For many families, the weekly calendar is overflowing. Practices, games, lessons, birthday parties, school events, and the logistics that come with all of it. The last thing most parents want is “one more activity.”

What they do want is something much harder to find. They want experiences that help their kids become more confident, more connected, and more grounded in who they are. They want environments where their children are not just entertained for an hour, but slowly shaped by community, challenge, and care.

On The Bliss Business Podcast, we sat down with Michael Browning Jr., CEO and Founder of Unleashed Brands, a platform of youth enrichment companies that help kids learn, play, and grow. From a single trampoline park in Texas to a portfolio that now serves around twenty million kids a year, Michael has spent his career designing spaces where kids and families feel seen, safe, and inspired. His story offers a powerful playbook for any leader who wants to move beyond transactions and build real community.

Community Is Not A Slogan

In many brands, “community” shows up as a hashtag, a tagline, or a campaign theme. For Michael, community is not a marketing word. It is something you can see, hear, and feel in the way a location operates.

He talks about the smallest moments as the real foundation. How a child is greeted at check in. Whether staff members know names and remember faces. Whether parents feel like the business is a lighthouse for families in that neighborhood, not just a venue that processes payments.

Community, in this view, is built by repetition and reliability. Families come back because they trust that every time they walk in, their kids will be seen, encouraged, and invited to stretch beyond their comfort zone. It is not the attractions alone that build loyalty. It is the pattern of being welcomed and cared for.

Parents Are Not Buying More Activity

One of Michael’s most honest observations is that parents are not out shopping for more things to put on the calendar.

He describes his own life as a father of three. Most nights feel like driving for a ride share service, shuttling kids between commitments. Weekends are filled with sports and events. Time is already stretched thin.

What families are actually buying is the outcome of who their kids become in those environments. They want to see anxiety turn into confidence. They want their children to build social skills, resilience, and a sense of belonging.

That shift changes how you design an experience. Safety becomes table stakes. From there, the focus moves to growth and joy. Are kids walking out taller than when they walked in. Are they building friendships, not just burning energy. Are parents seeing character traits develop, not just skills.

When a business organizes around outcomes instead of activities, it starts making different decisions about staffing, training, and program design.

Systems That Make Community Repeatable

It is one thing to create a special experience in a single location. It is another to repeat that experience across hundreds or thousands of sites.

Michael is blunt about this. Community does not scale on good intentions. It scales through systems that make the right behaviors the default.

That means investing seriously in:

• Training that covers everything from how to call a parent before a party, to how to greet an anxious child, to how to end a session on a high note.
• Clear brand standards for safety, cleanliness, staffing, and service.
• Playbooks for handling upset guests in ways that protect dignity while making things right.

He uses a simple metaphor to keep the team focused. In bowling, if you hit the lead pin correctly, the rest tend to fall. In his world, the lead pin is the customer. When the customer wins, operators win. When operators win, the platform wins. Systems are designed to keep everyone focused on that lead pin.

Using Data Without Losing The Human Story

In a system that serves millions of families, instinct alone is not enough. Michael leans heavily on data and feedback loops, but he refuses to let numbers become the whole story.

Every visit is an opportunity to ask structured questions. How did the check in feel. Was the environment clean. Did the curriculum or service deliver on expectations. Would you refer us to a friend. Those responses feed into daily dashboards that show revenue, satisfaction scores, and patterns across brands.

This is where he sees value in modern tools. AI can help sift through hundreds of thousands of comments, find themes, and surface sentiment that might not be obvious from raw scores. Calls can be transcribed and analyzed to understand what guests are really saying.

But data is always in service of a deeper goal. It is there to sharpen coaching, refine training, and improve experiences, not to reduce people to metrics. The team gathers weekly to “review the film” of how they played last week and decide how to improve. Activity is not confused with achievement. Only progress on the true lead pins counts as a win.

Scaling Empathy Across A Franchise

A core question in any growing organization is whether empathy can truly scale. It is relatively easy to care deeply about a small group of customers you know personally. It is much harder when you are working across fifteen hundred locations and a billion dollars in systemwide revenue.

Michael’s answer is clear. Empathy can scale, but never by accident.

First, you hire for heart. If someone does not enjoy working with kids and young adults, they are not a fit, no matter how strong their resume looks. The business exists to steward today’s kids, who will become tomorrow’s leaders. That is not a neutral responsibility.

