We really and truly have to come to terms with being totally self-sufficient from an energy standpoint. If that means drilling more wells or changing to some other fuel or building 700 nuclear power plants—whatever it takes, we need to have our eyes wide open and get a great plan. Let’s get moving forward from this instead of endless arguing and non-movement.

MASON: Stop taxing us. Stop adding to our liability and bottom line. The more pressure put on small business, the fewer people we can hire and the slower the economy is going to move because we support 70 percent of the economy.

Has the green movement changed how you run your restaurant?

CROSBY: Our approach is: What is good for the environment, what’s good for the world, and what is a financially sound business decision at the same time? We can’t come to terms or seem to make all local sourcing of meats or produce work; it just financially doesn’t seem to work for us. But we do source within regions. Everything is within the U.S. borders. We consider plants that meet certain standards about their carbon footprint, their waste, their recycling programs. We focus on packaging that’s recyclable. We get the maximum amount of recycled product in there.

We try to reduce our internal consumption back of the house, the paper that we print on, the impacts of the disposing of ink cartridges, how we dispose of or recycle any of the shortening that we have. It’s all there, right down to the quality of the water we’re putting back into the municipality system. When we specify grease interceptors, we get by with like a 300 to 400–gallon grease interceptor. We put in a 2,000–gallon grease interceptor and enzymes. We win awards for the quality of the discharge water that we’re putting back into the municipal systems.

We just try to approach it from what makes business sense, what makes us a good citizen, what supports all the efforts, especially efforts within our borders in the U.S.

Thom, you talked about the fact that you were “entrepreneurial” and that’s one of the reasons you chose to go as an independent operator versus a franchisee. What does it mean to be “entrepreneurial”?

CROSBY: Setting your own course and having the opportunity to then deal with all of the implications and decisions. If you’re entrepreneurial, you have a passion for wanting to create. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you want to create in a way that delivers predictable, sustainable results.

Is there a certain type of personality that’s best suited to run an independent restaurant?

CROSBY: First and foremost, that person is a lifelong learner. If you had a conversation with them, you could just see the wheels turning. They’re seeing the level of systems and the unique flow that’s going on around them. And if they bring to the table this characteristic of being a lifelong learner, they’re going to be successful.

They read QSR, and it’s not just, “I want to keep up with what’s going on.” They’re thinking more, “There’s good stuff here. The world’s full of great, smart people. What can I learn?” It’s the kind of individual that one single sentence or a piece of a sentence just really resonates with them and starts their minds churning about the ideas and possibilities.

The other thing is a person who has great tenacity; they don’t let things buffalo them. They will stick with it, if they have a passion. They’ll believe in what they’re doing, until they actually overcome the hurdles.

Whether you go the franchise route, the independent route in a restaurant business or any other business, or working for a nonprofit organization, there’s always hurdles. The real successful personality has to have this tenacity.

The final thing that is absolutely critical: They have to have a true ingrained passion and it just flows out of them. You can tell that they’re excited about what they’re doing, they love it. It energizes them and where they’re going.

ANDREW: It doesn’t matter whether it’s a franchise business or an independent business, you got to want to be in the people business when you’re in the restaurant business. You’ve got to want to make sure that you excel and your team excels.

It takes strong guts to be able to muscle through. The restaurant business is a very competitive business. It’s a seven-day-a-week business, very long hours. Being driven is paramount.

From my experience being on the franchiser side, the more successful franchisees are those who are good at following instructions and good at following formats and systems and staying within what we call compliance of the brand guidelines and the operational guidelines. Some people who are extremely entrepreneurial don’t make good franchisees because they’re always wanting to improve the box and change the bottle. That’s just in their DNA.

You’ve really got to analyze what your particular strengths and weaknesses are. You can probably come to a conclusion pretty quickly whether or not owning a franchise business or starting your own independent business is really the path that you should take.

I would encourage people who are looking at those options to really ask themselves some of those key questions: Do they want to go it alone in an independent business? Or do they want to join a larger system because they like the way it’s perfected and they just want to run a business?