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So, what’s the best way to spend a couple of hours talking shop these days? Ask the attendees of our Virtual Commercial Construction & Renovation Retreat, which featured some of the industry’s leading vendors and end users.

On the conversation list was everything from working in today’s construction climate, trends impacting the marketplace and how our attendees’ introduction to working in the industry. The roundtable some astute insights into what it takes to navigate our ever-changing construction landscape. The Zoom roundtable, sponsored by Commercial Construction & Renovation, was held over a two-day period in September. Here is a snapshot of our conversation.

FRANK WEISS VP Real Estate & Construction SPFS INC - Philly Pretzel Factory ROB ADKINS Store Development Starbucks HERMINIO PEREIRA Director of Construction Burger King GLENN MARSHALL Director of Business Development CDO Group Exec VP USA Kingsmen USA DAVID SHOTWELL Construction Manager

Atticus Franchise Group NICK KEYES Managing Director, Project Development Services Cushman & Wakefield

JASON SMEAL Director of Business Development

Inspected JOHN DINUNZIO President

STEPHEN HEKMAN Identicom Signs/FacilitiesRx Services

CCR: Give us a snapshot of what you do. Rod Adkins, Starbucks Coffee: I’m a construction manager for the Starbucks Store Development team in the Mid-Atlantic region, which encompasses areas of Maryland to South Carolina. My territory has been specifically the D.C. Metro area, Central Virginia, Southwest and Tidewater areas of Virginia. I’ve been with Starbucks as a Construction Manager for over two years, but my entire career has been spent in the Commercial Design and Construction industry.

Glenn Marshall, CDO Group: I’m the director of business development in the Frisco, Texas office. I run our entire business development team and handle client relations. I’m responsible for connecting clients on the front end and understanding their pain points and helping them achieve their goals.

Stephen Hekman, Kingsman: I’m the EVP for Kingsman, based out of Mesa, California. Our headquarters in Singapore. I have been with Kingsman for 12 years, building companies and building brands abroad. I also own the subsidiary of the office.

Jason Smeal, Inspected.com: I am the business development director for Inspected, a remote virtual inspection software company. I am responsible for procuring new clients and getting them on boarded, handling both the contractors’ and AHJ’s.

John DiNunzio, IdentiCom: We are a sign company and facility RX service. I’ve been in the sign business for more than 40 years, working with national accounts. I started IdentiCom in 2009.

Nick Keyes, Cushman and Wakefield: I run the project management and development services group for the South-Central Region, which is in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and some of the other tertiary markets surrounding those areas. I manage all of the project management, concept SF&E close outs, perform contract negotiations and manage all personnel.

David Shotwell, Atticus Franchise Group: Managing construction and facilities for the multiple brands Wing Stop, Massage Envy and Maaco Body Shops. We are based in Atlanta, but most of our locations are in the Midwest to East Coast regions.

Frank Weiss, Philly Pretzel Factory: I’m Vice President of Real Estate and Construction. We’re a 170-unit chain in 18 states around the country. I’ve been with them almost 12 years. We’re a franchise company, so I handle the franchises when they come on board—all the way from real estate to the construction process.

Hermino Pereira, Burger King Puerto Rico: I’m in charge of the construction department, renovations, construction and some facilities for our 170-plus Burger Kings and 13 Firehouse Subs locations. I’ve been with the company for 10 years.

CCR: What kind of adjustments have you made since the pandemic hit? Burger King’s Pereira: We started adjusting and adjusting because the market has changed completely. We used to be 60%

— Rod Adkins, Starbucks Coffee drive-thru and a 40% dining rooms. Right now, it’s 90% drive through and a 10% dining room. So we’re trying to make improvements to the drive drive-thru—add a double lane or other amenities. Regarding the interior of the restaurants, we probably have done the same thing most others have done. People are not coming inside the restaurant, basically. They are doing take-out or drive-thru.

CCR: And you have to wear a mask, correct? Burger King’s Pereira: Yes, it’s mandatory throughout the country.

CCR: Is it too early to tell what will become normal when things return? Are there some things that you are doing you will keep in place? Burger King’s Pereira: From my perspective, people are going to be accustomed to use the drive-thru more, not eat in the restaurant. Things were trending toward that for years. Every year, we had more and more people use the drive-thru. COVID will accelerate that tendency. We used to have 90-something seats or chairs. Today, when we remodel, we have 60 to 70 chairs. We don’t need any many than that. The dining rooms are going to be smaller and the drive-thru larger.

