We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cody Driggers. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cody below.
Cody, appreciate you joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
My business partner Andy and I both come from music. We each grew up playing punk rock and toured full time through our twenties and early thirties in different bands, and we met on the road crossing paths on the summer festival circuits. Dedicating yourself to a DIY band is a grind that can break you, but if it doesn’t, it informs everything you do that follows. Andy and I each eventually relocated to Nashville, and, during the height of the 2o20 pandemic, time at home and job changes led to picking up outdoor hobbies. Griddle cooking. Smashburgers, specifically. We started talking shop and kind of became obsessed with designing the perfect burger. Once the world settled, our burger was a huge hit with our friends and we figured it would be fun take it to the streets and see what would happen. A “happy if we break even” kind of experiment. Neither of us have professional culinary or service industry backgrounds, so there was a lot to figure out when it came to scaling the operation and cooking in volume. We had a friend design a logo, we printed it on a pop up tent and asked a local barber shop if we could come set up in their lot. That first weekend was a big hit, and word spread fast, so we kept setting up in different spots on the weekends. No permits, no business license, no plan. We had no idea what we were doing but we were loving it. When it got real and we decided to go all in and chase it, we were ready for the grind. Tour boys.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Bad Luck Burger Club is a food truck specializing in smashburgers. Our operation is based on a limited menu built for speed and volume. Smash burgers are a style of burger where a ball of ground beef is smashed flat on a very hot flat top to achieve a fast cooking burger with a juicy center and crispy, lacy edges. We double our patties on our burger and cover each patty with deli cut american cheese, and then top with grilled onions, dill pickles, and our signature Lucky Sauce on a toasted potato bun. We think it’s the best burger in the world. We think you’ll think that too. Our goal is provide quality food with a fun and positive experience. We have a good time on our truck because life’s too short to be anything but stoked. We hope folks feel that good energy and take some home with them. We want you to be better because you came to eat with us.
We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.
When we first started out in May of 2021, it was only for fun. We were coming out of months of the world being shut down and doing *anything* around people sounded great. We had no business plan, no permits, just a good product and a basic concept. As word spread about our little burger operation and we had more and more opportunities presenting themselves, we had to make some choices. In January 2022 I decided to leave my job as an operations manager in merchandising to pursue the burger club full time. Andy did the same. We booked a residency at a local bar that was having a lapse in their food program, bought the food truck, and spent the weeks building out the truck while we served the bar on the weekends. We launched the food truck in April of 2022 and have been full speed ahead ever since. We are currently serving 5-6 days per week, sometimes at multiple locations per day, all across the Nashville metro area. We do events and catering as well, but this is not a seasonal venture. We are operating as a restaurant aiming for consistent hours in consistent locations year round. This has allowed us the opportunity to hire, which is a huge milestone. We take a lot of pride in being able to provide someone’s livelihood.
How did you build your audience on social media?
A few weeks before we did our first public service, we threw a friends and family event in my front yard. We needed to practice cooking in volume so we invited people over in 15 minute time blocks and offered free burgers in exchange for all the social media coverage they would give us. That cast a pretty wide net that gave us a few hundred followers on our instagram account before we had even served publicly. It really primed us up as something to keep an eye on and the following grew fast from there. We have about 17,000 followers on the instagram now. Andy is our resident social media guru. He’s very good at creating and executing content, and very good at engaging with our audience. He tries to reply to every comment and message, and his personality is conveyed so well through written word. Our brand is naturally a little irreverent, so we lean into humor with our content and mix it with authentic connection. We don’t inflate numbers, we don’t bend facts to make us look good, we don’t push competition between us and other local burger spots, we’ll post about a business struggle or a hard service because it’s real and people identify with that. The business goal is to present what we’re cooking and doing in a way that’s entertaining and compelling while making sure the right info is getting through. The deeper goal is to connect with people and bring light and positivity into the world through our platform.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.badluckburger.club
- Instagram: badluckburgerclub
- Facebook: facebook.com/badluckburgerclub
- Twitter: badluckburgers
Image Credits
Katty Driggers