How To Design a Profitable Coffee Shop Subscription with Patrick and Krystal Burns of Palace Coffee Co.

🟡 This transcript is generated with AI. There may be spelling errors.

Garrett Oden (00:01.281)
All right, hey Crystal and Patrick, welcome to the podcast.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (00:04.762)
Thanks for having us. We are excited actually. We’ve had to move it a few times and we’re glad to finally be able to make it. So thanks for making time for us.

Garrett Oden (00:11.533)
Yeah, absolutely. So I’m a long fan, a long time fan of Palace Coffee. I grew up two hours away. And, you know, when I first became aware of coffee, Palace was certainly the, the best coffee shop in the region. And, know, anywhere from anywhere from Dallas to Albuquerque, you know, if you’re driving, you want to go through Canyon or Amarillo to get Palace. So, yeah, you know, I adored you and I made every, every opportunity I could to drive up from Lubbock to get to try your coffee.

y’all did a few things that always stuck out to me as terms of hooks to inspire loyalty and You know, I remember a few things like Harry Potter night and you know Harry Potter themed drinks It was like such an event but the thing that really stuck out to me most was your annual membership program and it just seems so different and Very well executed. So, you know, I wanted to get you on the podcast to talk to you about

How you pulled it off successfully for so many years, what it’s taken to refine the program over time to make sure it works continuously for you. And I’d to hear some of the backend operations of what it’s like to pull it off, the kinds of tools, how you train your team, things like that. So yeah, if y’all are ready, let’s go ahead and get into some questions.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (01:29.644)
Yeah, think that’s great. We’re ready. So.

We’re all about community. That’s been the big forefront of why we got into coffee in general. And so we just always have been trying to find different ways to tie a broader community into a smaller community to make them feel valued and special. We definitely want to provide that for everybody, but sometimes people need that closer relationship. And so this was just a different way that we can do that. How the club started actually wasn’t an original idea from us. As in everything in coffee, we steal from each other all the time. A lot of times we can actually

tip our hats and pay homage to the people that we borrowed it from. This one we actually got permission from the person who came up with the concept. We were at Coffee Fest, were a part of teaching a… Successful coffee house seminar. Yep, with the Delano’s crew. We won that award.

The year before the America’s Best Coffee Hats or Coffee Fest, they had a spot open up on their team to come and help teach. And so we said, yeah, we’d to be part of it. So we did. And we’re a part of that group with a guy named Joe out of Durango, Colorado. They own Durango Joe’s.

Hence the name, Durango Joe is from Joe. And he was telling us one day about this mug club that he started and told us about the program and how it all worked. And so it really piqued our interest because first of all, one thing he mentioned was that he does his mug club at the end of every year, which was a good way for them to build up a cash flow going into the January, February, March of the next year. And so we were like, well, yeah, we’re like everyone else. kind of dip.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (03:08.782)
after December and so that would be great if we could build up a little bit of cash flow for a cushion to get us going into the next year. And so that kind of helped start the idea and then we just kind of fleshed it out and made it our own. Well, Patrick actually wanted to apply something like that to Palace but kept saying, I think it’s going to be too cumbersome. Like it’s such a big program to kind of take on and how do we make it happen?

And he kind of wanted to table it, which this does not happen very often where he has an idea and wants to table it. Usually it’s he has an idea and I’m like, yeah, that’s we can’t do that. We call him the dreamer and me the dream crusher. But with this idea, I was like, but because of that idea of like it helping our cash flow and, you know, creating customer loyalty, as you said, I really wanted to try to take my hand at it logistically to see if there was a way that we could introduce it maybe in a small way. And so we kind of just.

kind of was like, let me see if I can make this work. And so I kind of took it and did a little research based off of what Joe was doing and then kind of took it and looked at some things on our end of how we can make that.

And some of the challenges with anything like that is, you know, do you make it a join at any time? If you make it a join at any time, you’re gonna have to combat with like, well, when did this person join versus when did this person join? So we kind of work through like all of the potential issues that we saw could be a logistical challenge for us. And we try to combat those and figure out what would work and how could we structure it in a way in which it could be, you know, consistently something that people joined into and bought into.

I think the first year we did it we had, I don’t know, like 100 and something. Yeah, I think we were around 160 people signed up. We started selling in November. So basically the last two months of the year is when we put it out there for people to sign up. And then it would start January 1st. And it started with not just being a member of the club. You got a discount. So you got a 25 % off your drink or your…

Patrick And Krystal Burns (05:09.07)
purchase for your specific things all the time. On Mondays, we did 50 % off their drink. If you’re a member, can come and get that. And then we also would have events throughout the year, typically three or four events that we would try to get people together to try to build that community up a little bit more. And then we also had a Tumblr that we did that was branded for the club year, which we’ve had club members that have been a part of us from day one. So I think this is our seventh year.

potentially, and so they have a different Tumblr every single year along the way. And then that year, I think I also made a really cool metal card, you know, like the AMX Black. It wasn’t that though, but it was a cool metal card that we made for people to feel a little bit more special that they could share with the register. So our baristas knew who our club members were that way. And so that year was great.

Garrett Oden (05:48.131)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (05:58.636)
The membership didn’t quite get to the level that we wanted it to. We kinda wanted to top out around 200, but we got 160 people as a part of it. And a big question I got from club members, even at our very first event, which I think was like three or four months in, they were like, so you’re giving me a discount now.

paid this much money for it. I’ve already recouped all the money I would have spent had or not had the savings. So how are you making money off of this? Like how is this good for you? And I was at an event and I just said, look around for one thing. There’s people here that are connected now that weren’t connected before that I’m more connected with because they’re club members. They’re more connected with our staff now. Our staff knows their names more because they’re club members. And so there’s a deeper tie that way. So when you just look at it from that perspective, regardless of financially,

Garrett Oden (06:29.89)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (06:48.046)
We were winning, like our goal was to create community for people. And that’s what we did. We helped create a second level of community for our customer base and for our baristas. And then two asked this question, I was like, so last year, how often did you come in a week? And it was like, or twice, you know, a week. I’m like, cool. Now that you’re a club member, how often are you coming in? They’re like, at least three or four times. I’m like, okay, cool.

Now, when you come in, do you just come in by yourself or do you come in with other people? He’s like, no, I hold most of my meetings at Palace now. Okay, but you didn’t last year, right? He’s like, well, no, I’m like, so you have someone else coming with you that’s getting a drink. You’re getting your discount on your drink and purchase and you’re coming in more often. So then I just stopped and looked at him. I was like, so do you want to tell me again how you don’t think that it’s good for us too?