Starbucks’ Adkins: In parallel to what Hermino from Burger King said, especially in the Northern Virginia region, where people work in or near DC, many professionals are opting to work from home. In turn, we are seeing a resurgence in sales largely from the suburban drive-thru model. With the Pandemic in full swing we rely heavily on the mobile order and pay option, which is where you have the opportunity order through the Starbucks APP and pick up in the store. Starbucks has also been utilizing curbside service when and where applicable. Challenges for any QSR are the cafe locations or stores without a drive thru in certain locales. Starbucks is nimble in that our Real Estate team searches for prospects to solidify our business for the future. Customers will modify their habits over time back to their normal routine—

pre-COVID. As restrictions from governments loosen we are seeing people return to the cafe, but I think the drive thru has been a big part of Starbucks keeping pace with our goals.

Atticus Franchise Group’s Shotwell: Our Wing Stop locations are through delivery phone app or pick up services. When the restaurant industry indoor dining shut down, it was a plus to have the option of pick up or delivery to help everyone get through the pandemic. As for Massage Envy locations, previously clients were able to wait in lobby, which has been changed to text/call our client when the appointment is ready. We have performed extra protocols for checking in every client temperature and cleaning before/ after every session. We have been blessed to keep business moving forward.

CCR: We are seeing some fast casuals, like Chick Fil-A, add more drive-thru lanes. The Wing Stops normally are not freestanding, correct? Atticus Franchise Group’s Shotwell: Correct.

CCR: So the deal is how do you get more people because you do not have a drive through. Or can you create a drive thru, depending on the strip center? Atticus Franchise Group’s Shotwell: Yes. One of the options is do a location at an end cap unit, which could give you some potential for a pick-up window or to install a drive thru. It helps keep the cost down drastically versus a standalone building on an out parcel. It is a different ballgame.

Philly Pretzel’s Weiss: One of the strengths we had going in was that we were already all take-out. We did not have tables and chairs in our stores. The place where we lost business was in wholesale. We are set up to do is handle large volume orders, so it is not unusual for a store to have an order for a thousand pretzels or something like that on a Saturday—soccer tournament or football concessions. We have lost that business right now. Some of the ways we are trying to get that back up is we are heavily involved with third-party delivery companies: Door Dash, UberEATS, Grub Hub and Postmates. Most of our stores are in-line, so one of the ways you combat that is by offering curbside pickup. It is almost like having a drive thru. It has helped a lot. We have pushed our app hard, too. Postmates is through our app. We have taken our menu and geared it toward larger orders like family meals—stuff we have never done before. We pack things together so that people understand we are more than just pretzels. We have sandwiches made on pretzel dough, etc. So that has helped. One of the places we are suffering is downtown. We have a very strong presence in downtown Philadelphia. Only one or two of the 15 or 16 stores are open. There really is nobody working downtown. Our Philly Airport store is closed. Almost 10% of our stores are closed.

— Nick Keyes, Cushman and Wakefield

From my perspective, retail, just like everyone said, is about adapt and survive. We see potential changes that COVID is driving. There are not all bad problems to have. There is more we can do with certain types of properties and building systems. What I would like to bring up is what clients are able to do. I think it comes down to health and safety, especially air quality. We have done a lot to educate ourselves at Cushman and Wakefield. We try to stay ahead of the game. We had lots of initial conversations that drove these kinds of discussions with our customers, building owners, chain owners. Anybody that has real estate, tenants, or ownership interest in a property a business is looking for an affordable solution to get their building back online. They also need a way to promote so that people are comfortable operating, shopping and eating in these spaces. I’ll give you an example. I’m working on a call center in Lexington, Kentucky for a client. We were halfway through the design process, but had to put a halt on things when COVID hit. The architect, engineer, client and me got together and said, “What can we do? What changes are really going to be impactful to the people we serve?” A lot of it came down to improving air quality. What can you do to improve the health of the air quality? Increase air flow throughout the space to avoid settling of germs and things like that. We have to whatever we can. If you can create a space that has increased outside air and fresh air intakes, you can increase your ability to clean the air—whether multiple different types of filter systems, UV lighting, ionizers, things like that. You can take an existing system and retrofit it at a pretty inexpensively. Those are the things we are working through to identify this. Surfaces also can be changed out to help bacteria from growing. This is where our business is. There are no band aids. The changes have to be long-term.

