Stop Being a Hobby Hustler: How Derrick Hayes Took Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks from a Gas Station to a Franchise
Derrick Hayes on building Big Dave's Cheesesteaks from an Atlanta gas station to 12 stores and a franchise, plus why hustling without mastery is a hobby.
- Treat belief like fishing: you can't see the fish under the water, so keep casting every day and let small catches add up to the big one.
- Hustle without knowledge makes you a 'hobby hustler' — master the business of whatever you're hustling or you'll still be hustling 20 years later with nothing to show.
- Success often comes without proof first; the people who need constant validation rarely reach the pinnacle.
- Scaling requires humility — build a team and advisors who challenge you, because if you aren't challenged you don't get stronger.
- Use the 'kickstand' test for your inner circle: you can pedal your own bike, but you need people to lean on when you stop.
- Expect friction when hiring family — paying a relative more and then becoming their boss is one of the hardest dynamics in business.
- Hire locally when you open in a community; Big Dave's Blue Apron program lets employees learn every station and graduate with a certificate and a career path.
- Outgrowing your space is a signal, not a problem — Big Dave's left a gas station doing 800–1,000 tickets on a three-foot grill and one broken fryer.
if you hustle with no knowledge, you just always going to hustle.
You're a hobby hustler. That's the new one. You're a hobby hustler.
You have to keep going without proof of success. And that's the difference between people that make it and people that don't.
When you throw a hook in the water, you can't see the fish at the bottom. You can't see what's in front of you in business. You just got to believe. It's the same scenario. Both of it worked for me. You just got to believe in what you're doing. And I fish every day, whether I'm fishing in business or I'm fishing in the water. I'm throwing my line out there with my bait on it every day. I'm trying to catch a fish, whether it's a big one or a small one. I'm taking one step at a time. If you don't catch one fish that's big enough, you can catch a lot of little ones that can add up to that big fish. That's the way business works.
You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. No theory. No fluff. No shortcuts. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford. What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. We're always talking about how you get right in business and life and ultimately what's happening today. It don't matter what happened last year, but matters five years from now. We got to talk about how to make it happen now. That's why we're always talking to legendary people doing legendary things. That's why we got the CEO and the founder of Big Dave's Cheesesteak. It's Derrick. Hayes. What's up, Derek? What's up, man? Thanks for having me, Ryan. Hey, man. My pleasure. I love seeing a man getting after it, thriving in America, doing the hard things well, and success.
It looks good on you, brother. Hey, man. It's a lot of hard work, a lot of sleepless nights. I want to change it for the world, man, because it made me who I am right now. Battling all these roller coaster rides and getting it out the mud. You know, man, I'm a big dude. I'm six, five to 60 on a good day. I like to eat, brother. Oh, man, I got it. You know what I would give you? I would give you my 18 inch cheesesteak. Oh, OK. I might put that down, man. 18 inch cheesesteak. I'm going to give you the 18 inch Dave's way. That got onions, peppers, three cheeses, a loaded sandwich. And oh, man, did I just fall on the floor and pass out?
Or did I get this? I got a couch over here. If we get there, Derek and I were talking pre-episode, they're opening one in G Vegas down the road in Greenville. We might have to do a follow up when he does it. He's going to bring that in here. We're going to have that on screen. Even if you're on that treadmill, which a lot of our listeners are, you don't want to hop off and run. Hey, listen, listen, run for the Dave's way. Talk to me, man. Been building this business. I know you bootstrapped this thing. It came together because I wanted to honor my father. He passed away in front of my face due to cancer. And for me, it was calling. It was a purpose.
When I moved to Atlanta, I tried to figure it out. Didn't know what I wanted to do. I'm going to do the thing that I told him I was going to do. I'm going to open a business. I started out selling Italian ice. Nobody in Atlanta knew what water ice was, so I couldn't get anybody walking the door at that point. I'm like, oh, man, what am I doing? What year are we talking about, roughly? This is 2014. This is early days. This is me as a young entrepreneur that really don't know what the hell he's doing. He just wants to do something good. Trying to sling some ice. It ain't going well. I remember it was people who thought that I was selling just cups of ice.
