From The Ritz To Cotati: The Amazing Business Story Of Acme Burger

DANO WEIR: A friend of mine left Sonoma about six months ago and moved back to Ohio, kind of outside Columbus. That's where he's from. And for the most part, he likes it. But I checked in with him recently and he said, hey, man, how's it going?

DANO WEIR: How are you liking it out there? And he goes, it's not bad. I like this. I like that. There's literally nowhere to eat, though. And I go, what do you mean? He's like, there's no restaurants. I'm like, how is there no restaurants?

DANO WEIR: I go, I go.

DANO WEIR: I mean, look, man, I just had this Burger place open up in my neighborhood and it's amazing. There's got to be a place like that. He goes, oh yeah. Check his bio on the website. And I go, okay.

DANO WEIR: Acme Burger.co Todd niece graduated from Culinary Institute Of America in New York apprenticeship at the grand Cayman Island, four-star restaurant and Fairmont hotel in New Orleans, five diamond Ritz Carlton hotel in Naples and own and operated a bistro for 16 years in Berkeley. And it went, oh, Maybe it is different here.

DANO WEIR: Financial confidence for your hip pockets.

TODD KNIESS: Money is really just energy.

DANO WEIR: Thanks for checking out It's All Money.

DANO WEIR: Welcome to It's All Money, powered by Sonoma Wealth Advisors, a financial advisor here in town. My name is Dan O'Weir. I'm the host. And we help individuals and families with financial planning and understanding their story. And that's what this show is. It's about understanding where life and finance meet and the story they're in.

DANO WEIR: It's All Money. Thank you. Welcome to the show. My guests today are a runaway business success story in Sonoma County. If you've ever dreamed of opening a restaurant, don't. But they're going to tell you their story about how they took one location into soon.

DANO WEIR: Five this is going to be the fifth location we're sitting in it right now in just six years on the back of a brilliant Burger please welcome to It's All Money the owners of Acme Burger Erica and Todd niece clapping for ourselves welcome thank you thank you thanks for having us thank you yeah well let's set the scene i mentioned it already where are we sitting right now Erica we are sitting in our fifth location our soon-to-be fifth location in Bennett Valley.

DANO WEIR: And Todd, this was a Burger place previously. You've moved into some locations that were Burger places and restaurants previously. Correct. Isn't that kind of the kiss of death in the restaurant industry? I mean, isn't it a quote dead location? What is it like moving into a location that's had a business like yours in it before?

TODD KNIESS: The way we think about it is we, as a business owner, you want to control your costs. And one of the biggest costs of... The restaurant business is building out a place and construction costs. So what we look for are restaurants, former restaurants that already have infrastructure. The plumbing's done, the electrical is done, the kitchen hood is in place.

TODD KNIESS: All of those big hard costs are already there. So our goal is to find locations that have great visibility. They have great parking in most cases, and they're easy to access. And then what we do is we go in and not reinvent them. Well, we reinvent them to our concept, but we open them.

ERICA KNIESS: Bones are there.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah, the bones are in place. So we don't spend a ton of money on that.

TODD KNIESS: And it's worked so far for us. The only place that we really built out was our Petaluma West location. And that was our biggest investment. And actually, that's our number one store as far as revenue is concerned because we're right next to the Crooked Goat. And we service them because they don't have a kitchen there. So we do all the food for them as well as one other vendor.

TODD KNIESS: So it was worth the investment. So our goal is to keep the investment low.

ERICA KNIESS: Keep the lease.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah. And negotiate a decent lease, which I've become. Pretty good at over the years. Had a really good teacher.

ERICA KNIESS: It's everything. It's foundation. You got to build it right.

DANO WEIR: And that Petaluma West location in particular, that was, if people don't know the history, it was a taqueria at one point. And then way back, it was a gas station. And it was, I mean, I'm born and raised in Petaluma. I've seen that be a million things.

DANO WEIR: And then it has just sat vacant for so long. And you came along and you literally have an awesome sauce. Your secret sauce as a business. You're able to just take that and now it's making money. Isn't that, that's crazy. Crazy.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah. We, yeah, it's, when I think back, you know, I moved up here in 2017 at Sonoma County from the East Bay. And I went to work for somebody, and then I realized I can't work for anybody.

TODD KNIESS: I don't like anybody telling me what to do.

TODD KNIESS: So, and Erica will attest to that.

TODD KNIESS: So, anyway, I was trying to figure it out.

TODD KNIESS: Was going through a change in my life and I decided that burgers was it. I wanted to get out of the high-end game because those restaurants are, they're no longer working in the state of California. It's very difficult to do those type of restaurants.

TODD KNIESS: Why? Well, there's a great divide right now in the restaurant business in California. You either have to go super high-end or you have to go fast casual because the numbers don't work. The financials don't work.