Second, you tell stories relentlessly. Every kid has a name, and every name carries a story. A divorced parent trying to rebuild connection. A family new to town. A child celebrating straight As. A shy kid who climbs to the top of the wall for the first time.

Leaders at Unleashed Brands ask staff to share these stories at the end of shifts. They surface moments where an anxious child left with a new sense of courage, or where a parent was moved to tears by what their child accomplished. Those stories circulate across the system, making empathy contagious and reminding everyone why the details matter.

Empathy, in that context, becomes a discipline. It is reinforced by rituals, language, and recognition, not left to personal preference.

Why In-Person Experiences Will Matter More In An AI World

Michael also pays close attention to the broader cultural context. Technology is not going away. Kids are growing up with more screens, more digital connections, and more information than any previous generation.

At the same time, he points to a growing phenomenon often described as connected loneliness. People are linked to more contacts online than ever, yet many feel more isolated, not less. Followership and true community are not the same thing.

In that environment, in-person youth enrichment becomes even more critical.

The role of technology, in his view, is to remove friction, not replace human experience. Seamless booking, faster check in, smarter staffing, and personalized progression can all be enhanced by tech. But goggles and algorithms cannot replace the feeling of being known by name, cheered on by a coach, or welcomed into a group of peers.

Human beings are wired for embodied connection. The brands that will stand out in an AI driven world are those that use technology as a tool while fiercely protecting the moments where people move, play, and grow together.

Key Takeaways

• Community Requires Design, Not Slogans
  Real community emerges from consistent behaviors, thoughtful environments, and leaders who treat every visit as an opportunity to build trust.
• Parents Buy Outcomes, Not Activities
  Families are not looking for more busyness. They invest in places that help their kids become more confident, connected, and resilient.
• Systems Are The Backbone Of Belonging
  Training, standards, and playbooks are what make care repeatable across locations. Without them, community collapses under the weight of scale.
• Data Works Best When It Serves Stories
  Numbers and sentiment analysis can guide improvements, but they should always point back to human stories, not replace them.
• Empathy Can Scale, But Only Intentionally
  Hiring for heart, sharing real stories, and reinforcing purpose in daily rituals are essential to keeping empathy alive in large systems.
• Physical Spaces Are The Antidote To Connected Loneliness
  In a world of constant digital connection, kids and families hunger for real places where they can move, be known, and belong.

Final Thoughts

Building youth enrichment businesses is not just about filling time slots or stacking revenue. It is about shaping the environments where kids discover who they are, where parents find support, and where communities quietly take root around shared experiences.

Michael Browning Jr.’s work with Unleashed Brands is a reminder that even at significant scale, it is still possible to center human connection, empathy, and purpose. In fact, those elements might be the only true differentiators that last.

Check out our full conversation with Michael Browning Jr. on The Bliss Business Podcast.

Originally Featured on The Bliss Business Podcast Blog

For a long time, restaurant performance was framed almost entirely through numbers: comp sales, traffic counts, ticket averages. If the dashboard looked healthy, the business was considered healthy.

That equation is cracking.

Guests are eating differently. Technology is reshaping how orders appear and how hospitality is delivered. New health trends are changing how often people eat, not just where they eat. Inside the four walls, teams are carrying more pressure in thinner margin environments. In that world, more data and more process are not enough.

Emotional intelligence is the missing layer that turns those inputs into a culture where people stay, grow, and perform. It is the difference between a brand that survives disruption and one that uses it to build deeper loyalty.

On The Bliss Business Podcast, we sat down with Kelly Roddy, CEO of WOWorks, the parent company behind six better for you restaurant brands, including Saladworks, Frutta Bowls, Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh, The Simple Greek, Barberitos, and Z!Eats. Kelly has led major brands through reinvention, guided franchisees through intense headwinds, and built a platform focused on helping guests live healthier lives with clean, nutrient dense food. His leadership approach offers a playbook for how emotional intelligence can operate at scale.

Emotional Intelligence Is Not A Soft Skill

Early in the episode, Stephen cites research showing leaders with high emotional intelligence see significant gains in employee engagement and team performance. Kelly does not treat that as a nice side benefit. For him, emotional intelligence is central to how a multi brand platform functions.