IdentiCom’s DiNunzio: In the middle of March, end of March, when the majority of the country shut down, our business

practically went from full throttle to about 5% of what we would normally do. That kind of hung around for a few months. Then the PPE came in. That helped out. But it ran out pretty quickly. And they changed the rules, which made it difficult to manage. It would have been better if we had known earlier. Right now, our manufacturing is at an uptake. We are probably about 60% of what we used to be. A lot of our clients are coming back, some have not. They are closing stores. Unfortunately, we are taking signs down on some of these locations, both in Canada and the United States. One of our clients, Forever 21, went bankrupt. In terms of the FacilityRX side, we were not hurt as much. We managed to maintain buildings. We work mostly with commercial buildings, not so much in retail, banks and healthcare. Those companies were not hit as hard, so they require service and maintenance. FacilityRX seemed to sustain it for most of the COVID period. I am pleased with that. The sign part is coming back again. We are hoping we can return to normalcy soon.

Inspected.com’s Smeal: It is a different angle for our business. We were developed at the tail end of last year, but did not plan to go to market until this year when COVID thrust us into market. One of the biggest challenges we face is closing sales in this new environment. We do not have to be on the property because we are virtual, but there is no replacement for presenting to a room in person. However, the world is adapting and fortunately our platform is designed to accommodate these changes.

Kingsman’s Hekman: I have a little bit of a different take. We are in fixtures and FF&E, everything from restaurants to retail. We do Tiffany stores and showcases. We had lots of furniture contracts that were ready to go at the beginning of this year. I just got back from Euro Shop when the pandemic hit. Within about 60 days, we had one of my key suppliers in California land the Target contract, supplying shields to all of its stores—$3 million worth. We immediately started designing shields. We just went to our base—Tiffany’s, Sketchers, Cole Haan— and landed about a half million-dollar contract in shields. So we have been doing but shields (right now). For example, we supplied shields to 292 branch offices for AAA. They aired all the shields over to Texas and to the different states. We put the shields on all their office kiosks, raising them up 6 feet. That seems to be the norm. Bloomberg just put out a bid for about 28,000 shields worldwide, 16,000 in New York City alone. I do not see this going away. In addition, we have been working with a company from Salt Lake City that does electrolyzed water systems, like a sanitizer spray you see in hotels. We just installed a walkthrough system at Jacksonville Jaguar stadium in Florida—one of the first for an NFL stadium. They are hoping people will want to walk through it. It is all soft water. We are working on a lot of different types of solutions. We pivoted to see what some of our existing accounts needed. They were going on the internet to look for things. It was more comfortable for them to deal with somebody they knew.

We are trying to standardize the process, as far as remote virtual inspections go. Most of the places are getting onboard. It is like trying to teach an old dog new tricks, so to speak.

— Jason Smeal, Inspected.com Lately we have seen furniture contracts come back. We just landed a large retailer in Chicago. They moved forward with the 30,000-square-foot job there. We are seeing business kick off.

CDO Group’s Marshall: For the construction landscape, it is adapting to the technology that is available for us, especially things like virtual calls. If certain inspectors could not visit every single site during a day, it was understood. How far out do I need to schedule these inspections to make sure we adhere to their standards? And with site management, the regulations that were put out for subcontractors is an issue. The example of how many people can you have in a certain space. This affects our entire schedule through the life cycle of that building. So, it is reimaging and managing schedule and site under a different lens by incorporating shift stacking. We use the entire day to run different shifts of trades. This helps maintain our schedule and our timelines.

CCR: What is the biggest item on your to-do list? Philly Pretzel’s Weiss: We lost a couple of stores due to the pandemic. People who were on the bubble decided that this was the right time to get out, so there were some stores that closed. We have a number of people who decided to get out of the business, so I have a number of stores transferring. This means I have to visit those stores and put together a list of items to bring the store back up to our current standards. We also had a decent amount of people in development prior to COVID, so I still have six stores I’m trying to get open before the end of the year and three I am developing for first quarter of next year. I do real estate and construction, so I am a one-man department. The biggest thing for me is making sure franchisees stay focused on their task. It is a little harder to do some things because they cannot. You cannot necessarily meet with people the way you would like to. I am doing some different things with visually inspecting stores online, as opposed to visiting them in person. So my list includes making sure I lean back on the way we used to do things, and

find different ways to do them. It is about getting the people to the finish line as quickly as we used to.