ERICA KNIESS: Middle of the road restaurants are squeezed out.

TODD KNIESS: Right.

DANO WEIR: Give me price points just so I can track here. High end is like $80 a plate, $60 a plate.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah, those are the high end places, anywhere between $60 to $100 per person and more. There's certainly plenty of those restaurants out there. But, you know, my bistro in Berkeley was, entrees were $18 to $32.

TODD KNIESS: And every year you're getting squeezed and the biggest reason you're getting the squeeze in the restaurant business is because of the minimum wage in California. And we're all for people making more money. We want our staff to thrive and we want them to make enough, you know, to raise their families. And so in 2015, I think I decided that. The future was not good. And you're seeing it now.

DANO WEIR: The future high end.

TODD KNIESS: Yes. Well, middle of the road.

DANO WEIR: Middle of the road.

TODD KNIESS: High end.

DANO WEIR: The future. So, okay, okay.

TODD KNIESS: Right? So it's like the carve out of the middle of the road risk.

DANO WEIR: 30 to 60 a plate doesn't exist, but 60 and above and 30 and under does.

TODD KNIESS: Exactly. The financials don't work right.

DANO WEIR: Interesting.

TODD KNIESS: Fast casual, you don't have that service. You still have cashiers, but the margins are much better because you're casting a wider net and... Had I known the margins were as good as they are, I would have done it 20 years ago. You know, but when you're young.

DANO WEIR: We're headed back in the direction.

TODD KNIESS: Well, yeah, we have.

ERICA KNIESS: So basically those middle of the road restaurants, you know, you go from the staff required to do a fast casual restaurant. Right. And then you can cover that in a fast casual space with with our price points. Then you move up to table service. So to cover that, to cover that table service.

ERICA KNIESS: There's a big jump right now, California. So asking people for $20 a plate with table service becomes impossible. So those, those restaurants that are trying to do table service and greet values for families or anyone really, they, their, their opportunity is less and less because it just doesn't work.

TODD KNIESS: They have to, they have to raise the prices and you continue to raise prices. People say, well, we'll pay for the minimum wage. You just raise prices. So, okay. Yeah, we can do that, but. When the prices go up, people come less often. Right. You can't afford it.

ERICA KNIESS: Get one-star yellow.

TODD KNIESS: And this is what we're seeing now in the restaurant business.

TODD KNIESS: You're seeing the prices. I mean, what do you pay for a burrito?

DANO WEIR: Oh, it's $10. It's a minimum. Minimum. $10 plus. And if you want anything Fancy and you want guacamole, it's $12.50.

TODD KNIESS: $18 for a burrito. And so you're seeing the prices go up and people don't. People don't really understand why the prices. They think that restaurants are out to gouge them, and that is simply not the case. I think most restauranteurs are trying to stay in business, and they're trying to figure it out.

ERICA KNIESS: They're not fair about prices.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah. They want people coming more often.

ERICA KNIESS: Leases, wages, food providers, everything. When all of your costs are going up, up, up, up, up, you have to compensate somehow.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah. Yeah, there was a, yeah. People make comments online. They don't understand. And the other thing is they don't you try and explain it to them. They don't really want to hear it.

TODD KNIESS: Right. So, you know, and if they don't want to hear it, that's fine, you know. So I think what we've hit on is we've hit on a price point that people feel there's a good value. And you have to have value in restaurants.

TODD KNIESS: It doesn't matter if you spend $100 for dinner or you spend $10 for dinner. You have to walk away saying, I got my money's worth. Right, right. And that's what we try and give to our guests.

DANO WEIR: Good value. I want to take a step back because we're 10 minutes into the episode and I haven't talked about food yet. Yes, exactly. Let's go back to you mentioned your days in Berkeley. And prior to that, I touched on in the open.

DANO WEIR: When you're chefing for those restaurants and in those gigs, what are you making regularly? What's your background from a food standpoint? What are some of the dishes you're making in that time in your life?

TODD KNIESS: Oh, my whole...

TODD KNIESS: My whole passion is French food. And the reason I like French food, the French were actually taught by the Italians how to cook. Right? Katerina Dometic.

DANO WEIR: Not fired, man.

TODD KNIESS: She brought over the Italians.

DANO WEIR: She didn't want to go on the internet with that.

TODD KNIESS: But the French were the first to be published. Right? So they have, and France is a beautiful country and very diverse. And so I fell in love. With French cuisine after I read Peter Mayle's first book, A Year in Provence. And I read that in New Orleans when I lived in New Orleans. And I fell in love with the whole thing. So my, and I worked for a French chef at the Ritz-Carlton.

TODD KNIESS: And of course, New Orleans is based all in French cooking. And so I always, you know, and then when I moved out here, I worked for Left Bank and Roland Pesso. So I got...