Like it works on every level. So that kind of helped people understand really what we were trying to do.

Garrett Oden (07:45.645)
That’s really interesting. You know, so you’ve used language like mug club, and I think people kind of understand what that is. You you buy a branded mug, you bring it in and you get a discount, you know, if you have your drink in that cup. But what you’re describing is something quite different. So, you know, can you explain how did you go from sort of a mug, a mug club concept to something that was a lot more dynamic and interactive with the events and the other elements? You know, how did, how did that evolve into something that was more unique?

Patrick And Krystal Burns (08:15.982)
I really do think it goes back to, I mean, 13 and a half years ago when we started Palace, what the core vision of Palace was, which was community, which was building spaces for people to belong. And if we’re gonna do that, we wanted to serve a really great product that goes along with it. And we also know that, man.

Sam’s Club has been doing a club style discount. know, Costco has a club style discount that you pay a yearly fee for. And so it was basically just looking out in the broader industry, not just the coffee industry specifically, but into other industries that have other things going on that are more membership based and then going home. I wonder if we could grab that from here and then plug it in over here. And if that can be a part of this whole story that we’re trying to tell, because the plan was year over year to keep building that membership up until it got to a point to where we didn’t feel like he could

to be sustainable based on losing personal connection. Because I mean, if we got to 1,000 members, man, that might be great for your cash flow, but can we really know 1,000 people that way to where they feel valued and we also can give that value back to them? And so that’s kind of where we’re like, okay, let’s try to grow it as much as we can. And then once we hit that limit, then let’s scale back, let’s change our pricing structure to make it make sense to where we can kind of keep it at a healthy level. And that healthy level really got to be about 200 to 250, really is what

to like the events part is something that we did add. That’s not something that that Joe was doing with his Mudd Club. And for us that that concept was the community base that we have so deeply rooted ourselves in. We’ve always loved community events. I mean, you mentioned Harry Potter night. That was something that we loved doing for our community and it was super fun. My background is actually in event planning. So anytime I can plan an event, I’m all for

But we also wanted to use those events not only as like…

Patrick And Krystal Burns (10:06.514)
to make the club member feel more special and like those were club exclusive events that they could bring a plus one to. When they would bring their plus one, their plus one are like these events are awesome. So then inevitably a lot of times their plus ones would join the club next year. And so it kind of helped us promote the club and the exclusivity of it in a weird way too by doing those events. And we were able to do events in which we, a lot of our events were also educational. So we would do a coffee and dessert pairing. And so we’re getting to show

paste our coffee and our product in a different to basically our Palace fans because they’re our club members and then they’re going out in the community and talking about it which then makes it feel more exclusive which then makes you want you know how it is if you see something that’s out there that seems exclusive you want in on it and so we were able to generate some kind of mystery behind the club by doing those events and by having people talking in our community we’re pretty fairly small community and so people talk to one another and we have

a lot of the same circles and so we were able to gain more club members each year basically because of them attending different things or hearing different things about the club.

Garrett Oden (11:16.471)
Yeah, when you see that card, I mean, you cannot help but crave the card. It just looks so legit. This is so interesting. mean, a lot of the conversation around subscriptions in the coffee world is very transactional. know, people say things like, we want the recurring revenue. You know, we want the, you know, the predictability of that revenue. And, but, you know, it feels very transactional. And what you’re describing is,

so community forward that you’re giving people really legitimate reasons to be deeply engaged and loyal, and you’re also turning them into evangelists for the brand and to outsiders. So that’s really interesting that for some of these members, you might’ve been operating at a loss if they come in a lot and they recoup their costs and then they’re getting discounts that you wouldn’t have given them otherwise. can you talk to me a little bit more about…

the unit economics and you know, how did you land on $150 for that first year? You know, how did you sort of add that up? You know, it seems risky to, to promise benefits for a full year in advance and have to commit to fulfilling those. You know, if you’re not totally certain how many times people are going to come in and what those actual costs for you will be. So yeah, can you talk a little bit about the, those economics?

Patrick And Krystal Burns (12:21.528)
Yeah.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (12:35.566)
mean, it’s a lot of averages is what we basically looked at. And so we knew what our hard costs were by being able to provide a $25 gift card, a tumbler and then that cool metal card. That was a set cost. And so then we knew, okay, then we have say $120, $115 left over that we’re gonna be able to put in our back pocket that will carry us through. So doing a 25 % discount on their drink and their pastry, that’s gonna equate to them coming in two times a week. And so we basically started doing hard math on it.

to figuring out where was their break-even point and then where are we really losing because even giving a 25 % discount we’re still above margin. I mean we’re still making more than what we would have made had them not come in at all.

And so then we had to start playing that game out of like, okay, if they’re going to be coming in four times versus coming in two times, they’re going to be saving more, but they’re also spending more with us. And so what are we comfortable with and doing that? And so that’s kind of what we did. We did a lot of spreadsheets, which is her favorite thing in the world to do. It’s weird. know, but I do love them. I think too, we really banking on the fact that they would come in more often and that they would bring somebody that would pay full price for a drink when they would come in.

Garrett Oden (13:38.115)
Hahaha

Patrick And Krystal Burns (13:45.644)
So while we knew that that wasn’t always gonna be the case, we knew that there was gonna be enough of that. And if you looked at our discounts over the year, it’s like, holy hell, you gave so many discounts over the year to club members. But, and it’s hard to know what revenue we also generated from those discounts, because it’s hard to kind of pin that down.

But we feel pretty confident that there were people that were coming in mostly because we saw it. We’d see a club member come in and they’d have a meeting with somebody. And so then we became the meeting place for that person too, because they got to come and experience who we are and what we do and how we take care of people. We kind of feel that way, like if we can get them in our door and we can make them feel valued and feel.

like we think we can hook them because our team is so exceptionally great at hospitality and taking care of people and making people feel that way. We hear it all the time and it really is, know, Patrick’s vision and his brainchild, but our baristas and our ship leads and our managers are, you know, in that every day and they’re doing it. They bought into the vision. And so we knew if we can get people in our door.

they’re gonna connect with our baristas, because our baristas are very people friendly. And so they’re gonna connect with them and then they’re gonna wanna keep coming back. And so it was just for us, I think in that first year especially, it was like, let’s just try this out, see if we can get more people in the door and then retain them. It was definitely an experiment and a risk that it was like, we don’t know if this is gonna be good or bad. then we just kind of kept.

