Perry Rogers, CEO/founder of sports management and corporate consulting company PRP, has managed both superstar athletes and Hollywood stars. He also built a successful restaurant company JRS Hospitality with many hot spots on the Las Vegas Strip.
As Shaquille O’Neal’s superagent, those experiences prepared him to partner with his big client to create a truly larger-than-life restaurant brand. Big Chicken is a testament to collaboration, vision, and fun.
Watch now to learn about building a food brand with Shaq, the power of collaboration, and the business of sports entertainment.
As Shaquille O’Neal’s superagent, those experiences prepared him to partner with his big client to create a truly larger-than-life restaurant brand. Big Chicken is a testament to collaboration, vision, and fun.
Watch now to learn about building a food brand with Shaq, the power of collaboration, and the business of sports entertainment.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome to Restaurant Influencers.
00:07I am your host, Sean Walchef.
00:09This is a Cali BBQ Media production in life, in the restaurant
00:13business, and in the new creator economy, we learn through lessons
00:17and stories. It is a big day for this media company.
00:21It is a big day for this show.
00:24Today, I have Perry Rogers on the show at the Big Chicken
00:29Conference at the Virgin Hotel, 2024.
00:32I started this restaurant business 16 years ago.
00:36We started a media company seven years ago, and I am having
00:41to pinch myself at the opportunity.
00:43I'm grateful for the opportunity, but Perry, welcome to the show.
00:46Thank you very much.
00:46Thanks for having me, Sean.
00:47We believe in storytelling, and Josh Halpern, who has been a
00:50guest CEO of Big Chicken, he has been a guest on this show.
00:54Phenomenal episode.
00:55He spoke so highly of you on the last time that I had him on,
00:59and I knew that you were here, and I made sure that he chased
01:03you down.
01:03And I said, I don't know what you have to do, but can I please
01:06ask Perry some big questions that I have?
01:09So welcome.
01:10Thanks very much.
01:11I look forward to this.
01:11It's going to be a good discussion.
01:12Where in the world is your favorite stadium, stage, or venue?
01:17The best stadium in the world is Allegiant in Las Vegas.
01:22The best venue in the world is the Hollywood Bowl.
01:26Okay.
01:27If you're going to see a concert, it's that.
01:29So we're going to go to Allegiant Stadium.
01:31We're going to talk to a lot of sponsors.
01:33I know you're very good at talking to sponsors.
01:35Toast is a sponsor of this show.
01:37They believed in me when we didn't have a platform.
01:40Entrepreneur stepped up.
01:41But we're going to fill Allegiant Stadium with people that play
01:44the game within the game and hospitality, people that actually
01:47want to level up, that are willing to do the work to improve
01:50their business to understand that in 2024, the rules are different.
01:53There's a brave new world out there for those that are willing
01:56to do crazy things like start a media company on top of their restaurant.
01:59But we're going to pack the stadium.
02:01And I'm going to give you the mic and just say, Perry, can you
02:04tell us the big chicken story, the origin story of big chicken?
02:07Yeah.
02:08So I have two careers.
02:13I'm really fortunate.
02:14I've represented athletes since I was in law school.
02:17My childhood best friend was Andre Agassi.
02:19So I fell into this.
02:21While I was in school, he asked if I would help him.
02:23We were fortunate.
02:24Things went well for us.
02:26And then I represented his first wife, Brooke Shields.
02:30And I put a TV show on the air called Suddenly Susan.
02:32Wow.
02:33And that gave me exposure to sports and entertainment,
02:36which was very rare for one person to be living in both of those things.
02:39When Shaquille decided he was looking for someone to run his life,
02:43he wanted to make a change, they called me and said, hey,
02:47let's have this discussion.
02:48What do you think about how things are going for us?
02:50How would you make changes?
02:52And they ended up hiring me because I had both sports
02:54and entertainment experience.
02:56So that's where I say I got lucky.
02:58How many people did they interview?
03:00I don't really know.
03:01I think six or seven.
03:02Do you remember the day?