In his world, emotional intelligence shows up in three practical ways:

• Staying emotionally regulated when the environment is noisy, so leaders can be a calm anchor.
• Connecting deeply with franchisees and operators who have put their life savings into the brand.
• Holding a long view that remembers there is always some macro crisis, and that the work is to focus the team on what they can control.

He refuses the excuse of “I lost my temper because I am passionate.” In his words, leaders are not babies. Emotional regulation is part of the job. Teams watch how leaders respond to pressure, and they calibrate their own responses accordingly.

Values You Actually Live, Not Frame

Many companies have value statements that live on posters and slide decks. Kelly is not interested in that approach. At WOWorks, values are treated as daily operating instructions.

Instead of wall art, the team talks about values constantly. They recognize people who live them every day. In all hands meetings they pick a value, go deep, and invite team members to share real examples of how they lived it. There is no “culture deck” doing the work. The culture is carried in live conversation and recognition.

This intentional repetition has a compounding effect. New hires often arrive skeptical, expecting the usual corporate lip service. Over time, the consistency wins them over. Values are not referenced only in calm seasons. They guide how the company navigates difficult years for the restaurant industry, which is when culture matters most.

Accountability As Shared Standard, Not Top Down Control

One of Kelly’s most useful reframes is how he talks about accountability. Instead of “I hold you accountable,” he defines it as “I need to do my job so you can do yours.” Accountability becomes a shared obligation to the team, not a weapon.

In practice, that looks like:

• Clear, specific goals tied to “big rocks” the team has committed to move.
• Weekly check ins, not monthly autopsies, so people can adjust in real time.
• Public commitments where each leader states what they will do this week to progress the work.

No one wants to be the person who shows up to the next call and admits they did not move their rock, especially when everyone else did. Accountability becomes a culture of self expectation, supported by transparent data, rather than a cycle of top down reprimands.

With franchisees, the same spirit applies. WOWorks shares performance benchmarks and “best in class” examples, then collaborates on a plan the franchisee helps design. Ownership is built in at the start, instead of imposed after the fact.

Serving Guests Who Are Eating Less, Not Eating Worse

The restaurant landscape is shifting in ways that are both structural and emotional. Off premise has exploded through third party delivery. Dining rooms can be half empty while kitchens are slammed with digital orders. At the same time, GLP 1 drugs are reducing overall consumption, which means there are simply fewer meals being eaten.

Kelly refuses to view these realities only as threats. Instead he asks a different question: if people are going to eat less, how do we make sure what they do eat is incredibly nutritious.

WOWorks focuses on:

• Clean ingredients, with a strong bias toward removing additives and preservatives.
• Nutrient dense offerings, such as genuine acai and high quality protein.
• Supply chain choices that favor all natural and “no antibiotics ever” over convenience.

Even in that operational focus, emotional intelligence is present. The company understands that guests want to trust that someone has thought deeply about what they are putting in their bodies. When a brand aligns its purpose with that concern, it earns loyalty that outlasts trend cycles.

Culture Design In A Remote World

WOWorks does not rely on a single headquarters office to transmit culture. The leadership team is spread across multiple states and time zones, and the broader team is largely remote. Instead of accepting culture erosion as the cost of flexibility, Kelly has invested in cultural infrastructure.

A chief culture officer focuses full time on reinforcing shared values and connection. That role is not an HR label. It is a mandate to design experiences that keep people human to one another.

Examples include:

• Weekly coffee talks where business conversation is off limits and people simply connect.
• Book clubs that discuss practical ideas and leadership concepts together.
• Programs like “Dare to Wow” that help team members set personal as well as professional goals, sometimes resulting in life choices as bold as training for a marathon.

Culture is treated as a living system that needs ongoing design, not as a vintage artifact from the pre remote era. Emotional intelligence here looks like designing for wholeness, not just productivity.

Purpose That Includes Every Stakeholder

Kelly describes WOWorks’ purpose as helping make the lives of everyone they touch better. That “everyone” is taken seriously.

The purpose extends to:

• Franchisees who are often local family businesses betting on themselves.
• Team members inside restaurants who deserve growth and meaningful work.
• Vendor partners who are also trying to build healthy companies and support their own families.
• Communities that should benefit from having a WOWorks brand in their neighborhood.

