Give an Ovation: The Restaurant Guest Experience Podcast with Zack Oates
Give an Ovation: The Restaurant Guest Experience Podcast is your backstage pass to the minds of hospitality leaders, innovators, and operators who are redefining what it means to serve. Hosted by Zack Oates, founder of Ovation, each episode dives into real-world tactics and inspiring stories from restaurant pros who know how to create five-star guest experiences—both in-store and off-premise.
From fast casual to fine dining, catering to curbside, learn how to drive loyalty, empower your staff, and deliver hospitality that hits home. Whether you're a restaurant owner, operator, marketer, or tech partner, this podcast will leave you with practical insights and plenty of reasons to celebrate and Give an Ovation.
Give an Ovation: The Restaurant Guest Experience Podcast with Zack Oates
From PepsiCo to Blaze Pizza: Jim Mizes on Restaurant Growth
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In this episode of "Give an Ovation," Zack Oates welcomes Jim Mizes, a restaurant industry legend with an impressive track record, including roles as VP of PepsiCo, President of brands like Einstein Bros and Blaze Pizza, and various advisory roles. Jim shares his insights on scaling restaurant brands, the importance of aligning founders and financial partners, and the timeless principles of guest experience. Learn how to eliminate operational boulders and focus on what truly matters—developing people and serving guests.
Thanks, Jim!
Creating a Stellar Guest Experience
Speaker 1Welcome 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 I am so excited we have Jim Mises , the legend himself , and buckle up and get ready for this bio if you're not familiar with him . Vp of PepsiCo , taco Bell , president of brands like Einstein , noah's Freebirds , vp of Ops and Innovation at Jamba , ceo of Club One and Blaze Pizza . He has been on or is on the boards or advising for brands like Pincho , dave's Hot Chicken , workstream and tons of others . Jim , you are all over the place , man . You have done so many things and it's incredible to see . I appreciate you carving out some time from your busy schedule to come on Give Inovation .
Speaker 2Zach , it's great to be here , very excited about what your brand is doing as well , and love that it always starts with the guest and creating a great guest experience . That's what this industry is all about .
Speaker 1I'm excited to chat more about that in a little bit , I think . To kick things off , I'd say , as you are talking to , you do a lot of speaking at trade shows . You advise a lot of brands . When you go into these brands , what are some of the common mistakes that you see ? Brands who are looking to grow that just can't quite get there . They can't get to the level of growth that the brands that you've worked with have experienced . What do you typically tell them to look at ? What advice do you give them ?
Speaker 2Right . I think you have to start with the founders . I am not an entrepreneur , right . I'm the entrepreneur's best friend who can help him or her scale . I think you have to look at the entrepreneur and make sure that they are stable , because entrepreneurs , by definition , are unique individuals .
Speaker 1We're a little kooky .
Speaker 2Yeah , and they have to know what their strengths and weaknesses are and they have to allow people to support them in the areas in which they are not at their best . I always start with let's learn about the entrepreneur and then let's learn about the funding that's going to be required for that entrepreneur to grow . And , by the way , if the entrepreneur doesn't want a partner , then I certainly can't help them . If they just want someone to do some work the dirty work that they don't want to do that's not going to get you too far , it's not going to get you to greatness , it's not going to get you to 400 to 1,000 units , it just won't . The entrepreneur can get in the way If they are willing to partner and they have a great concept , and then they have the right financial partners or financial backing .
Speaker 2That's the next question that has to be answered . And in going through that with any kind of financial partner , the key question is do the operators and the owners and the investor have the same timeframes , time horizons ? I have seen where that hasn't been the case , and then you get into all sorts of challenges with respect to value creation and value realization . Along those lines , I'm not talking about a difference of a year or two , but if somebody thinks there's going to be value in five and someone else thinks it's 15 , you've got great misalignment that will lead to decision-making that will be misaligned and that can cause challenges as well .