03:04I do remember the day.
03:05They called and they initially said that everything's
03:08fine with our agent.
03:09We just want advice.
03:11What changes would you make if you were running Shaquille's career?
03:15So I talked about what I thought they weren't doing well.
03:18And then he asked me a question.
03:19He said, do you think I make enough money from endorsements?
03:23I said, I have no idea.
03:24I don't know what you make.
03:26And he told me later, he said, that's what got you the job.
03:29Really?
03:29Everyone else said, you should make more.
03:32He goes, and when you said, I don't know what you make,
03:34I realized they don't know what I make either.
03:37So how would they think I should make more if they don't know what I make?
03:40So he hired me in 2001.
03:43And we went to work.
03:44And it's just been a really great partnership.
03:49While that was happening, in 2003 or 2004,
03:53Andre came to me and said, Michael Mina wants
03:56to build a restaurant company.
03:57I want you to help him build it.
03:59So Andre and I partnered with Michael.
04:01He had one restaurant in San Jose, in a Marriott in San Jose called Arcadia.
04:05And we said, yeah, we can do this.
04:07He's really talented.
04:08Michael is insanely great and just a kind person.
04:11So we started to build that company.
04:14And I loved the restaurant industry.
04:17Andre and I stopped working together in 2008,
04:19which means that Michael and I stopped working together in 2008.
04:23And yet, I still love the restaurant company.
04:25I'd invested in a nightclub here in Las Vegas called Pure.
04:29And one of the people I invested with was a guy
04:31I'd known since I was a kid, Corey Jenkins.
04:34And so Corey and I, in 2008, late 2008,
04:38started another restaurant company, which became JRS.
04:42And he's the J, Jenkins, of JRS.
04:46I'm the R. We have another partner, Rolly Sturm, who's the S.
04:50So the two of us started to build the restaurants on the Strip.
04:54And those had done well.
04:56And then Shaquille came to us in, I think, 2017 and said,
05:00you know, you've built this big restaurant company.
05:03I'm a little bothered.
05:04What have you built for me?
05:06And I said, well, I think that we've done a lot for you.
05:09And he said, no, no, I'm talking about legacy-wise.
05:11What's my legacy?
05:13And I said, well, Shaquille, you're an investor in this.
05:15He said, yeah, I'm an investor.
05:16You know, I want a legacy.
05:18I want something that's mine.
05:20So we went to work and thought about what that would be,
05:22what fits Shaquille, what reflects his values,
05:26what reflects his persona, and came up with Big Chicken.
05:31And went back to him and said, what do you think of this?
05:33And he loved it.
05:34And so that is how Big Chicken got started.
05:36We built one here in Vegas to see if we had something.
05:40And then after a couple of years,
05:41Corey and I said, you know, we think we have something.
05:44Let's call Shaquille.
05:45Shaquille said, let's do it.
05:46And so we hired Josh Halpern as a CEO
05:48and then said, let's see if we can build a company.
05:50So I think what we did well, what I'm proud of is,
05:52A, it came from Shaquille.
05:54Yes.
05:54B, Shaquille approved and said,
05:57we let it breathe for a while.
05:59We let it find its own voice.
06:03And then when we did, we said,
06:04now we know that we need to hire someone
06:06that knows what they're doing,
06:07because it isn't us.
06:08And that's when we brought in Josh.
06:10Can you share, we obviously believe in media.
06:13We have a restaurant group
06:14that builds a media company on top.
06:16One of the coolest things that I've ever seen
06:18was the Facebook Watch show.
06:20Building in public is such a bold thing to do.
06:23I mean, we do it at the smallest scale,
06:25but for Shaquille, that has so much global brand recognition
06:29of who he is, what he's done,
06:30not only in his athletic career,
06:32but also in his business career,
06:33to take that, a lot of people probably have told you
06:36that was a big risk to build like that.
06:39Can you talk about the Facebook Watch show?
06:40Yeah, I mean, I think it says the most about Shaquille.
06:43You know, you have a client who is really smart,
06:47but very bold and will take big chances.
