Zack: 0:00

Welcome to another episode 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'm so excited because we have Rick Mailer with us, who 25 years ago founded something called City Barbecue, and we met in person speaking at the Kathleen Wood event in New York City and I was just so impressed. I normally don't get a chance to sit in and listen to other speakers, but I was so interested in what Rick had to say and he gave a great I almost want to say sermon.

Zack: 0:47

Rick, Like it was just it was powerful talking about your story and the guest experience and the vision, and so afterwards I was like Rick, you gotta come on the podcast. So I'm glad we were finally able to get this on the calendar. So, Rick, I'd love for you to tell a little bit about the story of City Barbecue. I mean, how did this start? And because you go to your LinkedIn and it's like John Deere and then City Barbecue. You did not start this as a restaurateur.

Rick Malir: 1:15

No, that's a perfect bridge. I mean John Deere tractor salesman to segue into restaurants seems natural to me. I don't know why. Is there a different path? No, not all restauranteurs started out in the agriculture and machinery business. Well, I guess it comes down to I'm going to try to keep this short. On the backstory is like ag economics major from Kansas State University Got to give a shout out to the Wildcats and then went to work for John Deere as a corporate guy.

Rick Malir: 1:43

Great company, really enjoyed the people but also realized that you know, I'm just cut different. It doesn't make it right or wrong, I was just cut a little different. It was an entrepreneurial bent, like I wanted to have my own thing, if you will. And so looking around for a lot of businesses to buy to start, it was interesting and my brain kept coming back to the hospitality business because I always had that fascination with them. I thought it was very cool to serve people, that you could be creative, you could do a lot of different things, and so that's where I always kept landing, whether I wanted to or not.

Rick Malir: 2:20

And then I couldn't get the thought of barbecue out of my head because I love smoking. I was introduced to it by some college friends when I was in school and the real craft of what it was. And then I kind of looked around Columbus and went, hmm, I'm fascinated with restaurants, I really like barbecue and there just weren't any competitors around. I thought, you know, I'm going to have a marketing plan and my marketing plan is very extensive. I put a lot of work into it and the work was I bet there's 500 other guys like me that will enjoy this food. That was my marketing plan of who the customer would be fortunate enough to meet them. Actually, one of them I was talking to today at a tasting in our office. I can go back to that later.

Rick Malir: 3:08

But we joined up that way and they were the ones smart enough to keep their day jobs. I was the one crazy enough to say, yeah, I'll quit John Deere, I'll convince Bonnie to partner with me and double mortgage the house, put our life savings into a place and try to get this thing going. But we had a problem also that they knew how to really do barbecue. Great, I was the idiot that was ready to jump and do this thing, take the big chances a 35-year-old but none of us knew how to run a restaurant. That's kind of that's needed. And so I joined up with a third leg of the stool, as I like to say, and that was Frank Pizzo, who was one of our original founders as well. And so I joined up with a third leg of the stool, as I like to say, and that was Frank Pizzo, who was one of our original founders as well, and he was a Burger King guy. And so Frank really understood systems, point of sale, all that stuff right as a franchisee at Burger King. And Frank and I shared the same values as we were talking over time. And finally I said, frank, why don't we join up on this thing and try it? And he said, okay, so that's really kind of how we put this thing all together.

Rick Malir: 4:09

But it was a true bootstrap business. It was an old donut shop literally built the tables in my garage because I went to, I went to the restaurant supply place and the table costs 180 bucks at the time and I said, man, that's crazy, I can buy a used table stand for 15. And I literally went to Home Depot and grabbed a pine board and sawed it up and made tables in the garage before. But you're, hey, you know, I can save some money here. What's fun is those tables are still in the first restaurant and we put little placards on them saying by the way, these were built by Rick Mail and John Keene, who was one of the other original founders. Oh, wow, that's you're enjoying this barbecue on 25 years later.

Rick Malir: 4:53

So we started with one joint. We started officially as a caterer because we had so many delays getting the first one open and I didn't have any money. I didn't come for money. Bonnie, my wife, didn't come for money. I couldn't just pick up the phone and call people and say, hey, I need more cash. But we had these delays. I was like I need to get a little income here because now I'd already quit John Deere and so we would do catering out of my garage.