TODD KNIESS: To France my first time when I was 27 and I went with Roland we went to Burgundy we went to Lyon you know I saw where he grew up and met his cousins and his family and you know so culturally speaking the French have have a great history America also has a great history but of stealing things well of you know interpreting sourdough that's right you know dungeness crab green goddess stress and California What brought me to California was the great products that we have here.

TODD KNIESS: I mean, we have phenomenal stuff here. Yeah. But my base is, you know, the bistro is French. I enjoy the whole French thing. And the tagline for us was French food for the soul. And it was basically French soul food is what we did. Classic dishes, beef bourguignon, coq au vin, cassoulet, bouillabaisse, things like that. Very classic. What do you call it?

ERICA KNIESS: Cuisine gramelle?

TODD KNIESS: Cuisine gramelle, gramellist. Style cooking, one pot cooking. Comfort food.

DANO WEIR: Yeah. Erica, what about your background? What were you doing before you owned Acme Burger?

ERICA KNIESS: Before I owned Acme, I worked at a local credit union. The credit union worked in the CEO's office where I learned so much about marketing, about people, managing people, perception, public's perception, things to avoid, things to go to. You know, I learned so much about. How to help Acme Burger, how to bring it along in the direction that we've taken it.

ERICA KNIESS: And some of those lessons, I would say, are invaluable.

ERICA KNIESS: As much as you have a focus and you want to go this way, you also have to have that same focus of things you want to avoid. That's, you know, you have tools to do that. So the knowledge that I got there was really, really beneficial to Acme.

DANO WEIR: You're bopping along. You're living your life. You're working in a credit union. You're learning all this about customer experience. And that's how it's going to go until you met.

ERICA KNIESS: This guy.

DANO WEIR: How? What was the moment?

DANO WEIR: Where? Where did the stars cross?

ERICA KNIESS: Well, so Todd opened up our restaurant. We decided to do a cafe for employees. And before we opened, it was shopped around.

ERICA KNIESS: Who would do this who would come in and do this because we you know the credit union they're not restauranteurs so we looked around and we found this company that would do that they would build it all out they would bring in the staff and lo and behold Todd walks in and here's a funny story we recently got married after we kind of did it backwards but we had a beautiful big ceremony and the pastor that married us asked us to write a story about the other And not say anything.

ERICA KNIESS: Don't tell the other what you did.

DANO WEIR: This is dangerous. Yeah.

ERICA KNIESS: Well, funny, we're up at the altar and he's reading it. And we wrote the same story about the day that we met in that credit union. Yeah. And how it all went down.

TODD KNIESS: Two different variations.

ERICA KNIESS: Yeah. Yeah.

TODD KNIESS: Or two different perspectives. Yeah.

ERICA KNIESS: So we met and we had a different project in mind at the time. And. We started working towards that. There were.

ERICA KNIESS: And fate kind of gave us a different path. And we took it. So we had this concept of Acme.

DANO WEIR: Who had it first?

ERICA KNIESS: I think Todd and his daughter had it first. Todd and Addie, his daughter, had the concept for doing this fast casual. And we thought. Burgers and then I kind of came in a little after that we were just dating at the time and Todd and I went out to the coast to have a few drinks and we had a chance meeting with the parents of our current premium beef provider And everything just started to flow in that direction.

ERICA KNIESS: Yeah. So we were out at the coast, and we were having drinks, and we just start talking to this other couple, and they're having drinks, and we're talking to them.

DANO WEIR: And this is who? Can we name them? Can they be named mystery people?

TODD KNIESS: Sonoma Mountain Beef.

ERICA KNIESS: Right. This was Jamie Mickelson's parents.

DANO WEIR: Yes.

TODD KNIESS: Jim and Marsha.

ERICA KNIESS: Yeah, Jim and Marsha.

DANO WEIR: Chance meeting how? You literally bumped into them? You sat next to them at a table?

TODD KNIESS: We were at Marshall. We were at the place in Marshall, and we were just talking about.

ERICA KNIESS: Some wine, having some food. You know. Yeah. Started talking.

TODD KNIESS: And this guy walks in with this big hat on. And I'm like, who's this guy?

DANO WEIR: Beef guy with a cowboy hat?

TODD KNIESS: Are you sure? Yeah, I know. I'm stunned, right? Shocked. And so we get to talking. And we had a great time. We had a few drinks with them. And they were super nice people. And they said.

ERICA KNIESS: Oh, my daughter has this beef company.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah. We started talking about her daughter. And then she gives me her card. And lo and behold, she's a.

ERICA KNIESS: She's part of Kundi.

TODD KNIESS: She's a kunde. Yeah. And I'm like, she's like, yeah, fifth generation, fourth generation.