06:51I think that Shaquille looks at all these things like,
06:55I know where my intentions are.
06:57So if my intentions are right, I don't need to worry.
07:01And I've learned a lot from watching him apply that
07:05in his life to the people and the projects in his life.
07:07And that was just one example of it.
07:09I mean, we didn't know what we were doing at all, at all.
07:12You know, our restaurants
07:13were all full service restaurants.
07:14Much too big volume.
07:16And here you're off the strip
07:17and you're gonna do small volume
07:19and what should the size be?
07:21And even in the first store, we got a lot of things wrong
07:24that we didn't learn that we got wrong
07:27until we were operating.
07:28Oh wow, I wouldn't have done it that way.
07:31I wouldn't have had so much space.
07:32I wouldn't have had so many seats.
07:34I wouldn't have done the design this way.
07:36So you're doing all those things
07:38knowing that you're leading with your chin.
07:40But I think that if you look at life as,
07:44I wanna be on a continuous improvement journey,
07:48then it's not a big risk to fail because it is your reality.
07:52And I think letting people into that
07:54and letting them see when you don't get it right
07:57makes people understand that you're really authentic
07:59in the way you're trying to approach this
08:01and provide a product for people that they're gonna like.
08:03And that's where Shaquille's heart is.
08:05So there were a lot of stars that aligned,
08:07but it begins with Shaquille and his perspective.
08:10Can you share the first store, the Vegas store,
08:13what it meant opening when it did
08:15and when was it ready for the franchise path?
08:19So we opened in October of 2018.
08:25And when we opened,
08:27we had a different breading than we have now.
08:29We have different fries than we have now.
08:31We have actually a different mix of sodas.
08:34So I think that that's kind of our big asset was we opened,
08:40we saw what customers liked and what they didn't like.
08:43We were able to adjust, make those adjustments,
08:46finally feel like, okay, we're starting to hone in
08:49on what we want this to look like and feel like.
08:53Now let's see if there's a market for it.
08:55And that, as I said, was when we went out
08:58and got Josh as a...
09:02You can come in.
09:06Come on in.
09:07Hey, you can come in.
09:08You can come in and sit here.
09:16You're the kid from the Disney Channel.
09:22That was Shaquille O'Neal.
09:23He makes an entrance wherever he goes.
09:25Yeah, sorry about that.
09:27So I think it took us a couple of years
09:28of seeing how the customers felt about the product,
09:30trying to make adjustments and then hiring Josh
09:33and really asking Josh the question of,
09:35do you think there's a market for this?
09:37You know, we like it,
09:38but that doesn't mean that other people will like it.
09:42And Josh, to his credit, took time.
09:44He kicked the tires.
09:46And we started to talk to him in December of 20
09:50and we didn't hire him until May of 21.
09:52It was four and a half full months
09:54of really talking about what are we doing
09:57and what do we think we have?
09:58And then I think we would all admit
10:00that when we started the company itself,
10:03it was a little bit like you're holding onto a rope
10:05and then that rope actually gets a hold of the horse
10:09and the horse starts to drag you for a little while.
10:11It was a little bit of that.
10:12Really? Yeah.
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10:50Can you share about Vegas specifically?
10:53All these, how did you build what you've built in Vegas
10:56and what are kind of the lessons that you've learned?
10:58Yeah, you know-
11:00How many restaurants?
11:01So we have five restaurants and they're all on the strip.
11:04So we're very blessed.
11:06We have millions of people that walk by our door every year.
11:09Millions that walk by every year.
11:10I mean, I think the Paris locations,
11:13I think it's like 24 million people
11:14that walk by our door every year.
11:17It's unbelievable, wow.
11:17We're across the street from the Bellagio Fountains.
11:19We have a great location, but it wasn't easy.
11:23Believe it or not, it sounds easy now.
11:25Everything kind of always looks good in the rear view mirror
11:27but in front of us, we did the deal with the hotel
11:31when the financial crisis hit in 2009.
11:34And the hotels didn't have any money to spend on CapEx.
