Darren Keeler With Shuckin’​ Shack Franchising

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Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, and this is going to be a good one today on the show, we have Darren Keeler and he is with Shuck and Shaq. Welcome, Darren.

Darren Keeler: [00:00:43] Thank you, Lee. Glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to before we get too far into things. Tell us about Shaq and Shaq.

Darren Keeler: [00:00:52] Do Shaq and Shaq Oyster Bar? We are a emerging franchise, we have 16 open locations right now, mainly on the East Coast. But this year we are officially going national. We are opening locations just outside of Chicago, in Naperville, Illinois, in the St. Louis area and then also in Mansfield, Texas. So twenty twenty two has been pretty good to us where we are officially crossing the Mississippi. We are a national brand now of, you know, a seafood restaurant that you go and slurp down a bunch of oysters, crab legs. Watch the game with a cold beer in hand with all your friends and family. We’re just a good shucking time.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:40] Now, was this expansion kind of organic or was this initiative that you aggressively were pursuing?

Darren Keeler: [00:01:49] It’s starting in twenty nineteen. We aggressively pursued going national with our franchise. We partner up with Rain Tree, our great friend of company. They have been awesome. So about 20 19. And then we had to take a break in 2020 with the pandemic, even though we we did open stores during the pandemic and which was amazing that a lot of brands really can’t say that. So we are super grateful for all of that. And then in twenty twenty one, the boosters really took off and we got off the ground and now we are, you know, full speed ahead going national.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:34] Now we’re here to talk about an exciting initiative that you guys are are kind of championing this this concept of a shack elite or tapping into this new college athlete trend of being able to work with them a little bit more intimately than historically that had been historically possible. Can you talk about how that came about and what it’s about?

Darren Keeler: [00:03:01] Yeah. So about a year ago or just under a year ago, the NCAA changed the rules for nil name, image and likeness for collegiate athletes before it was not legal for any brand or company to sponsor collegiate athletes, student athletes. And they changed the rules last year, where now brands and companies can sponsor these collegiate athletes. The rule change happened quick. It happened, kind of. The NCAA just said, Yep, we’re changing it. You could sponsor whoever you want from any college, any sport. And there was a big, a big kind of outcry of, yes, this is amazing, but how do we do it? And the past year has been a lot of companies and brands trying to figure out what this nil thing really is. And colleges are doing the same thing. This is brand new to everybody. But Shuck and Shaq is a, you know, a sports bar. We love going to Chuck and Jack and having a gold one, having amazing food while watching college football, college basketball. You know, we actually don’t even care what sport is on. If it’s college gymnastics, we’ll watch it at the shack. You know, it just fits in with our brand. So it was a no brainer to us when the NCAA changed the rules and we could start sponsoring collegiate athletes. We jumped all over. We partnered up with a company called Icon Source. They are amazing. They are. They are former collegiate athletes that after the run was over, they started this new company. And with the NCAA changing the rules for nil, their platform really blew up and they are emerging company. They’re just like us as an emerging brand and emerging franchise. So our partnership with Icon Source has been absolutely tremendous where we we started sponsoring these collegiate athletes.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:27] And then so what does that look like from the, you know, from the athlete side and what is the kind of the franchisee and the franchise or get from this relationship with these athletes?

Darren Keeler: [00:05:38] Do what we do is we sponsor collegiate athletes that are local to our shuck and sharks and Shake Shack franchisees, so let’s say a couple of weeks ago we just signed a lease. Bauer, who is a woman swimmer for the University of Florida, her hometown is Ocala, Florida, where we have a shark and shark location. So we sponsor collegiate athletes that have ties with our hometown or family members close to our locations, or they go to school close to one of our locations. So we when we sponsor these collegiate athletes, we use them as brand ambassadors. We send them apparel. We send them gift cards. They post on social media at the shuck and sharks at their local shark and sharks, and they get to know our owners, our staff. This is a great way to have almost like a grassroots local marketing campaign where college athletes range from 18 to 20 to 20 three, sometimes even up to twenty five. Now, with eligibility rules because of COVID, they could they could play for longer now. So with that, we’re hitting a whole demographic that we usually don’t organically hit. These college athletes are wearing our apparel around campus, and they’re bringing their teammates to Shuck and Shack now, which is awesome.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:25] And then this helps the athlete. It helps get the word out about the brand. It’s kind of a win win all the way around.

Darren Keeler: [00:07:33] Exactly, us, them, the collegiate athletes that are going to the shark and sharks and posting on social media that their their brand is awesome, is great for brand awareness and in return, we share all of their posts on our brand social media pages and all the PR that we have just to say, Hey, look at this college athlete, this local college athlete, look at everything they’re doing. And even if they’re not doing anything around the Chicken Shack brand, if they’re if they’re doing something in their community, if they’re volunteering somewhere, we’ll share that to say, Hey, they have, they share our culture. And these collegiate athletes are great brand ambassadors for Chuck Todd because of their character and what they do out in their community.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:30] Well, good stuff. Congratulations on taking the lead in this initiative. I mean, not many franchises have really tapped into this yet, and kudos for you for being innovative in this manner.

Darren Keeler: [00:08:43] Thanks. You know, the first one through the wall always gets bloody, so we’re still trying to figure out what this nial scope is going to turn into, what is it going to be? But we feel that we are doing it in a way that other brands, other companies aren’t really focusing on. We are going after kind of mid-level athletes. Their top performers in their sports. But when the Neal rule change happened, a lot of companies started going after the bigger athletes of marquee athletes and bigger schools. And we they were going after the top one hundred athletes nationwide to be brand ambassadors to sponsor them. We looked at it and you said there are a bunch of other smaller colleges around the nation, and these athletes are working their butts off to get to where they are and they’re amazing athletes on a women’s and men’s side that are totally forgotten. You know, there’s 10000 other athletes out there in the college sports world that have totally been forgotten and we just want to we want to show off what they have to offer.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:04] Good stuff. I mean, that should be commended. And you’re opening this up to a lot of folks that, like you said, would have been forgotten and they weren’t really benefiting from being the athlete they are and the sacrifices they’re making in that regard. Well, congratulations and congratulations to the continued growth of shock and Shaq. I mean, you really kind of growing despite the challenges that we’ve had. And, you know, it sounds like the sky’s the limit.

Darren Keeler: [00:10:32] Yeah, there’s no stopping us now.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:35] Now, if somebody wants to learn more, what’s the website?

Darren Keeler: [00:10:39] So for Shuck and Shack Athletics, you could go to the shucking shacks, shucking shack athletics. We have all the information on there with our program. And if you want to find out more about franchising, which I can check Oyster Bar, you could go to the shark contact.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:59] Good stuff. Well, Darren, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Darren Keeler: [00:11:04] Thank you, Lee.