What we talked about
Erin Fletter is a serial entrepreneur, five-time cookbook author, and 30-year veteran of the food and hospitality world who turned a simple idea at her Denver kitchen table into Sticky Fingers Cooking®:a plant-forward children’s cooking school and social enterprise that has taught more than 200,000 kids the joy of cooking. In this conversation with host Federico Ramallo, Erin shares how a single after-school class inspired a national “cooking school without walls” that meets kids where they are: in schools, camps, and community centers.
Show notes
Erin Fletter struggled in school as a child, and now runs a national education company that has taught over 200,000 kids to cook. She built a proprietary technology platform over 13 years before most people knew what that meant, entirely by accident, starting with a college roommate’s husband who could “write a little something” to replace their 2 a.m. Excel spreadsheets.
What we covered
- Sticky Fingers Cooking started in 2011 at Erin’s Denver kitchen table after she watched her daughter thrive in an after-school taekwondo program and wondered why cooking couldn’t work the same way. The key insight was going to where kids already are, schools, rather than requiring families to travel to a storefront, which eliminated overhead and made the model scalable almost immediately.
- The curriculum goes far beyond recipes: every class teaches food history (macaroni and cheese involves Thomas Jefferson and a trip to Paris), what childhood is like in the country the dish comes from, one featured ingredient explored in depth, and “scrumptious science”, like demonstrating emulsification by shaking oil and vinegar together. Erin designed the learning she wished had existed when she was a student who found school boring.
- The “not so secret miracle” of the program is that kids who prepare food will eat it. Erin uses a ratio of one sweet recipe per month to hook reluctant eaters, followed by three savory recipes, and the sweet opener consistently converts kids into trying foods from Ethiopia, Thailand, and Argentina they might otherwise refuse.
- The franchise model emerged after Erin researched women’s business ownership statistics and found that less than 2% of female-owned businesses gross over a million dollars annually. She saw franchising as a way to create new business owners in underserved communities, today, over 50% of Sticky Fingers franchise owners are minorities, across 20 territories in 10 states.
- The Sticky Fingers Cooking Dash, their proprietary technology platform, now runs 85% of day-to-day operations across all franchise locations, handling everything from chef instructor timecards and KPI reports to logistics and allergy tracking. Unlike most tech companies, they built the software step by step as the actual business grew, adding only features they genuinely needed.
- Erin describes the franchise model’s core value as reversing the 80% small business failure rate: where 80% of independent businesses fail after five years, 80% of franchise owners succeed, because franchisees inherit 14 years of iterated best practices and can focus entirely on human connection and local growth.
About Erin
Erin Fletter is the founder and CEO of Sticky Fingers Cooking, a national plant-forward children’s cooking school and social enterprise based in Denver, Colorado. She is also a serial entrepreneur, five-time cookbook author, and 30-year veteran of the food and hospitality industry.
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-fletter-74b24454
- Website: https://stickyfingerscooking.com
Episode 81 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the PreVetted Podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today we’re joined by Erin Fletter. She’s a serial entrepreneur, five time cookbook author, and a 30 year veteran on the food and hospitality industry. She’s a founder and CEO of Sticky Fingers Cooking, a national children’s cooking school and social enterprise that’s taught
more than 200,000 kids. The joy of cooking through hands-on, planned-forward classes that wave together global flavors, food history, and creative learning. Erin, welcome to the show.
Erin Fletter (00:41) Thank you, Federico, I’m so happy to be here.
Federico Ramallo (00:44) Yeah, it’s pleasure to have you here. We were having such a wonderful conversation before starting the recording.
Erin Fletter (00:53) Yes, we’re fast friends. We’re good friends. I can’t wait to meet you in person one day.
Federico Ramallo (00:59) Yes, I’m looking forward to that. ⁓ So tell us a little bit about Sticky Fingers Cooking. You started that from home, right? How did that start?
Erin Fletter (01:00) you
I did. Yeah,
so I started Sticky Fingers Cooking at home from my kitchen table with an idea with my husband and my father. I was really inspired by we have my husband and I have three beautiful daughters and here in the US there’s a wonderful movement for children staying after school and having enrichment classes.