Food is the vehicle for that purpose, but not the whole story. Clean, accessible, flavorful fuel allows guests to pursue their own passions and health goals. Franchisees get a platform that aligns with their values. Vendors get treated as partners, not transactions. Communities get restaurants that see themselves as citizens, not just tenants.

This is emotional intelligence at system level. It is empathy structured into the business model, not merely into individual interactions.

Love As A Leadership Practice

When asked what role love plays in business, Kelly gives a layered answer. First, you have to love what you do. Then you have to love the people you do it with enough to make them feel genuinely valued.

That love is not abstract. It shows up as:

• Asking for people’s ideas instead of simply issuing directives.
• Creating environments where contribution is recognized and remembered.
• Being honest when there is a values mismatch and helping people transition out rather than forcing them to stay in work that does not fit.

Love, in this sense, is not sentimental. It is disciplined care. It is the decision to design systems, conversations, and choices that treat people as full human beings while still holding high standards. In a remote, fast moving, margin pressured industry, that is not weakness. It is a durable advantage.

Key Takeaways

• Emotional intelligence is an operating system, not a side skill. It shapes how leaders regulate themselves, connect with others, and focus teams in turbulent conditions.
• Values need to be spoken, celebrated, and debated often. If they live only on posters, they are not yet values.
• Accountability works best as self commitment inside a trusted team, supported by weekly check ins and transparent data.
• Restaurant leaders cannot ignore macro shifts like delivery and GLP 1 drugs. They can, however, respond with cleaner, more nutrient dense offerings that deepen trust.
• Remote culture requires deliberate design. Roles like chief culture officer, recurring rituals, and whole person programs keep connection alive at scale.
• Purpose that includes franchisees, team members, partners, guests, and communities aligns decisions across the system and makes tough calls clearer.
• Love in leadership looks like making people feel valued, telling them the truth, and caring about their growth, even when that means helping them find a better fit elsewhere.

Final Thoughts

Emotional intelligence in business is not a luxury for calm seasons. It is a necessity for environments that are changing fast, where people are tired of being treated like numbers and where brand relevance is always at stake.

Kelly Roddy’s work at WOWorks is a reminder that you can run a highly disciplined, data informed, multi brand restaurant platform and still lead with empathy, purpose, and love. In fact, those qualities often make the discipline sustainable.

Check out our full conversation with Kelly Roddy on The Bliss Business Podcast.

Originally Featured on The Bliss Business Podcast Blog

For many businesses, “community” still shows up as a marketing slogan. It is a word on a wall, a theme in an ad, or a nice-to-have line in a brand story. But for the people who show up every week, community is not an idea. It is felt in the way they are greeted, the way they are seen, and the way they are invited back.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in youth sports. Parents are investing time, money, and energy in programs they believe will help their kids build confidence, character, and connection. The best programs are not just teaching skills on the court. They are designing environments where people learn, compete, and belong.

On The Bliss Business Podcast, we sat down with Craig Moody, Founder and President of Shoot 360, a high-tech basketball training and competition platform that has grown from one facility in Beaverton, Oregon, into an emerging franchise. Craig has spent his life in sports as a coach, entrepreneur, and now franchisor. His story is a powerful reminder that community is not an accident. It is the result of intentional design.

Youth Sports As A Laboratory For Belonging

Craig grew up understanding that sports were never just about the scoreboard. They were one of the “universal languages” that connect people across backgrounds and generations. You eventually retire from the game. What stays are the relationships.

That perspective guides how he thinks about every Shoot 360 location. The goal is not simply to build a better shooting gym. It is to create environments where kids and adults are known by name, encouraged in their growth, and invited into something bigger than themselves.

He often reminds his team that a person’s name is the sweetest sound they will hear. When members walk through the door, the experience starts with a big hello, a sense that someone is genuinely glad they are there, and a culture that treats every member like part of the team. The technology is impressive. The real asset is the feeling of being welcomed and included.

Community Is Built In The Environment

Most businesses underestimate the power of environment. They focus on product, pricing, or promotion and treat environment as decoration. Craig flips that script. For him, environment is as important as the service itself.

In a Shoot 360 facility, the environment is designed to make people want to come back. Players get real-time coaching, encouragement, and connection. Staff members intentionally spend time with each player, not just to adjust shooting mechanics, but to ask about school, upcoming games, or what they are excited about that week.

