Sonja Brueuer (00:00):

We have the ability to pick out those diamonds in the rough and shine 'em a little bit so that they sparkle to be the hammer people. We call it being hammered. It's kind of a little hammer time.

Lola Conway (00:11):

That's so good.

Sonja Brueuer (00:12):

Yeah.

Lola Conway (00:12):

I'll do the dance with you anytime.

Sonja Brueuer (00:14):

Want gold lame pants? I had them in high

Lola Conway (00:15):

School. Yeah, I had purple. Yeah. Purple hammer pants. Yeah, exactly. This is my friend Sonya from Hamra, and they own Panera Breads and Wendy's and Noodles. You got it. Yeah,

Sonja Brueuer (00:37):

You got it.

Lola Conway (00:38):

You've got so many stores.

Sonja Brueuer (00:39):

We have 211 states.

Lola Conway (00:42):

211.

Sonja Brueuer (00:44):

211 states. 211 states. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is my friend Lola. Hi. And when I say her name, I want to go into the kink song.

Lola Conway (00:54):

Lola. It's funny. I walk like a woman and talk like a

Sonja Brueuer (00:57):

Man. Funnily enough. It's perfect. So Lola is the culture, the culture of Hattie Bees. She is all about her people and making sure that they're having fun with their guests. And so she's the perfect person for that role.

Lola Conway (01:15):

Thank you so much. Yeah. I'm very, very

Sonja Brueuer (01:17):

Lucky. You're all about the culture.

Lola Conway (01:19):

Yeah, well, taking care of people. We put the hospital in hospitality hospital. Yeah. That's pretty funny. You got to take care of people. That's right. Yeah. We're lucky and we're very, very grateful to help represent Nashville. And that in the chicken, in the chicken, the hot chicken, the traditional dish going back a hundred years, started with princes and Boltons and Helens in the last 15 years. It's just exploded across the country and we're just in the backseat of a rocket.

Sonja Brueuer (01:47):

I think that Charlie Sheen did it for chicken winter, winter chicken dinner. I think he was the one that actually made chicken famous. Well,

Lola Conway (01:54):

He's got tiger blood.

Sonja Brueuer (01:55):

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So since you are culture at Hattie Bees, tell me what is Nashville Hot Chicken? I hear about this, but I haven't experienced it.

Lola Conway (02:06):

Right. It's been on everybody's lips, spicy lips for the past 10 years, but it goes back much further than that. Philadelphia has the cheese steaks and Chicago has the deep dish. Kansas City has barbecue, has the city barbecue. So Nashville Hot chicken going back about a hundred years. There's an urban legend. Thornton Prince owned a restaurant back in the day.

Sonja Brueuer (02:28):

Was he a prince?

Lola Conway (02:30):

That was his last name. Thornton Prince, a prince of chicken maybe. And he came home late one night to his Paramore girlfriend or a wife, and he came home pretty late and he had requested some food and so she made it for him,

Lola Conway (02:47):

But

Lola Conway (02:47):

She served him a revenge dish because it was loaded with cayenne pepper and he loved it. So it kind of backfired because he put it on the menu apparently at his restaurant.

Lola Conway (02:58):

And

Lola Conway (02:59):

Then generations later, the Prince family opened up some restaurants and had served hot chicken and it was very, very popular and it just continued to grow with all these different incarnations. And so the Hattie B's family, the Bishop family, they grew up in the restaurant business, Morrison's cafeteria, which was a meat and three. And then they opened up their own meat and three, and they put Nashville hot chicken on the menu because they grew up eating it and they loved it so much. And all of the locals that would come into the meat and three would rave over it would sell out all the time, the revolving proteins. And they decided to do a little hot chicken spot in 2012. And now here we are, 14 locations, 12 years later, many more coming. So we're really excited to just celebrate the community love on people. We say we're a hot chicken restaurant, but we're not really in the chicken business. We're in the people business. And so the chicken is just the vehicle for the love.