Atticus Franchise Group’s Shotwell: As the industry lighten up a bit, we are gearing back up as we are taking the opportunity in seeking new locations that are closing or relocating for potential sites. Another opportunity is to renegotiate with the landlord at our existing locations. One of the bigger challenges is dealing with municipality in permitting. Many of the cities still have people working remotely from home, so plan reviewers are taking much longer above normal. A typical 15- to 20-day review process now takes 30 to 60 days if not more.

IdentiCom’s DiNunzio: We are getting to ramp up again. We are picking up more business. Our biggest challenge right now is the supply chain for plastics. It is very limited now. A lot of the plastics went to the shield industry, making things really scarce. The plastic we normally buy is a modified impact, for the most part. We also have polycarbonate. But we’re being told it may be February before we can receive new shipments. We are using a different type—poly—but the color is not specified by the customer. It is slightly different shades of white and is causing a bit of havoc for us with our clients. But they understand the limited availability. Another challenge we are seeing is human resources. We are having a hard time finding people. The stimulus package has limited people from coming back to work, and they’d just rather stay home. This has made it hard to keep up with production with our work force. Our administrative and project management sides are strong. The beauty of that we hire remotely, so I can hire a project manager in any city or state in the country. But manufacturing has to be in Farmington Hills, Michigan. So my to-do list is to find qualified people, and then find a source for the plastics.

Inspected.com’s Smeal: My to-do list is centered on standardizing the process for remote virtual inspections. AHJ’s are getting onboard with the idea but it has not yet been fully standardized. It is like trying to teach an old dog new tricks, so to speak. We have recently partnered with ICC Community Development Solutions, which is helping us along this path and get the word out.

Cushman and Wakefield’s Keyes: Project management-wise, I think the change in our business is to stop and slow down a little bit, and start to listen a more about what is going on inside the business of our clients. We need to try and understand that. Is expanding the best option for you? Is it achieving everything you want to achieve? Maybe there is another resource we should be bringing to our clients—try to be more multiverse and not single-focused. We want to bring options to these companies—help them achieve their revenue goals, profit goals, and not just look at it as a project. The more questions we ask, the more we find other solutions for them.

— Hermino Pereira, Burger King Puerto Rico The to-do list is the same every time. We meet a new client; we ask a lot of questions. Sometimes they can answer all of them. Sometimes they can’t. We try to help them determine what needs to happen, and do it at the best, most cost-efficient way. Whether it is industrial, commercial, office, retail, multifamily, we are just trying to keep an open mind and look in every direction, ask a million questions, and try to find resources and information for our clients.

Kingsmen’s Hekman: A couple things have happened this year. We’ve been out there getting packages from either a brand, an architect or a contractor, then sourcing or supplying and manufacturing that furniture package. But lately, a lot of the architectural firms have been cutting back. There are good people leaving. We found that some of those firms are left with just a few design people. They don’t have anybody in there to help through the design development process. So we’re actually stepping in with a few firms and acting as a consultant/advisor on a number of different projects. On the contractor or architectural side, we’re trying to get that cost down. Another trend I’ve seen happening is rebidding. I’m working on a project in New York City and we’re Quote No. 12 or something. They’re trying to substitute different materials because they have a little extra time. Those are some of the things I see as a value-add we can offer.

Starbucks’ Adkins: We are looking forward to fiscal year ‘21. The Mid-Atlantic Team hasn’t skipped a beat and we have a green light to open new stores and new concepts to continue to bolster sales and growth. Starbucks has an excellent kit of parts where programs and equipment can be interchanged or replaced quickly and efficiently. In partnering with our Operations Team, we are building better stores to maximize the Partner Experience and output whether it be in the store or in the drive-thru.