So whether it be art classes or science classes or maybe they learn a new language or try a new sport. And my oldest daughter, she wanted to try taekwondo. And it was amazing. She could be in her own school where she is her second home. She felt very comfortable. And she was in kindergarten. She became an orange belt and I just had to pay a small fee and I had an extra hour before I had to pick her up.
And I just thought, this is amazing. What a wonderful thing for children to be able to be curious and to be able to stay after school and to try something new. And I thought, how could we do this with cooking? it really, cause that is my love language. I love cooking. I love food. I love, I’m in hospitality. I own restaurants. And so I just thought this would be a wonderful thing to be able to teach kids how to cook.
I also, you know, I’m a serial entrepreneur, so I really kind of put on my thinking cap and thought like, this could be a really amazing business model where we don’t have a brick and mortar location. We don’t have a storefront where we don’t have all of the overhead that comes from that storefront. We don’t have to try to market our classes to bring parents in. We go to where kids are and we teach them where they are.
And I thought this could really grow and scale quickly. And so I took inspiration from my own childhood, from traveling the world as a child, from having a mom that cooked everything from scratch and always had me in the kitchen. So I used all of these kind of these things that I’m very passionate about and thought, let’s create a cook, a very unusual cooking school for kids where everybody’s welcome, where we’re teaching the children about the world through food.
And that’s really where it started. So I started here in Denver, Colorado, where I’m based, with three schools. Of course, I started in my children’s elementary school. And then we quickly, quickly grew. The model proved to be successful. And so these children, all of our students, we’ve taught 200,000 kids how to cook. They do everything from scratch in their classrooms. And they’re making…
Thai food, Argentinian food, Mexican food. They’re making food from Ethiopia, from all over the world. And every single week we have a new recipe that we teach them about that country and about the food and about nutrition and about world history and global history and food history. So we have a great time.
Federico Ramallo (04:02) That’s amazing. mean, I think that cooking is such a, you know…
and songs activity that you can do with any kids of any age, right? If, know, I think one of the things for smaller kids is you have to accept or embrace the chaos, right? Because they’re going to play, they’re going to explore, right? They wanna see how, you know, what happens if you drop something, right? And learn about that. you know, I used to think, oh, don’t make that mess, you know, because then we’re going to have to clean it up.
But then I realized, well, if I embrace it, it becomes an opportunity for the kids to learn, right? And explore the world without constraints. And it’s also an excuse for that parents to be a little bit silly, know, have a second childhood if you like.
Erin Fletter (04:55) I love your attitude. That’s exactly right. And that’s why we call it Sticky Fingers Cooking. So, you know, it gets a little bit messy. But we have so much fun. And honestly, here in the US, so many parents are busy and they’re working and they don’t cook themselves. And so for their child to come home and say…
I want to make vegetable lasagna like you’re having for lunch today, or I want to make a kale pesto. It kind of scares parents a little bit, but they don’t say no. And they end up cooking together and then they sit around the table together. And it’s just a beautiful thing. And I agree. I think that the magic happens when you let go and when you’re able to have fun and to connect with your children. And what better way to connect than through
cooking and through sharing a beautiful meal together.
Federico Ramallo (05:43) Yes, yes, it’s such a unique intimate activity and experience. Yeah. And then you have the, you can enjoy the, you know, the spoils of the activity, you know, the actual food, you know, it’s, you enjoy it cooking and then you enjoy eating it, right?
Erin Fletter (06:00) That’s
right. And there’s a very secret, I mean, we have a not so secret miracle that we do in our classes every day with thousands of children every day, that if they prepare it, if they make it, they will eat it. They will try it because they’re involved in the preparation and it becomes their own creation. And I think that a lot of parents don’t realize that, that if you invite children into the kitchen, if you have them chop up a cucumber,
they will try it because they’re part of the preparation. So it’s a very, very easy miracle for any parent to do. And this is what we do on our classes every single day.
