The Golden (Chick) Rule with Brian Loescher

Zack: 0:00

Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation, the restaurant guest experience podcast, where I talk to industry experts to get their strategies and tactics you can use to create a five-star guest experience. This podcast is sponsored by Ovation, an operations and guest recovery platform for multi-unit restaurants that gives all the answers without annoying guests with all the questions. Learn more at OvationUpcom. And today we have Brian Loescher on the podcast with us and if you don't know Brian, he is a staple at trade shows. He's great on stage, he's awesome to connect with in the halls. But he has a lot of restaurant experience from Rally's Hamburgers, arby's, grandy's Yum Brands and now he is president of Golden Chick Franchising. What's up, brian? How are you?

Brian: 0:49

How you doing, zach, thanks for having me.

Zack: 0:52

Yeah, well, thank you for taking some time to chat, and I'm excited for this podcast because I see a lot of these trade shows and I think one of the things that I like to hear is when you go to trade shows and we're about to enter some trade show season here what should people be looking for at trade shows? How do you, as a restaurant operator, get the most out of a trade show?

Brian: 1:14

Well, you know, things are changing so much. Over these last few years COVID, I think, kind of accelerated everybody's desire to look at new and innovative ways to connect with customers, operate the business, be more profitable. So I try to go in with my eyes open to what's out there, obviously connecting with current vendors and old friends, but at the same time, what's the next new exciting thing around the corner?

Zack: 1:39

And how do you not avoid the shiny object syndrome?

Brian: 1:44

Well, I don't like to be the first into the pool, so I like to look at the shiny object and I like to ask who else is using it and what success have they had? So, depending on that answer, it might be a get back to me next year, or I'll start following you on LinkedIn or whatever and see how things progress, or it might be the right time, right place. Everybody's timing is different and kind of to gauge. You know, you know, you know your company better than anyone else. So what's your internal staff ready for? What are your restaurants capabilities? Do you have the? You know, all these tech initiatives are all, are all building blocks right? So if you don't have the right base, you can't necessarily add a cool new flag on the top of the spire.

Zack: 2:25

And you can't necessarily add a cool new flag on the top of the spire, and you know, speaking of technology, I think that's one aspect of a business that's super important. But in 2024, there's a lot of change coming, a lot of headwinds for the restaurant industry and, while there's a lot of hope out there, it also is projected to be a really tough year to attract new customers. So what are some questions that restaurant operators should be asking themselves in 2024?

Brian: 2:47

You know, one of the things that we're doing here at Golden Chick is a little bit going back to basics and let's not get too far in the weeds on, as you said, the shiny objects, but let's make sure our guests are getting great quality food and getting it the right way every time. At the end of the day, if customer came to you, they came to you because they're hungry. They didn't come to you because of some shiny thing. So you better make sure they leave with what they ordered and it's in the box correctly and it's hot and it's fresh and it's delicious and they'll come back for that right.

Brian: 3:21

In today's day and age there's just too much competition in all sectors. We're fried chicken, but you look at pizza, look at burgers, look at tacos, whatever it is. You know customers have a lot of choices and they're not going to tolerate an incorrect order. That's very basic. But you know we're doing a lot of things behind the scenes and to kind of recreate our tech stack from the bottom up, and so what we're doing a lot of things behind the scenes, to kind of recreate our tech stack from the bottom up, and so what we're doing on the operations side. Let's focus on some of the basics and how do we get every guest the right order every time.

Zack: 3:53

And here's the reason why. And data actually shows that the angriest reviews are going to be from guests who have an inaccurate order or poor service. To be from guests who have an inaccurate order or poor service. And the reason why is because, if you look at the rationale behind that, that's basically saying I don't care enough about you, customer X, to get your order right. I don't care enough about you to serve you. Right, and the problem is the switching costs are just too low. Right, it's too easy for a consumer to choose another chicken place, to choose another sandwich place, to switch from chicken to pizza. Right, and we can't afford to put our guests anywhere else but the very front of our minds, right.

Brian: 4:44

Well, as you point out, all projections are it's going to be a tough year for restaurants. So when you get the guest's negative feedback, one of the first things is I paid X amount and didn't get it. That's very top of mind, right? I spent $12 on this combo meal or $30 on this family meal or whatever it is, and it wasn't right. And now I'm mad. And now I'm not just mad that you're missing an item, now I'm going to say, hey, that person was rude. Now your restaurant was dirty. Now your service time was slow. I was tolerating all those things. It's not like I got the right food. Now I don't have the right food. And it's so easy to complain. You know, I'm going to put you on blast for everything I possibly saw, whether it's been marginal.

