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An Interview With Mr. Boom
Posted by: Dan – Apr 26, 2011
Mr. Boom is different. He rocks his ball-cap reversed, with faded t-shirts, jeans, and cool sneakers. He’s a business owner in his twenties with a vision that transcends profits. He cares about his friends, family, employees, the environment, good hip-hop and electronic music. I’ve never seen him stressed. Even when his restaurant was empty, he found time to greet me with a smile, handshake and laugh at my jokes. Mr. Boom is, no doubt, a guy I’d hang out with. He’s like me and he’s like you; if you and me went in on a Burger Joint together, it would be a lot like Boom Boom Burgers.
Who is Mr. Boom?
Mr. Boom is the fast food industry’s advocate for 100% grass fed beef and fresh seasonal sides, not deep fried foods.
Who is he outside of the…
Outside of the shop? I would say Mr. Boom is a young guy in love with hip hop music, electronica, a lover of sneakers and t-shirts, and just a laid back guy
So you’re a younger, hip guy from California--not your typical Richmond entrepreneurial transplant. Why did you choose to bring your business to Richmond?
To be honest with you, I’d seen that the more successful ones, the ones that have more staying power in the city, are the ones that look at local foods as a staple in their menu. I also saw a lot of young people with a global perspective, not a small town perspective, even though Richmond is a small city. I saw a lot of these people who want to put RVA on the map. What I wanted to do was meet the needs of those guys and gals who are all about dining and eating local. I am in the hippest, coolest environment to do that. I know I’m not going to make everybody happy. I know my customers are like me--[people] who like to travel and listen to great music. Who are not confined by the city limits of Richmond, but understand that there is a world outside of this place. They’re all about pursuing it and learning more about it. I think there is enough going on here--and it is still growing--that I thought it was a great opportunity. Richmond is a good place to be, and it’s definitely on the rise
What does Mr. Boom do when he is not hanging-out with farmers and serving up a healthy alternative to fast food?
That’s a great question. Checking my twitter, facebook. I like to go on long walks on the beach. (Laughter) I love listening to music. I have my iPod in my car. I love going for a ride, just hanging out talking to people, checking out new bars. That takes up a lot of my free time.
Do you have any favorite Richmond hangouts?
I love to go to Reality. Eric Owen, the owner – a great guy. For drinks it depends on what I am doing – if it is for business I’d go to CanCan. The owner of CanCan used to own Havana 59: Mike Rip. His family owns all the Arby’s in Virginia. He comes in here and eats burgers pretty frequently. They are doing the grass fed thing too. Just hanging out with the guys, just going and not really giving a shit about anything. I like to go to the Lounge, its right next to Boom Booms. For a nice dinner I really like Café Rustica. There is nothing over the top. Their menu is excellent, wide, great value. That’s where I take Mrs. Boom when we want a night out.
So are you a big believer in the use of social media to connect with your customers? It appears that you have the right idea, to make it a personal experience, as opposed to using it just to get bodies in the door. What would be your advice be to local businesses who is unsure about how to use social media?
For me it’s always been about sincerity. I hate to say that, because you’re just tweeting. But honestly, everything I say, I mean it. I am going to run specials, that’s part of what I do. But I only run specials on twitter and the partnership I have with [RVA Magazine]. I don’t run them in Valpak. The reason I do that is because I want to reward people for following Boom Boom Burgers. Today we did a t-shirt special--mention the word “boom” and you get a free t-shirt. My advice to new businesses is to get a young person in there who cares about social media and have them tweet about whatever they feel like tweeting about. And in addition, throw in any information about your brand and your product. Ultimately, people will unfollow you if all you tweet about is your specials. Two weeks ago, I was down at The Lounge and I ate some incredible jerk chicken sliders. I tweeted about it. These guys are my neighbors, I want to support what they do, they are great people and I tweeted about that. It had nothing to do with my business but it [reveals] a sense of sincerity in what we are tweeting about. I think also it seems genuine.
Like, “It’s not just about my business, I care about Richmond. I care bout the people here”?
Exactly. For me, I think that people like to engage with a business--people who don’t own a business, people who tweet as a recreational thing--and we fulfill that experience. It’s cool to say, “I am coming to Boom Boom Burgers this weekend, what specials do you have?” I can answer them right away. It’s great to communicate with your customers and make new customers.
You used your blog to give your customers a look into Boom Boom’s, at the heart of it all. Do you think that made it more of a personal experience, and did you get a good response from it?