ERICA KNIESS: I think it's fifth.

TODD KNIESS: So, yeah.

DANO WEIR: That's just supplies of beef for.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah. We have, we have commodity beef and we have our high end beef, which is Sonoma Mountain Beef and Jamie, she just got married too. She's, incredible. She's incredible. Her product is awesome. And her business is growing and, we're growing. So her business is growing with us, which is great. And, you know, we're all about local. So it worked out really well.

ERICA KNIESS: Part of it, right.

DANO WEIR: Okay, perfect. So you've got this happenstance connection for beef. You've got this restaurant concept. It's 2019. You're going to open up. Nothing can go wrong.

ERICA KNIESS: Everything can go wrong.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah, I was feeling pretty good. We did open up in Katahdi. And Katahdi was our first store. I wanted to open up a place where I didn't have to be there 70 hours a week.

TODD KNIESS: 50 was good in the beginning.

ERICA KNIESS: Yeah.

TODD KNIESS: So, and then it got going, and we did well, and everything was good, and then.

ERICA KNIESS: Well, tell them about, so we had a write-up in the paper.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah, everything was good, and then the press Democrat wrote us up on the Sunday paper, and then that kind of gave us a jolt.

ERICA KNIESS: Like clubs, yeah.

TODD KNIESS: Yep, and we were off to the races, and things were progressing, and.

ERICA KNIESS: We went and did a champagne tour for two weeks yeah you know we opened and we were doing a set figure we're like okay we're good with this amount and then we had this tour planned we were taking a group to champagne and France yeah correct yeah and heather came in heather irwin and she said okay i'm gonna do this article for you guys and i'm gonna put you in this full page and it's you guys are gonna be really busy so our idea of really busy And what she really meant by really busy?

TODD KNIESS: Oh, wow. You got slammed, yeah.

ERICA KNIESS: So we're up in the air, and by the time we land, our restaurant's like, oh my, you know, it was out of control.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah. The article came out on Sunday. We left on Wednesday.

ERICA KNIESS: We have a lot of that staff still with us. Yeah. They rallied.

TODD KNIESS: They did really well. But it was good because it gave me a chance to break away because I can be micromanaged, which is not good.

DANO WEIR: You you know let pay people well and find the right people we built the system and it did its job and you've got momentum and then Covid hits and then you have to yeah that's it pull the plug what what why you thrive through that you expanded through that well here's what happens why we.

ERICA KNIESS: You know of course like everybody we panicked at first we didn't think we'd have work for any like we just didn't know we were fortunate to have acquired the ppp money so we had it so we kept all our staff we could keep the ball rolling.

TODD KNIESS: And that was helpful for sure.

ERICA KNIESS: Very. And so as fate would have it, we were just tailor-made to pivot just enough to send everything out the door.

ERICA KNIESS: And yeah, we had to stay open. I mean, that was really our option.

TODD KNIESS: Our app came out, right? Yeah. And like two weeks into COVID. So what happened in COVID was, you know, everybody freaked out. We didn't close. We stayed open. We just had to. You know, cut hours, but we kept everybody on board.

TODD KNIESS: So sales dipped. And then, you know, two weeks in the third week, it started coming back the fourth week, even more. And then the fifth week, and it just started going up. And what happened was what you saw was a lot of people gave up.

TODD KNIESS: And I said, well, you know.

ERICA KNIESS: Some did not have the ability to pivot. Some didn't come to the table.

TODD KNIESS: It gave us a lot of new customers who didn't know we were there because we're one of the only places open.

TODD KNIESS: I mean, you have to do what you have to do in order to keep your business going.

ERICA KNIESS: Keep your employees working and keep the wheels turning. Exactly. Everything else around us. In that area immediate area was shut down and and some just couldn't pivot some didn't know how but you know we had we we did what we could do and it worked it grew the same thing when we had the fires right you know the fires they they started shutting off the electricity right.

TODD KNIESS: And i remember my my manager and my chef calling me in the morning saying we don't have any electrician electricity we're going to open i said yeah we're going to open you want to get paid on Friday yeah So we opened during that time. I had the chefs and headlamps.

ERICA KNIESS: It was taking forever.

TODD KNIESS: Oh, yeah. We only opened from 11 to 6. Once it started getting dark, we couldn't do anything, right? So we shut it down. People were so happy that they had a place to go and get something to eat.

DANO WEIR: Did you go and buy the headlamps? Did you have them?

TODD KNIESS: Oh, no. No, no. I went and got them.

ERICA KNIESS: Probably, yeah.

DANO WEIR: Would you spend $100 on headlamps?

TODD KNIESS: Something like that. I forget.

DANO WEIR: To make a couple thousand that day. Right. I mean.

ERICA KNIESS: Kidding. People were so grateful that the power is out. There's nowhere to go, but you could come here.