Zack: 5:32

I'm still going to call it out, because I ordered a 20 piece and I only got 12 pieces, or whatever it may be. Well, and the problem is, people are three times more likely to leave a negative review than a positive one, and a negative review loses you 30 customers. And the issue is, the reason why people go to online reviews is because one they feel like there's been some injustice right. They want to feel heard, and if you're going to make it hard for them to feel heard with some 50 question survey, they're going to go someplace much easier for them, which is like an online review, and so the key is let's get in front of them. Let's make sure that they have a place. That's even easier than leaving a review online to give you private feedback, and that's where a lot of brands are going for. To find success is make it easy to get that feedback from the guest right, because it really is all about the guests. And, with that in mind, what do you think the most important aspect of guest experience nowadays is?

Brian: 6:27

Well, I think, order accuracy. At the end of the day, a guest came to you hungry. You got to leave them at the very least satisfied. You know, preferably highly satisfied through an awesome meal, through awesome over the top experience, through a great quick drive through, but at the very least, if you don't leave them accomplishing the goal that came to your restaurant, for they're not going to be happy and there's no way around that. So, you know, we've added QR codes to our receipts so that they get their feedback directly to us and our website, hopefully to catch them before it gets to other platforms. But even then, you know, the onus is on the franchisee and the manager to take that feedback and take action with it.

Brian: 7:07

Just knowing is not, you know. It's almost worse sometimes if you know you get the negative comment and you don't do anything, then to your point, man, you really don't care about me. I told you what was wrong and you know, maybe I didn't want to free me. I just want somebody to hear me. Somebody called me on the phone and say, hey, I'm sorry. And when you don't do that, you dig yourself a hole.

Zack: 7:28

Well, and that's the thing that we found, too, is you're talking about creating a better experience, and there may be some restaurant operators that are out there being like Brian, like I can't create a better guest experience. I'm like my margins are tight, my employees are tough, Like you know, standards are going up for expectations. Like, how do you, how am I supposed to create a better experience? And I think the beauty of being in the food business is it doesn't take much.

Brian: 7:58

It's not an expensive process to double check the bag. It doesn't cost you any more money to repeat an order to a guest. We've done some minor things with packaging, going to clear lid containers as opposed to a solid branded lid, just so you can see. So if a cashier looks in the bag and can see if it's that chicken tenders and green beans or chicken tenders and coleslaw, it's really easy to tell there's with a clear top. So we've done minor things like that and it's really been cost neutral from a packaging standpoint. But it's really focused on hey, we did all the all the research and our guests don't think we're slow but they do get upset when we're inaccurate.

Brian: 8:35

So we have the timers on the wall. We know what our time is. We don't need to be under three minutes, be three minutes and 15 seconds and take the second to look at the bag, confirm the order, ask the guests at the window hey, you had the four piece with the green beans. Great, here you go. Have a great day. So taking just the extra five to 10 seconds to be a little more intentional about getting the order correct out the window can make a huge difference for us.

Zack: 9:02

Well, and it's about apologizing to your point of. A lot of times the guest just wants to feel heard. What we found is that an unhappy guest has a 13% retention rate. If you respond to that guest right, there's an over 50% retention rate. And then we've developed some AI that has bumped that up to 68% retention rate. But the cool thing about that is that guest doesn't just come back. They spend more money on every subsequent visit. They come back four times more often than your average guest. They are 12 times more likely to leave a positive review and as you look at that, the value of that guest is so massive that they become 20 times more valuable than your average guest. A recovered unhappy guest.

Brian: 9:53

Right, right, right and that. How many friends and family do they tell about that experience?

Zack: 9:58

Right, you wouldn't believe it. I went to golden chick, I something went wrong and they actually made it right. Like, can you and that's the standard when we're talking about blowing their socks off, we're talking about saying sorry, say thank you, Like those are things that humans, that humans crave, and it's not that expensive.

Brian: 10:18

And we've seen, you know, like return guest feedbacks that say, hey, I had this issue, I talked to the manager, the manager fixed everything and they give me four free roles. That is so awesome. Four roles costs us, like you know, 48 cents or something like that, but that just that person was raving over it the just the small little bit extra to show, hey, we made a mistake and we want to apologize. And here's something to show that we are sorry and we do care about you as a guest and we want you to come back and hopefully we won't make the same mistake next time.

Zack: 10:49

Yep Love that. So what's a tactic that you've used to improve the?