Garrett Oden (15:02.841)
you

Patrick And Krystal Burns (15:18.776)
kept going and we have found some things that you know some things that worked in the beginning really really great you know fizzled out over time and it wasn’t as successful as we rotated different members we have some members that have been members from day one and they will forever and always be a Palace Club member.

because they’re just bought in. And then there’s others that have dropped off for whatever reason. Sometimes they’ll skip a year and then they’ll come back the next year. So, you we’ve learned over time and as our club is involved, certain things have kind of, you know, dissipated. Really after COVID, we noticed that the events weren’t as well attended. I think everybody got used to not doing things for a little bit and then it was hard to get it back into it and we never really regained that traction with events. And so that was one of the things with this year.

we’re not necessarily doing club exclusive events, we’re still going to do community events because that’s just who we are and we love doing that kind of stuff. But now we might open it up to everybody and then maybe talk about our club program while we have a captive audience or something like that. So yeah, we’ve evolved over time but I think initially our thought was like let’s just try it, let’s just you know see if the math maps and see if we can get people in the doors and retain them as customers.

Garrett Oden (16:31.405)
Was there something that you looked for to be the signal of whether this was successful or not for you?

Patrick And Krystal Burns (16:39.676)
that’s a good question. Yeah, that is a good question. Honestly, in back then, no, because we were just like trying things. I like to say we have fumbled our way through owning this business because we didn’t know what we didn’t know. And we just kind of are like, let’s just try this. are. He’s really more of a risk taker than I am. But I have such trust and faith in his vision that I’ve become more of a risk taker. Like the more that we’ve evolved in the more.

business together and so I think a lot in the beginning I was just like okay yeah if you think this is gonna work like we’ll figure it out I think in the last couple of years we’ve really been diving into getting more business coaching and mostly because we’ve had the ability to get our head above the

of just being entrepreneurs and business owners in general and owner-operators. Like we’re very involved in the day-to-day. And so I would say if you ask me that question today, I could be like, this is our goal because I have a process now. Like I want to make sure we have, need to have this many members to be able to break even or to make this money back or whatever it may be. Back then we really didn’t have, we were like, if we are in our mind, if we have 200 club members, we’re successful. And there wasn’t really any, you know,

But it was more of like that was success to us if we had quite a few people engaging that was successful to us Whereas now, you know as it’s kind of evolved and grown You know, we we haven’t we have a number that we’re like we really need to have You know this many members for it to make sense with the discounts that we’re giving out Yeah, I would say that’s the that’s the rub now is that we don’t want to become transactional we don’t want to be focused just on the back-end finances, but as

Hopefully solid business owners that want to provide a great place for our staff to work. We do care about revenue, we do care about continuing to grow so we can.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (18:38.68)
buy what we need to buy to make sure that they have what they need to take care of our guests properly, that we can pay properly, that we can come up with different benefits to make their job better and their life better in general while working here. And so I think before we were just focused on the people side of it, and then it’s easy to skew over and just focus on the transactional side of it and the revenue side of it. And so how do you bridge it? How do you keep your heart?

and also your head at the same time. Not only is it dreamer and dream crusher, people also say that there’s the head and the heart and she focuses more on that side of things to where I get to focus more on the heart side of things, the vision aspect of it. Doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have a heart, she definitely does. Doesn’t mean that I can’t think things through as well, but we definitely have our first natural tendency.

And so that’s where we kind of go with that. that’s why, honestly, it’s the best thing in the world to own a business with your spouse or your partner that you’re day in and day out with. It’s also some of the most difficult things you’re gonna do. But you get to bring the best of both worlds to the table and then it plays out from there. And so I couldn’t have a better partner and how.

and specifically in situations like this. Yeah and I have such empathy for business owners that are doing it on their own because we do we are able to bounce things off of one another and you know vent to one another and all the different things and I look at these entrepreneurs that are in it by themselves and they don’t have that and I’m like I don’t know how y’all do it and people look at us and they say I don’t know how y’all do it but you know we make it work. 25 years of marriage so far it’s been working okay.

Garrett Oden (20:02.221)
Hahaha

Garrett Oden (20:07.277)
Yeah, relationships are hard. So being in business and doing it together is even harder. So props to you. Well, so let’s see, you’ve changed the program over time. I think this is maybe your eighth or ninth year and you’ve changed what’s included. The pricing has changed. you give us a sense of direction of what some of those changes were and what you learned that caused you to make those changes?

Patrick And Krystal Burns (20:13.23)
Thanks.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (20:17.933)
Yeah.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (20:28.024)
Sure.

Yeah, initially some of the changes, we would talk to our club members and find out what they liked, what they didn’t like. We would actually send a survey out at the end of every year to our current club members asking them if they were planning on re-upping.

If they were, what are the features that they like about the club? they were but they had features they didn’t like, they could voice those. And then for people that dropped off, why’d you drop off? A lot of times it was we were moving or hey, I lost my job and so I just didn’t have the money at that time to do that. And I’m not coming in as often so it doesn’t make as much sense. So we would have those natural conversations. But some of the big ones that came up started in 2020 whenever we launched our app, which happened to be right in the right time whenever.

everything else shut down. We couldn’t find a way to have members utilize their discounts through the app, through the company that we were using. There was not a good tracking way to do that. And so as more people became more app focused in their orders, which is a very interesting thing for us because we are all about people and face-to-face connections. That’s why we don’t have any drive-throughs in our shops. We’re all about people.

stopping where they’re at, coming in and becoming part of our community, even for those two to five minutes while they’re with us, we believe it’s important for people to kind of get out of their day and get into just a nice neutral setting. And so whenever people really were like, hey, we really want to use the app for a discount, that started our thought process on, okay, if we’re gonna keep doing this, we’ve got to transition to a different way of doing it. We’ve got to get a little more technical on that side of things. And so I’m a member of the Cinemark Movie Club. I’m sure every time you go to the Cinemark,

Patrick And Krystal Burns (22:06.24)
you know you see the advertisement for it you know you get you a free ticket once a month they get you discounts every time you have a concession stand I don’t mean to be unplugged for a cent a mark but you know I

Garrett Oden (22:16.109)
Hahaha

Patrick And Krystal Burns (22:17.518)
using that app. And so every time I would go in once a month to go watch a movie, I’d pull that app out and I would use it. And so I’m like, why can’t we have something like this? Why can’t it be on the technical side of things? But we can still get to know people, we can still follow up with them, we can still have their marketing information so we can connect back with them in a real way, not just, you know, selling data, which we don’t do, you know, not just, you know, just doing push notifications, but actually connecting with them. And so that’s sort of that

Garrett Oden (22:20.153)
.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (22:47.424)
conversation and that’s been about the past year and a half. And that was something that we heard over and over again in our surveys. We wish we could use the app for our discounts but the problem is that our discounts were so complicated. It wasn’t just to like you get at this discount. It was like this discount on this day, this discount on this day. You know it’s exclusive to certain things and so we also did like a just over

Garrett Oden (23:05.973)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (23:11.618)
time just looking at all of our systems in general on the retail side we were trying to do some simplification logistically.

