Harold Walters is the CEO and Co-founder of Shootz, a growing Hawaiian fast-casual brand in southern California. Prior to co-founding Shootz, Harold founded and operated multiple 6 and 7 figure ecommerce brands, a direct response marketing agency, and short term rental business. His previous experience as a software developer combined with his business experience makes him a diverse individual with the capacity to scale his efforts into the quickly-growing, technology backed fast-casual restaurant industry.

Here are a few highlights from this episode:

Featured takeaway: Help employees reach their dreams.

“One of our company’s cultural principles is “Have a dream.”

Whenever we are in the hiring process, or whenever we do a one on one or have an evaluation, we always ask that question: what’s your dream? And the reason why is because I don’t want someone to necessarily be working for us for the sake of working for us…

I want to help them be a better person, so that they can reach their dream.“

What is the most important aspect of the guest experience?

“Matching what their expectations are… I always want there to be a consistency with what the customer is expecting and what we deliver.”

What are some successful tactics you’ve seen or tried lately?

“We have a social media team that creates content reels for us primarily. So we take all of those reels, and then we just continue to run [paid] campaigns each month using those reels.”

Who deserves an Ovation in the restaurant industry?

Andy Nguyen of Bored & Hungry, and Jim Bitticks of Dave’s Hot Chicken.