Federico Ramallo (06:41) Right, right. That’s amazing. Yeah, I I, I, I tried to cook for my son as much as possible, but, and we’re kind of, pushing him to eat healthier. so we, you know, we, we cook without salt and he criticized that, but by saying, you know, I don’t like your nuggets. I rather have the commercial nuggets. Right. And I think it’s because they have, you know, more salt and you know, other, other chemicals, right.
you know that enhances flavor so I’m a little bit hurt you know
Erin Fletter (07:13) Well, good for you for doing this. That’s unusual in this day and age. so good for you for doing that.
Federico Ramallo (07:20) Yeah, it’s a process. We were talking about this before, but it’s a process where they give you such a raw feedback of, know, unfiltered, right? ⁓ Yeah, but it’s right. Yes, yes. And the thing is, I’m also trying to influence him to eat healthier, right? it’s, know, it’s a little bit of negotiation there. And when
Erin Fletter (07:29) Exactly. Yeah, they’ll be honest. They’re always honest.
Federico Ramallo (07:43) When we cook together, then he, as you said, he’s more inclined to eat it, right?
Erin Fletter (07:52) Exactly. Exactly.
Federico Ramallo (07:54) Yeah. And he loves doing, you know, desserts. He likes to do flan and gel, jello. But then he, you know, eventually he eats a little bit. And because he hasn’t, he’s not used to eat sugar. He’s like, this is too sugary for me. So he eat a little bit and that’s it. So he enjoys more of the cooking than the eating.
Erin Fletter (07:58) Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Okay, and that’s so
perfect because it’s all about harmony and balance and having one spoonful of dessert, I mean, that’s fantastic. So he gets to enjoy a little bit, but not too much. in our classes, Federico, we have found a really beautiful kind of ratio. So we have released a brand new recipe with all the curriculum every single week of the year.
for almost 15 years. So we have thousands and thousands of recipes and what we do is that so all across the U.S. every week the children in Sticky Fingers Cooking from coast to coast and in 10 states they’re all making the same recipe and what we do is we have a ratio of one sweet recipe
So at the beginning of the month, we always have one sweet recipe and then we have three savory recipes. And we find that that works so beautifully because if you start a class with a sweet recipe like a flan or something like that, something sweet, of course it has some fruits and some herbs or something healthy in there. But they are like, I think I like cooking. And then you can…
that can introduce some more unusual foods and savory foods from all around the world. And then after the three savory recipes, we do another sweet recipe. So I find it’s all about harmony and balance. And I like that your son is figuring that out for himself as well.
Federico Ramallo (09:44) Right, it’s amazing. the promise of the dessert, right? It’s, I’m going to eat something sweet. It’s like a promise of a candy, right? And I made it myself, right? And then they become more, they’re more involved to the second and third recipe, right? Because now, I see that this is going to be fun, right? And that opens the exploration of flavors to so many other flavors, right?
Erin Fletter (09:52) Yes.
Yes. Yes.
Exactly. Exactly. Now you’ve got it.
Federico Ramallo (10:11) Yeah.
My my my mom had a dark secret for many years. She never told me. Right. But so in Argentina, we one of the traditional food is is polenta, which is is corn flour. Right. That you cooked slowly with milk and then you make it’s like a bread. Right.
Erin Fletter (10:35) Yes.
Federico Ramallo (10:36) She hated it, right? But she never told me because she didn’t want to, you know, she didn’t want to influence me. And I loved it. So we would make it frequently. And, know, eventually when I was grown up, she said, you know, I hate it. I hate it. The flavor. But I did it because you like it. So, you know, so we will cook it together. And and yeah.
Erin Fletter (11:01) And this is what I love so much about food when you talk about being raised, born and raised in Argentina and then enjoying polenta. And that comes from all of the Italians that immigrated into Argentina. And so, you know, I just, love the cross culture and the pollination of different foods in different countries and cultures. And so I love that and good for your mom for doing that. My mother always…
She never told me, but she hated cucumbers, but she would buy them and she would slice them. And then I, and it took me a while to realize like she couldn’t even stand the smell of them. So, you know, I think mothers are very good at that of knowing that their children need to eat some things that are healthy and even if they dislike them. So good job for your mom. Yeah. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (11:51) Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Good job for my mom. Yeah. We
call it a dark secret because, you know, it’s kind of it is kind of joking with her that, you know, it’s like, how dare you keep that secret from me? You know, so many years. Yeah. And we laugh about it. Yeah. And, you know, going back to your classes, you also talk about history, right? ⁓ During the classes.