CDO Group’s Marshall: For us, heading into Q4 is about connecting with our clients and understanding their 2021 goals. All the conversations we’re having right now have been kind of short-term. We want to talk long-term,

and make sure we’re set up for success before we start working on their plans and achieve their executive initiatives. Internally, we are looking at our operation’s team. A lot of programs we were working on nationally got pushed. A lot of the brands we partner with were a little unsure about the turnout, so they pushed things to 2021. We want to make sure, internally, that we’re buttoned up on our process. Any of these new traits that we talked about today, are they going to be carried over to 2021? Are there ways that we can improve on them, whether it be our daily reporting and our value engineering for each project?

Burger King’s Pereira: In March, when COVID started in the States, we stopped all construction. There was so much uncertainty. We have an innovation program that had been running the last four years. We do 20 per year. So in March, we were starting the year. They basically want to restart the program now and finish four or five stores before Thanksgiving. So it’s a challenge because our stores in Puerto Rico are more standardized than they are in the States.

CCR: What is your story? How did you get into the industry? Cushman and Wakefield’s Keyes: I’ve been in the business since 1998. I went to the University of Cincinnati to study construction engineering program and construction management. I felt I needed a bit more diversity. What I really wanted to do was development, real estate management, real estate development, so I went back to UC and was able to get a degree in commercial real estate finance and investment. I have a commercial real estate finance background with a construction management degree. Out of college, I went to work for some local general contractors doing out-of-ground construction for years before I moved toward finance. I worked in the development industry doing finance management and construction management for small developers—retail development. From there, I went to work at Luxottica Retail, wearing the Sunglass Hut construction hat. I did a lot of standard in-line, kiosk development. I ran a kiosk program. I worked with a ton of different malls and lifestyle centers across the country. Traveled like crazy, but then wanted to settle down and have a family. I ended up running all of the retail construction and renovations for Fifth Third Bank, which has a big footprint here. It was a good time for me to jump on. After two years, I moved into a leadership role supporting Brokers and Properties along with one off new external CRE clients. I have always enjoyed generating the business and listening to clients’ needs to help provide real estate solutions so this was a new way to bring more value to my clientele. There are strong opportunities on both sides of the fence but you always have to be willing to kick down a few doors to grow your business and stay visible. You have to train yourself to do business development effectively and I believe I have grown a pretty strong brand and confidence with our regional service providers. I worked at CBRE for roughly eight years and learned a ton about the business, resulting in exponential growth throughout my region. I was responsible for managing everything from contract

— Glenn Marshall, CDO Group managing everything contract negotiations, selling, working through concept planning, onboarding, bidding out architects, engineers, general contractors, managing construction for all types of CRE properties. I ran CBRE’s global retail program for six or so years. Tons of pitches and presentations. Tons of trips to Vegas for conferences and meetings. Retail is my background, so my specialty at Cushman and Wakefield was retail, but has grown in depth well beyond that vertical. The past couple of years my focus has been to grow our business again. I was brought over here to do the same thing I did at CBRE—grow the business from the ground up out of Cincinnati into the south central region. I like every aspect of construction—design, value engineering, working with new people, trying to find solutions and resource and the best team. I’d do that a million times a year if I could, but there is a bit of a limit on volume nowadays.

Kingsmen’s Hekman: I grew up in Riverside, California and studied in the CSU system at Cal State San Bernardino. I landed a job right out of college working for CPI – Corporate Property Investors – out of New York. I worked on the Burlington Mall, raising the second level of that mall. It was one of the third malls in the country—Tysons and Riverside were the others—to cut the rooftops off and add a second level. I went right into retail as a tenant coordinator, helping on that project. It was a temporary full-time job. I learned a lot. Next, I took a job as a director of construction for Three Day Blinds in California. I built about 250 Three Day Blinds stores nationwide with nothing but a sky pager and a fax machine (cellphones were just coming online). We were doing about two a week in strip centers. So basically I came in through the construction side. In 1994, they ran out of money, so I went to work for a fixture manufacturer in Mexico—Maquiladora. Rubio’s Restaurants, Bugle Boy Jeans and Hot Topic were some of my first clients. I watched them grow for a number of years. Then we landed Skechers, which took me overseas to do stores in Europe and Asia. They are still a client today.