Rick Malir: 5:17

And, as I like to say, the statute of limitations are over because we did not have health permits. We followed health code law. We wash and sanitize, we did all that, killed all the landscaping in the back of my house because of the chemicals, but we didn't have any licenses. But I just said, you know, let's just take a few jobs and start cooking and see where I can get some cash coming in while we get this restaurant open. So that was sort of leading up to the first one at City Bar barbecue. And to me it was interesting in the fact that what we really were obsessed with was is the food good, is it delicious, is it yummy? Is it the quality of what you would maybe get at a barbecue contest? Because my partners had won the 1997 American Royal in brisket, which was a huge deal, no-transcript and can we serve really great food? And then we figured the homemade tables would be okay.

Zack: 6:24

Yeah, yeah, I like that you put your emphasis where the real value was and I think that a lot of times it sounds so simple, but that's sometimes hard to do. You get swept up in a whole bunch of other things and it's hard to remember that when you're getting punched in the face with bills come and due, with your mortgage payments needing to come on, you start to cut the wrong corners and it's great that you really focused on that food first, and I think even starting off at catering first means that you have to focus on the food first, right? You don't have a lot of other stuff to distract you with.

Rick Malir: 6:58

And that's the fun thing is, when I do these podcasts or talk, I always try to analyze the audience and say what do they want to hear and why should they listen to me, or what do I have to offer to this conversation? And I'm guessing a lot of your listeners are restaurant owners. Maybe they're entrepreneurs, they're thinking about doing their own thing. So I'm trying to try to talk about things that might kind of get their brains going a little bit. But one of them was I looked at a franchise, to be a franchisee of a barbecue joint before we started City Barbecue, and then I bought a handbook on it. This is so crazy. This is 1998, when the Internet was such a new thing that you didn't really do much of a Google search. Or you know, I'm still sending off for books, and it's not through Amazon. It's like, hey, I found this and this guy.

Zack: 7:47

Franchising for dummies.

Rick Malir: 7:48

Yeah, franchising for dummies from some guy who was an expert on franchising but I remember it was so impactful because the bottom line of it was being a franchisee is almost the worst of both worlds. And so I'm reading it more and more and it goes you're working for a big corporation, but you're also got all your money invested. And I'm kind of going okay, I get it. Now there's a lot of people that made a lot of money being a franchisee, so I'm not going to poo-poo it.

Rick Malir: 8:20

But what it hit me was like I'm going, man, I don't want to be in the corporate world anymore, I want to be an entrepreneur. And here, why would I be a franchisee if I got to give them all this money? Go with their branding, go with the food they tell me to serve and how to do it, and et cetera. And so it was very enlightening. And that's where I said, you know, after meeting that franchisor of a barbecue joint back then, I decided you know, I think I want to do this on my own. And then I met the barbecue boys and Frank and we kind of put this whole thing together. So it's sort of interesting if you're thinking about starting a business and you're looking at a franchise. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying investigate the living daylights out of it and see what real value they bring to you and to your area.

Zack: 9:05

I totally agree, because there's some concepts where, man, it is a great business in a box and you're able to just start from day one, hit the ground running, the big decisions have been made for you, the technology is like locked down and there's some great opportunities there. But, to your point, talk to people who are doing down and there's some great opportunities there, but, to your point, talk to people who are doing it, because there's some definite mixed reviews. And in the end, though, I think, whether you have a franchisee, you know you decided to be a franchisee, you decided to open up your own thing. The key is and this is something I loved hearing you talk about in New York was is the guest experience. And so, when you think about the guest experience, rick, what do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience nowadays? I think it's that emotional connection.