Some of the stuff with the club membership logistically during November and December was something that we struggled with a lot. And we would always try these new things and try these little micro changes to see if it made it better. And then we would get to the end of the year and be like, well, this worked, this didn’t work. And so we would kind of continue to refine those logistical systems as it relates to like how our staff was getting those sales and different things like that, signing people up for club memberships.

We just started looking overall like, okay, is this the most simple way? Like we love the idea of a club. We love the idea of gaining loyalty and being able to connect with these people. But logistically, it was starting to get a little bit over complicated, especially with the new technology that was coming in and that we were here. People were utilizing that more often and they were.

to be able to kind of marry both. And so we had to kind of take a step back and go, okay, let’s look at everything and let’s lay it all on the table, which is essentially what we did this year. And our baristas are much more appreciative of it because their job is now easier in taking care of our guests. They still get to know them really well, but if they don’t have to have three different things to think about, they can focus on the main things, which is connecting and serving great coffee.

Like that’s really their job. And so we need to make sure as owners that we have the least amount of barriers for them to be able to do that. And if we’re coming up with systems that over complicate their job, then we’re not doing our job properly.

Garrett Oden (24:46.649)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I, you know, I have many gift cards from over the years and some of them do not work with like restaurant apps and things like that. It’s quite frustrating to, know, to have something of value and not be able to use it like you want. And yeah, it makes sense. So let’s see what’s changed now. So let’s see, you’ve made a pretty substantial change to how the program works for, for 2025. This is the first year that you’ve made this change. that right? Okay.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (24:56.524)
Yep.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (25:01.24)
Yeah.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (25:13.748)
Yep, we are two weeks in so far. we essentially, the changes over the years were mostly pricing changes and maybe the different type of merchandise that we offered up until this year. we might have offered a growler, know, like a half gallon growler was part of their package. One year, maybe one year they, instead of getting a cash card, they got a pen. Like we would change those things out periodically. The discount structure pretty much stayed the same from day one. We didn’t really ever change that.

and then the prices would increase or mostly increase over the years we kind of added a little

This year, what we were looking for was a way that they could use their discounts on the app and a way that it could make it easier for our baristas because essentially during the month of November and December, always have this, so it’s already your very busy time at a coffee shop. November and December are the busiest months ever. And throw on top of that, oh, also you’ve got to sign up these club members because they can only do it during November and December for the next calendar year. And so it was slowing our line down essentially.

because we’re having to take time to have them fill out this card. We tried a physical card for them to fill out. We tried doing it, you know, through an iPad. We tried a QR code. We tried all different kinds of things to try to simplify it. But essentially, ultimately, we were like, is slowing our lying down.

time so we were considering that we tried everything from like take your items with you when you purchase it well then they would come in thinking they were already members when really didn’t start till the next year and so we started doing deliveries I mean there was all kinds of different things logistically that we tried to do. I spent a whole week delivering within a 30 mile radius of Amarillo. All of their items because we were like okay we would come up against one roadblock that was like this is really hard

Garrett Oden (26:52.995)
Hmm.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (27:08.946)
and confusing either for our staff or the guests. And so we would try to fix it with something else. And then we’d come against another road walk. So this year we were like, we want to put everything on the table club membership wise. Like we know we want to have a club membership. We know that, you know, we want to try to make it work through the app. So let’s put everything else on the table and be willing to chop, you know, put everything on the chopping block essentially. And so that was what we did with our director team. So we kind of.

took it, we took a day and we just said okay this is our current club membership these are the things we think we want to accomplish how do we get from A to B without you know making all of our customers frustrated you know the ones that are used to this certain thing so we did a series of things we sent out you know we kind of put together our thoughts on what we could do with this program and how we can move it to where it was more app-based. We also wanted it to be an opt-in opt-out like

You don’t have to buy it in November and December. Because inevitably, every March, we’d have somebody go, I want to join the club. And we’d be like, well, you have to until November. So we wanted to make it more flexible. We wanted to make it where they could use the app. So we kind of put all of that on the table. And we said, let’s just figure out. So then we came up as a director team with ideas of like, OK, we think this is what it can look like.

Garrett Oden (28:09.945)
Yeah.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (28:26.55)
And then our director of retail who works with very closely with the app company went to the app company and said, these are the things that we want to do. How do we make this happen? And they helped formulate it on the back end. Once we were pretty confident that this could happen, we took that and we did another survey to our current club members. And we said, we are thinking about changing the, we were pretty, we had pretty much decided we wanted to move this direction, but we did.

want to hear their feedback and what things they you know would have to say about it and so it was very varied. We sent this survey to all current club members and we sent it to everybody that was like in our loyalty program that maybe wasn’t a club member that like was coming in all the time and coming in often enough that maybe they would qualify to be and it’s interesting the people that were not yet club members were like all about it they were so excited that we were going to this new model it really fit into

to what they would want and maybe why they hadn’t joined the club before. And then our current club members were all over the place. Some of them loved it. Some of them were like, absolutely not. We want our Tumblr. We want our whatever. so we just kind of had to weigh out. At the end of the day, what we always say as business owners and leaders in our community is we have so many people and it’s such a wide variety of customers.

you’re always gonna be disappointing someone. So what we have to do and what our job is to do as business owners is to make the decision that we feel is best, like overarching overall, even though it might disappoint some people. And so that was kind of where we talked with our team about,

here’s the pros and cons list of making this change. It’s a drastic change, it’s a big change. And so we ultimately decided to do a little bit of a soft launch. So we’re actually still in the soft launch phase where it’s on our app, it’s available, you can subscribe. If you get on our app, it’ll say like subscribe and save and you can click there. But we have not advertised this new.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (30:29.868)
method yet outside of advertising to our current club members so they know that because they knew you’re changing it and then just our current loyalty program like they know that this exists and our brief is just word of mouth telling people so we’re getting ready to do a big marketing push for this new structure the reason we had to kind of let our current club members know is because usually every October we’ll do a re-up event where if they renew at that event they got like a 10 % discount on their membership so we

We’ve always done that, we’ve been doing that for probably five or six years. And so in October, our current club members were coming to us going, hey, what’s this event? And we knew internally that we were reworking this program. And so essentially we were like, we’ve got to get something out to them to let them know we’re reworking it. So that was where the survey kind of came in.