From that experience, I got into furniture supply. I met the founder of Kingsmen at a conference in California in 2006. We started to work with them. Around 2010, the market got hit and they started cutting back on retail. Everybody sort of pivoted and wanted to go to Asia. At the same time, we landed Abercrombie and Hollister. I spent about four years taking Abercrombie and Hollister to four or five different countries: Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Korea. I spent a lot of time on a plane. We are full service and act as a turnkey. About four or five years ago, we incorporated the office California as a project office. I own it. I didn’t want to spend years on a plane flying back and forth, so I’ve been working with brands on the supply side. Some programs are imported here and we act as the IOR. Others we have a good supply base that I have formed over the last 20 years. I worked with a lot of our partner shops in the US and Canada. We also have an Amish supplier in Indiana. Coming from the construction side, I worked on the developer’s side. I’ve also been on the fixturing side for the last 15 to 18 years. It allows me to understand everybody else’s job. It’s always different because we were always traveling, until recently. I like to be involved with new projects, new prototypes and new challenges. If it was the same challenge every day, I wouldn’t want to come to work. I’ve been fortunate to work on some cool jobs, including the M&M store in Times Square. I worked on Dylan’s candy store, the Nike House of Innovation in Shanghai and first one in New York.

Burger King’s Pereira: I was born and raised here in Puerto Rico. I went to college here, graduating with where I graduated with a bachelor’s degree as a civil engineer in 1991. Out of college, I started working with Turner Construction Company on the island. I worked there for five years. After that, I opened my own construction company in 1997, working on things like restaurants. In 2010, with the economy not doing well, I closed my company and was hired by Burger King. I have worked with them since then. I’ve done lots of things. Right now we are renovating stores. We are not doing new stores anymore. We’re holding up the new construction. We have a bunch of them that still need to be renovated because we grew a lot since 1997. We did like 60 or 70 stores in three or four years.

IdentiCom’s DiNunzio: I was born and raised in Toronto. I got into the sign business in the early ‘80s. I was a novice. I just started working and learning the ropes. A few years later, I got into sales. I wanted to do sales and marketing, but ended up becoming an estimator and other related positions within the sign company. It was a large sign company in Canada. I moved around a little bit and did a lot of traveling. All of my customers were based out of the Northeast. Maine to Virginia was my territory. By ‘98, I decided to make a move. I uprooted my family and moved to Detroit to work for a national company. I had a work permit, and I had to get a Green Card and citizenship. It took a while, but the head of the company sponsored me. They ended up keeping me on as a salesperson, until I moved up to sales manager. Ten years later, I received my Green Card. I ended up taking a job with a company in South Carolina working remotely. It lasted a year. That was 2008. I was fired. So, out of desperation, I decided I was done working for other people and my own company in 2009— the week I got fired. IdentiCom is what we call in an industry “broker.” It does not really means that, but it is what we still use. I outsource 100% of the manufacturing and installation, but it is turnkeyed. I provided the due diligence in the permitting process, the design process, engineering process, and then to manufacturing. I outsourced the manufacturing and installation. In late 2015, when I built enough business to generate enough revenue and get some financial stability, I invested quite a bit of money into manufacturing. That’s where we’re at today. We do full-service manufacturing, in-house for multiunit chains. When I first started IdentiCom, I had a few clients who followed me. They were regional to national accounts. Slowly it built up. One of my biggest was with Domino’s (as it was known then). In 2015, it selected our company to re-image its corporate stores.

— David Shotwell, Atticus Franchise Group

So, Domino’s wanted to do the same thing. It wanted to focus on that title and drop the word “pizza.” It asked us to be its sign provider and provide its sign specifications. And then there was a couple of things it asked me to do—take a look at these specs and see if you can value engineer it. And quickly I learned there was a couple things. One was the LEDs for longevity of the sign and the LEDs that had proper warranties. There was a product 3M had just came out with around that same time— its pressure-sensitive vinyl. You have standard colors and custom colors, and most of your retailers are probably using 3M products in their signs. I introduced this new product to Domino’s. It was a homerun. It helped reduce the amount of LEDs needed by up to 30%. It also saved further energy by utilizing fewer LEDs. Today, we work mostly for multiunit chains. We do custom work locally in Michigan, but I would say 85% of our work is multiunit chains. Our claim to fame is our project management. I have great team of project managers. I started the company as a broker/project management company, and spent a ton of time experimenting and improving. We have stood the test of time in terms of project management and being a turnkey service. Project management is still my No. 1 focus. Manufacturing, of course, is important, too. But it is not the difficult part; the difficult part is that due diligence

from A to Z in terms of the permitting, design and logistics, and getting the sign up and installed.