Erin Fletter (11:56) dark secret. ⁓
You
you
Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (12:17) Can you tell us a bit about how that started and why?
Erin Fletter (12:21) Yes, exactly. Yes, I’d be happy to. So, you know, our curriculum is very, very robust and we…
We really like the STEM curriculum, you know, where we include math and science and engineering and all of the things and art. And one of the, we have three major components that we teach our students in every class, every single week. And that is we always do food history. And that’s because I find it fascinating. I find it really, really interesting to literally every recipe.
has a history behind it on why people were cooking that food. Often it comes from very humble roots of, this is what we had and there wasn’t much around. like one, for example, that is a very American history is the history of macaroni and cheese is a fascinating history. And it involves US presidents and Thomas Jefferson and Paris and it’s
and bringing things back to the US and it’s just, it’s this very rich, interesting history. The history of polenta, or polenta like we just talked about, has very humble roots based in Italy. Same with risotto. I mean, it’s like every recipe that you can imagine, when you research it and look into it, it has a very rich history that’s often tied to world history.
and interconnectedness of humans. So we always teach the lesson or the history behind the recipe and why it was made and teach the children that. We also teach what it’s like to be a child in Argentina, what it’s like to be a child in Mexico, what it’s like to be a child in Taiwan if we’re making a Taiwanese recipe. And then we always choose one ingredient to focus on, and maybe it’s a tomato.
Maybe it’s polenta, maybe it’s basil, or maybe it’s rice, whatever it might be. And then the children learn about that one ingredient in depth. we just, you know, I was not a wonderful student. I was not a very great student myself, and I found school to be a bit boring. And I struggled in school, honestly. So.
Federico Ramallo (14:30) you
Erin Fletter (14:39) It’s not lost on me the irony that I now run a very big and successful education company, but I do that because I think learning should be fun. And I think that learning should be interesting. so we also incorporate really bad jokes into our curriculum about food. And so I just think that
And also having hands-on experience, like exponential learning, where you’re doing something and then you’re learning, it just brings it all together. So this is why we talk about food history and we talk about recipe history and we bring all these things together. We even have something for all of our classes that’s called scrumptious science, where we learn about different properties about cooking. Like it might be…
emulsification, know, blending oil and water, vinegar, vinegar and oil together and how that works or, or, you know, how to make butter from cream by, by shaking it up and, you know, all of these different techniques. And we learn about the difference between baking soda and baking powder and yeast and why it works and why it makes things delicious and baked goods. So we’re always kind of bringing in these interesting things that we hope that children can apply to other parts of their life.
Not just cooking because yes cooking is It’s an essential life skill, but you can learn literally anything through cooking that might spur something really interesting that maybe a child gets interested in science right or interested in history all through cooking so so I’m very proud of our curriculum and And and it works
Federico Ramallo (16:23) I am you were talking about, it’s an irony that you are teaching, you know, going back to the occasion when you you were you feel you were not that’s good. I think it’s rather than irony. I feel it’s more of a full circle story ⁓ because you’re basically, you know, teaching the little airing right that they don’t like the classes. Right. So you’re you’re
Erin Fletter (16:37) Mmm.
Federico Ramallo (16:48) kind of, know, four circle, changing the way, you know, education works. So the little Aaron will be happy and learning.
Erin Fletter (16:57) Okay, you just got me very emotional. I’ve never heard anyone say that to me, so thank you. I’m trying not to shut a tear. That’s incredibly kind of you, and I never thought of it that way. Thank you. Muchas gracias. Thank you.
Federico Ramallo (16:59) Ha ha!
you
Yeah, think it that way. ⁓
Erin Fletter (17:18) Very kind. It
may be the best compliment I ever received. Thank you.