So that’s essentially what our process was to kind of get to this. And you know, at the end of the day, I think we probably did disappoint some people. I think a lot of people, it’s just they don’t fully understand the changes that we’ve made. And what I’ve recognized is when somebody comes and is like, I don’t really like this, and I’ll say, okay, great, what do you not like about it? And they’ll start talking and it’s usually a complete misunderstanding. It’s like, no, that’s actually not, that’s not, we’re not, you’re misunderstanding this program. Here’s actually how it works. And when I’m able to verbally

or even physically show them in the app like this is what happens and this is what you’re able to do then they’re like, okay. Yeah, I’m totally on board and they’ll sign up right there. So it’s we’re having to do a lot of like communicating and our director of retail has been amazing with that of just like really interacting with those guests that are showing some like, you know frustration or just like not understanding what the change was or how to sign up and so he’s been working really closely with those guests and so we’ve been trying to in this kind of

soft launch phase really work out all of the kinks. That way when we get ready to market it, all of Asstep is ready to go. one, I mean we ran into a really big kink in that we thought we were gonna be able to have two tiers. We were gonna have one that was a lower price, that’s just a discount base, and then we’re gonna have one.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (32:37.038)
movie club where it’s like you get a free drink a week and you have you know a higher you pay a higher price however the app developers totally misunderstood what we were asking for and they could not do both you can either get a free drink or a discount you can’t do both now they’re trying right now they’re in the works of trying to develop something where that tier could work maybe later this year but right now we’re just like we have one tier seven dollars and fifty cents a month often are out at any time and

Garrett Oden (32:52.066)
Oof.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (33:06.954)
you get 15 % off of all of your purchases. And so that is kind of what we move to. Whereas in the past…

It was, yes, a higher discount, but it was only off of the club members drinks. Well, now we don’t have to, our staff doesn’t have to go, well, which one of these drinks that you just ordered is yours? It totally, you know, takes all of the questions out. It’s like, are you a club member? They have a QR code in store that they show, that shows that they’re a club member. you know, they’re on the app, automatically, you know, places their discount for them. And so it really has taken the weight off of our baristas.

when you have that many baristas working in your shop, inevitably somebody’s gonna not check an ID or not check that they’re a club member, they’re gonna be giving away discounts or not giving away discounts and so we just wanted to take the guesswork out of all of it and so this model really aligns with our goals for that simplification. That was a really long answer for that question.

Garrett Oden (34:08.397)
is phenomenal. So this model, it’s different. Let me make sure I understand. So there’s a monthly fee that you pay. Is there an annual option or is it just monthly?

Patrick And Krystal Burns (34:20.108)
There is now. You can pay annually and it’s a 10 % discount. So if you want to pay for the full 12 months, you know you’re going to be a club member. You can pay it annually. The only thing that caveat we kind of tell our club members is like if you decide in January like you sign up in January and then know August you move.

you’re locked in for that year. You can opt out once your year is up since you paid up front. And that’s like with any app. So people are familiar and used to that model. But yes, there is an option to pay, which was one of the biggest questions we got. Like, I don’t want to pay every month. I want to pay one lump sum and be done with it. And so we were able to implement that as well.

Garrett Oden (35:02.579)
Okay, so, you know, it sounds like there’s a sense that some people valued the exclusivity of You get in you got it for the year you get a special card there’s events maybe that are just for you and and maybe some of that is gone and it’s and at least it’s it’s De-emphasized as a part of the program. How do you think about that? You know You’ve made this more accessible. It’s what it seems like and it feels like that was very intentional, you know, do you feel like you you?

Patrick And Krystal Burns (35:20.973)
Yeah.

Garrett Oden (35:30.839)
Is there anything, you know, what’s the trade off? guess is what I’m asking. You know, there, is there something you’ve, you’ve lost as, as part of that trade off?

Patrick And Krystal Burns (35:37.71)
With us only being two weeks into this year and us not really doing a big push for it yet, I don’t know that we know really what the trade-off is going to be. I think we can anticipate what it is, which it is going to be people maybe not feeling as connected. But that’s where we have to really trust our team. Like our hospitality, the way that we try to take care of our guests, the way that we train our baristas and everyone in the company on every level is to make people feel valued no matter who they are, no matter how.

And so if someone feels like they need that exclusivity to feel that, then that means we’ve failed in our basic level of hospitality of what we’re trying to do. And so I will, I’ll be more than willing to hear people out all day long as a guest if they do feel like they, well, I just felt more special because I had a card and so-and-so didn’t. Okay, let’s unpack that. You know, let’s get some counseling and figure out why you to have something more so than someone else to feel special.

Garrett Oden (36:27.927)
Hahaha

Patrick And Krystal Burns (36:34.254)
Because we feel like by valuing everybody, genuinely valuing seeing them as a person, that is what everyone desires. That is the deepest need of us as people is to be seen as valuable. And so is there gonna be a trade off for some people that don’t have a card or a tumbler to instantly be recognized as special? Sure. Is that something that we should be able to figure out and fix all the time?

No, I don’t think that’s our role. Our role is to make sure we’re consistent in our value.

And so, yeah, think to me that’s gonna be the biggest one. Well, and I think we had this conversation of like, we already take care of our guests all the same way. So a club member may think that they’re getting special treatment, but they’re not because we treat all of our guests the same way. so, and our staff, that’s why our staff was getting confused about who’s a club member who’s not because they treat all of them the same. And they’re like, you come in all the time, you’ve gotta be a club member. Well, they might not.

actually be a club member, you know what I’m saying? So we wanted to take that out of it. And so for us, we’re like, our guests are still gonna get treated the exact same. And now we’re gonna open up this community where, you know.