Atticus Franchise Group’s Shotwell: Growing up when I was in school, I was in North Carolina during the entire summer I was in Texas all the way up high school. Construction was something I always had a taste for construction. It really started when I attended shop class in high school. As I went on to community college Carpentry and Cabinet-making degree with a Home Builder’s Association Scholarship. I received my North Carolina General Contractor’s License at 25, as I started building houses for several years along working full-time at a lumber yard as an assistant manager. In ‘97, at the last minute, I sold my last spec house/my house and moved to Texas to be with my Dad and grandparents. When I arrived, I got into the commercial construction side as a GC working my way up from assistant superintendent, superintendent, project manager, senior project manager, all the way up with multiple major restaurant brands. One of the biggest rollout brands was Starbucks. I ended up building Starbucks for over six years on the GC side. Things changed when Starbucks decided to put the brakes on building anymore of their rollouts in 2007, which created an opportunity to work for a local restaurant chain called Biscuitville. It was a morning/lunch day type restaurant out of North Carolina which had over 50 locations. They were looking for a Director of Construction and Facilities at the time. When I crossed over to the dark side of retail, Biscuitville was the company that given me the opportunity to excel my career into the restaurant business with brands like Bojangles’, Cook Out Restaurant, Flynn Restaurant Group (Taco Bell, Arby’s, Applebee’s and Panera Bread). I am excited to be working with Atticus Franchise Group.

CDO Group’s Marshall: I’m from Louisiana, born and raised. I joined the Marines right out of high school and served as a machine gun squad leader for six years Which was a great experience for me and still drives me to this day. When I got out, I went back to Louisiana and attended LSU, where I focused on project management. That was a great opening for me because I was able to work within the industrial and civil engineering side of construction, working with pipeline companies and power companies across southern Texas and Louisiana. I got to walk around the swamp and the backwoods. So as a southern guy, I loved it. I ended up relocating to Texas and started working for a residential architecture company. I was fortunate enough that CDO Group was looking to expand and my counterpart, Vinny Catullo brought me on board. We opened our regional office in Frisco and hit the ground running. CDO Group did not truly have a business development team in place. So this was something we were able to create, put our hands around, and mold to what we saw was right. When I first got on, we were formalizing our woman-owned business status and, as of last month, we finally received our federal

— Stephen Hekman, Kingsman certification so there have been a lot of great initiatives. I was able to touch the industrial and the residential early in my career, and now being involved in commercial and engaging with different corporations and brands, has been great. I am trying to learn as much as possible as to provide the best service to our partners.

Inspected.com’s Smeal: I am originally from Western Pennsylvania—Franklin, Pennsylvania, which is about 90 miles north of Pittsburgh. My construction experience is pretty much limited to carrying and tying rebar, which was all my dad let me do on the construction site. I don’t have the long resume that you guys do, but I have been around it for a good period of my life. Upon leaving Pennsylvania, I went to school at the University of Miami. I moved to New York for five years, where I kind of bounced around financial services and staffing, among other things, before returning to Fort Lauderdale in 2000. I have settled here. I spent most of my time in financial services prior to moving over to the LoJack Corporation, where I worked for about five years. I got involved with their SAAS programs—dealing with software sales, and things of that nature. As I moved on, I worked throughout Florida traveling through car dealerships. Once we moved into COVID, I fell into Inspected, where I was handed the reins and we started building it from the ground up. My days are all about meeting as many people in the construction industry, and the city and government side to get the word out. It’s beyond exciting to be involved with something that is cutting edge. Inspected has an exciting vision and plan and it’s great to be part of the early stages. Personally, I’m married with a 14 year old daughter and 11 year old son. The kids activities keep us busy most of the time outside of the office, but we do our best to spend our free time at the beach in South Florida.