TODD KNIESS: It was cash only. It was, you know, it was like, we're going to stay open.

ERICA KNIESS: And people were so grateful.

TODD KNIESS: They were. They were very.

ERICA KNIESS: It was very heartwarming. It was one of those moments where you felt like, ah, this is part of this. The whole community would come in.

TODD KNIESS: You know, and people would talk and just commiserate together.

ERICA KNIESS: It was very special.

DANO WEIR: Well. My story with your brand because i am the worst journalist in the world because i'm the people who are on my show i'm fans of my story with your brand is i've got two boys who are four years apart they're six and ten now they were probably three and and three and seven three and seven three and seven then i'm always on the hunt for a family-friendly restaurant because they are in that.

DANO WEIR: Chicken tenders and fries zone. And there's only so many places you can get that. And most of the places you can get that, it's not necessarily so great for me. And so I'm shopping at Oliver's and I see this new Burger place has opened in the old Northlight Books.

DANO WEIR: And I used to go in there all the time because it was a bookstore, it was a cafe. And so I had many, many hours sitting on that very patio you've talked about, pretending to write a book, pretending to write an essay. I knew the space very well. And so I go there with my kids the very first time and immediately I can't even put my finger on it.

DANO WEIR: But the way I can describe it is I felt relaxed. I felt like it felt like a place I could take a load off. Good. It felt like very welcoming to me with two kids. I know as we've talked about the concept a little bit here, that sounds like that was by design, was it?

ERICA KNIESS: Absolutely. Why? Absolutely. Todd had a contact in Berkeley. And he would send out these newsletters for different events, different dinners, different this and that. And he'd always end it with, come as you are, which really stuck with me. Come as you are.

TODD KNIESS: That was the club, yeah. Come as you are.

ERICA KNIESS: Just come here. Just come here and relax. Be here. And it's a part of why, you know, no politics. You'll never see us online with, like, liking this or liking, like, never. Just come as you are. We're all here. Let's just be together. Food is a uniter. So we'd like to unite you at our table.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah, food and restaurants in general, you know, restaurants, the name comes from to restore, right? So you want to restore people's spirit, their hunger. People can go anywhere and eat. They come to Acme Burger because they're going to be taken care of. You know, our whole thing is the three basic steps of service that I learned when I worked for the Ritz-Carlton. And they're very, very simple. Warm welcome.

TODD KNIESS: People come through the door, you smile, you make them feel like you're happy to have them because they're going to pay your bills. They're going to pay that weekend in Santa Cruz or your college tuition. So smile when they come in, make them feel like you want them here. That's number one. Number two is anticipate what they're going to need before they have to ask you.

TODD KNIESS: So anticipate you're out of pickles, put pickles out there and make sure you got napkins. Can I offer you cheese on that Burger? Would you like bacon? Anticipate things that people are going to need before they have to ask for them. And the third one is a fond farewell. Say goodbye to people and thank them for coming. And not as, you know, be authentic. Be authentic. That is our life. Gratitude. Our customer is our lifeline.

ERICA KNIESS: Grateful, right? Yeah. And to, not to interrupt you, but to expand on that, like you said, we're parents as well. We've done this game and we're fast casual. We have burgers and chicken strips, and although they are the best in Sonoma County, made fresh, just saying.

ERICA KNIESS: If you want to be somewhere where you can drop your shoulders.

TODD KNIESS: I'm so humble.

ERICA KNIESS: And if your kids are a little loud, it's okay. Just here's some coloring. Here's some chalkboard walls. Here's something that they can do, and you can just relax for a minute. You can have a beer. You can.

DANO WEIR: They're good. There are so many places and it's not just restaurants, but there are just so many businesses that expect so much like pregame from you to like be on their app and do, do, do, do, do, do. You need to be like understand their whole language before you can even walk in the door. Right. And I'm just like, I'm sorry. I really don't want to be a part of the lifestyle that you're selling me. I just want a taco.

TODD KNIESS: Right.

DANO WEIR: Right.

DANO WEIR: I'm just agreeing that for you. Right. I just want the taco. Yeah.

ERICA KNIESS: I'm so glad. Yeah. I'm glad you said that because that was our whole, our entire goal. How many do you are? Just you don't have to be anything different than you are walking through that door. We got you.

DANO WEIR: Right, right, right.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah. And it's important. You know, the whole family aspect for us is important because I'll give you a quick little story. We were in France a couple of weeks ago and we went into this restaurant and it wasn't a Michelin starred restaurant, but it was a, it was a well run.

TODD KNIESS: Restaurant by a famous chef alan ducas and we we go in to sit down it wasn't cheap but we got a four-year-old with us right and that four-year-old ate in provence at two Michelin starred restaurants and and nobody had a problem right we sit down and i see this woman a couple tables down and she's looking at her husband and oh he shouldn't be here i'm like how how how do you expect to you said that in English or French In English.

