WING: Trying to bring outside managers in -- the people that were there before -- "Wait a second, hey, we've been working there a year, two or three and now all of the sudden somebody else gets to run our store?" So we thought it would be better if we groomed our managers from within and they're able to basically earn their respect from their crew in order to run a store. So they feel much better about the fact that they know all of the components and they are able to really bring the team together. Because an efficient store makes you a lot more money than just a bunch of guys working.

MINGO: We felt that to keep our good people in the company, we had to offer them an upside. And so we sat down and decided to fulfill sort of a promise and a potential for growth. We needed to give them a place to grow to. So we basically created the Wahoo's farm system, like a baseball team. As we would grow them from the inside and as they were ready to go we would sprout off and go open new units. So that was, and of course you know you can never grow without customer demand, that was the customers wanting us to be closer to where they were, closer to where they live. That was the original impetuous to get us to three units. Getting us over three units to where we could manage them ourselves, was really a decision based on keeping our quality people how are contributing to our company. Giving them a place to grow to.

HATTIE: Felcia Sorboni is general manager in La Jolla. So would you say you worked your way up from the bottom?

FELICIA: Absolutely... I was a cashier, 17-years old in high school...

STEVE: Felicia understood the concept from the get-go. She radiated, she projected that thing that I look for, that quality of enthusiasm and personality. And then you can train for anything.