Speaker 1: 0:00

and so there there's a um yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of owskies that in in western ukraine and a lot of anchos in central ukraine and a lot of like, um, you know the ovich at the eastern ukraine. But anyway, all right, joe. By the way, do you prefer joe or joseph?

Speaker 1: 0:25

you can call me joe, yeah okay, okay, 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 Joe Guskowski on with us. He's the senior editor at Restaurant Business and I am so excited to have you on, joe, because I wanted to turn the mic around.

Speaker 1: 1:11

You are often on the other end of the microphone, which is a very wildly like that metaphor doesn't quite fit as well with the camera as it does with the microphone, but you're always talking to these experts and you're not just reading the news, you're helping to inform people on the news and, with getting so much information, I'm excited to interview you, joe, and get your take on the industry and guest experience, because I've found that people like you have such a great take. So thank you for joining us on Give an Ovation. Thanks for having me, zach. So, joe, let's just kick it off. What are you seeing in the food and bev industry?

Speaker 2: 2:00

It's kind of a tough time out there, to be honest. I think you know generally we're seeing a handful of brands that are doing really well and then a whole bunch who are just kind of scraping by because of the macro economy. You know, consumers are maybe not struggling, but they're feeling the pressure of those menu price increases that we've seen for the past few years.

Speaker 2: 2:33

I think they're being much more selective with which restaurants they're visiting, how much they're spending, and so that's created this small group at the top they're doing really great, and this great big group in the middle that are kind of not really growing and in some cases, you know, going backwards. So that's kind of the high level as I see it right now.

Speaker 1: 2:58

And the brands that are doing great. I mean, I just talked to a restaurant operator last week and he was telling me that he's got a whole bunch of brands in his portfolio and the worst performing brand is running at a 17% profit right now. And I mean that's the kind of margin that helps you weather storms, especially if that's the bad performing brands. But and so for me, I'm seeing that the in the optimization of efficiency has been something I've seen that has helped a lot of the best performing brands Wanted to know what are you seeing?

Speaker 2: 3:33

Oh, efficiency has been such a buzzword the past couple of years through all of this, because you know, on one hand you're trying to get people into the restaurant but on the other hand, like you alluded to, you're trying to make money as well, and so the way you balance that is making your employees and your restaurants run better, and I think everyone is looking for ways to do that right now. A lot of it's through technology, obviously, simplification, you know, trimming down the menu a little bit or just changing kind of your processes, the way you make things. I mean Chili's has kind of been a big example of this the past couple of years. They've really been just kind of getting rid of tasks that the employees used to have to do that didn't really make a whole lot of sense, like counting out the individual shrimps that go in a shrimp dish. You know, before service starts things like that, you know that little things that add up and make things easier Everyone's looking for those little kind of hacks to be more efficient, like you said.

Speaker 1: 4:51

Yeah, and I think that the efficiency, the balance, is always how do we make money versus how do we create the best guest experience?

Speaker 1: 4:58

Right, obviously, if it were viable, I think every business would want to charge a penny and fly out a personal chef and have them prepare that meal at home for them, right, like with all their friends. Now, that's obviously a little bit too much and a little bit too little, but I think it's about finding that, that crossover of where can you maximize the what people are willing to pay versus the value that they get for that? And the guest experience is key to all of that, right, joe, and that's one of the things that we find over and over and over again is brands that invest this month in the guest experience. It pays huge dividends in the months to come, and the guests and the people that that trim off too much of the fat and they're now, they're getting towards the bone. They don't have enough. They don't have enough meat on the bone to provide that great guest experience. And so what do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience nowadays?

Speaker 2: 6:02

Yeah, I think you know. When I look at the brands that are doing well, I think the common denominator a lot of times is staffing and employees Interesting. I think that a well-staffed restaurant is going to operate better than one that is running short. And you know it's going to cost the restaurant more because you're paying more workers and you're probably paying them more as well to make sure that you're well-staffed. But, like you're saying, I think it pays off in the long run because guests are going to come back.

Speaker 2: 6:43

Texas Roadhouse is a good example of this so they have made a point of keeping their restaurants well staffed over the past couple years, probably overstaffed, you might, you might say, and their margins were suffering a little bit because of that.

Speaker 2: 7:00

They were declining, but this past quarter they made this jump, and one of the reasons is because the labor became more productive. The workers became more productive because they were sticking around longer, the teams were coalescing and they were learning to work together. They were just getting better at their jobs because they had more experience, and so then that pays off on the customer side, of course, and you can see that through Texas Roadhouse's sales.