Speaker 1I think that makes a lot of sense because sometimes as a founder and being a founder I mean this is my third for-profit I did one nonprofit you have this vision in your mind , right , and from a small scale . I think about it as like if I'm on my way home from work and I'm thinking about the Oreos that are in my pantry and I really want to eat those Oreos , and I get home and there's no Oreos there because the kids ate them all . It's like all I can think about are those Oreos , because I had this vision of eating them . And I think on a much bigger scale , it becomes hard when you realize that you have to be obsessed with the problem that you're solving and be flexible with the way that you're solving it as a founder . And it becomes really hard because you become attached to the solution where we should become obsessed with the problem that we're solving .
Speaker 2Absolutely , and I think you just nailed it . As an entrepreneur or founder , you saw a need that you thought Ovation could solve and I'm sure today your solution has zigzagged back and forth . Nothing is ever a straight line to the top . There's always ups and downs and some movement , and that's where the flexibility of the entrepreneur is also so critical .
Speaker 1I need to record that . Well , actually I'm glad this is getting recorded because I'm just going to take that clip and start every investor meeting with . Here's what Jim says about the path to up and to the right , because it's so funny . It's never a smooth line . That's baloney , that is . I just wish more people knew that .
Speaker 2It's no different than life is not a straight line to the right either . Amen , and in fact , we all learn best from the challenges that we face .
Speaker 1I think that is such an important thing . To really emphasize , too is that I keep on hearing this over and over again , and this especially now . I feel like this maybe I've been seeking this out , or maybe it's just I've been hearing it more . It's kind of this win-learn mentality , not the win-lose mentality . I love that you said that . That is something that I keep hearing in my life over and over and over again is what do you have to learn from this and how do you grow from the tough times ? Right ?
Speaker 2It took me a long time to learn that If you're learning it at your age , good for you . You're way ahead .
Speaker 1We're probably not that far apart in age as you'd think , Jim . Probably not that far apart in age as you'd think , Jim . I'm pretty old now , but I will say I think the one thing that you started off with , though , is talking around the focus on the guest . What do you think is one of the most important aspects of guest experience nowadays ?
Speaker 2I don't think it's changed , zach . You know what ? Because the guest experience is just like it was hundreds of years ago with respect to a guest in your house wants to be seen , wants to be heard , wants to be appreciated and , in fact , as a guest in your house , you're going to go do things to make sure that happens Well in a business today . I'm going to tell you what is different In a business today . It's the same thing Guests want to be seen , heard , appreciated and get value for whatever dollars they're transacting with you . What's different , I think , is the role of technology , the role of social platforms and the ability for people to microphone or megaphone , I should say their experience and how businesses react to it and the challenges that we all have with labor . But the experience of what people are looking for is no different than whomever was the first guest to walk into the house of Adam and Eve , I guess .
Speaker 1Yeah , whoever walked into that cave , that's true . I mean to welcome someone around that fire and sit around there . It's like it's about connecting individuals and I think that providing that environment to do so in a restaurant , I think you're so right .
The Human Element in Hospitality
Speaker 1The human element of what is hospitality , what does that experience for the guests mean ? You're so right . It hasn't changed in millennia because humans , the innate human desires , are all the same . I think about .
Speaker 1There's a photo I see it's a whole bunch of people on the subway and they all have their phones out and it's an old person that says what's wrong with kids these days ? And then there's a black and white photo of all of these from like the 1920s , all of these people waiting for a train and they all have their faces in a newspaper and it's an old person saying what's wrong with kids nowadays . There's a quote that I like to share . That's , basically I tell people it's from Nancy Reagan when people tell me oh , kids nowadays , jim , like I can't get good labor right . It's a quote and it says , like , hey , children love pleasure more than fun , they make fun of their teachers , they're rowdy in classrooms , they're loud , they don't like to work . And I tell everyone , like Nancy Reagan said this and then I'm like , actually I'm lying , it wasn't Nancy Reagan , it was Socrates , right ? I like the fact that connecting this to , like , the true human nature of things is really critical .