Federico Ramallo (17:22) Thank you. So tell us a little bit about your classes. You’re talking that your classes are planned forward, right? So why is that important to you? And you’ve done that from the beginning of the classes, right?
Erin Fletter (17:31) Mm-hmm.
We have, and we don’t use the word vegetarian. I was raised as a vegetarian. I was born outside of San Francisco with two very hippie parents. And so I was raised as a vegetarian. I’m no longer, as an adult, I eat meat. But it’s just something that I always gravitated towards. just I was raised eating lots of
fruits and vegetables and whole grains. My mother cooked for me all the time. And so it was a very natural thing. And when I started Sticky Fingers Cooking, I wanted everyone to feel included. So this is why we don’t use the word vegetarian, because immediately people think, I’m not, I can’t be included, I’m not a vegetarian. So we use the term plant forward. And you know, if you…
If you kind of understand a little bit more about Sticky Fingers Cooking and what we do, knowing that we’re not brick and mortar, knowing that we go into thousands of schools teaching hundreds and thousands of children and we bring in a cooking kit, we’re not using a kitchen, we’re using portable devices, and we teach kids from the ages of four all the way to 18 and nobody, nobody wants a kindergarten class.
chopping up raw chicken, right? Nobody wants that. And so we really focus on fruits and vegetables and whole grains. First of all, because I believe that kids in the US could probably eat a little bit more fruits, vegetables and whole grains. And it’s also very sanitary. It’s also very economical. You know, we use a lot of mushrooms and tofu and beans for protein.
and maybe teaching people a little bit on how to prepare foods differently and think about things in a different way. mean, we’re preparing Ethiopian food, which is maybe unusual for some kids in the US. And so that’s already pushing the envelope. But then, if we’re making steamed bao buns, we might be putting mushrooms or tofu in there. That might be very unusual for people too.
But we are always with all of our recipes and online for stickyfingerscooking.com, we always say, hey, you could always put in chicken or pork or beef. mean, that’s what I love about cooking is that you can always make it your own. So because we’re in thousands of schools all the time, we really wanna make it sanitary and safe and also economical for families. So that’s why we don’t.
choose to use meat in our classes, but we encourage families to make it their own by using our own recipes. Because you can always add whatever you like, chicken or seafood or whatever to any of our recipes.
Federico Ramallo (20:16) Right, right. And it’s, it’s, yeah. She said it’s safer. You know, you’re, not working with, you know, with raw chicken. could get Salmonella with, know, same with pork. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s a big risk. Yeah. And, um, I remember, I don’t remember which, uh, what was the case, but, uh, I think it was a Supreme court in the U S where they, argue that pizza is a, is a vegetable, right? So, uh, and catch up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Erin Fletter (20:25) Yeah. Nobody wants that.
and catch up and catch up.
Federico Ramallo (20:47) So,
know, the over-processed, hyper-processed food that is served in, you know, American schools, right, that’s an issue, right? So I’m glad to hear that you’re, you know, providing an alternative, right, of people can learn more about how to eat better.
Erin Fletter (21:02) Yes, and we’re very gentle with
it. We’re very, very gentle. We’re very gentle when we talk about nutrition. You know, if we’re talking about an apple, we’ll talk about how an apple grows and the different kinds of apples and the history of apples and where they originated from and why we eat them. And then we’ll talk about why it’s also when you eat it, how your body uses that energy and the vitamins and nutrients. And so we’re very, very, very gentle.
Federico Ramallo (21:17) you
Erin Fletter (21:29) when it comes to nutrition. And it’s really just about getting kids to interact with food and to get excited about food and to hopefully bring it home to their family and to share that excitement. And that is what we’re finding. It absolutely works. we keep growing and growing and growing. Now as a national franchise brand, just in the last two years, we’re adding new locations every single month.
And so Sticky Fingers is just growing as a movement and I couldn’t be more proud of our team.
Federico Ramallo (22:01) It’s one of things I was going to ask you about the franchises. ⁓ How did you start with the franchise model and what is the value proposition for the franchise owners?