And I was like, what kind of concept is this? Shouts out to my mother. She's like, it's time for you to put the kitchen in and do the cheesesteak thing that you really wanted to do. I decided to change the name to Big Dave Cheesesteaks. And that's where it all started. 2016, that year was like the year for me where I went from... not having any customers to start transitioning into customers, start transitioning into communities, start understanding that it's a good sandwich in Dunwoody, Georgia, which is still not in Atlanta. You're still about 35 minutes from the city. It got to be damn good for somebody to drive that far out. Done with you. Done with you. But after Eve came, she came in 2015.
I started to get the hype built up. But 2016, I like to call it, was my transition in the year, letting people know who I am. 2018, I represented Georgia in a sandwich competition where I ranked number seven in the world in sandwiches. When I came home, it was almost like a kid won the scholarship in college. The community was proud. They were happy. I can remember that moment. And then we just started getting so big that the gas station wasn't working for us anymore because we couldn't get the orders out fast enough. I only had a three-foot grill, one broken fryer. And, I mean, we're doing 800 tickets in some days. It's just crazy. It's wild. Sometimes a thousand on the weekends, but I was able to now spread my wings and go downtown to 57 Forsyth Street, where I think the real magic happened for not just my life, but for my career in the community, because this became a staple to the community, a landmark.
People would fly into Atlanta. First thing they do is they going downtown to go get a cheesesteak from Big Dave. So we started to have that, I'm flying to go get a cheesesteak or I'm flying in town. Big Dave's is there. I'm going to go get one. I see it on Instagram. It's a destination. Yeah, it started being that. And then through over the years, we just started to grow. I was able to get food trucks. I was able to go into different arenas, Mercedes-Benz Stadium. You name it, it goes on. So we was able to put more Brick and Waters in the city of Atlanta. And now over the last 10 years, almost, we became this from the mud type of business to a national chain.
And I think a lot of people, they love it because they've never seen nothing like it before. They hear stories about how McDonald's was built or how Chick-fil-A was built. But now they ain't just hearing the story of how Big Dave's is built, they watching it. That's true. It's all out there, man. It's all out there. This is social media. Exactly.
How many stores do we have? I have 12 right now operating. I got more in the works that I'm about to announce. And I got a franchise, a new franchise I'm announcing soon. Ah. You know. Is it with big days? I'm just waiting to announce it. Yeah. So you'll be officially franchised. Yeah, I'm franchised now. 15 paper right now. And then the new deal I just signed. It's going pretty good. This is fun. Moving fast, brother. I mean, it moves slow and then fast. That's how it happens. Well, that's the way life goes. I mean, think about it. I look at business like this. When you meet someone, say you're in high school and you're going to college and you meet your first love, you may holler at her, say, hey, can I take you out?
You take her out. Then you say, hey, I want to date her. Start dating her. And then you realize it started costing you, but you love it. Right. And after you figure it out, is this person for you? Then they start helping you and y'all build this empire. And that's the way I look at business. I feel like you got to give your business something and your business got to give you something back because either or you're going to drain out or the business is going to drain out. But I think if y'all do it together, you win together. That's why the iron sharpen iron thing is so important. Your business is the other side of the knife. You could be a marriage counselor, too, man.
Yeah. We're talking with Derek Hayes. He is the founder and CEO of Big Dave's Cheesesteaks. We got 12 and growing stores. These are, I guess, owned stores by you and the business. Yeah. And now we're expanding. We're growing that franchise. You talked about it. You moved into the new location. And that's when kind of that trigger went off of you were in a place where you You built up the demand. It sounded like you'd outgrown it and then you could really take off. But did you know in the moment, like as you've gone through this, when it was happening, did you go, oh boy, rocket ship initiated? To be honest, I felt like I was working so hard and it was almost I wasn't getting a recognition I thought I deserved.
Sometimes you could want to deserve something because you want to deserve it because you know how hard you're working. It takes time. Anything in life takes time. I fish a lot, right? And I think fishing helped me out with business because it teaches you patience. Sometimes you can throw something in the water and you never catch anything. Or you throw something in the water and you get a bite. And that's how business is. You might get some success to go, ah, and then it goes back. Ah, and it goes back. But if you're willing to keep throwing that in the water, your bait to go keep fishing. And I think that you believe in yourself, no matter if it's just a little bite or as if a fish keep taking it off, keep taking it off and you keep losing it.
and nothing is coming out the water that teaches you the same thing in business. But the one day you're going to catch a fish. When you catch that fish, don't nothing feel like it. When it hit that rod and you're reeling it in, that's how success feel when you're just continually working on something. And I'm gonna tell you why they're so similar. Because when you throw a hook in the water, you can't see the fish at the bottom. You can't see what's in front of you in business. You just got to believe. It's the same scenario. Both of it worked for me. You just got to believe in what you're doing. And I fish every day, whether I'm fishing in business or I'm fishing in the water.