These small moments are not extra. They are the fabric of community.

Craig contrasts this with transactional environments he has seen in other businesses. When people feel processed instead of seen, they disconnect. When they feel known, they stay, invite friends, and anchor their routines around the space. Community, in his view, is the cumulative effect of hundreds of small, human interactions that make people feel like they matter.

Technology As A Bridge, Not A Barrier

Shoot 360 is a deeply technical platform. Using machine vision and advanced tracking, it measures key variables like arc, depth, and left-right alignment on every shot. Players receive instant feedback, understand what the “splash zone” looks like, and can track their progress over time.

Craig is clear, though, that technology is a means, not the destination. He is always asking a simple question: will this actually transfer to the court in a five-on-five game. If the answer is yes, it stays. If not, it is a distraction.

He also leans into how this generation learns. Gamification is not a gimmick. It is recognition that many kids process information through interactive, game-like experiences. Shoot 360 blends serious skill development with real-time competition, immersive games, and global matchups where players can compete virtually with others around the world.

The result is a training environment that feels like a video game but produces real-world confidence and performance. Technology becomes a bridge between how kids want to engage and the discipline required to get better.

Importantly, Craig is expanding the vision beyond youth. An enormous number of adults still identify as basketball enthusiasts even if they no longer play full games. With new shooting leagues and formats like “three ball,” Shoot 360 is creating ways for adults to reenter the game, build community, and get a moderate workout in an environment that is social, competitive, and fun.

Parents, Narrative, And The Path To Confidence

One of the most revealing parts of Craig’s perspective is how he thinks about parents. He has watched talented kids leave sports not because they lacked ability, but because the narrative around them at home did not match the role they were playing on the court.

He offers a simple example. Imagine a player whose role is to rebound. They show up, do their job, and their coach is thrilled. Then they get in the car and hear, “Why are you not scoring more. Why are you not bringing the ball up the floor.”

Over time, this disconnect can wear down confidence and joy.

Craig encourages parents to affirm the role their kids are playing and then, if the child wants more, to support them with resources and opportunities to grow into that next role. In his view, parents are co-authors of the story their kids tell themselves about who they are. Community is not just built in the facility. It is reinforced in the conversations that happen on the way home.

Systems That Protect What Makes You Special

Scaling community is hard. As any franchise system grows, some locations thrive while others struggle. The easy mistake is to assume that culture will simply “copy and paste” across markets. Craig knows better.

He invests heavily in systems that protect what makes Shoot 360 special. That starts with who is allowed into the brand. The development team looks for franchisees who care deeply about kids, sports, and community. From there, the company provides training, playbooks, and ongoing support through franchise business consultants who visit locations, coach local leaders, and audit the environment.

Clean, friendly, and maintained is not just a slogan. It is a standard.

At the same time, Craig understands that many of the best ideas live in the field. He and his team actively study top-performing locations, ask what they are doing differently, and then incorporate those lessons into the broader system. Franchise advisory councils and regular conferences give owners a voice in shaping the future of the brand.

By combining clear systems with genuine listening, Shoot 360 tries to do something many companies struggle with: maintain consistency without suffocating local creativity and connection.

Purpose, Risk, And The Courage To Build Something New

Craig did not set out to build a high-tech franchise platform. He was a coach, a builder, and an entrepreneur. The turning point came when he walked into a room and saw his son and his son’s teammates choosing video games over a beautiful outdoor court on a sunny day.

That moment sparked a question: what if you could build a gym that felt like a video game.

The idea stayed with him. Despite the risk and the fresh memory of surviving the 2008 financial crisis, he and his wife decided that this was a bet worth making. Coaching had always been the place where he felt most purposefully connected to people. Building Shoot 360 was a way to scale that impact from a single team to hundreds of thousands of players.

He often quotes the idea that luck is when preparation meets opportunity. His life experience in coaching, construction, sales, and business created the preparation. The convergence of technology, gaming culture, and youth sports created the opportunity. Purpose gave him the courage to step into it.

Love As The Real Competitive Advantage

Underneath all the talk of systems, technology, and scale, Craig keeps returning to a simple word: love.

He equates love with passion and insists that it has a central place in sports and business. Love shows up in the way coaches and staff talk to kids, how they stay late to encourage someone after a tough day, and how they choose to care about the humans behind the numbers.