Erin Fletter (22:04) Yes.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, we did not start as a franchise whatsoever. We accidentally created a perfect franchise, but we didn’t set out to do that. So when I started Sticky Fingers Cooking in 2011 at my kitchen table with going to three schools here in Denver, Colorado, you know, we quickly grew and we quickly organically grew into three states as a privately held company. So for over a decade, we were running
Federico Ramallo (22:19) you
Erin Fletter (22:40) We were running five territories in three states with hundreds of employees. And it wasn’t until the pandemic happened that, you know, really gave us a moment to like, we could have kept growing. We could have kept growing organically as a privately held company. But I saw a need. I started looking into statistics of business ownership in the U.S. for women and minorities. And I had never done that before. And I’m a female founder.
business owner and I had never looked at the statistics in the US and I was shocked. mean, it’s like here in the US women were 30, I’m sorry, 52%, a little less than 52 % of the population. We own 41 % of businesses and honestly, I was like, well, that’s not so bad. But then you drill further into these statistics and less than 2 % of female-owned businesses gross over a million dollars a year.
I was shocked. I was stunned. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. And then you look into minorities and then you look into access for capital for starting businesses here in the US and minorities and women. We historically don’t have access to capital to start businesses. That’s really when my team and I, we’re all female led. And so we’ve really just leaned into it and we started looking into franchising.
And we thought, first of all, what better way to grow our movement and our business through business ownership? So I’m all about the win-win. So we already have proprietary technology that is the thread that keeps the movement of Sticky Fingers Cooking running perfectly and succinctly.
It’s we have this beautiful technology that and then and then on top of it we can create new business owners in Every community in the US that are teaching kids how to cook in their own schools in their own community and then creating Successful business owners. So we just thought we haven’t looked back and we worked with the top advisors here in the US it took us about two years to really like make sure that we were ready and
ready to go. And so we launched our franchise business in May of 2023. So just over two years ago, two and a half years ago now. And I am just elated to say that we have 20 territories in 10 states, 14 franchise owners and to see, and most of them are women, over 50 % are minority. And to see,
these wonderful people bringing Sticky Fingers Cooking to their communities and having successful businesses is just, it’s beyond me. It just, makes me so happy and my team and I are just so thrilled. So we can’t wait to see what’s next.
Federico Ramallo (25:35) Yeah, I think that the historical misrepresentation has been an issue and I’m glad to hear that you’re helping minorities and female founders to being able to run successfully a franchise. I think that one of the values that the franchise provides is this support structure, which we haven’t even talked about the platform, that allow you to de-risk
business and give them the guidance, the support, the, but I’m also the encouragement, right? Because then they, can just, you can help them increase the, the chances of success, right? Because you have a proven model that works and that they can go and execute, right?
Erin Fletter (26:21) You nailed it. I mean, that’s exactly right. It de-risks everything. mean, a lot of business founders in the US understand this statistic that 80 % of small businesses in the US fail after five years, where the franchise model, it actually reverses that number completely on its head, where 80 % of franchise owners are succeeding after five years. And that’s exactly it. It de-risks business.
It’s because it’s already a proven, this is franchise agnostic, not just about Sticky Fingers Cooking. This is about the franchise industry as a whole, is that you’re in business for yourself. It’s your own business, but you’re never by yourself because you have a proven model. You have brand recognition. Hopefully you have amazing systems and technology and all you have to do is follow a playlist and a playbook.
a recipe, so to speak, for business. And all of our franchise owners, get to take our 14 years of iterating and our own mistakes that we made and using our best practices that we have honed in over the years, well over a decade. They get to use our playbook entirely that we’ve invested in for 14 years and they get to use it and only focus on growth.
and human connection. Because Federico, are 100%. We’re not selling widgets. We don’t have a storefront. We are a relationship-based company. So we have relationships with our chef instructors that teaches that they have a relationship with the students and we have a relationship with the schools. so it allows humans to be humans and to focus on growing their business and not worrying about.
