(upbeat music) - Think of getting rich
like running a race.
You might think that to win this race
you just need to run faster, i.e work harder.
But in this race, some people start out
much farther ahead than others.
And since they're in the lead they've got better access
to the capital or money that they need to get further ahead.
So if you're starting out too far behind,
no matter how fast you run
that access to capital is probably close to you.
But what if I told you that a healthy fast food chain
and a single mom of three from Compton,
were teaming up to change
how people all over the world get access to capital?
Well, I am telling you that,
because it's happening right now,
at the corner of Santa Monica and Highland,
right next to Danny Trejo's donut shop.
- Can you think through a system
that can work on a capitalistic level
and a social level at the same time?
And I think we figured it out.
- This is Hard Reset,
a series about rebuilding our world from scratch.
(gentle music)
Everytable sells healthy food
at prices that are actually affordable,
five to eight bucks a meal.
And they figured out
how to make that work for them financially.
Like each store doesn't have a separate kitchen.
Everytable has one kitchen where they make the meals,
then transport those to their locations across LA.
- But Everytable is a business
where there is no trade off between
what's good for our business,
and what's good for our mission.
It's all intertwined and synchronistic.
- This is Sam, he's not actually a van driver,
but he can drive a van.
He's the CEO of Everytable.
Before this he was a hedge fund guy,
someone that helped the rich people get more rich,
which is also cool.
But when he founded Everytable,
he didn't want it to be focused on making money
for people who already had plenty.
- Basically, as we were building Everytable,
like many restaurant concepts,
we started to look at franchising as a great way to expand.
- Enter franchising.
It's how restaurants like McDonald's or Subway
are able to spread everywhere.
And if Everytable is gonna go from 10 locations
to 35,000, they need to franchise.
But the problem with franchising
is you need to find a bunch of rich people with capital
who are going to buy the real estate and license your brand.
Also helping rich people get richer
is kind of the opposite of Everytable's mission.
- Franchising like so many industries in America
is for the people who come from privilege,
who have had the potential to accumulate wealth.
And we looked at the reality of the situation,
which is that talent is equally distributed,
but opportunity is not.
- So Everytable is trying to find franchise owners
that might not have their own capital,
but are willing to work their asses off.
Someone like Dorsia.
- After my second divorce,
my kids and I became homeless,
but I always knew that I had to work really hard
to try to get a better life for my kids.
So that involved me working two or three jobs at a time
while trying to go to school at night or on the weekends.
- And during that time,
Dorsia started volunteering for a non-profit that Sam ran
then working as an employee,
then manager of an Everytable location.
Then eventually Santa Dorsia.
- I want you to own your own Everytable.
And I said, how?
- How?
Well, Everytable arranges low interest loans
for their franchise owners, in this case, Dorsia
that money goes to get the business up and running
and pay Dorsia a salary.
The profits from the store
go to paying off the initial loan.
- So ideally what's gonna happen is, is that your store,
once you pay off that loan,
that all profitability comes right into your pocket.
- That's Bryce, he runs Everytable's franchise program
and is totally pulling off that pink jacket.
- Yeah.
Let's say hypothetically,
that you were able to clear $150,000
after you paid off that loan, that $150,000 would be yours.
So a person like Dorsia I see
is someone who could end up owning two or three stores.
- All right.
- Can we create a system where Dorsia herself
can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year
and maybe millions of dollars
and have a business worth multiple millions,
send her kids to whatever school she wants to go to?
- Homeless to a millionaire in a decade or so.
With Everytable's growth curve, it actually seems doable.
- Dorsia is just the first of what we think will be,
you know, thousands,
if not tens of thousands of entrepreneurs.
- Wait, remember when we were talking about capital,
where is the capital coming from to get Dorsia that loan
in the first place?
- I know it sounds very strange,
but that's what I do.
I give money away.
- That's Judy Belk,
she's the CEO of the foundation that loaned Dorsia the money
for the new store.
- We're sitting on a humongous amount of money,
a billion in assets.
- Foundations typically have a big pot of money
called an endowment.
Every year they're required to give away
5% of that endowment to charitable causes.
- But the question is, okay, what happens to the other 95%?
And for the most part,
you know, it's invested in Wall Street and the market.
At Cal Wellness, and many other foundations are saying,
eh, I think we can do a little better with that.
Why not use that capital to invest in the communities
that we're supposed to serve?
- Well, that would be different.
Instead of investing in Wall Street,
could foundations invest in people
that haven't traditionally had access to capital?
It's still an investment, they're not grants or gifts,
but they're investing in people in a way
that gives them a first step to building real wealth.
- So we're expecting
that we'll get a return on investment
on those dollars that we can then plow back
into providing additional loans
to other programs
and other social enterprises like Everytable.
- And if you're thinking,
eh, foundations how much money could they have?
Ah, about $2 trillion.
If foundations invested just 1% of their endowments
to give capital to people like Dorsia,
they could fund 80,000 of these loans.
Imagine the impact of 80,000 hardworking people
from poor communities starting restaurants,
salons, mechanic shops, clothing stores, whatever,
imagine the capital that generates,
how that money gets passed down,
how it affects their communities.
And maybe it all starts with this little restaurant
right next to Danny Trejo's donut store.
(gentle music)
- I've worked very hard to get to this point in my life.
I believe poor people just need some extra help.
I never asked for handouts,
I don't want free this or free that,
I just want to be able to have the same opportunities
given to me and my children.
(gentle music)
- It's not a dream, that's how I feel.
It's real.
I can touch it.
(gentle music)
- This is the architecture.
(laughing) The architecture.
- Oh, it's beautiful.
- This what you see, all right.
- That's beautiful.
- We can't built it--
- We could possibly be wealthy people someday.
And that's something that I never,
never really thought would happen to my family.
(gentle music)
- Come back next time for another episode of Hard Reset.
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