Because a lot of what we would hear about the events in particular is like, well, it’s on a night that I can’t or it’s always on a this day or that day. Now we’re just going to do community events throughout the year that everyone’s invited to. And if you can make it great and if you can’t, you don’t. But it’s more approachable, think, and flexible for everybody to join. And so I think in our minds, already are like, our hospitality and the way that we care for our guests is the same no matter if they’re a member or not.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (38:19.119)
So for us, the trade off for them is like, if you’re member, you get a discount and that’s what’s good for you. What’s good for us is that hopefully you’re coming in more often and bringing your friends and introducing them to Palace and what we’re doing. And so I think that’s where we kind of hope that this program works is we each benefit from it. It needs to be mutually beneficial and we see that it is, we can see the value in it and we hope that they see that.

that if we need to change and add a community event that’s just for people that are members of our royalty program, we can do that on the fly and say, this July, we’re gonna be out at this community event, July 4th plus one. And if you come up and you bring your club membership, you’re gonna get a free drink on us at this event.

You know, so we can always add to it. That’s the freedom that we get to have in this is that we’re creating the baseline for it. And then we can build on top of this foundation and do things. Like she said, we’re not scared to take risks. You know, she’s become more that way. You know, we’ve opened up more shops than we currently operate. You know, we’ve shut down three shops over the 13 and a half years that we’ve had at Palace. And so we’re always willing to try new things. And so this is just another one of those new things that we feel like we’ve thought through.

Garrett Oden (39:12.949)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (39:40.686)
The logistics is best we can. And so now let’s try it, see what happens, and then add to it. see what works and what doesn’t.

Garrett Oden (39:49.209)
It is interesting that with the annual framework there was you knew the ceiling of what you could offer based on what that revenue cap was. Whereas now, since people can join throughout the year, you have more opportunities to bring people in and you can maybe have some extra flexibility. I definitely see the advantage of that.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (40:05.282)
Yeah.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (40:09.518)
Yeah, and there’s something too. We get a lot of travelers being in Amarillo. Obviously we have I-40 that drops people right on our front doorstep at our Whifflin location. Now with I-27, you know, getting expanded and that’s going to be a big corridor for us too. We’re going to have a lot of people going through Canyon that are going to do the same thing. So how does a club membership work for someone that doesn’t live here?

Well, we’re extending that same discount to our online community too, to where people can use a discount code that they get when they get onboarded, that they can go online and use that discount code that’s just for them. And so then we can build a relationship through our online store, which we’re about to, we’re redesigning, we’re hopefully launching in February. Because we also understand that while technology is important and it’s a way for us to reach more people, if we don’t have the heart and the connection of someone actually typing specific messages or caring for our online guests,

as well, then that’s still not palace and that’s just an online sort of sales palace. So we’re, that’s the next big step is trying to have an online community where we actually can have discussions about our coffee, discussions about you know just how we do things because when they stop in our shop they feel hospitality. So I want them to every time that they brew a cup of our coffee at home

to think back on the hospitality and also have a connection point that is like, hey, I just got in this new job at Rosita from Bolivia from you guys. You got any brewing recommendations for us? I want them to be able to instantly get on something and say, hey, Patrick, can you help me out with this coffee? I know you guys picked it out for a reason. I’m sensing this when I do it. And then I could get a chance to talk to him or our coffee team needs a chance to talk to him on that. So that’s kind of how we’re looking to expand. So again, this is our foundation and then we’re going to keep growing from there.

Garrett Oden (41:50.851)
So let’s talk about tools and the tech used to run the program. So is this all captured and contained within your app or do you use some other outside tools that help you run this?

Patrick And Krystal Burns (42:01.998)
It is 100 % through our app. This year it’s 100 % through our app, which we are so thankful for. In previous years, I’ve had a spreadsheet. We’ve had it in Square. I mean, it’s been a little bit all over the place. But because the app works with Square, we’re able to see it in both places. essentially, all of the framework and everything that we

which we use per diem is the company that we go through for our app. We switched over to them last year, beginning of last year. About eight, nine months ago. And have really enjoyed just their platform and how it’s really worked well for us. They’ve been super responsive. Their app is pretty and obviously it’s a skin that, you know, they pop on your…

and stuff, but we have full functionality where we can change things as we need to. And that’s where Cole, our director of retail, that’s part of his role is to make sure our app is staying as consistent and isn’t buggy. And if it is, then we get right to per diem and they’re really joining on the spot and fixing things for us.

Garrett Oden (43:05.849)
That’s great. Yeah, cool. Okay. So, you know, this approach that you have, you’ve made a lot of changes, you know, what advice would you give to somebody, you know, they are out there, they are looking into subscriptions, recurring revenue, memberships of some kind. There’s a lot of options, you know, what would you, what would you say to them to steer them on a good path?

Patrick And Krystal Burns (43:26.348)
The first advice I give anybody whenever they’re thinking anything about future growth is you’ve got to run that through your business plan model that you hopefully created whenever you started your business. And the most important aspect of that original business plan, it’s not the nuts and bolts of it necessarily, it’s the vision aspect of it, of who you are. Like why did you get into this? What drove you to want to be a part of this community? What drove you to want to start this kind of business with this kind of product? You have to run everything back through that.

For us, the reason we’re switching to this is because yeah, is there a revenue add for us to where we can make more money? 100%. So how do we keep the heartbeat of Palace in that? How do we make sure we don’t lose ourselves? That’s always the danger of getting too tech heavy, moving in a direction that you could not have to think as much because this is doing all the thinking for you.

We can’t lose the human aspect of it. And so that’s the thing that is important to us. They’ve got to figure out what’s important to them. If the nuts and bolts of it were why they got into it, if it was a revenue based game and they wanted to do that, then okay, then you’ve ran that through your generator, you’ve looked at it, you know it’s gonna work. Then move forward until you hit a wall.

And then if you hit that wall, figure out if you have the tools to cut a door through it and open it up, or you have a battery in that you can knock it down, or a ladder you can climb over. And if you can’t do those three, then you stop right there. And you turn around, and you try to find a different path through.