Speaker 2Yeah , absolutely . What's different today are all the different feedback mechanisms that we're going to talk about , All right , and the role of technology in the tasks that managers have and some of the other administration or administrivia , as I like to call it that managers have and that employees have that keep them . So these are tasks that keep them from the core of the business , which is hospitality , and then serving your product , whatever it may be , in its proper form , in a way in which the guest perceives that there's value for the exchange of the dollar and let's talk around that , because I think that that's a really good I don't know if there's a guest in our 300 episodes that's put that into a better perspective of , like the human nature of being seen , felt , heard .
Speaker 1What are some tactics that make sense from a strategy perspective ? On like the tactical level , how do you actually do that ?
Speaker 2Yeah , okay . Well , there are brands that are doing that quite well . Let me give you one example . You can have a hospitality person whose sole job is to greet the customer , whether it's in casual dining or even fast casual , even in some fast food and that's their role . Yeah , they may touch some tables et cetera , but their number one job is to greet and make sure the customer feels that they are seen and heard . That costs labor , that costs money , yeah .
Speaker 1Jim , come on now . I got margins . I got margins , Jim .
Speaker 2Right , but here we are . So now we can put in kiosks where that ordering task , which is not really a great guest experience in most cases , take that away . So now , if I don't have those kind of cashiers , can I invest a little bit in table touches , in bringing food to the guest , et cetera ? In certain restaurants it makes a difference . And , zach , then there's also what you do and others do , which is to follow up on any kind of negative experience and make sure that that experience , if it isn't up to par by someone's standards , that there's a chance for recovery all right and for making good and , in fact , turning that negative into now someone who's a real sponsor of your brand and wants to shout about it after a negative .
Speaker 2There are many elements that are out there . I would also argue , technology . If you take away the mundane tasks as much as possible so that leadership can be on the floor instead of in the back office or doing other tasks that are required in a restaurant , you free people up to set the example , and I'll leave you with this . I have my master's in finance , et cetera , and I had to learn how to run restaurants , and my biggest takeaway from spending three months learning how to run restaurants . All right . Three months , after years of study and working in corporate finance , my biggest takeaway was leadership at the restaurant level and I'm talking about at a support center does not do enough to remove the boulders that get in the way of restaurant leadership focusing on their real mandate , which is develop their people and serve their guests . I spent my career eliminating tasks and reducing tasks and simplifying the back of the house operations so that managers could spend time on really what they love to do develop people and serve their guests . Most brands don't do that .
Speaker 1What are some of the boulders that you've removed ? Because I think that a lot of times what happens is a lot of technology . Sometimes people will use technology and especially in a franchise system the franchisees it is just a collective groan when corporate is like we have a new technology that we're implementing . Right , because I think a lot of times those technologies are so complex that it's removing one boulder and adding two others right , it's splitting one boulder into two smaller ones and it's like it's still the same amount of work , maybe more right .
Speaker 2Fair enough . So some examples , right , every piece of technology that you want to bring to the field when you're testing it . There's really a couple of questions you have to ask . The first one is how did this save you time , effort or money ? All right , if your operator can't give you those answers , you should probably not roll that out or you should rethink what you're doing . It has to . I'm going way back . There's all sorts of labor scheduling programs , but way back we created one of the first GUI interfaces to turn scheduling labor scheduling from hours to schedule for next week into 45 minutes . And now there are many programs that do that . If someone can't schedule next week's labor and the following weeks in 45 minutes , there's a problem . All right , interesting , yeah . If your managers say to you no , it still takes me two , three hours , that's a problem .
Speaker 1Because what I'm hearing is like it's not just about hearing the guests , but it's also about hearing your people and making sure that you're making things frictionless for the guests and making them feel important . And your people ? You're making things frictionless for them and making them feel important , right ?
Speaker 2Exactly , and you know , we've all heard , the guest experience can never exceed the team member's experience , whether it's your team member who's an hourly team member or your salary general manager in your one and a half to six million dollar restaurant . You've got to make their experience great and I come back to the prime directives of develop your people and serve the guest and everything else is administrivia can you write a book ?
Speaker 1I think that is just like the two things to focus on when building a restaurant , because that is just so powerful right there , jim . And this next question , I know is going to be a little bit tough for you because you know everybody , but if you had to think of who's someone in the restaurant industry that you think deserves an ovation , who's someone that we should be following , oh , my goodness .
