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
The Duality of Dining and Entertainment with Dale Schwartz
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Imagine dining in a world-class restaurant and, as an added bonus, enjoying a lively game of bowling or bocce right there. That's the winning recipe Dale Schwartz, Founder and CEO of Pinstripes, brings to the table. From his journey as a visionary entrepreneur to the inception of Pinstripes, Dale shares the ups and downs of his business adventure.
On this episode, you'll learn from Dale about:
- Crucial role of feedback
- Cueing the guest
- Entrepreneurial success
- More!
Thanks, Dale!
Five-Star Restaurant 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 , a two-question SMS-based real-time guest feedback platform that helps restaurants measure and improve their guest experience . Learn more at ovationupcom . And today I hope you are buckled up and ready to have some fun , because we have the co-founder and CEO of Pinstripes , which is Bowling Bachi and Restaurant Experience , and they've got locations in Maryland , ohio , texas , connecticut , kansas , illinois , minnesota , dc , california , coming soon to Florida , new Jersey , which basically means , dale , you got everywhere by Utah . When are you coming to Utah ? That's my question .
Speaker 2Hey , soon enough , soon enough .
Speaker 1Well , thanks for coming on the podcast , dale , appreciate you being here .
Speaker 2Absolutely absolutely .
Speaker 1So let's jump into this a little bit , because this is for somebody who hasn't been there , hasn't been to Pinstripes . How do you explain it ?
Speaker 2So we are a very unique combination of high-quality cuisine and entertainment . In our case , entertainment is bowling and bachi , and everything we do is to go back to the future and let people gather and connect in the good old fashioned way , with quality food and spending time together with each other , so that , in a nutshell , encapsulates what we do and was the initial vision 33 years ago and then 17 years ago when we opened the first location .
Speaker 1And I also see you have events going on there . You'll have weddings that'll happen there , so you've been able to create a great experience , not just for individuals but groups , which is awesome .
Speaker 2No , correct . Our venues are big , so they're 25 to 35,000 square feet . So , yes , we bowls are a traditional restaurant entertainment , but also our private event business . We do over a thousand events a year Each location social , corporate weddings , our midst physical , birthday parties , team building events . So , yes , that private event side of our business that's nearly half our business is a critically important ingredient to what we do .
Speaker 1And do you guys do anything off-prem ? Is there any third party ? Is there any delivery , any catering ?
Speaker 2We do some . We certainly do through OLO , third party delivery , and then we also do some catering delivery of mostly breakfast lunch to some of our corporate clients and customers . Correct Got it .
Speaker 1And so , going back , what do you wish when you first started this restaurant , this experience ? Really , what do you wish ? You would have known then that you know now . What would a wiser Dale tell the young and scrappy Dale ?
Speaker 2A wiser Dale . Well , you know , we opened in 2007 , 2008, . In the infamous somewhat financial crisis was just about a year later . So a wiser day . We would have raised a little more capital in the early days to just have an even stronger balance sheet . That call is 17 years ago , because you never know what's going to happen . And we navigated just fine at the time . But a wiser day , I would have done that .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think very few people regret raising just a little bit more , I mean maybe not double or triple , but just a little bit more .
Speaker 2Yeah , not double or triple . That can get too dilutive and complicated . But yeah , beauty's in the eye of the beholder as to what a little bit more , but a little more yes .
Speaker 1And looking back , when you look at the impetus of this , what was it that made you want to start pinstripes ?
Speaker 2Well , I grew up in Cleveland . I bowled as a small kid , enjoyed bowling leagues with friends , certainly took dates bowling as the years went on . After business school I spent four years in Manhattan late 80s and I was going to buy a bowling alley in 1989 , 33 some years ago , with two friends on the Upper West Side having a pinstripes suit to canode an upscale image , because even back then we were going to do bowling with quality food and do something different . So that was the germ of the idea . And then got busy , didn't do it , waited about 15 , 20 years , kept an eye on the space and finally said life's too short . After I started , a few other businesses said let's finally do it . And so we've been doing it for almost 18 years now .
Speaker 1And was your first location in Ohio .
Speaker 2No , I grew up in Cleveland , but no , I was living in Boulder , colorado , for 17 years , so I'm one of the few people that left Boulder to move to Chicago , which is where we started pinstripes .
Speaker 1Oh God , I guess . I guess Boulder was a little bit too too warm for you , huh , so you wanted to move up to Chicago . Boulder is beautiful .
Speaker 2And we used to do mountain biking trips in Boab . Speaking of Utah , no , I wanted a city in Chicago where I knew we could do more than one location and there was quality restaurant tours . Franswijk , our bowling partner at the time , was based in Lake Forest . So , for a variety of reasons , greater Chicago made sense to launch the business and our flagship location , where I'm sitting today , is in the suburbs of Chicago .
Speaker 1And we love Chicago . There's so many great trade shows and events and so many of our good friends are up there . So we go up to Chicago quite a bit to go visit because there's just so many . There's so much happening in the food and beverage space there in Chicago , yeah a lot , a lot .
Speaker 1Yeah , I mean , and especially if you have a spare few days to go to the NRA show . It's a phenomenal show , recommended to everyone . I would just also recommend keep a spare day on the tail end just to try to get out . It takes about a day waiting for your Uber at the end of that show , right .