I'm throwing my line out there with my bait on it every day and I'm trying to catch a fish, whether it's a big one or a small one. I'm taking one step at a time. If you don't catch one fish that's big enough, you can catch a lot of little ones that can add up to that big fish. That's the way business works. This episode is brought to you by HighLevel. Make sure to check out the link in the show notes to sign up for your 14-day free trial. If you run a business, you know leads rarely arrive when it's convenient. A call comes in while your team is helping another customer. If someone reaches out, but the follow-up gets delayed, an invoice sits unsent, or a promising lead gets stuck in the wrong stage of your pipeline.
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It's using technology to handle the work that slows your team down so your people can focus on building relationships, serving customers, and growing the business. If you're ready to create better systems and get more from every opportunity, use the link in the show notes to sign up for your 14-day free trial. Derek, where'd you get your wisdom from, man? Because that's smart. I say all the time, this is why everybody's not successful. You have to keep going without proof of success. And that's the difference between people that make it and people that don't. A lot of people need proof all the time. And those people do okay, but they don't really ever get to the, let's call the pinnacle. And I'm not just saying money, but like even the bigger things in life because they need that validation.
I need proof. I need proof. I need proof. And you nailed it. You said it. That hook at the bottom, there's fish all around it, but you don't necessarily know it. So, yeah, you don't even know it. And sometimes you don't want that certain fish to bite it because you don't want it. That's right. You know, sometimes you could say that. Oh, yeah. Life is happening to me. I got this person to invest in me. I got this partner. But what if it's a bad fish? Yeah. Well, that's what a lot of people would say. I don't know if you're religious or not. They'd say that's when God's working for you, you know. Hey, look, I'm very religious and I definitely believe that. And I also believe that God is not going to pitch on anything you can't handle either.
That's true. Derek, where's your wisdom come from, man? I'm from the city of brotherly love, but it's a lot of hustle and grit there. You got to get or you won't make it out. Even at 38 years old, I've already lived the life of a 50, 60 year old person because I've been around so much stuff. But as a young age, I've seen things that a normal human being may not have saw. I've seen things that when you're young, you got to hustle to be able to make it yourself. When I was 12, 13 years old or a little younger, I was selling bean pies and newspapers and shoveling snow. I always been an entrepreneur, always been a hustler. But I realized one thing, if you hustle with no knowledge, you just always going to hustle.
Being a hustler is good. But if all you got is to keep hustling without being able to reciprocate the ROI of hustling, You just hustling the hustle. And that don't feel good because you look up 10, 20 years later and you're like, yeah, man, I've been hustling for a long time. And then just like you said, where's the pinnacle? What do you have to show? Where did you get to in that career? And the only way you could do that is if you learn the business of anything you're doing. When people say they're a hustler, you know, I say that's good. But are you learning your hustle? Did you master your craft? Did you become an expert in it? Because if you didn't, you're just a hustler that's a hobby.
You're a hobby hustler. That's the new one. You're a hobby hustler. That's what that is. And I didn't want to be that. I wanted to grow. I wanted to be respected. And I want to be respected in rooms that don't look like me. I want to be respected in rooms that shock them when they hear this come out of my mouth because they can't believe it. Because you know why? That's going to allow them to see a broader eyesight on generations of kids around the world that have good ideas, that have businesses, and they look broader at it as a whole. I got 40-something tattoos on my body. I don't look like the average CEO in Fast Casuals. I come from a very dangerous place, but I'm dangerous here, you know?
So me knowing that, knowing that I can sit with anybody and make it work, create a partnership. That's powerful, though, because they say if you want to really get somebody, they need to not anticipate that you're coming. And I think you probably can walk into places now and be real dangerous. You probably always have been. But now with both wisdom, knowledge, you know, sometimes I'm sitting around. Honestly, humbly speaking. And I could be in certain rooms and there's conversations in fast casual or anything. And I'd be like, they just don't know. I'm about to be the face of fast casual. This is about to be my world. I know what I have. I am creating something that's bigger than food that's never existed. And as an African-American where we own less than 8% of franchises,
Now I can actually show the world that you don't have to have a college degree. You don't have to have these certain certifications that they say you have to have. You got to be smart enough to use this and beat the people around you that's smarter than you to be able to scale the brand.