Rick Malir: 9:49

It sounds soft and fuzzy, but you teed up the biggest softball ever for me, by the way. So this is you just threw one right down the middle of the plate. But it's so important to have that guest feel good when they come in and when we're serving barbecue over a beat-up counter with homemade tables and paper towels on the tables for your napkins and a pretty rudimentary joint. In our first one, we had to focus on how do we really engage that guest? And we're a fast, casual concept, so we don't have servers walking around taking your order. We're a fast, casual concept. They walk up to the register and they're greeted. And so we really came in.

Rick Malir: 10:32

And I think the advantage of having a John Deere experience versus a restaurant experience was I couldn't break the rules because I didn't know what they were. Oh, interesting, I had no idea what the rules were. And, for example, frank and I are talking and he goes hey, do you know what the minimum wage is in Ohio? Because his mindset was well, burger King, we're going to try to pay minimum to get them in, and all this. And I said Frank, one is, I don't care because I want to hire really great people and give them a great opportunity here. So I don't care what minimum wage is, because we're not even going to think about that. We're not going to have a race to the bottom here. We're going to pay the most we can and that's actually a value we have.

Rick Malir: 11:11

An operating principle is when you run your restaurant and your joint, figure out how you can run it efficiently and build the sales to where you can pay your teams the most you can, not the least you can. And that's a rule that I didn't know I was breaking at the time. Now it's in vogue, right, you know, you know in companies, but back then you know it was a minimum wage mentality in the business. And so we broke that rule and we did have some really terrific teams and we really wanted them to not have a guest come in and say, yeah, I'd like a brisket sandwich, and then we say, do you want fries with that? We didn't have greetings. We said greet the guest how you'd want to greet them when they walk in your door at home and just make them feel like they're a special part of this. And so when we look at the guest experience and, by the way, the caveat here is that we are absolutely far from perfect. I mean, we strive every day to make this work better, to make this work better, but it starts with that basic interaction of a team member when that guest comes in, and are they being genuine and authentic with them?

Rick Malir: 12:17

Here's an example of things I fight is we have a loyalty program, right? And so some of the guys, especially the IT guys in our company, are going yeah, we need to get more loyalty signups because that dried, blah, blah, blah. And they're giving me all these statistics and analytics on why that's important. And I get it, you want to have a loyalty program. But they were for a while telling the cashiers, every guest that walks in ask them if they'd like to join loyalty. Oh, like no, you just killed the emotional connection with that guest because you're beating them up, asking them to join loyalty. If they want to join loyalty it's because they had a great guest experience and now they want to be more involved in the program.

Zack: 12:57

Yeah, oh my gosh, I love that, because to me, joining a loyalty program, that is the permission for the first kiss. Yeah, you know what I mean. And that happens normally after a good first date, right? You don't go bump someone up for a date and say, hey, you want to go on a second date, and it's like, hey, buddy, let's have dinner first.

Rick Malir: 13:17

Let's like, calm down, yeah, and so that's what so I think can get overlooked today in hospitality is that experience of just engaging and loving the guests. And I got such a great story I hear today from another company out there, jeff Ruby Steakhouse out of Cincinnati. So the gal that cuts my hair, she goes. She took her kids there for their birthday they're like 14 years old and she took them there as a big deal because that's where they wanted to go.

Rick Malir: 13:44

And you spend a lot of money at Jeff Ruby's it's not a cheap steak place and I said, how did it go when she was cutting my hair? Today and she goes oh my gosh, they made this special cake out of a Nike shoe. They printed a special menu with his name on it because it was his birthday, and they had a special menu for my daughter because she doesn't necessarily like steak, and they did all this crazy hospitality things. And she's just raving about what a great thing it was and I'm thinking to myself they did not use a single piece of technology to do that other than a printer and a little bit of heart right and a little bit of Uber away. And so in this day and age, technology can really help with the frictionless guest experience, to use the fancy terms, to have a frictionless guest experience, but you don't want to use it in a way that eliminates your ability to connect with a guest in a more personal way, and something that we really strive to do, because to me, that's the key.

Rick Malir: 14:41

People still want to have some sense of community, because to me, that's the key. People still want to have some sense of community. They still want to have some sense of belonging and friendship and I think a lot of folks out there say well, you know the younger class, they just want to be on their phones, they don't want to talk to anybody. I'm not so sure about that. I think they still, in a lot of ways, want to connect, whether they admit to it or not, even though they're looking at their phone 24-7, some of them 100% and I think that there's ways that you can connect with people on their phones.