That’s what you gotta do, but the vision of why you got into your business is the most important aspect of it. So that’s not just technology based, that’s everything. Anytime you wanna make a change. When people ask us all the time, can y’all add a drive-thru? Can y’all open up a shop that has a drive-thru? Can y’all put a box store that’s just a drive-thru only? Go back to our core vision. Why do we do this? We did this for people, we did this for community space. We did this to bring a community together that might not typically interact in our city.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (45:22.37)
We want to provide that environment where everyone feels comfortable that way they can all see the value that they bring to our community. So that’s our core statement. That’s our core vision. So this has to line up with that or else we wouldn’t do it. I think too, something that I’ve learned fumbling my way through all of this, but especially with this program is kind of going back to the basics of what we’re doing this year is like Patrick said, we built a foundation that can be built upon. So starting simple, maybe you don’t do.

all of the things at once. Maybe you don’t do a discount and the this and the that and events and all of these things. Maybe you start with it’s cost this much a month to join and this is your discount and then you can grow it from there because what we did the mistake that I feel like we made, I mean it worked out for us but if I had to do all over again I probably would have started with more of a foundation and then each year added things because then I think when we got to this year it wouldn’t have felt as like wow you took all

things away. You can always add things. It’s hard to take things away, especially from a guest perspective. Even if it’s the best thing for your business, they don’t care. They want what’s best for them and what makes them feel good. And so it’s way easier to add things to what you’re currently doing and be the hero and make them feel like, man, they added this aspect to the program versus being like, we’re going to start here and do all these things and then dwindle it down. I would say start simple.

Garrett Oden (46:26.606)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (46:49.58)
you know, figure out what it is you want and then build on it from there once you make sure the foundation and the method both of the logistic part of it works.

Garrett Oden (47:00.622)
So I was talking to somebody else who I found out was a friend of yours about something unrelated and she told me Alexandra little John said you have to ask them two questions and the first is What is the story of the name and the logo she sounds like there’s something there

Patrick And Krystal Burns (47:13.468)
no! I don’t know! Okay, I’m ready.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (47:21.39)
There is, that is great. So we’ve been looking to do a coffee company probably for about 18, 19 years. And it just never felt the right time for us with us having young kids and stuff. And so by the time we actually dusted the idea off the shelf, we’d been to the expo. I think our first one was in Anaheim.

2009, you’re Michael Phillips one. I think that’s right. So we got to see the industry at large for what it was and from you know, you’re from Lubbock. So you know that back in 2009 mid 2000s the coffee industry in this area, you know was some local stuff, but it definitely was more syrup and milk drinks. There wasn’t latte art really happening around here. There wasn’t specifically pour overs and talking about flavor notes. It was just more of the basic second wave coffee around here.

And so we walk into Willy Wonka’s world at the expo and see all this amazing tech and we see these coffee competitions and we’re like, wait a second, there’s a whole other side to the coffee industry that we didn’t know existed. And this fits more with our personality because this is about an experience. This is about creating things for people that then leads back into my heartbeat, which is creating community spaces. And then if we’re going to do that, we want to serve an elevated product that we’re stoked about, not pretentious about, but we’re at least excited that we can share information about.

So then we started thinking about, this is the style of shop we want to own. Cane this work in Amarillo or Cane in Texas. Really Amarillo, because we’re Amarillo kids. And so our thought was no. So we were looking at going to Tulsa, we were looking at going to Austin, or we were looking at going to DFW. But none of those felt right. We didn’t feel like we wanted to move because this is our home. At that point it felt like home for us, our long-term home. I mean, we’re hometown kids. And so we started just thinking about other ideas. And so finally…

I had the idea after visiting a really cool coffee shop in Louisville called Quills and they were just packed and they had college kids in there all day long. So I got to know their manager that week I was there and I was like, man, how are y’all busy? This busy all the time. He goes, well there’s just two colleges like right off of Baxter Avenue. And so we always have people coming in. So I sat down and I called her that day and said, hey, listen, I don’t think we need to look into a big market to create community and to create the style of coffee shop we want. I think we need to find a college town.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (49:38.542)
And she’s like, okay, cool. What college town are you thinking? I’m like, well, what if we didn’t have to move? And I was like, we don’t have a college, aren’t we? We do in Canyon. And I was like, oh yeah, we did have a college in Canyon. I forgot. is for those that don’t know, which a lot of people don’t, Amarillo is the hub community of the pain handle north of Lubbock.

Garrett Oden (49:45.037)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (49:56.814)
And then we have Canyon, which is just south. It’s called Canyon because it’s right outside of Palo Alto Canyon, the second biggest canyon in the nation. Everyone, if you get a chance to drive through, you definitely need to drive through Palo Alto Canyon. It’s beautiful. So we started looking in Canyon and we found this little old building that used to be called the Palace Hotel. It was built in 1906. It’s on the Texas Historical Registry of Buildings. 1906 to 1912, it was the mercantile of Canyon and upstairs was the land office.

In 1912, it turned into the Palace Hotel. And so that ran from 1912 to 1960. And that was the premier place to stay in the region. There was only, you know, 12 rooms upstairs. the upstairs of that building currently is still the old Palace Hotel. It’s not been touched. And so if you go up there, there’s still the hotel rooms and the numbers on the, you know, frames. doors are left. It’s wild. It’s been a ravaged building years. There’s not a lot up there anymore. But before we took it, it was vacant.

Garrett Oden (50:52.259)
Huh.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (50:56.674)
six years. It was rough. was rough shape. we went and found the building and we got the key to it. We were stepping over dead bats. The floors rolled, you know, because I love old buildings. think history matters. think old communities need to find a way to recapture their history and claim it. You tell the true story about your history, but then also make it better. Well, we walk in and Patrick says, it’s perfect. And I was like, what? I don’t see it.

Garrett Oden (51:09.498)
wow, yeah.

Garrett Oden (51:24.739)
hahahaha

Patrick And Krystal Burns (51:26.574)
Remember Dreamcrusher? So I was like no I can make this work the bones are beautiful like this can be a story this is where I want to create something. Yeah that’s where the name palace came from. and so as far as the logo our icons of Phoenix and Phoenix is you know bringing beauty from ashes you know taking something from death to life and so we felt like with the name palace and the meaning such a

a big part of Kenyan’s history, we wanted to bring that back to life. And so that’s why we decided Palace was a good name. The building, the Smith building, was threatened to be demolished if something didn’t go in there soon, which would have been a travesty in my opinion. And so we were able to bring that back to life as well. And then you alluded to the Harry Potter stuff and she mentioned as well. We’re Harry Potter nerds. We’re Harry Potter nerds. Our family, you know, were raised on it. And so Fox, you know, the Phoenix is an iconic character from those books as well.