11:38We had an idea that we could do something there.
11:41The restaurant that was there had closed
11:43and it had closed for a year.
11:45And the restaurant that was there had closed
11:47and it had closed before the crash.
11:49So it was just a vacant place on the strip.
11:52Now you look at it and think, well, yeah,
11:53everyone should take that.
11:54Well, okay, but the prior owners hadn't made it.
11:57So Corey and I said, we think that there's a here here
12:02and we built a restaurant and a nightclub.
12:05Cause as I said earlier,
12:06we'd been in the nightclub industry, Corey and I had,
12:09and we realized that the restaurant was very successful
12:12and the nightclub business was over.
12:15And we weren't sure what to do about that.
12:18And that actually is how we connected
12:19with Josh Halpern in the first place.
12:21We looked at the market and thought,
12:23well, everyone wants to sell $1,000 bottles of vodka,
12:27but who's offering a $7 beer?
12:30Good question.
12:31It's the right question.
12:32Why is it that people don't want to just come
12:33and be with their friends and relax
12:35and not feel like you had your hand
12:37in their pocket the whole time?
12:39How do we make it so people can just come
12:41and enjoy themselves with family and friends?
12:43And so we had heard that Anheuser-Busch
12:48was looking to do something in Vegas in a big way.
12:51We had a great location, a second floor directly
12:53across the street from the Bellagio Fountains.
12:57And so we came up with this concept of beer park
12:59and we went to Josh and said,
13:01Josh at the time ran on-premise for InBev
13:06through all of North America.
13:07So he was the guy to go to.
13:10And we said, hey, what do you think about you all
13:12making an investment in what we're trying to do?
13:15And we'll call it Beer Park by Budweiser.
13:17And so they spent marketing money with us,
13:21which gave us some money to build the place.
13:24And we built on the second floor,
13:25not knowing if anybody in Vegas
13:27would go to a second floor bar.
13:29And we hadn't seen it done before.
13:31And it worked.
13:32It worked from day one.
13:34And so years later when we decided,
13:37we think we have something with Big Chicken,
13:40Josh was our first call.
13:42We went back to him and said, hey, we work well with you.
13:44You're a great guy.
13:45You share our values.
13:47We like how honest you are.
13:49We like how engaged you are in the business.
13:51What about trying to do something with us here?
13:53So the one led to the other directly.
13:56So we just opened up a Cali barbecue in San Diego
13:59on the Navy Exchange.
14:00We also know that there's a Big Chicken
14:02that is going to be open on the Navy base.
14:04What does it mean to you to be opening
14:06on the Navy Exchange?
14:08What?
14:10Chicken vampire.
14:14The chicken vampire.
14:17You know, we're really excited.
14:19Look, Shaquille was raised in a military family.
14:21He traveled the world as a kid
14:24and there were some tough lessons learned there
14:27and there were some great lessons learned there.
14:29But he went to the School of Hard Knocks
14:32through just, you know, he was in Germany
14:34when he was a teenager.
14:35And so to go back onto a base
14:38and to feel like, you know, Shaquille's company
14:40can provide somebody with comfort,
14:42yeah, that's a win, you know.
14:44So I've been doing lots of interviews
14:47talking to the founding team, the team across the street
14:49at the first original Big Chicken location,
14:51obviously a lot of the franchisees that are here.
14:54One of the things that I've been,
14:55I asked them was how does it feel to work for Shaq?
14:59And I get quickly corrected.
15:01I'm not working for Shaq.
15:02I'm working with Shaq.
15:04For you, sitting in the seat that you sit in,
15:09I can't believe how involved you've been
15:10the last past two days.
15:12I mean, I'm blown away at the leadership of you
15:14talking the way that you're talking,
15:16but also the details.
15:17Why are you all in?
15:19This is his legacy.
15:20My job is to build the business that he wants to have.
15:24That's what I was hired to do in 2001.
15:28And that has morphed and yet it's never changed.
15:32That's the best way for me to say it.