How am I going to market a class? How am I going to, what recipes am I going to make? What am I going to do? How am I going to, know, what is the process for hiring? I mean, literally everything has been spelled out and we have a system and a process for everything. And what I love about franchising is that it’s this beautiful infinity loop. It’s this symbiotic relationship where Sticky Fingers headquarters as a franchisor,
cannot be successful unless we have highly successful franchisees. And so we are completely vested in bringing on franchise owners that are wonderful humans that we know will be successful and we give them the encouragement, the support to be as successful as possible because when they’re successful, we’re successful.
Federico Ramallo (29:00) Right, right. And you can scale with a franchise model and you can take responsibility of managing the business processes, the platform. There’s so many things that you already know that works. So having all that to support the franchisee and finding franchises that can have personal connection with…
with each parent and child being able to bring a fantastic experience to them. think that’s, for this use case, I think this franchise model is a fantastic idea.
Erin Fletter (29:34) We’re seeing so much success with it. And honestly, deal with, Sticky Fingers Cooking, we are dealing with two very important things, which are children first and food. And so we know that owners, business owners are going to care about that tremendously. And so what better way to have consistency and quality and hospitality than through the franchise business ownership model.
Federico Ramallo (30:03) Right, right, yes, yes. And we haven’t even talked about the platform, which currently is built on Ruby on Rails, but you also mentioned that you’re building a new version of the platform. You’re rebuilding the platform, right?
Erin Fletter (30:09) Let’s do it.
We are, yes, yeah. So a little history of, we call it Sticky Fingers Cooking Dash, because at the beginning it was just a very basic, very humble dashboard.
And then we made it into the dash and we have our icon is a little salt shaker like a dash of salt because everything we do is about cooking. But yeah, a little history of our Sticky Fingers Cooking dash. So I started Sticky Fingers Cooking again with my husband and my father at our kitchen table in 2011.
And this is just absolutely wild to me. It was only 14 years ago. And at the time, there was no white labeled software that we could utilize that would A, create a roster, take payments, and for parents to be able to type in just on a blank field, my child is allergic to eggs, or my child can walk home.
by themselves after school. Whatever it might be, all these very important things, in 2011 there wasn’t anything out there. Now we have AI and all this, it’s just wild to me. So, you know, as I said, we grew very, very quickly. The model worked and it proved to work very quickly. And my father and I were up at like two in the morning.
hand doing Excel rosters for all of the registrations were coming in. And we thought we can’t do this. Like we want to grow. was always this Sticky Fingers was always built to scale and grow. So we thought, what are we going to do? And so one of our employees who still works with us today, her husband’s college roommate,
was a coder and so he was a computer programmer and so it was just like, can you help us do this thing? And yeah, I can write a little something. And so it started so innocently and humbly, really so that we weren’t doing Excel spreadsheets at two in the morning. Very quickly, my brain turned on and I was like, wait a second, we can create software.
And software is the ultimate human tool, right? We have tools for the kitchen, we have tools for everything, but software is the ultimate human tool. And in order for tools to work, you have to use them and you have to have a reason why for using them. So we have been building our own proprietary technology platform for over 13 years that is built just for Sticky Fingers Cooking.
And now here we are from, you know, 2012 when we started to the end of 2025. This platform is now unbelievably robust. It runs 85 % of our day to day operations.
for all of our franchise owners so that they don’t have to, it does literally everything. It’s unbelievable. And it’s what holds our IP. It helps with our logistics. It does KPI reports. It does all of our chef instructor time cards, like just literally everything. And it’s very robust. So we have had over the course of the last,
over 13 years, we have had two independent programmers that we’ve worked with. I like to call them artists, like just, you know, working one-on-one with what we need over the years. So this technology has been building alongside of what we need. So everything is used and everything is intentional. Nothing is wasted and everything has been tweaked.
only for Sticky Fingers Cooking. Now that we’re absolutely growing and we’re nationwide and we have franchise owners, we now have to rewrite our dashboard to make our Sticky Fingers Cooking Dash and our proprietary technology platform to…
be very stable, to be very secure, and to be able to grow with us, because we are growing very, very quickly. So now we’re working with two amazing teams here in Denver, Colorado, and they are fortifying and rewriting our code right now to speak.