Brian: 10:54

guest experience. Well, so we 2023, we installed drive-through speed of service timers in every restaurant and now we're in the kind of a phase of analyzing that data and what we learned from that, as was the same, was that you know, we are pretty quick, certainly we have opportunities, and allows us to target our, our pockets of slowness. And is that a staffing issue? Is it a training issue? Is it a store setup issue, and how can we make those things better? And then now we're turning our attention in 2024 to really honing in on the accuracy piece, and how do we make sure our guests are leaving not only quickly, but quickly with the things that they actually ordered?

Zack: 11:31

I like that, yeah, because I think implementing little pieces of technology that's not distracting the team, but it's focusing the team and everyone talks about. I don't want to implement technology. That's. I don't want to implement tech because that's going to distract the team, but that's a great example of implementing tech that helps the team focus on what really matters, which is, at the end of the day, the guest, and I love that.

Brian: 11:55

That's a great example of we use an HME timer system that has, like you know, little leaderboards and some gamification, and the team can create their own icon, and there's competition amongst stores, and so you can make it friendly and fun without being too big brotherish and too, you know, always making it negative, focused on just the slow stores and our weekly newsletter. We feature the 10 fastest stories in the system every week. Now, certainly we'll, privately, we'll address those that are below standard, but we want to make it a positive thing. It's really more of our culture to be positive thinking. Reinforcement, recognition, celebration those are things that are important to us.

Zack: 12:33

Absolutely, and I couldn't agree with you more if you didn't tell by the name of our company. We love that celebration and that positive drive. So well, Brian, who's someone that deserves an ovation in the restaurant industry? Who's someone that we should be following?

Brian: 12:48

Well, I'll tell you a couple of folks that I like giving shout outs to. One is our support center here at Golden Chick. They're awesome, our hardworking franchisees out in the field. And then, you know, the Loomis agency is our ad agency and they really helped us. This last year hosted some executive summits where we really honed our mission, vision and values and where we kind of came up with this every guest, every time mantra which is shaping how we're approaching our 2024.

Brian: 13:14

We'll have regional rollout meetings this summer really trying to hammer home that we want to be the place known for. We want to be a loved brand, and to be a loved brand you have to be a trusted brand, and to be a trusted brand you have to be able to come every day and get the same experience and the same accurate order right. Another one is, as I kind of mentioned earlier, we're kind of tearing down our tech stack and starting fresh. We have been on a legacy POS system for decades and in 2024, we're starting to replace those with a QBeyond system. So if you're not familiar with QBeyond and you have an old legacy POS, I'm not naming any names, but we are saying aloha to our old POS and we're looking forward to embracing a new platform that just plays well with everyone else, and it really is what it came down to.

Brian: 14:03

The old system worked, but if we wanted to introduce new menu boards or a loyalty program or integration with a new app or whatever it might be, they just didn't have the capability, didn't want to have the capability, didn't want to be a good partner. And Q has been fantastic to work with their team of developers, their sales folks, all the way up to their CEO, nico. It's been a joy to work with and we've launched our first one a couple of weeks ago, we launched our second one this Sunday and then the installs will start ramping up and we're very excited about it this Sunday and then the installs will start ramping up and we're very excited about it.

Zack: 14:43

Yeah, I mean Amir Jen Kern.

Brian: 14:43

Nico Michael Sean Brennan Sean.

Zack: 14:45

Brennan, yeah, those guys are great. That whole team over there is just a phenomenal team, incredible partners and great industry leaders. Yeah, I think they've done some phenomenal, phenomenal work over the last few years and excited to see where they're going today and beyond. So, brian, where can we go to learn more about you here, your musings, or about Golden Chick?

Brian: 15:07

Well, you can find us at Golden Chick Official is our handle there on the TikTok and Instagram, and we're actually changing digital partners, so there'll be a lot of new content loaded soon. The Lumis agency, as I mentioned before, will be picking up our digital platform as well as our current traditional advertising A lot of exciting things over there. So we're on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and whatnot and we're mostly in Texas and Oklahoma, but we opened our first store in Mississippi a few weeks ago. Our second one will be opening here in the next 30 days. We have agreements in Nevada and Kansas City and Phoenix and look out world Golden Chick's coming to a town near you soon.

Zack: 15:45

Awesome. Well, Brian, for helping us remember the Golden Chick rule of sticking to the basics and remembering the guests. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on. Give an Ovation, Brian. Thanks, Zach. Thanks for joining us today. If you liked this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen. We're all about feedback here. Again, this episode was sponsored by Ovation, a two-question, SMS-based actionable guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants. If you'd like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience, visit us at OvationUpcom.