Speaker 2I'll give you two . One is obviously a gentleman I've worked with for many years who I just think is doing an incredible job at Dave's Hot Chicken , and that is Jim Biddix . All right , jim Biddix starts with the operator in mind , starts with how do I create an experience for the people in the restaurant that is second to none , and now at Dave's Hot Chicken , surrounded himself as well through Bill Phelps , with a team that really knows how to deliver . The other one I want to give a shout out to and ovation to is Charles Watson at Tropical Smoothie Cafe . They just announced that Levine-Leikman put them up for sale and they're being sold for $2 billion . And in the last four years nobody hears much from Charles because he's not the social platform out there .
Speaker 1Extrovert guy he's more of an so he and I are pretty similar . Is what you're saying Exactly .
Speaker 2You guys are like two peas in the pod but two flowers on a wall right . Look at what he's done in the last four and a half years . People don't know this . On a wall right . Look at what he's done in the last four and a half years . People don't know this . They've nearly doubled in size . Their AUVs have gone from 800,000 to 1.3 , 1.4 million and have gone from 800 and something units to 1,400 . And by the end of this year he'll be at 1,600 units or so , and that's why the valuation went from less than a billion to 2 billion in four and a half five years . Yet nobody knows about Charles Watson . Why ? Because he's not out there yapping away and creating his own brand for himself , which , again , nothing wrong with that but he's out there creating value and now realizing value for his investors and for his leadership team that is a participant in this sale , and I'm sure he'll have a whole nother package that comes together with his new private equity partner . But the point is he's created huge value in tough times .
Speaker 1I've always been told , trust the stake over the sizzle and , as a Charles Watson , if people who are doing that biggest stuff and you don't know their names , to me those are the people that you really need to be figuring out . Who are they and how do they do it ? Because that's the magic the sizzle is easy to create the steak that's the hard stuff and let's just put it in perspective Again .
Speaker 2Jim Biddix is awesome at Dave's Hot Chicken . It's a hot category , obviously , and they're leading the way in growth and so many metrics . But Charles is in a category where it used to be Jamba Juice . I was part of Jamba's beginning and it's now part of GoToFoods , but Jamba's kind of slid along the way . I left with 800 units and I think they have like 900 or 1,000 today . Right , and I left in 2002 , I left so 22 years ago . Okay , they haven't grown much and I don't think their AUVs are 1.4 million either In a category that certainly doesn't have the growth potential as chicken or hot chicken . Look what Tropical Smoothie Cafe has done , and bravo to Charles .
Speaker 1That's awesome . I love that , jim . Thanks for those two shout outs . Jim is a good friend and he's doing some incredible things . I'm excited to eventually , at some point , meet Charles . He sounds like the right guy to meet Jim . If people have enjoyed this podcast , which I know every listener has at this point , where could they go to learn more ? Where could they go to learn more about your musings and what you're doing ?
Speaker 2Look , I'm in my retirement phase , semi-retirement phase of consulting and advising in a very limited fashion , so I would say it's LinkedIn or reach out to me directly through LinkedIn . I'm always excited to talk to entrepreneurs and founders and help guide them if possible and if they are looking for that kind of direct feedback . I think that's what's the beauty of this phase , is my why today is really to help people and to help entrepreneurs minimize the roadblocks or the oops that can come in their way and provide some guidance if they're open to some experience as well as someone who's still trying to stay in touch with the industry and by that I mean restaurants and technology that supports restaurants .
Speaker 1Love that , jim . Well , I got to say , jim , this has been such an awesome conversation . I appreciate you coming on . I know you've got a lot on your schedule and , as we said before , this call this phase of life that you're in . I'm so grateful that you're choosing to give back as opposed to going fishing right now , because there's a lot of people who need to learn how to fish . And so , anyway , jim , mr Full of Prizes , mizes , for giving us some wisdom to unlock the magic of growth . Today's ovation goes to you . Thank you so much for joining us on Give an Ovation .
Speaker 2My honor to be here with you .
Speaker 1Awesome Thanks for joining us today . If you like 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 .