TODD KNIESS: She was an American woman. And I said, how do you expect to teach the child what food is all about and restaurants and what they're for if they don't go? Now, we're very good and proactive about taking them out, but we welcome kids. And in my bistro, I was always pro-kid. And if the kid was acting up, I'd go out and pick them up and bring them back to the kitchen or walk them around because you want the children.

DANO WEIR: To understand what it's all about right you can't so we're we're definitely family oriented and families need a place to go i mean really families or not i mean it's all value community and service those are our things yep we've talked about Acme Burger i've described the experience i've described the atmosphere but i want you Todd to explain the Burger because we have viewers and listeners our viewers are going to be able to see it we're going to make for his media is going to make that magic happen on the screen okay for our Apple Podcasts and our Spotify listeners describe the quintessential Acme Burger what is it so yeah so the Burger is is pretty straightforward it's it's just it's basically a smash Burger we do quarter pound we do Burger means what?

TODD KNIESS: So we take a ball of meat, right? And we make sure it's packed firm. We put it on the griddle and we press it down with a spatula. And it basically, you get a nice thin Burger. And what you're really doing is making sure you're getting a good caramelization on the meat. The flavor comes from the caramelization, right? So you want to make sure you caramelize it well. We season it with our house seasoning mix.

TODD KNIESS: And salt and pepper we use kosher salt two or three minutes on one side a minute on the other side it should have a touch of pink still left in it we want all the juices there once you smash it you don't touch it until you flip it you get the caramelization add your toppings it goes on a bun i think the bun is super important we work with Franco-American bakery they do a bun for us that It is incredible.

TODD KNIESS: And, I worked with Paul in the beginning on that and, simple lettuce, tomato. I thought about doing iceberg, but I really liked the, the leaf lettuce, sliced tomato, and then the awesome sauce. So people say, well, where'd the awesome sauce came from? You know, I kind of just messed around with it.

ERICA KNIESS: Basted it. Yeah.

TODD KNIESS: And it's, it's a thousand Island that's been spiced up.

ERICA KNIESS: Base. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's better though.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah. And we, we make everything. You know, we make all our soups, all our sauces, all our dressings, all our pickles, our pickled vegetables. So it's not overthought. The other thing we do is we toast the bun on both sides. So you get a little toast on the top side. I think that makes a difference. And the other thing is getting it as soon as it's ready.

TODD KNIESS: I never understood why somebody would door dash a Burger.

TODD KNIESS: Right? Sorry, being a dash. Yeah, not to be.

ERICA KNIESS: Or any other third-party delivery. Not to be specific.

TODD KNIESS: But burgers, you know, they're great for to-go, but...

DANO WEIR: There's a window.

ERICA KNIESS: Everything's a better friend.

TODD KNIESS: All food, right? Chinese food, I think, travels best.

ERICA KNIESS: Personally. Right, I agree with that. It's tough because you order through any of those services, and let's say your driver has three other stops, and you don't get your food for 45 minutes.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah.

ERICA KNIESS: And then you get the one star because it's cold, and it's, you know, this and that. So it's tough. We always say, come enjoy it. Come in if you can.

TODD KNIESS: And fries are best right off the fire.

ERICA KNIESS: Not always possible.

TODD KNIESS: That's the other thing. We use rice bran oil in our fryer, which for me is the...

DANO WEIR: Say that again?

TODD KNIESS: Rice bran oil.

DANO WEIR: Is that unique?

TODD KNIESS: Yes. Well, yeah. Most people use soybean oil or canola oil or peanut oil. The cheap oils.

ERICA KNIESS: Yeah. It is the healthiest option of the frying oils with the exception of, and the debate of, beef tallow. However, you use beef tallow, you render everything you serve as non-vegetarian. And that knocks out a lot of our audience. And so we can't do that.

TODD KNIESS: But the rice bran oil has a higher heat temperature.

ERICA KNIESS: Easier to digest. Yeah.

TODD KNIESS: So you get a night, the smoke point on is higher than all the other oils because it's a cleaner oil. I started using it 25 years ago because it was cheap, right? I didn't realize the benefits of it. And so I started using it when it was cheap. Now it's probably the most expensive oil. But I can't go back because when you eat our French fries, you don't get that.

ERICA KNIESS: Oil taste.

TODD KNIESS: Oral afterwards, you know, you have a gut bomb.

DANO WEIR: Yeah.

TODD KNIESS: And a lot of that is because of the oil. So we do little stuff here and there that I think makes the food better.

TODD KNIESS: But, you know, for us, it's.

ERICA KNIESS: Not only tastes better, but better for you. Better for you. And you're eating burgers and fries. So, you know.