He points out that the leaders who build lasting legacies in sports tend to be those who build the deepest relationships. They are demanding and competitive, yet their players never doubt that they are cared for.

For Shoot 360, love is not a sentimental add-on. It is the energy that makes high standards possible without creating fear. You can have clean, friendly, and maintained facilities, advanced tech, and strong systems. What makes people stay is knowing that the people behind all of that genuinely care.

Key Takeaways

• Community Is Designed, Not Declared
  True community comes from intentional environments, daily interactions, and leadership behaviors that make people feel known and valued.
• Technology Works Best As A Bridge
  When tech is designed to transfer to real-world performance and match how people learn, it can deepen engagement instead of replacing human connection.
• Parents Co-Author The Story
  The way parents talk about roles, effort, and growth either reinforces confidence or quietly erodes it. Community is strengthened when everyone is aligned on what success looks like.
• Systems Can Protect Humanity At Scale
  Franchises and multi-location businesses can use systems to maintain quality and culture while still listening to the field and empowering local creativity.
• Purpose Makes Risk Worthwhile
  Big leaps are easier to take when they are anchored in a clear sense of purpose about who you want to serve and how you want to impact their lives.
• Love Is A Strategic Advantage
  Caring deeply about people, telling them the truth with kindness, and being present in the hard moments is not soft. It is the foundation of trust, loyalty, and long-term performance.

Final Thoughts

Community and connection do not appear because a brand says the right words. They emerge when leaders design spaces, systems, and cultures where people feel like they truly belong.

Craig Moody’s work with Shoot 360 is a reminder that even in highly technical, data-rich environments, the real differentiator is still human. Names remembered. Stories heard. Confidence built. Love practiced.

For leaders in any industry, the question is simple: are you running a system, or are you building a place where people want to stay, grow, and bring others with them.

Check out our full conversation with Craig Moody on The Bliss Business Podcast.

Originally Featured on The Bliss Business Podcast Blog

For a lot of brands, community is something they talk about after the P&L. It shows up in mission statements, wall art, and the occasional fundraiser. Yet the real test is simple: when people think about your company, do they remember a transaction, or do they remember how it felt to be there.

On The Bliss Business Podcast, we sat down with Carl Comeaux, CEO of Crust Pizza Co., to explore what it really means to build community and connection in a growing franchise system. From how he picks franchisees to how he designs kids’ experiences, Carl treats community as the business model, not just the marketing story.

Community Is A Strategy, Not A Slogan

Carl is clear that community did not begin as a branding exercise. It started with where they chose to put their restaurants. Crust locations are intentionally placed in neighborhood, grocery anchored centers so they become part of daily life, not just a destination off a highway.

As the company grew from a handful of stores to dozens of locations, the team went back and asked a simple question: why are we successful where we are. The answer kept coming back to the same thing. Their best performing locations were deeply embedded in schools, churches, and local non profits.

The more they gave to the community, the more the community chose them. That realization moved community from a nice value to the center of the growth strategy.

Choosing Franchisees Who Want To Be Local Mayors

In franchising, the person who holds the license often determines whether the brand feels like part of the neighborhood or just another sign in the strip. Carl treats franchise awards as a culture decision first and a sales decision second.

They look for operators who genuinely want to be community focused, who see themselves as local mayors, not absentee investors. If a candidate is not sold on community first, he knows the model will eventually break, no matter how strong the pizza or the site selection.

To understand what makes franchisees successful, the company even profiled performance across the system. They found that many top performers are strong achievers who lean toward task and numbers, but who are coachable enough to grow their empathy and people skills. Others start out more naturally empathetic and must grow their operational discipline. In both cases, the non negotiable is coachability and alignment with the idea that the more you give, the more you receive.

The goal is not to find perfect people. It is to find people who are willing to execute a proven plan and pour their energy into the community around them.

Systems That Keep Everyone On The Same Island

Many franchise systems end up with what Carl calls two islands: the corporate island and the franchisee island. When those islands drift apart, trust erodes and culture gets replaced by conflict.

Crust has worked hard to bridge those islands with practical systems:

• Weekly emails that keep everyone aligned on what is coming next.
• A Franchise Advisory Council that meets quarterly to review results, set priorities, and surface issues from the field.
• Clear communication lines where council members are responsible for sharing updates with specific groups of franchisees.

