s all nice and cheesy gooey.

Trent Davis: Oh, within the taco meat.

Rory Knapp: In the meat taco, make it all cheesy, gooey.

Trent Davis: Oh, I thought you meant like spread it on the tortillas.

Rory Knapp: Nope. Nope. Nope. Make it all cozy, gooey and then fill your tortillas and roll them up like you would for an enchilada and cover them with sauce and some cheese and bake them.

Trent Davis: Oh, put them in the oven.

Rory Knapp: Yeah. Bake them like what, 20 minutes, half an hour at 350, just so they’re all cheesy, gooey and hot and delicious.

Trent Davis: Oh man.

Ian Crumley: I’m going to save that clip and save it to my desktop so I can refer back to this recipe. You heard it here first.

Trent Davis: Oh man.

Ian Crumley: You need to open a website or something.

Rory Knapp: Yeah, there you go. There you go.

Ian Crumley: Rory Knapp’s cooking.

Trent Davis: Or some sort of food truck.

Ian Crumley: Oh a food truck.

Trent Davis: Where you sell bagel bread pudding and it’s all… it revolves around bagels, but it’s these fusion recipes. And that’d be so fun doing that.

Rory Knapp: Yeah. There you go. Little bagel pizza’s, little bagel enchilada cream cheeses. Yeah.

Ian Crumley: Certainly. All right. Well-

Trent Davis: It was great talking to you, Rory.

Rory Knapp: Thank you. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it guys.

Ian Crumley: We really appreciate you coming on today. We’ll definitely be in probably right after this. Making me hungry, thinking about bagels all the time.

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