I think it did dude, honestly. I think people want to see the inter workings. They want to see what’s behind the curtain. I don’t want to get preachy here, but I just want to say, for a long time people have been closely guarding their ingredients. You can look on my register. I have a sign posted. I really think it is addressing our society’s desire to have more transparency in all areas of life. Look at Obama and the financial meltdown. Now all of a sudden we want more transparency. He was fighting for more transparency in executive pay. I’m not going to comment on whether he did anything. I believe when you have transparency, you can make a positive impact if your intentions are good. But you can also be manipulative and transparent at the same time.
Your vision of a burger restaurant is unique. Can you tell me about the things that make Boom-Boom different and how they came about?
The first thing that is different about us is that we serve 100% grass fed beef in a quick service style restaurant. Right around the corner, Café Gutenberg serves 100% grass fed beef but that is a sit down experience with a waiter. So we are really the only place in Richmond that does what we do. I feel that grass fed beef is a superior product. That came about from my vision statement for Boom Boom’s, which is to have locally raised, humanely raised food, not just available to the wealthy-elite, but for average people who need to come in and grab a quick lunch. They don’t want that sit down experience, but they still want quality food. I was willing to penetrate the market a little further with high quality ingredients. And having that framework in mind resulted in doing grass fed beef burgers to order, Sourcing locally, which a lot of high end restaurants do, but we are doing it in a less pricey scale.
My commitment to social media is my avenue to communicate to people like me. People who read RVA Magazine. People who grew up with instant messenger, or facebook. When I was deciding who my target demographic was going to be, I decided I wanted to be in the 25-35-40 kind of [range], and I didn’t think we could do it effectively without social media. I use it myself personally, and for business.
The iPad register was chosen because I knew that making everything from scratch was extremely labor intensive and I wanted to streamline everything. I thought to myself, if I wanted to streamline it and be hip to people my age – what are they using? They are using iPods, they are using iPads. I started researching what was available in the iPad, and I thought it was great. Not only can we have a point-of-sale system on the iPad, we can run Pandora on it. I’m always listening to Pandora on my iPod.
The no cash option was in the same vein with streamlining it. We calculated that it would add 40 hours of additional work a month just to accept cash. My demographic carries plastic. You don’t need a credit card at Boom Boom’s, you can use a debit card too.
We don’t fry our foods. It costs about 9000 dollars a year on oil for frying and as somebody who has personally worked in restaurants, I have burned myself more times than I can count on grease. And I was the grill guy! I never worked with grease. It is a health hazard. As a result we said no. It is a lot of work. When you are offering everything from scratch, you have to sacrifice certain things. We don’t think that us not offering fried foods is that much of a sacrifice. We think it was the right move. [It will be like that] til technology comes out that makes it so we can serve baked fries in one minute and 30 seconds, hand cut and fresh – I like French fries.
As far as no high fructose corn syrup, we did that because of our commitment to healthy and unprocessed foods, unrefined foods. Even though sodas are processed, we felt that making a stand against high fructose corn syrup was in line with what we thought about where our food system was today – a highly manufactured, highly processed industry. We want to change that.
You were recently contacted by the CRA. Want to tell me about that?
Corn Refiners Association – I got a packet from DC and it was a pretty official packet. It was seven pages, glossy paper front and back, and a letter addressed to me. The letter took an excerpt from an interview with Carrie Piper from Richmond.com. It was an excerpt that had me saying that, in keeping with the health conscious theme of Boom-Boom Burgers, [that we do] not use high fructose sodas and high fructose corn syrup. Their response to the excerpt was followed by a statement something to the effect of, “To be sure your customers aren’t receiving inaccurate information, we have enclosed this packet,” basically saying what corn farmers and corn refiners are saying--that sugar and high fructose corn syrup make no difference in your body. Once it is absorbed, your body can’t tell the difference.
Most of the research [they presented] was commissioned by the CRA. Most of the research that is commissioned by an organization, the results appear in favor of the organization commissioning the research. We did our own research. There is a lot of conflicting information out there. Our stance is that if there might be a risk to your health to consume something, why risk it? On top of that, even if there was no risk, high fructose corn syrup is the quintessential ingredient of a highly industrialized food system. You go from corn to sugar. If we have sugar, why not just use sugar, and not create this corn market that affects cattle farmers? Our philosophy is “minimally processed,” so we are going to stick with real sugar.