TODD KNIESS: That's why the pickles are there, too. Right.

ERICA KNIESS: Because you've got to have the vinegar. The vinegar helps with the digestion as well. Right.

DANO WEIR: So we've got the expensive oil. We've got Franco-American bun.

TODD KNIESS: Yes.

DANO WEIR: We've got Sonoma Mountain Beef option. Oh, yeah. Kraus family creamery soft serve.

ERICA KNIESS: The best.

DANO WEIR: So good. Yeah. You're a restaurateur. Could you not be making more money? Could you not be more profitable if you were using way cheaper stuff?

ERICA KNIESS: We could, but it would fall out of, it would fall out.

ERICA KNIESS: Of the model that we have community is a huge part of who we are and that falls in you know that's in so many faces with donations like we've donated over 80 000 since we've opened to i can't even tell you how many dine-in donates event donations ffa like all kinds of things the purpose of having these community products is also to keep these dollars in the community So, sure, we could make more doing it with less, but that doesn't really fit that model we have of the recycling.

ERICA KNIESS: You know, think of it like as the recycling arrows where they give to us and we give back and it goes and it goes and it goes. And it is attractive. It is marketable to have products like that, like Point Reyes Blue Cheese or like the, you know, Bodega Bay Fish. Right. They are better.

TODD KNIESS: Right. So. You have to invest in your customers too, right? You want your customers, you want your first time customer to be a long time regular. And if they, you know, people aren't stupid. They'll know if they come in the first time and then the next time they come in and it's completely different, they're going to let you know. Right.

TODD KNIESS: So you have to remain consistent. If you're going to start with quality, you got to continue with quality. And yes, prices do go up and things like that. But you know, there's a balance. There's a balance. And you do have to keep your costs in line. There's no doubt about it. And a lot of that we talk about every week. We're like that.

TODD KNIESS: Every week we go over the P&L and we talk about making sure we're doing all the things we're supposed to be doing.

TODD KNIESS: But we pass those savings on to our customer. And the other thing that we do that most companies don't do is we give our staff a cut of the profits every year.

TODD KNIESS: And that is another thing, you know, we invest in, our biggest investment is in our staff.

ERICA KNIESS: They are the face of our brand.

TODD KNIESS: And we want them to share in our profitability because they're the ones who are on the front lines doing it every day. So we want them to know that their actions or lack of actions are going to affect their bottom line. Right? I don't want employees. I want owners. I want people to feel like they have a stake.

TODD KNIESS: So that was a big thing for me coming up in the restaurant business is, you know, I had one guy, I won't say his name, but he offered me stock options in the company. I'm like, stock options? I help you build this company. Why don't you give me some stock in the company? Right?

TODD KNIESS: So it's important that, you know, you also invest in your employees.

ERICA KNIESS: That recycling symbol applies to them as well. Because they could go work anywhere. So we really do our best to invest in them and keep the ball rolling in that regard.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah, and we could pay them less and we could not do those things, but it's expensive to hire new people every year and not take care of them. It ends up costing you more.

ERICA KNIESS: And we do the shared tip pool. Which helps everybody.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah, that's another big thing.

ERICA KNIESS: Which makes everybody feel more like everything they do matters towards that end product for the customer. The kitchen, the front of house, they're all one team working towards one goal. And they all get a piece of that pie. So it helps.

TODD KNIESS: And each restaurant, I mean, it's between $7 and $10 an hour. Tips go to the staff, to everybody. Wow. Not the managers, but the regular staff.

ERICA KNIESS: Hourly.

TODD KNIESS: Hourly staff. So, uh... So that's important.

DANO WEIR: Well, I'm not going to ask you to take your books out, but you've gone from one location to soon to be five. So Cotati and then Santa Rosa, two in Petaluma. It's going to be a fifth one that we're sitting in in Santa Rosa now. So clearly this is working. Clearly you've been successful. What is the future? What is your dream?

DANO WEIR: I'm already getting an entrepreneur thing from you. I'm seeing he's an ideas guy. Is this a franchise model someday with an actor? Me in every suburban community and what the west coast is this you're growing it to sell it is that what what do you what do you want to see in 15 20 years we're discussing that we're quite happy being in Sonoma County and.

TODD KNIESS: It certainly is franchisable we haven't made that yet i i we do have a franchise starting in Connecticut i have a gentleman that I went to high school with. He went to Johnson and Wales. I went to CIA. We worked together in New Orleans.

DANO WEIR: The Culinary Institute Of America. Right. There's another CIA just so you know.

TODD KNIESS: So he's opening one, an Acme Burger.

TODD KNIESS: Make a long story short, he worked for the same company I worked for when I opened up the credit union. I only lasted three months. He was with them for like 12 years.