Sonja Brueuer (04:08):

We have the same slogan,

Lola Conway (04:10):

Very much. So tell me about how long you've been

Sonja Brueuer (04:13):

With Hammer. Hammer. So I've been with Hammer for over 20 years and Human Resources, SVP of hr. And with us, it's all about culture too.

Lola Conway (04:27):

Yeah, it was a family owned business. Hammer was a person still

Sonja Brueuer (04:29):

Our family owned. So Sam Hammer was our owner. Sam just passed in August. He was like Dad, 92 years old, had a great life. His son is actually our CEO. So the tradition goes on and I feel like his sister. So it's very family owned and we feel family owned in everything that we do. So we say the same thing. Our vessel is burgers, bagels, and noodles. And we're always like, are you a burger? Are you a bagel or are you a noodle? And it's really about,

Lola Conway (04:57):

There's no wrong answer there either,

Sonja Brueuer (04:58):

Right? Maybe altogether, who knows? But we really just want to make sure that we're making a difference in our communities and to the people that work for us, because then that grows and then it grows and grows. And so we don't look at profit as just lining somebody's pockets. We look at profit to build the next restaurant, to make the next group of people's lives better

Lola Conway (05:24):

And

Sonja Brueuer (05:24):

Careers and

Lola Conway (05:24):

Give them that career growth.

Sonja Brueuer (05:25):

Absolutely.

Lola Conway (05:26):

Absolutely. That pipeline.

Sonja Brueuer (05:27):

Yeah.

Lola Conway (05:28):

So what are the conditions right now, macro, economic, environmental, that are affecting recruiting for you and your company right

Sonja Brueuer (05:38):

Now? So I will say that after the pandemic life was crazy every other day it was a new salary. Someone down the road was offering a dollar more. So it was crazy time. I feel like we've really leveled off

Lola Conway (05:53):

And

Sonja Brueuer (05:54):

The world has calmed down a little bit with that.

Lola Conway (05:57):

Really? Where are you living?

Sonja Brueuer (05:58):

Yeah, Springfield, Missouri. There. I'm going. And so as far as staffing goes, and so we're not having to be the newest, the greatest in keeping up with the Joneses on the corner, which has been very good. Last year alone in paradox, we had about 99,000 applicants come in and we hired 6,600. So we've got more applicants right now than what we actually need. And that's a celebration because that wasn't the case in 20 20, 20 21 and 2023. So 2024 was our turning year. And so right now after Covid, we were looking at quantity rather than quality. And so now we're looking at quality because we have the ability to be picky. We have the ability to pick out those diamonds in the rough and shine 'em a little bit so that they sparkle to be the hammer people. We call it being hammered. It's kind of a little hammer time.

Lola Conway (06:56):

That's so good.

Sonja Brueuer (06:57):

Yeah.

Lola Conway (06:58):

I'll do the dance with you anytime.

Sonja Brueuer (06:59):

Want gold lame pants? I had them in high school. Yeah, I had purple.

Lola Conway (07:03):

Purple hammer pants.

Sonja Brueuer (07:04):

Yeah, exactly. So for us, it's really just getting quality. And we know that internal promotes 70% of our population comes internal.

Lola Conway (07:15):

So

Sonja Brueuer (07:15):

We don't just look at the great managers, we look at what can they become. So it's really identifying talent as well, but it's that quality instead of

Lola Conway (07:26):

Quantity. How about you?

Sonja Brueuer (07:30):

Besides growing? Growing, and

Lola Conway (07:31):

Besides growing and growing, I mean, honestly, it's scaling all of our systems right now. We have a lot of duct tape and WD 40 because we were a garage band. There was five of us eight years ago in the office, and now there's 30 of us. And so we're starting to find our lanes. We're starting to pinpoint the pain points and actually be more strategic and creative and not just block and tackle every day

(07:59):

Because we're so grateful that there's sometimes a thousand people walking through our doors every day. And our ops teams just constantly take a beating HR customer service. We're constantly answering questions and Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill just to have it roll back down the next day. Now what we are focusing on is streamlining our employee experience from the beginning, from the first point of contact, and making sure that we are developing folks, letting them know about our four pillars and our culture and what's really truly important to us. And finding people that love people. We love people, care about people and also take care of themselves. We do a lot of work just coaching and supporting and connecting people with aid organizations. If they need some personal issues, we can provide them with a job and a great environment. But there's a lot of things amongst this workforce that they have a lot of

Lola Conway (09:04):

Struggles.

