Brent Grundy, Owner of YO LOCO, joined us for a brief chat at the Sydney Franchising & Business Opportunities Expo, August 2022.

We covered some of the key aspects of the YO LOCO business including the type of people that are best suited, any common misconceptions about the brand or industry, as well as what he loves about what he does and more..

What is your business?

"YO LOCO, we're a Mexican restaurant, kids play centre all in one. 

Where are you located?

The first store is out at Penrith, that's our trial location, so that's been a really good success. So we'll take it from there and start opening everywhere else now. 

What do you love about the business and what you do?

It's for everyone. It's obviously for the kids. Kids, they want to go there, their parents probably want to go there just as much, if not more. 

So we found that we've got kids birthday parties, obviously, but now we're starting to get 50th, 60th or 70th birthday parties and that's become a bit of a big hit. 

So they can come down and bring all their family, no excuses that they can't find babysitters, because we're kind of putting babysitters out of a job. 

What do you look for in the right-fit person to be a franchise owner, can you describe them?

Yeah, we're not exactly sure we're looking for exactly just franchisees. So we may go down the franchise route. 

We're kind of here looking for just different potential, if it's going to be a like private equity firm to come in and help expand, or are we going to go down a license route? 

But at this stage, we're probably not really super excited about going down the franchise route. 

It's also because we probably don't for this kind of business, it's not really the mum and dad kind of business. It's got to be a bit more professional than what the average person can be sort of taught. 

You need to have someone that's a proper, solid manager to run these kind of businesses. If we left it in the hands of the average franchisee, to be honest, I don't think it would…it wouldn't grow as quick or as solid as we'd like it to grow. 

What’s a common misconception you believe people have about your brand or niche?

The misconception is they think it's all for kids. 

So but I like the way I look at it a different way, I think it's more dinner and drinks with kids on the side. 

What would your advice or guidance be to people looking to get into their own business?

My advice for people getting into business for themselves would be, not to listen to people around them as much. Don't ask people for advice, and a good example of that, you don't ask the secretary for business advice. 

So if you start doing that, you start asking people like your parents if your parents never really if they never really went into business and did a whole lot in business wise, then why should you ask them about business? 

Because the thing is that they're going to say it's not a good idea. They're going to say all these sort of things like that. Eventually you're probably going to believe them. 

But the thing you're forgetting about is that they don't have your ability, they don't have your capabilities.  

And if they if they were to do the business that you're looking at doing, then they would fail. So they're trying to protect you by saying, don't do these things and don't do this and don't do that. 

So you just got to try not to not to get caught in those conversations where you ask people for advice, you know, ask whether they think it's a good idea or if they think it's not, because otherwise you're going to adopt their their insecurities. 

And, you know, it's just you've got to be self-believing and just do what you've got to do. You can't you can't listen at all. You just got to block them all out and just go for it. 

What is your key focus for the next 12-18 months?

We'll probably go from here, we’re building one at the moment over in Mexico. 

We've got a few more coming up in Australia this year, so we're going to start some new builds, we’ve got one, opening up the second…

Probably more likely Australian will probably go America, I think. I think that's probably where we're going to head to, UK would be nice. But I think it's more of an American side because it's got the Mexican element to it a little bit more sentimental for a lot of people over there.”