These structures make sure people know where the brand is going and how their input helps shape that future. They also create a safe place to bring up pressure points before they turn into resentment.

When COVID hit, these systems were stress tested. Dine in volumes dropped and takeout surged, but rather than fracturing, the organization pulled closer together. For Carl, that is the sign of a healthy culture. Pressure either pulls you apart or pulls you closer. Good systems and honest communication made it the latter.

Nostalgia, Kids, And The Power Of Shared Moments

Carl believes that pizza is more than a meal. It is a memory factory. He remembers going to Pizza Hut as a kid, sitting under dim lights with red cups and sharing a pie on Friday nights. That experience disappeared as many chains shifted to takeout only.

Crust is intentionally bringing that kind of nostalgic dine in experience back. About half of their business is on premises, and they design every detail with connection in mind:

• Locations that feel like neighborhood gathering places for date nights and post game celebrations.
• Kids eat free nights to give parents a break from cooking.
• Half off wine or beer nights that give adults a chance to slow down and talk while kids enjoy the space.

They also lean into kid centric experiences. Children get dough balls to play with at the table. There is a mascot named Tavi, with coloring pages and games that turn a meal into an activity. They even run reading reward programs that echo classic “book club for pizza” initiatives from decades past.

These details might look small on a spreadsheet, but they are the things people remember when they decide where to go next Friday night.

Purpose That Comes From Hospital Hallways

Community for Carl is not theoretical. It is deeply personal. His perspective shifted even more when his wife and one of his twin sons each faced cancer. His son was treated at St. Jude, walking a protocol that had once had a fifteen percent survival rate and now has a vastly higher success rate thanks to decades of focused research.

Those years of hospital hallways reshaped his sense of purpose. The company now raises significant funds for St. Jude and similar organizations, with a long term vision of directing at least half of his future wealth to causes that change the odds for families facing childhood cancer.

Growth targets and unit counts still matter, but they sit inside a much bigger story. Revenue is fuel for impact, not the finish line. That kind of purpose changes how leaders approach decisions, sacrifice, and resilience.

Letting Growth Test And Strengthen Culture

Scaling always exposes weak spots. Crust has had moments where the wrong franchisee slipped through and created cultural friction. Rather than ignoring those signals, Carl used them to tighten the vetting process and get clearer about who should not come into the system.

He is candid that growth will always test culture. The question is whether leaders treat those tests as warnings to be avoided or as feedback to refine how they hire, support, and communicate.

For Carl, every challenge is an invitation to get closer, learn faster, and recommit to the values that made the brand special in the first place.

Key Takeaways

• Community Can Be A Growth Engine
  When locations, leaders, and programs are designed around genuine community engagement, connection becomes a competitive advantage, not a side benefit.
• The Right Franchisees Are Culture Keepers
  Awarding franchises is a values decision. Operators who want to be local mayors and are coachable on both metrics and empathy are the ones who sustain the brand.
• Communication Systems Hold The Culture Together
  Advisory councils, regular updates, and clear roles for sharing information keep corporate and franchisees on the same island and make scale possible.
• Experiences Matter More Than Transactions
  Nostalgic dine in rituals, kid friendly touches, and surprise moments of generosity turn a restaurant into a place people want to belong, not just buy from.
• Purpose Expands The Meaning Of Growth
  When leaders tie expansion to a larger mission, such as funding life saving care, revenue becomes a tool for impact, not just a scoreboard.
• Pressure Reveals, Then Refines Culture
  Seasons like COVID, difficult franchise relationships, or personal crises can either fracture a system or deepen its unity. Intentional leadership and honest reflection make the difference.

Building community and connection in business is not about slogans or occasional charity events. It is about who you invite into your system, how you communicate, what experiences you design, and why you are growing in the first place.

Carl Comeaux’s journey shows that when you treat community as the core strategy, choose franchisees who want to be rooted in their neighborhoods, and anchor growth in a purpose that reaches far beyond your own balance sheet, you end up building more than a franchise. You build a network of places where people feel like they truly belong.

Check out our full conversation with Carl Comeaux on The Bliss Business Podcast.

Originally Featured on The Bliss Business Podcast Blog