All of your ingredients are locally grown, which means you work with several small, privately owned farms. What makes your process different from dealing with a franchise or using a distributor?
It is definitely difficult. To be honest with you, people need to know, like my manager says, most restaurants have the odds against them. They have everything consolidated so that they can make their lives easier. We didn’t take that route. We wanted to go the local, humanely raised route. As a result, we have seven farms that I work with. And in that seven, I have several small food distributors, people who own farms themselves and cater to other [privately owned] farms. My distributors are distributing for other people too. When I first opened, it was hilarious, I called Dave--he’s my mushroom provider. Dave and his wife also distribute on behalf of other farms in the area. [Dave’s] like, “I’m at the farm for your collard greens man, and the guy hasn’t picked them yet. It’s going to be another hour. I’m going to be late.” You’re not going to have that conversation with Cisco Foods. As much as that could seem like a stumbling block, those are the things I grace right there. That’s raw right there. So yeah, it makes it difficult, but it’s worth it because the quality is there, and our customers can speak to that. Even the people who don’t like what we do say we have an excellent burger. They may hate our prices, or hate the fact we don’t accept cash, but if you read on YELP, all the shitty reviews are like: “Excellent burger, this, that, but I’m giving you two stars because of whatever.” It is what it is, man. You’ve got to have a thick skin and just move forward.
Some people might say that your prices are high. What would you say to those people?
I recognize that our prices are higher then your typical chain or experience. But what I would say to those people is, I want them to see the true cost of what you are comparing it to. You’ve got to understand that I am working with farmers who have legal help, [or] they don’t have any help. They are doing it themselves, and they have bills they have to pay. Naturally, when your working with small farms, just like working with a small business, you’re going to pay a higher price for what you are getting. [Someone wrote] that it’s a better value to eat at [other burger restaurants] then at Boom Boom’s, because you get probably three potatoes worth of fries and a cheap burger. If you look at how much waste they have, if you look at the quality of their ingredients, you’ll find that they are much lower than ours. I don’t think anyone would argue that Boom-Boom burgers don’t taste better than [your average] burger. For the people who just don’t like [the taste] of grass fed beef, we’re out of luck; we just can’t get those customers. So when you look at buying produce from those people who have to pay bills and don’t have the leverage of a farm that’s dedicated to putting out massive amounts of food, regardless of the cost to the land or regardless of paying [employees] a fair wage... Everything in this life comes at a cost, and I think if you actually look at the negative impact that industrialized farms are having, not just on the land alone, but on food quality, your health, the employees, you’ll actually find that [Boom Boom’s] is a much better value than whatever you want to compare us to. You have to look at it from the prospective that you get what you pay for, and people need to understand my prices are reflective of the prices that are standard to the industry.
I found just a burger to be surprisingly satisfying and easy on my digestion. Do you get that, overwhelmingly?
We get that a lot, actually. People come in who say they don’t really eat beef. Then they come in and they eat our burgers. Why is that? These people leave and have a wonderful experience. Unfortunately, consumers have been conditioned to this food coma experience, [so] that when they eat a burger that actually satisfies their body, they don’t understand the difference. You’re getting a quarter pound of [actual] meat. I’ve seen small girls eat a half-pound Boom-Boom and walk out saying “I feel great.” No food coma. What can you attribute that to? The answer is that you’re eating actual food your body was meant to digest, and you’re not going to be in a comatose state as a result.
So the standard industrialized food has so much filler and waste, and my body is expending so much energy separating the food from the filler, that it’s causing a food coma?
Exactly. Just like if you eat iceberg lettuce that has no actual nutritional value, corn, those types of things [that] seem like you’re getting a great value, how much of that stuff is getting absorbed into your body? Other than salt, we don’t use any preservatives. You’re really getting actual food. I can’t stress that enough. I knew that some people wouldn’t get it, but the ones that do will spread the word. My philosophy is, if you’re not pissing people off with what you do, then you’re not doing it right. I’m being true to my concept, the vision. If it fails, I accept those consequences. But I’m going hard 100%.
Last one. It’s a really canned question, but: where do you see yourself and Boom-Boom Burgers in five years?
I want to remain privately owned. I want to expand to other areas in the Mid-Atlantic, but Richmond will always be the home base for Boom Boom’s. But you never know. I can’t make people like my burgers - it just has to happen. If it happens, we’re going to take it beyond Richmond. Charlottesville, Virginia Beach, and D.C., you know. We definitely have it in our agenda. But we’ll see.
Damaged Andy
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