Lola Conway (09:05):

And so we need to be cognizant of that and help them to grow and mature and love others because that's going to make them feel good. So yeah, I think it's the technical side, streamlining all of those components to make sure everything's integrated, but it's also the personal side and taking care of folks.

Sonja Brueuer (09:27):

When I first started at Hammer, I would call it more ma and pa. And then one day we were just this bigger company with a little under 8,000 employees, and there were those

Lola Conway (09:40):

Struggles. Great. It was that

Sonja Brueuer (09:42):

Growing pains where you're like, okay, I knew how to do this, but how do I do this? And what do I need in order to do this?

Lola Conway (09:50):

How do you keep that culture when you expand? So because that's what we're so scared

Sonja Brueuer (09:53):

Of.

Lola Conway (09:53):

All of our managers are like, oh, this is great, but we don't want this to change.

Sonja Brueuer (09:57):

So

Lola Conway (09:57):

If you could speak a little bit about

Sonja Brueuer (09:59):

How

Lola Conway (09:59):

You maintain that.

Sonja Brueuer (10:01):

It has to be at your core, and it has to obviously come from the top and everyone has to believe it. So hammer is actually a Lebanese word and it means red. We have this funny saying that I bleed red, I bleed hammer. If you have enough people that are bleeding your company, the culture will come. If you build it, they will come. And if you start to offer programs, I think you and I talked about our employee assistance program that we actually in 13 years, it's a 5 0 1 C.

Lola Conway (10:37):

Great.

Sonja Brueuer (10:38):

And we actually get people out of homelessness and give them places to live. We get people out of domestic abuse situations and give them a fresh start. We pay first month rent, last month rent. We do security deposits.

Lola Conway (10:50):

You also work with formerly incarcerated populations. We do. It's incredible. We've also done that and want to expand that program.

Sonja Brueuer (11:01):

We've all messed up. It's just some people were caught and some people weren't. Right. And that's a lot of times the difference. That's right. And the restaurant world is a great place for them to get to

Lola Conway (11:12):

Rebuild.

Sonja Brueuer (11:12):

Absolutely. To get that new life. Or for a kid that doesn't maybe want to go to college, doesn't know where their life is, but sees, Hey, I'm really good at this. So I've seen crew members start 20 years. We've seen crew members start that have made it all the way up to shift manager, assistant manager, general manager, district manager, and they're all growns up. It's like moms

Lola Conway (11:39):

And they're dipping along the way. Absolutely. They're taking, sometimes you take a step back to take two steps forward. You're going to learn by your mistakes. And it's really important, not you could stay with us for two years, you could stay with us for 20 years, but while you're here, hopefully, not only do we teach you those practical skills of how to operate in the restaurant business, but also we're teaching you practical skills for being a kind human and being kind to yourself and being an integral part of the community.

Sonja Brueuer (12:09):

And it's all about communication. Everything breaks down in communication.

Lola Conway (12:14):

Ask for what you need. Don't just think it and don't believe all the stories you tell yourself.

Sonja Brueuer (12:19):

Yeah, exactly. You'll get stuck in your head and you create stories, and I call it sitting and spinning. So you got to get out there and actually change the record and actually speak what you want.

Lola Conway (12:28):

How bees is growing. We've got 30 locations coming in the next five years or so. We're a family owned company. We're known for our culture. We want to be the company that people want to work for because we have such incredible benefits and we take care of our folks. But you've scaled over the years. What's that playbook for you?

Sonja Brueuer (12:51):

It's scary because you don't want to lose it, that magic. And sometimes you can't identify the magic. So in one year, we grew by 60 locations through

Lola Conway (13:03):

One year. Yeah.