15:34It's evolved, but it's still the same,
15:36which is the things that are important to him
15:38are important to me.
15:40And this is his family legacy.
15:43His mom is involved in this business.
15:45His children are involved in this business.
15:48He's the largest shareholder.
15:50And he wants to make sure he's sharing the love
15:54that he felt as a kid with his mom and her cooking
15:57with all of the people that choose
15:59to come into our restaurant.
16:00So anybody that's watching this,
16:02that's watching where Big Chicken is now in 2024,
16:05we're recording in August,
16:07where is Big Chicken going?
16:09It's a great question.
16:11Look, we're expanding rapidly.
16:14We're trying to make sure we're expanding responsibly.
16:16That's, I think, the main focus for us.
16:19So we're going to continue to build throughout the country.
16:21We just opened our first outlet in the UK, in Manchester.
16:25Amazing.
16:26We're going to be building in Honduras in 2025.
16:29So you'll start to see us have a little bit more
16:31of an international footprint as well.
16:33But we're like a baby in that sense.
16:35I don't want anyone to think that we are, you know,
16:38attacking the whole world.
16:39Low and slow, like we do our barbecue.
16:41That's right, that's right, that's right.
16:44But as far as domestically,
16:46we're going to continue to expand where we believe
16:49that owners want to come in and operate the restaurants
16:53and be heavily involved.
16:54And that's probably been one of the biggest learnings
16:57for us.
16:58The stores that do well for us are the ones
16:59where the owners really are greeting the customers.
17:02If the customers don't feel that Shaquille love,
17:05there's a disconnect between what his intentions are
17:07and what that product is.
17:09So we need franchise owners that want to come in
17:12and really love hospitality.
17:15So any parting words of wisdom for people
17:17that are thinking about getting into this crazy world
17:20of restaurants and hospitality?
17:21I feel like you're born to be in this or you're not.
17:24That's great.
17:25And you, you know, they asked Mia Hamm's parents one time,
17:30what did you do to make her such a great soccer player?
17:32We signed her up for soccer.
17:34She just, when she got out there,
17:35she wanted the ball more than anybody.
17:37Yeah.
17:38And if you don't want the ball of hosting people,
17:42don't get in this industry.
17:43But if you do, if you love to host
17:45and you love to see people get smiles on their face
17:47because of the food you put in front of them
17:49and the way that your staff has greeted people,
17:52man, it's addicting, as you know,
17:55it's addicting, you know, you can't shake it
17:57because you feel like you're just giving all this joy
18:02and you get so much more back.
18:04It's just, it's just wonderful.
18:07There it is.
18:07Perry Rogers, we appreciate you more than,
18:10thank you, you've been such a gracious host,
18:11your entire team, big chicken team.
18:13We are grateful.
18:14If you guys want to stay in touch with me,
18:16it's easy at Sean P. Walsheff.
18:18Shout out to Josh, to Chicago, Sam, and to the entire team.
18:21You guys, you guys know how to do first-class hospitality.
18:24I am truly grateful.
18:25Stay curious, get involved.
18:26Don't be afraid to ask for help.
18:28Thank you for listening to Restaurant Influencers.
18:31If you want to get in touch with me,
18:32I am weirdly available at Sean P. Walsheff,
18:35S-H-A-W-N-P-W-A-L-C-H-E-F.
18:40Cali Barbecue Media has other shows.
18:43You can check out Digital Hospitality.
18:45We've been doing that show since 2017.
18:48We also just launched a show, season two,
18:50Family Style on YouTube with Toast.
18:53And if you are a restaurant brand or a hospitality brand
18:57and you're looking to launch your own show,
18:58Cali Barbecue Media can help you.
19:01Recently, we just launched Room for Seconds
19:04with Greg Majewski.
19:05It is an incredible insight into leadership,
19:09into hospitality, into enterprise restaurants
19:12and franchise, franchisee relationships.
19:15Take a look at Room for Seconds.
19:17And if you're ready to start a show, reach out to us,
19:20betheshow.media.
19:22We can't wait to work with you.