You're in the early phase of scale, but you clearly are going from 1 to 12 and now franchises, and that thing's about to take off like a firecracker. So what's the biggest thing you've learned that even if you're in the early stages, you seem to have the vision for it? What's been the learning lesson to help you scale? Being humble and being smart enough to know that you can't do it alone, you got to create a team. And that's the most important thing, because as you grow, you have to learn and you have to get challenged. If you're not getting challenged, it's like working out, right? If I'm sitting and I'm lifting weights, that's not really tiring me out. Then I'm not getting stronger. But if I put the right team around me, that's going to challenge me to be a better me, challenge me to the decisions I want to make, challenge me to the scale I want to get to, then that requires confidence.
pure dignity and education and soaking it all up and knowing that you just don't know it all. And you got to be okay with that. Because here's the thing, a lot of people say, oh, I got a mentor. This person helps me out. But for me, I could look at anybody on Instagram that intrigues me, that works hard, that keeps my engine going no matter what field it is. But when I'm looking at the expertise of my business, I'm leaning on my advisors, leaning on my team. Because I'm... It's like this, a bicycle is a kickstand. It can't stand up on its own, but it can keep going with somebody pedaling. I can pedal my bike, but if I wanted to sit there, I need a kickstand.
So that's the way I look at life. I need somebody now to, when I'm tired or I want to stop my bike, I need somebody I can lean on. And those are the kickstands you need around you for life. And that's your advisors, that's your team, and that's people you trust and believe in. A lot of people have family. They get involved in business. Dave's Cheesecake, it's huge. Eric Hayes has done this. Have you learned anything about working or not working with family when building this? Respectfully, it can be difficult at times when you bring somebody in that you have to pay more that now becomes their boss. And it's always, hey, I'm cuz or I'm brother or whatever the situation may be. That is the most difficult thing in business, not just for me as a whole, for people to hire family members.
When you open up a fast casual in a market, you really do have community impact. You have it where it's obvious, which is another great place to eat, especially if it's reputable and good like yours. But then it's you're hiring, you're supporting the community, you're buying in the community, you're selling in the community. There's so many things that go into it. Talk to me about that. I invest in the communities that we build Big Dave's in. We like to hire within because when you bring a multimillion dollar business in a growing community, it can help the community significantly. We are helping people gain employment. You're helping people gain careers. It could be a young kid that was maybe going down the wrong road. What I'll do is we have something called a Blue Apron program inside of Big Dave Cheesesteaks.
And if you learn to work all the stations, you can graduate. And what that does is that gives them some insight on the business. It makes them feel good. I come in there and I graduate them just like they're graduating, getting a certificate of a master's degree or undergrad, whatever. Hey, brother, I loved it. I can't wait to have you in Greenville and right down the road from us. And we'll have a follow up. We'll see how things are going. Where can everybody keep up with Big Dave's and Derek Hayes? Big Dave Cheesesteaks is my Instagram. My personal page is officialdhays. I'm always uplifting. I'm always teaching. I'm even always learning. So let's connect. Let's build. And if you're around Atlanta, if you're around South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, get you a Big Dave Cheesesteak.
I love it, brother. Thank you so much for coming on. All right. Thank you. Hey, guys, you know where to find us. RyanIsRight.com. We're always bringing you what's right, man. What's more right than this brother? Making it happen. He is the new face of Fast Casual. We need some new faces. I'm telling you what. I'm tired of the same old, same old. Hey, man, what is still here to stay? I know, man. I'm tired of it, man. I'm ready for a damn cheesesteak. I'm tired of the same old, same old. There's never been a better time for something different. So I love it. And you'll find all the highlight clips, the full episode, and all the links to Big Dave's and Dee Hayes. We'll see you next time on Right About Now.
Here's the truth. Information doesn't change your life. Execution does. So don't just listen to this episode and move on. Take the idea. Make the call. Launch the thing. Fix the problem. Build what you keep talking about building. For more, follow Ryan Alford on Instagram at Ryan Alford. And watch or listen to every episode at RyanIsRight.com. This is Right About Now. Now quit waiting. Go win.
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