ERICA KNIESS: He was very sassy.

TODD KNIESS: Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

TODD KNIESS: So they fired him after being there 12 years. And the reason they fired him is because he's making too much money. So that's what they do. That's what the big corporations do to you. So I said to him, I said, Chris, what are you doing, man?

TODD KNIESS: I said, what are you going to do? He said, well, I'm just, you know, I got to travel further and I got to find something closer to New York City. I said, why are you doing that? I said, why don't you start an Acme Burger?

TODD KNIESS: And he thought about it, and then we talked some more, and I said, you know, we'll do a franchise model. We'll give you everything you need, and, you know, we'll waive all the fees.

DANO WEIR: So it's not five locations. It'll be six.

TODD KNIESS: Hopefully by September.

ERICA KNIESS: So the Connecticut location is not connected to us. We're not going to share, and, like, this is kind of his own venture. He's using our concept. And we're doing that for legal reasons because we have copyrights and things like that so we're giving him legal permission to do that just to keep others from doing it for nothing and they'll be they've got a contract going but this is a friend to friend sort of it's kind of like.

TODD KNIESS: I don't think we want to franchise to somebody we don't know right it's our brand pretty connected to it So You know, it might be in the future. We have a lot of people that work for us who are very entrepreneurial. And maybe, you know, they want to go to Marin and do a franchise in Marin. Or somebody wants to go to Napa. Somebody wants to go up north. That might work.

ERICA KNIESS: So all that said, it's possible, right? We're not there.

TODD KNIESS: We're pretty happy, I think, here with Five. We have a new project we're working on that hopefully will be open by next spring sometime.

ERICA KNIESS: Different concept.

TODD KNIESS: And completely different concept. I'm kind of getting back to my roots. Remember I said you either go fast casual, you go super high end? This is going to be super high end. Very small. Yeah. So we'll see. So we have a lot of stuff going on. We've got a four-year-old who kicks our butt every day. And five is good.

TODD KNIESS: We don't want to conquer the world.

ERICA KNIESS: We just want to build all the restaurants. We're home. It feels good here. It feels like we're doing. Something that we can feel and see and touch. And so I think we're, we're pretty, connected with that, with not wanting to get so big that we lose it. We just, you know, the reins go to someone else. We're still here. We want to stay that way.

DANO WEIR: Well, congratulations on all the success. Thank you for all of the delicious food.

DANO WEIR: All right. And thank you so much for being on It's All Money today. My name is Dan Weir. I'm the marketing director for Sonoma Wealth Advisors. We power the show. We are a financial advisor here in Sonoma County. We help individuals and families with financial planning and more.

DANO WEIR: You can learn more about us at SonomaWealth. Com. If this is your first time checking out one of our episodes, please subscribe wherever you are, whether it's YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you're a Sonoma Wealth client or fan and you want to learn about Acme Burger, acmeburger.co.

DANO WEIR: They're also all over social media and in Petaluma, Santa Rosa, and Cotati. And Erica and Todd, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate it. I thought we were going to talk about crypto or something. Next time. Next time. Can I have a Burger with Bitcoin? Yeah, but soon.

DANO WEIR: All right. I'm hungry. Thanks for watching and listening to It's All Money. We hope today's episode shared information to increase your financial confidence. Now is the time in the show for the voiceover with a bunch of words at the end. Listen close though, you might find out something you didn't know. It's All Money is powered by Sonoma Wealth Advisors.

DANO WEIR: Sonoma Wealth Advisors helps individuals and families in Northern California and across the country with building, managing, and sustaining well. Sonoma Wealth is a comprehensive, holistic finance solution offering financial planning, asset management, tax planning, 401k solutions, and appropriate insurance.

DANO WEIR: Take our free wealth analysis now at SonomaWealth. Com. If you haven't already, like and subscribe to It's All Money on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. It's All Money features human hosts, musicians, editors, video crew, and voiceover talent. Video production by Forz Media in Roanoke Park, California. Online at forzmedia.com.

DANO WEIR: Music by Neon Beach, Sparkle Rising on Soundstripe. Voice over by me, Dano. Thank you for listening to the very end. We appreciate diligent viewers and listeners. Fermata Advisors LLC is registered as an investment advisor with the SEC and only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or is excluded or exempted.

DANO WEIR: From registration requirements. This content was produced by Fermata Advisors, LLC, DBA Sonoma Wealth Advisors, DBA Fermata 401K, DBA Fermata Tax. The opinions expressed by Fermata Advisors, LLC on this show are their own. Information presented on this program is believed to be factual and up-to-date, but we do not guarantee its accuracy and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed.

DANO WEIR: Discussions and answers to questions do not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice, but are limited to the dissemination of general information. A professional advisor should be consulted before implementing any of the options presented.

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