Philly Pretzel’s Weiss: I grew up in Philadelphia, mainly in the suburbs, a town called Southampton. I’m the oldest of nine

kids with only 11 years separating us. As you might guess, we grew up Catholic. It was always a crowded household. As I got a little older, I realized that if I worked at a restaurant I could eat whatever I wanted. So I started doing dishes and working the ice cream fountain when I was 14 at a local restaurant. I actually ended up working there through college. I went to college for hotel and restaurant management. When I graduated, I went into management. Much of my early career was in operations. I worked for Wendy’s, the founder of Popeye’s, all kinds of different chains. I was working for this company called Bassett’s Turkey, a local Philadelphia chain. They were a franchise wit probably 30 or 40 stores. And I was sitting in my office one day and the founder walked in and he dumped eight files on my desk and said, “You’re the construction manager now.” That was how I got into the construction end of the business. I’m not sure I showed any propensity for the construction end of things, but all of a sudden I was construction manager so I had to learn quick. I got those eight stores opened up and then continued to open for them. From there, I went to Rita’s Water Ice and learned how to work auto CAD and design stores. I helped manage and open stores. Rita’s was sold, and at one point and I actually owned seven stores with a couple of partners. I sold my last one about two years ago. While I was doing that a friend of mine that I worked at Bassett’s with landed a job at Philly Pretzel Factory. They were building tons of stores, so they needed help with construction management. I started helping them, and eventually turned that into my full-time job. And about halfway through, they added real estate to my list of responsibilities. I have been there almost 12 years and have about 100 stores. It is a lot of fun. We’re still growing as a brand and evolving every day. I am enjoying this new challenge that we have of trying to figure out how to continue to expand in this new COVID world. We have opened stores. We opened two stores last month and opened a couple prior to that. We’re hoping to open six more before the end of the year. I am hearing that franchise interest has never been stronger. I think there is a lot of people who have lost corporate jobs or were so scared after what they saw happen in their corporation. They want to control their own destiny. We have tons of interest right now, so it could be that all of us will be very busy next year opening and building stores.

Starbucks’ Adkins: I grew up and spent basically half of my life in and around Chicago (Go Cubs, Go Da Bears). If you ask me I’m from Chicagoland. I’m from a small town in the north suburbs called Libertyville. From there, my family moved to middle Tennessee for a handful of years, where I found myself in the golf industry. I was a golf professional for a couple of years in my late teens, early 20s. It was a great environment to start my career. I managed a stateof-the-art golf shop, coordinated large corporate tournaments and managed a staff of people not much younger than myself. From Tennessee, I made a move to Northern Virginia to live with family. I started my construction career with a small general contracting firm in Northern Virginia, where I was a project engineer. My main responsibility was assisting the project manager corps with whatever they needed to get done. The main contract the company had at the time was working for airport authority doing miscellaneous projects that were identified by the client. It could be anything from replacing a burnt out a light bulb to building a concourse. It was a very interesting job, especially seeing the ins and outs of a quasi-government entity. I was able to see intimately how the private industry interacts with general contracting firms. While working at the airports, I was introduced to Westfield, a concessions management company. I became the on-site tenant coordinator, assisting in navigating the opening of retail in all of the respective concourses. Most of my experience in construction is due largely in part to being a tenant coordinator. It honed my construction knowledge and skills, both on the technical side and design side, which I have a big passion for.

— Frank Weiss, Philly Pretzel Factory

I recruited by Westfield to help on their mall development side. My first project was the Westfield Annapolis Mall expansion. It was a grand multi-tenant development during the economic downturn. We were able to open almost 40 stores in that expansion/grand opening. After Westfield, my crowning achievement was working for the Peterson Companies, a very reputable commercial developer in the DC/Northern Virginia area. I was the Director of Tenant Coordination for a couple years, which helped me to expand my knowledge base and experience projects outside of my comfort zone. When I look back now, it was a great character-building experience. Westfield and The Peterson Companies helped shape my retail/commercial construction foundation. From there, I went on to find different challenges and experiences other landlords, and boutique tenants. What drove me to Starbucks was working at Tysons Corner Center in McLean, Virginia. Working as the Tenant Coordinator, I was connected with the Starbucks Store Development Team during one of their remodels in the mall. I’ve always had a great respect for Starbucks, especially how they approach their design and construction. They always had a plan, stuck to it, and opened when they projected. My position with Starbucks in Store Development is a great blending of my previous experience in the general contracting, tenant and landlord arenas. I feel as though I bring a different dynamic to the team. I can say that I have seen this done before, here’s the best way to do it. After 20 years in the industry, I have a unique perspective and have worn many different hats. CCR