Garrett Oden (52:20.793)
yep.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (52:21.582)
We wanted it to be regal but Patrick was like no lions. Lion is overdone. So I also thought about other things that were on coat of arms to go along with palace and you would see the firebird you know when they were ugly it’s like you know Ruger has a firebird there’s a lot of companies out there that use the firebird symbolism but we wanted to make it a little bit

us and so we had a friend who was a designer who created the icon for us and so therefore we have a Phoenix so Palace and Phoenix that’s that’s how that story works together.

Garrett Oden (52:53.421)
That’s a great origin story for those. All right, the other thing that Alessandra told me how to ask about was that you’re both apparently theater geeks is the language she used. I’m not sure what that means, but do you have a favorite Broadway show or some other show that you’ve seen or participated in even? don’t know.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (53:09.358)
attention. I mean the big story, biggest story. So we’re going back for our Christmas we buy each other a trip to New York. We do love New York, we do love theater. We’re very involved in our local community theater. Picking one show is really hard. It’s not. are you gonna tell the Hamilton story? I’ll let you tell it. So Hamilton, know, huge musical. The year that it won the Tony

for Best Musical, we were there before the Tony Awards and we happened to be there on a random Wednesday. I was like, I’m gonna enter the lottery for Hamilton and he was like, okay, we’re never gonna win that. And I was like, okay, well, I’m gonna try. We don’t have Hamilton money to spend in $500. Yeah, they were, the tickets were very expensive. So I entered the lottery on both of our emails and we were getting ready to leave the hotel and I was like, oh, we gotta check to see if we won the lottery. And he was like, okay.

Garrett Oden (53:53.305)
Yeah, yeah, it sure works.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (54:01.87)
And I pull out my phone and he pulls out his phone and at the same time we’re like, we won. He had won on his email address, I had won on my email address, and we actually won four tickets. Crazy, and I think what happened was it was usually on Wednesdays in New York, it was what they called the hand for hand. And so they only did the lottery in person. Well, all the locals didn’t realize they weren’t having a hand for hand that day. We didn’t know, we just were entering the lottery. So we won and we got to sit front row center.

Garrett Oden (54:09.933)
Wow.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (54:28.494)
$10 tickets original cast. It was incredible. So that’s probably like my favorite theater experience because it was just like, cannot believe we’re getting to see this. And then they won the Tony, you know, a few months later. So we kind of got in when it was like really exploding and we were able to see it for $10 like on the front row. I mean, it was insane. Favorite theater experience. I would say

And honestly, probably my favorite musical. I have every word memorized. Every single one. It’s your cleaning playlist. It’s my cleaning playlist. Yeah.

It’s tough, as far as Broadway musicals go, I’m not the musical person. I do plays, I like to act and I do plays and the heavy stuff. To Kill a Mockingbird, we got to go see that with our boys whenever our oldest graduated high school, we waited until 2021 to go. And we got to go see a bunch of great things that being able to experience theater with your family is important. Our kids grew up in theater doing plays and shows. And so it was really important, I think, for our family to be able to do that.

together as a group. And we got, we saw the big musicals that year too, Moulin Rouge, all that kind of stuff that, you know, I’ve been around for a long time, but being a play person, I wanted to go see an amazing play and Jeff Daniels as Atticus Finch and To Kill a Mockingbird and the staging of it was unbelievable.

So yeah, so in my change, we took this trip because the Outsiders is playing and the Outsiders is such a paramount piece for people in our region. I mean, it was written in Tulsa by a 16 year old woman, a girl at the time. And so to take that as such an important story for my childhood, I think our childhood, and to be able to go see that on Broadway after it won a Tony, I think that’s going to be probably another important one for us. Yeah, we are definitely theater nerds in case you couldn’t tell by how excited we just got to tell you those stories. Yeah, we can talk for a long time.

Garrett Oden (56:02.807)
Hmm.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (56:25.584)
about that side of things too.

Garrett Oden (56:27.927)
I’m a theater, you know, the magic of theaters is mostly lost on me. And my wife always gives me a dirty look whenever I remind her that I got to see Wicked in 2006 on a school trip and I was, you know, half asleep. I was not excited. It was not nearly as cool as seeing the Empire State Building. And I just remember the show ending and thinking to myself, wait a second, can plays be good? You know, and it was, I was shocked that it was like so amazing. And it was.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (56:39.563)
up.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (56:47.072)
Yeah.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (56:57.582)
It’s a fun experience. I think a lot of people feel that way though. So, ALJ has exposed us in the copy world, they now know we’re nerds. I’m gonna give you one reason why I think theater is so important. And it’s because I think it is a kind of one for one parallel to life in general.

Garrett Oden (56:57.881)
Sadly totally lost on me as a sixth grader

Patrick And Krystal Burns (57:15.298)
When you’re in a play or you go to a show, you get that experience at that one time. It’s never going to be done the exact same way ever again. Just like life. Every conversation you have, every guest we take care of at our offer bar, you have that one moment that actually makes it real. That if you say something dumb, own it and lean into the awkwardness that that might make. If you have a chance to make someone’s day, do that. Find a way to encourage people. But there’s a one for one parallel to theater to where that audience is the only audience that’s going to see that performance from that person in that time.

to where movies and TV you go back and revisit over and over and over and see the exact same thing again that’s why I live theater is important that’s why I think it’s a good part of community.

Thanks.

Garrett Oden (58:00.781)
Well, okay, Crystal, Patrick, this has been a really fun conversation. I’m very grateful for your openness to talk about these things and to help others out there who are in a similar situation, looking for inspiration and looking for ways to make their businesses more resilient. So thank you so much for joining us.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (58:19.106)
loved it. Feel free if they want to reach out to us and ask any questions you can share our email address and they can reach out to us.

Garrett Oden (58:25.675)
Absolutely. Where should people go? that paliscoffee.com?

Patrick And Krystal Burns (58:29.902)
It’s actually .co, that little M. Someone camped on that name before. think the last time we checked it was about $25,000 to buy. We’re like, we’re good without an M. It’s fine. patrickopennalscopy.co is my email address.

Garrett Oden (58:32.067)
.co

Ha ha ha.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (58:46.286)
They also can reach out through our socials, through obviously Instagram. That’s pretty much our main social. TikTok might be going away, so don’t do that. So yeah, yeah, yeah, and some messages or reach out through email.

Garrett Oden (59:01.237)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here.

Patrick And Krystal Burns (59:02.99)
Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you, Garrett.