Sonja Brueuer (13:04):

It was crazy. It was a crazy year. But

Lola Conway (13:06):

You don't have any gray hair.

Sonja Brueuer (13:08):

Yeah. That is not natural. Thank you very much. But it was important for us. In 2013, our founder said, we need to get our charter. Your charter is like your mission statement. That's who you are today and who you're going to be tomorrow. And there's a lot of companies out there that is hanging on the wall. It sounds good. So he was a visionary and he actually had 50 employees that were outspoken. Yes. I was in the room that actually got together with an outside firm to teach us how to write our charter.

Lola Conway (13:42):

That's amazing.

Sonja Brueuer (13:42):

Because I'm HR and we're a restaurant. I don't know how to write a charter. And so we worked with this group for months and months and months, and it really was what we said it was. And so now you

Lola Conway (13:53):

Got the buy-in from all the people.

Sonja Brueuer (13:55):

Absolutely.

Lola Conway (13:55):

And now you bleed hammer

Sonja Brueuer (13:57):

100%. And the neat thing is, is that while we were going through the process, I mean I wanted to kill people in the room. We had to agree on every single word that went in the document, humans. And it was important to us. We were all bleeding hammer at that time. But at the end, we were crying, we were high fiving. And before every meeting, before anything we do, we read the charter. Wow. Because as long as we're standing in the charter, the charter will guide

Lola Conway (14:26):

Us. I've always said that if we were a cult, we'd be a cult of chicken and kindness. But there's not one leader. We're all leaders. But that's it. You have to constantly remind yourself of your four pillars or your charter.

Sonja Brueuer (14:42):

You have to steer the boat in the same direction. That's right.

Lola Conway (14:44):

And if you want someone to do something, you just repeat a message. You want to learn something, you have to repeat it over and over again. So if that's your values, then share them and repeat them and make sure that they know them and share them.

Sonja Brueuer (14:57):

Our number one core value is fun.

Lola Conway (15:00):

That's great.

Sonja Brueuer (15:01):

And it was our CEO, my camera that said, if fun is not one of our core values, then I'm going home right

Lola Conway (15:07):

Now. That's so much fun. Our first foundational pillar is smile and hustle.

Sonja Brueuer (15:11):

Oh, fun.

Lola Conway (15:11):

So be kind and work hard, be dependable, and then

Sonja Brueuer (15:16):

Get to Yes. I think we're very similar in our rooted culture and that family. And we just want, this is in our

Lola Conway (15:24):

Charter.

Sonja Brueuer (15:25):

We want people to live a life they love. And I've actually helped people write resumes for other jobs.

Lola Conway (15:31):

That's right.

Sonja Brueuer (15:32):

Because

Lola Conway (15:33):

We want you to be passionate and follow your passion while you're with us. Please have fun. Enjoy yourself. Work hard, do the thing. And then go and live your

Sonja Brueuer (15:41):

Life. Because I promoted them to guest at that point.

Lola Conway (15:45):

We've said that before.

Sonja Brueuer (15:46):

You and I are so much.

Lola Conway (15:47):

I know. I love us. We're friends. Thank you so much for talking with me. Thank you. I want a

Sonja Brueuer (15:54):

Fern right here

Lola Conway (15:56):

Between two ferns. Yes. I

Sonja Brueuer (15:57):

Want a fern.

Lola Conway (15:58):

Yeah.

Sonja Brueuer (15:59):

Yeah. That would be really fun.

Lola Conway (16:01):

And Zach Hanaki, he's cool too.

Sonja Brueuer (16:02):

Yeah. Or maybe a fig tree. We'll do our own.

Lola Conway (16:05):

Yeah. Well, thank you. And I can't wait to have another conversation

Sonja Brueuer (16:09):

With you. Yeah. And I'll help you with your own hero fund because that is, the charter is the foundation. The emergency fund is actually the tree.

Lola Conway (16:24):

Yeah. It's going to be so important. And I'm grateful. I'm going to be grateful for all your advice. I'll every step of the way. Thank you.

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