Speaker 2So our downtown Chicago location is very close to the convention center , so myself and our team we've been a number of times to the NRA show .
Speaker 1Well , this year we're going to have to make a trip to Pinstripes , though , because I have not had the privilege of going yet so excited , and you guys do a great job Like your website , by the way . It is such a good job of putting you in the experience and showing you different things that you can do there . So , anyway , I think , great job on that website , and the guest experience starts there . It starts with the website , but that's not where it ends , and so , looking at the journey of the guest experience , what do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience nowadays ?
Speaker 2Well , I mean the firm , experiential is real . So Our guest , our customer , certainly in the face of what we refer to as the Amazon effect . So all of the online purchasing and some of the challenges that that's put on traditional retail or malls or developments , you can't replicate spending quality time together online .
Speaker 2So , the magic is to create an environment and we try to do it well , to create an environment that people can just enjoy themselves and celebrate and enjoy the company of others and connect . And mind you , when I started the business 2007 , may , when we opened our first location to put in context the iPhone was introduced two months later . So all of the all , the vision of connecting and going back to the future that was just accentuated with the lack of real , true connectivity of people because of technology . And then COVID certainly made that even more real . People can only zoom so often .
Speaker 2So so , to crystallize and answer your question , true connections is what is what we try to deliver in all kinds of ways .
Speaker 1I think that is such a great idea because we talk about this all the time and when I go around and do trainings on guest experience , it starts with convenience . It's got to be something . That's the effort to go there is not . The experience is better than the effort . My expectations of what I'm going to have is going to exceed the effort to go . And then the next level up is about consistency . If I go into pinstripes one time and have a great experience , not go the next time and have a terrible experience , chances are I'm not going to be super excited to go that third time .
Speaker 1But then the highest rung is all about connection , and connection to those around you , connection to the staff , connection to the brand . Speaking of Apple , they've done a great job standing for something and people connect with that , as if you were looking at the cameras facing the other way , as can be seen by , like my 15 , 20 Apple things that are in my office right now , and all of that comes down to a whole bunch of little things that you do well . And so what are some tactics that you've used to improve the guest experience over the years ? You've been doing this for a while . You've opened up a bunch of locations you're opening up . You have five more coming soon , right now . What are some things that you've learned along the way , some tactics you've used to improve the guest experience ?
Speaker 2Well , one of our first board members was Jack Greenberg . Jack's the former CEO of McDonald's , and Jack shared with me 16 , 17 years ago that in any business you want to queue , you want to queue the guest to feel or think different things . So take Pinstripes , it starts with our door handles . So our door handles are rustic iron . To queue that you're coming into something different and special , not just not a chain and not something sterile Our front doors we don't do turnstile .
Speaker 2You wouldn't come into someone's home and go through kind of a hotel turnstile , you would come in through doors . You walk into Pinstripes and there's fresh flowers behind the front desk . To queue quality , there's socks that we hand out at the front desk for bowling . To queue that , we just do it a little differently . The quality of music that's played , the level of music that doesn't interrupt volume , wise people speaking with each other . The lighting needs to be just soft enough to set the tone . The smell of the venue If you walk into a scratch kitchen , you smell food because we've been prepping foods since seven or eight in the morning . You don't smell floor cleaning product .
Speaker 2So , all of those queues , and then the design elements , and then the attire of our team members with lavender shirts , are all to create queues and overall experience . That suggests sophisticated fun and that for us is true north and so everything we do is to cue that in all the different ways that we can .
Speaker 1So who is someone in the food and beverage industry that you think is just doing a crack up job ? Someone who deserves an ovation , someone that we should be following ?
Speaker 2Well , I have tremendous respect for the Hillstone Group , houston Restaurant Group tremendous respect for George and who's the founder , but for what that group has done . The first person that I hired 18 years ago , chris , our COO , spent 13 plus years with Houston , so I gave the Hillstone Group tremendous kudos for quality of food service , overall execution . I've got tremendous respect for that .
Speaker 1Yeah , the Hillstone Group . They've done some incredible things over there . We've gotten you . Aren't the first one to shout them out , nor will you be the last I'm really impressed with what they're doing ?
Speaker 2I suspect not . Yeah .
Speaker 1And where do people go to learn more about pinstripes ? And I don't know if there's anywhere that you post your personal musings . Where can we go to follow some of your wisdom , dale ?
Speaker 2Mostly online . I mean our website . On occasion I'll post something on our Instagram page , much the same . On occasion I'll pen or post something , and our team does the same constantly our chefs and a lot of our team members . So any flavor one wants about our brand website , instagram , facebook and the best flavor is come in , come into our venue and pun intended eat the food and enjoy our phenomenal wine and tasting and experience it .
Speaker 1Awesome . Well , dale , for showing us how to dress up and live it up and connect in pinstripes
Thanking Zach for Feedback and Joining
Speaker 1. Today's Ovation goes to you . Appreciate you joining us and giving an Ovation . I appreciate it .
Speaker 2Thanks , Zach . I'll see you at pinstripes soon . Thanks for joining us today .
Speaker 1If you liked this episode , leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen to . 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 .