Zack: 15:14

Right, Make sure that you know, connect with them in a different way that meets them where they're at.

Zack: 15:16

You know not saying that you need to jump onto the metaverse and open up a city barbecue virtual location so that way you can like talk to streamers, but like there's ways that you could just connect with people where they're at and help them feel important, help them feel like you care, help them feel that connection like you're talking about Because at the end of the day, listeners of this podcast know I talk about this all the time the ladder of loyalty, and I'm sure you can like repeat it with me.

Zack: 15:39

It starts with convenience, then it ladders up to consistency, but then it really tops things off with connection and you can have great food and have okay loyalty, but when you have great connection and that guest knows that you care about them, that's magic, that is generational brands. And I think that the fact that you were with John Deere, my grandfather he was a farmer and he was amazing at connecting with people, because you would always tell me like when you're dealing with a farmer, it's about people, it's about the handshake it's about. Your word is your bond, and these old school ethics that ring true no matter when they are, and so be it. You know 1950s in Georgia, or today in Sheboygan or New York City people want to know that they're cared about and that you care about them.

Rick Malir: 16:31

Even more importantly than that is making sure your teams are connected and feel appreciated and trusted in a genuine way.

Zack: 16:40

Yeah.

Rick Malir: 16:40

Because only through an amazing employee team member experience can they deliver that great guest experience.

Zack: 16:46

Man, rick, we need to have you back on just to talk about how you've scaled from your garage to how many locations. You had now live 75. Think about that from a garage to 75 locations in 25 years. We need to have an episode just dedicated to that, because that's an incredible journey in and of itself. Now, rick, we're coming up here on time. I know that you know so many people in this industry, but who is someone that you think deserves an ovation? Who is someone that we should be following in this industry?

Rick Malir: 17:16

I'm going to give a shout out to a good friend of mine. He's a good friend, so I'm a homer here. I'm being biased. We're actually going quail hunting next month again, but I'm going to give a shout out to Rich Rosendale.

Rick Malir: 17:26

Chef Rich Rosendale he represented the US in Bocuse d'Or, I want to say about 10 years ago, and he used to be executive chef at the Greenbrier had a known fine dining restaurant here in Columbus. But why I'm giving him a shout out is what he's doing and you can Google him and you'll get onto his website. He does all kinds of stuff, interesting things. He has a subscription service, very innovative in the food space, a freak on new and innovative ways to cook and very experimental. But maybe more importantly, he's like this new chef.

Rick Malir: 18:02

That's cool, like he used to do a lot of work for us at City Barbecue, working on different techniques, and he would show up in a t-shirt and do dishes with the crew and knock stuff out. And this guy's a world-renowned certified master chef and he's working in such a humble fashion they aren't having to say yes chef, no chef, that it was hey Rich, what's up, and just a really cool guy that has a lot of interesting things out there that I believe the listeners could learn from so much. So it's Rosendale Collective, I believe would be a good Google. Rich Rosendale, you're going to find it cool guy.

Zack: 18:39

Okay, awesome. Well, thanks for that shout. I just checked him out. He looks to follow him. But speaking of following, how do we follow either you?

Rick Malir: 18:47

or City BBQ, citybbqcom. We have an Instagram account, we have the Facebook. We have all that going too. I'm on LinkedIn, though I'm the world's worst user. I'm trying to get better. Yeah, maybe that's the way to do it, and then I've been kicking around to reach our guests a little bit better. Do we start like some podcasts for our guests that they can learn about? Just stuff like we just learned about today? Oh, there's a lot of ways to follow, but, uh, yeah, the traditional ways Instagram, facebook, citybbqcom, all that kind of thing.

Zack: 19:19

Well, rick, for bringing his backyard barbecue to the city. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Give an Ovation.

Rick Malir: 19:27

Okay, thank you, we'll talk later.

Zack: 19:30

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.