Speaker 2: 7:31

You know they're just crazy, but then it's finally starting to fall to the bottom line too. So that, to me, is the big thing, you know, treating your employees well and making sure that they're well-trained, that they know what they're doing and that the job is like.

Speaker 1: 7:49

Yeah, it rarely doesn't pay to invest in the right things. Right, and you will. You're only as good as your last experience, and the guest experience can never exceed the employee experience. And so as you're training people well and doing that, I think it it does trickle down and I think that's a that's a great insight. And I think that's a great insight Because normally when you think about the guest experience, you think about like, oh, let's lower the prices of the menu, let's change up the pictures in the menu, let's redesign an LTO.

Speaker 1: 8:24

But it's like, how about we stop all of that and just make sure that we have enough good people working? You have enough good people working, and if people don't have and here's the thing, if people don't have that pizzazz in the interview, you can't afford to hire them, no matter how short staffed you are right, because someone who is unhappy will be extremely unhappy if you get a little bit short staffed, but someone who's happy at least can weather that storm and still make sure you're not losing guests, because I think that's a huge thing right now. Joe is just we cannot afford to lose guests in this economy.

Speaker 2: 9:08

You mentioned price a minute ago. If it was just all about price, if customer experience was all about price, the most affordable, whatever the lowest price chain, would be doing the best right. But that's not really the case, price is part of it, but I think people will be willing to pay more for a place that they know they're going to get a good experience.

Speaker 1: 9:34

So we can't just be like lower prices.

Speaker 2: 9:36

It can't just be promotions and deals all the time.

Speaker 1: 9:41

Cause I mean who, Joe, who is even low price anymore.

Speaker 2: 9:45

Well, I was struggling to come up with a good example.

Speaker 1: 9:48

I mean I took, I took my kids to McDonald's and I got.

Speaker 1: 9:51

I got like two ice cream cones and one happy meal because we had eaten beforehand, because I was like I don't want to, I don't want to break the bank and like feed everyone at mcdonald's because I went there and it was like 40. I'm like 40 at mcdonald's. I never, I never imagined I could spend that much at mcdonald's. But you know, and family of you know, I've got four kids. That's not even, that's not even hard to do.

Speaker 1: 10:18

No, that's, that's easy to do and it's just, it's just surprising because I I can't even think of a place I mean like I think in and out, you go there and you get the hamburger. You know you get what you pay for, right, like it's a, it's a, it's a, I think, from for dollar to meat, for dollar to like burger. It's hard to find a better deal. But you think about why does it work so well? Look at the people, look at how good the people treat all of the guests and look at how they've to completely flip that thing around. So the best employees, the ones making the burgers, right.

Speaker 2: 10:54

It is a great example.

Speaker 1: 11:02

Yeah, so what do you think are some tactics that you've? Seen lately to improve the guest experience, yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:09

So, like I said, I think that, like the best performing chains tend to be the ones that have this employee kind of focus first, and so actually the fastest growing chain on our top 500, we know we do this restaurant business, we do this top 500 ranking every year with data from Technomic the fastest growing chain was this coffee brand called Seven Brew.

Speaker 1: 11:28

It's like a drive-thru. You know them really well. I just had Nick, their head of marketing, on our podcast.

Speaker 2: 11:35

Oh, awesome, yeah, so they're this drive-thru coffee chain and um, they're very employee focused. You know they're they're. You know they um the employee happiness is like a big part of their brand and culture but they have this.

Speaker 1: 11:50

They call it a loyalty. I don't even know if I would call it a loyalty program.

Speaker 2: 11:54

But when you pull up to their drive-thru, an employee greets you. They're standing in the parking lot with like a tablet and they greet you and they take your phone number down. So then they store that in their system and you come back again and they ask for your phone number and they can pull up. They can immediately pull up, you know, the last thing you ordered and they can ask you if you want that again. And I just thought that was such a kind of elegant solution to so many things.

Speaker 2: 12:26

It's like it's great for the customer because a lot of people order the same drink every time they go get coffee, right, so it's easy for them. They don't have to repeat themselves. They just say, yep, I'll have the same thing again. That's a great experience for them. It's great for the employee because it creates this like moment of service connection. You know, like I know, I kind of have this connection with this customer because I can see what they ordered last time. Know, I kind of have this connection with this customer because I can see what they ordered last time.