Federico Ramallo (34:31) Amazing, Yeah, I think that software allows you to build, design what the business rules should be and then the software can follow that consistently. It’s much better than us humans to do that, right? And you don’t have to like double check the information because everything is, the validation rules are there. So if you follow them, then it should be fine. And it allows you to…
As you mentioned, you can now focus on the people and not focus on following a process.
Erin Fletter (35:01) Exactly. mean, and, and, you know, for the franchise model, it’s very, it’s very important for consistency. You know, it’s very, very important that if a child is taking a Sticky Fingers Cooking class in California and also in New York, that it’s, it’s the same and that the processes are the same and the quality is the same. And so technology.
is 100 % responsible for that. It also, you I mentioned that I was that I wasn’t a great student. Well, to be perfectly honest, there’s a lot of things in in founding and running a business that is I call it a death by by a million paper cuts. It’s all the back end redundancies that we have to do to run a business that just
is exhausting. And so we’ve automated all of these things that I have found exhausting for running the day to day operations of Sticky Fingers Cooking. So, Federico, as you said, that humans can be humans. And so, you know, our franchise owners, their job is to connect with humans and to grow their business and not worry about all the backend redundancies. Those are taken care of. And that is, that’s really so that the Sticky Fingers Cooking Dash
it is truly our secret sauce for being able to franchise and to be able to keep our quality high and consistent and to be able to bring on more more franchise owners.
Federico Ramallo (36:25) Amazing, Yeah, I agree. mean, the technology is great for that. It allows you to, you know, have peace of mind that, you know, the business rules are being followed and, you know, the requirements, whether legal, compliance, you know, local governance, whatever it is, you know, or the local state, whatever.
that you’re following all that, all those requirements, you’re fully compliant because the software supports it, right? And that way, as you mentioned, the franchisee can just focus on making the personal connection,
Erin Fletter (37:00) That’s exactly right. I mean, if I named I’m not going to name some world known franchise brands that I am truly shocked. They don’t have their own proprietary software. They cobble together third party white labeled software’s to make their magnificent giant franchise brands run, but they don’t even own their own set their own technologies or software’s or processes.
So many people are very shocked because we are, you know, we’re currently a pretty small homegrown company and people are just like, wait, you’re also a tech company. And we built our technology stack. So in such a reverse way of many tech companies that are around today, where oftentimes you get a big influx of cash, you get a bunch of investors, you build technology that you think.
that your business needs, that you haven’t even started your business and you hope that it’s gonna work, we did it the complete grassroots opposite way. We started very, very simply and the technology has grown step by step as we have grown our business. So it’s very unusual and I’m so proud of it because I wouldn’t have done it any other way. It was hard, but I wouldn’t have done it any other way.
Federico Ramallo (38:18) Right, right. mean, if you think about it, you become a technology company by accident, but with purpose, right? Your company has a big purpose, right? And I’ve seen so many startups, I go frequently to the Bay Area, right? And I see a lot of startups that have this amazing technology, but they don’t have traction, they don’t have, because they don’t have purpose, right?
Erin Fletter (38:23) Yes.
I love that. I love that.
I love that. I’m going to write that down for sure. Yeah, we’re a tech company by accident, but with purpose. And I would say that we’re also a franchise company by accident as well. But with tremendous purpose!
Federico Ramallo (38:46) So, yeah.
Yes.
Hahaha!
Yes, yes, it’s those happy, these happy accidents that are amazing. Yeah.
Erin Fletter (39:03) Yes, exactly,
exactly.
Federico Ramallo (39:06) Awesome. So we’re running out of time, but I think what you’re doing is amazing. I think we’re going to leave at the notes, we’re going to leave the links for people to sign up for the franchise, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if people want us to reach out for joining the franchise and this amazing experience, they should reach out.
Erin Fletter (39:17) Great. Wonderful. Yeah, we’re happy to talk to anybody.
Thank you, Federico, it’s been such a pleasure. Thank you.
Federico Ramallo (39:33) It’s been amazing, Erin. Thank you very much for joining us today and I’m looking forward to hear what you’re taking the company next.
Erin Fletter (39:40) Mucho gusto, gracias.
Federico Ramallo (39:42) Mucho gusto, gracias.