Speaker 2: 12:55

And then it also helps with the order accuracy because, you know, like I said, I believe most of the time people are just going to reorder, and so it reduces the chance that the employee is going to punch in the order wrong or something like that. And it's so simple it's just what's your phone number. You know, you don't have to pull out an app, you don't have to scan something and look how well they're doing.

Speaker 1: 13:21

So that was a. That was one. I guess you could call it a tactic.

Speaker 2: 13:25

I don't think it's probably realistic for every brand, but just little things like that where you can create these kind of moments of um recognition kind of for the guests where they feel like seen you know and, I think, noah glass.

Speaker 1: 13:43

I just interviewed him and he was talking about their, their new phrase of hospitality at scale and and I think that's a that's a beautiful trademark expression because by them, because it's just that's that hospitality is so critical, but you got to have it at scale, Right, and we, we talk innovation, we talk about guest recovery. You know, scalable guest recovery, because it's like you want to win people back but you can't like afford for your manager to be calling every single person individually or showing up at their house and being like Joe, I'm so sorry, we messed up yesterday. Here's a handwritten note with the fresh baked cookies. Let me make it up to you, Not scalable, but the feeling that you talked about, which is the number one thing in all of our research that we've done.

Speaker 1: 14:33

It's what. It's what consumers want to feel when they give about, which is the number one thing in all of our research that we've done. It's what consumers want to feel when they give feedback, which is heard. They want to feel heard and if you could help them feel heard, be it with fresh baked cookies or with an automated text message with an apology, that's a great way to win those guests back. Now you obviously, Joe. You know everyone. You see everyone In the industry. Are there anyone in particular that stands out that we should be following Someone that deserves an ovation? Can I say a brand instead of a Sure, yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:07

I wanted to shout out First Watch, because they did something recently that I don't think it got enough attention, but I thought it was so cool. And it goes back to this thing I keep talking about, which is, you know, taking care of your employees and um, so first watch is basically offering, um backup childcare to employees whose, you know, childcare has fallen through that day. Um, and so like, if, if, uh, you know, you work at first watch, you have kids, your babysitter cancels or whatever you can, um, send your kid to one of their approved daycare providers for 10 bucks for the day, and so you've got childcare figured out and then you can still come to work.

Speaker 1: 15:55

And and so first watch isn't scrambling to to fill your spot, or rather so first watch can scramble, ah, get it. That's right, I'll stick to my lane, you stick to yours.

Speaker 2: 16:14

But I just think that that's so awesome, and so, again, just kind of a simple solution to a really annoying problem.

Speaker 1: 16:24

I think that's so great. And because child care I mean being father of four, I think that's so great. And, you know, because childcare I mean being father of four. I see it all the time where it's even like hard enough to get for date nights and much less essential things like showing up to work. Love that, yeah, well, joe, any, what's next for restaurant business? Would love to hear kind of like flip it around and turn it to you guys Like what's, what's next? What are you guys excited for? What's coming up?

Speaker 2: 16:55

Yeah, well, we're excited about the restaurant show. Of course, a couple of weeks, that's always a big, big event for us.

Speaker 1: 17:05

And, by the way, if this gets published after the restaurant show we all had a great time there, joe, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2: 17:14

Yeah, I'm sure we did. So we got that coming up. We've got some longer term. Every year we do a few kind of like big team projects where we all work on something and I get. I'm not sure if I can say anything about those, but we also have the top 500 coming up.

Speaker 2: 17:32

We'll publish the whole list and we'll do a bunch of content around that stories and it's. I think it's going to be a super interesting list this year. A lot of movement kind of in the top 10, 20 restaurants and, like I mentioned before, some chains doing really well and then some that are like really struggling. So I think that's always a big, big push for us too. So a lot going on right now.

Speaker 1: 17:59

Awesome, that's exciting, joe. Well, where can people go to learn more? Follow you, follow Restaurant Business. Where should they go?

Speaker 2: 18:06

follow you follow restaurant business. Where should they go? Yeah, go to restaurant business onlinecom for all our our content. I'm on twitter, just my name at joe goskowski or x, I guess now and also pretty active on linkedin, so feel free to connect with me there. I find a lot of good conversation happens on linkedin these days, so awesome Joe for spoon feeding the news to us hungry readers.

Speaker 1: 18:29

Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Give an Ovation, joe. Thanks.

Speaker 2: 18:33

Zach.

Speaker 1: 18:35

Awesome Dude. That was so good man. You should do this more often.

Speaker 2: 18:40

Thanks man, that was fun.

Speaker 1: 18:41

You should get on. Yeah, because I mean.